ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► Let me just take a pause here so I can adjust my level some more.

00:00:02 ◼   ► I keep messing with my dials, it's killing me.

00:00:03 ◼   ► Alright, this is sounding better.

00:00:05 ◼   ► Why are you doing that to yourself?

00:00:06 ◼   ► It's the worst.

00:00:07 ◼   ► It's two dials.

00:00:08 ◼   ► It's a volume dial and a mix dial and like every time I think I have you at the right

00:00:12 ◼   ► volume then I talk and either I can't hear myself or I'm blasting my eardrums out.

00:00:17 ◼   ► So the rule of audio stuff is once you get it working, don't touch it.

00:00:19 ◼   ► Never touch it again.

00:00:20 ◼   ► I don't touch the dials but somebody or something touched my dials and now I have to.

00:00:27 ◼   ► - And the worst thing about these dials

00:00:29 ◼   ► is their tiny little dials don't even have markings on them.

00:00:31 ◼   ► So even if I did take a picture of them,

00:00:33 ◼   ► there's no, there's no.

00:00:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, my next suggestion was gonna be,

00:00:36 ◼   ► I actually, earlier tonight,

00:00:38 ◼   ► yesterday I had to change one of the settings

00:00:40 ◼   ► on my audio interface.

00:00:41 ◼   ► So today, as I was setting up for the show tonight,

00:00:43 ◼   ► I went and looked at my picture that I keep

00:00:45 ◼   ► of it set up correctly.

00:00:47 ◼   ► And I adjusted the knob that I had changed earlier

00:00:50 ◼   ► to match the photo of my correct setup.

00:00:53 ◼   ► It's something I highly recommend

00:00:54 ◼   ► if you have the ability to have an audio interface

00:00:56 ◼   ► where like it has knobs with lines on them

00:00:59 ◼   ► to show you where they are.

00:01:00 ◼   ► So you can actually like kind of basically save

00:01:02 ◼   ► and restore state in the most manual way possible.

00:01:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, you remember what this microphone looks like,

00:01:07 ◼   ► the one I'm using, like it has these tiny little,

00:01:09 ◼   ► like almost like a little, they're horizontal,

00:01:12 ◼   ► they're inside the device

00:01:13 ◼   ► and only the little curved part of them is peeking out

00:01:16 ◼   ► and there's no markings on them.

00:01:17 ◼   ► It's no good.

00:01:18 ◼   ► The only thing I take pictures of in that way

00:01:19 ◼   ► is how cables are connected in the back of my AV setup

00:01:22 ◼   ► and how things are arranged on shelves.

00:01:25 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:01:27 ◼   ► - Okay, the cables make sense.

00:01:28 ◼   ► The shelves, like, first of all,

00:01:30 ◼   ► how often do things get moved on your shelves

00:01:33 ◼   ► that this would even be a problem?

00:01:34 ◼   ► And second of all, who cares?

00:01:35 ◼   ► - Surprisingly often enough, I mean,

00:01:37 ◼   ► what I recently did was flip to one of my shelves,

00:01:38 ◼   ► so these big wooden shelves, they're like bowing,

00:01:40 ◼   ► and I wanted to flip it over, right?

00:01:42 ◼   ► And so I have to take a shot of the shelf

00:01:44 ◼   ► so I know where everything goes,

00:01:45 ◼   ► then take everything off, then flip it over,

00:01:48 ◼   ► and then put everything back on.

00:01:50 ◼   ► - I went to the Apple store, twice actually,

00:01:55 ◼   ► wants to buy some dongles just to have them, even though I haven't really needed them yet

00:01:59 ◼   ► for $10 a pop, why not buy a few? So I bought three to sprinkle around the house/cars. And

00:02:05 ◼   ► I briefly looked at the matte black, and I don't remember if this was before or after

00:02:08 ◼   ► the show, I want to say it was before the last show, and it was pretty but I prefer

00:02:12 ◼   ► the aesthetics of, oh I'm sorry, the jet black, it was pretty but I prefer the aesthetics

00:02:16 ◼   ► of the matte black. So the jet black, definitely a good looking phone, prefer the matte. But

00:02:20 ◼   ► then I think it was during the show that you guys, or at least you Marco and I were talking

00:02:24 ◼   ► about it and you asked me or somebody asked me if it felt any tackier and tackier in the

00:02:30 ◼   ► sense of like stickier if you will.

00:02:32 ◼   ► And it occurred to me I didn't really pay much attention to that which is kind of crazy.

00:02:35 ◼   ► I don't know why I didn't think about it but I went back to the Apple store and spent about

00:02:40 ◼   ► 45 seconds there and I grabbed the one Jet Black demo unit that they have and I tell

00:02:48 ◼   ► you what, based on feel there is no question that is the one to get.

00:02:52 ◼   ► without a shadow of a doubt, it feels so much better,

00:02:56 ◼   ► tackiness-wise, stickiness-wise, if you will,

00:02:59 ◼   ► than the matte black.

00:03:00 ◼   ► I still think the matte black looks better,

00:03:03 ◼   ► but oh, night and day, the jet black feels so much better,

00:03:06 ◼   ► and you are absolutely right.

00:03:07 ◼   ► So #marcoisright.

00:03:09 ◼   ► - All right, I finally got one.

00:03:11 ◼   ► I'm wrong about so many other things.

00:03:12 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:03:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, you can't win 'em all.

00:03:16 ◼   ► Sort of kind of speaking of, last we spoke,

00:03:20 ◼   ► You seemed like you were starting to warm to the home button.

00:03:24 ◼   ► Have you completely warmed to it?

00:03:26 ◼   ► Are you back to giving it the cold shoulder?

00:03:28 ◼   ► Where are you standing with the home button?

00:03:31 ◼   ► - It's fine.

00:03:32 ◼   ► You know, it's, when I go back and use an old phone, now it feels old, so it's like,

00:03:37 ◼   ► "Thanks a lot, Apple, you ruined buttons."

00:03:39 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:03:42 ◼   ► But so I suppose that means I like it.

00:03:45 ◼   ► It is a little bit annoying that it has become,

00:03:48 ◼   ► that it took something that was reliable

00:03:52 ◼   ► and made it just a little bit less than reliable.

00:03:54 ◼   ► And that's kinda, I mean, this is, you know,

00:03:56 ◼   ► the motto of so many other things,

00:03:59 ◼   ► or like this is like the modus operandi

00:04:01 ◼   ► of like so much of the progress we've made

00:04:03 ◼   ► in these areas recently, where like,

00:04:05 ◼   ► yeah, you made the old thing better in a lot of ways,

00:04:08 ◼   ► but, you know, worse in some other, you know,

00:04:11 ◼   ► smaller maybe, or less important to most people way.

00:04:15 ◼   ► But anyway, overall I like it, but I do find it unfortunate

00:04:19 ◼   ► that it has become a little bit less reliable

00:04:21 ◼   ► than a regular button.

00:04:23 ◼   ► - Do you find yourself running into that often?

00:04:25 ◼   ► Because I definitely have had a couple of times,

00:04:27 ◼   ► well maybe more than a couple, but every once in a while

00:04:30 ◼   ► I will find that I think I've hit the button

00:04:32 ◼   ► and the phone does not agree.

00:04:34 ◼   ► But it's pretty darn rare.

00:04:36 ◼   ► But from the way you're talking,

00:04:37 ◼   ► it sounds like it's somewhat common for you?

00:04:39 ◼   ► - No, I mean I just hit the button a lot.

00:04:40 ◼   ► You know, to me, this is one of the problems I have

00:04:43 ◼   ► with the Force Touch trackpad on the Max

00:04:46 ◼   ► is that the Force Touch trackpad took something,

00:04:49 ◼   ► if you were one of the people who clicked

00:04:51 ◼   ► in the bottom area of the trackpad,

00:04:53 ◼   ► and I recognize the Force Touch is better

00:04:55 ◼   ► because you can click anywhere on the surface,

00:04:57 ◼   ► but if you were one of the people

00:04:58 ◼   ► who came along the old track

00:05:00 ◼   ► where the buttons used to be below it,

00:05:01 ◼   ► so you'd hit the button with your thumb

00:05:03 ◼   ► and you'd point with your index finger or something,

00:05:05 ◼   ► or usually your middle finger, I guess,

00:05:07 ◼   ► and then when they removed the buttons,

00:05:09 ◼   ► they made the whole thing hinge that way

00:05:11 ◼   ► so that you could basically leave your hand

00:05:13 ◼   ► the same way it always was.

00:05:15 ◼   ► You could leave your thumb pushing down on the bottom area

00:05:18 ◼   ► where the buttons used to be and have that click

00:05:21 ◼   ► and then still move with your index or middle finger.

00:05:24 ◼   ► So if you're one of those people who came along,

00:05:27 ◼   ► the old button felt great because you were already clicking

00:05:29 ◼   ► always in the bottom area anyway.

00:05:32 ◼   ► So if you're one of those people, which of course I am

00:05:34 ◼   ► because we're all ancient, comparable to people

00:05:36 ◼   ► who like to use Snapchat and stuff.

00:05:38 ◼   ► So if you're one of those people,

00:05:40 ◼   ► the old one was incredibly reliable.

00:05:42 ◼   ► The idea that you would ever,

00:05:44 ◼   ► assuming you don't use touch to click,

00:05:45 ◼   ► the idea that you would ever accidentally click on something

00:05:49 ◼   ► on the trackpad or think you're clicking

00:05:52 ◼   ► but not have actually clicked,

00:05:53 ◼   ► that literally would never happen with the old ones.

00:05:57 ◼   ► And with force touch trackpads, that sometimes happens.

00:06:00 ◼   ► Similarly with the new home button on the phones.

00:06:03 ◼   ► It's really hard to accidentally hit the home button

00:06:05 ◼   ► on the old phones.

00:06:06 ◼   ► If you mean to hit it, you'll hit it.

00:06:08 ◼   ► And with this one, you can occasionally accidentally push it

00:06:12 ◼   ► where you meant to maybe just touch it

00:06:14 ◼   ► or you meant to grip it a certain way

00:06:17 ◼   ► or you can accidentally triple click

00:06:19 ◼   ► when you meant to double click or single click

00:06:20 ◼   ► or vice versa.

00:06:22 ◼   ► You can accidentally trigger Siri if you didn't mean to.

00:06:24 ◼   ► You can accidentally, this is a frequent one,

00:06:25 ◼   ► accidentally trigger reachability

00:06:27 ◼   ► by if you think you're pushing it

00:06:29 ◼   ► or think you're holding it

00:06:30 ◼   ► or think you're double pressing it

00:06:31 ◼   ► but you actually just double contact it, I guess,

00:06:33 ◼   ► whatever the reachability thing is called.

00:06:35 ◼   ► So basically, they took something that, again,

00:06:38 ◼   ► was a mechanically generally reliable thing

00:06:41 ◼   ► and made it do the wrong thing maybe 1% of the time.

00:06:46 ◼   ► For me, it's very frustrating when an input device

00:06:49 ◼   ► doesn't respond 100% of the time correctly

00:06:53 ◼   ► because we use input devices so much on these computers

00:06:57 ◼   ► and we use them to command them to do things

00:06:59 ◼   ► that if you hit the keyboard,

00:07:02 ◼   ► if you hit the same key over and over again

00:07:04 ◼   ► and every one out of 40 times

00:07:07 ◼   ► like the H throws out a J instead,

00:07:09 ◼   ► like this is the worst keyboard ever,

00:07:11 ◼   ► like why would you tolerate that, right?

00:07:14 ◼   ► I feel like I have a very, very high standard

00:07:17 ◼   ► for how I expect my input devices to be,

00:07:20 ◼   ► how reliable I expect them to be,

00:07:22 ◼   ► and it does annoy me when we make progress,

00:07:26 ◼   ► but at the cost of that reliability that we used to have.

00:07:29 ◼   ► And anything less than 100% reliability for me is annoying.

00:07:33 ◼   ► And that's not to say that I won't just deal with it,

00:07:37 ◼   ► Like when the new laptops come out forever from now.

00:07:39 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:07:40 ◼   ► Whenever the new laptops come out,

00:07:43 ◼   ► I'm probably gonna buy one,

00:07:44 ◼   ► even though it's almost certainly going to have

00:07:46 ◼   ► the same ForceTux trackpad we've had,

00:07:48 ◼   ► and I'm just gonna have to suck it up and deal with it,

00:07:49 ◼   ► and it'll be fine.

00:07:50 ◼   ► Just like, I'm probably never going to mention

00:07:54 ◼   ► the home button being unreliable a little bit on the iPhone 7.

00:07:57 ◼   ► I'm probably never gonna mention it again,

00:07:58 ◼   ► because I'm just gonna get used to it,

00:07:59 ◼   ► and I'll just be a little bit annoyed

00:08:01 ◼   ► whenever it doesn't work,

00:08:02 ◼   ► but then just move on with my day, right?

00:08:03 ◼   ► But we are losing something here

00:08:05 ◼   ► by making things that were 100% reliable, 99% reliable.

00:08:09 ◼   ► And that's all, but overall, I'm okay with it.

00:08:13 ◼   ► - I like the idea that you're never gonna mention it again.

00:08:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, maybe I shouldn't guarantee that.

00:08:18 ◼   ► - Seems very unlikely.

00:08:19 ◼   ► - But just again, just to restate the summary here,

00:08:24 ◼   ► overall, I like the new button.

00:08:25 ◼   ► I do like the Taptic Engine a lot overall,

00:08:28 ◼   ► and when I go back, the old one does feel old,

00:08:32 ◼   ► so they got me, right?

00:08:34 ◼   ► and I'm sold, however, it is a little annoying

00:08:37 ◼   ► that it can't be 100% reliable.

00:08:40 ◼   ► - So I don't know about this home button

00:08:41 ◼   ► 'cause I still haven't tried it,

00:08:42 ◼   ► but as for the trackpad, I continue to say

00:08:44 ◼   ► that you will eventually look back on the mechanical ones

00:08:47 ◼   ► and think they're barbaric,

00:08:48 ◼   ► and I would add that for most people,

00:08:50 ◼   ► maybe not you, but for most people I've seen

00:08:52 ◼   ► and myself included, using the mechanical one,

00:08:54 ◼   ► whether it was the button or the one

00:08:56 ◼   ► where it didn't have a button but the whole thing slanted,

00:08:58 ◼   ► not 100% reliable.

00:09:00 ◼   ► Very frequently, attempt to click and not actually click

00:09:03 ◼   ► if you're not using tap to click.

00:09:05 ◼   ► Happens to me every once in a while,

00:09:06 ◼   ► I see it to happen to people all the time.

00:09:08 ◼   ► So it's not, there's more to the reliability

00:09:12 ◼   ► than just like if you successfully actuate the mechanism,

00:09:16 ◼   ► you will do a click.

00:09:19 ◼   ► 'Cause that's true of anything.

00:09:19 ◼   ► You successfully accurate the mechanism

00:09:22 ◼   ► on the non-moving button,

00:09:23 ◼   ► you will successfully get a home button press or whatever.

00:09:26 ◼   ► It's just a question of do people sometimes go for it

00:09:28 ◼   ► and fail to do it?

00:09:29 ◼   ► And the answer for those real buttons is yes.

00:09:32 ◼   ► I mean, maybe the percentage was different for you,

00:09:34 ◼   ► but it's not as if anything is 100% reliable

00:09:38 ◼   ► when it comes to translating intention and hand action

00:09:42 ◼   ► into like the desired result.

00:09:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, I gotta say, I almost never run into problems.

00:09:48 ◼   ► Like I said earlier, a couple of times a new home button,

00:09:51 ◼   ► because I've hit it in such a way

00:09:52 ◼   ► that maybe I've hit solely the quote unquote button itself

00:09:56 ◼   ► and I haven't had any contact with the ring around it,

00:09:59 ◼   ► But very rarely do I have any problems with the home button.

00:10:03 ◼   ► And I cannot remember a time where I've had

00:10:05 ◼   ► an unintentional fire or a lack of fire

00:10:08 ◼   ► on the Force Touch trackpad.

00:10:09 ◼   ► So you must be a trackpad wizard in a bad way

00:10:12 ◼   ► because you are the only one that can find these issues.

00:10:15 ◼   ► Well, not the only one, but the only one I've heard of

00:10:17 ◼   ► that has found these issues.

00:10:18 ◼   ► So congrats, I guess?

00:10:20 ◼   ► I'm not really sure where to go from here.

00:10:22 ◼   ► - You still don't have a Force Touch trackpad

00:10:24 ◼   ► other than the one you use for podcast editing, right?

00:10:26 ◼   ► The Matic trackpad?

00:10:27 ◼   ► - That's right.

00:10:28 ◼   ► So I think that's also influencing you because we have one of those magic trackpads too,

00:10:31 ◼   ► and I hate trackpads in general, and I don't really like that magic trackpad either, but

00:10:34 ◼   ► I think once you get the new laptops that we're assuming they will someday release and

00:10:38 ◼   ► it has the trackpad, that's, I think that's when your real transition is going to be.

00:10:41 ◼   ► Because I was wondering, like, why is your opinion of this not getting better?

00:10:44 ◼   ► The only thing you're using is that thing.

00:10:45 ◼   ► I find that thing frustrating in that very frequently I'm trying to press anywhere on

00:10:50 ◼   ► the thing to make it click and it just doesn't, it feels like I'm pressing against a wall

00:10:55 ◼   ► that doesn't move.

00:10:56 ◼   ► and it does the little vibration thing,

00:10:58 ◼   ► and it eventually works, but it just,

00:11:00 ◼   ► it feels so much more awkward to me to press it anywhere,

00:11:04 ◼   ► in a way that it doesn't when I use

00:11:06 ◼   ► the four-star track pads on the big laptops.

00:11:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, look, the home button,

00:11:11 ◼   ► turns out, after you use it for a day,

00:11:14 ◼   ► you completely stop noticing it as a thing that is different

00:11:17 ◼   ► except for when it accuses it of the wrong thing.

00:11:20 ◼   ► But overall, it is really not a substantial problem at all,

00:11:23 ◼   ► and in some ways, it's a benefit.

00:11:24 ◼   ► So it is not a, if you don't yet have an iPhone 7,

00:11:28 ◼   ► the home button change is not a good enough reason

00:11:31 ◼   ► to not get one, if that was your only reason.

00:11:34 ◼   ► - Well, I would say, yeah, I mean, I prefer it now.

00:11:37 ◼   ► And as we spoke about last episode,

00:11:39 ◼   ► I hated it for the first, I don't know, day or so.

00:11:43 ◼   ► And then I've quickly come around and now I freaking love it.

00:11:45 ◼   ► And like you said, the little taptic touches

00:11:47 ◼   ► that are throughout the OS,

00:11:49 ◼   ► like on spinners and things like that,

00:11:51 ◼   ► I really, really like them.

00:11:52 ◼   ► I think they're really well done.

00:11:53 ◼   ► I'm looking forward to those little Taptic touches proliferating through third-party

00:11:59 ◼   ► apps as well.

00:12:00 ◼   ► So we'll see.

00:12:01 ◼   ► Moving on, listener Sid sent me an email, and I think this went only to me earlier today.

00:12:07 ◼   ► They had the same weird issue with their 5K iMac and OWC RAM.

00:12:15 ◼   ► And apparently they had gone back and forth with OWC trying different sticks.

00:12:20 ◼   ► And then just recently they sent an email to me, forwarded an email to me from OWC,

00:12:27 ◼   ► and it said a few things, but most interestingly, this is from OWC, "We have recently located

00:12:32 ◼   ► a coding fault in these modules and are currently refreshing our stock in order to rectify this."

00:12:38 ◼   ► I don't know what a coding fault is in terms of RAM, maybe one of you guys do, but it seems

00:12:43 ◼   ► that something genuinely was broken with the RAM and they've recognized it and they're

00:12:48 ◼   ► they're trying to fix it.

00:12:50 ◼   ► My computer had been up, I think, 10 or 15ish days

00:12:54 ◼   ► before I installed Sierra.

00:12:56 ◼   ► It's been eight days since then.

00:12:58 ◼   ► I wouldn't call that an absolute victory

00:13:01 ◼   ► for my replacement sticks, which I did get from OWC,

00:13:04 ◼   ► but certainly all signs are pointing to good news.

00:13:06 ◼   ► And so I just thought that was kind of interesting.

00:13:09 ◼   ► Do you guys have any idea what a coding fault would mean

00:13:11 ◼   ► in terms of RAM?

00:13:13 ◼   ► - I mean, there's probably some kind of like timing

00:13:16 ◼   ► and stuff, like RAM, obviously everything,

00:13:18 ◼   ► Every component in a computer is now

00:13:20 ◼   ► way more complicated than it used to be,

00:13:22 ◼   ► or way more complicated than we think it is.

00:13:23 ◼   ► So like there's, you know, a RAM stick

00:13:25 ◼   ► could have firmware for all I know.

00:13:27 ◼   ► Who knows?

00:13:28 ◼   ► You know, RAM has all these like tight timings

00:13:30 ◼   ► and controllers and everything in them,

00:13:32 ◼   ► so it could be lots of things like that.

00:13:35 ◼   ► - Fair enough.

00:13:36 ◼   ► Jon, you don't have anything to add, I assume?

00:13:38 ◼   ► - I got no idea what a coding fault is.

00:13:40 ◼   ► - Fair enough, all right.

00:13:42 ◼   ► At least I'm not alone, that makes me feel slightly better.

00:13:44 ◼   ► All right, moving on.

00:13:45 ◼   ► We also got word that, from Scott O'Reilly among other people, that the headphone jack

00:13:51 ◼   ► issue that he had reported in 10.0.0 has been fixed in 10.0.2.

00:13:56 ◼   ► So if you recall, if you had your, I believe it was only with the dongle, is that right?

00:14:01 ◼   ► Or generally speaking it was with the dongle.

00:14:03 ◼   ► You had some headphones, like perhaps the older earbuds, plugged into the lightning

00:14:08 ◼   ► to headphone dongle, and you paused something and let it sit for five or more minutes, then

00:14:12 ◼   ► then the buttons on the headphones would not allow you

00:14:16 ◼   ► to unpause them or unpause the playback.

00:14:18 ◼   ► And so Scott O'Reilly has reported in

00:14:21 ◼   ► that this is now fixed.

00:14:22 ◼   ► So good news.

00:14:23 ◼   ► - Cool. - I'm excited about that.

00:14:25 ◼   ► Eduardo Pellegrino wrote in to talk to us

00:14:28 ◼   ► about how volume works on Bluetooth.

00:14:31 ◼   ► So I don't know, Marco, do you wanna take care of this?

00:14:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, we'll go over it quickly.

00:14:34 ◼   ► Basically, we were discussing in previous episodes

00:14:36 ◼   ► about the question of whether Bluetooth

00:14:39 ◼   ► was re-encoding the audio to be sent over the air

00:14:42 ◼   ► between the phone and Bluetooth headsets.

00:14:44 ◼   ► One of the issues raised if you tried not to re-encode

00:14:47 ◼   ► the audio was that we said you probably

00:14:49 ◼   ► couldn't change the volume.

00:14:50 ◼   ► Eduardo Pellegrino wrote in to basically tell us

00:14:52 ◼   ► that with any modern Bluetooth peripheral,

00:14:54 ◼   ► the digital signal is at full amplitude

00:14:56 ◼   ► and the volume control is being applied only at the headset.

00:14:59 ◼   ► The volume level is negotiated

00:15:01 ◼   ► between the phone and the headset.

00:15:03 ◼   ► There's all sorts of stuff involved in the AVRCP spec.

00:15:07 ◼   ► In almost every case of modern Bluetooth headphones,

00:15:11 ◼   ► the signals being sent at full volume from the phone

00:15:14 ◼   ► and the headphone itself is applying

00:15:16 ◼   ► the volume reduction or whatever to it.

00:15:19 ◼   ► - So that shows you could be sending the AAC more easily,

00:15:22 ◼   ► but the important part of the volume thing

00:15:25 ◼   ► is we're talking about how like, oh,

00:15:26 ◼   ► sometimes you can just, like the volume,

00:15:28 ◼   ► you control the volume on your phone,

00:15:29 ◼   ► it changes on your headphones,

00:15:31 ◼   ► that's actually working in the opposite direction

00:15:32 ◼   ► and that when you do that, it's the headset and the phone

00:15:36 ◼   ► negotiating that when they press the volume buttons

00:15:39 ◼   ► the phone, send a signal to the headphones, like the phone is controlling the headphone

00:15:43 ◼   ► volume, the headphones are not controlling the phone volume, you know what I mean?

00:15:46 ◼   ► Like when you press that button, you're actually sending a signal to the headphones to say,

00:15:50 ◼   ► "Oh, back over at the phone, they said they want the volume lower," and then the headset,

00:15:54 ◼   ► the Bluetooth device itself, lowers the volume.

00:15:57 ◼   ► Then, we also heard word, or we've already heard word, that there are three digital-to-analog

00:16:02 ◼   ► converters in the iPhone 7, and we weren't really sure why, and we got some feedback

00:16:08 ◼   ► with the theory. Marco, do you want to talk about this?

00:16:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, this was, I think, my favorite thing

00:16:13 ◼   ► I heard this week.

00:16:15 ◼   ► So we got an email back, and it was from somebody

00:16:17 ◼   ► who wanted to remain anonymous, but it seemed

00:16:19 ◼   ► like they kind of had this as known information,

00:16:22 ◼   ► not speculation.

00:16:23 ◼   ► So there are basically three audio chips in the iPhone 7,

00:16:28 ◼   ► and we couldn't figure out what the third one was for.

00:16:29 ◼   ► We're like, well, maybe they're using it

00:16:31 ◼   ► just for convenience, for cable routing, whatever else.

00:16:33 ◼   ► So this person wrote in to tell us that what it's actually

00:16:35 ◼   ► used for is the Taptic Engine.

00:16:38 ◼   ► it seems like it might just behave like a speaker coil.

00:16:41 ◼   ► You know, 'cause you have the coils

00:16:43 ◼   ► that move the stuff around inside

00:16:46 ◼   ► to make the field vibrate.

00:16:47 ◼   ► The commands that the phone is sending to the Taptic Engine,

00:16:50 ◼   ► it seems like it's doing it via audio signaling.

00:16:54 ◼   ► It's not a speaker, it's just a vibrating weight

00:16:57 ◼   ► or whatever it is in there.

00:16:59 ◼   ► But isn't that, that to me, that sounds really cool.

00:17:02 ◼   ► That's such a brilliant hack.

00:17:04 ◼   ► Is that what you guys assume that meant too?

00:17:06 ◼   ► That's what I assume the Taptic Engine always was, because it's basically a speaker without

00:17:09 ◼   ► the cone. When you have a speaker, it's the thing moving back and forth, but there's no

00:17:13 ◼   ► paper cone or whatever moving air. So that's what it always looks like. It looks like a

00:17:16 ◼   ► big magnet coil-of-wire type thingy.

00:17:18 ◼   ► Yeah, and so if you think about how the phone would drive that, it's basically sending it

00:17:23 ◼   ► like MIDI notes almost. Whatever you're feeling, the phone's going like "uh-uh-uh-uh-uh," and

00:17:29 ◼   ► then instead of being a cone that's providing a sound, it's just vibrating the thing inside

00:17:34 ◼   ► at probably like one or two fixed frequencies

00:17:36 ◼   ► and just dealing with the timing

00:17:38 ◼   ► and the strength and everything.

00:17:39 ◼   ► I think that's really cool.

00:17:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, I never thought of it that way,

00:17:41 ◼   ► but that is super awesome.

00:17:42 ◼   ► And is there some difference in the way

00:17:45 ◼   ► the Taptic Engine is working that maybe

00:17:48 ◼   ► the new one is much better and that's why

00:17:50 ◼   ► you don't get that control in that API

00:17:53 ◼   ► for the 6S Taptic Engine?

00:17:54 ◼   ► 'Cause isn't that the case that the 6S Taptic Engine

00:17:57 ◼   ► you don't get any control over as a developer,

00:17:59 ◼   ► but the 7U do?

00:18:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, basically, or at least the 6S

00:18:03 ◼   ► you have very little control and the 7 you have basically full control.

00:18:06 ◼   ► Well you should look at the 7 to see if it has an audio thing for the Taptic Engine 2.

00:18:12 ◼   ► Maybe it does or it could be that the old ones are just basically on/off and the only

00:18:15 ◼   ► way you get different sort of vibration themes or sequences is by going on/off in different

00:18:21 ◼   ► frequencies whereas this one if you could dig through iOS maybe you could find like

00:18:24 ◼   ► the audio samples that they send to the virtual speaker that is the Taptic Engine rather than

00:18:29 ◼   ► and just going on, off, on, off, on, off,

00:18:30 ◼   ► just send tones or frequencies or sounds.

00:18:33 ◼   ► That would be a good jailbreak hack

00:18:34 ◼   ► if you could play music through the Tapsic engine

00:18:36 ◼   ► and see what it does.

00:18:37 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:18:38 ◼   ► - Like the floppy disk performances of the olden days.

00:18:42 ◼   ► Oh, that's a start.

00:18:43 ◼   ► - No, but you could like feel a song, you know?

00:18:45 ◼   ► You probably at least feel the basic rhythm, you know?

00:18:47 ◼   ► 'Cause like it basically is like a fairly imprecise

00:18:52 ◼   ► and different output type of speaker.

00:18:54 ◼   ► And that's pretty cool.

00:18:54 ◼   ► I think this is a really cool thing to learn.

00:18:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm curious to see if they give us

00:18:58 ◼   ► any more control over time.

00:19:00 ◼   ► I can't imagine that they would,

00:19:01 ◼   ► but man would that be neat to be able to do,

00:19:03 ◼   ► have some more fine grained control over it.

00:19:06 ◼   ► Assistive touch.

00:19:08 ◼   ► So we've been talking about this quite a bit

00:19:10 ◼   ► and there's been a couple of new theories

00:19:14 ◼   ► as to why I guess this is happening.

00:19:16 ◼   ► Jon, do you want to talk about this?

00:19:17 ◼   ► - This is just a couple that we left out

00:19:19 ◼   ► in the last discussion of why assistive touch

00:19:21 ◼   ► is so prevalent in East Asia.

00:19:24 ◼   ► And one idea was that the parts that are in the iPhones

00:19:29 ◼   ► in that region, sort of in the non-United States,

00:19:34 ◼   ► Europe regions, are the crudier parts.

00:19:37 ◼   ► Now, I can understand why this would be

00:19:42 ◼   ► something that happens in like,

00:19:43 ◼   ► when you're selling into markets that you sell less in,

00:19:47 ◼   ► that you make less money in,

00:19:48 ◼   ► and if you have parts that are not as good,

00:19:50 ◼   ► you might sell the crudier ones into the market

00:19:52 ◼   ► you make less money, it doesn't seem like a thing that Apple would ever do. It seems to me that Apple

00:19:58 ◼   ► has a certain quality control procedure and they just apply it to all their products and that's

00:20:01 ◼   ► that, but who knows, maybe they know better than I do. But this also sounds like one of those things

00:20:06 ◼   ► like so many companies have done it that they just assume everybody does it. I'm not sure if it's true

00:20:11 ◼   ► of Apple. But that would explain like, you know, our home buttons are worse than yours essentially.

00:20:16 ◼   ► Like I live in Thailand and our home buttons break more than yours do because we get the crappy

00:20:20 ◼   ► home buttons and you don't. Setting aside that like you know the iPhone 4 was bad for everybody,

00:20:25 ◼   ► right? So that's one idea. Another idea I heard put forth is it's really humid here and humidity

00:20:31 ◼   ► destroys our electronics sooner than yours. Like all this going towards the notion that

00:20:36 ◼   ► empirically home buttons do not last as long in this region of the world either because they're

00:20:43 ◼   ► getting cheaper parts or because they're getting the same parts and they get messed up by humidity.

00:20:47 ◼   ► Now, both of these sound like things that sound plausible, but don't really make that

00:20:54 ◼   ► much sense to me, because I can tell you in the United States at least, we have plenty

00:20:57 ◼   ► of humidity.

00:20:58 ◼   ► Just ask Casey.

00:20:59 ◼   ► We have places that have lots of humidity, and you don't hear about people in Louisiana

00:21:03 ◼   ► and Georgia having home buttons that fail more often than people in Arizona, right?

00:21:08 ◼   ► So I don't think that's it.

00:21:09 ◼   ► And the cheaper parts thing, only Apple knows for sure, right?

00:21:12 ◼   ► It's not like they're going to admit this, but it just doesn't seem like a thing that

00:21:15 ◼   ► Apple would do.

00:21:16 ◼   ► I think they have, for all their suppliers, have quality control standards and they just

00:21:20 ◼   ► apply them universally.

00:21:21 ◼   ► And if they don't meet the quality standards, they send them back around and recycle the

00:21:25 ◼   ► things and try again.

00:21:26 ◼   ► Yeah, it makes sense.

00:21:29 ◼   ► So we've gotten word that in iOS 10, iCloud backups, or really restores, I guess I should

00:21:34 ◼   ► say, now include passwords.

00:21:36 ◼   ► Now if you recall, and I think I first heard this from Marco years ago, but all three of

00:21:41 ◼   ► us had recommended that if you're going to back up your phone, the most reliable or maybe

00:21:45 ◼   ► perhaps easiest way to do it is to backup with iTunes and ensure that you've checked

00:21:51 ◼   ► the "encrypt backups" checkbox.

00:21:54 ◼   ► And so this password protects your backups and then because it's password protected,

00:21:59 ◼   ► Apple feels like, "Oh, in this case, I guess we can include Wi-Fi passwords and things

00:22:03 ◼   ► like that in the backup."

00:22:05 ◼   ► If you don't encrypt your backup, then the backup will not include Wi-Fi passwords and

00:22:09 ◼   ► things of that nature, which makes sense.

00:22:11 ◼   ► Now apparently in iOS 10, iCloud backups and restores now include passwords, which is excellent.

00:22:17 ◼   ► I didn't know that was a thing.

00:22:18 ◼   ► You have to learn to read the code of the notes, the show notes.

00:22:21 ◼   ► What do the show notes actually say?

00:22:23 ◼   ► They don't say iOS 10 iCloud restores now include passwords, right?

00:22:27 ◼   ► What do they say?

00:22:29 ◼   ► I see a question mark at the end of that sentence.

00:22:31 ◼   ► iOS 10 iCloud restores now include passwords?

00:22:34 ◼   ► There's a question mark at the end because I have heard this as well.

00:22:39 ◼   ► None of us have actually confirmed it, but I've seen a couple of tweets to that effect.

00:22:44 ◼   ► I have not tried it myself, but in theory, they now include passwords.

00:22:48 ◼   ► I was hoping one of you knew for sure if you had done it.

00:22:50 ◼   ► But anyway, I think this—

00:22:51 ◼   ► No, but I've heard this independently several different times now.

00:22:54 ◼   ► Yeah, I know.

00:22:55 ◼   ► I'm just saying I didn't go and look it up on Apple's site and I haven't done it myself,

00:22:57 ◼   ► so I don't want to tell people, "Hey, don't worry about it.

00:22:59 ◼   ► Just use iCloud.

00:23:00 ◼   ► We'll have everything."

00:23:01 ◼   ► But it seems like, fingers crossed, this will be the last update where you have to hear

00:23:06 ◼   ► the spiel from everybody who is on a tech podcast saying,

00:23:09 ◼   ► "Oh, make sure you do an encrypted iTunes backup."

00:23:11 ◼   ► And I like this because I hate iTunes backup.

00:23:13 ◼   ► I hate the fact that I connect my thing

00:23:15 ◼   ► and half the times it says,

00:23:16 ◼   ► "Oh, failed to connect to device,"

00:23:17 ◼   ► or "Backup failed for some reason that you can't control."

00:23:19 ◼   ► Just reboot everything and cross your fingers.

00:23:20 ◼   ► I hate it so much.

00:23:22 ◼   ► - Really? - Yes, it's the worst.

00:23:23 ◼   ► - You know, maybe you should get a newer Mac

00:23:24 ◼   ► because I don't have any new Macs.

00:23:25 ◼   ► - This is on the 5K iMac,

00:23:27 ◼   ► 'cause it's a 5K iMac with an iPhone 6S Plus.

00:23:30 ◼   ► This is what I'm doing, like my wife's device

00:23:32 ◼   ► and my kids' devices.

00:23:34 ◼   ► It's completely inscrutable.

00:23:36 ◼   ► And I kind of know like the one I can't connect to the process on the phone and

00:23:38 ◼   ► they're just messed up. You just have to like reboot them both and just get,

00:23:41 ◼   ► it's just, it's the worst. And half the time it fails in the middle.

00:23:43 ◼   ► For some reason it's like, well, I couldn't do it. Sorry.

00:23:46 ◼   ► And it's always at like 20 minutes of incredibly slow transfer over USB two

00:23:50 ◼   ► speeds from this. I hate it so much.

00:23:52 ◼   ► So I'll be very happy to have this be an iCloud thing that,

00:23:55 ◼   ► that is first terrible as iCloud restore is where it takes forever to your apps

00:23:59 ◼   ► to come back and everything. At least in my experience, it runs unattended.

00:24:03 ◼   ► So I could start the restore and then go to sleep

00:24:06 ◼   ► and leave it plugged in and wake up

00:24:07 ◼   ► and hopefully it will be done.

00:24:08 ◼   ► Whereas now with iTunes, it's like make an attempt,

00:24:12 ◼   ► come back in five, 10, 15 minutes to see if it failed.

00:24:15 ◼   ► If it has, do a bunch of rain dances, make another attempt.

00:24:18 ◼   ► I really don't like iTunes interaction

00:24:20 ◼   ► with iOS devices at all.

00:24:22 ◼   ► Never really liked it and it's just getting worse.

00:24:23 ◼   ► - That's so weird to me because I almost never

00:24:26 ◼   ► have any issues with iTunes backups.

00:24:28 ◼   ► And I have heard, although I've not seen this

00:24:31 ◼   ► with my own eyes, I have heard numerous people

00:24:34 ◼   ► complaining and moaning about how terrible

00:24:36 ◼   ► and flaky iCloud backups are.

00:24:38 ◼   ► Well, backups and restores.

00:24:40 ◼   ► And I mean, it doesn't mean you're wrong,

00:24:41 ◼   ► it doesn't mean I'm right, it's just surprising

00:24:43 ◼   ► that your experience seems to be the opposite

00:24:44 ◼   ► of everything I've heard.

00:24:46 ◼   ► - Well also, I mean, we have a lot of friends

00:24:48 ◼   ► and at least two of the hosts of the show

00:24:50 ◼   ► are early adopters who like to buy things on day one.

00:24:53 ◼   ► And on day one, sometimes the iCloud servers

00:24:56 ◼   ► get overloaded or the App Store servers get overloaded

00:24:59 ◼   ► and things don't quite work reliably.

00:25:00 ◼   ► And so we, day one people, will usually have

00:25:05 ◼   ► more reliable experiences with iTunes backup and restore

00:25:09 ◼   ► in that case, because we're avoiding

00:25:10 ◼   ► all those day one server hassles.

00:25:12 ◼   ► Whereas John, who buys phones when they're

00:25:14 ◼   ► three to four years old, once he's really sure

00:25:16 ◼   ► that everything is safe about them,

00:25:18 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:25:19 ◼   ► by that point, that everything has calmed down

00:25:21 ◼   ► with the servers and he doesn't run into those issues.

00:25:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, the main reason I would say for people to,

00:25:26 ◼   ► if iOS 10 iCloud restorers now have passwords in them,

00:25:30 ◼   ► we think the main reason to do is to save SSD space because the backups are big. True. Like

00:25:35 ◼   ► they're not the full size of your storage you know because of various you know app thinning and maybe

00:25:39 ◼   ► not transferring purchases or whatever but they're big enough that if you have a family full of iOS

00:25:44 ◼   ► devices and you have a single Mac with a regular person size SSD you are wasting a huge amount of

00:25:49 ◼   ► your SSD space. Not you're not wasting right but you're using a huge amount of your SSD space for

00:25:54 ◼   ► for device backups.

00:25:55 ◼   ► Say you get a family with a bunch of 128 gig devices

00:25:59 ◼   ► and you back them all up to a single Mac that you said,

00:26:02 ◼   ► oh, I'll just get the 500 gig SSD.

00:26:04 ◼   ► You will use all of your space for iOS device backups.

00:26:08 ◼   ► Now I'm not, you know, the cloud is not a perfect backup

00:26:10 ◼   ► and the cloud can be o's too.

00:26:11 ◼   ► And if you really care about the stuff that's on your phone,

00:26:13 ◼   ► have multiple backups, so on and so forth.

00:26:16 ◼   ► But it always annoys me when I run like Disc Inventory X,

00:26:19 ◼   ► that ancient program that still works

00:26:20 ◼   ► or any other programs that show you like the tree map

00:26:22 ◼   ► of your hard drive with the area on this little area

00:26:27 ◼   ► of the rectangles representing size.

00:26:28 ◼   ► And I see the giant thing for mobile backup

00:26:31 ◼   ► or whatever that folder is.

00:26:32 ◼   ► I think, do I need all those backups?

00:26:34 ◼   ► How many backups do I have?

00:26:36 ◼   ► And I just, you can just go in iTunes and delete them

00:26:38 ◼   ► and thin them out, but they take up a lot of room.

00:26:40 ◼   ► So I will be very happy when I can sort of allow iCloud

00:26:45 ◼   ► to be my main backup for my thing

00:26:47 ◼   ► and only backup to my Mac periodically

00:26:49 ◼   ► as like a belt and suspenders type thing,

00:26:51 ◼   ► like once every few months

00:26:52 ◼   ► and only keep one backup, not keep like backups,

00:26:56 ◼   ► you know, seven recent backups, just one in an emergency.

00:26:58 ◼   ► Because for the most part,

00:27:00 ◼   ► most of the data that's on my phone should be elsewhere.

00:27:04 ◼   ► All the photos go to PhotoStream,

00:27:05 ◼   ► PhotoStream goes to Photos,

00:27:06 ◼   ► Photos gets backed up in 17 million places

00:27:08 ◼   ► because of my crazy Photos backup, so those photos are fine.

00:27:11 ◼   ► Everything else like Notes and stuff like that

00:27:13 ◼   ► is in theory backed up locally on my Mac

00:27:15 ◼   ► because they're syncing to the same accounts

00:27:16 ◼   ► and back to multiple Macs.

00:27:17 ◼   ► So I feel like I still have multiple backups

00:27:20 ◼   ► and I'm totally ready to not waste my SSD space

00:27:23 ◼   ► with iTunes backups as soon as I can.

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00:28:59 ◼   ► [Music]

00:29:00 ◼   ► Eric Meyer Last week we talked about the rumors of Apple

00:29:05 ◼   ► investing in and/or buying McLaren and whether we thought that was a good idea or what Apple

00:29:10 ◼   ► would get out of it. And we got a lot of feedback about it and I would say the vast majority

00:29:15 ◼   ► of the feedback was telling us that we don't understand what an awesome company McLaren

00:29:19 ◼   ► is, that Apple would be happy to have them. Common threads that were pointed out is, "Did

00:29:24 ◼   ► you know McLaren has an F1 team?" And the F1 is really technically advanced, and computers

00:29:30 ◼   ► and engine control units and telemetry data from all the F1s. Basically, the idea that

00:29:37 ◼   ► Formula One is a very high-tech thing. McLaren is a high-tech company. It's not a bunch of

00:29:40 ◼   ► people with greasy overalls slapping together cars. They're a tech company. At a second

00:29:44 ◼   ► angle on that is, you know, they're not, they're not actually even a car company.

00:29:48 ◼   ► They're basically a technology company just like Apple, and they happen to make

00:29:51 ◼   ► cars. Their manufacturing expertise in terms of pushing the limits on new

00:29:57 ◼   ► materials and how to build, build cars in new ways that have new materials was

00:30:01 ◼   ► touted by many people, although other people also pointed out a BMW and their,

00:30:04 ◼   ► their carbon fiber stuff for their electronic cars and everything like that.

00:30:09 ◼   ► So in general, and I don't know if every single one of these emails was coming

00:30:13 ◼   ► From like the town in England where they're based or where are they? In Scotland or anything? I don't even know.

00:30:19 ◼   ► Anyway, it's obvious none of us follow F1. So you got us there.

00:30:22 ◼   ► We do not follow it and I think in general it's not nearly as popular in America kind of like soccer or football if you will.

00:30:29 ◼   ► Yeah, forgive us. We're American. Right. We don't know about F1.

00:30:32 ◼   ► I do know a lot about McLaren though and most of the things they're saying about carbon fiber and

00:30:37 ◼   ► the technology and all that stuff. Yes, that's all true, but I still go back to what I said

00:30:43 ◼   ► said on the last show, which is investment partnership.

00:30:46 ◼   ► Yeah, totally.

00:30:47 ◼   ► There's a million companies they can invest

00:30:48 ◼   ► and have partnerships with.

00:30:49 ◼   ► And there's certainly things they can get from them

00:30:51 ◼   ► and from every other company that they've--

00:30:53 ◼   ► in the audio industry that might have something-- they could

00:30:55 ◼   ► build something for them or whatever.

00:30:56 ◼   ► But in terms of buying them outright,

00:31:00 ◼   ► that's a whole other story.

00:31:04 ◼   ► But let's put it this way.

00:31:05 ◼   ► It's kind of like when I was talking about Nintendo.

00:31:07 ◼   ► Half of it is I think it wouldn't be a great idea,

00:31:09 ◼   ► but the other half of it, I have to admit,

00:31:11 ◼   ► it would be a shame to buy mclaren and not let it continue to do what it has done for

00:31:18 ◼   ► most of my life which is no not most of my life but since the 90s or whatever like they

00:31:24 ◼   ► make supercars right and i like that they make supercars and i don't want them to stop

00:31:29 ◼   ► doing that even though that may not be their most important business or their main business

00:31:32 ◼   ► or their area of expertise or whatever you know whatever aspect you think that is not

00:31:36 ◼   ► an important part of their business apple's not interested in selling 200 300 000 cars

00:31:41 ◼   ► I don't think right maybe maybe Johnny I will have the apple car edition that will be expensive made of solid gold

00:31:46 ◼   ► But I don't want someone to buy

00:31:49 ◼   ► McLaren and

00:31:50 ◼   ► Stop it from doing what it does and I bet the people who like f1 don't want Apple to buy McLaren and say yeah

00:31:55 ◼   ► We're not doing that f1 thing anymore, right?

00:31:57 ◼   ► If they only want them for their expertise in car telemetry and engine control units and manufacturing stuff then just partner with them

00:32:04 ◼   ► But I don't want them to buy them because I feel like what McLaren is doing does not fit with Apple

00:32:09 ◼   ► what I can imagine Apple ever wanting to do.

00:32:11 ◼   ► And so you either buy them and just let them continue

00:32:14 ◼   ► to be McLaren, which is weird, like a Beats kind of thing,

00:32:17 ◼   ► but with not as much synergy because Beats is closer

00:32:20 ◼   ► to Apple's business than what McLaren does,

00:32:22 ◼   ► or you just partner with them.

00:32:24 ◼   ► So, and then the other part is the mass manufacturing.

00:32:26 ◼   ► A lot of people are like, they know how to build things,

00:32:27 ◼   ► they're great at it.

00:32:28 ◼   ► Like those supercars are not built

00:32:30 ◼   ► in the same way as Toyotas.

00:32:32 ◼   ► You cannot build hundreds of thousands of cars

00:32:35 ◼   ► the way that they build the P1.

00:32:36 ◼   ► You just can't, it's a different technique.

00:32:38 ◼   ► Now it's great that they're advancing the state of the art

00:32:40 ◼   ► and finding new ways to build things.

00:32:42 ◼   ► There are a hell of a lot more people

00:32:44 ◼   ► doing things with their hands when building a McLaren car

00:32:47 ◼   ► than there are when building a Honda or a Toyota.

00:32:49 ◼   ► And many people are like,

00:32:51 ◼   ► Apple doesn't need to buy a company like that.

00:32:52 ◼   ► Yes, they can just partner.

00:32:53 ◼   ► But that's something Apple doesn't know how to do.

00:32:55 ◼   ► They know how to make lots of computers

00:32:57 ◼   ► and they know how to help other companies

00:32:59 ◼   ► make lots of computers.

00:33:01 ◼   ► They know how to invest in machinery

00:33:03 ◼   ► that Foxconn can use to build their computers,

00:33:05 ◼   ► but Foxconn doesn't know how to build cars

00:33:07 ◼   ► Apple doesn't know how to build half the stuff.

00:33:09 ◼   ► That's why they outsource it.

00:33:10 ◼   ► So again, if you're gonna outsource or partner

00:33:11 ◼   ► and have somebody, one of these builders,

00:33:13 ◼   ► the Magna Company build your stuff, fine.

00:33:16 ◼   ► But buying outright just doesn't seem like a good idea.

00:33:19 ◼   ► So let McLaren be McLaren is what I say.

00:33:22 ◼   ► - Makes sense to me.

00:33:26 ◼   ► A lot of people wrote in,

00:33:26 ◼   ► they're very enthusiastic about McLaren.

00:33:29 ◼   ► A lot of F1 fans that are also nerds, it seems.

00:33:31 ◼   ► - Did you know they made a car call to F1?

00:33:34 ◼   ► - I did.

00:33:35 ◼   ► I've heard it's very nice.

00:33:36 ◼   ► Maybe who have never listened to neutral and don't know like we don't know f1, but we know McLaren or never eat Marco doesn't

00:33:42 ◼   ► Well, I don't know they may be f1. I don't know anything about McLaren or f1

00:33:46 ◼   ► You've never heard of the McLaren f1. Of course not why would I you've never heard of the Millennium Falcon?

00:33:50 ◼   ► I mean that yeah car that did the Calciron 12 parsecs

00:33:53 ◼   ► That doesn't even make sense

00:33:56 ◼   ► No, you do you have heard of the McLaren f1, which is the one that had three seats and you drove in the center seat

00:34:01 ◼   ► You know what? I'm thinking of. Mmm. Nope, but that sounds like a terrible car

00:34:05 ◼   ► Oh my god, it was like the greatest car for me, but you're close pretty much

00:34:09 ◼   ► I mean this is coming from a Ferrari fanboy that the McLaren f1 is the greatest car ever made

00:34:13 ◼   ► No, I was disappointed in the p1 because anything like that's why they didn't make a success for so long

00:34:18 ◼   ► How can you how can you follow that up?

00:34:20 ◼   ► Well mini neutral them and the McLaren f1 as a supercar

00:34:23 ◼   ► Made to be like one of its important goals was it was gonna be the fastest not just the quickest but the fastest

00:34:29 ◼   ► So top speed was a big deal

00:34:31 ◼   ► They usually don't do that these days and although the Bugatti Veyron did a little top speed stuff as well

00:34:36 ◼   ► But in general supercars are staying away from the top speed because once you get up into the high 250 mile per hour things

00:34:41 ◼   ► It becomes a real aerodynamic and power challenge, which is why the stupid Veyron has this gigantic gasoline sucking engine 16 cylinder engine in there

00:34:49 ◼   ► But the f1 was it was quick not as quick as modern cars obviously, but it was quick

00:34:54 ◼   ► But it had a very high top speed. I think it was up in the 250s

00:34:57 ◼   ► You sat exactly dead center in it, which is something that always annoy me about like supercars like if his entire car is about performance

00:35:02 ◼   ► Why am I sitting off to the left?

00:35:04 ◼   ► Right, like it should be like a race car where you sit in the middle you did in this one. It looked great

00:35:08 ◼   ► and it was just

00:35:11 ◼   ► It was just the epitome of like let's make the best car in the world like what Apple

00:35:15 ◼   ► Not Apple didn't use to do some company some computer companies have done

00:35:18 ◼   ► Let's make the best X in the world

00:35:21 ◼   ► Like in every possible way it can be the best in terms like lesson. It's the best performance car

00:35:25 ◼   ► Is it faster than every color of the car? Yes. Is it quicker around the track than every other car?

00:35:29 ◼   ► Yes, is it better looking than every other car? Yes, I can just aim for the top

00:35:32 ◼   ► And it was on the top for a really long period of time and the successor the p1 is not the same thing

00:35:40 ◼   ► but anyway

00:35:41 ◼   ► It's kind of like the sr-71 of the car world where for a brief moment

00:35:45 ◼   ► They made the best car in the world and everyone recognized it and said yep, you did it and that's why they go for

00:35:51 ◼   ► huge amounts of money now, they also had a

00:35:54 ◼   ► an unfortunate penchant for killing their owners

00:35:59 ◼   ► and/or destroying themselves in a hail of carbon fiber

00:36:02 ◼   ► because very rich people get essentially the best car

00:36:05 ◼   ► in the world, but its reputation precedes it,

00:36:07 ◼   ► that it's more car than they can handle,

00:36:09 ◼   ► and they go out in a blaze of glory.

00:36:12 ◼   ► Drive carefully.

00:36:13 ◼   ► - See, I'm looking at this car,

00:36:15 ◼   ► and McLaren is a company that makes cars

00:36:20 ◼   ► that are exceptionally well regarded

00:36:22 ◼   ► by everybody else in the world,

00:36:23 ◼   ► but yet I look at them and just immediately

00:36:27 ◼   ► forget about them.

00:36:28 ◼   ► Like, if you would have asked me before this conversation

00:36:31 ◼   ► started to name supercar brands,

00:36:33 ◼   ► I would have forgotten about them.

00:36:34 ◼   ► Like, I wouldn't even, they don't even cross my mind.

00:36:37 ◼   ► - So they made the F1, which is like the best supercar

00:36:39 ◼   ► ever made, right, and then today they make a line of cars

00:36:42 ◼   ► that look like fish, fine, but they're really good.

00:36:45 ◼   ► Supercars, right?

00:36:47 ◼   ► The P1 and the 650 and all the other, like,

00:36:51 ◼   ► with the old unfortunate name, what was it, MP12 4C,

00:36:53 ◼   ► whatever the hell it was.

00:36:54 ◼   ► - I think that's right.

00:36:55 ◼   ► - They have terrible names, but they're good supercars.

00:36:58 ◼   ► Like they're not bad, they're right up there

00:37:00 ◼   ► with the whole rest of them, right?

00:37:02 ◼   ► That's why when they did like the various car challenges,

00:37:04 ◼   ► it was like the P1, the 918, and the LaFerrari, right?

00:37:07 ◼   ► They're right in there, they're the top three.

00:37:09 ◼   ► They're one of those other cars,

00:37:11 ◼   ► and you may think they're forgettable

00:37:12 ◼   ► because the styling is interesting,

00:37:13 ◼   ► but the F1 does look a little bit dated,

00:37:15 ◼   ► but you know, it's an old car, it's from the 90s.

00:37:17 ◼   ► - I mean, and maybe the problem is just that

00:37:19 ◼   ► I don't really care as much as most car enthusiasts do

00:37:23 ◼   ► about supercars.

00:37:24 ◼   ► Like to me, a supercar is just like,

00:37:27 ◼   ► you know, okay, great, it can go really fast,

00:37:29 ◼   ► it is completely impractical for any use ever,

00:37:31 ◼   ► and costs a billion dollars,

00:37:33 ◼   ► and you drive it 10 miles and it needs a $5,000 clutch.

00:37:37 ◼   ► Like, I don't really know why I should care

00:37:40 ◼   ► about this world.

00:37:41 ◼   ► - He's just not into supercars.

00:37:42 ◼   ► All right, to bring this back to tech topics,

00:37:44 ◼   ► I don't know how Mark is gonna edit this,

00:37:46 ◼   ► speaking of my potential pristine jet black iPhone

00:37:50 ◼   ► that I was speculating about possibly taking out

00:37:52 ◼   ► the case and then carefully putting in my clean room wearing my Intel bunny suit into

00:37:58 ◼   ► a leather case where no part of it that is not exposed to the outside will get damaged

00:38:04 ◼   ► if I'm very careful with it in theory.

00:38:06 ◼   ► A couple of people made snarky comments like, "Isn't it like getting an iPhone and then

00:38:12 ◼   ► never using the home button, but it doesn't matter because you're never going to use the

00:38:15 ◼   ► home button?

00:38:16 ◼   ► What good is a jet black phone that you keep pristine if you never see the jet black phone

00:38:20 ◼   ► because it's always in a case?"

00:38:21 ◼   ► I hope these aren't longtime listeners to the show. I would hope that people who are longtime listeners like you two who are always here

00:38:27 ◼   ► Why it is not analogous why do why is that not a valid analogy in my specific case we're saying oh John says

00:38:37 ◼   ► You know, you shouldn't if you never use the home button, it doesn't matter but he's doing the same thing with jetpack fun

00:38:41 ◼   ► Why is that not the case? I thought that was amazing feedback and I was disappointed. We didn't think of it during the show

00:38:46 ◼   ► Same here. You guys can't figure out switch your brains from that mode to the other mode

00:38:51 ◼   ► and say, "Assume that it is not the case,

00:38:54 ◼   ► "because I can tell you that it's not.

00:38:55 ◼   ► "Why?"

00:38:56 ◼   ► - Well, with the new home button,

00:38:57 ◼   ► it's irrelevant because it doesn't move, but--

00:39:00 ◼   ► - No, like, why is it not the same

00:39:01 ◼   ► as my Jet Black iPhone situation?

00:39:03 ◼   ► That's me specifically.

00:39:04 ◼   ► - Well, because there's a huge difference

00:39:06 ◼   ► in effectiveness here.

00:39:07 ◼   ► The people who are not using the home button

00:39:10 ◼   ► will actually succeed in their goal,

00:39:13 ◼   ► but Jon, you will not succeed

00:39:15 ◼   ► in not scratching the Jet Black.

00:39:16 ◼   ► It is impossible.

00:39:18 ◼   ► - I don't know if that's the case.

00:39:19 ◼   ► We'll see, but no, no.

00:39:20 ◼   ► See, what they were trying to say is the absurdity of,

00:39:22 ◼   ► look, if you're never gonna use the home button

00:39:23 ◼   ► and you're never gonna sell your phone,

00:39:24 ◼   ► that was the whole thing.

00:39:25 ◼   ► Like I was saying, if you're not gonna resell it,

00:39:26 ◼   ► 'cause obviously it retains resale value

00:39:28 ◼   ► by not breaking the home button.

00:39:29 ◼   ► If you have a pristine home button,

00:39:30 ◼   ► maybe your phone is worth more later.

00:39:31 ◼   ► So there's value in that.

00:39:32 ◼   ► But if you're never gonna resell it

00:39:34 ◼   ► and you're never gonna touch it,

00:39:35 ◼   ► what the hell do you care if it works?

00:39:36 ◼   ► And so with Jet Black, if you're never gonna see it,

00:39:38 ◼   ► 'cause you're always gonna keep it in the case,

00:39:39 ◼   ► what the hell do you care if it's scratched up, right?

00:39:42 ◼   ► And I don't understand why people don't know me from now

00:39:45 ◼   ► and you two are always making funny about this.

00:39:47 ◼   ► When I'm done with my phone, I'm not going to resell it.

00:39:50 ◼   ► What's going to happen to it?

00:39:51 ◼   ► So you're going to go into the museum of pristine Apple hardware, and there is

00:39:55 ◼   ► value in a museum of pristine Apple hardware for the hardware to be pristine.

00:39:59 ◼   ► Why do you think I'm protecting it in the case?

00:40:01 ◼   ► Not just so I can go to sleep at night thinking it's safely in its

00:40:03 ◼   ► constellations when I'm, when I'm done with the phone, it's going to come out

00:40:06 ◼   ► of that case and be a beautiful, pristine object along with my other.

00:40:10 ◼   ► Apple hardware and stuff.

00:40:11 ◼   ► Now you could say like, when people do that, all that junk in your attic will

00:40:16 ◼   ► will never be displayed in such a beautiful way deserving of.

00:40:18 ◼   ► But you have to, like, that's my plan right now.

00:40:20 ◼   ► So it has value in my plan, right?

00:40:23 ◼   ► Whether it has value in actuality, you can argue with,

00:40:25 ◼   ► but it's not analogy there.

00:40:27 ◼   ► Now if someone's preserving the home button,

00:40:28 ◼   ► 'cause they're never gonna resell it,

00:40:30 ◼   ► but then when they're done using the phone,

00:40:31 ◼   ► they're just gonna press that pristine home button

00:40:33 ◼   ► once a day for pleasure,

00:40:34 ◼   ► then they have a reason to do it as well.

00:40:36 ◼   ► - We're also sponsored this week by Fracture.

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00:43:11 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:43:14 ◼   ► - All right, so we didn't get any time

00:43:17 ◼   ► to talk about it last week, but macOS Sierra is out.

00:43:22 ◼   ► It's a thing, and I have installed it on my iMac.

00:43:25 ◼   ► I have not installed it on my work computer

00:43:27 ◼   ► because we got the standard, oh God, oh God,

00:43:30 ◼   ► we knew it's been coming for months,

00:43:32 ◼   ► but we haven't tested any of our software with it,

00:43:34 ◼   ► message from work.

00:43:36 ◼   ► So anyway, so it's not on my work machine,

00:43:37 ◼   ► but it is on my home machine.

00:43:38 ◼   ► And so far so good, I really like it, I think.

00:43:41 ◼   ► But anyway.

00:43:42 ◼   ► - Glowing endorsement from KZList right there.

00:43:46 ◼   ► - All right.

00:43:46 ◼   ► Are you running it on your iMac, Marco?

00:43:50 ◼   ► - No.

00:43:51 ◼   ► No, yeah, basically, normally I have jumped

00:43:55 ◼   ► into things like this quickly in the past.

00:43:57 ◼   ► In almost every case, I have regretted it

00:44:00 ◼   ► because something that I use breaks.

00:44:03 ◼   ► Often it's audio related or related to some kind

00:44:05 ◼   ► of hardware driver type of app.

00:44:08 ◼   ► people have reported issues with Fujitsu scan snap software,

00:44:10 ◼   ► which actually wouldn't impact me,

00:44:11 ◼   ► 'cause I have that running on my Mac mini server,

00:44:13 ◼   ► it's not on my main computer.

00:44:15 ◼   ► But I do have audio running on my main computer,

00:44:17 ◼   ► I have external audio devices, I edit with logic,

00:44:20 ◼   ► and we've heard various rumblings from people

00:44:22 ◼   ► at Jason Snell that this has had occasional problems

00:44:25 ◼   ► during the beta period and it might not still be fixed.

00:44:28 ◼   ► So basically, the question is,

00:44:31 ◼   ► and this we'll probably get into,

00:44:33 ◼   ► hopefully John's review of it,

00:44:34 ◼   ► but the question for me is what's new in Sierra?

00:44:37 ◼   ► what is worth risking things breaking and dealing with the inevitable instability that

00:44:43 ◼   ► almost every .0 release of the OS brings. And in iOS, you know, the differences are

00:44:49 ◼   ► larger and also I'm an iOS developer and so I feel like I need to pay more attention there

00:44:53 ◼   ► and use the betas and get my app ready for the betas and everything else. On OS X, I

00:44:57 ◼   ► never ever run the beta Mac OS on my main computer. If anything, I run it on my laptop

00:45:04 ◼   ► and even then, I don't usually do that.

00:45:07 ◼   ► So basically, I have to look at the features that are new,

00:45:11 ◼   ► and I have to say, what among these features

00:45:13 ◼   ► am I just dying to use that will make it worth

00:45:16 ◼   ► the period of potential instability up front

00:45:18 ◼   ► for a new OS release?

00:45:20 ◼   ► And in Sierra's case, it's just not compelling for me.

00:45:23 ◼   ► The features people are talking about,

00:45:24 ◼   ► the changes, the improvements, are just things

00:45:27 ◼   ► that either I wouldn't really use, or that would be nice,

00:45:32 ◼   ► but I'm not sure it's worth it yet.

00:45:35 ◼   ► So I'm not saying I'm never gonna upgrade,

00:45:37 ◼   ► I'm probably gonna upgrade within the next couple of weeks,

00:45:39 ◼   ► but I kinda just want like a point one to come out

00:45:42 ◼   ► or just to hear from people that these issues

00:45:45 ◼   ► that were in the betas might be fixed or whatever else.

00:45:47 ◼   ► There's not enough here for me to be an early adopter of it,

00:45:51 ◼   ► but I'll upgrade soon enough.

00:45:53 ◼   ► - Jon, what are your thoughts?

00:45:55 ◼   ► - So I've got two incompatible computers,

00:45:58 ◼   ► my work computer and my home computer,

00:45:59 ◼   ► in theory aren't supported in practice,

00:46:01 ◼   ► In practice, my home computer runs it fine

00:46:03 ◼   ► 'cause I ran the betas, albeit on a separate drive.

00:46:08 ◼   ► I waited long enough to hear if there's anything disastrous

00:46:11 ◼   ► and there wasn't, so I upgraded my wife's iMac

00:46:13 ◼   ► while she's away, surprise.

00:46:15 ◼   ► - Oh, gee. - It's fine.

00:46:16 ◼   ► - That's a bold move.

00:46:17 ◼   ► - I also control all the backups, so don't worry.

00:46:20 ◼   ► If anything was wrong, I just would have restored

00:46:22 ◼   ► from one of the umpteen backups I made

00:46:23 ◼   ► before doing this and it would have been fine,

00:46:26 ◼   ► but it's fine.

00:46:27 ◼   ► The only scare I've gotten so far,

00:46:30 ◼   ► I don't even know if I can blame this on Sierra

00:46:31 ◼   ► because it's one of those things that occasionally happens

00:46:34 ◼   ► where you get a dialogue asking for a password

00:46:36 ◼   ► and you enter the password and you get another dialogue

00:46:38 ◼   ► that says like a key chain system could not be found

00:46:42 ◼   ► or something like that.

00:46:42 ◼   ► You know, in a key chain, you've got all these different,

00:46:43 ◼   ► you got your login key chain and system key chain

00:46:45 ◼   ► and all of this stuff.

00:46:46 ◼   ► Key chain corruption is like one of the worst things

00:46:48 ◼   ► that can happen.

00:46:49 ◼   ► It's just such a pain in the ass.

00:46:50 ◼   ► You just, you can wipe it all out

00:46:52 ◼   ► and just type in the passwords

00:46:53 ◼   ► if you have them someplace else,

00:46:54 ◼   ► like in one password or whatever,

00:46:56 ◼   ► but it's just so annoying.

00:46:57 ◼   ► And you just want it to be like,

00:46:59 ◼   ► just go back to working state.

00:47:01 ◼   ► So anyway, once I saw that dialogue once,

00:47:02 ◼   ► I'm like, nope, that means reboot.

00:47:04 ◼   ► And so I rebooted everything and it's been fine,

00:47:05 ◼   ► which is the worst kind of problem to have.

00:47:07 ◼   ► Who knows what it was.

00:47:08 ◼   ► Very often when you update the OS,

00:47:10 ◼   ► it updates the bundled apps and sometimes they don't,

00:47:13 ◼   ► they have different signatures or whatever,

00:47:14 ◼   ► don't look up the same,

00:47:15 ◼   ► they can't get access to the same key chain items,

00:47:17 ◼   ► they want to be reauthorized.

00:47:18 ◼   ► Like this is a thing that I'm kind of used to by now.

00:47:21 ◼   ► But other than that, which only happened once,

00:47:23 ◼   ► everything else is mostly fine.

00:47:24 ◼   ► Also, her computer is the one

00:47:26 ◼   ► with the real Familyi photo library.

00:47:28 ◼   ► So I wanted it to do its thing with the photo searching

00:47:31 ◼   ► so I could actually use that.

00:47:33 ◼   ► And so I was motivated enough to upgrade her computer.

00:47:37 ◼   ► And like I said, it's fine.

00:47:39 ◼   ► I'm kind of in the same situation as Marco with mine,

00:47:41 ◼   ► only actually even worse

00:47:42 ◼   ► because I have unsupported computers.

00:47:44 ◼   ► In both situations, I have to ask,

00:47:47 ◼   ► do I want to risk like,

00:47:51 ◼   ► oh, what if a point update comes out

00:47:52 ◼   ► and I run the updater and then it hoses my thing

00:47:54 ◼   ► and I gotta go through some little dance to get it back

00:47:56 ◼   ► because it's unsupported?

00:47:57 ◼   ► Do I want to deal with that?

00:48:00 ◼   ► And what is there in the operating system

00:48:02 ◼   ► that makes me feel like I'm missing out, essentially?

00:48:06 ◼   ► I feel like I can't use something.

00:48:08 ◼   ► Today, I downloaded a developer build of an application

00:48:12 ◼   ► and had the little circle with a line through it on it.

00:48:14 ◼   ► And I realized, oh, this must be Sierra only.

00:48:17 ◼   ► That's the type of thing that makes me go, you know what?

00:48:19 ◼   ► I should upgrade, because I want to be

00:48:21 ◼   ► able to run the new software.

00:48:24 ◼   ► Or the features.

00:48:25 ◼   ► If everyone's like, oh, picture picture is amazing.

00:48:27 ◼   ► It's, you know, I use it all the time.

00:48:29 ◼   ► And you know, like our tab documents

00:48:31 ◼   ► and all these applications didn't previously support them.

00:48:33 ◼   ► Now magically do it because of OS, you know,

00:48:35 ◼   ► NS document features, right?

00:48:37 ◼   ► If I feel like I'm missing out on what everyone else is doing

00:48:40 ◼   ► I probably will bite the bullet, but at home,

00:48:42 ◼   ► I'm motivated not to upgrade because I might screw up

00:48:44 ◼   ► my audio, you know, like my podcasting set up here.

00:48:47 ◼   ► And at work I'm motivated not to upgrade

00:48:48 ◼   ► because in any way that I screw up my work computer

00:48:51 ◼   ► is a delay in doing my work.

00:48:52 ◼   ► And my work doesn't go away while I'm fussing

00:48:53 ◼   ► my computer and it's not like I can stay at work an extra three hours when I'm

00:48:57 ◼   ► wrangling the kids even though my parents are here just you know I have to

00:49:00 ◼   ► get back so I don't know what I'm gonna do I I may I mean like I'm not really

00:49:05 ◼   ► waiting like I feel like I'm not missing out missing out because I the 5k iMac

00:49:08 ◼   ► has it and whenever I do photo stuff I use it like I'm I'm seeing all the

00:49:11 ◼   ► features and of course I used all the betas so it's not a mystery to me and

00:49:14 ◼   ► not like don't know what it is but on the other hand I couldn't give you a

00:49:17 ◼   ► review of at this point because I'm not using it every day on the two main

00:49:19 ◼   ► computers that I use, my home computer and my work computer.

00:49:24 ◼   ► I don't know, by the time I bite the bullet, maybe they're on their point two or point

00:49:28 ◼   ► three or whatever.

00:49:30 ◼   ► I'm sure I will eventually.

00:49:31 ◼   ► I'm very bad at resisting these type of things, even though I've got it on, maybe because

00:49:35 ◼   ► I have it on the 5K iMac, but I'll see it over there and realize things are nicer or

00:49:39 ◼   ► I just want this thing that's over there that's not over here, even if it's just some new

00:49:42 ◼   ► feature in the terminal application or something.

00:49:45 ◼   ► I'll probably upgrade, but I haven't done it yet.

00:49:48 ◼   ► All right, good talk.

00:49:50 ◼   ► No, I mean, I've been using it at home, and I like it.

00:49:53 ◼   ► I think the thing that I interact with most that I like the most is probably some rudimentary support for new messages features,

00:50:04 ◼   ► like the big emoji, the inline, I have like rich content stuff, so if you say paste to tweet messages,

00:50:10 ◼   ► it'll actually go and expand that tweet for you kind of Slack style.

00:50:14 ◼   ► I have been using the watch unlock the first two times. I used it. I had a 50% success rate

00:50:19 ◼   ► Since then it's been nearly 100% success rate

00:50:23 ◼   ► But that being said it takes longer than it takes me to type my like 10 or 15 character password

00:50:29 ◼   ► Which is a little bit of a bummer

00:50:30 ◼   ► But maybe that'll get better in the future if I'm really that in that much of a hurry

00:50:34 ◼   ► I can certainly just type my password

00:50:36 ◼   ► But do you think it's because you have the old slow watch that's taking a while or is it just like you inherit in the you?

00:50:41 ◼   ► Know like what are you waiting on? I?

00:50:43 ◼   ► I think it's because it's just trying to figure out if the watch is close enough, physically

00:50:48 ◼   ► close enough.

00:50:49 ◼   ► So it's probably—I dug into this, or maybe somebody told me about it, but I guess it's

00:50:53 ◼   ► doing like a round-trip time of some sort of packet or communication between the watch

00:50:58 ◼   ► and the computer to make sure you are very physically close to it.

00:51:00 ◼   ► That someone was Craig Federighi on the talk show live.

00:51:03 ◼   ► Oh, okay.

00:51:04 ◼   ► So anyway, so point being, it takes a little time for that computation—or that, maybe

00:51:09 ◼   ► not the computation, but that round-tripping to be computed.

00:51:14 ◼   ► So I'm not saying it's like a CPU-intensive thing.

00:51:15 ◼   ► It's just it takes time to send a little bit of data, see how long that takes, wait for

00:51:20 ◼   ► it to come back, or whatever the mechanism is that's making this work.

00:51:23 ◼   ► But anyway, it is fairly reliable, but I haven't been able to say that it's much quicker than

00:51:32 ◼   ► just typing my password.

00:51:33 ◼   ► That was one of the features that was making—by the way, before you get off the watch unlock—that

00:51:37 ◼   ► one of the features that was making me think, "Oh, that's going to be the one that's going to make me

00:51:40 ◼   ► install it at work," because at work—I don't know if you do this, Casey, but in most corporate jobs,

00:51:43 ◼   ► they want you to lock your computer whenever you're not sitting in front of it, and I do

00:51:47 ◼   ► like just out of habit. Like, I always lock my computer the second I get up.

00:51:51 ◼   ► You know, unfortunate culture at work that is fading a little bit of if you do leave your

00:51:56 ◼   ► computer unlocked when you get up, you are punished for it by your co-workers who will

00:52:00 ◼   ► email everybody something embarrassing from your email account. I think that is inappropriate and

00:52:05 ◼   ► and should not be done and rather you should just remind them that they should lock their

00:52:08 ◼   ► computer.

00:52:09 ◼   ► Of course.

00:52:10 ◼   ► But in practice, what actually happens is much worse.

00:52:12 ◼   ► Anyway, I always lock my computer, which means that every time I come back to my desk, I

00:52:17 ◼   ► have to unlock my computer.

00:52:18 ◼   ► Even if I'm just getting up and walking one desk over, I have to, you know, I'm typing

00:52:21 ◼   ► in my unlock password over and over and over again.

00:52:23 ◼   ► And so I thought maybe this will, you know, get me to wear my watch again and, you know,

00:52:29 ◼   ► save me from typing my password a million times.

00:52:30 ◼   ► But even before I heard your story, I was like, come on now.

00:52:33 ◼   ► This is based on the same tech as Handoff, which never works.

00:52:36 ◼   ► And it can't possibly be fast.

00:52:39 ◼   ► And I'll just be sitting there in front of my computer, like the same way you're yelling

00:52:42 ◼   ► things to Siri and it's not understanding you.

00:52:44 ◼   ► It's like at a certain point it would have been faster if you just typed.

00:52:47 ◼   ► And typing always works.

00:52:49 ◼   ► So I will just continue to type my password.

00:52:53 ◼   ► The work makes me change on a ridiculous interval.

00:52:54 ◼   ► And I can't reuse any of the last 100 passwords I used.

00:52:57 ◼   ► It has to be different than the last password in 17 million different ways.

00:53:00 ◼   ► On the bright side, we can upgrade to Sierra at work because everything we use is now upgraded

00:53:06 ◼   ► to work with it, including the terrible antivirus software that we run.

00:53:10 ◼   ► So yay for work.

00:53:12 ◼   ► What antivirus are you running?

00:53:14 ◼   ► Symantec antivirus.

00:53:15 ◼   ► Symantec antivirus slash kernel panic causing piece of crap.

00:53:19 ◼   ► We're using Sophosophos, I don't know how you pronounce it, but S-O-P-H-O-S. I don't

00:53:25 ◼   ► know if that's the problem.

00:53:26 ◼   ► co-worker

00:53:28 ◼   ► upgraded to Sierra either before the IT department warning or perhaps in spite of the IT department warning and

00:53:34 ◼   ► He was telling me that our god-awful VPN which is checkpoint security VPN that the VPN software by the way

00:53:42 ◼   ► Hey, guess what includes a firewall that hey, guess what?

00:53:44 ◼   ► prevents outgoing LTP or outgoing VPN connections outgoing connections not incoming out

00:53:51 ◼   ► Going connections not that I'm bitter prevents airdrop from working which by the way

00:53:55 ◼   ► I have very rarely had airdrop issue. I shouldn't say very rarely. I've had a comfortable success rate with airdrop, but it blocks that as well

00:54:02 ◼   ► So anyway, so I install our VPN software on command like an animal

00:54:07 ◼   ► Because it's easier to do that than have half of the things I want to use not work when it is installed

00:54:13 ◼   ► Anyway, not that I'm bitter this software apparently hadn't been updated for Sierra

00:54:18 ◼   ► But this co-worker that did upgrade to Sierra found an installer

00:54:23 ◼   ► This is the same sort of thing like with Cisco.

00:54:25 ◼   ► You have to go spelunking into the deepest darkest part

00:54:29 ◼   ► of the website of the vendor

00:54:31 ◼   ► in order to find an installer DMG.

00:54:34 ◼   ► But eventually they found one and supposedly it works.

00:54:37 ◼   ► So I've been debating whether I wanna be that guy

00:54:39 ◼   ► that doesn't listen to the IT department

00:54:41 ◼   ► and just install it anyway.

00:54:42 ◼   ► So far I haven't, but we'll see.

00:54:44 ◼   ► And the reason I haven't, I think,

00:54:46 ◼   ► is because like Marco said, there's nothing that,

00:54:49 ◼   ► I was gonna say impressive,

00:54:52 ◼   ► That's nastier than I mean it.

00:54:53 ◼   ► There's nothing that's really pulling me

00:54:57 ◼   ► to immediately want to install it.

00:54:59 ◼   ► - Compelling.

00:54:59 ◼   ► - That's not necessarily, compelling is a great word, yeah.

00:55:02 ◼   ► That's not necessarily a bad thing,

00:55:04 ◼   ► but it's certainly not a great thing either.

00:55:07 ◼   ► - Okay, first of all, let me tell you guys

00:55:09 ◼   ► how to deal with your workplaces.

00:55:11 ◼   ► - Sure, go ahead.

00:55:12 ◼   ► - Here we go.

00:55:13 ◼   ► - Jon, if people who you work with are animals,

00:55:15 ◼   ► the correct answer to when somebody leaves

00:55:17 ◼   ► their computer unlocked and they shouldn't

00:55:19 ◼   ► is not to email things off their computer.

00:55:21 ◼   ► that is barbaric.

00:55:22 ◼   ► The correct answer is change their desktop wallpaper

00:55:24 ◼   ► to something funny or shocking,

00:55:26 ◼   ► and then put a bunch of windows over it

00:55:27 ◼   ► so they don't actually see it for a while

00:55:28 ◼   ► until they hide a window and then bam.

00:55:30 ◼   ► Okay, Casey, just ignore the IT department.

00:55:33 ◼   ► Do what you want.

00:55:34 ◼   ► Life is short.

00:55:34 ◼   ► - I didn't realize it was that easy.

00:55:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, it is.

00:55:38 ◼   ► That's it.

00:55:39 ◼   ► I mean, come on.

00:55:40 ◼   ► That's how jobs work, right?

00:55:41 ◼   ► - Totally.

00:55:42 ◼   ► I'm trying to be a nice guy right now,

00:55:45 ◼   ► but man, I'm putting holes in my tongue.

00:55:48 ◼   ► Anyway.

00:55:48 ◼   ► So yeah, so.

00:55:50 ◼   ► I was gonna say, for upgrading, the thing I think makes most people do it in the end

00:55:55 ◼   ► is they're not able to do something with their computer that they want to do.

00:55:58 ◼   ► Now the thing they want to do might be frivolous.

00:56:01 ◼   ► All my friends are using tabs on all their windows, and I see them doing it, and they're

00:56:05 ◼   ► all talking about tabs, and I don't have them on my windows because I don't have Sierra

00:56:09 ◼   ► that includes the new tab window manager, right?

00:56:13 ◼   ► That's a frivolous example.

00:56:14 ◼   ► A more concrete example is everybody's using this new Twitter client, and I'm going back

00:56:17 ◼   ► in time here when there was Twitter clients.

00:56:19 ◼   ► using this new tour client but it's CR only and I can't use it right if you

00:56:23 ◼   ► feel like you're not able to do things with computers then your computer you

00:56:27 ◼   ► know your into computers is one of your hobbies and everyone else you know and

00:56:31 ◼   ► the computer you know your little computer circles is doing this cool

00:56:34 ◼   ► thing and you can't do it because you're operating system so that I feel like in

00:56:37 ◼   ► the end is what makes people in our circle upgrade sometimes right off the

00:56:41 ◼   ► bat there's things for that and the other one is maybe you could say even if

00:56:45 ◼   ► I was the only computer user in the world this one has such nice performance

00:56:48 ◼   ► improvements that I wanted. Don't think Sierra has that, at least Apple's not touting it. Again,

00:56:52 ◼   ► I didn't test it, I didn't review it, though there are a lot of good reviews out there.

00:56:55 ◼   ► But performance increases are not a big selling point. I'm sure it's better in many performance

00:57:00 ◼   ► measures and there's huge performance improvements across the board, which is always in the back of

00:57:04 ◼   ► my mind as a reason to upgrade. Because anyone who writes software for a living knows what it feels

00:57:11 ◼   ► like to ship a new version of your software that you realize is so much better than the version

00:57:18 ◼   ► that your users out there are using.

00:57:20 ◼   ► Like the old version is a piece of crap.

00:57:21 ◼   ► It's like, do you realize how much code I deleted?

00:57:23 ◼   ► You don't understand how I refactored this.

00:57:25 ◼   ► You don't understand how I changed this code path

00:57:29 ◼   ► from being like 17 levels deep in subroutine calls

00:57:34 ◼   ► to now just being like two.

00:57:35 ◼   ► And this used to be called every 10 milliseconds

00:57:37 ◼   ► and now it's called like once a second

00:57:39 ◼   ► and just everything is so much better about it.

00:57:41 ◼   ► You're disgusted by the idea that anyone could be using it.

00:57:43 ◼   ► Well, operating systems like this

00:57:45 ◼   ► are filled with that stuff.

00:57:47 ◼   ► So I get the warm fuzzies, real or not, of "give me the new version of the software,

00:57:53 ◼   ► because I know there must be things about this that are just better than they were."

00:57:56 ◼   ► Now, it's not only that they also break crap to see Discovery D or whatever, but in general,

00:58:01 ◼   ► I want the new version of the software.

00:58:02 ◼   ► Although I think I'm a little bit weird in that respect.

00:58:04 ◼   ► But I think most of the reason people upgrade is, "everyone's doing the thing and I can't

00:58:09 ◼   ► do the thing."

00:58:10 ◼   ► And I will get to that point, and I think Marco will too, but we're both not there yet

00:58:13 ◼   ► with Sierra.

00:58:14 ◼   ► Yeah, that's fair.

00:58:15 ◼   ► I mean, I don't have anything bad to say about it. I don't I hope I don't sound too negative

00:58:20 ◼   ► It's not that I have anything bad to say

00:58:22 ◼   ► But I can't say that I've found any features that have really changed the way I use my computer so far

00:58:29 ◼   ► The watch unlock is the closest but I'm not relying on it

00:58:33 ◼   ► The one thing that I think I really do like and I do miss on my work computer

00:58:36 ◼   ► Like I said is having those like rich text or those rich previews in messages

00:58:41 ◼   ► Those are really, really great, and I wish I had that on my work computer.

00:58:45 ◼   ► But other than that, there's nothing really that's knocking my socks off.

00:58:49 ◼   ► And that's not necessarily a bad thing.

00:58:50 ◼   ► I mean, it's not rare for all of the three of us to beg and plead for Apple to just kind of take a breath

00:58:59 ◼   ► and try to improve reliability.

00:59:01 ◼   ► And I mean, it seems stable so far.

00:59:03 ◼   ► I mean, I'm only a few days in now, but it seems okay.

00:59:06 ◼   ► The one thing that I will tell you that I have been scared to do, though,

00:59:10 ◼   ► and doesn't really solve a problem I have anyway,

00:59:13 ◼   ► is this iCloud drive,

00:59:17 ◼   ► "Hey, we'll move things to the cloud on your behalf.

00:59:20 ◼   ► "Don't worry, you're pretty little face,

00:59:21 ◼   ► "we've got you covered."

00:59:22 ◼   ► This looks like, from everything I've heard,

00:59:25 ◼   ► this is a dumpster fire.

00:59:26 ◼   ► Like this is no good.

00:59:27 ◼   ► - I should have saved this clip.

00:59:29 ◼   ► In the tradition of now, this is my new thing now.

00:59:31 ◼   ► I look up stuff in old podcasts

00:59:32 ◼   ► and make overcast timestamp links.

00:59:34 ◼   ► So Marco better never make that site go down,

00:59:36 ◼   ► or at least add a new record somehow.

00:59:38 ◼   ► Anyway, I was thinking like we talked about this before and how we're all scared of this feature

00:59:44 ◼   ► and everything. I'm like, when was that? Turns out it was the WWDC show. Like as soon as they

00:59:48 ◼   ► announced this feature, that very day, we walked back to the hotel and recorded an episode and it

00:59:52 ◼   ► was like, no, no. Like we had it. We'd never touched this operating system. We'd never even

00:59:56 ◼   ► seen it in action. We just seen slides promising this feature that like, we will take your documents

01:00:01 ◼   ► and desktop folder and magically sync them across to all of your Macs if you want us to. Like, no,

01:00:06 ◼   ► don't do that. It will not turn out well. Right. And I'll find the audio clip of saying that in

01:00:14 ◼   ► no uncertain terms. And a lot of people who have reviewed Sierra have said, this feature has all

01:00:21 ◼   ► sorts of problems. Now, one category of problems are even when it's working perfectly, as far as

01:00:29 ◼   ► anyone can tell, it does things that the user doesn't expect in ways that scare people, like,

01:00:35 ◼   ► as in, where did all my documents go? Even when it's working correctly, it does some,

01:00:39 ◼   ► has some strange behaviors where rather than just merging things together,

01:00:41 ◼   ► as soon as you turn it on or if you turn it back off or whatever, very frequently everything on

01:00:46 ◼   ► your, everything on your desktop is on the people notice because people know what's on the desktop,

01:00:49 ◼   ► or they know like, if you're a messy desktop person, you have icons everywhere.

01:00:53 ◼   ► If you saw all those disappear, it doesn't matter if like the files aren't actually gone,

01:00:57 ◼   ► you have that moment of panic and you're like, where'd everything go? Or if everything disappears

01:01:02 ◼   ► from your documents folder, you open your documents folder and there's nothing in it,

01:01:04 ◼   ► doesn't matter at that point whether that data is actually gone. All that matters is that people

01:01:10 ◼   ► briefly think it is and that makes people hate you, Apple. So don't do that. So it does do that.

01:01:15 ◼   ► It has a thing where it moves your actual files aside and then like uploads them and then pulls

01:01:19 ◼   ► them back down from the cloud and tries to like, I'm not sure why it does that. Certainly things

01:01:24 ◼   ► like Dropbox or Google Drive don't have to do that to function. They just like badge your icons and

01:01:29 ◼   ► and slowly make them, you know,

01:01:30 ◼   ► oh, this one has successfully uploaded,

01:01:32 ◼   ► oh, here's the merge conflict.

01:01:33 ◼   ► Like Dropbox does like the dumbest thing

01:01:35 ◼   ► that'll possibly work with like renaming your files,

01:01:37 ◼   ► but at no point does it delete your crap.

01:01:39 ◼   ► At least I haven't tried the Project Infinity thing,

01:01:41 ◼   ► but the regular one doesn't.

01:01:43 ◼   ► So that's that.

01:01:44 ◼   ► And then the other aspect are just plain bugs,

01:01:47 ◼   ► where it's supposed to do the thing

01:01:49 ◼   ► where it moves aside your files

01:01:50 ◼   ► and puts them up to the cloud and pulls it back down

01:01:52 ◼   ► and merges all together.

01:01:53 ◼   ► But many people say, actually it didn't do that.

01:01:55 ◼   ► And when I tried to turn off the feature,

01:01:57 ◼   ► my files went away.

01:01:57 ◼   ► And since they hadn't been successfully uploaded,

01:01:59 ◼   ► I couldn't get them back.

01:02:00 ◼   ► And I had to restore from a backup

01:02:02 ◼   ► or it started trying to sync them,

01:02:04 ◼   ► but then all of a sudden numbers couldn't open

01:02:05 ◼   ► my spreadsheet file because of that wonderful error

01:02:07 ◼   ► that I was getting from pages where it says,

01:02:09 ◼   ► can't open file because reasons, sorry,

01:02:11 ◼   ► and you can never open it again.

01:02:12 ◼   ► And I had to just like turn everything off

01:02:14 ◼   ► and delete all my files and restore from backup.

01:02:16 ◼   ► Like it is not a successfully launched feature.

01:02:19 ◼   ► Every single review and every person I've heard

01:02:21 ◼   ► who has used it has had some kind of issue.

01:02:24 ◼   ► Now, maybe there's millions of people using it out there

01:02:25 ◼   ► with no issues, I don't know,

01:02:27 ◼   ► but that there are enough people reporting problems

01:02:29 ◼   ► that I absolutely positively cannot recommend

01:02:31 ◼   ► that anybody listening to this podcast use that feature.

01:02:34 ◼   ► Even if you only have five files, just don't use it

01:02:37 ◼   ► because it's not worth the risk.

01:02:38 ◼   ► It's weird, it works strangely, and apparently it has bugs.

01:02:42 ◼   ► And there are other solutions that do similar things

01:02:45 ◼   ► that are proven to be more reliable.

01:02:48 ◼   ► Dropbox, Google Drive,

01:02:49 ◼   ► even plain old regular iCloud Drive, maybe,

01:02:52 ◼   ► but giving your documents folder and your desktop to this,

01:02:56 ◼   ► places where people store tons of stuff,

01:02:58 ◼   ► I think is a very bad idea.

01:02:59 ◼   ► And honestly, at this point, based on how it launched,

01:03:02 ◼   ► like I was saying that WBC half snark,

01:03:04 ◼   ► but half like predicting like based on past history,

01:03:06 ◼   ► this is going to be a disaster, but who knows?

01:03:07 ◼   ► They could have pulled it off, you know, prove me wrong,

01:03:09 ◼   ► Apple, I probably said at some point in that big rant,

01:03:11 ◼   ► they have not proved me wrong.

01:03:13 ◼   ► And given that that's the case,

01:03:15 ◼   ► I have to now think was Sierra crying out,

01:03:18 ◼   ► like was the Mac operating system

01:03:20 ◼   ► crying out for this feature?

01:03:22 ◼   ► Like they already did iCloud drive, which is like,

01:03:24 ◼   ► hey, we can do Dropbox too.

01:03:25 ◼   ► And in general, it's not as good as Dropbox,

01:03:27 ◼   ► but I feel like they tick that checkbox.

01:03:30 ◼   ► Like, hey, if you buy a Mac,

01:03:31 ◼   ► we give you everything you expect from a modern computer,

01:03:33 ◼   ► including a cloud-based drive that syncs,

01:03:35 ◼   ► that you pay more for more.

01:03:36 ◼   ► So like, they give you that, they have that.

01:03:38 ◼   ► I think it's important for them to have that.

01:03:40 ◼   ► And I'm glad they finally going to that

01:03:41 ◼   ► instead of what they were doing before

01:03:43 ◼   ► with the documents in the cloud and everything.

01:03:44 ◼   ► Like this is better.

01:03:45 ◼   ► Do they need to also add,

01:03:47 ◼   ► by the way, we'll transparently sync your documents

01:03:49 ◼   ► and desktop?

01:03:51 ◼   ► Because desktop is a place that people love

01:03:53 ◼   ► and people feel comfortable with and safe.

01:03:54 ◼   ► And if you make that feel remotely unsafe, that's terrible betrayal.

01:03:58 ◼   ► And the Documents folder can potentially change, contain a huge number of things.

01:04:03 ◼   ► I should go look here.

01:04:04 ◼   ► I want to see how many documents I have in my Documents folder.

01:04:08 ◼   ► You want to take a guess while we're waiting for the calculating size to finish?

01:04:11 ◼   ► >>

01:04:11 ◼   ► >>

01:04:19 ◼   ► I was thinking the other day about all the computers in my attic and how like they probably

01:04:22 ◼   ► don't work anymore because the caps have all exploded.

01:04:24 ◼   ► But I was thinking like maybe I can salvage stuff from the hard drives.

01:04:27 ◼   ► Because hard drive sizes have gone on that hockey stick type of curve, I always imagined

01:04:31 ◼   ► and this never quite paid off for me, but I always imagined that I would be able to

01:04:34 ◼   ► take every document I had on my five megabyte hard drive and put it on my 32 megabyte hard

01:04:40 ◼   ► drive.

01:04:41 ◼   ► And every document I had on my 32 megabyte hard drive and put it on my 100 megabyte hard

01:04:44 ◼   ► drive and like, you know, just basically bring everything along with me forever and ever

01:04:47 ◼   ► because I could take all the documents on every single computer in my attic from like the 68k era

01:04:53 ◼   ► and put them on you know in a tiny little folder on my SD because storage space has gone up so much

01:04:58 ◼   ► that there's no reason I just can't have everything that I have but it hasn't happened that way like

01:05:03 ◼   ► I've gone through discontinuities where I upgrade to a bigger computer but don't bring over every

01:05:07 ◼   ► single FOB because they're not relevant anymore like all my all my confabulator themes and my

01:05:12 ◼   ► icon collections for 32 by 32 icons and stuff like that.

01:05:16 ◼   ► I've kind of left those behind and I want to go retrieve them because I feel like the

01:05:19 ◼   ► total size of that is only going to be like a couple gigs or something and it would be

01:05:23 ◼   ► great to have all that but in practice I don't have a lot of that old stuff and it's kind

01:05:28 ◼   ► of a shame.

01:05:29 ◼   ► Anyway, my thing just finished.

01:05:31 ◼   ► I want to guess how many things files are in my documents folder.

01:05:39 ◼   ► I would guess easily 100,000.

01:05:41 ◼   ► Margo?

01:05:42 ◼   ► I'd go a little lower. I'd say more like...

01:05:44 ◼   ► Your price is right. $1, $1!

01:05:45 ◼   ► I'd say more like maybe $20,000.

01:05:48 ◼   ► My documents folder contains 1,897,958 items.

01:05:54 ◼   ► Oh my gosh.

01:05:55 ◼   ► Is that one per Chrome tab?

01:05:57 ◼   ► Can you imagine pointing, like checking that checkbox on this computer and saying,

01:06:04 ◼   ► "Oh yeah, no, sure, iCloud. Go ahead. Go ahead with that."

01:06:07 ◼   ► Like, there's virtual machines in there. Multiple virtual machine files.

01:06:11 ◼   ► There's huge numbers of things there. My Dropbox doesn't contain that. I'm not insane.

01:06:16 ◼   ► Like, even if I had like a one terabyte, like, but the documents folder is essentially where

01:06:22 ◼   ► every, and this doesn't include, you know, movies are mostly on my Synology and photos are mostly

01:06:27 ◼   ► my photos library. So the movies and photos libraries have really pared down, although

01:06:30 ◼   ► there is some old crap in there, like iMovie things I made at the kids and everything,

01:06:33 ◼   ► but documents like that is, that is potentially limitless. Like that's where for most normal

01:06:38 ◼   ► people now that you know photos puts everything in your library folder and everything documents

01:06:44 ◼   ► should contain all of your documents and maybe you don't have 1.8 million of them fine whatever but

01:06:48 ◼   ► it's enough that i wouldn't say you know go ahead sync this with your unreliable sync system system

01:06:54 ◼   ► i'll sure sure it'll be fine so as i was saying before this is the type of feature i'd be like

01:06:59 ◼   ► did we really need this feature is this a net win for the mac as a platform reputation like it must

01:07:05 ◼   ► have taken a lot of effort to make this feature. It's complicated. It's hard to do well. You

01:07:09 ◼   ► spent that time and money, and what you got out of it was a thing that makes people not

01:07:13 ◼   ► trust you in the same areas that didn't trust you before, and it's not making a better product.

01:07:16 ◼   ► If you could have taken that time and energy and put it towards something else, I think

01:07:21 ◼   ► it would have been a better use of your time. Or maybe you just dedicated to this and say,

01:07:25 ◼   ► "Look, even though the first one's going to be crappy, we're going to work on it until

01:07:27 ◼   ► it gets better," which, to Apple's credit, they have been improving the cloud stuff slowly

01:07:31 ◼   ► but surely. The trajectory is the correct direction. The slope just isn't particularly

01:07:34 ◼   ► and there are lots of backsliding.

01:07:35 ◼   ► So I don't know, this is not a,

01:07:38 ◼   ► if I had written a Sierra review,

01:07:39 ◼   ► I would have spent a long time

01:07:42 ◼   ► sort of condemning this feature specifically

01:07:45 ◼   ► and everything surrounding it

01:07:46 ◼   ► and how Apple can't get its act together on this,

01:07:48 ◼   ► going off into like my usual rants about

01:07:51 ◼   ► why is this such a fundamental

01:07:53 ◼   ► incompetency for the company?

01:07:56 ◼   ► And even though I'm proving there,

01:07:57 ◼   ► why are they improving slowly?

01:07:58 ◼   ► Why can everybody else do this so well relative to Apple?

01:08:03 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:08:04 ◼   ► know is that my worst fear with Sierra was that it would be on by default and that I

01:08:07 ◼   ► would somehow have to install with the ethernet cable unplugged to make sure that it doesn't

01:08:11 ◼   ► even attempt to do anything and then just stop it, but apparently it's not on by default.

01:08:15 ◼   ► I just got to be really careful not to be fooled by the wording into activating this

01:08:19 ◼   ► feature.

01:08:20 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean this kind of thing worries me because not only the reliability issues and

01:08:28 ◼   ► perception and reputation of your customers and potential customer data loss, but if this

01:08:33 ◼   ► goes wrong or thinking it went wrong. But overall, and I've used this rant before so

01:08:39 ◼   ► I'll be brief, it worries me how little the Mac is getting attention these days, not because

01:08:46 ◼   ► it really needs a ton of changes. I mean it is a mature platform and I wouldn't say Mac

01:08:50 ◼   ► OS is done and needs nothing else. And I wouldn't even say that it doesn't need anything big

01:08:57 ◼   ► because it could use big improvements, things like modernizing the AppKit framework to be

01:09:02 ◼   ► to be more like UIKit or allowing more code sharing there.

01:09:06 ◼   ► Cellular data monitoring and being able to have cellular max

01:09:09 ◼   ► and have that, which the fundamentals of that are all there,

01:09:13 ◼   ► but bringing it up through all the apps

01:09:14 ◼   ► require a little more work, stuff like that.

01:09:18 ◼   ► That stuff exists, that can be done, that can be improved.

01:09:23 ◼   ► I'm not sure it ever will be anymore

01:09:25 ◼   ► because when you look at where Apple prioritizes resources,

01:09:29 ◼   ► it seems like, especially in the most recent years,

01:09:33 ◼   ► they're prioritizing resources in basically

01:09:36 ◼   ► where the money comes from.

01:09:37 ◼   ► And so, and iOS gets the most resources.

01:09:39 ◼   ► And that's probably a smart move.

01:09:41 ◼   ► Like, you know, if you look at it objectively,

01:09:43 ◼   ► that's probably smart.

01:09:43 ◼   ► It does kinda suck for those of us on the Mac side

01:09:45 ◼   ► who we care a lot about this platform, though,

01:09:47 ◼   ► and the Mac doesn't get a lot of attention anymore.

01:09:49 ◼   ► What I worry about is not that the Mac

01:09:52 ◼   ► will just kind of stagnate forever,

01:09:54 ◼   ► but that it will get updates with new features

01:09:58 ◼   ► like this weird iCloud desktop document sync thing

01:10:02 ◼   ► that are actually bad,

01:10:04 ◼   ► like that it will get this kind of drive-by updates

01:10:07 ◼   ► that it isn't a high enough priority to really do this well

01:10:10 ◼   ► and knock it out of the park

01:10:11 ◼   ► and give it the resources it needs to be good,

01:10:14 ◼   ► but they basically use the Mac as kind of like,

01:10:19 ◼   ► it's something to support the marketing messages

01:10:23 ◼   ► and everything else of their other services,

01:10:24 ◼   ► or they kind of like give it lip service updates

01:10:28 ◼   ► where they assign a small amount of resources to it

01:10:31 ◼   ► occasionally to update something or add a new feature,

01:10:34 ◼   ► but they're not giving it enough to really do it well.

01:10:36 ◼   ► So it isn't just the Mac OS will stagnate,

01:10:40 ◼   ► it's that if Apple starts being a little bit careless

01:10:43 ◼   ► and cavalier with some of these new features,

01:10:45 ◼   ► it'll actually get worse.

01:10:46 ◼   ► That is what I'm worried about.

01:10:48 ◼   ► You know, if they just ignore it forever,

01:10:49 ◼   ► that's also really unfortunate,

01:10:51 ◼   ► and I would not be happy about that either,

01:10:53 ◼   ► but if they actually start being less careful

01:10:56 ◼   ► updating it, that is actually worse than not updating it.

01:11:01 ◼   ► That's a little concern here.

01:11:02 ◼   ► I don't think they're making it worse.

01:11:05 ◼   ► This is like an unforced error.

01:11:07 ◼   ► There's no reason that they had to add this feature and they added it and it's not good

01:11:10 ◼   ► and using it makes the experience work.

01:11:12 ◼   ► But overall, the OS is still better.

01:11:14 ◼   ► Like if you just pretend this feature doesn't exist, everything that you were using before

01:11:18 ◼   ► is at least the same or presumably more efficient and faster or whatever, and they fixed a whole

01:11:23 ◼   ► bunch of bugs and stuff like that.

01:11:24 ◼   ► And they have added useful things, like the picture in picture, this type of thing was

01:11:27 ◼   ► not technically that impressive, but it makes a big quality of life difference for people

01:11:30 ◼   ► who want to just watch video.

01:11:32 ◼   ► This is exactly what they should be doing, identifying what is the thing that people

01:11:37 ◼   ► do all the time that we can make easier at the OS level.

01:11:39 ◼   ► The thing that people do all the time is they have video playing in some window, usually

01:11:44 ◼   ► a web browser window, but web browsers usually, I don't know how people do them, but mine

01:11:48 ◼   ► are basically like sheets of paper, that proportion, but that's not the right proportion for video.

01:11:52 ◼   ► So they take one of the web browser windows

01:11:54 ◼   ► and either they resize it,

01:11:55 ◼   ► or if they can't tolerate doing that

01:11:57 ◼   ► because they're like me

01:11:58 ◼   ► and don't want the default window size to change,

01:11:59 ◼   ► they like scroll it, you know,

01:12:01 ◼   ► drag it half off the screen.

01:12:03 ◼   ► So just the video is showing,

01:12:04 ◼   ► but then there's like the ad banner on the top

01:12:06 ◼   ► and they try to, you know,

01:12:07 ◼   ► you're trying to get it so you can just see the video part

01:12:09 ◼   ► and not all the stupid ads around it in the browser Chrome

01:12:11 ◼   ► and have it off to the side,

01:12:13 ◼   ► but still do the other stuff you're doing in your work.

01:12:15 ◼   ► Or if you're full screen, you can't even do that.

01:12:16 ◼   ► You have to put the video on a second monitor or something.

01:12:18 ◼   ► Picture-in-picture totally solves that.

01:12:20 ◼   ► Something they can do really easily,

01:12:22 ◼   ► something they can build into one of their bundled applications that really makes quality

01:12:25 ◼   ► of life different.

01:12:26 ◼   ► Same thing with the tab windows, which is a lot of people want tabs, we can build it

01:12:29 ◼   ► into our default controls, a bunch of applications get it for free if you don't want it, you

01:12:32 ◼   ► don't have to have it.

01:12:33 ◼   ► If you're a developer and you don't like it, you can opt out of it.

01:12:37 ◼   ► But it's the same tab control we've been using in Safari, it's debugged code for the most

01:12:40 ◼   ► part.

01:12:42 ◼   ► And people like tabs, like those are the things they can do on top of make it faster.

01:12:46 ◼   ► Now, what I'm looking for at this point is like,

01:12:50 ◼   ► fix the tech underpinnings, improve that stuff,

01:12:53 ◼   ► make it faster, make it more efficient with memory,

01:12:55 ◼   ► new file system, which they did,

01:12:56 ◼   ► and it's just a developer building this one,

01:12:58 ◼   ► but like all that stuff they're doing,

01:12:59 ◼   ► that stuff excites me and I think makes the product better.

01:13:03 ◼   ► And features, adding big features like desktop

01:13:07 ◼   ► and document sync that don't work.

01:13:09 ◼   ► Again, I don't think it makes the operating system worse

01:13:11 ◼   ► if you don't use them, but it's an unforced error.

01:13:14 ◼   ► No one asked you to do that, and now you messed it up.

01:13:17 ◼   ► And if people do look in that part,

01:13:19 ◼   ► they feel bad about you and they feel worse

01:13:20 ◼   ► about your operating system.

01:13:21 ◼   ► So, you know, on the bright side,

01:13:23 ◼   ► the new desktop background looks really good.

01:13:25 ◼   ► So, this is a silver lining.

01:13:27 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:13:28 ◼   ► - Oh my God.

01:13:29 ◼   ► - I feel like that's the most compelling new feature of,

01:13:33 ◼   ► because what do people see?

01:13:34 ◼   ► Like when my wife comes home,

01:13:35 ◼   ► the only reason she will know that I upgraded

01:13:36 ◼   ► is there'll be a different picture of mountains in the back.

01:13:38 ◼   ► She really liked the El Cap background picture,

01:13:41 ◼   ► like the default one, she just kept that.

01:13:42 ◼   ► - That was a really nice background.

01:13:43 ◼   ► - Right, and to Apple's credit,

01:13:47 ◼   ► I like how they do this,

01:13:48 ◼   ► when we upgraded, it didn't change it.

01:13:49 ◼   ► It kept the old one, but I like the Sierra one.

01:13:51 ◼   ► So I changed the Sierra,

01:13:52 ◼   ► and I think it's the only thing you should notice,

01:13:53 ◼   ► and what does that funny colored icon up in the right?

01:13:55 ◼   ► I still have not spoken to the computer.

01:13:57 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, neither have I.

01:13:58 ◼   ► - Not used Siri at all,

01:14:00 ◼   ► but I suppose I might at some point in the future, maybe.

01:14:04 ◼   ► - I completely agree with you.

01:14:06 ◼   ► I don't know, I feel, I don't mean to come across,

01:14:09 ◼   ► and I don't think any of us mean to come across

01:14:11 ◼   ► a negative about any of this.

01:14:13 ◼   ► I don't know, I don't want to speak for you guys necessarily, but I'm not negative about it.

01:14:18 ◼   ► It's just the headlining features are features that fix problems that I don't have.

01:14:23 ◼   ► I don't feel like I've ever really wanted to speak to my computer, to use Siri in that way.

01:14:28 ◼   ► I don't think I've ever really wanted my stuff mirrored in the cloud transparently.

01:14:34 ◼   ► A picture-in-picture does sound very appealing to me.

01:14:38 ◼   ► To be honest, I just keep forgetting that's a thing in Sierra now.

01:14:40 ◼   ► And the iMessage stuff is great.

01:14:43 ◼   ► The watch unlock, it is very good.

01:14:44 ◼   ► I wish it was a bit faster, but it's very good.

01:14:46 ◼   ► It's very freaking cool.

01:14:48 ◼   ► And maybe in a month or a week or two

01:14:50 ◼   ► or something like that, maybe I'll find that feature

01:14:52 ◼   ► that I say, "Oh my gosh, I can't live without it."

01:14:54 ◼   ► But just only a week or two in so far,

01:14:57 ◼   ► I haven't found that feature yet.

01:14:59 ◼   ► - Speaking of things that people predict will not work

01:15:04 ◼   ► and actually don't work because the predictions are right,

01:15:07 ◼   ► things, I mean, this is having to do with watch unlock

01:15:10 ◼   ► as well, but things that are related to AirDrop, Handoff, or related synchronization without

01:15:17 ◼   ► wires technologies between iOS devices and the Mac have always been a little bit weird

01:15:22 ◼   ► and have not really gotten less weird, and the one that I think of in Sierra is the clipboard

01:15:28 ◼   ► sync between iOS devices and Macs, which totally sounds like an awesome feature.

01:15:33 ◼   ► But you just know, you just know based on past experience, like, you're excited for

01:15:38 ◼   ► feature then you're like oh but that's not actually gonna work reliably you just know it's

01:15:43 ◼   ► not gonna work reliably and everyone who tests it says it works most of the time but sometimes it

01:15:48 ◼   ► doesn't and you don't know why and like yep that's exactly how all these features work handoff airdrop

01:15:53 ◼   ► universal clipboard sync all of them i totally expect to work most of the time but sometimes not

01:15:59 ◼   ► work for inexplicable reasons that you can't do anything about and that never change year after

01:16:04 ◼   ► year after year after year. And that is the word. Like Jason Snell has great three paragraphs,

01:16:08 ◼   ► which is like a three paragraph concise Jason Snell style version of the seven pages I would

01:16:12 ◼   ► have written with exactly this sentiment. I tried to tweet a quote from it. I'll try to read it here.

01:16:18 ◼   ► It's like he's frustrated with the cloud sync feature or whatever of the documents. He says,

01:16:22 ◼   ► "What's going on?" I don't know. This is a feature without an interface. So there's really no way to

01:16:26 ◼   ► debug it. Sometimes it worked and that's pretty cool. And then sometimes it just doesn't work.

01:16:30 ◼   ► That's frustrating. Like that's exactly so many Apple features recently specifically related to

01:16:35 ◼   ► this technology we just know they've been out for years it's just it's going to be like that.

01:16:40 ◼   ► And it's not the end of the world like if it doesn't work it's not like you're losing data

01:16:43 ◼   ► it's not you know it's not the same as the documents saying but you know you're oh so

01:16:47 ◼   ► what your clipboard didn't sync or whatever but it's like why what is stopping this from working

01:16:51 ◼   ► reliably almost 100% of the time. The first one fine the first few years you're working

01:16:57 ◼   ► out the kinks or whatever but are we just now resigned to the fact that anything that has to do

01:17:01 ◼   ► with like sticking the clipboard i think is especially for small clipboard items even if you

01:17:06 ◼   ► have like a size limit that's as basic as you can get and like look there is there's a wireless

01:17:10 ◼   ► feature that we have that uses bluetooth or wi-fi or whatever the hell magic we're using

01:17:14 ◼   ► to hand off that data from a mac to an ios device that's sitting on your desk is there some technical

01:17:22 ◼   ► reason why that can't eventually, after several years, become reliable enough that we don't talk

01:17:28 ◼   ► about, you know, that it almost never fails? Apparently the answer is no. And I'm like,

01:17:33 ◼   ► just don't make any more of those features. If you can't make the ones you have work,

01:17:37 ◼   ► if you can't make clipboards sync work, forget about any of the fancy ones, right? And the thing

01:17:42 ◼   ► is like, handoff, when I was testing that in my review, it worked pretty reliably, but because

01:17:47 ◼   ► it's a beta, the one time out of 100 that doesn't work, I'm like, oh, it's a beta. But three years

01:17:51 ◼   ► later you're like is this a beta like i don't know why it's not working again as jason said

01:17:55 ◼   ► there's no interface there's nothing for you to look at nothing for you to debug there's no way

01:17:58 ◼   ► you can make it work aside from like oh let me just reboot and cross my fingers or something

01:18:02 ◼   ► incredibly frustrating and i feel like that's you know whatever that problem is that is bad for

01:18:10 ◼   ► apple's image it's bad because we won't use the new features uh if they don't work and people

01:18:14 ◼   ► will abandon them um and it's bad that apple needs to figure out like why can we not make this work

01:18:19 ◼   ► If there's some technical reason, don't make any more features like this.

01:18:22 ◼   ► But if there's not, figure out what it is that's causing this to continue to be a problem.

01:18:27 ◼   ► Especially if it gets worse for things like Universal Clipboard.

01:18:29 ◼   ► I would totally use that feature.

01:18:30 ◼   ► I want that feature.

01:18:31 ◼   ► That would be a feature I'd be excited about.

01:18:33 ◼   ► But everyone has used it and tried it and said, "I was really excited about this feature

01:18:38 ◼   ► too, but sometimes it doesn't work and I just eventually come to not rely on it and it frustrates

01:18:42 ◼   ► me when I need it and it doesn't work."

01:18:45 ◼   ► this is the one time where I will say,

01:18:47 ◼   ► I am an AirDrop unicorn.

01:18:50 ◼   ► It always works for me.

01:18:52 ◼   ► And I feel like what makes it always work for me

01:18:56 ◼   ► is kind of a few luxuries I have

01:18:57 ◼   ► of being a work at home person.

01:18:59 ◼   ► First of all, I have my one Mac and my one phone,

01:19:04 ◼   ► and occasionally TIFF's phone that are involved.

01:19:06 ◼   ► So it's like a small number of devices.

01:19:09 ◼   ► I set them all to accept from everyone.

01:19:12 ◼   ► That is very, very important.

01:19:13 ◼   ► If you don't set, at least the receiving one,

01:19:16 ◼   ► if you don't set the receiving one,

01:19:17 ◼   ► which is almost always my iMac,

01:19:18 ◼   ► to accept from everyone,

01:19:19 ◼   ► I've found that it works way less often.

01:19:22 ◼   ► And obviously there are certain situations

01:19:24 ◼   ► where you probably shouldn't have it set that way.

01:19:26 ◼   ► For me, AirDrop works great and I use it all the time.

01:19:29 ◼   ► Almost always I will use it to send a photo I just took

01:19:33 ◼   ► from my phone to my iMac,

01:19:35 ◼   ► because it's faster than iCloud Photosync

01:19:37 ◼   ► and maybe it's from a phone that maybe doesn't have

01:19:40 ◼   ► iCloud Photo Library setup, like a developer phone,

01:19:42 ◼   ► sending a screenshot or something like that.

01:19:44 ◼   ► It's great, I use it all the time.

01:19:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, I wouldn't say I'm a unicorn,

01:19:48 ◼   ► but I'm a horse who is stuck

01:19:50 ◼   ► like a little unicorn thing to his head.

01:19:53 ◼   ► You know, so it like--

01:19:54 ◼   ► - Like wearing like a horn hat?

01:19:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, pretty much.

01:19:58 ◼   ► No, I say that, what I mean is,

01:20:00 ◼   ► it doesn't work all the time for me,

01:20:02 ◼   ► and gosh, when it doesn't work, it is so frustrating,

01:20:04 ◼   ► but it does work pretty darn often for me.

01:20:09 ◼   ► So I am pretty satisfied with AirDrop.

01:20:12 ◼   ► I agree with you that I see things appearing and disappearing from my dock all the time

01:20:16 ◼   ► from handoff.

01:20:17 ◼   ► I almost never use it, but it seems to be working well enough that things are appearing

01:20:23 ◼   ► constantly.

01:20:25 ◼   ► So I don't really have any complaints about those features.

01:20:27 ◼   ► I've yet to try the clipboard sync, but I've heard a lot of mixed reviews about it.

01:20:33 ◼   ► But I hope it works, because that'd be another one that would be great, that would compel

01:20:37 ◼   ► me to upgrade, say, my work Mac.

01:20:39 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

01:20:40 ◼   ► I would also, that would be a major feature for me too.

01:20:43 ◼   ► And when they announced it, I thought,

01:20:44 ◼   ► oh finally, this is great.

01:20:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:20:47 ◼   ► - But the reports that I'm hearing so far,

01:20:48 ◼   ► not only that it doesn't always work,

01:20:49 ◼   ► but also that it's a little bit slow.

01:20:51 ◼   ► And that, that's the kind of feature where

01:20:53 ◼   ► if you're going to have that feature,

01:20:55 ◼   ► it has to be fast and reliable.

01:20:57 ◼   ► If it's only one or neither of those things,

01:20:59 ◼   ► that's gonna make it hard to really get into your workflow.

01:21:02 ◼   ► - Didn't somebody say also that it doesn't work

01:21:04 ◼   ► with at least whatever clipboard history thing

01:21:06 ◼   ► they were using, that it wouldn't add to the history?

01:21:09 ◼   ► Like I use clipboard history all the time,

01:21:12 ◼   ► and if this feature kills my clipboard history,

01:21:14 ◼   ► that would be a reason for me not to upgrade,

01:21:16 ◼   ► because the most exciting new thing I got on my Mac recently

01:21:18 ◼   ► is the Payspot beta for the Mac.

01:21:21 ◼   ► I've already had it, you know,

01:21:22 ◼   ► I've been using various clipboard history things in the Mac.

01:21:25 ◼   ► The one that I had settled on before

01:21:26 ◼   ► is Jumpcut, this open source thing,

01:21:27 ◼   ► which is really ugly and silly,

01:21:29 ◼   ► but it's very reliable and small, and I've been using it.

01:21:31 ◼   ► And I switched to Payspot, which is much fancier.

01:21:33 ◼   ► I'm like, oh, this is probably too fancy,

01:21:34 ◼   ► but I really like it.

01:21:35 ◼   ► I like that it feels like it's going to be

01:21:37 ◼   ► a more supported product than the open source jump cut

01:21:40 ◼   ► and it certainly looks nicer

01:21:41 ◼   ► and has some interface niceties, but I need that feature.

01:21:45 ◼   ► Like my use of a Mac, it's kind of like window shade

01:21:47 ◼   ► used to be or all these other things,

01:21:48 ◼   ► like you come to rely on them.

01:21:50 ◼   ► At this point, a Mac without clipboard history

01:21:53 ◼   ► would feel broken to me.

01:21:53 ◼   ► So if Sierra breaks my clipboard history,

01:21:55 ◼   ► like I'm gonna be really sad and just be looking for ways

01:21:58 ◼   ► to find the secret P-list thing that I can set

01:22:01 ◼   ► to make it not do clipboard, universal clipboard stuff.

01:22:03 ◼   ► - Well, as far as I know,

01:22:04 ◼   ► I don't think it actually breaks clipboard history locally.

01:22:06 ◼   ► I think it just, I think the things that are remotely

01:22:09 ◼   ► brought in from the devices just never actually,

01:22:12 ◼   ► they don't actually hit your clipboard.

01:22:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, they don't get pulled until you paste, I think.

01:22:16 ◼   ► They're saying like it doesn't go to,

01:22:17 ◼   ► it doesn't actually transfer it when you copy or paste,

01:22:20 ◼   ► when you copy rather, it's when you paste

01:22:21 ◼   ► on the foreign machine that it says,

01:22:22 ◼   ► oh, actually I wanna pull it,

01:22:23 ◼   ► and maybe that's why it's unreliable,

01:22:25 ◼   ► because it's not doing it at the time you initiate,

01:22:27 ◼   ► it has to then go back to the phone and say,

01:22:30 ◼   ► oh, give me that thing that you said you had for me,

01:22:32 ◼   ► and the phone's like, what, I'm totally doing

01:22:33 ◼   ► something different now, hang on.

01:22:34 ◼   ► I don't know, I don't know what the problem is.

01:22:36 ◼   ► And here's the thing about these type of features,

01:22:37 ◼   ► like AirDrop or whatever, even if you're dutiful

01:22:41 ◼   ► and you're like, I'm gonna file bugs in this,

01:22:43 ◼   ► it's impossible to file a bug.

01:22:43 ◼   ► You're like, this one time it didn't work.

01:22:46 ◼   ► And then I go, you could send all the system reports you want

01:22:49 ◼   ► and give them all the information

01:22:50 ◼   ► and try to give them logs.

01:22:52 ◼   ► And I was just like, I don't know why it didn't work.

01:22:54 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:22:55 ◼   ► It's not reproducible because you try it again

01:22:58 ◼   ► and it works fine.

01:22:59 ◼   ► And you're like, what were you doing differently that time?

01:23:01 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:23:01 ◼   ► So it's the worst kind of bug to report.

01:23:03 ◼   ► It's incredibly frustrating as a developer.

01:23:05 ◼   ► like I can't fix your thing if the people who are developing universal clipboard or

01:23:09 ◼   ► handover like they can't fix my thing if I can't explain to help to make it how

01:23:13 ◼   ► how to make it fail and if it always a hundred percent succeeds for them and

01:23:16 ◼   ► all their automated tests and everything like I don't know what to tell them but

01:23:19 ◼   ► it's you know people out in the world are having it fail and there's nothing

01:23:24 ◼   ► they can do about it and the people who write the software I'm not sure there's

01:23:28 ◼   ► anything they can do about it you know I need give me a failing test case give me

01:23:32 ◼   ► reproducible bug otherwise it's just you saying this bad thing happened once and I have no

01:23:36 ◼   ► idea why.

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01:25:19 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

01:25:21 ◼   ► - Since we've spoken last,

01:25:24 ◼   ► the iOS 10.1 beta has been released,

01:25:27 ◼   ► which includes the portrait feature for the 7 Plus.

01:25:32 ◼   ► And this portrait feature basically is doing a faux bokeh,

01:25:38 ◼   ► gosh, I watched that video on how to pronounce it

01:25:42 ◼   ► and I've already forgotten what it is.

01:25:43 ◼   ► - The answer is however we say it is wrong, so continue.

01:25:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, fair enough.

01:25:47 ◼   ► So anyway, so it does the focal is what we'll call it.

01:25:51 ◼   ► And so what it does is it does a background blur

01:25:54 ◼   ► behind the person or in some instances object that you're taking a photograph of.

01:26:00 ◼   ► And so there's a write-up on this from Matthew Pansarino and then there's been plenty of stuff

01:26:07 ◼   ► put out by Serendi Caldwell. Lex Friedman has been posting pictures to Instagram that I'm

01:26:12 ◼   ► pretty sure are using this feature, although I have not confirmed that with him. And I gotta tell you,

01:26:20 ◼   ► at a glance, at a glance, they look pretty darn good. Under inspection, even for me, and I don't

01:26:27 ◼   ► have the most discerning eye, some of them look still look good, and some of them just look like

01:26:32 ◼   ► they're somehow wrong, even if I can't put my finger on them. I am, I probably have the least

01:26:38 ◼   ► discerning eye of the three of us, and Marco, as the person who I think is closest to a, a,

01:26:43 ◼   ► a quote-unquote "real photographer," how, how do you feel about this, and, and what are you thinking

01:26:48 ◼   ► thinking about this feature?

01:26:50 ◼   ► - You know, my thinking has evolved

01:26:52 ◼   ► as I've thought about it more

01:26:53 ◼   ► and as I've seen a lot of the people's pictures.

01:26:55 ◼   ► You know, before we could really only see Apple's pictures

01:26:57 ◼   ► and now that they've released this beta now,

01:26:59 ◼   ► anybody with a plus, with a seven plus,

01:27:01 ◼   ► can make their own.

01:27:02 ◼   ► And so, lots of our friends have it,

01:27:04 ◼   ► we're seeing these pictures all over the place.

01:27:06 ◼   ► And ultimately, I think they look pretty decent

01:27:08 ◼   ► for what they're doing.

01:27:10 ◼   ► Now what they're doing is not replicating an SLR.

01:27:13 ◼   ► However, if you view these photos on a phone

01:27:17 ◼   ► and you're doing like a casual look,

01:27:19 ◼   ► like reading through an Instagram feed,

01:27:22 ◼   ► or whatever the kids are using these days,

01:27:24 ◼   ► then they look pretty good.

01:27:26 ◼   ► And if you compare it to SLRs,

01:27:29 ◼   ► and quote real cameras that are generating

01:27:32 ◼   ► real background blur, using the actual properties

01:27:36 ◼   ► of the optics and the shape of the aperture blades

01:27:39 ◼   ► and everything else, to really generate

01:27:41 ◼   ► the nice, pleasing looking blur

01:27:43 ◼   ► and the various shapes of the circles and everything,

01:27:46 ◼   ► If you compare it to that, it's not even close.

01:27:50 ◼   ► The real optic version of this looks way nicer and doesn't have a few of the artifacts that

01:27:55 ◼   ► the fake one does that photographers will notice, things like the blurry edges around

01:27:59 ◼   ► subjects that the FOCA mode has.

01:28:03 ◼   ► But if you have your SLR, just use your SLR.

01:28:08 ◼   ► For all the other times, for either you don't own an SLR or you do have one but it's not

01:28:13 ◼   ► with you, it's kind of amazing that a phone can generate pictures that look this good.

01:28:19 ◼   ► Now that being said, the regular pictures from both the iPhone 7's cameras already

01:28:25 ◼   ► look fantastic. And the fake blur effect is literally just like, you know, it's kind

01:28:32 ◼   ► of like an Instagram filter. It's like, you can take very good pictures without it,

01:28:36 ◼   ► but if you want this kind of look you can fake it with this kind of, you know, with

01:28:41 ◼   ► with this kind of software effect.

01:28:43 ◼   ► It's a really good looking approximation

01:28:46 ◼   ► if you don't look too closely,

01:28:48 ◼   ► or if you're just skimming by.

01:28:50 ◼   ► It's really nice that it's there

01:28:51 ◼   ► because it's better than it not being available at all.

01:28:54 ◼   ► However, if you really want something

01:28:56 ◼   ► to look really good with that look,

01:28:58 ◼   ► a real camera doing it optically will look way, way better.

01:29:03 ◼   ► But in practice, in the modern world,

01:29:06 ◼   ► that doesn't really matter.

01:29:09 ◼   ► - I think I've gone the other direction from Marco,

01:29:11 ◼   ► He's coming around to like oh, you know, it's not as good as it could be but it's better like the more of these pictures

01:29:17 ◼   ► I see the more I'm convinced that certainly I would never willingly do this and

01:29:21 ◼   ► The more I'm convinced that nobody else should do this either because I they look really really bad to me

01:29:27 ◼   ► like the only time I feel I can get any value out of them is if there's a picture where

01:29:32 ◼   ► The background is really busy and would detract from the intended subject matter

01:29:37 ◼   ► and in this case the terrible blur they apply helps emphasize the part of the

01:29:42 ◼   ► picture that I'm supposed to be looking at but it always looks terrible to me

01:29:45 ◼   ► like I'm I'm not an expert in photography I don't even know what it is

01:29:49 ◼   ► that I'm seeing that's different but it looks wrong and bad and like someone

01:29:53 ◼   ► messed up my picture but you know blurring parts of it and one of the

01:29:58 ◼   ► questions a lot of people had about this was maybe it's using the other camera to

01:30:01 ◼   ► take it out of photos picture and using that for the background according to

01:30:05 ◼   ► to Panzarinos article, or maybe it was a tweet or something.

01:30:10 ◼   ► That's not the case.

01:30:11 ◼   ► It's computed blur.

01:30:12 ◼   ► - Well, and that would have been awesome,

01:30:13 ◼   ► because if you think about it,

01:30:16 ◼   ► and somebody could theoretically make a third-party app

01:30:18 ◼   ► that tries to do that, although I think--

01:30:20 ◼   ► - I don't think the cropping will work out.

01:30:22 ◼   ► - Well, the depth mapping information