00:00:59 ◼ ► #SnellTalkQuestion comes from Tim this week and Tim asks, "What image, Jason, do you use for your user login profile on macOS?"
00:01:08 ◼ ► So when you go to the login screen, if you use the login screen, I'm assuming that you do, and you put your password in, you get a little image that pops up there.
00:01:32 ◼ ► It's a picture of me taken by John Gruber at WWDC, like, in San Francisco, like, seven years ago or something, that got stuck on there and has never been replaced.
00:02:01 ◼ ► I don't think so because my -- I believe my icon in the chats that I've got in Messages are not that, but I don't know.
00:02:17 ◼ ► There is a picture of you looking inquisitively using a microphone, which I think was from one of our live episodes.
00:02:41 ◼ ► If you would like to send in a Snowtalk question to help us open a future episode, just send out a tweet with the hashtag #snowtalk or use the command ?snowtalk in the Relay FM members Discord.
00:03:03 ◼ ► And I just wanted to thank everybody who has donated to our St. Jude campaign here at Relay FM over the month.
00:03:18 ◼ ► So we are all so incredibly thankful for your support in helping St. Jude ensure that no child dies from cancer.
00:03:50 ◼ ► -Yeah, so this is just a piece of follow-up we got from a lot of people, which was last week we complained.
00:04:06 ◼ ► however, it's using its sensors to determine how you're standing or not standing, that it's super ineffective, super inefficient.
00:04:20 ◼ ► -It's so interesting that the sensors in the Apple Watch are so advanced in some ways, like the hand washing one, for example.
00:04:30 ◼ ► Like, it really does know when I'm washing my hands, but yet still after all this time,
00:04:45 ◼ ► a machine learning algorithm, which I think is super clever and this is what machine learning is good for, right,
00:04:52 ◼ ► which is you measure what the watch measures when people wash their hands and you feed that into the algorithm.
00:05:02 ◼ ► And it learns how, it builds up a model of understanding what it needs to see in the sensors.
00:05:17 ◼ ► But if you can say, "These are all the times that you wash your hands and this is all the sensor data,"
00:05:41 ◼ ► Train, use some advanced machine learning to do a better job of understanding when people are standing or not.
00:05:47 ◼ ► And I say all of this because we got a lot of feedback from people who said, "Oh, Jason, it's really easy.
00:05:52 ◼ ► If you want to trick your watch into thinking that you're standing, you just make sure you hold your arm straight up and down,
00:05:58 ◼ ► like, just put it down at your side for at least a minute and then it'll trigger it and it'll give you credit."
00:06:04 ◼ ► Which I appreciate the help, but my goal here is not to cheat, nor is it to hold my arm at a weird angle
00:06:12 ◼ ► that is uncomfortable just to trick the stupid Apple Watch into thinking that I'm standing, whether I am or not.
00:06:33 ◼ ► I appreciate all of the help of people who apparently just sit on their couch and let their arm dangle down for a minute every hour
00:06:41 ◼ ► Also, I heard from people who don't see this as a problem, and I think the answer there is their body motions obviously work
00:06:52 ◼ ► I guess when I'm standing, I'm not letting my arms dangle by their sides or my left arm or my watch is.
00:06:59 ◼ ► We've all seen you, you know, I've seen you, when you stand, you stand perfectly still, right?
00:07:17 ◼ ► We started talking about widgets last week and I think it started because I think it's going to be,
00:07:26 ◼ ► This has been one of those very rare features that ends up being a bigger deal than we thought
00:07:40 ◼ ► there'd be all the customization, everything going on with Widgetsmith and all that kind of
00:07:45 ◼ ► incredible stuff, but also just my daily usage of widgets is higher than I would have expected it to
00:07:52 ◼ ► be. Because one of the things that we were talking about at the time was when we found out that these
00:07:57 ◼ ► widgets were non-interactive, right? That you couldn't have buttons, they would always open
00:08:02 ◼ ► an application when you tap them, no matter what it is that you're doing, that kind of stuff.
00:08:09 ◼ ► But I think that what we have seen now is it was the best case scenario that I had posited at the
00:08:15 ◼ ► time, which was what we lose in functionality, we gain in general design, the ability to place them
00:08:23 ◼ ► in more circumstances, in better orientations, especially on the iPhone, where you can put them
00:08:28 ◼ ► anywhere on your home screen and they're in different sizes and the overall visual design
00:08:32 ◼ ► improvements of widgets, all of that, I think has come together to create something which is
00:08:38 ◼ ► so much better than what we had expected it to be. And developers continue to do really cool,
00:08:55 ◼ ► - I 100% guarantee that iOS 15 will have much more features for widgets because it's been such
00:09:00 ◼ ► a smash, right? - Sure. However, I will say that some of the stuff they took away and going from
00:09:05 ◼ ► the old style widgets to the new style widgets is, I think, a philosophical decision, which is Apple
00:09:10 ◼ ► feels like widgets aren't apps, right? That widgets shouldn't be a thing that you entirely like tap a
00:09:17 ◼ ► bunch of different buttons and get an answer and stuff like the Peacock widget, right? Like, I
00:09:21 ◼ ► think Apple feels like that was not what their intent was, that they want widgets to be glanceable
00:09:25 ◼ ► or very simply interactive. That said, I look at what the limitations are on widgets now,
00:09:30 ◼ ► and I think they could be more interactive than they are. And I think that will come next year.
00:09:35 ◼ ► But they do philosophically, they don't want it to be a replacement for an app. They want it to be
00:09:40 ◼ ► a very simple kind of interaction. But yeah, so unexpected that I didn't expect that I would
00:09:46 ◼ ► create a GitHub project for the first time, but that's where I am because I wrote that article
00:09:53 ◼ ► about using the Air Quality, the Purple Air Quality network to make a widget saying what
00:09:58 ◼ ► my nearby Air Quality was. And I pasted it into Gist, which is part of GitHub. And I had multiple
00:10:05 ◼ ► people make code contributions and say, "Oh, I changed this to add a gradient and I moved this
00:10:11 ◼ ► into a subroutine and here's what I did." And I realized, "Oh, this is like a project with
00:10:17 ◼ ► contributors?" So I actually will put a link in the show notes, but I actually put it up. So it
00:10:22 ◼ ► uses the Scriptable app. And actually the version that's up there now uses the beta, the new beta,
00:10:29 ◼ ► the Scriptable app because the developer of Scriptable keeps adding new features. But yeah,
00:10:34 ◼ ► I posted that. I mean, like you would never have bet that something like that would have happened,
00:10:41 ◼ ► but I wanted that widget because we've got like wildfires and stuff this season and the widget
00:10:46 ◼ ► seemed to be a really useful way for me to do that. And other people seem to want it too. And
00:10:50 ◼ ► it just sort of snowballed. So I'm not a developer and yet I have a GitHub project now. I told Casey
00:10:55 ◼ ► Liss immediately that I had a GitHub project because he is into that sort of thing. And within
00:11:02 ◼ ► five hours, I had somebody asking me for a whole bunch of features that are beyond the scope of the
00:11:07 ◼ ► project, which I feel like is, it's almost like there's a light goes off somewhere and they say,
00:11:12 ◼ ► "Okay, there's a new project that from somebody who's never had a project before, it's time to
00:11:17 ◼ ► haze them. So why don't you ask for a scope creep and a whole bunch of features that are not relevant
00:11:23 ◼ ► and see what he says." And what I said was, again, within five hours, I said, "Well, if you want
00:11:30 ◼ ► those features, you should just fork this project and do it yourself because I'm not adding it." So
00:11:39 ◼ ► - Yeah. Oh boy. It's great. But the fact is that widget that I built is way better now because of
00:11:46 ◼ ► the contributions of people who actually know what they're doing. So that's awesome. By the way,
00:12:11 ◼ ► - Yeah. They were nice about it. And they're like, "Oh, it's all part of the marketing, I guess."
00:12:19 ◼ ► But people were like, "You mentioned these widgets and I don't see them." And it's because the
00:12:24 ◼ ► version of Fantastic Al we were using is the beta and it wasn't out yet. But it is now.
00:12:28 ◼ ► People were also confused about something I think you said about the Carrot Weather widget.
00:12:32 ◼ ► And when we say people, I think I mean primarily our friend Todd, friend of the show Todd,
00:12:47 ◼ ► - Yeah. So I had mentioned that the widget that I was using for Carrot Weather was changing
00:12:58 ◼ ► using multiple widgets, but I wasn't. There is a widget type that... And I think that the Carrot
00:13:05 ◼ ► Weather developer Brian has added some features into the most recent update, which lets you
00:13:09 ◼ ► control this a little more. But basically the medium-sized versions, this came from Brian,
00:13:21 ◼ ► automatically switches between hour and daily data throughout the day. So if you put the hourly and
00:13:27 ◼ ► daily widgets into a stack though, they would automatically rotate hourly during the day.
00:13:30 ◼ ► - So you can do either one. You can put two widgets in a stack and they'll rotate. Or if you put the
00:13:34 ◼ ► hourly and daily, but if you put the SNARK or the forecast, they change their time horizon so that
00:13:41 ◼ ► they're telling you what happens that day, early in the day, and then late in the day when it's not
00:14:04 ◼ ► a wonderful thing. I've seen a few things that it is, but this widget for sure feels like it's
00:14:11 ◼ ► doing more than I thought could be done. And this is one of those things where the widget is
00:14:17 ◼ ► updating information throughout the day based upon what seems to be logical for the time that I need
00:14:23 ◼ ► it, which I mean, I know that from an underlying perspective, it's like, that's what the widgets
00:14:27 ◼ ► are supposed to do, right? But I don't think I've seen an implementation of this kind of logic as
00:14:34 ◼ ► good as the Carrot Weather widget, which frankly I'm not surprised about because Carrot Weather
00:14:38 ◼ ► is a truly fantastic application. We've said it many times on this show, it is one of my very,
00:14:49 ◼ ► - I will also throw in another app that I was trying, which is Weatherline, which I know a lot
00:14:55 ◼ ► of people like, and they don't even have an iPad app, it's just an iPhone app. But its widget is
00:15:02 ◼ ► really nice because the way it presents the weekly forecast with the little line that goes up and
00:15:07 ◼ ► down. So I've been trying that out, I never really used it before, but I like its widget, so I added
00:15:12 ◼ ► the app to my iPad and then I added the widget. Again, it's an iPhone app, so the app is terrible
00:15:20 ◼ ► on the iPad, but I don't use the app, all I'm using is the widget and it's a beautiful widget.
00:15:26 ◼ ► So I'm using the Weatherline widget now on my iPad. So that's a pretty cool thing where you
00:15:32 ◼ ► can have an app that is bad on the iPad, but their widget is still great because widgets are widgets
00:15:47 ◼ ► Widgets are Widgets, an iOS 14 story for children. - This episode is brought to you by Pingdom. Hey,
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00:16:27 ◼ ► You can customize how you're alerted and who is alerted depending on the outage severity
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00:17:04 ◼ ► from SolarWinds for their support of this show and Relay FM. Jason, today as we are recording this,
00:17:11 ◼ ► Apple and Epic are back in court to argue over whether Apple can legally keep Epic out of the
00:17:17 ◼ ► App Store. So if you remember, there were some temporary injunctions put in place about Apple
00:17:30 ◼ ► if you remember just a few weeks ago. Well, they're back in court today to make this permanent.
00:17:39 ◼ ► revoke this developer account and also they will be talking about whether Fortnite can come back
00:17:46 ◼ ► to the App Store or not. Of course, the Judge has already, I think, made it pretty clear
00:17:53 ◼ ► that she's not going to allow this to occur. I would be surprised unless Epic somehow have
00:17:59 ◼ ► got this incredible argument that we've not yet seen from them. It seems very unlikely. However,
00:18:05 ◼ ► the reason I want to note it is because if for some reason the Judge decides that Apple has to
00:18:11 ◼ ► reinstate Fortnite into the App Store, it would set a precedent for third-party payments because
00:18:20 ◼ ► that would be the assumption, right? That they will keep using their third-party payment method
00:18:23 ◼ ► in a court and said that it's okay. So there will be some interesting discussion, I think,
00:18:29 ◼ ► to come out of this, but I believe it starts today and I think will be over the next couple of days,
00:18:34 ◼ ► I believe, but we'll see. Meanwhile, there is, of course, more PR battles, but this time not just
00:18:41 ◼ ► from Apple. Epic have joined up with Basecamp, the Match group. The Match group is, you can assume,
00:18:48 ◼ ► like Match.com, Tinder, companies like that. Spotify, Tile, and many more to create the,
00:18:54 ◼ ► quote, "coalition for app fairness." They have a big 10-point plan of the things that they want
00:19:00 ◼ ► to see changed, but these points all coalesce around three ideas. They want to fix anti-competitive
00:19:08 ◼ ► policies that have been occurring, the 30% app tax, and no consumer freedom. So this is basically
00:19:16 ◼ ► them railing against Apple mainly, but Google also. I actually saw a report a couple of days ago
00:19:22 ◼ ► that Google is actually trying to get more of their 30% out of people than they have been in
00:19:28 ◼ ► the past. So no doubt to combat all of this, Apple has created another new selection of web pages
00:19:35 ◼ ► that explain the benefits of the App Store and what they give to developers. These pages are
00:19:40 ◼ ► funny to me. They don't need to exist because Apple has to sell itself to developers. That
00:19:48 ◼ ► job has been done. It's purely to counterbalance a lot of these discussions. This is Apple's side
00:19:55 ◼ ► of the PR piece where they're trying to say, "Look how amazing we are. Look what we give everybody."
00:20:01 ◼ ► Because these pages, if you looked at them without knowing any of this information, they look like,
00:20:06 ◼ ► "Oh, we're trying to convince you to develop for our platform," but that's clearly not something
00:20:10 ◼ ► that Apple needs to do. People want to make iOS apps. It's a very smart business to be in if you
00:20:18 ◼ ► want to be in any kind of app development company or app development business. But they're doing
00:20:29 ◼ ► HOST 1 Yeah, it's an interesting... This is an extension of the thing that they always do,
00:20:36 ◼ ► businesses that we help enable," and all of those stories that they tell. So they're fighting a PR...
00:20:42 ◼ ► This is the PR battle, right? There's the epic creating an organization full of the usual suspects
00:20:47 ◼ ► of companies that have had run-ins with Apple, and Apple posting a bunch of stuff on their website
00:20:52 ◼ ► about how great they are and how good they are to developers. This story will continue.
00:20:58 ◼ ► HOST 2 It most definitely will. I think we said this a while ago, but this will continue to be
00:21:04 ◼ ► probably the story of the year. It will just keep on rolling, especially now as a lot of these
00:21:09 ◼ ► companies are starting to band together. This was when the epic thing started. This was the
00:21:15 ◼ ► big question. Will other companies start to get together on this? And if they do, what happens?
00:21:22 ◼ ► Now, at the moment, just creating a coalition where they just make some noise is not really
00:21:27 ◼ ► that effective. The effective part is if any companies follow in what Epic tried to do and
00:21:38 ◼ ► It's actually all focused around Apple today. So there's been some new content signings. Apple's
00:21:43 ◼ ► partnership with the development company A24, the film development company, will be bringing a new
00:21:49 ◼ ► original movie to Apple TV+. It's called The Sky is Everywhere and stars Cherry Jones, Jason Segel,
00:22:02 ◼ ► and it's basically to help them do this, right? Develop movies and other TV shows and stuff like
00:22:07 ◼ ► that. Apple has also announced a deal with Patricia Arquette and Ben Stiller to create a new comedy
00:22:13 ◼ ► show, High Desert. Arquette will star and produce, and Stiller will be producing and directing some
00:22:19 ◼ ► episodes. This is being produced by Apple Studios, which is why this is one of the rare press releases
00:22:27 ◼ ► that was on Apple's website as opposed to Deadline or Variety. Apple's weird, totally separate TV
00:22:33 ◼ ► PR website, right? Yeah, at least it's now at apple.com/tv-pr because for a while it was like
00:22:44 ◼ ► apple.tv. It looked like a fake website, right? It was very weird. But at least they've tightened
00:22:51 ◼ ► that one up now. This is the second project with Arquette and Stiller attached to it. They're also
00:23:01 ◼ ► interesting because they don't own a production company together. Stiller does, and it's his
00:23:06 ◼ ► production company. And Patricia Arquette seems to have a working relationship with Ben Stiller
00:23:11 ◼ ► because they seem to keep executive producing shows together. But this is notable because
00:23:15 ◼ ► this is one of the few so far projects that are being produced by Apple Studios directly.
00:23:22 ◼ ► That's obviously going to continue as time goes on. Apple have also required the rights to a movie
00:23:29 ◼ ► called Cherry, which is a Russo Brothers movie. They directed the Avengers movies, the last two
00:23:34 ◼ ► Avengers movies. It will star Tom Holland and Clara Bravo, or Chiara Bravo. Apple reportedly paid over
00:23:42 ◼ ► 40 million dollars for this drama movie. It focuses around heartbreak, drug addiction, and crime.
00:23:50 ◼ ► They're kind of the main themes. So, you know, it's a gritty movie for sure. And it made me
00:23:58 ◼ ► think again about the expensive NBC comment. Because I started watching Ted Lasso. If you're
00:24:06 ◼ ► sick of everybody telling you how good Ted Lasso is, I'm sorry. I'm going to tell you now. It is
00:24:11 ◼ ► absolutely fantastic. I think we're four episodes in. But even with that show, so much cursing,
00:24:17 ◼ ► which really works for the show, but is way more than you would find on a network television. It's
00:24:27 ◼ ► Yeah, that's why it's not expensive NBC. But there was an angry, for those who don't remember,
00:24:31 ◼ ► there was some report that they were basically, the Apple TV+ shows were all going to be expensive
00:24:35 ◼ ► NBC. A lot of money, but they want to have control over the content. And that was very clearly from a
00:24:40 ◼ ► producer who basically got fired off of a show, or their show got killed or something like that,
00:24:45 ◼ ► and they had an axe to grind. And they had had a bad experience because of what was being asked
00:24:49 ◼ ► of them. They assumed that was being asked of everyone. It wasn't. It was just them. But they
00:24:54 ◼ ► ran to the press about it. And yeah, Ted Lasso is great. You know where, because his team is
00:25:12 ◼ ► - In the show, because they're not in real life. They're made up because they're sort of
00:25:27 ◼ ► - It was a very good move, I think, to create a fake team. And I will say, as a British person,
00:25:35 ◼ ► they do a very, I mean, it's clearly got British writing in it. Like, it clearly has been written
00:25:40 ◼ ► by people that are very familiar, if not are British or very familiar. Because it fits,
00:25:45 ◼ ► everything fits really well. None of it seems out of place, like what people say, the words
00:25:50 ◼ ► that they use, that kind of stuff. You know, like, it feels like a British comedy show to me.
00:25:55 ◼ ► - Yeah, it's got Americans running it, but it's shot in England and Americans starring in it.
00:26:02 ◼ ► But it's shot in England. And I'm unclear whether they had English writers or whether they had
00:26:07 ◼ ► the English, some English people do a pass on it to make sure that it, but you know, I'm glad to
00:26:12 ◼ ► hear that you, it felt authentic to me. I'm glad you feel it seems authentic to you. Authentic in
00:26:17 ◼ ► the sense of Britishism. I mean, it is, the show itself, the premise is kind of ludicrous, but it
00:26:26 ◼ ► seen so far as well is I like shows that they seem to be following conventions and then just don't.
00:26:37 ◼ ► I can see where this is going. And then it doesn't go to that place. So I like that kind of stuff.
00:26:46 ◼ ► which was a startup that creates radio stations for podcasts. This was a cross-platform application.
00:27:16 ◼ ► - I, yeah, I mean, my initial thought was, oh boy, just what podcast needs something that makes it
00:27:23 ◼ ► more like radio, which is why people listen to podcasts is they don't want radio. Here's my
00:27:28 ◼ ► theory. My theory is they like this technology and they want to do a better job of building a
00:27:35 ◼ ► podcast recommendation engine based on listening history. - Yes, that makes more sense too,
00:27:41 ◼ ► because that's one of the ways that they were doing it. Like basically the stuff that you seemed
00:27:44 ◼ ► to engage with and like, they would use that to feed the system to recommend or to put more stuff
00:27:49 ◼ ► into your feed. - So this is the thing is my guess is Apple's not going to do a genius playlist for
00:27:56 ◼ ► podcasts, but they are going to look at user behavior in the podcast app using the technology
00:28:01 ◼ ► from Scout FM and say, people who liked this podcast liked this other podcast or people who
00:28:08 ◼ ► liked what you like also like these other things and try to say like, rather than it being like,
00:28:21 ◼ ► Maybe they tweak it so it's more like, are you looking for more podcasts? Here are some that we
00:28:26 ◼ ► think you will like, but who knows? I mean, who knows what their philosophy is? I'm not a believer
00:28:31 ◼ ► in trying to genius playlist, trying to radio eyes podcasts because podcasts are like, they're
00:28:43 ◼ ► longer than songs for one, right? So like you listen to something for an hour and then there's
00:28:49 ◼ ► sort of like, here's a random podcast for another half hour or whatever. They're not easily split up
00:28:54 ◼ ► in that way. And I think people, I think the challenge is more about discovery and finding
00:28:59 ◼ ► things that you might like and that makes sense for this technology and if Apple can go in that
00:29:03 ◼ ► direction, that's great. - Yeah, I don't know. It seems really weird to me. Like, there are people
00:29:09 ◼ ► in the Discord saying like, maybe this is the type of thing for new users, but that doesn't make
00:29:13 ◼ ► sense to me either. 'Cause like, if you're a new user, it doesn't have any information on you. So
00:29:18 ◼ ► it's basically just the same as doing a search by a topic and just playing whatever's popular.
00:29:24 ◼ ► This really feels like I can see how somebody came to the idea. I can see how somebody get
00:29:31 ◼ ► investment for a project like that because if you invest to people that understand what radio is,
00:29:36 ◼ ► they're like, yes, podcasting needs to become more like radio. So it gets more listeners for
00:29:41 ◼ ► some reason that people think that it needs and then you get investment and then it becomes a
00:29:45 ◼ ► project. - I think the goal is somebody sends you a link to, you know, hello from the magic tavern
00:29:50 ◼ ► and you're like, okay, I'll listen to that and you listen to it and you're like, oh, this is great.
00:29:53 ◼ ► And then if, and this is why you'd Scout FM isn't the right answer. It's a vehicle to be
00:29:59 ◼ ► acquired by somebody who has a lot of podcast listeners like Apple, Perfect Match, whoever made
00:30:03 ◼ ► that company. I think this is probably what their ultimate goal might've been to get bought by Apple.
00:30:08 ◼ ► - Or a company, right? - Or a company, but it allows Apple to say, hey, new podcast person
00:30:14 ◼ ► who's never listened to a podcast before and listen to hello from the magic tavern. If you
00:30:18 ◼ ► like that, here are like five podcasts that are just like that. And maybe even five podcast
00:30:24 ◼ ► episodes you could listen to, to try to find something else. Cause the goal is to increase
00:30:29 ◼ ► engagement, I would assume and like not lose that person where they listen to one. So it was funny,
00:30:34 ◼ ► I guess, but I don't know where I go from there and say, oh, I can tell you exactly based on our
00:30:38 ◼ ► algorithm where to go from there for whatever it is that you happen to like. And then if you're a
00:30:44 ◼ ► again, we're all kind of intense podcast listeners, I think here, but there are also people who they
00:30:50 ◼ ► like podcasts, but they only have a handful and they don't know where they go from there.
00:30:55 ◼ ► And maybe it's a big mainstream podcast. Like, you know, it's a, they do a sports podcast and it's
00:31:00 ◼ ► able to throw them to a bunch of different kinds of sports podcasts from which they find something
00:31:04 ◼ ► a little more obscure, but that's a good fit for them. Like there are, you know, I like it as that.
00:31:09 ◼ ► I think better discovery in podcasting is a good thing. And I hope that that's what it is because
00:31:16 ◼ ► the, you know, just press play on sports and give me a, a, a lot of sports podcasts back to back
00:31:23 ◼ ► that nobody wants that. And it was also like, you know, you just go and press play and then
00:31:28 ◼ ► you give them something that's 10 minutes and then something that's two and a half hours. Like,
00:31:32 ◼ ► it's just, I just don't think it's the medium, you know, it's, it, I just don't think the medium is,
00:31:38 ◼ ► is created for that. You know, it's like, yeah, I don't know. It just doesn't work. Anyway, moving
00:31:44 ◼ ► on, uh, exposure notifications are now supported throughout the United Kingdom, Jason. So Scotland
00:31:49 ◼ ► was turned on a couple of weeks ago. Now, England and Wales are too. Uh, the NHS, the government and
00:31:56 ◼ ► the NHS have released their application. I had previously said that I would not use the app.
00:32:01 ◼ ► But I am using the app. Oh. Because I went and took a look at it. And also there's some of
00:32:07 ◼ ► the features that the application has in it, which are kind of useful for stuff that's going
00:32:12 ◼ ► on right now. So all the app does is asks for your postcode. But like only so our postcodes are like
00:32:19 ◼ ► four characters and three characters. And the four character thing is the general area. And then the
00:32:25 ◼ ► three characters narrows it down to where you are more exactly. And all the app wants is the first
00:32:30 ◼ ► four characters. So basically like what town do you live in? Right. Um, and then from there, it,
00:32:37 ◼ ► it gives you based on the town that you're in, what your kind of threat level is basically,
00:32:42 ◼ ► right? Like what is the, how bad is the virus where you are? And this is the England and Wales
00:32:47 ◼ ► app. Scotland has its own app. Um, and the, one of the other things that the application does is
00:32:54 ◼ ► has a QR code scanner in it. So if you go to public places like restaurants, cafes, that kind
00:33:01 ◼ ► of stuff, any retail business now has to display a, um, like a QR code on the door that you're
00:33:15 ◼ ► type stuff, right? Like that's, that's the thinking to it. Um, so I use the application.
00:33:21 ◼ ► I've been, uh, I've had it on for a few days. I haven't had any kinds of notifications yet.
00:33:30 ◼ ► Uh, I haven't had one of those yet either. I think it's after a week or something alert,
00:33:38 ◼ ► this is a long-term followup. This took longer than it should have because the government made
00:33:43 ◼ ► a stupid decision in trying to make its own application first. But frankly, I'm just pleased
00:33:53 ◼ ► MATT, that's good to know and report back. I, that, I mean, I know you're, you're staying safe.
00:33:58 ◼ ► I would imagine that if there's like somebody who's got it, who is riding the same train as you or
00:34:02 ◼ ► something like that, that that would be where you might get a notification saying, Oh, that guy
00:34:06 ◼ ► across the train from you had it. And you're on the train for 15 minutes, something like that.
00:34:12 ◼ ► I think that that's possible. Like that would be the most possible for me, um, because that's the
00:34:16 ◼ ► only time that I would be in contact with people for that amount of time. Or like a Lyft driver or
00:34:22 ◼ ► something. Yeah. Yeah. Like a driver or, um, or, or, um, in public, basically transport.
00:34:29 ◼ ► Transport is my main risk vector personally. Right. Cause you're just going from where you
00:34:33 ◼ ► live to where you work and back. But the good things that we have is one, if we do take taxis,
00:34:38 ◼ ► like, you know, I've seen some science in this, I don't know, but I've seen stuff that made me
00:34:41 ◼ ► feel better. Like you've opened the windows, which they recommend that you do like that airflow is
00:34:45 ◼ ► really good. Yeah. My understanding is that the ride sharing, um, companies in the U S have
00:34:51 ◼ ► basically mandated that the windows be rolled down. It's the same. Yeah. Yeah. Before you take
00:34:56 ◼ ► an Uber here, you have to like, there's like this extra screen now, which is like, you need to agree
00:35:01 ◼ ► to doing all of these things. Right. It's like, wear a mask, uh, wash your hands, open the windows,
00:35:08 ◼ ► like all that kind of stuff. Um, and with the trains for me, I can stay pretty far away from
00:35:14 ◼ ► people. Like I haven't had too many instances, but it's been, when I've been around too many people.
00:35:19 ◼ ► So, you know, it's been fine for me so far, but, uh, I, I will report back if I'm self isolating
00:35:25 ◼ ► at any point because the app told me to. If a podcaster self isolates, does anyone notice?
00:35:30 ◼ ► Oh, nice. Nice. Uh, probably not. Probably not actually, unless they tell you. Uh, so during an
00:35:37 ◼ ► interview at the Atlantic festival, uh, Tim Cook says he has been quote impressed by employees
00:35:44 ◼ ► ability to operate remotely and predicts that some new work habits will remain after the pandemic.
00:35:51 ◼ ► This is a report from Bloomberg. Cook said he doesn't believe Apple will return to the way
00:35:57 ◼ ► we were because we found that there are some things that actually work really well virtually.
00:36:03 ◼ ► This is a very surprising thing. Um, you know, if you've paid attention to Apple for long enough,
00:36:09 ◼ ► you will be aware of the fact that they are very hesitant, almost allergic to, uh, homeworking or,
00:36:16 ◼ ► um, kind of like telecommuting, right? Like that, that basically if you want to work for Apple,
00:36:22 ◼ ► you have to move to be near whatever place is closest to you. So whether it's Cupertino or
00:36:29 ◼ ► whether it's like a place in London or whatever, like you have to be able to go to that office
00:36:35 ◼ ► because that's where you work from. Um, and, and this isn't just because of a secrecy thing.
00:36:40 ◼ ► It's basically every part of the company. If you are in the, if you are in a head office function,
00:36:50 ◼ ► Steve Jobs didn't like telecommuting and really bought into the, uh, the concept that you had
00:36:56 ◼ ► to have people in person in order to have magical collaboration and all of that, which, um, you know,
00:37:02 ◼ ► I don't want to be too cynical here. Um, it does happen. It doesn't, it is not, uh, the only way
00:37:10 ◼ ► that those things happen. It's like, I'm a big supporter of remote work. And I, I hired a lot of
00:37:16 ◼ ► remote work people when I was a manager of a, an editorial organization at Mac world, we hired lots
00:37:22 ◼ ► of remote people because they were the best people and they were great. Um, and the issue I have is
00:37:31 ◼ ► this kind of myth that the only time you get collaboration and magic serendipity happens is
00:37:38 ◼ ► when people are like waiting for the toaster to toast a bagel in the lunchroom or whatever. Like,
00:37:47 ◼ ► but I think that there are lots of other ways to facilitate stuff like that, that don't require
00:37:51 ◼ ► your every single person that you have to be in an office together. And, you know, my, my experience
00:37:57 ◼ ► is when they were staffing up, um, app store editorial, a bunch of people I know were contacted
00:38:03 ◼ ► by Apple about that, um, those jobs. And what I found fascinating was that it was an in Cupertino
00:38:12 ◼ ► job. Like literally you had to be in Cupertino every day for that job. And it was no different
00:38:17 ◼ ► from the Mac world jobs that we all had where you could have somebody at their house. Cause
00:38:22 ◼ ► literally it's like writing words and you're not even dealing with the developers. The developers
00:38:28 ◼ ► are all remote. So it's really just you and your fellow people who are doing app store editorial.
00:38:32 ◼ ► And I had this moment where I just, I couldn't process it. It was like, this is so ingrained in
00:38:38 ◼ ► Apple's culture. I think because of not just Steve jobs, putting it there, but also this feeling of
00:38:44 ◼ ► control that a lot of people want over their employees where I want to see them. I don't
00:38:49 ◼ ► believe that they're working and maybe some of that has been removed now that you can't see them.
00:38:56 ◼ ► And yet they do their jobs. How about that? Isn't that amazing? So I hope this continues. And I hope
00:39:01 ◼ ► Tim Cook is serious about this. I'm skeptical. Corporate culture is really, really powerful
00:39:07 ◼ ► at resisting change. Even if everybody agrees that it should change a lot of times the change
00:39:13 ◼ ► just doesn't happen. It's amazing how corporate cultures are designed to resist change. Um,
00:39:19 ◼ ► because it's in many cases that's helpful, but in other cases it's really bad. So I hope this is
00:39:24 ◼ ► true because there are so many stories of people. Imagine the people who would be, uh, great
00:39:31 ◼ ► contributors at Apple, but they're not going to move to a big city and they're certainly not going
00:39:34 ◼ ► to move to the Bay area with the cost of living here. And, you know, I'll footnote James Thompson's
00:39:40 ◼ ► famous story where, you know, Apple was told move in the early days of Steve jobs return.
00:39:46 ◼ ► If you want to work on Mac OS X and the finder, you have to, you have to come to Cupertino. And
00:39:50 ◼ ► he was in Ireland and, you know, he left Apple because he wasn't going to move to California.
00:39:56 ◼ ► It was that simple. And Apple still has that attitude, not everywhere and not for everything.
00:40:01 ◼ ► But, um, I think companies, I'm not saying that having offices isn't good and that it can't be
00:40:07 ◼ ► good and that there aren't some jobs where it's necessary, but it's very frustrating when their
00:40:11 ◼ ► jobs that I know for a fact aren't necessary to be in person. And the company line is no,
00:40:20 ◼ ► you have to, you have to be in person. That's it. That's we, we all have to be here. Um, it's dumb.
00:40:26 ◼ ► So I hope that changes at Apple because, uh, it's wasteful. And they're, they're not hiring good
00:40:30 ◼ ► people, uh, because those people don't want to either move to or commute to, um, Cupertino.
00:40:37 ◼ ► Yeah. I think at this point, there will be very few companies that can truly believe that the
00:40:44 ◼ ► adaptations that they've had to make during the pandemic won't remain in some form because for
00:40:50 ◼ ► many, it's going to be a long-term change, but at all, there is any point that we can go back.
00:40:55 ◼ ► And that's how you make cultural change, right? Is that if you do it, if you do anything long enough,
00:41:00 ◼ ► it becomes the culture. That's the way we do things, right? We were, um, so, so my wife went
00:41:07 ◼ ► back to, they have a new schedule at the library. She's a librarian and they're still just doing the
00:41:13 ◼ ► people aren't in the library. They're just doing curbside service, but they're on a new schedule
00:41:16 ◼ ► where she's in, um, every other Friday and then, and then two other days in a week. And so she
00:41:22 ◼ ► worked her first three consecutive days in the office last week. And it was one of those things
00:41:27 ◼ ► where she used to work five days a week. Right. But after a few months, you're like, whoa, wow,
00:41:32 ◼ ► three days in a row. And like, that's, that's the thing is that you get used to the new thing after
00:41:38 ◼ ► a while. And then going back to the old thing is no longer back to normal. Now it's back to a weird
00:41:44 ◼ ► thing that I don't do right now. And that's that moment of opportunity. So I hope Tim Cook seizes
00:41:49 ◼ ► it because, um, it definitely has been going on long enough now that they should see one that it's
00:41:56 ◼ ► just a lie that these jobs can't be done remotely. Um, and, and two it's already changed the culture,
00:42:05 ◼ ► even if they didn't plan it just because of circumstance. Yeah. Currently just 10 to 15%
00:42:13 ◼ ► of Apple's employees are back at Apple park with the expectation that more will be able to return
00:42:17 ◼ ► next year at some point, because look, this is the thing for some people it is better to be,
00:42:23 ◼ ► uh, in the office. I do, whilst I am obviously a large proponent of, uh, remote work, I do
00:42:30 ◼ ► understand the benefits of being able to be in the same place as people like, it's something that I
00:42:35 ◼ ► would try and do every once in a while, you know, go to a different place, be with friends, that
00:42:43 ◼ ► one size fits all to this. That's the thing. Every job is different. Every person is different. And
00:42:47 ◼ ► we should mention, I mentioned this before when we've talked about this also, it's not, we've all
00:42:59 ◼ ► workspace available to them. Right? Some people don't have a place to work at home and you,
00:43:06 ◼ ► and now you can't go to a coworking facility, right? Those are, are not inbounds for the same
00:43:12 ◼ ► reason. So there's lots of issues here. Or even just a coffee shop. You can't go and work in a
00:43:17 ◼ ► Starbucks anymore. Like you just can't do that. And there's a gray area here too, which is like
00:43:21 ◼ ► Apple park is a good example. Like do they, when they come back, do they all come back full time
00:43:27 ◼ ► or do they come back with a mix where they, uh, everybody gets a little more space and people
00:43:35 ◼ ► are there, uh, some days, but not all days and they're home some and together some it'll be
00:43:40 ◼ ► interesting to see how that all pans out, but never bet against corporate culture reasserting
00:43:45 ◼ ► itself though. I would say so I'm glad Tim Cook is talking about this because maybe that means
00:43:49 ◼ ► that they've really had some moments of realization that they don't need to be quite as hardcore with
00:43:55 ◼ ► this where like, Oh, this person is brilliant, but we're going to make them move to California
00:43:59 ◼ ► and they won't move to California. So we're going to hire this person. We don't like as much like
00:44:03 ◼ ► that's a net loss for Apple hiring a person you don't want to hire instead of a person you do
00:44:08 ◼ ► because of your demand that they be in California for, if it's for a job that they don't actually
00:44:23 ◼ ► having a reason to exclude people, you know, it doesn't help with that, right? Like, as you say,
00:44:31 ◼ ► like you might end up finding the right person for the job, but they don't want to move to where
00:44:35 ◼ ► you're telling them to move. Right. Because eventually being in Silicon Valley becomes a
00:44:41 ◼ ► huge liability because the requirements, if you're not sort of in your twenties and willing to share
00:44:48 ◼ ► an apartment with eight random people, like if you're somebody with a family, like, and you're
00:44:55 ◼ ► not in Silicon Valley and you look at it, you think, Oh my God, like, where are we going to
00:44:59 ◼ ► live? And how much is that going to cost? And how long is my commute going to be? And, and that
00:45:04 ◼ ► becomes a major source of a brain drain within all of the companies in Silicon Valley. So,
00:45:10 ◼ ► this, this is an opportunity if they seize it, but they got to go against some of their existing
00:45:14 ◼ ► corporate culture in order to do it. I mean, unless you're getting a really good job at Apple,
00:45:20 ◼ ► you can't afford to live anywhere near, right? Well, that's, I mean, those editorial jobs,
00:45:26 ◼ ► I mean, we're talking about jobs that, that I will grant you pay better than working at an
00:45:30 ◼ ► independent publishing editorial organization. Cause of course they do. It's Apple versus IDG,
00:45:36 ◼ ► right? Apple's going to pay more, I would hope, right. But still it's not like that much more
00:45:42 ◼ ► that, that, you know, Apple doesn't pay every employee, even though they're the richest company
00:45:47 ◼ ► in the world, in some ways, Apple, believe it or not, Apple does not pay its employees,
00:45:51 ◼ ► you know, a million bucks to start like that doesn't happen. And that becomes a serious issue
00:45:58 ◼ ► if you're not an executive and you're trying to find a way to live with a family in the South Bay
00:46:11 ◼ ► environment stuff is going to continue to be a really big change. And if you're Apple and you
00:46:15 ◼ ► invest in Apple park, you're like, Oh, they spent billions of dollars on this thing. I think the
00:46:19 ◼ ► answer is going to be, don't feel bad for Apple for Apple park because Apple park will fill to
00:46:23 ◼ ► whatever capacity they choose for it. My understanding is they were already over capacity
00:46:27 ◼ ► before I opened. Yeah. So we'll up more property in the surrounding area. Let's say, yeah, let's
00:46:32 ◼ ► say Apple doesn't want to bring everybody back or bring everybody back full time. What will happen
00:46:40 ◼ ► is Apple park will fill up infinite loop will fill up, but maybe that old and kind of decrepit office
00:46:48 ◼ ► building that's on the border of Sunnyvale and Cupertino that they have now because they they're
00:46:53 ◼ ► desperate, but when they have some people work from home, it's like, Oh, we don't need to pick
00:46:59 ◼ ► up the lease on that building and that building and that building. That's, I think when you'll
00:47:04 ◼ ► see it there, their core campuses are going to be full as full as they want to make them because
00:47:09 ◼ ► Apple is in this case where, you know, Apple park is only a small percentage of the total
00:47:15 ◼ ► Apple workforce, even in Cupertino, believe it or not for people who don't know about that,
00:47:19 ◼ ► that the size of Apple and the size of that area. So they'll always be able to fill up Apple park.
00:47:24 ◼ ► So, uh, that beautiful thing, they spent a lot of money on it'll get used. The question is,
00:47:30 ◼ ► you know, does there end up being some kind of crappy office space somewhere in Cupertino or
00:47:35 ◼ ► Sunnyvale or San Jose or somewhere like that, that Apple dumps, you know, the lowest stuff,
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00:50:23 ◼ ► show and Relay FM. All right, Mr. Snell, let's talk about you. This is, you wouldn't usually
00:50:32 ◼ ► think that this is worthy of discussion, but we are in 2020. You went to an Apple store.
00:50:37 ◼ ► Breaking news, breaking news. Person goes to store. Yeah. So I bought a solo loop. I wanted to try on
00:50:47 ◼ ► the new solo loop and I was clicking around on apple.com as you do and looking at the colors
00:50:55 ◼ ► and thinking about if I could get one, cause I don't want to get a new Apple watch. I don't,
00:51:00 ◼ ► I don't have a need for it. Mine's fine. But I was curious about the solo loop and I thought
00:51:12 ◼ ► is that the Navy solo loop is I'm trying to find one that's like available quickly. And most of
00:51:20 ◼ ► them are not most of them, like the online orders are out in like October and November.
00:51:24 ◼ ► And then the Navy solo loop, it says, or pick up tomorrow in Corte Madera, which is my local
00:51:30 ◼ ► Apple store. I thought, Oh, so it's four weeks out or tomorrow. And I haven't been to that Apple
00:51:39 ◼ ► store since, you know, the pandemic. So I bought it and I have it. So I went to an Apple store
00:51:47 ◼ ► and I got, uh, and I got a solo loop. The solo loop is nice. Um, it's weird, but I, I've, I've
00:51:55 ◼ ► kind of gotten used to it. It's weird because you expect I've been wearing the sport band for so
00:52:00 ◼ ► long that I don't, like, I keep looking for the, the, the little dots or the it's the, it's that,
00:52:09 ◼ ► you know, where's the rest of me kind of moment of like, where is the, why is it? Does it keep going?
00:52:14 ◼ ► And it doesn't have little dots, rubbery one, the nylon one. Okay. Yes. It's the sport D solo loop.
00:52:22 ◼ ► The Apple watch names are so confusing now. I think by all rights, this should be called the
00:52:25 ◼ ► sport loop. Yeah. By all rights, this should be called the sport loop, but they already had made
00:52:29 ◼ ► a sport loop, so they can't call it that. So this is the solo loop like Han solo, I guess. Um,
00:52:49 ◼ ► John Gruber's chart and we'll put a link to it. If you haven't seen it, he took a picture. He
00:52:54 ◼ ► basically mapped the dots on the sport band to sizes of the loop. Yeah. Cause Apple make a chart
00:53:02 ◼ ► that you can print out that we spoke about, but it seems like the, that people's, um, experiences
00:53:09 ◼ ► in using the chart and ordering have been a little bit all over the place as to what they actually
00:53:15 ◼ ► end up receiving, how it ends up fitting them, I should say. Yeah. I think there's issues with
00:53:20 ◼ ► measurement, maybe issues with your printer scaling the file when it prints it. I don't know
00:53:25 ◼ ► what's going on there, but John figured out, cause he's got them, uh, cause he got them with his
00:53:30 ◼ ► reviewer package that, um, they map pretty directly to the number, the dot number on the sport band.
00:53:39 ◼ ► So if you have a sport band and you know what dot you usually use, which I imagine anyone with a
00:53:44 ◼ ► sport band has noted that they're on like four or five or whatever, for me, it was always like four
00:53:49 ◼ ► or five. Um, you can get your size from that. And so I did, that's how I picked my size is I used
00:53:55 ◼ ► Gruber's photo and, uh, I am completely baffled why Apple doesn't offer that. Like, it's such a
00:54:02 ◼ ► smart thing to say, do you already have an Apple watch with a sport band? Well, you could figure
00:54:06 ◼ ► out like based on like, why would you not do that? And I think the answer is that why you might want
00:54:11 ◼ ► to create something for people that it would be their first Apple watch. Yes, of course. Also,
00:54:15 ◼ ► right. Also, why not do this and avoid a bunch of returns, right? Avoid the returns by offering this
00:54:22 ◼ ► as a, as an option. And I don't understand it. I think they just, you know, this was a concept
00:54:27 ◼ ► from a different time and they expected people to try this on in stores and that's less of a
00:54:32 ◼ ► thing right now, but still somebody should have said, uh, we can map this to the sport band size
00:54:38 ◼ ► and solve this for a lot of people because the base model, the sport band is probably by far,
00:54:44 ◼ ► by far the largest percentage of the existing Apple watch population. So, um, anyway, my size
00:54:50 ◼ ► does alternate. I will use the fourth dot or the fifth dot in the sport band. Um, but I went with
00:54:56 ◼ ► a smaller one because I figured it's a stretchy material. And also with the fifth band, uh, the
00:55:02 ◼ ► fifth dot, it would rattle a little bit and not always make a contact with my wrist for like, um,
00:55:07 ◼ ► the heart rate monitoring. So I figured, okay, go with the smaller one because the, the band will
00:55:12 ◼ ► be stretchy, but I also do want it to not rattle around on my wrist and I want to make contact.
00:55:17 ◼ ► And it, and it feels pretty good. Like if I put it in the wrong place, it is a little too tight,
00:55:20 ◼ ► but if I wear it sort of where I'm supposed to wear it, it is, uh, solid and it doesn't bother me.
00:55:26 ◼ ► And, uh, it's, it's not for everybody. Um, I love the sport band, which is funny because
00:55:33 ◼ ► if you go back to early days of upgrade, you'll undoubtedly hear me talk about how I just,
00:55:38 ◼ ► we all, I think maybe assume the sport band was cheap and crappy and it's not, it's great. It's
00:55:43 ◼ ► the material that floral elastomer, whatever, it's really good. And I like it a lot. So there's a high
00:55:51 ◼ ► bar for this thing to clear and, um, it's pretty close to clearing it. It's, it's really, uh, pretty
00:55:57 ◼ ► nice. I'm not sure it's necessary in life. Like my sport band was fine, but this is definitely kind
00:56:02 ◼ ► of simpler and cleaner and, um, it looks nice. Um, so, so yeah, it's, I, I tried it. So definitely
00:56:12 ◼ ► endorsing John Grouper's, uh, map of the dots on your sport band to the loop if you want this.
00:56:19 ◼ ► And I bet the one that's fabric that costs 99 bucks, which is one of the reasons I didn't get
00:56:23 ◼ ► it. Plus it's hard to find availability. I bet that's nicer. Like I bet that's a lot nicer than
00:56:30 ◼ ► this, but this is nice. I like it. Yeah. If I was going to get one of these, I would get the braided
00:56:35 ◼ ► one because I think, I think it adds something. So, cause what I was thinking for me personally,
00:56:55 ◼ ► way less convenient to me than, than putting the watch on and with the clasp, because surely that
00:57:04 ◼ ► is easier or more comfortable to do. I would say relatively hairy man. So there's, it doesn't,
00:57:11 ◼ ► I am too. And that's not an issue. It's actually not an issue. It's very easy to put it on. I think
00:57:16 ◼ ► within Apple and perhaps within the watch world, Marco could tell us, um, there is this feeling that
00:57:23 ◼ ► sizing your watch band is a hassle. So it's like the, um, the, the sport loop, right. With the
00:57:31 ◼ ► Velcro you, it's like, this is great. You just put it wherever you want it. And, and you don't have
00:57:37 ◼ ► that hassle of like getting which, which band, which dot fits you. You just fit it to exactly
00:57:42 ◼ ► right. And then it's, and you don't have to worry about it. Yay. And I always thought like, and I
00:57:46 ◼ ► don't really, I have one of those. I don't, I don't wear it and I don't wear it because it ends up being
00:57:51 ◼ ► so fiddly like, is this too tight? Is this too loose? Is this too tight? It's this you loose.
00:57:54 ◼ ► Whereas I know it's number four on the sport band. I counted, but there's somebody at Apple who was
00:57:58 ◼ ► like, you don't want that cognitive load of having to count four holes in your watch band every
00:58:03 ◼ ► morning. No, that's too much. So we want to make it infinite. Like I get that there's somebody there
00:58:08 ◼ ► who's saying that that said, this gives me the feel of the sport band without having to do anything
00:58:14 ◼ ► except just slide it over my wrist. And that's kind of cool, but, but again, it's marginal,
00:58:20 ◼ ► like it's marginally better. I would say if it is better at all, it's just different. But, um,
00:58:26 ◼ ► but it's not bad. I was worried that it would be a really awkward experience putting it on, taking it
00:58:30 ◼ ► off and it's not, it's easy. You get used to it. You see, cause I understand what you mean about
00:58:35 ◼ ► the sizing thing, but like it just seems like such a pain in the butt to actually get the right one
00:58:39 ◼ ► in the first place. That's true. But once you get it, but this is, this is the fascinating thing,
00:58:43 ◼ ► right? It's like, there was definitely somebody at Apple who was like, oh, well, you know what
00:58:47 ◼ ► the perfect thing is to have the perfectly sized watch band and never have to size it and never
00:58:51 ◼ ► have to hassle with it and never have to check the Velcro or to count the dots. It's just perfect.
00:58:56 ◼ ► And we're going to do that by making 13 different sizes for both of the size watch classes. And then
00:59:00 ◼ ► people have to measure their risks. It's like, okay, you just lost it, right? It was perfect,
00:59:08 ◼ ► and it's the right size, it's, uh, it's, it's nice. It's nice. Yeah. You see, I liked having
00:59:15 ◼ ► the ability to change the, the, where the, how my watch is buckled. I like that personally,
00:59:23 ◼ ► because there'll be different times where I want to tie it or looser. Like that's just like a
00:59:27 ◼ ► personal preference thing of mine. But so my point is like the, the, the, the regular rubbery one,
00:59:33 ◼ ► like for me, the way that I look at it, I don't see why I would want that over the typical,
00:59:40 ◼ ► uh, sport loop because I, I like the sport loops. I wear the Nike pride sport loop on my Apple watch
00:59:47 ◼ ► and have been for a while since the, with my, um, series five, I've only worn, uh, sport loops with
00:59:54 ◼ ► it because I got the addition one, the white one. So I was wearing the white one that had the
00:59:59 ◼ ► matching ceramic pin on it because I really liked that. And then when they brought out the pride
01:00:04 ◼ ► Nike one, I was like, Oh, I liked that too. Cause it's also white. So I've been wearing that,
01:00:08 ◼ ► but I would consider the braided solo loop, um, because it looks nice. Right. Uh, so I think that
01:00:16 ◼ ► it is a good looking band. I actually would really like them to make that with a buckle on it
01:00:21 ◼ ► personally. Um, but I would consider it, but like, I'm not in a rush. Uh, I actually, I've,
01:00:28 ◼ ► I'm not going to buy one of the braided solo loops until I could try it on. And that's not going to
01:00:39 ◼ ► there were people in my Apple store. Uh, it seems as if, if I can give my report about that,
01:00:47 ◼ ► I showed up, there's a line of people that is like the line to see where you, who you are and why
01:00:52 ◼ ► you're there. And that was very short. And I said, I'm just here for pickup. And they said,
01:00:56 ◼ ► go stand over there. There was a separate line that was like for people who wanted to go in the
01:00:59 ◼ ► store. And it seems like everybody who went into the store was escorted by an Apple employee.
01:01:04 ◼ ► Um, to wherever they said they needed to go to do whatever they needed to do. So they could get in,
01:01:09 ◼ ► ask their questions that they needed to get in, get out. And they take the temperature before they
01:01:14 ◼ ► go in and stuff like that. But surely one of the things that, that you're not able to do right now
01:01:18 ◼ ► is try on a band. I don't know. It would be interesting to see, I bet you could, I bet you
01:01:24 ◼ ► could say, I want to buy a sport loop, but I don't know what my size is. And I wonder if they would
01:01:29 ◼ ► be like, we, we can do that. We can, we can make that happen. Um, I don't know what level they are,
01:01:34 ◼ ► but there were people in there. That's the thing that got me is like, what are they saying? Are
01:01:39 ◼ ► they saying I would like to look at an iPhone? Is that it? I would like to look at an iPad. Can you
01:01:43 ◼ ► show me an iPad? Okay, sure. Wait over there and we'll, we'll usher you in. Cause there were people
01:01:47 ◼ ► in there. There were probably, um, you know, 15, 20 people in the store with Apple employees.
01:01:54 ◼ ► So it was super, it looked busy in the context of mid 2020, but, uh, empty in the context of before
01:02:02 ◼ ► March of 2020. So it was fascinating to see that, but it was super efficient for me because I was
01:02:07 ◼ ► doing in-store pickup. So they literally, uh, had me wait on the side and then brought me the thing.
01:02:13 ◼ ► And I showed my ID and then I left. I didn't have to set foot in the store, which was just fine with
01:02:18 ◼ ► me because they don't need me in there and I don't want to be in there. So, um, the veg in the chat
01:02:29 ◼ ► There is a difference between Apple doing it and me wanting to do that. And I don't want to do that.
01:02:35 ◼ ► I see. Right. Like even if they are going to do it, if you're so keen on your Apple watch sizing
01:02:41 ◼ ► that you want to go to an Apple store, they will let you do it. Everybody's got a mask on,
01:02:44 ◼ ► they'll show it to you and all of that. So it's your level of comfort, but they seem to be up
01:02:48 ◼ ► and running for that. And then we have somebody else, uh, maybe Carter in the chat room saying,
01:02:52 ◼ ► uh, in their Apple store, you just need to be accompanied by a specialist at all times,
01:02:57 ◼ ► which is definitely what I saw is it's a one-to-one and which is great, except it's not
01:03:02 ◼ ► scalable. So I think it's going to be interesting to see how Apple handles this. If, you know,
01:03:06 ◼ ► as we get more toward the holidays, are they going, is there going to be more demand or they're
01:03:11 ◼ ► going to be longer lines? Are they going to have to change their policies? How are they going to
01:03:15 ◼ ► deal with the iPhone? That's what I'm interested in. I don't know. How are they going to sell the
01:03:19 ◼ ► next iPhone? Will you be able to buy it in a store? If you can, what does that look like?
01:03:23 ◼ ► Um, I I'm because, you know, we've all been in lines at Apple stores on iPhone day at some point
01:03:30 ◼ ► in our lives. Maybe you haven't actually, but most, most people have been. I have. Oh yeah,
01:03:35 ◼ ► you have? I have. Okay. Um, but those lines are long and they are crammed. So if you want to put
01:03:45 ◼ ► a bunch of distance between every person in that line, I think you could line up the entire of the
01:03:50 ◼ ► United Kingdom on iPhone day. You could just say all the lines will just start meeting with each
01:03:54 ◼ ► other at some point. Um, like I don't really know how they're going to manage that. Um, I also
01:03:59 ◼ ► personally would love to just run by an Apple store and just pick one up real quick, like how
01:04:05 ◼ ► you did on iPhone day. Cause I hate waiting for the delivery truck, but that, you know, I would
01:04:11 ◼ ► really want to know what their process is before I would consider that. I think it's going to be
01:04:15 ◼ ► interesting to see how that one all goes down. Yeah, well we'll keep watching it. This is among
01:04:21 ◼ ► our list. I feel like upgrade is, has formed its own little identity over time. And like,
01:04:25 ◼ ► we're interested in the rise of streaming media and the streaming wars. We're interested in
01:04:29 ◼ ► Apple retail and sort of like what their strategy is there. Like we have these little, little areas
01:04:33 ◼ ► that we're interested in. So we'll keep our eye on it. Hey, Upgradients, if you're out there,
01:04:40 ◼ ► if you no longer want to listen to ads on this show, get some extra content and support upgrade,
01:04:45 ◼ ► you should sign up for upgrade plus it's just $5 a month or $50 a year. And you get loads of benefits
01:04:51 ◼ ► for just for being a relay of a member like access to our annual bonus crossover shows that include
01:04:56 ◼ ► text adventures. You get extra monthly shows like backstage and fusion, which is just for relay FM
01:05:02 ◼ ► members and also access to our members discord, which is a wonderful community with loads of
01:05:07 ◼ ► conversations going on at all times and a really wonderful way to listen to our live streams as
01:05:16 ◼ ► secret society of Upgradients. You'll get what I mean when you see the show artwork for upgrade
01:05:21 ◼ ► plus go to get upgrade plus.com and you can sign up for $5 a month, or if you go to relay.fm/upgrade,
01:05:28 ◼ ► you can sign up for our annual plan, which is $50 a year. We've been really enjoying the additional
01:05:33 ◼ ► content that we make available for upgrade plus subscribers. It's fun, relaxed and can let us be
01:05:38 ◼ ► creative in different ways. There's a lot of stuff that is behind the scenes type of conversations
01:05:44 ◼ ► that we have as well. So like around the draft, we were talking about like kind of the meta draft
01:05:50 ◼ ► and then talking about how we think we're going to be able to do the drafts in the future as the
01:05:54 ◼ ► rest of the year runs out. So you can hear us talk about stuff like that. And there's also sometimes
01:05:58 ◼ ► just content that is really fun and different, but it didn't have a place for the show. And now
01:06:03 ◼ ► we actually get a place to put that and that's an upgrade plus. So yeah, there's a bunch of stuff in
01:06:08 ◼ ► there. So you can get this and so much more by becoming a member today. Once again, that is
01:06:14 ◼ ► getupgradeplus.com. It is time for some hashtag ask upgrade questions. And we'll start off with
01:06:30 ◼ ► oh, that's so hard. It's tricky, right? I have lots though. So I mean, a lot of them are pretty
01:06:37 ◼ ► similar to what I was talking about last time. So I think I'm going to have to go with three.
01:06:45 ◼ ► Okay. No, four. Jason, I'm going to do four. I can't help it. The Carrot weather widget that
01:06:55 ◼ ► I mentioned earlier, the forecast one, I think it's fantastic. I really love the fantastic cow
01:07:00 ◼ ► widget, which is called event list and calendar. Um, and I, they have a feature that I wasn't sure
01:07:07 ◼ ► about at first, but I've tried out and it's called to show heat map, which basically highlights in
01:07:13 ◼ ► color, how busy your day is on the calendar. And I wasn't sure about it at first, but I've actually
01:07:20 ◼ ► come to really enjoy getting that like bird's eye view of what my week looks like. So I like that
01:07:25 ◼ ► and I stuck around, um, the time zone widget and widget Smith. I really love that, especially
01:07:32 ◼ ► because I've been able to make it look really nice and aesthetic as the kids say. And also,
01:07:38 ◼ ► uh, there's an upcoming widget that for Timery, which is my time tracker. Um, and this, I think
01:07:44 ◼ ► it's coming pretty soon. Um, it's called time tracked, which is basically a widget that shows me
01:07:50 ◼ ► my total time track throughout the day and a little graph that shows me what I've spent my most time
01:07:56 ◼ ► on. Uh, and it also, when I'm tracking something, which like I am right now, uh, the time is ticking
01:08:02 ◼ ► up on the widget in real time, which I think is fantastic. It's really, really great. So then my
01:08:07 ◼ ► favorites, I do like the, um, the fantastic how widget a lot. I don't have it with the calendar.
01:08:16 ◼ ► I don't like the calendar. I like the straight up event list because the calendar is tiny and I don't
01:08:23 ◼ ► need to know all the things that are in there. So I, uh, although one of the things that's nice is
01:08:27 ◼ ► you can set those widgets to have different calendar sets. So one of the things that I'm
01:08:31 ◼ ► impressed by is you can have like, I could have my family calendar in a widget that is not my normal
01:08:36 ◼ ► calendar set, but in a widget, I can see what the family calendar is telling me, which is pretty
01:08:41 ◼ ► cool. Um, my favorite widget, honestly, it is scriptable because my two favorite widgets are
01:08:47 ◼ ► these widgets that I built for myself that use, you know, my local data to tell me the weather
01:08:53 ◼ ► that, or the current temperature and the high and the air quality and stuff like that. And I used to
01:08:58 ◼ ► hit my, um, my little weather server webpage all the time. And now I don't because I have it in
01:09:03 ◼ ► widget form, which is better. So scriptable. It's great. It's awesome. I saw somebody posting, uh,
01:09:15 ◼ ► somebody, somebody posted a scriptable, uh, script for a widget that ended up creating a
01:09:32 ◼ ► Yeah. So it takes a screenshot. It figures out what your wallpaper is, and then it uses that,
01:09:38 ◼ ► uh, and your location of your widget. And it basically runs out in the background. So it
01:09:42 ◼ ► looks like it's transparent, even though widgets don't apparently, um, support like an alpha
01:09:46 ◼ ► channel. So it fakes it. It's very clever and there's, there's going to be more stuff like that.
01:09:51 ◼ ► Also, I, I could say, Hey, uh, which is supporting alpha channels is a good idea. Also, it's
01:09:56 ◼ ► fascinating to be on the test flight for scriptable because he's, he keeps thinking of things that he
01:10:00 ◼ ► could add to it. Um, as he goes, so like now you can do a grid, so you can do, um, stuff that's
01:10:10 ◼ ► vertically. Um, so there's always new stuff and he did an auto resize thing, which I actually added
01:10:16 ◼ ► to my widget so that you can set a, uh, if, if you have text that changes like the air quality,
01:10:20 ◼ ► you can set a font size for it, but now you can set a minimum scale and it basically makes it
01:10:25 ◼ ► smaller until it fits, which is really great because some of the descriptions are long and
01:10:30 ◼ ► some of them are short and I want it to be big. And I was previously doing that manually. I always
01:10:34 ◼ ► like, if it's this word, make it this size. If it's this word, make it this size. And now that's
01:10:38 ◼ ► all back out because he added this thing that lets it just automatically scale. So, um, yeah,
01:10:44 ◼ ► he's, it's fun to see developers like widgets. It's not just users who are figuring out what
01:10:49 ◼ ► widgets are for the developers. People like Simon, people like David Smith are figuring out what
01:10:54 ◼ ► widgets are for too, as they go, which is fascinating. Alex asks, would renaming the low
01:11:02 ◼ ► cost $329 entry-level iPad to be called the iPad se help define the line of iPads in your opinion?
01:11:10 ◼ ► I like the suggestion. I think it would help. I, it would help how we refer to it, right? Cause
01:11:17 ◼ ► there'd be the iPad se, the iPad air and the iPad pro, and rather than the iPad, that's just the
01:11:21 ◼ ► iPad. Like we have to explain that iPad is also a product it's a product line and a product it's
01:11:26 ◼ ► confusing. So I would say in that, in that sense, yes. Um, in another sense, I don't know, it's an,
01:11:33 ◼ ► it's an iPad. It's the classic iPad. I kind of like that. It's still just the iPad, but it would
01:11:38 ◼ ► be much less confusing if it was the iPad se at this point, I think it's the only product that
01:11:46 ◼ ► still maintains the name of the line. There isn't an iPhone called iPhone. There isn't a Mac watch.
01:12:17 ◼ ► But as we know, you cannot rely on Apple's naming. You just can't even, even if something seems like
01:12:23 ◼ ► the logical thing, it doesn't mean that they'll do it. Luke asks, Jason, we're going to go back to
01:12:29 ◼ ► stand goals again. You mentioned that you lowered your stand goal from 12 hours to eight. How'd you
01:12:39 ◼ ► This is a new watchOS 7 feature. So on the watch, you go to the activity app and scroll down to the
01:12:44 ◼ ► bottom and there's a button called change goals. Did I just blow your mind? And you change your
01:12:50 ◼ ► goals and you say, you know what? I don't want to stand for 12 hours a day with your stupid thing
01:12:54 ◼ ► that can't detect when I'm standing. Uh, let's shoot for eight and it'll say, okay. So that's
01:13:01 ◼ ► what I did. I would like to air a frustration. Why? Like there are some things that you can do
01:13:07 ◼ ► on the watch and some things you can do in the watch app and some things can only be done on the
01:13:12 ◼ ► watch and some things can only be done in the watch app and it is impossible to try and understand.
01:13:19 ◼ ► There's no logic to which can be done where. So I find that very frustrating. I know that's,
01:13:25 ◼ ► that's, uh, a constant frustration for me. The idea that you have these two devices. I,
01:13:31 ◼ ► I ranted about this a few years ago about my, um, my Amazon echo show, which has a touch screen
01:13:40 ◼ ► and it has a settings menu and there are certain things that you can control from the settings
01:13:45 ◼ ► menu. And there are certain things that you can control from the Alexa app and they're totally
01:13:52 ◼ ► separate. And, and, and like, so you'll be like, well, why can I do this? And the answer is, oh,
01:13:58 ◼ ► I think what I was doing is I was complaining that there was something I couldn't do. Uh,
01:14:05 ◼ ► are you kidding me? So it is a problem that a lot of these little satellite devices have where
01:14:10 ◼ ► they're like, well, we have an app over here on your smartphone, but also there are some settings
01:14:14 ◼ ► you set on the device and sometimes it's only on one or the other. And it's very frustrating. So
01:14:23 ◼ ► but in the activity app on the watch, you can set it. Andrew says iOS 14 now has a visual indicator
01:14:30 ◼ ► in the operating system for when the camera is being used. There's also one for the dictation
01:14:35 ◼ ► too. I think that one's orange. The camera one is green. Do you think this could come to the Mac,
01:14:44 ◼ ► Uh, they could, I think the little light is great because the little light is, is wired into the
01:14:58 ◼ ► in software. Um, because it's hardwired in, I think that's the best practice is to make it
01:15:04 ◼ ► something that's not hackable by software to give the highest level of reassurance. And I like that
01:15:09 ◼ ► they're in, in, you know, Apple could say, well, it's so locked down that we control it all now
01:15:14 ◼ ► and it goes through the T2 and it's fine. And the T2 controls that. But you know, if you're just
01:15:18 ◼ ► displaying something in the Mac interface, it is theoretically something that could be hacked.
01:15:22 ◼ ► Whereas, um, something on your screen or the actual light you would need to with hardware,
01:15:28 ◼ ► like cover or break the light in order for that to not happen. And I think that's better. So I,
01:15:35 ◼ ► I don't see Apple backtracking on that. They could, if they want to cheap out and not have
01:15:56 ◼ ► This one was tricky cause my gut says no, you're, you're fine. Yeah. But don't buy something. Don't
01:16:02 ◼ ► buy anything when we're maybe like two weeks away from an Apple event. Like just if you can wait two
01:16:10 ◼ ► weeks, just wait. If you can wait until the Apple after the iPhone event, I guess you could, I don't
01:16:16 ◼ ► think it's a bad time to buy AirPods pro because they're great. Right. And like they show off the
01:16:21 ◼ ► new AirPods studio, the headphones, and then Chris is like, Oh, you know what? I would prefer those.
01:16:27 ◼ ► Well, if you would prefer a different product to the AirPods pro, then now it's probably not
01:16:31 ◼ ► the right time to buy the AirPods pro, but if you want AirPods pro and you're just worried that
01:16:36 ◼ ► they're going to be replaced by a second generation, you know, not only do the rumors not
01:16:40 ◼ ► really suggest that, but if there is a second generation, I have a hard time believing that
01:16:48 ◼ ► AirPods. So I wouldn't sweat it too much unless as Myke said, you are thinking of your options
01:16:55 ◼ ► and there might be a better option and Apple's got an event probably coming in the next few weeks. So
01:16:59 ◼ ► why not wait? Yeah, I think it's if you are desperate for a product of some kind, you get it now.
01:17:06 ◼ ► But if you're just interested or like you just really want it, don't just wait. It's like a couple
01:17:11 ◼ ► of weeks and then you'll know. I'm putting my money down personally now on October 13th, by the way,
01:17:19 ◼ ► for the next Apple event. I think that's the best guess is October 13th. Yeah, but we'll see. I was
01:17:28 ◼ ► thinking last week that it might be the 6th, but now I've changed my bet and I'm sticking with this
01:17:34 ◼ ► one. I reckon it's going to be the 13th. It's going to be our next Apple event, which means
01:17:39 ◼ ► that we'll probably be drafting again on the 12th. I guess. I don't think we're going to get two
01:17:44 ◼ ► weeks notice. Who knows? Maybe they'll give more notice for the iPhone event, but I doubt it. I
01:17:49 ◼ ► doubt it. If you'd like to send in a question for us to answer on the show, you can just send out a
01:17:55 ◼ ► tweet with the hashtag #askupgrade or use question mark ask upgrade in the Relay FM members discord,
01:18:01 ◼ ► which is something that is available for people that sign up for Upgrade Plus. You can go to
01:18:05 ◼ ► getupgradeplus.com and you can support the show, get more content and hear no ads. If you'd like
01:18:11 ◼ ► to find Jason online, you can go to sixcolors.com and he is @jsnell, J S N E double L. I am @imike,
01:18:18 ◼ ► I M Y K E. Thank you so much to Pingdom and Eero for their support of this week's episode. And of