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Upgrade

292: Don't Look Over There!

 

00:00:00   [Music]

00:00:08   From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 292. Today's show is brought to you by

00:00:14   Pingdom, Squarespace, Linode, and Eero. My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined by

00:00:19   the intrepid Jason Snell.

00:00:21   Hello, intrepid. Hi Myke, how are you?

00:00:24   I am fine my friend, how are you?

00:00:26   Just great, you know, again we are two of the people least affected by what's going on in the

00:00:32   world because we stay inside and work inside all the time, but it makes me feel a little bit

00:00:39   strange and of course my entire family is in my house now so, you know, it's, we live in

00:00:44   strange times, strange times.

00:00:46   But we're here to keep on keeping on. Marcus has a #SnellTalk question which is,

00:00:52   "Jason, what's your desktop background and does it serve any purpose other than decoration?"

00:00:57   Any, so the any purpose thing is what got me about this question.

00:01:00   Well, I've seen people that design like desktop backgrounds to have calendars on them and stuff,

00:01:05   you know?

00:01:06   Yeah, that's weird or I mean I shouldn't judge that.

00:01:09   Or like motivational messages, that kind of stuff.

00:01:12   I was thinking like a grid with like a little play or a little like

00:01:15   little places where you put files in various places.

00:01:18   Yeah, like you see that a lot with iOS apps, iOS like desktops, right? People

00:01:22   draw little app icons where app icons could go and that kind of stuff.

00:01:25   Yeah, exactly. I think, so I actually just wrote a piece that we can link to in the show notes

00:01:33   about my messy desktop and how I've actually changed how I approach.

00:01:38   Yeah, let's not go into too much detail there. I have that maybe as a,

00:01:42   "Oh, it's quiet this week, we're gonna talk about this."

00:01:44   Yeah, sure, about cleaning up my desktop.

00:01:46   Yeah, we're gonna be careful here.

00:01:48   You will see. So the short version is I can see more of my desktop than I used to.

00:01:51   And I have a 27-inch iMac Pro, so there's a lot of desktop there.

00:01:56   But the truth is, and you can see it in that screenshot, no, it serves no other purpose

00:02:01   than decoration. And what I actually use as my desktop background is from an app called Downlink,

00:02:09   which you can get at downlinkapp.com. And it accesses the satellite imagery real-time-ish,

00:02:15   you know, 15-minute increments or whatever. Satellite imagery from various satellites above

00:02:21   the Earth. And so I have a shot of the West Coast of North America out into the Pacific Ocean out

00:02:28   past Hawaii as my desktop background. And that changes, you know, every so often during the day.

00:02:35   So right now, when I look at it, I actually can see the terminator between here and Hawaii because

00:02:40   the sun hasn't come up in Hawaii yet. And I can see the clouds over California. And, you know,

00:02:45   if it's a clear day, then it'll be clear over California. And it's just pretty. And I can see

00:02:50   down through Baja, California and the Sea of Cortez and all of that. And yeah, so that's what

00:02:57   I do is I just have the Earth from space and my particular corner of the Earth.

00:03:02   - Very nice, very nice. If you would like to send in a Snell Talk question for a future episode,

00:03:07   just send out a tweet with the hashtag SnellTalk and it may be included like Marcus's was.

00:03:12   We should move on to some follow-ups. So iWork and iMovie. So the iWork apps on iOS or iPadOS

00:03:19   and iMovie have all been updated to take use of Apple's new trackpad cursor support stuff on iPadOS.

00:03:25   I've been really happy with the changes to numbers specifically. I think it's wonderful being able to

00:03:32   like see hovers and to be able to very easily move stuff around. And there's a lot of usage

00:03:38   of custom cursors that Apple have made in these applications. Like for example, in Keynote,

00:03:45   you can rotate imagery and stuff and they've made like a custom little rotate, like two little arrows

00:03:51   pointing in like curved circles around where the cursor is. So I'm all like the cursor turns into

00:03:57   those is probably a better thing to say. So yeah, I'm really excited to see more of this stuff. But

00:04:02   I think what Apple have done to these applications is really good. It's really good. I think the thing

00:04:08   that hit me about the numbers update is it behaves in not always, but in many ways, just like numbers

00:04:17   on the Mac in that, and something about that got to me that if you've got a chart and you use the

00:04:24   cursor and you click and you drag over items in the chart, it selects them. Which is not groundbreaking

00:04:31   at all, but that is not a concept that you really had on the iPad before. To click and drag and

00:04:39   basically lasso up a selection of stuff. And you do it because you think, "Oh, well, I do this on

00:04:46   the Mac, so I'll do it here." And it works, which is how it should be. Even just the text selection,

00:04:51   I'm really happy they brought it to pages. The idea of just like, I don't have to do something

00:04:57   before I start selecting text. It's so different, right? Completely normal to me on the Mac,

00:05:04   but it's like an alien thing on iPad OS. I'm still getting used to it, but I love it.

00:05:09   I also wanted to give a shout out to Fantastical. They had a fantastic update to support cursor

00:05:14   support as well. To being able to now do things like drag and extend an event over multiple days.

00:05:21   They've just put some really good stuff into it, like hovers and stuff like that. I'm really happy

00:05:27   with it. It's just like an app that I've seen that's really taken good advantage of it.

00:05:30   I want to keep calling these out as I see them because I think it's important to encourage this.

00:05:35   Also, people might not be checking these applications very much, if you're just used

00:05:41   to using touch. Did we mention last week's screens from Adobe? I think so, but it's actually gotten

00:05:47   better since last week. They made a new update that hides the iPad cursor when you're using it.

00:05:54   You're driving a remote computer. You move your trackpad or mouse or whatever on the iPad,

00:05:59   and it moves that cursor. Their first release, there was a double cursor. Then they used the

00:06:05   new APIs to hide the cursor in that scenario. I think Federico wrote a piece last week where

00:06:11   he referred to it as it's Mac as an app. That really is when you're in that scenario, which is

00:06:17   great, especially if you're somebody. If I'm somewhere else in my house or elsewhere, really,

00:06:23   and I'm using an iPad and I need to do something that is specifically on a Mac, I have my Mac Mini

00:06:28   server. It's always on, and I can just open it up and do that thing. Now it feels completely

00:06:33   natural if I'm using a trackpad and keyboard. Super nice. Turns out the 2020 iPad does have

00:06:40   a feature we didn't know about that makes a difference to the 2018 iPad. I'm going to read you

00:06:44   something from an Apple support page or security page. iPad models beginning in 2020 also feature

00:06:50   the hardware microphone disconnect. When an MFI compliant case made for iPhone compliant case,

00:06:56   including those sold by Apple, is attached to the iPad and closed, the microphone is disconnected

00:07:01   in hardware preventing microphone audio data being made available to any software, even with root or

00:07:07   kernel privileges in iPad OS or in case the firmware is compromised. So this is a feature

00:07:13   that is in some T2 enabled Macs where the microphone could just be shut off basically in

00:07:20   hardware, right? So there's no way that someone can actually turn it on when you haven't given it

00:07:25   permission to be on. The microphone hardware disconnects when the lid is closed, and here

00:07:29   the microphone is disconnecting when I'm assuming a magnet hits a particular part on the case,

00:07:35   and then it's popping, it's pulling the connection away, but it means that it's physically impossible.

00:07:40   It can't be hacked. The way you would have to hack it is you would also have to replace their case,

00:07:46   right? With one that doesn't have a magnet there or something because the normal set of magnets,

00:07:52   will presumably one of them will pop that and then there's no there's no microphone connection then.

00:07:59   Matt>> So again, this is not a reason to buy the 2020 iPad Pro, but it's an interesting change

00:08:04   because what it shows is that Apple was thinking more and more about how to make these devices

00:08:09   more privacy conscious. I like the way that they've done this, you know, with the case idea,

00:08:15   because that is presuming you then are not using the iPad so you're good, right? You've closed it

00:08:20   up. So I think that they've done a really good job with that. And references to, well, a reference to

00:08:27   the phrase "AirTags are shown up in an Apple support video for Find My." Steve>> This is a recurring

00:08:33   theme for us, right? Which is what Apple, what are you doing? Matt>> Let me say what this is and I'm

00:08:38   going to come back to that. So the feature is being shown off in a support page called "Enable

00:08:45   offline finding." So this will enable a device or paired AirTags to be found when not connected to

00:08:51   Wi-Fi or cellular. And this is taking advantage of the ultra wideband and/or Bluetooth to basically

00:08:58   locate a device or an AirTag via other people's iPhones and Macs which is... Steve>> I think this

00:09:05   is the Bluetooth LE beacon which basically sends an ID and other devices see it and send it back

00:09:11   to Apple and say, "I saw this device at this place at this time." And that could, you know, you could

00:09:16   argue that that's a privacy issue so you can turn it on and you can turn it off as you see fit.

00:09:20   Matt>> So this is a, like, this is going to be the, like, must-buy reason for AirTags, right? That

00:09:26   you could put them in your bag, you could put them on your pet's collar or whatever, depending on how

00:09:31   big they are, and you will be able to find this stuff by the use of the billions of Apple devices

00:09:38   that exist in the world, right? It's going to absolutely destroy this market if you're an iPhone

00:09:44   user. Or even if you're not, honestly, right? Like, you just have an iPad, you pair it to something,

00:09:50   you're great, you still take the use of it. Now, I think the reason this has happened is Apple

00:09:55   have clearly delayed AirTags, it would seem, and these, all of this stuff, all of these assets are

00:10:02   created and they're put into systems and then these systems release the assets, right? So, like,

00:10:07   these support videos were to be published for a device that exists. I think AirTags, we're not

00:10:14   going to see them this year, no. Do you want to know why, Jay? Tell me why. Because people aren't

00:10:19   going outside, are they? How do you sell a product which is for in case you lose something if you're

00:10:26   not leaving the home? Like, how do you lose something? Like, I mean, yes, you can lose things

00:10:31   in your house, but I don't think that that is what this product will be, like, mainly positioned for.

00:10:38   So, I would be surprised to see this product launch in the current climate that we're in,

00:10:45   because the main selling feature is kind of nullified and it would be really weird

00:10:52   to market this product. Yeah, we'll talk about Quibi later, speaking of products that maybe

00:10:59   shouldn't be launching right now, but I agree with you, though. I think one of the reasons that this

00:11:03   AirTag stuff and the U1 chip are happening is because this is a product that Apple thought

00:11:09   would be ready at various times and then turns out isn't, and so they're proceeding under the

00:11:15   assumption that it's in there, and then they have to take it out, and they didn't take it out of

00:11:19   every bit of documentation, and therefore, you end up leaking it. It seems like they intended it to

00:11:25   ship in the fall and it wasn't ready, probably, and now it seems like maybe it is ready. And I

00:11:31   think you're right, it may be that they just don't want to ship it. And why not launch it later? I

00:11:37   mean, you could argue why not launch it now, but they're not going to sell them now and people have

00:11:41   forgotten about them by the time that they're moving around and traveling around and potentially

00:11:45   losing things. It's an interesting question, but clearly this product exists, right? This isn't

00:11:50   just, "Oh, well, I heard a rumor that." It's in support videos. It's in documentation.

00:11:55   And it may be that they are going to put them on sale sooner rather than later, but they need to

00:11:59   redo the marketing of them, right? Certainly.

00:12:02   You would assume that the ads showed people traveling and forgetting their bag at an airport.

00:12:07   Yeah, right. Yeah. And you can't make an ad like that now because it's so tone-deaf.

00:12:12   So, we'll see. We're going to be doing a Myke in the Movies next week. I said to Jason, "Hey,

00:12:19   Jason, I want to watch a happy movie. What do you recommend?" And what did you recommend?

00:12:23   We are going to watch Star Trek IV. Myke hasn't seen Star Trek movies, you see.

00:12:29   I've only seen two, so we're going from two to four.

00:12:33   Yeah, I'll tell you what happens in Star Trek III. Star Trek III is the search for Spock,

00:12:36   so Spock dies in Star Trek II. Star Trek III is called the search for Spock.

00:12:39   Here's my summary for you. Here's what you need to know. They find Spock.

00:12:43   Oh, no. I mean, yay.

00:12:44   Yeah, they find him.

00:12:46   My understanding is that every other Star Trek movie is good. Is that correct?

00:12:51   For the first run of them, the even ones are the really good ones, II, IV, and VI.

00:12:59   All right, so Star Trek IV, Star Trek IV.

00:13:03   The Voyage Home.

00:13:04   The Voyage Home.

00:13:05   Yeah, 1986, directed by Leonard Nimoy, who also directed Star Trek III. And it is, I think,

00:13:13   depending on how you calculate it, it's basically the most financially successful of all of the

00:13:19   original Star Trek movies. It was a hit in 1986, and that's because it's a feel-good comedy. Yes,

00:13:26   it's a sci-fi movie, it's a Star Trek movie, but it is also a funny movie. And if you haven't seen

00:13:30   it or you haven't seen it recently, I think it's a good movie to watch because it's nice. And we

00:13:35   live in dark times right now, so watch a nice fun movie about a bunch of space people who go back

00:13:40   to the '80s. It's funny. So, yeah. Let's talk about Apple and their coronavirus response,

00:13:49   their update for this week. So, lots of news as always, and I will do my best to summarize them.

00:13:55   So, according to Bloomberg, Apple employees are struggling still to adjust to work from home life

00:14:01   while maintaining product secrecy. We've heard this before, but there's been continued reports

00:14:06   of this being difficult for Apple employees. This is Mark Gurman calling all the people he

00:14:11   knows who work at Apple and go like, "Hey, how's it going?" "How's it going?" "I'm here. I'm in

00:14:15   my house. You're in your house. What's going on?" And they're like, "Oh, man, let me tell you." And

00:14:18   he's like, "Yes, yes, tell me more." And then there's a story. That's how journalism works

00:14:22   today. I mean, it's like, what else is going to happen? It's people in their homes. So,

00:14:27   but it is interesting that Gurman has good sources, and he calls around and says,

00:14:32   "What's this like?" And I try to think about like software developers. I keep thinking like,

00:14:36   that's something I get. I totally get software developers and how they might work in a distributed

00:14:41   environment because that happens. And I think about like building hardware and stuff. And I

00:14:45   think, how does that work? Like, how do you keep that rolling? I know that the designers aren't

00:14:53   exactly like sitting around soldering things all day and bending wires and stuff, but still,

00:14:58   it feels much more hands-on. It feels like that would be a greater leap in order to keep the ball

00:15:02   rolling on. You're designing the next iPhone or iPad or Mac or whatever. And to do that when

00:15:09   everybody's in their own home seems harder to me. It is, according to Gurman, harder, in fact.

00:15:19   And really the biggest issue though is that they're finding is the secrecy stuff. So,

00:15:24   especially with the hardware, this is difficult. It is also apparently difficult with software

00:15:30   because Apple is only able to, or is only allowing certain people to be able to use this stuff at

00:15:37   home. You've got to assume that like, you know, they're worried about network security. They're

00:15:42   worried about like, does it call like sneaker net security, right? Take the source code out of

00:15:47   Cupertino. I totally see why you wouldn't want to do that, right? Like you're secrecy focused and

00:15:53   you've got a bunch of stuff that you're working on and then suddenly you change your policy and now

00:15:58   it's like at somebody's house on their laptop. It's like, I get it. But at the same time,

00:16:03   what are you going to do? Stop working? - Exactly. So, apparently though, there are still a selection

00:16:09   of products that are being worked on, including a new HomePod, which is interesting, a new Apple TV,

00:16:16   a new MacBook Pro, the lower price iPads, so not the iPad Pros, the regular iPads, Apple Watch,

00:16:22   iMac, and of course the iPhone. These are all things that Apple is still working on.

00:16:26   - Well, I mean, they never stop, right? Like they may be working, you know, Gruber always points out

00:16:33   that, you know, this year's iPhone is already designed and specced and probably being built.

00:16:38   That's true, but next year's iPhone isn't, right? Next year's iPhone is being designed now.

00:16:45   And then they're also working on the year after's iPhone and like it never stops. So we may end up

00:16:50   in a situation a little like movies and TV actually, where new stuff is rolling out now.

00:16:56   Like there are movies that were, I mean, other than movies and theaters, which is another problem,

00:17:00   but like TV shows, there are TV shows that have been made and are going to come out in the next

00:17:05   few months. But what's going to happen, and you used to see this with whenever there's a writer

00:17:10   strike, for example, you would see this. Then there's a gap, but it comes later where it's like,

00:17:17   "Oh, now we've run out." And now the shows are back and there's a gap. And that's, I think,

00:17:23   the challenge here for Apple is not necessarily this year, but like, does this slow down,

00:17:32   you know, is there a gap in Apple's product offerings at some point because they

00:17:37   just had to slow down because of this and for good reason, but like where I don't know where

00:17:42   that hole is, but there's going to be a hole in Apple's like product schedule that is where we may,

00:17:49   depending on how long they have to rectify it, we may see the hit that they're taking because

00:17:54   they all had to leave the building. Will Barron, JL;DR; You know, you mentioned TV there for a

00:17:59   second. I wanted to say like, I wanted to like just reference because we were talking about

00:18:04   a lot of like late night shows and stuff like that. People recording on their iPhones,

00:18:08   they're using AirPods. John Oliver, I don't know why HBO have done, they did the right thing. It

00:18:13   looks like the John Oliver show. He's recording at home. He has a white background. He has a proper

00:18:18   camera, a teleprompter, a good microphone. Like, yeah, because you can put those things in the mail

00:18:23   and send them to people. No, they placed a really nice order from B&H. And, you know, he got a paper

00:18:30   like background to clip up and a couple of lights and a camera or, you know, it might be an iPhone

00:18:36   camera. Honestly, you couldn't tell if it was a phone camera because phone cameras are so good now.

00:18:41   And they are broadcast quality essentially. If they're lit properly, yeah. Well, all of them,

00:18:47   it's a tangent that I'm fascinated by it because they are all trying to figure this stuff out and

00:18:54   all of them have all kind of come back at a certain level. Like, Stephen Colbert is the

00:19:00   same way. He's got an iPhone and then he's got, it looks like a laptop on the floor with a Zoom

00:19:06   conference with his producers who are like saying, "No, do that again," kind of stuff. But like,

00:19:10   they're all figuring it out because the consumer tech at this point and readily available tech

00:19:16   is so good that you can, you know, you're going to have to take, there'll be a lot of FaceTime calls

00:19:22   saying, "No, push this button. No, no, no, not that button, this button," kind of stuff to get them

00:19:26   up and running, them and their kids and their spouses. But you can do it. Like,

00:19:33   you get some LED light panels, you get this microphone, you get the computer here and the

00:19:37   phone here and the tripod and all that. And it can end up looking pretty good. Yeah. John Oliver's

00:19:42   show is basically John Oliver's show now, except with no studio audience.

00:19:45   - And it took them a little longer to make.

00:19:47   - Yeah. And Trevor Noah's show looks really great. He's in front of like his own furniture

00:19:51   instead of in a white void. Like, I imagine that John Oliver didn't have a really good background,

00:19:57   so he has a white background instead. But like Trevor Noah doing the Daily Show,

00:20:01   it looks great. It really does. They figured it out and Colbert's figuring it out and Jimmy Fallon

00:20:08   is figuring it out. Like, they're all figuring it out now, which is fun to see. And the tech

00:20:13   is there that you just have to, your high priced comedian talent, you got to walk them through how

00:20:18   to set it all up, but they can do that usually. And that's been interesting to see.

00:20:23   - But like, it was refreshing to me to see that at least some television production companies

00:20:31   can understand that it is possible to make this stuff look good with home stuff. All the other

00:20:36   things I've seen just look terrible. - No, the John Oliver one, I think,

00:20:40   is a great example. Although Trevor Noah, I would say, is at that level and Colbert is getting there,

00:20:46   where you can see that it's almost, Oliver especially, it's almost like the show was.

00:20:56   Like, other than the fact that the background is different, it ends up being about the content

00:21:00   again. And I'm sure the other side of this, because we keep talking about production,

00:21:04   like writing this and all of those and post-production, they got to get those

00:21:08   files and they got to transfer that HD video over the internet to an editor to put, right?

00:21:15   Like all of that is super complicated. Like the writer's rooms have to run with, are they doing

00:21:20   like Google docs and Zoom meetings and stuff like that? Like it's, there's a bunch of stuff beneath

00:21:25   the waterline that we don't even see, but it is really amazing to watch as these shows start to

00:21:31   turn into the same show as it was before, except now it's all kind of DIY, but they've managed to

00:21:37   figure it out. And I'm not surprised that that happened, but some of them are happening faster

00:21:42   than I thought, because this is literally like show two for John Oliver in his house. And it's

00:21:47   just his show now. All right. So going back to what we were talking about, which is Apple and

00:21:51   coronavirus, Foxconn executives tell their investors on a private conference call that

00:21:56   leaked out that the 5G iPhone is still on track for 2020. Like we said, listen to Gruber, you've

00:22:04   heard this before. It's already done. Like it's already done. It's already designed. They had to

00:22:07   make it. And so it's great to hear Foxconn say, yeah, yeah, we'll do that. But like that's one of

00:22:14   these products that seems to be already down the line. It doesn't seem to be, it's like a TV show

00:22:20   that they already shot and are in the process of editing and they may be editing it in their houses

00:22:24   now. There was a great, I think Instagram shot of somebody who's editing the new season of Star

00:22:29   Trek Discovery. And it's just like a trashcan Mac Pro and a big monitor and some speakers on a card

00:22:34   table next to their stairs in their house. And it's like, all right, but that like they can put

00:22:39   that show out. They can make that happen. And I feel like the 2020 iPhones are probably like that

00:22:46   where it's like, yeah, we can make this work. This is not where the gap is going to be.

00:22:49   Apple has communicated internally that they're expecting their stores to be closed until at least

00:22:56   early May. So they keep kind of pushing that forward. That's just going to keep getting pushed

00:23:00   forward. Uh, and Tim Cook appeared again on Twitter via video to announce that Apple is

00:23:05   now sourced over 20 million masks to be distributed worldwide. Last week it was half of that.

00:23:10   And Apple's also designed, developed, and manufactured a face shield for medical workers.

00:23:16   They have delivered the first batch of these to some hospitals in the US and they're going to

00:23:20   start shipping 1 million of them a week starting in America, but looking to expand beyond. So it's

00:23:25   pretty cool. Yeah. Tim, somebody got to Tim and said, Tim, it's your Twitter account. You don't

00:23:30   need to introduce yourself every time we know who you are. And also told him how to stop the video.

00:23:35   Did a good job this time. He did. So Tim Cook like John Oliver and Stephen Colbert and Trevor Noah,

00:23:42   Tim Cook improving his skills. I can't wait for him to do, uh, an interview and a monologue in

00:23:48   the future. Any day now. One of the things he said in that video that I thought was really nice is he

00:23:52   said, we're just trying to find things that we were applicant, add something like we're not,

00:23:56   if there's a skill that we have, that's so we think we can contribute something. That's what

00:24:02   we're looking for. And I think that's the right attitude to have is not like what can we do to be

00:24:06   seen as much as like, are there things we have in our manufacturing and design capabilities that we

00:24:13   think we could, we could actually make a difference and let's try to do that. And they seem to be like

00:24:17   the face shield seems to be a good example of that. And the, and the mask distribution for

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00:26:36   So we're in upstream now and we have a big Apple Amazon theme to talk about. So out of nowhere last

00:26:45   week, it became suddenly possible without again, like a lot of fanfare to be able to purchase

00:26:52   movies and TV shows in the Amazon Prime app. So this had previously not been possible because

00:26:57   of Apple's in-app purchase rules related to digital goods. So if you sell a digital product,

00:27:02   you have to put it through Apple's in-app purchase system and movies and TV shows inside of the

00:27:07   Amazon Prime Video app would count as that. So it was like this way you'd have to do it previously

00:27:12   is like you couldn't sign up for Prime in it, you couldn't buy anything in it and Amazon couldn't

00:27:16   link you anywhere. So you either were a customer or you weren't and you kind of had to work out

00:27:22   on your own. I think you could sign up for Prime or Prime for Prime Video using Apple's method.

00:27:29   I think you could do that. I think that was the one they again, they don't want you to do that,

00:27:34   but I think like Netflix used to be before they dropped out of that. Right. Okay. I think you

00:27:38   could. Slight difference. Slight difference there. Thank you for that clarification. But now

00:27:41   if you are a Prime customer with Amazon, you can buy video content with your existing logins. So

00:27:48   this is stuff that's on top of your Prime now. Yeah. So I'm a Prime member and I have the Prime

00:27:54   Video app and I was able to all of a sudden they put up a little screen that goes, "Do do do, you

00:27:59   can now do this." But like I was able to find a movie and tap rent. I think a Jojo Rabbit is the

00:28:06   one that I did. And I was just like, "Oh, rent this movie." And it's like, "All right, we're

00:28:10   going to rent this movie and charge your credit card that we have on file at Amazon." And then I

00:28:15   got an Amazon receipt that said, "You just rented a movie." And so for me, my experience had nothing

00:28:22   to do, no connection with Apple at all. I was doing that all inside the Amazon app using Amazon's

00:28:28   payment services. So it's not just that it's... A lot of debate about Apple taking 30% and if they

00:28:38   might change it so Apple's taking less through their in-app purchase system. This is not Apple's

00:28:44   in-app purchase system. This is just Amazon. This is how it works on Android, by the way,

00:28:49   but this is not how it works on iOS except now it does if you're a Prime member.

00:28:54   - So if you're not a Prime member, it will switch to Apple's in-app purchase system.

00:29:01   So your Apple will take its cut for the purchase of that movie or television show.

00:29:06   And you can also sign up now for Prime via Apple subscription method too. Before I think it was

00:29:13   just you'd still have to do it through Amazon. But now if you're not a Prime video member and

00:29:18   you want to become one and you're in the iOS app for Prime video, which is a funny way that

00:29:24   you'd find yourself in that situation, I think you can subscribe via Apple subscription method.

00:29:30   So Apple, after this got published in a few paces, and I'm sure that a lot of journalists reached out

00:29:35   to their press contacts at Apple for a statement on this, Apple did release a statement, but it's

00:29:40   basically a selection of nothing. - Yes.

00:29:45   - There really isn't much in this statement except for saying that there is a special deal available

00:29:50   to premium video services and they referenced two services in Europe, I believe.

00:29:54   - Canal Plus. - Canal Plus. And there was one other

00:29:58   that I'd never heard of. Like Canal Plus I've heard of before because they're the company that

00:30:02   provides Apple TV boxes for their cable subscriptions. And they referenced one other

00:30:09   company. - Altice One.

00:30:12   - Altice One. Okay. I don't know that one at all. So these are two companies that Apple is doing

00:30:18   this deal with, where they will allow for purchases inside of the app using an existing,

00:30:24   like an external payment processing. But to do this, to get access to this deal is a bit give

00:30:30   and take. So Apple say that you have to support everything they want you to. So all the APIs that

00:30:36   they want, you have to have your content in the TV app, you have to support AirPlay too, all that

00:30:40   kind of stuff. Amazon is the first worldwide distributor to take advantage of this program.

00:30:44   Clearly some deal has been struck. I think that if you've been paying attention, it's easy to see

00:30:51   that Apple and Amazon have been doing a lot of stuff together over the last year, right? You've

00:30:55   got like Apple Music on the Echo, the TV app on Fire products, Apple products back on Amazon for

00:31:06   sale. There was a deal done, which includes a lot of things. Whether we've seen all of that yet,

00:31:13   I don't know, but there has clearly been a lot of like give and take with Apple and Amazon. And this

00:31:19   is just another piece of that puzzle. - I'm not sure. I don't wanna over,

00:31:22   given Apple statement, I don't wanna overemphasize what this might mean because I think maybe this

00:31:32   arrangement couldn't have happened if Apple and Amazon hadn't buried the hatchet. But Apple saying

00:31:39   very specifically, this is an existing program. This is not even the first or the second company

00:31:44   to do this. And we haven't mentioned it, but like Apple TV and the TV app is a big part of what this

00:31:53   is, right? Because I get the impression that Apple basically has said, we will give you a premium

00:32:01   subscription video provider. We will give you the freedom to charge your customers for extra stuff.

00:32:09   It's like if you wanted to build your cable company app and still charge people for on-demand

00:32:15   or something through it, like they're your existing customer, they're paying you a subscription fee.

00:32:20   If you wanna charge them and not do in-app purchase, it's fine. But here's what you have

00:32:26   to do to get this, to get us to approve it. And I suspect it is things like fully integrating into

00:32:31   the Apple TV app and the API so that I can link to you and you tell me what they're watching and

00:32:36   I can show it in the TV app as what's been... Like you need to be in our video ecosystem

00:32:42   to get this feature, which Netflix doesn't have, right? Netflix doesn't do all cart. So this is not

00:32:51   a carrot for Netflix, right? Because they don't do all cart. They only do a subscription fee.

00:32:55   So, but Amazon sells stuff. It doesn't just do a subscription fee, it sells stuff. So it's

00:33:01   unique in that way. So when this initially broke, I thought, "Oh, maybe this is exactly what you

00:33:10   said," which is another offshoot of that bearing the hatchet between Apple and Amazon, and that

00:33:18   it would be followed up by Kindle and Comixology. And then Apple released the statement and I

00:33:24   thought, "Oh, maybe not then." Like, 'cause it is very TV focused. So I initially thought, "Well,

00:33:31   wouldn't it be nice?" But it's what Apple says as well. It's about video and it's about a

00:33:35   subscription video product. And then when you're a member of that subscription video service,

00:33:40   then you get this extra ability to buy things inside it. And that, short of like the video

00:33:48   takes out Kindle and Comixology, they do offer subscription services within both of those

00:33:56   products. But it's not video, but I could see that. So I think it's an open question. Like,

00:34:01   it would be really great if this continued and Kindle and Comixology got purchase inside of it.

00:34:10   But like, I don't know, it seems like a bit far afield from this because this is a very specific

00:34:16   instance where you have to, A, it's gotta be video. B, you have to have an existing subscription

00:34:21   relationship with Amazon. And then C, you have the ability to pay more money to buy or rent things

00:34:29   inside it. And like, even if they brought that to something like Kindle or Comixology where there's

00:34:35   like Kindle Unlimited and the Comixology Unlimited subscription services, and yes, they also sell

00:34:41   products inside those stores. Even if you got over the video hump, that's still a weird experience,

00:34:47   right? Where regular Kindle users would not be able to buy books under this circumstance. You'd

00:34:53   have to be a Kindle Unlimited member unless they claimed that Prime was a membership that included

00:35:00   books or like, I don't know. It seems like a stretch is what I'm saying. And so while I was

00:35:04   really excited about the ability to buy potentially books and comics inside Amazon's apps as a next

00:35:10   step here, reading Apple's statement, I think it's not gonna happen. And that this is really

00:35:15   just specifically about Amazon ticking all the boxes in terms of being an Apple's TV ecosystem.

00:35:21   So their deal made this possible, but it doesn't follow that there's more to come.

00:35:29   - This whole thing has made me re-realize how unfair I think this rule is. Like, there is no

00:35:37   reason that Apple should be involved in the purchase of a Kindle book. There's just no

00:35:43   reason. They're not serving the files. They're not gonna provide the payment system 'cause Amazon

00:35:49   don't even want that. - It is rent-seeking behavior. It is Apple saying, "It's our platform,

00:35:54   and so any money that changes hands for digital goods, you gotta cut us in for 30%

00:35:58   because we control it. We don't provide anything to you here. We just are gonna take money from you."

00:36:04   - But it's so easy for Amazon to very, I think, rightly fire back and be like, "No, no,

00:36:11   Kindle is our platform. You have nothing to do with this. We're equals here."

00:36:17   I find it very frustrating, again, to be reminded of it.

00:36:25   - I understand. So the argument from Apple's side is that it's not rent-seeking behavior.

00:36:32   It's protecting the platform because they don't want apps from unscrupulous vendors to suddenly

00:36:39   start charging you, and you don't know anything about their infrastructure, whether they're

00:36:43   unscrupulous or just not paying attention. Like, you may be compromising your credit card, and are

00:36:49   they gonna be charging you for more than they say, and all these things. It's like, well, you don't

00:36:52   have to worry about it 'cause Apple is gonna protect you from that. And I see that, but then

00:36:57   you look at a company like Amazon and you think, "Come on, Amazon is so huge, and they've got an

00:37:03   existing relationship with these customers." And that's always been my argument that

00:37:08   Kindle and ComiXology on iOS is appreciably worse for users than on Android because of Apple's

00:37:20   policy, because it means that if you wanna buy a book, you have to go to Amazon's website and do it.

00:37:25   Whereas Apple, and it's even worse because Apple has a book app, and you don't have to do it with

00:37:31   Apple's book app because Apple is the landlord, and so they get to set those rules and they don't

00:37:37   have to, they don't apply to Apple because there's no middleman. Apple is the man, and Apple takes

00:37:45   all the money. So it's ridiculous and unfair, and I hope that they find a way to define the rules in

00:37:54   a way where shady apps don't try to charge your credit card, but giant companies with existing

00:38:01   financial relationships can because I would really like to buy Kindle books on iOS without going to

00:38:08   the webpage and ComiXology especially. For me, that's where it really hits me is I read a lot of

00:38:13   comics on my iPad, and every time I wanna buy new comics, I have to go to Safari, I have to log in

00:38:20   again because their login only sticks for seven days on the web, and then I have to go through

00:38:27   and find the comics, and then I have to switch back to the app, and then I have to refresh,

00:38:30   and then I have, it's just, it's awful. - It's like, and I get that idea of like,

00:38:35   oh, we wanna protect our customers, but there is an app on iOS called Safari that will allow me to

00:38:41   put my card information into literally any website I want, right? So like, sure, the app store is

00:38:49   like this beautiful payment paradise, but the web isn't, and like--

00:38:55   - Yeah, and well, my argument would be there will still be a motivator if they drop this demand,

00:39:01   there would still be a motivator for people to use the in-app purchase system because it is clean

00:39:06   and easy, and you don't have to reenter your credit card information, and it's backed by Apple,

00:39:13   and like there's still plenty of reasons for apps to use the in-app purchase system to reduce

00:39:19   friction, but-- - In the same way that people use

00:39:21   things like CloudKit, there are other syncing solutions for data, but people use Apple's because

00:39:26   it has these benefits for them as a developer. - By the way, I did hear from somebody, I don't,

00:39:31   I'm not an Audible subscriber, but I did hear from somebody that that was another example of

00:39:36   an interface change where somebody said that, and forgive me, 'cause I'm only half remembering this,

00:39:42   that Audible, you know, you have a subscription and it gives you credits, and I think that changed

00:39:47   recently as a part of this detente between Apple and Amazon where Audible, you now have a little

00:39:52   more freedom to like spend your credits inside the Audible app where before--

00:39:56   - That might have been part of the books thing. - Yeah, where before you got--

00:39:59   - I would be surprised if that was part of the e-book settlement.

00:40:00   - You got kicked out to the web for Audible as well, but it's ridiculous. That's the bottom line,

00:40:09   is it's ridiculous. So I hope it continues because I think this is one of the worst

00:40:14   policies that Apple has, and it benefits nobody except Apple.

00:40:18   - I know that people talk about this a lot, right? But I think we are getting to a point

00:40:22   where Apple needs to kind of re-justify its cut again. Like what are you getting as a developer,

00:40:29   as a platform partner? And I don't disagree with Apple doing these kinds of deals, right? Like

00:40:36   that's business for you, right? Like Amazon is a big enough company, you know, they're bigger than

00:40:43   the movie company me and Jason start, right? Like we're not gonna get the same deal that Amazon get,

00:40:50   and I have no problem with that because Amazon have been successful enough that they get to

00:40:56   sit at a table with Apple and talk it through and explain it and come to a deal. But I do think

00:41:02   in general, Apple need to maybe reevaluate things a little bit more in the same way that they did

00:41:09   the 30 to 15% on subscription thing, right? That was great, made a lot of people happy,

00:41:13   made a lot of people more money, incentivized the reason to have subscriptions over one-time

00:41:19   purchasing, you know, like helped people change their business models so they could have a free

00:41:24   app that could have a subscription, like great, that was a great move. I think we need to see a

00:41:28   little bit more of that again, just to continue justifying why Apple deserves the cut that it

00:41:36   takes because the original pitch, you know, of like we have the storefront people are going to

00:41:43   find your app, like that's great, we're going to help with like that, all of that stuff means less

00:41:47   now than it used to, I think. And so I think that, you know, with the apps being the age that it is,

00:41:53   it might be time to not just for larger players, but to reevaluate some of this stuff again.

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00:43:32   So let's continue with some upstream news. There is a new WarnerMedia CEO, Jason Keeler,

00:43:40   who was Hulu's first CEO. Yeah, it's just a little story, but it made me laugh because he was the

00:43:47   founding CEO of Hulu, which meant he was being pulled in various different directions by the

00:43:53   various media companies that owned Hulu. And he's had a different job for the last few years,

00:43:57   but he's going to be the CEO of WarnerMedia reporting up to the AT&T bosses. And I just

00:44:04   think it's an interesting thing and says something about maybe his skill set as a manager who was a

00:44:11   manager of a streaming service in its early days, that that was who they wanted in charge of all of

00:44:16   WarnerMedia. So just yeah, little thing. Interesting. Chris Willis (00;01;00):

00:44:22   Quibi launches today to mixed reviews. Apparently the app itself is pretty good, nicely designed.

00:44:30   There's some interesting ideas in there. The content can change depending on the orientation

00:44:37   of your device. If you're holding it in landscape or portrait, you might see different things.

00:44:40   That's cool, but it feels like a gimmick to me. I don't know if I want to be moving my phone

00:44:46   up and down, up and down to be able to watch a TV show and see different things. Apparently there's

00:44:51   like a Steven Spielberg production upcoming, which will also use your GPS and the clock of your phone

00:44:57   to show the content differently. I don't know if I want these experiences. Maybe I could be proven

00:45:03   wrong, but I just don't feel like I want that. Something that was kind of funny out of some of

00:45:09   the reporting today that the Quibi app blocks screenshots. So it's using copyright protection.

00:45:13   So if you screenshot the content, it just is a black box.

00:45:16   So there'll be no, nothing will go viral from Quibi.

00:45:20   No. Great job, Quibi. Great job.

00:45:21   Yeah, that's exactly what you want to be able to do. The reports on the content is that

00:45:27   ultimately it feels pretty cheap feeling or that it's stuff that feels like it's YouTube focused.

00:45:32   Yeah, that's the one that I saw is it feels like you're now paying for more YouTube videos

00:45:37   that you can get for free. Yeah. And YouTube content is fantastic,

00:45:40   right? But YouTube content is considered a free thing, right? For people, you just go watch it.

00:45:47   And this is a shame because of the pricing. Now this wouldn't be a problem if they had a free

00:45:52   of ads tier. It's like, great, you know, that's YouTube. But to get their ads tier, you pay $4.99

00:45:58   a month. So that's kind of a bit complicated. And also they have a $7.99 a month without ads tier.

00:46:04   Outside of the US, you can only get the $7.99 a month option because they didn't sell ads outside

00:46:10   of America. Of course they didn't.

00:46:12   So this was the wrong time to launch this product. We made reference to it earlier.

00:46:19   We spoke about it before. Also, I got to say, I question the entire premise of Quibi.

00:46:25   Sure. Because people watch video,

00:46:27   I mean in the before time, people watch video anyway on the go. Like it's not like somebody

00:46:34   is somewhere and thinks, oh man, I wish I could watch Netflix or YouTube or something on my phone,

00:46:38   but I can't do that. So I guess I'll just sit here and stare out the window.

00:46:41   Instagram stories or any other type of social media video.

00:46:44   Or literally anything else. Yeah, right. Right.

00:46:47   But no, the problem is I just need a 10 minute long Quibi video. That's what I

00:46:52   really wish I had right now. So, you know, they did an interesting

00:46:56   thing in signing up a lot of big stars and all that kind of stuff. But I just, it just,

00:47:02   I'm not interested in, right? Like I wanted to maybe check this out. I was thinking about it,

00:47:08   but I don't want to pay for this. Like I don't want to pay more than Disney plus for this.

00:47:16   Which I will be paying two pounds a month more than I pay for Disney plus for the service.

00:47:20   Like I'm not, I know they have a 90 day free trial, but honestly, like I'm not even,

00:47:25   I don't even want to check it out. Like I don't think I'm gonna get anything out of this content.

00:47:31   Like I will wait to hear of the TV show, the Quibi show, the quiblet. I don't know what they call it.

00:47:37   I'm sure they've got some name for it. That's a must have.

00:47:39   That is a must have. But like right now I'm not interested in this. The only thing that I wanted

00:47:45   to maybe see was Chrissy's court, which is Chrissy Teigen doing like a judge Judy type thing.

00:47:50   But it's not, I don't want to see it enough that I didn't want to pay seven pound 99 a month for it.

00:47:57   Which again is how much I pay for Netflix, right? Where I can watch Tiger King,

00:48:01   which is incredible. Have you watched Tiger King?

00:48:03   Yes. I watched the first three episodes, I think.

00:48:07   So good, right?

00:48:09   I don't think I would say so good. It's fascinating to watch. It's hard to believe

00:48:12   that people like that exist and yet they do. And I talked about this on TV Talk Machine last week,

00:48:18   but I'm encouraged by the fact that people will watch documentaries if they're about

00:48:22   super outlandish subjects. And in fact, people will watch like an eight hour long documentary if

00:48:26   you break it up into episodes and have cliffhangers at the end of each episode. So fair play.

00:48:30   But you break them up into hour chunks. You don't break them up into 10 minute chunks.

00:48:34   Exactly. Well, that's true. There's a tiger. Stay tuned next week for more Tigers on Quibi.

00:48:40   Tiger.

00:48:41   Like, okay. All right. Oh, hey, there's this guy who works with the tigers. All right.

00:48:45   Come back next week.

00:48:46   Yeah.

00:48:47   Thanks, Quibi.

00:48:47   This hasn't launched in the world that it should have. And I feel like,

00:48:53   I don't know what they would have done, you know, like in their position,

00:48:58   I probably also would have just launched it anyway because you put so much money into it

00:49:01   at this point. But I think the target market for Quibi was small. And that small market

00:49:09   is working at home right now. And they don't need your bite sized chunk videos.

00:49:13   We'll see though. I'd like to prove them wrong. And Apple debuted a trailer for an Apple TV Plus

00:49:18   show called Trying, which is a British comedy show starring Rafe Spall.

00:49:22   It is focusing on relationships and parenthood and conception complications. It's coming May 1st.

00:49:29   It looks really good. I love the trailer. It is the drive, realistic British humor that I enjoy

00:49:34   and that Rafe Spall is especially good at. I'm looking forward to checking this one out. It looks

00:49:39   good. It looks different because it's a British comedy. So it's different to the other type of

00:49:44   content that is on Apple TV Plus right now. So I'm excited about it.

00:49:48   And this is Apple's worldwide content initiative, right? Like everybody gets to see this British

00:49:53   show that is on Apple TV Plus.

00:49:55   Yeah. This is a very like Channel 4 or BBC content. Also, it's like shot in,

00:50:00   it looks like Camden, which is an area that I love. Like, yeah, I'm super cool. I'm super into it.

00:50:04   So Jason, should we talk about Zoom?

00:50:07   I think we should probably, yeah.

00:50:10   I mean, this is being covered in a lot of places. I don't know if we need to go into the exact

00:50:14   details, but you know, if you're working from home right now, you've, or you have kids homeschooling

00:50:21   right now, especially, you've probably heard about Zoom. Zoom is the web conferencing,

00:50:26   video conferencing application that has risen to prominence during lockdowns around the world.

00:50:32   It's funny. They seem to have been perfectly positioned somehow for this. And I think not

00:50:38   entirely intentionally, but they, everybody seems to have leapt to Zoom and people are using Zoom.

00:50:44   And I was thinking about it. I was trying to explain to somebody like why Zoom in particular.

00:50:50   And I, you know, I think maybe the reason is that they worked really hard on this kind of

00:50:56   frictionless interface where unless you're the host of the meeting, you can just send somebody

00:51:02   a link and it just opens and they're in a meeting, right? So you don't have to, so like Skype is a

00:51:07   good example where the way Skype works is everybody sign up for Skype, send me your Skype account.

00:51:12   Now they have like a join link and stuff, but it's like, it was always the case with Skype that was

00:51:17   like, you need to register, you need to set up your Microsoft account. And now you can be in a

00:51:21   Skype call. Whereas with Zoom, you just show up and there's a teleconference. And I think that that

00:51:30   led plus the fact that they had a free tier that gave you 40 minutes, a 40 minute long conversation.

00:51:36   They're also, you know, successful, pretty successful in enterprise. So as people were

00:51:42   starting to move to working from home, they were having to use the software that their

00:51:47   company was telling them to use, which in a lot of places was Zoom. So then they were like,

00:51:52   well, Zoom's easy and we need to have this call with the five family members. Let's just do it

00:51:57   over Zoom because Zoom's on every device. It's not FaceTime. I just did a Zoom call last night with

00:52:02   all the members of my wife's family. And we were like, you could use FaceTime and they're like,

00:52:07   nah, we'll use Zoom. But you literally all have Apple devices. You don't, you could just use,

00:52:11   like, no, we're going to use Zoom. Okay, fine. We'll use Zoom. It's fine. But it was, so it

00:52:17   turned out to be perfectly positioned for this. And what's come out is in our show notes, you say,

00:52:22   it honestly feels like there are too many reports about security issues in Zoom to even mention.

00:52:28   So we'll link to Glenn Fleishman's article on tidbits where he went through every single one

00:52:31   of them. Thanks, Glenn. This is like this really interesting thing that happens in technology media

00:52:37   reporting. And I am not criticizing this, like, do not get me wrong, but it's just like an interesting

00:52:41   thing to observe. Where like, website A publishes a thing that they found out about a security issue

00:52:48   or an issue with a piece of software. And then there are lots more as every other tech-focused

00:52:56   news outlet is trying to find this stuff or they're getting other tips. So like, it becomes

00:53:01   this like feed, like a beast that is being fed. Like we saw it with the Enterprise Certificate

00:53:10   stuff. Do you remember that? Sure. It's the steady drip, drip, drip, where somebody points something

00:53:15   out and then everybody else starts investigating it and they find things. And Zoom, honestly,

00:53:19   it's also a little bit like Zoom is very casually walking down a hallway, minding its own business,

00:53:26   and then a giant spotlight is placed on it and it's like, uh, and it freezes. It's like, uh.

00:53:31   So here's my, I mean, look, Zoom has issues. There's no doubt about it. I don't have a lot

00:53:38   of time for people who want to say that Zoom is evil like Facebook, because I don't think they

00:53:46   are. I think they're just, and I wouldn't say incompetent, but I would say that they are a

00:53:51   startup who was really focused on adding features so that they could serve customers and close deals

00:53:57   and get more money and get more customers and continue growing because they're a startup and

00:54:03   was a lot less focused on all the things that involve security and limits to their system.

00:54:10   Cause they're like, yeah, but who's going to do that? It's not a big deal. This is enterprise

00:54:13   software. People aren't going to be like Zoom bombing the idea that people can just kind of like

00:54:17   come up with codes and appear in random video conferences. And it's, and it's really bad. And

00:54:24   they've actually had to change their, uh, their security. Like now by default, you, you have to,

00:54:30   as the starter of a meeting, you have to look at a list and admit people to a meeting. Or, or you,

00:54:36   Glenn's suggestion is you look through the list, kick out the people you don't know, and then do

00:54:40   an admit all to everybody. But like they, but in the early days, right? Like they were, they were

00:54:46   just not focused on it. They were moving as fast as they could. And, uh, and it led to a lot of bad

00:54:52   practices. There's no doubt about it. And I'm not really defending that. I'm just trying to

00:54:55   understand it. Like, you know, why did, why did the Zoom installer on the Mac install all the things

00:55:01   in the preflight? And then when you click the install button, nothing happens because it's

00:55:05   already installed itself. Well, you know what? I don't think that's them being evil. I think that

00:55:09   that is a developer who made a mistake and either nobody noticed or nobody cared. And I think a lot

00:55:14   of it is nobody cared because, and I would imagine there are developers at Zoom given the speed at

00:55:20   which they've implemented some of these fixes. I think there are developers and maybe even product

00:55:24   managers at Zoom who knew all about these flaws and were like, can we, cause I've been there folks,

00:55:30   I've been there. Can we fix these flaws? Can we get development resources to fix these flaws? And

00:55:36   then somebody up the chain says, no, build the new feature. That's going to get us this $4 million

00:55:41   contract. Do that instead. And they just sit there. And then the spotlight gets switched on

00:55:47   and Zoom's like, uh, uh, don't look over there. That is what basically has happened. I think here.

00:55:57   And I think that their response really is about as good as a response can be in the situation that

00:56:03   they found themselves in where they did get there. Yep. You know, Pope, but he's not effect. Uh,

00:56:12   yeah, they got there. The entire expertise of this company is not to be in that big a spotlight,

00:56:18   right? Like none of them are good at it. None of them were, were got to where they were because

00:56:23   they were good at it. And the final response was, yeah, we, you're right. We, we like, like the,

00:56:30   the ad tagging, like the ad tagging on their website where it's like, their privacy policy

00:56:35   is like a marketing privacy policy. And it's like, we can sell all your information. And somebody

00:56:39   who's a privacy person calls them on it and says, why do you, why are you reselling your customer

00:56:43   information? You're a, you're a subscription based company. You're not even an advertising company.

00:56:47   And their response was something like, Oh yeah, we just, and you really get the sense that whoever

00:56:52   put up the privacy policy, yeah, yeah. They ripped a privacy policy from somewhere and posted it

00:56:58   because they knew they needed to have one. And that is that dumb? Yes, it is. Do I understand

00:57:02   how that would happen in a, in an organization that is moving quickly and has priorities that

00:57:06   are not the priorities of tightening every screw down because they're a startup? Yes, I do. And

00:57:12   that privacy policy has been in place for four years and not one user or person at Zoom has read

00:57:17   it until someone wanted to read it to find something. So not excusing bad practices, but this

00:57:23   is how this stuff happens. You are focusing on pushing forward, always building your company

00:57:30   forward, forward, forward, and you just let things go. And honestly, if you're the kind of person who

00:57:34   says, you know, we need to really, we need to sweep up behind us and we need to tighten all the screws

00:57:38   on these things and we need to go back and fix these little bugs. I mean, look at Apple, right?

00:57:42   How many stories do we have about bugs that get introduced in a version of Mac OS or iOS, and they

00:57:49   never get fixed? All the new features keep coming in, but they never go back and fix a lot of these

00:57:54   little bugs. It's because that company is not providing developers and product managers incentive

00:57:59   to fix little bugs. Their incentives are all about making new features. And this is a, this is a

00:58:04   problem. So Zoom's privacy policy, like, is Zoom really planning on being a gross company that

00:58:09   resells all of its customer data when you come to their website? No, they're just dumb and they

00:58:14   used a dumb privacy policy and you can see it because the moment it gets pointed out, they're

00:58:17   like, oh God, no, oh, let's change it, right? Like, so, so again, there are, is Zoom a badly

00:58:24   run company? Kind of, but in a, in a really boring way that most, I would say, companies,

00:58:31   especially startups, are badly run, which is they prioritized growth and didn't realize what, like

00:58:38   the rest of us, exactly what was around the corner, which was this level of scrutiny. And I will also

00:58:44   say they, it has taken them a while to do the right thing, but they've generally come around to

00:58:50   realizing that, that it is the right thing in a way that is refreshing because it's not something

00:58:55   that Facebook ever did. Yes, you have to, like, I get that these things can be criticized when you

00:59:00   find out about them. You can criticize the way that they respond, but if a company ultimately

00:59:05   comes around to doing what is recommended or what people suggest, that needs to be like,

00:59:10   not necessarily applauded, but recognized because these days technology companies, big technology

00:59:15   companies, and Zoom went from 10 million daily users to 200 million daily users. They're a

00:59:21   massive tech company now. Too often, these companies just dig their heels in and they

00:59:28   don't do what you want them to do. Zoom is in the crucible right now. They are in the crucible and

00:59:33   two things can happen. They can either come out of it better for it, or they can burn up. Those are

00:59:40   the sort of two things that can happen. And I think they're going to come out of it better for

00:59:44   it. I think that they're going to, despite all of these complaints about Zoom bombing and privacy

00:59:49   issues and bad technology practices, their business at the end is going to be way larger

00:59:54   than it was going in. But I also think it will be way more focused on these customer issues,

01:00:03   because they've had to focus on them. And that has given a little more cred to the people inside,

01:00:08   presumably, who can say, "We need to do this the right way. You saw what happened when we did it

01:00:13   the wrong way. Let's do it the right way now." And I think there'll be a better product and service

01:00:17   and company when all is said and done. They got those.

01:00:23   I mean, they had to learn it the hard way. But honestly, I think a lot of times that's exactly

01:00:26   what happens to companies is they go along, and then they get called on it. And then you find out

01:00:32   what they're made of when they get called on it. And a lot of times you get, honestly, Zoom's

01:00:39   response is not that different from the responses of all sorts of people to the COVID-19 crisis,

01:00:44   where you start by kind of bargaining and you're like, "Well, all right, maybe we'll change a little

01:00:49   bit and maybe we'll do this little minor thing." And then you have that moment where you go, "Oh,

01:00:53   no. No, no, this is huge. I need to just stop right now." And that's, I think, what Zoom has

01:00:58   basically done is they're like, "Well, there's a little thing." And then they finally seem to have

01:01:01   had that moment where they're like, "You're right. This is really bad. We're not going to..."

01:01:05   I mean, the fact that it's such a big deal in the text of like, "We're going to stop implementing

01:01:10   new features, and we're going to focus on fixing all of our security and privacy problems," it's

01:01:14   like, "Well, you guys were still working on new features? Don't do that. Don't do that. Capacity,

01:01:21   stability, and fixing all your really bad privacy and security bugs, let's do that now. Right now,

01:01:28   let's focus on that." And they got there. It took them a while, but they got there, again,

01:01:32   in a way that some of these tech companies don't get there because it turns out that they

01:01:38   do actually intend... They either intended to be evil all along or they found out how profitable

01:01:44   being evil was. And they're like, "No, I really just want to do that now." And I don't think Zoom

01:01:49   is at that point. So I think, you know, are there... And here's the other thing. Are there

01:01:53   alternatives to Zoom? Yes, there are. Google Hangouts, FaceTime, Skype. Yeah, they're all

01:01:57   going to have different trade-offs, but there are advantages to them. You don't have to use Zoom.

01:02:02   I would argue that just like getting mad at an airline or a cable company or a cell phone company,

01:02:08   you're really probably just trading one set of issues for another. But if, you know, the beauty

01:02:14   of the way Zoom is built is I believe you can just use a web browser and not even install their app

01:02:19   and still get into their conferences if you're not the host. So, you know, I've been using Zoom

01:02:25   for a while now because it has a very particular feature that is extremely helpful to me as a

01:02:30   podcast host and editor, but it is so esoteric that, you know, my need for it is not the need

01:02:38   that anybody else who's not a podcast host and editor has a need for. What is your need?

01:02:43   Just to... Yeah, because people ask about this. Zoom will let you do a recording of your call.

01:02:48   Well, most places will do that, but Zoom will let you choose to record it locally and not up

01:02:52   in the cloud. And one of the options is record everybody's voices on separate tracks. And what

01:02:58   that means is I walk away from a Zoom call with a track for every single person who was on the

01:03:05   podcast separate from all the other voices. Now, I have them all record their voice on their own

01:03:12   computer, but sometimes, and that's the highest quality possible, sometimes the recordings fail.

01:03:17   And it used to be when I used Skype that if that recording failed, I had to take my recording of

01:03:26   like everybody talking at once and like cut out the parts where they made noise and put that in

01:03:31   and cut out all the other people's voices from where they're talking because they're talking

01:03:36   on their microphone and on that track. It was a lot of work. It's a lot of work. And now I just

01:03:41   sub in the Zoom version of their voice and I got it. And that work goes away. So that's the

01:03:46   reason I use it, but that's 0.0001% of Zooms and we keep adding zeros as this crisis continues.

01:03:54   So, you know, there are alternatives out there. I just want to say like switching to some other

01:04:00   thing is no guarantee that they do not also have privacy, security, and ease of use problems

01:04:06   because Zoom very clearly prioritized ease of use over security and it's biting them now,

01:04:12   but it's also the reason that they're being used by so many people is it's fairly easy to

01:04:16   hop on a Zoom call. I'm really enjoying Ben Thompson's discussion on this in the Daily

01:04:22   Update. I recently subscribed to the Daily Update podcast and it's very good. So this is like Ben's

01:04:28   daily update, which you've probably heard of for a while, there's an email newsletter and now there's

01:04:31   a podcast version, which is great for someone like me who doesn't like to read very much.

01:04:34   And what Ben ended up recommending was that Zoom take like 90 days to focus on privacy.

01:04:41   That's exactly what Zoom is doing now, which is, I don't know if they took his advice or if they

01:04:48   just came to the same kind of result, but that's what Zoom is up to now. They are just pausing all

01:04:55   feature development, focusing on a security overhaul. So that's Zoom. Can't get away from it.

01:05:03   I had a Zoom call today. I have two tomorrow. Everyone wants to use Zoom now. It's kind of funny

01:05:08   to me, Jason, like I used to do just video, like just calls, just phone calls, but now I'm having

01:05:13   video calls with the same people. So we didn't video call before. Why do we do video call now?

01:05:18   It's fun. We can do this now. Yeah. I mean, I still get hangouts requests because Google

01:05:23   hangouts still exists, even though they keep trying to kill it. And Skype definitely. But Zoom,

01:05:30   you know, I think there's also the truth that once it's a tool in your arsenal, you want to apply it

01:05:34   to everything. And some of this might fall away as being like, yeah, I don't need to do that. Or it

01:05:41   may just be like, oh, I got it. Let's just use it. Like it's also everybody's inside and seeing

01:05:46   another face is kind of nice. Right. I think that's part of it too. I think there's an

01:05:52   interesting question about FaceTime. Like group FaceTime should be like my, like I said, my wife's

01:06:03   family and I should have used FaceTime last night, but we didn't. And I think it's because the

01:06:10   perception is it's complicated. People don't know how to use it. And it's got the weird like bubbles

01:06:14   and stuff that float around. Whereas Zoom is just a grid and like the bubbles are whimsical, but I

01:06:19   think they're bad. So saying about that, I have, I have been pondering this idea, something I want

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01:07:50   So I've been rolling this idea around in my head, which I'm kind of referring to as a big question,

01:07:58   which is how will COVID-19 change consumer technology? And I've been thinking about this

01:08:04   just in general that like I would like to maybe try and do this stuff more if people like it,

01:08:07   of less something that is focused on like what happened this week, which is typically what we

01:08:12   talk about on the show, but more kind of like bigger questions about technology. So, Rip,

01:08:18   the reason I've been thinking of this is like the way that people are working right now is different

01:08:23   to how they've worked before and at large scale, right? People have been working from home, working

01:08:29   from home in technology for years, decades maybe even, but the idea of "no, everyone" is different,

01:08:38   right? And it's going to unearth a few different types of ideas in the way that people are used to

01:08:46   working. Therefore, the way that technology enables us in our lives and when all the big

01:08:52   technology companies are forced to face these issues, they may see things that other people

01:08:57   have been seeing for a while. So there is that whole stream, but the first stream that was

01:09:01   interesting to me was how COVID-19 may change the way that we interact with our devices on a daily

01:09:10   basis. And one that I've been thinking about is how good is Face ID if we're all wearing face masks?

01:09:16   So this is a thing that's come up in Asia for a long time and was apparently a contributing factor

01:09:22   to lower sales of the iPhone X line. If you live in a society where people's faces are

01:09:34   obscured when they're outside of the home, Face ID is so much worse than Touch ID because you

01:09:42   can't unlock your phone. Now, depending on where you live in the world right now, people are being

01:09:47   told to wear face masks or not, but it seems like the general consensus is moving to if you go

01:09:52   outside, cover your face somehow, right? Leave the medical grade face masks to people in the medical

01:09:59   profession, but maybe wear something, right? So does that mean that if the now the Western world

01:10:08   may be moving into using face masks more? Because if we're living with this in some form for a

01:10:14   couple of years, which is possible, will we get used to wearing face masks? Will that just become

01:10:21   a thing in Europe and in America like it has in some places in Asia? And if that's the case,

01:10:27   do we want Face ID or do we want Touch ID again? Yeah, I wonder about this, although I have heard

01:10:35   from people who talk about like the problem. There are issues with Touch ID too, right? Like if you're

01:10:40   wearing gloves, including if you're wearing gloves to protect yourself from stuff that you would

01:10:47   touch, right? Like whether it's cold or medical reasons, you can't do Touch ID. So there are

01:10:58   issues with all of these biometric things, but I think you're right that if Face ID becomes

01:11:05   an even greater liability in more places for more people and your Apple, you have to start to think

01:11:12   like what some of the Android phone makers have done, which is to say, "I want face unlock and I

01:11:20   want touch unlock." I've also heard a bunch of people who've said they've made their password

01:11:25   simpler on their iPhone because they now have to enter it. And that's like, I've got an

01:11:31   alphanumeric passcode on my iPhone. And if I'm out and about wearing a mask all the time,

01:11:37   that's gonna change, right? Like I'm not gonna have to do that every time I unlock.

01:11:43   I also wonder if Apple's thought of some other sort of like biometric things like

01:11:46   Apple Watch unlock for your iPhone or something like that. Like once you unlock your Apple Watch

01:11:51   and your iPhone and it stays on your wrist, then maybe your iPhone can unlock more easily. But

01:11:58   clearly this is new data being input that is gonna change the equation. Of course,

01:12:03   as we've talked about, it takes years for Apple to change the philosophy on some of this stuff.

01:12:08   But it would be, I think it's worth thinking about that if this, we'll see what happens culturally,

01:12:15   but it's hard to believe that there won't be at least more mask wearing than there used to be.

01:12:19   So then as well, I'm wondering about cameras in devices because we're all using cameras,

01:12:30   our front facing cameras more for video calling, right? Whether we're on a Mac to do a work call,

01:12:36   on an iPad to speak to your friends or your family, your iPhone to speak to your parents,

01:12:41   your grandparents. So we're doing more video calling. So should front facing cameras be

01:12:46   better? Will we see that? I think we will. At the moment I have on my iMac Pro a Logitech external

01:12:53   camera because the camera in my iMac Pro is really, really bad. And I have this Logitech

01:12:59   camera. I've had it for a while when I was doing streaming for, well, whenever I do game streaming

01:13:06   stuff, I want to have my camera on it. And this 1080p webcam from Logitech is much better looking

01:13:12   than the one in my iMac Pro. So I've just plugged that one in now. And I think probably quite a lot

01:13:17   of people are doing stuff like that because the cameras, especially in Macs, they suck.

01:13:22   And I wonder if we're going to see that start to change now.

01:13:26   Yeah, the Mac cameras could be better. Although I think that iMac Pro camera is 1080.

01:13:31   Whether it is or it isn't, this Logitech one is much better, right? It might be 1080, but

01:13:37   the lens is bigger, right? Like it's a dedicated product. My five-year-old whatever USB Logitech

01:13:42   camera is still better than what is in my iMac Pro. I think you're right. I think that prior,

01:13:47   if everybody's doing video stuff, prioritizing video cameras, especially like on computers,

01:13:53   it's certainly been the case. It feels like that, you know, some devices have really nice cameras

01:13:58   and others don't. But like if you're doing a long conference call, you're probably not holding your

01:14:02   phone and doing that or even holding an iPad. You're probably doing it on a laptop or something

01:14:08   like that. I think for a lot of this stuff. And Apple's laptop webcams are bad. They're just

01:14:13   not very good. That has not been a priority for them. So I do wonder about that. I also wonder

01:14:18   about, in general, upgrading that technology to have more kind of machine intelligence. You know,

01:14:25   there are those webcams that are out there where they will do face tracking and stuff like that. So

01:14:30   if you move around a little bit, it'll adjust the frame based on where you are. Like you get a wide

01:14:34   angle shot and then it will kind of intelligently frame and move and things like that. And Apple

01:14:41   could do more stuff like that too, if it wanted to, but it hasn't been a priority. And I do think

01:14:46   that that may be something that changes. And let's talk about like we talked the 16-inch MacBook Pro

01:14:52   and the new iPad Pros. They've got their, you know, six, whatever it is, microphone array,

01:14:59   and 16-inch MacBook Pro is the studio quality microphones and all that. Apple was already on

01:15:05   that, but I think that's a real win for them because having your existing microphone device be

01:15:11   better and sound better is, you know, something that they're already headed toward. And it's

01:15:18   important. Like you don't want to sound like you're at the bottom of a well if you're in a Zoom

01:15:21   meeting or whatever, or a Slack meeting on audio. You know, you don't want to sound bad. You don't

01:15:27   want to not be able to hear someone, right? Like if you're doing over speakers, like all of that

01:15:31   stuff is important. And I think that we're going to see like a continued push on this stuff because

01:15:37   people are having to use these devices more frequently. Like, as I say, there are a lot of

01:15:42   people that are doing this every day, but not necessarily the people that make the computers

01:15:47   are doing this or have been doing this. Yeah. Well, yeah, this is that famous story that I love

01:15:53   about how Apple Mail was really, really bad on slow connections. And I discovered that when I

01:15:59   was on a cruise ship, like 10 years ago, that like Apple Mail wants to sync all your mailboxes and

01:16:04   it just uses huge amounts of data. And then they started doing Wi-Fi on airplanes. That became a

01:16:11   very popular thing and that was a slow connection. And the next release of macOS was much better

01:16:17   in terms of mail using the connection. And it was very clear what happened, which is

01:16:22   all the people who wrote the software and the executives who used it, all of a sudden found

01:16:26   themselves on a low latency, slow internet connection and realized that Apple Mail was

01:16:31   completely inappropriate for that. And so they fixed it. Like that just happens. Like if you

01:16:36   don't live it, we could talk about maps, right? Like the maps, Apple Maps is really great in the

01:16:40   Bay Area, but it's not necessarily very good in lots of other places and you get a skewed

01:16:47   perception of it. So I think you're right that this is one of those things that we're going to

01:16:52   see. This is a good example, but there are others like we're going to see collaboration,

01:16:58   communication apps and also hardware that's used in them get better in the next few years

01:17:06   because the people who make that stuff are currently dealing with whatever today's state

01:17:12   of the art is and probably having some ideas about where this stuff could be better.

01:17:18   Matt>> Yeah, when it comes to apps and services, the thing that's interesting to me is like the

01:17:23   hardware is coming from your existing hardware makers, but apps and services can come from

01:17:27   anywhere, you know? So like, you know, something like Slack is born out of... wasn't Slack...

01:17:33   it was... there was the company behind Slack was building a video game and then they built a

01:17:39   communication tool to talk about the game that they were making. The game didn't end up going

01:17:44   anywhere, but they realized that they had stumbled into a better communication tool. I think that's

01:17:48   Slack's origin story. So these types of software solutions can come out of weird places and I would

01:17:56   expect that we see a lot of startups over the next couple of years coming in to try and save

01:18:05   or fix X, right? Like I think the company behind Basecamp is building an email replacement tool,

01:18:15   which I think is on hold at the moment. It's 37signals, right? I believe it's them.

01:18:20   Yeah, it's doing this, but this is, you know, that will come at a time when people have realized...

01:18:25   have been using email too much or using Slack too much to communicate and they're like,

01:18:30   "Oh, I'm frustrated with this tool. I wished it was better." You know, Slack is kind of funny now that

01:18:35   like Slack has now become the establishment. So people want to build Slack replacements when

01:18:40   Slack was to replace email. But what we've all realized is Slack is great for team communication.

01:18:46   It did not replace email, right? It doesn't... email continues. So now people are still trying

01:18:52   to build better tools for that. But this is like a big area like communication and collaboration.

01:18:56   I think we're going to see a lot of new companies pop up with these things in mind.

01:19:00   - Also, users, you know, the users who have built... these products have been built around users

01:19:07   who are traveling or organizations that have multiple centers of work or people who work from

01:19:14   home. But now there's this whole new set of users because now it's like whole businesses that are

01:19:19   moving remote. And even the existing companies are going to learn things about the needs of

01:19:26   these organizations. Because I do think there will be more virtual organizations in the future

01:19:30   because I do think some companies are going to look at this and go, "Why are we paying for

01:19:33   expensive real estate and there's going to be other people?"

01:19:36   - We don't need to have an office because we still continued to work, right?

01:19:41   - Right. Right. And again, there are good and bad things about that, but I do think that will happen.

01:19:45   I also think new companies, there'll be more virtual organizations that are founded

01:19:49   now because people are more comfortable with it as a concept. Because, you know, I worked with

01:19:54   lots of people who... I mean, there were CEOs that I worked with who, you know, they didn't want

01:20:01   people working from home because they wanted to be able to walk through the office once a day

01:20:06   and see a busy office. It had no basis in reality of how we worked, but they wanted to see it.

01:20:12   I think that people are going to have their attitudes changed a little bit. Also, though,

01:20:18   I think users, because there are these different users of these services than were there before,

01:20:23   the users are going to try things and the services are going to see them trying things,

01:20:27   and that's going to change the game too. So an example would be, like, we take for granted

01:20:32   things like Slack and Dropbox, right? And Google Docs. They've been around a long time.

01:20:40   But I know not in our listenership necessarily, but, like, I know other people who are not tech

01:20:48   savvy. And let me tell you, there are a lot of people who are using Dropbox to exchange files

01:20:53   for the first time. There are a lot of people using Google Docs to collaborate on documents

01:20:57   for the first time. There are lots of people using Slack to talk to their colleagues for the first

01:21:04   time, and that's going to not only, yes, drive usage of those tools, but it's going to change

01:21:09   how they get built and change how people work because they're more aware of them. But also,

01:21:16   I think that things are going to come up and they're going to be like, "Why does Dropbox

01:21:19   do this?" And I think Dropbox will learn things and Slack will learn things, and that will feed

01:21:23   into it too. So I would imagine that there were enough people out there that communication

01:21:29   collaboration systems were already a big business, but so we primed the pump. But now here's

01:21:39   everybody else, and everybody else is going to have different issues, and it's going to build

01:21:44   a bigger business for those companies, but a different business too. And I think that will

01:21:51   push them in different ways. Because I think Google Docs and Dropbox both seem so basic to us,

01:21:56   but thank goodness they're there. There's a piece that John Gruber linked to on Daring

01:22:03   Fireball from Joshua Topolsky that was basically, "Thank God for the internet." I was thinking about

01:22:07   that too. I know we're all isolated, but we have the internet to connect us. And for business,

01:22:12   it's such a great example. Businesses can still run, not all of them, but a lot of businesses can

01:22:18   still operate entirely because of the internet and because of these collaboration tools. So

01:22:23   that part, I'm fascinated by what the end result of that will be. But at the very least, you've got

01:22:30   people using collaboration tools who never thought of them before. Which is kind of awesome, isn't it?

01:22:35   I think so. As a user of those collaboration tools, this is one of those things where the

01:22:43   rest of the world is seeing things that you and I have been working with for a while now.

01:22:47   And I think that's cool. And there will be good and bad about it. I talked to somebody who is

01:22:54   related to—I'm going to be very vague—who is related to somebody I know. I'm the computer guy.

01:23:03   People ask me tech questions. And it was a question about Slack, and they were joining

01:23:07   Slack. And it was like, "What shouldn't go in Slack?" And I said, "Well, if you've got things

01:23:15   that you want to say to your colleagues that you don't want the boss to see, don't put them in

01:23:23   Slack." Do that as a—send an iMessage or something. People are going to have to learn stuff like that,

01:23:30   too. This belongs and the archives belong to the company. So don't—

01:23:34   Yeah, and they can get them at any point.

01:23:36   At any point.

01:23:36   This is that fun thing where it's like, "You will be told, so everyone is told if the archive

01:23:41   is accessed, but the archive can be accessed."

01:23:45   Yeah. So it's stuff like that that people are going to learn, too. But I think it's great.

01:23:51   And the scrutiny—to pull back to Zoom for a second—scrutiny by people who are not the

01:23:57   usual people in a moment where this stuff is becoming more and more used is going to

01:24:04   reveal faults, whether they're usability issues or blind spots in the product where they never

01:24:11   realized that that was a thing people would want to do until now, or pure security failings like

01:24:18   what Zoom has dealt with. So much of that is going to come out. And I do believe—because I

01:24:24   am an optimist—I do believe that these products will be better for it in the long run because

01:24:28   they will have been put through the ringer. But in the short run, people are going to bash their

01:24:32   heads against parts of these products and be like, "Why does it do it this way?" And the answer is

01:24:36   going to be something that's not uncommon when you talk about products from big tech companies,

01:24:41   which is, "Uh, we didn't ever think of that." It's like, "Oh, yeah, well, you got new users now,

01:24:47   and you're going to have to deal." I think that's great.

01:24:50   So that was our first big question.

01:24:53   Big question.

01:24:54   I would like to know if people want to hear more of this type of stuff. And if you do,

01:24:57   what do you want us to talk about? Just something I'm playing around with. Because, again, it's like

01:25:02   we've spoken about this before. It's like, how will COVID-19 change your technology podcasts?

01:25:06   Well, at some point, the news might stop, and we want to continue to entertain you. So this is one

01:25:11   way that I hope that we can do it. Couple of pieces of news before we do #AskUPGRADE. It is

01:25:17   Apple acquisition season, Jason. Oh, boy. You can still buy companies.

01:25:22   You sure can. Apple acquired the weather app and service, Dark Sky, and is slowly going to be

01:25:28   shutting down the application and some platforms on Android, and the API is being shut down as well.

01:25:36   You are a weather person. You like the weather. What is your take?

01:25:40   Nobody wants to talk about that.

01:25:41   What is your take on this news?

01:25:43   I like that Apple is looking at a third-party app and service and saying, "Why don't we have that?"

01:25:51   They have their own weather source that they buy for their weather app. Dark Sky goes way beyond

01:25:56   what is available or being used by Apple. So I can see from that perspective. I can also see

01:26:03   from the perspective of potentially letting other weather apps on their platforms have access to the

01:26:10   API exclusively so it makes weather better on Apple platforms. I mean, they're shutting it off for

01:26:18   Android. So I think it's just one of those cases where Apple could choose to build a better weather

01:26:25   app, but they're going to have to go through all the trouble of building a better app and making

01:26:28   deals with a bunch of data sources and building out this whole backend infrastructure, or they

01:26:33   could just buy Dark Sky, who already did it. And it makes sense to me. And it stinks if you're

01:26:41   somebody who relies on their data and are on Android, but I think it makes sense and is smart

01:26:48   from Apple's perspective. Apple have bought an AI app called Voices to boost natural language

01:26:55   processing for Siri. The company focuses on creative voice technology to help narrow down

01:27:01   searches for shopping items. So for example, there was an example given in the Bloomberg

01:27:06   article that was reporting on this saying that you would, for example, say I need a new LED TV

01:27:11   and my budget is $1,000 and the assistant would be able to provide a result for that. So it's

01:27:16   doing a lot of language processing to help narrow search queries. Apparently, the tech that this

01:27:23   company has built can be squeezed down to 25 megabytes and put on a device. So it seems to

01:27:31   be pretty powerful natural language processing that can be shrunk down and put onto devices.

01:27:38   This is the thing that Google talks about and tries to do a lot, that they want to shrink down

01:27:42   the assistant and put it on phones, and they do that on Pixel phones so that the processing is

01:27:46   faster. So that's one. Do you have anything extra on that? It's interesting. I'm pleased to see that

01:27:52   they're trying to do more to make Siri's comprehension better. That's what I was going to

01:27:56   say is I think we can all agree that spending money to get technology to make Siri work better

01:28:01   is good. Yeah, we all want to see that, right? You love to see it. And they're also rumored to

01:28:08   be buying a company called NextVR. NextVR provides VR experiences for live events.

01:28:14   So they're most popular for filming sporting events so you can watch them at home on your VR

01:28:19   headset. Sounds super weird, right? Why would Apple want this company? I'm familiar with them.

01:28:26   They do this with wrestling events and stuff. They'll put cameras on the posts, the ring posts,

01:28:32   and you can watch. It's very strange, but it's a thing. Turns out NextVR holds a large series

01:28:38   of patents around virtual reality streaming. So their patent portfolio could potentially be

01:28:44   of interest for any company that wants to be involved in virtual reality. So maybe that's more

01:28:51   than Apple wants to do VR streaming of basketball games. That would be peculiar, but if they hold

01:28:59   patents for streaming of virtual reality, that might be a thing that you might want to own going

01:29:05   into the future. I hear that Tim is bullish on AR, but maybe VR too. Who knows? Yeah, I mean,

01:29:13   it's not wild to imagine that any kind of virtual reality stuff could also be AR-based. These things

01:29:22   can go together, you know? But I think Apple have made some moves into VR. We've seen it, right?

01:29:29   Remember when they had that demo at WWDC with the Darth Vader thing a few years ago? They want to do

01:29:36   it and every company's looking at it at least in case it is that next frontier. All right, let's

01:29:41   finish up the show. As we always do with some #AskUpgradeQuestions. But before we do that, let

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01:30:45   this week, Jason, Myke Hurley has been podcasting for 10 years and my first podcast website was

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01:31:05   it on Squarespace for a project that me and Grey have been working on on Cortex. So it's super easy

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01:31:56   pretty much every week for like eight or nine years now at this point. So I love you Squarespace.

01:32:00   Thank you. #askupgrade. First question comes from Greg and Greg wants to know is it possible in

01:32:08   Mac OS to have a folder in the dock with apps in it like you can on iPad OS? Sure, although I

01:32:16   generally don't recommend that you take apps out of the applications folder. That's the problem

01:32:20   isn't it? So you make a folder and you make aliases of those apps in that folder and put that folder

01:32:25   in the dock and then you got it. You could do the launchpad thing right but that's not anything

01:32:29   that's what you want to do right because that's every app then. Yeah you don't want to live in

01:32:34   the dock you don't want to do that but like in your documents folder or something make a

01:32:38   folder for your stuff and then you do it's command option drag I think will make an alias just direct

01:32:50   command option drag the apps into that folder and then you drag that I'm doing it right now in fact

01:32:55   and then you drag that folder into your dock and look you got a bunch of apps that pop up and you

01:33:02   can have it be one of those little stacks or however you want to view it and and then you

01:33:06   click on them and they launch. So that's the way to do it I would say is aliases keep it clean.

01:33:11   I like this question because from Greg because I like the idea of a Mac feature that went to

01:33:19   the iPad and now wanting to replicate an iPad function on the Mac feature which is the dock

01:33:25   back on Mac OS. I just like that back to the Mac nature of it all. Casper says Myke what about using

01:33:32   a Mac mini as a recording Mac it's not as portable as a laptop but you're adding a monitoring keyboard

01:33:37   anyway so just a bit of context in case you're not familiar with this. When I'm allowed to go back to my

01:33:42   studio I wanted to have separate computers so when I'm able to get that set up so I would be having

01:33:48   my iMac Pro to do all my editing and heavy work on and then I want to record on a separate desk which

01:33:55   is more sound isolated and use this different computer for that and I planned on using a laptop

01:34:00   for it. Now I understand the idea of a Mac mini because I'm going to have a keyboard, mouse and

01:34:06   monitor anyway so why not use a Mac mini so it'd be a permanent system and it can maybe have a bit

01:34:11   more power in it but one of the reasons I want to use a laptop for this is so then when I travel

01:34:16   I take the same machine that I'm recording on all the time that is set up for recording I take that

01:34:22   machine with me. That is my thinking who knows how this will play out if it ever plays out

01:34:28   but that's that's kind of the route that I'm going with is wanting to replace to a laptop

01:34:35   and I am thinking now Jason still that MacBook Air is probably the right move for me I think

01:34:41   just like price power wise I think that's that's what I'm going to be looking at but not anytime

01:34:46   soon. Seth asks my family is on a shared account in settings and Bluetooth all of my kids AirPods

01:34:55   and Beats headphones and mine are in there I don't want them in there when I click remove it says it

01:35:00   will remove all the devices on a shared iCloud account any advice? Seth you need to move to an

01:35:05   iCloud family. Yep that's it I know you don't want to hear it but Apple is very strict on this now

01:35:11   they don't they're not interested in building features that make it easy or convenient for

01:35:17   you to put every device in your entire family on one Apple ID they want you to have different

01:35:23   Apple IDs for the different people and have them be in a family and if that doesn't work for you

01:35:28   then you're just going to have to deal with having all those devices in your Bluetooth menu

01:35:31   but that what Apple wants you to do is create you know for your kids you create kids Apple IDs

01:35:38   and tie them into the family and then you can authorize them and set them up however you want

01:35:43   but that's for the last like three or four years that has been Apple's whole standard so you just

01:35:48   that's the answer. And I switched to a Nikon family plan a couple of months ago and I would say

01:35:54   it's fantastic I have no it was easy to do and I have no personal downsides maybe if you like do

01:36:02   Apple music you would need to pay a little bit more for it that's one I will include in the

01:36:07   show notes a link to Mac Power Users episode 522 where Steven and David talk about iCloud family

01:36:15   sharing in case you want to get a refresher on this Seth or other listeners out there if you're

01:36:20   thinking of doing this but the problem is it is all tied to one iCloud account which I'll say is

01:36:25   great it's a great feature of AirPods right that like I pair it with one device and it's on all my

01:36:30   devices but if you're sharing a whole like if you're sharing one account with a lot of different

01:36:39   people well everyone's gonna connect to everybody else's devices like that's just the way it is.

01:36:44   Ben says with a lot of fake news being spread regarding 5G like the ridiculous conspiracy

01:36:50   theories that it's causing coronavirus resulting in people setting 5G masks on fire in the UK

01:36:56   do you think that this will affect Apple's adoption of the technology? I got this Myke.

01:37:01   Okay go on. No.

01:37:03   I only included this question in the show because I wanted to talk about this real quick just in

01:37:13   case there is anybody out there who believes this or knows someone. This is rolling right over my

01:37:18   no but yeah okay yeah let's talk about it let's break it down. Right it's just purely like this

01:37:21   idea is absolutely crazy like it's crazy it's baseless and it's it's madness like this I like

01:37:31   people oh my god people want to have feel like they have control of their lives and that they

01:37:36   can understand what's going on and under stress and under pressure they will make irrational

01:37:42   they'll believe irrational things and do irrational things and there was already this undercurrent of

01:37:48   kind of not even remotely supported by any information in fact where people were convinced

01:37:53   that 5G was causing health problems so it was very easy to port that over and blame a virus on

01:37:59   cell phone towers those it's it's it's bad and wrong and those people are to be I mean I'm

01:38:09   frustrated with those people but I think they're also to be kind of pitied and maybe help helped

01:38:15   if they can be because they believe a a ridiculous thing and they're wrong and they think that it's

01:38:22   going to make a difference in their lives and it's not going to and it may put them in harm and other

01:38:28   people in harm's way so it's a real shame and and it's not real and 5G is not gonna be affected 5G

01:38:36   rollout is not going to be affected by weird people who believe weird things that is not

01:38:43   that that have no basis in reality yeah I can't can't help but feel sorry for people in these

01:38:48   situations right because they're like they're desperate I get it right like they're desperate

01:38:52   so they'll believe something because it might mean that this can go away quickly like if we turn off

01:38:57   5G it's going to get rid of this but like that's it's not true and it's it's upsetting but also I

01:39:03   just wanted to bring it up as like a just in case anyone was kind of thinking it out there or like

01:39:09   you've heard someone mention it please like this is a this is a wild thing and these types of

01:39:14   these types of distractions are not helpful for people in times like this right like it's not

01:39:21   going to help us get through this because that's not the solution to this problem the solution is

01:39:26   stay at home just stay at home stay at home if you stay at home we're going to be good for the

01:39:32   record you know what causes COVID-19 is there was a virus that was in a bat and or maybe a pangolin

01:39:38   and there was a market and it transmitted to people and it turns out that people could

01:39:42   transmit it to one another and that they're asymptomatic they don't show any symptoms

01:39:47   but can still spread it for the first few days of having it or perhaps longer and then it went from

01:39:51   person to person that's how it happened because that's how viruses emerge and they will continue

01:39:57   to do so and this one is particularly because it is novel it is not something we have any immunity

01:40:03   to and so the solution since we don't know who has it necessarily because unless you've got a

01:40:08   an advanced testing regime which most countries don't have is to stay inside and and wash your

01:40:14   hands and if you go out stay six feet away from everybody and wear a mask if you can or especially

01:40:22   if you're in close quarters but you should still try to keep your distance from other people that

01:40:27   that's it like that's it i know everybody wants there to be more and and bigger picture and stuff

01:40:32   like that um but that's it that's literally it there is no secret cabal there is no secret

01:40:39   technology there is no conspiracy it's you know this is a tale as old as time i mean literally

01:40:48   it is a plague it they happen they are terrible we'll get through it do what you can just just

01:40:57   just follow the rules right like not necessarily the rules of your government like the rules of

01:41:03   the world health organization but 5g phones are going to be fine is what i'm saying 5g phones

01:41:08   okay there's one thing we've learned from this 5g phones are going to be fine

01:41:12   uh and finally today johan asks do you speed up podcasts um when i'm recording them

01:41:23   if i need tea then possibly that i sometimes i have to slow them down um uh i listen to most

01:41:31   podcasts that i listen to at slightly faster very slightly like one tick up on overcast with smart

01:41:37   speed turned on um so slightly faster there are occasionally podcasts that i will speed up if i'm

01:41:43   way behind on podcasts like i kind of am now i will sometimes speed it up another tick although

01:41:48   i find that that makes some podcasts ludicrously fast and i will set those to still play at a

01:41:55   slower speed the podcast that i truly cherish i play i actually play at 1x with smart speed

01:42:01   because i don't want it to end and i'm willing to take it slow like the flophouse i usually listen

01:42:09   to at 1x but um but there are other podcasts where it's like yeah the 1.1 or 1.2 or whatever it is

01:42:15   that's mine that's mine so i do i do um but not a lot i know there are people out there who listen

01:42:21   to 2x and all it's like i i i feel like in that point like bless you because you're listening to

01:42:27   a lot of podcasts but at the same time i feel like i'm starting to miss even above 1.1 i'm starting

01:42:32   to miss the timing of everything and if all you're really doing is is getting information then that's

01:42:38   great but you start to miss the timing of the conversation and i don't like that so i keep it

01:42:42   keep it slight yeah i i am 1x with smart speed or silent skipping uh just because that's just how

01:42:50   i've always been i used to be like a speed purist right like i would say do not listen like please

01:42:57   don't listen to my shows faster than 1.5 or whatever but i've kind of i've i've grown up and

01:43:03   i've i've grown out of that because honestly like people use silent skipping like you know and that

01:43:08   even could be a like it can be a frustration to me because there are shows where like i'm editing

01:43:13   them really particularly and i am putting the spaces in yeah and the spaces are just just taken

01:43:19   out like it's like if you're listening to this in smart speed at at 1.5x that thing where i said no

01:43:24   that killed at 1.0 with no sports speed that was the funniest thing in this whole episode but

01:43:30   you kind of missed it okay we just we just we just blew on past it because that was all about

01:43:34   like timing and and and stuff like that now i agree with you um what i always have said and i believe

01:43:41   this is um my podcasts are made for 1x and you can do what you want with them but like their

01:43:49   support the supported speed is 1x i make it to sound right at 1x and then you can do what you

01:43:58   like with it and people listen really fast and that's fine that's fine but what i don't do is

01:44:04   think oh now how's this going to work in smart speed and what's it going to sound like at 1.2

01:44:08   and i'm just i'm not going to do that that that i'm not going to do that's take it into your own

01:44:13   hands and make your own judgments also we never ever ever ever need to hear again when we're live

01:44:20   in person or if that ever happens again or on a live stream i never need to hear it again that

01:44:25   we sound drunk so slowly that 1x no i don't no i don't this is how i actually speed you listen so

01:44:32   quickly oh i have to remember that i have to try no no you listen too fast that's that's what it is

01:44:43   if you'd like to send in a question for a future episode just send out a tweet with the hashtag

01:44:47   ask upgrade we'd love to get some more of these kind of run a little low right now so ask anything

01:44:52   you want especially like uh stuff about working at home me and jason have been doing it for five

01:44:57   years at least right so we have tips we have to share i will say but about anything technology

01:45:02   related or whatever you want to send out a tweet with the hashtag ask upgrade and they're collected

01:45:06   up into a document so please send some of those in uh thanks so much for listening thanks to our

01:45:11   sponsors this week squarespace linode pingdom and ero if you want to find jason's work online he is

01:45:17   at jason l j s n e double l and you can find his work writing over at sixcolors.com i am i mike i

01:45:24   m y k e thank you thank you as always so much for listening to this show uh we genuinely genuinely

01:45:30   appreciate it if you want to support the show you can become a relay fm member you got a relay.fm

01:45:35   membership but there's also a link in your show notes of this episode to support upgrade

01:45:40   if you feel like you would like to do that we would appreciate it if not totally cool uh don't

01:45:46   forget stay inside wash your hands all that fun stuff we're gonna get through this together as

01:45:50   long as we keep listening to podcasts am i right jason yep thanks so much for listening until then

01:45:56   say goodbye jason snow goodbye everybody

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