Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:08 ◼   ► From relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 265. Today's show is brought to you by Pingdom, FreshBooks, and DirectMail. My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined by Mr. Jason Snell.

00:00:20 ◼   ► Hello, Mr. Myke Hurley. Welcome home. Hello, Jason Snell. I have a #SnellTalk question for you. Oh. Alright. Could you believe that's how we're going to start the episode?

00:00:29 ◼   ► That's unusual for us to start with the first segment, but okay, I'll allow it.

00:00:33 ◼   ► It's coming from Raphael. Raphael asks what your daily average word count is, and I wanted to maybe refine it a little in case you don't know the answer to that question, but you may.

00:00:42 ◼   ► And I wanted to add to it to say like this time of the year when you're writing reviews, we're going to talk about some of those later on, what is kind of the average amount of words that you will write in a day if you're really focused?

00:00:56 ◼   ► Okay, so I don't, my job is not just sit and write words. So I don't have, I'm not a, like I know novelists and they have a target count for every day.

00:01:10 ◼   ► And I'm sure when you have done NaNoWriMo you've tried to do like a target.

00:01:14 ◼   ► Oh sure, you have to if you're going to write 50,000 words in 30 days, you've got to write 1,666 words a day.

00:01:23 ◼   ► But the, is that the target? I can't even remember. Anyway, there's a target number.

00:01:29 ◼   ► Write 2,000 words a day if you want it. It's going to be in that ballpark.

00:01:32 ◼   ► 1,666 times 30 is 49,980, so you'd have to write, I don't know, like 20 words of thank yous at the end of something.

00:01:40 ◼   ► Yeah, well yeah, yeah, you're right, 1,667 words a day.

00:01:43 ◼   ► The truth is that my job is not just that. I have all sorts of other things I do, including this podcast, and running my own little podcast network and editing, you know, some of that stuff and editing other podcasts.

00:01:57 ◼   ► And I have other parts of my job. So I'm not just sitting and writing.

00:02:01 ◼   ► If I was sitting and writing full time and that was the only thing I did was just writing words, even then you have to actually use the stuff and do research.

00:02:11 ◼   ► You know, you have to think about what you want to write about and you have to try stuff out.

00:02:15 ◼   ► And so the words are just a part of the, just one part of the job.

00:02:19 ◼   ► So I think your refining of this question is good.

00:02:21 ◼   ► I would say, you know, my Macworld column is usually about 1,000 words.

00:02:25 ◼   ► A lot of the pieces that I write are 1,000 words. Link pieces are much shorter, obviously, when I'm just quoting something and linking to it.

00:02:31 ◼   ► I could, you know, so I don't have an average word count.

00:02:35 ◼   ► Your refined answer, like if I'm really cranking, yeah, I could totally write 6,000, 7,000, 8,000 words in a day if that's all I'm doing the whole day.

00:02:44 ◼   ► And it's for something where I have a heavy deadline and I just have to do it.

00:02:48 ◼   ► Or I guess it happens sometimes.

00:02:50 ◼   ► Similarly, but in the inverse, if it is something you are incredibly like focused on, right?

00:02:57 ◼   ► Like that there is a thing where you're like, I am all in on this, like not necessarily as the deadline, but like you've had a spark, right?

00:03:04 ◼   ► And you're just going for it.

00:03:05 ◼   ► Sure, although nothing really focuses you like a deadline.

00:03:08 ◼   ► And I find that those days where I'm writing and writing and writing and writing are generally motivated by having something that has to get done or that I have to dive deep into.

00:03:17 ◼   ► Because it's taxing.

00:03:19 ◼   ► Like writing that much, you are doing nothing else and you get tired, you get mentally exhausted from the focus that's required of that.

00:03:29 ◼   ► And so, you know, it's not something I could do at that level every day, but it does happen.

00:03:33 ◼   ► The iPhone review that I just posted on Six Colors, that's only about 4,000 words.

00:03:39 ◼   ► But usually my pieces are even, you know, OS reviews or whatever, they're a little bit longer.

00:03:44 ◼   ► And, you know, I don't know.

00:03:46 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:03:46 ◼   ► I can definitely write several thousand words in a sitting if I need to.

00:03:52 ◼   ► It just depends on the context of it.

00:03:53 ◼   ► But there's a balance there of the research goes into it.

00:03:57 ◼   ► You got to think about what you're going to write.

00:04:00 ◼   ► You can't just write random words.

00:04:03 ◼   ► So it's complicated.

00:04:04 ◼   ► But I can be very, very productive when I want/need to be.

00:04:09 ◼   ► - Can't we all?

00:04:11 ◼   ► Can't we all?

00:04:13 ◼   ► - No, we can't all.

00:04:14 ◼   ► It's hard.

00:04:15 ◼   ► - Well, maybe some of us can, some of us can't.

00:04:17 ◼   ► We'll find out.

00:04:18 ◼   ► Thank you so much to Raphael for the #snowtalk question.

00:04:22 ◼   ► If you would like to send in a question to help us open an episode of the show in the future, just send out a tweet with the #snowtalk and it will be picked up.

00:04:31 ◼   ► I would like to, I think this may be the last time now that we talk about our St. Jude fundraiser that's been going on throughout the month of September, which has been absolutely incredible.

00:04:41 ◼   ► We have been raising money for St. Jude Children's Cancer Research Hospital throughout the entire month.

00:04:47 ◼   ► We've done many special events, including our podcastathon.

00:04:49 ◼   ► I will remind you, we started with a goal of $75,000.

00:04:54 ◼   ► As we are sitting here today, as we are approaching the very final day of September.

00:05:00 ◼   ► We have currently raised $296,000, Jason.

00:05:04 ◼   ► $296,738 has been raised by the Relay FM audience for St. Jude, which is absolutely unbelievable.

00:05:14 ◼   ► It is an unfathomable amount of money.

00:05:17 ◼   ► Thank you so much to everybody who has donated.

00:05:20 ◼   ► This is an incredible showing of support for a wonderful cause.

00:05:23 ◼   ► You can still donate.

00:05:24 ◼   ► Put us just over that $300,000.

00:05:26 ◼   ► Maybe we will hit that before the end of the day.

00:05:28 ◼   ► I really do hope so, because why not just hit another incredible amount of money.

00:05:31 ◼   ► Just thank you so much.

00:05:34 ◼   ► It's really, you know, from the bottom of my heart, and I'll say it for Stephen too,

00:05:39 ◼   ► and all of us here at Relay FM.

00:05:41 ◼   ► The amount of money that has been generated for this cause really means the world to us.

00:05:46 ◼   ► So thank you so much.

00:05:48 ◼   ► You can go to stjude.org/pineapple to donate to support childhood cancer around the world.

00:05:53 ◼   ► That is stjude.org/pineapple because

00:05:56 ◼   ► St. Jude are an incredible organization to help so many people.

00:05:59 ◼   ► So thank you so much for that.

00:06:00 ◼   ► Isn't that an amazing amount of money?

00:06:03 ◼   ► On one level, I am completely blown away because I remember you standing at my house in my

00:06:10 ◼   ► backyard and saying, well, we're really, we're going to get to $75,000.

00:06:14 ◼   ► We're really going to have a goal of $100,000.

00:06:16 ◼   ► And here you are at nearly triple that goal.

00:06:20 ◼   ► Also, I start to think about what the heck we're going to do for next year.

00:06:24 ◼   ► I don't even want to think about that yet.

00:06:25 ◼   ► If we hit $300,000, we could Drupal our original like 75 goal, but yes,

00:06:29 ◼   ► triple the 100, triple the secret goal.

00:06:32 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:06:32 ◼   ► I don't know what we'll do next year, but boy, howdy, we're going to try.

00:06:36 ◼   ► So we'll think about that.

00:06:38 ◼   ► We heard from lots of people in Apple retail over the last week about the retail experience.

00:06:46 ◼   ► Jason, before we do this, though, actually, I would like to share an Apple retail experience

00:06:49 ◼   ► that I had because it also kind of sucked.

00:06:51 ◼   ► Oh, listen to Myke.

00:06:53 ◼   ► I'm upgrading Myke.

00:06:54 ◼   ► Tell me your story.

00:06:55 ◼   ► I want to tell this story before we talk about the feedback that we got.

00:06:58 ◼   ► So we'll talk about this later on in the episode, but I am now an owner of an Apple watch.

00:07:02 ◼   ► I pre-ordered it.

00:07:02 ◼   ► What?

00:07:03 ◼   ► No.

00:07:04 ◼   ► I would never have guessed.

00:07:05 ◼   ► Who could have imagined that I would have ended up buying an Apple watch?

00:07:08 ◼   ► It's ceramic one after the conversations.

00:07:10 ◼   ► Ceramic.

00:07:11 ◼   ► Oh, what a surprise.

00:07:12 ◼   ► What a surprise.

00:07:13 ◼   ► It's everybody's surprise.

00:07:14 ◼   ► I ordered it, you know, as you do that in my pickup window, I went and then waited for

00:07:19 ◼   ► 30 minutes just at a table while, you know, there were other people coming in,

00:07:24 ◼   ► other people that were coming in after me getting picked up before me.

00:07:27 ◼   ► I had to go and remind the guy that I was there before anybody came over, you know,

00:07:31 ◼   ► and it's this whole thing of like, go wait at this table, go wait at the table.

00:07:35 ◼   ► It's like 20 people around the table.

00:07:37 ◼   ► They do this wild thing where in their system, they're like describing what you look like.

00:07:40 ◼   ► I saw a friend of the show, Alex Cox, having an issue where they took off a sweater and

00:07:46 ◼   ► then couldn't be found by an Apple store employee.

00:07:49 ◼   ► They were telling me about this like a couple of days ago.

00:07:51 ◼   ► So yeah, yeah, but you don't change your, that would be a great thing to do, right?

00:07:55 ◼   ► Go in with like a jacket and a hat and sunglasses.

00:07:58 ◼   ► And then as soon as they leave, take those all off and see how long it takes for them

00:08:02 ◼   ► to figure out who you are.

00:08:03 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:08:04 ◼   ► So I didn't have a great experience in the Apple store either.

00:08:07 ◼   ► Would you like to go through some of the feedback that we did get from Apple store employees

00:08:11 ◼   ► about what's going on here?

00:08:12 ◼   ► Yeah, we definitely heard from a bunch of people trying to, you know, some of it was

00:08:17 ◼   ► explained, some of it was defend.

00:08:19 ◼   ► Some of it was, there was a lot of stuff because we're talking about the retail experience

00:08:23 ◼   ► and obviously it's close to them because they're working in it.

00:08:25 ◼   ► Definitely got some feedback from people who basically were saying, look, this is really

00:08:29 ◼   ► hard.

00:08:30 ◼   ► It's very busy.

00:08:30 ◼   ► We did a pretty good job given how much pressure there is on a launch event, which I totally

00:08:36 ◼   ► get.

00:08:36 ◼   ► I don't think our point when we talk about this stuff is to say that Apple store employees

00:08:41 ◼   ► are not doing a good job.

00:08:41 ◼   ► This is not on the employees at all.

00:08:43 ◼   ► Is it the system that is created around them?

00:08:45 ◼   ► Exactly right.

00:08:46 ◼   ► Our point is, is not, hey, Apple store employees, uh, you work harder or anything like that.

00:08:52 ◼   ► It's that Apple needs to be solving some of these issues that come up and considering

00:08:56 ◼   ► ways to refine and improve the process next time.

00:08:58 ◼   ► But it's a process issue.

00:09:00 ◼   ► And I believe that they are in the same way that like the upgrading process from phone

00:09:05 ◼   ► to phone gets better every year.

00:09:07 ◼   ► I wouldn't be surprised if every year they are refining, they are refining, but neither

00:09:10 ◼   ► thing is perfect, right?

00:09:12 ◼   ► Yeah, I have actually even heard through the grapevine that they're at least toying with

00:09:17 ◼   ► the idea of some of the stuff that we mentioned.

00:09:19 ◼   ► The idea of, for example, if you have an online order, like I was saying about how I ordered

00:09:24 ◼   ► my watch and they said, it's going to, it's not going to be there for however long for

00:09:29 ◼   ► a few weeks, but it's in stock at my local store having, you know, they're apparently

00:09:35 ◼   ► at least through the grapevine.

00:09:36 ◼   ► This is what I hear, uh, at least investigating the possibility of how could you convert an

00:09:40 ◼   ► online order into a store.

00:09:41 ◼   ► Breaking news, Jason Snell says that Apple is converting the ordering process.

00:09:47 ◼   ► Somebody might be considering, I mean, that's not a guarantee that it'll happen, but I think

00:09:52 ◼   ► that that's not surprising.

00:09:53 ◼   ► What we said is it's not surprising that Apple would be looking, I mean, right?

00:09:59 ◼   ► They would be, if you're an Apple store executive, you were not doing your job if you aren't

00:10:04 ◼   ► realizing all the places that you think the system is a little bit weak and are wondering,

00:10:09 ◼   ► and some of the answers may be, wow, that's not going to solve this.

00:10:12 ◼   ► Right.

00:10:13 ◼   ► But thinking about it, thinking about it, because there are some issues, right?

00:10:16 ◼   ► Like if you order your Apple watch and it's not going to be there for two weeks, then,

00:10:21 ◼   ► and it hasn't shipped yet and you go into the store, can they convert it?

00:10:24 ◼   ► Maybe.

00:10:25 ◼   ► But what if it's already shipped?

00:10:26 ◼   ► Well, can they, can they divert your UPS package at that point?

00:10:30 ◼   ► Or are they like, sorry, it's already shipped.

00:10:32 ◼   ► But as we said last week, you end up in this situation, and this happened to me where you

00:10:38 ◼   ► go and buy an Apple watch and then you have to do a return because then the other one

00:10:44 ◼   ► comes a week later and it's got a, one of them has to be returned at that point.

00:10:48 ◼   ► And that's not great for Apple because they have to, they have to restock it and there's

00:10:52 ◼   ► cost associated with it.

00:10:54 ◼   ► So I'm sure they're looking at stuff like that.

00:10:55 ◼   ► The question is, you know, how complicated is it?

00:10:58 ◼   ► How much work do they want to do to make it happen?

00:11:01 ◼   ► And does it, you know, does it work out in terms of their, their set of priorities for

00:11:05 ◼   ► next year, but that I have no doubt that they're, that they're looking at it.

00:11:08 ◼   ► And, and so that's, that's good.

00:11:10 ◼   ► That's good to hear.

00:11:11 ◼   ► I also heard that, you know, at some stores they, they will, in the example of the letter

00:11:17 ◼   ► writer we got last week at some stores, I heard from somebody who said, you know, at our store,

00:11:20 ◼   ► if that happened, we would absolutely see if that Apple watch was in stock.

00:11:25 ◼   ► And if you're already being helped, like they'll bring out the watch in the band and, and ring

00:11:30 ◼   ► you out.

00:11:31 ◼   ► And that's the end of it.

00:11:32 ◼   ► Like the, the reservation system is supposed to be for peak times when they don't have

00:11:37 ◼   ► enough employees.

00:11:38 ◼   ► It should not be deployed ideally when what the letter writer said was there's basically

00:11:43 ◼   ► nobody there and the store had just opened and there was nobody waiting in line.

00:11:46 ◼   ► And, and that letter writer was told make an online order and come back in two hours.

00:11:51 ◼   ► And so I, I definitely heard that that sounded unusual at least to one particular Apple store

00:11:57 ◼   ► employee in their store.

00:12:00 ◼   ► I also heard from somebody just an interesting bullet point about wired transfer, you know,

00:12:06 ◼   ► where you can actually plug the phones in and transfer the data over a wire, which is not

00:12:09 ◼   ► particularly faster than doing the wireless connection.

00:12:13 ◼   ► And what they said was wired connections are really good in the Apple store because everywhere

00:12:21 ◼   ► in the Apple store are iPhones that are shooting out data over wifi to do transfers or whatever.

00:12:29 ◼   ► And it is a hostile environment for data transfer.

00:12:33 ◼   ► I bet.

00:12:33 ◼   ► Right?

00:12:35 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:12:35 ◼   ► And, and as well, just having that as an option, like even just so you are confident that even

00:12:41 ◼   ► if the wifi for the entire store dropped that you're not going to have to start this process

00:12:45 ◼   ► all over again.

00:12:46 ◼   ► Right?

00:12:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:12:47 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:12:48 ◼   ► I mean, it's just, it's, it's a, it's a smart thing.

00:12:51 ◼   ► I mean, I don't think again, I don't, I don't think it's the wifi of the store because I

00:12:56 ◼   ► don't, I think this is all point to point device to device.

00:12:59 ◼   ► But the problem is they're all using the exact same spectrum, which means that, you know,

00:13:04 ◼   ► for those who remember way back to when Steve jobs had to tell everybody to turn off their

00:13:08 ◼   ► computers so that he could demo a wifi feature, like you can saturate the, uh, the, the spectrum

00:13:16 ◼   ► around you with wifi and then the connection.

00:13:18 ◼   ► Billion wifi, like devices connected to the wifi in any Apple store at one time.

00:13:22 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:13:23 ◼   ► Or, or transferring data over a wireless transfer.

00:13:26 ◼   ► Right?

00:13:26 ◼   ► There's so many different ways that works.

00:13:27 ◼   ► So anyway, that was an interesting little data point that the wire, one of the ways that

00:13:30 ◼   ► that wire transfer feature makes sense is actually in Apple stores when they're doing

00:13:35 ◼   ► that.

00:13:35 ◼   ► And then I heard from a few people that, uh, the delays with the watch and getting the

00:13:42 ◼   ► watches out to you and why they need to build in time to do it is actually about what we

00:13:47 ◼   ► speculated about, which is that the watch studio approach, which is very clever because

00:13:51 ◼   ► they're no longer kind of saying, well, you can only have this watch with this band because

00:13:56 ◼   ► now they've got a bunch of boxes with bands and a bunch of boxes with watches and they

00:14:00 ◼   ► put them together in the little wrapper, the little cardboard wrapper that goes over them

00:14:04 ◼   ► with the two tabs.

00:14:04 ◼   ► And now, Oh, you've got an Apple watch with a band, but you got to pick.

00:14:08 ◼   ► That's great.

00:14:09 ◼   ► They got to put those together backstage and then bring them out to you.

00:14:12 ◼   ► And that is a delay because you can imagine that they are getting, they're prepping all

00:14:17 ◼   ► of their watches for pickup from customers and they've got a backlog and there's somebody

00:14:21 ◼   ► back there who has to, and it's not just sticking them in, right?

00:14:24 ◼   ► They've got to like scan them and mark them as being for this order.

00:14:27 ◼   ► And it's like, there's a lot going on to do that.

00:14:30 ◼   ► And that's, this is an example where there is a potentially frustrating buying experience

00:14:36 ◼   ► on the outside of the store that needs to be improved, but it's actually being caused

00:14:39 ◼   ► by an innovation that they're doing that is making that is less customer hostile, which

00:14:45 ◼   ► is you don't have to buy a band you don't want.

00:14:47 ◼   ► You can buy the band you want instead of what they used to do, which is you have to buy

00:14:50 ◼   ► the watch with a band you don't want a lot of the time and then separately get the band

00:14:54 ◼   ► you do, or you have to wait because while they have your watch and they have your band,

00:14:59 ◼   ► they don't have them together.

00:15:00 ◼   ► And so there's nothing you can do about it.

00:15:02 ◼   ► Like that's, it's great that they're taking that part and separating it.

00:15:06 ◼   ► But the bad side of that is that it can cause some delays while the assembly is happening

00:15:13 ◼   ► in the back.

00:15:13 ◼   ► Okay.

00:15:14 ◼   ► That makes sense.

00:15:15 ◼   ► So, but yeah, the big issue is, is like when we talk about the iPhone setup experience

00:15:23 ◼   ► or any other aspect of this, what we're not saying is in this case, the Apple retail employees

00:15:29 ◼   ► are doing a bad job.

00:15:30 ◼   ► What we're saying is how could this be better?

00:15:32 ◼   ► And is what are the weak spots and is Apple trying to figure this out and what are some

00:15:38 ◼   ► possibilities?

00:15:39 ◼   ► And I think that the Apple store employees are working hard under difficult circumstances

00:15:46 ◼   ► whenever there's a product launch.

00:15:47 ◼   ► But those moments of stress are where we can get gleaned some insight into what's working

00:15:54 ◼   ► and what's not working at Apple retail.

00:15:56 ◼   ► And they've shown in the past that they are interested in improving the system and that

00:16:02 ◼   ► will make the process better for the employees and the customers, hopefully.

00:16:07 ◼   ► I just have a couple of headlines for Upstream.

00:16:11 ◼   ► Apple has released three trailers to highlight its children's content for Apple TV Plus.

00:16:16 ◼   ► So Snoopy in Space, which we've seen already, but they've got another trailer for that.

00:16:20 ◼   ► A Ghost Writer, which is a show where four friends team up to figure out why a ghost

00:16:25 ◼   ► at a haunted bookstore is releasing fictional characters into the world.

00:16:28 ◼   ► And it's a mix of like live action and CG.

00:16:31 ◼   ► And then the trailer.

00:16:32 ◼   ► That's a remake.

00:16:33 ◼   ► Yeah, it's a, yeah, they bought that property, right?

00:16:36 ◼   ► That was a 90s TV show.

00:16:38 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:16:38 ◼   ► And I believe in the trailer you can see the kids all using iPhones, which is, there you

00:16:43 ◼   ► go, if you want to, that kind of stuff.

00:16:44 ◼   ► What product placement.

00:16:45 ◼   ► And another trailer for Helpsters, which is the Sesame Workshop project.

00:16:49 ◼   ► This had stage time during the Apple event.

00:16:51 ◼   ► If you remember when Big Bird came on and introduced another character and they talk

00:16:55 ◼   ► about like coding and stuff like that, right, that's this show.

00:16:58 ◼   ► All of these three will be premiering on November 1st as part of the original slate of programming

00:17:04 ◼   ► that Apple will have available, which is in just about a month before Apple TV+ will be

00:17:09 ◼   ► rolled out to people.

00:17:10 ◼   ► And TiVo, Jason, your favorite TiVo customers will soon see ads before their recordings.

00:17:17 ◼   ► Pre-roll ads for all customers, no matter what this description level is on any device

00:17:22 ◼   ► that runs the software called TiVo Experience 4, which is their operating system.

00:17:26 ◼   ► They will be skippable ads, which makes me wonder why even bother.

00:17:31 ◼   ► Well, I mean, the TiVo has ad skipping anyway, and so it feels like they've just decided,

00:17:36 ◼   ► well, why don't we just put pre-rolls in and people can skip those too or not.

00:17:41 ◼   ► And I don't think it makes any sense.

00:17:43 ◼   ► TiVo is not the company that made TiVo.

00:17:45 ◼   ► It's a company called Rovio that renamed itself TiVo after it bought the assets of TiVo.

00:17:50 ◼   ► That was a confusing sentence.

00:17:52 ◼   ► All right, so it's not the original company anymore, is what you're saying?

00:17:55 ◼   ► No.

00:17:56 ◼   ► Okay.

00:17:56 ◼   ► No, they got bought by a company that owns a whole bunch of intellectual property and

00:17:59 ◼   ► various patents and various things and stuff like that.

00:18:02 ◼   ► And they are, I'm not, I'm really not sure what they're doing other than trying a bunch

00:18:09 ◼   ► of stuff out.

00:18:10 ◼   ► It seems kind of baffling to me.

00:18:11 ◼   ► When this was first reported, I think everybody kind of assumed, oh, this might be a way,

00:18:15 ◼   ► because there's a monthly fee to do TiVo, that this might be a way to try and encourage

00:18:20 ◼   ► people to buy the product by making Amazon style, right, with special offers, like a

00:18:26 ◼   ► cheaper version of TiVo or the TiVo service that has some ads in it, and then you can,

00:18:32 ◼   ► you know, or you can pay more.

00:18:33 ◼   ► But they said, nope, we're just going to put this everywhere.

00:18:36 ◼   ► And the demo is really disappointing.

00:18:38 ◼   ► The other thing about this is, well, what's the big deal if you press play and it starts

00:18:42 ◼   ► with an ad, because maybe your recording started with an ad anyway, and you just press the

00:18:45 ◼   ► ad skip button that you press anyway, and you skip the ad.

00:18:48 ◼   ► Well, it's like two things.

00:18:49 ◼   ► One is your question, which is if the people who use your service skip ads, why are you

00:18:54 ◼   ► putting an ad in and making it skippable, because it's like, okay, first off, they don't

00:18:57 ◼   ► want to see the ads.

00:18:58 ◼   ► - It's like selling, one of the main selling points of the entire product, right, like this.

00:19:02 ◼   ► - Is it just that there are some people who don't know how to do that and they just press

00:19:05 ◼   ► play and sit there?

00:19:06 ◼   ► I don't think, I mean, I'm sure some of those people exist, but it seems very, very strange

00:19:10 ◼   ► to focus on that kind of a market.

00:19:12 ◼   ► So it doesn't make any sense.

00:19:15 ◼   ► And then the second thing is the actual experience.

00:19:17 ◼   ► You talk about us picking apart Apple store experiences.

00:19:20 ◼   ► The TiVo experience, at least in the beta that somebody posted on the internet, you

00:19:24 ◼   ► press play on your recording, and then you wait because it's slow and it's loading.

00:19:30 ◼   ► And so you have to sit through the pause as it loads the ad, and then it starts playing

00:19:37 ◼   ► the video ad.

00:19:38 ◼   ► And then you press the skip button, and then you wait because it's bad software until it

00:19:44 ◼   ► shifts to your actual recording, and then you can see the recording.

00:19:47 ◼   ► So if it were seamless and they were patching in, it would be one thing, but you're also

00:19:50 ◼   ► sort of like waiting for the ad to buffer or something.

00:19:53 ◼   ► I don't even know what.

00:19:54 ◼   ► It's such a bad idea.

00:19:55 ◼   ► And I would be more up in arms about it except for two things, one of which is I am not on

00:20:00 ◼   ► TiVo Experience 4, which is also called Hydra, which is a, it's their really lousy overhauling

00:20:06 ◼   ► of their user interface.

00:20:07 ◼   ► I don't like it at all.

00:20:08 ◼   ► So I'm not using it.

00:20:09 ◼   ► I'm still using the old version, which they've had for 15 years, 20 years, and it's great.

00:20:17 ◼   ► And the other thing is, I feel like the era of the DVR box is coming to an end.

00:20:23 ◼   ► And this is why I think it's really dumb for them to do this, is all they're doing is providing

00:20:32 ◼   ► an impetus for people to finally just cut the cord and stop using TiVo and use a cloud

00:20:36 ◼   ► DVR and just be done with TiVo or go to their cable company's DVR.

00:20:43 ◼   ► Their whole idea here is they're a better experience and you have to pay for it, and

00:20:46 ◼   ► it's a third-party experience, but it's better.

00:20:48 ◼   ► For me, the time is coming and I can see it coming now where I just don't have a TiVo

00:20:54 ◼   ► anymore and I'm using an app for an over-the-top TV service that's got a cloud DVR, whether

00:21:00 ◼   ► that is Hulu or PlayStation View or YouTube TV or something else, DirecTV.

00:21:07 ◼   ► There are a bunch of other options.

00:21:11 ◼   ► And if TiVo degrades its service, that'll be a reason to jump, but I will probably jump

00:21:18 ◼   ► eventually anyway.

00:21:18 ◼   ► The number of TV shows that I watch that come over the traditional, even though I have a

00:21:23 ◼   ► cable subscription and I watched shows that come from the fact that I'm paying for cable,

00:21:29 ◼   ► the number that I'm watching off the hard drive of my DVR dwindles by the week.

00:21:35 ◼   ► Because even like I watched a new CBS show yesterday.

00:21:40 ◼   ► I didn't even bother recording it because I have CBS All Access.

00:21:43 ◼   ► So I just watched it on CBS All Access.

00:21:45 ◼   ► I didn't even need to watch it.

00:21:47 ◼   ► I could just stream it.

00:21:49 ◼   ► So I don't know.

00:21:51 ◼   ► It's sad that this is how it's ending for TiVo, but this does feel, to me, it feels

00:21:56 ◼   ► just like the death throes.

00:21:57 ◼   ► They're desperate and they don't care and they're trying to see what sticks.

00:22:01 ◼   ► And it's baffling to me that they would do it this way.

00:22:05 ◼   ► But oh well, it was good while it lasted.

00:22:08 ◼   ► It was the best DVR.

00:22:10 ◼   ► But you know, all things come to an end.

00:22:15 ◼   ► So it goes.

00:22:16 ◼   ► Let's do a good ad.

00:22:17 ◼   ► This episode is brought to you by FreshBooks.

00:22:20 ◼   ► The wonderful people at FreshBooks.

00:22:22 ◼   ► Hey, stop it.

00:22:24 ◼   ► Stop it.

00:22:24 ◼   ► You stop it.

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00:22:25 ◼   ► Let's talk about FreshBooks instead.

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00:23:09 ◼   ► going to see it.

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00:24:03 ◼   ► Our thanks to FreshBooks for their support of this show as FreshBooks.com/upgrade.

00:24:08 ◼   ► So let's talk about the iPhone.

00:24:13 ◼   ► Again, we're going to talk about the iPhone and the Apple Watch again today because there's

00:24:17 ◼   ► more...

00:24:17 ◼   ► There's still more to say.

00:24:18 ◼   ► There's still more to say.

00:24:20 ◼   ► It's September.

00:24:21 ◼   ► This is what we do.

00:24:22 ◼   ► Have you heard the show?

00:24:24 ◼   ► Things keep moving on, right?

00:24:26 ◼   ► 265 episodes later, you know what we're going to do, right?

00:24:30 ◼   ► We've had the phones for a couple of weeks and I think especially with this iPhone, the

00:24:37 ◼   ► more I use it, the more I have to say on it because I keep finding new things or I keep,

00:24:44 ◼   ► you know, new stuff keeps happening.

00:24:46 ◼   ► But you wrote your review and I wanted to get meta with you a little bit.

00:24:49 ◼   ► You wrote your iPhone 11 review, which encapsulates both the 11 and the 11 Pro, right?

00:24:56 ◼   ► You kind of like review them both at the same time and pull out the differences where needed,

00:25:00 ◼   ► but they're very similar phones.

00:25:03 ◼   ► But I wanted to kind of ask you because you published it yesterday, which is about a week

00:25:09 ◼   ► or two after the original reviews went live.

00:25:12 ◼   ► And I kind of wondered, is it tricky to write a review after the embargoed reviews have

00:25:21 ◼   ► gone out?

00:25:22 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:25:23 ◼   ► Yeah, it's very much so because if you get the product under embargo, then you know that

00:25:31 ◼   ► your review is going to land with all of the other reviews at the firing of the starting

00:25:37 ◼   ► gun, whatever that embargo is.

00:25:38 ◼   ► Every review will drop then.

00:25:40 ◼   ► The way it works generally is you get the phone probably at the event.

00:25:43 ◼   ► You get a product either at the event or relatively soon thereafter and you're given a time.

00:25:48 ◼   ► So you can't post this before 3 a.m. on Tuesday.

00:25:51 ◼   ► All right, so you've got a deadline and it's actually quite freeing in the sense that if

00:25:58 ◼   ► you're handed it and there's no embargo, like if literally they hand you something and that's

00:26:03 ◼   ► happened to me where I've gotten, I think the iPad was like that where I was given the

00:26:07 ◼   ► iPad just before the review embargo dropped with that as my embargo.

00:26:11 ◼   ► But it essentially meant that by the time I drove home or like to, I think I drove to

00:26:16 ◼   ► like Dan Frakes's house for Macworld and then we wrote about it.

00:26:20 ◼   ► Like everybody else had had time with it.

00:26:22 ◼   ► It's one of those things where you can write about it now, but what will you say?

00:26:26 ◼   ► You haven't used it.

00:26:28 ◼   ► So what would you do?

00:26:29 ◼   ► And that's where you get a lot of those sort of like anybody have any questions for me

00:26:32 ◼   ► because I haven't used it yet.

00:26:35 ◼   ► So if you're not in that first group where everybody's gotten time to look at it and

00:26:39 ◼   ► consider it and they're all dropping and it really is the news about like what do the

00:26:43 ◼   ► reviewers think of this thing that isn't out yet?

00:26:45 ◼   ► After that happens, like I literally got, I knew those would be dropping on the day,

00:26:52 ◼   ► the Tuesday morning because I had a briefing at noon on Tuesday and I thought, well, the

00:26:58 ◼   ► embargo will be before that.

00:27:00 ◼   ► That's sort of the second wave reviewers.

00:27:03 ◼   ► That's what they do is they don't give it to you before that embargo drops.

00:27:07 ◼   ► They give it to you right after.

00:27:08 ◼   ► So I got my briefing and then I'm sitting there having not used these products until

00:27:14 ◼   ► just now.

00:27:16 ◼   ► And there are already a dozen deeply considered several, almost a week of time thinking about

00:27:22 ◼   ► it reviews online.

00:27:23 ◼   ► There's no point in me even dashing off a review at that point, right?

00:27:27 ◼   ► Like I'd be late, whatever, a day late and a week short of experience if I did something

00:27:35 ◼   ► like that and it wouldn't be any good.

00:27:36 ◼   ► So then it becomes this kind of conundrum, which is I still want to write about it, but

00:27:41 ◼   ► I want to take the time to use the products and I can't be part of the, you know, tell

00:27:48 ◼   ► me whether I want to buy this thing anyway, because so many people bought it on the pre-order

00:27:54 ◼   ► date before any reviews were up.

00:27:56 ◼   ► So, you know, in my audience especially.

00:27:58 ◼   ► So what is it?

00:27:59 ◼   ► It becomes this question of like, what is it?

00:28:02 ◼   ► What is this review even trying to do?

00:28:04 ◼   ► And I struggle with that when it's one of these.

00:28:07 ◼   ► I want to take my time with it.

00:28:08 ◼   ► I don't want to rush something out because there's really no point, but at that point,

00:28:13 ◼   ► you know, it needs to have a point of view and it ends up becoming in this case, you

00:28:16 ◼   ► know, it's different every time.

00:28:18 ◼   ► And this was very hard to write because there was so much else going on.

00:28:21 ◼   ► iOS 13 stuff that I was writing, I'm packing up my daughter to take her to college.

00:28:25 ◼   ► There's lots of things going on.

00:28:27 ◼   ► And so it was a struggle.

00:28:28 ◼   ► And then a week later, you can't write the review, which is like, let me tell you about

00:28:35 ◼   ► what this phone is all about because we know that now.

00:28:38 ◼   ► And we already knew all the specs anyway.

00:28:39 ◼   ► I mean, that's a challenge even if you're an embargoed reviewer.

00:28:42 ◼   ► So what do you do?

00:28:43 ◼   ► What do you do?

00:28:44 ◼   ► And I just decided it's kind of a movie review after the fact of just like an essay about

00:28:55 ◼   ► it.

00:28:56 ◼   ► It's kind of about what's missing and what it's kind of like big picture about like,

00:29:01 ◼   ► what does this mean strategically for Apple?

00:29:04 ◼   ► What are the choices they made?

00:29:06 ◼   ► And, you know, because in the end, basically what I thought was this is my essay about

00:29:13 ◼   ► the iPhone 11 and what I think is interesting about it and what I think it means.

00:29:19 ◼   ► Because in truth, I don't think it can serve the purpose.

00:29:24 ◼   ► You know, if I was writing it for the wire cutter or something, I would say to myself,

00:29:28 ◼   ► well, what's going to happen is that this story is going to get into Google and people

00:29:31 ◼   ► are going to search for it who are looking at buying an iPhone 11 in December or in March

00:29:36 ◼   ► and they'll use this as buying advice.

00:29:38 ◼   ► But I don't think my audience is that audience.

00:29:41 ◼   ► So instead, I just tried to make it about, you know, what do I think about this big picture?

00:29:46 ◼   ► What are the features that jumped out at me?

00:29:50 ◼   ► The decisions Apple made when they were making this thing?

00:29:52 ◼   ► Where do they go from here?

00:29:53 ◼   ► You know, and is that the right decision?

00:29:56 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:29:57 ◼   ► It's a weird position to be in where like they briefed me, they gave me the phones.

00:30:01 ◼   ► I want to be on the record about it, but I'm also not interested.

00:30:06 ◼   ► I'm not under embargo and I'm not interested in writing a quick hit piece.

00:30:10 ◼   ► That's like I said, essentially a day late and a dollar short.

00:30:13 ◼   ► So instead, you know, it went on longer than I would have liked.

00:30:16 ◼   ► I would have liked to have posted this a week after.

00:30:19 ◼   ► But like I said, with the other stuff I was working on and the fact that we were packing

00:30:23 ◼   ► up my daughter and driving her eight hours and then the next day driving her back or

00:30:28 ◼   ► driving back without her, I like I got I got delayed.

00:30:32 ◼   ► So it took a little bit longer than I would have liked, but it finally did pour out of

00:30:35 ◼   ► me the last parts of it on on Saturday.

00:30:39 ◼   ► And that was good.

00:30:41 ◼   ► Because I guess as well, right, like the other thing is you have to find like an angle, right?

00:30:47 ◼   ► Like you have to find a reason for it to exist.

00:30:51 ◼   ► Right.

00:30:52 ◼   ► And I wonder if like that is becoming do you is that becoming more difficult?

00:30:58 ◼   ► Over time, like because especially like these phones, they don't change a ton.

00:31:05 ◼   ► And it's true.

00:31:07 ◼   ► That probably makes it tricky.

00:31:08 ◼   ► And then they're also adding more to the lineup.

00:31:11 ◼   ► Right.

00:31:11 ◼   ► There are like three phones now.

00:31:12 ◼   ► So I guess that makes it tricky.

00:31:13 ◼   ► But is it like, you know, you do a good job with this.

00:31:17 ◼   ► Is it practice for you?

00:31:19 ◼   ► Like that you think in a different way?

00:31:21 ◼   ► Like how do you end up being able to work out what your angle is going to be?

00:31:26 ◼   ► Well, I think the challenge is that it used to be a lot easier to take the big picture

00:31:31 ◼   ► as the as the long lead review, the long term review, because the short term reviews were

00:31:37 ◼   ► very focused on all the new features when there aren't a lot of new features.

00:31:40 ◼   ► I mean, and you could see it like the Verge review is like this and John Gruber's review

00:31:46 ◼   ► is like this.

00:31:47 ◼   ► Like when when there aren't as many, you those reviews end up being kind of the let's step

00:31:54 ◼   ► back and think about what this means.

00:31:56 ◼   ► It's like, come on, guys, leave me something.

00:31:57 ◼   ► You got to just just talk about the just do a Geekbench score.

00:32:02 ◼   ► Okay.

00:32:03 ◼   ► Just do some image samples and move on.

00:32:07 ◼   ► So but yeah, that's that's the challenge.

00:32:10 ◼   ► And so, you know, I think what I've come to is, at least in this cycle, and we'll see

00:32:14 ◼   ► what happens next time where I've come to is basically what I need to do is think about

00:32:21 ◼   ► the big picture and write an essay about where the iPhone is and where it's going for people

00:32:29 ◼   ► who care about that stuff, because I feel like those are the people who read my stuff

00:32:34 ◼   ► and and focus on that.

00:32:38 ◼   ► Now, you know, could I have the challenges that like all the iPhone is so big that all

00:32:44 ◼   ► the angles are taken because back in the Mac world days, what I would have probably done

00:32:46 ◼   ► this focused on let's focus on speed and we'll do battery life testing and we'll do so we'll

00:32:52 ◼   ► do an image sample jury and compare it to other phones and all that.

00:32:56 ◼   ► But the fact is, most of those angles are taken by somebody, right?

00:32:59 ◼   ► Like I'm sure, you know, Mark Spoonhour at Tom's Guide is doing the comparison with the

00:33:05 ◼   ► photography of the Google Pixel 3.

00:33:08 ◼   ► And I'm sure that the Display Mate guy did his whole review of the display on the 11

00:33:15 ◼   ► Pro and how it compared.

00:33:17 ◼   ► And everybody's got every little piece of that and then I fix it as taking it apart.

00:33:22 ◼   ► Like all of those bits are out there.

00:33:24 ◼   ► So, you know, again, I come back to what can I say that's, you know, even remotely interesting

00:33:30 ◼   ► and different on this and that's where I ended up, which is so so the piece a lot of it is,

00:33:34 ◼   ► I mean, some of it's experiential about the about like night mode and how I think they

00:33:38 ◼   ► really nailed that feature and how when we talk about photography, it's not just the

00:33:44 ◼   ► hardware, although it starts with the hardware, it's also the software about how, you know,

00:33:48 ◼   ► how you pick what you upgrade incrementally when you do an incremental upgrade like Apple

00:33:53 ◼   ► does so often and how this year they picked the, I think, two most important things, which

00:33:58 ◼   ► are battery and photography.

00:34:00 ◼   ► And then, you know, I talk about the positioning, which we talked about on the show a lot, like

00:34:05 ◼   ► the idea of making the 11 the center, making them what was the 10R the mainstream phone

00:34:12 ◼   ► and what that means in terms of like saying, you know, the iPhone is a is not a thousand

00:34:19 ◼   ► dollar phone.

00:34:20 ◼   ► That's the pro model for and how I think that positioning marketing wise is way more appropriate

00:34:26 ◼   ► for the product line and makes the makes Apple look better to say, yeah, we do sell a thousand

00:34:31 ◼   ► dollar phone, but it's the pro model up there.

00:34:33 ◼   ► You if that's if you don't want the pro features, just get this.

00:34:36 ◼   ► It's the iPhone.

00:34:37 ◼   ► Like I so I did a little bit about that.

00:34:40 ◼   ► And and and in the end, I did a little thing about like where do they go from here and

00:34:43 ◼   ► where I'm kind of musing to myself about like what's left?

00:34:46 ◼   ► What's the frontier for Apple here?

00:34:48 ◼   ► And that, you know, you put it all together and it's a, you know, four or five thousand

00:34:52 ◼   ► word essay and and then you you press save and take some pictures and you post it.

00:34:58 ◼   ► One of the I want to quote from you that I really liked and it was an interesting thought

00:35:02 ◼   ► that I hadn't I hadn't considered and I hadn't seen anywhere, which is about the pricing

00:35:07 ◼   ► changes.

00:35:07 ◼   ► So I read a little quote from Jason's review, which is very good.

00:35:10 ◼   ► And as one of the reason we talk about is because you do surprise me like how this in

00:35:16 ◼   ► these situations, you always turn out something that is interesting to read.

00:35:21 ◼   ► And I read it and I think to myself, how did you manage to do that?

00:35:24 ◼   ► Because I feel like I already know all this stuff.

00:35:27 ◼   ► So that's why it took me all this time to figure out what to say is like, can I come

00:35:31 ◼   ► up with something interesting here, please?

00:35:33 ◼   ► It doesn't matter.

00:35:33 ◼   ► Something you haven't seen before.

00:35:34 ◼   ► Right.

00:35:35 ◼   ► Like it doesn't matter how long it takes to share something good to say about it.

00:35:37 ◼   ► But this is the quote I want to read.

00:35:39 ◼   ► Let's all consider the narrative about Apple trying to goose iPhone revenue in an era where

00:35:43 ◼   ► sales are flat by raising prices.

00:35:45 ◼   ► Yes, the top of the iPhone price list is the most expensive that it's ever been.

00:35:49 ◼   ► With the iPhone 11, Apple has cut $50 off the starting price of last year's iPhone 10R.

00:35:55 ◼   ► Granted, this is the same starting price as the iPhone 8 in 2017, and it's $50 more than

00:35:59 ◼   ► the 7.1 2016.

00:36:00 ◼   ► Still, I wasn't expecting Apple to cut the starting price of any iPhone ever again.

00:36:04 ◼   ► And here we are.

00:36:05 ◼   ► This is fascinating to me because there's a bunch of stuff about this iPhone, which

00:36:10 ◼   ► is really interesting, right?

00:36:11 ◼   ► Like people have said, oh, 13 was so buggy, they should have delayed it, but they couldn't

00:36:15 ◼   ► delay it because it delayed the iPhone.

00:36:18 ◼   ► They would have pushed it into the next quarter and Apple would have missed their guidance

00:36:21 ◼   ► and Wall Street would have just obliterated them, right?

00:36:25 ◼   ► Like it would have been a disaster if they would have done that.

00:36:28 ◼   ► So they had to release it when they did.

00:36:30 ◼   ► That's why iOS 13 has been so weird because the iPhone could not be delayed.

00:36:34 ◼   ► But then I hadn't considered this, that all they have to show for the iPhone now is it's

00:36:40 ◼   ► not unit sales, right?

00:36:41 ◼   ► It's just revenue now, is that right?

00:36:42 ◼   ► That's how they do it?

00:36:43 ◼   ► - Yep, that's how they do it.

00:36:44 ◼   ► - So now that they are only focusing on the revenue, they've cut the starting price of

00:36:49 ◼   ► their most popular model and have repositioned that phone even more strongly that it should

00:36:55 ◼   ► be the most popular model.

00:36:56 ◼   ► That is a very interesting decision that they've made, right?

00:36:59 ◼   ► - Mm-hmm.

00:37:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, and again, I mean, maybe you could make the argument that when the most interesting

00:37:07 ◼   ► thing about an iPhone, I don't know if it's the most, one of the most interesting things

00:37:10 ◼   ► about an iPhone release is the marketing and pricing decision.

00:37:14 ◼   ► But I would argue that it's always interesting.

00:37:17 ◼   ► I think that's one of the most interesting things, at least for me, about a lot of the

00:37:23 ◼   ► choices Apple makes is why did they choose to price it that way?

00:37:26 ◼   ► Why did they choose to call, especially like the naming, they try so many weird naming

00:37:31 ◼   ► things across the product line, and we talk about it on this podcast.

00:37:34 ◼   ► But so I look at this and I think, well, that's really interesting.

00:37:37 ◼   ► Like they have, last year was a mess, right?

00:37:41 ◼   ► Last year it's like Roman numerals and then letters that are pronounced and there's ProMax

00:37:45 ◼   ► and all of those things.

00:37:46 ◼   ► Like, what does it all mean?

00:37:47 ◼   ► And it was because they really wanted to do the iPhone 10 with the big X and charge $1,000

00:37:52 ◼   ► and blow people away.

00:37:53 ◼   ► All right.

00:37:54 ◼   ► But then they lived it, they had to live it down last year.

00:37:57 ◼   ► This year they're like, okay, reset 11 and made this decision, not just to take the 10

00:38:05 ◼   ► R and upgrade it and make it the, you know, and do a new version, but to make it the 11,

00:38:12 ◼   ► to make it the default.

00:38:13 ◼   ► And I know most of our audience is like, eh, I'm going to get the pro, right?

00:38:16 ◼   ► I get it.

00:38:17 ◼   ► But the default iPhone, the iPhone 11, not the oddball, not the light, not the, you know,

00:38:25 ◼   ► like the 10 R, which was sort of like this weird, like, what does the art mean?

00:38:28 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:38:29 ◼   ► It's the iPhone 11 is that model.

00:38:32 ◼   ► And that they did that.

00:38:33 ◼   ► And that, and that the more surprising thing is that it's $50 less than the 10 R was, which

00:38:39 ◼   ► as I said, I kind of gave up on Apple taking a price slot and reducing the price, but they

00:38:46 ◼   ► did it, they did it.

00:38:47 ◼   ► And it benefits the entire product line to have that product there at that price.

00:38:53 ◼   ► And the, you know, Apple said it's the 10 R was their best-selling phone last year in

00:38:57 ◼   ► the last year.

00:38:58 ◼   ► Presumably that's broken out pro and pro max separately, but still, you know, that's, that's

00:39:03 ◼   ► pretty good.

00:39:04 ◼   ► So, um, I just, I think that that's, I think it's an interesting move on their part.

00:39:08 ◼   ► Matt Walter When you say last year, you don't mean pro pro max, you just mean 11 and 11

00:39:12 ◼   ► max.

00:39:12 ◼   ► Well, I mean, when they say the 10 R, yeah, 10 S, max.

00:39:18 ◼   ► I tried to correct you and made it more wrong, but I think people know what we're saying.

00:39:22 ◼   ► Right.

00:39:22 ◼   ► Like the 10 R outsold, I don't think they mean outsold the 10 S collectively.

00:39:27 ◼   ► I think they mean the, the, they didn't say, but I assume they mean it outsold the individually

00:39:33 ◼   ► the 10 S or the 10 S max.

00:39:35 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:39:35 ◼   ► But still pretty good.

00:39:38 ◼   ► So, uh, I don't know.

00:39:40 ◼   ► I mean, it's a risk on Apple's part too, because if they say the cheaper phone is more, uh,

00:39:47 ◼   ► central, are they going to end up selling more of them percentage wise than they sell

00:39:52 ◼   ► of the pro line?

00:39:54 ◼   ► And does that hurt their, uh, revenue per unit?

00:39:58 ◼   ► Does it hurt their revenue or does it help their revenue because the lower price gets

00:40:02 ◼   ► more people to buy?

00:40:03 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:40:04 ◼   ► It's a, it's a fascinating decision, but I think assuming that people are still going

00:40:08 ◼   ► to buy the pro because they want to buy the pro because that's the one with all the fancy

00:40:11 ◼   ► features and the, and the different sizes and the better display and all of that.

00:40:16 ◼   ► I think it's still better to have those be.

00:40:19 ◼   ► Marketed as pro phones.

00:40:22 ◼   ► And so anyway, I, it's just, it's fascinating because this is, this is the biggest product

00:40:26 ◼   ► consumer product around and they're still tinkering with how to sell it.

00:40:31 ◼   ► It comes back something that you and I talked about six months ago, maybe, which is the

00:40:36 ◼   ► idea that Apple now has to market the iPhone because it doesn't sell itself.

00:40:40 ◼   ► And like in Apple stores, they're doing more aggressive, like actual sales techniques and

00:40:44 ◼   ► Apple retail stores.

00:40:46 ◼   ► This is like that too, right?

00:40:48 ◼   ► This is Apple like mopping the sweat off of its brow a little bit and saying, all right,

00:40:52 ◼   ► how do we, let's get down to business here.

00:40:55 ◼   ► How do we really set up these iPhones so that they sell?

00:40:58 ◼   ► I wanted to talk about, uh, the two main features, camera and battery a little bit more because

00:41:05 ◼   ► I've had more time.

00:41:06 ◼   ► We've all had more time to use the phone.

00:41:10 ◼   ► I am absolutely unequivocally in love with the camera on this phone.

00:41:16 ◼   ► It is absolutely fantastic in every way.

00:41:23 ◼   ► I was just in Munich this past weekend.

00:41:26 ◼   ► I was at my brother's stag in Oktoberfest.

00:41:30 ◼   ► Funnily enough, Tim arrived just as I was leaving.

00:41:33 ◼   ► I cannot talk about whether I spoke to Tim.

00:41:35 ◼   ► I didn't.

00:41:35 ◼   ► But he just, he just pops up sometimes.

00:41:40 ◼   ► And I'm going to include in the show notes, uh, an Instagram story highlight that I made

00:41:44 ◼   ► of like just some of my photos that I took in Munich.

00:41:47 ◼   ► And I'll say these are pretty much all edited in, uh, VSCO, the software, you know, that's

00:41:54 ◼   ► like filters and edits and stuff.

00:41:56 ◼   ► So any of the photos that look good, they are, uh, they're edited in VSCO.

00:42:00 ◼   ► But what comes out of this camera is just stupendous.

00:42:08 ◼   ► Like the, I am absolutely in love with it.

00:42:11 ◼   ► I think it's fantastic.

00:42:13 ◼   ► I'm having so much fun taking pictures with all of the different lenses, right?

00:42:18 ◼   ► Like I'm working out which one's the right one and comparing them, trying to understand

00:42:22 ◼   ► when to use what.

00:42:23 ◼   ► I had, and I actually had a real world instance where the auto cropping thing worked for me.

00:42:29 ◼   ► So there was a group shot that one of my brothers was cut out of.

00:42:35 ◼   ► And the iPhone, it actually automatically arranged it to bring him back in where it's

00:42:40 ◼   ► using the wide angle lens.

00:42:41 ◼   ► Yeah, because they're using, they're doing some machine learning analysis of objects

00:42:45 ◼   ► and people, uh, in video and in stills to figure out that there's something outside

00:42:51 ◼   ► the boundary of the frame that you probably want and then automatically including it,

00:42:57 ◼   ► which is, if you think about it, that is bananas.

00:43:00 ◼   ► And I was so happy to see it like in a real world test, it actually worked for me.

00:43:04 ◼   ► And I was like, yeah, thank you iPhone.

00:43:05 ◼   ► You did it.

00:43:06 ◼   ► I would say though that like, so I crop a lot of my, I crop my images, uh, before I post

00:43:13 ◼   ► them to Instagram.

00:43:14 ◼   ► Just this is a top tip for people.

00:43:16 ◼   ► You post, if you take a picture and you edit it and you want to look really nice on Instagram

00:43:19 ◼   ► stories, crop it to 16 by nine or nine by 16, like in the portrait before you upload

00:43:24 ◼   ► to Instagram, because otherwise Instagram does like a weird compression to it.

00:43:28 ◼   ► Very strange.

00:43:28 ◼   ► I don't know why that happens, but it does.

00:43:30 ◼   ► Pictures always look better if you crop them first.

00:43:32 ◼   ► But when you go into that mode, there's like an auto cropping and arranging now, right?

00:43:36 ◼   ► That the system will try to do, which is new and you can turn it on and off on a picture

00:43:40 ◼   ► by picture basis.

00:43:41 ◼   ► It tries to crop it for you, but there's like, um, you can do like a vertical and horizontal

00:43:46 ◼   ► adjustment, which basically like warps the image, like makes it feel like it's coming

00:43:49 ◼   ► towards you.

00:43:50 ◼   ► Right.

00:43:50 ◼   ► My phone seems to do that a lot and I have no idea what it's doing.

00:43:54 ◼   ► Like it's like, why would you make the image look like that?

00:43:56 ◼   ► So there's still some tweaks to be made to some of the auto cropping, but I was super

00:44:02 ◼   ► impressed by the fact that it was able to fix that group photo for me, which otherwise

00:44:06 ◼   ► would have been completely lost.

00:44:07 ◼   ► So I really loved it.

00:44:09 ◼   ► I absolutely love this camera.

00:44:11 ◼   ► It is fantastic.

00:44:12 ◼   ► And I also wanted to mention the battery I've been traveling.

00:44:18 ◼   ► It's not a battery case levels, you know, like it's not like you can go with this thing

00:44:23 ◼   ► forever and ever, no matter how heavy you're using it.

00:44:26 ◼   ► Right.

00:44:26 ◼   ► Like if you've got like the battery case and I can't wait for the battery case, it's like,

00:44:30 ◼   ► who knows?

00:44:30 ◼   ► It's just like things that last forever.

00:44:33 ◼   ► But I was using my iPhone incredibly heavily as I do whenever I travel.

00:44:36 ◼   ► And just to save my own anxiety, like I top it up a little bit when I was like back in

00:44:41 ◼   ► a hotel room or whatever, but I never hit red on my iPhone.

00:44:45 ◼   ► And I'm taking pictures all the time and taking video all the time, using it for directions,

00:44:49 ◼   ► podcasts and music when I'm walking around.

00:44:51 ◼   ► Like when I'm traveling, that's when I'm hitting my phone the hardest.

00:44:54 ◼   ► And I wasn't willing to go through the test of not topping it up when I had the opportunity.

00:45:00 ◼   ► Right.

00:45:00 ◼   ► But I never got into a situation where I had to turn on the battery saving mode or it hit

00:45:09 ◼   ► the red.

00:45:10 ◼   ► So the battery on this phone is serious.

00:45:13 ◼   ► Yeah, it's, I feel like what there's a lot of debate about, like, if you're really somebody

00:45:22 ◼   ► like Alex Cox who is using these phones to do Pokemon Go and things like that, and you're

00:45:27 ◼   ► killing the battery, or you're in extreme travel mode where you are using it for a long

00:45:31 ◼   ► time or using it really intently.

00:45:33 ◼   ► Like, there are going to be scenarios where you're going to want to charge and top up

00:45:39 ◼   ► or to have a battery case or to have an external battery.

00:45:43 ◼   ► But I think in the normal use on an extended day, not having to worry about it is basically

00:45:53 ◼   ► what has happened.

00:45:54 ◼   ► Which is good.

00:45:57 ◼   ► That's, I think that's the number one battery anxiety for a phone is just, am I going to

00:46:03 ◼   ► be able to get through the end of the day?

00:46:04 ◼   ► If you're doing something more extreme than that, then yeah, bring a battery or make sure

00:46:08 ◼   ► to charge up.

00:46:09 ◼   ► But by adding several hours of battery, you're able to get, you're not going to be able

00:46:14 ◼   ► to go through a second day, right?

00:46:16 ◼   ► It's still, it's not adding 12 hours of battery, but it's adding enough battery for

00:46:20 ◼   ► you to get through your normal day without worrying about it.

00:46:24 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:46:25 ◼   ► They're just, it's a great phone.

00:46:27 ◼   ► It's really, really great.

00:46:28 ◼   ► That camera, boy oh boy, that camera.

00:46:31 ◼   ► I absolutely love it.

00:46:32 ◼   ► Blows me away, but that wasn't the only product.

00:46:35 ◼   ► We actually didn't get to talk very much about the Apple Watch because you just got yours

00:46:38 ◼   ► and I didn't have one.

00:46:40 ◼   ► So we're going to talk a little bit more about the Apple Watch.

00:46:42 ◼   ► I have some questions for you, Jason, about the Apple Watch Series 5.

00:46:45 ◼   ► I stand ready to answer.

00:46:47 ◼   ► Thank you very much.

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00:48:18 ◼   ► I bought the ceramic edition watch.

00:48:22 ◼   ► It had been long rumored that I would do it by me and you and I did it.

00:48:28 ◼   ► So that's that.

00:48:30 ◼   ► Includes a sport band.

00:48:32 ◼   ► Did you know that?

00:48:33 ◼   ► The edition models, they include a sport band no matter what band you get.

00:48:38 ◼   ► For fun?

00:48:38 ◼   ► They have the pins in a matching material.

00:48:42 ◼   ► So I have the white sport band and it has a white ceramic pin in it, which I'm very

00:48:50 ◼   ► happy about because when the so there's a long story for me with this.

00:48:55 ◼   ► I love this watch and I've loved it for a while.

00:48:59 ◼   ► The white ceramic has previously been around in the edition line and that was what it came

00:49:04 ◼   ► paired with, which was a white sport band with the white ceramic pin.

00:49:08 ◼   ► And I was really upset when they had the the configurator because I go, I can't get it.

00:49:11 ◼   ► It's not an option anymore, but they include it in the box.

00:49:13 ◼   ► If you get a titanium, you get a different color.

00:49:15 ◼   ► I think you get like a gray kind of stone, I think they call it.

00:49:18 ◼   ► And I believe it has a titanium pin, not the aluminium pin.

00:49:21 ◼   ► So I've been wearing it all white, white and white for about a week.

00:49:26 ◼   ► I absolutely love the way this watch looks as a piece, right?

00:49:31 ◼   ► Not, I'm not talking about like this looks great for an Apple watch.

00:49:35 ◼   ► I genuinely think this is a very good looking

00:49:38 ◼   ► thing to wear, which is why I opted for this one.

00:49:41 ◼   ► For me, this is just like an item that I want to own because I think it's beautiful, right?

00:49:47 ◼   ► It is not as, I would say it is not as like fancy looking as the other watches that I own.

00:49:56 ◼   ► I feel like even though it is an expensive item, it is more of a casual watch for me

00:50:03 ◼   ► from look perspective.

00:50:04 ◼   ► Like I wouldn't wear it if I was wearing a suit, right?

00:50:07 ◼   ► If I'm going out for a nice dinner, I would not wear the Apple watch.

00:50:10 ◼   ► I am still, this is, I think this is going to be a bit of a journey for me, Jason,

00:50:16 ◼   ► because I am still not sure how and where the Apple watch fits into my life.

00:50:22 ◼   ► I can tell you unequivocally, no matter how much I enjoy it,

00:50:24 ◼   ► this will not be an everyday watch for me.

00:50:26 ◼   ► Because I love my other watches too, right?

00:50:32 ◼   ► And no watch is like a watch that I wear always.

00:50:35 ◼   ► I have a couple and I rotate, but I see what I am feeling and what I want to wear.

00:50:40 ◼   ► But the Always-On display has made this a product that I could wear comfortably.

00:50:47 ◼   ► Because without an Always-On display, the Apple watch just can't work for me

00:50:52 ◼   ► because I want to be able to see the time on my watch, right?

00:50:57 ◼   ► That's what I want.

00:50:59 ◼   ► And I noticed that I am catching it in the Always-On display mode a lot

00:51:04 ◼   ► because I am using the California face and the red second hand that I have disappears, right?

00:51:10 ◼   ► Yes.

00:51:10 ◼   ► So I know, I am reading it a lot, which tells me that if it wasn't an Always-On display,

00:51:15 ◼   ► I would be very frustrated because I would not be able to see the time when I want to, right?

00:51:21 ◼   ► Absolutely.

00:51:21 ◼   ► And I assume, I mean, I know for you, the Always-On display,

00:51:26 ◼   ► well it's new for all of us, but you were wearing Apple watch, right, before.

00:51:31 ◼   ► Yes.

00:51:32 ◼   ► So have you found that to be as nice an experience as you were looking for with the Always-On?

00:51:38 ◼   ► Absolutely.

00:51:39 ◼   ► It's enormous.

00:51:40 ◼   ► Not only are the times where I have to train myself back into the habit of being able to

00:51:44 ◼   ► glance at my watch without doing a kind of dramatic wrist flip.

00:51:48 ◼   ► Yeah, I like that I haven't had been doing that, right?

00:51:51 ◼   ► Because I'm not used to doing that, like raising my wrist up to my eye level to see the time.

00:51:56 ◼   ► But I have imagined that all previous Apple watch users are still trying to train themselves out of

00:52:01 ◼   ► that motion for the time being, right?

00:52:04 ◼   ► Well, and also what I've noticed is sort of an interim.

00:52:07 ◼   ► So sometimes I'll just look at it and see what the time is and then note to myself that I did that

00:52:12 ◼   ► and it wouldn't have worked before.

00:52:14 ◼   ► Other times though, what I'll do is I'll turn my wrist a little bit to look at the time

00:52:18 ◼   ► and sometimes it will trigger and sometimes it won't trigger.

00:52:23 ◼   ► And I'll think to myself, well, this is good because I don't need to worry.

00:52:28 ◼   ► I've seen the time now.

00:52:29 ◼   ► I don't need to trigger it, whereas before I would have had to do another flourish in

00:52:34 ◼   ► order to get it there.

00:52:35 ◼   ► And when it does trigger, I think to myself, well, you know, whatever, that's great.

00:52:40 ◼   ► It will dim almost immediately when I move my watch back.

00:52:43 ◼   ► It's doing some very interesting things in software where if all you do is just move slightly,

00:52:47 ◼   ► it'll brighten up for a minute.

00:52:48 ◼   ► And if you don't interact with it after that, it very quickly or you move, like turn your

00:52:53 ◼   ► wrist back away, it kind of like dims very suddenly.

00:52:56 ◼   ► It's funny how smart it's trying to be with the power saving.

00:53:00 ◼   ► But the funny thing is that I will look at it and then it will brighten up, but I've

00:53:05 ◼   ► already seen what I need to see.

00:53:07 ◼   ► And then I just turn my wrist away and move on.

00:53:09 ◼   ► And it's just another reminder that before it was not just turn your wrist, but turn

00:53:15 ◼   ► your wrist and wait.

00:53:16 ◼   ► And now it's on and now you can see and then you can go about your day.

00:53:19 ◼   ► So yeah, it's a fantastic feature.

00:53:21 ◼   ► Marco on ATP last week made a very clear case for why this is the number one new feature

00:53:29 ◼   ► of the Apple Watch more than cellular, because in the end, you know, a percentage of people

00:53:35 ◼   ► actually use the cellular features.

00:53:36 ◼   ► But, you know, everybody looks at the watch to see the time.

00:53:41 ◼   ► And, you know, it's telling that Apple's ad campaign is it tells the time, right?

00:53:47 ◼   ► Like even Apple is like, yeah, okay.

00:53:49 ◼   ► Yeah, you can you can see the time on it, which is always was the joke, right about when people

00:53:53 ◼   ► would ask me when I was wearing a pebble, they're like, Well, how do you like the digital, you

00:53:57 ◼   ► know, the computer watch only well tells the time like number one is it tells the time

00:54:01 ◼   ► that you got to get that right.

00:54:02 ◼   ► And the always on makes it vastly superior.

00:54:07 ◼   ► Yeah, I think like, you know, I'm in agreement.

00:54:09 ◼   ► I think it's the biggest advancement to the Apple Watch since it's in like, since it originally

00:54:14 ◼   ► came around.

00:54:15 ◼   ► Everything else has been like, this is nice.

00:54:17 ◼   ► So they're adding more sensors.

00:54:18 ◼   ► That's great.

00:54:19 ◼   ► But like, this fundamentally changes the product in a way that it should definitely have, right?

00:54:25 ◼   ► Like this is something that should have been around for a long time.

00:54:28 ◼   ► And I'm pleased that it is.

00:54:29 ◼   ► However, it is the watch faces themselves, which would mean that I would never leave

00:54:35 ◼   ► the analog wall behind.

00:54:37 ◼   ► And I'm going to be echoing some of what Marco said on ATP is a great segment.

00:54:42 ◼   ► Great segment.

00:54:44 ◼   ► I am in agreement with him.

00:54:45 ◼   ► Well, one is that I feel like I can never get exactly what I want, which is more frustrating

00:54:49 ◼   ► to me here.

00:54:49 ◼   ► Isn't like as many options as the California face offers.

00:54:53 ◼   ► It's still, I still feel like they are very close in some ways to the face that I want.

00:54:58 ◼   ► Yep.

00:54:58 ◼   ► They still aren't there because my realization the other day was that the face that I like

00:55:03 ◼   ► the best is still utility, which they haven't updated for the new screen sizes, which means

00:55:08 ◼   ► it's the old style complications and it's more limited.

00:55:11 ◼   ► But the face itself is exactly the face that I want.

00:55:15 ◼   ► It's the face.

00:55:16 ◼   ► And it's honestly, some of that is just nostalgia.

00:55:19 ◼   ► That's the face of the two analog watches I wore from, you know, from when I got married.

00:55:25 ◼   ► And that was a, that was a wedding gift.

00:55:28 ◼   ► And then I replaced that with another one that was similar and they looked just like

00:55:31 ◼   ► that face.

00:55:32 ◼   ► And it's like, I like that face, but they haven't updated it.

00:55:35 ◼   ► And although you can get close with the California face, it's not quite the same.

00:55:41 ◼   ► And Marco's point, I mean, Marco came strong out of the gate because he basically said,

00:55:46 ◼   ► I mean, first he said that Apple can't design analog watch faces and that's harsh, but I

00:55:54 ◼   ► think maybe fair.

00:55:55 ◼   ► And his bigger point, which I think is, is the strongest point he made, which is for

00:56:02 ◼   ► the, for all the importance that watch faces have, they are the primary interface of your

00:56:07 ◼   ► fancy computer watch.

00:56:09 ◼   ► It sure feels like Apple doesn't spend proportionally as much time on it as they do other parts

00:56:15 ◼   ► of the watch.

00:56:16 ◼   ► And I think that's, I think that's a strong point.

00:56:19 ◼   ► I get that they need to build out an app store and they need to fix these bugs and they have

00:56:23 ◼   ► to have to make new APIs for standalone watch apps.

00:56:26 ◼   ► And like, I get it, but you gotta do the, it's like what we said last year, right?

00:56:31 ◼   ► You gotta do the faces, right?

00:56:32 ◼   ► And if you're not going to do third-party watch faces, then it's incumbent on you.

00:56:37 ◼   ► You have taken by, by preventing other people from building watch faces, you are now responsible

00:56:44 ◼   ► for doing a good job building watch faces.

00:56:46 ◼   ► And although the watch face story is way better in this new version of watchOS, it really

00:56:51 ◼   ► is way better because they have created more flexible faces.

00:56:55 ◼   ► Like it's still with all the improvement that they've made, still not good enough.

00:57:00 ◼   ► It's just not good enough given how important it is.

00:57:03 ◼   ► I like the California face.

00:57:06 ◼   ► But California with more than one, uh, when you take it from full screen to circular,

00:57:10 ◼   ► so you can add corner complications is a horrific mess.

00:57:13 ◼   ► Like in its square version, I think it's the best looking Apple watch face.

00:57:18 ◼   ► And it's like when it's filling up the screen and you have one complication, uh, or do you

00:57:23 ◼   ► think have two, a date and a complication.

00:57:25 ◼   ► In the smaller style, it's a nightmare.

00:57:28 ◼   ► And plus there's too many complications for me anyway.

00:57:30 ◼   ► I don't want five or six, I just want like a couple, but I feel like that they, there's

00:57:34 ◼   ► still more they could do.

00:57:35 ◼   ► Like, I don't know, just give me a piece of software to let me literally make my own from

00:57:39 ◼   ► a bunch of drag and drop things, put it on my iPhone, right?

00:57:42 ◼   ► Like let me make it, let me do it.

00:57:43 ◼   ► Give like, give me the tools to build my own watch face, right?

00:57:47 ◼   ► Like just, I don't know what you want to do if you don't want third parties to make them.

00:57:51 ◼   ► But I think that ultimately there is nothing that Apple can do ever to give me a watch

00:57:58 ◼   ► face that I'm going to prefer over an analog watch face because it's the materials on a

00:58:04 ◼   ► real watch that I love, the different textures, the way that light hits it when you turn it

00:58:08 ◼   ► this way or that way, you know, like, sure.

00:58:11 ◼   ► The way that those hands stand up from the face, right?

00:58:15 ◼   ► Or like the way that the indices, like the numbers and stuff, like the way that they're

00:58:18 ◼   ► layered and the material they're made of and how does it differ, right?

00:58:22 ◼   ► Like you can't give me that because it's an OLED screen and it's always going to be an

00:58:26 ◼   ► OLED screen.

00:58:27 ◼   ► And like, this is not like a slam against Apple, but it's just like for, if you are a

00:58:32 ◼   ► person that enjoys these types of things and watches, there's only ever so much that they

00:58:37 ◼   ► can do anyway.

00:58:38 ◼   ► So, but the thing that frustrates me is my computer watch can't be customized enough.

00:58:44 ◼   ► And I'm just like, what are you doing?

00:58:47 ◼   ► Like, let me do, you get, they get so close, but they never nail it.

00:58:52 ◼   ► And I'm not buying mechanical watches and I am basically all in on the computer watch.

00:58:57 ◼   ► And I feel the same way as you, right?

00:59:00 ◼   ► Like I'm not concerned about it being so good that it replaces a mechanical watch.

00:59:07 ◼   ► I just want it to be good.

00:59:09 ◼   ► And I think that Apple knows and that's good that like, there are things that it will never

00:59:17 ◼   ► be able to do that a mechanical watch can give you.

00:59:20 ◼   ► And that's fine.

00:59:21 ◼   ► Cause it's, it's got its own strengths.

00:59:23 ◼   ► It is its own thing.

00:59:24 ◼   ► It is a computer watch.

00:59:25 ◼   ► I get it.

00:59:26 ◼   ► But yeah, it could be better.

00:59:28 ◼   ► And I think the frustration with the California face is in some ways it's exactly the right

00:59:34 ◼   ► path for Apple to go down.

00:59:35 ◼   ► And maybe this is the thing is that they did like these two new super flexible faces and

00:59:41 ◼   ► they put all their work into that.

00:59:44 ◼   ► And then there, you know, the others are around and that's okay.

00:59:50 ◼   ► But like, I feel like they did a lot, but it's still not enough.

00:59:54 ◼   ► And I don't know what the answer is there.

00:59:56 ◼   ► I feel like the answer is either that they need way more people and resources put into

01:00:01 ◼   ► making their faces good.

01:00:03 ◼   ► And I don't know who is doing faces.

01:00:05 ◼   ► I mean, what Marco said is as a mechanical watch fan, he feels very strongly that whoever

01:00:10 ◼   ► is making these decisions at Apple doesn't understand watches.

01:00:14 ◼   ► That they are maybe a designer who has a watch or likes watches, but he feels, and I can't

01:00:20 ◼   ► say maybe there is somebody who absolutely loves watches.

01:00:22 ◼   ► And for some other reason, they don't get to be heard at Apple.

01:00:25 ◼   ► But in the end, the output to somebody who was really into mechanical watches feels,

01:00:31 ◼   ► and I totally get what he's saying, feels like they don't get it.

01:00:34 ◼   ► And that it's people who don't wear watches designing watches.

01:00:38 ◼   ► And that's a bad place to be in.

01:00:39 ◼   ► You want somebody who is aware of, and I'm not saying that everything they do should

01:00:45 ◼   ► be trying to fulfill the desires of people who like fancy watches, because that's absolutely

01:00:49 ◼   ► not true because that's not their whole audience.

01:00:52 ◼   ► What I am saying is, I think there's truth in the idea that if you don't spend all your

01:00:58 ◼   ► time thinking about how other designers have applied themselves to the issues of watches,

01:01:04 ◼   ► you're not going to have the best output.

01:01:08 ◼   ► And I think that's where Marco is coming from when he talks about this.

01:01:11 ◼   ► So I get that.

01:01:13 ◼   ► And I feel it too, as somebody who is not an obsessive watch person, I feel that same

01:01:17 ◼   ► way.

01:01:17 ◼   ► I think it's really telling that this boring face that was part of the original watch face

01:01:23 ◼   ► lineup is still my favorite, even though they have done nothing to update it to the new

01:01:28 ◼   ► complication formats or to the new screen size.

01:01:32 ◼   ► And it's still the one that I like the best.

01:01:34 ◼   ► I also like Marco's bit about giving up on analog faces altogether and embracing digital.

01:01:39 ◼   ► I use Infograph Modular way more often than I ever expected.

01:01:44 ◼   ► And it's ugly.

01:01:46 ◼   ► But you know what? With the new watch, I'm not using it anymore.

01:01:49 ◼   ► And that's because I don't want to look down at my wrist and see numbers.

01:01:53 ◼   ► I want to look down at my wrist and see those hands.

01:01:56 ◼   ► And now with the Always On Display, I can do that.

01:01:59 ◼   ► So I'm back to the analog faces again.

01:02:03 ◼   ► I understand why people use the Infograph faces because you are embracing what the wrist

01:02:08 ◼   ► computer is, which is like to give you all of the data.

01:02:11 ◼   ► And I used to be like that, but now my tastes have changed, right?

01:02:14 ◼   ► So honestly, right now my Apple watch face has the date and then I'm using Underscore's

01:02:21 ◼   ► new Moon++ because I think it's nice.

01:02:24 ◼   ► So it's a moon complication that actually is accurately representing the moon as it is

01:02:33 ◼   ► in your location.

01:02:33 ◼   ► And I just think that I have it in monochrome, so it's black.

01:02:38 ◼   ► I have the all black face and just everything's white.

01:02:42 ◼   ► So then when it goes into the Always On mode, the color doesn't change.

01:02:45 ◼   ► Because if I had the blue or the addition watch, it has its own color called addition,

01:02:53 ◼   ► which is kind of off white.

01:02:55 ◼   ► If I have that color, when I turn my wrist, my watch lights up in my face, which I don't

01:03:00 ◼   ► like.

01:03:00 ◼   ► So I now have it so there's not too much difference between the dimmed mode and the regular mode.

01:03:06 ◼   ► Because that doesn't work for me.

01:03:08 ◼   ► I don't want my watch to shout at me that it is available to show me the time.

01:03:13 ◼   ► You following what I'm saying?

01:03:14 ◼   ► >> Yeah.

01:03:15 ◼   ► >> Right?

01:03:15 ◼   ► There if you have it as a color, it just like just lights up.

01:03:18 ◼   ► It's like, no, that's not what I want.

01:03:21 ◼   ► But anyway, I really like this.

01:03:22 ◼   ► I just think that it is a -- this is just I think the nicest looking that I've been able

01:03:26 ◼   ► to get my watch to fit my own tastes as a person.

01:03:31 ◼   ► But I just don't think that it is -- I have an option really to make it more computery.

01:03:38 ◼   ► I am happy to have the health monitoring features back.

01:03:41 ◼   ► It's good to know.

01:03:42 ◼   ► I've been doing the ECG stuff for fun, right?

01:03:45 ◼   ► Like but there is also when I'm putting it on and it's walking me through, I set it up

01:03:49 ◼   ► as a new watch, it's walking me through all the things that it does, you know?

01:03:51 ◼   ► Like it can do all the fall detection.

01:03:53 ◼   ► It can just monitor my heart whenever I want.

01:03:55 ◼   ► It's making sure I'm moving around.

01:03:57 ◼   ► I'm reminded again, you know, I hadn't forgotten, but it was a nice like refresher of this is

01:04:02 ◼   ► one of the reasons that this thing is such a good product is that you have an extra piece

01:04:08 ◼   ► of mind in your life, that there is a device that is strapped to you, which is making sure

01:04:13 ◼   ► you're being healthy.

01:04:14 ◼   ► I like that.

01:04:15 ◼   ► I'm really struggling with notifications though.

01:04:20 ◼   ► I feel like it doesn't matter how much I bring it down, it's still too many.

01:04:24 ◼   ► And I'm wondering how you have your watch set up kind of like from a notifications mindset.

01:04:31 ◼   ► Do you let it monitor -- mirror what's on your iPhone?

01:04:34 ◼   ► No.

01:04:35 ◼   ► Okay.

01:04:35 ◼   ► So you've -- what do you kind of like a top level, what kinds of things do you have going

01:04:41 ◼   ► to your watch?

01:04:42 ◼   ► Calendar notifications, messages, and some like a couple of smart home notifications,

01:04:48 ◼   ► like when my door locks and unlocks because I'm using that complication actually to unlock

01:04:54 ◼   ► my door.

01:04:55 ◼   ► It's one of these things that frustrates me is that my smart door lock will pair with

01:04:59 ◼   ► the Bluetooth in my phone, but not my watch.

01:05:01 ◼   ► So when I leave with just the watch, I have to manually unlock the door when I come back

01:05:05 ◼   ► because it should be able to pair via Bluetooth and talk and they don't.

01:05:09 ◼   ► And it's -- I don't like that.

01:05:11 ◼   ► So I've got those, but that's it.

01:05:13 ◼   ► That's it.

01:05:13 ◼   ► Like I have turned off most of my notifications because I don't want them.

01:05:18 ◼   ► I want -- if somebody texts me, I want to see it because that is -- I will field that

01:05:24 ◼   ► on my watch a lot.

01:05:25 ◼   ► And I actually really like that, especially with the canned answers.

01:05:28 ◼   ► I can have whole conversations with people with nothing but canned answers.

01:05:32 ◼   ► It's great.

01:05:33 ◼   ► The standard canned answers make you sound like a crazy person.

01:05:37 ◼   ► I have -- I had a conversation the other day with -- I think with Steven Hackett where

01:05:43 ◼   ► I actually started answering with weird, not quite right responses because I just thought

01:05:48 ◼   ► it would be funny and didn't say anything about it.

01:05:51 ◼   ► They are so kind of -- they are so straight to the point sometimes.

01:05:56 ◼   ► It's like if you're trying to have a conversation with somebody, they have no emotion in them.

01:06:02 ◼   ► I feel like then -- I'm sure that there was supposed to be a little bit more smart added

01:06:06 ◼   ► to this stuff and I just don't feel it.

01:06:08 ◼   ► But I would like to -- I know you can add some of your own and I've done that in the

01:06:12 ◼   ► past and I should do it again for this watch.

01:06:14 ◼   ► But I want to -- I've been thinking a lot about notifications, right?

01:06:17 ◼   ► And here's one thing that's been bugging me.

01:06:19 ◼   ► Because the most of the stuff that I have really is like calendar, iMessage, Slack.

01:06:25 ◼   ► They're basically the three applications and then maybe like my airline, right?

01:06:30 ◼   ► Like my British Airways app can send me notifications because I feel if I'm traveling, I probably

01:06:34 ◼   ► want to know.

01:06:34 ◼   ► Yes, that's true, yeah.

01:06:35 ◼   ► It's like direct communication applications are the things that I want the most.

01:06:39 ◼   ► But so here is a thing that I want to put to you.

01:06:42 ◼   ► If I'm sending you a message in Slack, I DM you and I send you four DMs in a row.

01:06:48 ◼   ► Do you need to be notified four times?

01:06:51 ◼   ► I don't think that you do.

01:06:54 ◼   ► I agree because it should be intelligent enough to know that I did a notification and you

01:07:00 ◼   ► haven't seen it.

01:07:01 ◼   ► Just wait, you know if I've seen it, watch.

01:07:03 ◼   ► Just wait.

01:07:04 ◼   ► That's right.

01:07:04 ◼   ► This is my biggest problem.

01:07:06 ◼   ► Also, I would say just a little thing.

01:07:10 ◼   ► I don't even have Slack on my watch.

01:07:12 ◼   ► Like I don't --

01:07:13 ◼   ► Yeah, I know.

01:07:13 ◼   ► And I know you run your business on Slack and -- but like there is nothing in Slack.

01:07:19 ◼   ► I don't have the app.

01:07:20 ◼   ► It's just the DMs.

01:07:21 ◼   ► Yeah, no, but I don't have those turned on.

01:07:23 ◼   ► There is nothing in Slack for me important enough to buzz me on my watch.

01:07:28 ◼   ► Yeah, I understand that for a lot of people.

01:07:32 ◼   ► That's not the way it is for me, right?

01:07:33 ◼   ► Like --

01:07:33 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:07:34 ◼   ► I have like -- if you need me, you need me.

01:07:37 ◼   ► But here's the thing.

01:07:39 ◼   ► For you and the way you use the watch, because what I'm really talking about is when I leave

01:07:44 ◼   ► without my phone, have it be on the phone and not go to the watch.

01:07:48 ◼   ► And then you don't need to deal with it enough.

01:07:51 ◼   ► Yeah, but I'm like -- this is it. I'm trying to like work out what's best for me.

01:07:54 ◼   ► And again, Underscore, who I mentioned already, who made me a plus plus, he said to me,

01:07:58 ◼   ► "Why don't you just turn haptics off?"

01:07:59 ◼   ► And I was like, "That's not a bad idea."

01:08:02 ◼   ► Because then I can just check my notifications whenever I'm ready to.

01:08:06 ◼   ► So I'm thinking about trying that as like another thing, because I find the haptics

01:08:11 ◼   ► mostly distracting because of this idea, right?

01:08:13 ◼   ► Where like -- say there's like a group thread that I'm in.

01:08:15 ◼   ► I mean, I have a bunch of group texts.

01:08:17 ◼   ► Oh, and I just keep --

01:08:19 ◼   ► I know everybody's got something to do not disturb.

01:08:21 ◼   ► I don't want to do that.

01:08:21 ◼   ► Like, I don't feel like I need to do that.

01:08:23 ◼   ► But like, if the group thread is popping off, tell me one time until I look.

01:08:29 ◼   ► I have had that happen.

01:08:31 ◼   ► And that is very frustrating, where suddenly a group thread that I'm on that I don't have

01:08:37 ◼   ► notifications turned off.

01:08:38 ◼   ► And I will give you another little secret, which is a lot of my group threads,

01:08:42 ◼   ► I've just turned off notifications.

01:08:45 ◼   ► I see the little alerts on my phone, but I've turned off the haptics and all of that,

01:08:49 ◼   ► because it's -- because it will -- they're having -- other people are having a conversation,

01:08:53 ◼   ► and I'll get buzzed.

01:08:54 ◼   ► I walk on the dog, and I'm at the dog park, and my watch will tap me like eight times

01:08:59 ◼   ► in the span of two minutes, because other people are sending emojis to each other.

01:09:03 ◼   ► And it's like, I don't.

01:09:05 ◼   ► Please unsubscribe me from everything here.

01:09:08 ◼   ► And it is -- yes, I agree.

01:09:10 ◼   ► It needs to be smarter about like, oh, there's a conversation going on.

01:09:13 ◼   ► Now you know.

01:09:14 ◼   ► You haven't tapped through to look at it, so please leave it alone.

01:09:18 ◼   ► I wouldn't give up haptics, because I like them when -- you know, I've gotten to a happy

01:09:25 ◼   ► place where my distractions are so minimized that I really want to get tapped on my wrist

01:09:30 ◼   ► when there's something going on.

01:09:32 ◼   ► But I agree.

01:09:33 ◼   ► If I was getting -- if I was on a group text, and I was getting tapped every 20 seconds,

01:09:39 ◼   ► I would go bananas.

01:09:40 ◼   ► I would just be like -- and that's why I've turned off notifications for some of my threads,

01:09:45 ◼   ► because it's like, stop, you people, stop.

01:09:47 ◼   ► I don't want to hear it.

01:09:48 ◼   ► And I feel like I -- I feel like I've been begging Apple for this for a long time.

01:09:58 ◼   ► Please let me get granular.

01:10:00 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:10:02 ◼   ► Well, and the intelligence thing -- and I think Apple does this with iMessage to a certain

01:10:05 ◼   ► degree, and that's actually part of the funny thing, is that I think some of this may be

01:10:09 ◼   ► that Apple has to enable this for third-party apps.

01:10:13 ◼   ► But maybe not.

01:10:14 ◼   ► Maybe third-party apps could do some of this on their own.

01:10:16 ◼   ► But, like, yeah, the intelligence to say, I don't want to be notified.

01:10:20 ◼   ► Like, they made lots of notification center updates on the phone.

01:10:24 ◼   ► But I agree with you, it does sort of feel like you need some notification -- more granular

01:10:28 ◼   ► notification preferences for the watch, like, roll up all the alerts.

01:10:33 ◼   ► Like, if I get a second alert from the same Slack channel or DM, like, I don't need it.

01:10:40 ◼   ► Or within a certain period of time.

01:10:42 ◼   ► It's like, stop, don't bombard me with this.

01:10:44 ◼   ► It's all part of the same thing.

01:10:46 ◼   ► One notification is all I need.

01:10:48 ◼   ► And then let's -- but it doesn't seem to do that.

01:10:51 ◼   ► Siri I found to be mostly okay.

01:10:52 ◼   ► The raise to talk feature I really like.

01:10:54 ◼   ► And I'm still kind of getting my head around, like, when it -- how close you exactly need

01:10:59 ◼   ► it to your mouth to get it to work.

01:11:00 ◼   ► But I do like that feature.

01:11:01 ◼   ► The give me a moment type stuff is still eternally frustrating.

01:11:05 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't understand why that happens when it -- I've had good luck with Siri lately

01:11:11 ◼   ► on the watch where it's actually worked pretty well to do things like set timers, which is

01:11:16 ◼   ► most of what it is.

01:11:16 ◼   ► Is I've got, like -- I've put meat on the grill and my hands are, you know, I'm trying

01:11:22 ◼   ► not to touch anything with my hands until I can watch them.

01:11:25 ◼   ► And I will lift my wrist and I'll tell it to set a timer.

01:11:28 ◼   ► And that actually works most of the time.

01:11:29 ◼   ► But yes, there is nothing more frustrating than having it do that kind of, like, loop

01:11:34 ◼   ► where it's, you know, give me a moment.

01:11:35 ◼   ► I'm not able to listen.

01:11:37 ◼   ► And I don't know why that happens.

01:11:39 ◼   ► And it's really frustrating.

01:11:40 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:11:42 ◼   ► So I would say that on the whole, I've been happy with Siri as well.

01:11:48 ◼   ► I've found that I have not had issues where I've asked it to do something and it has misunderstood

01:11:55 ◼   ► me.

01:11:56 ◼   ► When I can get it to listen, right?

01:11:58 ◼   ► Like, when it's executing the command, it is getting correctly what I'm saying to it.

01:12:04 ◼   ► So I find that is, you know, as someone who's been away from the watch for a while, it's

01:12:07 ◼   ► something that continues to get better.

01:12:09 ◼   ► I have absolutely no battery life complaints.

01:12:11 ◼   ► The watch is lasting a whole day for me.

01:12:13 ◼   ► I had one day where I got the 20% warning at like 11pm.

01:12:17 ◼   ► But that's it.

01:12:17 ◼   ► I say this because it seems like it's a bit of a mixed bag for a lot of people about the

01:12:22 ◼   ► battery life.

01:12:23 ◼   ► I want to know what your feelings are on it.

01:12:25 ◼   ► But for me, as somebody who has never had a series 4, right, that I find the battery

01:12:30 ◼   ► life to be great.

01:12:31 ◼   ► It's lasted me a whole day.

01:12:32 ◼   ► Yep.

01:12:34 ◼   ► I agree.

01:12:35 ◼   ► I have a larger model.

01:12:38 ◼   ► I've heard the complaints with the smaller model.

01:12:41 ◼   ► I also think John Syracuse's data point where his wife's series 4 lost battery life on

01:12:48 ◼   ► iOS 13 is interesting that there are some other bugs at play here.

01:12:52 ◼   ► I haven't had a problem with it.

01:12:53 ◼   ► Okay.

01:12:53 ◼   ► Yeah, so I've had no issues there.

01:12:55 ◼   ► So I'm happy with that.

01:12:56 ◼   ► That's working.

01:12:57 ◼   ► It's working great for me.

01:12:58 ◼   ► So I don't know what my life is going to be like with the Apple Watch, but I like it.

01:13:04 ◼   ► But I feel like I still need to get my head around the notifications part.

01:13:11 ◼   ► I like it as a nice looking product and as a nice watch.

01:13:16 ◼   ► And it's a bonus that I can interact with it in computery-like ways.

01:13:20 ◼   ► But I will follow up if and when I work out how I'm going to actually be running this

01:13:25 ◼   ► thing.

01:13:26 ◼   ► I might give the no haptics a go.

01:13:28 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:13:28 ◼   ► I'm still in the tweaking mode.

01:13:30 ◼   ► But I do like it.

01:13:33 ◼   ► But the one thing that I have recognised is that idea of give me one notification for

01:13:39 ◼   ► a conversation.

01:13:40 ◼   ► That's all I require.

01:13:41 ◼   ► And then move on from there.

01:13:43 ◼   ► All right, let's do some #AskUpgrade to finish out today's episode.

01:13:48 ◼   ► But first, let me thank our final sponsor of this week.

01:13:51 ◼   ► And that is our friends over at Pingdom.

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01:14:39 ◼   ► And so you can see what's affecting user experience.

01:14:42 ◼   ► We use Pingdom here at Relay FM.

01:14:43 ◼   ► And every week we get a report about how the website's been and all that kind of stuff.

01:14:47 ◼   ► So we know, right?

01:14:48 ◼   ► We could just get a report from them.

01:14:49 ◼   ► This is what it's been like over the last week, which is really useful.

01:14:52 ◼   ► Doesn't matter what type of website you have.

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01:15:12 ◼   ► So thanks to Pingdom for their support of this show and Relay FM.

01:15:15 ◼   ► Let's do some #AskUpgradeQuestions.

01:15:18 ◼   ► Delayed response on the lasers there, but I'm happy they finally came through.

01:15:24 ◼   ► First one comes from Crazytown.

01:15:25 ◼   ► Crazytown asks, last week I upgraded to an iPhone 11 Pro from a 7 Plus.

01:15:30 ◼   ► Based on rumors about the 2020 iPhone, should I return my Pro or stick with it or wait until

01:15:38 ◼   ► next year?

01:15:38 ◼   ► Now, this is a difficult question.

01:15:42 ◼   ► We get these kinds of questions a lot, right?

01:15:44 ◼   ► And I wanted to talk about this.

01:15:46 ◼   ► You could wait forever for the next phone to come along.

01:15:49 ◼   ► Yes.

01:15:50 ◼   ► If you like it, just keep it.

01:15:54 ◼   ► Because look, the 2020 iPhone will be better than the 2019 iPhone.

01:15:58 ◼   ► The 2021 iPhone will be better than the 2020 iPhone.

01:16:01 ◼   ► If you waited from a 7 Plus to upgrade, you must be loving your phone right now.

01:16:06 ◼   ► Just give it another few years and upgrade again.

01:16:08 ◼   ► Don't focus on the future that much, right?

01:16:11 ◼   ► Unless you're like a few weeks away.

01:16:12 ◼   ► If you just bought an iPhone after so many years, don't return it now and get, I don't

01:16:18 ◼   ► know, like another 7 or whatever to wait for 2020.

01:16:21 ◼   ► Get your next iPhone in 2023 and be happy about the advances that you'll get then.

01:16:27 ◼   ► Yeah, I did.

01:16:28 ◼   ► I actually tested.

01:16:30 ◼   ► I brought, I pulled out an iPhone 7 and tested it.

01:16:32 ◼   ► The speed test thing with the new iPhone 11s.

01:16:37 ◼   ► And it's, you know, it's three times faster on single core and four times faster on multi-core.

01:16:42 ◼   ► Like, it's a huge, the 10 jump alone was a huge jump and 7 is preceding that.

01:16:48 ◼   ► So I agree with everything you said.

01:16:50 ◼   ► I think you should keep it.

01:16:52 ◼   ► I think next year, yes.

01:16:53 ◼   ► Will there be new iPhones?

01:16:54 ◼   ► Sure, there will.

01:16:54 ◼   ► There will always be new iPhones.

01:16:57 ◼   ► You have a 7, it's probably time to go.

01:16:59 ◼   ► 5G is lurking next year, but I think 5G is not going to be super relevant to people for

01:17:05 ◼   ► a long time.

01:17:06 ◼   ► And I think, honestly, with a 7+, I think you've waited long enough, personally.

01:17:12 ◼   ► I mean, you know, if you want to go back, go back.

01:17:15 ◼   ► But I would say you are always going to be in the boat of, well, what about next year's

01:17:18 ◼   ► model?

01:17:19 ◼   ► So don't worry about it.

01:17:20 ◼   ► Because I bet you in 2020, then people are going to say, well, is Apple's foldable phone?

01:17:25 ◼   ► You're just going to keep going forever.

01:17:26 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

01:17:26 ◼   ► Well, you know that Ming-Chi Roger Kuo is going to have a report next July about what's in

01:17:33 ◼   ► the 2021 phones and everybody's going to be like, well, but the 2021 phone is going to

01:17:37 ◼   ► have this feature.

01:17:38 ◼   ► And like, yeah, OK, you just have to buy a phone sometime.

01:17:40 ◼   ► There's always, it's always going to be, here's bad news, everybody.

01:17:44 ◼   ► The technology you buy this year will be obsolete at some point in the future.

01:17:48 ◼   ► That's it.

01:17:49 ◼   ► That's the sad truth.

01:17:51 ◼   ► That's just, and there's nothing to be done about it.

01:17:54 ◼   ► David asks, it seems weird to me that Apple launched Apple Arcade without an update to

01:17:58 ◼   ► the Apple TV, given that the product is two years old.

01:18:01 ◼   ► Do you think this is a sign that Apple is giving up on Apple TV and that they're doing

01:18:04 ◼   ► a rethink that isn't ready or something else?

01:18:06 ◼   ► I feel like, well, I actually look, the Apple TV hardware as it currently is, is all it

01:18:12 ◼   ► needs to be to run the games like it can handle them.

01:18:15 ◼   ► Yeah, I think so.

01:18:15 ◼   ► They're built in this way.

01:18:16 ◼   ► And I think Apple putting Arcade on the Apple TV in the first place is a good sign of their

01:18:22 ◼   ► belief in the Apple TV product.

01:18:24 ◼   ► Right.

01:18:24 ◼   ► I agree.

01:18:25 ◼   ► Because they did it.

01:18:26 ◼   ► I think the Apple TV 4K, um, does, I mean, I'm sure they will update it at some point

01:18:33 ◼   ► to put a faster processor in it, but I think it's in a pretty good place.

01:18:37 ◼   ► And I agree with you, Myke.

01:18:38 ◼   ► I think that the fact that Apple TV is part of their strategy for games is a, is a good

01:18:44 ◼   ► sign for Apple TV and the Apple TV hardware.

01:18:47 ◼   ► So I just don't think they feel they need to update it that often and that it's good

01:18:52 ◼   ► enough right now, the 4K model.

01:18:54 ◼   ► And they only update the Apple TV every, you know, every so often.

01:18:58 ◼   ► So it's just not, I think it's fine.

01:19:01 ◼   ► I don't think it's a sign of anything.

01:19:03 ◼   ► I took delivery today of an Xbox One S controller to pair with my Apple TV to try that whole

01:19:08 ◼   ► experience out.

01:19:08 ◼   ► I'm going to give that a go.

01:19:09 ◼   ► Nice.

01:19:10 ◼   ► John says, Photos has mixed up the people options on my devices and it now thinks that me and

01:19:16 ◼   ► my brother are the same person.

01:19:18 ◼   ► Jason, is there any way to fix this?

01:19:20 ◼   ► It's bad.

01:19:21 ◼   ► I hate to say it, but I think what you need to do is go to the people album and, and select

01:19:27 ◼   ► all and delete, which will basically reset your people database.

01:19:36 ◼   ► And then it's going to rescan and you're going to re need to re tag everything you could.

01:19:40 ◼   ► The other thing you could try to do is delete that person that is you and your brother,

01:19:44 ◼   ► and then go in and manually tag a bunch of things as you and as your brother and see

01:19:48 ◼   ► if that will feed into them, you know, to the face scanner going back through.

01:19:53 ◼   ► But that might be a better, better first starting point.

01:19:56 ◼   ► First step.

01:19:57 ◼   ► But I think in the end you may actually need to, uh, you may find that the right thing

01:20:02 ◼   ► to do is to just delete the database and start again.

01:20:05 ◼   ► Uh, D Khrushchev asks, would you sacrifice the additional battery life on the current

01:20:10 ◼   ► phones in exchange for the return of 3D touch?

01:20:14 ◼   ► I miss 3D touch because I think haptic touch is slow in places, but the battery life is

01:20:20 ◼   ► more important than 3D touch in the grand scheme of things, especially because haptic

01:20:26 ◼   ► touch can be made better.

01:20:27 ◼   ► Apple can tighten that up.

01:20:29 ◼   ► They can tweak that.

01:20:30 ◼   ► Um, and I really hope that they do.

01:20:32 ◼   ► There's some stuff.

01:20:32 ◼   ► It's just so slow, like everything on the lock screen, getting notifications from the

01:20:36 ◼   ► lock screen, launching the camera.

01:20:37 ◼   ► It's slow and unreliable and I want to see Apple get better at that.

01:20:40 ◼   ► And I think that they can.

01:20:42 ◼   ► Uh, but I believe that the battery life is a more important thing overall for more people.

01:20:47 ◼   ► Would you agree?

01:20:49 ◼   ► I agree completely.

01:20:51 ◼   ► Um, I don't miss 3D touch much at all.

01:20:55 ◼   ► And the places where I do use it, they can tweak it a little bit and the battery life

01:21:00 ◼   ► is more important.

01:21:01 ◼   ► And it's a feature that I think most, I think Apple knows for a fact that it's a feature

01:21:04 ◼   ► most people did not use.

01:21:06 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:21:06 ◼   ► Oh, they wouldn't have got rid of it.

01:21:07 ◼   ► Right.

01:21:07 ◼   ► If everyone was using it, they wouldn't have gotten rid of it.

01:21:09 ◼   ► Cause I would have been wild.

01:21:11 ◼   ► Uh, Eric asks, what are your thoughts on the clear case for the iPhone 11?

01:21:16 ◼   ► Have you used any of the clear cases?

01:21:18 ◼   ► I have.

01:21:18 ◼   ► I mean, I don't like them and I bought a leather case for my iPhone 11 pro.

01:21:25 ◼   ► So that tells you how I feel about the clear cases.

01:21:28 ◼   ► Um, Jamie's got a clear case on her iPhone 11.

01:21:30 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:21:31 ◼   ► We'll see how she, how she likes it over time.

01:21:33 ◼   ► I mean, the case trade-off is always about protection.

01:21:37 ◼   ► I mean, she, she wants to see her purple iPhone and I get it.

01:21:40 ◼   ► Like if you want to see it, then, uh, then, then you want, and you want to show it off.

01:21:45 ◼   ► Like you want to have the clear case.

01:21:47 ◼   ► I don't love it, but I don't love that case regardless of whether it was clear or not.

01:21:50 ◼   ► I just, I don't want the feel of it.

01:21:52 ◼   ► Um, I don't particularly like the look of it.

01:21:54 ◼   ► Uh, and so it's leather case for me as, as usual.

01:21:58 ◼   ► So I will say, uh, the clear case has gotten more grippy for me.

01:22:02 ◼   ► I don't even want to think about why that's happened, but it's less slippery now.

01:22:05 ◼   ► The oils in your skin are slowly denaturing the plastic.

01:22:08 ◼   ► I don't want to talk about that right now, but thank you.

01:22:10 ◼   ► Uh, yeah, it's gotten grippier.

01:22:12 ◼   ► Uh, bacteria from your hands have transferred to that.

01:22:16 ◼   ► Okay.

01:22:16 ◼   ► And the pop socket helps too, right?

01:22:18 ◼   ► I'm not telling everybody to do that, but that is the thing that I use.

01:22:21 ◼   ► Um, the biggest problem with the clear case is that Lin gets in it and oh boy, it gets

01:22:26 ◼   ► just, it just gets everywhere and you can see it because the phone case is clear, but

01:22:31 ◼   ► I really love my midnight green iPhone and I want to see it and I don't want to do what

01:22:34 ◼   ► Casey did and drop it.

01:22:35 ◼   ► So, and smash.

01:22:36 ◼   ► Lin is on the inside.

01:22:38 ◼   ► Look, I don't want to talk about it.

01:22:41 ◼   ► Right.

01:22:41 ◼   ► That's terrifying.

01:22:42 ◼   ► It happens.

01:22:43 ◼   ► By the way, my advice for Casey who dropped his phone and broke the back of it is get

01:22:48 ◼   ► the, get the leather case and you won't even see that it's broken and you can live your

01:22:53 ◼   ► life.

01:22:54 ◼   ► That's what I say.

01:22:54 ◼   ► No, I think he just needs to go and get it fixed because that's wild.

01:22:59 ◼   ► It is not going to fix yet.

01:23:00 ◼   ► Anyway.

01:23:00 ◼   ► Um, last question comes from John.

01:23:02 ◼   ► This is related.

01:23:03 ◼   ► Myke, does your pop socket show up in frame when you use the ultra wide camera?

01:23:06 ◼   ► No, it does not, but my fingers do sometimes, which is kind of hilarious.

01:23:09 ◼   ► Whenever I, oop, better hold the phone differently.

01:23:12 ◼   ► Have you seen that?

01:23:12 ◼   ► Like, it's like, there's my fingers, but no, I put my pop socket.

01:23:17 ◼   ► It's now over the Apple logo because it goes in the middle of the phone.

01:23:20 ◼   ► And I never seen my pop socket in the, in the ultra wide.

01:23:24 ◼   ► So just wanted to, I know people, I had a bunch of people ask me that, so fear not.

01:23:28 ◼   ► It depends where you put it though.

01:23:30 ◼   ► If you put it next to the camera, then yeah, you probably will.

01:23:32 ◼   ► But that seems like a terrible place to put a pop socket anyway.

01:23:35 ◼   ► If you would like to send in a question for us to answer on the show, just send out a

01:23:38 ◼   ► tweet with the hashtag ask upgrade and it will go into the document and we can pick

01:23:44 ◼   ► it out for future consideration.

01:23:46 ◼   ► I'd like to, Oh wow.

01:23:48 ◼   ► There's more lasers.

01:23:49 ◼   ► Thank you to the hashtag lasers this week.

01:23:52 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

01:23:53 ◼   ► And direct mail and fresh books for their support of this show.

01:23:55 ◼   ► Don't forget, you can still donate to St Jude.

01:23:58 ◼   ► Go to stjude.org/pineapple.

01:24:00 ◼   ► As we finish this episode, Jason, we're at $298,218.

01:24:04 ◼   ► So it feels very possible now that we will hit $300,000.

01:24:08 ◼   ► So thank you so, so, so, so, so, so much to everybody that has helped us raise that money

01:24:13 ◼   ► for St Jude this month.

01:24:14 ◼   ► If you want to find Jason online, go to sixcolors.com.

01:24:17 ◼   ► You should definitely go there and read Jason's iPhone 11 review.

01:24:19 ◼   ► It's awesome.

01:24:20 ◼   ► Uh, you can also find him at @jsnell, J S N E double L.

01:24:24 ◼   ► I am iMyke, I am Y K E on social platforms.

01:24:27 ◼   ► You should follow me on Instagram if you want to see some of the photos I've been taking.

01:24:30 ◼   ► Oh, I did want to mention as well.

01:24:31 ◼   ► I took a picture of Adina.

01:24:32 ◼   ► I don't know if you saw this picture, uh, and it's quite possibly, I think the best

01:24:36 ◼   ► photo I've ever taken.

01:24:38 ◼   ► It's a portrait mode photo.

01:24:39 ◼   ► I absolutely love this camera, Jason.

01:24:42 ◼   ► Oh, it's so good.

01:24:43 ◼   ► So good.

01:24:44 ◼   ► It makes me feel like such a professional.

01:24:46 ◼   ► Um, so yeah, if you want more, more, uh, of examples of the pictures that I'm taking,

01:24:53 ◼   ► uh, you can go there.

01:24:54 ◼   ► I'm finding mobile photography to be coming more of a hobby of mine.

01:24:58 ◼   ► Um, and it's because the software and stuff is so good.

01:25:02 ◼   ► And again, I'll recommend VSCO, uh, for that, if you are interested in trying to just bump

01:25:08 ◼   ► things up and try out some different ways, play around with what these apps have to offer.

01:25:11 ◼   ► And it's really fun.

01:25:12 ◼   ► There's loads of great editing tools.

01:25:13 ◼   ► Anyway, we'll be back next time.

01:25:16 ◼   ► Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell.

01:25:18 ◼   ► Slash pineapple.

01:25:20 ◼   ► [Music]