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Upgrade

215: The Future of TV is the TV App

 

00:00:00   [Music]

00:00:08   From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 215. Today's show is brought to you by GreenChef,

00:00:15   Pingdom, and Squarespace. My name is Myke Hurley, I'm joined by Jason Snell.

00:00:20   It is great to be here in episode number Divisible by 5. 215. Hi Myke, how are you doing?

00:00:27   Our Snell Talk question this week, #SnellTalk, comes from our friend, Stay, who wants to

00:00:34   know. To follow up on Upgrading Casey's question from last week, where is Jason's favorite

00:00:40   place to visit outside of California, and what places top his bucket list for places

00:00:46   he'd like to go?

00:00:48   So careful listeners to the Upgrade program will know that in the episode where we discussed

00:00:59   that Myke had just returned from his vacation, his honeymoon, to Hawaii, that Hawaii is my

00:01:05   favorite place. So my favorite place to visit outside of California is Hawaii. I would go

00:01:10   there every year if I could. This year, my kids have a huge amount of time between right

00:01:21   before Christmas and like a week after New Year's. It's the perfect time to go to Hawaii.

00:01:28   But because my wife is very wonderful and now has a full-time job where she's providing

00:01:34   benefits to the rest of the family, that also means that she's limited in her vacation time,

00:01:39   and we can't just go to Hawaii. So, you know, trade-offs. But I would love to do it every

00:01:45   year because I love Hawaii. That's my answer. And then in terms of top of my bucket list,

00:01:52   I have a big-ish birthday coming up. No, I have a big birthday coming up in 2020.

00:01:59   30, can you imagine?

00:02:01   Yeah, I know, right? Yeah. Whew! It's hard to believe hitting 30, but it might happen.

00:02:07   So I have already informed my wife that I want to go to Australia or New Zealand for

00:02:17   that birthday.

00:02:18   Oh! Ooh! Look at you. All right. You've never been to either, I'm assuming?

00:02:23   I've never been, no. I've never been south of the equator. So, yeah, those are my choices.

00:02:30   I originally said Australia, but then I also admitted to say New Zealand would also be

00:02:33   just fine.

00:02:34   Lord of the Rings, right?

00:02:36   As we have determined on a different one of my podcasts, Australia is filled with wild

00:02:44   animals that will try to kill you, and New Zealand has essentially no predators more

00:02:49   dangerous than like a pig or a cat. So I'm open to New Zealand, but either one is fine.

00:02:58   Thank you to Sté for asking that question. If you would like to submit your own question

00:03:03   to be answered on a future episode to open the show, just send in a tweet with the hashtag

00:03:08   SnellTalk. I would like to remind our listeners that we will be recording an episode in person

00:03:15   next week. I'll get to that at the end of the show so we can talk about some of the

00:03:19   potential logistics that will come with that. So what I will ask is if anybody has any questions

00:03:24   that pertains specifically to us being in person, send them in for the next week's show,

00:03:30   hashtag SnellTalk.

00:03:31   Some follow up, we were talking on the last episode about USB-C and the iPad and the Apple

00:03:37   Pencil and listener Jono wrote in to make a very good point about why in 9to5Mac's report

00:03:44   from Guillermo Rambo, Guillermo mentioned that the existing Apple Pencil may not be

00:03:49   compatible with new iPads because the Apple Pencil currently pairs over Lightning and

00:03:56   these new iPads may be USB-C, so how would you pair them? It's a very good point.

00:04:01   Exactly. Yeah, I think I hadn't really thought about that. It's a very good point. It wouldn't

00:04:07   shock me given that it's Bluetooth basically, it wouldn't shock me if you could still use

00:04:12   them even in this situation, but it might require a ridiculous trip through the dark

00:04:19   back streets of Dongle Town in order to adapt USB-C to Lightning and then have the little

00:04:28   gender adapter and then plug into that and then it would pair.

00:04:32   But then you're going to have charging issues too, right, because it's just not going to

00:04:36   be as easy to charge. It would be a pain in the butt.

00:04:39   Yeah, so it might be compatible but it's probably not going to be advisable even if it is compatible.

00:04:45   Further follow up about the iPad Pro, there was an update to said report from Guillermo

00:04:50   Rambo saying that the processor would be an A12X processor, not an A1210 processor, an

00:04:59   A12X processor.

00:05:01   This is nice because so often the iPads are the previous generation chip technology with

00:05:06   some stepped up things that add the X.

00:05:08   Or sometimes current, right, like it's never like a, it's very rarely a new, new thing,

00:05:14   but this would be a brand new chip. A chip that actually may never get anywhere else

00:05:19   other than this iPad. You know, it may be the A13 for the next iPhone, we don't know.

00:05:23   Yeah, exactly right. So the A12X, the idea there is that it's going to be based on the

00:05:27   existing chip that's in this year's iPhones. But with the, you know, extensions that they

00:05:32   do to, you know, which can take various things, better graphics, whatever it is, it's an upgrade,

00:05:38   a little bit of an iPad spin on the existing processors that are in the iPhone, XS and

00:05:44   XR. And that's exciting because those are incredibly powerful.

00:05:48   So as Guillaume says in his report, it is a GPU apparently, which would be beefed up

00:05:53   specifically. And its code name is Vortex, which I enjoy as a code name.

00:05:58   Sure, sure. And it's, yeah, because there's many more pixels on one of these giant iPad

00:06:03   Pro screens than on, even on the iPhone XS Max. And I mean, so this got me thinking.

00:06:11   We've seen these reports about the A12 and how Apple has built into the A12, there is

00:06:17   a, like JavaScript benchmarks are off the charts with the A12 because the A12 is basically

00:06:23   includes instruction sets. They talked about this on ATP the last two weeks, instruction

00:06:28   sets that calculate things like JavaScript does. It's basically like you don't have to

00:06:33   do extra work to do JavaScript stuff. It will handle it natively. And that means that the

00:06:38   JavaScript benchmarks are off the charts to the point where like JavaScript benchmarks

00:06:41   on an iPhone XS are faster than on an iMac Pro. And that's ridiculous, but it's because

00:06:47   of that optimization. And I was thinking, oh, well, A12X on the new iPad Pros, that

00:06:54   means that they're also going to have that high level JavaScript. And it just, it got

00:06:57   me thinking about one of my huge frustrations with the iPad Pro, which is its mobile Safari.

00:07:04   Mobile Safari is not as fully featured as desktop Safari is. And in addition, because

00:07:11   of the user agents it reports to websites, a lot of websites hijack a page load and lose

00:07:17   and load a mobile version of the site, which can be good, but is often very bad because

00:07:23   it's a phone page that's loading on an iPad. And I heard from a lot of people when I complained

00:07:31   about this on Twitter, like I do, who are iPad, big iPad Pro users who very much said,

00:07:37   yes, this is one of their biggest frustrations. This is a place where Chromebooks really have

00:07:42   it over the iPad and where the new tablet from Google has it over the iPad is that it's

00:07:47   got a desktop browsing experience and the iPad's browsing experience is not. I also

00:07:51   heard from a lot of people and it's the usual, which is Apple can do anything and they're

00:07:56   amazing and they never do anything wrong, but this is a hard problem and Apple can never

00:08:00   solve it. It's like, okay, that is another way to take it.

00:08:03   It's so easily solvable. I mean, the difference between this and like the, the slate, right?

00:08:08   The Google slate is the pointing device. I mean, that's, that's what you need, right?

00:08:12   Because these devices, I completely agree with them more than powerful. In fact, sometimes

00:08:17   overpowered, right? Like to deal with these. But the problem is that touch doesn't work

00:08:24   always with every single website. So you need a pointing device. And honestly, it's true.

00:08:28   The Apple pencil can deal with this, right? Like, you know, like as well as a trackpad,

00:08:34   but they already make something that can make this work.

00:08:36   Yeah. And, and you know, I, what I'm not saying, and of course the other thing that happens

00:08:40   on Twitter is that people assume you are being an absolutist and like, and then they're like,

00:08:44   aha, but this doesn't solve all examples and therefore it is wrong, which is also dumb.

00:08:50   You know, desktop Safari lets you adjust per site, video autoplay, video autoplay with sound.

00:08:56   There's all these things. It's like, it wouldn't be that hard. I mean, again, it's an engineering

00:09:00   project, but it's Apple. I think they're capable of it to say this site, I want you to load

00:09:05   the full desktop version and this site. I don't. And of course it is worth mentioning,

00:09:09   right? Yes, you can say force desktop, but it doesn't always work. It doesn't always

00:09:13   work because in many ways, a lot of times what happens is you're already redirected

00:09:17   elsewhere and that you're not on the real page anymore and you can't get back to it.

00:09:23   And you can't force it beforehand. Like they need, this is something that would make a

00:09:27   big difference. It will make a huge difference to the future of the iPad. We have some stuff

00:09:32   later on today, which kind of like actually comes back to this topic. So maybe we should

00:09:37   leave it there for now. Yeah, I think just the overarching thing here is this iPad Pro

00:09:42   that's rumored to be released in the next month, maybe, is going to have probably the

00:09:47   best JavaScript performance of any device that exists. And yet when you think about

00:09:53   the web browsing experience on the iPad and compare it to other devices, the fact that

00:09:58   it is a mobile browser and doesn't give you the desktop browser performance, like other

00:10:05   than issues with pointing devices, you could do a great desktop class web browsing experience

00:10:11   on the iPad Pro and we should be able to do that. So, you know, we'll see. We'll see if

00:10:17   they get there now. We'll see if they get there in iOS 13. We'll see when we get there.

00:10:22   All right. So as I mentioned, we will come back to some of this a little later on, but

00:10:26   for now, Jason, we must do some upstream news because CNBC had a report in quotation, I

00:10:35   think, about Apple's upcoming streaming service. I want to read a quote from this article.

00:10:41   The product will include Apple-owned content, which will be free to Apple device owners

00:10:45   and subscription channels, which will allow customers to sign up for online-only services

00:10:51   such as those from HBO and Starz. So we'll take this. There's two points here we want

00:10:56   to address. The first is the second point. So taking the model basically that Amazon

00:11:00   has of Prime Video channels, full disclosure, they have been a sponsor of some relay FM

00:11:04   shows, but that doesn't make a difference to this point. But just wanted to mention

00:11:08   it because I said the exact name of the product. That got reported as news. And it's not really

00:11:13   because even the story says Bloomberg already reported that part in May. So one of the things

00:11:16   is this is a very long story and it's very hard to find what actually is new reporting

00:11:20   here, if anything. And yet the story got picked up heavily. So here is the part that seems

00:11:26   to be new. So the channels, the idea there is Apple's going to, which goes directly against

00:11:31   kind of the app model that they launched the Apple TV with, is that Apple now is going

00:11:35   to try and get you to buy premium streaming services, essentially sign up within the TV

00:11:42   app and they appear in the TV app, which is sort of like, I mean, you can still buy things

00:11:46   already with, I'm not sure how different that is than what they do now because you can buy

00:11:52   things with Apple's payment system through the third-party apps, but maybe the apps won't

00:11:58   be necessary because it will be in the TV app. So you won't need to download the HBO

00:12:03   Now app because you just watch those shows within the TV app. That's how the Prime channels

00:12:08   work. So maybe. That's very confusing. But it's also old news. So really the news seems

00:12:12   to be this suggestion that Apple is going to make some of its own video content available

00:12:18   for free for people who are using Apple's devices and running that TV app as a way,

00:12:23   I guess, to get people comfortable in the TV app and also to get those other things,

00:12:27   other channels in front of them. Now, the amount of money Apple spending on original

00:12:31   content will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever be made back by taking a percentage of

00:12:36   the sales of other people's streaming video services. That is not a, you know, Apple is

00:12:42   not investing in this content in order to sell you HBO Now and take a percentage of

00:12:47   the subscription sale. That's not why it's doing it. Probably what's going to go on here

00:12:51   is either Apple wants to get people into the TV app and sees that what the CNBC story says

00:12:57   is a Netflix-like subscription service quote "down the road." And I think that's basically

00:13:05   the report here is that they're saying Apple will launch this content for free in the TV

00:13:12   app along with the channel stuff and then they will launch the full service a little

00:13:18   bit later. And the only question there is, is it really going to be free shows to start

00:13:26   or is it going to be more like Apple Music where you get these shows for free but you've

00:13:33   got to sign up and after three months we start charging you or after six months we start

00:13:37   charging you?

00:13:38   I feel like the idea of them doing a trial is just an inevitability. I feel like anyone

00:13:43   could write that in an article without ever knowing it because it makes perfect sense

00:13:48   and they already did it with Apple Music and that wasn't even their own stuff.

00:13:52   And we've talked about the split season model too where if they order 13 episodes of a show,

00:13:59   maybe these shows debut with six or four or three and maybe they roll out in a drop or

00:14:06   maybe some of them roll out weekly. But the idea there is what you want is to get people

00:14:13   to sample this stuff and then decide that they're in and they want to pay. And that's

00:14:18   probably, like all this report really says is they're going to give some stuff away.

00:14:22   And I'm sure, right, like we would all agree, of course they are because there's going

00:14:26   to be a free trial at some point almost certainly. So maybe that's what this is or maybe not.

00:14:32   Maybe this report is saying that they're just going to drop a couple of shows just for free

00:14:36   right in the TV app because what they want as the first step in moving people into the

00:14:41   TV app where obviously this other service is going to live in that TV app, that's worth

00:14:48   it to them to burn a couple of shows just to get people comfortable in the TV app.

00:14:53   Keeping in mind they're not giving it away to everybody, they're giving it away to everybody

00:14:55   who has an Apple TV or an iPad or an iPhone to watch on those devices. But still, of course,

00:15:01   because that's what they're going to do. Anyway, it's a weird report. There's a lot of words

00:15:06   for apparently not a lot that's new. And the stuff that's new is kind of unclear. So, you

00:15:14   know, but it's worth at least pondering the idea that Apple somehow is going to, you know,

00:15:20   that its master strategy, I think it's worth saying that this story is saying what we've

00:15:23   kind of intuited, which is its master strategy is get people in the TV app, put their service

00:15:28   in the TV app, and then this previous Bloomberg report saying they're also going to focus

00:15:33   on reselling other people streaming in the TV app and making the TV app. So the future

00:15:39   of TV was apps, but now the future of TV is the TV app. And that's not surprising. They've

00:15:45   been headed that way for a year.

00:15:47   [Laughter]

00:15:48   Future of TV apps is apps and apps is the future of TV.

00:15:54   And the apps are named, if the app is named TV. The future of TV apps is the TV app.

00:15:56   The future of the TV app. We have a new challenger approaching. Of course, there is another media

00:16:02   conglomerate which is working on their own streaming service, WarnerMedia, who we have

00:16:07   been talking about a little bit over the last couple of weeks. There's a report from The

00:16:12   Hollywood Reporter that WarnerMedia is preparing to launch their streaming service of their

00:16:16   own in case you need a refresher. So some of the services and/or content that could

00:16:21   be included in this, HBO, TBS, Cartoon Network, Properties from the DC Universe, Hanna-Barbera

00:16:29   cartoons, Sesame Street, because HBO have the rights to Sesame Street, and even Warner

00:16:34   Brothers movies, which includes stuff like the Harry Potter franchise. I was thinking

00:16:38   about this one, Jason, because at first I was kind of like, all right. But then I started

00:16:42   thinking about some of the properties that Warner actually own. And it's like, I think

00:16:48   we maybe sometimes don't give them the same credit we could give Disney, right? Even just

00:16:53   Harry Potter. So me and Nadina are currently watching the Harry Potter movies because she's

00:16:58   never seen them. She's never read the books, never seen the movies. So we're watching them

00:17:01   all. As I'm watching them, as somebody who read the books and watched the movies, loved

00:17:04   the movies, but I was like, God, this would be a really good TV show instead.

00:17:08   I know, right? Where they could actually tell the stories.

00:17:11   Because we watched Goblet of Fire and she's like, why don't we get to see what everybody

00:17:16   else is doing? I'm like, oh, because you did in the book, but there just is not enough

00:17:21   time in the movies to tell the whole stories. God, it would be a really good like seven

00:17:28   series TV show, high budget on HBO. Oh boy, that would be good.

00:17:34   Or on the Warner media streaming service. What's interesting here is that basically

00:17:38   they're feeling like HBO now is successful and they don't want to upset that. So they're

00:17:43   going to keep that going, but they want to build this broader streaming service that

00:17:47   encompasses all their content. I look at that and think, okay, I guess it kind of makes

00:17:50   sense, but in the long run, I'm not sure HBO now makes sense on its own. At some point

00:17:55   you probably just want everybody to have... They're trying to not burn all their bridges,

00:17:59   which is probably a good move, right? In the long run, one streaming service, because

00:18:04   they also want to increase the content at HBO, but at some point, if this is a super

00:18:12   set, it's everything that HBO does and is going to do plus other stuff, then at that

00:18:16   point it doesn't make sense. Now maybe HBO and this service are different in some way,

00:18:22   and that would be different. I don't know, but I'm fascinated by this because you're

00:18:27   right. They also have their DC thing that they did, that they launched, which is the

00:18:30   DC Universe streaming service, which just launched, and that's got original shows on

00:18:34   it as well and catalog stuff. So it is a little like Disney, right? They're not doing a Marvel

00:18:44   streaming service, but they've got multiple streaming services in different areas. I could

00:18:48   totally see Warner doing something similar with some of this other stuff. Harry Potter

00:18:55   is a good piece of intellectual property. There are others. Warner Brothers has a lot

00:18:59   of intellectual property in their vault that they could put together, not just for old

00:19:05   stuff, but for new stuff, as well as completely original stuff, but franchise stuff that they

00:19:10   could pull out and put on here, including some other DC stuff that's not in the DC streaming

00:19:16   service or that's on both. That might be interesting to do. Harry Potter is a great example of

00:19:20   that too. So there's lots. We'll see what they're doing. But everybody's, you know,

00:19:25   every single one of these giants is going to have a multi-tiered streaming strategy,

00:19:30   and that's what the future is going to be. You're going to have your Comcast streaming,

00:19:34   and you're going to have your Warner streaming, and you're going to have your Disney streaming,

00:19:36   and that's just, and Sony apparently also will exist or will be bought by somebody.

00:19:42   But yeah. It's just like, I was watching the movies, right? And the first one came out

00:19:47   in 2001. So it's like it's fast approaching 20 years. I'll tell you, man, the special

00:19:52   effects and the Philosopher's Stone do not hold. They do not hold up. The rest of them,

00:19:58   from the second one, it does its job, right? But in the first one, you can see all these

00:20:02   places where they're trying to hide special effects, right? They're trying to like, you

00:20:07   don't see McGonagall turning into a cat. You just see a shadow, right? It's like, we can't

00:20:11   do that yet, but they get that later on. But just in general, the special effects do not

00:20:17   hold up in that first movie. But it was like, I looked at it, I was like, oh, because it's

00:20:20   Disney 20 years old. It's kind of, and I guess, you know, I reckon those budgets improved

00:20:25   a lot from the second one onwards. But it's been great fun to watch it again, but it does

00:20:29   make me think at the same time at 20 years, like, I'm surprised they haven't tried to

00:20:33   reboot it yet. And I know that there's a lot of other Harry Potter stuff going on, which

00:20:37   is probably why, right? Like there's like a whole prequel series of stuff.

00:20:40   Yeah, film series, yeah.

00:20:42   And Fantastic Beasts, but.

00:20:44   And the sequel theater stuff.

00:20:46   And the theater, right? There's still a lot going on.

00:20:48   All over the place, yeah.

00:20:49   But I would love to see a TV show. I did see a thing recently that they're making, like,

00:20:54   somebody, some studio is making like a AAA open world game set in the Harry Potter universe,

00:21:00   which seems interesting.

00:21:01   So when you get to the end of all the movies, then the next thing you guys need to do is

00:21:04   go see the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

00:21:07   I think we will. I think he seems to be enjoying it a lot more than I expected you would.

00:21:11   That's good. That's good. And you'll like it because the plot of that movie is very

00:21:15   Back to the Future, which is your favorite. So yeah.

00:21:18   All right. Today's show is brought to you in part by our friends over at Green Chef.

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00:22:37   Yeah, well, so Green Chef has all these great different options, but we have some options,

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00:23:19   honest here, dreading it, dreading these two meals that were going to come in a box for

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00:24:32   All right, so this week, this past week, if you follow lots of people that we talk about

00:24:39   on this show on Twitter, people like David Smith and Steve Shountain Smith, not related

00:24:45   I don't think, but both Smiths or Marco Arment, then you may have seen custom watch faces

00:24:51   as a on the Apple watch as a thing.

00:24:55   It's a thing that people are doing, which is funny because of course you can't do it.

00:25:00   You can write an app that poses as a watch face.

00:25:04   Let me explain this a little bit. So Steve Shountain Smith created a thing which is on

00:25:10   GitHub. So it's something you can go get started with on your own of building your own custom

00:25:14   watch faces using SpriteKit. Now these aren't, as Jason said, these aren't actual watch faces

00:25:19   you can choose as watch faces. They're apps that you can make, little apps that you can

00:25:23   make that operate like watch faces.

00:25:26   And if you use a setting on the Apple watch, which is to, when you look at the watch for

00:25:30   it to show you the last used app, which is a setting that you can choose, you can show

00:25:34   me the last used app or my watch face, you can, by doing this, kind of fake a custom

00:25:40   watch face, which has led to many, many people playing around with what Steve has been doing

00:25:46   and digging in and kind of customizing their own thing with SpriteKit.

00:25:50   And it spread quite widely. I will include also in the show notes a link to a blog post

00:25:56   that David Smith has done. So underscore he made a bunch of really useful functional faces,

00:26:02   but also some faces that look like my watch brand, Nomos, which is kind of funny. Like

00:26:08   he used those as an inspiration. And of course, if you look at some of what Steve Shountain

00:26:12   Smith has been doing, it clearly started from the Hermes face and moved on from there, right?

00:26:18   The Hermes face, which debuted with the series four, is like these two colors cut in half

00:26:24   and it moves, the color kind of split moves with the minute hand. So it moves around the

00:26:29   face and then he kind of went on from there. So you kind of would ask yourself, why are

00:26:34   people doing this? You know, and I think that Jason, you wrote a really good article that

00:26:39   I have no doubt in my mind that started some of this, um, because I think it started a

00:26:45   wave of conversation over the last couple of weeks about Apple watch faces in general,

00:26:51   because we see new ones every single year, but there's no consistency. The new watch

00:26:56   faces have new complication types. They can't use old ones. Old watch faces aren't updated

00:27:01   to get the new ones. It kind of feels like every year we get new watch faces that have

00:27:04   some difference and then the old ones get forgotten about.

00:27:08   Yeah, this is, yeah, I wrote a about it briefly in my Apple watch review and then Marco wrote

00:27:13   a post about faces that, and then I wrote a, a law longer post just about faces too.

00:27:18   So it was kind of in the water there. But I think this moment where we've got the larger

00:27:23   screen on the Apple watches, this, this generation and the moves that Apple made in terms of

00:27:29   the faces really brought to the forefront, um, that Apple doesn't care very much about

00:27:36   watch faces. If that makes sense. Like, uh, and I know that the reaction that can be,

00:27:41   well, what do you mean they built this new thing and they have these awesome new watch

00:27:44   faces with these new complications. It's like, yeah, they do. But if you peel it back a layer,

00:27:49   what you'll find is Apple, every time they come up with a new watch, they like, we'll

00:27:53   throw a couple of faces on there, but they don't go back really and rethink the old faces

00:28:00   and this time it's all exacerbated. So they made the two Infograph faces in order to make

00:28:06   more rich complications. They created some new complication styles for the new Infograph

00:28:11   faces. I think there are three or four new complication styles for the new faces that

00:28:19   only work on those faces. Fair enough, right? But the weird thing is everything else, like

00:28:24   all the other faces didn't get updated except for like little minor updates and some of

00:28:28   which are annoying, like making the straight line complications on other faces into slight

00:28:34   curves, but it's still literally the same complication. It's the old style complication.

00:28:39   So that's annoying and they keep doing that where obviously it's not a priority to them

00:28:44   to make their old watch faces better just to throw more new ones on. And that's, I mean,

00:28:52   what Marco said, I think on Twitter or maybe in his blog post is it feels to him like there's

00:28:56   like one person working on faces at Apple and so they do what they can and then that's

00:29:01   it. But then you get into some of the details that are just so bad and the best one, the

00:29:07   best example is Apple introduced a new circular complication on the new watch faces. They

00:29:13   have an existing circular complication. They made no attempt to put any compatibility in.

00:29:20   So if you use the Infograph faces and you lose all of these complications from older

00:29:25   apps that haven't been updated to use the new complication type, including a bunch of

00:29:28   complications from Apple that just aren't there. Their Apple originated, like if you

00:29:34   want to launch messages or something, it's not there anymore. You have to use a different

00:29:38   face for that. So they've created this own kind of like discontinuity of watch face complications

00:29:46   in the thing that they completely control themselves. And it is just one of those moments

00:29:50   where a whole bunch of us who use the Apple Watch look at this and say, "Why is it that

00:29:55   for all of the effort Apple puts into so many aspects of the Apple Watch, it appears to

00:30:01   be doing almost the minimum on watch face design?" Like literally, and because the minimum

00:30:08   is we have a new big screen, we need to create new faces to take advantage of them that we

00:30:13   can show off. So they did that and then literally nothing else, including adding compatibility

00:30:17   for older complications or allowing those new complications to live on the older faces,

00:30:24   which is the other part of this. My favorite Apple Watch face is utility, and I took screenshots

00:30:31   of utility in the infograph face. And the actual watch face itself is exactly the same

00:30:35   size, the circle is exactly the same size, which means those complications in the corners

00:30:41   have exactly the same amount of room on both faces, but one face can only use the old ones

00:30:48   and one face can only use the new ones. And I get that there might be some design issues

00:30:54   there, but it seems kind of ridiculous. Like why can't I use my favorite face with the

00:31:01   new complications if there's room for them there? And I think the real answer is they

00:31:08   didn't bother, probably because whoever's working on this had to prioritize and updating

00:31:14   old faces wasn't going to make the cut. And I guess that's ultimately what a lot of us

00:31:22   are saying. And you see the frustration when you see developers like Steve Trout and Smith

00:31:27   building these watch face apps. I think the message here is, one, third parties can build

00:31:35   watch face apps and that's interesting. But two, it's there's a hunger for better watch

00:31:41   faces on the Apple Watch. And for me, it comes down to this idea that if Apple, and this

00:31:50   is what I said in my piece, if Apple, I get that Apple might want to keep complete control

00:31:55   or mostly control of the watch faces. I get that. I get that we may never see a true third

00:32:00   party access to custom watch faces. Maybe we will. Again, people on Twitter will make

00:32:07   that absolutist argument. They'll say, well, you know, they can't let anybody because they'll

00:32:10   be intellectual property issues and lawsuits and things like, well, you know, if you read

00:32:14   a CarPlay app, you have to get approval from a special part of Apple App Store group in

00:32:21   order to be allowed to have a CarPlay app. You can curate a developer and say, we trust

00:32:25   you. But even if they don't, like this is the thing is, okay, Apple, you want to completely

00:32:30   control the watch face experience. Fine. I mean, I don't love it, but I get it. But if

00:32:37   you're going to have the monopoly on it, you got to do a better job. Like that's the bottom

00:32:41   line is you got to do a better job. You've got to update your old faces. You got to provide

00:32:44   more variety. You've got to make the complications better and more compatible. And I get the

00:32:50   argument, I think overarching argument that there have been so many other problems on

00:32:54   watch OS for the last few years that they've been trying to deal with that the watch faces

00:32:58   was not a priority. But I look at watch OS 5 today and think it's come a long way and

00:33:06   it feels to be at a level where the faces and the lack of compatibility and the fact

00:33:14   that they've kind of been doing minimal effort on faces all this time is starting to show.

00:33:20   And so from my perspective, I feel like all of us are essentially through all these different

00:33:24   actions are saying, hey, Apple, watch faces matter. You don't pay as much attention to

00:33:29   them as you should. By the time we get to watch OS 6, can we either let third party

00:33:33   developers build watch faces or can you do a better job internally of providing access

00:33:38   to complications across all the faces and making sure all the faces are up to date because

00:33:44   there's a discontinuity here. I think the face is the main interface of the Apple watch.

00:33:50   It's the equivalent of the finder or the app launch screen on an iPhone. I think faces

00:33:55   and complications are how people use the Apple watch. And so to just kind of stick in a couple

00:34:01   new ones and not worry about the old ones and build new complication styles and not

00:34:05   worry about the existing ones and not even bother to update your own complications for

00:34:10   the new style, it's just not good. It's really bad. And so that's what's going on here. It's

00:34:15   fun to watch Steve Trout and Smith's thing because he basically built this face that

00:34:19   can do like thousands of different-- you can hit a random button and like thousands of

00:34:24   different options across it. And it's fun. And these are developers playing, but they're

00:34:31   also making a point that it's not impossible to build nice watch faces and somebody ought

00:34:39   to do it either inside or outside Apple.

00:34:41   I want to talk about the copyright issue thing because I think that's brought up quite a

00:34:45   lot and also it's like I can see why people will bring it up because a lot of the watch

00:34:49   faces that are being created by people right now would infringe on the copyright of other

00:34:55   watchmakers. And I think it's because right now as people are kind of just getting their

00:35:01   head around it, they're making replicas of things or they're using property that they

00:35:06   already understand because they're first tinkering. This is kind of how you learn is by like,

00:35:12   "Okay, can I make this?" It's like, "Okay, I made this and it looks like this so I know

00:35:15   how it works. Now I can start working on my own ideas." Underscore David Smith's a really

00:35:21   good example of that. He shows in his blog post like, "First I created some stuff that

00:35:25   looked like watches that I knew and then when I understood that I made some stuff that was

00:35:30   useful in my own way and that are my own designs." Because I think that's kind of how people

00:35:35   start. So I can see how the argument of copyright gets brought up when everybody's kind of sharing

00:35:40   things that look like different Rolexes or whatever. But ultimately this is a problem

00:35:47   that Apple can solve or have already solved. Look at the iMessage sticker store. This was

00:35:56   the thing that they spoke about. Apple spoke about this, the potential for copyright infringement

00:36:02   issues and that they said that they would take care of it. And it seems by and large

00:36:07   that they mostly have. I mean, you can search for a lot of copyright characters and you

00:36:12   typically only find stuff that is legit. If you search for Disney characters, you find

00:36:18   Disney stuff that Disney makes. You don't find other people. So you know, the very popular

00:36:22   character Pusheen, right? They make a sticker pack for Pusheen. There aren't a bunch of

00:36:30   other people trying to make these fake Pusheen sticker packs because you would find them

00:36:34   because it's a character that people like but you don't see it. You don't see Mickey

00:36:38   Mouse stickers. It's literally a curated app store. This is why we have a curated app store.

00:36:44   This is why you have to get approval from Apple. Now, we could argue in the app store

00:36:49   space especially, on the largest collection that they've got the highest volume, they

00:36:55   have issues there with approving some stuff that should not get approved. But on the smaller

00:37:00   ones, it seems to not be that much of a problem. But even in the app store, there is a process

00:37:05   right that if you as the copyright holder have a problem, you can lodge a complaint

00:37:10   and it can be taken care of. So there is a method for this. The copyright complaint I

00:37:17   think is an easy one to levy but when you play it out, it's manageable. It is totally

00:37:23   manageable.

00:37:24   So I'm not going to accept that argument that well you can't do this because they'll

00:37:28   all be knockoffs of existing faces. First off, there is the irony here that Apple itself

00:37:33   was got in trouble for knocking off an existing watch face.

00:37:36   >> The Mondale Swiss clock, right?

00:37:40   >> Yeah, the Swiss clock, right. But if they wanted to do third-party watch faces, they

00:37:45   could say it's very much in the terms already but they could even point a finger at it that

00:37:51   like anything that's intellectual property of an existing watchmaker is not allowed and

00:37:56   there'll be a process to do that and they'll train up a team on what the existing watch

00:38:02   face trademarks are or whatever and they'll be super specific about it or they'll train

00:38:09   up a team who's looking at specific watch faces and figuring out what's there or not

00:38:15   or they'll do the other thing which is say you can apply to be a watch face developer

00:38:20   and agree to all these other things and we're going to watch what you do more closely and

00:38:26   that's going to be how they do it is like you know you're an approved watch face developer.

00:38:30   There are lots of ways they can do it if they want to do it and it would be great if they

00:38:34   want to do it that way because maybe Apple could focus on making complications compatible

00:38:39   across all of these different things and not worry about building a million different faces

00:38:44   but again I'm okay if they want to just keep it all to themselves as long as they make

00:38:50   all of the watch faces they offer good and compatible and make the complication system

00:38:56   as robust as they can so that you can use complications in different places and maybe

00:39:01   in different contexts which is another thing that they're lacking where you know I want

00:39:05   my timer to appear when a timer is running but otherwise I don't want it to appear at

00:39:09   all stuff like that that's also not not capable right now.

00:39:13   So ultimately do you think that Apple will ever allow this custom watch faces do you

00:39:20   think that it is a thing that they will do?

00:39:23   If I had to put money on it I would say I would say no I would ever ever is a long time

00:39:33   I think it is highly possible that they will one day do it will they do it next year I'm

00:39:39   skeptical it's possible.

00:39:40   Within the next five years let's let's kind of put a cap on it just to make it a little

00:39:43   bit easier to discuss.

00:39:45   Yeah let's say yes yeah let's say yes I think that in the long in the long range I think

00:39:50   they will do it because it just is going to make the watch more delightful to have a lot

00:39:57   of different face options on it and it reduces their burden you know because in the end if

00:40:03   you think about it Apple would be especially if they don't have a huge team working on

00:40:08   faces which they totally don't it Apple would be better off focusing on foundational face

00:40:15   technology right like the API's for complications and a possibility of contextual complications

00:40:22   and stuff like that and building some design guidelines and having a base set of faces

00:40:27   but then letting people write their own you know pretty face designs or whatever and focus

00:40:35   on the complications but I could see them saying you know what there aren't that many

00:40:39   like honestly Steve trout and Smith what he showed is if you build a clever watch face

00:40:45   with a whole bunch of different options you can end up creating something with thousands

00:40:50   of variations that let you customize it to your personality and if that's true then you

00:40:56   could also if your Apple just build a bunch of those kind of faces in different styles

00:41:03   and feel like you've given enough personalization options to people so you know I think.

00:41:09   It might be a good move for Apple to open it up but I can see why they wouldn't want

00:41:15   to and again I'd be okay with that if they do all the other things but the problem is

00:41:19   they haven't opened it up and they aren't doing the other things and honestly even if

00:41:23   third party watch faces were allowed today it would still be a mess because there are

00:41:26   the different complication types and compatibility is limited you know you and you don't get

00:41:32   access to the old complications on the new faces and it's kind of a mess as it is which

00:41:36   may be why it isn't a third party opportunity right now because it's kind of a mess and

00:41:42   maybe what they need to do and maybe even what they've been doing in the background

00:41:45   is building a new system for faces that is way better that would be a great watch OS

00:41:50   6 feature and maybe as a part of that you would have either more much more dynamic complications

00:41:56   or third party watch faces we'll have to see but I like the fact that it's not just me

00:42:01   it's some other people too who are all kind of grumbling about how faces should be better

00:42:04   on the Apple watch that's the bottom line is the Apple watch faces are interesting but

00:42:09   it's kind of a mess beneath the surface and they should be better and it matters it's

00:42:12   important part of what that what that device does and clearly it's not getting enough attention

00:42:19   inside Apple and I think all of us who are complaining are hoping that by causing a little

00:42:24   bit of a dust up maybe somebody inside Apple goes see I told you we aren't doing enough

00:42:29   with faces maybe we'll see that sometimes that happens sometimes it doesn't.

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00:44:04   So today Adobe had a presentation on their Adobe Max conference I guess convention I

00:44:12   think it's a little bit of both it seems like a pretty big deal it happens in San Jose and

00:44:16   it confirms the Bloomberg report that we had earlier this year about Photoshop coming to

00:44:22   the iPad I like they have a line on their website it says not Photoshop for the iPad

00:44:30   Photoshop on the iPad and that is like a really good way of explaining what they're doing

00:44:35   they haven't made an iOS version of Photoshop they are taking the new version of Photoshop

00:44:41   and making it work the same everywhere this is the full desktop app it has all of the

00:44:48   toolbars all the controls and layer management unlimited layers and all that kind of stuff

00:44:53   it is a new user interface but Adobe is saying that they are observing a lot of the placement

00:44:58   and actions from existing versions of Photoshop to ensure muscle memory is maintained but

00:45:03   like with Final Cut Pro X which is kind of what Adobe are kind of going through here

00:45:09   their final cutification of Photoshop not every feature is going to make it to this

00:45:15   1.0 and it's the 1.0 across all devices so they're initially going to be shipping a slim

00:45:22   down version with planning to add more functionality over time so they think that this 1.0 will

00:45:29   have the majority of stuff that people need but it's going to be some super powerful features

00:45:33   or some education features which exist in the current Photoshop that won't make it to

00:45:37   the 1.0 but will be added in as time goes on which I think is a perfectly fine way of

00:45:44   working right and I think that by and large Final Cut Pro X has bought that out right

00:45:50   like I assume there are still some people using 7 but I think over time people got happier

00:45:55   and happier with how that went this version of Photoshop syncs with the desktop version

00:46:01   so they're using cloud psd files as a thing they've created so you can work on the same

00:46:05   file seamlessly so the file lives in the cloud it lives in your creative cloud so you can

00:46:09   work on a desktop down on the iPad what do you think about this to start with?

00:46:15   Well, I'm so happy as we said before I'm happy and I'm a Photoshop user I'm a creative cloud

00:46:21   Photoshop and Lightroom subscriber and so I'll get this when it comes out I'll just

00:46:28   add this to the list and you know as we've been talking about and Federico and Fraser

00:46:33   Spears and so many people have talked about the iPad hardware is capable of this right

00:46:38   like it's not a question the iPad hardware is capable the question has been can you bring

00:46:43   it to the touch interface and but you've got the touch and and Apple pencil as a as an

00:46:50   input so I'm really excited by this and I'm okay that it might not have every feature

00:46:55   I mean I'll ask me again if it doesn't have a favorite feature of mine but given what

00:46:59   I use Photoshop for the number one feature is that it's Photoshop and that I have been

00:47:05   using that for app for 25 years now a long long time and so I know it and that's why

00:47:16   that's really why I use it and pay for it is that I just I know it I know how to use

00:47:20   it I don't want to learn something else at this point when I've got the thing that

00:47:24   I want but on iPad I don't so you know I'm interested in it it is a the thing that gives

00:47:31   me pause is this conversation that they they had about cloud PSD files which in the verge

00:47:38   has a as a podcast and they also did a transcript of a Q&A that they had with an Adobe exec

00:47:44   that mentions the idea that Photoshop files in the cloud and they you know Niles got it

00:47:51   covered right he's like well wait a second I'm on a plane somewhere and I can't get

00:47:55   the you know in-flight wireless to download a giant Photoshop file and the guy from Adobe

00:48:00   says no no it's it's it's fine you know we're gonna we're gonna sync stuff and put

00:48:06   it in a cache and you can pull traditional PSDs in and export out traditional PSDs it's

00:48:14   more like what they're building is a cross device sync for documents you're working

00:48:18   on and that made me feel a little bit better about it the idea is Adobe wants that if you're

00:48:22   working on if you're working on if you think about like what Apple's demoed with their

00:48:27   iCloud stuff it's the same idea it's like you're working on Photoshop on a Mac and

00:48:31   then you open up Photoshop on the iPad it should it basically should be able to get

00:48:35   the exact same document in the exact same state without you saving it somewhere dragging

00:48:40   it somewhere else you know copying it in editing it there and then putting it back that if

00:48:45   you're working in Photoshop on different devices it's going to use this cloud PSD format to

00:48:50   seamlessly sync that that file and that project across and that's okay I just I just don't

00:48:56   want it to be what Adobe has done with some stuff in the past which is sort of like why

00:49:01   don't you just abandon files and go to our weird cloud service that everybody needs to

00:49:05   be a member of Creative Cloud to use and my response to that is always no I'm not interested

00:49:11   in that I don't I want to use my Dropbox right so it sounds like you can you can it sounds

00:49:17   like yeah yeah so it sounds like they are they are thinking of the cloud stuff as being

00:49:22   and I'm sure they sell to work groups you know if super expensive cloud storage and

00:49:27   stuff like that but for this purpose it seems like it's more about creating that kind of

00:49:32   seamless across device experience as you hop from place to place.

00:49:35   So all of the a lot of the product imagery and the demos and stuff that they're showing are including the Apple Pencil.

00:49:42   It seems to be a very important part of this purely because I think that a lot of the controls are pretty small and also you know I think a lot of creative people they use Wacom tablets and stuff like that that they're used to having a stylus and on the

00:49:56   verge cast which Jason mentioned which was an interview with Scott Belsky who's Adobe's chief product officer yes I want to read you a little transcript. The Adobe guy. Just some rando. I want to read you a little part of this.

00:50:10   I feel like some phone calls may be made from Apple to Adobe today so this is a transcript.

00:50:16   We're really excited. I would almost bet that Adobe and Apple are already working on what

00:50:22   their presentation is going to be for the iPad Pro event whenever it occurs right.

00:50:26   But like what I mean is the phone call is because of this. We're really excited about the pencil. I think you'll see the capabilities of this accessory grow over time. We do collaborate with Apple a lot on this. All I can say is it's an important part of the product for the iPad. I think it will grow in importance.

00:50:42   So I picked and chose a little bit from that because Neelay jumps on him because he's so friggin excited that it goes down this route so that's like two sentences smushed together. But what I think that very clearly tells you is exactly that that Apple and Adobe have probably already been working on their presentation.

00:51:00   And I believe, I think this is very clear that Adobe have definitely seen some stuff that's coming over the next few years. I mean we spoke about this when the report came out. This is very much these two companies needing to work together to make this work.

00:51:17   If Adobe are going to make this bet they need to know Apple are in this for the long haul. And Apple need Adobe. They need each other for this to really make this something that goes on to be a good thing. And the Apple Pencil becoming a more important part of the toolkit will 100% make this Photoshop move a good one.

00:51:36   Because what it's showing is pointing devices right and like that these are a thing that should exist on the iPad and maybe the primary one is the Apple Pencil but it doesn't matter how it is because that's what you need for these desktop class apps because the UI is built differently.

00:51:51   So I think that this whole thing including the Apple Pencil thing and this whole thing of Photoshop is really significant. Like this is a big thing for the iPad.

00:52:00   So here's my thinking on it right. Maybe this pushes more people more companies to make this decision.

00:52:07   Or maybe this is just something that Adobe can do because Adobe has a business model that supports this. But either way, this is positive because even if nothing else happens except for the fact that we now have Photoshop on the iPad, that's a big win for the iPad.

00:52:21   Just that on its own. That's huge. But it could also mean that more companies like Microsoft did as well, right, we can't discount Word. Word on the iPad is really good.

00:52:33   But just showing that if you have a business model that supports it or if you can create one that will, the iPad is the place for you.

00:52:42   I wrote a thing about this a while ago when I was complaining about, on the internet like I do apparently, about Photoshop not being real on the iPad. That there's an artist named Jen Bartel and she was detailing her workflow and talking about how she's gotten better on iPad but until real full Photoshop is there, she can't use the iPad even though she really likes the iPad and the Apple Pencil.

00:53:06   And so she's got a mobile studio, like a Wacom mobile studio that's basically running Windows that she can use.

00:53:13   And that's an example of somebody who is an existing Adobe customer and wants to use the iPad and can't. And I think there are a lot of them. I think there are a lot of them out there who appreciate or would consider the iPad Pro and the Apple Pencil, current or future, if they had this other piece which is they need Photoshop.

00:53:33   And you can say, "Well, oh, but they can use this other piece of software that runs on the iPad." And some people can, but a lot of people can't.

00:53:41   And in her case, it has to do with her Adobe specific brushes she uses. Like she wants Photoshop on the iPad and she's going to get it, which is very exciting, right?

00:53:51   And I think there are going to be a lot of people like that who love the hardware, but they are also part of their whole workflow is based on Adobe products and especially Photoshop.

00:54:02   So it's exciting.

00:54:03   This wasn't all. Adobe had a bunch of other stuff today, which is also encouraging. They have a video app aimed at YouTubers called Premiere Rush.

00:54:13   And it is a version of Premiere, which is like slimmed down and streamlined. It's on all devices, phones and tablets and PCs and stuff like that.

00:54:26   But it is created with YouTubers in mind.

00:54:30   It's effectively iMovie.

00:54:33   Right, right. And this is, I wonder what we'll see from Apple on this front because...

00:54:39   If anything.

00:54:40   Well, at some point, I think they've got to do something. Then they can update iMovie and that's fine, but I keep thinking to myself, is anybody at Apple thinking that Logic and Final Cut need to be on the iPad Pro?

00:54:52   Because in some form.

00:54:54   Now, GarageBand is a light version of Logic and iMovie is a light version of Final Cut Pro.

00:55:01   But I do have to ask, like, is that enough?

00:55:05   Is that enough on the iPad Pro to have these kind of light versions that haven't really improved a lot on the iPad in a while?

00:55:13   It is cool to see Adobe trying to rush in here and say, "We've got a YouTuber video editing app that is now available on iPhone and iPad."

00:55:27   That's great. But I do wonder, like, what is Apple's strategy there?

00:55:31   Because we've talked about, like, Ferrite, which is what I use on the iPad to edit podcasts.

00:55:36   And, you know, there is no Logic for iPad. Will there be? And what about Final Cut? That's a good example.

00:55:42   Again, the hardware can do it.

00:55:44   What about Xcode?

00:55:45   Sure, sure. That's a big question, too. So what's Apple's intention for this platform, too, in the long term?

00:55:51   Also, they're working on a drawing and painting app, which is codenamed Project Gemini, which is clearly, well, I would assume, gunning for Procreate.

00:56:01   Yeah. Kudos to Adobe, right? Like, it took them a while.

00:56:05   I think they made a bad bet, which is that they basically made a bet on, "We're going to do fun bite-sized apps for the iPhone."

00:56:11   And then the world went in a little bit of a different direction, and they've had to realign.

00:56:17   And this became part of a larger kind of re-envisioning of what their apps are as sort of across devices.

00:56:26   And so it's been a long wait, but it's good to see it.

00:56:31   All right. We should do some Ask Upgrade. Today's show is also brought to you by our friends over at Squarespace.

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00:58:14   So we have some #AskUpgrade questions. The first comes from Wildfire.

00:58:21   "With the increase in phone size and high DPI screens, I'm feeling less inclined to need or want a Kindle.

00:58:28   Do you think this trend will eventually reduce the demand for Kindles or do you think that demand is inherent for other purposes, Jason?"

00:58:36   I think the demand is already reduced by the existence of iPads and iPhones and other phones and tablets.

00:58:43   I think that was the big reducer in demand is for some people a backlit screen or an OLED screen is enough.

00:58:50   I don't think it's going to make a huge impact as long as the physical screen of the device has glare and is basically emitting light rather than reflecting light.

00:59:08   And so for me, I could read a book on my iPhone. I have read books on my iPhone and the XS Max is bigger, so that's nice.

00:59:18   But for me, the reason you get a Kindle is one, no interruptions, no notifications, no one swipe away from other apps.

00:59:26   It's a focused device. It's got very long battery life. And the screen, the E Ink screen, there is a light you can turn on in the dark, but it is a reflective thing.

00:59:39   It is white with black lettering on it that works like paper. The sun shines on it or a light shines on it and then it bounces back in your eyes.

00:59:48   And that is a very different feel than a phone screen. And so is that a niche set of desires? It is.

00:59:56   That's why the Kindle is a niche device. But I do think that nothing in the trends of the phones in the last few years has really made me think, "Oh, well, this is going to kill the Kindle."

01:00:05   The existence of tablets and phones makes the Kindle's audience much smaller because they have to get a dedicated device.

01:00:11   And you can read on these devices just fine. But I would, I, nothing has come, I mean, talk to me when Apple makes an iPad or iPhone that has no glare and doesn't feel like it's shining a light in my face and I'll talk, you know.

01:00:28   But until then, I just don't think that a bigger screen, for most people a bigger screen or a higher DPI is what drives people to the Kindle.

01:00:40   Josh asks, "Do you have any idea on how to distribute live photos? I'd like to freely distribute some movies that I've made into live photos that I've shot with my drone.

01:00:52   But when I export them, I get JPEGs and MOV files." So two parts to this. One, this wasn't a question, but it was something that I thought to myself, "Can you actually make live photos that weren't photos?"

01:01:03   It turns out you can. I found an app. I think this is an API. I didn't find many apps that could do this, but I found an app, a pretty cool app called Into Live where you can take movies and turn them into native live photos.

01:01:14   Just a part of this question that I thought I could give some use to everyone. It exists as a free app, has a bunch of ads in it, but you can remove the ads from an in-app purchase and it has extra functionality. Looked pretty cool.

01:01:24   But the sharing part seems trickier because I mean I've seen people talk about this, but I couldn't really find anything definite. You may know as the photos person that when you share live photos, you can share them individually, right?

01:01:42   Like I could send you an iMessage and you can see the live photo or I can send you via AirDrop and you get the live photo. But there doesn't seem to be a way to allow for that file to be downloaded en masse.

01:01:54   Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I feel like live photos for such a fun feature, Apple has done a really bad job of making it available to other people, right?

01:02:06   Yeah, I haven't been able to find a reliable way that will allow you to share them. Like for example, you could share a Dropbox link to a file because whenever I try and export them to Dropbox, I get that like a JPEG and a movie file.

01:02:23   Like you get both. And I've tried it with the HEIC. I've tried it with the settings for HEIC on and off and I couldn't really find a way to do it.

01:02:34   You can make an album and share it. But it's, yeah, it's a mess. My short version of it is it's a mess and I wish that it were better. But it's not.

01:02:52   And there are cases where you can make a shared album and send people a link that's a new, I think, feature. I'm actually trying to do it right now.

01:03:05   You can generate an iCloud link for a photo, right?

01:03:09   Yeah.

01:03:10   By the new sharing stuff. Interesting. That could maybe do it. Alright, so I'm making an iCloud link to an image now and I'm going to send it to Jason via iMessage. And if you can download it, then potentially this is a way to do it.

01:03:27   I guess probably the best thing for you to do is to, I don't know, not open it on an iOS device because then it just goes straight to photos.

01:03:34   Yeah, no, I just opened it on my Mac and I have an image and it is a photo.

01:03:41   Not live?

01:03:42   Not live.

01:03:43   There you go. So, who knows?

01:03:46   Boo.

01:03:47   We tried.

01:03:48   I use motion stills to turn live photos into animations, animated chiffs. Or is it pronounced shifts? I don't know.

01:03:58   Heefs.

01:03:59   No, not heefs. Those are different. Heefs.

01:04:04   So, basically, we will throw it to the upgradients. If anybody knows a good way to do this, we'd love to know.

01:04:11   So the ability to try and maybe give somebody a link or some kind of downloadable format, which is a native live photo.

01:04:18   We've tried with this sharing thing and it seems like still, like if Jason picked it up on his iPhone, it'll probably work.

01:04:24   But we want it so you could tweet a link and people could download one of these awesome drone photos from Josh.

01:04:31   So let us know. You can tweet at us. Let us know or email. However you would like.

01:04:35   Nepali wants to know, Jason, now that the time capsule is dead, are there network drives available that are time machine friendly or can time machine backup over the internet?

01:04:44   I know that there are network attached storage devices that offer time machine compatibility.

01:04:51   So the idea there is that you've got a server in your house that's a storage server and you can back up to it.

01:04:59   So those do exist and you just have to look for time machine compatibility on a NAS device.

01:05:04   And they can be a little pricey, but I have one and a lot of people I know have them.

01:05:10   And the nice thing about them is it's a huge amount of storage.

01:05:12   And if you've got an Apple device with an SSD, you probably don't have a lot of storage.

01:05:16   So you can offload your old files and stuff to that server.

01:05:19   They're there if you need them, but otherwise not.

01:05:22   And they will do time machine.

01:05:23   And the ones that are compatible will let you set a size for the partition that you want for time machine so that time machine doesn't expand.

01:05:31   It'll expand to fill as much space as you give it so you can give it a very limited amount.

01:05:34   And then when it gets to the end, it'll delete the older files and just kind of keep rolling through the backup.

01:05:39   So that's the way to do it.

01:05:41   Time machine, I don't recommend.

01:05:43   There are some plugins that claim to do this, but I don't recommend trying using time machine as an internet backup.

01:05:48   It's not built to do it that way.

01:05:49   It's built to be on a local network or on an external drive on a local device.

01:05:54   If you want to do internet backup, you should use a service that's built for that, that's connecting to their remote servers and compressing data and doing all the things that it needs to do.

01:06:03   Luke wants to know, do you buy AppleCare for your Apple Watch?

01:06:06   I don't.

01:06:07   Why is that?

01:06:08   I don't buy AppleCare for almost anything, although I did buy it for my iPad, my iMac Pro because it was so expensive that I was like, you know what?

01:06:15   And the AppleCare was not so expensive.

01:06:19   So for that one, I decided to do it.

01:06:22   But because I'm a person who had a big spider in my iMac screen at one point, right?

01:06:27   So I was like, all right, we're going to do that.

01:06:29   But for my Apple Watch, I just don't.

01:06:30   I don't buy AppleCare.

01:06:31   I have been fortunate that the amount of destruction that has happened of devices in my life has never cost me anything close to what I would have been paying on AppleCare.

01:06:41   And so my, I'm, I just, I don't have a negative energy field around me that causes me to break devices all the time.

01:06:48   And so I feel like for me, I know people who are like that and they are, they are very happy to use AppleCare.

01:06:53   I just have never been one of those people.

01:06:55   So I don't, I don't buy AppleCare in general.

01:06:58   In fact, I think the first time I've ever bought AppleCare for anything was the iMac Pro.

01:07:04   I buy AppleCare for my iPhone.

01:07:06   I bought one for my XS Max.

01:07:08   I would buy AppleCare for a watch as well, just because it seems breakable.

01:07:17   It is breakable.

01:07:18   It's a small thing.

01:07:20   Like it's a small little device, right?

01:07:23   Like that feels like you could, you could, you could knock it against something and scratch it, break it in some way.

01:07:29   Like it feels like a, an easily breakable device, I should say.

01:07:34   And if AppleCare was, is within your budget, like I recommend it.

01:07:39   I would always say, look at it.

01:07:40   Look at the how this works.

01:07:42   One of the reasons that I bought AppleCare for my XS Max is because of how expensive it is to replace even the back glass now on these phones.

01:07:53   So I did it because you get a couple of like accidental damage things right now included with, with the, the AppleCare.

01:07:59   I mean, you have to pay a small amount for them, but it feels like something I want to do, especially after destroying my iPad Pro as I did recently.

01:08:07   So I'm a little bit, little bit, I'm warming up to AppleCare a little bit more because I looked at how expensive it would be to replace the iPad screen and not for me.

01:08:16   Steph asked, how does international roaming work on the Apple Watch Series 4?

01:08:20   Do I need to set up a new provider if I travel abroad?

01:08:22   Will the watch work without a cellular connection?

01:08:25   Yeah, here's how it works.

01:08:27   It doesn't.

01:08:28   Doesn't work.

01:08:29   It does not work.

01:08:30   So you can't roam internationally on an Apple Watch.

01:08:33   That just, it's not a feature.

01:08:35   So you'll be in your home country.

01:08:36   It'll work there.

01:08:37   When you go overseas, just turn it off.

01:08:40   It won't work.

01:08:41   Maybe one day it will be different, but that is a level of complexity in terms of how it's connected to your phone and all of those things that it's just, it does not work.

01:08:50   So don't try.

01:08:52   And will it work without a cellular connection?

01:08:54   Sure.

01:08:55   It'll work great.

01:08:56   Like the non-cellular Apple Watch does, which is it will be tethered to your Apple Watch via Bluetooth and/or Wi-Fi.

01:09:04   And finally today, Landon asked, do you know how the iPad tracks apps for screen time if you're using picture-in-picture and/or split screen?

01:09:12   So I thought I knew the answer to this.

01:09:14   I asked Federico and he confirmed my suspicion that it tracks them all at the same time.

01:09:22   So if you have Safari and Google Docs both open, they're both getting tracked as being open in screen time.

01:09:28   So that is, that's the way that I believe it to be.

01:09:32   That's the way he believes it to be.

01:09:33   It matches with my own testing that is tracking everything, which I think is the best thing to do.

01:09:40   It sees everything.

01:09:42   Everything.

01:09:43   If you would like to send in a question for Ask Upgrade, just send it to tweet with the hashtag #AskUpgrade and it goes into a document for us to pull out in the future.

01:09:53   Again, we're going to be in person next week recording upgrades.

01:09:58   So if you have any questions that you think would work nicely for that environment, send in a tweet with hashtag #AskUpgrade.

01:10:05   So we should talk about that.

01:10:06   So next week, me and Jason are going to be in Chicago doing a live show.

01:10:11   Tickets sold out a long, long time ago.

01:10:13   So if you have a ticket, great. Hope to see you there.

01:10:15   But here's the thing about this.

01:10:18   Oh boy.

01:10:19   We're expecting an Apple event at some point before the end of this month.

01:10:26   Right? I feel like that is a thing at this point.

01:10:28   We believe, I still believe, at this point I don't think it's going to be next week because in that instance the invite probably should have gone out last week.

01:10:38   They should probably have already gone out if they were holding it next week, which is good for us in terms of me being in Chicago instead of out here for an Apple event.

01:10:48   But it does suggest that, yeah, I think we are hoping that it will be the last week of October.

01:10:58   Because, because, so here's the thing. If you, if one time you're listening to this, Apple has announced an event for the week of the 29th, which is now what we would, I guess, expect and hope.

01:11:11   That means the next episode in Chicago will be a live draft.

01:11:17   It's hard to imagine what would happen if that lines up, right? The idea that we would be drafting an Apple event live on stage.

01:11:27   Very excited about the potential of a live draft.

01:11:30   I don't know if my heart can take it. Oh my goodness.

01:11:34   Wouldn't that be a lot of fun. So that is what we hope will happen is that there will be a live draft.

01:11:39   Now, in the event, so we just want to put this out there because we're saying that we're recording next week.

01:11:44   In the event that there is an Apple event next week, right? Like, doubt it, but just in that event, we are still going to be doing our show in Chicago.

01:11:55   Right. But we will record Flop House Style, an episode that will be a special that will come out probably in November.

01:12:03   Yeah, it'll be an evergreen-ish episode where we can talk about a topic that is not based on the news of the day.

01:12:08   Because the thought here is if they do an Apple event next week, we will delay the real upgrade and do it after the Apple event as we do.

01:12:16   Because, you know, recording an episode one day before an Apple event is never a good idea for this show because we'd be too excited to run the Apple event.

01:12:25   I did that once with the talk show where we did a two-hour episode that was released like four hours before an Apple event in which we speculated on the Apple event.

01:12:32   And I thought, wow, this episode has the smallest expiration date, the nearest expiration date of any podcast I've ever done.

01:12:39   Because in four hours, and you have to listen for two hours, it will be...

01:12:44   That is such a narrow window.

01:12:46   It will be useless. So if that happens, then we will come up with something very clever and funny that is not tied at all with news.

01:12:56   And you'll hear that episode maybe Thanksgiving week or something like that.

01:13:01   But we're all crossing our fingers here for an event announced for the week of the 29th, this week sometime, so that we can do a live draft episode.

01:13:13   Live draft.

01:13:14   On stage in Chicago.

01:13:15   Just the excitement level of me. I might combust on stage.

01:13:21   I may have to walk off at various points and just like breathe small oxygen.

01:13:26   Yeah, a bunch of water.

01:13:27   Yeah.

01:13:28   So, very excited about the potentials here. But nevertheless, no matter what we do, we're really excited about doing the first ever Live with an Audience episode of Upgrade.

01:13:39   Yeah.

01:13:40   So that's going to be a lot of fun. So we hope to see you all there.

01:13:43   But otherwise, we'll be back next week. Come Apple event or High Water, we'll be back next week.

01:13:50   Until then, thanks so much to our sponsors, Squarespace, Pingdom and Green Chef.

01:13:56   You can find Jason online at 6colors.com. He's Jason L on Twitter.

01:14:00   I am @imike, @imyke on Twitter and Instagram. You should follow me there.

01:14:04   This show is a part of Relay FM. We have many shows at Relay FM that you may enjoy.

01:14:08   Go to relay.fm/shows for that. The show notes for this week are a Relay.fm/upgrade/215.

01:14:15   Until next time, Jason Snow. Say goodbye, Jason Snow.

01:14:18   See you next week, Chicago.

01:14:21   [Music]