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Upgrade

211: You Will Pay

 

00:00:00   [Music]

00:00:08   From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 211. Today's show is brought to you by Squarespace,

00:00:15   Pingdom, and Green Chef. Everything's back to normal now. My name is Myke Hurley. I'm joined by Jason Snow. Hi, Jason Snow.

00:00:23   This episode is Upgrade 211, which is a preview of what iOS will be called in 199 years.

00:00:31   Excellent.

00:00:32   iOS 211.

00:00:33   That's definitely a way to think about every episode. It's just a preview.

00:00:38   In the year 2217, iOS 211 will be released.

00:00:43   So yeah, we are back to normal, by and large, today. There's no event, there's no draft, there's no fun summer.

00:00:49   No, it's a Monday. There's no summer of fun, no. It's just we're back to...

00:00:52   Back to normal.

00:00:53   Ah, back to the usual. It's good. It's good, the usual is good.

00:00:56   So, we must stop Jason Snow, as we always do.

00:01:00   Oh, yes.

00:01:00   With the #snowtalk question that comes from Ryber this week.

00:01:03   Jason, do you enable secondary click on your mouse or trackpad, or are you a single button purist?

00:01:10   I love how listeners are... all the upgrade-ians are drilling down into the details of my opinions about input devices.

00:01:20   People want to know the intricacies of every part of how you use your devices.

00:01:25   That is what... someone, somewhere, has got one of those cork boards with the registering on it,

00:01:31   and they are detailing just exactly how you use your devices.

00:01:34   So no tap to click, but natural scrolling.

00:01:39   And I'm just gonna say #snowtalk, you can just ask, "Nobody knows where Jason's dock is yet, no one's asked that one."

00:01:47   Oh man, they were talking about that on ATP the other week, and I was like, "Oh, I have opinions about dock placement."

00:01:51   And actually, just if people want to wind it back,

00:01:55   Syracuse says several things on there that make me believe that Syracuse and I actually share a dock preference.

00:02:01   That is no longer available, by the way.

00:02:03   But that's not... nobody wants to hear about that this week.

00:02:08   Ryber, I am not a monster. Of course I enable secondary click on my trackpad.

00:02:14   I use a Magic Trackpad, and if I want the little context menu to come up, I put down two fingers and push.

00:02:22   I understand how people have dock preferences and windowing preferences and even scrolling preferences.

00:02:29   I cannot imagine anybody that wouldn't want the secondary click. Why would you not want that?

00:02:34   It is, I mean, habit, I suppose.

00:02:37   Well, so the reason that I don't like tap to click would be the reason, I would think,

00:02:44   which is if the way your hand rests on your trackpad, you get accidental two-finger presses when you only mean one,

00:02:54   and it's frustrating, and you're like, "No, no, no, I never want that. I'll pull down the control key when I want to right-click."

00:03:02   But I don't have that. For me, it's, and as somebody who has been educated in the ways of multi-touch on iPhone and iPad and all of that,

00:03:11   it is second nature. Not only is, you know, I'm doing two-finger scrolling, so I've already got two-finger gestures there,

00:03:17   I'm doing multi-finger expose kind of stuff, and two-finger click to get the context menu. It's all very natural.

00:03:25   In fact, I was thinking about this the other day, that it's amazing how Mac input methods have changed.

00:03:31   We think about the Mac as this sort of static classic thing, but Apple, with the trackpads on their laptops,

00:03:37   and also even for somebody who uses a desktop like me with that magic trackpad, like, Apple has inculcated all Mac users,

00:03:46   or at least many Mac users, in the multi-touch world just with that trackpad. And like, classic Mac OS,

00:03:55   and, you know, the scroll wheel was kind of like a wild idea, right? But now with the standard on the Mac for years now

00:04:05   has involved multiple finger movements on a trackpad. And so, it's interesting when you think about it that way.

00:04:12   I cannot envision, and I used a trackball for many, many, many years, which was really bad because you can't do a scroll wheel on a trackball.

00:04:20   Eventually they put like a ring around the ball, which was not great, but it was better than not having a scroll wheel,

00:04:26   and four, I think I had four buttons. It was lots of stuff. And then I converted to the trackpad,

00:04:34   because of course using a laptop you got used to the trackpad, and then Apple's like, "Yeah, we also made a trackpad for your desk."

00:04:39   And that's it. Like, multi-touch trackpad to the right of my keyboard, I cannot envision using a computer without that

00:04:48   and all of those gestures, including two fingers down, click. Yeah.

00:04:54   If you would like to submit a question like Rybo did, it could be about anything you want,

00:04:58   and I'm assuming we're going to get some very specific questions over the next week.

00:05:02   You can just send out a tweet with the hashtag SnellTalk, and we may be included in a future episode of the show.

00:05:08   So we move right now into follow-up by talking about pre-orders.

00:05:12   So Jason, I know that you are sometimes given the joy, the pleasure of taking a second trip up to the park to pick up some devices.

00:05:25   So I know that you mentioned this last time, right? So you may not have ordered any devices,

00:05:30   but I wanted to know, did you order anything last week?

00:05:32   Yeah, so I'm hoping, I'm hopeful, I live in hope that I might get in the review program and get advanced units,

00:05:39   but I don't have any yet, or get units, you know. I think last year I got them like the day before they shipped

00:05:44   or the day they shipped, something like that, which is great, because I can't buy every iPhone and Apple Watch

00:05:50   and review them. I can't do that. And so usually because I often get review units, I tend not to rush an order,

00:05:58   especially if I don't have, like last year I bought an iPhone X at the time, because I hadn't bought a phone in two years,

00:06:04   and I wanted a new phone that is mine, separate from like buying something just to review it.

00:06:10   This year, first off, I didn't stay up till midnight, although I keep threatening to do a live stream.

00:06:16   Macworld actually did like a periscope or something of everybody on the staff waiting to order.

00:06:22   Every year I want to do it.

00:06:24   But the problem, the thing that holds me back is there will be a stretch of like five minutes when nobody's talking.

00:06:29   Yeah, I'm still thinking about it. I think it might be, I was envisioning like we would get various relay hosts

00:06:37   to just kind of like pop in and say hi for a little while and then go away, and then of course at midnight

00:06:42   all the audio will just be furious typing or maybe we'll put in some sound effects, like a little intense music

00:06:46   as everybody will do. It'll be like New Year's Eve live, basically. That's how I need to think about

00:06:52   the Apple, the live stream on the night of Apple ordering, which is, it's like waiting for the ball drop to drop in Times Square.

00:07:00   Anyway, I woke up the next morning and I ordered a 40 millimeter Apple Watch Series 4 GPS in silver aluminum

00:07:10   for my wife, who has been using a stainless Series 0. I don't want to pay the price for stainless this time.

00:07:17   I think she'll actually approve that it's lighter and has more prominent haptics than the stainless model does,

00:07:24   even though it's not quite as shiny and pretty. And she's been waiting a long time and her battery life

00:07:29   on her Series 0 is eroding rapidly. And for people who forget the Series 0, like, you know, it doesn't have GPS,

00:07:37   so it's, distance tracking is poor. It's like, it's not, we take walks and I'm closing rings and she's got nothing, right?

00:07:46   So it's not good. So she's getting a new watch and it won't be here for, on launch day, you know,

00:07:53   because I didn't bother staying up late, but it will be here at some point. So that's me.

00:07:58   I mean, and also something that's really, I mean, is worth remembering, I had forgotten about this

00:08:03   until I was reminded over the last couple of days, that watch does not get watchOS 5.

00:08:08   Yeah, I think that was the clincher, is that it also won't run the latest version of watchOS.

00:08:13   So I had that moment where I thought, oh, it's time for you to get a new watch. And then she started

00:08:18   complaining about the battery life too, because the battery life is getting really bad on it.

00:08:21   And that was the, that was the clincher. I feel like it was already clinched, but that was just the,

00:08:25   that was the last step there. Yeah. iOS 12 and watchOS 5 are coming out today as we record this.

00:08:31   We'll talk a little bit about iOS 12 later on in the episode. But like, there's a bunch of things

00:08:36   in watchOS 5, like the ability for third-party podcast playback and even Apple's podcast app.

00:08:42   So you want that, right? Like that's the thing that a lot of people would, I think,

00:08:46   would kind of want. So it does make the upgrading a little bit more imperative than it has in past

00:08:53   years, because it won't run the most recent version, which honestly I think is fine. Like,

00:08:57   five years is pretty good, I think. I think Apple did a decent job there, right? Keeping that running

00:09:04   for as long as they did. Especially for a new product, like the watch where the original watch

00:09:11   and what the watch is now, they've, it's really gone on a different path that I don't think anyone

00:09:15   was really expecting and like what people use these things for. So it is not necessarily as

00:09:23   capable in the right way. So I'm not surprised they had to cut it off at some point.

00:09:26   I ordered a 256 gigabyte iPhone XS Max in gold. And I bought, that's for me.

00:09:37   Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Hashtag plus club. I get it.

00:09:41   Max Club. Max Club. We're in the Max Club now.

00:09:44   You use Max? That's what that means? It's that you're all, you're joining us over in the Max

00:09:47   Club? Where we all use Max? I'm using Max right now.

00:09:49   Yeah, I actually prefer Club Max instead of Max Club. But Max Club has kind of just,

00:09:57   it's kind of gotten away from me already. So it's too late to change it to Club Max. But Max Club is

00:10:03   back. Well, you know, it's gonna begin for the first time. Big Phone Club. And I bought a 40

00:10:09   millimeter gold aluminum cellular series four for Redeemer. Yeah.

00:10:14   I have a question about Max Club. Or Big Phone Club, you also said. Like, I am worried that

00:10:22   this is gonna be an exclusive club, an exclusionary club. Are you going to, are you going to like have

00:10:28   a person at the door who looks at the phone and if it's a 10R, like turns them away, turns their

00:10:35   nose up and says, no, it's not big enough and then kicks them out? No, there will be a special area

00:10:40   in the club to try and advocate. Oh, so they'll be like down on the bottom,

00:10:44   but the 10S Max people will be up like on the mezzanine. They'll go behind the velvet rope.

00:10:48   Yeah, yeah. You get shown why the bigger phones are better while you're there. So you'll eventually

00:10:54   convert over. But yeah, I have both of these to pick up on Friday. So I'll be getting them on

00:10:57   Friday. So for our next episode next week, we'll be able to talk about all of these in detail.

00:11:03   I'm really excited about the Max. I'm very intrigued as well as being excited for a phone

00:11:09   of a screen the size that it has. That's going to be quite an experience. So I'm pretty excited to

00:11:15   check those out. We have some follow out. I mentioned it was iOS 12 review, well, it's iOS

00:11:21   12 day today, which means it's iOS 12 review time as well. I would like to guide everybody over to

00:11:27   Federico Viticchi's review on iOS 12. It is the Max Stories review. I mean, I think at this point,

00:11:33   it has become, in the way that the Syracuse's reviews were expected and enjoyed and it's

00:11:39   become an event. Well, Federico, I think has done that. And it's because of his work. This

00:11:45   review is incredible. I have read it. Not only have I read it, I have once again committed my

00:11:50   voice to it. You've read it out loud.

00:11:51   And I've read it out loud for your enjoyment. So Max Stories are selling an audio book

00:11:57   that I created. There is a discount for Club Max Stories members. All the information will be in

00:12:02   the show notes for that if you want to get it, but you can go and get it. So if you don't want

00:12:06   to read it and you want to have it read to you, there is an audio book, which is in my voice.

00:12:12   It's like three and a bit hours long. There's chapter markers and all that fun stuff. So you

00:12:16   can go and check it out and load it into like, recommend Castro or Overcast because you can,

00:12:22   if you pay for those apps, you can sideload files in. So that works really nicely.

00:12:27   Or you could listen to it however you want, but they're really good because they're,

00:12:30   you know, it's kind of been made to be played in podcast apps is kind of the way that I produced

00:12:35   it because that's what I do. It's just, you know, it's how I know to make stuff. But Federico's

00:12:40   review is incredible this year. It's my favorite. His writing about shortcuts is my favorite writing

00:12:48   he has ever done because even more than iPad, I think workflow is intertwined with him in a way.

00:12:57   And again, everyone thinks about Federico with the iPad, but workflow was this whole other level and

00:13:02   getting to read him talk about how important this is. And when I read the conclusion for the

00:13:08   shortcuts chapter and the overall conclusion, I got goosebumps reading them. It's incredible.

00:13:13   I think of it this way. This is a person whose area of specialty is iOS. And Federico is also

00:13:21   a person who's the, I would say the leading voice as a champion of workflow as an app.

00:13:30   Now imagine that workflow where he is the leading voice is bought by Apple and integrated as perhaps

00:13:38   the banner feature of a release of iOS, which is his area of specialty. Like it is, it's huge,

00:13:47   right? I mean, there could never be anything more Federico than this. So I'm looking forward to

00:13:53   reading that section. I've only read the beginning because I just downloaded the ebook as a Clubmax

00:14:00   Stories member. I just downloaded the ebook version this morning and I've only read the first part of

00:14:05   it. But it's wonderful that I really, really recommend that people read. And of course,

00:14:09   we'll be talking in more detail about Unconnected this week. I also wanted to mention the Max

00:14:16   Sparky Shortcuts Field Guide. So wonderful for Mr. David Sparks has put together a video guide on

00:14:21   how to get started with shortcuts. So if that's the kind of thing that you want, if you want to

00:14:26   see rather than just read and you want video and you want to hear the wonderful David Sparks teach

00:14:31   you, then that's another place to go and find out more about shortcuts. I am very enthused about

00:14:38   shortcuts adoption rate so far. So again, iOS 12 is not out yet when we're recording this. It will

00:14:44   come out probably whilst we're recording this. But their app updates are starting to come out. And

00:14:50   there are big companies, like not independent app developers that are putting shortcuts in their

00:14:57   app. And I am really excited, Jason, because it seems like the adoption that I wanted to see

00:15:02   is going to happen, right? Like it's going to start today but will continue because people are

00:15:08   going to be like, "Oh, I'm not sure if I wanted to add these." And then they see how many companies

00:15:12   are doing it. And then it will, I think, push more people to do it. So I'm really, really excited.

00:15:16   JASON WARNKE Right. What we said when WWDC happened was

00:15:19   that workflow was something where, you know, a user might bug a developer or an independent

00:15:26   developer would see the workflow app and they'd be like, "Oh, that's interesting. Maybe I'll try it."

00:15:30   But it was this kind of grassroots word of mouth kind of thing. It's now a core iOS feature that

00:15:39   Apple is demoing on stage. And so there's this moment where, you know, I think it flips over in

00:15:46   the priority list of especially larger companies, as you said, who develop iOS apps to be like,

00:15:52   "It's no longer a 'wouldn't it be nice if we added this obscure thing that will help some users' to,

00:15:57   'Oh, this is the big iOS 12 feature. We need to prioritize this in our update that takes advantage

00:16:02   of iOS 12.'" And once those things are in there, and Apple did use some, the method that they're

00:16:07   using to do the shortcut stuff is related to stuff that's already how people build their apps. So

00:16:12   it's not like there's a whole new thing that they need to think. They need to make modifications

00:16:18   that they probably have already kind of got the basics down in their apps the way that they're

00:16:23   structured. But they do that and they pick all of this up. And once those things are picked up,

00:16:29   then your system is watching as you use your apps and giving you those as options in the

00:16:34   shortcut settings in the settings app. So you can just say, "Oh, yeah, that's a thing I did

00:16:41   recently. Let's give that a shortcut in Siri." But there's also that secondary effect, which is then

00:16:45   they show up in the shortcuts app too. So it's like it all gets unlocked. And the fact that it's

00:16:51   now a banner feature in iOS 12 means that all these app developers are prioritizing it. And then

00:16:57   to your point, there's also the peer pressure, which is like, now you're a competitor. Now this

00:17:00   other big developer did it. Why didn't you do it? And that is more grist for the mill in terms of

00:17:06   like getting those things booted up the priority list. And before you know it, all the major apps

00:17:11   have shortcut support and that's great for everybody. And last piece of follow up,

00:17:16   because people keep sending this to us, a couple of days before the event last week,

00:17:21   so this was like on Monday last week, Apple started selling the Logitech crayon to the public.

00:17:26   We don't know what that means, right? So no, it's on Logitech site too. You can buy it from

00:17:32   Logitech directly too. I bought one because I have an iPad 6th generation here. Still only

00:17:37   works with that one, right? So it still only works with the newest cheap iPad. That's what

00:17:44   it works with. The reason it works that way is that the Apple Pencil is a Bluetooth device.

00:17:48   So you pair it with like any Bluetooth device, you pair it with a device and then it's paired

00:17:53   with that device. And if you want to use it on a different iPad, you need to move to that device,

00:17:59   pair it with that device. And then it works with that one. The Pencil, and the story they told was,

00:18:05   because it's in a classroom environment especially, the Pencil doesn't work like that. The Pencil,

00:18:10   if you put it down on a 6th generation iPad, it will write because it's using a different wireless

00:18:15   frequency. It's communicating using a radio that is only in the 6th generation iPad. And it is this

00:18:22   cheaper thing. It doesn't have all of the features of the Pencil, but it's also cheaper than the

00:18:27   Pencil is. I do wonder, I know like you wonder, if why would Apple not make that same connection

00:18:38   capability available in the iPad Pro going forward? And we'll see if there are new iPad

00:18:45   Pros at some point, because we didn't get them last week, if they will also support it. And that

00:18:50   may be one of the reasons why Logitech's initial push was education only, but now it's been opened

00:18:56   up to everybody. It may be simpler than that. It may be that they're hoping that a lot of those

00:19:01   6th generation iPads sell for the holidays, and that it's a nice accessory to bundle along with

00:19:07   it, and not everybody's going to want to buy the full-on Apple Pencil. We'll see.

00:19:10   All right, today's show is brought to you by our friends over at Green Chef. Green Chef is a meal

00:19:17   delivery service that includes everything you need to cook delicious gourmet meals that you can feel

00:19:22   good about. Green Chef sends a wide variety of organic ingredients and imaginative new recipes

00:19:28   to you every single week. Now what makes Green Chef different, and I think really awesome,

00:19:32   is that they have meal plans for different diet types like paleo, vegan, vegetarian, keto,

00:19:37   gluten-free, omnivore and carnivore. You can choose one of those and they will pick the meals

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00:19:52   is tracked from planting to plating, and they have recipes that include pre-made sauces, dressings,

00:19:57   and spices so you can get more flavor for your meals with less time requirement for you. Jason,

00:20:02   you have Green Chef, correct? Yes, I got a Green Chef box, absolutely. What did you think of it?

00:20:08   It was very good. We got the veggie box, and I am a skeptical person when it comes to vegetarian

00:20:17   meals, let me tell you. Anyone that's listened to relay of home bonus specials in the past,

00:20:21   and I think Jason does not like salad. No, I mean, I do like salad, but I like some very specific

00:20:26   things in salad. What Jason thinks of salad is not salad. I hate vegetables. I now eat roasted

00:20:34   vegetables because I discovered that roasted vegetables are good. My point here is that

00:20:37   we made the Green Chef vegetarian meals and they were all really good. They were all really,

00:20:42   really good. And there was one in there especially that I basically, our method is you put a little

00:20:47   star on the menu card and that means save this and everybody liked this and we should have this

00:20:52   again. And we did that. There were these corn cake things that were with cheese and, oh my God,

00:20:59   they were so good. So yeah, it was very good, easy to make, pre-portioned ingredients, no food waste,

00:21:06   very easy to put them all together, and super tasty. And they have meat dishes too. We just

00:21:13   didn't get those because of various dietary restrictions in my family, but they have a whole

00:21:19   range of different levels, including ones that have meat and ones that do not. So we got the

00:21:26   veggie one. It was great. - Green Chefs expert chefs design recipes with gourmet flavor that

00:21:32   you typically only find in restaurants. And they think that dinner should be planned around your

00:21:36   life, not the other way around. So they love to give you the choices that they have. You can get

00:21:40   $50 off your first box of Green Chef by going to greenchef.us/upgrade. That's greenchef,

00:21:47   G-R-E-E-N-C-H-E-F.us/upgrade, and you can get $50 off your first box of Green Chef.

00:21:55   Our thanks to Green Chef for their support of this show and Relay FM. So a week has,

00:22:01   well, nearly a week has passed. - Nearly. - Feels like two weeks, but it's been about four days.

00:22:07   - We did a Wednesday show, so yeah, it's been, it's not, haven't been that long.

00:22:12   - So there's been some stuff that's come out. There's been some different things that we've

00:22:16   been thinking about. I wanted to just share some information that I found out about Dual Sim Support

00:22:21   because it's kind of not really as good as we were hoping it was going to be, I think.

00:22:28   So Dual Sim Support is coming in a future update for iOS, probably iOS 12.1, which is when they'll

00:22:38   ship like emoji. Who knows, maybe group FaceTime, but I'm not holding out for that anytime soon.

00:22:42   And to be able to use your phone with multiple carriers, it has to be an unlocked phone,

00:22:48   because otherwise you can only enable two lines with the same carrier. So if you buy a two mobile

00:22:55   phone, it's locked to two mobile, for example, or Verizon or whatever, it has to be the same carrier,

00:23:01   which is by and large for most people probably not that useful. So it is unlocked phones only that

00:23:09   get you kind of like the maximum flexibility with being able to use different carriers for your

00:23:16   regular SIM and your eSIM. And I believe like if you have CDMA, like that's it, like it's just

00:23:23   CDMA, like you're done. So there are some definite limitations to this, and it kind of continues from

00:23:33   there a little bit. I want to check that thing about CDMA. So yes, if a CDMA carrier provides

00:23:37   your first SIM, your second SIM won't support CDMA. So you can't have multiple CDMA.

00:23:42   Oh boy, this whole story, and then there's more to it that you're going to get to, but it's all

00:23:47   about how phone carriers are control freaks. That's it. Because a lot of it is like, well,

00:23:52   but we assumed maybe it'll work like it does on the iPad. Oh no, no, no, no. Because the iPad is

00:23:58   a tablet. It's weird. It's an add-on device. We don't care about that. We care about your phone.

00:24:02   We want complete control of your phone. We want like, if you insert a SIM the wrong way,

00:24:07   we take control of your phone and like, we don't want, it is amazing the difference here between

00:24:13   what is technically possible and what is contractually possible when you work with a

00:24:17   carrier and it's a smartphone and not a tablet. It is amazing just how much they ruin the process.

00:24:25   Like it's nothing like the iPad at all. You can't select a carrier to use from the settings app like

00:24:29   you can on the iPad. You need to scan a QR code that is provided to you by the carrier to activate

00:24:36   the secondary SIM and the eSIM. It's unclear right now kind of how this would work for short-term

00:24:42   plans, right? So if you want to do like a traveling plan or you want to be in another country and use

00:24:46   a plan there, it's kind of unclear. This is going to have to be something we wait and see our carriers

00:24:50   deal with it when they roll out their support. Right. My hope is that, because I always buy

00:24:56   SIMs when I travel to Europe, my hope is that some company, whether it's the one that I use now or

00:25:07   some other company, will offer a similar sort of thing where you basically get a QR code in the

00:25:13   package and you scan it and then you're on their network for the duration and that would be nice.

00:25:19   Or you buy it online even better and they just send you a QR code and you scan it and now you're

00:25:26   on their network. That would be it. We'll see, right? But we can't take it for granted because

00:25:31   so much of the story is like, "Hey, all those things that we can do, you can't do them." So

00:25:35   we'll see if there are partners because it's like only some carriers are announced as partners in

00:25:41   this and what are they going to do and are they going to make it so that it's only on plans that

00:25:47   are not good and we're going to all end up popping our SIM trays out because I would really like

00:25:53   the scenario when I'm in the UK, let's say, where I'm on data and stuff on a local network for a

00:26:00   reasonable price and yet if somebody sends me a text or tries to call my American phone number,

00:26:09   I get the call. That would be great but we'll see if that's something that's going to actually be

00:26:14   possible. So the way that the settings work, you can do that. There's a very confusing

00:26:18   setting screen but you can say primary SIM will be for calls and texts, secondary SIM is for data

00:26:25   only. So if you can get it to work, it will be that way. There is potentially one silver lining.

00:26:30   The number of disclaimers in this section is amazing. There is a giant asterisk

00:26:35   hanging over this whole part of the podcast just to be clear. So there is a reference to also using

00:26:41   carrier apps to enable the service in some instances. So there is a potential here that

00:26:47   you will sign up with a carrier and then they will provide a code that you can activate it with and

00:26:53   then that might be how you could get short-term things. So like say you were using 3, you'd go

00:26:58   to 3's app and you could buy a month of service and it would activate an eSIM for you and you can

00:27:03   also store more than one eSIM but you can only use one at a time. So you could have, you went to four

00:27:08   countries, you could have accounts with four companies and then use just the data that they're

00:27:14   providing during that time. But the thing is, it seems like Apple has provided the building blocks

00:27:20   but now it's up to like what will the carriers provide. But basically this is, we thought it was

00:27:26   going to be like the iPad system, this is literally zero like the iPad system. And it's such a shame,

00:27:31   I mean I get why they, again it's about control. I get why they're doing it, it's because they

00:27:36   want more control of the process but it's so stupid because what Apple has shown is that

00:27:40   we don't need little cards stuck in our phones anymore. Like it is so stupid, it is like

00:27:46   requiring, I mean I don't know, it's like requiring a disc to watch a movie. Like it is not necessary

00:27:55   anymore. It's literally a little card with some data on it. It can be done entirely virtually

00:28:02   and yet it's not. And that's annoying, like that's annoying. And I get that the priorities of a

00:28:11   carrier are not the priorities of Apple or necessarily an iPhone user. And one of the nice

00:28:16   things about having a physical SIM is that if you have an Apple phone and a not Apple phone, you can

00:28:23   move between them, which is absolutely true. But the fact that the eSIM process is so kind of

00:28:30   ridiculous, I want to be optimistic here and say I think this will ultimately get worked out because

00:28:35   we've come a long way since in the 10 years since the original iPhone 11 years. We've come a long

00:28:40   way in terms of carriers kind of realizing that there's certain things that they really need to

00:28:44   do better. And I think we will get there with the rest of this. And I think a bunch of carriers will

00:28:48   start to see this as a great opportunity, right? Some of the smaller carriers that haven't got the

00:28:53   market share will try and make this a thing that they can provide to people. Well, like T-Mobile

00:28:58   in the US will be an example of that. Traditionally, they have been a very aggressive carrier in terms

00:29:06   of like embracing new stuff like their free data plan for iPads, right? Where they want their SIM

00:29:12   in the iPad so that then if you want to buy more data, you'll buy it from them. And so they'll give

00:29:16   you some small amount of free data every month. That's the kind of thing that, yeah, the smaller

00:29:21   carriers are going to want to step up here. And the easier they make it, right, for the transaction,

00:29:27   like you don't physically need to have anything anymore. That's good for them, right? Because

00:29:33   then they just need to get in front of your face long enough for you to buy something. They don't

00:29:36   need to put it in a vending machine or send you something from Amazon or something like that.

00:29:40   They literally just need you to give them money and they text you a barcode. That's pretty cool.

00:29:47   So let's talk about the iPhones from last week because we've all had more time to think about it.

00:29:56   I've been reading some articles that you've posted into Six Colors. And I think one of the things

00:30:01   that I wanted to talk about first is price, is the price spectrum that we have across the iPhones

00:30:09   now. Because you pointed out quite rightly that between the XR and the XS Max, there is a $350

00:30:16   difference now between the two, from where it starts on each of those lines.

00:30:22   That is, I would assume for new phones, that's got to be the biggest jump, right?

00:30:32   Yeah. For the base price of a new iPhone. And keeping in mind that Apple tends to only

00:30:37   release, they did two new iPhones for a while and they were separated by what, $150. And then they

00:30:43   did three last year. And they did three again this year. But in my Six Colors piece, I used the

00:30:50   metaphor of boiling the frog, the idea that you keep turning the heat up and the frog doesn't

00:30:54   notice that it's slowly being boiled. That's kind of what's going on here because what Apple did

00:30:58   last year was release two iPhones at the price, slightly higher than the price of the standard

00:31:05   iPhone releases the last few years. The 8 and the 8 Plus were a little bit more expensive than the

00:31:09   7 and the 7 Plus. And then they did the 10 way up at $999. That was like a little bit of sleight

00:31:15   of hand because then this year they keep the 10S at $999. They had the XS Max at $1099. They bring

00:31:21   them the XR in and it is the traditional like plus, it's actually a little cheaper than the

00:31:28   8 Plus was last year. It's the same price as the 7 Plus was when it went on sale and the 6S Plus.

00:31:35   But there's no iPhone, no new iPhone at the 8 price or the 7 price, right? So by,

00:31:45   they've removed the bottom plank out of their prices of the new phones. So now if you want

00:31:52   to buy a new iPhone, the starting price is higher than it's ever been. But they did it in a way that

00:31:58   like, because imagine, Myke, imagine if last year Apple just released the iPhone X and there was no

00:32:05   iPhone 8 and the message was, "Welp, Apple just raised the price of the iPhone by $300." But

00:32:11   instead they did it in steps and it makes it a lot easier to not realize what just happened, which is

00:32:17   it is more expensive than ever to buy a new iPhone, intentionally so.

00:32:22   - Especially when you think that we are kind of calling or thinking of like the 10R as like

00:32:27   the cheaper phone in the lineup, the more budget phone in the lineup. This is the price that iPhones

00:32:32   used to be. - Yeah, this is the budget phone in the lineup is the cost of the big iPhone in the old

00:32:41   days, not the base iPhone, the Plus iPhone. So it's 150 basically over what we thought of as sort of

00:32:49   the iPhone entry price like a couple of years ago. - That's wild. - And that's for the one, and yet

00:32:55   in many articles you will see it referred to as the budget model. And it is given its features

00:33:02   compared to the 10, it is a budget 10 because it is way cheaper than the iPhone 10, let alone the

00:33:11   the XS Max or the XS and the XS Max. It's way cheaper, but it's way more expensive than a base

00:33:20   model iPhone. So it's basically Apple saying, if you want a brand new iPhone this year, you can get

00:33:26   a big model that is the cost of a Plus, or you can get these 10s that are up at 1,000 or 1,100,

00:33:36   but that's it. Like if you want the slot below that, you don't have a new phone this year. You

00:33:41   can get the eight and the eight's great, and it's cheaper than it was. So it's an even better deal.

00:33:46   But if you want one of those three new models, you will pay. And this is absolutely part of

00:33:52   Apple's strategy, which is to ratchet up the average selling price. 'Cause iPhone sales

00:33:58   number wise are flat, but their revenue is up. And how do they do that? The average iPhone being sold

00:34:04   costs more than it used to. And they raised the prices last year. And this year the new phones

00:34:09   are all with higher prices. So the price spread is different. And that's like, I'm not trying to,

00:34:16   I mean, I just, it's an observation. We can judge it for what it is, which is a brand new iPhone is

00:34:21   less affordable than it used to be if you want the 2018 model. Also, I think there is a fascinating

00:34:29   question about the phone you're buying that gets you in behind the velvet rope, right? The 10s Max

00:34:35   and the 10R. 'Cause the 10R is a big phone. It's not as big as the Max. It doesn't have the screen

00:34:42   that the Max has. It's also $350 cheaper than the Max. So I think that's interesting. Like who's

00:34:50   gonna get the 10R when it comes out versus the 10s Max. And my gut feeling is the people we know

00:34:56   who are buying phones on day one are gonna get the 10s Max because they want the latest and greatest

00:35:02   and the very best. But when that 10R comes out and people are shopping in Apple stores over the

00:35:08   holiday season, let's say, they're gonna look at the 10R and it's gonna look, I think, appealing

00:35:15   because it's bigger than the 10, way cheaper than the 10S, or bigger than the 10S, way cheaper than

00:35:21   the 10S Max. And the difference is that that floor isn't there anymore. And then there's the 8s,

00:35:29   which are last year's tech. And they're way cheaper. So you can get an 8 if you want. But

00:35:33   like if you're going to buy the new iPhone, here it is, and it's the 10R. So I think that they'll

00:35:40   be more casual users. The general public that is not as focused as the more techy people,

00:35:47   I think the 10R is going to have a much broader appeal.

00:35:50   - I think the 10R is the phone for everybody that doesn't already know what iPhone they want.

00:35:55   Right? - Unless they want a smaller phone.

00:35:58   I mean, that is part of the argument. - Okay. Let's imagine like you go in and

00:36:02   you're like, I want one of these new iPhones. I want the face ID. Like I want that. But I don't

00:36:07   know which one. Like you haven't already made the decision. The 10R is probably, I think is the

00:36:12   right phone for every single one of those people because... - Unless you're deeply opposed to the

00:36:16   size of it, it's the best. It's such a good deal. Right? And the screen, having held one, like,

00:36:20   okay, first off, the colors are pretty. The screen is really good. And Apple's not wrong when they

00:36:25   say that it's the best LCD screen they've ever made in an iPhone. Like it's not an OLED. But

00:36:31   unless you're looking at it and being like, oh, the blacks aren't quite as black as I,

00:36:34   you know, it looks good. It is a good looking phone. And it's, if you want into the 10,

00:36:40   it's your cheapest way in. So unless you're opposed to that size,

00:36:44   it's, I agree with you. Like that's the path people will go down.

00:36:50   - Can we talk about iPhone size as a phone? - Yeah. Yeah, we should.

00:36:55   - This has become like a, I've seen a lot of think pieces on this over the last week or two,

00:37:02   that in getting rid of the SE and not having anything to replace it, and then kind of the

00:37:08   smallest new phone being the iPhone 10, right? Which is kind of like sits with the 7,

00:37:15   and then you have, or the 8, I should say, and the 8 Plus, and then phones that are as

00:37:19   big or as bigger than those, right? Like all the phones are bigger now and there's kind of nothing

00:37:24   small. I'm seeing, and I'm sure you're seeing, a lot of people kind of, they're upset about this

00:37:30   and saying that Apple is leaving them behind. And I think that there is, and there's also the

00:37:35   argument of like, oh, I know thousands of people that want to buy this phone, right? And I kind of,

00:37:41   my question to you is, do we assume that Apple is doing this for a reason?

00:37:47   - I, so I think Apple knows a lot about the phone market, right? I think they know, they have all

00:37:58   their data about iPhone sales, they're watching the whole smartphone market. I think Apple knows

00:38:02   a lot about the trends in their own purchasing, in their own sales, and the trends in the competitor's

00:38:09   sales worldwide. And even though we all know people who don't like small phones.

00:38:18   - There are people listening to this show right now who want a small phone, right?

00:38:23   - Absolutely. And I, hey, nobody was a bigger champion than me for the small phone size and

00:38:28   the existence of an iPhone SE, remember. I kept saying, I think they're going to bring it, I think

00:38:32   they're going to keep it around, and they did, although now it's gone, but they did. Even though,

00:38:36   and there is a market for it, there is undeniably a market for it. That all said,

00:38:42   I think Apple knows there's a bigger market for bigger phones. No phone company has been

00:38:49   disappointed by making a large phone. The people, because a huge swath of the market sees bigger

00:38:56   as better. Oh, this has got a bigger screen, this is better. Like, and I will also put in,

00:39:02   I think there are two kinds of people who like small phones. The kind who legitimately can't hold

00:39:09   or put in a pocket a small phone, or a large phone. They need a small phone. I think there

00:39:17   is also a group that's just resistant, right? - I think there is definitely a group of people

00:39:23   who don't know the joy of having a bigger screen. - Like, I didn't love it when I went to the iPhone

00:39:31   6, but in short order, I was like, oh, this is better. And then when I went to the X, which is,

00:39:37   again, slightly larger, I was like, yeah, it's fine. It's fine. I was skeptical about the size,

00:39:43   it's fine. And so I am one of those people who came along and like the X size is fine. I don't

00:39:48   want the XR or the XS Max because I have tried Plus phones before. That's a bridge too far for me.

00:39:54   So some people have a totally legit, like I literally can't use anything more than the SE.

00:40:00   I do think there's a group of people. I also saw somebody on my Twitter feed the other day who said,

00:40:04   I'm just going to stick with what I've got because I don't want to give up my physical home button.

00:40:09   And my thought, and I didn't reply to the person, but I thought,

00:40:13   oh brother, you're just resisting change is what you're doing there. Because the physical home

00:40:21   button was great and all, but I don't miss it in the least. You just have to adapt. And the fact

00:40:28   is a lot of people don't want to change and they are super resistant to it and they're grumpy about

00:40:33   it. So I'm not saying there isn't legitimate complaint about size stuff, but I am saying

00:40:39   Apple is doing cold analysis of this. And we've talked about this in other contexts,

00:40:46   Myke, on this show about how, we talked about, I think in the context of high-end Mac users,

00:40:53   people who are doing web development on Pro Max and things like that, where it's like,

00:40:57   I get that every time Apple makes a product segmentation decision that leaves people out,

00:41:03   those people who get left out are mad. You should be mad. Absolutely.

00:41:07   You should be upset. You have bought into this and then they don't make what you want anymore.

00:41:12   Right? And there's this feeling too that when a business is catering to you, you feel good.

00:41:17   Nobody likes it when a business says, your business isn't worth it to us. Your business

00:41:23   is not welcome here. Nobody likes that. We just had that, to go on a little side note here,

00:41:30   we just had that with a payment system that Relay has used for a while to pay its hosts,

00:41:38   where they're pivoting. And one of the ways they're pivoting is all the ways you use our service

00:41:44   are not our path forward. So we're shutting it all down and you need to leave. Right? And it's like,

00:41:49   that sucks. It sucks to be told, thank you for your patronage, but your business is not important

00:41:53   to us. Then again, from the business's perspective, they need to stay in business and grow their

00:42:00   business. And sometimes people get left behind when they make the right business decision.

00:42:08   And maybe Apple will get bitten by this. Maybe it turns out there is a whole category that wants a

00:42:14   small phone, but I think what's happening is the SE was kept around not because it was a small phone,

00:42:19   but because it was cheap to make. And they will continue to try and make a cheap phone,

00:42:25   but the size wasn't the point of it so much as the price. And that Apple thinks there's way more

00:42:31   opportunity in selling larger phones to people. Now, are they over correcting for the fact that

00:42:37   Samsung got there first with the Galaxy Note and that, maybe, but I'll remind everybody that the

00:42:42   single best year Apple has ever had was the year the 6 came out, because that was when the 6 Plus

00:42:48   came out. And so both phones were larger than the iPhone 5S. And there was a huge either pent-up

00:42:55   demand from people who wanted to buy an iPhone but didn't want the small screen, or for people

00:43:01   who were waiting for a new iPhone and the large screen motivated them to finally upgrade their

00:43:06   old iPhone. But it was a huge year for Apple. And I think Apple learned at that point that

00:43:12   big screens talk, big screens sell. And here they are all in on big screens. They've just released

00:43:21   three iPhones, two of which have big screens. And if you don't like big screens, that kind of

00:43:27   sucks because they're not pandering to you, they're not catering to you anymore. But are they

00:43:34   wrong? I don't think they are. And I say that as somebody who does not want a Max or a XR. I think

00:43:41   the market has shown that people like big screen phones, they just do. And more people like big

00:43:48   screen phones than don't. Yeah. I mean, it totally sucks, right? Like if you are like, and I feel for

00:43:54   you and I, you know, it's a shame. But there's one thing that I wanted to mention, like it's

00:43:59   something that frustrates me a little bit that somehow this argument gets equated to gender,

00:44:04   which I find peculiar. Like I've seen a lot of pieces over the last week that are

00:44:12   saying that Apple doesn't care about women anymore because they don't make small phones.

00:44:16   And I don't think that this is accurate. I know many women who love plus and max size phones.

00:44:23   Like my wife, who is a tiny person, loves her iPhone 10, which is bigger than the five that

00:44:29   she was coming from. And she had to adapt and did. And I get that, like, there are definite issues

00:44:36   with like pocket sizes and stuff like that. Totally understand that. But I think that equating it

00:44:42   purely to gender seems wrong to me. I think it's just people. There are people who like smaller

00:44:48   phones of all shapes and sizes of all walks of life. I would also say that from the market

00:44:53   perspective, if it was true that women didn't like large phones, that would mean half the market

00:45:03   didn't like large phones, which would mean that the market wouldn't favor large phones and the

00:45:09   market favors large phones. So I think that market data would show you that there are, that lots of

00:45:17   people like large phones and that includes men and women. I do think it's worth pondering that,

00:45:25   right? Like, does this skew the phone market in general away from phones that women are

00:45:36   more likely to use? And I'm sure there's some truth in that, but to your point,

00:45:41   it's way more complicated than that because your wife is a tiny person with a big phone.

00:45:47   I think there are also arguments that like pockets on women's clothing are so non-existent or small

00:45:52   that women have purses. And when you've got a purse, you might as well have a large phone.

00:45:56   I think that was always my argument with Lauren getting the Apple Watch was at some point,

00:46:01   she could actually get a big phone because she doesn't have to carry her phone around anymore

00:46:06   if she's got a pocket for it because she gets texts on her watch. And then when she does want

00:46:11   to use her phone, she could have a bigger phone. So, I think that there's a lot of complexity here.

00:46:17   I think it's something to watch to say if there are some sort of like fundamental biases that

00:46:22   are creeping in. But I think you're right that this is a much more complex issue and that if it

00:46:28   was really true that half of the population was rejecting large phones, then we would see it in

00:46:36   the rejection of large phones as a category and we haven't seen it.

00:46:41   - So, you know, and again, like who knows, may turn out that way, but just my belief is that like,

00:46:45   I get it like if you are in that bucket, but I don't think that we need to like

00:46:50   skew it one way or another. It's just people, right? People like them, people don't. And,

00:46:56   you know, that's kind of my feeling towards the hot takes.

00:47:00   - And if you're somebody who is swimming against the tide there,

00:47:03   who really likes the small phone, and I know lots of people who do, including large men,

00:47:07   who I know who like the SE, right? It's not just women, it's men too. There are people who don't

00:47:15   like large phones. I feel for them because this is definitely the trend. And I would love it if

00:47:22   Apple had a product range that included a smaller phone and maybe they will. But for this year,

00:47:27   anyway, that is not what they did. The 10 is as small as it comes and the 10 is larger than

00:47:32   any standard sized iPhone they've ever made. So this is where we are. And this is a, it's a market

00:47:38   trend. And you know what? It maybe is fashion a little bit too. And I will tell you, money talks.

00:47:45   So if Apple keeps this up, they're doing it because it's successful financially.

00:47:50   If Apple hits a little bit of an iPhone bump here, because they're looking at the data and

00:47:54   realizing people are buying the iPhone 8 and the iPhone 7 more than they did before, and they start

00:47:59   to suspect that it's because they pushed the size thing too far, they will react to that. They will,

00:48:05   of course, correct if it's worth it to do so. - Yeah, so if you're upset about small phones

00:48:11   and hoping that they're gonna bring small phones back, just pay attention to the next earnings

00:48:14   report. If the earnings are up, the iPhone sales are up, then I think you may have to transition

00:48:21   in some way. - Yeah, there's still hope. I feel like there's still hope that there will be a new

00:48:24   iPhone SE next year. - Maybe. - Or the year after. But I keep feeling like what it's gonna be is it's

00:48:31   gonna be an iPhone 7. - That's what I think. I think they will do another SE, but the SE line

00:48:36   will just keep swallowing up the last size. - Yeah, it'll be the last design generation.

00:48:41   - So the 5 will go away, right? So that iPhone 5 size and design, which was the SE, and it will

00:48:47   become the iPhone 6 size, right? Which is the 7 and 8, because there won't be an iPhone 9 next year,

00:48:56   right? That's not gonna happen. - Seems unlikely. - Right, then that design will go away,

00:49:02   most likely, because they'll have so many phones that they can push down that are 10-shaped and

00:49:06   sized and featured that I reckon they'll bring out an SE then, so it'll be the iPhone SE,

00:49:11   which could be the iPhone SE probably, because there'll be nothing for a while,

00:49:14   and then it will be that size. - I'll say I'd give it 50/50 that what they'll do next year is

00:49:20   release an iPhone 9 that's just an upgraded iPhone 8, off-cycle maybe, and that's instead of calling

00:49:26   it the SE, they'll just call it the 9, because it's a better number and it's right below the 10.

00:49:31   It's possible that they might call it that. - Does a rose buy any other name, right?

00:49:34   - But in the end, yeah, it'll be something shaped like a 678 and with the A12 processor,

00:49:41   and it'll be a lower price and it'll sit on the price list, yeah, for years. - For years.

00:49:48   I just want to touch on the Apple Watch as well a little bit. I think the biggest thing here,

00:49:53   the biggest story, is just about expansion of capability. This is the thing that's going on

00:50:00   with the Apple Watch, and I've been seeing a lot of developers getting excited about

00:50:03   the new complications and how much more data they're going to allow, and it really does feel

00:50:08   like for the daily use cases of what people are using Apple Watches for, the way that the data

00:50:14   is going to be displayed to you feels like it's going to be a big deal, especially when you think

00:50:18   as well that watchOS 5 is introducing the ability for third parties to talk to the Siri Watch face

00:50:24   as well, as well as all of these new complication types that are coming with Series 4. - Yeah,

00:50:30   and this is going to, because the new complication types are part of the new watch, you're going to

00:50:37   get all these watch app updates that are happening based on watchOS 5, and then we'll get a second

00:50:43   wave. Some of them will be out now with a first crack at it because they've really quickly done

00:50:48   that, but you will see more updates over the fall where those apps are going to get further support

00:50:54   for the new watch, not just watchOS 5, but the new complications, and then that'll, I think it's an

00:51:00   exciting time to be an Apple Watch user. I think there's a lot of great stuff about it, about

00:51:05   watchOS 5 and what it enables. It feels like watchOS 5 is the first, and part of this comes from me

00:51:11   being an Overcast user, but basically, like, I have to detail all of this, but watchOS 5 and the new

00:51:17   version of Overcast that's coming out today, I was able to do a couple of months ago the thing that I

00:51:24   thought I would be able to do when the Apple Watch came out, and it took all of this time,

00:51:28   but I'm able to do it now, which is listen to podcasts streamed from my watch to AirPods

00:51:36   while also getting interval training from a separate app and running.

00:51:41   - This is the future we were promised.

00:51:43   - Totally works. It totally works. It's amazing. And watchOS 5, basically, is the stuff that enabled

00:51:48   apps to finally be able to do some of this more complex stuff that they're doing, and the AirPods

00:51:53   support is way more reliable than it used to be as well. So I think it's very exciting, and we'll

00:51:58   have more Apple Watch stuff to talk about as we go forward too, even though you don't have one,

00:52:03   but you'll have one in the house, and I'll have one in the house.

00:52:05   - Yeah, there are two reasons that this watch is coming into the home. One, because I want to get

00:52:09   one for Adina, because I think she loves her watch, and I think she's due for an upgrade,

00:52:13   considering she's held on to the Series 0 for so long. But the other is I want to be able to

00:52:19   play with and test it. What's going to happen is I'm going to spend a weekend with it,

00:52:24   and then she's going to take it. - Yeah, it's like John

00:52:27   Siracusa's wife having the iPhone X. - Yeah. I need to just squeeze everything

00:52:30   I can out of it for a couple of days, and then it's all hers. It feels like a pretty good deal

00:52:35   to me, I think. She seems happy about it enough anyway. Well, she's choosing the color. The gold,

00:52:41   we're very intrigued to see what that's going to look like, the gold aluminum, because she has a

00:52:44   silver one. But I was kind of pushing a bit like, "Branch out a little bit, maybe try something new."

00:52:50   So we're going with gold aluminum, see how that fits into the family.

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00:54:49   So Jason, let's talk about iOS 12. iOS 12 comes out today.

00:54:54   Any moment. Any moment now. As we record this.

00:54:59   What are your overall opinions on iOS 12 as a release? Kind of just like very top-level stuff.

00:55:04   It is, and Federico's review says this, it is the most stable beta process I've ever been through

00:55:12   for iOS. It's smooth. They said that they focused on performance. I've seen that.

00:55:20   I'm really looking forward to installing this on the phones in my house,

00:55:28   because my son is using a 5S and my daughter is using a 6S. So I'm really interested in seeing how

00:55:37   well it does with those models. Oh yeah. I mean, that's going to be telling, right?

00:55:41   Right? Yeah.

00:55:43   Yeah. I mean, I've only used it, well, I've used it on my iPhone. I've used it on both my iPads,

00:55:49   basically since beta 2. I haven't had any instant crashing apps. I haven't had any battery issues.

00:55:55   It's been super solid. I've been really pleased with it. This has been the only beta process of

00:56:00   all time. I kind of forgot that I was using the beta because it was just, it's been super,

00:56:03   super stable. So I think people were really going to love the way this makes their devices feel.

00:56:07   And there's all this testing. And again, we referenced Federico's review again.

00:56:11   In the stability section, he bought some old devices to test it out on. And he was super

00:56:18   impressed and has a bunch of benchmarks and statistics in there about how this is running

00:56:23   on older devices. And it seems like this is going to be a great update for everyone,

00:56:28   not just the people who are buying the new devices at the end of the week, which it has kind of been

00:56:32   for the last few years. It's like, you know, this is a great version of the operating system,

00:56:37   especially if you have the new phone, right? And that isn't kind of the way that this one's

00:56:43   being positioned. It isn't the way that this one's been developed. And I think that's going to be

00:56:46   great for Apple. I think it's going to change some people's opinions on what iOS kind of means to

00:56:52   them as an upgrade rather than like, oh, it makes my phone worse. This could be starting a trend of

00:56:57   it makes my phone better. And this is kind of like at scale, not just if you have the new stuff.

00:57:01   I love the notification management stuff. I think this is one of my absolute favorites. You know,

00:57:11   I was thinking today, like, what do I like about iOS 12? And this was one of the last features that

00:57:15   I wrote down because I kind of forgotten about it because it's become so normal for me now.

00:57:21   Yeah, this is the problem with using a beta since June is you have to remember what you really loved

00:57:26   about it three months ago. Yeah. And the notification stuff is definitely part of it because

00:57:31   this, it feels like the way it should have always been, you know, having notifications from specific

00:57:37   apps grouped together and you tap them to see them so you can see more notifications kind of

00:57:43   at a glance to be able to have some notifications go into notification center, but not notify you

00:57:50   when you're using the device like that deliver quietly as it's called. It's just wonderful,

00:57:54   you know, being able to kind of like put slightly offending apps or less important apps in a kind of

00:58:00   temporary jail, right? Like I'm going to put you in the quiet section and then maybe eventually I'll

00:58:06   turn it off. And I have done more notification triaging over the last three months than I've

00:58:11   probably done in the last three years because being able to control notifications kind of from

00:58:18   kind of a blanket level right from notification center is fantastic. I love it.

00:58:23   Yeah. My favorite feature is the unsubscribe. Yeah. Where basically you can get a notification

00:58:29   and be like, I never want to see this again, right? Like I never want to see this news headline.

00:58:33   I never want to see it. And the apps have the ability to have it be a link to their notification,

00:58:38   granular notification settings, which is fine. I've used that too, where an app has been pushing

00:58:43   too much to me and I'm like, this is, this has to stop. And I can tap on that and say, no, no,

00:58:49   turn off these and then keep that one. And then being able to send things just to notification

00:58:53   center, the silent kind of notification. That's good. I do that with a few things where I've got

00:58:58   like my, um, my sprinklers in my backyard are on a smart sprinkler controller, which I don't know

00:59:07   if I've even mentioned on this show, but anyway, I have a, I have a smart irrigation controller.

00:59:11   I was surprised at how, uh, um, it wasn't, I expected them to cost a fortune and they didn't,

00:59:16   it was reasonable. And I was putting in new sprinklers and we did it. Um, those go to my

00:59:20   notification center so I can pull down notification center and see what's going on and see if the

00:59:26   sprinklers ran. Um, but they never get in my face. I have to go look for them. And I really like that.

00:59:32   I didn't know whether I would like that. And because they're collapsed, all I, all I see is

00:59:38   that here's the ratio sprinkler update stack. And if I want to know more, I tap and then I see them

00:59:44   all like, that's perfect. That's exactly what I want. I want that. I want to clear that out of my

00:59:49   face, but it's there if I want to get to it. And so, yeah, it is, it is just, um, the first few

00:59:57   weeks you use it, you'll be doing some triage, but it is, it's like training spam in email or

01:00:03   something like after you do it, you'll be delighted with the improved quality of your notifications.

01:00:10   Once you, once you, every time you get an annoying notification, instead of going,

01:00:14   Oh, that was annoying. You go unsubscribe, take me. I'd never want to see that one again. And

01:00:19   then they just go away. It's great. Do kind of a similar vein. Do not disturb, you know, like

01:00:24   there are a bunch of different changes to do not disturb like the bedtime stuff. I haven't really

01:00:29   gotten on board of that. What I love two things. I love that I have the quick actions in control

01:00:34   center, so I can just like do it for an hour or I can, you know, like press and hold a 3d touch and

01:00:40   it just, Oh, like just we'll jump in and I can say, Oh, until the end of this event, which is

01:00:45   on my calendar, like all of that stuff. I really, really like that. Um, I've been very, very happy

01:00:50   with the additional functions and controls that I got with, uh, with controls with do not disturb,

01:00:58   especially in control center this year. I'm really pleased about that.

01:01:01   Yeah. I want to bring up, uh, passwords because that's something that is still, uh, going on

01:01:08   that, uh, I think one password is doing their official release today on this, but the idea,

01:01:13   first off that third party password managers are officially supported so that if you're in

01:01:20   Safari and you've got a password and one password, it prompts you like, I know this password and

01:01:27   you're like, all right. And it fills it in like, which you could do before using the system key

01:01:32   chain, but not if you were using one password. Um, and so now you can do that, which is great.

01:01:38   The suggestion auto suggestion of, of strong passwords by the system is also great. So if

01:01:43   you're in a press password prompt, it's like, here's a crazy long password that you could use

01:01:48   here and you say yes, and it saves it and that's done. So entering passwords on iOS generally has

01:01:53   suddenly become vastly easier than it was before for me as a one password user, especially. Um,

01:01:59   I, I, you know, I have some things in my system key chain, but I have so many things stored in

01:02:03   one password. Um, and it, and one password still has its place because there are a lot of things

01:02:07   that this doesn't support. Like, um, I don't have, uh, credit card codes and I have my, uh,

01:02:15   I have my one time password numbers in there and I have a bunch of other information auto-filling.

01:02:21   Uh, but, uh, so one pass was still there. If you're not using one password, you know,

01:02:25   it's better than it was before to just use Apple system stuff, which is great. And I think for most

01:02:30   people that's good enough. Um, but if you are a user of an extra password manager kind of thing,

01:02:36   that's a way better experience now than it used to be too.

01:02:38   Uh, screen time is a nice addition. Like I like poking around and I've enjoyed over the beta

01:02:44   process kind of just going in and out and looking at that. He's been pretty Rocky over the beta

01:02:48   process. He keeps getting reset and stuff. So, um, really for me, it's like, I was just like

01:02:53   looking at it and being like, okay, I see how this works, but it's from now that I'm going to

01:02:57   start spending more time. Now the iOS 12 is out looking into screen time and trying to analyze

01:03:04   the data that goes into there. Like I'm very keen to see how I'm using my devices and see what, um,

01:03:09   answers to questions that I didn't ask that it could have, because I think that that's going to

01:03:14   be a valuable thing for me going forward. Um, but it's kind of like from now is where I'm paying the

01:03:21   most attention to it. Yeah, because of the, the resets during the beta process. Um, I do think

01:03:27   it's going to be huge. I think this is the one that I put down as the, you know, there will be

01:03:32   so many think pieces about our iPhone usage and our iPad usage. Once people start looking at stats,

01:03:37   every writer for every newspaper, website, whatever is going to. Going to pitch a think piece

01:03:44   about, oh, now that we know that I use this or I gave up on social media because, or all of those

01:03:50   things it's going to happen because we're going to get that data. And, uh, I think it's going to be a,

01:03:54   uh, a phenomenon. Um, I could be wrong, but I just, I feel like putting that data in the hands

01:03:59   of people and parents, uh, with their kids usage and all that. I think it's going to be big.

01:04:04   I think, I think it will be a, uh, uh, it will change how we view, how we're using iOS. Um,

01:04:10   maybe for the better, maybe for the worst, but I think it's going to be a big, a big thing. Oh,

01:04:14   by the way, Myke, this just in breaking, breaking iOS 12. As we record, this is now live. We are in

01:04:20   the iOS 12 era. Oh, isn't that exciting? Do we sing old Lang Syne now? The ball has dropped in

01:04:28   New York city. Um, podcasts app. Like I use, I use overcast, but, uh, because I'm a nerd and we

01:04:37   nerd tech nerds use third-party podcast apps, but Apple's podcast app is the most popular podcast

01:04:44   app in the world. Non iOS, not unlike Apple's platforms in the world across all platforms,

01:04:51   because Google has done a really crappy job of supporting podcasts and in Android up to now.

01:04:58   Um, this is, I judge, I judge Android on this one. Like podcasts, I think could be way more popular

01:05:05   if Google cared and they don't, not that there aren't great podcast apps on Android and not that

01:05:10   Google isn't sort of trying, but they've tried so many ways. Anyway, it's a rant. Uh, I find it

01:05:14   amazing that given that Apple's iPhone, uh, overall smartphone market share, that podcast is still

01:05:19   clearly the biggest podcast player in the world, but it is, they made a bunch of great updates

01:05:25   that it's worth calling out. MP3 chapter support is in there now. So if you're on iOS 12, listening

01:05:31   to upgrade in the podcast app, you'll be like, Oh, look, what are all of these? And it's like,

01:05:35   yeah, we have been putting podcast chapters in there to break our segments up for a while now

01:05:40   without work with artwork and everything. And you can see it now in the podcast app. So that's

01:05:45   exciting. If you should give it a look, if you're listening now on iOS 12 with the podcast app,

01:05:50   um, there are customizable skip buttons. So you can change your skip duration,

01:05:54   which is a feature again, that the nerdy apps have had for a while, but the podcast app has now

01:05:58   the watch app is there, which everybody was like, come on. I want to do podcasts on the watch and it,

01:06:05   including on the cellular model, it'll just stream a podcast. So, uh, that, and, and the data sync.

01:06:11   So that's good. Good. It's a huge step forward. It's way better than it was. And even though the

01:06:16   tech nerds among us may be like, well, you know, I'm using pocket cast Castro overcast, you name it.

01:06:22   Um, so many people are using the podcast app and they will get a better podcast experience

01:06:27   with this new version. So I'm excited about that. Well, obviously we're really excited about that,

01:06:32   right? Like obviously for good reason. And, um, the photos search is the last one I wanted to

01:06:39   mention, which is they didn't, they didn't actually update the photos app on the Mac almost at all,

01:06:44   but they did a bunch of things on iOS, including like a new view that's better.

01:06:48   But the big one for me is the search because, um, you can do multiple search terms now in a way you

01:06:55   couldn't do before. And my example, and this includes the machine learning categories. So

01:07:00   if you want to find something on your phone, a picture, it is so much better than it used to be.

01:07:07   And, um, the example I'll give is I searched for dog and I got 800 pictures of a dog.

01:07:16   And then I searched for snow and I got two pictures that had dog and snow. They were both

01:07:23   pictures of my dog in the snow. And I thought that was like perfect example. Like I want to see that

01:07:29   picture of when we took my dog to the snow search for dog search for snow, two pictures, both of the

01:07:35   same thing. It's like that is how that's supposed to work. Put in one person, put in another person's

01:07:41   name. There's all the pictures of them together. Put a person, you know, and a location person and

01:07:48   a category, find a picture of your kid with a dog. And there are all the pictures of your kid with a

01:07:54   dog. So iOS photo search, they did a really great job. It is really annoying that that isn't on the

01:08:00   Mac, but it is on iOS and it is a fantastic feature and, uh, people will find their photos

01:08:05   much more easily using it. I do have something I don't like about this feature is that you have to

01:08:10   search all the words independently for some of these stuff to show. So like you should say,

01:08:16   like if you type such a word dog and present and then snow and present her will find it.

01:08:21   But if you did snow dog, it might not find it. And I've had this problem. And I think that that's

01:08:25   wild because it needs to, it doesn't want you to search for a text string. There's probably some UI

01:08:32   things they could do better there where they could detect that those are two different keywords and

01:08:36   separate them. And that would be a good improvement for them, but it does, it does work kind of

01:08:41   amazingly well when it works. Yeah. Yeah, it does. But it's just one of those things. It's just one

01:08:47   of those things that happens every now and then like a new features introduced and you have to

01:08:51   learn the way the feature works and then it's great. Right. But like my first time using it,

01:08:57   I was like, well, this doesn't work at all. Like I know there was a picture of like a dinner in Rome

01:09:01   or like a dinner and whatever. Like I know that this exists, but I couldn't find it. It's funny.

01:09:06   I actually don't have any pictures of the dinner in Rome. I don't even know why I said that.

01:09:09   We've never been to Rome, but like I was trying, but if I would search the two words independently,

01:09:15   it would find the image, but it wouldn't find it on its own. And then I blame photos search being

01:09:21   bad. Right. That's my initial thing. It's like, well, it's bad because I know this picture exists,

01:09:26   but it's because I'm not searching in the way that it wants. This just in, users of the workflow app

01:09:31   will now find as we record this, this has just gone live. The workflow app has been updated and

01:09:38   is now called shortcuts. So if you were wondering how they were going to distribute it, that's how

01:09:42   they've done it. Cause there's a lot of question about like how that was going to, how that was

01:09:46   going to happen. So now we know it's, it's literally just taking the slot of the workflow app.

01:09:52   Yep. So now we will know. So do I have one version of shortcuts on my phone or two versions of

01:10:00   shortcuts on my phone? Now I have two versions of shortcuts on my phone. I'm sure that's not going

01:10:04   to be, uh, cause I'm in the beta. So let's try and not worry about what that means. Because you've

01:10:09   got the beta, right? Yeah. And it's under a different ID. Sure. Okay. I'm sure that's,

01:10:14   I'm sure I'm not going to have any issues there. I'm sure that'll be fine. It's fine.

01:10:18   Should we talk about shortcuts? Yeah. I mean, shortcuts is the, is the banner feature. Uh,

01:10:26   and there are two versions of it, which I think there's some lack of clarity. I noticed last week

01:10:30   about this. So first off there is Siri shortcuts that are built into the system. You don't need to

01:10:34   download an app to get, and I had somebody was like, well, why isn't shortcuts the app in the,

01:10:39   in the OS release? And the answer is they decided, I think for some really good reasons to put it in

01:10:45   the app store. One is it's already in the app store, it's workflow, and now it'll be shortcuts.

01:10:49   But two is now that they can make changes to that and iterate faster than on the OS version,

01:10:54   which given app support and stuff is probably a good thing like to keep being able to tweak it

01:10:59   fairly rapidly as this is going on. So you add that from the app store, the main Siri shortcuts.

01:11:05   I just wanted to say this is that my big realization is this is the keyboard shortcuts

01:11:12   of touch screen devices. This is the, um, you can take anything you do practically on your iPhone

01:11:19   and go into settings, Siri, and say, I want to give this a Siri command to make this thing happen,

01:11:28   whatever it is. And you can do it and you record telling Siri what to do it. And then at that point

01:11:34   you can say, ahoy telephone, do this thing that only I do. And Siri will say, all right,

01:11:40   I'm doing that now without any programming. Right. That's just in the settings app.

01:11:45   I think that alone is huge because it lets you set custom shortcuts for stuff you want to do,

01:11:51   make Siri way more useful, lets you select sort of like anything you do on your phone on a regular

01:11:56   basis that you want to tie to a shortcut that you can just give a voice command and, and it will do

01:12:02   it voice command on your watch or your home pod too. Right. Like, I think that alone is a big deal.

01:12:08   And then if you want to get more complicated and do multiple things at once, then you use the

01:12:14   shortcuts app to do it. And we've talked about how great workflow is. Um, and then there's the

01:12:20   shortcuts app, which is basically workflow with the entire power of Apple as a system, you know,

01:12:25   a platform owner behind it. So good. It's just so, so good. Some of the additional things that

01:12:31   you're able to do now, programming system stuff like do not disturb. It's just wonderful. So like,

01:12:39   I, uh, I've taken up yoga, right. And I thought to myself, I wanted to set up a little shortcut

01:12:45   to put in whenever I, whenever I, uh, I'm, I'm yoga in to put my phone on, do not disturb.

01:12:51   And because I don't wear the Apple watch, um, I wanted to log everything to the health app because

01:12:57   I use my yoga app on my iPad. And because of the fact that health isn't on the iPad, it can't log

01:13:02   my workout into the health app, but what, but shortcuts can do it. So, uh, what I do is I have

01:13:10   a little, uh, shortcut that I built that does a couple of things. It turns my phone on to do not

01:13:14   disturb for 30 minutes, cause you can take, give it a duration of time. So you say, put me on,

01:13:18   do not disturb for 30 minutes and log a 30 minute workout in the health app as, and you can say it's

01:13:25   yoga. So like you can build all of these little things. And now that the third party apps that I

01:13:32   use are getting updated and they're adding shortcut support and I can do so much more.

01:13:36   So like, you know, everyone that I know that has been using this has been trying to do something

01:13:40   along the lines of like a morning routine, like workflow, right? So you can like in the morning,

01:13:45   you can press it and it will give you all the information you want and that kind of stuff. And

01:13:49   carrot weather got updated. So now I can have a visual shortcut of carrot weather with all of its

01:13:54   UI in there or an app like peak calc where James basically built a comp it's called a custom intent.

01:14:00   So you can basically take all of the power of your app or some of the power of your app and build it

01:14:04   right into, into shortcuts without shortcuts, never needing to open your application to get

01:14:09   the data. So James basically built a version of the peak out calculator inside of the shortcuts app.

01:14:15   It's incredible. Yeah. I basically built, um, in bed lying in bed on Sunday morning,

01:14:21   I built a shortcut that looks, um, because a lot of the stuff that I write, you end up with, um,

01:14:30   distances that are in or temperatures, right? Like things that are in Fahrenheit that should also

01:14:36   be listed in Celsius or millimeters, but should also be inches or vice versa. And I built a, uh,

01:14:43   proof of concept cause I need to do more work on it, but it's a, a shortcut that basically I will

01:14:49   type in, in a couple of brackets, a single measure. And then you run the shortcut and it takes the

01:14:57   single measurement. It searches for the single measurement in the document and then plops back

01:15:03   out, um, a conversion that lists both measurements and that's using peak calc to do all the

01:15:11   conversions and rounding. And in fact, I pointed out to James that I couldn't round in peak calc.

01:15:17   And there was a, there was a second peak calc update that adds rounding that was released

01:15:22   later that day. Cause James is, he is a machine. It's amazing. So, uh, yeah, and that's just an

01:15:29   example. It's from my line of work where I find myself a lot of times having to do conversions of

01:15:35   things because I make reference. Steven and I deal with, there's a lot on, on liftoff too,

01:15:40   where we have to, we mentioned, Oh, this is this tall or whatever. And then, and people are like,

01:15:46   what is that in a real measurement Americans? And, uh, and so I built a little, I built a little

01:15:52   service basically within workflow that looks for some shorthand and expands it out into, um, both

01:15:58   sets of measurements and, uh, it's, it's awesome. Yeah. And that's just a little morning project

01:16:04   while I was drinking my tea. I mean, and then you've got the fact that it works in the home

01:16:08   pod. So like I'm testing an app right now, which I believe is going to come out soon. Um, which is a,

01:16:14   it's like an app for toggle to time tracking system that I use. And it's like a new interface. It's

01:16:19   like many, many ways better than toggles app, but they just added Siri shortcut support in the beta.

01:16:24   So now I'm able to set up voice actions for my timers. So for example, this morning, Jason,

01:16:31   I said, Oh, hi, telephone show prep upgrade. And it set a timer with the project, which is show

01:16:38   prep added the tag, which is upgrade, turned it on. It was going. And then when I was done,

01:16:42   I was like, Oh, hi, telephone, stop my toggle timers, stops my timers. This is,

01:16:47   I'm so excited. I cannot explain how excited I am. Like it, this, there is so much stuff. And like,

01:16:55   I've seen some things that some people are working on and it's like, I am so infused about this,

01:17:02   like now, like better than ever, I have a way of resuming overcast because now I don't have to

01:17:11   pull down a control center and see like, did my phone throw out overcast? Like,

01:17:15   right. It says it's music. Now I just hold the side button down. I say, resume overcast

01:17:19   immediately. It starts playing where I was in the last show. Like I am so excited about this.

01:17:24   It's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's, uh, it's only going to get better as more stuff supports it too.

01:17:32   That's the thing I had. Um, I'm not sure if I told this story or not, but I was building a,

01:17:37   a complicated workflow for my charts and, uh, for my Apple financial charts on iOS. And, um,

01:17:45   the one hang up I was having was how to transfer something to my web server via FTP,

01:17:52   because transmit the FTP client that I use on iOS is going away. It turns out there's a command

01:18:00   in workflow. So in shortcuts that is basically like issue an SSH command to a remote server,

01:18:09   which is like super scary. But I was like, Oh, I could just use this to FTP

01:18:16   my file. It totally works. It's amazing. So, and let alone the fact that there's now all

01:18:23   these JavaScript actions that you can do to execute in Safari. Like it is, you know,

01:18:30   Federico mentioned this a bunch best timeline we are in it. It is the best timeline for this,

01:18:36   for this case, this is, is this. So I hope I'm very excited by this. And I hope, uh, people

01:18:41   out there who maybe have not experimented with this stuff, give it a try. Um, the way of thinking,

01:18:47   I, so David sparks, we should mention is doing a, uh, uh, uh, uh, course, basically. Yeah,

01:18:54   that was in follow out. Did you mention in the fall? Okay. I'm going to, I'm going to follow

01:18:59   back back to the out too earlier in the episode and say, um, those kinds of things are good to do.

01:19:08   And I know there are going to be more is, uh, is, uh, is, uh, is Matthew doing

01:19:14   a bunch of, uh, yeah, he's on a YouTube channel about this too. So the reason I mentioned all

01:19:20   of this is shortcuts app is not super easy. Like if you want to go beyond a few basic steps,

01:19:28   it's actually kind of like Mac automator where you start and you're like, Oh, I could do this.

01:19:31   And then you're like, but what about this? And you hit a brick wall and it's all possible. All

01:19:37   things are possible. Sometimes it takes more steps than you'd like, but all things are possible

01:19:41   basically inside shortcuts app. You would be surprised, but it is. You gotta, you gotta learn

01:19:47   it a little bit. So if you bounce off of it, but you're interested, I highly recommend looking at

01:19:52   Matthew Casanelli's YouTube channel or giving Sparky's, uh, course a try, because, um, once

01:20:00   you start thinking like I had, I had the pros, right? Like I got to ask Federico when I needed

01:20:06   help, which is nice. Not everybody gets to do that, but he showed me the way, right? Federico

01:20:12   showed me the way to think about workflow. And so, uh, there are shortcuts ways of thinking.

01:20:17   And once you get it, you're like, Oh no, I can do anything now. Right. And then everything kind of

01:20:21   opens up a child could do it. Oh my God. So, um, I just say that it's a little persistence. If, uh,

01:20:27   I hope people are intrigued enough by this to try the shortcuts app, to do some stuff on iOS that

01:20:32   they want to do in one step. Um, but you may need to read up a little bit and think about it a little

01:20:37   if you want to do something complicated, because it's very powerful, but sometimes I would say

01:20:41   non-intuitive. And again, like we'll reference it. There's also the master, right? Federico's work,

01:20:46   like that he has a tag on the max race website with cool shortcuts, which I've also put in the

01:20:52   show notes, which collects up all the coverage that they have, which references shortcuts. And

01:20:56   that's going to be all the articles that they've got. I know he's working on tons more stuff.

01:20:59   And also the, the shortcuts chapter of the review is also a really good guide and includes a lot of

01:21:08   examples, which was a kind of a new thing for him, which is really cool. So you can download the

01:21:12   examples as well from the website and what, and once you've downloaded the examples, and this is

01:21:17   how I've learned a lot of it is when you look at the example, you'd be like, Oh, I see how that

01:21:22   works. I know how, and then you have an idea, you know, like I built my favorite, um, shortcut that

01:21:27   I've built, um, it's called show prep. And what it does is I tell, I say, which show I'm currently

01:21:36   want to prep for. So say it's in, I will tap it and say, which show and I say upgrade, and then

01:21:42   it will start a toggle timer for upgrade and then open the, uh, upgrade Google document for me to

01:21:48   start working in. Right. And it's just because I had a couple of different shortcuts that I was

01:21:54   looking at, which had like fragments of this. And then I worked out myself to kind of like bring it

01:21:59   all together. So there's a bunch of super, super exciting stuff that you can do with this. And I'm,

01:22:04   and we're really lucky that there are a selection of people that are trying their best to teach

01:22:10   other people about it. Right. And looking at samples is, is the best way to learn. That's

01:22:14   how I learned to do scripting. It's how I learned to do automator stuff. It is by far the best way

01:22:19   to do it because it's open source in the best way where you can literally just see all the steps,

01:22:24   but you're like, Oh, I see how they did that. And then you can modify it to do what you need it to

01:22:29   do. It's great. Like without a doubt, shortcuts is the biggest and most important and most exciting

01:22:35   thing that's happening in iOS 12. And if you haven't paid attention to it, start paying

01:22:39   attention to it. Cause you have the ability now to make Siri as good as you want it to be. You know,

01:22:45   we've all complained about Siri. You can make Siri your own Siri now, right? Like that is a thing

01:22:50   that is happening. That is a thing that is coming. So pay attention. All right. Today's show, we're

01:22:58   doing some Ask Upgrade before we wrap up today. And, uh, today's show and hashtag Ask Upgrade is

01:23:02   brought to you by our friends at Squarespace. They let you easily create a website for your next idea

01:23:07   with the ability to grab a unique domain name, take advantage of award winning templates and

01:23:11   so much more. Like if you just thought to yourself, Hey, I know what I'm doing with Shortcuts. I want

01:23:16   to start a shortcuts website. Squarespace is a great place to do it because they have all of the

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01:23:42   all of the pain points away from you. There's nothing to install, patch or upgrade. They take

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01:23:51   wonderful unique domain name, you can register that directly with Squarespace as well. Their

01:23:55   plans start at just $12 a month, but I want you to go and try out Squarespace for free. And their

01:24:01   free trial was awesome. You go to squarespace.com/upgrade and you can try it out right now. And

01:24:06   you can have complete access to everything. You can try everything out. And you just, when you

01:24:13   want to set your website out to the world, you sign up for a plan. But their trial was awesome

01:24:18   because you get to go in and customize everything and see how it looks before you commit. That's, I

01:24:22   love their trial. It's really great. But I can get you 10% off your first purchase of a website or

01:24:27   domain. And you also show your support for the show by doing this. If you use the code upgrade

01:24:32   at checkout. So that's squarespace.com/upgrade and the code upgrade to get yourself 10% off your

01:24:37   first purchase. Our thanks to Squarespace for their support of this show. Squarespace, make your

01:24:42   next move, make your next website. So our first hashtag ask upgrade question comes from Parvel

01:24:49   this week. Parvel wants to know what is this question about 720p resolution for the iPhone 10R?

01:24:59   How does this affect watching 1080p video on YouTube or Netflix? So in case you don't know

01:25:04   about this, the iPhone 10R's resolution is 1792 by 828. So it doesn't have enough pixels to watch

01:25:13   1080p video content. 1080p means 1080 lines in the tall direction, not the wide direction. And the

01:25:23   10R only has 828 pixels in that orientation, which means that it's better than a 720p display,

01:25:33   but not as good as a 1080. So it literally, you could theoretically show a 1080 video on it,

01:25:40   and it would have to scale it down. Probably going to just show the 720p video, right?

01:25:45   - Yeah. So, you know, when you watch stuff on YouTube and Netflix, they'll show you a 720p

01:25:50   version. I would expect in most instances, you're not going to notice this because of the screen

01:25:55   size. You know, the screen is still small, right? Like the people with the very, very,

01:26:00   very best eyesight might see a difference, but I think you're going to be fine, honestly. But it is

01:26:05   something to note. And this is something we don't know yet because we haven't had the time to try

01:26:10   it. But like, my expectation is you're going to be fine. You'll still be able to watch videos,

01:26:15   but they're just not going to be at 1080p. They'll be at 720p. Screen is still going to be great,

01:26:19   but it's something that is new. iPhones have not done this for a while. I'm not 100% sure why this

01:26:26   is the case, but this is what it is, is what that panel is. David has said, "With the iPhone SE now

01:26:34   being dead, how much longer do you think the iPod touch of its A8 chip will stick around?"

01:26:39   Also, as well, just to note, like, getting rid of the iPod touch gets rid of the iPod. The iPod's

01:26:44   gone. It's the only iPod left. So what do you think about this? Do you think it's going to

01:26:47   stick around? I would love to see Apple reinvent the iPod somehow. I think that would be great to

01:26:56   keep that product around as an iOS device. Maybe it's like less than an iPad mini. Certainly,

01:27:05   something like the lowest-end iOS device, something small, but I kind of don't see it.

01:27:12   I kind of don't see it. It would be great. I would love the iPod touch to get an update, but it's

01:27:19   hard to see it happening. And again, my guess is that what we said about small phones goes for the

01:27:26   iPod touch too, which is there may just not be enough sales for it to ever be updated. But it

01:27:36   does feel like we're perilously close to the point where the iPod touch is either going to need to be

01:27:41   updated or die. I feel like next year they won't support the A8 anymore. I feel like that's going

01:27:47   to go away. I feel like this is probably the last year of this iPod touch revision. So whatever

01:27:53   they're going to do, they're going to make their decision about it, I think. Tyler said, "Will the

01:27:58   iPhone XR support landscape mode like the Plus and Max phones do with split layouts for mail settings

01:28:05   calendar?" Do you know this, Jason? It seems like this is the thing that people can't answer right

01:28:09   now, and I wondered if you'd seen anything yet. I think it will. I don't know that for sure,

01:28:14   but I would assume given the size of the screen that it's going to, but I don't know for sure.

01:28:20   Because everything that I've seen so far seems to indicate that it is being treated like a Plus

01:28:25   phone. So I've seen developers talking about that, that it will be treated like a Plus phone. So

01:28:30   I am expecting that it will get everything like the landscape mode, but I will also tell you that

01:28:37   having been a Plus user for a long, long time, that landscape mode is not very useful in most

01:28:41   instances. I'm hoping that now that there's going to be more phones that support it, that developers

01:28:47   might find more interesting things to do with it, but so far that's been a bust, that feature,

01:28:52   really. Yeah. Joshua said, "I'm on a two to three year iPhone upgrade cycle, and currently I have a

01:28:58   6S. Do you feel like the 10S represents a good bet for the future three years, or would I be better

01:29:04   served waiting one more year for a bigger update?" I know that the conventional wisdom here is that

01:29:10   if you want to wait for a bigger update, the S revision is the year to sit out.

01:29:16   I'm going to say the opposite, which is, first off, the S revision is Apple's chance to refine

01:29:22   the 10, so it's a little better than the 10. And the other thing is, the 10 was such a big leap

01:29:27   forward for Apple. I would say this is a little bit like saying, "Well, I could get the 6S,

01:29:36   but should I wait for the 7?" Like, the 6 changed the game, and then it was iterative 6S, 7, 8,

01:29:44   right? Well, the 10 changed the game. This is the new game. Apple's going to ride the 10 for a while,

01:29:50   so I would say I wouldn't wait. If it's time to upgrade, upgrade now. I don't think there's going

01:29:57   to be some mind-blowing new phone to replace the 10S next year that's a huge advancement. I feel

01:30:04   like Apple's going to be iterating for a while on this stuff. Yeah, they'll be an update next year,

01:30:08   right? Remember how phones look like the iPhone 6 for like four years?

01:30:12   Like, phones are going to look like the iPhone 10 for the next four years, and they're going to

01:30:16   get a little bit better every year. There's always going to be a better phone next year, Josh.

01:30:22   That will always happen. You will be coming from a 6S, your mind will be blown with the 10S.

01:30:28   Just go for it. Just go for it. Landon says, "It's 2018. Why does Apple still have to take their

01:30:35   store offline to launch new products?" I think this is a PR thing now. You know, and I think

01:30:41   it also helps them. People can't buy stuff and they're putting things in. I'm sure it's useful.

01:30:46   People can't buy stuff when they're about to turn off some of the stuff.

01:30:50   I just think that it's a whole part of the thing now, right? Even if their technology

01:30:57   allowed them to just do a real quick changeover, I think they'd still put the store down.

01:31:01   Yeah, I think you're right.

01:31:03   Finally today, James says, "What do you think is happening with Face ID and landscape? Do you

01:31:08   think this is going to be revealed in iOS 12.1? There was nothing mentioned about this with the

01:31:13   new phones or iOS 12. Do you think this is going to be something that will come out when iPad's

01:31:18   released or is it not going to be in this generation's phones or will the iPads have

01:31:21   multiple cameras?" What do you think, Jason? Because we have no idea. We have no idea.

01:31:26   I can't envision the iPad requiring you to hold it a certain way to unlock it, right?

01:31:31   That seems terrible. And I still can't imagine four cameras something.

01:31:38   Are they going to say, "Oh, hey, your iPad is in a keyboard, so just type your passcode instead,

01:31:44   and that's good enough." I have a hard time seeing it. So my hope is that it will either have two

01:31:52   sensor bars or will be able to work in either orientation. That's my hope. My hope is that one

01:31:59   of those things will be true and that it's a feature that's necessary for the iPad but is

01:32:04   not necessary for the iPhone, and so they didn't make that change, but they have to make it for the

01:32:09   iPad. I would be surprised if they announced the iPads and said, "This update will also now work on

01:32:17   the iPhone X and XS and XR." Not saying it's impossible, but my gut feeling is that there

01:32:26   will be something different about the iPad hardware that will enable this, and it's not

01:32:30   just a software thing. That they will design a different sensor, design a different camera,

01:32:36   design a multi-camera system, something. Or an update to the neural engine. Yeah,

01:32:42   something that they'll do in the iPad Pro that allows it to do this because they know that

01:32:47   people are going to be viewing this in a couple of different orientations. Not to mention holding it

01:32:51   in a bunch of different ways, right? Because it's a much larger device than an iPhone. So Face ID on

01:32:57   it I don't think is just as simple as aping the Face ID on the iPhone X series, right? I think

01:33:02   it's going to be more complicated and they're going to have more things that they will have had

01:33:06   to do to get Face ID functioning on the iPad Pro. I think it is safe to say the plot thickens.

01:33:12   Oh boy, when will we know? No rumors yet about when we will know what's going on with the iPad.

01:33:19   That hasn't happened yet, so we get to start the cycle anew because it may be, Myke, it's possible

01:33:25   that you will have a chance to tie me because we'll do another draft. It's possible. Don't get

01:33:30   my hopes up. No, no, probably not. They'll just do a press release. Yeah, I see. If you want to find

01:33:37   our show notes for this week's episode, there's a great place to do that. Well, first off, your

01:33:41   podcast app should have them, I would hope. All the good podcast apps have them now. All the great

01:33:45   podcast apps. But if for any reason you want to go to our website, because it is lovely, you can

01:33:49   go to relay.fm/upgrades/211 and find everything there. If you want to find us online, there's a

01:33:54   few places to do that. You can go to sixcolors.com and you can find Jason's work. Jason hosts many

01:33:59   shows here on relay.fm. You go to relay.fm/shows. You also find shows that I do there too as well.

01:34:04   Obviously, the next couple of weeks, a lot of our shows are focusing on iOS and the new phones and

01:34:10   the new watches. So it's a great time to maybe pick up a new show that maybe you haven't checked

01:34:15   out before. Maybe something like Mac Power Users or Automators or Under the Radar. There's a couple

01:34:21   of selections for you about Rocket maybe or maybe Connected. There's so many. All the great shows

01:34:26   I've heard are over at relay.fm except for all the great ones that are over on The Incomparable

01:34:30   as well. Hey, Jason. The incomparable.com for a bunch of wonderful shows about pop culture and

01:34:36   fun. There's lots of fun stuff over on The Incomparable like Total Party Kill, for example.

01:34:40   Jason is on Twitter. He's @JasonL. I would like you to follow me on Instagram. I am @imike. I am

01:34:47   @mike on Instagram. I'm trying to use Instagram more because I love Instagram and I want to

01:34:52   contribute more to Instagram. So you can find me there. There was something you may have missed.

01:34:56   I did a whole behind the scenes last week of what it's like to be me on an iPhone Keynote day.

01:35:02   And I saved that on my Instagram profile as like a highlight thing that they do. So you can save

01:35:08   stories as a highlight. So it started at 1 p.m. and ended at 1.30 a.m. So you can see what it's

01:35:14   like for Myke to prepare and record and produce and edit and post an episode of Upgrade. That's

01:35:20   what I did for the entire day. It was people told me that they like that. So I'm trying to get into

01:35:24   that a little bit more. Even Jason, I recorded myself doing the intro and put that in the story

01:35:29   as well. So you can see what it's like when Myke says "from" you can see what it's like. It's in

01:35:34   living color. Thank you so much to our sponsors this week, the fine folk at Squarespace, Pingdom

01:35:40   and Green Chef. And thank you so much for listening and we'll be back next time. Until then,

01:35:45   say goodbye to yourself. Goodbye everybody.