Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:08 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode 162.

00:00:12 ◼   ► Today's show is brought to you by Encapsula, Flight Logger, and Freshbooks.

00:00:16 ◼   ► My name is Myke Hurley, I'm joined by Jason Snell.

00:00:18 ◼   ► Hi, Jason Snell.

00:00:20 ◼   ► Hi, Myke Hurley, how are you?

00:00:21 ◼   ► I'm very well, how are you?

00:00:23 ◼   ► Well, I am completely out of sorts because my iMac is not in front of me right now.

00:00:30 ◼   ► And I do think people want to hear about that.

00:00:33 ◼   ► Nobody cares about that right now.

00:00:34 ◼   ► Right now.

00:00:35 ◼   ► Later we can care about it.

00:00:36 ◼   ► But right now, nobody cares about what computer you're using because it is time for everybody's

00:00:41 ◼   ► favorite segment of the show, #SnellTalk.

00:00:44 ◼   ► And today's #SnellTalk question has been sent in by Reid, and Reid wants to know, "Jason,

00:00:50 ◼   ► how did you celebrate your birthday?

00:00:52 ◼   ► Happy birthday, Jason."

00:00:53 ◼   ► - Oh, thank you. You know, it is a, it was just a work day. So I didn't work as much

00:01:01 ◼   ► as I would normally. I watched some baseball because my birthday tends to coincide with

00:01:07 ◼   ► baseball playoffs and there are always interesting baseball games on television. So I watched

00:01:13 ◼   ► some of those and had lunch with my wife because she had kind of a weird schedule on that day

00:01:21 ◼   ► too and then we all went out to dinner with her parents actually were in town so we all

00:01:25 ◼   ► went out to dinner to a nice restaurant and she bought a cake that was very nice and that's

00:01:31 ◼   ► the kind of cake that I like from the place that I found a cake that I like because I

00:01:36 ◼   ► don't like a lot of cakes.

00:01:38 ◼   ► Did the wait staff sing happy birthday to you?

00:01:41 ◼   ► No in fact there was a very dicey moment when the guy came with the bill and my mother-in-law

00:01:47 ◼   ► mentioned that it was my birthday and the guy looked at me like it's your birthday do

00:01:50 ◼   ► Do you want a dessert?" and I said, "Well, first off, we already told you we don't want

00:01:54 ◼   ► a dessert because we have a dessert at home, we have the cake. And second, I don't, let's

00:01:58 ◼   ► just..." I shut him down.

00:02:00 ◼   ► They really wanted to put a candle in that dessert for you, Jim.

00:02:02 ◼   ► It was not that kind of restaurant, but like seriously, no. I, um, no. Don't, don't, and

00:02:07 ◼   ► that is a pro tip, by the way. When there are servers around, when your waiter is around

00:02:14 ◼   ► at a restaurant, don't mention that it's somebody's birthday because they will listen and then

00:02:20 ◼   ► It gets weird.

00:02:21 ◼   ► Unless that's what you want to happen.

00:02:23 ◼   ► Unless that's what you want, but I said pro tip, not amateur tip of somebody who's excited

00:02:28 ◼   ► to make the waitstaff at a restaurant sing non-proprietary birthday songs to them. But

00:02:34 ◼   ► you're a pro, you just let it go.

00:02:36 ◼   ► So we're going to be together next week, which we'll talk about in a moment, and I'll do

00:02:40 ◼   ► my level best not to mention to any waitstaff that it's your birthday during that period

00:02:44 ◼   ► of time.

00:02:45 ◼   ► Well, it'll be too late.

00:02:46 ◼   ► But they won't know that, Jason.

00:02:47 ◼   ► You will invest your chance.

00:02:48 ◼   ► They won't know if I say it. They will. They're probably people who go get the birthday thing

00:02:54 ◼   ► every time they go out to dinner because nobody is checking their ID.

00:02:58 ◼   ► Yeah, free cake. So we are going to be together next week, so if you want to send in, you

00:03:02 ◼   ► can bear that in mind of your Snail Talk questions. #SnailTalk if you want to ask a question to

00:03:07 ◼   ► start the show and you have a rare opportunity to ask something that I don't know what we

00:03:11 ◼   ► would do or what difference it would be because we're going to be looking into each other's

00:03:14 ◼   ► of the Zeis when we record the show, but it could open up some opportunities for some

00:03:19 ◼   ► new and exciting Snail Talk questions. We're going to be at the Release Notes conference

00:03:23 ◼   ► next week. So if you're going to be there, it's going to be in Chicago. If you're going

00:03:27 ◼   ► to be there, come say hi. We're doing a couple of event things, but they're like ticketed

00:03:32 ◼   ► events, so that's going to be a, they're already gone. So we're doing a live episode of Connected

00:03:37 ◼   ► and the tickets are already gone for that. But there is going to be one public meetup

00:03:41 ◼   ► that we're going to be a part of which I'm doing as part of the Pan-Addict podcast.

00:03:46 ◼   ► We're going to be having an open house at Field Notes, the notebook company.

00:03:50 ◼   ► We're going to open the house with them.

00:03:53 ◼   ► They have like a Facebook event thing.

00:03:55 ◼   ► I'm going to put that in the show notes because if people do want to come by, this will be

00:03:57 ◼   ► a really cool event to go to.

00:03:59 ◼   ► Then you can come to a high…

00:04:00 ◼   ► That's Friday, right?

00:04:01 ◼   ► That's on Friday.

00:04:02 ◼   ► It's on Friday, October 13th.

00:04:03 ◼   ► Yes, I will not be there.

00:04:05 ◼   ► No.

00:04:06 ◼   ► So don't look for me.

00:04:07 ◼   ► Well, you could look for Jason, but you won't find Jason.

00:04:09 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:04:10 ◼   ► tip, don't look for me, because if you were an amateur tip, then you will look for me

00:04:14 ◼   ► and not find me, and pros don't like to fail.

00:04:16 ◼   ► We're all about pro tips today. Lots of pro tips on this show.

00:04:19 ◼   ► This is the pro tip edition. Pro tip. So yeah, we're going to be at Release Notes,

00:04:23 ◼   ► if you're going to be there, please come and say hi. If you're not, we'll be doing stuff,

00:04:27 ◼   ► if we're going to do any kind of a public event, we'll tweet about it or something,

00:04:30 ◼   ► but we don't have anything on the cards right now for that. But if you're in Chicago, I

00:04:35 ◼   ► hope that we're going to see you next week.

00:04:37 ◼   ► I don't think on the cards is the way that works,

00:04:40 ◼   ► but that's fine.

00:04:42 ◼   ► Maybe there literally are cards that you've got.

00:04:44 ◼   ► It's in the cards.

00:04:45 ◼   ► It's not in the cards.

00:04:46 ◼   ► - You don't know how I set up my calendar.

00:04:50 ◼   ► It could just be very card based.

00:04:51 ◼   ► - You could have an entirely card based planning system.

00:04:54 ◼   ► Maybe that's what they say in England.

00:04:56 ◼   ► It's not on the cards.

00:04:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's a card based calendar system right there.

00:05:04 ◼   ► There's been a follow up for watchOS, watchOS 4.0.1 has been out in the last week or so

00:05:10 ◼   ► and it specifically called out fixing the captive Wi-Fi bug that we've been talking

00:05:15 ◼   ► about over the last couple of weeks that a bunch of people are seeing where the Apple

00:05:19 ◼   ► Watch was trying to connect to open Wi-Fi networks that didn't have passwords for.

00:05:24 ◼   ► Apparently Apple has done something to fix this and that's watchOS 4.0.1.

00:05:28 ◼   ► I've never seen this problem myself personally so I can't attest to whether it's been improved

00:05:32 ◼   ► but this is a bug fix that we were waiting for.

00:05:36 ◼   ► Yep, yep, this is the, yeah, you walk by some place that has an open Wi-Fi

00:05:43 ◼   ► but you have to go on the in the browser to log in and it gets confused and it's bad. So this is

00:05:50 ◼   ► good that they put this out there because it's being aggressive at trying to attach to Wi-Fi,

00:05:55 ◼   ► but a little too aggressive.

00:05:58 ◼   ► Upgrading and Rob has sent in an app to us called Half,

00:06:03 ◼   ► that is called the Half App, you can go halfapp.co for this.

00:06:06 ◼   ► It is an application for iOS and Mac OS

00:06:10 ◼   ► to convert your images and videos to HEIF and HEVC.

00:06:15 ◼   ► So we've been talking about, people have been asking us,

00:06:18 ◼   ► we've got a bunch of questions,

00:06:19 ◼   ► ask upgrade questions about this,

00:06:20 ◼   ► like how can I do this?

00:06:21 ◼   ► What's the best way to do this?

00:06:22 ◼   ► This is an application that claims to do this, right?

00:06:25 ◼   ► it claims to be able to take your photos and turn them into the smaller file sizes, the

00:06:30 ◼   ► new compression systems that Apple have. Use of caution, I guess. I haven't tried this.

00:06:36 ◼   ► I'm a little bit wary, personally, of sending my files through this conversion system, but

00:06:42 ◼   ► this is an app that says it does it.

00:06:43 ◼   ► >> Yeah, and it doesn't do batch yet, although they say that that's coming. And something

00:06:48 ◼   ► -- so I said last time, and I'll say it again, that I don't like the idea. I think you should

00:06:54 ◼   ► just keep your old photos the way they are rather than converting them because

00:06:58 ◼   ► when you convert a lossy compressed file to a new lossy format there is some data

00:07:05 ◼   ► loss that happens there. Now of course it's already compressed so there's a

00:07:10 ◼   ► limit to you know it's already lost a lot of data. One thing that I like about

00:07:15 ◼   ► what the half FAQ says is they're using the highest quality setting when they do

00:07:21 ◼   ► this. So they're not. They're trying to not throw away more data on. You still

00:07:25 ◼   ► get a size savings. So if you don't care about this, that's fine. It's just like

00:07:30 ◼   ► my I looked at this and thought, You know what? I just I'll leave my old

00:07:33 ◼   ► J pegs alone. So you'd really need to be in a space crunch. And if you are,

00:07:38 ◼   ► then then so be it. But I feel like the you prefer probably rather just keep

00:07:43 ◼   ► your originals around and you know, cloud storage is getting cheaper and

00:07:47 ◼   ► on device storage is getting cheaper. The long arc of history. It's getting

00:07:51 ◼   ► cheaper, maybe not right at the moment, but in the end, do you want to go through the

00:07:57 ◼   ► trouble and then you've got two sets, so then do you delete your old ones or do they keep

00:08:01 ◼   ► kicking around in a backup? I think it's kind of a mess, but if you really want to do it,

00:08:05 ◼   ► yes, this is an app that will do it and they're going to bring batch processing in and they

00:08:08 ◼   ► seem to be doing the right thing and trying to minimize the data loss that will happen

00:08:13 ◼   ► when you do double lossy compression.

00:08:16 ◼   ► Yeah, I am, it's good that this exists, but I'm definitely in the snow camp of just, I'll

00:08:23 ◼   ► let it go in the future. I mean, I haven't even converted on my iPhone yet. I'm keeping

00:08:29 ◼   ► it as JPEG because I haven't upgraded my Mac to High Sierra. Like I'm just waiting to be

00:08:33 ◼   ► in a position where I've got everything running and I have no intention of upgrading to High

00:08:37 ◼   ► Sierra right now. So I'm going to keep everything in JPEG for the time being. I mean, I have

00:08:41 ◼   ► more than enough space on my devices but in the future I will move to these systems once

00:08:47 ◼   ► all of my devices I'm comfortable to have them all support it because I'm really sure

00:08:51 ◼   ► I really like you know I just can't see myself going back to my archive and trying to convert

00:08:56 ◼   ► it but exactly yeah 100% so it's like I'm just kind of like I know it's there it's going

00:09:00 ◼   ► to be great when it's there I'm not using it at all right now but one day I will you

00:09:04 ◼   ► know that's kind of I feel a lot that way about a lot of the things that are in High

00:09:08 ◼   ► High Sierra like APFS.

00:09:11 ◼   ► Right, like I'm using it on my iPhone, on my iPad

00:09:13 ◼   ► and it's fine, but I'm really kind of hesitant

00:09:16 ◼   ► to put it on my Mac right now.

00:09:18 ◼   ► I'm just a little bit like, I'm just gonna give it some time

00:09:22 ◼   ► because I don't need High Sierra for anything

00:09:25 ◼   ► and considering some of the stuff that High Sierra is doing,

00:09:28 ◼   ► it feels to me personally like a higher risk upgrade

00:09:30 ◼   ► than normal, so I'm kinda just gonna wait for a little bit.

00:09:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, I can see that.

00:09:37 ◼   ► So yeah, we spent a bunch of time talking about Twitterrific for Mac when they were

00:09:43 ◼   ► running their Kickstarter campaign.

00:09:45 ◼   ► And the Kickstarter campaign was funded and they've had Project Phoenix in beta and now

00:09:51 ◼   ► it is going to be available to everybody on Tuesday the 10th, so tomorrow as we record

00:09:57 ◼   ► this, Twitterrific for Mac will be available in the Mac OS app store.

00:10:00 ◼   ► But Kickstarter backers like me and you, we got our copies of the full final version of

00:10:06 ◼   ► terrific mac a few days ago and I wanted to know Jason as a person who loves

00:10:11 ◼   ► terrific used to terrific on all the devices what are you thinking about this

00:10:17 ◼   ► application using it like how do you feel about it I am using it I've been

00:10:22 ◼   ► using it more the last couple of weeks it's it's been in beta for a while but

00:10:26 ◼   ► it's one of those things where it's not it was under construction it was

00:10:31 ◼   ► definitely a beta and so I would use it for a little while but I hadn't gotten

00:10:33 ◼   ► and gone full in.

00:10:34 ◼   ► And there's still some things that it doesn't do

00:10:36 ◼   ► that I miss from the Twitter for Mac app,

00:10:39 ◼   ► because it has access to features

00:10:41 ◼   ► that Twitterrific doesn't have access to,

00:10:43 ◼   ► because it has to use the API.

00:10:45 ◼   ► And Twitter for Mac can use secret Twitter stuff.

00:10:49 ◼   ► But I like a lot of things about it.

00:10:51 ◼   ► It's customizable.

00:10:52 ◼   ► You actually can hold down the option key

00:10:54 ◼   ► when you open the preferences

00:10:55 ◼   ► and you can even build your own custom theme.

00:10:57 ◼   ► It looks good, syncs with the iOS stuff

00:11:03 ◼   ► and looks very much like the iOS app in a lot of ways.

00:11:06 ◼   ► There are things about it that are a little weird

00:11:08 ◼   ► that are gonna either take some getting used to

00:11:09 ◼   ► or some refinement on the icon factories part.

00:11:12 ◼   ► I'm not sure how well some of the interface translates

00:11:18 ◼   ► from iOS in terms of things that like in iOS,

00:11:21 ◼   ► you can get to threads and replies by swiping

00:11:24 ◼   ► and on the Mac, they don't do that, which is fine,

00:11:27 ◼   ► but I end up trying to click on things

00:11:32 ◼   ► and I end up in this weird position where I'm like,

00:11:35 ◼   ► how do I get the thread to show up using my mouse

00:11:40 ◼   ► instead of like my keyboard, I can do it with an arrow key,

00:11:43 ◼   ► but how do I get that with my mouse?

00:11:45 ◼   ► And you know, and you can't swipe it.

00:11:47 ◼   ► I just tried, I didn't even realize it would be nice

00:11:49 ◼   ► if you could just swipe on the track pad over the items

00:11:51 ◼   ► and that would be just like on iOS,

00:11:54 ◼   ► but failing that some sort of a reliable

00:11:57 ◼   ► kind of mouse gesture and it's not quite reliable.

00:12:01 ◼   ► it feels like double clicking, it seems to do a lot of stuff,

00:12:04 ◼   ► but there's something about double clicking,

00:12:07 ◼   ► which feels weird to me.

00:12:08 ◼   ► - Where you double click too, I have a lot of,

00:12:10 ◼   ► sometimes there's a thread button that you can click on,

00:12:12 ◼   ► but sometimes it's sort of like I have to double click

00:12:14 ◼   ► in the margin because if I double click in the tweet,

00:12:17 ◼   ► it doesn't do anything, but if I go out on the margin,

00:12:20 ◼   ► it does, or it doesn't do it as reliably.

00:12:22 ◼   ► And you know, it's a, for all of it's, you know,

00:12:26 ◼   ► it's version 5.0, it really is in many ways version 1.0

00:12:30 ◼   ► of bringing it back, but it's got a lot of stuff

00:12:33 ◼   ► I really like and it's, yeah, it's a good start.

00:12:38 ◼   ► And there are a lot of things I like about it.

00:12:41 ◼   ► So I'm trying to use it, trying to use it more

00:12:44 ◼   ► and we'll see how it goes.

00:12:46 ◼   ► But there, yeah, I'm encouraged.

00:12:50 ◼   ► It also has, it's one of these things that it's funny,

00:12:53 ◼   ► Twitterrific on iOS has a mute and muffle feature

00:12:56 ◼   ► where you can like, just like on Tweetbot,

00:12:58 ◼   ► that you can hide stuff that you don't wanna see.

00:13:00 ◼   ► And that interface doesn't currently exist

00:13:02 ◼   ► on the Mac version, but the feature is there.

00:13:04 ◼   ► So if all the stuff that I have muted and muffled,

00:13:07 ◼   ► just like users of Tweetbot on Mac and iOS

00:13:09 ◼   ► will know this as a feature,

00:13:11 ◼   ► I have lost that when I switched away.

00:13:15 ◼   ► Well, Twitterrific for Mac was so old

00:13:16 ◼   ► and kind of out of sync that it didn't do it.

00:13:18 ◼   ► But now it syncs together.

00:13:20 ◼   ► So all of my mutes and muffles on iOS just work on the Mac,

00:13:25 ◼   ► even though there's no UI for it yet.

00:13:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, like I was playing around of it

00:13:29 ◼   ► and couldn't find a way to do that.

00:13:31 ◼   ► Or like, I was like, oh, where is that feature?

00:13:32 ◼   ► But it's like, it's not here yet.

00:13:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, the UI is not on the Mac side yet.

00:13:36 ◼   ► It's only on the iOS side.

00:13:37 ◼   ► So I'm sure they'll add it.

00:13:39 ◼   ► And there's other stuff that I would like them to add.

00:13:41 ◼   ► There's some, a lot of interface niceties

00:13:46 ◼   ► that they had their list from their Kickstarter

00:13:50 ◼   ► of the features that they needed to do.

00:13:52 ◼   ► And so some of the stuff isn't there that I would like.

00:13:55 ◼   ► Like I have individual lists called out on a sidebar in iOS.

00:14:00 ◼   ► I would love to be able to do something like that,

00:14:02 ◼   ► where I could take one of my lists

00:14:04 ◼   ► and put it in the toolbar of my window

00:14:07 ◼   ► so that I could just flip to a particular list

00:14:09 ◼   ► instead of having to click the list button

00:14:11 ◼   ► and then click the sports button or whatever.

00:14:15 ◼   ► But yeah, it's getting there.

00:14:17 ◼   ► And I guess I should bring up now

00:14:19 ◼   ► the thing that I always bring up

00:14:20 ◼   ► when I am talking about a Twitter client

00:14:24 ◼   ► that is not Tweetbot, which is to say to everybody out there who uses Tweetbot, I have Tweetbot.

00:14:33 ◼   ► I have used Tweetbot on all the platforms. You don't need to remind me that Tweetbot

00:14:38 ◼   ► exists. I am aware of it. Doesn't work for me. Glad it works for you, but I am aware

00:14:44 ◼   ► it exists. You don't need to point out that Tweetbot exists because I have found that

00:14:49 ◼   ► if you discuss any other Twitter client, people who use Tweetbot emerge from the shadows,

00:14:55 ◼   ► from a bush, and they say, "What about Tweetbot? Have you used Tweetbot? Have you heard the

00:14:59 ◼   ► good news about Tweetbot?" And the answer is, "Yep, I heard it. I got it. It's fine.

00:15:03 ◼   ► It's not for me, and that's fine." As a person who uses Chrome on iOS, I understand. I think

00:15:09 ◼   ► that mine's a little bit more extreme, but people are just like, "Why don't you just

00:15:13 ◼   ► use--" I just don't. I just don't. It's not what I want to do. I just don't. Myke, did

00:15:17 ◼   ► Did you know that Safari is a browser that Apple provides?

00:15:20 ◼   ► That's the good news about Safari.

00:15:21 ◼   ► So I'll say, like, I've only really, like, tinkered around with, uh, with Tweetbot on

00:15:26 ◼   ► the Mac a little bit, and I am struck at how much it feels like an iOS app.

00:15:31 ◼   ► Like, it's a very strange feeling.

00:15:34 ◼   ► It is a nice-looking application.

00:15:35 ◼   ► I'm pleased that it exists.

00:15:37 ◼   ► Do you mean Twitterific?

00:15:38 ◼   ► I mean, but I think what you just said is true for Tweetbot is true for Tweetbot on

00:15:42 ◼   ► the Mac, too, actually.

00:15:43 ◼   ► I meant Twitterific, but it's 100% true for Tweetbot, although I will, for me personally,

00:15:47 ◼   ► I feel like the Mac version of Tweetbot feels more like a Mac app than the Mac version of

00:15:52 ◼   ► Twitterrific does.

00:15:53 ◼   ► Oh yeah, well, and that's what I was saying about interface niceties. I think that's part

00:15:57 ◼   ► of it, is that in doing a conversion from iOS to Mac, Twitterrific is still, you know,

00:16:04 ◼   ► there are still a lot of things where, you know, if they were building it for the Mac

00:16:07 ◼   ► or if they had more time to work on it, they would have made it more Mac-y, and there's

00:16:13 ◼   ► some stuff where they obviously just chose to be like, "Well look, this is, we gotta

00:16:16 ◼   ► to ship this first version, so let's just do it." Whereas Tweetbot has had way more

00:16:20 ◼   ► time to be a considered refined Mac app, although there are still things in Tweetbot on the

00:16:25 ◼   ► Mac that I think, "This is a little weird, right?" Because I feel like it's sort of riding

00:16:29 ◼   ► on iOS conventions a little bit.

00:16:31 ◼   ► Yeah, and like, even Tweetbot for the Mac doesn't have all of the same features that

00:16:34 ◼   ► iOS does. Like, the iOS apps are more advanced, right? Like, they have their whole activity

00:16:38 ◼   ► tab stuff, which doesn't exist in the same way on the Mac and things like that.

00:16:41 ◼   ► Yeah, it's a bigger market. Yeah, and the Today feature, which is the equivalent in

00:16:46 ◼   ► Twitterific is not on the Mac at this point.

00:16:48 ◼   ► Maybe someday.

00:16:49 ◼   ► - I hope that the response is good.

00:16:50 ◼   ► I'm interested to see what the response will be like

00:16:52 ◼   ► because calling this version five feels weird

00:16:55 ◼   ► because you say it really feels like version one.

00:16:57 ◼   ► - But it would need to be like what,

00:16:58 ◼   ► Twitterific two version one?

00:17:00 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:17:01 ◼   ► - Something that's strange.

00:17:01 ◼   ► - This is the only way to do it.

00:17:03 ◼   ► And I reckon probably that if you are a Twitterific user,

00:17:07 ◼   ► you're just gonna be super happy with this

00:17:08 ◼   ► because it exists.

00:17:09 ◼   ► But I can't see them pulling people in

00:17:13 ◼   ► from other Twitter apps right now with this version.

00:17:16 ◼   ► You know, I can't, personally, I don't imagine like Tweetbot users or the official app users

00:17:21 ◼   ► being like, "Great, I'll switch over to Twitrific now."

00:17:25 ◼   ► Because the Mac app, this is a building, like this is a foundation to build upon.

00:17:29 ◼   ► So I hope that it's successful for them, I hope that they can build a business on it,

00:17:33 ◼   ► and most of all I'm pleased because you and John Siracusa finally get an app that you

00:17:37 ◼   ► can use.

00:17:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's true.

00:17:39 ◼   ► And John and I were both people who would like dig

00:17:42 ◼   ► into the apps frameworks to customize the look

00:17:47 ◼   ► and feel of the app.

00:17:51 ◼   ► And it's nice that although it's basically unsupported,

00:17:55 ◼   ► it's got that way that you can go in

00:17:57 ◼   ► and build your own theme.

00:17:58 ◼   ► 'Cause I've totally done that.

00:17:59 ◼   ► - Wow.

00:18:00 ◼   ► - And well, you know, I don't like their dark theme.

00:18:03 ◼   ► The text is like gray on a,

00:18:07 ◼   ► it's light gray on dark gray background.

00:18:08 ◼   ► It's like, I hate that.

00:18:09 ◼   ► I hate the lack of contrast.

00:18:11 ◼   ► So I, you know, I could change it.

00:18:14 ◼   ► And that's fun too.

00:18:15 ◼   ► And I can change it in a UI instead of having to change it

00:18:18 ◼   ► in a text file like before.

00:18:21 ◼   ► So that's kind of fun too.

00:18:22 ◼   ► - Feels like a good post for six colors

00:18:24 ◼   ► to tell people how to do that 'cause I have no idea.

00:18:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, I suppose so.

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00:20:34 ◼   ► I would like to talk about your Spider Mac.

00:20:38 ◼   ► So last week before we recorded the show, if you listen live, and you can listen live

00:20:44 ◼   ► to the show every week, go to relay.fm/schedule and you can find out when this show and all

00:20:48 ◼   ► of our shows will be streaming so you can join in with the chatroom if you want, it's

00:20:52 ◼   ► a great time.

00:20:54 ◼   ► The live listeners last week found out that your iMac had a spider in it.

00:21:02 ◼   ► Yep.

00:21:04 ◼   ► This is true.

00:21:05 ◼   ► This was a horrifying realization for me, as I am not a fan of the eight-legged creatures.

00:21:14 ◼   ► Can you explain what happened?

00:21:17 ◼   ► How does a spider even get into a computer?

00:21:19 ◼   ► I can't explain what happened, Myke.

00:21:21 ◼   ► 5K iMac, unlike previous iMacs, was sort of,

00:21:26 ◼   ► one of the things mentioned about its build

00:21:29 ◼   ► was that the screen is a single piece.

00:21:32 ◼   ► Like, it used to be you could pop an iMac's glass

00:21:35 ◼   ► off the front with suction cups,

00:21:39 ◼   ► 'cause it was held on by powerful magnets,

00:21:40 ◼   ► and then you could access the computer that way.

00:21:42 ◼   ► And the iMac, the 4K iMac is, or 5K iMac, is a single piece.

00:21:49 ◼   ► like the glass and the screen are all attached.

00:21:51 ◼   ► And I think the implication there when we learned that

00:21:53 ◼   ► was that that meant also that it was probably

00:21:55 ◼   ► very tight fit, it's closer to the glass,

00:21:58 ◼   ► there's maybe very little air gap, if any air gap there.

00:22:01 ◼   ► Well, guess what?

00:22:04 ◼   ► - It's big enough.

00:22:05 ◼   ► - There is enough room in there and then somehow somewhere

00:22:09 ◼   ► access in there that a small spider could crawl in there.

00:22:13 ◼   ► And I heard from some, when I posted this on Twitter,

00:22:15 ◼   ► I heard from people who said that they also had a spider

00:22:18 ◼   ► or a fly or a couple people said ants had crawled into the space, the very small space

00:22:26 ◼   ► between the glass and the screen from, you know, obviously had come in a vent and then

00:22:34 ◼   ► crawled around inside my computer and emerged somehow in the screen at which point it died

00:22:42 ◼   ► and sat in the screen.

00:22:46 ◼   ► What I find interesting is that the spider died but it stayed in the same place. It must

00:22:50 ◼   ► have been a real tight fit. Well yeah, I think that's it. It was a very tight fit. Well,

00:22:54 ◼   ► it may have died and then fallen into a position where it stuck. That's possible. This makes

00:23:00 ◼   ► me so uncomfortable to talk about. I didn't check with the medical examiner, the spider

00:23:04 ◼   ► medical examiner about this. Spider Coroner. But whatever it was, it was sort of like,

00:23:08 ◼   ► and you know, it was kind of like, I mean, I'm not going to shake my iMac like a tambourine

00:23:14 ◼   ► or something, but it didn't seem to be movable. It was wedged in that spot.

00:23:22 ◼   ► And as I asked at the time, attempting to poke it with the mouse pointer didn't do anything

00:23:25 ◼   ► either. Just to check.

00:23:26 ◼   ► Not a thing.

00:23:27 ◼   ► Just to check.

00:23:28 ◼   ► Not a thing. I moved my windows underneath it and no effect.

00:23:34 ◼   ► Can I shuffle it down?

00:23:36 ◼   ► It is an X-spider, yeah.

00:23:39 ◼   ► So I mean, I just assumed that the screen was laminated, right? Like that was just,

00:23:43 ◼   ► I mean, I assumed they obviously never said that, but like my mind was like, oh, this

00:23:47 ◼   ► is laminated like the iPhones, right? That's just kind of what my brain had told me these

00:23:52 ◼   ► computers were like, you know, like that there was no gap anymore.

00:23:56 ◼   ► Sure. I, yeah, yeah. That's, uh, I, you're right. They never really said it, but you,

00:24:01 ◼   ► your brain starts to think, oh, well, all of Apple screens now are just the glass and

00:24:05 ◼   ► and the screen are all connected

00:24:06 ◼   ► and that's how it works now.

00:24:08 ◼   ► And nope, let me tell you,

00:24:11 ◼   ► that was my moment when I saw it,

00:24:15 ◼   ► I was like, what is that?

00:24:16 ◼   ► And it's like, can I wipe that?

00:24:17 ◼   ► And it's like, there's nothing there.

00:24:19 ◼   ► That's a spider.

00:24:21 ◼   ► It's under the glass, but over the screen.

00:24:24 ◼   ► How is that possible?

00:24:25 ◼   ► - The spider is coming from inside the glass.

00:24:27 ◼   ► - It's from inside the glass.

00:24:29 ◼   ► - Horrible.

00:24:30 ◼   ► - Yep, it would've been worse if I knocked on the screen

00:24:32 ◼   ► and it knocked back.

00:24:34 ◼   ► That would have been worse.

00:24:35 ◼   ► It would have been significantly worse if you saw it moving around.

00:24:38 ◼   ► I feel like that would have been like just like a horror show.

00:24:42 ◼   ► Anyway.

00:24:43 ◼   ► Well, yeah, but at least then there would have been the hope that I would come back the next day

00:24:46 ◼   ► and it would be gone.

00:24:47 ◼   ► It will have left its screen domain.

00:24:50 ◼   ► I guess so.

00:24:50 ◼   ► And then I could just continue on with my life as normal.

00:24:53 ◼   ► And they said that Max don't get bugs.

00:24:56 ◼   ► Um, you, you...

00:24:59 ◼   ► Spider's not a bug.

00:24:59 ◼   ► Ah, come on.

00:25:01 ◼   ► Give me that one.

00:25:02 ◼   ► Give me that one.

00:25:03 ◼   ► You wrote a post on Six Colors about this because you have to, right?

00:25:06 ◼   ► You got to show the pictures to the world.

00:25:07 ◼   ► But there was a thing in there that really stood out to me that this Mac was one of

00:25:11 ◼   ► the first products that you reviewed on Six Colors.

00:25:13 ◼   ► And I have one of these feelings of that feels like so long ago and not long enough.

00:25:19 ◼   ► You know, like it was this weird like timeline freeze for me, right?

00:25:22 ◼   ► It was like, oh wow.

00:25:23 ◼   ► It feels, because one, it just feels like Jason Snell, he does Six Colors.

00:25:27 ◼   ► That's just how you cemented in that.

00:25:29 ◼   ► Since the beginning of time.

00:25:30 ◼   ► You know, but like the Macworld stuff has mostly disappeared

00:25:33 ◼   ► in my like association of you.

00:25:35 ◼   ► So it's just funny. - That's three years.

00:25:38 ◼   ► - Three years, oh my word.

00:25:39 ◼   ► I guess it's as long as old as the show, right?

00:25:41 ◼   ► Like we started it at the same time.

00:25:43 ◼   ► But it feels like ages ago and not long enough.

00:25:46 ◼   ► So what are you gonna do? - That's two weeks.

00:25:48 ◼   ► - What are you gonna do about this thing?

00:25:51 ◼   ► What's gonna happen?

00:25:52 ◼   ► Are you gonna live with it?

00:25:53 ◼   ► Have you given the spider a name?

00:25:54 ◼   ► - I, no, I've not given the spider a name.

00:25:58 ◼   ► So I could live with it.

00:25:59 ◼   ► Dan Morin pointed out that he had an iMac that he used

00:26:02 ◼   ► that had like a blue line on it for a couple of years

00:26:06 ◼   ► and he just used it.

00:26:07 ◼   ► And the truth is--

00:26:08 ◼   ► - Dan Morin is a monster though.

00:26:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, so yeah, I could live with it.

00:26:12 ◼   ► But it's really distracting.

00:26:17 ◼   ► It was driving me up a wall.

00:26:18 ◼   ► - 'Cause it was basically dead in the center as well, right?

00:26:21 ◼   ► Which is like the worst place.

00:26:22 ◼   ► - No, it was sort of in the,

00:26:24 ◼   ► it was not in the center, but it was in my working area.

00:26:28 ◼   ► I mean, that's a big screen,

00:26:29 ◼   ► but it was in my working area.

00:26:30 ◼   ► And it's one of those things where, yeah,

00:26:31 ◼   ► I could have avoided, I thought about things like,

00:26:33 ◼   ► should I just put a sticker on there?

00:26:34 ◼   ► Should I, can I find an app that will just float,

00:26:37 ◼   ► or like block off that part of the screen

00:26:40 ◼   ► and just like pretend that screen isn't there

00:26:42 ◼   ► and just it's gonna emulate a much smaller screen.

00:26:45 ◼   ► - Draw a little white line around the spider.

00:26:48 ◼   ► - Like I've got two different virtual monitors

00:26:50 ◼   ► on that screen, but the spider part is blacked out.

00:26:53 ◼   ► Like I thought about all sorts of things like that.

00:26:56 ◼   ► So yeah, I could deal with it.

00:26:57 ◼   ► The thing is, so my thought process first,

00:27:00 ◼   ► all right, let's walk through the thought process.

00:27:02 ◼   ► 'Cause of course I could live with it.

00:27:03 ◼   ► I could live with it.

00:27:04 ◼   ► It would be, it would,

00:27:07 ◼   ► it would very, it would frustrate me

00:27:09 ◼   ► and distract me on a regular basis.

00:27:12 ◼   ► But I could live with it.

00:27:14 ◼   ► I'm not gonna say I could get used to it.

00:27:15 ◼   ► - But you're a grownup, right?

00:27:16 ◼   ► Like you can deal with it.

00:27:17 ◼   ► You're a grownup, right?

00:27:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, but again, I might deal with it

00:27:20 ◼   ► by putting a piece of tape on the screen or something like,

00:27:23 ◼   ► but I could do that.

00:27:26 ◼   ► So then I started to think,

00:27:27 ◼   ► you know, your initial reaction is, you know, burn everything down.

00:27:31 ◼   ► Time to get a new iMac. There's a spider in this one. Like, those are the initial reactions.

00:27:39 ◼   ► And then I thought, well, this is a great computer. So if I, if even if I were to just like,

00:27:47 ◼   ► say, forget it, this, this is, this is giving me a new one. I would want to put this one to use.

00:27:53 ◼   ► and now I'm put in the position where I'm either handing down to one of my children

00:27:57 ◼   ► or selling on the internet or on eBay or whatever a computer with a spider in the screen. So

00:28:04 ◼   ► then it's like, "Here, enjoy this great iMac, why don't you want it?" Well, there's a dead

00:28:08 ◼   ► spider behind the glass. "Oh, thanks for the spider Mac that you've just given me." So

00:28:15 ◼   ► I thought, "Okay, I could live with it for a while, but ultimately I'm gonna want to

00:28:21 ◼   ► get the screen. I'm going to either want to get the screen replaced or I'm going to want

00:28:25 ◼   ► to get somebody to attempt to remove the spider from the screen. Whatever, however that works.

00:28:31 ◼   ► The screen is like a $400 part I think. And getting in there is complicated because there's

00:28:39 ◼   ► like it's all attached with tape now so you have to kind of like knife around the edges

00:28:45 ◼   ► to get in and then you have to replace the tape and all of that stuff.

00:28:49 ◼   ► this has become something that you can't really do anymore, right?

00:28:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's not meant to be, I mean, iFixit does it, and it can be done, but it's not

00:28:57 ◼   ► one of those things that is...

00:29:01 ◼   ► IMAX screens are not a thing that you generally want to try to mess with yourself, also because

00:29:05 ◼   ► like even in the old ones that were easier to pop off, the challenge is how do you...

00:29:09 ◼   ► Okay, the spider's bothering you, but if you don't do it right, or if you're in the wrong

00:29:13 ◼   ► environment when you put it together, you're gonna end up with like a dog hair and a fingerprint

00:29:17 ◼   ► and some dust.

00:29:18 ◼   ► You can have more spiders in there than you had before.

00:29:20 ◼   ► - Or more spiders.

00:29:21 ◼   ► Just dump in a tray of ants and then slap the glass back on

00:29:26 ◼   ► and see, and you got an ant farm.

00:29:28 ◼   ► - Well, you gotta send in something bigger

00:29:30 ◼   ► to get the spider out.

00:29:31 ◼   ► That's how that works.

00:29:32 ◼   ► - Oh, that is, that is, that's good.

00:29:35 ◼   ► They should make a song about that.

00:29:36 ◼   ► Anyway, so I decided I would do that

00:29:38 ◼   ► and that I would replace the screen.

00:29:41 ◼   ► So what's ended up happening is I'm gonna get the,

00:29:44 ◼   ► I'm gonna get either the spider remove evicted

00:29:48 ◼   ► from the screen or replace the screen.

00:29:50 ◼   ► And my iMac is gone.

00:29:51 ◼   ► I've already taken it to the nice service people

00:29:54 ◼   ► who are going to attempt a screen replacement on it.

00:29:57 ◼   ► And what I also decided as a part of this whole conversation

00:30:01 ◼   ► about the future of my iMac and whether I should just like

00:30:04 ◼   ► set it on fire 'cause there's spiders,

00:30:06 ◼   ► I have, I think come around to the idea

00:30:11 ◼   ► that I'm gonna buy an iMac Pro.

00:30:12 ◼   ► - Interesting.

00:30:13 ◼   ► - So I'll fix this one and then I can sell it

00:30:16 ◼   ► or pass it down when the iMac Pro comes out.

00:30:20 ◼   ► - There could be some conspiracy theories

00:30:22 ◼   ► brought about here, you know?

00:30:24 ◼   ► Was the spider a plant so you'd buy it,

00:30:26 ◼   ► you have a reason to buy it. - Was Jason Stelzien

00:30:28 ◼   ► with a box of spiders in his garage?

00:30:32 ◼   ► - Shiftily going into his garage.

00:30:34 ◼   ► - For those who haven't been in my garage,

00:30:35 ◼   ► I do not need to supply spiders.

00:30:38 ◼   ► I live, I work in a garage.

00:30:41 ◼   ► We have spiders.

00:30:44 ◼   ► We have spiders in our house sometimes, we have them in our garage, there are a lot of

00:30:49 ◼   ► them outside in the trees, there are spider webs on our car mirrors when we go out in

00:30:54 ◼   ► the morning, there are spiders around.

00:30:55 ◼   ► I don't need to supply spiders.

00:30:58 ◼   ► This is a natural process that brings spiders into my life.

00:31:02 ◼   ► So how did you get to this then?

00:31:06 ◼   ► Why do you think that you want or need an iMac Pro?

00:31:11 ◼   ► Well the short version would be it's Marco Arment's fault, because it's always Marco's

00:31:15 ◼   ► fault because if you mention products around Marco, he will convince you to buy an expensive

00:31:21 ◼   ► product.

00:31:22 ◼   ► I once visited Marco and I think within 25 minutes had bought all new audio equipment,

00:31:28 ◼   ► like new headphones, a new headphone amp and a new microphone.

00:31:32 ◼   ► He has this horrible ability to make you see sense, but sense that is expensive.

00:31:40 ◼   ► viewing it once you get, it's like the reality distortion field with Steve Jobs, it's a little

00:31:45 ◼   ► like that. It's this sort of like once you start to view Marco's perspective, which is

00:31:50 ◼   ► very much a, and it's not unreasonable, right? That's the thing that's dangerous about it.

00:31:55 ◼   ► It's like, well, yeah, but if you look at it this way, you should buy the good thing

00:31:58 ◼   ► because the good thing is good and you will use it. I mean, it comes across sometimes

00:32:04 ◼   ► as him talking you into buying things and spending lots of money, but his perspective

00:32:07 ◼   ► is usually a reasonable one, which is to get something good, you have to pay for it. So

00:32:12 ◼   ► don't cheap out. Get the good thing because you're going to use it. This is not a thing

00:32:16 ◼   ► that you're not going to use. You should get this. And I think that when he's talking to

00:32:22 ◼   ► people he knows about this stuff, as opposed to maybe some of the stuff that he tries out

00:32:26 ◼   ► himself, there's an extra burden when you're talking to somebody you know. And he knows

00:32:32 ◼   ► how you use that audio stuff and that you're going to appreciate it and therefore it has

00:32:37 ◼   ► value and that spending more money on it you're going to get the value out of it and so it's

00:32:42 ◼   ► worth it. So that's basically what happened with me and the iMac Pro. He said, and he's

00:32:46 ◼   ► completely right, he said, "You, me, Jason, use iZotope RX6, which is this audio software

00:32:57 ◼   ► that does noise removal and echo removal and all sorts of other wild things. I've written

00:33:01 ◼   ► about it a couple of times. I do a lot of podcasts with people who are not in ideal

00:33:08 ◼   ► recording environments, and so I get files that are full of background hums from heaters

00:33:12 ◼   ► and air conditioners and computer fans and sometimes in echoey rooms, and I process most

00:33:18 ◼   ► of it to make it sound better, and that, using iZotope, and that is a piece of software that

00:33:25 ◼   ► uses all the cores that you can throw at it, all the processor cores. And Marco is somebody

00:33:31 ◼   ► who really is focused on processor efficiency, like he spent all that time working on multi--and

00:33:39 ◼   ► he talked about it on ATP--working on multi-threading MP3 encoding because he got frustrated that

00:33:44 ◼   ► the MP3 encoders were only using like two cores or one core and he wanted them to efficiently

00:33:50 ◼   ► use all the cores all the time, right? But he's right, the tools that I use to do a lot

00:33:55 ◼   ► of this are multi-core savvy and so I will benefit greatly from having an iMac Pro with

00:34:06 ◼   ► that many many core processor that's very fast because instead of starting a denoise

00:34:11 ◼   ► job and then walking away for 10 minutes, even on my i7 iMac, it takes forever to do

00:34:18 ◼   ► that stuff. That it will happen a lot faster.

00:34:20 ◼   ► faster.

00:34:21 ◼   ► The generation after you, right? Mine is completely maxed out. And if I ever use iZotope, and

00:34:27 ◼   ► I use it every now and then, I don't use it nearly as frequently as you do, I'm always

00:34:32 ◼   ► surprised by how long it takes because everything else is so quick. It's like, "Okay, I'm

00:34:36 ◼   ► going to process this file. Okay, five minutes remaining. What?" Because everything else

00:34:40 ◼   ► I do with audio on my iMac, it happens in seconds.

00:34:43 ◼   ► Yeah. No, this is, and it's like, and if you've got like iStat menus on or activity

00:34:48 ◼   ► monitor open you can see it just it pins the processors at 100 percent the fans spin up and

00:34:55 ◼   ► for five minutes or whatever or longer it is just churning on this stuff it does an amazing job like

00:35:01 ◼   ► that's why it's doing it the way it's doing it but it is incredibly processor intensive so um that

00:35:07 ◼   ► that is uh also your iMac actually because it's the 2015 has the faster uh SSD faster storage

00:35:17 ◼   ► transfer, it's like 2x of mine, and that's another place where I would get a benefit

00:35:23 ◼   ► by getting a new iMac or iMac Pro is once I'm done processing these files, I have to

00:35:29 ◼   ► save them, and the save takes forever. And now keep in mind also these are huge files,

00:35:34 ◼   ► like when I do denoising for a session of Total Party Kill, the Dungeons and Dragons

00:35:40 ◼   ► podcast that we do. So that's got like seven people on it. So I have seven

00:35:46 ◼   ► uncompressed audio files that are probably four hours long each. Wow.

00:35:53 ◼   ► Oh my word. That takes a long time and those are huge files and then you have

00:35:59 ◼   ► to save them. So anyway, you know, Marko's point, he's right. Like I could, an iMac Pro,

00:36:04 ◼   ► even though it would be by far the most expensive computer in terms of a dollar

00:36:09 ◼   ► figure, not necessarily in terms of like actual dollars because of inflation and things like

00:36:14 ◼   ► that, but the largest single amount of money I've ever spent for a computer if I bought

00:36:20 ◼   ► an iMac Pro. I've never bought a $5,000 computer before. Generally, they're $2,500 computers

00:36:25 ◼   ► at most. But would I use it and would it make my job easier and would everything go faster

00:36:33 ◼   ► and would I be more productive? Yeah, actually, yeah, it's true, I would be. So maybe, we'll

00:36:41 ◼   ► see. The good news is, like the 4K or the 5K iMac, sorry, the 5K iMac, my hope is that

00:36:50 ◼   ► I will get to review the iMac Pro. Because that's what happened with the 5K iMac. I wrote

00:36:57 ◼   ► a review of it, Apple sent me one and I used it and I wrote a review of it and I sent it

00:37:00 ◼   ► it back to Apple. And before I had even sent it back to Apple, I had ordered one, right?

00:37:05 ◼   ► So my hope is that it'll be something like that. I'll get to try it out and say, okay,

00:37:08 ◼   ► let's see how this thing works. Another funny thing that actually works in my favor for

00:37:12 ◼   ► the iMac Pro is that it's going to be VESA mountable. Unlike the current generation of

00:37:19 ◼   ► iMacs where you have to order it as either one with a stand or one that's VESA mountable,

00:37:25 ◼   ► which led to me carrying my iMac like a, I don't know, like a box of pizza when I was

00:37:33 ◼   ► taking it in to get it fixed because it was off the arm and just this slab has no stand

00:37:39 ◼   ► or anything. Anyway, the iMac Pro has, apparently it's like the old iMacs where you can pop

00:37:47 ◼   ► off the stand and mount it, and it's just one configuration for both. Because if I do

00:37:55 ◼   ► hand down my existing iMac, I'm gonna have to get basically either wall mounted somewhere

00:37:59 ◼   ► or I'm gonna have to buy a VESA mount computer stand to stand it, because it doesn't have

00:38:06 ◼   ► a stand of its own. It's made to be mounted. So now I'm leaning toward that. We'll see

00:38:11 ◼   ► how it is. If I get to review it, that'll be great, because I'll get to try out the

00:38:15 ◼   ► iMac Pro and see for myself how, if it's something I want to do. So yeah.

00:38:22 ◼   ► That's awesome. I'm very keen to know how you feel about it. I can't see myself buying an iMac Pro. I don't need it. I'm good.

00:38:33 ◼   ► I really do believe that the iMac that I have right now is going to be my computer for the next few years because I very rarely have to do anything like what you do.

00:38:44 ◼   ► what you do because most of the shows that I do are with people that are in

00:38:51 ◼   ► predictable environments, right? So like the amount of times that I have to do

00:38:55 ◼   ► any severe audio processing is very minimal and a lot of the applications

00:38:59 ◼   ► that I use that do require processing power, they're not fully optimized in a

00:39:05 ◼   ► way that maybe iZotope would be, right? To use all of those cores. Yeah exactly.

00:39:09 ◼   ► That's gonna be my argument when we get to the end of the year is, okay,

00:39:13 ◼   ► this is what a $5,000 and I think a lot of a lot of people who are kind of on the

00:39:18 ◼   ► pro side of Mac usage are going to have this moment which is what do I get for

00:39:25 ◼   ► $5,000 with the base model iMac Pro versus what do I get for the build to

00:39:32 ◼   ► order high-end iMac, 5k iMac and what's the difference there and what's the real

00:39:39 ◼   ► difference there right because the true pinned multi processor you know multi

00:39:44 ◼   ► core processor test the iMac Pro will undoubtedly blow away the iMac right

00:39:51 ◼   ► yeah because it's it's it's made to do that but in your everyday life will you

00:39:57 ◼   ► see the benefits and for a certain Steven Hackett about this too because of

00:40:02 ◼   ► video stuff right like I also do for some of the stuff I do I do video stuff

00:40:07 ◼   ► Stephen's doing a lot of video. Encoding 4K video is another place where it's like, "Wow."

00:40:11 ◼   ► When I encode video for Total Party Kill, I often will just leave it overnight. And it doesn't take

00:40:19 ◼   ► all night to finish. It finishes in an hour or two. But I just, at the end of the day, I'm like,

00:40:22 ◼   ► "All right, export the file here." And I walk away because it is a long process. And that's just 1080

00:40:27 ◼   ► video. So that's another... This is a question, do you do stuff that is going to use eight cores?

00:40:35 ◼   ► No, like I don't or are you really just gonna benefit from by having a fast?

00:40:39 ◼   ► i7 and fast storage and is that all you really need because even video I have absolutely no intention of doing 4k

00:40:46 ◼   ► right and I know that like

00:40:48 ◼   ► Stephen has all these problems and of trying to do with things in 4k

00:40:52 ◼   ► Like I've had some people ask me questions about this before like Final Cut can deal with it

00:40:57 ◼   ► But it is really tough and I guess an iMac Pro is built to handle these types of tasks providing the applications of

00:41:04 ◼   ► Develop to take advantage of all of it, but it's more power than I need especially for how little time

00:41:10 ◼   ► I you know in my life sit in front of my iMac like most of my

00:41:15 ◼   ► Working time really is an iOS. So I'm kind of good, you know

00:41:19 ◼   ► But I get why lots of people will look at the iMac pros why the computer should exist in the first place

00:41:25 ◼   ► But I'm also Jason waiting. I'm waiting before I make any choices to see what the Mac Pro is

00:41:32 ◼   ► That I just want to see right like my next computer and maybe two or three years

00:41:36 ◼   ► Is it gonna be an iMac Pro or is it gonna be a Mac Pro? I don't know yet, right?

00:41:42 ◼   ► And so I'm I'm keen to wait it out

00:41:45 ◼   ► It's like another reason like just a way out any kind of upgrade to see

00:41:50 ◼   ► Maybe next year what the Mac Pro looks like because you never know like it might be better for me for my things at that

00:41:56 ◼   ► Point, but I just can't foresee it right now

00:41:58 ◼   ► Yeah, I think

00:42:01 ◼   ► You know pros of the Mac Pro is if a spider gets in your monitor, you can just get a new monitor

00:42:05 ◼   ► Exactly, but I I don't know. I'm I'm I'm not sure that's a that's a path. I need to walk down

00:42:13 ◼   ► But it is I can see how some people are gonna be and that that's Apple's intention was not to have a Mac Pro

00:42:20 ◼   ► Right, so that there's the question of what's that Mac Pro gonna be?

00:42:22 ◼   ► That's why I'm even more intrigued by it because it shouldn't exist. This should be it

00:42:27 ◼   ► It's a product that shouldn't exist. It's true. And the iMac Pro was meant to replace

00:42:31 ◼   ► it and of course now it's not going to replace it, which is a question of like, what's the

00:42:35 ◼   ► iMac Pro versus the Mac Pro? That's going to be really interesting to watch. Yeah, so

00:42:39 ◼   ► we'll see. But I'm now much more also as somebody who runs my own business and we have the way

00:42:45 ◼   ► that the tax and structure of the business work, you know, we try to, this is boring,

00:42:50 ◼   ► but forgive me for a second. We try to have the business be, um, break even basically

00:42:56 ◼   ► because all the profit is then rules into our taxes

00:42:59 ◼   ► and we have to pay our taxes anyway.

00:43:01 ◼   ► So we rather the business break even

00:43:02 ◼   ► and then we just pay the taxes on the money that we make.

00:43:06 ◼   ► What that means, net result is at the end of the year,

00:43:09 ◼   ► I'm seriously considering buying things

00:43:12 ◼   ► because that helps make the,

00:43:15 ◼   ► that's a good time to buy stuff

00:43:17 ◼   ► is at the end of the year where we're wrapping up the books

00:43:19 ◼   ► for the calendar year.

00:43:21 ◼   ► And so buying an iMac or an iMac Pro in December,

00:43:25 ◼   ► It's great. I hope it doesn't. I hope I can buy one in December and it doesn't.

00:43:29 ◼   ► It doesn't get delayed to January cause then that will make me sad. But, uh,

00:43:34 ◼   ► but yeah, so we'll see. We'll, we'll see. Um, but I,

00:43:37 ◼   ► I'm now leaning that way because although the iMac that I have is amazing other

00:43:42 ◼   ► than the spider and I really like it and it's so powerful and it's so great for

00:43:49 ◼   ► so many things.

00:43:49 ◼   ► The truth is that a lot of this stuff that I do does make me sad.

00:43:55 ◼   ► does take a lot of extra power. And although it does it in an amazingly short amount of

00:44:01 ◼   ► time, there now exist computers that could shave that time quite a bit. And, you know,

00:44:08 ◼   ► it's not the stuff, it's not me typing words, right? It's not me looking at pictures. It's

00:44:11 ◼   ► the churning through hundreds of gigabytes of audio and video and stuff like that. So

00:44:20 ◼   ► So maybe, maybe. So this is the path that the spider sent me down, but in the end, the

00:44:28 ◼   ► spider is a separate issue. The spider just sort of made me also think about, do I want

00:44:34 ◼   ► to get a new iMac? Do I want to make sure that this iMac doesn't have a spider in it

00:44:39 ◼   ► so that I can pass it down or sell it and get a new iMac? Because we got to that point,

00:44:46 ◼   ► It's suddenly, it's like, I can't just freely at any point

00:44:49 ◼   ► give this thing away or sell it

00:44:51 ◼   ► because there's now a spider embedded in the screen.

00:44:53 ◼   ► So it was the, it was a,

00:44:56 ◼   ► it just forced me to think of the larger issues

00:44:59 ◼   ► that I had been already thinking about

00:45:00 ◼   ► involving my iMac and whether I want to upgrade

00:45:04 ◼   ► after three years.

00:45:05 ◼   ► - Spider is a metaphor, you know.

00:45:08 ◼   ► - The spider makes, the spider makes us consider our lives.

00:45:13 ◼   ► I think, Myke.

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00:47:17 ◼   ► It is emoji season.

00:47:18 ◼   ► It is.

00:47:20 ◼   ► Apple have previewed more emoji.

00:47:22 ◼   ► So if you remember a few months ago, Apple showed off some of the emoji that they were

00:47:26 ◼   ► going to be doing.

00:47:27 ◼   ► It included some of the elf and stuff like that, all of the mythical beings that they're

00:47:34 ◼   ► putting in along with some of the other faces that they're adding.

00:47:38 ◼   ► While they've now previewed even more emoji that are going to, and they've also said when

00:47:43 ◼   ► we're going to get them, they're going to come in 11.1 which is also going to be in

00:47:47 ◼   ► beta this week.

00:47:49 ◼   ► So I think on public and developer beta they're going to be pushing the emoji out on 11.1

00:47:53 ◼   ► and then 11.1 I reckon will probably come out around iPhone 10 time if not before.

00:48:01 ◼   ► Some of the new emoji that have been shown are face with monocore which I will be using

00:48:06 ◼   ► with abundance. Some gender neutral emoji for children, adult and older adult. Cup with

00:48:12 ◼   ► a straw which is an emoji that I have wanted for a long time. One of the first conversations

00:48:17 ◼   ► I had with Emojipedia maestro, Mr Jeremy Burge is why is there not a cup with a straw emoji

00:48:24 ◼   ► and the reason this frustrated me is because in Apple's picker, you know like they have

00:48:28 ◼   ► like the food picker, it used to have a cup of a straw in it.

00:48:30 ◼   ► So there's actually no emoji for that, so that's coming.

00:48:33 ◼   ► A smiling hedgehog, which is one of the cutest emoji

00:48:37 ◼   ► that has ever existed.

00:48:38 ◼   ► There is the American Sign Language sign for I love you,

00:48:42 ◼   ► which I think is amazing.

00:48:45 ◼   ► And I think will get used a lot, which is a great one.

00:48:48 ◼   ► And there's stuff like sleds, curling stones,

00:48:51 ◼   ► you need for curling. - Curling stone, yeah.

00:48:52 ◼   ► - Which is just a beautiful emoji.

00:48:54 ◼   ► It is beautifully done and just in time for the Winter Olympics.

00:48:59 ◼   ► Yep.

00:48:59 ◼   ► Because that's when people will use it.

00:49:01 ◼   ► It's the only time.

00:49:02 ◼   ► There will be curling.

00:49:03 ◼   ► I will wear the curling emoji out in February.

00:49:08 ◼   ► I'm telling you now.

00:49:09 ◼   ► And also, one I think will also be used a ton

00:49:13 ◼   ► is a shushing face.

00:49:14 ◼   ► So a face with a lip to the mouth to be like shh.

00:49:19 ◼   ► So that's a good one.

00:49:20 ◼   ► That one's going to be used a lot.

00:49:21 ◼   ► There's a lot of great new emoji coming in here.

00:49:23 ◼   ► I'm very excited about it.

00:49:24 ◼   ► - And it's probably-- - Smiley with a monocle.

00:49:26 ◼   ► - Smiley with a monocle. - That kills me.

00:49:27 ◼   ► I think monocles are hilarious

00:49:29 ◼   ► and now there's a smiley with a monocle.

00:49:31 ◼   ► So that one's gonna get used

00:49:33 ◼   ► in all sorts of ironic ways, I think.

00:49:34 ◼   ► That'll be great. - The swearing face,

00:49:36 ◼   ► the stars in eyes, the vomit face,

00:49:37 ◼   ► the mind exploding, the dinosaurs.

00:49:41 ◼   ► This is a really great update.

00:49:42 ◼   ► There's gonna be a lot in there.

00:49:43 ◼   ► And as always, we spoke about this a bunch,

00:49:47 ◼   ► adding new emoji drives iOS adoption

00:49:50 ◼   ► because your friends start sending you emoji

00:49:52 ◼   ► that you can't see.

00:49:53 ◼   ► So you will update to iOS 11 as well.

00:49:56 ◼   ► And there have been reports,

00:49:57 ◼   ► and I'll put a link in the show notes

00:49:59 ◼   ► to an article on MacRumors,

00:50:01 ◼   ► that iOS adoption has been a little bit slower

00:50:04 ◼   ► than usual with iOS 11.

00:50:07 ◼   ► So it's currently installed, as of a couple of weeks ago,

00:50:09 ◼   ► on like 25% of devices,

00:50:11 ◼   ► but this is slower than it's been in the past.

00:50:13 ◼   ► Like iOS 10 was at 34% at the same period of time.

00:50:17 ◼   ► So it's not horrifically slower, but it is slower.

00:50:20 ◼   ► And I will say personally,

00:50:22 ◼   ► I don't know if you've seen this Jason, but this has I have not noticed this personally

00:50:27 ◼   ► but I've been seeing a lot of people talking online and we had a

00:50:30 ◼   ► Family dinner yesterday and every single member of my family was telling me about the battery life problems that they're having on their phones since iOS

00:50:37 ◼   ► 11 yeah, this is like after a couple of weeks of updating so that initial

00:50:41 ◼   ► Processing of all the photos and whatever it does should be done by now

00:50:44 ◼   ► But people were showing me you know like it was like one o'clock in the afternoon

00:50:48 ◼   ► And there were like low power warnings happening on people's phones

00:50:51 ◼   ► phones. So something going on in 11 I think for a lot of people.

00:50:55 ◼   ► It's unclear right? I mean it's hard to pin down but I've definitely heard people report

00:50:59 ◼   ► on it. Older models, this seems to have been an update that I've heard from a lot of people

00:51:06 ◼   ► with iPhone 6s who have who say that it is really slow.

00:51:12 ◼   ► Yeah this is predominantly 6 and 6s that are in the family that most of my members of my

00:51:19 ◼   ► family have either an iPhone 6 or an iPhone 6s, and they were all having these problems.

00:51:25 ◼   ► So I hope that, you know, something will happen here with 11.1 maybe to try and address some

00:51:30 ◼   ► of this stuff. Apple has been pushing out a bunch of updates, you know, we've got a

00:51:33 ◼   ► 0.01, a 0.02, and I hope that some of that is fixing this.

00:51:37 ◼   ► It does, it's interesting, I mean, you mentioned the emoji thing, and we, it's so easy for

00:51:41 ◼   ► people to say, "I can't believe they're talking about emoji, this isn't particularly important."

00:51:46 ◼   ► I will point out that Apple went to the trouble of doing an entire press release basically.

00:51:49 ◼   ► - Two. They've done two now for this emoji release.

00:51:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, right. They did one on World Emoji Day and now they've done a one on Friday.

00:51:57 ◼   ► They did one about the new emojis in iOS 11.1. They know that this is a thing. It's funny

00:52:01 ◼   ► that they come in the point one release and not in the point O release. I don't know what

00:52:06 ◼   ► that is. Maybe that's just to spur people to update who have held out. There may be

00:52:13 ◼   ► a strategy to it, which would be interesting if there's a strategy. Like the early adopters

00:52:17 ◼   ► get the first version and then the laggards start getting, they demand the later version

00:52:24 ◼   ► because their friends aren't sending them. But they know that this drives interest in

00:52:28 ◼   ► the operating systems and it's this purely social way of forcing your peers to update

00:52:35 ◼   ► because you need to update to see the emoji and to use the emoji, which people want to

00:52:40 ◼   ► do once they once once these new if you use emoji it's like oh my god I can use

00:52:44 ◼   ► that emoji now and like it's like the moment when Myke realized he could start

00:52:48 ◼   ► sending the nerd emoji right it was huge so like if you think about it right

00:52:53 ◼   ► let's let you well this the the the understood wisdom is that it does help

00:52:56 ◼   ► push adoption so if you know this like if Apple will notice if you know this

00:53:00 ◼   ► piece of information isn't it better to let the OS out to a small like a smaller

00:53:07 ◼   ► a subset of users to make sure that you iron out any bugs before you push the update that

00:53:12 ◼   ► forces the rest of the user base to update.

00:53:15 ◼   ► I think that there is a logic to that.

00:53:18 ◼   ► It is very, very normal for an OS to go out and there to be widespread problems that didn't

00:53:22 ◼   ► come out in testing.

00:53:23 ◼   ► This is just a normal thing that happens.

00:53:25 ◼   ► It happens with all types of software.

00:53:28 ◼   ► So it maybe would make sense to do the public beta, you find out what you find out, you

00:53:32 ◼   ► push it out to everybody else and then you find out more stuff.

00:53:34 ◼   ► Oh, there's battery life problems.

00:53:36 ◼   ► "Well, let's fix those before we push out the update that makes the rest of our users

00:53:40 ◼   ► update because they want the emoji."

00:53:42 ◼   ► I can see why you would maybe stage this if this is the case, right?

00:53:46 ◼   ► Because the emoji are done.

00:53:47 ◼   ► They're showing them to us.

00:53:48 ◼   ► They're done.

00:53:49 ◼   ► Right, they're clearly done.

00:53:50 ◼   ► It's done.

00:53:51 ◼   ► And I don't think it is an incredibly difficult process of putting these into the OS.

00:53:58 ◼   ► I can't imagine that it needs a team of 50 people to put the code points in.

00:54:04 ◼   ► I wanted to mention, and this is something I find, because I find this emoji stuff fascinating,

00:54:08 ◼   ► because it's like, as much as people kind of roll their eyes out, I feel like this is really

00:54:13 ◼   ► meaningful. Like people are using this as a method of communicating. It solves a lot of problems that

00:54:17 ◼   ► when we went to computer communication and plain text was all we had and you lost a lot of nuance

00:54:23 ◼   ► of speech intonation and body language, right? That emoji is kind of like, become a way of

00:54:31 ◼   ► bringing some of that back and it's got new meetings and I think it's going to be with

00:54:35 ◼   ► us for a very long time to come. And so it constantly fascinates me. One of the things

00:54:42 ◼   ► that I'm also interested in is how software provides access to emoji because one of the

00:54:49 ◼   ► challenges is with all these new emoji, the emoji keyboard is unwieldy, right? And I feel

00:54:54 ◼   ► like Apple still providing you a picker with a million smiley faces in it. It's like I

00:54:59 ◼   ► know that you can now do the smiley face, you know, you type "pizza" and the autocorrect

00:55:05 ◼   ► thing will suggest a pizza emoji to you, which is, that's a start, but I feel like there's

00:55:09 ◼   ► more that needs to happen here in terms of clever ways to get people the emoji that they

00:55:15 ◼   ► want. And I know there are like third-party emoji keyboards, but I want to see Apple,

00:55:21 ◼   ► Apple's investing a lot in emoji art and rolling these things out and publicizing them. I'm

00:55:26 ◼   ► not entirely convinced that the people who build the keyboard are, at least I

00:55:32 ◼   ► haven't seen any evidence that the people who build Apple's keyboard app

00:55:35 ◼   ► have really tried to think about better ways of doing emoji input and then and

00:55:40 ◼   ► forget on the Mac, like on the Mac it's a complete disaster unless you're using

00:55:44 ◼   ► slack basically and that needs to be better too because I, you know, these

00:55:50 ◼   ► these are part of our lexicon and they need to be easier to use. I would say

00:55:54 ◼   ► that the Mac is better because there's a search bar in the picker right at least

00:55:58 ◼   ► has that well that right but you have to bring up the picker yeah which is yes a

00:56:01 ◼   ► terrible you can't search in iOS right if you if you've got a you're just

00:56:05 ◼   ► looking for a particular flag you can't search you you have to have the the auto

00:56:10 ◼   ► correct bar up and then you can type the name of the country and it will do it

00:56:15 ◼   ► it'll show I will say if you're using the messages app there is a software

00:56:18 ◼   ► button for emoji as well which I always forget is there's like a little smiley

00:56:22 ◼   ► face just in the message window but you know we use so many different

00:56:26 ◼   ► applications and it would be better to have you know honestly I would like there

00:56:30 ◼   ► to just be an emoji key on the keyboard right like that would just be great like

00:56:33 ◼   ► just put a hardware emoji key on the keyboard and then I can just bring up a

00:56:36 ◼   ► pic or I'd be very happy with that I use Gboard on iOS and it has when in

00:56:43 ◼   ► their emoji thing it has a search view as a search field you can type in

00:56:46 ◼   ► whatever you want they put in a bunch of different meanings right so like there

00:56:50 ◼   ► are a lot of words attached to each emoji based upon what people actually use them for.

00:56:54 ◼   ► Like there are some interesting ones, like if you search the word "but" a peach comes

00:57:00 ◼   ► up. The peach comes up, yeah. Google understands, right? It's what people use these emojis for.

00:57:05 ◼   ► Not that I ever send these types of emojis. No, you wouldn't do that. You're right about

00:57:09 ◼   ► the smiley button in the text window. It's easy to forget. That's a nice place contextually.

00:57:14 ◼   ► problem is it you know if access to emoji in certain apps right versus

00:57:22 ◼   ► everywhere is yeah that's like slack for me slack has become the default way I

00:57:28 ◼   ► use emoji in slack way more than anywhere else and it's because slack has

00:57:31 ◼   ► built in really easy access to emoji you type a colon and you start to type a

00:57:36 ◼   ► word that you think is an emoji and it and it pops up a little list above it of

00:57:42 ◼   ► suggestions and you can pick one and hit return and you're done right it's so

00:57:46 ◼   ► easy to do and that is a that emoji expression is now a native part of of

00:57:51 ◼   ► slack and I you know I want an experience kind of like that and I don't

00:57:56 ◼   ► know what that is whether there's a system wide keyboard shortcut for emoji

00:58:01 ◼   ► search that inserts something because that's actually what I do on the Mac is

00:58:04 ◼   ► launch bar has an emoji search and so I enter launch bar and type the name of an

00:58:09 ◼   ► emoji and press return and it inserts it. And I do it that way.

00:58:13 ◼   ► I can't let Slack get away from this conversation, though, without saying how terrible they are

00:58:19 ◼   ► at supporting emoji. Emoji is a massive part of their system. It's in all their communication.

00:58:26 ◼   ► Emoji is part of Slack's brand.

00:58:27 ◼   ► They're like a year behind, two years behind, on the new emoji?

00:58:30 ◼   ► They will now be a year behind on releases of emoji. So they haven't yet implemented

00:58:35 ◼   ► the emoji from this time last year.

00:58:38 ◼   ► From last year, yeah.

00:58:39 ◼   ► mind-boggling. What is their problem? Mind-boggling because emoji is such a big

00:58:43 ◼   ► part of their corporate brand. They use it everywhere. Yeah, then again I do use

00:58:48 ◼   ► I do use custom emoji a lot in Slack which is kind of nice and that's not

00:58:52 ◼   ► something that's real like that's not part of the standard but there is that's

00:58:55 ◼   ► an interesting little lab for how people use if people can make their own emoji

00:59:01 ◼   ► what which ones would take off and which ones wouldn't and I'm not yet ready to

00:59:06 ◼   ► to follow in the footsteps of Mark Bramhill of Welcome to Macintosh and

00:59:09 ◼   ► propose my own emoji even though I use the Skeletor emoji, well sorry,

00:59:15 ◼   ► hooded skeleton all the time. Maybe someday we'll get a skeleton emoji.

00:59:23 ◼   ► Maybe we could do a, I mean, I think there might be a skeleton emoji but

00:59:26 ◼   ► it's not the Skeletor emoji, so maybe skeletons need a like a variant for

00:59:34 ◼   ► yellow skeletons with hoods I don't know. Before we leave emoji corner there's two

00:59:40 ◼   ► other things I want to bring up something was fascinating I saw this on the Emojipedia blog.

00:59:45 ◼   ► Last week the whatsapp beta for Android got new emoji. Now just a piece of context which makes

00:59:55 ◼   ► this very interesting. Jeremy Burge is a personal friend and we talk about this a lot when we talk

01:00:02 ◼   ► about emoji. WhatsApp use Apple's emoji artwork on Android.

01:00:08 ◼   ► The Apple emoji artwork on Android because they wanted to have all the emoji and WhatsApp

01:00:14 ◼   ► look the same. And it is unclear if and how Apple allow this,

01:00:21 ◼   ► right? Like, are they cool with this? Are they not? It's unknown. However, in the beta

01:00:26 ◼   ► that was just released last week, WhatsApp have recreated Apple's emoji. They are new icons,

01:00:34 ◼   ► but they are extremely similar to Apple's. Now this isn't in the release version yet,

01:00:41 ◼   ► it's unknown if it will be, it's also unknown if it's also going to find its way to iOS,

01:00:44 ◼   ► but it may look like, I think at this point, whatever was going on, Apple was maybe unhappy

01:00:50 ◼   ► with it now and you know that this is what they have decided to do is to alright we're

01:00:57 ◼   ► going to make our own and they're going to look exactly like yours. So that's the thing

01:01:00 ◼   ► that's out there. It's a very interesting thing to see what's out there to make that

01:01:03 ◼   ► change.

01:01:04 ◼   ► Tim Cynova Yeah that's again fascinating. We've talked

01:01:08 ◼   ► about it before on this show too because we both talked to Jeremy Burge a lot from Emojipedia

01:01:14 ◼   ► about this stuff and he knows we're interested in this stuff and the emoji fragmentation

01:01:18 ◼   ► issue always comes up, which is that every platform shows its own emoji. There's no—Unicode

01:01:24 ◼   ► Consortium doesn't produce an emoji image and hand it out for everyone to use. Everybody

01:01:30 ◼   ► has to produce their own.

01:01:31 ◼   ► They produce a description.

01:01:33 ◼   ► Yeah. And that can lead to interesting things like the cup with the straw, which in some

01:01:36 ◼   ► places is a glass with a—you know, a clear glass with a straw dropped into it. And in

01:01:42 ◼   ► other places it's a—like apples is a—it's like a white takeaway container with a lid

01:01:46 ◼   ► and a red straw inserted in it.

01:01:49 ◼   ► It's very different because they've interpreted it different.

01:01:52 ◼   ► And that happens, the woman and man in the steam room

01:01:57 ◼   ► are very different in some different ones

01:01:59 ◼   ► where it's more of just a face with some steam

01:02:01 ◼   ► versus somebody having like a back scratcher

01:02:03 ◼   ► or something like that,

01:02:04 ◼   ► where it's more like a spa kind of thing.

01:02:07 ◼   ► And that's all up to the interpretation.

01:02:09 ◼   ► But WhatsApp's always been interesting

01:02:10 ◼   ► because they just basically just used Apple's emoji set

01:02:15 ◼   ► on Android in order to keep them in parallel.

01:02:17 ◼   ► And this is the big mystery is, was that allowed?

01:02:20 ◼   ► Was that just a rogue thing that Apple didn't know about

01:02:23 ◼   ► or didn't care about?

01:02:24 ◼   ► Did, you know, did Apple give them a warning and say,

01:02:27 ◼   ► you guys need to make your own emoji set on,

01:02:30 ◼   ► at least for Android?

01:02:32 ◼   ► We don't know, but obviously they have made

01:02:35 ◼   ► their own emoji set.

01:02:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, something's changed, but we don't know.

01:02:38 ◼   ► Before we move on, Joe Steele was very rightly

01:02:42 ◼   ► pointing this out because we've probably already had people

01:02:44 ◼   ► that have sent this link to us.

01:02:47 ◼   ► If you're listening to this show,

01:02:48 ◼   ► there is this Mac app thing called Rocket,

01:02:52 ◼   ► which kind of enables an emoji picker,

01:02:54 ◼   ► which is very similar to Slacks Anywhere on Mac OS.

01:02:59 ◼   ► - I tried it and I couldn't use it because it, yeah,

01:03:04 ◼   ► it didn't, I was very excited about it

01:03:06 ◼   ► and it works in some places.

01:03:07 ◼   ► And then I started to, I can't remember now,

01:03:11 ◼   ► basically at some point I thought,

01:03:12 ◼   ► This is too far the other way.

01:03:15 ◼   ► We're now emojifying is happening in places

01:03:17 ◼   ► where I don't want it to happen.

01:03:18 ◼   ► So, but yeah, it's there.

01:03:20 ◼   ► And the whole goal of it as a Mac app

01:03:22 ◼   ► is to make it way easier to put emoji everywhere

01:03:25 ◼   ► that you put text.

01:03:27 ◼   ► - All right, this week's episode

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01:04:42 ◼   ► Jason, it's time for #AskUpgrade.

01:04:49 ◼   ► First question this week comes from Anton.

01:04:50 ◼   ► Anton wants to know, "What do I have to do to get photos to sync people and their faces

01:04:55 ◼   ► between iOS 11 and High Sierra automagically?"

01:04:58 ◼   ► Well, ideally you have to do nothing, although what you do need to do is train. It should work, but it doesn't always work.

01:05:08 ◼   ► This seems to be the story with photos in iOS 11 and High Sierra right now, is that it should work, but it doesn't always work.

01:05:14 ◼   ► I've seen people get it to work, and I've seen people not get it to work.

01:05:18 ◼   ► The idea is that when you say it doesn't sync the face training data, but it will

01:05:25 ◼   ► if you say this photo is of this person, that rides along with it, which

01:05:31 ◼   ► allows the other device to train its photos more easily because it can use

01:05:37 ◼   ► the data that you provided. So what you need to do is sit down at a Mac or I

01:05:43 ◼   ► mean I guess you could use your iPhone or iPad to do this too, but sit down at a

01:05:46 ◼   ► device and identify a bunch of the faces in your photos and start training it a

01:05:50 ◼   ► little bit and then that should sync. One of the problems that I'm having

01:05:55 ◼   ► and it makes me wonder if some of the battery things might be related to

01:05:58 ◼   ► photos after all is it seems like photos is not indexing the photos

01:06:07 ◼   ► in a reasonable amount of time like it should. I've had that

01:06:15 ◼   ► happen where I've looked at my photo library and it says it's still scanning

01:06:18 ◼   ► photos and it's been a while now and it's still scanning photos. So I wonder

01:06:24 ◼   ► if there's some things going on there that are going to have to be addressed

01:06:27 ◼   ► in an update, but ideally the way it's supposed to work is you train your

01:06:31 ◼   ► faces. You say this is this person and there's a drag and

01:06:37 ◼   ► drop interface. You can actually select a bunch of the same person and drag them

01:06:40 ◼   ► on to the person you've already identified as that person and merge them

01:06:44 ◼   ► all together and that sort of sweeps it up. They threw away the old face scanning

01:06:48 ◼   ► interface and put in this brand new interface for iOS 11 so it's a different

01:06:52 ◼   ► it's a whole different thing but it's very good at finding faces because I

01:06:59 ◼   ► keep seeing people in my people library that are like pictures of people in

01:07:04 ◼   ► screenshots I took and they're like oh there's a person it's like no that's

01:07:07 ◼   ► just a guy in a screenshot or there's somebody who is on the TV in the

01:07:11 ◼   ► background of this picture I took. Do you know this person? No, I don't know that person.

01:07:15 ◼   ► When machine learning gets too powerful. Yeah, well it is like finding all the faces.

01:07:22 ◼   ► So yeah, you're not supposed to do anything, it's supposed to just work. And if you're

01:07:25 ◼   ► having trouble with it, I don't know what to tell you right now other than maybe try

01:07:30 ◼   ► to give it a kick by assigning some faces. But don't expect a one-to-one correlation

01:07:37 ◼   ► 'cause that's not how it's set up.

01:07:39 ◼   ► It's not going to,

01:07:40 ◼   ► only the faces that you train are the faces

01:07:43 ◼   ► that it knows are that person.

01:07:47 ◼   ► It has to reprocess everything and get,

01:07:50 ◼   ► ideally get using the same code

01:07:52 ◼   ► to the same point on the devices.

01:07:54 ◼   ► It's dumb, this is one of those things where

01:07:56 ◼   ► I think Apple needs to spend more time

01:07:59 ◼   ► dealing with photos, syncing and metadata across devices.

01:08:04 ◼   ► And they've come some distance

01:08:06 ◼   ► in the last year and a half but they need to go way way further down this path.

01:08:10 ◼   ► I feel like we might be saying this forever.

01:08:12 ◼   ► Steve wants to know is there an impact to picture quality if I select a new key

01:08:16 ◼   ► photo from a live photo in iOS 11?

01:08:19 ◼   ► Yeah I need to test this some more I think so I would like to think that iOS 11

01:08:26 ◼   ► is shooting several photos that are stills and wrapping them up in the

01:08:31 ◼   ► heath file, because remember the heath file can contain multiple images

01:08:37 ◼   ► from like a burst, it can contain a video or just a link to the HEVC video. I need

01:08:42 ◼   ► to take this apart.

01:08:44 ◼   ► My assumption is yes, that if you pick a different key photo, because you don't

01:08:49 ◼   ► have to pick the one that was actually selected, you can slide it around in the

01:08:52 ◼   ► live photo and pick a different one.

01:08:54 ◼   ► My guess is yes, but I don't know that 100%. I need to investigate this more. I'm

01:08:58 ◼   ► planning on updating my book and some of this stuff has just gone by the wayside

01:09:01 ◼   ► because I haven't had a chance with all the other stuff that's come out. So that

01:09:05 ◼   ► one's on my list. I'm unclear what's happening because ideally what's

01:09:10 ◼   ► happening in iOS 11 is when you capture a live photo it should be capturing

01:09:14 ◼   ► video and it should be capturing more than one high-quality still and then

01:09:18 ◼   ► ideally you could you could pick from the high-quality stills, choose a new

01:09:22 ◼   ► key photo and it would still be a good photo instead of choosing a lower

01:09:27 ◼   ► resolution video frame at which point you just got a low res video frame

01:09:32 ◼   ► instead of your pretty picture even if it's a better pose it doesn't help if

01:09:36 ◼   ► it's way lower quality yeah so that's what it does for pre ios 11 photos where

01:09:41 ◼   ► you end up with a low quality image yeah but I would like my my hope is that

01:09:46 ◼   ► Apple is taking advantage of their new file formats and maybe more powerful

01:09:51 ◼   ► powerful hardware in later, in the more recent models of iPhone to pack more stuff in a live

01:10:00 ◼   ► photo. But I don't know, I will, I'll investigate and ask Apple and I'll let everybody know

01:10:07 ◼   ► sometime down the road about this.

01:10:09 ◼   ► Logan wants to know, "What pre-order strategy should I use on the 27th for the best chance

01:10:14 ◼   ► of getting an iPhone X? Multiple devices, use the Apple Store app and the website, just

01:10:21 ◼   ► multiple devices, as many devices as you can get, try and use them all at once

01:10:24 ◼   ► that's what I'll be doing I'm gonna be sitting at my desk with my iMac and my

01:10:29 ◼   ► two iPads and my phone and across the swath of devices I will be attempting to

01:10:35 ◼   ► put my pre-order in for an iPhone 10. Yeah if you had to if you had to choose

01:10:43 ◼   ► one it would be an iOS device running the Apple Store app we we have

01:10:49 ◼   ► discovered that lots of people do this because some enormous percentage of

01:10:53 ◼   ► orders come through the Apple Store app for this stuff and people know it works

01:10:57 ◼   ► but it works too because for whatever reason with Apple systems the app

01:11:01 ◼   ► instead of the whatever web app they've got running on the website the the you

01:11:06 ◼   ► know the app iOS app has access to the same back end stuff but is better

01:11:12 ◼   ► connected apparently in some way or more robust in in connecting to it so but

01:11:19 ◼   ► But yeah, if you really want to do it, be sure you're wide awake and have all your devices

01:11:27 ◼   ► accessing places where you can buy these things and just be quick.

01:11:31 ◼   ► John wants to know, on the Apple Watch, is improved series speed with the Series 3 tied

01:11:35 ◼   ► to the LTE or will the GPS only version be faster also?

01:11:41 ◼   ► I believe it's tied to the new processor.

01:11:43 ◼   ► That's what makes it faster.

01:11:44 ◼   ► Yeah, it's the new processor in the Series 3, it's not the LTE.

01:11:48 ◼   ► Because most of the time the Siri stuff isn't going over LTE anyway, it's just processing

01:11:53 ◼   ► on the device and being able to listen and being able to speak, which it can do. So it

01:11:58 ◼   ► shouldn't be related to the cellular at all.

01:12:01 ◼   ► All of the new Siri features including the speaker and like talking back to you, that

01:12:07 ◼   ► is series 3, not necessarily L2, it's just the series 3.

01:12:12 ◼   ► Kyle wants to know, for your various projects, is there always a specific time for uploading

01:12:16 ◼   ► on a day or posting on a certain time, do we worry about that? Only for my calendar.

01:12:25 ◼   ► I just do things on the day that I do them and I post them on the day that I do them.

01:12:29 ◼   ► I don't spend a lot of time fretting over a perfect upload day and time for my projects.

01:12:35 ◼   ► It's kind of just like when it's done, it goes up.

01:12:37 ◼   ► Tim Cynova Yeah, I mean people will sometimes set their

01:12:40 ◼   ► schedules around our release date and it definitely happens when an episode gets released later,

01:12:46 ◼   ► notice which is great right? Although we feel bad in the moment it also means that we have

01:12:50 ◼   ► an audience that actually expects us to deliver and I think that's great because that's what

01:12:54 ◼   ► we should do and we generally do. We've trained them by being consistent and now they've come

01:12:59 ◼   ► to expect it from us and we need to deliver but there's wiggle room in there. It's very

01:13:05 ◼   ► rare that somebody says, "Oh well, you didn't release upgrade at 11 a.m. Pacific or 12 or

01:13:12 ◼   ► or whatever, what's wrong if we do it at four. Maybe some people will, but it's not as big

01:13:17 ◼   ► a number. I do for a lot of my stuff, it's, I know the release schedule even if nobody else does.

01:13:24 ◼   ► I do, I push a lot of stuff out at eight or nine in the morning, my time, because I want it to be

01:13:29 ◼   ► released that day and it's ready to go in advance. And I just set it to then, because then I'm awake

01:13:33 ◼   ► and I can see that it's going up. Or I'll put, I'll either push it live or on the incomparable,

01:13:38 ◼   ► I can schedule it to go live and I watch and see that it happens. So some of it is like

01:13:43 ◼   ► that. So I will use a time like nine o'clock, just Pacific, just to get it out there. But

01:13:49 ◼   ► other times it's when it's done, it goes out or it's just, I need to get out this day.

01:13:53 ◼   ► With the incomparable, even though it usually releases on Saturday mornings, my time, the

01:13:58 ◼   ► only rule I have there is it comes out on the weekend. I mostly do it Saturdays and

01:14:04 ◼   ► every now and then I release on a Sunday and people say, "Is there no episode this weekend?"

01:14:07 ◼   ► which again is nice that they noticed, but I hold myself to releasing it on the weekend,

01:14:12 ◼   ► which is something that goes back to when I had a regular job and that was the time

01:14:16 ◼   ► I had to work on the side project was on the weekend, but I still sort of do it that way

01:14:21 ◼   ► most of the time. So yeah, it's on the web, my understanding, you know, from back in the

01:14:27 ◼   ► day when I worked at IDG, there is a certain time that is peak web traffic in the US and

01:14:33 ◼   ► It tends to be 11 a.m. Pacific to Eastern. That's the high point, the peak. And if you

01:14:39 ◼   ► want to hit a story at the peak, that's when you put it out there. But there are lots of

01:14:43 ◼   ► philosophies about making things available later for evening commuters or making them

01:14:48 ◼   ► available early in the morning for morning commuters, people on trains and buses and

01:14:52 ◼   ► things to read. Podcast is different because it's when is the download happening for people

01:14:57 ◼   ► to listen? Are they getting it on their ride home? Are they getting it on their ride in?

01:15:01 ◼   ► of theories, everybody's different, I think there's no particular best practices, so in

01:15:05 ◼   ► most cases it's like Myke, we've got a general rule, and then you post it when it's ready.

01:15:09 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:15:10 ◼   ► It's like they go out on the day that they tend to go out on, but I don't really fret

01:15:14 ◼   ► about time.

01:15:15 ◼   ► And for me, if I've got them in advance, then I post them basically first thing in the morning

01:15:18 ◼   ► when I'm up and working, just so that, you know, I wait until the day it's released,

01:15:24 ◼   ► but at that point I just want to get on with my day, so I post all of them at 9am and I

01:15:28 ◼   ► move on.

01:15:29 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:15:30 ◼   ► today Brian asked, "The new App Store today view has made me go from basically never checking

01:15:34 ◼   ► the App Store to looking at it daily. Are you doing the same?" I am. I'm finding myself

01:15:39 ◼   ► going to that today view every day. I have looked at the articles. There tends to be

01:15:43 ◼   ► something I'm interested in. I think that the time has shown for me that this new App

01:15:49 ◼   ► Store redesign is really successful and I'm finding a lot of new apps and games because

01:15:54 ◼   ► of it.

01:15:55 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm using it more. I wouldn't say daily, but I'm using it more as something other than a place where I check the updates.

01:16:02 ◼   ► And that's good. I have definitely read articles there and used it to read about things and find things that I'm interested in.

01:16:12 ◼   ► I also really appreciate, and they used to do this, it's just a little more visible now, that when I think to myself,

01:16:17 ◼   ► "Oh, you know, I want to try out some of the apps that use drag-and-drop or that use ARKit,"

01:16:22 ◼   ► that they've got nice collections of those sitting there for me to try.

01:16:26 ◼   ► Yeah, the collections, as you say, maybe have always existed,

01:16:29 ◼   ► but they're way more visible now than they have been in the past,

01:16:31 ◼   ► and they've done more to make those pages look nicer. I really like the overall look

01:16:36 ◼   ► of the App Store pages. We spoke about that a couple of weeks ago. I think this App Store

01:16:40 ◼   ► redesign, at least for users, has turned out to be great. One thing that I have noticed,

01:16:44 ◼   ► I don't check the newer noteworthy anymore really, but I used to do that, but I don't

01:16:49 ◼   ► really look at the games category and the apps category, I tend to just look at what's

01:16:52 ◼   ► on the today view that they have.

01:16:55 ◼   ► Just as a personal anecdote, but I really do like that, I think that the articles are

01:16:59 ◼   ► well done and I like the variation to the stuff that they pick and most of the time

01:17:04 ◼   ► the things that I look at, whether I would want them or not, I can see that they look

01:17:08 ◼   ► to be really good quality applications, so I think it's been really great and I hope

01:17:12 ◼   ► that Apple can keep it up.

01:17:13 ◼   ► All right, that is it for this week's episode. If you want to find our show notes go to relay.fm/upgrades/162.

01:17:22 ◼   ► Thanks again to our sponsors, the great folk over at Freshbooks, Flightlogger and Encapsula.

01:17:27 ◼   ► If you want to find Jason's work go to sixcolors.com and the incomparable.com and like me, Jason

01:17:32 ◼   ► hosts many shows at relay.fm. Go to relay.fm/shows and you can find a list of all of the shows

01:17:37 ◼   ► that we do there. If you only listen to Upgrade and maybe one or two of our podcasts, there's

01:17:41 ◼   ► a ton more I'm sure that you will be able to pick at least one more to add to your list.

01:17:45 ◼   ► We produce lots of great content at Relay FM and I'd like you to check some of it out

01:17:49 ◼   ► if you haven't already. Jason is @jsnell on Twitter, J S N E double L. I am @imike, I

01:17:56 ◼   ► M Y K E. We'll be back next week where we'll be able to high five at this point in the

01:18:00 ◼   ► show. Until then, say goodbye Jason Snell. Until next week Myke Hurley. Keep those spiders

01:18:08 ◼   ► away from me. Please don't bring any. I don't want any in my computers. Please keep the spiders away.

01:18:12 ◼   ► Yeah, the spiders stay here. This is their home.

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01:18:19 ◼   ► [ Music ]