Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:08 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade episode 142. Today's show is brought to you by MailRoute,

00:00:16 ◼   ► PDFPEM9 from SMILE, and Encapsula. My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined by Mr. Jason Snell.

00:00:24 ◼   ► Hi, Jason Snell.

00:00:25 ◼   ► Don't panic. Sorry, it's 142 so I have to do a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference.

00:00:29 ◼   ► Oh, of course you do.

00:00:30 ◼   ► Any 42 increments. So there it is. Don't panic. Always know where your towel is,

00:00:33 ◼   ► Myke. Always know where your towel is.

00:00:35 ◼   ► I would be crazy to know too. Jason, Matthew wants to know for #SnellTalk,

00:00:41 ◼   ► what is your most anticipated movie or TV show for this coming year?

00:00:45 ◼   ► It's funny. I was just watching the first episode of Twin Peaks, which I probably wouldn't have

00:00:54 ◼   ► have said anticipated because I sort of as somebody who was a really into that show when

00:00:59 ◼   ► it was on 25 years ago, I am actually I was concerned about this being really bad but

00:01:06 ◼   ► having watched the first 20 minutes it seems to be exactly the same as what the old show

00:01:10 ◼   ► was which is weird and slow and deliberately frustrating the viewer and I was like, all

00:01:16 ◼   ► right good. It's not it hasn't disappointed me yet. Anyway, it wouldn't count because

00:01:20 ◼   ► I took this to mean in the next year, starting today, starting right now, in the next year,

00:01:25 ◼   ► of the things that I know about, what's the thing that I'm anticipating the most.

00:01:28 ◼   ► At this point, I will refer you to this weekend's episode of The Incomparable that was just

00:01:32 ◼   ► posted which is all about our deconstruction of the trailer for the brand new Star Trek

00:01:37 ◼   ► show, Star Trek Discovery.

00:01:39 ◼   ► So that is my most anticipated thing in the next year.

00:01:41 ◼   ► This fall, there will be a new Star Trek TV show and I am excited about it.

00:01:45 ◼   ► How long has it been since there's been a Star Trek TV show?

00:01:48 ◼   ► I don't know when Enterprise went off the air. A long time though, right? Like this

00:01:52 ◼   ► many, many, many years. More than a decade. 2005 Enterprise went off the air. 2005. So,

00:01:59 ◼   ► yeah, so 12 years, 12 plus years since the last Star Trek TV show. It's the longest gap,

00:02:06 ◼   ► you know, basically since the original gap between Star Trek and Star Trek The Next Generation.

00:02:10 ◼   ► So that was 17 years. 16, 18 years? Something like that. I've never seen Twin Peaks. It's

00:02:15 ◼   ► weird. And I've never really watched Star Trek shows desirably. I just assume you haven't

00:02:21 ◼   ► seen anything. I just go with that as the default. Twin Peaks was a real phenomenon

00:02:28 ◼   ► at the time even when there was no social media or anything like that. It was a rapidly

00:02:33 ◼   ► rising kind of fan culture. I went to a diner in San Diego to watch episodes of that with

00:02:39 ◼   ► people who were fans of the show to watch it as it aired on ABC. I have a coffee mug,

00:02:44 ◼   ► I still have it. I tweeted a picture of it the other day that a friend of mine got when

00:02:48 ◼   ► he visited Snoqualmie, Washington, which is where they shot a lot of the exteriors of

00:02:52 ◼   ► the show. And Twin Peaks Coffee Break mug, still have it. And now 25 years later, it's

00:02:58 ◼   ► back. It's a weird show. It was weird at the time. It was so unlike anything on TV. And

00:03:03 ◼   ► it'll be interesting to see how they did this year or the show this time. But it looks appropriately

00:03:10 ◼   ► weird. So at least they got that going for it.

00:03:12 ◼   ► I really don't want to be that guy and I'm so sorry to ask but 25 years ago how did you even

00:03:17 ◼   ► find out that something like an event like that was going on? Well you know 25 years ago the media

00:03:22 ◼   ► landscape in the United States at least was so flattened that there were three networks, I don't

00:03:30 ◼   ► know if Fox even counted at that point, broadcast television networks and everything they showed

00:03:36 ◼   ► it was easy to be aware of everything that was on but Twin Peaks was a phenomenon it got great

00:03:41 ◼   ► ratings when it premiered and the question of who killed Laura Palmer that drove the

00:03:48 ◼   ► first year and a bit of the show was a real zeitgeist kind of moment for television. So

00:03:57 ◼   ► it was it just it spread it spread word of mouth and people tuned in for the pilot because

00:04:01 ◼   ► they were intrigued by the promotion for it I guess and it just kind of kept going and

00:04:06 ◼   ► then yeah I just heard from somebody that or maybe we even saw in an article in a newspaper

00:04:10 ◼   ► that there were fans gathering at this diner, because a diner is a main set in Twin Peaks,

00:04:17 ◼   ► and they were watching the show and I thought that would be fun and I went with some people

00:04:20 ◼   ► to do that a couple of times. Yeah, it was a--and we had viewing parties at college too

00:04:26 ◼   ► in somebody's apartment. They'll be like, "Come on over, we're all gonna watch this,"

00:04:29 ◼   ► and you get 10, 12 people sitting in a living room watching a show together. It was pretty

00:04:33 ◼   ► wild stuff, but it was definitely of the moment in the early 90s.

00:04:38 ◼   ► If you have a question you would like us to talk about at the start of this show just

00:04:42 ◼   ► send a tweet with the hashtag SnellTalk and we'll include it.

00:04:46 ◼   ► Let's do some follow up. I saw today that there are some new Nike plus bands Jason.

00:04:51 ◼   ► These are all, there's four colours, they're going on sale at the start of June for $49

00:04:56 ◼   ► each. They're all solid colours this time. I think with the include, actually not completely

00:05:02 ◼   ► solid but they're not like massively contrasting colors you know like between the holes and

00:05:09 ◼   ► the band right so like they are they're like a gray a blue a purple and a darker blue and

00:05:16 ◼   ► they're meant to represent day to night so like a day to night schedule they all are

00:05:22 ◼   ► to mirror a color of the sky and the holes you know like the holes in the nike plus bands

00:05:28 ◼   ► the colors that they're filled in with a less like clashing this time so that doesn't stand

00:05:32 ◼   ► out so much. These look really nice and they're going to be limited edition at select Nike

00:05:36 ◼   ► stores, Apple stores and at Apple.com. So go check those out if you're interested.

00:05:43 ◼   ► One of us is very interested in watch bands and the other one of us is not. So great.

00:05:48 ◼   ► I haven't bought any in a while though so these ones, whilst they look nice, I'm not

00:05:54 ◼   ► so interested in sport bands anymore. We're a couple of weeks away from WWDC so not only

00:06:01 ◼   ► are our topics pretty much focused on that over this week and coming weeks and previous

00:06:08 ◼   ► weeks, of course. So is our follow-up. A couple of things I want to let our listeners know

00:06:12 ◼   ► about, Jason. The first off is a second meet-up that Relay FM is going to be putting on. So

00:06:19 ◼   ► we had a meet-up, the tickets sold out incredibly quickly, and we have a really large waiting

00:06:23 ◼   ► list. So we've teamed up with the Women@WWDC organization to host a meet-up at the AppCamp

00:06:30 ◼   ► for girls benefit that they have every year. So this is the City National Civic, it's going

00:06:34 ◼   ► to be on June 7th at 7pm. The tickets, you have to buy tickets for this, but their money

00:06:39 ◼   ► supports a great cause which is AppCamp for Girls. So you'll be able to go to that event

00:06:43 ◼   ► and we're going to have a little section inside of the City National Civic which is going

00:06:48 ◼   ► to be dedicated for a Real AFM meetup. So there's going to be a bunch of hosts there

00:06:51 ◼   ► who will be in attendance, we'll be there so come and say hi and you'll be able to feel

00:06:55 ◼   ► good for supporting a really really great cause. There will be links in the show notes

00:06:59 ◼   ► to for you to go and get yourself a ticket for that so come and say hi and

00:07:04 ◼   ► maybe the most important news of the season next week will be the upgrade

00:07:10 ◼   ► keynote draft for WWDC 2017 so we are frantically now putting together our

00:07:18 ◼   ► list of rumors that we will be able to pick from for our draft there will be

00:07:23 ◼   ► rules next week there were rules we have instituted a series of rules to try and

00:07:28 ◼   ► make the the the the drafts as drafty as they can be.

00:07:32 ◼   ► Well it's that sort of thing of does it does it get mentioned on stage versus is

00:07:36 ◼   ► there a silent press release and we've got all those rules and and they will be

00:07:39 ◼   ► enforced by Stephen Hackett in person in force right because we're all going to

00:07:43 ◼   ► be at WWDC so he will be able to tick off as the keynote is going on you know

00:07:49 ◼   ► yes Jason yes Myke you know and then we can argue about it a little bit but

00:07:53 ◼   ► Stephen will be there to be the ultimate decider.

00:07:56 ◼   ► if we cannot.

00:07:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, basically Steven's role is in if me and Jason

00:07:59 ◼   ► cannot come to an agreement on something,

00:08:02 ◼   ► then we go to Steven as our adjudicator to help us.

00:08:05 ◼   ► - Right, because if we can work it out amongst ourselves,

00:08:08 ◼   ► I think that's fine, we don't need to have him.

00:08:10 ◼   ► The worst thing would be if he came in and made a decision

00:08:12 ◼   ► that we both disagreed with.

00:08:15 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:08:16 ◼   ► - Nobody wants that.

00:08:17 ◼   ► - Nobody wants that, so that's why we have him

00:08:20 ◼   ► as an adjudicator.

00:08:21 ◼   ► But if you have any suggestions of rumors for us to include,

00:08:25 ◼   ► tweet them to me, I'm @imikeyke on Twitter.

00:08:29 ◼   ► I'm going to be collecting those up

00:08:31 ◼   ► and then me and Jason will make our silent choices

00:08:33 ◼   ► of we need to decide how many rounds we're going to have.

00:08:35 ◼   ► We haven't done that yet.

00:08:36 ◼   ► And then we'll be doing our picks next week.

00:08:40 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:08:41 ◼   ► - All right, this week's episode is brought to you

00:08:43 ◼   ► by our friends at Encapsula,

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00:09:18 ◼   ► network will stop any attack traffic, making sure that any denial of service attacks or

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00:09:42 ◼   ► needs. As a listener of this show you can get one whole month of service absolutely

00:09:47 ◼   ► free. All you need to do is go to encapsula.com/upgrade that's I N C A P S U L A dot com slash upgrade.

00:09:54 ◼   ► This is where you can find out more and claim your free month. Thank you so much to Encapsula

00:09:58 ◼   ► for their support of this show and Relay FM.

00:10:03 ◼   ► So last week we were talking about some potential hardware that may be on stage at WWDC right?

00:10:08 ◼   ► we were talking about Siri in a can, and we were talking about the 10.5 inch iPad which

00:10:13 ◼   ► have both been rumoured by Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities.

00:10:17 ◼   ► Well, since the episode is posted, Mark Gurman and Alex Webb at Bloomberg have proposed the

00:10:24 ◼   ► idea that they, from sources who may be familiar with the matter, that Apple will be refreshing

00:10:31 ◼   ► their laptop line at WWDC as well. This would include a new version of the 12" MacBook,

00:10:39 ◼   ► the current MacBook Pros will receive faster Kaby Lake processors, and possibly new processors

00:10:50 ◼   ► in the 13" MacBook Air. The argument they have made is that they are trying to compete

00:11:01 ◼   ► with Microsoft's current offerings.

00:11:04 ◼   ► (blows raspberry)

00:11:05 ◼   ► Now, on this front, Jason, allow me to see if I can,

00:11:10 ◼   ► can try and extract what they're getting at here.

00:11:13 ◼   ► Because obviously, they are not trying to compete

00:11:17 ◼   ► on sales here because I'm pretty sure,

00:11:21 ◼   ► I mean, I don't have numbers, but just historic numbers,

00:11:24 ◼   ► and just anecdotally, what you see out in the world,

00:11:26 ◼   ► Apple will just like walk in the floor,

00:11:30 ◼   ► like walking the floor and cleaning the floor

00:11:32 ◼   ► with Microsoft sales of these products, right?

00:11:34 ◼   ► Like MacBooks and MacBook Pros, you know.

00:11:39 ◼   ► - We don't know what the Surface laptop will sell like though

00:11:41 ◼   ► that is the first real like not weird tablet convertible

00:11:44 ◼   ► thing that they've done in that line.

00:11:46 ◼   ► So I think it's just a timing argument.

00:11:48 ◼   ► The idea that Apple is going to ship presumably systems

00:11:53 ◼   ► in mid June because Microsoft made an announcement in May

00:11:58 ◼   ► is ludicrous because that's not enough time to do that. That strikes me as being a very

00:12:07 ◼   ► narrative, you know, layer of narrative frosting on top of this story, like how do we connect

00:12:13 ◼   ► all these dots and make it seem like it's part of an ongoing narrative? They put in

00:12:17 ◼   ► the Microsoft response thing. I think it might be a response to all the criticism of Apple

00:12:22 ◼   ► not updating its products, especially its laptops, as often as it should, I think that's

00:12:29 ◼   ► reasonable. I think that this may be a reaction to Apple learning that the way it was handling

00:12:33 ◼   ► this was a mistake and they were being rebuked by people in the market. But as the idea that

00:12:39 ◼   ► Apple saw the Surface laptop and went, "Oh no, what do we have? Can we put some new chips

00:12:44 ◼   ► in things?" I'd come on. So, the way I read this or the way that I think about this, the

00:12:52 ◼   ► The only way that I could assume that this is in response to Microsoft at all is just

00:12:57 ◼   ► to change the PR narrative a little bit.

00:12:59 ◼   ► Sure.

00:13:00 ◼   ► Right?

00:13:01 ◼   ► Like, like Apple has received criticism for their laptop offering, Microsoft is receiving

00:13:05 ◼   ► praise.

00:13:06 ◼   ► So like, they may have had this stuff like nearly ready, but didn't want to pollute WWDC

00:13:10 ◼   ► with it.

00:13:11 ◼   ► But now they're like, spend five minutes, put it on a slide and it's there.

00:13:13 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, it's possible.

00:13:15 ◼   ► That's the sort of thing you can do.

00:13:16 ◼   ► But the products have to be there.

00:13:18 ◼   ► The products with the updates have to be there.

00:13:20 ◼   ► And if this is an impetus to ship them at a particular time or announce them at a particular

00:13:24 ◼   ► time, fair enough.

00:13:25 ◼   ► I mean, I definitely, when I wrote my piece the other week about comparing the Surface

00:13:28 ◼   ► laptop to Apple stuff, it was very clear that the strongest argument was they need to be

00:13:33 ◼   ► refreshed, right?

00:13:34 ◼   ► It's not that, oh, Microsoft got you, you can't catch up.

00:13:37 ◼   ► It's like, no, you're out of step.

00:13:39 ◼   ► Microsoft's got one step ahead because they've got the newer processors.

00:13:42 ◼   ► And if you refresh your product line, you could probably, if you're Apple, get back

00:13:46 ◼   ► in line and have it not be an issue anymore.

00:13:49 ◼   ► This is all true. It's just a better story that way. And I think maybe the way to really

00:13:55 ◼   ► say it is everybody kind of caught Apple sleeping and then Microsoft releases products in that

00:14:01 ◼   ► category and everybody says, "See, Apple is sleeping." But it's more, that's not quite

00:14:07 ◼   ► cause and effect there. But I'm intrigued by this story. There are two aspects of it.

00:14:13 ◼   ► There's what Apple is doing here and there's the WWDC question, which is actually feeds

00:14:19 ◼   ► into our more esoteric keynote bingo issue, which is, if Apple did this, how would they

00:14:27 ◼   ► do it? And then separately, like I said, the what of it. What is this that they would be

00:14:33 ◼   ► doing? And they're both interesting questions, I think.

00:14:37 ◼   ► I don't know how I feel about this one, honestly.

00:14:41 ◼   ► Search your feelings, Myke.

00:14:42 ◼   ► I just think that if all it is is processor updates, like that's pretty much all there's

00:14:49 ◼   ► going to be for the Pro line. I don't know if I see them putting it on stage.

00:14:56 ◼   ► The wording of the 12-inch MacBook is "new version," right? So it might be something

00:15:02 ◼   ► more substantive, but if you think about how Apple does most of their presentations, and

00:15:06 ◼   ► the WWDC presentations are a little bit different, but they're all still in the ballpark. There

00:15:10 ◼   ► is usually an update section where they talk about all the product lines before they sort

00:15:14 ◼   ► of dive into the details. They try to give you kind of a status report on other stuff

00:15:19 ◼   ► that's going on at the company. And that can be an area that they want to highlight. It

00:15:23 ◼   ► can be, we're going to talk about accessibility or we're going to talk about health. It could

00:15:26 ◼   ► be we're going to talk about environmental stuff and sustainability. But they also will

00:15:32 ◼   ► say, let me tell you how Apple Watch is doing. Now, because this is WWDC and there are going

00:15:37 ◼   ► to be platform introductions, right? There is a basic level of like macOS, iOS, watchOS,

00:15:42 ◼   ► and I would argue probably the Apple Watch goes into the watchOS section because there's

00:15:46 ◼   ► not a lot there. Those are going to be the big topics of the day, right? Because that's

00:15:50 ◼   ► the OS rollout opportunity. And tvOS, easy to forget, but still important. Sorry, Apple

00:15:57 ◼   ► TV, tvOS as well, right? They're going to talk about the platforms. Totally going to

00:16:01 ◼   ► do that. But they have the opportunity at the beginning to say, "Let me tell you how

00:16:04 ◼   ► our Mac hardware business is doing. And within that, I think it is not unreasonable that

00:16:11 ◼   ► you can slide in a product announcement. Like you could say, "Hey, people love..." Again,

00:16:17 ◼   ► I'm going to do like I did on Six Colors last week when I wrote a fake introduction for

00:16:20 ◼   ► the series speaker, like in dialogue of Tim Cook and Phil Schiller, which was really weird,

00:16:26 ◼   ► but it was kind of fun to do it, fan fiction for Apple. They would say, "People love the

00:16:32 ◼   ► MacBook, it's great. It's the best thing ever. People love it, right? Because that's what

00:16:35 ◼   ► they always do. And they're like, but you know, we thought it could be better. And people

00:16:39 ◼   ► had some complaints and we took them to heart. And, uh, and today we're announcing that there's

00:16:44 ◼   ► a whole new MacBook that's even better because it's got fill in the blank. If they, if they

00:16:49 ◼   ► really have something that's a little bit different, it's got two ports, it's got Thunderbolt

00:16:53 ◼   ► support, whatever, whatever it is that it's got, if they've got something that's substantially

00:16:58 ◼   ► they could say that. And then in passing, they could probably say, "Also, we've heard

00:17:02 ◼   ► the feedback. We know you want the latest and greatest Intel processors, so today the

00:17:06 ◼   ► new MacBook Pros with Touch Bar are shipping with new Kaby Lake processors, and the MacBook

00:17:11 ◼   ► Air, which continues to be an incredibly popular product with a certain set of customers, is

00:17:16 ◼   ► being updated to the latest Intel Core i5 and i7 processors. Yay! Moving on." Right?

00:17:21 ◼   ► I mean, that's all it takes, right? Is that they spend two minutes or three minutes on

00:17:25 ◼   ► the MacBook if it truly is a sort of second generation body model instead of just a speed

00:17:32 ◼   ► bump. And then they just mention it in an aside, because I think you wouldn't just

00:17:37 ◼   ► relegate it to a press release. I think you'd mention it as an aside, because it's an

00:17:40 ◼   ► applause line, right? Developers are going to applause if you say the MacBook Pros that

00:17:43 ◼   ► we shipped last fall have just gotten turned over again with new processor generations.

00:17:48 ◼   ► They know what that means and they care about that. So that's an applause line. You wouldn't

00:17:51 ◼   ► forego applause on stage, right? You want the applause. So I could see that. And then

00:17:56 ◼   ► if the MacBook is just a speed bump of the MacBook, then I still can see that in the

00:18:01 ◼   ► Mac line, you'd say, "Today, we're making all three of these products better with new

00:18:08 ◼   ► processors. Yay. Everybody applaud." And then, you know, and maybe they say, "You know, we're

00:18:12 ◼   ► working on a new Mac Pro too, and that's coming because we love you." Moving on, right? There's

00:18:16 ◼   ► room in there to do that and not make a big deal about it. It's not going to be like 20

00:18:22 ◼   ► minutes about a new MacBook. That's not going to happen. But they could totally take five

00:18:27 ◼   ► minutes to an anxious developer crowd who's probably a little frustrated with the pace

00:18:32 ◼   ► of the change in the tools they use to develop software to get a little applause for saying

00:18:39 ◼   ► we're going to show your product line some more love now.

00:18:44 ◼   ► One other story that could be told with this, the thought around Apple this year has been

00:18:53 ◼   ► like what are they doing?

00:18:56 ◼   ► What is going on?

00:18:58 ◼   ► And WWDC, we said this, I think I said this last week, it's the beginning of the year,

00:19:03 ◼   ► right?

00:19:04 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:19:05 ◼   ► And it is a time where under the right circumstances, they can just blow us away.

00:19:12 ◼   ► And I think of maybe two years ago when Swift was announced.

00:19:15 ◼   ► So it was just so much stuff, right?

00:19:17 ◼   ► Sure.

00:19:18 ◼   ► In that announcement.

00:19:19 ◼   ► And we were like, they could do this and be like, great, here's all this stuff we're doing

00:19:23 ◼   ► on software on all of the platforms.

00:19:26 ◼   ► Here are all these things we're doing on the iPad, fingers crossed.

00:19:29 ◼   ► And like, oh, and by the way, here is this whole new Siri thing that we're doing.

00:19:33 ◼   ► Oh, and also here is a new iPad, a new Siri in a can, refreshing all the MacBook lines.

00:19:40 ◼   ► we're gonna give you a tingty bit more information

00:19:43 ◼   ► about the MacBook Pro.

00:19:44 ◼   ► Oh, and here's some changes we're making

00:19:46 ◼   ► to the way that we deal with developers.

00:19:47 ◼   ► Like, and just totally blow our hair back, right?

00:19:50 ◼   ► And then we continue with the rest of the year that way.

00:19:53 ◼   ► Like, this would be, if, like, I kind of imagine,

00:19:56 ◼   ► like, if they have anything to say about a line,

00:19:59 ◼   ► they'll say it, because it will give them

00:20:02 ◼   ► a real kind of way to change the way

00:20:06 ◼   ► that we're thinking about Apple right now.

00:20:07 ◼   ► - Sure, change the narrative, absolutely.

00:20:09 ◼   ► if they can just come in and be like,

00:20:10 ◼   ► "Oh, but BT dubs, we've done everything on everything."

00:20:15 ◼   ► And then we move on from there.

00:20:16 ◼   ► - Let the year begin.

00:20:18 ◼   ► Let the operating system turnover begin now.

00:20:22 ◼   ► - Could be a way of doing it.

00:20:23 ◼   ► - And I mean, and that's why I say,

00:20:25 ◼   ► the question is not really, how would they do it?

00:20:30 ◼   ► Or would they do it?

00:20:31 ◼   ► The question is, will they do it?

00:20:33 ◼   ► - And if so, why, right?

00:20:35 ◼   ► Like, you know, will they do it?

00:20:36 ◼   ► If so, why would they do it?

00:20:37 ◼   ► I guess that's what we, that's the criminology, right? Is what we like to talk about.

00:20:40 ◼   ► Well, I think what we want to see, what a lot of us want to see, what I want to see,

00:20:45 ◼   ► is I want to see, this rumor makes me think, we could see from Apple a commitment,

00:20:52 ◼   ► maybe even spelled out, but if not, then in actions that the Macs are going to get turned

00:20:57 ◼   ► over faster. Right? I mean, and the only way to really do that, you could say, we're going to do

00:21:02 ◼   ► it more. They sort of said that in the Mac Pro like little sit-down briefing thingy,

00:21:08 ◼   ► right? But you got to show it. So if the next thing they do at WWDC is turn over the laptops

00:21:13 ◼   ► and say all new processors, right? There's still a question like, "And where's the iMac?"

00:21:18 ◼   ► But this is an opportunity for them to show it. Like we have a laptop that we shipped

00:21:23 ◼   ► in October with a processor. A new processor from Intel has come out since then. We're

00:21:30 ◼   ► updating those today, it's not even been a year, with the new processor because we know

00:21:33 ◼   ► you want the latest and greatest, right? They could make that case and that would be interesting.

00:21:38 ◼   ► The question is, will they do that? The rumor is that they will and I think that's great

00:21:42 ◼   ► news if it happens and it'll be interesting to see if they also use it to tell a larger

00:21:47 ◼   ► story or if they just say, very matter-of-factly, like, "We know you want this. Here it is,"

00:21:53 ◼   ► right? Moving on and then go on to the next thing.

00:21:56 ◼   ► I'm most excited about the MacBook because, as I've been talking about, I think since

00:22:00 ◼   ► the MacBook came out, I feel like all along I've been thinking, a second generation of

00:22:06 ◼   ► this where they maybe back off on a little bit of the extremeness of the product or tech

00:22:12 ◼   ► advances enough that they can add some stuff in without backing off on how extreme the

00:22:17 ◼   ► product is, would really excite me.

00:22:20 ◼   ► Like the idea of a MacBook with GASP two ports.

00:22:24 ◼   ► That would be really good.

00:22:25 ◼   ► That'd be really exciting.

00:22:27 ◼   ► - Can they give it its MacBook Air moment?

00:22:29 ◼   ► - Right, right, 'cause that's the question.

00:22:31 ◼   ► And then there's also a question about like the MacBook Air

00:22:34 ◼   ► that we've had, this rumor, I kinda love this rumor.

00:22:36 ◼   ► I was listening to the ATP guys talk about it last week.

00:22:39 ◼   ► The idea that the MacBook Air would get a processor change

00:22:41 ◼   ► 'cause it hasn't really changed in two years.

00:22:43 ◼   ► They're just, they're selling an old model

00:22:45 ◼   ► of an old laptop because people still want it

00:22:47 ◼   ► and they want something under $1,000, right?

00:22:49 ◼   ► And it's a 999, 13-inch MacBook Air.

00:22:52 ◼   ► But I love this move if they did this, I love it.

00:22:55 ◼   ► because yeah, it's a MacBook Air,

00:22:58 ◼   ► it doesn't have a retina screen.

00:22:59 ◼   ► I've got one right here.

00:23:01 ◼   ► There are three in my house.

00:23:02 ◼   ► We have three MacBook Airs in my house

00:23:04 ◼   ► that are used all the time.

00:23:06 ◼   ► Mine, my wife's and my son's.

00:23:08 ◼   ► And we love them.

00:23:11 ◼   ► And it's two years old.

00:23:14 ◼   ► It's like, there's really nothing stopping Apple

00:23:17 ◼   ► from just dropping a new Intel processor in there

00:23:19 ◼   ► and keeping it going and saying, look, it's still $999.

00:23:22 ◼   ► It still doesn't have a retina.

00:23:23 ◼   ► If you want that, we've got other products for you,

00:23:26 ◼   ► but if you want a Mac under $1,000,

00:23:28 ◼   ► it's better than it was.

00:23:29 ◼   ► And kind of accepting that people are still buying it,

00:23:31 ◼   ► so you might as well make it more modern

00:23:34 ◼   ► without having to do all the work of re-engineering it.

00:23:37 ◼   ► They're not gonna build a new, like next generation

00:23:39 ◼   ► MacBook Air with all the guts ripped out, right?

00:23:41 ◼   ► They did that.

00:23:42 ◼   ► It's the MacBook or the MacBook escape.

00:23:46 ◼   ► But it's still on the price line,

00:23:48 ◼   ► doesn't seem to be going away.

00:23:49 ◼   ► They don't seem to be willing to take the MacBook

00:23:51 ◼   ► and do what Microsoft did,

00:23:52 ◼   ► which is do a really spec-stripped version for $9.99 that nobody's gonna really want

00:24:00 ◼   ► and that isn't very good and then try to upsell you. That's what Microsoft's game is, is that

00:24:05 ◼   ► that $9.99 Surface laptop, it has really poor specs, but it's $9.99. Apple seems to not

00:24:13 ◼   ► want to do that. They seem to rather just keep selling the MacBook Air, which keeps

00:24:16 ◼   ► So I love the idea that they would have enough pride in their product to say we shouldn't

00:24:23 ◼   ► be selling a product with that old processor.

00:24:26 ◼   ► It's also possible that that old processor is becoming decreasingly available and they

00:24:30 ◼   ► need to replace it with a new processor just because that's what Intel is making now.

00:24:34 ◼   ► That's also possible.

00:24:35 ◼   ► Talking about pride in product though, there are other things in that MacBook Air that

00:24:41 ◼   ► I don't think that they can be proud of in 2017.

00:24:45 ◼   ► Like just the overall design of it, the screen, like that stuff is really old now.

00:24:50 ◼   ► Like personally, I would just prefer to see the MacBook get good enough and cheap enough

00:24:54 ◼   ► that the Air doesn't need to be around anymore.

00:24:56 ◼   ► I think everybody would prefer that, and this rumor suggests that that's not going to happen

00:25:00 ◼   ► this year.

00:25:01 ◼   ► So this is where we are.

00:25:02 ◼   ► Well unless they were able to keep the current version of the 12 inch and bump that down,

00:25:07 ◼   ► make it cheaper.

00:25:08 ◼   ► I know that it's not necessarily a replacement for the Air, but that computer is so old now.

00:25:16 ◼   ► I know, but this is the thing, as somebody who uses a MacBook Air and has family members

00:25:21 ◼   ► using the MacBook Air, it's still pretty great.

00:25:23 ◼   ► I see why they sell a lot of them.

00:25:25 ◼   ► I see it.

00:25:26 ◼   ► I know that it's not a redness screen, but there are a lot of things, like people like

00:25:29 ◼   ► it, people like that laptop.

00:25:31 ◼   ► And I think if you're Apple, what you're probably doing is analyzing the margins.

00:25:37 ◼   ► And the margins on the MacBook Air have to be great.

00:25:39 ◼   ► And the margins on the MacBook may not be as great and certainly may not be able to

00:25:43 ◼   ► be remotely kept at $999, right?

00:25:47 ◼   ► So they don't do it because they've got to have the margins on their products.

00:25:50 ◼   ► They've got to have profit of a certain percentage on every product they ship.

00:25:54 ◼   ► And so if you do the math and you say, oh, MacBook Air is insanely profitable and people

00:25:59 ◼   ► are still buying them even though these other products exist.

00:26:02 ◼   ► So let's not give them a reason to stop buying it until we're ready to move down with the

00:26:07 ◼   ► MacBook tech or the MacBook escape tech or both. And they'll get there, but it looks

00:26:13 ◼   ► like they're just not there yet. And I think maybe they like the idea that there's a premium

00:26:17 ◼   ► to be paid for a high resolution Mac laptop screen. But I agree with you, if they could

00:26:22 ◼   ► get to $999 in a way that satisfies them with the MacBook, I think that would be a better

00:26:28 ◼   ► thing for them to do. The problem is, if you look at what Microsoft is doing, which is

00:26:33 ◼   ► a good direct analog, Microsoft only got there by stripping the RAM and storage down to what

00:26:40 ◼   ► for Apple appears to be below bare minimum. Because I think it's two gigs and a 128 SSD

00:26:46 ◼   ► in the Surface laptop at $999. It's just not, you know, Apple doesn't do that. They're not

00:26:52 ◼   ► going to have a 2 gig of RAM laptop. It seems, unless they do, unless they decide to do that,

00:27:00 ◼   ► but it seems like that's like, they're not going to go that low. Like if you want the

00:27:03 ◼   ► MacBook, you got to pay, you got to pay up. And at that next level, at the price of the

00:27:06 ◼   ► MacBook, the Surface laptop has the same specs, except it's got a better processor, but it's

00:27:11 ◼   ► got the same RAM and storage. So I don't know. I'm okay with it, accepting the fact that

00:27:17 ◼   ► if they're going to keep selling the MacBook Air, having it be a little bit, you know,

00:27:21 ◼   ► a modern version of the processor that lives in it is better than having it be an ancient

00:27:28 ◼   ► computer that they're still selling. I agree the best thing to do is get another laptop

00:27:32 ◼   ► under $1,000 but it appears that they don't want to do that because of the margins.

00:27:39 ◼   ► Last week we had Google I/O and you know so Google showed up what they're going to be

00:27:44 ◼   ► doing over the coming year I guess and there were a few themes. Google was continuing their

00:27:50 ◼   ► theme of machine learning in every product that they have and that every product physical

00:27:55 ◼   ► and software that they produce has some kind of machine learning sprinkled into it. I feel

00:28:00 ◼   ► like this is a meme right now in Silicon Valley, right, machine learning, but Google is the

00:28:07 ◼   ► company that can convincingly show what they're doing with it. I think of everyone, they are

00:28:13 ◼   ► the company that when they say we're going to add some machine learning to this, I'm

00:28:17 ◼   ► "Yeah, do you know what? You probably are." And I believe that it's going to work, right?

00:28:22 ◼   ► Because I think this machine learning trend has been started by Google, right? They started

00:28:26 ◼   ► it a few years ago. And of maybe any company in the world, they are the ones that have

00:28:32 ◼   ► the machines that can learn more than anybody else, right? Because there's just this sheer

00:28:36 ◼   ► amount of data that they are able to pull in and gladly mine, right? As opposed to anybody

00:28:43 ◼   ► So they have it and their products continue to show it.

00:28:47 ◼   ► So you are a man who is synonymous with photos

00:28:51 ◼   ► because of the books that you've written on iCloud.

00:28:54 ◼   ► Google showed off a selection of features

00:28:56 ◼   ► coming to Google Photos.

00:28:57 ◼   ► And I wondered how-- if you could maybe sum up some

00:29:00 ◼   ► of the ones that you think are most interesting

00:29:02 ◼   ► and compare what you think considering to what Apple's

00:29:04 ◼   ► currently offering.

00:29:06 ◼   ► Yeah, there's a couple things.

00:29:07 ◼   ► One of the interesting things, by the way,

00:29:09 ◼   ► about machine learning is that Google--

00:29:11 ◼   ► there's an article that I read that I

00:29:12 ◼   ► I think it's in Fast Company that's by Harry McCracken about how Google is doing a lot

00:29:17 ◼   ► of their in Android O, which is kind of boring, we can talk, there are a couple interesting

00:29:21 ◼   ► things, but they're doing some machine learning stuff that is running on the phone. They have

00:29:28 ◼   ► a version, a light version of their TensorFlow, which is their machine learning system that

00:29:35 ◼   ► runs on phones. And that's because in a lot of contexts, you don't want to wait for data

00:29:41 ◼   ► to pass up on the internet and be processed and passed back to your device, you want it

00:29:45 ◼   ► instantly. And I think that's really funny because that means that Google is going to

00:29:49 ◼   ► where Apple is for certain things because Apple has to be on the device because of their

00:29:54 ◼   ► philosophy of not processing your data on the server. But Google sees value in that

00:30:00 ◼   ► too. So it's kind of interesting that they're both doing some...

00:30:03 ◼   ► So it makes them both, right? Like I think that's the key.

00:30:04 ◼   ► They're both doing machine learning on the server or on the client. It's just on the

00:30:08 ◼   ► server that Google has the advantage. And it's not, you know, it's not like Apple can't

00:30:13 ◼   ► buy access to data streams to do machine learning. It's just that Google has these massive streams.

00:30:21 ◼   ► But it's definitely an arms race in machine learning because, bottom line, we talk about

00:30:25 ◼   ► this and this buzzword and for people out there who don't know or care, the idea here

00:30:31 ◼   ► is that you can have the way, it's sort of how it does it, how it does the magic. So

00:30:37 ◼   ► when we talk about photos, Google Photos has this ability to identify the

00:30:42 ◼   ► contents of pictures and it does that not because there's a somebody wrote a

00:30:45 ◼   ► program to identify what a cat looks like and it's not because there's people

00:30:51 ◼   ► looking at your photos and saying there's a cat, it's because Google has

00:30:56 ◼   ► trained this algorithm with a bunch of photos of cats and said these photos

00:31:00 ◼   ► have in common that these are cats and these these photos do not have cats and

00:31:05 ◼   ► machine learning allows them to have these huge data sets dumped into the

00:31:09 ◼   ► software and then the software learns based on you telling it these are yes

00:31:14 ◼   ► these are no over time the software learns how to differentiate between them

00:31:19 ◼   ► instead of having a human being program the differentiation they the human just

00:31:24 ◼   ► programs the the data set and the conditions and the the software sort of

00:31:32 ◼   ► writes itself, which is incredibly powerful because this is stuff that would be very hard

00:31:36 ◼   ► for a human to quantify, but if you dump a billion photos into an algorithm, it's a lot

00:31:42 ◼   ► more efficient. So that's when we're talking about machine learning. It's a lot of stuff

00:31:46 ◼   ► like that, of being able to take a bunch of data and make sense of it in a way that our

00:31:51 ◼   ► brains probably also process data, right? But that is very different than a programmer

00:31:56 ◼   ► sitting down and saying, "I'm going to try to write an algorithm that reads your email

00:31:59 ◼   ► and determines whether it's happy or sad.

00:32:02 ◼   ► Like that's not an efficient way to do that.

00:32:05 ◼   ► So that's the background here.

00:32:07 ◼   ► For photos, you know, Google Photos has been able

00:32:10 ◼   ► to do a better job, I think in general than Apple's photos

00:32:13 ◼   ► that they introduced with iOS 10 and Mac OS Sierra

00:32:18 ◼   ► of identifying objects in photos.

00:32:20 ◼   ► Like Google Photos has lots of things you can say,

00:32:22 ◼   ► mountains and valleys and cows and things like that.

00:32:25 ◼   ► And it can do that.

00:32:27 ◼   ► It can do multiple items in a photo

00:32:28 ◼   ► and it scanned, based on the machine learning,

00:32:32 ◼   ► it scanned your photo library

00:32:33 ◼   ► and it can pull out all the photos or a particular person.

00:32:35 ◼   ► And Apple's Photos does some of that.

00:32:38 ◼   ► It's a first release.

00:32:39 ◼   ► And because of the way Apple does things,

00:32:41 ◼   ► they don't have a backend server to keep tweaking.

00:32:44 ◼   ► So Photos just sits there.

00:32:46 ◼   ► And I assume we will see a progression of that announced

00:32:50 ◼   ► at WWDC, the second take that Apple has done

00:32:53 ◼   ► with their own machine learning on their photo library stuff.

00:32:56 ◼   ► So Google's done that.

00:32:57 ◼   ► Google's also added a feature that is the one that I think made me sit up and take notice,

00:33:01 ◼   ► which is family sharing, where they're going to launch this thing with one other--you can

00:33:06 ◼   ► share your photo library with one other person, and you can either choose that to be a very

00:33:10 ◼   ► simple "I'm going to share this library with one other person."

00:33:15 ◼   ► That's pretty cool because I've written about that a little bit.

00:33:19 ◼   ► When we take trips, after a trip is over, I have to take my wife's iPhone and plug it

00:33:24 ◼   ► into my Mac and import her photos because there's no way for us to say, "Look, we just

00:33:30 ◼   ► want our photo library to be shared," right? Which for us is fine. That's all we really

00:33:36 ◼   ► want. An iCloud photo library, family sharing, all that just doesn't do it. There is—I

00:33:42 ◼   ► commented on this on Twitter and I got a bunch of "well actually"s from people saying, "Well,

00:33:47 ◼   ► actually there's a family shared library in iCloud photo sharing." It's true, but you

00:33:52 ◼   ► You have to manually place your photos in there. They don't go in there as you take

00:33:56 ◼   ► them like your like iCloud photo library works. And I believe it's built on the same kind

00:34:02 ◼   ► of older sharing infrastructure as photo stream. But regardless, I will tell you, even if you

00:34:09 ◼   ► use that approach, all your photos get scaled down to three megapixels, which is not apparently

00:34:14 ◼   ► widely known because that's the sharing. If you airdrop something, it's full size. But

00:34:19 ◼   ► if you go to Facebook or if you do iCloud photo sharing,

00:34:22 ◼   ► it scales the photo down.

00:34:24 ◼   ► So it's not ideal.

00:34:25 ◼   ► And for me, it's like, if it's not automatic, it's not ideal.

00:34:28 ◼   ► Like I don't wanna have to remind my wife

00:34:31 ◼   ► to share her pictures from our trip to Seattle

00:34:34 ◼   ► in order to get those photos.

00:34:37 ◼   ► And she shouldn't have to text me and say,

00:34:39 ◼   ► I need that picture that you took of the kids

00:34:41 ◼   ► so that I can send, right?

00:34:43 ◼   ► I mean, we should be able to opt in and say,

00:34:45 ◼   ► no, we just want one library.

00:34:47 ◼   ► So Google's gonna let you do that.

00:34:48 ◼   ► But Google also has this other sharing feature that uses the machine learning stuff, and

00:34:52 ◼   ► that is to be able to say, "Photos of a certain kind, photos in a certain place, photos of

00:34:56 ◼   ► certain people, I want you to automatically share them."

00:35:00 ◼   ► And it will even suggest sharing them.

00:35:02 ◼   ► So if you don't want to share all your photos with a loved one, you could share all your

00:35:05 ◼   ► photos of your family with a loved one, and that will work.

00:35:09 ◼   ► And it will remind you and suggest, "Oh, here's a photo you took that Bob is in.

00:35:12 ◼   ► Would you like me to share that with Bob?"

00:35:14 ◼   ► And you can say yes, and then Bob will get the pictures of Bob or Bob's kids or what

00:35:18 ◼   ► whatever. And that is really interesting because what Google is saying is our machine learning

00:35:24 ◼   ► can now power, it knows about the content in photos to the point where it can suggest

00:35:29 ◼   ► other people who want to see those photos. Which if you've ever been to a party or something

00:35:33 ◼   ► and there's a bunch of people taking pictures.

00:35:34 ◼   ► That's really cool, right?

00:35:36 ◼   ► Right? And we just did this because we went to a party for one of Lauren's cousins' daughter

00:35:43 ◼   ► of Bat Mitzvah, so big party. All the families there, and this was in Seattle, and everybody's

00:35:49 ◼   ► taking pictures. And the vision I think that Google has is, "You were at a place with

00:35:56 ◼   ► all of these family members. Would you like me to share your photos from there with them?"

00:36:03 ◼   ► And that's a little proactive. It's not like you can't do a version of that today,

00:36:08 ◼   ► but that's a little bit more proactive, because otherwise you're going to, maybe you forget.

00:36:13 ◼   ► It's just time passes on. It's a week later.

00:36:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, my favorite part of that was that

00:36:17 ◼   ► once you share those photos with people,

00:36:20 ◼   ► Google Photos will suggest,

00:36:21 ◼   ► "Hey, we think these photos were of that event.

00:36:23 ◼   ► Do you want to share these with everybody as well?"

00:36:25 ◼   ► Which I thought was awesome.

00:36:26 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:36:27 ◼   ► - So like it's doing the recognition of time and location

00:36:31 ◼   ► and probably of people's faces and some image stuff

00:36:33 ◼   ► to be like, "We think these were from that event.

00:36:36 ◼   ► Why don't you share all of those?"

00:36:37 ◼   ► And then you create this like one big shared album.

00:36:40 ◼   ► And it's probably doing some duplicate stuff

00:36:42 ◼   ► to make sure they're not the same image.

00:36:43 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that that sort of stuff is really cool.

00:36:47 ◼   ► And I mean, I've really,

00:36:49 ◼   ► looking at the landscape right now,

00:36:50 ◼   ► it feels like Google is really the only one

00:36:52 ◼   ► in the place to do a lot of this stuff really reliably

00:36:55 ◼   ► because of just this huge data set that they're building up,

00:36:58 ◼   ► which is bigger than anybody else's,

00:37:00 ◼   ► especially based on real photos of real people

00:37:04 ◼   ► and you and your family and all your friends.

00:37:07 ◼   ► It's building up all this information.

00:37:09 ◼   ► It's not that Apple can't do it,

00:37:13 ◼   ► it's just that it's harder.

00:37:15 ◼   ► But Apple could do this stuff.

00:37:16 ◼   ► And this is great stuff because this is computers

00:37:21 ◼   ► getting, doing stuff that we're not gonna do

00:37:26 ◼   ► because it's too complex or we're gonna forget about it.

00:37:29 ◼   ► It's like this is, computers making our lives easier.

00:37:31 ◼   ► Technology saying we can see the patterns

00:37:35 ◼   ► in what you're doing and take that logical next step

00:37:38 ◼   ► and make it so that all you have to do is agree.

00:37:41 ◼   ► Like, that's great.

00:37:42 ◼   ► That is better than saying, well, what I'm going to do

00:37:44 ◼   ► is I'm going to make a shared album,

00:37:45 ◼   ► and I need to look up every-- oh, I don't have this person's--

00:37:48 ◼   ► I don't have Lauren's other cousin's email address,

00:37:51 ◼   ► because I haven't seen him since the wedding.

00:37:53 ◼   ► And so I got to look that up.

00:37:55 ◼   ► And so I'm going to share it with a few of those people.

00:37:57 ◼   ► Now I'll create it.

00:37:58 ◼   ► OK, now I'm going to add some things in.

00:37:59 ◼   ► And people on iPhones can add their own,

00:38:01 ◼   ► but the people who aren't on iPhones can't.

00:38:03 ◼   ► There's a lot.

00:38:04 ◼   ► Or I'm going to upload that to a service,

00:38:06 ◼   ► or I'm going to put it on Facebook,

00:38:07 ◼   ► but this person's not on Facebook, right?

00:38:09 ◼   ► Like to have the ability for a piece of software essentially

00:38:14 ◼   ► to say, hey, you got a family get together,

00:38:17 ◼   ► should I make a shared thing and share it with everybody

00:38:19 ◼   ► and say, yep, that's a great promise.

00:38:22 ◼   ► - And like here's the difference of Google, right?

00:38:24 ◼   ► You can do that on Android,

00:38:25 ◼   ► you could do that on iPhone with the iPhone app

00:38:27 ◼   ► and they said that like you can just text it to someone

00:38:30 ◼   ► and they could just download them from a webpage.

00:38:32 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:38:33 ◼   ► - So like anywhere, no matter what they're using,

00:38:36 ◼   ► don't even need to be Google Photos users, you can email them or text them and they can

00:38:39 ◼   ► just download the images, right? Like, I just don't see Apple doing that, right? Like, even

00:38:45 ◼   ► if they were able to pull all this tech together, I don't see it existing on Android. So like,

00:38:51 ◼   ► you're either in this system or you're not.

00:38:52 ◼   ► Well, I mean, they probably would generate a web link to an iCloud page.

00:38:56 ◼   ► Oh yeah, that's true. But I can't imagine an Android app, though.

00:39:01 ◼   ► So my point here is this has been announced by Google, it's not out yet.

00:39:08 ◼   ► Apple's going to have their developer conference.

00:39:10 ◼   ► Presumably one of their iOS 11 features will be photos related, whether they spend a lot

00:39:14 ◼   ► of time with it or not.

00:39:16 ◼   ► It was a huge iOS 10 update.

00:39:19 ◼   ► Presumably there will be an iOS 11 update with photos that will add a bunch of things

00:39:22 ◼   ► to photos.

00:39:23 ◼   ► And that's the question is like, how will the machine learning advance?

00:39:26 ◼   ► Will they add features to be more proactive about suggesting ways that you could share?

00:39:30 ◼   ► Will there be better sharing features?

00:39:32 ◼   ► Will there be better ways to take advantage of the iTunes family accounts, which came

00:39:37 ◼   ► out six months before iCloud Photo Library and yet have no connection to them?

00:39:42 ◼   ► That's the one that really bugs me, is that I want to be able to say, I want to share

00:39:48 ◼   ► my iCloud storage space and photo library with my wife and just be done with it, right?

00:39:53 ◼   ► But nope, can't do it yet.

00:39:55 ◼   ► Maybe this time, maybe not.

00:39:56 ◼   ► I did talk to them, I think a photo product marketing manager a couple years ago.

00:40:02 ◼   ► This sort of thing about the sharing is actually part of their concern, I think, about why

00:40:08 ◼   ► it hasn't happened.

00:40:10 ◼   ► Do you really want to share every single photo you take with another person?

00:40:16 ◼   ► And I heard from people last week who were like, "No, I don't want to do that.

00:40:19 ◼   ► Why would anyone want to do that?"

00:40:21 ◼   ► My response would be, "Well, I want to do it, and I don't think it's unusual for a husband

00:40:24 ◼   ► and a wife to want to share their photo library so all their family photos stay together instead

00:40:29 ◼   ► of being in two separate places.

00:40:30 ◼   ► But I like that Google even answered that question themselves by being like, "You can

00:40:34 ◼   ► also take it of just certain collections of people. They're the only photos that we share."

00:40:40 ◼   ► Exactly right. So those are options, and I think that's a nice way to do it. And maybe

00:40:43 ◼   ► that was sort of some of the stuff that Apple's been thinking of as well. Although I will

00:40:47 ◼   ► say again, I think even a bare library share would work for a whole lot of people. And

00:40:53 ◼   ► I actually was quite disappointed with the response I got on Twitter from people because

00:40:57 ◼   ► the attitude seemed very much to be like, "Well, I don't want it, so nobody should have

00:41:01 ◼   ► it." It's like, "No, wrong. Wrong. This is a convenient feature. I can see the convenience

00:41:06 ◼   ► in it personally, and I know lots of other people would use that feature." Just because

00:41:10 ◼   ► you don't want it, it's a super important feature for families and especially for parents

00:41:16 ◼   ► of kids to share their photos of the kids so that they don't end up in separate iCloud

00:41:22 ◼   ► libraries that's really dumb and you can't share them you can't share full quality photos

00:41:27 ◼   ► the answer of like oh this might get some people in trouble like it's so silly yeah

00:41:32 ◼   ► oh that was really good it's like we shouldn't do this feature because it might get some

00:41:36 ◼   ► husband who's cheating on his wife in trouble it's like yeah well we have find my iphone

00:41:40 ◼   ► that ship has already sailed and i don't want to have no access to half the photos of all

00:41:47 ◼   ► my family until I plug my wife's phone into my Mac because of some fear that some dumb

00:41:54 ◼   ► person who's having an affair and taking pictures of his girlfriend and sharing that library

00:41:59 ◼   ► with his wife. I mean, come on. That's just such a bogus argument. So, but I appreciate

00:42:03 ◼   ► Google's granularity here because that suggests something that I think was on the mind of

00:42:09 ◼   ► the Apple people that I spoke to about sharing, family sharing on Apple's side is, can it

00:42:15 ◼   ► be a little more granular if it's just like I would be I would love to be able

00:42:20 ◼   ► to say my wife doesn't need to see all those screenshots I take for for stories

00:42:24 ◼   ► I write because she does not want to see them and I don't want to flood her

00:42:28 ◼   ► camera roll with them fair right sure that would be nice some granularity

00:42:32 ◼   ► would be great but in the end the fact that you cannot automatically share any

00:42:37 ◼   ► version of a the full quality photo that you've taken with someone else who's in

00:42:43 ◼   ► your family in your iTunes account family without air dropping it or doing

00:42:50 ◼   ► an import over a wire is that's dumb that's really dumb so maybe they'll

00:42:58 ◼   ► overhaul that stuff and like I said I think the sharing stuff is all legacy

00:43:01 ◼   ► stuff from before iCloud photo library I think it's all based on the older like

00:43:04 ◼   ► photo stream kind of technology which explains why it's it you know why it

00:43:09 ◼   ► might be harder to update the sharing stuff because they've got an existing

00:43:12 ◼   ► sharing infrastructure and if they do something new they're probably gonna

00:43:15 ◼   ► want to base it on iCloud photo library which is a different thing so there's

00:43:19 ◼   ► there's I get it this is not necessarily technically easy but I would also point

00:43:23 ◼   ► out that it's been now two years since iCloud photo library and two and a half

00:43:27 ◼   ► years since the iTunes family accounts came out so I hope to see more from

00:43:32 ◼   ► Apple on that end and they don't need to answer Google across but everything but

00:43:37 ◼   ► they definitely need to keep stepping up their game because this is an area that

00:43:40 ◼   ► that is important. And right now the only thing, I'd say the number one thing that prevents

00:43:44 ◼   ► people from switching from Apple's photo stuff to Google's photo stuff on iOS is that Apple,

00:43:51 ◼   ► as the system provider, as the platform owner, allows photosyncing to happen at any time

00:43:57 ◼   ► in the background when you're on Wi-Fi. And Google can't do that because it's a third-party

00:44:02 ◼   ► app. And although it'll sync in the background for a while, eventually, inevitably, it will

00:44:06 ◼   ► be quit by the system because it's been running in the background for a long time transferring

00:44:11 ◼   ► data, at which point none of your photos sync until you remember to launch Google Photos

00:44:16 ◼   ► again on your iPhone. And until Apple, if Apple would ever do that, levels the playing

00:44:22 ◼   ► field and allows certain kinds of apps to sync their data in the background sort of

00:44:30 ◼   ► eternally when plugged in and on Wi-Fi, like Google Photos, Apple will have a huge advantage

00:44:36 ◼   ► like that's a huge advantage that I will,

00:44:40 ◼   ► we will miss photo syncs and I'll have to tell my wife

00:44:44 ◼   ► to launch Google Photos.

00:44:45 ◼   ► Remember to launch Google Photos

00:44:47 ◼   ► just so that we can sync our photos, that's dumb.

00:44:49 ◼   ► And iCloud, that's a huge advantage

00:44:51 ◼   ► that iCloud Photo Library has on iOS right now.

00:44:53 ◼   ► And that's an artificial barrier where Apple,

00:44:57 ◼   ► it allows Apple to escape with a lower quality product

00:45:01 ◼   ► because they've erected a barrier

00:45:04 ◼   ► that they don't have to jump over. And that's not how Apple should be winning these battles.

00:45:09 ◼   ► They should be winning these battles on their own merit and not because they give themselves

00:45:14 ◼   ► permission to do things no one else does.

00:45:16 ◼   ► The Assistant battle is continuing to heat up. There are a bunch of enhancements to Google

00:45:21 ◼   ► Assistant. One of the key ones, two, I think it's two key ones. It's on iPhone now, although

00:45:27 ◼   ► in the US only, but there is an iPhone app and Google have found some interesting ways

00:45:31 ◼   ► is to, like, we have a widget, right,

00:45:33 ◼   ► to make it very accessible, which is very smart.

00:45:36 ◼   ► Yeah, US only right now, boo.

00:45:39 ◼   ► And they've also allowed it so you can talk in text

00:45:43 ◼   ► to the Google Assistant now in the Google Assistant app

00:45:46 ◼   ► or from other parts in Android,

00:45:48 ◼   ► which will be coming, I think, in Android O,

00:45:49 ◼   ► but you can do it right now in the iPhone app,

00:45:52 ◼   ► which is great, it's great to have that option available.

00:45:54 ◼   ► This is something I think many people

00:45:57 ◼   ► have wanted Siri to do for a long time,

00:45:59 ◼   ► and when Google Assistant came out,

00:46:00 ◼   ► You could talk to it in Duo, but I think Duo has not done what Google wanted, so they now

00:46:05 ◼   ► enabled it in the Assistant app as well.

00:46:08 ◼   ► You had a great post that you mentioned earlier on, imagining the introduction of a Siri speaker

00:46:12 ◼   ► where you take on the role of Tim and Phil in like a Johnny Ive video and you write out

00:46:18 ◼   ► how you imagine it going in an ideal world.

00:46:21 ◼   ► You showed your "Down with the Kids" in knowing a Lourdes song that I've never heard

00:46:26 ◼   ► of, but you mentioned it, so I assume that you're down with the kids there.

00:46:29 ◼   ► - Wasn't it just Lorde?

00:46:31 ◼   ► Lorde?

00:46:32 ◼   ► - I see, again, so--

00:46:33 ◼   ► - Like Sade?

00:46:34 ◼   ► - You are proving that you are more down

00:46:36 ◼   ► with the kids than me because I have always read

00:46:38 ◼   ► that in my head as Lorde.

00:46:40 ◼   ► - I was thinking that it would be,

00:46:42 ◼   ► you know, this is like when we did our draft predictions

00:46:44 ◼   ► not for the last event where I was trying

00:46:47 ◼   ► to predict a musical act.

00:46:48 ◼   ► And it's like, there's a game plan there.

00:46:50 ◼   ► I don't know if Green Light's the right song or not,

00:46:52 ◼   ► but I thought that that was placeholder.

00:46:55 ◼   ► I was like, yeah, some song that's popular now

00:46:58 ◼   ► that's gonna make Apple look cool like Green Light by Lorde

00:47:00 ◼   ► and then I thought about changing,

00:47:04 ◼   ► using your voice to change the lights in the room

00:47:07 ◼   ► to turn green and I thought,

00:47:08 ◼   ► oh well, that's a perfect song then.

00:47:11 ◼   ► So anyway, yeah.

00:47:12 ◼   ► So I did a fake Apple event is what I'm saying.

00:47:14 ◼   ► And I don't, I mean, they're the experts at it.

00:47:17 ◼   ► I've just, I've seen so many Apple events

00:47:18 ◼   ► that I can try to, what I said was,

00:47:20 ◼   ► this is the best my Apple event emulator could do.

00:47:23 ◼   ► I'm just one person.

00:47:24 ◼   ► - It was pretty good though.

00:47:25 ◼   ► I can tell you've been to a lot of these things.

00:47:27 ◼   ► So yeah, there's more in the assistant world.

00:47:29 ◼   ► - I can hear the voices there.

00:47:31 ◼   ► Yeah, so it's that is a, right?

00:47:34 ◼   ► So Cortana is built into a Harman Kardon speaker.

00:47:37 ◼   ► You've got the Google Home assistant is getting built up.

00:47:41 ◼   ► The Amazon keeps releasing echoes.

00:47:44 ◼   ► And Apple is rumored to have this Siri speaker,

00:47:48 ◼   ► which I called Apple Home only because even though

00:47:51 ◼   ► there's a Google Home, it's like,

00:47:52 ◼   ► that's probably the right name for it.

00:47:54 ◼   ► I kept thinking of other things to call it,

00:47:57 ◼   ► but none of them were quite as good.

00:47:58 ◼   ► - They've had an app called Home for a while, right?

00:48:01 ◼   ► Like it's in Apple's branding machine already.

00:48:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, and in my,

00:48:05 ◼   ► one of the reasons that I did this is it made me think,

00:48:08 ◼   ► it made me think what, how does Apple describe this?

00:48:12 ◼   ► How does Apple sell this product?

00:48:14 ◼   ► What features does Apple highlight?

00:48:17 ◼   ► And HomeKit has to be one of them, right?

00:48:21 ◼   ► Like my thought is that that's one of the ways

00:48:23 ◼   ► Apple sells this as a differentiator is,

00:48:26 ◼   ► It's a HomeKit hub, so you don't need an Apple TV or an iPad or something.

00:48:29 ◼   ► You plug this in, you can control your home.

00:48:31 ◼   ► HomeKit is great, blah, blah, blah, right?

00:48:33 ◼   ► All the things that they're going to say about how much they love their own

00:48:35 ◼   ► technology, because it's an Apple event.

00:48:36 ◼   ► They're going to pump up their own stuff, fair.

00:48:39 ◼   ► And then you throw in, yeah, it's all the power of Siri, and it'll talk to you.

00:48:44 ◼   ► And maybe if it's got a screen and a camera,

00:48:45 ◼   ► maybe it'll do something like FaceTime.

00:48:47 ◼   ► Maybe it won't.

00:48:47 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:48:48 ◼   ► But I think HomeKit has to be part of the story,

00:48:52 ◼   ► because that's how these products get used, is they're in your home.

00:48:56 ◼   ► So having it just lean into that and lean into HomeKit

00:49:00 ◼   ► seemed to be like a logical way

00:49:01 ◼   ► for them to tie it all together.

00:49:03 ◼   ► So that's my, people can read the story,

00:49:06 ◼   ► imagine it in Phil and Tim's voices.

00:49:08 ◼   ► And I invented a product video that involves the Apple Home

00:49:12 ◼   ► in a kind of home setting with kids and parents

00:49:15 ◼   ► and playing music and being notified that you need to leave

00:49:20 ◼   ► for your next event and stuff like that.

00:49:22 ◼   ► And I even threw in a feature that would be really cool

00:49:25 ◼   ► that Apple wasn't promising when they launched the product

00:49:28 ◼   ► because they do that sometimes now too,

00:49:31 ◼   ► which was that later this year,

00:49:33 ◼   ► it will recognize your voice.

00:49:37 ◼   ► And so if you ask it a question about a calendar,

00:49:40 ◼   ► it will recognize that it's you.

00:49:42 ◼   ► And if your child asks about their calendar,

00:49:46 ◼   ► they will be told about their calendar instead.

00:49:49 ◼   ► And in my imaginary thing, that isn't ready yet.

00:49:54 ◼   ► And so they're like, that's the thing that ships in December,

00:49:57 ◼   ► on December 30th.

00:49:58 ◼   ► And then the other thing that I did

00:50:01 ◼   ► that was kind of a funny moment was that I,

00:50:03 ◼   ► I guessed what I would want to pay for the product

00:50:06 ◼   ► and then I raised the price.

00:50:07 ◼   ► Because the new Apple products always cost more

00:50:09 ◼   ► than what you want to pay.

00:50:11 ◼   ► So I guessed 299 and then I said it's 349.

00:50:14 ◼   ► So that's-- - Yeah, the Google Home

00:50:15 ◼   ► just started doing that voice recognition thing

00:50:18 ◼   ► a couple of weeks ago.

00:50:19 ◼   ► And that seems like a feature that would be really great

00:50:23 ◼   ► have in my echo. Yeah the fact that Google is now doing that I think everybody needs

00:50:29 ◼   ► to get there. I'm sure everybody's been working on it right because this is an issue with

00:50:33 ◼   ► all of these products like the echo should be able to know that when the little girl

00:50:37 ◼   ► wants to order the doll houses that she doesn't get to. That she needs parental approval for

00:50:44 ◼   ► that. A code or something. And multiple I mean again coming so many of these services

00:50:50 ◼   ► were built on the idea that everybody's got their own account and they're siloed.

00:50:54 ◼   ► And the problem with that is that people's lives aren't siloed. A lot of our lives

00:50:59 ◼   ► are messy because we live with other human beings, right? It's not—a lot of these

00:51:04 ◼   ► things are envisioned as like, you've got your computer, so you log in with your account,

00:51:07 ◼   ► and you have another computer, and you log in, which is great, until suddenly you've

00:51:11 ◼   ► got a voice box in the middle of your house that everybody can use, and it cannot be one-to-one,

00:51:16 ◼   ► right? And so they are trying to find ways to back out of that one-to-one thing, whether

00:51:22 ◼   ► it's like a family account thing or it's the ability to log in multiple people and detect

00:51:27 ◼   ► them by voice in the case of a voice assistant. It's hard stuff, but surely Amazon is working

00:51:32 ◼   ► on it, Google has announced it, and so I kind of envisioned, and that's a little bit wish-casting

00:51:37 ◼   ► on my part, but I tried to envision that Apple would have that be a feature that they could

00:51:42 ◼   ► tout for a product like theirs because especially if it's tied into the family sharing that

00:51:47 ◼   ► kind of makes sense. The ability to differentiate so that if, yeah, and also the way I had them

00:51:53 ◼   ► phrase calendars and reminders, they say you can check your calendar, you can check your

00:51:57 ◼   ► reminders. In the back of my head I'm thinking it's really only going to work with iCloud

00:52:01 ◼   ► calendars and reminders but they're not going to mention that part. Let people who use Google

00:52:06 ◼   ► Calendar be disappointed later by the fact that it doesn't work with them. Again, trying

00:52:10 ◼   ► to emulate an Apple product announcement.

00:52:11 ◼   ► Could it not just like take some information from what's in your iPhone maybe, right?

00:52:15 ◼   ► Because like I have Google calendars on my iPhone.

00:52:18 ◼   ► I was thinking, well, one of the things I thought while I was writing the story was

00:52:21 ◼   ► it could do handoff, right?

00:52:22 ◼   ► A Siri speaker could do handoff stuff where like on your Mac if your phone rings or you

00:52:28 ◼   ► get a text, you get it everywhere, that you could get that text and it could say, "You

00:52:34 ◼   ► just got a text," you know, or play the chime and "Would you like me to read it?"

00:52:38 ◼   ► would you like me to answer the phone here?" And those are all things that it could do

00:52:42 ◼   ► too. So interaction, that would be another way that Apple could make its product more

00:52:48 ◼   ► impressive is have it sync and communicate with the stuff that's on your phone and your

00:52:53 ◼   ► tablet. But we'll see. We'll see if it-- I'm not entirely convinced-- we'll see at the

00:52:58 ◼   ► draft how we pick it, but I'm not entirely convinced this product actually is going to

00:53:02 ◼   ► get announced at WWDC, but I do wonder if the reason to do it is it gives them a long

00:53:07 ◼   ► run up until they ship it and because they want to talk about Siri features across all

00:53:12 ◼   ► their platforms because they have SiriKit now, which means there's a developer story,

00:53:18 ◼   ► and so they want to get developers really excited about supporting SiriKit and one of

00:53:23 ◼   ► those reasons they could get excited is because it's going to also tie in to what they're

00:53:27 ◼   ► doing with their Siri hardware. And that, for me, that would be the rationale to announce

00:53:33 ◼   ► that product, but I'm not convinced. Some of it is wish casting again, some of it is

00:53:39 ◼   ► me thinking, "I'd like that product." And that gets in the way of, so I've got a red

00:53:45 ◼   ► flag in my mind that says, "No, no, no, no, no, that's probably, come on, that's a product

00:53:49 ◼   ► you like, that's a product you want. It probably won't happen, come on, you're just dreaming."

00:53:54 ◼   ► But I don't know, that's what the rumor says, so I guess we'll see.

00:53:58 ◼   ► - Android?

00:53:59 ◼   ► Yeah, it's not a lot to say about Android O. I talked to some people, people can listen

00:54:04 ◼   ► to the Download Podcast from last week, we talked about Google I/O a lot, and we talked

00:54:08 ◼   ► about Android O very little because there's not a lot, it wasn't a big focus. I suppose

00:54:14 ◼   ► there will be more to come as it gets closer to consumers. There's not anything huge in

00:54:22 ◼   ► it, there's a bunch of little stuff that's interesting. The one thing about it, and this

00:54:26 ◼   ► says a lot about me and my interests that I wrote about on six colors was that they

00:54:32 ◼   ► redesigned all the Google emoji and Jeremy Bird wrote a piece about it.

00:54:37 ◼   ► - This is a big deal.

00:54:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, you know, for those who know the smileys on Google's platforms look like

00:54:43 ◼   ► gumdrops or if you're less charitable like Jeremy Bridge was at Emojipedia, blobs.

00:54:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, a little blob, a little blobby guy.

00:54:52 ◼   ► - I like to think that they're like a gumdrop, like it's a gumdrop shape.

00:54:54 ◼   ► rounded on top and then sort of like come to an edge on the bottom and then there's

00:55:01 ◼   ► a different kind of curve thing at the bottom. It's a gumdrop guy. Well, those are gone.

00:55:04 ◼   ► The gumdrop guy is gone, the blob, the Google blobs are gone in Android O and presumably

00:55:09 ◼   ► on Gmail and all of that when they roll this out, replaced by more traditional sort of

00:55:14 ◼   ► circular faces. And there are people who love those blobs and they're going to be sad to

00:55:19 ◼   ► see them go. But I think the number one reason that you do that if you're Google is because

00:55:24 ◼   ► Because every other platform does not have gumdrop blobs. Every other platform has circles.

00:55:29 ◼   ► And emoji is a language people use to communicate. It's not the place to have a lot of flair

00:55:36 ◼   ► on your platform that is not followed on other platforms because, as was the title of an

00:55:41 ◼   ► episode of this very show a while ago, because of emoji fragmentation. Because what you don't

00:55:46 ◼   ► want to have is, "I send you an image that I think means this, but you receive a different

00:55:50 ◼   ► image that you interpret to be completely different and we have failed

00:55:53 ◼   ► to communicate. So I think this is a good thing. I know it seems silly but I think

00:55:57 ◼   ► it's actually a really good thing for Google to do this to sort of sync up

00:56:00 ◼   ► their design language with it and then also this will be the first

00:56:04 ◼   ► this is the first announced support for the emoji 5.0 spec so it's the one with

00:56:11 ◼   ► like with a dinosaur and a vomiting face emoji and other things like that it's

00:56:14 ◼   ► the latest and greatest emoji. Including the mind blown which in Google's version

00:56:19 ◼   ► of the mind blown is awesome. It looks great.

00:56:22 ◼   ► It's the surprised face with a mushroom cloud coming out of the top.

00:56:26 ◼   ► The UK flags, the independent UK flags of Wales, England, Scotland, Scotland.

00:56:32 ◼   ► Also a monocle face.

00:56:33 ◼   ► I mean, it's all for me really. Monocle face, English flag.

00:56:38 ◼   ► Top hat, put it in there.

00:56:39 ◼   ► Top hat.

00:56:40 ◼   ► It's gonna be great.

00:56:41 ◼   ► And iOS 11 will obviously have all this stuff too. It's just a matter of, it's like Google

00:56:45 ◼   ► beat Apple. It's like, well no, Google pre-announced their operating system three weeks before

00:56:49 ◼   ► Apple because that's when their event was. iOS 11 will undoubtedly support all of these

00:56:53 ◼   ► emotions.

00:56:54 ◼   ► David: Could still beat them though, could still come first. Race is still on. I think

00:56:58 ◼   ► calling it boring is a little unfair. I think that it is a polished release. Feels a little

00:57:05 ◼   ► like iOS 10 to me in that there are some cool features but no blockbusters.

00:57:09 ◼   ► Tim: So we said this in download too and I want to repeat it here. I think it's a good

00:57:14 ◼   ► kind of boring. Like, it's okay. It's okay that it's not, we're tearing everything apart

00:57:20 ◼   ► and rethinking it again. I think smartphone operating systems at this point aren't at

00:57:25 ◼   ► that level anymore. They've kind of moved past that. Android is just being polished

00:57:30 ◼   ► and updated and made better by Google. That's what they should be doing. They don't need

00:57:34 ◼   ► to take it apart. But it also means that I don't have a lot to say about it because they

00:57:38 ◼   ► released a limited amount of information about it. And because, again, it's not as exciting

00:57:44 ◼   ► to talk about incrementally making your products better, even though for end users that may

00:57:49 ◼   ► be the best thing to do.

00:57:51 ◼   ► There are less big blockbuster features available now for smartphones. A lot of smartphone operating

00:57:56 ◼   ► systems as we currently have them are getting pretty close to feature completeness, right?

00:58:00 ◼   ► Like it's like what reminds me of the Mac, right? There just isn't that much really whizbang

00:58:06 ◼   ► stuff you can put into macOS anymore.

00:58:10 ◼   ► to do quantum leaps right now on smartphone OSs.

00:58:13 ◼   ► Not that they can't be improved,

00:58:15 ◼   ► they absolutely all can be improved.

00:58:17 ◼   ► But it's harder to see like we just added this thing

00:58:22 ◼   ► that everybody's been clamoring for, that nobody's had,

00:58:25 ◼   ► and now we've added it because I feel like we've passed that.

00:58:28 ◼   ► All that stuff has been taken down and used.

00:58:32 ◼   ► And now it's all about, could you make that better?

00:58:34 ◼   ► That thing you introduced five years ago,

00:58:36 ◼   ► maybe you can make that better because five years have passed

00:58:38 ◼   ► and things are better now.

00:58:39 ◼   ► And that's not as exciting, it is more boring.

00:58:43 ◼   ► But like I said, I think in the end,

00:58:46 ◼   ► that stuff makes the experience better

00:58:48 ◼   ► and that makes users happy.

00:58:49 ◼   ► And yeah, I'm all on that.

00:58:52 ◼   ► Like more polish and fixing things

00:58:54 ◼   ► and making everything nicer.

00:58:56 ◼   ► That's where we are.

00:58:58 ◼   ► And the wacky innovation has gone to other devices now.

00:59:01 ◼   ► The smartphone is not done, but it is not,

00:59:05 ◼   ► it was leaping from like 10% done to 40% done

00:59:09 ◼   ► to 70% done, right? And now it's just sort of ticking through little tiny increments

00:59:14 ◼   ► because the quantum leaps aren't there anymore.

00:59:16 ◼   ► All right, Jason, do you want to take a break and talk about mail route?

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01:00:33 ◼   ► And I like that because I always forget to check my spam filters.

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01:00:45 ◼   ► And at a glance you can see, first off, mostly it's "whew, wow, spam is really bad."

01:00:50 ◼   ► But every now and then I see something in there and I'm like "Oh, that is valid.

01:00:55 ◼   ► I actually want to get that mail."

01:00:57 ◼   ► And with one click I can have it deliver the message and whitelist the sender.

01:01:01 ◼   ► And if I'm not sure about whether I want to whitelist the sender, there's another link

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01:02:00 ◼   ► Thank you to MailRoute for their support of this show and all of Relay FM and most importantly,

01:02:07 ◼   ► for mailbagging.

01:02:08 ◼   ► MALECE Mailbagging!

01:02:09 ◼   ► I tell you, the NHS probably could have really enjoyed using MailRoute over the last couple

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01:02:16 ◼   ► BRIAN You think?

01:02:17 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:02:18 ◼   ► MALECE Alright, should we talk about Apple Park or

01:02:21 ◼   ► maybe some issues in detail with Wired's pretty awesome expose, I don't know if you'd

01:02:31 ◼   ► call it that.

01:02:32 ◼   ► It's not an expose if they invite you in.

01:02:33 ◼   ► Yeah, what is it then?

01:02:35 ◼   ► Feature, it's like a big feature story by Stephen Levy about building this. Yeah, it's

01:02:38 ◼   ► not an expose if they give you the tour and give you a hard hat. Yeah, it's a, people

01:02:45 ◼   ► should read it, it's in Wired, Stephen Levy knows the company better than anybody, it's

01:02:48 ◼   ► a really good story. It is a lot of detail about what's going on at Apple

01:02:53 ◼   ► Park and how they built it. So I had a couple of notes upon reading it that I

01:02:58 ◼   ► wanted to share. I wrote some of this up at Six Colors. One of them is the idea is

01:03:03 ◼   ► the concept of the story is that Apple Park is Steve Jobs' last product. The last

01:03:08 ◼   ► product that he was heavily involved with and it's taken this long to build

01:03:12 ◼   ► it but he was heavily involved in the details of the product up until the

01:03:17 ◼   ► park up until he died.

01:03:19 ◼   ► Yeah, and it seems like from what Levi was saying, significant parts of his final years

01:03:25 ◼   ► were spent on it because he was taking very, very, very long meetings with people that

01:03:31 ◼   ► were taking up most of his days, and him and Johnny really spent a lot of time together.

01:03:38 ◼   ► It was a big collaboration between the two of them, even from very early on.

01:03:43 ◼   ► I think it's not surprising to me when you see this information to maybe realize why

01:03:50 ◼   ► Johnny's not been around so much recently, apparently.

01:03:53 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that one of the things about this article is, and I've heard from other

01:03:59 ◼   ► people who've said similar things, is it's hard to see the description of the level of

01:04:08 ◼   ► care that Apple people took with this project, down to the pizza boxes, right, that people

01:04:16 ◼   ► mentioned, but also like the door handles and the toilets, like the amount of custom

01:04:23 ◼   ► design throughout this. And people, you know, some people are going to roll their eyes at

01:04:29 ◼   ► that. And I feel like one, it's Apple and Apple does stuff like this. It's part of their

01:04:34 ◼   ► identity that Apple's not going to just move into a rectangular office building

01:04:39 ◼   ► with cubicles with the standard kind of panels on the walls right if Apple's

01:04:47 ◼   ► making their showcase headquarters of the future are they going to do that are

01:04:51 ◼   ► they just going to build drop down an office block somewhere with generic

01:04:54 ◼   ► equipment from the office depot it's not going to happen it's Apple it's not

01:04:57 ◼   ► going to happen they wanted to be inspirational to the people who work

01:05:00 ◼   ► there and Apple does feel like they have things to contribute to making, you know, sort of

01:05:05 ◼   ► what the future of a workplace is like. I think Apple is hoping that this, and Steve

01:05:09 ◼   ► Jobs is probably hoping that this would be an incredibly influential project that people

01:05:12 ◼   ► would learn from and take maybe some lessons of what not to do, but also take a lot of

01:05:16 ◼   ► lessons of why don't we do that when we build our next thing, why do we settle for less.

01:05:21 ◼   ► So I think that that's all, it's a valid perspective. What I wrote in my piece is it so feels like

01:05:28 ◼   ► an Apple product in the sense that they are coming from a point of view when

01:05:31 ◼   ► they make this. It's like, we think that offices should be like this. And not

01:05:35 ◼   ► everybody agrees when Apple does a product that has a point of view, like

01:05:38 ◼   ► the MacBook's a great example, right? Which is, we think a laptop should be

01:05:40 ◼   ► like this and everybody's like, "But it only has one port!" Yeah, but it's really

01:05:43 ◼   ► thin and light, but it, but, but, but, like, alright, well, it's not for everybody, but

01:05:47 ◼   ► like, Apple had a very strong belief, like, this is the kind of product. That's how

01:05:51 ◼   ► you get an interesting product, and that's, I would argue, that's how you get

01:05:54 ◼   ► a great product, is being opinionated like that. Well, Apple Park is like that,

01:05:58 ◼   ► that. And I think that comes from Steve Jobs and carried on by other people. It is their

01:06:02 ◼   ► vision, Apple's vision for what a workplace should be like if you've got the money for

01:06:07 ◼   ► it and if you've got the space for it and all those things. But it's like imagine what

01:06:11 ◼   ► a world-class workplace for 12,000 people would be, and Apple Park is that vision. It

01:06:17 ◼   ► is hard though, when reading Steven Levy's article, not to think that because they sweated

01:06:22 ◼   ► all those details, and it's very clear that people involved in Apple design, including

01:06:27 ◼   ► Jonny Ive were deeply involved in this process, it's really hard not to walk away thinking

01:06:33 ◼   ► they've been distracted for the last two years. It's just, and I've heard from

01:06:36 ◼   ► other people similarly.

01:06:37 ◼   ► I thought that was very insightful that you put that in an article that you wrote which

01:06:43 ◼   ► would be in the show notes and I'd never considered that, you know, deeply, but if

01:06:47 ◼   ► it was this, you know, the biggest product they've ever designed with more intricate

01:06:55 ◼   ► parts than they've ever needed before, that there is a possibility that Apple decided

01:07:00 ◼   ► to put a lot of its own people on that project. Like, why, you know, I understand having an

01:07:06 ◼   ► architect to design the structure, but all of the internal pieces, why would you not

01:07:13 ◼   ► have your own people do them? Right? Like, you have people that you know can do incredible

01:07:18 ◼   ► internal design for their stores, right?

01:07:20 ◼   ► Well, if you're Apple you feel you're the best in the world at design. Why would you

01:07:24 ◼   ► have someone else design your building?

01:07:26 ◼   ► >> You would like to think that Apple is trying its best to find the best designers on the

01:07:32 ◼   ► planet, right? So they believe they have them. So I understand that. I mean, I'm not necessarily

01:07:37 ◼   ► saying they should do this, right? Like their products are what enables a building like

01:07:42 ◼   ► this.

01:07:43 ◼   ► >> And in fact, somebody who designs computers and phones and things may not be the best

01:07:47 ◼   ► person to do industrial design on a workspace, right? They may be incredibly talented, but

01:07:52 ◼   ► still may not be the best because they haven't spent the last 20 years designing chairs and

01:07:58 ◼   ► doors and things, right? They've spent the last 20 years designing computers, and so

01:08:02 ◼   ► you could argue that maybe that's not the best fit, but I see the temptation if you're

01:08:08 ◼   ► a designer to be like, "I've always wanted to design a better door because I hate these

01:08:13 ◼   ► doors, so let's make a better door." And I can also see somebody who has been working

01:08:17 ◼   ► in the real world for the last 20 years say, "What do you mean a better door? We got the

01:08:22 ◼   ► the doors, we figured it out, just use the door, like use the pizza box, okay?

01:08:27 ◼   ► [laughs]

01:08:28 ◼   ► So the great example of this, the classic example was when Steve Jobs was helping design

01:08:34 ◼   ► the Pixar headquarters where anyone could put all the bathrooms in one place, you know?

01:08:39 ◼   ► Like, that is a… you couldn't see why he wanted to do it, it's an interesting

01:08:43 ◼   ► idea, probably not great in practicality.

01:08:46 ◼   ► - Well, and I will say that means this is not the first building that Steve Jobs put

01:08:52 ◼   ► together, right?

01:08:53 ◼   ► - Yep.

01:08:54 ◼   ► - 'Cause he did put together the Pixar.

01:08:55 ◼   ► - And he loved some lessons.

01:08:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, so I think that's interesting too.

01:08:57 ◼   ► And he obviously cared about this and the story quotes the architects as being amazed

01:09:01 ◼   ► at the level of detail and care and knowledge that Steve Jobs had about this.

01:09:05 ◼   ► So I don't wanna go too far down the rabbit hole.

01:09:07 ◼   ► It's just, it's hard for me to read that story and say that Apple didn't have some serious

01:09:11 ◼   ► design brain power that was busy designing something that's not a product per se.

01:09:16 ◼   ► the park and maybe, you know, the fact is that if their brain power was spent on that,

01:09:23 ◼   ► that was less brain power being spent on their products and that was a decision they made.

01:09:27 ◼   ► But maybe that's something that helps us understand the last couple of years of Apple products

01:09:31 ◼   ► better. I don't know. I don't know. I don't want to overstate it, but I also can't wave

01:09:35 ◼   ► it away because I think it's possible. And like I said, I've heard from a couple of people

01:09:40 ◼   ► who have connections to Apple who've said that that has been a perception as well that

01:09:46 ◼   ► some people have been distracted with a new campus. So how big a deal it is? Don't want

01:09:51 ◼   ► to blow it out of proportion, don't want to ignore it, right? So I want to just say, it

01:09:55 ◼   ► struck me in reading Steven Levy's article, wow, they did spend a lot of their brainpower

01:10:00 ◼   ► worrying about a lot of the details of it. But the fact is, now this thing is going to

01:10:04 ◼   ► stand for a long time, and so I get why you want to invest some time in it, because then

01:10:10 ◼   ► you're stuck with it, right? So the last thing you want to do is say, "Well, you know, I

01:10:14 ◼   ► could spend a little more time on this light change to the iPhone or that will

01:10:18 ◼   ► ship for two years and then be done or I could do this thing that will be in this

01:10:23 ◼   ► facility for the next hundred years that's I get it I get it the the idea of

01:10:29 ◼   ► Steve Jobs this being his last product also was it hit me kind of emotionally

01:10:33 ◼   ► more than I was expecting in sad I've been thinking about this a lot and it's

01:10:37 ◼   ► made me quite sad over the last few days well I mean not only does the article

01:10:42 ◼   ► say clearly that this is the of all the things Apple talks about like Steve

01:10:45 ◼   ► Steve said don't think of what Steve would do make your own products take

01:10:49 ◼   ► Apple forward the one place where that seems to not be true is building Apple

01:10:54 ◼   ► Park Apple Park everybody viewed as Steve's legacy they felt like Steve was

01:10:59 ◼   ► in the room with them they were working with Steve on all of this this is he put

01:11:02 ◼   ► huge amounts of the end of his life into this they wanted to make it something

01:11:06 ◼   ► that Steve would be proud of and that they felt like this was essentially the

01:11:09 ◼   ► monument to Steve Jobs' legacy. They leavey tiptoes around the discussion. It sounds to

01:11:15 ◼   ► me like somebody really offered to Steve Jobs' family that they call it the Steve Jobs Campus

01:11:22 ◼   ► and they felt uncomfortable with that and suggested, somebody suggested that they name

01:11:26 ◼   ► the theater after him because that's where the product events are going to be and he

01:11:30 ◼   ► was so famous for that. But it sounds like regardless of the naming, you know, this is

01:11:34 ◼   ► a monument to Steve Jobs and it's his last product. And then the saddest note, whoever

01:11:39 ◼   ► wrote the headline, what a great headline. The headline of this story is one more thing.

01:11:46 ◼   ► Because this is it, this is the last Steve Jobs product.

01:11:49 ◼   ► At least they didn't call it one last thing. Right, which I'm sure was also on the naming

01:11:56 ◼   ► board. So, you know, it's an amazing, I can't wait

01:12:01 ◼   ► to see this place because it's just sounds bananas. I cannot wait to see it.

01:12:08 ◼   ► I did, did I mention that on this show that I did an overlay of, because it's

01:12:12 ◼   ► like a 45 acre site or something, I forget what it is, it's huge. I

01:12:18 ◼   ► grew up in the middle of nowhere and we had 42 acres and you could just

01:12:28 ◼   ► walk you know I would just walk back and up a hill and there's just like hills

01:12:32 ◼   ► and there's nothing there we had that the house was right on the on the front

01:12:34 ◼   ► on the road and then there was just you know hills and trees and cows and things

01:12:38 ◼   ► and I realized you could put almost the entire large property barns and fences

01:12:48 ◼   ► and horses and cattle inside the ring of Apple Park. Inside the ring! Like, not like on the

01:12:58 ◼   ► site but in the ring it is so huge. And then there's all this detail. I'm fascinated by

01:13:04 ◼   ► all of it. I hope to see it sometime and get to see this thing because it will be a pretty

01:13:10 ◼   ► wild thing. And then, you know, and then history will judge it and I think it will be, that's

01:13:16 ◼   ► what happens when you have a big idea, is history will judge it. It'll be judged as

01:13:20 ◼   ► being too expensive or over-designed or full of mistakes, or it'll be judged as incredibly

01:13:25 ◼   ► influential, but it will be judged and it will be thought about. And I think that is

01:13:31 ◼   ► also true of anything that you do that is great, is you strive for greatness. You may

01:13:35 ◼   ► not make it. I'm not saying this is going to go down in history as one of the great

01:13:39 ◼   ► buildings. I'm just saying that you have a chance to be considered and critically appraised

01:13:44 ◼   ► you go for it, and they totally went for it. So it's just fascinating.

01:13:51 ◼   ► I can't wait to see it. The only other thing I wanted to mention before we move on is I

01:13:58 ◼   ► put a line in my piece in Macworld about it that just mentioned that I think that when

01:14:05 ◼   ► I was thinking about it and reading the story, I had that moment of having just seen Amazon's

01:14:10 ◼   ► new stuff that they're building in Seattle downtown, that it is—I have a problem with

01:14:19 ◼   ► big companies in general, not just tech companies, building huge work spaces in suburban areas

01:14:29 ◼   ► with poor transportation infrastructure, because what it means is that a lot of people have

01:14:33 ◼   ► to drive and it fills up the roads. It affects where you can live. It can make it harder

01:14:39 ◼   ► for people, they have to have longer commutes in order to find places where the cost of

01:14:43 ◼   ► living is acceptable. And the advantage that building in an urban area has is that there

01:14:48 ◼   ► is not that urban areas that cities are cheap to live in, because they're not, but that

01:14:52 ◼   ► they tend to have the most regional planning is about getting commuters from outlying regions

01:15:00 ◼   ► where it's cheaper to live into the city center to work. And so the commute structure builds

01:15:06 ◼   ► up. And therefore, my example is I used to work in a suburb and live in a different suburb,

01:15:11 ◼   ► and it was the worst commute of my life. And then they moved our offices to a city center.

01:15:17 ◼   ► And my commute changed, but the commute got better. The, as an aside, my lunches got better

01:15:25 ◼   ► because there was way more stuff, places to buy lunch than there was when I was in the

01:15:30 ◼   ► suburbs and there was nothing around but a supermarket. Go to the deli and get a sandwich.

01:15:35 ◼   ► But, you know, the biggest thing was the options for where I could live and have a survivable

01:15:43 ◼   ► commute got a lot better.

01:15:47 ◼   ► And so when I think about Apple building in Cupertino, which is not really a great place

01:15:53 ◼   ► in terms of transit, the transit planning was never about putting trains in Cupertino.

01:15:59 ◼   ► Mountain View's got Caltrain close by and Santa Clara has the Santa Clara light rail

01:16:05 ◼   ► and is going to have, you know, BART is going to connect at some point maybe. But Cupertino

01:16:10 ◼   ► is kind of not close enough, so Apple runs a lot of buses just like Google does. And

01:16:16 ◼   ► I just had that moment of like, wouldn't it have been interesting if Apple did, or if

01:16:20 ◼   ► Google did, what Adobe did, which is build a bunch of high-rises in downtown San Jose

01:16:24 ◼   ► and say, we want to be part of the city. And this way our employees can drive or take transit.

01:16:31 ◼   ► And San Jose's transit infrastructure isn't as good as San Francisco's. And I think it's

01:16:36 ◼   ► worth at least thinking about that. But in the end, and people freaked out, they're like,

01:16:40 ◼   ► oh, no, cities are terrible, suburbs forever. And especially people who work in Silicon

01:16:46 ◼   ► Valley were very resistant to this because they're used to it. They just, they're used

01:16:49 ◼   ► to that and I think maybe can't see outside themselves. And that's fine, but what stopped

01:16:57 ◼   ► me is Apple is a suburban company, just like Microsoft in Redmond. Like Apple's front,

01:17:04 ◼   ► Steve Jobs is from the suburbs. They built the, the, the garage was in the suburbs. Apple's

01:17:09 ◼   ► always been in the suburbs. I can't picture Apple picking up and moving to San Jose or

01:17:16 ◼   ► San Francisco. I just can't, I can't picture it. I can't. This is, this campus is Apple.

01:17:25 ◼   ► It is in Apple's DNA. It is, to bring it back to Steve Jobs, the expression of how Steve

01:17:30 ◼   ► Jobs saw Apple. Now, I'm sure Apple's got a lot of programs to try to tie in their workers

01:17:39 ◼   ► to whether it's the buses on the freeway or tying them into transit. I'm sure they're

01:17:43 ◼   ► trying they've got a target number that they're trying to get to a percent of

01:17:45 ◼   ► of the people who use transit but Silicon Valley is a very expensive place

01:17:49 ◼   ► to live and if you have to drive that is not the traffic is really bad it's it's

01:17:55 ◼   ► there's lots of issues there that might be different if you're in a more city

01:18:00 ◼   ► environment with better transit options

01:18:02 ◼   ► the fact is it wouldn't be Apple I can't imagine it just like I can't imagine

01:18:06 ◼   ► Microsoft picking up stakes in Redmond and building a bunch of high-rises in

01:18:10 ◼   ► downtown Seattle where the transit and infrastructure is better. I just can't

01:18:14 ◼   ► see it. So in the end I think it's worth thinking about it and considering that

01:18:18 ◼   ► other businesses like Twitter is a good example of that and Amazon is investing

01:18:21 ◼   ► in this and even like Apple's got space in south of Market San Francisco it's

01:18:27 ◼   ► just not central. Google's got a building south of Market in San Francisco so

01:18:32 ◼   ► they've got like presences but in terms of like the DNA of these companies and

01:18:38 ◼   ► and Apple in particular, this is what they are. Apple is a Cupertino company and Apple

01:18:44 ◼   ► Park is a representation of that identity and I can't imagine it really being any

01:18:49 ◼   ► other way. So, you know, in the end, I kind of came all the way around.

01:18:53 ◼   ► Will Barron I think something coupled with this that I

01:18:55 ◼   ► think is really frustrating is something that was called out in the article and I've seen

01:19:00 ◼   ► a lot of people talking about is the fact that there are no childcare facilities inside

01:19:03 ◼   ► of this mammoth building that Apple have created. I feel like that this would have helped a

01:19:08 ◼   ► lot of young people and young families, especially when they're paying really high rental costs

01:19:15 ◼   ► anyway to have something provided by the company so they have a solution for their children.

01:19:20 ◼   ► Whilst, you know, there is something that, again, I don't have kids so I can't really

01:19:25 ◼   ► speak to a lot of this, but something that I find awkward in the idea of like taking

01:19:30 ◼   ► your kid to work and putting them in the childcare and then the company is looking after the

01:19:34 ◼   ► children while you're working 14 hour days. Like there is a, I don't know, there's

01:19:38 ◼   ► something that makes me shift a little bit about that, but I know that for so many people

01:19:42 ◼   ► there are no other options, right, so this is why this should exist. I find it really

01:19:47 ◼   ► disappointing that Apple have created a brand new campus and haven't, haven't decided

01:19:52 ◼   ► to, to, to give us a facility like this.

01:19:55 ◼   ► I'm on the fence about this because of detail. Uh, like I don't know the detail of it.

01:19:59 ◼   ► I don't know what all the benefits are about Apple and childcare.

01:20:04 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:20:05 ◼   ► I mean, I agree with you, but like, you know.

01:20:08 ◼   ► And most tech companies, it seems, and large companies don't offer it, but I share the

01:20:14 ◼   ► disappointment because I think you could argue that the providing on-site childcare is sending

01:20:24 ◼   ► a message that parents of young children especially—

01:20:28 ◼   ► Matthew: Are welcome here.

01:20:30 ◼   ► Chris: Are welcome to do their jobs. We want you to be able to continue doing your jobs.

01:20:38 ◼   ► We don't want to—because it leads to a feeling like this company is hostile to being

01:20:42 ◼   ► a parent, right? Like, if you're—and you know, one of the net results of that is if

01:20:48 ◼   ► you're a woman who wants to have a kid and wants to—maybe wants to breastfeed the child,

01:20:53 ◼   ► for example, it's very easy to look at your company's policies and be like, "They don't

01:20:58 ◼   ► want me to have a child here. So if I want to do that, I'm not going to work here anymore."

01:21:03 ◼   ► And that's not a great thing if you're trying to increase the—you know, retain your female

01:21:10 ◼   ► employees. But even for men, I mean, it's for parents in general, it's saying, "We

01:21:14 ◼   ► don't want this." That said, okay, I am also—they're building a big gym there, right? And they've

01:21:19 ◼   ► got a big food facility. I am also a little uneasy about the tendency of Silicon Valley

01:21:24 ◼   ► companies to build these spaceships like this campus that are designed for the employees

01:21:31 ◼   ► to never have to go home. You can eat here, you can work out here, you can do your laundry

01:21:36 ◼   ► here, whatever, never leave. Right?

01:21:38 ◼   ► David: You can check out whenever you like, but you can never leave, right? Welcome to

01:21:42 ◼   ► Apple Park, California.

01:21:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, or the Googleplex or whatever, right?

01:21:46 ◼   ► We never leave.

01:21:48 ◼   ► And having your children be on site is like,

01:21:50 ◼   ► well, now you really never have to leave

01:21:52 ◼   ► because you never even have to go get your kid.

01:21:55 ◼   ► But I don't know what their benefit is.

01:21:57 ◼   ► I don't know if their childcare facility is near the campus.

01:22:00 ◼   ► There may be issues.

01:22:02 ◼   ► I heard from somebody who suggested that,

01:22:04 ◼   ► and I thought it felt like kind of excuses,

01:22:08 ◼   ► but just to get the mindset of it,

01:22:09 ◼   ► I heard from somebody who said that there was a concern about childcare being a distraction

01:22:17 ◼   ► if it was on campus, that people were going to the childcare to check on their kids.

01:22:23 ◼   ► My argument would be, set a policy, you got a manager.

01:22:28 ◼   ► I generally don't like it when the excuse to not offer an employee something is because

01:22:32 ◼   ► then you would have to set a policy and manage your employees.

01:22:35 ◼   ► Geez, you want to chain people to their desks so they can't go take breaks, right?

01:22:39 ◼   ► Yeah, well like we can't offer them something because they might walk away from their job

01:22:45 ◼   ► and not do it for a while. It's like, well, make them not do that then. Set a policy about

01:22:50 ◼   ► it. Don't say we're just going to not provide any benefits for you because we don't want

01:22:55 ◼   ► you, you might be distracted by them. We're not going to have a break room because you

01:22:59 ◼   ► might be distracted by it. Or the internet.

01:23:00 ◼   ► You probably should have a break room and a policy. Or the internet, exactly, right.

01:23:04 ◼   ► So I don't know, it's a complicated issue, it is a little bit disappointing, but I can

01:23:08 ◼   ► see that there's probably a lot of other things going on.

01:23:11 ◼   ► I think juxtaposing with the gym is a little bit weird, but at the same time I do have

01:23:17 ◼   ► an uneasy feeling about that we're going to keep you trapped here.

01:23:22 ◼   ► Like, well you could go to the gym somewhere else, but we don't want you to ever leave

01:23:27 ◼   ► campus.

01:23:28 ◼   ► Then again, as a work-from-home person, I tend to do my activity in the middle of the

01:23:33 ◼   ► day, right? I start work a little bit earlier and then at 11 o'clock or 1 o'clock or whatever,

01:23:39 ◼   ► then I go out and do my, you know, walk the dog or go for a run or whatever. And so I

01:23:47 ◼   ► can see the rationale of like, we would rather you take a break in the middle of the day

01:23:51 ◼   ► and go work out and then be reinvigorated when you go back to work. We'd rather you

01:23:56 ◼   ► eat in our cafeteria and not have to go get your car and drive somewhere and drive back.

01:24:00 ◼   ► It's like, it's too much, we're going to make it easy for you. So I guess what I'm

01:24:03 ◼   ► saying is I think it's a complex issue that maybe has been oversimplified, but there's

01:24:07 ◼   ► a lot I have a lot of uneasy feelings about a lot of aspects of it on not just the childcare

01:24:14 ◼   ► not being there, but also things like the the big gym being one of those yet another

01:24:20 ◼   ► thing that keeps you inside because I think I think the ultimate goal and I don't mean

01:24:24 ◼   ► it to sound this nefarious, but you know, the ultimate goal is you enter the spaceship

01:24:31 ◼   ► And you stay there, you enter when it's early in the morning and you stay there until it's

01:24:35 ◼   ► dark and your entire life is lived inside the campus and then you emerge from it.

01:24:41 ◼   ► Maybe if it's still light out you emerge blinking into the light, but you know you're in this

01:24:45 ◼   ► other world when you're in there and it's kind of hermetically sealed.

01:24:48 ◼   ► Your food's in there, your workouts in there, your shower room's in there, everything's

01:24:52 ◼   ► in there.

01:24:53 ◼   ► And that can be great for focusing, but it can also be a little bit like we don't want

01:24:57 ◼   ► the rest of the world to intrude on our employees when we're getting our work out of them,

01:25:02 ◼   ► which is great if that's what you want as an employee, but it also feels kind of a little

01:25:06 ◼   ► oppressive. So I don't know, it's a choice.

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01:26:11 ◼   ► I'm

01:26:38 ◼   ► Okay, we start off this week. O players asks,

01:26:41 ◼   ► now that they live stream the keynote,

01:26:43 ◼   ► is there any advantage Jason to attending in person?

01:26:46 ◼   ► - Well, you get to see everything 30 seconds

01:26:50 ◼   ► before everyone else.

01:26:51 ◼   ► You get to see people that you know

01:26:55 ◼   ► and don't know before and after.

01:26:57 ◼   ► And usually there's access to other things afterward.

01:27:02 ◼   ► Usually they have some area either an open press area

01:27:07 ◼   ► or a series of appointments in order to get your hands on new stuff. So, you know, but

01:27:14 ◼   ► it's less, it's less of a big deal than it was when it wasn't live streamed. It's true.

01:27:20 ◼   ► But you know, I guess that there are, it's nice to be in the environment as well, right?

01:27:24 ◼   ► Like there are just some niceties to that. Um, but I guess the real, the real benefit

01:27:29 ◼   ► does come from if there is a press room to see stuff in the hands on area, like if and

01:27:34 ◼   ► when they exist at events, I guess that's where the real benefit comes from being in

01:27:39 ◼   ► person now, right? Because you might get to touch a product that's not going to be out

01:27:42 ◼   ► for six months.

01:27:44 ◼   ► So Wes asked, "I want to get my dad either a Google Home or an Echo and not sure the

01:27:49 ◼   ► strengths of each. He's a Prime user. What do you think?"

01:27:53 ◼   ► Well, I'd say wait.

01:27:59 ◼   ► I would agree with that actually, yeah.

01:28:01 ◼   ► wait, see what's going on. I mean, because if your dad has Apple stuff and there's an Apple product,

01:28:05 ◼   ► that might be better. If he's a Prime user, you know, it depends on what ecosystem you're

01:28:11 ◼   ► deepest into. If he's a heavy Google user, Google Home might be better. If he's a Prime user, Echo

01:28:15 ◼   ► is going to be better. You can get one cheaper. Yeah, it depends. It really depends. Right now,

01:28:22 ◼   ► if I had to say bottom line, I'd say get an Echo, but that could change rapidly. And if you're

01:28:29 ◼   ► leaning toward one ecosystem or another that could be enough to sway you.

01:28:34 ◼   ► Yeah the home is improving a lot right but

01:28:37 ◼   ► the Echo is really great right now but as you say

01:28:40 ◼   ► who knows what's just around the corner. I mean if you can wait

01:28:44 ◼   ► like three weeks, wait three weeks. Yeah. That's what I would say. James asks is

01:28:50 ◼   ► there any possibility that Apple might ship the fancy unicorn iPhone at WWDC

01:28:55 ◼   ► because it would be closer to the 10th anniversary ship date?

01:28:58 ◼   ► No. I don't think so. There's like a whole industry built around September, right? Like,

01:29:04 ◼   ► this is more than just Apple. We'd also know if it was shipping, we'd know. And they do the fall

01:29:12 ◼   ► event and the fall event makes sense and it works for them and they get them at that point and it

01:29:16 ◼   ► doesn't, yeah. It's a fun idea, but it's on the level of that date that they spotted in the board

01:29:23 ◼   ► for

01:29:39 ◼   ► about this a lot, right? Because…

01:29:40 ◼   ► This is Brent, listener Brent, I'm Grady and Brent.

01:29:42 ◼   ► Of course, I'm Grady and Brent, thank you Brent. I've been thinking about this a lot,

01:29:46 ◼   ► right? Because whilst this phone would be bigger than the iPhone 7 in screen size, you'd

01:29:51 ◼   ► get more screen size, it's less than the Plus which I've come accustomed to. But

01:29:56 ◼   ► my feeling about the Plus has kind of been twofold. I like a bigger screen but I also

01:30:02 ◼   ► like to have what I consider to be the best iPhone and in my opinion the best iPhone is

01:30:07 ◼   ► the bigger one. In the past it's had more features, in the past it's had improved statistics

01:30:14 ◼   ► whether it be battery life or something like that. So for me this next phone it may be

01:30:19 ◼   ► a little bit smaller but it will probably be the best iPhone available and for me best

01:30:26 ◼   ► iPhone trumps screen being a little bit bigger. So I would be happy to go down a little if

01:30:32 ◼   ► I'm going to be getting extra features, better features that's in the Plus model. Does that

01:30:37 ◼   ► fair Jason. Yeah I think so and it's I mean it's still a bigger screen and high

01:30:45 ◼   ► resolution and so it may not be that much of a step down for you. I feel like

01:30:50 ◼   ► for people who use existing iPhones it'll be almost like getting a plus

01:30:53 ◼   ► screen in not a bigger object. Yeah I would expect that it wouldn't feel like

01:30:59 ◼   ► I was going down too much or like I feel like it would be okay but I don't think

01:31:03 ◼   ► I wouldn't mind too much. So Patrick's written in with something that I go through quite

01:31:09 ◼   ► a bit. So I got an Expedia flight receipt email. Gmail can add it to gCal. Apple Mail

01:31:16 ◼   ► doesn't. I thought this was a feature. So here's the thing about this stuff. So there's

01:31:21 ◼   ► a thing in Apple Mail and in Apple's Canada app on the iOS devices, I think it's probably

01:31:29 ◼   ► on the Mac too, but I know it's on the iOS devices, where it can see certain events including

01:31:33 ◼   ► hotel bookings and flight bookings and can either suggest them to you in mail to add

01:31:38 ◼   ► them to your calendar, you open the calendar app and you check the little, there's an inbox

01:31:41 ◼   ► on the bottom right hand corner, at least on the iPad app, where it will show you invites,

01:31:45 ◼   ► if you get invites to regular events, as well as these proactive things. Hey, we found this

01:31:49 ◼   ► in your inbox. This is super unreliable and it seems to only really reliably work with

01:31:56 ◼   ► certain providers. So like for example, if I book a flight with British Airways, no problem.

01:32:03 ◼   ► if I book a flight with Virgin Atlantic, cannot find it.

01:32:06 ◼   ► And there are certain hotel providers and aggregators

01:32:10 ◼   ► that it works with and some that it doesn't.

01:32:12 ◼   ► So one, there is a condition that you need.

01:32:14 ◼   ► The email has to be in your mail.app, I believe in Box,

01:32:17 ◼   ► but it has to be loaded in the mail.app for it to find it.

01:32:20 ◼   ► Like it can't just be in the server, like the mail,

01:32:22 ◼   ► the local app has to know it's there and then it can pick it out.

01:32:25 ◼   ► When this works, it's great.

01:32:27 ◼   ► When it doesn't, it's not so great.

01:32:29 ◼   ► And this is a win for Gmail because Gmail works

01:32:31 ◼   ► much all of the time from my experience and from other people's experiences. I do find

01:32:35 ◼   ► it's pretty frustrating because I keep this travel calendar of mine in iCloud, so I find

01:32:40 ◼   ► myself doing a lot of manual entry where I really wish that my calendar application was

01:32:45 ◼   ► smart enough to be able to pick this up more often than it does. So this is a feature of

01:32:50 ◼   ► Apple's system, but it is a very unreliable one.

01:32:54 ◼   ► And finally today, Matt asked, "Will Apple address the number one problem that I have

01:32:59 ◼   ► with Siri that pushes me towards its competition, its infuriating personality.

01:33:05 ◼   ► So personally, I don't think Siri's personality is going away because it's something that

01:33:11 ◼   ► Apple has built around it. And it's not the only one with a personality, you know, like

01:33:15 ◼   ► Cortana, I believe has quite a strong personality. And then the Amazon and Google, their voice

01:33:23 ◼   ► assistants have it to a point, right? It depends what you're asking. Like, for example, you

01:33:27 ◼   ► ask your echo to bark and meow which Adina found accidentally it misheard her one day

01:33:32 ◼   ► and the echo just started meowing and she's like what is going on so that's a thing that

01:33:37 ◼   ► it can do so it has this stuff in it. I don't think that Apple's going to remove the personality

01:33:43 ◼   ► of Siri. I think there's a possibility they may tone it down but I believe it will always

01:33:49 ◼   ► remain in some instances but I think that they shouldn't remove the personality as much

01:33:54 ◼   ► as they should just improve accuracy and ability, because if the accuracy and ability of Ciri

01:34:00 ◼   ► is improved, the personality will be more palatable. When it's giving you the information

01:34:05 ◼   ► that you need, and it's doing it well, and in ways that you expect it to, the fact that

01:34:09 ◼   ► it might throw a bit of sass in or a joke every now and then might make the whole thing

01:34:13 ◼   ► feel better rather than worse. Do you know what I mean?

01:34:17 ◼   ► Yeah, and I agree with you. I don't think it's going to happen. I think they feel that

01:34:20 ◼   ► this is part of their thing. Like Siri has this way about her/him. Yeah this is

01:34:29 ◼   ► this is Siri and that's a feature not a bug so yeah but I do think that if they

01:34:36 ◼   ► can make Siri more advanced they could make it smarter then its personality

01:34:42 ◼   ► will become less less annoying for us. So and I hope that WWDC brings some of that

01:34:47 ◼   ► that's something that I've really got my eye on and if Apple really wants to play

01:34:50 ◼   ► in this space there are there are things that they really should be doing not not

01:34:55 ◼   ► necessarily say that they're behind although I think I personally feel that

01:34:58 ◼   ► they are but not to say that they are but I think that they need to be ahead

01:35:02 ◼   ► as well as just catching up in certain areas because of where they are right

01:35:07 ◼   ► where they and where their competitors are right now alright so as we mentioned

01:35:11 ◼   ► at the top of the show next week is going to be the upgrade WWDC keynote

01:35:15 ◼   ► draft if you have any suggestions of rumors that you would like to see

01:35:18 ◼   ► be included for the potential for me and Jason to pick for our draft picks, tweet them to

01:35:22 ◼   ► me, I am @imikeyke on twitter. Jason if you want to catch up with what his work he is

01:35:27 ◼   ► @jsnell and he is at sixcolors.com and the incomparable.com as well. I want to thank

01:35:34 ◼   ► Encapsular, Mailroute and Smile for supporting this weeks show. If you want to find our show

01:35:38 ◼   ► notes go to relay.fm/upgrades/142. Don't forget to go and check out the WWDC benefit

01:35:47 ◼   ► for AppCamp for girls, which has links in the show notes for that.

01:35:50 ◼   ► So you can come and say hi to real AFM people, but also listen to some great

01:35:53 ◼   ► music and support AppCamp for girls, which is an awesome thing.

01:35:57 ◼   ► If you're going to be in WWDC.

01:36:00 ◼   ► Thanks for listening. We'll be back next time.

01:36:02 ◼   ► Until then, say goodbye, Mr Snell. Goodbye, everybody.

01:36:04 ◼   ► [MUSIC PLAYING]

01:36:08 ◼   ► [ Music ]