Upgrade

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:08 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Upgrade, episode number 108.

00:00:13 ◼   ► Today's show is brought to you by Help Spot and Cricket,

00:00:16 ◼   ► and we also have a message about Childhood Cancer Awareness Month in this week's episode.

00:00:21 ◼   ► My name is Myke Hurley, and I am joined by Mr. Jason Snell.

00:00:26 ◼   ► Hi Myke, it's good to be here. Episode 108, it's near and dear to my heart. The highway

00:00:31 ◼   ► that ran through my hometown growing up was highway 108. So here you go. Here we are.

00:00:38 ◼   ► I have literally nothing to respond to.

00:00:41 ◼   ► No, it's, it's, that's fine. It's just like, let's hear it for highway 108. Highway 108,

00:00:46 ◼   ► you ended up, that was where all the, you know, you have to go up the highway to get

00:00:49 ◼   ► to the, to get to the supermarket, to get to the movie theater. And, and then there

00:00:53 ◼   ► were a bunch of number themed stores on Highway 108, your Pizza 108, and of course because

00:01:05 ◼   ► every barbershop needs a pun, Hairway 108.

00:01:08 ◼   ► It's not really a good pun.

00:01:12 ◼   ► No, well, you know, every barbershop needs its own pun, Myke, and that means that they

00:01:16 ◼   ► run out of the good ones very early.

00:01:19 ◼   ► I'm just gonna, like, move real swiftly into follow-up.

00:01:23 ◼   ► Okay, follow up is good.

00:01:25 ◼   ► Alan tweeted to us to point out that there has been an update to the Spotify app in the

00:01:30 ◼   ► App Store, which is significant because this is the first update since May, I believe.

00:01:37 ◼   ► Look at that.

00:01:38 ◼   ► So there has now been an update for the Spotify app, which could mean a couple of different

00:01:45 ◼   ► things.

00:01:46 ◼   ► The primary one that it means is that Spotify and Apple have come to some kind of agreement

00:01:54 ◼   ► it would expect and they're partly satisfied with the current state of the Spotify application.

00:02:00 ◼   ► You may remember we spoke about this before, that Apple was blocking an app update for

00:02:05 ◼   ► Spotify because they were doing some things that Apple were unhappy with, trying to push

00:02:11 ◼   ► people to other means of signing up for Spotify for cheaper than through the Apple system

00:02:17 ◼   ► because they wanted to circumvent the 30%.

00:02:20 ◼   ► And Apple were holding it up.

00:02:22 ◼   ► They said that they weren't going to allow the app update to go through.

00:02:25 ◼   ► And yeah, this was originally reported on by Recode in June.

00:02:30 ◼   ► And I think there hadn't been a version of the app since maybe late May.

00:02:35 ◼   ► And now we are many months later and there has been an update.

00:02:39 ◼   ► I think that there may be in here some fixes for potentially for 10 that Apple have let

00:02:48 ◼   ► through if it hasn't been that they're happy with the current state of the business practices

00:02:52 ◼   ► but we'll see if it continues to be updated and Spotify is one of those applications that

00:02:58 ◼   ► is big enough that it gets updates every couple of weeks right like it's just churning out

00:03:02 ◼   ► that we're always making this app better for you kind of updates so if they continue to

00:03:06 ◼   ► to come through then we can assume that the situation has been resolved between Spotify

00:03:10 ◼   ► and Apple. But it is significant because this has been a story ongoing for many months now.

00:03:16 ◼   ► Interesting how it's, uh, quiet. Just, it happened.

00:03:20 ◼   ► It just happened. No fanfare, nothing, which is probably the best way to do it for both

00:03:24 ◼   ► companies because it's kind of ridiculous. Yeah.

00:03:28 ◼   ► Dennis made a suggestion for our future comics segment, if you remember we were naming them

00:03:32 ◼   ► and you were unhappy with many of the names that had been given so far,

00:03:39 ◼   ► Dennis suggested "uptrade".

00:03:42 ◼   ► I'll put it on the list.

00:03:43 ◼   ► Okay, so Dennis, you're still also not the winner because if it's going on the list,

00:03:48 ◼   ► Jason does not want to do it.

00:03:51 ◼   ► So, keep suggesting names!

00:03:52 ◼   ► I'm not saying that I'm not going to do it, but I'm not going to.

00:03:57 ◼   ► Anyway, I will say I do have an update here.

00:04:00 ◼   ► We're gonna do an episode of The Incomparable that will be a Marvel Unlimited draft and

00:04:07 ◼   ► one of the origins of that concept is give Myke some reading suggestions.

00:04:13 ◼   ► - Oh, this is a crossover event we're doing here.

00:04:17 ◼   ► - Yes, it is.

00:04:18 ◼   ► Talk about comic themed, it's a special crossover event where we will take the idea from here,

00:04:24 ◼   ► we will run it over there at some point in the next couple of months and then we will

00:04:27 ◼   ► bring a big long list back for you to read.

00:04:31 ◼   ► - I like this and then we can find some way

00:04:33 ◼   ► to take this and put it back over there.

00:04:35 ◼   ► - Sure. - I like this.

00:04:36 ◼   ► This is good, this is a crossover, I'm excited about this.

00:04:40 ◼   ► - Whatever we call it.

00:04:42 ◼   ► - The first, yeah, first we need a name for our segment.

00:04:44 ◼   ► Currently we don't have one.

00:04:45 ◼   ► I am expecting that we've run out of all good pun names

00:04:48 ◼   ► and all good alliterated names.

00:04:50 ◼   ► So maybe now we need to look in other directions.

00:04:53 ◼   ► - I was thinking that like something

00:04:54 ◼   ► that instead of just being Myke of the movies,

00:04:56 ◼   ► maybe it's like Myke Hurley something, like, so that we could play off of your last name.

00:05:01 ◼   ► Hurley at the something, right? Yeah, or, or, or I Myke, uh, or I don't know, but I

00:05:07 ◼   ► think we gotta get more creative for the name. That's all I'm saying. Well, Hurley and the

00:05:11 ◼   ► Heroes was one that was, uh, one that was suggested. That's not, that's not bad, I mean,

00:05:15 ◼   ► it doesn't, it doesn't cover non-hero comics, but that's not a bad, I like that one, that

00:05:19 ◼   ► might be my, uh, favorite one so far. Okay. There have been many reports over the last

00:05:25 ◼   ► week or so that states that Twitter is moving for a sale. Now we have spent some time on

00:05:30 ◼   ► this show talking about our feelings about Twitter, the company and Twitter the service.

00:05:37 ◼   ► Especially when Jack came back because it was a Jobsian like tale of the founder coming

00:05:43 ◼   ► back to save the company. Jack has not done that. Twitter is not in good shape right now

00:05:52 ◼   ► and there had been rumblings over the last couple of weeks that there was going to be

00:05:57 ◼   ► a board meeting in which a sale would be discussed, that Twitter was going to kind of put themselves

00:06:04 ◼   ► up for sale in a way in that they would send the feelers out to other large companies to

00:06:11 ◼   ► kind of say we are looking for someone to maybe buy us and start accepting some conversations

00:06:17 ◼   ► and offers.

00:06:18 ◼   ► Now there have been many reports last week, this was, this story was running on Thursday

00:06:24 ◼   ► and Friday in what was a monumentally weird week for technology last week. Lots of very

00:06:30 ◼   ► strange stories like the Snapchat spectacles. Which we're not going to talk about today.

00:06:36 ◼   ► I might talk about this on Connected with Federico because I'm really interested in

00:06:40 ◼   ► what they're doing but I just figured you would have zero to none level of tolerance

00:06:45 ◼   ► for that topic.

00:06:46 ◼   ► - It's somewhere in that range, yeah.

00:06:48 ◼   ► - But there was just some weird stuff happening last week

00:06:52 ◼   ► and one of those stories is this one.

00:06:54 ◼   ► So currently the rumored suitors are Google, Salesforce,

00:06:59 ◼   ► Microsoft and Verizon.

00:07:01 ◼   ► So a real ragtag bunch of companies there.

00:07:06 ◼   ► However, I read a report on TechCrunch which stated that

00:07:09 ◼   ► it is believed from some sources that they have

00:07:12 ◼   ► that Microsoft's bid is purely to drive the price up

00:07:15 ◼   ► past the level that Salesforce could afford them because they want to stop Salesforce

00:07:19 ◼   ► from getting them. Which I expect happens a lot. I mean, Microsoft probably don't want

00:07:26 ◼   ► Twitter but they don't want Salesforce to have Twitter because they are in competition

00:07:32 ◼   ► right for the kind of the enterprise stack. I don't know exactly how they compete but

00:07:39 ◼   ► I know that they do right because there's a lot of stuff that those companies do that

00:07:43 ◼   ► I don't understand. Salesforce has been buying up stuff recently. Recently they bought Quip,

00:07:48 ◼   ► the document collaboration engine. Many people are very confused about why a company like

00:07:53 ◼   ► Salesforce of Arisen would want Twitter. But it's for the same reason that a company like

00:07:59 ◼   ► Google would. It's insane amounts of data. Like, no company bar Google, maybe not even

00:08:07 ◼   ► Even Google has the potential information about me that Twitter does. Because I interact

00:08:15 ◼   ► with brands and people that I'm interested in and I put all of my thoughts and feelings

00:08:21 ◼   ► out into the world via Twitter.

00:08:23 ◼   ► I would even say it's, if not the best, it is one of the best sources of user data that's

00:08:30 ◼   ► on the market, right? Because Facebook's got all of it and Facebook's got all of its own

00:08:36 ◼   ► and it's got all of the Instagram data, but what's out there that's on the market that

00:08:40 ◼   ► is a service that people use that is buyable, that has all this data, and the real-time

00:08:45 ◼   ► data right, which Twitter excels at, although Twitter has lots of issues, one of the things

00:08:49 ◼   ► that it's very good at is what's happening in real time.

00:08:53 ◼   ► And what a web as well that they have, you know? Like, to make logical jumps between

00:08:59 ◼   ► like if you follow a brand and I follow you and Stephen follows a brand that's the same

00:09:06 ◼   ► brand that you follow right let's say you're both following a company and I follow both of you

00:09:11 ◼   ► there's probably a good chance that ads from that company would be good to jump into my timeline

00:09:15 ◼   ► right like this these this is the stuff that is available but twitter has seemingly not done a

00:09:21 ◼   ► very good job with it for a myriad of potential reasons maybe they're not good at leveraging the

00:09:26 ◼   ► data, maybe they're too slow, they can't deal with it quick enough, maybe they just have not got very

00:09:31 ◼   ► good advertising infrastructure or maybe their applications don't correctly or adequately serve

00:09:38 ◼   ► these ads to people in a way that's engaging. Whatever the reason is, Twitter has seemingly

00:09:43 ◼   ► failed to deliver on what is expected from them which is why their stock price is down and their

00:09:49 ◼   ► revenue is down. Their revenue is down, their stock price is down, it's a disaster. But all

00:09:54 ◼   ► All of these companies, Verizon, I don't really know what they would do with it, but they're

00:10:00 ◼   ► a weird outlier right now. They're buying out some stuff.

00:10:03 ◼   ► Yeah, they're buying internet content because they think that it's important to be internet

00:10:06 ◼   ► content. Part of me thinks that they're hedging against being a dumb pipe. The danger, and

00:10:11 ◼   ► Comcast is the same way. Like the danger is if you end up, if all this technology means

00:10:16 ◼   ► that everything's on the internet and your business of providing data over a pipe is

00:10:21 ◼   ► not that great a business, it's not differentiated, then owning content that goes over the pipe

00:10:27 ◼   ► is not a bad hedge against that, and so I think that's what's motivating Verizon. So

00:10:31 ◼   ► they bought AOL and--

00:10:32 ◼   ► It's preparing them for a future where they might not have any money, whilst they have

00:10:37 ◼   ► money now.

00:10:38 ◼   ► Yeah, it gives them some leverage because they have content that people want, even if

00:10:42 ◼   ► they're not on their networks. I don't know, it is a little bit weird, but I'm not surprised

00:10:48 ◼   ► the Verizon's being mentioned because they've made these other purchases. It doesn't, it

00:10:52 ◼   ► seems like it's in the ballpark. I kind of feel like Google is the best fit for them.

00:10:57 ◼   ► G

00:11:17 ◼   ► be better. I think, well, that's not true, not almost anything, but there are lots of

00:11:22 ◼   ► scenarios where Twitter is better off being run by somebody else than doing what they're

00:11:28 ◼   ► doing now. There are also scenarios where somebody buys Twitter and ruins it, you know,

00:11:33 ◼   ► makes it unusable. So I don't even know.

00:11:35 ◼   ► Google will have had terrible history with social networks, but I don't think it's ever

00:11:39 ◼   ► been because of the quality of the tools. It's just always been their timing. They've

00:11:44 ◼   ► always been too late. Their Twitter competitor was too late, their Facebook competitor was

00:11:48 ◼   ► too late. I think that they have the ability to build something that works, but they've

00:11:53 ◼   ► just never been able to get it in on time. That's my feeling about them.

00:11:59 ◼   ► So I think that with this amount of data, with all of these inbuilt users, they could

00:12:04 ◼   ► do something with it. And I also think that Google, believe it or not, my feeling is they're

00:12:10 ◼   ► the one that's likely to keep it around the longest and keep it as close to current Twitter

00:12:17 ◼   ► as we have. Salesforce, they're going to want to move more towards business because that's

00:12:23 ◼   ► what they do. Verizon, I have no idea what they're going to do with it, right? Because

00:12:29 ◼   ► this is not their business. Google is the closest company out of those proposed that

00:12:35 ◼   ► would actually do something with it. One company that is not mentioned that I really don't

00:12:39 ◼   ► want to buy Twitter is Apple because that's like people think of them as like

00:12:42 ◼   ► the white knight in these things. Absolutely under no circumstances do I

00:12:47 ◼   ► want Apple to own Twitter. It just doesn't make any sense for me and I

00:12:51 ◼   ► can't imagine what they would possibly ever do with that service. It's so far

00:12:57 ◼   ► out of their purview they would probably strip it for parts because Apple could

00:13:02 ◼   ► get nothing out of that. But so fingers crossed for Google I think they're

00:13:07 ◼   ► the most likely candidate to do this because I think they will want it. They have more

00:13:12 ◼   ► money than Salesforce and they're more serious I would expect than Microsoft and Verizon

00:13:18 ◼   ► would be because they need this more than the others. Google need the data that Facebook

00:13:25 ◼   ► has before Facebook eats Google's lunch. Facebook's not giving it to them because why would they?

00:13:35 ◼   ► So I think that this is a data source for them,

00:13:37 ◼   ► which could be really interesting.

00:13:38 ◼   ► And quite frankly, I have no concerns about Google

00:13:42 ◼   ► having this data because it's all out there

00:13:45 ◼   ► on the internet anyway, like we can do.

00:13:48 ◼   ► - Google's got all the data anyway.

00:13:49 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:13:50 ◼   ► So yeah, I know that they have access to the pipe, right?

00:13:53 ◼   ► But they can't serve the ads.

00:13:55 ◼   ► They can take the data, but they can't serve the ads.

00:13:58 ◼   ► And I think that's what they wanna do,

00:13:59 ◼   ► serve the ads back to us

00:14:01 ◼   ► in the Google-owned Twitter application.

00:14:03 ◼   ► Well, it also gives, I mean, ads aside, I don't want to overstate Twitter's importance

00:14:09 ◼   ► because it is a service that's more important to us than it is to the internet at large,

00:14:13 ◼   ► but...

00:14:14 ◼   ► Well, you say that, but the hashtags are everywhere, though.

00:14:18 ◼   ► It's true, but I mean, again, Facebook is the big story here, much more than Twitter

00:14:22 ◼   ► is, but my point is this, which is, Twitter, if Google got it, Twitter is a data stream,

00:14:29 ◼   ► it gives you signal.

00:14:30 ◼   ► it gives you a lot of noise, but it gives you signal. And I think Google could use that.

00:14:35 ◼   ► Google could tune searches in real time and ad rates in real time better than it can now

00:14:44 ◼   ► if it's integrated that... I mean, Google has gone back and forth integrating the Twitter

00:14:48 ◼   ► fire hose, but if Google got all of the inside Twitter data, I feel like that would just

00:14:53 ◼   ► improve Twitter's business because it would know more about what's happening on the internet

00:14:57 ◼   ► at any moment in any region and that that's the business they're in. So in terms of fit,

00:15:02 ◼   ► it's the best fit for Google. You know, part of this is as a Twitter user, I don't want

00:15:08 ◼   ► to see somebody buy it who is going to dismantle it or, you know, make it not something that

00:15:14 ◼   ► I want to use. And I think Google wouldn't do that. Google might actually make it better

00:15:19 ◼   ► than it is now.

00:15:20 ◼   ► So, in a feeling that I can't really unpack right now, but it's a feeling that I'm having,

00:15:27 ◼   ► I don't think I would mind too much if Twitter went away, as long as there was something

00:15:33 ◼   ► to replace it.

00:15:34 ◼   ► I really wouldn't mind the service being boiled back down and started again.

00:15:39 ◼   ► I agree, but it's hard to find something to replace it.

00:15:43 ◼   ► You know, that's the trick.

00:15:44 ◼   ► Well, I know this is a joke now, but if App.net was now...

00:15:49 ◼   ► Still wouldn't make it.

00:15:51 ◼   ► No, but if it was now, and let's say it came now and Twitter just boiled away, I would

00:15:57 ◼   ► be happier to go to a service like that.

00:16:00 ◼   ► Mainly just because Twitter is a cesspool now.

00:16:03 ◼   ► Yeah, that's true.

00:16:04 ◼   ► And I don't think with their current infrastructure they can clean it up.

00:16:09 ◼   ► I just think it's too far now.

00:16:12 ◼   ► There is a world which I hope would exist if Google bought them where everybody would

00:16:16 ◼   ► be changing their authentication method and signing in with their Google account. I think

00:16:20 ◼   ► that might help a lot because Google is very focused on real name stuff.

00:16:25 ◼   ► Although, you know, YouTube comments is still a cesspool.

00:16:29 ◼   ► Yep. So there is no good way to deal with it. The way to deal with it is to make it

00:16:34 ◼   ► obscure again. That's what I want.

00:16:35 ◼   ► Right, right. Yeah, I get that. And, you know, those were good days. So maybe we'll get back

00:16:40 ◼   ► there.

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00:19:12 ◼   ► All right, Jason Snell in a surprising twist late last week, a developer beta of iOS 10.1

00:19:25 ◼   ► dropped which included the new portrait mode on the 7 plus and then later in the week,

00:19:33 ◼   ► a couple of days later a public beta dropped as well which also includes the new depth of field

00:19:39 ◼   ► feature in the portrait mode for the camera on the 7 plus and we both raced to install it

00:19:49 ◼   ► we did to play around with it Matthew Panzorino over at TechCrunch got the exclusive and had a

00:19:54 ◼   ► really great article talking about it showing off a bunch of stuff so before we talk about

00:20:00 ◼   ► our feelings and experiences this. I just want to know from you, have you learned anything new now

00:20:05 ◼   ► about portrait mode that you maybe didn't know before or had anything clarified?

00:20:09 ◼   ► Uh, anything that I know? Well, I don't know. It's, I mean, using it tells you a different

00:20:20 ◼   ► story. Um, Panserino, you know, had a lot of good details about like how, how it works a little bit.

00:20:26 ◼   ► He had a lot of examples, places where it falls down, I guess. You know, Apple, what

00:20:31 ◼   ► did we say when they demoed it? We said that Apple was showing us the best examples. And

00:20:40 ◼   ► now that it's out, you can make lots of bad examples too. And we're getting a better sense,

00:20:44 ◼   ► I think, of what the batting average is for this, what percentage of photos that you shoot

00:20:51 ◼   ► turn out and what percentage don't, and what circumstances is it good and what circumstances

00:20:56 ◼   ► this is bad. I think that's the only other thing that took me by surprise a little bit,

00:21:01 ◼   ► although I think they mentioned this, is that it's very chatty. That it tells you what's

00:21:05 ◼   ► wrong in text on the screen when you're trying to shoot a portrait.

00:21:09 ◼   ► It's like a little game. Yeah, it's like too close, no, no, no, it's too far, no, you don't

00:21:14 ◼   ► have a subject. Not enough light, I kept getting not enough light. Especially because the feature

00:21:18 ◼   ► came out in the evening for me. So I just started snapping pictures of things. And not

00:21:24 ◼   ► and I have been really surprised at how well this feature works for inanimate objects,

00:21:32 ◼   ► because Apple never said that this would work. They explicitly said it worked with people,

00:21:38 ◼   ► and it was using face detection and machine learning to pick out the subjects. But I've

00:21:44 ◼   ► found that all you need to do really is just tap on the thing that you want to take a picture

00:21:48 ◼   ► of and it will work. It will blur the background.

00:21:52 ◼   ► It will try, right? And sometimes it fails, and when it fails it just takes a picture.

00:21:56 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:21:57 ◼   ► Right. I mean, that's the failure mode is that it just takes a picture.

00:22:01 ◼   ► Yeah, because you get two pictures every time you take a photo with the portrait mode. You

00:22:05 ◼   ► get the original, and you get the blurred one.

00:22:08 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:22:09 ◼   ► Which is good, because sometimes you don't know how they're going to turn out until you

00:22:13 ◼   ► actually take the photo.

00:22:15 ◼   ► And it's great for before and after samples, too. So that's nice. I assume, I'm not sure

00:22:20 ◼   ► if that's a setting or not, but I assume that at some point that might be a setting, like

00:22:23 ◼   ► HDR, about whether you keep it or not.

00:22:26 ◼   ► Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a while away, though, you know, like, until they know they've got

00:22:30 ◼   ► it, because they're still calling this a beta, and I think it will be a beta once it's even

00:22:33 ◼   ► released, because it is buggy, and it is a bit difficult to get to work, but some of

00:22:40 ◼   ► the photos that I have taken with it, I have been thoroughly impressed. So, the first one

00:22:47 ◼   ► that I took was a picture of my little BB8, my Sphero BB8, and I think it came out fantastically

00:22:53 ◼   ► well.

00:22:54 ◼   ► Real time follow up, that setting is already in there. There's a keep normal photo setting

00:22:57 ◼   ► for portrait mode in the photos and camera settings, and so if you were about to tweet

00:23:02 ◼   ► at us that we got that wrong, close that window, because then we corrected ourselves.

00:23:07 ◼   ► It's too late.

00:23:08 ◼   ► So you can turn that off. Well, we'll know exactly who sprung into action when we said

00:23:13 ◼   ► there was no setting and didn't listen to the next 20 seconds of the podcast. So I got

00:23:18 ◼   ► my eye on you. But yeah, so it is there. Your BB8 photo was a very interesting sample.

00:23:24 ◼   ► David B

00:23:24 ◼   ► Yeah, so I took a picture of my little Sphero BB-8 and I tweeted it and it was quite early

00:23:32 ◼   ► right because I just installed it and kind of immediately ran downstairs and it was subject

00:23:37 ◼   ► to a lot of conversation from people about how good the quality is because there are

00:23:43 ◼   ► a couple of things about it so I'll put a link in the show notes so you can go find

00:23:46 ◼   ► it.

00:23:47 ◼   ► If you take a look at the image you'll see a couple of different things like the antenna

00:23:50 ◼   ► on BB8's head are blurry when it shouldn't be and there's some kind of, some people have

00:23:55 ◼   ► pointed out some like blurring on the coasters and stuff but I really horrifically stress

00:24:00 ◼   ► tested this thing. It was dark out, there was no, like the sun was down. I was doing

00:24:07 ◼   ► this mainly with the light from the window and the overhead light and I'm taking the

00:24:13 ◼   ► the photo on a reflective surface, and it wasn't a person. And I was floored at how

00:24:20 ◼   ► well it performed under those conditions. And to me, it looks really cool. I think it

00:24:26 ◼   ► looks awesome.

00:24:27 ◼   ► Yeah. Oh, I agree. I think it looks great. Now, one of the things that I've noticed,

00:24:35 ◼   ► because I posted a picture of my cat that I took with this, and I noticed, I wrote a

00:24:41 ◼   ► little thing about it on Six Colors too. I noticed something very quickly about how people

00:24:45 ◼   ► respond to these photos. I don't know if you noticed this too, which is there's two completely

00:24:48 ◼   ► different camps. They're the people who says this looks great and they're the people who

00:24:52 ◼   ► say this looks fake. And the first--

00:24:55 ◼   ► Nobody's in the middle.

00:24:56 ◼   ► No, no. And the first people are regular people who think it is a cool looking thing. And

00:25:01 ◼   ► the second group is people who are photographers, they have knowledge of photography, they know

00:25:06 ◼   ► how that effect is supposed to look and think that it is wrong. And they're probably right,

00:25:13 ◼   ► right? I mean, they're like, "Well, the foreground should also be blurred in this, but it's not.

00:25:16 ◼   ► It doesn't make any sense." And fair point, I think, to those people that it's not necessarily,

00:25:23 ◼   ► although it is a beta, and in fact, like we were saying, it's a beta in a beta. Like when

00:25:28 ◼   ► 10.1 or whatever this is goes final, it may still be a beta feature, right? So we're dealing

00:25:35 ◼   ► with a beta of a beta. And that all said, it makes what a lot of people would consider

00:25:42 ◼   ► pleasant looking images that are things they like to look at. And so I think even if Apple

00:25:50 ◼   ► gets this way better than it is now, there are still going to be people who don't like

00:25:54 ◼   ► it because it's not real, because it doesn't do exactly what a real lens would do. And

00:25:59 ◼   ► fair point, but there are a lot of people who hate Instagram filters too because they're

00:26:02 ◼   ► not real and the fact is people like them and I just it's an interesting split but I

00:26:07 ◼   ► think that Apple is not going I think Apple would love it to be exactly what a real like

00:26:14 ◼   ► SLR would do in that situation but what they really want is to make photos that people

00:26:19 ◼   ► like to look at and that's what they're shooting for primarily so if some photographer says

00:26:25 ◼   ► yes but it wouldn't actually ever look like that I don't know if anybody cares.

00:26:29 ◼   ► And there are people, just still in the chatroom for example, who can look at this and immediately

00:26:34 ◼   ► see the issues.

00:26:35 ◼   ► And he called it out, and he circled a bunch, he marked up my picture of my cat, and was

00:26:39 ◼   ► like, "What about this? What about this? What about this?" And it was like there were weird

00:26:42 ◼   ► foreground blur areas where light was reflecting off the floor, and it was blurring those areas,

00:26:46 ◼   ► but not the areas next to them, which has something to do with the depth finding where

00:26:49 ◼   ► it was reading the depth of the light reflected off of the floor as different from the part

00:26:56 ◼   ► of the floor that didn't have the reflection. He called it out. And it's true, there are

00:26:59 ◼   ► are artifacts in a lot of these images. But you know what though? I don't care because

00:27:06 ◼   ► I think it looks awesome. Like you can show me them. Like so there's another picture I'm

00:27:11 ◼   ► going to put in the show notes which is a picture of me taken by a friend of the show

00:27:15 ◼   ► Jeremy Burge of Emojipedia. He took a photo of me and I think it's a really great photo

00:27:21 ◼   ► of me. I can look at this and see that like around my hair in the photo it's a little

00:27:26 ◼   ► bit weirdly blurred but I don't care because I look at this picture and I'm like that's

00:27:31 ◼   ► maybe the best photo that's ever been taken on a camera on an iPhone camera of mine because

00:27:37 ◼   ► as well as this portrait photo the camera on the plus is amazing like it is amazing

00:27:45 ◼   ► I am so happy with these cameras as like a slight aside like the photos that I'm able

00:27:52 ◼   ► to get I could never have gotten before like with the zoom lens and stuff it's just superb

00:27:58 ◼   ► and just the general quality of the pictures I think it's fantastic I'm so so happy with

00:28:03 ◼   ► it and then copy go to a feature like this it's like here's something that is even more

00:28:08 ◼   ► than and to a person that like doesn't feel like these things are like nails on a chalkboard

00:28:16 ◼   ► and I know that like I have my stuff right like if I'm listening to something like a

00:28:22 ◼   ► podcast I can hear all the problems because that's what I do and if what you

00:28:27 ◼   ► do is edit photos or you're in special effects this is gonna kill you right to

00:28:33 ◼   ► see these things I understand that but I don't care I think it looks amazing and

00:28:39 ◼   ► this feature is built for people like me right it is not built for photographers

00:28:45 ◼   ► it's built for people who own the only camera that they own is the one that's

00:28:50 ◼   ► attached to their smartphone so the only way that they could ever do this is with a feature

00:28:55 ◼   ► like this because I don't have a camera that can take these depth of field effects and

00:29:00 ◼   ► can really do this stuff in a great way. These cameras, the phone cameras, they can do a

00:29:05 ◼   ► little bit of it like if you get something closed up enough and it can blur out in the

00:29:08 ◼   ► background but not to this effect and not to this kind of intensity. I love the way

00:29:14 ◼   ► that these photos come out because this is a feature built for me and if you can't take

00:29:18 ◼   ► it, like if you don't like it, that's totally cool. Just don't ever use it. I love it and

00:29:24 ◼   ► I use it and I think it's great. Yeah, I think this is, and I think both, I think both takes

00:29:31 ◼   ► on this are perfectly reasonable. So do I. Because like you said, like you said, there

00:29:36 ◼   ► are things that bug you and there are things that don't bug you. And if you know, look,

00:29:40 ◼   ► I was just watching, um, the other night I watched a new TV series that is called Pitch

00:29:47 ◼   ► and it's about a woman being the first Major League Baseball player who's a woman. And

00:29:52 ◼   ► they shot it in a Major League Baseball stadium, they used the logos, it's done with the Major

00:29:57 ◼   ► League Baseball announcers, it was all kind of part of a, you know, basically it's not

00:30:03 ◼   ► a co-production, but they had the full support of the real baseball entity when they made

00:30:07 ◼   ► this show. And as somebody who's a baseball fan, there were lots of things where I'm like,

00:30:14 ◼   ► "No, no, no, no, but they can't." No, they wouldn't do that because, right? Even with

00:30:17 ◼   ► all of the stuff that they got the cooperation, I have a hard time looking past all the things

00:30:22 ◼   ► that I know aren't right. And so for me, that show may be very effective to lots of people.

00:30:30 ◼   ► For me, it is in my way. And I'm not wrong, I'm going to say, about the fact that there

00:30:38 ◼   ► are things that they do that are missing details of how baseball works. I'm also, the people

00:30:46 ◼   ► who enjoy that show and don't notice those things, they're not wrong either because those

00:30:50 ◼   ► decisions were probably made for some good dramatic reasons even though they make it,

00:30:56 ◼   ► they stand out to me. And I feel like that's what's going on here with this feature is

00:31:00 ◼   ► if you know what to look for, you will probably, it's like nails on the chalkboard for you.

00:31:06 ◼   ► if you don't know then you're like, "Oh, it's pretty." And I would imagine that that's true

00:31:09 ◼   ► with lots of photo effects. And I do think it will get better. I think Apple, it is a

00:31:15 ◼   ► beta and Apple will make strides here. I don't think it will necessarily get better anytime

00:31:19 ◼   ► soon enough for those people to not be bugged by it.

00:31:23 ◼   ► It never will.

00:31:24 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:31:25 ◼   ► Because it's, the thing is like...

00:31:26 ◼   ► Never say never. Computers are really smart. They got two lenses back there.

00:31:30 ◼   ► All right. But here's the thing though, Jason.

00:31:32 ◼   ► But it'll be hard. It'll be very hard to do.

00:31:34 ◼   ► I think people of that inclination will, it will be like a placebo or a nocebo type thing

00:31:40 ◼   ► because you know, it's like, what is it, the Pepsi challenge? Because you know it's fake.

00:31:47 ◼   ► You always think it's bad because your brain will tell you that, you know? So like even

00:31:52 ◼   ► if the computers get perfect at it, there'll be this thing in your head, you're like, I

00:31:56 ◼   ► know that's not real so you'll never truly accept it. And that's, again, it's like a

00:32:01 ◼   ► a perfectly human thing to feel that way? It's true, and I'm fine with it, but it is,

00:32:09 ◼   ► I wanted to tell you the thing that I think is magical about this feature, which is the

00:32:12 ◼   ► live preview. That is the thing that gets me. Oh, I think it's amazing. Because it is

00:32:18 ◼   ► doing all those calculations. It's not like waiting for you to snap a picture and then

00:32:23 ◼   ► cranking through what you've snapped and then showing you a magical kind of "here's the

00:32:28 ◼   ► outcome of what you've snapped. It's not doing that. It's showing you on the screen, so every

00:32:34 ◼   ► frame, and it's not like 60 frames a second or anything, but every frame that it's showing

00:32:38 ◼   ► you is with that effect applied. So you know what you're going to get when you tap the

00:32:45 ◼   ► button to take the picture. That part blows me away, because that's a lot of work that's

00:32:51 ◼   ► going on on these little devices in order to make that happen.

00:32:56 ◼   ► This is just one of the things, you know, so like follow up from last week talking about

00:33:01 ◼   ► this being a strange weird phone but it having things that I like, this is one of them.

00:33:06 ◼   ► Like the cameras having spent more time with the cameras and now having some cool features.

00:33:12 ◼   ► I love my phone even more for that.

00:33:15 ◼   ► I still think that things that are weird about it are weird and I still think that the things

00:33:18 ◼   ► that are good about it are good but the camera in the 7 plus, it makes it even more of a

00:33:25 ◼   ► thing that I will make it more it makes it more likely for me to recommend it to

00:33:29 ◼   ► somebody now because just how good it is and the things that it can do that the

00:33:34 ◼   ► previous phone could not do. But the telephoto lens being the real key

00:33:40 ◼   ► behind all of it to me. Yeah it's it's it's a really good I mean the iPhone 7

00:33:44 ◼   ► camera is better and as always and that and when you throw in the the telephoto

00:33:49 ◼   ► it is that really changes how you shoot a lot of stuff it's so nice to to be

00:33:55 ◼   ► that much closer to something without. I think about it like shooting with a prime lens on

00:34:00 ◼   ► an SLR where when I put the prime lens on, what I'm committing to is having to walk over

00:34:05 ◼   ► or step back when I want to take a shot of something because I can't zoom anymore. And

00:34:10 ◼   ► so having the ability to toggle to not have to walk over to the object because you probably

00:34:16 ◼   ► can't in order to take the picture is pretty great too.

00:34:20 ◼   ► And something Kathy pointed out in the chat room that is really awesome that I love as

00:34:24 ◼   ► as well is you can switch to the telephoto lens

00:34:26 ◼   ► whilst recording a video.

00:34:28 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:34:29 ◼   ► - So you can be recording in the 1X and then hit it in the 2X.

00:34:31 ◼   ► The one thing I don't like is the swiping to zoom gesture

00:34:36 ◼   ► because every time I try and flick between photos and videos

00:34:42 ◼   ► I'm now just swiping to zoom

00:34:44 ◼   ► because it's like right in the area

00:34:45 ◼   ► where I would be swiping.

00:34:47 ◼   ► So I just have to kind of adjust my muscle memory for that.

00:34:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

00:34:52 ◼   ► I get what they're doing there

00:34:53 ◼   ► because they want you to be able to do a one-fingered zoom.

00:34:56 ◼   ► - It's better than pinching.

00:34:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, but they may want to tune that a little bit

00:35:00 ◼   ► or we may just need to, like you said,

00:35:03 ◼   ► tune our own muscle memory to get it.

00:35:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, like the way to do it now is to swipe across

00:35:09 ◼   ► where the camera button is.

00:35:12 ◼   ► You just swipe there and it will change

00:35:14 ◼   ► from thing to thing, like portrait to video to whatever.

00:35:17 ◼   ► But I'm just used to swiping it on the middle of the screen,

00:35:19 ◼   ► but now activates the zoom.

00:35:21 ◼   ► I would like it if you just press the 1x and then moved left and right, but it is easier

00:35:28 ◼   ► if you want to do the zooming that way, but I just need to kind of break my feeling about

00:35:32 ◼   ► it.

00:35:33 ◼   ► There's just a little area where you do that, a little strip, so obviously where you're

00:35:38 ◼   ► swiping to move between modes is in that area.

00:35:41 ◼   ► So you could also move your thumb up a little bit and that would work, or you could move

00:35:44 ◼   ► it down a little bit.

00:35:45 ◼   ► So that might be a pretty easy thing for you to train in yourself.

00:35:48 ◼   ► Yeah, it will be. It will be, like in the way that I'm getting used to pressing the

00:35:51 ◼   ► home button to unlock the phone, which I'm still not completely perfect with, but I'm

00:35:57 ◼   ► getting way better at doing that.

00:35:59 ◼   ► It's a pretty good feature. I gotta say, people who are in the Plus Club are gonna be really

00:36:04 ◼   ► happy with that feature.

00:36:05 ◼   ► It's a real bonus for us Plus Clubbers.

00:36:06 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:36:07 ◼   ► And it looks like Apple are gonna get it out quicker than we expected.

00:36:10 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, we'll see how long this beta goes, but it, uh, yeah.

00:36:17 ◼   ► I wasn't expecting a beta until the holiday season to be honest.

00:36:20 ◼   ► Right, I mean the fact that like a week after the phone came out you can just sign up for

00:36:23 ◼   ► the public beta and get that feature. And I didn't notice anything wrong with the beta,

00:36:28 ◼   ► otherwise it seemed fine to me. But so I'm not going to endorse people, random people

00:36:33 ◼   ► downloading a public beta, but it seemed fairly safe to me if you're somebody who really wants

00:36:37 ◼   ► that feature to, you know, the fact that they released it a few days later for public beta

00:36:41 ◼   ► means that they released it to developers and the developers didn't find anything terrible

00:36:45 ◼   ► with it. So that's also a good sign. So I'll just very quickly add to that. So I've had

00:36:50 ◼   ► no problems with 10.1, but I've had some people telling me some apps that they use are crashing

00:36:54 ◼   ► on 10.1. So it's a beta is a beta is a beta. So beware. Beware. All right, I want to take

00:37:00 ◼   ► a very quick moment to mention something in lieu of a sponsorship break at this point

00:37:06 ◼   ► in the show. We want to talk about Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, which is September.

00:37:11 ◼   ► Now we want to talk about this because it's something that's near and dear to mine and

00:37:16 ◼   ► Jason's hearts because of the connection that we have with Steven Hackett, co-founder of

00:37:21 ◼   ► Relay FM, your co-host on Liftoff as well.

00:37:26 ◼   ► You may or may not know this, go to firetowelpixels.net/september, we'll have a link in the show notes as well.

00:37:33 ◼   ► But Steven's son, Josiah, he has a brain tumour, he was diagnosed with a brain tumour when

00:37:39 ◼   ► he was born basically and uh... the this little kid is one of the most incredible

00:37:43 ◼   ► kids i've ever had the pleasure of meeting

00:37:47 ◼   ► it brings to mind

00:37:50 ◼   ► for us allot of course that

00:37:54 ◼   ► cancer is a thing in children

00:37:56 ◼   ► it exists and it's horrible

00:37:59 ◼   ► and these kids have to try and live a normal life as much as they can

00:38:04 ◼   ► which is

00:38:05 ◼   ► difficult and it's difficult for the families and for everyone around.

00:38:10 ◼   ► One of the luckiest things I guess in the Hackett's life is that they live close to

00:38:15 ◼   ► the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital which is a place that I visited on one of

00:38:20 ◼   ► my trips to Memphis and is also one of the most incredible places that I've ever had

00:38:25 ◼   ► the experience of visiting. I took a tour there and got to look at the work that they

00:38:31 ◼   ► do and it's kind of incredible. And one of the great things about St. Jude is that

00:38:36 ◼   ► every family that goes to St. Jude has all of their expenses covered. All of them. You

00:38:43 ◼   ► know, the amount of treatment and work that would have needed to have been paid for, for

00:38:48 ◼   ► Josiah's care over his life, would probably be into the millions of dollars right now.

00:38:56 ◼   ► And mainly because of St. Jude and the work that they do, that's all been covered.

00:39:02 ◼   ► And this little boy has been able to live the best life that he can live because of

00:39:06 ◼   ► the work that St. Jude does to help them and the family and the family of many, many, many,

00:39:11 ◼   ► many families.

00:39:13 ◼   ► And also more importantly, St. Jude is a research hospital.

00:39:17 ◼   ► And every day they are learning more and more about cancer and trying to help prevent these

00:39:22 ◼   ► things for children.

00:39:24 ◼   ► This is something that is incredibly important to me.

00:39:27 ◼   ► So I want you to go and donate some money.

00:39:31 ◼   ► Go to 512pixels.net/September.

00:39:34 ◼   ► Steven does this every year.

00:39:35 ◼   ► There is a Memphis marathon that happens and he's raising money for that.

00:39:41 ◼   ► I want you to all just go and give something.

00:39:44 ◼   ► Anything.

00:39:45 ◼   ► Anything you can will be put to great use to help try and fight this stuff and also

00:39:52 ◼   ► to give a level of care to these families, which they really need. So go to 5topixels.net/September.

00:40:01 ◼   ► We would all really appreciate it.

00:40:03 ◼   ► Tim Cynova Yep. I was fortunate to visit the Hackett's

00:40:07 ◼   ► when we were in Memphis last month and see that, see the whole family. And that is a

00:40:15 ◼   ► house that has been through a lot and it is a house full of love and it was great to meet

00:40:21 ◼   ► the whole Hackett family, including Josiah, who was an awesome kid. So, yes, please consider

00:40:29 ◼   ► donating to St. Jude.

00:40:31 ◼   ► - Jason.

00:40:32 ◼   ► - Yes, sir?

00:40:33 ◼   ► - We spoke about this last week. MacOS Sierra is out.

00:40:38 ◼   ► - It is. It is. It came out last Monday. Or last Tuesday? Last Tuesday, I guess. Last

00:40:45 ◼   ► Tuesday.

00:40:46 ◼   ► - Can you just say some stuff about it?

00:40:48 ◼   ► - Okay, sure.

00:40:49 ◼   ► Are you not using it, Myke? Do you not install it right away?

00:40:53 ◼   ► No. Should I start off with this?

00:40:57 ◼   ► No, we'll get there. I can talk about Sierra a little bit before we get to why you are

00:41:01 ◼   ► not... I think it is a perfectly reasonable thing. We'll get into it. For a lot of Mac

00:41:06 ◼   ► users to not upgrade right away, and I think that's fine. I think the upgrading to it is

00:41:10 ◼   ► inevitable, but is it something that you must have today, especially if you're somebody

00:41:16 ◼   ► in a, you know, doing your job on the Mac where every minute counts, I'd say no, but

00:41:22 ◼   ► depending on what you want, that there are reasons to upgrade sooner or later. I think

00:41:28 ◼   ► the number one reason, somebody was asking me last week on Twitter, why should I upgrade

00:41:32 ◼   ► to Sierra? Like, is there any reason for me to upgrade to Sierra? And again, leaving aside

00:41:36 ◼   ► the fact that upgrading is inevitable because at some point you will upgrade, the security

00:41:40 ◼   ► updates will be necessary, it's free. I found it fairly, you know, I found it inoffensive

00:41:46 ◼   ► in terms of doing stability things to my system. My system, once I switched over to it a couple

00:41:51 ◼   ► months ago, really didn't change. I haven't had any major software incompatibilities.

00:41:56 ◼   ► It's all fine. But I'd say the number one thing about Sierra, the thing that I like

00:42:01 ◼   ► the most, is photos. It's got the same photo stuff that's in iOS 10 in terms of the machine

00:42:05 ◼   ► learning. So if you have a big photos library, when you turn this on, it will use your processor

00:42:11 ◼   ► for a long time. You should probably keep your Mac up overnight and let it maybe for

00:42:15 ◼   ► a few nights, depending on how big your library is. And it will index everything. It will

00:42:21 ◼   ► learn about all your photos. And then when you say, "Show me pictures at the beach,"

00:42:25 ◼   ► or "Show me pictures of cows," or "Show me pictures of horses and mountains," it will

00:42:29 ◼   ► let you do those searches. And it's a pretty great feature. And it has a different face

00:42:35 ◼   ► detection algorithm that's much more modern than the one that was there before, so you

00:42:40 ◼   ► can classify people and make smart albums for photos with different people in them.

00:42:47 ◼   ► Unfortunately, you can't do smart albums where you say, "Show me all the pictures with this

00:42:51 ◼   ► person and on the beach." It's not capable of doing that yet, which is kind of weird.

00:42:57 ◼   ► But what's the other thing? Memories is another feature that's on iOS 10, but it's also in

00:43:02 ◼   ► Sierra. It's a really great feature. It surfaces photos. If you've got thousands of photos

00:43:08 ◼   ► in your library like I do, there's so many of those photos you're never going to look

00:43:11 ◼   ► back. You're never going to scroll back through thousands of photos and say, "Oh, look, 2007.

00:43:16 ◼   ► Remember that?" It's not going to happen. And Memories does that for you. It's incredibly

00:43:20 ◼   ► clever. It's got a lot of different cues. It's not just, "Here is what you did last

00:43:24 ◼   ► year." It does that, but it also does things that are kind of blew my mind, both in generating

00:43:29 ◼   ► memories and then generating related memories. So it'll say, you know, here's the best of

00:43:34 ◼   ► the last month or here's the one that really got me was in nature. And it's literally,

00:43:40 ◼   ► it's pictures of my kids that are in like forests and deserts and stuff where we were

00:43:44 ◼   ► out in nature and it made a memory of that. And then there was one memory that involved

00:43:49 ◼   ► us going to a baseball game. And one of the related memories that photos offered to show

00:43:54 ◼   ► us was other times we've been to baseball games because it knows like the people who

00:43:59 ◼   ► were in all those photos and it knows that they were at a ballpark and so it uses that

00:44:04 ◼   ► metadata to then do essentially generate other searches of the library to find things in

00:44:11 ◼   ► common and pull those out and make those into memories as well. It's pretty amazing stuff

00:44:17 ◼   ► and I will admit to being kind of emotionally moved at a few points while I was doing this

00:44:22 ◼   ► because I was being hit with memories. It was a trip down memory lane as generated by

00:44:27 ◼   ► this algorithm and pretty great stuff. So I think in general, photos is a reason to

00:44:37 ◼   ► update to Sierra. It doesn't, not that I don't have issues with some of it, if you plugged

00:44:42 ◼   ► in your, you updated your phone to iOS 10 last week or two weeks ago and it got warm

00:44:47 ◼   ► as it indexed all your photos overnight because it does that. You might be thinking, "Well,

00:44:52 ◼   ► I won't have to do that when I upgrade to Sierra because I already had a device that's

00:44:56 ◼   ► syncing with iCloud that indexed all those photos." And you'd be wrong because Apple

00:45:00 ◼   ► did not build in any syncing of metadata related to machine learning between devices. So every

00:45:07 ◼   ► iOS device and every Mac running Sierra that has photos on it gets to re-index all of your

00:45:12 ◼   ► photos. Again, why did they choose to do that? My guess is this was such a big feature that

00:45:19 ◼   ► they decided to forgo, the machine learning part was so big, that they decided to forgo

00:45:25 ◼   ► the sinking of data for now. That's my guess, but it is kind of silly that every device

00:45:31 ◼   ► has to waste energy and time to process your photos, and that if you train your Mac on

00:45:39 ◼   ► who these people are in all of these photos, that your iPhone doesn't pick that up, because

00:45:45 ◼   ► that's the current state of affairs, it doesn't pick that up, which is a shame. But still,

00:45:49 ◼   ► I think it's a pretty great feature. I like it a lot, and it has done some great work

00:45:54 ◼   ► on Mac and iOS of pulling out photos from days gone by.

00:46:00 ◼   ► My problem with this feature is an issue that exists across Apple's platforms right now,

00:46:07 ◼   ► Which is, these systems are good when they work on their own, right?

00:46:13 ◼   ► They do this stuff on their own.

00:46:14 ◼   ► And that's what machine learning is supposed to do.

00:46:17 ◼   ► And Apple has shown that they're able to do it.

00:46:20 ◼   ► But I have kind of two trails of issue with it.

00:46:23 ◼   ► Is inconsistency in data, because it's all being processed locally, there are inconsistencies

00:46:31 ◼   ► where a photo may get missed.

00:46:33 ◼   ► If you search for cow by the way on your phone and on your on your Mac, you may find a different

00:46:38 ◼   ► collections of photos it because everything seems to be sort of fuzzy matching which is

00:46:44 ◼   ► I mean, I wouldn't say it's unacceptable but it's less than ideal like to search for an

00:46:51 ◼   ► image and then search for it somewhere else expecting to find it and you don't get it.

00:46:55 ◼   ► My other problem mainly lies around the people stuff. You could spend hours trying to wrangle

00:47:03 ◼   ► all

00:47:23 ◼   ► 25, 35 minutes doing that on my iPhone, I then have to go and do it again on my Mac.

00:47:28 ◼   ► And I know you've already said this, but this for me is just why I have no intention of

00:47:33 ◼   ► really digging into this stuff right now, in the hope that Apple will add some kind

00:47:37 ◼   ► of metadata syncing in the future to alleviate this, because I have no interest in taking

00:47:43 ◼   ► a machine learning brain, teaching it multiple times.

00:47:48 ◼   ► Yeah, and at the very least, and I think it used to do this with the faces data,

00:47:53 ◼   ► at the very least a photo that's got two people in it, it should just say these are the two people that I saw in this photo

00:47:59 ◼   ► and sync that so that if you're on another device and you search for those people,

00:48:04 ◼   ► it will know these photos that some other device says has these people in it, right?

00:48:08 ◼   ► To take it, sort of take it at their word, and you didn't sync it, you didn't scan it,

00:48:12 ◼   ► and yeah, there are other levels above that where you actually match the face to the other device

00:48:17 ◼   ► and say, "Oh, this person is that person. Okay, I'll pick that up and do a true sync."

00:48:22 ◼   ► But even if all you were doing was in the metadata for that photo, you said, "This has

00:48:26 ◼   ► Myke and Steven in it." So that on another device, if you search for Myke, it'll say,

00:48:30 ◼   ► "Well, I don't know who Myke is, but this photo says that Myke's in it." And it doesn't

00:48:35 ◼   ► do that.

00:48:36 ◼   ► Like, I know why it's difficult for them to do this with the way that they want to work,

00:48:41 ◼   ► right? You know, like with the differential privacy stuff. It makes it harder. It makes

00:48:44 ◼   ► it harder at least because they can't just flat out just add this metadata but

00:48:49 ◼   ► there's ways that this could be done.

00:48:52 ◼   ► I don't see I don't agree I think that this has nothing to do with privacy

00:48:56 ◼   ► other than the optics of it I do have a theory I'm not sure I believe it but

00:49:00 ◼   ► there is a theory that I have that one of the reasons it doesn't sink this

00:49:03 ◼   ► stuff is because Apple wanted a very clean message about privacy and that

00:49:08 ◼   ► sinking metadata might muddy it which is a dumb argument but I worry that

00:49:13 ◼   ► maybe that was something that they were concerned about from a like people will

00:49:16 ◼   ► people will misunderstand it but but I think it's most likely that this is

00:49:20 ◼   ► literally like this is a huge feature and this is all we could do and ship it

00:49:23 ◼   ► is what they would say if they were being honest about it but because it's

00:49:27 ◼   ► not you know you're it's not well we can't we can't move that between devices

00:49:31 ◼   ► because it's in the cloud because you're freaking photos are in the cloud it's

00:49:35 ◼   ► moving them between devices the difference is the analysis is happening

00:49:39 ◼   ► on the devices the metadata should be able to sync they should be able to do

00:49:43 ◼   ► that. No, they're not doing what Google does where the analysis is happening up

00:49:47 ◼   ► on the cloud, but the devices should be able to share data among themselves and

00:49:52 ◼   ► that's what they haven't implemented. And they do that in all that data just like

00:49:56 ◼   ► the photos is encrypted. Only your devices have access to it. It's fine.

00:49:59 ◼   ► So can they build this? They totally can build this. Is it easy? No, of

00:50:04 ◼   ► course not. I was thinking about it. I was trying to go through the steps of

00:50:07 ◼   ► like how you sync machine learning data and it's like well if different machines

00:50:11 ◼   ► do you have a master first one to index it wins and then that data sinks and how

00:50:16 ◼   ► do you match that up

00:50:17 ◼   ► do you just take it at its word and say okay well this says horses so I'm just

00:50:20 ◼   ► going to accept that it's horses

00:50:21 ◼   ► how do you do that with the people database which is even more complicated

00:50:24 ◼   ► because you're tying that to other information

00:50:26 ◼   ► it's not an easy problem for them to solve which is why I'm inclined to think

00:50:29 ◼   ► that the reason this didn't happen is simply that they had to make some

00:50:33 ◼   ► choices about what they were going to be able to ship in time and they didn't

00:50:36 ◼   ► make it on board they've been consistent from the beginning that this stuff

00:50:39 ◼   ► wasn't shipping. I asked them when I got briefed about Sierra in July and they said, "Nope,

00:50:46 ◼   ► it's not going to sync between devices," and it doesn't. So every device has to do it.

00:50:51 ◼   ► I'm almost positive that this will be something that gets addressed in a software update.

00:50:55 ◼   ► If I had to guess, I would say though it will be next fall's, a year from now, software

00:51:00 ◼   ► update, not in a 0.1 or 0.2 release. I hope I'm wrong, but it is the biggest weakness.

00:51:06 ◼   ► And it's, you know, again, it could either be an annoyance if you don't care, or if you're

00:51:10 ◼   ► somebody who really wants to train this stuff and do all that, you know, name recognition,

00:51:15 ◼   ► you know, connecting the faces to the names and all of that, it could be really frustrating

00:51:19 ◼   ► because the last thing you want to do is keep training a device over and over again.

00:51:23 ◼   ► I cloud.

00:51:24 ◼   ► Oh boy.

00:51:25 ◼   ► iCloud's the big thing, right?

00:51:26 ◼   ► Like, continued iCloud enhancements is the biggest changes to the OS, I guess, because

00:51:32 ◼   ► Photos is an app, right?

00:51:34 ◼   ► Like, and it's, you know.

00:51:35 ◼   ► I know you don't get it separately, but like, Photos is its own thing, and then iCloud is

00:51:43 ◼   ► the stuff that they've baked into the EOS.

00:51:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:51:47 ◼   ► The um, so the big, the big thing that they did is iCloud, is iCloud storage, which exists

00:51:57 ◼   ► already, right?

00:51:58 ◼   ► There's iCloud Drive.

00:51:59 ◼   ► Yeah, pay attention everyone, this is confusing.

00:52:01 ◼   ► So iCloud Drive's already there.

00:52:03 ◼   ► The difference is that now, so iCloud Drive was a special folder essentially on your Mac,

00:52:07 ◼   ► like Dropbox or Google Drive, special folder that syncs with Apple's cloud.

00:52:12 ◼   ► Okay, that's fine, fair enough.

00:52:16 ◼   ► In Sierra, you have the option of syncing, and I think it asks you when you upgrade,

00:52:21 ◼   ► it says, "Would you like to sync these other things?"

00:52:24 ◼   ► And the option is to sync your documents and desktop folders to iCloud.

00:52:31 ◼   ► It's not neither or you got to sync both of them.

00:52:34 ◼   ► And that's in addition to your iCloud drive folder.

00:52:37 ◼   ► In reality, what's happening is it's creating a documents folder and a desktop folder inside

00:52:42 ◼   ► the iCloud drive folder and syncing them and basically linking those folders as a, as a,

00:52:50 ◼   ► you know, more or less an alias.

00:52:52 ◼   ► It's making those your desktop and documents folders.

00:52:55 ◼   ► So even though you see them on your desktop, they're actually an iCloud folder in iCloud

00:53:01 ◼   ► Drive called desktop.

00:53:05 ◼   ► There are some issues with that.

00:53:08 ◼   ► The biggest issue is that if you've got multiple devices, when you turn it on, it's going to

00:53:14 ◼   ► -- at least what it did for me -- it's unclear whether this happens for everybody or not,

00:53:18 ◼   ► but what happened for me is I turned it on on a laptop and it all just sort of happened

00:53:24 ◼   ► and worked.

00:53:25 ◼   ► then I turned it on my iMac and my iMac's desktop sort of disappeared and what I got

00:53:30 ◼   ► was my laptop's desktop with a folder inside it called "Desktop iMac" which is weird but

00:53:39 ◼   ► at the same time I can kind of understand it that when you're turning on syncing on

00:53:43 ◼   ► all these different devices the idea is that they're all going to share the same desktop

00:53:47 ◼   ► eventually but what do you do? Do you mix those devices together or do you do this kind

00:53:51 ◼   ► of one-time place where you partition, you know, like, "Okay, the laptop files are here

00:53:57 ◼   ► and the desktop files are here and you get to decide where you want to put them." So

00:54:01 ◼   ► I kind of understand instead of merging them all together.

00:54:03 ◼   ► To my taste, I made the wrong decision. Like, my expectation would be I get more files now

00:54:11 ◼   ► on my desktop and all the stuff that's on my current desktop is added to my other computers

00:54:16 ◼   ► as well.

00:54:17 ◼   ► I think, well, which it is, but it's added inside a folder. And I think maybe that's

00:54:22 ◼   ► crazy. Maybe the right thing to do there is to ask, and I know that's asking for more UI as a

00:54:26 ◼   ► part of this process, but it's a complicated thing. Maybe the right thing to do there is to say,

00:54:30 ◼   ► Oh, you already have files synced to your desktop by iCloud. What would you like me to do? Would you

00:54:36 ◼   ► like me to combine these two together or make a separate folder? But it just, in my experience,

00:54:43 ◼   ► at least it just made a folder, dump my stuff in it. It was still there. I could pull it out. I did.

00:54:47 ◼   ► and then my stuff was back out on my desktop. But it can be confusing. It's a lot of file moves that

00:54:53 ◼   ► are happening. So if you've got the guy who does Talking Points Memo, a politics site, Josh Marshall,

00:54:58 ◼   ► I think is his name, he was bitten by this over the weekend. It seems like he just had thousands

00:55:04 ◼   ► of files on his desktop, and they were large files. And it meant that it looked like they

00:55:08 ◼   ► disappeared when in fact it was moving them to the iCloud folder. But there's weird stuff going on.

00:55:15 ◼   ► on. I mean, there's a lot of stuff in Sierra that makes me, even when it works, it gives

00:55:19 ◼   ► me pause because it's doing some stuff that people aren't used to seeing. It is saying

00:55:23 ◼   ► your desktop is on your desktop when it really now is in an iCloud folder and linked to where

00:55:29 ◼   ► you thought it was before. And it's not quite the same. And we're moving your files around

00:55:33 ◼   ► for you. And it can be, you know, again, sometimes that is disquieting to have the system be

00:55:40 ◼   ► shunting your files around without you really understanding what's going on. But in the

00:55:45 ◼   ► end, the way this feature works is, if you've got enough iCloud space, if you're paying

00:55:48 ◼   ► for enough iCloud space, you can have everything you're working on, if you work on stuff in

00:55:53 ◼   ► your Documents folder and your Desktop folder, syncing to iCloud, which means if I have a

00:55:58 ◼   ► Logic project open on my Desktop, which is where I keep my projects when I'm working

00:56:02 ◼   ► on them, I'm somebody whose Desktop is my workspace, when I keep them there, the idea

00:56:07 ◼   ► here is if I open a laptop that's running Sierra and it's syncing those folders, I have

00:56:16 ◼   ► access to all those on the desktop there too. That Mac's desktop is my desktop. They all

00:56:22 ◼   ► share the same desktop and documents folder at that point via iCloud. That's the idea.

00:56:26 ◼   ► That's the promise. And there's a lot to be said for that, of keeping it simple. I'm not

00:56:30 ◼   ► shunting my files around or having to pull them into iCloud in order to sync them. Apple

00:56:36 ◼   ► now has made it, you flip a couple of boxes and your files are with you wherever you go

00:56:42 ◼   ► as long as you're syncing them to iCloud. I know, right? This is what I mean by disquieting,

00:56:48 ◼   ► right? Like I get the idea here and I can see the instances where for certain users,

00:56:55 ◼   ► this is in simple use cases, this is actually great, right? It's like I've got five files

00:57:00 ◼   ► on my iMac and on the desktop and then I'm on my laptop somewhere and oh look, the files

00:57:06 ◼   ► are there too. That's great. It's like now my computer is the same wherever I go. I'm

00:57:10 ◼   ► syncing more stuff. It's just about me. It also means that on your iOS devices you can

00:57:15 ◼   ► get access to everything you keep on your desktop or in your documents folder because

00:57:18 ◼   ► they're in iCloud drive. So you have access to them on iOS as well without, you know,

00:57:23 ◼   ► again using a third-party service like Dropbox. So that's all going on. I think that feature

00:57:29 ◼   ► is okay it's got some issues but I get what they're doing there. Then there's the other

00:57:39 ◼   ► part. So optimize storage is also a feature and this is confusing because Sierra actually

00:57:48 ◼   ► has a couple different kinds of storage optimization that it's doing and some of them I really

00:57:52 ◼   ► like because some of them are about cleaning up your hard drive. Some of them are just

00:57:58 ◼   ► sensible. Right, right, exactly. Some of them, and some of them are things only

00:58:02 ◼   ► Apple could do and some of them aren't. Some of them are an interface that says

00:58:06 ◼   ► here are a bunch of your big files, we can delete them for you. Including things

00:58:11 ◼   ► like, did you know you have this 50 gigabyte iTunes backup of an iPhone that

00:58:16 ◼   ► hasn't been touched in two years? And I had a couple of those, I'm like, oh, I don't

00:58:20 ◼   ► need that backup anymore, save some space, delete that. It does a bunch of that

00:58:24 ◼   ► stuff. It's much more aggressive about things like cleaning up log files that

00:58:28 ◼   ► you never see but that is part of the kind of Unix heritage of the Mac that it

00:58:32 ◼   ► spews out these log files. It's more aggressive with that. If you download an

00:58:36 ◼   ► installer to an app and you already downloaded like six months ago you

00:58:39 ◼   ► downloaded an installer to that app, it will actually remove, it'll move that old

00:58:44 ◼   ► installer to the trash and just download the new one so you don't have like

00:58:48 ◼   ► installer one, installer two, installer three, installer four, which it's a little

00:58:52 ◼   ► feature but I think it's probably a good feature. You can have the trash auto

00:58:56 ◼   ► delete things that are that have been in the trash more than 30 days so you don't

00:59:00 ◼   ► end up forgetting to ever empty the trash and have 40 gigs of stuff sitting

00:59:04 ◼   ► in the trash for a year. All that stuff is good. I reclaim some space. That's all

00:59:08 ◼   ► good. What is also happening though, there are a couple other things that are

00:59:12 ◼   ► happening here that are weird. One of them is they have this concept of

00:59:16 ◼   ► purgeable storage now and I like the idea of it because this is putting a

00:59:23 ◼   ► little more user interface on something that they're doing with iCloud photo

00:59:26 ◼   ► library especially where if you are if you're you're set to not keep all of

00:59:32 ◼   ► your files locally right instead the idea is iCloud the truth is in iCloud

00:59:38 ◼   ► iCloud's got all your photos and then it'll download some photos when you need

00:59:41 ◼   ► them and they're basically cached they can be deleted at any point it's okay

00:59:45 ◼   ► because the original is in the cloud. That takes up a lot of space. That takes up a lot

00:59:51 ◼   ► of space on iOS and on the Mac. And there's not a lot of great user interface for that

00:59:55 ◼   ► because there's none. Like, on iOS I'll see, like, photos are taking up this huge amount

01:00:00 ◼   ► of space on your device. It's like, yeah, but I need to copy these audio files because

01:00:04 ◼   ► I'm going to edit a podcast on my iPad. And, you know, how does it know to delete that

01:00:10 ◼   ► stuff, and it doesn't do as good a job as it should with that. The iOS needs to do a

01:00:15 ◼   ► better job of either giving you a little bit of an interface to say, "Clean up the space,"

01:00:19 ◼   ► or be much more responsive on, "Oh, geez, you're trying to load a bunch of big files

01:00:22 ◼   ► on here. I need to delete some of my purgeable stuff." Well, on Sierra, it actually will

01:00:27 ◼   ► tell you how much purgeable stuff you've got. As far as I can tell, it's mostly stuff that's

01:00:32 ◼   ► in iCloud and stuff that's things like stuff that's iTunes movies that you

01:00:39 ◼   ► bought on iTunes that are in the cloud so you could download them again and

01:00:42 ◼   ► it's things like all those photos in your photo library that are purgeable

01:00:45 ◼   ► because they're in the cloud. They're safe. I can delete them on my drive

01:00:49 ◼   ► because they're in the cloud. So where it gets weird is that in Sierra it

01:00:54 ◼   ► wants to show you your free space and now all of a sudden Sierra has two

01:00:58 ◼   ► different concepts of free disk space. It's got how much actual free space is on

01:01:06 ◼   ► the drive right now, and it's got how much actual free space is on the drive

01:01:11 ◼   ► plus purgeable space that could be made free if we need it to be free.

01:01:17 ◼   ► I'm really confused.

01:01:19 ◼   ► Well if you look at my review the very top screenshot of my review contains,

01:01:26 ◼   ► this is like a little easter egg. The very top screen shot of my review shows

01:01:31 ◼   ► simultaneously a screen from system information that says 54.68 gigabytes

01:01:37 ◼   ► available. And a Siri response for how much free space is left on my hard drive

01:01:42 ◼   ► that says 30.06 gigabytes of storage available.

01:01:46 ◼   ► Huh?

01:01:49 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. So what's happening here is that I think it gets confused.

01:01:55 ◼   ► there may also be bugs. I actually went back to my Apple contacts after this and

01:01:59 ◼   ► asked them about this and the indication I get is that I also discovered some

01:02:04 ◼   ► bugs so yay for me that I found bugs but the point is that if you get info on

01:02:10 ◼   ► your hard drive in Sierra it will often tell you something like I could do it

01:02:13 ◼   ► right now I can get info on my hard drive and it says available 81.73

01:02:20 ◼   ► gigabytes and then in parentheses 35.91 gigabytes purgeable. Ok, first off, I don't

01:02:27 ◼   ► know whether that means I really have 81 gigabytes free and that includes the

01:02:31 ◼   ► 35.91 or whether I have 81 minus 36 free. I don't know which it is. So, and

01:02:41 ◼   ► Apple hasn't... they never mentioned purgeable space to me when I talked to them.

01:02:45 ◼   ► When I got my briefings about Sierra, it doesn't even come up. So that's a

01:02:49 ◼   ► bit weird because now we don't know whether you actually have space free or

01:02:53 ◼   ► whether you have space, you know, "free" in air quotes, which is not actually free

01:02:57 ◼   ► but it could be made free if it wants to.

01:03:00 ◼   ► Ok, so that's weird. I haven't gotten to the best part, Myke.

01:03:06 ◼   ► Alright, the best part is there is another feature. So, space

01:03:16 ◼   ► considerations, good. SSDs that we have in modern Macs are small. It's harder to

01:03:21 ◼   ► fit space. We don't have these huge drives, spinning drives, in a lot of our

01:03:24 ◼   ► computers anymore. Having the system be much more careful about deleting stuff

01:03:30 ◼   ► you don't need, and being aware that, like, something's got a copy in the cloud, and

01:03:34 ◼   ► like, on my iCloud photo library, I've got everything, and on my iMac, I have it set

01:03:40 ◼   ► to optimize storage, because this is not my master library. I'm okay with it

01:03:44 ◼   ► wiping out everything in that cache whenever it needs to.

01:03:48 ◼   ► And being more aware of that is good.

01:03:50 ◼   ► That's a good thing.

01:03:50 ◼   ► I approve of the direction they're going.

01:03:53 ◼   ► I think it's great.

01:03:54 ◼   ► I think it's great that they're doing that.

01:03:55 ◼   ► Here's a place where they maybe went a little too far,

01:03:59 ◼   ► or at least they couldn't implement the feature quite right.

01:04:01 ◼   ► It's got some bugs, but it bit me,

01:04:03 ◼   ► which is this idea of optimizing your iCloud storage.

01:04:08 ◼   ► So this is a part of the optimized storage feature.

01:04:11 ◼   ► And what it does is,

01:04:14 ◼   ► and I think it may actually turn on by default when you enable the documents and desktop syncing.

01:04:21 ◼   ► I'm not 100% on that, but I've heard people say that they didn't enable it and they had to disable it.

01:04:27 ◼   ► And by the way, I recommend you disable this feature.

01:04:29 ◼   ► I think you need to turn this feature off, and I'll tell you why in a minute.

01:04:33 ◼   ► What this feature does is dynamically-- it's what I said about iCloud Photo Library for your files.

01:04:40 ◼   ► if you've got files in iCloud, including files on your desktop or your documents folder if

01:04:44 ◼   ► you're syncing them with iCloud. And the system says, "Oh, geez, there's a lot of stuff being

01:04:52 ◼   ► written to disk right now. I've run out of disk space, but I got a lot of purgeable space.

01:04:57 ◼   ► I can make that available. I'm going to delete some files." Okay, deleting files from your

01:05:02 ◼   ► hard drive is scary, but the system is, to its credit, saying, "Well, this file's already

01:05:07 ◼   ► in the cloud, I can get it later if I want to, so I'm going to delete it now, and it's

01:05:11 ◼   ► available in the cloud. And the way Apple pitches this feature is, it looks at your—it's

01:05:15 ◼   ► a little like how it described Fusion Drive. It looks at your files, it finds stuff you

01:05:19 ◼   ► haven't used in a while. When it needs to delete them, it deletes them. And it puts

01:05:23 ◼   ► a little—they still show up in the Finder as a file, but there's a little download link

01:05:28 ◼   ► next to them, and you click the download link and it brings it back down. Right? No problem.

01:05:32 ◼   ► a problem. So it's a little scary, but right, I'm sure it's fine. I'm sure it's fine. So

01:05:38 ◼   ► here's what happened to me. I was editing a podcast last weekend, weekend before last,

01:05:45 ◼   ► and I'm using Logic, a product made by Apple, by the way, so there you go. And I'm editing

01:05:51 ◼   ► the audio files in it are a couple weeks old. So they're like 600 megabyte files. There

01:05:55 ◼   ► are five or six of them. They're a couple weeks old, but they're being actively read.

01:06:01 ◼   ► not being written to, but they're actively being read, they're being used, they're on

01:06:04 ◼   ► the desktop. My system says I have, like, 60 or 70 gigs free. Plenty of room. Even when

01:06:11 ◼   ► I looked at the purgeable space later, it looked to me like I had, like, 30 gigs of

01:06:15 ◼   ► purgeable space, so I had lots of room. There's, like, literally no reason for it to think

01:06:20 ◼   ► that it needed to delete stuff, right? So I'm editing this podcast, and all of a sudden

01:06:24 ◼   ► one of the voices in the podcast disappears. Is silent. The rest of the conversation continues

01:06:31 ◼   ► one voice disappears and I think, "That's a weird bug." I've seen something like

01:06:34 ◼   ► that in GarageBand before where one

01:06:36 ◼   ► track becomes totally silent, you can't get it back, and you gotta move it to a

01:06:39 ◼   ► different track. So I'm like, "Alright,

01:06:40 ◼   ► this is weird. I'm gonna quit out of Logic and I'm gonna open it again." I open Logic and it

01:06:44 ◼   ► says,

01:06:44 ◼   ► "This file of this person talking, I can't find it."

01:06:49 ◼   ► So I go into the folder on the desktop where I'm working on this project

01:06:54 ◼   ► and sure enough, several audio files from my project

01:06:58 ◼   ► have been removed from my hard drive, but they're in iCloud, but they've been removed while I was working on them.

01:07:04 ◼   ► Which, again, you could argue that since they were a couple weeks old and they were big, they were ripe to be removed,

01:07:12 ◼   ► although I would say, one, I was actually using them, and it seems a shame if the system is incapable of detecting

01:07:18 ◼   ► that they were being read all the time while this was going on, that it seems to maybe was looking at a last modified date? I don't know.

01:07:27 ◼   ► Yeah, because reading in Logic doesn't change the modified date of the file, because you're

01:07:31 ◼   ► not actually working on the file. You're copying the file into Logic and it does like a link

01:07:36 ◼   ► between them, then you edit the local version that's in Logic. But depending on how you

01:07:40 ◼   ► set up your project, the actual file doesn't exist sometimes, and it's just mirroring it.

01:07:47 ◼   ► Yeah, it's reading the file off the disk, and then I'm editing like a proxy inside Logic,

01:07:52 ◼   ► the actual file is untouched, it is just the source file, it sits there and is red. It

01:07:57 ◼   ► is red, which means the system should be able to track file reads.

01:08:01 ◼   ► It should know, it should just know. Like, there's no reason for me, like, from a logical

01:08:06 ◼   ► perspective that this should have ever happened. Right. So, those files are gone, and as far

01:08:12 ◼   ► as I can tell, my hard drive had plenty of space, but it deleted them anyway. At this

01:08:19 ◼   ► point I pretty much said shut her down boys and I downloaded I downloaded everything back

01:08:27 ◼   ► from iCloud copied it all some copied the entire contents of my desktop to a server

01:08:32 ◼   ► somewhere in case something bad happened and turned off all of the iCloud syncing features

01:08:37 ◼   ► now why did I turn them on because I was writing a review of Sierra and I wanted to live with

01:08:42 ◼   ► it and if it was going to bite me I needed to have it bite me and it bit me and did I

01:08:47 ◼   ► I lose anything permanently? No, I didn't. I didn't lose anything. But what it did

01:08:51 ◼   ► teach me is that this is a feature that is not working right because it's deleting

01:08:57 ◼   ► files when it doesn't need to. It's incapable of discovering the files that are being worked

01:09:02 ◼   ► on even by Apple's own apps. And you could argue like, "Oh, well, but you're editing

01:09:06 ◼   ► podcasts. That's a pretty serious feature. You know, you're a power user. This feature

01:09:12 ◼   ► wasn't really meant for that." Well, it let me turn it on, one. So if it's not

01:09:16 ◼   ► really meant for it, maybe it shouldn't let me turn it on for me because I'm

01:09:20 ◼   ► using my files are too big, too, they could make it so that it doesn't sync the big

01:09:25 ◼   ► files. They could make it also make it better, they could make it not make

01:09:30 ◼   ► mistakes, they could allow power user type people to bar certain folders. It is

01:09:36 ◼   ► true if I really wanted to take advantage of this feature I could move

01:09:38 ◼   ► the stuff I'm working on out of the desktop and put it somewhere else.

01:09:42 ◼   ► However, what I would argue is the whole point of this feature is it's places

01:09:46 ◼   ► where people work on files. And that if the solution to the problem of not being able

01:09:52 ◼   ► to count on your files being around is not to put your key files in the places that sync

01:09:57 ◼   ► in order to make your key files available everywhere, you, what's the point of the

01:10:02 ◼   ► feature?

01:10:03 ◼   ► This feature wasn't created to let people sync their junk. Because why would you make

01:10:08 ◼   ► that feature? Like this feature was made because Apple knows that people put the documents

01:10:14 ◼   ► that they're working on on their desktop. They know this, which is why they did this.

01:10:18 ◼   ► Because why would you need the files that you're just temporarily storing somewhere

01:10:23 ◼   ► on every machine that you own? That's not what this file is for. So you may not use

01:10:27 ◼   ► your desktop, like, listener out there for this stuff and you may have a more sophisticated

01:10:33 ◼   ► filing system, but that's not how most people work. Including me, my podcast Scratch Files

01:10:40 ◼   ► and all of the audio files, mostly, live on the desktop whilst I'm working on them. That's

01:10:46 ◼   ► where they go, because it's accessible.

01:10:49 ◼   ► Right, and, you know, fair enough, I think maybe one of the arguments is, well, just

01:10:53 ◼   ► don't turn it on, and it's like, yeah, I agree. Don't turn it on. People shouldn't turn it

01:10:58 ◼   ► on. But it is at cross-purposes with the entire concept here, which is, if this works correctly,

01:11:06 ◼   ► I should be able to flip open my laptop and pick up where I left off. And I can't. And

01:11:13 ◼   ► maybe it's like, well, your files are too big. Fair enough. But there's no other UI

01:11:17 ◼   ► here, so it's either on or it's off. Will most people be editing, you know, WAV files

01:11:23 ◼   ► that are 600 GB in size on a—or 600 MB in size, whatever it is. Big files. Probably

01:11:34 ◼   ► but I think it goes to the larger point here which is I had things deleted silently that

01:11:40 ◼   ► didn't seem to need to be deleted and then I needed them and they weren't there. And

01:11:45 ◼   ► I was fortunate enough to be on a fast internet connection where I could download them again,

01:11:50 ◼   ► but if you're on a slow connection or no connection and those files got deleted silently, that's

01:11:55 ◼   ► it. You don't have the files anymore. And there's no UI for saying always keep this

01:12:03 ◼   ► file. So your only option then is to put it somewhere else, at which point it's not being

01:12:10 ◼   ► synced. And what's the point of that? So, I don't know, the bugs, it's a problematic

01:12:16 ◼   ► feature, it's not for everyone, the bugs make it so that I think it's not for anyone right

01:12:21 ◼   ► now because if I got bitten by this, other people can get bitten by this too. I get what

01:12:26 ◼   ► they're trying to do here. It's not, as far as my experiences go, I feel like it's not

01:12:32 ◼   ► ready to go because if it can just sweep files out from under you while you're working on

01:12:37 ◼   ► them, that's not appropriate for your work files.

01:12:42 ◼   ► One of the things that surprises me the most about a lot of this stuff is how it kind of

01:12:47 ◼   ► feels like a company like Dropbox is doing this. Like they are hacking around inside of OS X

01:12:56 ◼   ► to get this stuff to work. Like the renaming of your desktop and documents folders to desktop

01:13:03 ◼   ► local and documents local that it does, right? Because then it starts pulling them from the

01:13:07 ◼   ► cloud. You can see the fact that those file names have changed, those folder names have changed.

01:13:14 ◼   ► Why should you see that? If you create the operating system, hide this. It really feels

01:13:21 ◼   ► to me like it was made by some ragtag group who's hacking around with only what they have available.

01:13:30 ◼   ► It's like they've just had to build on top of a bad system to get it to work. It just feels really

01:13:37 ◼   ► strange. It's like this is the type of thing that might have been a really great idea to implement

01:13:43 ◼   ► when you overhauled your file system? Which is happening in like two years.

01:13:49 ◼   ► Yep, yep. Anyway, I think, again, I love the reason they're working on this stuff,

01:14:00 ◼   ► and some of these features are good, and others of these features, I think,

01:14:05 ◼   ► just are not good enough. And that's the bottom line. Your mileage will vary depending on what

01:14:12 ◼   ► what your files are and where you're putting them, but I think it's a

01:14:16 ◼   ► feature designed for your key files and so that needs to be a hundred percent

01:14:19 ◼   ► trustworthy. And I'm not sure the interface-less approach here is the

01:14:24 ◼   ► right approach. I feel like I get why Apple doesn't want to put a WYSI

01:14:28 ◼   ► user interface on everything, I get it, but to be able to right-click on a file

01:14:35 ◼   ► and say keep this always, why not do that? Why not do that?

01:14:42 ◼   ► So everything I'm going to say here is based on the preface that my Macs are used for basically

01:14:49 ◼   ► one purpose, which is to record and publish podcasts. They are complete work machines

01:14:55 ◼   ► for me. They are workstations, yeah.

01:14:57 ◼   ► They are workstations. I turn these machines on to record shows, edit shows, then I turn

01:15:02 ◼   ► them off and go back to iOS devices to get the rest of my work done. The rest of my business

01:15:07 ◼   ► is run from iOS devices on my side. So all of this is important for the way that I feel

01:15:15 ◼   ► about Sierra. One thing I don't want before I take my laptop on a trip is to have another

01:15:22 ◼   ► place to check to ensure that the files that I'm going to need when I'm traveling are there.

01:15:27 ◼   ► I don't want to deal with that, right?

01:15:29 ◼   ► That like the podcasts that I'm going to be editing

01:15:32 ◼   ► or just the files that I'm going to be needing,

01:15:33 ◼   ► maybe when I'm on a plane

01:15:35 ◼   ► or maybe when I'm on a hotel wifi connection,

01:15:38 ◼   ► I don't want to be checking

01:15:39 ◼   ► that they are where they need to be, right?

01:15:42 ◼   ► Because that's just another frustration,

01:15:45 ◼   ► another thing that can go wrong,

01:15:47 ◼   ► another thing that can bite me is that,

01:15:49 ◼   ► oh, that file, that two gigabyte file you're relying on

01:15:52 ◼   ► is not there.

01:15:54 ◼   ► Don't want to be dealing with that.

01:15:55 ◼   ► Like dealing with selective sync with Dropbox

01:15:57 ◼   ► is already a big enough problem for me, right?

01:15:59 ◼   ► Because I don't have enough storage on my laptop.

01:16:02 ◼   ► Like that's as far as I wanna go over a problem.

01:16:04 ◼   ► But do you know what as annoying as that is,

01:16:06 ◼   ► that is a complete interface in which I can go in

01:16:10 ◼   ► and check and uncheck everything that I need.

01:16:12 ◼   ► - Well, and this is sort of what Dropbox wants to do

01:16:16 ◼   ► with Dropbox Infinite, the difference being that Dropbox

01:16:19 ◼   ► wants to give you the control over saying always keep this.

01:16:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, my understanding with Dropbox Infinite

01:16:24 ◼   ► you will be able to explicitly tell Dropbox which files they should not take away.

01:16:28 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

01:16:29 ◼   ► Which is great.

01:16:30 ◼   ► And I think that, I think, and I get Apple not wanting to be that fiddly about it, but

01:16:34 ◼   ► I feel like maybe this is a case where it needs to do that, because the last thing you

01:16:38 ◼   ► want to do is be on a plane without internet and need this image for your presentation

01:16:43 ◼   ► that you know you kept in your Documents folder and it's not there.

01:16:47 ◼   ► I mean, it's not like it's deleted.

01:16:49 ◼   ► Again, people freak out about this and think it's deleting my files.

01:16:51 ◼   ► It's like, it's not gone.

01:16:52 ◼   ► No.

01:16:53 ◼   ► it's there, there's a proxy for it there, but it's not really there. And this goes

01:16:59 ◼   ► to the unease that I think a lot of Mac users feel about this, which is

01:17:02 ◼   ► especially power users, although increasingly the Mac is a power user

01:17:06 ◼   ► platform because people are using their phones and their tablets for the non

01:17:11 ◼   ► power kind of things. This is one of those things that makes you uneasy is

01:17:14 ◼   ► the folder isn't where you think it is. The file is there but it's not really

01:17:19 ◼   ► there now it's a proxy file that is telling you you can get the file if

01:17:23 ◼   ► you're on the internet by downloading it it's not actual you know the document

01:17:28 ◼   ► isn't there that you're saying it's a ghost

01:17:29 ◼   ► who's bookie goes so yeah it's yeah I wanted to mention since I'm bringing out

01:17:38 ◼   ► all the issues I have with Sierra I wanted to mention two other features

01:17:42 ◼   ► that are really good features that come from a good place that I can't endorse

01:17:46 ◼   ► wholeheartedly because they aren't consistent and if you think back to

01:17:52 ◼   ► continuity, if you've used continuity features on your on your iPhone and and

01:17:58 ◼   ► your Mac, that's another really cool feature that isn't really consistent

01:18:02 ◼   ► sometimes it works, airdrop sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, who knows why.

01:18:06 ◼   ► Well, we got more like that now, more features like that.

01:18:11 ◼   ► unlocking your your Mac via your Apple watch. When it works it's pretty cool. I

01:18:20 ◼   ► get it to work maybe half the time. And UniversiClipboard, really cool when it

01:18:27 ◼   ► works. The idea that I can copy something on one device and then paste it on the

01:18:31 ◼   ► other device it's really great. I can get it to work fairly consistently

01:18:34 ◼   ► between my iPhone and my Mac. If I copy something on my iPhone I can

01:18:39 ◼   ► paste it on my Mac. The other direction can't get it to work consistently. Other

01:18:43 ◼   ► devices can't get it to work consistently. So it's a cool feature when it

01:18:47 ◼   ► works.

01:18:48 ◼   ► Neither of those features work consistently enough for me to say, "Hooray,

01:18:53 ◼   ► this is a great feature."

01:18:54 ◼   ► It's a great feature when it works, but the downside... and of course they have no

01:18:58 ◼   ► UI, right?

01:18:59 ◼   ► There's no UI for any of this stuff. So it's one of those "it just works"

01:19:02 ◼   ► features, and when it just works, it's magical.

01:19:05 ◼   ► it's really great. The problem is a lot of the times it doesn't just work. And that's

01:19:11 ◼   ► really frustrating because there's nothing you can do. There's no real troubleshooting

01:19:13 ◼   ► you can do. It just, you paste it and it's not there. You're like, "Alright, it's not

01:19:19 ◼   ► there."

01:19:20 ◼   ► And you wave those rubber chickens around and maybe if you're lucky you'll get there.

01:19:24 ◼   ► Turn off Bluetooth, turn it back on, go into airplane mode on your phone, turn it back

01:19:29 ◼   ► on.

01:19:30 ◼   ► I have this problem with personal hotspots. This personal hotspot became part of continuity.

01:19:33 ◼   ► it starts recognizing the devices and that you connect to them easily. Like I was trying

01:19:37 ◼   ► to connect my, see this is the thing right, most people don't deal with this problem,

01:19:41 ◼   ► I was trying to connect my Apple TV to my phone yesterday because I wanted to watch

01:19:45 ◼   ► something and it was the only consistent connection I had. The life of someone with bad internet,

01:19:51 ◼   ► right, this does not happen in Cupertino California. And my Apple TV refused to find my phone,

01:19:58 ◼   ► it just wouldn't do it, I kept turning things on and off and on and off and on and off,

01:20:02 ◼   ► other devices could see it, Apple TV could not see it.

01:20:05 ◼   ► But also, I don't know if anybody's noticed this, does the Apple TV just not bother to

01:20:09 ◼   ► save WiFi passwords?

01:20:12 ◼   ► Most people won't recognize this because who often changes their WiFi network on their

01:20:16 ◼   ► Apple TV?

01:20:17 ◼   ► I do and I have to enter my password every single time.

01:20:20 ◼   ► I don't know what it's doing.

01:20:21 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:20:22 ◼   ► Alright so let me tell you what I'm doing with Sierra.

01:20:26 ◼   ► Okay.

01:20:27 ◼   ► Nothing is the answer.

01:20:29 ◼   ► I'm not upgrading.

01:20:30 ◼   ► This is nothing specifically against Sierra.

01:20:33 ◼   ► Are we going to change the name of the show now?

01:20:37 ◼   ► Staying put with Myke and Jason.

01:20:40 ◼   ► I won't be upgrading and this is not a Sierra problem.

01:20:44 ◼   ► The issues that people are having with Sierra is another reason why I'm happy that I'm not.

01:20:50 ◼   ► But it is more my issue with the Mac.

01:20:53 ◼   ► The Mac bores me now.

01:20:56 ◼   ► There is nothing exciting happening on the Mac.

01:20:59 ◼   ► I'm so sorry everybody. And this is because it's a stable platform. The Mac is, it is

01:21:05 ◼   ► what it is. What we have now is what it will be for some time. Because now there can't

01:21:12 ◼   ► be big changes to it. Right? The biggest change we've had in the Mac was some of the UI changed

01:21:18 ◼   ► a little bit. And that's it. Like that's base, it's basically the same as when it was introduced.

01:21:23 ◼   ► Right? Like they add things to it every year, but it's not like iOS. iOS can still go through

01:21:28 ◼   ► complete overhauls revision to revision. That could just happen. Huge massive changes can

01:21:34 ◼   ► still be added to iOS because iOS has a lot more work to bring it, to make it as completely

01:21:41 ◼   ► capable as the Mac is. Someone like me can do all of their work by and large on iOS.

01:21:48 ◼   ► Most people can do more work on iOS than even I can because part of my work is very specialised

01:21:53 ◼   ► which is doing this stuff. But if I was the type of person that all I did was meetings

01:21:58 ◼   ► and talking to people and sending email. Like if I did a kind of a more standard job again,

01:22:04 ◼   ► like maybe the type of job that I used to do, marketing, I could use iOS completely.

01:22:08 ◼   ► 100%. I would never need a Mac, right? Like if I was, like let's say for example if I

01:22:14 ◼   ► was a writer and I didn't make any podcasts, I could 100% use iOS instead of a Mac, right?

01:22:19 ◼   ► But whatever. So these days my Mac is my workstation. It is a dedicated machine where I do this

01:22:27 ◼   ► type of work. The Mac is kind of is what it is for me. There isn't really a lot of stuff

01:22:31 ◼   ► happening there that's very exciting. And anything that Apple could do, they kind of

01:22:37 ◼   ► can't because it will destroy all the Mac users. Like if they wanted to completely overhaul

01:22:42 ◼   ► it, well, you may as well start a new product line.

01:22:46 ◼   ► Exactly.

01:22:47 ◼   ► Because you can't do anything to the millions of people that are using your operating system.

01:22:53 ◼   ► No, that's why they use the Mac is because it's familiar, because it's the Mac and they've been using it and they've got everything set up.

01:22:59 ◼   ► This is, this is, every time somebody comes up with this thought about like, what if we, John Saracusa talks about this a little bit, like what is the next generation of the Mac and can you get there?

01:23:08 ◼   ► And the answer is it's kind of, you're kind of trapped because people, the Mac is in use because it is familiar.

01:23:17 ◼   ► and if you throw that away, then it's not the Mac anymore, it's something else.

01:23:21 ◼   ► And they already have something else. It's iOS, right? They don't need another something else.

01:23:26 ◼   ► So the Mac is, I think you're right. I mentioned it earlier and you said it here about it being a

01:23:33 ◼   ► workstation. It's like, it's true people buy Macs for lots of levels. There's an education and

01:23:40 ◼   ► people still buy computers for their home. They're not just on iPhones and iPads and things like

01:23:44 ◼   ► that but the mix is starting to change and I've heard certainly in our kind of

01:23:48 ◼   ► group of more technical people I've heard a lot of not necessarily complaints but

01:23:53 ◼   ► people expressing their feelings about Sierra and saying exactly what you said

01:23:58 ◼   ► which is this is a workstation and none of the features in Sierra feel like

01:24:01 ◼   ► workstation features and so they just kind of don't care like they want the

01:24:05 ◼   ► stability instead they're just going to stay put because they their computer

01:24:09 ◼   ► works the way they need to work to do their job and they're not really into

01:24:12 ◼   ► getting new features. And the fact is, most of the features that Apple is rolling into

01:24:17 ◼   ► the Mac at this point are to allow iOS users to feel some comfort and connection with the

01:24:24 ◼   ► Mac that they've got so that they work together better. And I think that's a perfectly reasonable

01:24:29 ◼   ► thing for them to do, but I think it's also reasonable for a Mac user who is trying to

01:24:33 ◼   ► use their Mac to do their job every day, and this has always been true, but I think it's

01:24:38 ◼   ► still true. Not to upgrade for a while and let everything shake out. And like I said,

01:24:45 ◼   ► I think upgrading to Sierra is an inevitability because of security updates and things like

01:24:50 ◼   ► that, and I don't find it, if you turn off the features that you don't want or that might

01:24:54 ◼   ► be pernicious in some way, I find it unobjectionable, and there are some things about it that I

01:24:59 ◼   ► like. But is it a "Oh my god, I gotta have it now, this is gonna help me do my job so

01:25:04 ◼   ► much better kind of update for those people. No, it's not.

01:25:09 ◼   ► And I don't foresee a future where there is a Mac update that does that, that has that

01:25:13 ◼   ► kind of feeling. It's hard to imagine what that would be, but

01:25:20 ◼   ► I would love to see it. I'd love to see it. But it's hard to see the Mac as, to get back

01:25:27 ◼   ► to the Steve Jobs truck metaphor, like it's a truck and we use it to do a job and it

01:25:34 ◼   ► needs to be a good truck and if I had one but I don't know the mix Apple knows

01:25:38 ◼   ► the mix of who's buying Macs but if I had one criticism it would be that there

01:25:44 ◼   ► are the you know iOS is not a truck and moving iOS features to the Mac is making

01:25:50 ◼   ► the Mac it's giving the Mac more non work non truck features and is that the

01:25:56 ◼   ► focus should that be the focus or should it be on things that make the Mac a

01:26:00 ◼   ► better workstation I don't know it may not be realistic it may just this is

01:26:04 ◼   ► what the Mac is and it's always going to be that and and maybe that's fine I

01:26:08 ◼   ► would not I would not want to do my job without my Mac although some of that is

01:26:13 ◼   ► because of the power of the processor in it compared to my iPad and the software

01:26:18 ◼   ► that's available for it like all of my I can't imagine denoising audio files on

01:26:23 ◼   ► an iPad I I'm sure I could do it it would take forever and be painful you

01:26:28 ◼   ► know I sit on my Mac every day and do my job so I love I love the Mac and I I

01:26:33 ◼   ► I always will, but you're right, it does, I do feel a little bit different about it

01:26:37 ◼   ► than I did when it was the only place that I did my work.

01:26:42 ◼   ► So this isn't a new thing for me. In the past, I've kept my Macs on previous versions of

01:26:48 ◼   ► the operating system, because if it's working, why would I upgrade it? Like, when the work

01:26:54 ◼   ► that I output is, requires a stable system. You know, like if I'm writing into a text

01:27:02 ◼   ► editor or into a web app, then it's probably, you know, I'm not going to have too much of

01:27:06 ◼   ► an issue, but I'm recording long stretches of audio, which require stability just to

01:27:13 ◼   ► make it work, right? And to be able to output what then pays my bills. And I will probably

01:27:20 ◼   ► upgrade to Sierra at some point. I would be surprised if I upgraded to it on the iMac

01:27:26 ◼   ► before the next version of the OS X comes out. I probably will leave it until the next

01:27:31 ◼   ► because then it's like the most baked it can be at that point.

01:27:34 ◼   ► And what will probably end up happening is

01:27:37 ◼   ► I am looking to replace my laptop at some point this year

01:27:40 ◼   ► to something more manageable

01:27:42 ◼   ► from a weight and size perspective

01:27:43 ◼   ► because of the uses that I have for that now.

01:27:46 ◼   ► So it'll leave a B to the MacBook or a MacBook Pro

01:27:49 ◼   ► if it is super thin and super light, which is unexpected.

01:27:52 ◼   ► And then I'll be using Sierra on there,

01:27:54 ◼   ► but there's nothing I can do about it.

01:27:55 ◼   ► Right, that's just the version of the operating system

01:27:58 ◼   ► that will come with that Mac, so I'll just live with that.

01:28:00 ◼   ► and then that one will stay put for a while.

01:28:02 ◼   ► So that's kind of my feeling about it.

01:28:04 ◼   ► This week's episode is brought to you by Cricut.

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01:31:15 ◼   ► Relay FM.

01:31:16 ◼   ► All right, Harrison asked, we're in Ask Upgrade now by the way, if you didn't know.

01:31:22 ◼   ► Okay.

01:31:23 ◼   ► Ask Upgrade question from Harrison, "Do you accept Ask Upgrade questions via iMessage

01:31:28 ◼   ► and if so, do they have to be sent with lasers?"

01:31:31 ◼   ► I like Harrison's thinking, we do not accept questions by iMessage because I can't think

01:31:35 ◼   ► of any way that that would work.

01:31:36 ◼   ► Have you noticed that the lasers make the taptic engine move so they're like, the lasers

01:31:42 ◼   ► are vibrating the phone a little bit?

01:31:43 ◼   ► So good.

01:31:44 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:31:45 ◼   ► So good. It's like it feels like it goes up and down. It's really great. I've spoken to

01:31:50 ◼   ► some people who say they can't feel it, but I can feel it. We spoke about it. It's awesome.

01:31:54 ◼   ► Uh, no, but I wish there were lasers over Twitter now.

01:31:57 ◼   ► Jimmy wants to know if we're disappointed with the new watchOS timer application.

01:32:03 ◼   ► I'm overjoyed with it. I don't know why you would be disappointed with it.

01:32:08 ◼   ► If you don't want to use the preset ones?

01:32:12 ◼   ► I know why someone might feel that way, but the application is more reliable now.

01:32:18 ◼   ► So getting to the point where you have to hit the custom one is way quicker.

01:32:22 ◼   ► And also it remembers where your place is more often.

01:32:25 ◼   ► So you're able, like the next time you open the application, there's a strong chance that

01:32:28 ◼   ► it's going to be still on the customized screen so you can just set a new one.

01:32:31 ◼   ► And I use three and five all the time so now I don't even have to enter anything in, I

01:32:35 ◼   ► just tap and I go.

01:32:37 ◼   ► Yeah, it's, I find that it's got most of the timers that I need, but when I need a custom

01:32:43 ◼   ► one, I can get to it way quicker. I'm not waiting around for the watch to do something.

01:32:46 ◼   ► I assume that Jimmy wrote this because he's disappointed with it and this isn't some sort

01:32:50 ◼   ► of setup where he actually loves it but wonders if we're disappointed in it, because that

01:32:54 ◼   ► seems strangely specific. But no, I don't, I'm not disappointed with it at all.

01:32:58 ◼   ► Nope. Yeah, this is what I'd assume too, but I think it's fantastic. I really, really liked

01:33:02 ◼   ► any time wrap as I do like lots and lots of watchOS 3.

01:33:07 ◼   ► Connor asked have you felt the need to replace the tip on your apple pencil yet? No, they

01:33:12 ◼   ► do include an extra tip in the box. I don't know why they do this, I assume they wear

01:33:16 ◼   ► over time but I use mine a lot and I've never had any wear. It's good that they do include

01:33:21 ◼   ► it though or if it breaks or something happens you've got another one right there but no

01:33:25 ◼   ► I haven't felt the need to replace mine and if I haven't I am about 116% sure that Jason

01:33:30 ◼   ► hasn't either. Justin wants to know, do you think the W1 chip will be in the newest iteration

01:33:39 ◼   ► of the Apple Pencil? I do. I assume that this W1 chip is all about better connection and

01:33:46 ◼   ► power management. W1 I'm assuming means wearable one or something. I assume it will power the

01:33:57 ◼   ► the Apple Pencil or at least a new iteration of it.

01:34:00 ◼   ► I'm not entirely sure that it isn't, you know, some version of what became dubbed the W1

01:34:06 ◼   ► isn't in the current Apple Pencil, honestly.

01:34:09 ◼   ► Like that was the starting point of it.

01:34:10 ◼   ► I think the difference is that the Apple Pencil doesn't have, you know, you do the plug lightning

01:34:15 ◼   ► to pair kind of thing and to charge and, you know, I don't think they're going to create

01:34:21 ◼   ► a little pencil case for charging the Apple Pencil, right?

01:34:25 ◼   ► would be amazing. Although wouldn't it be great if you just take the cap off the

01:34:29 ◼   ► pencil or something and have it have the iPad slide up and say would you like me

01:34:33 ◼   ► to pair this pencil instead of plugging it in? But it would be nice if

01:34:38 ◼   ► the sticking, plugging it into your iPad and having it stick out thing was

01:34:42 ◼   ► replaced with some other approach eventually. But I think this is all,

01:34:46 ◼   ► I mean this is the thing, is it the W1? Are they going to call it something else? I

01:34:50 ◼   ► think this is all of a kind. This is Apple's hardware group building tech to

01:34:54 ◼   ► connect these little devices to their bigger devices and so I'm sure it's all mixed in

01:34:59 ◼   ► there. I bet you the Apple Pencil informed the design of the AirPods.

01:35:03 ◼   ► Yeah, I think you're very right actually. Although I do wish that they did make lightning

01:35:11 ◼   ► connected Bluetooth stuff so I could do a quick charge on the road. I know the case

01:35:15 ◼   ► is there and the case does its thing but I need to spend time with the AirPods. I'm eagerly

01:35:22 ◼   ► awaiting them to be released because I really want to get a feel for those things.

01:35:27 ◼   ► And finally today Giacomo asked, since the new Macs are going to presumably have USB

01:35:33 ◼   ► C on them or the new Mac line, when do you think or how long do you think it will be

01:35:38 ◼   ► before Apple start shipping USB C to lightning cables in the box with their iOS devices?

01:35:44 ◼   ► Very interesting question. It's going to happen because they already make it, right? If you

01:35:51 ◼   ► have an iPad Pro you can get the USB C connector and it's for faster charger. It charges the

01:35:58 ◼   ► iPad Pro to a point nine way faster. I think it's going to happen eventually but I think

01:36:05 ◼   ► we are a few years away from it. It will probably be an easier transition to start including

01:36:13 ◼   ► those in the box than it would be the headphone jacks in all honesty because I would expect

01:36:18 ◼   ► that most people use the lightning cable that comes in their box to just plug it into the

01:36:23 ◼   ► thing and then plug it into their phone.

01:36:26 ◼   ► The one that comes in the box is probably usually the one that you keep plugged in by

01:36:30 ◼   ► your bedside or whatever it is you charge your phone every single day.

01:36:34 ◼   ► It's supposed to be in the cable that you throw in your bag and plug into your Mac.

01:36:37 ◼   ► I think we're only a couple of years away in all honesty.

01:36:40 ◼   ► Once we have maybe all current Macs including USB-C on them, I think we may see a switchover

01:36:46 ◼   ► because you probably already have enough cables. Well, so you're, as Mark in

01:36:54 ◼   ► the chat room has pointed out, you know, iPhones, most iPhone users don't have

01:36:58 ◼   ► Macs and the USB is a USB standard is on every computer and lots of chargers.

01:37:10 ◼   ► So I think this is a tough one. I think it's going to be tough for Apple to make

01:37:13 ◼   ► this call. Obviously they don't shy away from having the, you know, making everybody buy

01:37:23 ◼   ► adapters, but I think it's a good question. I wonder if Apple would do something like

01:37:28 ◼   ► include a lightning to USB-C cable or maybe a USB-C to standard USB adapter in future

01:37:38 ◼   ► Mac boxes. So in my Nexus P, which is a USB-C charging device, I got a little USB-C to USB

01:37:46 ◼   ► adapter that came in the box. So that's a possibility. Also, a lot of these Macs that

01:37:52 ◼   ► are going to maybe have USB-C on them, I think it might be possible that they will also have

01:38:00 ◼   ► USB 3.0 on them, at least one. So we may be in a larger, a longer transition here,

01:38:08 ◼   ► if that makes any sense. So you would still be able to use the cable because, yeah, the problem

01:38:14 ◼   ► with putting the USB-C connector in an iPhone without an adapter is everybody who's got not

01:38:20 ◼   ► just a Mac but a PC that doesn't have that. If they're, again, if they're connecting to a

01:38:26 ◼   ► computer which Apple probably knows some small percentage of them that actually

01:38:31 ◼   ► do that. Yeah, so that's why I think like because they probably don't connect to

01:38:37 ◼   ► computers it doesn't matter. That's my feeling that they connect to wall

01:38:41 ◼   ► chargers. Yeah, you could charge them better in fact if you if you shipped a

01:38:46 ◼   ► USB-C cable on a USB-C charger in the box right because yep it can it can push

01:38:50 ◼   ► more power as we know from the the big iPad Pro. So that's that's why I think it

01:38:54 ◼   ► will change quicker than expected because it would just be the one that you plug in.

01:39:01 ◼   ► So we'll see, I mean, but I think this may change a little bit faster than we expected

01:39:05 ◼   ► to because Apple already make the product. They literally make it already. They make

01:39:12 ◼   ► these cables, those cables are in production. So we'll see what happens.

01:39:17 ◼   ► Alright if you want to find our show notes for this week go to relay.fm/upgrade/108 if

01:39:23 ◼   ► you have any questions or follow up or feedback, it's really great to tweet using the hashtag

01:39:27 ◼   ► #askupgrade because it all gets collected into a lovely spreadsheet that we can pick

01:39:31 ◼   ► from for future episodes. If you want to find Jason online, he's over at sixcolors.com and

01:39:37 ◼   ► he is @jasonell on Twitter, J-S-N-E-double-L. Anything interesting coming to Six Colors

01:39:43 ◼   ► over the next week, Jason, that you're working on?

01:39:45 ◼   ► JASON: Oh, I don't know, I'm still getting over having done those things, but people

01:39:49 ◼   ► should definitely check out my book. Ten dollars, take control of a photos, or photos for, take

01:39:56 ◼   ► control of Crash Course, I guess is what it's called.

01:39:58 ◼   ► Good work on knowing the name of your own book there, Snell.

01:40:01 ◼   ► Yeah, Photos Colon, a take control, well I don't get to name it. Crash Course, ten dollars,

01:40:06 ◼   ► we'll put a link in the show notes.

01:40:07 ◼   ► What would your name be?

01:40:09 ◼   ► I don't know, but there would probably not be a colon in it.

01:40:14 ◼   ► If you want to, oh my, if you want to support our sponsors for this episode, we would greatly

01:40:19 ◼   ► appreciate that. Help Spot Cricket, great sponsors we have here and also go and donate

01:40:27 ◼   ► to Stephen Hackett's fundraising page to help raise money for St Jude and bring awareness

01:40:33 ◼   ► to childhood cancer awareness month. There are links in our show notes for that. If you

01:40:38 ◼   ► want to find me online I am on Twitter, I am @imikeyke. We'll be back next week. Until

01:40:45 ◼   ► then thank you so much for listening. Say goodbye, Jaces now.

01:40:48 ◼   ► Bye everybody!

01:40:55 ◼   ► [Music]