284: stevensmerch.com
00:00:00
◼
►
(upbeat music)
00:00:02
◼
►
- Hello and welcome to Connected, episode 284.
00:00:11
◼
►
It's made possible this week by our sponsors,
00:00:13
◼
►
Squarespace, Bolin Branch, and SaneBox.
00:00:17
◼
►
My name is Steven Hackett and I'm joined by Mr. Myke Hurley.
00:00:20
◼
►
- Oh. (laughs)
00:00:22
◼
►
- You did it wrong, but thank you.
00:00:24
◼
►
- I miss an episode, so y'all's even episode
00:00:27
◼
►
is my odd episode.
00:00:28
◼
►
- No, that's not how it works.
00:00:29
◼
►
I just got it wrong, really.
00:00:31
◼
►
Yeah, because it's in there now.
00:00:33
◼
►
Hey, Federico.
00:00:34
◼
►
Hi, Federico.
00:00:35
◼
►
Hello, I'm also here.
00:00:36
◼
►
Yay, all three of us.
00:00:37
◼
►
Federico, do you feel as angry as I do
00:00:40
◼
►
when I'm not announced correctly?
00:00:43
◼
►
Not particularly.
00:00:45
◼
►
I am disappointed in Steven, but I'm not upset.
00:00:49
◼
►
Steven, you gonna issue another apology,
00:00:53
◼
►
another public apology?
00:00:55
◼
►
If you do it too often, it cheapens them.
00:00:58
◼
►
Are you going to publish a fleet about it?
00:01:00
◼
►
Whatever they're called.
00:01:00
◼
►
What are they called?
00:01:01
◼
►
I got to move to Brazil.
00:01:02
◼
►
Yeah, Twitter stories, whatever.
00:01:04
◼
►
What is it called?
00:01:06
◼
►
Got to say, I like that name.
00:01:07
◼
►
Tweets are fleeting, you know?
00:01:08
◼
►
I can't tell if it's a really good name or a really bad name.
00:01:12
◼
►
But that, I think, means it's really good.
00:01:15
◼
►
Anyways, we have just a lot of stuff to do.
00:01:18
◼
►
I'm very glad to be back.
00:01:19
◼
►
I missed you all last week.
00:01:20
◼
►
I really enjoyed listening to the show.
00:01:22
◼
►
Thank you to everyone who sent me weird fish.
00:01:24
◼
►
A lot of people did it in Twitter DMs,
00:01:26
◼
►
which I didn't expect.
00:01:27
◼
►
So like, what is happening?
00:01:28
◼
►
You got the arms open? Yeah. Well then you bring that upon yourself don't you? No it's
00:01:32
◼
►
uh only sometimes creepy things happen. I just want to say something I I I regret
00:01:38
◼
►
none of my tattoos but at this time yeah this time I have you know the thought of
00:01:47
◼
►
the timeliness of my weird fish tattoo has hit me over the past couple of days
00:01:53
◼
►
Because people are using that emoji as coronavirus emoji.
00:01:58
◼
►
Yeah, even though it's not a virus emoji, like it's not called the coronavirus emoji,
00:02:02
◼
►
I think a lot of people call it that.
00:02:04
◼
►
But the coronavirus, the actual virus looks like that emoji.
00:02:08
◼
►
It sort of does.
00:02:10
◼
►
That's the problem.
00:02:12
◼
►
Well, it kind of does, you know, with all the tiny circles around the bigger ball.
00:02:18
◼
►
It kind of does look like it.
00:02:21
◼
►
So I have been keeping my inner arm hidden from other people.
00:02:31
◼
►
You know, just because like what?
00:02:33
◼
►
This is your revenge.
00:02:35
◼
►
Is it though?
00:02:36
◼
►
Because, yes, because you had to bandage that to hide it from us in your meanness.
00:02:42
◼
►
So now you have to hide it from the world.
00:02:46
◼
►
So this is your revenge.
00:02:50
◼
►
Possibly okay, we should be follow up Myke you would tell us about the BBC
00:02:54
◼
►
so the BBC is a part is a
00:03:00
◼
►
publicly funded
00:03:01
◼
►
Organization it's not that produces television shows and radio shows and news and stuff like that and there's a thing called
00:03:09
◼
►
TV license that we will have to pay and then but why would it be in our follow-up could we maybe get to that part?
00:03:17
◼
►
Oh, because they purchased the same Getty image that I purchased of Tim Cook standing
00:03:22
◼
►
in front of our artwork on WWDC 2016. And just in the, this is the image that they used
00:03:30
◼
►
of Tim Cook to talk about Apple opening its first Indian store in 2021, which I've read
00:03:36
◼
►
apparently Donald Trump helped with. I read somewhere, or at least I saw a headline and
00:03:41
◼
►
that's all that news is these days, right? It's just a headline that you see. And then
00:03:44
◼
►
becomes the facts. Was it 2016? 2018? I said 2016, right? Yeah, I think it was... I think
00:03:52
◼
►
it was 2018, because it wasn't this year, it was the year before. Yeah, anyways, yeah,
00:03:56
◼
►
so a lot of people sent us this, this image pops up from time to time. Yeah. It's always
00:04:00
◼
►
good to see it, you know, obviously they chose it because of us. You love to see it. We should
00:04:05
◼
►
also acknowledge the fact that in the first version of the story, Tim Cook was spelled
00:04:09
◼
►
with the final E. So Tim Cook with an E at the end. Is that like the Scottish spelling
00:04:15
◼
►
or the Irish spelling? Cook with an E is a pretty typical way of spelling. Cook. Oh,
00:04:23
◼
►
okay. It's like in America shop is S-H-O-P, but in Britain it's S-H-O-P-P-E. Same thing.
00:04:30
◼
►
Just added the E. Yep, Yeoldy Tim as we call him. Yeoldy E. Yeoldy. Is it true about the
00:04:38
◼
►
the shop it's not about the shop right yeah well okay like technically yes but
00:04:43
◼
►
also no at the same time so it's like choppy that is the old English way of it
00:04:49
◼
►
yeah in America you see it on places that want to look fancy it's not like
00:04:52
◼
►
you would have Photoshop II
00:04:56
◼
►
the only Photoshop is just when you would take like other paintings and just
00:05:02
◼
►
lay them over each other that's that's Photoshop II Wow interesting okay well I
00:05:08
◼
►
I like the, I think it's kind of funny, the way that like the BBC, like the style guide
00:05:12
◼
►
of BBC is like Mr. Cook.
00:05:14
◼
►
Well, the New York Times is that too, but they put a period after Mr. and the BBC doesn't.
00:05:20
◼
►
It's just MR space cook.
00:05:22
◼
►
I didn't know that that was a thing.
00:05:24
◼
►
Maybe I don't know what the rule is in British English for that.
00:05:28
◼
►
Or English I should say.
00:05:30
◼
►
Oh, God damn.
00:05:31
◼
►
Please send your feedback to Casey.
00:05:32
◼
►
Federico, do you want to tell us about unhomekitting a Logitech camera?
00:05:36
◼
►
We received a tweet about the problems that we talked about last week, about the fact
00:05:42
◼
►
that if you wanted to...
00:05:44
◼
►
Well, I had to remove a Logi Circle 2 camera from my existing HomeKit configuration, and
00:05:49
◼
►
because I had previously flashed the HomeKit secure video firmware on the camera, I could
00:05:56
◼
►
not do that setup from scratch using the Circle app from the App Store, because now that camera
00:06:01
◼
►
can only talk to HomeKit.
00:06:03
◼
►
friend of the show, Jonathan, let us know, he sent us a screenshot that basically tells
00:06:10
◼
►
you that if you want to reset your Logitech Logitech 2 cameras to not be HomeKit cameras
00:06:17
◼
►
only anymore, you have to place a phone call or otherwise contact Logitech support. So
00:06:23
◼
►
if you want to un-flash the firmware, if you want to go back to the way it used to be,
00:06:28
◼
►
the LogiCircle 2 camera could be configured and used within the LogiCircle app and HomeKit
00:06:34
◼
►
but without HomeKit Secure Video. If you want to go back, you need to talk to Logitech and
00:06:39
◼
►
let them do it for you. I'm guessing that they will have you download a special firmware
00:06:44
◼
►
file that can override the newer version, but there's a screenshot, there's a documentation
00:06:50
◼
►
page on the Logitech website, and yeah, I'm not touching this, I'm not doing this, I don't
00:06:56
◼
►
want to contact anybody. This is like when you sign up for those online subscriptions
00:07:03
◼
►
and they force you to get in touch with technical support, like with customer support, if you
00:07:07
◼
►
want to unsubscribe. Like, for example, when I subscribed to the, was it the Wall Street
00:07:11
◼
►
Journal that forced you to get in touch with support? And I came up, well, came up is a
00:07:19
◼
►
strong expression, I Googled and I discovered that if you have a California zip code due
00:07:25
◼
►
Due to regulations in California, if you just change that in your account, you will gain
00:07:30
◼
►
the option to do it yourself.
00:07:33
◼
►
If you're a California resident, all these online services are forced by law to offer
00:07:39
◼
►
an unsubscribe button.
00:07:41
◼
►
So this is totally a tangent, but if you have an online service that is requesting you to
00:07:48
◼
►
get in touch with customer support, just change your zip code to any California zip code and
00:07:52
◼
►
and it's very likely that you will gain
00:07:54
◼
►
an unsubscribe button.
00:07:56
◼
►
In any case, this is different.
00:07:57
◼
►
This is not an online service.
00:07:58
◼
►
If you wanna roll back the firmware
00:08:00
◼
►
of your LogiCircle 2 camera,
00:08:03
◼
►
you have to contact Logitech.
00:08:05
◼
►
So even if you live in California, that doesn't matter.
00:08:07
◼
►
Just get in touch with them
00:08:09
◼
►
and go back to the previous version.
00:08:10
◼
►
Honestly, I would, like if I could do it myself,
00:08:14
◼
►
I would probably go back
00:08:16
◼
►
because it hasn't been great so far.
00:08:19
◼
►
This HomeKit Secure Video stuff hasn't been,
00:08:22
◼
►
You know, all my, anytime we're not home, every single time I get the notification that
00:08:29
◼
►
says, "The camera has detected a person." And every single time is that person, and
00:08:35
◼
►
I'm sorry to bring this up on the show, but that person is my dog's butt. So I'm not sure
00:08:40
◼
►
why that particular shape is recognized as a...
00:08:44
◼
►
Is that like when you see faces in toast?
00:08:48
◼
►
It's kind of like that. It's kind of like that. Every single time the snapshot from
00:08:55
◼
►
the camera is Zelda's...
00:09:01
◼
►
Rear end, yes. Let's say that. Every single time, like my heart skips a bit. I'm like,
00:09:06
◼
►
"Oh no, they finally broke in." But no, it's just my dog jumping on the bed.
00:09:11
◼
►
We were bearing it all to the world.
00:09:13
◼
►
Yes, yes. To the camera.
00:09:16
◼
►
So we spoke last week about two things.
00:09:19
◼
►
One, that the technical support pages for HomeKit secure
00:09:23
◼
►
routers request suggested that for your devices
00:09:27
◼
►
to work with the new settings, you
00:09:29
◼
►
needed to remove them all and add them to your home app again.
00:09:35
◼
►
And also at the same time, the ERO
00:09:37
◼
►
had added support for HomeKit secure routers.
00:09:42
◼
►
And we heard from a bunch of enterprising and daring
00:09:45
◼
►
individuals, uh, JJ being one of them,
00:09:47
◼
►
that somehow the Eero app and the whole Eero system will allow you to enable
00:09:53
◼
►
secure router support without needing to re-add everything.
00:09:59
◼
►
This is all very confusing to me because Apple published the documentation,
00:10:04
◼
►
but the Eero app itself and whatever it does and whatever Eero's implementation
00:10:09
◼
►
of the system is means that people are reporting to us. I have not done it.
00:10:13
◼
►
I don't think any of us here have done it.
00:10:15
◼
►
- I'm afraid.
00:10:16
◼
►
- Because I just got an Eero for my new studio
00:10:20
◼
►
that I'm setting up.
00:10:20
◼
►
I'll talk about all this at some point in the future.
00:10:24
◼
►
Like it's a really, like that app is wonderful.
00:10:26
◼
►
Like the Eero app is really nice.
00:10:27
◼
►
Has been a sponsor, not a sponsor.
00:10:29
◼
►
Wasn't able to get one until now
00:10:30
◼
►
because they've only recently launched in the UK.
00:10:32
◼
►
But they're really nice.
00:10:33
◼
►
It's really nice.
00:10:34
◼
►
And it's suggesting that I re-add all my other devices
00:10:38
◼
►
via HomeKit and I'm like nah, I'm fine.
00:10:40
◼
►
But we've heard from many listeners
00:10:42
◼
►
that this is something that they have done and it was working fine for them.
00:10:47
◼
►
I don't know what's going on there.
00:10:48
◼
►
I want to mention that somebody,
00:10:50
◼
►
I don't remember who because I didn't save the tweet, but somebody
00:10:53
◼
►
let me know that
00:10:55
◼
►
there probably was a way for me to avoid having to
00:10:58
◼
►
re-add all of my HomeKit accessories
00:11:02
◼
►
after I changed my Wi-Fi network.
00:11:04
◼
►
And basically this person told me,
00:11:06
◼
►
"Look, all you need to do was create a new network with the same name and the same
00:11:09
◼
►
authentication and the same subnet mask. And at that point, I was like, yeah.
00:11:14
◼
►
Was that all I needed to do?
00:11:17
◼
►
So I'm so disappointed in me for not remembering about the subnet mask. I mean, this is the
00:11:23
◼
►
kind of stuff that Steven would have known. Steven has all the masks, the subnet and the
00:11:30
◼
►
regular net. You have all the masks. I hereby apologize to everybody for not remembering
00:11:38
◼
►
about the subnet mask sorry I'm Stephen do you know what a subnet mask is yeah of
00:11:43
◼
►
course he does yeah Oh doesn't everybody okay fine lastly someone and I tried
00:11:52
◼
►
finding who and I couldn't find it so I apologize but someone sent us a
00:11:56
◼
►
screenshot of the Apple trailers website and they have fixed it since but
00:12:01
◼
►
apparently the header and footer were broken and I just bring this up because
00:12:04
◼
►
the bottom of the page just said Apple footer and like giant text but now they
00:12:10
◼
►
fixed it again so that's a little bit of a letdown for the show. But isn't it more
00:12:15
◼
►
exciting and interesting that somebody did fix it? Yeah somebody is
00:12:22
◼
►
working on this website. Look we're on to you, single person who works on this site.
00:12:27
◼
►
We've been charged. I've emailed with them.
00:12:29
◼
►
We know you're out there. Only you are emailing with this person though.
00:12:35
◼
►
And just to let you know that your work is appreciated. Wait, there's a movie called Connected coming out?
00:12:41
◼
►
Oh yeah, I didn't really want to talk about this, but I guess we have to now. Yeah, there is. It's a...
00:12:47
◼
►
Yeah, there is. It's a movie called Connected. I think it's probably... And the O is the upgrade logo. Come on, Sony!
00:12:54
◼
►
I think this potentially could end up being a problem for us, but I guess we'll have to deal with that at the time that we need to.
00:13:00
◼
►
Somebody at Sony just started listening to relay podcasts, it seems.
00:13:04
◼
►
Well, but that could be a problem for us though, right? Like, you see the issue with like trademarks and all that kind of stuff, but...
00:13:11
◼
►
We'll see what happens.
00:13:12
◼
►
But yep, there is a movie called "Connected" coming out.
00:13:14
◼
►
Also the logo says "con-nected", like the "con" is on a different level of the text.
00:13:19
◼
►
Yeah, because it's connecting. It's like...
00:13:21
◼
►
No, no, no, it's not.
00:13:23
◼
►
Is it because it's a con?
00:13:25
◼
►
No, no, no. The movie trailer is fun. It's from the same people who made like the Spider-Man
00:13:31
◼
►
into the Spider-Verse and the Lego movie. It's from Sony Pictures Animations. It's the people
00:13:35
◼
►
behind those movies as well, like the directors and stuff, writers, directors. But it's about the
00:13:42
◼
►
like bad side of technology. So it is the con, right?
00:13:46
◼
►
Okay. So it's not like a con, like you're a con man?
00:13:50
◼
►
No. Well, there is, it does actually seem to be a little element of that in it too,
00:13:54
◼
►
but I don't think that's what they're going for.
00:13:55
◼
►
So, but did they have a photo of Tim Cook in front of the "Connected" the movie logo?
00:13:59
◼
►
Maybe they will. Like, that doesn't seem outside of the realm of possibility.
00:14:04
◼
►
But yeah, this, I don't know, Steven, you're the legal eagle. I don't know if this will be a
00:14:09
◼
►
problem for us, but I am concerned, I am genuinely quite concerned about it.
00:14:12
◼
►
I'm not worried. I mean, look, Sony comes knocking, we'll just take them on to court.
00:14:16
◼
►
We can take Sony. No, I don't think it's a problem.
00:14:20
◼
►
but I also won't see the movie. So take that, Sony. Oh, it'll be good though. I will see the movie.
00:14:26
◼
►
Okay. Maybe we can do that as our membership special. I mean, we can change your name,
00:14:33
◼
►
but Sony has to give us PlayStation 5s in advance. Yeah, that's the terms of the deal, Sony,
00:14:39
◼
►
if you're listening. Wait, that doesn't work for all of us. Hang on. No, it does. It does,
00:14:43
◼
►
because you can make a YouTube video about it. It'll be great. Exactly. We'll get three
00:14:47
◼
►
Advanced PlayStation fives before any other news outlet and then we will change the name of our show
00:14:53
◼
►
Consider changing that that's the only will change it to connect it to and then if you want to do a sequel
00:15:00
◼
►
Then we need to talk about the PlayStation 6. So yeah, that's those are the terms of our deal
00:15:05
◼
►
When you guys prepared that contract, I'm gonna tell everybody about our first sponsor. Mm-hmm
00:15:10
◼
►
This episode of connected is brought to you by Squarespace
00:15:14
◼
►
Make your next move with Squarespace lets you easily create a website for your next idea
00:15:19
◼
►
With unique domain name award-winning templates and much more
00:15:23
◼
►
maybe your site needs to have an online store or a portfolio or a blog or
00:15:28
◼
►
Image galleries or podcasts anything you need to do Squarespace is the all-in-one platform that lets you get it done
00:15:34
◼
►
There's nothing to install. There's no patches to worry about no upgrades are needed
00:15:38
◼
►
You just don't have to worry about that kind of stuff because Squarespace has got it covered
00:15:42
◼
►
They have award-winning 24/7 customer support if you need any help
00:15:47
◼
►
Let you quickly and easily grab a unique domain name and all of those award-winning templates are beautifully designed for you to show off your great ideas
00:15:54
◼
►
Just last week. I launched a new site for my brother's nonprofit. We built it in Squarespace and it is a
00:16:01
◼
►
Massive site there's lots of content lots of things going on and
00:16:05
◼
►
Squarespace makes it really easy and the best part is he can go in there and update his content update the blog do all these
00:16:11
◼
►
things without my help which is pretty awesome. Squarespace plans start
00:16:16
◼
►
just $12 a month but you can start a trial with no credit card required by
00:16:21
◼
►
going to squarespace.com/connected. When you decide to sign up use the offer
00:16:25
◼
►
code connected to get 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain and to
00:16:30
◼
►
show your support for the show. Once again that's squarespace.com/connected
00:16:35
◼
►
and the code connected to get 10% off your first purchase. I'd like to thank
00:16:40
◼
►
Squarespace for the support of this show and relay FM Squarespace make your next move make your next website
00:16:46
◼
►
I've been working with the chat room
00:16:48
◼
►
While we record live to come up with the future names for the show as Sony continues to buy us out over time
00:16:55
◼
►
So we are now connected and so I decided to go with fast and furious style naming here
00:17:02
◼
►
Okay, so the second so the first rebrand will become connect ood
00:17:07
◼
►
So just be that the number two right in the middle so like TW od right connect
00:17:13
◼
►
See you and any CTW od or to connected to connection is another option for the second
00:17:19
◼
►
for the third is
00:17:21
◼
►
Connected but with a number three in the space of the first e right of course, right?
00:17:26
◼
►
You see how that works and then the fourth one will be
00:17:29
◼
►
Connected but with a four instead of the T
00:17:32
◼
►
and then we'll become connected origins as we reboot the entire show for the fifth installment.
00:17:38
◼
►
You forgot about connected Tokyo Drift though.
00:17:40
◼
►
Yeah, so No Grass Will Grow suggested connected Tichi Joycon Drift, which is excellent.
00:17:48
◼
►
Does Steven know what a Joycon Drift is?
00:17:50
◼
►
I don't know. Oh, he has a Switch.
00:17:53
◼
►
Yeah, I have a Switch.
00:17:55
◼
►
I have not experienced this problem, but I know people have.
00:17:57
◼
►
Interesting. So you do know.
00:18:00
◼
►
Yeah, man of surprises. I know. Federico, you have gone just in all that war against
00:18:09
◼
►
your home pods. You've turned on your children. In the end, Sylvia won. This is the basic
00:18:17
◼
►
conclusion of the story. So I mentioned over the past month how Siri activation on, accidental
00:18:24
◼
►
serial activation on the HomePod became extremely problematic, to the point where the three
00:18:31
◼
►
HomePods that we have in our house were just randomly activating themselves multiple times
00:18:38
◼
►
a day. Just out of the blue, we were watching TV, again, in Italian, or we were talking,
00:18:45
◼
►
and just randomly you hear "I'm on it!" or "Let me work on that!" And like, you would
00:18:51
◼
►
I have no idea what happened behind the scenes, what the HomePod was actually doing. One time,
00:19:00
◼
►
it tried to send a message to a certain John in my address book. To this day, it might
00:19:06
◼
►
have been John Voorhis, might have been John Siracusa, or John Gruber, we'll never know.
00:19:11
◼
►
And finally, the last... is it an American expression, the last straw? Is that something
00:19:17
◼
►
that you say, was when today it picked up, out of nowhere, a phone number. And it confirmed
00:19:25
◼
►
to me, "Okay, I'm calling like 1-2-3-7-8-9-0." And I had to rush to the HomePod and touch
00:19:33
◼
►
the top of the display to say, and say stop, because I panicked. So that was enough. And
00:19:41
◼
►
I had to, Silvia started yelling, as usual, at the thing, and she told me like, "You make
00:19:48
◼
►
a decision, either you disable Siri or I will unplug them all and throw them in the trash."
00:19:55
◼
►
That is quite an ultimatum.
00:19:59
◼
►
So I had to go in the home app settings and disable the Siri activation for all the home
00:20:07
◼
►
Because I, I mean, I gotta agree with Silvia.
00:20:09
◼
►
is too much. This is an impossible situation to be in with this assistant that lack at
00:20:15
◼
►
least three times a day at the very least, just out of nowhere activates itself. Now,
00:20:20
◼
►
I don't know if it's because I live in Italy and the HomePod of course doesn't speak Italian,
00:20:26
◼
►
it speaks English, and that creates a confusion. But ever since I tweeted about it today, a
00:20:31
◼
►
bunch of people got in touch with me to say that the accidental activation also happens
00:20:37
◼
►
in English if you say the word, for example, "see", just right in a way that the HomePod
00:20:43
◼
►
picks it up. Or a couple of people at least told me that they have dogs named Macy. And
00:20:52
◼
►
that also seems to trigger Siri on the HomePod.
00:20:54
◼
►
So you're saying that about names. Super quick tangent. I had somebody write to me, I don't
00:20:59
◼
►
remember where it was, they were asking me a question and they were saying that like,
00:21:04
◼
►
is a kid in this person's child's school whose name is Siri. Oh my. And their life is a nightmare
00:21:12
◼
►
because everybody just says "hey Siri" to them all the time, right? Oh my god. Oops,
00:21:18
◼
►
just turned on mine. Obviously that was bound to happen. But like how terrible for that
00:21:23
◼
►
poor person to have that name because they may be like old enough where like it wasn't
00:21:28
◼
►
a problem when the parents name like that kid's like nine or ten. That could have just
00:21:33
◼
►
been a name, right? But now, like, this person will spend probably their entire life having
00:21:41
◼
►
this joke, even after Siri is gone, right? Like, all the people her age will remember
00:21:47
◼
►
it. That's the brief aside. So, like, just it could be worse, you know, it could be Siri.
00:21:52
◼
►
Yeah, I guess it could be worse. But now, basically, the story is my home pods are just
00:21:58
◼
►
speakers. They are music speakers and
00:22:01
◼
►
Airplay automation devices for HomeKit and for my alarm system, but
00:22:06
◼
►
we are not using them for Siri requests anymore and whenever I need to use
00:22:12
◼
►
Siri I just pick up my phone and I long press
00:22:16
◼
►
the side button. So you haven't got it on your phone
00:22:19
◼
►
anymore? Nope, nowhere. It's gone everywhere? It's gone
00:22:23
◼
►
everywhere. I guess you have the Apple Watch though, right? You could do the
00:22:25
◼
►
the raise thing? Does that work for you?
00:22:27
◼
►
- No, never works.
00:22:30
◼
►
- No, but I disabled it everywhere on my iPhone,
00:22:32
◼
►
on the iPad, on the watch.
00:22:33
◼
►
It's gone, it's gone.
00:22:35
◼
►
I don't use it anymore.
00:22:36
◼
►
And whenever I need Siri, I can just touch and hold
00:22:40
◼
►
on the two home pods that are within reach,
00:22:43
◼
►
or I can just use my phone.
00:22:46
◼
►
The, as I mentioned before, Siri on the watch
00:22:48
◼
►
has also been problematic for me in that it often asks me
00:22:52
◼
►
to repeat what I just said.
00:22:54
◼
►
It seems more reliable on the phone if you hold down the side button.
00:22:58
◼
►
So I'm very bummed about this, of course, because I do love the idea of a persistent
00:23:03
◼
►
home assistant that can listen to you everywhere.
00:23:06
◼
►
But the combination of being unable to tell what exactly Siri heard compared to, say,
00:23:12
◼
►
the Amazon Echo that gives you a log of all the audio activations that you can review
00:23:18
◼
►
and listen to again, this cannot be done with the Apple system.
00:23:23
◼
►
So the combination of that obscurity and the fact that it just kept happening and it just
00:23:28
◼
►
wouldn't stop.
00:23:31
◼
►
In the end, as I said, Sylvia won.
00:23:33
◼
►
She was right and they are now just music speakers and quite expensive music speakers,
00:23:40
◼
►
Can I ask you a question?
00:23:43
◼
►
This is just like a thought that popped into my mind.
00:23:46
◼
►
Is the hotpot available in Italy now?
00:23:50
◼
►
Do you think that there is an often used Italian phrase that sounds like it?
00:23:58
◼
►
Well I mean the obvious one...
00:23:59
◼
►
That would be the thing that would make the most sense to me here as to why you are having
00:24:03
◼
►
the problems that you are having?
00:24:04
◼
►
Yeah, so one of the... it's not really an expression. So in Italian the word "yes" is
00:24:11
◼
►
"si", right? S-I. And colloquialism, I guess, when you're talking to somebody, like in English,
00:24:21
◼
►
like in a conversation, you would say something like "yeah", like when you agree with somebody,
00:24:25
◼
►
just say "yeah". In Italian, we would say "se".
00:24:29
◼
►
I've heard you say that. That's what I was thinking, because I couldn't remember it,
00:24:33
◼
►
but like I've heard you when you, if I'm ever around here and you're talking on the phone,
00:24:37
◼
►
I've heard you say make that noise before and I expect that could be it, right?
00:24:43
◼
►
And this isn't exactly one of them.
00:24:46
◼
►
This isn't a thing where it's like, oh, but it's okay.
00:24:49
◼
►
Because that's not what I'm, you know, it's not what I'm getting at.
00:24:52
◼
►
It's just like, I'm wondering what it could, if there is something which makes it worse
00:24:58
◼
►
And my thought was that like, considering it's not available in Italy or in Italian,
00:25:04
◼
►
like, oh my God.
00:25:07
◼
►
happening to me anyway, so clearly it's not an Italian thing. I don't know why this is
00:25:12
◼
►
happening to me so much today, but I just figured that that might be a particular problem
00:25:18
◼
►
that you're having. I don't know.
00:25:20
◼
►
That is definitely one of the sounds that we make when we're just talking, or something
00:25:25
◼
►
that you would just hear on TV, just something that people say all the time. And obviously
00:25:29
◼
►
all of this would be, you could say, fixed if only there was the option to change the
00:25:34
◼
►
activation phrase and make it a custom one. I believe you can on other smart assistant speakers.
00:25:40
◼
►
You can at least change. I don't think about custom, but you can change.
00:25:42
◼
►
Maybe you can choose between multiple options, but it would be like, you know,
00:25:45
◼
►
something like, "Hey, HomePod." It would be much more different from the sound and the noises that
00:25:53
◼
►
we make when we talk to each other in Italy. So that's definitely part of the problem. And,
00:25:57
◼
►
and of course, something that Apple cannot account for.
00:26:00
◼
►
But honestly, like, even if that's the excuse, right?
00:26:05
◼
►
People could say, well, this happens
00:26:07
◼
►
because you bought a home pot in the US
00:26:09
◼
►
and you live in Italy
00:26:10
◼
►
and it's not supposed to be used like that.
00:26:12
◼
►
But let me ask you then,
00:26:14
◼
►
why wasn't this happening three years ago?
00:26:17
◼
►
So, you know, three years have passed
00:26:19
◼
►
and in theory, technology has gotten even smarter.
00:26:21
◼
►
And it wasn't happening three years ago with the Echo
00:26:24
◼
►
that I also bought in the US.
00:26:26
◼
►
And, you know, and I mean, we have words that are similar to the name of the
00:26:31
◼
►
Amazon assistant. We have like people names that are similar to that.
00:26:35
◼
►
And it wasn't happening.
00:26:37
◼
►
I've observed something interesting about my Amazon Echo recently.
00:26:41
◼
►
Adina pointed it out to me and we were like testing it out together. Uh,
00:26:46
◼
►
so we have an Echo show, right? And when you start,
00:26:51
◼
►
when you give it the trigger phrase, the little blue light,
00:26:54
◼
►
line appears along the bottom of the screen rather than there being the physical light.
00:26:59
◼
►
And we'd noticed that if we said the word, like, all right, I'm gonna say it, sorry,
00:27:04
◼
►
but if we said the word Alexa in part of a conversation whilst talking about the echo,
00:27:09
◼
►
because I don't know why we would do that, but we just bought some new ones, so like maybe that
00:27:14
◼
►
was it, right? What we'd noticed is if you said the word but continued talking, the light went
00:27:21
◼
►
on and off again, as if it was working out that it wasn't supposed to be paying attention.
00:27:28
◼
►
Like, "Oh, yeah, they're not talking to me."
00:27:30
◼
►
And I think it's because all of these systems are currently listening, right? Like, they're
00:27:34
◼
►
always listening, but they have a buffer on them or something, like in very simplistic
00:27:38
◼
►
terms. So maybe there's some kind of machine learning that it's doing where it's analyzing
00:27:45
◼
►
was said before and is disregarding it if it thinks that it's part of a conversation
00:27:52
◼
►
because then we were just testing it and we're just putting the word in the middle of sentences
00:27:56
◼
►
and it wouldn't take the request, it would just turn off.
00:28:00
◼
►
So I don't know if Amazon's doing something different here to Apple but anecdotally I
00:28:08
◼
►
would also say it happens way less to me with my Echo devices than with my Apple devices.
00:28:17
◼
►
Yeah, Siri is a bit over eager to help and I wish there was like a slider that allowed
00:28:23
◼
►
me to say, like define the eagerness of Siri to get in touch with me and offer the help,
00:28:31
◼
►
like a threshold, right, that you could set a different level of activation. But until
00:28:36
◼
►
that changes or until it becomes public knowledge that all these accidental
00:28:41
◼
►
activations have been fixed, the setting is very likely going to stay off
00:28:46
◼
►
because I don't want to hear Silvia yell at the thing and me as a result because
00:28:53
◼
►
of these problems. So the problem with these kinds of issues
00:28:58
◼
►
though is how are you going to know? Flipping the switch on again without
00:29:02
◼
►
without telling Silvianci what happened.
00:29:06
◼
►
Testing your relationship.
00:29:08
◼
►
The setting is gone on all my three home pods.
00:29:10
◼
►
One of them says that I gotta reconnect my iCloud account.
00:29:13
◼
►
And no matter how many times I tap in my password, it says that there's an error, so whatever.
00:29:18
◼
►
You're not reconnecting hard enough.
00:29:20
◼
►
What's wrong with you?
00:29:22
◼
►
I've got one that does that.
00:29:23
◼
►
It's just like I've just given up.
00:29:26
◼
►
I mean it still works as an Airplay speaker, so whatever.
00:29:30
◼
►
It does seem like you have this a little bit worse than others, but we definitely have
00:29:33
◼
►
this in our household.
00:29:34
◼
►
And the one that really gets my wife upset is when it goes, "Hmm?"
00:29:38
◼
►
It's like, "Hmm?"
00:29:40
◼
►
It just really pushes her buttons in a way that I find sort of funny.
00:29:45
◼
►
We have some follow-out.
00:29:47
◼
►
Myke, do you want to walk us through this?
00:29:49
◼
►
Yeah, we do.
00:29:51
◼
►
Well, because I'm not a part of any of it, so I guess I should do it.
00:29:55
◼
►
Federico was on the talk show.
00:29:57
◼
►
It was an excellent episode and I was really actually genuinely very pleased that Federico
00:30:03
◼
►
was on the show because I just thought it was nice.
00:30:06
◼
►
But also I thought it was really good to hear you and John Gruber go at it head to head
00:30:11
◼
►
especially about iPad multitasking because I think what it ended up proving, which I
00:30:15
◼
►
think is always useful in these discussions, is that you end up falling in the middle.
00:30:22
◼
►
is closer to the middle of the argument than they appear to be when on their own. And when
00:30:28
◼
►
two people can have it out and talk about it, it's a useful conversation. So I thought it was really
00:30:36
◼
►
good to hear and I thought it was really good to hear John clarify some of his thoughts and I
00:30:42
◼
►
didn't really find myself disagreeing with any of it, which I think is different to how we have,
00:30:48
◼
►
both me and Federico especially have reacted to some of the things that he's been writing recently.
00:30:54
◼
►
So I thought it was a very good conversation. So and if you listen to last week's episode of this
00:31:00
◼
►
show, which you probably did, it's actually a really nice bridge because there was some of the
00:31:04
◼
►
stuff we were talking about was coming up there too, but with a slightly different take. So I
00:31:09
◼
►
thought it was a really good episode and Federico you did a wonderful job. Thank you. Thank you.
00:31:13
◼
►
I appreciate it. It was a very fun discussion.
00:31:16
◼
►
Steven was on Sara Dietschy's podcast, That Creative Life, and it was a very interesting
00:31:21
◼
►
interview and discussion. It gets very in the weeds in a nerdy, great way about podcast
00:31:27
◼
►
advertising, which I think people might enjoy who listen to this show because us podcast
00:31:32
◼
►
nerds love podcast nerdery, right? So there might be some good stuff there. But also,
00:31:38
◼
►
Sarah is just like a really great creator and she thinks about things in a way that
00:31:43
◼
►
I think people that are slightly younger than us approach online media now. And so we're
00:31:50
◼
►
all a bit old fashioned here now, which I hate to admit, but like the more young people,
00:31:56
◼
►
especially YouTubers that I follow, I've realized that our ways are a bit more old fashioned
00:32:02
◼
►
and it makes me feel older. But Sarah approaches her kind of creative life, no pun intended,
00:32:09
◼
►
in a really interesting way. And it was really fun to hear the two of you kind of talk things
00:32:15
◼
►
through because I think there was like a mutual thing where it was like, "Oh, I hadn't thought
00:32:19
◼
►
of it that way. I hadn't thought of it that way." And it was, yeah, it was really good.
00:32:22
◼
►
Yeah. Crossing the generational divides.
00:32:24
◼
►
Yes, exactly.
00:32:26
◼
►
Like I do with y'all every week.
00:32:28
◼
►
every single week. You also said very nice things about me and Federico so I always appreciate that.
00:32:34
◼
►
And this one, you know, Steven has some merch available so you should go buy Steven's merch.
00:32:39
◼
►
Yeah that'd be sweet, thank you.
00:32:40
◼
►
They're actually really nice t-shirts. And two things, one, which I like, one,
00:32:46
◼
►
Steven made a long sleeve version of his new 512 pixels t-shirt because I asked him to, and two,
00:32:51
◼
►
one thing I didn't ask and you didn't do and I'm really pleased is you didn't print anything on the
00:32:55
◼
►
back. Yeah just the front. You have done that in the past with the back printing and I don't
00:33:00
◼
►
like the back printing so I'm pleased you didn't do that and it's a fun little joke
00:33:04
◼
►
if you don't get the joke because I didn't initially get the joke but when I did I really
00:33:08
◼
►
liked it it's a pun on its hip to be square so go and check out Steven's t-shirt but yeah
00:33:14
◼
►
Steven's merch dot com Steven's merch dot com. Steven's merch dot com.
00:33:24
◼
►
- Stevensmerch.com.
00:33:26
◼
►
- You're making me bad domain.
00:33:29
◼
►
- You hope it's available,
00:33:30
◼
►
or another Steven's making a lot more money than you.
00:33:34
◼
►
- See if it's available.
00:33:35
◼
►
- Let me tell you from my own personal experience,
00:33:38
◼
►
having an actual URL to send people to,
00:33:41
◼
►
to get your merch, which is memorable,
00:33:43
◼
►
is much better for your merch.
00:33:45
◼
►
Like you will note that on this show
00:33:47
◼
►
and on upgrade as well,
00:33:48
◼
►
I have also bought specific URLs when we do merch,
00:33:52
◼
►
because it is very useful because you hear this and you're driving and you're like, "Oh,
00:33:58
◼
►
I have to check," and you forget. ConnectedMerch.com. There's nothing. There's absolutely nothing
00:34:06
◼
►
available. Maybe at some point there will be. I guess we should, you know what, let's
00:34:12
◼
►
talk about the merch elephant in the merch room right now, which is like the reason Steven
00:34:18
◼
►
did his merch, which is probably pointless now, which is for WWDC.
00:34:23
◼
►
You're going to look good sitting at home the first week of June.
00:34:28
◼
►
But that's not why people do merch at this time of year.
00:34:31
◼
►
Like we're all thinking about like, "Oh, do we want to do merch for WWDC?"
00:34:34
◼
►
It seems to be like the typical thing that people do.
00:34:37
◼
►
You do merchandise for the fact that people will want to wear your merchandise to your
00:34:42
◼
►
It is incredibly unlikely now that WWDC is happening.
00:34:46
◼
►
There was one last kind of bastion to fall, which was Google I/O in my opinion.
00:34:54
◼
►
We have been talking about this as everybody has, right?
00:34:57
◼
►
So like the three of us and Jon Voorhees, we talk all the time in a text channel and
00:35:02
◼
►
we have been talking and following all of the events that keep getting cancelled.
00:35:07
◼
►
And I've been saying the entire time it's all on Google I/O.
00:35:11
◼
►
If Google I/O goes ahead, WWDC was going to go ahead.
00:35:15
◼
►
But if Google I/O is cancelled, Apple cannot do WWDC.
00:35:20
◼
►
Because it's all about, you know, obviously coronavirus is becoming a problem, it's a
00:35:30
◼
►
big problem, right?
00:35:31
◼
►
But let's just park that for the moment.
00:35:34
◼
►
We all know it, right?
00:35:35
◼
►
Like we don't need to talk about it, we all know it.
00:35:38
◼
►
But just from a business perspective, Apple cannot say "Hey world, do you want to come
00:35:50
◼
►
Let's all be in a single building, 5,000 people.
00:35:53
◼
►
Irrespective of the safety of the individuals, just from a public relations standpoint, you
00:36:02
◼
►
cannot be the only company right now who's like "No, no, we want you to come over here
00:36:07
◼
►
to our house. Is that cool?
00:36:10
◼
►
The optics of it would be terrible.
00:36:12
◼
►
Exactly. Like, you know, bless them self by self, Wes, they're like hanging on. They're
00:36:18
◼
►
still going ahead at the moment, but everything else.
00:36:20
◼
►
Nobody's going there anymore, so.
00:36:22
◼
►
Yeah, everyone's pulling out of it and everything else is getting canceled. So yeah, it was
00:36:27
◼
►
a Google I/O was canceled yesterday as we're recording this. It was going to be in May,
00:36:31
◼
►
so probably about three or four weeks before WWDC likely would have been. They haven't
00:36:37
◼
►
announced what their plans are going to be but you would expect there will still be a keynote
00:36:40
◼
►
probably presented from Google's campus on May 12th but they've not said anything about that yet
00:36:45
◼
►
and they're refunding everybody because people bought tickets but this is something I thought
00:36:51
◼
►
this is really nice actually if you won the lottery and were able to buy a ticket
00:36:57
◼
►
you your lottery win is rolled over to 2021. That's nice. So they probably won't do a lottery
00:37:05
◼
►
in 2021 and then everybody who had a 2020 ticket secured, they will automatically get
00:37:10
◼
►
a ticket for 2021 to buy, like the opportunity to buy again.
00:37:14
◼
►
Which I think is the right way to do it, right?
00:37:16
◼
►
Because these systems are so difficult.
00:37:18
◼
►
It's such a shame if someone's like, "Yes, I'm finally going to Google I/O."
00:37:22
◼
►
And like, "No, we're going to cancel it now.
00:37:23
◼
►
Here's your money back."
00:37:25
◼
►
Nobody knows where this virus is going to go and where it's going to be by that time
00:37:28
◼
►
of the year, right?
00:37:29
◼
►
It could be better, it could be worse, it could be the same.
00:37:32
◼
►
And every single day it seems like it is changing a lot, right?
00:37:35
◼
►
Like that it's getting better and worse depending on where you are in the world, right?
00:37:40
◼
►
It's a real tricky situation.
00:37:43
◼
►
No company should be holding a large scale event right now.
00:37:47
◼
►
You just shouldn't be doing it.
00:37:48
◼
►
So you know, obviously it's a real bummer if WWDC is cancelled.
00:37:56
◼
►
It's a shame because it's like a real nice community event.
00:37:59
◼
►
we won't be doing our live show because you know we're not gonna go to San Jose on our own.
00:38:05
◼
►
It would be unsafe to do any live show with a large gathering of people.
00:38:11
◼
►
There was like a moment I was like oh I wonder if we would do a live show somewhere else
00:38:15
◼
►
but it's like no in the same reason that there's no WWDC we would not invite a large group of
00:38:21
◼
►
people to come together so it's a real shame but this is probably the way it's gonna go
00:38:28
◼
►
and I wonder what Apple will do. Jason Snow had a really good piece on Macworld,
00:38:33
◼
►
me and him have been talking about this over the last couple of weeks on upgrade as well.
00:38:36
◼
►
What do you guys think Apple will actually end up doing for that week in WWDC's place?
00:38:46
◼
►
So this was one of the topics that we tried to discuss on the talk show and I think the more
00:38:53
◼
►
more I think about it, the more I believe that Apple should do two things. At the very
00:38:58
◼
►
least, there should be some kind of keynote. Like, because, well, let me say that I think
00:39:04
◼
►
there will be a WWDC. It just will not be an in-person event. There should be some kind
00:39:11
◼
►
of day one announcement in the form of a keynote or something else, because a new version of
00:39:17
◼
►
iOS and iPadOS and all the other OSes, they should come out. They must come out, arguably.
00:39:24
◼
►
And so I believe there should be a keynote. Now, should it be like a keynote where it's
00:39:28
◼
►
only Apple employees in the audience and it's held at Apple Park and it's effectively Apple
00:39:33
◼
►
presenting to Apple and then the event is also streamed? Maybe. Could it be a keynote
00:39:39
◼
►
where some members of the press are invited? In theory, that would be the less unusual
00:39:47
◼
►
thing to do, but also you're still inviting a bunch of people from all over the world,
00:39:52
◼
►
and I don't see Apple saying "Oh, we're inviting the press", but not from Italy, not from China,
00:39:57
◼
►
not from Singapore, not from, you know, either you invite them all or you just don't. So
00:40:03
◼
►
there should be a keynote, but I'm not sure if it should be like a media-only keynote
00:40:07
◼
►
or a keynote where its Apple executives presenting to...
00:40:11
◼
►
The thing that they get to do with that though is they don't have to make that decision until
00:40:17
◼
►
- So that they can wait.
00:40:19
◼
►
Also, Apple is in a kind of funny situation
00:40:22
◼
►
because Apple does not pre-announce WWDC, right?
00:40:26
◼
►
Unlike Google IO, Apple just likes to say,
00:40:30
◼
►
oh, we're doing WWDC again.
00:40:31
◼
►
If you ask Apple like in 2019,
00:40:34
◼
►
when are you gonna do WWDC 2020?
00:40:36
◼
►
And they always reply,
00:40:37
◼
►
who said there's gonna be a WWDC 2020?
00:40:40
◼
►
It's one of those things where like everybody knows
00:40:42
◼
►
there's gonna be WWDC next year,
00:40:44
◼
►
but Apple does not confirm that
00:40:46
◼
►
until it's officially announced.
00:40:48
◼
►
So what I think they should do is,
00:40:50
◼
►
WWDC this year should be an online event
00:40:53
◼
►
in the form of sessions that can be still made available
00:40:58
◼
►
as videos with a presenter on stage,
00:41:00
◼
►
or they can just be slides with engineers talking,
00:41:04
◼
►
and Apple asked the tech to do this.
00:41:05
◼
►
They could be live, they could be pre-recorded.
00:41:08
◼
►
I mean, we have daily WWDC sessions now anyway.
00:41:13
◼
►
It's been the case for the past couple of years, I believe.
00:41:15
◼
►
So that'll just be online sessions.
00:41:18
◼
►
Now, one of the benefits of WWC if you're a developer
00:41:23
◼
►
is that you get to attend and you get to do networking.
00:41:27
◼
►
You get to meet people,
00:41:28
◼
►
you get to talk to fellow developers in real life,
00:41:31
◼
►
and mostly you get to talk to Apple face-to-face
00:41:34
◼
►
at the labs.
00:41:35
◼
►
So if you're a developer and you have some problems
00:41:38
◼
►
with your code and you wanna get an Apple employee
00:41:40
◼
►
to look at it, you can physically go to a lab
00:41:43
◼
►
at the convention center and schedule an appointment
00:41:46
◼
►
and you're gonna get the help that you need
00:41:47
◼
►
from Apple engineers.
00:41:48
◼
►
Now, of course, that may be tricky to replicate online.
00:41:53
◼
►
Although, again, it's not impossible.
00:41:55
◼
►
I could see a scenario where developers can schedule
00:41:58
◼
►
a virtual meeting with an Apple engineer
00:42:01
◼
►
and instead of talking to them in real life,
00:42:03
◼
►
you could just talk to them
00:42:04
◼
►
with an Apple developer chat program, right?
00:42:07
◼
►
It's not impossible.
00:42:09
◼
►
And, you know, Apple has faced technical limitations
00:42:13
◼
►
that were much more difficult in the past.
00:42:15
◼
►
Now here we're talking about streaming a bunch of videos
00:42:17
◼
►
and creating a virtual meeting type of service
00:42:22
◼
►
for developers, because I do believe that they should
00:42:25
◼
►
continue to offer some kind of virtual labs for people,
00:42:29
◼
►
because that's one of the real benefits of WWDC,
00:42:31
◼
►
getting the answer that maybe to a bug
00:42:34
◼
►
that maybe you've been trying to fix for a few months,
00:42:36
◼
►
and you talk to an Apple employee and you have a solution.
00:42:40
◼
►
Honestly, that should be a service all year long.
00:42:44
◼
►
But how would they limit that?
00:42:46
◼
►
Well, they can't do that because then people would never get their work done.
00:42:49
◼
►
Right. Also, I get that.
00:42:51
◼
►
The thing is like how, I mean, the 5000 number of people that get to go to WWDC is the inherent limit, right?
00:43:01
◼
►
That's the limit you can make.
00:43:04
◼
►
How would they limit a virtual thing?
00:43:08
◼
►
I don't know.
00:43:09
◼
►
Would it be like a customer service thing where you just get in the queue and like,
00:43:12
◼
►
you are 600th Lion Lion, right?
00:43:14
◼
►
Like that's the problem, right?
00:43:16
◼
►
I guess it could be like a Genius Bar appointment where you go to the web page and it shows
00:43:20
◼
►
you all the available slots for you.
00:43:24
◼
►
Maybe that could be...
00:43:25
◼
►
I figure Jake could use the lottery system to whittle people down and then allow those
00:43:30
◼
►
people the ability to join a queue, right?
00:43:33
◼
►
And also I want to say, maybe, because this is one of the problems of modern Apple that
00:43:39
◼
►
I see mentioned, especially lately, very frequently on Twitter, maybe this is an opportunity for
00:43:44
◼
►
Apple to write better documentation.
00:43:47
◼
►
This has been a problem in the past couple of years, the documentation for certain APIs
00:43:52
◼
►
has been, I don't want to say poorly written, just absent until September.
00:43:58
◼
►
So maybe this is also an opportunity for Apple to provide better documentation, better explanation
00:44:03
◼
►
in the developer docs.
00:44:04
◼
►
- I guess it's more that it may force them, right?
00:44:07
◼
►
- May force them, yes.
00:44:09
◼
►
Yeah, so I think there should be a WWDC,
00:44:13
◼
►
should be an online one this time.
00:44:16
◼
►
I know that it's a bummer because, you know,
00:44:18
◼
►
part of WWDC, the beauty of it is the experience
00:44:21
◼
►
in real life, but what you gotta do,
00:44:23
◼
►
you're not gonna release any OS updates this year, no.
00:44:26
◼
►
Of course you are, if you're Apple.
00:44:27
◼
►
You want to release, you want to launch a new iPhone
00:44:30
◼
►
and that iPhone has a new version of iOS on it.
00:44:32
◼
►
So they should do it, but it should be streamable and everything as much as possible.
00:44:39
◼
►
It should be an online deal.
00:44:40
◼
►
I know what they could name this.
00:44:42
◼
►
Could be WWVC worldwide virtual conference.
00:44:47
◼
►
I don't know if they need to rename it.
00:44:50
◼
►
I don't think that's a thing.
00:44:52
◼
►
I saw somebody say online, which I thought was a good point, which is like, you know,
00:44:57
◼
►
one obvious reason why you don't want this is you don't want all of your engineers to get sick.
00:45:02
◼
►
Like it, because, because then it's not that, oh, we didn't do WWDC this year.
00:45:07
◼
►
So we didn't release software this year because we have nobody here.
00:45:12
◼
►
Right. Because we,
00:45:13
◼
►
we threw everybody in a room with the world and then they all started touching
00:45:17
◼
►
each other. Uh, uh, which is a strange sentence.
00:45:22
◼
►
Um, I, this is it. Yeah. I, I see a lot of people, they're like, oh,
00:45:27
◼
►
Apple doesn't want to do WWDC.
00:45:29
◼
►
This gives them the excuse to never have to do it again.
00:45:31
◼
►
I do not subscribe to that theory.
00:45:33
◼
►
I genuinely believe that Apple and its employees do value this conference because they know
00:45:43
◼
►
it's a community event.
00:45:45
◼
►
And Apple have done lots of things over the last few years to further that, right?
00:45:50
◼
►
Like they always have that page on their site where they promote some other things that's
00:45:53
◼
►
They make their executives available for interviews and on podcasts and stuff.
00:46:00
◼
►
And I also think that Apple like the kind of rock feel that it has, you know?
00:46:06
◼
►
You're like, "Oh, we've got our own festival."
00:46:08
◼
►
And it's like a great thing.
00:46:10
◼
►
And I think that these companies do enjoy this, and they like to be able to do this.
00:46:15
◼
►
And I bet the executives especially enjoy it, right?
00:46:18
◼
►
But they get to walk out on stage and they have these great moments and they get to hear
00:46:22
◼
►
people be really excited about the work that's going on.
00:46:25
◼
►
And I bet the people that present the sessions feel the same, right?
00:46:28
◼
►
They get to have what they're not, you know, Apple employees are not allowed to
00:46:33
◼
►
interact with people.
00:46:34
◼
►
Right. And being able to see the excitement and hear the excitement must and be able to
00:46:40
◼
►
finally share what they're working on.
00:46:44
◼
►
Like all of that stuff I expect is highly valued.
00:46:47
◼
►
And yeah, so you have one year doesn't mean it goes forever.
00:46:51
◼
►
To have that public attribution of your work, to have your work recognized.
00:46:56
◼
►
I think that's important to engineers.
00:46:57
◼
►
And I also want to say that, besides the usual issues that we mentioned, like how world developers
00:47:04
◼
►
go to the labs, I also want to point out all the other important events of WWDC.
00:47:09
◼
►
Like, for example, the accessibility events and the meetups, being able for different
00:47:16
◼
►
members of the accessibility community to gather and to talk to each other and to talk
00:47:21
◼
►
to Apple and to talk to engineers and provide feedback in real life.
00:47:25
◼
►
That's important, right?
00:47:26
◼
►
And it's also an aspect that we should consider.
00:47:28
◼
►
All these other events that happen around WWDC,
00:47:32
◼
►
not just these sessions and the labs,
00:47:34
◼
►
but there's so much more going on.
00:47:36
◼
►
- The scholarship program.
00:47:38
◼
►
- The scholarship, I mean, God,
00:47:39
◼
►
that absolutely is so important, right?
00:47:41
◼
►
To get these young developers, hundreds of them,
00:47:43
◼
►
to travel from all over the world and get an opportunity
00:47:46
◼
►
to meet Apple executives and engineers.
00:47:48
◼
►
And those will be the future engineers,
00:47:51
◼
►
it's very likely, that work at Apple.
00:47:53
◼
►
And so there's so much value to the community aspect of it
00:47:58
◼
►
and being able to gather people
00:48:00
◼
►
and let them talk to each other and meet and discuss ideas
00:48:03
◼
►
and problems and solutions.
00:48:04
◼
►
That is so important, which is such a shame
00:48:07
◼
►
if it's gonna be an online only event
00:48:09
◼
►
because you're gonna lose that aspect.
00:48:11
◼
►
I mean, it just happens,
00:48:14
◼
►
but at the very least you will retain the fact
00:48:17
◼
►
that you have new software coming out
00:48:19
◼
►
and therefore new apps and new features and new products.
00:48:24
◼
►
Oh yeah, VC, sorry, sorry.
00:48:28
◼
►
Worldwide Venture Capital.
00:48:30
◼
►
This episode of Connected is also brought to you by Boll & Branch, the folks who make
00:48:38
◼
►
the softest organic sheets and luxury bedding.
00:48:41
◼
►
If you're looking to add a little luxury to your life, then this is for you.
00:48:45
◼
►
Our wife and I got a set of Boll & Branch sheets and the unboxing experience alone was
00:48:50
◼
►
just out of this world.
00:48:51
◼
►
so good right? I want everything to come in fancy boxes now. They like, there's like a
00:48:56
◼
►
box with a ribbon built into it. It's like, oh hello. Yeah it's very nice and the bedding
00:49:02
◼
►
is just, it's so great. The products are made with uncompromised quality with attention
00:49:08
◼
►
to detail every step of the way. They're meticulously crafted from pure 100% organic cotton and
00:49:15
◼
►
they're such high quality because of that cotton. It's organic long staple cotton which
00:49:20
◼
►
means a bowl and branch sheets get softer over time. They're honestly so
00:49:25
◼
►
soft of the only bedding loved by three US presidents. If you didn't know already
00:49:29
◼
►
bowl and branch are the good guys when it comes to ethical manufacturing. All of
00:49:34
◼
►
their factories prioritize worker empowerment and sustainable incomes. 100
00:49:38
◼
►
percent of that fancy packaging is made from recycled paper. They're the first
00:49:43
◼
►
manufacturer of lemons to be fair trade certified. You really need to give these
00:49:47
◼
►
a try. Shipping is always free you can try them out for 30 nights risk-free. And
00:49:52
◼
►
right now you can get $50 off your first set of sheets at bowlandbranch.com
00:49:58
◼
►
with the promo code connected. Go there now upgrade your bedding you won't
00:50:03
◼
►
regret it. One final time that's bowlandbranch b-o-l-l and branch.com the
00:50:10
◼
►
promo code connected. Our thanks to bowl and branch for the support of this show
00:50:15
◼
►
and relay FM.
00:50:17
◼
►
Listen, a friend of the show, Vidit, sent in a concept that they've been working on
00:50:22
◼
►
for iPad multitasking. So we were talking about this last time. This is maybe my favorite
00:50:30
◼
►
concept that I've seen so far about how somebody could improve multitasking. So there's a couple
00:50:37
◼
►
of things going on here. Vidit is basically addressing three major areas. One is to, and
00:50:42
◼
►
this is from Vidit's tweet, I'll include it in the show notes so you can watch the video
00:50:46
◼
►
to provide a clear path to launch any app in split screen and this is done by this little
00:50:50
◼
►
icon on the top right hand corner next to the clock.
00:50:53
◼
►
You tap this icon and you get a little grid view pop up of your applications so you can
00:50:59
◼
►
add another one in.
00:51:00
◼
►
Right, very simple.
00:51:01
◼
►
So that's how you add an app into the screen.
00:51:04
◼
►
The second is to clearly show which app is in focus and this is done in two ways.
00:51:08
◼
►
One the app that is not currently being interacted with is slightly greyed out, so it's still
00:51:14
◼
►
visible if you need to see it but it's much cleaner to see which one is in focus.
00:51:19
◼
►
Plus in the top left hand corner the two apps that are in split screen, their names are
00:51:24
◼
►
written there and the in use one is both highlighted and larger in font size.
00:51:32
◼
►
And if you switch between them this switches from left to right which is very nice.
00:51:36
◼
►
And also it simplifies the multitasking screen by also adding in Control Center into that
00:51:44
◼
►
So Control Center and multitasking all in one place with the dock there as well.
00:51:49
◼
►
So I just think this is a really useful, clean, powerful and simple version of iPad multitasking.
00:51:59
◼
►
I think it's really great.
00:52:01
◼
►
does of course introduce a new visual element that takes away somewhat from the app experience,
00:52:09
◼
►
and that would be the taller status bar, which of course needs to be taller, because I've
00:52:14
◼
►
been design this to account for the fact that tappable elements must be, I believe, at least
00:52:21
◼
►
44 points in size in the iOS and iPad OS UI, so the status bar needs to be taller.
00:52:27
◼
►
But as you said, it's simpler and powerful at the same time, and it clarifies a lot of
00:52:32
◼
►
the confusion that is typically associated with SplitView.
00:52:35
◼
►
It doesn't necessarily take away from the dock, in the sense that Vidit doesn't show
00:52:40
◼
►
this, but you may as well just invoke the dock as usual and just use drag and drop,
00:52:44
◼
►
because it doesn't seem to suggest that drag and drop is just eliminated altogether.
00:52:49
◼
►
There's just a basic, more intuitive way.
00:52:53
◼
►
And also I want to say I'm 100% on board with the idea of putting Control Center in the
00:52:59
◼
►
This is something that I've always wanted to have.
00:53:01
◼
►
And of course if you're going to have a button in the upper right corner of the status bar,
00:53:05
◼
►
which is also where Control Center is activated right now, well then you would have to move
00:53:09
◼
►
Control Center.
00:53:10
◼
►
And I do believe that the app picker is where Control Center should be.
00:53:14
◼
►
What I like about this concept that I hadn't noticed before Federico is when that button
00:53:18
◼
►
is clicked, the dock also appears.
00:53:21
◼
►
So you would then be able to I guess drag and drop out of there.
00:53:24
◼
►
I hadn't noticed that because the Twitter web player puts all of its UI over that area.
00:53:30
◼
►
So yeah, it's really nice.
00:53:32
◼
►
I like the inclusion of the app name in the status bar.
00:53:36
◼
►
The Mac does that we have the menu bar and right now mine says Safari because I'm looking
00:53:40
◼
►
at our Google Doc in a browser.
00:53:43
◼
►
And that is a nice little thing of hey, this works on the Mac, but we're going to bring
00:53:48
◼
►
it to iPadOS in a way that is like native and makes sense there. And yeah, I like a
00:53:55
◼
►
lot about this. I really do. And if it is additive to what we have now, then people
00:54:01
◼
►
who are used to the drag and drop and the swipey deal, then you can just do that. But
00:54:06
◼
►
if you want to use this little button and this new UI, I think it's a nice middle ground.
00:54:11
◼
►
Do I think that this is what iOS 14 is going to look like? No. But just because like, what
00:54:18
◼
►
is the chances of this happening but I do think this is like just another
00:54:22
◼
►
basically what I like about these things is they give me hope that there are ways
00:54:26
◼
►
to make this system better because smart people are able to come up to come up
00:54:31
◼
►
with them. Vida is a very talented developer and designer. Am I losing my
00:54:35
◼
►
mind or was multitasking and the control center stuff wasn't that in one screen on
00:54:41
◼
►
some device at some point? Didn't it used to be? I believe it was either in in a
00:54:46
◼
►
a leak or...
00:54:48
◼
►
That's what it was. It was leaked to be in the iPhone.
00:54:52
◼
►
Yes, we have seen this before but I do not believe it ever actually made it to a shipping version of iOS.
00:54:57
◼
►
I think you're right.
00:54:59
◼
►
It never was in a shipping version but I distinctly remember this image of an iPhone screen showing the control center next to the app picker, like on the same level.
00:55:11
◼
►
Frankly, that could have just been a concept, one of the many, many concepts that have done
00:55:18
◼
►
I mean, it's better than the iOS 8 deal of putting your contacts in multitasking.
00:55:22
◼
►
Do you remember that?
00:55:25
◼
►
It's kind of just like the contacts in the share square.
00:55:28
◼
►
That name's not going to take off, I hope.
00:55:30
◼
►
I'm telling you right now, it's taken off.
00:55:34
◼
►
It's better than ShareSheet.
00:55:35
◼
►
And I'm just going to keep saying it.
00:55:39
◼
►
So I'm obviously behind on some podcasts. Okay. Yes, I'm behind. Gray's mom refers to
00:55:45
◼
►
it as the Cher Square and both me and Gray think that that is a vastly superior name
00:55:52
◼
►
than Cher Sheet. The Cher Square. Cher Square sounds cuter and also the icon is a square
00:55:58
◼
►
with an arrow pointing out of it. Sure. And it's a much nicer name and makes more sense
00:56:03
◼
►
share sheet. It's easier to say and more fun. I mean why not right why not well
00:56:12
◼
►
except for the fact that you hate nicknames of things but maybe it's just
00:56:15
◼
►
hardware I don't know. I have some real-time follow-up. Oh no is it
00:56:19
◼
►
canceled? No I don't know. Stevensmerch.com with a PH and a V both now
00:56:27
◼
►
redirect to the store. Was that the real-time follow-up? Yeah.
00:56:31
◼
►
- Was it worth interrupting? - Hey man, I got, I got bills to pay.
00:56:38
◼
►
- There's also a link, iOS 8. - Oh yeah, so people will remember what that looked like.
00:56:43
◼
►
- I thought that was your real-time follow-up. - Oh no. Come on, that'd be silly.
00:56:49
◼
►
- Stevensmerch.com almost sounds like Craigslist or something.
00:56:52
◼
►
- It does! It really does! - You could look at that into like a bigger
00:56:56
◼
►
thing. - Wait, is Craigslist because of somebody
00:57:00
◼
►
named Craig? Yeah! It's the founder. Oh my god. It was the guy Craig. Oh my god. And you know,
00:57:05
◼
►
like Myspace was just Tom Space. He was just referring to himself. I just, I just thought
00:57:09
◼
►
that, that Craig's was like a word for something. Craig Newmark. He's like, "Hey, you want to buy
00:57:16
◼
►
some Craig's?" Craig had a list. He has given, he's given away like millions and millions of dollars,
00:57:23
◼
►
which is really cool. So like a guy named Craig, oh my god, so it's not, oh my. Yeah, we'll put
00:57:29
◼
►
Craig Newmark's Wikipedia page in the show notes. This is like that time when I discovered that the
00:57:36
◼
►
word "Christian" comes from Jesus Christ. I had that realization at 14, so quite late in my life.
00:57:42
◼
►
Oh, interesting. Interesting.
00:57:43
◼
►
Yeah, I know. I know.
00:57:45
◼
►
All right, Federico, I have been wanting to talk to you about this for a while. What in the world
00:57:53
◼
►
does the ShiftScreen app do? This seems like something that shouldn't work.
00:57:57
◼
►
OK, so this utility is a new app for iPad.
00:58:03
◼
►
And I believe it's also on the iPhone,
00:58:04
◼
►
but I've only used it on the iPad.
00:58:07
◼
►
So what it does is it takes advantage of the existing APIs
00:58:11
◼
►
for external displays to let you display in full screen,
00:58:17
◼
►
so with no pillar boxing, either a web page or a document
00:58:23
◼
►
on an external monitor.
00:58:25
◼
►
So what you can do here is, when you open Shift Screen, you essentially have two different
00:58:30
◼
►
views. It can be a Web view, or it can be a Document view, like a Document preview.
00:58:37
◼
►
You create multiple tabs in Shift Screen, and then you decide what do you want to put
00:58:42
◼
►
on the external display. And on the external display, because of the existing full-screen
00:58:47
◼
►
APIs that developers, usually game developers, use, you can see a Web page or a PDF document
00:58:54
◼
►
or something else without the black bars at the sides of that view. Now, this is quite
00:59:01
◼
►
ingenious because of course this API was not meant for this kind of utility, but due to
00:59:06
◼
►
a weird iPadOS, like, legacy feature, you can use ShiftScreen. So, follow me here. You
00:59:17
◼
►
You can use Shift Screen in Split View next to something else, and even though you have
00:59:24
◼
►
two apps active at the same time on your iPad, if Shift Screen is on the left side of the
00:59:31
◼
►
Split View and only on the left side, it'll still be able to output a full screen view
00:59:39
◼
►
of the external monitor.
00:59:41
◼
►
So this is a legacy feature in that in the days of iOS 9, the leftmost app was considered
00:59:48
◼
►
the primary app.
00:59:49
◼
►
Yep, that's right.
00:59:50
◼
►
And that was never changed behind the scenes.
00:59:54
◼
►
So if you put Shift Screen on the right, it will not work.
00:59:57
◼
►
But if you put it on the left, and it can be in any Split View size, even the compact
01:00:02
◼
►
one, so you can have a tiny Shift Screen window on the left side of Split View, and then a
01:00:08
◼
►
bigger Safari or Mail window on the right side, and then on the external monitor you
01:00:16
◼
►
will still get a full screen web page or a full screen document.
01:00:20
◼
►
So if you want to have a reference document or reference web page on an external display
01:00:28
◼
►
while still working on your iPad with something else, this lets you do it.
01:00:33
◼
►
And I've been talking to the developer, there are some features that I wanted to see and
01:00:38
◼
►
the developer was kind enough to add them,
01:00:39
◼
►
so now you can define a custom resolution,
01:00:42
◼
►
a custom zoom size for the external monitor.
01:00:47
◼
►
I believe they're also working on better media playback,
01:00:53
◼
►
so maybe in the future you will be able to have
01:00:56
◼
►
like a video playing on the external monitor.
01:00:59
◼
►
But the idea here is that you just put it on the left side
01:01:02
◼
►
of Split View on the iPad,
01:01:05
◼
►
it'll still be considered the primary app by the system.
01:01:08
◼
►
And because of that, you will be able to put right now
01:01:11
◼
►
just web pages and documents on an external monitor.
01:01:15
◼
►
- What does document mean?
01:01:17
◼
►
- PDF documents, any other document that is previewable
01:01:20
◼
►
with Quick Look on your iPad.
01:01:24
◼
►
- In files, yeah.
01:01:25
◼
►
There's a file speaker and you just pick a document
01:01:27
◼
►
and it previews.
01:01:28
◼
►
Now, I've been using this as part of a bigger story
01:01:31
◼
►
that I'm working on, but I've been using this
01:01:33
◼
►
with portable external monitors.
01:01:37
◼
►
So I'm trying a couple of them at the moment.
01:01:39
◼
►
These are like monitors that are portable.
01:01:42
◼
►
They have a built-in battery
01:01:43
◼
►
and you just plug a USB-C cable.
01:01:45
◼
►
- They're called iPads.
01:01:48
◼
►
- No, but that's it, right?
01:01:49
◼
►
They're not computers, they're just portable,
01:01:52
◼
►
usually 1080p, 15-inch monitors.
01:01:56
◼
►
Literally just a screen.
01:01:58
◼
►
And you plug in the USB-C cable or an HDMI cable
01:02:02
◼
►
and you just use the monitor.
01:02:03
◼
►
And this way I can work on my iPad,
01:02:06
◼
►
but also have a monitor next to me.
01:02:08
◼
►
Usually if I don't wanna work in the bedroom,
01:02:11
◼
►
like I can put the monitor on the kitchen table
01:02:13
◼
►
and I can have a webpage on another side.
01:02:17
◼
►
And of course that webpage,
01:02:18
◼
►
you can scroll from shift screen,
01:02:21
◼
►
you can swipe and scroll the webpage,
01:02:23
◼
►
same with the documents.
01:02:25
◼
►
- Like you can't like copy text out of it or anything,
01:02:28
◼
►
I'm assuming?
01:02:29
◼
►
- I'm not sure. - 'Cause it's just
01:02:30
◼
►
a presentation, isn't it?
01:02:31
◼
►
It's just a presentation. You can mirror the UI.
01:02:35
◼
►
So I want to say that maybe there's, I'm not sure though.
01:02:38
◼
►
I haven't tried to copy.
01:02:40
◼
►
Maybe in the mirroring mode though, right?
01:02:42
◼
►
Like you could do more.
01:02:44
◼
►
So like when you're looking at a webpage in the full screen,
01:02:47
◼
►
what are you seeing in shift screen?
01:02:48
◼
►
What is it showing you?
01:02:50
◼
►
That's what I was trying to say.
01:02:51
◼
►
I think you can choose, you can have like a touch pad
01:02:54
◼
►
or maybe you can have a smaller version of the page.
01:02:58
◼
►
I believe usually just like a virtual touch pad
01:03:00
◼
►
then you use that to scroll.
01:03:02
◼
►
But this is, of course, this is ideal for like teachers
01:03:05
◼
►
or anybody who wants to do presentations
01:03:08
◼
►
while also continuing to work
01:03:11
◼
►
on something else at the same time.
01:03:13
◼
►
So like if you wanna do a lecture
01:03:15
◼
►
and you also need to do something else while presenting,
01:03:18
◼
►
you can put Shift Screen on the left side.
01:03:21
◼
►
People will just see the webpage or document
01:03:24
◼
►
that you wanna show them.
01:03:25
◼
►
But on the right side, you can continue using Safari
01:03:28
◼
►
or maybe you can tweet and pretend to be paying attention or whatever.
01:03:32
◼
►
Have you ever given an lecture? Because I don't know what you think is happening whilst
01:03:36
◼
►
the lecture's going on, right? Someone's like, "Oh, just hang on a minute. Let me just send
01:03:42
◼
►
this tweet."
01:03:43
◼
►
I mean, it feels within the realm of possibility to me that somebody has done a lecture so
01:03:49
◼
►
many times that they could tweet at the same time. But also I have given a presentation
01:03:54
◼
►
and the thought of other things occurred to me while talking. So like, I am capable of
01:04:01
◼
►
brain multitasking, I guess. Right. But do you think you could have been able to record
01:04:06
◼
►
them in any way whilst giving the presentation? I don't know, I haven't tried that. I remember
01:04:11
◼
►
how nervous and focused you were, like I would be surprised. Yeah, I don't know, maybe I
01:04:16
◼
►
wouldn't be able to. I mean, I also, I'm not a professional lecturer. True, true. Really?
01:04:22
◼
►
It feels that way sometimes. I'm just kidding.
01:04:32
◼
►
Nice joke, Dad. You did it.
01:04:37
◼
►
You still got it. You still got it.
01:04:39
◼
►
You found the one joke that worked. So, yeah, I mean, Shift Screen shouldn't be a thing,
01:04:47
◼
►
but it's a thing and then of course,
01:04:49
◼
►
all the limitations of the current external monitor system
01:04:53
◼
►
apply, you cannot interact with that screen
01:04:57
◼
►
using a mouse or a cursor and all that.
01:05:00
◼
►
But if you wanna have a webpage or a document,
01:05:03
◼
►
and maybe again, maybe in the future media
01:05:06
◼
►
on an external monitor, this is a solution for now.
01:05:10
◼
►
- This feels like it's gonna break at any moment.
01:05:12
◼
►
- Yes. - Yeah.
01:05:14
◼
►
It's just, it's like, it's a generic bridge
01:05:17
◼
►
to an external display.
01:05:18
◼
►
It's what it is that lets you pick the kind of content
01:05:21
◼
►
that you wanna have on the external display.
01:05:22
◼
►
But I believe this is the kind of thing
01:05:24
◼
►
that as soon as Apple makes it like a proper feature
01:05:28
◼
►
of iPadOS, this is gonna break.
01:05:30
◼
►
Usually that's how it goes.
01:05:31
◼
►
- All right, we have a little bit more to go,
01:05:33
◼
►
but let me tell you about our third sponsor.
01:05:35
◼
►
This episode of Connected is brought to you by SaneBox.
01:05:39
◼
►
Getting your inbox down to zero
01:05:42
◼
►
is almost impossible these days.
01:05:44
◼
►
We all get a lot of email and sometimes the important stuff
01:05:48
◼
►
like that email from your accountant
01:05:49
◼
►
or your significant other,
01:05:51
◼
►
it gets lost with things that don't matter at all.
01:05:54
◼
►
And that's where SaneBox comes in.
01:05:56
◼
►
As messages come in, SaneBox will triage them for you,
01:05:59
◼
►
sorting out those important emails from the noise.
01:06:03
◼
►
It will put what matters in your inbox
01:06:05
◼
►
with all the distracting stuff landing
01:06:07
◼
►
in your SaneLater folder,
01:06:09
◼
►
which lets you deal with what's important right now
01:06:11
◼
►
and review everything else when it suits you.
01:06:14
◼
►
SaneBox has a bunch of nifty features like the Sane Black Hole where you can drag messages
01:06:19
◼
►
from annoying senders and never hear from them again.
01:06:23
◼
►
And Sane Reminders so you can be notified if someone hasn't replied to your email by
01:06:29
◼
►
a certain date.
01:06:30
◼
►
Best of all, you can use SaneBox with any email client or phone.
01:06:34
◼
►
It works wherever you check your mail.
01:06:37
◼
►
I've used SaneBox for so long now I really can't imagine my email life without it.
01:06:43
◼
►
I get a ton of email and it really does an amazing job.
01:06:46
◼
►
And what's great is that I can train it.
01:06:48
◼
►
So if it puts something where I don't want it,
01:06:50
◼
►
I can just drag it out and it learns what I want over time.
01:06:54
◼
►
See how SaneBox can work its magic
01:06:55
◼
►
to remove distractions from your inbox
01:06:57
◼
►
by getting a free two week trial right now.
01:07:01
◼
►
Visit sanebox.com/connected to start your free trial.
01:07:05
◼
►
And you'll also get a $25 credit when you sign up.
01:07:08
◼
►
That's SaneBox, S-A-N-E-B-O-X.com/connected.
01:07:13
◼
►
Our thanks to SaneBox for the support of this show
01:07:17
◼
►
and Relay FM.
01:07:18
◼
►
All right, so we wanted to wrap up this week
01:07:21
◼
►
by talking about Mini LED.
01:07:23
◼
►
And this comes from a new rumor
01:07:26
◼
►
that basically is saying, I'm just gonna list these,
01:07:29
◼
►
a 12.9 inch iPad Pro, a 27 inch iMac Pro,
01:07:33
◼
►
a 14.1 inch MacBook Pro, a 16 inch MacBook Pro,
01:07:38
◼
►
A 10.2 inch iPad, a 7.9 inch iPad mini,
01:07:42
◼
►
particularly a new Apple Watch,
01:07:44
◼
►
would all ship with mini LED technology from 2020 to 2021.
01:07:49
◼
►
That's a lot of stuff.
01:07:51
◼
►
- Now you're getting it?
01:07:52
◼
►
These are not 12 products.
01:07:54
◼
►
- This is one product. - This is one product.
01:07:57
◼
►
(both laughing)
01:08:04
◼
►
- With mini LED, we have created
01:08:05
◼
►
the transformers of computers.
01:08:07
◼
►
It's everything.
01:08:08
◼
►
Steven, can you start before we dig into these actual products?
01:08:13
◼
►
Can you actually tell us what mini LED is?
01:08:17
◼
►
So if you think about a regular
01:08:19
◼
►
non OLED display, so OLEDs are totally different, but like a regular LCD, like
01:08:24
◼
►
in your your MacBook right now, it has
01:08:28
◼
►
backlight LEDs.
01:08:30
◼
►
And one thing that makes the Pro Display XDR special is that it has
01:08:35
◼
►
lot of them and they're arranged in local dimming zones and what this means
01:08:40
◼
►
is that the software can tell the screen okay this part needs to be darker than
01:08:45
◼
►
this part and the more local dimming zones you have you get higher contrast
01:08:51
◼
►
ratios and more dynamic range. Again this is why the Pro Display XDR is special
01:08:55
◼
►
it's not OLED but I forget the number but it's it's a ton of these local
01:09:00
◼
►
dimming zones with these backlight LEDs. What many LED does is it makes the those
01:09:06
◼
►
LED components smaller, much smaller, and so you can not only cram in more of them
01:09:12
◼
►
but you can cram in more local dimming zones so you can get even better
01:09:18
◼
►
contrast and dynamic range than you could get from a typical LED backlit
01:09:23
◼
►
display. So OLED of course has really good dynamic range and really great
01:09:29
◼
►
contrast because black and OLED are pixels that are off. LEDs can't do that
01:09:35
◼
►
but with ones that are smaller and with more dimming zones you can get closer to
01:09:40
◼
►
it so it could pave the way for a nice display improvement without making
01:09:45
◼
►
everything in our lives OLED. If you think about a computer display there are
01:09:51
◼
►
a lot of manufacturers making OLED notebooks and you can do a couple of OLED
01:09:55
◼
►
external displays, but you have burn-in issues and that's a bigger deal on
01:10:01
◼
►
something like a desktop operating system where say the menu bar and the
01:10:04
◼
►
dock are the same place for years on end as opposed to a phone where UI elements
01:10:10
◼
►
change over a lot more often. So this could be a way forward for Apple in
01:10:14
◼
►
improving their displays without going to OLED. And clearly, thank you very much
01:10:19
◼
►
for that, and clearly with that kind of product turnover in two years this is
01:10:24
◼
►
going to be like the new retina? Yeah I mean I don't know so I obviously haven't
01:10:29
◼
►
seen any mini LED display this is new technology so I don't know if it will be
01:10:33
◼
►
even noticeable to most people but or at least in a way that's like super
01:10:38
◼
►
meaningful so I mean it more in a way like Apple will create probably a brand
01:10:43
◼
►
name for this screen and then it will like come to everything they're gonna
01:10:46
◼
►
give it some ridiculous name and yeah it will roll out so yes and that yes that's
01:10:50
◼
►
why I misunderstood what you said and that way yes it'll be like retina where
01:10:53
◼
►
just or true tone or anything else where it spreads but I think is in terms of
01:10:57
◼
►
things you notice I think it's gonna be kind of like true to him like some
01:11:00
◼
►
people see it some people don't but it makes everybody's life better even if
01:11:03
◼
►
they don't realize it I think this will be something that you mostly know us
01:11:07
◼
►
when consuming content like watching video looking at pictures right like
01:11:12
◼
►
because that's where people I think care the most about HDR and contrast and
01:11:18
◼
►
stuff right like oh yeah I kind of yeah so it's gonna be good there but so
01:11:23
◼
►
So that's this technology, we don't really know how Apple is exactly going to implement
01:11:28
◼
►
it yet so there maybe isn't too much we can talk about specifically with that.
01:11:32
◼
►
But the thing that is I think even as if not more interesting from Ming-Chi Kuo's report
01:11:39
◼
►
here is the amount of products listed in the timeframes for some of them.
01:11:44
◼
►
So one of these things is iMac Pro and iPad Mini for 2020.
01:11:50
◼
►
the only two dates that Kuo has given in this particular report. Kuo previously did say
01:11:57
◼
►
that a 16-inch MacBook Pro with mini-LED would also come in Q4 2020, but that's not in this
01:12:03
◼
►
current note. So we'll see. He did also again say the same about a 12.9-inch iPad Pro, which
01:12:11
◼
►
if that's the case, that could be, we've spoken about this second iPad Pro maybe later in
01:12:17
◼
►
the year that it could get 5G and the mini LED. The iMac Pro being listed here is great
01:12:25
◼
►
because it means that it lives because I mean, I basically come to the conclusion that there
01:12:31
◼
►
was it was one and done, but clearly not.
01:12:35
◼
►
These reports from him are very component based, which is why I put a lot of I think
01:12:40
◼
►
all of us put a lot of credence into what he says. You know, this being an iMac Pro
01:12:45
◼
►
versus the regular iMac. I mean maybe that's muddy because the regular iMac is
01:12:49
◼
►
not here for reasons we can talk about. But very clearly Apple is moving forward
01:12:54
◼
►
with this technology and they feel confident enough to basically put it in
01:12:57
◼
►
everything they're gonna update over the next couple of years it looks like. Maybe
01:13:00
◼
►
the the MacBook Air is not in this list. I don't know I don't think that's been
01:13:04
◼
►
mentioned previously but that's a low-end notebook. It just got True Tone
01:13:08
◼
►
and its first revision and so maybe that one you know falls behind a little bit
01:13:12
◼
►
but in a bunch of the nice hardware at least Apple's gonna be moving this direction.
01:13:17
◼
►
The rumoured MacBook Pro, smaller MacBook Pro is I think maybe one of the first times given a size
01:13:26
◼
►
14.1 inches which is kind of around what people had expected that it would go to 14. Yeah for
01:13:33
◼
►
many reasons right one just because the 15 went to 16 but also because then it further
01:13:38
◼
►
differentiates it from the iPad Air from the MacBook Air. Also different from the iPad Air.
01:13:43
◼
►
They're very differentiated now. Yeah. So but here's the thing right so Quo is saying you know
01:13:51
◼
►
sometime in 2020 2021 for this 14.1 inch MacBook Pro with mini LED do you think that we will get
01:13:59
◼
►
a regular LED version sooner or does this product not appear at all until then? I think we see a
01:14:06
◼
►
regular one sooner look they've got to do something with that keyboard and I
01:14:09
◼
►
Think it's totally fine if they revised any of these products before then and they just go to
01:14:16
◼
►
many LED at some point down the road and remember like I could see like a
01:14:20
◼
►
kicking the can down the road kind of thing where like you do the 14.1 say in the spring and then in like
01:14:27
◼
►
October you do the 16 inch of mini LED and then the following year the 14 follows up again
01:14:34
◼
►
And Apple has put the MacBook Pro on pretty much an annual cycle, more or less, since 2016.
01:14:41
◼
►
And so that would fit in with that. Say there's a 14.1 this spring, you know, coronavirus and world
01:14:47
◼
►
economy crashing aside, say there's one this spring. And the 16 will be a year old this fall.
01:14:53
◼
►
So it gets the new display and the 14 follows next year. I think that's a totally natural path
01:14:58
◼
►
for this to follow. Regular iMac is not listed at all here. Do you think, I mean my initial thought
01:15:06
◼
►
was that it could be a price thing. Yeah. They may still redesign the iMac but they don't want to put
01:15:11
◼
►
mini LED in it yet. I don't know. Yeah I don't know either. I mean if the MacBook Air is out
01:15:16
◼
►
for price maybe the the iMac is as well or it could be and I don't I'm not basing this on
01:15:23
◼
►
anything so you know take that for the grain of salt. It could be that larger
01:15:27
◼
►
displays are trickier or a lot more expensive than small displays with this
01:15:31
◼
►
because you think about the LEDs being smaller you need even more of them and
01:15:34
◼
►
so it may be that the iMac Pro price can absorb this cost of this component but
01:15:40
◼
►
the 27 and 21 inch iMac can't and so maybe it would get it a few years down
01:15:45
◼
►
the road. I mean look the iMac, well Apple's done a good job at keeping the
01:15:49
◼
►
GPU and the CPU updated on a pretty regular basis to your point the design
01:15:53
◼
►
is old but it's you can still get with a spinning hard drive and all that stuff
01:15:57
◼
►
so maybe the iMac just just follows along a few years later I'm not really
01:16:03
◼
►
sure. There was a report from well there was some tweets sent out by a noted
01:16:10
◼
►
leaker who goes by the name coin X on Twitter this person like accurately
01:16:16
◼
►
predicted a bunch of stuff about the iPhone, like the name and stuff like that.
01:16:21
◼
►
They tweeted today, they don't tweet very often, they tweeted today two tweets, one
01:16:27
◼
►
saying "IMAC and Mac Mini soon" and that there is a new camera on the iPad and
01:16:31
◼
►
it's great basically. So this would suggest that there is an iMac update
01:16:36
◼
►
coming, but I wonder if... Well again it's been about a year and that's about where
01:16:42
◼
►
Apple's been the last few years with it.
01:16:44
◼
►
So it could just be just a regular-- like last year,
01:16:48
◼
►
you guys covered it and upgraded really well.
01:16:50
◼
►
That was just a pretty boring spec bump of the iMac.
01:16:52
◼
►
Apple made a big deal of it, but it wasn't a big deal.
01:16:55
◼
►
And maybe the iMac is just on that cycle in the Mac Mini
01:16:58
◼
►
Hey, there's new processors.
01:16:59
◼
►
Maybe there's some new GPU options.
01:17:01
◼
►
We've tinkered with the configs a little bit.
01:17:02
◼
►
But it's basically the machine that you know today.
01:17:06
◼
►
It would be a shame if they-- the iMac deserves something.
01:17:12
◼
►
totally deserves a redesign and especially the iMac Pro it's like this
01:17:17
◼
►
is a really powerful machine you've put it in the same case so who knows what
01:17:21
◼
►
what'll happen there it does feel like it's all due whether it comes with this
01:17:25
◼
►
or not I mean who knows there was also there has also been previous this has
01:17:31
◼
►
been previously rumored that micro LED was gonna come to the Apple Watch yeah I
01:17:35
◼
►
wonder if this would be the first product yeah so micro LED is everything
01:17:41
◼
►
I said about mini LED, but even smaller again, so it's okay
01:17:45
◼
►
It's degrees of tininess and oh yeah, cause it's the same mini micro micro is micro. Okay?
01:17:51
◼
►
Yeah, micro mini and then regular so that that rumors around for a long time
01:17:56
◼
►
and it may be that the Apple watch goes to micro LED and
01:18:01
◼
►
Everything else gets mini LED and just over time everything
01:18:05
◼
►
Get smaller because all the benefits are there was interesting though is the Apple watch is OLED now and so
01:18:12
◼
►
And one thing that's really nice about the Apple watch even with the always-on display is the blacks are just off and so it's really good
01:18:19
◼
►
on battery and it looks really good with the black surround on the watch face and
01:18:23
◼
►
Can if micro LED can really mimic what OLED does that would be awesome
01:18:30
◼
►
But for my understanding that's even like many LEDs a step towards that and micro is even further
01:18:37
◼
►
So maybe micro is just on the watch for a while
01:18:39
◼
►
But if Apple does replace the OLED display on the Apple watch with the micro LED
01:18:43
◼
►
They're really making a statement that this is as good as OLED and I would expect that we would see it on things like the iPhone
01:18:49
◼
►
Pro and other devices in the future as well
01:18:52
◼
►
There's one last product that I'm interested in here which is
01:18:59
◼
►
The old iPad mini I got one right here
01:19:04
◼
►
be mentioned here is interesting I would love to see a
01:19:11
◼
►
of this product
01:19:12
◼
►
Can you imagine an iPad mini with?
01:19:15
◼
►
With no bezels and how amazing that could be it'd be about the size of your big iPhone
01:19:24
◼
►
Well, hmm not technically true, but sure we can do that if you want
01:19:29
◼
►
But wouldn't that be cool though?
01:19:31
◼
►
Like if you just had that seven point nine inch screen with a thin bezel around the outside
01:19:36
◼
►
I mean nice it'd be super cool. I have to say I just think it would be nice
01:19:40
◼
►
Very nice. It would be weird to see
01:19:43
◼
►
The not do something different with that
01:19:46
◼
►
Like I wouldn't want to say face ID because again like that
01:19:50
◼
►
I don't know if Face ID going into the future is going to be the only thing that Apple have, right?
01:19:56
◼
►
Like whether they would go back to Touch ID in some way. I think it would be really
01:20:02
◼
►
interesting to see what they do with that. I cannot believe that they would
01:20:05
◼
►
still, they would do all of that, like they will put that screen in it,
01:20:09
◼
►
but keep the design the same, keep the Touch ID and the home button, they'd be kind of weird.
01:20:13
◼
►
Do we want to talk about the upcoming iPad Pro?
01:20:19
◼
►
I mean, yes, we saw that, like, I saw a report a couple of days ago that basically on the
01:20:27
◼
►
line along the lines of there's limited stock of iPad Pro units at some Apple stores. So
01:20:33
◼
►
maybe it could be a sign that a new iPad Pro is coming, but also maybe it may be nothing.
01:20:38
◼
►
It may just be the impact, the impact of coronavirus. And as usual with these things, like it could
01:20:44
◼
►
be this or it could be nothing. So like that was quite funny. But if we believe the timeline
01:20:49
◼
►
there that a new iPad Pro was supposed to come out in the spring, then maybe, you know,
01:20:54
◼
►
we're in March, so in theory a new iPad may come out this month, which is kind of wild
01:21:01
◼
►
to think about because we're basically, you know, we've had a couple of rumors but that's
01:21:06
◼
►
it. We know that there's a new camera and maybe there's going to be a smart keyboard
01:21:09
◼
►
with the trackpad, which, you know, I have it in my queue, an episode of Upgrade where
01:21:17
◼
►
Myke and Jason talked about this that I want to listen to. This is a report coming from
01:21:20
◼
►
the information. Of course, this was, I believe it was rumored at some point in the past,
01:21:29
◼
►
but now the information is putting their weight behind the support saying Apple is planning
01:21:33
◼
►
this new keyboard. And again, we know nothing. We know, like, how is it going to work from
01:21:38
◼
►
an ergonomic standpoint, what's it gonna look like, how big is the trackpad gonna be.
01:21:43
◼
►
And personally I believe it's gonna be a small trackpad, I don't think it's gonna be a MacBook
01:21:46
◼
►
size giant trackpad, I think it's gonna be a small one, like the Surface has, for example,
01:21:52
◼
►
with the Surface Cover keyboard, I think it's gonna be a small one.
01:21:56
◼
►
And I personally believe it's gonna be not just for text editing.
01:22:01
◼
►
I believe if Apple decides to use that premium space for a physical trackpad, that trackpad
01:22:08
◼
►
better be used for everything in the iPad OS UI. But this is all we have. We have no
01:22:15
◼
►
other design details, we have no details on the materials being used. It's very likely
01:22:21
◼
►
that it's going to look like a smart keyboard with the same fabric and the same smart connector
01:22:24
◼
►
system but with the addition of a trackpad and maybe, of course, I suppose a different
01:22:29
◼
►
angle for the iPad because you're going to have to make room for the trackpad in front
01:22:35
◼
►
of the keyboard. I've seen some wild speculations and concepts from people saying "what if the
01:22:40
◼
►
keyboard was the trackpad? What if you could just swipe your fingers over the keys and
01:22:45
◼
►
the keys are also a trackpad?" I would hate that so much. I would hate that because it
01:22:49
◼
►
would feel weird and also like these futuristic ideas, they make sense. Like, they make some
01:22:56
◼
►
sense when they're a concept but then in practice, you know, physics comes in and say "hey guys,
01:23:01
◼
►
I'm this thing called physics and you really can do that.
01:23:04
◼
►
Hey guys, physics here.
01:23:06
◼
►
Physics here, that is not possible.
01:23:08
◼
►
So I think it's going to be a trackpad, a small one, nothing
01:23:11
◼
►
revolutionary from a trackpad standpoint,
01:23:15
◼
►
but absolutely important for the iPad as a product.
01:23:20
◼
►
So this is where we're at.
01:23:22
◼
►
Maybe a new iPad is coming out within the next 26 days,
01:23:25
◼
►
or March has 30 or 31 days.
01:23:31
◼
►
34. So maybe it's coming out in the next 30 days or it's not. So this is fun and it's
01:23:40
◼
►
supposed to have a new camera and major changes to the most important accessories. So I'm
01:23:46
◼
►
excited but also is there going to be an event at this time considering all things?
01:23:53
◼
►
I think at this point it is a bunch of press releases.
01:23:57
◼
►
Yeah, that's which, you know, not as exciting in terms of...
01:24:02
◼
►
Well, unless they want to test what WWE DC where no press is like and they just fill
01:24:07
◼
►
their Steve Jobs Theater with a bunch of employees.
01:24:10
◼
►
Maybe they're gonna have virtual briefings with the press. That could be a thing. Let's
01:24:14
◼
►
meet on Skype and let us tell you about the new iPad. I don't know. I don't know. It's
01:24:19
◼
►
exciting. I want to see this new iPad not for the camera, but for the keyboard. So we'll
01:24:26
◼
►
I think any reporting on the exact, like this product has shipped at this day and now it's
01:24:35
◼
►
this day later.
01:24:37
◼
►
Like at this point where the world is, I don't know if I'd read much into that.
01:24:40
◼
►
Like even the iPhone 11 has slipped to like a week or two depending on the exact skew.
01:24:44
◼
►
I think it's just, it could be that once coming it probably is, but I think any reporting
01:24:49
◼
►
just on that at this point is a little short-sighted.
01:24:52
◼
►
I'm about to go write a report.
01:24:54
◼
►
a new iPhone 11 coming because it slipped by like a week.
01:25:00
◼
►
According to Stephen Hackett from stephensmerch.com.
01:25:03
◼
►
stephensmerch.com.
01:25:04
◼
►
dot com dot com.
01:25:07
◼
►
Okay so I think that does it for this week.
01:25:10
◼
►
If you want to find links to everything we spoke about you can look in your podcast app
01:25:15
◼
►
or you can go to the website relay.fm/connected/284.
01:25:20
◼
►
While you're there, you can send us an email with feedback or follow up.
01:25:23
◼
►
You can become a member to support the show directly, or you can find us on Twitter.
01:25:28
◼
►
Myke is there as I-M-Y-K-E and Myke is the host of a bunch of shows here on Relay FM.
01:25:35
◼
►
You can find Federico on Twitter as Vitici, V-I-T-I-C-C-I, and he's the editor-in-chief
01:25:40
◼
►
of MacStories.net and the father of many home pods.
01:25:44
◼
►
You can find me on Twitter as ismh and you can find all of my best work at stephensmerch.com.
01:25:53
◼
►
I like to thank our sponsors this week, Squarespace, Bowl and Branch, and SaneBox.
01:25:59
◼
►
Until next time gentlemen, say goodbye.
01:26:02
◼
►
Stevensmerch.com.