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2019 in Review: The Date of November Came in September

 

00:00:00   (upbeat music)

00:00:02   Hello and welcome to Connected episode 274.

00:00:13   This is our 2019 year interview episode

00:00:16   and it is made possible by our sponsors,

00:00:18   Squarespace, Pingdom, Hover and StoryWorth.

00:00:23   My name is Steven Hackett

00:00:24   and I am joined by Mr. Federico Vittucci.

00:00:27   - Hello, happy end of the year.

00:00:30   Is that a thing that people say?

00:00:31   - Yeah, it's the end of the year.

00:00:33   It's almost over.

00:00:36   - Finally, the year of Steven is ending.

00:00:39   - The year of Steven two is just around the corner.

00:00:41   - Oh no.

00:00:42   - And we're also joined by our friend, Myke Hurley.

00:00:47   - Oh, hello.

00:00:48   - Hey buddy, the year in review.

00:00:49   So if you are not familiar with this episode,

00:00:53   what we're gonna do is we're gonna go through

00:00:55   the major Apple headlines for the year.

00:00:58   And we kind of see what stories ended up being important,

00:01:01   what stories seem like a big deal,

00:01:03   but weren't funny things that happened.

00:01:05   And we will just work our way through 2019 together.

00:01:09   We do this round robin style, and so we don't mess that up.

00:01:12   Myke has very helpfully put in initials

00:01:14   next to the month names in the Google doc.

00:01:16   - I had to do it 'cause you would probably do

00:01:18   like round robin, but the rounds of round robin per quarter,

00:01:22   so it adjusts the order and then there's like,

00:01:26   we go like a round robin per every half year,

00:01:28   which is different to that one.

00:01:31   - You really want nested round robins.

00:01:33   So like every level down is another round robin.

00:01:36   - It's round, round robin, robin.

00:01:38   - Exactly.

00:01:39   We're gonna start in January.

00:01:43   - Do we have to?

00:01:44   - We do, we do need to go in order.

00:01:45   - Why do we just start in January?

00:01:47   Why don't we round robin the months?

00:01:49   - Time is a social construct.

00:01:51   We should start from June.

00:01:53   - Yeah, that's true actually.

00:01:54   - Yes.

00:01:54   - I agree with that.

00:01:55   - Let me tell you guys something.

00:01:56   I have tried several times to write an episode of "Ungeniest,"

00:02:00   which is the show Myke,

00:02:01   you and I have about things on Wikipedia.

00:02:02   I've tried several times to write an episode

00:02:04   about how calendars work, and it's impossible.

00:02:07   - Oh no. (laughs)

00:02:08   - It cannot be explained by me or any really other human.

00:02:13   Yeah, we're all just in the system.

00:02:15   The Matrix says we start in January,

00:02:16   so we're gonna start in January,

00:02:17   and I'm going to start with huge news, guys.

00:02:21   huge news reported by MacRumors, AirPower has entered production and is coming soon.

00:02:26   This is where you put in the crickets playing.

00:02:29   About every month for the first six months of the year there was a link in one episode which was

00:02:38   about AirPower coming. So I put this one in and it will come up later on when it was cancelled.

00:02:45   This is probably one of the bigger themes of the year because by this point it was very old, right?

00:02:54   Because, well, they announced it with the iPhone 10. They did, right? Yes. In 2017. That's correct.

00:03:01   Then we missed a whole second holiday season. Yes. And so the desperation started to set in

00:03:09   And then the desperation created more rumors.

00:03:14   And then that was one of the big themes of 2019 was just airpower.

00:03:18   It's mere like a hint of a possible existence and then cancellation, which happens later.

00:03:26   Well don't spoil it.

00:03:28   Jesus, Myke.

00:03:29   Or not.

00:03:30   We don't know.

00:03:31   It's January.

00:03:32   Yeah, or not.

00:03:33   We haven't gotten there yet.

00:03:33   It's only January.

00:03:35   Up next, more product rumors. The 2019 iPhones are to adopt USB-C and Apple is working on

00:03:43   seventh generation iPod touch. That did come true. They did ship a new iPod touch in May of 2019

00:03:50   with the the A10 Fusion in it. It's a pretty, pretty beefy little iPod touch, but no USB-C yet

00:03:57   on the iPhones. And we've talked about this a lot. We have not talked about because the cycle of the

00:04:02   the way we've done our show recently is that there's a rumor that Apple is gonna do an iPhone with no ports

00:04:07   It's like jump over USB C to nothing that makes me sad to think about the iPhone

00:04:13   I'll be really disappointed if that's what they do like I hope the 2020 phone has USB C on it. Me too. I

00:04:19   Hope they never get rid of the ports, but that's all other discussion. Yeah, we can have that one another time

00:04:25   Yeah, in fact, I want another button. I want a camera shutter button. But anyways, I want an extra port double ports. Mm-hmm

00:04:31   not the headphone jack though don't want that one give me like two USB C ports

00:04:37   that's what I want nice actually yep Myke in January you tried out the paper

00:04:44   like screen protector on your iPad remember this is that still on your

00:04:49   iPad no I took it off remember it's like some sometime in a few months after I

00:04:53   took it off the reason I've put this in there is because sitting next to me I

00:04:56   have the new one I haven't put it on yet they did a Kickstarter campaign for a

00:05:00   second one and Marco was talking about an ATP a few weeks ago. I had backed

00:05:05   the Kickstarter campaign but didn't want to tell you. I was waiting for

00:05:12   the right time and now is kind of the right time but I haven't actually put it

00:05:16   on my iPad yet but I'm going to. Why don't you do it while we're on the show? Do it

00:05:20   now. That is not something I'm gonna do. Something I did do as well recently was

00:05:25   I got my first dbrand skin. I put a dbrand skin on my Galaxy Fold to make it

00:05:29   look a little bit more like a Pokedex. Can you explain to Steven what a Pokedex is?

00:05:35   It's like a computer encyclopedia of Pokemon. It's like a Rolodex. A Rolodex of Pokemon.

00:05:42   Yes. Oh my, that's where it comes from! It's a Rolodex. Of course Steven knew. I've got

00:05:48   white and red. White on one side, red on another side. So it looks like a, it kind of, in my

00:05:53   mind looks like how a Pokedex would look. Because this device kind of feels like a Pokedex

00:05:56   to me it's kind of cute also in january we got the best apple p of the year meme of all time

00:06:03   yep our personal meme of the year yes uh this was a press release about um airlines apple music

00:06:12   on american airlines so apple did a deal with american airlines where there would be you could

00:06:17   stream apple music for free over their wi-fi whether you were connected to the wi-fi or not

00:06:22   and they created a incomprehensible image.

00:06:26   Like just...

00:06:27   They created an image which is clearly meant to like...

00:06:33   Like replicate a...

00:06:35   Oh yeah.

00:06:36   In-flight safety card.

00:06:37   The safety card, yes.

00:06:38   But there is just like every...

00:06:40   So it's a three box image.

00:06:42   Every image has like so many questions related to it.

00:06:46   It's so good.

00:06:47   I love it.

00:06:50   I love it so much.

00:06:51   The first box is the best one. Just because of the expression of the guy in the picture.

00:06:56   He's just happy.

00:06:57   He's just staring.

00:06:59   What I like is that the lady next to him is reading a blank notebook.

00:07:04   Which is good.

00:07:07   With her eyes half closed also. She's kind of falling asleep.

00:07:10   It's because she's got nothing to read. She's sleepy.

00:07:13   Something that I just noticed is that the playlist that the guy is listening to is the

00:07:18   the new Chicago. So either the guy's leaving Chicago and it's like he's so happy that he's

00:07:22   leaving Chicago or he's arriving, he's landing in Chicago. It's like, yes. And I like that

00:07:28   the image is poorly cropped. So like the arrow on the search back button is like touching

00:07:34   the edge of the phone, which is bad. The piece de resistance is just the satisfied face.

00:07:40   The satisfied, yeah. Of listening to his beats. Because he's looking at the playlist and he's

00:07:44   "Oh yeah, give me some of that sweet, sweet Illinois."

00:07:46   You have to go to the show notes and check this out. Like, if you've not seen this image

00:07:52   before, it's so good.

00:07:55   There should be an award for the Apple person that came up with this illustration. This

00:08:00   is so good. Everything about it is perfect. This is the only good thing that happened

00:08:04   in 2019. And yeah.

00:08:06   I agree.

00:08:07   This image.

00:08:08   I agree.

00:08:09   Like, what's your favorite thing of the year? A JPEG file. This one. Yeah.

00:08:13   Well do we just want to wrap it up here?

00:08:15   Like I can just do four ad reads and we can go.

00:08:18   Yeah okay good.

00:08:19   Before we get into these next, so four items left for January.

00:08:23   You may remember or may not remember these all happened within the span of like two weeks

00:08:28   and it was a nightmare for Apple.

00:08:31   Right?

00:08:32   Like I just wanted to make sure that that was like these four things we're about to

00:08:35   talk about which round out January.

00:08:38   like it was so bad at the time because it just felt like everything was falling

00:08:44   to pieces which was it was very fun. Up first we have the FaceTime bug that

00:08:50   allowed access to the microphone maybe even your camera without you giving that

00:08:58   access. So not only was there that bug do you remember Apple's response to it?

00:09:04   Was it the story with the kid that discovered...

00:09:07   Yes, the kid that discovered it and then the parent wrote that big letter and then Apple

00:09:11   tried to brush it off and then they eventually had an executive go to the house.

00:09:15   They had a photo op or something, right?

00:09:18   Yeah, and that they named the kid and I think that they gave them money from the bounty

00:09:22   program if I remember rightly.

00:09:24   It wasn't just that they had this bad bug, they tried to like, and there's another story

00:09:28   like this later on in the year, Apple tried to brush it away and it got way worse.

00:09:34   - Yeah, they ended up having a software update.

00:09:37   I think they ended up turning off group FaceTime.

00:09:40   - They turned off FaceTime, yes.

00:09:42   - Yeah, until you ran the update

00:09:43   and they never re-enabled it for this old version of iOS.

00:09:46   Yeah, not Apple's finest handling of a situation like this,

00:09:51   but definitely an unusual story.

00:09:54   We don't see this sort of,

00:09:56   there's definitely quality control issues,

00:09:57   but this is a pretty big deal.

00:10:00   - Yeah, 'cause it was to the point

00:10:02   where they had to server side disable a feature of the iPhone.

00:10:06   And as well, if you remember, Group FaceTime was hilariously late as well.

00:10:13   So it came late and then had this massive flaw.

00:10:18   So yeah, that was not a good time.

00:10:19   I remember testing Group FaceTime with you all and John, I think when it was in beta,

00:10:24   and I saw my phone being hot to the touch, like this isn't ready yet.

00:10:28   I was in Seattle, I think, and we tried it all out and like it was just it was

00:10:32   Has anybody ever used it? Group FaceTime?

00:10:35   No, I've never used it. But I very rarely use FaceTime to be honest. Like I very rarely video call anybody.

00:10:40   Maybe if I did that I would if you know what I mean, right? Like if I was

00:10:46   If my family were a FaceTime family, which I know a lot of people are, I could imagine us doing multiple people

00:10:53   on a call, but like we just never do that.

00:10:55   Yeah, I agree.

00:10:57   In January we also had Facebook's VPN app.

00:11:02   It came out that they were using that to collect a lot of data on people.

00:11:06   It was called Project Atlas.

00:11:08   It was basically Facebook went around to a bunch of teenagers and paid them.

00:11:12   That's a good name if we're going to spy on people.

00:11:15   Project Atlas.

00:11:16   And it was previously called Onavo?

00:11:18   Yeah, that's the Onavo VPN thing.

00:11:21   Yeah.

00:11:22   But the problem was with this, as you may remember, this wasn't in the App Store.

00:11:26   it was being spread around with an enterprise certificate,

00:11:30   which Facebook were publicly getting people into.

00:11:33   Like they had like Instagram ads and stuff like that

00:11:36   to get people to sign up for this.

00:11:39   And then they were installing an app

00:11:40   with an enterprise certificate,

00:11:41   which made Apple revoke Facebook's enterprise certificate

00:11:45   completely for a period of time while they fixed it.

00:11:49   And if you remember, they also did it to Google as well.

00:11:51   - Which basically broke Facebook

00:11:53   because they used that certificate

00:11:54   on all their internal apps.

00:11:56   and we've been to Facebook's campus, right?

00:11:58   You need an app to order food or do all these things.

00:12:01   And from accounts in the company,

00:12:03   it basically just meant no one could do anything for a while.

00:12:06   And then Facebook and Apple came to some sort of agreement.

00:12:10   Because I mean, look, these companies,

00:12:12   as kind of gross as it is, they do all need each other.

00:12:15   The iPhone has to have the Facebook app on it

00:12:17   to be a smartphone people want.

00:12:20   But they got it worked out, I guess.

00:12:23   And it did spin off a bunch of discussion

00:12:26   about these enterprise certificates

00:12:28   and Apple's rules about them are actually pretty strict

00:12:31   in how a lot of big companies were basically

00:12:34   just doing what they wanted to with them.

00:12:36   So I don't know if they've made any big changes

00:12:39   to that program, but I think these companies

00:12:41   are gonna be a lot more careful about using them

00:12:45   with public people in the future.

00:12:48   - Yeah, 'cause you gotta imagine, right,

00:12:50   like Apple did kind of bring down the hammer a little bit,

00:12:52   not as much as some people would have liked, but they did,

00:12:55   there were ramifications. Yeah.

00:12:57   I wouldn't be surprised if those ramifications came with a more serious threat,

00:13:01   right? Just like we catch you doing this again. It's over.

00:13:06   Which is within Apple's right. You know, it's, it's their,

00:13:09   their right to protect their platform and Facebook man.

00:13:13   Cause I'm pretty sure that the,

00:13:14   like the agreement terms of the enterprise program is that you cannot use

00:13:20   program to make publicly available software.

00:13:23   Right.

00:13:23   What they were doing.

00:13:24   Yeah.

00:13:24   They're made for internal testing and depending on how you read it, even

00:13:30   Facebook's use of it for like internal apps for their employees, like even that

00:13:35   may be beyond the scope of what Apple intends with these certificates.

00:13:39   So, yeah, I think that, I mean, I don't know, there are people smart and

00:13:42   in me, but like, I think ultimately there needs to be a method of only being able

00:13:46   to distribute these over like a net company's network.

00:13:50   And that's the only way it can be done.

00:13:52   You know, you have to be connected to this Facebook Wi-Fi, corporate Wi-Fi,

00:13:57   and it can be distributed that way.

00:13:58   Otherwise, you can't. I think having these things distributed over the Internet is a problem.

00:14:02   Or like, by cable or something, if it's for distributed workers, I don't know.

00:14:07   But it just feels like that it's not really a great system.

00:14:13   I think the Enterprise Certificate was actually just created so teams of developers could install the apps they were testing.

00:14:19   I don't think that they were it was created so like a

00:14:23   Company of a thousand people could have the app that they do have said at lunch that they just don't want to go into the public

00:14:29   That stuff should be done through web apps probably so that is that's January. That's January so we've on to February

00:14:37   So Angela Arendt leaves Apple and Deidre O'Brien assumes the retail role

00:14:43   Combining retail and people and the year of Steven

00:14:47   This is where Steven got drunk with power because we made our picks and then just a couple of weeks later the first

00:14:53   executive of the year left

00:14:55   Apple and it was surprising and it was one of those it was weird because it happened very quickly like

00:15:01   Angela's going, Deirdre's in place, Angela's gone, right? Like it wasn't like the Johnny thing where it's like it was

00:15:08   much more in advance

00:15:10   It seems like that they announced his departure before he actually left like Angela seemed to have been gone immediately. And of course

00:15:17   You may remember that this was also around the time that Apple started doing a lot of different things around the way that iPhones were

00:15:23   sold after a disappointing quarterly result the year before

00:15:26   and that the tea leaves and then some reports afterwards seemed to indicate that

00:15:32   Angela came in to do a specific job and to build Apple stores a specific way with with programs

00:15:39   But then Apple's business changed and the things that she was brought in to do

00:15:46   couldn't work anymore and they had to change a lot of stuff around the way that iPhones were sold and that the

00:15:51   Apple stores looked and they needed somebody different for that because it was not the role that Angela was brought in for and so

00:15:57   It seemed like that. It seemed like I don't know like an amicable parting of ways probably

00:16:01   Do we think the Apple stores have gotten better in terms of buying stuff or getting support? I haven't been there

00:16:09   I wouldn't say that. I mean I've never had terrible problems, but like

00:16:13   It's a thing that I've seen constant like, you know, it's like yes like that's

00:16:17   It is as bad as it's always been or as good as it's always been but the main thing that I've seen is like

00:16:23   Well, there's different signage and stuff in the Apple stores that more clearly spell out some stuff about the phones

00:16:28   Yes, they're trying to separate the phone line

00:16:30   Yeah and show people and there but then the biggest thing is

00:16:33   There are like these are the ways you can get an iPhone for cheaper than you thought supposed us all over the place

00:16:38   Yeah, I saw also I worked by

00:16:42   recently and I saw new signage for Apple TV+ that clearly explains like if you buy a new

00:16:49   device, you get a year of Apple TV+ and you get all these shows. It's like super like

00:16:55   clear language, you know, not aspirational posters or that kind of stuff, which I think

00:17:00   is good. I think it's good to, you know, to have a more pragmatic approach.

00:17:04   All right. So what else do we have? Reports of alternate app stores that use the Enterprise

00:17:11   certificate not being taken down by Apple. So TechCrunch were on a beat at this point

00:17:15   because the VPN app thing was a big exclusive for them. And then they kept having a bunch

00:17:21   of really great reports. And so they kept going and kept going. And then they found

00:17:25   that not only were companies using enterprise certificates, there were shady individuals

00:17:31   who were using the enterprise certificate program to create underground app stores to

00:17:37   distribute things that were against Apple's rules like pornographic applications, gambling

00:17:43   applications and other illegal and then also illegal activity stuff so people would download

00:17:50   a enterprise certificate and then they could get their hands on these different applications.

00:17:54   So this was like another thing that this program was being used for so that is gone.

00:18:03   And then Federico, I know your favorite story of the year. USB 3.0 and 3.1 merged under new USB 3.2 branding.

00:18:10   Yes, there's a great change. Basically, if things weren't already confusing before,

00:18:17   so the USB 3.0 spec was divided between USB 3.0 and 3.1, and 3.1 used to be split in 3.1 Gen 1,

00:18:31   which is 5 gigabits per second and 3.1 Gen 2, which is 10, which is also what the 2018 iPad Pro features.

00:18:40   Now, the USB, what's it called, the USB-IF, the implementers forum, decided to change USB 3.1 Gen 1

00:18:53   to USB 3.2 Gen 1 and USB... so basically upgrade them by one step each

00:19:02   so from 3.1 to 3.2 but still Gen 1 and Gen 2 and then what else did they do?

00:19:11   It was like super speed? Yeah that was the super speed branding right? Oh yeah now

00:19:16   there's also a thing called USB 3.2 Gen 2x2, which is 20 gigabits per second. And it's

00:19:25   known as SuperSpeed USB 20 gigabits per second.

00:19:30   My favorite speed.

00:19:33   So it's, you know, this is the worst. This is the, you know, engineers coming up with

00:19:40   names that make sense on a spreadsheet and then you gotta explain them to manufacturers.

00:19:46   So yeah, there you have it. If you're looking for the... I don't know of any Apple computers

00:19:52   or I mean the iPad Pro doesn't. USB 3.2 Gen 2x2, 20 gigabits per second. Does the Mac

00:19:59   Pro support this, Steven? Would you know if it supports 20 gigabits?

00:20:05   I'm not sure off the top of my head.

00:20:09   the next iPad Pro will. So yeah, I remember I had, I really struggled to write the linked

00:20:16   post for these on Mac stories because of all the names and, you know, super speed USB.

00:20:22   Yeah. But this does tie in, like even that question

00:20:26   you just asked, there's a problem with like USB-C and Thunderbolt. It is almost impossible

00:20:31   for you to know easily what you need and what supports what. It's like a nightmare. Because

00:20:37   Because then as well companies don't say.

00:20:39   So something that we should mention, like we've been referencing for a while, is like

00:20:44   will the Pro, like we talk about the Pro display XDR right?

00:20:48   Last week.

00:20:49   Well the Pro display XDR will be, like you can use it with an iMac Pro, even though Apple

00:20:54   doesn't list it.

00:20:55   You can also use it with an iPad Pro, which was Federico's prophecy from a while back.

00:21:00   So like, Apple, like so companies don't even list what you, like these things properly

00:21:04   for whatever reason.

00:21:06   And it's because it will run at 5K, not 6K, but it does work.

00:21:10   So it's like, this is the whole problem with Thunderbolt and USB-C and USB-3 and all that

00:21:15   nonsense.

00:21:16   It's a nightmare.

00:21:17   Some real-time follow-up, the I/O card in the Mac Pro, the USB-A ports are only to 5

00:21:25   gigabytes per second.

00:21:26   Really?

00:21:27   Mm-hmm.

00:21:28   So they're not even the 10.

00:21:29   But it also has two Thunderbolt ports, so you get the 10 gigabit there, but if you want

00:21:32   the 5 gigabit, USB-A is going to be slower.

00:21:35   Alright, it's a bummer.

00:21:38   And then lastly in February the Galaxy S10 launched with an ultrasonic fingerprint reader.

00:21:43   I put this in here because it just looked kind of like a note of record.

00:21:47   I weren't the first one to do it but they were the biggest market phone to do it first.

00:21:53   There were some phones from other manufacturers that had this but now it's become more of

00:21:56   a thing on Android as phones are going edge to edge.

00:22:00   They're putting their fingerprint readers onto the screen.

00:22:02   And the reason that I want to put this in there is because it's still very possible

00:22:06   that we could end up with one of these and an iPhone in the future.

00:22:11   I would like it.

00:22:14   It'd be sweet.

00:22:15   Yeah, I would like it too.

00:22:16   All right, so that is February.

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00:24:05   Alright, it is March and we begin with Spotify,

00:24:10   launching a time to play fair campaign against Apple and filing a complaint with the European Commission,

00:24:18   which is a regulatory body that controls non-competitive practices in the market and whatnot.

00:24:27   Basically Spotify had a blog post written by CEO...

00:24:31   And they also created that whole website.

00:24:33   Yes, they had a blog post and a website at time2playfair.com,

00:24:38   essentially arguing that Apple was stifling innovation and competition via a few...

00:24:46   They basically mentioned a few issues.

00:24:48   Apple's commission of 30% from App Store subscriptions that

00:24:53   for services with recurring revenue and subscriptions like Spotify, the company was arguing that it's too much.

00:25:00   And they also mentioned the fact that Spotify users could not take advantage of

00:25:06   integrations with the

00:25:09   iPhone's operating system like Siri, for example. So this locked-in approach that Apple was using

00:25:15   to promote their own services like Apple music at the expense of third-party services like Spotify. There was a big

00:25:22   discussion on all tech blogs and

00:25:26   basically on all major news websites about Spotify launching this campaign.

00:25:31   Then I sort of I don't know what happened because doesn't feel like we've nothing has come out of this basically.

00:25:40   Well, Apple has allowed some stuff.

00:25:43   Apple has, yes, at WWDC with iOS 13, Apple opened up the Siri media intent to allow Spotify,

00:25:53   for example, or other music or podcast apps, to start playback with Siri.

00:26:00   So you can search the entire Spotify catalog with Siri, you can play music, you can play

00:26:04   playlists.

00:26:05   Obviously you don't have all of the commands that you have with Apple Music, but I guess it's a start.

00:26:11   And you can do, you know, if you want to play your discovery weekly with Siri, you can do that now.

00:26:16   But when it comes down to like the cotton stuff, well nothing's happened, so I guess we're assuming

00:26:21   something to come out of the European Commission if they accept the complaint from Spotify.

00:26:25   So the website is still up, time2playfair.com, there's a video, there's a few...

00:26:31   five fast facts about Apple's anti-competitive behavior.

00:26:36   So that happened, we talked about it.

00:26:40   I thought that, you know, I remember that Spotify

00:26:43   had a point about the fact that Apple

00:26:47   should have opened up the platform more,

00:26:49   and they did that, so that's fine about the money stuff.

00:26:52   Well, you know, somebody smarter than me

00:26:55   will decide whether that's anti-competitive or not.

00:26:59   - Yeah, the last that I can find is that

00:27:01   a EU commission started looking into this in May.

00:27:07   - Okay, so maybe they went on vacation afterwards.

00:27:12   - I think these things just move very, very slowly.

00:27:16   - So before the, spoiler alert,

00:27:20   there's gonna be an Apple media event in March,

00:27:23   but before that, Apple sort of cleared the deck

00:27:26   with a few announcements.

00:27:27   New iPad Air and iPad Mini.

00:27:29   So the iPad Mini hadn't received an update since 2015,

00:27:34   so big comeback four years later.

00:27:36   Updated CPU and home button, of course,

00:27:41   no Face ID, still Touch ID.

00:27:43   And the iPad Air was essentially the old 10.5 inch iPad Pro,

00:27:48   but with a new name and a cheaper price.

00:27:50   So the 10.5 iPad Pro basically became the new iPad Air,

00:27:55   which is a great deal for a lot of people, I think.

00:27:59   Confusing name, I know, we've had iPad,

00:28:02   now we have iPad and iPad Air,

00:28:04   and iPad Mini and iPad Pro,

00:28:06   but I think it's a, you know, the iPad Air is a great deal.

00:28:09   It supports the Apple Pencil, the first generation one.

00:28:12   Doesn't have all the fancy stuff of the new,

00:28:14   of the 2018, well, not new anymore,

00:28:17   of the 2018 iPad Pro, like USB-C,

00:28:20   or the second generation Apple Pencil,

00:28:22   or the fancy, what do they call it?

00:28:24   Liquid Retina Display, but it's again, supports the Smart Keyboard, supports the first generation

00:28:30   Pencil, runs iPadOS, I think it's a great deal, people seem to like it. I absolutely

00:28:40   do not remember the fact that the iMac was updated, but I do remember the episode of

00:28:45   Upgrade about it, Myke. Thank you. Yeah, this was when we interviewed

00:28:49   Collinoviale. It was by and large a relatively regular update to the iMac

00:28:55   but I was just really proud of this episode so I put it in the year update.

00:29:01   AirPods 2, we were really happy to see this an update to the AirPods three

00:29:08   years after the original ones. I remember we were talking back then about the fact

00:29:13   that my AirPods were dying just in time for the new ones to arrive.

00:29:17   Yep, we were all starting to have battery problems, but yours were in a pretty bad situation.

00:29:21   Yeah, and basically the week after one of them completely died, Apple announced the new AirPods.

00:29:28   I guess the most notable feature of the new AirPods is the option to get a wireless charging case,

00:29:36   which to this day I still love the fact that I can just put the AirPods on a wireless charging mat

00:29:42   and they charge. That's great. They also had support for voice activation for Siri. So

00:29:49   overall I think people liked the second generation AirPods. I remember a few folks complaining

00:29:56   about the price increase for the wireless charging option, but you know, you got an

00:30:01   extra and you pay for the extra. So we all love our second generation AirPods, but wait

00:30:06   until we talk about the AirPods Pro.

00:30:08   Hey, some of us are still using our AirPods 2.

00:30:11   Oh yeah.

00:30:12   Oh yeah.

00:30:13   Oh yeah.

00:30:14   I'm not a pro boy.

00:30:15   You're not a pro.

00:30:16   Period.

00:30:17   Wow.

00:30:18   Yes.

00:30:19   There was an Apple...

00:30:21   This is, I guess, one of the most surprising announcements or maybe just changes of the

00:30:27   year.

00:30:28   The fact that Apple had a service-focused event in March.

00:30:31   They talked about Apple News+, the Apple Card, and Apple TV+, and Apple Arcade.

00:30:38   So a bunch of services all at once.

00:30:40   Apple News+ rolled it out with, what was that, 100 magazines in theory?

00:30:45   So you pay a subscription.

00:30:48   Is that...

00:30:49   So I don't remember because I stopped paying for this months ago.

00:30:52   $9.99 a month, right?

00:30:54   Yes, it is.

00:30:55   A single monthly fee of $9.99.

00:30:57   So $10, 300 magazines.

00:31:00   I remember that night when I went through Apple News and compiled the list of all the

00:31:04   magazines that I could find. I don't remember why I did that to myself, but I did. So largely

00:31:09   a disappointment, I would say. The service is struggling to gain traction. There's a

00:31:16   few reports that are saying it's not really working out for publishers. Some other reports

00:31:20   are saying, well, some publishers do make some money off of Apple News Plus. The experience,

00:31:26   from a customer point of view, really horrible.

00:31:30   The fact that the news app is this mesh of

00:31:34   original news content from publications

00:31:38   that are using the Apple News format,

00:31:40   including some of the magazines from Apple News Plus,

00:31:43   but then some other magazines are essentially glorified PDFs

00:31:47   that you need to actually read the scanned page

00:31:50   inside the news app.

00:31:51   You need to zoom in because it's not text, it's a PDF.

00:31:55   So not a great experience, not a great pricing model.

00:32:00   This is a, Apple News Plus is probably ripe

00:32:05   for being bundled with some other service eventually.

00:32:08   - Do you remember the Apple News app on the Mac

00:32:11   allowed for people to just rip the PDFs?

00:32:13   - For a period of time, you could find the PDFs

00:32:16   on Apple's CDN and just download the PDF documents

00:32:19   for paid for publications for free using Safari.

00:32:24   So really good job there. Apple card. I really don't know how to describe this. So Apple

00:32:28   partnered with Goldman Sachs, which is a bank in America. Yes. Kind of. It's like a financial

00:32:35   institution. Is that a better to say that? Better to say that. So they made a credit

00:32:40   card and I'm going to get this wrong. I saw an Apple card in person recently. And I touched

00:32:45   one finally. It's a heavy card. They're cool. Yes. They're cool. It's very cool. What's

00:32:51   So this is my best description as an Italian with no experience about American banks and

00:32:55   credit cards. What sets it apart is the integration with the iPhone, the fact that it's made by

00:33:00   Apple so it's all integrated with the Wallet app, but it's got also the daily cashback

00:33:06   feature. So basically you spend money, you get money back. You don't get points, you

00:33:10   don't get rewards, you get actual cash in your Apple Wallet.

00:33:14   Yep, that's perfectly explained.

00:33:17   Okay, cool.

00:33:18   Good job.

00:33:19   you. And finally Apple TV+, of course after two, three years of rumors and

00:33:26   reports from Hollywood publications, it's real, it's coming at the end of the year.

00:33:31   Later we would know it was gonna be November, or maybe they said in March it

00:33:34   was gonna be November. Do you remember, Myke? Did they say it's November or just

00:33:38   this fall? They said... I think they said later. Yeah. Yeah. But we saw... Yeah, the day of

00:33:47   of November came in September. Yeah. Okay. For the same fair at the arcade. They were

00:33:52   both just like later this year and the dates came in the September event for the WWDC.

00:33:59   In hindsight, has that announcement event aged well in your minds? You know,

00:34:03   they had all the people on stage and like talked about their shows, but didn't show any clips.

00:34:08   It's very strange. I thought it was fine. I mean, but again, like I was paying way more attention.

00:34:12   I knew all of the shows that they were announcing anyway. So like, I don't know how it came across

00:34:16   for people that weren't paying the level of attention that I did, but I still felt like

00:34:20   they did a good job, I think.

00:34:23   And are you all watching anything on Apple TV+?

00:34:27   The first season of most of the shows is wrapping up right about now.

00:34:30   Yeah, so by the end of this week, maybe the answer is no to that question.

00:34:34   Right, it's all done.

00:34:36   But what have you watched?

00:34:39   For All Mankind.

00:34:40   Yes.

00:34:41   Very good.

00:34:42   Which is just like, no spoilers, but like, Jesus!

00:34:45   I'm two episodes behind, so no spoilers. Thank you.

00:34:48   Right, but that's all I'll say then. And the morning show, I think, has been consistently

00:34:54   good. I think that For All Mankind started good and has gotten really good. And see,

00:35:04   I watched the first episode, didn't like it. I've watched a handful of episodes of

00:35:07   Dickinson. Like, I will finish it, but I'm in no real rush to. And I want to try out

00:35:13   the the the crime podcast drama one to be told. Because the trailer looked good I thought

00:35:19   the premise is ridiculous but the trailer looked good so I want to give it a shot. Is

00:35:23   that the one where the podcaster murders somebody or something? It's where like a murder podcaster

00:35:27   goes back because she realizes that like she put someone in prison and then she realizes

00:35:33   that she shouldn't have. I mean look who hasn't accidentally done that with with their podcast?

00:35:37   No one's seen Kyle Le Gray for a while. It's basically a TV show about crime podcasts follow-up

00:35:45   when you think about it.

00:35:48   Oh my God, yeah. It's like it's weaponized follow-up, I guess. Criminalized follow-up.

00:35:54   Most important follow-up, right? When you get someone out of prison.

00:35:58   Actually, you know, I should go back to this topic. Maybe the guy's not guilty. Apple Arcade

00:36:05   was also announced and I think we were all pretty impressed with the fact that Apple

00:36:09   was promising a service of regional, well not regional but at least exclusive on iOS

00:36:16   games, some regional games, a hundred games, I think they mentioned a hundred games, right?

00:36:22   And they had, yeah, and they showed a slide of a bunch of publishers, there were demos,

00:36:27   yeah it was good, it was good. So that was the Apple services event. Here's a question

00:36:32   before we move on to the next month, which is April, because that's how calendars work.

00:36:37   Do we think that Apple will have a services event again?

00:36:43   It's possible. So there's a thing in the media industry called up-fronts, where there's like

00:36:50   a certain time of year, it happens a couple of times a year, where you are showing off

00:36:54   typically, traditionally, you are showing off what shows you have to interest advertisers,

00:37:01   But it's also over time become media.

00:37:04   So you are showing your products to advertisers, so they'll sponsor you or give you advertisements

00:37:10   for your shows.

00:37:11   And or because all the media is there as well, so you want them to see the content that you

00:37:15   have coming.

00:37:17   I would be really surprised if Apple did not participate in these types of things.

00:37:24   But knowing them, they wouldn't want to go to the turf of everybody else and do it.

00:37:29   But they might.

00:37:30   And they have shown some willingness to bend to the TV industry.

00:37:35   But I expect that there will be another event for Apple TV+ next year where they show off

00:37:40   some of their upcoming programming for the year.

00:37:43   Mm hmm.

00:37:44   No, it makes sense.

00:37:45   I mean, but there is there could also be if they wanted to do it and like, oh, and here's

00:37:47   a bunch of Apple Arcade stuff that we're going to do and like, and or tie in a media thing,

00:37:54   services thing in with other stuff.

00:37:56   So it might become part of a like the music event.

00:37:58   know like the music event ultimately started to become an event that had more

00:38:04   things in it yeah so that might be the same all right we're gonna move into

00:38:08   April this next thing actually happened in March but I it would be awkward for

00:38:14   Federico to talk about it because he got a lovely quote tweet from Tim Cook we

00:38:21   spoke about it in April it happened on March 28th yeah I apologize yeah that's

00:38:25   I saw the date and I decided to keep it in April.

00:38:28   Federica, you had tweeted about setting up the ECG stuff in the Apple Watch, which is

00:38:34   really cool.

00:38:35   And Federica, you got a lovely Tim Cook tweet saying that they were thrilled that their

00:38:40   new heart health features are available in Europe and Hong Kong.

00:38:44   That's cool.

00:38:45   That was cool.

00:38:46   Oh, that was also in the week where Tim was releasing all his products all the time.

00:38:51   Do you remember when he was just over the shoulder shots of him just like with different

00:38:56   products in his hands?

00:38:57   Oh yeah, that happened this year.

00:38:59   Yeah.

00:39:00   That was in March.

00:39:01   The best part about that tweet, I mean besides the tweet alone, which is awesome, is the

00:39:05   fact that so many people tweeted at me saying things along the lines of "you made it?"

00:39:14   As if like now because of a single tweet my career is like complete.

00:39:19   I finally made it.

00:39:20   Congrats.

00:39:21   It's not like, I mean, the way I would see that is it is a very selective, very cool

00:39:29   hill to have climbed over.

00:39:33   To get a, I mean, I think most people like to get an acknowledgement like this on social

00:39:39   media from any of the Apple executives is something that a lot of people in the technology

00:39:44   industry aspire to achieve.

00:39:48   And that was one of them.

00:39:49   Tim Cook tweet is like a particularly rare tweet. Yeah, that's what people meant by that. It's cool. You should feel good about it

00:39:55   Yeah, I do up up next we have the

00:39:58   power beats Pro being announced

00:40:02   In in early April we've my wife has been on the show to review them. They seem popular think people like them

00:40:09   There of course the the wireless power beats with the the air potted goodness in them, but completely independent with the ear hooks

00:40:15   so they're sort of designed for

00:40:18   Activity and working out and that sort of thing. So they seem like people are happy with that

00:40:22   We also have Myke is another one from March Apple

00:40:26   On March 29th, not April. Hey, you know canceled. I remember saying I've guys don't worry

00:40:33   I've gone through an added I spent the time and gone through and added all this you could have checked it

00:40:38   I did it. I did not know this is based upon when we spoke about it on the show

00:40:43   So we spoke about an April air power is dead

00:40:46   This is an article from Matt pans Reno over on TechCrunch. There's a quote in here

00:40:51   that

00:40:53   After much effort we concluded that airpower will not achieve our high standards and we have canceled the project

00:40:59   Yeah, poor airpower

00:41:04   Michael's right

00:41:06   Did you say it was dead? I was the only one out of three of us to thought it was completely dead. Yeah

00:41:11   So we had a prediction, one of the predictions included Air Palace somewhere.

00:41:18   I was very convinced that it was not going to live on, because once the information started

00:41:24   coming out about how complicated it was to build, like how many coils were needed, I

00:41:29   was convinced that there was no way that it could live, because it just seemed like it

00:41:34   was an incredibly complicated manufacturing problem, and that was what it seemed like

00:41:39   they could not have overcome. Yeah, so it's dead and gone, rest in peace Airpower.

00:41:47   We also saw leaks, beginning leaks of iOS 13 including dark mode and multitasking.

00:41:56   Federico, when this broke what did you what did you think? I thought the dark

00:42:03   mode. This was the 9 to 5 Mac. They had a multiple day long thing. This was the

00:42:10   first of those. Yeah, I remember being surprised by the details on the

00:42:16   undue gestures and the font management because those looked very

00:42:20   specific, to have specific gestures and details about fonts. What I

00:42:30   But I guess what I was really excited to see was the idea that, and it didn't pan out actually

00:42:34   in practice, that on iPad with multitasking you could be, according to 95 mic you could

00:42:41   be able to detach popovers from the UI and have these floating panels that you can rearrange

00:42:50   on screen.

00:42:51   And that didn't happen with iPadOS.

00:42:54   So that's possible that Apple maybe punted the feature and that's still coming next year.

00:42:59   saw before, there was this open source framework made by a guy who now works at

00:43:04   Apple, at the Xcode team of all places, called PanelKit, that allowed developers

00:43:10   to implement these floating panels, like take a popover, long-press it, detach it,

00:43:16   and resize it, and place it on screen, do whatever you want. I

00:43:20   would have liked to see that, and I still think it's a good idea, especially if you

00:43:25   have a big iPad and you want to customize the interface and the elements

00:43:30   that you see according to your taste and needs, that'd be nice, but that didn't

00:43:35   happen. I was really excited to see that, but it didn't happen. But yeah, otherwise

00:43:39   they got it all right, I think, including the new volume HUD. That also happened.

00:43:44   Yeah, and they redesigned the Reminders app, so there was a bunch of information

00:43:48   here that actually was correct. I have never, and I still have not gotten used

00:43:54   to that three-finger tap gesture.

00:43:55   Oh, really?

00:43:56   Oh, I use it all the time.

00:43:58   It's so nice.

00:43:58   I just haven't got used to it yet.

00:44:01   Same as with, like, the changes to the way

00:44:03   the text selection works.

00:44:04   Oh, yeah, that's horrible.

00:44:05   Text selection is so bad.

00:44:06   They should just go back to the way that it used to be.

00:44:08   I cannot select--

00:44:10   Jeremy Burge was tweeting about this recently.

00:44:12   I cannot select text reliably anymore.

00:44:15   It's effectively become impossible to move the cursor

00:44:18   exactly where you want it to be.

00:44:20   But even just, they have the news like intelligent or smart text selection, which is nice in that if you double tap something that is detected to be a specific piece of data, like a person's name or a company name or a song, and you double tap, the whole thing gets selected, which is nice.

00:44:42   So if you have something like Fallout Boy, for example,

00:44:44   and you double tap anywhere near that,

00:44:48   the entire three words get selected.

00:44:50   So that's nice because it's recognized

00:44:52   to be a band name, Steven.

00:44:54   There are musicians.

00:44:55   - Got it. - Yeah.

00:44:58   But like the whole thing is just so fiddly now

00:45:02   and you don't have the magnification loop anymore,

00:45:04   which I still, and I wrote this in my review,

00:45:07   I don't understand why the magnification loop

00:45:09   had to be removed.

00:45:10   This was the feature that allowed you to see

00:45:12   zoomed-in view of what you were selecting, because your finger is covering the text that you're selecting.

00:45:20   It only made sense. It's been available since the iPhone was able to select text.

00:45:24   So with iOS 3, iPhone OS 3 maybe, 4, years ago, many many years ago. And now it's gone, for no good reason.

00:45:32   Like, you can still have a magnification loop, it's fine, and now you're in a situation where you select text,

00:45:40   if you can, and when you do, you cannot see what's underneath your finger because the loop is gone.

00:45:46   I don't get it. Yeah, it's way too complicated. I don't like it. I've tried and I haven't wanted

00:45:51   to talk about it, but I really, really don't like it. Myke, this month also brought the best news of

00:45:58   the year. Wonderful/terrible Galaxy Fold. And since you're a Galaxy Fold enthusiast,

00:46:04   tell us what happened this spring. Two things happened in April. The first Galaxy Fold review

00:46:10   started dropping and then all of the devices immediately started breaking.

00:46:15   So we had, there were a couple of issues, Dieter Bohn had a problem where some dust

00:46:19   got in the hinge and broke the screen of his and then other like various media types, YouTubers,

00:46:25   reporters peeled off what they thought was a screen protector on the device and it actually

00:46:30   peeled the whole screen off and all the phones broke and then Samsung promptly first said

00:46:35   they were going to continue charging on and then they didn't and they

00:46:40   unfortunately delayed the phone at that point. I say unfortunately, I say

00:46:44   fortunately delayed the phone. They took the time to get it right, like to fix

00:46:48   some of the problems and make the phone better and it came out later on in the

00:46:52   year. And is yours broken? Mine is going strong and I as I said like I play with

00:46:57   it quite a lot and I am not careful with it by design, right? Like I'm not trying

00:47:02   to like treat this thing with kid gloves right like I I use it like I would any

00:47:09   device and I think it's great I'm so excited for the razor the folding razor

00:47:17   oh yeah the Motorola hmm it does look cool anyway I get the best

00:47:23   new story of the year from May Warren Buffett paper wizard game of the year

00:47:29   Absolutely.

00:47:30   I'm going to say that this is, there is a travesty, travesty in Max Story Select, which

00:47:37   we'll talk about later on, that it did not, that Warren Buffett Paper Wizard was not even

00:47:42   considered.

00:47:43   I think that this is a travesty and I'm going to be writing a letter, a strongly worded

00:47:48   letter to the editor in chief of Max Stories about this.

00:47:52   Yeah.

00:47:53   Brooke, I think it's just a, just a disaster.

00:47:55   This created one of my very favorite episodes of connected where we dug deep into Warren Buffett's kind of hope thing

00:48:03   Oh, yeah, and we're losing our minds as we learn more and more about war. He's a strange individual

00:48:08   He likes his coke a certain way and I mean coca-cola

00:48:11   You know, he has very is a man of particular taste

00:48:14   This warren buffett. So super interesting character in a bunch of ways actually Warren Buffett

00:48:20   But I will recommend to you guys if you have not seen the documentary Inside Bill's Brain

00:48:25   on Netflix, it's the Bill Gates documentary.

00:48:29   Warren Buffett pops up in that a bunch, but it's actually just like a really interesting

00:48:33   documentary that I recommend.

00:48:36   So we have Warren Buffett Paper Wizard where we also realised that nobody could beat Warren

00:48:41   Buffett's score which is kind of like the most perfect thing.

00:48:45   And it's just also one of those really wonderful and weird Apple stories where someone was

00:48:49   made to do something that they didn't want to do and it's so fun to imagine how on earth

00:48:54   this thing was made.

00:48:56   And then Apple also updated the MacBook Pro, they tweaked the keyboard again and then extended

00:49:01   the keyboard service program to include that keyboard.

00:49:04   So still going well in May.

00:49:08   I think it is yet to be proven how those keyboards will age.

00:49:13   I have one of these MacBook Pros, one of the 2019 ones, and the keyboard's been totally

00:49:18   It may stay that way, but clearly they had to move away from it, and we'll talk about

00:49:23   that later in this episode.

00:49:24   This was the final revision, right, of the keyboard.

00:49:27   It was.

00:49:28   It was the one, so they had the first one.

00:49:30   They revised the MacBook Pro again, didn't they, but they kept the keyboard the same?

00:49:34   "MacbookPro_final_final_v3.pdf"

00:49:38   Underscore, we promise the keyboard's fixed, Underscore.

00:49:45   This is the one that they already had had the little rubber covers and then this change

00:49:51   included material changes and some people think, including iFixit, that the stainless

00:49:56   steel dome switch is tougher than maybe those were failing and causing some of the issues.

00:50:01   But mine has been fine.

00:50:03   Now I don't use it every day, but I do travel with it and it has been fine so far and my

00:50:08   2016 failed within a few months and again, not a daily driver.

00:50:13   So far, mine's been fine, but it is under that extended keyboard service program, and

00:50:18   so I know that I'm cool if something does happen.

00:50:20   Halfway?

00:50:21   Halfway!

00:50:22   We're gonna jump back in to June, right after this break, where I talk about Pingdom.

00:50:29   The holiday shopping season, it's here.

00:50:33   It's almost over.

00:50:34   In fact, if you haven't started yet, you're in trouble.

00:50:36   You should go do that.

00:50:37   You've really gotta hurry up!

00:50:39   Come on!

00:50:40   You've got a week.

00:50:42   You know we have just terrified a bunch of our listeners who have realized they have

00:50:45   not started their holiday shopping yet, so this is the service we provide.

00:50:49   I'm here to help.

00:50:50   Just like Pingdom is here to help.

00:50:53   Oh, that's good.

00:50:54   So if you're shopping online, there's a little worse than that failing, right?

00:50:57   You're in a shopping cart somewhere and you go to enter something and the page freezes

00:51:01   or reloads and all your stuff's gone.

00:51:04   That's no good.

00:51:05   Pingdom is a service to help prevent all that sort of stuff because it lets people behind

00:51:10   websites know the moment their site goes down in whatever way is best. So it uses

00:51:16   transaction monitoring to alert people when cart checkouts, forms, login pages, and

00:51:21   much more fail. We use this on Relay's website so I know if Relay.fm is

00:51:26   having problems before I open Tweetbot and discover that people are

00:51:30   telling me there before it affects the business. You can customize those alerts

00:51:35   and who is alerted depending on the severity of the outage.

00:51:39   Go to pingdom.com/relayfm right now

00:51:42   for a 14-day free trial with no credit card required.

00:51:46   And when you sign up, use the code connected at checkout

00:51:48   to get an awesome 30% off your first invoice.

00:51:52   Our thanks to Pingdom for their support of the show

00:51:54   and Relay FM.

00:51:55   - In June, of course, WWDC happens,

00:51:59   and that is where I unveiled the tattoo

00:52:03   that I didn't get in June.

00:52:05   I actually got months before, so there was this whole story that I invented about the

00:52:11   fact that I was going to get a skin biopsy to help other people.

00:52:15   Because you're a terrible person.

00:52:17   I'm a terrible person.

00:52:19   So basically, try to understand my position here.

00:52:23   I got a weird fish tattoo like months before in April, so it was fully healed by WWDC,

00:52:31   But I needed to come up with a method to hide the fact that I had this tattoo in my inner...

00:52:40   What's this?

00:52:41   Bicep.

00:52:42   Part of the human body.

00:52:43   Bicep, yes.

00:52:44   Bicep.

00:52:45   Hide it.

00:52:46   So imagine this.

00:52:47   California in June, it's gonna be hot, you know?

00:52:49   Nice weather.

00:52:50   You don't wanna wear like a sweater or a long-sleeve shirt.

00:52:55   So I needed to hide this tattoo that is very visible on my bicep from Myke, who I was

00:53:01   sharing a hotel room with for four, five days actually. It's not like I just could walk

00:53:10   for five days with my left arm attached to my body without ever moving it. That would

00:53:15   have looked weird.

00:53:16   Nobody has ever contested that you needed some idea of which to hide this.

00:53:23   I need an excuse to put on a huge patch on my bicep and explain why. So...

00:53:30   But you never had to say that it was to assist with cancer diagnoses in other people.

00:53:39   Well, I needed to sell it and I thought that my history with cancer and stuff would avoid

00:53:50   any kind of question from people. And it did! It worked! It was like, yeah, I gotta...

00:53:53   I mean, yes, it definitely worked.

00:53:56   So my plan was to make everybody feel bad forever asking why I had a patch.

00:54:01   And that's it.

00:54:02   Nobody's ever going to ask again.

00:54:04   Perfect.

00:54:05   So I needed to come up with a story.

00:54:06   And I did.

00:54:07   And I kind of regret it because, you know, it's bad to lie, but it was for a good reason.

00:54:12   Because I wanted to unveil the tattoo at our live show for Connected Live.

00:54:18   And it was beautifully done.

00:54:20   Yes.

00:54:21   I'm very happy with the execution that also, by the way, involved a quiz during the show.

00:54:26   we had a little game where I had Steven jot down ideas. Well, not ideas, but answers to

00:54:33   a long question. Eventually those words would put together, they would take you to an Emojipedia

00:54:40   page. So I collaborated with Jeremy Burge of Emojipedia. And on that page, for the weird

00:54:47   fish emoji page, you could find the Max Stories link, you tap the Max Stories link and you

00:54:52   see the photos. Then I get up on stage and I remove my jacket and Myke looks at it too.

00:54:58   It was very nicely done, I think. Anyways, WWDC was also going on, of all things.

00:55:08   In my life, it really is just that WWDC was the also that year to this.

00:55:14   Yeah, a bunch of things happened. I interviewed Craig Federighi. That happened.

00:55:20   Oh yeah.

00:55:21   Yes, um

00:55:23   iPadOS was announced so

00:55:26   Apple announced that they were gonna split iOS in two iOS for iPhone and iPod touch I guess because it's still a thing and

00:55:33   iPadOS for iPads

00:55:35   They unveiled the Mac Pro the new Mac Pro. Yes, it did. Yes

00:55:41   Yep, and we got to interview Doug Brooks the product manager for that on Mac power users, which was really cool

00:55:47   Of course iOS 13 with dark mode and what else is new on the iPhone?

00:55:53   I mean the updated shortcuts app, a bunch of things really.

00:55:57   Yeah, Mac,

00:56:17   app was new, a lot of things you can check out the... well we can talk about it later.

00:56:21   Well I completely forgot about this phone but Huawei postponed the Mate X foldable phone.

00:56:30   Is it still in a postponed state or did it actually come out?

00:56:34   I think the the latest that I'd noted is that they had released it in limited quantities in China only.

00:56:42   So it is essentially still not available, widely anyway.

00:56:46   anyway. Okay. There have been no reviews of this product in any outlet that I have come across.

00:56:51   Let's move on to July. Yeah, let's do that. We got the news that

00:56:58   Johnny Ive leaving Apple to form an independent design company, and this ends a really like

00:57:08   impressively long career at Apple. Of course, he was a close collaborator with Steve Jobs.

00:57:15   He designed the most iconic Apple products you can think of.

00:57:19   He designed Apple Park, like down to like the chairs

00:57:22   and the bolts holding doors on to bathroom stalls,

00:57:25   like all of it.

00:57:26   And I don't think this was a huge surprise

00:57:30   to people paying attention,

00:57:32   but they sort of made it official.

00:57:34   This was a process.

00:57:35   You mentioned Angela and the retail changes earlier.

00:57:40   With Johnny, it was different.

00:57:43   This was the beginning of a process

00:57:45   that really just ended at Thanksgiving a couple of weeks ago.

00:57:47   He's out doing his thing.

00:57:49   He took some of the designers with him.

00:57:51   There's new bosses.

00:57:52   One change here is that now the industrial design

00:57:56   organization doesn't report to Tim Cook directly.

00:57:58   It reports to Jeff Williams, the chief operating officer,

00:58:03   and, assumedly, the CEO in waiting.

00:58:05   And so that is a huge structural change,

00:58:08   but this is a thing where we'll know over time

00:58:11   whether this was good or not for Apple.

00:58:14   I think a lot of people are happy with where a lot of Apple stuff is today, but that stuff

00:58:18   didn't start over the summer.

00:58:20   That stuff has been in the works for a while.

00:58:22   So I still feel like we're probably a couple of years out from really understanding what

00:58:27   this means.

00:58:28   But the most important thing is it means that the year of Steven continued, that my pick

00:58:32   of changes on Apple's executive team continued throughout the summer.

00:58:39   Johnny Ive.

00:58:40   Bye-bye.

00:58:41   Bye.

00:58:42   - Federica, I had totally forgotten about this,

00:58:45   but there was a feature for FaceTime

00:58:47   called attention correction,

00:58:49   and it was using machine learning and all sorts of stuff

00:58:52   that would basically,

00:58:53   if you were not looking at the FaceTime camera

00:58:55   on a FaceTime call, it would move your eyeballs,

00:58:58   like the focus of your eyes,

00:59:00   to make it look like it was looking in the camera.

00:59:02   - Yes. - Which,

00:59:03   people fell into two camps on this.

00:59:04   They thought it was really cool

00:59:05   and a good use of technology,

00:59:07   and other people thought it was super creepy.

00:59:10   But then you have a note in here

00:59:11   that says it was later removed. Is it not there? It's not here anymore. It never shipped.

00:59:17   Rightfully so because it was creepy. I fell into both camps. Creepy, but cool. It was

00:59:24   like a very interesting use of technology, very well implemented, but it never should

00:59:32   have shipped. It should have gone as far as "hey look what I can do, somebody show somebody

00:59:38   else at Apple and they go "that's cool, don't ever commit it" right? Like just leave it

00:59:43   at that. I think yeah sure it's cool. Which it kind of seems like that was the case in

00:59:46   the end really. When technology works, I think it's cool, but especially this kind of stuff

00:59:53   that is really impressive in real time, it's real time video communication so it's even

00:59:56   more impressive, but no, thanks. It's like the kind of thing you'd see at a TechCrunch

01:00:02   hackathon. Right? I'm so pleased you did that but don't ever release it to the world.

01:00:11   This is not a product. Yeah, yes, yes. Like a tech crunch disrupt or something.

01:00:16   Sure, sure, we could go with that. In July Apple revised the MacBook Air and the

01:00:25   13 inch MacBook Pro so the MacBook Air became cheaper it got the true tone

01:00:35   display the only change here the bigger change though was with the entry-level

01:00:39   MacBook Pro it had previously been the MacBook Pro but had function keys it was

01:00:45   called the MacBook escape by Federico he named it not Marco and Federico loves

01:00:50   names of products done don't ever do this to me this is like the greatest

01:00:54   insult that you could ever say.

01:00:58   Yes.

01:00:59   Great scenes on the show that I like to come up with nicknames.

01:01:02   Sorry.

01:01:03   I'm sorry.

01:01:04   Please forgive me.

01:01:05   Uh, but it got a, uh, a guy touch bar and so there's that.

01:01:10   Um, so yeah, it kind of evened out that weirdness, that entry-level Mac book pro I think was

01:01:15   supposed to be the Mac book air replacement, but that never really took off.

01:01:19   So just an adjustment in the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro line up at the low end.

01:01:27   But this is not like people are still unhappy at this point with these MacBook Pros?

01:01:31   Yes.

01:01:32   Well, and these, I mean, to skip forward to today, these Macs still don't have the new

01:01:35   keyboard.

01:01:36   So there's still an asterisk with buying these.

01:01:40   But it's just, you know, also these came out like a week after the first rumors of the

01:01:45   16 inch MacBook Pro from Inchi Kuo.

01:01:47   It was very close.

01:01:48   I mean, she quote published his first report and then like a week later the these revisions came out

01:01:52   Yeah, so like people already had in their mind this future product anyway. Mm-hmm

01:01:57   Also in July we had a visitor in Myke the Oracle

01:02:04   You were you were

01:02:07   You were quite sick and it was quite sick you wanted to be on the show

01:02:12   But we didn't wanna let you talk because you sounded like you were really like you should have been in bed

01:02:16   You shouldn't have you should not have hung out with us. I wasn't sick at that point, though

01:02:20   I'd only lost my voice and then the sickness came and it came bad, but after the voice losing

01:02:25   And so we we limited you to single word answers on that show and we thought about it

01:02:32   I think it came up on the show like we didn't talk about it before I don't think

01:02:35   No, we didn't and it's one of my favorite things that's ever happened on this show. Yes

01:02:40   And then somebody created mike the oracle dot space where you can go and ask a question like a magic eight ball and click

01:02:46   the button and it just gives you one of my one word answers which is just fantastic.

01:02:52   You will hear things like Amazon or complicated.

01:02:57   That was Marina Ivanova and Myke Apurin who made that website which is just the very best.

01:03:03   Yes, yes very very good very good website.

01:03:06   Oh my voice was so bad.

01:03:09   I just clicked the button and you just said the word groceries. I don't know why.

01:03:14   Yeah, I clicked it and it said "Bassy".

01:03:19   Yes, more.

01:03:23   It was a creative challenge for me that episode.

01:03:27   Because you would ask me quite complex questions and I was only allowed to say one thing.

01:03:32   An exercising restraint, Myke.

01:03:34   I'm pretty sure one of the words is "Jeremy" in there somewhere.

01:03:37   It is, yeah.

01:03:38   I remember that from somewhere.

01:03:40   That's really good.

01:03:41   If you haven't looked at that website, you should.

01:03:44   We end July with actually really big news.

01:03:47   So Qualcomm and Apple had been fighting for years

01:03:52   over modem patents and all sorts of stuff.

01:03:55   And basically this was a one-two punch.

01:03:57   Apple settled with Qualcomm

01:03:59   and then bought Intel's modem division.

01:04:02   And like one big move.

01:04:04   Apple for a while had been using Intel modems.

01:04:07   I think it started in some phones,

01:04:08   but it was like some phones had Intel, some had Qualcomm.

01:04:11   people thought one was better than the other.

01:04:13   I think we're clearly moving to a world

01:04:15   where Apple will just make the modems in their own phones

01:04:19   and with 5G coming, that's even more complicated.

01:04:22   But this was a huge move and again,

01:04:26   like the Johnny Ive thing, this will be something

01:04:28   that we find out over the next few years what it means,

01:04:31   but definitely huge headlines to end in July.

01:04:35   - Yeah, it's one of these stories

01:04:36   that I am desperate to know which way the cards fell.

01:04:40   Like, did Apple realize that they couldn't beat Qualcomm in court?

01:04:43   Or did Intel or did they come to a realization that Intel were lying to them

01:04:49   about how far along in the modems that they, you know?

01:04:53   Like, what was the situation?

01:04:55   Because these two things happened at the same time.

01:04:57   And both situations could be true of like, did they settle with Qualcomm then

01:05:03   buying Intel's thing or did they find out that they had no choice and had to buy

01:05:08   Intel's work and then settle.

01:05:10   Like it's a I would love to know the way that this actually fell.

01:05:13   At some point it'll come out.

01:05:15   But I agree with you.

01:05:16   I would love to know what went down here.

01:05:19   In one of my favorite little tangents of the year in August, FileMaker,

01:05:24   the subsidiary, the wholly owned subsidiary of Apple Incorporated, became

01:05:28   Clarus. They rebranded, got a new CEO and set forth a very strong business plan

01:05:35   in what almost feels like an internal mutiny within Apple.

01:05:38   It's like this guy came in and was like, you know what?

01:05:41   I'm shaking things up.

01:05:42   And so now Clarus is a thing and they have other products.

01:05:46   And that's that.

01:05:47   No, FileMaker isn't now part of the Clarus lineup.

01:05:50   Relay FM turned five years old.

01:05:53   Wow. We did a bunch of stuff, including a big live show.

01:05:57   And yeah, the first ever family feud

01:06:01   we put on this big show in San Francisco.

01:06:04   and yeah, turned five years old as a company, which was great.

01:06:08   That was a very good week.

01:06:09   It was a very, very good week.

01:06:11   And Apple, it was discovered by The Guardian,

01:06:14   were having contract employees

01:06:18   listen to misfired recordings of Siri.

01:06:21   So if you accidentally trigger Siri and nothing occurred,

01:06:26   they would send these out to contract employees who would listen to the audio.

01:06:30   The Guardian initially reported this.

01:06:32   Apple kind of tried to shrug it off and it snowballed to the point that Apple changed

01:06:38   their tact on this and got rid of all the contractors, which was kind of sad really,

01:06:45   like that wasn't necessarily the nicest thing to do in that situation, but they fired all

01:06:49   the contract employees and/or hired some of them because they said it was now going to

01:06:52   be, everything was going to be done by Apple employees and then they made it an opt-in

01:06:57   after pausing the thing. As I said many times before, which I still don't like,

01:07:03   you cannot opt out of transcripts being sent, but you can opt out of audio being

01:07:10   sent for misfired Siri interactions. It's another example. Apple's had a few of

01:07:14   these this year where I feel like they've sort of dropped the ball in the

01:07:17   way they handle a story. Like FaceTime and this, they're like, I think it's

01:07:21   it's like they underestimate the response maybe? I don't know, something

01:07:26   just sort of funny about that. We're going to get to September another big

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01:08:33   512 pixels.net. And every time it comes up, it's like, yeah, doing this another year. And when you

01:08:39   are starting a project, you can use their tools to search for something. I remember when I rebranded

01:08:43   my blog to 512 pixels, part of that was going to hover and seeing what domain names were available

01:08:49   for the different ideas that I had. Buy a domain and start using it today. Go to hover.com/connected

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01:09:03   Make a name for yourself with Hover. Our thanks to Hover for their support of this show and Relay FM.

01:09:09   September means Apple event. So new iPhones, new Apple Watch, and a bunch of software updates.

01:09:18   So Apple unveiled the iPhone 11 and the iPhone 11 Pro line.

01:09:21   The iPhone 11 Pro you can get in two sizes, the Pro and the Pro Max.

01:09:26   And I remember we could not believe, well at least I couldn't believe that they were gonna call it the iPhone 11 Pro Max, but they did.

01:09:33   So that's a bad name, I still think it's a bad name.

01:09:37   I still kinda don't believe they did it, even though I know it was done.

01:09:40   They did it, it's called the iPhone 11 Pro Max.

01:09:42   So it happened.

01:09:45   Apple Watch Series 5 with an Always On Display. This was the big surprise from the event.

01:09:52   I don't think we were expecting maybe to have sleep tracking.

01:09:57   Sleep tracking was the rumor. There were absolutely zero credible rumors that indicated that there would be a big hardware change to the Apple Watch.

01:10:09   And of course the new iPhone 11 and 11 Pro lines with the iPhone 11 Pro having three cameras,

01:10:16   one of them being the ultra wide and the iPhone 11 taking the place of the iPhone XR and offering

01:10:25   the wide angle and ultra wide, so the standard and the ultra wide camera, but not a telephoto lens.

01:10:32   So the iPhone 11 Pro has all of them. There's no difference in terms of performance between

01:10:36   the iPhone 11 Pro and the Pro Max but the iPhone 11 does not have the 2x telephoto camera.

01:10:42   And it also has an LCD screen right? Compared to the OLEDs?

01:10:45   It has an LCD screen, it has a liquid retina but it's not the OLED one basically. Is it called

01:10:53   super retina? I think so.

01:10:55   Yeah super retina display I think. Or is it liquid retina?

01:11:01   Liquid. Oh.

01:11:03   It's liquid retina when it's LCD. It's super retina when it's OLED. I don't know.

01:11:10   It's confusing. All these names are confusing.

01:11:12   I think that's right.

01:11:13   Mega Retina. Hyper Retina.

01:11:15   Hyper Retina Display.

01:11:16   Max Retina.

01:11:17   Yes, Retina Max.

01:11:18   There you go.

01:11:20   And also the event Apple confirmed the release date for iOS 13, but we're gonna talk about that in a few minutes.

01:11:26   First I need to mention that this was awesome and I'm so happy that I played a small part

01:11:32   in this event.

01:11:33   Real AFM raised almost, which is incredible, $315,000 for St. Jude.

01:11:40   Yeah we did!

01:11:41   You guys had your first ever podcastathon, which I also think is the first time anybody

01:11:47   has ever used this word or come up with this thing, a podcastathon, which is awesome.

01:11:53   And you raised-

01:11:54   it before but we I'd come up we had come up with this word like five years ago

01:11:59   uh-huh but just me and Steven is referred to it with each other as a

01:12:03   thing we wanted to do and then we ended up doing it I'm so proud of this yeah

01:12:09   we do like $315,000 is a lot of money mm-hmm yeah it's it's incredible it's

01:12:16   like what 4x your original expectations something like that yeah Myke ended up

01:12:23   with a bunch of glitter on his beard so that was cool. Stephen had way less hair.

01:12:28   Stephen shaved. Had a mustache. Yes. Which you should bring it back. That was super

01:12:34   good Stephen. So that happens. We'll see. We're gonna do another one so you never

01:12:38   never know. Okay. Is that #BreakingNews? Yeah we're gonna do

01:12:43   one we're gonna do one in 2020. There you go #BreakingNews we're doing it

01:12:46   again. Start saving up everyone. Bigger and better.

01:12:50   Yes. September saw the release of iOS and iPadOS 13, but with a weird twist toward the

01:13:00   very end. A lot of features were delayed to 13.1, which would follow 13 by like 10 days.

01:13:11   So I had to make a decision, do I want my review? Well, I knew that my review was going

01:13:15   include both iOS and iPadOS. iPadOS also didn't launch alongside iOS, I believe. iPadOS came

01:13:25   ten days later. But I had to make a decision, do I want to split it? What do I want to do?

01:13:29   And I decided I'm going to do it as I was planning to do all at once, two OSes and also

01:13:36   the features that are going to come out in ten days. I had to make a bunch of changes

01:13:40   to the story saying this feature will come out with 13.1, but otherwise it was fine and

01:13:45   and I'm very happy with how it went.

01:13:47   Like, I'm super, super happy.

01:13:49   I know that every year is the best year ever,

01:13:51   but I was happy with the graphics,

01:13:53   with the animations that we did,

01:13:54   with the section, with the fact that it was,

01:13:56   well, I mean, it was a huge review,

01:13:57   but it was also two operating systems at once.

01:14:00   People liked it, and the extras, they went really well.

01:14:07   And I also like iPadOS and iOS.

01:14:10   So, you know, well, I don't love the fact

01:14:13   that they turned out.

01:14:14   So here's the thing, now that I'm just thinking about it now.

01:14:18   One of the things that I will have to address next year

01:14:21   that I got wrong in hindsight was just how much iOS 13 ended

01:14:28   up being, just how much buggy, sorry, ended up being.

01:14:33   I was not expecting it to be that much buggy, honestly.

01:14:38   But also something weird that I noticed,

01:14:40   and that I don't know what you guys think about it,

01:14:43   but iOS has gotten worse for me over its many updates.

01:14:48   Like I'm having more issues. - Oh, really?

01:14:51   - Yes, I'm having more issues now on 13.3

01:14:55   with like shortcuts or file.

01:14:58   Shortcuts has gotten really worse for me, but also files.

01:15:01   - Shortcuts is wonky in places for sure.

01:15:05   - But it's like, it's worse than before.

01:15:07   And even files, the files app is worse for me than before.

01:15:10   So many times I have to force quit files

01:15:13   And I was not doing that in September.

01:15:15   Like, I was not for screening files all the time,

01:15:18   but now I am.

01:15:19   So in any case, I will have to address the performance stuff

01:15:22   in next year's review.

01:15:23   But yeah, so September was a busy month.

01:15:26   - Let's not do that again, though, remember?

01:15:29   Keep saying it to you now, the length of the review.

01:15:31   - Well, yeah, it's--

01:15:33   - Let's not do that again.

01:15:34   - The plan is already in place for next year

01:15:37   to have more stories in the summer to relieve me

01:15:42   from having to cover it all.

01:15:44   So the plan is definitely to go shorter again,

01:15:48   even though I do want to have two OSs in the same review,

01:15:52   but more--

01:15:53   I think that's fine.

01:15:54   More help from other people in the summer.

01:15:56   Yeah, that's probably a good idea.

01:15:58   October brought macOS Catalina.

01:16:01   I wrote a review of that. Hooray!

01:16:03   Not as lengthy as Federico's,

01:16:06   but still pretty good, very proud of it.

01:16:08   It's a really big deal.

01:16:11   I mean, we talk about iOS 13 and iPadOS 13

01:16:13   being like a big departure point.

01:16:15   Catalina is right there with it,

01:16:16   with the death of 64-bit apps.

01:16:18   This was a return to the review for me.

01:16:21   I did reviews for a long time,

01:16:23   and then I did some sort of oddball stuff

01:16:26   for a couple of years, but with Catalina,

01:16:29   I knew that I wanted to review it.

01:16:32   And John Vorhees wrote a review on Mac Stories as well,

01:16:35   also very good.

01:16:36   And yeah, it's just a very polarizing release

01:16:39   'cause it brings so many changes

01:16:42   and a lot of people can't run it yet

01:16:45   because they have software that would break on it.

01:16:49   And then there's a lot of features in it

01:16:50   that aren't really fully formed.

01:16:52   Like screen time is just super weird on the Mac

01:16:56   and the ghost of iTunes being broken into multiple apps

01:17:01   is like pretty good, but there are some features

01:17:03   that aren't around anymore.

01:17:06   And if you needed those, then you're sort of stuck.

01:17:08   So it's definitely a release to prepare for, not to install blindly, but that sort of kicked

01:17:16   off October.

01:17:17   R.I.P.

01:17:18   IWeb, am I right?

01:17:19   I know.

01:17:20   That's gone from Catalina.

01:17:21   IDisk?

01:17:22   Yeah.

01:17:23   Is that gone?

01:17:24   Has that finally gone to you?

01:17:25   That's been gone a long time.

01:17:26   Backup.app.

01:17:27   But could it run before though?

01:17:30   Like was it 32-bit?

01:17:31   No, IDisk was like an iCloud drive sort of thing.

01:17:33   Like it was a feature of the OS that got turned on by mobile media.

01:17:37   So what was the one that made... iDVD!

01:17:39   I was thinking of iDVD.

01:17:41   That was a thing.

01:17:42   Yeah.

01:17:43   iDisk was like...

01:17:44   I went out for iDVD.

01:17:45   Right.

01:17:46   iDisk was like .max file syncing thing.

01:17:47   Yeah, I remember it now.

01:17:49   Not good.

01:17:50   I had an iDisk.

01:17:51   Mm-hmm.

01:17:52   Me too.

01:17:53   Myke, you bought a new phone in October.

01:17:56   Samsung Galaxy Fold.

01:17:57   Mm-hmm.

01:17:58   I worked very hard on a review that will be respected after my time.

01:18:03   Wow.

01:18:04   Because it was not respected in its time.

01:18:07   Far into the future people will respect my review. Okay, we also had

01:18:11   The same episode is it the same episode? Geez, we'll screw with me Apple Apple screw with me

01:18:17   I worked so friggin hard on the galaxy fold review and then they released the emoji

01:18:23   Mm-hmm that episode is where we named that contest the Jeremy's where it's where weird fish comes from to where we make

01:18:30   Federico guess the names of the emoji and you go into like media blackout so you don't read any coverage of it

01:18:36   We just send you a JPEG and you have to name them.

01:18:38   Yes.

01:18:39   And then we all took a sip of Grandpa.

01:18:41   We did.

01:18:42   That's what I will always remember from that episode,

01:18:44   taking a sip of Grandpa.

01:18:45   Yes.

01:18:46   That was a-- it's a horrible thing that you guys make me do,

01:18:51   but I also enjoy it.

01:18:53   Mostly because I don't get to read Emojipedia

01:18:55   for like nine months, and then I need

01:18:59   to fill Emojipedia with page views from September--

01:19:01   from October to December.

01:19:02   It's like click, click, click.

01:19:03   I know Jeremy's really hurting for those very cool page

01:19:06   I'm sorry, I don't give you my business no more.

01:19:09   Where's my traffic from Italy?

01:19:10   Where is it?

01:19:11   But yeah, the taking a sip of Grandpa and the Kiwi meatballs were highlights of the

01:19:18   year.

01:19:19   Kiwi meatballs is a highlight, but like the level in which taking a sip of Grandpa is

01:19:23   a highlight for me is like so much more.

01:19:25   It's like a Bezos chart type deal, right?

01:19:27   Like it's like significantly more important to me.

01:19:31   Yeah.

01:19:32   It just came out before I realized it.

01:19:34   We also had AirPods Pro come out in October.

01:19:38   They came out, big surprise, just like one day, like product page and available to purchase,

01:19:43   and they like shipped the next day.

01:19:44   It was like wild.

01:19:45   It was.

01:19:46   We were thinking, is there going to be an event, are there going to be embargos, but

01:19:50   no, just like a press release and a webpage.

01:19:54   And the two of you really liked them, a lot of our listeners really liked them.

01:19:58   I love them.

01:19:59   Yeah.

01:20:00   I will just say though, I just want to say, right, like let's see if we're amongst friends

01:20:02   here, so I'm going to say it.

01:20:04   It's the most gross piece of technology I've ever owned in my entire life.

01:20:07   Oh yeah, you gotta clean it all the time.

01:20:09   Yes.

01:20:10   It's totally gross, gross, gross, gross.

01:20:13   But I let you in on a little secret.

01:20:15   Something that I'm planning for like a holiday project,

01:20:19   like a do-it-yourself project sort of way.

01:20:22   So there's a whole... and by whole...

01:20:24   Kickstance?

01:20:25   There's a whole community, and by whole community I mean like 20 people,

01:20:30   on the MacRumors forums, writing about how they modified the silicone ear tips of the

01:20:38   AirPods Pro to fit in a layer of memory foam underneath the silicone.

01:20:44   So basically, there's even a YouTube video from a person who did this.

01:20:49   You buy one of the Comply foam tips and you slide in the AirPod silicone one in a way

01:20:57   that you can sort of pull it back and basically you end up with foam underneath the silicone

01:21:04   tip, which is something that I want to do. I ordered these very specific foam tips from

01:21:11   Amazon Japan, so they're Japanese so you know they're quality stuff.

01:21:14   Yeah it's the best stuff.

01:21:16   You know, "ario" means Japan and therefore it's quality. So I will be destroying my AirPods

01:21:24   silicon tips soon enough because I know that this will go horribly wrong. But I'm going

01:21:31   to do it. I will go.

01:21:33   So why, maybe I missed it, why are people doing this?

01:21:36   Because it's more comfortable if you have this memory foam layer at least underneath

01:21:42   the silicon layer, you know?

01:21:45   Foam is also significantly more gross, right? You think the silicon's gross, the foam is

01:21:50   grosser.

01:21:51   So ideally somebody should make real foam tape replacements for the AirPods Pro, but

01:22:00   they need to have like a specific plastic clip to attach to the AirPods Pro.

01:22:04   Someone's going to do it, just nobody's been able to do it yet.

01:22:07   So what I'm doing now, so the silicone will still touch my ears, right? Because the foam

01:22:13   will be underneath the silicone, the foam will sit in between the central structure

01:22:21   of the tip and the outer silicone layer, right? So if you look, if you remove the silicone

01:22:28   tip and you look at it, you see that there's like an empty section, like an empty circular

01:22:32   section. I'm wondering though, how comfortable it's actually going to be. I'm wondering that

01:22:37   too. It's not going to be as comfortable as just the foam, I guess. It's supposed to act

01:22:43   like a filler for the tips. So we'll see, I don't know, I know, I'm going to destroy

01:22:51   This will go really, really bad for me.

01:22:53   -My recommendation to you before you do this

01:22:56   is to go to the Apple Store and buy replacement tips.

01:23:00   -Yes, I plan to do that.

01:23:01   But the theory is that because you add the foam,

01:23:05   the silicone tip will still --

01:23:07   Like, because of the foam, it will fit better.

01:23:10   And, like, it'll fit itself to the shape of your ear better

01:23:14   because it's not just silicone.

01:23:16   There's also this memory foam layer

01:23:19   that sort of makes it, you know, allows its shape to change in a better way.

01:23:24   That's the theory from these 20 people on the MacRumors forums. And I want to

01:23:28   believe them. I feel like these individuals with very funny usernames are up to

01:23:33   something and I want to believe them. So I'm gonna do it. I still think there's

01:23:38   room for Apple to do different style tips for these things. I agree. You know,

01:23:43   they could do foam, they could do various things and, you know, still could. Maybe

01:23:48   Maybe when they revise the AirPods Pro,

01:23:50   that would be a thing they could offer.

01:23:52   - Federico, I have a question for you.

01:23:54   How'd you find this?

01:23:55   - Well, it's funny you ask.

01:23:57   I started searching, I've been searching on amazon.com

01:24:02   because of course these things do not arrive in Italy ever.

01:24:05   For, here's a quick tip for you.

01:24:08   You can search Amazon results by latest arrivals.

01:24:11   So for the past few weeks, every, like everything,

01:24:13   like every couple of days, I would go to amazon.com

01:24:16   and search for "Foam Tips AirPods Pro"

01:24:19   and sort search results by latest arrivals.

01:24:22   Nothing was ever happening, so I Googled that,

01:24:25   and I filtered the Google search results for the last month,

01:24:30   and that's where I discovered the MacRumors people

01:24:34   hanging out and discussing this technique,

01:24:37   and eventually one of them made a video.

01:24:39   The person makes it look very easy.

01:24:41   It's not gonna be very easy, and at some point,

01:24:45   they start pulling the silicon tip with pliers or something.

01:24:50   It goes, this is gonna go super bad, I know it,

01:24:55   we all know it, but I gotta try it.

01:24:57   This is gonna be a more involved project

01:25:00   than the kickstands that I attached to my iPad Pro,

01:25:03   well, to the smart, which I still love

01:25:05   and I use every day, they're perfect.

01:25:08   So that went well, but this is more involved.

01:25:11   I will probably have to request Silvia's help

01:25:14   because she has smaller hands,

01:25:16   and I don't think I will be able to handle

01:25:18   this very precise job myself.

01:25:20   So we'll see, but I'm definitely gonna buy

01:25:23   the replacement tips from Apple, for sure.

01:25:27   - Yeah. - Mm-hmm.

01:25:28   But if it works, they could be so much more comfortable

01:25:31   for me, so we'll see.

01:25:34   - Please make an Instagram story of this as you do it.

01:25:36   - I will try, yes.

01:25:38   - So we are approaching the end of the year

01:25:40   of very busy November and December,

01:25:43   But before Myke tells us about what happened in November,

01:25:46   I wanna tell you about StoryWorth,

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01:27:09   Our thanks to StoryWorth for their support of this show

01:27:12   and Relay FM.

01:27:13   - It's time for November.

01:27:14   November was very busy, full of way more news

01:27:17   than you would expect at this time of year.

01:27:19   The first piece I would like to bring to you

01:27:21   is Photoshop for iPad.

01:27:22   It was released much later than anybody had expected,

01:27:26   and also with less features than most people wanted,

01:27:30   but Adobe since have seemed to commit

01:27:33   that this is an important thing for them

01:27:35   and they're gonna keep working on it

01:27:36   and adding new features.

01:27:37   It really does feel like the beginning

01:27:39   of Photoshop for iPad, even though people wanted more.

01:27:43   We spoke about them already a little earlier,

01:27:45   but in November was when Apple's TV+ shows debuted.

01:27:50   The 16-inch MacBook Pro was unveiled

01:27:52   to the world in November.

01:27:54   Everybody was much excited about this.

01:27:56   Of course, it killed the butterfly keyboard,

01:27:58   which is no longer around.

01:28:00   - It killed it for one laptop, not two other sets.

01:28:02   - Yes, it has gone in this very MacBook Pro,

01:28:04   but also brought with it a bunch of interesting features

01:28:07   and performance and stuff.

01:28:08   Like overall, like it seemed like this computer

01:28:11   is very well regarded.

01:28:12   So.

01:28:13   - Yeah, I think people are really enjoying it.

01:28:15   - Yeah, which is great news, right?

01:28:17   Like Apple did exactly what people were hoping

01:28:19   that they would do with this product.

01:28:21   So it's good to see that.

01:28:22   - You said that and that they killed

01:28:25   the butterfly keyboard in my brain because it's weird.

01:28:28   I instantly imagined like the cover of Kendrick Lamar's

01:28:33   Pimp a Butterfly album, but it's called To Kill a Butterfly and there's a MacBook on the cover.

01:28:38   Somebody should make that. Please make that. I need that in my life if you ever have the time

01:28:42   to do so. Thank you. The information spoke about a report, well they gave a report of a meeting

01:28:49   that happened inside of Apple that laid out an internal roadmap for AR products including an AR

01:28:54   headset in 2022 with glasses in 2023. You will note that the hosts of this very show were very

01:29:00   dubious of this idea and technology. Apple Music Replay launched, which was Apple's attempt

01:29:06   at doing something like Spotify Wrapped. Spotify Wrapped came later and absolutely destroyed

01:29:11   in quality and features Apple Music Replay, but like, better luck next time Apple, because

01:29:17   Spotify did a far better job with Spotify Wrapped. Did you guys get to see it much at

01:29:22   all?

01:29:23   I saw that they had the, well I mean besides the cultural influence of it alone, like I

01:29:30   I saw people sharing and tweeting about Spotify.

01:29:33   - It basically created a UI,

01:29:35   which is like an Instagram story inside of Spotify,

01:29:38   which showed all these graphs and graphics

01:29:40   and things you could share.

01:29:42   It also included podcasts, which was cool.

01:29:44   - And the really good idea they had

01:29:45   was to have your songs of the decade,

01:29:48   which I think is what really resonated with people.

01:29:50   And it was a missed opportunity for Apple

01:29:52   because they should have seen this coming.

01:29:54   Like it's the end of the decade.

01:29:56   Let's show people.

01:29:57   And I guess that the problem for Apple

01:29:58   that Apple Music has only been around for five years now, just over four years, basically.

01:30:04   So it kinda doesn't make sense to do songs of the decade, but, you know, whatever. People

01:30:09   don't remember how time works, so Apple Music should have done it, even if it's just for

01:30:13   like five years of data, you know? So Spotify has it, better luck next decade, I guess,

01:30:20   Apple. And Apple Music Replay is still around, it updates weekly. So I'm guessing that on

01:30:27   January 1st or maybe the first Sunday of January 2020 you will have to go to...

01:30:32   You'll get your 2020 replay? You will have to go to the website to replay... what is it?

01:30:37   beta.music.apple.com/replay and generate the Replay 20 playlist. But after

01:30:44   that you can listen to music and every week of the year 2020 you will get an

01:30:48   updated set of songs in your Replay 20 playlist. So we'll see how it goes.

01:30:55   Motorola showed off the folding Razer phone which will be available next year

01:31:00   which I'm very excited about and of course Tesla showed off Federico's

01:31:04   favorite the Cybertruck.

01:31:06   Yeah, that sound, that sound you made.

01:31:12   Can we move to December?

01:31:14   Please.

01:31:14   Let's move to December.

01:31:15   Apple held a secret awards ceremony for the what used to be just a press release and sometimes a

01:31:24   web page and often just a section of the App Store. The best lists for apps and games and

01:31:32   books and podcasts of the year. Now they had this private event, I suppose in New York

01:31:38   City, and there were some, there were picks, you know, there were apps chosen and games

01:31:47   chosen, the work categories were selected, and yeah, we talked about them, you know,

01:31:55   Moleskine Flow won its 10th award of the year from Apple.

01:32:00   Whoa, so much shade.

01:32:02   No, I mean, it's a good app. I'm kidding.

01:32:05   Yeah. What do you think about their watch pick for the year? I think they really nailed

01:32:09   that category.

01:32:10   Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a really good pick. I think absolutely, you know, from an editorial

01:32:15   standpoint, what a peak, right?

01:32:17   We've all got to agree, the coolest physical awards given of the year, right? The Apple

01:32:23   Music Awards?

01:32:24   Yes! Well, actually, yes. They had the Apple Music Awards.

01:32:28   God damn it!

01:32:29   Yeah, actually, they are the coolest. The Apple Music Awards made out of silicon, like,

01:32:36   I'm guessing unused silicon parts for Apple-made chips. And they're big, right? We talked about

01:32:43   they're like the size of an LP. The circular part of the size of the LP then it has a

01:32:48   huge piece of aluminium around it. It is an object, they are a substantial object. So

01:32:54   Billie Eilish basically swept the Apple Music Awards, but there were also other

01:33:01   picks and there's a list that we published, you can still find it

01:33:05   somewhere on the App Store at Apple Music I think. But yeah, Specter Camera was the

01:33:10   up of the year and Sky was the game of the year. What else is happening in December?

01:33:18   Let's see. Oh yeah, the Mac Pro finally came out. A bunch of people are excited about this.

01:33:25   You know, some people are buying it, other people are not.

01:33:30   John Sircus has got one coming.

01:33:34   There are podcasts being made about the Mac Pro that will come out.

01:33:39   podcasts are being made about the Mac Pro. People seem happy, but also people are not

01:33:43   happy because folks, and this is like, I'm sort of out of this discussion, but I sort

01:33:49   of pay attention to it in passing.

01:33:52   I like how you pay attention to the MacRumors forums.

01:33:54   Oh no, I actually, I do.

01:33:56   Pay way more attention to those.

01:33:58   Those are my people. The MacRumors forums people. Folks were expecting better performance

01:34:04   out of a Mac Pro, like the base model or the medium model.

01:34:08   Like if you spend $3,000 or $5,000 on a Mac Pro,

01:34:11   you know, still like a good expense,

01:34:15   like it's a good amount of money,

01:34:17   but people do not seem happy

01:34:19   about the performance that you get.

01:34:20   So Steven, can you shed some light

01:34:22   on what is going on with this debate?

01:34:25   - Well, you gotta spend $6,000, not three,

01:34:28   to even get in the door,

01:34:28   but it seems like the base eight core

01:34:32   and then maybe even the 12 core doesn't really outpace the iMac

01:34:36   Pro in some things, but that should not

01:34:39   be surprising to anybody.

01:34:40   Because they both use the Intel chipsets, right?

01:34:44   Like it speaks highly of the iMac Pro

01:34:47   that is as fast as it is.

01:34:49   But I really think that the Mac Pro, as far as performance,

01:34:53   goes beyond just like raw CPU numbers.

01:34:56   Because you can get those in that other machine.

01:34:59   But where the Mac Pro is going to shine

01:35:01   is in RAM capacity and then GPU computational stuff and the afterburner if you're working in

01:35:09   ProRes. And so if you look at it more holistically, the Mac Pro smokes the iMac Pro for

01:35:18   some workflows. But I mean, I think people just want to find something to complain about. Like,

01:35:21   I don't read much into that being a problem for this machine, because on paper, like, yeah,

01:35:25   they're going to benchmark about the same, because they have the same CPUs.

01:35:29   Well, you know, I guess if your job is to run Geekbench scores, it's important,

01:35:34   but I don't think that's anybody's job, so it's probably not that important.

01:35:37   Next up, do I have to read my own stuff?

01:35:41   Well, you can, or Myke can do it.

01:35:44   Okay. All right, so this is stuff that we hadn't reported on, but it has happened,

01:35:48   so it's worth mentioning. So there are two things.

01:35:50   First is Federico published the most ambitious shortcuts crossover of the year.

01:35:57   A is two shortcuts, one has like 800 actions, another has a thousand actions.

01:36:02   But I've called music bot, you've got music bot and music bot pro.

01:36:05   Music bot pro as of this release is not available,

01:36:08   it will be sent out in this week's club max stories weekly.

01:36:12   Music bot is a shortcut which I think I saw Stephen say this earlier and it's completely true,

01:36:17   goes way further than not only any shortcut I have seen before,

01:36:21   but more than I actually believed was possible for what shortcuts could do,

01:36:26   because I've never seen an 800 action shortcut before.

01:36:29   And if you want to see what it's like because of the way that shortcuts

01:36:32   makes you enable it, you have to scroll through the list and you can get like,

01:36:36   like as you as you install it, you scroll through and it shows you all the actions

01:36:39   before you can add it. But I actually like that because it gives

01:36:42   you an appreciation for what you are adding.

01:36:45   Plus I had to at one point because I had this a little bit early,

01:36:49   I was helping because as we mentioned on the show, I break all of Federico

01:36:53   shortcuts for reasons that don't make any complete sense. But one of the things that

01:36:57   was funny this time was when going into Apple's because okay actually let me pause, I'm going

01:37:02   to pause there I'll explain a little bit more about what it is. MusicBot is a collection

01:37:06   of shortcuts wrapped into one very large shortcut essentially which will allow you to operate

01:37:12   the music in your Apple Music library in many various ways from picking playlists to saving

01:37:19   albums, to having MusicBot keep track of albums that are coming out later in the year, to

01:37:25   letting you search your library, to playing music by genre, to being able to control the

01:37:31   audio from the sense of the volume of your device, to sending it to other devices via

01:37:37   Airplay. It does all of this stuff and it's incredible. It will also allow you to pick

01:37:43   Apple mixes, so like your friend mix and stuff like that. Well, one of them, can you remember

01:37:51   which mix it was? The favorites. There's a mix called favorites, which kept failing for

01:37:56   me because in the UK it's spelt with a U, right? And so like it couldn't find it, so

01:38:04   stuff like that. But when I did that, Federico said to me, "Oh, just go in and add it, just

01:38:08   amend it yourself. So I entered the matrix of the shortcut. I had to one, find the area

01:38:17   where I had to add this U and then two, like I, like at one point I like accidentally picked

01:38:24   something up, right, you know you can feel the haptic, and I was like, ahh! I forced

01:38:28   quick shortcuts, that was the way that I dealt with that. It was like, I don't wanna do,

01:38:33   I ended up finding it and adding the you in the right place.

01:38:37   But like it was almost it's kind of funny, like at the time,

01:38:40   like even though I knew that this would only affect my local version,

01:38:45   there was a part of me that was like, I can't believe Federico's

01:38:48   trusting me to do this.

01:38:49   But I had done it. I've been in there and I asked Federico,

01:38:53   how did you edit this? Can you tell people?

01:38:55   Because I was like, how would you keep in track of this

01:38:58   when you were building it? And you told me the way that you did it.

01:39:01   Can you just reference like when you were building this shortcut,

01:39:03   the way that you would build it.

01:39:05   - So initially, so the first thing I do

01:39:09   for these complex shortcuts is I try to build

01:39:12   a structure out first, so I don't actually,

01:39:15   it's not working, it's not functioning,

01:39:17   but I do build the structure of like menus and lists

01:39:20   and conditional blocks.

01:39:21   So to do this, I use my iPad, but later when I needed

01:39:25   to actually fill the shortcut with data and actions

01:39:27   and parameters, I had to use a second device.

01:39:31   So a second device disconnected from the internet

01:39:34   so that it wouldn't sync changes back and forth

01:39:37   as I was editing on my main iPad.

01:39:39   So imagine one iPad editing the shortcut,

01:39:43   another iPad in portrait mode

01:39:46   so that I could see more actions at the same time

01:39:48   because of the vertical orientation,

01:39:50   disconnected from the internet,

01:39:52   that would allow me to scroll the shortcut back and forth

01:39:54   and see where data was coming from,

01:39:57   as the other one was actually making changes

01:39:59   to the live copy.

01:40:00   this is not an ideal situation. And later, for example, now when I'm building MusicBot Pro

01:40:07   and I'm adding features to the Pro version, I'm relying on the scroll bar method a lot in iOS 13,

01:40:15   that you can pick the scroll bar and scrub it through real quick, and that allows you to navigate

01:40:21   real fast in a long document. I'm using that. I now have a sense of where things are located,

01:40:28   more or less in MusicBot, but also the combo of using the scroll bar and looking at the

01:40:34   emoji that I used. The emoji are used in MusicBot for menus and lists, both for presentation

01:40:42   purposes but also for me to keep track of sections through the colors of the characters,

01:40:47   of the emoji. So yeah, not an ideal situation editing in MusicBot, but yeah, I got it done.

01:40:54   MusicBot Pro is now well over a thousand actions, so that should be fun.

01:41:00   And it just adds more features in, right?

01:41:03   It adds more features, yeah. So basically, MusicBot Pro,

01:41:06   as I wrote on Mac Stories, you will have to own the Toolbox Pro app,

01:41:13   which is the shortcuts companion utility we talked about.

01:41:16   And thanks to that, you will be able to have additional Apple Music actions.

01:41:22   Initially the plan was for me to let people create a developer token for Apple music, but now thanks to toolbox Pro

01:41:28   I no longer have to so there's nothing you need to worry about basically on Friday

01:41:32   just make sure that you have toolbox Pro installed and download music pop pro and

01:41:37   Do the normal configuration?

01:41:39   No developer stuff involved anymore, and it'll work for you, and you will you will be able to do things like

01:41:46   love or dislike a song that is currently playing, you will be able to do this for any song

01:41:52   regardless of whether it's already in your library or not.

01:41:56   So basically the idea of MusicPod Pro is that the limitation of the free version,

01:42:02   that it only works for stuff that is in your library, that's gone.

01:42:06   Because Toolbox Pro has actions that talk directly to the Apple Music API,

01:42:10   the web service. So you can search for any song and

01:42:15   and you can start playing any song, even if it's not in your library.

01:42:19   So like, you think of something, you can open MusicBot Pro, and there's a new action called "Search and Play".

01:42:25   And you can just type in the name of a song and start playing it right away, in the background.

01:42:30   It doesn't even launch music.

01:42:32   So, a bunch of features like that, and you can also save curated playlists from Apple Music.

01:42:40   Like there's a really good... Yeah. So, you know, any Apple Music playlist, like, I don't know,

01:42:45   best of like the... What's it called? The alternative, you know, the top of the alternative...

01:42:50   A-list.

01:42:52   A-list. There's an excellent new playlist that I just saw today called Emo Rap, which is really,

01:42:58   really good for, you know, that kind of genre. Those playlists you can now save in MusicBot Pro

01:43:05   because they normally... that's all Apple Music catalog stuff, as they call it.

01:43:11   And the favorite albums features in MusicBot Pro is just called favorites, because you can save

01:43:19   singles, albums and playlists to your favorites. So that's nice.

01:43:24   Very cool. It's very, very cool. And then today, MaxStory Selects, which were your...

01:43:29   I think last year was the first year you did this, where you did basically your apps of the year.

01:43:35   It included two different categories this year, right?

01:43:37   It was a reader's choice and was it...

01:43:38   Was Best New Feature, was that new?

01:43:41   I think it was four, four categories actually.

01:43:44   Best New Feature, Reader's Choice, Best Watch App,

01:43:48   Hint, Hint, and Best Mac App,

01:43:51   because we also remember about those.

01:43:54   So making...

01:43:55   That's a total of six awards now that you give out?

01:43:58   Eight.

01:43:59   That's eight awards.

01:43:59   Oh my God, what's wrong with me?

01:44:00   I can't count.

01:44:02   There's like an amount of awards

01:44:04   and something. But the awards are really nice and you did something which I think is amazing,

01:44:10   which is physical trophies with the Max Story Select logo in them, which is a very nice

01:44:14   touch. It's very classy.

01:44:16   Yeah, I knew.

01:44:17   I want one of those.

01:44:18   Well, create something and maybe you will be considered.

01:44:22   Oh wow. Poof. Okay.

01:44:25   Well, so here's the thing. I knew that I wanted to do this last year, but I needed to see

01:44:31   if it was like a thing that people would care about before committing because it's an investment,

01:44:35   right? The awards do not build themselves out of thin air.

01:44:41   Yeah, see, like we, so me and Jason do the upgrade is right, which is like the awards

01:44:45   that we've done. And I thought to myself a bunch of times, like, Oh, it'd be really cool

01:44:49   to make physical awards. But our categories are so wide reaching because we do like a

01:44:54   favorite movie. It's like no movie studios except in the awards. So I've never bothered

01:44:57   doing it, but it makes perfect sense for you to do it because you have the captive audience.

01:45:03   Like the developers of applications are reading the site anyway, so they are all super excited.

01:45:10   With the upgradeers, it seems to have been over the last few years that it is podcasters

01:45:15   care most about the upgradeers. So other podcasters want to receive upgradey awards, right? That

01:45:23   seems to have been a thing. But we're not just going to make awards for two categories

01:45:28   of our 12 categories or whatever it is. But I think this is a very cool idea to do. I

01:45:33   think you've executed it perfectly. Thank you. There's obviously more we want to do

01:45:38   next year. But I am naturally assuming Jon made this happen. Well, actually we did a

01:45:46   lot of research, but yet the manufacturer of the awards is based in the US. So Jon had

01:45:56   to talk to them.

01:45:57   This just feels like a very John Voorhees project, like the execution of a project like

01:46:00   this. This feels like something Jon would do.

01:46:03   Yes, and he took all the photos and the videos that we have, these spinning animations that

01:46:08   we're sharing on Twitter and Instagram today.

01:46:10   Very cute. Yeah, very cute.

01:46:12   But also a fun detail, each winner, so we'll proceed with shipping the awards later this

01:46:19   week. Each winner will get the award and a lovely card alongside the award. And because

01:46:27   both Jon and I have really, really horrible handwriting, we had Silvia do the handwriting

01:46:35   on the card. Because Jon and I cannot write. And Jon was here in Rome, obviously last week,

01:46:42   So it was convenient to plan all of that.

01:46:45   But yeah, physical awards.

01:46:47   It was fun.

01:46:48   I haven't seen them in person, by the way.

01:46:50   Maybe in a couple of years time, there can be like an actual ceremony and you can hand

01:46:54   them out to people.

01:46:55   Imagine that.

01:46:56   Yeah, that would be cool, actually.

01:46:58   Yes, we'll see.

01:47:00   You know, okay, maybe we can have this conversation offline, but like, if you shifted the awards

01:47:07   to June?

01:47:08   Well, yeah.

01:47:10   So I thought about it actually, but I don't know how to... there's maybe something we

01:47:16   can do.

01:47:17   We'll see.

01:47:18   You can counter-program against the ADAs.

01:47:19   Just like do it at the same time.

01:47:22   Especially, you know.

01:47:23   And the max-or you select goes to flow by moleskine.

01:47:28   You do it outside on the sidewalk, outside WWDC, you know, like in protest.

01:47:31   You just hand one out to everybody.

01:47:33   Yeah.

01:47:34   See, now you made it terrible, Steven.

01:47:36   So now it's not something I want to do anymore.

01:47:38   Aww.

01:47:39   - Oh, well, on that disappointment,

01:47:43   we should wrap this up.

01:47:44   Some housekeeping, we will be off on Christmas Day,

01:47:49   but we will be back on January 1st with the 2020 Rickies.

01:47:55   Our predictions for next year,

01:47:58   we will grade our predictions from 2019.

01:48:02   We've already been arguing about what's a Ricky and not,

01:48:05   so do not miss that.

01:48:06   - There is way less bloodshed so far.

01:48:09   I mean, there's still some time to go before we nail it down,

01:48:12   but like there was some bloodshed six months ago,

01:48:16   but there's been way less this time, which is good.

01:48:19   - We are preparing for that.

01:48:21   Also just want to say, you know,

01:48:22   we are really fortunate to do this show

01:48:24   and it is something that is only possible

01:48:27   because of y'all out there listening.

01:48:30   So in talking about the year in review,

01:48:32   like Connected has had a great year

01:48:34   and that's because of y'all.

01:48:35   So the three of us wanted to say thank you

01:48:37   our listeners out there for making it possible for another year. Yeah and I think to kind of put

01:48:43   a slight bent on that. You don't want to thank our listeners for listening? No no because we thank

01:48:49   people every year right as is totally right because like we're super happy that people tune in.

01:48:54   Yeah. But this show got really weird in 2019. Yes. Right like we leaned into a specific way that we

01:49:03   we want to produce this show and it seems to have also hit our listeners with exactly

01:49:11   I think what a lot of them were looking for and so I want to thank everyone for coming

01:49:16   along with us on this journey for making this show I think for the three of us like way

01:49:22   more fun to produce as well as trying to balance with the interesting commentary that we want

01:49:28   to do but like we have a lot of fun with this show now and it's kind of taken its own path

01:49:33   And I'm you know, it seems like people have really

01:49:36   Warmed to that idea along with us

01:49:38   Which has given me like a whole new appreciation for a project that I have been doing that we have all been doing

01:49:46   For a very long time at this point. So, you know like this show the

01:49:50   Us three working together. It's like how many years now coming up on seven six seven? Yeah, right

01:49:57   And so I feel completely refreshed like we're doing a brand new show

01:50:02   Yeah, and that has happened in 2019 and it's made me very it makes me

01:50:06   Really look forward to every Wednesday

01:50:10   So yeah, I'm not a person who believes in these things, but I'm just saying

01:50:15   We began the show with a trashcan Mac Pro and the show was re you know

01:50:21   Basically reborn with them with the new Mac Pro. So is it a coincidence?

01:50:26   I don't know. You know, I think when you say that you say like I guess the identity of our program is tied up in

01:50:32   The Mac Pro and we should be remembered for that. You know, we are the Mac Pro show and all those ATP folks.

01:50:38   I agree actually.

01:50:39   There you go. Who? Yeah, exactly. So yes, we're super. We're the Mac Pro show. We are the Mac Pro show. We are pro Mac

01:50:46   people over here. Macintosh professionals. We love the Macintosh.

01:50:50   We love the Macintosh professional. We do.

01:50:55   We do so yes, thank you everybody for listening and especially when we go on our weird, you know side topics

01:51:01   Including the Macintosh professional look forward to our first part purpose of the year where Federico talks about how he split some

01:51:09   AirPods silicon tips in half

01:51:11   I am going to buy a Mac Pro just to watch the video and you know with with with a better video codec

01:51:22   Because of good afterburner a thing that's right. It makes video faster like it actually goes faster

01:51:29   So I think I think that does it for 2019 for connected

01:51:32   I think our sponsors this week Squarespace pingdom hover and story worth in

01:51:37   The the time that we are gone. You could still follow us on Twitter. Of course, you can find Myke there as I am y

01:51:43   Ke he is the host of a bunch of other shows here on relay FM

01:51:47   You can find Federico on Twitter of a t G v I t I CCI he's the editor-in-chief and apparently trophy

01:51:55   Designer over at max stories dotnet you can find me on Twitter as is mh and my writing at 512 pixels

01:52:02   dotnet and until

01:52:05   Next year gentlemen say goodbye

01:52:07   Gotta be that you happy new year everybody adios