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Connected

210: Cold Feet Apple Blogger

 

00:00:00   (upbeat music)

00:00:02   Hello and welcome to Connected, episode 210.

00:00:12   It's brought to you this week by our sponsors,

00:00:13   Away, Pingdom, and Molekule.

00:00:15   I'm your host, Steven Hackett,

00:00:17   and I'm joined by my co-host.

00:00:19   I have Mr. Federico Faticci, how are you?

00:00:22   - Ciao, Steven, how are you?

00:00:23   - I'm good, I'm glad you're here with us.

00:00:25   And of course, we're also joined by Myke Hurley.

00:00:28   Myke, hi.

00:00:29   Ciao Steven, how are you?

00:00:30   (laughing)

00:00:32   - Deja vu.

00:00:32   - Don't copy me.

00:00:34   - Well that's what I do now.

00:00:35   I just say everything you say.

00:00:37   - I'm older and I can get confused easily.

00:00:39   So please, please behave.

00:00:41   We have a lot of stuff to talk about.

00:00:45   You know sometimes in these Apple news cycles,

00:00:47   there's like a week of in between.

00:00:49   So they announce stuff last week,

00:00:52   but stuff doesn't ship till the end of this week

00:00:54   or next week or even further in the future.

00:00:56   So we're kind of in between.

00:00:57   but in the fall that often means software releases.

00:01:00   So we're gonna talk a lot about software today,

00:01:02   but first we have some follow up.

00:01:03   And there was, I don't wanna say that the listeners

00:01:07   tried to hold a mutiny, but the listeners tried

00:01:11   holding a mutiny over our scoring of Federico's--

00:01:14   - Over your tyranny, over your tyranny,

00:01:17   because this is not fair.

00:01:18   You made fun of me, this is what happened.

00:01:21   You made fun of me and I was right.

00:01:22   And the people, rightfully so, the people got upset.

00:01:26   - You weren't right.

00:01:27   - So we should back up a second.

00:01:29   We graded our predictions last week,

00:01:31   and somehow we still have a podcast after.

00:01:33   Listeners don't know unless you're listening live.

00:01:35   I cut a lot of stuff out of the final episode.

00:01:37   It really got out of hand.

00:01:38   But you had a prediction. - That was my Federico Stike

00:01:40   Kirsten.

00:01:41   - No, that's not true. - It was in Italian.

00:01:43   - Not true, not true.

00:01:44   - That's not true.

00:01:44   It's not true. - No, no, no, no, no.

00:01:45   - He used so many hand movements,

00:01:47   he knocks his microphone off the table.

00:01:48   - How would you know?

00:01:49   Do you have cameras in my bedroom?

00:01:50   - No, I heard the sound. - Looking at me?

00:01:51   - Yes. - Sure.

00:01:52   Okay.

00:01:54   a prediction that I work would would receive an update and it did but the

00:02:01   predictions were about the event not about what Apple would do in the

00:02:06   meantime so what I'm willing to do a because it's not going to cost me my

00:02:09   victory but B because I want to try to heal this rift this this transatlantic

00:02:15   rift we have in our podcast I'm willing if Myke is willing to grant you a half

00:02:20   point because you were right but you were wrong in the sense that it didn't fall within

00:02:25   the purview of the event. But I'm willing to give you a half point and I think maybe

00:02:30   that should be a nice compromise. You are rewarded for getting something right but you're

00:02:35   not rewarded fully because you weren't fully right. Is that fair?

00:02:38   Do you also get a punishment for making fun of me?

00:02:41   No, no punishment. Just a half point. No. No, you can't punish yourself.

00:02:45   I will accept it. Thank you. Thank you.

00:02:48   I don't agree with it. I don't agree with that.

00:02:50   what? You don't agree with it? Oh my god. There are no half points around here. This

00:02:56   is not upgrade, this is not draft, this is a different system. This is a system where

00:03:01   points can be awarded randomly for things that happen significantly after the prediction's

00:03:07   point. Myke, so Federico, plug your ears for a second. Myke, I'm just doing this so he's

00:03:10   not angry with us anymore. I'm listening to you! You were asked to hold your ears! I want

00:03:17   people to remember, go back to the previous episode, so re-listen to the old episode,

00:03:22   and the reaction that these two had to my suggestion that iWork should get shortcuts

00:03:27   in iOS 12. They thought it was a crazy idea, and let it be known, support for shortcuts

00:03:33   in iWork is terrible, but still, it's there. I have no problem with the specific pick.

00:03:39   What I thought was funny is that they would devote any time during the iPhone keynote

00:03:44   to talking about iWork updates. That was what I was ridiculed for.

00:03:49   To be fair, they talked about the, you know, what was the name, home court, and the other

00:03:55   Galaga. They're not going to bring out a famous writer

00:04:00   to show how pages work, they want to bring out how basketball works.

00:04:03   I don't know, I could see JK Rowling on stage showing pages and shortcuts, like, that would

00:04:08   have been awesome. Sure.

00:04:10   There you go, you've got next year's prediction set.

00:04:14   So I have not, I just skimmed this article. I don't use iWork on a regular basis. What

00:04:19   can you do now with Siri shortcuts in iWork?

00:04:25   It's really not great. Like mostly you can just...

00:04:27   Quarter point! Quarter point it is.

00:04:30   There's no take backs. That half point is mine.

00:04:33   One second. We can't apply no take backs to this situation because by giving you a half

00:04:37   point we are quite literally taking it back.

00:04:40   no take back take backs. Oh, that's a give back. Like, it's the opposite. So, this is

00:04:50   stupid. The shortcuts in iWork are kind of terrible in that, well not terrible, just

00:04:57   not really useful in that they mostly allow you to just reopen documents. They're really

00:05:03   not like actions. I think the only action we could find was in Keynote you can play

00:05:09   presentation but like don't expect super complex stuff like I don't know change

00:05:15   layouts or apply modifications to text or all that kind of stuff it's just

00:05:19   reopen a document or reopen a template that kind of that kind of shortcuts

00:05:24   yeah I could see a world where I work or maybe even notes because notes has the

00:05:30   table feature of like if I have a chart or something like hey I just want to add

00:05:34   a new entry you know some basic data entry stuff maybe that'll come should

00:05:38   have been in the keynote though. What is earth-shattering is that the home pod as

00:05:44   discussed now supports multiple timers so I recorded myself speaking to my home

00:05:49   pod. If you haven't listened to this I will warn you this will set off your

00:05:53   home pod it will add timers to your home pod but I cancel the timers at the end

00:05:57   of the recording because I'm looking out for you dear reader and listener. That is

00:06:02   very conscientious. I know I'm a nice guy. More or less this works like the echo so

00:06:08   you can set multiple timers you can name them and you can ask the HomePod hey how

00:06:13   much time is left on you know this timer or that timer but this really again

00:06:18   draws attention for me at least to the fact that Siri is so different on all of

00:06:23   our devices so the HomePod does this but the iPhone does not so if you have a

00:06:27   timer running on the iPhone on iOS 12 on the public release it says a timer is

00:06:32   already running would you like to replace it no I don't want to do that but

00:06:37   But it's even worse on the Apple Watch.

00:06:39   If you have a timer running on watchOS

00:06:42   and you ask to set a new timer,

00:06:45   it overrides the old timer.

00:06:47   This just blows it away and sets a new one.

00:06:49   So I wish Apple would, this is great,

00:06:51   it's on the HomePod, I'm glad it is,

00:06:52   but these sorts of things should be the same everywhere,

00:06:56   I think, for, you know, Siri still feels like

00:06:59   it is limited based on the hardware it's in.

00:07:01   It doesn't feel like it's this,

00:07:03   it's this all-powerful being that sort of

00:07:06   across multiple devices the way I think it should. So I'm hoping that Apple

00:07:09   continues to make it more feature complete no matter what particular piece

00:07:14   of hardware you're speaking into. Yeah it doesn't really make sense that you

00:07:18   would launch this feature but just make it exclusive to the thing that not so

00:07:22   many people have. And it's this is the big problem of Siri like we see this

00:07:27   problem all the time that it's inconsistent and while on one hand we do

00:07:33   praise the fact that Apple is able to integrate the software and the hardware

00:07:36   together, sometimes that's sort of also a liability in that the integration goes

00:07:42   too far into the the problematic aspect of this that it only works on one

00:07:48   specific device. Well it's like they integrate it really well with one device

00:07:52   but the devices don't integrate together, right? And this is

00:07:57   part of the issue that people have with Siri and why like Siri is considered bad

00:08:01   is because inconsistency breeds unreliability and unreliability means

00:08:06   you don't trust it and that's why we get into these situations. So apparently the

00:08:12   decision has been made on how the iPhone names are being written. This has been a

00:08:16   problem that many people writing about the iPhones over the last few weeks have

00:08:20   had. Is it capital S's? Lowercase R's? How does it work? Joe Rossignol of

00:08:27   of MacRumors says that Apple confirmed to him

00:08:30   that it is capitalized and the two letters are put together

00:08:33   unless small caps are available.

00:08:36   I mean, I don't really know why people would,

00:08:38   like do people have small caps lying around?

00:08:40   Like I don't really get that, but.

00:08:42   - Yeah, I got a bag of them here in the drawer.

00:08:44   - Got a bunch of small caps right here

00:08:45   just in case I need them.

00:08:47   So that's it, right?

00:08:47   It's X, capital X, capital S, put together,

00:08:51   capital X, capital R, put together.

00:08:53   It's strange.

00:08:55   And Apple have actually since confirming this updated a bunch of their materials to try

00:08:59   and replicate this everywhere, to clear up a lot of the inconsistency that's been floating

00:09:04   around Apple.com.

00:09:06   This is my kind of problem, right?

00:09:07   I still don't know, for example, in iOS 12 whether I'm supposed to use lock screen with

00:09:12   a capital L or lock screen with a lowercase l.

00:09:15   And I mentioned this because I...

00:09:16   I can never remember if lock screen and home screen are two distinct words or one word.

00:09:21   So two words, first word is capitalized.

00:09:26   That's the way it used to be.

00:09:27   And if you check the Apple--

00:09:28   - That doesn't make any sense to me.

00:09:29   It's the lock screen.

00:09:31   - Yes, that's the way that Apple styled it.

00:09:35   And people, when I complained about this on Twitter

00:09:37   this summer, people gave me a hard time.

00:09:39   Like, why do you care?

00:09:40   Because I wanna be precise.

00:09:41   Like, it's one of those things that,

00:09:43   like, would you get upset if instead of calling you Mark,

00:09:48   I would call you Marcus?

00:09:49   It's kind of similar, but it's not the same.

00:09:51   it's not your actual name,

00:09:53   Apple has a style guide that you can find on the web.

00:09:56   It's help.apple.com/apple-style-guide.

00:10:00   It was last updated in May 2018,

00:10:03   and it still says that you're supposed to use

00:10:05   lock screen with a capital L when used in a sentence.

00:10:09   But in iOS 12, in some places,

00:10:13   the system uses lock screen with a lowercase L.

00:10:15   In other places, it uses the old version.

00:10:18   So this is one of those things

00:10:20   that drives me crazy. In my review, I went with lowercase L because I heard from a few

00:10:26   people that that's the new style, even though the style guide still hasn't been updated.

00:10:31   This is one of those things that really, really I think about because it makes me itchy in

00:10:38   a way that I need to know that the way that that couple of words are in my artworks, that

00:10:49   My articles are precise because I hate it when people spell things wrong or write things wrong

00:10:56   and I say this as the guy whose name is always typed wrong in places on the internet. So, yeah.

00:11:04   Would you say that you sometimes get vid-tee-chee? Yeah? I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry.

00:11:12   Where do I put my resignation letter for this podcast?

00:11:18   You can fax it right to me.

00:11:20   I mean, the joke I made in Slack was like,

00:11:25   if you have to confirm with the press

00:11:28   how you write your product names,

00:11:29   your product names probably aren't very good.

00:11:32   I still struggle.

00:11:33   The thing that really gets me is the two capital letters

00:11:37   that people are supposed to treat differently.

00:11:39   So I have been, we've talked about this,

00:11:43   I've been a stickler for iPhone 10.

00:11:47   - But I don't correct people in the real world

00:11:48   because that makes you a type of person

00:11:50   that I don't wanna be, right?

00:11:51   Like if you're, I don't wanna be that guy.

00:11:52   - Yeah, you just internalize and push those feelings down.

00:11:55   - Yeah, what you wanna do is push the feelings down

00:11:58   as far as you can as long as you can.

00:12:00   And they probably won't explode out the other end.

00:12:03   But the, what I'm kinda coming to now is like,

00:12:07   maybe Apple doesn't care, and like, I'm not gonna say X,

00:12:11   because now 10 is just drilled into my brain,

00:12:14   but like, I'm not gonna get worked up

00:12:16   other people say, even like on a tech podcast,

00:12:19   because Apple's naming is so screwy now.

00:12:22   You know, every year, we talk about Apple's names

00:12:26   being problematic for several years now,

00:12:28   and every year I'm like,

00:12:29   this is the year they're gonna fix it,

00:12:31   and instead they find the one possible way out

00:12:34   of the hole they've dug, but this year,

00:12:38   I really don't know what's after this.

00:12:39   It really feels like you've hit rock bottom,

00:12:42   and there's no way out of this for you.

00:12:46   People who do this at Apple are super smart,

00:12:47   they make lots of money to make these decisions,

00:12:50   they're already thinking about it, they may already know it.

00:12:52   But from the outside perspective, it's like every year,

00:12:55   Apple's just like slowly cutting off more and more doors

00:12:59   out of this room and now they're just stuck with 10 S max.

00:13:03   There's no way out.

00:13:04   - Now that I think about it, it's kind of funny

00:13:07   that the same company found a solution

00:13:11   to fix this problem elsewhere.

00:13:13   So the same company that does A10, A11, A12, W1, W2, W3, like they use letters and numbers

00:13:21   and when the numbers get ridiculous they use another letter.

00:13:24   But with the iPhone they just couldn't do X1 and X2 and X3, like that would have been

00:13:28   so simple.

00:13:29   It would have been cool too.

00:13:31   Like the iPhone X2, that sounds like a cool phone.

00:13:34   Exactly, but no, they need to do this 10...

00:13:37   So it's the company that went with Mac OS 10 point something name, right? It's like

00:13:44   you didn't really have to look incredibly far to work out what could come after 10.

00:13:49   At this point, I'm starting to believe that the joke from WWDC, you know, with the marketing

00:13:56   team and the weed is kind of true. Like, how can you even think of these names? I don't

00:14:03   think that's a joke.

00:14:04   they didn't have enough when coming up with these names. Yeah, this is their sober names.

00:14:09   They've cleaned up and this is what they're left with. So last week Federico played the question,

00:14:15   which is a good question, of what is the future problem by buying the XR, right? Like what is

00:14:20   Apple skimping on that could end up being a problem in the future? And there's been some

00:14:26   filing with the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, which is like the

00:14:34   Chinese version of the FCC. So Apple has to register information with them to get cellular

00:14:39   approval. And it turns out from these filings that it would appear that the XS and XS Max

00:14:44   have 4GB of RAM and the XR has 3GB of RAM. There is also some battery stuff, but that's,

00:14:51   you know, I don't think that is as imperative, I think, but that's what it is. So it does

00:14:57   have a gigabyte less of RAM. Which is what you predicted.

00:15:02   Yeah, it's, I mean, it's a difference. I don't think it's a huge difference for now.

00:15:07   Yeah, the TIN's got 3GB of RAM too. I mean, it's not like it's out of line, I don't think.

00:15:13   Oh, for sure, for sure. But it was the point, you know, it's enforcing the point that you

00:15:16   made of like, it will be fine now, but like, in two years time, it could make it run worse,

00:15:24   right? Like what is the future problem you're buying into? So that was the point that you

00:15:27   were making, and this kind of, it just shows that there is something, the 3GB of RAM, it's

00:15:31   of RAM is really going to get you for quite a while. I think especially because the next,

00:15:37   I would say at least two versions of iOS will also have a stability focus on them. I just

00:15:42   think that's going to continue for a while, so you're probably going to be good.

00:15:45   And two, if you think about the iPhone 6 Plus, which had I think a gigabyte of RAM and it

00:15:50   had the big screen, it really struggled, and then Apple went to two gigs and it was better.

00:15:54   The XR has got that lower res screen, like we talked about, it's still a good screen,

00:15:58   Everyone who had hands-on still thinks it looks great, but it is lower resolution than

00:16:02   the new XS and XS Max.

00:16:05   And so that may balance the RAM.

00:16:08   It may be in practice, it doesn't matter if it had three or four.

00:16:12   That three is balanced with the system.

00:16:14   So I think the idea that if you buy a XR, I don't think it's going to age any faster

00:16:19   than any other iPhone.

00:16:20   I think it's going to be just fine.

00:16:22   No, but it's more just like it will age faster than the XS.

00:16:25   Sure.

00:16:26   In theory.

00:16:27   potentially I don't know it is worth mentioning as well you know you're

00:16:31   talking about like the screen the 10R has a lower resolution and lower pixel

00:16:35   count than an 8+ so it's an 8+ is 401 ppi at 1920 by 1080 and the 10R is 1792 by

00:16:44   828 at 326 ppi even though the screens bigger it's really interesting I am

00:16:48   really keen for the reviews to see what people say like about that screen

00:16:53   specifically over long periods of time also I read and we're gonna talk about

00:16:57   I've done 10 reviews but I'm looking at the page now through was funny these

00:16:59   aren't planets these images they're bubbles did you see that yeah the images

00:17:03   that they're using they're not planets they're soap bubbles or oil bubbles or

00:17:07   whatever planets are just bubbles of rock really gas man whoa I'm a space

00:17:12   podcast and I'm talking you've been have you been spending time with the Mac

00:17:16   naming team yeah we're just we're ready we're just we're just floating floating

00:17:22   down the river together. It may be that the XR is in practice the fastest phone of these

00:17:29   three. It's got the same processor, it has a little less RAM but a lot less pixels to

00:17:32   push, and it's got a bigger battery. The XR is like, like we talked about last week, the

00:17:38   more I think about this phone, it is super interesting that in a lot of ways this is

00:17:41   the best phone this year from Cernit angles. And you guys know this because we, sometimes

00:17:46   before I buy things and often after I buy things, I have what I like to call a Steven

00:17:52   - Doubt.

00:17:53   - Doubt.

00:17:54   (laughs)

00:17:55   - Okay.

00:17:55   (laughs)

00:17:56   - You always do this every year.

00:17:58   You have a thing.

00:17:59   - Every time.

00:17:59   - Every single time.

00:18:00   - And it's so predictable.

00:18:02   - You guys know this 'cause I don't share this on Twitter,

00:18:05   but I share it with you all.

00:18:07   And this year the thing was,

00:18:09   I even talked to Jason about it.

00:18:11   'Cause like, these guys know me,

00:18:13   Jason knows me pretty well,

00:18:14   but we've been on a show together for 22 years, so.

00:18:17   I remember I had Jason too and I said,

00:18:19   I have this thought that all the podcasters

00:18:23   are gonna buy the XS or the XS Max, right?

00:18:26   The people who are gonna upgrade who do this for a living

00:18:27   are gonna do, and that's fine, that's great,

00:18:29   I did it, I bought a XS Max.

00:18:31   But what if, would it be interesting

00:18:34   to live on a XR for a year?

00:18:37   Hey, I could spend half the money

00:18:38   and I could get a phone in blue

00:18:40   and just kinda see how that goes.

00:18:43   And basically everyone talked me out of it.

00:18:46   And Myke, I think I'm trying to find it in iMessage.

00:18:48   You were like, you 100% would return it in December

00:18:51   and then buy it 10S Max, which is true.

00:18:54   - Yes, that would be super interesting as a thing to do.

00:18:58   Someone should and could do this.

00:18:59   You are not that person.

00:19:01   Because you do this all the time.

00:19:03   If you could just go back through the history of this show

00:19:05   and just see how Steven's iPad has grown and shrunk

00:19:08   over that period of time.

00:19:09   - Yes, or my MacBook Pros.

00:19:11   I haven't done it with my desktops,

00:19:13   but that's serious big boy money,

00:19:15   so you don't get the option.

00:19:16   - You did do this with desktops,

00:19:17   you were like dead set on buying a refurbed retina iMac and you bought an iMac Pro instead.

00:19:23   Yeah I did do that and then I didn't return it.

00:19:25   But this is what you do! You're a flip-flopber!

00:19:28   You also lived for several months without an iPhone a few years ago.

00:19:32   Oh yeah!

00:19:33   That's true, I did in 2011 or so.

00:19:36   Yeah you're right.

00:19:37   This is like, you know, your friends just know you. We know you and we can help you.

00:19:42   I understand you get like excited about things but you know.

00:19:46   - You're a cold feet Apple blogger, that's who you are.

00:19:51   - That's good. (laughs)

00:19:53   But you know, I do think that someone,

00:19:55   like if you have tech podcast,

00:19:56   someone should have the 10 R so we can talk about it.

00:19:59   But I'm not that person, so if someone wants to jump on that,

00:20:03   feel free to run with it.

00:20:05   So we're gonna talk about some other stuff,

00:20:07   but I wanted to remind everybody,

00:20:09   we do this in September as a show, I do it on the site.

00:20:11   The September is National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month.

00:20:14   There are a couple links in the show notes

00:20:15   And this chapter has a link in it.

00:20:17   You can just tap it and something like Overcast will open.

00:20:20   St. Jude is a hospital here in Memphis, Tennessee

00:20:22   that treats children with cancer

00:20:26   and other catastrophic diseases.

00:20:27   And the kick here is they do so

00:20:30   without charging the families a dime.

00:20:32   So my son has been a patient there for nine and a half years.

00:20:35   He was diagnosed with a brain tumor as an infant.

00:20:38   And he's doing great now.

00:20:38   He's in third grade and doing homework

00:20:41   and running around the backyard

00:20:42   and playing with the siblings.

00:20:43   He's doing really well

00:20:44   because of the work that St. Jude does.

00:20:45   - Causing trouble.

00:20:46   - Causing some trouble.

00:20:47   Not a lot of trouble, but sometimes.

00:20:48   - A healthy amount of trouble.

00:20:50   - Yeah, he wants to do what I do when he grows up.

00:20:52   Like he wants to talk about technology,

00:20:54   which is really cool.

00:20:55   - This, that is the most wonderful thing I've ever heard.

00:20:58   - It is.

00:20:59   - Yeah, think about that.

00:21:00   It'll talk about old iPhones.

00:21:01   That's pretty amazing.

00:21:02   - Yeah, I'm gonna save my iPhone X

00:21:04   so he can have in his collection.

00:21:05   - Oh, you can teach him.

00:21:06   You can teach him so much.

00:21:07   - I know.

00:21:08   So this is the difference between the G3 and the G4

00:21:11   in these various ways that no one cares about.

00:21:13   - Think how much better than you he could be.

00:21:16   - Oh yeah, no doubt.

00:21:18   So he said nine and a half years of treatment,

00:21:19   chemotherapy, surgery, lots of stuff.

00:21:22   And they've never charged us a dime.

00:21:24   And that's incredible because it's millions of dollars

00:21:26   of care, so every September I donate all the revenue

00:21:29   from 512 Pixels to St. Jude and I urge listeners

00:21:32   of the show and readers to join me in that.

00:21:36   'Cause it's a really special place that treats kids.

00:21:38   We've met kids from like literally all over the world.

00:21:40   We met a family from South Africa, from Japan,

00:21:43   all over Europe, all over the United States.

00:21:45   Come to Memphis for treatment because it is the place

00:21:49   on the planet that can tackle these issues the best.

00:21:51   So I appreciate you, thank you so much if you have done this

00:21:54   and if you haven't, like I said, there's a link

00:21:56   in your podcast player.

00:21:57   I'd really appreciate it if you would go check it out.

00:21:59   - Fundraising pages at $16,372 right now.

00:22:03   I think it would be very amazing if we hit the $20,000 goal

00:22:07   before next week's episode and to do that,

00:22:10   It's all on you, connected listeners.

00:22:11   You're all incredible.

00:22:13   You're amazing.

00:22:13   Show how amazing you are by throwing some money to St. Jude.

00:22:17   All right.

00:22:17   Should we take our first break?

00:22:18   Yes.

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00:24:45   Federico, you published your iOS 12 review. If you haven't read it, dear listener,

00:24:52   there's a link in the show notes to it. My advice is to read it on an iPad. That is, it feels like

00:24:58   like its natural form.

00:25:00   If you wanna read it on like a iBook G4,

00:25:03   I guess that'd be fine by me, but an iPad feels right.

00:25:06   So Federico, I wanna ask you, how'd it go?

00:25:09   How has the reception been?

00:25:11   How do you feel?

00:25:13   Kinda, how's it been the last couple of days

00:25:15   since you published it?

00:25:16   - This is the best it's ever been,

00:25:20   both in terms, and especially in terms of like

00:25:22   how I feel about it, and how it's actually doing

00:25:26   terms of visits and sort of the profit from the... because this is a huge

00:25:32   investment for me in terms of like hours spent on the review. I feel good about it

00:25:38   because launch day this time was perfect, like not a single issue. As I mentioned

00:25:44   last week we had a new caching system in place that we rolled out on the site

00:25:51   last November after the problems with last year we rewrote the system

00:25:56   completely and this year was perfect. When we released it, when we published

00:26:02   the review we made sure that every page was cached before I tweeted about it and

00:26:07   so it's 17 pages so we we cached all of them and the the performance on the site

00:26:14   was really good and I was happy that people told me they they spent they

00:26:19   they spent time on the first page of the review refreshing just to see the

00:26:23   animation at the top with the iPhones and my MIMOJI.

00:26:27   There was an idea of Sam Beckett, the designer, he's an amazing designer,

00:26:34   he's been working with me first with the iOS concepts and then providing these

00:26:40   assets for the iOS 11 review and this year the iOS 12 one and his idea of the

00:26:45   iPhone animation and the animated Memoji inside of it was really really well

00:26:51   received. I'm happy because the review is doing well in terms of traffic. We are

00:26:57   well ahead of our previous milestones of hitting a 1 million page views in the

00:27:06   first week. So judging as I shared last night in 30 hours we did

00:27:13   300,000 page views on the reviews, which for a project that I essentially work by myself

00:27:21   and for a website like Mac Stories, we're not 9-5 Mac, we don't have a staff of 20 people,

00:27:28   we're not The Verge, we're four people essentially, and these are huge numbers. But most of all,

00:27:35   fact that people like the review, people told me that it's easier to read and it's not as

00:27:44   sort of overcomplicated by technical stuff as last year, but also the fact that people

00:27:50   like the extras that we put together for Club Max Stories members.

00:27:55   So there's the ebook that members get for free, there's a few shortcuts that I shared

00:28:01   with members of the club, like toggle shortcuts and dark sky, a bunch of stuff.

00:28:09   There's also a discount that they can get on the excellent audiobook version that Myke

00:28:13   recorded once again.

00:28:15   So people responded well to the idea of, there's the review on the website, but also I can

00:28:20   get more if I sign up.

00:28:22   So overall, and I got tons of messages from friends at Apple, people at Apple about the

00:28:29   review.

00:28:30   because every engineer that I know jumps straight

00:28:33   to the chapter of the feature that they worked on.

00:28:36   And they're always like, every year I try to start

00:28:39   from the intro, but when I'm there,

00:28:41   I just jump straight to my stuff because I wanna--

00:28:44   - That's sad news for the guy

00:28:46   who put the iWork shortcuts in.

00:28:48   - I am. - There's no iWork section.

00:28:49   - Really sorry.

00:28:50   But overall, yes, and most of all,

00:28:52   I feel relaxed and happy.

00:28:55   I'm not stressed.

00:28:56   And in fact, I think it's the first time

00:28:59   after the review I just want to go back to work because it's I'm fine I'm doing fine.

00:29:02   And Myke you read the ebook version uh ebook version audio version again right?

00:29:07   I sure did I don't I'm not 100 sure why I decided to suggest to Federico to do this again because

00:29:19   last year it was I'm really pleased that I did it but it was in place is a bit of a disaster

00:29:27   right, for like a selection of different reasons. The biggest one was that I was recording whilst

00:29:33   traveling. So the audio, I was unhappy with the audio and I spent something like 55 hours in total

00:29:42   on the book last year, which was significantly more than it should have taken really. And it's

00:29:47   because a lot of it was trying to fix audio. And then, you know, the launch wasn't as great. I mean,

00:29:54   just Federico had the same thing, right? Like it wasn't as great as we would have wanted it to be

00:29:57   because there were problems and it kind of left the thing on a bit of a down note, right? So I

00:30:03   don't know why I thought to myself in June, "Yeah, all right, I'm gonna ask him if he wants me to do

00:30:10   it again." But I did and this time was much better. It took 20 hours this time of work. It was much

00:30:20   better, no significant issues. The only problem we had, which I was very annoyed about this,

00:30:26   was when the shortcuts beta updated with a fix after the iOS 12 GM went out. So I'd finished,

00:30:38   the book was all done, it was delivered with Federico, and then the shortcuts beta updated.

00:30:44   I've never been more upset about something I want, so they added Dropbox support back in,

00:30:50   which I was begging for, but when it happened, I knew that what I now had to do was re-record

00:30:56   part and then re-master the book again. And with a three and a half hour logic project with

00:31:05   thousands of edits in it, any change that I make could potentially break something else,

00:31:12   so I'm always terrified to go back in again. But nevertheless, there were no issues,

00:31:18   and I'm happy to do it. This, if I can get a meta for a moment, this is one of the weirdest projects

00:31:26   that I do because it's not mine. So like I spent all this time and effort and care on it because

00:31:35   I'm very honored to be given the opportunity to do this. But it's so strange that like when it's done

00:31:42   it's like it's Federico's work, it's not my work. And it's this weird kind of like feeling of

00:31:48   I just hand it away and then it's nothing to do with me anymore. It's a very strange project,

00:31:55   but I take great pride in being able to produce the audiobook because I think about people like me

00:32:04   who would struggle to sit down and read it all in other circumstances, but this way in like three

00:32:10   hours you can get the whole thing and I consider it a great honor to also be a part of what has,

00:32:16   I believe, become a very important institution which is the Federico Vittucci IOS 12 review.

00:32:23   So getting to play a part in that no matter how small is something that I hold very dear.

00:32:29   But it is very unique to me in it being this project that I create that really

00:32:37   is not mine in any shape or form and it makes it quite unique.

00:32:41   But thank you Federico for including me again.

00:32:44   Thank you for being part of it.

00:32:47   I struggle to think of it as an institution, as you said, like as a thing.

00:32:59   Well you shouldn't. Everybody else can, but you shouldn't.

00:33:05   I like that it's sort of become that type of event, even though it's a huge responsibility.

00:33:11   Like when you make something on the internet and people like it and you do it a couple

00:33:17   of times, that's fine. But if you do something and people like it and then people expect

00:33:21   it to continue to exist every year, especially for this kind of project, it becomes... it's

00:33:28   hard to balance it in a way that it doesn't become something you hate. Especially for...

00:33:33   Because it's a lot of pressure. It's an awful lot of pressure.

00:33:36   And I was talking to John Siracusa actually a few years ago about this.

00:33:42   It becomes something that fully absorbs you and your family and your summer.

00:33:48   And it happens in a moment of the year when like your friends want to go to the beach and,

00:33:53   you know, people just want to hang out together because maybe they're on vacation or something.

00:33:57   Like it's the type of project that can make you regret signing up for it.

00:34:02   But at the same time, it's so rewarding to, and it's precious, I think, and I'm lucky to be able to have this kind of opportunity that have, you know, people waiting for it.

00:34:15   I mean, that's amazing. The fact that, sort of, people, you know, on Twitter, they ask me, "What time are you publishing the review?" because I want to be able to coordinate.

00:34:23   I'm like, "This is not a job. Don't worry about it. Like, you can read it later." But I get it. I get it why people want to do this, and it's amazing.

00:34:30   And so I'm really grateful to anyone who actually spends time on the site or in the ebook or listening to Myke.

00:34:37   Any consumption, any medium is totally fine for me.

00:34:44   And I'm just happy that this year has done well.

00:34:47   No problems on the site, people just went straight to the intro and kept reading.

00:34:52   So it was fun to put together and I think you said something very nice, Myke, on upgrade with Jason

00:34:58   about the fact that even more than the iPad last year,

00:35:02   the shortcuts chapter, it felt mine in a way that,

00:35:06   even though people identify me,

00:35:08   it's more important.

00:35:09   - It's more important.

00:35:10   - I think it was more important for me to, you know,

00:35:14   sort of, it's both closing a chapter

00:35:18   for the workflow stuff that I used to do,

00:35:20   but also beginning a new one.

00:35:21   So yeah, I'm really happy.

00:35:24   - Federico's conclusion to the shortcuts chapter

00:35:27   and the conclusion to the review itself, because they kind of mirror each other,

00:35:32   they are... I feel that they are your best little chunks of writing that you've ever done.

00:35:38   Like, I got goosebumps reading them, which was quite... that also is really tricky, by the way.

00:35:45   When you read something and you know it's good, and like when I'm reading it aloud,

00:35:51   and I'm like, I don't know if I did that justice. That's the hardest part. Like,

00:35:56   the amount of takes that I will do on something like that because I want to make sure that

00:36:01   I have gotten the point across in the way that it's been sent to me. But yeah, anyway,

00:36:07   the review is amazing. You should go and check it out in whatever way you want. I recommend

00:36:12   just buying the audiobook even if you don't want it because you just should.

00:36:18   It's a... You should have a collection of... I have my own little shop.

00:36:23   I opened iBooks and it's just all your stuff. Wow! It's just you and then a collection of

00:36:30   David Sparks stuff. They're the only books that I have. iPhone watch reviews have come out. Should

00:36:36   we talk about like the iPhone reviews a little bit? All right, sure. There's a couple, so the

00:36:41   ones that I have mostly consumed, I read John Gruber's review and I watched MKBHD's review

00:36:49   And the Verge's review. They're kind of like... and that's typically what I will do because I

00:36:54   feel like it gives me a good spread of popular opinion, right? Because you've got kind of like

00:36:59   someone who is mostly Android focused but appreciates the iPhone. You've got the Verge

00:37:04   who tries to play the middle and then you've got John Gruber who is obviously an iPhone person.

00:37:09   It seems like the general consensus is that the camera improvements are really good,

00:37:15   But people who have spent significant time testing everything still prefer the Pixel 2,

00:37:21   which is exactly what I expected for the reason when Apple spoke about computational photography

00:37:27   as one of the ways that they're making their photos better. My initial thought was, how can

00:37:35   anybody beat Google if you're talking about machine learning being applied to photos?

00:37:39   like Google should be better at that, right?

00:37:43   And if Apple can make something that's even close,

00:37:46   then we're all good. You know what I mean?

00:37:48   I think we're at a sort of an inflection point in terms of like where Google and Apple are going

00:37:54   with their camera stuff. In that Google is, I mean, fully embracing the cloud and processing

00:38:02   in the cloud with their services and with the Google Photos features that they have.

00:38:07   Well sure, but the Pixel 2 stuff is all on device. It's not in the cloud. This was something

00:38:12   that John wrote in his review that was incorrect. Like the processing of the photos to make

00:38:16   the photos look good. I mean I'm not saying you're saying this, but this is something

00:38:19   that Trungkuba said. The Pixel's processing is happening on device like Apple's is.

00:38:24   Yeah, but I was also sort of talking about the photos, the Google Photos app with the

00:38:30   way that you can browse your photos later, which is different from actually taking the

00:38:34   Sure, but I mean, I think it, I struggle to imagine how Apple could match that type of

00:38:42   sort of just prowess that Google has when it comes to applying huge chunks of machine

00:38:47   learning.

00:38:48   Like this is what they do for, this is their business and Apple's business is not like

00:38:53   having a service that relies on machine learning.

00:38:55   They sort of indirectly maybe rely on machine learning to sell their features, but you're

00:39:00   not buying a web service entirely based on machine learning from Apple, you're buying

00:39:06   a phone or an iPad or a MacBook. So Apple uses machine learning, Google in a way sells

00:39:10   machine learning. That's the way that I try to think about it. And so it's why I think

00:39:15   it's going to be challenging for Apple too. I mean, even if you just look at the Google

00:39:19   Assistant and the Amazon stuff and Siri, that's sort of how you can frame the discussion of

00:39:27   the computational photography landscape like for Google and Apple and I think unless something

00:39:33   dramatic changes I think that's where it'll end up in the next few years that Google will

00:39:38   always be ahead just even a couple of steps and Apple will be playing catch up with them.

00:39:46   I don't know, I'm not a camera expert but as we…

00:39:49   Well it's just because it's changed, right? When it was all about the hardware…

00:39:53   Exactly.

00:39:54   ahead forever. And then when things started to change, when a couple of things changed,

00:40:00   Samsung got really good at making camera hardware as well. So that started to push them forward.

00:40:06   And then Google came in and got better and absolutely everyone at processing these images.

00:40:12   And I'm very keen to see what happens with the Pixel 3. How good is that going to be?

00:40:18   Apparently the Smart HDR mode is amazing.

00:40:27   So I've seen some pictures being shared.

00:40:29   Jonathan Morrison, who runs the TOD Today YouTube channel, he tweeted the best example

00:40:34   I've seen of this, where he's taking a selfie with the sun behind him.

00:40:39   Like, I don't know how they're doing this.

00:40:43   The Smart HDR looks really really promising.

00:40:47   - Yeah, it's one of those things too, again,

00:40:49   like Apple has been building towards this,

00:40:53   and that's so much about what this phone is,

00:40:54   where I was taking where they are

00:40:55   and just making it a little bit better,

00:40:56   but the HDR really started, like you remember,

00:40:59   in the beginning it was something

00:41:00   you could turn on or off, right?

00:41:02   Like, and most of the time, I think a lot of people

00:41:04   left it off in the beginning,

00:41:05   because it was sort of not great.

00:41:08   And over time, as the phones have gotten faster

00:41:10   and the sensors have gotten better,

00:41:12   it has, Apple's become more confident in it.

00:41:15   And starting a couple years ago,

00:41:16   it was on by default, and now it's just on all the time,

00:41:19   and now it's even better.

00:41:20   And it's just something that, you know,

00:41:22   it's just one of those metrics you can look at from,

00:41:24   you know, the iPhone 4 to now, or the iPhone 5 to now,

00:41:28   and see how far they've come.

00:41:31   And is this a reason to go buy a phone?

00:41:33   No, but if you go, if the camera is the big driver for you,

00:41:38   then this is something you should pay attention to.

00:41:41   And I think for a lot of people, the camera is the driver.

00:41:44   having a conversation with somebody yesterday, we were talking about the new Apple Watch,

00:41:49   and a local friend of mine, and he was like, "Is the smartwatch ever going to replace the

00:41:54   phone?"

00:41:55   And I quoted Marco's, I think, very wise words of "Don't bet against the smartphone."

00:41:59   But the thing that came up in the conversation was like, "Most people use their phone as

00:42:04   a camera, like, all the time."

00:42:06   And that's where Apple and Google and Samsung all spend a lot of time and attention to make

00:42:12   that better.

00:42:13   one thing the watch will never catch up on because the watch doesn't have a camera and even if it did

00:42:16   it would be weird and not what we want so this is a big improvement I think if you especially if you

00:42:22   do outdoor photography but it's one that I think too is like we're going to find its limits we're

00:42:27   going to find what works and what doesn't but I'm excited to put it through its paces. I thoroughly

00:42:33   enjoyed the technical camera portion of John Gruber's review yeah because there was information in

00:42:42   in there that I haven't seen elsewhere, you know, like talking about like this seems to

00:42:45   be like a wider field of view that there is something different going on with the camera

00:42:49   lenses and like with the hardware and I think that's being shown and like there's been some

00:42:54   stuff floating around today about the the actual size of the camera module is slightly

00:43:00   larger because some iPhone 10 cases don't fit the XS in the camera portion or they're

00:43:06   like super tight. So there's definitely stuff going on there and it seems like Apple has

00:43:11   done a lot more with the hardware than they gave away in the press conference, like in the keynote,

00:43:17   which is kind of peculiar, but I think it's because it's really difficult to explain

00:43:22   what they did. And it takes John Cooper quite a while to do it, and I think he does it accurately,

00:43:29   like in a way that I can't sum it up for you, right? But there's a bunch of stuff going on in

00:43:34   the hardware that seems to be producing significantly better pictures in a bunch

00:43:39   of different ways, not just the Smart HDR stuff.

00:43:43   It's fascinating to me why Apple didn't talk about these numbers and the larger sensor,

00:43:50   for example, on stage. Like, Gruber makes a point that if you're selling camera improvements

00:43:55   and you want to give out these details, pro photographers are going to listen to you and

00:43:59   they're going to understand. And there lies my question. Didn't they... probably... I

00:44:05   think it's possible that they didn't share these details because they were too geeky

00:44:08   and too nerdy to share with everybody watching the new iPhone stuff, starting to talk about

00:44:14   a larger sensor and all those words that Gruber used that I, like Myke, I'm not able to repeat

00:44:21   in a coherent sentence. The field of view one feels like something

00:44:25   that they should have shared more of. I understand this, yeah, exactly.

00:44:29   Because you could say, like, look at this picture with the iPhone XS, you can get more

00:44:33   in the frame. And I need to say, and I'm going to say that

00:44:36   Reading Gruber's review, from a writing perspective,

00:44:40   it was super clever in how he showed the pictures

00:44:45   somewhere around the beginning of the article,

00:44:48   and then you keep reading,

00:44:49   and multiple paragraphs later, he says,

00:44:52   oh, and by the way, those were shot from the same position,

00:44:55   from the same angle.

00:44:57   It's not like I moved two steps behind.

00:45:00   And you go like, oh, so you scroll back up

00:45:03   and you look at the pictures again.

00:45:04   - It's the prestige.

00:45:05   (laughing)

00:45:07   - It does raise a question, Myke, your comment about,

00:45:10   does Apple go into these details on stage?

00:45:14   And that's a question I've pondered before,

00:45:17   but I really felt at this time.

00:45:19   Who are the events for?

00:45:21   You have obvious answers.

00:45:22   You have tech press and you have enthusiasts, right?

00:45:24   People like us and people who listen to shows like ours.

00:45:28   Past that, though, is where I really begin to wonder

00:45:32   how far these get into the world.

00:45:33   So again, my buddy I had lunch with yesterday,

00:45:36   he's into the iPhone, he's had several Macs over the years,

00:45:41   but he's not, he doesn't listen to any relay shows,

00:45:43   he knows what I do and I'm his tech friend, so he asks me.

00:45:45   I just wonder how, could Apple be nerdier

00:45:50   in those segments and it be fine?

00:45:53   If the public at large isn't watching,

00:45:56   people's eyes won't glaze over.

00:45:57   I don't know if there's an answer to that,

00:45:59   but I kinda just think about that sometimes.

00:46:01   I think the way that they rely on it is almost like pseudo word of mouth,

00:46:06   which is exactly what happened in my household. I got the iPhone 10.

00:46:10   Adina wasn't really that fussed.

00:46:12   She was seeing the pictures I was taking and was like,

00:46:16   why are they that good? And I'm like, well, because of blah, blah, blah, blah,

00:46:20   blah. She said, well, I want one.

00:46:21   And I think that might be the way that they assume this stuff happens, right?

00:46:25   People sharing pictures online,

00:46:26   they're sending pictures to their friends with the new phones and like, oh my God,

00:46:30   this is such a good picture. Like, yeah, I just got the new iPhone.

00:46:32   And then people are like, well,

00:46:33   I need that new iPhone as well because that picture is really good.

00:46:36   Because as well, like a lot of the photo stuff, as I was saying last week,

00:46:40   you can't appreciate it in the, in the keynotes, right?

00:46:43   Like because they're professional photos taken by professionals on my TV.

00:46:48   So I can't even see the detail in them anyway,

00:46:50   because I'm looking at a camera,

00:46:54   which is taking video of a projected screen, right?

00:46:59   which is, I've got all this stuff that it's like,

00:47:01   there are so many layers of abstraction

00:47:02   that it doesn't work.

00:47:03   So I guess they just wait on people sharing pictures

00:47:05   of each other and then everybody realizes

00:47:07   the cameras are better.

00:47:08   - And if that's true, if it's like the word of mouth thing,

00:47:11   then like you said, Gruber is an excellent writer,

00:47:13   took him like five paragraphs to explain it.

00:47:15   So that doesn't distill down into something

00:47:18   you can easily share with a friend over lunch, right?

00:47:21   It's like, oh, the F-stop does this and focal length

00:47:24   and people's, just their eyes fall out of their head.

00:47:26   - I think the idea, it's just like, yeah,

00:47:28   this phone as a back camera?

00:47:29   - I think where I get confused is that it's called

00:47:33   focal length, but then you talk about how wide it is.

00:47:38   It's like, is it long or is it wide?

00:47:40   I don't understand.

00:47:41   - Yeah, all different things.

00:47:42   They're all different things.

00:47:44   And it's interesting because smartphones have taken

00:47:47   photography and made that stuff more mainstream.

00:47:50   It is still confusing for a lot of people,

00:47:52   but more people now know what that means than ever,

00:47:55   and it's because the iPhone has miniaturized all this stuff

00:47:57   is something we have we have in our pocket which is uh which is cool like i like that

00:48:03   people are excited about this stuff but it's uh you're right it's kind of hard hard to

00:48:06   talk about i think once we start seeing these things like pop up on instagram people be

00:48:11   like oh look what that thing can do so portrait mode is apparently better i mean i'm seeing

00:48:16   photos that look better than any portrait mode photo i've seen before which is a combination

00:48:22   of ios 12's improvements and i guess the new iphone's improvements and the neural engine

00:48:27   But you know, it's not like it's perfect.

00:48:28   It's still not perfect and it never will be.

00:48:30   There's always going to be bad examples,

00:48:32   but the good examples are better than any of the good examples that came before.

00:48:36   So, you know, if you like portrait mode and I do like great.

00:48:40   The new f-stop feature is awesome.

00:48:42   It looks really fun.

00:48:43   Like this is where you can adjust the background blur.

00:48:45   So there's a couple of things on this.

00:48:48   This will be live and like so right now you take the photo and you can adjust it.

00:48:53   But in a later version of iOS 12,

00:48:56   this will be something you can do in the viewfinder.

00:48:59   And what it seems like, and correct me if I'm wrong here,

00:49:04   the iPhone 10 cannot do this.

00:49:08   But if somebody takes a photo of a 10s and sends it to someone

00:49:13   with an iPhone 10, the iPhone 10 can adjust it. Is that correct?

00:49:16   The iPhone 10 will not be able to do it live.

00:49:20   Will do it live. It will not do that.

00:49:25   It sounds like it will be able to apply the effect when you're just editing the picture.

00:49:33   But in the video...

00:49:34   But it can't take the picture either, though, right?

00:49:36   No, it cannot take the picture with the slider that will supposedly appear.

00:49:42   I think Matthew Panzareno shared this bit of information on Twitter and in his review.

00:49:48   So it sounds like the iPhone XS will get the slider that in real time, when you're taking

00:49:53   the picture you will be able to change the whatever background blur is called.

00:49:59   On every iPhone there will be a software update I suppose 12.1 that will allow you to apply

00:50:06   the same effect after the picture has been taken.

00:50:08   So the XS gets the real time edition as well.

00:50:13   Right, okay, thank you.

00:50:15   This has been very strangely communicated and it's very difficult.

00:50:18   Only because we only have a tweet from Panzarino about this.

00:50:22   It's the best way to get communication out there into the world.

00:50:28   Two tweets.

00:50:29   Moving away from the camera.

00:50:30   So the general consensus is the Max is big, but it's not as big as you think, but reaching

00:50:35   the corners will be tricky.

00:50:36   I received my case.

00:50:38   It's big.

00:50:39   It's a big old phone, this one.

00:50:42   I'm very excited though.

00:50:44   I mean, you know, look, it is going to, I'm very confident that I'm going to love it in

00:50:48   in every way I love the plus phone, but like the plus phone, it's going to come with some

00:50:52   difficult parts and it looks like getting to control center is going to be something

00:50:58   you just can't do without reachability anymore.

00:51:01   Like that's just going to be a thing that we live in our lives.

00:51:03   Yeah, I'm a little nervous about it.

00:51:05   I won't lie.

00:51:06   I'm excited.

00:51:07   I mean, I've got that nervous excitement thing going on because I just feel like it's just

00:51:11   going to look so good.

00:51:14   Face ID feels a little faster, but it's not monumental.

00:51:17   an advanced face ID. It's not face ID generation 2, like Touch ID 2 was. It's advanced. They're

00:51:25   so bad with these names, like what are they going to call it next year? Advanced face

00:51:29   ID 2? Second advanced face ID? Advanced face ID 2 R. Extra advanced face ID. So again,

00:51:39   to kind of sum it up with people's conclusions, the XS as an update from the X for most of

00:51:47   people is probably not going to give them that much. You have to really care

00:51:53   about photography to maybe want to go from the X to the XS for most people.

00:51:58   However, you know most people do not update their phones every year so the XS

00:52:02   is an amazing phone for anyone coming from the X prior to the X because the X

00:52:08   is a fantastic phone right. If you want a bigger phone the Max is a good choice

00:52:12   for the same reasons that a bigger phone was always a good choice right so like

00:52:15   If you like big phones, you're going to like it.

00:52:17   If you have a 6S or a 7, the 10S will be great.

00:52:22   But so would the 10R, probably.

00:52:25   Like if I was a different person,

00:52:29   I would want to wait until the 10R came out if I was just going to get a 10S.

00:52:33   Because again, like we said this a million times,

00:52:36   nobody knows how the 10R is going to review yet.

00:52:39   And it can go one or two ways.

00:52:42   And it kind of is just like, OK, it's slightly disappointing.

00:52:45   or "oh my god don't buy the 10s"

00:52:46   That's how these reviews are gonna be

00:52:48   I think it's gonna be one of two

00:52:49   So we're gonna have to wait and see on that

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00:53:59   So like any other iOS release there are lots of third-party app updates coming this week. No doubt you've noticed

00:54:07   The App Store is busy busy with updates and we've picked out

00:54:11   Several of our favorites there are many more Mac stories is doing a really good job of logging them as they come out

00:54:17   I know Federico you and your team are just an overdrive this week

00:54:20   But I thought we could talk about some of these and I thought we could talk about overcast first

00:54:26   So Myke, what's what's new in overcast?

00:54:28   so overcast

00:54:30   Five has a bunch of different things. I wanted to pick out three of the top things

00:54:35   So my two favorites is the new now playing screen.

00:54:39   I absolutely love the design that Marco has come up with.

00:54:42   It kind of separates everything into these little cards.

00:54:45   It feels really fresh.

00:54:46   It feels like new iOS design

00:54:49   that kind of like maps inspired iOS design.

00:54:52   I really, really like it a lot.

00:54:54   I like the way everything's been kind of re-engineered.

00:54:57   I like the symmetry of all of the panels.

00:54:59   I think it looks really good.

00:55:00   And I love the tactics that kind of go along

00:55:02   with all of that.

00:55:03   makes makes overcast feel really fresh again.

00:55:06   It's interesting that it was just that change

00:55:09   and it feels like a completely brand new app for me.

00:55:11   The Siri shortcut support is extensive and excellent.

00:55:14   Everything that I would want is in there.

00:55:17   You can set individual Siri shortcuts to play specific shows or playlists

00:55:21   or just to resume playing and to skip chapters and stuff.

00:55:24   It's really, really good.

00:55:25   I've been using it now a bunch because I found it to be the most reliable way

00:55:30   to get my iPhone to play what I want it to play is to just trigger the Siri shortcut

00:55:34   to do it.

00:55:36   And whilst I don't use an Apple Watch, I am aware that everybody is super excited about

00:55:41   the Apple Watch app because it is a full Apple Watch app.

00:55:44   You can have shows sent to your Apple Watch and you can listen to them without the phone

00:55:48   even needing to be around.

00:55:49   So you could just take your Apple Watch out and you've got Overcast on it, you can go

00:55:52   for a run and connect your AirPods.

00:55:54   And it does the, Marco does all of the encoding so you can get smart speed and stuff.

00:55:58   It's super clever and it's really, really nicely designed.

00:56:02   I'm a big, big fan of the new version of Overcost.

00:56:04   >> Yeah, it's really good.

00:56:06   I really like the fact that you can use these shortcuts both via Siri,

00:56:12   so you can invoke Siri and play any show,

00:56:15   any show that you have a playlist,

00:56:16   but also you can use them as actions in the shortcuts app.

00:56:20   You don't even have to actually see the shortcut.

00:56:23   You can just run in the background and start audio.

00:56:26   And not only can you create these custom shortcuts for playing specific shows, I don't know,

00:56:33   maybe you want to choose from a menu or something, but you can also create personal shortcuts

00:56:38   for overcast features.

00:56:40   Like I have a shortcut that lets me use a widget to navigate chapters in an episode

00:56:48   that I'm listening to in overcast, because next chapter and previous chapter are shortcuts

00:56:53   that the app donates to the system.

00:56:55   So the idea of, I can ask Siri, and it turns out that if you ask on the HomePod, Overcast

00:57:02   now sends an audio stream using AirPlay One to the HomePod, which was not the case this

00:57:08   summer with the previous version of the HomePod OS.

00:57:13   So not only can you do that, but also you can create these custom shortcuts and use

00:57:16   Overcast as actions.

00:57:18   But they're not actions like the old-fashioned way that launch URL schemes and stuff.

00:57:23   they run in the background and they either start audio

00:57:26   or perform features like recommending an episode

00:57:29   or navigating an episode, which is amazing.

00:57:32   - Up next we have Google Maps.

00:57:34   So one of the announcements with iOS 12 was

00:57:37   CarPlay was having the ability to, I guess,

00:57:41   host other mapping solutions.

00:57:43   So before this, if you used CarPlay,

00:57:45   you were stuck with Apple Maps,

00:57:46   which it may be good where you are,

00:57:47   it may not be good where you are.

00:57:49   That's kind of the problem.

00:57:50   That's why Apple's rebuilding it.

00:57:51   But now Google Maps is in CarPlay

00:57:53   and John Voorhees, never heard of him.

00:57:58   - I think his French is John Voorhees,

00:58:02   that's the way that you're supposed to say it.

00:58:04   - Voor-eh?

00:58:05   - Voor-eh?

00:58:06   - Eh?

00:58:07   - Eh?

00:58:08   So he wrote up on Mac Stories a little article

00:58:12   about Google Maps coming here.

00:58:13   It seems like what you would expect, right?

00:58:14   It's Google Map data, in CarPlay, you can search,

00:58:17   you can use your voice, it has all your saved places.

00:58:21   Like one thing that's nice about Google Maps

00:58:23   if you have something on the web you can save it and it's in the mobile app when

00:58:26   you open that. So all that stuff is here. So if Apple Maps is maybe subpar where

00:58:31   you live or the directions aren't very good now you have an alternative which I

00:58:35   think is is really great. This should have been there on day one with CarPlay

00:58:38   and I'm glad Apple's finally gotten around to it. Federico, can you explain to

00:58:43   the connected listeners why Peacock's shortcuts support is so good? Yes, it's

00:58:50   This is the way that I would like more developers to present their shortcut support in iOS 12.

00:58:57   So PQLK has a settings screen inside of the PQLK app where you can configure all of these

00:59:04   shortcuts.

00:59:05   Shortcuts in PQLK are different types of actions that you can take in the app.

00:59:10   You have, for example, the ability to switch layouts or to copy a result to the clipboard,

00:59:16   but also you can perform actual operations and conversions and functions.

00:59:21   And the way that you do this, like, when I first talked to James in June, he was like,

00:59:25   "I don't know how I can support shortcuts if I don't have, if I cannot have the users

00:59:33   dictate a number to Siri."

00:59:36   Because right now you just run a shortcut, you don't give any input to the shortcut.

00:59:40   So the system it came up with is, you can either read a number from the system clipboard,

00:59:47   or you can use a number that is currently stored in the PQL cap, or you can use the

00:59:52   variables that PQL supports.

00:59:55   And James came up with this settings screen design where you have all these lists of shortcuts.

01:00:02   And through a bunch of controls you can choose to open the shortcut in the PQL cap.

01:00:08   So after you summon the shortcut, Siri will just launch Pico and perform the action.

01:00:12   Or you can choose, there's an actual control that says "Running background".

01:00:17   So you can run the operation in the background, and the data that you're dealing with can

01:00:23   come from the system clipboard.

01:00:25   So you can do stuff like, the number that I currently have in my clipboard, the number

01:00:29   that I just copied from Numbers or Safari or whatever, use this number and, for example,

01:00:36   convert this number from euros to dollars, or from meters to feet, stuff like that.

01:00:45   And this is an extremely powerful idea, because it means you can have these operations.

01:00:50   You can copy a number, then just invoke Siri, and it gives you the result, without having

01:00:55   to launch PQLK.

01:00:57   But also the way that you create these shortcuts is very intuitive, and it's consistent with

01:01:03   settings by Apple, but also sort of enhanced. I would actually love Apple to implement a similar

01:01:09   design in the future, where like, here's your shortcuts, now if you want you can customize the

01:01:14   way that they work. I really like the way that it's done in Peelcock. But also, again, like I said for

01:01:20   Overcast, you can chain multiple Peacock shortcuts in the shortcuts app, so it's not a super elegant

01:01:30   solution. Again, I also covered this in my review. Shortcut really needs a proper data flow, like

01:01:36   giving users the ability to pass input and have an actual output from a shortcut.

01:01:43   So right now it's kind of hacky, but you can do stuff like multiple clipboard actions and multiple

01:01:50   pick out shortcuts and you can change them together and you can make a single longer shortcut

01:01:56   that for example, and I have one of these on my Xories that you can download, given a single number

01:02:01   give me back a bunch of conversions in different currencies. So like given 10 euros give me the

01:02:10   equivalent in pounds and US dollars and another currency that I cannot add, I don't know, Japanese

01:02:15   yen for example. So the idea of, again, you can use a single shortcut in Siri or you can chain

01:02:22   multiple ones together in the shortcuts app. And the way that everything is done in PQLK

01:02:28   is actually kind of superior to the Apple system in that you can tap on shortcuts to

01:02:33   add them to settings or you can just create a city phrase. I really, really like it and

01:02:37   I wish that, you know, this should, this, James is going to hate me for saying this

01:02:42   but I think it should be an open source thing that other developers can implement. It's

01:02:46   really, really good. Sorry.

01:02:47   Oh that's nice of you. All that work you did. Oh just give it away for free!

01:02:52   No okay don't do it. I totally get it. This is a competitive advantage for Peacock but

01:02:56   it's really well done and I wish that more apps were like Peacock. So it's a compliment

01:03:01   and not a request.

01:03:03   It also has great iMessage stickers with a panda that I love very much.

01:03:07   With Pascal the panda.

01:03:09   I don't understand the Siri shortcut stuff as much as I understand iMessage stickers.

01:03:15   We also have Carrot Weather on the list,

01:03:18   as you would expect from Carrot Weather,

01:03:20   a big update here on day one with shortcut support

01:03:24   with a great visual shortcut so you can set up Siri

01:03:27   to say check the weather, check the forecast,

01:03:30   and it will pull in graphics from Carrot Weather.

01:03:32   So I have Federico's morning routine,

01:03:36   which I think you link to in your iOS 12 review.

01:03:39   And I've tinkered with that and added a couple things.

01:03:42   One of the things I added was Carrot Weather's

01:03:46   like weather intent.

01:03:47   So I can say hey, you know, show me my day

01:03:49   and it shows me my calendar,

01:03:50   it shows me what the weather's gonna be.

01:03:53   It's really great.

01:03:54   There's also Siri Watch Face support and WatchOS 5.

01:03:57   I've not played with this yet,

01:03:58   but I'm meaning to spend some time on the Siri Watch Face

01:04:02   to kind of see how that comes together.

01:04:05   And there's support for the new watch as well.

01:04:07   So as always Carrot Weather is in this list of apps

01:04:11   ready to go on day one.

01:04:12   Things has some really very impressive, you know, you're saying about, um,

01:04:16   Peacock has a really interesting way of creating shortcuts to be done.

01:04:21   It's a system. I think things is another very different,

01:04:24   but also very impressive implementation.

01:04:26   They've basically created a custom view

01:04:32   inside of things,

01:04:33   which allows you to build templates that get donated to the system as

01:04:38   shortcuts.

01:04:39   So you can pre-fill task names and due dates and project info,

01:04:43   or you can put clipboard in there and stuff.

01:04:45   It is a very, very clever implementation.

01:04:48   Yeah, I really like the idea of-- and again,

01:04:50   this is something that Apple-- I don't know how they feel

01:04:53   about it, but everybody's doing it,

01:04:54   and I kind of feel like it's too late at this point.

01:04:57   The clipboard as a variable, essentially,

01:05:01   every developer of productivity apps and utilities

01:05:04   are doing this.

01:05:06   using the clipboard as a way to get data into a shortcut and to get it out of a shortcut.

01:05:12   And the way that it works in things, I think it's really clever in that not only can you

01:05:19   read like a line of text from the clipboard, but you can also, if you have multiple lines

01:05:23   of text in the clipboard, you can choose to have the first line be used as the title of

01:05:30   task and subsequent lines can either be used as the note field or as multiple

01:05:36   items in a checklist. So that's really really clever and as per things

01:05:41   tradition the design is very elegant, very intuitive. Yeah, the clipboard as a

01:05:46   variable it's the shortcuts hack of 2018, you know. Everybody's doing it.

01:05:54   Everybody's doing it. All the cool kids are doing it now. The cool kids are doing it.

01:05:58   Sometimes it's like an app up there.

01:06:00   So I've got shortcut support and it's impossible to find,

01:06:02   like there's nothing in the app.

01:06:03   Like you'd never know.

01:06:04   You have to just go to settings.

01:06:06   Yeah, like I work.

01:06:07   Todoist is actually an offender of this.

01:06:11   It's impossible looking in the application

01:06:13   to find out what they've added.

01:06:15   You have to go to the settings screen to find them.

01:06:18   But they have given me the basic shortcuts

01:06:21   that I was hoping for.

01:06:23   Show me today all the tasks I have today

01:06:25   and show me what tasks I have for the next seven days is exactly what I wanted to build

01:06:30   into. I mean I have it so I could just call them up as simple shortcuts from Siri, but

01:06:34   also to build them into the shortcuts app as well and like morning routine things which

01:06:38   everyone all the cool kids are building morning routines and like show me what I have today

01:06:42   is a great part of that. So I very I like that a lot.

01:06:46   It's a it's a good addition. Yeah I'm using Todoist. I was glad.

01:06:51   Can we just quickly mention the promo video that Todoist shared yesterday on Twitter?

01:06:56   You know what? So I tweeted this, right?

01:06:58   Yeah, I know.

01:07:00   Because it looks like they have dark mode coming and some other features. So they're

01:07:06   using this incredibly dramatic music.

01:07:09   Like this screeching sound as soon as it...

01:07:11   It's like when they introduced the Mac Pro and the iMac Pro.

01:07:15   Yeah, it's like Hans Zimmery type stuff. And I will say, in their defense, like the CEO

01:07:21   of Doist tweeted at me. Because I said, "This feels a tad too dramatic for a to-do app."

01:07:27   And he replied and said, "Just wait for our upcoming sci-fi movie to-do list, Revenge

01:07:31   of the Dark Side." And I gotta hand it to the guy. I gotta hand it to the guy because

01:07:36   I'm making fun of his video and he's got a good job for me.

01:07:40   He's owning it, man.

01:07:41   owned it. I like that. I was like, okay, you got me. You got me. But that video is ridiculous.

01:07:48   However, I do really want Darkmodan to do it. So I will be happy when it comes, but

01:07:52   nevertheless.

01:07:53   And finally we have 1Password. And I wasn't clear until this shipped what changed with

01:07:59   the keyboard password entry. Federico, what does this do? Please teach me.

01:08:04   You want to know about password autofill, which is a new API in iOS 12.4.

01:08:09   Is that something to do with Phil Schiller?

01:08:10   I always think that every time auto Phil, it's like he just pops up

01:08:13   and he's like, I'll do your passwords for you.

01:08:16   Anyway, move on.

01:08:17   I have a second resignation letter today.

01:08:20   You can you can beam it to my Newton after we're done.

01:08:25   So in iOS 12,

01:08:29   third party password managers can now integrate with the quick type keyboard.

01:08:34   So the quick type keyboard actually means the Apple system keyboard.

01:08:38   but they call it the QuickType keyboard.

01:08:42   Just like you can have iCloud Keychain in there,

01:08:45   like on top of the keyboard when you're filling a login,

01:08:48   now you can have data from third-party password managers

01:08:51   in there. There are some limitations.

01:08:55   You cannot save new logins directly from the keyboard.

01:09:00   You can do this with iCloud Keychain.

01:09:02   Like if you log in into a web page

01:09:04   that it's not already stored in iconocatch and the system will ask you do you actually want to save

01:09:11   this login but if you have one password installed as a password autofill extension it will not ask

01:09:19   you if like hey do you want to save this in one password you can save new logins in the extension

01:09:24   but at the point it means you just have a model window up on the screen and you can save in in

01:09:29   in one password.

01:09:31   - Also when you bring up the keyboard based extension,

01:09:34   the QuickType based extension,

01:09:36   you can't copy information out of that.

01:09:39   So this is sometimes with Chrome, things don't auto fill.

01:09:43   Right, so with the old extension,

01:09:45   you can actually copy the password, which I would do a lot,

01:09:48   but you can't do that with the QuickType based one.

01:09:51   - Yeah, also I love the fact that Apple is opening this up

01:09:55   to third party developers,

01:09:56   But there are still a few things that are nicer in iClog Kitchen.

01:10:02   First of all, I think it does a better job at detecting the default login for a website

01:10:08   where maybe you have multiple logins, or at least the most recent one.

01:10:12   I don't think 1Password has a way to detect the most recent login that you use on a web

01:10:16   page.

01:10:17   iClog Kitchen does a better job at that.

01:10:20   And also, I mentioned the inability to create logins, but there's also the fact that 1Password,

01:10:25   to allow you to fill one-time codes

01:10:29   for two-factor authentication.

01:10:31   They need to rely again, you guessed it,

01:10:32   on a hack, which is the clipboard.

01:10:34   So when you, which is very nice and it totally works.

01:10:37   Like when you use the one password in the keyboard

01:10:41   and you fill a login, like you fill the username

01:10:44   and the password, the one-time code will be copied

01:10:48   to your clipboard so that on the next page

01:10:50   you can just paste and enter the security code.

01:10:54   It would be nicer if this was also an API,

01:10:57   that the keyboard actually,

01:10:59   if the keyboard extension knew that there was a way

01:11:03   to fill the security code,

01:11:05   you wouldn't have to do the dance

01:11:06   of opening the one password extension

01:11:07   and seeing the notification come up that says,

01:11:10   "Your code has been copied to the clipboard."

01:11:12   I think next year, either two things are gonna happen,

01:11:17   not necessarily together.

01:11:19   Either iCal Kitchen becomes a standalone app,

01:11:23   so like you have a kitchen app from Apple, sort of like you do on MacOS,

01:11:26   and/or Apple starts supporting one-time authentication codes natively,

01:11:32   so you will have an option to use iCloud Kitchen to authenticate with the six digit codes

01:11:38   that you can use for two-factor, or is it two-factor? It's not two-factor, it's two-step, right?

01:11:43   I always get it wrong. I think it's two-factor, maybe.

01:11:46   I have no idea. I have no idea, I'm sorry, it's one of those two.

01:11:50   I thought it was two-factor.

01:11:52   So yeah, this is how it works. It works in the Apple Season keyboard, it works in apps, it works in Safari.

01:11:59   If you use iCloud Kitchen, you get the extra benefits of being able to save logins.

01:12:05   If you use 1Password and other password managers like Secrets or Dashlane or LastPass, you will get the same extensions because they also support iOS 12.

01:12:15   I found a kind of funny bug which you've probably come across. If you try and create a new password in one password

01:12:22   The system keychain tries to fill the password. It's very strange

01:12:27   If you try and create a new entry like the systems like let me do that for you

01:12:32   It's like no, you don't understand you're not wanted here. Go away. I find that really funny

01:12:37   and I don't know what's going on there, but it makes me giggle every time because it's like the

01:12:42   The keychain is so excited about being able to create a password for me.

01:12:45   Yeah. Can I have an extra pick for this list?

01:12:49   Yeah. All right. So I want to mention an app that is going on my home screen as

01:12:53   soon as I have the time to reorganize my phone.

01:12:55   And the app is Lookup.

01:12:57   It's a dictionary app.

01:12:58   And I really, we covered it on Mac stories yesterday.

01:13:02   And I really like it because I've always been looking for a dictionary app that

01:13:05   would do two things at once.

01:13:07   One of them is give me a word of the day.

01:13:12   Like, as a non-native English speaker,

01:13:15   I want to extend my vocabulary as much as possible.

01:13:18   And so I really like the idea of word of the day type of services,

01:13:22   but I don't want to go to a website filled with junk and ads.

01:13:26   And Lookup in iOS 12--

01:13:27   -This is so beautiful. -Oh, it's very beautiful.

01:13:29   It's very pretty.

01:13:30   So it's a beautiful dictionary app.

01:13:33   But in the old versions,

01:13:34   I think it used to be more on just the eye candy side.

01:13:38   Like you had the word of the day, but not much else.

01:13:42   But now it's like a complete package

01:13:45   in that you can have the word of the day

01:13:47   and every word is accompanied

01:13:49   by these beautiful illustrations

01:13:51   and the definitions, of course.

01:13:53   But also with the latest version,

01:13:54   you can create collections of words.

01:13:56   And so while I'm reading,

01:13:58   I can add a word that I discovered to a collection

01:14:01   and I can have multiple collections.

01:14:03   So like words that I discovered

01:14:04   while reading video game articles

01:14:06   and words that I discovered

01:14:07   while reading technology articles, stuff like that.

01:14:10   And also, the type of data that you see

01:14:14   when you open a definition is much, much better

01:14:17   in version 5.

01:14:18   You have synonyms, antonyms.

01:14:19   You have, I think, example phrases even.

01:14:22   So it's really, really good, the data that you see.

01:14:24   And every feature of the app-- so the word of the day,

01:14:28   collections, liked words-- everything can be a shortcut.

01:14:32   And everything can be either open in the app

01:14:34   or displayed in Siri with a shortcut.

01:14:37   It's really, really good.

01:14:38   It's even got like this fancy,

01:14:40   not really useful, but also kind of funny as a demo

01:14:44   every once in a while, as like a look around you,

01:14:48   the dictionary, like you can point the iPhone's camera

01:14:50   at an object and get a definition

01:14:52   of the object you're looking at.

01:14:54   - Oh, very nice.

01:14:55   - But most of all, it's beautiful.

01:14:57   And in version five,

01:14:58   it's actually like a complete dictionary app.

01:15:01   It's not just beautiful.

01:15:02   In the old versions, it used to be like,

01:15:04   yeah, it's a beautiful word of the day,

01:15:05   but now you can actually use it.

01:15:07   Like as someone who needs to extend his vocabulary,

01:15:11   like being able to have collections is amazing.

01:15:13   And it's on the iPhone and the iPad.

01:15:15   So this is going straight to my home screen.

01:15:17   I just didn't have the time to do so yet.

01:15:19   - There's one last thing.

01:15:22   We're not gonna get into this.

01:15:23   You have to go and read about it.

01:15:25   It is possible to trigger IFTTT and Zapier actions

01:15:29   relatively easily from Siri shortcuts,

01:15:32   which can enable you to do wild things

01:15:35   like operate your Roomba or set your nest's thermostat temperature.

01:15:39   How would you know?

01:15:40   So exactly.

01:15:43   My Roomba Robbie makes an appearance in the Max Stories article.

01:15:48   So this is amazing.

01:15:51   This is very cool.

01:15:52   Like it opens up to even more interesting wicked and wild support for what shortcuts

01:15:58   can do.

01:16:00   So I recommend that.

01:16:01   Federico has the article about IFTTT and Zapier wrote their own which I thought was really funny

01:16:06   and kind of awesome so you can go and check those out so if you use those services you can you can

01:16:11   you can connect up things that HomeKit can't support so very very very cool stuff.

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01:17:58   for their support of this show and relay FM. So Stephen your time is here

01:18:04   next Monday Mac OS Mojave ships to the world how would you recommend well first

01:18:16   First off, do you recommend that connected listeners upgrade and if they do, and if you

01:18:22   recommend that they do, what are some things that they should be thinking about?

01:18:27   Because I think that an upgrade to Mac OS tends to be, it involves a lot more steps

01:18:32   than an upgrade to iOS, things can be a little bit more complicated, so what should people

01:18:37   be thinking about?

01:18:39   So all good questions in my iPad using Friend.

01:18:43   You want to make sure that your machine can actually run it.

01:18:47   The system requirements have changed over High Sierra, so if you were in sort of the

01:18:53   older machine camp for Sierra and High Sierra, you may have been dropped this time, including

01:18:58   both my Mac Minis.

01:18:59   So that's sad.

01:19:00   My home server will be on High Sierra for the time being.

01:19:04   So check that.

01:19:05   Of course, you always want to make sure--

01:19:07   More like, "Bye, Sierra."

01:19:08   Are we doing this again?

01:19:09   Rico you can send in your third letter if you need to. Thank you, thank you. Yeah, I will.

01:19:15   So make sure you can run it. I have a backup so things like Time Machine are always good,

01:19:20   Backblaze is always good. If you really want like a belt and suspenders approach you can always

01:19:25   create a clone of your drive which means that you could boot up from the external if something

01:19:30   really goes wrong. There are a bunch of ways to do this. I like Carbon Copy Cloner, it's been the

01:19:35   app I use for a long time. Super Duper is another option. So if you have another external hard drive

01:19:39   and you really want to be extra cautious,

01:19:42   that's a good way to do it.

01:19:43   But I think most importantly is check the compatibility

01:19:47   of any mission critical apps.

01:19:49   If you're just using the built in applications in Chrome,

01:19:51   then you're fine.

01:19:53   But if you're doing production work of any kind,

01:19:55   or you're doing anything sort of outside the normal realm,

01:20:00   make sure that your apps are compatible with 10.14.

01:20:05   There have been a few things in my workflow

01:20:07   that I have had to receive updates during the beta,

01:20:10   including like Audio Hijack Pro and some of my editing tools.

01:20:14   And they're all ready now, but just take an afternoon

01:20:17   to kind of walk through your workflows

01:20:18   and make sure that everything that you need is supported.

01:20:22   This is not as big of a deal as it will be next year.

01:20:24   This is the last year, the last hurrah for 32-bit apps.

01:20:28   The system will, if you start a 32-bit app,

01:20:31   will give you a warning saying that this app

01:20:33   needs some attention.

01:20:35   Go bug the developer on Twitter.

01:20:37   I actually have only a handful of 32-bit apps

01:20:40   that I use on any regular basis,

01:20:43   and that number is shrinking,

01:20:44   so hopefully with all this lead time

01:20:47   there won't be many apps abandoned at this,

01:20:49   but this is, just like it was in iOS,

01:20:51   this is a big change,

01:20:53   and it's going to mean that some apps get left behind.

01:20:56   This means all Carbon apps are dead.

01:20:58   Rest in peace, James Thompson in the chat room

01:21:00   who has some Carbon code floating around, I think.

01:21:03   So that app compatibility thing's a big deal.

01:21:06   It's a really, really big deal next time.

01:21:08   So maybe get in that habit if you're not now.

01:21:10   As far as if you should upgrade or not,

01:21:14   that's a harder question.

01:21:16   It seems like especially over the last three or four builds,

01:21:19   like Mojave's stable, it was rough in the beginning,

01:21:21   but I've been using it a bunch.

01:21:23   I know Jason Snell's been basically booted from it

01:21:25   for a while now, and it's been fine.

01:21:29   So it's, you know, if your apps are compatible

01:21:32   and your machine supports it and you have a backup

01:21:34   and you wanna do it, then do it.

01:21:36   But it's not a groundbreaking change.

01:21:40   macOS is really mature.

01:21:42   This is in line with other releases.

01:21:45   We can talk about the features if you want,

01:21:46   but I would say that if all those boxes get checked

01:21:50   and you wanna do it, do it, but there's no rush either.

01:21:53   I don't think there's anything Mojave

01:21:54   that's like a must-have right from day one.

01:21:58   - What about someone like me?

01:22:02   Someone like you or you in particular?

01:22:05   My answer's pretty different.

01:22:06   - Yeah, when I say someone like me, I mean actually me.

01:22:08   - Should you do it?

01:22:09   - The person who is most like me.

01:22:11   - Are you still on Sierra?

01:22:13   No, you upgraded at some point.

01:22:14   - I think I had to.

01:22:15   There was a piece of software that forced me

01:22:16   to upgrade to High Sierra.

01:22:18   - Yeah, I mean, so I think if you have a production machine,

01:22:21   which like your iMac you use for audio recording

01:22:24   and editing and publishing,

01:22:25   that's really all you do on your Mac.

01:22:28   On a machine like that, I think the answer is always wait.

01:22:33   Not just for Mojave, but like,

01:22:36   so like for me, my laptop's on it,

01:22:37   and my iMac Pro is gonna be on High Sierra

01:22:39   probably for a couple of patches to Mojave.

01:22:41   I'll jump in on like, you know, point one or point two,

01:22:45   just to give it some time.

01:22:47   Because as wide as the public beta may be,

01:22:51   there are always things that come up

01:22:52   when it's in general release.

01:22:54   Because everyone downloads it.

01:22:55   and then we realize, oh, the login system

01:22:59   is completely destroyed, like it was in High Sierra,

01:23:02   or we have these security updates.

01:23:05   On a production machine, so Myke, like your iMac,

01:23:07   my iMac Pro, I think wisdom says

01:23:10   to give it a little bit of time.

01:23:12   I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

01:23:13   I don't think you're missing out on much,

01:23:14   unless you just really want dark mode.

01:23:16   I think it's totally fine to give it some breathing room.

01:23:20   There are some nice features that you may enjoy,

01:23:22   like there's a lot of finder stuff in this release

01:23:24   it's pretty interesting. But like if your workflow work has worked for the last 15 years

01:23:29   without these new finder features, I don't think it's going to like radically change

01:23:32   your life now.

01:23:34   It's probably unlikely that I would support like I would really adopt any of them anyway.

01:23:38   Yeah.

01:23:39   Right. I mean, like, what are some of the little finder features that you have found

01:23:43   the most compelling?

01:23:46   I think the most well, there's dark mode, which is not the most compelling one, but

01:23:50   It's the flashiest because it literally affects everything you see on the screen.

01:23:54   I mean, the finder, the finder enhancements, right? Cause that's that. Yeah.

01:23:59   Yeah. So finder enhancements are divided into a couple of sections.

01:24:02   You have desktop stacks, which, you know, the stacks have been on the docs.

01:24:07   It's like leopard. I think, you know,

01:24:08   you put your downloads folder in there and they spring out. It's handy.

01:24:11   I've got several, I use them all the time.

01:24:13   You can now have those on the desktop and they can be sorted automatically by a

01:24:17   bunch of different ways. So the default is by file type. So say that you have, you

01:24:23   know, 14 JPEGs, three PDFs, and four mp3s on your desktop. If you say load stacks,

01:24:29   then you just have three icons and all the mp3s are together, all the PDFs are

01:24:35   together, all the JPEGs are together. It's not a organizational change if you

01:24:39   browse in Finder to your desktop folder. They're not in subfolders, like it's just

01:24:43   visual change. But it can be a way to group things if your desktop is messy.

01:24:48   Where it gets more interesting is you can you can sort them you can have them

01:24:52   stacked automatically by date created, date modified, a lot more than just file

01:24:59   type. So if you need to sort things in specific ways or if you have a lot of

01:25:04   stuff on your desktop but you want it to look neat, this is pretty cool. And like a

01:25:10   lot of people just store a bunch of stuff on their desktop and this could be

01:25:13   useful to them. I think you can also sort into stacks by tags. If you're a big tag

01:25:17   user, like that's the way you think about file structure and like organization,

01:25:22   then this is gonna be huge for you because you just have like a stack with

01:25:26   all the tag stuff on your desktop in one place. So I think that's the most

01:25:30   interesting. I think the most powerful though is something that Apple calls

01:25:35   Quick Actions. So in the Finder there's now a modified right sidebar. So that's

01:25:42   always shown like preview of the file date modified that sort of thing that

01:25:46   now shows more metadata so like that's improved a little bit but then you have

01:25:52   quick actions and so what these are the finder comes with several of them built

01:25:56   in out of the box and you can create your own an automator so say that like a

01:26:00   common workflow for me is I have an image I need to downsize it to like

01:26:05   2,000 pixels across to publish on the website you can just open that and do it

01:26:10   and preview or if you were a power user you could create an automator script to

01:26:14   do that and just like fire an automator action and do it but now you can

01:26:19   basically append those automator actions to finder. So if I am previewing an image

01:26:25   in finder the quick action bar now shows those custom automator actions to me

01:26:32   automatically based on file type. So you could you could go in and build your own

01:26:36   custom automator actions you can name them you give them an icon give them a

01:26:40   glyph and they're available to you really quickly. So if you're using

01:26:45   Automator a lot or you want to start now is a really good time because it used to

01:26:49   be like you had to save the Automator action as an application or know how to

01:26:52   like launch it from the contextual menu and now they're just exposed right in

01:26:56   the sidebar and I think that that is like giving Automator a new sort of a

01:27:01   new breath of life here you know years and years later after it was introduced.

01:27:06   So that's really interesting it's really powerful because you can do all this

01:27:10   scripting now basically just with the push of a button. I mean very much like

01:27:14   Siri shortcuts like it's a nag like the analogy is the the with the shortcuts

01:27:21   widget on iOS where you can drag you know slide over and you have you know

01:27:25   six or ten or whatever shortcuts that are just from a tap of a button this is

01:27:29   like that but they're contextually aware so if you're previewing a movie it will

01:27:34   not show you the quick action to downsize your image it's it's smart

01:27:38   about what you're viewing. And it's it's really pretty cool. I'm looking forward to seeing

01:27:43   how third party developers, they can bundle these in their apps like other extensions.

01:27:48   And so I'm looking forward to how, you know, other developers kind of surface things in

01:27:54   their apps directly into the Finder now.

01:27:56   Is that something you do really expect to see though?

01:28:00   I think so. I think I think with this release, Apple is okay, let me back up for a second.

01:28:06   So for a long time, macOS updates were more or less like, "We're doing this on iOS and

01:28:13   the Mac's going to get it too."

01:28:14   Right?

01:28:15   Like there was a lot of that over the last four or five years, even longer.

01:28:20   It feels like with 10.14, Apple is saying, "The Mac is different from the iPad in particular,

01:28:27   but different from iOS in all these different ways, and we are going to really double down

01:28:33   on the differences."

01:28:34   So the iPad doesn't have Finder, it's got files but it's not the same.

01:28:39   It doesn't have a desktop and the Mac does.

01:28:43   A lot of people use the desktop as their sort of operating, their like operating room.

01:28:48   Like that's everything on the Mac is just on the desktop and so make that better.

01:28:52   The Mac has always been a powerhouse for scripting and automation and they're making that better

01:28:56   and easier like more easily surfaced.

01:28:59   So I think this year they are making the Mac more Mac-like.

01:29:03   And I think that Mac develop, like real Mac developers,

01:29:06   like people who build like custom really good Mac apps

01:29:11   will support this because it's yet another way

01:29:15   that the Mac is sticky to the people who still use it

01:29:17   every day in their work.

01:29:20   And so I expect we'll see them.

01:29:21   I think that Mac developers are excited

01:29:25   about this sort of thing.

01:29:27   Again, like shortcuts.

01:29:29   Some new stuff to do, right?

01:29:30   There's new stuff to do, but it can surface your app in places

01:29:34   outside of your app bundle.

01:29:35   So I'm in Finder, and I can see a piece of functionality

01:29:38   that you wrote as a developer.

01:29:39   That's good for the developer.

01:29:40   That's good for the application.

01:29:42   And I think that is something that

01:29:44   will entice a lot of developers, or at least some developers,

01:29:47   to take on.

01:29:49   So yeah, so Mojave will be out on Monday.

01:29:52   Like I said, I ended up not writing a review.

01:29:55   I have covered just going to be scattered

01:29:57   across multiple websites that I've been working on this week so we'll round those

01:30:01   up in next week's show. If you really want dark mode and your apps all work

01:30:06   then have fun I guess. It'll be waiting for you sometime on

01:30:11   Monday. I forgot some really important follow-up. Oh yeah? Did we all get the

01:30:16   phones we wanted? Oh yeah. Yeah totally. We are getting the phones we wanted on

01:30:23   Friday right? All three of us? Maybe a slight situation with my delivery but

01:30:27   we'll see what happens. Is the bakery closed? I may have to play the bakery

01:30:32   card because I'm not sure if I need to be not at my house. We'll see. I'm trying

01:30:45   to make arrangements with the UPS in Rome. This is the benefit of store pick up, because

01:30:54   you could have built it into your day. Steven, can you do the conclusion Steven, otherwise

01:31:00   Myke is just gonna be "I told you so, store pick up, I live in London, Regent Street,

01:31:06   blah blah blah" Take the two, be on my phone. Take the two, we are NFC, wireless payments

01:31:12   and the queen, all that British stuff.

01:31:15   - So I'm in the same boat, you are Federico.

01:31:17   In store pickup was not available to me

01:31:20   in either color phone.

01:31:21   I ended up with space gray,

01:31:22   but it's because of my system of each device has a preset

01:31:26   and I go with whatever the Apple Store gods want me to order

01:31:29   so I went with space gray this time.

01:31:32   I'm very excited about the band,

01:31:33   less excited about the back,

01:31:34   so we'll see if that grows on me.

01:31:36   But, so I'm home delivery,

01:31:38   like I couldn't pick it up in the store.

01:31:40   The problem is I have a lunch meeting on Friday with someone here in town.

01:31:44   Generally UPS delivers very late in the day in my neighborhood.

01:31:49   You're leaving the house?

01:31:51   Some, well, I'm getting to what I've done. I have created a workflow for this.

01:31:55   Okay.

01:31:56   Usually UPS, like sometimes it's after dark, like we are like,

01:31:59   whatever the route is in Memphis, we are dead last on like my UPS drivers, uh,

01:32:04   route. And, uh, it's always been that way in this neighborhood.

01:32:07   We've lived here like five years.

01:32:09   So I figure I'm safe to go to lunch because he's probably not going to show up until four

01:32:16   or five and with a bunch of iPhones on Apple event days, he's always later because he has

01:32:22   to deliver a ton.

01:32:23   Like it really feels like days they they ship iPhones.

01:32:26   He always looks stressed and like he's always hours late.

01:32:30   But I know if I leave the house, I am tempting fate.

01:32:35   And then I have to call UPS and I have to beg them, "Don't try to deliver it again on

01:32:39   Monday.

01:32:40   Please hold it.

01:32:41   I will come to your depot at the airport with my ID in hand and I will receive it."

01:32:46   I don't want to do any of that.

01:32:47   So what my workflow is that I asked my very understanding, very forgiving spouse.

01:32:55   That's not a workflow.

01:32:58   I've got to go to this lunch meeting.

01:33:00   Would you mind being home when I'm gone at lunch in case UPS shows up?"

01:33:09   And so she agreed.

01:33:11   And so my workflow is that she's going to babysit for UPS and I'm going to do something

01:33:15   very nice for her as a thank you.

01:33:17   So that's my workflow.

01:33:19   So much pressure on Mary.

01:33:21   Right?

01:33:22   No, but if she's in the...she doesn't hear the door, right?

01:33:27   Like she's in so much pressure.

01:33:29   Maybe I'll have my Nest Cam on my iPad at lunch like loaded up so I could be monitoring

01:33:34   the front of the house.

01:33:36   I'm doing an early pick up so I'll have my phone before everyone.

01:33:39   Oh yeah because you have the tube and it's London.

01:33:43   I live in a country with healthcare.

01:33:45   I actually don't take the tube to Regent Street but you know whatever.

01:33:48   We have Uber in London.

01:33:50   Nope nope I'm taking a big train.

01:33:52   Well I don't care what you're taking you're gonna have your phone and I'm happy for you.

01:33:56   I have very conflicted feelings right now.

01:34:00   - Taking a rickshaw to the Apple store.

01:34:02   Is that it?

01:34:03   That's all we got?

01:34:04   I feel like we've been doing a lot of podcasts.

01:34:06   So if you want to find links to stuff we've talked about,

01:34:11   the articles we mentioned, the apps we talked about,

01:34:13   the YouTube videos, reviews we watched,

01:34:16   all that stuff is in your podcast player,

01:34:18   but it's also on relay.fm/connected/210.

01:34:23   If you go to the website, you can do a couple things.

01:34:25   You can email us feedback and follow up.

01:34:27   We love email for feedback and follow up

01:34:28   because it means I don't have to check Twitter.

01:34:29   You can become a member there as well

01:34:32   if you want to support the show directly.

01:34:33   There's a link there to become a member.

01:34:35   And you can do all that stuff online.

01:34:39   And if email's not your thing,

01:34:41   you can find us on LinkedIn, I think.

01:34:43   Are we all on LinkedIn?

01:34:45   No, just me? - Yes.

01:34:46   - Myke and I are on LinkedIn.

01:34:47   You can send us messages on LinkedIn.

01:34:50   You can follow us there. - Don't do that.

01:34:51   - Please don't do that. - Follow me on Instagram.

01:34:53   - Are we gonna do Instagram again?

01:34:54   - Okay, we'll do Instagram. - I am.

01:34:55   I'm doing it all the time now.

01:34:57   'Cause as well, I'm gonna be posting stuff

01:35:01   when I get my iPhone on Instagram.

01:35:03   - Are you gonna do an IGTV?

01:35:04   You gonna?

01:35:05   - Probably not, I'll probably just keep it to stories, but.

01:35:08   - Okay, well, if you wanna be with the cool kids arts,

01:35:11   it's not IGTV.

01:35:14   - No, it's not, is it?

01:35:16   - That's really sad.

01:35:17   You can find us on Instagram, you can find us on Twitter,

01:35:19   you can find our emails, we're around.

01:35:21   Get in touch if you have comments

01:35:22   or questions about the show.

01:35:24   I'd like to thank our sponsors this week, Away, Pingdom, and Molekule.

01:35:27   You can learn more about them in the show notes as well.

01:35:29   And until our next episode, gentlemen, say goodbye.

01:35:32   I love you.

01:35:33   Cheerio!