184: They Perfected It, Mum
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From Relay FM, this is Connected, episode 184. Today's show is brought to you by Linode,
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Squarespace and Pingdom. My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined by Federico Vichicchi. Ciao Federico.
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Hi Myke, I see you're gone with the old school intro.
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It's all I know buddy, it's all I know, it's what I know.
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Steven got really excited about WWDC being announced. So he's already in San Jose. That's right. He's already there
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He's lining up outside of the game. He's setting up. He's getting the tent ready
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He's gonna see you know, he figured he doesn't know if he's gonna be in the lottery yet
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But just in case he wants to be first in line
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So he can wave at Tim Cook
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So you can see so you can see all the new bits early all the bits. So from next week
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Stephen will be recording live from the keynote line as he will be all the way up until the first week of June
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But this week he he didn't have all of his equipment ready in time. So maybe he'll call in by the end of the episode. Who knows?
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Probably not because I'm editing this week, which means we won't have any disembodied Stephen heads popping in
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So I just want to break that to you right now
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I know how many people love that but I won't be doing that
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Because I'm not Steven and also as I mentioned he's busy
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It's getting set up outside of the machinery convention center
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Of course, we are gonna talk about WWDC including a really really huge amazing massive awesome announcement
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That we have to make a little bit later on in the show
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But we do not issue traditions around here. So we must address some follow-up
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Our follow-up is thank you
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A follow-up is slightly different this week as it always is when Steven's gone in that
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one item is a brand new news story, one is about nothing we've ever actually spoken before,
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and then the other part of follow-up is just in follow-up because part of the headline
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is called follow-up.
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This is not follow-up.
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It's just because it says follow-up, so I figured it should go in the follow-up section.
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So follow-up item, which is not really follow-up number one, is that there has been another
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a rumour about the potential of another cheap laptop in Apple's line.
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So if you remember last week when we were talking about what might come in an event,
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there was a rumour from KGI about being a cheaper MacBook Air this year.
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Well, now Digitimes is reporting a brand new entry level 13" Retina MacBook which will
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be unveiled in June with a lower cost than the current 12" MacBook.
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It's probably going to be $999 and reported to enter production in May.
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So what it looks like is they're going to take the current 12 inch, make it bigger and
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make it cheaper but it will have the same retina display, a 2560 by 1600 panel.
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Now all of this to me Federico says this is the replacement for the MacBook Air.
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I feel like the KGI rumor and this rumor are the same rumor.
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And that this cheaper MacBook Air is actually a cheaper Retina MacBook.
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It seems to me like the details either about the name or the screen sizes are
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incorrect. And this is in fact the same computer and the same strategy would be
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that it's the MacBook, but it's slightly bigger and it replaces the MacBook Air
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while also being, you know, it gets a price cut,
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it doesn't... otherwise to reconcile all of these different rumors,
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they don't just make any sense to me. This is much much simpler.
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Take the MacBook, make it slightly bigger like the 13-inch MacBook Air,
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but it's got a red display and it now costs $1000
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and it's the new Air as it should be because it's also seen in light.
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If that happens, what happens to the current 12-inch MacBook?
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It goes away?
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You think so? So like they get rid of the 12-inch MacBook, they don't have a MacBook Air anymore,
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and they just have a MacBook line that starts at $999 for 13-inch and then that's that.
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Well I guess you could keep the old one around and also give it a price cut,
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but at the point you have a 12-inch computer and a 13-inch one,
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and also the old MacBook Air line, like some of these computers have to go eventually.
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So why not now?
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Otherwise the solution of keeping them all around seems to just add confusion to the entire lineup.
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So I think either the... I mean I would guess that the Air goes away
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and the MacBook is the replacement, even if it doesn't get a name change.
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Like why does it need to be called MacBook Air?
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Because at that point, I think you argued about this on
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"Excellent discussion on upgrade"
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that the MacBook Air is largely there just to fit the price point.
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Because many institutions, like schools for example,
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they want that kind of computer with that kind of price.
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But it's also confusing if you keep everything around.
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So if you keep the cheaper MacBook Air
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and the cheaper 12-inch MacBook
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and the new but also cheap 13-inch MacBook. It adds the confusion to the
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consumer choice that I'm not sure Apple wants. Yeah I think that my ideal
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situation would be that all that remains is the MacBook line and that maybe
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there's two configurations, maybe there's two different sizes. You know I could
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imagine them doing a 12-inch and a 13-inch but just doing a 13-inch would be
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fine and then that's it. It's just called the MacBook. That's it. Um,
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and then they charge nine 99 to starting price.
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It's got all of the current specs that the 12 inch has and then you can get a
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more expensive one for 1300 that has a better processor, more RAM,
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and more SSD in it.
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I think that this makes way more sense than last week's rumor of reducing the
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price on the current MacBook Air whilst also still selling a more expensive 12
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inch MacBook and also continuing to like breathe life into a non retina Mac in
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2018. That maybe makes a little bit more sense to me. And also, considering how little information
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actually came from KGI, that makes sense to me. But the story got blown up because it
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was interesting. But all KGI said was "cheaper MacBook Air". That was all they said. They
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said nothing else. So it could be that this is what it is. Because $999 I think is cheaper
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in the current MacBook Air that you can buy. So it would make sense to me that you could hear
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one thing and kind of get a little bit confused with something else, right? Like I can see how
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you'd end up. Well, okay, so the MacBook Air right now starts at $999. So, you know, I mean,
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who knows? But I wouldn't be surprised if this is what we ended up being. Or if you think of it as
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like, I don't know, can you get the 13 inches? $999? Can you only buy that? What do you get now?
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Yeah, they only get a 13 inch.
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OK, so I don't know, but it makes way more sense to me that the wires got
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crossed a little bit, depending on who the sources are.
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Or it could be that the Digitimes thing is wrong completely.
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We'll find out soon.
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I mean, I guess
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I guess if I remember correctly, right, the KGI rumor
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suggested this might happen soon.
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And the Digitimes rumor is June, like probably at WWDC.
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So who knows? We'll see.
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I'm intrigued to see how this one is.
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I'm shaking out though.
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Reuters is reporting via a release from Apple that Apple Music has passed 38 million paid
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subscribers.
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This is up 2 million more since February.
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Just as a comparison, Spotify had 71 million premium subscribers at the end of 2017.
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So you kind of assume that they're around the similar level if not increased.
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This does put Apple at number two.
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else is so much smaller all of the Apple players you know kind of Google and
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Amazon etc yeah but obviously Apple have a long way to go if they want to catch
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up with Spotify yeah they still have a long way to go they're growing more
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quickly than Spotify I think it's obvious I saw a chart a couple of days
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ago showing the growth path of Spotify and Apple music and the Apple music one
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is way like it's a steep curve so they're growing more quickly but they're
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still behind like Spotify has nearly double the paying subscribers and that's
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a big number. And I think they have double that free subscribers as well.
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Yeah so that's a big advantage of Spotify that you can try for free and
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somehow I guess they make at least some money with the advertisements I'm not
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sure if it's enough to keep them around you know 20 years from now 30 years from
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now, whereas Apple can just basically bankroll this entire service because they can.
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But I think it's important.
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I saw someone making this argument a few weeks ago.
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I think it's important to have a company like Spotify that's based outside of Silicon Valley,
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that comes from Europe and that it's entirely about music.
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I think it's important to have this kind of player and I'm sort of glad that Spotify is
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the leader because it keeps everybody else on their toes.
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think it's important whereas you know all these other companies Apple and
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Google and to an extent Amazon they just make the music streaming service because
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it's a feature whereas Spotify it is entirely what they make it's the only
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thing they do that's their thing yeah it's just photo sharing all over again
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we spoke we've mentioned that before on the show right like companies that were
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just doing photo sharing couldn't exist in the long term and if anything it's
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Storage was their problem. The music streaming services, they have the whims of the record labels, which I think are even more volatile
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Which is a whole different thing in those contracts. I'm keen to see how Spotify continue into the future
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The numbers that they're at right now are impressive, but I don't know if that is a
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Money-making endeavor going long into the future as you say, especially when companies like Apple and Google and Amazon
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they offer this as part of their overall business and they can use other parts of their business to
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undercut and to subsidize the cost of doing a service like this and paying for deals. I do have a question for you though
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Where is this growth coming from for Apple? Like that's what I'm
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Really trying to wrap my head around. Why is it growing at such a fast rate?
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Well, I think based on conversations I had with my friends
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which are always fascinating because they allow me to sort of get a different point of view.
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The strength of the built-in advertisement essentially in the music app on iOS
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and the fact that the credit card is already on file is a big incentive, I think, to push these people to
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all these new users to subscribe because it's so easy and it's built-in and it's...
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I think there's also an association that people make between Beats and Apple Music with the headphones and the music service that I think it's helping.
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But I'm surprised by the fact that a lot of my friends, they keep mentioning Siri as a feature that when they're driving they can ask Siri to play music, which I was not expecting.
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But I think mostly it's about the fact that it's the music app, it's in the system, and
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it works with iTunes, which a lot of my friends still use to upload their own albums and songs.
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And the fact that the credit card is the same as the iCrowd account, basically as the iTunes
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store account, and so everything is built in and is easy enough to sign up for and forget
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about it, essentially.
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That makes sense.
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In our last piece of follow up, this is the piece that has no bearing on anything previously
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discussed is the Amazon Echo follow up mode.
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This is a new feature that the Amazon Echo has got in the past week or so.
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For some reason, I'll never understand, this is a US only feature right now.
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This has happened with basically every feature that Amazon have added to the Echo.
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It goes to the US and then rolls out to other territories later on.
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It doesn't make any sense to me why this is the case.
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considering it's the same company that makes all this stuff, but hey, I had to wait for
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months for named timers.
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I think obviously it's a John Siracusa copyright problem.
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They only got the licensing deal in the US for the follow-up term.
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That makes a lot of sense.
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But the feature is really cool, so I'm looking forward to getting it.
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What it will do is you can now enable this option, you turn it on in the settings, for
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your Echo devices to continue listening for five seconds after a command has been executed.
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If you say, "Hey, turn on the lights."
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It will listen for another five seconds.
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You could then, for example, say, "and set a timer for 10 minutes."
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This will allow you to chain commands together.
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I think this is really cool because this is a nice little addition.
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There are times when I would want to do this, especially cooking is the often used one,
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but sometimes when I'm setting multiple timers, I'm setting them at the same time.
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able to do two different things at once is a great little workaround. I mean it would be nicer if I
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could ask both of these things at the same time, but until they gain the feature possibility to
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do that I'm cool with executing one command after another in a chain. Yeah I think it's a good
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workaround. I think it makes sense. It's obviously not what the future of these things will look like.
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I think eventually we'll have assistants with the ability to discern different sentences within the same activation command.
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That's obviously the way it's going to go, that if I ask you to turn on the lights and then I ask you to also set a timer,
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I don't mean to turn on a light named pasta timer, because that's what happens right now.
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All the names and all the terms get mixed up in a single command.
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So eventually an assistant should be smart enough to interpret these two commands as two sentences and therefore two actions.
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But right now, I think it's a very clever workaround and I wouldn't mind to see this kind of
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option in Siri going forward unless, you know, Apple is working on real multi-command support.
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But I would be surprised considering all the other things they need to fix first.
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But right now this is a... should get the job done, I suppose.
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Alright, today's show is brought to you in part by our friends at Linode. Linode offer
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So yesterday March 13th out of nowhere WWDC was announced.
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So WWDC 2018 will be back in San Jose from June 4th to June 8th.
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As we expected last year, this is a permanent move, or at least a permanent move for the
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time being, but this is where we are June 4th to 8th 2018.
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We're both going to be there, of course, but more importantly than that, we have a pretty
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awesome announcement.
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We're going to be doing a live show at WWDC in conjunction with AUGTCONF and the folk
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at the Accidental Tech Podcast. We are putting on the first ever WWDC Podcast Festival. It's
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going to be two days of podcasts in the evenings. ATP is going to be on Monday, June 4th and
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we are going to be doing a Relay FM live show on June 6th in conjunction with AltConf. There
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are tickets available now. I'll put a bunch of links in the show notes so you'll be able
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to go and get your tickets. We've got tickets on sale right now. They are $5 and all of
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the money for the tickets is going to be going towards helping all comp so all
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the money is going to all comp to help support what they're doing they do a
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great a great service for people attending WWDC they're a great option to
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go to even if you don't get yourself a pass they've got loads of really really
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awesome and amazing stuff and you can even attend for free there are options
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to pay but you can attend all comp for free which is just kind of awesome
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they're really great with that sort of stuff so we're gonna be doing a live
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show is going to be broken up into some fun segments like what we did in 2016 when we
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did RelayCon San Francisco. So the show will feature the three of us, so me, Steven and
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Federico in the first section and then Steven is working on some programming for the other
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sections so he's working on that, I'm very excited. There's going to be some mashups
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and some crossovers over Relay FM shows. We're really excited about it. I have no idea how
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long the tickets are going to be on sale for. I would just say this is a significantly larger
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show than we've ever done before. There are 900 tickets available, which is bonkers. It's
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like three to four times larger than any live show we've ever done. But I will say if our
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waiting lists every other year have proven anything is that there would be that amount
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of people that would want to get a ticket.
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If you are interested, there will be links in the show notes for you to go and pick up
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tickets of your own.
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But of course you can just go to auteconf.com and you can get a ticket to our live show.
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If you're going to be in town, please grab a ticket.
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If you've got any questions you can reach out to us on Twitter.
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All of the information should be available in our show notes.
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We're really excited.
00:19:38
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►
Anyway, let's talk about WWDC, shall we?
00:19:41
◼
►
So San Jose, we're very happy about that, right?
00:19:44
◼
►
I mean, last year felt fantastic.
00:19:48
◼
►
It was a great environment.
00:19:50
◼
►
It was way nicer than any other year that I've been to.
00:19:55
◼
►
I really, really enjoyed it.
00:19:56
◼
►
I had a great time.
00:19:58
◼
►
So I'm expecting that it will continue to be that and may even be even better than last
00:20:04
◼
►
year would be my hope.
00:20:06
◼
►
Yeah, I think so, especially because Apple had the time to work out all the issues with
00:20:10
◼
►
the new location last year. I mean, the entire organization was already quite smooth and,
00:20:15
◼
►
you know, they partnered with other events throughout town during the week. I think it
00:20:21
◼
►
was really great. I had a great time and the city was lovely and the weather was fantastic,
00:20:27
◼
►
of course, because of California. And I think it will be even better this time because now
00:20:31
◼
►
now we know what we are doing.
00:20:33
◼
►
We are more used to the place.
00:20:35
◼
►
We know where we're going and we know where to get good
00:20:39
◼
►
coffee. So I think that's really important.
00:20:42
◼
►
And I think the, you know, the,
00:20:44
◼
►
the inside of the convention center,
00:20:46
◼
►
I think it was probably nicer than Moscone.
00:20:50
◼
►
From my personal experience, I think it was just nicer.
00:20:53
◼
►
Even the outside being able to be outside.
00:20:56
◼
►
There was like, like you could sit at a table or just,
00:20:59
◼
►
you know, on the ground there were like an entire garden type situation.
00:21:04
◼
►
I think it was really, really lovely.
00:21:06
◼
►
So I'm happy that it's again in San Jose because I had a great time and a great
00:21:11
◼
►
decision to not be in San Francisco.
00:21:14
◼
►
I hope that the vibe continues of like feeling like the town gets taken over.
00:21:19
◼
►
Um, I'll note that like hotels and stuff seem to have been booked up way quicker.
00:21:24
◼
►
Um, like the hotel that we stayed at last year, same hotel we're staying at this
00:21:28
◼
►
year there are no rooms available. We actually booked rooms on a whim like three months ago.
00:21:36
◼
►
Just kind of guessed some dates and started putting some deposits down on rooms and yeah
00:21:41
◼
►
we ended up we were okay. Which is great. I'm very pleased about that. But all about
00:21:47
◼
►
the branding for WWDC this year. I love that is they've got dot grid paper. Dot grid is
00:21:53
◼
►
my favorite type of paper.
00:21:55
◼
►
Okay so it's entirely about paper because I've seen all these tweets that like dot grid
00:21:59
◼
►
is the best, dot grid is all that.
00:22:02
◼
►
Okay it's paper.
00:22:04
◼
►
Yeah like a dot grid is great because it's not, it doesn't like box you in as much as
00:22:08
◼
►
a regular grid would, you know?
00:22:10
◼
►
So yeah this is a dot grid.
00:22:12
◼
►
I mean what I think what they're showing here is building blocks.
00:22:16
◼
►
I'm not really looking into it very much.
00:22:18
◼
►
I see people, I don't know if they're joking, I'm not saying like oh they're bringing depth
00:22:22
◼
►
back to the design.
00:22:24
◼
►
I don't know if it means anything other than just like, this is just building blocks of
00:22:29
◼
►
design, right?
00:22:30
◼
►
Like this is kind of, you would sketch out your app on paper, that kind of thing.
00:22:34
◼
►
And I think it looks really nice.
00:22:36
◼
►
I like the aesthetic that they're going for.
00:22:39
◼
►
It's kind of cool.
00:22:40
◼
►
Some people on Twitter would have you believe that you have no right to like this type of
00:22:49
◼
►
3D style because Apple has no right to go back to depth and shadows because of the crimes
00:22:57
◼
►
they committed with iOS 7.
00:22:59
◼
►
It's a nice graphic.
00:23:00
◼
►
It's a nice web page.
00:23:01
◼
►
I think it's a lovely look, you know, this 3D combination of various interface elements
00:23:07
◼
►
and programming signs.
00:23:09
◼
►
I think it looks fantastic.
00:23:10
◼
►
I wouldn't read too much into, you know, Apple is bringing back 3D and shadows and perspective.
00:23:17
◼
►
I don't think it's that.
00:23:18
◼
►
I think it's just a graphic designer needed to put up a visual identity for WWDC, and
00:23:24
◼
►
this is what they were going for.
00:23:28
◼
►
Some folks like to see the conspiracy everywhere.
00:23:31
◼
►
Sometimes it's just a couple of designers making cool graphics.
00:23:35
◼
►
Just from a visual design perspective, I'm interested to see how this translates.
00:23:40
◼
►
What you get here, the branding of the website, is the branding of the conference.
00:23:44
◼
►
branding is carried through to banners and posters and little elements that go
00:23:50
◼
►
throughout the conference and all white, everything in white, I'm interested to
00:23:55
◼
►
see how that translates to other materials. It's because we the
00:23:59
◼
►
people bring the color, it's what we do. You know, Johnny got his hands all over
00:24:03
◼
►
it and just like all white, all white only. Or that, but my message is more inspiring, I'm positive.
00:24:09
◼
►
I like to go with that.
00:24:11
◼
►
It is. But I'm interested to see how it will translate.
00:24:14
◼
►
I like the visual design aspect, right?
00:24:18
◼
►
I think that's fun. I always love walking around the town and seeing
00:24:22
◼
►
the banners up and stuff like that. So I'm keen to see how that translates.
00:24:26
◼
►
Maybe you're all going to get some nice dot grid notebooks when you're standing in line so you can take all your important notes
00:24:31
◼
►
for the conference.
00:24:33
◼
►
Or maybe they give you little objects
00:24:36
◼
►
shaped like these interface elements and somehow they are AR toys that you
00:24:43
◼
►
point your iPhone camera at and they transform into little figurines and
00:24:47
◼
►
characters, you know? Sort of like Nintendo bundled like those AR cards
00:24:53
◼
►
with the Nintendo DS. You remember those?
00:24:56
◼
►
You could like look at the card and fall into the table.
00:24:59
◼
►
Yeah, maybe it's something like that.
00:25:03
◼
►
So I felt like this announcement came out of the blue a little bit.
00:25:09
◼
►
Obviously, I was starting to believe we're getting closer, right, because
00:25:14
◼
►
I don't think I expected we would find out as early as we did, because it was a
00:25:19
◼
►
couple of weeks prior to this, a year ago.
00:25:23
◼
►
It was early March that we found out, and that was because they up and moved the
00:25:27
◼
►
conference. I was expecting we'd maybe find out maybe late March, early April, but
00:25:33
◼
►
We're kind of finding this out in mid-March.
00:25:35
◼
►
It kind of came out of nowhere, I think, but in a good way.
00:25:38
◼
►
I mean, I think it's way better to find out earlier
00:25:41
◼
►
rather than later.
00:25:42
◼
►
I think that's just a good thing
00:25:43
◼
►
so you can get all of preparations in mind,
00:25:46
◼
►
especially as people who are trying to arrange things
00:25:50
◼
►
to do around.
00:25:52
◼
►
But I like that it gives more people more time
00:25:54
◼
►
to make more plans.
00:25:55
◼
►
I always think that's a good thing.
00:25:58
◼
►
- Yeah, I think it's always good
00:26:00
◼
►
to have an announcement early
00:26:02
◼
►
because flights are expensive and hotels also.
00:26:06
◼
►
I had a little story that I wanted to tell you.
00:26:10
◼
►
So I called my mom yesterday
00:26:12
◼
►
because usually she drives me together
00:26:16
◼
►
with Sylvia to the airport.
00:26:17
◼
►
And so I was like, oh, by the way,
00:26:19
◼
►
Apple announced the dates of the conference dates.
00:26:23
◼
►
I'm gonna leave in the first week of June.
00:26:25
◼
►
And her first reaction was like,
00:26:26
◼
►
oh, they're doing another one?
00:26:30
◼
►
I was like, yes, mom, they--
00:26:31
◼
►
well last year. And she was like, what are they going to announce this time? I was like,
00:26:38
◼
►
well, I don't know.
00:26:39
◼
►
Does she think they ran out? Like that's it?
00:26:43
◼
►
She was under the, my mom, every time Apple announces something, she's surprised that
00:26:49
◼
►
they have more. They're like, when the iPhone 10 came out, she was like, oh, they have another
00:26:53
◼
►
iPhone? She's always like somehow convinced that Apple is making the last of everything.
00:27:00
◼
►
They perfected it mum, they're done.
00:27:03
◼
►
No more conferences, no more iPhones.
00:27:07
◼
►
But yeah seriously, I think it was about a couple of weeks ago
00:27:10
◼
►
that Jon and I, we were certain
00:27:14
◼
►
that Apple would have an announcement for WWDC and so we prepared like we had a
00:27:18
◼
►
post ready to go, we had an entire
00:27:20
◼
►
like setup with Pingdom and all these alert systems
00:27:24
◼
►
to make sure that the announcement was you know being monitored
00:27:28
◼
►
but nothing happened.
00:27:29
◼
►
And yesterday, I was actually like,
00:27:31
◼
►
I was not expecting the announcement at all.
00:27:33
◼
►
I was writing, I had all,
00:27:36
◼
►
so I'm working on this story for the website next week.
00:27:39
◼
►
And I had, like, when I'm in this mode,
00:27:41
◼
►
I put all my devices in do not disturb.
00:27:44
◼
►
So I was writing, then I get up to,
00:27:46
◼
►
because of the time to stand notification,
00:27:49
◼
►
and I look at my iPhone, and there was a message from you.
00:27:53
◼
►
What did you text me?
00:27:54
◼
►
Like something about-
00:27:55
◼
►
- I sent you a screenshot of flight time.
00:27:57
◼
►
There's like, do you think this is like about the prices like do you think this is okay?
00:28:03
◼
►
And I was like, am I missing something here?
00:28:05
◼
►
What I said to you was, I'm sure you're busy right now, but we need to book this.
00:28:10
◼
►
And you're like, why?
00:28:11
◼
►
I'm like, um, WWDC?
00:28:16
◼
►
And then you were like, you like, am I missing, am I missing something here?
00:28:20
◼
►
And I was like, WWDC is announced.
00:28:22
◼
►
And you were like, wait, what?
00:28:23
◼
►
You're being serious?
00:28:23
◼
►
I'm like, are we doing this again?
00:28:26
◼
►
You sent me in all caps, "Dude, it's out now!" They just announced it also in all caps.
00:28:33
◼
►
Yeah, because again, I was not expecting the announcement at all. I thought at this point
00:28:40
◼
►
it was gonna be like April. So I was really surprised. And I was thinking about this,
00:28:45
◼
►
I was actually discussing this with you before the show. I almost feel like the announcement
00:28:51
◼
►
has been made, we dealt with the hotel and flight staff for like 30 minutes to an hour,
00:28:57
◼
►
you dealt with the announcement on Reel FM for the live show, and then it all passed and we were done.
00:29:03
◼
►
I don't feel like the same... I don't know, but like I don't want to say that I'm not happy,
00:29:12
◼
►
of course I'm super excited, but the mechanic of the announcement, it flew by almost. I don't know
00:29:19
◼
►
I don't know if you feel the same way.
00:29:21
◼
►
- I mean, kinda, I think that your circumstances
00:29:26
◼
►
are slightly different, right?
00:29:27
◼
►
So this is your third time.
00:29:29
◼
►
The first year was your first year, so you're super excited.
00:29:32
◼
►
Your second year was the biggest change in 10 years.
00:29:35
◼
►
So that created a lot of discussion and thought
00:29:38
◼
►
and like, what is this gonna be like?
00:29:40
◼
►
What is this gonna be like?
00:29:41
◼
►
So now this year, there are a couple of things to it.
00:29:43
◼
►
One, it's like you're a little bit more used to it.
00:29:46
◼
►
And two, there isn't anything new or big.
00:29:48
◼
►
and we're finding out way earlier than usual, right?
00:29:52
◼
►
I mean, if memory serves,
00:29:53
◼
►
it's been like late April sometimes.
00:29:55
◼
►
So now we're kind of middle of March,
00:29:57
◼
►
it's still like basically best part of three months away
00:30:01
◼
►
that you are maybe just, it's too far to think about.
00:30:06
◼
►
- Yeah, yeah, I think that's it.
00:30:09
◼
►
And also maybe the fact that,
00:30:11
◼
►
at least the current rumors are not suggesting
00:30:15
◼
►
any new groundbreaking features coming to iOS.
00:30:20
◼
►
I think that's also kind of setting the mood
00:30:22
◼
►
in a different way.
00:30:24
◼
►
Like last year, there were all kinds of rumors,
00:30:26
◼
►
if I recall, about Apple is gonna,
00:30:29
◼
►
are they gonna go back to the iPad?
00:30:31
◼
►
Are they gonna focus on,
00:30:33
◼
►
are they working on augmented reality stuff?
00:30:36
◼
►
But this year, with the rumor of the working on fixes
00:30:39
◼
►
and improvements, and maybe the biggest announcement
00:30:42
◼
►
will be Project Marzipan, I feel like that's sort of setting a different mood in people
00:30:50
◼
►
who are following this stuff that maybe feel, it's gonna feel different from last year even
00:30:55
◼
►
though the location is the same.
00:30:57
◼
►
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I get that, but like I've been to bad WWDCs and they're still, I mean,
00:31:05
◼
►
the event itself, the time is still enjoyable.
00:31:07
◼
►
Oh yeah, for sure.
00:31:09
◼
►
You know, you have maybe, again, you just maybe not had enough of them yet, right?
00:31:15
◼
►
You had like one bad one and one like the best one you could have ever imagined.
00:31:20
◼
►
But like your bad one was still the first time.
00:31:23
◼
►
So I don't know.
00:31:24
◼
►
My feeling still as we are right now is that there's never going to be nothing.
00:31:31
◼
►
There's always interesting stuff.
00:31:33
◼
►
Even if they're cooling it down, there's still going to be stuff in there that's going to
00:31:36
◼
►
be exciting.
00:31:38
◼
►
And I think that we're still far enough away that there could be other rumors that come
00:31:43
◼
►
out and leaks that come out if that's the kind of thing that we're looking for to be
00:31:46
◼
►
excited about.
00:31:47
◼
►
I still think that there's time for there to be more.
00:31:51
◼
►
I don't think that prior even the announcement we would typically know all of the rumors
00:31:57
◼
►
we're going to know.
00:31:59
◼
►
And also as well there's enough time for everyone to like drum up their own beliefs as what's
00:32:05
◼
►
going to happen that get turned into kind of an expected thing.
00:32:09
◼
►
Project Mars-A-Ban I think is one of those.
00:32:11
◼
►
I think this is something that we're all kind of expecting to happen that still might not
00:32:17
◼
►
I am definitely in the camp of "I believe this will happen" but it is unknown.
00:32:24
◼
►
It's unknown if even if they show it off it might not be available this year.
00:32:27
◼
►
It might be like "here is this thing and it's going to be 2019" or who knows.
00:32:31
◼
►
I have no idea.
00:32:33
◼
►
There's still enough that can happen now.
00:32:36
◼
►
Even just hardware, right?
00:32:37
◼
►
We get some new iPads, that would be pretty sweet, right?
00:32:40
◼
►
That would be enough for me.
00:32:41
◼
►
That would be excellent.
00:32:42
◼
►
That would be excellent, yeah.
00:32:44
◼
►
So I'm remaining cautiously optimistic, but my entire focus, honestly, right now is about
00:32:52
◼
►
That's where my mind is focused on, is this event that we're doing.
00:32:57
◼
►
I am most excited for that right now.
00:33:00
◼
►
Oh yeah, yeah.
00:33:01
◼
►
buy tickets buy tickets buy tickets is what I'm trying to say. But yeah WWDC it's coming
00:33:06
◼
►
back at you first full week of June I'm very excited I'm looking forward to all of the
00:33:12
◼
►
different parties and events that are going to be announced yeah it's it's gonna it's
00:33:17
◼
►
gonna hit us quicker than we think though. Because I feel like we always go there for
00:33:24
◼
►
the news for the Apple stuff but really we go there for for the people to meet people
00:33:29
◼
►
to meet our friends and to meet listeners and readers and you know everybody who is
00:33:33
◼
►
part of this entire big community that folks who follow Apple and like Apple products and
00:33:40
◼
►
So that's the best part of going there and meeting people and being exposed to faces
00:33:47
◼
►
that you normally just see on Twitter timelines.
00:33:49
◼
►
I think that's always been the best part for me.
00:33:51
◼
►
So I will underscore that by saying if you want to go but you either don't want to buy
00:33:57
◼
►
a ticket or don't get a ticket. There is so much awesome stuff to do. It is worth being
00:34:03
◼
►
in San Jose for that week. I am not going to attempt to get a ticket. I'm not interested.
00:34:08
◼
►
There's enough to keep me excited throughout the day, throughout the evenings. There's
00:34:13
◼
►
so much cool stuff going on. You've applied for a pass again, right?
00:34:18
◼
►
Good luck. I hope that you get it.
00:34:20
◼
►
That makes third time's a charm, right? If you do. The first two years you won the lottery,
00:34:24
◼
►
the first two times. So hopefully it'll continue to work but even if it doesn't
00:34:31
◼
►
I'll still be there because it's so so worth it especially for my job and your
00:34:37
◼
►
job to talk to developers to meet folks who are working on new apps new games
00:34:42
◼
►
it's just an excellent time for... I just like to hang out and go see live
00:34:47
◼
►
podcasts like it's not really about me anymore you know but yes I get I get it
00:34:52
◼
►
I did last year take more meetings than I've taken in all other years combined
00:34:56
◼
►
because I think people started to care.
00:35:00
◼
►
But that's not why I go.
00:35:02
◼
►
I do go for the app, for all of the different social events,
00:35:06
◼
►
you know, the different live podcasts, right?
00:35:08
◼
►
To see ATP live, to see the talk show, to go to like fundraisers,
00:35:12
◼
►
like AppCamp for Girls and stuff like that.
00:35:13
◼
►
Like that's that's why I go because those things are genuinely fun.
00:35:17
◼
►
And now I'm I have friends that I'll see there every year.
00:35:20
◼
►
I make new friends every year.
00:35:22
◼
►
Like it's always a great, great experience, which I really, really thoroughly recommend that people go to.
00:35:27
◼
►
And if they do go, they should come to our live show because it's going to be the best thing that you'll see all week.
00:35:31
◼
►
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00:37:09
◼
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It was announced during a conversation with Eddie Q.
00:37:16
◼
►
that Apple have acquired a digital magazine service and company called Texture, who were
00:37:24
◼
►
owned by a larger company that's also the entire company has been bought. The company
00:37:30
◼
►
is called Next Issue Media and they made an application service called Texture. Next Issue
00:37:35
◼
►
Media has been purchased by Apple. This even warranted a post on the Apple PR newsroom.
00:37:43
◼
►
Federico, do you know much about texture?
00:37:45
◼
►
Had you come across texture before
00:37:48
◼
►
this announcement came out on Monday?
00:37:51
◼
►
- So I was surprised by the fact that texture
00:37:54
◼
►
was already in my downloads,
00:37:57
◼
►
listing on the app store for my Apple ID.
00:38:00
◼
►
So sometime in the past, I downloaded texture.
00:38:04
◼
►
And I'm pretty sure that I didn't keep using it
00:38:10
◼
►
because I don't read magazines really.
00:38:12
◼
►
I read websites.
00:38:14
◼
►
And this is an application that lets you read articles
00:38:18
◼
►
from magazines like GQ and National Geographic and People
00:38:23
◼
►
and all these popular US magazines,
00:38:25
◼
►
which usually they have a web component.
00:38:29
◼
►
So that's why I don't need to get the magazine version.
00:38:33
◼
►
But I think it's really nicely done.
00:38:38
◼
►
if you're that type of consumer
00:38:42
◼
►
who wants to have a digital way of reading magazines.
00:38:46
◼
►
- Is it just scans of magazines
00:38:48
◼
►
or do they like have the content?
00:38:50
◼
►
- I don't think it's just scans.
00:38:54
◼
►
So for example, if I open on a story here,
00:38:58
◼
►
which of course I cannot do
00:38:59
◼
►
because I need to create an account,
00:39:01
◼
►
which I don't have,
00:39:03
◼
►
but what I think is interesting is the ability to,
00:39:07
◼
►
There's a section called highlights that takes you directly to a story.
00:39:12
◼
►
I don't think the it's just like a PDF scan that you have to
00:39:17
◼
►
that you have to zoom back and forth to read.
00:39:20
◼
►
Also the app just crashed for me.
00:39:23
◼
►
That's interesting.
00:39:23
◼
►
It's all going well so far.
00:39:24
◼
►
I'm not sure about which kind of format they're using but I would be surprised if
00:39:30
◼
►
it's just like just give us an image and let people zoom into the text.
00:39:34
◼
►
I don't think that's that's what they're doing at all.
00:39:37
◼
►
What I think is interesting and fascinating for Apple
00:39:39
◼
►
is that this company built a system
00:39:42
◼
►
to extract individual stories from magazines
00:39:45
◼
►
and to highlight them in a separate view of the app.
00:39:48
◼
►
So you can have this like this bundle of magazines
00:39:51
◼
►
that you're paying for with the Netflix-like model.
00:39:54
◼
►
You're paying a subscription
00:39:55
◼
►
and you get access to dozens of,
00:39:57
◼
►
it says 200 plus magazines and it's $10 per month.
00:40:01
◼
►
But you also get these personalized feed
00:40:06
◼
►
that gives you stories extracted from different magazines,
00:40:10
◼
►
which seems to me like it's a perfect fit
00:40:12
◼
►
for the Apple News model,
00:40:14
◼
►
where you can drill down into individual sources,
00:40:18
◼
►
individual websites and publications,
00:40:20
◼
►
or you can stay in the main view
00:40:23
◼
►
where you get a collection of different stories
00:40:26
◼
►
from different websites, and in this case, magazines.
00:40:29
◼
►
And we were speculating about this
00:40:31
◼
►
in our iMessage conversation,
00:40:34
◼
►
And I think I said, or Stephen said,
00:40:37
◼
►
this makes sense for Apple News.
00:40:40
◼
►
And of course, EdiQ was speaking at Southwest
00:40:43
◼
►
a few minutes later.
00:40:44
◼
►
So this announcement, this entire thing,
00:40:46
◼
►
was pretty well timed with this EdiQ appearance.
00:40:49
◼
►
And he confirmed that Apple plans to integrate
00:40:52
◼
►
this technology somehow with Apple News.
00:40:54
◼
►
Because again, it just makes sense
00:40:56
◼
►
for that type of structure, I think.
00:40:58
◼
►
- Yeah, I'm wondering why they're feeling the need
00:41:03
◼
►
to buy this company though. It feels like what you really need for this is just the
00:41:10
◼
►
buy-in from publications to do this. And unless they have created some really, really special
00:41:20
◼
►
proprietary technology, I don't necessarily understand why Apple needed to buy this company
00:41:26
◼
►
to do this specific thing.
00:41:29
◼
►
is my question too, also because Apple has been promoting this format
00:41:35
◼
►
that websites can use the Apple News format to produce stories optimized
00:41:42
◼
►
for Apple News, so I was under the impression that Apple wants to work with
00:41:46
◼
►
websites, not with magazines trying to adapt to the Internet, but with websites
00:41:53
◼
►
that have already a web presence and a web component. So it's either I see two
00:41:59
◼
►
possible paths for this that either Apple wanted to get all these rights and these deals
00:42:06
◼
►
with publishers.
00:42:07
◼
►
But I'm not sure about how that stuff works, right?
00:42:10
◼
►
Because that doesn't seem logical to me that if you buy a company, you just take all of
00:42:15
◼
►
their contracts.
00:42:16
◼
►
And even if that was the case, that contract was written in that way, contracts expire.
00:42:21
◼
►
And if Apple are concerned that they're not going to be able to get people to sign contracts
00:42:26
◼
►
with them, which is why they're buying a company for it.
00:42:29
◼
►
Like how do they know they're going to get renewals on the contracts?
00:42:32
◼
►
That doesn't seem like a good reason to buy a company to me.
00:42:38
◼
►
So I think it's either somehow they worked out a deal that still works for them from
00:42:44
◼
►
that point of view, even though I think it's, I don't know how these things work.
00:42:48
◼
►
Or texture built technology that is amazing, that Apple wants to have in Apple News, and
00:42:56
◼
►
Maybe they want to move to a format where stories you get on Apple News are more magazine-like.
00:43:03
◼
►
Or maybe it's entirely about the engine and about the fact how we can recommend individual stories,
00:43:10
◼
►
how we can deal with hundreds of magazines but also highlight interesting stories on a daily basis.
00:43:19
◼
►
I don't know what the reason is because of course Apple is not telling us.
00:43:23
◼
►
Maybe there's a point to make about the broader idea of maybe Apple sort of positioning themselves as the company who wants to help publishers in an era where there's a problem of fake news everywhere, basically.
00:43:42
◼
►
And the publishing industry dying in places, right?
00:43:45
◼
►
And the publishing industry dying at the mercy of Facebook, mostly.
00:43:49
◼
►
So I wonder if this is what Apple's play is gonna be like of "we're going to help you survive"
00:43:57
◼
►
even though I don't know if it's just marketing or if it's something that they truly believe in
00:44:04
◼
►
because the news industry, from Apple's perspective, it's just something that they can use to push people to subscribe
00:44:13
◼
►
subscribe and to get people into the system, essentially.
00:44:17
◼
►
I don't think that they have a genuine,
00:44:20
◼
►
it's not that I don't think,
00:44:21
◼
►
I don't know if they have a genuine feeling of,
00:44:24
◼
►
oh, we need to save the publishing industry
00:44:26
◼
►
because it's good for America and it's good for the world.
00:44:29
◼
►
I don't think if they have that kind of sentiment
00:44:32
◼
►
behind this push for getting this kind of company.
00:44:37
◼
►
- Yeah, I'm also a little bit uncomfortable
00:44:41
◼
►
of any company that says something like what Eddy Cue said,
00:44:44
◼
►
we are committed to quality journalism from trusted sources
00:44:47
◼
►
and allowing magazines to keep producing beautifully designed
00:44:49
◼
►
and engaging stories for users.
00:44:51
◼
►
It's the trusted sources thing that I don't like,
00:44:54
◼
►
like that there is a company that can be like,
00:44:56
◼
►
you can trust this one, you can't trust this one.
00:44:58
◼
►
I don't know, like there's something about that kind
00:45:00
◼
►
of thing which is a little bit,
00:45:03
◼
►
it just makes me feel a little bit uncomfortable at times
00:45:05
◼
►
where it's like, well, who is making the decisions though
00:45:09
◼
►
about what I can and can't see.
00:45:13
◼
►
I kind of get a little bit uncomfortable with any company
00:45:16
◼
►
that is like cherry picking just the right stuff.
00:45:20
◼
►
You know what I mean?
00:45:22
◼
►
- Yeah, yeah, I do.
00:45:23
◼
►
- I feel like that is easily open to abuse
00:45:25
◼
►
in one way or another.
00:45:26
◼
►
And also I personally believe
00:45:30
◼
►
that if you want to ingest any type of news,
00:45:32
◼
►
you should try and have a balanced view on it.
00:45:35
◼
►
I think there's a there's a general sense of discomfort lately with the news.
00:45:42
◼
►
And I get why, because if there's just absolute forced stories being produced,
00:45:47
◼
►
then yes, of course you should be untrusting of it.
00:45:50
◼
►
But I also like to believe that most people don't just completely shut
00:45:55
◼
►
themselves off from things they don't agree with.
00:45:57
◼
►
Right. Like, I feel like most people will at least have an idea of things that
00:46:01
◼
►
they're that they don't agree with.
00:46:03
◼
►
And I would want to see Apple doing that.
00:46:05
◼
►
I mean, I don't want Apple to just,
00:46:08
◼
►
if they're gonna do something like this,
00:46:09
◼
►
to only have stories from the left, right?
00:46:14
◼
►
I feel like they have to have something which is moderate
00:46:18
◼
►
that can be served for everyone, right?
00:46:20
◼
►
That they have things for everybody
00:46:21
◼
►
because that seems like the right thing to do, right?
00:46:24
◼
►
Just because you are maybe more on the right side of things,
00:46:28
◼
►
it doesn't mean that everything is wrong, right?
00:46:31
◼
►
Like there is, because there is wrong on both sides
00:46:34
◼
►
every debate, right? So I would hope that they would at least try and keep things
00:46:39
◼
►
relatively neutral. Would you agree?
00:46:43
◼
►
Yeah, that's the problem. So someone emailed me a few weeks ago, or maybe I was reading an article that I wanted to link to,
00:46:53
◼
►
but anyway there was this sentence that kind of stood out to me of, "I don't use the iBook store because Apple is always
00:47:02
◼
►
pushing their liberal agenda. And that really, like I paused when I was reading
00:47:10
◼
►
this, because it's an issue that even though I don't agree with it, I
00:47:15
◼
►
think Apple, you know, I use Apple News I would say at least once on a daily basis
00:47:20
◼
►
I think it tends to have a good mix of different types of sources but I can see
00:47:27
◼
►
how, especially in this age and this current political landscape everywhere, this is a
00:47:35
◼
►
very sensitive issue of is this company trying to inject their values into the news that
00:47:44
◼
►
I see and the content that I want to buy and pay for? And this is why this acquisition
00:47:50
◼
►
is so peculiar to me because if it's not for the technology, what is it for then?
00:47:58
◼
►
So the only reasonable explanation that I can think of, it must be the technology
00:48:04
◼
►
and the team because otherwise what's the... you already have a system where if
00:48:10
◼
►
you want to have content on Apple news you can say to all these
00:48:13
◼
►
websites just use this format, just use this code and you will be on Apple news.
00:48:19
◼
►
Why do you need to say you can find your trusted sources on texture?
00:48:27
◼
►
It's something that I don't understand. People can already choose for themselves
00:48:31
◼
►
and they can already go on Apple News and find different sources that they like and subscribe
00:48:37
◼
►
and any website can say I'm advertising my content as compatible with Apple News.
00:48:43
◼
►
Why the need to cherry-pick magazines that are part of this program?
00:48:48
◼
►
This is what I don't understand.
00:48:50
◼
►
So my... I hope that it's about the technology and not about the ideology
00:48:56
◼
►
behind "let me pick all the sources that I think are good for the people".
00:49:01
◼
►
Because that shouldn't be Apple's job.
00:49:04
◼
►
That shouldn't be Apple's job at all.
00:49:06
◼
►
No, especially not where they are as a company.
00:49:09
◼
►
Right? The biggest company in the world.
00:49:11
◼
►
world and like Apple can decide if the things that they do are more liberal in
00:49:17
◼
►
nature they can make that decision and that's fine but not with something like
00:49:24
◼
►
giving people the information that they receive right you see where I'm going
00:49:29
◼
►
like it is I think is totally fine for them to do things that would be
00:49:35
◼
►
considered to be liberal right like to support specific causes and to make a
00:49:40
◼
►
stand on certain issues because there are people that believe that those are the right
00:49:45
◼
►
things to do. I am of that leaning as I believe that you are too, right? Like we both believe
00:49:50
◼
►
in more liberal ideals. Plus there are people that don't in the world and Apple can make
00:49:56
◼
►
those decisions about the way that they want to run the company. But when it comes to like
00:50:01
◼
►
choosing news sources, I don't think you can do that. I don't think that's the right thing
00:50:07
◼
►
I think they should be able to separate having values as people and as a company and running an editorial service with an editorial board.
00:50:18
◼
►
That is not a news organization producing content. Well, to an extent, you could argue that the spotlight section in Apple News does reflect some of the values of the Apple editorial team.
00:50:30
◼
►
team, but by and large, it's an aggregation service that collects
00:50:36
◼
►
articles from different sources. It's not the Apple magazine. You're not reading
00:50:40
◼
►
the Apple Times. You're reading sections in Apple News from other people, from
00:50:45
◼
►
other journalists. So I think it's important for Apple at this point in
00:50:48
◼
►
time to separate having values, having opinions, having ethics as
00:50:55
◼
►
as individuals and as a company as a whole and running the App Store today tab, running
00:51:02
◼
►
Apple News, running these features and these services that showcase content but that do
00:51:09
◼
►
not necessarily need to be political.
00:51:12
◼
►
I think that's probably an unpopular thought that some people would say no, Apple should
00:51:19
◼
►
take a stand, should actually promote all the political thoughts that they have.
00:51:27
◼
►
But I think they can do that elsewhere, not in the news application that people want to
00:51:32
◼
►
use to read the news from the Times or the Post or Fox News or whatever it is.
00:51:37
◼
►
I think as long as it's about the news aggregation service, the news app on everybody's devices,
00:51:44
◼
►
that should be kept neutral.
00:51:46
◼
►
And of course there are services that they can not go to, right?
00:51:53
◼
►
Like there are websites that are out there that are just spewing hate, right?
00:51:58
◼
►
And you know, and just saying just bad things and not even so much like false news, but
00:52:07
◼
►
just bad, like really bad opinions about things and saying horrible stuff.
00:52:12
◼
►
And they can choose to not use those, right?
00:52:14
◼
►
And that's not completely shutting it down, that's like drawing a line around it but still
00:52:18
◼
►
trying to maintain balance.
00:52:20
◼
►
And of course it is worth saying, Apple are not saying that they're going to do this but
00:52:25
◼
►
the wording can be a little bit risky if that's a route they want to go down, if that's what
00:52:33
◼
►
they truly believe, right?
00:52:35
◼
►
And it's like what is trust, how is trust earned, what becomes a trusted source, what
00:52:40
◼
►
views and opinions do they have to have, that kind of thing.
00:52:43
◼
►
Because for example in the app store there are all types of stuff.
00:52:47
◼
►
And they have the lines that they draw, but there are all types of things that you can
00:52:52
◼
►
get that reflect many different views and opinions.
00:52:56
◼
►
But there are things that get rejected because they're considered to draw a line and I think
00:53:00
◼
►
that that is perfectly fine as a way to do things.
00:53:06
◼
►
It's a tricky balance.
00:53:08
◼
►
It's so tricky that it makes me wonder why they're doing it.
00:53:11
◼
►
Yeah, exactly.
00:53:13
◼
►
Like Apple news as a product is a nice to have. It is not a requirement because people can just
00:53:21
◼
►
go to the app store and download news apps. This is one thing that Apple do not need to do.
00:53:27
◼
►
So I'm keen to see why. What it looks like they're doing is continuing to enforce
00:53:35
◼
►
Apple news as a thing rather than newsstand. I feel like that's where we can see
00:53:40
◼
►
the change is happening, right? They are pushing their one platform, their app with stuff in it,
00:53:46
◼
►
as opposed to a container application which has publications in it that you choose.
00:53:50
◼
►
There's an interesting parallel between the App Store's "Today" tab and what Apple is doing with
00:53:59
◼
►
Apple News, in the sense that on the App Store, Apple is free to have their own voice with the
00:54:06
◼
►
stories that they publish in the today section because it's their own
00:54:11
◼
►
controlled environment. Apps that you submit to the App Store, it's Apple's
00:54:16
◼
►
place and they can choose to feature whatever they want and to share whatever
00:54:20
◼
►
message they want. But Apple news, it's about world facts. It's not about the
00:54:27
◼
►
Apple ecosystem. It's about what's happening in the world. It's about the
00:54:31
◼
►
news and Apple does not control that, does not own what's happening in the
00:54:35
◼
►
world. And so it becomes much more trickier for Apple to say we want to have
00:54:40
◼
►
a voice but also we want to run this service because it's not the kind of,
00:54:44
◼
►
even though the App Store is a huge place now, I think two million apps or
00:54:48
◼
►
something, it's still a controlled environment, it's still a marketplace,
00:54:53
◼
►
it's limited. But on Apple news you cannot apply the same approach of
00:54:59
◼
►
we as Apple want to have our own voice and want to push our own thoughts and
00:55:04
◼
►
and ideas, but also we need to provide people
00:55:08
◼
►
with a neutral service that can scale
00:55:10
◼
►
for different types of people.
00:55:13
◼
►
That's incredibly tricky.
00:55:14
◼
►
And maybe that's why it's been so difficult
00:55:18
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for Apple to expand Apple News internationally,
00:55:21
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because you need to essentially reset the culture
00:55:24
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of the team that runs the service for each country.
00:55:27
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And I suppose that that can be extremely costly
00:55:31
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and tricky to scale.
00:55:33
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doesn't surprise me honestly. I'm keen to see if we can ever even really point at
00:55:39
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this as like oh that's what they did with it right yeah yeah because Apple
00:55:44
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Music you can't really point and be like oh that's where Beats Music went yeah
00:55:51
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you know it's just like well I mean the things that Beats Music had and Apple
00:55:56
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Music had the things that overlap are not technically complex things like
00:56:03
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visual that you can see right like the things that they seem to have really
00:56:07
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taken from Beats Music was the editorial curation but it didn't need to buy Beats
00:56:11
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Music for that now I'm sure that there is lots of stuff under the hood that is
00:56:15
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Beats Music but the things that Beats Music did differently you don't see in
00:56:19
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Apple Music and they're something can you correct me if I'm wrong I mean I can't
00:56:23
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think of anything I mean a lot of the even a lot of the Beats Music features
00:56:28
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like the best ones were not carried over to Apple Music at all yeah and I wonder
00:56:33
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if it's going to be something like that where it's like well there is this thing
00:56:37
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which maybe you could say is that team working on it but you'd never really
00:56:40
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know. I wouldn't be surprised if after all it's just about the people that were
00:56:46
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working on this. Engineers and designers that have the expertise to aggregate
00:56:51
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►
articles from different sources. Maybe that's all there is really. We'll wait and see.
00:56:56
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Alright today's show is also brought to you by our friends at Pingdom,
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the company who offer uptime monitoring and web performance management.
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know when the WWDC page changed. Go to Pingdom.com/RelayFM right now for a 14 day free trial with no
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save 30% off your first invoice. Our thanks to Pingdom for their support of this show
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►
and RelayFM.
00:58:27
◼
►
So, because Steven isn't here this week, I thought, why don't we do something completely
00:58:33
◼
►
iOS focused that is, I think, something for people that use iOS all day every day like
00:58:40
◼
►
me and you do.
00:58:41
◼
►
And I've been calling this segment iOS Little Wonders.
00:58:45
◼
►
So some little things that we encounter on a daily basis that makes iOS so wonderful
00:58:52
◼
►
for us to use every day.
00:58:54
◼
►
And also, while some things are multi-platform, cross-platform, there are some little elements
00:59:00
◼
►
to it that make it better on iOS.
00:59:04
◼
►
The one that I want to talk about was the reason I thought of this thing in the first
00:59:09
◼
►
place because I took a screenshot on my iPad the other day and I cropped the screenshot,
00:59:15
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I copied it, I deleted the screenshot and then pasted it into Twitter.
00:59:19
◼
►
And I was like, "I love this UI so much.
00:59:23
◼
►
It is so good.
00:59:26
◼
►
I take screenshots on the Mac when I'm sitting at my Mac and the built-in UI just drops a
00:59:31
◼
►
JPEG onto my desktop.
00:59:32
◼
►
That is never what I want to happen.
00:59:36
◼
►
That is 100% never what I'm looking for.
00:59:40
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►
And services like Droppler exist and they're mostly good but none of these things are as
00:59:45
◼
►
good as the screenshot UI in iOS 11.
00:59:49
◼
►
There are still some places I would like to see it get a little bit better.
00:59:52
◼
►
I would love a way to be able to delete an image with some kind of action that didn't
00:59:57
◼
►
require tapping. So maybe if I swiped it to the other side of the screen or did drag and
01:00:02
◼
►
drop and a little trash can popped up on the screen that I could just drag it over and
01:00:07
◼
►
it disappeared. But just being able to take a screenshot, do whatever I need to, share
01:00:12
◼
►
it however I want and then it just be destroyed is amazing. And then you've got all the markup
01:00:17
◼
►
stuff which I don't use that often but every time I do I'm like I'm so pleased this is
01:00:21
◼
►
all in this one UI. It really is amazing. And then when you get into looking at how
01:00:26
◼
►
different it is on the iPad or drag and drop where you can take a bunch of screenshots
01:00:30
◼
►
and then drag them all into something, it really is just a wonderful advancement that
01:00:37
◼
►
came with iOS 11.
01:00:40
◼
►
It truly is one of the best little features of iOS 11. I'm glad that you picked this one
01:00:46
◼
►
I also use it every day and in fact I love the fact that you can take multiple screenshots
01:00:53
◼
►
and they will be stacked in the same carousel. It's really so well done. I want to go
01:01:00
◼
►
as a little feature that I love as shared notes. So a lot of people probably use this but
01:01:08
◼
►
you can share if you use the Apple Notes app, you can share a note with someone else.
01:01:13
◼
►
And it's not just that the collaboration is great, because it doesn't require any complex setup.
01:01:22
◼
►
You just send a link to someone on iMessage or somewhere else, and they can open the note and start editing the note.
01:01:30
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►
It's also the fact that if you share a note with yourself, so if you make yourself the collaborator of the note,
01:01:38
◼
►
you can then use the link as a launcher on iOS.
01:01:46
◼
►
I do this for a bunch of notes that I access on a regular basis. I share the note with myself
01:01:56
◼
►
and then I create a launcher, like a widget launcher, that opens the note. The only probable
01:02:03
◼
►
downside is that because it's based on the iCloud, on the CloudKit system, when you tap these
01:02:10
◼
►
launchers you get like a small dialog in the middle of the screen that says
01:02:15
◼
►
"retrieving" for like half a second and then the note launches and that's
01:02:20
◼
►
because the you know the system is going to iCloud to say "is this actually a note
01:02:24
◼
►
that I can open?" and then it kicks you off to the Notes app but you know on a
01:02:28
◼
►
you see that for like how less than a second usually and it's so convenient
01:02:33
◼
►
because I have a lot of notes that I share with my girlfriend, with John, with
01:02:37
◼
►
other folks at for Mac stories, but really I have these notes that I share with myself
01:02:43
◼
►
that I find so useful because I can use them. Otherwise there's no way to like, there's
01:02:49
◼
►
no notes URL scheme that you can use to open notes. So this is a good workaround.
01:02:56
◼
►
That is a tuchi tip, man. I'm gonna have to think about all the ways I could use that.
01:03:00
◼
►
Like even with stuff like travel notes, because I will like start a travel note, like my WWC
01:03:07
◼
►
And then it's like buried somewhere and sometimes I just want to be able to get to it from
01:03:12
◼
►
somewhere else right like whether it be something like trip it or something like that to save a link or
01:03:17
◼
►
Sometimes I will attach I will want to
01:03:20
◼
►
Reference a note in a task in Todoist and I'm just like search this in Apple notes
01:03:25
◼
►
This is that I put in the little comment to myself
01:03:28
◼
►
But being able to grab those UI URLs and just launching them from Todoist just by tapping on a button
01:03:35
◼
►
like that would be amazing. That's really great. That's a great tip. My next one was
01:03:41
◼
►
the only shining thing in a otherwise mostly boring WWDC presentation two years ago. Stickers
01:03:52
◼
►
and message effects in messages on iOS. I don't care what anybody says, I use stickers and message
01:04:01
◼
►
effects every single day. I don't think that when any of these message effects were created,
01:04:08
◼
►
they were done with complete seriousness in mind. I would expect that the engineers knew
01:04:13
◼
►
that these things were mostly going to be used ironically and to make fun of certain
01:04:19
◼
►
situations. Because, you know, what else do you need lasers for? Right? Like, you know,
01:04:25
◼
►
I have so much fun sending these. I send them all the time and stickers are just a great
01:04:33
◼
►
way to be expressive. I used Animoji yesterday to show my excitement about WWDC. I felt like
01:04:45
◼
►
a unicorn shaking its head with its mouth open was the only way to fully express my
01:04:50
◼
►
excitement level. I use Bitmoji constantly.
01:04:54
◼
►
You use Bitmoji a lot.
01:04:57
◼
►
I mean this started because it's something that me and Adina share with each other because
01:05:01
◼
►
they are these cute little images that are incredibly expressive and there are just so
01:05:08
◼
►
many, there are bitmoji stickers for every occasion and therefore all of my friends are
01:05:14
◼
►
subject to my Bitmoji now because I think that they're hilarious and they're just sometimes
01:05:19
◼
►
it's some really really good ones. The keyboard sticker messaging, so the sticker app is pretty
01:05:24
◼
►
good. They have a keyboard that I don't use but the sticker messaging app is really good
01:05:28
◼
►
and it has a little search in there so you can search for a term and it just brings up
01:05:31
◼
►
relevant Bitmoji. There are always any new ones, they have ones for special events and
01:05:35
◼
►
stuff. I really like them. Just stickers in general, I have my favourite packs now. Not
01:05:41
◼
►
too many packs jump in these days, mostly because I tend to just use Bitmoji all the
01:05:46
◼
►
But there are still a few that I love and I think that this was a great addition to the messages app and it's done
01:05:52
◼
►
It for me. It's definitely stood the test of time
01:05:54
◼
►
Yeah, I I sure do get a lot of beatmoji from Myke
01:06:00
◼
►
Alright I want to go with the live photo effects. These are
01:06:06
◼
►
Effects that Apple added in iOS 11. I don't think they are super popular, but they're perfect for me
01:06:14
◼
►
Because I have two puppies now, I guess dogs because they're supposedly they are one year old
01:06:21
◼
►
We don't have a precise date because they were abandoned so we don't know the birthday
01:06:25
◼
►
But they are these live photo effects you access them by
01:06:29
◼
►
Swiping up on a live photo in the photo app and you get this
01:06:34
◼
►
Gallery this horizontal carousel at the bottom
01:06:38
◼
►
There are probably four
01:06:41
◼
►
effects. There's loop bounce, long exposure, and I think just a standard live photo one.
01:06:47
◼
►
And I love the loop and the bounce ones because they are perfect for little dogs playing around
01:06:55
◼
►
and doing stuff. So you create these animations that are either looped or that are reversed
01:07:02
◼
►
with the bounce one and they are fantastic because then you can share the animation,
01:07:09
◼
►
You can make a gif out of it and they're so fun and you don't need to install a separate app from the App Store to generate these animations.
01:07:19
◼
►
It's built into the Photos app. As long as you take a live photo, all you need to do is swipe up and choose the effect.
01:07:27
◼
►
They're super fun. They're perfect for dogs, I assume also for kids playing around and doing stuff.
01:07:33
◼
►
or if you're capturing something that is moving in some some animated object in general
01:07:40
◼
►
I think it's probably gonna go well. Also for people jumping into a pool or something
01:07:44
◼
►
you can use the bounce effect to to great extent for that type of live photo. So yeah,
01:07:50
◼
►
they're not super popular but I use them a lot.
01:07:54
◼
►
One thing that I wish those live photo effects did was to work like live photos because sometimes
01:08:02
◼
►
they don't, they just loop as if they're GIFs, you know what I mean? So then when you do the 3D
01:08:08
◼
►
touch on them, it doesn't necessarily always do what I want to do. So I would like to just be able
01:08:14
◼
►
to replace what happens when I 3D touch, you know what I mean? But I do really like those effects,
01:08:22
◼
►
I think they're really good. And the last one that I wanted to mention was share extensions.
01:08:27
◼
►
Share extensions are very nice and my favourite one is the notes one.
01:08:32
◼
►
So like being able to see a link on Twitter or over iMessage or something like that and then
01:08:39
◼
►
just share it with the share extension, add it to a note and the note in the note the link is there
01:08:45
◼
►
with like it's a rich link so it's like images and headlines which are way easier to pass
01:08:49
◼
►
rather than just copying and pasting text links into a document. I find it so much nicer like
01:09:15
◼
►
the show I go in and look at those URLs and add in all the topics that I want to do for
01:09:22
◼
►
Sometimes I'll see a link on Twitter and then I'll just grab my iPhone, open Tweetbot and
01:09:26
◼
►
then add it there because I know it will be way easier for me later on to have the rich
01:09:30
◼
►
link rather than to have just this string of text for like MacStories.net/something/something
01:09:35
◼
►
right because it doesn't mean anything when I'm just looking at it even though your URLs
01:09:40
◼
►
are amazing of course but I much prefer to have the actual headline and any associated
01:09:44
◼
►
imagery just right there. I love the share extensions and that is my favorite one because
01:09:51
◼
►
it is just a way nicer thing way for me to be able to share URLs around. Because on the
01:09:56
◼
►
Mac even though there are share extensions or at least some kind of share UI it's not
01:10:00
◼
►
good really at all so you know what you're gonna do I don't think it's very good so I
01:10:06
◼
►
love I love the way that it's implemented on iOS so I think it's really great. All right
01:10:13
◼
►
Is that it for today?
01:10:15
◼
►
Well then, if you want to get our show notes for this week, go to relay.fm/connector/184.
01:10:22
◼
►
There you will find all the information you need to buy tickets to our WWDC live show,
01:10:27
◼
►
which you definitely should.
01:10:29
◼
►
They're just five dollars and you will be able to enjoy the show with hundreds of other
01:10:35
◼
►
Relay FM listeners.
01:10:37
◼
►
And you'll also be supporting OTCONF, which is a great, great, awesome thing to support.
01:10:42
◼
►
They do awesome work for people in our community.
01:10:46
◼
►
You also find information about our sponsors there,
01:10:48
◼
►
Pingdom, Squarespace, and Linode.
01:10:49
◼
►
We're kind enough to sponsor this week's episode.
01:10:52
◼
►
I want to thank everyone for listening.
01:10:53
◼
►
If you want to find Federico online, he's at maxstories.net.
01:10:56
◼
►
He is @Vittici on Twitter, V-I-T-I-C-C-I.
01:11:00
◼
►
When Steven is not just outside
01:11:02
◼
►
of the McInerney Convention Center in San Jose,
01:11:04
◼
►
he can also be found at five12pixels.net,
01:11:06
◼
►
and he is @ismh on Twitter.
01:11:09
◼
►
And I am @imike, I-M-Y-K-E.
01:11:11
◼
►
Until next time, say goodbye Federico.
01:11:13
◼
►
Arrivederci.