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Connected

179: The Tiny Head Pandemic

 

00:00:00   (upbeat music)

00:00:02   - This is the introduction to this podcast.

00:00:10   This podcast is named "Connected."

00:00:11   It is episode 179.

00:00:14   It is brought to you this week by three sponsors,

00:00:17   Linode, Squarespace, and Casper.

00:00:19   I'm a host of the show.

00:00:21   My name is Stephen Hackett.

00:00:22   I have two co-hosts.

00:00:23   One, whose name is Myke Curley.

00:00:25   How are you, Myke?

00:00:26   - From Relay FM, this is Myke Curley.

00:00:28   - That's not.

00:00:29   That's... it was going really well.

00:00:34   The other co-host is named Federico Vittucci.

00:00:37   This is the worst NPR introduction I've ever heard on a show, I think.

00:00:43   I'm nervous because we have a special guest today.

00:00:45   Myke, since I did the intro so well, do you think you can follow in my footsteps and introduce

00:00:50   our guest with the same level of polish and professionalism that I've already brought

00:00:54   to the table?

00:00:55   Yes.

00:00:56   time that I am honored to introduce the creator, founder and operator of Emojipedia.org, the

00:01:03   wonderful Mr. Jeremy Burch.

00:01:04   It's great to be here on the serial podcast. I can't wait to hear who did it.

00:01:09   Today we are solving the mystery of emoji. Where is it? How did it come from?

00:01:15   Steven is the killer. It's Steven.

00:01:18   Stay tuned for episode 13.

00:01:20   Where we'll give our opinions as to whether emoji actually committed the crime. Steven,

00:01:24   Please follow up, come on, let's do this.

00:01:26   So Myke, you were gone last week, you were celebrating your birthday.

00:01:29   My 41st birthday it turned out to be.

00:01:32   Did you like the good wishes on Twitter, Myke?

00:01:34   Yeah, I found out a lot of people's favorite colors.

00:01:38   Blue and red were very popular in the favorite colors.

00:01:42   Red?

00:01:43   Really?

00:01:44   I figured like blue or green, like blue is kind of the default answer.

00:01:48   I mean we're just going through the RGB scale basically here.

00:01:52   head blue. So, make sense. Keep it simple. There has been a lot of breaking

00:01:57   news, #breakingnews, about this tiny heads phenomenon.

00:02:03   Yeah. Is phenomenon a word or are we going to go with some crisis or pandemic? What have

00:02:09   we got going on? Ooh, pandemic. The tiny head pandemic. That

00:02:12   makes it sound like an actual disease. Well, I mean, something's going on in which

00:02:18   all of these unrelated companies are catching this tiny head problem from each other. It's

00:02:23   everywhere. This is one of those things that once people mention it to you, you can't help

00:02:28   but see it everywhere. And our listeners are seeing it everywhere.

00:02:32   You know, I'm not joking. There's actually a word for when you, when you, like, when

00:02:37   you, when you don't know something, it's a German word and then you don't know something

00:02:42   and then suddenly you know and you see it everywhere.

00:02:45   It's actually called the Beta-Meinhof phenomenon.

00:02:48   Yeah, that's probably, it's not a word, it's more like a concept.

00:02:51   It's a concept.

00:02:52   It's, yeah, you see, like, a friend of yours gets a new car, and then you see the same

00:02:57   car everywhere.

00:02:58   It's called the Beta-Meinhof phenomenon.

00:03:00   So yes, that's what's happening with tiny heads.

00:03:03   And this is something that people were finding old examples of and current examples of, and

00:03:08   we have some for the show notes.

00:03:10   Jon sent in to us Evernote, Evernote doing this with a tiny head, big body, and also

00:03:16   something more interesting, tiny feet going on at Evernote.

00:03:20   This is going two for two here. It's a tiny head and tiny feet.

00:03:24   Hey, Evernote is just trying to stay relevant any way possible.

00:03:27   Oh no!

00:03:28   You want to break it?

00:03:29   No!

00:03:30   Come on!

00:03:31   Have you heard about tiny chat?

00:03:34   And then we have Air Table, which is tiny heads against skinny tiny feet, but they introduce

00:03:42   a lot of really fun colors to it.

00:03:44   The Air Table one is very colorful.

00:03:47   There is also like a sub set of this where like the tiny heads seem to be followed by

00:03:52   simple block colors in most of the times.

00:03:56   Somebody basically somebody created this and now it's just like everywhere and it is everywhere

00:04:01   because we have even more examples.

00:04:03   We do.

00:04:04   We have Procreate as an Instagram, Procreate is being used I guess you could say to create

00:04:12   some of the stuff.

00:04:13   So there's an Instagram link in the show notes with many examples, a whole tiny head army

00:04:18   of people, mostly with dogs just hanging out on Instagram.

00:04:24   So actually pretty good illustrations but the heads are really tiny.

00:04:28   So tiny heads, but normal size earrings, which is interesting, but the head is tiny. So something

00:04:38   that goes on your head must be tiny, but accessories can be normal sized, which I think is an interesting

00:04:43   rule to follow.

00:04:46   Some of these get real tiny in this Instagram post, and then just really, really tiny heads.

00:04:52   Really tiny heads.

00:04:53   Yes.

00:04:54   The wonderful Kate who is great on Twitter as @rhl_ has created a tiny head drawing of the three of us

00:05:03   Which is nice to see. Yeah, I especially appreciate how tiny Steven's head is.

00:05:08   Steven has the tiniest head.

00:05:11   This is a great drawing. I'd like to see your heads get smaller again. Just keep making them smaller.

00:05:17   Keep making them smaller. I mean, this is great, but I want to see them get smaller again.

00:05:21   This is the most amazing piece of fan art the details in this are incredible the little pieces of tape

00:05:28   I have on my microphone stands. Yeah cables. It's all in the correct place

00:05:32   I choose to look at it though is that my head is not tiny, but I'm just super buff all of a sudden

00:05:39   Have you ever watched there, what's the name of the the Ken Shiro anime?

00:05:48   you know with the guy with the

00:05:51   Super tiny head and I should send you a link actually, I don't know if it's called Ken Shiro in Italy

00:05:57   I'm not sure if it's a Ken of the Seven Stars something in America. I'll send you a link

00:06:02   I don't think you're gonna get a lot of help in this group

00:06:05   Unfortunately Federico with the anime. Ken of the Seven Stars? No, no, no, no.

00:06:11   Juffle Jeremy had it. It's like oh, I know all about it the tiny head anime, but no. I'll find it. I'll find it

00:06:18   So connected listeners if you find more examples of tiny heads, you know where to send them we we must know

00:06:25   About what is happening in the tiny head world?

00:06:28   Keep us keep us updated

00:06:31   we have some important follow out as well and this this was not just a

00:06:37   Way to get our special guests to join us. Although I think I think it helped but

00:06:43   Jeremy you host a podcast called emoji wrap which I just absolutely love and you had

00:06:49   The latest episode I believe is about some of the original story

00:06:54   Or some of the story about the original emoji at Apple. Can you tell us a little bit about that episode?

00:06:59   Yeah, so the first thing that's fun about by the way hosting an emoji podcast is seeing the tweets when people find it and they sort

00:07:07   of I don't know that 50%

00:07:10   amazed and they're like how on earth is there a podcast about emoji every month and then the other half sort of dismayed with the

00:07:16   World that there's a podcast about emoji every month. I get this with I can't believe there's a podcast about pens

00:07:22   Yes, I suspect it's a really similar split, right?

00:07:25   Yeah, very very simple like people like how can you talk about like trust me?

00:07:30   Every everything every industry has news, right?

00:07:34   It's just it's a thing and you think oh, well, maybe you're scraping the bottom of the barrel

00:07:40   But there's more, there's things that you wouldn't discuss that you just don't have time for, right?

00:07:43   There's more than you can do.

00:07:45   So, and the same thing happens on Emoji Wrap, that every month, you know,

00:07:49   what you came on, Myke, last month, and we had about 10 different things to get to,

00:07:53   and we were just trying to burn through them.

00:07:55   But this month, we had Angela Guzman, who was one of the original Apple emoji designers,

00:08:01   which is pretty cool, because as everybody knows, you don't often get people from Apple on the record.

00:08:07   about a whole bunch, so you have to wait a lot of years until they've kind of moved on

00:08:10   a little till they open up and they want to chat. So that was actually really cool that

00:08:14   she was an intern at the time.

00:08:17   That's wild. I listened to it today. I couldn't believe that the person who was responsible

00:08:23   for designing so much of the original emoji set was an intern. Considering how important

00:08:29   emoji is today, I can't imagine Apple just grabbing an intern and being like, "You do

00:08:36   this."

00:08:37   Funny that I guess I'd heard sort of that over the years and that different interns and I'd heard bits and pieces about

00:08:43   Different people who did different parts of it, but in particular the very first core set. Yeah, it was basically an intern and

00:08:50   Her mentor someone that was already a full-time employee at Apple and the two of them

00:08:55   Basically got down to business and made just about all the emojis

00:08:59   So it was fun to have her on she kind of talked about some of the ones that she made personally

00:09:03   She she was saying she's also gonna post online that she wrote about it how she sort of started with some of the easy ones

00:09:08   and then

00:09:10   moved through the list and

00:09:12   She didn't want to I I didn't want to pick on specific instances and all that people give a hard time to the two camels

00:09:19   That they've got the the good camel and the bad camel

00:09:22   I didn't want to make her tell me whether she was the good camel or the bad camel, but

00:09:26   But nonetheless, yeah, it is pretty fun

00:09:29   when you look at those original sets there is sort of a bit of divergence even though she did say they really tried hard then

00:09:34   to kind of

00:09:35   Match each other's style and look back and forth at what each other were doing just to make sure that the final set at least looked

00:09:40   mostly like one one product

00:09:42   And I guess what's interesting is whilst I assume that the actual work that Angela did probably doesn't exist anymore as Apple's like

00:09:51   increased the

00:09:53   the quality of the emoji over time

00:09:56   She still defined the look and the look hasn't changed very much in a lot of the emoji

00:10:01   Right, like they look the same but they probably been reproduced. So I guess she's she's got a bit of a legacy

00:10:07   Yeah, some of that stuff is just never gonna change

00:10:09   Right, like that party popper is a party hopper and so many people said that was one that she did and you know

00:10:15   Even the new one today. It's 3d rendered and the confetti is done in 3d

00:10:19   But it still looks about the same and when you think of it in your head is sort of what's a party like image

00:10:25   That one there. I don't know how many years from now. We'll still be thinking of that particular image, but right now

00:10:29   Yeah, she had a huge part to play and it was yeah, it was really cool getting to have her on the show

00:10:34   Which is wonderful because it looks like no party popper I've ever seen but I only think of it as the party pop, right?

00:10:40   You said on the show it looks like a party hat. Yeah with some streamers coming out of it, but that's that's party man

00:10:47   That's what it's all about. Tada. That's suddenly yeah

00:10:50   We're using this new thing that we wouldn't have otherwise used but because it looks like that in the emoji

00:10:54   were like, oh, that's fine. That's what a party popper is.

00:10:56   So this is the light side of emoji.

00:10:58   This is the good side.

00:11:00   But there is a dark side of emoji.

00:11:02   There is especially right now in the Apple community.

00:11:05   And that's what we have Jeremy to talk to us about today,

00:11:08   about some of the some of the darker side of emoji.

00:11:11   And we're going to get to that in just a moment.

00:11:13   But first, let me thank our first sponsor for this week's show,

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00:12:40   Alright Mr. Burge we've had you here today because nobody knows emoji like you and you

00:12:46   know a lot of the legalities around emoji and these are conversations that me and you

00:12:50   have had many times, so you are perfectly suited to talk about what is going on right

00:12:55   now with Apple App Review.

00:12:57   So what is the story here?

00:12:59   It seemed like there was a bit of a hubbub going on over the last couple of days on Twitter

00:13:04   about app rejections or something like that.

00:13:08   What I've been hearing over the last six months or so is every now and then someone will come

00:13:14   along and go, "Hey look, my app got rejected because I put an emoji in it," or "I put a

00:13:17   bunch of emojis in it."

00:13:19   And these things have sort of come and gone and, you know, it's always hard when someone

00:13:22   jumps on Twitter and just makes an announcement to say, "My app got rejected because of this,"

00:13:27   because you don't really know, is it just that.

00:13:30   App review rules have changed, right?

00:13:33   And it takes a bit of time to like kind of really get down to the business and figure

00:13:37   out, was it that or is this person overblowing the situation or whatnot?

00:13:42   So it was only last week a developer called Sam Eckert.

00:13:46   Sorry, Sam, if I've got your name pronounced slightly incorrectly there, but he documented

00:13:54   the rejection notices he got for an app called BitTracker, and effectively it was quite clear

00:14:00   this time.

00:14:01   For the first time it sort of had rejection wording from Apple saying, "Look, you've

00:14:04   used emojis in these parts of your app, specifically here, here, and here."

00:14:09   And he said he spoke to Apple and they confirmed, "Yes, you can't use emojis in your app

00:14:13   whatsoever unless a user types it in or you're rejected.

00:14:17   And this sort of set a chain in motion of people going, "What is going on?

00:14:20   How can we not use emojis in apps?"

00:14:22   - Isn't emoji just a font?

00:14:24   How is this a problem?

00:14:25   - I mean, yes.

00:14:26   So Apple has what the font is called Apple Color Emoji, and it's on every system.

00:14:32   And I guess that is what's tricky is most developers, not all, some of them are sort

00:14:35   of rendering a copy of Apple's emoji and sticking it around the app, but most of them are just

00:14:39   saying, "Hey, display the pooh here.

00:14:42   the light bulb emoji here and it pulls it out of Apple's own font. So I guess that's

00:14:47   what some of the confusion is, is that you'd think, well I'm just calling a font on the

00:14:52   system like any other. But the tricky thing being, of course, that is Apple's color

00:14:57   emoji font just a font? It doesn't really fall into the traditional definition of sort

00:15:01   of a black and white glyph. So I guess the line is that Apple in the past hasn't enforced

00:15:08   this too much. So we're really going to look at is this treated like a font for copyright

00:15:14   and other reasons or is it treated like images that Apple owns like Apple logo or the iPhone

00:15:19   you know traditionally you see people get apps rejected if they have icons that look

00:15:23   too much like an iPhone in it. So is this just a font or is it images and it's sort

00:15:28   of a bit of both and that's I think why there's so much confusion.

00:15:31   So like you mentioned about owning. Like does Apple own, what does Apple own? It's text

00:15:37   Right? Like how do they own it?

00:15:39   Yeah, I mean, so Apple owns the rendering. They own the images that they put in their emoji font.

00:15:44   So effectively, so if I'm a developer and I put in a bunch of

00:15:49   effectively text where I say display this emoji, this emoji, this emoji, the way it pops out is Apple's

00:15:55   copyrighted images. And of course that means that Apple has some say over what happens there.

00:16:01   It's tricky though because that's never been an issue. People, you know,

00:16:05   if you type a font, if you use a system font in your app, that's fine because you're just typing the text

00:16:10   and people feel like they're doing the same thing.

00:16:12   But let's say you take an app and you make the logo an emoji, or you make the entire brand of the app

00:16:18   really based around Apple's emoji images. Apple owns those images, so

00:16:22   they do have some leg to stand on. It's just a matter of figuring out

00:16:27   are they going too far with this? Are they, when they don't let you put a single emoji in some text,

00:16:31   is that too much because that's sort of what emojis are for, or is it just well within

00:16:36   their rights to say, "Look, hey, we earn the copyright on these, we don't want you to use

00:16:40   them anymore, too bad, our app store, our rules." And that seems to be sort of what's

00:16:44   happening right now.

00:16:46   Let's assume for a moment that like this, I mean, because we're going to get, you've

00:16:49   spoken to a lot of developers and we're going to get into some of the specifics of what

00:16:52   people are being rejected for. But let's just imagine for a moment that this is a new rule

00:16:58   and that basically if it's not being typed in a text field,

00:17:02   Apple will not allow people to use emoji, right?

00:17:05   Like, let's just assume that for a moment.

00:17:07   Why would they do this and why would they do this now?

00:17:11   - So, yeah, as you say,

00:17:12   let's say if this is genuinely the rule.

00:17:14   If a user doesn't type it, you can't put it in your app.

00:17:17   And I think the main reason Apple would want to do it

00:17:20   is they want to bring back some control

00:17:22   of their own emoji set.

00:17:23   They've got an emoji now,

00:17:24   which a lot of their iPhone X ads are using not just an emoji but their

00:17:30   existing emojis all over the ad. You know, their sort of Apple's public marketing

00:17:34   and public presence in a way is quite heavily tied to their emojis and just

00:17:38   like they wouldn't let you use, you know, their own imagery in your own ads for

00:17:43   your company, they own those emoji images. So I think from Apple's

00:17:47   perspective their concern would be that our company's being building their entire

00:17:52   the brand of their app around Apple's emojis specifically, and if so, would the common

00:17:58   person think, "Oh, this is an app from Apple," or would they think, "This must be endorsed

00:18:02   by Apple in some way because it's got so much of Apple's imagery in it." So I think that's

00:18:06   where it's really coming down. Apple appears to be wanting to bring back some control that

00:18:12   they haven't really done in the past. They've sort of let it go, they've let people do whatever

00:18:16   they like, and I think now someone at Apple, either for legal reasons or just for branding

00:18:22   and marketing has said, you know what, we want to have a bit more control over how people use

00:18:27   our specific emoji images. Now I know that in the past you've reported on this a bunch of times

00:18:32   about apps like WhatsApp and Telegram using Apple's emoji set, which they've probably

00:18:39   scraped of somehow on Android, right? Do you think this could be a factor here?

00:18:44   This is what that part's way easier. You know, to me, I think those are outside of Apple's

00:18:51   control as such, they don't own the App Store on Android of course, but I definitely

00:18:55   have never understood why that's been allowed to stand for major companies like Facebook

00:18:59   who owns WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, even Slack, I mean I love Slack, sort of other

00:19:05   than its memory and all the things, but the fact that they would literally scrape Apple's

00:19:11   images and then embed them in their apps, particularly on Android and Windows, because

00:19:16   they'd go "oh well users love Apple's ones, why don't we just put them over here?"

00:19:20   So I'm surprised it took Apple that long and I suspect these all might be part of a

00:19:25   similar, they might have had a similar origin.

00:19:27   I don't know whether it was a meeting or a lawyer or marketing.

00:19:31   Someone I think somewhere has said in the last little while, "Hey, we should pay a

00:19:35   bit more attention to how our emojis are being used."

00:19:38   And at least I think it's fully a great idea.

00:19:41   I think it's a great idea that they are going after at least Android apps embedding

00:19:45   their own emojis in them.

00:19:47   I'm just a little bit iffier on exactly where the line is on iOS.

00:19:51   Yeah, there was news kind of in this timeframe too

00:19:55   from Slack. Slack has kind of famously been behind

00:19:59   adding emoji. I think they didn't even have the 2016 class

00:20:03   in there. And I believe they were using Apple's image set

00:20:07   everywhere. They've got a blog post out and this update is rolling out now where

00:20:11   you will see all of Apple's emoji

00:20:15   in Slack if you're on a Mac or on an iOS device.

00:20:18   And then if you are elsewhere, you will see,

00:20:21   I believe they're using Google's emoji font

00:20:24   for all non-Apple users.

00:20:26   So it seems like maybe they were aware of this

00:20:29   or wanted to get around it.

00:20:31   And the benefit to Slack users is you can use

00:20:34   a bunch of new emoji that you didn't have access to before.

00:20:37   - You know what?

00:20:38   I do think that Apple,

00:20:41   it feels like the timing is quite coincidental, right?

00:20:44   was last year that WhatsApp for years had been using Apple's emoji images.

00:20:48   They switched last year to a set that looks a lot like Apple's, but it's not.

00:20:51   And then this week, Slack stopped using Apple's ones.

00:20:55   All these rejections are mounting up on the iOS app store.

00:20:58   It does feel like Apple might have changed position on this.

00:21:02   And Slack in particular.

00:21:04   Yeah, I mean, they did used to offer you the choice.

00:21:06   You could pick any of them. You could pick Google emoji.

00:21:08   You could pick Twitter. You could pick Apple's.

00:21:10   But the difference is Twitter and Google have open source licenses

00:21:13   on their emoji sets, and Apple doesn't.

00:21:15   Apples are copyrighted, and I would absolutely not be surprised if someone had tapped them

00:21:20   on the shoulder and said, "Hey Slack, it'd be awful nice if you could stop using our

00:21:24   images on other platforms."

00:21:27   My only question is, is this really necessary?

00:21:31   Does the biggest corporation in the world really need to go after people using emoji

00:21:37   in their apps?

00:21:38   I honestly cannot... maybe it's just me, but I have never heard of anybody being confused

00:21:44   by an application that features an emoji as a UI element and being confused that that

00:21:51   app has been made by Apple.

00:21:54   It just seems petty to me that, because they own it and because of copyright reasons, which

00:22:00   I understand, but my question is, I understand whether if it's copyright, if it's a legal

00:22:05   reason, but do you really have to?

00:22:08   What's the benefit to the company, to the bottom line of Apple, to have this kind of

00:22:13   control over emoji?

00:22:15   Just seems like pettiness and going after developers who use them, just not even out

00:22:20   of spite, but just because you can.

00:22:23   But I wonder if you really have to.

00:22:26   And I think that's a question that a bunch of people are asking.

00:22:29   Do you really have to go after people using emoji in apps?

00:22:32   Yeah.

00:22:33   I mean, when I look at the examples, I would agree with some of them.

00:22:36   In particular, some that just sort of use them within text.

00:22:39   I think it's fine when you've got a fun sentence that says, "Hey, here's some new features,

00:22:43   party popper."

00:22:44   I think that's totally fine.

00:22:46   The UI stuff, I'm also pretty, you know, I get where Apple is coming from, but you're

00:22:51   right.

00:22:52   When it's sort of a subtle UI bit of decoration, it's fine.

00:22:54   I think what might have happened is that they wanted to get rid of the most excessive examples

00:23:01   of apps that might entirely be using Apple emoji as game icons in particular. If you're

00:23:07   sort of gaming characters or they're thinking if you're making apps hypothetically that

00:23:13   look too much like an emoji, which Apple has a history of doing, they don't want apps that

00:23:16   are too similar to their own apps, which can be a fine line. So I think that they've tried

00:23:22   to get the worst offenders and they've actually ended up getting everybody. And at least just

00:23:28   before we've gone to where here I have actually heard from some people that maybe some things

00:23:33   are changing. I know this is sort of, I can't go into details right now and I actually don't

00:23:37   know where this is going to go. I have no firm information whether Apple's decided to

00:23:43   backflip on this or whether they're reconsidering or not. I'm just hearing murmurings that maybe,

00:23:48   just maybe, something could change. So I'm going to have to keep an eye on this because

00:23:52   I don't know, did some app, was it just a few stray app reviewers that got a bit wild

00:23:56   with a well-intentioned guideline or was this something more meaningful and I think we're

00:24:03   gonna find out hopefully in the coming weeks if we see all the apps not use emojis or whether

00:24:07   we see actually this seems to be sticking.

00:24:12   So what have you seen actually been rejected?

00:24:15   Because if I'm right you've had quite a few people reach out to you to tell you about

00:24:20   rejections that they've had.

00:24:21   Like, was it a lot of companies that are developers that were having these problems?

00:24:27   And what were the kind of the standard issues that were occurring?

00:24:30   Yes, it seemed to be the ones that I saw were all smaller developers.

00:24:34   And to be honest, they went through the whole spectrum.

00:24:38   They went from things that I would consider maybe a bit egregious, as I said before,

00:24:42   like using having games where every character is an emoji or the entire interface is made up of emojis

00:24:49   right through to ones that just said, "Yeah, we've got new features," or one of them

00:24:53   seemed a bit ridiculous. This bit tracker had, on the Apple Watch, it had just a little

00:24:58   that little chart decreasing emoji of the stocks going down, and it just had a tiny

00:25:03   UI element where it said, "Oh, stocks are down 2%," little downward pointing emoji,

00:25:08   and that was still cited as a problem. So it seemed to be the entire spectrum. As long

00:25:14   as there were small developers, it seemed like there had been at least one example of

00:25:18   Apple getting rid of everything from splash screens with emojis right through to little

00:25:21   tiny bits of text. And on the other hand I did see a few that got through recently as

00:25:26   well so it's definitely, it's definitely inconsistent right now. I had a developer

00:25:30   today who just said "oh yeah my app just got reviewed today with all these emojis all

00:25:34   over the UI". So it's, I don't know, it's not being consistent in those clear examples

00:25:39   where the same thing is being allowed in one spot and not in another, which is hard to

00:25:43   tell who's wrong. Was the reviewer that let it through in the wrong or was the reviewer

00:25:47   that rejected the other ones in the wrong.

00:25:51   It seems like it may have at least been more than one reviewer, right? With the amount

00:25:55   of apps that have gone through this issue. I mean, there is a long history of this type

00:26:00   of stuff happening, where there will be a certain thing that becomes a bugbear in App

00:26:05   Review for like a week or two, and then it's all taken care of. But this is the first time

00:26:10   I think that emoji has been caught up in this. And it's an interesting discussion, because

00:26:15   I understand and agree with what you're saying Federico, like who is it harming really. I

00:26:23   do understand a little bit from Apple's perspective that there are maybe too many companies that

00:26:30   are aligning their brand to something that Apple owns, which is their emoji set. And

00:26:39   I think it's tricky, right? I mean we said this before, like we were complaining about

00:26:44   Slack, right? They have so much of their brand tied up in emoji but it took them so long

00:26:52   to get their emoji update out. But they're also a good example. Apple created this emoji

00:26:58   set and then Slack used it everywhere because it matched with their marketing, because their

00:27:03   marketing was using Apple's emoji. And I think it's tricky, right? They are still images

00:27:09   that Apple own and if they do want to do something like an emoji, they don't want those emoji styles

00:27:16   to be used on another platform because someone else is going to come up with their version of

00:27:22   an emoji. That feels like a given at this point that some other developer or some other OS is

00:27:30   going to come up with their version of an emoji. Some Android firm will have a version soon and I

00:27:35   And I guess that Apple wants to try and protect their styles in all of this would be my thinking.

00:27:41   And it's not just because of Animoji, but just in general.

00:27:44   Like, Apple makes a change to Emoji, to the way their emoji looks, and every other vendor

00:27:49   follows.

00:27:50   And I guess maybe they're getting a little bit peeved about that?

00:27:53   I don't know.

00:27:54   But I don't know if it's worth rejecting people, but it might be worth coming up with some

00:27:59   new guidelines that state when and where emoji can be used.

00:28:03   I think if you are using it in text, you are fine.

00:28:07   If you are using it as some kind of graphic in your application where no text is used,

00:28:14   maybe that needs to be looked at a little bit more clearly.

00:28:18   They're not just little pictures that you can put all over the place.

00:28:22   That's not what they're for and it's not what Apple created them for.

00:28:26   So I guess it's worth just Apple coming up with something.

00:28:31   If they want to actually start rejecting people, as always, they need to actually come up with

00:28:35   some kind of clear guidance that they give to the world.

00:28:38   But I wouldn't be surprised to see them somehow try and strengthen their rules around this.

00:28:44   I mean, arguably though, if you're a developer and you're using a Mac, you can type an emoji

00:28:51   with a keyboard.

00:28:52   So effectively you'll be telling people you cannot type an emoji with a keyboard in Xcode.

00:28:57   So you're basically, I don't want to say that you're banning text, but it gets messy when

00:29:06   you think about it.

00:29:07   Right, but there are people that use them not as text, though, right?

00:29:09   So if you're...

00:29:10   Yes, but you type them as text with a default control on the Mac.

00:29:14   You also can use Command-C to copy an image from anywhere and use it, right?

00:29:18   You don't say that by saying that you can't use this copyright image, you're not banning

00:29:23   the use of copy and paste, right?

00:29:26   I get that they are developed, that they are shown via text, but everybody knows it's generating

00:29:33   an image.

00:29:34   And if you're using, let's say you're using it on some kind of promotional artwork, you

00:29:39   may have typed the text in into Photoshop, but you know what you're doing at that point.

00:29:43   You're not treating it like a text character.

00:29:45   You're treating it as an image, like a sticker, right?

00:29:48   That's what you're treating it as in that point.

00:29:51   I don't think that it needs to be taken away when someone uses emoji and copying their

00:29:56   application. I think that's too far.

00:29:58   I just have a personally bad feeling about the idea of artwork that can be reproduced

00:30:08   by anybody, because it's a keyboard feature, but still subject to copyright. That really

00:30:15   does not work well with the way that I think about copyright and owning things. Because

00:30:21   Because yes, it is art by Apple, designed by Apple and owned by Apple, but you're limiting

00:30:26   the usage.

00:30:27   Because it's not like Apple, you know, they made the Mona Lisa and the Mona Lisa is in

00:30:32   the Louvre in France, and if you want to see the Mona Lisa, you need to go there.

00:30:37   This is like a set of images or fonts or colors, whatever you want, and anybody can use them.

00:30:42   And now you're regulating the usage of something that is in the hands of everybody.

00:30:47   And I really don't...

00:30:48   Like it doesn't leave me with a good feeling.

00:30:50   I don't like the idea.

00:30:52   I don't like the idea.

00:30:54   And it just seems in most cases, it seems just petty to me.

00:30:57   Yeah, I can totally see it because at this point it's too light

00:31:02   because emoji has become part of our language.

00:31:05   Like right now they left it too long if they wanted to actually try

00:31:09   and pull some of this in.

00:31:10   Now, I totally understand them

00:31:13   put like raining in some areas, right?

00:31:16   like not allowing WhatsApp to use Apple's emoji on Android, right? Because it's not needed, right?

00:31:23   There is already Android emoji. And the example that you were using, Jeremy, about like creating

00:31:27   a video game using emoji, right? It's like it's not, it's, that's not what it's for, right? But

00:31:34   I think anywhere that text is used, anywhere that text is seen, it should be okay. But there are edge

00:31:40   cases that maybe they should be protecting against. Yeah, I would agree with that. I feel like most

00:31:45   Most people agree it shouldn't be used on other platforms, because that's not even text.

00:31:49   Once it's on Android, it's just an image by then.

00:31:51   If you just embedded the emoji, the Unicode character, it would show with the Android

00:31:55   image.

00:31:56   So I think we all agree that it would be weird for them to be cool with it being on Android,

00:32:02   but it's just when we're talking about iOS specifically, yeah, I would tend to fall down

00:32:07   the line.

00:32:08   If it's sort of within text, if it's conversational, if it's there as part of your app and it's

00:32:13   sort of flowing around text, totally fine. Don't make it the whole point of your app

00:32:17   to use emoji, Apple's emoji specifically as your brand. And I would say, Federico as

00:32:22   well, that if you think about it, that Apple's logo is one of the characters on iOS. You

00:32:27   can type it and they wouldn't be cool with that if you opened up your app and if you

00:32:32   just type the Apple logo everywhere all over your app because it's included in Apple

00:32:35   fonts on iOS, I'm pretty sure they'd say, "Hey, can you not put our logo everywhere

00:32:41   in your app?"

00:32:42   That's a good point.

00:32:43   But yeah, but overall I think that's where we're sitting there.

00:32:46   It seems to – looking at some of these examples, I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't

00:32:50   seen the proof from the developers that there are some incredibly minor offenses here where

00:32:55   a soul emoji is used next to text and they've been rejected for it.

00:33:00   And those ones I think have gone too far.

00:33:03   And really it's just – Apple should, as you say, Myke, put some guidelines out there,

00:33:08   have a couple of examples.

00:33:09   This is too far.

00:33:10   This is fine.

00:33:11   and then we'll then would only be debating the gray area whereas right now we're potentially

00:33:15   talking about any emoji use that isn't done by a user and that just seems over the top.

00:33:20   Yeah, I often when I look at these things like I apply the working in a large office

00:33:27   problem to this. Like the Apple app review team must be a lot of people for them to be

00:33:34   able to cope with what they cope with. I'm assuming it's many hundreds of people that

00:33:38   work somewhere and it seems like with a lot of this stuff that somebody gets told or everybody

00:33:43   gets told we're focusing on this if you see this you got to stop it and what happens is people

00:33:48   overreact so like somewhere inside of apple app review i believe that people were being told to

00:33:55   reject apps that are using excessive emoji in marketing materials or something like that

00:34:00   and then people were seeing one emoji used in a line of text somewhere and they're like rejecting

00:34:08   because they're not clearly outlining the rules or someone is overreacting or someone didn't fully

00:34:14   understand the new policy change inside of Apple and then we end up with these stories and then

00:34:19   they have to like codify it and then it sorts itself out and that's what I assumed going to

00:34:23   happen. There will be some kind of more standardized rule around the way it's used but I expect that a

00:34:30   lot of the apps that have been rejected so far will probably get taken care of. Is that where you

00:34:34   think this is going, Jeremy? What do you think is going to be the result of all of this?

00:34:38   That's my gut. I feel like in the past week, this is sort of getting a bit of momentum.

00:34:42   It is, you know, nobody wants this in iOS. App developers don't want restrictions,

00:34:48   users don't want restrictions. This is just something that Apple wants to do

00:34:52   for their own copyright and their own IP and their own branding. And I think they maybe didn't realize

00:35:00   how annoyed it would make people, and yeah, I feel like a common ground will be made,

00:35:04   but I don't think this was entirely accidental. Maybe Apple just didn't realise the backlash,

00:35:10   because a number of developers I've spoken to have been on the phone with App Store Review,

00:35:14   and that's normally a different tier already. By the time you speak to someone, it's not just

00:35:18   someone working a few hours a week, you know, clicking buttons there. So I feel like there

00:35:23   is or was a very specific policy that was too restrictive and that maybe now some higher

00:35:32   ups are starting to see some consternation and that hopefully, hopefully Sane Ahead will

00:35:37   prevail and we'll all agree that whatever Apple comes out with in the end is hopefully

00:35:42   something quite reasonable. But I guess we're just going to have to wait and see.

00:35:47   Jeremy Virge, thank you so much for joining us. Where can people find out about all of

00:35:51   the work that you do in creating emoji?

00:35:53   Ah, you snuck it in there.

00:35:57   I did not create emoji.

00:36:00   You created your own emoji set though.

00:36:02   There is an Emojipedia emoji set, so you did create that.

00:36:04   True, and stay tuned very soon.

00:36:06   Emoji whenever the new emoji updates for 2018 are out.

00:36:10   We'll have our new, we do designs also in Apple's style.

00:36:14   I hope we're on their good side.

00:36:15   We do them to sort of look like what we think the emojis will look like when Apple does

00:36:19   them.

00:36:20   But your imagination is being copyrighted Jeremy.

00:36:24   But this is the problem though right?

00:36:28   Like that is the problem.

00:36:29   Like Apple's emoji design has become the way people think that emoji should be drawn.

00:36:36   And I guess this is why if they were ever going to fight anything that's probably why.

00:36:40   Yeah I mean yeah I really just think they want to bring back some control.

00:36:43   They know emoji is big business.

00:36:45   They don't want to get left out of the game if somehow it gets used so wildly all over

00:36:49   the place that everyone just assumes they're public domain, which I feel like a lot of

00:36:53   people actually already do think of Apple's emoji in that way.

00:36:56   So no, you can jump on Emojipedia.org to check out all the emojis, or I'm just @JeremyBirge

00:37:02   on the tweets.

00:37:03   Thank you very much Jeremy.

00:37:05   This week's episode of Connected is brought to you by Squarespace.

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00:38:24   make your next move, make your next website. Let's take it back. Let's take it down a notch,

00:38:28   right? No more emoji. No more speaking about those little pictures. Let's get to the serious

00:38:34   business.

00:38:35   No more fun. No more fun. If you read some of these reviews. Yeah.

00:38:37   So Stephen, what is the consensus? I think the TLDR here is that the HomePod sounds great,

00:38:47   and Apple put a lot of work into the audio quality and fidelity of this thing. They worked on it for

00:38:53   a long time, they built special labs that look like spaceships, but it's sort of a bummer that

00:38:59   it's locked to Apple Music. It's sort of a bummer that Airplay 2 hasn't shipped yet,

00:39:04   And it's a bummer that Siri isn't very good sometimes.

00:39:07   And so it seems like it's an amazing sounding speaker,

00:39:10   but sort of the smart side of it maybe doesn't hold up to its competition.

00:39:15   Which isn't, it's not super surprising to me.

00:39:18   It was just, we got shocked by those reviews.

00:39:20   It's basically everything we thought it would be.

00:39:23   And I think John Gruber had a good line in his article about it that

00:39:27   it's basically Apple said it would be nothing more.

00:39:30   And I think we were all under the impression that Siri on the HomePod would have some secret

00:39:38   trick, you know, especially until a few months ago.

00:39:41   We were certain that it would do multiple users or multiple voice recognition, multiple

00:39:48   timers, and instead everything is just single user, single voice, single timer.

00:39:54   And nothing more than that.

00:39:56   And we don't even know based on these reviews, because at least to my knowledge, nobody has

00:40:02   put the SiriKit stuff through their paces, you know, with the third-party apps running

00:40:08   on the iPhone.

00:40:09   We don't even know how well it works.

00:40:12   Like if I have things or Todoist on my iPhone and I want to collab to the HomePod to create

00:40:18   tasks.

00:40:19   In theory, that should be possible, because the Apple developer website says it is.

00:40:23   But these reviews don't go into detail.

00:40:25   So we don't know if it works, how well it works, how fast it is or it's not.

00:40:30   And I don't want to say that we are...

00:40:33   I mean, I guess we are disappointed by the fact that Siri is so much behind, but I think,

00:40:38   especially over the past month, I was prepared for this possibility that there was no secret

00:40:46   trick coming, that it was all there is on the Apple website.

00:40:50   No AirPlay, no fancy multiple user stuff.

00:40:53   speaker that does Apple music sounds great but Siri is even more limited than on the iPhone.

00:41:00   Yeah I saw in Joanna Stern's video review she attempted to call an Uber and it's just like

00:41:07   I can't do that. So there is SiriKit stuff there but as we've known right it's not all there

00:41:14   and you know there's a funny thing about like I know what you're saying about like nobody really

00:41:18   tested it. I think that is indicative of SiriKit, but just no one really bothered.

00:41:24   Yes, it says something. The fact that we haven't seen that, like all these reviews,

00:41:31   I haven't seen a single, like even a box on the side saying, by the way, we tested with,

00:41:37   you know, Apple, say if you go on developer.apple.com/SiriKit, I think you will see a mention

00:41:42   that the list and notes domains are supported on the HomePod,

00:41:47   so you can add stuff to your note-taking application

00:41:51   or tax manager using the HomePod as a bridge

00:41:54   between the app running on the iPhone and your voice.

00:41:58   -So is it just those two?

00:41:59   -I think it's just -- I'm pretty sure it's --

00:42:01   -I mean, if that's the case, that's why no one's showing you,

00:42:04   because it's pointless, basically.

00:42:06   It's so little, it's not even worth really getting into, right?

00:42:10   Saving, reminding, using alternatives to reminders is pretty useful, I think. But I agree that

00:42:17   the whole syntax involved with sending commands to third-party apps, and even the fact that

00:42:24   sometimes Siri, as we talked about before, cannot understand some app names like Todoist

00:42:31   is a problem. So why even bother? I guess you're right, yeah.

00:42:37   You know what I mean? It's like, that's not really even a very good...

00:42:43   I mean, what are you going to do? Like in your comparison between this and the Amazon Echo

00:42:48   when you're talking about the fact that the Echo has loads more skills.

00:42:51   You go, "Well, they have loads of skills. You can add your shopping company, you can play games of it,

00:42:57   you can add all of your HomeKit devices just by adding a skill."

00:43:00   Oh, but also Apple lets you add reminders.

00:43:02   So the domains are messaging, lists, and notes.

00:43:07   So in theory you could say, I know right?

00:43:10   In theory you could say, send a WhatsApp to somebody,

00:43:13   or add a reminder to a task manager, or save a note.

00:43:18   Three examples of these on iOS, on iOS 11 would be, I guess, WhatsApp,

00:43:23   lists things, or Todoist, or OmniFocus.

00:43:30   Notes, I don't know. Devontink, I guess. I'm not surprised that, you know, the Wall

00:43:35   Street Journal didn't test Devontink for the HomePod.

00:43:40   The thing is, you're the only person to bother testing this, because you're literally

00:43:46   the only person that cares.

00:43:47   I'll give them a pass on the failed Devontink test. I will make sure to try it when I get

00:43:55   it.

00:43:56   Guys, can I just take a very quick pause from the HomePod conversation? Because I have

00:44:00   literally some breaking news for you. So I am hearing from our previous guest, Mr. Jeremy

00:44:07   Burge, that Sam Eckert, developer of BitTracker, has had his app retroactively approved. So

00:44:14   that is happening right now as the show is going on. So we don't know what it means yet,

00:44:19   but it looks like something's happening. The emojis of the version with the emojis in has

00:44:24   gone through app review now. They have, Apple's proactively approved it retroactively, right?

00:44:30   They have gone out and sent another thing to him and said, "Go for it."

00:44:33   So who knows what's going on?

00:44:36   It's I think only more proof of our conversation in that these things, they have to be, and

00:44:41   I don't know how Apple is still having this problem, that they are not setting these rules

00:44:46   clearly for anyone or talking about them upfront before they try and enforce them.

00:44:50   And every single time there is a real change, we end up having this conversation.

00:44:55   It's wild to me that this is still going on.

00:44:57   So that is our breaking news.

00:44:58   So we can now return to our regularly scheduled programming.

00:45:01   So yeah, we were talking about dev and think.

00:45:04   Please, let's go back to talking about dev and think.

00:45:07   Good.

00:45:09   No, I mean, you're right.

00:45:10   The fact that most people didn't bother-- in fact,

00:45:14   nobody tried SiriKit for third-party apps--

00:45:19   is indicative of the fact that SiriKit is complicated.

00:45:23   I guess it's a good word to describe it.

00:45:26   It's just too many rules involved with spelling app names

00:45:31   and sometimes it doesn't hear you

00:45:34   and you gotta use the app name within your sentence.

00:45:38   It's not natural.

00:45:39   And at this point, I've said it before,

00:45:41   I think it's also in my review of iOS 11,

00:45:43   there should just be a screen in settings

00:45:46   where you say, here's the different domains

00:45:49   for which on iOS and therefore on your Apple Watch

00:45:53   or on the HomePod, you can pick a different default app.

00:45:57   I don't think Apple should allow developers to say,

00:46:01   Google Chrome is not your default browser on the iPhone.

00:46:05   But I think default apps could be done--

00:46:06   - They totally should, by the way.

00:46:07   They totally 100% should allow me.

00:46:09   - That's another topic.

00:46:11   What I'm saying is the default apps,

00:46:13   the way we think about them is probably wrong.

00:46:16   I want to see default apps for SiriKit.

00:46:19   So when I'm talking to Siri,

00:46:21   My default app for messaging is WhatsApp,

00:46:23   and my default app for reminders is Things.

00:46:26   So default apps for how you talk to the assistant,

00:46:30   not default apps in the sense of I'm using Google Chrome

00:46:33   and I'm using Gmail as my default apps,

00:46:36   not in that sense, but default apps for Siri,

00:46:38   that would be so much better.

00:46:41   - Well, while we're talking about default apps,

00:46:42   let's talk about Spotify, shall we?

00:46:44   'Cause this is something that every single review touches on

00:46:47   for good reason.

00:46:49   you can use only Apple Music or some kind of Apple-ordained music service because you can use

00:46:56   iTunes Match and purchase music with the HomePod too. Everybody, all of the reviewers mentioned

00:47:01   this because it is a frustration, no support for Spotify. And I really like the way that

00:47:08   Nilay Patel put it, right? Like he went, I think it was Nilay that did this, going through all of

00:47:12   the competitors saying like this one will allow it, like this is a Google product, Google have

00:47:17   their own music and they allow Spotify. You know, Amazon have their own music service,

00:47:22   they allow Spotify, right? Like everybody else is seeming to just allow this stuff,

00:47:28   allow Spotify to work because Spotify is the world's biggest music streaming service. But

00:47:33   Apple decided not to. And I do wonder and I do believe that less people will buy this

00:47:38   product. I mean, I don't know how many more, but less people will probably buy this product

00:47:42   because of it, right? Because it's, if you use Spotify, if that's what you've chosen

00:47:47   to use. I believe Federico, which one are you on now?

00:47:51   Both. Both. I jumped between them. I'm using Apple

00:47:56   Music more over the past month, three weeks, but

00:48:00   really I'm paying for both of them. And you can AirPlay, so you can open

00:48:05   your phone and connect the AirPlay and you can do it that way and you can

00:48:08   still use voice controls for Play, Pause and Skip, which is good once you've

00:48:12   connected. But really we should be able to use SiriKit for

00:48:15   this right because I want to be able to use overcast because the thing is I

00:48:20   haven't seen anybody talk about this which makes me believe that you can't do

00:48:24   it that there is not going to be a voice way to connect via airplay that doesn't

00:48:29   seem like that's the case like I've seen people talking about oh it's just a

00:48:33   couple of taps to to use airplay like what I would want to do is be like a

00:48:39   high telephone connect to my phone or something like that and then resume but

00:48:45   But it looks like I'm going to have to get my phone every time I want to do that.

00:48:49   With my Echo, I can just say, "Hey Tube, connect to my phone."

00:48:55   It connects and then I can say "Resume" and it will just play.

00:48:58   I don't need to have my phone to do that.

00:49:02   And the point of a product like this is to use your voice for as much as possible.

00:49:08   So many of these things end up in the kitchen and your hands are full or they're in the

00:49:12   sync with a bunch of dirty dishes and you want to play a song that comes to mind.

00:49:17   And yes you can use Spotify and Airplay but it is it is clunkier and I do I

00:49:22   agree with you I wish Apple would open Siri kit to two audio apps and I just

00:49:31   this is you know this is part of the deal with Apple right they have a music

00:49:35   streaming service and they have a speaker so they're not gonna let anybody

00:49:38   else play in that space and it doesn't matter to them the rest of the apps like

00:49:43   overcast get caught up in that right it's like well we're not gonna allow this

00:49:47   entire category because we operate in that and it's it's different I had an

00:49:54   email from a download listener asking it how this was different than them

00:49:58   allowing like things and to do us access to Siri kit because well Apple has a

00:50:03   reminders app they have a notes app but they allow these third-party apps to to

00:50:07   work with SiriKit. The difference is obvious I think is that Apple Music is a

00:50:13   paid subscription and they want to push you to that so their services revenue

00:50:17   continues to go up. That's not a bad thing. They're a company that need to make money.

00:50:20   I'm not judging. I'm saying that's how it works. And if a customer uses Notes or

00:50:26   Evernote or Reminders or things, it's no real skin off Apple's back because Notes

00:50:33   and Reminders aren't paid services. They don't use a lot of iCloud storage so

00:50:37   So it's not like they're trying to get you to use it

00:50:39   so you upgrade your iCloud space.

00:50:41   It's a very different type of thing.

00:50:43   And I just, I think if you're a Spotify user,

00:50:47   the HomePod's not the right product for you

00:50:49   because again, voice is so important.

00:50:51   And if you really want one and you're a Spotify user,

00:50:52   I wouldn't hold your breath for Apple to open it up.

00:50:55   I just, I don't see it happening anytime soon.

00:50:56   - Do you not?

00:50:57   - I think that they are so focused on Apple Music

00:50:59   becoming a really big product for them

00:51:03   is a report that they may soon pass Spotify

00:51:07   and market share in the US.

00:51:08   Worldwide Spotify kills them,

00:51:10   but in the US that may change.

00:51:12   And I think they want that to be true.

00:51:14   And it is interesting that all these reports

00:51:19   say that Apple has started to work on this

00:51:22   sometime in like 2010 or 2011,

00:51:24   like six or seven years ago.

00:51:27   That was before Apple Music was a thing,

00:51:29   But I'm sure that once Apple Music came into existence,

00:51:34   that these two products got married internally

00:51:36   at Apple real quick.

00:51:38   What's the name for this problem, the Apple tax,

00:51:43   in the sense of you're both the company that

00:51:46   wants to sell hardware to people,

00:51:49   and therefore people expect flexible functionality

00:51:53   from a speaker, but also you're the company that

00:51:56   controls the platform with the streaming service.

00:51:59   and so you're kind of working against yourself

00:52:01   and having to pick, do I prioritize customers

00:52:04   who want Spotify on their speakers

00:52:06   or do we prioritize ourselves with Apple Music?

00:52:10   Therefore, locking down the entire platform

00:52:12   and the speaker to just Apple Music

00:52:15   and the built-in podcasts.

00:52:18   It's an interesting problem.

00:52:19   Like, sort of a pick your poison situation.

00:52:24   Do you want to go against your customers

00:52:27   or do you want to go against your services revenue? I don't know what the solution is,

00:52:33   but it's an interesting problem to discuss. Because obviously from a customer perspective,

00:52:39   and maybe if Apple prioritizes the "customer is always right" approach, therefore the customer

00:52:46   must have options. But it's also a corporation that wants to make money from services. They

00:52:51   really care about those services and they really care about the Apple Music growth.

00:52:55   So I don't know, but it's um, what do you guys think they should do?

00:53:01   I think that they should be, I think, they should create Zirikit.

00:53:08   Like I understand, the way to get people to sign up for your music streaming service is

00:53:13   not by giving them only one choice.

00:53:17   Like actually make the service something people want to sign up for.

00:53:20   Like you don't, you're doing it the wrong way around.

00:53:24   And if that is why there is no SiriKit audio intent, I mean we don't know the reason, but

00:53:30   if it is an anti-competitive thing, then they've made the wrong decision, because that's not

00:53:36   the way to do it.

00:53:37   The way to do it is to make a service that's so compelling people want it, not to lock

00:53:41   down all of your devices so people can't sign up for it.

00:53:44   It's the wrong way to do it.

00:53:47   Maybe it will get you more subscribers that way, but I don't think it's the best thing

00:53:50   for customer satisfaction.

00:53:52   Because if we follow – I agree with you completely – if we follow the same thinking

00:53:57   here, we could argue that we can probably – what's the analyst's name that was

00:54:07   always talking about the Apple television?

00:54:09   Gene.

00:54:10   Muster.

00:54:11   You know, we could summon the ghost of Gene Muster and argue that –

00:54:15   That's not bad.

00:54:16   He's still around.

00:54:17   But I mean, metaphorically speaking on a podcast, we could argue that someday Apple will make

00:54:25   a video service and the only way to watch Apple shows is to buy an Apple television.

00:54:30   Because this is what's happening with the HomePod. If you want to listen on a good speaker,

00:54:35   you buy the HomePod and, you know, it's Apple Music. I really think that to make great services

00:54:45   is two things. One is you actually make a great service that is compelling and that,

00:54:51   you know, has features that people want to give you money for. And the second is your

00:54:55   service is everywhere. So, you know, Apple Music is on Android and there's this weird

00:55:04   distinction between Apple Music is on Android, but if you want the HomePod, it's only for

00:55:09   iPhones. So I really cannot reconcile the thinking here that the service can be for

00:55:17   Android users, but the speaker is only for Apple Music. And it's such a weird distinction.

00:55:25   Yeah, that is a good point, right? Like, why have it on Android? And then if you're focusing,

00:55:33   like, "Oh, this is an Apple Music speaker." Well, but it's not, though, because not all of the Apple

00:55:37   your Apple Music subscribers can use it because you need an iPhone to set it up.

00:55:41   It makes it very, it's just like very confusing. So we're spending a lot of

00:55:44   time talking about the negatives, right, which were obvious and I'm sure we'll

00:55:49   have things to say differently when we actually get them in our hands, but it

00:55:53   does seem like the audio engineering paid off because everyone is talking

00:55:57   about the fact that this thing sounds incredible and I'm excited to see what

00:56:02   that is like. I don't know if I am a person who can tell the difference between the quality

00:56:08   of music speakers. Because people talk about like "oh that's flat and that's tinny and

00:56:13   the mids are something and the bass is bumpin'" but I don't feel like I can hear any of that.

00:56:19   I wouldn't be able to tell you what was tinny and what was mids and what the highs and the

00:56:23   lows and the basses were all about. I feel like I don't have a good sense for what that

00:56:31   means when I'm listening to music? Well I think a lot of people pretend they know. So,

00:56:36   you know, fake it until you make it is always the best approach. Oh yeah, well it's like

00:56:39   I say when the bass is bumping, you know? That's my new phrase by the way. Exactly.

00:56:43   That is what the kids say, I think. Yeah, that's my new catchphrase. I think you will

00:56:49   be able to tell the difference between an echo and the home part. Even if you don't

00:56:53   know the right terminology. When a speaker is a good speaker and is a great speaker,

00:57:00   You can tell, even if you don't know what's the right word to describe this sound that

00:57:04   I'm hearing in a different way, but you can tell, oh yeah, this is a better speaker.

00:57:09   And honestly, in most cases, that's enough.

00:57:12   Like if you jump from a Google home, which sounds terrible, I have one.

00:57:17   I don't know why I bought one.

00:57:18   We were together when I did.

00:57:21   You were just excited to be on the Google store.

00:57:23   I was really excited.

00:57:24   It's like I bought a mug, but I do love my mug though.

00:57:26   Yeah, yours was a better purchase. You can tell that it sounds better than a Google Home.

00:57:34   And now I don't know if you can tell the difference between a Sonos One and a HomePod, and honestly

00:57:40   I would also struggle there. I think I'm, at least I was used to listening to, you know,

00:57:47   back when we were in a band that Steven likes to listen to very so often, we had this guy

00:57:55   guy, he was our audio engineer, and he made us, effectively made us, do blind tests for

00:58:02   speakers and stuff to sort of be able to discern different sounds and different speakers and

00:58:08   what it means for the way that you produce music.

00:58:12   So I have a basic understanding of what's going on here, but also if I were to do a

00:58:20   blind test today between a Sonos One, which according to the reviews it sounds very similar

00:58:25   to the HomePod and an Apple HomePod, I don't know if I would be able to tell the difference

00:58:30   right away and I think that's fine because ultimately, yes it sounds great but you're

00:58:35   also buying the speaker for the ecosystem and you're buying it because it runs Apple

00:58:39   Music and it lets you do some Siri in some fashion.

00:58:44   Yeah I'm intrigued by it. I just, I really can't work out what I would use it for. I'm

00:58:52   gonna see. I mean it looks nice, sounds good, I'm gonna give it a real try but...

00:59:00   and I hope it can... do you know what? I hope that I can listen to it and be like

00:59:04   "oh my gosh, this is incredible, why do I play music on anything else?" because I am

00:59:10   an Apple Music subscriber, it's what I use. I only have a Spotify account because of

00:59:15   my Amazon Echo. Hmm, I have seen you ask the Echo to play songs in your apartment

00:59:22   Yeah, but that's just because we mostly play music when we have guests.

00:59:26   Oh, okay. So that was very kind of you.

00:59:28   Yeah, it was very kind. Just for you. Give you some music.

00:59:31   Let me ask you, how do you use the echo? Like, what are the skills or the commands that you

00:59:36   use, like, on a regular basis?

00:59:38   I've been thinking about this in preparation for trying out the HomePod. I ask it for...

00:59:46   I've written this down. Let me get it so I can see, because I have actually written it

00:59:49   down. I use it for turning on the lights and you know that kind of stuff. Weather,

00:59:58   measurement questions, so like how many ounces in a something, timers, right so

01:00:06   when I'm cooking and every now and then the occasional pop culture question but

01:00:13   then I also use a couple of skills and the most important one is the shopping

01:00:17   service that we use, which is called Ocado, we can add things to the shopping to our trolley,

01:00:24   which is excellent. So like when I'm cooking and I realize we've run out of olive oil,

01:00:29   I can say, "Hey Echo, tell Ocado to add olive oil to my shopping list." And then it adds

01:00:35   it to our next actual order.

01:00:38   Is it extra virgin olive oil or just regular one?

01:00:41   Only extra virgin, of course. But the system is very good. If I just say olive oil, it

01:00:46   looks through my previous purchases and that's the one that we bought the most or most recently.

01:00:51   It's very, very clever. And I wouldn't want to give something like that up because it's

01:00:56   like so many people use these products when they're cooking for helping them cook, right?

01:01:02   So like measurements and timers. And another big part of that for me is when I am cooking

01:01:08   and I realize I'm in the recipe, right? Like I'm doing the thing. I don't have time at

01:01:13   that point because I've already got stuff on the go to grab my phone out and add the

01:01:17   thing to my shopping list in the Ocado app. But I can just be walking around the kitchen

01:01:21   and speaking at it. And obviously this product is not built for that because they have made

01:01:27   no considerations, none, not one, to make it for this. Because the easy one was just

01:01:34   adding multiple timers but it didn't even bother to do that. Not even name timers, they

01:01:38   just didn't do it. So Apple has made a big stand and like every time they ever

01:01:43   show this product it's always in a living room. That's where it is. It's a

01:01:46   living room product. So this is obviously not what they're going for but that's

01:01:52   why like it doesn't matter how much I love the HomePod it will not replace

01:01:58   Echo for me because where I'm using it most the HomePod does not fit right now.

01:02:05   now. It can, this is all software, all this stuff is software and they can make this

01:02:09   product better but they haven't done a lot of this stuff right now. Yeah my uses

01:02:16   of the Echo are very similar to yours and honestly I think except for the

01:02:21   shopping cart deal but I think the thing that's gonna break it for us if they

01:02:25   don't they don't update it is the multiple timer thing. Like I've just been paying

01:02:28   attention over the last couple weeks of how we use ours and almost every night

01:02:34   when we're cooking, there's more than one timer going.

01:02:37   And we name them, so you know what's done when.

01:02:41   And it just, it seems like such an obvious thing

01:02:44   to have supported.

01:02:46   But even the iPhone can't do it.

01:02:48   Even the iPhone's stuck with one timer.

01:02:50   So I hope they can add that,

01:02:53   'cause I think that is important to a lot of people.

01:02:54   Like that's been a popular thing I've seen on Twitter

01:02:58   and heard another podcast.

01:02:59   I don't think it's just us that want that.

01:03:03   One other thing that I'm concerned about with the home part is the same problem that the

01:03:07   Google Home has, how verbose it is, and I'm concerned that Siri's gonna wanna make jokes

01:03:12   every time I turn the lights on and off. Or at least just be like, "Okay, turning the

01:03:17   living room light on." I'm interested to see what that ends up looking like because one

01:03:23   of my favorite things about the Echo compared to the Google Home, I've mentioned this before,

01:03:28   is about the fact that when I ask it to do something, it keeps it short and sweet, which

01:03:32   is what I want. I don't need it to try and have a conversation with me when I'm turning

01:03:35   the lights off at night. So I'm keen to see how this thing's going to turn out, but so

01:03:41   far I think the reviews have played exactly the way you could have predicted them to.

01:03:46   Like great hardware, terrible software and service, right? Like we're gonna, I mean,

01:03:51   I don't think we're going to have much more to say outside of that. Obviously Federico

01:03:55   will be giving us comprehensive reviews of SiriKit, no actions next week.

01:04:00   But that's, I guess that's what people tune in for, right?

01:04:04   Because the minutiae that we provide.

01:04:06   I think I will be one of the first people in Italy with a HomePod.

01:04:10   I've gone to great lengths to make sure that I will have a HomePod soon enough.

01:04:16   That means basically giving UPS a lot of money.

01:04:19   You do?

01:04:20   Oh, okay, you're going to do an overnight situation.

01:04:22   Yeah.

01:04:23   Yeah, yeah.

01:04:24   I've done that.

01:04:25   Marco overnighted an Apple Pencil to me when you couldn't get them anywhere on the planet,

01:04:29   it but he managed to get one and then I wrote a review of it.

01:04:33   I remember the Apple Pencil.

01:04:34   Yeah, I was using mine today. I was filling out a document and was using my Apple Pencil.

01:04:40   So that's the home part. That's what we know so far. Look out for more next week.

01:04:46   Can I just say something before we move on to the next topic?

01:04:48   Of course.

01:04:49   There's something strange that happened thanks to the chat room on the Relay website. So

01:04:56   We mentioned our My Old Band, and somebody said...

01:05:00   Seniors, everyone's favorite band, the Seniors, there'll be links in the show notes.

01:05:03   And here's a clip you can listen to right now.

01:05:06   You know that something's a change You know that something's a change

01:05:11   You know that something's a change We call it time

01:05:19   And there's no more singing alone There is nothing we can do

01:05:25   Oh no! Anyway, pasta boy in the chatroom said "It's also on Apple Music" and I was like

01:05:31   "Wait, what? It's not supposed to be on Apple Music, I never signed anything to be on Apple

01:05:36   Music" and I thought it was maybe a mistake, so I searched for "Seniors on Apple Music"

01:05:41   and sure enough, there's an entry for Seniors on Apple Music. It only has two songs with

01:05:49   Apparently in an EP that we...

01:05:52   This cover, I don't remember, I remember taking this photo. I don't remember the cover. It's got two songs

01:05:59   from 2008 under Enjoy Record as the label and also there's another song that we didn't actually

01:06:07   make

01:06:10   so

01:06:12   Somebody must be representing us, I guess. I have no idea

01:06:17   What is going on here?

01:06:19   Can you see it? Can you see it too?

01:06:21   I haven't I'm still trying to find it, but I can't believe that that exists

01:06:27   Your music royalties any day now?

01:06:30   It's from 2008 under pop as the genre and

01:06:37   There's two I have no idea. Maybe it's what's the name of the song that is yours?

01:06:44   Try Who's There, for example. These are terrible titles.

01:06:49   Is that... Wait, so this album artwork I'm looking at, is that you?

01:06:54   That is me in the middle. Oh wow, see I don't recognise you without

01:06:59   facial hair. Yeah, as soon as I previewed it, I needed

01:07:03   like half a second to hear the Federico Vittucci Oasis style and I knew exactly that it was

01:07:09   the band that I love so much. But I don't remember the other song, Even

01:07:13   "Evening Shadows Falling" that is something that I never sang.

01:07:16   Have you listened to it? Is it you?

01:07:18   I don't know. Should I try?

01:07:21   Yeah, you gotta... I see too who's there and what I tried to say to you last night.

01:07:26   Yeah, and "Evening Shadows Falling" which... what is this? I have no idea.

01:07:31   That's not available on my EP here. Maybe that's just an Italy only song.

01:07:35   Oh, it doesn't play for me. I click on it and it does nothing.

01:07:39   I think that's mis-categorized, but I see that, but I don't think that's you.

01:07:42   Well look at you! Federico Vittucci on Apple Music!

01:07:46   This is strange, but...

01:07:48   I must remember, the very first song that I asked for my home pod to play for me is

01:07:53   "Who's There?" by The Seniors, so I can really get some of that bump in bass playing through.

01:08:00   What is Enjoy Record? I don't know.

01:08:02   You gotta hunt them down, they're making money on you, man! They're selling that!

01:08:06   I want all my two euros from these royalties, they're mine!

01:08:11   Especially after this episode, everyone's gonna go listen to it. It's in the show notes.

01:08:15   Exactly.

01:08:16   Wow. Wow. I don't know how we're gonna come back from that. I think we have to take a

01:08:20   break so everybody can calm down a little bit. And the best way to calm down is to take

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01:08:34   - it's on Spotify too! It's in the chair! It's in Spotify too! I can't believe it!

01:08:38   But there's another song in the middle!

01:08:40   There's another one!

01:08:41   Federica's music is everywhere!

01:08:43   Anyway, you spend a third of your life sleeping.

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01:09:38   Stephen Hackett, I know you have a Casper mattress.

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01:09:44   I would say that, yes.

01:09:45   So you feel greatly supported every night when you tuck into bed?

01:09:49   I feel supported physically, emotionally.

01:09:52   It's really comfortable, it's great.

01:09:54   Big fan.

01:09:55   I'm pleased to hear that.

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01:10:40   in this tiny little box that you put in the bedroom, you cut it open and you're all set.

01:10:45   Look at that. Lovely story, Steven. Thank you. Start sleeping ahead of the curve with

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01:11:00   offer code connected. Our thanks to Casper for their support of this show.

01:11:06   So a couple of weeks ago I saw an article from the wonderful Matt Burchler at

01:11:12   birchtree.me about watchOS 5. So we're going into the fifth version of

01:11:19   watchOS. It's crazy. Is it been five years? Is that what that means? No it doesn't mean that.

01:11:24   that yeah the first one went by real quick remember they replaced it okay I

01:11:31   thought I just lost a significant portion of my life right there well I

01:11:34   mean you're 30 now so one year is not that significant yeah sure I thought I

01:11:38   was 41 I just loved 11 years of it well then I guess we are on what choice 16

01:11:44   my oh no yeah it does seem crazy that that they're already on five and when

01:11:51   When I saw this, my thought was,

01:11:54   if you think between iPhone OS 1 and iOS 5,

01:11:59   how many things were added, how many things were different,

01:12:04   the evolution that took place over that time,

01:12:08   and I just don't see that on WatchOS.

01:12:09   Like, yes, the underlying technology's better,

01:12:13   yes, they got rid of glances and now they're cards

01:12:16   or something and they've rearranged some stuff,

01:12:18   and it's a lot faster,

01:12:20   watchOS still feels fundamentally the same as it always has to me and I just

01:12:27   I just I saw that number and I sort of had lost track and it surprised me. I

01:12:31   think it's that the iterations that they've made have kind of just like

01:12:36   moved it along. They haven't obviously and I don't think it's coming and I

01:12:40   don't think we're even close to it it hasn't had like its iOS 70 moment where

01:12:44   they like rebuilt a bunch of it visually or in any significant way so like it

01:12:49   It feels like everything's just moved along real smooth throughout watchOS's life.

01:12:54   But Matt broke down a bunch of feature improvements that he'd like to see for watchOS, and it's

01:12:59   a great post full of lovely concept imagery.

01:13:02   Stephen's very happy because remember the milk sneaks in there somehow.

01:13:05   It's true.

01:13:06   And even though Matt recommends or uses remember the milk, I still trust what he has to say.

01:13:12   One of the big things is the Siri watch face and some improvements there.

01:13:16   I still use the Siri watch face every day and I like it very much, but I agree completely

01:13:20   with Matt that the ability for third-party applications to be able to put data here would

01:13:25   be awesome.

01:13:26   Like for me to be able to see weather stuff from Carrotweather, Calendar from Fantastic

01:13:30   Out, and todos from Todoist would be incredible.

01:13:33   Like it would give me the exact thing that I would want from my Apple Watch.

01:13:39   Because I really, really honestly do like the Siri watch face, but it does feel a little

01:13:43   bit restricted at times as to what data I'm actually seeing.

01:13:47   Yeah, totally agree.

01:13:49   There should be an API for developers to plug into it

01:13:52   and say, these are my apps items.

01:13:55   They have due date or time.

01:13:58   And there you go.

01:14:00   And the system figures out what to do.

01:14:03   They can take into account dates, times, location.

01:14:06   Apple sees if you tend to use an app in your car or at the office

01:14:10   or in your home.

01:14:11   And so there should be a way for developers to say,

01:14:14   here's my data, and for Apple to say,

01:14:17   we're going to take this, and Siri, as an intelligence,

01:14:20   is going to sift through this data

01:14:22   and create a watch face for you.

01:14:24   It makes subtle sense.

01:14:26   Steven, you have put in our documents something

01:14:29   that I've been thinking about a lot recently about complications

01:14:33   and the Siri watch face.

01:14:35   It would be great to see, like you said, third party stuff.

01:14:41   But I can also see, so the idea of complication was

01:14:44   you put it on there and it's a little piece of data that updates throughout

01:14:48   the day. So like for instance

01:14:49   on my watch if I use the

01:14:53   the modular face one of the ones that I show

01:14:57   is Todoist. So I could see how many to do items I have left. It's a little number

01:15:02   and sometimes it remembers the sync with my iPhone and it updates

01:15:05   as I check things off. But it's very basic right? If I want to actually see any

01:15:10   information I have to tap into it and then wait for it to load. I could see a

01:15:14   world where the Siri watch face expands on this idea. So like you said I don't

01:15:21   just see that I have six items left but I see you know the next item based on

01:15:25   importance or the next thing due by time. You know it being intelligent and

01:15:29   surfacing things as they become as they become relevant to me. And complications

01:15:36   can kind of do that, but complications require me to do it.

01:15:39   So if I want to keep up with a basketball score,

01:15:43   I can put some sort of sports score keeping complication

01:15:47   on my watch, but I gotta remember to do that.

01:15:49   I gotta remember, oh right, there's a game,

01:15:50   I wanna keep up with it, I'm not gonna be able to watch it,

01:15:52   I just want my watch to remind me.

01:15:55   Apple talks about Siri being the proactive assistant

01:15:57   and being really intelligent, it's like,

01:15:59   well then do that on the watch.

01:16:01   You have all this information on my phone

01:16:05   that watch face could do so much more it could it could take the idea of

01:16:08   complications and like expand it into the next level and that would be that

01:16:14   would be really really great and then just in general watch face improvements

01:16:19   always on yes definitely like the battery life can 100% support this now

01:16:24   like please make it happen and then third party developed faces Federico do

01:16:29   Do you think that this is gonna happen at some point?

01:16:32   - I don't know.

01:16:33   I would love to see it, especially for,

01:16:37   maybe as a way for apps to bundle a watch face.

01:16:42   Like I imagine that if you are

01:16:45   like a really productivity oriented type of person,

01:16:48   you could say Todoist now comes with a watch face.

01:16:51   And you can customize it.

01:16:53   You can put in multiple complications from other apps.

01:16:58   But I imagine that maybe apps could offer an extension,

01:17:02   a watch face extension, that lets you replace

01:17:06   the Apple watch face with a third party one.

01:17:08   And there could be different types,

01:17:11   like a to-do list, watch face could have a bunch of shortcuts

01:17:14   to your lists, to your to-dos, or there could be like,

01:17:18   I don't know, fitness watch faces,

01:17:20   I imagine would be amazing because they make a lot of sense.

01:17:23   I don't know if there should be a watch face marketplace

01:17:27   of sorts, because in theory, all of these extensions

01:17:33   that we've seen Apple do over the years,

01:17:35   all kinds of extensions from widgets to complications

01:17:38   to extensions on the iPhone, they've

01:17:41   always been bundled with apps.

01:17:43   And even with custom keyboards on the iPhone,

01:17:47   it's strange when you need to download something just

01:17:52   to get the extension.

01:17:53   I don't think Apple is really good at sort of pushing people

01:17:57   to-- because the App Store is their only marketplace.

01:18:00   And so people are used to the idea, I go to the App Store,

01:18:02   I download an app.

01:18:04   But then when I go to the App Store--

01:18:05   and we've seen this with iMessage apps,

01:18:07   iMessage only apps-- the confusion that generates from,

01:18:11   I go to the App Store, I download something,

01:18:13   but it's not on my home screen.

01:18:14   And so I imagine it would maybe be easier to say,

01:18:17   the watch faces are tied to the apps that you have.

01:18:21   But also that creates another problem, that what if Todoist--

01:18:25   and I'm using them as an example,

01:18:27   they have an idea for a watch face,

01:18:31   but it's got nothing to do with Todoist as a product.

01:18:34   So there's pros and cons to this approach.

01:18:37   It would be interesting to see though,

01:18:40   the Apple Watch App Store,

01:18:43   maybe there's another idea,

01:18:44   sort of pivot to being something else,

01:18:47   like a place where you go to download not apps

01:18:50   that you get from the iPhone App Store anyway,

01:18:53   But you go to the watch app store to get complications,

01:18:56   to get watch faces, and to get all these additions

01:18:58   to your Apple Watch.

01:19:00   That could be maybe like breathe new life

01:19:02   into the watchOS app store, which is not a wasteland,

01:19:06   but I don't know anybody who goes--

01:19:09   - Less about apps and more about just general customization

01:19:13   of the watch. - Yes, yes.

01:19:15   - Is a better way to think about the Apple Watch today

01:19:19   than like these specific applications.

01:19:21   It doesn't make sense.

01:19:23   and hasn't made sense.

01:19:25   - It would be better, you know,

01:19:26   because Apple, they have, for example, on the Watch app,

01:19:28   they have that Watch face gallery,

01:19:30   and I think that's pretty good looking,

01:19:32   and it makes sense as a feature.

01:19:35   I would love to see an entire app store

01:19:37   that's just like that, not apps.

01:19:39   I'm going to the app store for apps anyway.

01:19:42   I wanna go to the Watch app store

01:19:44   to get customization features, options,

01:19:48   and it's done contextually within the Watch app

01:19:51   that when you tap something, you go back into the settings

01:19:54   and you see it, it would make so much sense, I think,

01:19:57   to have the kind of reboot for the watch app store.

01:20:00   - Matt also talks about a frustration he has

01:20:02   with workouts where like if you forget to say

01:20:05   you're on a workout, well, you've lost the ability to do it.

01:20:07   So Apple should try and add some kind

01:20:09   of automatic workout detection.

01:20:11   And while something like this is never gonna be perfect,

01:20:13   it would be a great backup for the times

01:20:16   where you forget to start a workout

01:20:17   and then you don't get your green ring close to the day.

01:20:20   And I like Matt's proposal that the watch will notify you,

01:20:23   give you a little tap if it thinks you're working out

01:20:26   to which you can confirm or deny.

01:20:28   I like that.

01:20:29   Rest days should totally be a thing.

01:20:32   If you're sick, you'll lose your streak, right?

01:20:35   Like it's as simple as that.

01:20:36   And I like the way that _DavidSmith,

01:20:39   he does a great job of this in like activity plus plus.

01:20:42   Like if you, for some reason,

01:20:44   don't do your exercise goal one day,

01:20:46   it doesn't break your streak.

01:20:47   You just got a rest day and that's healthy, right?

01:20:50   that's fine, it's fine to do that. That would be a nice thing to see Apple implement.

01:20:54   And of course, the big one, sleep tracking.

01:20:57   Yeah.

01:20:58   And I know you would love this Federico, I'm assuming, native sleep tracking, because you

01:21:02   do this, don't you? Do you still do this?

01:21:04   I do this every day, every night, I guess. But yeah, I use Autosleep on my watch and

01:21:09   on the iPhone, and I have the data going into gyroscope, going into streaks to make sure

01:21:16   that I get all my, you know, my six or seven hours. I would love for Apple to add, I don't

01:21:23   know if maybe a fourth ring, because sleep is more of a passive thing, whereas the activity

01:21:30   is more like I have an active lifestyle, but I think the Apple Watch should have sleep

01:21:36   tracking built in that goes into her kit. Also, I don't think that it would be a good

01:21:40   idea for them to like add it as a ring because it's telling people to do it and most people

01:21:46   will still charge their phone or charge their watch or don't want to sleep with the watch

01:21:50   on. Right, like I think that might be too much but like you know in the way that Breathe

01:21:54   exists you know like it's another application which you can do a thing in if you want to

01:21:59   and you can set it up to remind you but it doesn't actually make an effect to your activity

01:22:04   scores and stuff. That might be cool. And the last one is podcast support. Like at the

01:22:09   the very least there should be an Apple shipped podcast, an Apple podcast app for the Apple

01:22:13   watch. But what I think we would like to see way more, and I know many people that would

01:22:18   love this too, is Apple to improve the API, is to allow third parties to create valid

01:22:24   independent podcast applications that don't need to be setting up as workouts or taking

01:22:29   in little hacks. So I can take just my AirPods and my Apple watch out into the world and

01:22:33   listen to a podcast. That would be great, wouldn't it? I hope they do that. That would

01:22:38   be wonderful.

01:22:39   great. So that's some some thoughts on WatchOS 5. I think we all agree with this. I recommend

01:22:43   people go and take a look at this article just to see the lovely little mock-ups that

01:22:49   Matt has worked on. I like the way that he has displayed some of his ideas kind of visually.

01:22:57   Before we finish today, I have more emoji breaking news for you. It's all happening.

01:23:01   It turns out that Jeremy was very kind of his time because basically immediately after

01:23:06   leaving us, there's a post on Emojipedia about the 2018 emoji list, the 157 new emoji added

01:23:15   to the standard. I'm looking at the video now, it's really well done, as always, by

01:23:21   Jeremy and team. So this is emoji 11, this is 11.0, and some of the highlights, it includes

01:23:29   superheroes and supervillains, more hair color types, so red hair, curly hair, bald people,

01:23:37   and white hair are in there. There's a very creepy looking leg that is in the Emojipedia

01:23:42   representation. There is a bone, I can't imagine that being used out of context. There's a

01:23:50   lab coat, a skateboard is in here. Some great looking emoji, or some great representations

01:23:57   of Emojidex are going to be coming. Oh look at that! Cold face and hot face, party face,

01:24:00   I like the party face. That would be good for World Emojidex because that's the World

01:24:04   Emojidex icon, which is a holiday that Jeremy created, which has become a real thing that

01:24:10   people pay attention to, which is hilarious. Jeremy Burge is one of the most interesting

01:24:15   people that I know, without a shadow of a doubt. He has a very interesting life. Like

01:24:20   I know many people that have jobs, like all of us, which is like, how is that a job? But

01:24:25   But I think that about Jeremy.

01:24:27   How is emoji his job?

01:24:29   Turns out it is.

01:24:30   By the way, a little bit of follow out.

01:24:33   Me and Steven do a podcast called "Ungeniused" and Jeremy filled in for me on an episode

01:24:38   a couple of weeks ago where Steven asked him about emoji and how it was created and kind

01:24:45   of where it came from and how it's become the thing it is today.

01:24:47   So you can go listen to that too.

01:24:49   It's "Ungeniused" episode 43 emoji.

01:24:53   So I think that wraps it up for today.

01:24:54   Wow, what an action-packed episode.

01:24:58   But I'm unable to finish the episode

01:25:00   because we have to throw it back over

01:25:02   to the new host of the show, Stephen Hackett,

01:25:05   to round out the show today.

01:25:07   - So that's the end of the podcast.

01:25:08   It's basically over now.

01:25:10   We're gonna do the same stuff we kind of always do.

01:25:12   We're gonna tell you where to find the show notes.

01:25:15   Relay.fm/connected/179.

01:25:20   There's a bunch of tiny heads artwork in there

01:25:21   should click and just be amazed by that trend. You can get in touch with us there. You can

01:25:28   send us an email or you can find us on Twitter. Myke is I-M-Y-K-E. Federico is V-I-T-I-C-C-I.

01:25:37   And again, there's links to all of his music in the show notes. You can find me on Twitter

01:25:42   as I-S-M-H. You can find Federico on Apple Music. And Spotify.

01:25:51   So bad. You're bad. Just ask your smart speaker of choice to play this. You're a bad, bad

01:25:57   person. What I love about this is this was a thing you did in your past that you can't

01:26:02   get rid of. You have no way of removing this and now it's just there for us all to listen

01:26:06   to. No, you could even ask a smart speaker about it. Who owns the copyright to this music?

01:26:12   I have no idea. I don't know. Because, you know, we could totally just change our theme

01:26:17   song to the show. No we cannot. To be a senior's track. To be a senior's original track. We

01:26:22   don't need that classical music anymore. Maybe outro music at least. The seniors do not exist

01:26:29   anymore. Yeah we don't have outro music. We could 100% just add this in as outro music.

01:26:36   We don't need it. We'll just see what happens. I'm gonna put all this stuff in Logic, I'm

01:26:40   gonna shake my computer up real hard and we'll see what comes out the other end. You just

01:26:43   you never know you know that's how podcasts are made thank you to our three sponsors uh this week

01:26:50   lenode squarespace and casper for making the show possible and until next week gentlemen say goodbye

01:26:56   goodbye

01:27:00   [Music]

01:27:07   [Music]

01:27:14   [Music]

01:27:21   [Music]

01:27:26   Adios.