Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:12 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Connected. Episode 166. Today's show is brought to you by Away.

00:00:19 ◼   ► Timing and encapsulation today is a very spooky episode because it's Halloween. My name is Myke

00:00:23 ◼   ► Hurley and I am joined by Federico Vittucci. Ciao Federico. Ciao Myke. And Mrs. Stephen Hackett.

00:00:28 ◼   ► Hello, Steven Hackett.

00:00:30 ◼   ► - Hello, Michael Hurley.

00:00:31 ◼   ► I thought that you may give us spooky names

00:00:34 ◼   ► that people do on Twitter,

00:00:35 ◼   ► which I think is the dumbest thing people do on Twitter.

00:00:37 ◼   ► - Please don't.

00:00:37 ◼   ► Please do not. - When I said,

00:00:39 ◼   ► when I said spooky, my brain was scanning

00:00:42 ◼   ► and I couldn't do it in time.

00:00:43 ◼   ► - So maybe we should try it now?

00:00:46 ◼   ► Like Frightening Federico?

00:00:47 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:00:48 ◼   ► - I think it's pretty good.

00:00:49 ◼   ► - Well, I like it.

00:00:50 ◼   ► Frightening Federico, Scary Steven, and--

00:00:52 ◼   ► - Malicious Myke.

00:00:53 ◼   ► - Ooh, I like that, yeah, Malicious Myke,

00:00:56 ◼   ► Frightening Federico, and Scary Steven.

00:00:58 ◼   ► are our Halloween names. It's my least favorite Twitter meme. We have a huge show today so

00:01:03 ◼   ► we should probably start with follow up with the most important anticipated piece of follow-up

00:01:08 ◼   ► item in a while. Federico's Nvidia Shield. So if you listen to last week's episode,

00:01:14 ◼   ► you know for some reason Federico bought an Nvidia Shield and there was a specific reason

00:01:19 ◼   ► for this and we asked our listeners to send us in some suggestions. So I wanted to read

00:01:24 ◼   ► a couple of them that I thought were a little bit compelling. O players said to play PC

00:01:29 ◼   ► games because there is some software that they have where you can set up something on

00:01:34 ◼   ► a Mac or a PC and you can play these games over the internet. Bob, Boris and Kostas all

00:01:40 ◼   ► guest emulators of some description like many different emulators of old Nintendo consoles.

00:01:45 ◼   ► Ferris was wondering if it was to do with HEVC playback. Eric and Paul thought that

00:01:50 ◼   ► Federico was buying this for his baker and Neil believed that it had something to do with home automation or camera systems

00:01:57 ◼   ► So Federico, why on earth did you buy an Nvidia shield?

00:02:00 ◼   ► so I feel like no one really got the specific reason why I bought the shield but you Myke and

00:02:08 ◼   ► Ferris got

00:02:11 ◼   ► The closest to the to the real story here. So it was for Plex

00:02:16 ◼   ► but it was for

00:02:20 ◼   ► hardware-based decoding of videos played through Plex.

00:02:25 ◼   ► - Oh, I'm taking that.

00:02:26 ◼   ► I'm taking that as a big--

00:02:27 ◼   ► - We said Plex on the show last week.

00:02:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, we spoke about Plex.

00:02:30 ◼   ► - You spoke about Plex, but I asked you why,

00:02:33 ◼   ► because I told you.

00:02:34 ◼   ► - Come on, come on.

00:02:35 ◼   ► - I said, no, no, no, I said on the show,

00:02:38 ◼   ► I already have Plex on my Synology.

00:02:41 ◼   ► Why would I want to use Plex on the NVIDIA Shield?

00:02:44 ◼   ► And you said, I need to think about this some more, so.

00:02:47 ◼   ► I'm awarding myself half of a mic point for that.

00:02:50 ◼   ► It's half of a mic point and also half for listener Ferris

00:02:53 ◼   ► because HEVC playback is indeed part of the story here.

00:02:58 ◼   ► So yes, the reason is I like Plex.

00:03:00 ◼   ► I've been using Plex for years on my DS214Play Synology NAS.

00:03:06 ◼   ► And it's fine.

00:03:07 ◼   ► But every time I was playing a video,

00:03:09 ◼   ► whether it was a TV show or a movie,

00:03:11 ◼   ► it took a long time to buffer the video

00:03:13 ◼   ► because the chips inside the Synology

00:03:15 ◼   ► were not powerful enough to do the decoding,

00:03:19 ◼   ► hardware-based decoding, to stream to my iOS devices.

00:03:23 ◼   ► Because Plex does a bunch of things,

00:03:25 ◼   ► whether it's called direct stream or direct playback.

00:03:28 ◼   ► Most of the time, if you're not feeding the correct format,

00:03:31 ◼   ► which tends to be MP4 container, H.264, and AAC audio,

00:03:36 ◼   ► if you do not do that,

00:03:38 ◼   ► Plex needs to do some decoding on the fly,

00:03:42 ◼   ► as you're watching the video.

00:03:43 ◼   ► And with my Synology, that was always super slow,

00:03:45 ◼   ► and my girlfriend and I were getting annoyed by the fact that as we're watching the movie,

00:03:49 ◼   ► it starts buffering and it pauses and it takes minutes to do another chunk of five minutes

00:03:55 ◼   ► of decoding and that was super bad. But we didn't want to stop using Plex, because we

00:04:01 ◼   ► like Plex. And so I did a bit of research and I realized by watching some YouTube videos

00:04:07 ◼   ► and reading on the various Plex forums that the cheapest way to get hardware-based decoding

00:04:14 ◼   ► via Plex. And also, while keep using my Synology as basically a ton of storage, was to get

00:04:23 ◼   ► an NVIDIA shield and hook it up to my Synology, use the Synology for basically just hosting

00:04:28 ◼   ► the files and the NVIDIA shield to run Plex Media Server. So the NVIDIA shield can get

00:04:35 ◼   ► the actual movie and files from my 4 terabytes of storage on the Synology, and the shield

00:04:44 ◼   ► takes care of decoding those to a compatible format for Plex on iOS and Apple TV.

00:04:51 ◼   ► That is the only reason why I bought the NVIDIA Shield in the first place, because I wanted

00:04:55 ◼   ► to have a faster Plex experience and to be able to have transcoding sessions or streaming

00:05:01 ◼   ► sessions without buffering and without having to wait several minutes just to watch a movie.

00:05:07 ◼   ► As I did this last week, I set this up, it's very easy, you log into your Google account,

00:05:14 ◼   ► and on the NVIDIA Shield, then you confirm with the code on your iPhone and

00:05:20 ◼   ► you're basically off to the races. You just need to update Android TV, which

00:05:25 ◼   ► is what the NVIDIA Shield uses, and then you can start using the Shield. The only

00:05:29 ◼   ► thing that I needed to do was to configure my Synology with the NVIDIA

00:05:33 ◼   ► Shield as an external storage source. This is the kind of stuff that you can

00:05:37 ◼   ► do on Android TV. You can basically scan your network for compatible storage

00:05:42 ◼   ► devices and the Synology showed up right away because of course it's on my network.

00:05:47 ◼   ► But I had a bit of a struggle initially because all of my... basically the Synology was being

00:05:53 ◼   ► recognized by Plex but the videos were still super slow.

00:05:58 ◼   ► And so I spent a couple of days obsessing over this problem, we had already talked about

00:06:02 ◼   ► it on the show and it would have been really bad if I couldn't figure this out before the

00:06:06 ◼   ► next episode.

00:06:08 ◼   ► So I did more research and I realized that initially I thought it was going to be some

00:06:12 ◼   ► kind of permission problem with accessing files and folders on my Synology, but it turns

00:06:17 ◼   ► out that the NVIDIA Shield comes with a built-in version of the Plex Media Server, which is

00:06:25 ◼   ► an old one, and to get the best experience and the latest features from Plex, I needed

00:06:30 ◼   ► to install a beta version of the Plex Media Server from the Google Play Store.

00:06:34 ◼   ► This is all done natively on Android TV.

00:06:37 ◼   ► You can just basically go to the Google Play Store, search for Plex.

00:06:42 ◼   ► Actually before you need to sign up your Google account for beta access.

00:06:45 ◼   ► And then you go to the Google Play Store and you see the beta.

00:06:47 ◼   ► And it's all done sort of like Test Flight really.

00:06:50 ◼   ► And so I downloaded the beta of Plex on my NVIDIA Shield.

00:06:54 ◼   ► It's a much, much more recent version.

00:06:56 ◼   ► And it runs great.

00:06:57 ◼   ► It's doing hardware decoding of videos.

00:07:00 ◼   ► It can do multiple streams at a time.

00:07:02 ◼   ► I was able to do like two to three 1080p transcoding sessions simultaneously on the NVIDIA Shield

00:07:09 ◼   ► and I got the best of both worlds. I got the storage on my Synology like 4TB in RAID 1

00:07:15 ◼   ► and I also got the NVIDIA Shield that is behind a fast and efficient Plex experience and this

00:07:22 ◼   ► is the best Plex setup that I've ever had. I never had a powerful machine being able

00:07:28 ◼   ► to do transcoding for videos on the fly as I was watching them. And of course the NVIDIA

00:07:33 ◼   ► Shield is, I don't know which version of the, what's it called, the Snapdragon chip or whatever

00:07:39 ◼   ► the Android device is used. But it's fast and it takes care of multiple HD streams.

00:07:43 ◼   ► In theory it should be able to handle at least one 4K HDR stream, but I don't have a 4K HDR

00:07:49 ◼   ► TV yet so that's not a problem for me. It's running an NVIDIA Tegra X1 processor. Alright,

00:07:55 ◼   ► NVIDIA Tiger, right. So yeah, fast plex, hardware decoding, no more wait times, it's really awesome.

00:08:01 ◼   ► Like, I hit play on a video in Plex, I don't care about which format, which encoding it is, I tested

00:08:07 ◼   ► with like H.264, H.265 and HEVC, MKV containers, MP4 containers, everything just works, because the

00:08:17 ◼   ► chip is fast enough to do the the transcoding necessary for iOS devices and Apple TV. But in

00:08:24 ◼   ► in the process, I also got a chance to sort of play around with Android TV and appreciate

00:08:30 ◼   ► the things that Google is doing on the big screen. And I gotta say, it's not too bad.

00:08:37 ◼   ► It's actually very nice. I think from a UI perspective, from a navigation perspective,

00:08:43 ◼   ► everything makes a little more sense to me than the tvOS UI. It's not too Android-ish

00:08:50 ◼   ► in the sense that, like, whenever I use, I have an Android phone, and whenever I use

00:08:55 ◼   ► Android, I, there's some UI metaphors that I never really understand, or, just because

00:09:02 ◼   ► they're so different from what I'm used to. But with Android TV, because I'm not a huge

00:09:08 ◼   ► TV OS user, with my Apple TV, I found the switch to be more, to be less cumbersome than

00:09:16 ◼   ► switching from an iPhone to an Android smartphone. And there are some nice features like Chromecast

00:09:22 ◼   ► integration is built in. So you can, I was watching a video on my iPhone and with a YouTube

00:09:29 ◼   ► app and if you have an Nvidia Shield hooked up to your TV you can just beam the video

00:09:34 ◼   ► to the Shield as a Chromecast device, which is really nice. And of course it's got, because

00:09:40 ◼   ► it's Android and there are no, you know, those limitations do not apply, you can use Spotify

00:09:45 ◼   ► as a native audio playback source, so I added my Spotify account, and with the recent update

00:09:53 ◼   ► to the NVIDIA Shield software, there's also the Google Assistant.

00:09:57 ◼   ► You can ask to the Google Assistant on the Shield to play music for you, and it will

00:10:01 ◼   ► play in Spotify, which was also really nice.

00:10:04 ◼   ► And finally, I haven't played any games.

00:10:07 ◼   ► I also got the, like, there's a game controller that came in the box, I don't care, because

00:10:10 ◼   ► I just want to play with Mario on my Nintendo Switch, but I can see that the remote, so

00:10:17 ◼   ► there's in the box I got an Nvidia Shield Pro because it's got 500GB of storage and

00:10:22 ◼   ► I thought I would need that storage because sometimes when Plex is doing the transcoding

00:10:26 ◼   ► it caches some of the buffered video content into the local storage. So I thought, you

00:10:30 ◼   ► know, if I'm transcoding like five videos or if I'm downloading five videos because

00:10:35 ◼   ► I'm getting on a plane, I want to be able to have a local cache instead of doing the

00:10:39 ◼   ► back and forth with the Synology and the network.

00:10:41 ◼   ► So in the box for the NVIDIA Shield Pro, you get the actual NVIDIA Shield with 500GB of

00:10:47 ◼   ► storage, you get the TV remote and you get the game controller.

00:10:50 ◼   ► The game controller, I don't know what it's like to use because I haven't done it in a

00:10:56 ◼   ► single game, but the TV remote is much much better than the Apple TV remote.

00:11:00 ◼   ► It actually makes sense.

00:11:02 ◼   ► I feel like I always pick it up in the right orientation, the buttons are nicely labeled

00:11:08 ◼   ► and there's an area somewhere in the middle that I think acts as a touchpad

00:11:11 ◼   ► so you can you can swipe up and down to adjust the volume and stuff like that

00:11:16 ◼   ► it's nice and I mean for something that I primarily bought as a home server for

00:11:24 ◼   ► hardware accelerated Plex streaming it also comes as with Android TV so I guess

00:11:31 ◼   ► That's a nice plus.

00:11:32 ◼   ► But overall, this basically this Nvidia Shield thing just sits next to my dour

00:11:40 ◼   ► and my Synology.

00:11:41 ◼   ► My basically, I never turn it on on my TV and it just does streaming for video

00:11:50 ◼   ► content to my iPhone and iPad.

00:11:52 ◼   ► That's all.

00:11:53 ◼   ► And with that, we made our final evolution into becoming Accidental Tech Podcast, as

00:11:59 ◼   ► Federico spends time with hardware encoding machines looking for Plex. So congratulations

00:12:06 ◼   ► everyone we did it, we made it. Was this explanation satisfying to you Myke? Yeah, you definitely

00:12:11 ◼   ► gave me a lot more information than I was expecting. I feel like for Halloween we decided

00:12:17 ◼   ► to dress as ATP, that's what we did. Federico I have Casey here? Yeah, you're Casey in this

00:12:26 ◼   ► one though because Casey is the Plex guy right like I'm sure he's obviously writing down yeah

00:12:32 ◼   ► okay I'll happily will be Marco so there we go congratulations to all of us I am very surprised

00:12:40 ◼   ► at the amount of power that the shield has I would not have expected it to be able to do everything

00:12:44 ◼   ► that you was describing like just the multiple trans like encoding of videos it just it wasn't

00:12:49 ◼   ► a device that I necessarily considered would be that powerful when thinking about other devices

00:12:55 ◼   ► and it's like that it's competing against you know like the Apple TV I

00:12:59 ◼   ► can't imagine that that could do that you know something like a Chromecast

00:13:02 ◼   ► obviously cannot you know it was interesting. Yeah the main difference is

00:13:06 ◼   ► because it's Android you can do stuff like you go into the settings like the

00:13:10 ◼   ► system settings of the Nvidia Shield and you can you can add multiple external

00:13:16 ◼   ► storage sources stuff like Synology for example or even I mean it's got USB

00:13:21 ◼   ► ports on this thing so you can connect like a USB SSD and use it for external storage.

00:13:27 ◼   ► This is the kind of stuff that you will never be able to do on an Apple TV and so that allows me

00:13:31 ◼   ► to keep my Synology and the money that I spend on my Synology have four terabytes of external storage

00:13:37 ◼   ► but also use a modern TV box that does the hardware decoding behind the scenes which is nice.

00:13:46 ◼   ► In your continued quest for the best keyboards for your iPads,

00:13:52 ◼   ► David sent in to us the Slimbook Zag.

00:13:57 ◼   ► It seems like on paper for the 12.9, this thing has everything

00:14:02 ◼   ► that you're looking for Federico.

00:14:03 ◼   ► Have you ever come across this product before?

00:14:05 ◼   ► So I think

00:14:07 ◼   ► many, many years ago, I used to have a Zag keyboard.

00:14:13 ◼   ► They had like the Zag Folio or something, right?

00:14:16 ◼   ► that was a pretty popular keyboard that they made.

00:14:18 ◼   ► Yeah, I think so. My only problem with this product, just two small things.

00:14:23 ◼   ► One, there's no Italian layout, so if I were to consider this I would have to get the English UK option.

00:14:29 ◼   ► And the images in the screenshots are from iOS 8, so that doesn't inspire a lot of confidence.

00:14:35 ◼   ► [laughter]

00:14:38 ◼   ► I'm just saying.

00:14:39 ◼   ► How can you tell it's 8? I can tell it's not new, but...

00:14:42 ◼   ► It's, look, I remember, this is, no, no, the wallpaper and the music icon, it's ISH.

00:14:48 ◼   ► No, I just said, there is newsstand, there is a newsstand icon there.

00:14:51 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:14:52 ◼   ► Wow.

00:14:53 ◼   ► Come on guys, what are you doing?

00:14:55 ◼   ► TBT.

00:14:56 ◼   ► Yeah, out of principle, like, just don't buy this, right?

00:14:58 ◼   ► Like, it's just like, if you can't get that set, like, I cannot trust your product.

00:15:02 ◼   ► I just can't.

00:15:03 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:15:04 ◼   ► It doesn't inspire confidence, yeah.

00:15:06 ◼   ► Because that's clearly not that device, right?

00:15:09 ◼   ► Like, in that thing, anyway.

00:15:11 ◼   ► Remember we used to care about screenshots that was a different time. Oh, yeah. Yeah

00:15:15 ◼   ► Gotta clean those screenshots

00:15:18 ◼   ► Does Google Docs have drag-and-drop?

00:15:21 ◼   ► Nope

00:15:22 ◼   ► No, and they also we don't have access to Google Docs anymore

00:15:26 ◼   ► Yeah

00:15:30 ◼   ► We were getting ready to record the show and it seems so a quick check on Twitter says this is happening a

00:15:36 ◼   ► Big yellow arrow box shows up on the Google Doc for me

00:15:40 ◼   ► I own the document this item has been flagged as inappropriate and can no longer be shared

00:15:44 ◼   ► When you hit request a review it goes to a tab that is a 404 page on Google Doc support

00:15:51 ◼   ► So they're they're struggling today. So we're in Dropbox paper

00:15:54 ◼   ► but it's uh

00:15:56 ◼   ► It's quite a scene over there. I

00:15:58 ◼   ► Don't think Dropbox paper has drag-and-drop either right? I don't know. I

00:16:03 ◼   ► I don't know. Do you know Federico? I'm assuming no.

00:16:06 ◼   ► No, I don't think they do. Okay. Okay. So nobody does basically. If you want a collaborative

00:16:12 ◼   ► editing suite. I tried it into editorial the other day and then I thought wait a second.

00:16:19 ◼   ► This is the wrong app to be trying this. That's not gonna ever happen for you. 2025. A quick

00:16:25 ◼   ► reminder that we are halfway through our cool fresh gear pre-order. There'll be a link in

00:16:31 ◼   ► in the show notes.

00:16:32 ◼   ► This is a t-shirt and set of two AirPod stickers

00:16:37 ◼   ► to make everything in your life look like tiny things

00:16:39 ◼   ► of floss, which I think are adorable and hilarious.

00:16:43 ◼   ► It is a pre-order, so get your orders in

00:16:45 ◼   ► by Monday, November 6th, and we'll get these shipped out

00:16:49 ◼   ► mid-December.

00:16:50 ◼   ► If you are a member of Real AFM, check your email.

00:16:53 ◼   ► Last week we sent an email out that includes

00:16:55 ◼   ► some discount codes so you can get 15% off this

00:16:58 ◼   ► and anything else in the merch store.

00:17:00 ◼   ► So I'm super excited about this.

00:17:02 ◼   ► I think it looks awesome.

00:17:03 ◼   ► Frank did a great job and it's just a fun holiday,

00:17:08 ◼   ► little pre-order deal from Relay.

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00:19:40 ◼   ► So Steven, where is your MacBook Pro?

00:19:44 ◼   ► Do you have it back yet?

00:19:45 ◼   ► Did they fix the top case?

00:19:46 ◼   ► - I do have it back.

00:19:48 ◼   ► So what I shared last time was not the whole story.

00:19:52 ◼   ► I went to the Apple store and had a Genius Bar appointment,

00:19:56 ◼   ► whatever went, and they wanted to charge me $428 plus tax

00:20:00 ◼   ► to repair this computer.

00:20:05 ◼   ► Now this computer is under the limited warranty

00:20:07 ◼   ► until January.

00:20:08 ◼   ► I've not purchased AppleCare to extend that,

00:20:10 ◼   ► but it is under warranty.

00:20:13 ◼   ► The genius who was helpful,

00:20:16 ◼   ► I have nothing against my interaction with him,

00:20:18 ◼   ► basically explained it as the butterfly switch,

00:20:22 ◼   ► a little plastic piece that Phil Schiller

00:20:23 ◼   ► was so excited about when they introduced it

00:20:25 ◼   ► a couple years ago, that sits in little metal brackets

00:20:28 ◼   ► on the top case and the issue, the way my key failed,

00:20:33 ◼   ► if you remember, the bottom part of it was flapping

00:20:36 ◼   ► and so the key was like smashing into

00:20:39 ◼   ► those little metal pieces and bent them down.

00:20:41 ◼   ► and his concern was that that was accidental damage.

00:20:44 ◼   ► Which of course is just like complete fill in the blank

00:20:47 ◼   ► so I don't have to bleep this later in the edit.

00:20:49 ◼   ► Like it's ridiculous.

00:20:50 ◼   ► I told him that and I was like I really needed

00:20:53 ◼   ► to speak to the service manager and explained it to her.

00:20:57 ◼   ► How the key failed and that I understood

00:20:59 ◼   ► that that's what it was showing

00:21:00 ◼   ► and that this is why it was showing that.

00:21:02 ◼   ► I do not play the I used to do this for a living card ever

00:21:06 ◼   ► at the Apple store but I played it in this conversation

00:21:08 ◼   ► with the manager.

00:21:09 ◼   ► I was like I understand what your genius is saying.

00:21:11 ◼   ► - Oh dang.

00:21:12 ◼   ► - But this is ridiculous.

00:21:13 ◼   ► It's not like I tried to put the key back on,

00:21:15 ◼   ► it's not like I tried to bend these things.

00:21:18 ◼   ► The key failed.

00:21:19 ◼   ► This is a nine month old computer

00:21:20 ◼   ► that's owned by a business.

00:21:21 ◼   ► It's unacceptable.

00:21:24 ◼   ► And so--

00:21:25 ◼   ► - Did you say don't you know who I am?

00:21:27 ◼   ► - I did not say that.

00:21:28 ◼   ► I said I've got a background in hardware repair,

00:21:31 ◼   ► including at the store.

00:21:33 ◼   ► I understand that these things are fragile.

00:21:35 ◼   ► I would not have gone in there with a tool

00:21:36 ◼   ► trying to fix it myself.

00:21:38 ◼   ► And so she, thankfully, said,

00:21:41 ◼   ► "Hey, you know, we'll cover that.

00:21:43 ◼   ► "I understand your point of view."

00:21:45 ◼   ► We decided to do it in the store

00:21:47 ◼   ► because sending a cover repair to the repair center

00:21:50 ◼   ► can get weird, they find something else wrong,

00:21:51 ◼   ► they have to get it okay, it can add a lot of time to it.

00:21:54 ◼   ► So I get the computer, they order the top case.

00:21:56 ◼   ► So it's top case, keyboard, and battery is one component.

00:22:00 ◼   ► Those parts came in, I don't know, three or four days later.

00:22:03 ◼   ► I take my computer out there, they're gonna fix it,

00:22:05 ◼   ► I'll have it back in three or four days.

00:22:08 ◼   ► Three days into it, I get a phone call.

00:22:09 ◼   ► I'm like, great, my computer's ready.

00:22:11 ◼   ► The computer's not ready.

00:22:12 ◼   ► Turns out they also have to order a screw kit

00:22:15 ◼   ► because something about these screws can't be reused.

00:22:17 ◼   ► And they didn't, so they basically didn't have

00:22:19 ◼   ► all the parts, which is ridiculous.

00:22:21 ◼   ► And the genius admin was like, you know,

00:22:23 ◼   ► we actually haven't done one of these in store.

00:22:25 ◼   ► We sent them out to the repair center.

00:22:27 ◼   ► At that point, I did not want anyone locally touching them.

00:22:30 ◼   ► He's like, you haven't done this before?

00:22:31 ◼   ► Like, send them to the repair center.

00:22:32 ◼   ► They do these all day.

00:22:34 ◼   ► And if it takes a longer time or something,

00:22:36 ◼   ► that's on the store, that's the store's problem, not mine.

00:22:38 ◼   ► So I go, you know, they ship the computer

00:22:42 ◼   ► to the depot for me.

00:22:44 ◼   ► Two days later, I get an email from Apple.

00:22:47 ◼   ► You know, "Dear Mr. Hackett, we're trying to get in touch

00:22:50 ◼   ► "with you about your repair.

00:22:50 ◼   ► "Please call this number, reference this case number."

00:22:52 ◼   ► So I call, and they need the firmware password

00:22:56 ◼   ► for the computer.

00:22:57 ◼   ► I have a firmware password on it,

00:22:58 ◼   ► means you can't boot it from an external device

00:23:00 ◼   ► without the password.

00:23:01 ◼   ► Clearly they were doing that as a diagnostic at the depot.

00:23:04 ◼   ► And the Apple Store didn't need it,

00:23:06 ◼   ► 'cause they don't need that to do repair internally.

00:23:08 ◼   ► And they didn't think to ask for it

00:23:10 ◼   ► when they sent the computer out for repair.

00:23:13 ◼   ► So I give this person over the phone

00:23:15 ◼   ► my firmware password, which is very complicated.

00:23:17 ◼   ► - Let me ask you a question about this.

00:23:18 ◼   ► I wanna ask you a question about this process.

00:23:20 ◼   ► Why do you have the firmware password?

00:23:22 ◼   ► - Why do I have it?

00:23:24 ◼   ► Because I travel with the MacBook Pro

00:23:27 ◼   ► and if it were to walk away or something,

00:23:30 ◼   ► I wouldn't want somebody to be able to boot it

00:23:31 ◼   ► get into it. It's not anything you ever run into unless you try to boot it from a USB

00:23:36 ◼   ► driver from recovery or something.

00:23:38 ◼   ► It's kind of like the reason for having it is negated by giving it to somebody over the

00:23:42 ◼   ► telephone though, right?

00:23:43 ◼   ► Yeah, but it's Apple. And honestly, I would change it when I got it back because I gave

00:23:49 ◼   ► it to somebody else. So in my mind, I think they did not ask for an administrative password,

00:23:57 ◼   ► and they're probably going to need it.

00:23:59 ◼   ► Right, so I hang up the phone.

00:24:01 ◼   ► Two hours later, Mr. Hackett, we're trying to get in touch

00:24:04 ◼   ► with you about your repair, please call us at this number,

00:24:05 ◼   ► reference this case number. - Oh my gosh.

00:24:07 ◼   ► - I call them back.

00:24:08 ◼   ► Now I had created a administrator on this machine

00:24:11 ◼   ► just for them, the username was Apple,

00:24:13 ◼   ► the password was Apple.

00:24:14 ◼   ► I give the nice moment on the phone,

00:24:17 ◼   ► that username and password.

00:24:18 ◼   ► She says, "Great, thank you so much.

00:24:20 ◼   ► "Hopefully I won't have to call you again."

00:24:22 ◼   ► Like, 'cause they have a record of all this.

00:24:23 ◼   ► So she can see what I've been through already.

00:24:25 ◼   ► At this point, I've been without the machine six days.

00:24:28 ◼   ► So it's like nine days or something

00:24:30 ◼   ► since my first interaction,

00:24:32 ◼   ► and then it's been gone for a while.

00:24:35 ◼   ► So I finally get it eight days later.

00:24:38 ◼   ► It's gone a total of eight days.

00:24:40 ◼   ► I finally get it back.

00:24:42 ◼   ► And it's fine.

00:24:43 ◼   ► I'm not out the 428 bucks.

00:24:46 ◼   ► The first thing I did in the Apple Store,

00:24:48 ◼   ► open TextEdit and type every single key.

00:24:51 ◼   ► All the keys work.

00:24:51 ◼   ► They all feel good, right?

00:24:53 ◼   ► None of them are uneven.

00:24:55 ◼   ► So it's fixed, it's fine.

00:25:00 ◼   ► In the meantime, an episode of ATP came out,

00:25:05 ◼   ► and I'm gonna ruin, this is a couple episodes ago now,

00:25:07 ◼   ► so sorry.

00:25:08 ◼   ► Marco Arment bought a late 2015 MacBook Pro

00:25:13 ◼   ► to replace his touch bar,

00:25:14 ◼   ► 'cause he just got fed up with it, which I understand.

00:25:18 ◼   ► I'm not doing that,

00:25:20 ◼   ► But I did have a 2012 MacBook Pro in the collection

00:25:23 ◼   ► that it needs a battery, but it's fine.

00:25:26 ◼   ► And I needed, actually came into a situation

00:25:29 ◼   ► where I needed a laptop while this thing was gone.

00:25:31 ◼   ► Usually I don't need a laptop in town,

00:25:33 ◼   ► I usually mostly use it for travel.

00:25:35 ◼   ► Or I just wanna work from somewhere else,

00:25:36 ◼   ► but my iMac is my main machine.

00:25:38 ◼   ► So I needed it, so I migrated my user to it.

00:25:44 ◼   ► There's a lot of funny stuff with that,

00:25:45 ◼   ► including that this MacBook Pro now thinks it has Touch ID,

00:25:48 ◼   ► because I migrated it from a computer with Touch ID,

00:25:50 ◼   ► which is pretty funny.

00:25:51 ◼   ► There's a tweet about that in the show notes.

00:25:54 ◼   ► So I've been using this late or mid 2012,

00:25:57 ◼   ► whatever it is, Retina MacBook Pro.

00:25:59 ◼   ► And I see, again, I don't think I'm doing this,

00:26:04 ◼   ► I see what Marco is saying, right?

00:26:05 ◼   ► Like it has all the ports I need,

00:26:07 ◼   ► the keyboard is pretty good, it's still Retina.

00:26:10 ◼   ► I understand why he did it.

00:26:11 ◼   ► And like I have this virus in my brain,

00:26:13 ◼   ► like maybe I just used the 2012 MacBook Pro for a while.

00:26:16 ◼   ► Because at the end of the day,

00:26:19 ◼   ► yeah, the Apple sort of screwed this up multiple times,

00:26:21 ◼   ► but ultimately they took care of me,

00:26:22 ◼   ► ultimately they paid for the repair,

00:26:24 ◼   ► which is all I wanted.

00:26:24 ◼   ► After that,

00:26:25 ◼   ► after that, it doesn't really matter how long it took,

00:26:31 ◼   ► 'cause I didn't have to pay for it.

00:26:33 ◼   ► But the deal is,

00:26:37 ◼   ► I now feel like this computer's a ticking time bomb.

00:26:39 ◼   ► I feel like this keyboard is just one tiny piece

00:26:44 ◼   ► debris away from failing again.

00:26:47 ◼   ► I would not own a late 2016 MacBook Pro without AppleCare.

00:26:53 ◼   ► People can debate if AppleCare is worth it or not.

00:26:56 ◼   ► I tend to do it because I know how expensive these repairs are on these computers.

00:27:00 ◼   ► But at the same time, I can say I've had multiple computers over the years where I bought AppleCare

00:27:04 ◼   ► and never needed it.

00:27:05 ◼   ► But if the GPU goes out on this iMac, then whatever it was, two or three hundred bucks,

00:27:11 ◼   ► is worth it.

00:27:12 ◼   ► If your keyboard dies on your MacBook Pro and it's $428 to get a key fixed, maybe you

00:27:19 ◼   ► should buy AppleCare.

00:27:20 ◼   ► So if I keep this thing, I'm definitely going to buy AppleCare for it.

00:27:24 ◼   ► But I just don't want to.

00:27:26 ◼   ► It left such a bad taste in my mouth knowing how much this repair is.

00:27:29 ◼   ► I don't know what to do.

00:27:30 ◼   ► So I have the 2016 MacBook Pro.

00:27:32 ◼   ► It's here on my desk.

00:27:34 ◼   ► I haven't really logged into it again.

00:27:36 ◼   ► I've just been using the 2012 and we'll just see what happens.

00:27:40 ◼   ► But it was such a pain.

00:27:44 ◼   ► At the same time, I think nerds experience, as we're going to talk about this later,

00:27:47 ◼   ► I think, when nerds have something happen with their computers or with their devices,

00:27:52 ◼   ► it's sort of better than the average person.

00:27:54 ◼   ► Because I understand how things can go wrong, how repairs can be complicated.

00:27:58 ◼   ► But at the same time, it also kind of makes it worse, because I know how to do a good

00:28:03 ◼   ► job at it.

00:28:04 ◼   ► I know what steps they could have taken.

00:28:07 ◼   ► genius should have known better than trying to blame accidental damage on it.

00:28:10 ◼   ► I told him, "You and I both know that these keyboards are fragile.

00:28:14 ◼   ► I don't know why we're playing this game."

00:28:17 ◼   ► So it's been really frustrating, but it is back.

00:28:20 ◼   ► Apple did take care of it ultimately.

00:28:22 ◼   ► Any interaction I had with Apple was really potty.

00:28:24 ◼   ► The second time I had to call them to give them the second password, you could just hear

00:28:29 ◼   ► in her voice that she was disappointed that she had to call me again, that we had to have

00:28:33 ◼   ► another interaction over it.

00:28:35 ◼   ► So yeah, that's the story. It's been like four years since this key broke it feels like.

00:28:42 ◼   ► But now it's over until, you know, another nine months from now and it breaks again.

00:28:47 ◼   ► Whew!

00:28:49 ◼   ► Well, that was a story.

00:28:52 ◼   ► The problem with this, you both have great stories today, the problem with this issue

00:28:56 ◼   ► that I find is that it shouldn't cost nearly $500 to replace a key on a keyboard and if

00:29:04 ◼   ► is what it costs, the product wasn't designed well. Yeah, so I think we should

00:29:11 ◼   ► clarify a little bit. If the key itself just breaks, they basically do it in

00:29:15 ◼   ► store, they have a box of them, whatever, they pop one on, and they tried that at

00:29:18 ◼   ► first and then he took the time to actually see what was wrong, but if the

00:29:24 ◼   ► top case fails, so if those little metal brackets bend or break or if the little

00:29:28 ◼   ► so the key sits on a little rubber switch, if that breaks or falls off or is

00:29:34 ◼   ► is damaged somehow, then the entire top case is that 428.

00:29:38 ◼   ► So it's top case, keyboard, and battery.

00:29:42 ◼   ► And a lot of that expenses is the labor

00:29:44 ◼   ► because the way these machines are built,

00:29:45 ◼   ► they're built into the top case.

00:29:46 ◼   ► So basically you put them face down

00:29:48 ◼   ► and you take all the guts out of one,

00:29:50 ◼   ► including the screen, and like attach it,

00:29:52 ◼   ► like you're rebuilding the computer from zero.

00:29:55 ◼   ► So I understand why it costs that,

00:29:56 ◼   ► but I totally agree with you.

00:29:58 ◼   ► It is ridiculous that such a simple failure

00:30:02 ◼   ► can lead to such an expensive repair.

00:30:03 ◼   ► And it is worse with this MacBook Pro

00:30:06 ◼   ► because the keyboard is worse,

00:30:07 ◼   ► but this is a flaw inherent to the Unibody design,

00:30:11 ◼   ► that since they started doing Unibody

00:30:13 ◼   ► with the original MacBook Air,

00:30:14 ◼   ► and then in 2008 when they introduced it

00:30:16 ◼   ► into the MacBook Pros, this is the expense

00:30:18 ◼   ► because everything is built into this one piece.

00:30:21 ◼   ► And you have to replace that piece,

00:30:23 ◼   ► a lot of stuff comes with it.

00:30:25 ◼   ► And I'm not suggesting Apple get away from the Unibody.

00:30:28 ◼   ► I really like it.

00:30:29 ◼   ► I mean, this machine is thin and light

00:30:30 ◼   ► and amazingly rigid,

00:30:31 ◼   ► but clearly you need to have some sort of thing

00:30:35 ◼   ► in your system of like, if this key,

00:30:38 ◼   ► you know, if these keyboards have problems,

00:30:42 ◼   ► we need a cheaper way to fix them.

00:30:45 ◼   ► I still think that we could be in a situation

00:30:47 ◼   ► where Apple opens a repair extension program

00:30:50 ◼   ► on these keyboards, okay, for three years,

00:30:51 ◼   ► in or out of warranty, if your keyboard's failed,

00:30:53 ◼   ► we're gonna replace it for you.

00:30:55 ◼   ► They should do that because this design,

00:30:57 ◼   ► as you said, is inherently flawed.

00:31:00 ◼   ► 'Cause the thing is, we've had unibody Macs for a while.

00:31:04 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:31:05 ◼   ► - But it's only now that there seems to be

00:31:06 ◼   ► widespread keyboard problems.

00:31:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, 'cause the old keyboards are way more robust.

00:31:10 ◼   ► - And could they be replaced without taking

00:31:14 ◼   ► the top case off, the old ones,

00:31:16 ◼   ► or did they still need that?

00:31:18 ◼   ► Like if you bust a key on your 2012, what happens?

00:31:21 ◼   ► - So it's the same type deal.

00:31:23 ◼   ► If that little rubber piece or one of the brackets

00:31:26 ◼   ► is broken, it needs a top case.

00:31:28 ◼   ► But the way they were designed,

00:31:29 ◼   ► that was far less likely to happen.

00:31:32 ◼   ► I mean, to really break one of these keyboards

00:31:34 ◼   ► in a way that you need a top case,

00:31:35 ◼   ► it would have to be accidental damage.

00:31:37 ◼   ► You would have to go in there

00:31:38 ◼   ► digging around with a dental pick.

00:31:40 ◼   ► Now, it's much easier for it to happen

00:31:42 ◼   ► because the keyboards fail

00:31:43 ◼   ► and then it leads to this other issue.

00:31:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't know, man.

00:31:49 ◼   ► It seems like a bit of a mess to me.

00:31:50 ◼   ► - Connected, we are all just in keyboard pain,

00:31:55 ◼   ► I feel like, the last couple months.

00:31:57 ◼   ► and it's just-- - I'm okay.

00:31:58 ◼   ► - You're okay?

00:31:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, Microsoft sculpt ergonomic keyboard

00:32:02 ◼   ► on the Mac and then I barely use the laptops

00:32:06 ◼   ► so I don't care and I don't have problems

00:32:08 ◼   ► and then I use the smart keyboard

00:32:09 ◼   ► because smart keyboard is the best keyboard

00:32:11 ◼   ► that Apple currently makes.

00:32:12 ◼   ► - I agree with that.

00:32:13 ◼   ► Well, the Magic Keyboard is still pretty good,

00:32:16 ◼   ► the external aluminum one. - I prefer it.

00:32:17 ◼   ► I don't like the Magic Keyboard, I never liked it.

00:32:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's fine. - I don't know why,

00:32:20 ◼   ► it's just not for me. - That's fine.

00:32:22 ◼   ► I like the smart keyboard too.

00:32:23 ◼   ► I mean, I've been typing a lot on the iPad

00:32:25 ◼   ► and like, keyboard's really good,

00:32:26 ◼   ► especially on the 10-5, like the size is really nice.

00:32:29 ◼   ► And it uses the same switches as my stupid MacBook Pro,

00:32:33 ◼   ► but it's covered in cloth, so stuff can't get in.

00:32:36 ◼   ► Like, just pull a Surface Book and cover the thing in a rug

00:32:38 ◼   ► and you'll be fine.

00:32:39 ◼   ► - Fishing for titles there, I like it.

00:32:43 ◼   ► Cover it in a rug is a good one.

00:32:45 ◼   ► Federico, I'm just taking a nice little back seat today,

00:32:49 ◼   ► but I've got something right for the end of the show,

00:32:50 ◼   ► so we'll wait, we'll wait, don't worry, I'll get my time.

00:32:53 ◼   ► Federico, I see a note in the document here where you are concerned about fine art in

00:32:58 ◼   ► your applications.

00:32:59 ◼   ► Well, it's just, this is something that Steven and I were discussing a few days ago, that

00:33:04 ◼   ► it seems like there's a trend lately in these big services of sort of redesigning some key

00:33:16 ◼   ► aspects of the branding and splash screens, websites, with these new artistic, you know,

00:33:24 ◼   ► these illustrations. And I find it fascinating because, especially, you know, we talked about

00:33:32 ◼   ► Dropbox and how they are putting this huge emphasis on this, you know, this fancy redesign

00:33:39 ◼   ► and the whole idea of letting your inner creative energy flow, whatever that means.

00:33:48 ◼   ► And Todoist has also now added a bunch of illustrations to the service.

00:33:54 ◼   ► They're making these announcements.

00:33:55 ◼   ► Now we have new illustrations.

00:33:58 ◼   ► Now I'm not against pretty things.

00:34:03 ◼   ► If you want to have these illustrations, it's fine.

00:34:08 ◼   ► I think there's a... I think it's somewhat strange when...

00:34:13 ◼   ► Like, you do not expect art, you do not expect fine art from your water pipes.

00:34:23 ◼   ► Like, utilities are not supposed to be showcased in a museum, you know?

00:34:31 ◼   ► And so I think it is strange, it's just strange to me to have this contrast between

00:34:37 ◼   ► something that I use because it's useful, but I'm not expecting to be gaining an artistic

00:34:43 ◼   ► sentiment out of that. And also having these companies focus on "oh now you have these

00:34:49 ◼   ► beautiful illustrations in your to-do list". Well, I'm not sure I needed illustrations in my

00:34:54 ◼   ► task manager, but sure I'll take it. And when it gets to the extreme, such as with Dropbox,

00:35:02 ◼   ► it's a you know and they have this and like site wide redesign and a blog post and it's

00:35:09 ◼   ► major announcements it kind of makes me wonder if they focused on this for the past several months

00:35:15 ◼   ► so it's just something to to sort of you know we see these trends come and go with this

00:35:21 ◼   ► big companies big web companies they have money they can invest on this stuff and of course to

00:35:27 ◼   ► do is just like a minor case of a bunch of splash screens. It's more exaggerated in Dropbox maybe.

00:35:34 ◼   ► But I was thinking about why I find this strange, and I guess the problem is indeed that when I'm

00:35:44 ◼   ► using some kind of software, because it does a thing, I'm surprised when that simple utility,

00:35:54 ◼   ► that simple thing gets embellished with a bunch of illustrations. Like, I'm not expecting

00:36:00 ◼   ► to see the Mona Lisa in text edits, you know what I mean? There's that contrast which I

00:36:05 ◼   ► find strange.

00:36:08 ◼   ► So for Todoist, it came with version 11.6 of their iPhone and iOS app. It's like the

00:36:15 ◼   ► top bullet. A new surprise when you reach Todoist 0.

00:36:18 ◼   ► Yeah, that's the tone. It's always like, there's something new for you to experience.

00:36:23 ◼   ► It's not an experience, it's an illustration. It's not like I'm opening my task manager

00:36:28 ◼   ► and I'm taken aback by this magnificent illustration.

00:36:31 ◼   ► I was taken aback.

00:36:33 ◼   ► No.

00:36:34 ◼   ► I think the problem with a lot of this stuff, and I mean, this is how things tend to be

00:36:38 ◼   ► with software and services. Like, if they're not perfect for you, if there's something

00:36:42 ◼   ► you use them but there's something about it that frustrates you, but like whenever

00:36:45 ◼   ► the company or the individual is working on something that's not something that you

00:36:49 ◼   ► want, it's frustrating, right? Because it's like, why are you not fixing the thing or

00:36:52 ◼   ► advancing the thing and I want, but instead you're adding this other feature.

00:36:55 ◼   ► It is exacerbated when that additional feature is a new illustration, because you

00:37:00 ◼   ► just know people had to take time to do it.

00:37:02 ◼   ► Right. Like these things, they don't they don't just magically appear.

00:37:05 ◼   ► So it's I get the frustration.

00:37:07 ◼   ► Also, like, you know, I'm with you that it's like, please understand what you are.

00:37:12 ◼   ► Right. Like this is a big thing with Dropbox right now.

00:37:16 ◼   ► It's like your customers don't care about the fact that you have created some

00:37:21 ◼   ► beautiful illustrations.

00:37:22 ◼   ► This is not a thing that we care

00:37:25 ◼   ► about.

00:37:25 ◼   ► And so you don't have to position it

00:37:27 ◼   ► like it is the best thing ever.

00:37:28 ◼   ► Dropbox should have published the

00:37:31 ◼   ► redesign stuff, but they shouldn't

00:37:33 ◼   ► have tweeted about it from the main

00:37:34 ◼   ► Dropbox Twitter account.

00:37:35 ◼   ► Right. Like, it's not something

00:37:37 ◼   ► that your customers should care

00:37:39 ◼   ► about, like your internal

00:37:41 ◼   ► ideas about your design.

00:37:43 ◼   ► Like, people don't

00:37:44 ◼   ► care about that.

00:37:46 ◼   ► Right. Like, it is for you to

00:37:48 ◼   ► do and you should care about it.

00:37:49 ◼   ► but you don't have to be like, look how amazing this is and expect everyone to go,

00:37:53 ◼   ► yep, I know it. Right. Like, no, that's not, that's not how it works.

00:37:57 ◼   ► So I also like really like realistically,

00:38:00 ◼   ► it's not like I'm opening Dropbox and like I'm moving a bunch of folders around

00:38:04 ◼   ► and I'm zipping documents. And then as I'm looking at the file manager,

00:38:08 ◼   ► I realize, you know, my life should be better. I should,

00:38:11 ◼   ► I should let my creative energy flow.

00:38:13 ◼   ► It's not like that process does not exist.

00:38:16 ◼   ► Like there's no correlation between managing my files and suddenly realizing that my life

00:38:21 ◼   ► needs to have more creative energy.

00:38:23 ◼   ► I just, I don't understand.

00:38:25 ◼   ► It is, I don't know what it is, but like I feel like it is a thing where these services

00:38:32 ◼   ► and these companies, they feel like they have to make you feel like they're more important

00:38:37 ◼   ► to you than they actually might be.

00:38:39 ◼   ► And I assume this is to keep you using their system.

00:38:43 ◼   ► Savage.

00:38:44 ◼   ► don't know who this works on. There must be some people that this works for, but I mean,

00:38:52 ◼   ► it's like, I'm trying to understand why this bothers me, because I think it shouldn't bother

00:38:58 ◼   ► me, like it's just a company doing a thing, but it's the trying to extract a feeling from

00:39:07 ◼   ► my usage of your software that, like on a personal level, like just sync my files and

00:39:14 ◼   ► let me move my folders on iOS. That's all I ask for. And instead they're trying to get

00:39:19 ◼   ► personal with me and I don't want that. And also the illustrations are kind of ugly. But

00:39:25 ◼   ► I'm sorry this is just taste.

00:39:27 ◼   ► The Dropbox ones. The Todoist ones are fine, right? They're fine.

00:39:31 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. The Dropbox ones are, you know,

00:39:35 ◼   ► So Federico, what you need to do and what I expect to see now, you know, you review

00:39:38 ◼   ► a lot of apps on MacStories, you and your team do an incredible job.

00:39:43 ◼   ► I expect a section in every review now to discuss the type of art that's being used

00:39:48 ◼   ► on screens and otherwise I'll just have text.

00:39:52 ◼   ► You can write that all in Italian or something so it's more fine.

00:39:56 ◼   ► Yeah fine art, fine text, fine stories.

00:40:01 ◼   ► And it's like written in papyrus or something so it fits that little section.

00:40:07 ◼   ► I think your site's finally going to make it after this.

00:40:11 ◼   ► This is going to be the turning point.

00:40:13 ◼   ► This is your breakthrough moment.

00:40:15 ◼   ► - It is.

00:40:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, this is what I need to do.

00:40:17 ◼   ► All right.

00:40:20 ◼   ► - We talked about the iMac Pro a little bit on the show.

00:40:24 ◼   ► I know Federico's super excited about it.

00:40:26 ◼   ► I just wanted to point out,

00:40:27 ◼   ► there's this Final Cut Pro X creative summit

00:40:30 ◼   ► that happens in Cupertino that Apple is involved with.

00:40:34 ◼   ► I don't quite understand the relationship

00:40:36 ◼   ► between Apple and this thing.

00:40:37 ◼   ► Anyways, the iMac Pro was there on demo

00:40:42 ◼   ► And it looks really awesome, space gray accessories,

00:40:45 ◼   ► which look really sweet.

00:40:48 ◼   ► Talked about Final Cut Pro 10.4,

00:40:50 ◼   ► which will include color support and support for HEVC,

00:40:55 ◼   ► and direct import of iOS, iMovie timelines, which is cool.

00:41:00 ◼   ► You can start on your iPhone or iPad

00:41:01 ◼   ► and then move it to Final Cut.

00:41:03 ◼   ► And the Sidekick Pro just seems awesome.

00:41:05 ◼   ► People were doing like 8K footage on it,

00:41:08 ◼   ► and it was taking it like a champ,

00:41:10 ◼   ► whereas the late 2015 sometimes struggles on 4K.

00:41:13 ◼   ► I think if you make video for a living

00:41:15 ◼   ► and you aren't interested in a Mac Pro

00:41:17 ◼   ► or can't wait for the Mac Pro,

00:41:19 ◼   ► this definitely seems like a computer

00:41:21 ◼   ► that could work for your needs.

00:41:23 ◼   ► And I'm super interested in it.

00:41:25 ◼   ► I wanna see how it goes at launch,

00:41:27 ◼   ► but I definitely have been thinking about this computer

00:41:29 ◼   ► as an eventual replacement of my iMac, so.

00:41:32 ◼   ► - Do you dream about it?

00:41:33 ◼   ► - No, no, I don't dream about it, but.

00:41:36 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:41:37 ◼   ► - Do you feel like an illustration would help?

00:41:39 ◼   ► - I think so.

00:41:40 ◼   ► Yeah, if they put like a nice colorful light. No, no, that's what I need now. That's what

00:41:43 ◼   ► I need because my late 2015 takes so long to render 4K video. If Final Cut could just

00:41:48 ◼   ► show me some illustrations while it's crunching video in the background, I think that'd be

00:41:52 ◼   ► really nice. See? Yeah.

00:41:55 ◼   ► So that'll help your creative energy flow. Yeah.

00:41:57 ◼   ► You know what a Johnny Ivey illustration would be like?

00:41:59 ◼   ► It's just a white screen. Just a white screen.

00:42:03 ◼   ► Like I understand, about this iMac Pro, right, like seriously, like I understand how difficult

00:42:08 ◼   ► this thing is to build and blah blah blah blah blah like you know it's very powerful

00:42:12 ◼   ► I really don't like those air vents on the back. It needs it though. It's very I know

00:42:17 ◼   ► it needs it which is why I knew you were gonna say which is why I said I understand it right

00:42:22 ◼   ► I understand it needs it but it looks very Windows PC. It's like racing stripes. I don't

00:42:28 ◼   ► like them. Yeah so. I don't like them and they've done a good job of trying to hide

00:42:31 ◼   ► them and like I never see that right like I'm never gonna look around the back of my

00:42:35 ◼   ► on my Mac, but it is a little ugly.

00:42:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, so I've talked to several nerds

00:42:38 ◼   ► who do video and audio names you would expect,

00:42:42 ◼   ► and there are definitely some people

00:42:45 ◼   ► who are super interested in this,

00:42:46 ◼   ► and the people like Marco and me, I think,

00:42:48 ◼   ► of like, yeah, this looks great,

00:42:50 ◼   ► I just wanna see how it performs,

00:42:51 ◼   ► because they say that the airflow is like,

00:42:54 ◼   ► whatever they say, 18 times better,

00:42:56 ◼   ► but it's only 10 times hotter or something,

00:42:58 ◼   ► whatever it is, they seem to have headroom built in,

00:43:00 ◼   ► but as long as it's silent while recording a podcast

00:43:03 ◼   ► my late 2015 is, then I think it would be fine for my uses.

00:43:07 ◼   ► But I kind of want to see, just because it's so new, I don't know if I would wait to Gen2

00:43:14 ◼   ► or very less cease and refuse, have some people I trust use it for a while.

00:43:18 ◼   ► I know Jason Snell's been thinking about it.

00:43:21 ◼   ► He's doing anything multi-core, Final Cut, or sound cleanup or whatever.

00:43:27 ◼   ► Any sort of those tasks would be faster, and speed is always good.

00:43:30 ◼   ► Plus, the accessories are in space gray.

00:43:32 ◼   ► So even if I don't end up with one, I'm sure I actually already have it on my collection

00:43:36 ◼   ► wish list.

00:43:37 ◼   ► iMac Pro Space Gray Input Devices.

00:43:40 ◼   ► Because it looks like the mouse Darth Vader would use.

00:43:44 ◼   ► If he used a bad mouse.

00:43:47 ◼   ► It would be in his little containment pod that he sits in.

00:43:50 ◼   ► His cool office.

00:43:51 ◼   ► Spoiler alert.

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00:45:25 ◼   ► So did we make our pre-orders in time for the iPhone 10?

00:45:30 ◼   ► Steven, did you make your pre-order?

00:45:32 ◼   ► - I most definitely did.

00:45:33 ◼   ► I was up at 2 a.m. my time,

00:45:36 ◼   ► and I have a silver 256 gig with AppleCare Plus.

00:45:41 ◼   ► I remembered this time,

00:45:43 ◼   ► and I did not follow Federico's advice.

00:45:44 ◼   ► I ordered it at the same time.

00:45:46 ◼   ► My order closed at like 2.03 a.m. or 2.04 a.m.,

00:45:50 ◼   ► and I'm doing in-store pickup this Friday

00:45:53 ◼   ► at 8.30 in the morning, so thumbs up.

00:45:56 ◼   ► - Wow, early bird. - Thumbs up here.

00:45:57 ◼   ► Yeah, I got a busy day Friday,

00:45:59 ◼   ► and the store's gonna be hectic so you know just get it, it was the first one available

00:46:04 ◼   ► so I could just get it out of the way. And yeah so I'm excited. What about you Myke?

00:46:11 ◼   ► Let's go to Federico first. Just get Federico's situation out of the way and then we can maybe

00:46:20 ◼   ► go to mine. I was able to pre-order my iPhone X which should be coming on Friday. My setup,

00:46:30 ◼   ► as I described last week, consisted of my MacBook Pro on Wi-Fi, my iPhone on 4G, and

00:46:38 ◼   ► one of my iPad Pros, because now I can say that, Myke, one of my iPad Pros on Wi-Fi also.

00:46:45 ◼   ► the Italian time for pre-orders was 9 a.m. and I started refreshing at

00:46:50 ◼   ► 859 and

00:46:53 ◼   ► for until

00:46:56 ◼   ► 906 a.m

00:46:58 ◼   ► The website was down and the app was not loading

00:47:01 ◼   ► I was kind of getting concerned because I had Twitter streaming on my MacBook and I was taking a look at people being able to

00:47:08 ◼   ► Put in their pre-orders, but at 906 the app when became available on my iPhone

00:47:15 ◼   ► so on 4G and I was able to do the pre-order in like 10 seconds and my email that I got right

00:47:22 ◼   ► away my email says that at seven minutes basically 907 that's when I when I did my pre-order and I

00:47:31 ◼   ► paid with Apple Pay so that took about like three seconds to complete and I did not add AppleCare

00:47:39 ◼   ► and I did not select a pickup location no I'm gonna get AppleCare I just I didn't want to add

00:47:44 ◼   ► extra seconds to the purchase process. So I am going to buy Apple Car Plus. I also did

00:47:52 ◼   ► not set a… I was thinking about like Silvia was looking at my phone and she was like,

00:47:56 ◼   ► "Do you want to get it at the Apple Store?" And I thought about it for a fraction of a

00:48:00 ◼   ► second. Then I thought, "No, it's going to ask me questions about the place where

00:48:03 ◼   ► I want to go to and I don't want to waste time so I'm just going to buy right now."

00:48:08 ◼   ► And I got the email right away. My card got charged the same day and now supposedly it's

00:48:14 ◼   ► coming on Friday. I screwed it up. No, no, no. I screwed it up. What did you do, Myke?

00:48:22 ◼   ► What happened? I mean, I followed the teaching method, right? Like I had all different devices,

00:48:27 ◼   ► all different situations, networks, all that thing. And then, like, the store refreshed

00:48:33 ◼   ► and I was able to, like, it popped up and it was like third for pickup. So, like, I

00:48:40 ◼   ► went to do that but then I don't know why I did this I decided I should change

00:48:44 ◼   ► the store to a different store in London I don't know why I did this it was so

00:48:49 ◼   ► strong I don't know I don't know why I did it it recommended a store that like

00:48:53 ◼   ► isn't very easy for me to get to but like I could have gotten to it right

00:48:59 ◼   ► like it's not a problem but no I was like no I want to get it from this store

00:49:01 ◼   ► so I've ruined it I ran out of time like if by the time I got there it was

00:49:07 ◼   ► already like weeks away so then I'm not thinking straight right so what do I do

00:49:12 ◼   ► I back out to get and try to have a color I don't know why I did this it's

00:49:16 ◼   ► all wrong I just I was in a haze it's like I've never done this before and then

00:49:20 ◼   ► I went into that and it was like they couldn't that was everything was

00:49:24 ◼   ► unavailable pick up then it was only a couple of minutes so I have an order

00:49:27 ◼   ► from Apple for a silver it's not white I keep getting told it's not white for the

00:49:32 ◼   ► silver iPhone X to be delivered between the 13th and 20th of November. Problem number

00:49:40 ◼   ► one, I am going to America on the 16th of November, so I have a small window of time

00:49:46 ◼   ► to receive this order. But I have some other options going on right now.

00:49:53 ◼   ► Oh no. Options. I have other options.

00:49:57 ◼   ► Is this one of the options? A guy in an alley? What are you doing?

00:50:02 ◼   ► Maybe. No, no. That might be one of them. I placed an order for pickup at a store in

00:50:12 ◼   ► a chain, very big chain in the UK called the Carphone Warehouse. It's huge.

00:50:16 ◼   ► People seem not to like them. Like just on Twitter.

00:50:20 ◼   ► Problem. Okay, so the problem with the Carphone Warehouse is this is very normal for them.

00:50:24 ◼   ► They will tell you that the phone is going to be with you on release day. They will charge

00:50:28 ◼   ► you and you get an email like the next day and like, "Nah, it's gonna be the tenth."

00:50:32 ◼   ► Oh no.

00:50:33 ◼   ► This is a very normal thing. But I have spoken to them and they have told me it's the third,

00:50:38 ◼   ► that I'm gonna be able to pick this phone up. Everybody that I know that has been, that

00:50:43 ◼   ► has called them, because I know a few people that did this, that called them and they were

00:50:45 ◼   ► told the tenth, I think they're all getting the space gray. So that might be a bit delayed.

00:50:50 ◼   ► I don't know what's going on, but I've been charged, they told me it's for pickup. But

00:50:54 ◼   ► And I also have a potential resale opportunity from a very nice person.

00:51:00 ◼   ► So I have a couple of options.

00:51:02 ◼   ► I may end up with two iPhones.

00:51:05 ◼   ► I don't know what I'm doing yet.

00:51:07 ◼   ► This is like the Nintendo Switch all over again.

00:51:09 ◼   ► Day phone, night phone.

00:51:10 ◼   ► But yeah, I'm going to deal with it.

00:51:13 ◼   ► If I do end up with two, I already have a buyer for the second one.

00:51:17 ◼   ► Don't @ me.

00:51:18 ◼   ► So I don't know what's going on yet.

00:51:21 ◼   ► But I'll say by next week you'll know.

00:51:24 ◼   ► I'm confident that I will be able to get an iPhone on Friday, but it's all still very

00:51:30 ◼   ► like who knows.

00:51:32 ◼   ► But I've ruined it. I just hope I just I don't know what I did. I was awake like half an

00:51:37 ◼   ► hour before.

00:51:38 ◼   ► But you just you just panicked. I panicked. Yeah. I panicked.

00:51:43 ◼   ► Well I don't know.

00:51:44 ◼   ► Once. So yeah, I totally understand. I totally understand. Yeah. Yeah. That's too bad. Well,

00:51:49 ◼   ► you got options. So you got a bunch of.

00:51:51 ◼   ► I'm really pleased that I have like a couple of options. There's even like a nut

00:51:55 ◼   ► There's like another option as well. Well, I can have a friend is like that

00:51:59 ◼   ► they've bought a phone but it's not the one that they want and if I

00:52:03 ◼   ► Don't get it. They will sell it to me, but it's also not the phone that I want right?

00:52:07 ◼   ► It's like a 64 but like so yeah

00:52:09 ◼   ► I have a bunch of options which will mean that I will hopefully at least have a phone next week so I could talk about it

00:52:15 ◼   ► And then I'll work out what I want to do after that, but fingers crossed. It's very

00:52:21 ◼   ► I have a second part to my story, which we're now getting to the potential problem of my

00:52:28 ◼   ► pre-order. So, I will be driving on Friday, because we need to do a few things.

00:52:36 ◼   ► No, this is unacceptable.

00:52:38 ◼   ► Hold on. So, in theory, we are leaving at 11am, around that time. And usually, my UPS,

00:52:51 ◼   ► person and friend does not show up until lunchtime. And that is a problem, of course, because

00:52:58 ◼   ► I want to get my iPhone on Friday. So I've been considering multiple options here. First,

00:53:05 ◼   ► I need to understand whether the UPS guy comes usually around lunchtime because he likes

00:53:12 ◼   ► to have lunch to pick up like a slice of pizza at the bakery, or if the lunchtime...

00:53:18 ◼   ► This bakery is so intrinsic to your life.

00:53:21 ◼   ► I feel like your entire world revolves around this bakery.

00:53:24 ◼   ► So the reason why this entire bakery delivery system started

00:53:30 ◼   ► off in the first place, it's because the UPS guy

00:53:33 ◼   ► had the idea.

00:53:36 ◼   ► He planted the seed of the idea in my mind,

00:53:39 ◼   ► and then I decided to use that as a plan.

00:53:44 ◼   ► But I knew that, like, he goes to this bakery

00:53:48 ◼   ► to pick up something for lunch.

00:53:50 ◼   ► Now, does the UPS guy have to do that,

00:53:54 ◼   ► or can he come to my house and deliver the package

00:53:57 ◼   ► at like 10 a.m. if I asked him to?

00:54:00 ◼   ► But there's two problems to this.

00:54:03 ◼   ► First, how can I ask the UPS guy to make an exception

00:54:05 ◼   ► from his usual schedule?

00:54:08 ◼   ► And second, am I sure that the delivery

00:54:12 ◼   ► is going to be taking care of UPS. So I'm trying to address these doubts in two ways.

00:54:25 ◼   ► So the second point, I'm trying an experiment. I pre-ordered, like I bought other stuff from

00:54:36 ◼   ► the Apple store. So I can see the UPS guy before and talk to him. Like, tomorrow. Like,

00:54:43 ◼   ► today and on Thursday. So I'm just going to say this, right? Like,

00:54:49 ◼   ► you could just grease his palm a little bit, you know?

00:54:52 ◼   ► No, no, no. Once you go down that road, you are always

00:54:57 ◼   ► greasing the palm. That's a bridge you can't uncross.

00:55:00 ◼   ► No, no, because you just say like, on this occasion, could you please come to me at this

00:55:04 ◼   ► time and I would really appreciate it." And then you reach out your hand, right? And you

00:55:09 ◼   ► have, you know, you have a cool 20 in it.

00:55:13 ◼   ► There's more, hold on. So what I did is I told you that I didn't particularly care for

00:55:18 ◼   ► wireless charging, but I bought the Belkin BoostUp charger anyway, because it had a delivery

00:55:25 ◼   ► date of Thursday. So I thought, "Well, this is perfect because UPS..."

00:55:29 ◼   ► You just got a case or something.

00:55:31 ◼   ► you need it to be in the style of the iPhone 10. So the UPS guy comes to my house the day

00:55:37 ◼   ► before and I can talk to him and I can be like, hey, is there any chance like tomorrow

00:55:42 ◼   ► morning you can maybe make an exception and instead of showing up at 1pm you can be here

00:55:47 ◼   ► at 10am. But you know, it's the day before. This is perfect. And I was really excited

00:55:51 ◼   ► because I had this plan. And yesterday, last night, I get this notification from the from

00:55:57 ◼   ► the Apple Store that says, "Well, your order is gonna be to your house tomorrow instead

00:56:03 ◼   ► of Thursday." And I'm like, "Okay, tomorrow is Tuesday, it's fine. It will probably remember

00:56:09 ◼   ► something that I asked him on Tuesday on, you know, it'll keep it in mind for Friday."

00:56:14 ◼   ► And as I was thinking about this, like, you know, is he really gonna remember a question

00:56:19 ◼   ► from Tuesday when it's Friday morning? And so in the meantime, I also bought something

00:56:24 ◼   ► nuts from the Apple Store. Oh my God, what are you doing? Which keyboard? No, no, no,

00:56:31 ◼   ► a cable. A USB cable. Oh really? This poor guy. I got a USB-C cable that should be coming

00:56:41 ◼   ► on Thursday. Did you need it? Or was it the cheapest thing you've found? No, no, no. You

00:56:48 ◼   ► You should have just come with the adapter, the headphone adapter.

00:56:51 ◼   ► So I thought I can ask him a question on Tuesday and then I can ask him the same question on

00:56:58 ◼   ► Thursday and then when it's Friday morning he will remember my request.

00:57:03 ◼   ► So have you seen him today? Has he come today?

00:57:06 ◼   ► Hold on. This morning I get the following notification from deliveries. It says "A

00:57:15 ◼   ► non UPS labor dispute as the as delayed your delivery. So there's a national there's a

00:57:22 ◼   ► national strike for delivery companies. There are yesterday and today they are not delivering

00:57:31 ◼   ► orders and it seems that UPS is affected even if it technically it's not a UPS strike, but

00:57:40 ◼   ► some of the companies that they use, you know, like truck drivers for example, there's this

00:57:46 ◼   ► national strike. So, at this point I'm not sure where the Belkin BoostUp charger is.

00:57:55 ◼   ► The cable should be here on Thursday, I think. And all of this says that my iPhone should

00:58:03 ◼   ► be coming on Friday, I think I will be able to still get the phone because I signed up

00:58:10 ◼   ► for UPS My Choice, which is this extra additional service where you can monitor your delivery

00:58:16 ◼   ► and make changes.

00:58:17 ◼   ► Quite possibly the hardest sign up process for anything ever. It's almost impossible

00:58:22 ◼   ► to do it, but once you do it, they give you more information about your packages. But

00:58:27 ◼   ► it is baffling to try and sign up for this service.

00:58:31 ◼   ► Yeah, so worst case scenario I will make changes to my delivery from UPS My Choice and set

00:58:38 ◼   ► like a pickup point. There are a bunch around my house, I mean like official pickup points,

00:58:44 ◼   ► not the bakery, like stores when you need to show your ID, like stuff like that. But

00:58:49 ◼   ► worst case scenario I will just call the guy or text him because I have his phone number.

00:58:55 ◼   ► Wait, you have his phone number?

00:58:57 ◼   ► I have his personal cell.

00:58:58 ◼   ► Why are you doing all of this Federico? You have his contact information.

00:59:01 ◼   ► It seems like an intrusion of his privacy to just call him on the phone and be like,

00:59:05 ◼   ► "Hey, I'm the guy from Amazon."

00:59:06 ◼   ► Where did you get his phone number?

00:59:08 ◼   ► Where did you get his phone number?

00:59:10 ◼   ► He gave it to me.

00:59:13 ◼   ► But he called me once.

00:59:16 ◼   ► He called me on the phone and he was like, "This is my phone number."

00:59:18 ◼   ► And so I saved his phone number.

00:59:20 ◼   ► I never used it.

00:59:22 ◼   ► I never used it because it seems like a little too much, maybe.

00:59:26 ◼   ► I still think he needs to give him some money.

00:59:28 ◼   ► needs a tip or a bribe, however you want to do it, but you gotta make this worth his while, man.

00:59:34 ◼   ► I'm struggling, man. You know, I was thinking about this. All of these problems would be solved

00:59:40 ◼   ► if we decided to move and go live in a building where there's a doorman that takes care of

00:59:47 ◼   ► packages instead of doing this whole dance of the bakery and the UPS guy and being able to talk to

00:59:52 ◼   ► the UPS guy before. If we had an actual building with an actual doorman that would take care of

00:59:57 ◼   ► these problems and these packages that would be fixed.

01:00:02 ◼   ► The other thing is just to plan your week better and not be leaving the house on Friday.

01:00:06 ◼   ► Yeah. Well, that…

01:00:09 ◼   ► Just cancel whatever else.

01:00:14 ◼   ► Is it more important than an iPhone? You know, like is anything…

01:00:16 ◼   ► I feel like I'm exhausted. I don't know.

01:00:18 ◼   ► I still feel serious. I make it. It's a joke, but like I'm being serious. You need

01:00:24 ◼   ► to make it worth this guy's time because if he does this, if he actually does this for

01:00:29 ◼   ► you, he's going outside of the route that is decided for him by the company. His day

01:00:34 ◼   ► is going to be worse. No, you're going to get him fired is what you're going to do.

01:00:38 ◼   ► No, no. Don't do this. As long as he delivers all these packages, he'll be fine. I mean,

01:00:42 ◼   ► the guy stops at a bakery to have lunch, I'm sure he can be flexible. He can just, you

01:00:47 ◼   ► know, I mean, I don't know how this stuff works, but my assumption is like they give

01:00:50 ◼   ► him a route so he can finish his stuff within the time that he has allotted for the day.

01:00:54 ◼   ► So like he might just need to work a little bit later. So in that case, you gotta make

01:00:59 ◼   ► it worth it. So how much money is acceptable, Myke? What should the amount be? Is it bribery

01:01:04 ◼   ► if it's a favor? 100%. 100% bribery. But how much? This is inconvenient. I don't know,

01:01:11 ◼   ► something like, well okay, so this is the thing, right? You're spending like a thousand

01:01:14 ◼   ► euro right on this phone yeah so give him 50 so 5% is it is it bribery if you

01:01:21 ◼   ► talk about it before on a podcast yes it makes it more bribery if you give in the

01:01:26 ◼   ► money beforehand it's bribery if you give him it afterwards it's a tip right

01:01:30 ◼   ► it's I see it's a tip no but you've got him you've got to convince him to do it

01:01:35 ◼   ► beforehand by giving him the money what if I promise a tip that's bribery yes

01:01:40 ◼   ► That's bribery.

01:01:41 ◼   ► Oh no.

01:01:42 ◼   ► Because you may as well give him the money at that point.

01:01:44 ◼   ► Well, are you uncomfortable with bribery?

01:01:46 ◼   ► Isn't that, I mean, why, why?

01:01:48 ◼   ► Well.

01:01:49 ◼   ► Does that not happen in Italy?

01:01:50 ◼   ► I was trying to avoid that.

01:01:52 ◼   ► What I'm saying is, okay, so I was just-

01:01:56 ◼   ► It happens everywhere.

01:01:57 ◼   ► It happens everywhere, Myke.

01:01:58 ◼   ► I mean, I didn't listen to this show, so I'm going to say it.

01:02:00 ◼   ► Quite a lot of this happens in Romania.

01:02:02 ◼   ► Like there's a lot of this type of thing.

01:02:04 ◼   ► Like everybody's doing favors and giving each other money for it.

01:02:08 ◼   ► It does happen a lot, especially in Rome with the local government.

01:02:11 ◼   ► But I don't want to be like them.

01:02:13 ◼   ► So I feel like there should be another way for me to convince the UPS guy to...

01:02:19 ◼   ► Why don't you give him some pizza?

01:02:21 ◼   ► Or just be like, "Oh, I'll cover your lunches for you for a few weeks."

01:02:25 ◼   ► It's all bribery, but there's just no money changing hands.

01:02:27 ◼   ► Is it bribery if you eat it?

01:02:32 ◼   ► If it's a slice of pizza, it's not money, it's not cash.

01:02:35 ◼   ► Still bribery.

01:02:36 ◼   ► The rules are so stringent on this, like, it's not fair.

01:02:40 ◼   ► - I mean, it's what you're doing by going to the bakery

01:02:43 ◼   ► and buying bread or a cupcake or whatever

01:02:46 ◼   ► every time you go pick up something.

01:02:47 ◼   ► It's the same, you're just moving to the next level

01:02:50 ◼   ► of handing someone cash.

01:02:51 ◼   ► - If you get a receipt, if you get a receipt,

01:02:53 ◼   ► that's not bribery.

01:02:54 ◼   ► - But you weren't gonna buy the cupcake otherwise.

01:02:56 ◼   ► You're already down this rabbit hole.

01:02:59 ◼   ► Just go, just fully--

01:03:00 ◼   ► - Just take the next step.

01:03:01 ◼   ► - You're already in the tub, just slowly lower yourself

01:03:04 ◼   ► into the warm water of bribery.

01:03:06 ◼   ► It's fine.

01:03:07 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:03:08 ◼   ► It's fine.

01:03:09 ◼   ► Like, you know, you're not committing a crime, right?

01:03:11 ◼   ► Like, you know, nothing bad's happening.

01:03:14 ◼   ► You just, you're making it worth this guy's while.

01:03:17 ◼   ► That's all it is.

01:03:18 ◼   ► You keep repeating this expression.

01:03:20 ◼   ► It's really creepy, Myke.

01:03:21 ◼   ► But it's true though, right?

01:03:23 ◼   ► You're saying to him like, "Oh, do me a favor."

01:03:25 ◼   ► And he's like, "Why?"

01:03:26 ◼   ► And you're just like, "Because I want my iPhone?"

01:03:28 ◼   ► Like what's the reason?

01:03:29 ◼   ► So Myke, have you bribed somebody in the service industry for something?

01:03:32 ◼   ► You seem to be comfortable with it.

01:03:33 ◼   ► I've never bribed anybody.

01:03:34 ◼   ► Yeah, me neither.

01:03:35 ◼   ► I've never done it.

01:03:36 ◼   ► I've never done it.

01:03:37 ◼   ► But in this case though, I would totally do this.

01:03:41 ◼   ► Like if I am Federico in this situation, 100% I would say to the guy, please can you do

01:03:46 ◼   ► this, I'll make it worth your while.

01:03:49 ◼   ► I would do that.

01:03:50 ◼   ► And then you've got to be done asking.

01:03:51 ◼   ► So after this though, no more favors.

01:03:54 ◼   ► Like you've got to reset or the expectation is going to be the cash is involved with everything.

01:03:59 ◼   ► You've got to back off.

01:04:00 ◼   ► Someone on Twitter told me, "Have you considered buying gifts for the bakery and the UPS company?"

01:04:07 ◼   ► You definitely should.

01:04:08 ◼   ► Oh, you've got to do that anyway.

01:04:09 ◼   ► I think I should.

01:04:10 ◼   ► That's the Christmas bonus, right?

01:04:11 ◼   ► I saw, like, we have a guy who does, like, caretaking services for our building.

01:04:16 ◼   ► And we give him a Christmas bonus.

01:04:20 ◼   ► Just so, like, if later on we might need something, he might help us because he knows he's going

01:04:26 ◼   ► to get a bonus from us every year.

01:04:27 ◼   ► So I went through this.

01:04:28 ◼   ► I went through this.

01:04:29 ◼   ► I remember when I was collecting the 13 IMAX.

01:04:32 ◼   ► As you might imagine, actually like 17 showed up

01:04:35 ◼   ► because we threw some, and the boxes are very large

01:04:37 ◼   ► and heavy, and turns out in my old house,

01:04:40 ◼   ► I knew the UPS guy, we were in the same cycling club.

01:04:43 ◼   ► So one day I'm outside with my kids, he's like,

01:04:46 ◼   ► "Oh hey man," I'm like, "Oh, you're the guy

01:04:48 ◼   ► "bringing all these IMAX every day, so sorry."

01:04:51 ◼   ► And I was going to get him a gift, and then we moved.

01:04:54 ◼   ► And I haven't seen him since, like, I don't know,

01:04:57 ◼   ► we're just not riding together anymore,

01:04:58 ◼   ► But now I have this over my head.

01:04:59 ◼   ► Like if I see him, I feel like I gotta have a gift

01:05:02 ◼   ► in the trunk of my car, like ready to go at all times

01:05:04 ◼   ► because he lugged these heavy IMAX.

01:05:06 ◼   ► And I wasn't even doing anything near the level

01:05:09 ◼   ► of messing with the system that Federico is.

01:05:12 ◼   ► So you should definitely do gifts for the bakery

01:05:15 ◼   ► and the B.S. guy.

01:05:16 ◼   ► And you should just hit reset on all of this.

01:05:18 ◼   ► Like tell them like, hey, if I'm not here,

01:05:19 ◼   ► just like treat me like any other customer

01:05:21 ◼   ► or use one of those pickup locations.

01:05:22 ◼   ► Like Amazon just opened one at the Whole Foods

01:05:25 ◼   ► around the corner of my house because they own Whole Foods.

01:05:27 ◼   ► - It is kind of wild, Federico, that you have a designated pickup locations that you can

01:05:31 ◼   ► use but yet you can't use the bakery.

01:05:33 ◼   ► - That's really troubling.

01:05:34 ◼   ► - Well, it's just, it feels like I'm caught up in this situation.

01:05:38 ◼   ► - You are.

01:05:39 ◼   ► - You're on a web of life.

01:05:40 ◼   ► - So pay this guy if you want to and then just back out.

01:05:43 ◼   ► Like you go up and touch the stove real quick with the cash and then you're done.

01:05:47 ◼   ► Like back out, be a normal person again.

01:05:50 ◼   ► And then if you need to do something in the future, like the expectations are reset.

01:05:54 ◼   ► But you've got it back all the way out or this guy is going to expect cash every time.

01:05:59 ◼   ► Things may start happening to your deliveries.

01:06:01 ◼   ► Who knows?

01:06:02 ◼   ► I don't know how we were talking about this.

01:06:03 ◼   ► Again, it just keeps coming up.

01:06:05 ◼   ► I do want to touch real quick on AppleCare.

01:06:08 ◼   ► The costs are higher on this phone.

01:06:11 ◼   ► So if you break the back glass on this phone, it is extremely expensive.

01:06:16 ◼   ► Like $549 for out of warranty repair.

01:06:22 ◼   ► The screen repair is $279, which is more than the previous phones.

01:06:26 ◼   ► It's an expensive phone with expensive parts by AppleCare+.

01:06:30 ◼   ► It's the charging, right?

01:06:31 ◼   ► It's the wireless charging stuff, all the coils, that's probably why the back is more

01:06:34 ◼   ► expensive.

01:06:35 ◼   ► I assume all that's like one piece, you know.

01:06:38 ◼   ► So you break it, you've got to get it all replaced.

01:06:40 ◼   ► For $549 you can just go buy an iPhone 6.

01:06:44 ◼   ► So don't break your phone, put it in the case.

01:06:46 ◼   ► I bought a case, I bought the Apple leather case, the black one, the one I use now.

01:06:51 ◼   ► What do the two of you do?

01:06:52 ◼   ► Myke, I know you've been talking about a bumper case.

01:06:54 ◼   ► Have you found anything that has met your wildest dreams?

01:06:59 ◼   ► I've had a few options sent to me, but I haven't decided on one yet in case of making one called

01:07:04 ◼   ► the frame, which looks pretty interesting, but I haven't seen it available for purchase

01:07:08 ◼   ► anywhere yet, which is not surprising.

01:07:11 ◼   ► I bought the silicone.

01:07:13 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:07:14 ◼   ► You know, like the purple silicone one, because it looks great.

01:07:19 ◼   ► I don't want to have a case on this, so I am also going to buy AppleCare whenever, if

01:07:24 ◼   ► ever, I get one of these things.

01:07:27 ◼   ► And then I want a bumper just so I have added protection, but I want to be able to hold

01:07:31 ◼   ► the glass again like I did with the iPhone 4 line.

01:07:33 ◼   ► I miss that.

01:07:35 ◼   ► That might be a road that I go down.

01:07:36 ◼   ► But I am buying a case so I can put it straight in a case until I end up eventually getting

01:07:42 ◼   ► AppleCare on it.

01:07:45 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:07:46 ◼   ► So with that, you have to take the phone into a store.

01:07:48 ◼   ► You have to prove it's not broken, Federico,

01:07:50 ◼   ► that you said that's what you're gonna be doing.

01:07:52 ◼   ► I would, I mean, the application's expensive,

01:07:55 ◼   ► but you already spent $1,000 on a phone.

01:07:57 ◼   ► Like, we're already past the point

01:07:58 ◼   ► of this being ridiculous for most people.

01:08:00 ◼   ► - You have to take it into the store?

01:08:01 ◼   ► That's so frustrating. - I think so.

01:08:03 ◼   ► I think maybe you can do it, I'm Googling,

01:08:06 ◼   ► I think maybe you can, they do like some sort of diagnostic

01:08:09 ◼   ► on it over the internet?

01:08:11 ◼   ► I don't really know.

01:08:12 ◼   ► But you have to basically prove that it's not broken.

01:08:15 ◼   ► So if you've like smashed your phone,

01:08:17 ◼   ► then you can't show up.

01:08:19 ◼   ► So here we go.

01:08:20 ◼   ► Purchase AppleCare+ with your new phone

01:08:23 ◼   ► or buy it within 60 days.

01:08:25 ◼   ► So you only have two months, Myke.

01:08:27 ◼   ► So don't mess that up.

01:08:30 ◼   ► Online, it verifies your serial number

01:08:33 ◼   ► to run a remote diagnostic.

01:08:34 ◼   ► Go to an Apple store or call a 100 number

01:08:37 ◼   ► and again, it requires a remote diagnostic.

01:08:40 ◼   ► So you can do it in your own home,

01:08:43 ◼   ► but you gotta do it within 60 days.

01:08:45 ◼   ► There'll be a link to that in the show notes.

01:08:47 ◼   ► you can read about it. Yep, kbase probably. Always. Always. Alright, should we talk about

01:08:54 ◼   ► reviews? Yes. Because all the reviews have come out today. Yes! Alright, well, I say

01:09:01 ◼   ► today, the last couple of days. Before we do, let me thank our last sponsor for this

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01:10:15 ◼   ► So iPhone X reviews have been staggering out over the last couple of days. So there are

01:10:22 ◼   ► a couple of things that happened yesterday, which is Monday the 30th. Steven Levy of Backchannel/Wired

01:10:29 ◼   ► published a first impressions post as kind of a call back to the fact that he was one

01:10:34 ◼   ► of the people that got the original iPhone. Then there were a smattering of YouTube videos.

01:10:40 ◼   ► So there were a large selection of videos from not the usual suspects, so there isn't

01:10:46 ◼   ► like MKBHD or Unbox Therapy or Tilly Today, the big tech YouTubers weren't in this.

01:10:54 ◼   ► But it was more kind of middle ground YouTubers, a bunch of people that I've been familiar

01:10:58 ◼   ► with like there's a guy that I subscribe to called Your Average Consumer, he was there,

01:11:02 ◼   ► he had a video, there was like a bunch of different YouTubers that have videos.

01:11:06 ◼   ► kind of like, I say mid-level, but it's like hundreds of thousands of subscribers, right?

01:11:10 ◼   ► But like in the YouTube tech world, that is mid-level because the top tier is like millions

01:11:15 ◼   ► of subscribers. And it was seen, what it looked like, it was a large selection of videos.

01:11:20 ◼   ► Sarah Dietschy had one too, she's really great. I'll put some links to some of these in the

01:11:26 ◼   ► show notes in case you want to see them. What it looked like is that there were a bunch of

01:11:32 ◼   ► of videos that went out having all been recorded in the same place. So what it appears to have

01:11:39 ◼   ► been was a location in New York that Apple had set up to kind of look like a demo area

01:11:47 ◼   ► that exists after a hands-on, like after an event like the hands-on type stuff. And obviously

01:11:54 ◼   ► if you're given that kind of access as a content creator you are going to call it a review,

01:12:01 ◼   ► right? This is my review. But really, it was more like extended hands-ons. That's kind

01:12:08 ◼   ► of the way that it ended up being. It was like big hands-on videos from a couple of

01:12:13 ◼   ► relatively large size YouTubers and some magazines and stuff like that. They were pretty surface

01:12:18 ◼   ► level because obviously these people had only had a small amount of time, I think, to spend

01:12:25 ◼   ► with the devices because they were just kind of in a confined environment. And then that

01:12:30 ◼   ► That was kind of it for Monday, and it was an interesting, different approach.

01:12:36 ◼   ► It's usually what we see are sort of the standard reviewers, Verge, Daring Fireball, etc., hit

01:12:45 ◼   ► the embargo and drop off at the same time, and I think we were all expecting that, and

01:12:49 ◼   ► that is what happened.

01:12:50 ◼   ► We were talking about that.

01:12:51 ◼   ► But instead we saw this sort of smattering of these YouTube videos that are really, I

01:12:56 ◼   ► agree with you, are hands-on.

01:12:57 ◼   ► I don't think the label's that important.

01:12:59 ◼   ► review is to walk through, no one knows.

01:13:02 ◼   ► But I watched a bunch of them,

01:13:04 ◼   ► I follow some of these channels already,

01:13:06 ◼   ► and some of them I didn't.

01:13:07 ◼   ► And I thought it was kind of nice to see

01:13:10 ◼   ► people's takes on it who aren't steeped

01:13:13 ◼   ► in the technology that we are.

01:13:14 ◼   ► And you know, some of the details are wrong,

01:13:17 ◼   ► and whatever, it's a different approach.

01:13:20 ◼   ► And if you've been paying attention to Apple PR,

01:13:24 ◼   ► a different approach should not be that surprising.

01:13:26 ◼   ► Apple BR has changed rapidly over the past few years

01:13:30 ◼   ► under new leadership and I think they are more willing

01:13:35 ◼   ► to try new things.

01:13:35 ◼   ► Like those big name YouTubers that you mentioned

01:13:39 ◼   ► get Apple press event invites.

01:13:41 ◼   ► You know, it's like people like MKBHD or Jonathan Morrison

01:13:46 ◼   ► are at events.

01:13:48 ◼   ► Like they're in the Steve Jobs Theater

01:13:49 ◼   ► like doing the hands-on and the deal

01:13:50 ◼   ► and this is sort of like one step past that.

01:13:52 ◼   ► So it's Apple continuing to evolve their

01:13:55 ◼   ► who they used to get their messaging out.

01:14:00 ◼   ► And then today, the 31st, a bunch of reviews dropped from the usual suspects. So, you know,

01:14:06 ◼   ► there was reviews from TechCrunch, The Verge, I think Mashable, Buzzfeed, Jason Snow had

01:14:13 ◼   ► a review, MKBHD published a video. There's a bunch of stuff that's come out today which

01:14:18 ◼   ► are more kind of your standard reviews, you know, they're bigger and they're written and

01:14:24 ◼   ► etc etc. But one of the differences here is that, save for some exceptions, most of these

01:14:31 ◼   ► individuals got the devices yesterday. This is very unusual. Usually these devices are

01:14:39 ◼   ► given out to journalists and reviewers weeks and weeks in advance, or days in advance.

01:14:47 ◼   ► weeks was a bit of a stretch, but days and days and days. So they've given out an amount

01:14:53 ◼   ► of time in advance. These weren't so much. And then kind of, you know, from there, for

01:14:59 ◼   ► some people it kind of tainted the way that they reviewed it. Like for example, the Verge

01:15:02 ◼   ► review is almost completely focused on the fact that they've only had the device for

01:15:07 ◼   ► a short period of time. It was a really great view because Neelay is awesome, but I feel

01:15:12 ◼   ► like they spent a little bit more too much time in their review talking about the kind

01:15:16 ◼   ► point that's inside baseball when they actually got the device? Yeah, I think they probably,

01:15:20 ◼   ► I mean, David Pierce at Wired did the same thing. He's like, "I got this five minutes,"

01:15:23 ◼   ► and the first five minutes of the video is him literally setting up the phone.

01:15:25 ◼   ► I think it's just hard for people to separate that, but it's insane that Jason got a review

01:15:33 ◼   ► out. You guys are going to talk about it on upgrade this week, but most of these are like

01:15:37 ◼   ► sort of unboxing or first impressions, being more fair to the situation that they're in.

01:15:42 ◼   ► Some people push through like Jason did.

01:15:44 ◼   ► I think he's awesome for doing it.

01:15:47 ◼   ► But a lot of these bigger publications are saying,

01:15:49 ◼   ► hey, we just got it.

01:15:50 ◼   ► We're gonna do a full review,

01:15:53 ◼   ► but this is sort of a setup.

01:15:55 ◼   ► And the thing that is true about most of these

01:16:00 ◼   ► sort of big reviews or hands-on and the YouTube ones

01:16:04 ◼   ► are that they're basically the design,

01:16:06 ◼   ► so you get to see the phone,

01:16:08 ◼   ► setting up and using Face ID,

01:16:09 ◼   ► which all of them talk about, and the camera.

01:16:12 ◼   ► and things like sort of the more traditional review stuff

01:16:14 ◼   ► like battery testing or like what's it like

01:16:17 ◼   ► to live with this new size or what's wireless charging like?

01:16:19 ◼   ► That stuff will come later,

01:16:22 ◼   ► but these sort of early limited time things

01:16:24 ◼   ► basically force most of these stories

01:16:27 ◼   ► to be just about the essentials,

01:16:29 ◼   ► and that's what most people who watch these

01:16:31 ◼   ► are gonna care about.

01:16:32 ◼   ► What is Face ID like?

01:16:32 ◼   ► What's the camera like?

01:16:33 ◼   ► And so they can answer those questions

01:16:35 ◼   ► and then leave the detail for a second smaller cycle.

01:16:37 ◼   ► - So this is what I've been thinking about, right?

01:16:41 ◼   ► Like there's been a lot of people kind of hand wringing today about why is this happening?

01:16:46 ◼   ► Why are these unknown people getting it first? Why are they only giving 24 hours to all of the established names?

01:16:52 ◼   ► This is clearly a new new strategy and I actually think it's quite a quite a smart one

01:16:57 ◼   ► So this is kind of the things that I've been thinking about point one is

01:17:00 ◼   ► Who does it serve for Apple to give?

01:17:03 ◼   ► These devices to tech blogs like who is it serving? Like if an Apple focus tech blog, right?

01:17:10 ◼   ► they're kind of just breached into the converted.

01:17:14 ◼   ► You know, people that are likely to buy it

01:17:17 ◼   ► and or have made their decision.

01:17:18 ◼   ► You know, like a lot of people,

01:17:19 ◼   ► I don't think are necessarily waiting for the reviews

01:17:21 ◼   ► to make their decision if they're in a particular bracket.

01:17:24 ◼   ► Of course, there will be people like that,

01:17:26 ◼   ► but I think a lot of audiences of these types of websites,

01:17:28 ◼   ► you know, kind of like Jason's website,

01:17:30 ◼   ► Daring Fireball, The Loop, Macworld, right?

01:17:33 ◼   ► Like these people have already made their decisions,

01:17:35 ◼   ► I think, by this point,

01:17:37 ◼   ► as to whether they're gonna buy it now.

01:17:39 ◼   ► I don't know if a review is going to change much of that and

01:17:42 ◼   ► Frankly, the iPhone is as mass-market as a product can be so why wouldn't they push this out wider like to more mainstream?

01:17:51 ◼   ► Publications why wouldn't they give it to fashion calm? Why don't they give it to BuzzFeed?

01:17:55 ◼   ► I mean, I think BuzzFeed they were one of the sites that had it for a week

01:17:58 ◼   ► it looked like they had it for a longer period of time and

01:18:00 ◼   ► Then they picked like one website tech crunch to the one technology side to have it for longer because for whatever reason they've picked

01:18:07 ◼   ► people that they think can tell their story the way that they want it to be told because

01:18:10 ◼   ► that's what this is. PR is not a democracy, right? It is a specific thing that is chosen

01:18:18 ◼   ► for Apple to be able to get their message out in the same way. And then by doing the

01:18:22 ◼   ► way that they've done things with the extended hands-on and then some reviews and they give

01:18:28 ◼   ► people a short lead time, I think what we're going to do is we're going to see in-depth

01:18:33 ◼   ► coverage all week, which is not normal. Usually it's like reviews come out, then there might

01:18:37 ◼   ► be the old story here and there right but we got a bunch of press on Monday

01:18:41 ◼   ► because it was this big thing that was just happening like it just started to

01:18:44 ◼   ► happen and nobody knew what's going on Tuesday you start getting reviews then

01:18:48 ◼   ► Wednesday Thursday Friday we're gonna see people having bigger columns that

01:18:51 ◼   ► haven't published yet like as of this recording there's nothing from the Wall

01:18:54 ◼   ► Street Journal but they're working on something and Joanna Stearns has been posting

01:18:57 ◼   ► like pictures of like a 3d model of her face right which seems quite fun right

01:19:02 ◼   ► you can see what she's gonna do with that there's nothing from daring fireball

01:19:05 ◼   ► yet. The Verge is still saying that they're going to have an actual review coming. MKBHD

01:19:09 ◼   ► will have a review coming. This stuff is going to continue to move forward. I think that

01:19:18 ◼   ► one of the problems with Apple and the way that they communicate is that they tend to

01:19:23 ◼   ► do things by trend so that when they break a trend, people think that something's broken,

01:19:28 ◼   ► like something's wrong, rather than maybe they've just changed the way they do things.

01:19:32 ◼   ► And I think the last 12 to 18 months has shown that they are changing all of this stuff.

01:19:39 ◼   ► The way that they communicate has changed significantly in the last year or two.

01:19:43 ◼   ► So what they have done is they have decided that this old way of having these like strict

01:19:48 ◼   ► embargoed reviews of giving people products for a week, this is not how it's going to

01:19:52 ◼   ► be anymore.

01:19:53 ◼   ► They're changing the narrative.

01:19:54 ◼   ► They're changing the way that this stuff is done.

01:19:56 ◼   ► And I actually think from a pure like getting your message out perspective, giving people

01:20:02 ◼   ► these devices and getting yourself a week's worth of coverage is genius. I think it's

01:20:07 ◼   ► a really good idea.

01:20:08 ◼   ► I do too. There's a really good blog post by our friend Matt Alexander that'll be in

01:20:12 ◼   ► the show notes basically outlining what you just said but he's got a good background in

01:20:16 ◼   ► PR sort of explaining why that longer cycle is important. And yeah, it's different and

01:20:21 ◼   ► clearly some people were not a fan or were very confused or freaking out or showing that

01:20:28 ◼   ► there may be a little out of touch,

01:20:29 ◼   ► but I think it's interesting the Monday releases

01:20:34 ◼   ► that sort of mostly younger, less known YouTubers.

01:20:40 ◼   ► Jason, we were talking to Slack earlier,

01:20:42 ◼   ► mentioned that most of these channels

01:20:44 ◼   ► are still bigger than popular tech podcasts, right?

01:20:46 ◼   ► So I'd love for tech podcasters to have access

01:20:50 ◼   ► to this stuff, but we're further down the chain.

01:20:52 ◼   ► But this is--

01:20:54 ◼   ► - Plus it's better to have a visual medium

01:20:56 ◼   ► to show off your beautiful new phone.

01:20:57 ◼   ► - Totally, especially on a phone that looks crazy pants.

01:21:01 ◼   ► This phone looks all new.

01:21:02 ◼   ► But they have different audiences.

01:21:04 ◼   ► A lot of these YouTubers do tech stuff,

01:21:06 ◼   ► but they also do vlogs and do some other types of content

01:21:08 ◼   ► that people who may be listening to our shows or even us,

01:21:12 ◼   ► we may not be their audience.

01:21:14 ◼   ► And I think something that came to mind this morning for me

01:21:19 ◼   ► is that Samsung spends a ton of money and time

01:21:22 ◼   ► in this audience.

01:21:24 ◼   ► So Samsung, especially the New York vlog scene

01:21:26 ◼   ► Casey Neistat and those people. Samsung does a lot of stuff on those channels, they do

01:21:32 ◼   ► a lot of events, those people get review units from Samsung, and I think it's been very successful

01:21:36 ◼   ► for them. And I think Apple is smart to look at that sort of media. Like, you know, people

01:21:43 ◼   ► like I've just closed Twitter for the day, people arguing, you know, these people are

01:21:46 ◼   ► not going to replace John Gruber and Jason Snell and Matt Panzareno. Well, one day they

01:21:51 ◼   ► Like one day we'll all be gone and what we do will be seen as sort of one type of media.

01:21:59 ◼   ► And I think this, the YouTube side of things is a different type.

01:22:03 ◼   ► And yes, you know, you can make fun of the videos and you make fun of their own skateboards

01:22:07 ◼   ► and use GoPros and use jump cuts.

01:22:09 ◼   ► Like some people are very upset about the editing.

01:22:11 ◼   ► It doesn't matter.

01:22:12 ◼   ► It does not matter because their audience is important for Apple to reach.

01:22:17 ◼   ► And Apple PR is not about what we want.

01:22:19 ◼   ► company PR, like you said, it's not democracy,

01:22:22 ◼   ► it's what the company wants.

01:22:23 ◼   ► Like, who does PR serve?

01:22:25 ◼   ► It serves the company.

01:22:26 ◼   ► Companies have PR groups internally and externally,

01:22:30 ◼   ► so they sell more products.

01:22:31 ◼   ► And using younger, but extremely influential

01:22:36 ◼   ► in their spheres YouTubers is brilliant

01:22:39 ◼   ► when you think about it that way.

01:22:41 ◼   ► Now, are all those people, all the audience

01:22:43 ◼   ► gonna rush out and buy $1,000 phones?

01:22:45 ◼   ► No, but not everyone who's listening connected

01:22:46 ◼   ► is running out and buying a $1,000 phone,

01:22:48 ◼   ► because we've talked about it either.

01:22:49 ◼   ► But it's about getting this device,

01:22:52 ◼   ► and getting the hype for this device

01:22:54 ◼   ► into the audiences of these YouTubers.

01:22:57 ◼   ► And like I said, I watched almost all of them,

01:23:01 ◼   ► and the excitement is there.

01:23:03 ◼   ► You can tell they're excited to be there.

01:23:05 ◼   ► Yeah, you know, it's not as professional

01:23:06 ◼   ► as someone who's been doing this for a long time,

01:23:09 ◼   ► but again, it doesn't matter,

01:23:10 ◼   ► because I think they were doing a very good job

01:23:12 ◼   ► at showing the device to their audiences

01:23:14 ◼   ► in a way that their audiences want them to do.

01:23:17 ◼   ► Some of these channels I've watched for a long time

01:23:20 ◼   ► and their Apple videos are right in line

01:23:22 ◼   ► with the other type of content they make.

01:23:23 ◼   ► It's not like they sort of put on the suit and tie

01:23:25 ◼   ► to go talk about Apple.

01:23:26 ◼   ► They're doing it in a way that's authentic

01:23:28 ◼   ► to what they do on their channel.

01:23:30 ◼   ► And I think if there are people in our community

01:23:32 ◼   ► who really freaked out about that,

01:23:34 ◼   ► and I would say all of us, those of us in the media,

01:23:37 ◼   ► those who just consume media,

01:23:39 ◼   ► we should think about this and really,

01:23:42 ◼   ► instead of making fun about their style

01:23:44 ◼   ► or about what they do, or you know,

01:23:47 ◼   ► and some of them did better jobs than others, right?

01:23:48 ◼   ► But that's true of the mainstream press as well.

01:23:51 ◼   ► Like really understand what Apple is doing here,

01:23:54 ◼   ► and if we make the conversation about that,

01:23:55 ◼   ► then I think it all makes a lot more sense

01:23:57 ◼   ► than complaining about the way they edit their videos.

01:24:00 ◼   ► That's just stupid.

01:24:01 ◼   ► I mean, and I think sort of the last thing,

01:24:03 ◼   ► and I'll be quiet, I'll go for my soap boxes.

01:24:07 ◼   ► As someone who has worked in tech media now

01:24:09 ◼   ► really nine years since I started blogging,

01:24:11 ◼   ► I remember the first times I got breaks,

01:24:15 ◼   ► and the first time I got my content

01:24:17 ◼   ► in front of people who I respected.

01:24:19 ◼   ► The first interaction I ever had with Jason Snell,

01:24:21 ◼   ► I don't even know if he knows this,

01:24:23 ◼   ► I wrote something in reply to what he wrote on Macworld,

01:24:27 ◼   ► and he emailed me disagreeing with my point,

01:24:30 ◼   ► and we had a back and forth,

01:24:31 ◼   ► and then we came to an understanding,

01:24:33 ◼   ► and then he tweeted publicly about it,

01:24:34 ◼   ► like hey, we had a chat,

01:24:36 ◼   ► full credit to Steven for whatever.

01:24:39 ◼   ► And that meant the world to me at the time,

01:24:41 ◼   ► because I still look up to Jason,

01:24:42 ◼   ► but I looked up to him then as well.

01:24:44 ◼   ► And the fact that he read something that I wrote,

01:24:46 ◼   ► even if he disagreed with it, meant a lot.

01:24:49 ◼   ► And anyone who has a blog remembers,

01:24:51 ◼   ► if you've been on Daring Fireball

01:24:52 ◼   ► the first time that's happened,

01:24:53 ◼   ► or the first time that your favorite writer

01:24:55 ◼   ► or podcast mentions, that means things to people.

01:24:58 ◼   ► And I don't want our community to be beating up

01:25:03 ◼   ► on these YouTubers, 'cause it's a big deal

01:25:06 ◼   ► for their careers, right?

01:25:07 ◼   ► That some of these channels are getting promotion

01:25:11 ◼   ► this week that they've never gotten before

01:25:13 ◼   ► and it's exciting for them to be invited,

01:25:16 ◼   ► it'd be exciting for Myke or I, Federico,

01:25:18 ◼   ► to be invited to an Apple event.

01:25:19 ◼   ► Federico has and it was exciting for him.

01:25:21 ◼   ► And so there's that angle too that I really find

01:25:24 ◼   ► disheartening of like, this is a big deal for these creators

01:25:29 ◼   ► and we should be excited that they get the opportunity

01:25:31 ◼   ► to do this and that, so what if they don't make something

01:25:34 ◼   ► that we agree with or that we like 100% of their decisions?

01:25:37 ◼   ► It's good for Apple, it's good for these creators

01:25:40 ◼   ► And I think we should all just grow up a little bit.

01:25:45 ◼   ► I have two thoughts here.

01:25:50 ◼   ► The first one is, if you take a look at the type of people who worked on these first impressions

01:25:57 ◼   ► on YouTube, it's a very diverse type of creator in the sense there's a good variety of non-white

01:26:10 ◼   ► men who are about 40 to 50 years old.

01:26:13 ◼   ► And to have this kind of representation

01:26:16 ◼   ► among the people who get some kind of early access

01:26:19 ◼   ► to the new iPhone, I think it's great news.

01:26:22 ◼   ► And I think that it's showing now, to some degree,

01:26:26 ◼   ► Apple is going sort of beyond the usual circle

01:26:29 ◼   ► of middle-aged bloggers.

01:26:31 ◼   ► And I'm counting myself into that group,

01:26:33 ◼   ► who get access to some Apple hardware when it comes out.

01:26:38 ◼   ► So, you know, there's a,

01:26:40 ◼   ► if you take a look at the channels that get access

01:26:43 ◼   ► to these hands-on area,

01:26:45 ◼   ► if you take a look at, you know,

01:26:48 ◼   ► the people who are talking in these videos,

01:26:50 ◼   ► you can see that it tends to be more diverse

01:26:53 ◼   ► than what we usually see when it's embargo time

01:26:56 ◼   ► and you see the review on the Verge

01:26:57 ◼   ► and you see the iPhone on Daring Fireball

01:27:00 ◼   ► and you see maybe an iPad on Mac stories.

01:27:02 ◼   ► So that's great.

01:27:03 ◼   ► But also, I mean, besides,

01:27:05 ◼   ► So besides the social aspect of increasing the group of people who can talk about new

01:27:13 ◼   ► Apple hardware beforehand, let's consider this from our own perspective of the traditional

01:27:19 ◼   ► media, you know, tech blogs and publications with websites where they put out text.

01:27:25 ◼   ► I think it is, if you think about it, it is counterintuitive and it is actually counterproductive

01:27:32 ◼   ► to be sort of bitter and maybe unwelcoming to new types of tech reviews and tech audiences.

01:27:44 ◼   ► Because it is those people who have a different kind of audience and maybe a wider audience

01:27:51 ◼   ► that later, you know, those people can make younger minds or new types of people interested

01:27:59 ◼   ► in tech and to expose maybe a teenager to what it means to test an iPhone before it

01:28:07 ◼   ► comes out or to expose a family, someone like my mother for example, she can watch a video,

01:28:14 ◼   ► she can understand what is going on. And it is those people that will maybe later become

01:28:21 ◼   ► geeks and obsessed with tech and it's that kind of audience that we cultivate on tech

01:28:28 ◼   ► blogs. So to be against new forms of media, it is effectively, if you think about it,

01:28:36 ◼   ► the worst move that we can possibly make, because we need to make sure that new people,

01:28:43 ◼   ► that fresh minds, are constantly exposed to these interests, to tech news, to iPhones,

01:28:50 ◼   ► or to Google phones, whatever. So all I'm saying is, to think that Apple is doing the

01:28:56 ◼   ► wrong move here or any company is doing the wrong move by going beyond the traditional

01:29:02 ◼   ► tech review. I think it's not only, personally I think it's wrong from a social and human level,

01:29:09 ◼   ► but even if you only want to talk about the business aspect, I think it's not the best move

01:29:16 ◼   ► that we can make because our entire businesses are predicated upon the fact that there's people

01:29:23 ◼   ► who want to know more about technology. And so eventually, you know, the 50-year-olds that read

01:29:30 ◼   ► Mac stories, that read The Verge, you know, those people maybe in 20-30 years they will die because

01:29:35 ◼   ► this is what we do. I'm just being honest. And so we, you know, it's a cycle and we need to move on

01:29:42 ◼   ► with times. And YouTube is now a big deal and these folks from these channels will one day be a big

01:29:47 ◼   ► deal and it matters that one there's a representation but two that you know we

01:29:53 ◼   ► constantly have new people reading what we want to write and watching the videos

01:29:58 ◼   ► that we want to make so to be to sort of to not welcome those people is

01:30:05 ◼   ► wrong on so many levels if you ask me it's really not it's really not what I

01:30:10 ◼   ► was expecting some part of the Apple community to do when when Apple did is I

01:30:15 ◼   ► yes I was surprised, I was surprised because it was a strange embargo strategy. It was

01:30:22 ◼   ► an unusual PR move but the fact alone that we are talking about this I think it proves

01:30:30 ◼   ► that Apple PR succeeded. I'm just a little sad when I tweeted for example a link to Sara

01:30:40 ◼   ► a ditchy video and I got a bunch of nasty replies. And that's a little disheartening,

01:30:48 ◼   ► you know, every time it happens. And I've seen others, you know, being a little peculiar

01:30:53 ◼   ► about this, what Apple did, which is sad, if you ask me, it's really sad. But it is

01:30:59 ◼   ► what it is. And I just think that it's awesome that more people get to, in some limited fashion,

01:31:05 ◼   ► I actually wish they had actual review units, if you ask me. But I think it's awesome that

01:31:10 ◼   ► new people, more people can talk about this stuff and from my personal point of view,

01:31:17 ◼   ► when it comes to my business, to my website, the more people can read about technology

01:31:21 ◼   ► and develop an interest, a hobby in technology, the better it is for me personally. But the

01:31:27 ◼   ► bigger picture is, the more people, the more diverse group of people that can talk about

01:31:32 ◼   ► this stuff, the better for everyone it is.

01:31:35 ◼   ► Well said. So the iPhone X looks good. We haven't really spoken about it. This is a

01:31:44 ◼   ► new phone. I think we might as well just wait now until next week. I mean me and Jason on

01:31:51 ◼   ► upgrade today, Jason has one, right? So we're going to review it. So if you want to get

01:31:56 ◼   ► some thoughts from someone who actually has one of these devices, you can go to relay.fm/upgrade.

01:32:01 ◼   ► be an episode posted maybe by the time you're hearing this or shortly after so you can get

01:32:06 ◼   ► that if you want to. But I think this was a worthwhile discussion because it's something

01:32:11 ◼   ► that seems to have upset the apple cart a little bit in kind of the community that we're

01:32:16 ◼   ► involved in. And I think that they're all points well made by you guys so I think we

01:32:21 ◼   ► should maybe put a full stop on it today and then hopefully next week we can have our review

01:32:26 ◼   ► of the iPhone X. So if you want to catch our show notes for this week, go to relay.fm/connected/166.

01:32:33 ◼   ► Thanks again to our fine sponsors, Away, Timing and Encapsula. And if you want to find Federico

01:32:38 ◼   ► Online, MacStories.net, he's @Vittucci on Twitter, Steven is @5tailpixels.net, he's

01:32:43 ◼   ► @ismh and I am @imike, I-M-Y-K-E. And we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye

01:32:49 ◼   ► guys.

01:32:50 ◼   ► Arriereci.

01:32:51 ◼   ► Adios.

01:32:52 ◼   ► [BLANK_AUDIO]