Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:06 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Connected, episode 140, the tweet edition.

00:00:12 ◼   ► Today's show is brought to you by Casper, Pingdom, and Bumfell.

00:00:16 ◼   ► My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined by Mr. Steven Hackett.

00:00:19 ◼   ► Hey buddy.

00:00:21 ◼   ► Hey.

00:00:22 ◼   ► Welcome back.

00:00:23 ◼   ► Thank you. I'm back.

00:00:24 ◼   ► So Federico is gone.

00:00:25 ◼   ► We are now operating a revolving door policy on Connected.

00:00:29 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:00:30 ◼   ► One in, one out.

00:00:31 ◼   ► I don't understand why I'm the center of it.

00:00:33 ◼   ► I have not missed an episode in a long time.

00:00:35 ◼   ► But the two of you, crazy Europeans, just like going around the world doing stuff.

00:00:40 ◼   ► So Federico will be back next week.

00:00:42 ◼   ► I think next week should be all three of us again.

00:00:44 ◼   ► Which will be good.

00:00:45 ◼   ► Who knows though?

00:00:47 ◼   ► You never know.

00:00:48 ◼   ► I may just take off just because I can.

00:00:49 ◼   ► Nope, you can't actually.

00:00:51 ◼   ► I really can.

00:00:52 ◼   ► No, you really can't.

00:00:53 ◼   ► You gotta check your contract.

00:00:55 ◼   ► We have a bunch of follow up.

00:00:57 ◼   ► Good.

00:00:58 ◼   ► It's really been piling up this week.

00:01:00 ◼   ► So we're gonna get right into it.

00:01:01 ◼   ► We had what I have called in our show notes

00:01:04 ◼   ► the sweet sweat email.

00:01:06 ◼   ► - No, that's good.

00:01:07 ◼   ► - It's good, right?

00:01:08 ◼   ► As an aside, sometimes I do asides and follow-up

00:01:13 ◼   ► and other people don't like them.

00:01:15 ◼   ► But Myke, you are known for typos on the internet, right?

00:01:20 ◼   ► It's a thing that you've done.

00:01:21 ◼   ► Someone, I won't say who, runs a whole Tumblr about it.

00:01:25 ◼   ► But once, very embarrassingly, I left a note for Mary, my wife, and I called her "Sweetheart,"

00:01:34 ◼   ► but I did it in a hurry, and I wrote "Sweathart." And so that's been a joke in my marriage now for

00:01:41 ◼   ► a long time. So I'm not sure we go, "Hey, Sweathart." So this is the Sweathart email

00:01:47 ◼   ► from listener Jochen. And Jochen works on—this was a very involved email, but the gist of it is,

00:01:55 ◼   ► Yokin works with some sort of polymer that is used in disposable diapers and so they

00:02:01 ◼   ► are familiar with the types of things they use.

00:02:06 ◼   ► Fake urine to test.

00:02:07 ◼   ► So he knows about fake sweat and he says fake sweat is not gross.

00:02:13 ◼   ► It is 99% water with less than 1% salts dissolved into it.

00:02:19 ◼   ► It's pretty interesting and he kind of likens it to Gatorade that these drinks are to replace

00:02:28 ◼   ► exactly what you're losing while you sweat, so they have salt in them, ionic things.

00:02:34 ◼   ► It's important to material design because salt solutions are very corrosive over time.

00:02:39 ◼   ► So some scenarios with the watch and things like the headphones and everything, they want

00:02:43 ◼   ► to make sure that if you're running in this thing, you're playing basketball and you're

00:02:46 ◼   ► getting it sweaty, that you're not going to be damaging the product and it's not damaging

00:02:51 ◼   ► you.

00:02:52 ◼   ► So, lesson learned, as the ghost of Federico put in our show notes, you can put your Apple

00:02:57 ◼   ► devices in Gatorade and they'll be just fine.

00:02:59 ◼   ► I don't buy that.

00:03:00 ◼   ► I think it's a lesson here.

00:03:01 ◼   ► I don't think it's a good thing to follow.

00:03:03 ◼   ► I think it's fake news.

00:03:05 ◼   ► The second piece of follow up, this will be the first link in the show notes.

00:03:11 ◼   ► Maybe Myke will put a photo of it in the show notes so you don't even have to click on the

00:03:14 ◼   ► link because this is really it in some ways it's the best thing I've ever seen

00:03:19 ◼   ► on the internet and other ways it is the most frustratingly annoying thing I've

00:03:23 ◼   ► seen on the internet Myke what did you receive as a gift a chop it's what it's

00:03:30 ◼   ► called this is a very pan addict focused thing but my friend Glenn sent me what

00:03:36 ◼   ► is called a chop and the chop is what you use to make wax seals you know you

00:03:41 ◼   ► see those old-timey wax seals like you drip wax onto an envelope and you stamp

00:03:44 ◼   ► something on it. Well my friend Glen had made for me a #MykeWasRight chop so I can now seal

00:03:51 ◼   ► all of my correspondence with my brand. And I'm very excited about that. I can also apparently

00:03:56 ◼   ► use this on chocolate so everybody can expect chocolate soon that say Myke was right on

00:04:01 ◼   ► them.

00:04:02 ◼   ► I have a lot of questions. The first one is, how often do you send correspondence that

00:04:09 ◼   ► you seal with wax? That's very...

00:04:11 ◼   ► I don't send letters at all, but now I'm going to because I actually today, it may arrive

00:04:16 ◼   ► during the show, I have some wax coming. Some special wax and like a spoon thing that you

00:04:24 ◼   ► have to heat it up over. It's very interesting.

00:04:27 ◼   ► medieval?

00:04:28 ◼   ► Yeah. And so then I will be able to wax seal everything. So everything in my house is going

00:04:34 ◼   ► to get a wax seal, just as Myke was right on it.

00:04:37 ◼   ► Yeah, that was my next question. Where does one buy wax? Is it a special wax? Can you

00:04:43 ◼   ► pick the color? I guess you can pick the color, right?

00:04:45 ◼   ► Yeah, I got this whole kit on Amazon. It was like £8 and it's on Prime of course, which

00:04:51 ◼   ► is really interesting to me.

00:04:53 ◼   ► It's really ironic.

00:04:54 ◼   ► That you can get your old-timey antique sealing wax on one day delivery from us on Prime,

00:05:02 ◼   ► but turns out you can.

00:05:04 ◼   ► That's pretty spectacular.

00:05:06 ◼   ► So people who follow us on Twitter will know that I sent the 1000th invoice from our company.

00:05:11 ◼   ► Why are you doing this?

00:05:13 ◼   ► And I'm just begging you not to send our invoices sealed with the "Myke was right" stamp.

00:05:19 ◼   ► I'm going to print that one invoice and send it back to you.

00:05:23 ◼   ► Do it.

00:05:24 ◼   ► I'll open it live.

00:05:25 ◼   ► I'll stream it live on the internet somewhere.

00:05:28 ◼   ► You have my address.

00:05:30 ◼   ► Do it.

00:05:31 ◼   ► 2017 around Relay FM HQ has been known as the year of live.

00:05:35 ◼   ► We're doing a bunch more live events this year

00:05:38 ◼   ► and we're very excited to announce another one.

00:05:41 ◼   ► This will be on Sunday, October 15th,

00:05:44 ◼   ► connected, which is the show you're listening to now,

00:05:46 ◼   ► although with three of us, not just two of us,

00:05:48 ◼   ► all three of us are gonna be in person in Chicago

00:05:52 ◼   ► for the Release Notes Conference.

00:05:53 ◼   ► There'll be a link in the show notes

00:05:54 ◼   ► to the Release Notes Conference signup page.

00:05:57 ◼   ► It's an amazing conference if you're a developer

00:06:00 ◼   ► a small business owner, an independent.

00:06:02 ◼   ► If you're kind of in this community,

00:06:03 ◼   ► Release Notes is a conference you should go to.

00:06:06 ◼   ► Myke spoke the first year, I spoke last year,

00:06:09 ◼   ► and Federico is speaking this year.

00:06:11 ◼   ► So they are three for three for connected listeners,

00:06:14 ◼   ► our connected host.

00:06:16 ◼   ► And this year on Sunday, October 15th at 6 p.m.,

00:06:20 ◼   ► we're going to do a live episode of Connected

00:06:23 ◼   ► right around the corner from their venue.

00:06:25 ◼   ► And if you sign up for Release Notes,

00:06:28 ◼   ► In the email, there'll be a link to a secret ticket page

00:06:31 ◼   ► where you can go.

00:06:32 ◼   ► Tickets are free to come see us.

00:06:34 ◼   ► We're gonna do a live show.

00:06:36 ◼   ► Federico then has to go to a speaker thing,

00:06:38 ◼   ► but Myke and I will be around for a little while, I think.

00:06:41 ◼   ► Tickets, like I said, are going to attendees

00:06:42 ◼   ► of Release Notes first, but we are planning

00:06:45 ◼   ► on opening that ticket page to the public pretty soon.

00:06:48 ◼   ► So if you're on the fence about Release Notes,

00:06:51 ◼   ► you should totally go, go sign up, get a ticket,

00:06:54 ◼   ► come to Chicago, and come see us.

00:06:56 ◼   ► We're excited to do a live show.

00:06:57 ◼   ► Since we're not doing Connected Live in California this summer, we're going to do it live in

00:07:01 ◼   ► Chicago this fall.

00:07:02 ◼   ► It's going to be a lot of fun.

00:07:04 ◼   ► Let's talk about Year of Live, right?

00:07:07 ◼   ► Because I will also that weekend be doing a live episode of The Penn Addict in Chicago

00:07:13 ◼   ► at the Field Notes offices.

00:07:16 ◼   ► And we've also just did the episode in Atlanta a couple of weeks ago.

00:07:20 ◼   ► And we've got some other stuff bubbling as well.

00:07:23 ◼   ► This is fun.

00:07:24 ◼   ► I enjoy it a lot.

00:07:25 ◼   ► It's difficult to do.

00:07:27 ◼   ► shows are a hard thing to put on but we're getting better at the technology

00:07:30 ◼   ► of it all so we're working on trying to do more and more of them in places all

00:07:35 ◼   ► over the world not just not just in America but also across America and I'm

00:07:41 ◼   ► trying to see what the feasibility would do be to try and do something in London

00:07:44 ◼   ► at some point not in the not-too-distant future as well so there you go.

00:07:48 ◼   ► Lots of lots of good stuff. We're talking about Relay News we did sometimes we do

00:07:55 ◼   ► this, we launched a new show last week called Download. They'll be linking the

00:07:58 ◼   ► show notes. Download is a panel show dedicated to covering the week's biggest

00:08:05 ◼   ► and most interesting tech stories. So Download is not another Apple show, it is

00:08:09 ◼   ► a show about tech sort of on the broad. It is the, we're looking at companies,

00:08:16 ◼   ► products, trends, things like quarterly results even, but the the idea is to

00:08:22 ◼   ► cover tech sort of wide you know as widely as we can. Most of our shows are

00:08:27 ◼   ► very sort of niche even some of that connected which covers Apple you know we

00:08:32 ◼   ► really just cover Apple and Amazon stuff as they relate to Apple. Download is not

00:08:36 ◼   ► that, download is looking at the whole thing. There's a link in the show notes

00:08:39 ◼   ► also to a blog post I wrote last week. We started this project back in August of

00:08:45 ◼   ► last year when you Myke and Jason were in town. We started sketching this out.

00:08:51 ◼   ► Jason is the host. I'm working as the producer, which is a new role for Relay.

00:08:54 ◼   ► So I'm on the show a little bit, but doing a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff.

00:08:59 ◼   ► You scarily pop in. I do, that's the whole gag. People are like, "I didn't

00:09:05 ◼   ► even know you were there!" And so we're gonna do a better job on episode two of

00:09:07 ◼   ► introducing me at the beginning. But I'm sort of like the annoying guy on

00:09:11 ◼   ► the talk shows at night, you know, who sits in the corner and makes bad

00:09:15 ◼   ► jokes. That's me on the show. But one of the big goals here is to give us another opportunity

00:09:28 ◼   ► to bring new and diverse voices to Relay. So, you know, that's something we work really

00:09:33 ◼   ► hard on. It's hard to do because most of our shows don't have guest spots. You know, a

00:09:36 ◼   ► show like Connected, we may have two guests on a year and that's usually something very

00:09:41 ◼   ► specific. We don't really have an interview show anymore outside like Mac

00:09:46 ◼   ► Power Users and Presentable, so this is like another way of doing this. And so be

00:09:51 ◼   ► on the lookout for new voices. If you have a story idea or a guest idea, someone who

00:09:56 ◼   ► you think would be really good on the show, let me know. You can find me on Twitter

00:10:00 ◼   ► @ismh because we want download to be a success and we want it to be a real

00:10:05 ◼   ► different thing than what we're doing on some of the other shows. Well put.

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00:11:33 ◼   ► in a couple years actually unboxed it on Periscope

00:11:36 ◼   ► because it comes in like a box the size

00:11:38 ◼   ► of a dorm refrigerator and queen size mattress inside

00:11:41 ◼   ► due to science and magic.

00:11:43 ◼   ► And we just moved about nine months ago

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00:12:29 ◼   ► so much to Casper for their support of this show and really I am. So I was looking across

00:12:34 ◼   ► the internet the other day and I went to my homepage which is fivetallpixels.net and I

00:12:39 ◼   ► found a link to something which is so in your wheelhouse that I'm not even going to bother

00:12:44 ◼   ► spending any more time trying to explain what it is.

00:12:47 ◼   ► So this is a Indiegogo campaign. Someone is working on a documentary about the Newtons

00:12:58 ◼   ► So for those who aren't familiar, I don't know why anybody wouldn't be familiar, right?

00:13:02 ◼   ► Come on.

00:13:05 ◼   ► It is a handheld PDA that Apple put out in the 90s.

00:13:09 ◼   ► Apple kind of actually--

00:13:10 ◼   ► What is a PDA?

00:13:11 ◼   ► Public display of affection?

00:13:12 ◼   ► That's what that is, right?

00:13:13 ◼   ► Yes, a personal digital assistant.

00:13:14 ◼   ► In fact, John Sculley, the CEO of Apple at the time, coined that term, actually.

00:13:21 ◼   ► And so it was a handheld thing, had its own operating system, it had a stylus.

00:13:26 ◼   ► big thing was it had handwriting recognition but at the beginning it wasn't very good which

00:13:30 ◼   ► led to many jokes.

00:13:31 ◼   ► Anyways, there is still to this day a community of people who are super into the newton.

00:13:36 ◼   ► I've got a couple of them.

00:13:37 ◼   ► I used one in college, I've talked about that before, but I don't use one regularly now,

00:13:42 ◼   ► but there are people who still do and this Indiegogo project is to kind of document that,

00:13:49 ◼   ► document the newton, where it came from, what happened to it, why it got canned, spoiler

00:13:55 ◼   ► Larry Lurtz, Steve Jobs did it when he came back.

00:13:58 ◼   ► And anyway, so I'll link to it.

00:14:00 ◼   ► They're trying to raise 17 grand

00:14:01 ◼   ► over the next eight weeks or so.

00:14:03 ◼   ► And I think it'd be fun to see.

00:14:05 ◼   ► - I'm kind of watching the video

00:14:09 ◼   ► that they put on their Indiegogo page right now.

00:14:12 ◼   ► And I like that every time that the guy,

00:14:13 ◼   ► like Noah, is talking to camera,

00:14:15 ◼   ► he has Final Cut in the background behind him.

00:14:17 ◼   ► It's like, I swear I am a video producer.

00:14:19 ◼   ► - That's right, it's how you know.

00:14:21 ◼   ► Yeah, it's how you know. - It's like, I promise.

00:14:22 ◼   ► I promise, look, I can use Final Cut.

00:14:24 ◼   ► This movie can be made.

00:14:26 ◼   ► How much did you pledge?

00:14:27 ◼   ► - 25 bucks.

00:14:28 ◼   ► - Okay, I thought you'd maybe go like,

00:14:30 ◼   ► what is the full on 6.99 producer credit?

00:14:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, the full John Syracuse, no, I just did 25.

00:14:36 ◼   ► - Well, it might be on you to push them over the edge.

00:14:38 ◼   ► So-- - It could be.

00:14:39 ◼   ► - Get on that.

00:14:40 ◼   ► I will also wait for them to contact you,

00:14:42 ◼   ► which I assume is imminent, to talk to you about your,

00:14:46 ◼   ► I'm assuming, extensive collection of Newtons.

00:14:50 ◼   ► - That's right, I think they're gonna just film

00:14:51 ◼   ► in the studio the whole movie.

00:14:53 ◼   ► So I saw a link online the other day about the Pixel and Pixel XL which I thought was

00:14:57 ◼   ► interesting. Basically Google have announced that they're going to be guaranteeing a total

00:15:04 ◼   ► of two years of OS updates to this phone. So the Pixel line came out in October 2016.

00:15:10 ◼   ► They've confirmed that it will get Android O in the fall of 2017 and Android P, well

00:15:15 ◼   ► presuming it will be called P something, in 2018. So that's it, that's the only two updates

00:15:21 ◼   ► that they're guaranteeing and then there'll be no guaranteed security updates until after

00:15:24 ◼   ► 2019.

00:15:26 ◼   ► So I thought this sounded interesting and kind of short, like it sounded short to me,

00:15:30 ◼   ► like that the phone gets two years of updates.

00:15:33 ◼   ► And so I looked at what Apple's currently doing.

00:15:35 ◼   ► So the iPhone 5 is currently running iOS 10.

00:15:38 ◼   ► It's the oldest phone that will run iOS 10.

00:15:40 ◼   ► And that came out in 2012, so that's four and a half years and counting.

00:15:44 ◼   ► I mean, it could be cut off iOS 11.

00:15:47 ◼   ► You believe this is going to be the case, right?

00:15:49 ◼   ► Yeah, there's a lot of-- and I kind of wish Federico was here,

00:15:52 ◼   ► but there's a lot of stuff right now of if you're running a 32

00:15:55 ◼   ► bit app, that's like called out in settings

00:15:57 ◼   ► now on its own screen.

00:15:59 ◼   ► And developers are basically being

00:16:02 ◼   ► told that you've got to go to 64 bit

00:16:03 ◼   ► or your app's going to get dropped.

00:16:05 ◼   ► And so I think that's paving the way for these 32 bit devices

00:16:09 ◼   ► to be left behind with iOS 11.

00:16:12 ◼   ► So it's quite a bit less than the iPhone, right?

00:16:15 ◼   ► So like this Pixel phone will last for two years.

00:16:18 ◼   ► and the iPhone 5 will last for maybe like four and a half,

00:16:21 ◼   ► five years, something like that.

00:16:22 ◼   ► And I kind of found it interesting

00:16:25 ◼   ► to see a company call it out in advance, right?

00:16:27 ◼   ► To just be like, this is how long you've got left?

00:16:30 ◼   ► 'Cause with Apple, it's like, it could be anytime.

00:16:31 ◼   ► Like you have no idea, right?

00:16:32 ◼   ► They don't talk about this stuff, but Google does.

00:16:35 ◼   ► And I can't decide if I'm like, how I feel about it.

00:16:38 ◼   ► Like I just think it's an interesting thing

00:16:39 ◼   ► that they've done it in advance.

00:16:41 ◼   ► And I wonder if it's that much of an issue

00:16:43 ◼   ► when people kind of replace their phones

00:16:45 ◼   ► every two to three years anyway.

00:16:46 ◼   ► Like this phone will be running the most recent version

00:16:50 ◼   ► of Android for like three years in total, right?

00:16:52 ◼   ► Before it maybe gets cut off.

00:16:55 ◼   ► And I don't really know how I feel about that.

00:16:58 ◼   ► Like I guess most people replace their phones

00:17:01 ◼   ► within that period of time anyway.

00:17:03 ◼   ► - I mean, at least people who buy things like the Pixel,

00:17:06 ◼   ► right, like the enthusiast phones.

00:17:08 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know.

00:17:10 ◼   ► I mean, I think in one sense I like it

00:17:14 ◼   ► because with Android, with some manufacturers,

00:17:17 ◼   ► and this is a lot less now than it used to be,

00:17:19 ◼   ► but say for even three or four years ago,

00:17:23 ◼   ► you may only get a year or 18 months for some OEM phones.

00:17:26 ◼   ► And so yeah, two years isn't great,

00:17:28 ◼   ► but they're trying to get out ahead of that,

00:17:30 ◼   ► and so at least you have some sense of certainty.

00:17:34 ◼   ► For me, I think things like the Pixel,

00:17:38 ◼   ► I don't think someone's gonna,

00:17:41 ◼   ► I mean, maybe someone is,

00:17:42 ◼   ► but I think the Pixel, at least,

00:17:44 ◼   ► and like the Nexus phones before it,

00:17:46 ◼   ► is still an enthusiast device.

00:17:47 ◼   ► And so those people are gonna be paid every year,

00:17:49 ◼   ► every 18 months, every 24 months.

00:17:52 ◼   ► Where I would like to see this,

00:17:53 ◼   ► I mean, I'd like to see them support phones longer,

00:17:57 ◼   ► obviously, but I would like to see that from OEMs as well.

00:18:00 ◼   ► The Pixel sells a fraction of what something

00:18:03 ◼   ► like the Samsung Galaxy S8 will,

00:18:06 ◼   ► and those customers are beholden to Samsung for updates,

00:18:09 ◼   ► not Google.

00:18:11 ◼   ► I think on the whole, the whole Android ecosystem would do better to support phones longer,

00:18:15 ◼   ► but at the very least I give it a thumbs up for more transparency ahead of time.

00:18:22 ◼   ► iOS 11 and Apple Music TV shows.

00:18:24 ◼   ► So there was this Bloomberg profile of Jimmy Iovine, right, who was Beats and then now

00:18:30 ◼   ► works at Apple Music.

00:18:33 ◼   ► In this profile he mentioned that Apple may be planning as many as 10 original TV series

00:18:38 ◼   ► for the Apple Music platform.

00:18:41 ◼   ► with iOS 11 potentially bringing some more video focused features to Music.app.

00:18:47 ◼   ► You guys were talking about Carpool Karaoke last week and that it's been unceremoniously

00:18:52 ◼   ► delayed for an unspecified period of time.

00:18:56 ◼   ► And I wonder if this is going to be one of those iOS 11 features.

00:19:01 ◼   ► There's going to be more video and part of these videos and series.

00:19:04 ◼   ► But if that's the case, and iOS 11 is what's really going to bring about these new changes

00:19:10 ◼   ► to iOS and especially the music app which doesn't handle video very well right now honestly.

00:19:15 ◼   ► So I wonder what they're going to do with something like Planet of the Apps, right?

00:19:19 ◼   ► Like that's seemingly still coming soon and it doesn't really feel like Apple Music, on

00:19:25 ◼   ► the iPhone at least, does a good job of running video and they may be holding some of this

00:19:29 ◼   ► other stuff until iOS 11.

00:19:31 ◼   ► It's interesting, right?

00:19:33 ◼   ► Like, what is going on here I think is an interesting thing to think about.

00:19:37 ◼   ► Yeah, you could see them using the new TV app like Apple's names

00:19:42 ◼   ► TV apps only in the u.s. So it is but I wonder if

00:19:48 ◼   ► If this sort of content is a way to get that app elsewhere that maybe it doesn't have all the other stuff

00:19:54 ◼   ► We have here in the US but that they use that as a building block just cramming this in the music app

00:19:59 ◼   ► That's already like impossible to understand is not I don't think it's super great

00:20:04 ◼   ► But this is all stuff that comes with your Apple Music subscription though, right?

00:20:08 ◼   ► Yeah, but you could put an Apple Music tab in the TV app and think you'd be fine.

00:20:11 ◼   ► Oh, that's not confusing.

00:20:12 ◼   ► It's all very confusing.

00:20:15 ◼   ► Isn't a video tab in the Apple Music app just as good as an Apple Music tab in the video app?

00:20:20 ◼   ► Maybe. Or maybe they, you know, maybe they... I don't know. I mean, I would be fine having an

00:20:27 ◼   ► Apple Music app that has all this in it and I can just see my local music elsewhere, but that's me.

00:20:31 ◼   ► Yeah, you're gonna be in there.

00:20:31 ◼   ► because I'm old-fashioned.

00:20:33 ◼   ► All in all, though, I think that Apple,

00:20:36 ◼   ► if they're going to do this,

00:20:38 ◼   ► I always felt weird that it was just two shows, right?

00:20:41 ◼   ► There's Carpool Karaoke whenever it comes out,

00:20:43 ◼   ► and then there's whatever the other one with the escalator

00:20:45 ◼   ► that I can't even remember the name of.

00:20:47 ◼   ► - Planet of the Apps.

00:20:48 ◼   ► - Ugh.

00:20:49 ◼   ► But if they're gonna become a network, right,

00:20:52 ◼   ► or having the network effect,

00:20:53 ◼   ► then having all this stuff out at once

00:20:54 ◼   ► may make more sense, I don't know.

00:20:56 ◼   ► Clearly something's going on,

00:20:58 ◼   ► clearly they are moving into content

00:21:00 ◼   ► more than they said that they were going to at one point.

00:21:03 ◼   ► So, you know, but they gotta ship something, right?

00:21:05 ◼   ► Like, what happened to carpool karaoke?

00:21:07 ◼   ► - I was just gonna say, surprise, surprise,

00:21:09 ◼   ► an Apple product or endeavor has been delayed again.

00:21:12 ◼   ► - Well, they had to take people off carpool karaoke

00:21:15 ◼   ► to go back to working on the new Mac Pro, so it's all--

00:21:17 ◼   ► - And the car.

00:21:18 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:21:19 ◼   ► - Everyone that works on carpool karaoke

00:21:20 ◼   ► now works on the autonomous car project, right?

00:21:22 ◼   ► Like, that's how that works, I think.

00:21:23 ◼   ► - I think it's kind of the same thing, maybe.

00:21:25 ◼   ► - Full cars, full carpooling.

00:21:27 ◼   ► - I mean, how can you sing

00:21:28 ◼   ► if your hands are on the steering wheel?

00:21:29 ◼   ► can't dance that way. Oh my word that's it that's what it is right? I'm an analyst.

00:21:34 ◼   ► All the tests that they've been doing it's all with celebrities. That's how it works.

00:21:40 ◼   ► Interesting. I saw on the verge some leaks of Fitbit's potential smartwatch

00:21:46 ◼   ► project. We were talking about this a while ago right? They bought Pearble. I was

00:21:51 ◼   ► talking to a friend recently who has a smartwatch, I can't even remember the

00:21:55 ◼   ► name of the company honestly that was also bought by Fitbit. Like this wasn't

00:22:00 ◼   ► the I think I remember at the time I was mentioning they bought some other stuff

00:22:03 ◼   ► that we'd never heard of but like there's a company that had this product

00:22:07 ◼   ► out which had like a super long battery life and it had a lot of the smartwatch

00:22:10 ◼   ► stuff in it but it just wasn't very high power tech but this was another thing

00:22:14 ◼   ► that Fitbit bought. And there's been some leaks that Yahoo grabbed a hold of

00:22:21 ◼   ► showing what might be their smartwatch project.

00:22:25 ◼   ► And it looks just like the Fitbit Blaze,

00:22:27 ◼   ► which was the smartwatch-looking Fitbit.

00:22:31 ◼   ► But this one has been developed in-house,

00:22:33 ◼   ► it's the first one developed in-house,

00:22:34 ◼   ► they're really the one thing else they've used

00:22:36 ◼   ► of an external product design company.

00:22:39 ◼   ► And now we have this potential thing.

00:22:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, I see a lot of Blazes.

00:22:46 ◼   ► Like, at the gym, I see them out and about,

00:22:49 ◼   ► I think people who like the Fitbit,

00:22:51 ◼   ► the Blaze is kind of a natural upgrade

00:22:53 ◼   ► if they don't really want the rest of the stuff

00:22:55 ◼   ► or the cost of the Apple Watch.

00:22:57 ◼   ► I don't know how much the Blaze is,

00:22:58 ◼   ► but it is not a good looking device.

00:23:01 ◼   ► And this thing, this rendering is also not great.

00:23:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think the Fitbit stuff might keep selling

00:23:08 ◼   ► 'cause they do have some brand recognition, right?

00:23:11 ◼   ► In the same way that Garmin is still able

00:23:13 ◼   ► to sell all their crazy tracking stuff

00:23:15 ◼   ► 'cause they're maybe a bit more focused, right?

00:23:18 ◼   ► Apple tries to do a little bit more, that their super fitness people might still gravitate

00:23:22 ◼   ► towards the brands that they know like Garmin and Fitbit. But I don't have a lot of faith

00:23:28 ◼   ► in Fitbit being around in like two years. No. I mean, it seems like they're spiraling

00:23:36 ◼   ► a little bit. I watched a video that Verge put out trying to compare all the Fitbit models,

00:23:41 ◼   ► and it's basically impossible. They have one every $50 from $100 to $300.

00:23:47 ◼   ► bucks and there's market research saying that their market share is

00:23:52 ◼   ► shrinking. They have, out of like just fitness trackers, they win, right? Like

00:23:57 ◼   ► there's no one else doing fitness trackers anymore, really, that matters. But

00:24:01 ◼   ► the Apple Watch is, you know, as it gets cheaper it is slowly eating into their

00:24:05 ◼   ► high end and I can't help but wonder if the Fitbit long-term would be something

00:24:10 ◼   ► like the iPod. It's great as a standalone thing until something converges it with

00:24:14 ◼   ► something else and it's better and I wonder if the Apple watches that thing.

00:24:17 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah I don't know. I think that there isn't really like this as we spoke

00:24:23 ◼   ► about a bunch of times this isn't like a huge market and that there really might

00:24:28 ◼   ► only eventually be room for one or two companies to do this and it's already

00:24:33 ◼   ► shrinking dramatically and I kind of wonder where it's gonna end up like I

00:24:37 ◼   ► really really do not see this as a market that could sustain a company that

00:24:42 ◼   ► wants to just do this. Right, and I'm worried that Fitbit moving into the smartwatch market

00:24:48 ◼   ► is a big mistake. That they're going to run into a lot of the same problems Pebble did,

00:24:54 ◼   ► that on iOS you're going to have limited functionality. Constantly chasing, constantly. And I would

00:25:02 ◼   ► imagine, I'm just going to go out on a limb, that iOS is a pretty important operating system

00:25:09 ◼   ► for Fitbit users and the blaze maybe as close as they can get but if they go further down

00:25:16 ◼   ► the smartwatch route that iOS users are going to be frustrated and then not buy one or just

00:25:21 ◼   ► like like the idea so much they just buy an Apple watch is going to work better.

00:25:25 ◼   ► Like it just seems like a dangerous thing to get into and an expensive thing to get

00:25:28 ◼   ► into.

00:25:29 ◼   ► But what I think it's like what else are they going to do right?

00:25:33 ◼   ► I feel like that's the problem.

00:25:34 ◼   ► They're kind of they're in this situation because it's like they know that their product

00:25:37 ◼   ► isn't selling as well as it used to since smartwatches so they're kind of

00:25:42 ◼   ► like well guess we're gonna make one of those now and so they bought a bunch of

00:25:45 ◼   ► technology and now they're making one as what I kind of see like if I was gonna

00:25:50 ◼   ► play an analyst for a moment as the kind of a last-ditch attempt to turn the ship

00:25:54 ◼   ► but I don't think it's gonna do that maybe they just start making their own

00:25:57 ◼   ► content everybody else is like that would do it they should make a

00:26:00 ◼   ► self-driving watch that streams online the video that it takes of people's

00:26:07 ◼   ► faces.

00:26:08 ◼   ► I think that's it.

00:26:09 ◼   ► There you go.

00:26:10 ◼   ► There you go.

00:26:11 ◼   ► Fitbit just write us a check.

00:26:12 ◼   ► You can have the idea anytime.

00:26:13 ◼   ► We're ready.

00:26:14 ◼   ► This week's episode is also brought to you by Pingdom.

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00:27:48 ◼   ► So the rumored Apple voice assistant in a can, this is really getting difficult to talk

00:27:57 ◼   ► about these things, is rumored again.

00:27:59 ◼   ► And so there's a report, MacRumors quoting friend of the show, call friend of the show,

00:28:07 ◼   ► Ming-Chi Kuo saying that this Apple voice in a can could be coming as soon as WWDC.

00:28:16 ◼   ► The report says that its standalone,

00:28:19 ◼   ► or kind of its headline feature would be excellent acoustics

00:28:21 ◼   ► with a subwoofer and seven tweeters.

00:28:23 ◼   ► It would be powerful, like an iPhone 6 or 6S type,

00:28:29 ◼   ► you know, system on a chip,

00:28:31 ◼   ► and would be positioned for the high-end market,

00:28:34 ◼   ► entertainment, and of course, shockingly,

00:28:36 ◼   ► would have a higher price than the Amazon Echo.

00:28:39 ◼   ► - And Ming-Chi Kuo also says that he thinks

00:28:42 ◼   ► that there's like a 50% chance that this would come at WWDC,

00:28:45 ◼   ► as it stands right now.

00:28:46 ◼   ► - That number really cracked me up.

00:28:47 ◼   ► I don't remember seeing numbers in reports like this before.

00:28:51 ◼   ► I was like, I don't know, I could do it, I don't know.

00:28:52 ◼   ► 50%.

00:28:53 ◼   ► Flip the coin. - I mean, everything has

00:28:54 ◼   ► a 50% chance of appearing at WWDC, right?

00:28:57 ◼   ► It's like it either does or it doesn't.

00:28:58 ◼   ► It's 50%.

00:29:00 ◼   ► I have a 50% chance of appearing at WWDC.

00:29:03 ◼   ► - If you wanna email us about how math works,

00:29:06 ◼   ► please email Myke directly.

00:29:07 ◼   ► - If it does or it doesn't, 50%.

00:29:09 ◼   ► - That's, so, I, when I first noticed, I thought, huh,

00:29:14 ◼   ► - WWDC's a weird place for this,

00:29:16 ◼   ► because this would be a consumer product.

00:29:18 ◼   ► This is not a new Mac Pro, right?

00:29:22 ◼   ► This is not a new MacBook Pro,

00:29:24 ◼   ► which has also made appearance at WWDC before.

00:29:26 ◼   ► But then I thought some more, Myke,

00:29:28 ◼   ► and time, time is in your favor

00:29:31 ◼   ► when you're thinking about things.

00:29:33 ◼   ► And I could see this following a very predictable pattern.

00:29:38 ◼   ► So several years ago,

00:29:40 ◼   ► I don't know what version of iOS it was,

00:29:43 ◼   ► There's a bunch of stuff like,

00:29:44 ◼   ► you should make your apps resizable,

00:29:46 ◼   ► and this is how you make your apps resizable,

00:29:47 ◼   ► and then we got the big iPhones, right?

00:29:50 ◼   ► You should make your iPads app resizable,

00:29:52 ◼   ► and we got SlideOver.

00:29:53 ◼   ► And it could be that SiriKit,

00:29:55 ◼   ► which was introduced last year in iOS 10,

00:29:58 ◼   ► that if this, if SiriKit gets a whole lot of stage time

00:30:00 ◼   ► and a bunch of new APIs and is more powerful, more flexible,

00:30:04 ◼   ► then I think that could pave the road towards this,

00:30:07 ◼   ► this sort of product is like perfect

00:30:09 ◼   ► for the iPhone introduction in the fall, right?

00:30:12 ◼   ► you have they try to pair something else with the iPhone, the an Apple voice in a can product

00:30:20 ◼   ► would be a very natural extension of that. You know, maybe the watch gets an update or

00:30:23 ◼   ► at least you know seasonal update and you talk about this thing. And so I lean towards

00:30:27 ◼   ► that as opposed to this thing coming out in June, but I think that if you're paying attention

00:30:32 ◼   ► the the bricks, you know will be laid down on the road for this to come a few months

00:30:38 ◼   ► But it doesn't need to come out in June though. They just need to show it.

00:30:42 ◼   ► No. I don't think they have to show it. I think they could be like, "SiriKit APIs!"

00:30:46 ◼   ► I don't think they have to show it. I think they can just talk about SiriKit and drop

00:30:49 ◼   ► a lot of hints.

00:30:50 ◼   ► No, I'm not saying they have to show it. I'm just saying that there is a non-zero chance

00:30:55 ◼   ► that they could, right? And just be like, "We have this new SiriKit and we want you

00:30:59 ◼   ► to work for it. Why? Because we have this thing."

00:31:01 ◼   ► Sure. I can tease it.

00:31:02 ◼   ► And Apple have done this so many times, right? Like, Apple Watch got it, right? They show

00:31:05 ◼   ► it like six months before, the reason we want you to make this new stuff is because we have

00:31:10 ◼   ► this thing. Like if it's not SiriKit, if it's like a whole new platform, right, which they

00:31:15 ◼   ► might well do, they kind of have to show the product if they want people to make stuff

00:31:19 ◼   ► for that platform. Because otherwise it's like, here is this new platform, we're not

00:31:23 ◼   ► telling you what it's attached to, might be like Voice OS or something, I don't know,

00:31:28 ◼   ► Siri OS. Could be anything and everything will be lowercase. And then they show it off

00:31:33 ◼   ► And they're like, hey, this is this product that we're making.

00:31:36 ◼   ► It's going to come out later this year.

00:31:38 ◼   ► Please make stuff for it.

00:31:39 ◼   ► And then in September, they bring it out on stage again,

00:31:42 ◼   ► and they show all of the awesome app partners

00:31:44 ◼   ► that they have that now work with the little home

00:31:46 ◼   ► kind of stuff.

00:31:46 ◼   ► Yes.

00:31:47 ◼   ► App demos, everyone's favorite part of a keynote.

00:31:49 ◼   ► Yep.

00:31:49 ◼   ► Here is a little car that drives itself.

00:31:51 ◼   ► Here is an Infinity Blade that you can talk to.

00:31:54 ◼   ► Infinity Blade's always my favorite.

00:31:56 ◼   ► Look at all the games that we made for this thing

00:31:58 ◼   ► that nobody wants to use.

00:31:59 ◼   ► Look at this, everyone.

00:32:01 ◼   ► So I have a lot of questions about this product.

00:32:05 ◼   ► I totally buy that the acoustic performance would be something

00:32:09 ◼   ► that Apple would pitch.

00:32:11 ◼   ► They have a history of that.

00:32:12 ◼   ► High five, high five.

00:32:14 ◼   ► I've got one sitting four feet away from me.

00:32:16 ◼   ► Jason has one sitting on his desk.

00:32:18 ◼   ► They still, to this day, sound amazing.

00:32:20 ◼   ► I still use it as a stereo sometimes

00:32:23 ◼   ► if we have people outside or something.

00:32:25 ◼   ► I can see them going down that road.

00:32:28 ◼   ► And you have Apple Music bundled in.

00:32:30 ◼   ► you can talk to the Apple voice in the can and ask it to play

00:32:34 ◼   ► whatever you want Apple music and it plays it for you.

00:32:37 ◼   ► Assuming you can Bluetooth pair it so you can listen to things like podcasts.

00:32:40 ◼   ► Or that SiriKit would get that functionality finally,

00:32:44 ◼   ► right? Which makes so much sense anyway. It should have this but doesn't.

00:32:49 ◼   ► Maybe like Overcast or Audible, these other audio apps could

00:32:52 ◼   ► could just be controlled with Siri. I'd love that as someone who listens to the podcast

00:32:55 ◼   ► all the time on my phone.

00:32:59 ◼   ► The other part of this is, if Apple's doing this,

00:33:03 ◼   ► how do they handle the design of it?

00:33:06 ◼   ► I don't necessarily mean how it looks.

00:33:08 ◼   ► I think it would look beautiful.

00:33:09 ◼   ► I made a joke in the show and they could just reuse

00:33:11 ◼   ► all the cylinder Mac Pro cases they built.

00:33:14 ◼   ► Stick a microphone in there.

00:33:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, I have complete faith that Apple can create

00:33:18 ◼   ► a nice looking product for their home.

00:33:19 ◼   ► - Sure, me too.

00:33:20 ◼   ► - Their Wi-Fi routers are, right?

00:33:23 ◼   ► They're just like these nice looking things

00:33:24 ◼   ► that they're not too much.

00:33:26 ◼   ► They haven't got like 65 antennas sticking out of them.

00:33:28 ◼   ► don't like spiders like some of them do, right?

00:33:31 ◼   ► - I remember when they used to make those.

00:33:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, back in the day.

00:33:34 ◼   ► - But really what I'm after in this conversation

00:33:36 ◼   ► is sort of the how it works.

00:33:38 ◼   ► So if you have an Echo,

00:33:42 ◼   ► you download the Echo app to your phone,

00:33:44 ◼   ► and it's fine, it's kind of basic.

00:33:45 ◼   ► Amazon's, at least their iOS app design isn't very good,

00:33:48 ◼   ► but it's basic.

00:33:50 ◼   ► And you can go in there

00:33:51 ◼   ► and you can set up your smart home stuff.

00:33:53 ◼   ► You can go in there and add skills to it.

00:33:55 ◼   ► And what I like about it is you have a whole history

00:33:58 ◼   ► of stuff, so if you're like, you can go back,

00:34:01 ◼   ► and sometimes the Echo will say, I can't answer that,

00:34:04 ◼   ► but I put results in the app for you.

00:34:07 ◼   ► And so you go in the app and whatever you look for,

00:34:09 ◼   ► if it can say it, is in there sometimes.

00:34:12 ◼   ► And Amazon falls back to the app,

00:34:15 ◼   ► and it's not the most graceful thing in the world,

00:34:18 ◼   ► but I think you need it on a product like this,

00:34:21 ◼   ► 'cause a product like this cannot have,

00:34:23 ◼   ► at least at this point in technology, 100% hit rate.

00:34:26 ◼   ► It kind of needs a crutch to fall back on.

00:34:29 ◼   ► And Apple already has that with the way Siri works now.

00:34:33 ◼   ► So I talk to my phone.

00:34:36 ◼   ► Sometimes it can talk to me back.

00:34:37 ◼   ► Sometimes it needs to display something on the screen.

00:34:40 ◼   ► But how would Apple do that on a product like this

00:34:42 ◼   ► that your phone is not guaranteed to be around?

00:34:45 ◼   ► If this is in your kitchen, you're just making dinner.

00:34:48 ◼   ► You shout to the Apple box, hey, ask it a question.

00:34:51 ◼   ► And it says, oh, I can't answer that.

00:34:54 ◼   ► But I can show it to you.

00:34:56 ◼   ► How does it show it to you?

00:34:56 ◼   ► Does it push the notification to your phone?

00:34:59 ◼   ► Does it pop up on your phone screen?

00:35:00 ◼   ► - Straight on the lock screen.

00:35:01 ◼   ► Like that's, you know, like you don't even have to

00:35:03 ◼   ► open an app. - It's got to, right?

00:35:04 ◼   ► - It's just like, just go look at your phone right now,

00:35:06 ◼   ► it's on there.

00:35:07 ◼   ► Or like anything, right?

00:35:08 ◼   ► Like it just puts it on all of your devices.

00:35:11 ◼   ► - That's what I would hope,

00:35:12 ◼   ► because that is an important part of these products

00:35:15 ◼   ► and we like to think of them as voice products,

00:35:17 ◼   ► but they're really voice plus app products.

00:35:19 ◼   ► And there's something that I keep coming back to

00:35:21 ◼   ► and thinking about Apple would do it.

00:35:22 ◼   ► Apple has an opportunity as the platform owner

00:35:25 ◼   ► to put things on your lock screen,

00:35:27 ◼   ► or to have it show up on your watch if it knows,

00:35:30 ◼   ► Apple knows if your watch is unlocked.

00:35:32 ◼   ► Hey, if I talk to this box and it can't tell me what it does,

00:35:35 ◼   ► don't push it to my phone, push it to my watch

00:35:37 ◼   ► 'cause you know I'm wearing it.

00:35:38 ◼   ► Like be smarter, we talked about this with continuity,

00:35:42 ◼   ► Apple has slowly been getting smarter

00:35:43 ◼   ► about what device you're on.

00:35:45 ◼   ► So if I'm on my computer and Messages is the foreground app,

00:35:50 ◼   ► then my iPhone screen right next to me in a dock,

00:35:54 ◼   ► literally two inches from my iMac doesn't light up because it knows I'm in

00:35:57 ◼   ► messages on the Mac. Well here's a question for you, right? Yes.

00:36:00 ◼   ► We've heard rumors of a next-gen Echo

00:36:04 ◼   ► that has a screen on it.

00:36:06 ◼   ► Would this Apple device maybe just have a screen on it?

00:36:10 ◼   ► I mean, I don't know. They definitely could, right?

00:36:14 ◼   ► None of the rumors indicate that at this point.

00:36:16 ◼   ► I think that something with a screen on it is sort of inherently

00:36:20 ◼   ► less likely to end up

00:36:22 ◼   ► looking nice, and like the Echo is not a looker, right?

00:36:25 ◼   ► The tall one, it's not an amazing piece

00:36:27 ◼   ► of industrial design.

00:36:28 ◼   ► - No, but it stays out of the way, right?

00:36:30 ◼   ► - But it's inoffensive, right?

00:36:31 ◼   ► 'Cause it's in the kitchen, I don't have a screen

00:36:33 ◼   ► in my kitchen, I just have this tube, right?

00:36:35 ◼   ► If you just walk in, maybe you think it's a diffuser

00:36:37 ◼   ► or like something else you don't remember.

00:36:38 ◼   ► - Oh, something like kitchen appliance.

00:36:40 ◼   ► Any room that it's in, it looks like it could be

00:36:43 ◼   ► something else that lives in that room, right?

00:36:45 ◼   ► - And a screen has baggage attached, right?

00:36:48 ◼   ► I may be less likely to put that in my kitchen

00:36:51 ◼   ► or on my dining room table.

00:36:52 ◼   ► Like my favorite thing in all these ads for all this stuff

00:36:54 ◼   ► is like the Echo is like on the dining room table

00:36:56 ◼   ► next to a flower, right?

00:36:57 ◼   ► It's like, I'm not sure anyone's,

00:36:59 ◼   ► where'd the power cord go?

00:37:00 ◼   ► - They should just hollow out them inside

00:37:02 ◼   ► so you could put a flower in it, you know, perfect.

00:37:04 ◼   ► - You were just on fire with the product I just did.

00:37:07 ◼   ► - I know.

00:37:08 ◼   ► - So there's all those questions, right?

00:37:11 ◼   ► And there's also the dimension of this is an established,

00:37:15 ◼   ► it's a young market, but it is established, right?

00:37:17 ◼   ► Like I have two Echos,

00:37:20 ◼   ► I have the tall one and I have the dot

00:37:22 ◼   ► sitting here next to me in my office.

00:37:24 ◼   ► We have friends that have many,

00:37:26 ◼   ► I think Merlin has like two dozen dots

00:37:28 ◼   ► in his house in his office now.

00:37:29 ◼   ► This, on every surface, is covered in dots.

00:37:31 ◼   ► - They're all on one table, that's the problem.

00:37:33 ◼   ► - It's really weird, right?

00:37:34 ◼   ► Like, gotta spread 'em out.

00:37:36 ◼   ► And so would those of us who already have a product,

00:37:41 ◼   ► who already have workflows built around them,

00:37:44 ◼   ► would we, specifically you and I,

00:37:46 ◼   ► would you or I consider switching

00:37:48 ◼   ► to an Apple voice in a box if this thing is, is it all real?

00:37:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, I would, and the reason is because like,

00:37:55 ◼   ► Apple has all of the component parts there.

00:37:59 ◼   ► They just need to bring them together

00:38:01 ◼   ► in a way that makes sense.

00:38:02 ◼   ► Like the other day, we were playing around at home,

00:38:04 ◼   ► and Adina was using Siri to turn our lights on and off.

00:38:07 ◼   ► It's actually quicker to do that than to use the Echo.

00:38:10 ◼   ► The Echo takes longer to actually perform the action.

00:38:14 ◼   ► The difference is, we don't always have our phones

00:38:16 ◼   ► in our hands.

00:38:18 ◼   ► And our phones are not necessarily in the places

00:38:20 ◼   ► that we think they are to use the Ahoy telephone command.

00:38:24 ◼   ► But the echoes, we know exactly where they are

00:38:26 ◼   ► because they don't move.

00:38:28 ◼   ► So you either say it in a way where you're in the room

00:38:31 ◼   ► where you know what it is, you either look to it

00:38:33 ◼   ► so you can direct your voice to it, or you speak louder,

00:38:36 ◼   ► right, 'cause you know where it is,

00:38:38 ◼   ► 'cause it's in this fixed place.

00:38:40 ◼   ► So for us, it's more likely to get the result that we want

00:38:43 ◼   ► because we don't have to find something first,

00:38:45 ◼   ► we just know where it is and so and also because it is as we've spoken about so many times

00:38:49 ◼   ► this dedicated thing which has like a million microphones in it it does a better job of

00:38:53 ◼   ► like picking up the voice but Apple's product could be better in many ways and one of the

00:38:59 ◼   ► key ones is the fact that it ties in with the OS so it could do stuff like hey I've

00:39:03 ◼   ► pushed pushed this answer to your watch right which is you said it's such a good idea you

00:39:07 ◼   ► just show me the text because Siri kit currently has this UI part to it as well right the fallback

00:39:14 ◼   ► part because it can't give you everything you need and I find personally

00:39:19 ◼   ► like the the echo like oh hey look in the app I find that really annoying

00:39:22 ◼   ► because I don't want to look in the app that's why I'm talking to you but if it

00:39:26 ◼   ► says it's on your watch well as you say my watch is on all the time like that's

00:39:30 ◼   ► a great way of tying all that stuff together so as long you know but there

00:39:35 ◼   ► are other parts of this which are trickier what will all my devices that

00:39:39 ◼   ► I'm buying to work with the Echo work with this thing.

00:39:43 ◼   ► No they won't, right?

00:39:45 ◼   ► Because it's all gonna have HomeKit in it

00:39:46 ◼   ► and we've spoken about this many times before,

00:39:48 ◼   ► at least in the UK, there are nowhere near

00:39:50 ◼   ► as many HomeKit devices as there are

00:39:51 ◼   ► Amazon Echo enabled devices.

00:39:55 ◼   ► I don't see Apple making like a web version of their API,

00:39:58 ◼   ► like it will be Apple's own APIs.

00:40:02 ◼   ► And so like my IFTTT stuff might not work,

00:40:04 ◼   ► depends on if they expand SiriKit that way.

00:40:06 ◼   ► It's like there are a lot of ifs,

00:40:07 ◼   ► Like, it has the ability to be better at the things

00:40:10 ◼   ► that it does than anybody else,

00:40:12 ◼   ► because I'm in the Apple ecosystem,

00:40:14 ◼   ► but all of the other stuff that makes me want

00:40:17 ◼   ► to use that device over Siri, it might not be still,

00:40:20 ◼   ► and that's where it might be an issue.

00:40:22 ◼   ► - I totally agree, and I have less IFTTTT stuff

00:40:29 ◼   ► than I think you or Federico do.

00:40:31 ◼   ► - I only have a couple of things,

00:40:32 ◼   ► but the things that I have to do--

00:40:33 ◼   ► - They're important.

00:40:34 ◼   ► really like being able to activate my canary with voice is something that I

00:40:39 ◼   ► really like to be able to do yeah yeah and I think that that is like the mess

00:40:46 ◼   ► the crux of like every conversation about moving to an Apple platform or not

00:40:49 ◼   ► right that it is always going to be more closed off mm-hmm for you know whatever

00:40:54 ◼   ► reason Apple squeezes into it but uh the thing for me is that I I have that stuff

00:41:02 ◼   ► and that the Echo does what I want it to do.

00:41:06 ◼   ► Like I'm not looking to replace it

00:41:08 ◼   ► because it does what I want.

00:41:11 ◼   ► Now, if the Apple thing comes along

00:41:14 ◼   ► and it does more of what I want,

00:41:15 ◼   ► or does what I want better,

00:41:17 ◼   ► then that would be potentially more interesting.

00:41:20 ◼   ► Especially if it sounded better.

00:41:21 ◼   ► You know, the Echo's not an amazing speaker.

00:41:23 ◼   ► Now it's fine for like Spotify in the kitchen,

00:41:25 ◼   ► but it's not great, it's not killer.

00:41:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, I would like an easier way

00:41:28 ◼   ► to be able to resume the podcast

00:41:30 ◼   ► that I'm currently listening to, right?

00:41:31 ◼   ► Like currently I have to ask my Echo to connect to my phone and then the Bluetooth.

00:41:39 ◼   ► I would just like to be like, "Hey, ahoy canister, play Overcast."

00:41:44 ◼   ► Sure.

00:41:45 ◼   ► Right, that's what I want.

00:41:48 ◼   ► And that would be brilliant.

00:41:49 ◼   ► But I have some more questions for you, right?

00:41:50 ◼   ► Because there are some other ways that Apple could go with this.

00:41:53 ◼   ► What if they added more sensors into their product?

00:41:56 ◼   ► Like my Canary, it has like temperature and humidity sensors

00:42:00 ◼   ► inside of it.

00:42:01 ◼   ► So I can get the temperature in the house

00:42:03 ◼   ► and stuff like that.

00:42:04 ◼   ► Now that would be really cool if you then had it connected

00:42:06 ◼   ► to some kind of thing like a Nest or like an EchoBee

00:42:10 ◼   ► or something like that.

00:42:11 ◼   ► One of these, like if there are, I think there is a

00:42:15 ◼   ► or a couple of HomeKit enabled temperature things

00:42:18 ◼   ► where it can just be like--

00:42:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, EchoBee works with HomeKit, Nest famously does not.

00:42:22 ◼   ► - No.

00:42:22 ◼   ► And then you could like see what the temperature is

00:42:25 ◼   ► and just have it fire off something like that

00:42:26 ◼   ► even when you're not at home, right?

00:42:28 ◼   ► 'Cause you can use the HomeKit stuff outside of the house.

00:42:31 ◼   ► I guess this would also become the HomeKit hub

00:42:34 ◼   ► like the Apple TV can be, right?

00:42:35 ◼   ► So that would be kinda cool.

00:42:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, it would be,

00:42:41 ◼   ► I think that Apple could definitely tie that together.

00:42:45 ◼   ► And we've talked about HomeKit a bunch.

00:42:47 ◼   ► We wanna rehash all of that.

00:42:48 ◼   ► But it is better than I thought it was,

00:42:50 ◼   ► but it could do a lot more.

00:42:52 ◼   ► And I think a product like this could help entice

00:42:56 ◼   ► product makers to embrace HomeKit.

00:42:59 ◼   ► You know, we've heard many times that it's really hard

00:43:02 ◼   ► to develop a HomeKit product or service

00:43:06 ◼   ► because Apple's regulation over it.

00:43:08 ◼   ► And maybe this could be incentive, like,

00:43:10 ◼   ► "Hey, if you wanna be in our thing,

00:43:12 ◼   ► "you gotta use HomeKit,

00:43:12 ◼   ► "because we're not opening it up to IFT."

00:43:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, 'cause right now, all they've got is stick, right?

00:43:17 ◼   ► And not a lot of carrot, and this would be that, I think.

00:43:21 ◼   ► this would help device makers have a reason to jump through Apple's hoops and hopefully

00:43:27 ◼   ► at the same time Apple might try and make it a little bit easier or cheaper for someone

00:43:31 ◼   ► to do this because it becomes in their interest to have more and more HomeKit devices.

00:43:35 ◼   ► Like they're not silly, they know they don't have as many devices for HomeKit as Amazon

00:43:40 ◼   ► has and Amazon, I'm going to talk about a couple of these later on, Amazon has continued

00:43:44 ◼   ► to expand the things that have their assistant capability inbuilt in them at a rate which

00:43:49 ◼   ► which is exponentially faster than there are new HomeKit devices.

00:43:51 ◼   ► So Apple knows this, surely, and I'm sure that they're trying to do some things to

00:43:56 ◼   ► fix that.

00:43:57 ◼   ► And it may be that instead of something being HomeKit-enabled, that you can do something

00:44:03 ◼   ► with SiriKit instead, right?

00:44:05 ◼   ► That it talks to an app as opposed to a device.

00:44:07 ◼   ► There might be ways that they can try and make that a bit better, right?

00:44:10 ◼   ► A little bit more like the Amazon model.

00:44:12 ◼   ► There might be something that they can do there which still enables some things to work

00:44:16 ◼   ► and still keep security, right?

00:44:18 ◼   ► I don't know what that would be, but there might be something that they can do, right,

00:44:21 ◼   ► that makes them comfortable with that.

00:44:23 ◼   ► One other thing, talking about sensors, we'll have to put a camera in this thing.

00:44:26 ◼   ► Just completely killed the home security market.

00:44:30 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, I think that they would run into the same problem that Amazon potentially

00:44:37 ◼   ► is, but they're just going to talk about in a minute that you've got privacy and, like,

00:44:41 ◼   ► just weirdness concerns with the camera.

00:44:43 ◼   ► I don't see Apple, I don't think I see Apple doing that.

00:44:46 ◼   ► Yeah, but what, you know, they could do what they always do, right?

00:44:49 ◼   ► They just say like, Oh, nobody ever see, you know, like they could,

00:44:52 ◼   ► they could run the privacy game on it.

00:44:54 ◼   ► Yeah. And,

00:44:55 ◼   ► and thinking how many people that we know who tape over their eyesights on their

00:44:59 ◼   ► laptops, right? And,

00:45:00 ◼   ► and if you want a product that's going to be in your kitchen or in your home all

00:45:03 ◼   ► the time, it's hard enough.

00:45:04 ◼   ► Some people are already worried about that it's listening all the time for its

00:45:07 ◼   ► wake word.

00:45:07 ◼   ► And people think that they're streaming out of the cloud and maybe they are.

00:45:12 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:45:12 ◼   ► But I think a lot of those people are the same people that would assume that

00:45:15 ◼   ► Apple will protect you. I know what you're saying, right? But yeah.

00:45:19 ◼   ► Oh yeah, there's a lot of like the weird like fear and certainly doubt situation

00:45:25 ◼   ► with that but I think a camera is probably too far from most people. I like

00:45:29 ◼   ► to think that they could do more sensors and other stuff and make it a better

00:45:33 ◼   ► home kit hub than just like just what the Apple TV is which is basically just a

00:45:37 ◼   ► gateway to the outside if you're not home. Do you think this is a product

00:45:40 ◼   ► coming? I do. It seems inevitable. It seems like that Amazon is doing it, Google's

00:45:49 ◼   ► doing it, Google just I think I just saw on Twitter so I don't know if there's all

00:45:53 ◼   ► the details so forgive me if I have something wrong but I believe they're

00:45:56 ◼   ► rolling out the multi-voice deal so if it's if I speak it has certain access

00:46:02 ◼   ► to things and if someone else speaks if I have a guest over they can't add things

00:46:06 ◼   ► in my calendar. This stuff is evolving and Apple was there in the early days

00:46:12 ◼   ► with the iPhone 4s with Siri and it has been stuck on the phone for a long time.

00:46:20 ◼   ► Now it's on the watch, now it's on the Mac which I always forget until

00:46:22 ◼   ► accidentally hit it and it's time for Siri to sort of expand to this next

00:46:27 ◼   ► category and like you said Apple has all the parts for this. They had

00:46:31 ◼   ► the voice assistant, they have the web services, they have a music streaming

00:46:35 ◼   ► service and they know how to make really nice looking things that sound good.

00:46:40 ◼   ► Like Apple has all the parts on the shelf, they just got to go do it.

00:46:44 ◼   ► Yeah I have this like, I've always had this theory, it's not an insanely complex theory,

00:46:49 ◼   ► that there are some products that Apple makes just because everybody thinks they're making

00:46:53 ◼   ► them, right?

00:46:54 ◼   ► Like a rumor begins and it gets to the point where they're like, well we've got to kind

00:46:58 ◼   ► of make this now because everyone thinks we're making it.

00:47:00 ◼   ► Like what?

00:47:01 ◼   ► Like what?

00:47:02 ◼   ► What comes to mind?

00:47:03 ◼   ► my mind with this. Whether it was a project or not, there were rumors for the iPhone for

00:47:09 ◼   ► what felt like so long, there was always a part of my mind that was like, if they're

00:47:13 ◼   ► not making this, they're going to have to make it at some point. You know they were

00:47:17 ◼   ► talking about, there was all this talk about, oh they were making this touchscreen product

00:47:21 ◼   ► and it was going to be the iPad and then they shelved it and made a phone? I've always

00:47:24 ◼   ► thought in my head, is that just because everyone thought they were making one? So they're

00:47:27 ◼   ► kind of like, well let's just do this now first. And then they moved on with it. I don't

00:47:31 ◼   ► But anyway, I always think there's got to be a certain point where everyone thinks we're

00:47:36 ◼   ► making this, maybe we should actually just move this product along quicker than we already

00:47:41 ◼   ► are or not at all.

00:47:42 ◼   ► So I think they're going to make a product like this just because it's become expected.

00:47:47 ◼   ► And it might even just be that we're looking at the wrong place and it's just the new Apple

00:47:51 ◼   ► TV that has this stuff in it.

00:47:53 ◼   ► There was that rumor a while ago, it could just be that.

00:47:55 ◼   ► There's all these two products together.

00:47:58 ◼   ► My complaint with that rumor has always been that

00:48:00 ◼   ► Amazon has proven that products like this

00:48:03 ◼   ► will want to live in the kitchen.

00:48:04 ◼   ► And I don't know about you,

00:48:06 ◼   ► but my big television is not in my kitchen.

00:48:08 ◼   ► - I agree with that.

00:48:10 ◼   ► I wonder if it, I mean, this is getting real convoluted

00:48:13 ◼   ► at this point, but it's like a multi-product,

00:48:15 ◼   ► like it's not like a multi-device product.

00:48:17 ◼   ► You buy like this one thing and it has these two components.

00:48:19 ◼   ► The only reason I think this is just,

00:48:21 ◼   ► I think Apple's going to want to try and push more and more

00:48:23 ◼   ► to make sure that people's TVs are connected

00:48:25 ◼   ► to their services, because they're going to start spending

00:48:28 ◼   ► so much money on content that they need to make sure that they're pushing that and whether

00:48:34 ◼   ► it's like a way cheaper Apple TV, like making the Apple TV more like the Chromecast or something.

00:48:41 ◼   ► You know, like so you buy this product which is the speaker and a tube and it comes with

00:48:45 ◼   ► something you just stick into the HDMI port and it's the TV thing. I don't know. I don't

00:48:50 ◼   ► know because it's a Bluetooth remote, right? So like anyway, I wonder if that there could

00:48:56 ◼   ► be some way of connecting those two things together, I don't know.

00:49:00 ◼   ► I'm interested to see where this goes just because the Echo has become something that

00:49:04 ◼   ► we really like in our home even to do the very limited things that we do with it, but

00:49:08 ◼   ► we wouldn't want to get rid of it.

00:49:10 ◼   ► The idea of having something that's maybe a little bit more integrated with the devices

00:49:14 ◼   ► that I use, if done well, could be something very compelling for us.

00:49:19 ◼   ► In a way that the Google Home hasn't been.

00:49:22 ◼   ► I didn't get a Google Home because I'm like, "We don't really seem to do anything better

00:49:25 ◼   ► for me than the Echo does. So why would I go down that route?

00:49:30 ◼   ► Yeah, I checked one out. It's been in my file cabinet for a while now. And for me, it had

00:49:36 ◼   ► the same problem that this Apple one could potentially have. Like, the Echo does what

00:49:40 ◼   ► I want it to do and it's already configured. Like, it already is all working for me the

00:49:44 ◼   ► way I want. And I like having one out here and one inside so I get the same experience

00:49:49 ◼   ► with places.

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00:51:16 ◼   ► It's really awesome to communicate with them and tell them what you're looking for.

00:51:20 ◼   ► So Steven, I believe that you got some stuff from Bonfer.

00:51:22 ◼   ► What do you think?

00:51:23 ◼   ► I have.

00:51:24 ◼   ► And so I went through the signup process.

00:51:27 ◼   ► So people may not know, part of these deals, we just sign up like normal people.

00:51:30 ◼   ► And so they have a style quiz when you go sign up and actually just load it up in a

00:51:35 ◼   ► tab.

00:51:36 ◼   ► And I don't know about you, Myke, but I'm very often confused by fashion terms, right?

00:51:41 ◼   ► So a question is like, what is your preferred fit?

00:51:44 ◼   ► Trim or relax?

00:51:45 ◼   ► I have an idea what that means, but pictures are helpful, and Bombfell uses pictures in

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00:51:58 ◼   ► And for me, it takes some of the stress out of different companies have different terms

00:52:02 ◼   ► for different things, and Bombfell's style quiz makes it super easy to be like, "Yes,

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00:52:10 ◼   ► Click the button, and you're good to go.

00:52:11 ◼   ► Do you like stuff that you got?

00:52:13 ◼   ► I do, yeah.

00:52:14 ◼   ► Yeah, so I got a couple shirts and a pair of shorts because I'm a dad. Hey shorts and

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00:52:41 ◼   ► you

00:52:59 ◼   ► weeks ago we were talking about what we thought was going to be the Amazon Echo security camera.

00:53:06 ◼   ► You remember this? There was an image that somebody found online and it was what ended

00:53:11 ◼   ► up being the Amazon Echo Look and we were like oh can't wait for Amazon security camera.

00:53:15 ◼   ► Wasn't a security camera. It is, in case you don't know, the Amazon Echo Look is a product

00:53:20 ◼   ► that Amazon have made which is to allow for you to get some styling advice. Now I'm going

00:53:28 ◼   ► I'm going to put some links in the show notes to Amazon's page, to Dan Moran's post on six

00:53:32 ◼   ► colors because he is the resident Echo person, and also a YouTube video which kind of gives

00:53:40 ◼   ► a breakdown of what the product is.

00:53:41 ◼   ► I watched the video, I don't know if you've seen this video, but something I found very

00:53:44 ◼   ► interesting in this video is it features women almost exclusively, which is very different

00:53:48 ◼   ► for a consumer technology product video.

00:53:50 ◼   ► And I thought that was really cool and just a different thing to see.

00:53:53 ◼   ► So this product has a camera and you can see what your outfit looks like front and back,

00:53:58 ◼   ► which I think is really clever.

00:54:01 ◼   ► I can never see what I look like from the back because I don't have an elaborate system

00:54:04 ◼   ► of mirrors, but this product you turn around and it can show you.

00:54:09 ◼   ► It has a built-in blur and depth of field effect, so the images that you take they kind

00:54:13 ◼   ► of are framed nicely.

00:54:15 ◼   ► And you can share your images on social media and then it creates your own lookbook.

00:54:18 ◼   ► Are you familiar with what a lookbook is, Steven?

00:54:21 ◼   ► Only because I watch this YouTube video.

00:54:23 ◼   ► OK, I've heard this phrase before.

00:54:25 ◼   ► And a lookbook is basically like a selection of your outfits,

00:54:29 ◼   ► which you can share.

00:54:30 ◼   ► And this is like a big thing for people

00:54:32 ◼   ► that do share their outfit of the day and stuff like that.

00:54:34 ◼   ► Are you familiar with the hashtag #OOTD?

00:54:36 ◼   ► No.

00:54:37 ◼   ► I'm trying to show that I'm cool, right?

00:54:39 ◼   ► I think you're showing that you used Google before the episode.

00:54:41 ◼   ► No, this is stuff I see.

00:54:43 ◼   ► I see this stuff online, like my friends and people I follow.

00:54:47 ◼   ► I see these things.

00:54:48 ◼   ► Well, Myke, you live in a fashionable world city.

00:54:51 ◼   ► That's true.

00:54:52 ◼   ► I really do. London, Milan. I live five minutes from Arkansas.

00:54:55 ◼   ► Is that not a style icon city?

00:54:59 ◼   ► It is a city that I love but not a style icon.

00:55:03 ◼   ► No, I see what you're saying about this and I think that

00:55:06 ◼   ► it's easy for me to sort of poke fun of. In fact, in my blog post I was like, I wear a podcast

00:55:10 ◼   ► t-shirt and Chuck Taylors every day so

00:55:11 ◼   ► it's not for me. But there are people, there are a huge number of consumers

00:55:16 ◼   ► who this is like aimed squarely at and

00:55:20 ◼   ► What I find so interesting about this is that the Echo and the Google Home and the future

00:55:27 ◼   ► Apple voice in a canister, those things are all like general computing devices.

00:55:35 ◼   ► Really, I can ask it questions about lots of things.

00:55:38 ◼   ► I may not always know the answer, but it has its strengths and weaknesses, but it's sort

00:55:43 ◼   ► of general and broad.

00:55:45 ◼   ► This thing is designed for a very narrow, specific set of tasks.

00:55:51 ◼   ► I assume the rest of the Echo stuff is in here, where I can ask this thing the weather

00:55:55 ◼   ► and to add things to my calendar, but it is marketed as a fashion accessory, a fashion

00:56:01 ◼   ► technology hybrid accessory, dingus camera.

00:56:05 ◼   ► And for me, this is a very interesting take on it, that they're making something very

00:56:09 ◼   ► specific and targeting and marketing it in a very specific way is a big change.

00:56:14 ◼   ► So you would think that it was just like the regular Echo, but it isn't.

00:56:19 ◼   ► Does it not have the other stuff?

00:56:21 ◼   ► It has some of it, but not all of it.

00:56:23 ◼   ► And the thing that it's missing is super weird.

00:56:25 ◼   ► You cannot order products via this device.

00:56:28 ◼   ► What?

00:56:29 ◼   ► You can only order them via the app.

00:56:31 ◼   ► This was something that I found out from Dan's piece on 6colors.

00:56:36 ◼   ► That doesn't make any sense, right?

00:56:38 ◼   ► This thing, you would feel like you would be more likely to order stuff because it figures

00:56:42 ◼   ► out the clothes that you want and then you like look in the app and you're like

00:56:45 ◼   ► yeah order me that black t-shirt and it's like you can order in the app yeah

00:56:47 ◼   ► I mean or maybe it's like the bomb phil battery like it's helpful to see things

00:56:52 ◼   ► like see pictures and you say hey order another one of these shirts and maybe it

00:56:55 ◼   ► gets it wrong I mean maybe that's coming or maybe that involves more more AI and

00:56:59 ◼   ► machine learning and hashtag you know words that it doesn't have right now so

00:57:05 ◼   ► some of the ways that it does advance the assistant stuff is it adds something

00:57:09 ◼   ► called style check this is what makes this product different and they are

00:57:12 ◼   ► combining machine learning as you say and advice from fashion specialists so

00:57:16 ◼   ► you take these photos of yourself you upload them and it will give you an idea

00:57:20 ◼   ► as to what works best for you and it can suggest some other clothes you can kind

00:57:24 ◼   ► of show two different outfits and it will tell you what works and what

00:57:26 ◼   ► doesn't. Very interesting like I remember originally thinking that the echo was a

00:57:32 ◼   ► ridiculous product like you could go back in time and find the episode of

00:57:36 ◼   ► whatever show it was we were doing at the time where we were probably talking

00:57:39 ◼   ► about how stupid it was and this product isn't for me but it doesn't mean that it's stupid and

00:57:44 ◼   ► I'm not thinking of it that way anymore right and being like okay the echo look is not something that

00:57:49 ◼   ► I am interested in because I don't have a personal lookbook my personal lookbook would be full of

00:57:54 ◼   ► podcast t-shirts and pajama trousers I don't really think I need that so much but I know that many

00:58:01 ◼   ► people would I bet Adina would quite like the idea of a product like this because this is something

00:58:06 ◼   ► that she cares about more than me. I bet that Matt Alexander would care about this more

00:58:11 ◼   ► than me, right? Because he is more in the fashion world than I am.

00:58:14 ◼   ► It's very handsome.

00:58:15 ◼   ► So I'm wondering whether people that care about this stuff would actually care about

00:58:21 ◼   ► a computer algorithm trying to give them fashion advice. And so I expect that the reason that

00:58:26 ◼   ► they're talking about fashion specialists in this is because that's an important thing.

00:58:31 ◼   ► And I wonder if they were gonna, you know, maybe as this product starts to catch on a

00:58:35 ◼   ► a little bit, they could do some stuff to try and attach some brands or influences to

00:58:38 ◼   ► the system. And I was thinking like, what if there were like some people that you really

00:58:42 ◼   ► liked and their voice could come out of the thing instead of the regular voice?

00:58:46 ◼   ► So I could have Matt tell me that my outfit is "on point".

00:58:49 ◼   ► Wow, it's weird that we both went there. I don't even know if he even says that, but

00:58:54 ◼   ► we both think he says "on point". Or they could just have like little tips or trends

00:58:57 ◼   ► and stuff, but like considering this is a thing of a speaker, like it could actually

00:59:01 ◼   ► speak them to you which I thought would be kind of interesting and I guess in the app

00:59:05 ◼   ► you know people can they can like try and attach this stuff and show you how

00:59:09 ◼   ► somebody can talk to you

00:59:10 ◼   ► maybe like young people are into this we're not so young anymore I don't know

00:59:14 ◼   ► speak for yourself

00:59:16 ◼   ► yeah okay and they have an autumn like this visual log over time which is kind

00:59:20 ◼   ► of cool as well where so it can show you like these are the things that work for

00:59:24 ◼   ► you these are the things you want in the past and I think it can do this stuff

00:59:26 ◼   ► where it will suggest you like hey you wear this a bunch

00:59:29 ◼   ► stop wearing that.

00:59:30 ◼   ► So you know, you say to me like stop wearing that ATP shirt,

00:59:33 ◼   ► you wear that all the time.

00:59:35 ◼   ► So there is a lot in this product

00:59:37 ◼   ► and it has some foibles,

00:59:40 ◼   ► but I think that it is an interesting advancement

00:59:44 ◼   ► of the Echo technology.

00:59:45 ◼   ► I'm not so concerned about the fact

00:59:48 ◼   ► that it's a camera in the bedroom.

00:59:50 ◼   ► It's like, okay, look, I know that's kind of weird,

00:59:54 ◼   ► but you can choose if you want that

00:59:55 ◼   ► and you can choose how you want to live your life

00:59:57 ◼   ► and if you want it to be a camera in your bedroom or not.

00:59:59 ◼   ► But we have these devices, I already have probably three or four devices in my bedroom

01:00:04 ◼   ► that have a camera on them.

01:00:06 ◼   ► They just don't face me.

01:00:08 ◼   ► You can arrange your bedroom in such a way that your camera isn't facing you.

01:00:12 ◼   ► Do you know what I mean?

01:00:14 ◼   ► We both sleep with phones by our bedsides and iPads.

01:00:19 ◼   ► They all have cameras in them.

01:00:21 ◼   ► You just adjust as necessary.

01:00:23 ◼   ► Just don't point it at the bed if you don't want it focused on the bed.

01:00:28 ◼   ► arrange it the way that you want. This is an interesting product and I'm happy to see

01:00:33 ◼   ► Amazon kind of do something a little bit outside of the box again because the Echo worked for

01:00:38 ◼   ► them. That was out of the box when they announced it. The Echo Look, similar kind of idea.

01:00:43 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. Even if it doesn't take off, I applaud them for trying something that is

01:00:51 ◼   ► new and like we said, specific. And it goes along with, I mean Amazon has been working,

01:00:56 ◼   ► Jeff Bezos has been vocal about this, working towards being more of a fashion

01:01:02 ◼   ► brand, right? They have, I heard some of the podcasts that they have a like a

01:01:08 ◼   ► fashion office in New York City, like they're working, they're designing,

01:01:12 ◼   ► and I think this is it this is gonna be a big push for Amazon this year and into

01:01:17 ◼   ► the future, and Amazon is unique in that it can partner retail with like high

01:01:24 ◼   ► technology and this is just another good example of that. But there's more going

01:01:29 ◼   ► on with the Amazon ecosystem stuff right?

01:01:33 ◼   ► Mm-hmm yeah so there's an article tech crunch

01:01:38 ◼   ► Amazon has an update for the the voice engine I guess is what we would be

01:01:44 ◼   ► calling it that yeah it's this is hard to talk about but basically it can

01:01:52 ◼   ► whisper, it can take a breath to pause for emphasis, adjust the rate, pitch, and volume

01:01:58 ◼   ► of speech, and basically to sound more natural and more, I guess, approachable.

01:02:06 ◼   ► Which is good, I mean, even if you paid attention to Siri, that voice has changed over the years.

01:02:13 ◼   ► The first one, if you go back and use Siri on, you know, back in like the, when it was

01:02:19 ◼   ► the 4S, you know, that era sounded much more robotic and much more cold than it does now.

01:02:27 ◼   ► And this is just Amazon advancing their language engine.

01:02:31 ◼   ► So there's more coming here to make it sound, I guess, more and more realistic, right? Like,

01:02:35 ◼   ► I guess that's their idea. I don't know if we need that, like I don't know how realistic

01:02:41 ◼   ► the voice needs to sound, but I guess it's kind of cool that it is going to get better.

01:02:45 ◼   ► I wonder if like making the voice sound more normal that when it gets things wrong it might

01:02:50 ◼   ► be more annoying?

01:02:51 ◼   ► Maybe.

01:02:52 ◼   ► Like there's this disconnect of like that's a robot where I'm kind of not so frustrated

01:02:58 ◼   ► when it gets it wrong because I remember it's a robot but if it starts to sound like an

01:03:01 ◼   ► actual human being will I get more annoyed when it gets stuff wrong?

01:03:03 ◼   ► Or will I be less annoyed because it's got feelings?

01:03:06 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:03:07 ◼   ► I mean as long as it doesn't make stupid jokes about it like Siri does then I'm fine.

01:03:10 ◼   ► That's the thing that kills me with Apple.

01:03:13 ◼   ► I want to mention before we wrap up, and ratchet up, that's a new phrase that I'm working

01:03:19 ◼   ► on.

01:03:20 ◼   ► I've spoken so many times about the fact that I've been trying to get my Dyson fan to integrate

01:03:26 ◼   ► with my Echo to varying levels of success.

01:03:29 ◼   ► Well, Dyson might fix this for me because they've announced a new product that integrates

01:03:34 ◼   ► with it.

01:03:35 ◼   ► So it's called the Dyson Hot Cool Air Purifier, Dyson Pure Cool Link Purifier, Hot and Cool

01:03:42 ◼   ► Link Air Purifier.

01:03:44 ◼   ► I'm going to get this eventually.

01:03:45 ◼   ► It is the Pure Hot and Cool Link Air Purifier.

01:03:48 ◼   ► There we go.

01:03:49 ◼   ► I did it.

01:03:50 ◼   ► I did it.

01:03:51 ◼   ► Okay.

01:03:52 ◼   ► I did it.

01:03:53 ◼   ► It's because they've had this product, right?

01:03:54 ◼   ► It was called like the Cool Link and then they have one called the Hot.

01:03:55 ◼   ► This costs $600.

01:03:56 ◼   ► Yeah, it does.

01:03:57 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:03:58 ◼   ► Uh, and basically they've just been bolting the words on.

01:04:01 ◼   ► The product's got more and more advanced.

01:04:03 ◼   ► It's added new word every time.

01:04:05 ◼   ► Not a great--

01:04:06 ◼   ► It is.

01:04:07 ◼   ► So it's the fan I have, which is a hot and cold fan.

01:04:09 ◼   ► But it also adds an air purifier.

01:04:11 ◼   ► This is a separate line that's meshing two things together.

01:04:15 ◼   ► So this is an air purifier that can do hot and cold.

01:04:17 ◼   ► And it also has an app, which you can connect it

01:04:21 ◼   ► to the internet.

01:04:22 ◼   ► And then eventually, later on, the product's out now.

01:04:24 ◼   ► But soon, they're going to have it integrate with the Echo

01:04:27 ◼   ► stuff as well.

01:04:28 ◼   ► It is mega expensive.

01:04:29 ◼   ► this is exactly what I'm looking for in a product. Eventually we'll probably sell the

01:04:34 ◼   ► one that we have and then buy this because it's exactly what I've been looking for but

01:04:40 ◼   ► it's just mega expensive but it's what I've been looking for so eventually it will make

01:04:46 ◼   ► its way into my home I think. Air purification, we don't have that you know, it would be a

01:04:52 ◼   ► benefit I guess. Health, it's all about the health right? That's the thing, health. Air

01:04:57 ◼   ► I'm sure it's good for your health.

01:04:59 ◼   ► That's how I'll sell it.

01:05:00 ◼   ► You know, oh no, of course we need to spend $600, this is good for the health.

01:05:05 ◼   ► You don't sound too impressed about this.

01:05:07 ◼   ► I mean I think that Dyson stuff is overpriced and kind of ridiculous.

01:05:11 ◼   ► But hey.

01:05:12 ◼   ► Do you own any Dyson products?

01:05:13 ◼   ► No.

01:05:14 ◼   ► Alright, but they're always the best products in their categories.

01:05:16 ◼   ► Their vacuums are so good.

01:05:17 ◼   ► They look beautiful.

01:05:19 ◼   ► It's like a piece of sculpture in your living room.

01:05:20 ◼   ► I'm telling you man, like if you don't own any Dyson products you should get, you should

01:05:24 ◼   ► at least get a vacuum.

01:05:25 ◼   ► this stuff is amazing. It is the most Apple-like company that I have used the products of.

01:05:32 ◼   ► Like you even get this little booklet in the product which tells you the history of them.

01:05:36 ◼   ► And it's like James Dyson is the guy. He's still there. He still engineers all the stuff.

01:05:42 ◼   ► They're very Apple-like. And every product of theirs that I have, we have two now, I

01:05:46 ◼   ► am so impressed by the way that it's made, the way that it works, all of the things that

01:05:52 ◼   ► you add to it. They are a very, very cool company and Apple liking the way that

01:05:57 ◼   ► their stuff is more expensive than anybody else's but I think for

01:06:00 ◼   ► good reason. Can I tell you on the new face of Dyson did I mention that at all?

01:06:04 ◼   ► Huh. Mm-hmm. What was it? Invoice 1000? The thing that that I mean the Dyson stuff

01:06:12 ◼   ► whatever but you can just buy anything with with the service in it it's crazy

01:06:18 ◼   ► like they they have taken the Windows approach to this of hey we make

01:06:22 ◼   ► software really or an OS kind of and just stick it in whatever you want and

01:06:27 ◼   ► ecobee has an upcoming thermostat that has the service built-ins you killing me

01:06:32 ◼   ► killing me why are you doing this to me it's just all over the place mm-hmm

01:06:36 ◼   ► thank you for listening to this week's episode of connected if you wanna find

01:06:40 ◼   ► our show notes for this week go to relay that FM slash connected slash one four

01:06:44 ◼   ► If you want to find Stephen online, he's at ismh, and he's at 512pixels.net.

01:06:49 ◼   ► I am at imike, I-M-Y-K-E, and Federico should be back next week, I hope, if he's—I don't

01:06:55 ◼   ► know what he's doing, actually.

01:06:56 ◼   ► He's probably preparing for his release notes talk, right?

01:06:58 ◼   ► That's what I expect he's doing.

01:06:59 ◼   ► He's—

01:07:00 ◼   ► I think he's watching the Microsoft education events going on right now.

01:07:03 ◼   ► He's watching that, I think.

01:07:04 ◼   ► Take notes.

01:07:05 ◼   ► Okay.

01:07:06 ◼   ► Needs some Microsoft education.

01:07:07 ◼   ► Everybody does, right?

01:07:08 ◼   ► That's what we're all after.

01:07:09 ◼   ► He's at macstories.net, and AppStories as well.

01:07:10 ◼   ► He's a new podcast.

01:07:11 ◼   ► You can go check it out.

01:07:12 ◼   ► is at the TGVITI CCI. Thanks for listening, thanks to our sponsors this

01:07:17 ◼   ► week, Bombfell, Pingdom and Casper and we'll be back next time. Until then, say

01:07:22 ◼   ► goodbye Steven. Adios.