Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:05 ◼   ► From V-Lay FM, this is Connected, episode 110.

00:00:10 ◼   ► Today's show is brought to you by TextExpander from SMILE, FreshBooks, and Pingdom.

00:00:16 ◼   ► My name is Myke Hurley and I am joined by my European brethren, Mr Federico Vittucci.

00:00:23 ◼   ► Hey Myke.

00:00:24 ◼   ► How are you, sir?

00:00:25 ◼   ► I'm doing well.

00:00:27 ◼   ► It's a fine evening in Rome.

00:00:29 ◼   ► It's been a strange day tech-wise, like one of those days when everything stops working

00:00:34 ◼   ► for some reason, but I would say aside from the tech issues it's been a very good day.

00:00:40 ◼   ► Everything happened last week.

00:00:42 ◼   ► There was so much weird tech news last week, it was kind of incredible.

00:00:48 ◼   ► Yeah it was, especially during the weekend with the Snapchat news, it was all kinds of

00:00:55 ◼   ► strange.

00:00:56 ◼   ► leak and there was Snapchat and there was people started talking about Google

00:01:00 ◼   ► and what they're about to announce. It was strange. I don't know. I feel like the

00:01:05 ◼   ► past week has been strange. I don't know if it's me or maybe in general. I mean

00:01:09 ◼   ► and then there was the thing at The Verge, right? Yeah, that was super odd and

00:01:15 ◼   ► I don't know, I guess the quick reaction from people. So if you don't know what

00:01:20 ◼   ► we're talking about, The Verge put out an editorial note from Neil A. Patel, the

00:01:24 ◼   ► editor-in-chief of The Verge about one of the, actually I think one of the co-founders

00:01:28 ◼   ► of The Verge, what's the name? Chris Siegler. Chris Siegler, apparently The Verge found

00:01:34 ◼   ► out in early September after he was, I wouldn't say missing, but stopped communication, stopped

00:01:41 ◼   ► going to work in late July. They found out almost a month later that he got hired by

00:01:48 ◼   ► Apple and so they needed to conduct this sort of internal, what would you say, interview?

00:01:54 ◼   ► Audit, yeah, I guess, to make sure that there was no conflict of interest, that it didn't

00:01:59 ◼   ► influence any coverage of Apple. And it was a very odd situation because then some people

00:02:05 ◼   ► started saying, "Yeah, but Chris Ziegler, we don't see his name in the Apple internal

00:02:09 ◼   ► directory." Other people saying, "Yeah, but Chris Ziegler is actually an alias. It's not

00:02:13 ◼   ► his real name." And it's just, I mean, I don't know the guy, but I just hope he's okay, you

00:02:21 ◼   ► because it sounds a little concerning. No communication, no tweets, no nothing from

00:02:27 ◼   ► this person. So I just hope he's okay. It sort of became a meme quickly on Twitter,

00:02:34 ◼   ► you know how these things go. So I just hope he's okay and the verge of everyone's fine

00:02:39 ◼   ► and can go back to work.

00:02:41 ◼   ► Really strange. Anyway, Steven's not here this week. He is at the Release Notes Conference

00:02:46 ◼   ► this week and he's speaking so good luck buddy if you're out there anywhere and you're listening

00:02:51 ◼   ► to us we'd like to wish you the very best of luck. As an update to Steven's hissing

00:02:56 ◼   ► story he received a new 7 plus there was no kind of as far as we're aware special hand

00:03:03 ◼   ► in this it was basically just the the open ticket that he had with AppleCare came through

00:03:10 ◼   ► and his local store got a 7 plus in matt black which he's done picked up and he's been using

00:03:15 ◼   ► it and hasn't had any issues so it seems like it's now been fixed and everything's hunky

00:03:20 ◼   ► dory again. Nice. And I think what did his video do? I haven't thought to look. Maybe

00:03:26 ◼   ► I should go and check it right now and see how many views it got up to in the end. 1,447,161.

00:03:37 ◼   ► So he's approaching 1.5 million views on his hissing video. But I think we can finally

00:03:44 ◼   ► put his gait to bed. Yeah that was crazy right? The amount of views that he got? It was really

00:03:52 ◼   ► impressive and it was such a, you know, it's such a simple video right? It's like 20 seconds

00:03:57 ◼   ► of noise and it goes on to sort of prove just how viral YouTube can be and how many people

00:04:04 ◼   ► use YouTube like the media in TV shows and talk shows you know it's just it's just insane

00:04:11 ◼   ► to me to have that kind of popularity for such a relatively simple video.

00:04:19 ◼   ► And it worked out well for Steven.

00:04:21 ◼   ► That's virality though, right?

00:04:23 ◼   ► That's just how it goes.

00:04:24 ◼   ► Talking of hissing and stuff like that, I saw a link go by today from The Cult of Mac.

00:04:31 ◼   ► And so this is kind of, I think at this point it's just like one source but no one really

00:04:37 ◼   ► knows the answer yet.

00:04:38 ◼   ► but really interesting if it's the case that a replaced Galaxy Note 7 caught fire.

00:04:44 ◼   ► Oh really?

00:04:45 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:04:45 ◼   ► Even the replacement? Are we sure it's a replacement?

00:04:48 ◼   ► This was a replaced version.

00:04:50 ◼   ► Maybe Samsung actually got the replacement wrong?

00:04:52 ◼   ► Well that should be... there's this like software thing isn't there? I don't know if you've seen

00:04:56 ◼   ► this but any of the replaced ones, the battery is green, they have like a battery icon on the

00:05:02 ◼   ► phone, it's green to indicate that it's from the newer battery, one of the replaced ones.

00:05:06 ◼   ► But this guy, he ordered one now and it was still going, but apparently it was one of

00:05:10 ◼   ► the replaced ones. I'll put a link in the show notes, but like, just imagine if it continues,

00:05:15 ◼   ► like, oh my god, they will be over. I have this theory, by the way, that I haven't shared with

00:05:22 ◼   ► you yet about what Samsung are going to do next, because obviously this has been very unfortunate

00:05:27 ◼   ► for them, right? And they will come back from this because they're Samsung. I mean, and this all

00:05:32 ◼   ► all plays very well for Google because they've got an event next week right where it looks

00:05:37 ◼   ► like they're going to unveil a new phone TBC and how that's all going to work out. We'll

00:05:43 ◼   ► probably talk about it next week actually because the event is on next Tuesday so it

00:05:48 ◼   ► might be fun to see what Google are up to. But I have a theory about Samsung that they're

00:05:52 ◼   ► going to, and this is not a joke, this is completely serious, that I think that they're

00:05:56 ◼   ► going to give a new name to this product line, they're going to call it like Arctic or something.

00:06:01 ◼   ► I genuinely think they're going to give it some kind of name that means cold or like

00:06:05 ◼   ► all the colors will be like arctic blue and frost white and stuff like that to try it.

00:06:11 ◼   ► This is not me trolling. I seriously think this is what they're going to do because this

00:06:15 ◼   ► is what I would do if I was in charge of Samsung marketing because the Note 7 and the Note

00:06:21 ◼   ► name has been tarnished now. So they should be giving it a new name anyway I think and

00:06:27 ◼   ► I think they need to go for something code related. Anywho, let's actually get into the

00:06:32 ◼   ► show rather than just this weird technology show that I've decided to host.

00:06:36 ◼   ► If you work for Samsung, why don't you write a letter to the marketing team?

00:06:40 ◼   ► I don't want them taking my ideas. They'll never hear it if it's here, but if I write

00:06:44 ◼   ► to them, they might take it. Matthew wrote in to let us know that Carrot weather, my

00:06:50 ◼   ► my favorite weather application is now implementing as of just a few days ago the new subscription

00:06:58 ◼   ► method.

00:06:59 ◼   ► Oh nice.

00:07:00 ◼   ► So when I was talking last week about where are all the subscription apps, well here's

00:07:03 ◼   ► one of them.

00:07:05 ◼   ► And the way that they're doing it is the app is still a paid upfront application but this

00:07:10 ◼   ► was something that they previously had before is you could subscribe to a premium level

00:07:14 ◼   ► which would get you stuff like watch complications.

00:07:17 ◼   ► Yes.

00:07:18 ◼   ► Now they have moved that to a $2.49 auto-renewing subscription.

00:07:23 ◼   ► It was previously a non-auto-renewing subscription.

00:07:27 ◼   ► But now that's been changed over, so the Carrot Weather app made by Carrot is now – oh,

00:07:35 ◼   ► Grail LLC, I can't say the name – is now one of these applications that's implemented

00:07:40 ◼   ► the auto-renewing subscriptions that are new.

00:07:44 ◼   ► Nice.

00:07:45 ◼   ► Nice. Yeah, I mean it's very...

00:07:47 ◼   ► You know, Carrot is the kind of app that I would actually subscribe to.

00:07:50 ◼   ► It's been in development for many years.

00:07:52 ◼   ► It's always been updated for the latest iOS versions and features.

00:07:56 ◼   ► And it makes sense to add more functionality through subscriptions.

00:07:59 ◼   ► Especially, I think, for something like a complication,

00:08:02 ◼   ► which is a feature that you put on a watch.

00:08:05 ◼   ► So I think it makes sense, you know, as long as you keep wearing your watch,

00:08:09 ◼   ► you're going to have the extras through their subscription.

00:08:12 ◼   ► subscription. So I think it makes sense, I think the Carrot Weather

00:08:16 ◼   ► audience is especially dedicated to the app. They have some really

00:08:20 ◼   ► strong fans and some really strong advocates for the app. I'm one of them, by the way.

00:08:24 ◼   ► I absolutely love Carrot Weather, I use it multiple times a day. I very rarely open the

00:08:30 ◼   ► application itself. I use the notification center widget or whatever it's called now.

00:08:37 ◼   ► today widget and I use the watch app mostly because the watch app is superb. It's always

00:08:44 ◼   ► worked really really well even on watchOS 2 it loaded fast and quickly and I use the

00:08:49 ◼   ► complication I like the little one because you can customize it and I have the little

00:08:53 ◼   ► one on the what watch face do I use the simple watch face and I just have the temperature

00:08:58 ◼   ► and then the icon next to it to show the current weather condition so it shows a little sun

00:09:03 ◼   ► or a little cloud or a rainy badge depending on where you are in the world. I see cloud

00:09:08 ◼   ► and rainy badge quite a lot.

00:09:09 ◼   ► Of course you do.

00:09:11 ◼   ► Seventeen degrees Celsius, a cloud and a moon is what I see right now on my watch. So yeah,

00:09:16 ◼   ► I wanted to mention this because it was an example of an application that's moved to

00:09:21 ◼   ► these auto renewing subscriptions that everyone was talking about and also because I think

00:09:24 ◼   ► that you should get Carrot Weather. This is not a sponsorship, I just think it's a fantastic

00:09:28 ◼   ► application.

00:09:30 ◼   ► Gabriel created, now we know Gabriel, Gabriel has created artwork for us in the past, do

00:09:35 ◼   ► you remember your Federico Vittucci protest with the iPad?

00:09:39 ◼   ► Oh yes I do, the protest sign, that was glorious.

00:09:42 ◼   ► Gabriel did this for us before and he, after last week's episode, created a movie poster,

00:09:47 ◼   ► Steven Potter and the Historians' Gate, which is amazing and it's all three of us in cloaks

00:09:53 ◼   ► looking down at a hissing iPad and it's full of Harry Potter jokes.

00:09:57 ◼   ► This is funny no matter whether you are a Harry Potter fan or not, I think you're still

00:10:01 ◼   ► gonna get a kick out of it.

00:10:03 ◼   ► Or if you are a Steven fan also.

00:10:07 ◼   ► Especially if you're a Steven fan.

00:10:08 ◼   ► Exactly, exactly.

00:10:09 ◼   ► Of which, you know, there are many, including me and you.

00:10:13 ◼   ► Yes, I'm a fan of Steven.

00:10:14 ◼   ► I am a fan of Steven.

00:10:15 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:10:16 ◼   ► It's a shame he's not here to receive this adulation.

00:10:19 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:10:21 ◼   ► So you will find Gabriel's amazing artwork in our show notes this week.

00:10:25 ◼   ► Federico Vittucci, where can people find our show notes?

00:10:28 ◼   ► Oh, they can go to... This is actually a trick question, Myke. You haven't been doing this

00:10:32 ◼   ► in a while.

00:10:32 ◼   ► Exactly. It's not a trick question. It's still an accurate question. It's just a surprise.

00:10:37 ◼   ► It's kind of a surprise, tricky question.

00:10:39 ◼   ► I know what you're doing, by the way. You're stalling it so you can get the number.

00:10:42 ◼   ► No, no, no. I'm looking at the document. Relay.fm/connected/110. And you will find...

00:10:49 ◼   ► 110.

00:10:50 ◼   ► Yeah, that's a lot of episodes. All the great episodes. And you're going to find all of

00:10:54 ◼   ► great show notes through that link. You know the deal by going with the web browser and

00:10:59 ◼   ► you know don't let me repeat the instructions again.

00:11:01 ◼   ► Yeah, yes, they get it by now. So we did 110 episodes of this show, we did 57 episodes

00:11:09 ◼   ► of The Prompt, so we're 167 episodes into this shindig.

00:11:15 ◼   ► I'm kind of tired of you Myke.

00:11:18 ◼   ► Okay, well let's give you some time to talk then.

00:11:21 ◼   ► The show is over, see ya.

00:11:23 ◼   ► You got an iPhone 7 finally. I did. It's a review unit from Apple.

00:11:29 ◼   ► So fancy. Disclaimer.

00:11:31 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know, fancy. Anyway, waiting for a Plus unit.

00:11:37 ◼   ► Because they don't exist in Europe right now really.

00:11:40 ◼   ► Yeah, it's very short. It's a serious problem. No Pluses for anybody.

00:11:46 ◼   ► Especially if you want the black versions. No, the jet black is really nowhere to be

00:11:51 ◼   ► found. But I'm waiting for a plus unit, I've been using this smaller iPhone 7 so I'm coming

00:11:58 ◼   ► from an iPhone 6S Plus, I've been in the #Plus Club for the past two years, Michael was the

00:12:05 ◼   ► one who inducted me into the club and I would say that I've got used to the bigger iPhone

00:12:13 ◼   ► and it's been a little bit of a shock to go back to the smaller version and I'm still

00:12:19 ◼   ► I'm not used to it, I still think I prefer the bigger iPhone, but I was curious to check out the new iPhone 7 features

00:12:25 ◼   ► I guess I'm working on some kind of story

00:12:29 ◼   ► I don't know the details yet

00:12:30 ◼   ► But I'm trying to collect my notes and thoughts and I feel like I can still appreciate

00:12:35 ◼   ► The new features in the iPhone 7 at least the ones that I can try so I would say three things

00:12:41 ◼   ► Stood out to me the home button. I actually love it. It's different from before for sure

00:12:49 ◼   ► but I think it's simpler to use, at least for me, I don't know

00:12:54 ◼   ► but I went back to the iPhone 6s and I found the mechanical version to be so, I don't know, fidgety

00:13:04 ◼   ► I cannot describe it, like it feels old and I prefer the new version

00:13:08 ◼   ► it's kinda trippy when the phone is turned off and you press it and it doesn't do anything

00:13:13 ◼   ► But I got used to the click, I got used to the feeling of it, and I think in the future this is like a first step.

00:13:19 ◼   ► It's kind of awkward for now because it's still the shape of a button and it's still down there,

00:13:24 ◼   ► but I feel like we're truly moving to an iPhone where the Home button is somehow built into the screen.

00:13:32 ◼   ► So like my feelings on the Home button, they're not changing a lot but they're solidifying in that.

00:13:39 ◼   ► I think it's fine. You know, I quite like the the number three option. I think that the amount of feedback that it gives you is great

00:13:45 ◼   ► But I just think that it is a regression in some ways. So whilst I think the actual

00:13:51 ◼   ► When you get the click when you when you hit it and you press it

00:13:54 ◼   ► I think it's more satisfying because it's more of like a really like you did this like, you know, it's letting you know about it

00:13:59 ◼   ► Yes, but using it if especially if you have a case on your phone on like a desk, it feels terrible

00:14:05 ◼   ► I don't know if you tried this like it barely feels like there's any click because you're not feeling it with the with your hand around

00:14:11 ◼   ► The back of the phone. So that's one thing I don't like and the other is that

00:14:14 ◼   ► There are times and it does happen to me at least, you know daily

00:14:19 ◼   ► I would say it happens more often more days often than not really where I

00:14:23 ◼   ► Attempt to hit the button in some way and it doesn't fire and that could be that some things obstructed it which does happen with me

00:14:29 ◼   ► And or it could be with like my fingernail or something like that where I'm clicking it and I'm missing

00:14:35 ◼   ► I don't know if this has happened much to you, but I do feel that to be a regression

00:14:40 ◼   ► in that way.

00:14:41 ◼   ► But overall, the feeling of the button I do find to be more pleasurable.

00:14:45 ◼   ► I just find that part a shame.

00:14:48 ◼   ► Yeah, I haven't run into the problem of the fingernail, the cloth between my finger and

00:14:54 ◼   ► the button.

00:14:55 ◼   ► So that's not been a problem.

00:14:56 ◼   ► I did notice having the phone on a desk, it happened to me once, actually today.

00:15:03 ◼   ► I don't think it's a big deal. I don't think it's a problem for me because most of the time I'm not putting my phone on a desk and clicking the button on a desk.

00:15:13 ◼   ► I mean, they're not problems in the, you know, I really want to preface it. I don't think that it's necessarily a problem with the phone.

00:15:21 ◼   ► It's a downside.

00:15:22 ◼   ► It is just a curious flaw in the new system, right? Like it's less good than before because of those things, but better in other ways because of other things, you know?

00:15:33 ◼   ► Yeah. The second feature that I wanted to mention is the white color stuff.

00:15:38 ◼   ► Oh, isn't it amazing?

00:15:39 ◼   ► And by stuff I mean the photography and the screen.

00:15:41 ◼   ► And I was reading tweets from people before I got the iPhone 7 saying,

00:15:45 ◼   ► "Once you compare photos from the iPhone 6S and the iPhone 7, you really do notice the difference."

00:15:49 ◼   ► I was like, "Yeah, those are artsy people. I don't care about that stuff."

00:15:53 ◼   ► But I did take a picture on the iPhone 7 and I took the same picture on my iPhone 6S Plus,

00:15:59 ◼   ► and boy do you notice the difference. It's absolutely impressive.

00:16:04 ◼   ► The colors from the old photographs seem washed out as if there's no life to them.

00:16:12 ◼   ► I don't know how to describe this. You gotta see it in person and you can appreciate the difference more

00:16:18 ◼   ► if you compare the same picture with the same lighting, the same conditions taken on two different iPhones.

00:16:25 ◼   ► and looking at white color photos on the display is just amazing.

00:16:30 ◼   ► The only thing missing from the display is the True Tone feature of the iPad Pro, so hopefully in the future we'll get that.

00:16:37 ◼   ► And the third aspect, Myke, that I need to mention, with one downside, is the speakers.

00:16:44 ◼   ► So the speakers are amazingly loud. I wouldn't say iPad Pro loud, but much louder than the old iPhone.

00:16:51 ◼   ► I listen to music on my iPhone speaker, dual speaker now, quite often and I enjoy it instead of putting on headphones, you know, especially when I'm alone.

00:17:03 ◼   ► I prefer to have speakers because I feel less isolated, I guess.

00:17:07 ◼   ► But what I noticed is that they consume more battery and it's noticeable, like the amount of battery life that decreases when you're listening to music on your iPhone.

00:17:19 ◼   ► I saw I think my friend Ryan

00:17:21 ◼   ► Jonesy on Twitter

00:17:23 ◼   ► He was tweeted about battery consumption with a dual speaker on the iPhone 7 with overcast

00:17:28 ◼   ► And I think I have found the same to be true with music

00:17:31 ◼   ► So of course, I mean there's another speaker so it drives more power and you know takes more battery life out of the iPhone

00:17:39 ◼   ► Make sense just you know something to keep in mind

00:17:42 ◼   ► In fact, I went to check in the battery settings and of course music is like 30% in there

00:17:47 ◼   ► So it makes sense, but the speakers sound very loud and it's very very nice.

00:17:51 ◼   ► Yeah, they are really great. I mean Apple said on stage it was two times louder.

00:17:57 ◼   ► I don't think it doesn't seem that way to me, but it's much louder.

00:18:00 ◼   ► It's loud enough that I don't need my iPad for a lot of the times where I would have for

00:18:06 ◼   ► podcasts and stuff to listen around the house.

00:18:09 ◼   ► You know?

00:18:11 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:18:13 ◼   ► You got some beats didn't you and I want to talk about your experience here with the new beats that Apple have with that new chip in them.

00:18:23 ◼   ► But before we do that I think we should take a quick break to talk about our first sponsor for this week and that is FreshBooks, the company on a mission to help small business owners save time and avoid the stress that comes with running their own businesses.

00:18:37 ◼   ► all starts with pain free invoicing. They have created an incredibly intuitive tool

00:18:42 ◼   ► to make sending invoices simple. I actually had a call with FreshBooks last week and they

00:18:46 ◼   ► gave me a demo of the new FreshBooks which you can get if you sign up now. They have

00:18:50 ◼   ► had a complete overhaul of their system and oh boy, boy oh boy, it looks incredible. My

00:18:58 ◼   ► favourite thing about the new FreshBooks is when you create an invoice they have now built

00:19:03 ◼   ► like a WYSIWYG system. So everything that you type in, all of the fields that you type

00:19:07 ◼   ► in, all of the prices and all of the information, it's all being put into a WYSIWYG view. So

00:19:13 ◼   ► what you're typing in is exactly how it ends up showing on the invoice that you sent to

00:19:17 ◼   ► someone and obviously the information has always been correct but you could set themes

00:19:21 ◼   ► and templates and fonts on your invoices, you've always been able to do it at FreshBooks,

00:19:26 ◼   ► but then you wouldn't see how that looked until you actually sent it and downloaded

00:19:29 ◼   ► the PDF. But now with the new FreshBooks, when you build that invoice, you'll be able

00:19:34 ◼   ► to see exactly how it's going to show up in the inbox of your client. This is just one

00:19:38 ◼   ► of the many new things in the brand new FreshBooks that I'm going to tell you about. And you

00:19:42 ◼   ► can go and try it out for yourself by going to FreshBooks.com/connected and you can sign

00:19:45 ◼   ► up and you'll be straight on board. But it's another thing that I really like. FreshBooks

00:19:49 ◼   ► are migrating their old customers over. So if you're a current FreshBooks customer, and

00:19:54 ◼   ► they're doing this in a really smart way. They are notifying their customers when all

00:19:59 ◼   ► of the features that they use, that FreshBooks know that this person uses, has been implemented

00:20:05 ◼   ► in a new version. So you're not going to be ported over and you can't do that thing that

00:20:09 ◼   ► you do every week. I love that. So I think this is a really smart way of moving people

00:20:14 ◼   ► over so you'll get an invite when it's ready for you. So you're not moving over and being

00:20:18 ◼   ► all confused. I think that's a really great way. And that is just another example of FreshBooks

00:20:22 ◼   ► FreshBooks is a superior customer service, this is something that they believe greatly

00:20:25 ◼   ► in making the best experience for their customers and also providing fantastic support as well.

00:20:31 ◼   ► FreshBooks have tons of things that will help make your invoice and all of your money stuff

00:20:35 ◼   ► run waste mover in your business.

00:20:38 ◼   ► FreshBooks customers get paid 5 days faster on average because they make it so simple

00:20:42 ◼   ► to integrate many payment options and make it easy for your clients to pay you.

00:20:47 ◼   ► I want you to go and try it out for yourself today.

00:20:50 ◼   ► Freshbooks is offering a 30 day free trial to listeners of this show.

00:20:53 ◼   ► There's no credit card required.

00:20:55 ◼   ► Claim your 30 days of unrestricted use by going to freshbooks.com/connected and then

00:21:00 ◼   ► when you sign up enter the code word connected in the how you heard about section so Freshbooks

00:21:05 ◼   ► knows that you came to them from this very show.

00:21:10 ◼   ► Thank you so much to Freshbooks for their support of connected and Relay FM.

00:21:15 ◼   ► So Federico, you were interested in trying out the Beats Solo 3, the new Beats that have

00:21:23 ◼   ► the Apple W1 chip in them.

00:21:25 ◼   ► Yes, yes.

00:21:27 ◼   ► And they kind of launched in Italy a couple of days ago and you got a pair.

00:21:32 ◼   ► So I would like to hear all about your experiences.

00:21:37 ◼   ► So I wanted to try the new W1 chip which is on the Beats Solo 3, the Beats X and the new

00:21:44 ◼   ► new PowerBeats. It's the same chip and in theory the same experience that you will

00:21:49 ◼   ► get with the AirPods, but because the AirPods are not coming out until late October, I was

00:21:53 ◼   ► like "well, you know, I should probably get the Solo 3 so I can see what it's all about".

00:21:59 ◼   ► And now, disclaimer, I tried first on the iOS 10.1 beta and I had some issues, so before

00:22:08 ◼   ► complaining publicly I went back to disable iOS 10 beta and allow me to have

00:22:14 ◼   ► an aside Myke I didn't know you can downgrade from a beta of the same major

00:22:20 ◼   ► iOS version without losing data on your device.

00:22:24 ◼   ► I didn't know that you would.

00:22:25 ◼   ► It used to be that you needed to, so if you wanted to downgrade from a newer version to an older version you needed to put your iPhone in DFU mode and then you will lose everything

00:22:38 ◼   ► and you couldn't even restore from a backup of the latest version because you were on an older version.

00:22:43 ◼   ► But I guess since iOS 9, maybe earlier, you can now, if you're on the same major version, so version 10,

00:22:51 ◼   ► and if you want to go back from 10.1 to 10.0.2, you can do that. And once you update through iTunes,

00:22:58 ◼   ► you get a screen on your device which says "Uptending to restore data", and it's like a progress bar,

00:23:05 ◼   ► and when you're done, you've downgraded to an older version with the same apps, the same data, like it's a software update,

00:23:13 ◼   ► but actually you went back. Just kind of neat. And I googled it and I think it's been available since iOS 9, maybe earlier,

00:23:20 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:23:21 ◼   ► Anyway, aside closed.

00:23:23 ◼   ► I take the bits out of the box and there's a new instruction manual that says if you're on iOS 10

00:23:31 ◼   ► you can do the easy pairing and it's done by pressing the power

00:23:35 ◼   ► button on the beats for one second until a

00:23:40 ◼   ► quick pairing screen pops up on your device. It's the same screen that you've probably seen with the Apple TV setup in iOS 10.

00:23:49 ◼   ► It's the same

00:23:51 ◼   ► dialogue that you will get with the AirPods.

00:23:53 ◼   ► So I take the beats out, I press the power button and nothing happens. I'm like, okay, I'm probably doing something wrong.

00:24:01 ◼   ► So I went I go back to check the

00:24:04 ◼   ► The instructions and it says if you want to do the standard Bluetooth stuff, it's five seconds

00:24:10 ◼   ► It's if you want to do the easy pairing

00:24:13 ◼   ► Just make sure the device is within five centimeters of the Beats headphones and press for one second. Okay, I try again

00:24:20 ◼   ► Nothing happens five centimeters is very close

00:24:24 ◼   ► Yeah, it has to be close same for the Apple TV

00:24:28 ◼   ► it says you gotta hold your iPhone up to the Apple TV if you wanna start the setup.

00:24:32 ◼   ► So I lock my phone, unlock the phone again, I put in airplane mode,

00:24:41 ◼   ► I disable airplane mode again, I try the setup and it works. So it was probably stuck

00:24:47 ◼   ► trying to find Bluetooth devices. I don't know. Anyway, after the airplane mode trick it works.

00:24:54 ◼   ► The pairing takes one second and it says done and it shows you the battery life level right inside of this dialog

00:25:01 ◼   ► Which is very nice and I'm like, okay now I want to listen to some music and I play some music and it works

00:25:06 ◼   ► You know good audio quality for you know, Beats Solo headphones

00:25:11 ◼   ► So in theory the feature of these

00:25:14 ◼   ► W1 powered headphones is that once you do the first pairing on an iPhone if you're logged in with an iCloud account

00:25:21 ◼   ► This is also written on the booklet.

00:25:24 ◼   ► You can switch to these headphones without doing any pairing on an iPad from Control Center or from a macOS

00:25:31 ◼   ► computer from the menu bar.

00:25:34 ◼   ► Because the pairing information propagates across devices using your iCloud account. So I

00:25:40 ◼   ► pause music on my phone, I unlock my iPad and there's no

00:25:45 ◼   ► Beats Solo 3 in Control Center. And I'm like, okay, I should probably reboot my iPad, maybe get stuck.

00:25:51 ◼   ► So I reboot the iPad and nothing. At this point, the music on the phone was paused.

00:25:57 ◼   ► So I play music again, and it works on the iPhone. Then I power off the Beats headphones,

00:26:04 ◼   ► turn them on again, and at that point everything stopped working.

00:26:10 ◼   ► On the iPhone I could no longer connect to the headphones. They were not showing up on my iPad and

00:26:17 ◼   ► I thought okay, maybe it's a beta issue. So let's downgrade,

00:26:22 ◼   ► let's go back to the latest stable version of iOS 10 and see if it works.

00:26:25 ◼   ► So I go back to the stable version of iOS 10, takes about an hour. Thank God for my fiber connection.

00:26:32 ◼   ► I forget the device from the Bluetooth settings of the iPhone and when you do forget

00:26:39 ◼   ► get a W1 powered device, you get an additional message that says if you forget this device,

00:26:47 ◼   ► the information will also be removed from iCloud. So I was like, well, if it actually

00:26:53 ◼   ► is an iCloud, I don't know, but sure, okay. So I forget the device and I do the pairing

00:26:58 ◼   ► again. And that's when things really got weird. So my iPhone's audio started going crazy.

00:27:09 ◼   ► music app was no longer responsive. When I took a screenshot, I would hear no sound in

00:27:20 ◼   ► the headphones, but I would hear the screenshot sound on my iPhone five seconds later.

00:27:28 ◼   ► five solid seconds later and anytime I tapped on Control Center, when I tapped

00:27:38 ◼   ► on Beats headphones, the audio actually went back to my iPhone speakers and if I

00:27:44 ◼   ► tried to select the Beats headphones in the Music app, the Music app froze and I

00:27:48 ◼   ► needed to quit the app. At that point the audio on my iPhone wasn't usable

00:27:57 ◼   ► But the Beats headphones were showing up on my iPad thanks to iCloud. When I tapped them

00:28:03 ◼   ► on my iPad they did nothing. So at that point, after an hour spent debugging this problem,

00:28:10 ◼   ► you can guess I was starting to be frustrated and I took it to Twitter and unfortunately

00:28:17 ◼   ► a lot of people said that does sound like a defective unit. And I tried the standard

00:28:24 ◼   ► Bluetooth pairing and it was failing. I tried to reset my network information on the iPhone and the iPad

00:28:31 ◼   ► I tried to reset the Beats headphones and after I did all of these resets the easy pairing screen no longer comes up

00:28:38 ◼   ► I can only try to pair with the usual Bluetooth setting screen

00:28:43 ◼   ► but when I pair the music app freezes, audio stops playing

00:28:49 ◼   ► Control Center doesn't become responsive. I think I actually crashed Control Center twice

00:28:54 ◼   ► Like when you tap on the play icon the Control Center disappears because it crashes

00:29:01 ◼   ► So I think I got a bomb unit and I gotta replace it

00:29:06 ◼   ► There are a couple of things at play here, right the potential reasons for why this happened. One of them is that the unit is a dud

00:29:14 ◼   ► one of them is that like there is something wrong with the beta and

00:29:19 ◼   ► and your attempt at doing this with a beta device has broken something somewhere and

00:29:25 ◼   ► it might actually be in the headphones which you can't restore, right? Like there may have

00:29:29 ◼   ► been something written in the W1's memory if it has any, you know, and it's gotten upset,

00:29:35 ◼   ► right? Like there might be something going on there. Or the lesser of all of the options

00:29:40 ◼   ► I guess is that it sucks, right? Like there is a there is always the potential that it might not

00:29:50 ◼   ► work as well as it should and it might be that like 10.1 when it releases will have some additional

00:29:56 ◼   ► support for this stuff because the AirPods aren't out yet and I know you can buy these solo things

00:30:01 ◼   ► but maybe that's less than Apple's priority and they've still got a little bit of work left to

00:30:06 ◼   ► to like iron out some of the bugs in this before the AirPods come out, because that's

00:30:11 ◼   ► where the real kind of test for this feature will be. Oh, and there is one final one in

00:30:17 ◼   ► that like, unfortunately, as much as Apple tried, they will never solve all of the insane

00:30:21 ◼   ► problems that can happen with wireless.

00:30:23 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know. After I tweeted, both the Beats Support Twitter account and the

00:30:32 ◼   ► Apple support Twitter account sent me messages on Twitter and to try to

00:30:37 ◼   ► explain the situation so I just another example of your so fanciness so I sent

00:30:43 ◼   ► various detailed reports of my experience and the best part is Apple is

00:30:49 ◼   ► now sending me links to support documents but here's the problem since

00:30:55 ◼   ► Since Apple acquired Beats, they did something to the Beats website.

00:31:03 ◼   ► So now when I go to bitsbydre.com, I get redirected to it.bitsbydre.com, which is the Italian subdomain.

00:31:12 ◼   ► And Apple did something here, because I see bitsbydre.com with an Apple Inc. certificate

00:31:19 ◼   ► in Safari, but the page is blank, like there's only a cookie notice.

00:31:25 ◼   ► And I think because of this domain redirect they're doing, the old support documents are

00:31:31 ◼   ► no longer working, so now I need to send a screenshot of the broken website to the Apple

00:31:35 ◼   ► support direct message conversation, because the links they send me is just like a toolbar

00:31:43 ◼   ► and a cookie notice.

00:31:44 ◼   ► I don't understand how any of the old support documents that would even help you, these

00:31:49 ◼   ► are new products.

00:31:50 ◼   ► Also I should mention, Apple is now saying you should try the Beats Updater.

00:31:57 ◼   ► Because I am a Beats customer, we own like three pairs of Beats.

00:32:03 ◼   ► I have the Beats Updater on my Mac and the Beats Updater is updated.

00:32:12 ◼   ► When I connect the Beats Solo 3, they're not recognized by Beats Updater.

00:32:17 ◼   ► So my theory is that the Beats software hasn't been actually refreshed for the new Beats

00:32:23 ◼   ► devices, which now makes me wonder how can you release a product so early that your own

00:32:30 ◼   ► software updater tool doesn't recognize them?

00:32:34 ◼   ► Well, it might be because it shouldn't require software updates right now, you know?

00:32:41 ◼   ► It should tell you so, because when you plug in other Beats, the software update screen

00:32:45 ◼   ► changes and it tells you you're up to date. These are your Beats headphones, thank you

00:32:50 ◼   ► Tichi, you have to do nothing. So maybe my Beats headphones are so broken they're not

00:32:55 ◼   ► even recognised by a USB.

00:32:58 ◼   ► This is like what makes Beats so peculiar as a wholly owned Apple subsidiary. It's like

00:33:04 ◼   ► the previous versions of iTunes have support for the new coming iPhones. So you don't have

00:33:10 ◼   ► this issue when you plug an iPhone in before you've updated iTunes, right? Like, I hadn't

00:33:16 ◼   ► updated iTunes in ages. I plugged my iPhone in and it knew what it was and then it was

00:33:20 ◼   ► like "hey, you need to update iTunes to download the beta for this phone" but it knew what

00:33:25 ◼   ► was going on. It wasn't like "I don't know what this device is", you know? Like, that's

00:33:29 ◼   ► what makes it so peculiar that they have this piece of software that's like "I don't know

00:33:32 ◼   ► what this is".

00:33:33 ◼   ► Yeah, I should also mention before I get the emails and the tweets from people just trolling

00:33:38 ◼   ► saying, "I got a better pair of headphones." I own like five different types of headphones

00:33:44 ◼   ► recommended by Marco Arment, which is like, I think, the utmost expert that I trust. But

00:33:50 ◼   ► I think the Beats headphones look nice, they look cool. I go around with them.

00:33:55 ◼   ► And also you wanted to try out the parent stuff, right?

00:33:59 ◼   ► Exactly. And I don't mind the heavy base of the Beats stuff sometimes. And I just wanted

00:34:05 ◼   ► to try out the new feature, and because it was available on the Italian website, you

00:34:09 ◼   ► know, so let me try those. But, you know, maybe better luck next time, I guess.

00:34:16 ◼   ► Heavy bass is fine for European techno music, right?

00:34:19 ◼   ► It's... yes.

00:34:20 ◼   ► Because that's, you know, that's obviously all you listen to, so...

00:34:24 ◼   ► Obviously, yes.

00:34:25 ◼   ► Obviously, you're European, so, European techno music.

00:34:27 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:34:28 ◼   ► I'm sorry that you've had such a terrible, terrible time with these.

00:34:32 ◼   ► You know, it's one of those scenarios like if something can go wrong, all of it will

00:34:39 ◼   ► go absolutely wrong.

00:34:42 ◼   ► And like from the Bluetooth easy pairing to standard Bluetooth to the USB updater, like

00:34:49 ◼   ► nothing is working.

00:34:51 ◼   ► So I should probably just get them replaced.

00:34:55 ◼   ► If we could look at this little segment here as being a place where we can maybe share

00:35:00 ◼   ► error grievance, I would like to error grievance that I have.

00:35:03 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:35:04 ◼   ► - And I have been trying to live with this

00:35:07 ◼   ► over the last couple of weeks on iOS 10.

00:35:09 ◼   ► I wanna spend a few moments talking

00:35:11 ◼   ► about the notification view.

00:35:13 ◼   ► - Sounds like you had a really rough time.

00:35:16 ◼   ► - I have had a terrible time and I've tried to live with it

00:35:20 ◼   ► because I know that I can be quick to judge

00:35:25 ◼   ► software products and I can be quick to judge hardware.

00:35:28 ◼   ► I know that about myself but sometimes I get a product and I only have a day to spend with

00:35:34 ◼   ► it and then I just give all of my opinions and then I have to follow up later with some

00:35:37 ◼   ► others but this is something that I've tried to live with since the 13th of September.

00:35:44 ◼   ► So we've got two weeks now since iOS 10 came out and I have tried to live with this for

00:35:50 ◼   ► that amount of time and that is the notification view.

00:35:53 ◼   ► did something in iOS 10 that I will never ever understand. There used to be a toggle

00:35:59 ◼   ► with your notifications to show them grouped chronologically or grouped within application

00:36:05 ◼   ► chronologically. So you could see one long list grouped by Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday

00:36:10 ◼   ► of all the notifications you have on your notification view or you could see Tweetbot,

00:36:15 ◼   ► Airmail and it would sort them within the little application by their date and then

00:36:21 ◼   ► would move the application that had the most recent notification to the top.

00:36:25 ◼   ► Am I making sense?

00:36:26 ◼   ► So if you had airmail and tweetbot there and then tweetbot got a notification it would

00:36:30 ◼   ► show that one and then bump tweetbot to the top of your list if it was the most recent

00:36:34 ◼   ► app to receive a notification.

00:36:37 ◼   ► Now the reason I love this Federico is because I was used to it for the entire history of

00:36:44 ◼   ► notifications on iOS.

00:36:46 ◼   ► It has been this way, there has been at least this setting for the whole time that it's

00:36:50 ◼   ► been around.

00:36:51 ◼   ► So over these many many years since iOS was it four or five that notifications came in

00:36:56 ◼   ► I think it was five. I think I announced push notifications in four and then actually ended

00:37:00 ◼   ► up shipping in five. Anywho, no matter when it was, a long time, right? Over five years

00:37:08 ◼   ► I have gotten used to living this way. I've been told in the chat that it was iOS 5. So

00:37:13 ◼   ► there you go. So many, you know, half of the iOS timeline ago. So I would get things like

00:37:19 ◼   ► Like for example, someone would send me an email and I would see the notification for

00:37:23 ◼   ► it and I would be like I want to deal with that email later.

00:37:26 ◼   ► Or someone would send me a text message and I would see the notification for it and I

00:37:29 ◼   ► think to myself I will deal with that text message later.

00:37:32 ◼   ► And then notification center became a triage for all of my notifications.

00:37:38 ◼   ► But if I woke up in the morning and I had 10 twitter notifications, 5 text messages,

00:37:45 ◼   ► a bunch of notifications from an in app purchase game that I'd forgotten to get rid of.

00:37:50 ◼   ► I could go in and clear them out by whole application, right? So I could go in and be

00:37:54 ◼   ► like "In app purchase game, go away." Then I could be like "Airmail, go away, I just

00:38:00 ◼   ► want to see my messages here." And then I could think to myself "Right, okay, so this

00:38:03 ◼   ► is just what I've got left, I can come back and deal with this later." So you see what

00:38:07 ◼   ► I'm getting at, like I had a whole triage system built around the fact that I had all

00:38:11 ◼   ► my apps siloed so I could leave them and I could get new notifications in and I could

00:38:15 ◼   ► clear them all away and I could still leave airmail untouched until I wanted to go back

00:38:19 ◼   ► to it later or I would leave it as just a visual reminder of the fact that I had an

00:38:23 ◼   ► email sitting in that application that I had to deal with.

00:38:26 ◼   ► I can't do any of this anymore Federico, I can't do it.

00:38:30 ◼   ► Because I get lots of notifications because I use my phone as just like a, this is where

00:38:34 ◼   ► all the notifications go, the important ones go to my watch right and then I will go back

00:38:39 ◼   ► to triage later on the phone. That's how I've been working since the watch came out and

00:38:43 ◼   ► then before even. But now I look at this list and it's like here is just a vomit of notifications.

00:38:51 ◼   ► Everything all mixed together and I just have to like clear them all all the time. So I

00:38:57 ◼   ► get none of the benefit of the notification view saving this information for me. The only

00:39:01 ◼   ► way that I can for example keep those two air mail notifications that I want to keep

00:39:06 ◼   ► up because I know their emails have to do with later, is to manually clear every single

00:39:11 ◼   ► notification one by one.

00:39:14 ◼   ► Yeah, that's what I do.

00:39:16 ◼   ► I can't live like that. I can't live like that. I just want to get rid of all of the

00:39:21 ◼   ► Tweetbot notifications or I want to get rid of all of the calendar notifications or all

00:39:25 ◼   ► of the Slack notifications but leave my OmniFocus there or leave my email there.

00:39:29 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it. I know a lot of people are complaining about this and I really

00:39:34 ◼   ► wouldn't be surprised if it comes back in like 10.1 or 10.2.

00:39:38 ◼   ► I have like, one of the reasons that I haven't spoken about this or anything is I've just

00:39:43 ◼   ► wanted to see if I could find a reason. But I can't see a reason!

00:39:48 ◼   ► Nah, nah. Probably got cut to rebuild Control Notification Center and maybe they're just

00:39:56 ◼   ► waiting for enough people to complain to put it back.

00:39:59 ◼   ► Well this is my, I'm lodging here my formal complaint.

00:40:03 ◼   ► This is your formal, okay. This is my formal complaint. It is not a bug

00:40:06 ◼   ► report because we all know where they go, they're radars. This is just a formal complaint

00:40:10 ◼   ► that I am lodging at this time. Okay.

00:40:13 ◼   ► My complaint has been filed. There it is. One other thing whilst we're talking about

00:40:18 ◼   ► notifications. But have you filed a radar?

00:40:20 ◼   ► No, I have not gotten around to that yet. So what I'll do is I will take this section

00:40:25 ◼   ► and I'll upload it somewhere and I'll put it in a radar, right? And then people can

00:40:30 ◼   ► read it. You gotta do that. I have to say I have filed some radars, I have filed some

00:40:36 ◼   ► feedback requests and I have complained on podcasts, right? I have found that every time

00:40:41 ◼   ► I complain on a podcast it is way more effective at getting what I want than the radar. I can

00:40:48 ◼   ► actually say the same for Mac stories I think. Because I may see a change and then I feel

00:40:55 ◼   ► like it's done but the radar is nothing. It's like, "Juped! This is a jup. Alright, well,

00:41:01 ◼   ► that's no use to me." I take the complaint on a podcast route as my method of lodging

00:41:08 ◼   ► official complaints. So, I tell you what, if you're listening out there and you're thinking,

00:41:12 ◼   ► "This is annoying, you should file a radar." I would love it if you would file a radar

00:41:17 ◼   ► for me.

00:41:19 ◼   ► Plus, I mean the radar interface is so bad. Like it's MobileMe interface.

00:41:26 ◼   ► I wish that the radar interface was like the feedback interface when you're on a public

00:41:31 ◼   ► pater because that one is easy to do. The radar interface, like I barely understand

00:41:37 ◼   ► what half of it is asking me to do.

00:41:39 ◼   ► Makes you feel like a punishment. You know, "Oh you found a bug? There you go, use this UI."

00:41:44 ◼   ► Yeah, here you go, here's some pinstripe for you. Does it still look like that or have they updated it now?

00:41:49 ◼   ► I can't remember. Maybe that shows how long it's been since I've found it.

00:41:51 ◼   ► No, I think they updated it for like two days and then it went back to the old design.

00:41:57 ◼   ► Just to give you a taste of what they could give you. Have you noticed as well

00:42:02 ◼   ► that there are some notifications that you tap on and just nothing happens?

00:42:07 ◼   ► Yes.

00:42:07 ◼   ► What is going on here?

00:42:08 ◼   ► I don't know what's up with that. I don't know what's up with that. Actually, this makes me think

00:42:12 ◼   ► of a comment that I gotta share with you, Myke, and I know it's gonna make you happy. I need to say

00:42:18 ◼   ► publicly that you were right.

00:42:22 ◼   ► Oh, I love hearing that.

00:42:24 ◼   ► When you said that there were some weird things about the iPhone 7, which are not necessarily

00:42:30 ◼   ► complaints and not necessarily worth having like making a big deal about them, but there's

00:42:36 ◼   ► like some odd stuff.

00:42:39 ◼   ► Some of it got fixed with 10.0.2 with the audio lightning EarPods feature.

00:42:49 ◼   ► But there's some odd things.

00:42:51 ◼   ► I don't know if it's iOS 10 or if it's the iPhone 7.

00:42:54 ◼   ► I would say it's the iPhone 7 because I didn't see these problems on the 6s.

00:42:58 ◼   ► And you would have seen it.

00:43:00 ◼   ► But like sometimes you press the home button and something weird happens or notifications

00:43:07 ◼   ► do nothing or control center crashes. I don't know how to describe them. I'm not complaining,

00:43:15 ◼   ► it's just something that I noticed and I know that Myke also noticed and it's not effective

00:43:21 ◼   ► to talk about because there's no proper way to describe it. It's not a feeling because

00:43:26 ◼   ► I'm not making this up but it's hard to describe because I don't know how to reproduce it,

00:43:31 ◼   ► I don't know how to talk about it.

00:43:34 ◼   ► Just there's some weird, you know, there's some rough edges, that's all.

00:43:39 ◼   ► And maybe slightly more of them than in the past.

00:43:43 ◼   ► But, you know, comes with the territory I guess.

00:43:46 ◼   ► Yeah, see, do you remember when we broke everybody's brains by telling them that the folder corner radius changes

00:43:53 ◼   ► when you go from folder to home screen?

00:43:56 ◼   ► Like I found a bug like that, which I know that you guys have seen.

00:44:00 ◼   ► And I kind of don't want to tell people in case it ruins their phones for them.

00:44:05 ◼   ► You know what I'm talking about, right?

00:44:07 ◼   ► You mentioned something recently.

00:44:10 ◼   ► It's the multitasking one.

00:44:13 ◼   ► With the iPhone 7.

00:44:16 ◼   ► Alright, I'm going to break everybody's brain.

00:44:19 ◼   ► Okay, yeah.

00:44:19 ◼   ► Refresh my memory.

00:44:20 ◼   ► Sometimes when on the new iPhones when you double click to open multitasking your current application

00:44:27 ◼   ► Just bounces down a little bit and then springs back up

00:44:29 ◼   ► It's very weird

00:44:32 ◼   ► So when you you double click and it's like your iPhone was sending the application back to home

00:44:38 ◼   ► But you caught it just too late and it flies back up. It's very strange

00:44:41 ◼   ► It just looks like the apps kind of bounce a little bit and then they go into multitasking

00:44:45 ◼   ► Yes

00:44:45 ◼   ► I was on I think I have my iPhone for like 45 minutes and I did it and I nearly screamed because I was like

00:44:51 ◼   ► Something weird just happened, but I don't know what it was like. Yeah, it broke my brain a little bit

00:44:56 ◼   ► I was like, ah what just happened? Did you did you ever watch scrubs? Yep

00:45:01 ◼   ► The what's the name of the character the Todd when it when he says something terrible just happened like because he could hear

00:45:09 ◼   ► people in the hospital

00:45:11 ◼   ► Yeah, I guess we can go for that clip

00:45:15 ◼   ► Yeah, so there's a little thing. If you understand what I'm saying, because I know it's a bit

00:45:19 ◼   ► complicated to explain, every now and then you go to a multi-task and I feel like you

00:45:25 ◼   ► catch the phone. I think that the new home button is just slightly too slow for what

00:45:31 ◼   ► iOS is expecting, because this never happened on my previous versions. I don't know what's

00:45:35 ◼   ► going on there, but it's very peculiar. And I'm sorry if I broke anybody's brains with

00:45:41 ◼   ► now how they treat their phone.

00:45:43 ◼   ► Yeah, once you see that problem, you really cannot unsee it.

00:45:47 ◼   ► It's one of those things.

00:45:48 ◼   ► It's one of those.

00:45:49 ◼   ► Federico, I have been doing some research about Snapchat spectacles

00:45:55 ◼   ► to teach you everything I know.

00:45:57 ◼   ► I know quite a bit.

00:45:58 ◼   ► Good.

00:45:59 ◼   ► Then we can talk about it.

00:46:00 ◼   ► Okay, teach me.

00:46:01 ◼   ► I want to teach our audience as well.

00:46:03 ◼   ► You want to teach Tichi?

00:46:04 ◼   ► I want to teach Tichi and Tichi can help me teach the T-Chats.

00:46:08 ◼   ► This is so bad.

00:46:09 ◼   ► ...to your audience.

00:46:10 ◼   ► This episode is brought to you by TextExpander from Smile. TextExpander puts the power of amazing

00:46:16 ◼   ► text shortcuts right there in the palm of your hands and with just a few keystrokes you will have

00:46:24 ◼   ► the ability to expand phrases, sentences, paragraphs, whatever you need access to in just

00:46:30 ◼   ► a flash. Look, put simply, you will be able to communicate smarter with TextExpander. You're

00:46:35 ◼   ► You're able to speed through and customize all your repetitive tasks, all your repetitive

00:46:39 ◼   ► texts that you need all the time with the use of TextExpander fill in snippets as well.

00:46:44 ◼   ► So you'll be able to just fire off a keystroke and you'll be given this little form and you

00:46:48 ◼   ► just fill out a couple of options, either you type them in or you choose from some dropdowns

00:46:52 ◼   ► and then you can have paragraphs of text paste in that boilerplate with just those few things

00:46:58 ◼   ► changed over.

00:46:59 ◼   ► I use this religiously and it makes me very, very happy.

00:47:02 ◼   ► You can even transform all of that repetitive stuff into knowledge now because with Text

00:47:08 ◼   ► Expander team subscriptions you can share those snippets with your whole team and make

00:47:14 ◼   ► everyone more productive.

00:47:17 ◼   ► Text Expander is perfect for sharing consistent answers within a support team and consistent

00:47:22 ◼   ► marketing messages across a whole company.

00:47:26 ◼   ► Text Expander for teams now also includes group statistics as well so you can see just

00:47:31 ◼   ► how much more productive your team is and which content is used most often, which is

00:47:36 ◼   ► really great because then you can make sure that you have all of the greatest and newest

00:47:42 ◼   ► knowledge in your team shared with everyone.

00:47:46 ◼   ► And once you see maybe which snippets are being fired more frequently than others within

00:47:52 ◼   ► your team, you can maybe find out if there is something that you can build better within

00:47:58 ◼   ► your software or in your systems.

00:48:00 ◼   ► if all of your support team are sending the same message to 50 people all day every day,

00:48:05 ◼   ► maybe there's something bigger going on.

00:48:16 ◼   ► You could try TextExpander for free for 30 days and TextExpander subscriptions include

00:48:20 ◼   ► software for the Mac, iPad, iPhone and now a beta of Windows too.

00:48:24 ◼   ► hacker subscriptions cost $40 a year in US and include all of the apps and the text expander

00:48:30 ◼   ► sharing service as well. Upgrade discounts are available for registered text expander users.

00:48:35 ◼   ► Go to smile software.com/connected for more information. Thank you so much to smile for

00:48:39 ◼   ► their support of this show and relay FM. Okay, so Snapchat spectacles. Now this was a really weird

00:48:51 ◼   ► an interesting announcement. The story seemed to leak on Business Insider, I think was the place

00:48:59 ◼   ► that first got it. They had this kind of this video that went up that was like it looked like

00:49:06 ◼   ► an ad of some description for Snapchat Spectacles. And then a couple of hours later, Snapchat

00:49:14 ◼   ► announced that they were building this product. So the way that I look at it is what happened was

00:49:21 ◼   ► there was a leak that came out or a video kind of leaked out a little bit

00:49:28 ◼   ► early. My theory is this came from an advertising agency because this isn't

00:49:32 ◼   ► the ad that they released. What this looks like to me is the third option of

00:49:38 ◼   ► a campaign video. It looks like a demo reel. Well I tell you what it looks like

00:49:43 ◼   ► from someone who's worked in marketing. Like you got a campaign and you have a

00:49:48 ◼   ► a couple of different routes that someone will go down on a campaign.

00:49:50 ◼   ► Right. So to show you a few different options,

00:49:52 ◼   ► this feels like one of those options because the product video that they made

00:49:58 ◼   ► is a Google Glass video in essence of who it's attracting.

00:50:03 ◼   ► So it's showing like wholesome family fun recorded with Snapchat glasses.

00:50:08 ◼   ► That's not what they do. It's for kids. It's for teens, right?

00:50:13 ◼   ► It's for young people, which is the ad that eventually went out.

00:50:16 ◼   ► but there were elements of it that looked exactly the same,

00:50:19 ◼   ► like some of the product shots and stuff.

00:50:21 ◼   ► So my feeling is, this was a video

00:50:23 ◼   ► that maybe came from an agency, but was a rejected video?

00:50:26 ◼   ► Am I making sense?

00:50:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, makes sense. - Like this wasn't the one

00:50:29 ◼   ► that they were gonna go with,

00:50:30 ◼   ► because what they went with was someone on like,

00:50:33 ◼   ► Venice Beach skateboarding and high-fiving with their buds.

00:50:37 ◼   ► Right, that's more the Snapchat kind of aesthetic,

00:50:40 ◼   ► and it's not a criticism, it's just kind of

00:50:41 ◼   ► where they operate.

00:50:44 ◼   ► But anyway, so this leaked out,

00:50:45 ◼   ► And then Snapchat got ahead of it and they put up a bunch of press.

00:50:49 ◼   ► I think there was a Wall Street Journal article like a profile that kind of went up quite

00:50:53 ◼   ► quickly.

00:50:54 ◼   ► I assume that was scheduled for Monday morning, but it went up on Friday instead, right?

00:50:59 ◼   ► And then they got a bunch of product pages.

00:51:02 ◼   ► So yeah, let's talk about Snapchat Spectacles.

00:51:06 ◼   ► So Snapchat, the company, this is part of it, has now rebranded themselves to Snap,

00:51:13 ◼   ► Inc.

00:51:15 ◼   ► And Snap Inc now make Snapchat, Spectacles, and in the future, some other products.

00:51:23 ◼   ► This is like a whole thing.

00:51:24 ◼   ► It reminded me of when Apple rebranded from Apple Computer to just Apple.

00:51:29 ◼   ► It's the company outgrowing its original vision and moving forward.

00:51:33 ◼   ► Snapchat now call themselves a camera company, which is a very interesting way to describe

00:51:37 ◼   ► themselves.

00:51:40 ◼   ► The first product of Snap Inc is Spectacles.

00:51:44 ◼   ► glasses so they're glasses that you put on your face they record 10 second clips when

00:51:49 ◼   ► you tap a button on the side of them but you can tap it a few times to get a video of a

00:51:53 ◼   ► maximum of 30 seconds as the maximum clip that you can get from them. They will transfer

00:51:58 ◼   ► these videos to your phone over wireless or bluetooth depending on the operating system

00:52:04 ◼   ► that you use of choice depends on how easy one of those two things are. It kind of takes

00:52:10 ◼   ► a preference on Android and iOS. But if you don't have your phone with you, the spectacles

00:52:17 ◼   ► will store the video and then you can transfer it later. They record using a wide angle lens,

00:52:23 ◼   ► which I find this part very interesting. It's said to be more like the human field of vision.

00:52:29 ◼   ► And what I think is the most genius part of all of this is they actually record circular

00:52:34 ◼   ► And they do this so you can view the video on a device in any orientation

00:52:42 ◼   ► without flipping the video

00:52:45 ◼   ► So let's say you've got somebody in there recording a snapchat video and you have your phone in portrait

00:52:51 ◼   ► But then you realize it'd be better in landscape you can rotate your phone

00:52:55 ◼   ► But the video kind of stays fixed in place and your phone rotates around it

00:53:01 ◼   ► Now, I have put a link to a tweet in the show notes which has a gif that highlights how

00:53:08 ◼   ► this works because again, it's something that's very difficult to explain but the video doesn't

00:53:13 ◼   ► flip just the kind of the video stays in place and your phone kind of rotates around it.

00:53:20 ◼   ► Am I doing a good job of explaining this?

00:53:22 ◼   ► I'm gonna watch the gif.

00:53:24 ◼   ► Look at the gif that's in the show notes and you'll get an idea of what I'm talking about

00:53:29 ◼   ► here.

00:53:30 ◼   ► Does that make sense now?

00:53:33 ◼   ► Oh, oh yes, okay, I see. This is clever.

00:53:39 ◼   ► It's very clever, right?

00:53:40 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean you're using the circular video to rotate around it and to adjust for different form factors.

00:53:50 ◼   ► I guess I want to know how they know how to center the video correctly,

00:53:55 ◼   ► like how it doesn't move to the right or left edges.

00:54:01 ◼   ► So in your example, I'm looking at an image of a dog,

00:54:05 ◼   ► and in landscape there's a horizontal layout and the dog is in the center of the picture,

00:54:10 ◼   ► and then when you rotate to portrait, the dog is still in the center of the frame.

00:54:15 ◼   ► I guess I want to know how they balance this without moving off to the left or right, because

00:54:22 ◼   ► it's perfectly in the center of the screen.

00:54:25 ◼   ► I think that might just be to show perfect demonstration.

00:54:28 ◼   ► It might be a bit wonky in places, but irregardless, this is a great way of dealing with that.

00:54:32 ◼   ► Yeah, it's very clever, yes.

00:54:35 ◼   ► The cameras themselves, there's a camera on each of the corners of the lenses where the

00:54:40 ◼   ► arm of the lens begins, where the hinge is around the front.

00:54:43 ◼   ► two cameras they have lights around them which indicate to people when you're recording and

00:54:49 ◼   ► you also see a light on the inside of the glasses to show you that it's recording so

00:54:55 ◼   ► you know that you've got it. Snapchat say that or Evan Spiegel CEO of Snapchat said

00:55:01 ◼   ► in a bunch of, or Snap I should say in a bunch of interviews that you should get all day

00:55:06 ◼   ► battery life from the Spectacles and it comes in a case that has a battery inside them like

00:55:11 ◼   ► the AirPods and you can get four full days of charge from the cases battery. So when

00:55:17 ◼   ► you put them in the case they charge. Which is kind of amazing. I love that. I love that

00:55:21 ◼   ► kind of thinking. The glasses come in one size and three colours black, teal and coral.

00:55:27 ◼   ► And Spiegal said that they're kind of treating Spectacles as a toy product from Snap. I think

00:55:34 ◼   ► what they're trying to do is attempt to downplay the importance of this product in case they

00:55:40 ◼   ► they have a Google Glass incident on their hands

00:55:43 ◼   ► in that nobody really seems to care

00:55:45 ◼   ► and it just gets ridiculed, right?

00:55:46 ◼   ► I think that's what they're doing here.

00:55:47 ◼   ► They have a, they're setting themselves quite a low bar

00:55:51 ◼   ► and just saying that this is something

00:55:53 ◼   ► that they wanted to see kind of how people thought of it.

00:55:56 ◼   ► They're making them in very low quantities to start with.

00:55:58 ◼   ► Distribution will be limited.

00:56:00 ◼   ► I think they're just trying to hedge their bets with it,

00:56:02 ◼   ► which I think is the right way to go

00:56:03 ◼   ► because this is a new thing.

00:56:05 ◼   ► Who knows how people will really react to this?

00:56:08 ◼   ► I don't think that, I mean I think it's a categorical fact

00:56:11 ◼   ► that you don't look as ridiculous in these

00:56:13 ◼   ► as you did in Google Glass because they just look like

00:56:16 ◼   ► kind of slightly strange sunglasses as opposed to

00:56:21 ◼   ► this weird non-glass, like this weird visor

00:56:24 ◼   ► you put on your head with this huge one arm

00:56:27 ◼   ► and no glass in them, you know?

00:56:28 ◼   ► So I think that their first kind of shot out the gate

00:56:33 ◼   ► is better than Google's first shot out of the gate.

00:56:35 ◼   ► And I know that Glass got better looking

00:56:36 ◼   ► but at that point it was tainted.

00:56:38 ◼   ► - I think Snapchat is, at a fundamental level,

00:56:43 ◼   ► it's more cool than Google.

00:56:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, they understand how to make something

00:56:47 ◼   ► that looks cool, 'cause I think these look cool.

00:56:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, and they know how to market their stuff to people,

00:56:55 ◼   ► even when those features can be potentially creepy,

00:57:00 ◼   ► like the same features advertised from Google and Snapchat,

00:57:04 ◼   ► Google is gonna make them sound creepy, Snapchat is gonna make them sound cool or like whatever,

00:57:09 ◼   ► if you want you can use it, if you don't it's okay.

00:57:13 ◼   ► They have this attitude of not pushing too much but at the same time I think that lack

00:57:20 ◼   ► of insistence makes people wanna try those features.

00:57:25 ◼   ► Does it make any sense?

00:57:26 ◼   ► Like by saying look it's a toy, like it's no big deal, people are like yeah but I wanna

00:57:30 ◼   ► check it out.

00:57:31 ◼   ► Instead, if you go all the way out and be like, "This is the future, you gotta wear glasses, you gotta document every single moment of your life."

00:57:38 ◼   ► People can be like, "Yeah, it's kinda creepy, I don't know."

00:57:41 ◼   ► So I think they have a way. They have an excellent marketing department, first of all.

00:57:46 ◼   ► And they have a way to introduce new features that others are gonna copy, because you can bet on Instagram copying some of these things eventually.

00:57:56 ◼   ► and they have a way to test this new stuff progressively, slowly, but sure enough they're basically leading the, you know,

00:58:07 ◼   ► they are the social network to follow at this point and Facebook knows this, that's why they pay attention to Snapchat,

00:58:14 ◼   ► that's why they copy Snapchat and now about these glasses.

00:58:18 ◼   ► I do want to make one quick correction for myself. There is one camera and one light thing

00:58:25 ◼   ► So they're mirrored so it looks like there's two cameras, but it's one is a camera and one is a light on the other side

00:58:32 ◼   ► It's not two cameras.

00:58:34 ◼   ► I feel like

00:58:37 ◼   ► Some people are gonna be

00:58:39 ◼   ► Turned off by the idea of wearing a camera just because

00:58:45 ◼   ► It's very difficult to sell people on the idea of wearing a camera on your face.

00:58:48 ◼   ► But if anyone can do it, I feel like the idea of Snapchat sunglasses is

00:58:54 ◼   ► probably the best idea of the bunch.

00:58:57 ◼   ► It fits more into their core product. Yes, then Google Glass fits into Google's, I think.

00:59:04 ◼   ► I mean, especially because when you wear the sunglasses, you know, it's going into your story.

00:59:09 ◼   ► Whereas when you wear the Google Glasses, where does it go? Does it go to Google services?

00:59:14 ◼   ► they're like Sergey Brin watching my footage somewhere like in a data center or something.

00:59:19 ◼   ► Like the idea of okay now I want to document my day, I want this footage to go into my story

00:59:25 ◼   ► puts people more at ease than the idea of Google

00:59:30 ◼   ► creepingly observing you and what you see at the family barbecue, right?

00:59:35 ◼   ► But I feel like, I mean I don't know if I would wear the sunglasses.

00:59:41 ◼   ► By being sunglasses it means these are meant to be used when you're outside

00:59:45 ◼   ► unless you're one of those people like Leon Gallagher always wearing sunglasses

00:59:49 ◼   ► but I guess it makes sense more to put them on at specific times.

00:59:54 ◼   ► Now we don't know in terms of how do you review all of your footage.

01:00:01 ◼   ► Is it going to be just like a video on your camera roll that you gotta choose to upload to Snapchat?

01:00:06 ◼   ► Is there going to be like a special interface in the Snapchat app?

01:00:10 ◼   ► We don't know yet.

01:00:12 ◼   ► It puts them into your memories.

01:00:14 ◼   ► By default, okay.

01:00:16 ◼   ► Yeah, and then I think from there you can post them.

01:00:19 ◼   ► Alright, yeah. Makes sense.

01:00:22 ◼   ► See, they have a way to introduce these features without being too creepy about them.

01:00:26 ◼   ► I know that some people are going to be like, "These glasses are ugly, I don't want to wear them,

01:00:31 ◼   ► why do I need to wear glasses to use Snapchat?"

01:00:33 ◼   ► and that's the point. I don't think you will need the glasses to use Snapchat.

01:00:38 ◼   ► Not today, not any time in the near future, but they're sort of taking the first steps.

01:00:45 ◼   ► If they truly believe in the camera company, instead of being like a social network with an app,

01:00:51 ◼   ► if they want to be a camera company, it's time to get started with the idea of going beyond the app

01:00:57 ◼   ► and going beyond the camera made by Apple, because it means Snapchat wants to make their own cameras.

01:01:02 ◼   ► cameras with their own features, custom built for the Roam network. It makes sense. I don't

01:01:11 ◼   ► know if it's going to take off. I don't know if it's going to be available internationally.

01:01:13 ◼   ► I don't know if it's going to be more than a toy. But of all the wearable cameras, I

01:01:18 ◼   ► mean, this is like a GoPro for the masses done in a fashionable way. And I think it

01:01:24 ◼   ► makes sense.

01:01:26 ◼   ► It goes down to just little things that I like from like a branding perspective. You

01:01:30 ◼   ► they own spectacles.com now and I don't know why I think this is interesting but

01:01:38 ◼   ► I just do they have a rotating kind of full page of models that go backwards

01:01:44 ◼   ► and forwards and they do a great job of showing off the colors but all of the

01:01:49 ◼   ► models are you only see them from like the top of their shoulders up they're

01:01:52 ◼   ► all naked and it's just like that works for snapchat and like and I'm not trying

01:01:58 ◼   ► make a joke or be creepy but like it just works for them and like I look at

01:02:03 ◼   ► it and I'm like that is nice photography that is nice product imagery I don't

01:02:07 ◼   ► look at it and be like that's super creepy like if Google Glass was

01:02:11 ◼   ► advertised with naked people I'd be like what on earth are you doing?

01:02:16 ◼   ► See I didn't even notice this I didn't even pay attention. I've only noticed it

01:02:20 ◼   ► because I've had the page open for a minute but it's just it fits it just

01:02:25 ◼   ► fits and I don't think you're meant to be like they're necessarily naked people

01:02:29 ◼   ► maybe they are maybe they're wearing swimsuits like it kind of doesn't matter

01:02:33 ◼   ► but it's like this just fits with this company and it shows the difference that

01:02:38 ◼   ► they they are they have an app and one of those popular apps in the world and

01:02:42 ◼   ► they're to make a technology products but they're not a technology company

01:02:45 ◼   ► they're just not they're just not a technology company like their CEO I

01:02:51 ◼   ► I think he's married to or is in a long-term relationship with a supermodel.

01:02:56 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:02:56 ◼   ► And he's a good-looking guy. He's a fashionable guy, right?

01:02:59 ◼   ► They are a very different company and that comes across in kind of everything that they do, I think.

01:03:06 ◼   ► I am not a Snapchat user.

01:03:09 ◼   ► I don't like the application and with some exceptions, I don't really have many friends that use it.

01:03:17 ◼   ► All of my friends use Instagram for their ephemeral content now and that has continued

01:03:22 ◼   ► as stories on Instagram remain.

01:03:25 ◼   ► So it doesn't really gel with me but I appreciate what the company is doing.

01:03:28 ◼   ► I can see what they're doing.

01:03:29 ◼   ► I think what they're doing is interesting stuff.

01:03:31 ◼   ► I actually think this is kind of a brilliant product because it is simple.

01:03:35 ◼   ► It looks really good.

01:03:36 ◼   ► It doesn't try and hide what it is.

01:03:38 ◼   ► It embraces what it is and puts a big yellow ring around the camera like it embraces what

01:03:44 ◼   ► it is.

01:03:45 ◼   ► the details are really good and I like that they're owning it as well and saying that

01:03:49 ◼   ► it's kind of a toy and an experiment right now. I hope this does really well for them

01:03:54 ◼   ► because I think it's really interesting. I feel like, and this is gonna totally sound

01:03:59 ◼   ► like an old person wanting to get into the action, but I feel like we need to pay attention

01:04:04 ◼   ► to Snapchat and I feel like we need to understand it. Well, I pay attention to it and I understand

01:04:09 ◼   ► it from what the company is doing and what the product is. No, I mean I want to use it.

01:04:13 ◼   ► I just don't like using it.

01:04:15 ◼   ► I don't want to say I'm forcing myself to use it, but I'm making an effort to see what

01:04:22 ◼   ► I'm missing out because I don't want to... again, it comes down to what I talked about,

01:04:27 ◼   ► or I guess I thought I covered on the podcast. Anyway, I don't want to end up one day being

01:04:34 ◼   ► irrelevant and by relevant I mean by not knowing how to relate to a new audience that doesn't

01:04:42 ◼   ► know me because I feel like when I was new to the Apple scene with Mac stories initially,

01:04:51 ◼   ► Twitter was new. And so I found a new audience for my new website and we were new together.

01:04:59 ◼   ► And I don't want to end up at the point where the website is like 10 years old and all of

01:05:06 ◼   ► the young generations have moved to Snapchat and I don't know what's up and I'm just that

01:05:11 ◼   ► guy in a corner writing stuff on his website and he doesn't know how to talk to people anymore.

01:05:16 ◼   ► So, you know, I feel like even if I don't like it in places, I want to at least make an effort

01:05:24 ◼   ► to see why people like it, why people use it, and to try and make connections there,

01:05:30 ◼   ► if it makes any sense. Because I don't want to be... It's not just not being left out,

01:05:36 ◼   ► but losing the ability to understand new things, right?

01:05:41 ◼   ► - Should I try it with you?

01:05:43 ◼   ► Should we try and go on an experiment together?

01:05:44 ◼   ► - I'm using it, Myke.

01:05:45 ◼   ► No, I've already started the experiment.

01:05:47 ◼   ► I'm just waiting for you.

01:05:48 ◼   ► - All right, you're gonna help me?

01:05:49 ◼   ► 'Cause I really don't get it.

01:05:51 ◼   ► I mean, not right now.

01:05:53 ◼   ► Although I think it will be a kind of fun episode.

01:05:55 ◼   ► You're just trying to explain Snapchat to me.

01:05:57 ◼   ► But I'm downloading it again,

01:05:59 ◼   ► and I'll put links in the show notes

01:06:02 ◼   ► to the way that people can add us.

01:06:05 ◼   ► Is that how you do it?

01:06:07 ◼   ► Yeah, you can share the username or you can share the Snapcode, which is like a custom QR code with your selfie inside.

01:06:15 ◼   ► It's kind of fun. It's like a ghost with a QR code and your selfie inside the ghost silhouette. It's fun.

01:06:22 ◼   ► Something to keep in mind. Unlike the Instagram stories, now it could be that I'm ignorant and I don't know what I'm talking about,

01:06:31 ◼   ► But there's no view count for your story on Snapchat.

01:06:38 ◼   ► So what I'm doing is I subscribe to DJ Khaled, because this is what you do when you sign up for Snapchat.

01:06:44 ◼   ► You subscribe to DJ Khaled. You subscribe to Apple Music.

01:06:47 ◼   ► So you start following those stories.

01:06:50 ◼   ► And I gotta say, DJ Khaled is very inspirational to me. He's very motivational.

01:06:54 ◼   ► The stuff that he says.

01:06:56 ◼   ► And then I basically, I'm documenting moments of my day, like random things, and they're going out into the wild.

01:07:05 ◼   ► Someone, I guess, is watching them, because a few people have replied to my videos and, you know, stupid pictures.

01:07:14 ◼   ► But I don't know how many people are watching them. I don't know how many people follow me, because I don't know if there's a friend count.

01:07:23 ◼   ► Well I just swiped down on the top and it says i-mic and then there's a line and then it says 411

01:07:31 ◼   ► and I don't know what that means but I assume that's people?

01:07:36 ◼   ► For me it says 78.

01:07:38 ◼   ► I'm way more popular than you then I guess.

01:07:41 ◼   ► I think those are points, those are not people. I have way more than 78 people Myke.

01:07:46 ◼   ► How do you know that? You don't know the view count.

01:07:47 ◼   ► I'm scrolling the added me list and there's way more than 78 people.

01:07:53 ◼   ► So what is added me then?

01:07:55 ◼   ► It's like people who added you.

01:07:57 ◼   ► And what does that mean?

01:07:59 ◼   ► I don't know but now I got 79 under my profile.

01:08:04 ◼   ► See we're totally sounding like two dads trying the new social network.

01:08:10 ◼   ► This is awkward Myke but it's also amazing at the same time.

01:08:13 ◼   ► Alright I want to try it but like how do people follow me?

01:08:17 ◼   ► You gotta share your username.

01:08:19 ◼   ► Well I'm Myke of course.

01:08:21 ◼   ► down and tap on the share icon in the top left.

01:08:24 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm Myke. I am YKE, obviously.

01:08:28 ◼   ► So go add Myke. I'm gonna search for Myke. Add friends.

01:08:31 ◼   ► I already have you here.

01:08:32 ◼   ► Oh yeah?

01:08:33 ◼   ► I've got you in my recent updates.

01:08:37 ◼   ► Why can I not see? Okay, hi Myke. Hey buddy.

01:08:41 ◼   ► So okay, so I guess... Do I need to be friends with people?

01:08:46 ◼   ► You don't need to be friends with anyone.

01:08:49 ◼   ► So they can just follow me, they can see my snaps.

01:08:52 ◼   ► So I'm just taking a picture of the screen, which...

01:08:58 ◼   ► I'm Federico Vittucci by the way, not just Vittucci but Federico Vittucci.

01:09:02 ◼   ► So I put it in my story, right?

01:09:04 ◼   ► And that's how everybody sees it.

01:09:05 ◼   ► What did you put in your story, Myke?

01:09:07 ◼   ► It's just a picture of the webpage that says "I, Myke" on it.

01:09:16 ◼   ► I'm looking at it.

01:09:17 ◼   ► You did put a picture of a webpage.

01:09:19 ◼   ► Yeah, it's just a picture of the Snapchat download page.

01:09:23 ◼   ► Make sure to follow DJ Khaled Myke.

01:09:25 ◼   ► It's gonna give you a lot of inspirational messages.

01:09:27 ◼   ► Do you know who DJ Khaled is?

01:09:29 ◼   ► I am familiar with the man who talks about keys that are major.

01:09:33 ◼   ► Yes, yes, the major keys, another one, you know, that type of stuff.

01:09:38 ◼   ► What is he, DJ Khaled 305 or what is it, just DJ Khaled?

01:09:43 ◼   ► It's just DJ Khaled, I don't know, I just searched for DJ Khaled Myke.

01:09:47 ◼   ► I have no idea which one's the right one though. Official Stories. Okay, I'm gonna go with

01:09:51 ◼   ► Official Stories.

01:09:52 ◼   ► The one with the key. The one with the key, Myke.

01:09:54 ◼   ► The one with a key on it. Okay. Well, there you go, everyone. This is Myke Confederico

01:09:59 ◼   ► trying to be down with the kids.

01:10:02 ◼   ► Yes.

01:10:03 ◼   ► Not completely understanding anything that they're doing.

01:10:05 ◼   ► But I'll tell you what. I've been reading a few of the featured stories, like from IGN,

01:10:11 ◼   ► CNN BuzzFeed has a great Snapchat presence and custom layouts with videos.

01:10:18 ◼   ► I mean, there are obviously articles meant to target younger people because there's a

01:10:25 ◼   ► lot of cute graphics, simple explanations, videos, drawings.

01:10:30 ◼   ► It's meant for a younger generation, but you can still consume the news if you want and

01:10:37 ◼   ► I've been reading a few articles on Snapchat and there's a lot of stuff to discover.

01:10:42 ◼   ► The interface can be confusing, but once you lay out the different horizontal panes in

01:10:48 ◼   ► the UI, it kind of makes sense.

01:10:51 ◼   ► There's also the new Memories feature that you can access by swiping up from the camera

01:10:57 ◼   ► interface.

01:10:58 ◼   ► There's a lot to talk about, there's a lot to discover, but I feel like, I mean, if millions

01:11:03 ◼   ► of people are using this, either they are all crazy, which is not the most likely explanation,

01:11:10 ◼   ► or me and you, we need to, you know, get on with the times, maybe.

01:11:16 ◼   ► John is sending me text messages, John Voorhees telling me to add him on Snapchat, so now

01:11:25 ◼   ► I'm doing that. You're talking to John on Snapchat?

01:11:28 ◼   ► He's sending me text messages right now. Why is no one sending me messages?

01:11:32 ◼   ► everybody knows you and is already friends of you.

01:11:35 ◼   ► No, I'll see one person added me and it's Jonathan.

01:11:39 ◼   ► I'm gonna guess that Jonathan is listening to Connected so I feel like I wanna be friends

01:11:43 ◼   ► with Jonathan.

01:11:44 ◼   ► So by the way, people listening to the show, not live, this is gonna sound super weird,

01:11:49 ◼   ► but stuff is happening in the past, so I guess stuff happened in the past when we were recording.

01:11:57 ◼   ► So now if you're listening to the show, feel free to add me and Myke to Snapchat.

01:12:02 ◼   ► will be able to see all of the great computer screen pictures from Myke.

01:12:06 ◼   ► I posted a selfie too.

01:12:08 ◼   ► Oh that's you, that's really you Myke.

01:12:11 ◼   ► Mm-hmm, so people know it's me.

01:12:13 ◼   ► Yeah, so there was a great story today in the Snapchat about dog surfing and they were

01:12:22 ◼   ► actually dogs surfing with swimsuits for dogs and sunglasses for dogs and it was amazing.

01:12:29 ◼   ► Like, I spent way too much time looking at dogs surfing.

01:12:34 ◼   ► It was really good.

01:12:35 ◼   ► Really good story.

01:12:36 ◼   ► Anyway, that's Snapchat, Myke.

01:12:39 ◼   ► Make sure to have fun with it.

01:12:40 ◼   ► I mean, I guess we'll never get Steven to try this.

01:12:44 ◼   ► So of course it's something that we do when Steven's not around.

01:12:49 ◼   ► We're not gonna launch a Snapchat dedicated podcast like we did that time when we launched

01:12:52 ◼   ► a video game podcast.

01:12:55 ◼   ► There's something I have a notification now, and I don't know what notification is for

01:13:00 ◼   ► You're gonna want you're gonna want to delete this very shortly. I

01:13:05 ◼   ► Know that that feeling Myke because I did it many times before

01:13:09 ◼   ► Leave it installed for the night and

01:13:12 ◼   ► Start browsing a few stories just to get an idea then maybe tomorrow if it doesn't stick with you just delete the app

01:13:19 ◼   ► Don't delete it right away

01:13:22 ◼   ► All right. I'm gonna try

01:13:24 ◼   ► Oh, hang on, I have to take a picture of myself.

01:13:28 ◼   ► Yes.

01:13:29 ◼   ► Oh no.

01:13:30 ◼   ► Please take a picture.

01:13:32 ◼   ► Oh, it's a video or something?

01:13:33 ◼   ► What's it taking a picture of?

01:13:34 ◼   ► Yeah, it can be like a GIF inside of-

01:13:36 ◼   ► Why is it doing this?

01:13:37 ◼   ► I want it to stop.

01:13:38 ◼   ► No, no, don't stop.

01:13:39 ◼   ► All right, well-

01:13:40 ◼   ► If you look at my Snapcode, it's me doing silly faces.

01:13:43 ◼   ► I'm just making lots of different eye motions in front of my microphone.

01:13:46 ◼   ► This is terrible, terrible podcasting, so I'm going to take a break and thank our friends

01:13:52 ◼   ► over

01:14:12 ◼   ► They do this by offering powerful and easy to use tools and services.

01:14:16 ◼   ► For example, if you're a Pingdom user, which you should be, monitoring the availability

01:14:21 ◼   ► and performance of your server, database or website will be a breeze because they will

01:14:26 ◼   ► emulate visits to your website from over 70 global test servers around the globe, that's

01:14:32 ◼   ► why they're global, and they will check your availability as often as every single minute.

01:14:37 ◼   ► One of my favourite features about Pingdom, because we're a Pingdom user at Real AFM,

01:14:42 ◼   ► is they send a little report on the weekend which tells you how much uptime you had and

01:14:46 ◼   ► how well your website performed in the week and if it was all good it's like a little

01:14:50 ◼   ► merit badge for yourself you know you're like yay well done me I have a good website. Talking

01:14:56 ◼   ► about good websites, websites are big these days, good websites are full of lots of stuff

01:15:01 ◼   ► and all of this stuff is dependencies, these little things that can go wrong, maybe contact

01:15:07 ◼   ► forms, ecommerce checkouts, login functionality, search functionality. It's way more now than

01:15:13 ◼   ► just monitoring the uptime of your entire website because all of these little elements

01:15:17 ◼   ► can go wrong independently, maybe some of them come from outside and they're all maybe

01:15:21 ◼   ► hosted in different areas and because you want to keep things split up. All of this

01:15:25 ◼   ► stuff can break independently. Pingdom can monitor all of it. It's not just about your

01:15:31 ◼   ► whole website. All you need to do is give Pingdom the URL you wish to monitor. They'll

01:15:35 ◼   ► take care of the rest. When they detect an outage they will alert you immediately so

01:15:39 ◼   ► they can fix the error before that downtime affects you. You don't want to be called out

01:15:44 ◼   ► when someone wants to access your site so you need Pingdom. Go check it out today by

01:15:49 ◼   ► going to Pingdom.com/connected for a 14 day free trial and use the code connected to get

01:15:54 ◼   ► 20% off at checkout. Be the first to know when your site is down. Go check out Pingdom

01:16:00 ◼   ► Thank you so much to Pingdom for their support of this show and Relay FM

01:16:05 ◼   ► Now Federico Myke I have an Amazon echo

01:16:10 ◼   ► Arriving within the next day or two. All right

01:16:14 ◼   ► Okay

01:16:15 ◼   ► And I want you to tell me all of the things that I should be considering maybe some of the things that I should think about

01:16:22 ◼   ► Some examples some stuff that you're doing

01:16:24 ◼   ► So I can be prepared

01:16:27 ◼   ► For my Amazon echo. So do you still use your own a lot? I know that you were really happy about getting your Amazon echo

01:16:33 ◼   ► Yeah

01:16:35 ◼   ► Couple of questions Myke. Mm-hmm

01:16:37 ◼   ► Do you use Apple music or Spotify? I use Apple music, but I have a Spotify account. Okay, do you have currently any

01:16:46 ◼   ► Smart home devices like lights or sensors whatever I bought two Wemo

01:16:53 ◼   ► plugs the smart plugs

01:16:56 ◼   ► And when we move, whenever that is, I'm gonna get a bunch of hue bobs but I'm not

01:17:04 ◼   ► gonna buy them now in case they don't fit in the new place which would be crazy.

01:17:07 ◼   ► Alright so what you can do is you can connect your Spotify account because the

01:17:13 ◼   ► Spotify integration with the Echo is amazing. It can actually be your default

01:17:18 ◼   ► music service if you look into the Alexa settings. So first, download the Alexa app

01:17:25 ◼   ► for the iPhone, which is nothing but a web app, but it logs every single request, so

01:17:31 ◼   ► you can view a history of your commands, and you can change the settings. And among these

01:17:36 ◼   ► settings is an option to make Spotify the default player, otherwise the Echo uses the

01:17:41 ◼   ► Amazon whatever music instead of Spotify. So the integrations are called Skills, but

01:17:48 ◼   ► you already know that. Look for the service that you use, whether it's the Philips U lights

01:17:54 ◼   ► or the Wemo, Spotify, just search for their name and you will be able to set up the integration.

01:18:01 ◼   ► I use my Echo for lights every day, music, even though now I'm listening via Apple Music, so I

01:18:12 ◼   ► haven't tried Spotify in a while, but when I was a Spotify user for the past six months,

01:18:17 ◼   ► I use it every day. Lights, wall outlets, so like my Wemo, you can assign custom names to those devices.

01:18:28 ◼   ► So for example, the Wemo that is connected to my espresso machine, I called it the coffee maker,

01:18:34 ◼   ► so now I can just say "Alexa, turn on my coffee maker" and it turns on the Wemo. So I've given a

01:18:39 ◼   ► nickname to devices via Alexa, it's a neat feature. Anything else, like you can check for the news,

01:18:46 ◼   ► you can get audio summaries for NPR or like... I don't know if there's the New York Times in it.

01:18:53 ◼   ► Again, I'm not sure if you set up the Echo in the UK what it's gonna be like.

01:18:57 ◼   ► I think they have some integrations with some UK companies.

01:19:01 ◼   ► Yeah, but I guess the things that I use it the most is music, lights, WIMO, and timers.

01:19:09 ◼   ► I know that I can do all of this to an extent with Siri, but it's just easier to

01:19:15 ◼   ► I don't want to say shout, but just to talk to Alexa in the kitchen.

01:19:22 ◼   ► Because you don't have to yell with Siri and you don't have to put up with Siri's inconsistencies.

01:19:30 ◼   ► Because Alexa is a much bigger device with many more microphones and bigger microphones,

01:19:35 ◼   ► it does a better job at picking up your voice and picking up your accent and your requests.

01:19:41 ◼   ► I have a relatively small apartment, but I can talk to Alexa from the bathroom, and Alexa

01:19:46 ◼   ► is in the kitchen and she's going to understand me.

01:19:48 ◼   ► So it's very nice.

01:19:50 ◼   ► You can also trigger IFTTT recipes.

01:19:54 ◼   ► So for example, if you hook up the Canary to IFTTT, you can say turn on my camera, and

01:19:59 ◼   ► when you leave the house you can just shout that command to Alexa, and it will turn on

01:20:03 ◼   ► the Canary.

01:20:04 ◼   ► So do you use any other IFTTT things?

01:20:07 ◼   ► I guess it just kind of unlocks a world of possibility at that point.

01:20:10 ◼   ► Yeah, I use it with many things, which is the camera service that I use with my old iOS devices.

01:20:16 ◼   ► So I can say turn on the camera and it goes to IFTTT and this recipe is there instant,

01:20:22 ◼   ► so it takes like two seconds for Alexa to trigger the IFTTT recipe and you can check in the Alexa app if you want to make sure that the recipe went through.

01:20:31 ◼   ► Otherwise, what I do is when I'm about to leave, I tell Alexa to turn on the camera.

01:20:37 ◼   ► I stand in front of the camera, I make like a waving motion just to make sure that I get the notification on my phone that I know it's working.

01:20:44 ◼   ► So I'm very excited about this. Because I've wanted one of these for ages and I always said that I was gonna kinda just wait.

01:20:52 ◼   ► But this is part of my overall feeling of wanting to have a smart, connected home.

01:21:01 ◼   ► And I've been looking around and there really isn't a lot of products.

01:21:09 ◼   ► It feels like there aren't a ton of smart home devices, you know?

01:21:15 ◼   ► Especially stuff that works with either HomeKit or the Echo.

01:21:20 ◼   ► My original thinking was to get every home device that I buy to work with both of those

01:21:25 ◼   ► services but that's just a fool's errand because they don't.

01:21:31 ◼   ► like maybe one. Like the Philips Hue lights, they seem to work with both HomeKit and Alexa,

01:21:37 ◼   ► Echo, whichever you'd like to call it, it's the same product in case we're being unclear.

01:21:43 ◼   ► But outside of that, it seems like more stuff is currently working with the Echo than with

01:21:49 ◼   ► HomeKit. And I like the fact that there is this whole realm of possibility with the skills.

01:21:58 ◼   ► Because it's officially launching in the UK, you have a US version that you use in Italy.

01:22:03 ◼   ► They have got a bunch of UK specific skills that have been brought on.

01:22:08 ◼   ► So like, I can get recipes from Jamie Oliver.

01:22:12 ◼   ► We have a takeaway app here called Just Eat, which I can use.

01:22:15 ◼   ► I'm a big fan of Just Eat.

01:22:16 ◼   ► There you go.

01:22:17 ◼   ► See what he's talking about.

01:22:18 ◼   ► I think we spoke about this a couple of weeks ago, but they have like National Rail.

01:22:21 ◼   ► I like that you can order an Uber straight from the Echo.

01:22:25 ◼   ► sort of stuff is really cool and I'm looking forward to that but I also want

01:22:29 ◼   ► to really spend some time digging into what I can do with IFTTT because there

01:22:36 ◼   ► are so many apps and services and things that I could potentially build upon it

01:22:44 ◼   ► kind of feels amazing right like there's like a whole huge list of

01:22:51 ◼   ► of possibilities of things that I could do once I really started digging into IFTTT.

01:22:57 ◼   ► Even just triggering things on my phone using the IFF app.

01:23:01 ◼   ► It feels like there's a lot there.

01:23:04 ◼   ► I feel like I want to try and build some things related to workflow and Alexa and just kind

01:23:09 ◼   ► of really play around and tinker with some weird and wonderful things that I might be

01:23:13 ◼   ► able to do.

01:23:14 ◼   ► You can go back to in the Club Max series archive and you will find when I went crazy

01:23:21 ◼   ► and built a custom Alexa skill using a bit of Python code

01:23:25 ◼   ► to send an email to To Do using Alexa,

01:23:29 ◼   ► which has now been updated to send an email

01:23:31 ◼   ► to To Doist using Alexa.

01:23:33 ◼   ► So I can now just shout things at the echo

01:23:36 ◼   ► to save them in my To Do inbox, To Doist inbox,

01:23:40 ◼   ► so I can find them later.

01:23:42 ◼   ► It's kind of amazing, but you can go all the way in

01:23:45 ◼   ► if you know your way around code

01:23:47 ◼   ► and Amazon Web Services and Amazon Lambda.

01:23:50 ◼   ► you can make custom skills, you can execute code, you can come up with custom dictionaries

01:23:56 ◼   ► for Alexa.

01:23:57 ◼   ► I mean, the developer platform is quite well done.

01:24:01 ◼   ► And if you like to think, I mean, I gotta say, I followed the tutorial from someone

01:24:08 ◼   ► else and then I modified the script to my needs.

01:24:11 ◼   ► But you can go crazy with the Alexa skills.

01:24:13 ◼   ► Just sign up for the Alexa developer portal.

01:24:16 ◼   ► It's free and you can make custom skills and go crazy.

01:24:19 ◼   ► It's very nice.

01:24:20 ◼   ► I'm excited.

01:24:21 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:24:22 ◼   ► Myke, I want to quickly mention.

01:24:23 ◼   ► I tried, for the very first time, a ride-sharing service in Rome.

01:24:30 ◼   ► Not ride-sharing, but kind of like an Uber competitor.

01:24:33 ◼   ► So it's called My Taxi, and it's this service which is available in Europe and it's also

01:24:39 ◼   ► available in Italy.

01:24:40 ◼   ► I guess it's owned by a conglomerate that Mercedes, like the auto brand, is somewhat

01:24:49 ◼   ► involved with this company, like they have a majority stake, I don't know. Anyway, the taxi

01:24:54 ◼   ► industry is not happy with Uber in Italy because of regulations and like Uber's aggressive tactics.

01:25:01 ◼   ► I don't really follow the politics of that. Anyway, I knew that my taxi, this new company,

01:25:07 ◼   ► launched I think last year and a few months later it launched in Milan and then a few months later

01:25:13 ◼   ► it launch in Rome. It's like Uber, only you call a taxi. And it works just like Uber.

01:25:22 ◼   ► You have an iPhone app, you can pay with your credit card, you can leave a tip to the driver,

01:25:29 ◼   ► which I think is different from Uber, you can leave a review, or because it's a taxi,

01:25:34 ◼   ► if you want you can also pay with cash. So I needed to be somewhere in Rome a few days

01:25:39 ◼   ► ago and I tried my taxi. Something you can do, and I showed this to Myke and John, it

01:25:46 ◼   ► was very cool, you can pre-order a taxi, like you can schedule a pick up. You can schedule

01:25:54 ◼   ► a pick up up to four days in advance, which is really convenient because if you need to

01:25:58 ◼   ► be like at the airport or you need to be at a meeting, you can just make sure that a car

01:26:03 ◼   ► will be there to pick you up. And they give you a name of the driver, the photo of the

01:26:08 ◼   ► driver and then it's like Uber, you see a map, you see a preview of the car moving

01:26:13 ◼   ► around and I had a car to pick me up at like 5 to 5 and just like a minute later

01:26:22 ◼   ► like a 4 minutes to 5 it was there, like very precise. The interface was really

01:26:27 ◼   ► well done, I didn't need to use my car I could just use the taxi, you call it from

01:26:32 ◼   ► from the iPhone, pay with my iPhone and the credit card. It was very nice. It's not like

01:26:39 ◼   ► Uber, not as fancy. You drive in actual taxis and the taxis in Rome are not that fancy.

01:26:47 ◼   ► But it doesn't matter as long as it got me to my destination. It was very nice. I appreciated

01:26:53 ◼   ► the fact that I could leave a tip for the driver. I know that I'm not supposed to, but

01:26:57 ◼   ► The drivers were really nice, were really conversational and cordial to me.

01:27:01 ◼   ► So, I don't mind.

01:27:03 ◼   ► Yeah, my taxi.

01:27:05 ◼   ► If you live in Italy, if you wanted to try something like Uber, make sure to check it out.

01:27:10 ◼   ► Unfortunately, it doesn't have the Apple Maps integration in iOS 10 yet.

01:27:16 ◼   ► I say yet because I have Google Maps integration.

01:27:19 ◼   ► So, if you're looking at an address in Google Maps and if you live in Rome,

01:27:26 ◼   ► you can directly inside the Google Maps app for iPhone,

01:27:30 ◼   ► you will see the option to hail a MyTaxi

01:27:33 ◼   ► directly from Google Maps,

01:27:35 ◼   ► which is the same integration that Uber has.

01:27:38 ◼   ► So I suppose they're working on a similar integration

01:27:40 ◼   ► for Apple Maps in iOS 10.

01:27:42 ◼   ► So yeah, pretty cool.

01:27:43 ◼   ► - I love, if there's, you know,

01:27:46 ◼   ► you get one thing out of this show,

01:27:48 ◼   ► it's the latest in ride sharing services.

01:27:50 ◼   ► - Yes, of course.

01:27:52 ◼   ► - If you wanna find our show notes for this week's episode,

01:27:54 ◼   ► over to relay.fm/connected and if you want to support our sponsors, oh it's slash 110

01:28:02 ◼   ► relay.fm, this is why I need you to read the URL relay.fm/connected/110 please support

01:28:08 ◼   ► our sponsors because they helped support us this week. This show was brought to you by

01:28:11 ◼   ► the great people over at Smile with TextExpander, FreshBooks and Pingdom. If you want to find

01:28:16 ◼   ► Federico online he's at maxstories.net. Steven who is currently at the release note conference

01:28:22 ◼   ► is at phytopixels.net. Federico is @Vittici, V I T I C C I. I am @imike, I M Y K E on Twitter.

01:28:30 ◼   ► I'm also @imike on Snapchat. Federico, you are what? Federico Vittici? Federico Vittici

01:28:36 ◼   ► on Snapchat and Vittici on Twitter. Look at that. We're down with those kids now. We're

01:28:42 ◼   ► cool. You can be cool like us and add us on Snapchat. Until then, until next time, until

01:28:48 ◼   ► another time into the future. Say goodbye, Federico.

01:28:51 ◼   ► Arrivederci. Oh man, you gotta say adios.

01:28:54 ◼   ► Alright, adios.