Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:00:02 ◼   ► - Hello and welcome to Connected, episode 107.

00:00:09 ◼   ► Today is September 8th.

00:00:11 ◼   ► My name is Steven Hackett and I'm joined this week

00:00:13 ◼   ► by my co-host who I think may just be in a bathtub

00:00:17 ◼   ► full of espresso at this point, Federico Vittucci.

00:00:20 ◼   ► - Hey, that's me.

00:00:22 ◼   ► Hi Steven.

00:00:22 ◼   ► I'm not in a bathtub full of espresso,

00:00:26 ◼   ► but I feel like we're approaching that point

00:00:28 ◼   ► quite quickly by now.

00:00:31 ◼   ► So yeah, I'm doing well, how are you?

00:00:33 ◼   ► - I'm doing well, man.

00:00:34 ◼   ► It's a busy week, we have an Apple event,

00:00:37 ◼   ► we have a lot of stuff to get to.

00:00:38 ◼   ► Myke is on an airplane to Portland.

00:00:42 ◼   ► I'll be joining him tomorrow.

00:00:43 ◼   ► We're both going to the XOXO Conference.

00:00:46 ◼   ► So if you are gonna be at XO,

00:00:47 ◼   ► or you are just in Portland,

00:00:49 ◼   ► and you see us out and about,

00:00:50 ◼   ► come say hey, we'd love to meet you.

00:00:52 ◼   ► It's a really fun weekend,

00:00:53 ◼   ► we'll be there with a bunch of other relay people.

00:00:55 ◼   ► And so yeah, so I will see Myke tomorrow,

00:00:58 ◼   ► he's not here today. And I thought it was going to a sticker manufacturing plant in

00:01:02 ◼   ► China. It's just going to XOXO. Oh man. My idea was much better. Anyway, Myke, we miss

00:01:11 ◼   ► you. Come back soon. Don't die. Cheers. Come back soon. Yeah. So we're going to skip follow-up

00:01:17 ◼   ► this week. As everyone knows, there was an Apple event yesterday. There was lots to talk

00:01:21 ◼   ► about so we will resume follow-up next week. And I thought we could sort of talk about

00:01:28 ◼   ► the event itself, sort of like the meta comments on it, some of the pre-product stuff, and

00:01:34 ◼   ► then kind of dive into the big news. Right off the bat, opening skit, Tim Cook, pretty

00:01:41 ◼   ► great. Yeah, I mean, there wasn't an opening skit based on carpool karaoke and it's very

00:01:48 ◼   ► popular web series that Apple, if I'm not mistaken, acquired the rights for a new

00:01:54 ◼   ► series exclusive on Apple Music. So they did this video with with the host James

00:02:00 ◼   ► what's the last name I don't remember? Corden? Corden? Yeah I think so.

00:02:05 ◼   ► Anyway there was Tim Cook with James in a car driving and then

00:02:10 ◼   ► eventually Pharrell Williams joined them and they were just chatting about the

00:02:14 ◼   ► the Apple event, the iPhone and just singing like "Sweet Home Alabama" and I don't remember

00:02:19 ◼   ► the first song. It was very funny, especially if you know James and if you know Carpool

00:02:23 ◼   ► karaoke, like the style and you know what it's like. I thought it was very funny. I

00:02:29 ◼   ► love the guy and it was kind of cool to see you know Tim Cook in that kind of scenario

00:02:34 ◼   ► and even I thought Apple did a good job by faking the fact that Tim Cook was getting

00:02:39 ◼   ► out of the car and walking on stage I thought that that editing was really well done.

00:02:44 ◼   ► I like that he had the crazy sunglasses and just like threw them. So generally on keynote

00:02:52 ◼   ► days you know I watch the keynote in real time yesterday I was in the Six Colors talk

00:02:56 ◼   ► show we were kind of discussing the news there but then I at least skim the keynote that

00:03:04 ◼   ► evening you know you always miss stuff and like you know we got to talk about it for

00:03:08 ◼   ► living so I want to make sure that I have all my details straight and most of

00:03:12 ◼   ► the time my wife will watch it with me and last night you know I just sort of

00:03:15 ◼   ► skimmed through and watch the big parts but when this opening skit like how it

00:03:19 ◼   ► opened up like she was on board like she loved it she thought it was hilarious

00:03:23 ◼   ► and you know she's not one who really knows much about Tim Cook or his

00:03:26 ◼   ► personality but she loved it and and she she thought it was really funny and

00:03:32 ◼   ► really well done so I give a thumbs up to this this opening opening bit this

00:03:36 ◼   ► time we get some some news about Apple

00:03:41 ◼   ► music some app store stuff it's been a

00:03:43 ◼   ► while since they've done a sort of state

00:03:44 ◼   ► of the Union as far as the business

00:03:46 ◼   ► businesses what is it 17 million Apple

00:03:49 ◼   ► music subscribers 140 billion apps

00:03:51 ◼   ► downloaded that's year-over-year growth

00:03:54 ◼   ► and downloads like a hundred and six

00:03:55 ◼   ► percent which is a pretty pretty wild

00:03:57 ◼   ► you have a link in here to maxories

00:04:01 ◼   ► about all the different numbers that

00:04:02 ◼   ► were thrown out is there anything else

00:04:03 ◼   ► that popped out at you?

00:04:05 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, we already know that Apple had sold

00:04:09 ◼   ► over a billion iPhones, and Tim Cook sure liked to

00:04:12 ◼   ► underline that again.

00:04:14 ◼   ► I'm not sure if it's new, but there's a half a million games

00:04:18 ◼   ► on the App Store alone, and I think all the other numbers

00:04:23 ◼   ► we already knew, Apple also, when talking about

00:04:27 ◼   ► the Apple Watch hardware, they made this joke about

00:04:30 ◼   ► a thousand nits on the new Apple Watch,

00:04:33 ◼   ► And I just thought that was funny.

00:04:36 ◼   ► But in terms of business, it seems like the most notable figure were the Apple Music subscribers

00:04:41 ◼   ► and the App Store downloads.

00:04:44 ◼   ► And I feel like, especially when it comes to Apple Music, the company likes to update

00:04:49 ◼   ► people on this number to show the kind of growth that they're having compared to Spotify

00:04:53 ◼   ► and other streaming services.

00:04:55 ◼   ► So even if it's not a big number by any measure compared to what Apple does, comparing like

00:04:59 ◼   ► a billion iPhones and 17 million Apple Music subscribers. It's like literally Apple's

00:05:06 ◼   ► oranges. But I think they're doing this to show that they're coming after Spotify and

00:05:12 ◼   ► Pandora and all these other guys.

00:05:14 ◼   ► Right. I did like the joke about the thousand nits. I think Jeff Williams is like, "That's

00:05:19 ◼   ► a lot of nits." There's actually a little bit of a tradition in Apple keynotes. If there's

00:05:24 ◼   ► a really technical term, sometimes the speaker will make a joke about it. My favorite example

00:05:29 ◼   ► I think it was the Power Mac G5.

00:05:32 ◼   ► You know Steve Jobs is talking about

00:05:33 ◼   ► predictive branches in the processor

00:05:36 ◼   ► and he says, "I don't know what it does,

00:05:37 ◼   ► "it predicts branches."

00:05:38 ◼   ► I don't know, I'm told it's good.

00:05:39 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:05:41 ◼   ► I like those little asides.

00:05:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's pretty funny, how'd you know that?

00:05:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't know what it does, predicts branches.

00:05:48 ◼   ► Up next we have ConnectED, which is like connected

00:05:53 ◼   ► but with a capital E and a capital D.

00:05:54 ◼   ► This is a program that we heard a little bit about

00:05:58 ◼   ► I think last year or maybe even earlier this year,

00:06:01 ◼   ► where Apple and other technology companies,

00:06:04 ◼   ► so it's not just Apple, are partnering with the government

00:06:08 ◼   ► here in the United States to provide technology

00:06:11 ◼   ► to underserved schools or budget,

00:06:13 ◼   ► or schools that don't have the budget

00:06:15 ◼   ► for technology they may want or need.

00:06:17 ◼   ► Apple is backing 114 schools this fall.

00:06:21 ◼   ► That means it's like 4,500 teachers got a MacBook

00:06:25 ◼   ► and an iPad, there's an Apple TV in every classroom,

00:06:28 ◼   ► and they donated 50,000 iPads to students

00:06:32 ◼   ► across these 114 schools.

00:06:34 ◼   ► And I was super glad to see this have stage time.

00:06:38 ◼   ► This is the sort of initiative that makes me proud

00:06:41 ◼   ► to be an Apple fan, that they are doing this.

00:06:44 ◼   ► There's nothing saying they have to do it.

00:06:46 ◼   ► And again, Apple's not the only company that does it,

00:06:48 ◼   ► but I think it's great that these companies

00:06:49 ◼   ► that have such wealth and such magnitude

00:06:52 ◼   ► such as magnitude, are giving back.

00:06:56 ◼   ► And yes, they can always do more,

00:06:58 ◼   ► they should do more, but it's a nice thing to see.

00:07:01 ◼   ► And they had a picture of the Apple II

00:07:04 ◼   ► in a classroom with a bunch of kids,

00:07:06 ◼   ► I guess in the 80s, and it really is a rich history.

00:07:10 ◼   ► Apple, very early on with the Apple II,

00:07:15 ◼   ► put them in classrooms around like Cupertino and San Jose,

00:07:19 ◼   ► and you could look at that with a cynical viewpoint

00:07:21 ◼   ► well they want kids to be loyal to their brand,

00:07:24 ◼   ► and that may or may not be true,

00:07:25 ◼   ► but Apple has a rich history in education

00:07:28 ◼   ► and it's good to see it continue to flourish

00:07:30 ◼   ► even today when Apple is so much bigger

00:07:32 ◼   ► than it's ever been.

00:07:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's a very awesome initiative.

00:07:35 ◼   ► I was watching yesterday, I was like nodding with my head

00:07:39 ◼   ► because it's something that I really,

00:07:42 ◼   ► like we talk about, and I bring this up very often,

00:07:46 ◼   ► we talk about technology from a geeky perspective,

00:07:50 ◼   ► But this is like the stuff that really makes an impact to help students, to help kids study

00:07:55 ◼   ► in a better way, in a new way.

00:07:58 ◼   ► I like that Apple does this often.

00:08:01 ◼   ► They give it a mini section during the keynotes where people come to see the new iPhone and

00:08:07 ◼   ► the new Apple Watch.

00:08:09 ◼   ► And instead they always mention either accessibility or education, which is always great.

00:08:15 ◼   ► Totally, totally great.

00:08:19 ◼   ► about this time in the keynote that the @Apple Twitter account which has been

00:08:24 ◼   ► doing some more things so they're doing like these purchase tweets that only

00:08:27 ◼   ► show up in your timeline if they apply to you with it it's not in their main

00:08:30 ◼   ► timeline kind of weirdness they had a tweet about the iPhone 7 that you could

00:08:36 ◼   ► pre-order now I assume this tweet was to go out on Friday because it said

00:08:40 ◼   ► pre-order now but it leaked that it was water resistant it leaked the the jet

00:08:45 ◼   ► black image and I mean unprecedented. I mean so let me sum this up. Last week the

00:08:56 ◼   ► news got out that Apple was now using quote-unquote Twitter that the account

00:09:02 ◼   ► that had long been dormant on Twitter had become active with a new avatar and

00:09:06 ◼   ► with the profile thing going on with a verification badge and Apple didn't

00:09:12 ◼   ► tweet, but people started seeing tweets from Apple, and as it turned out, those tweets

00:09:19 ◼   ► were promoted tweets that Apple had like a special integration with Twitter to let people

00:09:24 ◼   ► sign up for news, and when the keynote was about to start, the Apple account was replying

00:09:30 ◼   ► to those original retweets. So it was like a promoted initiative that they did with Twitter.

00:09:36 ◼   ► And it seemed like, alongside these sign up for the keynote notifications, which were

00:09:43 ◼   ► super annoying by the way, because before the keynote started you could see this Apple

00:09:49 ◼   ► account on Twitter just replying to everyone to say "Hey, get ready for the keynote, it's

00:09:53 ◼   ► about to start".

00:09:54 ◼   ► Anyway, in addition to those ads, Apple also apparently prepared ads for the iPhone 7.

00:10:01 ◼   ► The problem was they went live two or three variations of those ads way before the announcement.

00:10:11 ◼   ► And there was even a video, like a brief Twitter video showing the iPhone 7 specifications.

00:10:19 ◼   ► Details about the cameras, it was basically everything.

00:10:22 ◼   ► The Twitter ads spoiled the iPhone 7 announcement.

00:10:27 ◼   ► It was probably my impression, but a few minutes after this happened, like Twitter exploded

00:10:32 ◼   ► and it was all over the blogs, 9to5Mac and The Verge, when Tim Cook watched out on stage

00:10:38 ◼   ► again he looked very upset to me.

00:10:41 ◼   ► Yeah, I think someone told him.

00:10:45 ◼   ► And I tell you what, I would not want to be on the team responsible for that screw up.

00:10:50 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:10:51 ◼   ► it's in the big picture of things you know it's no big deal because you know

00:10:57 ◼   ► the iPhone 7 is being announced anyway and people are watching but maybe you

00:11:02 ◼   ► gotta wonder how many people saw the tweets and saw the news on the blogs and

00:11:05 ◼   ► stopped watching I don't know it's just you know not a very well coordinated

00:11:10 ◼   ► strategy. Yeah and I mean for the first time to use Twitter like this I'm

00:11:17 ◼   ► curious how it will color their future use if it'll be something that we see

00:11:20 ◼   ► more of and maybe they change their policy or maybe they think hey you know

00:11:24 ◼   ► this is too fraught with with trouble but but it has happened before you know

00:11:29 ◼   ► historically it's been an Apple's own website where you know a something you

00:11:33 ◼   ► know some random accessory will show up or some specs will change prematurely

00:11:38 ◼   ► it's it's happened before but definitely not with the iPhone not something so big

00:11:43 ◼   ► So kind of a weird side story about the phone itself.

00:11:48 ◼   ► We'll get to it a little bit later.

00:11:51 ◼   ► I think there's a lot of hand-wringing around a line

00:11:55 ◼   ► that Phil Schiller said about taking courage

00:11:57 ◼   ► to get rid of the headphone jack.

00:12:00 ◼   ► I don't care for the wording, but it is what it is.

00:12:05 ◼   ► Phil Schiller sometimes gets sort of weirder lines

00:12:10 ◼   ► and keynotes, and I think this is just one

00:12:12 ◼   ► that didn't land the way they thought it would.

00:12:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I have to wonder

00:12:18 ◼   ► if all of these punchlines are decided in advance.

00:12:23 ◼   ► I mean, they gotta be.

00:12:25 ◼   ► But how is it possible

00:12:26 ◼   ► that no one can see their negative reactions?

00:12:30 ◼   ► Maybe because from a certain point of view,

00:12:32 ◼   ► even a negative reaction is still a reaction

00:12:35 ◼   ► and people talk about it.

00:12:37 ◼   ► But in the case of the courage line, as we'll see later,

00:12:40 ◼   ► It's sort of become of a joke and meme already on Twitter and everywhere else.

00:12:46 ◼   ► So I don't know.

00:12:48 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:12:49 ◼   ► I don't know what I think, honestly.

00:12:50 ◼   ► I don't like the line.

00:12:51 ◼   ► I don't like the choice of the word "courage".

00:12:54 ◼   ► I think it's very... it doesn't land quite well.

00:12:57 ◼   ► I mean, I do get it.

00:12:58 ◼   ► It does take courage, but it's just the... it sounds pompous and grandiose in a way that

00:13:06 ◼   ► it's probably not appropriate for a headphone jack.

00:13:08 ◼   ► That's all.

00:13:09 ◼   ► - Agreed.

00:13:10 ◼   ► We knew a lot of stuff going into this keynote,

00:13:16 ◼   ► but there were some surprises in the usual places.

00:13:20 ◼   ► Things like software, like the iWork collaboration,

00:13:24 ◼   ► complete surprise.

00:13:25 ◼   ► Software doesn't leak really the way hardware does

00:13:27 ◼   ► because software doesn't get made in China

00:13:30 ◼   ► and then put in a bunch of boxes, right?

00:13:31 ◼   ► It's these things that aren't physical

00:13:33 ◼   ► are much easier to keep quiet.

00:13:35 ◼   ► New watch materials and bands kept quiet.

00:13:38 ◼   ► some of the partnerships, release dates.

00:13:41 ◼   ► You know, so even going into this thing,

00:13:43 ◼   ► if you know, hey, the iPhone is gonna look like this,

00:13:45 ◼   ► it's gonna have this, it's not gonna have that,

00:13:47 ◼   ► there's still always room for Apple to drop a little bit

00:13:50 ◼   ► of that surprise and delight into these events still.

00:13:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, we knew almost everything

00:13:55 ◼   ► when it comes to the iPhone 7 and even the watch.

00:13:59 ◼   ► The surprises came from, really from other places.

00:14:03 ◼   ► I mean, I didn't see iWork coming, honestly.

00:14:08 ◼   ► And you should have seen my reaction when Shigeru Miyamoto walked out on stage.

00:14:14 ◼   ► Because even, I mean, we've been discussing this, me and you and Myke, and also with Myke and Shaheed on

00:14:20 ◼   ► remaster, the possibility eventually of Nintendo being on stage at an Apple event.

00:14:26 ◼   ► We talked about it and every time we reach the same conclusion, it's not gonna happen,

00:14:31 ◼   ► at least not in our lifetime.

00:14:33 ◼   ► And because it just seems so not Nintendo-like to have its foremost figure be on stage at

00:14:44 ◼   ► the event of a different company to announce games for another platform that it's not

00:14:49 ◼   ► Nintendo's.

00:14:50 ◼   ► And to see that yesterday going on, it was like I had one belief of Nintendo before and

00:14:59 ◼   ► now it's different.

00:15:00 ◼   ► I saw someone on Twitter, probably Chris Collar from Wired, say that the seal has been broken.

00:15:07 ◼   ► And in a way that's true, because we've always seen Nintendo as the company that doesn't

00:15:11 ◼   ► make games for other platforms.

00:15:13 ◼   ► And sure, we saw this change before with, you know, Miitomo and to an extent with Nintendo

00:15:19 ◼   ► subsidiaries like Pokemon Go and other Pokemon Shuffle on iOS, but the Mario game is a different

00:15:26 ◼   ► story.

00:15:27 ◼   ► And it's a very big deal, I think.

00:15:29 ◼   ► Yeah, really the only other surprise was iWork. So they are bringing

00:15:36 ◼   ► real-time collaboration to iWork in the apps themselves. So this demo was

00:15:42 ◼   ► crazy to me that they tried it. They had a keynote deck and she opened it up

00:15:47 ◼   ► and all of a sudden a bunch of things are like flying around as people are

00:15:51 ◼   ► editing the keynote document all at once. And it is very Apple to put this in the

00:15:57 ◼   ► the desktop apps first.

00:15:58 ◼   ► There was no, well there was only like a mention of iOS.

00:16:02 ◼   ► They also said like, also on the web.

00:16:04 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:16:05 ◼   ► - Apple is just like, for so many things,

00:16:08 ◼   ► are still like a desktop application first.

00:16:11 ◼   ► And that is what it is.

00:16:13 ◼   ► I think that's a little bit of an outdated way

00:16:14 ◼   ► of thinking about it.

00:16:16 ◼   ► I'm shocked that iWork made the stage.

00:16:21 ◼   ► Of course there were lots of take action jokes

00:16:23 ◼   ► from loyal prompt and connected listeners.

00:16:26 ◼   ► we tried was, what is it, I work in the cloud or whatever it's called and it went hilariously

00:16:33 ◼   ► wrong. So we are going to try this at some point. We also need to try the shared notes

00:16:40 ◼   ► when I was 10 and Sierra and everything come out. But you know, I'm glad that Apple is

00:16:46 ◼   ► spending time on iWork. You know, it's not the flashiest product they have, but I think

00:16:50 ◼   ► it's one that a lot of people rely on and it's something that a lot of people use, I

00:16:56 ◼   ► think especially Keynote used over Office because it really is so much better than

00:17:02 ◼   ► PowerPoint. So I'm glad they're still making investments in it. I've actually

00:17:06 ◼   ► been spending a lot of time at Keynote recently preparing for a talk and

00:17:09 ◼   ► Keynote's really good and so I'm glad they're paying attention to it and

00:17:14 ◼   ► I'm curious to see and excited to see how this real-time collaboration works

00:17:19 ◼   ► out in the real world. Yeah I mean you gotta wonder when the I work for iOS

00:17:24 ◼   ► is gonna be updated. I'm gonna guess next Tuesday we're gonna see an update.

00:17:28 ◼   ► But that's the optimistic take, because if I'm not mistaken, the iWork apps for the

00:17:33 ◼   ► iPad Pro were updated months later, if not at least a few weeks later.

00:17:38 ◼   ► You know, with the split view and with the full screen resolution on the iPad Pro,

00:17:42 ◼   ► they were not ready at launch, I think. So it's gonna be interesting to see

00:17:47 ◼   ► between this announcement and, you know, the rollout on the desktop and the web

00:17:51 ◼   ► web when the iOS versions get updated. Hopefully this time they will be ready with iOS 10.

00:17:57 ◼   ► I'm not sure what other iOS 10 features iWork can take advantage of. Maybe notifications,

00:18:04 ◼   ► if they do collaborations I guess. Widgets, I don't know. Do you want to see your spreadsheet

00:18:09 ◼   ► in a widget? Maybe. No.

00:18:11 ◼   ► Not even me and I like spreadsheets.

00:18:13 ◼   ► You like spreadsheets. Maybe Myke, but Myke doesn't use iWork. So yeah, we'll see.

00:18:18 ◼   ► Cool. We're going to get into the Mario game but first we're going to take a

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00:20:21 ◼   ► connected. We thank Squarespace for the support of this show and all of Relay FM. So give

00:20:28 ◼   ► me a rundown on this Mario game, Federico. So it's basically a Nintendo's take on the

00:20:33 ◼   ► the endless runner category of games on iOS. It's a Mario game where Mario runs always

00:20:40 ◼   ► from left to right and all you need to care about is jumping. So the game can be played

00:20:46 ◼   ► one-handed, that was one of the priorities of Nintendo and Shigeru Miyamoto to make a

00:20:51 ◼   ► Mario game that you didn't need to play with two hands. You can tap it with your finger

00:20:56 ◼   ► to make Mario jump, the longer you tap the higher Mario jumps, you can jump on enemies,

00:21:02 ◼   ► collect coins and the goal is to reach the end of the level and to jump on the pole flag.

00:21:10 ◼   ► That's the gist, it's basically if you've played Rayman on iOS, any 2D endless runner

00:21:17 ◼   ► on iOS, substitute that with Mario and you got Super Mario Run.

00:21:23 ◼   ► That said, it looks fantastic, of course, because it's a Nintendo game, so I love the

00:21:27 ◼   ► style.

00:21:29 ◼   ► There's different modes, so there's the classic mode which is the endless runner, there's

00:21:33 ◼   ► the Toad Rally mode in which you compete with friends, it's sort of like a time limit with

00:21:38 ◼   ► multiplayer, and there's also like a building mode where you can collect accessories and

00:21:44 ◼   ► like world elements to customize the Mushroom Kingdom of the world where Super Mario takes

00:21:51 ◼   ► place.

00:21:52 ◼   ► The most important part of this game is that there's no...

00:21:56 ◼   ► So on stage, Nintendo said it's not a freemium game where you're constantly badgered to pay

00:22:05 ◼   ► up.

00:22:06 ◼   ► So people interpret that as no in-app purchases in the game.

00:22:10 ◼   ► But basically, if you look at the iTunes page, because there's a pre-order page, which I'll

00:22:15 ◼   ► get to in a minute, it says the Super Mario Run will feature in-app purchases.

00:22:19 ◼   ► So how do you reconcile that?

00:22:21 ◼   ► Well, the game will most likely be free with a single in-app purchase to unlock levels

00:22:26 ◼   ► and all the content once.

00:22:29 ◼   ► So you've unlocked the in-app purchase once and you're good to go forever.

00:22:35 ◼   ► There's no gems, no sacks of coins like in other games.

00:22:40 ◼   ► There's only one in-app purchase.

00:22:41 ◼   ► So it's basically like a free trial.

00:22:43 ◼   ► You download the game for free and then you unlock it once and you're good to go.

00:22:47 ◼   ► I dig it.

00:22:49 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:22:50 ◼   ► About the App Store listing, the game is not out yet, but Apple is letting Nintendo have

00:22:55 ◼   ► sort of like a pre-order page, let's say.

00:22:58 ◼   ► It's not really pre-order because it doesn't unlock the moment that it comes out.

00:23:02 ◼   ► Basically instead of having a download button, you can press on notify.

00:23:06 ◼   ► And when you press on notify, you'll get a notification when the game launches in December.

00:23:12 ◼   ► So it's a way to let high profile companies and I guess game developers have a listing

00:23:18 ◼   ► on the App Store with the app icon, with the screenshots, with the video description and

00:23:22 ◼   ► everything, but the actual app, and to let people sign up for that and get a notification

00:23:27 ◼   ► when it launches.

00:23:28 ◼   ► I think it's a great idea and I hope it opens up to every developer.

00:23:33 ◼   ► I think it's fantastic to have a place on the App Store where developers can say, "Hey,

00:23:37 ◼   ► go here, sign up, you'll get a notification when it's out."

00:23:40 ◼   ► I think it's great.

00:23:41 ◼   ► It should be open to everyone.

00:23:42 ◼   ► I totally agree.

00:23:44 ◼   ► How many times do you deal with an embargo and then the app comes out early because of

00:23:49 ◼   ► propagation or comes out late?

00:23:52 ◼   ► It's very messy.

00:23:53 ◼   ► And to have something where you could say, "Hey, alert me when this thing comes out,"

00:23:58 ◼   ► and a developer could even treat that as an embargo.

00:24:01 ◼   ► A reporter, Federico, when you see the notification come through, you can publish your article.

00:24:10 ◼   ► I think there's lots of interesting things around that little button and I would love

00:24:14 ◼   ► to see it roll out across the store, absolutely.

00:24:18 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, the timing is also interesting from Nintendo's part.

00:24:23 ◼   ► The company had previously said, "We're going to do more mobile games with iconic characters

00:24:28 ◼   ► in addition to, in addition to Miitomo," which is, you know, the weird social network with

00:24:34 ◼   ► the Mii avatars that they did.

00:24:36 ◼   ► And they said we're gonna do Fire Emblem and Animal Crossing, which are two very popular

00:24:40 ◼   ► franchises for Nintendo games.

00:24:44 ◼   ► But they didn't say anything, at least that I remember, about Super Mario.

00:24:47 ◼   ► So to have that announcement at an Apple event with Shigeru Miyamoto and Bill Trinen on stage,

00:24:53 ◼   ► that really does resonate with Nintendo fans, with Apple fans.

00:24:58 ◼   ► And there's a time interview which I linked on Mac Stories, which you can find in the

00:25:02 ◼   ► show notes of this episode where it sounds like, at least initially, the game will be

00:25:08 ◼   ► exclusive to iOS, but maybe in the future Nintendo will launch it on more platforms,

00:25:14 ◼   ► so you know, Android basically, but for now it seems like it's an Apple deal, it's happening

00:25:19 ◼   ► on the iPhone and iPad, I think it's universal, and it should be launching before the end

00:25:24 ◼   ► of the year, Nintendo's gonna do more games on the App Store, Fire Emblem and Animal Crossing

00:25:30 ◼   ► next year, I think by March 2017, so maybe before the next Nintendo console launches.

00:25:36 ◼   ► Also another point, Nintendo doesn't have a new console for the holiday season. So if

00:25:42 ◼   ► you, I don't know if you follow Nintendo news Steven, but basically the company doesn't,

00:25:47 ◼   ► Nintendo doesn't really have a lot of new titles for the Nintendo Wii U, which has always

00:25:53 ◼   ► been struggling, but especially in the past year, basically no major game has come out.

00:25:58 ◼   ► And on the 3DS, the major games coming out are the new Pokemon games, Sun and Moon, they're

00:26:04 ◼   ► launching in November.

00:26:06 ◼   ► But they have no new console for the holiday season, because they said we're going to launch

00:26:11 ◼   ► the next console, codename Nintendo NX, by March 2017.

00:26:17 ◼   ► So everybody's waiting for some kind of announcement, some kind of keynote or event from Nintendo.

00:26:22 ◼   ► But a lot of people were saying, well, if Nintendo only has Pokemon on the 3DS, how

00:26:27 ◼   ► are they going to compete with the other companies in the holiday season without the new console,

00:26:32 ◼   ► without games on the Wii U? Well, there's your answer. They're going to make a lot of

00:26:36 ◼   ► money with iPhone and iPad games, and it's no problem, really, because they've been making

00:26:42 ◼   ► some money with Pokemon Go, but they're going to make a lot of money with Super Mario Run

00:26:46 ◼   ► on the App Store, because everybody's going to check out Super Mario Run. And you can

00:26:50 ◼   ► bet on this. I would bet on Super Mario Run taking the spot of the top-grossing app from

00:26:57 ◼   ► Pokemon Go when it launches.

00:27:00 ◼   ► I totally agree.

00:27:02 ◼   ► It seems like, even somebody like me who I grew up with, Nintendo in the house, and I've

00:27:06 ◼   ► got a Wii now, but definitely not super big into it, and I hit that notify button like

00:27:13 ◼   ► I want to play this game.

00:27:16 ◼   ► Let me ask you this, in this world where the Wii U has not really been a big success and

00:27:22 ◼   ► their next gen console is not here for the holidays, I agree that the iPhone is going

00:27:27 ◼   ► to give them a huge revenue bump and enough to carry them. Do you see this expanding to

00:27:33 ◼   ► something like the Apple TV where you have a controller and you're playing on a TV or

00:27:38 ◼   ► is that too close to their console business? Do you think that they will steer clear of

00:27:43 ◼   ► the Apple TV as not to conflate their time on the television?

00:27:46 ◼   ► What they said to time, I think, in the interview is we realized with Pokemon Go a lot of people

00:27:54 ◼   ► are discovering the game and then signing up or buying the existing Pokemon games on

00:28:00 ◼   ► our consoles, because apparently they saw a huge influx of people purchasing the original

00:28:06 ◼   ► Pokemon Blue and Red after playing Pokemon Go on the iPhone and Android.

00:28:11 ◼   ► So I don't think it's too crazy at this point to see Nintendo develop two branches

00:28:18 ◼   ► of their own games. One for mobile devices and even Apple TV with a, let's say, lightweight

00:28:25 ◼   ► experience. So don't expect to see the new Zelda or the new Metroid or a real Super Mario game on

00:28:32 ◼   ► iOS or tvOS but I would, I would, I don't think it's too crazy to see Nintendo doing games to

00:28:42 ◼   ► introduce you to Nintendo franchises on other platforms so you can then convert

00:28:47 ◼   ► to a paying Nintendo customer on their dedicated consoles. Even if that means

00:28:52 ◼   ► you know TV OS, as long as it's not the real Super Mario experience that you get

00:28:58 ◼   ► on the Nintendo NX or you know whatever it's called, I think as an appetizer of

00:29:03 ◼   ► Nintendo games it makes sense, you know? So you you try it here on iOS or TV OS,

00:29:11 ◼   ► You have fun, you give us money, which we like, but then if you want to play the real, the full game,

00:29:18 ◼   ► you know, all the innovations that Nintendo does, you gotta buy the console.

00:29:22 ◼   ► So it's sort of like they're treating iOS as a trial platform.

00:29:27 ◼   ► You get the trial on iOS and then you pay up and get the full game on Nintendo platforms.

00:29:32 ◼   ► It's not too crazy. They should have done this a long time ago.

00:29:38 ◼   ► Yeah, and that's really the the question is someone who again just knows Nintendo from afar of like this seems like such an obvious

00:29:45 ◼   ► Answer to so many problems right you have cash flow you have people who?

00:29:50 ◼   ► You know like I'm not gonna buy the next-gen tendo console like I've got no reason to spend money with that company, but I will

00:29:58 ◼   ► Download and play this Mario game, and you know other

00:30:01 ◼   ► Casual games or something that I am interested in because I do love many much of their IP

00:30:07 ◼   ► from you know when I was a kid just like everyone else in their 30s or high like

00:30:11 ◼   ► I think Mario is pretty universally loved by a lot of people my age and older and

00:30:16 ◼   ► The the thing that really just boggles the mind is it like this seems so clear

00:30:21 ◼   ► Why haven't they done it and I'm glad they're doing it. I think that

00:30:24 ◼   ► Having this special relationship with Apple is probably something that was key to it on their side

00:30:29 ◼   ► That they want they don't just want to be another app in the app store that they want to be

00:30:36 ◼   ► special and I think that they that they've earned that right and for me, you know seeing Nintendo on stage and having this demo and

00:30:43 ◼   ► Was totally great and like and I'm usually one like last night when I rewatched the keynote

00:30:48 ◼   ► Skimming through the game demos because I just I just don't care like I'm sorry. I'm sure you're nice

00:30:51 ◼   ► I'm sure your game is great. I just don't care

00:30:54 ◼   ► but but this felt really different and it feels like something that Apple and it into both have a lot to gain from and so

00:31:02 ◼   ► So I'm in favor of it, I think it's great, and I'm really excited to play this when it

00:31:07 ◼   ► comes out, which is not something I say very often.

00:31:09 ◼   ► This is very surprising coming from you.

00:31:11 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:31:12 ◼   ► So yeah, so I was at Nintendo, I would say that no one expected Mario to be on stage

00:31:19 ◼   ► at Avakina this year.

00:31:20 ◼   ► Not at all.

00:31:21 ◼   ► I was like, Silvia took a picture of me during my reaction, I was like with my hands covering

00:31:26 ◼   ► my face, I was like, what is going on here?

00:31:29 ◼   ► Am I really...

00:31:30 ◼   ► I think we're gonna need that for the show notes.

00:31:32 ◼   ► You gotta understand, I grew up with Shigeru Miyamoto as like my, as like a legend to me.

00:31:40 ◼   ► I was 10 and I was writing books about Shigeru Miyamoto, just not even, not just books, I

00:31:46 ◼   ► was just typing things on the computer. I was obsessed with the genius of this man.

00:31:53 ◼   ► And so to see, and you know, growing up, of course, video games remain such a huge important

00:31:57 ◼   ► part of my life. And so to see this man and this company on stage for an event of the

00:32:05 ◼   ► company that I write about for a living, it was like one of those crossovers, you know,

00:32:09 ◼   ► like Superman and Batman, only good, you know? Yeah.

00:32:14 ◼   ► Right. Subtle. I like what you said. So we're going to get into the Apple Watch, but first

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00:34:15 ◼   ► So as expected we saw Apple Watch 2 which they're now calling Series 2.

00:34:22 ◼   ► We can get into the name. There's actually a lot of naming changes. But Apple opened this up.

00:34:26 ◼   ► Again we see watchOS 3 again. They say it's the best smelling, the best smelling,

00:34:32 ◼   ► it's the best smelling watch. The best selling, selling smart watch. It's got the

00:34:38 ◼   ► highest customer satisfaction or something Tim Cook loves to say about

00:34:40 ◼   ► anything you can. And we saw Pokemon Go on the watch, which at first I didn't really

00:34:48 ◼   ► understand I listened to Upgrade this morning and they spoke a little bit more about it

00:34:53 ◼   ► where you can now do things in Pokemon Go just on the watch that you know before you

00:34:57 ◼   ► had to have your phone open. Yeah you can see Pokemon nearby, you can get notifications

00:35:03 ◼   ► for PokeStops, you just cannot catch Pokemon on your watch, you gotta pull out your phone.

00:35:07 ◼   ► Which makes sense because you use the watch as a sort of, let's say, notification hub

00:35:13 ◼   ► for Pokémon stuff going on around you.

00:35:16 ◼   ► By the way, this is amazing that all of this is fictional, but we're tweeting Pokémon

00:35:20 ◼   ► Go as if there were real Pokémon around you.

00:35:23 ◼   ► But yes, you gotta pull out your phone for more complex actions.

00:35:27 ◼   ► I think it's awesome.

00:35:28 ◼   ► I think it's gonna be probably the most popular app on the Apple Watch.

00:35:31 ◼   ► I don't wanna say it's going to be a reason for people to buy an Apple Watch, but it's

00:35:35 ◼   ► definitely going to be the most popular app on the watch app store.

00:35:40 ◼   ► And it's not shipping now right? It's later this fall? Do you think, I mean we've even

00:35:46 ◼   ► spoken about it on Connected Some, that maybe Pokemon Go has already hit its peak. Do you

00:35:50 ◼   ► think this will be a second peak of people rediscovering it or do you think that it will

00:35:55 ◼   ► kind of be, by the time it's out the, you know, the spotlight's already kind of moved

00:35:58 ◼   ► on and people don't care as much? I think in terms of Niantic are being really

00:36:01 ◼   ► smart with generating buzz on every update. So to keep people talking about the game,

00:36:07 ◼   ► talking about what's new. And I definitely think the Apple Watch doesn't have a small

00:36:12 ◼   ► install base, and I would argue that, you know, people who, of course people who have

00:36:16 ◼   ► an iPhone have an Apple Watch and people are really into, you know, Pokemon Go on the iPhone,

00:36:21 ◼   ► maybe are also very loyal iPhone users and, you know, they have an Apple Watch. I think

00:36:25 ◼   ► it's gonna be popular. I think it's gonna be definitely the most popular Apple Watch

00:36:29 ◼   ► and I wouldn't be surprised if you know Niantic and Nintendo continue to do

00:36:35 ◼   ► updates and maybe add new generations of Pokemon to the game, you know

00:36:40 ◼   ► especially with Pokemon Sun and Moon coming out, it's a perfect you know PR

00:36:44 ◼   ► wave of things happening in the Nintendo and Pokemon worlds so I don't see

00:36:51 ◼   ► Pokemon GO dying out as a fad just yet I think it's got

00:36:58 ◼   ► it's got legs on it as they say.

00:37:02 ◼   ► So let's get into the watch a little bit itself. The current watch, the one that

00:37:09 ◼   ► you and I are both wearing right now that everyone is wearing right now has

00:37:12 ◼   ► been updated. It is now called the watch series one so not to be confused with just

00:37:19 ◼   ► the regular old Apple watch. It is a new dual core CPU. It is not the the S2

00:37:25 ◼   ► chipset that's in the new watch.

00:37:27 ◼   ► So it does not have GPS, it does not have the waterproofing,

00:37:32 ◼   ► but it is an updated Apple Watch as we know it.

00:37:35 ◼   ► And the prices start at 269, so you know,

00:37:38 ◼   ► we were at like 249, 349, now we're 269, 369,

00:37:45 ◼   ► so up a little bit in price.

00:37:47 ◼   ► But you know, I think for someone who doesn't necessarily

00:37:50 ◼   ► care about the waterproofing or the GPS,

00:37:53 ◼   ► I think it's a great option.

00:37:56 ◼   ► I spoke recently on the show about my wife

00:38:00 ◼   ► wanting an Apple Watch and deciding what to do,

00:38:02 ◼   ► and we waited, and so last night,

00:38:04 ◼   ► doing this part of the keynote,

00:38:05 ◼   ► she was like, "Well, the Series 1 is fine."

00:38:07 ◼   ► She doesn't care about the GPS.

00:38:09 ◼   ► The waterproofing's not a big deal to her.

00:38:12 ◼   ► Totally, the water resistance on the first watch is great.

00:38:17 ◼   ► You're not supposed to swim in it, but people do.

00:38:19 ◼   ► I've definitely gotten it wet.

00:38:20 ◼   ► It's totally fine.

00:38:22 ◼   ► And so the Watch Series 1, I think,

00:38:23 ◼   ► going to be a nice entry-level watch and the dual core system on a chip will allow it to

00:38:29 ◼   ► be even faster than this one with the watchOS 3 which would be good, right? I was a little

00:38:33 ◼   ► afraid honestly that they were not going to rev the CPU and that this old slower watch

00:38:40 ◼   ► was going to stick around a long time and hold the platform back but it seems like they

00:38:44 ◼   ► were aware of that and are making adjustments. Yeah, I mean it's going to be a little tricky

00:38:49 ◼   ► I guess to explain to people that the watch they already have is not the serious one.

00:38:53 ◼   ► The serious one is the old one, but kind of also new. It reminds me of a new iPad 3 scenario,

00:39:03 ◼   ► like the new iPad and the new new iPad. You know, it's kind of... Apple sometimes, actually

00:39:08 ◼   ► quite often, they do confusing naming things, just because the lineup is so huge now and

00:39:14 ◼   ► so many different devices. There's no perfect way to indicate what a device really is in

00:39:21 ◼   ► terms of marketing to have a precise naming scheme, especially when you also do this kind

00:39:26 ◼   ► of same eye updates where you take an old model and then you stuff a new chip in it

00:39:31 ◼   ► and also don't update anything else on it. So it's kind of old but also kind of new.

00:39:36 ◼   ► It's like a Schrodinger's Apple Watch. Unless you open it up, it's really both old and new.

00:39:43 ◼   ► I mean I do think it makes sense. It's like a generation 1.5.

00:39:49 ◼   ► It's a step in between. I was honestly hoping they would be able to bring the

00:39:54 ◼   ► price further down to compete with the high-end Fitbits. You know 269 is still

00:39:59 ◼   ► pretty good for the smaller one but I would like to see that price come

00:40:03 ◼   ► down over time but between the price coming down and them revving the CPU I

00:40:09 ◼   ► I choose the CPU because this current watch,

00:40:11 ◼   ► even on watchOS 3 Beta, can be sluggish

00:40:15 ◼   ► and I think that it could potentially be a situation

00:40:18 ◼   ► like the A5 chipset was on the iPads

00:40:20 ◼   ► and the iPhones for such a long time.

00:40:22 ◼   ► The developers were stuck with the A5

00:40:25 ◼   ► way longer than they should be

00:40:26 ◼   ► and I think it held certain types of applications back

00:40:29 ◼   ► and now I think maybe they've learned

00:40:31 ◼   ► from that mistake a little bit

00:40:32 ◼   ► and are saying, hey, you know,

00:40:34 ◼   ► the watch, we need to keep iterating

00:40:35 ◼   ► and if that comes at a cost,

00:40:38 ◼   ► they're willing to deal with that for now at least.

00:40:40 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, having the Apple Watch at a lower price point allows more people to check

00:40:47 ◼   ► it out, but also I appreciate the decision that with more people Apple also wants them

00:40:51 ◼   ► to have a better experience with apps, especially with WatchOS 3.

00:40:56 ◼   ► So it was easier to say, "Look, we're going to keep the original Apple Watch around."

00:41:02 ◼   ► But I feel like having the lower price point, but also an update to the chipset, ensures

00:41:08 ◼   ► that the original Apple Watch doesn't put the ecosystem in danger of having slow apps,

00:41:16 ◼   ► apps that crash, performance isn't good.

00:41:19 ◼   ► So it's a typical Apple way of doing things.

00:41:22 ◼   ► We're going to do the lower price point just low enough so we can also have a new chip

00:41:27 ◼   ► in it so the apps are better, so that the perception of people, even those who don't

00:41:31 ◼   ► get the Series 2 is a good perception of the Apple Watch app ecosystem so then we

00:41:36 ◼   ► can move away from the original criticism of the first Apple Watch, the

00:41:40 ◼   ► apps are slow, the apps crash, it's unusable. I think it's a good move.

00:41:44 ◼   ► I think so too. Series 1 is only available, best I can tell, in the

00:41:52 ◼   ► aluminum finishes so there's no stainless steel anymore of the Series 1

00:41:57 ◼   ► It's just what was called the sport watch.

00:42:01 ◼   ► But it's a bunch of different options.

00:42:03 ◼   ► You got the gold, the rose gold, the regular aluminum,

00:42:06 ◼   ► and then the dark aluminum.

00:42:07 ◼   ► So still plenty of options if you want to

00:42:11 ◼   ► purchase a Series 1.

00:42:12 ◼   ► And I would really say if someone's looking to check out

00:42:14 ◼   ► the watch for the first time,

00:42:15 ◼   ► this is a fine place to start.

00:42:17 ◼   ► I don't think there's any need unless you really want

00:42:20 ◼   ► the GPS and the waterproofing to jump to the Series 2

00:42:24 ◼   ► at this point.

00:42:25 ◼   ► I think they've made a really compelling

00:42:26 ◼   ► entry-level model for once. So the series 2 is the the new watch we already spoke

00:42:32 ◼   ► a little bit about this the s2 system on a chip so this little waterproof

00:42:36 ◼   ► computer biscuit thing that has all the guts in it. The the waterproofing is is

00:42:43 ◼   ► what they're calling swim proof. There were two things that really jumped out at

00:42:47 ◼   ► me during this part of the keynote. One they built a robot to basically mimic

00:42:52 ◼   ► like years worth of swimming use.

00:42:55 ◼   ► And A, I just love any sort of industrial testing

00:42:59 ◼   ► because I don't know, something about that

00:43:01 ◼   ► makes my brain happy.

00:43:02 ◼   ► But two, the fact that Jeff Williams is like,

00:43:04 ◼   ► we tested for years of use.

00:43:06 ◼   ► That little phrase, and maybe I'm reading a lot into it,

00:43:10 ◼   ► but I think Apple does think about the Apple Watch

00:43:12 ◼   ► as a multi-year product.

00:43:14 ◼   ► And there was so much debate when it first came out

00:43:18 ◼   ► of how long the cycle was gonna be

00:43:19 ◼   ► and is something that people are gonna update every year.

00:43:22 ◼   ► I think Apple is fine with people

00:43:25 ◼   ► skipping generations on this thing,

00:43:27 ◼   ► and testing for years of use is something

00:43:30 ◼   ► that I'm glad they're doing, because honestly,

00:43:32 ◼   ► I think a lot of people will buy a watch

00:43:34 ◼   ► and wear it for three or four years

00:43:36 ◼   ► before thinking about updating it.

00:43:38 ◼   ► I don't know, do you have any thoughts

00:43:39 ◼   ► on that sort of life cycle?

00:43:41 ◼   ► - I've been thinking about this, right?

00:43:43 ◼   ► I don't know, I still don't know if the Apple Watch

00:43:46 ◼   ► is something that we should have,

00:43:47 ◼   ► like a new model annually, or every couple of years,

00:43:51 ◼   ► because it's not like a phone, and it's also much harder to make the components smaller

00:43:59 ◼   ► and to make them fit inside the watch. I've been looking at the Series 2 and it's a fine

00:44:06 ◼   ► upgrade I think. It's stuff that I was expecting. It also doesn't really relate to me because

00:44:14 ◼   ► I'm not a runner, I'm not a swimmer. It's fine, I'm gonna get one because I want the

00:44:20 ◼   ► best watch that I can have and because I feel like the performance is gonna make

00:44:25 ◼   ► me like the Apple Watch more because I want to like it and I want to use it it's

00:44:30 ◼   ► just it doesn't doesn't make me as excited as the iPhone 7 or you know the

00:44:35 ◼   ► iPad Pro it's just it's fine I keep I was talking with the Mac stories team

00:44:39 ◼   ► about this and in our slack it's a fine update that doesn't make me want to pull

00:44:45 ◼   ► my hair out that's all yeah. So it's got GPS as well for running the all this is

00:44:56 ◼   ► packed and basically the same case is actually one millimeter thicker but I

00:44:59 ◼   ► mean I don't think anyone is gonna be able to eyeball that. Same basically the

00:45:06 ◼   ► same battery life rating although there's also there's a little conflicting

00:45:11 ◼   ► information about this on one of the specs pages it shows better workout

00:45:15 ◼   ► battery life but I think it's kind of the same overall battery life but I

00:45:19 ◼   ► would say the safe bet today is same battery life or better which I think is

00:45:23 ◼   ► fair. The drinks have interesting stuff for the branding so before you had the

00:45:28 ◼   ► Apple watch sport which was aluminum you had the Apple watch which was stainless

00:45:31 ◼   ► steel and then you had Apple watch edition which was gold and all sorts of

00:45:34 ◼   ► craziness. This time around they are kind of blurring those lines a bit a little

00:45:39 ◼   ► bit so it's now like the Apple watch aluminum series 2 as opposed to the

00:45:44 ◼   ► Apple watch sport and I think that is um I think that's clear actually that you

00:45:49 ◼   ► were just basically saying what generation of watch and your finish and

00:45:52 ◼   ► if the finish doesn't break the watches out into different families and Apple

00:45:57 ◼   ► did this because it mimics what happens in the quote-unquote real watch market

00:46:01 ◼   ► best I understand but I think it's a clearer way to consumers that you don't

00:46:05 ◼   ► have to think about what family it's in you just say you know I'm looking for

00:46:09 ◼   ► the Series 2 aluminum or Series 2 stainless steel.

00:46:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, I feel like maybe it's easier to get people

00:46:16 ◼   ► to choose based on material rather than name.

00:46:19 ◼   ► Like, what does sport mean?

00:46:21 ◼   ► Does it mean that I have to do sports?

00:46:23 ◼   ► Can I buy one even if I don't do sports?

00:46:26 ◼   ► So maybe Apple has found out that to explain people

00:46:29 ◼   ► the materials is better than to explain a marketing term,

00:46:32 ◼   ► which I think for a watch, for something that you wear,

00:46:35 ◼   ► makes more sense than having to learn a whole terminology.

00:46:38 ◼   ► you know, sport edition or you know, what's your name, Apple Watch Steel. I think it's

00:46:44 ◼   ► easier to just say one or two and then which material do you want, which bands to go with

00:46:48 ◼   ► it. I think it's easier. I think so too. There are a couple of other variations. We have

00:46:54 ◼   ► a Nike Plus variation which is a aluminum watch with some crazy looking sport bands.

00:47:04 ◼   ► They also ship with a custom, or a couple custom I think,

00:47:07 ◼   ► Nike Plus watch faces.

00:47:09 ◼   ► But the app and everything behind all that

00:47:13 ◼   ► seems to be, the best we can tell, universal.

00:47:15 ◼   ► So I could download the Nike Plus running app

00:47:18 ◼   ► on a regular Apple Watch if I don't want the custom face

00:47:23 ◼   ► and the crazy, in my opinion,

00:47:25 ◼   ► not very good looking watch bands.

00:47:27 ◼   ► And then we also have the Hermes, right?

00:47:31 ◼   ► Which is an existing partnership,

00:47:32 ◼   ► some new colors of those bands, again, exclusive faces.

00:47:35 ◼   ► The Nike one in particular seems really obvious.

00:47:41 ◼   ► Tim Cook's on the board, Apple and Nike have always

00:47:43 ◼   ► had a really close relationship, and for years and years

00:47:46 ◼   ► they've shipped products together.

00:47:48 ◼   ► They had the Nike Plus running kit for the iPod

00:47:50 ◼   ► where you put a little puck in your shoe

00:47:52 ◼   ► and it talks to your iPod Nano, all sorts of crazy stuff.

00:47:55 ◼   ► And so this seems like a really natural next step

00:47:59 ◼   ► in that partnership to me.

00:48:01 ◼   ► Yeah, no more Nike fuel band also.

00:48:03 ◼   ► Oh yeah, I forgot.

00:48:04 ◼   ► Yeah, they discontinued it.

00:48:06 ◼   ► Remember that existed.

00:48:08 ◼   ► I owned one.

00:48:09 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:48:09 ◼   ► I mean, I think an Apple Watch at a Nike store

00:48:15 ◼   ► will make for a perfect showcase.

00:48:18 ◼   ► I don't like it.

00:48:19 ◼   ► I think it looks ugly.

00:48:20 ◼   ► I also think it's perfect for runners.

00:48:22 ◼   ► Those things are not mutually exclusive.

00:48:25 ◼   ► I think it makes total sense to have the kind of design,

00:48:28 ◼   ► the kind of watch face.

00:48:29 ◼   ► And when you think about it, I think it opens up a lot of opportunities for more, not just

00:48:35 ◼   ► branded Apple watches, because we saw that with the Hermes, but also for branded and

00:48:41 ◼   ► functional Apple watches.

00:48:44 ◼   ► There's all kinds of different applications that Apple could go with.

00:48:48 ◼   ► Imagine Apple teaming up with, I don't know, some company that specializes in heart rate

00:48:56 ◼   ► monitoring, so they do a whole Apple Watch just for that, or you know, there's other

00:49:01 ◼   ► sport brands for other types of, you know, activity. Imagine a watch for cycling, for example.

00:49:06 ◼   ► I think it makes sense to slowly but surely to do these kind of collaborations and to have a family

00:49:14 ◼   ► of Apple Watch products that the baseline is always the same, but you can get different

00:49:21 ◼   ► customizations, different designs and different functions, not just looks, based on what you

00:49:26 ◼   ► need to do with it.

00:49:30 ◼   ► Especially now, it's been two years, but Apple is still kind of figuring out what the Apple

00:49:35 ◼   ► Watch is, what the Apple Watch does, and trying to position it in a few different ways.

00:49:40 ◼   ► I think to do these kind of collaborations makes sense, to kind of see where it can go.

00:49:47 ◼   ► Yeah, I think so.

00:49:50 ◼   ► My guess is there's going to be more of these in the future.

00:49:55 ◼   ► Maybe the Hermes one was sort of the testing ground that it would work, that there'd be

00:49:59 ◼   ► a market for it, but I think the Nike+ one will be very popular in sort of that segment

00:50:04 ◼   ► of the population.

00:50:05 ◼   ► Yeah, you know, they're going to do the Nintendo Apple Watch at some point.

00:50:12 ◼   ► There is the addition.

00:50:13 ◼   ► It stays around.

00:50:14 ◼   ► The gold and all that stuff are gone.

00:50:17 ◼   ► there's no longer a $17,000 Apple watch.

00:50:20 ◼   ► The new one starts at $1249

00:50:22 ◼   ► and it is made out of white ceramic.

00:50:24 ◼   ► In my word, do I want this watch.

00:50:28 ◼   ► I'm not gonna buy it,

00:50:28 ◼   ► that's an obscene amount of money to spend,

00:50:31 ◼   ► but this thing to my eye looks gorgeous.

00:50:34 ◼   ► It's white, it's harder than steel,

00:50:37 ◼   ► it is glossy, it is, I just think, really, really nice.

00:50:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, I saw a lot of people

00:50:44 ◼   ► seem to like the ceramic design.

00:50:46 ◼   ► It just looks white to me.

00:50:48 ◼   ► I like, maybe touching it will be better,

00:50:51 ◼   ► I just don't get it right now.

00:50:52 ◼   ► Like, it looks like white plastic.

00:50:54 ◼   ► - Oh man.

00:50:56 ◼   ► - I don't know, I never had a ceramic watch, so you know.

00:50:59 ◼   ► - Me neither.

00:51:00 ◼   ► - I don't know what it feels like, but it's just white.

00:51:04 ◼   ► I think, you know, by personal preference,

00:51:06 ◼   ► I do appreciate the shiny steel, personally.

00:51:09 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:51:10 ◼   ► - In the addition it makes me think,

00:51:12 ◼   ► why haven't we seen a like a hardened plastic watch? I mean the aluminum is

00:51:17 ◼   ► really light would plastic even be lighter you could do lots of fun colors

00:51:22 ◼   ► you know maybe at some point we'll see that some sort of like really fun bright

00:51:27 ◼   ► spunky Apple watches but for now I think the white ceramic is sort of as far out

00:51:32 ◼   ► there as you can get but um so I guess the question I guess the question is

00:51:37 ◼   ► what are your plans? So my plans are to let's say to get a serious 2 steel with the usual

00:51:48 ◼   ► watch bands. I don't want to go crazy with the you know these Hermes ones they're also

00:51:53 ◼   ► quite expensive. Yeah I mean I'm gonna get one like I said I'm gonna get one because

00:51:58 ◼   ► it's faster because it's better but I think I'm gonna keep it pretty standard you know

00:52:04 ◼   ► just keep my existing bands, probably get a steel one eventually, because I still don't

00:52:11 ◼   ► have a steel band. But yeah, that's what I'm gonna do. Not gonna get the edition. That's

00:52:17 ◼   ► what I wanted to ask you, Steven. Do you think the edition line is a way to keep Johnny happy

00:52:25 ◼   ► and play with new materials, like his personal playground?

00:52:32 ◼   ► I could see a world where that's true.

00:52:33 ◼   ► The ceramic is a one-off at this point.

00:52:36 ◼   ► They're not using it anywhere else.

00:52:38 ◼   ► It seems like a very Johnny Ive design, right?

00:52:42 ◼   ► Like shiny and white are kinda his home base.

00:52:45 ◼   ► So yeah, I mean, maybe.

00:52:46 ◼   ► And I don't really buy into the idea that Apple does,

00:52:51 ◼   ► or Johnny Ive is doing crazy stuff

00:52:53 ◼   ► just to keep him from getting bored and to keep him engaged.

00:52:56 ◼   ► If Johnny Ive didn't wanna be there, he wouldn't be there.

00:52:58 ◼   ► He can go anywhere.

00:53:00 ◼   ► he's got money he could buy an island.

00:53:02 ◼   ► But I do think that this sort of special project

00:53:04 ◼   ► does come from him, that he does get to work on these things

00:53:08 ◼   ► and probably enjoys them.

00:53:09 ◼   ► So yeah, I think to a degree that's probably true.

00:53:13 ◼   ► Or maybe, you know, ceramic is-- I think they

00:53:15 ◼   ► said it's harder than steel.

00:53:18 ◼   ► So maybe it's also a way to experiment with the material

00:53:20 ◼   ► now on the Apple Watch for a line that is quite expensive.

00:53:24 ◼   ► Not a lot of people will buy it.

00:53:26 ◼   ► But maybe eventually there's going

00:53:28 ◼   ► to be an iPhone made of ceramic.

00:53:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, I saw some tweets go by about that.

00:53:32 ◼   ► I mean, there's no telling, right?

00:53:34 ◼   ► And Apple, they're very good about reusing stuff

00:53:39 ◼   ► so that they brought things like the rose gold aluminum

00:53:42 ◼   ► to the phone and then it showed up on the watch

00:53:44 ◼   ► and even the MacBook.

00:53:46 ◼   ► Like, they reuse materials and technologies

00:53:49 ◼   ► across multiple products and so I think if the ceramic

00:53:52 ◼   ► behaves well and people like it,

00:53:55 ◼   ► then we could definitely see more of it.

00:53:56 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:53:57 ◼   ► So I don't know what my plans are. I mean I've got the stainless steel now. I like

00:54:03 ◼   ► the stainless steel. It is a bit heavy but I like the way it looks. Honestly I'm

00:54:08 ◼   ► not because I'm not wearing my watch every day and I'm not super in love with

00:54:13 ◼   ► it for now. I think I'm going to stay put. Like I said I'm going to buy a series 1

00:54:18 ◼   ► sport aluminum not sport named watch from my wife but for now I think I'm

00:54:24 ◼   ► I'm gonna stay put.

00:54:25 ◼   ► I think if I were to go purchase something,

00:54:27 ◼   ► I would probably do the aluminum Series 2.

00:54:31 ◼   ► As much as I like the stainless steel,

00:54:32 ◼   ► it is more money for something I'm not using every day,

00:54:35 ◼   ► and it is heavy.

00:54:36 ◼   ► But you know, at this point,

00:54:38 ◼   ► the WatchOS 3 is pretty good on the first gen watch.

00:54:42 ◼   ► I have no doubt the new ones will be noticeably faster,

00:54:45 ◼   ► but I don't, I guess can't really justify it at this point

00:54:48 ◼   ► for something that I'm not using every day.

00:54:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

00:54:53 ◼   ► So we're going to get to the main event of the iPhone 7, but first I want to thank our

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00:56:43 ◼   ► iPhone 7.

00:56:46 ◼   ► - So what'd you think?

00:56:47 ◼   ► Give me your summary.

00:56:49 ◼   ► What's your impression here?

00:56:52 ◼   ► - My impression that even though it is a design

00:56:55 ◼   ► that is familiar, right, it is the 6 and 6S,

00:56:58 ◼   ► that there's so much stuff packed in here technology-wise

00:57:02 ◼   ► that I kinda don't even care that it's the same design.

00:57:06 ◼   ► I don't even particularly love the design

00:57:10 ◼   ► of the 6 and 6S.

00:57:10 ◼   ► I'm with Marco that it's slippery

00:57:12 ◼   ► and like a little round bar of soap,

00:57:13 ◼   ► but I'm excited about all the tech they've packed in it

00:57:16 ◼   ► the audio to the cameras and everything in between. It feels it's much more than

00:57:21 ◼   ► just an S phone and I think overall I'm excited to pre-order. Yeah so let's see

00:57:26 ◼   ► what's new. We got new colors so the space gray is gone. There's two shades of

00:57:32 ◼   ► black here. There's the jet black which is the glossy one and there's the super

00:57:39 ◼   ► shiny black and there's the what's it called just black. It's just called black

00:57:44 ◼   ► but it's a matte finish. Yeah, and the Jet Black option is not available on the 32

00:57:51 ◼   ► gigabyte version, which by the way it's the new base model, so you know the 16

00:57:55 ◼   ► gigabyte is officially dead, like really dead dead. Thank goodness, unless you

00:58:00 ◼   ► buy an SE. It's still there. Yes, and the Jet Black is only on the 128 gigs and 256

00:58:10 ◼   ► gigs, which you know the mid range option so it's double the storage which is the

00:58:16 ◼   ► one that I'm gonna get, whereas you can get the normal black on 32 gigs as well.

00:58:21 ◼   ► The colors they look fantastic I think and the jet black

00:58:28 ◼   ► especially, Apple seems to devote a lot of attention to it because it's the one

00:58:32 ◼   ► that really looks different, you know because even the black, the matte

00:58:37 ◼   ► black one it looks kind of like darker 6s whereas the jet black it's metal but

00:58:44 ◼   ► it's shiny and it's glossy and Apple did a whole video to show the procedure like

00:58:47 ◼   ► the whole system where they treat this material to be glossy and shiny

00:58:53 ◼   ► which is a Johnny Eye narrated video which is the very first video that they

00:58:58 ◼   ► showed for the iPhone 7. Yeah which is weird right because it shows off the

00:59:02 ◼   ► dual camera and like and shows off as no headphone jack and then they explain

00:59:05 ◼   ► everything you just saw.

00:59:06 ◼   ► Sort of weird, a weird direction there.

00:59:09 ◼   ► But the jet black is intriguing to me.

00:59:12 ◼   ► So from the hands-on videos I've seen,

00:59:15 ◼   ► there are a bunch of them on YouTube,

00:59:17 ◼   ► it looks like, so if your iPhone 6 6s is off,

00:59:21 ◼   ► that's kind of how the whole thing looks.

00:59:22 ◼   ► So it's very reflective, very shiny.

00:59:25 ◼   ► And part of me is tempted by it because it's so different.

00:59:28 ◼   ► Like you said, the regular black is sort of like

00:59:30 ◼   ► a darker space gray.

00:59:33 ◼   ► And while this thing is like something we haven't seen

00:59:34 ◼   ► really since like the 3G or 3GS days of that shiny black.

00:59:38 ◼   ► So I am tempted by it, but all the hands-on reports say that it's like a fingerprint magnet.

00:59:44 ◼   ► There's actually a disclaimer on Apple's website that it's going to show abrasions and micro

00:59:48 ◼   ► scratches and stuff, which I mean I understand it's glossy.

00:59:53 ◼   ► And even then I'm still a little tempted by it because I think that it may wear nicely,

00:59:57 ◼   ► but if it was the only black option it's what I would do.

01:00:02 ◼   ► That matte black looks really good to me.

01:00:04 ◼   ► I don't know if the Jet Black is gonna wear nicely.

01:00:08 ◼   ► I mean, do you remember the 3GS by the end of the year?

01:00:13 ◼   ► It was all scratched up.

01:00:14 ◼   ► At least mine was all scratched up and it was really ugly to look at.

01:00:18 ◼   ► And I feel like the same is gonna happen with the Jet Black even if it's not plastic.

01:00:24 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:00:25 ◼   ► Here's my problem.

01:00:26 ◼   ► It looks fantastic.

01:00:27 ◼   ► I wanna get the Jet Black, but also I don't want scratches and I don't want it to look

01:00:31 ◼   ► like the 3GS used to look when I moved to the iPhone 4. And also if I'm going to put

01:00:38 ◼   ► my iPhone in a case, does it really warrant having a jet black? I mean maybe yes, because

01:00:46 ◼   ► sometimes you can get it out of the case and just use it naked so you can appreciate the

01:00:52 ◼   ► shiny design. I think I'm gonna get the jet black just because it's new and just because

01:00:59 ◼   ► I have a I've been using a white iPhone for two years straight. I want to go back to

01:01:05 ◼   ► Black iPhone all the way in the other. Let's just go all the way to the other side at this point

01:01:12 ◼   ► Yeah, and there's something to be said for that right I used to alternate between white and black so it felt new which is

01:01:18 ◼   ► you know sort of ridiculous, but I

01:01:21 ◼   ► Think the I think they both look nice. You know the the white silver

01:01:26 ◼   ► The gold and the rose gold are still around they'll have the white glass on the front

01:01:30 ◼   ► But I think I think Apple is really pushing that jet black and is it something you know that we could see elsewhere

01:01:36 ◼   ► Is this is this new regular black are we gonna see this on iPads and on the MacBook in the future?

01:01:42 ◼   ► You know it I think absolutely I think that the days of like space gray actually being like four different colors

01:01:49 ◼   ► Probably coming to an end and we'll see I think we'll see some unification around these new colors

01:01:55 ◼   ► And they opened with this right is the first thing out of Phyllis not like we have a new design that starts with

01:02:01 ◼   ► this new finish and I

01:02:04 ◼   ► Think that they they're pushing it so hard because it does look so different than the previous phones

01:02:10 ◼   ► Right that that in jet black. It's kind of hard to tell the details of the case and it looks so unusual

01:02:16 ◼   ► Compared to where we've been that they're they're sort of I don't say they're hiding the fact that it's the same design because I don't

01:02:23 ◼   ► they're doing that but it does mask it a little bit it does deflect attention

01:02:27 ◼   ► away from the case and to the finish itself.

01:02:30 ◼   ► So what else? We have the home button with haptic feedback.

01:02:37 ◼   ► That's a new thing that people are freaking out about the home button.

01:02:43 ◼   ► As we knew from the rumors, Apple got rid of mechanical parts so it's no more

01:02:49 ◼   ► mechanical button. It's like the touchpad of the the trackpad of the MacBook.

01:02:55 ◼   ► It's based on Force Touch, so it gives you the illusion of clicking, while in

01:03:00 ◼   ► fact there's a Apple's haptic engine inside that gives you haptic feedback.

01:03:06 ◼   ► So the problem here, at least right now, is that a lot of people who tried it are, as

01:03:12 ◼   ► as you would expect from a new iPhone, into separate camps.

01:03:16 ◼   ► The Verge says that the clicking sensation,

01:03:21 ◼   ► the haptic feedback is awful,

01:03:23 ◼   ► that it doesn't feel like a click at all,

01:03:25 ◼   ► that it's worse than clicking the MacBook's trackpad

01:03:28 ◼   ► with first touch, they don't like it.

01:03:30 ◼   ► And it feels like, in the article they said,

01:03:33 ◼   ► it feels like a kick in the lower part of the iPhone,

01:03:36 ◼   ► like the entire iPhone.

01:03:38 ◼   ► I saw other people on Twitter,

01:03:41 ◼   ► Matthew Panzareno, Renee Ricci were at the keynote and on the hands-on demo area where

01:03:47 ◼   ► they said it's different, doesn't exactly feel like a click, but once you get used to

01:03:52 ◼   ► it, we think it's gonna be awesome.

01:03:55 ◼   ► So here's where we stand right now.

01:03:58 ◼   ► Based on what I'm reading here, doesn't feel like a click, but you get used to it because

01:04:03 ◼   ► it's a different thing, it feels like Apple is moving to making the home button part of

01:04:08 ◼   ► the screen.

01:04:10 ◼   ► not this year, maybe not next year, but you gotta know eventually it's gonna be

01:04:13 ◼   ► part of the, you know, there's not going to be a bezel separating the screen, it's

01:04:17 ◼   ► gonna be all screen with a home button inside. That's the plan. And moving away

01:04:23 ◼   ► from the mechanical part and integrating the Taptic Engine and giving developers

01:04:27 ◼   ► an API to program the Taptic Engine to do stuff for apps, it's like

01:04:33 ◼   ► rethinking the role of the home button, rethinking what you can feel in

01:04:38 ◼   ► in apps it's a it's becoming a whole thing you know the screen and the app

01:04:43 ◼   ► and the button and the engine it's becoming a single layer in a way.

01:04:49 ◼   ► The feedback mechanism of the Taptic Engine you know is I can see why people

01:04:56 ◼   ► feel what they're feeling and I haven't obviously got to try it so take it all

01:05:00 ◼   ► with a grain of salt but with the four star trackpad and even the watch the the

01:05:06 ◼   ► area that is the button and the area that is the Taptic engine or you know

01:05:10 ◼   ► the same size or the same width. If you if you push down the trackpad on my

01:05:14 ◼   ► MacBook Pro it feels like it clicks because the sensation is coming from

01:05:18 ◼   ► underneath your finger and the home button if you know even they even in the

01:05:23 ◼   ► keynote have these are like tearaway photos. Taptic motor is still wider you

01:05:28 ◼   ► know it's wider than the button it's not localized just behind the button so it

01:05:31 ◼   ► makes sense that you would feel it and it would feel as if it were coming from

01:05:35 ◼   ► from an area in the phone that's not directly

01:05:39 ◼   ► behind the button, which could lead to the sensation,

01:05:42 ◼   ► right, that the whole phone is vibrating or kicking

01:05:45 ◼   ► or it's not localized to my thumb,

01:05:47 ◼   ► and so it feels unusual.

01:05:50 ◼   ► I fully expect this will be something that's really weird

01:05:52 ◼   ► for the first week, and then we'll never talk about it again

01:05:55 ◼   ► that we will just get used to it.

01:05:56 ◼   ► And even on my MacBook Pro, which has the Force Touch

01:05:59 ◼   ► track pad, I wasn't crazy in love with it at the beginning,

01:06:03 ◼   ► But now I kind of even forget that it's there because it just works and it feels like a

01:06:09 ◼   ► button and that's fine.

01:06:11 ◼   ► So I see where people are coming from, I see why, like why that feeling could exist, the

01:06:16 ◼   ► way that it's put together, but I think that long term this is not going to haunt the new

01:06:19 ◼   ► home button.

01:06:20 ◼   ► Yeah, I've been using Sylvia's new MacBook Pro, she has a MacBook with a first touch

01:06:26 ◼   ► trackpad and it's alright, you know, it feels like a button, it feels like clicking.

01:06:32 ◼   ► I don't get people who are like, "Oh my God, I hate the first touch."

01:06:36 ◼   ► No, it's not terrible.

01:06:37 ◼   ► You know, it's fine.

01:06:38 ◼   ► It feels like a click to me.

01:06:40 ◼   ► And I get used to it.

01:06:41 ◼   ► And I can imagine, you know, Apple says it's a customizable home button.

01:06:46 ◼   ► And by that, they mean, I saw a few pictures.

01:06:49 ◼   ► There's a new customization screen, probably yet another screen in the setup process of

01:06:55 ◼   ► iOS.

01:06:56 ◼   ► I have a section about this in my review.

01:06:59 ◼   ► There's yet another customization screen where you can choose from three types of clicking

01:07:03 ◼   ► sensations.

01:07:06 ◼   ► The default one is the one that they said feels like a kick in the lower end of the

01:07:11 ◼   ► bezel, basically.

01:07:14 ◼   ► But the potential for user customization, if you think about it, accessibility options,

01:07:23 ◼   ► people who have all kinds of impairments or disabilities,

01:07:27 ◼   ► to be able to customize the physical sensation

01:07:30 ◼   ► with feedback is pretty great.

01:07:32 ◼   ► You're not constrained by mechanical parts.

01:07:35 ◼   ► You can use software to change the feeling

01:07:38 ◼   ► of pressing the button, which is pretty great.

01:07:41 ◼   ► And also, developers doesn't relate to the home button,

01:07:44 ◼   ► but the same engine can be used by apps.

01:07:47 ◼   ► So when you're using an app, you do something.

01:07:50 ◼   ► If you go read the updated human interface guidelines,

01:07:53 ◼   ► which I skimmed last night.

01:07:55 ◼   ► Apple is saying, if you're, for example,

01:07:57 ◼   ► you can program the Taptic Engine API

01:08:01 ◼   ► to give users the sensation of a thud,

01:08:04 ◼   ► when, for example, two views collide and touch each other,

01:08:08 ◼   ► or you can have like a success feel.

01:08:13 ◼   ► So you can not just hear or see the interface,

01:08:18 ◼   ► you can also feel it on your phone,

01:08:20 ◼   ► Which is pretty great because Apple sort of did this with first touch on Mac OS, but there's

01:08:26 ◼   ► a whole, you know, it's much bigger potential on iOS because it's something that you're

01:08:31 ◼   ► constantly touching on the screen.

01:08:33 ◼   ► And it's just the beginning, like the API is really limited right now.

01:08:36 ◼   ► And again, the home button is clearly separated from the screen.

01:08:40 ◼   ► But I feel like the, you know, I would want to have a Venn diagram of people who complain

01:08:47 ◼   ► about the headphone jack and people who complain about force touch, you're gonna see right

01:08:52 ◼   ► in the middle there's the people who don't like either. And I feel like it's because

01:08:58 ◼   ► tech nerds love cables and they love mechanical parts, so whenever software is involved and

01:09:04 ◼   ► whenever wireless is involved, they go crazy.

01:09:07 ◼   ► Right. One thing I'm looking forward to back up to the customization is the ability, seems

01:09:14 ◼   ► like one of the hands-on showed the screen even to set the amount of

01:09:16 ◼   ► pressure to register the click and so my MacBook Pro I have it as light as

01:09:21 ◼   ► possible you can do this now with 3d / force touch whatever it's called on the

01:09:26 ◼   ► iPhone 3d touch so the amount of pressure it takes to push down on the

01:09:30 ◼   ► screen to trigger that action you can set to light medium or heavy I guess and

01:09:35 ◼   ► I have all those set to the lightest so I don't have to put much pressure down

01:09:38 ◼   ► you know through my thumb and which is already like mostly crippled some days

01:09:43 ◼   ► I think it's nice to have that option where you don't have to click as hard to

01:09:50 ◼   ► if you have an RSI issue in your finger or thumb or something so I like that

01:09:54 ◼   ► customization again I'm sure that we'll all get used to this vibration situation

01:09:58 ◼   ► and go from there so yeah see we have waterproofing and

01:10:05 ◼   ► desk proofing super exciting. Well, don't call it waterproofing otherwise

01:10:09 ◼   ► people will be upset I know because I went through this. Is it like

01:10:14 ◼   ► mispronouncing Australian beach names? Kind of, it's water-resistant. Water-resistant.

01:10:20 ◼   ► So the watch is waterproof and the iPhone is water-resistant, am I getting

01:10:25 ◼   ► that right? So splash means... Swim proof. Swim means waterproof, splash means water-resistant.

01:10:32 ◼   ► I think that's right. So it's water-resistant and dust-resistant, which

01:10:38 ◼   ► means you can use it in the rain, you can drop it in the toilet. I mean, not intentionally,

01:10:43 ◼   ► well, you want to do that intentionally. Drop it in the pool and it's not gonna die, so

01:10:52 ◼   ► say goodbye to the rice bowl and, you know. Oh gosh. Yeah. It's pretty great. You know,

01:10:59 ◼   ► they started this work with the iPhone 6s, what's the name, Gasket? Gasket, yeah. And

01:11:07 ◼   ► And this year they're going all in.

01:11:08 ◼   ► You know, also by getting rid of the headphone jack, it allows Apple to kind of compartmentalize

01:11:13 ◼   ► the components more and better, and so there you go.

01:11:17 ◼   ► You can use it in the rain.

01:11:18 ◼   ► Now you can be, you know, have a romantic scene, you in the rain with your iPhone, and

01:11:23 ◼   ► it's not gonna die.

01:11:24 ◼   ► Sounds great.

01:11:25 ◼   ► Yeah?

01:11:26 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:11:27 ◼   ► And I think it's high time, and, you know, I definitely have gotten water on my 6s Plus,

01:11:34 ◼   ► and it's been okay.

01:11:35 ◼   ► to a degree it has some water resistance I think if you're if you're lucky but

01:11:39 ◼   ► it'll be nice to sort of not worry about about it quite so much. We have the

01:11:46 ◼   ► camera which is I think probably the biggest addition so we'll get through

01:11:51 ◼   ► some tech stuff real quick. Both the 7 and the 7 plus have optical image

01:11:56 ◼   ► stabilization that was just available in the plus in the past. The back camera is

01:12:00 ◼   ► 12 megapixel at f/1.8 which is really wide aperture that's a huge change

01:12:06 ◼   ► big improvement and it sits at equivalent 28 millimeters it shoots wide color gamut

01:12:14 ◼   ► so this what is what is the name of the spec? It's a P3 color space. It's used in

01:12:22 ◼   ► the cinema industry was available on the 5k iMac and the 9.7 iPad Pro

01:12:30 ◼   ► now it's on the iPhone as well.

01:12:33 ◼   ► - So you can shoot in that color now,

01:12:34 ◼   ► so you have that color chain all the way through.

01:12:38 ◼   ► Live photos are getting some video stabilization

01:12:40 ◼   ► and some other features.

01:12:42 ◼   ► You can shoot and capture raw images via the API,

01:12:45 ◼   ► not in the camera app, but third party developers

01:12:47 ◼   ► will be able to capture raw images, which is excellent.

01:12:51 ◼   ► You're gonna spend 128 gigs on raw pictures

01:12:53 ◼   ► if you're not careful.

01:12:56 ◼   ► The front, for the FaceTime camera,

01:12:58 ◼   ► 7 megapixels, they talk about the image signal processor, it does lots of cool machine learning

01:13:03 ◼   ► to do things. And Apple likes to say machine learning every single time. Because I mean

01:13:09 ◼   ► even before, back in the iPhone 4, iPhone 4s, iPhone 5 days, the iPhone camera was able

01:13:16 ◼   ► to focus on a person when taking a picture, right? The yellow square was like recognizing

01:13:23 ◼   ► the subject. But Apple didn't say machine learning before. It's a feature that we always

01:13:27 ◼   ► And now they're saying, "And thanks to machine learning, we can now focus on a person's face."

01:13:31 ◼   ► I mean, that's always been there, but sure, now it's machine learning.

01:13:35 ◼   ► And it's possible that now the same feature has been augmented with machine learning,

01:13:39 ◼   ► but you can feel that it's a marketing term that they really like to use.

01:13:44 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

01:13:45 ◼   ► It's in our show notes and all capital letters so you know it's important.

01:13:49 ◼   ► The 7+, #mikewasright, gets a second 56mm telephoto lens.

01:13:55 ◼   ► the relationship between these two cameras is pretty interesting so you can

01:14:00 ◼   ► zoom in the camera app and it will move or you can move it between the wide

01:14:06 ◼   ► angle and the telephoto lens. The telephoto lens is f/2.8 so it's not as wide of an

01:14:12 ◼   ► aperture as the the other lens. You can do optical zoom which is of course like

01:14:18 ◼   ► the whole point before with software zoom that leaves a lot of artifacting and

01:14:22 ◼   ► kind of blocky color and stuff and this should be much better at that so 2x

01:14:26 ◼   ► optical zoom and anything from 2 to 10x is still software zoom but because it's

01:14:31 ◼   ► already on the telephoto lens they're saying it will be it will be clearer.

01:14:35 ◼   ► So let me understand optical zoom means it's physically zooming into the picture.

01:14:43 ◼   ► Right, yeah with the lens itself and so how they're so on a regular camera

01:14:47 ◼   ► So like on my 70D, if I have a zoom lens on it and I turn the ring on the lens, the lens

01:14:53 ◼   ► actually moves.

01:14:55 ◼   ► And the distance between the – this is super high level – the distance between the glass

01:15:01 ◼   ► and the sensor changes and that changes the zoom.

01:15:04 ◼   ► That's optical zoom.

01:15:05 ◼   ► It's actually the physical world is – the light is being changed.

01:15:10 ◼   ► How Apple is doing it is they can't move these lenses, right, because they're all

01:15:13 ◼   ► fixed.

01:15:14 ◼   ► It's in your pocket.

01:15:15 ◼   ► It's tiny.

01:15:16 ◼   ► Oh, so they don't move inside.

01:15:17 ◼   ► they're swapping between the two so you zoom up to a certain point and then it

01:15:21 ◼   ► kicks over to the telephoto lens. Oh okay. And then past that you're still doing

01:15:26 ◼   ► you're still doing software zoom which is you know what we've always had right

01:15:30 ◼   ► that looks kind of janky and not very good. Yes. Because it's it's sort of a

01:15:34 ◼   ► hack right the two camera system really is a hack on that idea that I can't move

01:15:38 ◼   ► this lens in and out like I can on a DSLR or a quote real camera but I can

01:15:44 ◼   ► and have two lenses sort of at preset lengths

01:15:47 ◼   ► and moving between them.

01:15:48 ◼   ► So it's clever, I think, that their demo

01:15:52 ◼   ► was pretty convincing, that it will work well.

01:15:54 ◼   ► Their sample shots on the website look great.

01:15:57 ◼   ► If I wasn't already in the Plus Club,

01:15:59 ◼   ► this would push me over the edge.

01:16:01 ◼   ► I'm really excited about the camera setup.

01:16:04 ◼   ► There are a lot of times where I would like more zoom.

01:16:07 ◼   ► You know, we've all seen family photos,

01:16:10 ◼   ► or I do a picture of my kid playing soccer,

01:16:13 ◼   ► and she's like a tiny little dot, right?

01:16:15 ◼   ► Because she's 100 yards from me

01:16:17 ◼   ► and the iPhone just can't do it.

01:16:18 ◼   ► And this will bring that in closer

01:16:22 ◼   ► and I think that that's gonna be a really nice thing.

01:16:24 ◼   ► - But that's not all that it can do, the dual lens setup.

01:16:28 ◼   ► - It has a secret project, capital letters.

01:16:31 ◼   ► So in an upcoming update, which we'll come back to.

01:16:35 ◼   ► We're gonna come back to that.

01:16:37 ◼   ► They're using both cameras at the same time

01:16:40 ◼   ► and they're using machine learning to create a depth map.

01:16:43 ◼   ► So if I took a picture of Federico

01:16:45 ◼   ► standing in front of a waterfall,

01:16:47 ◼   ► he uses both lenses to create a depth map

01:16:50 ◼   ► so it understands where Federico is

01:16:52 ◼   ► in relation to the background behind him.

01:16:54 ◼   ► And the image signal processor

01:16:57 ◼   ► and the machine learning and the iCloud robot

01:17:00 ◼   ► or whatever else is in that little chip to make it work,

01:17:03 ◼   ► it will blur the background

01:17:07 ◼   ► to make you pop out more.

01:17:09 ◼   ► And this is an effect that is pretty easy to do,

01:17:13 ◼   ► honestly, on a DSLR.

01:17:15 ◼   ► Like, I've got a fixed 50 millimeter lens

01:17:18 ◼   ► that is sort of my default lens,

01:17:19 ◼   ► and it does a really good job of this,

01:17:21 ◼   ► of separating the foreground from the background.

01:17:24 ◼   ► So Federico is nice and crispy in focus,

01:17:27 ◼   ► and their waterfall is this gorgeous color blur behind him.

01:17:30 ◼   ► The effect is called bokeh.

01:17:32 ◼   ► - Okay.

01:17:33 ◼   ► - What they're doing is, again, it's a hack, right?

01:17:34 ◼   ► Because they can't, they don't have that quality of lens

01:17:36 ◼   ► because of the size, but by using both lenses

01:17:39 ◼   ► to create this mashed up image,

01:17:42 ◼   ► and then best I can tell, artificially blurring

01:17:44 ◼   ► the background in software, it is creating this effect.

01:17:49 ◼   ► So it only works on the 7 Plus,

01:17:51 ◼   ► it only works because it has this two camera system

01:17:54 ◼   ► and because this new image signal processor, this new ISP.

01:17:58 ◼   ► What's really crazy to me is that it does it in real time.

01:18:01 ◼   ► So Federico, if you shifted a little bit in my frame,

01:18:06 ◼   ► It all stays, like I can see that,

01:18:08 ◼   ► and the background stays blurry behind you,

01:18:10 ◼   ► and like that to me is the impressive part,

01:18:12 ◼   ► that they're rendering it in real time,

01:18:15 ◼   ► and you can see what it's gonna do.

01:18:17 ◼   ► That just seems incredibly expensive

01:18:20 ◼   ► from a computational standpoint to me,

01:18:22 ◼   ► and I think it's cool.

01:18:24 ◼   ► Now it's not coming, it won't be here on day one.

01:18:27 ◼   ► WTF, mate.

01:18:29 ◼   ► Phil Schiller called it a extra, what'd he say,

01:18:33 ◼   ► like extra credit project.

01:18:34 ◼   ► I agree with what Jason said on upgrade that they just missed the boat and didn't get it done and it's coming later

01:18:40 ◼   ► I think they wanted to pre announce it to show off what they can do with the camera

01:18:46 ◼   ► Yeah, and they get people excited where if you're on the fence because honestly that the zoo may not be enough for most people

01:18:52 ◼   ► Right that I want it but not everyone does

01:18:54 ◼   ► But if this portrait thing gets you excited like it does me

01:18:58 ◼   ► Then maybe that's enough to push you to buy the plus now knowing the update is coming

01:19:03 ◼   ► So I see why they announced it early, but it's super weird that a huge software feature

01:19:09 ◼   ► that takes advantage of the flagship hardware and their flagship device isn't there at launch.

01:19:17 ◼   ► When you think about it, the fact that it's doing this in real time, it's sort of like

01:19:22 ◼   ► an application of augmented reality in the camera app, because you're modifying what

01:19:28 ◼   ► the camera is seeing in real time. And it's easy to see how with the dual camera system

01:19:34 ◼   ► Apple could, in the future, do all kinds of different applications for AR in the camera.

01:19:40 ◼   ► And right now the portrait mode, of course it's a simple picture taking mode feature

01:19:46 ◼   ► of the camera app, but from a conceptual standpoint it's also AR, because it's modifying in real

01:19:55 ◼   ► real-time what the camera is seeing even more than just a color filter, right, like it used

01:20:00 ◼   ► to be before. It's acting with these two different cameras, it's mapping out the depth of field,

01:20:07 ◼   ► it's doing machine learning, it's doing everything in real-time, rendering on screen, it's pretty

01:20:12 ◼   ► impressive and it's a testament to Apple's work with the A10 Fusion CPU in the iPhone

01:20:19 ◼   ► 7. It's quite impressive.

01:20:22 ◼   ► I think it's great and I think that my guess is there gonna be a lot of people who were

01:20:26 ◼   ► not on the plus that are going to move up to the bigger size for the camera.

01:20:30 ◼   ► I mean every every time that the camera gets bumped I mean it's so many people by the phone

01:20:36 ◼   ► for that reason and and shows something really interesting and Schiller is a photographer

01:20:40 ◼   ► like he is into cameras even made like a little joke that really felt off the cuff to me that

01:20:46 ◼   ► he said I just love cameras I really love them like that sounded like Phil Schiller

01:20:49 ◼   ► just making a comment during the keynote.

01:20:51 ◼   ► He said you know look you're not going

01:20:53 ◼   ► to replace your DSLR like they're setting

01:20:54 ◼   ► that expectation like this is not going

01:20:56 ◼   ► to look as good as something shot on my

01:20:58 ◼   ► expensive fixed lens on my camera but

01:21:01 ◼   ► it's going to look good and he said you

01:21:03 ◼   ► know most people the only camera they

01:21:05 ◼   ► have is in their phone and most of the

01:21:07 ◼   ► time it's the best camera they've owned

01:21:09 ◼   ► to date. So if you own the iPhone 5s

01:21:12 ◼   ► that's the best camera you've ever owned.

01:21:14 ◼   ► If you own the iPhone 7 it's the best

01:21:16 ◼   ► camera you've ever owned for most people.

01:21:17 ◼   ► And that's really compelling and a really powerful thing, I think, that Apple is treating

01:21:24 ◼   ► the iPhone in a lot of ways as a bunch of different products.

01:21:29 ◼   ► And the first several phones, the camera was just sort of there, sort of thrown in, I think.

01:21:34 ◼   ► And they've realized over time that it's a really important feature to a lot of people.

01:21:38 ◼   ► I mean, I can't even imagine how many people the only photos of their kids, or the majority

01:21:43 ◼   ► of the photos of their kids, are taken on an iPhone.

01:21:45 ◼   ► I've got two nice cameras actually and the bulk of the photos I take are on my iPhone

01:21:50 ◼   ► because the one's always with me.

01:21:52 ◼   ► And so to make that tool and that camera better is a really no-brainer reason for me to update

01:21:57 ◼   ► every year.

01:21:58 ◼   ► Yeah, absolutely.

01:21:59 ◼   ► All right, so we're going to blast through the display.

01:22:03 ◼   ► 25% brighter, that white color gamut.

01:22:06 ◼   ► No True Tone.

01:22:08 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:22:09 ◼   ► I mean, I was expecting True Tone to come this year.

01:22:12 ◼   ► Me too.

01:22:13 ◼   ► Maybe Apple could have managed to get the tech ready

01:22:18 ◼   ► in a small display, in a small footprint, I don't know.

01:22:21 ◼   ► It would have been nice to have it.

01:22:23 ◼   ► I'll survive without it, even because when I use

01:22:26 ◼   ► my devices at night, it's usually the iPad

01:22:29 ◼   ► because I'm in bed and I'm reading and just relaxing

01:22:32 ◼   ► or watching a TV show, whatever.

01:22:34 ◼   ► It would have been nice, but no big deal, maybe next year.

01:22:38 ◼   ► - Maybe next year.

01:22:39 ◼   ► - Audio.

01:22:41 ◼   ► - So the audio.

01:22:42 ◼   ► Let me ask you, are you one of those people who are freaking out about the headphone jack?

01:22:47 ◼   ► I don't love the decision, and I don't fully buy their reasoning for it.

01:22:52 ◼   ► Okay, let's talk about it.

01:22:55 ◼   ► What I did, the last month, I've really been thinking about this, and I've made little

01:23:00 ◼   ► notes to myself, just mentally, of when I actually use the headphone jack.

01:23:04 ◼   ► It's not very often.

01:23:06 ◼   ► Now, I'm fortunate that my car has a Bluetooth system, so it just connects and plays over

01:23:11 ◼   ► Bluetooth. I do own a pair of Bluetooth earbuds that I work out in some. And so, you know,

01:23:19 ◼   ► I'm not thrilled that it doesn't impact me as much. Some people it's really going to

01:23:22 ◼   ► impact more. But I don't love it, but I'm not not buying a phone because of it. What

01:23:30 ◼   ► about you? It's really no big deal for me. I mean, I do, I'm all in favor of moving on.

01:23:40 ◼   ► And I think the headphone jack, I basically only use it for plugging into my earpods.

01:23:47 ◼   ► And I'm all, you know, I tried wireless headphones, and the moment that I tried them, I was like,

01:23:53 ◼   ► this is my future.

01:23:54 ◼   ► I don't want to have wires anymore.

01:23:57 ◼   ► Because wires break, they get in the way, they're clumsy, and I hate wires.

01:24:03 ◼   ► And I want to get rid of them as much as possible.

01:24:07 ◼   ► So I mean, I do get the argument that it's an open standard, that Apple is pushing on

01:24:14 ◼   ► to proprietary formats and all of that. But as an Apple user, as an iPhone user, and as

01:24:21 ◼   ► awful as that may sound to people who fight for open standards like USB and stuff, I don't

01:24:27 ◼   ► care because practically I want to have wireless headphones all day for all time in the future.

01:24:35 ◼   ► I don't want to have wires anymore. I'm getting a new car and it's gonna have Bluetooth, so

01:24:41 ◼   ► you know, no big deal, I don't need the aux cable there anymore. And honestly, I, you

01:24:48 ◼   ► know, it's fine, thank you Apple for doing this because you can use the space for something

01:24:54 ◼   ► else. You can give us more battery, you can make it water resistant. It's gonna be, maybe

01:24:59 ◼   ► you know, for some people it's gonna be an inconvenience, but there's a free adapter

01:25:03 ◼   ► in the box, which I honestly didn't see coming.

01:25:06 ◼   ► - Agreed.

01:25:07 ◼   ► - So, you know, we're all moving on.

01:25:09 ◼   ► When Apple replaced the 30-pin dock connector,

01:25:12 ◼   ► it was like the end of the world.

01:25:14 ◼   ► I was around for that, I had Mac stories already,

01:25:17 ◼   ► and I remember people freaking out,

01:25:19 ◼   ► it's gonna be the end of the iPhone,

01:25:20 ◼   ► Apple is making a huge mistake.

01:25:22 ◼   ► And looking back, we're all fine.

01:25:24 ◼   ► Apple has kept selling more iPhones.

01:25:26 ◼   ► It was a short-term inconvenience, everyone moved on,

01:25:30 ◼   ► and we're better because of that.

01:25:32 ◼   ► And I think, you know, right now Apple is catching a lot of criticism and some of that

01:25:38 ◼   ► is only natural because when you drop something, happened before with the CD-ROM, with the

01:25:43 ◼   ► DVD, happened with the serial bus interface, you know, it always happens.

01:25:49 ◼   ► And the moment that you ditch something for, you know, because it's sold, because it's

01:25:53 ◼   ► time to move on, you get the people who are establishing that standard and they're not

01:25:57 ◼   ► okay with that.

01:25:59 ◼   ► And you know, people move on, people don't need... I honestly think that people don't

01:26:05 ◼   ► want wires either. I mean, who wants wires? Who loves wires? Nobody loves wires. Even

01:26:12 ◼   ► if you think about it, you don't love the wire. You love the fact that it's an established

01:26:16 ◼   ► standard that you're familiar with. But at a very conceptual level, you don't like the

01:26:21 ◼   ► wire itself as a concept, as an idea. You only like the fact that it's existing, that

01:26:26 ◼   ► already existed, then you don't need to change. So you gotta have, Apple says, courage. I

01:26:32 ◼   ► wanna say you gotta have the vision to say, we believe this is the future, it's gonna

01:26:36 ◼   ► be an inconvenience, we're gonna give you an adapter, but in the future we're gonna

01:26:40 ◼   ► be wireless. We're not gonna have wires around. And this is what we wanna do, and if you don't

01:26:47 ◼   ► like it, just, I guess, buy an Android phone or whatever.

01:26:50 ◼   ► People in the chatroom are saying they're gonna do that. So I think a couple things

01:26:54 ◼   ► worth mentioning the what is different about this than the dot connector is

01:26:59 ◼   ► that the eighth inch you know 3.5 millimeter jack is as close as as a

01:27:07 ◼   ► universal standard as it gets it is in cars it is in hotel rooms it is in a V

01:27:13 ◼   ► setups it is everywhere and apples credit they they're putting a debt from

01:27:18 ◼   ► the box to apples bigger credit the things only nine dollars I'm gonna end

01:27:22 ◼   ► buying four of them just keeping them everywhere but the you're right with

01:27:27 ◼   ► time this will fade and but I think it's gonna take a lot longer than the dock

01:27:33 ◼   ► connector did because this this jack and this plug is just so ubiquitous the you

01:27:42 ◼   ► know apples statement of hey this thing's a hundred years old we need more

01:27:46 ◼   ► space they didn't really say it helped with waterproofing but I think they sort

01:27:51 ◼   ► hinted at it and maybe we're just reading that. There's this article on

01:27:55 ◼   ► BuzzFeed will be in the show to check out talking with Jaws and other

01:28:00 ◼   ► Apple team members about it. This thing they saw it as a reasonable trade-off and

01:28:06 ◼   ► the question is will users see it as a reasonable trade-off and my guess is

01:28:10 ◼   ► that people who listen to this show are going to be at the extreme ends of it

01:28:14 ◼   ► where some people gonna be like you who like really don't care they're using

01:28:17 ◼   ► Bluetooth anyways and they're going to be people who also send the show who are

01:28:21 ◼   ► on the far other end who you know like me have really nice headphones and want

01:28:25 ◼   ► to continue to use them and are myth that you can't charge and listen at the

01:28:32 ◼   ► same time which is a real bummer you know I don't know how many people I

01:28:37 ◼   ► noticed in my own like family who you know have a car tape adapter or

01:28:41 ◼   ► something and so they plug in lightning and they plug in 3.5 millimeter when

01:28:46 ◼   ► get in the car. There are going to people who are caught by that. I'm sure someone will

01:28:50 ◼   ► make an adapter that splits it out. But there's going to be this this this this time of pain

01:28:59 ◼   ► discomfort. Did Apple have to do it with this phone? Could they have made other decisions?

01:29:04 ◼   ► Could they have made other trade offs? Of course they could have. But they thought that

01:29:08 ◼   ► it was time. And you know, there's the story going around that this next iPhone is going

01:29:14 ◼   ► to be just amazing and edge to edge glass and be the Iron Man phone like Tony Stark

01:29:18 ◼   ► magic phone.

01:29:19 ◼   ► Well, not anything that's true, who knows, but the idea that they would sacrifice the

01:29:24 ◼   ► headphone jack and sacrifice the iPhone seven to make that iPhone.

01:29:28 ◼   ► You know, this this the headphone jack gate be done.

01:29:32 ◼   ► I don't know if Apple really plays that game.

01:29:34 ◼   ► But all in all, it's a huge move.

01:29:35 ◼   ► And I think it's one that there are going to be ramifications for the foreseeable future.

01:29:40 ◼   ► But I think they're doing the right thing by having lightning headphones.

01:29:44 ◼   ► They said, like we have talked about in the past,

01:29:46 ◼   ► the number one set of headphones in the world

01:29:49 ◼   ► are the one that come in the iPhone box.

01:29:50 ◼   ► People use them, people use the headphones

01:29:52 ◼   ► that come with their phone.

01:29:53 ◼   ► Even in speaking again, like I used my wife as a barometer

01:29:57 ◼   ► 'cause she's the only person I see during the day.

01:30:00 ◼   ► You know, we were talking about it last night

01:30:01 ◼   ► and she uses the AirPods a lot for phone calls

01:30:04 ◼   ► and she was like, oh well if they come in the box,

01:30:07 ◼   ► it's fine, like you know, she uses it a lot

01:30:09 ◼   ► but when she realized she could still plug it in

01:30:11 ◼   ► didn't have to deal with Bluetooth, then she was fine.

01:30:14 ◼   ► I think that's really gonna be okay for like a lot of the people who aren't at the

01:30:17 ◼   ► extremes. It's sort of like people who don't have a strong feeling either way.

01:30:23 ◼   ► It's in the box, you have an adapter you would leave plugged into your car, and

01:30:27 ◼   ► it's maybe a little annoying but it's fine. So again, I think it's something

01:30:30 ◼   ► that there's a lot of fervor around right now that will die out over time.

01:30:35 ◼   ► And of course in two years, who cares? Because it's gone and Apple is big enough

01:30:38 ◼   ► and powerful enough that it can affect this sort of change.

01:30:42 ◼   ► The new Motorola Droid Z, I think is the name of it.

01:30:47 ◼   ► They dropped the headphone jack, I guess,

01:30:50 ◼   ► in anticipation that Apple would do it.

01:30:52 ◼   ► If Moto was the only company doing this, no one would care

01:30:54 ◼   ► because they don't sell many phones relative to Apple,

01:30:57 ◼   ► and it's fine.

01:30:59 ◼   ► Apple doing it because they're such a dominant player

01:31:02 ◼   ► means the rest of the smartphone industry

01:31:04 ◼   ► will probably follow them at some point,

01:31:07 ◼   ► which will make the adjustment period kind of wrap up faster, I think.

01:31:11 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, I totally see, you know, competitors making fun of that initially.

01:31:18 ◼   ► You know, we have a headphone jack, like, as a differentiator, but as, you know,

01:31:24 ◼   ► sales of wireless headphones are already picking up, people are moving on, like I said, and

01:31:29 ◼   ► I honestly believe some things are, you know, better off left in the past,

01:31:36 ◼   ► and the headphone jack seems like one of them.

01:31:39 ◼   ► So, you know, I'm not saying that people who are

01:31:42 ◼   ► gonna have inconveniences right now are stupid,

01:31:45 ◼   ► because I totally get it. Like, if you're not a professional,

01:31:48 ◼   ► if you need the headphone jack, if you need the cable for something,

01:31:51 ◼   ► it's gonna be an inconvenience, for sure.

01:31:54 ◼   ► I just say that it can be...

01:31:58 ◼   ► at the same time, you can

01:32:00 ◼   ► say that it's going to be an inconvenience,

01:32:02 ◼   ► but also recognize that it's right to move on.

01:32:06 ◼   ► Like those things can be true at the same time.

01:32:09 ◼   ► You can say it's an inconvenience for me,

01:32:11 ◼   ► but also in the bigger picture, it's the right thing to do,

01:32:15 ◼   ► because we need to move on.

01:32:17 ◼   ► Because think about it, we love technology so much,

01:32:20 ◼   ► especially in this Apple community.

01:32:21 ◼   ► We say that we are technologists,

01:32:25 ◼   ► we are in favor of the future, but every time--

01:32:28 ◼   ► - I mean, you're an analyst.

01:32:29 ◼   ► - Also, I'm a hashtag analyst, which is the next level.

01:32:32 ◼   ► I got a promotion.

01:32:34 ◼   ► But when you think about it, we always complain about things going away.

01:32:38 ◼   ► So do we really like the future or not?

01:32:40 ◼   ► That's the thing we've got to decide.

01:32:42 ◼   ► But saying that it's an inconvenience and saying that it's old and it's taking up space

01:32:47 ◼   ► and we want more battery, we want things to be thinner, we want things to be lighter,

01:32:52 ◼   ► there's a way to do it.

01:32:54 ◼   ► And so I think we'll be fine.

01:32:57 ◼   ► I want to be, as usual, the optimistic person here.

01:33:02 ◼   ► We'll be fine.

01:33:03 ◼   ► We'll get the adapters, we'll move on,

01:33:05 ◼   ► we'll look back at this day and be like,

01:33:07 ◼   ► "Hey, remember we were freaking out about the headphone jack

01:33:09 ◼   ► "and good times."

01:33:11 ◼   ► Yeah. - Yeah.

01:33:12 ◼   ► So let's talk about the future a little bit.

01:33:14 ◼   ► $159 accessory, the AirPods will ship later this fall.

01:33:18 ◼   ► They are more or less wireless AirPods.

01:33:21 ◼   ► They have little stems on them where the batteries sit.

01:33:23 ◼   ► They're using Bluetooth, but they come equipped

01:33:26 ◼   ► with what Apple is calling the W1 processor,

01:33:28 ◼   ► which best I can tell from reading Apple's material

01:33:31 ◼   ► is sort of like a Bluetooth plus it is still Bluetooth these are backwards compatible with

01:33:36 ◼   ► other Bluetooth devices but the W1 allows the AirPods to be smart so you can take them

01:33:43 ◼   ► in and out of your ears and they stop and pause your music they can send the audio back

01:33:46 ◼   ► to your iPhone when you're done with them they manage accelerometers and stuff so if

01:33:53 ◼   ► you double tap it you can activate Siri.

01:33:56 ◼   ► seem very smart which is nice you know I've got a pair of the power beats and

01:34:01 ◼   ► they are fine but just an on/off button and you smash it to go into pairing and

01:34:06 ◼   ► it can be very confusing what sort of state they're in because it just has a

01:34:11 ◼   ► little button and a single LED and there's no real feedback what it's doing

01:34:15 ◼   ► and this seems to change some of that again bunch of sensors inside bunch of

01:34:19 ◼   ► technology they pair to your iPhone they can auto switch to your watch but they

01:34:24 ◼   ► they are passing the pairing information over iCloud.

01:34:27 ◼   ► So I guess how this would work is if I'm at my Mac,

01:34:30 ◼   ► I could be listening to music from iTunes on my Mac

01:34:32 ◼   ► with these things, and then I get a phone call,

01:34:36 ◼   ► and can I switch them quickly to my phone to take the call?

01:34:39 ◼   ► Like, some of those questions, I think,

01:34:42 ◼   ► are a little unclear at this point,

01:34:43 ◼   ► but it seems that these are really designed

01:34:45 ◼   ► to work across all of your technology,

01:34:50 ◼   ► all your Apple gear.

01:34:52 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:34:53 ◼   ► five hours of battery life on a single charge, 24 hours in the case, so the case is a charger

01:34:58 ◼   ► itself. Five hours isn't great, but I don't, you know, my guess is that you listen to them

01:35:04 ◼   ► and then you put them in the case of lunch, they quick charge like the Apple Pencil, and

01:35:08 ◼   ► then you can pick them up after lunch and work until five.

01:35:13 ◼   ► I think it makes sense when you take a look at iOS 10's control center and, you know,

01:35:20 ◼   ► look at the iPhone 7, you look at the AirPods, I think the redesign of Control Center, this

01:35:24 ◼   ► is one of the points that I make in the review, so this is officially a spoiler, it makes

01:35:30 ◼   ► total sense when you consider the ability to switch between wireless audio sources,

01:35:35 ◼   ► to be, you know, to more easily move from speaker to, you know, Bluetooth headphones

01:35:41 ◼   ► and AirPods. Even Apple shows this in the commercial for the iPhone 7, the Control Center

01:35:47 ◼   ► with the new audio switching interface built in.

01:35:50 ◼   ► And there's going to be a lot of people complaining about Control Center moving from a unified

01:35:56 ◼   ► dashboard of controls and moving to pagination effectively, but when you think about the

01:36:03 ◼   ► iPhone's new audio features, so more stuff for Apple Music and the AirPods and a move

01:36:11 ◼   ► to wireless audio, having that bigger audio page makes more sense.

01:36:16 ◼   ► And at that point, if you already have a second audio page,

01:36:20 ◼   ► why not make a third one?

01:36:21 ◼   ► And I think from that perspective, it explains also,

01:36:25 ◼   ► not just removing the headphone jack,

01:36:27 ◼   ► but also the software approach to redesign Control Center

01:36:31 ◼   ► to make it more flexible, to make it move away

01:36:35 ◼   ► from the single page design,

01:36:36 ◼   ► but also to give more function to each page.

01:36:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think that's fine.

01:36:42 ◼   ► And I think that the smarts of all this stuff

01:36:45 ◼   ► together is something that only Apple can do because they do hardware, they do

01:36:48 ◼   ► software, they do all the stuff in between. I think it's a really nice

01:36:53 ◼   ► example of how well integrated something from a single vendor can be. So you know

01:36:57 ◼   ► I don't know if it's something that I'm going to use. I don't find the EarPods

01:37:02 ◼   ► particularly comfortable and they sort of work their way out of my ears over

01:37:05 ◼   ► time. And it happens with one of these things on your end you're on a run it's

01:37:08 ◼   ► just like gone forever. But I'm willing to give them a shot when they come out. I

01:37:13 ◼   ► I mean part of that is that it's my job to talk about these things so I will order a pair when they come available

01:37:18 ◼   ► But I'm really curious to see how people react to this, you know 160 bucks is it's not cheap by any stretch of the imagination

01:37:25 ◼   ► but it is in line with some other wireless earbuds that are on the market and because Apple is using

01:37:31 ◼   ► You're you know using this w1 and some beat stuff if you don't particularly care about this form factor

01:37:37 ◼   ► Some of their other beats products will pick up some of the same intelligence

01:37:41 ◼   ► which I think is great and Apple is finally leveraging Beats and Apple

01:37:46 ◼   ► together on the hardware side to have some some options. So I think that's good.

01:37:54 ◼   ► We'll wrap this up real quick with the performance A10 Fusion chip is a quad

01:37:59 ◼   ► core chip so it's a set of two high performance cores and a set of two high

01:38:04 ◼   ► efficiency cores and basically Apple picks what processes need to be on each

01:38:09 ◼   ► core at any given time. So if the phone is you know asleep and just checking

01:38:13 ◼   ► email and getting notifications in the background it can use the the lower

01:38:17 ◼   ► power cores because it doesn't need to be fast at the time. You pick it up and

01:38:20 ◼   ► you're playing a game obviously you're gonna you're gonna have all that on the

01:38:24 ◼   ► high performance cores. And I think all this is leading to better battery life.

01:38:28 ◼   ► These phones are getting better battery life than their than their predecessors.

01:38:31 ◼   ► It's what two hours if you're on the the smaller phone in an hour if you're on

01:38:35 ◼   ► the big one, that's great.

01:38:37 ◼   ► I mean, who doesn't want better battery life?

01:38:40 ◼   ► So many people are always so afraid

01:38:41 ◼   ► Apple's gonna take it away or stay the same.

01:38:43 ◼   ► This is a really clever way of doing it, right?

01:38:46 ◼   ► Instead of, and I think the batteries are bigger,

01:38:49 ◼   ► but instead of just coming at it from a physical,

01:38:53 ◼   ► like put more battery in it,

01:38:55 ◼   ► having really smart technology to help balance

01:38:59 ◼   ► when you need it to be fast and when you don't,

01:39:02 ◼   ► that's something that is really clever and I think the ATIN Fusion chip, as goofy as

01:39:09 ◼   ► the name is, I think is a real step in the right direction on mobile devices.

01:39:13 ◼   ► Yep, totally agree.

01:39:15 ◼   ► It's pretty awesome.

01:39:17 ◼   ► Yep.

01:39:18 ◼   ► So pre-orders start if you're in the US and the launch countries at basically at midnight

01:39:24 ◼   ► tonight.

01:39:25 ◼   ► Are you in the launch country?

01:39:27 ◼   ► Oh yeah man.

01:39:28 ◼   ► Sweet.

01:39:29 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:39:30 ◼   ► Congratulations.

01:39:31 ◼   ► Yeah, thank you.

01:39:32 ◼   ► On behalf of my country, thank you Steven.

01:39:34 ◼   ► - I speak on behalf of the United States,

01:39:36 ◼   ► you speak on behalf of Italy.

01:39:37 ◼   ► We're just two state heads having a conversation.

01:39:41 ◼   ► - Sure.

01:39:43 ◼   ► - So we already talked about it,

01:39:44 ◼   ► you are leaning towards Jet Black maybe, 128 gig?

01:39:47 ◼   ► - Yeah man, I'm gonna go 128 Jet Black Plus, of course.

01:39:52 ◼   ► - Yes. - Yeah, yeah.

01:39:53 ◼   ► - I think I'm gonna go the Matte Black 128 Plus.

01:39:56 ◼   ► I am thinking about doing the Apple upgrade program,

01:40:02 ◼   ► And part of it depends if I can do that online. Apple's documents are very confusing as to

01:40:07 ◼   ► whether you have to go into the store or you can do it online.

01:40:09 ◼   ► No, I think Alex did it online. At MacSor you see we were chatting in the Slack yesterday.

01:40:16 ◼   ► I saw a screenshot. He was doing it online.

01:40:19 ◼   ► So I'm going to try to do that. I'm going to wake up at 2 o'clock tomorrow morning before

01:40:23 ◼   ► I get on a flight at 8 a.m. It's going to be a really great day for me tomorrow.

01:40:26 ◼   ► nice and pressy. So yeah so I'm excited to purchase a phone this tonight and they

01:40:33 ◼   ► ship on the 16th so it's just a week out you know that was it last year there was

01:40:37 ◼   ► a couple weeks. Two weeks. Like a longer delay. Yeah. You of course will be getting your iOS 10

01:40:43 ◼   ► review ready so I guess by the time our next episode you will have you will be

01:40:51 ◼   ► publishing or being in that process.

01:40:54 ◼   ► So next week is going to be pretty big at Max Stories.

01:40:59 ◼   ► We have not just my review, so we have a huge surprise for Monday.

01:41:06 ◼   ► Something I've also, in addition to the review, it's something else we've been working on

01:41:10 ◼   ► for quite a while, that we got another surprise organized primarily from Graham and John.

01:41:17 ◼   ► And there's my review, there's the bonus content for club members for the review.

01:41:22 ◼   ► It's a whole week of special stuff we've been working on since June, basically.

01:41:28 ◼   ► And it's, I mean, the process of finalizing the review, doing the screenshots, the images.

01:41:33 ◼   ► Once again, there's also a surprise in the review, for the review, which I still haven't

01:41:39 ◼   ► shown either to, you know, to Steven or Myke, nobody else.

01:41:43 ◼   ► me and you know Silvia and Alessandro the developer of Mac stories. It's pretty big

01:41:50 ◼   ► and yeah man I'm exhausted but also nearing the finish line. It's final push. We're gonna

01:41:57 ◼   ► do this. It's gonna be great. I'm really excited to see it. So that will be next week. We will

01:42:03 ◼   ► follow that with iPhone stuff after the 16th. Sierra comes out on the 20th for the four

01:42:09 ◼   ► of us who care about the Mac still. So a very busy month here in the the Apple

01:42:15 ◼   ► ecosystem connected world headquarters just really busy. Yeah. If you want to

01:42:21 ◼   ► find show notes for this week you can do that in your podcast app of choice or

01:42:25 ◼   ► you can go to our website relay.fm/connected/107 the links will be

01:42:31 ◼   ► there there's a sidebar on that page where you can email feedback to us we

01:42:36 ◼   ► We read all of that email.

01:42:37 ◼   ► We will resume follow-up next week.

01:42:40 ◼   ► You can also send follow-up on Twitter.

01:42:41 ◼   ► The show is @_ConnectedFM.

01:42:44 ◼   ► It's a globe in the rainbow colors, really hard to miss.

01:42:48 ◼   ► You can find us on Twitter as well, of course.

01:42:51 ◼   ► Myke is @IMYKE.

01:42:54 ◼   ► Federico is @Vittici, V-I-T-I-C-C-I.

01:42:57 ◼   ► And of course, the glorious MaxStories.net,

01:43:01 ◼   ► which if you haven't discovered, has a dark mode.

01:43:04 ◼   ► Just hit that button.

01:43:05 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, it does.

01:43:06 ◼   ► looks beautiful at night. You can find me on Twitter @ismh and I write 512 pixels

01:43:12 ◼   ► .net. Thank you so much for listening to Connected this week. Thanks for staying with us.

01:43:16 ◼   ► I know it's a long one but a super busy week and until next time,

01:43:20 ◼   ► for Rico, say goodbye. Adios!

01:43:23 ◼   ► [