91: Developer Festival
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From Reel AFM, this is Connected, episode 91. Today's show is brought to you by Text Expander
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from Smile. My name is Myke Hurley and I'm joined by Mr. Federico Vittucci. Ciao Federico!
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And howdy Mr. Stephen Hackett.
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Wow, I don't even know how to respond to that.
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You say howdy back.
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There you go, perfect. Howdy y'all.
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It doesn't sound convinced for some reason.
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Yeah, it's not really my thing, but let's just do the show.
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So we moved the show by a few days so we could cover the Google I/O keynote and all of the
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announcements that came out of there.
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But what this did was not really give us enough time to remind you that our t-shirts are on
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So if you are listening on the 19th of May 2016, you have but merely a few hours left
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to buy t-shirts. They will go off sale today on the 19th of May. There is a link in our
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show notes if you want to buy a t-shirt. Thank you to everybody that did and I hope that
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you're able to get them. I'm sorry if you can't. You should follow us all on Twitter
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because we've been tweeting about it. If you missed out then you need to pay more attention
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to our Twitter timelines.
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Myke is a good person to follow on Twitter. He has a lot of good tweets.
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I have a lot of insight and most of it's spelt incorrectly so you've got that kind of play
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You have a lot of good tweets and good typos.
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So it's part informational, part kind of comical.
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It's basically how I present myself all the time, part information, part entertainment.
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That's what I'm all about.
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It even follows through to my Twitter timeline.
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Just a very quick piece of follow up, there's also a piece of follow out.
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episode 27 of Under the Radar on Relay FM, you get to hear David Smith and Marco Arment
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have a great conversation about the benefits of fast app review based on what we were talking
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about last week. It definitely seems like the fast app review was not a blip, this seems
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like a new trend. I'm seeing more and more people tweeting about it, I'm having more
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people tell me about how quickly their apps are going through review. And this was a good
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kind of look at what fast app review could do, good and bad, for developers. Spoiler
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alert, it's more good. Go listen to episode 27 of Under the Radar.
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We were given the full set of data by app review times and Graham put together a series
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of charts for Mac service and you can clearly see that there's a huge drop lately in app
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review times and it's really amazing to look at that and especially to hear from developers
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saying this is such a huge change, you know, I submit an app at like 10am in the morning,
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at 1pm is in review, and at 3pm is approved. Like, that's a major change.
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Like, it's fundamental, right? Like, it's not just like "oh, this is quicker". This
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fundamentally changes the way that people can develop applications.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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It is a massive step change that if this is the way it works now, is going to make some
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big and sweeping changes across iOS development, which is excellent.
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And I hope that it remains.
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So we'll see.
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Initially, I had the concern that maybe Apple was just approving everything and then asking
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questions later, like, let's approve everything and then if something is wrong, we can reject
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apps at a later stage. But it doesn't seem that way because I've seen developers say
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"I submitted an app but App Review got back to me with actual feedback and questions about
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a feature or maybe, you know, notes about a bug or a crash" and they were able to do
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so with an actual human being because they were looking at the actual app. So it's not
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like App Review is fast now. And I've seen a few people make this joke. App Review is
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so fast because there's really no one looking at submissions anymore, Apple just approves
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everything. Doesn't seem to be the case because they're getting back to developers
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quickly with questions and notes about crashes and bugs, which I assume can only come from
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actual reviewers looking at the apps. So that's great news. Definitely seems to be more people.
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I feel like what they're doing is something along the lines of more intelligent computer
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data-driven acceptance, right? Along with an increase in people.
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It feels like there has to be both of those things and I don't know how you
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could do it without both of them. It just feels like that's the only way
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that they could do this. I wonder if this becomes part of WWDC
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announcements. I feel like it kind of has to, but we'll see.
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Yeah, kind of ramping up for WWDC and say, by the way, we've been testing this for
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Imagine if you should have said you have been testing this for a month and I really like
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That would be really nice.
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But yes, I agree.
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It seems to be the case.
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All right, so we're going to talk about Google I/O today.
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The Google I/O keynote was yesterday as we recorded this.
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It was Wednesday the 18th.
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Google had a bunch of stuff and we're going to talk through some of the things that we
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find the most interesting.
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So one of the first points I think of note is the venue for Google IO this year.
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So a lot of Google IO is happening kind of in and around Google's campus and the kind
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of surrounding property.
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And the IO keynote was at the Shoreline Amphitheatre, which is an outdoor music festival located
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basically immediately behind Google's campus.
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So they put IO on there and they had like 7,000 people I think in the audience and it
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looked like a rock concert which was really weird but I bet it felt really cool.
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Like I bet it had a really interesting and exciting feeling to it.
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I mean I bet it's gonna fit, WWDC is gonna feel like that too because they're doing it
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at a music venue, right?
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You know like the watch event, the watch event was at Bill Graham right?
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And it looked strange, right?
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They had those boxes along the side walls and stuff.
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It looked like a music venue.
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But being outside is a whole different thing.
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The problem that Google probably couldn't have foreseen is that there currently is a
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heatwave in that part of San Francisco.
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And I think temperatures were around 90 degrees.
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And not everybody was in the shade.
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What's that in actual degrees?
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I think it's like high 30s or something.
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90 Fahrenheit to Celsius. Hey Siri, what's 90 degrees Fahrenheit in Celsius?
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I don't understand what you mean. 32 degrees, okay, thank you Siri. That's hot.
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Yeah, quite a bit, yes. And I saw they gave out sunscreen to attendees at the
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Google I/O. They also had a little pack that came with like a scarf you could put on
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your head. I mean what are you gonna do, right? Like you wanted to do it in a different venue
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and it's hot and sunny. Like, you know, I kind of feel like you can't really criticize
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them so much. It's like, what are you gonna do? Like, it's a heatwave. Like, you can't
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stop that. Well, it's California so at least you don't have to worry about it raining.
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But it is interesting. It's, you know, Apple's run into it too where like there's just not
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venues indoors large enough for the people that they need to have in attendance.
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I mean, what else can you do except go to some big outdoor stadium like this?
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So, this is an interesting view.
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Yasmin Evian, who is one of the hosts of Material on Relay FM, she tweeted,
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"Outdoors is a fun twist for tech conferences, but standing in the sun
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for an hour to get into a session is bad."
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Like, and she was tweeting it later on that like, she missed a session because it was
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full, then had to wait outside in the sun for like another 90 minutes or something to
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get into the next session.
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That's not great, right?
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Like, it's like, that's uncomfortable.
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And I don't really know what you do, but it's like, that's kind of the situation.
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But mentioning Yasmine, Material recorded at Google.
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That's amazing.
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Their episode I think will maybe be coming out sometime today.
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I'll put a link in the show notes to the material podcast, go and subscribe.
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Like they're gonna have a better take on this than us for sure.
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But like yeah, I just... can you imagine us recording at Apple?
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Never gonna happen.
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Yes, I could imagine that.
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But it's never gonna happen.
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But they recorded at Google.
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So well, I mean, we could we could sit on the curb and record with a portable microphone
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just outside of infinite loop.
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I'm sure I've read something recently that like if you stand outside on the sign for
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too long there's like a security guard will come and shuffle you away.
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Could we sit in the car and drive around the loop and record...
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Like a power slide.
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...power sliding around the campus?
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I think we should give it a go.
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I have one of those like, I have one of those little microphones you can plug into a lightning
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were recording from Apple, but just, you know, were circling the campus.
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I feel like they maybe got a better deal than we did.
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Yeah, I think so.
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It, um, yeah, the one thing I saw some people on Twitter had it, there's like, there's these
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big exhibits, because it's all outdoors, right?
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You can just do whatever you want.
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There's like a robot that's painting a giant rotating cube, like flinging paint at it,
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which is the most Google thing ever.
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Also, I kind of want one to put in my yard, but I think they have to drive the self-driving
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cars buzzing around too.
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Yeah, just mowing people over.
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It's new and I think it's exciting.
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My guess is that Google will probably continue to do this, but I think I would expect some
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tweaks to it as they sort of work out the kinks.
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Because what you've done in this scenario is you've created a festival, which is a great
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kind of idea, like they've turned Google I/O into a developer festival rather than
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a conference, and I hope that they continue to go down that route, because that sounds
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like you're going there to learn stuff, you're going there to find out information, but why
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not make it fun as well, right, rather than everybody just being inside of a conference
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center all day.
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Yeah, initially I thought the idea of a keynote outside was also in conjunction with something
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related to augmented reality or something in the sky, I don't know, like drones or
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Project Loon flying by. I thought about that but it didn't seem to be the case.
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It seemed purely just they wanted a bigger venue and it was the one that made the most
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sense to them because it's right outside.
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Yeah, exactly.
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I mean, this is the company that had people skydive onto the Roscosky and you're wearing
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Google Glass, so I can see where you got that Federico.
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That was awesome man. I know a lot of people didn't like that but like as far as product
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demos go, it's a pretty good product demo.
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Yeah. The closest one in the Apple world is when they introduced like airport wireless
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And they jumped off the platform.
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So they had Phil Schiller like on a scaffold and he had iBook and they had an accelerometer
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attached to it and they were sending data from it across the wireless network and he
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he jumped like 15 feet onto this big mattress.
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And it's a really funny, we'll dig that up and find it,
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put it in the show notes, but it's a really funny
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little moment of weird stuff.
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But I think that stuff is important to get people excited.
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Going to WWDC feels like a conference, and that's fine.
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And clearly people are excited, they're like
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fist pump guys ready to go.
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But I agree with you, Myke.
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I like the idea that the atmosphere could be different
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that like taking something like I/O or WWDC and giving people like more freedom to
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mill about and interact with people and be in a different environment can lead
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to some really interesting things just between developers communicating so I
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think they'll my guess is they'll continue to do this but um I don't see
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Apple doing it anytime soon but I think it would be fun for Apple to change
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things up sometimes too.
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Yeah, I mean certainly Skyyaving is better than the Anki toy cars that we got at WWDC
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a few years back.
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Oh god, why did you bring that up?
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I know that we talk about the music presentation as like a bad presentation, but the Anki cars
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was worse in its own way, because it meant nothing, there was no reason for it, and it
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was at the start of what was a fantastic WWDC presentation.
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Very peculiar.
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Very, very peculiar.
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Just watching and going like, "Why are you showing this?
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And why is it not working even?"
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It was kind of weird.
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Yeah, it was horrific.
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All right, so let's talk about what was happening here.
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So one of the big kind of prevailing things that went throughout Google's keynote was
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something that they're calling the Google Assistant, which seems to be like the big
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brother of Google Now.
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And it seems like what Google have done is they're taking everything that they've learned
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from machine learning and from all of the speech stuff that they do and all the queries
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that they have to run and they're turning it into an assistant, something that you can
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have an ongoing two-way dialogue with. And they're building some of this stuff in now
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and they were showing a lot of stuff where that what they wanted the future of it to
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look like, you know, and like Sundar Pichai, who I love, like just guy is so cool. Anyway,
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He was basically showing that you could have a conversation around booking some theatre
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tickets like movie tickets with it. So you'd say like what's on tonight and it will show
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you some stuff and be like I want something that's family friendly and it will refine
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it. Then you say it will say oh what about Jungle Book and you'll say is that movie good
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and then it'll be like here's some reviews it seems like people like it. And Google said
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this is all stuff that they can get but they're like building it out now to the point where
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you can have this sort of conversation with it. And one of the things that they really
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focus on, and rightly so because they do it well now, is questions around context. And
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this is in Google Now in the new Android and beta anyway, you can do it, where you can
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ask a question and then ask it a follow on question. Should I give it a go?
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Alright, so give me a person like, hang on, let me try this. Okay, Google, who is the
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Prime Minister of the United... oh, it stopped, hang on, I am running a beta here.
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- This is-- - Okay, Google.
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Who is the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom?
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- David Cameron is the Prime Minister of United Kingdom.
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- Okay, Google.
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How old is he?
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- He's 49 years old.
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- That's what they can do.
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- Yeah, okay.
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- Right now, I know the demo's a bit wonky, but whatever.
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The context and the follow on questions
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is something Google can understand,
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because what it was doing was looking at the page.
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So remember that Google Now on tap thing?
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Where basically it will look at what's on the page
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and make suggestions to you?
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That's what I believe it's doing there,
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is I have the David Cameron Google page open at that point,
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and it's seeing who's on the page
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and understanding the questions.
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Siri can't do this stuff.
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Follow on questions just seem to throw it through a loop.
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Like if you set a timer and ask it to stop the timer,
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like I can set a timer! I was like no you what are you doing? like do you want me to
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kill you? this is the sort of stuff that Google's able to do and this is the sort
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of stuff that they're starting to build and it seems like eventually this Google
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Assistant will be with you everywhere and then the rest of the a lot a lot of
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the following on chunks of the keynote have Google Assistant as a core part of
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what is going on. It seems to me that the Google Assistant is a combination of
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Google Now, Voice Search, Google Now On Tap, you know, it's a bunch of things
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taken together using the same technology, but obviously Google is sort of jumping
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onto the chatbot trend. It's like the ultimate chatbot, right? Yes, it's like a
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conversational experience, you can text the Google Assistant in the new, what do
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you say, "Hello", "Hello", "Hello" app, you can text the assistant and it seems like
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they're sort of going after the trend, but when they say we believe we have the best
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technology and we're ahead of any competitor, I tend to believe that. And it's interesting
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to me, however, that not even in this case with the Google Assistant, we're not seeing
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the ability yet to combine multiple commands together. For example, I've always wanted
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to be able to say "turn off my lights" and "turn on the coffee maker". You know, it's
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two different commands. And it seems that any assistant is still not capable of doing
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that, because right now they're focusing on context, which makes sense, you know, before
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getting onto multiple commands, you want to nail down the context portion, which I think
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it's, you know, it makes sense. Still, the demo from Google from the assistant is impressive,
00:17:47
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►
especially when you consider that they're already working on a developer platform. Interestingly,
00:17:53
◼
►
going to be a bunch of partners already working with the Google Assistant and with the Google
00:17:59
◼
►
Home, which we're going to talk about shortly. What do you guys think of Google getting into
00:18:05
◼
►
this space? I thought it was interesting to kind of see that approach with the Assistant
00:18:14
◼
►
and with the Google Home saying, "We want to thank the team of Amazon and we're working
00:18:19
◼
►
on these features." It's so different.
00:18:23
◼
►
I mean I think it's the the natural evolution of Google's technology.
00:18:28
◼
►
Say Google now is really great and can do a bunch of good stuff but it is locked away
00:18:35
◼
►
on iOS behind an app or on Android in a couple different places but you have to go to it
00:18:41
◼
►
right if you're on a desktop you have to go to the browser to go do it.
00:18:45
◼
►
So Google is locked away sort of in its own area and what this is doing is putting it
00:18:51
◼
►
you are more directly so if you have it sitting on your kitchen counter you just
00:18:54
◼
►
yell at it or if you have it in your chat app you can just talk to it
00:18:59
◼
►
directly and they are trying to integrate it more kind of out yeah in
00:19:04
◼
►
the real world and I think that's the like the Amazon echo is showing that
00:19:09
◼
►
that's the next step for a lot of the stuff is that you know I can set a timer
00:19:13
◼
►
on my phone or my watch but I have to interact with them both to do that right
00:19:22
◼
►
I have to touch them because I have a hoy telephone turned off because it only
00:19:26
◼
►
trips when I listen to podcasts but with something on the counter I can just yell it in
00:19:30
◼
►
it's always listening and it does a better job anyways so I think I think
00:19:34
◼
►
Google's moving into that space and I think it's completely reasonable and I
00:19:38
◼
►
think it's where all this stuff maybe not Apple we can get to that but I think
00:19:41
◼
►
that's where these other companies are definitely headed to in a hurry.
00:19:45
◼
►
I think at this point Siri is starting to feel really, you know, backwards, really antiquated
00:19:52
◼
►
if you will. I mean the fact that Google and others can handle context better, they, you
00:20:00
◼
►
know, they have assistance or they will have assistance that you can text. You can have
00:20:05
◼
►
conversations without having to, you know, talk out loud in public. And the fact that
00:20:10
◼
►
there's an integration with services, you know, from any developer can plug into these technologies.
00:20:15
◼
►
I think Siri is starting to feel a lot like a limited version of this idea that Apple had a
00:20:22
◼
►
few years ago and hasn't really improved meaningfully. I mean, Siri, you can make the argument
00:20:26
◼
►
that Siri supports more languages and it can handle native tasks better, I don't know,
00:20:34
◼
►
but it seems to me like Apple's idea of privacy and we don't want to use machine learning too much
00:20:43
◼
►
to understand what our users do, it seems like we're starting to see the practical
00:20:48
◼
►
counter-effects of that policy, which is Google, Amazon, to an extent Microsoft, Facebook,
00:20:56
◼
►
they're going beyond what Siri can do, and I'm not sure if Apple can catch up, not necessarily because
00:21:03
◼
►
of engineers and technology, but because of their own ideals, and I think that's a big
00:21:09
◼
►
Yeah, I mean, I think that quite a few things that are going to come across in this conversation
00:21:17
◼
►
today is, for me, that Google is kind of winning a lot of this stuff, and as an Apple user,
00:21:26
◼
►
I am concerned that I don't think Apple can do some of this stuff, and are we going to
00:21:32
◼
►
start missing out. So one of the biggest parts of this is Google Home. So this is
00:21:37
◼
►
basically Google's Echo competitor. It will be available later this year. I would
00:21:42
◼
►
expect internationally, and it seems like they may be announcing it now to try and
00:21:47
◼
►
get ahead of any potential competition. They want to show that they're in the
00:21:50
◼
►
game here, right? Everything's controlled by voice. It looks to me
00:21:55
◼
►
way nicer than the Echo. It's much smaller and you can customize it.
00:22:00
◼
►
you can different finishes and different colors and stuff like that so I think it
00:22:05
◼
►
looks more akin to something you would have in your house than the echo does
00:22:09
◼
►
which looks like this kind of terrifying tube of death. Speaker. Yes. It looks I don't know the
00:22:14
◼
►
the echo looks super intimidating to me. It looks like the the the Jeff Bezos
00:22:19
◼
►
version of the eye of Sauron from the Lord of the Rings. I can see that.
00:22:25
◼
►
The Google home will do a lot of the stuff that you're used to with these
00:22:29
◼
►
types of things like the Echo, like it will play music, it will connect with home automation
00:22:35
◼
►
products including Nest products of course. There will be an API, they flat out said that
00:22:41
◼
►
they're going to have an API. It will do something I really like, you can hook it up to Google
00:22:45
◼
►
Chromecast so you can like plug Chromecast and Chromecast audios into devices in your
00:22:51
◼
►
home and you can say things like play music in the front room and it will do that. And
00:22:57
◼
►
think that's super smart. That's something too that Amazon seems prime to be able
00:23:01
◼
►
to do if you have the Echo and the Fire TV stick and as far as I know they don't
00:23:06
◼
►
talk to each other but I can see Amazon being just at the cusp of doing this
00:23:11
◼
►
sort of stuff as well where you have a smart speaker always listening and it
00:23:15
◼
►
can control media on other devices.
00:23:18
◼
►
Sonos does a little bit of that right with all their connected stuff
00:23:22
◼
►
but it seems like Amazon could do this as well.
00:23:25
◼
►
They had a demo video that they showed which was amazing.
00:23:29
◼
►
Like it was just so good.
00:23:31
◼
►
One of my favorite things is like a lady's getting dressed,
00:23:35
◼
►
she's getting ready for the day and she just says like,
00:23:38
◼
►
"Okay Google, I'm listening."
00:23:39
◼
►
Oops, there we go.
00:23:42
◼
►
And it based then that the home just told her everything
00:23:47
◼
►
that was happening in the day and things that might be an issue.
00:23:50
◼
►
So she's like, "Oh, you've got a meeting at this point,
00:23:53
◼
►
"but there's traffic on the road, do you wanna do anything?"
00:23:55
◼
►
She's like, "I'll text Mary and tell her that I'll be late."
00:23:57
◼
►
Like it was a really good kind of way of doing it.
00:24:01
◼
►
And then obviously they had the cute stuff
00:24:02
◼
►
with the kid asking questions,
00:24:04
◼
►
but they had like the dads getting,
00:24:06
◼
►
trying to wake everybody up and he's like,
00:24:07
◼
►
"Play music in every room of the house
00:24:10
◼
►
"as a way to like wake everyone up."
00:24:12
◼
►
The demo video was really great.
00:24:16
◼
►
And I think that this product is gonna be cool.
00:24:18
◼
►
And I'm going to wait to see what happens, but I probably will get this over an echo
00:24:23
◼
►
just because I think that Google has more ability to do this better.
00:24:30
◼
►
I think it has a stronger underpinning and a longer history of dealing with voice commands.
00:24:37
◼
►
And I think that there's going to be, depending on what their API looks like, stronger and
00:24:41
◼
►
deeper integrations with companies and services.
00:24:45
◼
►
But part of the problem of all of this is,
00:24:48
◼
►
it really works better when you're all in on a platform.
00:24:50
◼
►
Like having an Android phone will obviously
00:24:52
◼
►
make this whole thing better.
00:24:54
◼
►
And this is where I start to think that we're gonna
00:24:56
◼
►
get left in the dust a little bit as Apple users,
00:24:58
◼
►
because I just can't see Siri Home product.
00:25:02
◼
►
I just don't see it happening.
00:25:04
◼
►
It just doesn't feel like that's something
00:25:05
◼
►
that we're gonna see even the next six months or so.
00:25:07
◼
►
Like I just don't see it.
00:25:09
◼
►
- You know, I don't know about what you say
00:25:12
◼
►
if as iPhone users we're gonna miss out.
00:25:14
◼
►
Because, I mean, the primary interface of this is going to be voice.
00:25:19
◼
►
And Chromecast, you can buy one and you can configure one from an iOS device.
00:25:24
◼
►
The integration with third-party services doesn't matter if you use an iPhone or an
00:25:27
◼
►
Android phone, you can plug in Spotify, you know, other apps.
00:25:30
◼
►
No, no, it's a good point.
00:25:31
◼
►
But I just feel like, so there are things like where he asks for something and he's
00:25:36
◼
►
like, "Can you send that to my phone?"
00:25:37
◼
►
And you just know that's not going to be as nice.
00:25:39
◼
►
It's going to be locked inside of a Google app.
00:25:42
◼
►
Yeah, there's going to be some limitations, but I feel like it's going to be, you know,
00:25:46
◼
►
like 80% of the experience that you would otherwise get on an Android phone. But what
00:25:51
◼
►
matters is that you're putting Google into your home and you're, you know, even from
00:25:56
◼
►
an iPhone you're plugged into a Google ecosystem. You're not plugged into an iCloud or Siri
00:26:00
◼
►
ecosystem, you know, and that is starting to be a big problem for Apple to have, you
00:26:04
◼
►
know, clearly there has to be improvements to Siri and to open up Siri. If Apple believes
00:26:10
◼
►
that voice, especially inside the home, because we've seen it doesn't really work in public,
00:26:17
◼
►
especially inside the home. It's just more natural, more conversational. But that only
00:26:20
◼
►
gets better if you can collect more data and if you can open up an ecosystem for developers
00:26:25
◼
►
to build upon. And I feel like when you consider the Amazon Echo and Google, Google is maybe
00:26:31
◼
►
the best representation of the principle that there's no data, like more data. And Google
00:26:37
◼
►
Google has lots of them. And I also agree with you when you say that maybe Google is
00:26:42
◼
►
better positioned to tackle this in the future, you know, because they've been doing this
00:26:47
◼
►
for a long time. And I mean, Google has built their own TPUs, the Tensor Processing Units.
00:26:53
◼
►
It's basically like TensorFlow is the Google system for machine learning and such, and
00:26:58
◼
►
AI. And they have built their own, instead of a CPU or a GPU, a TPU, which they've been
00:27:04
◼
►
using it in a data center for over a year, which is crazy. Google is going all in on
00:27:10
◼
►
AI, machine learning, to power these consumer products, such as the assistant on a phone,
00:27:16
◼
►
and the Google Home speaker thing. So I feel like there's a lot of potential here, and
00:27:23
◼
►
for different aspects of normal life, because in the end it boils down to what can you do
00:27:31
◼
►
with this thing in normal life. So I see a bunch of openings, such as, you know, there's
00:27:37
◼
►
potential for a Sonos-like setup when you consider the Chromecast and playing audio
00:27:43
◼
►
in different parts of the house. That could be possible, you know, you just need to buy
00:27:47
◼
►
a Chromecast audio and plug it into any kind of speaker, any kind of soundbar.
00:27:50
◼
►
Which are like $30, they're not expensive.
00:27:53
◼
►
Exactly. There's integration with developers. If you look at the Google Home partnership
00:27:58
◼
►
slides. You can see Spotify, you know, not just Google Music, which kind of sucks, but
00:28:05
◼
►
you can also do Spotify. WhatsApp, that's interesting, I've seen WhatsApp, so Facebook
00:28:10
◼
►
is apparently working with Google to bring WhatsApp messaging to Google Home, which is
00:28:16
◼
►
intriguing to me. And I feel like there's a... what the Amazon Echo started, maybe Google
00:28:24
◼
►
can perfect, you know, and can grow into a bigger platform, and I'm really... I would
00:28:30
◼
►
love to be a fly on the wall inside of Apple's office in Cupertino and see what they think
00:28:36
◼
►
of the idea of a Siri device inside the house. Because obviously people don't like using
00:28:41
◼
►
Siri in public, because it's just dumb. You cannot... I've seen people talking to Siri
00:28:46
◼
►
in public and it's just awkward, and you cannot text Siri, so that's a big problem, and the
00:28:52
◼
►
The best place to use Siri is when you're walking around the house or when you're driving.
00:28:57
◼
►
But when you're inside the house, what are the chances you're constantly walking with
00:29:02
◼
►
the phone in your hands?
00:29:03
◼
►
I mean, I do use my phone inside my house, but you know, I'm also doing house stuff,
00:29:08
◼
►
and it would really be more convenient to be able to, you know, I'm not saying to yell
00:29:13
◼
►
at Siri, but to kind of talk normally, to talk normally and anyone can talk and anyone
00:29:18
◼
►
can ask questions.
00:29:20
◼
►
I think the Amazon Echo and maybe in the future the Google Home, those are the kind of devices
00:29:24
◼
►
that you don't really get until you try them, but once you do, and I'm primarily talking
00:29:29
◼
►
out of experience with the Amazon Echo, once you do, they really click and they make sense.
00:29:33
◼
►
At least that's what happened to me.
00:29:35
◼
►
Well, I think Apple's answer to that is the Apple Watch.
00:29:38
◼
►
Why would you have something locked on your way in your kitchen when you're in the bedroom,
00:29:42
◼
►
you have your watch on, just hit the button and talk to your watch, right?
00:29:46
◼
►
I think they're trying to do the same type of things and you look at like the basic stuff
00:29:52
◼
►
of you can do iMessage you can do homekit stuff if your your home stuff supports that
00:29:57
◼
►
like they're trying to do the same thing but instead of it being a cylinder on the counter
00:30:01
◼
►
it's something that strapped to your wrist all the time no matter where you are you may
00:30:04
◼
►
in the backyard and do it.
00:30:06
◼
►
I don't know which one is right I know between my Apple Watch and my Echo that I use the
00:30:11
◼
►
Echo way more or especially for voice stuff.
00:30:16
◼
►
So maybe the cylinder speaker design works better for me at least, but I think Apple's
00:30:23
◼
►
already kind of putting Siri everywhere we are, just in a different way.
00:30:28
◼
►
Yeah, I don't know.
00:30:30
◼
►
I know I'm excited about this product though.
00:30:34
◼
►
Like I don't feel like, I just don't feel like the Apple Watch is going to be the product
00:30:39
◼
►
that can do something that this can, and it's based on microphone technology, you know?
00:30:45
◼
►
things, these home listening devices are full of microphones, where the watch I don't think
00:30:51
◼
►
is as good because it doesn't do a great job of picking up what I'm asking it to do. But
00:30:55
◼
►
I understand and agree with what you're saying Steven that I think that is the ideal of what
00:31:01
◼
►
Apple's looking for. But I don't think that they've achieved it.
00:31:05
◼
►
You know, by saying that I'm excited about Google and what Amazon are doing, I'm not
00:31:11
◼
►
saying that Apple is doomed when it comes to Siri and the Assistant stuff, I'm just
00:31:16
◼
►
saying that Apple has to make some necessary steps to improve what they have. So there
00:31:21
◼
►
are some obvious limitations, I would say three of them. You cannot text Siri, you cannot
00:31:26
◼
►
have a real conversation with real follow-up questions, and there's no developer platform.
00:31:31
◼
►
These are the three key pillars upon which I think Apple should improve Siri. And if
00:31:36
◼
►
they do, and if they can come up with a system to collect data without being creepy, without
00:31:41
◼
►
actually knowing all the things they don't want to know, so taking a different approach
00:31:45
◼
►
than Google, I don't know how, but there must be some technical compromise they can
00:31:49
◼
►
make, I think they have a chance. Because especially on iOS, there can be a different
00:31:56
◼
►
approach. iOS has a richer app ecosystem, and Siri on iOS could have a richer app integration
00:32:04
◼
►
then Amazon can only talk to web services and Google doesn't have the same rich native
00:32:11
◼
►
app ecosystem as iOS. So Apple can take a different approach, but there's some fundamentals
00:32:15
◼
►
that they need to improve. And I think those three key features are what I'd like to see
00:32:20
◼
►
for Syria WWDC. But I don't know.
00:32:23
◼
►
And I think you touched on it a second ago, but the philosophical difference between the
00:32:28
◼
►
two companies has never been clearer to me when looking at this sort of stuff. And I
00:32:33
◼
►
I mean all three of us use Google services,
00:32:35
◼
►
our business runs on the back of Google apps.
00:32:38
◼
►
I've got no problem with Google's supposed privacy.
00:32:43
◼
►
My whole photo library is in Google Photos.
00:32:46
◼
►
I'm a Google user.
00:32:47
◼
►
But there is this thread, at least in parts
00:32:51
◼
►
of the nerd community, that Google is creepy,
00:32:54
◼
►
or Google is spying on you.
00:32:55
◼
►
And I just think that's a lot of baloney.
00:32:57
◼
►
But there is a difference between the two companies.
00:33:00
◼
►
Apple one reason Siri is limited in what it can do is that Apple hasn't opened it
00:33:04
◼
►
up and even when you're on your device
00:33:07
◼
►
Siri doesn't have all like the access that something that that like something
00:33:13
◼
►
like the Google Assistant would have because you know they're not looking in
00:33:17
◼
►
your iCloud account for a bunch of stuff you know if like if you signed into
00:33:21
◼
►
Google on the web and you have an Amazon receipt in your inbox and you search for
00:33:27
◼
►
for like, oh, I bought this camera or whatever.
00:33:30
◼
►
It shows a little link to that message
00:33:32
◼
►
in the Google results.
00:33:33
◼
►
Google can do all that stuff because they're not afraid
00:33:35
◼
►
to break those walls down, and Apple is.
00:33:38
◼
►
And I'm not saying which one is right
00:33:40
◼
►
or which one I prefer, I'm gonna sidestep all that,
00:33:43
◼
►
but there is a clear difference.
00:33:44
◼
►
And for something like an assistant that knows
00:33:48
◼
►
everything about your digital life,
00:33:49
◼
►
who can do everything a real assistant can do,
00:33:52
◼
►
they can handle messaging, they can handle invitations
00:33:56
◼
►
your calendar and sending notices people all that stuff that requires a level of
00:34:00
◼
►
access that Apple doesn't grant itself to its user data and so how could Siri
00:34:06
◼
►
ever catch up how could how could a Siri home assistant or Siri being better in
00:34:11
◼
►
iOS it just can't do that stuff because of those those boundaries and that is
00:34:16
◼
►
something that if that's the decision that Apple stands by and there's no reason to
00:34:20
◼
►
believe they're going to change their mind on that then we as iOS users and as
00:34:25
◼
►
people in the Apple ecosystem just need to understand that there's some things
00:34:30
◼
►
out there that we can't use you know like like I I used Gmail for my personal
00:34:34
◼
►
email address but all my contacts and calendars are in iCloud because I share a
00:34:37
◼
►
lot of stuff with my family members and that just means that I can't tell the
00:34:42
◼
►
echo to ask them into my Google Calendar because my calendar is in iCloud and
00:34:46
◼
►
you have to know where those boundaries are and if you're living in a mixed
00:34:50
◼
►
platform environment knowing that you're going to hit broken things because of
00:34:54
◼
►
decisions made from a political and philosophical level.
00:34:58
◼
►
You know, ultimately it comes down to trading convenience and utility for an idea, and you
00:35:06
◼
►
gotta choose.
00:35:09
◼
►
There's Google people, let's call it Google people, they believe in convenience and utility,
00:35:14
◼
►
and I can see why.
00:35:15
◼
►
Because when I open the Google app, and on the front page there's a little box that tells
00:35:20
◼
►
me "You know, your Amazon Echo is shipped and your Nintendo game is on the way", because
00:35:26
◼
►
they look into my email inbox, and because they parse that, and they show me a photo,
00:35:30
◼
►
and they show me a tracking link, and they save me time, I can say "Okay, that's convenient,
00:35:35
◼
►
that's useful". But there's Apple people that say "You know, we don't want to look at your
00:35:40
◼
►
stuff, we don't want to do any smart processing, we don't want your data". And so it's two
00:35:46
◼
►
different camps and personally when I see what can be done with Google and when I see
00:35:53
◼
►
what cannot be done with Siri, I'm kinda, you know, I say, you know, I miss this stuff
00:36:00
◼
►
and I use the Google app on iOS, but it's still a limited experience. Now, you know,
00:36:07
◼
►
iOS has a stronger, I believe, has a stronger app ecosystem. The kind of innovation that
00:36:14
◼
►
that you see on the App Store, for the iPhone, for the iPad, and even to an extent for the
00:36:17
◼
►
Apple Watch, I'm gonna say.
00:36:20
◼
►
I don't think you can get that on Android.
00:36:22
◼
►
And I think Apple has a real opportunity to integrate Siri with apps.
00:36:27
◼
►
Maybe there can be some local processing they can do, and I believe they do that for proactive
00:36:32
◼
►
recommendations, which are not great, but maybe there's a way to build upon that.
00:36:36
◼
►
And I think Apple has a real chance to leverage all these amazing apps on iOS and to improve
00:36:44
◼
►
Siri in ways that are not creepy, to work with developers and to say "we can make
00:36:49
◼
►
our own assistant, we can make it different and it can still be useful", you know?
00:36:53
◼
►
And if you want, you can still use the Google apps on iOS and you can still get 70%, 80%
00:36:58
◼
►
of the advantages of the benefits of Android.
00:37:02
◼
►
And you can get it on iOS because Google can make iOS apps.
00:37:07
◼
►
So I don't know what's it gonna be, you know?
00:37:10
◼
►
I would like to see those basic improvements to Siri.
00:37:14
◼
►
And I feel like at this point we're seeing the direction the industry is going for the next few years.
00:37:21
◼
►
So AI, machine learning, having text conversations with bots, having assistance inside the house,
00:37:31
◼
►
virtual reality, but that's another topic.
00:37:33
◼
►
I feel like these are going to be the next, as Steve Jobs said, the next horses you want
00:37:42
◼
►
The technologies that are on the rise.
00:37:45
◼
►
So it'll be interesting to see what Apple does.
00:37:47
◼
►
But today, even if you look at something like Gboard, the Google keyboard, the auto corrections
00:37:53
◼
►
are way better than the Apple keyboard.
00:37:56
◼
►
And that's because they use machine learning.
00:37:58
◼
►
But the compromise, it's a custom keyboard.
00:38:00
◼
►
It doesn't really work well on iOS.
00:38:02
◼
►
That's where we're at today.
00:38:07
◼
►
This wasn't all that Google announced.
00:38:08
◼
►
They announced some other interesting stuff and some other weird stuff, but let's take
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a break to thank Smile for sponsoring this week's episode, and I want to talk to you
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of this show.
00:40:24
◼
►
All right, so Google also announced a new messaging app,
00:40:30
◼
►
which I don't think anybody expected, called Allo,
00:40:34
◼
►
which I love the name, right?
00:40:38
◼
►
That's how I should call it, but won't.
00:40:40
◼
►
So this is something else that they announced,
00:40:42
◼
►
which was surprising, I think.
00:40:44
◼
►
I don't think that anybody was really expecting
00:40:48
◼
►
that this was something that we were gonna see from them,
00:40:50
◼
►
another messaging app,
00:40:51
◼
►
especially when this isn't replacing anything.
00:40:54
◼
►
- Actually, in the Mac stories Slack, the day before,
00:40:58
◼
►
our credit to Jake, he said,
00:41:02
◼
►
I believe Google is going to do some messaging
00:41:04
◼
►
and music stuff, and sure enough, we saw the speaker
00:41:08
◼
►
and we saw the messaging app, so, you know.
00:41:12
◼
►
Some people saw it coming, but it's probably just Jake.
00:41:15
◼
►
So congratulations, Jake.
00:41:17
◼
►
- I think the idea of them creating a messaging service
00:41:20
◼
►
that doesn't replace and just is in conjunction with a messaging service that they already
00:41:24
◼
►
had is a very peculiar thing.
00:41:28
◼
►
Like six of them at this point. How many does Google have?
00:41:32
◼
►
I think they'll have two now once this comes out. So the way that Google is presenting
00:41:39
◼
►
this is a smart messaging service that has all of the richness of Google with inside
00:41:44
◼
►
your Messenger application. It has stickers, it has emojis, it has something called whisper
00:41:48
◼
►
shout where I thought this was kind of cute, most people think this is ridiculous, so you
00:41:53
◼
►
can type something into the text field and you can hold on to the send button and you
00:41:58
◼
►
can increase the text size or decrease the text size by moving your finger up and down,
00:42:03
◼
►
so it's like imagining you want to shout something or whisper something. I think this was kind
00:42:06
◼
►
of cute, I kind of liked it.
00:42:09
◼
►
I think it's a really good interaction. I saw people making fun of it, they're like
00:42:12
◼
►
"oh it's just a text size". Yes, but the way that you rethink it on a mobile device, that's
00:42:17
◼
►
what makes sense. And I think it's really well done. Instead of being like desktop controls
00:42:24
◼
►
for font sizes, which is what these people were making fun of, it's a slider and it makes
00:42:29
◼
►
it bigger or smaller. It's a really fun interaction from a design perspective.
00:42:32
◼
►
I'm glad you agree with that. Because I think so. Smart replies. So we've seen this stuff
00:42:38
◼
►
before, but they're again using their learning to create smart replies. They will learn your
00:42:43
◼
►
frequently used emoji and stickers and will present those as smart replies that you can
00:42:46
◼
►
app. They're using their machine learning on photos so it can understand what's in an
00:42:51
◼
►
image and suggest smart replies for you. So like for example, they had a picture of a
00:42:56
◼
►
dog and it would be like, "Oh, that's a really nice breed of dog." Right? It can also do
00:43:02
◼
►
stuff like read what's in the message and suggest things. So say somebody says to you
00:43:05
◼
►
like, "Do you want to go out to eat tonight?" The Google Assistant will suggest restaurants
00:43:11
◼
►
that are located near you. They know your preferences. Then you can all within the messaging
00:43:16
◼
►
application, find out information about the restaurant and then book it through something
00:43:19
◼
►
like OpenTable. So you don't ever need to leave the chat to Google something. Google
00:43:23
◼
►
is within the chat. They're going to have an API to allow companies to integrate and
00:43:28
◼
►
as Federico was mentioning earlier, you can also, at Google, to call the Google Assistant
00:43:33
◼
►
in to any chat and you can also have one-on-one chats. So you can use the Google Assistant
00:43:37
◼
►
to bring in images, videos, you can even play games with it. I love that they gave some
00:43:42
◼
►
time to incognito chats. It just seemed like a funny thing to put up on stage. Disappearing
00:43:48
◼
►
messages and expiring conversations, end-to-end encryption, and discrete notifications for
00:43:53
◼
►
any incognito chat that you have.
00:43:55
◼
►
I love the way that Americans say incognito, because it's so different to me. It's in Italian.
00:44:03
◼
►
Ah, of course you would. Silent G. Yep, that's so much nicer. But it's just funny to me.
00:44:09
◼
►
I know why you do it, we all know why it's there,
00:44:12
◼
►
but like, I don't know, it's just a funny thing
00:44:14
◼
►
to put up on stage, right?
00:44:15
◼
►
Like, those secret conversations that you like
00:44:17
◼
►
to have with people that maybe you shouldn't,
00:44:19
◼
►
we're building a feature for that, right?
00:44:21
◼
►
Like, all right, cool.
00:44:23
◼
►
My thing about all this is all of this looks really good.
00:44:27
◼
►
So when I look at something like, quite frequently,
00:44:30
◼
►
me and Federico have moved all of our conversations
00:44:33
◼
►
to Telegram, and Telegram is a really nice chat service.
00:44:35
◼
►
I use WhatsApp for people in my family.
00:44:37
◼
►
This looks like it has all of the stuff that I'm used to and some really interesting extra stuff.
00:44:41
◼
►
But why would I leave my current messaging service?
00:44:45
◼
►
And how do I get everyone in my life to meet me?
00:44:47
◼
►
Exactly. Exactly.
00:44:49
◼
►
It's the same problem with any chat service that is not Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp or iMessage.
00:44:56
◼
►
How do you convince people?
00:44:58
◼
►
Google is obviously betting on these smart features.
00:45:02
◼
►
I don't know if those are enough to explain to people and to show them the benefit.
00:45:07
◼
►
And it looks really good to me from a design perspective, from a technology perspective,
00:45:12
◼
►
but I do get the feeling that it's one of those, I call them Silicon Valley features,
00:45:19
◼
►
It's these people live the perfect lives and they text each other about restaurants and
00:45:24
◼
►
they can look up restaurants nearby and they can book reservations with OpenTable and they
00:45:29
◼
►
can book an Uber and they can go around and use all of these smart services and apps.
00:45:35
◼
►
real life is kind of messier than that outside of Silicon Valley and even in Rome. I wouldn't
00:45:40
◼
►
imagine like, I would say 70% of these features, they wouldn't be possible in Italy right now.
00:45:46
◼
►
So how do you, you know, how do you explain to people that you should switch the service?
00:45:53
◼
►
Because in theory it looks great, you know, the demo looks great, you can see all these
00:45:57
◼
►
integrations, but does it really work in the real world? I don't know. Is that enough to
00:46:02
◼
►
convince people to switch because of smart replies and suggested stickers and emoji,
00:46:07
◼
►
and because it tells you that it's a really cute dog. I mean, by the way, all dogs are
00:46:10
◼
►
cute. I think. So anyway, I think it looks fantastic, I'm just not sure if in practice
00:46:17
◼
►
it's enough to get people to move over.
00:46:20
◼
►
Yeah, that is, I agree with you, like in a perfect world these things look great, but
00:46:25
◼
►
maybe it works really well. I know how often I will be talking to somebody and then go
00:46:30
◼
►
go Google something, right?
00:46:32
◼
►
Like I will go and Google something,
00:46:33
◼
►
look for an answer for something during the conversation.
00:46:35
◼
►
It'd be nice if I didn't do that,
00:46:37
◼
►
like you just keep it on the application.
00:46:40
◼
►
They're using phone numbers for signup,
00:46:42
◼
►
like something like WhatsApp and Telegram does.
00:46:44
◼
►
I wonder how that's gonna work.
00:46:46
◼
►
And it's gonna be cross-platform iOS and Android.
00:46:49
◼
►
Like I wonder if they're gonna do, you know,
00:46:51
◼
►
some services like WhatsApp,
00:46:53
◼
►
they're like very much locked into the device that you're on
00:46:56
◼
►
I wonder if they're gonna have like an iPad application
00:46:58
◼
►
that you can use as well.
00:46:58
◼
►
that will be key for them to do that.
00:47:01
◼
►
Like, okay, you sign in with your phone number,
00:47:03
◼
►
but you should still be able to get the messages
00:47:05
◼
►
wherever you wanna get them.
00:47:07
◼
►
So we'll see how that turns out.
00:47:08
◼
►
- I mean, that's one of the things
00:47:10
◼
►
that creates iMessage lock-in, right?
00:47:11
◼
►
That I can be on my iPad or my Mac or my phone
00:47:14
◼
►
and just talk to people.
00:47:17
◼
►
- I don't have to worry about
00:47:19
◼
►
where I left off on another device.
00:47:20
◼
►
But I agree with you guys.
00:47:22
◼
►
I mean, the cost of switching is like the problem
00:47:25
◼
►
with all of these messaging apps.
00:47:27
◼
►
and maybe Google will solve some of these problems
00:47:30
◼
►
and it'll show up on the web and show up other places.
00:47:32
◼
►
I mean, this is clearly step one.
00:47:35
◼
►
But the most curious thing to me is like,
00:47:40
◼
►
like we talked about with the platform services thing
00:47:46
◼
►
with the Google Home, we're starting to see that now
00:47:50
◼
►
in messaging, so are we gonna live in a world
00:47:53
◼
►
where if I need to do something,
00:47:55
◼
►
I need to be in Facebook Messenger
00:47:56
◼
►
or you know, "Oh, I'm talking with you over here
00:47:59
◼
►
"and I can't look up this piece of information."
00:48:01
◼
►
Like, becoming increasingly fragmented
00:48:05
◼
►
even in something like chat apps seems problematic
00:48:09
◼
►
and kind of a pain to keep up with.
00:48:12
◼
►
But I'm not, for one, I'm not super convinced
00:48:16
◼
►
that I want, and not Google, I'll say this
00:48:19
◼
►
with Facebook as well, that I want like robots
00:48:21
◼
►
in my chat to go do things for me.
00:48:23
◼
►
Like, I've not been proven, it's not been proven to me
00:48:27
◼
►
that that utility is worth it yet.
00:48:29
◼
►
But a lot of people are betting big on this, right?
00:48:32
◼
►
Microsoft's doing it in Skype,
00:48:33
◼
►
like lots of people are doing bots,
00:48:35
◼
►
like that's the thing all of a sudden, so who knows?
00:48:38
◼
►
- I guess we can thank Slack, right?
00:48:41
◼
►
- Guess, I mean it seems to be where it started.
00:48:43
◼
►
- Yeah, along with Allo is a video calling app called Duo.
00:48:48
◼
►
Duo is also Android and iOS and will be
00:48:51
◼
►
when they both come out in the summer.
00:48:53
◼
►
There's a few things that Google are focusing on here.
00:48:55
◼
►
Performing well on bad networks is something
00:48:57
◼
►
that they're really trying to focus on.
00:48:59
◼
►
They have something called Knock Knock,
00:49:01
◼
►
which I think is interesting.
00:49:03
◼
►
So this is a feature where when the phone call,
00:49:07
◼
►
when the video call is coming in before you answer it,
00:49:09
◼
►
you see the person.
00:49:11
◼
►
So you can see what they're doing,
00:49:13
◼
►
you can see where they are.
00:49:15
◼
►
I think that this is kind of nice.
00:49:16
◼
►
And the way that they're setting up,
00:49:18
◼
►
and they have a cute video for it, of course,
00:49:20
◼
►
But the thinking for me is video calls
00:49:24
◼
►
are still really weird to receive.
00:49:27
◼
►
If I receive a video call from someone,
00:49:29
◼
►
I'm a little bit like,
00:49:30
◼
►
why are they calling me on video right now?
00:49:33
◼
►
Do they do this by accident?
00:49:34
◼
►
Like what's happening?
00:49:35
◼
►
If you can see someone is in a specific location,
00:49:38
◼
►
you can see that someone's with their child
00:49:40
◼
►
and they wanna say, hey,
00:49:41
◼
►
they show stuff like,
00:49:43
◼
►
there's like a girl who's showing her engagement ring.
00:49:46
◼
►
Like if you can kind of get a bit of context
00:49:48
◼
►
to why the video call is coming in. I think it takes away some of the barriers of making
00:49:53
◼
►
the calls because you, as a person, initiating the call as well, are able to give contacts
00:49:59
◼
►
before the person has to commit to showing their own face. I actually think that this
00:50:02
◼
►
helps break down the barrier a little bit. I think it's a really nice feature.
00:50:06
◼
►
I think it's very nice. I think it makes sense to kind of flip it the other way around.
00:50:12
◼
►
And also from a technical standpoint it seems like the implementation is solid, like you
00:50:19
◼
►
see the preview, then you swipe up and it's like there's no transition, it's seamless,
00:50:24
◼
►
going from the preview, from the live preview to the actual video calling.
00:50:28
◼
►
But there's just one point that I want to make, and that is with the current implementation
00:50:33
◼
►
of something like FaceTime, when you receive a video call, the big preview on the screen
00:50:41
◼
►
goes to the front camera and it shows your face, usually, before you take the video call.
00:50:48
◼
►
And I think Apple does that, and I think other companies do that, because it's sort of like
00:50:53
◼
►
looking in the mirror before taking the video call. So you can see how you look before you
00:50:58
◼
►
respond. Yeah, that's a good point.
00:51:00
◼
►
And if you don't have the preview, maybe it's just a small thing that you lose, being able
00:51:06
◼
►
to check your face or check where you're actually at before you commit.
00:51:11
◼
►
I don't remember off the top of my head, I'll see if I can try and find it, if there is
00:51:15
◼
►
any kind of video preview on that screen still.
00:51:18
◼
►
I think there's like a little round avatar.
00:51:21
◼
►
Yeah, that's my memory in the bottom left hand corner or something.
00:51:25
◼
►
My screen is small, really small.
00:51:27
◼
►
Yeah, but it's there, but I get your point.
00:51:32
◼
►
I think there's a counterpoint to all of that is my phone is on my desk and I have someone
00:51:38
◼
►
sitting at my desk or I'm in a meeting and my phone's out and someone wants to video
00:51:44
◼
►
chat with me in a way that I don't want shared.
00:51:49
◼
►
Then you just look over at my phone, Federico is sitting next to me and you look over and
00:51:53
◼
►
Myke is naked on my phone.
00:51:56
◼
►
But the thing is, I understand what you're saying, but...
00:51:59
◼
►
Does he do that?
00:52:02
◼
►
puts someone else in charge of what shows up on my display.
00:52:05
◼
►
And that is a little weird.
00:52:07
◼
►
- Yeah, yes, I understand that.
00:52:10
◼
►
But I feel like in most scenarios,
00:52:14
◼
►
if someone's gonna call you with something
00:52:18
◼
►
that you wouldn't want the world to see,
00:52:20
◼
►
most of the time someone's gonna check with you
00:52:22
◼
►
before they make that call.
00:52:23
◼
►
- Yeah, exactly.
00:52:24
◼
►
Can I video call you?
00:52:25
◼
►
- Right, 'cause I know what you're thinking of, right?
00:52:27
◼
►
Like if we just say like,
00:52:32
◼
►
"Interesting times" we'll call it, for the time being. If someone is calling you for
00:52:37
◼
►
interesting times, I would assume in most scenarios somebody is going to even know not
00:52:43
◼
►
to call you at two o'clock in the afternoon on a work day.
00:52:45
◼
►
They're just going to text you beforehand.
00:52:47
◼
►
And will probably just clear with you in the first scenario that interesting times are
00:52:51
◼
►
able to occur within the current parameters of location.
00:52:54
◼
►
Oh yeah, no, I'm sure. But you know, it's just something to consider. And I had the
00:53:00
◼
►
thought and it was kind of mean so I kind of feel bad for even sharing it that like
00:53:03
◼
►
uh you know made people working on this like that didn't even cross their mind like
00:53:07
◼
►
oh it definitely there's lots of upside to it if the same company is also talking about creating
00:53:12
◼
►
incognito chats or discrete notifications they're thinking about interesting times yeah but uh so
00:53:17
◼
►
it's it's just something to consider my guess is maybe there'll be a toggle uh people don't want it
00:53:22
◼
►
there but uh...
00:53:25
◼
►
I think it is an ingenious solution
00:53:29
◼
►
the awkward problem of video calling
00:53:32
◼
►
yeah there's trade-offs and this is one of them, Steven has a point
00:53:36
◼
►
he says I don't want other people to decide what goes up on my screen
00:53:39
◼
►
there should probably be a toggle you know? It would be better if you have an
00:53:44
◼
►
device because it won't be able to show up on your screen you'll get a
00:53:47
◼
►
notification first right?
00:53:50
◼
►
on Android, I assume being Android there's going to be an option when I'm at the office
00:53:55
◼
►
change how Duo works.
00:53:57
◼
►
You make a joke, but yeah, probably.
00:54:01
◼
►
There's going to be some way to do that.
00:54:04
◼
►
The cross-platformness though, right?
00:54:07
◼
►
That's huge.
00:54:09
◼
►
I mean, Skype exists, there's a "one begins with a V" exists, but the idea of...
00:54:16
◼
►
I can't remember the name, but like the idea of a...
00:54:19
◼
►
What did you say? One that begins with a V?
00:54:21
◼
►
There is a video calling service that begins with a V that I can't remember the name of.
00:54:26
◼
►
But there is one that exists but I can't remember it.
00:54:29
◼
►
Let's see, let's see Google. Video calling with a V.
00:54:33
◼
►
Yeah that's not gonna help you. But anyway, you know, I think something that is probably
00:54:39
◼
►
gonna be installed on everybody else's device that's not an Apple user, right? Like that's
00:54:44
◼
►
a good thing. Like it's there, all you then need to do is download it. There isn't something
00:54:47
◼
►
on the other end, you can't download the Android FaceTime app. Still waiting for that open
00:54:52
◼
►
source protocol to come that Steve promised. Do you remember?
00:54:57
◼
►
It's not gonna happen.
00:54:59
◼
►
One day man, no I'm holding on, like you know, why would you lie?
00:55:02
◼
►
I think it's because of a lawsuit or some kind with the parents, you know, not gonna
00:55:07
◼
►
Yeah sure, I'm sure that was the reason. I, you know, we'll see what happens here. It's
00:55:13
◼
►
more messaging services.
00:55:17
◼
►
That's the problem for me when it comes to Google. They do these services, they look
00:55:21
◼
►
good initially, then they launch them, people don't switch, they forget about them, they
00:55:25
◼
►
leave them on the App Store for years and months, you know, and they don't receive updates
00:55:30
◼
►
and eventually the world forgets about them and they unveil a new one. That's what they've
00:55:34
◼
►
done in the past, you know, Google Chat, Hangouts, Google+, what's the name, Messaging, Messenger,
00:55:43
◼
►
you know, they've done like four or five of them at this point. I don't have a lot of
00:55:48
◼
►
faith and again, it's just, even setting aside Google's track record, it's just a problem
00:55:55
◼
►
of practicality, of convincing people. Why should I switch from WhatsApp and Facebook
00:56:00
◼
►
and Messenger and, you know, this other iMessage, for example? Especially when you consider
00:56:06
◼
►
that this year WhatsApp is going to finally monetizing their platform with some kind of
00:56:12
◼
►
bot system. So you can talk to hotels, you can talk to restaurants, you can talk to flight
00:56:18
◼
►
companies for your ticket and that kind of stuff. So it's going to be a platform war,
00:56:25
◼
►
but not in the sense of choosing your messaging service, in the sense of what can you do with
00:56:31
◼
►
other platforms inside of your messaging app. And that's going to be interesting. And again,
00:56:36
◼
►
I wonder if Apple is paying attention because it seems like any major messaging service
00:56:42
◼
►
on earth that people are actually using, lots of people are actually using, are going to
00:56:46
◼
►
be doing this kind of stuff.
00:56:49
◼
►
Not so much.
00:56:50
◼
►
So I don't know.
00:56:51
◼
►
I don't want to see iMessage becoming the service that you use to receive confirmation
00:56:56
◼
►
codes for web services, you know?
00:56:58
◼
►
I don't care about iMessage going cross-platform.
00:57:02
◼
►
is not something that I really need or desire, because the text messages are also in the
00:57:07
◼
►
same application. What I do want to see is iMessage getting a lot of the stuff that you
00:57:12
◼
►
spoke about in your iOS 10 thing. I want to see it just become a messaging service that
00:57:18
◼
►
is aware that the internet exists. Because right now it's not. It's like the internet
00:57:23
◼
►
doesn't exist outside of the blue bubble.
00:57:26
◼
►
It's really glorified SMS right now. It's just fancier, just a little fancier, and free.
00:57:33
◼
►
That's really iMessage, the whole proposition is free and, well, you can share, I don't
00:57:39
◼
►
know, video and pictures, that's it. You can make groups. It's really the same iMessage
00:57:45
◼
►
as we saw with iOS 5 back in the Scott Forsall days. May, rest in peace. Well, it's not that,
00:57:54
◼
►
I think it may be Rest in Broadway, I think that's his thing now.
00:57:57
◼
►
He's having fun in Broadway, that's right.
00:58:00
◼
►
So yeah, we'll see.
00:58:02
◼
►
Alright, Android N. Let's breeze through some of this stuff,
00:58:06
◼
►
because it's stuff that we've heard before.
00:58:07
◼
►
They are saying that they want the world to suggest the name,
00:58:11
◼
►
but this seems like total BS.
00:58:13
◼
►
Yeah, that's not really true, it's just a marketing thing.
00:58:16
◼
►
Yeah, they know the name.
00:58:17
◼
►
There's like, I saw somebody tweet an image to the terms and conditions,
00:58:23
◼
►
which basically, so I'll read it, it says "This is solely intended to be for entertainment
00:58:27
◼
►
purposes. The name you submit will not be judged and there will be no prizes or compensation
00:58:32
◼
►
awarded to any participant." So, okay.
00:58:35
◼
►
Yeah. I mean, the name should be, and I'm gonna say it with the Italian version, Android
00:58:43
◼
►
Yeah, I think that's probably where they're gonna end up going.
00:58:46
◼
►
Do you guys say Nutella or Nutella? What do you say?
00:58:50
◼
►
Nutella, okay.
00:58:51
◼
►
that might be what they end up doing. Maybe they are struggling to get the licensing arrangement.
00:58:58
◼
►
Yeah. That's why they now have this thing. Yeah. I thought initially that they might
00:59:04
◼
►
be looking to break outside of the candy names, hence the suggestions. You know, I like something
00:59:10
◼
►
like Android Nebula, you know, just sounds cool. Nebula, wow. But I assume that they're
00:59:15
◼
►
still going to go down the candy route and then it's probably just going to end up being
00:59:18
◼
►
Maybe what they're trying to do is prove to the Nutella people, I think it's Nestle again,
00:59:23
◼
►
that so many people want them to call it Nutella, right?
00:59:26
◼
►
So they're like, "Look, we have millions of people that said Nutella!"
00:59:28
◼
►
Or maybe they can play the card of, "Look at all these great names we can choose, in theory,
00:59:34
◼
►
but we really want to make you guys a favor and we want to use Nutella."
00:59:38
◼
►
Yeah, do us a favor.
00:59:40
◼
►
Android had some significant performance updates.
00:59:43
◼
►
They have graphical improvements via something called Vulkan which seems a lot like Metal
00:59:49
◼
►
on the face of it from my understanding.
00:59:51
◼
►
You know like digging more into the GPU and harnessing that power.
00:59:55
◼
►
Stronger security, file based and full disk encryption.
00:59:59
◼
►
They talked about something called seamless updates which to me seems kind of genius.
01:00:03
◼
►
They've borrowed this from Chromebooks.
01:00:05
◼
►
Basically all installations of Android N have two installs on the device and updates are
01:00:12
◼
►
downloaded and installed automatically on the not in use version of the
01:00:15
◼
►
operating system and then the next time that you turn your phone on they switch
01:00:20
◼
►
around so then you have the updated version. This just seems genius right?
01:00:25
◼
►
So basically they're saying that Android devices now will stay up to
01:00:29
◼
►
date automatically which I think that that is a really smart system that it
01:00:34
◼
►
just happens in the background on a mirrored version of the OS and then they
01:00:37
◼
►
just swap around. Yeah I think if Apple is gonna do that people are gonna find
01:00:41
◼
►
all kinds of ways to use it for jet breaking.
01:00:45
◼
►
- Yeah, probably.
01:00:46
◼
►
But I mean, talking about updates,
01:00:47
◼
►
I'm terrified to update my iPad right now, right?
01:00:50
◼
►
There's all these stories of 9.3.2
01:00:53
◼
►
breaking the 9.7 inch iPad.
01:00:54
◼
►
- Yeah, I saw that, I saw that.
01:00:56
◼
►
- So like, you know, I don't know.
01:00:59
◼
►
- Should probably wait for now.
01:01:02
◼
►
- Yeah, I'm just dismissing the update prompt.
01:01:11
◼
►
It's just like, no, go away.
01:01:12
◼
►
I'll put a link to a Forbes article.
01:01:14
◼
►
But by the way, no, I'm not going to put a link
01:01:16
◼
►
to a Forbes article because Forbes has the worst website
01:01:18
◼
►
on the entire planet.
01:01:19
◼
►
I will find somebody else.
01:01:22
◼
►
- Look at you taking a stand.
01:01:23
◼
►
Good for you, Myke. - Man, it's so bad.
01:01:24
◼
►
If you ever visited the Forbes website on a mobile device.
01:01:28
◼
►
- Yes, unfortunately, yes.
01:01:30
◼
►
- It's like, who cares about layout?
01:01:32
◼
►
- Oh, and you know that they used to,
01:01:34
◼
►
some researchers found out that they used the,
01:01:37
◼
►
you know the inspirational quote that they show you
01:01:39
◼
►
before loading an article, some people, or maybe some companies behind the ad, use that
01:01:45
◼
►
screen to inject malware in people's browsers.
01:01:48
◼
►
Yeah, of course they do. Of course they do, thanks Forbes.
01:01:51
◼
►
Funny times at Forbes.
01:01:52
◼
►
Anyhow, so I think that's really cool. They have some productivity enhancements, so I
01:01:58
◼
►
quite like this one. They remove infrequently used apps from the multitasking tray automatically,
01:02:03
◼
►
so you don't have like an infinite list.
01:02:05
◼
►
See, I have many thoughts about that.
01:02:08
◼
►
Because people, both on Android and iOS, people do that.
01:02:12
◼
►
Keep doing that all the time.
01:02:13
◼
►
All my friends close all of their apps, you know?
01:02:16
◼
►
Well, I mean, the idea is, like, I was multitasking earlier, and I have, like, 60 items in there,
01:02:22
◼
►
which don't need to be there.
01:02:23
◼
►
I only need, like, 10.
01:02:25
◼
►
So that's one thing that they're doing.
01:02:26
◼
►
So they're just automatically clearing things that you don't use.
01:02:29
◼
►
They do have a clear all button, which upsets me, and I know upsets them to put in there,
01:02:34
◼
►
but they said like due to popular demand. It's like people ask us for this button so
01:02:38
◼
►
we just put the button in.
01:02:39
◼
►
If you close these apps on Android, do they also stop execution of tasks in the background?
01:02:45
◼
►
Or is it just, okay, so it's just a visibility thing?
01:02:49
◼
►
Yeah, it's getting rid of the multitasking tray.
01:02:51
◼
►
When you do that on iOS, you also stop the background refresh, I think, which is, you
01:02:56
◼
►
know, the problem that people say you shouldn't force quit your apps on iOS, and you shouldn't,
01:03:01
◼
►
you know, every time close the app. But I do get why it's important to have that feature,
01:03:06
◼
►
because so many times, you know, apps have bugs, and the only way to get them to work
01:03:10
◼
►
again is to force quit them and start them up again. And so I don't think Apple will
01:03:17
◼
►
ever remove the ability to force quit apps, and I see people say, you know, Apple should
01:03:21
◼
►
just disable people from doing that. And that's never gonna happen, you know? Never, ever
01:03:26
◼
►
gonna happen, because people need to be able to force quit software.
01:03:29
◼
►
I like the idea of having that tray cleared up a little bit.
01:03:33
◼
►
Yeah, I see that, it makes sense. Maybe it's time to, you know,
01:03:38
◼
►
just make it a visibility thing on iOS also,
01:03:41
◼
►
and not necessarily tied to background stuff.
01:03:44
◼
►
It's a tricky problem to solve, I don't know.
01:03:47
◼
►
Double tapping the multitasking button will switch you to the previously used application.
01:03:52
◼
►
I like that. So you'll be in Chrome, you open Messages, then you just double tap the multitasking button,
01:03:57
◼
►
you're back in Chrome again.
01:03:58
◼
►
This is nicer than covering the status bar.
01:04:01
◼
►
- Yeah, it's like a physical command tab.
01:04:03
◼
►
- Yeah. - I think they said, yeah.
01:04:04
◼
►
- Yeah, they did.
01:04:05
◼
►
They're bringing split screen and picture in picture,
01:04:08
◼
►
which is great. - Of course.
01:04:10
◼
►
- They are the first to support the 72 new emoji
01:04:14
◼
►
in Unicode 9. - Yeah.
01:04:16
◼
►
Well, we're gonna see that in iOS 10 or 10.1.
01:04:18
◼
►
- Yeah, they just wanted to say we're first.
01:04:19
◼
►
And it's in the base that it's out now,
01:04:21
◼
►
so technically they are first,
01:04:22
◼
►
and there are some great ones in there.
01:04:25
◼
►
I was sending them in our Slack today
01:04:26
◼
►
that nobody could see,
01:04:27
◼
►
because I have my Android device, like avocado, bacon,
01:04:31
◼
►
whiskey in a jar, they have a shrugging person.
01:04:33
◼
►
That's some great emoji in there.
01:04:34
◼
►
- Oh, shrugging person?
01:04:35
◼
►
- Yes, shrugging person.
01:04:36
◼
►
- That's gonna be the best one this year.
01:04:38
◼
►
- You use it all day, every day.
01:04:40
◼
►
They have improved notifications with quick replies
01:04:42
◼
►
and easy access to settings, which are quite like,
01:04:44
◼
►
you can hold on the notifications,
01:04:45
◼
►
say stop telling me about this application for a while.
01:04:48
◼
►
It's kind of cool. - Oh, nice.
01:04:49
◼
►
Nice, there should be a 3D touch feature on Android.
01:04:51
◼
►
- I agree completely.
01:04:52
◼
►
Well, there should be a 3D touch to clear all notifications,
01:04:54
◼
►
but hey, huh.
01:04:56
◼
►
One of the other big pillars of Android M,
01:04:58
◼
►
which was not previously announced, is virtual reality.
01:05:01
◼
►
So Google are building something called Daydream.
01:05:04
◼
►
It's like the next kind of evolution
01:05:06
◼
►
from the Cardboard initiative.
01:05:10
◼
►
Basically Daydream is multiple things.
01:05:13
◼
►
It is baked in support for VR into Android.
01:05:17
◼
►
So they're putting it into the operating system.
01:05:20
◼
►
They are going to be,
01:05:21
◼
►
and they have created a reference design
01:05:23
◼
►
for a headset and controller to be used.
01:05:25
◼
►
and they're also releasing tools to developers to build great VR applications.
01:05:30
◼
►
They said that several phones are daydream ready for later on this year.
01:05:34
◼
►
They've been talking to manufacturers, and there are also a bunch of manufacturers
01:05:37
◼
►
creating headsets and controllers that will be available in the fall as well.
01:05:42
◼
►
We didn't really see the headsets.
01:05:46
◼
►
Yeah, they don't have one, that's why.
01:05:47
◼
►
Just like a blueprint of a sketch.
01:05:50
◼
►
They haven't built one.
01:05:51
◼
►
They probably will have a Nexus version, but they're just not ready to show it yet.
01:05:55
◼
►
We've talked on our other show, Myke, "Remaster", about VR and how I believe that eventually
01:06:01
◼
►
all VR is going to be mobile. And I think this shows that Google is also thinking this
01:06:06
◼
►
way that the screen of the phone that you use every day, so in the future, this is the
01:06:11
◼
►
idea, in the future the computer is going to be the phone. So from people in the 80s,
01:06:16
◼
►
people in the 90s, the computer was the thing at the desk, people from, you know, 20 years
01:06:21
◼
►
from now the computer is going to be a phone. And the phone, it can be the device that you
01:06:25
◼
►
carry around and that you look at, and it's also the device for virtual reality. That's
01:06:31
◼
►
But when you think about it, right, it's way easier to say to somebody, "Buy this headset
01:06:36
◼
►
and controller for $50 or whatever," than, "Make sure you have a computer that can run
01:06:42
◼
►
this or a PlayStation and then spend over $400 or $700 on the headset." This is why
01:06:48
◼
►
mobile VR is probably gonna win out this initial run?
01:06:53
◼
►
There's two problems. One is probably temporary, which is can current phones be capable of
01:07:01
◼
►
handling powerful, credible VR experience?
01:07:05
◼
►
The answer is no, because they're saying all the Daydream phones are coming later this
01:07:08
◼
►
year, right? They can't right now.
01:07:10
◼
►
So that's only getting started. And the second, which is a bigger problem, still don't know
01:07:14
◼
►
the answer, because we're really just getting started with VR. We've been talking about
01:07:19
◼
►
VR since like four years, since the Oculus Kickstarter campaign, but we're really starting
01:07:24
◼
►
to get VR today in practice. The biggest problem, which we still don't know the answer for,
01:07:30
◼
►
is "Is VR socially acceptable? Is it going to be a thing? Or is it going to be a fad
01:07:36
◼
►
and we're going to forget about it?" I mean, it's possible, it's cool today, but it's like
01:07:41
◼
►
If somebody came up with the idea of a crazy technology, like a flying car, and it's totally
01:07:50
◼
►
cool, it's possible, but you're gonna look like a dork, or there's a risk of dying.
01:07:56
◼
►
Just because it's possible doesn't mean that it's gonna take off.
01:07:59
◼
►
That's my idea.
01:08:01
◼
►
VR is possible, maybe it's great today, are we sure it's gonna take off?
01:08:07
◼
►
It's gonna be accepted by people and it's gonna be normal in the future?
01:08:10
◼
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We still don't know.
01:08:12
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Will we get over the social awkwardness of a screen on our face?
01:08:16
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We don't know yet.
01:08:17
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But all I know is the very limited experience I have with VR is I want it all in my life.
01:08:22
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Like I want it.
01:08:23
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Because it's amazing.
01:08:26
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I still don't know.
01:08:27
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See, you tried the Oculus, I still haven't.
01:08:29
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I'm looking forward to having, I hope, the PlayStation VR demo units at the GameStop here
01:08:36
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in Rome, maybe sometime in the next few months.
01:08:39
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That's what I'm hoping to get. Or maybe when I'm in San Francisco, someone, so this is
01:08:46
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an open call to our listeners, friends of the show, if you happen to have an Oculus
01:08:51
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Rift in San Francisco during the week of WWDC, please let me try one.
01:08:55
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Oh, there'll be tons of companies that have them. So yeah, if you have one in an office
01:08:59
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that's close to Moscone or something like that, send us an email or get in contact with
01:09:05
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Federico. We want to come and see it.
01:09:07
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Federico wants to try one. Thank you, I would really appreciate that. And again, we can
01:09:12
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exchange, we can trade. You let me try the Oculus and I buy you coffee.
01:09:17
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Yeah, someone's gonna, they're gonna be there, so we just need to find the place.
01:09:21
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Okay, awesome.
01:09:23
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Android Wear 2.0 was the next part. So, something I didn't know, but there was a limitation
01:09:30
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between what custom watch faces and custom complications could be paired together. That's
01:09:34
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now been taken away all custom watch faces can show custom complications
01:09:37
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that's great it's weird that it couldn't do that but you know what I wish I could
01:09:41
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get custom watch faces so like you know swings and roundabouts you can one thing
01:09:48
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that I really like you can get a message and you can draw with your finger a
01:09:51
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response I know it's kind of ridiculous but sometimes I don't really get it
01:09:55
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sometimes you could be out in the street and you don't want to talk into your
01:09:59
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watch but if I can just say if I can just draw and say what I want to say
01:10:03
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because a lot of the time the smart quick replies aren't necessarily going to answer the question
01:10:09
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that is being asked of me. There are some times where I would get a slack message when someone
01:10:15
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says "oh are you going to be around today what time" and I could just say "I'll be"
01:10:20
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or just say 4 p.m. I would like to be able to do that. I know it's kind of ridiculous but...
01:10:26
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Shouldn't you just use your phone at that point?
01:10:28
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Sure but what if I don't want to, right? Like the whole point of me having...
01:10:33
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But the whole point of me having this watch is to use the watch.
01:10:37
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What's the point of me seeing something and then going to get my phone out?
01:10:39
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I might as well just never had the watch in the first place.
01:10:42
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I mean, between the ridiculous keyboard that they showed and handwriting recognition, and,
01:10:49
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The keyboard is insane.
01:10:50
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No, it doesn't really make sense.
01:10:52
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I can't understand how the keyboard can work.
01:10:54
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I just cannot understand that.
01:10:55
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But the handwriting recognition, great.
01:10:57
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Let's go for it.
01:10:58
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Yeah, I mean, between the two, handwriting all the way.
01:11:00
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And I think maybe if you accept that, even the way that the screen kind of moves horizontally
01:11:06
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to follow handwriting and to transcribe what you're drawing, I think it's also kind of
01:11:13
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I just, maybe I don't see the appeal, but once you explain that, and I kind of get it,
01:11:19
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But I feel like for me, the Wear 2 was the weakest announcement of the show.
01:11:26
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I think there's just less there.
01:11:27
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I mean, but it did have a couple of things that I would like the Apple Watch to do.
01:11:31
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So the keyboard entry, they said about the ability for Android Wear devices to automatically
01:11:36
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start tracking fitness stuff.
01:11:38
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I would like the Apple Watch to be able to do that.
01:11:40
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Like the Apple Watch doesn't know I'm exercising until I tell it.
01:11:44
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See that's one of my problems with the Apple Watch because I remember that a couple of
01:11:50
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years ago Apple bought this company that they had this technology with a wearable device
01:11:57
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to automatically detect what type of workout you were doing. And I had big hopes for the
01:12:04
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Apple Watch to have this feature, which is you don't have to go to the workout app and
01:12:08
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to say "look I'm about to do running" or "I'm about to do whatever it is people do at the
01:12:15
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gym", it's just the watch recognizes what you're doing. And I really wanted to have
01:12:20
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that. And maybe in the future, but you know, automatic workout recognition, that's, you
01:12:25
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know, I think it's a really great feature for a wearable device. Because it's just natural,
01:12:30
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you know, it's like having a personal trainer with you that says, "Look, I see you're doing
01:12:36
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that, good job." Instead, it's a wearable device that you have on your wrist and it
01:12:40
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tells you, you know, you don't have to open an app and say what you're about to do, I
01:12:45
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can just keep track of that automatically. I think that's really smart. I think that
01:12:48
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should happen with the Watch 2 in the future.
01:12:53
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There's also a lot of stuff about decoupling the Watch, so apps on Android Wear 2.0, see
01:12:58
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I think this was big but it didn't spend enough time on it. The apps can be standalone, they
01:13:03
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can run on a device, they're able to connect to Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and cellular where it's
01:13:06
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supported on their own and do their own stuff. That's what we all want with WatchOS and Android
01:13:15
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where 2 has got it. Maybe we're gonna get it in watchOS 3, I think we will, but I think
01:13:20
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that they just, they basically just ran through this section. And if they, and I expect there's
01:13:25
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actually a lot more interesting stuff in there than they gave away. Because they had something
01:13:29
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pretty big and weird to get to. Yeah, I mean the watch was fast and I'm sure we'll spend
01:13:36
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more time talking about it leading up to June, but for me, like, part of the idea of having
01:13:42
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the watch is like something simple like if I'm out mowing the yard I can leave my phone
01:13:46
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inside and still you know get text messages and respond and do that sort of stuff and
01:13:51
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it just doesn't it just doesn't work and so I think there's a lot of opportunity for Apple
01:13:56
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to to look at what this is doing and maybe improve on in some areas I agree that the
01:14:02
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keyboard text thing is a little weird but across the board I would like to be able to
01:14:06
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text like type to my devices like ask Siri a question by typing like I think Apple has
01:14:10
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a lot of work to do there but I think maybe we're finally seeing like smart
01:14:15
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watches kind of finally become their own thing as opposed to just a satellite
01:14:20
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device and that that's pretty exciting to me.
01:14:23
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The last thing Google announced was Android Instant Apps. This is a big one.
01:14:31
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This is very strange. It is basically the next evolution of deep linking because
01:14:38
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what it's doing is deep linking but maybe to an app that you don't have
01:14:43
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installed. So you'll get a link to something like they used like a B&H
01:14:49
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photo and somebody sent them a link to the store or they was in a Google search
01:14:56
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and they clicked it instead of it going to be an B&H's website it took them to
01:15:01
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the application so the Google Play Store jumps into the middle and just downloads
01:15:07
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the piece of the application that you need right at that second. Basically Google is
01:15:12
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saying goodbye to the web.
01:15:15
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>> Developers need to modularize their applications, but they say that it's not a ton of work.
01:15:21
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They said it's a day of work. And it said, depending on how complex your app is, okay?
01:15:26
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So it's seven months of work. You can then, when you're in the application, they also
01:15:30
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show like Buzzfeed videos. Somebody sent them a Buzzfeed link. They opened it. It opened
01:15:34
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in the Buzzfeed video app, and then there was an install button, so you could then install
01:15:38
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the application if you wanted to. And the way that they described it was your app would
01:15:43
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be just a tap away on a billion devices, which is a very tasty proposition. I actually think,
01:15:54
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looking at this, and looking at deep linking on iOS, I see the potential for Apple to do
01:16:00
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this as well. Why would they not do this?
01:16:03
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I feel like there's a fundamental fork in the road, maybe, for links and the web on
01:16:12
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mobile devices.
01:16:14
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Because we're at the point where the functionality of native apps and the integration with the
01:16:19
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hardware is so ahead of what is possible to do with a mobile web app.
01:16:26
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So we're talking about integration with payment systems.
01:16:29
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NFC on Android, native assistance.
01:16:33
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I said about NFC, something that was really cool, is like instead of downloading like
01:16:37
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a parking meter application, you just hold it up to the parking meter and it just downloads
01:16:42
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the necessary parts for that specific parking meter and just plays it.
01:16:47
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Like that was cool.
01:16:48
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Yeah, so we're at the point where native apps have all of this functionality that is completely
01:16:55
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or mostly cut off from the mobile web, which also happens to be slow and to, quite frankly,
01:17:02
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suck these days.
01:17:04
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So the idea here is we're using the web and we're using links as the backbone for identification
01:17:14
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of content, but we're actually redirecting users to the superior native app experience.
01:17:22
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And how do we make that better? By splitting up apps in different portions, and you let
01:17:32
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the OS take care of the content that you need to see, and in just maybe a couple of seconds,
01:17:38
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instead of having to wait for a web page and having fewer functionalities than a native
01:17:43
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app, you're shown just that bit of a native app that you need to see to engage and interact
01:17:50
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with content. And I feel like it's the next logical step for any kind of deep linking,
01:17:57
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which is you remove the overhead of users having to go to the app store, download the
01:18:04
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app, and then open the app, maybe sign up, and then eventually get to the content. Instead,
01:18:10
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you use the link and you use the deep link to bring up an instant app, a native app,
01:18:17
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as all of the features that you expect, so native sharing, maybe assistant integration,
01:18:23
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payment integration, so you don't have to insert all of your details again.
01:18:29
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And at that point, it becomes clear that there's going to be maybe a future where HTML and
01:18:37
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JS on the web are just fallback options, and they're mostly used to provide hierarchy,
01:18:45
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provide directions, but all of the content that we're looking for is native code, and
01:18:52
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it's native app content. I don't know how I feel about this, especially because I write
01:18:57
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on a website. Maybe that's going to be okay, but it's just we're at the point where the
01:19:07
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native apps have so many more integrations than mobile websites, so many more native
01:19:12
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features that people expect, that it just seems obvious to me, and looking at what Apple
01:19:18
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is doing with universal linking, on-demand resources on the Apple TV, which is the idea
01:19:23
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of splitting up apps in bits and pieces and TVOS can get those pieces on demand.
01:19:30
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►
It's not too crazy to think that eventually, maybe not iOS 10, maybe iOS 11, you use universal
01:19:37
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linking and on-demand resources, maybe the next evolution of that technology, to have
01:19:42
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something like Instant Apps on iOS as well.
01:19:45
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I think both companies are approaching the same problem from two different perspectives,
01:19:51
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but the end goal, I feel like it's the same.
01:19:55
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One thing that I'm struggling with with this is the data required to download the section
01:20:00
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►
of the application would surely be larger than the data required to access the website?
01:20:07
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Well, it depends, right? There are some websites that can ask you for over 10 megabytes of
01:20:12
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data or maybe, you know, 12, 15 I've seen also. So it's a problem that kind of mirrors
01:20:18
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the current state of the web. It's so slow and so confusing and it doesn't have all of
01:20:25
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the features of native apps, I do understand why Google is doing this. I mean, even if
01:20:31
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►
you look, you should have seen this coming, right? Because Google has been thinking about
01:20:35
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this deep linking problem for longer than Apple. They've done in the past, you know,
01:20:41
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that feature where you look up something on Google search like a recipe and you're given
01:20:46
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►
a Google Play result and you click that and in a bunch of steps you're taken to a newly
01:20:53
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installed app and into that content. That is sort of the ancestor of Instant Apps on
01:20:59
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Android. But I feel like Apple has all of the sudden list to get all of the pieces of
01:21:05
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the same puzzle together. Because there's just an advantage of tapping a link and being
01:21:12
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taken into a native app instead of a website. For as great as Safari is on iOS, I buy the
01:21:20
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argument that sometimes universal links can be annoying because you actually want to be
01:21:25
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in the browser, but in most cases I do like the fact that I tap on a link to a tweet and
01:21:30
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I'm taken into the Twitter app, or I tap a link to Spotify and I'm taken into the Spotify
01:21:35
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app instead of the web preview. I do like that. And maybe there should be a way to make
01:21:39
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it easier for people to be shown this content. Honestly, if done well, with respect to bandwidth,
01:21:49
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to data, to letting people choose what they want to do, letting developers choose what
01:21:56
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they want to do, I don't see any disadvantages. If only setting aside the philosophical problem
01:22:02
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►
maybe that weblinks should always go to a website, but I feel like we're past that stage
01:22:09
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►
and the ship has sailed metaphorically.
01:22:13
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►
I don't get that argument, like weblinks should go to a website. Like weblinks should go to
01:22:18
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►
wherever the owner of that web link wants it to go. That's the way I look at it, right?
01:22:23
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►
Like if Twitter decides they want it to go to their app, great. If they don't, they just
01:22:27
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►
don't implement it. They own the website.
01:22:31
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►
Steven, do you disagree with that? I feel like if anyone's going to disagree with that,
01:22:35
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►
it might be easier.
01:22:37
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►
I do disagree with that to a degree. I think that there should be some type of user control
01:22:43
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►
there that I can you know choose to some degree what I want to happen when I tap
01:22:52
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►
on a link because the worst thing we've all done this is you tap on link because
01:22:56
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►
you need it to be in one place or the other and it does like the wrong thing
01:23:00
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►
and on iOS there's no recourse for that like I guess I can uninstall the Twitter
01:23:04
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►
app so it stops doing it but I think that there should be some sort of some
01:23:09
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►
sort of options built around that and I think that if if this is where we're
01:23:15
◼
►
headed and definitely seems that that's the case to a degree that there should
01:23:19
◼
►
be some sort of expectation set around what developers should do with that and
01:23:26
◼
►
how they should be handled and you know a lot of times you see like universal
01:23:31
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►
links these deep links like acting in unexpected ways sometimes and of course
01:23:35
◼
►
you know the big one is people will throw one up to like launch the App
01:23:39
◼
►
store is like part of spam type stuff and like that there should be some
01:23:44
◼
►
preventative measures there to keep it from being abused but I mean I like
01:23:50
◼
►
the open web I don't know particularly in love with the philosophical argument
01:23:54
◼
►
that we should all be moved into silo apps but I cannot argue with your point
01:23:58
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►
that it is markedly a better experience especially when it comes to payment
01:24:02
◼
►
right like those examples they used for the most part were around payment where
01:24:06
◼
►
I feel like if I can be in an app and use Apple Pay, then that is inherently more secure
01:24:13
◼
►
than giving a website my credit card number.
01:24:19
◼
►
And I don't think Apple's going to open Apple Pay to the web in a way that would be useful.
01:24:24
◼
►
So there are trade-offs there, but I would hope for some sort of middle ground as far
01:24:29
◼
►
as expectations and control.
01:24:33
◼
►
So guys, you know, I've been thinking about the Google I/O announcements, right? We've
01:24:38
◼
►
seen there's lots of interesting stuff happening. And I mean, we're all Google users to a degree.
01:24:45
◼
►
We're using Google Apps, we're using Google services. And I've been thinking, you know,
01:24:50
◼
►
I do love the IOS ecosystem and I do love the App Store. And I feel like there's nothing
01:24:55
◼
►
like the IOS App Store. But I feel like I should be, I was thinking like I should be
01:25:00
◼
►
more knowledgeable about technology in general. Like, I've been writing for seven years about
01:25:06
◼
►
Apple, but I'm interested in technology in general, and I do have lots of other devices
01:25:11
◼
►
not made by Apple. So I was thinking last night, like, there's especially, you know,
01:25:18
◼
►
ahead of my iOS 10 review this year, like, I was thinking I should do more to know more
01:25:27
◼
►
about what's going on outside of the Apple ecosystem.
01:25:30
◼
►
And so I've done something last night, and I bought an Android phone.
01:25:38
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►
(dramatic music)