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Connected

91: Developer Festival

 

00:00:00   [Music]

00:00:06   From Reel AFM, this is Connected, episode 91. Today's show is brought to you by Text Expander

00:00:12   from Smile. My name is Myke Hurley and I'm joined by Mr. Federico Vittucci. Ciao Federico!

00:00:18   Ciao Myke!

00:00:19   And howdy Mr. Stephen Hackett.

00:00:20   Wow, I don't even know how to respond to that.

00:00:24   You say howdy back.

00:00:24   Howdy.

00:00:26   There you go, perfect. Howdy y'all.

00:00:29   It doesn't sound convinced for some reason.

00:00:32   Yeah, it's not really my thing, but let's just do the show.

00:00:37   So we moved the show by a few days so we could cover the Google I/O keynote and all of the

00:00:43   announcements that came out of there.

00:00:45   But what this did was not really give us enough time to remind you that our t-shirts are on

00:00:50   sale.

00:00:51   So if you are listening on the 19th of May 2016, you have but merely a few hours left

00:00:59   to buy t-shirts. They will go off sale today on the 19th of May. There is a link in our

00:01:06   show notes if you want to buy a t-shirt. Thank you to everybody that did and I hope that

00:01:11   you're able to get them. I'm sorry if you can't. You should follow us all on Twitter

00:01:15   because we've been tweeting about it. If you missed out then you need to pay more attention

00:01:20   to our Twitter timelines.

00:01:21   Myke is a good person to follow on Twitter. He has a lot of good tweets.

00:01:25   I have a lot of insight and most of it's spelt incorrectly so you've got that kind of play

00:01:29   as well.

00:01:30   You have a lot of good tweets and good typos.

00:01:33   So it's part informational, part kind of comical.

00:01:37   It's basically how I present myself all the time, part information, part entertainment.

00:01:41   Yes.

00:01:42   You know?

00:01:43   Yes.

00:01:44   That's what I'm all about.

00:01:45   It even follows through to my Twitter timeline.

00:01:46   Just a very quick piece of follow up, there's also a piece of follow out.

00:01:50   episode 27 of Under the Radar on Relay FM, you get to hear David Smith and Marco Arment

00:01:55   have a great conversation about the benefits of fast app review based on what we were talking

00:02:00   about last week. It definitely seems like the fast app review was not a blip, this seems

00:02:04   like a new trend. I'm seeing more and more people tweeting about it, I'm having more

00:02:08   people tell me about how quickly their apps are going through review. And this was a good

00:02:12   kind of look at what fast app review could do, good and bad, for developers. Spoiler

00:02:19   alert, it's more good. Go listen to episode 27 of Under the Radar.

00:02:23   We were given the full set of data by app review times and Graham put together a series

00:02:30   of charts for Mac service and you can clearly see that there's a huge drop lately in app

00:02:38   review times and it's really amazing to look at that and especially to hear from developers

00:02:46   saying this is such a huge change, you know, I submit an app at like 10am in the morning,

00:02:53   at 1pm is in review, and at 3pm is approved. Like, that's a major change.

00:02:58   Like, it's fundamental, right? Like, it's not just like "oh, this is quicker". This

00:03:04   fundamentally changes the way that people can develop applications.

00:03:08   Yeah, absolutely.

00:03:09   It is a massive step change that if this is the way it works now, is going to make some

00:03:16   big and sweeping changes across iOS development, which is excellent.

00:03:24   And I hope that it remains.

00:03:25   So we'll see.

00:03:26   Initially, I had the concern that maybe Apple was just approving everything and then asking

00:03:32   questions later, like, let's approve everything and then if something is wrong, we can reject

00:03:38   apps at a later stage. But it doesn't seem that way because I've seen developers say

00:03:43   "I submitted an app but App Review got back to me with actual feedback and questions about

00:03:48   a feature or maybe, you know, notes about a bug or a crash" and they were able to do

00:03:55   so with an actual human being because they were looking at the actual app. So it's not

00:04:00   like App Review is fast now. And I've seen a few people make this joke. App Review is

00:04:04   so fast because there's really no one looking at submissions anymore, Apple just approves

00:04:09   everything. Doesn't seem to be the case because they're getting back to developers

00:04:14   quickly with questions and notes about crashes and bugs, which I assume can only come from

00:04:20   actual reviewers looking at the apps. So that's great news. Definitely seems to be more people.

00:04:26   I feel like what they're doing is something along the lines of more intelligent computer

00:04:32   data-driven acceptance, right? Along with an increase in people.

00:04:40   It feels like there has to be both of those things and I don't know how you

00:04:44   could do it without both of them. It just feels like that's the only way

00:04:49   that they could do this. I wonder if this becomes part of WWDC

00:04:54   announcements. I feel like it kind of has to, but we'll see.

00:04:58   Yeah, kind of ramping up for WWDC and say, by the way, we've been testing this for

00:05:02   Imagine if you should have said you have been testing this for a month and I really like

00:05:06   it.

00:05:07   That would be really nice.

00:05:10   But yes, I agree.

00:05:11   It seems to be the case.

00:05:12   We'll see.

00:05:13   All right, so we're going to talk about Google I/O today.

00:05:17   The Google I/O keynote was yesterday as we recorded this.

00:05:22   It was Wednesday the 18th.

00:05:24   Google had a bunch of stuff and we're going to talk through some of the things that we

00:05:29   find the most interesting.

00:05:31   So one of the first points I think of note is the venue for Google IO this year.

00:05:36   So a lot of Google IO is happening kind of in and around Google's campus and the kind

00:05:42   of surrounding property.

00:05:44   And the IO keynote was at the Shoreline Amphitheatre, which is an outdoor music festival located

00:05:51   basically immediately behind Google's campus.

00:05:55   So they put IO on there and they had like 7,000 people I think in the audience and it

00:06:01   looked like a rock concert which was really weird but I bet it felt really cool.

00:06:08   Like I bet it had a really interesting and exciting feeling to it.

00:06:11   I mean I bet it's gonna fit, WWDC is gonna feel like that too because they're doing it

00:06:16   at a music venue, right?

00:06:18   You know like the watch event, the watch event was at Bill Graham right?

00:06:23   And it looked strange, right?

00:06:24   They had those boxes along the side walls and stuff.

00:06:26   It looked like a music venue.

00:06:28   But being outside is a whole different thing.

00:06:31   The problem that Google probably couldn't have foreseen is that there currently is a

00:06:35   heatwave in that part of San Francisco.

00:06:39   And I think temperatures were around 90 degrees.

00:06:43   And not everybody was in the shade.

00:06:45   What's that in actual degrees?

00:06:48   I think it's like high 30s or something.

00:06:52   90 Fahrenheit to Celsius. Hey Siri, what's 90 degrees Fahrenheit in Celsius?

00:06:58   I don't understand what you mean. 32 degrees, okay, thank you Siri. That's hot.

00:07:05   Yeah, quite a bit, yes. And I saw they gave out sunscreen to attendees at the

00:07:14   Google I/O. They also had a little pack that came with like a scarf you could put on

00:07:19   your head. I mean what are you gonna do, right? Like you wanted to do it in a different venue

00:07:25   and it's hot and sunny. Like, you know, I kind of feel like you can't really criticize

00:07:28   them so much. It's like, what are you gonna do? Like, it's a heatwave. Like, you can't

00:07:34   stop that. Well, it's California so at least you don't have to worry about it raining.

00:07:38   But it is interesting. It's, you know, Apple's run into it too where like there's just not

00:07:43   venues indoors large enough for the people that they need to have in attendance.

00:07:50   I mean, what else can you do except go to some big outdoor stadium like this?

00:07:55   So, this is an interesting view.

00:07:58   Yasmin Evian, who is one of the hosts of Material on Relay FM, she tweeted,

00:08:02   "Outdoors is a fun twist for tech conferences, but standing in the sun

00:08:07   for an hour to get into a session is bad."

00:08:09   Like, and she was tweeting it later on that like, she missed a session because it was

00:08:14   full, then had to wait outside in the sun for like another 90 minutes or something to

00:08:18   get into the next session.

00:08:21   That's not great, right?

00:08:22   Like, it's like, that's uncomfortable.

00:08:24   And I don't really know what you do, but it's like, that's kind of the situation.

00:08:28   But mentioning Yasmine, Material recorded at Google.

00:08:35   That's amazing.

00:08:36   Yeah.

00:08:37   Their episode I think will maybe be coming out sometime today.

00:08:41   I'll put a link in the show notes to the material podcast, go and subscribe.

00:08:44   Like they're gonna have a better take on this than us for sure.

00:08:47   But like yeah, I just... can you imagine us recording at Apple?

00:08:51   Never gonna happen.

00:08:52   Yes, I could imagine that.

00:08:55   But it's never gonna happen.

00:08:56   But they recorded at Google.

00:08:58   So well, I mean, we could we could sit on the curb and record with a portable microphone

00:09:03   just outside of infinite loop.

00:09:05   I'm sure I've read something recently that like if you stand outside on the sign for

00:09:09   too long there's like a security guard will come and shuffle you away.

00:09:14   Could we sit in the car and drive around the loop and record...

00:09:20   Like a power slide.

00:09:21   ...power sliding around the campus?

00:09:24   I think we should give it a go.

00:09:25   I have one of those like, I have one of those little microphones you can plug into a lightning

00:09:30   port.

00:09:31   were recording from Apple, but just, you know, were circling the campus.

00:09:36   I feel like they maybe got a better deal than we did.

00:09:39   Yeah, I think so.

00:09:42   It, um, yeah, the one thing I saw some people on Twitter had it, there's like, there's these

00:09:48   big exhibits, because it's all outdoors, right?

00:09:50   You can just do whatever you want.

00:09:51   There's like a robot that's painting a giant rotating cube, like flinging paint at it,

00:09:55   which is the most Google thing ever.

00:09:58   Also, I kind of want one to put in my yard, but I think they have to drive the self-driving

00:10:03   cars buzzing around too.

00:10:05   Yeah, just mowing people over.

00:10:07   It's fine.

00:10:09   It's new and I think it's exciting.

00:10:12   My guess is that Google will probably continue to do this, but I think I would expect some

00:10:16   tweaks to it as they sort of work out the kinks.

00:10:20   Because what you've done in this scenario is you've created a festival, which is a great

00:10:26   kind of idea, like they've turned Google I/O into a developer festival rather than

00:10:31   a conference, and I hope that they continue to go down that route, because that sounds

00:10:36   like you're going there to learn stuff, you're going there to find out information, but why

00:10:41   not make it fun as well, right, rather than everybody just being inside of a conference

00:10:45   center all day.

00:10:46   Right.

00:10:47   Yeah, initially I thought the idea of a keynote outside was also in conjunction with something

00:10:53   related to augmented reality or something in the sky, I don't know, like drones or

00:11:00   Project Loon flying by. I thought about that but it didn't seem to be the case.

00:11:06   It seemed purely just they wanted a bigger venue and it was the one that made the most

00:11:09   sense to them because it's right outside.

00:11:11   Yeah, exactly.

00:11:12   I mean, this is the company that had people skydive onto the Roscosky and you're wearing

00:11:17   Google Glass, so I can see where you got that Federico.

00:11:21   That was awesome man. I know a lot of people didn't like that but like as far as product

00:11:25   demos go, it's a pretty good product demo.

00:11:27   Yeah. The closest one in the Apple world is when they introduced like airport wireless

00:11:33   networking.

00:11:34   And they jumped off the platform.

00:11:36   So they had Phil Schiller like on a scaffold and he had iBook and they had an accelerometer

00:11:41   attached to it and they were sending data from it across the wireless network and he

00:11:45   he jumped like 15 feet onto this big mattress.

00:11:49   And it's a really funny, we'll dig that up and find it,

00:11:52   put it in the show notes, but it's a really funny

00:11:55   little moment of weird stuff.

00:11:58   But I think that stuff is important to get people excited.

00:12:01   Going to WWDC feels like a conference, and that's fine.

00:12:07   And clearly people are excited, they're like

00:12:08   fist pump guys ready to go.

00:12:11   But I agree with you, Myke.

00:12:12   I like the idea that the atmosphere could be different

00:12:14   that like taking something like I/O or WWDC and giving people like more freedom to

00:12:22   mill about and interact with people and be in a different environment can lead

00:12:26   to some really interesting things just between developers communicating so I

00:12:31   think they'll my guess is they'll continue to do this but um I don't see

00:12:35   Apple doing it anytime soon but I think it would be fun for Apple to change

00:12:39   things up sometimes too.

00:12:41   Yeah, I mean certainly Skyyaving is better than the Anki toy cars that we got at WWDC

00:12:47   a few years back.

00:12:48   Oh god, why did you bring that up?

00:12:49   I know that we talk about the music presentation as like a bad presentation, but the Anki cars

00:12:57   was worse in its own way, because it meant nothing, there was no reason for it, and it

00:13:03   was at the start of what was a fantastic WWDC presentation.

00:13:08   Very peculiar.

00:13:09   Very, very peculiar.

00:13:10   Just watching and going like, "Why are you showing this?

00:13:14   And why is it not working even?"

00:13:16   It was kind of weird.

00:13:17   Yeah, it was horrific.

00:13:18   All right, so let's talk about what was happening here.

00:13:20   So one of the big kind of prevailing things that went throughout Google's keynote was

00:13:26   something that they're calling the Google Assistant, which seems to be like the big

00:13:31   brother of Google Now.

00:13:34   And it seems like what Google have done is they're taking everything that they've learned

00:13:38   from machine learning and from all of the speech stuff that they do and all the queries

00:13:43   that they have to run and they're turning it into an assistant, something that you can

00:13:48   have an ongoing two-way dialogue with. And they're building some of this stuff in now

00:13:53   and they were showing a lot of stuff where that what they wanted the future of it to

00:13:57   look like, you know, and like Sundar Pichai, who I love, like just guy is so cool. Anyway,

00:14:07   He was basically showing that you could have a conversation around booking some theatre

00:14:12   tickets like movie tickets with it. So you'd say like what's on tonight and it will show

00:14:16   you some stuff and be like I want something that's family friendly and it will refine

00:14:20   it. Then you say it will say oh what about Jungle Book and you'll say is that movie good

00:14:24   and then it'll be like here's some reviews it seems like people like it. And Google said

00:14:27   this is all stuff that they can get but they're like building it out now to the point where

00:14:31   you can have this sort of conversation with it. And one of the things that they really

00:14:35   focus on, and rightly so because they do it well now, is questions around context. And

00:14:41   this is in Google Now in the new Android and beta anyway, you can do it, where you can

00:14:47   ask a question and then ask it a follow on question. Should I give it a go?

00:14:51   Yes.

00:14:52   Alright, so give me a person like, hang on, let me try this. Okay, Google, who is the

00:14:58   Prime Minister of the United... oh, it stopped, hang on, I am running a beta here.

00:15:04   - This is-- - Okay, Google.

00:15:06   Who is the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom?

00:15:10   - David Cameron is the Prime Minister of United Kingdom.

00:15:16   - Okay, Google.

00:15:18   How old is he?

00:15:19   - He's 49 years old.

00:15:24   - That's what they can do.

00:15:25   - Yeah, okay.

00:15:26   - Right now, I know the demo's a bit wonky, but whatever.

00:15:31   The context and the follow on questions

00:15:33   is something Google can understand,

00:15:34   because what it was doing was looking at the page.

00:15:37   So remember that Google Now on tap thing?

00:15:39   Where basically it will look at what's on the page

00:15:43   and make suggestions to you?

00:15:44   That's what I believe it's doing there,

00:15:46   is I have the David Cameron Google page open at that point,

00:15:49   and it's seeing who's on the page

00:15:51   and understanding the questions.

00:15:53   Siri can't do this stuff.

00:15:54   Follow on questions just seem to throw it through a loop.

00:15:59   Like if you set a timer and ask it to stop the timer,

00:16:02   like I can set a timer! I was like no you what are you doing? like do you want me to

00:16:05   kill you? this is the sort of stuff that Google's able to do and this is the sort

00:16:10   of stuff that they're starting to build and it seems like eventually this Google

00:16:15   Assistant will be with you everywhere and then the rest of the a lot a lot of

00:16:19   the following on chunks of the keynote have Google Assistant as a core part of

00:16:24   what is going on. It seems to me that the Google Assistant is a combination of

00:16:31   Google Now, Voice Search, Google Now On Tap, you know, it's a bunch of things

00:16:36   taken together using the same technology, but obviously Google is sort of jumping

00:16:40   onto the chatbot trend. It's like the ultimate chatbot, right? Yes, it's like a

00:16:46   conversational experience, you can text the Google Assistant in the new, what do

00:16:51   you say, "Hello", "Hello", "Hello" app, you can text the assistant and it seems like

00:16:58   they're sort of going after the trend, but when they say we believe we have the best

00:17:03   technology and we're ahead of any competitor, I tend to believe that. And it's interesting

00:17:09   to me, however, that not even in this case with the Google Assistant, we're not seeing

00:17:16   the ability yet to combine multiple commands together. For example, I've always wanted

00:17:22   to be able to say "turn off my lights" and "turn on the coffee maker". You know, it's

00:17:27   two different commands. And it seems that any assistant is still not capable of doing

00:17:31   that, because right now they're focusing on context, which makes sense, you know, before

00:17:36   getting onto multiple commands, you want to nail down the context portion, which I think

00:17:42   it's, you know, it makes sense. Still, the demo from Google from the assistant is impressive,

00:17:47   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

00:21:08   problem.

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.

00:23:41   [laughter]

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.

00:25:41   Yeah, yeah.

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

00:37:40   to bet on.

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.

00:38:04   All right.

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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00:40:23   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?

00:40:37   Allo.

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.

00:44:02   Incognito.

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?

00:44:44   Yeah.

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,

00:45:18   you know?

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.

00:47:16   - Yeah.

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?

00:52:01   Maybe.

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

00:53:27   to

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

00:53:43   Apple

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.

00:54:08   Yeah.

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

00:55:06   happen.

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.

00:56:48   iMessage?

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,

00:57:53   so...

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

00:58:42   Nutella.

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?

00:58:49   Nutella.

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.

01:02:24   Right?

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

01:06:30   the idea.

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   We still don't know.

01:08:11   No idea.

01:08:12   Will we get over the social awkwardness of a screen on our face?

01:08:16   We don't know yet.

01:08:17   But all I know is the very limited experience I have with VR is I want it all in my life.

01:08:22   Like I want it.

01:08:23   Because it's amazing.

01:08:26   I still don't know.

01:08:27   See, you tried the Oculus, I still haven't.

01:08:29   I'm looking forward to having, I hope, the PlayStation VR demo units at the GameStop here

01:08:36   in Rome, maybe sometime in the next few months.

01:08:39   That's what I'm hoping to get. Or maybe when I'm in San Francisco, someone, so this is

01:08:46   an open call to our listeners, friends of the show, if you happen to have an Oculus

01:08:51   Rift in San Francisco during the week of WWDC, please let me try one.

01:08:55   Oh, there'll be tons of companies that have them. So yeah, if you have one in an office

01:08:59   that's close to Moscone or something like that, send us an email or get in contact with

01:09:05   Federico. We want to come and see it.

01:09:07   Federico wants to try one. Thank you, I would really appreciate that. And again, we can

01:09:12   exchange, we can trade. You let me try the Oculus and I buy you coffee.

01:09:17   Yeah, someone's gonna, they're gonna be there, so we just need to find the place.

01:09:21   Okay, awesome.

01:09:23   Android Wear 2.0 was the next part. So, something I didn't know, but there was a limitation

01:09:30   between what custom watch faces and custom complications could be paired together. That's

01:09:34   now been taken away all custom watch faces can show custom complications

01:09:37   that's great it's weird that it couldn't do that but you know what I wish I could

01:09:41   get custom watch faces so like you know swings and roundabouts you can one thing

01:09:48   that I really like you can get a message and you can draw with your finger a

01:09:51   response I know it's kind of ridiculous but sometimes I don't really get it

01:09:55   sometimes you could be out in the street and you don't want to talk into your

01:09:59   watch but if I can just say if I can just draw and say what I want to say

01:10:03   because a lot of the time the smart quick replies aren't necessarily going to answer the question

01:10:09   that is being asked of me. There are some times where I would get a slack message when someone

01:10:15   says "oh are you going to be around today what time" and I could just say "I'll be"

01:10:20   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   Shouldn't you just use your phone at that point?

01:10:28   Sure but what if I don't want to, right? Like the whole point of me having...

01:10:33   But the whole point of me having this watch is to use the watch.

01:10:37   What's the point of me seeing something and then going to get my phone out?

01:10:39   I might as well just never had the watch in the first place.

01:10:42   I mean, between the ridiculous keyboard that they showed and handwriting recognition, and,

01:10:48   you know...

01:10:49   The keyboard is insane.

01:10:50   No, it doesn't really make sense.

01:10:52   I can't understand how the keyboard can work.

01:10:54   I just cannot understand that.

01:10:55   But the handwriting recognition, great.

01:10:57   Let's go for it.

01:10:58   Yeah, I mean, between the two, handwriting all the way.

01:11:00   And I think maybe if you accept that, even the way that the screen kind of moves horizontally

01:11:06   to follow handwriting and to transcribe what you're drawing, I think it's also kind of

01:11:12   cute.

01:11:13   I just, maybe I don't see the appeal, but once you explain that, and I kind of get it,

01:11:18   maybe.

01:11:19   But I feel like for me, the Wear 2 was the weakest announcement of the show.

01:11:26   I think there's just less there.

01:11:27   I mean, but it did have a couple of things that I would like the Apple Watch to do.

01:11:31   So the keyboard entry, they said about the ability for Android Wear devices to automatically

01:11:36   start tracking fitness stuff.

01:11:38   I would like the Apple Watch to be able to do that.

01:11:40   Like the Apple Watch doesn't know I'm exercising until I tell it.

01:11:44   See that's one of my problems with the Apple Watch because I remember that a couple of

01:11:50   years ago Apple bought this company that they had this technology with a wearable device

01:11:57   to automatically detect what type of workout you were doing. And I had big hopes for the

01:12:04   Apple Watch to have this feature, which is you don't have to go to the workout app and

01:12:08   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   gym", it's just the watch recognizes what you're doing. And I really wanted to have

01:12:20   that. And maybe in the future, but you know, automatic workout recognition, that's, you

01:12:25   know, I think it's a really great feature for a wearable device. Because it's just natural,

01:12:30   you know, it's like having a personal trainer with you that says, "Look, I see you're doing

01:12:36   that, good job." Instead, it's a wearable device that you have on your wrist and it

01:12:40   tells you, you know, you don't have to open an app and say what you're about to do, I

01:12:45   can just keep track of that automatically. I think that's really smart. I think that

01:12:48   should happen with the Watch 2 in the future.

01:12:53   There's also a lot of stuff about decoupling the Watch, so apps on Android Wear 2.0, see

01:12:58   I think this was big but it didn't spend enough time on it. The apps can be standalone, they

01:13:03   can run on a device, they're able to connect to Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and cellular where it's

01:13:06   supported on their own and do their own stuff. That's what we all want with WatchOS and Android

01:13:15   where 2 has got it. Maybe we're gonna get it in watchOS 3, I think we will, but I think

01:13:20   that they just, they basically just ran through this section. And if they, and I expect there's

01:13:25   actually a lot more interesting stuff in there than they gave away. Because they had something

01:13:29   pretty big and weird to get to. Yeah, I mean the watch was fast and I'm sure we'll spend

01:13:36   more time talking about it leading up to June, but for me, like, part of the idea of having

01:13:42   the watch is like something simple like if I'm out mowing the yard I can leave my phone

01:13:46   inside and still you know get text messages and respond and do that sort of stuff and

01:13:51   it just doesn't it just doesn't work and so I think there's a lot of opportunity for Apple

01:13:56   to to look at what this is doing and maybe improve on in some areas I agree that the

01:14:02   keyboard text thing is a little weird but across the board I would like to be able to

01:14:06   text like type to my devices like ask Siri a question by typing like I think Apple has

01:14:10   a lot of work to do there but I think maybe we're finally seeing like smart

01:14:15   watches kind of finally become their own thing as opposed to just a satellite

01:14:20   device and that that's pretty exciting to me.

01:14:23   The last thing Google announced was Android Instant Apps. This is a big one.

01:14:31   This is very strange. It is basically the next evolution of deep linking because

01:14:38   what it's doing is deep linking but maybe to an app that you don't have

01:14:43   installed. So you'll get a link to something like they used like a B&H

01:14:49   photo and somebody sent them a link to the store or they was in a Google search

01:14:56   and they clicked it instead of it going to be an B&H's website it took them to

01:15:01   the application so the Google Play Store jumps into the middle and just downloads

01:15:07   the piece of the application that you need right at that second. Basically Google is

01:15:12   saying goodbye to the web.

01:15:14   >> Yes.

01:15:15   >> Developers need to modularize their applications, but they say that it's not a ton of work.

01:15:21   They said it's a day of work. And it said, depending on how complex your app is, okay?

01:15:26   So it's seven months of work. You can then, when you're in the application, they also

01:15:30   show like Buzzfeed videos. Somebody sent them a Buzzfeed link. They opened it. It opened

01:15:34   in the Buzzfeed video app, and then there was an install button, so you could then install

01:15:38   the application if you wanted to. And the way that they described it was your app would

01:15:43   be just a tap away on a billion devices, which is a very tasty proposition. I actually think,

01:15:54   looking at this, and looking at deep linking on iOS, I see the potential for Apple to do

01:16:00   this as well. Why would they not do this?

01:16:03   I feel like there's a fundamental fork in the road, maybe, for links and the web on

01:16:12   mobile devices.

01:16:14   Because we're at the point where the functionality of native apps and the integration with the

01:16:19   hardware is so ahead of what is possible to do with a mobile web app.

01:16:26   So we're talking about integration with payment systems.

01:16:29   NFC on Android, native assistance.

01:16:33   I said about NFC, something that was really cool, is like instead of downloading like

01:16:37   a parking meter application, you just hold it up to the parking meter and it just downloads

01:16:42   the necessary parts for that specific parking meter and just plays it.

01:16:47   Like that was cool.

01:16:48   Yeah, so we're at the point where native apps have all of this functionality that is completely

01:16:55   or mostly cut off from the mobile web, which also happens to be slow and to, quite frankly,

01:17:02   suck these days.

01:17:04   So the idea here is we're using the web and we're using links as the backbone for identification

01:17:14   of content, but we're actually redirecting users to the superior native app experience.

01:17:22   And how do we make that better? By splitting up apps in different portions, and you let

01:17:32   the OS take care of the content that you need to see, and in just maybe a couple of seconds,

01:17:38   instead of having to wait for a web page and having fewer functionalities than a native

01:17:43   app, you're shown just that bit of a native app that you need to see to engage and interact

01:17:50   with content. And I feel like it's the next logical step for any kind of deep linking,

01:17:57   which is you remove the overhead of users having to go to the app store, download the

01:18:04   app, and then open the app, maybe sign up, and then eventually get to the content. Instead,

01:18:10   you use the link and you use the deep link to bring up an instant app, a native app,

01:18:17   as all of the features that you expect, so native sharing, maybe assistant integration,

01:18:23   payment integration, so you don't have to insert all of your details again.

01:18:29   And at that point, it becomes clear that there's going to be maybe a future where HTML and

01:18:37   JS on the web are just fallback options, and they're mostly used to provide hierarchy,

01:18:45   provide directions, but all of the content that we're looking for is native code, and

01:18:52   it's native app content. I don't know how I feel about this, especially because I write

01:18:57   on a website. Maybe that's going to be okay, but it's just we're at the point where the

01:19:07   native apps have so many more integrations than mobile websites, so many more native

01:19:12   features that people expect, that it just seems obvious to me, and looking at what Apple

01:19:18   is doing with universal linking, on-demand resources on the Apple TV, which is the idea

01:19:23   of splitting up apps in bits and pieces and TVOS can get those pieces on demand.

01:19:30   It's not too crazy to think that eventually, maybe not iOS 10, maybe iOS 11, you use universal

01:19:37   linking and on-demand resources, maybe the next evolution of that technology, to have

01:19:42   something like Instant Apps on iOS as well.

01:19:45   I think both companies are approaching the same problem from two different perspectives,

01:19:51   but the end goal, I feel like it's the same.

01:19:55   One thing that I'm struggling with with this is the data required to download the section

01:20:00   of the application would surely be larger than the data required to access the website?

01:20:07   Well, it depends, right? There are some websites that can ask you for over 10 megabytes of

01:20:12   data or maybe, you know, 12, 15 I've seen also. So it's a problem that kind of mirrors

01:20:18   the current state of the web. It's so slow and so confusing and it doesn't have all of

01:20:25   the features of native apps, I do understand why Google is doing this. I mean, even if

01:20:31   you look, you should have seen this coming, right? Because Google has been thinking about

01:20:35   this deep linking problem for longer than Apple. They've done in the past, you know,

01:20:41   that feature where you look up something on Google search like a recipe and you're given

01:20:46   a Google Play result and you click that and in a bunch of steps you're taken to a newly

01:20:53   installed app and into that content. That is sort of the ancestor of Instant Apps on

01:20:59   Android. But I feel like Apple has all of the sudden list to get all of the pieces of

01:21:05   the same puzzle together. Because there's just an advantage of tapping a link and being

01:21:12   taken into a native app instead of a website. For as great as Safari is on iOS, I buy the

01:21:20   argument that sometimes universal links can be annoying because you actually want to be

01:21:25   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   I'm taken into the Twitter app, or I tap a link to Spotify and I'm taken into the Spotify

01:21:35   app instead of the web preview. I do like that. And maybe there should be a way to make

01:21:39   it easier for people to be shown this content. Honestly, if done well, with respect to bandwidth,

01:21:49   to data, to letting people choose what they want to do, letting developers choose what

01:21:56   they want to do, I don't see any disadvantages. If only setting aside the philosophical problem

01:22:02   maybe that weblinks should always go to a website, but I feel like we're past that stage

01:22:09   and the ship has sailed metaphorically.

01:22:13   I don't get that argument, like weblinks should go to a website. Like weblinks should go to

01:22:18   wherever the owner of that web link wants it to go. That's the way I look at it, right?

01:22:23   Like if Twitter decides they want it to go to their app, great. If they don't, they just

01:22:27   don't implement it. They own the website.

01:22:30   Yes.

01:22:31   Steven, do you disagree with that? I feel like if anyone's going to disagree with that,

01:22:35   it might be easier.

01:22:36   Yes.

01:22:37   I do disagree with that to a degree. I think that there should be some type of user control

01:22:43   there that I can you know choose to some degree what I want to happen when I tap

01:22:52   on a link because the worst thing we've all done this is you tap on link because

01:22:56   you need it to be in one place or the other and it does like the wrong thing

01:23:00   and on iOS there's no recourse for that like I guess I can uninstall the Twitter

01:23:04   app so it stops doing it but I think that there should be some sort of some

01:23:09   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   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   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   (dramatic music)

01:25:41   you