Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:06 ◼   ► From Relay FM, this is Connected, episode number 73.

00:00:11 ◼   ► Today's show is brought to you by Igloo and PDFPan from SMILE.

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

00:00:20 ◼   ► Hello Michael Hurley.

00:00:21 ◼   ► Hello Steven Hackett and hello to Federico Vittucci.

00:00:25 ◼   ► Good evening guys.

00:00:26 ◼   ► Oh good evening Federico.

00:00:28 ◼   ► Yeah, it's getting dark out here. I'm really tired of this winter season.

00:00:33 ◼   ► It's just started.

00:00:34 ◼   ► Yeah, it should be over, like, tomorrow. But anyway, how are you, Myke?

00:00:39 ◼   ► I'm good, I'm very good.

00:00:43 ◼   ► Yeah? Okay.

00:00:44 ◼   ► I've got a sticker on my ample pencil.

00:00:46 ◼   ► I saw the picture, so tell me, what are you doing? Because I showed the photo to Sylvia also.

00:00:52 ◼   ► What are... why... so why in general?

00:00:57 ◼   ► You're starting to put stickers on accessories, not just your main devices, but also the accessories to the device?

00:01:05 ◼   ► Don't you think this is a little too much maybe?

00:01:08 ◼   ► Nah, somebody sent me this, right? Someone sent me a link to this a couple of weeks ago.

00:01:12 ◼   ► dbrand, the company that makes skins for devices, they created an iPad... an Apple Pencil skin,

00:01:20 ◼   ► skin which makes it look like just like a regular pencil and I was like think

00:01:24 ◼   ► that's silly and then I was just talking to gray about it and I decided I would

00:01:28 ◼   ► just get one I just see how it came out it came today I stuck it on I think it

00:01:33 ◼   ► looks kind of cool so I figure why not just leave it on to see how I feel about

00:01:37 ◼   ► it because at the end of the day I have stickers all over my iPad you see a

00:01:41 ◼   ► preview of them in the picture that I took I'm gonna see how I feel about it

00:01:46 ◼   ► but I think it's fun. I like putting stickers on things.

00:01:49 ◼   ► I like giving things a little bit of extra personality. I don't like that the

00:01:52 ◼   ► Apple pencil is white, or white anyway, so now I have mine that

00:01:56 ◼   ► looks like a regular woodcase pencil. I can't help but notice your stickers

00:02:01 ◼   ► are oriented in a vertical fashion and I would imagine you don't hold your

00:02:05 ◼   ► iPad. They are not! You are not seeing all of

00:02:08 ◼   ► the stickers. Those stickers are. Stickers on other parts

00:02:12 ◼   ► of the device are facing in different directions.

00:02:14 ◼   ► Oh, so you did the full round robin on the stickers?

00:02:17 ◼   ► I went round robin, yep.

00:02:19 ◼   ► Because you look at something like the slack sticker, that could be any...

00:02:22 ◼   ► The Fittichi Sealer quality could be in any, you know, depending on how you're looking at it.

00:02:26 ◼   ► And you see what the pencil's pointing to? That's one of those new wooden slack stickers. Have you seen those?

00:02:31 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't mind being sad ways, Myke.

00:02:35 ◼   ► Okay.

00:02:37 ◼   ► That's no problem. I do like the combination of the colors in the stickers.

00:02:44 ◼   ► Yeah, those ones are all grouped up there because they look good together.

00:02:48 ◼   ► See, the thing is, I'm adding stickers to my iPad Pro more slowly,

00:02:56 ◼   ► because there's less space to put stickers on.

00:02:59 ◼   ► So like, I'm adding them slowly over time, so there's still a lot of space on it,

00:03:02 ◼   ► because I haven't found the right stickers yet.

00:03:05 ◼   ► Hmm. That's interesting.

00:03:07 ◼   ► I mean, the pencil is really like something now.

00:03:10 ◼   ► It looks like a combination of a pen and an actual pencil.

00:03:15 ◼   ► You know, it's got the little clip.

00:03:17 ◼   ► What do you call it? The clip at the top?

00:03:19 ◼   ► Yeah, I bought the clip.

00:03:21 ◼   ► It's an aftermarket thing.

00:03:23 ◼   ► I also bought a pen loop as well.

00:03:26 ◼   ► I'm all in on the customization of this thing, as usual.

00:03:29 ◼   ► At this point you should also buy a fake sharpening tool.

00:03:33 ◼   ► And when you go to a coffee shop you pretend you're sharpening your pencil?

00:03:36 ◼   ► I could do that. I could just get a regular pencil sharpener and take a blade out.

00:03:40 ◼   ► Yeah. So you can just be the guy, you know, the hipster guy with the sharpener at the coffee shop.

00:03:45 ◼   ► You already do drink the hipster coffee, so it would be a good fit.

00:03:49 ◼   ► It's a good coffee to drink, man.

00:03:50 ◼   ► Yeah. So anyway, I think we got some follow-up from Steven about his latest addiction.

00:03:57 ◼   ► We do have some follow-up. Before we get to it, I would like to point out

00:04:02 ◼   ► episode 13 of this very program. You are dead to rights Federico. Oh my god.

00:04:11 ◼   ► In which one Federico Vatici outlines his concern and desire to preserve software

00:04:18 ◼   ► from the App Store. Okay, okay I'll give you that. That's not all though. There are

00:04:24 ◼   ► episodes of virtual where you did the same.

00:04:28 ◼   ► Yes, okay, so I make fun of Steven, right, because of the OS X installers. I think, I

00:04:39 ◼   ► mean, if I have to be serious, I know why he's doing it and I appreciate the effort

00:04:44 ◼   ► and maybe if I had the capacity I would do the same with iOS. In all seriousness, I think

00:04:54 ◼   ► preserving software is awesome, something that people should be doing, but I guess my

00:04:59 ◼   ► main argument is big companies should be doing this. Apple should be doing this, Nintendo,

00:05:06 ◼   ► Sony, all the big guys with the digital content should find ways to preserve content and let

00:05:13 ◼   ► people use apps or play games again 20, 30 years from now. What I find amusing is that

00:05:22 ◼   ► I imagine this sort of attic in Steven's house and his family doesn't know about it, so it's

00:05:28 ◼   ► like I have this sort of different image of Steven collecting stuff secretly from his

00:05:33 ◼   ► family.

00:05:34 ◼   ► That's what I find amusing, even if that's probably not true.

00:05:37 ◼   ► But I like to think that Steven has like a secret base where he stashes all of his old

00:05:41 ◼   ► mechs and backups and stuff.

00:05:44 ◼   ► I do understand why you do that, Steven.

00:05:48 ◼   ► So if I poke fun sometimes, it's only for the sake of the show.

00:05:54 ◼   ► That's good.

00:05:55 ◼   ► That will help me through my therapy appointment.

00:05:57 ◼   ► I can poke fun because I just think it's crazy.

00:05:59 ◼   ► Well, there's that.

00:06:00 ◼   ► Well, see, Myke is a bad person.

00:06:03 ◼   ► I pretend to be a bad person.

00:06:06 ◼   ► Pretending to be a bad person, does that make you better or worse?

00:06:09 ◼   ► That may be worse.

00:06:10 ◼   ► Because you're aware that it's bad and you're still doing it.

00:06:13 ◼   ► No, because if you look at it from my perspective, I do it for the sake of the show.

00:06:17 ◼   ► So he makes me also a good colleague, not also a good friend.

00:06:20 ◼   ► I don't know if that makes you a good colleague.

00:06:22 ◼   ► No, it does.

00:06:23 ◼   ► Well, you put it that way.

00:06:28 ◼   ► And I did have some help.

00:06:29 ◼   ► I have some people to thank for helping me source some pre-release OS X stuff.

00:06:34 ◼   ► There were all these versions of OS X before they got to 10.0.

00:06:39 ◼   ► They had the developer previews and a public beta, and they had Rhapsody and Mac OS X Server

00:06:45 ◼   ► 1.0.

00:06:46 ◼   ► I now have the complete set of OS X installers.

00:06:50 ◼   ► So thank you if you help me on Twitter

00:06:51 ◼   ► source some of that stuff.

00:06:52 ◼   ► And the one guy on eBay I bought a disc from.

00:06:55 ◼   ► So the collection of OS X installers is now complete.

00:06:59 ◼   ► And I've been playing with some of those developer previews

00:07:03 ◼   ► on a PowerBook.

00:07:03 ◼   ► And man, the road to OS X was a bumpy one.

00:07:08 ◼   ► We'll just leave it at that.

00:07:10 ◼   ► If anyone was around that transition

00:07:12 ◼   ► or working as a developer,

00:07:13 ◼   ► that transition my hat is off to you for living through that time and surviving

00:07:17 ◼   ► it so it's complete. I will say that someone on Twitter, I'll try to dig it up

00:07:25 ◼   ► for the notes, mentioned they're doing this with iOS which of course is

00:07:31 ◼   ► probably harder because you have you have you would have to have it running

00:07:36 ◼   ► on the device like an old OSN installer I can burn a disk anytime and install it

00:07:41 ◼   ► on an old computer but...

00:07:43 ◼   ► - What is that just downloading the GM builds

00:07:46 ◼   ► from the developers in there?

00:07:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, but I think their point was

00:07:50 ◼   ► they have like a stack of old iPod Touches

00:07:53 ◼   ► and they run like various versions of iPhone OS and iOS.

00:07:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, that feels less secure or safe

00:07:58 ◼   ► than the way that you do it.

00:07:59 ◼   ► Like in keeping the actual files.

00:08:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, well the fragility is there in both ways, right?

00:08:07 ◼   ► Because I've got, say these OS X developer previews

00:08:10 ◼   ► as an example.

00:08:11 ◼   ► DP1 only ran on like two machines,

00:08:14 ◼   ► and then DP2, et cetera, ran on several.

00:08:18 ◼   ► And I've got like a power book and a tower

00:08:20 ◼   ► that can run those old versions of OS X,

00:08:23 ◼   ► but at some point those old G3 Macs are gonna explode.

00:08:26 ◼   ► And like at some point these just become bits on disk

00:08:31 ◼   ► where you can't actually run them,

00:08:34 ◼   ► which is like the problem with software,

00:08:36 ◼   ► like saving software and preserving it,

00:08:38 ◼   ► is that eventually like you run to the situation where it can't be run anymore

00:08:45 ◼   ► like the old you know stuff that ran on big punch card machines like you have to

00:08:50 ◼   ► have a punch card machine to run that you can't you can't virtualize it you

00:08:52 ◼   ► can't put it on something else and once all that all that hardware goes away

00:08:57 ◼   ► then it just becomes ones and zeros which is like it's sort of a losing

00:09:02 ◼   ► fight trying to preserve software where you know even if the my say that that

00:09:08 ◼   ► PowerBook Pismo I have, even if it dies, like the logic board goes up in smoke, I

00:09:12 ◼   ► still have the computer, right? It's not functioning, which makes it less

00:09:15 ◼   ► interesting, but I still have like the design of it and the weight and the way

00:09:19 ◼   ► it worked and the way the batteries came out. So it's kind of a different

00:09:23 ◼   ► thing and it's sort of like, if you think about it from the standpoint that

00:09:27 ◼   ► Federico spoke about on those episodes, it's kind of sad, right? Like

00:09:31 ◼   ► the games that we once loved or the software that we once got our work done,

00:09:35 ◼   ► it will die because there won't be a container, there won't be hardware for it to run on it anymore.

00:09:40 ◼   ► That's on the note.

00:09:45 ◼   ► That's on the note.

00:09:46 ◼   ► Emoji via text replacement system. We got a whole stack of tweets from people.

00:09:51 ◼   ► iOS as you probably know has a built-in text replacement system, so you can give it a

00:09:58 ◼   ► shortcut and you can give it the expanded text and it will fill it out if it feels like it.

00:10:02 ◼   ► I've had very mixed luck with this over the years. Yes. I've given up on it

00:10:06 ◼   ► It's supposed to sink. It's supposed to sink via iCloud. That's what it has never worked for me. Oh, yeah, that sucks

00:10:12 ◼   ► Yeah, it's really bad

00:10:14 ◼   ► and so what some people have done including these three tweets in the show notes have put some of their commonly used emoji as

00:10:21 ◼   ► Text shortcuts so like in slack you can do colon flag - D E colon and it will give you the little German flag and

00:10:31 ◼   ► you can you can sort of recreate that with this text replacement system, which is pretty cool and

00:10:37 ◼   ► It seems that Apple could leverage that technology they already have to mimic something like what slack does in

00:10:45 ◼   ► in

00:10:47 ◼   ► Typing emoji if you will instead of like hunting it down on that crazy keyboard. I

00:10:50 ◼   ► Have seen

00:10:54 ◼   ► Somebody do this. I wish I would have kept it for the show notes

00:10:57 ◼   ► there is one of the third party keyboards, maybe something like SwiftKey or something

00:11:01 ◼   ► like that, would suggest emoji as you type.

00:11:05 ◼   ► That's probably SwiftKey or FlexKey, maybe?

00:11:08 ◼   ► Yeah, Flexy.

00:11:10 ◼   ► Flexy?

00:11:11 ◼   ► What do you say?

00:11:12 ◼   ► Flexy.

00:11:13 ◼   ► Flexy.

00:11:14 ◼   ► Yeah, Flexy, probably.

00:11:15 ◼   ► One of those.

00:11:16 ◼   ► One of them, yeah, does.

00:11:17 ◼   ► And there's a bunch of emoji keyboards that do this.

00:11:19 ◼   ► I got a bunch of pitches in my email inbox after the episode.

00:11:23 ◼   ► What I've been doing since the past year is I created text shortcuts in the iOS keyboard

00:11:32 ◼   ► preferences and instead of doing semicolon and some kind of keyword, because I don't

00:11:37 ◼   ► care about flags and that type of stuff, I only care about emotions, like smiles and

00:11:43 ◼   ► hearts and monkeys for some reason? I don't know. So what I do is I use the standard emoticons,

00:11:50 ◼   ► So colon, parenthesis, and like colon or capital D, you know, for the big smile.

00:11:58 ◼   ► And basically the reason I do this is if out of habit I try to type out the standard emoticon

00:12:07 ◼   ► code, it gives me an emoji.

00:12:09 ◼   ► Because you know, I don't want to look like an old person using the old emoticons.

00:12:13 ◼   ► Not even my mom does anymore.

00:12:16 ◼   ► And now it's become sort of natural for me to type out the standard column parenthesis

00:12:22 ◼   ► and it gives me the emoji smile.

00:12:25 ◼   ► I set up like 10 or 12 of these for my most used ones.

00:12:31 ◼   ► And the problem is, like you said Steven, sometimes sync doesn't work and by sometimes

00:12:37 ◼   ► I mean all the time when you set up a new device, then for some reason, like out of

00:12:41 ◼   ► a miracle, like a couple of weeks later, it starts working.

00:12:45 ◼   ► I don't know if it's like wine that you gotta wait a couple of, you know, for a certain period of time for it to become good, you know, like zinc.

00:12:54 ◼   ► Or zinc is like a fine apple wine you gotta wait for deposit to kind of...

00:12:59 ◼   ► I don't know how it works really. Just wait a couple of weeks and it'll start working.

00:13:03 ◼   ► That's probably not a good way to put it, but that's how it's been doing for me.

00:13:07 ◼   ► I had a weird thing a couple of weeks ago. I have a few of these text selections for

00:13:12 ◼   ► like text replacement things for a few different commonly used phrases or whatever.

00:13:16 ◼   ► And I was using one I have like TTM, which says thanks man, because I say that quite a lot. And I

00:13:23 ◼   ► typed TTM and it expanded and I press send on a DM in Twitter and it just sent TTM instead.

00:13:30 ◼   ► Then I did it again and it did it again. So I look like a crazy person.

00:13:37 ◼   ► I was DMing with

00:13:39 ◼   ► That's pretty good and there is a tweet in here from

00:13:43 ◼   ► From Graham on Twitter saying that there is a one of Apple's Chinese keyboards has emoji in its

00:13:49 ◼   ► Suggestions, you know in the quick type bar that they're putting so he's a picture of a little horse in here

00:13:55 ◼   ► Yeah, that's how Apple should do it. Yeah

00:13:57 ◼   ► Yeah, why not though in the quick type thing? I don't know about you guys

00:14:01 ◼   ► I use that feature all the time

00:14:04 ◼   ► Like it is really cut down to the number of characters have to type on my phone

00:14:07 ◼   ► But it seems like a sort of every now and then not very often. I like the game

00:14:11 ◼   ► We used to do this as a group of us with along with Matt

00:14:16 ◼   ► We used to play this game where we would just smash the keyboard until and let quick type like pick words

00:14:23 ◼   ► And that's really cool until you ruin your predictive text on your phone because it just doesn't know what to do anymore

00:14:30 ◼   ► but it's I

00:14:33 ◼   ► I think I guess our collective point is that there are a lot of ways Apple could do this and Apple should do it. So

00:14:40 ◼   ► Yes, we last thing in follow-up Myke. This is directed to you has Google Docs been updated for iOS 9. Oh no

00:14:49 ◼   ► How do you feel how do you feel about that I feel great tell us how you really feel my I feel great

00:14:58 ◼   ► it's awesome it makes me so happy to work in a

00:15:02 ◼   ► really kind of just

00:15:04 ◼   ► constrained way every single time that I try and do anything in

00:15:09 ◼   ► All of the various Google apps that I use to try and get my work done

00:15:13 ◼   ► Yeah

00:15:16 ◼   ► So, do you know we're gonna keep getting the suggestions to hey, have you tried quip?

00:15:23 ◼   ► Hey, have you tried this other service? Why do you keep using Google Docs?

00:15:27 ◼   ► Do you know the pages works fine now with iCloud and collaboration?

00:15:31 ◼   ► So we are, again, we are aware of the alternatives and we just need to use Google Docs.

00:15:38 ◼   ► So I just feel like this disclaimer is until we're gonna get a multitasking update.

00:15:43 ◼   ► This is my disclaimer. So I want to take care of you guys by protecting you, by telling people "please don't send us suggestions".

00:15:51 ◼   ► It's not that we don't love you, we do love you and we do appreciate the suggestions, we just gotta keep waiting for Google Docs.

00:16:00 ◼   ► right guys? It's the best service I've ever used like for the collaboration. I

00:16:05 ◼   ► said this again, the collaboration engine is amazing, just the apps on top of them

00:16:09 ◼   ► is not so much.

00:16:11 ◼   ► Yeah it's, I mean my increasingly more and more of my work is done in Google

00:16:18 ◼   ► Drive, both at Relay and other places. It's just, it's just really critical to

00:16:23 ◼   ► how I work and hopefully they get that sorted. Someone on

00:16:29 ◼   ► Twitter and I think someone in our

00:16:31 ◼   ► feedback email had made the suggestion

00:16:33 ◼   ► or sort of like a winky suggestion of

00:16:36 ◼   ► that the Drive team is separate from

00:16:38 ◼   ► docs etc etc and like surely that is the

00:16:41 ◼   ► case and Google's huge and these apps are

00:16:43 ◼   ► really big and complicated so I'm sure

00:16:46 ◼   ► the different groups but that doesn't

00:16:48 ◼   ► really that doesn't really change

00:16:49 ◼   ► anything about the complaint like if

00:16:51 ◼   ► anything you could work in parallel like

00:16:53 ◼   ► you don't it just seems it doesn't

00:16:56 ◼   ► matter to me if it's different teams or

00:16:57 ◼   ► not it's something that should be addressed.

00:17:00 ◼   ► It could be different teams working on the apps, but like, Docs is part of Drive.

00:17:05 ◼   ► They must have the same overall leadership, right?

00:17:08 ◼   ► It's part of the Drive suite.

00:17:11 ◼   ► They go together.

00:17:12 ◼   ► There must be some collaboration there.

00:17:14 ◼   ► And also, like the other thing, that's not my problem.

00:17:18 ◼   ► As a user, I don't care, right?

00:17:20 ◼   ► Like I don't care that the teams are different.

00:17:23 ◼   ► It's been like nine months now.

00:17:26 ◼   ► So I am unhappy, clearly.

00:17:29 ◼   ► Really it's been how many months?

00:17:32 ◼   ► Well like, how long ago did the betas begin?

00:17:35 ◼   ► Oh well, June.

00:17:37 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:17:38 ◼   ► Yes.

00:17:39 ◼   ► Well maybe, I don't know, the guy at Google in charge of following the news was drunk

00:17:45 ◼   ► in San Francisco and he didn't notice until September.

00:17:49 ◼   ► That could be an excuse.

00:17:52 ◼   ► That is an unacceptable excuse.

00:17:54 ◼   ► Especially because being drunk from June to September is probably not a good strategy.

00:18:00 ◼   ► So yeah, we're gonna keep waiting and being sad.

00:18:07 ◼   ► That's what we do lately when it comes to Google Apps on the iPad.

00:18:12 ◼   ► I'm sorry, Myke.

00:18:13 ◼   ► I continue to be sorry about this.

00:18:16 ◼   ► There's lots of sombering things that have fallen asleep.

00:18:23 ◼   ► Let's talk about something slightly happier, shall we?

00:18:27 ◼   ► Yeah, sounds good.

00:18:29 ◼   ► So I have gotten into the world of the Sonos sound equipment and there's a note here

00:18:38 ◼   ► in Federico, "Can Steven explain Sonos to me?"

00:18:40 ◼   ► So I guess the pitch for Sonos is it's high-end speaker system but sort of like for the 21st

00:18:49 ◼   ► century so I just bought one of their speakers but you can I can go out and buy

00:18:53 ◼   ► others and I can go buy other devices they sell and basically you can kind of

00:18:58 ◼   ► build up your system over time and so you can do this you can have a couple of

00:19:02 ◼   ► what I have in different rooms of the house and so you can play music to the

00:19:07 ◼   ► kitchen or the bedroom and it'd be separate or you can tie them together so

00:19:11 ◼   ► you could say hey these are both in the living room and this one is the left

00:19:15 ◼   ► speaker use this one as the right speaker and they're all very intelligent

00:19:18 ◼   ► They work over wireless. The model I have even has an ethernet jack on the back of it.

00:19:23 ◼   ► You can do whatever with your wired connection.

00:19:25 ◼   ► And it basically turns speakers from something that is sort of a dumb thing that just plays what they're told to something that's a lot more dynamic.

00:19:34 ◼   ► And the hardware is great, they sound great. It's actually very Apple-like in a lot of ways.

00:19:41 ◼   ► the hardware I bought the the play one which is sort of like their their base model and

00:19:46 ◼   ► We can find a link to that put the show notes, but it it it comes out of the box. It's beautifully wrapped

00:19:53 ◼   ► It's a beautiful device. I bought it in white it sits in our kitchen and it really

00:19:57 ◼   ► Looks like an Apple device and then you turn it on and the onboarding is really good

00:20:03 ◼   ► and you know, we've all experienced this with like smart devices where

00:20:07 ◼   ► Like you have to join their wireless network and then tell the device no go use my home wireless network or like I do like

00:20:13 ◼   ► A Bluetooth bridge or something even all of that stuff, which is generally fiddly and

00:20:17 ◼   ► Home electronics is really well done

00:20:20 ◼   ► And they have their own like they work on their own deal. So this is not using airplay

00:20:26 ◼   ► there are some workarounds and some things you can do to make it talk to airplay, but

00:20:32 ◼   ► Out of the box that uses the Sonos app and it streams over your wireless

00:20:37 ◼   ► to the speaker and so what this gives you is it works around some of the

00:20:45 ◼   ► weirdness of AirPlay so the other night we're making dinner and we're playing

00:20:51 ◼   ► music from my iPhone to the Sonos and I needed to look something up on or I

00:20:57 ◼   ► wanted to look something up on YouTube real quick and I did it and the YouTube

00:21:00 ◼   ► audio doesn't interrupt with the Sonos as it's playing for my phone and the Sonos is

00:21:05 ◼   ► - This is continuing to stream in the background.

00:21:07 ◼   ► And so it is, it's a little weird that it is broken,

00:21:12 ◼   ► like it's not in control center,

00:21:13 ◼   ► like it's broken away from the system audio.

00:21:15 ◼   ► So it can play music from,

00:21:19 ◼   ► basically any streaming service you can think of.

00:21:22 ◼   ► It can play music from your local library

00:21:25 ◼   ► and your local podcast library, so it can't,

00:21:28 ◼   ► something that's a little frustrating

00:21:30 ◼   ► is it currently can't play music from Overcast

00:21:33 ◼   ► or any third-party podcast client,

00:21:35 ◼   ► you have to be in your podcast.app library.

00:21:40 ◼   ► But really for music, it's really great.

00:21:43 ◼   ► And so I've been listening to stuff just locally

00:21:45 ◼   ► on my, from my phone.

00:21:47 ◼   ► And if you use something like,

00:21:49 ◼   ► I know Spotify supports this,

00:21:50 ◼   ► where my wife and I can have a shared queue,

00:21:53 ◼   ► and so she can add a song, I can add a song,

00:21:54 ◼   ► and it just plays through it.

00:21:56 ◼   ► It's all really great, and I'm really enjoying it.

00:21:59 ◼   ► And a lot of people on Twitter were like,

00:22:01 ◼   ► "Yes, you will buy more of them."

00:22:02 ◼   ► and I can totally see how that's gonna happen.

00:22:05 ◼   ► But the question for me,

00:22:07 ◼   ► came to my mind almost immediately,

00:22:10 ◼   ► is why is Apple not in this space?

00:22:13 ◼   ► And I know that we've bemoaned Apple

00:22:15 ◼   ► doing a lot of different types of things.

00:22:17 ◼   ► And so I understand that there's friction

00:22:20 ◼   ► in my two schools of thought on that.

00:22:24 ◼   ► But this really seems like something Apple

00:22:27 ◼   ► would be good at and would want to do.

00:22:29 ◼   ► And they've dabbled in this in the past.

00:22:31 ◼   ► course there's the iPod Hi-Fi and a whole bunch of crazy stuff in the 90s

00:22:34 ◼   ► and now there's AirPlay and there are speakers that you can buy that have

00:22:38 ◼   ► AirPlay sort of built in. You can use an Airport Express if anyone remembers

00:22:42 ◼   ► those things they still sell them. They can put in your network and plug speakers into

00:22:45 ◼   ► and do AirPlay that way and of course Apple supports Bluetooth audio. We used a

00:22:50 ◼   ► Jambox before this in the kitchen and that just works great.

00:22:55 ◼   ► I think the question is even weirder when you consider that it was heavily

00:23:00 ◼   ► rumored including like a story this weekend in variety that Beats Audio was

00:23:05 ◼   ► working on a Sonos-like system when Apple bought them and that it seems like

00:23:11 ◼   ► according to sources Apple basically shut that program down and it just seems

00:23:17 ◼   ► like curious to me that Apple wouldn't want to be in the home audio space. I

00:23:22 ◼   ► don't know if you guys had any thoughts on that or not. I think that Beats

00:23:27 ◼   ► would like it just makes sense that beats would have something like

00:23:31 ◼   ► Why not have they have speakers right? They already have their little beats pill and things like that

00:23:37 ◼   ► Why not make a connected speaker? Yeah some description

00:23:41 ◼   ► Like it just seems like the next logical step for something like Apple music and I mean you look, you know

00:23:48 ◼   ► They do carplay right which is kind of this with some extra stuff, but in a car

00:23:53 ◼   ► I think it makes sense to have something like this in the home because the Apple TV isn't

00:23:58 ◼   ► that, right?

00:23:59 ◼   ► Like, the Apple TV is the video portion and then maybe they create like some kind of Apple

00:24:05 ◼   ► or iPod Hi-Fi for audio.

00:24:08 ◼   ► Yeah, I've been thinking…

00:24:10 ◼   ► Or they just buy Sonos.

00:24:12 ◼   ► Yeah, I've been thinking about this, right?

00:24:14 ◼   ► And I got a few friends who bought one of those Beats portable speakers and it's really

00:24:21 ◼   ► strange that they don't have a bigger one. And my theory is that maybe this kind of product

00:24:31 ◼   ► for the home, which is not exactly portable, isn't exactly in the range of beats kind of

00:24:38 ◼   ► market. They make portable stuff for trendy portable speakers, portable headphones, or

00:24:46 ◼   ► earbuds for, you know, for fitness and that kind of stuff and a speaker that you keep

00:24:51 ◼   ► on your desk or you keep on the kitchen table. It's not exactly, I don't want to say trendy

00:24:56 ◼   ► or hip, but you get the idea. Maybe that's the reason why they don't want to do it. Or

00:25:01 ◼   ► they just, you know, they tried, they didn't have the good electronics in place and Apple

00:25:06 ◼   ► bought them and they were like, no, what are you doing? We're going to do a new one, but

00:25:10 ◼   ► you got to wait. I don't know. It is strange.

00:25:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, and especially when you think about

00:25:17 ◼   ► like the, from the home kit angle,

00:25:19 ◼   ► which we spoke a lot about a couple months ago,

00:25:22 ◼   ► where Apple is doing some stuff like in the connected home,

00:25:25 ◼   ► smart home world, and it's not hard to imagine

00:25:29 ◼   ► that speaker or audio system or something

00:25:32 ◼   ► could tie into something like that,

00:25:35 ◼   ► and let alone like the Apple TV,

00:25:37 ◼   ► and I mean there's lots of like weird little holes

00:25:41 ◼   ► in Apple's strategy that could be filled

00:25:43 ◼   ► with something like this.

00:25:45 ◼   ► But yeah, maybe it's just as simple as

00:25:48 ◼   ► the Beats one wasn't very good,

00:25:49 ◼   ► or wasn't far enough along, and Apple just decided

00:25:52 ◼   ► that it wasn't something worth focusing on.

00:25:55 ◼   ► But I do think there's, I mean, clearly there's a market

00:25:57 ◼   ► for this, right, Sonos is a very successful company,

00:26:00 ◼   ► not to mention all of the B&Os and the Bose

00:26:04 ◼   ► and all these other companies out in the world

00:26:07 ◼   ► that do this sort of stuff.

00:26:09 ◼   ► And I think Apple could do well in it.

00:26:11 ◼   ► It just came to my mind like Sonos is a very Apple-like experience.

00:26:16 ◼   ► For the most part their Mac app is

00:26:19 ◼   ► Dumpster Fire but the rest of it is really good. Why not

00:26:23 ◼   ► look at it? Anyways, I'll keep you guys

00:26:27 ◼   ► posted on it. So far it's really been really nice to have

00:26:30 ◼   ► and we'll see if I add any. The sound quality

00:26:34 ◼   ► is good on the Play One? It is, it's really good and I've listened to a bunch of different types of music on it.

00:26:39 ◼   ► very clear. It does really well loud. It doesn't distort any and it

00:26:45 ◼   ► the app has a feature where basically you put it in the room where you want it.

00:26:50 ◼   ► So I just sort of at the end of the kitchen sort of almost in a corner and

00:26:55 ◼   ► you put it where you want it and then the iPhone app will walk you through

00:27:01 ◼   ► basically getting it set up for the room so once the room to be silent you it

00:27:05 ◼   ► actually does a really clever thing where even if your screen rotation is

00:27:08 ◼   ► locked it turns the app UI upside down because it wants the microphone and like

00:27:14 ◼   ► the speaker at the bottom of the phone pointed at the speaker itself and so it

00:27:20 ◼   ► prompts you in a very visual way to turn your phone upside down and then it plays

00:27:24 ◼   ► tones with the phone and the speaker and it sort of gets everything set up for

00:27:29 ◼   ► the room acoustically and I will say after doing that I could tell a

00:27:34 ◼   ► a difference in what it was doing. It really, at least for my uses, is definitely high-end

00:27:41 ◼   ► for what I need and I'm more than happy with the way it sounds.

00:27:46 ◼   ► Nice. Yeah, I think that the Sonos solution looks

00:27:50 ◼   ► like a good solution. It would just be really nice if it could also do airplay. That would

00:27:54 ◼   ► be the final thing that would make it super awesome. It has all the other good stuff,

00:27:58 ◼   ► but the ability to not be able to send overcast to it is, for me, a bit of a deal breaker

00:28:03 ◼   ► because that's what I'm mainly doing when I'm at home listening to audio.

00:28:08 ◼   ► Yeah and that's completely fair and hopefully there's something that is addressed at some

00:28:13 ◼   ► point but it is...

00:28:16 ◼   ► Can people build apps for the Sonos?

00:28:19 ◼   ► I know there is a program, I'm not quite sure of the details on that but...

00:28:27 ◼   ► You have to work with them I assume?

00:28:30 ◼   ► I think so yeah.

00:28:31 ◼   ► you can't just show up and be like... because I don't have an app store, right?

00:28:34 ◼   ► There's no Sonos app store, I assume. I don't know.

00:28:37 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm not real positive to tell you the truth.

00:28:42 ◼   ► Alright, so did you try the Apple Music beta program?

00:28:48 ◼   ► I don't have an Apple Music account, so no.

00:28:51 ◼   ► Oh, that's right, that's right. Sorry, I forgot.

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00:31:15 ◼   ► So we were discussing yesterday about what we were going to talk about today.

00:31:21 ◼   ► We had a couple of topics that have been sitting in our cryogenic chamber that we were looking

00:31:24 ◼   ► to bring out.

00:31:25 ◼   ► And then Apple dropped iOS 9.3 on us.

00:31:28 ◼   ► Yeah, that was quite the surprise.

00:31:30 ◼   ► Yes, it was a little bit of a surprise.

00:31:33 ◼   ► We'll get to a little bit later, I think, why this is such a surprise.

00:31:36 ◼   ► Should we break down some of the new features?

00:31:38 ◼   ► Probably the biggest user-facing feature is Night Shift.

00:31:42 ◼   ► Federico, what is Night Shift?

00:31:45 ◼   ► So if you remember a while back, a popular tool for the Mac called Flux came out on iOS,

00:31:54 ◼   ► and you could install this application by sideloading the file with Xcode.

00:32:00 ◼   ► Basically Flux is a utility that during the day keeps the display's color and brightness

00:32:08 ◼   ► at the same level that you usually use your computer with.

00:32:13 ◼   ► After sunset, or with the custom schedule set by you, the flux reduces the blue light

00:32:20 ◼   ► wavelength of the traditional LCD displays and it switches to a warmer yellow tint of

00:32:29 ◼   ► the display in front of you, so it's easier on the eye and it follows the idea that, according

00:32:35 ◼   ► to many scientific studies, reducing blue light before bed helps with better sleep,

00:32:42 ◼   ► less headache and less eye strain.

00:32:46 ◼   ► Apple of course came down with their ban hammer on site loading Flux, and now with iOS 9.3

00:32:56 ◼   ► to everyone's surprise, there's a new tool called Night Shift, which basically does exactly

00:33:02 ◼   ► what Flux does.

00:33:04 ◼   ► It's integrated with the operating system, so if you go into Settings, Display and Brightness,

00:33:09 ◼   ► a new "reduce blue light" setting. You can say "I want my device to reduce the blue

00:33:16 ◼   ► light after sunset until sunrise" or you can set a custom schedule, if you're like

00:33:22 ◼   ► me and you have weird habits when it comes to sleep time and waking up in the morning,

00:33:28 ◼   ► or should I say lunch time. You can also activate Night Shift manually, there's a toggle,

00:33:37 ◼   ► So it's really like low-power mode. You can activate it manually anytime you want.

00:33:41 ◼   ► You can also let the system kick it in and activate it automatically.

00:33:46 ◼   ► So I tried it last night. I've always been kind of skeptical about flux.

00:33:53 ◼   ► I know many, many people who swear by flux. They're like, "I cannot use my Macbook without

00:33:59 ◼   ► flux." And every time I set up a new OS X machine, I install flux because it's just

00:34:04 ◼   ► much better and it's been so much better for my eyesight and going to bed every night.

00:34:10 ◼   ► And I've always been kind of "yeah, I don't really believe this" and the fact that I don't

00:34:16 ◼   ► use a mic anymore didn't exactly urge me to try Flux. So last night I set up at about

00:34:24 ◼   ► 1am or 2am, I was already in bed, I was watching a TV show with my girlfriend, I installed

00:34:32 ◼   ► I activated the night shift on my two devices, so my primary iPhone 6S Plus and iPad Pro

00:34:39 ◼   ► are already on iOS 9.3 beta 1. Yes, I know I shouldn't, I'm not supposed to do this,

00:34:44 ◼   ► but whatever, they're stable, so it works for me. Initially, my reaction is, "Okay,

00:34:50 ◼   ► this is strange. This is very yellow, I don't like this, what am I gonna do?" So I treated

00:34:56 ◼   ► this and a few people told me, "Stick with it for a couple of hours and you'll see."

00:35:01 ◼   ► So sure enough, I kept it enabled for about 4 hours and when I was...

00:35:10 ◼   ► I got used to it, right?

00:35:12 ◼   ► So I worked on a Mac source article, I did a bunch of email.

00:35:18 ◼   ► After 4 hours and a half maybe, I went back into the settings, I disabled the night shift

00:35:25 ◼   ► and the blue light hit me so hard, my eyes felt like they were burning.

00:35:31 ◼   ► It was terrible.

00:35:32 ◼   ► Like, I was looking at this screen, I was like, "This is blue.

00:35:36 ◼   ► How did I use this screen at night for the past six, seven years, every single night?"

00:35:42 ◼   ► And I'm looking at this blue, you know, just awful retina burning display.

00:35:48 ◼   ► And it's just so nice.

00:35:50 ◼   ► I feel like one night without headache when I went to sleep, and I actually think I also

00:35:56 ◼   ► slept better, but that could be the placebo effect of the first night, so I'll keep

00:36:01 ◼   ► testing this, but it felt so nice on the eye, I'll give you that.

00:36:05 ◼   ► I think I'm a Flux/Night Shift convert, I think I really like this, and sure, Apple

00:36:14 ◼   ► kind of stole it from Flux, it's really similar, but it's a really nice done implementation

00:36:21 ◼   ► and I genuinely believe for lots of types of people, people who work at night but also

00:36:29 ◼   ► for the accessibility community, people with visual impairments or people who need to not

00:36:34 ◼   ► strain their eyesight, I genuinely believe this is going to be a big deal and it's great

00:36:39 ◼   ► to see Apple doing this, even if I can shake the feeling that they were kind of upset by

00:36:44 ◼   ► Flux and they were like "Sure, you upset us, we're gonna steal your idea." But still,

00:36:49 ◼   ► as a customer, it works really well. I mean, I can't imagine that this was built

00:36:57 ◼   ► in response to that, but clearly there's a Sherlocking element going on.

00:37:03 ◼   ► Yes. Well, they probably got the idea there and

00:37:06 ◼   ► then saw that Flux thing and was like "No way! We're doing that!" and then they killed

00:37:12 ◼   ► it. Could be. I mean, I don't know. Did you guys try it last night? Mm-hmm. I did. I'm

00:37:19 ◼   ► not on the beta because I'm not a crazy person. Steven, you kill all the excitement. First

00:37:23 ◼   ► up, no Apple Music, no betas. What did you do? Make OS X installers. No, I'm excited

00:37:30 ◼   ► about this because I'm one of those people, I've used Flux, I mean, as long as I can remember,

00:37:35 ◼   ► And it really is nice, and to a point where a couple weeks ago I was working on my MacBook

00:37:42 ◼   ► Pro and then I hooked up my wife's MacBook for something and she doesn't run it.

00:37:45 ◼   ► And it was like that experience you had where all of a sudden you feel like your eyes are

00:37:48 ◼   ► being melted from your skull.

00:37:51 ◼   ► So it is nice and I'm looking forward to it.

00:37:53 ◼   ► And it may be enough for me to play with the beta.

00:37:55 ◼   ► But I think it's a welcome addition, especially on the iPad where the screen is just so much

00:38:02 ◼   ► bigger.

00:38:03 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:38:04 ◼   ► I've never used Flux before.

00:38:08 ◼   ► It's not so much of an issue to me now because I very rarely work late on my iMac, but I

00:38:13 ◼   ► am working late in the evenings on my iPad and on my iPhone.

00:38:18 ◼   ► So I installed this and was surprised just how quickly I got used to it.

00:38:22 ◼   ► So I had it on my iPhone first and I was looking for it for a couple of hours, picked up my

00:38:25 ◼   ► iPad and I hadn't enabled the night shift and it was crazy.

00:38:31 ◼   ► Like it just looked so different.

00:38:33 ◼   ► I got used to the tone very quickly because my eyes just adjusted to it and it looked

00:38:37 ◼   ► fine.

00:38:39 ◼   ► And then like I was noticing that I would get a notification on my Apple Watch and it

00:38:43 ◼   ► was like my Apple Watch was a laser in my eyeball.

00:38:45 ◼   ► It was really weird how quickly my eyes just adjusted to it.

00:38:50 ◼   ► And it was also much, I think it was much nicer, like I could have the screen a little

00:38:53 ◼   ► brighter in bed and it wasn't too bright.

00:38:57 ◼   ► Because you know, Adina is sleeping and I'm working until like two in the morning or whatever.

00:39:01 ◼   ► And it felt like the light wasn't so harsh that it would disrupt her and I could have

00:39:07 ◼   ► my screen a little brighter than I usually would.

00:39:09 ◼   ► So I'm really excited about it.

00:39:12 ◼   ► I think it's a great new feature for iOS and it's something that I'm happy Apple

00:39:18 ◼   ► is thinking about because they're thinking about like how do people use their devices

00:39:21 ◼   ► and how can we make them more comfortable and I think that that is a nice addition.

00:39:25 ◼   ► Yeah you know what I'm actually scared of is that now that I have Night Shift on my

00:39:31 ◼   ► iOS devices, it's going to be an excuse to say, "Yeah, well, now I can work even more

00:39:35 ◼   ► at night because my eyes won't suffer." So I think I've got to balance that kind of temptation

00:39:44 ◼   ► in a way to say, "Yeah, I mean, working at night may be better now, but I still got to

00:39:49 ◼   ► keep myself in check because now that I have this tool, it doesn't mean that I can stay

00:39:53 ◼   ► up until 7 a.m. working just because I can." So, you know, it works. It seems to be very

00:39:59 ◼   ► Very nice, but take it easy people, don't work until 5am or 6am.

00:40:07 ◼   ► So what else is in 9.3?

00:40:11 ◼   ► So Notes got a bunch of nice improvements.

00:40:14 ◼   ► Steven, I know that you're going to be a fan of the new sorting options.

00:40:18 ◼   ► You can sort by date or by name, there's three of them.

00:40:22 ◼   ► It's named, dated and recently edited.

00:40:24 ◼   ► Nice, nice, very nice.

00:40:27 ◼   ► And you can also, this is a big deal for me actually, you can now password or touch ID

00:40:33 ◼   ► protect individual notes.

00:40:35 ◼   ► So if you go into a note in the notes app on 9.3 and you tap the share icon.

00:40:41 ◼   ► Which is a super weird place to put this button.

00:40:43 ◼   ► Yeah, let's not talk about the share sheet right now.

00:40:46 ◼   ► Anyway, if you tap the share icon, there's a new, I want to say, action extension to

00:40:53 ◼   ► say I want to protect this note.

00:40:55 ◼   ► So if you store any type of sensitive data in the Notes app, like your passport, your

00:41:00 ◼   ► personal documents, or health information, like I plan to, you can now say "I want

00:41:07 ◼   ► to protect this note so every time I open it, it's going to be password protected

00:41:11 ◼   ► and only me, in theory, only I should be able to access this note".

00:41:15 ◼   ► So that's nice and I'm glad that I switched to the Notes app.

00:41:18 ◼   ► I'm gonna put a bunch of scanned documents, PDFs, personal receipts in the app.

00:41:26 ◼   ► Like I have a copy of my passport in my Notes app, so now it would be nice to put a password on that note.

00:41:33 ◼   ► Yeah. There's a... it's kind of funny. The News app got a few updates.

00:41:42 ◼   ► Oh man, I'm so happy about that. Do I love that News app?

00:41:46 ◼   ► So in this groundbreaking series of updates, there's a better algorithm for recommending

00:41:55 ◼   ► stories to you.

00:41:57 ◼   ► The main view, which is called the "For You" section, like Apple Music, should be faster.

00:42:03 ◼   ► You can now tap videos in the main feed and play them without having to go into the story

00:42:09 ◼   ► and find the video and play the video.

00:42:12 ◼   ► What else is new?

00:42:13 ◼   ► going to be more editor's picks and that type of recommendations. And what else? Faster,

00:42:23 ◼   ► better recommendations, videos. Apple is kind of struggling with news. They did this weird

00:42:31 ◼   ► kind of thing a few days ago where they announced that they're reporting on how many users

00:42:39 ◼   ► are actually using notes. It was wrong and there are actually more people using news

00:42:44 ◼   ► that they were expecting them to be. They were like, "Hey guys, look at this new service.

00:42:50 ◼   ► Actually there's more people than we expected using this service."

00:42:53 ◼   ► It's a super weird article in the Wall Street Journal, I'll put it in the show notes, and

00:42:56 ◼   ► they have quotes from a bunch of different people at different media outlets and there

00:43:01 ◼   ► are so many people like, "Oh, it's okay, but we love our relationship with Apple. We love

00:43:05 ◼   ► Apple so much! News is doing okay! We love Apple!" It's so weird to read it, because

00:43:11 ◼   ► they're like, they put in these quotes on the record, but nobody wants to upset Eddie.

00:43:15 ◼   ► Yeah, it's strange, right? Because it feels like they want to say, "Well, news is amazing,

00:43:21 ◼   ► and many people use news, but actually even more people than we thought use news. So if

00:43:27 ◼   ► the publishers say we haven't seen much traffic, the fault is ours, because we…" I don't

00:43:33 ◼   ► like it's trying to spin a bad argument in two ways and I really don't understand it.

00:43:41 ◼   ► Anyway if you use Apple News look out for iOS 9.3 because there's gonna be a bunch of

00:43:46 ◼   ► improvements. This is nice. The Health app is gonna have two major updates or you know

00:43:55 ◼   ► two major new features. You can now view your watch activity data in the dashboard. There's

00:44:02 ◼   ► a new card that you can put in for the activity category from the Apple Watch, so you can

00:44:09 ◼   ► see move, stand and workout data with a... it looks really nice, there's a dark preview

00:44:15 ◼   ► card in the health tab. And also, for each individual category, or at least for most

00:44:21 ◼   ► of the categories in the app, the Apple now recommends you third-party apps from the App

00:44:28 ◼   ► So if you go into the weight category, for instance, you can see "lose it" or like the "white things" app for the digital scale.

00:44:36 ◼   ► If you go into the steps section, maybe you will be able to find "parameter++" or other step counters from the App Store.

00:44:46 ◼   ► And the idea is we have these different sections based on HealthKit and there's a lot of these apps on the App Store.

00:44:55 ◼   ► So we want to recommend relevant apps to the user.

00:44:58 ◼   ► Now, that's laudable.

00:45:00 ◼   ► That's very nice.

00:45:01 ◼   ► My questions are, and my concerns, I guess,

00:45:04 ◼   ► how are you going to recommend these apps?

00:45:06 ◼   ► Are we going to see the same apps over and over

00:45:08 ◼   ► and the usual suspects, like my fitness pal, Lucid,

00:45:12 ◼   ► and why things?

00:45:14 ◼   ► Or are we going to see more rotation

00:45:16 ◼   ► of these recommendations?

00:45:17 ◼   ► Are people going to care at all about these recommendations?

00:45:20 ◼   ► And are they going to have any sort of meaningful effect

00:45:24 ◼   ► on developers and users.

00:45:26 ◼   ► I feel like every time Apple tried

00:45:27 ◼   ► to push these recommendations, they got more negative

00:45:32 ◼   ► reactions than necessary.

00:45:35 ◼   ► Remember when they were pushing app recommendations

00:45:38 ◼   ► on the lock screen based on your location?

00:45:41 ◼   ► And then they had to add a setting

00:45:43 ◼   ► to disable that because people didn't really like the idea.

00:45:48 ◼   ► We'll see how it goes, I guess.

00:45:52 ◼   ► The Alta app could use a little more love.

00:45:55 ◼   ► There's a few apps that do a better job

00:45:57 ◼   ► at providing dashboards and visualizations

00:46:00 ◼   ► for your health data.

00:46:01 ◼   ► We'll see, maybe with iOS 10.

00:46:04 ◼   ► I keep saying this to myself, maybe with iOS 10.

00:46:08 ◼   ► If you're one of those people,

00:46:10 ◼   ► and Myke, you certainly are not,

00:46:13 ◼   ► with a car and a CarPlay unit,

00:46:15 ◼   ► maybe you can have a friend with the CarPlay unit,

00:46:20 ◼   ► Myke, I don't know.

00:46:21 ◼   ► Anyway, Apple Music and Maps.

00:46:25 ◼   ► So in the Music app, I think you will have the "For You" section, and in Maps you're

00:46:31 ◼   ► gonna have nearby recommendations.

00:46:33 ◼   ► So again, Apple wants to do more recommendations, so now if you plug in your phone, activate

00:46:39 ◼   ► the CarPlay dashboard, you're driving, you're getting recommendations from Maps for restaurants,

00:46:44 ◼   ► coffee shops, gas stations, you name it.

00:46:47 ◼   ► As long as Apple Maps can find it, and I have some doubts about that, you will get some

00:46:52 ◼   ► suggestions.

00:46:53 ◼   ► I guess that's about it.

00:46:55 ◼   ► So why did Apple do this?

00:46:57 ◼   ► Why are they doing this preview?

00:46:58 ◼   ► Why are they talking about it?

00:46:59 ◼   ► Why is 9.3 out in beta now?

00:47:02 ◼   ► Why does it have all these new features?

00:47:05 ◼   ► Why are we not waiting for iOS 10 for all this stuff?

00:47:08 ◼   ► I have two theories.

00:47:11 ◼   ► is they want to get back in the news cycle after CES, so they left the stage open to

00:47:17 ◼   ► Samsung and HTC and all these other companies, and they kind of want to back into the press

00:47:23 ◼   ► coverage in a big way. But also the other theory that I subscribe to is they're kind

00:47:34 ◼   ► breaking out from the annual, you know, September release cycle where they say

00:47:40 ◼   ► "Okay, we work on this OS for a year, we bundle together hundreds of features, we

00:47:48 ◼   ► give it to you in September, and if you don't like it, well, tough luck, you're

00:47:51 ◼   ► gonna wait another year for updates and changes." And instead, if they're

00:47:57 ◼   ► gonna do this, they were like "Okay, we'll ship the basic foundation in

00:48:03 ◼   ► September with some new apps, major updates throughout the year and until January or February

00:48:10 ◼   ► or maybe early March, we're gonna give you updates. And we're gonna give you meaningful

00:48:16 ◼   ► updates, not like bug fixes. We're gonna give you new features, design changes, maybe new

00:48:22 ◼   ► apps even, new system features like Night Shift. That's, I think, a good way to, not

00:48:30 ◼   ► only to say in the news cycle, but also to have more staggered releases and saying "we

00:48:37 ◼   ► wanna have this set of features, but instead of rushing them all in September, making them

00:48:42 ◼   ► unfinished, shipping them in a bad state so people complain and people accuse us of having

00:48:48 ◼   ► low quality software", which was true for the past couple of years, we're gonna do

00:48:52 ◼   ► more releases throughout the year and they're generally more stable and people are happier

00:48:57 ◼   ► because they keep getting, you know, essentially more bang for their buck in a way, because,

00:49:01 ◼   ► you know, just convincing people to upgrade is difficult, but if you continue to give

00:49:05 ◼   ► them more features, people are happy, and they establish this trend of saying "okay,

00:49:10 ◼   ► we're getting people hooked on the idea of performing regular updates, which is better

00:49:15 ◼   ► for us, better for people, and everyone's happy". At least that's how I would approach

00:49:20 ◼   ► this.

00:49:21 ◼   ► Yeah I mean it is an interesting break right where iOS has been very annual but

00:49:26 ◼   ► they've done this on the OS X side as well. Photos I think is probably the best

00:49:30 ◼   ► example dropped with a point update to Yosemite and maybe it's that the stuff

00:49:36 ◼   ► isn't ready maybe it's that iOS X is like really big or I don't know it is

00:49:45 ◼   ► unusual and I don't know if it's a like this is the way they're going to do it

00:49:49 ◼   ► from now on or we're gonna look back and this is sort of a one-off thing. You know

00:49:55 ◼   ► maybe it was that all the education stuff which we're going to talk about in

00:49:58 ◼   ► a couple minutes if all of that stuff was kind of ready to go and they

00:50:03 ◼   ► needed something consumer-facing too because like the notes and the

00:50:07 ◼   ► health stuff like while it's nice isn't huge I think night shift is the big

00:50:12 ◼   ► thing here and so it's the big new thing right it's the user feature right so

00:50:17 ◼   ► maybe it was you know the education stuff is cool but we need some other

00:50:21 ◼   ► things too and maybe this you know maybe something night shift was further down

00:50:24 ◼   ► the road and they brought it forward there's no there's no way of knowing but

00:50:28 ◼   ► I do like I like this sort of mid-cycle release stuff I think it to Federico's

00:50:33 ◼   ► point it keeps people engaged and excited and I think it helps keep the

00:50:39 ◼   ► platform feeling fresh other than just in September when it's new so I'm looking

00:50:45 ◼   ► forward to this making out there to the world.

00:50:49 ◼   ► I should mention one more reason for me not to use a Mac anymore. Now you can install

00:50:58 ◼   ► a developer beta. So it's not the public beta which has this feature. I've had this feature

00:51:03 ◼   ► for a while. The developer beta can now be installed with the configuration profile.

00:51:08 ◼   ► So instead of having to download the firmware file from Apple servers and then installing

00:51:14 ◼   ► through iTunes, you can install a profile from Safari on your iOS device, reboot the

00:51:20 ◼   ► device, when you open the settings again, you will find the beta seed available as a

00:51:28 ◼   ► software update, and you can do the entire process directly on iOS without having to

00:51:32 ◼   ► use a Mac. So, one more item checked off from my list of reasons why I need a Mac in 2016.

00:51:41 ◼   ► So it's just way nicer, the process.

00:51:43 ◼   ► It was incredible, I mean I just type a file, start the download, and boom, done.

00:51:49 ◼   ► It was so much nicer than having to use iTunes.

00:51:52 ◼   ► So yeah, I'm happy, you know, another reason why my MacBook Air can die slowly and peacefully.

00:51:59 ◼   ► So also, not really previewed but it's in the developer thing, people were talking about it,

00:52:04 ◼   ► TVOS is gonna get a nice update as well, it's gonna be TVOS 9.2 because

00:52:10 ◼   ► No one knows how version numbers work with tvOS.

00:52:12 ◼   ► Couple headline things, you're gonna have folders in the UI, you can put all your games in a folder, which would be nice.

00:52:19 ◼   ► It's going to support

00:52:22 ◼   ► Bluetooth keyboards, which of course the old Apple TV did and then it was dropped.

00:52:26 ◼   ► That's coming back now, sort of following in the footsteps of the remote app and that's nice.

00:52:32 ◼   ► I've had a Bluetooth keyboard setup with my old one.

00:52:36 ◼   ► I'm curious as if I'll do it this time around because the Siri stuff really is

00:52:40 ◼   ► been pretty good at least for my uses, so I don't know if I'll bring that keyboard back or not and

00:52:49 ◼   ► And there's a lot of stuff with app analytics. Federico, can you walk us through that?

00:52:55 ◼   ► So now you can, if you're a developer, I think the major

00:53:00 ◼   ► updates for App Analytics are, you can keep track of campaign tracking codes and see how they're doing and

00:53:08 ◼   ► if you have a TV OS app, you can now see how many people view your app page on the TV OS App Store

00:53:16 ◼   ► Which is nice. The main problem is I don't believe developers can yet generate

00:53:23 ◼   ► links to apps on the App Store. So for example, we just covered on Maxor the new VLC

00:53:30 ◼   ► app, the free video player, and at the end of the article we had to write "to get VLC

00:53:37 ◼   ► for your Apple TV you need to search for VLC on the TV App Store", which is just awful.

00:53:43 ◼   ► There should be a way to link to an item, because the hyperlink is the currency of the

00:53:47 ◼   ► web and there's no reason why an Apple TV as a web-connected device shouldn't be able

00:53:52 ◼   ► to have links to apps on the App Store. But yeah, I guess if you're a developer and you

00:53:57 ◼   ► you want to see more of your app analytics, now there's more to check out in iTunes

00:54:02 ◼   ► Connect. And also, I believe there's now a way to see how many people are converting

00:54:08 ◼   ► to paid in-app purchases. That should be nice. You know, with a lot of apps switching to

00:54:15 ◼   ► a premium model, that's a welcome addition. I keep hearing from developers that app analytics

00:54:22 ◼   ► is getting better and they're discovering how people are finding their apps. The big

00:54:30 ◼   ► omission here, of course, is the Mac App Store, which still has no analytics for developers.

00:54:36 ◼   ► The what app store? Is there one?

00:54:39 ◼   ► The one on the computer, Myke.

00:54:41 ◼   ► Oh, okay.

00:54:42 ◼   ► That one. Still no test flight, no analytics. It's really kind of bad. But yeah.

00:54:50 ◼   ► Feel like a ghost town.

00:54:52 ◼   ► iOS and tvOS, you should be happy.

00:54:55 ◼   ► Last thing that interested me about tvOS is that it now has a podcasts app on the Apple

00:55:02 ◼   ► TV, which is interesting, although I've seen some people tweet today that it doesn't currently

00:55:06 ◼   ► support video podcasts.

00:55:08 ◼   ► Hmm.

00:55:09 ◼   ► Well, it doesn't make sense.

00:55:12 ◼   ► It's like the main reason you would maybe want it.

00:55:15 ◼   ► It's like if you made a podcast app for the iPhone and it didn't play any audio.

00:55:20 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:55:21 ◼   ► what's going on.

00:55:22 ◼   ► - It's a peculiar omission, but.

00:55:24 ◼   ► - Oh man, you know, beta, Myke.

00:55:26 ◼   ► - Beta, yeah. - It's a beta.

00:55:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah. - It's a beta.

00:55:28 ◼   ► File a radar, Myke, file a radar.

00:55:30 ◼   ► - I'm not gonna do it, I don't care enough.

00:55:32 ◼   ► But I just thought that that was funny.

00:55:34 ◼   ► All right, let's take a break.

00:55:35 ◼   ► On the other side of this break,

00:55:36 ◼   ► we're gonna have Fraser Spears join us,

00:55:38 ◼   ► who is a new Relay FM host,

00:55:40 ◼   ► to talk about iOS in education.

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00:57:31 ◼   ► of this show.

00:57:32 ◼   ► - So a big part of the news about iOS 9.3,

00:57:35 ◼   ► in addition to all the consumer-facing stuff,

00:57:37 ◼   ► is a whole bunch of stuff geared

00:57:39 ◼   ► towards the education market.

00:57:42 ◼   ► and really, at least of what's on Apple's website,

00:57:45 ◼   ► that's the majority of what iOS 9.3 is bringing.

00:57:48 ◼   ► And we have brought a very special guest today,

00:57:52 ◼   ► really an expert in the field.

00:57:55 ◼   ► Fraser Spears is a co-host of the Out of School podcast

00:57:58 ◼   ► and a new show on Relay named Canvas

00:58:00 ◼   ► with some Italian guy who--

00:58:02 ◼   ► - Hey. - I don't remember his name.

00:58:04 ◼   ► So Fraser, welcome to Connected.

00:58:07 ◼   ► - Thanks, Steven, thanks for having me on.

00:58:09 ◼   ► So yesterday, obviously big news for the iPad in the classroom, which of course you have

00:58:18 ◼   ► lots of experience in.

00:58:19 ◼   ► Your school was the first one-to-one iPad program in the world, I believe.

00:58:23 ◼   ► Is that correct?

00:58:24 ◼   ► As far as we know, Naughty's contradicted me really on that yet, so I'm going to keep

00:58:28 ◼   ► saying it until someone does.

00:58:29 ◼   ► You are the pioneer!

00:58:30 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:58:31 ◼   ► It's been six years and I think your claim is probably safe.

00:58:38 ◼   ► Apple's announcements really kind of fall into several big buckets. The first being

00:58:45 ◼   ► shared iPads, which, and all this language, at least on Apple's public site is, I don't

00:58:52 ◼   ► want to say hand wavy, but it's not real detail rich. So what is what is the shared iPad program

00:58:59 ◼   ► about? And how do you think it's going to work?

00:59:00 ◼   ► Okay, so basically what this is is it's multi-users for iPad and as far as I can

00:59:07 ◼   ► tell it's specifically for iPad and I'm not assuming that multi-user is coming

00:59:11 ◼   ► to the iPhone or anything like that and this is also positioned as a feature

00:59:15 ◼   ► that is only available to education. So we can talk a little bit later about how

00:59:19 ◼   ► they might enforce that but basically what it is is that students can log into

00:59:23 ◼   ► an iPad, multiple students can log into an iPad and they will get a personalized

00:59:27 ◼   ► experience just more or less exactly like you get on OS X where you have and

00:59:32 ◼   ► I'm not sure what the credential is that you log in with whether it's a pin code

00:59:35 ◼   ► for every user or their Apple ID password or something like that but it's

00:59:39 ◼   ► there there is some mechanism by which individual students can be identified

00:59:42 ◼   ► and they log into the iPad and they get a personalized apps and data experience

00:59:46 ◼   ► on that device which of course is something that hasn't been possible in

00:59:49 ◼   ► iOS since forever and I think we can possibly thank the Chromebook team at

00:59:54 ◼   ► Google for doing such a good job of selling Chromebooks to schools that Apple

00:59:57 ◼   ► has finally had a push to bring this feature to iOS.

01:00:01 ◼   ► I know so you mentioned the Mac where of course a multi-user environment has been

01:00:07 ◼   ► around since day one and I know on the Mac and education enterprise there are

01:00:12 ◼   ► really a couple of different ways to do this you can have the user folder

01:00:15 ◼   ► sitting on a server and more or less sort of streaming to the Mac or you can

01:00:20 ◼   ► do synced home folders. I think this has changed over the years so my information is probably

01:00:25 ◼   ► out of date. But basically you have the home directory on the MacBook and when the user

01:00:31 ◼   ► logs in or logs out it syncs with the server and so the MacBook can be used offline or

01:00:36 ◼   ► away from the server. Is there any indication of which direction it's going here on the

01:00:41 ◼   ► iPads?

01:00:42 ◼   ► Yeah, my understanding is that the way that this works is that it's basically syncing

01:00:47 ◼   ► a delta of change data to and from a server.

01:00:51 ◼   ► Now I'm not clear on which server we're talking about here.

01:00:53 ◼   ► OS X server has this feature called caching server,

01:00:56 ◼   ► which can do caching for iCloud data and apps

01:00:59 ◼   ► and iOS releases.

01:01:00 ◼   ► And I suspect that's part of the mixture,

01:01:02 ◼   ► but also iCloud in the backend as well.

01:01:05 ◼   ► So what's gonna happen is when you log into a device,

01:01:08 ◼   ► it's possible that none of your data

01:01:11 ◼   ► from the last time you logged into that device

01:01:12 ◼   ► has left the device.

01:01:14 ◼   ► So if you have say a 128 gig iPad and two users,

01:01:17 ◼   ► each of which have 10 gigabytes of data,

01:01:19 ◼   ► then that data is just gonna stay there.

01:01:21 ◼   ► And it's only when the device comes under storage pressure

01:01:23 ◼   ► that some data is gonna be ejected to a caching server

01:01:27 ◼   ► or to iCloud, and then it'll stream back

01:01:31 ◼   ► once you log back into the device.

01:01:34 ◼   ► So if you do have a very large iPad and very few users,

01:01:37 ◼   ► there's a possibility that you'll have

01:01:38 ◼   ► a very slick experience because all the data

01:01:40 ◼   ► will be able to survive on the device

01:01:42 ◼   ► for both users at the same time.

01:01:44 ◼   ► But if you have a 16 gigabyte iPad and 20 users,

01:01:47 ◼   ► you're gonna have an agonizing wait

01:01:49 ◼   ► every time you reassign that device to a new user.

01:01:51 ◼   ► - So in the ideal scenario, would you have maybe,

01:01:55 ◼   ► you know, 20 iPads in a classroom

01:01:58 ◼   ► and each kid can pick up any of them

01:02:00 ◼   ► rather than like a kid can pick up any iPad

01:02:03 ◼   ► in the entire school?

01:02:05 ◼   ► - What you're really gonna want to do,

01:02:07 ◼   ► if you're doing a shared iPad deployment

01:02:09 ◼   ► is you're gonna want to take, say a cart of 20 iPads

01:02:12 ◼   ► and 20 kids in the classroom,

01:02:14 ◼   ► you're gonna want to say iPad number one

01:02:16 ◼   ► goes to Bobby every day,

01:02:17 ◼   ► and iPad number two goes to Alice every day,

01:02:19 ◼   ► and iPad number three goes to Colin every day.

01:02:21 ◼   ► So you wanna have the same users having the same device.

01:02:24 ◼   ► 'Cause if you just give them out willy-nilly,

01:02:25 ◼   ► then the possibility,

01:02:27 ◼   ► the number of users that might go through that device

01:02:29 ◼   ► over the course of a day or a week will be very high,

01:02:31 ◼   ► which will increase the possibility

01:02:33 ◼   ► of some data being ejected from the device.

01:02:35 ◼   ► Whereas if you only, you know,

01:02:37 ◼   ► let's say you deploy a 64 gigabyte iPad,

01:02:40 ◼   ► and you see that there's one pupil in each class

01:02:42 ◼   ► in the school uses that iPad,

01:02:44 ◼   ► then you can say, well, there's seven users.

01:02:46 ◼   ► On average, your users maybe make six gigabytes of data.

01:02:49 ◼   ► Therefore, we can size our iPad correctly

01:02:51 ◼   ► to increase the chances

01:02:53 ◼   ► that nobody will ever have their data sent off the device

01:02:56 ◼   ► to the cloud, which minimizes your login time again.

01:02:58 ◼   ► That would be the ideal scenario.

01:02:59 ◼   ► So the classic sort of seating chart approach

01:03:03 ◼   ► to deploying iPads to individual pupils in the classroom

01:03:05 ◼   ► is gonna be really important here.

01:03:07 ◼   ► You do not want kids picking up any iPad out of the set

01:03:10 ◼   ► and just using it.

01:03:11 ◼   ► You wanna make sure the same kids

01:03:12 ◼   ► get the same iPad every time.

01:03:14 ◼   ► - But that still seems a lot better

01:03:15 ◼   ► than somebody having to, I guess,

01:03:17 ◼   ► drag a cart around to every classroom

01:03:19 ◼   ► the class is gonna be in over the course of a day, right?

01:03:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, the cart-based approach

01:03:24 ◼   ► is good for primary schools, really.

01:03:26 ◼   ► You know, K through eight grade

01:03:28 ◼   ► or wherever that is in the US.

01:03:30 ◼   ► For secondary schools, the ideal scenario is one-to-one.

01:03:34 ◼   ► I mean, my school is one-to-one,

01:03:35 ◼   ► and I would argue for quite a long time,

01:03:37 ◼   ► actually that one-to-one is the right approach for everybody.

01:03:41 ◼   ► From an educational point of view,

01:03:42 ◼   ► I would say that is the game changer.

01:03:44 ◼   ► I was talking to my head teacher

01:03:45 ◼   ► about these announcements yesterday,

01:03:46 ◼   ► and she said, "Look, I would rather have one-to-one

01:03:49 ◼   ► Chromebook than shared iPads."

01:03:50 ◼   ► And I said, "I would rather have one-to-one Kindle Fire

01:03:52 ◼   ► than shared iPads."

01:03:54 ◼   ► And I think that's, to me,

01:03:56 ◼   ► that's really the number one thing.

01:03:58 ◼   ► In secondary, it gets very complicated

01:04:00 ◼   ► because classes split up and go back together

01:04:02 ◼   ► for different subjects.

01:04:03 ◼   ► So they may be separated for one subject

01:04:05 ◼   ► and together for another.

01:04:06 ◼   ► So getting those devices to the students where they go is a really difficult logistical task,

01:04:11 ◼   ► whereas in primary school it's a lot easier because the kids stay usually together, usually

01:04:14 ◼   ► in the one classroom for most of the day. So that's where carts can actually be made

01:04:18 ◼   ► to work, whereas in secondary schools, even with shared iPad, I think it's going to be

01:04:22 ◼   ► difficult to logistically get that sorted out for them.

01:04:28 ◼   ► So what I want to know Fraser is, from an administration point of view, once you create

01:04:34 ◼   ► multiple users and you set up this shared iPad system,

01:04:39 ◼   ► do you as an admin get any sort of web view or app

01:04:45 ◼   ► where you can manage and see the data of multiple users?

01:04:49 ◼   ► Can you do any sort of organization for that data

01:04:53 ◼   ► from outside of the iPad or is it just private to the user?

01:04:57 ◼   ► - That's a good question.

01:04:59 ◼   ► The second sort of tent pole of this announcement

01:05:01 ◼   ► for education is this app called Apple Classroom,

01:05:05 ◼   ► which is not at all gonna be confusing

01:05:06 ◼   ► with Google Classroom, which already exists,

01:05:08 ◼   ► but put that to one side for now.

01:05:10 ◼   ► And I believe, my understanding is that

01:05:12 ◼   ► the Apple Classroom app allows a teacher in the class

01:05:15 ◼   ► to assign specific devices in a set to specific pupils.

01:05:20 ◼   ► And what that will do is that will trigger at that point

01:05:24 ◼   ► that device to sort of prepare itself for that student.

01:05:26 ◼   ► So if that student's data has gone off the device,

01:05:29 ◼   ► it will start to reposition the data back on the device

01:05:32 ◼   ► before the student gets to it and logs in.

01:05:34 ◼   ► So if the Delta is small,

01:05:35 ◼   ► there's a chance that that data could be restored

01:05:37 ◼   ► before the student even gets to the cart.

01:05:40 ◼   ► But if the data is large,

01:05:41 ◼   ► then there probably will be a delay anyway.

01:05:44 ◼   ► So I believe the classroom app can help with that.

01:05:47 ◼   ► I don't know how much kind of analysis or insight you get

01:05:51 ◼   ► from the classroom app

01:05:52 ◼   ► onto what's happening on each individual iPad.

01:05:55 ◼   ► Usually a mobile device management server

01:05:57 ◼   ► would have a bit more insight into what apps are there

01:05:59 ◼   ► and how much data has been used and so on.

01:06:01 ◼   ► But those tend not to be really appropriate

01:06:02 ◼   ► for a classroom teacher to use.

01:06:04 ◼   ► - So how do you,

01:06:09 ◼   ► because I saw that there's another feature

01:06:10 ◼   ► called screen view,

01:06:12 ◼   ► which I believe that's supposed to let you access

01:06:15 ◼   ► and see what's going on on the iPad screen

01:06:18 ◼   ► of another of a student.

01:06:20 ◼   ► Is that correct?

01:06:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, so for me, this is the most important feature.

01:06:24 ◼   ► 'Cause our school's one to one,

01:06:25 ◼   ► so we're probably not going to use shared iPad very much,

01:06:28 ◼   ► but we will absolutely use this.

01:06:30 ◼   ► And I remember when we started our iPad deployment,

01:06:33 ◼   ► it was probably the first or second conversation I had

01:06:35 ◼   ► with our Apple people, our business development people here.

01:06:39 ◼   ► I said, "Look, where's Apple remote desktop for iOS?"

01:06:41 ◼   ► I really would love in the classroom to be able to,

01:06:44 ◼   ► from my iPad, go and look at another student's iPad

01:06:46 ◼   ► and either make sure that they're on task

01:06:48 ◼   ► or help them with something.

01:06:49 ◼   ► And finally, we're getting this, you know,

01:06:51 ◼   ► there's a lot finally going about these days,

01:06:52 ◼   ► but I think some of it's justified.

01:06:55 ◼   ► And I think it's not clear to me exactly

01:06:58 ◼   ► how much you can do with this.

01:07:00 ◼   ► I think it is just observation.

01:07:03 ◼   ► For example, I can't send a touch or a drag

01:07:05 ◼   ► to somebody else's iPad from my iPad,

01:07:08 ◼   ► but I can look at their screen.

01:07:09 ◼   ► It was described to me as a sort of,

01:07:11 ◼   ► as a quick look at somebody else's screen.

01:07:13 ◼   ► I don't know what that means.

01:07:14 ◼   ► Maybe can you only look at it for five seconds

01:07:16 ◼   ► or can you, is it a static snapshot you take or something?

01:07:19 ◼   ► Not absolutely clear to me.

01:07:20 ◼   ► But the other thing that you can see on the screenshots

01:07:22 ◼   ► on apple.com is you can see a view where

01:07:26 ◼   ► the class is kind of grouped by which app

01:07:28 ◼   ► each student is using on their iPad at the moment.

01:07:31 ◼   ► So in the classroom app, it seems like you can see,

01:07:34 ◼   ► there's 10 people using pages,

01:07:36 ◼   ► five people using Safari,

01:07:38 ◼   ► and two people using iTunes U or something like that.

01:07:40 ◼   ► And that would be really nice because then you can see,

01:07:42 ◼   ► assuming that updates in real time,

01:07:44 ◼   ► you could see if somebody had jumped into Angry Birds

01:07:46 ◼   ► or something like that.

01:07:47 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:07:50 ◼   ► - I like that in reading about it,

01:07:52 ◼   ► there are a lot of similarities to Apple or mode desktop,

01:07:55 ◼   ► which is still around, but it also seems like

01:07:59 ◼   ► more of a modern take on, like I know one of the features

01:08:01 ◼   ► Apple is kind of showing off on their pages

01:08:04 ◼   ► is the ability for the teacher to take any iPad screen

01:08:07 ◼   ► and AirPlay it to the Apple TV,

01:08:09 ◼   ► so if someone's working on a problem

01:08:11 ◼   ► or they've come up with a solution,

01:08:13 ◼   ► teacher can share that with the rest of the students

01:08:16 ◼   ► pretty quickly, which I think is pretty neat.

01:08:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, we've got Apple TV in most of the classrooms

01:08:22 ◼   ► in our school, and the kids are fairly au fait

01:08:24 ◼   ► with being able to start AirPlay for themselves,

01:08:27 ◼   ► but perhaps for younger teachers in classrooms

01:08:31 ◼   ► full of younger students, you know,

01:08:32 ◼   ► five, six, seven year olds,

01:08:34 ◼   ► it might be more helpful for the teacher

01:08:36 ◼   ► to be able to start with that

01:08:36 ◼   ► rather than have to wait for the student to get it right.

01:08:40 ◼   ► - Gotcha.

01:08:41 ◼   ► So that's kind of like the,

01:08:44 ◼   ► I think that's the overview of kind of the classroom

01:08:48 ◼   ► facing features of iOS 9.3,

01:08:50 ◼   ► but there's a lot of stuff behind the scenes

01:08:52 ◼   ► for people like you who are managing this stuff

01:08:54 ◼   ► It seems like the big one is managed Apple IDs and Apple School Manager.

01:09:00 ◼   ► So I know you guys have talked about it on your show numerous times, sort of the limitations

01:09:05 ◼   ► and the frustrations of working with Apple IDs in a school environment.

01:09:11 ◼   ► Does this new program alleviate some of those?

01:09:14 ◼   ► Yeah, I think it does.

01:09:16 ◼   ► I mean, the biggest problem with Apple ID was that you had to essentially make one for

01:09:21 ◼   ► every student and that's fine if you're dealing with like really quite old

01:09:26 ◼   ► students you know 15, 16, 17 year olds they probably already have Apple IDs but

01:09:30 ◼   ► if you're dealing with 5, 6, 7 and 8 year olds they do not have Apple IDs and

01:09:33 ◼   ► typically what happens if you wanted to use volume purchase and push apps to

01:09:38 ◼   ► devices there needs to be a working Apple ID on that device in order to do

01:09:42 ◼   ► that. Now that restriction was taken away in iOS 9 but it's still a job that

01:09:47 ◼   ► schools have to do because other things like iTunes U, now if you want to

01:09:51 ◼   ► participate in the classroom stuff in iTunes U, the student has to have a

01:09:55 ◼   ► working Apple ID in order to, you know, for iTunes U to know who's sending back

01:09:59 ◼   ► the homework for example. So schools still need an Apple ID. It's no longer so

01:10:03 ◼   ► much about getting apps but it's about getting access to services like iTunes U,

01:10:07 ◼   ► like iCloud backup and so on. So it's always been a very tricky and tedious

01:10:11 ◼   ► process. One, because you can't automate it in any way except using something

01:10:16 ◼   ► like Keyboard Maestro, which I have done in the past. And the second thing is that

01:10:19 ◼   ► you have to be very careful not to get banned by the App Store for spamming too

01:10:23 ◼   ► many accounts. There is actually a mechanism by which if you know the right

01:10:27 ◼   ► people to talk to you can get your IP address whitelisted for a certain period

01:10:30 ◼   ► of time. If you know, you know, at the beginning of August or September you're

01:10:34 ◼   ► going to make 500 Apple IDs. They will actually take that tripwire off your

01:10:39 ◼   ► account so that you can just go ahead and make as many as you need. That sounds

01:10:42 ◼   ► horrible to sit and do that. Yeah, oh it's agonizing. So I was fortunate to only have

01:10:47 ◼   ► to make 50 and that took me about a day and a half but imagine you had to make 400 or

01:10:52 ◼   ► 500 you know it's just it's possible yeah yeah. So we now have this thing called a device

01:10:59 ◼   ► assignment for apps which means that through your device management server you can send

01:11:04 ◼   ► an app to a device rather than just to a Apple ID. So you don't have to have a working Apple

01:11:10 ◼   ► on the device but that precludes you from using things that I change you from

01:11:14 ◼   ► depending on iCloud for backup and so on and so on so all the other things that

01:11:17 ◼   ► require an Apple ID, find my iPad for example which we've used a number of

01:11:20 ◼   ► times as well which is quite useful. So yeah I bet find my iPad useful in the

01:11:25 ◼   ► school. Yeah the problem is that sometimes the iPads go to sleep and they

01:11:29 ◼   ► go off the Wi-Fi and then you can't get to them which is agony as well so

01:11:33 ◼   ► sometimes you've got to do the old-fashioned way and send every people

01:11:35 ◼   ► the school looking for the device. But to be fair over six years we have lost zero iPads

01:11:41 ◼   ► on a permanent basis. We've lost them for a couple of days at a time but we always find

01:11:44 ◼   ► them again.

01:11:45 ◼   ► So I guess I guess the big question for me at least is why now? So that all these changes

01:11:52 ◼   ► coming 9.3 doesn't have a release date but we can assume this spring. Why now? It seems

01:12:01 ◼   ► off cycle for an iOS release? Is that because of the way schools work or is it

01:12:06 ◼   ► just this feels like it's done and they're kind of getting it out there

01:12:09 ◼   ► because they can? I think it's a bit of column A and a bit of column B. I was

01:12:14 ◼   ► told by folks at Apple that it's coming in these are coming out in January

01:12:18 ◼   ► because they want to take from now till the start of the next school year to

01:12:22 ◼   ► test this and then have people's feedback on it and so on which is is

01:12:25 ◼   ► wonderful to hear because if you listen to out of school you know that Bradley and I

01:12:29 ◼   ► quite often wish for Apple not to do everything in September because September is literally

01:12:34 ◼   ► the worst month to do anything for the school because we've just started. And you know,

01:12:38 ◼   ► when we when we buy new iPads, we buy them in June, July or August, we set them up, and

01:12:43 ◼   ► then a month later, they're obsolete, because everything comes out for Christmas. So I'm

01:12:47 ◼   ► also keeping my fingers crossed for an iPad Air 3 this this spring as well. So it's really,

01:12:52 ◼   ► really great to hear that Apple are listening to that message. And they're they're bringing

01:12:55 ◼   ► stuff out now so that we can kick the tires and give them feedback in time for the next

01:13:00 ◼   ► school session. So that long run-up is fantastic. In terms of why off-cycle for an iOS release,

01:13:06 ◼   ► I think the simple answer is Chromebook. The foothold that Google is getting in schools

01:13:12 ◼   ► with Chromebook is really starting to scare people at Apple. And rightly so, because if

01:13:18 ◼   ► you look at a school making a platform transition from say Windows to something else, the door

01:13:23 ◼   ► open for people to think of as something that's not Windows. If people make the decision for

01:13:28 ◼   ► Chrome OS right now, that's another tech generation before Apple gets another chance to go into

01:13:33 ◼   ► that school. So and I think shared iPad in particular is a very defensive move against

01:13:38 ◼   ► the Chromebook insurgency if you like into schools. And that's why I said at the start

01:13:42 ◼   ► of this segment, thank Google for many of these features because if it wasn't for Chromebook

01:13:47 ◼   ► putting that pressure on iOS in particularly American schools, I don't think we would see

01:13:51 ◼   ► these features at this point.

01:13:54 ◼   ► And that phrase is also what I want to ask you about in the end. Do you believe that

01:14:00 ◼   ► a shared iPad starts with the education market and Apple wants to test this and wants to

01:14:07 ◼   ► provide an alternative to the Chromebook, sort of revolution in the education space?

01:14:13 ◼   ► But do you think that this kind of multi-user support will be something that Apple will

01:14:17 ◼   ► also consider for the general consumer version of iOS in the future?

01:14:24 ◼   ► That's a very interesting question and I think possibly but I think it might take a while

01:14:29 ◼   ► and the reason for that is that the infrastructure and the mechanisms by which data is ejected

01:14:34 ◼   ► from the device and cached somewhere and brought back, that's going to be something that you're

01:14:39 ◼   ► going to want a sysadmin to have an eye on for a while, maybe like two years because

01:14:44 ◼   ► Because you know most households don't have a caching server on site, in fact I would

01:14:48 ◼   ► argue probably none do.

01:14:51 ◼   ► And iCloud storage and things, one of the things I'm not clear about is how much does

01:14:55 ◼   ► that eat into somebody's iCloud storage quota if their data is being cached off the device

01:15:00 ◼   ► and then brought back in.

01:15:02 ◼   ► And that's another question is can schools possibly get more iCloud storage space per

01:15:05 ◼   ► user that would be very nice to have as well.

01:15:07 ◼   ► So I think possibly yes but you might be looking at iOS 11 for something like that.

01:15:14 ◼   ► So Fraser, looking at all of these changes and all of these new things that have come

01:15:19 ◼   ► out, what do you think is going to make the biggest impact to your work?

01:15:25 ◼   ► Personally speaking it's going to be screen view and the classroom app.

01:15:28 ◼   ► I can see our teachers adopting that app very quickly and very deeply for what we do in

01:15:35 ◼   ► school.

01:15:36 ◼   ► Shared iPad is great for schools that are not going to be one-to-one.

01:15:39 ◼   ► Our school has been one-to-one for nearly six years now and we're not going to go back

01:15:42 ◼   ► from that.

01:15:43 ◼   ► I would certainly hope that schools that are looking at going one-to-one won't look at

01:15:49 ◼   ► shared iPad and think, "Oh, well, now we don't have to go one-to-one.

01:15:52 ◼   ► We can just buy a few iPads and that'll do us."

01:15:55 ◼   ► Because I think the experience is not going to be as good with the best will in the world.

01:15:58 ◼   ► It's not going to be as good as having your own iPad 24/7 available to you for everything

01:16:02 ◼   ► that you want to do.

01:16:04 ◼   ► But for me, the classroom app is going to be really powerful.

01:16:07 ◼   ► And also with my SysAdmin hat on, which is the other part that I do at school, Managed

01:16:11 ◼   ► Apple ID brings Apple ID up to, I hope, roughly where Google Apps is at.

01:16:17 ◼   ► Because we're also Google Apps school and when I want to, you know, at the

01:16:20 ◼   ► start of the year make new email accounts for incoming students, shut down

01:16:23 ◼   ► old ones, I just upload a CSV file and I'm done and it takes me a minute or two.

01:16:27 ◼   ► And I understand that's also going to be possible for Apple ID now as well. So I

01:16:31 ◼   ► can extract that data from our student management system, create a CSV file of

01:16:36 ◼   ► it and fire up to a web portal and then all of those Apple IDs are made and

01:16:39 ◼   ► ready to go. And that's kind of the thing we've been wanting for years and

01:16:43 ◼   ► years and years with iOS is that kind of feature to take away that kind of

01:16:48 ◼   ► long-term planning and hassle of getting whitelisted, sitting down for a day and

01:16:53 ◼   ► just making Apple IDs till your eyes bleed and then moving on with that. So

01:16:57 ◼   ► I'm looking forward to both of those parts the most. The Apple School Manager

01:17:00 ◼   ► part not such a big deal. I think Apple School Manager is really just it's a

01:17:05 ◼   ► unified name for a number of different web entry points for sysadmins. So the

01:17:10 ◼   ► device enrollment program, the volume purchase program, the Apple ID for

01:17:14 ◼   ► students and the iTunes public site manager. All those were different places

01:17:17 ◼   ► people had to go and now that's all been brought together under Apple School

01:17:21 ◼   ► Manager which is good but it's not the most important part of the announcement.

01:17:25 ◼   ► I guess if people want to hear more about this, more of your thoughts and

01:17:29 ◼   ► Bradley's as well, they should go and listen to Out of School which is

01:17:32 ◼   ► at Outofschool.net. Yep we're there every week. And if you want even more of Fraser,

01:17:37 ◼   ► which you definitely do, and more of Federico, you should tune in to our new show on Relay

01:17:42 ◼   ► FM called Canvas, which we both host. It's a fortnightly show discussing tips, tricks,

01:17:47 ◼   ► workflows and the best apps to living an iOS life. So you should go and check that out.

01:17:51 ◼   ► The first episode is out now and it is awesome. Fraser is there anywhere else that people

01:17:54 ◼   ► can find you? Yep people can follow me on Twitter @FraserSpears and my blog is spears.org

01:18:02 ◼   ► on the web. Excellent stuff. Thank you, Fraser. Thanks, guys.

01:18:05 ◼   ► All right, guys.

01:18:06 ◼   ► I think that brings us to the end of this week's bumper

01:18:09 ◼   ► 9.3 edition of the show.

01:18:11 ◼   ► We should probably see if we know I'm not going to try and do that.

01:18:14 ◼   ► Like rename the episode number to 9.3.

01:18:16 ◼   ► It's just 73. It's close enough.

01:18:19 ◼   ► Just put a point in the middle point.

01:18:21 ◼   ► Yeah, we can do with that.

01:18:22 ◼   ► If you want to find us all online, a few places you could do that.

01:18:24 ◼   ► You can go and find our show notes over at Relay.fm/Connected/73.

01:18:29 ◼   ► You'll find links to everything we've spoken about today.

01:18:31 ◼   ► If you want to find Federico online, he's over at maxstories.net.

01:18:36 ◼   ► And don't forget to check out our new podcast of which Federico is on two of them.

01:18:41 ◼   ► We have Canvas, which we mentioned with Fraser Spears a little bit earlier.

01:18:44 ◼   ► And we also have a remaster, which is our new video game show where me and Federico

01:18:48 ◼   ► are joined by the wonderful Shaheed Ahmad, who used to work at PlayStation.

01:18:53 ◼   ► And now we have all of his wonderful knowledge, uh, every two weeks.

01:18:57 ◼   ► So you can go and check that out.

01:18:57 ◼   ► Now we stole him from PlayStation.

01:19:00 ◼   ► whoosh, don't talk about that, you shouldn't mention that, all the lawyers will come. And

01:19:05 ◼   ► if you want to find Steven online, he's over at 512pixels.net and we're all on Twitter.

01:19:11 ◼   ► Federico's @thetichi, V-I-T-I-C-C-I. Steven is @ismh and I am @imike, I-M-Y-K-E. Thanks

01:19:18 ◼   ► again to Smile and Igloo for sponsoring this week's episode and thanks again to Mr. Fraser

01:19:23 ◼   ► Spears for joining us. Thank you for listening and we'll be back next time. Until then, say

01:19:28 ◼   ► goodbye guys.

01:19:29 ◼   ► Arrivederci adios