69: Snoozepocalypse
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From Relay FM, this is Connected, episode number 69. I am back from New York and
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today's show is brought to you by Braintree, Casper, and Foot Cardigan. My name is Myke
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Hurley and I am joined as always by Mr Federico Vittucci.
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Hello Myke, welcome back.
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Thank you Federico and Mr Steven Hackett.
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I enjoyed listening to the show last week.
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Oh yeah? Thank you. Yeah? Sweet, thank you Myke. I was America. I was the land of the free.
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It was pretty free. I felt free. Yeah, yeah, it was good.
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You felt free?
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Okay, that's good to know, Myke.
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I'm pleased that there wasn't too many references to my death, which is always good. Still a few.
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Still a few.
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You gotta assume you have died so many times already. It got pretty, you know, tiring after
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If somebody ever wants to plot out the amount of ways that I met my untimely end when I've been missing from this show
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I would appreciate that at some point just so I can kind of understand
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Isn't there like a TV show about this, like a thousand ways to die?
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I think it's a YouTube thing?
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No, it's also on TV in Italy.
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Yeah, I think like they did with many YouTube shows they turned it into a TV show
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Is it like dumb ways to die or something?
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Dumb, maybe dumb. In Italy it's called maybe a hundred or maybe a thousand ways to die?
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I don't know. Anyway, there should be like a thousand ways
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Myke dies or something. I mean, that's horrible for me though. No
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In a sort of light-hearted way, you know, like just for fun just like in theory, you know
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I love you Myke. I'm just trying to imagine all the possible options
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Steven can you please start the follow-up?
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I would love to. So the first follow-ups not so much follow-up as it is
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a continuation of our language discussion and
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I'm gonna squash all hopes that Federico is going to read something and some foreign tongue
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But Derek wrote in and was very confused Myke about a word that you use
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Why you speak and why you when you write I've noticed in writing as well. Would you like to?
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Tell us about about this this word choice of yours whilst
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Yeah, which is well it's one of those words that when I when British people say them
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I said them in varying ways and when I say it, it just sounds like a sound that I'm making
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Which is whilst as opposed to an actual word
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It's like the sound you make if someone like comes up behind you and like grabs you
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Yeah, like it was like a the air coming out of you
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So I guess maybe I'll try and slow it down like something. It's like whilst which is
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h i l s t maybe some people say whilst I don't know but it's effectively a
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different way of saying while and again I'm doing it again while while how do
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you say that the actual way Americans say it I say while but I'm from the south
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so who knows this is the worst podcast for any type of pronunciation because
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we're all wrong in our own beautifully distinct ways although everything that
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Federico says wrong is just more stunningly amazing. It actually
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becomes more right than it was in the first place. Well in a very particular
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way. This word whilst does mean the same as while and it's just one of those
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words that fell out of American English so they mean exactly the same thing and
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Derek who wrote and provided a link for a kind of an explanation of this but
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yeah while and whiles to mean the same thing but they just kind of the meaning
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remain the same but the word changed as it went from correct English to American
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English. Correct English. Nice one Myke. We also have a blog post from listener Alister
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speaking about the the Mac App Store and you know there was this this leak by our
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Dan Council we talked about of all these apps that have left the Mac
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App Store maybe weren't even ever there to begin with and Alistair kind of has a
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counterpoint of saying well you know there are a lot of apps that that are
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there that he uses and there's a bunch of good ones like things like Evernote
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and 1Password and Tweetbot, PDF Pen Pro, Byword, OneNote a lot of good OS X apps
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that are still in the App Store and some of these are App Store only like Tweetbot.
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I know it's a common link between most of the really good apps that are in that
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list. Right. iCloud. Yeah because you have to have you have to be in the App Store
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to use iCloud for any sort of data store or syncing or anything and so Tweetbot
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of course uses for example uses one or uses iCloud to sync things like
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MuteList and RedPosition and all that sort of stuff that makes it really
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seamless. Put it on your iPad, hook up your iPhone and you're in the same place.
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And you know some of these apps are available outside of the App Store.
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Things like Evernote I believe you can get directly from Evernote. I believe
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you can get 1Password and PDF Pen Pro directly. But it's a good
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post you go check it out but the question that leads me to is what you
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just touched on Myke. If iCloud were available outside the App Store like who
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would like is that holding a lot of these people there? I reckon so. I think it may be.
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You think something like Tweetbot, like I feel like at this point they would keep that
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outside the store and all of the apps that sell maybe in both places would maybe keep
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it outside as well. I think it's clear from this list that you can see that there is a
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market on the Mac App Store for certain types of apps like really high profile apps like
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Evernote and OneNote and stuff like that. It's good for them to be on the App Store
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because it's where maybe the most general of users will look for apps because it's the
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one place, it's in the dock. You'd want it to be there. And I think it definitely shows
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the Mac App Store isn't dead but I think it in an interesting way also highlights that
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there is a really healthy market for the direct route as well because it's half of Alistair's
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apps already split in half and I think that's probably the same for quite a lot
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of our listeners. Yeah I definitely have a lot of stuff in my dock that comes
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from the Mac App Store because again that it's not a choice for some of these
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apps that's a decision those developers have made that is right for their
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business but you know again it's it's just interesting that there's this sort
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of dual world where I don't mean I imagine that you could just get by on
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stuff that's in the Mac App Store and I'm sure that some users do but I mean I
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think something even as widespread as Microsoft Office you know you've got to
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get outside so I can't imagine the number of OS X users out there that are
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living completely within the Mac App Store. I just don't see that being a big
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section of the population. You know what what's interesting I guess as a thought
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experiment would be in an ideal state with a sort of parity between the Mac
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App Store and selling apps outside of the store. So imagine that you could
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choose between having all these types of apps, so Audio Hijack, Bartender, all
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these different powerful Mac apps on the Mac App Store, and at the
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same time you could also choose to have these apps outside of the Mac App Store
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but with the same benefits such as iCloud, what would you choose? And personally I would say
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with the same features
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with two options and the same product with no limitations
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I would choose the Mac App Store just because it's easier. And so if only, and I truly believe that buying from the Mac App Store
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presents an easier mechanism for all kinds of people.
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And so that's why I believe it's such a shame that Apple isn't letting the Mac App Store grow and accept
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different kinds of apps and different kinds of business models because
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technically it is a better system for people. It's easier, it's safe,
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you don't have to put in your credit card multiple times over and over. It's integrated with the system.
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It's just old and limited and it's not growing anymore. And
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that's why I think they're making a mistake here.
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You know, it's okay, you got options, you can go to the website of a developer,
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but you don't get the same features and you don't get the same experience.
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And I know that, you know, with two options in an equal state,
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I would always choose the Mac App Store, but right now I can't and, you know, that's why I think it should be improved.
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Totally agree.
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Adrian also points out that Apple have trademarked the word "AirPods"
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and this is probably on the back of the conversations last week about the removal or potential removal of the
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3.5 millimeter jack for headphones and
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Yeah, I mean Apple patents and trademarks a ton of things
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But I guess when you look at that word air pods does seem like a root naming route that they would go down if they
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made Bluetooth headphones
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It doesn't mean they're gonna do it
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Yeah, I mean they you know Apple has all sorts of patents and trademarks for all sorts of things
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But I agree with you the name would fall into their
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scheme pretty nicely. I think at some point they may
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you know I have
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the, but you have them too I think that is it the Powerbeats
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the Bluetooth Beats. Oh no I got the
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Bluetooth Beats Studio wireless ones
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and I got the Jaybird BlueBuds. Jaybird, that's what I'm thinking of.
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You know there are, Beats has one as well, there are products now that are
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Sort of wireless earbuds and most of them have a cable in between them and like the microphone ends up kind of behind your ear
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And it doesn't really work all that well and the things that I've tried so there are things like what this could be out there now
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again, there's this tension with now that Apple owns beats of like
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If Apple were to do this at some point, I think it'd be really far down the road
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I think if they're going a lightning they're gonna have lightning ear pods for the foreseeable future
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But if they do offer some sort of Bluetooth option, I'm sure it would be an additional product
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You know Apple has always sold there's the premium earbuds
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Or they have for a long time. I've got a pair of the original somewhere
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But now there's this tension where they own beats as well. It's like would Apple have a Apple branded
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AirPods type thing and also the beats wireless stuff and these other brands like I don't know
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It's it's it'll be interesting to see how that plays out
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Well, they're gonna put something in the box in theory, right? Maybe eventually, but I don't know.
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That's why they might have AirPods and Beats. Beats won't be in the box.
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Yeah, but I think if Apple drops the 3.5mm jack, I don't think they're gonna go straight to
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Bluetooth. I think they're going to step in between with Lightning EarPods to keep from a
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cost perspective. Yeah, I agree with that notion. We'll see. It'll be interesting either way.
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Stephen you did something which I think is very expected but I think is unexpected for you
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This is the part of the show where we talk about what we bought because we are all three weak
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You are the weakest currently soft boned
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Young man open-walleted
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Is that is that a phrase we're gonna use now it is now
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Yeah, so, you know I had
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I picked up like the 32 gig iPad Pro just to check it out spend some time with it trying to understand it
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Eventually get around to writing a review when I have time
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And I had to return it because these things have a return policy
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And at some point I'm gonna get flagged for doing stuff like this, but I haven't yet
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and I went back to my iPad Air 2 for a couple of weeks and
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was immediately pretty
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cramped on the on the air too and felt like it was sort of
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Sort of the wrong size
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I mean if you remember back when Myke was right started and a lot of that sort of took off bigger than just our show
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With CGP gray and like the conversation that the iPhone 6 for for him and I think for me too and for you guys
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It's sort of the wrong size phone like the 5 5 s is really nice and this the plus is really nice
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But the 6 kind of says in this weird in-between
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Spot and I kind of am beginning to feel that way about the air - I still think Apple is right to start with that
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Size, I think that I was at 9.7 inch display makes a lot of sense for a lot of people
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but for me, it's just sort of the wrong size now where I want to do this multitasking and
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Side-by-side stuff and it's just all especially the keyboard up very cramped on the air -
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Where the iPad mini which I've also been using my kids have one and I've been using it and actually
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There's a lot to like about the iPad mini still.
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That stuff is so cramped on there doesn't make any sense.
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I'm still using, if I pick up their iPad mini for something, I'm doing one app at a time.
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But the the Pro and the Air 2 feel just like extremely different devices. And so I ended up going back and getting the
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Pro because 32 gig is too small for me. And I really wish there was a 64 gig
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so I don't have to buy the most expensive one, but that's life.
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So yes, I've got it in my bag. I've been setting it up as new.
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from like a clean start not showing my backup which is nice and
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Yeah, so it's my iPad of choice for the next year
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Welcome to the new club. I don't know what yeah, maybe this is teachy is right
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I don't know, but so I had I had I had thoughts about that because
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Think the mic was right air is coming to a close. You know with end of the year. It can be very
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Gonna carry on about 18 months. No why?
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Luigi the year Luigi was 18 months. We are not using the year of Luigi as a measurement unit Myke. I would like to
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You know in in space stuff they just make basically make up measurement
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So you have the astronomical unit which is the distance between the earth and the Sun which means nothing to anybody but humans
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Right like like oh, it's one of you away. That's not a thing
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Don't all measurements mean nothing to anybody but humans
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You have to listen to liftoff and find out if they're aliens this week. But um
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So I agree with Federica the year of Luigi seems like a weird measuring stick
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But I also don't think that Myke was right like at some point
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It has to shift and I think it's Federica's turn to pick up the mantle
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So I second the motion that it is the year of of teaching
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Go with that for 2016. I bet he takes 18 months though
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Maybe well, yeah, because I'm better than you Myke
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Well, you got the Italian plumbers going on, yeah?
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You know Myke edits this show, right? That's just going to be gone from the edit.
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It's just a long beep.
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You're going to make me sound awful.
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No, Myke, I think you've done a pretty good job with 2015.
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Many of your opinions have been right.
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Yeah, it's been a good year, I must say. I can see that, you know, it feels like if you're
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ever going to stop it, the turn of the year makes sense.
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about buying things I have actually finally purchased a smart keyboard.
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Oh yeah? It is currently 15 minutes away from my home. A man called Tony has it in a van
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and he's driving it and I'm tracking him. You should get Tony on the podcast when he
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shows up. I'll take the microphone downstairs and be like "how has your journey been today
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Tony?" Can you really? No, I would have to take my entire computer with me. Or just buy
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really long XLR cable. I haven't got the time to get that. Or invite Tony upstairs. There's
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no world in which Tony knocks on my door and I say come to my bedroom in that he is gonna
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do that, is he? That is a whole lot of a different show, that is not this show. Wow. So we have
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one last piece of follow up and this is a question we've been asking ourselves for a
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a while now, is Google Docs updated for iOS 9 yet?
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- No! (laughs)
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Drive is, right?
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This has been established, Drive is.
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So we know it's coming, right?
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That is the kids' theory. - As is Chrome, right?
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- As is Chrome, but Google Drive being updated
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is kind of the first piece of that puzzle,
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because that's the whole suite.
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So fingers crossed, any day now.
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I really would like that day to be now, though.
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But it's coming.
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This is just incredible, right? I mean it's been what, two, three months?
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But this is what it was like when they were updating for the 6 Plus.
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Well, it doesn't mean it's right. It's a stupid policy.
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I'm not saying it's a good thing, I'm just saying it's their thing.
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Yeah, it sounds surprising and it's always disappointing.
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I mean, it's Google, it's not like we're asking some dude in some country with limited resources
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to update a suite of apps for a new OS.
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It's a big, huge company.
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I really don't understand why they're doing this.
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- It feels political to me.
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- Okay, if it's political, then it's just bad for users.
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- Yeah. - I mean,
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you can have the ideas that you wanna have,
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but it doesn't mean it's right for people like us,
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or people in general.
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I mean, it's just you use the app on the iPad Pro,
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It's awful. And what's even worse is that I don't want to switch to something else
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because I know I enjoy the benefits of Google's approach. It's all in
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one system, one account. I got my Gmail, I got my Google Docs, I got my Google Calendar.
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I don't want to switch to something else. I know that I got options. I could use
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other services for document collaboration. I just don't want to
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switch. And so I'm left here complaining alone, basically, with you too.
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I'm in good company, but we don't have a good app.
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Federico, you are not alone. I am here with you.
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Thank you, Myke. Thank you.
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This week's episode is brought to you by Braintree, code for easy online payments.
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They are the payment solution used by so many apps that I expect at least a couple of on your iPhone.
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Thank you so much to Braintree for their support of this show.
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Switch support will kick into some topics this week. We have a couple of interesting
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topics to say the least. We launched membership at Relay FM yesterday as we were called this.
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Basically a Relay FM membership comes with a bunch of cool little perks and they're available
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across all the different tiers that we have. So every year we're going to do some bonus
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episodes that will coincide with Relay FM's birthday in August. So there will be bonus
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episodes of all of your favourite shows and we'll be doing some fun stuff for those. There's
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There's going to be a monthly behind the scenes newsletter which kind of will go into detail
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about some of the stuff that we're doing at relay FM and you'll get some cool little tidbits
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and Stephen's going to be putting that together for you every month.
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Also you can get 15% off anything in our merchandise store so buttons, stickers and relay FM t-shirts
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you'll get 15% off any of this and all of it for being a relay FM member.
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We have a bunch of different ways that you can become a member of relay FM.
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There are three different tiers.
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We have the silver tier at $5 a month, the gold tier at $10 a month or you can pay annually
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for $100 a year.
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We'd love it if you'd go and become a member of your favorite shows, you can become a member
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of any of the shows.
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So for example if you really love Connected, which I'm sure that you do, you should become
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a member and give Connected some money.
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Or if you love all of the shows that we have at Relay FM, you can do that, you can become
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a member and support all of your favorite shows and money will be given to all of the
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hosts of Relay FM.
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So we give as much money as we can to the hosts of the shows so when you become a member
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and you choose which shows you want to support, us outside of transaction fees will be giving
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all of the money to the hosts.
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So if you really do love one or two shows more than all the others, you should try and
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support them because then more money will go to your favorite hosts.
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So please go check that out at relay.fm/membership.
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It's a way to have our hosts be rewarded a little bit more for the time they put in.
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We're still going to be an advertising focused business.
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the way that this industry works and it works well for us. This is a way to show support
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directly to the hosts that you enjoy. I'm excited. I've joined as a member for a couple
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of shows. I guess the perks will be a little less exciting for me since I create them.
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Other than that, I'm really glad to be helping out some hosts directly. It's super cool.
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Go check it out. It'd be awesome to have you on board.
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So Apple provided us with some fantastic topic for today.
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It was like an hour ago.
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I was dropping my kids off for the day with some friends and was like, "Oh yeah, let me just..."
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I was sitting in traffic. I was like, "Let me just open up, see what's going on."
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And it was like, "Oh, I'm waiting for this train to pass by. I'm just sitting at the train crossing
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and reading this iPhone battery case news."
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and I had the sudden urge to hurl my phone into the moving train like that was my
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Gut level response to this
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so for some reason and that is my
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overall feeling about this for some reason Apple have created a
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battery case just for the iPhone 6 and 6s
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Not the plus not the plus and it does a few different things
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It gets you an additional 18 to 25 hours of battery life
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That's kind of the main thing when you put the case on it helps boost your antenna signal with some integrated antennas or something
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And I guess that's kind of it. It's a silicon case. It's all integrated in one. There's only one piece
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And it is god-awful ugly
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Right, but what is happening here? So this is one of those things
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I'm looking at this product and I urge you to go to the show notes
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there'll be a link to the store so you can go check it out for yourself and
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What we have here is a silicon case like the regular silicon cases with a huge backpack on it or something
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it's got like this little brick that sits on the back which is the battery and
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You can kind of see what they were trying to do, right?
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They wanted to have one piece and if you want to have a battery and batteries are rigid
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You can't have one piece
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So they made a silicon case and they obviously couldn't have the battery fill up the whole thing
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So there's just like area where you fold it back and you push the phone in and you fold it back over again
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So like in theory like that is an interesting way to solve this problem
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Mm-hmm, but there are many
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Avenues to go down when talking about this. The first one is the fact that it just doesn't look good at all
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It looks it looks like a pregnant iPhone. That's a great way of putting it. It's like there's a baby iPhone inside there
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So obviously it's not the full size yet. It's only a baby iPhone. There's an original iPhone
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Make one for the 6+ it would be the size of like a 4
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Yeah, I have a thought that and I don't really think this but the thought crossed my mind that maybe they just had like a
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barge full of
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Extra iPod touch batteries and that's what's inside this thing
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They had to come from somewhere right like where did those batteries come from maybe?
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Yeah, so either like Phil Schiller can build a fortress for his kids out of these or
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We can glue it into this silicone case and we can sell it for a hundred bucks like yeah
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So it gets weirder because going to the verge and some other reviews this thing this case can't take up your phone from a
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Zero to 100% charge, you know, and you also can't choose when to do it. It just does it itself
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It's like all of that combined like with the weird design like if they made the whole back a battery
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Like the mofis do could you get from zero to 100%?
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Could you go from zero to 100 and then a little bit more even like some of these cases do like these do so
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- And so like, that's why I think, like in my,
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in the like sort of jokey part of my brain,
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that this, whatever's inside this thing,
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and I'm sure iFixit will take it apart
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in about five minutes, that this is a part
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that we already know about, and they're just like,
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oh, let's just put it in a case.
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- If this is an iPod Touch battery,
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if they find a way of doing that,
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then Federico loses the year of Federico
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and it goes to Steven.
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- I think so.
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- Sorry Federico.
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- I have a very short lived--
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- I've already lost.
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We've all lost something today.
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- That escalated really quickly.
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- And you know, maybe, and I don't know
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if Apple has said anything about this.
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I mean, maybe the thought is that, hey, this thing,
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because it's silicone, it's gonna be easier to pick up.
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You know, one thing I don't like about some
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of the battery cases, especially some of the cheaper ones,
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they're like that hard, slick plastic,
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and it doesn't, it's kinda hard to hold onto.
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The Mophie, I think, has got a soft touch finish,
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which is nice, but maybe the thought is,
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hey, it's easier to pick up, it's easier to hold.
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Like, you kinda have a place for your fingers to go
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on either side of this battery hump,
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but either way, it is not good looking at all.
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Man, look at this 360 degree view on the store,
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and it's sort of hard to believe that this is real.
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- Yeah, it doesn't look good,
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but I read a couple of reviews this morning,
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and especially the one from Joanna Stern.
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Quite a few people saying that it's not sexy at all,
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it's ugly, but it's comfortable to hold,
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even more so than a Mophie.
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So I don't own a Mophie,
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I don't know what you guys are talking about.
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I mean, I do know what you're talking about, I don't have any hands-on experience, but
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I read from these reviews that because it's thinner at the top and bottom edges and the
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battery is, you know, basically the bulge is in the middle of the case, it's more comfortable
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than other battery cases.
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Yeah, I can see that, and I can see that that's probably the reason that they did it.
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But what you end up with is something that doesn't look good.
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No, it doesn't look good.
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And then there are like, you know, the weird parts of it.
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It's like, okay, you made a battery case,
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and then made the battery small,
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so it doesn't actually do a full charge from zero to 100.
00:28:02
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But the biggest part about all of this,
00:28:04
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so let's park the way it looks for a bit,
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is Apple have made a battery case.
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What does that say?
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- So a lot of people are saying, well, you know,
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this is Apple making some sort of statement
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they understand that the iPhone 6 battery life
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is not what people want.
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This is a big issue. - No, I don't think
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they care about that, right?
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- I don't think they care about it either.
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I think that this falls in line with Apple's
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more traditional approach towards accessories
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where they, for a long time Apple's made,
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I mean they made like this $100 leather iPod case
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they introduced with the iPod Hi-Fi which was gorgeous.
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I think I sold one of them in three years
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at the Apple store, like it's Denizel.
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They've made iPhone and obviously iPhone cases
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for a long time now.
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I think they look at the market and they see what's popular
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and if there's a thing they can move into
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and they think they can do it well, then they do it.
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And I think maybe they missed the mark on this.
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I don't think this case, this particular battery case
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has problems, but I don't think it's like a political
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statement about the iPhone 6/6s battery life.
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Now the flip side of that coin is there's not one
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for the plus so if they are saying the 6s battery life isn't good enough are they saying
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the plus is good enough like then it sort of gets weird but I just think they look at
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the accessory market and they think hey we can move into this space and I'm sure they're
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gonna sell a bunch of these things because they're in the Apple store and they got the
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logo on it but it doesn't make it less weird to me that they've done this sort of thing
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in the past. Yeah I wonder why there's no 6 plus option I mean is it because it's too
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big otherwise or because Apple seems to implicitly say "you got a 6+ so you got plenty of battery,
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you don't need a case". I kinda would like to see a 6+ option, just mainly out of curiosity
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to check it out. I don't think I'm gonna use this thing daily. But I feel like there's
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no particular statement about "we're doing this so you people can understand the real
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motivation. I don't think there's any subtext here about Apple making statements about batteries.
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It's just about the money, you know. Apple knows that quite a few people are gonna buy
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a case from Apple, a battery case from Apple, especially because it's on Apple.com. It'll
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likely have a more prominent position in the Apple stores, and it's a problem common enough
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that people are gonna... This is gonna make for a great Christmas present, I feel like,
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And even if it's not maybe the best option, even if it doesn't get you from 0 to 100,
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I feel like Apple is going to sell a lot of these.
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And it doesn't matter if it looks ugly, or I mean it matters for us, but most people
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just want some extra battery.
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And I've seen people put the craziest accessories on their iPhones just to get a little extra
00:31:04
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protection or battery.
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So it doesn't surprise me if this case is going to sell a lot of units.
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Sure, but if you allow me to be that guy for a minute, right?
00:31:14
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You know, the whole thing about the iPhone battery life not changing over the years.
00:31:18
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Oh no, yeah, I agree with that.
00:31:20
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Their kind of line on it is that this is the amount that you need, right?
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That's like, we stick to this level because we believe this level is the level that people
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need in their daily life.
00:31:29
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If you believe that, battery cases don't need to exist, but now you're making one.
00:31:34
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selling them in the stores, selling mofis in the stores, you're kind of budging up against
00:31:38
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that line but it's kind of okay because you can be like this is an accessory that people
00:31:42
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are looking for, we allow these things to be made by the MFI program so we put them
00:31:49
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in our stores. But actually taking the time to develop, design, manufacture and sell your
00:31:55
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own one is a whole different scenario when you are the company that can control the battery
00:32:00
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life in the phone. Like it all just is a little weird and all it does is it makes us mad because
00:32:06
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we all want more battery life in our phones. And I don't know, you were talking about this
00:32:13
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last week Federico actually and I was talking back to my iPhone a little bit when you were
00:32:19
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saying about how we want the phones to stay as they are and then Apple make them thinner.
00:32:25
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We complain but then get used to the thinness and we're happy with it. And I kind of agree
00:32:29
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with that right like that I like that they're thinner but I really didn't feel like it needed
00:32:35
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to be thinner the last time and it really doesn't need to be thinner than this like
00:32:40
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if they make it thinner yeah you get used to it and you like it but do you need your
00:32:45
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next iPhone to be thinner than your current one? Like if you look at it right now like
00:32:50
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if they came out with the iPhone 7 and it was the same thickness would that annoy you?
00:32:56
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I don't know, but it's not a matter of being annoyed by sameness, it's being surprised
00:33:02
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by difference.
00:33:03
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Yeah, but the main surprise is, like, oh, the battery life is the same again.
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I don't know, I mean, would you switch an hour of battery life for a sexier phone?
00:33:16
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I mean, I know I would choose battery life myself, but, you know, I'm gonna sound stupid
00:33:23
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for saying this but a lot of people buy iPhones for the way they look just because it's an
00:33:27
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iPhone and just because it's sexy and new. I'm sorry but that's just... you're not gonna
00:33:33
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hear this kind of opinion on tech podcasts and tech blogs but a lot of people buy an
00:33:38
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iPhone just because it looks good. You can make it look new without making it thinner
00:33:41
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though right? You can do a different case design. Thinner doesn't have to be one of
00:33:45
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those things. I know the argument that you're making, I can see where you're coming from
00:33:50
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But it was just something that I wanted to give that opinion and obviously unlike regular
00:33:56
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listeners I can force my opinions into the show which I just did.
00:34:01
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But yeah all of this is it's just it's really strange all this is just very strange to me
00:34:06
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and if you couple this with that Apple watch charger the Apple accessory game from a design
00:34:14
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perspective is real peculiar right now.
00:34:17
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Yeah, it's bizarre world. That charger is really strange. I wonder too, like why...
00:34:28
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If you're gonna sell an accessory like this, and I'm sure they hope that it does well,
00:34:32
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it's actually a little rare in the Apple world that it is actually relatively priced pretty
00:34:40
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competitively. I mean, yes, you can go like get battery cases. There's one like Amazon
00:34:44
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right now it's a lot cheaper but if you're gonna buy a name-brand battery
00:34:48
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case you're gonna spend you know 70 80 100 bucks yeah they are that amount of
00:34:52
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money but they do have bigger batteries in there that's true and they don't look
00:34:56
◼
►
like whatever this thing looks like but it is it is a strange time if you had to
00:35:02
◼
►
choose would you be on a desert island with the new iPhone case or with the
00:35:08
◼
►
magic mouse and the lightning connector at the bottom that doesn't bother me so
00:35:13
◼
►
so much and it's the same like people people are saying about like the pencil
00:35:16
◼
►
you know charging in the iPad like but like I said whilst that is in elegant
00:35:21
◼
►
that is actually really useful that it charges that way because you're using
00:35:27
◼
►
the thing this has happened to me happened to me like two days ago I'm
00:35:29
◼
►
using it and I get a little notification it says your pencil has 5% of battery
00:35:33
◼
►
life so my great just pop it in the side for like five minutes and it was like at
00:35:37
◼
►
70% or something crazy like that I was like great perfect rather than me having
00:35:41
◼
►
to go and find somewhere to plug it in. Like that one, I'm totally on board of that one.
00:35:45
◼
►
Like it is weird and elegant, kind of dangerous for everyone, but it makes a lot of sense.
00:35:51
◼
►
And the thing is, when you're using a battery case, I think you kind of, you understand
00:35:58
◼
►
what's going on here. Like, you know, if I ever use a Mophie, it's like, right, I'm using
00:36:02
◼
►
this thing, my phone is now bigger than it should be. I'm okay with that because I'm
00:36:07
◼
►
in the battery life. I don't know if you necessarily need to make it so it's like
00:36:11
◼
►
oh it still feels kind of like I'm just wearing a case and I have battery like
00:36:15
◼
►
because then you put the thing on the desk and you press the home button and
00:36:18
◼
►
the thing that he flips over and hits you on the back of the hand like it's
00:36:21
◼
►
gonna be all kinds of weird. But they did what they had to do. Yeah I don't know you know it I
00:36:29
◼
►
guess the upside of this case and like this other stuff that Apple is doing is
00:36:33
◼
►
they can tie like the case to iOS in some interesting ways but there's even
00:36:40
◼
►
some drawbacks there but like I think the bot the end of the day if someone is
00:36:43
◼
►
going to like buy a new iPhone or buy a battery case or buy a watch charger like
00:36:49
◼
►
looks do matter and it's troubling that these are now two accessories in a row
00:36:54
◼
►
from Apple that don't look very good and I think our collective opinion but you
00:36:59
◼
►
know like is like having this battery meter in the notification center is that
00:37:04
◼
►
enough to sell this over a mophie like I'm not sure that it is I'm sure some
00:37:08
◼
►
people buy it but I think at the end of the day it's not gonna like Kyle Kyle's
00:37:13
◼
►
of the gray just tweeted something remember when getting sure locked by
00:37:18
◼
►
Apple was a bad thing now it's just marketing for your superior product
00:37:22
◼
►
that's a really good insight yeah he's a he's a real thought leader in the
00:37:28
◼
►
technology space. But I like that idea that, I think it's well said that this isn't, you
00:37:36
◼
►
know, and maybe you can never really say it about Apple accessories. I don't think Apple
00:37:39
◼
►
accessories were ever like leading the charge. Like their cases now are nice, but they're
00:37:45
◼
►
better cases out there. Their keyboards and mice are nice, but they're arguably better
00:37:50
◼
►
keyboards and mice out there. So maybe this just falls in line in the tradition of like,
00:37:55
◼
►
you want something Apple made, we sell it and it does some kind of cool stuff
00:37:58
◼
►
others can't do, but there's trade-offs. But if you want something that's more
00:38:04
◼
►
powerful or works in a different way than Apple thinks, so look, there's lots of
00:38:07
◼
►
third-party ones. But what if you just want something nicer? I'm not trying to
00:38:12
◼
►
justify what Apple is doing here. I think it looks ugly. But what if you want
00:38:17
◼
►
something that feels nicer in this case, you know? I mean it's... Yeah, and that's
00:38:21
◼
►
clearly an angle they're going for right like all those reviewers saying it like
00:38:25
◼
►
that that is something that Apple has gone for and it seems like they've done
00:38:28
◼
►
that if it feels nice in your hand like that is a very important metric to a lot
00:38:32
◼
►
of people this yeah yeah and so yeah so I think there's again it's just trade
00:38:36
◼
►
offs it kind of depends on the priorities that you have if I'm gonna
00:38:39
◼
►
buy a battery case I want like the most battery sure I can stuff into a case and
00:38:44
◼
►
so this isn't going to be for me it reminds me it reminds me and forgive me
00:38:47
◼
►
if I'm gonna bring headphones into the discussion just briefly. It reminds me of how many people
00:38:52
◼
►
make fun of me every time I tweet about liking my Beats headphones. I know I have better options and
00:38:59
◼
►
there's plenty of better headphones and
00:39:04
◼
►
besides liking the fun sound of the Beats headphones, you know with the bass that's higher than normal
00:39:11
◼
►
they just look cool and they just look nice and you may be like
00:39:15
◼
►
"Oh, I'm not gonna spend my dollars on headphones just because they look nice."
00:39:19
◼
►
Yes, I will spend my euros in this case on headphones that look nice because I
00:39:24
◼
►
wanna wear my headphones also if I'm in public, you know, I'm whatever I am, and I
00:39:29
◼
►
don't want to look like a stupid human robot with a bunch of huge
00:39:34
◼
►
headphones on my ears. You know, there's an argument to be made about the fact
00:39:38
◼
►
that technology isn't just about tech specs, and I feel like that's kind of
00:39:42
◼
►
obvious, you know. But when you read these reviews and you hear most podcasts, I want
00:39:49
◼
►
to be the guy who brings the fashionable aspect into the discussion, you know.
00:39:56
◼
►
Yeah, I want to spend my money on something that is not the best technological option,
00:40:05
◼
►
but maybe feels nicer or looks nicer. Is that stupid? Maybe. So I'm happy to be stupid.
00:40:12
◼
►
That's my conclusion.
00:40:13
◼
►
- I have to just wrap this conversation up
00:40:15
◼
►
by just pointing out something that I noticed
00:40:17
◼
►
on the case page, like in the highlights section,
00:40:21
◼
►
where they'll say like, oh, internet use up to 18 hours
00:40:24
◼
►
in LTE, that kind of thing.
00:40:25
◼
►
One of the highlights is designed by Apple.
00:40:27
◼
►
- That's not even words.
00:40:30
◼
►
- Like product benefit, we designed it.
00:40:33
◼
►
There's your product benefit right there.
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◼
►
So I feel like we kind of knew that this was coming.
00:43:19
◼
►
Nevertheless it is sad that it has happened.
00:43:22
◼
►
Dropbox announced yesterday that they're killing Carousel!
00:43:25
◼
►
Boo! Always so sad! Oh, and Mailbox.
00:43:28
◼
►
Tell us about your feelings, Myke.
00:43:32
◼
►
My feelings are very complex.
00:43:35
◼
►
I knew this was coming. It was obvious to me.
00:43:39
◼
►
The app wasn't being updated.
00:43:41
◼
►
And there was no real product direction.
00:43:44
◼
►
Nothing seemed to be happening.
00:43:46
◼
►
But it was one of those things that even though I knew it was coming, I didn't want to let go.
00:43:50
◼
►
because I love mailbox.
00:43:52
◼
►
I've grown my kind of workflows into mailbox,
00:43:57
◼
►
the whole system of moving email around in lists,
00:44:00
◼
►
which I haven't found any other app that does that,
00:44:03
◼
►
which I love.
00:44:04
◼
►
So I kind of just move around things that are most important.
00:44:06
◼
►
I physically move them around so I don't lose things.
00:44:09
◼
►
I snooze emails quite a lot.
00:44:11
◼
►
That's all going away because mailbox is going away.
00:44:14
◼
►
And this scenario isn't like when an app usually is killed
00:44:19
◼
►
where it will work, it will just continue to work,
00:44:22
◼
►
and then one day it will stop working,
00:44:24
◼
►
but if you really don't want to let go,
00:44:25
◼
►
you can at least hold onto it for a little while longer,
00:44:27
◼
►
because it won't be broken until iOS updates break it.
00:44:31
◼
►
But a lot of Mailbox's features are done server-side,
00:44:34
◼
►
like the snoozing and stuff like that,
00:44:35
◼
►
and on February the 26th, they're just killing all of that.
00:44:38
◼
►
So everything you have snoozed
00:44:40
◼
►
will just appear in your inbox again,
00:44:41
◼
►
and all of that stuff is just gonna break.
00:44:44
◼
►
So let's get back to Mailbox in a minute,
00:44:48
◼
►
because there's a bigger discussion there about kind of why email apps seem to be basically
00:44:54
◼
►
impossible to survive on iOS. I want to talk about carousel. Why did that exist? Why did
00:45:04
◼
►
carousel exist at all? I think there was a minute before our show killed the entire industry
00:45:11
◼
►
that photo services looked like they were going to be a thing that people were interested
00:45:17
◼
►
in and we had Everpix and all these other companies that again we accidentally shut
00:45:22
◼
►
down and I think Dropbox saw that and said you know Dropbox was in a unique position
00:45:29
◼
►
at the time because they already had storage infrastructure in place you know that that
00:45:35
◼
►
famous Everpix sort of like big article after they after they went away that was in the
00:45:42
◼
►
Basically, their company boiled down to,
00:45:45
◼
►
"We can't pay our AWS bill."
00:45:48
◼
►
Dropbox already had that well in hand.
00:45:50
◼
►
They already had a lot of syncing
00:45:52
◼
►
and file management tools available to them.
00:45:54
◼
►
And so I think from Dropbox's perspective,
00:45:57
◼
►
it was sort of an obvious, I don't wanna say easy,
00:46:00
◼
►
I'm sure it was a difficult project,
00:46:02
◼
►
but a sort of natural evolution of the Dropbox product.
00:46:06
◼
►
Say, "Hey, we're gonna have a sort of sidecar app
00:46:10
◼
►
that is really based around photos and viewing your photos and storing them and backing them
00:46:18
◼
►
up to Dropbox and doing all that stuff. And it was actually really nice. And I think that
00:46:24
◼
►
the things like iCloud photo library and, lol, and photos on the Mac and Windows is
00:46:33
◼
►
doing some interesting photo management stuff these days even though no one ever talks about
00:46:36
◼
►
I think that it just sort of like it was a thing that was going to happen on the internet and then it wasn't and
00:46:42
◼
►
I think it was just something that you know Dropbox and get their business
00:46:47
◼
►
It didn't make sense to keep putting money into but I think at the time
00:46:51
◼
►
I think it made a lot of sense and I was excited by it
00:46:53
◼
►
I was on the north betas I used it for a long time
00:46:55
◼
►
It was a really nice product
00:46:57
◼
►
But then it just didn't go anywhere and I think they I think they were right to let it go
00:47:01
◼
►
if that's indeed the case.
00:47:03
◼
►
But it was a funny one, right? Because nothing ever happened.
00:47:06
◼
►
They put it out there and they said they were gonna
00:47:08
◼
►
kind of continue building it, but they didn't really...
00:47:11
◼
►
They released a couple of updates.
00:47:14
◼
►
No, they didn't really change anything.
00:47:17
◼
►
It was just a bunch of minor additions.
00:47:20
◼
►
And it was like... I guess the big problem
00:47:23
◼
►
for these kind of services was
00:47:26
◼
►
Apple and Google jumping into the game with iCloud for Library and Google Photos.
00:47:31
◼
►
And I feel like those two companies alone kind of kill the need for a third-party storage
00:47:39
◼
►
services for photos, you know, because a lot of people just want to take pictures and let
00:47:44
◼
►
the device take care of the pictures in the cloud.
00:47:46
◼
►
And you can do that with iCloud on an iPhone.
00:47:49
◼
►
You can do that on Android with Google Photos automatically.
00:47:54
◼
►
And so it's become a problem, you know, for these companies.
00:47:57
◼
►
We've seen Everpix.
00:47:58
◼
►
we've seen Loom, which became Carousel under Dropbox,
00:48:02
◼
►
and Picture Life is another example.
00:48:05
◼
►
- Is that still around?
00:48:06
◼
►
- It's around, it's been acquired by another company
00:48:09
◼
►
that also does something kind of like Plex
00:48:11
◼
►
for media on your own server, I think.
00:48:14
◼
►
I don't even remember the name,
00:48:15
◼
►
but it's something about media.
00:48:17
◼
►
It's like not just pictures, but also music and movies,
00:48:20
◼
►
that kind of stuff.
00:48:21
◼
►
So that's not really around anymore, basically.
00:48:27
◼
►
And it's become a problem if you're a third party and you want to build a service on top of storing pictures for people when people have better, more native options on their devices.
00:48:44
◼
►
So I would say launching Carousel was mostly a problem of bad timing for Dropbox.
00:48:52
◼
►
Because just what, like a year, two years later?
00:48:56
◼
►
I don't want to say it became useless, because there's plenty of use cases for storing pictures in Dropbox
00:49:04
◼
►
and having a better browsing interface.
00:49:07
◼
►
But does it justify having a separate team and a separate product?
00:49:11
◼
►
Does it help Dropbox get more customers?
00:49:14
◼
►
I think that's the question that Dropbox was asking themselves.
00:49:17
◼
►
Does having Carussella and Mailbox help us get more people to use our service?
00:49:23
◼
►
Especially when Dropbox is in a kind of difficult phase,
00:49:26
◼
►
that they want to kind of sell the product to more business customers,
00:49:32
◼
►
and they want to get more users.
00:49:34
◼
►
I don't... I feel like it's the right choice to get rid of this,
00:49:40
◼
►
But it's still sad, especially because Mailbox was an excellent product.
00:49:44
◼
►
But if you read the message that they have shared in the blog post, and I think in an
00:49:49
◼
►
email to customers maybe, they have kind of given up on email.
00:49:53
◼
►
They're basically saying, "We want to solve other problems that generate email in the
00:49:58
◼
►
first place.
00:49:59
◼
►
So we don't want to solve email anymore, and we're going to focus on paper."
00:50:02
◼
►
Which is arguable, again.
00:50:04
◼
►
But still, they have basically given up on reinventing email and, you know, reinventing photo management.
00:50:11
◼
►
Alright, so, I mean, we can probably assume that they killed Carousel because I expect there probably wasn't anybody using it.
00:50:17
◼
►
But maybe Mailbox wasn't growing, but I'm sure it still had a relatively large user base.
00:50:24
◼
►
I guess the question is, would you start using mPain for Dropbox just because of Mailbox?
00:50:31
◼
►
No, you wouldn't.
00:50:32
◼
►
Yeah, and that's a problem for Dropbox.
00:50:35
◼
►
- So why did they buy it?
00:50:36
◼
►
- I have no idea, because people change, Myke,
00:50:39
◼
►
because strategies change.
00:50:42
◼
►
- Teaching me something about life here today.
00:50:43
◼
►
- Yeah, I guess that maybe two to three years ago,
00:50:47
◼
►
they kinda had this vision and now it didn't work out,
00:50:50
◼
►
so let's just kill the app.
00:50:51
◼
►
- Yeah, I always had the thought in the back of my mind
00:50:55
◼
►
that Dropbox could become an iCloud-like deal.
00:51:00
◼
►
I mean, they already had the file stuff.
00:51:01
◼
►
Maybe they have, like there were rumors a long time ago
00:51:04
◼
►
that Mailbox was also going to include an email service
00:51:06
◼
►
and then like adding contact and calendar sync
00:51:09
◼
►
that is not too far fetched.
00:51:12
◼
►
For a minute you could kind of get the feeling
00:51:15
◼
►
that Dropbox was going to make a move
00:51:17
◼
►
in becoming like a consumer sort of cloud company
00:51:20
◼
►
in a new, in sort of a new way from where they were.
00:51:23
◼
►
But I think since then, to Federica's point,
00:51:26
◼
►
there the ground has shifted and I think with Dropbox Pro
00:51:30
◼
►
and Dropbox for business, which is actually a really compelling, like,
00:51:34
◼
►
it's nice. I've got clients who are on it.
00:51:36
◼
►
I've got friends who use it at work. It seems really great. Um,
00:51:40
◼
►
I think that's where they realize where the money is. And, uh,
00:51:44
◼
►
and so they're pursuing that as opposed to this, this other vision. And you know,
00:51:47
◼
►
mailbox got caught in the crossfire of that. It seems like.
00:51:50
◼
►
So why? So they bought it, screwed up. Why did they kill it?
00:51:55
◼
►
Why didn't they sell it or let somebody take it? Like the tech is there, right?
00:51:59
◼
►
They could have just sold it on.
00:52:01
◼
►
They just couldn't be bothered.
00:52:03
◼
►
- Maybe we could take it over.
00:52:04
◼
►
- Oh my God, can you imagine connected mail?
00:52:07
◼
►
- I know like a little bit of CSS.
00:52:09
◼
►
That's enough to keep email client up, right?
00:52:12
◼
►
- Yeah, it's all web views.
00:52:16
◼
►
- I don't know, maybe they just don't care
00:52:18
◼
►
about discontinuing the product.
00:52:19
◼
►
Or maybe they wanna reuse some of the tech
00:52:22
◼
►
in an upcoming product or services or features like paper.
00:52:27
◼
►
I don't know.
00:52:28
◼
►
Maybe they have a... there must be a... I don't want to believe they're not selling it because they don't want to, like out of spite.
00:52:34
◼
►
Maybe they have some kind of reason, maybe they wanna... although I do know that a lot of people left the mailbox team, Dropbox.
00:52:42
◼
►
But maybe they wanna reuse the technology somewhere else. That's the only possible reason I can think about.
00:52:48
◼
►
What could you use though? Like it's email technology. I understand where you're coming from, but it's like what could you do with that?
00:52:54
◼
►
No idea, Myke. Organization of stuff into lists? I don't know.
00:53:01
◼
►
It's just frustrating, right? The whole thing is just real frustrating.
00:53:04
◼
►
I kind of want to hear from your perspective what you're gonna do, exactly.
00:53:09
◼
►
Do you know, I actually don't know. So, I have a plan, right?
00:53:13
◼
►
But the plan means I have to completely rethink the way that I use email.
00:53:18
◼
►
So it's not really a plan, it's more like giving up.
00:53:21
◼
►
Like I have the practicals, but I don't have the overall thinking.
00:53:26
◼
►
So like, I'm gonna use Outlook on iOS, because I was starting to use it more anyway, because
00:53:33
◼
►
Mailbox on the iPad Pro was horrible, like just horrible, so I was starting to use Outlook
00:53:40
◼
►
That app is pretty good, and it's got most of what I want.
00:53:45
◼
►
The one thing that it has that I won't be using is the snoozing feature, so they have
00:53:50
◼
►
So you can take an email and you can say "remind me about this on Monday" or whatever, which
00:53:53
◼
►
I like, but that doesn't sync with any desktop client because the Outlook desktop client
00:54:00
◼
►
is not only horrific but doesn't have that feature.
00:54:04
◼
►
Because they're different, right?
00:54:05
◼
►
You've got the iOS ones and the Mac ones, they're completely different code bases, they
00:54:08
◼
►
came from different places.
00:54:09
◼
►
So I'm going to have to get rid of the idea of snoozing email, but I think maybe more
00:54:14
◼
►
importantly for me though is the reordering. I really like that and I
00:54:19
◼
►
can't do that anymore because what I'm most likely gonna do with snoozing stuff
00:54:25
◼
►
is just get rid of the email. I'm just gonna get used to dealing with it right
00:54:30
◼
►
when it comes in I'm just gonna have to deal with it, sort it and file it
00:54:33
◼
►
because a lot of snoozing that I would do is like say for example I got
00:54:37
◼
►
feedback for connected on Thursday. I don't need that until at least Monday so
00:54:43
◼
►
So I would snooze it until Monday and then pick it up and deal with it.
00:54:47
◼
►
So what I'm going to have to do now, most likely, is set up filters and folders and
00:54:51
◼
►
stuff and then just know to go in and check them.
00:54:54
◼
►
But that's not an elegant solution.
00:54:56
◼
►
Waking up on Monday morning and having the connected feedback or whatever in my inbox
00:55:02
◼
►
is perfect because on that day I'm going to go and write up the documents.
00:55:06
◼
►
So could you see how I built a workflow around it all?
00:55:09
◼
►
So I'm going to have to change all of that and that's the hardest part of it all, is
00:55:12
◼
►
changing it all. So today I have Mail.app, I opened up Mail.app and I don't want to cry
00:55:18
◼
►
about it, I hate Mail.app. And I'm maybe going to try some other stuff. I saw this desktop
00:55:23
◼
►
app of LinkedTwit floating around called Polymail, which looks kind of pretty, and I think I'm
00:55:30
◼
►
going to get on there alpha, so that sounds terrific.
00:55:33
◼
►
No, look at you all fancy and testing betas and alphas of all things.
00:55:37
◼
►
I was just tweeting about it and they said send me your email address.
00:55:40
◼
►
Nice. I think you're gonna be interested in trying the...
00:55:46
◼
►
You know, I've been working on this review about To-Do, the iOS task manager.
00:55:52
◼
►
And they have this upcoming email integration. It's detailed on the To-Do website.
00:55:56
◼
►
You can read about the product. I don't know if it'll work for you.
00:56:01
◼
►
I definitely think you're gonna be interested in that kind of feature.
00:56:06
◼
►
But you will be able to read more details soon, Myke.
00:56:09
◼
►
Myke and Steven.
00:56:11
◼
►
I'm interested to see, but I don't know how I feel about changing my task list manager
00:56:16
◼
►
because the email I thought I used has gone away.
00:56:19
◼
►
Yeah, yeah, I know, I know.
00:56:21
◼
►
But we'll see, I mean, look at this, it's too much change, man.
00:56:25
◼
►
New year, new resolutions, Myke.
00:56:28
◼
►
So you gotta make it a goal of the next year to reimagine your life around email and tasks.
00:56:36
◼
►
That's a funny goal.
00:56:39
◼
►
That's a fun way to start the year. Email and tasks. What could be better?
00:56:44
◼
►
Oh, yeah, sounds fantastic.
00:56:46
◼
►
I can feel so frustrated by this news.
00:56:52
◼
►
Because it's annoying. It's really annoying.
00:56:56
◼
►
Yeah, no, no, no. I can imagine. It's like if something like editorial or Python install
00:57:02
◼
►
went away for me. I can only imagine being emailed such an essential piece of your...
00:57:08
◼
►
You know, you communicate with a lot of people, you have to manage a lot of people every day for the network.
00:57:12
◼
►
So I can only imagine how big of a problem email is for you.
00:57:16
◼
►
Because one of the other things I'm hoping for is a cross-platform solution.
00:57:23
◼
►
That's ideally what I need, just so that I can build a real system.
00:57:28
◼
►
So there's a couple that are promising.
00:57:30
◼
►
Yes, exactly. Did you see the tweet from the Spark email client
00:57:35
◼
►
about adopting mailbox-like snoozing. That could be a solution for you.
00:57:41
◼
►
Yeah, I've seen stuff like that, but the problem is Spark is iPhone only.
00:57:45
◼
►
But it's going to the iPad and the Mac.
00:57:48
◼
►
But when? It's 2016, they're saying. And AirMail as well.
00:57:52
◼
►
I know it's pretty public to have an iPhone app in beta,
00:57:56
◼
►
but they don't seem to have an iPad app.
00:57:59
◼
►
So that might work, but I want something that's everywhere.
00:58:03
◼
►
Because if it's not everywhere, I can't be in on that system.
00:58:07
◼
►
So I can't start snoozing stuff in Spark and then trying to use MailApp because everything
00:58:12
◼
►
will just explode.
00:58:14
◼
►
A lot of this stuff, it gets really upset when you move it from platform to platform
00:58:18
◼
►
because these things are horrifically hacking the way that IMAP works.
00:58:23
◼
►
It's just horrible, the sort of stuff that they're doing to your email.
00:58:28
◼
►
If you want to take advantage of these systems, you've got to be all in on that system.
00:58:32
◼
►
So there are some potential contenders, but nobody is really there yet.
00:58:40
◼
►
I'm optimistic, Myke, that you're gonna find the solution within the next, let's say, six
00:58:46
◼
►
By then, I've most likely changed my system again, like the way I work.
00:58:51
◼
►
Because I can't not work for the next six months waiting for an email app.
00:58:55
◼
►
So what's the single feature that you want to be able to have?
00:58:59
◼
►
Is it snoozing? Is it lists? Is it the manual sorting of emails?
00:59:03
◼
►
You've got to pick one feature, because you have so many requirements.
00:59:07
◼
►
I feel like you're not going to find the perfect mailbox replacement.
00:59:11
◼
►
But maybe if you only pick one feature, maybe you can find that.
00:59:15
◼
►
I really think, because the snoozing is easier for me to deal with.
00:59:19
◼
►
Because a lot of the stuff that I snooze emails for is just for convenience.
00:59:23
◼
►
So I could get used to just going in and checking folders, right?
00:59:27
◼
►
isn't a difficult thing to do but the reordering of email there's no other
00:59:30
◼
►
way there's no way for me to do that I either can do it or I can't do it so I
00:59:34
◼
►
think that's probably the main feature that I'm looking for.
00:59:36
◼
►
It happens with any third-party thing right like we talked about what would the world be
00:59:39
◼
►
like without Twitter well you know we may find out one day this stuff doesn't
00:59:43
◼
►
always doesn't always last forever and I think the best bet for something like
00:59:49
◼
►
this is to find something that does it as part of their service and not rely on
00:59:53
◼
►
on a third-party like mailbox or any of these other mail clients. Mail clients
00:59:59
◼
►
seem like a really hard business to be in. So I do some of this sorting but I do it
01:00:03
◼
►
all in Gmail rules and filters and so my relay inbox would be crazy without this
01:00:09
◼
►
this just catacomb of mail rules that I have set up to sort things into folders
01:00:16
◼
►
as they come in and mark them as read and it can help but yeah I mean if
01:00:21
◼
►
reordering or things like that are what you want then it's gonna be harder to
01:00:24
◼
►
to find it I think. Yeah and setting up filters and rules and all that stuff
01:00:29
◼
►
sounds kind of horrific right like it just sounds like an epically difficult
01:00:35
◼
►
thing to try and work out right? Mm-hmm. So we'll see maybe maybe I can get there
01:00:42
◼
►
at some point but it's I think it's gonna be a tough road back but there is
01:00:46
◼
►
still some more that I want to talk about in regards to this and kind of
01:00:50
◼
►
Dropbox as a company and kind of understanding what's going on next
01:00:54
◼
►
clearly they've made these changes for a reason but before we do that let me take
01:00:58
◼
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a moment to thank our friends over at Foot Cardigan for supporting this week's
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01:02:47
◼
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All right, so Federico, what do you think is going on at Dropbox?
01:02:53
◼
►
I feel like they're getting squeezed by all sides.
01:02:57
◼
►
And most of the idea of the core Dropbox service is now available in the products and in the
01:03:09
◼
►
devices as a feature of the iPhone, of Android phones, and every company is into file storage
01:03:19
◼
►
You can have Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft even.
01:03:24
◼
►
And I feel like Dropbox started as a very simple idea and they built a business on top
01:03:30
◼
►
of this idea.
01:03:31
◼
►
But now the basic feature, which is storage in the cloud with integration with your smartphone
01:03:39
◼
►
and tablets and computers is now available elsewhere as well.
01:03:44
◼
►
Now I am a Dropbox user and I use the service every day and I feel like Dropbox still has
01:03:51
◼
►
many many details and features, little differences that other companies don't get exactly right.
01:04:00
◼
►
There's a simplicity and almost all the integrations that Dropbox has with third party apps, I
01:04:08
◼
►
cannot find those features in other solutions. I don't trust iCloud Drive as much as I trust
01:04:14
◼
►
Dropbox because Dropbox lets me see versions of my files. It lets me share a file with
01:04:19
◼
►
other people, it lets me share a folder, it lets me view deleted files and restore them.
01:04:25
◼
►
So there's many... So the basic idea is available in other services, which is, you know, you
01:04:30
◼
►
get an X amount of gigabytes in the cloud. But the way that Dropbox does it, it's still,
01:04:36
◼
►
in my opinion, unique, at least for what I do and for what we need to do.
01:04:41
◼
►
So I don't want to see Dropbox going away, but that's not to say that other companies
01:04:47
◼
►
are getting faster at becoming Dropbox than Dropbox is at expanding and reaching more
01:04:55
◼
►
customers and more users.
01:04:56
◼
►
And I feel like this continuation of Carousel and Mailbox is sort of a sign of wanting to
01:05:04
◼
►
more on the idea of Dropbox, but there's a weird contrast between this news and the upcoming
01:05:13
◼
►
Dropbox paper. I still don't quite understand how focusing on Dropbox and doing paper at
01:05:19
◼
►
the same time works, and I don't know if this paper product will contribute to the bottom
01:05:25
◼
►
line of the company, because that's what the matter is, really. They want to grow the bottom
01:05:29
◼
►
as they say, they want to get more customers, they want to get more paying customers.
01:05:33
◼
►
And I don't know if this paper is going to be another nice, good-looking experiment,
01:05:38
◼
►
you know, it's still in beta, or if it's going to be a key feature that you sign up
01:05:45
◼
►
and pay Dropbox for. So, I don't know how I feel about Dropbox.
01:05:51
◼
►
I feel like they're a big company now, but they have been in many ways,
01:05:55
◼
►
over the past two years especially, they have been very slow at understanding what's changed.
01:06:02
◼
►
Being a storage company today is different than 2010. You have all these competitors from Apple to Microsoft,
01:06:11
◼
►
you have people communicating in a different way, with Slack and with mobile messaging.
01:06:18
◼
►
It's not the same scenario five years ago.
01:06:22
◼
►
And even if you just look at iOS,
01:06:25
◼
►
Dropbox is being slow at adopting the latest features
01:06:28
◼
►
for multitasking and iOS 9.
01:06:31
◼
►
So I love the company, but it's not changing fast enough
01:06:36
◼
►
or not changing, evolving and growing fast enough,
01:06:39
◼
►
at least from my user perspective.
01:06:41
◼
►
I have no idea about their finances,
01:06:43
◼
►
but I feel like they should,
01:06:46
◼
►
Focusing more is a welcome change of pace.
01:06:51
◼
►
I'm kind of concerned or maybe confused about paper.
01:06:55
◼
►
I really don't know how it fits with the rest of the company,
01:06:58
◼
►
what they want to do, but I guess we'll see.
01:07:01
◼
►
Maybe it'll be discontinued next year.
01:07:04
◼
►
- When I look at paper, it's like,
01:07:06
◼
►
I can see what you're trying to do,
01:07:08
◼
►
but you're claiming to build something simple,
01:07:12
◼
►
and I don't know if people want simple.
01:07:15
◼
►
I think they want, if they want anything,
01:07:17
◼
►
they want something that replaces Google docs,
01:07:18
◼
►
which is complicated and full featured.
01:07:21
◼
►
So while simple can be good,
01:07:23
◼
►
simple means not as many features sometimes.
01:07:25
◼
►
And I don't know if that is a good thing,
01:07:27
◼
►
but it does look pretty, but though,
01:07:31
◼
►
I can't remember what it was, but like I tried it out
01:07:32
◼
►
and there was just like a bunch of things in there
01:07:34
◼
►
that I needed that it didn't have.
01:07:36
◼
►
If we were gonna use it for like this, for example,
01:07:39
◼
►
what we're doing right now.
01:07:41
◼
►
There's one other thing that I wanted to touch on
01:07:43
◼
►
before we finished today,
01:07:44
◼
►
which is the public perception of Dropbox after a move like this.
01:07:48
◼
►
Because I know I feel differently about them.
01:07:50
◼
►
Because in my mind now, they've changed from scrappy upstart
01:07:54
◼
►
to a bigger company, because a big company will do this, right?
01:07:57
◼
►
Acquire things, soak up the talent, and then eventually shut them down.
01:08:01
◼
►
And this doesn't seem to have been their intention,
01:08:03
◼
►
but it's what they've done.
01:08:04
◼
►
And it makes Dropbox feel a little bit more monolithic to me,
01:08:10
◼
►
You know, like this big company, this big entity that's doing this stuff.
01:08:14
◼
►
I'm part of this.
01:08:16
◼
►
And I think the majority of my feelings towards this is their use of the word
01:08:20
◼
►
sunsetting everywhere.
01:08:21
◼
►
Yeah, I know.
01:08:23
◼
►
Like they tweeted that the app update subscription for mailbox said added
01:08:29
◼
►
important sunset information.
01:08:31
◼
►
That was the description.
01:08:32
◼
►
Like, I don't like it when companies talk that way.
01:08:35
◼
►
Like be open to what you're doing.
01:08:37
◼
►
You're shutting it down.
01:08:39
◼
►
Like, they said that in some of the email communication, but some of their public-facing
01:08:44
◼
►
stuff they're saying there's sunset in this product.
01:08:46
◼
►
Like it's a really bad buzzword and it's not something that people understand because it
01:08:52
◼
►
doesn't make any sense because the word is created to try and put a positive spin on
01:08:56
◼
►
a negative thing.
01:08:57
◼
►
So it just doesn't make any sense.
01:08:59
◼
►
And then there's a little banner in the app now that says mailbox will be shut down in
01:09:04
◼
►
Like, why didn't they go with shut down everywhere?
01:09:05
◼
►
They shut down verbiage in certain places and then sunsetting in others.
01:09:10
◼
►
I think moves like this are bad marketing moves and they deal in a company's perception.
01:09:14
◼
►
And now, any company that uses the term "sunsetting" gets a little check in my brain.
01:09:20
◼
►
Because I just think it's a disgusting word to use for what you're actually doing.
01:09:25
◼
►
It's one of those words you would hear from the Silicon Valley TV show.
01:09:32
◼
►
It's almost like a parody, really.
01:09:34
◼
►
What it is is a sleight of hand trick, right? They're like "hey look over here, we're using
01:09:38
◼
►
this lovely little word, people like sunsets right? You like sunsets? Ahh closed!"
01:09:43
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Yeah, they're trying to use this beautiful, evocative, poetic image of a sunset to really
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communicate that a bunch of people have lost their jobs and a product is gone.
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I don't know in this scenario if people have lost their jobs, it seems like they've actually
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just sucked up those engineers. Or people left Dropbox.
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That's how it seems anyway, because I haven't seen anything that people left or lost their
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jobs and basically what it seems like is it was in maintenance mode and then got shut
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So what I assume is Dropbox just had a... what I assume is they just got a bunch of
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talented developers and moved them onto different parts of the team that are more important
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to them at the time but I just really wish that they didn't say sunsetting.
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Makes me sad Federico.
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I agree, I agree.
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Sad as a sunset.
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Dropbox is ruining sunsets for me now.
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Whenever I... Every evening now I just think about the fact that my email is going away.
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You just... I can picture the scene, you're just gonna be holding your girlfriend's hand
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on top of a hill in London, looking at the sunset and all you can think about is Dropbox and mailbox.
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A single tear runs down my face and she turns to me and she's like,
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"This sunset, it makes you emotional?" and I was like, "No, darling, I'm thinking about my email."
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Think of all those emails, all those snoozes Myke, they're all gone forever and they're
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not coming back.
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We can all look forward to Snoozepocalypse on February 26th.
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If you want to find our show notes for this week's episode head on over to relay.fm/connected/69
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you can also find links on that page to become a member of Relay FM and give your money to
01:11:21
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this show if you love this show we would appreciate that.
01:11:24
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If you want to find us online head over to the following places.
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maxstories.net for Federico's writing, 512pixels.net for Stevens.
01:11:32
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And you can find us all on Twitter.
01:11:33
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Federico is @theti-chi, V-I-T-I-C-C-I.
01:11:36
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Steven is @ismh and I am @imike, I-M-Y-K-E.
01:11:41
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Thanks again to our sponsors for this week's episode.
01:11:43
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The great people over at Foot Cardigan, Casper and Braintree.
01:11:48
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Most of all, thank you for listening and we'll be back next time.
01:11:51
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Until then, say sunset everybody.
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sunset in the show.