Connected

00:00:00 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:00:02 ◼   ► - Hello and welcome to episode 68

00:00:05 ◼   ► from your friends at Relay FM.

00:00:07 ◼   ► My name is Steven Hackett and I'm joined this week

00:00:10 ◼   ► by Mr. Federico Vittucci.

00:00:13 ◼   ► - Hello Steven.

00:00:14 ◼   ► - Hey buddy.

00:00:15 ◼   ► - How are you?

00:00:16 ◼   ► - I'm good.

00:00:17 ◼   ► I'm once again pretending to be Myke.

00:00:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean your accent kind of gives it away

00:00:23 ◼   ► a little, just a little.

00:00:25 ◼   ► - They're slightly different.

00:00:28 ◼   ► Just very minor difference.

00:00:30 ◼   ► Our British friend is away.

00:00:33 ◼   ► He's in the land of the free.

00:00:35 ◼   ► He's in your country, Steven.

00:00:36 ◼   ► - He's in my country.

00:00:37 ◼   ► He's in New York City.

00:00:39 ◼   ► He and his lady are taking a little vacation time,

00:00:41 ◼   ► which is awesome, well deserved.

00:00:44 ◼   ► So he is away this week.

00:00:46 ◼   ► And you know, it always happens on Connected.

00:00:49 ◼   ► I think because there's three of us,

00:00:51 ◼   ► we are a little more flexible with the schedule.

00:00:53 ◼   ► And so if someone, like it always seems like

00:00:56 ◼   ► we have this couple week spans where there's not all three of us.

00:01:00 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:01:01 ◼   ► Definitely in the summer because Italy takes the summer off and you're just gone to the

00:01:04 ◼   ► beach.

00:01:05 ◼   ► Basically.

00:01:06 ◼   ► Yes.

00:01:07 ◼   ► And now, you know, around the holidays I was out last week with some family stuff.

00:01:10 ◼   ► Your mic's gone this week.

00:01:14 ◼   ► And yeah, that's that.

00:01:16 ◼   ► So.

00:01:17 ◼   ► But we're here.

00:01:18 ◼   ► It's not dead.

00:01:19 ◼   ► It's not dead.

00:01:20 ◼   ► I mean it could be.

00:01:21 ◼   ► I haven't spoken to him in a couple hours.

00:01:23 ◼   ► I mean, he's gone to Walmart and I'm pretty sure I saw some pretty scary pictures of people

00:01:27 ◼   ► at Walmart on the internet.

00:01:29 ◼   ► So pay attention, Myke.

00:01:32 ◼   ► Be safe.

00:01:33 ◼   ► We're thinking of you.

00:01:34 ◼   ► But still, we're going to do a show.

00:01:36 ◼   ► Steven, I believe Myke was also part of the follow-up.

00:01:40 ◼   ► Myke is part of the follow-up.

00:01:41 ◼   ► Myke is the follow-up.

00:01:42 ◼   ► Okay.

00:01:43 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:01:44 ◼   ► So we straightened the follow-up early.

00:01:46 ◼   ► But there's really another pressing question about the staff of Connected.

00:01:54 ◼   ► Oh, really?

00:01:55 ◼   ► It is what you did for Thanksgiving.

00:01:57 ◼   ► Okay, so it wasn't exactly a Thanksgiving dinner, after all.

00:02:02 ◼   ► It was more like a casual party with a hint of Thanksgiving.

00:02:08 ◼   ► So as I said, one of Sirius' teachers, dance teacher, is American.

00:02:14 ◼   ► So he wanted to celebrate Thanksgiving.

00:02:16 ◼   ► Only this dinner basically turned into a sort of multiracial dinner.

00:02:23 ◼   ► So there was like a Filipino dish.

00:02:26 ◼   ► It was like some rice with some meat and potatoes that I'm not sure.

00:02:32 ◼   ► There was a Nigerian dish from another guy who goes to the same school.

00:02:36 ◼   ► And the American teacher prepared like...

00:02:40 ◼   ► It was like sausages wrapped in bacon.

00:02:43 ◼   ► They were delicious. And I'm not sure if it's American or if it's something that he invented

00:02:49 ◼   ► or if it's Italian and he just pretended to be American. I don't know, but they were delicious.

00:02:53 ◼   ► And most of all, the food was nice, but it wasn't really the traditional Thanksgiving.

00:03:02 ◼   ► The focus of the dinner was really beer and drinking. So it wasn't really a Thanksgiving

00:03:07 ◼   ► dinner was more like a Thanksgiving party with a bunch of guys from Rome.

00:03:12 ◼   ► So just a Thursday night really?

00:03:15 ◼   ► Basically yes. It was just a Thursday night. We had fun. It was fun. I'm typically not

00:03:26 ◼   ► the kind of person who eats a lot of, I call it strange food because to me, you know, non-Italian

00:03:33 ◼   ► food is always strange.

00:03:34 ◼   ► An unusual food for you.

00:03:35 ◼   ► - Unusual food.

00:03:37 ◼   ► It's nice every once in a while to taste new stuff

00:03:41 ◼   ► and it was good, so yeah, it was a fun night.

00:03:44 ◼   ► But still, no turkey, no traditional Thanksgiving meal

00:03:48 ◼   ► for me, so you guys will have to take care of me eventually

00:03:51 ◼   ► for Thanksgiving.

00:03:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, we'll have to get you over here for some point

00:03:55 ◼   ► and do it upright.

00:03:56 ◼   ► So we have, and what has become a thing on our show?

00:04:03 ◼   ► we have some more automotive follow-up.

00:04:07 ◼   ► And so, long time follow-upper, follow-upper?

00:04:12 ◼   ► - Yes. - Follower-upper.

00:04:14 ◼   ► Long time follower-upper.

00:04:15 ◼   ► Luca has sent us another note about,

00:04:19 ◼   ► this is the Enjoy company, is that who this is?

00:04:22 ◼   ► - Yes, Enjoy.

00:04:24 ◼   ► - And they also have three wheel scooters,

00:04:28 ◼   ► I guess available for people in Milan.

00:04:31 ◼   ► And I have a lot of questions about this.

00:04:33 ◼   ► - Me too, actually.

00:04:35 ◼   ► - It seems crazy, and maybe this is just

00:04:38 ◼   ► the dad in me talking, but three-wheel scooters

00:04:40 ◼   ► seem crazy dangerous, and you're just gonna

00:04:43 ◼   ► let anyone on it?

00:04:44 ◼   ► I don't know how to drive with it.

00:04:45 ◼   ► I would crash a three-wheel scooter immediately.

00:04:48 ◼   ► I can just go run one.

00:04:50 ◼   ► - Actually, I was about to say, I think it's safer

00:04:52 ◼   ► than a two-wheel scooter.

00:04:54 ◼   ► - Well, it's gotta be safer than that.

00:04:56 ◼   ► - It's ugly, just plain ugly.

00:04:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, they're not good looking.

00:05:00 ◼   ► You know?

00:05:01 ◼   ► I don't know, is it?

00:05:02 ◼   ► This is one of my preconceptions that I gotta clear up.

00:05:06 ◼   ► Is American traffic also full of scooters?

00:05:11 ◼   ► - No. - As much as it is in Italy?

00:05:12 ◼   ► - No. - No.

00:05:13 ◼   ► I mean, maybe in like real big cities, but like,

00:05:16 ◼   ► I mean, I live in a pretty typical American city

00:05:19 ◼   ► and there's none of that business.

00:05:21 ◼   ► I mean, everyone's in a car. - No scooters.

00:05:23 ◼   ► - No scooters.

00:05:24 ◼   ► - Oh, that's so strange.

00:05:26 ◼   ► Like in Rome, you gotta,

00:05:27 ◼   ► You don't have to pay attention to the cars in traffic as much as you gotta pay attention to the scooters.

00:05:32 ◼   ► Because people on scooters are crazy.

00:05:34 ◼   ► I think actually scooter people are the craziest people around.

00:05:39 ◼   ► They just zigzag around, you know, they go left and right and don't care about the normal rules of traffic.

00:05:46 ◼   ► I'm always keeping an eye out for the scooter man, you know?

00:05:50 ◼   ► It's just...

00:05:52 ◼   ► That's the scariest part of driving in Rome.

00:05:55 ◼   ► these people on scooters going everywhere.

00:05:58 ◼   ► So the three wheel scooters with the Enjoy sharing.

00:06:02 ◼   ► I also have questions about parking and the,

00:06:06 ◼   ► you know, because you can,

00:06:07 ◼   ► I imagine leaving a car in a good spot

00:06:11 ◼   ► or in a good condition is easier than leaving a scooter,

00:06:15 ◼   ► you know, out in the open.

00:06:16 ◼   ► So it's interesting, but this Enjoy company,

00:06:19 ◼   ► now that I know how it works,

00:06:21 ◼   ► I see these Enjoy cars everywhere.

00:06:23 ◼   ► It's like, you know, that phenomenon that you hear a new word and suddenly everyone is speaking that word?

00:06:28 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:06:29 ◼   ► Now I'm seeing you enjoy cars like all the time. So...

00:06:32 ◼   ► Yeah, thank you. Luca was also a good friend of mine for the scooter follow-up.

00:06:39 ◼   ► Steven, we gotta convince Myke. Now that he's gone, we can, you know, talk about Myke.

00:06:46 ◼   ► We gotta convince Myke to drive one of these cars and see what happens.

00:06:49 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:06:50 ◼   ► Or maybe the scooter?

00:06:51 ◼   ► Because he doesn't draw I mean

00:06:53 ◼   ► He has driven

00:06:57 ◼   ► But he doesn't have a driver's license, and he doesn't drive on a regular basis

00:07:00 ◼   ► So it would just really what you want is Myke to be in a car wreck which is not cool, man

00:07:03 ◼   ► No, maybe we can find an empty road and just see for that for the funds you know I did

00:07:10 ◼   ► One time when he was here. I did have the thought of like I would let him drive my car in a parking lot

00:07:15 ◼   ► But then I was like no

00:07:19 ◼   ► So we got a we got an email this week from listener Brandon

00:07:23 ◼   ► About some JavaScript stuff, and then there's notes in here about JavaScript and Coda, so I'm just gonna let you talk about this

00:07:30 ◼   ► So yeah last week. I think it was I

00:07:33 ◼   ► complained about the lack of a JavaScript

00:07:37 ◼   ► interpreter on iOS and

00:07:39 ◼   ► In fact a few people got in touch with me about this so lisar Brandon first

00:07:46 ◼   ► sent us an email arguing that it should be possible to create a JavaScript app like Pythonista for JavaScript, basically, and

00:07:55 ◼   ► maybe even with fewer

00:07:57 ◼   ► problems than what Pythonista ran into, because on iOS there's a JavaScript core engine,

00:08:05 ◼   ► which is the same used by Safari, for example, when you when you want to use a JavaScript work market in the browser.

00:08:10 ◼   ► The JavaScript core engine is available on iOS, can be called by other apps, and you put together

00:08:16 ◼   ► a playground demo with Xcode. And not sure if it was in Swift or not.

00:08:22 ◼   ► Anyway, it executes JavaScript code and I tested it on my Macbook Air with Xcode,

00:08:29 ◼   ► and it works! Indeed, it shows a message and it shows that JavaScript

00:08:33 ◼   ► core can be executed by other apps and hopefully, you know, this will be... Brandon

00:08:39 ◼   ► says that it should be possible to make the kind of app that I want. It is

00:08:43 ◼   ► possible it's just that no one's making it so you know maybe eventually we'll

00:08:47 ◼   ► get something. In the meantime and I was told this by a reader and good friend

00:08:54 ◼   ► Pedro Lobo on Twitter I hope I don't spell his name right it is possible now

00:09:00 ◼   ► to do JavaScript playgrounds in Coda so Panix Coda app for iOS you can now

00:09:07 ◼   ► create in the top bar, if you press the plus icon, you can now create a

00:09:13 ◼   ► playground. And the playground is not like a full IDE for JavaScript, you can

00:09:19 ◼   ► only execute, you press enter, the code executes and

00:09:25 ◼   ► now you gotta write the code again. But still, it can show you alerts, it can

00:09:30 ◼   ► show you errors, so it is something. It's not a full JavaScript developer

00:09:34 ◼   ► environment like the one that I want but it is you know it is a good start so

00:09:40 ◼   ► that's about it for you see Steven we're jumping from automotive to automation I

00:09:47 ◼   ► feel like this is very good follow-up

00:09:49 ◼   ► Steven very good structure thank you

00:09:52 ◼   ► I you know it's just really just a bulleted list but I'm happy to help

00:09:56 ◼   ► no no you gotta see a deeper meaning follow-up and I put this in the follow

00:10:02 ◼   ► it's not really follow-up, it's sort of like a mini topic, but yesterday as we

00:10:07 ◼   ► record this, the word came down from on high that Apple Music was coming to the

00:10:13 ◼   ► Sonos platform. If you're not super familiar with Sonos, it is basically a

00:10:18 ◼   ► sort of like an ecosystem for audio. I mean they've got an app,

00:10:22 ◼   ► they've got like really nice speaker systems you can put in your house or

00:10:26 ◼   ► your office or whatever, and they also sort of have like this content section

00:10:31 ◼   ► and their thing as well.

00:10:32 ◼   ► And so, you can load music into their app,

00:10:37 ◼   ► and I've read and heard big things about the podcasting,

00:10:41 ◼   ► I'm not really up to date on that,

00:10:42 ◼   ► what they're doing there, but Apple Music is coming.

00:10:45 ◼   ► And, which is like, people who are into this stuff,

00:10:49 ◼   ► or like Sonos fans, are really into it.

00:10:52 ◼   ► Like, have you noticed that people

00:10:53 ◼   ► get really excited about this?

00:10:54 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:10:55 ◼   ► - And like, I would like to check it out,

00:10:56 ◼   ► but I have bills to pay, so I'm not gonna do that.

00:10:59 ◼   ► But it does seem like Apple Music's on Android now,

00:11:04 ◼   ► now they're doing here.

00:11:05 ◼   ► I mean, they're really,

00:11:06 ◼   ► what's interesting about this to me,

00:11:09 ◼   ► is I don't have a dog in the Sonos fight,

00:11:12 ◼   ► is that Apple Music is really expanding

00:11:14 ◼   ► past Apple hardware.

00:11:16 ◼   ► Generally and historically, Apple's services and software,

00:11:20 ◼   ► like look at the iTunes store,

00:11:23 ◼   ► it was built for the iPod, right, and for iTunes.

00:11:26 ◼   ► And now, I think Apple wants music to be bigger

00:11:31 ◼   ► than just the iPhone or just the Mac,

00:11:33 ◼   ► which is crazy, right, 'cause the iPhone

00:11:34 ◼   ► is like a crazy big business.

00:11:37 ◼   ► But they really want Apple Music to sort of be

00:11:39 ◼   ► the service that you can work, it does work

00:11:43 ◼   ► on Apple hardware, and that's fine,

00:11:45 ◼   ► but it can also work with all of your other stuff, too.

00:11:48 ◼   ► And I think that's really like, it's an interesting

00:11:50 ◼   ► like shift of strategy from Apple,

00:11:51 ◼   ► and I think it's one that they need to do

00:11:53 ◼   ► if Apple Music is going to be successful, right?

00:11:54 ◼   ► they need it to be huge because Spotify is everywhere.

00:11:58 ◼   ► Spotify is on, I mean, it's on my dishwasher, I think.

00:12:01 ◼   ► RDO is nowhere anymore, but they tried to do that as well.

00:12:06 ◼   ► They were cross-platform.

00:12:08 ◼   ► And so it's interesting that Apple's doing this,

00:12:10 ◼   ► and I think it's like if you're a Sonos user

00:12:12 ◼   ► and you like Apple Music, for that section

00:12:15 ◼   ► of the population, they're gonna be really excited.

00:12:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, these services can only,

00:12:21 ◼   ► I think they can only survive if they achieve

00:12:23 ◼   ► some kind of scale, so if they're available everywhere to as many people

00:12:27 ◼   ► as possible on as many platforms as possible. And we have seen this kind of

00:12:32 ◼   ► idea from Apple actually from the first few weeks when they also

00:12:39 ◼   ► enabled integration with Shazam and I'm pretty sure also SoundHound,

00:12:45 ◼   ► to allow you to recognize a song and stream it instantly from

00:12:49 ◼   ► these apps and now they're continuing to do so even to a higher degree

00:12:54 ◼   ► with the Sonos speaker ecosystem which I think it's a good idea. I really I was

00:13:01 ◼   ► kind of surprised by the amount of people excited by this news. I didn't

00:13:06 ◼   ► honestly know Sonos was this popular. I used to... I reviewed one of the old Sonos

00:13:13 ◼   ► before they changed the name to the Play 3 or Play 5. Many many years ago they

00:13:19 ◼   ► sent me a review unit and I remember it was really really nice and but it was

00:13:25 ◼   ► also quite expensive you know and so I'm I'm curious to see how it works I just

00:13:31 ◼   ► don't want to spend the money on a speaker also because I feel like I

00:13:35 ◼   ► listen to music more with headphones than speakers because you know speakers

00:13:40 ◼   ► especially when they're loud I don't want to bother you know other people in

00:13:44 ◼   ► the house I don't want to bother my neighbors so I just feel like I can

00:13:47 ◼   ► enjoy headphones more, so I'm not really a speaker person, but maybe just out of curiosity

00:13:55 ◼   ► if I can find a used unit or a cheap version, I don't know, we'll see.

00:14:03 ◼   ► Every time Apple Music has an update, I enjoy it. And by enjoy I mean, it's not really enjoyment,

00:14:12 ◼   ► but it's just an observation, Jim of the loop.

00:14:16 ◼   ► He's having quite a few problems with Apple Music.

00:14:20 ◼   ► And he makes some good points, I think.

00:14:24 ◼   ► Jim is very into music, he's a music fan.

00:14:30 ◼   ► The comparison would be, if people like me, we are power users for productivity apps,

00:14:38 ◼   ► Jim is the power user for music stuff.

00:14:40 ◼   ► And it doesn't really like Apple Music, and it continues to have all these crazy bugs

00:14:46 ◼   ► and all these crazy technical problems, which I don't see, because I don't use my music

00:14:51 ◼   ► library as much as Jim does.

00:14:53 ◼   ► But I find it interesting that Apple is kind of not paying attention to these problems.

00:14:57 ◼   ► And it's not just Jim.

00:14:58 ◼   ► There's a lot of people who have the same issues.

00:15:01 ◼   ► And I'm running the iOS 9.2 beta, and I don't -- again, I don't use the Music Library features,

00:15:08 ◼   ► you know, the My Music section.

00:15:10 ◼   ► But I still see quite a few glitches and problems with the interface.

00:15:15 ◼   ► Missing albums that I once added to my music or that I liked or loved, whatever is the

00:15:21 ◼   ► proper name.

00:15:22 ◼   ► They're not loved anymore, which is sad.

00:15:27 ◼   ► Or maybe music that I added to a playlist which just disappeared.

00:15:33 ◼   ► So there's still technical problems which Apple is not fixing.

00:15:36 ◼   ► And I wonder, are they gonna wait for iOS 10 to fix these issues, people like Jim and

00:15:44 ◼   ► in general?

00:15:45 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:15:46 ◼   ► But hey, you get streaming on the Sonos.

00:15:49 ◼   ► I agree with you, I think Apple Music is so problematic in areas, and clearly Jim has

00:15:58 ◼   ► had more problems than most people with his sort of platform.

00:16:04 ◼   ► always that that stress of tying like OS releases with fixes and stuff we're

00:16:11 ◼   ► gonna talk more about that with iCloud photo library here in a second but um

00:16:14 ◼   ► yeah it's it's it's cool like if you like Sonos and you like Apple Music it's

00:16:18 ◼   ► great for me not using either it doesn't do much for me but it's nice to have

00:16:22 ◼   ► options so yeah hey Federico did you know this week's episode of connected is

00:16:29 ◼   ► sponsored by lynda.com. Oh nice. It is. lynda.com is the online learning platform with

00:16:35 ◼   ► over 3,000 on-demand video courses to help you strengthen your business,

00:16:39 ◼   ► technology, and creative skills. For a free 10-day trial visit lynda.com/connected

00:16:45 ◼   ► That's L-Y-N-D-A dot com slash connected. lynda.com is for problem solvers, for the

00:16:51 ◼   ► curious, and for people who want to make things happen. Maybe you want to master

00:16:55 ◼   ► Excel, strengthen your negotiation tactics, build a website, or boost your

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00:17:23 ◼   ► Illustrator, you can take care of that, there's a really nice course on that.

00:17:26 ◼   ► There's a lot of stuff, we were talking about JavaScript earlier, there's a lot of

00:17:29 ◼   ► programming stuff in here. You can work with JavaScript, you can work with Xcode,

00:17:34 ◼   ► with Swift, with iOS app development, or you know maybe you're more on the

00:17:39 ◼   ► business side and you need to look at something like getting things done or

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00:18:06 ◼   ► so you can follow along, you can search for something and skip to that part in

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00:18:19 ◼   ► create and save playlists of courses you want to watch to customize your learning

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00:18:51 ◼   ► Thank you so much, Helena dot com,

00:18:52 ◼   ► for supporting this show and all of Relay FM.

00:18:55 ◼   ► Sketch had a blog post this morning.

00:19:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, this just happened basically like an hour ago.

00:19:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, and the crux of it is that they are leaving

00:19:06 ◼   ► the Mac App Store, so if you're not familiar with Sketch,

00:19:10 ◼   ► it is a design tool for the Mac.

00:19:14 ◼   ► It's extremely popular, extremely successful.

00:19:17 ◼   ► and it has been Mac App Store only, I believe,

00:19:21 ◼   ► since day one, and now it is, they are leaving.

00:19:26 ◼   ► And so this blog post kind of outlines why,

00:19:29 ◼   ► and there's not much in here that's super surprising,

00:19:32 ◼   ► right, which is maybe even the saddest part about this,

00:19:35 ◼   ► that I kind of knew the reasons before I read it.

00:19:37 ◼   ► It's things like, what did I say, review time,

00:19:41 ◼   ► sandboxing, App Store guidelines,

00:19:43 ◼   ► and that upgrade pricing is unavailable.

00:19:47 ◼   ► It's kind of just more of the same.

00:19:51 ◼   ► And one thing I like about this post a lot

00:19:53 ◼   ► is that they say it's not a knee jerk reaction

00:19:55 ◼   ► to the certificate issue of a couple weeks ago

00:19:57 ◼   ► where, I'm sure you remember,

00:19:59 ◼   ► a bunch of Mac App Store apps,

00:20:01 ◼   ► a bunch of users had to reinstall their Mac App Store apps

00:20:03 ◼   ► because a certificate was broken in the App Store

00:20:07 ◼   ► and it corrupted the apps.

00:20:08 ◼   ► I got hit by it, I didn't reinstall a bunch of apps.

00:20:13 ◼   ► It was super frustrating.

00:20:14 ◼   ► And they say that wasn't the reason,

00:20:16 ◼   ► but they said that made them feel justified.

00:20:20 ◼   ► They'd already made the decision, it seems like,

00:20:21 ◼   ► and that was sort of just icing on the cake.

00:20:23 ◼   ► And I think this is a big deal.

00:20:26 ◼   ► I mean, Sketch is a popular app, it's an expensive app,

00:20:30 ◼   ► and now it is leaving.

00:20:32 ◼   ► - Apple designed a word winner three years ago,

00:20:37 ◼   ► now leaving the very store that allowed them

00:20:40 ◼   ► to achieve success.

00:20:42 ◼   ► I think it is a problem.

00:20:43 ◼   ► And I think at this point, we're actually past the stage

00:20:46 ◼   ► of saying the Mac App Store may have a problem.

00:20:51 ◼   ► We all acknowledge the problem,

00:20:54 ◼   ► and the only thing we can do is either find a solution

00:20:57 ◼   ► or hope that Apple listens.

00:20:59 ◼   ► But it's been, I would say that there have always been

00:21:03 ◼   ► problems with the Mac App Store since it launched.

00:21:06 ◼   ► It'll be five years in January.

00:21:09 ◼   ► - It's crazy.

00:21:10 ◼   ► From yeah, and from the very first day, so January, I still remember, January 6, 2011.

00:21:17 ◼   ► The following day, there were developers who were asking Apple to improve the Mac App Store

00:21:22 ◼   ► with the same issues, the same problems that we're talking about today.

00:21:26 ◼   ► So it's been five years and the Mac App Store has not changed. It has somehow,

00:21:31 ◼   ► you know, just continued to exist without any major improvements.

00:21:38 ◼   ► Sure, Apple brought nicer featured pages or nicer banners, maybe?

00:21:46 ◼   ► They started selling, or actually making available for free, the version of OS X on the Mac App

00:21:52 ◼   ► Store.

00:21:54 ◼   ► But that's it.

00:21:55 ◼   ► So developers are still asking for the same features, and if anything, the Mac App Store

00:21:58 ◼   ► got worse for developers, because since Apple started enforcing the sandboxing rules, preventing

00:22:04 ◼   ► apps from accessing certain files and locations on a user's computer, it even became harder

00:22:11 ◼   ► for developers to make software that is not a menu bar utility on the Mac.

00:22:19 ◼   ► And the simple reality is that we're now at the point where the best apps for the Mac

00:22:28 ◼   ► cannot be sold on the Mac App Store because it's just too much of a hassle, too much of

00:22:33 ◼   ► a problem and developers are, they still have a way, you know, you could argue but it's

00:22:39 ◼   ► not really a problem because you got Gatekeeper and you can install software securely from

00:22:45 ◼   ► outside the Mac App Store.

00:22:46 ◼   ► But you see, this is not the kind of argument that you can have two sides of the coin.

00:22:51 ◼   ► You cannot say the Mac App Store is still the best place, is the best place to sell

00:22:55 ◼   ► software, you gotta be on the Mac App Store and then when you are confronted with reality

00:23:00 ◼   ► you say "but hey, you still have Gatekeeper".

00:23:02 ◼   ► So it's either the Mac App Store is the best place or the solution, it's not really a solution.

00:23:11 ◼   ► It's a temporary alternative, which is not the perfect alternative actually for developers,

00:23:20 ◼   ► because if you decide to release an app outside of the Mac App Store, you lose a bunch of

00:23:24 ◼   ► benefits.

00:23:25 ◼   ► The first one, of course, is exposure and availability in a simple to use store.

00:23:32 ◼   ► And there are also a bunch of other technical limitations.

00:23:35 ◼   ► For instance, you cannot use iCloud if you decide to sell an app outside of the Mac App

00:23:39 ◼   ► Store.

00:23:40 ◼   ► So this is a very simple argument.

00:23:43 ◼   ► These apps, and it's, you know, Sketch, BB Edit, Dan Council has a great list of apps

00:23:50 ◼   ► that are not available on the Mac App Store.

00:23:52 ◼   ► These are not stupid people.

00:23:55 ◼   ► These are great apps.

00:23:57 ◼   ► And it's a very simple problem.

00:23:58 ◼   ► You look at this list and you're like, "Okay, these are great pieces of software.

00:24:02 ◼   ► Why are they not available on the Mac App Store?

00:24:04 ◼   ► If I were someone at Apple in charge of this situation, if there's still anyone in charge

00:24:09 ◼   ► at this point of the Mac App Store, or if it's just like an X serve left on a shelf

00:24:16 ◼   ► binding the store, I would say, I would look at this list, I would say, "Okay, this is

00:24:22 ◼   ► great software.

00:24:24 ◼   ► The people who use these apps are not insane.

00:24:26 ◼   ► They are professionals.

00:24:27 ◼   ► They are creatives.

00:24:28 ◼   ► They are normal people.

00:24:30 ◼   ► not any less intelligent than me, why is this list of software not available on the Mac

00:24:35 ◼   ► App Store?

00:24:36 ◼   ► And I would fix it.

00:24:37 ◼   ► And the principles that are guiding Apple, such as simplicity or sandboxing or security,

00:24:46 ◼   ► can only go as far when it comes to getting work done.

00:24:49 ◼   ► And we have talked about this at length in the past.

00:24:52 ◼   ► I believe in the safe and secure model of the Mac App Store and the iOS App Store in

00:24:57 ◼   ► general. But you cannot force people to change the way that they get work done.

00:25:03 ◼   ► If I want my design tool to access files on my computer, you cannot say "yeah you

00:25:11 ◼   ► cannot do that" because at the end of the day getting work done is getting work

00:25:15 ◼   ► done and you cannot tell people "yeah you gotta spend $200 and you're not gonna be

00:25:21 ◼   ► able to try that beforehand. You see, the principle is good on principle, but in

00:25:28 ◼   ► practice you gotta do something. Well, all the details are wrong, right? I mean, you

00:25:33 ◼   ► know, again this is a little bit of rehash, but I mean, software existed on the Mac

00:25:39 ◼   ► for a long, long time before the App Store showed up, and the App Store

00:25:42 ◼   ► basically took the iOS model and just kind of pasted it on top of the Mac

00:25:47 ◼   ► without the consideration of the way things have been done.

00:25:51 ◼   ► And that people do expect things like

00:25:54 ◼   ► being able to trial an app or have upgrade pricing.

00:25:59 ◼   ► And I get that on day one, but you hit it on the head.

00:26:03 ◼   ► It's been five years and there's been no evolution.

00:26:06 ◼   ► I mean, look at TestFlight, right?

00:26:07 ◼   ► TestFlight's been out on iOS well before Apple bought them.

00:26:12 ◼   ► And there's still nothing like that on the Mac.

00:26:14 ◼   ► And if you're running Mac beta,

00:26:15 ◼   ► you basically like send out zip files and hope for the best and it's

00:26:18 ◼   ► It's it's I understand that on day one if it wasn't a good fit

00:26:23 ◼   ► That's fine. Like I can get over that because I can go buy apps elsewhere and I do

00:26:27 ◼   ► but

00:26:29 ◼   ► Having no evolution no meaningful change in this long

00:26:33 ◼   ► either shows one of two things one is that just no one cares at Apple, which I

00:26:39 ◼   ► struggle to find it I

00:26:43 ◼   ► Struggle to believe that I think that they do care about the Mac and they do care about Mac software

00:26:47 ◼   ► So I think the second one is true

00:26:49 ◼   ► which is more worrisome is that people are paying attention to it and they don't think there's a problem and

00:26:54 ◼   ► that they view that the iOS model can work on the Mac and

00:26:58 ◼   ► That maybe we'll all just come around eventually and between the two that's more worrisome to me because clearly it's not working, right?

00:27:05 ◼   ► it's not just people like me who

00:27:07 ◼   ► are old and and

00:27:10 ◼   ► cranky it is like sketch is a real business like their

00:27:14 ◼   ► Their founder spoke at release notes gave a great talk about his business and it's like this is a real company making a really good

00:27:21 ◼   ► powerful application and that a lot of people rely on do their jobs and

00:27:26 ◼   ► because of the of Apple's

00:27:29 ◼   ► Unwillingness or inability to change or to fix this in fact. They've made it worse right I mean

00:27:35 ◼   ► with sandboxing being sort of a bigger problem to deal with than it used to be

00:27:40 ◼   ► Clearly they're not interested in the same things and that's fine as long as you can survive on the outside

00:27:47 ◼   ► But like you said you lose

00:27:49 ◼   ► The spot in the storefront right that you you don't have the you don't have the benefits of being in the App Store if you're

00:27:56 ◼   ► out on your own and so I think sketch will do well because sketch is

00:28:00 ◼   ► It's big and well known

00:28:03 ◼   ► But if you're a small app developer being in the app store, maybe your only choice

00:28:09 ◼   ► Maybe your only shot to gain an audience and I don't know what if you want to be what if you want to be the next?

00:28:15 ◼   ► catch

00:28:16 ◼   ► Yeah

00:28:18 ◼   ► Yeah, absolutely solution. It's really hard. I mean it's really tough and it's not I don't envy any

00:28:25 ◼   ► Envy anyone having to make those decisions

00:28:28 ◼   ► But I just do wish that Apple would listen because

00:28:33 ◼   ► You know you can write one or two apps off. You know you know something like

00:28:37 ◼   ► Transmit that you know needs root level permission to your disk and maybe that's not a good fit

00:28:42 ◼   ► But like Sketch doesn't you know Sketch is leaving for a bunch of reasons not just one and they're not just technical they're political

00:28:48 ◼   ► And that I think something Apple needs to pay attention to

00:28:50 ◼   ► Yeah, and you know you could argue that

00:28:54 ◼   ► Is the problem you know with the Mac App Store

00:29:00 ◼   ► making Apple sell fewer Macs, so is it really a problem for the millions of computers that they sell every quarter?

00:29:07 ◼   ► Right now, maybe it's not a problem.

00:29:10 ◼   ► But the people who run into these kind of problems,

00:29:14 ◼   ► they are the people who recommend to their friends and to their families to buy a Mac.

00:29:20 ◼   ► Maybe it's not a big deal right now, but I believe when you're in charge of a big company,

00:29:27 ◼   ► You gotta spot this, you know, it's not when you're in charge of a company like Apple

00:29:33 ◼   ► it's not about solving the problem as much as it is about diagnosing the problem very early on and

00:29:41 ◼   ► when all these millions of

00:29:44 ◼   ► Dollars are at stake and when you have a developer ecosystem

00:29:48 ◼   ► You gotta be able to recognize the problem when it's starting and it's been five years

00:29:53 ◼   ► which is why we're all this concerned about the Mac App Store because it's been a long time and

00:29:58 ◼   ► there's still nothing just silence and

00:30:02 ◼   ► It's become even more ridiculous in the past year since you know test flight and all these other

00:30:08 ◼   ► Changes for developers analytics is another one that I forgot to mention

00:30:12 ◼   ► and it's just radio silence on the Mac, which is you know concerning because you clearly have

00:30:20 ◼   ► You clearly have a problem and the doctor doesn't say anything.

00:30:23 ◼   ► Imagine that if you were a patient. The Mac App Store is ailing and there's no communication from Apple.

00:30:30 ◼   ► No changes, just nothing.

00:30:32 ◼   ► How are you supposed to react to that? I don't know. Well, we'll see what happens, I guess.

00:30:38 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't expect much.

00:30:41 ◼   ► But we'll see. And there are good things about the iCloud.

00:30:46 ◼   ► There's the ability to easily go in and see what you've purchased and redownload it.

00:30:49 ◼   ► I mean there are nice things about it and I just wish that those nice things came with better trade-offs, you know

00:30:55 ◼   ► Anyways, um, so on the on the subject of

00:31:02 ◼   ► Apple and sadness. I had a rough weekend, Federico. I had a real rough Sunday. So

00:31:10 ◼   ► I'm sure a bunch of people saw this because it was all over the place. But um

00:31:15 ◼   ► the

00:31:18 ◼   ► During the beta of photos, which is like a like a year ago now like it was like

00:31:22 ◼   ► It's been a while. It's been like months and months and months

00:31:26 ◼   ► So you know what as I do was part of my job. I need to check this out, right?

00:31:31 ◼   ► So I download the photos beta sign up for the iCloud photo library beta

00:31:35 ◼   ► I import my photo library is roughly 70 gigs in size

00:31:38 ◼   ► Probably a little smaller a year ago

00:31:41 ◼   ► Imported it all from Dropbox. That's where I've kept it which we're not reopening the photo management

00:31:48 ◼   ► can of worms today I promise.

00:31:50 ◼   ► Umm...

00:31:51 ◼   ► But uhh...

00:31:53 ◼   ► Uploaded them all and it was just a mess.

00:31:55 ◼   ► It was beta, it was real buggy, it was slow.

00:31:57 ◼   ► It really wasn't for me at the time.

00:31:59 ◼   ► So I was like, you know what, that's fine.

00:32:00 ◼   ► I still have my Dropbox and Finder system, which I like.

00:32:02 ◼   ► I'll just remove my photo library and

00:32:05 ◼   ► with umm...

00:32:08 ◼   ► with iCloud

00:32:11 ◼   ► you can go in and you can

00:32:14 ◼   ► basically tell it to remove your

00:32:17 ◼   ► your photo library from the cloud. So the kind of way it works the photo app on the Mac syncs the photos up and

00:32:23 ◼   ► then you can sync them back down to iOS devices and

00:32:25 ◼   ► and go from there. And so I did that right and it says hey

00:32:29 ◼   ► it's gonna be 30 days before I delete this. It's like a safety mechanism, which I like. I like that it's not

00:32:34 ◼   ► going to just nuke all my stuff immediately, which is which is nice. So I

00:32:40 ◼   ► tell it to delete. I wait the 30 days

00:32:43 ◼   ► It seems to have done it. I get the storage space back in my iCloud account, right? It seems to all be gone.

00:32:49 ◼   ► And I move on. And so over the last couple weeks I've been thinking, "Hey, you know, I'd like to try this again.

00:32:58 ◼   ► It seems to be better under Akapitan. The app seems better. People seem to be happy with the iCloud photo library these days."

00:33:03 ◼   ► So I just did it again, right? Imported the photos, didn't take that long.

00:33:07 ◼   ► Uploaded them, which is pretty quick for me.

00:33:10 ◼   ► Everything's cool for a couple days.

00:33:13 ◼   ► and it seems kind of subtle so I go to my iPad and like okay I'm gonna turn

00:33:16 ◼   ► iCloud photo library on on my iPad and I do it and it just spins for like two

00:33:23 ◼   ► days like it just never happens and it's this is like over Thanksgiving right so

00:33:27 ◼   ► I'm not checking in on this right just kind of like oh it's still working okay

00:33:31 ◼   ► I'll put it back down and this weekend I pick it up and I open photos on the Mac

00:33:35 ◼   ► and I have a big mess. So basically I have albums that from my old, from the

00:33:43 ◼   ► previous library, have been synced back in and most of them were just duplicates

00:33:49 ◼   ► which I could deal with right? It'd be a pain but I could deal with duplicate

00:33:52 ◼   ► albums like that's not the end of the world. But what is the end of the world

00:33:55 ◼   ► is that they didn't all duplicate that there was a number of them that over

00:34:00 ◼   ► local data on disk with an empty album from iCloud and that's not great.

00:34:08 ◼   ► So I wrote this thing, I wrote it you know kind of as it was happening. I think it's

00:34:12 ◼   ► pretty clear what happened in the article but I was I was upset and I think

00:34:15 ◼   ► rightfully so and you know I've gotten a bunch of feedback on this more than I

00:34:22 ◼   ► have in a long time but anything I've written on all sides of it there were

00:34:26 ◼   ► like I don't know how many comments on the Hacker News thread I just closed the

00:34:29 ◼   ► and went on with my day, but it's a problem.

00:34:34 ◼   ► And the error that iCloud made was it overwrote data

00:34:38 ◼   ► on my local disk with empty data from the cloud.

00:34:41 ◼   ► That was old that I told it to delete months ago, right?

00:34:44 ◼   ► And so I'm just over it.

00:34:50 ◼   ► I really would like to use iCloud Photo Library.

00:34:52 ◼   ► I think it'd be really nice to have all of my photos

00:34:54 ◼   ► accessible on my iPad, but I have to be able to trust it.

00:34:59 ◼   ► it and as you know more so than with documents and more so than with music I

00:35:05 ◼   ► have to feel like I could trust my photo solution because that stuff is

00:35:10 ◼   ► irreplaceable and and really what kicked me over the edge was one of the albums

00:35:14 ◼   ► that over it was our make-a-wish trip and I was just like you know what I've

00:35:16 ◼   ► done like you know that's a big no and and so I've heard from a few people

00:35:22 ◼   ► people in the chat room right now saying I've had the same issues and and there

00:35:26 ◼   ► people who it's run smoothly for, which is great.

00:35:29 ◼   ► I think it runs smoothly for most people.

00:35:31 ◼   ► But again, and maybe I fell into the Dalrymple hole

00:35:35 ◼   ► of Apple Music and I'm just in that with photos.

00:35:38 ◼   ► But there's no transparency with iCloud, right?

00:35:43 ◼   ► You can't really see what it's doing.

00:35:47 ◼   ► You can't really go in and reset anything or redo anything.

00:35:51 ◼   ► One thing I really like about Google,

00:35:53 ◼   ► you can go to Google Takeout and you can

00:35:56 ◼   ► Download all your data and you can like close different services on your account

00:36:01 ◼   ► you can close your whole account and you and you can see what it has right and and

00:36:04 ◼   ► Apple just doesn't have that and I think they think they need it

00:36:09 ◼   ► and

00:36:10 ◼   ► You know, I'm hopefully working with Apple support and some people at Apple try to get this resolved

00:36:16 ◼   ► But like it shouldn't have to come to that to to make this work for me, you know

00:36:20 ◼   ► Yeah, no, but what happened to you sounds extremely bad

00:36:25 ◼   ► Again, different use cases, different, you know, I just take pictures on my iPhone, they

00:36:32 ◼   ► show up on the iPad, I'm okay.

00:36:35 ◼   ► But I can perfectly understand, you have a library of years and years of photos, and

00:36:40 ◼   ► you want to start using iCloud, and it overwrites what you already have, that's bad.

00:36:48 ◼   ► There's just no way around it, you can justify the behavior, it doesn't mean that it's right.

00:36:54 ◼   ► to work better. I mean, I think you should continue to use Dropbox and maybe other backups.

00:37:03 ◼   ► I hear quite a lot of praise for Google Photos.

00:37:06 ◼   ► Yeah, I use that. So the system has been, and I think will continue to be, stuff in

00:37:11 ◼   ► Dropbox, which makes it show up on two computers and my NAS and a bunch of time machine drives.

00:37:20 ◼   ► And I then also have the Google Photos backup app sitting and running and watching that

00:37:26 ◼   ► folder.

00:37:27 ◼   ► And what's nice about that is that I have the Google Photos app on my phone.

00:37:31 ◼   ► If I need to find something that I haven't synced over, that's how I do it because it's

00:37:35 ◼   ► fast and Google Photos is basically magic.

00:37:39 ◼   ► But I still want my photos local so that Google Photos for me is like that backup and kind

00:37:42 ◼   ► of online view.

00:37:43 ◼   ► If that makes sense.

00:37:44 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:37:45 ◼   ► I want to try Google Photos again.

00:37:47 ◼   ► I deleted it this summer because I really wanted to try the Photos app.

00:37:53 ◼   ► Now I want to put all my photos in Google again.

00:37:58 ◼   ► Speaking of which, we had a double iCloud/Google topic this week.

00:38:06 ◼   ► So you talked about iCloud and Photos, I want to talk about iCloud Calendar and Google Calendar.

00:38:15 ◼   ► But before I do that, I think you want to thank our friends at igloo.

00:38:19 ◼   ► I do, I do.

00:38:21 ◼   ► That's very thoughtful of you Federico.

00:38:25 ◼   ► Our friends at igloo make the internet that you will actually like.

00:38:29 ◼   ► With igloo you don't have to be stuck at your desk to do your work.

00:38:32 ◼   ► You can manage your task list from your laptop during a meeting, share status updates on

00:38:37 ◼   ► your phone, and access the latest version of a file from anywhere on your tablet.

00:38:43 ◼   ► Because these days everything is mobile and your work should be too.

00:38:47 ◼   ► If you've ever looked at your intranet, and I've had jobs with intranets, and you think

00:38:51 ◼   ► "whoever designed this must truly hate me and everyone here."

00:38:55 ◼   ► Those days are over.

00:38:56 ◼   ► Igloo allows you to make your intranet feel like the place you actually want to be.

00:39:01 ◼   ► It's surprisingly configurable and you can completely rebrand it to give it the look

00:39:04 ◼   ► and feel of your team.

00:39:06 ◼   ► There's group spaces, role-based access permissions, and easy drag and drop widget editor so you

00:39:10 ◼   ► really customize it and give your team the tools that they need to do their work.

00:39:15 ◼   ► With our mobile lives people are increasingly bringing in outside apps

00:39:19 ◼   ► and services into companies and sensitive documents are getting spread

00:39:22 ◼   ► across all these different platforms and that can cause some big security issues

00:39:27 ◼   ► for companies but if you use igloo you're able to integrate those services

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00:40:15 ◼   ► So what's going on with your calendar?

00:40:19 ◼   ► So

00:40:21 ◼   ► every year I like to

00:40:23 ◼   ► try iCloud calendar again because every year there seems to be a new feature that

00:40:28 ◼   ► you know, it makes me curious to check it out. And this year after I wrote about, you know,

00:40:33 ◼   ► ICLR calendar last year, this year I wanted to try the new time-to-leave notifications,

00:40:39 ◼   ► which were sort of an evolution of the driving time information screen label, whatever, that they

00:40:47 ◼   ► added back in what was the OS X before Yosemite, was it Mavericks? What was the name? Mavericks,

00:40:58 ◼   ► Are you sure? So it's Mavericks, Yosemite and what's... Oh, El Capitan. Yeah, El Capitan.

00:41:03 ◼   ► So anyway, they added the driving time in calendar a few years ago. This year

00:41:09 ◼   ► it's time to leave notifications, which the idea is you create a calendar event with

00:41:14 ◼   ► with an address and

00:41:17 ◼   ► you can choose to receive an alert on your phone when it's time to leave. So depending on traffic,

00:41:24 ◼   ► Depending on your location and other conditions. In theory, such as the weather also, or road accidents ahead of you, or road work,

00:41:32 ◼   ► all these other variables, you get a notification when it's time to leave. As I wrote in my

00:41:37 ◼   ► iOS 9 review, these time-to-leave notifications have been useless for me. They fire too early,

00:41:46 ◼   ► so I know that I have an event that takes me, I don't know, about 15 minutes to drive there.

00:41:53 ◼   ► In theory I should be able to get, I don't know, maybe 5 to 10 minutes before the driving time

00:41:59 ◼   ► So maybe I would say 20 to 25 minutes ahead of time. I get the time to leave notifications

00:42:04 ◼   ► So I get like 5 or 10 minutes to get ready. That's what I want.

00:42:08 ◼   ► Instead Apple, for an event that takes me 15 minutes to get there, they send me notification like

00:42:15 ◼   ► 50 to 55 minutes before, which is just useless because by the time I gotta leave I

00:42:20 ◼   ► forget maybe or maybe I start doing something else and then I don't know that I'm supposed to leave.

00:42:25 ◼   ► And this has never worked for me. I don't know if it's an American thing that Americans maybe want

00:42:31 ◼   ► to arrive at destinations early. I just don't care because I don't have to arrive early

00:42:39 ◼   ► at anywhere. It's just uncommon for me to arrive early. I arrive when it's time.

00:42:46 ◼   ► Anyway, I remembered that the Google app was able to look into the Google Calendar account

00:42:54 ◼   ► and send you actual, precise notifications for driving times, time to leave.

00:43:02 ◼   ► So, last week I was about to drive to an event and I had, for an unrelated reason,

00:43:12 ◼   ► installed the Google app on my iPhone. And I just needed to check out, I think, the new design or

00:43:19 ◼   ► just another feature. Anyway, I logged into with my Google account and by chance it had an old

00:43:28 ◼   ► repeating event that I didn't delete in my Google Calendar account. And I just happened to be about

00:43:35 ◼   ► to drive to the same event, to the same location, because I should mention here I don't create a lot

00:43:41 ◼   ► of calendar events with locations. I don't do a lot of, actually I never do meetings in real life,

00:43:48 ◼   ► at least. I drive to specific places a few times each week and it's always the same event.

00:43:56 ◼   ► It is what you would call a routine. I just happened to have one of those events already in

00:44:03 ◼   ► my Google Calendar, so I was just sitting there with my iPhone and the Google app sent me a

00:44:08 ◼   ► notification. I was like "huh, you remembered." And looking at the time, it was just perfect.

00:44:15 ◼   ► The timing, it was about 10 minutes ahead of time. It knew that it would take me about

00:44:20 ◼   ► 15 minutes to get there, and it was just perfect. Instead,

00:44:25 ◼   ► iCloud Calendar sends me notifications way ahead of time, and then for some reason, while I'm already

00:44:34 ◼   ► driving, sometimes it decides to send me the notification again, only with just the wrong

00:44:41 ◼   ► time. So what I decided to do is I'm going to move back to Google Calendar. And this

00:44:50 ◼   ► is a much bigger topic than those couple of events that I got in my calendar. And it's

00:44:57 ◼   ► a bigger idea and I think I also touched on this in my in my ISNI review. I appreciate

00:45:03 ◼   ► Apple's commitment to privacy and you know to keeping customer data secure and

00:45:10 ◼   ► to not look at the information across different services. So for example

00:45:16 ◼   ► they could you know look at what you browse in Safari and give you music

00:45:20 ◼   ► recommendations in Apple Music. I appreciate that and I think that a lot

00:45:24 ◼   ► of people also do. I'm a fan of the transparency of Apple and Tim Cook's commitment to privacy.

00:45:33 ◼   ► I like that. It's just that for some features and for some apps, the practical benefit and

00:45:40 ◼   ► the trade-off of Google's approach just works better for me. Because, again, it's a matter

00:45:45 ◼   ► We all love to talk about principles and ideas, but ultimately I got a house that I gotta pay the bills for, I got a life, and I got a routine.

00:46:01 ◼   ► And it doesn't matter, you know, I can hold my principles for more important matters.

00:46:10 ◼   ► But when it comes to "Do I want to get a notification when it's time to leave so I'm not late?"

00:46:16 ◼   ► I like that.

00:46:17 ◼   ► It's a practical feature and it just doesn't work with iCloud.

00:46:20 ◼   ► And maybe it doesn't work for, because you know, Apple doesn't like to look at a bunch

00:46:24 ◼   ► of different data points.

00:46:27 ◼   ► And it's a nice idea, but Google's approach just works better in practice.

00:46:32 ◼   ► And I realize that maybe I'm giving up some of my privacy.

00:46:38 ◼   ► But to an extent, I would say I'm okay with that, when the service that I receive in return

00:46:43 ◼   ► just works better in everyday life.

00:46:48 ◼   ► And this is reflected for me in Google Calendar the most, because it can look at Google Maps,

00:46:55 ◼   ► it can look at my history.

00:46:56 ◼   ► And I understand why people don't want to use Google services.

00:47:03 ◼   ► This doesn't want to be one of those stupid wars between Apple and Google.

00:47:09 ◼   ► I'm just saying here that for what I need to do, for my life outside of the website

00:47:16 ◼   ► and the principles and the ideas, I'm just a regular human being who doesn't want to

00:47:22 ◼   ► be late.

00:47:23 ◼   ► And the Google app helps me to do that with Google Calendar.

00:47:27 ◼   ► And also, I want to say, I struggle to see what could ever happen to me if there was

00:47:37 ◼   ► ever a breach in Google Calendar.

00:47:40 ◼   ► Would people know my address?

00:47:41 ◼   ► Well, that's basically public anyway.

00:47:44 ◼   ► Would there be someone that comes knocking at my place?

00:47:49 ◼   ► We're gonna have fun, I think.

00:47:51 ◼   ► You know, I'm just not...

00:47:55 ◼   ► Quite a few readers email me, "Are you not scared of the kind of data that you put into

00:47:59 ◼   ► Google?"

00:48:00 ◼   ► Well, you know, there's a lot of scary things in life, and I would say I'm more scared by

00:48:05 ◼   ► the scooter man in Rome and the traffic and, you know, bad news that you see on TV that

00:48:11 ◼   ► I'm scared about data breach on Google.

00:48:14 ◼   ► Again, it's about the practical benefit.

00:48:16 ◼   ► And when it comes to the calendar, iCloud is just not working for me, so I moved back

00:48:21 ◼   ► to Google Calendar, which again takes me like two minutes because I don't have many events.

00:48:27 ◼   ► But just for those few events, I see the upside, which is I get notifications when it's time

00:48:33 ◼   ► to leave, they are accurate, and they take into account, which is also nice, you can

00:48:38 ◼   ► see in the Google app if there's any accident on the road, if there's any problems, any

00:48:44 ◼   ► slowdowns, traffic jams, it's useful.

00:48:47 ◼   ► And I don't get the data with Apple Maps or with iCloud Calendar.

00:48:51 ◼   ► So it just works better for me.

00:48:54 ◼   ► I'm not afraid of the security and actually the privacy concerns.

00:49:00 ◼   ► I realize that a lot of people are upset by this way of living life, but it's just, you

00:49:06 ◼   ► know, I live each day this way.

00:49:09 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:49:10 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:49:11 ◼   ► that's interesting to me talking about this and I use iCloud basically for

00:49:18 ◼   ► contacts, calendars, like the whole thing, my personal email. I use iCloud calendar

00:49:24 ◼   ► and for the big reason is that it's really easy to share and so like I've

00:49:28 ◼   ► got two, I've got like me and then I've got work and we have one for like family

00:49:34 ◼   ► events, my wife has one, and we share that it's really seamless to share those and

00:49:40 ◼   ► And so for me, like moving systems would involve

00:49:44 ◼   ► like dragging her into it as well.

00:49:47 ◼   ► But I mean I think what you're saying makes a lot of sense

00:49:51 ◼   ► and it comes down to that just sort of like

00:49:53 ◼   ► fundamental difference is that Google can do that

00:49:55 ◼   ► really well because they apply what they learn

00:49:58 ◼   ► like in mass and Apple's system is local on your device

00:50:02 ◼   ► and maybe not as powerful.

00:50:06 ◼   ► I will say I've had pretty good luck with the

00:50:09 ◼   ► hey can you know remind me when it's time to leave type thing on iOS it seems

00:50:13 ◼   ► to work pretty well for me maybe it's that their map data is better where I am

00:50:16 ◼   ► than you are I mean who knows but I will say that the where it falls down for me

00:50:24 ◼   ► is like Apple software like that the built-in calendar app like I've had it

00:50:28 ◼   ► they all go change an event and it will revert back after a sync and I don't

00:50:31 ◼   ► have that happen in fantastic our busy cows like there's a whole bunch of

00:50:35 ◼   ► moving parts with calendars and with contacts and everything.

00:50:39 ◼   ► But for me, where I feel at the most of where I look

00:50:43 ◼   ► at going back to Gmail is just with the email stuff,

00:50:46 ◼   ► with the email rules and the spam filtering and everything.

00:50:47 ◼   ► iCloud just isn't as powerful as what Google's doing.

00:50:51 ◼   ► And I think that that idea that Google knows this about you,

00:50:56 ◼   ► like I understand people's concern and I don't wanna,

00:51:00 ◼   ► I don't wanna belittle anyone's concerns at all.

00:51:03 ◼   ► But it's just not something I worry about.

00:51:05 ◼   ► Like I trust that their privacy stuff is in good shape

00:51:09 ◼   ► and that yes, I'm sharing it with a company

00:51:11 ◼   ► and with their really smart computers,

00:51:12 ◼   ► but I'm not, you know, that stuff's not gonna get

00:51:16 ◼   ► published anywhere.

00:51:17 ◼   ► And so I agree with you.

00:51:18 ◼   ► I think you just have to make the decision of like,

00:51:21 ◼   ► is the trade-off here worth it for me?

00:51:25 ◼   ► And that's what Myke said months ago

00:51:26 ◼   ► when we talked about this last time.

00:51:27 ◼   ► For him, it made sense.

00:51:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, absolutely.

00:51:31 ◼   ► And actually right now I am a little curious to see what's going on with the Google App

00:51:36 ◼   ► and Google Now on iOS.

00:51:39 ◼   ► I don't know if you saw my tweet last night, but I'm basically getting the Google Now cards

00:51:47 ◼   ► from apps on iOS.

00:51:48 ◼   ► It used to be an Android feature.

00:51:50 ◼   ► I think it's rolling out on iOS right now, so the idea is certain apps allow you to connect

00:51:56 ◼   ► to your Google account so you can see relevant snippets of data in Google Now, which is interesting.

00:52:03 ◼   ► I'm not sure what apps I can try that have this feature on iOS, but it's something that

00:52:08 ◼   ► I also want to try.

00:52:10 ◼   ► Yeah, they have that good ecosystem of stuff that all works together and pulls from that

00:52:16 ◼   ► central information in your account.

00:52:19 ◼   ► And again, that's really powerful, and if that makes sense for you and you need that,

00:52:23 ◼   ► that's great.

00:52:24 ◼   ► I keep coming back to this because the photo library thing in particular

00:52:29 ◼   ► just really burned me a little bit. The idea of no one company,

00:52:35 ◼   ► we cover Apple here, we like Apple, but just as we cover Apple and we like them,

00:52:39 ◼   ► and we like their products, doesn't mean that they're perfect and it doesn't mean

00:52:43 ◼   ► that every other company is the opposite of perfect. And the beauty

00:52:49 ◼   ► of the modern era we live in is that your iPhone can be a

00:52:53 ◼   ► Google machine right you can you can use Google services on iOS and it works

00:52:56 ◼   ► really well same thing on OS X and that flexibility is really nice and it's

00:53:02 ◼   ► something that I think makes iOS really powerful that you can use all these

00:53:06 ◼   ► differences like you work in exchange like cool plug your exchange thing in if

00:53:09 ◼   ► the built-in stuff doesn't work for you go download outlook that works with

00:53:12 ◼   ► exchange if you have all these options but the idea that like we or anyone else

00:53:19 ◼   ► is supposed to be like, tightly in allegiance with one, like, "I'm only going

00:53:23 ◼   ► to use Apple stuff," and like, I had someone, like, basically call me like,

00:53:28 ◼   ► sensationalist for writing what I wrote. It's like, "Well, no, like, I wrote what

00:53:31 ◼   ► happened to me," and that's all I, you know, like, I didn't show up, I was like,

00:53:37 ◼   ► "It was, you know, with pitchforks, right?" It's like, "Well, you should have emailed, you

00:53:40 ◼   ► should have called their support first," you know what, I did, and we have a call set

00:53:45 ◼   ► up to work through it, like, you know, I didn't just write it for the page use, I

00:53:49 ◼   ► that you're not doing this just to inflame the Apple-Google war, you're doing it because

00:53:53 ◼   ► it makes sense for how you need to use your devices, right?

00:53:57 ◼   ► I mean, you can even stretch that argument back to the iPad and Mac thing where, "Oh,

00:54:01 ◼   ► you just use the iPad to make the points."

00:54:04 ◼   ► No, use an iPad because it makes sense for you.

00:54:07 ◼   ► Why does that conversation need to go past that statement?

00:54:10 ◼   ► No, no.

00:54:12 ◼   ► It's just this applies to a lot of aspects in life.

00:54:18 ◼   ► the problem becomes much bigger on Twitter.

00:54:20 ◼   ► It can be tricky to understand that people have different opinions than you

00:54:27 ◼   ► and they have different lives and different experiences.

00:54:30 ◼   ► That's part of being an adult and maybe a responsible adult

00:54:34 ◼   ► to understand that people are different and what works for you doesn't work for me.

00:54:38 ◼   ► And the great thing about technology is that it's always different.

00:54:41 ◼   ► So I can take selfies on my iPhone and, you know, Austin Mann can go to Switzerland and take awesome pictures with the same iPhone.

00:54:50 ◼   ► Again, saying that something doesn't work, I think it's actually one of the best things that you can do to criticize a product, to help make it better.

00:55:02 ◼   ► And I actually don't think there's a lot of utility in praising unnecessarily a product,

00:55:10 ◼   ► even when you know that it's got flaws and problematic aspects, just because you like a

00:55:16 ◼   ► company. I think being fair, being honest, is a good thing. And I don't see what you wrote as

00:55:23 ◼   ► sensationalism. I think it's just the truth. It's what happened to you. Again, it's a very basic

00:55:29 ◼   ► idea. Shouldn't have happened, but it happened. So why? Can we fix it? Can we make it better?

00:55:34 ◼   ► It's very simple. This was a good discussion, Steven.

00:55:39 ◼   ► Yeah, and again, it's that, you know, there's options, there's these things you can fit

00:55:43 ◼   ► together to solve the problem that you have. So if, you know, if the directions in "Leave

00:55:51 ◼   ► on Time" feature doesn't work for you in one, go to somewhere else. And I think that's nice,

00:55:58 ◼   ► I mean there are people who are gonna do it all,

00:56:02 ◼   ► you can do it all self-hosted.

00:56:05 ◼   ► You know, there's all these different ways you can do it

00:56:07 ◼   ► and I think that's great.

00:56:09 ◼   ► So yeah, anyways, we're gonna go with the next iPhone

00:56:16 ◼   ► because apparently it's that time of year again.

00:56:18 ◼   ► It seems early.

00:56:20 ◼   ► But first, I wanna tell you about our friends

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00:56:42 ◼   ► You know, one of the most stressful parts about the holidays, you know, we're in this season now,

00:56:45 ◼   ► is picking out that perfect gift for someone you know.

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00:58:07 ◼   ► Thank you so much foot cardigan for supporting this show and all of relay FM. I

00:58:12 ◼   ► Should add Steven that since I started paying attention to my socks

00:58:16 ◼   ► You know to get nicer designs and one of the best things I could have done to my style in general people

00:58:23 ◼   ► always notice good socks. And funny socks, elegant socks, doesn't matter. I find it to

00:58:28 ◼   ► be one of the best details that you can add to your general appearance or style. I'm a

00:58:36 ◼   ► big fan of the idea behind Fruit Caragon. The website is also funny and fantastic, so

00:58:41 ◼   ► make sure to read the FAQ on the website. It's very well done and I love the designs.

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00:58:55 ◼   ► Yeah, it's a lot of fun.

00:58:58 ◼   ► So iPhone 7, it's so early for this.

00:59:02 ◼   ► Oh God, really?

00:59:03 ◼   ► Are we really doing this?

00:59:04 ◼   ► I'm still learning 3D Touch on my success.

00:59:07 ◼   ► We are.

00:59:08 ◼   ► We are doing this.

00:59:10 ◼   ► - So the rumor of the day from the Japanese website,

00:59:14 ◼   ► Mac,

00:59:16 ◼   ► - You can do it, go on, go on.

00:59:20 ◼   ► - I can't do it, Mac Odokara, Odokara?

00:59:24 ◼   ► - I would say, Mecha Takara, yeah.

00:59:25 ◼   ► - Perfect.

00:59:26 ◼   ► - Or maybe is it Japanese Mecha Takara, I don't know.

00:59:31 ◼   ► - I did not hear the difference between those two things.

00:59:34 ◼   ► Where's Myke?

00:59:35 ◼   ► So this rumor and this Japanese, this site,

00:59:39 ◼   ► Has pretty good track record which Mac rumors points out is that Apple is playing to remove the 3.5

00:59:46 ◼   ► millimeter headphone jack on the next iPhone in favor of their lightning connector

00:59:52 ◼   ► So the background is a little bit is that you can now like you can go buy lightning

00:59:57 ◼   ► equipped headphones Apple supports audio in and out over lightning I

01:00:02 ◼   ► Think that's true since the iPhone

01:00:06 ◼   ► 6 I think it was in 2014 they announced that it's part of the made for iPhone program

01:00:13 ◼   ► it's

01:00:16 ◼   ► You know so it's been around right and this kind of Apple does things like Apple's like hey we have this new spec

01:00:20 ◼   ► It's gonna be really important like a year. You know or two years

01:00:24 ◼   ► and

01:00:26 ◼   ► So the the rumor basically comes down to the 3.5 million Jack if you look at on the bottom of your iPhone

01:00:32 ◼   ► It's the thickest thing on your phone

01:00:34 ◼   ► Several people point out to it. It's also very deep

01:00:36 ◼   ► the amount of the depth of that port, you know, if you look at the iPod nano I

01:00:43 ◼   ► think I saw an image of like that whole bottom lip on the nano is there to

01:00:46 ◼   ► support that jack. It's big and it's bulky and it's problematic because it

01:00:51 ◼   ► gets broken off and so people are saying this report is saying that

01:00:58 ◼   ► Apple can make their phone thinner and simpler and what I'm interested in is

01:01:04 ◼   ► maybe even a little more waterproof

01:01:06 ◼   ► if they get rid of this thing.

01:01:07 ◼   ► Which is a little bit crazy.

01:01:13 ◼   ► - It is crazy.

01:01:14 ◼   ► - Because, I mean this, I wrote about this, I mean,

01:01:17 ◼   ► the eighth inch or 3.5 milliliter stereo jack

01:01:23 ◼   ► is like the most universal thing I can think of

01:01:26 ◼   ► in consumer technology.

01:01:28 ◼   ► Like every single device that takes audio

01:01:33 ◼   ► or sends audio uses this thing.

01:01:35 ◼   ► It's in cars, it's in AV systems,

01:01:38 ◼   ► it's in home theater systems, it is in classrooms,

01:01:42 ◼   ► any place you can, it's so universal,

01:01:45 ◼   ► you just walk in and plug your thing into it,

01:01:46 ◼   ► and it doesn't, I mean, I could be playing music

01:01:48 ◼   ► off my first gen iPod or my phone or a tape player.

01:01:52 ◼   ► It doesn't matter, I can get audio out through this thing.

01:01:55 ◼   ► And this report is saying that Apple's gonna get rid of that

01:01:58 ◼   ► to gain thinness.

01:02:00 ◼   ► and that's a very interesting trade-off to me.

01:02:03 ◼   ► - Okay, so let me ask you the same question in another way.

01:02:09 ◼   ► In 100 years, do you see the human race listening to audio

01:02:15 ◼   ► by plugging a connector into a hole?

01:02:17 ◼   ► - No, I don't.

01:02:20 ◼   ► - Okay, so if not in 100 years, why not in five?

01:02:24 ◼   ► I mean, if it's clearly the future,

01:02:29 ◼   ► If it's obviously the future, why not do it now?

01:02:34 ◼   ► It's going to be problematic. It's crazy.

01:02:36 ◼   ► And I totally agree, and they're going to sell you an adapter, whatever.

01:02:40 ◼   ► But if it's obviously what's going to happen, and I believe it is inevitable,

01:02:43 ◼   ► with all these cables and buttons and physical objects

01:02:48 ◼   ► that you either plug or click or move, they're going away.

01:02:53 ◼   ► But if it's inevitable, why don't get started on it?

01:02:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I don't disagree with that.

01:03:01 ◼   ► And it's not,

01:03:02 ◼   ► it's not that you can go into this lightly, right?

01:03:08 ◼   ► It's not like transitioning from PowerPC to Intel,

01:03:10 ◼   ► where you can run Rosetta and all your old stuff works,

01:03:12 ◼   ► right, like you can't be like, oh well,

01:03:14 ◼   ► you can have the jack sometimes, right?

01:03:15 ◼   ► And Apple had a patent a couple years ago

01:03:17 ◼   ► for a smaller headphone jack,

01:03:19 ◼   ► and that seems to have just gone by the wayside.

01:03:23 ◼   ► Maybe they built it, maybe it didn't work,

01:03:24 ◼   ► there's no telling, right?

01:03:25 ◼   ► Apple patents all sorts of stuff they never use.

01:03:27 ◼   ► And there's no doubt that lightning is like superior hardware in basically every way.

01:03:36 ◼   ► And if they can make it more robust like that's great and there will be an adapter and I will

01:03:43 ◼   ► have to buy 12 of them because that's how adapters go. I agree with you right it's going to be

01:03:48 ◼   ► problematic there's no way to ease into this because this thing is such a well-used like

01:03:56 ◼   ► universal type thing, it is going to be painful

01:03:58 ◼   ► whenever they do it.

01:03:59 ◼   ► And so I agree with you, it's inevitable, right?

01:04:03 ◼   ► This is, it's sort of a bad deal, it's super old school,

01:04:06 ◼   ► very analog, kinda gross.

01:04:08 ◼   ► But whenever it is, it is gonna be painful.

01:04:14 ◼   ► And there's going to be that round of discussion of like,

01:04:17 ◼   ► well, they did this to make it thinner,

01:04:20 ◼   ► but we don't need thinner phones.

01:04:21 ◼   ► And again, I think, we've talked about this before,

01:04:24 ◼   ► Thinness and lightness go together right like the the new phone is a little bit thicker and a little bit heavier than the old one

01:04:30 ◼   ► Apple doesn't like that

01:04:32 ◼   ► Myke in our in our

01:04:35 ◼   ► Non-skype conversations was like well

01:04:38 ◼   ► He did this means they made a way to make the battery better and so they can make it thinner and lighter and still retain

01:04:43 ◼   ► their battery life

01:04:44 ◼   ► And so the 3.5 millimeter jack has to go

01:04:47 ◼   ► But the transition is gonna be hard like you're not gonna be able to use your earpods and move from your phone

01:04:53 ◼   ► to your older iPad or to your computer even,

01:04:57 ◼   ► 'cause I mean, the Macs don't ship with lightning at all,

01:04:59 ◼   ► and so are we gonna start seeing lightning

01:05:01 ◼   ► show up on the Macs?

01:05:02 ◼   ► I mean, there's lots of like weird questions here,

01:05:04 ◼   ► and what's gonna happen is people are gonna have an adapter

01:05:06 ◼   ► or they're gonna have two sets of earbuds,

01:05:07 ◼   ► or it's just gonna be painful.

01:05:10 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:05:11 ◼   ► I believe that a lot of people are against a rumor,

01:05:16 ◼   ► which is really like a very ironic state of affairs,

01:05:21 ◼   ► But anyway, a lot of people are against this idea,

01:05:24 ◼   ► because it's almost like,

01:05:27 ◼   ► oh man, I really don't wanna deal with this right now.

01:05:29 ◼   ► I wish that my son in 20 years,

01:05:33 ◼   ► the future generation would have to deal with the problem

01:05:35 ◼   ► of dropping the 3.5 millimeter jack.

01:05:38 ◼   ► But I feel like it's a change that's gonna come

01:05:42 ◼   ► sooner or later, and we gotta deal with this right now.

01:05:47 ◼   ► I am a proponent of dropping physical interfaces in the form of cables, plugs, buttons, stuff

01:05:56 ◼   ► that moves and requires space.

01:06:01 ◼   ► The argument that we don't need thinner phones...

01:06:07 ◼   ► Do we want thicker phones?

01:06:09 ◼   ► We may not need thinner phones, but do we want them to be thicker?

01:06:14 ◼   ► Do we want them to be heavier?

01:06:16 ◼   ► Or is it just this fantasy that we have created for ourselves that, "Oh, if only the iPhone

01:06:22 ◼   ► had a much bigger and heavier battery, I would be so happy."

01:06:25 ◼   ► But then you would run into another problem that would be bulky and uncomfortable to use.

01:06:29 ◼   ► And I think we have sort of convinced ourselves that we don't want the iPhone to be thinner,

01:06:35 ◼   ► but every year it gets thinner and we're happy.

01:06:37 ◼   ► And when it doesn't, such as this year, that it's slightly thicker, we complain.

01:06:42 ◼   ► So it appears that you can write a nice article, such as "The Verge", with a nice sketchy headline

01:06:49 ◼   ► "We don't need thinner iPhones", but in reality we all want them and we all like them when

01:06:54 ◼   ► we have them.

01:06:55 ◼   ► So it's easier to forget about this part.

01:06:59 ◼   ► As for the connector itself, it is going to be a problem and it is going to be problematic.

01:07:05 ◼   ► Graham Spencer at MacStory said a nice, I believe a nice article today about this.

01:07:12 ◼   ► It is going to be inevitable, and it is going to be a problem,

01:07:17 ◼   ► but there's a few ways that Apple could make this better, and maybe a smoother

01:07:21 ◼   ► transition for users. And I think that it makes some good points about

01:07:27 ◼   ► maybe just give a few adapters for free with each iPhone. They give you an

01:07:33 ◼   ► adapter for free. I mean, it's not free, you pay for, but it's for free in the box.

01:07:38 ◼   ► When you buy an Apple Pencil, if they make this switch... So of course make your

01:07:43 ◼   ► EarPods, Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, whatever, and give people an adapter or maybe a couple

01:07:50 ◼   ► of adapters in the box. And maybe if you want to also sell one separately, just

01:07:56 ◼   ► don't make it 20 bucks, make it like 5 or 10 bucks tops like 999. Just, I feel like moving away from

01:08:06 ◼   ► the standard audio jack is going to be a more, it's going to be a messier move than the 30 pin

01:08:14 ◼   ► to lightning, which was already messy and already people still are cracking jokes about it. I

01:08:20 ◼   ► remember Tim Cook was on Colbert a few weeks ago and he made a joke about the connector.

01:08:25 ◼   ► So it's still in everyone's minds, and if you change from the audio jack to Bluetooth or something else,

01:08:33 ◼   ► it's going to be a much, much bigger story.

01:08:35 ◼   ► So Apple has a few ways to kind of ease people into this change, and the solution is to not do

01:08:43 ◼   ► whatever they have done so far when it comes to adapters and when it comes to moving from one

01:08:48 ◼   ► standard to another. And because you know, the Lightning transition wasn't a problem

01:08:54 ◼   ► for us because we're nerds and we just, okay, we're gonna spend 50 bucks on cables and new

01:09:00 ◼   ► adapters. But people like my mom, people like my friends, they still hate. I mean, now they

01:09:05 ◼   ► got used to it, but it didn't help the goodwill of the Apple community, you know, when it

01:09:12 ◼   ► happened. Because Apple very famously likes to ask for quite a bit of money for cables

01:09:17 ◼   ► and adapters. So there's a few ways that they could make this better, but I totally believe

01:09:22 ◼   ► that it's going to happen, and I also think it should happen, because we should move away

01:09:26 ◼   ► from these components that occupy space and they are prone to damage, and it's just ugly

01:09:34 ◼   ► to look at, and it's just an old idea. It's been around for like a century, the 3.5mm

01:09:41 ◼   ► jack. It's a very old piece of technology, and if you think about it, it's incredible

01:09:46 ◼   ► that we still use one. And again, I ask you, if you think that in our ideal future we're

01:09:52 ◼   ► not going to be using jacks to listen to audio, why not create the future now? It's going

01:09:58 ◼   ► to be messy, it's going to be problematic, it's going to be a transition that we all

01:10:01 ◼   ► got to take care of, but you know, the human race survived worst things, so I think we

01:10:08 ◼   ► can survive moving from audio jacks to something else.

01:10:12 ◼   ► And a theory that I see on Twitter, and this is the last point, a theory that I see on

01:10:16 ◼   ► Twitter, and that it's kind of interesting, my friend Zach Saichi is in favor of this

01:10:24 ◼   ► idea.

01:10:25 ◼   ► What if Apple doesn't roll out this audio jack free change on the main line of the iPhone,

01:10:35 ◼   ► but on a separate iPhone model?

01:10:38 ◼   ► I think the parallel here is the original MacBook Air and what Marco calls the MacBook

01:10:44 ◼   ► One, so the new MacBook, with USB Type-C only available on the new MacBook, which is clearly

01:10:52 ◼   ► the feature, but it's not available on the main lines of the Mac ecosystem yet.

01:11:00 ◼   ► So you cannot buy an iMac with only one single USB Type-C port.

01:11:04 ◼   ► What if Apple starts to do this kind of major breakthrough?

01:11:08 ◼   ► So an iPhone without audio jack connector, and maybe even an iPhone without the home

01:11:14 ◼   ► button, just a screen that does everything wirelessly or via touch, but it's not the

01:11:20 ◼   ► main iPhone yet.

01:11:21 ◼   ► This is not even a rumor, this is just speculation, but I feel like it's fun to imagine.

01:11:26 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, they kind of do that because old phones stick around, and we know that

01:11:30 ◼   ► people buy old phones. So even if it's just on the new one, it's still a transition period,

01:11:36 ◼   ► right? Look how long it took for everyone or most people to have a retina phone, then

01:11:42 ◼   ► how many people have an LTE phone? I mean, that stuff takes time. Yeah, I mean, I don't

01:11:47 ◼   ► know. I think that the best, the simplest thing they can do is throw an adapter in the

01:11:54 ◼   ► box but you know even when the Mac went from Mac safe to Mac safe to you buy you

01:11:59 ◼   ► know $2,500 MacBook Pro and you can't use your old power adapter without buying a

01:12:04 ◼   ► $9 thing like I just don't have faith that Apple's gonna do it I think they

01:12:09 ◼   ► should and I think you know this is such a big deal that then maybe they have to

01:12:13 ◼   ► but I don't know I mean it I want the trade-off to be they have to sell it

01:12:20 ◼   ► right? They have to say we are doing it because X. And X better not just be thinness because

01:12:27 ◼   ► I get it and I appreciate it but even to me that's not enough of a trade-off. I think

01:12:33 ◼   ► to the general public it's definitely not because people put their phones in big bulky

01:12:38 ◼   ► cases and they don't notice that the phone is thinner, right? And I mean last night we

01:12:43 ◼   ► bought a new success for my wife and part of the conversation was well what case do

01:12:47 ◼   ► she puts her phone in a case and that's fine but that's just what people do.

01:12:53 ◼   ► And so most people are not going to notice it's a millimeter thinner and they are going

01:12:59 ◼   ► to notice that they can't plug it into their car anymore without an extra thing.

01:13:03 ◼   ► So we'll see.

01:13:04 ◼   ► I think I'll be curious to see how this moves forward and what they do.

01:13:10 ◼   ► If that jack is one of the reasons that the phone still has a big chin underneath the

01:13:15 ◼   ► screen like I would love a plus-sized screen in a smaller chassis right with

01:13:21 ◼   ► less of that stuff at the top and bottom like I want Apple to be focusing on that

01:13:24 ◼   ► sort of stuff you look at the iPhone X any any other sort of flagship Android

01:13:28 ◼   ► phone most of them that have smaller bezels at the top and bottom than Apple's

01:13:32 ◼   ► using and those sort of trade-offs I mean yes they have the home button and that's

01:13:36 ◼   ► not really there on Android phones in the same way but I think it's time that

01:13:40 ◼   ► Apple starts looking at some of these things that have been around since day

01:13:44 ◼   ► one like how do we make this better and I don't I'm not convinced that just

01:13:50 ◼   ► thinner equals better but I do think that Apple is thinking about that sort

01:13:54 ◼   ► of thing and we'll see how it goes and it's December and we're talking about

01:13:59 ◼   ► the next year's iPhone so that's just crazy in and of itself I guess. Yeah I

01:14:05 ◼   ► mean it's been what two months since the new iPhone we're already talking about

01:14:09 ◼   ► but the iPhone 7.

01:14:10 ◼   ► I cannot survive with this crazy schedule, Steven.

01:14:15 ◼   ► It is too much.

01:14:16 ◼   ► My poor heart is gonna suffer for this iPhone craziness.

01:14:21 ◼   ► - And there is part of my brain that says,

01:14:25 ◼   ► if this is true and this is out there early,

01:14:28 ◼   ► is that on purpose?

01:14:30 ◼   ► - Actually, you know what I'm thinking?

01:14:32 ◼   ► What's gonna happen to Marco and his headphones?

01:14:35 ◼   ► - It's thousands of adapters.

01:14:37 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:14:39 ◼   ► And that's what I'm gonna have to do.

01:14:41 ◼   ► Like, you know, I mean, I use,

01:14:42 ◼   ► I actually don't listen to headphones

01:14:44 ◼   ► with my iPhone very often.

01:14:46 ◼   ► And something too we should talk about,

01:14:50 ◼   ► I think there's articles out there

01:14:52 ◼   ► that if I were to look for them, I could find them.

01:14:54 ◼   ► But I would imagine, I think common sense just tells you

01:14:56 ◼   ► that most people who use headphones or earbuds

01:15:00 ◼   ► with their iPhone use the ones that come in the box with it,

01:15:03 ◼   ► rather than just use the EarPods.

01:15:04 ◼   ► And even again last night unboxing this new phone,

01:15:07 ◼   ► I'm like, "Hey, you have new earbuds."

01:15:09 ◼   ► And she's like, "Yes, my old ones were destroyed."

01:15:11 ◼   ► And like, "Why didn't you tell me they were destroyed?"

01:15:12 ◼   ► Like, "I have like three sets of them,

01:15:14 ◼   ► "I could just give me another one."

01:15:16 ◼   ► People just use what comes in the box, right?

01:15:18 ◼   ► And so the ear pods,

01:15:20 ◼   ► assumedly would obviously move to some sort of lightning

01:15:24 ◼   ► plug at the end of it.

01:15:25 ◼   ► And so you could buy a new phone,

01:15:27 ◼   ► "Oh, my new earbuds work, that's great."

01:15:29 ◼   ► And that is a big deal that does take care

01:15:33 ◼   ► of a lot of people who are just going to use

01:15:37 ◼   ► what comes in the box.

01:15:38 ◼   ► And maybe they don't plug in their car,

01:15:39 ◼   ► maybe they use Bluetooth in their car,

01:15:40 ◼   ► because that's very, I mean, even my Corolla I bought new

01:15:44 ◼   ► last year has Bluetooth in it, right?

01:15:45 ◼   ► It's not an expensive car.

01:15:47 ◼   ► And so, you know, most people, if most people just use

01:15:50 ◼   ► the headphones that come in the box

01:15:51 ◼   ► and maybe Bluetooth in their car,

01:15:52 ◼   ► then maybe it's not as big of a deal.

01:15:55 ◼   ► And maybe it's only people like us who, you know,

01:15:58 ◼   ► my phone, at least in a previous life,

01:16:00 ◼   ► got plugged into a bunch of AV systems,

01:16:01 ◼   ► and does get plugged into various things around the house.

01:16:05 ◼   ► And maybe that my sort of usage is not as mainstream

01:16:09 ◼   ► as I think it is, and that by just changing the ear pods,

01:16:13 ◼   ► most people would be relatively okay.

01:16:15 ◼   ► And so there's that angle too, right,

01:16:17 ◼   ► that Apple has that data.

01:16:18 ◼   ► Apple, they also have Beats, right?

01:16:21 ◼   ► And if you're telling me that Beats

01:16:23 ◼   ► wanna have lightning equipped headphones on day one,

01:16:26 ◼   ► then I would be just blown away.

01:16:28 ◼   ► They're gonna have that.

01:16:29 ◼   ► And so people who are even into that brand

01:16:33 ◼   ► and who like those products will have options as well.

01:16:36 ◼   ► And so I don't, you know, it is gonna be problematic,

01:16:39 ◼   ► but maybe it isn't the end of the world for everyone

01:16:42 ◼   ► because Apple can do these things

01:16:44 ◼   ► with their first party stuff.

01:16:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, I agree.

01:16:48 ◼   ► It's definitely going to be,

01:16:50 ◼   ► I think it's gonna be more interesting just to observe.

01:16:54 ◼   ► I'm probably gonna have to buy a bunch of adapters

01:16:57 ◼   ► because if they do this it's the kind of adapter

01:17:00 ◼   ► that I'm going to lose like 100 times.

01:17:04 ◼   ► And again, there should be a couple in the box

01:17:07 ◼   ► if they move away.

01:17:09 ◼   ► But I see whenever I go, I take the bus or,

01:17:14 ◼   ► actually I don't take the bus, what am I saying?

01:17:15 ◼   ► I take the train occasionally, never take the bus.

01:17:18 ◼   ► - It's like a bus.

01:17:19 ◼   ► - Stoned rails.

01:17:21 ◼   ► Whenever I take the train or the plane,

01:17:23 ◼   ► I see people either with the standard iPhone earpods or with Beats.

01:17:29 ◼   ► And increasingly I'm seeing wireless Beats, which I also have.

01:17:33 ◼   ► The Studio 2, Studio 1, I don't know.

01:17:37 ◼   ► Anyway, they're wireless Beats.

01:17:39 ◼   ► And they're pretty good, but Bluetooth still has issues.

01:17:42 ◼   ► And I don't know if it's an iOS 9 problem or if I gotta update the firmware of my headphones, which is crazy.

01:17:49 ◼   ► But anyway, I get dropped connections or sometimes I just get back quality or if you want to watch videos with the Beats headphones in wireless mode,

01:18:01 ◼   ► you get a delay between the video and the audio, which basically makes video unplayable with the Beats wireless.

01:18:08 ◼   ► So there's still going to be problems to fix and it's up to Apple to kind of sell this change, to say "Hey, we made this transition from a cable to wireless audio,

01:18:18 ◼   ► it's better in such and such ways. We'll see what happens. But we got quite a few...

01:18:25 ◼   ► 10 months, Steven. We can literally make a baby in the meantime, and the baby will be

01:18:31 ◼   ► born to wireless audio. You and I can't make a baby. Well, it's just

01:18:36 ◼   ► a figure of speech. I think that's probably the end of the show.

01:18:42 ◼   ► Maybe forever. If you want to get in touch with us, there are a bunch of ways you can

01:18:46 ◼   ► do that you can find the show notes and

01:18:49 ◼   ► email link you can email us from our website

01:18:51 ◼   ► relay.fm/connected this is episode

01:18:55 ◼   ► 68 so all the show notes will be at that

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01:19:01 ◼   ► bunch of links we talked about today you

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01:19:04 ◼   ► show is underscore connected FM you can

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01:19:13 ◼   ► smacstories.net. You can find me on Twitter @ismh and

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01:19:37 ◼   ► Arrivederci. Adios.