Upgrade - 148: I Think I Think What You Think

Episode Date: July 3, 2017

Jason convinces Myke to upgrade to iOS 11 so they can both talk about using it on their iPads, including the new 10.5-inch iPad Pro. Also, Jason announces his enormous strategic partnerships and sends the stock market on an adventure! Finally, Jason breaks down Photos on macOS High Sierra.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 148 today's show is brought to you by casper fresh books and encapsular my name is mike hurley i am joined by jason snell hi mike hurley how are you i'm very well jason snell how are you? I'm enjoying patriotic holidays. That's what I'm doing. It is the Independence Day long weekend in the United States. It was just the 150th Canada Day in Canada. So North America is just one big festive red, white, and sometimes blue party. Jason, Frank would like to know for Hashtag Snell Talk this week, what is your favorite snack?

I will refer Frank to episode 108 of the Robot or Not podcast, which was just posted last week, in which I declare my love for peanut butter in all its forms. It is my favorite food. It is absolutely my favorite snack. So peanut butter, that's it. Right out of the jar? Yeah. Uh-huh.

Yeah, I'll do that. Right out of the jar. Yeah, see, I'm pretty sure we've actually had a what is your favorite food question somewhere. I think we have, because it was clear at that point that my favorite food question somewhere i i think we have it because we we it was clear at that point that my favorite food would kill you so you know but it's interesting that not only is your favorite food peanut butter your favorite snack is peanut butter i wonder what else peanut butter fills i wonder what other categories in your life peanut favorite thing

to buy of apple pay peanut butter right like a list goes on favorite uh i i once had a um despite peanut butter being my favorite food i went to this uh restaurant when i was visiting family in pennsylvania and they they brought the dessert menu out and it had peanut butter pie on it which is a thing that exists but i had literally never heard of peanut butter pie before and i said well bring that to me now and uh it's pretty great so peanut butter you know is it my favorite dessert i don't know i really like peanut butter frozen yogurt if i go to a frozen yogurt place i will get the peanut butter flavor if it if it's there um there are good ones there are bad ones but they're all they're all peanut butter so they're

they're all okay yeah love it i'll have it for breakfast i'll have it for breakfast. I'll have it for lunch. Maybe one day I'll buy some EpiPens and I'll come over to California. Don't. And you can give me a taste of the amazing peanut butter that you like. I'm sure there's a peanut butter flavor that is entirely devoid of actual peanuts. I wonder. They probably make that. If anybody knows of such a thing that exists, let me know. It won't taste like peanuts at all, but, you know, maybe it exists.

Some totally artificial peanut flavoring. Talking about things that shouldn't exist at all. Yeah, oh boy. The Galaxy Note 7 FE, which is actually known as the Galaxy Note 7 Fandom Edition, that is what the FE stands for, is going on sale July 7th in Korea. This is a refurbished version of the Galaxy Note 7s that were recalled. So Samsung is trying to put back into the market

all of the handsets that they had to bring back. They're saying that it's featuring different components to the original i don't get this these are also i just want to be clear these are the ones that didn't explode they didn't refurbish the ones that blew up these are the ones that didn't explode at this point i wouldn't put it past them you had to bring them back in and now they're selling them for fans for the fans the fandom for the people who just they wish they had that galaxy note 7 and they didn't get it and now they're gonna finally get it with a uh with a battery that is apparently much less capable

than the one because that seemed to be the source of the problem you kind of calling your contacts in in korea now mike trying to get get a galaxy note 7 fe oh you know me fe stands for phones explode phones explode phones explode i like that phones explode yep we're just months away from the galaxy note 8 like because it debuts before the iphone this is such a strange thing i mean i can see i can obviously see why they're doing this, because they have a warehouse full of Galaxy Note 7s, and they're just trying to get some out there, like just get rid of some of these. But it's like, just don't.

I know why you're doing it, Samsung, but just don't. This is why people look at your company and say silly things about your company. It's why you get weird headlines, right? Like, these are the bad decisions that you make, and this is just one of them. the cost of these things that are in the warehouse and is making a case right making a claim saying you know we could sell these maybe in certain markets like our home market of korea and make some money out of these things because they're perfectly good with the battery uh with the battery replaced and if we do that we'll cut our losses and we'll limit it to these markets so you know where we're impervious and maybe not put it elsewhere but we'll sell some here and we'll make some money and look look at how the budget will be improved by by this i imagine there's some someone made a business argument somewhere and how yeah i mean i

get it like on one level you want to sweep it under the rug on the other level it's a an opportunity for them to make some of the money back that they lost in this thing i don't know it it from a from an optics perspective you'd kind of want to just like let it be um fandom edition also such a weird name i do wonder if it's like literally there are the way this is being marketed is people who love samsung and buy all the galaxy note models are really sad that they can't have a galaxy note in their collection well and also like people loved that phone right and like were unwilling to give it back to the point that samsung had to brick the phones to make people send them in right so so this is them saying all right if you really want

it you can have it but it's uh yeah it's weird you'd think that you'd want to move on but samsung does lots of things we don't we don't understand and uh yeah that's that's uh it's weird it's it's really weird. By all accounts, it was a good phone other than the exploding. So I guess I can see that, but the Galaxy Note 8 is going to come out. So yeah, it's weird.

We don't understand Samsung. Last week, Bloomberg posted a big article claiming that Apple is working with Hertz, the rental car company, to manage its self-driving fleet. That is the headline. Apple is working with Hertz to manage its self-driving fleet. In the article, they note that Apple is leasing a small fleet from Hertz for their cars and

compares it to the deal that Alphabet and Avis have together for working on self-driving technology. This is a collaboration between these two companies to together for working on self-driving technologies. This is a collaboration between these two companies to try and work on self-driving cars. Because of this news, as you can imagine, the shares for Hertz skyrocketed. But it came out a little bit later on in the week that there is no story here and that Apple are literally just leasing six cars from Hertz that they are outfitting with their technology and there is no special deal. Apple later told CNBC that they are like categorically

we are not partnering with Hertz. What is going on here? I really like this, Mike. I think that this is something that we should take up in our daily lives and just stick with me here for a moment. Like I got an Amazon package yesterday. So I'd like to announce I'm partnering with Amazon. Oh, congratulations. Thank you. I've got a new relationship with Amazon that is, it involves branding and e-commerce. That is the incomparable incorporated six colors.com and me personally, Jason Snell. I have that deal with Amazon now. So we've extended that relationship. The details of the relationship are kind of, I'm going to keep it under wraps,

but it mostly involves me giving them money and then putting cardboard boxes in front of my door. But we'll see where it goes from there. So I hope my investors are excited about that. I'm also happy to announce that I have a relationship. I'm partnering with Comcast. That relationship is they are providing providing me they're the exclusive provider of internet access in my house in the i'm sorry in the headquarters of the incomparable

incorporated exclusive access also also we we cut an entertainment deal on the side they're also my entertainment provider partnership so uh i think that's going to be big i think it's going to be really big i have some late-breaking news, Jason. Yes. Some late-breaking news straight from the market floor that both Comcast and Amazon's shares have skyrocketed upon the news of a very recent and sudden and strong partnership collaboration effort. This is ridiculous, right? This is just – I don't what bloomberg was doing here like i don't know if they heard something and misinterpreted it or they're just totally trying to make a story out of nothing but it's like they wrote this

entire article which had just one sentence that was of any interest and they spun this one sentence into this entire piece which then created this effect and i've got to say this is the start of a not start this is a this is indicative of a trend at bloomberg right now um which we have spoken about we've spoken about it last week with talking about the Apple rumors and stuff. It seems like that they have a habit right now of finding out one little thing and then making a huge big story out of it.

The fact is that this happens in journalism a lot, where you get a source, and especially in modern web journalism, you get a source, and you get a tidbit of info, and what you do is you write a whole story around it. And I mean, I've seen this, and this happens not even when you're doing reporting, but this is also how reblocking goes, where I read a story the other day that was based on an interview on another website. And to their, no, sorry, it was based on three different interviews on another website. And this story wove those three interviews together with background information. It was very expertly done, but contained no new information. It was literally just strip mining other people's stories and

organizing it into a new way. So that's just a thing that we deal with on the web these days. And the Bloomberg stories are a little bit like that where, you know, they got a tidbit, an original reported tidbit from someone, and then you build your narrative around it and so like literally you could have a story with one piece of information which is you know a guy at apple or at hertz or somewhere in between who says hey did you know i'm just giving you a tip here, that Apple is getting into bed with Hertz. They've got a small fleet of cars that they have leased involved, and it's the self-driving stuff. So they're making a deal.

Apple's making a deal with Hertz on this, and so it's big news. You should report on that. And it's going to be – and they've got the details. It's like their Lexuses, theirased from Hertz's fleet management unit. And then what do you do with that story? And the answer is you write a story with a big headline that says Apple's working with Hertz. apple's leasing a small fleet they're going to lease this model apple declined to comment um and then you throw in like background so it's here's what's hurt stock performances and here's alphabets deal with avis and that draws a a parallel um and then you throw in a paragraph of background which is here's what's happened with the apple car project in the past and tim

cook said you know last month that they are working on something. And you end up with this big story. It's not that big, but it's like a six, seven paragraph story that's really based. You could really summarize in one sentence in terms of the initial information, which is Apple is leasing some cars from Hertz related to their self-driving fleet. And it's small and there may only be a half dozen of them. Okay. It's not much of of a story then so you build it up in the narrative and that that happens sometimes we've seen it with mark german stories which at uh nine to five mac were pretty no nonsense of here's what you know here's what i've heard and here's the background and since he's been to bloomberg one of the things that's happened is you've seen more co-bylines where he's put on with someone else. And you've seen these kind of more fluffed up, expansive stories where more

narrative is put into it, wrapping around what the actual nuggets of information are. And that just seems to be the approach Bloomberg is taking to this sort of thing. And not just Bloomberg, I think a lot of news organizations do this sort of thing. And not just Bloomberg. I think a lot of news organizations do this sort of thing when you've got scraps and you're trying to make something out of the scraps. It's just a silly story. The other thing that I think is kind of funny is that why aren't Apple just buying six cars? Why are they leasing and then like drilling holes in these cars? Like just buy the cars. cars it's really weird it does seem a little weird i wonder if there's something about like them there's a reason why it's a better thing legally or in some other way to lease cars rather than buy them for a part of this project i don't

know but it does seem like they could write it feels like an accounting thing to me honestly just go down to the lexus dealer buy some cars have them sent over also i will say this is an interesting example when when apple actually told cnbc that there's no special deal there like there's an apple decline to comment in the bloomberg story so what's what seems to have happened here is Apple has done its reflexive, we're not talking about this. We're just going to keep everything quiet. And then they saw the story take off and they saw Hertz shares go up. And somebody at Apple saw all of this and said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We got to get out there. Now, I would like, I'm going to say that Apple PR should maybe look at this as an example of how you don't, your old classic decades-long policy of reflexively declining to comment or occasionally saying you'll get back

to somebody and then never doing it. This is a good example why maybe that's not a great standard policy. Maybe you should process these requests a little bit more, knowing that Bloomberg is going to write a big story about your connections to Hertz, which maybe as a PR person you don't know anything about, maybe do a little research and find out what's going on there and give an actual reply to Bloomberg that says, no, no, no, this is overstated. We have at least six cars for this project that we're working on. It's not a big deal. At which point Bloomberg actually might not run the story, right? But instead they're just like, no, we have nothing to say. Bloomberg runs the story hearthstock goes up and then somebody at apple decides to put their foot down and and tell cnbc that it's uh overblown it's weird like you know they could have they in other words apple

could have nipped the story in the bud because really if apple had come back to these writers and said no this you got you got it wrong this is not we're not we're not no commenting you here guys like literally you got it wrong there are a half if you think that a half dozen cars that we're leasing like six cars is uh is newsworthy then go to town but it's just part of our everyday you know operations when we're working on projects and then they could run that story if they wanted to but it certainly would have been a lot less interesting. Then again, I'll take it from the reporter side. You kind of don't want Apple to get back to you, right? Because they might pop your balloon. So you almost want them to decline comment. And then, or if they don't get

back to you right away, be like, Oh, they didn't respond, which is what Hertz did. Hertz just didn't respond in time for them to post the article. It like well that's good because then they have an article otherwise they don't have an article i don't know it's just weird that that apple declined comment and then felt the need later to burst the bubble yeah i wonder what decline to comment means like if it means that they were like we're not talking about this or they just didn't bother to reply because it was a stupid thing no decline to comment means that they said um that that they that they said they said they didn't have any statement about it so what would they say like apple didn't reply to requests or whatever well here's the sentence in the story an apple spokesman declined to comment while a representative for

hertz didn't immediately respond to a request for comment and that's the difference immediately you have 20 seconds yeah my guess is they called hertz and said so we got this story uh you got any comment and and they're like let me get back to you and and you wait and i i will say yes maybe you wait a minute and then you post the article but i will say i have written articles where I've really wanted an Apple comment. And I called Apple and said, I got this article. I would like a comment. And they've said, instead of we don't have a comment on that, they've said, you know, I get what you're saying. Let me go get, let me talk to some people and I will get you a comment.

And I've held the story. In one case, we held it for a couple of days. They never responded. And at some point, as a journalist, at some point point you've got to be like i'm not just going to wait around because i definitely have felt played in the past by sources where they're just trying to put you off the story and they're never going to get back to you yeah and you don't want to sit on it for too long because then somebody else is going to post it exactly and and it's yeah, I mean, I'm doing you a courtesy by trying to get an answer, letting you go on the record about what I'm writing about, but I'm not

going to let you delay my story for three days. So get back to me in a reasonable amount of time. So that could be the case here, or it could literally be. Because I said immediate, I wonder, Bloomberg must have a policy of what immediate means. If it's less than a day, or if it's less than six hours, or if it's less than an hour, I don't know what the policy is, but it wouldn't surprise me if they actually have a policy about what makes it an immediate, didn't immediately respond because you could see how a source might get frustrated if they respond in an hour and it doesn't matter because they, you know, Hey, could you help me out? I need you to clarify this thing about your car leases. Okay. Well, I'm going to have to talk to people who i'm not even sure who knows about this but i will try to get back to

you as soon as i can and then you turn around and you start finding that person in your organization and oh meanwhile bloomberg already posted the story like i can understand how that would be really frustrating if you're the person trying to get the comment and they just are going through the motions but we don't know what the what the background news gathering happening here is but in the end it ends up being the story that boosts the stock the story has been updated to reflect the boosting of the stock which i think is interesting um and then but not updated with the statement that they gave to to cnbc yeah i noticed that too like why didn't they put the apple comment back in because the answer to the story has been given like yeah it was given to cnbc but like just linked to cnbc

now i think i think if you asked the editors at bloomberg what they'd say is their story is not factually inaccurate they say it's a small fleet they say it's testing self-driving technology. Of course. Their suggestion in the lead that it echoes a larger deal is the problem, right? Because that is providing a linkage to the Alphabet and Avis deal. And the fact that in the story, they literally call out that deal. Yes. They refer to it. Right. And it's like, oh, no, we're just mentioning it.

And Apple said no. Yeah. We're just and apple said no yeah like you know we're just we're just bringing it up but like no you bring it up because then it makes it look like it's a bigger thing i guess anyway this isn't much of a story other than it's i think it is just an interesting indication about where a lot of these stories live now, like the kind of the world that they're operating in with like any piece of information and you'll post it and it becomes a big deal, big enough that it literally affects

the value of another company. Mike, this is Justin. I'm happy to report that I now have a strategic relationship with the Peanut Butter Producers of America. Oh, congratulations. That must mean a lot to you. It now have a strategic relationship with the peanut butter producers of America. Oh, congratulations. That must mean a lot to you. It does mean a lot to me. I'm going to be purchasing peanut butter, American-made peanut butter, and eating it.

So that's a strategic partnership where they make peanut butter, and that's their strategy. And I buy it and eat it, and that's my strategy. So I think this is going to be great news for the peanut butter industry. I just had the peanut butter industry get in contact with me, Jason, to say that this is merely just a one tub a month deal. It's not like a big, big partnership. Mike, I think what you'll find is that it parallels your deal with the ice cream producers of the uk i'm pretty sure it mirrors it echoes well it echoes that deal it's not quite the same but it echoes it i think you'll find now this is now a real sponsorship message and it is okay so we're going to talk

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that much wider than the 9.7 was but for making a a full-size keyboard by the sort of the way the definition apple has chosen um it is wider enough that there's that much if you think about it the wider the the um ipad is the wider the smart cover is because the smart cover is the exact dimensions of the screen of the ipad and of the whole the whole thing screen plus bezel and they've redesigned the smart cover a little bit, or the smart keyboard, I guess, not smart cover, smart keyboard, the keyboard that lives inside the cover. And it means that those letter keys are now what they would call full size. There's actually an ISO standard, which is basically 17 to 19 millimeters between the centers of the key caps is what's considered a full-size keyboard

and these are 17 millimeters they are the smallest key caps you can have and call it full size but they are and they actually shrunk some other keys to do that and the result is that yeah i think typing on the 10.5 5 is even better than typing on the 9.7 was. And I liked the 9.7 smart keyboard and the 10.5 smart keyboard is that much better. Plus you get the wider screen, right? So the on-screen keyboard is also better because it's bigger. They just scaled it up. It's literally just stretched wider. I checked. I checked. It's not, they didn't reformat, it seems, anything, at least so far, unless they change it in iOS 11 at some point. It's just every key cap is a little bit wider, which means, again, it's not quite the size of the 12.9, which has the full size keyboard

on screen with a number row at the top, but it's way better um and so that's one of those things it's like we've talked about the screen being better on the 10.5 than the 9.7 and that's true but don't miss the other part of it which is the that the that the keyboard is better and on ios 11 you also get that flick keyboard which is even better once you get used to it because then you've got quick access to the secondary keys, secondary symbols without having to toggle into another mode. So they're, you know, typing the typing story on the 10.5, I think is way better than the 9.7. And not to say the 9.7 is bad. But like if you're looking, if you're 9.7 iPad Pro user, and you're looking to upgrade and find a reason to upgrade to the 10.5, I would say

typing is a thing to keep in mind. Now, it it's true you have to buy all your accessories again because you can't really you shouldn't really use uh the smart keyboard from one on the other and the whole point is that you want the bigger keys but uh but yeah i think it's pretty good i don't know do you do you have you have all of this right you have a smart keyboard on a 10.5 have you found it to be it feels more comfortable i mean i noticed it almost immediately just by looking at it which is kind of weird like the first time that i saw one of the keyboard i couldn't when i looked at the ipad i couldn't tell that the ipad was physically bigger but as soon as i saw the keyboard i was like that's bigger i don't know why but it was just something in my brain where

i was like yep i know that and i've been happy with it i i will say last week i was doing i was working out the house for a day or two um and i was kind of like around london and just like finding different places i needed to go and in between meetings and stuff was just going to coffee shops and just setting up and i was using the 10.5 for it and that is such a great my god it's such a great iPad to work on. Like, it doesn't, as we said before, it doesn't have all of the benefits of the 12.9, but that kind of middle ground of the full-size keyboard, the 10.5-inch screen, which is bigger, so it's nicer, just because everything's bigger because the screen's bigger.

So you can kind of, whilst you don't get the ability to have the full-sized applications side-by-side, um so you get you know you can you can kind of whilst you don't get the the ability to you know have the full-sized applications side by side you can like zoom out on them more and stuff like that like i'm able to zoom out more on spreadsheets and things like that because i have more physical space to deal with and i've been really really impressed with it like everything is more comfortable the keyboard is great the screen's fantastic like that is a absolutely fantastic ipad like it is it is even more like an ipad that i'm even more happy to use when traveling so like i'm i'm going to be traveling a lot over the summer and i've been deliberating and or was deliberating right

do i take the 12.9 or the 10.5 i I wasn't sure. And whilst I still haven't come to my complete decision, it isn't a case now of like, oh, the screen's too small. That's not going to be the reason. So I'm really, really impressed with the 10.5. And I've been using it just more and more at home and stuff like that. It really is just an absolutely fantastic iPad.

I've been trying to travel with both of them. So I'm taking'm, um, I'm taking a couple of short trips and, uh, over the last couple of weeks and, um, cause I want to try both of them out and yeah, I'm still trying to write my kind of final statement about the, about the iPad pro. Cause I haven't gotten to that cause there's been so much else going on. But, um, I, I agree with you. I think the 10.5 is excellent as a 12, as a 12.9 user. I, I love the 12.9. I really do. It is huge, but I love it. And iOS 11 on it, which we can talk about a little bit more. It makes it that much better. The apps are big. It's great. When I use

the 10.5, I still feel like, you know, wow, this is, this is small. There's less room for everything than I'm used to on the 12.9. But it's better than the 9.5 or the 9.8, right? It's better, it's bigger without feeling bigger or heavier, really. And I think I've reached the same conclusion you have, which is i would probably enjoy my experience more on the 12.9 just because i do love that big screen but could i travel without any hesitation about like well i really need to be the 12.9 because with this 10.5 it's like yeah i would i would travel it does it's the same processor you know it does this it does everything that the 12.9 does the screen's just a little bit smaller and it's lighter and and yeah i could i could do what i do on the 12.9 just fine on the 10.5 it wouldn't

be it would feel a little more cramped and i might have to do a little more kind of moving things around on screen than i have to do on the 12.9. But it's an incredibly capable device to the point where I would say like, if there's like a pie chart of appropriate users for the 12.9 and the 9.7, and now we update that pie chart for appropriate users for the 12.9 and the 10.5, I feel like the already majority of the pie chart that was the 9.7 gets a little bit bigger because I feel like this will push a few more people over to saying, you know, I don't need the bigger iPad. And that's fine.

I still love that 12.9 and I'm glad it exists. I would have been very sad if it had been eliminated. But yeah, I think the 10.5 is appreciably better than the 9.7 in a bunch of different ways that make it a more usable um usable device i am very sad as you are that logitech has so far at least chosen not to make a create keyboard for it i chose to make a terrible keyboard it's not just so much that they didn't make a create they made a decision instead to make one of the worst keyboards i've ever used which is the uh that that's not that you're bitter not that i'm bitter at all uh what is it called the slim something or other yeah so bad just i i hate it i really i really really hate it

slim combo that's it the slim combo we we like the 9.7 create and so where's the 10.5? There's a larger issue that I'm going to write about at some point, which is, again, what is the deal with the smart keyboard or the smart connector? Just like so few products with the smart connector, obviously it's got some issues, but I like the idea of creating keyboards for the iPad. And maybe it's just the size of the market. Maybe people are concerned that they can't make enough money on an iPad keyboard that only works on the iPad Pro, one model of the iPad Pro. But that Create keyboard was really good for the 9.7.

It would be, you know, you use it all the time. Imagine that, but a little bit bigger on the 9.7 it would be you you know you use it all the time imagine that but a little bit bigger on the 10.5 not the giant shell the macbook air shell that's the 12.9 create keyboard but the 9.7 so good a 10.5 would be that much better and for whatever reason logitech seems to just not again they might be working on it and there's something going on and they can't announce it but um the lack of any comment about it makes me concerned that it's just not going to happen and it's too bad but not to say that the smart keyboard isn't good like smart keyboard is good and you can you can use it in um all sorts of circumstances it's a good keyboard but the

create keyboard was for people who really want to use a keyboard, was that much better. Mm-hmm. The thing that annoyed me is, like, they made a product called the Slim Folio for the iPad, the current standard 329 iPad, which is the Create,

without the loop. With Bluetooth. With Bluetooth. But they didn't make a version of the create or haven't made a version of the create for the new ipads but i don't know whatever come on logitech or like anybody really like why is it just logitech they're not it's not called the logitech smart connector right like come on, come on. What's going on here? Someone needs to do some digging on this to find out what is happening with the smart connector. I agree.

Yeah, and if there's anybody out there, we don't do this often, but I'll say if there's anybody out there who knows what the deal is with the smart connector and why accessory vendors are kind of hesitant to do it, if they're technical issues or if it's literally just like the market's not big enough, you would think that there would be some sort of market here,

but maybe not. I don't know. I would love to hear about it. And I know Mike would love to hear about it because where are they? Like where? The iPad Pro is Apple. I'll put it this way.

Apple is providing an opening here. Apple has not yet made a more traditional laptop style keyboard for the iPad Pro, right? Apple has declined to do that. And I'm a little bit baffled by that. I know the smart keyboard is their thing, and it's their first product to do this at all and um maybe this is they think this is enough or maybe they have to start somewhere but like there are opportunities to get in on the ground with this ipad pro and say we've got a better solution than apple for you people who are doing your work and your those fortune 500 companies that are embracing the ipad and like we can get you something that's that that's a little more keyboard than what you get with

a smart keyboard. And yet, there are very few that do that. It's a little bit, it's disappointing. I'll say that. So let's talk about iOS 11. I have been holding off installing iOS 11 onto my iPads for a couple of reasons. I mean, one, you know, people say, don't put betas on your work devices. Well, these are my primary work devices, both of my iPads, right? The 10.5, the 12.9. That is where if I'm not recording and

editing a podcast, all of the other work that comes with running my business is done from those machines. So I've been a bit hesitant. This hesitance came from the fact that Beta 1 bricked both of my iPads, and I had to restore them. But then the temptation got to me, and I installed the developer Beta 2 on my 12.9 inch iPad this morning. This was mostly because this was in our document today. And I woke up to a message from Jason. Two messages. I think something to the effect of like, come on, just install it now. Do it.

Do it. So at that point, Jason pushed me over the edge and I installed beta 2 this morning and it went fine and i can tell there is a massive difference between beta 1 and beta 2 and just general reliability i was having a lot of problems with beta 1 just like everything was like shaken around all over the place like it was not good and beta 2 is way better which i think is the public beta i think the second developer beta is basically the public beta. So that's the one that anybody can sign up for. Yep. But you've been running the betas since WWDC, right? Yeah, I would say, yeah.

So I installed it on a secondary iPad when developer beta one came out. But when I got the new iPads, i didn't wait too long before i installed so i got i got a 12.9 and the 10.5 and so i i installed the beta on the 12.9 almost right away figuring that it was based on a backup of of my personal 12.9 this is a this is the one i bought i got for the review um and so if there was a problem i would just pick up the real 12.9 and use that my previous one um but i uh i i then went after a few days i went and installed it on the on the 10.5 because really it is night and day like again if you absolutely have to rely on everything working right on your ipad you shouldn't install a beta especially in

early beta because things will be things are broken there are things that i try to do like i have it where occasionally command tab just stops working or if you use the four finger gesture to move between apps in beta 2 i have apps that just freeze when you try to do that that you switch this to the other app and then they freeze and you've got to kind of go to the lock screen and unlock it and then wait for it to quit before you can move on with your life and there's stuff like in tweetweetBot, for example, if you paste a link into the ComposeBox, it immediately crashes every single time. Yeah. By the way, there is a workaround for this. If you paste the link before you write any other text, it won't crash.

Just a quick FYI for anyone. where when you paste a link in at the end of a tweet, it shows it pasted into the beginning of the tweet, and then it moves to the right place. It's super weird. I think there's something to do with the drag and drop stuff is messing around with copy-paste. Yeah, and then another one that gets me, and this is actually a workflow issue that I did have to deal with, which is literally because I have these workflows in workflow that resize photos and upload them to

my server for six colors, and using transmit the FTP app, and they don't work. It gets to the transmit step and just stops. And so I let panic know and I let workflow know. And it's fine because it's a beta. Like I'm not going to get mad at anybody about it other than myself maybe. It's like that's what happens. But this is what I'm saying is you got to pay right now. If you want to get the benefits of the multitasking stuff now, you got to pay now. Now for us, we talk about this stuff. I think it's

worth taking that as part of our jobs, taking that risk a little bit. I have found that there, you can work with them and it's not, these bugs are not horrible. You can deal with them. And the trade-off I get is that I get to experience and think about and write about these features. And maybe even, Dan and I were talking write about the these features. And maybe even Dan and I were talking about this the other day on the six colors podcast, maybe even influence it a little bit, because I've seen like, Matthew Panzarino had a really nice Twitter thread that, you know, I hope he filed some radars, too. But he had a really nice Twitter thread about some of the UI things that are in these early betas of iOS 11 that just seem like misguided or wrong. And now is the time for those of us who

use this stuff a lot to write articles and post tweets and file radars and say, don't let this ship to stuff that isn't quite right. Cause there's definitely stuff in there that, that is new interface stuff that doesn't work right. That like you shouldn't do it this way. And some of that stuff, it may be stuff we get used to and we deal with it and we move on. But some of it feels like it's just misguided. And the more people who say,

why is it like this? The more somebody inside Apple has ammunition to say, see, I told you we shouldn't do it this way and maybe change it. So what are some of the things for you right now that are sticking out good and bad? Well, on the good, and I haven't even put it on my iPhone because I don't see the point, because really I installed it for the iPad stuff. And I want to, you know, I'm looking forward to using Drag & Drop, but Drag & Drop right now is kind of, until there are betas of third-party apps I use that support Drag & Drop more explicitly right now, it's really hit and miss. So I kind of don't bother a lot of the time.

So for me, it is the multitasking stuff, primarily the fact that I can have two windows open in split view, and a slide over window running and the slide over window can be left or right. The fact that I can have those two windows live together, so that I can have Twitter and Slack open side by side in one and my text editor and Safari open in another and I can command tab between them. That's great. That that's that moment where I'm like, Oh, yeah. And the command tab is fast. It basically just does a dissolve a really fast dissolve. And you've gone from your these two apps to these other two apps. And they get to sit there and the configuration you set them in. Because remember, in iOS 10, you can only have one sort of secondary app that you set them in because remember in ios 10 you can only have one sort of secondary app that you set

and if you switch command tab to a different app the the left app changes but the right app just stays there and in ios 11 that concept is gone which is great which is not to say that it couldn't be better but it's so much better than what was uh what was there before so for me that's the that's the number one that's an interesting thing to point out because i know for a lot of people um that change has been a problem and and i thought that it was going to be a problem for me right because i would do so much work where i would have i would basically be using three applications and the way that i would do it is so like i'll give the the biggest one for me is when I'm preparing for shows. I would have Google Docs on the right hand side.

So it's in the non-moving side. And then on the left hand side, I would have notes. And what would happen is I would be going through my notes document where I've been saving links and stuff throughout the week. I would tap on a link. It would switch out to Safari. I would read the articles that I need to read, copy and paste the things that I need, and then just command tab. And that command tab would swap me right back to notes again. And this is just something that I've really gotten to use. And that is the way that I work, right? And I do it for like when we're sending out invoices and stuff, then I'll

have like a web browser. I have two web browsers, don't ask, and Google Sheets and would like I'll be swapping between Safari and Google Sheets with Chrome on the right hand side. Great, right? That's how I would do it. And I've realized quite quickly, I can't do that anymore, right? That doesn't work. If you command tab, it takes you to a complete full screen app or another pair or something like that but the way that i was doing it this morning because i prepared for this show using ios 11 i waited until i'd updated before i did it so i could try and work it out it's just a case of changing things around so one thing that i was to the way i was doing it this morning is i would have uh google docs and a web browser open so So I'd have Google Docs and Safari open.

And then I would have notes in that little slide over app. So I would just slide it over, click the link, it would open in Safari, slide it away again, and then I can use the two and bring it back when I need it. So it's just a case for me of adapting to the new method. And while it feels weird right now, it's because I've had two years of muscle memory to build these workflows that I currently have, like the way that I'm currently working on my iPad. It's been that way forever, but it doesn't mean that that was better. Like, for example, I spent, I'm not kidding, 45 seconds yesterday trying to find an app in the current split view picker on iOS 10. So I was just swiping through the list.

I was like, I know it's here somewhere. And I'm doing it the whole time. And then I realized if I was on iOS 11, I would just swipe up from the dock and just drag it up. And just for an hour today of doing this, I'm like, oh, this is really like, I'm like zipping around the system, right? Like you just got to lock into it, but it's like, okay, so I can just bring up this app and then I can swap it around with this one. And then I can search for this app and it brings open a full screen. And then I just bring up the doc and just drag another app in. And like I was doing something earlier, I was watching a YouTube video on the YouTube app, right? And then I needed to respond to a message

and I needed to copy something out of an email. So I brought up the two applications, did that, right? Did the work that I needed, swiped up from the dock. And then the recent thing was the YouTube app. I just pressed it and it brought the YouTube video back again. And like iOS 11, me and you are going to be real good friends. Yeah, you talk about the muscle memory. I think that's one of the challenges when you're using a beta is and you're evaluating it and you're writing or talking

about it is trying to keep in mind that everything is different and different doesn't necessarily mean bad because the danger is that everything you see that's different, you go, oh, this is bad, they should go back to the way it was. And then you complain about it, or you file a bug or whatever. And that's one of the tricks I found is like, you got to really think about it. Like, do I react to this because it's different? Or because there are reasons why it doesn't work for me. And that's just a challenge. So when, you know, some of the stuff that comes up in a new system, I end up embracing and being like, oh yeah, okay, I see why they did it. I just need to live with it for a while. And other things, if you go through that process and try to say, now, why am I reacting

this way to this? What was I doing before? Is there another way to do this now? Or is this a mistake? Because it's just so easy to just have that knee jerk reaction of, oh, it's different. I don't like it. Make it back to the way it was. And sometimes changes can be bad, but sometimes it's just change and you're reacting to it. So I will give you an example of something that somebody came, was it Federico? Somebody mentioned, maybe it was Steve Trott and Smith, but it was a really good point, which is to your old workflow, one thing you can't do is pair two apps together and then pair another app with one of those previous apps.

Like they only have one buddy. And I get why that would be a thing that you would do if you're Apple, because it sort of simplifies the whole process, not to have like different instances of the app displaying in the app switcher and all of that. But I can see how in different workflows, you might want to have the same app recur. Like I want this app in Safari, but I also want this app in Safari. And in iOS 11, at least so far, that's not something you're allowed to do. And that's, and slide over might be a workaround there. But I could see like the argument that that's a case where, is there a workaround like slide over? And is that enough?

Or is this something that really it should be able to do it. But I also feel a little bit ungrateful even talking about it. Cause it's like, it's so much better than it was. Yeah. And like I said, it could be better. There are some things that I don't entirely endorse,

but it's so much better than it was. So yeah, that's, that's the challenge. The multitasking. I mean, I got to say, I think they,

I think they kind of nailed it. Searching is another thing, right? We right in a multitasking context you you still can't like search for an app and then drop it in you have it has to be in the dock or in the recents part of the search for spotlight like you know and then and then then pull it in and then so for someone like me as a keyboard user right like i'm a persistent keyboard user with my ipad that works fine because i can spotlight search and then drag and drop from spotlight results but i know that it's not as easy to do this if you don't have a keyboard all the time right but that works yeah i mean and and i imagine that's that's the thing making that more searchable i i imagine is something that is going to happen.

In fact, I was finding that I wanted the command tab switcher to allow me to just touch on one of them and say, drag it over here. And it's like, nope, not allowed. That would be nice. I tried to do that too, where I was like, oh, why do I need to? I just need to bring it in. Let me just drag it straight out. You know, you touched on something there that I do feel. I feel like I like i feel like i can't criticize i'm scared they're gonna take it away from me right like you asked for this don't you don't start saying we're doing it wrong now because

we'll take it away multitasking has been removed in public beta 2 you ungrateful people how dare you there is one thing though jason where i completely agree with you, right? That sometimes they don't just say something bad or worse. Get used to it first and then see how you feel. I agree with that. However, the notification center is a disaster right now. There are a ton of different things that are wrong with it. Now, the idea of merging the lock screen and notification center i know why that's problematic and and some people don't like it right because it's like what is the locked state or whatever but from a

functional perspective that doesn't bother me too much right like whatever right like i've just got the time there now instead i mean admittedly i'm not using this on an iphone i don't know how it is on an iphone if it's different in any way or if it's trickier or more confusing but it's like okay whatever my problem is so i'm coming at this from the ipad one you have just a single column which is such a waste of space on this huge screen that you've given me especially now you have reverted to a single column widget layout where we had a dual column widget layout before. But the biggest problem is just the way you interact with notifications is a nightmare. So currently, even on the iPad, you have to do like a mock 3D touch to do any interaction at all with notifications, where in the past you used to be able to swipe them and perform some quick

actions, which is way quicker because on the iPad, you're waiting for an animation because on the iPhone, you are instigating the 3D touch so you can make that happen immediately. But on the iPad, you have to like press and hold and wait for it to open. It's a tap and hold, yeah.

There's a lot of tap and hold now. Exactly. I mean, a tap and hold for the drag and drop, like I'm fine with, but for the notifications, it's not great. And also like I can't find a way to you can't just tap on the notification and it opens the app anymore like then all the notification stuff seems like a bit of a nightmare to me right now and and i that is the one area that well one

i'm seeing a lot of people who are using the public beta's now start to complain about this i'm hoping that this is a thing that will get refined as we go through because right now it is a bit of a mess, I think. Right, we don't know. One of the other things that's tricky when you talk about betas is we can talk about them like it's a done deal, but we actually don't know whether... Yeah, they literally may have not gotten to it yet.

We're making some changes to the notification stuff it's not finished right like you know or they or they they said well let's try this and see what the reaction is right because they know that they have a public beta process now so let's try it and see what the reaction is oh wow people really hated that let's go back because we've seen that right we've seen that in previous betas where they made changes and everybody screamed and they went back even sometimes things that we kind of like the changes, but other people are like, oh, no, I can't believe it. And they're like, all right, we're going to turn that off. Yeah, so I have faith that if there's something here that categorically people are not happy with and people are raising feedback and stuff like that, that they will change it. Because they're not silly and we've seen it happen before.

But like I was saying, if there's one thing that I don't like, it's that. That's kind of the thing that i'm not too keen on i feel like it's not fully baked i agree with you there um i was going to point out uh i actually don't like control center on the ipad i think that i think again i think it needs to be refined i like it a lot what do you not like about it i don't love um i understand that they kind of wanted to have a single gesture for the multitasking and control center so you've got this and the dock right so you've got the you got to take the big swipe up um but there are a few things so like i needed to airplay a video last weekend. And for the life of me, I couldn't figure out how to do it.

Because there was no airplay command visible in the video player, in the app. And I ended up figuring it out with help. But what I had to do was I had to swipe up to control center. I had to tap and hold on the now playing icon oh yeah that's wrong at which point it expanded to show the because because the screen mirroring is visible on control center but that's not what you wanted to do but i wanted to airplay a video and not mirror my screen and i had to tap and hold on now playing to bring up the airplane sub menu, which then I could tap on and choose an Apple TV. And then, so I'm out of the app.

I'm in control center. I'm in a modal pop-up in control center. And then I bring up another modal, I guess it changes the modal pop-up to be a list view. And then you pick where you want to play. And then it plays and um that's wrong for a few ways first is is we want to play we want to airplay video and it's very much like a music interface that's happening here so that that was not good um i don't like the fact

that i can't tap and hold on um on the bluetooth and the wi-fi and get a picker to pick a new thing. I have to go to the settings app. I feel like that should be covered. I think you should be able to add and remove items from control center by tapping and holding and having them jiggle and move them around on the screen or remove them. Yeah, I'd like to be able to move stuff too.

It's editable from a list in the settings app, which just seems completely wrong to me. And again, it's a new feature. Maybe it's on their list and they just couldn't make it happen. That's frustrating to me. And then my number one complaint actually is about the brightness control.

Because, so I'm sitting in bed and it's morning or night, I'm reading something on my iPad and it's black text on a white background. It's really bright. And I decide I need to make this screen a little bit darker so that this black text on a white background

is not as harsh in my eyes. In iOS 10, you flip up control center and you grab the brightness slider, right? And the control center is only on the bottom part of the screen as you slide the brightness slider what happens it actually drops out the opacity on the app behind you so that you can see the actual effect of the brightness change yeah on the app you're using and get it to like there there i'm comfortable with that well in ios 11 it takes your app, throws it into a thumbnail, and then you slide a little slider, which means you can't see the context, not really,

of brightness. So then now you're guessing like, well, is that enough? Tap on the app. Nope, it's still too bright. Bring it back up, make it down a little bit. Oh, that's a little too dark. Tap it again, bring it a little bit up. It's just, it's a mistake. Like it's bad. It's bad user experience. I want to adjust. bad it's bad user experience i want to adjust they had it right before i want to adjust the brightness in context of what i'm viewing so that i can see whether it's too bright or too dark and with this approach you can't do that you just have to guess and uh you know again i'll get used to it i suppose but i that's one where i can tell now like that is not the right effect that is that is you are

losing usability by doing that so so what i'm saying is control center uh it there are a lot of things i like about it but that is not i've got some i've got some complaints yeah i can agree that there are definitely some issues especially the brightness one because i do the same but on the whole i i really prefer the control center layout and design because even, you know, the thing with the brightness thing, I'm willing to make the trade-off based on the fact that now I can swipe it up

and brightness is always in the same place where I expect it to be. Like, that has annoyed me every day for a year. And I think I would prefer to just like, maybe have to do a little bit more fiddling or eventually just work out what the brightness will be right like there will always be like in the morning or at night there's going to be a level that i'm going to like and i'll be able to tell visually right like on the little slider maybe but the fact of me knowing where everything's

going to be um i'm way happy with that and And also, I may be in the minority here, but I think it looks really cool. I like the way it looks. And I'm also a big fan of the additional functions. It's been really fun, right, to watch people sharing things about the beta because everyone's just using screen recording. It's been really fun to see that.

I'm like, yeah, this is great. This is a great step. So this is just the beginning of a this is a great step so this is just the beginning of our ios 11 thoughts i guess um there is a lot to like there is a lot to to clearly that needs some refinement and honestly we're so early in the process right now i believe a lot of it will be refined and uh yeah but overall like i am very very very positive about ios 11 and i'm really excited to see what happens come september october as all of the applications that i use are updated and enhanced right like drag and drop i am i'm excited that test flight

which is the which is the source of uh that's how you get beta versions of apps. Like Apple has already apparently turned on the spigot where apps built for iOS 11 can be put in TestFlight, which it used to be that that took a while, like that was late in the game. And so we would have these summer experiences with iOS 11, but it was iOS 11 from Apple. And then all of our apps were iOS 10 apps. And this summer, I have hope that for the apps that if you're fortunate enough to be using betas of apps, you've talked to the developer, you've gotten on their test flight list. And I would say that if you are somebody who makes the

move to iOS 11, and has an app that you love on iOS 11, that whether it works properly or not, on iOS 11, whether it works properly or not, if you love it and you use it and you know you're going to use it a lot under iOS 11 this summer, send an email to the developer and offer and say, I'm using iOS 11 and I love your app. I don't know if you're doing a test flight for iOS 11, you're doing a test flight for iOS 11, but I would use it heavily if you want me to test it. They may say, no, be polite, don't demand it, and don't feel like you're entitled to it. But I would say that that can certainly make the beta experience better. And I would think that getting good feedback from committed users of a product is helpful to developers as part of the beta process. But you're really in deep now because then you're using beta software on beta software.

So you got to be prepared. But I'm excited about it because I've got apps that I use and that I like that are going to be updating in test flight for iOS 11. And that's exciting because I'm not going to have to wait until the day that iOS 11 ships and then the update hits the app store because i want to use it i want to use that stuff now i have apps in my test flight that are built for ios 11 but test flight is not working on my ipad i've heard yeah so test flight didn't work at all in beta 1 for me in beta two it's working on some of my ipads and not on others

and we've had friends who've said the same thing that they they can't get uh the first beta i just kept tapping the the link and it never would click basically i i am trying to log in and it's telling me that test flight is unavailable yes so i have i have three ipads right now running ios 11 the old 97 the 10 5 and the and the 12 9 and uh two of them have access to test flight and the other says it's not available if anybody knows how to fix this please let me know please let me know i really let me know. I really want to use TestFlight. There is one application in there that I really want to use, and I can't, and it's making me upset. Also, I'm going to run into some problems with some of the apps that I use that I'm on the baits for anyway, so we'll see how that goes.

iOS 11, kids, it's real. It's real. All right, today's show is also brought to you by FreshBooks. To all of you freelancers listening right now, I want to pose a question to you. What if you could reclaim up to 192 hours of your time a year? Would you do it? Well, our friends at FreshBooks make cloud accounting software

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Thank you so much to FreshBooks for their support of this show. Small giant mic. That's me. That is me. So, the macOS High Sierra public beta. High Sierra. I don't, thank you. I don't know if there's as much to say with this one.

Have you, I'm sure you've probably played with the High Sierra beta a little bit. I have. Do you have any, what is here, Jason? What is here for people um well it's there's stuff um photos i wrote a whole thing about photos but we're gonna get into photos in a minute right we're pulling photos out of this initial discussion i'm letting you get away with that easy because we have a whole discussion about the new photos. But I want to know. Apple file system, which I haven't tried yet,

but people are excited about. So when you sign up for High Sierra, does APFS begin immediately with iOS 10.3? Does it just move you over or does it say, hey, do you want to do this? No, I think you have the option to upgrade a drive i feel like that's better for the mac if you because you can boot different storage devices on max right it's not like ios and so you could be in a situation where you convert that and then you boot into another os an earlier os and it doesn't like see the drive it's like i don't even know what that is and that's bad because then only your data is only visible from versions that can see apfs so but i haven't i haven't tried it out

um and you know they've talked about the it a lot on accidental tech podcasts so i'd refer people there um i i think there's some stuff that's existing now that's exciting like quick copies like if you duplicate a file it just basically marks it as a duplicate. It's instant. It does the right thing. If you edit it later, it'll write that new edit out to disk while keeping the original in its place. It's all good. Time machine in the long run will be better, but not in the short run using this technology.

I'm interested in how it works on Fusion Drives because it sounds like since it was built with the Fusion Drive in mind, that Fusion Drives will be better. Apple has said that it's going to place data on the flash and hard drives on a per file basis, using hints on optimal file location for different apps for increased performance. So it sounds like they're trying, APFS is trying to do the right thing and be very optimized for Fusion Drive. Also, it's a file system built with the idea for SSDs. So I'm intrigued by that as somebody who's got a computer that has an SSD on it, that this might be a much better experience in terms of my disks than the file system that was built for spinning disks.

But again, this is esoteric stuff. It's going to be like, this is step one of a long process where this is coming in and then changes will start to happen that will make it, you know, that will make it more relevant as time goes on. What else is in here? All the HEVC stuff, high efficiency video coding that is in iOS 11 is in here too. So support for those higher quality, more compressed videos, H.265 is in High Sierra too. So you want to have that compatibility thing. I mean, it's still going to be incompatible. This stuff is going to be, unless it's converted, it's going to be incompatible with older operating systems. But it will be the two most recent Apple operating systems will have compatibility for those files. What else? Metal 2.

But again, it's a developer feature. So the idea there is that you should be able to see apps take advantage of a better and more efficient graphics pipeline. That includes their VR support that they've got, the HTC Vive for headsets. It remains to be seen if they're going to be like, if we're actually going to see HTC Vives attached to Macs playing VR games, if that's going to be a thing that happens or not with, and which Macs would that be? Is it just the new iMacs? Is it other models? We don't really know. Safari update stuff is in there, although that'll come to older operating systems,

because I think they update Safari a couple of versions back when they do it, including WebRTC, which we talked about. That will mean that a lot of these web podcast tools will start to work on Safari at some point, probably. There's some work that the developers need to do to support it, but it should be supportable. So tell me what's going on with the photos then you don't want to hear about uh how about the improved

full screen mode in mail no not really jason the uh or a safari reader on a per uh on a per per domain basis that's actually kind of nice sure i get all these complaints when i link to stories that i write on sites that have autoplay video and it's like well now you just mark it as always turn on safari reader well also autoplay video is being killed in safari well that's that's true too that's the that's the uh that's the story although i haven't seen that work but that's the idea is that you can just turn off autoplay of everything which is uh that's pretty cool. So yeah, the big one I would say is photos. There's a lot of changes in photos, which is, I wrote a book about it, so I care about that. There's new editing views. There's some new editing tools. They finally have committed to

the sidebar for the UI for it, which previously you could like have it as tabs or as a sidebar. Felt like there was a little war going on there where some people were like, no tabs. And other people were like, come on sidebar. And they're like, Oh no, sidebar is like iPhoto. It's old and boring. We don't want that. And the sidebar people won. So the sidebar is just there all the time, which is fine. And they've got, you know, your photos organized into different media types. So like you can quickly jump to all the live photos and all the screenshots and that's in this albums area along with your own albums that you make and then there's like a library view where there's um all your imports you can actually see now like when did i import that file it was back here and you can find it that way it's got a persistent import history

view of your library which is kind of interesting um and they uh they they improved memories and and people the people got better the people are better yeah your friends are going to be better now the people people stuff is uh the interface is a little nicer but they've actually improved the face recognition engine um they actually look at context of what people are in what photos. The example that I gave, I think in my story about this is if you've got two people that you have photos of who never appear together and it finds a photo of people, it thinks it's those two people. It's going to be more skeptical of that because they're never supposed to be together. Or if you've got photos

of two people who are commonly together and it's got i know this person is in this photo and this might be that person it's going to be more um aggressive about saying no that's that person because they understand it understands the context of when people are together or not and uses that as a hint um so that's that's kind of interesting. And then, and then, and then when you say this is this person, um, that metadata gets synced in the cloud. So the, your other devices can use that as part of the hinting when they're doing their facial processing of your photos, which is not the same as syncing all your metadata. I wrote, I wrote the story and I had a bunch of people say, wait a second. I thought that it synced all the metadata. And it's like, well, yeah, we thought

that too, when it got announced on stage, but it turns out that that's not the case and that it scans everything but on every device i don't know um and but this is a bit of metadata that does get synced which is if you said this photo contains this person that rides along with that photo and that the other the other devices can look at that and say oh that's that person and that helps keep your faces in sync across and that's that's good because that's the one place where there's human interaction with training that's probably why they did it is like this is the one place where there is uh like you have to do work to train faces you don't do work to say this is a cow this is a cow this is a cat this is a dog this is also a cow this is a mountain right this is a mountain this

is a horse this is a lake uh with people though you have to do that this is this is julian this is lauren this is jamie this is mike this is steven right you have to you have to do that and uh it's really annoying if you have to do that on every device that you own so they they put that in they sync that so at least that part is better and then on the memory side it's more of this machine learning stuff where it's like memories are these auto-generated albums it's actually very clever that they introduced last time and they've created more context now basically it's looking for things it recognizes and building albums based on those. And those are memories. And now there are more of those things it's looking for. So

like pets is an example where it'll see animals and maybe like even like at your house and it'll say, oh, here's a gallery of pet photos. Or like recognizing food and saying, Oh, these are, there's a gallery of your, your meal photos. So there's, there's like a half dozen new things. It's trying to mine out of your photo metadata and float up so that you can

see them, which is it's interesting because this is what they're trying to do is they're trying to take your library of tens of thousands of photos and use some intelligence based on those scans that it's done and the objects it's recognized. Do a second level, which is now that I know what's in all these photos and when they were taken and where they were taken, can I make albums based on that? And so it's trying to get better there. What do you think? Is there anything else other than the machine learning data, which isn't synced, which should be, which we all thought was going to be,

but turns out it isn't. Is there anything else in that sort of vein that you would like to see added? Are there any other big missing features for you? I don't know. I think some of it is just it all needs to get better. And that's like the memories thing is a good example of that, where they just need to keep pushing on that because the ultimate goal is that you should not not only should you not have to

tag your family in every photo you should not have to make albums right like you take a trip you take a road trip for the summer it should figure that out right it should be like oh you know these this if i look at this time stream i can see you moving uh you know in this direction and then coming home again and being in all these places you aren't usually. And it's these people and like, I can make a photo highlight of your vacation with all the different locations included, right? It, all of it's there. It just needs to be intelligent enough to be able to do that. And for a birthday party and for a trip to the beach, like whatever, it should be able to do all that stuff. So the party and for a trip to the beach, like whatever, it should be able to do all that stuff. So the more that Apple can push that the better, because not only is

Google giving them a lot of competition there, but I think that's one of the great advantages of having this stuff. It's like, I don't just want a repository for my photos anymore. I do want it to start doing my organization for me because I'm not going to take the time. I'm not going to build a lot of albums. I might build some, but if it can float up something and say, hey, here's all of your trips to Seattle in this little gallery. It's like, wow, that's really great. You know, I just took a trip to Seattle and then I've taken trips there before. And now you've put this whole thing together with some of the same people across 10 years, 15 years. That's really great, right? More like that and better recognition,

better metadata fits into that better realization, like they've added of the relationship between different people where these people appear in photos together, and these people don't. So these are work people, and these are home, you know, family people, and that they, you know, these are these kind of family people and these kind, the more that all of these photos things do with that, the better. Also, I will say, we these photos things do with that, the better. Also, I will say, um, we get a calendar every year that's based on the previous year. So like January will be pictures from January and February will be pictures from February. And, um, one thing that they haven't done that frustrates me a little bit, I'd like them to do is like, if I order a

calendar from Apple, it should like figure out what I might want in the calendar before I start working on it. That would be great. It's like, we've already done it. We've already picked the best photos from this year and put it on a calendar for you. That would be great. On the account that they are still the ones making these things, it is interesting that they've not applied the machine learning to making the products.

Yeah. Google do that now, right? That was one thing that Google Photos now does. Yeah. Third-party apps actually can hook into Photos now for the first time. So like Shutterfly can build an app that basically lives inside of Photos and lets you build and order stuff through Shutterfly. So they've opened that to third parties.

It's no longer just sort of via Apple. And these are going to be like Mac App Store apps, right? Yeah. Yeah. There's going to these are going to be like Mac App Store apps, right? Yeah, yeah. There's going to be a special section in the Mac App Store that is going to be for apps that have this feature. And you download them in the Mac App Store and then they basically get inserted into photos. And then you can use them within photos to build these things.

And that actually passes through some memories data, which is interesting. But I don't think that um apple is using it turns out there is something happening with the mac app store a little very little bit a very little bit i should say two years after introducing live photos they actually put live photo editing into photos which is nice you can um you can set the crop you can set the animation effect if you wanted to bounce or just be a standard animation they've got this wild like um uh it's a uh it's a long duration exposure thing where i had these live photos at a waterfall and i flipped it into long duration exposure mode

and it turns into this kind of like beautiful like long exposure of the waterfall but it was built out of a live photo which is pretty cool. And you can choose the representative image, the picture frame image, basically from your live photo. I think that's going to be better over time because I suspect newer iPhones running iOS 7 are going to get better or iOS 11 are going to get better at what they capture with the live photo will be higher quality, I think over time time and so that's good because that allows you to pick a fairly high quality um representative image so like when you look at that live photo you you missed it by a half a second but you can actually like tick it

over and have that be the image that displays in your library which is uh kind of neat i'm excited about the live photo changes we're going to get to this in a minute, actually. I won't spill the beans. We've got an Ask Upgrade just about this, too. Great. Speaking of which, should we move on to Ask Upgrade? Sounds good. Today's show is also brought to you by our friends over in Capsula,

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So let's do this question that we have here from Chris, where Chris is asking us about photos and Chris wants to know if we still use bursts at all. Butris says that he used to use burst photos all the time when they came out but then when live photos came along he stopped using bursts what do you do jason do you still use bursts and have live photos maybe kind of taken a lot of that away from you or what i i only ever use bursts in very specific circumstances where i felt like like it was something happening so fast that i just wanted to just grab all the photos and deal with it later and pick the ones that I liked. But I never use them very often. I generally leave live photo turned on because it's kind of fun. And so you end up with these

things that you never really thought about being good live photos that are good live photos. But it's still kind of a curiosity for me. I'm not being good live photos that are good live photos, but it's still kind of a curiosity for me. I'm not using the live photos as much as I maybe hoped, but it is basically for me, the live photo is this really cool thing where you find a photo that you like and realize that if you tap and hold on it or 3D touch on it, that it plays a little tidbit of the surrounding action. And sometimes that's really great. Like I had a picture of my dog at the dog park. And when I opened up the live photo, it shows her like spinning around or running around. And that was, that was cool. Like I get the extra time there. It's a, it's fun, um, which is why I leave it on, but that's kind of about it. I think that we're,

I think we'll get to the point where the live photo stuff is more valuable because they will up the quality of the live photo content to the point where it's approaching the quality of the still. And that's really great because the closer you get to that, then you get to the ability of picking your moment. And then it's like a burst where I don't know whether it's doing this now, but you know, theoretically when you're doing a live photo, you could take not just the one full quality photo in the middle but you could bracket it you could have a full quality photo every tenth of a second twentieth of a second half of a second whatever and that would allow you after the fact like every photo is a burst and a video basically and that's great because then you could go back and say oh i just missed the moment and then slide

it back a little and be like no no, actually I got it because the moment was slightly earlier. I know that there's file size issues and all of that, but that's one of the reasons Apple is doing this higher quality video and photo formats is I think to give them the ability to capture more data when you capture a photo. Because by all rights, when you capture a photo, if you had enough space and the technology allowed it i would want it to capture lots of data around the photo because i might not have pressed the button at the right time but if it captures slightly earlier than that and slightly later if i miss the moment by half a second if it's always capturing and buffering that you know a second before or three seconds before, then I'm going to get the shot after all. That's pretty great. Like that, that, uh, that should, we need more of that.

And I feel like live photos is, is, is taking us in that direction. I'm a huge live photos fan. Um, I love it. I don't really use bursts very much anymore. Um, I really enjoy live photos. I leave them on all the time there was a time recently where i realized i had them off for a while by accident when i was really sad about that because the live photo is just gone right if it's not taking it but i love right i love when i'm flicking through my library and the photos are moving a little bit i love that i mean i i really do like the fun that they add and i'm really excited about some of the changes like i have some live photos which are terrible photos but the live photo is awesome

but the image is bad so i love that you can now change the image the representative image so you'll know what the live photo is and then also some of the loop stuff like i've been playing with that a little bit the way that it's looping and all that little fun effects you can do now they are really good and you can sometimes get some really funny stuff happening with them so I'm very excited to see the more that's going to happen here and I'm looking forward to just playing around with live photos more with these new effects I'm really excited about it it's one of my favorite things about iOS honestly like I really love live photos Brian is looking for a decent iPad Pro 10.5 sleeve ideally that can hold the smart cover

keyboard and pencil any suggestions? I think there's only one suggestion which is the one that Apple makes the leather sleeve I haven't seen anything else I don't know if you have Jason but this fits the bill perfectly

apple made it it's perfect with the keyboard on it right like it all fits in there um and it's got a nice little slot for the pencil this is on my like someday list like i i like the look of this i just don't have a reason to buy it right now but like i might put this on like my holiday list you know like if somebody wants to get me a nice gift for the holidays like this could be something for that right like i i just like the way it looks and when i'm traveling and stuff it might be nice to just put it all in and you know if i'm working out then i've got this nice little lever thing to put down i can put my notepad on it or whatever i i really love the way this this case looks i think it's a nice accessory but um i just haven't got a reason right now to to pick one up but i think i think if you want a sleeve like this is right now the one to get i assume i i that's all i know that's all

i know too so that's it's it's not cheap but it's very it's very nice it's very well done and there will be more ipad 10.5 accessories as time goes on if you can wait and you want to wait to see if there's something else out there I'm sure they will arrive at some point oh by the way just something on photos that I forgot to mention the photos app on iOS now shows animated

gifs there is like also like there is a auto created folder in the photos app it's called Animated. And when you open a GIF now, when you open it up, it starts to animate. Finally.

Yes. So I'm excited. Congratulations. You get your animated GIFs at last. Oh, I noticed what you did there. We won't talk about that today. Dave wants to know if either of us use apple's two-factor authentication i will include a link in the show notes to dan moran's excellent article on six colors uh last year where he went into this in detail um and helped me set it up i do use apple's two-factor

authentication uh and it works great i'm happy. I'm happy with it. Yep. Like it does exactly what I need. Yeah, I like it a lot the way they do it where you log in and it pops up the little thing on all your devices and you just need one of your devices to get the code

and you put it in and it's... I've got two-factor on lots of stuff now but I am using it. I have heard that in iOS 11 and macOS High Sierra that you don't have to do the two-step that Dan describes, that there's a more direct way to upgrade from one to the other, from the

old two-factor to the new two-step, or two-step to two-factor, whatever. There was an old one, and there's a new one. And it used to be very complicated, but it's about to be less complicated. But I think people should do it. I know it's a pain because every time you log there's a new one. And it used to be very complicated, but it's about to be less complicated. But I think people should do it. Like, I know it's a pain because every time you log in on a new device, it's going to ask you to put in a six digit code. But it means that if somebody doesn't have one of your devices, they can't get into your account, which means that if somebody random somewhere on the Internet is trying to break into your account, they can't do it unless they also have one of your devices which is going to be less likely yeah i uh the only thing that frustrates me with the two-factor is the app specific passwords where like apps that use my iCloud information i have to go to the apple website and create a specific password for them every single time it's just like and it like it's just a every single time. It's just like a frustration.

I only ever have to really do it one time but when I'm setting up a new device I have to generate all these different passwords and you literally have to use a different password for every instance of an application on all of your machines and it's just a frustration. I wish there was an easier way to set it up.

I wish there was an iOS app that could do this, the Apple made, um, instead of having to go to the Apple account page every time and setting it up in this weird way. And then it's not easy to like get a list of the previous password. It's just a frustration. Like they,

you name them, but you can't see the, I don't know. It's weird. I don't like it. I would, I would like something different, um, or like just a more robust way of setting that up luke has asked with ar kit and increased access to the pluses sensor data in ios 11 with the depth

api what do you think the likelihood is of dual cameras on all of the iPhone line coming in September. What do you think, Jason? I think I think what you think, which is that if the scenario where there's a 7S and an 8 both released, which is unclear, but that's the rumor, I would imagine that the 8 would have dual camera. The high end, sort of in between the size of the seven and the, and the seven plus, if that phone exists, I have a hard time thinking that they wouldn't put the best stuff in it, including the depth effect stuff from the two cameras. So that's going to be, you know, that that's my guess. If they also do a seven S and seven S plus, I think it would not be as likely in the 7s that they would just sort of that's a you know don't change it too much kind of update that they're doing in the background

while they're also releasing an iphone 8 if that's the case i think that the smaller phone wouldn't get it but the newfangled awesome phone would probably pick up the second camera because why would you not i mean you want that to be like the phone that has everything the best of everything in it so it would mean two cameras for sure because it's going to cost like a million dollars but yeah that's what they should be doing right this this iphone whatever it's going to be is is like the i the next generation right That's how I see it as being set up. It's like whatever this iPhone is, it is like the past 10 years of iPhones look this way,

and then this is the future of the iPhone. That's how I think they're going to talk about this iPhone 8 or iPhone Pro, whatever it's going to be. And I think that it will have all of the features that the previous iPhones have had, plus these new ones. So I can't see them being like, oh, it still has one camera. If you want two cameras,

you have to get 7S Plus. Like, I just don't think that's going to happen. And then in 2018, they'll all have two cameras, right? Like, all of the phones that Apple released will have two cameras on. So I think it will happen. But we're still going to be in this in-between in 2017.

And finally today, Bozy asked, is it stupid to get a high-end Retina 5K iMac for future proofing? I'm mostly concerned about the hundreds of tabs that I keep open. So my feeling on this is, it depends how far into the future you're expecting to keep this machine.

Like, if this is going to be your computer for the next five years ten years i think future proofing is a great reason like if you're buying a computer now and you're wondering if you should spend a little bit extra to get some some more beefy specs because you're looking to keep this machine around for a while i think that's a good part of the purchasing process honestly because you do want to future proof yourself like if if you're planning to buy this computer and keep it around for say five years you want to make sure that in five years it's still going to be running well look at john siracusa yeah he's going for the he's shooting the moon going for 10 years but do you agree with this i i yeah I think if it's within your means, I think the best way to buy a Mac

is probably to spend a little money on higher-end models because they'll last longer and then run them into the ground. But everybody's different. I know people who buy a stock model, run it for a couple of years, sell it and get a new model. And that's what they do. But I will say, this is kind of how I use cars. I will oftentimes buy a new car and then

just drive it for a very, very long time until it is old. And not everybody wants to do that, but there is something to be said for that, that you can buy a high-end model. And I would say technology right now, it used to be like the difference between the computer now and two years ago was dramatic. But these days, it's not so dramatic. It's not so dramatic. And that's how John Syracuse has been able to run a Mac Pro for almost 10 years. The changes are not as dramatic as they used to be. So I think a higher-end Retina iMac that is going to last you for many years is probably a good thing if you have the means, if you can afford to buy it at that high price, because it is a high price.

That was my rationale when I bought my 5K iMac was I wanted to, um, I wanted it to last and I wanted the, I wanted the fastest one because I knew that over time, you know, it becomes less impressive and less fast. And the fact is that although I don't have the fancy screen that, that the new iMacs have that processor, that i7 processor I have in my iMac still pretty fast, still pretty darn good. i'm not worried about its uh its performance so it's not stupid but it depends on what your priorities are i did this when i bought my iMac and this iMac would last me with my current tasks years more because i went i went for the top of the line my only only thing is like the VR. Like I, if VR games come to the Mac,

then I might have to ask some questions about what I want to do. But if under the current things that I'm doing, like I bought the best, so it would last the longest. Also hundreds of tabs. I'll just point out what you need to do is max out your RAM.

Like that's what you need to do if you've got hundreds of tabs open. More than anything else, more than processor, disk or anything, it's RAM, max out your ram like that's what you need to do if you've got hundreds of tabs open more than anything else more than processor disk or anything it's ram max out your ram and you can do that through third third parties you don't actually need to um max it out at apple if you buy the 27 because it's got the door on the back for ram and you can have it to be the minimum amount of ram sold on that model and then buy Macs from a third party and install it. You can do that. But if you've got lots of tabs, you want as much RAM as possible.

On that note, we'll wrap up today. Thank you so much to our sponsors for this week's show, Casper FreshBooks and Encapsular. If you want to grab our show notes, they're at relay.fm slash upgrade slash 148. I will mention at this point, if you haven't yet checked out Jason Snell's new show on Relay.fm, Download, just reached episode 10 last week. Go check it out. It's a great show.

I think that you'll enjoy it. There's a lot of people on there that you may have heard of and a lot of people that you may have not, and you're going to be introduced to some new awesome voices. So go check out Download. That's at Relay.fm slash download because you upgrade at the start of your week and you download

at the end of it. Isn't that right, Jason? That's right. You know it. You know it. If you want to find Jason's work online, he's over at

sixcolors.com and he's at jsnell on Twitter, J-S-N-E-L-L. I am at imyke, I-M-Y-K-E. I want to thank you all

for listening as always and we'll be back next time. Enjoy your Independence Day over there, Americans. I hope that you have lots of hot dogs and fireworks. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Fireworks. Wait, hang on. That sounds like lasers.

How do we do fireworks? They're similar. Like, maybe. There we go. Perfect. Fireworks. Nailed it. maybe there we go perfect fireworks nailed it hot dogs