Upgrade - 152: August State of Mind

Episode Date: July 31, 2017

A HomePod firmware leak may have given us our best look yet at the features of the next iPhone, including face detection. Photos of Apple Park’s aggressively open-plan workspaces lead us to the most spirited discussion of space planning you may ever hear. Plus: The iPod dies, the Apple Watch might get an update, and Jason gets over his Game of Thrones hangover.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 152 today's show is brought to you by ero ting and encapsular my name is mike hurley and i am joined by my wonderful co-host mr jason snell hello my wonderful co-host mr mike hurley how are you very well this is a co-host, Mr. Mike Hurley. How are you? Very well. This is a co-host appreciation episode. That's right. Traditionally, the 152nd episode is the co-host appreciation episode. But Jason, nobody cares about how wonderful we are. Hashtag Snell Talk this week comes from Eric. Eric wants to know, how does Jason's working setup and schedule change during the summer when the kids are out of school? Oh, boy.

It changes in every possible way. Oh, boy. Yeah. Well, there's people in the place that usually does not have people in it. So, schedule-wise. So, my wife works. Her work starts a little bit late i think she starts work at uh 9 30 usually i think is when is when she starts but um that doesn't uh that doesn't happen uh that's after the kids are off to school so the the school is the thing that gets us up in

the morning things are happening in the morning because the kids are off to school. So the school is the thing that gets us up in the morning. Things are happening in the morning because the kids are out the door by like 7.45. So everything happens more slowly in the summertime, which is nice, I guess, but it's also frustrating because like, I like being gotten up by the activity in the house. And instead I sort of have up by the activity in the house. And instead, I sort of have to start the activity in the house because everybody else is slow in getting up.

So that's a challenge. It's nice in the sense that I don't have to run my kids around to different activities after school, which I sometimes have to do. And that can be a time waster and a distraction for my afternoon work. And I'd say, but I'd say the biggest thing to me is that I really am, like I said, when I started, I am accustomed to working. I can work with the door open to the rest of the house. I can move my, I can like set up my iPad and a keyboard on the counter in the kitchen on the bar top and get a little change of scenery. I can, there are lots of things I can do and the house is silent other than like the presence of the cat and the dog. And when the kids are home for the summer, I got to close the door there.

I can hear them like shouting and playing video games and doing stuff in the rest of the house and i i you know i feel a little more uh isolated in that way where where if i have to hunker down and do work when everybody's having fun right on the other side of the wall so it's different psychologically and i i um as nice as it is to have summer vacation and have flexibility for trips and things like that. The fact is that when the kids go back to school, the, the professional working part of me will be, um, incredibly relieved because I get to go back to sort of my default state where when I'm in the core of my work day, nobody's here. Um, and that is, it's less distracting that way.

There are fewer distractions in that scenario. So, you know, but like there are positives, like I said, but I think that in the end, it knocks me out of my normal working rhythm. And some are so scattershot that there's never, there's not like a summer pace either. It's like, sometimes the kids are here. Sometimes one of them has gone to a camp or to a friend's house and it it's all just much more erratic and that's not great if you're trying to get into a groove so um the nice thing about it is that even if they're camped out in the house if it's a nice warm day i can just go out in the backyard under the tree with uh with a chair and with my ipad and get work done and that's pretty great if you're interested in hearing more about this type

of thing, I recommend Free Agents on RelayFM, which is the show that Jason hosts with David Sparks. On episode number four, Location, Location, Location, I think the two of you went into depth about what would it maybe take to work out of the home and stuff like that

so people can get more color there if they want to. But as always, thank you, Eric, for submitting your Snell Talk question. If you want to have a question that opens the show, just send a tweet with the hashtag Snell Talk. I collect them up and pick the ones that I find super interesting. I have a nice backlog, Jason. I've got a great, great spreadsheet building up.

Don't tweet them at me. I don't want to see them. I don't want to see them until right before the show or right when Mike asks me. I'll be tempted to answer them directly on Twitter, and that's no good. If I tweet them at me, I'll just send them out into the ether. I will see them all. Don't worry.

As long as you use the hashtag SnellTalk, I see them all. Mike sees all, knows all. Talking about seeing them all, Jason, I feel like in the past week, we've seen every Mac Mini user currently around. Yep. All the Mac Mini users wrote to us. And we appreciate it.

Last week's show was funny because I was... I mean, we're talking about a product that doesn't... I mean, it currently exists in Apple's price list, right? It's still a current product. It's as shorting as computer, right? Like, it either does and doesn't exist. Well, we know Apple reassured us in that thing that it is a product that exists.

Great. That was the most minimum of reassurance. Well, we know Apple reassured us in that thing that it is a product that exists. Great. That was the most minimum of reassurance. But so our conversation was me saying, I like the Mac Mini and I use it and I think it needs to be around. But it's never getting refreshed. It's obviously a low priority. intrigued by like what i saw with that intel next unit computing thing the nook that is like a mini mac mini and how i look at that and think say apple could make a really interesting next gen mac mini if it wanted to where um it was even smaller because it doesn't you know it's only going to have an ssd in it and so they can be that much smaller and just like keep keep making it smaller and smaller and

you took a devil's advocate position for the purposes of like uh conversation i think about like well do they really need it and i think what we heard as a result what we heard from many people was not yay hooray thank you for defending it and was not boo you are mean you know you shouldn't have said bad things about it. They're like, they really just kind of talked about it back and forth. So instead, what we got was lots of descriptions of how people use the Mac Mini. And what I took from that was very much what we said in the show last week, which was the Mac Mini doesn't have one use. It kind of is that, like I said, the spackle, the caulk. It just fills in a whole bunch of parts of the Mac market that other Macs don't reach. So we heard from people who say they've got it in racks as musicians, in installations for art.

A lot of people pointed out that at $500, like it is way cheaper to get into the Mac with a Mac mini than any other device. Like there are lots of examples. And I feel like we covered those last week, but it was good to hear from Mac mini people to basically say, yes, yes, there are all the things you said and all these things that you didn't say are reasons why we're enthusiastic about it. And I think that's why it still exists, quite frankly, is that there is a market of assorted parts, but it's kind of like a junk drawer. And I mean that in the nicest sense, which is, you know, you're like, whoa, this drawer is full. Yes, it is full, but it's full of like all sorts of assorted little things. That's kind of

the Mac mini, which is, it's just, it's a tool that can be applied to lots of different, lots of different things. So it was great to get that feedback because I think it proved the point, which is, uh, people really love it. Uh, and they're using it for a huge diverse set of tasks that are, it's not like it's big in X, like it's no, it's just kind of scattered around everywhere. People use it for when they want a Mac in a certain place, and it's the best one that fits. Yeah, I feel like from the feedback that we got, what I've taken away is that

this is maybe the most versatile computer that Apple currently sells from just how people use it, not how they make it. If you think about versatility, I think we typically think of, oh, the modular Mac Pro that's coming in the future is very versatile. But really, that's going to have one or two main uses, right?

Like people that want to play games and people that want to do high-end production. It'll be an amazingly versatile piece of hardware. But in the end, it will probably be, because of the price, it will probably be concentrated in some very specific markets but like the mac mini people like they reap they purpose it for lots and lots and lots of weird and wonderful things because you can because it's small it's all in this one little box it doesn't you know you can run it headless like it's it's an interesting machine and i i think the way that i came out of it i wouldn't say that i was particularly down on the mac mini i kind of just apathetic but now i i do feel a little bit more of a sense of like i hope it sticks around just because i don't know like i feel like there's all

these people that seem to continue to be super excited about a machine that's just not very good anymore and so i think i would really like to see it get updated now yeah i think that's i mean that was sort of my goal when i am prompted by seeing that that uh intel nook and and and talking to russell about his experience uh buying one of those that i just had that thought of like oh this this is something that makes me excited about the mac mini and And I feel like that would be good, like to have a Mac mini that excites people. And again, I kind of expect that even if Mac were to do or Apple were to do an update on

the Mac mini, even if all they did was turn over the processors, but let's say they do make a mini Mac mini, an even more mini that's, that's a little bit smaller. That's, that's kind of might not be as small as an Intel Nook, but something like that, you know, they wouldn't update it again for three years. And I think that would be okay. Like, I think that's what that product is going to be. It's never going

to be cutting edge. They're not going to be putting in the effort to turn it over every year. Maybe they could, it would be nice if they, if they did, but they don't have to. But I do, I do think continuing to like kind of nudge it along every so often, keep that plate spinning, is a good thing because there are uses for that. even if its isolated value is not particularly great. Because that way you're keeping people in the platform, in the ecosystem, by giving them that outlet at $500 or $700 or whatever they want to price it at. So last week you had a Game of Thrones hangover, I think is the right way to put it.

Oh, man. The show had just come back. It was like week two or something like that. Week one, week two. I don't know how many. I don't watch Game of Thrones. But you had a bit of a Game of Thrones hangover last week. Yeah.

Well, so I do a podcast about it right after it's on. So I have to watch it and take notes. And then we do a podcast. And sometimes it's late. And then I got to edit it and post it and all of those things. And this happened last year when it was on. Then I get up the next morning and do upgrade and sometimes i'm very sleepy in fact today i tried to get up early and have more more tea and also um i i was i tried to be done earlier last night um so that i would be awake for Upgrade because I didn't want the Game of Thrones hangover again.

Because last week, and you know, and we didn't get nearly as much feedback about this as I thought we would, which is because everybody was too busy telling us about their Mac minis, I guess. You know what it is, Jason? I think people just believed it because you said it in the same way that I believed it because you said it to the point that I then repeated these facts unconnected

yeah you know uh so here's so here's what happened is i was parts of my brain were asleep and what i said was that the macbook was weighed a pound which of course it weighs two pounds and that the macbook pro was twice as heavy but it isn't it's like three pounds. Yeah, it's 50% as heavy. And why did I say that? Because quite honestly, I don't know. My brain was not working right. And when you're on a podcast, you just say stuff and then you're like, okay. And the thing of it is, my brain at that point when I said it and we were talking about it was like, really? One pound?

That seems kind of light. Maybe you mean two pounds. And I was like, whatever. And I just kept talking. No one in the chat room got us. Like we just kept rolling with it. And then I believed it for an extra two days. My inner fact checker was like,

I think that might not be right. I think that might not be right. But again, parts of my brain just not, just were asleep. So I apologize for, it's a podcast. Sometimes we say things that are wrong.

And that was one of them. It's a two pound product. Somebody pointed out, boy, I'd love a one pound MacBook. I'm like, yeah, that would be pretty great. Cause that would be the weight of the 9.7 inch or the 10.5 inch iPad pro. Right. That would be really great, but no, that's going to be a long time coming. But, uh, but two pounds, which is still very light for a laptop. All the other thing, Mike is all my arguments about it were right.

It's just the numbers were wrong. Yeah, yeah, yeah. One of them is smaller and one of them is bigger and one of them is, you know, all that. Another thing that I think is interesting, although, again, I would say it kind of doesn't quite change the argument. it just changes the terms is that our friend Marco Arment wrote in to point out that although the build to order the processors in the MacBook are now called i5s and i7s, it's basically a marketing change. They are still the same product line as the M5 and M7 in the previous generation. And this is one of those sneaky things where now they can say, look, it's got an i5 processor in it.

But as Marco points out, it's still that same 5W product line, barely faster than the ones they had before. Very little variation between the lowest and the highest in CPUs. So yeah, this is on the 12-inch MacBook just for double-double clarification, just so we don't get it wrong again.

Yeah, yeah. So although we can now say, look, you can get an i7 in a MacBook. Isn't that awesome? Oh, yes. They call it an i7, but it's really the same as what they used to call the M7, and that's true. It's not going to blow

away the processor in the MacBook Pro without touch bar. It's not going to blow it away at all. It is a much less powerful CPU. However, the overall argument still remains the same, which is for almost everything, it's fine. That's the bottom line of that. But it is a good point and another point that my sleeping brain spaced on, which is it's a marketing change

and not really a hardware change substantially. And keep that in mind that this is one of those things where like, oh, people are turned off by this M5 branding because they're so used to the i5 branding. Like, okay, we'll call it that then. All right, I guess you could do that

yeah great brilliant it's an upgrade yeah that's right developer of carrot weather wrote in brian mueller uh and he got in touch to say because we're talking about carrot weather last week that it is actually possible to force carrot weather to use a specific weather station which is something that you were looking for um yes it is this is very exciting i actually just did this the other day after Brian's advice. You go into a location, which I hadn't really thought about,

like saving my location and saying, basically you go to the current location and you tap the kind of more button and it says in this location, you can choose, if you've got weather underground as your source, you can choose a weather station. And basically, so when I'm in Mill Valley,

I have set my watch and phone app of Carrot Weather to use my weather station, which is awesome because the current temperature then is the actual current temperature in my backyard because there's a lot of variation where I live, a lot of microclimates. What's funny about this is that now that data is intermingled with the forecast data, which is still what I said before, problematic because if you're using a forecast for the town below me or the town above me, it could be a huge

temperature range. So it's been very foggy here the last couple of days even though there's been heat in other parts of the bay area it's been very foggy here right by the water and so the little chart in carrot weather shows like the current temperature is 62 and then it's got uh and that's based on my weather station the rest of it is based on a forecast from a data source right and those are all like 74 76 78 so there's there's like what it actually is and then the dream of what the forecast is and they they still don't match but that's that's fine because it's a forecast and it actually is useful because i can see their forecast is way uh too optimistic for how warm it's going to get today but bottom line is yeah i can look at carrot weather now and see um the actual

temperature and at my house which is awesome and it's such a good app have you played with the watch app yeah absolutely fantastic right and the complication is i i love it and so just another huge thumbs up so just a second recommendation for it is it's the first uh because weather underground makes a watch app with a weird complication, but they haven't updated it in a while, and so it's sort of the old tech. This is the first watch app where I've been able to put a weather complication on my watch that is the current temperature at my house and is actually right and updated. And I love it.

It's fantastic. That's exactly what I wanted. I want to be able to look down at my watch and see what's the temperature outside. And now I can. Jason, you want to take this next piece of follow up? Sure. Yes. So those who are people who are relay members may remember last summer, we did a what's called a parsley adventure. There's a guy named Jared Sorensen who has created a series of... They're like text adventures as a party game. So basically,

you get a group together and somebody is the parser and they have the map, they have the rules, and they accept your commands in the style of an old text adventure. So go north, get the gun, go south, shoot the gun. And they're a lot of fun. We played three of them so far on the Incomparable Game Show, and there's another one coming this week. And last summer, you and CGP Grey played a game called Six Gun Showdown from this Parsley collection with me as the parser. And that was our Upgrade Cortex crossover special for members. And it's still available if you become a member and you've not heard it.

You can become a Relay member and get it. It's fantastic. You should do it. It was so much fun. Yeah. it it's fantastic you should do it like it was so much fun yeah and and we should tease that um this the membership season for relay is coming up later this summer yep and yes there is a new mike and gray play a text adventure with the snelletron 5000 coming so if you're if you are thinking of being a relay member uh that there's another inducement

and if you're already a relay member get excited we're going to do another one it's going to be hilarious yep mike is hard at work it's done it's basically done and it's brilliant and we had so much fun with it and if you remember you're going to love it so go to relay.fm membership support any show and you'll get all of the benefits. You'll get all of the perks. And you'll be hearing a lot more about this in a few weeks as our kind of membership season kicks off at Relay.fm.

Right. But the reason we're mentioning it now is there's a Kickstarter going on for the next, as we record this, 11 days that is by Jared Sorensen, the creator of Parsley Games,

including Action Castle and Six Gun Showdown. And you can get, if you back it you can get a pdf of the entire collection of the parsley games and you can get a you can get a book uh with the entire collection and i would say it is really fun as a party game um one person is the parser everybody else just plays along uh ideally the way you do it which is not how gray and mike chose to do it is everybody is forced to take turns and not collaborate which means you end up sort of like um arguing in your commands to the parser which is funny yeah it's uh so i recommend people go to kickstarter we'll put a link in the show notes and back this i backed it i want to get the hardcover i think it's a lot of fun there's a lot of neat art that is focused on

each of the games he commissions original art for each of the games, and then there's extra stuff that's in the Kickstarter that will be in the new book. It's a lot of fun, so check it out. We're going to do a new one. We've already got one that's available

for members, and then the Incomparable Game Show's got some that you can check out too, starting with Action Castle, and a new one this week there so it's just a lot of fun so people should check out jared sorenson's parsley games kickstarter yeah so go back i backed the the hardcover um they're so much fun so you should go check them out and we'll put a link on the show notes for that all right today's show is brought to you in part by our friends over at Ting. Now, this is really cool. Ting is a mobile phone service that wants to help you save money. Imagine that.

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checker to confirm your phone can make the switch. And if you're looking to upgrade, Ting has plenty of options for you in their online shop to get a lovely new handset. Listeners of this show can get $25 off selected devices or keep that as a Ting credit. Just go to upgrade.ting.com and see how much you can save. We thank Ting for their support of this show. So last week, Jason, in Ask Upgrade, we answered the question of whether we thought that there was going to be a new Apple Watch this year. And you didn't think so, but I thought so. There's been a report from MacRumors this week who are saying that one of Apple's manufacturing partners for the watch, I think they've been responsible for building all of the watches so far

at least the vast majority of them, a company called Quanta, they are indicating that they are going to enjoy a strong second half of 2017 in part due to a third generation Apple watch and previous rumors indicate that there will be no

major visual design change but we're going to see a soul radio in series 3 and that was just kind of reiterated by mac rumors so what do you think do you think that sounds compelling well i mean i think the next generation apple watch or at least well i shouldn't say that right i think the next big step for the apple Watch is cellular connectivity, right? Because one of the challenges right now is you have to bring your phone with you. If you want to get a text message, get a call, anything like that, you need to bring your phone with you. And I face this every time that I go out running or bike riding with my, I got an Apple Watch, I got AirPods. And when I ride my bike, I bring my phone and I stick it in the bag underneath the seat, right?

So it's not in my pocket, but it's still with me. And when I'm running, it's in my pocket and wiggling around out there. And it's not great, but I need to do it. So the next step is leave your phone at home. It doesn't matter. You're still out there. If there's an emergency, you can still call. If somebody calls you or texts you, you can see it.

That's clearly where the Apple Watch needs to go. And I know people are like, yeah, I don't care about that so much. It's like, yeah, but it will be so much more useful when it can reliably, and the apps on it will be more useful when they can reliably update over a connection. And all of the carriers now are offering

little monthly upgrades that attach to your constellation of devices and put it on your plan and i i think that's where clearly where this is going the question is this is a rumor that's like okay a manufacturer says they expect to do better and the cited like previous reports is like a supply chain analyst in march said that it would have this so it's like i'd say these are not the strongest rumors it doesn't mean they're not true no it's not it's not like blockbuster these are not mark german says that this is happening these are more like you know a guy who is an analyst says that he thinks it might happen and a company that has been known

to make products for apple thinks that it will be nice later it's like it's a very weird kind of hazy thing so i'd say this pushes it a little more into the likelihood percentage you know a little bit more than last week but and and i don't think it's an unreasonable rumor right i think i think it's highly unlikely that apple's going to completely radically change the apple watch design right i i think it's kind of iconic at this point like you know it's an apple watch it keeps compatibility with all of these bands that they've sold. They're not going to be able to make it radically smaller. That's not going to happen.

If they change the screen, everybody would have to redo their apps, which I think nobody wants to do. So yeah, keeping the same design and adding cellular connectivity is totally what the next step would probably be, unless they can't get there yet, and they're going to do another like little half step where, well, it's a little faster and it's got one new feature. But I think the question is, will it be this fall or not? I really don't know. Like it could be, it totally could be. And I think I said that when we talked about this is like, yeah, sure. It could be, or it could be

a year. We don't really understand what Apple's approach with the Apple watches, but, um, now that they've got the different series that might actually free them up to make a series three with cellular connectivity and get rid of the series one, keep the series two around and allow the series three to have a higher price because it's got the cellular connectivity for people who want it. That, that, um, that could totally be what they do this fall. And I would welcome it because I think the Apple Watch with cellular is going to be a way better product,

like vastly better product. They need to get there. I can't wait for that day where I can leave the phone at home and still be connected and get everything that I need to do. But, you know, will it be this fall? I don't know.

That's a lot of stuff to cram into that Apple Watch, right? I mean, are they at that point now where they can do i that's a lot of stuff to cram into that apple watch right i mean are they at that point now where they can do that maybe a lot of the other smart watches have cellular connectivity so maybe they can i think it makes sense like i've been thinking about this like to do it now do it before you make a visual change right because the hardware case is the same size i think it was like slightly thicker so they're getting used to like making things smaller and potentially making some space right like if if i the little i understand about this stuff right like miniaturization continues and you're able to be more efficient well you want to make sure you have a ton of battery and if you're going to put a cell radio in there

and considering how good the battery life is in the series too you can keep that make it a little bit better even and then throw a cell chip in, that makes the most sense to me before you make it thinner maybe, which I assume is going to happen at some point, right? They will do a big visual change. It might make sense to try and get the cell radio in before that, but we'll see. We'll see. I would welcome either of those things,

either a big visual change to make it a lot thinner or a cell radio. I'd be equally happy. either a big visual change to make it a lot thinner or a cell radio i'll be equally happy so let's talk about some uh some leaks which are significantly more credible um than than what we saw today overnight last night as we record this steve troughton smith notable uh code miner has once again been digging into some code from Apple to find some details about future product releases. There's quite a few little tidbits here, so we're going to kind of try and go through them piece by piece. So this time, all of this stuff was found on a HomePod firmware release, which was located on Apple's servers. I actually want to start with just talking about that

as a thing that happened before we actually talk about what was in there. This is so weird to me. Why did this ever exist in the public? It must have been a mistake, right? It's got to be, right? I mean, why? I mean, I suppose you need to test the HomePod firmware update and things like that.

And they've probably ceded units to people at Apple and they want to push out the firmware updates, but to have it on a public website where Steve Troughton Smith is watching, that shouldn't happen. And many others, right? Like, it's not just something that he snuck into. Like, this is a thing that people can access. Like, there are a bunch of people that saw this. There are a bunch of people that dug into it. But there are people that just see it and just kind of ignore it.

But this is a thing that was just available for the public to dig into, essentially. Yeah, there's a page where you can see the firmware downloads. And there's this device that is not a previously known device in terms of its identifier. I wonder if there's a disconnect about like, well, it shouldn't be a problem because we already announced the HomePod, so this shouldn't be an issue. But the problem is that the software is assuming a world at the end of the year

where all the new iPhones have come out. And so they contain, they're building it for that world. They're not going to release it before then. So, right? So you don't have the software that you're working on in beta in july for a product that's going to ship in december uh you don't have it not know about the

next iphone because you know why would you do that why would you have to add that late in the game you're you're building for december you you're pretending essentially that it is december when you're when you're building this product because you don't need to release it before then and uh i wonder if there was a disconnect where somebody said uh well you know it's already announced product we can just put it up and it's not a big deal nobody's got one um but inside it and this is not the first time this has happened but inside it there are are lots of details that can be gleaned about what's in the HomePod. And the HomePod makes references to stuff that's in the new iPhones. Which is even more delectable.

Like, I've seen screenshots of people posting where there are files and strings and stuff like that that have the word hide in them as in these are supposed to be hidden which is yeah beautiful right like there's a thing that i i think this it's hilarious yeah it's not uh it's not good right like either either that stuff should have been trimmed or this should be have been put in an alternate stream and it's you know this stuff is complicated and somebody appears to have really screwed it up so let's talk about what some of the details were what some of the details were of the release um so the firmware has included data that refers to a few different things, which can be attributed to some rumors about the upcoming iPhone that I don't actually think that we've really covered at all on this show about like the facial detection and stuff like that. infrared capture and pearl id and i've seen people tweeting uh apparently pearl id is an internal code name for a face detection system so this seems like pretty solid evidence that the next iphone is going to have some kind of face detection system right like they are referencing

it the code is clearly referencing that apple is building some kind of face detection right like they are referencing it the code is clearly referencing that apple is building some kind of face detection right like that's what this is it sure looks like it right i mean it's kind of hard to argue with this that this is an infrared camera on the front of the device so that it can see you even in darkness and it will detect your face and there are strings in there about like too many faces or can't detect a face um and so it looks very much like this is an iphone that is you know doing biometric verification via face detection yeah what do you think about this jason how do you feel we've not spoken about it like what what are your feelings when you hear touch id goes away replaced by face detection

well um so my initial thoughts were that this is sounds real complicated right and i remember you guys talked about this unconnected like touch id is everywhere right and you and you having a biometric approval system is uh vital to what apple does so you can't not have a biometric approval system but um yet there were these rumors about this so the next question is, okay, let's assume this is true. What does that mean? And I got to say, I don't think Apple would, if you think back to other things that we've been skeptical about, like, I don't think Apple would release face scanning as their biometric replacement for touch ID if they didn't feel like they had it down right i feel like

we're imagining this does happen sometimes and they may blow it i mean it's entirely possible but we sometimes what we do is we imagine a bad implementation of something because it seems so hard and unlikely and we think of all the challenges that are involved and then apple comes out with it like the fingerprint scanning honestly and and everybody goes oh like oh apple did a good job they implemented it properly that's got to be what's going on here right like if they i really believe this that if they don't have the face recognition stuff working they wouldn't ship the phone like seriously i think it's that simple that there's no way that apple is going to ship a brand new flagship iphone with a biometric identification system that doesn't work like i i just i can't see that happening that that is not

what apple does that would be the most unapple thing imagin. So I've got to start thinking, what would this be like if it totally did what it said? Like literally I pick up my phone and it knows it's me and it works and it's unlocked, or at least I can unlock it easily at that point. There are a lot of questions, right? About what that means in terms of, could somebody else hold your phone up to your face while you're tied in a chair being held hostage and use your phone? Yeah, but they could probably jam your finger on the, on the touch ID button too. So I don't know. I feel like we have to start conceiving of how this could be good. Good enough for Apple to actually implement it because I don't think I believe that Apple would put like apple pay and all of their

security stuff in the hands of technology that they weren't supremely confident would work i am completely of the opinion i spent a lot of time thinking about this right you know the rumors have been around for like a month or so now. My feeling is just, well, I am confident that it's going to be great, right? That's how I feel about it. Right now, I'm like, well, I'm sure that it's going to be awesome because why else would they do this? Of this exact same mindset that you're in, this isn't just like the next iPhone.

This is like the next iPhone that we're expecting is going to be a mega expensive iPhone. And that they would be like, Oh, Hey everyone, you're buying this new phone. And like to unlock it, like just sucks.

Do I think that it will be as completely reliable as touch ID? No, probably not. Like it, I reckon it will probably get close, but every now and then it might get a bit confused but like i'm okay with that as long as the the margin of error is slim within that kind of that realm right like that it's almost as good or as good for me to accept

it because it's like i expect it to be really cool right like i'm willing to to take a small like small i mean small hit on reliability if it is significantly cooler than touch id right because you can kind of you can kind of let it go right like it was like when touch id came around every now and then it wouldn't work now my i could always put my passcode incorrectly but that's nowhere near as cool as using your fingerprint so i'm expecting there to be an increase in the cool factor and if that is met and and they do a just a good enough job at trying to get it close then i would be happy personally there's coolness and there's uh i would say speed is another thing like there's reliability and you're right it might be less reliable but i think speed is an issue like You want it to unlock fast. And the fact that people talk about second-generation Touch ID is kind of ridiculous.

Why do they do that? They talk about it because it's faster. That matters to people. It unlocks my phone faster. I just had it where I was doing something in the kitchen, and then I tried to unlock my phone, and my fingers felt dry, and the phone felt dry, and yet, obviously, there was a little bit of moisture there, and it's a second-generation phone felt dry. And yet, obviously, there was a little bit of moisture there. And it's a second generation Touch ID sensor. Didn't matter. It was like, nope,

you can't unlock your phone, put in your password. And it's like, ah, like it does happen. It does happen now, even with second generation Touch ID. But yeah, you want it to be fast. You want to be pretty reliable. And having it be cool is great. I think the other thing I would say is the difference between this and something like the dual camera thing, like that was a with a depth mode, right? That is not a core feature. beta and kind of work and not be not be turned on originally and still be fine right because it was not a core feature of the phone you could still do all the things you would expect to do on an iphone even if that didn't work right or was not turned on or was in beta right this is not that right biometric authentication what which up to now we've kind of called touch ID, but it also includes face ID or whatever they call it. That's a core feature. I also wonder about the Apple Watch. I have this other thought, which is, could they use the Apple Watch to authenticate as well? If you have an

Apple Watch and it hasn't left your wrist um and you're close would it let you go the other direction where it'd be like oh apple watch is still on it's fine i don't know if they would do that or not but because they do it the other way around right like you put your watch on unlock your phone just in case people don't notice you could have missed this uh if you have your watch on and you unlock your phone your watch unlocks you don't need the code which is just a nice little thing yeah and it stays unlocked the entire time it stays on your wrist because there's a proximity detector on it. And you can use your watch to unlock your Mac.

So could you use your watch to unlock your phone, and could that be a second way of doing it? I mean, maybe, maybe not. Maybe it's not worth doing because this infrared thing is so amazing. But the point is that biometric authentication, by whatever means, is a core feature of the system now. Like,'t half-ass that you can't so i i think we have to assume that if this is real that apple feels supremely confident that this infrared camera and and face detection and whatever else they're doing to get that face profile actually works, like, solidly.

Because this is not an experimental feature. This is a core part of the iPhone experience now. But this wasn't all. But I did just... Why is this even in the HomePod stuff, do you think? Like, why is this showing up? I don't know. I was thinking maybe some kind of

remote authorization for something, but I can't even work out what that would be. Maybe some of the Siri commands, because it has to be tied to your phone, right? If you ask it to read you a message, the phone needs to be unlocked. So maybe the HomePod needs to confirm that, and so it's in the

firmware. It's just strange to see all this stuff popping up in there, right? It could be a mistake. It shouldn't be in there, but it got in there because of something in their process. The HomePod is an iOS device, basically, or a variant. But it's basically another ARM processor running code that's derived from iOS. So it could be that it's just kind of in there. It could be that there's some thing of like authenticating in order to change features of the HomePod. I don't know. But yeah, it looks sloppy to me on a few levels, right? It's sloppy

that it's in there, maybe. Sloppy that it got out. A lot of sloppy stuff here and i yes i would not want to be in the hallway well maybe i would in the hallway between the people working on the home pod and the people working on the new iphone like that would be to be a fly on the wall there as angry people march down the hallway you ruined our product launch maybe there's no hallway jason maybe they all work in one big open plan area big yeah and they're just throwing throwing stuff across the room at them yeah maybe maybe again tomatoes tin cans yeah there's so much stuff we've already spoken about but there's more so um apparently steve troughton smith discovered uh that there is code relating to the home pod that indicates that the top of the home pod is some kind of led

matrix display so it's it's pretty rudimentary um it's not it's not like a display you'll get in a phone but it's like a grid of led LEDs that could show shapes and symbols and stuff like that. So basically the, the tale of what is that top part continues to just like change and change and change. Nobody like is a hundred percent sure what's going to be shown on that little display on the top of the HomePod, but the technology seems to at least indicate that it's an LED matrix display. So there is animations, there is stuff that it can show. seems to at least indicate that it's an LED matrix display. So there is animations, there is stuff that it can show. Yeah, it sounds like it's a 32 by 32 grid of LEDs.

It's not, and this again, it's not really a display in the way we think of it. It's like a grid of dots. It's a bunch of colored lights, right? Yeah, it allows them to do Siri animations and stuff like that. But they could theoretically put other indicators up there. So if they wanted to, I think it's not built for that. And it's probably not what they want.

They probably just want to do it so they can do little sort of Siri animations and things like that. But who knows? It's interesting. They could put symbols up there if they wanted to. But it's not going to be like displaying the name of the currently playing track or anything like that. Because it's a very small little grid of dots. Unless it just shows you one letter at a time. Just really slowly.

That would be kind of funny. But there is more. We have some iPhone stuff, some more iPhone stuff. This firmware, this stuff that was found, also included an outline icon of, we're assuming what the next iPhone is going to look like, and it's what we expected. It is a version of an iPhone with thin bezels

that has that little notch taken out of the top of the screen right the little forehead uh that houses the cameras and sensors i feel like this is confirmed now that's what the next iphone is going to look like you know all of this these mock-ups that we've seen this potential hardware there seems to be a lot of like confusion about what's in there uh this this explains it and and yeah so no home button buttons on the side notch out the top yeah and with a notch it looks like what they're what they're probably going to do there is have the um battery status and the cellular status appear up there by the cameras and all that and that that moves out of what we currently think of as the status bar.

That is, those things get tucked in, in the side. Maybe the time too, I don't know. But like, basically, there are, there's just enough space on either side of those sensors for some basic status information when you're holding the phone in portrait orientation. Yeah. So whilst there like, there isn't a ton, ton to say on that, that was the most interesting thing to me. That's what the next iPhone is going to look like.

This leak came from Apple, right? And I know it's super basic, right? Like just an outline. But for this phone, that tells so many stories, right? An outline of an iPhone before this, not interesting. The outline of this iPhonehone before this not interesting the outline of this iphone very interesting right like it's the worst possible one for them to see yeah because it's not i could see the argument like well it's not really a picture of the next iphone it's just sort of a

platonic ideal of the iphone but like it's got no home button and it's got cutouts like this is not a shape of any existing iPhone. And it corresponds exactly to the rumors of what the iPhone is. So it's very hard not to look at this. Unless this is a prank, you know? Unless it's like, oh, put that in the HomePod stuff and see what they think. It totally doesn't look like that, but let's do that. But unless it's a really ridiculous prank that Apple is pulling on us, like, this is just reaffirmation of the fact that the rumors were right.

We're really building up now, right? A couple of months away. I know it's July 31st as we record this, but this is an August conversation, is it not? This is the, like, they turn the burner up all the way on iPhone rumors as we we get through august into september this is what august is like it is the you know things start to really build toward that uh that launch event so uh maybe you know it was july on the calendar but this is this feels very august to me this is the this is the height of iphone silly season yeah this this is an August state of mind. This is, yeah, this very, really kind of just fascinating. All of these little tidbits just to come out of this one piece of firmware.

I do wonder, like, at a certain point, can't Apple just offer, like, an insane amount of money to Steve Trout and Smith and just hire him? Just stop him, right? Like, just stop him. I know there are other people that find this stuff as well. Like, just stop him. I know there are other people that find this stuff as well, but, like, I think he's high-profile enough at a point that, like, when he posts this, every website runs with it because he has just great skills and track record of finding this stuff.

You know, just offer the guy a bajillion dollars and stop him. Maybe make him work on the other side of it, right? Like, he can hide the things so people like him can't find them super interesting and some people have had a really really bad monday really bad just really i i think so when when you go to so much effort to double down on privacy and or on security and secrecy and this is just stupid right like this is just a silly mistake well and it's you know yeah and it's leaking inadvertently from people who didn't understand what they were doing probably or didn't take proper care or weren't properly trained on it it's that's tough

when it's an accident and not you know they they do all of that work to tell people don't leak things keep it a secret. And it's all about intentional leaking, right? And then this is just an accidental disclosure that generates this. I mean, you've got to learn from it, right? And say, oh, that is part of our process that we didn't really think about. Or whether it's we didn't think about putting it up, that Steve Trott and Smith exists. I did have that moment where I thought, can't Apple just hire Steve Troughton Smith? Yeah.

Like he's kind of brilliant, even if they didn't use him for anything. Like that guy, he causes you trouble. He has this great understanding of what's going on. Have him find your leaks and just tell you about it. Just put him in a room and just like stop him make him security officer like whatever it takes just pay him to to to read books and eat ice cream all day if you want to go ahead because he's incredibly valuable because he he's the guy who takes uh takes this stuff apart and looks at it and has discovered all sorts of interesting things about it i should mention by

the way he has a patreon if people really like really like all these disclosures that are coming from Steve, maybe you want to throw him a few bucks because he does this all kind of out of his own inquisitiveness, but he does have a Patreon for people who want to support him. But I did have that same thought, which is maybe Apple should take him off the board in some way because, because like, yeah, anyway, they'll, they'll figure out like what part of their process broke down because it's not Steve's fault.

Like people found this, it was on a public website. So why was it there? Why was the stuff that was in it, in it? And either they didn't realize that that was visible or somebody didn't do the right thing and made a mistake. And either they were just being human or they didn't get trained properly, but it is i'm sure they will you know redouble their efforts but it's

super embarrassing and got to be frustrating for apple yeah as i said like i think what makes it so much worse is like there was all this code about hiding it right which was public which was visible right there's all these words like hide and stuff like that, but they hadn't hidden them. It's like, oh gosh. It's so glaring when you see it all just right there. Fascinating. This episode is brought to you by Eero. Never think about Wi-Fi again,

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Eero for their support of this show and RelayFM. So Jason, we talk about new products, but we must also talk about the end of old products. Earlier this week, or was it late last week, Apple removed the iPod Nano and the iPod Shuffle from sale, just quietly. Apple.com slash iPod now redirects to Apple.com slash iPod Touch. I'll include a link in the show notes to noted Apple historian Stephen Hackett. He put together a lovely post and a little YouTube video to lament the end of some of the more traditional iPods in the line. The iPod Touch remains on sale. It's $199 now, and it has double the capacity than before.

I was wondering, Jason, kind of before we talk about the iPod and what's gone away, how long do you think the iPod Touch has left in its life? Well, I think the question is, is the iPod Touch the Mac Mini of iOS or not? Yes, it probably is, right? It hasn't been significantly updated in a while. And I mean, they're putting new storage in it, but I think that's just to kind of keep it

up to date so it can maybe handle some of the more recent updates but like it yeah it's old now was it like an a8 and a and a iphone 5 screen or something yeah it's old but it's 199 and it's little and there are uses there are probably uses for it in education and training and all you know families families with little kids who don't want an ipad but they want to give them something like there there are uses for it but they're scattered and there's no i think it's harder to point like with the mac mini at the ipod touch and say here is the market for the ipod touch like well no kind of not but there are lots of different uses for it and it probably sells well enough for them to keep it around like the Mac mini, but not well enough for them to spend a lot of time upgrading it. So again,

maybe, maybe the iPod touch dies. Maybe the iPod touch gets an update at some point that is really minor and, uh, then doesn't get updated again for another three years. That could totally happen. So I don't know. I kind of feel like it's useful for them to have a small iOS device that's not a phone. But yeah, I mean, you could flip a coin on it, but it depends on how much they really sell. Do they know how much they really sell? But I do hear from people who say that these things happen in camps and schools and other places. Now, the iPad is the real question because there's now a fairly low cost iPad. And that is much more successful in schools and other places that used to sort of use iPod Touches. Now they tend to use iPads. So you could maybe argue that Apple

would rather they buy iPads than the iPod Touch. But i don't know i mean if they if it sells well enough to keep it around why not the challenge is that it's you know advantages it's using iphone parts right so that makes it that makes it pretty easy but it doesn't have the cellular stuff so um apple's got the parts apple knows how to build something this small they can make it smaller because it doesn't have any of the cellular stuff and make it cheaper but do they want to i don't i really don't know i think it's a coin flip it really depends on does it sell well enough does it fill enough of the ios market and unlike the mac mini which i feel like is very clearly filling that market i'm not convinced that apple is convinced that the ipod Touch is required when the iPad exists.

Yeah, for me, it's just weird to see. I'm not incredibly nostalgic for a lot of this stuff, but the iPod as a music player going away, there's something a little bit sad about that. I have a really great history with that. something a little bit sad about that like i have a really great history with that you know i'm of the the people that kind of are interested in this stuff i'm the ipod generation you know the the ipod got me into the apple ecosystem i had an ipod mini a pink ipod mini was my first apple product and it opened the door for me to want to get a Mac, you know,

and then I got like all of the iPods that I wanted after that, right? Like I had the Nano, the iPod Nano, the original iPod Nano is still, I think, one of the most impressive products Apple ever shipped. Just the jump in what they made going from the iPod Mini, which is small, but this big chunky thing, you know, maybe the size of like a packet of cigarettes or something like that, right? Down to something that was, you know, like, like a packet of, I know the shuffle was like this packet of gum, but like the nano was like this thin thing, like almost like a stick of gum, right? Like a few sticks of gum stacked on top of each other, like

this impossibly small product, like how did they go from that to that right like it was really fascinating and also like the iPod mini was selling so well for them but they cut it off and made this new thing and you know then kind of like going to like the iPod video like I have these vivid memories of like putting TV shows onto my iPod video and and when it was like I was supposed to be going to sleep before school the next day, I would be watching TV shows under the covers on my iPod video. The iPod was a very important product to me and it's a shame, you know, it is a shame to see the Nano and the Shuffle go like the Classic did because really what's left, it isn't like an iPod right like the ipod touch is not an ipod it's an iphone without a cell radio yeah it's an ipod name only because it's basically an iphone yeah no you're absolutely

right i would say in fact the apple product most like the ipod now the apple watch small yeah it's with you you can load music onto it you can sync music onto it. You can sync music onto it. It'll play the music back over Bluetooth. You know, it's the iPod Nano of today is the Apple Watch. As weird as that is to say, it kind of is. Like, in fact, I had a moment when this announcement happened where I thought to myself, you know, I don't think Apple wants to do this. But if Apple wanted to make a next generation iPod, it could just take the Apple Watch tech. Literally, it could take the Apple Watch technology and use that to make something that's kind of like an Apple Watch and kind of like an iPod Nano or Shuffle with a clip on it. And just say, here's the new iPod.

It does Apple Music and it's got Wi-Fi and it runs little apps and it's basically the Apple Watch. But I don't think they will because I think they want you to buy an apple watch to do that but it's not that far off right like it's got a touch interface that isn't unlike the the recent nano that just got discontinued where it was like a sham of a of a an ios interface because it's not actually running ios the ipod or the apple watch is has a real interface that actually is built for it. And it's got music sync. And very much like the iPod, it's reliant on a parent device to sync its music. It can't do it itself.

And so it's very iPod-y in that way. And you can walk around without your phone or anything and listen to music on it. So I don't know. It hit me. I don't think it's ever going to be more than that but it did strike me that that the today's ipod nano or ipod shuffle is an apple watch hey what if they made it into the airpods right you just put music music in the case and you know i think a long-term thing for the airpods is probably like what you can't

why why not like in the long i'm not making a rumor here for this fall or something i'm saying in the long term like at some point wouldn't couldn't your airpods be that intelligent couldn't couldn't they sync music and store it locally like yeah i think at some point you might not need anything more than that to go out for a run. And if you get a call, your AirPods are on your cellular plan. Now, there's some issues with having devices that have radios that are that close to your head for things like cellular connectivity. That might not be the best idea, but having it on your wrist is not that bad. Just build it into the case, right?

This case is always going to be there. You just have to carry your case around with you. Yeah, I suppose so. So, you know, it's just, it's funny. This is where we've come. Is that like, we've left the world where the iPod is there because you want to have a... And again, some people still want them and need them and use them and great. But for most people, like that is the old tech.

And the new tech is these smaller devices that we wear that have this stuff built in and uh and that's why i feel like the apple watch has this kind of like interesting affinity with the the ipod like it's kind of doing what the ipod did but in a modern context. So the Wall Street Journal had a profile of Johnny Ive and Apple Park showing us some details, some pictures we haven't seen of the newly opened building. And you can tell me if you have any other feeling on this, but I think it seems that the majority of discussion that has come out of this profile for whatever was in there is just is mainly talking about kind of like the open office nature that the apple park seems to have that we've seen some photos

in this which show these kind of stark open areas like these vast open areas, these working areas that we've heard about, right? Like we've heard in previous profiles that Apple Park would contain this stuff, but this is the first time that we've seen anything of it, right? Right. And I think that that is the thing that has sparked the majority of conversation is like, what does this look like? How is this going to work? So I wanted to talk a little bit about open offices because I think we both have some experience with those. It seems like there are engineers who work inside of Apple reportedly and commentators are very upset. So it seems like there is a – coming from the Wall are very upset so it seems like it seems like

there is a coming from the wall street journal article it seems like people are upset and i've seen lots of people tweeting about this about the the idea of potentially loud disruptive working environments and the idea that the whiteboards are now being replaced by sliding glass doors which i actually think sounds super cool uh like i think of House, right? Like House used to write on the glass. It was awesome. But this is a trend, right? Like this isn't something that Johnny Ive has created. He hasn't created the open office. Like open offices are a real thing. And I think it seems like you mention open offices to people and people hate them, right right you mentioned the term open office and everyone's like oh i hate open offices but companies keep installing them and moving in that direction so like i've been thinking about this right there has to be a reason right like if they were as bad

if open offices are as bad as people fear or think why do they keep getting put in like if open offices really destroy all productivity wouldn't somebody have worked that out by now well i i don't know about like what studies have been done have there been studies done about someone's done them right like somebody has well i don't i don't know anything about that i also don't know anything about um you know work is not like we tested workers and found that they were more productive because everybody's work is different i'm not sure you can you can boil this down if you can then great but you have to you would have to work very hard in terms of like we had two different scenarios where people's workplaces

were essentially identical in every other way but not in this way because everybody's workloads are different and different different uh groups work differently and it's funny because when i wrote my comment on this on this wall street journal piece what i said was basically um some people aren't going to like it because i've experienced that we moved to an open plan and we also moved to a a cube based office at one point when a lot of people had offices and they got kicked out into cubicles when i worked at mac user and then in mac world um we ended up at idg doing an open plan like a severe open plan no cube walls kind of thing. And I saw it like some people were okay with it and some people were not. And then the other thing that I observed is,

and this comes from not just this Wall Street Journal story, but my own personal experience, what I observed is sometimes the people who are designing and rolling out and approving open plan spaces, I think sometimes their motivations are flawed. And sometimes they, and again, not all the time, and sometimes they lose some perspective because they don't know how the people who are going to be in the space actually work. And sometimes the managers who are vouching for them do not understand how they actually get work done. And there's often a lot of corporate talk about productivity and collaboration and things like that that goes into this. So I guess what I would say is sometimes offices get built and they're not really looking at studies and they're not looking at evidence and they're not looking, ideally they would talk to their people about what they want. Sometimes that happens. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes you talk to the people and then you don't give them what they want. Trust me, I've seen it happen. So I look at this and I think, okay,

So I look at this and I think, okay, I'm not a big fan of open plan. But one of the things that bothers me about it is that it seems to often be inflicted on workers by people who think that it's great, but aren't doing the job that they're doing. Now, I've heard, since I wrote that, I've heard from people who are programmers who say, I love open plan because collaboration is an incredibly important part of what I do. But I also heard from lots of programmers who say, it's terrible because it's distracting and I need to focus. And like Joel Spolsky wrote a piece about how developers need to be in flow, right? Where they get in a groove and they are really working on. And that's when they're at their most productive. And you've got audio and visual clutter in an open plan that distracts you and gets you out of out of flow. And his suggestion was programmers are at their most productive when they are in a space they can control. And that means like cube walls or an office. Now, not every developer is going to be like that. Our friend Casey has always worked

in cubicles, right? And some people are fine with that. Although cubicles aren't open plan. I'll point that out. Like open plan is you have a table and you can look around and see everybody else working in the room. Like everybody, there's no, you don't have any privacy at all. You are completely exposed. That's what open plan is. And that's what Apple is doing. So, you know, again, it's an adaptation. It's going to be a productivity hit for Apple. Some of the people are going to hate it. And what I found at IDG is people can come up with ways to deal with open plan. They face the wall.

They put on headphones. They do things to, they work from home. on headphones. They do things to, they work from home. Like they do things to try to override the open plan because they need to do their work. And collaboration is something, collaboration's important, right? But I think it's importance gets overstated. And, you know, in my workplace, like there was always, there were always times where we needed to collaborate. We wanted to stand up. We talk. We go into a room and have a conversation and draw things on a whiteboard.

That's totally important. It does happen. I do think it gets overstated. Then there's the part where you have to go back to your desk and work. And very rarely is somebody's work, especially if you're a writer, if you're a programmer, something where literally the work you're doing is happening with someone there, unless you're doing like pair programming or something like that. Like you are sitting down by yourself and focusing.

And if you're in a workspace that is not conducive to focus, then you're not going to be able to do your job very well. And I think that's the challenge that Apple has here. And I don't know, like, I don't know how much Apple talked to its people. I don't know how much this was driven by design. I don't know. I've not seen the space like in use. That's one of the things I'm kind of fascinated by is, will we see a picture of a workspace at Apple Park at some point when people are moved in and there's clutter and there are humans and what does that look like and how is it working? and what does that look like and how is it working?

But I am a little bit skeptical that this is a design-driven project that the developers who work on this stuff are going to have to do some serious adaptation and are gonna be frustrated and are gonna push back. And some of that is a fear of change, but some of that may be legitimate resistance to a distracting work environment. Because as much as people say, oh no, collaboration is great. Who among us would

argue that collaboration isn't important? But at the end of the day, when I'm writing an article, like I'm not writing an article while talking to somebody, I am focused. I'm not collaborating at that point. And even in a google doc where somebody else is in there like making changes while i'm working that's distracting having people walking around and standing by my desk and things like that super distracting so again not for everybody some people will like it some people will hate it but i do i i think I got a call, a call out the suggestion that, well, this is just how it works now. And it's great because collaboration, because it strikes me that this is more like, it looks

great. You can see everybody. If you're a manager and you can see what they're doing, they can't hide from you. And it's cheaper. It's not an Apple's case, but in general, because you don't have to pay for those cube walls or those offices. You can just have a completely reconfigurable space where everybody's out in the open. So I worked for like three years in an open plan office, and it definitely had its downsides.

Like one of the biggest problems for me was if there were people that got on your nerves, you couldn't hide from them. Like they were there every day, like frustrating you and you'd keep hearing them or whatever, like just doing their thing, right? Like we're all human. We don't have to like everybody. There are people that can just frustrate you, right? And there were people like that, but it can be distracting. Yeah, for sure. But there were definitely benefits to it. Like I honestly felt like collaboration was aided with my coworkers. Like we could all frequently jump

in to help each other out with problems right like someone would say something to the table it's like 13 of us sharing this like desk you know there'd be like six on one side six seven on the other side everybody's kind of just like around this huge table this long table and there are upsets to it right like we could help each other out we could solve problems like it was a thing that was useful in some situations. Of course, it could be difficult in others, but this is why everybody had headphones, right? This was the thing.

When you didn't want to be bothered, you put the headphones on. But it was really easy to get somebody's attention if you needed and wanted to ask them a question. There are benefits to it, but of course it shouldn't and doesn't work for everyone, but also in the same way that private offices won't work for everyone either totally totally now i i agree but this and that this is one of my questions is for apple park it's like who decided and did they talk to the developers who decided that uh developers love

being out in the open versus in little rooms. Cause I think everybody having their own office is pretty extreme, right? That's pretty extreme. And then you have to, you have to make a real effort to get people out of their offices at the same time. And maybe it's generational where younger programmers have no problem just sitting out at a table where everybody,

they can see everybody in their, in their office and, and all that. I, I, I get your, your, what you're saying about being able to have a conversation with somebody. Although when you described that table, I thought, well, that sounds like hell to me. I would have to put on headphones.

At which point somebody can't say, hey, Jason. Instead, they have to wave at me. And then am I now worried that I need to look around to see if somebody's waving at me in order to get my attention so that I can take my headphones out and pause my music we used to im each other to get attention okay you know so why not just use im but why not go to a collaboration space it's way it's way better to be able to talk to someone who's across the desk from you than have an im thing and also like so here's the thing like saying why not get up and go to a collaborative a more collaborative space i mean we we had right because there was no space right that gets back to the whole reason they're doing this i'm sure

all right space is a premium because it's cheaper but like it's it's not even about cheaper it's like how big can you make your building right like apple park is huge and they still can't fit everyone in it right like i've been to a bunch of big technology companies now i've been to their offices and every single one of them is open plan like and they have offices that people can go into for meetings and stuff like that but these companies are so huge they have so many people what else you're going to do right well that's and that's what my point actually you just made my point which is um the reason this happens is because configuring offices is expensive. You have to put in drywall.

You have to build the offices in there. And then if you reconfigure because you leave and the next company comes in because you've grown and you've outgrown the space, then they want to reconfigure. And they tear the offices out and they put in new offices. And that's really expensive. It's way cheaper to just have an empty room that you stick tables in or maybe low walls. Or maybe you make rows with higher walls and then everything else is a low wall because you're just in an empty box. There are lots of really good reasons financially to do open plan. Lots of them. None of them has to do with the productivity of your workers.

None of them has to do with them feeling like they can focus on their job. It's all about the managers and the budget. And, you know, that's the facts, right? Like it would be almost impossible to create a space with all offices and you wouldn't buy the argument that i think they're selling us and they're selling workers which is no no open plan is great for you too it's not just because it's cheaper for us it's not just because it's our budget it's great for you because it's so collaborative it's like okay there are jobs where collaboration is important at various levels there are jobs where you really need to focus and some some people maybe can be masters of focus. I don't think I could survive doing what I do. And I mean, podcast aside, because that doesn't work, but like being a writer and an editor doing what I've done for my career. If I was sitting at a, at a table with no barriers with 10 other people, even if I had my headphones in, because I think it would be very hard for me to

focus, especially if I knew that some of them might want to talk to me at some point. I think that would be a very difficult way to adapt. Now, maybe if you're 22 and you're just starting out, you totally deal with the distractions differently and you're able to do it. There may be some generational things happening here, But what sours me on this is I feel like open plan is used way too often as an excuse to tell the workers to shut up and take it because it's actually good for them because collaboration. And at Apple, I hope Apple's better than this. I said this on Twitter when people were asking me about it. It's like, I hope Apple's better than this. I hope this on Twitter when people were asking me about it. It's like, I hope Apple's better than this. I hope Apple knows exactly who their people are

and how they do their job and that they've configured the workspaces in this incredible next generation building to get the most out of their workers. My fear is that this is a design project first and foremost and Johnny Ive and all of his collaborators want it to look like this. And then reality will intrude. And then the question will be like, oh my God, the engineers

are freaking out. It's like, okay, well, it's a period of adaptation. Let's give them six months. But in six months or a year, does somebody go, yeah, we're going to need to put up some cube walls. We're going to need to put up some offices. We're going to need to change this because, um, I think, I think this is one of those cases where the battle plan doesn't stay the same. Once it meets the enemy. I think that when Apple park is opened, you're going to find that a lot of the people who build the software, especially that, uh, that Apple relies on are going to have some serious problems adapting to the work environment and hopefully most of those go away and after six months but i wouldn't count on it i don't know i feel like it's a maybe i don't think it's possible to to make a statement like that to just be like

it's not going to work and i'm not saying that you're necessarily making that statement but like i've seen a lot of people just saying i didn't say that as i just said i've seen a lot of people saying like oh it's not gonna work like engineers can't work that way right and i don't think that it's possible to make those kinds of claims look for every person who said to me um it's fine right like i've gotten some people who are like i have an open plan and it's fine works for me right it right? It's like, okay, well, great. It works for you. Have you proven anything by telling me it works for you? You've proven that it's not terrible for 100% of the people.

For every one of those, I've gotten one or two people who said it won't work. It's terrible. Programmers can't work like that. Those statements are wrong, right? Like some people can work like this. The question is going to be, again, what's in the middle? And again, I want to say like change, like, of course, people are going to be resistant to change. Of course, that's going to happen. The people who are used to another

working environment are going to come into the space and be like, oh boy, like we got our big, beautiful, brand new space at IDG. And it was big and beautiful and new and so much more modern than the old thing which was like a like out of a magazine movie about a magazine in the 1980s like it was super old and dark and terrible and the new space was none of those things and yet once we all kind of got settled in it was like oh i don't know like it was not great and that's resistance to change. You got to adapt. It's going to happen. But yeah, in the long run, who's going to bend? Are the employees going to adapt? Are some of them not going to be able to adapt?

Is the company going to be able to adapt? Once this building is not a grand opening anymore, but an ongoing concern, are managers going to, and the people running the facility going to adapt? Are they going to say, look, look, it's always going to be this way and leave Apple if you don't like it or get on board, or are they going to be like, you know, this is bad. We need to fix this because we are, we are, you know, distracted and we're losing people or they're great engineers that we don't want to lose and we need to change it. I don't know. I don't know how it's going to go. I just have my little spider sense going off that I've seen this.

I've seen this happen before. And it just in my environment, and IDG is not Apple by a long shot, but in my environment, it was not the most productive workplace after all. And it was less open than Apple's is actually, because we did have rows with higher walls. The Apple photos, there's like your wall next to you is actually a glass panel with a conference room behind it. So there'll be meetings going on while you're sitting there and they can see you and you can see them. And I don't know. Well, it looks beautiful.

This is the thing. It looks beautiful. How does it work? Because as Steve Jobs told us, design isn't how it looks. Design is how it works. And so I hope Apple has made good design decisions for Apple Park about the people who work there being able to get their work done productively. Because if it's a beautiful building that people hate to work in and are not productive in, it's a failure. So it needs to be a success. And that means the people need to be productive and

happy when they work there just before we move on i just want to state for the record like i'm not saying this is good i'm not saying it's bad right like i feel like sometimes you know i'm doing my best to to to argue with you right to? Sure. For conversation. I don't always, like... You don't hate the Mac Mini. No, I don't always necessarily believe like 100% of what I say. Like, a lot of the time, I'm playing devil's advocate

to draw out the conversation. You know, my feeling on this, like, if I was to summarize it, it's just like, when I look at something like this, I'm like, well, I assume the reason they're doing this is the reason they have to do it and it may purely be like look at the end of the day we only have so much space and it's like you can either work here or

you can go back to cupid you can go back to infinite loop right like it's we can only fit so many people in and we're just going to see how it goes like i see that as being like a real potential here and it's not necessarily saying that like anybody believes it's good or bad or better or worse but it's like we want to try and get as many people as we can into apple park and the only way we can do that is to put you all in this room sure together right but that But again, where the rubber meets the road is, does it work as a workplace? I get, they could pack them in. They could pack them in even tighter,

fill every space in Apple Park until it's like a sweatshop. They could do that, but they won't do that because that would be a terrible place to work. The question is, where does that line get drawn? And over time, does it change? And we don't know Apple. Look, right now, Apple is justifiably proud of their space and they're showing it off. It is a beautiful brand new building.

It is the dream of Steve Jobs. I would like to work there. It is billions of dollars. I want to see it. It looks amazing. And that's all great. It's just that when the Wall Street Journal specifically calls out trepidation about these spaces, I'm like, yeah, I can see that. I went through it.

And it will all come down to how people react, how managers work with their staff, how the staff reacts, how flexible the facility is to make adjustments based on how people work. Again, if you're somebody who says, look, I can't work without a private office, give that to me or I'm out of here. I doubt Apple Park is going to be able to please them, right? They're going to be like, sorry, that's not going to happen. At IDG, it was the same thing. It's like we had two offices in the entire side of the building I was on. And I was in one of them and I was actually kind of miserable because the office was terrible too. I think I would have rather been out in the cubes.

In fact, if I hadn't left, I probably would have moved out into a cube because it was a tiny, dark interior office that was soul sucking. So, you know, we'll see how it goes. We'll see how the adaptation happens. It's going to take time. There are going to be stories about angry people at Apple who hate Apple Park. There are going to be stories about tech failures at Apple Park. Oh, this elevator didn't work. Or, oh, it leaked when it rained. Or it got a little too cold and everybody had to bring jackets. Or Apple had to buy jackets for everybody. We're going to get those stories because it's a new facility and it's going to shake down. And everything that

Apple does is reported with high drama. My question is just like, for Apple's ongoing productivity and the happiness of the people who work there, what is that workspace like in a year? And is it something where it's kind of like, nope, we decided it's going to be like this. You guys are all going to have to deal. Or is it going to be, oh, this group doesn't work like that. We should make some changes. And I hope it's the latter because that's how a good company deals with this. And this is not a unlike so many of these companies where they rent office space, and they're in there for a few years, and then they move right where you can't make big structural changes, because it's not worth the investment, because you're not going to be there very long, you've got a small lease. This is Apple's building for essentially the rest

of Apple's existence as a company. They need to get this right, not just for now, but for the long term. So we'll see. We'll see. But I hope they're continuing to listen to their employees about what makes a conducive workspace. Today's show is also brought to you by our friends over at Encapsular. They have website security tools. The best website security tools. And a content delivery network that makes any website safer, faster

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and RelayFM. Jason, it is time for Ask Upgrade. Already? Already. Jimmy asked, Do you think that at some point Apple may make matte black or jet black iPad Pros? Wow.

I think it's possible depending on how the color line shakes out into the future because we can get gold ones, right? Like you can get gold now. I don't think you can get rose gold, but you can get gold. So if matte black and jet black just become standard colors over the years

seems possible right like maybe the space gray gets replaced with matte black or something i think there's a materials issue which is um these are larger devices so like fingerprints on them are different um physically making them is different and that that's my gut feeling about like a Jet Black iPad is can they really make that? And how would it hold up? And how expensive would it be for them to manufacture that? And would that eat into their profit margin?

I think it's possible. The matte black is very fingerprinty. The Jet Black is kind of fingerprinty too. I think on large devices, I would say think about the iPad Pro and think about the MacBook and the MacBook Pro the same way. Which is like they want those to be they have been really conservative with those

and making something that isn't in that anodized aluminum thing I think is something they're willing to do on an Apple Watch or an iPhone but not on a bigger device. So I doubt it, but we'll see. I think it's more likely that they would do, yeah, they would have another color variation

like they have on, like how those iPod Touches have colors, right? Or there's the red iPhone. I think it's more likely that we might see a a new kind of very subtle color variation that rolls across the line eventually than something that is like um super shiny like a like a jet black so next up today from james do you think there's any chance that there might be an iphone se update this fall considering how popular the product was when it launched and kind of took apple by surprise well there's always a chance although i kind of i mean maybe although i mean the question is what's the easiest for apple like is it is it easier for apple to slip stream the iphone se when they announce new iphones in the

fall or is it easy for them to do it like later when they're not busy with other things and have that drop in the spring like they did when they originally announced the iPhone SE? I don't know. My gut feeling is that it would be easier for them to release that design later rather than say, well, here's a new iPhone 8 and an iPhone 7S Plus

and an iPhone 7S and an iPhone SE, right? Like, would it be easier for them to just say, you know, the SE is not about the latest and greatest. We will update it next spring with the innards of an iPhone 7 or something or a 7S. So yeah, it's possible. It remains to be seen whether it's going to join the iPhone line for updates,

whether it'll get updated sort of off axis every other year in the spring, or whether it won't get updated at all. I think that's also a question. I hope it does, though. Yeah, I feel this is one that I really haven't got a solid feeling on. I mean, they only did it once. So we're guessing now. I don't think it's going to go away. I think that there is a great value in that size. I was one of those people who were was plucking them not giving away that size from the beginning. And now that it exists, you know, I'm on board with the yes, it needs to get updated. I'm not sure it needs to get updated with everything else. In fact, if they're trying to kind of like ramp up those big iPhones, and get that up and going, like they did with the iPhone se, where then later, they came in and said,

oh yeah, and this has last year's, last fall's tech in this thing too. You know, that might be a more fitting place in its lineup, but we just don't know because we only have the one data point, which is when they released the SE. Yeah, and also my feeling is assuming that it's going to be an SE

isn't necessarily the right thing to think about, right? Like the 5C was kind of this as well, right? Like a new phone with old parts inside. Like there is a possibility of just like a different thing, you know, maybe more like the 5C where it's got some kind of new case. Like I feel like the idea of Apple releasing a new inverted commas iPhone with old parts is like, that's not a new idea.

And they could continue to do that. And I think will continue to do that. But I have no real good sense of what I think it's going to look like the next time they do it or even when. Sorry. Considering, this is from Michael, not from me. Michael's considering a new MacBook Pro purchase, but doesn't like the touch bar. not from me, Michael's considering a new MacBook Pro purchase but doesn't like the Touch Bar.

Do we think that the Touch Bar is here to stay and that he should just get used to it and buy the MacBook Pro? I don't know. I feel like it's going to at least last another generation. Even if Apple decide they don't like it, I don't think they'd can it that quick. Yeah, I mean, that's probably right.

If you're getting a 13, you could just get it without the Touch Bar and that's probably right um if you've got the if you're getting a 13 you could just get it without the touch bar and that's a pretty good computer but uh if you want a 15 or you want like more more more power then you could get it with a touch bar i don't i don't love the touch bar i think it's got a lot of potential but i am not seeing the touch bar being uh meeting its potential like high sierra doesn't really have anything to speak of about touch bar in it which is really disappointing so um i don't know i mean you could get used to it i'm not convinced it's here to stay because it doesn't seem like a hit it seems like something Apple's still trying to make it happen. And I don't find people loving it as a group. It seems like it's present. So I don't know. I don't have a good answer here other

than if you don't like the touch bar and you can buy a MacBook Pro that pleases you that doesn't have it, which is that 13-inch model, maybe that's what you should do and just not worry about the touch bar and wait for later to see if the touch bar evolves into something you like or goes away cory wants to know in the new files app in ios 11 can you be signed into two different dropbox accounts i had to think about this for a minute i was like why why would you need that like i can't i don't think there's any way you can currently do that like on any device right like i don't think yeah you can't do that anywhere right you can't do it on the mac i don't think you definitely can't do it in the dropbox app but i was thinking about this right and i was

like do you know what there might be a way around this in files in the files app so okay so let me back up a second right now no but dropbox hasn't been updated updated, of course. So it's in the files app currently, but it's just the old document provider. It just opens a window. Eventually, it's going to get updated and it's going to appear in files. It's going to be amazing and we're all going to be so happy.

But I still don't think that you're going to be able to have Dropbox letting you sign into two accounts because it's such a niche thing. I just don't think you're going to be able to do that. But I think you could spoof it because you could use another app, something maybe like Documents by Reidel

to sign into the second Dropbox account. Then that will show up in files. And effectively, you'll have access to two different Dropbox accounts within the files app, right? Like that seems like that would work, right? Maybe as long as those apps aren't doing, I mean, that's the thing.

Like if those apps are using the new files method, which they're all going to get updated to do, then it's not going to happen. But if they're using an older method that is separately isolated, logging into Dropbox, then maybe so. I use Goodreader sometimes to do this. But I think Dropbox very much wants you

to have one Dropbox account i think i wonder if this is like a personal one and a work one or something like that that have a different set of files on them um i don't know i i don't think the intent is to do this but we don't know so i think yeah the second second app workaround is maybe not not terrible but it's not going to provide the files experience then it's going to be in another app well no but you could i'm assuming that documents will be a file provider right like it will have all the stuff so you'll be able to get because it is currently so yeah but then there are they sinking i don't know that's that maybe maybe not like well i have to see like my conception of this says it could work in some strange way but i don't know right but like when i was thinking about this i was like hmm

maybe that will work but we don't know we'll see travis wants to know does photos on ios 11 jason support smart albums i don't think so i mean there's nothing more to say as far as i can tell smart albums are still not supported um they don't work you can't see them they the last time i checked i haven't checked in recent betas but when i talked to apple about it that was not a thing that came up so it seems like not ito ito asked do you primarily use your ipad in portrait or landscape what about you jason uh landscape me almost almost exclusively i will use it in portrait for reading comics um for sometimes for reading articles because depending on the app like uh i use the new york times app i often will read that not always

but often will read that in portrait because the column width is too wide in landscape but sometimes i read in landscape most i would say most of the time like 95 percent of the time my ipad is in landscape i'm mostly in landscape as well because i have the keyboard attached but like i will sometimes turn it into portrait like if i'm reading twitter for a while or something you know it's nicer in landscape in portrait i i i mean i think i've complained about this before but i am frustrated by apple's insistence that in its industrial design that the ipad is a portrait device because i just don't think it is i think think it's a landscape device. And the fact that the home button is on the bottom in portrait. And so you've got, when you're using it in the landscape all the time, you just got one side's got a button on it. Which side is it? Because

you could use it either way. And so I find that kind of ridiculous. And when you start it up, the Apple logo is there in portrait orientation. And of course, on the back, the Apple logo is there in portrait orientation. And of course, on the back, the Apple logo is in portrait orientation. And that makes it just like every other iOS device. But I never use my iPhone in landscape mode unless I'm watching a video or playing a game. But my iPad is always in landscape orientation. Always. With very few exceptions. So I think that's a little bit silly that Apple,

maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm an outlier, but I feel like the iPad is a landscape device more often than portrait. If you would like to send in questions for Ask Upgrade, you can tweet at us with the hashtag Ask Upgrade. You can also, don't forget to send in your Snell Talk questions if you want to be at the start of the show. Hashtag Snell Talk will send those in. If you want to find our show notes today, head on over to

relay.fm slash upgrade slash 152. If you want to find Jason online, it's at sixcolors.com and at jsnell on Twitter, J-S-N-E-L-L. I am at imyke, I-M-Y-K-E. Thanks to Eero, Ting, and Encapsular for supporting the show.

And as always, thank you for listening. We'll be back next time, and I'm going to be in the United States of America. Until then, Mr. Jason Snell, say goodbye. Bye, everybody.