Upgrade - 164: The Lost Phone for Nerds

Episode Date: October 23, 2017

What if Jason went to a tech conference with a brand-new iPhone and nobody cared? We discuss the curious case of the iPhone 8, the challenges entertainment and tech companies both face when trying to launch video streaming services, and the future of the Mac as viewed through the inbox of Apple executives.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 164 today's show is brought to you by pdf pen from smile timing and encapsula my name is mike hurley i'm joined by mr jason snail hi jason snail hi mike hurley we're back in our offices, in our respective homes again this week. Been a week of travel for us again. Classic upgrade has returned. Classic upgrade. But nobody cares about that. I think they do, but nobody does. Rick wants to know in our hashtag Snell Talk segment, Jason, where and what type of pizza did you eat in Chicago? Well, I guess this is a place for us to promote the fact that you and I,

along with Stephen Hackett and Federico Bottici, had the great honor of going to the Cards Against Humanity office where they have the podcast studio that is spectacular. Makes me so jealous. High quality podcast studio. Just, I want that office, that studio. Yeah. I want all of that.

And we were there. I was very excited, of course, because that's where they record Hello from the Magic Tavern, which is one of my favorite podcasts. And I did a dramatic reading of the entire name of Usador the Wizard because I had to.

And then we recorded an episode of dubai friday we should involving uh with alex cox and max temkin and via a very broken skype connection merlin man uh-huh and merlin was eating a microwave chicago pizza while we ate like seven different kinds of chicago pizza uh including like a thin buttery party pizza that was Max's childhood pizza. And we ate a, what else do we have? We had a deep dish. We had a focaccia. We had another kind of pizza that I don't even remember what it was. There was a reheated, which was unfortunate, but very tasty, kind of more traditional Italian pizza.

There's a reheated, which was unfortunate, but very tasty, kind of more traditional Italian pizza. And then things took a turn when we got to the gluten-free deep dish, which everybody ate and said wasn't very good. We didn't know. We didn't know. We thought it was just a bad deep dish pizza. And then it turned out that was the gluten-free. And as Stephen Hackett, who can't eat gluten, pointed out, the secret ingredient in gluten-free, the gluten-free alternative is sadness they put in sadness instead of gluten and we all experienced the sadness of gluten the gluten-free pizza which um that and that was when we i think all were like oh i can't eat any more pizza there

is also a great possibility that we'd eaten too much pizza at that point i think i think it's just funny that that's the one that it turned on. I think the good flavor of all the others gave us momentum to keep eating, even though we should have stopped. And then my big mistake was that I really liked that focaccia pizza, and I ate the whole piece. And I knew that was a mistake, and I should have just taken one bite. You've got to do what wine tasters do, right? Which is you take a sip and then you spit it out.

That's what we should have done. Just spit pizza all over their wonderful desk so uh i really really encourage people one to listen to do by friday in general but also to check this episode out there will be a link in the show notes i will say it is without a shadow of a doubt one of the most fun experiences i have ever had behind a microphone um we had such a great time. It was an honor to be on that show because I really respect the three of them and the work that they've made. I think Dubai Friday is incredible. It is an upgrade-y award winner for newcomer of last year. I suppose that's true, yes.

The upgrade-ys are on the way, Jason. I'm very excited about that. I know. Months away, but I start to get excited now because we're in the quarter. They're always on the way. As soon as they're over, they're coming back around again. Those little grannies, they will get you. And I wanted to just give a very quick mention to

Alex Cox's incredible editing skills. There were like a bunch of really interesting technical problems that she was able to edit around. And what she did with that show is incredible so if you like it and you enjoy it you can tweet to at alex cox and tell her because she did a great job so if you enjoyed that episode it's because of alex's hard work as a podcast editor i love it

when uh an editor in editing sort of shapes and saves the material. And ideally, you don't have to do that. Ideally, it's not a disaster and it's a very easy edit. But I've had those, the incomparable holiday music special comes to mind where there's just a disaster of things, technical and content-wise. And what Alex did was she shaped a show out of parts of our conversation,

edited around some massive technical problems, and then also generated their after show for their Patreon supporters. So kind of amazing. On The Incomparable, we have the members get to listen to the bootleg, which is the untouched, just original recording. If they had such a thing for Dubai Friday and you compared it to the final product, you would be blown away with the work that alex did so yeah and it was so fun to be there with them and talk to them and

like max timpkin who i follow on twitter and i've exchanged all sorts of you know things with and i met briefly with it xoxo and like i've all all these things and then it was very funny because i i started to speak and he's like whoa jason snell is jason stills voice is here because he listens to the stuff that we do. And that was fun because it was like, wait a second, Timkin knows the stuff that I do, but I know the stuff that you do. And it was one of those. I think I actually said the phrase, love your show, which is the, you know, that's the podcast equivalent of, well, I mean, it is the showbiz phrase, right? It's like you put on the glasses and then you just say, love your show. You don't even need

to know if they have a show. You just love your show that's the thing but i actually said that i couldn't help it because um yeah so it was good great hospitality in chicago um and at at cards against humanity very nice episode 47 uh the title is fancy prince um go check it out it's in our show notes yep if you want to send in Snell Talk questions hashtag Snell Talk for a question to start off the show thanks to Rick for the question

that he asked which allowed me to very easily transition into some semi-follow out which was a but that was all the pizza we ate

was during that podcast literally we did a podcast where we ate pizza and that was it quite frankly I went to the airport that evening and usually

at Midway Airport and it's funny because I talked to Dr. Drang about this because Dr. Drang flies out of Midway Airport all the time on Southwest Airlines, just like I do when I go to Chicago. I fly into Midway on Southwest from Oakland.

And he and I both shared how we get like a hot dog at the food court at Midway. You can get a Chicago dog. There's all sorts of different kinds. There's a hot dog place there. And for him, it's like a hot dog at the food court at Midway. You can get a Chicago dog. There's all sorts of different kinds. There's a hot dog place there. And for him, it's like a ritual. And for me, it's kind of like a ritual now too. I go to Midway Airport and before I get my flight, I get a hot dog. I eat a little hot dog in Chicago and then that's the end.

Well, guess what, Mike? I don't know if you had dinner on Wednesday night, but I did not. I went straight to the gate and sat down and i got on the plane and i flew home and i went to bed and i did not eat a single thing the rest of the day after that pizza because i was a lot i was choosing like my choice was i would eat nothing and and federico gave a talk that day at release notes so we went out and had some drinks afterwards and then after having some drinks i had a cheeseburger uh but that yeah i maybe shouldn't have done that bold move bold move strong yeah very strong um yeah we had a great time in chicago uh we spent a bunch of time together release notes the conference that we were at was really good um i enjoyed it there they put on a real good show um but we got to

spend a lot of time together which was nice but there were some technology observations that I had made from us, from being there. Yes. One was seeing you purely on iPad for the entire time, which was fun. Yeah, I mean, I've talked about this before, but it was still one of those moments that everybody's like, oh, you don't have, like you and Steve and both were like,

oh, you don't have a laptop here. It's like, I don't travel with a laptop unless I absolutely have to. And the number of cases where I absolutely have to keeps decreasing. Because if I can get it done on the iPad, then why would I bring, I'm going to bring my iPad regardless.

I love my iPad, right? I'm not going to leave it behind. I prefer to use it. I can't even envision traveling without the iPad. And so at that point, it's a question of like, do I also need to bring a laptop? And if I can avoid it, I do. And so, yeah, that was a good example of people getting to witness it in person, that I was doing everything I needed to do on the laptop.

So because we were recording so many live shows, like four live shows in Chicago, I decided I would bring my macbook pro uh for emergencies right like just in case something happened nothing happened and i've decided i'm going to stop doing that if we're going to a place where you know because like steven mostly will handle the technological stuff in regards to the recording of the show so he always has his macbook with he's a whole case with microphones and things in it. It's like a whole big thing that he's very good at. So I'm just going to stop bringing my MacBook as a backup or an emergency because I figure if there is the requirement for an emergency,

we can find a Mac somehow. Yeah, especially at a tech conference. Yes. Macs are available. Or like every big city has an Apple store. We could just go buy a macbook right or you could get one of those places that rents that'll rent you a laptop i mean there's so many different ways to do it that if you if you needed to do it yeah so i'm gonna stop carrying my

macbook pro around when i don't need it and the only time then you'll bring a mac with you when you travel is if you have like you want to you know you want to or know you need to edit a podcast or record a podcast or something like that but not as not as the emergency fall unless i am solely responsible yeah yeah exactly exactly that makes sense i don't want to i just don't want to do that anymore because i'm carrying it around for for a week it seems kind of it seems kind of pointless to me uh the other uh i mean you also i got a lot of people as i always do when i travel with that thing and i go to tech circles people were asking about that bridge keyboard that i have which we talked about and it's the i'm lucky because i've got one that works you tried it the only one that works jason you have the only

working bridge keyboard yeah bridge 12.9 it's possible steven hackett has bought a 10.5 bridge keyboard so we'll see if they've if they've uh worked out the bugs there he got an email right so oh i saw the email the bridge have just released a version for the 10.5 and they took his payment and shipped it then he got an email like which was like kind of an email within a mailing list being like there's a problem with the hinges this company cannot make reliable products yeah it's it's really a shame because i love that keyboard and i would i would i said this because we're talking about it now but like i would shout it to the world like buy this keyboard I want people see it and they're

like oh what's that oh that's how does it oh that's you you've got a lap because everybody's like what laptop are you using that has a touch screen like it's an iPad but it looks like a laptop and but I can't like I had to go through three of them before I got one that worked you went through two and both of them had the same failure. And now Steven has had this thing where it's like, well, some of, some of these might have an issue. So you should watch that. Like, oh boy, uh, it's too bad.

It's a shame. I kind of, and I believe that there was something else with this company where they kind of like got, had new management or they got bought out or something like that. And it's too bad because this idea for a product is really great. And I wish that it was, um um being stewarded by a company that was more capable of building reliable products because i'd like to recommend them i want i really want it but it seems like i can't buy it the other amazing thing that happened last week that we should mention is that federico saw a kindle for the first time i want to say i think

so yeah i think it was the first time we'd ever seen one. Yeah, my Kindle Oasis. And we were talking about the new Oasis, but I had my old first-generation Oasis with me. So I just pulled it out and Federico's like, oh, and then he starts like touching on it and like, how do I select things? And does it do multi-touch?

It's like, no, Federico doesn't do that. Where's the menu? How do I go back? I'm like, you got to top it. I mean, because it's like no federico doesn't do that where's the where's the menu how do i go back i'm like you gotta top it i mean because it's got a weird gestural interface like why can i see the previous page all that kind of stuff yeah yeah and then it took him a long time to realize that oh i could use these hardware buttons to go next and previous because he was swiping which is very ipad gesture right makes sense but and and he was also the e-ink screen he's like why is it what you know why is it flickering and it's got like a little like hint of the previous page

and I'm like yeah it's e-ink that's how that works and it was funny for him it was like first time to see it so that was kind of fascinating that was like a moment of somebody who's just literally never paid attention to this particular area of technology

suddenly getting his hands on it and wondering what the heck it was we were talking about it a bunch I don't know if he's's gonna buy one but i think he might yeah i think he was kind of intrigued by well you know what actually intrigued him the most is the fact that i have my instapaper archive sent there every time that i i have like a i add an article to instapaper it basically at 6 a.m sends me um my my instapaper bundle of like 20, the last 20 articles I added to Instapaper. And so that's especially when I'm traveling or there's a long form article that I'm just, there's no way I'm going to read it. I put it in Instapaper and it shows up on my Kindle.

And so when I'm sitting on an airplane somewhere, generally is when it happens, and I'm thinking I want something to read and I don't want to read one of the novels that's on my Kindle. I've got the Instapaper things there. And Federico was very intrigued by that idea of like, oh, so you can just get your whole Instapaper archive and have it go to your Kindle automatically. It's like, yeah, that's a good alternate use for the Kindle. But Stephen's got one too. I mean, he and I are both kind of believers in when you're just reading text, the Kindle is a, that's what it's good for right it's like not distracting the way steven put it was um my kindle's not going to tell me that there's a tweet on twitter i should look at right

yeah that's yeah there's something to be said for that so i'm sure we'll have more comprehensive kindle coverage when the well in fact i think it's next week the new kindle oasis ships so we may have to call in our kindle experts people People from the field. I wanted to mention we have some RelayFM merchandise available, which has been a much-requested item. So we sold stickers to go on your AirPods case to make it look like dental floss, RelayFM-branded stickers. We're doing something kind of different, but kind of the same. We are doing a bundle,

which we're calling the Cool Fresh Gear Bundle, which includes a t-shirt with the artwork of the sticker on it and two new red cinnamon flavor stickers. So you can get those. They're available now. We're going to be doing this different to how we've done stuff before, because we believe that there might, if it's like the last time we sold these stickers, the demand might be quite high. We sold out in like an hour previously. So we're going to be doing pre-orders. You can pre-order until November the 6th.

Of course, all the links will be in the show notes, but you can go to... If you want to go check it out, if you want to just go there right now, you can go to relay.fm.store and you'll find it there. But we're doing pre-orders until Monday, November the the 6th and these will be shipping in mid-december um because this is a tricky logistical thing we have stickers and t-shirts coming in from all different places um and they'll be shipping out from the u.s i apologize in advance to people if you're outside the u.s for the shipping prices we are unfortunately fixed into um standardized shipping prices there's

nothing we can do about that i'm'm afraid, with our fulfillment center. But yeah, you can go check it out now. These are really, I think we're really happy about this. I know a lot of people really, really loved and wanted us to bring back these stickers. So we've found a way to do it that makes sense for everybody. So it's going to be a t-shirt and sticker combo, which I think is really cool. And it's fun and it's kind of different. And you can go check it out.

And as I said, you can pre-order up until November the 6th. I just tried to order one. The funny thing is that when I got to the order summary screen, it said, so you're ordering seven of these. And I thought, oh my gosh. What did you do? I don't think I did anything, but it thinks I want seven of them, which is great.

I don't. I only want maybe five shirts and 10 stickers yeah you should you should could you hoard the stickers oh man there were so i still have some of the i still have some of the green those are collectors items they really are worth that's like bitcoins yeah so yeah this is we did it this way so we won't run out that was the plan we ran out last time that's great wanted them so we're doing it as a pre-order so we don't run out of them. Because we have no idea how many people. There you go. I can see Jason Snell's order right there.

You only ordered one. So good work on adjusting. Yeah, I didn't do seven after all. I also wanted to mention, before we finish the follow-up today, our good friends over at AppCamp for Girls currently have an Indiegogo fundraising going on. They want to raise $75,000 to expand their efforts to three new cities by 2020. There are a bunch of great rewards for this campaign, as we've all good crowdfunding campaigns,

but I think you should give some money to AppCamp because it's a cause worth supporting, because you'll be helping to inspire and encourage young girls, transgender and non-gender conforming kids to become developers. And having just been to a technology conference, this is really important.

We need to have more non-men in this industry and anything that we can do and you can do to help AppCamp for Girls is a good thing to ensure diversity in the future of the stuff that we do. So you can go check them out. They're doing really great. They've raised $23,000 so far.

They're 31% of their goal. I would love it if the Upgradians could go there and give some money to the great folk over at Upcome for Girls. They really are great. So we would all appreciate that. Okay, should we take a break, Jason? Sounds like a good idea. I want to thank Timing for supporting this week's show. Timing is the smarter way to track time. Time is your most precious resource. You need to know how you're spending it. But frankly, manual time tracking can interrupt your workflow. It's easy to lose track of and sometimes can just be kind of annoying.

And that's why Timing is different, because Timing automates your time tracking to save you as much time as possible. First, it automatically tracks how you spend time on your Mac, broken down by app, website and document. That's a lot of data to work through, right? So timing lets you use drag and drop to create rules that automatically categorize your time. So it just gets done for you. You don't even need to think about it. Timing also understands that not all of your work will happen when you're sitting down on your Mac. think about it. Timing also understands that not all of your work will happen when you're sitting down on your Mac.

That's why it automatically suggests to fill gaps in your timeline so you never forget to track a meeting. It can even automatically ask you what you did whenever you returned to your Mac, so you can just enter it right in there. I spent a bunch of time with the developer, Daniel, of Timing, while we were in release notes. Really, really nice guy.

We were talking about things that he wants to add to the app in the future. He has a really great plan for this app. It's really, really cool and I think you should go and check it out. There are loads of great graphs and charts in the application when you've been using it for time tracking that break down not just the apps that you're using

but also the categorization stuff is really cool. I was really, really impressed with that. So you can track everything in the phrasing that that. So you can track everything in the phrasing that you understand because you can even customize all of these categories as well. So it's like in your vernacular. You can download the 14 day free trial today by heading to timingapp.com slash upgrade, and you'll save 10% when you purchase. Timing. Stop worrying about time and focus on doing your best work instead.'d like to thank timing for their support of this show all right mr snell yes sir should we talk about android tv a little bit this

is still a little bit more follow-up go out follow up today um yeah marge wrote in to remind us and i completely forgotten about this and not only do we never think about chromecast uh we also didn't remember that android tv exists as a whole product. It is an operating system with Chromecast support and a bunch of apps that is built into TVs and other TV connected devices. Right. So this is Google's equivalent of Apple TV and Roku and Amazon Fire TV. Chromecast, obviously way more prominent in terms of mind share kind of everywhere. But there is Android TV. It does have apps.

It's built into a few boxes and a bunch of TVs, although it seems like Roku is beating them on the TV side. It seems like. At least I see Roku TVs. I hear about Roku TVs a lot and less about Android TV embedded, but they are playing in, in the embedded TV game and draw and powering the idea there that they put their operating system in it. And then the apps just come from their platform instead of the TV manufacturer,

building their own like custom thing. That's got a few apps in it. They just put in Android TV or they put in Roku and they, they walk away and say, we're good. So, so it does exist. Um, that that's, that's, uh, that's what we were talking about. So that's Google's that's

Google's real direct sort of app based, uh, TV strategy. Um, but I think the fact that we didn't think of it, I mean, part of that is that we're, we're more in the Apple space, but even though I, I mean, I've got a fire TV and I used to have a, and I used to have a Roku that's old, and I don't use it anymore. I don't have the latest Roku. But it is interesting that we didn't think of it. I think it doesn't get brought up a lot. And I understand how frustrating that can be because I remember in the old days as a Mac user, people would list off things. And they'd be like, why didn't you mention the Mac?

And it can be very frustrating when there's a thing that you use and you understand and that people pretend it doesn't exist this happens when we talk about streaming services a lot or live tv streaming services where people say but why didn't you mention this because it turns out we mentioned three as examples and there are five and the people who are users of the other two get angry and i get it so um so android tv is a thing that exists. Yeah, and I would argue that even Google doesn't put the focus on this product. They focus on Chromecast. I just watched the Made by Google keynote a couple of weeks ago. I didn't hear Android TV brought up at all. I don't even remember it being brought up at Google I.O., but it may have been.

Chromecast is funny because it's a product, basically, and a feature. but it may have been. Chromecast is funny because it's a product, basically, and a feature. And in fact, one of the main features of Android TV is Chromecast. I did hear from somebody, and I thought they made a good point, and I know you got that email too,

a little bit kind of tangential to the point we were trying to make, but worth at least mentioning, one of the values of Chromecast is that you can have Chromecast devices all over your house and use your phone to control them. And it's essentially one device logged into the services that you're streaming a device if you're on a service that limits the number of devices that you can have one of the advantages whether whether that's for legitimate sort of like i have lots of devices issues or it's semi-legitimate i'm sharing passwords with

other people in my family kind of issues um you could hit a limit a lot more readily on three devices in your house or five devices in your house plus whatever else is going on than with necessarily with a chromecast which you're just kind of like your phone is the master device no matter which chromecast you're you're casting to so it's worth mentioning too there's there's some nuances there yeah there definitely is uh yeah we should i guess we should talk about uh another thing uh regarding tv streaming so this is this is like a we we don't have a word for it it's probably okay that we don't have a word I'm sure there's a word in German for it anyway which is a new topic that that

grows out of follow-up but we might as well talk about it here since we're talking about video nobody don't don't send don't send any suggestions in for what this is called um uh we're building out anyway please don't you're doing it no i'm doing it i gotta stop i gotta stop uh we talked a lot about streaming services right we talked about apple getting into this apple's gonna do streaming services everybody wants a streaming service people are frustrated like how many streaming services can i subscribe to and the answer is probably not many. And some of the streaming services will discover that and then they're gonna go out of business or retrench or merge, because they're going to discover that but they're all trying to grab a piece of the pie, because they feel like that all

the money that has been going into traditional TV is kind of up for grabs, and they want it. So everybody wants to build their own streaming service. And a lot of these companies are entertainment companies, right? Some of them are technical and some of them are entertainment. And what's interesting is to look at how they approach their businesses. So like when Amazon builds their video service or Netflix, which is a tech company, you know, they're more than they're an entertainment company, I would argue, or at least they started out that way. And Apple is certainly a good example of this. They are going to approach it from a technical standpoint and presumably their streaming infrastructure. It doesn't mean that they'll do it right, but they've got a much better

chance of doing their streaming infrastructure, right? Because like they have a big streaming infrastructure already for other things. And they've got data centers and they've got, they've got, uh, advanced, you know, network engineers who know how to build this stuff. Um, the, and they struggle potentially with the part of the business that is not what they're good at, which is like entertainment, which is why you see Apple hire TV guys to run their business because, you know, Apple's expertise does not extend to making deals with creative people in Hollywood. It doesn't for television shows and developing a slate of television programming. It doesn't map. If you're an entertainment company, the reverse is true, right? You've got programming down. hbo is already doing it it's good but then

hbo says but we want to do a streaming service and if you don't know this story i mean the short version of the story is hbo's chief technical officer was charged to build a streaming service and i think he was building hbo now while um they were using Major League Baseball Advanced Media's streaming service for HBO Go. I think that's what it was. And basically, the HBO home-built thing was a disaster, and they fired the guy, and they just went to MLB Advanced Media, which is now called Bamco and is owned majority by Disney, because Disney bought them for the same reason of like they're you think about baseball and and and if you're you're like some people you think baseball is

boring but they did a major league baseball built this company that is basically state-of-the-art in terms of streaming video on the internet and they built it for themselves and then they then they but a bunch of other sports companies went in and then a bunch of entertainment companies went in with them because they they built a tech company that was very good at video streaming so hbo was finally like okay we give up uh we're going to use you because you know what you're doing now hbo is actually saying now they're going to build they're building their own infrastructure and they're going to move off of bamco good luck i say to them good luck i bring this up because I've been enjoying watching Star Trek Discovery,

which is in the U.S., is on CBS's streaming service. The rest of the world, it's on Netflix, except for Canada where it's on a Canadian streaming service. But in the rest of the world, it's on Netflix, which is great. But here in the U.S., we have to use CBS All Access. So CBS built their own streaming service. Yay! And it's a disaster and this is one of those good examples where if you're an entertainment company and you don't have expertise in tech you you are

going to struggle on that side so cbs all access uh you know they don't support 5.1 audio i believe they're streaming a 720p stream. There's no higher quality available. The close captioning is rudimentary compared to Netflix. Like the Netflix experience outside the US, way superior to what we're getting in the US, the origin of this, because their app and their infrastructure can't support it. And then last night's episode of Star Trek Discovery, anybody with an Apple TV

and some other people using other devices reported this too but it sounds like everybody who watched with an apple tv it was uh glitches and uh video would just back up by two or three seconds and repeat multiple times like it was trying to figure out what to do with the stream and failing or they had a bad file i'm not really sure quite what was going on but it was trying to figure out what to do with the stream and failing um or they had a bad file i'm not really sure quite what was going on but it was um well it took me like an hour to watch a 45 minute episode so that should tell you how it was and it kind of broke the mood when you have something dramatic and the way the way it sounded just to give people an illustration of

how it to give people an illustration of how illustration of how it sounded when this was happening. It was like that. It was just infuriating. And all I have to say is I like that CBS... I mean, a lot of people are mad because they're basically saying you have to pay if you want to watch Star Trek. And you're not going to just use your Netflix subscription. You have to pay us directly if you're in the US.

We're holding this show hostage because we want to build a streaming service. I get why that frustrates people, but like, I think it's a clever business decision. I think it's borne out. They renewed Star Trek discovery for season two. I think that it's working for them. I think it's working for Netflix and the rest of the world. All that's fine. But the other part of the story is you got to do a good job with your technical infrastructure and it's harder than it looks. Just like we say all the time about Apple and television that it's harder than it looks to do content. We got to be fair here.

It's harder than it looks to do internet. And so when FX and AMC say they're going to do streaming services, I had that moment where I think maybe Disney wasn't so stupid when they spent billions of dollars on Major League Baseball advanced media, because they bought a company that knows how to do video streaming. And I think a lot of these companies are fooling themselves when they feel like that's the tech part's not a problem. We'll figure that out. It's the creative part. What we are good at, that's the secret sauce. And the tech part is just whatever. We'll streaming on the the internet how hard could it be and the answer is it's it's very hard if i wanted to just to provide some real-time follow-up that the company is called bam tech oh that's right bam tech bam tech and it's and it's which is just out of major league baseball

advanced media they always called it bamAM, B-A-M. And now it's BAM Tech. That's right. It's not BAM Co., it's BAM Tech. But it's a dumb name. The old name was dumb too. It's now a new dumb name. But the point is they built a tech startup,

essentially inside Major League Baseball, that learned about how to do video streaming and did it right early. And everybody else went, oh my God, let's just pay those guys to do this because this is hard and when you see somebody go it alone um and it goes to the streaming infrastructure it also goes to the app development like the cbs all access apps aren't very good either because they've had to build you got to build your own app and they're

not very good um so i where the blame is to be placed the fact that the streams aren't high quality either when they do work it's uh i just thought it was really interesting and i've been thinking about writing about that for a while now and talking about it but really last night was the capper because it made the show basically unwatchable and uh if i hadn't been set to record a podcast an hour later uh which we did which we we do every week, which is a lot of fun. It was a fun episode. We had a lot of laughs. It was actually a really great recap episode.

And the episode itself was good, but I would have given up and come back to it days later if I didn't have that commitment because it was terrible, a terrible experience to watch it. So streaming, it's harder than it looks. Yeah. I mean, even BAMTEC don't get it perfect. So the WWE use BAM use bam tech that's what their platform is based on and i was watching live last night and had a very similar experience to you where it just kept jumping back to a previous part of the stream like every now and then like

an hour earlier and stuff like that you know yeah and is that their stream or is that their app is also unclear majorly baseball is not without fault i mean they have issues but when they're when they're going well yeah i will say, I will say this is a rare occurrence. Major League Baseball's app, you can do a 60 frames per second live stream of any baseball game that's playing at any given time, which is amazing. And they set records on usage every year. I get the press releases from the guys at BAMTEC, who it's like, here's the latest record numbers of video streams for major league baseball and it keeps going up so yeah yeah so it's it's just it's funny that uh so when when

you hear i i asked the the listeners when you hear about a tech company say they're going to get entertainment i think you're going to bring your skepticism. When you hear an entertainment company explain that they've got a tech thing, like a streaming service, I think we all need to apply that same level of skepticism. Because just because they know how to make TV has no bearing on whether they can put the TV on the internet. So in more news of Apple executives responding to emails, there are a couple of instances.

Isn't it great they use email? They use email at Apple. It's wild. It's wild. A couple of instances. One comes from MacRumors, where somebody emailed Craig Federighi and asked, will we see an October event?

There's a guy named Luke asked this question. Federighi replied with, I think we're all keynote it out for the season. So this is kind of answering the question of will we see an event which includes the home pod and the imac pro uh the answer seems to be probably no it's no and the reason the reason is we already saw that event it was the wwdc keynote and i i get i get the people i think there's a little too much uh emphasis on live events in especially in the apple world where i i've seen some people

um speculating like especially on twitter like well what happens like there's so much more to say about the home pod it's like yeah but the reveal already happened and apple's got lots of other ways to get out details to the people who care about details, right? To the people who don't care about details, Apple's got a really great way to get it out, which is they buy ads. And there are cool ads with the HomePod at the holidays or whenever they've got these things ready to ship. And people will know that it exists. But they don't need an event to do that. exists. But they don't need an event to do that. And they don't need an event to get the details out because they can bring press down if they want and do some briefings and seed them with

review units and have an embargo. And then suddenly one day in December, every tech site has a HomePod review. They can do that. They can do it by press release if they really wanted to. I doubt they will. I think they will take the extra step of seating review units and in certain places and getting people to write about it that way. And the, you know, the iMac Pro is the same way. It's already been unveiled. Like there are details, sure, but they can do that with reviews. And that becomes news. The fact that the first reviews have dropped via embargo. And for the people who care about details, that's going to do it, that's going to do the trick. And they'll post, you know, they'll post their own content, too. We, we ignore that people like me,

who like are on the independent content creation side, ignore the fact that one of the big sources for information about Apple's products is apple.com. And they can post videos and spec sheets and tech specs and all sorts of things there and do. So there's going to be a lot of information out there. You don't really need, I think the events are about the reveal, right? The events are about the reveal, not the details. And it's iPhone 10 launching too, is the same way. They don't need to do another event to say it's shipping,

even though there will be details there. So none of these products, they've already been revealed. So there's no new event necessary. And it feels very much like the Mac, which we're going to talk about the Mac a little bit too. I think that's the next email in the inbox, the upgrade inbox.

The Mac stuff feels very much like, with the exception of that iMac Pro, a 2018 kind of story story I did want to mention though about about the home part like I understand why people um are questioning and like wondering if there's going to be an event because the WWDC event left a lot of questions like even to the point where they were like oh it's it's gonna do other stuff right like it's there'll be more but like we didn't see it like all the Siri things like I feel like this is a product oh, it's going to do other stuff, right? Like, there'll be more, but, like, we didn't see it, like, all the Siri things. Like, I feel like this is a product that it's like, it feels to me, in a way, that, do you remember the original unveiling of the Apple Watch in, like, I think it was in, like, September?

And then they brought it out in March. Do you remember that? Like, they showed it off, and then they did another event where they brought it out right there was like a time period so that's how i'm kind of thinking of the home part is like you've shown us the basics of this but where's the rest and what they are probably going to do now is bring in a bunch of press right and do big feature stories it's probably the way they're going to do this but i understand why there was a question especially around the home pods because it's like it's a new product, it's a thing we've never seen before, and we didn't

get all the details. So I can see, I personally can see why there was a question in the air, but in the same vein, I can see why you could say, well, the HomePod is not enough for an event on its own, which it's not. The iMac Pro doesn't need an event, because there's nothing else more than what we've seen, right? Like it is what it is, and they have no other products. So

it's not an event, it's not enough, unless they had something else which they don't yeah i sometimes wonder i mean but it would it would come under the heading of event i do sometimes wonder if what they what they could do is something that's a little bit less like an event i guess it would be a briefing i mean because they could invite people down to cupertino and have these things in different rooms and like usher people through. But either either that's a press event where everybody's going there at a certain time to do this, at which point it's an event, essentially. Yeah. You may as well have somebody get on stage at that point because it's more official. And the briefings briefings are what they prefer. And that's what they're going to do is they've got they've got places that they can they can take journalists.

They've got places that they can take journalists, and I've been through that. I've run the gauntlet there a bunch. You go into one room, they tell you about one thing, then you're there for 30 minutes, then they take you to another room, they tell you about another thing, you're there for 30 minutes, they do demos, and then if you've got a review unit, you get that and you leave and you get an embargo time, and if it's under embargo, and you go back home and go to work. That's the deal. So they can do that with the HomePod and that's probably what they'll do. And they do that, they seem to do that in Cupertino and in New York. They book people and bring them in and

have them do that. So I imagine that's what's going to happen. Just like they do, they'll do that for the iPhone 10 as well, right? They'll get people to come and give them a briefing and give them a review unit with an embargo time. Yep, because they weren't given out, right? We know that. Right. So, which is funny, it's not an event, but it's like, it's still a PR campaign that happens.

It's just not a public event. Instead, it's this private kind of behind the scenes timed coordination that they do, but it's a big part of behind the scenes timed coordination that they do. But it's a big part of their rollout strategy for any product, too. So I suspect that's what it'll be. And there'll be some morning in December where all of a sudden there'll be 10 or 15 stories from people who got pre-release HomePods talking about their full review after having spent a week with the HomePod in their house. Which I hope that'll was something like that. And then also Tim Cook responded to an email,

and this is another one coming from MacRumors, where Rita Krah wrote in to ask about the Mac Mini. And Tim said, I'm glad you love the Mac Mini. We love it too. Our customers have found so many creative and interesting uses for Mac Mini. While it is not time to share any details, we do plan for Mac Mini to be an important part of our product lineup going forward. So it has gone from being a product in the line to an important part of the product line. So the Mac Mini has received a wording upgrade, not an actual upgrade.

The current version of it is three years old now. But this is more positive about the Mac Mini than the last time Apple gave a public statement about the Mac Mini. Yeah. Well, the last statement was, the mac mini exists yeah and this is you know an important part of our product line going forward which okay you know the parsing let the parsing begin right like going forward means it will continue to exist okay that's a step forward then currently exists that's it will continue to exist in the future and And then part of the product line, we covered that last time, right? It exists. Important part of the product line suggests that it has a level of, I don't know, an undefined level of value to Apple as part of the product line that is not zero. So interesting statement. Of course, Tim Cook email issuances tend to be hard to parse in a way. We talked about it on this show the last time he did this, that I feel like this is a, you know, one of the attempts to just sort of like soothe people without giving details

is to do this. And they tried to do that with a Mac Pro and it failed. And they ended up having to do the emergency all hands round table Mac Pro event to soothe that group of people and get a story out about how they were going to listen to them. I'm not sure that will happen with a Mac Mini where we're going to suddenly have, oh, eight journalists were convened around a table to talk about the Mac Mini. That's probably not going to happen, but I'm encouraged by this because I feel that this does go beyond the Mac Mini exists to say it will continue to exist.

But I take important part of our product lineup to mean we will update it every so often like we've been doing for its entire life. It's not important if you leave it there forever. It's not you know so they they must be doing or planning to do something yeah well and and it's obviously not a priority for them but um but the fact is that the mac mini has has often gone in its lifetime through long stretches of time where it's untouched and then it comes out. Now, I would like it to be updated more regularly as new chips come out, but that seems to just not be what it,

its sales must not merit that. I'll put it that way. I think it's probably right for Apple not to highly prioritize the Mac mini. So they give it a refresh, a new coat of paint every few years, and then they let it sit there for a while. Now, you know, I've talked about on this show before that, you know, you look at what Intel has done with their next unit of computing little boxes that are incredibly small. They're the size of an Apple TV essentially. And there's a whole computer in there that's powerful. It's got an Intel, like an i5 or an i7 processor in there and a fast SSD and a bunch of ports and the Intel stuff that supports Thunderbolt 3 and USB-C plus standard USB-A, HDMI out. It's got all

of these features in a little tiny box that's the size of an Apple TV. And I look at that box and I say, and I have one right here. I look at that box and I say, that's what the Mac mini should be. You know, it doesn't have to be quite that small. It doesn't have to look quite that plastic. Apple can do their own thing with it if they want to. But like that strikes me as being a great direction for Apple to say the Mac mini is even more mini now and they put it out there and then they walk away from it for three years again, because that's what they're going to do. But it's, you know, I, I, I'm encouraged by the fact that maybe in 2018, at some point we'll see that, that something that's sort of styled like the apple tv maybe comes out except it's a mac and uh and i really believe and i forgive me because this is like a broken record i've said this many times that gives apple enough

to kind of like pat itself on the back and say look how we've reinvented uh computing again by blowing your mind by doing this small this super. Yeah, and that would be a fun story. They exist already. You know, like for a product that maybe doesn't get a lot of the spotlight because it's not a very popular product. The smallest Mac ever. Yeah, but yeah, the smallest Mac ever,

a Mac you can fit in your pocket, you know? That might be fun, right? There could be some fun branding around that which might entice people to grab one and like put some something on it and throw it in a cupboard right like it's you know that there are uses for a product which is mega tiny well right and the the um i saw neil cyber the analyst on twitter was talking about i'm not sure where the mac mini um you know how important it is and how necessary it is and i you know i replied to him and i basically said uh what i've said to you before which is it's

one of the reasons that it's good to have a Mac Mini is that it's like an escape valve, like a pressure release valve. It's like if there's something you want to do with Mac OS and none of the other options work, there's the Mac Mini. Just do what you want, right? It's like literally it's affordable. It runs Mac OS. You can attach anything to it. Just take one and do whatever. This could become the education computer, right?

Like these are the computers you put in schools, right? There are many things that it could do, especially if it was priced interestingly. Like there are options. There are options. Right. And it allows the iMac not to need to be everything to everyone or the Mac Pro to be everything to everyone

because they can't be. And that's the, you know, I'm just a real believer in this, like products need to not carry the entire weight of the platform. Like the more diversity you have in the product line, that allows the products to do what Apple likes them to do, which is like super, like be true to themselves and have that kind of specific, like this is what the iMac, you know, which is like super, like be true to themselves and have that kind of specific, like this is what the iMac, you know, the iMac is trying to be

the best iMac it can be. It's a lot easier if somebody who says, well, yeah, but I don't want the big screen or whatever, you're like Mac mini, just go to the Mac mini, right? The Mac mini then is that pressure release valve, which is if you would like to do literally anything you can think of

with a Mac, the Mac mini exists, go to town, right? And so I think that's the value of that product is that it lets them point at it and say, for all of your little projects, because I think there's no one single amazing use for the Mac mini used to be like attached to your TV and stuff. But we've gone way past that with the Apple TV and other things it's a lot less of a of an issue but there are still uh a million different weird things that a mac mini is good at and that's why it's important to have it so i'm i'm encouraged by this i think there will be a new mac mini and i hope um i feel like the the existing footprint of the mac mini is still stuck in the spinning hard drive. There used to be a CD drive kind of a mentality in terms of the design of it. So I have a strong

feeling that the next Mac mini will be something more like those little Intel boxes or like the Apple TV where they just, that's a very Apple thing to do to just go all in on tiny that it's ssd you know there's no cd drives anymore so we can make this thing incredibly small and just and then go away take it take it away we don't want to talk about it anymore just take your thing and go because i think that is sort of apple's attitude to it is we just need it to exist and then we'll move on to the more exciting products elsewhere i wanted to say just one more thing about the Mac Mini. I don't remember who, but I saw somebody on Twitter saying all of the people that are complaining about the Mac Mini not existing are people that wouldn't buy it, right?

So like people like me and you, like we don't really have use for that type of product. Like we want the powerful products. We want the portable products. I agree with that idea, right? Like people that are complaining about it won't buy it. But that's not the reason that people are frustrated about it. The reason that people are frustrated about it

is because Apple is selling a product to people, potentially. It's available for you to buy, which is bad, which is just bad. It's a bad product because it's slow and old. Yeah, I mean, I would say maybe even worse than the Mac Pro, honestly. It is an old slow product that they made slower when they said it uh worse than the last version of it so the best mac mini ever made is now not three years old but like these current models the best mac mini ever made is what five or six years old now because it was that four core system that the new mac mini

was slower than that's still the, uh, the fastest Mac mini ever. And it's very old now. Like, I don't care what they do. I just want them to do something. The decision is we don't sell the Mac mini anymore. Awesome.

Right? Like, I don't care what you do. Just do something with it because this is, this is the ongoing story. And, um, and for those who listen to ATP,

you know, John Syracuse is a believer in the Mac Renaissance. And I kind of am too. I feel like they've changed their tune on this but this is another example of what we've seen the last couple of years which is rot in the mac product line where things just sit there and apple it's like they're not paying attention to the mac that they don't update them when new chips come out and the products age and a product that is that is a good value buy today at the same price with the exact same specs in two years is a is a terrible value so that's the that's the problem in most cases maybe not in all cases but in most cases is that is that it's the these products are

unattended and and the the laptops have been attended to we can talk about the issues involving them being attended and what apple's trying to do with them, but at least they have paid attention to them. They've speed bumped the iMacs. The Mac Pro, at least they've said they know they're going to do something. And now the Mac Mini, I suspect the same thing is happening. But for now, yeah, that's the open question, which is why is this product being left there to rot? I believe, just like I did with the Mac Pro, that the reason that it's sitting there is

because they're working on something else. Because if they weren't, they'd just kill it. You hope. I believe that. I believe that to be the case. That if Apple truly did not care about the Mac Mini and was never going to update it again, after three years of it just sitting there, they'd probably say, yeah, we're going to shut this down. It's the end of life, like the iPod Classic or something like that. Just like, this is the end. It's gone. But instead, they're like, oh, but just around the corner, there's a new one. So we're just going to leave it there. We don't want to

create stories about how they've killed the Mac Mini and then bring it back. We're just going to let it sit there until we've got a new one. And they've let it sit too long. But I have hope that next year, there will be a new one and that's great because i've had a mac mini running in my house for like a decade or more now uh you know i've gone through a couple of different ones but um i find it you know incredibly valuable to have in my house i'd like to keep using it i'd rather not repurpose an imac or something into uh because that's just a waste for what i use them for. But yeah, we'll see. Today's show is brought to you by Encapsular. They will help you delight visitors to your website

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adjust things on the fly with their smart dashboard, which gives you real time information. As a listener of this show, you can get one whole month of service for free. All you need to do is go to encapsular.com slash upgrade. That's I-N-C-A-P-S-U-L-A.com slash upgrade. Check it out now to find out more about what Encapsular can do for you and claim that free month. Give Encapsular a try. You're not going to regret it. Thank you so much to Encapsular for their support of this show and RelayFM. One thing I wanted to mention is, before we move on, is about Mac Mini versus Mac Pro. And just that I've seen a lot of people say, well, maybe the Mac Pro is the Mac Mini, which is a fun conspiracy theory. And I'm not a computer engineer i i can't say but my impression

is that those are two entirely different computers because one of them it needs to be it's cheap light small the speed is okay it's got you know okay power it doesn't need a lot of ventilation because they can they can use a small fan or whatever and it'll be uh it'll be fine but the mac pro needs a huge like amount of ventilation and the fastest parts and all of those things in order to do its job and uh so i don't see how that's one computer i feel like that's two computers the mac mini and the mac pro you can't make like a one size fits all because then the parts that you're putting in the the the one size fits all are going to be way more expensive than necessary for the mac mini and theall are going to be way more expensive than necessary for the Mac Mini,

and the enclosure is going to be way bigger than it needs to be, or you're going to skimp on those things, and then the Mac Pro is going to be lousy again, which you don't want. So I just wanted to say that before we moved on. All right, then. So I want to talk about the iPhone now. Let's shift gears from the Mac to the iPhone. iPhone X availability has been a question mark

about this over the last few days because analysts from KGI Securities, everybody's favorite Min-Chi Kuo, has published a report talking about supply chain problems for the first weekend sales. So, quick breakdown. According to this report, Apple is still facing severe constraints for the iPhone X.

Kuo is reporting that Apple may have only between 2 to 3 million units for the launch weekend or the launch period, whatever that initial pre-ordering process is going to be for the first week or so, which probably isn't enough. So, for example, getting this from a TechCrunch article, which I put in the show notes, the iPhone 6S sold 13 million units in the first weekend. Now, of course,

there were two phone options, and this time the 8 line exists as well, right? So you can assume that the iPhone 8 and the iPhone 8 Plus have chipped away. Some of those say there's going to be 15 million, so it's taken a chunk out of those. But I bet the remaining number is more than 3 million. That would be my expectation. Quo is reporting that there are a variety of problems that are leading to these shortages. There is a new flexible circuit board in the iPhone X, which has been problematic for production. There's a separate circuit board for the new camera sensors, which is facing issues, and also a component of the infrared sensor for Face ID. So Apple is struggling to get reliable parts for all of these things. id so apple is struggling to get reliable parts for all of these things so it's looking like as we assumed it's looking like to be the case that if you want one of these on day one it's going to

be a struggle no matter where you are in the world and there may be very long waiting times which is a shame considering that this device is already shipping way later than we maybe would have initially expected right like it's coming out in nove, which is two months after when an iPhone usually debuts. And even with that lead time, the extra time, potentially, it seems like we're still going to be faced with real difficulties to get one of these within a fair period of time.

Oh man, it's going to be like a command center in here on friday morning let me tell you i think everybody's gonna be disappointed it's gonna be it's gonna be tough it's gonna be it's gonna be a bloodbath i think honestly it's gonna be real bad if you care about this stuff which i'm assuming you do because you listen to this show we can all wallow in our sadness together yeah and it's uh when when is the pre-order it's thursday at midnight and midnight first yeah pacific friday and thursday night friday morning it's friday 8 a.m for me it's uh thursday uh midnight for you and midnight pacific between 3 a.m eastern yeah uh oh boy yeah that's gonna

be tough that's gonna be a tough one are you gonna pre to pre-order? I think I'm going to try, but my hope is that, yeah, I mean, yes, I am because it's time for me to buy a phone. So I am going to try. We'll see how long it takes to get there. My hope is that I will get a review unit, so I'll be able to review it sooner than I would actually be able to get it. But who knows? Because it may be like, well, you'll get your phone in January, but maybe I can get a review unit before that because I'd like to write about it. But I will buy one regardless because it's time for me to buy a new phone for myself and that's the one I'm going to get. But this could be rough. And we know that

probably a lot of our listeners, people who really care about apple stuff a lot of them are i think deferring right not getting the iphone 8 and instead waiting for the 10 and so this is the this is the challenge like we talked about it when these rumors were first starting which is can they spread the demand out or is everybody just going to wait for the 10 and and and they can't deliver the 10 and it stays back ordered for months i mean it could be that this this phone is back ordered by months through like mid 2018 when you're assuming they've already been building them for months right and the most they've been able to generate is three million of them that you could be waiting months more to get the next three yeah right like we we don't know

how well a lot of this stuff works it says that apparently in quotes report that production will be able to ramp up shortly but you know that's still gonna then just fulfill the people that are pre-ordered like it's gonna be i think this is probably gonna be one of the worst for waiting times that maybe we've ever seen for the iphone yeah um i'm intrigued i mean for me personally i know maybe this sounds silly but but like it's important to me i will be frustrated if i'm not able to get one soon because i want to be able to talk about it on the shows right because otherwise it will be like maybe a month of me going like still haven't got it and then when i get it nobody cares what i think anymore you know no one wants to review anymore because it's two months right right so yep i hope that

i'm able to get one i'm gonna try my best to get one uh and just see how we go and then hope with fingers crossed that you get one and maybe federico gets one uh from apple pr or something like that and then hope so then we'll have stuff to talk about on the show so that's my main thing if i don't get one i don't care as long as you have one because if you have one we can talk about it on this show no but you know what i mean it's like because that's that's the thing that's most important to me like obviously i really want this phone but the thing that takes the most importance is being able to talk about it here so people can hear about it because that's what people are tuning in for so fingers crossed on all fronts

and then maybe i'll fly to california and just press some buttons if he also knows we'll see about sure but you uh you got confused i assume uh thinking that there is a phone to be ordered and you've ordered a phone already you did something it says in our document did you did you accidentally pre-order too soon jason what happened to you no i bought an iphone 8 this weekend okay okay were you just getting ready like you know you were like priming the pump Did you accidentally pre-order too soon, Jason? What happened to you? No, I bought an iPhone 8 this weekend. Okay, okay. Were you just getting ready? Like, you know, you were like priming the pump,

getting some practice in for the ordering process? No, I mean, I did look actually online to see if I could order it and just have it shipped to me. And it said, oh, that iPhone 8 will be there in two weeks. Or you can just go up to your local Apple store. That's one exit up the freeway and buy it today. You've always got to go up the freeway, Jason. We've learned that so far for this season. Always go up the freeway.

Go to the Apple store. Go to the Apple store. This time I was recognized. I walked in the door and the guy said, Jason. Mr. Snowden. I don't know whether that's that he knows me or who I am through local things. I didn't recognize him or whether they like do mug shots of the people who have placed an order and are coming into the store. I don't know. But it was quite strange. I was wearing my purple ATP

t shirt. So maybe that was a thing too. But I did I went up there and came back with a space gray iPhone 8 because my wife has been using an iPhone 6 for the last three years. And you may not have heard this, Mike, but a couple of things happen after three years of using an iPhone 6. One is the battery life has been a problem for the last six months. The battery starts to get old, three-year-old battery. And the other thing, and this is something that people have been complaining about a little bit on the internet.

And I have seen it for myself and my wife's phone and my daughter's phone, which is iOS 11 is really bad on iPhone six. Like iOS 10 was fine. I don't know what they did, but iOS 11 is really bad on iPhone six. And as much as I roll my eyes at the conspiracy theories about Apple making old phones slow

so that you have to upgrade to new phones, the fact is iOS 10 was fine on the iPhone 6 and iOS 11 is really bad and you can't go back now. I would just tell my daughter to go back to iOS 10 and she can't. So-

The biggest problem is the battery life. Yeah, the battery life. So what I'm doing with my wife is I bought her an iPhone 8. What I'm doing with my daughter is I bought her a replacement battery and I'm going to replace the battery in her phone. And I'm going to make her still use her iPhone.

You're going to replace the battery in the phone? Yeah. I got the iFixit kit. I'm ready to go. And you know what, Mike? If I break it, guess what? I got another iPhone 6 that's my wife's old phone. But I'm going to try to do it that way for her. But the iOS, I hope that they can make some changes, but I'm not particularly optimistic that Apple is spending any time trying to make iOS 11 work better on older phones. But it's pretty sad that the iPhone 6, which is a pretty good, powerful phone, it just struggles. Like you type something in Spotlight and you got to wait like five or ten seconds for it to come up with a response. And if you tap on an app, sometimes you're like, okay, I tapped on the app. And then finally the Apple launch.

It's like it's really kind of unforgivable that it is so bad on so, uh, it's so bad on an iPhone six. Um, but my wife's happy cause she's got an iPhone eight now. And, uh, and we had to buy her a new case because the camera is different. And so the, the old, her old case that she likes, uh, covers the camera part of the camera now. So we got her a new camera or a new case to not cover that camera. And, uh, and it's all good. Uh, a funny thing happened last week too, which is that I have an iPhone eight review unit. And the, yes,

I am eventually going to write an iPhone eight review. I finally got an angle for it. This is the angle. Um, I took it to release notes and it was like, everybody, everybody was like, Ooh,

is that the iPhone eight? And I realized that's, this is a nerd conference and all the nerds are waiting for the iphone 10 and none of them have seen an iphone 8 because they just it's just not even on their radar it's like the lost phone for uh at least for nerds and for for like real serious tech enthusiasm about apple uh it's all about the iphone 10 to the point that i was kind of taken aback i i did not expect the level like it happened at least a half a dozen times where somebody was like oh is that the eight because i don't i don't have a case on it so it's very

clearly like the the glass back and there were there were also a bunch of like jason's got an eight show show him you know he hasn't seen the eight so show it like a lot so it i really got the message talking about our previous topic like oh boy there's gonna be a lot of people trying to get the 10 because they've just passed the eight by the fact that i could i could like a month after the phone came out i could bring it to a tech conference and nobody had seen one before like i got to hold one which i hadn't done before and i love the glass oh man i'm so excited for the iphone 10 to have the glass back again i've forgotten how much i missed that but i am what i want is a bumper case again and i hope people make those i know for the iphone 10 because i it's glass so i don't want no case but I would prefer to not have a case and

keep the phone thinner. So a bumper case would be real good because the bumper doesn't add like noticeable thickness when it's in your hand because you're holding it right. And the bumper is just like in your hand. You don't really notice it. So I'm hoping I mean, there have always been bumper cases that you can get bumper cases for the six line so i'm hoping that somebody but like a really good company makes one of these bumper cases again that's what i'm hoping for because it's a glass phone so i feel it's going to be more susceptible to being broken uh but i want to be able to just hold it and the way it's meant to be held i see see what you're saying. My last thought about the iPhone 8, and I am going to write all this down at some point,

maybe this week, is am I saying that since all the nerds were like, ooh, show me your iPhone 8, which is the first time that I've ever gone a month and gone to a tech conference and people have been interested in the phone that I've been carrying, right? Because by that time, everybody's got one.

Everybody's seen it. been interested in the phone that I've been carrying, right? Because by that time, everybody's got one. Everybody's seen it. But the truth is, who's the iPhone 8 for? And for that, I take you back to the start of this conversation, which is, I bought an iPhone 8 this weekend. Because for my wife, who is on an iPhone 6, the iPhone 8 is is a huge upgrade she she's not gonna want me to spend you know she was like go buy me a phone i just don't want to deal with this anymore you do it i'm like all right i'll do it like she's not gonna spend a thousand dollars on an iphone 10 she doesn't want an iphone 10 she doesn't need an iphone 10 she doesn't care um she she and i had the conversation about whether i should just buy her an iphone 7 honestly and i was like you know

you're the kind of person who uses a phone for three years let's get you the latest phone and you'll use it for three years and then we'll get you an iphone whatever that is 12 um 11 s 10 point x point i i um whatever it is i don't know um and uh and that's what the iphone 8 is for it's for people who don't want to spend that money, who have an old phone, and they just want the new phone that is like their old phone, but better and faster and isn't slow under iOS 11

and doesn't have a bad battery or whatever. And that's what the iPhone 8 is there for. Talk about a release valve for the Mac mini. The iPhone 8 is kind of a release valve too because the tech cutting edge people, sorry, I called you nerds, but I do it with love. The tech nerds and people who want to be on the cutting edge and people for whom money is no object and people who can wait and are very patient, we'll all get the iPhone 10

and that's fine. But the iPhone 8 is for everybody else who's upgrading from a 6 or a 6S and they don't need to go to the 10 the 8 is going to be a really nice upgrade for them and that that hit home this week when i noticed all the tech nerds hadn't seen it before and then i went and i just i bought one and uh it you know it made my wife happy and my daughter is unhappy because she does i'm not going to buy her a new iphone that's not going to happen so uh yeah so so that's yeah. So that was my iPhone 8 education this week on both who doesn't want it and who does want it.

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Rafael wants to know, Jason, I'm going to ask you, Jason, do you think that the air power mat will be able to charge multiple iphones it's a great question especially since there are now two phones in my house that support wireless charging which which is fun right i had that moment where i i showed my wife that oh you can just it it was literally the upgrade from a few weeks ago, which is, oh, you can land your phone on this helicopter pad

or you can just plug it in. That's easy. And she's like, oh, all right. Like, why would I do that? And I'm like, I don't know. It's kind of fun and cool, but also dumb. Do you use the wireless charging? I feel like I'm almost using it ironically now.

Yeah, okay. I plugged it in to try it. and so now it's sitting right next to where all the USB cords are, which is next to the microwave oven in the kitchen, which is where we charge all our phones. It's in the kitchen. There's a counter there next to the microwave, and there's an outlet there with four USB, and it's just got coming out of it and all the phones gets charged there. And, and the, the, you know, the batteries get charged there and that's like the charging station. And I ran the, uh, from behind the microwave, I plugged in the, the, the cord that goes to the wireless thing and it sits there too. And I come into the house and I'm like, I could plug it in. I'm like, well, the, the stupid helicopter pad is there. I might as well just lay it on that. And then I do like, I could plug it in. I'm like, well, the stupid helicopter pad is there.

I might as well just lay it on that. And then I do and it's fine. But I have not like moved it somewhere else or integrated into some other part of my life because I haven't found a need or value in it or anything. Like the cables work pretty well. So I think at some point I will just go, this is dumb that this is taking up space on my counter and I'll just take it and I'll put it away somewhere. So I'd say no.

Now that Lauren's got the iPhone 8 too, I had that moment of, oh, well, if at some point, if the air power thing charged multiple phones, I could put the mat down here. And it would be, and you could still put like papers or other stuff on it and it wouldn't be a big deal but if you laid a phone on it it would charge it and that would be kind of cool so i hope i don't know but i hope it will um apple's spec sheet says simultaneously charge up to three devices so my hope is that that means any three devices why three keep in mind they had to they had to modify this whole you know charging the cheese charging standard to support multiple device charge and it must be that in terms of engineering this is the most they could do it also may be just the power output of the pad but surely like they're all different power

requirements right like three iphones will need more power than three airpods cases yeah but they may have to weave like three different sets of power transfer coils into this thing right and okay and have them be like for because they have to charge independently of one another i don't know the engineering there's probably a lot of very weird electrical engineering happening in these pads the dream of course right is that you have a big charging pad that you can lay down and just put wherever devices on it. And it's a surface in your home. You can put just papers on it or whatever, but if you lay a device that's relevant, you know, and compatible next to it, it just charges it. And that's great. Like that's the,

that's the dream here. And this is like a first step toward that. But if, if, if that's all true, I will be sorely tempted to buy an air power mat for that counter space in my kitchen. Because I know that what that means is that my wife and I will both just be able to lay our phones down in that space where we already charge them. Not helicopter them down right on top of a plastic puck, but just sort of lay them down and they'll charge. And that I might do that that would be more interesting so i think that's the the the dream we'll see it's next year anyway that's another this so many things we're talking about are like 2018 things this week that's a 2018 thing rajeev wants to know are either of you two having crashing issues on the apple tv 4k

i have to reboot often because of navigation problems i haven't had anything nothing like this no me me neither no i haven't um all my all my issues have been like cbs all access being broken um and every now and then there's an app that that behaves weirdly but i haven't had any problems with the apple tv 4k and i've not heard anybody else say this either so sorry rajiv uh napali asked i scanned some old black and white photos they're sized around 20 to with the Apple TV 4K. And I've not heard anybody else say this either. So sorry, Rashif. Napali asked, I scanned some old black and white photos. They're sized around 20 to 40 megabytes each.

Will photos convert to HEIC? Is that it? HEIF? No, HEIF. H-E-I-F, right? HEIF. Oh my God. See, HEIF.

See, Napali got the HEVC and the HEIF. Well, HEIC is the container file. It's worse, Well, HEIC is the container file. It's worse, Mike. HEIC is the container file format for a HEIF file. Why? HEIC is a HEIF container file. God, I need to update my photos book because this is so confusing. You must certainly do. I am.

I'm going to do that in the next month. Napalic's question is, will photos convert these images to HEIF, or do I need to do it himself? Or do they need to do that in the next month. The question is, will Photos convert these images to HEIF? Or do I need to do it? Does they need to do it themselves before? Photos doesn't do any file conversion. So you would need to convert that to a HEIF file and then bring it in. Because Photos doesn't do that. I mean, it'll convert out to a compatible format if it needs to.

But what you bring in is what it takes in. If you bring in a compatible file format, even if it's this big ping, it will take it and just have it because it doesn't want to mess with your files. So you should do that conversion yourself. Make sure you're happy with it. Make sure that it looks good because that's going to be your original from that point on. So be sure, but you should do that yourself. All right, next up comes from steven how do you

transfer video content from the mac to the ipad for example blu-ray rips or downloads jason what do you do um i used to attach a wire and drag it over from like sync it via itunes but i've stopped doing that because itunes is not good at that and currently i use plex so i have the plex app on my ipad um and i have my movies all on my plex server and before i go on a trip i bring up the movie and i save it to my ipad and it basically downloads the file from my plex server is that that doing that locally? Is it downloading from your local network? Or is it downloading from the internet? It's downloading from the local network.

No, it's downloading from my server. It attaches to my server. Because the Plex app on iOS, I can play movies that are sitting on my server. Yeah, I knew that. And I can just watch them, right? So you just say, basically, you save it. And then when you're in mobile mode, basically, you can watch those movies on your iPad using the Plex app.

So that's generally what I do. I used other apps before where i would attach by wire and then use just the app part of itunes where where it's like the file transfer part of itunes which really should be in the finder and not in itunes but that's just on the list um and uh but but plex has made it a little easier so so now before i go on a trip i have that moment of like do i want to download movies or tv shows from itunes that i own do i want to download movies or tv shows from plex do i want to download uh amazon or netflix shows that i can cash on my ipad and i do all of that before i go on a trip but for the stuff that is not in iTunes,

if I've got it on Plex and on iTunes, honestly, I will just download the iTunes version because that's super easy. But if it's only available on Plex, I just download it on Plex and do it that way. And that works great. I know Casey's going to be so mad that I asked a question about Plex and just didn't have the answer, right?

Because he's always trying to convince me to use it. i what do you do i don't have any local media so it's either i'm either downloading itunes movies or tv shows or i'm downloading videos on netflix or amazon prime like there you go because you can download locally stuff for both of those like i don't keep local media like i don't even have a way to like take a blu-ray and make a thing out of it right so you know i i did it works for me you know everything's in itunes and i have not a huge itunes library but i have an itunes library with a bunch of content that i really enjoy so typically when i'm on planes i tend to just watch movies i've already seen before i just watch the stuff that

i like otherwise i'll just watch what's on the plane because the plane has all the new movies right so it's like uh i have my favorites on my ipad or i watch the movies on the plane because they're all new stuff that i've never seen before i cannot remember the last time i watched a movie on a plane and you know why it's because the plane screens aren't as good as the screens that i own and they're massively inconsistent right so when we the audio is bad when we flew out to chicago the the flight out the screen was one of those like ancient like yeah four inch it felt like cross and it had a terrible coating on top of it i mean that was good because like i was just playing switch or whatever yeah it's a

standard shiny grainy standard def screen and then you plug in your headphones and you get the audio but in the background is like a kind of like weird hum it's not good like i'm sure there are good airplane things but but the fact is i have a huge ipad screen it's like a giant hd ipad screen it's great it's that's what i want to watch things yeah but the thing's like so okay, in favor of the airplane experience. Okay. Mike, in defense of the airplane. Most flights that I take are transatlantic,

and they tend to be new airplanes. This was a weird one that I had. It was old. So honestly, in most instances, the TV screens will do the job just fine. And they have typically a better selection of movies than I'm bringing with me right like that's just like for me personally so that's why i would do it i have done it i don't always do it but i

have no like philosophical problem with you with like watching movies on a plane um so but typically i will watch stuff on my ipad but it's things that i'm bringing with me um unless there is like a new film that i specifically wanted to watch right so like i'm on a flight recently i've got deadpool and captain strange and captain america's all movies i haven't seen dr strange he's not a captain no he's just a doctor no it's a different version here it's like you know how they rename the avengers they call him captain strange here don't worry about it it's not good it's a british it's a british thing don't worry about it just don't look it up either uh chris we get next chris wants to know if you get a cellular series 3 watch and don't activate cellular will you get longer battery life i would expect so but i don't yeah i haven't tested it but i don't see why you wouldn't right like

because this every time the cellular watch gets uh gets uh activated the cellular features get activated it's going to use battery so yeah but the question if the question is will i get better than the series 2 i don't know if the question is will i get better battery than if i was using the cellular then yes right like i don't know if the series 3 watch has like massively different battery life than a series 2 in general so uh but if you're if you're using it if you're using the cellular radio you get worse battery like it's just i would imagine it's not as i mean if the idea is well i want the most battery life so i'm going to buy the cellular version instead of the non-cellular series 3 i don't think that's going to help you

because my gut feeling here is that they have the same battery more or less and it's just a matter of um you yeah it's trying very hard not to use the cellular radio radio except when you exactly need it and when you do you lose battery life and that's part of the cellular battery life experience so i don't think there's like a secret one secret trick to more apple watch battery life is to buy the cellular and not turn it on it's like i don't think that's it or on apple's comparison page series 3 with cellular series through gps and series 1 are all quoted with up to 18 hours battery life so yeah apple rates them all the same even the same watch you currently have so yeah because the way they rate battery life is doing the same things and then they say with

cellular if you talk on the phone for two hours then you'll drain the entire battery right that's that's but it's it's not part of the i think yeah in terms of just normal use it's exactly the same and then you get your cellular use like is deducted from your runtime john said pictures taken at my house are spread across a huge radius in the map view in photos in many stacks. Are there any tips that you have, Jason, on merging these or getting all these photos to recognize the same location? Yeah, basically you want to select all those photos and then you choose Command-I to bring up the info palette. And you can actually drop a pin in one particular location and that sets the location for all those photos.

So you can manually reset the location of your photos um and so if you want to force all of your house photos to be in one location the other the other way to do it is just zoom out a little bit because if you zoom out it will it will agglomerate them all together in one place but if you are a picky person about that data which i understand then yeah if you're if you're super frustrated about the fact that they are slightly uh in slightly different locations then that would be the way to do it is to uh is to uh just select those photos um which you may have to create an album or something in order to select them all but once you've selected them and you open up the info palette you can actually go in and and move the pin to a different location and uh it should overwrite the data and override your selection and put them all in the same place

or go in one at a time and then drop their pin at the same location because within a few feet of one another they are um you know they're all just kind of marked together. So it's okay. And Brandon asks the question that I am asked many times a week, but I'm always happy to answer because it results in good things. Brandon wants to know,

shall I get the 10.5 inch or the 12.9 inch iPad Pro? I will be using it for researching. I usually watch videos or surf in safari while taking notes at the same time. I tend to work either at my desk or the couch. Brandon, in your situation, I would recommend getting the 12.9 because it sounds like you're in fixed places, either an office or at home. And if you're doing that, if you're planning on buying this iPad and mostly using it in one location, I mostly recommend the 12.9 for this

because as well, if video and notes and Safari are all involved, the extra screen space is going to be great for you. So in this instance for Brandon, I would recommend the 12.9. I am updating my personal overall pick to be the 10.5. I think that in most instances, for most people,

the 10.5-inch iPad Pro is the perfect iPad. But there are certain instances where I'd recommend a 12.9, and for Brandon, I would recommend a 12.9. I agree 100%. If you want to find our show notes for this week, head on over to relay.fm slash upgrade slash 164. Jason is online. He is at jsnell

on Twitter. Even when he's offline, he's still at jsnell on Twitter. He's always, you know, the account's always there. You just tweet at him, he'll get to you when he wants to. He's the incomparable.com for many of Jason's incredible shows focused, would you say, mostly on pop culture? Is that a good way to sum up the incomparable? But there's game shows and there's dungeons and dragons playthroughs and and loads of amazing

content entertainment and culture and and silly stuff and all of that stuff and then the more like tech and and although liftoff is about space i don't know what that's about anyway there's also technology we'll go with that it is it's it's it's techie sure yeah and yeah jason hosts many shows at relay fm some great ones really great ones not just upgrade upgrades amazing but they're all some of the great shows some of the great shows jason's on them but all of the shows that jason's on are great so they are all the great shows uh sixcolors.com for jason's work you can find me at relay.fm i host many shows uh i think seven i think seven i think that's how many shows that i do somebody asked me at release notes

and I tried to count it and I think I missed something. I've got a new answer to that. I just say I can't count that high. Now, when they say, how many shows do you host? It's like, I've lost count. I can't count that high.

Nobody knows. Nobody knows. It can't be calculated. It's impossible. Thanks again to our fine sponsors this week. PDF Pen Family, a product from Smile, Timing,

and Encapsular. We'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snow. Love your show. Love your show. Great show. Love it. Love it.

Love it. Love it.