Upgrade - 211: You Will Pay

Episode Date: September 17, 2018

What a time! iOS 12 has arrived and we're waiting for delivery of new Apple products. This week Jason and Myke discuss their favorite features of the new update, which new devices they've bought, why phone carriers ruin everything, and the fallout from Apple's decision to focus on larger and more expensive phones this time around.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 211 today's show is brought to you by squarespace pingdom and green chef everything's back to normal now my name is mike hurley i'm joined by jason snow hi jason snow. This episode is Upgrade 211, which is a preview of what iOS will be called in 199 years. Excellent. iOS 211. That's definitely a way to think about every

episode. It's just a preview. In the year 2217, iOS 211 will be released. We are back to normal, by and large, today. There's no event. There's no draft. There's no fun summer.

There's no summer of fun. No, it's just we're back to... Back to normal. Back to the usual. It's good. We must start, Jason Snell. As we always do. Oh, yes.

Hashtag Snell Talk question. It comes from Rybo this week. Jason, do you enable secondary click on your mouse or trackpad, or are you a single-button purist? I love how listeners are, all the upgradians are drilling down into the details of my opinions about input devices. People want to know the intricacies of every part of how you use your devices. Someone somewhere is like,

it's got one of those cork boards with the red string on it. And they are like detailing just exactly how you use your devices. No tap to click. But natural scrolling. And I'm just going to say, hashtag Snell talk. You can just ask. Nobody knows where Jason's dock dock is yet no one's

asked that one oh man they were talking about that on atp the other week and i was like oh i have opinions about dock placement and actually just if people want to wind it back syracusa says several things on there that make me believe that syracuse and i actually share a dock preference that is no longer available by the way um but that's that's not nobody wants to hear about that this week um ryber i am not a monster of course i enable secondary click on my trackpad i use a magic trackpad and if i want the the little context menu to come up i put down two fingers and push i understand how people have dock preferences and windowing preferences and even scrolling preferences. I cannot imagine anybody that wouldn't want the secondary click.

Why would you not want that? It is, I mean, habit, I suppose. Well, so the reason that I don't like tap to click would be the reason I would think, which is if the way your hand rests on your trackpad, you get accidental two finger presses when you only mean one and it's frustrating and you're like, no, no, no, I never want that. I'll pull down the control key when I, when I want to right click. Um, but I don't have that. For me, it's, and as somebody who has been educated in the ways of multi-touch on iPhone and iPad and all of that, it is second nature. Like not only is, you know, I'm doing two finger scrolling. So I've already got two finger gestures there. I'm doing multi-finger, you know, expose kind of stuff and two finger click to get the context

menu. It's all very natural. In fact, I was thinking about this the other day, that it's amazing how Mac input methods have changed. Like we think about the Mac as this sort of static classic thing, but Apple with the trackpads on their laptops, and also even for somebody who uses a desktop like me with that magic trackpad like apple has inculcated all mac users or at least many mac users in the multi-touch world just with that trackpad and like classic mac os um and you know the the the scroll wheel was kind of like a wild idea right but? But now with the standard on the Mac for years now has involved multiple finger movements on a trackpad. And so it's interesting when you think about it that way.

I cannot envision, and I used a trackball for many, many, many years, which was really bad because you can't do a scroll wheel on a trackball. Eventually they put like a ring around the ball, which was not great, but it was better than not having a scroll wheel um and four i think i had four buttons it was it was lots of stuff and then i converted to the trackpad because of course using a laptop you got used to the trackpad and then apple's like yeah we also made a trackpad for your desk and that's it i like

multi-touch trackpad uh to the right of my keyboard i cannot envision using a computer without that and all of those gestures including two fingers down click yeah if you would like to submit a question like rybo did and it can be about anything you want and i'm assuming we're going to get some very specific questions uh over the next week you can just send out a tweet with the hashtag Snell Talk, and we may be included in a future episode of the show. So we move right now into follow-up by talking about pre-orders. So Jason, I know that you are sometimes given the joy,

the pleasure of taking a second trip up to the park to pick up some devices so i know that some you mentioned this last time right so you may not have ordered any devices but i wanted to know did you did you order anything last week yeah so i'm hoping i'm hopeful i live in hope that i might get uh in the review program and get advanced units but i don't have any yet or get units you know i think last year i got them like the day before they shipped or the day they shipped something like that, which is it's great, because I can't buy every iPhone and Apple Watch and review them. I can't do that. And so usually, because I often get review units, I tend not to rush an order, especially if I don't have like last year, I bought an iPhone 10

at the time, because I hadn't bought a phone in two years, and I wanted a new phone that is mine, separate from buying something just to review it. This year, first off, I didn't stay up to midnight, although I keep threatening to do a live stream. Macworld actually did a Periscope or something of everybody on the staff waiting to order. Every year, I want to do it. But the problem, the thing that holds me back is there will be a stretch of like five minutes where nobody's talking. Yeah, I'm still thinking about it.

I think it might be, I was envisioning like we would get various relay hosts to just kind of like pop in and say hi for a little while and then go away. And then of course at midnight, all the audio will just be furious typing or maybe we'll put in some sound effects like a little intense music as everybody will do it it'll be like new year's eve live basically that's what that's how i need to think

about the apple the live stream on the night of apple ordering which is uh it's like waiting for the ball drop to drop in times square um anyway uh i I woke up the next morning and I ordered a 40 millimeter Apple watch series four GPS in silver aluminum for my wife who has been using a stainless series zero. Um, I don't want to pay the price for stainless this time. I think she'll actually approve that it's lighter and has, um, more prominent haptics than the stainless model does, even though it's not quite as shiny and pretty. And she's been waiting a long time.

And her battery life on her Series Zero is eroding rapidly. And for the people who forget the Series Zero, like, you know, it doesn't have GPS. So it's, distance tracking is poor. It's like, it's not, we take walks and I'm closing rings and she's got nothing right so it's not good so she's getting a new watch um and it won't be here for on launch day you know because i didn't bother staying up late but um it will be here at some point so that's that's me i

mean and also something that's really i mean is worth remembering i had forgotten about this until i was reminded over the last couple of days that watch does not get watch os 5 yeah i think that was the clincher is that it also won't run uh the latest version of watch os so i i had that moment where i thought oh i it's time for you to get a new watch and then she started complaining about the battery life too because the battery life is getting really bad on it and that was the that was the clincher i feel like it was already clinched but that was just the that was the last step there yeah ios 12 and watch os 5 are coming out today as we record this we'll talk a little bit about ios 12 later on in the episode but like there's a bunch of things in watch os 5 like uh the ability for third-party podcast

playback and even apple's podcast app so you want that right like that's the thing that a lot of people would i think would kind of want so it it does make the upgrading a little bit more uh imperative than it has in past years because it won't run the most recent version which honestly i think is fine like five years is it's pretty good i think i think that i think apple did a decent job there right keeping that running for as long as they did, especially for a new product like the watch where the original watch and what the watch is now, it's really gone on a different path

that I don't think anyone was really expecting and what people use these things for. So it is not necessarily as capable in the right way. So I'm not surprised they had to cut it off at some point um i uh ordered a 256 gigabyte iphone 10s max in gold um and i bought that's for me and yeah yeah yeah hashtag plus club i get it max club max club we're in the max club now you use max that's what that means it's that Max club. Max club. We're in the max club now. You use max? That's what that means? It's that you're all, you're joining us over in the max club?

I'm using max right now. Yo, I actually prefer club max instead of max club. But max club has kind of just, it's kind of gotten away from me already. So it's too late to change it to club max. But max club is back. Well, you know, it's going to begin for the first time, Big Phone Club. And I bought a 40 millimeter gold aluminum cellular series four

for, you know, yeah. I have a question about Max Club or Big Phone Club, you also said. Like, I am worried that this is going to be an exclusive club, an exclusionary club are you going to are you going to like have a person at the door who looks at the phone and if it's a 10r like turns them away turns their nose up and says no it's not big enough and then kicks them out no that there will be a special area in the club to to try and so they'll be like down on the bottom but the the 10 10s max people will be like down on the bottom, but the XS Max

people will be up like on the mezzanine. They'll be behind a velvet rope. Oh, I see. You get shown why the bigger phones are better while you're there, so you'll eventually convert over. But yeah, I have both of these to pick up on Friday, so I'll be getting them on Friday. So for our next episode next week, we'll be able to talk about

all of these in detail. I'm really excited about the Max. I'm really excited about the Macs. I'm very intrigued as well as being excited for a phone of a screen the size that it has. That's going to be quite an experience. So I'm pretty excited to check those out. We have some follow-out. I mentioned it was iOS 12 review. Well, it's iOS 12 day today, which means it's iOS 12 review time as well.

review well it's ios 12 day today which means it's ios 12 review time as well um i would like to guide everybody over to federico vatici's uh review on ios 12 it is the max stories review i mean i think at this point it has become you know in the way that that syracuse's reviews were expected and enjoyed and it's become an event well federico i think has done that and it's because of his work. This review is incredible. I have read it. Not only have I read it, I have once again committed my voice to it. And I've read it out loud for your enjoyment. So, Mac Stories are selling an audiobook that I created. There is a discount for Club Mac Stories members. All the information will be in the show notes for that if you want to get you want to get it but you can go and get it so if you don't want to read it and you want to

have it read to you um there is a there is an audio book which is my voice it's like three and a bit hours long there's chapter markers and all that fun stuff so you can go and go and check it out and load it into like recommend castro or overcast because you can if you you know you pay for those apps you can sideload files in, so that works really nicely. Or you can listen to it however you want, but they're really good because it's kind of been made to be played in podcast apps. It's kind of the way that I've produced it because that's what I do. It's how I know to make stuff.

But Federico's review is incredible this year. It's my favorite. His writing about shortcuts is my favorite writing he has ever done. Because even more than iPad, I think workflow is intertwined with him in a way. Everyone thinks about Federico with the iPad,

but workflow was this whole other level. And getting to read him talk about how important this is and when i read the conclusion for the shortcuts chapter and the overall conclusion i got goosebumps reading them they are it's incredible think of it this way this is a person whose uh area of specialty is ios and federico is also a person who's the, I would say, the leading voice as a champion of workflow as an app. Yeah. Now imagine that workflow, where he is the leading voice, is bought by Apple and integrated as perhaps the banner feature of a release of iOS, which is his area of specialty.

Like, it is, it's huge, right? I mean, there could never be anything more Federico than this. So I'm looking forward to reading that section. I've only read the beginning because I just downloaded the e-book. As a Club Max Stories member, I just downloaded the e-book version this morning, and I've only read the first part of it but it's wonderful that i really really recommend that people uh read and of course we'll be talking in more detail about it and connected this week um i also wanted to mention

uh the max sparky shortcuts field guide so our wonderful friend mr david sparks has put together a video guide on how to get started with shortcuts so So if that's the kind of thing that you want, if you want to see rather than just read, and you want video and you want to hear the wonderful David Sparks teach you, then that's another place to go and find out more about shortcuts. I am very enthused about shortcuts adoption rate so far. So again, iOS 12 is not out yet when we're recording this. It will come out probably whilst we're recording this yeah but their app updates are starting to come out and

yeah there are big companies like not independent app developers that are putting shortcuts in their app and i am really excited jason because it seems like the adoption that i wanted to see is going to happen, right? Like it's going to start today, but will continue because people are going to be like, oh, I'm not sure if I wanted to add these. And then they see how many companies are doing it. And then it will, I think, push more people to do it.

So I'm really, really excited. What we said when WWDC happened was that workflow was something where, you know, a user might bug a developer or an independent developer would see the workflow app and they'd be like, oh, that's interesting. Maybe I'll try it. But it was this kind of grassroots word of mouth kind of thing. It's now a core iOS feature that Apple is demoing on stage. And so there's this moment where, you know, I think it flips over in the priority list of especially larger companies, as you said, who develop iOS apps to be like,

it's no longer a, wouldn't it be nice if we added this obscure thing that will help some users to, oh, this is the big iOS 12 feature. We need to prioritize this in our update that takes advantage of iOS 12. And once those things are in there and Apple did use some, uh, the method that they're using to do the shortcut stuff is related to stuff. That's already how people build their apps. So, um, it's not like there's a whole new thing that they need to think they just, they need to make modifications that they probably have already got to kind of got the basics down in their apps, the way that they're, they're structured. structured um but they do that and they pick all of this up and once those things are picked up then your system is watching

as you use your apps and giving you those as options in the short in the in the shortcut settings in the in the settings app so you can just say oh yeah that's a thing i did recently let's give that a shortcut in siri but there's also that secondary effect which is then they show up in the shortcuts app too so it's like it all gets unlocked and the fact that it's now a banner feature in ios 12 means that all these app developers are uh prioritizing it and then to your point there's also the peer pressure which is like now you're a competitor now this other big developer did it why didn't you do it and that is more grist for the mill in terms of like getting those things booted up the priority list and before you know

it all the major apps have shortcut support and that's great for everybody and last piece of follow-up because people keep sending this to us um a couple of days before the event last week so this was like on monday last week ample started selling the Logitech crayon to the public. Yep. We don't know what that means, right? No, it's on Logitech's site too. You can buy it from Logitech directly too. I bought one because I have an iPad 6th generation here.

Yep, still only works with that one, right? So it still only works with the newest cheap iPad. That's the one it works with. The reason it works that way is that the apple pencil is a bluetooth device so you pair it with like any bluetooth device you pair it with a device and then it's paired with that device and if you want to use it on a different ipad you need to move to that device pair it with that device and then it works with that one the pencil and the story they told was,

because it's in a classroom environment especially, the pencil doesn't work like that. The pencil, if you put it down on a sixth-generation iPad, it will write because it's using a different wireless frequency. It's communicating using a radio that is only in the sixth-generation iPad. And it is this cheaper thing. It doesn't have all of the features of the pencil, but it's also cheaper than the pencil is. I do wonder, I know like you wonder, if why would Apple not make that same connection capability available in the iPad Pro going forward? available in the iPad Pro going forward. And we'll see if there are new iPad Pros at some point,

because we didn't get them last week, if they will also support it. And that may be one of the reasons why Logitech's initial push was education only, but now it's been opened up to everybody. It may be simpler than that. It may be that they're hoping that a lot of those sixth generation iPads sell for the holidays and that it's a nice accessory to bundle along with it and not everybody's going to want to buy the full-on Apple Pencil. We'll see. All right. Today's show is brought to you by our friends over at Green Chef. Green Chef is a meal delivery service that includes everything you need to cook delicious

gourmet meals that you can feel good about. Green Chef sends a wide variety of organic ingredients and imaginative new recipes to you every single week. Now, what makes Green Chef different, and I think really awesome, is that they have meal plans for different diet types like paleo, vegan, vegetarian, keto, gluten-free, omnivore, and carnivore. And you can choose one of those and they will pick the meals for you and cater to the dietary requirements that you've chosen. Green Chef is the first USDA certified organic meal delivery service.

Every ingredient is thoughtfully sourced and its journey is tracked from planting to plating. And they have recipes that include pre-made sauces, dressings, and spices so you can get more flavor for your meals with less time requirement for you. Jason, you have Green Chef, correct? Yes, I got a Green Chef box, absolutely. What did you think of it? It was very good. We got the veggie box, and I am a skeptical person

when it comes to vegetarian meals, let me tell you. Anyone that's listened to Relay FM bonus specials in the past will know that Jason does not like salad. No, I mean, I do like salad but i like some very specific things in salad it's not what jason thinks is salad i hate vegetables i hate vegetables i i have i now i now eat roasted vegetables because i discovered that roasted vegetables are good my point here is that we made the green chef vegetarian meals and they were all really good they were all really really good and good. And there was one in there especially that I basically – our method is you put a little star on the menu card.

And that means save this and everybody liked this and we should have this again. And we did that. There were these corn cake things that were – they were with cheese and, oh, my God, they were so good. So, yeah, it was very good, easy to make, pre-portioned ingredients, no food waste, very easy to put them all together, and super tasty. And they have meat dishes too. We just didn't get those because of various dietary restrictions in my family. But they have a whole range of different levels, including ones that have meat and ones that do not. So we got the veggie one.

It was great. Green Chef's expert chefs design recipes with gourmet flavor that you typically only find in restaurants. And they think that dinner should be planned around your life, not the other way around. So they love to give you the choices that they have. You can get $50 off your first box of Green Chef by going to greenche.us upgrade that's

green chef g-r-e-e-n-c-h-e-f.us upgrade and you can get $50 off your first box of green chef thanks to green chef for their support of this show and relay fm so a week has nearly a week has passed nearly feels like two weeks but, but it's been about four days. We did a Wednesday show, so yeah, it hasn't been that long. So there's been some stuff that's come out. There's been some different things that we've been thinking about. I wanted to just share some information that I found out about DualSIM support, because it's kind of not really as good as we were hoping it

was going to be i think so dual sim support is coming in a future update um for ios probably ios 12.1 which is when they'll ship like emoji who knows maybe group facetime but i'm not holding out for that anytime soon and to be able to use your phone with multiple carriers, it has to be an unlocked phone because otherwise you can only enable two lines with the same carrier. So if you buy a T-Mobile phone, it's locked to T-Mobile, for example, or Verizon or whatever, it has to be the same carrier, which is by and large for most people probably not that useful so it is unlocked phones only that get you kind of like the maximum flexibility with being able to use different different carriers and for your regular sim and your e-sim and i believe like if you have cdma like that's it like it's just CDMA. You're done.

So there are some definite limitations to this, and it kind of continues from there a little bit. I want to check that thing about CDMA. So yes, if a CDMA carrier provides your first SIM, your second SIM won't support CDMA. So you can't have multiple CDMA. Oh, boy. This whole story, and then there's more to it that you're going to get to but it's all about how phone carriers are control freaks yeah that's it

like because a lot of it is like well but we assumed maybe it'll work like it does on the ipad oh no no no because the ipad is a tablet it's weird it's an add-on device we don't care about that we care about your phone we want complete control of your phone. We want, like, if you insert a SIM the wrong way, we take control of your phone. And, like, we don't want – it is amazing the difference here between what is technically possible and what is contractually possible when you work with a carrier and it's a smartphone and not a tablet. It is amazing just how much they ruin the process. Like it's nothing like the iPad at all. You can't select a carrier to use from the settings app like you can on the iPad.

You need to scan a QR code that is provided to you by the carrier to activate the secondary SIM and the eSIM. It's unclear right now kind of how this would work for short-term plans, right? So if you want to do like a traveling plan or you want to be in another country and use a plan there, it's kind of how this would work for short-term plans right so if you want to do like a traveling plan or you want to be in another country and use a plan there it's kind of unclear this this is going to have to be something we wait and see our carriers deal with it when they roll out their support right my hope is that because i always buy uh sims when i travel um to europe my hope is that some company whether it's the one that i i use uh now or some other

company will offer a similar sort of thing where you basically get a qr code in the package yep and you scan it and then you're on their network for the duration and that would be nice um or you buy it online even better and they just send you a QR code and you scan it and now you're on their network. That would be, we'll see, right? But we can't take it for granted because so much of the story is like, hey, all those things that we can do,

you can't do them. So we'll see if there are partners because it's like only some carriers are announced as partners in this and what are they going to do and are they going to make it so that it's only on plans that are that are not good and we're going to all end up popping our sim trays out because i would really like the scenario when i'm in the uk let's say where i'm

on data and stuff on a local network for a reasonable price and yet if somebody sends me a text or tries to call my american phone number i get the call that would be great but we'll see if that's something that's going to actually be possible so the the way that the settings work you can't do that like there's a very confusing setting screen but you can say like primary sim will be for calls and texts secondary sim is for data only so like if you can get it to work it will be that way there is potentially one silver lining because the number of disclaimers in this section is amazing just there is a giant asterisk hanging over this whole part of the podcast just to be clear so giant asterisk there is a reference

to also using carrier apps to enable the service in some instances so there is a potential here that you will sign up with a carrier and then they will provide a code that you can activate it with and then that might be how you could get short-term things so like say you were using three you'd go to three's app and you could buy a month of service and it would activate an e-sim for you and you can also store more than one eSIM, but you can only use one at a time. So you could have, you went to four countries,

you could have accounts with four companies and then use just the data that they're providing during that time. But the thing is, it's like, it seems like Apple has provided the building blocks, but now it's up to like, what will the carriers provide? But basically this is,

we thought it was going to be like the ipad system this is literally zero like the ipad system and it's such a shame i mean i get why they again it's about control i get why they're doing it it's because they want more control of the process but it's so stupid because what apple has shown is that we don't need little cards stuck in our phones anymore. Like, it is so stupid. It is like requiring, I mean, I don't know. It's like requiring a disc to watch a movie. Yes. Like, it is not necessary anymore.

It's literally a little card with some data on it. It can be done entirely virtually, and yet it's not. And that's annoying. Like, that's annoying. And I get that the priorities of a carrier are not the priorities of Apple or necessarily an iPhone user. And one of the nice things about having a physical SIM is that if you have an Apple phone and a not Apple phone, you can move between them, which is absolutely true. But the fact that the eSIM process is so kind of ridiculous,

I want to be optimistic here and say, I think this will ultimately get worked out because we've come a long way since in the 10 years, since the original iPhone 11 years, we've come a long way in terms of carriers kind of realizing that there's certain things that they really need to do better.

And I think we will get there with the rest of this. And I think in terms of carriers kind of realizing that there's certain things that they they really need to do better um and i think we will get there with the rest of this and i think a bunch of carriers will start to see this as a great opportunity right some of the smaller carriers that haven't got the market share will try and make this a thing that they can provide to people like t mobile in the uh in the u.s will be an example of that they traditionally they have been a very aggressive uh carrier in terms of like embracing new stuff like their, you know, their free data plan for iPads, right? Where they want their SIM in the iPad, so that then if you want to buy more data, you'll buy it from them. And so they'll give you some small amount of free data every month. That's the kind of thing that yeah, the smaller carriers are going to want to step up here. And the easier they make it, right, for the transaction.

Like you don't physically need to have anything anymore. That's good for them, right? Because then they just need to get in front of your face long enough for you to buy something. They don't need to put it in a vending machine or send you something from Amazon or something like that. They literally just need you to give them money and they text you a barcode. That's pretty cool. So let's talk about the iPhones from last week. Because we've all had more time to think about it.

And I've been reading some articles that you've posted into Six Colors. And I think one of the things that I wanted to talk about first is price, is the price kind of spectrum that we have across the iPhones now. Because you pointed out quite rightly that between the XR and the XS Max, there is a $350 difference now between the two, from where it starts on each of those lines. from where it starts on each of those lines. That is, I would assume, for new phones,

that's got to be the biggest jump, right? Yeah, for the base price of a new iPhone. Keeping in mind that Apple tends to only release, they did two new iPhones for a while, and they were separated by, what, $150? And then they did three last year. And they did three again this year. But in my six colors piece, I used the metaphor of boiling the frog, the idea that you keep turning the heat up and the frog doesn't notice that it's slowly being boiled. That's kind of what's going on here because what Apple did last year was release two iPhones at

the price, slightly higher than the price of the standard iPhone releases the last few years. The 8 and the 8 Plus were a little bit more expensive than the 7 and the 7 Plus. And then they did the 10 way up at $999. That was like a little bit of sleight of hand because then this year they keep the XS at $999. They add the XS Max at $1099. They bring the 10 are in and it is the traditional like plus it's actually a little cheaper than the 8 plus was last year it's it's the same price as the 7 plus was when it went on sale and the 6s plus um but there's no iphone no new iphone at the 8 price or the seven price, right? So by they've removed the bottom plank out of their prices of the new phones. So now if you want to buy a new iPhone, the starting price is higher than it's ever been, but they did it in a way that like, cause imagine Mike,

imagine if last year Apple just released the iPhone X and there was no iPhone 8. And the message was, well, Apple just raised the price of the iPhone by $300. But instead they did it in steps. And it makes it a lot easier to not realize what just happened, which is it is more expensive than ever to buy a new iPhone. Intentionally so. Especially when you think that we are kind of calling or thinking of like the XR as like the cheaper phone in the lineup, the more budget phone in the lineup. This is the price that iPhones used to be. Yeah, this is the budget phone in the lineup is the cost of the big iPhone in the old days, not the base iPhone, the plus iPhone where you paid. And so it's 150,

basically over what, what we thought of as sort of the iPhone entry price, like a couple of years ago. That's wild. And that's, that's for the one. And yet in many articles, you will see it referred to as the budget model. And it is given its features compared to the X, it is a budget X because it is way cheaper than the iPhone X, let alone the XS Max or the XS and the XS Max. It's way cheaper, but it's way more expensive than a base model iPhone. So it's basically Apple saying, if you want a brand new iPhone this year, you can get a big model that is the cost of a plus, or you can get these 10s that are up at 1,000 or 1,100. But that's it. If you want the slot below that, you don't have a new phone this year. You can get the 8, and the 8's great, and it's cheaper than it was. So it's an even better deal. But if you want one of those three new models, you will pay. And this is absolutely part of Apple's strategy, which is to ratchet up

the average selling price because iPhone sales number-wise are flat, but their revenue is up. And how do they do that? They're the average iPhone being sold costs more than it used to. And they raised the prices last year. And this year, the new phones are all with higher prices. So, you know, the price spread is different. And that's like, I'm not trying to, I mean, I just, it's an observation.

We can judge it for what it is, which is a brand new iPhone is less affordable than it used to be. If you want the 2018 model. Also, I think there is a fascinating question about the phone you're buying that gets you in behind the velvet rope, right? The XS Max and the XR. Because the XR is a big phone. It's not as big as the Max.

It doesn't have the screen that the Max has. It's also $350 cheaper than the Max. So I think that's interesting. Like who's going to get the XR when it comes out versus the XS Max. And my gut feeling is the people we know who are buying phones on day one are going to get the XS Max because they want the latest and greatest and the very best. But when that XR comes out and people are shopping in Apple stores over the holiday season, let's say, they're going to look at the XR and it's going to look, I think, appealing because it's bigger than the X, way cheaper than the XS,

or bigger than the XS, way cheaper than the XS Max. And the difference is that that floor isn't there anymore. And then there's the 8s, which are last year's tech. And they're way cheaper. So you can get an 8 if you want. But if you're going to buy the new iPhone, here it is, and it's the XR. So I think that there'll be more casual users. The general public that is not as focused as as the

more techie people i think the 10r is going to have a much broader appeal i think the 10r is the phone for everybody that doesn't already know what iphone they want right unless they want a smaller phone i mean that is sure the argument okay let's imagine like you you go in and you're like i want one of these new iphones i want the face id like i want that um but i don't know which one like you haven't already made the decision the 10r is probably is i think is the right phone for every single one of those people because yeah unless you're deeply opposed to the size of it it's the best it's such a good deal right and the screen having held one like okay first off the colors are pretty the screen is really good and apple's not wrong when

they say that it's the best you know lcd screen they've ever made in an iphone like it's it's not no led but unless you're looking at me like oh the blacks aren't quite as black as i you know it looks good it is a good looking phone and it's if you want into the 10 it's your cheapest way in so unless you're opposed to that size it's i agree with you like that's that's the path people will go down can we talk about iphone size as a yeah yeah we should this has become like a i've seen a lot of uh think pieces on this um over the last week or two that in getting rid of the SE and not having anything to replace it, and then kind of the smallest new phone

being the iPhone X, right? Which is kind of like sits with the 7, and then you have, or the 8, I should say, and the 8 Plus, and then phones that are as big or as bigger than those, right? Like all the phones are bigger now, and there's kind of nothing small. I'm seeing, and I'm sure you're're seeing a lot of people could like kind of they're upset about this and saying that like apple is is leaving them behind and i think that there is a you know

and there's also the argument of like oh i know thousands of people that want to buy this phone right and i kind of my question to you is do we assume that Apple is doing this for a reason? So I think Apple knows a lot about the phone market, right? I think they have all their data about iPhone sales. They're watching the whole smartphone market. I think Apple knows a lot about the trends in their own purchasing, know in their own uh sales and the trends in their competitor sales worldwide and even though we all know people who don't like small phones there are people listening to this show right now who who want a small phone, right? Absolutely. And I, hey, nobody was a bigger champion than me

for the small phone size and the existence of an iPhone SE, remember? I kept saying, I think they're going to bring it. I think they're going to keep it around. And they did, although now it's gone, but they did. Even though, and there is a market for it. There is undeniably a market for it. That all said, I think Apple knows there's a bigger market for bigger phones

no phone company has been disappointed by making a large phone the people because a huge swath of the market sees bigger is better oh this got a bigger screen this is better like and i will also put in i think there are two kinds of people who like small phones. The kind who legitimately can't hold or put in a pocket a small phone or a large phone. They need a small phone. I think there is also a group that's just resistant. Right? I think there is definitely a group of people who don't know the joy of having

a bigger screen like you know i didn't love it when i went to the iphone 6 but in short order i was like oh this is better and then when i went to the 10 which is again slightly larger i was like yeah it's fine it's fine i i was skeptical about the size it's fine and so i am one of those people who who came along and like the 10 size is fine i don't want the 10r or the 10s max because i have tried plus phones before they don't that's a bridge too far for me but uh so some people have a totally legit like i literally can't use anything more than the se i do think there's a group of people i also saw somebody on my twitter feed the other day who said um i'm just gonna stick with what i've got because i uh i don't want to give up my physical home button and my thought and i didn't reply to the person but i thought oh brother like can i get

left you're just you're just you're just resisting you're just resisting change is what you're doing there because the physical home button uh is was great and all but i don't miss it in the least you just have to adapt and there the fact is a lot of people don't want to change and they they are super resistant to it and they're grumpy about it so i'm not saying there isn't legitimate complaint about about size stuff yep um but i am saying apple is doing cold analysis of this and we've we've talked about this in other contexts, Mike, on this show about how, like we talked about, I think in the context of like high-end Mac users,

people who are doing web development on Pro Max and things like that, where it's like, I get that every time Apple makes a product segmentation decision that leaves people out, those people who get left out are mad. You be mad like you're absolutely upset like you have bought into this and then they don't make what you want anymore right and there's this feeling too that like when you when a business is catering to you you feel good nobody likes it when a business says your business isn't worth it to us. Your business is not welcome here.

Nobody likes that. We just had that, to go on a little side note here, we just had that with a payment system that Relay has used for a while to pay its hosts, where they're pivoting. And one of the ways they're pivoting is, all the ways you use our service are not our path forward so we're shutting it all down and you need to leave right and it's like that sucks it sucks to be told thank you for your patronage but your business is not important to us we don't want then again then again from the business's perspective they need to stay in business and grow their business and sometimes people get left behind when they make the right business decision. And maybe Apple will get bitten by this. Maybe it turns out there is a whole

category that wants a small phone. But I think what's happening is the SE was kept around not because it was a small phone, but because it was cheap to make. And they will continue to try and make a cheap phone, but the size wasn't the point of it so much as the price. And that Apple thinks there's way more opportunity in selling larger phones to people. Now, are they overcorrecting for the fact that Samsung got there first with the Galaxy Note? Maybe, but I'll remind everybody that the single best year Apple has ever had was the year the 6 came out, because that was when the 6 Plus came out. And so both phones were larger than the iPhone 5S. And there was a huge either pent-up demand from people who wanted to buy an iPhone but didn't want the small screen, or for people who were waiting for a new iPhone and the large screen motivated them to

finally upgrade their old iPhone. But it was a huge year for Apple. And I think Apple learned at that point that big screens talk, big screens sell. And here they are all in on big screens. They've just released three iPhones, two of which have big screens and you know if you don't like big screens that kind of sucks because they're not they're not pandering to you know they're not catering to you anymore but are they wrong i don't think they are and i'm i say that as somebody who does not want a max or a 10r i think the market has shown that people like big screen phones. They just do. And more people like big screen phones than don't.

I mean, it totally sucks, right? Like if you are, and I feel for you, and it's a shame. But there's one thing that I wanted to mention. Like it's something that frustrates me a little bit, that somehow this argument gets equated to gender, which I find peculiar. Like, I've seen a lot of pieces over the last week that are saying that Apple doesn't care about women anymore

because they don't make small phones. And I don't think that this is accurate. I know many women who love plus and max size phones. Like, my wife, who is a tiny person, loves her iPhone 10, which is bigger than the 5 that she was coming from. And she had to adapt and did. And I get that there are definite issues with pocket sizes and stuff like that. Totally understand that.

But I think that equating it purely to gender seems wrong to me. I think it's just people. There are people who like smaller phones of all shapes and sizes of all walks of life. I would also say that from the market perspective, if it was true that women didn't like large phones, that would mean half the market didn't like large phones, which would mean that the market didn't like large phones which would mean that the market wouldn't favor large phones and the market favors large phones so i think that market data would show you that there are that lots of people like large phones and that includes men and women yes um i i do think it's worth pondering that, right? Like, does this skew the phone market in general away from phones that women are more likely to use?

And I'm sure there's some truth in that. But to your point, it's way more complicated than that because your wife, your wife is a tiny person with a big phone. I think there are also arguments that like pockets on women's clothing are so non-existent or small that women have purses. And when you've got a purse, you might as well have a large phone. I think that was always my argument with Lauren, um, getting the Apple watch was at some point she could actually get a big phone because she isn't caring. She doesn't have to carry her phone around anymore if she's got a pocket for it because she gets texts on her watch. And then when she does want to use her phone, she could have a bigger phone.

So I think that there's a lot of complexity here. I think it's something to watch to see if there are some sort of fundamental biases that are creeping in. But I think you're right that this is a, this is a much more complex issue. And that if it was really true that half of the population was rejecting large phones, then we would see it in the rejection of large phones as a category. And we haven't seen it.

So, you know, and again, who knows may turn out of that way, but just my belief is that like, I get like if you are in that bucket but i don't think that we need to like skew it one way or another it's just people right people like them people don't and you know that that's kind of my feeling towards the hot takes and if you're somebody who is swimming against the tide there who really likes the small phone and I know lots of people who do, including large men who I know who like the SE, right? It's

not just women. It's men too. There are people who don't like large phones. I feel for them because this is definitely the trend. And I would love it if Apple had a product range that included a smaller phone, and maybe they will. But for this year, anyway, that is not what they did. The 10 is as small as it comes, and the 10 is larger than any standard sized iPhone they've ever made. So this is where we are. And this is a market trend. And you know what? It maybe is fashion a little bit too. And I will tell you, money talks. So if Apple keeps this up, they're doing it because it's successful financially. If Apple hits a little bit of an iPhone bump here because they're looking at the data and

realizing people are buying the iPhone 8 and the iPhone 7 more than they did before, and they start to suspect that it's because they pushed the size thing too far, they will react to that. They will course correct if it's worth they pushed the size thing too far, they will react to that. They will course correct if it's worth it to do so. Yeah. So if you're upset about small phones and hoping that they're going to bring small phones back, just pay attention to the next earnings report. If the earnings are up, the iPhone sales are up, then I think you may have to transition

in some way. There's still hope. I feel like there's still hope that there will be a new iphone se next year maybe um or the or the year after but i i keep feeling like what it's going to be is it's going to be an iphone 7 that's what i think i think they will do another se but the se line will just keep swallowing up the last size so yeah it'll be the last design generation so the five will go away right so that ip that iPhone 5 size design, which was the SE, and it will become the iPhone 6 size, right? Which is what is the 7 and 8.

Because there won't be an iPhone 9 next year, right? That's not going to happen. They will all, right? Then that design will go away most likely because they'll have so many phones that they can push down that are 10 shaped and sized and featured that I reckon they'll bring out an SE then.

So it'd be the iPhone SE, which could be the iPhone SE probably. Sure. Because there'll be nothing for a while and then it will be that size. I'll say I'd give it 50-50 that what they'll do next year is release an iPhone 9

that's just an upgraded iPhone 8. Off cycle, maybe. And that's instead of calling it the SE, they'll just call it the 9 because it's a better number and it's right below the 10 it's possible that they might call it by any other name right like it's but you know in the end yeah it'll be a it'll be something shaped like a 678 and with the a12 processor and it'll be a lower price and it'll sit on the price list yeah for years for years um just want to touch on the apple watch as well a little bit you know i think the biggest thing here the biggest story is just about expansion of capability like you know this this is the the

thing that's going on with with the apple watch and i've been seeing a lot of developers getting excited about the new complications and how much more data they're going to allow. And it really does feel like for the kind of the daily use cases of what people are using Apple Watches for, the way that the data is going to be displayed to you feels like it's going to be a big deal, especially when you think as well that watchOS 5 is introducing the ability for third parties to talk to the Siri watch face as well, as well as all of these new complication types that are coming with Series 4. Yeah, and this is going to, because the new complication types are part of the new watch,

you're going to get all these watch app updates that are happening based on WatchOS 5. And then we'll get a second wave. Some of them will be out now like with the first crack at it because they've they've really quickly done that but um you will see more updates over the fall where those apps are going to get further support for the new watch not just watch os 5 but the new complications and then that'll that'll i think it's an exciting time to be an apple watch user i think there's a lot of great stuff about it, about watchOS 5 and what it enables.

It feels like watchOS 5 is the first, and part of this comes from me being an Overcast user, but basically, I have to detail all of this, but watchOS 5 and the new version of Overcast that's coming out today, I was able to do a couple of months ago the thing that I thought I would be able to do when the Apple Watch came out and it took all of this time,

but I'm able to do it now, which is listen to podcasts streamed from my watch to AirPods while also getting interval training from a separate app and running. This is the future we were promised. Totally works. It totally works. It's amazing. And watchOS 5 This is the future we were promised. Totally works. It totally works.

It's amazing. So, and watchOS 5 basically is the stuff that enabled apps to finally be able to do some of this more complex stuff that they're doing. And the AirPods support is way more reliable than it used to be as well. So it's, I think it's very exciting and we'll have more Apple Watch stuff to talk about

as we go forward too, even though you don't have one, but you'll have one in the house and I'll have one in the house. Yeah yeah there are two reasons that this watch is coming into the home one because i want to get one for adina because i think she loves her watch and i think she's due for an upgrade considering she's held on to the series zero for so long but the other is i want to be able to play with and test it and kind of that what's going to happen is i'm going to spend like a weekend with it and then she's going to take it yeah it's like john it's like uh john syracuse's

wife having the iphone 10 yeah i need to just squeeze everything i can out of it for a couple of days and then it's all hers it feels it feels like a pretty good deal to me i think she seems happy about it enough anyway well she's choosing the color uh gold we're very intrigued to see what that's going to look like the gold aluminium aluminium, because she has a silver one. But I was kind of pushing it a bit like, branch out a little bit, maybe try something new. So we're going with gold aluminium, see how that fits into the family. Today's show is brought to you by our friends over at Pingdom. Pingdom are the best because they help keep your site and our site online.

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from Pingdom every week told us that everything was going faster again. So it's good to know, right? Like it's not just the immediate stuff. They're also tracking this stuff so you can see how things are loading over time and can see trends, which is really, really great. If you have a site of any size, you need Pingdom. They have a no-fuss approach to get you started. You just give them the URL that you want to monitor and they take care of the rest. Go to pingdom.com slash RelayFM for a 14-day free trial with no credit card required. Then when you sign up, use the code UPGRADE at checkout and you'll get a huge 30% off your first invoice so thanks to pingdom for their support of this show and relay fm so jason let's talk about ios 12 ios 12 comes out today any moment any moment as we record this what are your overall opinions on ios 12 as a release kind of just like very top, top level stuff.

Um, it is. And Federico's review says this, it is the most stable beta process I've ever been through for iOS. And it is, uh, it's smooth. They said that they focused on performance.

I've seen that. I'm really looking forward, uh, to installing this on the phones in my house because my son is using a 5S and my daughter is using a 6S. So I'm really interested in seeing how well it does with those models. Oh, yeah. I mean, that's going to be telling, right?

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I've only used it uh well i've used it on my iphone i've used it on both my ipads basically since beta 2 i haven't had any instant crashing apps you know i haven't had any battery issues it's been super solid i've been really pleased with it um this has been like the only beta process of all time and i kind of forgot that i was using the beta because it was just it's been super super stable so i think people are really going to love the way this makes their devices feel you know and there's all this testing and again we reference federico's review again there's a in the stability section you know he bought like some old devices to test it out on and he was super

impressed and you know has a bunch of like benchmarks and statistics in there about kind of how this is running on older devices and it seems like this is going to be a great update for everyone, not just the people who are buying the new devices at the end of the week, which it has kind of been for the last few years. It's like, you know, this is a great version of the operating system, especially if you have the new phone, right? And that isn't kind of the way that this one's being positioned. It isn't the way that this one's been developed. And I think that's going to be great for Apple. I think it's going to change some people's opinions on

what iOS kind of means to them as an upgrade, rather than like oh, it makes my phone worse. This could be starting a trend of it makes my phone better. And this is kind of like at scale, not just if you have the new stuff. I love the notification management stuff i think this is one of my absolute favorites you know i was thinking today like what do i like about ios 12

and this is one of the last features that i wrote down because i kind of forgotten about it because it's become so normal for me now yeah this is the problem with using a beta since june is you have to remember what you really loved about it three months ago. Yeah, and the notification stuff is definitely part of it because it feels like the way it should have always been. Having notifications from specific apps grouped together and you tap them to see them

so you can see more notifications kind of at a glance to be able to have some notifications go into notification center but not notify you when you're using the device like that deliver quietly as it's called it's just wonderful you know being able to kind of like put slightly offending apps or less important apps in a kind of temporary jail right like i'm gonna put you in the quiet section and then maybe eventually i'll turn it off and i have done more notification triaging over the last three months than i've probably done in the last three years because being able to control notifications kind of from

a kind of a blanket level right from notification center is fantastic i love it yeah the my favorite feature is the unsubscribe yeah where basically you can get a get a notification be like i never want to see this again right like i never want to see this news headline i never want to see and they the apps have the ability to have it be a link to their notification uh granular notification settings which is fine i've used that too where i've an app has been pushing too much to me and i'm like this is this has to stop and i can tap on that and say no no turn off these and then keep that one um and then being able to send things just to notification center the silent kind of notification that's good i do that with a few things where i've got like my um my sprinklers in my backyard are on a smart uh sprinkler, which I don't know if I've even

mentioned on this show. But anyway, I have a smart irrigation controller. I was surprised at how it wasn't. I expected them to cost a fortune and they didn't. It was reasonable. And I was putting in new sprinklers and we did it. Those go to my notification center. So I can pull down notification center and see what's going on, see if the sprinklers ran. But they never get in my face. I have to go look for them. And I really like that. I didn't know whether I would like that.

And because they're collapsed, all I see is that here's the Ratio sprinkler update stack. And if I want to know more, I tap and then I see them all. Like, that's perfect. That's exactly what I want. I want that. I want to clear that out of my face, but it's there if I want to get to it. And so, yeah, it is, it is just, um, the first few weeks you use it, you'll be doing some triage, but it is, it's like training spam in email or something. Like after you do it, you'll be delighted with the improved quality of your notifications. Once you, every time you get an annoying notification, instead of going, oh, that was annoying, you go unsubscribe. Take me, I'd never want to see that one again. And then they just go away.

It's great. Kind of a similar thing, do not disturb. You know, like there are a bunch of a similar vein do not disturb you know like there are a bunch of different changes to do not disturb like the bedtime stuff i haven't really gotten on board of that what i love two things i love that i have the quick actions in control center so i can just for like do it for an hour or i can you know like press and hold a 3d touch and it just oh like just will jump in and i can say oh until the end of this event which is on my calendar like all of that stuff i really really like that um i've been very very happy

with the additional functions and controls that i got with uh with control with do not disturb especially in control center this year i'm really pleased about that yeah i want to bring up uh passwords because that's something that is still uh going on that uh i think one password's doing their official release today on this but the idea first off that third-party password uh managers are officially supported so that if you're in a safari and you've got a password and one password, it prompts you. Like, I know this password. And you're like, all right. And it fills it in.

Which you could do before using the system keychain, but not if you were using one password. And so now you can do that, which is great. The auto-suggestion of strong passwords by the system is also great. So if you're in a password prompt, it's like, here's a crazy long password that you could use here. And you say yes, and it saves it, and that's done. So entering passwords on iOS generally has suddenly become vastly easier than it was before

for me as a 1Password user, especially. I have some things in my system keychain, but I have so many things stored in 1Password. And 1Password still has its place because there are a lot of things that this doesn't support. I don't have credit card codes, and I have my one-time password numbers in there, and I have a bunch of other information autofilling. So 1Password is still there. If you're not using 1Password, it's better than it was before to just use Apple system stuff, which is great. And I think for most people, that's good enough. But if you are a user of an extra password manager kind

of thing, that's a way better experience now than it used to be too. Screen time is a nice addition. I like poking around and I've enjoyed over the beta process, kind of just going in and out and looking at that. It's been pretty rocky over the beta process. It keeps getting reset and stuff. Really, for me, it's like I was just looking at it and being like, okay, I see how this works. But it's from now that I'm going to

start spending more time, now the iOS 12 is out, looking into screen time and trying to analyze the data that goes into there. Like I'm very keen to see how I'm using my devices and see what answers to questions

that I didn't ask that it could have, because I think that that's going to be a valuable thing for me going forward. But it's kind of like from now is where I'm paying the most attention to it. Yeah, because of the resets during the beta process, I do think it's going to be huge.

I think this is the one that I put down as the, you know, there will be so many think pieces about our iPhone usage and our iPad usage once people start looking at stats. Every writer for every newspaper, website, whatever, is going to pitch a think piece about, oh, now that we know that I use this, or I gave up on social media because, or all of those things, it's going to happen because we're going to get that data. And I think it's going to be a phenomenon. I could be wrong,

but I feel like putting that data in the hands of people and parents with their kids' usage and all that, I think it's going to be big i think i think it will be a a uh it will change how we view how we're using ios um maybe for the better maybe for the worst but i think it's going to be a big a big thing oh by the way mike this just in breaking breaking ios 12 as we record this is now live we are in the ios 12 era hooray oh isn't that exciting do we sing auld lang syne now the ball has dropped in new york city um podcast app like i use i use overcast but uh because i'm a nerd and we nerd tech nerds use third-party podcast apps but apple's podcast app is the most popular podcast app in the world. Not on iOS, not on like

Apple's platforms in the world across all platforms because Google has done a really crappy job of supporting podcasts in Android up to now. I judge Android on this one. Like podcasts, I think could be way more popular if Google cared. And they don't. Not that there aren't great podcast apps on Android and not that Google isn't sort of trying, but they've tried so many ways. Anyway, it's a rant. I find it amazing that given Apple's iPhone, overall smartphone market share, that podcast

is still clearly the biggest podcast player in the world, but it is. They made a bunch of great updates that it's worth calling out. MP3 chapter support is in there now. So if you're on iOS 12 listening to Upgrade in the podcast app, you'll be like, oh, look, what are all of these? And it's like, yeah, we have been putting podcast chapters in there to break our segments up for a while now. With artwork. With artwork and everything. And you can see it now in the podcast app.

So that's exciting. You should give it a look if, and you can see it now in the podcast app. So that's exciting. You should give it a look if you're listening now on iOS 12 with the podcast app. There are customizable skip buttons so you can change your skip duration, which is a feature, again, that the nerdy apps have had for a while that the podcast app has now. The watch app

is there, which everybody was like, come on, I want to do podcasts on the watch. And including on the cellular model, it'll just stream a podcast. So, uh, that, and, and the data sync. So that's good. It's a huge step forward. It's way better than it was. And even though the tech nerds among us may be like, well, you know, I'm using pocket

cast Castro overcast, you name it. Um, so many people are using the podcast app and they will get a better podcast experience with this new version. So I'm excited about that. Obviously, we're really excited about that, right? Like, obviously. Yeah.

For good reason. And the photos search is the last one I wanted to mention, which is they didn't actually update the photos app on the Mac almost at all, but they did a bunch of things on iOS, including like a new view that's better. But the big one for me is the search because you can do multiple search terms now in a way you couldn't do before. And my example, and this includes the machine learning categories. So if you want to find something on your phone, a picture picture it is so much better than it used to be

and um the example i'll give is i searched for dog and i got 800 pictures of a dog well dog pictures and then i searched for snow and i got two pictures that had dog and snow they were both pictures of my dog in the snow. And I thought that was like perfect example. Like I want to see that picture of when we took my dog to the snow, search for dog, search for snow, two pictures, both of the same thing. It's like, that is how that's supposed to work. Put in one person, put in another person's name. There's all the pictures of them together. Put a person, you know, and a location, person and a category. Find a picture of your kid with a dog.

And there are all the pictures of your kid with a dog. So iOS photo search, they did a really great job. It is really annoying that that isn't on the Mac, but it is on iOS and it is a fantastic feature and people will find their photos much more easily using it i do have something i don't like about this feature is that you have to search all the words independently for some of these stuff to show so like you should say like if you type search word dog and press enter and then snow and press enter will find it but if you did snow dog it might not find it and i've had this problem and i think that that's wild because it needs to it doesn't want you to search for a text string

there's probably some ui things they could do better there where they could detect that those are two different keywords and separate them and that would be a good improvement for them but it does it does work kind of amazingly well when it works yeah yeah it does but it's just one of those things it's just one of those things that happens every now and then like a new feature is introduced and you have to learn the way the feature works and then it's great right but like my first times using it also well this doesn't work at all like i know there was a picture of like adina in rome or like adina and whatever like i know that this exists but i couldn't find it it's funny i actually don't have any pictures of adina in rome i don't even know why i said that

we've never been to rome but like i was trying but if i would search the two words independently it would find the image but it wouldn't find it on its own and then i blame photos search being bad right that's my initial thing it's like well it's bad because i know this picture exists but it's because i'm not searching in the way that it wants this just in uh users of the workflow app will now find as we record this this has just gone live the uh workflow app has been updated and it's now called shortcuts so if you were wondering how they were going to distribute it that's how they've done it. Because there's been a lot of question about how that was going to happen. So now we know. It's literally just taking the slot of the workflow app.

Yep. Beautiful. Now we all know. So do I have one version of shortcuts on my phone or two versions of shortcuts on my phone now? I have two versions of shortcuts on my phone. I'm sure that's not going to be because I'm in the beta. So let's try and not worry about what that means.

Because you've got the beta, right? Yeah. And it's under a different ID. Yeah. Sure. Okay. I'm sure I'm not going to have any issues there. It'll be fine.

I'm sure that'll be fine. It's fine. Should we talk about shortcuts? Yeah. I mean, shortcuts is the banner feature uh and there are two versions of it which i think there's some lack of clarity i noticed last week about this so first off there's siri shortcuts that are built into the system you don't need to download an app to get and i had somebody was like well why isn't shortcuts the app in the in the os release and the answer is

they decided i think for some really good reasons to put it in the App Store. One is it's already in the App Store, it's workflow, and now it'll be shortcuts. But two is now they can make changes to that and iterate faster than on the OS version, which given app support and stuff is probably a good thing, like to keep being able to tweak it fairly rapidly as this is going on. So you add that from the app store. The main Siri shortcuts, I just wanted to say, my big realization is this is the keyboard shortcuts of touchscreen devices. This is the, you can take anything you do practically on your iPhone and go into settings, Siri, and say,

I want to give this a Siri command to make this thing happen, whatever it is. And you can do it and you record telling Siri what to do it. And then at that point, you can say, ahoy, telephone, do this thing that only I do. And Siri will say, all right, I'm doing that now without any programming, right? That's just in the settings app. I think that alone is huge because it lets you set custom shortcuts for stuff you want to do make Siri way more useful, lets you select sort of like anything you do on your phone on a regular basis that you want to tie to a shortcut that you can just give a voice command and it will do it voice command on your watch or your home pod too right

like i think that alone is a big deal and then if you want to get more complicated and do multiple things at once then you use the shortcuts app to do it and we've talked about how great workflow is and then there's the shortcuts app which is basically workflow with the entire power of apple as a system you know a platform owner behind it so good it's just so so good some of the additional things that you're able to do now programming system stuff like do not disturb it's just wonderful so like i uh i've taken up yoga right and i to myself, I wanted to set up a little shortcut to put in whenever I'm yoga-ing, to put my phone on Do Not Disturb.

And because I don't wear the Apple Watch, I wanted to log everything to the health app because I use my yoga app on my iPad. And because of the fact that health isn't on the iPad, it can't log my workout into the health app. But shortcuts can do it. So what I do is I have a little shortcut that I built that does a couple of things.

It turns my phone on to Do Not Disturb for 30 minutes because you can give it a duration of time. So you say, put me on Do Not Disturb for 30 minutes and log a 30-minute workout in the health app. And you can say it's yoga. So you can build all of these little things. And now that the third-party apps that I use are getting updated and they're adding shortcut support and I can do so much more.

So everyone that I know that's been using this has been trying to do something along the lines of a morning routine-like workflow. So in the morning, you can press it and workflow right so you can like in the morning you can press it and it will give you all the information you want and that kind of stuff and carrot weather got updated so now i can have a visual shortcut of carrot weather with all of its ui in there or an app like p calc where james basically built a it's called a custom intent so you can basically take all of the power of your app or some of the power of your app and build it into shortcuts without shortcuts never needing to open your application

to get the data so james basically built a version of the p count calculator inside of the shortcuts app it's incredible yeah i basically built um in bed lying in bed on Sunday morning, I built a shortcut that looks, because a lot of the stuff that I write, you end up with distances that are in, or temperatures, right? Like things that are in Fahrenheit that should also be listed in Celsius or millimeters, but should also be inches or vice versa. And I built a proof of concept because I need to do more work on it. But it's a shortcut that basically I will type in, in a couple of brackets, a single measure. And then you run the shortcut and it takes the single measurement. It searches for the single measurement

in the document and then plops back out a conversion that lists both measurements. And that's using pCalc to do all the conversions and rounding. And in fact, I pointed out to James that I couldn't round in pCalc. And there was a second pCalc update that adds rounding that was released later that day because James, is he is a machine it's amazing so uh yeah and that's just an example it's from my line of work where i find myself a lot of times having to do conversions of things because i make reference steven and i deal with there's a lot on liftoff too where we have to we mention oh this is this tall or whatever and then and people are like what is that in a real measurement americans and uh and so i built a little i built a little

service basically within workflow that looks for some shorthand and expands it out into um both sets of measurements and uh it's it's awesome yeah and that's just a little morning project while i was drinking my tea. I mean, and then you've got the fact that it works in the HomePod. So like I'm testing an app right now, which I believe is going to come out soon, which is like an app for Toggle,

the time tracking system that I use. And it's like a new interface. It's like in many, many ways better than Toggle's app, but they just added Siri shortcut support in the beta. So now I'm able to set up voice actions for my timers so for example this morning jason i said ahoy telephone show prep upgrade and it set a timer with the project which is show prep added the tag which is upgrade turned it on it was going and then when i was done i was like oh hi telephone stop my toggle timers stops my timers this is i'm so excited i cannot explain how excited i am like it this there is so much stuff and like i've seen some things that some people are working on and it's like

i am so enthused about this like now like better than ever i have a way of resuming overcast because now i don't have to pull down on control center and see like did my phone throw out overcast like right it says it's music now i just hold the side button down i say resume overcast immediately it starts playing where i was in the last show like i am so excited about this it's amazing yeah yeah it's it's uh it's only going to get better as more stuff supports it too that's the thing i had um i'm not sure if i told this story or not but i was building a complicated workflow for my charts and uh for my apple financial charts on iOS. And the one hangup I was having was how to transfer something to my web server via FTP

because transmit the FTP client that I use on iOS is going away. Turns out there's a command in workflow. So in shortcuts, that is basically like issue an ssh command to a remote server which is like super scary yeah but i was like oh i could just use this to ftp my file it totally works it's amazing so and let alone the fact that there's now all these javascript actions that you can do to execute in safari like it is you know federico mentioned this a bunch best timeline

we are in it it is it is the best timeline for this for for this case this is this is so i hope i'm very excited by this and i hope uh people out there who maybe have not experimented with this stuff give it a try um the way of thinking i so david sparks we should mention is doing a uh uh uh a course basically yeah that was in follow-out did we did you mention in the follow-up okay i'm going to i'm going to follow back back to the out to earlier in the episode and say um those kinds of things are good to do and i know there are going to be more is uh is is uh is matthew doing yeah he's on a youtube channel about this too so the reason i mentioned all of this is shortcuts app is not super easy like if you want to go beyond a few basic steps,

it's actually kind of like Mac automator where you start and you're like, Oh, I could do this. And then you're like, but what about this? And you hit a brick wall and it's all possible. All things are possible. Sometimes it takes more steps than you'd like, but all things are possible. Basically inside shortcuts app, you would be surprised but it is you gotta you gotta learn it a little bit so if you bounce off of it but you're interested i highly recommend looking at matthew cassinelli's youtube channel or giving sparky's course a try because um once you start thinking like i had i I had the pros, right? Like I got to ask Federico when I needed help, which is nice. Not everybody gets to do that, but he showed me the way, right?

Federico showed me the way to think about workflow. And so, uh, there are shortcuts, ways of thinking. And once you get it, you're like, oh no, I can do anything now. Right. And everything kind of opens up. A child could do it. Oh my God. So, uh, I just say that it's a

little persistence if uh i hope people are intrigued enough by this to try the shortcuts app to do some stuff on ios that they want to do in one step but you may need to read up a little bit and think about it a little if you want to do something complicated because it's very powerful but sometimes i would say non-intuitive and And again, we'll reference it. There's also the master, Federico's work. He has a tag on the Max Stories website which is called Shortcuts, which I've also put in the show notes, which collects up all the coverage that they have,

which references Shortcuts. And that's going to be all the articles that they've got. I know he's working on tons more stuff. And also the Shortcuts chapter of the review is also a really good guide and includes a lot of examples, which was kind of a new thing for him, which is really cool. So you can download the examples as well from the website. And once you've downloaded the examples, and this is how I've learned a lot of it, is when you look at the example, you'll be like, oh, I see how that works. I know how.

And then you have an idea, you know, like I built my favorite shortcut that I've built. It's called show prep. And what it does is I tell, I say which show I'm currently want to prep for. So say it's in, I will tap it and say, which show and I say upgrade, and then it will start a toggle timer for upgrade and then open the upgrade Google document for me to start working in. Right. And it's just because I had a couple of different shortcuts that I was looking at, which had like fragments of this.

And then I worked out myself to kind of like bring it all together. So there's a bunch of super, super exciting stuff that you can do with this. And we're really lucky that there are a selection of people that are trying their best to teach other people about it. Looking at samples is the best way to learn. That's how I learned to do scripting. It's how I learned to do automator stuff. It is by far the best way to do it because it's open source in the best way where you can literally just see all the steps. Like, oh, I see how they did that and then you can modify it to do what you needed to do it's great like without doubt

shortcuts is the biggest and most important and most exciting thing that's happening in ios 12 and if you haven't paid attention to it start paying attention to it because you have the ability now to make siri as good as you want it to be. We've all complained about Siri. You can make Siri your own Siri now. That is a thing that is happening. That is a thing that is coming. So, pay attention. Alright, today's show

we'll do some Ask Upgrade before we wrap up today and today's show and hashtag Ask Upgrade is brought to you by our friends at Squarespace. They let you easily create a website for your next idea with the ability to grab a unique domain name, take advantage of award-winning templates, and so much more.

Like if you've just thought to yourself, hey, I know what I'm doing with shortcuts. I want to start a shortcuts website. Squarespace is a great place to do it because they have all of the functionality that you're looking for. You can create a blog. You can create portfolios.

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Their plans start at just $12 a month, but I want you to go and try out Squarespace for free. And their free trial was awesome. You go to squarespace.comcom upgrade and you can try it out right now and you can you can have complete access to everything you can try everything out and you just when you want to set your website out to the world you sign up for a plan but their trial was awesome because you get to go in and customize everything and see how it looks before you commit that's i love their trial it's really great. But I can get you 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain, and I'll also show you support for the show by doing this, if you use the code UPGRADE at checkout. So that's

squarespace.com slash upgrade, and the code UPGRADE to get yourself 10% off your first purchase. Our thanks to Squarespace for their support of this show. Squarespace, make your next move, make your next website. So, our first hashtag ask upgrade question comes from Pavel this week. Pavel wants to know, what is this question about 720p resolution for the iPhone XR? How does this affect watching 1080p video on YouTube or Netflix? So, in case you don't know about this, the iPhone XR's resolution is 1792 by 828, so it doesn't have enough pixels

to watch 1080p video content. Yeah, 1080p means 1,080 lines in the tall direction, not the wide direction, and the XR only has 828 pixels in that orientation which means that it's better than a 720p display but not as good as a 1080 so it literally you could theoretically show a 1080 video on it and it would have to scale it down probably gonna just show the 720p video right yeah so you know when you watch stuff on youtube and netflix they'll show you a 720p version

i would expect in most instances you're not going to notice this because of the screen size you know the screen is still small right like the the people with the very very very best eyesight might see a difference but i think you're going to be fine, honestly. But it is something to note. And this is something we don't know yet because we haven't had the time to try it. But my expectation is you're going to be fine. You'll still be able to watch videos, but they're just not going to be at 1080p. They'll be at 720p. Screen's still going to be great.

But it's something that is new. iPhones have not done this for a while. I'm not 100% sure why this is the case, but this is what it is. This is what that panel is. David has said, with the iPhone SE now being dead, how much longer do you think the iPod Touch

of its A8 chip will stick around? Also, as well, just to note, getting rid of the iPod Touch gets rid of the iPod. The iPod's gone. It's the only iPod left. So what do you you think about this do you think it's going to stick around i would love to see apple reinvent the ipod somehow i would i think that would be great to keep that product around as an ios device maybe it's like uh less than an iPad mini. Certainly something like the lowest end iOS device, something small.

But I kind of don't see it. I kind of don't see it. It would be great. I would love the iPod Touch to get an update, but it's hard to see it happening. And again, my guess is that what we said about small phones goes for the iPod Touch too, which is there may just not be enough sales for it to ever be updated.

But it does feel like we're perilously close to the point where the iPod Touch is either going to need to be updated or die. I feel like next year they won't support the A8 anymore. I feel like that's going to need to be updated or die. I feel like next year they won't support the A8 anymore. I feel like that's going to go away. I feel like this is probably the last year of this iPod Touch revision. So whatever they're going to do, they're going to make their decision

about it, I think. Tyler said, will the iPhone XR support landscape mode like the Plus and Max phones do with split layouts for mail settings calendar do you know this jason it seems like this is the thing that people can't answer right now and i wondered if you'd seen anything yet i think it will i don't know that for sure but i would assume given that the size of the screen that it's gonna it's going to but i don't know for sure because everything that i've seen so far seems to indicate that it is being treated like a plus phone. So like I've seen developers talking about that, like that it will be treated like a plus phone.

So I am expecting that it will get everything like the landscape mode. But I will also tell you that having been a plus user for a long, long time, that landscape mode is not very useful in most instances. I'm hoping that now that there's going to be more phones that support it that that developers might find more interesting things to do with it but so far it's that was that's been a bust that feature really yeah joshua said i'm on a two to three year iphone upgrade cycle and currently i have a success do you feel like the

10s represents a good bet for the future three years, or would I be better served waiting one more year for a bigger update? I know that the conventional wisdom here is that if you want to wait for a bigger update, the S revision is the year to sit out. I'm going to say the opposite, which is, first off, the S revision is Apple's chance to refine the 10. So it's a little better than the 10. And the other thing is the 10 was such a big leap forward for Apple. I would say this is a little bit like saying, well, I could get the 6S, but should I wait for the 7? Like the 6 changed the game and then it was iterative 6S, 7, 8, right? Well, the 10 changed the game. This is the new game.

Apple's going to ride the 10 for a while. So I would say I wouldn't wait. If it's time to upgrade, upgrade now. I don't think there's going to be some mind-blowing new phone to replace the 10S next year that's a huge advancement.

I feel like Apple's going to be iterating for a while on this stuff. There'll be an update next year, right? Remember how phones look like the iPhone 6 for like four years? Phones are going to look like the iPhone X for the next four years. And they're going to get a little bit better every year.

There's always going to be a better phone next year, Josh. Always. That will always happen. You will be coming from a 6S. Your mind will be blown with the 10S. Just go for it. Just go for it. Landon says, it's 2018.

Why does Apple still have to take their store offline to launch new products? I think this is a PR thing now. You know, and I think it also, it helps them. People can't buy stuff and they're putting things in. I'm sure it's useful. People can't buy stuff and they're putting things in. I'm sure it's useful. People can't buy stuff when they're about to turn off some of the stuff. I just think that, like, it's a whole part of the thing now, right?

Like, you know, even if their technology allowed them to just do a real quick, like, changeover, I think that still put the store down. Yeah, I think you're right. And finally today, James says, what do you think is happening with Face ID and landscape? Do you think this is going to be revealed in iOS 12.1? There was nothing mentioned about this with the new phones or iOS 12. Do you think this is going to be something that will come out when iPad's released?

Or is it not going to be in this generation's phones? Or will the iPads have multiple cameras? What do you think, Jason? Because we have no idea we have no idea i can't envision the ipad requiring you to hold it a certain way to unlock it right that seems terrible and i still can't imagine four cameras something i mean you know are they gonna say oh hey your your ipad is in a keyboard So just type your passcode instead. And that's good enough. Like I have a hard time seeing it. So my hope is that it will either have two sensor bars or will be

able to work in either orientation. That's, that's my hope. My hope is, is that one of those things will be true and that it's a feature that's necessary for the iPad, but it's not necessary for the iPhone. And so they didn't make that change, but they have to make it for the iPad. I would be surprised if they announced the iPads and said, this update will also now work on the iPhone 10 and 10S and 10R. Not saying it's impossible, but my gut feeling is that there will be something different about the iPad hardware that will enable this, and it's not just a software thing, that they will design a different sensor, design a different camera, design a multi-camera system, something. Or an update to the neural engine.

Yeah, something that they'll do in the iPad Pro that allows it to do this because they know that people are going to be viewing this in a couple of different orientations, not to mention holding it in a bunch of different ways, right? Because it's a much larger device

than an iPhone. So Face ID on it, I don't think is just as simple as aping the Face ID on the iPhone X series, right? I think it's going to be more complicated and they're going to have more things that they will have had to do to get Face ID functioning on the iPad Pro. I think it is safe to say the plot thickens with this one.

Oh boy, when will we know? No rumors yet about when we will know what's going on with the iPad. That hasn't happened yet. So we get to start the cycle anew because it may be mike it it's possible that you will have a chance to tie me because we'll do another draft it's possible don't get my hopes up no no probably not they'll just do a press release yeah let's see if you want to find our show notes for this week's episode there's a great place to do that well first off your podcast app should have them i would hope all the all the good podcast apps all the great podcast apps but if for any reason you want to go to our website because it is lovely you can go to relay.fm upgrade 211 and find everything there you want to find us online a few places to do that you can go to sixcolors.com and you can find jason's work jason hosts many

shows here on relay fm you go to relay.f. You'll also find shows that I do there too as well. Obviously, the next couple of weeks, there's a lot of our shows are focusing on iOS and the new phones and the new watches. So it's a great time to maybe pick up a new show that maybe you haven't checked out before. Maybe something like Mac Power Users or Automators or Under the Radar.

There's a couple of selections for you about Rocket maybe or maybe Connected. There's so many. All the great shows i've heard are over at relay.fm except for all the great ones that are over on the incomparable as well hey jason the incomparable.com for a bunch of wonderful shows about pop culture and fun there's lots of fun stuff over on the incomparable like total party kill for example jason is on twitter he's at jsnell. I would like you to follow me on Instagram. I am imike, I-M-Y-K-E on Instagram. I'm trying to use Instagram more

because I love Instagram and I want to contribute more to Instagram, so you can find me there. There was something you may have missed. I did a whole behind the scenes last week of what it's like to be me on an iPhone keynote day and I saved that on my instagram profile as like a

highlight thing that they do so you can save stories as a highlight so it started at 1 p.m and ended at 1 30 a.m so you can see what it's like for mike to prepare and record and produce and edit and post an episode of upgrade that's what i did for the entire day it was people told me that they liked that so i'm trying to get into that a little bit more even jason i've recorded myself doing the intro and put that in the story as well so you can see what it's like when mike says from you can see what it's like it is it's in in living color um thank you so much to our sponsors this week the fine folk at squarespace pingdom and green chef and thank you so much for listening and we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell.

Goodbye, everybody.