Upgrade - 212: The Chocolate Phone Is No Good

Episode Date: September 24, 2018

The iPhone XS and Apple Watch Series 4 are here, and Myke and Jason offer their first impressions of all the new devices. Plus macOS Mojave arrives and Apple sets some interesting standards for its forthcoming video service.

from relay fm this is upgrade episode 212 today's show is brought to you by pingdom pdf pem from smile and ero my name is mike hurley and i am joined by jason snell hi jason snell hi mike hurley it's the temperature in in Fahrenheit at which water boils and it's the area code of New York City. It's good old 212. Great. Thanks. Is this your new thing now? Like a number fact at the beginning of every episode? Actually, yeah. We're going to have a little Chris Breen stinger that we're going to drop in that's going to be like, upgrade number fact. Boo. You just did it. You just did it. Our hashtag snow talk question this week came in from many people, but Magnus was the first.

Jason, Magnus wants to know, where is your dock located on your Macintosh? I did ask for this, I suppose. And I was surprised on Accidental Tech Podcast a few weeks ago that I was reminded. I think I knew this before that John Syracuse was like me in this way. I believe I am a right hand dock person. And I used to be before they took the feature away, a pinned at the bottom right hand dock person where the dock would be in the bottom right corner and grow up

from there um and why the reason why is kind of lost to history other than to say that i am one of those people who feels that there's way more um extra space left to right on my screens than there is top to bottom and that i i just have for a long time now run it on the right side and therefore that's where it goes that's i'm a dock on dock on right person and not hidden um not hidden no magnification do you have any stacks or folders or anything in the dock i so what i have is i'm experimenting right now just in the last couple of days with this mojave feature where it actually puts recent apps in the dock. Oh, like the iPad?

Yeah, which is also nice because it distinguishes between running apps in the dock that are not normally in the dock. They live in that same space. Oh, nice. So I don't have Skype in my dock. And when I launch Skype, you know, it goes in the dock. But right now, Skype and Audio Hijack and my IRC client are all in the dock, but they're in that other section of apps that aren't normally overheated. I'm super surprised to hear that those three applications are not in your dock, considering you must use them multiple times a day, every single day.

I use them specifically for these tasks, and I just launch them with LaunchBar, or when I get my act together um something like keeper maestro to sort of make it even simpler but no i don't keep those in my dock because i want my dock to be tidy i don't have that many apps in my dock i've only got like eight apps in my dock um so so yeah so i'm using that right now i do have i have a also in that doc, a link to screen share with my server, my Mac mini server. So I can click on that and then its window appears, which is very convenient because that is otherwise a multi-step process where you have to connect to the server and all that. And so I made a shortcut for that.

And then I've got a, yeah, my downloads folder and my dropbox folder are in there too as and formatted as stacks yeah i like stacks that's like a it's a good feature i always use that i love the downloads it was a great feature put downloads in there i haven't played around mojave yet but i really don't think that anyone's going to use the desktop stacks feature i just don't it is solving a problem for people that don't think that anyone's going to use the desktop stacks feature i just don't it is solving a problem for people that don't want the problem to be solved i think right potentially i mean some people are just hopelessly disastrously messy and it might help them because they they don't have to do anything an organization happens i am a little disappointed with um the decisions they made about what stacks get created.

Because the other day, I had four PDFs out on my desktop. And when I went into desktop stacks mode, it just threw them in this other folder. I'm like, guys, I got a bunch of PDFs. Why don't you make a PDFs thing? No, that's not a thing that they want to do. So I don't get that.

That's a little frustrating. But I see your point. I think fundamentally the issue is, the one that gets me is, I was listening to Stephen talk about this on Connected last week, that you can also organize it by tags. And I was trying to imagine the person who tags all their files,

but doesn't organize them. Like, who is that person who every file gets tagged, but then they just throw them on the desktop and they're like, whatever, I don't care. I've done all I need to do. Who is that person? Right? So that'll work now with this. You can do it that way.

That's great. But who is the person who is so devoted to tagging things and yet does not care about filing things? I don't understand that if you are that person please write in because i have some questions for you we have a lot of questions we may send you may refer you to someone um yeah so we'll see we'll see how people use it but i do think there are people who have basically declared uh desktop bankruptcy and might get their desktop back a little bit. Sure. Like I changed, I used to,

I got a lot of crap on the internet when I would post screenshots and people would be like, look at all that stuff you've got unorganized on your desktop. And it's like, my desktop's kind of like my inbox. I use it. But I did after that, the most recent time, I did actually change

so that my desktop is now sorted by name, which basically means it's on a grid and I can't drag something and have it just float randomly. It goes on the right side and in kind of a grid and an order. And I was like, okay, all right, I'll do that. And I actually have liked that.

So I can see somebody in an even more precarious situation than I was saying uh yes turn on stacks because at least then there it seems like there's some order to the chaos so the problem i have with stacks is that then you look in like an open or save dialogue box and you just see the whole mess like the stacks stacks don't become virtual folders or something they're just in finder so every other place you look in the desktop it's a disaster still yes i feel like that would break my kind of mental model of how

things are arranged yeah no it's it's weird and then the other thing about stacks since we're there's like a little mini mojave check in here in snell talk but um when you click on an item in a you click on a stack and it opens and it pushes everything around on the screen which is weird i wish it opened in a floater instead but then you you click, if you, like you can scroll through items in a stack, which is great. And then you click on the item that you want and you can, then you can like double click it. You can drag it somewhere or you can hit space bar and open Quick Look, which is great. Except the moment you move your cursor out of where it's hovering over that file, it goes back to just being a stack. So like you open it in Quick Look

and you're like, oh yeah, I want to, I don't know, move to the next page or press play or whatever. I want to interact with it in Quick Look in any way. You move your mouse, it goes, boop, it's gone. Like this doesn't, this is not entirely well thought out. So there are issues there. But anyway, to answer Magnus' question

and everybody else's question, right-hand dock, I don't know why. It's for a long time. I wouldn't change it now. The only issue I have with the right-hand dock is that if I'm in a situation where I want to play around with having a second monitor, it is the worst if I want the second monitor to be on the right. or mac os does is um if you if you write doc obviously it puts it at the farthest right point which means that now that my doc if i have a second monitor to the right now my doc is like i can't be found it's just so far so far to the east that it can't be spotted by telescopes so that's no good that is that is a real downside of having the doc on the right that has bitten me every now and then in the last 15 years but other than that i like dock on the right that has bitten me every now and then in the last 15 years.

But other than that, I like it on the right. That's where I think of it. I think a lot of people are like this where geography on my screen is like one of the ways that I keep things together. Like I keep certain apps in certain places and I keep the dock where it is because I'm used to it there. Yeah. I am a left-hand side dock person. You're left-handed too, aren't you? Yeah, but that doesn't...

I don't really feel like that makes a difference. That's not the reason? Okay, all right. Cool, because I use a mouse with my right hand. Oh, okay. Interesting. So, I mean, you know, my Wacom tablet, obviously I use my left hand,

but before I got the Wacom, so for basically all of my computing life, I was navigating with my right hand. I am, I think, slightly ambidextrous in that I write with my right hand i am i think slightly ambidextrous in that i write with my left hand but my right hand is is my dominant hand it's just not so good at fine skills it's kind of a little bit peculiar i don't really know why i'm built this way jason but that's kind of just mostly the story of just me as a human why why does mike do things the way he does nobody nobody knows no that's i feel like one of

the things we do in this podcast is we explain that we do things a certain way and then everybody asks why and we have no good answers there is no reason no but i i feel an affinity with people with side docs because i feel like side doc makes more sense to me than the than the lower doc and and in occasionally when i put have a system with a dock down, I immediately hide it. And that is okay, but I still don't like hiding stuff. I want the menu bar to be there always. I want the dock to be there always. I just prefer that.

Thank you so much to Magnus for his Snell Talk suggestion. You can just send in a tweet with the hashtag Snell Talk, and it can be something to open the show. You're clearly saying there could be a potential theme here, so maybe you want to keep going down that route, or you can send in absolutely anything you want. Hashtag Snell Talk. I didn't necessarily have this in the document for today, because we have a pretty packed show talking about new hardware, but macOS Mojave is coming out today, so do you have any real quick thing you want to say about it?

It's Mojave Day. Yeah, I mean, we should talk about it sometime. I know it's not the most exciting subject for you. Well, no, no. I mean, it's fine. I mean, honestly, I don't think that Mac OS releases are typically incredibly exciting. There's interesting stuff that happens in them

but i mean and we've talked about it yeah we talked about it when it came out that's the so i'll say my experience on running the beta and i've definitely heard people on podcasts including you and steven talk about this like i found the mojave beta after uh for the last month or two to be incredibly stable good i've been using it. There was a period where I was rebooting or using a different computer to do podcasts after I installed it on my iMac Pro because it was not stable enough. And that went away within a few weeks. And I've been using, I've been 100% on Mojave for the last maybe six weeks. And no, well i was gonna say no problems it's it is no no more problems than on high sierra let's put it that way like i there are still some weird usb quirks with

the usb pre-2 my audio interface that are no different than they were before um all the software got updated uh the software i use all got updated to work with mojave and all works fine audio hijack and loopback and things like that. So I've been very happy with the stability of it. Let's see, what else? We talked about the desktop stack stuff. I don't like dark mode. Okay.

Mostly because the world doesn't know that dark mode is a thing yet. because the world doesn't know that dark mode is a thing yet. I feel like dark mode will be good when all apps and websites understand that computers can have a dark mode. Because right now what happens is, and Apple has made no attempts to kind of override here, which surprises me a little bit. Like you can be in dark mode. And if you've got just apps that are using dark themes, everything's pretty good. And then you open a web page,

and the web page assumes you want a white background and black text, and you get this huge blinding white rectangle, and it's no good. And similarly in mail, if you open a mail message that's an HTML mail message, it'll have a background color set. And I'm a little surprised that Apple hasn't made an attempt. First off, that Apple hasn't proposed a CSS thing for websites that basically says, here's how you detect that we're in dark mode. There are some proposals out there. I'm just, I'm a little surprised that Apple hasn't been more forward with that with WebKit to say, hey, people who want to support Mojave dark mode on Macs, here's how you do it on your website. That doesn't seem to have happened yet. Although there's stuff going around, maybe it will happen. And nor has Apple made an attempt

to do something like optionally like smart invert colors, which they have on iOS, which basically inverts the text and background of a page, but not the content, which is essentially a way to get dark mode when there isn't a dark mode. If you're reading at night on an iPad and it's an article on a website that's white background and black text, you can go into Smart Invert Colors mode and the pictures don't invert and look weird, but the text in the background does. They didn't make any attempt to do that or to do any sort of detection about like well we're on this super light web page but you're in dark mode so maybe we should uh sort of remap these things to an inverse they just leave it which i understand like well it's their website design we'll leave it

but it kind of ruins dark mode to have so much stuff that just assumes that you are working in a light mode. And so every time I've tried dark mode in Mojave, I can't, even when I said this week, I was like, all right, I'm just going to use it for a few days. I lasted like an hour. And I was like, I can't do this. I just can't do this. It's too much of a mishmash. And it's not Apple's fault in a way, but Apple has also not tried to mitigate a bunch of these places where, you know, the reality is that the assumption is not dark mode.

And, I mean, you and I are sitting here in a Google Doc right now, right, that in dark mode would be a nightmare. It's a nightmare, yeah. Yeah, right? It's not good to look at. And there's no – and, again, Windows 10 has a dark mode. And again, Windows 10 has a dark mode. I mean, it would not surprise me if in a few years, everybody who does all this stuff has an affordance for your computing environment's very good. Now, maybe if you've got a very specific set of apps and you're not worried about web pages and mail and stuff, then it may make you very happy. And that's great. But for me, I found it the way the apps I use and the web content that I see, it's basically unusable.

Have you thought about adding like a dark mode option to six colors if i knew how to do it and and apple had offered that as a sort of the standard thing that you could do in safari on mojave mojave i would absolutely have done it already i i looked when this came out i was like how do i make a dark mode version of six color can't can't do it so unless you manually did it right yeah i could make a mode that you could click and switch to and all of that, but that seems kind of ridiculous. I don't think I'm going to do that. But anyway, so there's that. And then my last thing about Mojave

is the four new apps are there. And basically, I'm glad that HomeKit support is there in the Home app. I don't think the Home app is very interesting, but it's also a very simple app. I think Apple News, I think, again, if you're somebody who likes Apple News on other iOS devices, being able to get it on the Mac is nice. As apps, I think they're really bad. And they're lousy Mac apps. And there are embarrassingly bad failures to convert them to be Mac apps from iOS apps, including the worst one being when you're scheduling something in the home app and you

get the spinner for setting time. And you can kind of click through it or you can hover your cursor over it and scroll on your trackpad in this modal window that's in the middle of this other window because it's not really windows it's a single window interface and it's early and the functionality being on the mac is good but it is i just they got a lot of work to do before they hand this stuff over to developers if they if their vision really is that these things are going to be Mac apps. And I hope that's their vision because the alternative is that their

vision is the future of the Mac is just apps that behave like iOS apps. And that's just how it is. And I have a problem with that because I don't think it works unless they're making even more changes to the platform where after a couple of years, we're all using touchscreen Macs and then all of these touch interfaces make sense. But I just, there's a lot more work to do. This is why they didn't give it to third-party developers this year. But I can't let it go and say, yay, news and stocks and voice memos and home are on the Mac. It's like, yes, I'm happy for the functionality, but they're not very good. The news interface is kind of a mess. It's better than it was at the beginning of the beta because they added some menu items in to do things that were previously

sort of happening within the interface only. But really, the menu bars are perfunctory. interface only. But really, you know, the menu bars are perfunctory. The interface is weird. You've got arrow buttons in weird places. The keyboard shortcuts when they exist are strange. It's just not, it's not a great experience. And I'm glad that they're there because they add functionality. But when you think of Mojave as half of an operating system that is fresh coated paint, a bunch of new stuff. I like the new accent colors. That's great. They should have done that in OS 10, 10.4. They waited until now to let you say, oh, how about orange, right? I'm great. Finally, they did that. I like that Apple is showing like they actually are thinking about what they want the Mac to be and adding

features like Steven said on Connected last week, adding features that are not just for iOS synchrony, but like features that are about the Mac, like Finder features, that all is great. So that's about the present and making the Mac something different. And I think that's great. But the other half of Mojave is the story about where is it going with all of these iOS-based apps that are going to become Mac apps next year, presumably. all of these iOS-based apps that are going to become Mac apps next year, presumably. And what we've got is not... They're fine, but they're not very good. And it gives me some concern about the work that Apple has to do over the next year to make it so that those apps are

decent. Because the bad scenario here is that literally next year, yeah, you can run iOS apps on the Mac, and they're all just very clearly just iOS apps, and they're weird. And it's almost like you're using virtualization or something. There's just a weird iOS mode that some things are in. They don't talk to Mac apps. They don't behave like Mac apps. You have to say, what kind of app is this every time you open an app? And that's not a good experience. So there's a lot going on here. And again, I'm going to give Apple the benefit of the doubt that they will hopefully do that right thing next year. But I don't look at the news app and say, aha, I am completely confident that we'll get there in the next year. It's more like,

they got to do better than this. Now, they got a year to do it. So, or at least, I guess, what, nine months to get to WWDC next year. And we'll see. Apple is, sometimes Apple, they only said next year, right? They can wait until December or even delay it further if they don't if it's not ready but um it's going to be a huge change for the mac and they need to do it right and uh what we get in mojave is just a little toe in the water and uh we'll see where it goes from there but i don't i don't love those apps i'm i'm happy that they're there but i don't think they're i don't think they're great yeah it is interesting like the general consensus seems to be that they're bad and and i understand that like this is the beginning of a process but apple's not really calling these a beta or anything right which i'm surprised that they're not all called like

home beta and use beta like they're being kind of shipped as if they're finished yeah this goes back to the conversation we had back in June, which is why even announce it this way. And I think the answer is, one, the existence of Steve Troughton Smith. Yeah, they had to say it if they were going to ship them. Very soon upon the release of the first Mojave beta, that these four new apps that Apple extolled on stage are actually iOS apps, right? It would have been clear. Everybody would have known. You just look at them. You can tell, right? So how could you not say anything?

And it is a developer conference. It allows Apple to say on the record, hey, guys, next year we're going to ask you to do this. Not this year, but think about it. Start thinking about it, which I think is good. I think it's great for developers to get that piece of information. Here's where they never do this. Here's where Apple is going in 2019, which is they're going to give you a way to convert your iOS apps and run them on the Mac. And so many people at WWDC are iOS developers. Um, we're going to give you that next year so start thinking now but we don't have any tools for you now and i think that was the right move i think that's the

right move and the truth is they do have a year so what they are doing now is um you know the dog fooding right it's they're using this stuff and they're finding i think it is great because i think there is probably somebody who's responsible for news who's looking or not news for a home who's looking at that spinner in the scheduling and being like, we can't do this. This has to be better. And I'm disappointed that they didn't do that in Mojave update and or perhaps the next next year's release, stuff like that, that is very clearly not good enough, will get addressed. Like multi window apps is not a thing right now. And perhaps it will be. And it might even be related to changes in iOS next year, right? Where if if if iOS apps get multi window support, like Safari has now, that could be part of the same thing that allows Mac apps running based on iOS to have that. But anyway, so I think it's a good thing that they're doing it. And it might give them an excuse to be like, yeah, we know they're weird,

but at least you can, because the truth is at least I can turn my lights on and off from my Mac now. I used to sit in here with no iPhone and no iPad and be like, oh, I need to turn that. And I have to get up and go find an iOS device because my Mac sitting right here was incapable of doing it. So, I mean, I'm glad the Home app exists. I'm glad it's tied into Siri. That's all great. It's just, you know, it does make you wonder what exactly the plan is for next year. All right.

Today's show is brought to you by our friends over at Eero. The folks at Eero have built the Wi-Fi system that you're going to want for your home. They will give you a fast, reliable connection in every single room, and it can even go all the way out to the backyard too. They can blanket your entire home in the Wi-Fi connection that you want. It's going to be reliable. It's going to be super fast. The Eero features three 5 gigahertz radios. This is faster than it's ever been before, and it will sit flat on any surface. You just plug it into the wall with the included power adapter, then you'll be ready to connect your Eero device either via

wirelessly or via ethernet. And then once you've got that one set up, if you want to extend it out to the home, you just get yourself some of these little Aero beacons. They're these tiny little things. You just plug them straight in. That's all they are. They're just basically plug sockets. You just put them straight in and that's it.

What's the American term? Wall wart? Is that the American term? Some people use that term, sure. Yeah, sure. And then all you need to do is plug those straight into the wall. They will expand the coverage to any room so you don't have to move to a different part of the house to get the speed that you want because it will be super fast wherever you want it to be. Plus those little arrow beacons, they have little nightlights in them too, which is super cute.

Having one router, look, it just doesn't work anymore because our homes are bigger and we have more technology and we want and we desire faster connections because we're doing more with them and like light waves wi-fi waves don't really go through walls very well like you wouldn't turn on a light bulb in the bedroom and expect that you'd be able to get some light out into the backyard maybe like that's just not that's just not how it works not smart no no and that's exactly the way that wi-fi is and with Eero you can install an enterprise grade wi-fi system in your home in just a few minutes. And I have been to the Snell abode. I've been to the Jason Snell household. You've been in the Snell zone is what you're saying, yes. And I know that Jason has a lovely back patio garden situation. And I know that I would want to hang out there. And I know that Jason does. And I'm sure that his Eero helps him get some Wi-Fi coverage out there.

know that jason does and i'm sure that his arrow helps him get some wi-fi coverage out there uh yes indeed when i'm sitting out there on my uh ikea furniture and there's a story there that we'll tell next time i think um about the ikea furniture but the wi-fi is is out there i've got some connected devices that are in the backyard and also in the front of the house and these were areas that could not be reached by my wi-fi before. But now I've got three Eero's in various places and they all talk to each other. And it couldn't have been easier to set them up. And now everything is covered. And I don't have a particularly big house, but there were enough connection issues to reach into the backyard that it was a problem. And now it is not a problem.

It's great. If you've heard this and you want to get your new Eero straight away, you get free overnight shipping to the us or canada when you go to aero.com that's eero.com and at checkout you select the overnight shipping option and then enter the code upgrade and it will be free so it's aero.com eero.com with the promo code upgrade for free overnight shipping our thanks to aero for their support of this show and relay fm i want to tell you um we mentioned the snell zone during that ad read people who skipped the ad you missed it um and i just just wanted to share so for um my wife's birthday last weekend we did a an escape room oh which is the first professional escape room. Oh. Which is the first professional escape room I've been in.

I, of course, have done the UL escape rooms. And we won. We got it done and we had an hour and we got it done in like 48 minutes.

And there was one thing that we were hung up on or we would have been out of there in 40 minutes. And it was me and Lauren and the kids. We were the team.

And we did it everybody contributed it was huge amounts of fun and i recommend escape rooms they're fun but in the end they give you a little thing and they take your picture which is great they take your picture and it's a little whiteboard that's it's got your what what room it was in what your time was and a name for your team and i immediately picked it up and just wrote Snell Zone. Bravo. So that is Team Snell Zone that escaped the escape room. But yeah, that was a lot of fun.

So I recommend escape rooms, and Team Snell Zone undefeated escape rooms. 1-0. We are channeling our inner ATP today. We're not done with follow-up yet. No, no, nope. Well, Mojave just popped out and said, hey, I'm coming out today.

Maybe you should talk about me. I was like, okay, fine, Mojave, shut up. Yeah, follow-up. I just, I feel bad for Mojave. Really, I've been writing stories this whole week about iOS and Apple TV and tvOS releases and all that. And it's always like, oh, this is the week where apple releases all its operating system nope gotta restate that almost all its operating systems mac os oh anyway last week's episode was called you will pay it was

about in in part the apple pricing strategy where we talked about how apple sort of been slowly boiling the frog and raising the prices of iPhones and raising the price of the iPhone line. And I just wanted to mention, I did write a whole article, including charts for Macworld about it, and we'll put a link in the show notes. And it is, it's one of those things where it got tweeted out over the weekend by Macworld with a question it was like um why are iphones so expensive and that's the worst because then what happens is all these people who follow macworld reply trying to helpfully answer the question it's like no no no read the

article the article answers the question and i got all these like well because apple wants to make more money thank you yep anyway if you want to read words about why Apple is charging more for iPhones and how they're doing it and what's happened, you can read that article. Jason, I would like to welcome the triumphant return of Upstream to the Upgrade program. It's been away for a few weeks because we have so much stuff to do, but it's back and we have a selection of things here. Apple has ordered a miniseries starring Chris Evans. The Captain America star will play the lead role

in a series called Defending Jacob. It's based on a novel by William Landay. It is a drama show and has been given a straight-to-series order. Chris Evans hasn't been on TV, I think it says in this article, since like 2010 or something like that. Or since the 2000s.

2000. Long time. Because Apple is writing huge checks, continues to do so, and now they've landed yet another A-list star for their upcoming TV project. On that note, there was a Wall Street

Journal article that hit over the i think it's over the weekend um talking about apple trying to keep their content somewhat clean the article starts off talking about a story that i know has been in an article before yeah tim cook declines dr dre's show they remember those working on you may remember they were working on a show about dr dre's life. That show seems to not be happening anymore, and partly because it featured lots of sexual content and violence, which Tim Cook didn't want. So the Wall Street Journal is reusing this story, along with other sources, to once again state that Apple is not keen on gratuitous sexual content, violence, or strong language for their shows. They say that Apple currently prefers a family-friendly approach for their programming,

but they do have a small selection of shows that will veer into TVMA, so like mature content territory, but only a little bit. And you and I have talked about this and speculated about this, and I have with tim goodman over at the tv podcast i do with him tv talk machine um the question here so there's a lot to unpack here first off this is we've heard this before this this has got new sources saying that this is sort of what apple's trying to do that apple is not it's interesting is not completely going to avoid mature audience content. Yeah, I find it so strange because these articles are written in such a way where they're like, oh, prudish Apple,

they're not going to do it. But there is some, they're just like, and I kind of, I think I can kind of get on, I think I'm kind of on board with this. Like if the story calls for it, go for it. But other than that, like just, just try and keep it to a minimum. Yeah.

What Apple doesn't want is for all of its shows to be mature audiences only, right? Apple wants of Spectrum, which it is Disney-like in that way because the Disney services are going to be like that, right? And in a world where Netflix has these Marvel shows that are all TVMA, right? There are other Marvel shows on cable channels that are not. So it's this interesting thing of like, well, what do you want your mix to be of your service? Do you want it to be all TVMA? Do you want it to all not be? And it sounds like Apple is pretty hands-on in saying we want to range

and you know we and and that they've got a standards department that or as it's often called sensors that are going to be like this is what we want for this show and this is the level we want and that that has apparently had some conflicts with uh some of the people they've made deals with um some of the stuff is really overstated like they mention the uh the amazing stories i think yeah they did and how they and how they they set they separated from the showrunner there and what is not stated in that article is that these two things are even linked in any way it doesn't yeah because amazing stories had a showrunner and it had a concept and when they sold to apple apple wanted it to not be as dark and mature audience as the original showrunner wanted it to be. And so that showrunner left.

But that's not the case that Apple – like it was a different order. And it was like there was an original concept. But when it got sold to Apple, the concept changed and the showrunner exited. It's just a little bit different. So I think this could be good. I think this could be bad. Every time I talk about this, somebody says, so I'm sure there are people out there listening who are saying this, why do you have to have violence and swearing and sex in order to make good drama? And those people tend to be people, not always, but tend to be people who don't want to see it, right?

And what I would say is, I think you make a good point. Network TV had great drama for many years with broadcast standards in place, right? The difference is that, or not NBC, we'll get to that. Apple is competing not just with NBC and Fox and ABC and CBS. Apple is competing with Netflix and Amazon and other streaming services who potentially have no standards.

They're like literally whatever. Or their standards are very, very limited. They're competing with them, not just for audiences. You can't just think about that. They're competing them for creators, for high profile creators, people who they think are going to be making

great stuff, whether they're already famous or whether they've got a great hot new property that everybody likes and thinks is going to be a hit. And the more of a reputation you get for meddling with what the creators want to do, for giving notes, for saying, you can't say that that you can't show that yeah the more those people get turned off then you get a reputation right and apple can counter that with money but only to a certain point and that means that apple is now spending more to get those people than amazon or netflix would because they have to counter they have to like use their money to counter the creative things and above a certain point a lot of these creators are going to be

like well i can i can make a slightly cheaper deal with Netflix and have complete creative control. Or I could go to Apple and get a little more money, but they're going to be in my face for however long I'm doing this, changing my vision into something else. Now, I'm not saying that's right or wrong. I'm not saying that those creative people, when put in a little bit of a box, wouldn't come up with creative solutions that mean they don't really need to be TVMA and they can still make a really great show. I'm not saying that because I do believe that is actually true. I think you can make a perfectly great modern dramatic show without it being full of nudity and sex and graphic violence and strong language. I think you could. I'm saying if I'm a successful TV producer

and I've got a choice between the service that's going to read every script and give me feedback and say, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this. And there's other service that'll pay me just as much and not say anything. Who am I going to pick? Like, really, who am I going to pick? So that

is the challenge here. And it's a reputation thing. And it's about making deals with the people who are making these shows and being a place that creative people want to go. This is the story of HBO, right? Like creative people want to go to HBO because of the reputation HBO has. And that is what NBC is working with here. Sorry. Okay. I'll get to it now because I keep saying NBC. The most damning thing in the entire Wall Street Journal thing is Apple being referred to by people in Hollywood as expensive NBC, which made me laugh out loud when I saw it, because what it means is Apple's got a lot of money, but they want broadcast standards. They are expensive NBC.

They don't want to make a super edgy HBO show. They want to make an NBC show, but they'll pay you a lot of money for high value. Now, on one level, that seems like a recipe for failure because people don't watch network TV anymore. They watch streaming and premium cable and stuff like that. And network TV is seen as this area of like kind of boring, um, uh, completely sanded down entertainment. Uh, the other way to view it would be that maybe the money is part of it and that a Apple's money could counteract that and make something that was

for a particular target audience, but not compromised in a way that makes it not interesting. I think Apple is walking a really dangerous line here where they may end up with a, you know, they may turn off good creators and they may end up with programming that isn't as good as they could be because of meeting these standards. But at the same time, they're picking who their target audience is. And I really appreciate, like Lost in Space on Netflix. It's a bad show. I didn't like it. But what I appreciated about it, watch the whole thing.

It was bad. Don't write me. What I appreciate about it is that that was built for a target audience. That was family audience. It was not built TVMA. There was just, what is it? Is it Netflix or Amazon just has a show that just came out. Tim Goodman actually reviewed it. And there are a few of these shows now popping up on streaming that are basically like network stuff. Fuller House is another good example, right? If you're Netflix, you actually want to not just get an HBO audience. You want a broad audience.

You want people who are leaving network TV behind, but still kind of want the stuff that's on of a style that's on network TV. So what I'm saying is as this whole world of streaming and television changes, there's going to be a desire for all sorts of different kinds of content at different levels targeted at different audiences. So it may just be that Apple is trying to be really careful of not coming out of the gate with every single show being TVMA because what they want is a range. They want kids shows. They want stuff that families can watch and they want some stuff that's adult, but they don't want all their stuff to be adult.

If you think about it in the network context, you got to have an eight o'clock show. You got to have a nine o'clock show and a 10 o'clock show and the content that's allowed in those different time parts or whatever you want to call them. I think it's like in the UK,

it's like before and after the watershed, right? Where it's like kids don't watch after the watershed right that it's that idea um if you're apple do you want to spread it kind of i'm like i i can kind of get behind that that they want to spread disney will do the same thing with their streaming services services they're going to want a spread of content for audiences they're not going to want it to all be um for little kids unless it's a little kid service right you're defining it as a broader service so i don't know know. I think this could be okay. But in the back of my mind, I keep thinking I'm a creator. Apple's got getting a reputation for micromanaging some of the details of the show

that I want to make because they don't want it to be TVMA and it's going to be a fight. Or I can go to Netflix or Amazon if I have that option and it's not going to be a fight. Or I can go to Netflix or Amazon if I have that option. And it's not going to be a fight. And that means those people are not going to pick working with Apple. And that's not good for Apple. Disney streaming service is going to be getting more original Marvel content. Apparently, so there's rumors now, but you know how it is in the TV industry. Apparently, they are planning a number of limited series centered on Marvel characters like Loki and Scarlet Witch.

But what's more, these shows are expected to feature the movie actors reprising their roles for six to eight episode miniseries about the characters. Disney is serious. This is how serious Disney is about launching their service

is they have never done this where they've taken movie characters and made TV shows about them for Marvel, right? The Marvel TV stuff has been produced largely separate from the Marvel films. And it's typically people that aren't in the movies, right? At all. They don't recast people. They just don't put them in. Right. So this is, we will pay Tom Hiddleston to do a six hour mini series about Loki for our streaming service because everybody's going to want to see it

because they watch all the Marvel movies and now he's going to also have a TV show. It is, yeah, it's, I read this and I was like, okay, game on, right? Like this is them willing to spend a lot of money in order to play this card, which is they've got this incredibly valuable film franchise and the existing Marvel Netflix shows

and other network shows don't really dovetail with um the marvel films and this is and they especially want now yeah explicitly connecting them so yeah they're being serious you're gonna pay people like he'll just a movie money right like he's gonna get paid what he get paid for doing a movie so probably right because it's going to be like three hours probably of content right that that will be produced so this is it's going to be it's very big and lastly um amazon announces a tivo like device called the fire tv recast they had like a an absolute billion amount of echo devices last week i know that you covered them on download right like just everything amazon

doing everything one of them was the fire tv recast it can send a signal from an antenna to echo devices that have screens on them fire tv devices or to mobile devices via an app it allows you to record two shows at once and there are 500 gigabyte and one terabyte models as a tivo fan does this interest you in any way? Well, it is not a device meant to be hooked up to cable. It's meant to be hooked up to an antenna. And so for people who live,

and there are a lot of people who do, uh, in the U S near, uh, their local TV antenna where they can get the broadcaster where they can get over the air. Like there's high quality, high definition over the air broadcasting happening and you can capture it and record it. And so then you can cut the cord and keep your local channels, which is really cool. And that's what this does. TiVo has

a device like this. There are a couple other devices like this. I can't get over the air, so it's irrelevant to me. But I think it's interesting that Amazon is going in here because this is a niche market, but I think that it could grow with education. The idea that you're a cord cutter with an antenna on your roof or on your patio or whatever, because it does make it easier to cut the cord if all your local channels come along. Like, you know, your network affiliates and local independents, just're they're they're downloaded onto your hard drive and it's done that um of course a lot of the streaming services will offer your local channels too but this is a way to get it for for free basically and if you can get them via antenna so so it's kind of interesting it's still going to be a real niche product though all right let's

talk about the iphone 10s we we both had them for yes the whole weekend right i know that you have both right the 10s and the 10s max i am holding them both in my hands right now mike because uh you took a trip up to the mothership again right i went down to cupertino picked up some uh review units got a briefing, and yes, I got both sizes to try out, which is fun. I have, obviously, my XS Max. Of course. And I kind of wanted to just go through a few different sections and kind of just talk about our experiences with them. Yeah, totally.

It's time. So the design of the phones overall is mostly the same. The colors are different. What color do you have in with yours well apple i think is leaning hard into gold right yeah every review model i've seen has been gold yeah well it's the new color right so so yeah but mine are both gold i have the gold and i love the gold um it's really interesting actually because i went to the regent street apple store and picked up mine in the morning and in the store with the in-store lighting the gold is very

very subtle but at home it's much deeper like it's like a copper color when i'm at home like it seems to react to different lighting in different ways but i really do like the the gold i mean i am a a case person for my phones because i just don't trust myself um yeah and i got a blue case and it matches quite nicely with the little gold accents that pop you know out like the bottom or the the the ringer switch and stuff i really i really like the gold you know like ultimately because i do put my phone in cases it kind of doesn't really matter anymore what I get because all the phones have dark faces now. But I wanted to go for the gold and I went for the gold.

I'm really happy with my decision, actually. I've seen all three colors, right? And it is personally my favorite of the three color options right now. What I have to say is gold, always believe in your soul. You've got the power to know. I'm indestructible. Yeah, you are gold. is gold always believe in your soul you've got the power to know i'm indestructible yeah you are gold because i was sorry little little spandau ballet uh sideline there how could you not no it's the gold is very pretty they did a good job i this is this thing it kills me every time um syracuse refers to the white silver iphone 10 design as dishwater white

i don't read it that way at all i think it's beautiful i think that i think he's very wrong because i think that the space gray is the worst looking i think the space looks like a chocolatey brown color which yeah it's a chocolate phone that's i was about to say the exact same thing it's it's the chocolate phone and i always go for the black phone right yeah and i got i bought that last year and then my review unit was a white one, a silver. And it's prettier. It's absolutely better looking. And the reason is that I don't view the white back as dishwater color. I view it as this kind of shimmering silvery white.

Like it's got this kind of almost pearl finish to it. And it's beautiful. The gold is that but gold like it is they're very pretty they're they did a good job and i stand by my statement that i think that the the space gray phone is actually the most boring and and if you put in a case it doesn't really matter no um but if you're just judging it without a case i think that the the chocolate phone is no good. There isn't really anything else to say about the physical hardware design, the look of them.

I mean, I want to talk about the size of the Macs, but... I have one thing to say, which is just I love the fact that in the future, people who are analyzing what model of iPhone you have when you bring it into an Apple store or to an independent or whatever, are going to be looking at the speaker grates on the bottom to see if they're yeah if they're symmetrical or not that's bad like that's one of those things that like so basically in case you don't know if you look at the bottom of your iphone they have little holes in the bottom which are the speaker grates and on the 10 they were symmetrical they were so like five and five or whatever how many there were but on the 10s there it is an uneven number so on the max it's four on the left and seven on the right so the the the speaker holes are not symmetrical anymore

and this is one of those things that like for years you would see somebody post a picture of the bottom of an Android phone, like a Samsung phone, and be like, oh, look at this. They don't even like when people are trying to show that Samsung have copied Apple. Right. And they'll take pictures of the two, the bottom of both phones. And Samsung will have asymmetrical speaker grates or whatever. And people are like, oh, the design. Well, now Apple does it, too. And it's because they've the antenna the design well now apple does it too and it's because they've the antenna line is there i don't know why it's there it's probably something to do with the dual sim is on the left it's three it's three and six for the 10s standard size but yeah

it's and so that's going to be one of those things where if you're a super knowledgeable apple person you're going to look and you're going to be like, oh, that's not a XS, that's a X. How did you know? Don't they look the same? It's like, almost. Yeah. Almost, but not quite. Anyway, it's a silly little thing. But otherwise, it's indistinguishable.

Like, I put my XS review unit in my X case because they do fit. They're not quite perfect, but they fit. It's a little snug around the camera, is my understanding. Yeah, a little bit, but it's close enough and uh it's the same phone like it feels exactly the same it is not it does not feel different in any way this is one of those years where the design is basically unchanged and that's fine but the gold is pretty unless you got the big one unless you got the big one in which case in which case so let me let me lead you into talking about the big one because

you're the plus club and i've never been in the plus club. And what I'll say is one of the funny things about having both of these phones is you spend a little time with the XS Max and you start to lose track. You become unmoored from reality and you're like, oh, I don't remember that the iPhone X was this big. But it's fine because it is so weird because it is, it is just an iPhone 10 that has gotten a little bit bigger. It's, it's, it's this really strange feeling. It doesn't, something about it, maybe it's the bezels being gone, something about it. It doesn't feel like, like I wouldn't choose it because I prefer the smaller phone in my hand but it feels just like an alternate version of the iphone 10 to me in a strange way and then you carry that around for a while and then you put it back down next

to the iphone 10s not max and you go oh look at the teeny little phone that's there right because you lose perspective about it because they're literally the same phone, just one of them's bigger. So I have my theory about this, right? So I'll just say I find the Max to be very comfortable in the hand. It reminds me so much of the Plus. It feels like less of a jump. And I feel like people like yourself

who were very much in the anti-Plus size, I think what's happened is, because a lot of people that I know are saying similar things like, oh, this actually isn't too bad. And I think what's happened is the 10 was bigger than the 7, right? So you have become a little bit more accustomed to a bigger phone anyway. And now the jump up to the max is not as much as it used to be. So I think that the fact that the phones got bigger, the 10 got bigger, now they're

being another bigger one. Well, it's just a little bit bigger again. And I think that that's, I mean, maybe it is part of it, right? That the design makes it feel that way, but you already got used to having a bigger phone. So getting used to having an even bigger phone is way less harder than it used to be. That's kind of my theory on on this one why i think there seems to be a lot of people and basically every review even from people like that i know would never have bought a plus phone including john gruber right said basically a similar thing to you which is like i could actually see myself using this i've still chosen the 10s but i could see myself using it i would even go so far as to say that if I was in a particular scenario where I was spending a lot of time with just my iPhone and I needed to get stuff done, I could see choosing this because of the bigger battery and also because of just having that bigger screen. project and it's like you know you're in in um horizontal mode uh where you can see three tracks

at once and you can like i could totally edit a podcast on the 10s max i could do it on the 10s but it would not be pleasant but i think it would actually be okay on the 10s max and that's that's a scenario there that like do i want for the way i live my life I don't want a bigger phone in my pocket but I could see other scenarios where this one would would be worth it for me in a way that the plus models wouldn't have been it was really funny like so I you know everyone knows this who's listened over the past years I think everybody does this as soon as I get the phones I open up apple notes and I just start writing down everything that I'm experiencing so I can put it into some kind of cohesive narrative for later on. And there was one thing that I wrote, well, a couple of things that I wrote after holding the

Macs. It was within minutes, my iPhone 10 felt tiny, like just was like, what is this baby, baby phone? And I kind of, I wrote down the size, like it's big, it is heavy, this phone, right? It's bigger and heavier, but it feels just right for me. And that I kind of had this feeling of that I was home again, right? That's kind of how I felt. It's like, this feels like home again, having the bigger phone. About 20 minutes after Federico received his phone, he sent me a text. He says, I feel like I'm home again. I was like, oh, I said the same thing, right? Because I didn't say it to him. But he, you know, also being someone, a previous opponent of Plus Club,

I think it's just like having these bigger phones. This is what we're used to. Like, I love these phones for media and in lots of apps, even ones that haven't been like specifically tuned for it. You can just see more at once. And that can either be something you want or something you don't want but it is for people that like these bigger phones it's one of the main reasons to get them it's just you want to be able to see as much as you can see on the screen that you have and so i'm very very happy with the size of this phone um but every new phone jason brings with it setup so i wanted to talk to you a little bit about setup

so like last year the quick setup feature really makes this process so much easier now so this is where if you have if you have an old phone on and near any device actually even like an ipad that is signed into an icloud account. When you turn on the new phone, it will prompt you and be like, do you just want to transfer the settings? And this is something I hadn't seen before. It popped up on my iPad and was like, you have this phone.

We know you have this old phone. Do you just want to transfer the settings of the old phone to this one? So I guess it's pulling it from my iCloud back up somewhere, right? Yeah, so what it's doing is it's connecting, it's providing just a basic amount of information that's necessary to transfer directly. And then it's kicking off the iCloud backup of the rest of it.

And it's funny since one of our, I think, most popular episodes ever, three years ago maybe, was complaining about how unpleasant what should be your most pleasant day as an Apple product buyer should be. how unpleasant what should be your most pleasant day as an Apple product buyer should be. And this thing, which they've had for a little while now, but it keeps getting better. And it got better again this year, which I think it was this year, because I do this every year now with my reviews. Not only is there the thing where you hold the camera over the other thing and see little dots, just like on the Apple Watch, and it does that basic transfer between the two devices, and then it kicks off the wireless, and you have to put in the password of the one phone on the other phone and all the security stuff. And that works really well. But this year, the Apple Watch transfer worked too.

I know you're not an Apple Watch person, but let me tell you, the Apple Watch stuff, which used to be a total disaster. You had to remember to unpair your Apple Watch from your old phone and it would take forever because it's the Apple Watch. disaster. You had to remember to unpair your Apple Watch from your old phone, and it would take forever because it's the Apple Watch. And then you had to go transfer to the new phone, and then you had to repair and restore from a backup and all of that. And this time when I did it,

it was like, oh, you've got an Apple Watch. You want me to transfer that too? I'm like, yeah. And it still does, takes time and all that, but it was way smoother than it has been in the past where it realized I have an apple watch attached to my phone i'm moving to a new phone maybe i want to move the apple watch there too

and it did it and it worked and i was very happy about that so they they keep they keep making this better i i am impressed i uh other than having to like re-enter my gmail password um which was not a big deal everything else transferred and was there and was super easy so i mostly agree right like the process is much easier there's way less stuff to tap and i did see one thing that i hadn't seen before that i really liked where on the the 10s max it popped up and said hey your iCloud backup is a little bit out of date. It hadn't been updated since 7 p.m. the day before. Do you want to do an iCloud backup on the old phone first? Right.

And when I tapped yes, the backup began on the 10. I tapped the button on the 10S Max, and then an upgrade, a backup began on the 10. I was very impressed by that i thought it was very nice but i still remain overall unhappy with set how you set up a new iphone from a backup there are too many weird things like too many apps i'm logged out of or my settings are different in some way like and i'm fully aware of the fact that there's like if you do if you back up on a mac and do the encrypted backup things are more likely to be transferred correctly but i do iCloud

restores because that's how the vast majority of people getting a new iphone will set it up because it's what apple pushes you into right like this, they don't even talk about like go to your Mac and do like, they're pushing you down the iCloud restore. And I just feel like for like two weeks afterwards, I'm like, so none of my music that I downloaded on my 10 is downloaded on my 10 S I have to manually go in and download all my music from Apple music. If I want anything to be offline, you know, there are a bunch of applications that I open them up and they're just logged out. But not every app is like this. Some apps I go there and it's all there again.

I find this process to be way too splintered in a way that I am unhappy with because I spend an amount of time having to go in and check everything. I really want to just start my phone and it all be a hundred percent exactly how it was left and until apple gets to that point i will continue to be unhappy with the way that this process works that's fair i mean i i think i understand why a lot of those things need to be re-entered but yeah i mean i understand the technical reasons why it happens but i think

it's a poor user experience because it's because the problem is is it's not consistent right some apps i'm logged into some apps i'm not and no matter what the technical reasons are as a user that is not my problem right like i i want a system whatever it is they have to do to make it, that this won't be an issue. You know, and my hope would be that like stuff like iCloud Keychain can help me get there. Right. That like they could do something in the future where like if they if an app requires you to re-login again, that app can just pull it immediately in the background from the keychain.

Like that. I want to see stuff like that happening because when I open, you know, I open my email app and that's all there, but then I open Todoist and I have to log back in again, right? And it's just like, I don't, it's very, I just find it frustrating. And I would, and it is the inconsistency

that bugs me the most. I think this is made easier by the fact that now with the new app login stuff and the new password stuff that I was able to get one password passwords inserted into a lot of my apps when I needed to re-login. Yeah, I mean, that made it amazingly faster than ever before, right? The fact that I could just hit that little suggestion in the QuickType keyboard and could get my one password. So this year was a nicer process but it's still way too manual for me like i i want more of this to be automatic i hear you and and if it is an issue of not wanting to back things up to the cloud the response maybe should be to allow that

stuff to be able to transfer as part of that initial yes device to device transfer right so literally you show you have the password for this other device, and now it's going to transfer all of its stuff to you and then do an iCloud backup. And I'm sure there are lots of security ramifications there, but it strikes me as being a way to solve this. Because at some point as a user, you need to be able to say, all the stuff on there is my stuff. Move it over, right? And maybe there are issues with things being tied to a particular device or something like that. If that's the case, then make changes to the operating system that allow app developers to

not necessarily tie to a specific device, but tie to you as a user. And maybe they're already in the process of doing that. I don't know. But I agree with you. I think it's gotten a lot better. I think it is a minor inconvenience to log into apps now instead of a major inconvenience to get the phone to a point where it's functional but it could be better sure like i'm doing this on launch day right and i'm not having these problems anymore where my iCloud restore is sitting for like six hours doing nothing you know right it's totally it's going quickly downloading apps yeah i'm not having to answer like 30 questions anymore right like or log into your apple id um 10 times yeah like all of that stuff is so much better and this is like i'm and i'm really happy for that but it's because that's gotten better i want the whole experience to be even

smoother still right and i feel like this is an important thing and i would love to see them get even better at it um just like a super quick thing because there isn't really too much to say on this these things do feel really snappy i know that there's not been a ton of performance stuff done um but even things i found like text selection in notes feel smoother than it did before like there are a lot of little places, and we're going to talk about the camera's performance, but even like the camera app is moving way quicker. Like there are a lot of areas where these phones do feel more capable. However, I am noticing stuff, and this is like when the Plus came out. There are just like a

bunch of like super weird layout bugs that are happening right now. Like there's not a lot of them, but I'm getting some like weird bugs and weird freezes on the Macs that I wasn't getting on my iPhone 10. My assumption here is just because like, I would assume that based upon Apple's secrecy, not a lot of testing occurs necessarily on the Mac's phone, right?

I would assume the majority of testing in iOS 12's development is occurring on the max phone right i would assume the majority of testing and i was told development is occurring on the stuff that already exists right you assume that to be the case that feels like that would be the way i would assume that mostly i'm sure they do test this on the new hardware but it's probably much more limited right because the hardware hasn't been announced yet so i mean and it is pretty normal that like a couple of weeks after a phone comes out there is like a super quick point update right that just clears out some bugs like i've even had stuff like i had no app crashes on my iphone 10 for the entire ios 12 beta but i have a couple of apps that completely crash on uh on on load right now like they will not open they're instant

crashing on the and this is on the 10s and the 10s max which is so strange i don't understand why that would be occurring like what about these new phones is doing that but that that is not a completely unique experience i've been seeing a few there's few cases of this in different places but the phones do feel really snappy they're really quick right we need to talk about the camera. I'll say before we get to the camera, one last thing about the apps on the Macs that aren't explicitly updated for the Mac's size are scaled. Yeah, there is a bit of that. And the difference is that the resolution of the X is so high, and the XS and the XS Max, all these phones, these three phones that are kind of the same in a lot of ways. So high that it's actually almost impossible to tell, unlike on the Plus, right,

where the scaled ones all looked fuzzy. On the XS Max, the scaled apps look fine. Now, supporting the native size puts a lot more content on the screen. And so it's worth doing if you're an app developer. But as a user, my feeling is you basically don't notice because it still looks good. It does.

It's only a little bit scaled. The way you can see it is the keyboard. Yeah, the keyboard is scaled a little bit strangely. But this is nowhere near as harsh as it's been with other phones. And I think it's just because there's been enough history of this now that it's not so bad. But, like, I'm seeing some apps starting that need a little bit of update and getting it. And I'm looking forward to seeing, like, when people have this phone and the XR in for testing, that we may see some more developers taking advantage of the bigger screens in even more ways, which I love.

But the camera. Now, this is so interesting to me um just the performance of the camera on these phones and information that was not given in the keynote so john gruber's review of the iphone 10s was one of my favorites that i read um and he goes into a lot of detail about stuff that just wasn't spoken about like for example that there is an increase of 32 i think increased focal length all right so no the sensor the sensor is 32 okay sorry yes that's it and that that increases focal length is is what i was trying to say so the the sensor is larger yep and it increases the focal length so it means if you take a picture with a 10 and a 10s in the exact same place the picture

that you get at the end of it there is more to see it's taken it takes right you know you can see more of the world on the effective picture what it is is the effective lens size is larger yes so you know it is therefore you get this you you get a little more in there yeah that's true and there's more light going into the sensors and there's a lot more going on because that sensor is larger which means that it it's taking in more light and i am having so much fun of taking what should be bad pictures i am doing everything i can right now to take pictures in ways that i wouldn't normally take them like hey stand in front of this light fixture and let me take a picture of you is what i've been doing for the past couple of days because smart hdr is blowing my mind like it is unbelievable every

photo i've taken has been just facing into the sun yeah like you know you can't take a picture facing into the sun it'll blow out the picture i'm like all the pictures i take will be facing into the sun from now on like the the way. I'm like, all the pictures I take will be facing into the sun from now on. Like the way it deals with low light, the way it deals with bad light sources is wonderful. And this is Apple leaning into computational photography, right? And I know like it seems that all of the reviews that I've seen from sources where they look at Android

and they look at iPhone are saying that like, this camera is incredible. The Pixel 2 still takes better pictures, but this phone, this camera is incredible. It makes perfect sense to me because if the big improvements here are because of machine learning, Google's gonna have that on lock

because that's what they do. But the argument for this stuff always is like, I don't want the best camera i want the best camera on an iphone because i want to use an iphone right i want to use an iphone so i want i want apple to get better at this yeah i would say um i have i've heard this argument and i did hear it on connected last week that um the argument is apple's got to work hard here because google is great with machine learning stuff and computational photography is all about that sort of stuff. And that's true. However, what is Apple good at that its competition is bad at,

or at least not as good as Apple at? And it's chips, right? So just because... So yeah, here's the thing. Google can be better at machine learning, but they still got to run that on a Qualcomm chip. Yeah. And if Apple can beat the pants off Qualcomm at the neural engine performance, basically, then that's Apple's advantage. Yeah, it's an arms race. It is.

And I'm not saying that one is better than the other. Right, like they both have their things and who can get to the best fastest. That's right. But they're both pressing their advantages which is why apple talks all about the neural engine and the eight cores and all of that in the in the promo of this because that's what they're really good at now they're they have lots of machine learning people i think that it does everybody a disservice

to say that and also qualcomm's actually done really well with the neural processing sub processors on their mobile chips too. So it's not like one company is bad at one thing and good at the other, but there is an arm's race happening. Yes, absolutely. Apple have done an incredible job with the machine learning and all the neural stuff

to make smart HDR work because it is one of my favorite features that Apple have introduced to an iPhone ever. I love it. It's incredible. It makes me a better photographer and that's that's it i always want that from my device like i want to be forgiven for the bad photos that i will inevitably take because i am not a photographer and i am personally not massively interested in learning all of the stuff that i'm going to need

to know to take good pictures i want my incredibly powerful computer phone to assist me. That's what I want. If I want to get the most accurate pictures in the world, I'll get a camera, right? Like I'll get a camera and I'll take them on that. That's not what I want. I have a thing I want to capture forever. I want it to be captured in the way that I'm going to be happy with it in years to come.

So I want my computer phone to take this picture for me and give me something that is closest to what my eyes can see. That's all I want. And dynamic range and smart HDR is speaking to one of the truths. It's not true that every photo you take, you want to look exactly like what you're seeing because something like having a blurred background, right? You're actually creating something that's not like what you're seeing, but that is pleasing

aesthetically. But I do think so much of consumer photography really is about, I see this thing happening in front of me and I want to capture it. And the problem is that our human eyes have so much dynamic range built into them. Not just the optics, just to make a parallel to computers, not just the optics, but the neural processing, right? Like our brains do a lot of processing of the images we get from our eyes, but it's way better than a camera can do. So what the smart HDR is doing that I think is really powerful is getting that image that you're seeing,

especially where there's huge dynamic range in the scene there's darks and lights in the same shot is to try to get something that is closer to what you actually were trying to capture closer to what you see because your eye can see it but how many times have you done that where you're like oh this is great and then you take a picture and it's like you can't see half of it because there was too much light and it it adjusted for the darkness and so it blew out the lights or it adjusted for the light and then you can't see anything that's in the shadow and for stuff like that it does a a spectacular job and i think people will like it and they won't think anything of it right that's the other thing about this being turned on by default and doing all this stuff is as far as you're concerned as

a user you press the button and it takes a picture and the picture looks good and that's all it it should be like, there shouldn't be any fiddling around here, it should just do it, you don't have to tap, like, be sure to tap on the light spot, and then it'll get the dark spots like no, no, no, no, it does all of that it figures all that out. And I'll throw in on the video side, something that they also didn't talk about so much, which is the idea that there's this extended dynamic range video, which blew me away. As somebody who tries to think about how much processing and how much data is going on here, they don't say HDR, they say it's extended dynamic range video.

This is a feature that has existed before and other things. Dan Sturm told me that it's a feature on RED cameras to do this, which is a high-end professional video camera. But the way it works on the iPhone XS is if you take a 4K video at 30 frames a second, the device is capable of capturing 60 frames a second, right?

So if you take it at 30, what it does is it still captures at 60, but it captures every other frame as a stepped up or stepped down image. And then on the fly, stitches those two images together into a single extended dynamic range image, which means, follow me here. It's shooting 4K video at 60 frames a second, adjusting the settings every 160th of a second and every 130th of a second, taking two frames of 4K video and analyzing them to see if they can put them together in a way to extend the dynamic range. And all you do is you press the button and record video. But some of their videos where they've got like bicycles going through the forest and

there's like light streaming through and there's a shadow, deep shadow in the back. Like what it's doing there is the the dark stuff is being taken from one of those sets of frames and the light stuff from the alternate light, you know, other set of frames. And then it's stitching them all together. It's that is amazing that that kind of stuff is happening. But that's where we are with this technology is that how do you get around the limits of sensors in terms of dynamic range? And the answer is build faster sensors

and take a bunch of pictures and then have software stitch them all together on the fly. And it's happening today. Like literally the shipping iPhone today, if you take video at 30 frames per second, it is capturing and extending dynamic range and you don't even know it so i just wanted before we move away from this and we start talking about the apple watch i put a link in the show notes to a like a camera test that i did yesterday me and india we went out and we're having a drink in a

bar low light in there and i took a picture on her phone and a picture on my phone you see this link i put in the show notes yeah i see you compare those two right so on the left is the iphone 10 and on the on the right is my 10s max that difference like this is the exact type of thing i'm talking about right like if we're out a nice place i might want to take a picture of her right she has a drink now if i would have taken that picture on the 10 i would have not kept that photo yeah what it looks like is she so she's backlit there's a light right behind her head and on the the 10s picture what it looks like is it looks like almost like a photographer's assistant was off screen with like a reflective thing to light her face yeah because it because a professional

photographer that's what they do if you're backlit is that they're gonna they're gonna front light you to counteract the backlighting right but in this case what's happening is the 10s max is doing you know that long exposure and also the other exposures and then putting them together and so it's able to capture now also i'll point out the light behind her is also not blown out like it is on the 10. Like the 10, it's all bulgy and there's like a big flare at the top of the light. And on the 10S Max shot, it is the shape of the light, which is also kind of amazing. You can see the picture in the background. Yep.

And she looks further away, right? Because... She does, right? Because the focal length is different so i mean for me like this is the kind of thing that i'm talking about right like nobody who knew what they were doing with a camera would take this picture right because it's just not going to come out right like just me on my own taking this picture but i want to take it i want these pictures and this camera is allowing me to do that like all of the detail all of the

color the color of her sweater like all of this stuff comes out in a way that i could never have before like i am really really blown away by how good this camera is at fixing my mistakes. And I think that that is awesome. And I am very surprised that Apple didn't... I feel like they didn't sell this to me. I think that they did a bad job of selling this thing to me because the pictures that they're taking are professional photos and that's not what they should be showing me.

Like, I want to see pictures like this. Show me pictures of someone in a bar. Like, don't show me pictures of someone standing like next to the Golden Gate Bridge. Like, and it'd be all beautiful. Because that's not like, that's not how me and you take photos. Because that's not what we do. We take pictures of our friends, you know, doing silly things in places. And we take pictures of our dogs in the park, right? Like that.

And I want to see that kind of stuff because that sells it to me. Because it's been so funny, like as I've been sharing some of these pictures over the past few days, that people are like, oh, now I want one of these because I had no idea it was this good. I think this is the feature that would get if you have last year's model, the thing that will make you say, oh, I do need to update, which again, most people are not needing to update from last year's model. But if there is something that's going to drive it, I mean, I posted something in our Slack, like a picture of my dog. I was taking a walk in one of these situations where it was the afternoon and we were on the side of the mountain on a trail and there's light parts and dark parts. And like, you can see the dog in the shadows.

You can see the blue sky. It's not blown out. You can see the leaves on the trees. I was in some extreme dynamic. I mean, I'm shooting into the sun and it looks fine. And that's, it's just that, again, if you're a professional photographer, you know not to do that, but this is consumer photography. And you just, you know, you don't care where the sun sun is you care where your kid is or your dog is or whatever

and you want to um take a picture of that and have it actually look good and this does that can i put that in the show notes too so people can see it yeah sure so that'll be in there too just just a couple of things right and you know none of this is conclusive but it's some of the stuff that's makes me has made me happy that I upgraded my phone. All right, we should talk about the Apple Watch. We should. Before we do, let's thank our next sponsor, which is our friends over at Smile. I want to talk to you about the PDF Pen, which is one of my very favorite applications.

PDF Pen is the ultimate tool for editing PDF. Using PDF Pen, you can go paperless for scanning because it also features OCR as well, so it can read the text that's in the images that you're scanning in. You can mark up and highlight PDFs. You can search and redact sensitive information, such as account numbers, if you're sending them off to somebody else. You can correct text in PDFs without needing the originals, which is wonderful, and you don't have to do that weird thing where you convert it to a different format and try and convert it back again. You can insert, remove, and reorder pages in pdfs you can move and adjust images record and playback

audio annotations so much incredible stuff or as well you can grab pdf pen pro which will allow you to do create fillable pdf forms you can create an edit table of contents convert websites into pdfs and even add and edit document permissions pdf pen 10 comes with a bunch of new features such as watermarks and a new precision editing tool head over to the smile blog and you can get details and animated gifs of all of these features in action i use and love pdf pen like i use it every single day i'm the i deal with contracts so much in my work and i get sent some of the most wild things you'll ever see in your life, right? Where I love when somebody sends you a Word document and like, can you sign this?

Like, how? How? How do you think I've got to print this? Like, no, I don't want to print this. I use PDF Pen and I do it and it's wonderful. So you can learn more about PDF Pen and PDF Pen Pro right now at smilesoftware.com slash podcast. Our thanks to PDF Pen from Smile for their support of this show and RelayFM. All right, so the Apple Watch Series 4. I didn't buy one of these for myself, but I did buy one for Adina, and I wore it for a whole day just so I could kind of get a feeling for it. When I went to the Apple store though, I did try on the gold stainless steel in the 44 millimeter and immediately fell in love with it. That is the, in my opinion, the most beautiful Apple

watch that Apple has ever made. I think it is stunning. I mean, overall, these watches look brilliant. I really do love the design of them but that gold one it it really spoke to me i don't know why i i absolutely loved it um which watch do you have it's because you are gold i guess always believing anyway we're back to spin about like i have the aluminum space gray as i always do right i mean i just wondered if they pushed the gold on you like i i saw it but they did not give me a gold watch to review i uh i i did see one and it looks very nice like i love it the gold stainless looks really really nice if you want a gold watch um shiny gold watch it's definitely i i don't love the fact that the stainless is only the um the cellular model because that's a 300 gap between the gps

only aluminum and the uh the nearest stainless and i don't i don't love that but it is what it is there i i get why they're doing it but i don't love it did you was coming the original packaging because i don't know how this stuff comes from yeah oh yeah shrink wrapped because they've changed the way that they do the watch packaging which is really interesting to me where you now get the watch and the band in two separate boxes and it's kind of held together in this this paper the little wrapper yeah yeah so my expectation is i mean they're clearly doing this to help with logistics right because then they don't need as many uh what's called skews right so they don't need as many options and as many pre-packaged watches with the bands because now the boxes the watches are all just exactly the same and they add

the band choice my expectation is they are building towards a build to order for the watch which you can't do right now like if you want to X watch, it comes with X band and that's it. And there might be a couple of options, but like you can only choose from the options. But then there are way more colors and, you know, a band you can buy afterwards. I expect that Apple is like beginning the steps towards you go to the website, you say, I want this watch and this band and ship that to me. Because that feels like where they're going with this. And this is kind of step one ship that to me because that that feels like where they're going with this and this is kind of step one of that of getting that process in place because that's where they should go i mean this is a personal like device that people buy you know

like you don't get a pre-packaged case with your iphone right like that's not how it works you just buy the iphone and you get a case if you want it but they have so many band options that you know you shouldn't just have the choice of like two sport bands in two different colors you should be able to choose from any of them it is so annoying that they have the whole like i was looking to see where they're in stock because the one i ordered for lauren is not coming until next month and they're like oh well we have the one with this band in stock here and the one with this band in stock here. And I thought, really? Really? This is dumb.

Plus, you're like, I don't want a white sport band. But if you can get the phone with a white sport band and you've got existing bands, I guess I'll just buy the white sport band. So I'm also hopeful that maybe this is going to lead to some sort of either uncoupling of the two or you'll be able to order it online with and pick your band yeah and because you know in the supply and certainly it means that right now when you've got two band options for each one or or even more than that maybe for some it means that at the factory they can you know all the all the watches are just made with the same process in the same box and then they're wrapped um which probably helps them if there's like more orders for one or another you can you can do that on the fly but i'd love it if was if there was more consumer

choice beyond that so on the wrist these watches really don't wear much bigger they they are bigger but they don't necessarily feel it, I would say, for me. So Idina is very small, and the 38 was always big on her. And the 40mm is still big on her, but she finds it comfortable. And that's kind of the thing. It's like, yes, these are bigger, and they are physically bigger, but it's how do they feel. And the fact that they're lighter and they're thinner,

so they're lower down to the wrist, I found this for me, me she's found it for her and this seems to be a general consensus that yes they are bigger but they don't necessarily feel it they're still very comfortable and they're comfortable in new ways which i think is a big is a big difference for this one yeah i like um i got the bigger one and it doesn't feel bigger. It looks bigger when I tap on it. I actually have been like my passcode. I get the numbers wrong because the metrics are a little bit different because it is such a taller screen than it was before. But it doesn't, I mean, what makes part of what makes it feel bigger is that there's more pixels stretched out.

I don't know how much of it is that the screen is actually taller and how much of it and wider, but that it's just, it goes to the edges now. And so that makes it feel different. The edges are rounded down in a way that the previous models weren't. That makes it feel thinner. And then it is actually a little bit thinner and it feels, it looks and feels much thinner on my wrist, even though it a small amount you can you can see the difference yeah which is it makes the overall just it makes it for i think very comfortable it's that i think they've done a great job um the tactics adding the tactics to the digital crown is a really nice touch and i feel that i mean okay so i haven't won an apple watch for like five or six

months nearly at this point but like five months i haven't i don't i haven't won an apple watch on a daily basis at all but the digital crown that's a real nice addition but the taptic motor in general feels slightly different to me and i wonder if you feel the same it does feel different okay great because it feels a little bit more natural yeah i'm not sure i would say that it is more prominent because i actually had prominent haptics turned on before and i have them turned on now and i feel like they're maybe less prominent than they were before but they're still but they're maybe a little more distinct like like there's a little more fine feel there i don't know they just it feels different for sure than the old one i do like the um the digital crown uh haptics are very clever and um're software controlled. So it's not like

every little bit that you rotate, it makes a tick. It's based on whatever you're seeing on screen. So like in the apps list, every app that appears is a tick. In the emoji picker, right? Every line of the emoji picker is a tick. And that just reinforces what you're seeing in the UI, which I think is smart. What do you think of the new watch faces? I like them. I am still kind of, well, first off, I think the jury's out because you have to build, if you're a watch app maker, you have to build new complications in order to use in the infograph faces. The old, you would have thought

that they would have done some sort of compatibility mode where like, there's an overcast complication and it's on my utility face and it's round. It's round. It could fit in one of those circles

on the infograph face, but nope, nope. You need a different, it's a different style of complication to get in those circles on the infograph faces than it is on the other faces. And so apps need to be updated. So I'm encouraged by it. I kind of like them. I like how they look. I don't like the infograph, the non-modular, the infograph with the hands as much as I thought because I want to put numbers

on them and you can't because they put complications where all the numbers are. So I kind of like a watch face with numbers. But the big thing is going to be I don't have enough things to fill the complication slots. Like there just aren't enough things that I think are useful.

Apple is like, oh, well, we'll put the air quality index on there and we'll put the UV on there and all that. It's like, that's fine. I don't, those aren't things that I need. So what I want is a bunch more Apple watch complication stuff to be added

that feeds those complications. And I mean, I'm increasingly interested in the infograph modular, which has a huge space in the middle for a giant mega complication. And right now what's on offer there is not stuff that I'm super interested in, but I'm hopeful that if something comes out that I'm really excited about, that that will be a more likely use case. I am still frustrated. I have to say, um, the, there's a calendar face. That's actually pretty good. That shows you your next calendar event in the infograph, uh, face. And the complication has been around a long time, but there's more room for it. It looks nice. And it's got the date also on it, but it's the same thing as always, which is when you don't

have a meeting, it puts text on your wrist that says no more events. And I hate that. I hate that. Just don't put text there. If there are no more events, don't put text there. But every time I check my watch, it's going to say no events today, no more events today. It's stupid. One thing that Apple Watch, even with watchOS 5, has not gotten to yet is the idea of being really conditional where, like, I want to see a timer if a timer is running, but I don't want the timer complication on my watch all the time. I guess the Siri watch face is closest to that, but the Siri watch face comes with its own set of drawbacks, right?

Exactly. Exactly. So anyway, but I do, I think they're really cool. So anyway, but I do, I think they're, I think they're really cool. I just think there needs to be more content for them. And I haven't yet figured out kind of exactly how I want to do, how I want to set them up. So I'm still, I'm still kind of exploring there. But, you know, but it looks, they look great.

I really like them. And I think that they could be, they are built to have information overload. Like that's what they're for. And right now there aren't enough complications that are compatible with them that fulfill my desire for information overload. Like that's what they're for. And right now there aren't enough complications that are compatible with them that fulfill my desire for information overload. And I hope, I hope we get there because I do want to load it up with things that I actually want, things I want to see when I check my watch. And right now there, you know, I've got carrot weather and I've got the activity complication and I've got the date and the time. And that's literally it, which is not much. I set it up with the regular Infograph watch face. And I love the one with the white face when you're going to have the white face to it.

I just like the way that looks a lot. I had the same problem as you. Like there are a couple of complications where it was like, well, I'm just going to put these there because i need to fill the spaces i do like on that watch because you've got the four kind of circles in the middle that you can assign one of your favorites from your favorite contacts into there and it puts the little picture there and you can tap it and send them a message or call them i like that that was cool but i ended up with like i put the solar system one in i don't know what to put in here. But I do, I mean, I know that these are polarizing because I understand why it is a very particular design decision

that's been made with these of like having all this information with different colors and stuff. But I really like the way that it looks. And I really like the corner complications. I like the way the current weather and like, they're great for weather, right? Where you show the low and high temperature and on that little graph, right? I love that.

That is such clever interface design. Like that's one of the best ways I've ever seen to show temperature. Like it's genius. I've never seen it. I mean, I'm sure it's been done somewhere like this, but I've never seen it displayed in that way where you've got this like low and high and then a point on that line. I think it's really smart. I like the idea of like, okay, how does it feel right now?

All right, well, this is the middle point of temperature today. And it's like I like thinking of it that way, that it's a nice visual way of showing that information. So my other frustration about these watch faces is that there are these nice circular complication spaces in the infograph face and yet they didn't update the other faces they updated the other faces for the series four because like the bottom on on my beloved uh utility face is now curved when before it was straight but what they didn't do is modify the circular complication areas on that face to use the new fancier circular complications yeah they're using the old ones and i just don't i don't understand why that is there's a discontinuity like that like on the series four perhaps you should use the series 4 fancy complications and design around them.

And they chose not to do that, which I don't entirely understand. It is weird that they've got all these new complication types, but they can only be used in two places and that's it. It's kind of like the Series stuff again, right? It's like, well, okay, you can build some areas that tie into the Series watch face to show contextual stuff. But no, not on any other watch face. On every other watch face, it will just show no more events. It's like, why are the watch faces being built in these weird silos? It's very strange.

Okay, so this is a jumping ahead to an Ask Upgrade question. Rajiv asked if you can get cellular signal status on any other face besides Explorer. The answer is still no. Why can you only find out your cellular status on the other face besides Explorer? The answer is still no. Why can you only find out your cellular status on the Explorer face? That should be a complication. Like, it's very strange.

Very strange. I don't really understand that. Can I talk about what it's been like, what it was like to use an Apple Watch again? Yeah, yeah, I'm intrigued. So, I will say that I'm very happy that the Apple store in Regent Street didn't have any of the gold stainless steel watches in stock.

Because I loved it so much wearing it, I probably would have ended up walking out with one. And now after having worn the Apple Watch for a day, I was reminded of the things that I didn't like about it and also given some new things that for some reason I now just don't like about the Apple Watch anymore, so I won't be buying one. So I found myself frustrated about two main things. One was the Apple Watch's inability to show me the time. Like, I find, I still find it really annoying that I can't just glance down at my wrist and see the

time. I find it really annoying that I have to raise my hand in a way and there is a slight weight. Like there is still just those milliseconds. I feel it now because I've been used to seeing the time whenever I wanted it because my watch can just show me it. You know, like one advantage that my Apple watch has over my standard watch is that I can get the time in the dark easier with an Apple Watch. Right. That's really nice because my my my Nomos watch that I wear, I'll put a link in the show notes to my watch in case you're interested. It doesn't have any glow in the dark features. Right. So that's you know, that's one tick up for the Apple Watch. But aside from that, every other time, you know, I feel like I'm waiting i i cannot fathom why apple has not built a system for an always on watch

face we've spoke about this so many times now and i find it really really weird like it it is very strange to me that they haven't found a way to do this yet or just for whatever reason have decided not to do this yet and i think the apple Watch really needs it because I find it annoying. I find it really annoying that I can't just look. So my hand right now is on my keyboard and I can look down and see what the time is. I can't do that with my Apple Watch. And I find that even more annoying

now that I've lived without it for a while. But I always found that to be annoying. I have a new annoyance, which is very weird to me considering how I live my life with the Apple Watch. I find notifications to be frustrating now. This wasn't a thing that I felt before. This wasn't a thing that I felt when I was wearing the watch. But I noticed that if I was busy with something, if my phone is going off, my phone is usually somewhere, right? But I can easily ignore it because I'm focused and it's just lighting up or it's, you know, it's behind me and it's buzzing, but it doesn't intrude on me. But the watch is intrusive, like it is physically hitting my body, right?

Like it is telling me like there is notifications, there's things happening. And I have now noticed that I don't like that so much. I like that I get notifications when I want them more. So basically what I've learned is my old system for receiving the amount of notifications that I would get doesn't work for me anymore. And if I was to wear an Apple Watch again, then I would need to cut down my notification types a lot more. But it was just interesting to me to notice that the way I used to do it, I don't want anymore. And I found that really, really weird. So even with because I wasn't doing one to one monitoring, because I set it up the way I always did. But the amount of notifications that was coming to my watch was still too many so I would need to change that but it was just something that I found peculiar because this was

not how I felt when I wore an Apple watch for like three years but for some reason now I do yeah I had that same thing where um I set up my new review unit as a new watch and discovered that the default notification settings were not going to work for me. And I had already, obviously on my other watch, I'd set them that way, but I went back to the defaults and it was like, no, like I, I have carefully curated what my Apple Watch is allowed to annoy me with and everything else I don't want to see it I'm not interested in what it's doing yeah but I found that even my previous level of curation does not fit Mike of September 2018 for whatever reason so look I've super appreciate how much better the Apple Watch has gotten. This is by far the best Apple Watch ever.

It is so good. It is so good. This is the first Apple Watch that I've actually lusted after design of. Previously, it was like, okay, I like this, and which one do I like the most? But I was never like, oh oh my god i love this thing but that gold one i'm like i i really want it because i find it very visually attractive right but i'm not gonna buy it because i i know i'm not gonna wear it and i think i think the

edge to edge display adds into it too when it's when it's open right when it's on not completely blank um it it is i think it adds to the attractiveness especially on the faces that yeah that it it's it's a more full kind of watch experience plus some of the little subtle changes they made in the corners especially making it thinner making it kind of slope down a little bit oh and the back the back is so beautiful. It is. The all ceramic back. Like in the previous watches, it kind of felt like this just looks how it looks

because it has to look this way, right? Like there's just nothing we can do about it. We need these sensors. This is how it looks. There's a weird black circle on it and it's got these big two green dots. But now it's like, it looks like they spent way more time designing that to to be attractive

visually attractive and i appreciate that too yeah that after four years of working on this they've in the fourth iteration they were able to really and they had to write for the the electrocardiogram stuff but they they redesigned the whole back they made it ceramic so that it's more transparent to radio waves which means that it's got better reception. All of these things that go into it. But it feels less curved, too. It feels less intrusive on my wrist than the old one does. I don't know if that's actually true or not or if it's just a factor of the thinness and all of that.

But it feels less like it's bulbously pushing into my wrist. They did make it smaller like the protrusion is is smaller than it then it was like whatever you call it like it is the the bulbousness is less the bump the bump is less the bump less bump thing yep so i mean you know like obviously the i am a big fan of the upgrade from my phone because I got the bigger size, I got what I wanted but I still think that for people using if you use an iPhone every day, use an Apple Watch every day the Apple Watch upgrade is a better upgrade than the iPhone upgrade is

I 100% agree with everybody's initial theory about this when they showed it off if you are a daily Apple Watch user this new Apple Watch user, this new Apple Watch is a very good purchase for you. I would almost say it is close to how the iPhone X was a step up from the iPhone 7 or the iPhone 8, in how much of a jump that was in so many different ways. I think the Apple Watch is similar.

It looks amazing. They've given you much more screen it's way more capable you know the battery life is still incredible it's super fast they've added just niceties like that taptic thing they did not need to add that they just added it because it's nice you know like in the way that like the stainless steel was nice right on the on the iphone 10 like i think the apple watch makes me is reminiscent of that kind of upgrade for me it is a fantastic product like and if you use one every day i think you'll be super happy with it yeah i agree it's a really really good upgrade um the first kind of

major design change with the screen change and it's it's it's nice if you if you have a an older apple watch um i think a lot of people who have stuck with the series zero i keep talking to people who are like oh yeah i now's the time because you don't get watch os5 yeah if you still have a series zero and you love your apple watch and you can and you have the means you should upgrade like without i mean and i would say that no matter what one you have, you could probably be good with it, but especially if you're back down there on Series 0, you should think about that upgrade. All right, let's round out today's episode

with some Ask Upgrade questions, but before we do, let me thank our friends over at Pingdom for their support of this show. Pingdom are amazing because they help keep websites online. They keep your site online, the site you love online, because if something goes wrong with a website, you want to be able to get in and fix it. But you want to be able to get in and fix it as quick as you can. And that's why you need Pingdom's real-time monitoring and feedback. They will let you know exactly what's going on with your website at all times. Pingdom detects around 13 million outages every single month.

That is 400,000 outages a day because stuff breaks on the internet all the time. It doesn't matter what type of website you have, whether it's tiny or whether it's huge, you need alerts about any critical website issues that you have because you just want to know. Pingdom will be able to let you customize how you're alerted. So depending on the severity of the outage,

you can alert different people in different ways. And they'll also track and analyze your website's load time as well so you can see what's affecting an experience. And if you've had a patchy time, right, then you can see if the work that you've done has improved it because they will give you those reports. Pingdom have a no-fuss approach to getting started.

You just give them the URL that you want to monitor. They take care of the rest. So go to pingdom.com slash RelayFM right now 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 wonderful 30% off your first invoice. Thanks to Pingdom for their support of this show and RelayFM. All right, so let's go into some hashtag ask upgrade questions first comes from

tony gala who wants to know what are your favorite apple watch bands well i have a few that i rotate through they're going to be boring but i rotate through an orange sport band which of course they don't make anymore yeah let's just say most cities are probably not made anymore right because the colors they change and they change them yeah but an orange sport band, a black sport band, which is the classic, and the Nike Plus, it's the white with the black dots. I don't know what that's called, but that's actually what i have on right now but i i mostly rotate through those three i do have a leather band and a knockoff uh milanese loop but i almost never wear those it's almost always the sport band and and then sort of seasonally i will swap out different colors i love the sport loops um my favorite is one they still sell which is the black sport loop do not let its name fool you it is full of tiny little colored pieces of

thread it's a great band like i absolutely love that band um adina got the gold aluminium watch and she had one of these uh sport loops looks fantastic right like it looks really good paired with the the gold aluminium watch so yeah that's that's my favorite is the black sport loop um and that one is still available you can still buy that i'm pleased because that's that's my favorite is the black sport loop um and that one is still available you can still buy that i'm pleased because that's one that they should keep around for a long time because it is a that is a great that is a great uh apple watch strap um capilla asks i've got a series 2 watch with uh os watch os 5 installed however the toggle to enable raise to speak for siri just isn't there does this feature only work on series three and

four watches the answer is yes so this is a new feature on watch os5 where which i actually think is pretty good actually i i enjoyed the feature you have to get the kind of the distance timing right yeah because you kind of have to raise it really close to your mouth and you start speaking and you kind of feel like an idiot when it doesn't work um but when it does work and i found it worked for me pretty much every time i tried it it's a good feature but it is available in the series three and above only my uh expectation of this is something to do with the chip right because it's like how airpods don't have the always listening uh ahoy telephone right now i assume it's whatever chips there are in series three and above allows them to do whatever it is that's required to go that one step further from the uh always listening series so yeah series three and above but it is a fun feature do you have you tried that one out

yeah it's all in the timing and you do feel like an idiot when it doesn't work but when it does work it's magic the first time i did it it, it worked perfectly. And I was like, oh, this is amazing. And then the second time I was like, oh, check this out. And it was a complete failure. Yeah, yeah. So it is about like, yeah, timing. You got to lift it and then talk. And I've also had it where I've lifted it and then said something to somebody and been like, oh, no, it's trying to interpret my thing.

So it takes some getting used to. But it is kind of nice to not have to be like, all right, I'm going to hold down the button and talk to the lady now. It's better. Once you get it working right, it's useful. And the speaker's louder in the Series 4 too. It's a lot clearer to hear what she has to say. Camel asks, if you ask Siri to resume Overcast on your HomePod, will it resume your podcast on your HomePod or on your iPhone? All right, so there's a couple of things that need to be mentioned here. So if you just ask a HomePod randomly to resume Overcast, it will just start playing music. But if you set up a Siri shortcut in iOS 12 that has, you set it up with some kind of trigger word to resume overcast, like resume overcast, if you ask your HomePod to do that,

playback will resume on your HomePod, not on the iPhone. This is amazing. This is not how the feature behaved during the beta period, but it is once the HomePod got its update. So if you set up the Siri shortcut, you ask your HomePod to resume Overcast in whatever way you ask it, it will just start playing on the HomePod and not on your phone.

Really great. Big fan of that. It's awesome. Dramskov asks, AirPods don't fit in my ears. What is the best alternative? Is there a real alternative at all? Jason, what is the best alternative for Dramskov? The struggle is real. Well, the good news is Apple makes another headphone with that,

actually several, with the chip that's in the AirPods. And it's, what you're looking for is Beats X, not pronounced 10, apparently. Yeah, funny that. Which are, they're earbuds with, I believe you get to select, you know, you can, there are different tips you can put on them and they're connected together. They're not, they're wireless, but they're're not they're connected to each other by a wire so you wear them kind of behind your neck and put them in your ears um but that gives you much more ability to uh fit because they have different ear tips that are available so you can figure

out which ones fit your ears yeah it comes with four ear tip size options in the box and also those little wings that you can put on them. So they're like hold in place with the rest of your ear. So, and it has all the same internals, right? As the AirPod does. So that is a good choice. And finally today, Benjamin asks, if you were starting from scratch today,

would you use Dropbox or iCloud as your main file system? I would, oh, I don't know. It's a hard one. I would probably use Dropbox because Dropbox has a bunch of features that iCloud still doesn't have in terms of sharing. File restoring is a big one for me.

Yeah. Diversioning and stuff. I've used shared folders. I've used upload links because that's one thing you can do that I use all the time for my podcast, which is give people a Dropbox link where they go to a webpage and upload their file and it pops into my Dropbox. That's amazing. And I'm a big Dropbox proponent to the point where I just actually upgraded to their higher level that gives me not just more storage, but it gives me that feature where I can sort of download on demand on my Mac. I decided I was going to try that out for a while. So iCloud is way more competitive than it used to be.

And depending on how you're using it, especially if you're already paying for iCloud space, it can be a good choice. But that said, I think given how all the different ways I use Dropbox today, I would have to find alternatives if I went to iCloud for a bunch of the things I do and, you know, that Dropbox provides. Yeah, I agree that there are just some features where Dropbox saves my butt and iCloud doesn't offer them. And it's like that file restoring for stuff that is far in the,

you know, into history or the versioning, you know, and those power user features, they're things that I want. They're available to me and they've saved me in a bunch of different ways. So I really, really, I really like Dropbox a lot. And also just the way it ties into some apps and stuff, just the ways that iCloud doesn't. And let alone the sharing features being really kind of next level. So I would still choose Dropbox So I would still choose Dropbox.

I would still choose Dropbox. All right, so that's it for today's episode. If you'd like to send in a question for us at the end of the show, just send out a tweet with the hashtag AskUpgrade. Thank you so much to everybody that continues to do that week after week. We appreciate it greatly. If you want to ask something a little bit more fun, a little bit more esoteric,

you can send in a tweet with the hashtag SnowTalk. It's a great way to open the show. Thanks again to Eero and PDF Pen and Pingdom for their support of this week's episode. If you want to find Jason online, go to sixcolors.com. He is on Twitter. He is at jsnell. You can find more of his work at theincomparable.com. And this show is a part of RelayFM. Me and Jason both host many shows at RelayFM. You can go to relay.fm slash shows to find more. If you want to find me online, Instagram is a great place for that.

Instagram.com slash iMike. Trying to put more time and effort into there because I enjoy Instagram a lot, Jason. It's a nice place to be. All right, thank you so much for checking out this week's episode of Upgrade. And we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell. Goodbye, thank you so much for checking out this week's episode of Upgrade, and we'll be back next time. Until then, say goodbye, Jason Snell.

Goodbye, everybody.