Upgrade - 56: The Migration Experience

Episode Date: September 28, 2015

This week Jason and Myke share their iPhone 6S/6S Plus upgrade experiences, and give their first impressions of the new iPhone 6S features.

from relay fm this is upgrade and this is episode number 56 today's show is brought to you by stamps.com posted on demand casper because everyone deserves a great night's sleep and fracture photos printed in vivid color directly on glass. My name is Mike Hurley and I'm joined by Mr. Jason Snell. Hi Mike, how's it going? Very well sir, how are you? I'm, you know, I am doing a lot right now. I'm kind of exhausted. I think I didn't go outside yesterday. I haven't been outside today. I'm feeling like a little yeah i'm feeling kind of like that like a crazy person who lives in a cave right now because i've been doing so much stuff for the last i mean arguably since the since the apple event so that that's almost three weeks ago

but um yeah it's been a pretty crazy last couple of weeks season yeah it is it is there's i don't really think of it as the peak money-making season, but it's certainly a busy season. It's a peak money-making season for Apple, that's true. And it's very busy for people who write about Apple products. So yeah, there's iPhone stuff. I got iPhones on Thursday. And so I've been working on that. I did a first look on Macworld. By the time this posts, my review should be up on Macworld. And in the background, I'm also working on El Capitan because, you know, El Capitan should be coming out on the 30th. So I've been working on my review for that.

And then I, you know, I think maybe I made some, either I wasn't thinking or I made some mistakes about, the iPhone release is about a week later than it was last year. They pushed it back a little bit. So there was a little more of a gap between the event and the release. And whether I was planning on it being like it was last year, whether I just wasn't thinking about it at all, I can't remember. But I also made a whole bunch of commitments to, you know, I'm going to be on this show. I was on the new screensavers this weekend, you know, which was a lot of fun with Leo Laporte, but that took three hours. Um, and we did it forward to watching that. Actually, we did a total party kill, uh, a session that was four hours long last night. And in between I'm writing these articles that

I have to write. Um, so, so it's been, I, I, you know, I, I went down to the South Bay for a couple of meetings last week on different days. So that's many hours out of the house. So it's just been a kind of crazy time and crazier. I made it crazier than it needed to be by agreeing to some stuff, not realizing it would be during a crazy time, which maybe is my fault. So as a result, yeah, stuff, not realizing it would be during a crazy time, which maybe is my fault. But so as a result, yeah, it's, it's, uh, this is, this is what happened last year, more or less. And I told my wife at the time that just because I was starting this new thing where I was doing this myself and I was suddenly working all weekend and insane hours and all of that,

that it wouldn't be like that forever. Um, and that was true, but we're back to that time of year where that is actually, you know, that is true for the, for the last two weeks. That's been the case where other than like planned things like, you know, we're going to go somewhere for these hours. Other than that sort of thing, it's been pretty much all work for the last couple of weeks. It's pretty crazy. So I'm a frazzled mess right now is what I'm trying to say. Talking about a year, we'll come to that a little later on in the show today. We haven't asked up

a great question about your one year at Six Colors. But we'll get to that a little later on. But before we do that, should we address some follow-up and follow-out? Yeah, let's do it. So I want to talk about my iCloud woes again. Oh, good. It's been an interesting week for feedback. My feedback in regards to this show

has uh three it's taken three different um kind of avenues uh one avenue is people telling me that i shouldn't be saying negative about apple sure well that's inevitable if you say something negative about apple people will say you shouldn't do that. However, I have had way more people agreeing with me because this specific thing, the iCloud stuff and the watch stuff, seem to be problematic for many people. Oh, yeah. And the other thing has been people telling me what they have done to fix their iCloud problems. they have done to fix their iCloud problems. I have seen, so I'll just give you a couple of things. Some people tell me to reinstall iOS 9 from scratch. People telling me that I was definitely on the beta. I can assure you that I'm not. People tell me to just reboot my device.

People telling me to install Yosemite on the mac i don't know what that one was about uh but that was another one the list just went on and on so the conclusion that i drew that i cloud is broken in some way and it needs a reset of some kind but that reset differs person to person like there is a issue at the moment with i cloud and it requires something but it seems like they are vastly different because I tried obviously rebooting it. I'm not I have I'm running Yosemite and El Capitan on two different Macs

I am not having these problems with my iPad as I mentioned so it's kind of all over the map. What I did do I told you last week that you should log out and back in and that's the same premise, right? Which is something is weird. So let's change the iCloud state to something else and see if that resolves what's going on, question mark.

So I did log out and log back in of iCloud, which is a horrific thing to do because everything beeps and flashes. Yes. It throws little boxes in your face, like, please enter a password. Please, please enter a password. I beg you. But it is the right thing to do, I think, because it is so baked into so much stuff. Like, just signing out and never signing back in again,

which some people may do, is a terrible idea. It worked. So when I signed back in again I was able to perform an update an iCloud backup but now it's broken again on the new phone

found out last night just checking, I thought I should just check because I have a weekly OmniFocus reminder a weekly OmniFocus task at the moment to remind me to just back up my phone to my Mac, right? Just plug it in, back it up, do it once a week. Once a week is fine for me

because I don't feel like I'm going to lose too much stuff. Most stuff gets pushed into the cloud in some manner anyway. So let me just check before I say, you know, before I delete this task because I don't need it anymore. And my 6S+, I can't get that right, 6S+, is not backing up to iCloud at the moment. And I tried to perform two backups and they both failed. So this morning I signed out of iCloud

again, back in, and it did perform an update. However, I'm not convinced that it is updating, that it is backing up everything i kept saying update when i mean backup as well i'm all over the shop today i'm not convinced that it is performing a full backup because for example when i look at what's in the next backup just the pure storage amounts taken up is way more right so it's saying that currently my the current iphone that i have which is i've given it the name Mike Was Right, which I very much enjoyed when I had that idea. And the backup size currently is 3 gigabytes. But the next backup size, there is 4 gigabytes of photos.

Now, I haven't taken a gigabyte of photos in the last six hours, so I have no idea what's going on. Maybe photos are being downloaded from iCloud or something. I'm not 100% sure what's going on maybe maybe photos are being downloaded from iCloud or something I'm not 100% sure what's going on but it did perform a backup so it's now a case of me keeping my eye on this again but so I will urge again everybody who's listening who thinks that their phone may be backing up to iCloud just to double check because there is something wrong right now and I'm not sure if it is tied to the beta in some way having run that you know if you have run the betas and then go on forward to the standard release versions if because you ran the betas it's done something crazy to your iCloud. A couple of people wrote in to remind me

that that $7.99 a year 25 gigGB tier for my iCloud storage was probably not really worth holding onto anymore considering that now the 50GB is something like £9 a year, £9.48 a year, so I have upgraded to the 50GB now because when they changed the pricing it's now made it way more worthwhile to just go for that. So it was bugging me about iCloud backup and also reminding me to put, you know, oh, you should be doing all your photos. So I was like, okay, whatever.

Just get the 50 gigabytes and I'm good. So that's that. And the last thing, the new phone has fixed my tethering problem. Oh, good. So that's one of these things is fixed. So that's that. So I will continue to update people in iCloud Corner

over the next couple of weeks. But there's something going wrong. I have had a few people say to me that they were having these problems, but the 9.1 beta has fixed them. So potentially in a couple of weeks time, it will all go away again but there does seem to be an issue i'm happy that i'm not alone and i'm hoping that uh that something is being done

about it that's good that's good i i um this isn't really iphone review related so i i'll mention it here i think is um my observation while transferring to a new phone last week is that this just isn't simple enough. Like there's too much, like if you do, if you restore from an iCloud backup, which I think is a very common thing, because a lot of people use iCloud backups now, you have to reenter in all your passwords. So even if it all works fine, you have to enter in all the passwords again. So even if it all works fine, you have to enter in all the passwords again. And if you use the encrypted backup method, which uses iTunes, there are issues there too. It is true that if you restore from an encrypted backup on iTunes,

that you don't have to re-enter in most of your passwords. You still have to enter in your iCloud ID, and you have to put in your Apple Pay security code, and you have to retrain Touch ID, which I kind of understand for the way they're built technically to be secure and to have the software not know sort of what the secrets are. But even then, you have to deal with iTunes. And iTunes is a gigantic pain, especially if you haven't synced to it for a while. It says, I want to transfer your content. And that can take forever. And then even though it did transfer my content, when I came back, it still needed to download a whole bunch of apps from the App Store, even though those apps were sitting on my device, which was frustrating.

And I keep thinking about people who rely on tethering, right? And have metered data. Or just people who have metered data in any instance. It's like, wait a second, this data is on my phone, and yet you're going to redownload it from the internet anyway. So that's kind of frustrating. And you just having to resort to iTunes. And I had that moment where I thought, you know, Apple needs to make this, especially in a world where people are potentially going to be upgrading their iPhones every year, this needs to be better. This needs to be so much better. Apple needs to put some work into having, you know, somebody on Twitter said to me, why can't you put two phones next to each other and say, all right, I want to transfer from A to B. And I know there are

technical reasons why that might be difficult, but... My integration assistant exists. Yeah. Even if, you know, there might be space considerations, although the new phone, if it's completely empty, you know, could it take, could it receive a big data packet from the the phone and launch the iPhone migration utility and press a button and have it suck everything in and then hook up the new phone and press a button and have it do that. But whatever the approaches are, and iCloud kind of is like that, except then you enter in a million passwords, because it seems like people are also confusing iCloud Keychain, which is used for logging into websites and autofilling in Safari. iCloud Keychain does not, to my knowledge, remember your Gmail password, right, or anything like that. Anything that's saved as a stored password in the system, in preferences, those are flagged as being passwords, and they're not backed up because they don't want to put your passwords on iCloud.

So it's kind of a mess. And, and although it's better than it was, I feel like this is one of those areas where Apple needs to make it a better experience for its customers that, that if they're, you know, you're more likely to upgrade your phone if it's an easy experience to upgrade your phone and you don't lose data, have a frustration where you have to look up passwords. Let's make it as easy as possible so that people are really enthusiastic about upgrading and don't have their upgrade experience sort of soured by having a painful upgrade. And I haven't even mentioned the Apple Watch yet, which it feels like Apple just completely forgot or punted about the fact that

people were going to buy new iPhones and need to repair their Apple Watches because there's no transfer procedure at all for an Apple Watch to move between phones. You have to unpair it. It wipes itself. Then you need to repair it. And then it loads from a backup, which may not contain all your data. I lost a couple of days of fitness data, even though I followed what I thought were all the proper steps. And again, I understand technically why, but it shouldn't. It's not a good experience. It needs to be better. All right, Jason, you've lit a fire in me now.

I had so many problems setting up my phone. I'm sorry to everybody who tuned in, hoping I feel better. I have many nice things to say later in the show about my 6S Plus because Mike was right all over again. But I do want to talk about my setup process. Before we do that, let me thank Fracture. So Fracture is sponsoring this week's episode. We love Fracture and Fracture love you guys. And they also want to say a ginormous thank you to every single one of you who have been buying fractures and giving fracture a chance to print your favorite photos fracture is that company that will take your favorite images print them directly onto a piece of glass for you so you

can proudly display or give as gifts as we said before we love fracture we love the prints that they create both me and jason have them hanging on our walls at home and it's also great working with them and I love seeing all of the photos of the awesome prints that people have made and they send me pictures of them on Twitter so I really like that because it's a nice thing because I get to see the pictures that people love and I get and they tell me that they're happy with their fractures so that makes me feel happy when our listeners are happy with the sponsors and the products that they provide as well the team at Fracture is super passionate about helping people display and celebrate their memories and accomplishments with the beautiful glass prints that they produce.

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It's a beautiful one. But they have specifically requested that we mention that if you're considering giving a fracture or two as gifts this December, you need to start making plans now because their queue always fills up fast with holiday orders. So to avoid disappointment, you should be ordering as soon as possible because Fracture prints really do make amazing gifts for family and friends. So rescue those photos that are just hidden away on your devices and pick a few to have on show at home or at work, wherever you want. Head on over to fractureme.com to learn more and get started. And if you use the code UPGRADE, you will not only get yourself 15% off your first order,

you'll also help support this show. Once again, big thanks to Fracture for supporting RelayFM. Don't forget to send your pictures along of your fractures when you get them. They're beautiful. They really are. So, I feel, and I agree with you, that there are many problems here. And what I think is Apple's current stance on privacy

is making iPhones set up harder and more frustrating. Yeah, I mean, they've made their lives more difficult. And again, their stance on privacy, I think, is rightly so. It's a lot easier if you're Google and you have all the things in the cloud to do things with all of those things. And Apple, I mean, total tangent, but when I talked to Apple about the Photos app for Mac, which I wrote the book about, and I'm going to do an update of that for El Capitan and how all that stuff syncs, it's the same thing, right? Which is because they're

not going to put all of your facial recognition data in the cloud, which is in part, at least for privacy reasons, it makes a lot of things more complicated in photos. Because if you have two Macs syncing to iCloud Photo Library, they can't share the face recognition database because it stays on the machine. So, you know, there are a lot of these cases where Apple's strategy, which is, you know, we could argue about which came first, whether it was that Apple's business model, it makes – leads to these kind of privacy things or whether it is a choice to have privacy and then that permeates the products. But either way, it makes their job harder. So I have said this many times. I think that my idea of privacy is different to many others in that I'm willing to accept trade-offs where I think that I get benefit from them.

So I would really love if I could say to Apple, even if just on this one occasion whilst I'm doing this backup, take the data and just promise me you'll delete it afterwards. And I know that that is so ideal, but it doesn't bother me if they have it anyway, right? And I'm talking about like health data and Apple Pay information. And I know that, well, the Apple Pay information is slightly different because there's so many legal reasons

why they can't have your credit cards on file in that way so they can make purchases, blah, blah, blah, blah, get all of that. Because that's needed so people can't steal your data from your phone, all that kind of stuff. But there are so many things now that you perform a backup, you set up your phone, and it's like you now need to enter this in again, you need to

enter this in again, this in again, and this and this and this. Oh, and if you do the iCloud backup and restore, which we try and push to you as the preferred one, some of this data just will not come over. So it's gone. Right. Imagine you sell your phone and you don't know.

It's gone. Again, for good reasons, right? For good reasons why those things are flagged as not to be backed up because you don't want to have this device resident security stuff. What's the point if you then put it in the cloud? Because then they get your password and if they get your iCloud password, then they have all of your other app passwords and service passwords and all of that. It's a huge issue. So totally understood why you wouldn't do it. But boy, that leads to this whole other set of problems. But then my other question is, why can't I do an encrypted iCloud backup?

But then my other question is, why can't I do an encrypted iCloud backup? Like, don't Apple claim that iMessage is encrypted and they don't have the keys? Right. So the idea would be you'd set your iCloud backup with a password. Yeah. And I think the challenge, yeah, I mean, I am not an encryption expert. So I think that would be the question. There may be a technical reason why, but yeah, I've had that same thought, which is, you know, let me encrypt, let me do something to provide extra protection so I can do something that protects this even more.

Because I think what you want is another layer. You don't want it just protected with the iCloud layer. That's why they don't save that stuff. You would want another element so even if they broke into your iCloud layer. That's why they don't save that stuff. You would want another element. So even if they broke into your iCloud account, they couldn't rifle through your disk images for all of those secrets because they would be extra encrypted.

One reason may be because of technical challenges involving incremental backups. It strikes me as being impossible, but I don't know. Again, this is not my area. And this is the thing that's difficult is I think neither of us are saying that these are not difficult problems. It's just when we think of sort of the bar Apple set in terms of the user experience, this stuff is problematic. And there may be good reasons why this stuff is the way it is,

some of which may be technical, some of which I suspect are probably organizational or things that they have legacy software. I was talking to Leo Laporte this weekend when I was on the new screensavers about, he was like, why does it keep asking for my iCloud password? Like, it keeps asking me over and over again. And I've had that experience too sometimes. And, you know, my gut feeling there is that there, there are stuff that Apple could probably build that made, uh, you know, made you get prompted a lot less. Uh, but there are a bunch of different systems and they're not really quite connected right because they were built separately over time. And I think that's part of this too is,

you know, which is, again, there are lots of reasons, but all we can see as users, which is who we are, is that it's not a good experience and that that's a place where Apple should do better. And Apple may very well know that it needs to do better there. But it remains that the Apple Watch transfer experience was poor and a lot of these iPhone migrations are not particularly strong. And it would seem to me, like I said earlier, that, gosh, if you're Apple and iPhone sales are the most important thing you do, that finding ways to reduce the friction on getting a new iPhone should be pretty high up on the priority list. I completely agree. So the thing that I found the most frustrating, though, was the Apple Watch. Like, it's probably one of the worst user experiences I've had of an Apple product.

The fact that I have to delete my watch and all of the data on it to pair it with another device. Like, that is madness. And I feel like i have an understanding of why because a lot of the data is shared from one to the other and that kind of thing but it's like that is crazy yeah it's um um again technically the way the apple watch is set up it is set up with um pairing right it's set up with this slave relationship it is tied to your iphone it is it is a little satellite of your iphone okay um but

you would think that you could build it. So with keeping in mind that people do change their iPhones, you would think you could build it in a way so that there's a transfer process of some sort. Like, how do I make it so I can authenticate on two devices, two iPhones, and make this easier? Yeah, sometimes you're going to lose your device. It's going to fall in the river, and you're going to need to restore your Apple Watch from a backup on a new iPhone. But what if you've got both devices and you just bought a new iPhone? Is there a way that we can make this process simpler than the idea that you're going to wipe the Apple Watch, have it be a complete blank, and then go to the new phone and restore and then

go through the apple watch setup again because that's what it is now basically yeah and it's it's kind of just this it's just crazy to me i mean because my problem was i was having some issues uh downloading apps uh from the app store because i did and i I did an iTunes backup, but I had this same thing where half of my apps didn't install. They just weren't there. Like they just weren't there at all. And I had to sit for about three hours and basically recreate my phone again.

Yeah. Because even the apps that were showing on the home screens as being there weren't downloading. I had to go in and manually download them all. There was this bug with app thinning, which it turns out is a problem. And Apple ended up having to issue a tech note about it. And actually now when you do a migration, there's like a warning about app thinning that comes across that they've inserted in the process somewhere, somehow using some sort of flag that they can set.

And it did strike me that app thinning, one of the disadvantages of app thinning, which the idea that you could drop out resources that are not for your particular model of device, is that it does make it harder or impossible, essentially, to do a completely, what, free from cloud restore. Because if I've got iPhone model a, and I just bought the, you know, I got, I've got a six S and I just bought the shiny new iPhone seven, right? And it's got a shiny new processor and we've got app thinning and the resources that I need for the seven are not the same as the six. Then I can't do a, uh, an iTunes backup encrypted with all of my apps on it. Because even if the apps are the same, the data is not the same anymore because of app thinning. So that adds a whole other layer of complication.

Unfortunately, it bit everybody this time because of the bug in app thinning that made everybody, you know, they warned everybody should update all of their apps. I guess they changed a flag, which turned app thinning off, it sounds like. So if you did an update, it would download the full app instead of the thin version. And then you could do a, you could do an upgrade. But, you know, I didn't, I don't think I lost apps other than some beta apps, which that happens if you're not in test flight or whatever. I think I lost some of those, but I didn't lose them. But I did have that ghostly, you know, like, oh, these need to redownload. And those that redownload process is also not that great a lot of the time where it stalls.

I had like 30 apps that just said waiting, and it was unclear what we were all waiting for. And I did a restart, and then I ended up logging out and logging back into the App Store. And that is the thing that finally kicked it off. See, I didn't think to do that. I just sat and was like, I basically just downloaded everything again. But the really weird thing, and it's not weird, but it felt weird, was that even though I downloaded the app, so I downloaded an app from the store, but all my data was in it.

It was very strange. I know that the data comes over. That's how the iTunes backup process works now is my understanding, is that you backup the data to iTunes, and the data comes back over to the phone, but then the apps come from the store. I can't think, I don't know why they're doing this. I don't know why everything that I update

doesn't come straight over again. It might have something to do with purchase transfer maybe wasn't complete, but it was a whole big rigmarole. And basically this part, the fact that I spent so many hours dealing with it was a whole big rigmarole and basically this part the fact that i spent so many hours dealing with it was what annoyed me the most about having to for example re-enter apple pay and do the watch because i was already spending so much time doing all of that i then had to go in and add all this stuff in again uh which was a pain it was definitely a pain

uh but yeah i i think that this stuff could be. I don't know what the tools are to make it better. Well, yeah, that's the thing. And I don't doubt, I don't think, and this is the thing when I think people who follow Apple and like Apple stuff get frustrated by media coverage of this that makes stupid assumptions. And then, you know, the macalope comes in

and knocks them on the head. And I don't want to make any dumb assumptions here i don't want to assume that apple thinks this is all great right because i i bet you there are lots of people at apple and you know maybe even at the executive level but i'm sure there are people down in the uh in the in the trenches who know that this is frustrating and probably know exactly why this is this is as frustrating as it is and my guess like i said is that there are lots of legacy issues here, lots of things, different web services that grew up over time and are all connected in different ways to iOS. And even if Apple is very clear that they want to push them all together, and in some cases maybe have

pushed them together, it's just not all there yet. It's very, you know, that's why I'm always hesitant. We've talked about this on the show before. I'm always hesitant to say, well, here's the solution because you don't actually know what the internal issues are. It is kind of a black box, but we can look at it from the outside as users and say, wow, um, this isn't any better. Like, you know, especially if you go through it once a year, um, you once a year, you've got your little check-in and like, how's the migration experience going with, with iCloud and with getting a new iPhone.

And we get to check in and see. And, you know, over that year, you're like, oh, well, this is probably improved in the last year. And then you go into it and you're like, no, it actually is not any better. And in fact, with the addition of the Apple Watch, it's kind of worse. And with the app thinning thing, it got extra complicated and worse. So, you know, that's the bottom line is that it's got to be better. It needs to be better. I mean, this does go to my general feeling right now and kind of the flag that I'm waving is that I'm concerned that these devices are getting too complicated. As they're having to add new features constantly, they're getting way, way too complicated for a new user, for a less technically advanced user.

And or people are just completely missing that some things even exist in their phones. Yeah, it's a tough because they are more complex, right? And so Apple wants to add features and make these things more complex without making them more complicated. And that is tricky. And yeah, you get a new phone and it asks, you know, there's like a wizard, like the old Microsoft concept of a wizard. There's an assistant. There's this thing that walks you through like, would you, you know, would you like to turn on location services? Would you like to turn on touch ID? Would you like to log into iCloud or make an iCloud or an Apple ID? You know, would you like to send information to Apple? Would you like to send information to third party developers? You know, it there know, there are reasons why all of those questions are there. And I'm not saying that maybe they should all go away. But the fact is, you know, it used to be easier. And with every new feature, it seems like it gets

a little more difficult. And with every new security and privacy feature, it gets a little more complicated. There's another screen you need to go through. And yeah, you only have to go through it once a year or every two years. I'll grant you that. But still, you know, I see people get new iPhones and have this same frustration. You know, this happened the last time my wife got a new iPhone. She was like, you know, it's asking me about this and that and this now. It's like, yeah, that's you got to do it. And it just, it feels like work and it may be necessary, but it doesn't necessarily lead to a super happy, joyous experience, which let's, let's be clear here. You know, getting a new iPhone should be a super happy, joyous experience, right? It should be, it should be. And everything that happens that makes it less of that is something that there's gotta be somebody at Apple saying we got to do better because, you know, that's their whole business.

I mean, two-thirds of their business is selling new iPhones. So the onboarding experience of a new iPhone needs to be as awesome as possible. And I think it's not. The complexity thing, I don't blame Apple for it, but it's just the situation that they're in. These things have to become more complex as the demand for new features increases as well. There's nothing they can do about it, right? They've got to put new stuff in these devices, but there is an issue that it makes them more complex.

Yeah, well, I mean, you add Touch ID, and then you need to set up Touch ID every time, and you've got all the data stored in the secure element where it can't come back out, and so you can't just copy. First off, even if the hardware and there's new touch ID sensors. So who's to say that the whole training process and the hardware is not different under there? Like, even if you could pull out your ID information, your fingerprint information and transfer it, you know, would it work? Or has the hardware changed and the specs have changed and it actually needs you? But even if it doesn't need you to retrain because of that, it needs you to retrain because they put security in place to not get that data out.

And, you know, that's a choice. And it's, I think, maybe a good choice. But it does mean that's a whole set of training that you have to redo when you move to the new phone. And you could, you know, adding an Apple Watch complicates it further. And it's just, it's all in there. It's a hard problem. And I, you know, we see both, both of us see Apple struggling with it.

And I think we have to say they're struggling with it. This is, you know, there's a lot of room to grow here. I don't think anybody does a good job of this type of stuff, like the migration process, but Apple is not doing a good one either. And that's the one that I go through the most yeah and our expectations are pretty high like google's is worse it actually brings over less information especially going from device vendor to device vendor it's my my own experiences with it is i it's been very hit or miss as to what it actually

provides you with um it's been a while since I since I used an Android phone. But the last time I did, my impression was if it's stuff you've got in Google and your Google ID unlocks it, you are in good shape and everything else. Yeah, not so much. All right. I want to get over this hump and actually talk about some happy things and some good things about my new device here. Before we do that, let's take a moment to thank Casper, the online retailer of premium mattresses that you can get yourself for a fraction of the price that you will find mattresses in stores. The mattress industry has always forced consumers into paying high prices,

and Casper is here to revolutionize the mattress world by cutting the cost of dealing with resellers and showrooms and passing that saving directly on to you, the consumer. A Casper mattress provides resilience and long-lasting supportive comfort. Casper mattresses are one of a kind. They have created their own type of mattress technology. They combine a new hybrid mattress that has latex and memory foam in it. It's very, very fancy. Jason, I know that you are a Casper man, are you not? Yeah, I guess you could say that. I do sleep on a Casper mattress every night when I am in my house.

And it's very nice. It's a very comfortable mattress. Our old mattress was not. It was like sleeping on a trampoline. You sit on one side, the cat flies off the other side. And this new one is just, when they say it's just got the right sink and the right bounce, that's about it. That's well-crafted. That describes the feeling when you lay down on it. It's comfortable and risk-free, which is, I think, the most beautiful thing about it because you can send it back if you don't like it. Yep. They have a 100-day return period.

It's completely risk-free to buy a Casper mattress. You can try it out on your own bed in your own home and sleep on it and make sure that it's right for you. And if it isn't, they will pick it up for free and return it. You will get a refund, and they will come away, and they will pick it up for you because they understand. They will get a refund and they will come away and they will pick it up for you because they understand the importance of truly trying out a mattress. That in all reality, you'll probably be spending a big chunk of your life on like a third of your life in most instances. Usually mattresses can often cost well over $1,500, but Casper mattresses cost between $500 for a twin size mattress, $750 for a full, $850 for a queen, and $950 for a king.

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See casper.com slash upgrade for details. Thank you so much to Casper for sponsoring this show and RelayFM. So I reserved my phone on the Apple Store app late one night in Portland. And it was the best decision I've made in a long time. Because I was planning to go to the store because I'm fed up of the

lackluster delivery companies we have here in the UK. I arrived at the Apple Store that I wanted to go to. I kind of got there about half past eight in the morning. I think the store was open to eight maybe. The line to get a phone was huge, hundreds of people deep. And the line for reserving was like 20 people deep.

So I felt very good about that. You just get your time slot, you get in the line, and then when your time slot comes up, they will say like, oh, the 8.45 time slot, please come forward. You go there and I just gave them my name and a guy come and collected me from the line and we went into the store. It was crazy busy in the store.

They had hundreds of iPhones sitting on that big counter at the back. You know, the one like the right at the very back. I think it's the Genius Bar in this store anyway. They had loads and loads of phones there and there was just store members running to and four two and four two and four all day like did you pick one close to you or did you pick one that you know is less uh you know less busy or do you have any strategy about which store you i just picked the closest because i knew i was

going to be leaving early in the morning it's a relative but it's a relatively busy one but all apple stores in london are busy because they because they're big stores in big malls. We don't have local stores like in some cities. We have five or six, and they're all huge, including two of the largest in the world. I actually think the Covent Garden is the biggest Apple store per square foot in the world. There you go.

A little fact for you. Nice tip. The Covent garden store is beautiful and it's huge um it's the nicest apple store i've been to anyway uh but i went to uh one in a mall here in stratford in in london because it's the one that's closest to my home um and i kind of i kind of uh ruined everything for this poor guy because i wanted to buy a watch band as well and and it ruined everything for him oh because he had wanted to buy a watch band as well and it ruined everything for him because he had to

get someone to go into the back to pick one up and he was like, we were waiting, we were chatting for a few minutes and we were just chit-chatting and he was very nice. We were talking about how busy the day was and stuff. But they're optimized for come and get your phone and leave, come and get your phone and leave, next, next, next. And you were like

oh, a band, please. Yeah, I think they might actually be kind of targeted on that day maybe to do that, like the amount of pickups that you had. But I bought AppleCare, so that probably balanced it out for him because I expect that if you sell AppleCare, you are probably in good books. I'm sure that is still a retail thing. Like, yes, well done, AppleCare. I buy it because the

phone's so big right it's more likely that i'll drop it and i actually had the closest call of all time whilst walking to the apple store with my old phone in my hand i hit it and it span out and i just caught it before it landed the ground uh it would have smashed to pieces which i thought was quite funny i just get there like oh i broke it can i buy a new one um but whilst whilst the we were waiting for the watchman to come and the guy was kind of getting a little bit impatient so he went into the back so i'm kind of just standing there and then i heard one uh apple store representative ask her manager so can i quickly pop to the loo and the manager says

very quickly yes that shows how busy they were she felt like she had to ask and when she did he was like yeah but you have to be super fast so i was like yeah that's how busy they are on these days uh look the guy told me like he was there at like five in the morning or something like that which yeah i can't even imagine what these days are like for the apple store stuff um but yeah i bought my uh success plus in white and silver um i have a midnight blue case and i bought a midnight blue watch band and i also have a orange case as well silicon cases um i went a bit crazy with it but i really love colors, the orange and the midnight blue. I love them both. So I'm very happy that I got them both.

Do you have your own iPhone? Did you buy one? I don't have one yet. Okay. So that is to come. I just decided since I was going to get the review units and I wanted to spend time with them, that I would just deal with getting a phone later. And you got your review

unit the day before right or something like that on the on the thursday okay and what what model do you have uh well it's the i have the six and the six or the 6s and the 6s plus um uh space gray 6s and it's a silver 6s plus i'm surprised you didn't go for one of the funky colors especially on the plus because i know you won't leave the house well you don't you don't get to choose they they sort of ask what you uh what you want and my understanding was that everybody wanted the rose gold and i said i didn't care if it was rose gold yeah because i guess if you're going to be taking photos take photos of the new one right that makes sense so my feelings with the

phone once i'd actually gotten it through uh upgrade hell um that might be a new segment on the show everything it's a new name of the podcast it's upgrade hell on relay fm everything on this phone feels faster it's crazy oh yeah typing feels faster like there's no lag on the keys um the speed and the snappiness is definitely noticeable like uh there's no this is one thing that i was noticing on my uh six uh six plus was the like a little lag when you pull down to search for an app that's gone with the success plus for me there's no lag there when you pull down to search for an app that's gone with the 6s plus for me there's no lag there when you do the little pull down to search for apps and spotlight search yep um the home button is way clickier it's way clickier yeah and i expect that touch id something to do with that

yes that's well i mean it's a new sensor right so so sensor, right? So whatever that is in that button, it's new. It's a different one than the last one. And it definitely feels and sounds clickier. There's more to it than there was in the 6 models. The Taptic Vibrate motor is awesome. I agree. Feels better and is way quieter. It was like every time I had a message on my uh six plus before i

turned vibration off basically it was like a an airplane was taken off it's so loud but now that i have fixed that and it's great um touch id is like fast to the point that it's too fast it's crazy well i i saw somebody on twitter speculate that maybe the point that it's too fast. It's crazy. Well, I saw somebody on Twitter speculate that maybe the reason that Apple hasn't invested a lot in lock screen complications or that sort of idea on the phone is that you're never going to see the lock screen. You put your finger down and boom, it's gone.

They made live wallpapers though. Yeah, I know. I know. It's just funny because i i'm i'm almost never gonna see unless i'm unless i'm even when i just try to push my thumb down on the button to bring up the lock screen to check the time let's say um it unlocks yeah it's like i know we both know that there is another button that performs this action, but that's not the button I've ever pressed. No, that's exactly right.

Well, yeah, it is a, yeah, the Touch ID is crazy fast. Because even before Touch ID days, I pressed the home button and then swipe to unlock. Sure. That was how I did it. Yeah, me too. I can't imagine myself getting out of this idea, but luckily we don't need our phones to see the time anymore

because we have tiny computers strapped to our wrists. Exactly right. So it doesn't matter. So instead we can press that side button and then do a 3D touch on the screen and watch everything move. I would like to suggest, I tried to tweet this, but people misunderstanding me.

So I deleted the tweet. I would like to play, I tried to tweet this, but people misunderstood me, so I deleted the tweet. I would like to play a game with everybody here, which I think is kind of crazy. If you lock your phone and press the lock button so the screen lights up, and just tap your finger on the home button. So you try and make sure that you get a good contact with the metal ring. like you try and make sure that you you get a good contact with the with the metal ring uh just tap it as quickly as you can and it surprises me just how little information it needs to read it like a millisecond it's doing this reading in because you can just tap it very very fast and the phone unlocks yeah um i am kind of my mind is kind of blown about this. I think that this is, 3D Touch is awesome. Really, really great.

But this Touch ID thing feels like a massive technical achievement that they're underplaying. I don't know how they've managed to do this. It's crazy. Because of the size of the leap that they've made. Like, it's instant now. Like, you know, you could make it faster instant now like i'd you know i'd pretty much you could make it faster but i don't even know if it would be purposeful like i guess what

the only way to make it faster is like you never even see the lock screen anymore like you just press it and it's already unlocked before your eyes can perceive that the lock screen's there like i guess it's the only other thing you can do right i don't know um i really feel the additional weight it's um well it's it's noticeable and it is more noticeable on the plus because that's it's i think 20 grams heavier yeah on the on the plus which you know to put it in perspective if you've used the apple leather case, it's like, um, it's that essentially, because it's, it's basically the, because the case is larger on the six plus than the six. It's basically the weight of the Apple case for your device. It's like, um, you know, that's the extra weight.

And then you can put a case on there and now you're back to even, you know, another 18, 16 grams more weight. I, I think it's, I think you get, you get used to it, but if you're just going directly from one to the other, you can absolutely tell. All the other dimensions, I think, are not noticeable at all. You have to bring out the calipers to measure them, but the weight, you can tell it's heavier. I mean, I've only had it a few days, but I'm not used to it. It reminds me of the Retina iPad. You remember how that got heavier? And it was like, it's not that much heavier,

but you notice it every time you pick it up. It's denser. I mean, it just feels denser. But yeah, it's true. I don't think it's a big deal, at least on the 6S. On the 6S Plus, it may be a bigger deal. It's about. I don't think it's a big deal, at least on the 6S. On the 6S Plus, it may be a bigger deal. It's about 20 grams, and it sounds like the reason for this is the Touch ID stuff, that they have to have another layer of sensors back there.

3D Touch, do you mean? Sorry, yeah, the 3D Touch. It's the strain gauges, basically. It's that layer that is measuring your pressure. And that means, according to the iFixit teardown, the screen is heavier than it was because of that. Well, it would make sense that it's something like the screen, right? Because if it's heavier on the Plus, it has to be something that's large. And obviously, if, for example, it was like a component, that doesn't make any sense, right?

Because not all components are bigger because it's a bigger phone. If it was like the Taptic Engine, it's replacing battery. So is it that much denser than the battery it's replacing? But on the screen, you're adding an entire new layer of something to the screen. 3D Touch. So I struggle to activate the 3D Touch multit I struggle to activate the 3D Touch multitasking oh the multitasking

yeah I have adjusted I have adjusted 3D Touch in the settings to the lowest because as I've mentioned this before I really do like 3D Touch but I kind of still stand by like it's not a pleasant experience I think

to press harder I don't. I think just like to press harder. I don't really I don't like that. Like tapping is nice to me. It's a nice way to interact. But the pushing, I don't know. There's just something in my brain which is like this is a little bit weird. I'm very sensitive at the moment to I don't have them. But any I'm thinking a lot about RSI.

So I think I'm just overly worried about anything that's kind of weird with my hands. Does that make sense? Like I'm a little bit... Sure. I've been getting a bit more wrist pain again recently, even though I've changed all of my equipment to try and combat this. So anything that kind of feels new and different like that is just a little bit strange to me. Because my way of thinking is like is i'm holding it in one hand and then like pushing with one thumb and i'm just

concerned that it's like a a hyper extension of some description i don't know i don't know enough about this stuff i don't know the science but it's just something i've been thinking about but the actual if you put that to the side which most of the time i'm not worrying about it um i really do like 3d touch i think that the multitasking gesture is a little bit too difficult to perform with a case i have no problem reaching with the six plus i know that many people do but we've mentioned before i have big hands uh i can't there's a gesture on uh so so if you push if push if you push from the left side I keep saying push I think that feels like a good verb

to me but rather than to 3D touch something push push works if you push on the left side and start to swipe it reveals the app switcher which is a it's a nice gesture like with the just a normal swipe where you're moving back through the interface

it's a nice shortcut that is complicated if you have a case. Because then the case is sitting there at that edge, and it's a little harder to do it. You've got to be a little more careful when you do it. There is also a gesture if you continue that swipe all the way across the screen where you just quickly jump back to the previous app. And it lets you kind of toggle back and forth and that's a gesture i can't do on the iphone uh 6s plus because my my thumb doesn't go that far yeah see i can't do it uh so my my issue is with it is i most of the time don't know if i've successfully triggered the first part of the action until nothing happens um like you can kind of you do it a little bit and it kind of starts to fan away and then you know you've done it but

i think it's because i have a case because as well the new silicon cases there's a higher lip on them than there was before which makes it even harder like the lip that kind of went around the screen is higher now this is probably to further protect your screen in case of it dropping, which is good, but it's making that gesture harder. But I don't, I mean, I'm trying it out right now, but I'm pretty fine with the double tap of the home button. I don't know if I needed this personally myself.

I have kind of worked out a way of doing it that works more often than not, which is kind of like pushing with the tip of my thumb and then rocking my thumb backwards. This is difficult to explain. Kind of like rocking my thumb backwards, like rolling it across the screen. Anyway, I can't explain this.

It's too difficult. But I love the peek and pop stuff. I like that I can read messages without marking them as read or taking the badge off. So you can read a message, like an iMessage, and it doesn't show as read. So you still have the little number, like one message unread, and it doesn't change the read receipt.

Because sometimes I've sent things that people want me to work on or to do something for them but i just want to check what it is now and i know i'm going to do it later so i like to know that the badge is there so it reminds me to take care of it but i also don't want people to think that i'm ignoring them so i like that that's a really good thing um i love the dropbox implementation so you can peek into folders and you can peek into previews of documents. It's really great in Safari. I don't really use Safari still. I'm still using Chrome.

So I'm waiting now for third parties to implement this across the board. I think that this will be a really, really great thing for third party apps. I think this is the next interaction method. It does add a whole new layer. It really does.

You can do other things you couldn't do before, and I'm excited for what third-parties come up with that is outside of Peek & Pop. I want to see the next pull to refresh from 3D Touch. So that excites me. The me the cursor trackpad is the best

creation that apple have ever come up with so yeah you just you do a 3d touch on the keyboard and it goes into cursor mode like with the two fingers on the uh on the ipad but the difference is the two fingers i find a lot of times the the iPad thinks, oh, you just type something and it messes it up. Whereas with this, it seems much more precise. Like when you push a little bit harder, suddenly you're using a trackpad and it's very clear and there aren't mistakes about what key you pressed. And then you can move the cursor around, which is very nice. I imagine that's even extra nice on the 6S Plus. Yeah, because I don't have to reach up to the text that failed

you know it is very i love that i really do love it um if people you know i would say like check out it's in accessibility settings by the way for you to change the um the amount of force required to activate the 3d touch um i would suggest just check that out see if maybe you like it lighter or stronger um i was way happier when I set it to lighter. It just works for me to have it nice and light. I like apps like Launch Center Pro and Workflow have integrated with the Quick Actions, which is cool. I'm really excited to see what, now that devs have the devices, where can we go with that? That is really cool to me so i'm like that so

all in all the phone itself i think it's fantastic like it's it was i was thinking about this uh yesterday this really does feel like more than an s revision you know i we say that but some of the s revisions have had some pretty impressive features. But this one is, you know, the difference between the speed of the 6S and the 6 is so much more than the difference between the 6 and the 5S. It is so much more. This is a huge speed upgrade, let alone that it also adds the 3D Touch. And the Touch id sensor and the 12 megapixel camera and the 5 megapixel front facing camera we haven't even spoken about the cameras the camera is incredible like the the um i mean i don't know a lot about this stuff but it's gonna sound so

stupid uh but you know how i think it's the focal length like when you can focus on something that's really close and it makes everything in the background blur I've been able to take pictures using that method but I could never do before the front facing camera is awesome the software flash is fantastic it's so bright I really like live photos it ends up making me have to think about

photos a little bit more than before because i have to think like do i want this one to be a live one or not but but i really like it um i think it's kind of cool i think it's cool but i am disappointed in how it is uh how should i put this it's's a cool idea. I really like the idea. The way it's implemented right now, the video that it shoots is so low quality. It's like 15 frames a second. And it's, you know, it's, it's a four by three, but it's like 1080 basically, but it's not, it's not a very high quality image. And you contrast that with the, the 12 megapixel still. And I keep thinking I'd almost rather have it be a series of 12 megapixel or maybe a little bit less stills around it rather than a low quality movie and, you know, it's impressive technology. And again, this may be one of those cases where this is the way the sensor is built and the way the processor and the device works.

This is what they could do. But I think when I look at this, I think, boy, this is going to be really good in a couple of years when it when it looks like a really looks like a Harry Potter picture where right now it's a really good picture that then goes back to a kind of mediocre video you know it's and it is they're still working it out i mean it's a it's a new feature so it's a good idea but it's a new feature so like in 9.1 i guess when you drop it at the end if you drop your phone it will stop the live picture instead of like having your your live photo be include you putting the phone down um but it might also want to measure the data when you're picking the phone up

so that you don't end up with, you know, the opposite of that. And I'm sure they could do that if they wanted to and truncate it at different places. But it's a fun idea. And I look forward to the day when, you know, every picture we take is taken like this, where, you know, you you captured a moment but you also got a few seconds around it think think about that it it captures when you press the button it captures the the second and a half it goes back in time and captures the second and a half before you press the button which means that it's capturing video when you're in that mode

all the time it is always capturing video and buffering it so that if you need it, it will use it. That is pretty amazing. I have to say, though, I like that it's low frame rate. I don't want video around the photo. I want something that is kind of a little bit different. So I just take a video. I like that it's I mean, yes, it could be higher quality. But this is my point.

Give me one of those 60 frames. Like I like that. It's like, you know, quality, but I like that it's not 60 frames. I like that it's like, you know, personally, I like that it is a little bit, like, I love that the audio is there and the audio is running at like regular speed, you know, like it's not cut up in any way. But I kind of just like that it's not a video. I like that it's got something a bit different about it. I feel like the reason that it's 15 frames a second

is because they want it to feel not like a video. Maybe there's a technical reason that they're doing that too, but I think it makes a statement that this is not a video. It's a series of stills. The thing is, it is a video, and the quality is so much less than the quality of the stills that i'd almost rather and again you know there are probably reasons why but i'd almost rather see it and and as a future direction perhaps as a series of stills perhaps

you know instead of it being um this resolution it's a higher resolution at 10 or 15 frames a second around that still that you that you wanted and's like a burst mode, kind of, except it's always there. That would be, because that's my one challenge. Also, I'm sure they experimented with it a bunch of ways. I kind of don't like the fact that when you push on it to activate it, it takes your still, and then it fuzzes it out, and then it shows you the video, that seems it seems kind of weird to me. But I understand that given that the picture isn't quite the same, that it can't really like fade into it.

But that would be the ideal for me. The ideal gesture would be that when I when I press it, the picture just kind of winds backward and then plays forward and then winds backward and plays forward or something like that. Instead of kind of drawing the curtain for a minute and then playing the video. But, you know, it was a hard challenge regardless of it. So I feel like it's a good, you know, it's a fun feature. And as apps support it and understand what the heck this format is, so you can share it online, that will make it more fun. And, you know, I just imagine a couple of generations out that this could be, uh, just

that much more cool and impressive than it, than this first iteration. Mikey and Mr. Soup in the chat room have pointed out the, what I was trying to say, uh, was debt fulfilled. Yeah. That was what I was going for. So I wanted to just clear that up, up, even though the tweets have already come. Yes. Some people tweet while they're listening.

I understand that. And there was a great pleasure, there's a great pleasure to replying and just saying, keep listening. Knowing that it is addressed later in the episode. That's the danger. I do love the people that then listen and then say, oh no, you just said it.

Like, I like that. But I get why people tweet because it's like, I'm not going to wait till the end. Like, I'm going to take my notes and tweet about you afterwards. It's crazy. Yeah, no, I do that. And I'm in the car listening to podcasts all the time. And I'm like, oh, I have a comment. I disagree with John Syracuse about something.

And then, you know, by the time I get out of the car, it's gone. I'm going to wherever I'm going and it's not going to even happen. So I get that, like, if you have the ability to send a tweet or something about something we said that you just do it immediately before the moment passes it's just funny sometimes where you're like yeah actually i think you're i know where you are in the show wait two minutes there it is we all got there together yep do you have anything else to say about the 6S? Oh, well, I mentioned that it's way faster. I really do like 3D Touch. Yeah, the camera.

So I didn't have to do a super in-depth camera test for Macworld, where my review has run, because Chris Finn is doing a whole review of the cameras. But just to say the 12 megapixel upgrade is nice. I think that for a lot of people, the quality is, you know, it's better, but it may not, it's not going to blow you away about how much better it is because it's better and it's fine. But on the plus, you get the optical image stabilization

on, on a video as well as still when last year it was just still, I think, or maybe it was just video. Now it's both. So that, that's, that's an improvement. And, um, and the really thing is the selfie camera, the selfie camera is crazy better. And, um, I'm going to have my daughter do a bunch of selfie tests for me because she's an expert at selfies. But it's because you've got not only a much better camera, but they've got the selfie flash mode, which is using the screen as a flash. And it's not just like drawing a white box on the screen. They actually are driving the screen brightness 300% of normal up to 300% of normal brightness. So it's way more bright than just putting a white rectangle on the screen. And then they're also doing what they do on the, on the front of the camera with the true tone flash, which is they're detecting the color composition of the image and

adjusting what color is on the screen when it flashes so that it's the most kind of harmonious color set for the flash. So there's a lot going on with that. Um, and this is one of those cases, it's a little bit like upgrading the camera on the iPad, where somebody at Apple's like, like the rest of us are like, nah, first time I didn't even have a camera, right? So yeah, nobody needs a camera. And then well, we'll put a camera on there, because you know, maybe you'll need it for something. And then people are everywhere taking pictures with their iPads. And you're like, oh, well, if they're going to do it, maybe we should make that a better camera. Well,

that seems to be where they've gotten with the iPhone now, which is like, yeah, selfies, that is a thing. And our selfie game is not particularly strong. Because previously it was for like video calling. That was why it was there. It's a FaceTime camera. I mean, it's literally they want it there. And if you're streaming video on a FaceTime call,

how good does that video really need to be? And what they have done here is, is, uh, admit that selfies is a thing and they need to be better at it. And now they are much better at it because that camera is way better. And then they put the flash in too. I mean, it's not, it's not perfect because it's still, you know, it, it doesn't have an actual flash and it's, it's got some tech challenges, but it's so much better than it was before. We should say that Ahoy Telephone is now on optionally, but it can be on all the time because they integrated the motion coprocessor

into the main chip, which means that they can offload a bunch of other kind of low power mode stuff. So it can listen to you all the time, wait for you to say Ahoy Telephone. And also you can train your voice. It asks you to speak some key phrases when you train it to activate ahoy telephone with the hope being that your tone of voice and my tone of voice are different enough that you can't activate my phone

by saying ahoy telephone so i want to test it i want to try it i want to see if it works will you allow me to do this? Because in theory, I expect a large portion of our audience have upgraded. So they should have gone through this process where if I say those words, their phones won't go off. So I want to see if it works

for other people listening to the show. Okay, and then people can let us know if it works or not. Yeah, I apologize to everyone who hasn't upgraded or who this does set off off but i'm going to say it right now and i'm going to say in a moment so i'm giving you enough time to skip forward just a little bit one time for science but i'm going to say it's one time for science and we'll see if my own phone goes off okay ready yep hey siri My phone didn't do anything. All right.

That's awesome. So there you go. Okay. Doesn't do anything. So if it works, what I would love to know, if you have a 6S or a 6S Plus and your Siri just started up, I want to know because mine didn't, right? So you may have Mike's phone.

Oh, do you know who did, though? And who's doing stuff my little watch guy he's going crazy over here so he just said okay that word so that's awesome if it what what i would like to know what if you have a 6s or 6s plus and you are are you to start up i want to know mine but the phone didn't do a thing didn't do a thing. Didn't do a thing. That is interesting. All right, let's take a break, do some Ask Upgrade. Let's do it. Jason, would you like to tell the listeners who is sponsoring Ask Upgrade this week?

Ask Upgrade this week brought to you by Stamps.com. You know, getting mailing and shipping done. I have a bunch of things I have to ship out. In fact, this week, they're sitting here in a box. And the beauty of it is all I have to do is get them ready to go and hand them to my letter carrier. I don't need to go to the post office. Going to the post office takes up valuable time. Leasing a postage meter for your business can be very expensive with multi-year commitments and hidden fees.

There is a better way. That better way is stamps.com. Because with stamps.com, you can buy and print official U.S. postage for any letter or package, like the packages I'm going to be sending out. You know what I'm sending out, Mike? I'm sending out the Parsec Award trophies to my panelists for The Incomparable. Look at that. You get multiple trophies? You can ask for them.

They'll send you one, but you can buy extra ones if you want. And I have a lot of panelists. So I have a lot of little trophies here that I'm going to send out to them. And I'm going to send them out using stamps.com, using my own computer and printer. I will weigh the trophy package so we'll know exactly how much it weighs. And then I'll put in the information of where I'm shipping them. And then I print out labels and put them on the boxes and hand them to my letter carrier. And that's it. They'll get the trophies. They're out of my garage and I can reclaim that space and use it for something else. And stamps.com is way easier than a postage meter

at a fraction of the cost, 80%, up to 80% you can save using stamps.com instead of a postage meter. And again, as we've established, you get to avoid being around the people at the post office, which I really like because no offense post office, I don't want to be there, especially as we get into the holidays. I really don't want to be there, especially as we get into the holidays. I really don't want to be there because it gets more crowded and more crazy and I don't like it. It's hectic in the post office. Stamps.com, it's $15.99 a month. That's it. There's no long-term multi-year commitment, no markups on postage, and you can even get special postage discounts with stamps.com. It's really a no-brainer. Use our promo code, which is upgrade, the name of

the show. You should know the name of the podcast you're listening to. Go to stamps.com. It's really a no-brainer. Use our promo code, which is upgrade, the name of the show. You should know the name of the podcast you're listening to. Go to stamps.com and enter, you click on the microphone at the top of the homepage, type in upgrade, and this is what you'll get, a no-risk trial. And there's $110 bonus offer, which includes a digital scale on up to $55 in free postage. Stamps.com, top of the home page, type in upgrade. Thank you so much to Stamps.com for supporting this show,

all of RelayFM, and for helping me mail those trophies out without going to the post office. So the first Ask Upgrade this week comes from Richard. And Richard would love to know and would love to have an update about how Now That Six Colors is a year old.

How has it been for you? And what are you thinking about doing going forward if you considered membership or that kind of thing? Yeah, I referenced on Twitter, I referred Richard to the post I made about the redesign and the post I made about being week 52 of Six Colors a couple weeks ago, both of which I mentioned that I am planning on doing a membership thing and I just haven't gotten to it yet. Looking at what Federico Vittici has done with Mac Stories,

that was actually very much what I was planning, including the same vendor. And seeing his implementation has actually made me move up my timeframe on that because I've been dealing with the fact that I need to build a member site, which means I need to do a WordPress install and put in this plugin and all of this. And what Federico has done is really interesting, is he's using Memberful, which is the site that lets you manage your membership list, and he just links to his implementation on their site. So he hasn't had to build this special custom thing, which is what was holding me back. And so I may do that. So yes,

my goal is to have a membership for Six Colors where people can support me directly, which leads to a lot of nice things like me taking less freelance work and maybe even being able to bring on more writers, but certainly write more myself at the site instead of taking that freelance work on and writing articles elsewhere. And supporting me also as a different revenue stream. So when times may get tough and sponsors may not be there, I've got another reason to keep doing Six Colors because there are readers who are paying me to write there instead. So I'm working on it. It'll definitely happen by the end of the year. I hope it'll happen a lot sooner than that, but I have to get through this crazy week and actually maybe go outside and see the sun at some point. Um, but once this, uh, once this last, uh, crazy period is over and we've entered a calmer, uh, less hectic

period, then, um, I will do that. But otherwise, um, it's a lot of fun. It's going well. I was able to bring on Dan Morin to write two days a week, which is great because I wanted more content on the site and I was doing some freelance stuff. So I thought I would add Dan into the equation and that's been fun. And that's been good for Dan because he's got a bunch of different stuff going on, including a novel that he's trying to get published. And so being able to kind of give him some stability in terms of what he's working on has also been a nice benefit of it. So I've been pretty happy with it. I would say the big surprises for me in the last year have been I'm doing more freelance than I expected.

I actually wasn't planning on freelance work at all. And so I'm doing getting quite as much from the incomparable as I thought that I would in my initial calculations. I think relay has been a pleasant surprise as a part of my, as a part of my, uh, my, my income as part of my, my, my job. Thank you. Thank you very much. Um, so the, the, the mix is a little different than I expected. And there's more, a little more freelance in there. But in general, you know, I really enjoy coming into my office every day and going to work. And it's been very enjoyable. And the more my old job recedes away from me, the more I know that it was, you know, I was completely burned out and unhappy and needed a change.

So it's been nice to get some distance from that and realize that I was doing a lot of things that I didn't want to do. And these days I'm doing a lot of things I do want to do. So that's better. I just saw somebody just sent me a link to say that Tweetbot 4 has now been submitted to the App Store so we have to have any that's important news to me I know it's not important to you

good for people who use Tweetbot yep not you I have Tweetbot it's nice to see the one year thing I'm looking forward to the membership stuff. I'm looking forward to talking about that on the show with you. And whilst you were talking about that, I checked my own calendar

because I was like, I feel like it's ramping up. And I quit my job on October 8th. So now thinking about it, 2014, I went independent four weeks later in November. You must have been a subconscious influence for that. You were surrounded by people who were leaving their jobs. That is definitely true. So that, I mean, I know like, you know, there's a whole big story about me doing it and why I did it. And I did it really much, very much on a whim, but it wasn't, it wasn't a snap decision. It was a decision

that had been brewing for a long time that a certain event just made me do it, which was my shoelaces broke. I'll put a link in the show notes to the episode of Analog where I told the story, which is a story that I love very much, and if you're going to be at Release Notes

in October, you're going to hear part of that story again. Oh, good. I will be there. Good. You're going to hear part of that story again. Oh, good. I will be there. Good. You'll get to hear it again. I'm looking forward to it. With potentially some visual aid. Nice. So there you go. That'll be fun.

But let's move on with Ask Upgrade. The koala, time of koalas thing, it's a joke from a long time ago uh i think it was a connected joke do you know i think it was a prompt joke it was a prompt joke i actually remember listening the funny thing is i was on the bus going to work and uh we were talking about timer coalescing and what federico said was timer koala sing and i thought well that's really funny that's like a timer and a koala that sing and um somebody also thought that was funny and made it their entire like

pseudonym online identity the timer koala sing so uh but i remember very clearly listening to that episode of the prompt yep episode one i didn't know that you were listening how nice of you oh yeah well while i while I power slide around Infinite Loop, I'm listening to the prompt and connect it now. So the koala asked, now that peek and pop allows archiving without going to the next message, automatically will Mike switch to mail.app?

So this is a long running thing for me. My main frustration with the mail app is how when you archive an action and message, it brings up the next message automatically therefore uh enabling it as red i hate that um my main issue though is the mac not ios that for this ios has never been so much of the problem because it's easier to mark a message as red uh but the reason i want to bring this up because it's kind of like a no i'm not going to move back to the Mail app at the moment anyway. Because at the moment, I am frustrated with my mail setup in general.

I'm currently using Mailbox everywhere, but I'm looking for a new solution because I'm not confident that Mailbox are doing a lot to push their platform forward. Yeah, it's been awfully quiet over there. And I've been using Spark. Is it Spark? Yeah, I love Spark. I love Spark, but it's only on one platform. Yeah. So the reason I say this is because with the types of mail apps recently,

it's very beneficial to have it everywhere because they manipulate your email. You put these snooze things on and it will pop back up. But if you're outside of the ecosystem, like if you're using some other app or some other system on one device and then another device, you end up

with a scenario where your email is all kinds of crazy. And there are things that are in your inbox and maybe shouldn't be in your inbox because you think they're going to be in your inbox in a week but they're there now because this app doesn't like it gets all kinds of messed up i don't like it i like to use a system that is all in everywhere so i'm currently looking into stuff right now i am i really really want to to use the new outlook app because everybody that i know that uses it loves it. But the problem is their Mac app is not like their iOS app.

Nope. So I can't, I'm hesitant of going into that system because I do email everywhere. I don't have a dominant device. I do email all my devices. So for me it's very important that if I am using features that are core to the

platform that they are that they follow me around from device to device so which means i will probably end up sticking with mailbox but also mailbox we'll see because i do question whether and i like mailbox a lot but i question what development is actually happening at dropbox involving mailbox now um but peak and pop can come to anything right so? So it's in mail today, but it should be in lots of other things soon on iOS, uh, you know, on, on iPhone anyway. Um, and, uh, so it may not matter what app you're using cause they may all implement peak and pop in, in, in some way or other. I'm all over the place now. I'm using, um, I'm using mail plane

on my Mac, which is just the fancified version of the gmail interface web interface it puts it in its own app with its own kind of some mac extras and then on i was using spark on the iphone when i transferred to the new iphone i can't get it to load i think because i have to there's like beta credentials and things because i think it was on a beta version um so i have to get that but i've been using using Apple Mail because of writing about iOS 9 a little bit. I've been using Apple Mail on my iPad because Spark doesn't work on the iPad. I'm all over the place too. And the nice thing about using, since I use Gmail, is that these, whether it's Mailbox or Spark, they end up saving everything in IMAP mailboxes, which is basically labels in Gmail. So I don't get to use those features on the desktop, but at least I can see those messages

because they're filed in a place I can see. I can see all the special folders that they file things into. But yeah, ideally you'd have the same approach everywhere. Google Inbox, I've thought about trying because since I'm using Gmail, Google Inbox is sort of that because they've got apps for iOS and then it sort of integrates into the web interface. But right now I'm just,

I'm drifting and searching. Then I thought maybe Inbox would be a good option, but I also use iCloud. So I want all of my email in one place. I don't want three different email apps. This is probably why I will end up sticking with Mailbox. But I really need to hope that they're doing something.

Like the Mac app is seeing updates. I'm on the beta. It's not fantastic, but it's okay. It's doing the job for me, and it's getting updates. But for example, their Twitter account, nothing. They're not tweeting, nothing. So, like, I want to see split screen on the iPad more than Peek and Pop. Right.

You know, we're not seeing anything like that. So I've now installed another email app. I've installed Dispatch on my iPad because it has split screen because I really want a split screen email app because that is really really really useful to me but yeah so it's very frustrating right now now I'm thinking like you know so I was like I know how great dispatch is that's a great email app but they don't have a Mac app right you end up in this scenario I go round and around every few months trying to find a new solution

for this because I'm never happy with my email setup. But I always end up coming back to Mailbox because it's the only one that gives me what I want everywhere. Yeah. So there you go. Email. Email. Alright, let's move on.

So the next Ask Upgrade is from John. how many watch straps do you own and which ones do you have a favorite i have three now i know i was going to mention it earlier but you were just so fancy with all of your watch bands i have a um i have my black sport band I have my black leather old style, which I'm really regretting buying now because they made a new one that I got to get my hands on

at Apple the other day. It was really nice. The new leather band, the black leather and the brown leather bands are so nice. And the old one is so thin and papery, but I've got it and it looks good.

It just feels kind of weird and then i i picked up a uh a new orange sport how great is the orange it's great well and it's really great with the black the the the space gray uh sport too little little orange black thing and as a fan of uh my my baseball team is orange black colors so that it gives me a little extra thing but i like the orange it's nice so that's that's for me now my wife uh her her new stainless apple watch came with the white band white sport band um and i got her the uh the midnight blue which is nice and we got a 30 dollar leather band on ebay and it's actually pretty good it's not great but it's pretty good. It's not great, but it's pretty good. So I have, I think, six sport bands now. I have black, white, blue, green,

midnight blue, and the orange. And I... The black, I think, is the nicest feeling of them all, but it's not my favorite. Because they all feel differently. Subtle, but they do all feel different. But I love the new colours the most. The midnight blue and the orange. I really, really love those colours.

I'm also going to get a red at some point. And then I want to see the other ones in person. I love the sport bands. They're not cheap. They're not massively expensive. But I really like them a lot. I like the sport bands. They're not cheap. They're not massively expensive, but I really like them a lot. I like having different colors. Sometimes I match them to what I'm wearing. I just like them. I think they're really nice. I think that they're awesome. I've often thought, oh, I wanted a Milanese, but I'm not going to get one of those now. And I'm thinking, I quite like

the look of the saddle brown leather, but no, I'm just going to keep buying sport bands. I like them a lot. I think they're really comfortable. They're really cool looking um and they're they're really useful as well like not useful but they feel good the way you put them on take them off um i'm a big fan i'm a big fan so i'm just gonna keep getting them all right so there you go that's that's it for me i love i love them i think that they're really really cool it's it fun. It's fun. I bought the eBay non-Apple Apple Watch band as an experiment just because I was curious what the quality was.

We talked about possibly doing that. I actually thought about going, and sometimes I can find them and sometimes I can't. Sometimes they sell a space gray Milanese loop, which intrigues me because it would actually match my space gray watch um i think it would be really cool if you were able to i don't know if you would want to and or if you could buy a bunch and review them because i haven't seen a lot of a lot of people uh giving reviews of popular ones of these or just from a few different manufacturers because I bet there are people

that want to buy this stuff. But for me, for example, I'm not going to trust eBay reviews or whatever. I want someone that I trust to tell me what they think. Well, and I'm not sure even if I get one that I like that the next one wouldn't be bad.

That's the thing because you're talking about kind of like, I don't know if they're disreputable, but they're kind of non-reputable places because you're talking about like kind of like i don't know if they're disreputable but they're kind of not rep non-reputable but places that you're buying them but uh we'll see we'll see how the one that that lauren got wears um it looks nice i mean it what it is is basically a somebody has has made uh their own apple watch lugs and with with an adapter that will go to sort of standard watch band stuff and is putting them

together and then selling them um and there are also places that are making you know that are that are building adapters that let you do that with your whatever watch bands you've got so it's gonna you know it's gonna vary and then there's an official apple program for this too so still waiting to see stuff's coming from that yeah hasn't hasn't happened i got a note from that get click uh product that is that is just that you it's the lugs and they're they're making the lugs and send them to you and then you just use any standard watch band on them um saying that they were starting to ship that was a product i thought i would never get so maybe i'll actually get it i I still don't trust that. I just don't trust it.

We'll see. I'm sure they work. I'm sure they work. But I just don't like the idea of it. I just want the official stuff. The lugs on Lauren's leather band probably didn't slide in quite as smoothly as an Apple constructed one would. They did go in. I didn't have to force it.

But I had that moment of like, I bet this experience is not as good. But, you know, it was an interesting experiment. I really did buy it because I was curious about what an off-brand Apple Watch band looked like. And, you know, it looks fine. It looks like a watch band. And Rajiv asks,

what's Apple's rationale behind not syncing the iPhone clock alarms with the Apple Watch clock alarms? I don't know what their rationale is, but I think for me, I'm happy that that doesn't happen because far too often in my life, I have multiple devices making sound at the same time. Like you get a FaceTime call and six devices ring. I don't want all of that to sync up to. Yeah, I could see an update that allowed the concept of a shared alarm. I'm trying to think of a scenario like, you know, you want to set an alarm on your Apple watch using Siri, but have it be for tomorrow morning on your iPhone or something like that.

Maybe there are some scenarios there. But yeah, I mean, it does seem simpler to just say if you set an alarm on your watch, it's on your iPhone or something like that. Maybe there are some scenarios there, but yeah, I mean, it does seem simpler to just say if you set an alarm on your watch, it's on your watch, and if it's on your phone, it's on your phone, and they stay apart. And maybe that's okay. Yeah, it's, you know, I just don't want it. I just don't want it.

So I think that's it, Jason Snell. Yeah, I think so. If you'd like to find show notes for this week's episode, head on over to relay.fm slash upgrade slash 56. There's some notes to a few things we discussed, including Jason's Macworld review is in the notes. You can go and check that out. If you want to find Jason's work online,

the best place to go, of course, is to thelovely6colors.com. And he is at jsnell on Twitter. And I am at imike, I-M-Y-K-E. Thank you so much for listening. Don't forget, this show does broadcast live. We don't really mention that very much. And if you want to check it out, just go to relay.fm slash live.

You can go to relay.fm slash schedule, and you can find out when the show is going to be on. And you can come and listen and hang out in the chat room. We have a great group in the chat room, so you should come and listen to us whilst we record. Thanks again to our sponsors this week, Casper, Fracture, and Stamps.com. And we'll be back next time. Until then, thank you so much for listening. Goodbye, Justin Snow.

Goodbye, Mike Early.