Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - Craig Federighi talks WWDC and Apple's Big Design Ideas
Episode Date: June 26, 2020This year marked Apple's first completely online WWDC. After a wonderfully-produced event, we had the opportunity to sit down and chat with Apple's Senior VP of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi. ...We covered all the big news announced at WWDC, the advent of the term "Jiggly Mode", and more! Finally, we close out the episode with a great post-interview chat about some of the biggest headlines from WWDC. Links: https://twitter.com/wvfrm https://twitter.com/mkbhd https://twitter.com/andymanganelli https://www.instagram.com/wvfrmpodcast/ shop.mkbhd.com MKBHD WWDC: https://bit.ly/3icVlIu MKBHD iOS 14: https://bit.ly/2BdrcI9 Apple's Battery Icon: https://bit.ly/31g9BtJ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Thumbtack presents the ins and outs of caring for your home.
Out. Uncertainty. Self-doubt.
Stressing about not knowing where to start.
In. Plans and guides that make it easy to get home projects done.
Out. Word art. Sorry, live laugh lovers.
In. Knowing what to do, when to do it, and who to hire. Start caring for your home
with confidence. Download Thumbtack today.
Hey, what's going on, everybody? Welcome back to the Waveform Podcast. We're your hosts. I'm Marques Brownlee. And I'm Andrew Manganielli. And this is a good one for a couple reasons.
Number one, because there's a lot happening this week, lots of reveals and new features in general.
Number two, because we have an interview today with Craig Federighi, a senior VP at Apple.
And number three, because Andrew is back
in the podcast studio, doesn't have quite as difficult of an editing job. Yeah, I'm excited
already. Welcome back. You're speaking into a new, what do you think of the arms that are set up at
this table? Arms are great. I already like this. I feel like I don't have something in front of my
eyes anymore. Like we used to talk and I would talk into the microphone and kind of lean to the
side. So I felt like I was talking to you face to face. We're a social distance acceptable apart across
the table, but it's good to not have like a bunch of different tracks to remote sync and everything.
Yeah. That was always kind of a pain and my house, I live really close to the road,
so I could hear like every car going by and everything. This is a real studio experience.
Yeah. So a lot has happened on the channel since the last episode let me see we got the cyber truck phone which is just prime quarantine content it's this ridiculous
seven thousand dollar custom case for the iphone 11 that kind of looks like a cyber truck yeah i
mean any piece of bent metal looks like a cyber truck so sure yeah no curves no curves but we
have that we took a look at it. Then we had
the top five Android 11 features. So this isn't super new, but the alpha had been out for a little
while. I didn't really see that many new features in it to talk about, but a few more got added.
We have a beta now and there was enough for a video by the time that canceled IO happened. So
yeah, minor update, but all those Android 11 features are out in a video in one
place. We also had my better late than never Galaxy Buds Plus review. I think, yeah, better
late than never, but these are one of the best, most rock solid pair of headphones. Hot take,
I'll say they're better than the Pixel Buds for less money. They're just rock solid at everything.
I would say the Galaxy Buds are the second most truly wireless here but i recognize
out in the wild oh really more than there's actually someone in this i see someone in the
parking lot here all the time i'm assuming airpods is number one of course okay like i mean i guess
if you really wanted to do it there's probably airpods and then airpods pro are the second most
and then going into galaxy buds that's still pretty impressive that's that's uh and there's
a good reason for that they're really good so check out that review if you haven't seen it then we got the playstation 5 reveal
and i did a video on my thoughts and reactions to uh well all the new features the games and the
slightly controversial design i would say did you did you have any thoughts on that design my my
thoughts are all on the design i think um i don't know why they're going this like i have a theory on why
they're going the crazy route but first i have to say is it crazy i don't like it okay okay i think
it looks bad i think the new xbox looks better because i feel like anyone who wants to put a
console next to the tv wants it to look sleek and kind of just like i'll have a thought on that
yeah like i still think ps2 slim was one of the best because it was just little tiny.
You hit it super easy.
What's your thought quick before I go into my theory?
Well, it's interesting.
The PS2 Slim was, it's funny that they made that
because, oh yes, they recognize people want a slim,
less obtrusive thing.
But then they also realize if they only make one PS5,
you're gonna buy the PS5.
And if they make a huge, obnoxious, obvious looking PS5,
everyone that walks in your house
is gonna know exactly what console you have.
And I think that's part of why it looks so.
So that's my theory then,
and not just for everyone who walks into your house,
but every content creator that has one,
whether it's a tech channel or a gaming channel,
or literally just like vlogging.
If you're vlogging and in the background you have a PS5,
everyone's gonna know exactly what it is.
Where you have, yeah, the Xbox S, is that the new one?
Xbox One Series X.
Yeah, that just looks like,
could be a Sonos speaker in the background.
That could be a VCR, not a VCR, but you know, like a,
it could be anything back there.
Yeah, so PS5 is in your face.
You'll know what that is from a mile away.
So it's good marketing, I guess.
Good marketing design.
I don't like it though.
I kind of do like it.
Really?
Like it didn't take very long to grow on me.
I talked about this in the video.
You can put it sideways
and that's actually the only way it'll fit under my TV
is if I put it sideways
because I'm not putting it next to my TV.
Yeah, asymmetrical works sometimes
but then now you're looking at it being asymmetrical
in a really strange way, and I wouldn't.
Yeah, I don't know.
It's fine.
It's got great memes.
Great memes.
Great memes.
Somebody said it looks like a Daft Punk helmet
like squished together.
But this is the thing.
They're not going to make a black version,
so someone's going to make,
like dbrand's going to make a black skin for it like there's going to be people who customize it and make it
look other ways but yeah it does kind of look like a giant router or a daft punk helmet yeah
those like gaming routers that go over the top to look like gaming aesthetic but that's fine with me
um this week we also had the first ever online only wwdc keynote and the whole conference is online only, but it's a developer conference.
So, of course, we saw updates to all their software, all their OSs, iOS, iPadOS, WatchOS, TVOS, macOS.
I think, I don't know.
I think that's probably the whole list right there.
We watched it live.
It was a pretty great show.
It was pre-recorded and they produced the whole thing
and then just premiered it
and showed everyone at the same time.
So it wasn't like a live on stage,
awkward nobody in the audience clapping type thing.
Literally the opening like drone shot was just like,
okay, they're not messing around here.
That was pretty serious, man.
If you flew that drone for that, hit us up.
I just want to know. If you flew that drone for that, hit us up. I just want to know if I was a drone for the Apple keynote and you still are looking for a job.
You have one here at the MKBHD studio or at least come on the podcast and quickly tell us about how that all went.
That would be awesome.
But yeah, that was amazing.
It was really well produced.
Not surprised.
But then at the same time, you have other companies doing online stuff and it's not even close to the realm of what they just did. So I will, I will slip this in here.
There are some upcoming events that I've heard about that are, you know, sometime in the second
half of this year that have some serious, either awesome or cringe potential, depending on how it
goes. Let's rank them at the end of the year. Yeah. Oh, absolutely.
This will be fun.
But we'll stay tuned.
Keep an eye on that
because there's obviously many more events
and things coming out.
But we got all these software features.
There's a bunch of new iOS features.
Did you have like a favorite announcement
from the whole show?
So as someone who's a Windows and an Android person,
I'm not that deep in the Apple ecosystem at all.
I use a Mac at work.
But I guess I kind of like to watch it and think,
oh, there's something I really wish I had
on Android or Windows.
I think one of the coolest things I saw
was that when you have your AirPods in
and you switch from your phone to your iPad
and pick it up, it automatically switches,
which is just AirPods taking another step
at just completely crushing
all the other truly wireless smart headphones. You know, sometimes they say stuff just works
like magic in the Apple ecosystem. You have to be fully in the ecosystem to feel that magic. But
when you do, it does kind of seem like magic when it works. So that'll be fun to see. We have two
videos up on that whole keynote on the channel the first one is a
huge WWDC reaction recap of everything from top to bottom from all the new software features to
max switching to Apple Silicon later this year all of that and then the second one second video
is about iOS 14 spending a day on my phone basically and getting to know the new features
and there are a lot of them and I basically run through a basically and getting to know the new features. And there are
a lot of them. And I basically run through a bunch of the top level new features and some of the
hidden stuff you might not find if you didn't have it on your phone. So iOS 14 video is up.
But I think a great place to start with WWDC would be to have a chat with the man himself.
He spent a lot of time on camera in Apple's keynote video, but also behind the scenes,
behind all the stuff happening there.
And that's Craig Federighi.
So I chatted with Craig about the production of that massive two-hour keynote, which is
a video, not a live stream.
It's a whole two-hour video.
And then some behind the scenes questions on the new iOS, the new macOS features, and
even some random stuff like fan questions from you guys and where jiggle mode came from, I had to ask.
So it's a very important question.
So, of course, now I'll preface this all by saying,
whenever you get access to a senior VP of any big company or anything like that,
someone with insider knowledge,
they're expecting those questions about future products and future hardware.
That sort of stuff is off
limits so i'm not going to go straight up and ask him when's the new iMac coming that's they just
tell you right off the bat that's not going to be talked about so anyway just so you know we
talked about as much as we could and all that is after the break be right back BetMGM, authorized gaming partner of the NBA,
has your back all season long.
From tip-off to the final buzzer,
you're always taken care of with a sportsbook born in Vegas.
That's a feeling you can only get with BetMGM.
And no matter your team, your favorite player, or your style,
there's something every NBA fan will love about BetMGM.
Download the app today and discover why BetMGM is your basketball home for the season.
Raise your game to the next level this year with BetMGM, a sportsbook worth a slam dunk,
and authorized gaming partner of the NBA.
BetMGM.com for terms and conditions.
Must be 19 years of age or older to wager.
Ontario only.
Please play responsibly.
If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you,
please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge.
BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario.
With Uber Reserve, good things come to those who plan ahead.
Family vacay? Reserve your ride as soon as you book your flights.
To all the planners, now you can reserve your Uber ride up to 90 days in advance.
See Uber app for details.
All right, Craig, first of all, thanks for joining us on the Waveform podcast.
Hey, great to be here.
And yeah, my first question is, how are you?
You know, it's been a busy week, I'm sure, for all that WWDC has included and everything
leading up to it and this keynote and now all the sessions afterward.
And it's been a while since we chatted, but how's it going?
It is going all right.
I mean, these are unusual times and I've been very grateful that we've all had the opportunity to do work during this time.
And I mean, I couldn't be more proud of what the team's been up to WWDC are for our software teams, just the most intense period of bringing it all together and getting ready to unveil it to the world of the year.
It's always our most intense time.
And this year, maybe doubly so, you know, with our announcement of Apple Silicon.
I mean, this is the culmination of many years of work.
And so to have that all coming together, I mean, we've been excitedly envisioning the day when this would happen.
I didn't envision at the beginning that we would be unveiling it under exactly these circumstances.
But, you know, it couldn't be more thrilled to be here right now.
So I'm feeling good.
For sure. That's good. So we'll get to all the things that. So I'm feeling good. For sure.
That's good.
So we'll get to all the things that the software teams have worked on in a second.
But I wanted to touch on the work of the production team.
Yeah.
Because this was the first ever online-only WWDC, which meant you didn't necessarily have to do it any certain way.
This was a door open to doing it a different way. And it turned into this very nicely produced, you know, two-hour keynote that had a density
of information that was admirable, but also just a fun production value that I thought
was great.
How long did that take to make?
You want to shed some light behind what that experience was like for you?
Yeah.
Well, first, I'd say just the team took this as, you know, at first it was kind of, oh,
no, you know, we're not going to be able to do this in the way that we've become accustomed and in front of an enthusiastic live audience. But I think pretty immediately people started saying, like, what could we do?
Like, what's the opportunity here?
And, you know, when we do an event at the conference and we have 6,500 people in the room, you know, it's got to be in
some external venue. And we thought, Hey, we can, we can bring people into Apple park. And, uh, so
that was, that was the amazing opportunity in these spaces that, you know, you you've probably
been in the audience of Steve jobs theater. Most of the people out there haven't. And if they've
seen anything of it, it's sort of just see the stage, uh, and, and to, to, you know, make Apple Park the set
and to take people around this space and share with them where we work was, was I think one of
the first big ideas there. Uh, and then, you know, we just, we worked with it throughout the
production on like, how, how can you take advantage of the fact that you can now move between people
kind of immediately, you can move between locations immediately.
And then, of course, all the creative transitions that we worked into,
to both showing off the park and providing little moments.
I couldn't have more respect and admiration for the teams that put that all together.
I'm humbled to have been a little part of it.
But what they did was just
amazing. It was an incredible amount of work too. And when you think about this kind of film
production, obviously it's an incredibly compressed timeframe to put it together because
all the software has got to come together before we can shoot. It's all got to come together for
the conference. And then all of the production, all of the editing, making it just right in
an incredibly compressed timeframe.
So they've, they've moved mountains.
And, uh, you know, when I, I finally saw the result with, with everyone else, uh,
on Monday and, uh, you know, I was, I was really amazed with what they did with the
horrible raw footage I gave them as input.
Did you not, you didn't see it until Monday?
No, I hate looking at myself, is the truth. So yeah, it was really an open question for me
whether I'd watch my part at all or just walk out of the room every time I spoke. But I got to sit
there with my family and watch it, and that was kind of fun.
It turned out great. I'll echo the sentiments of a lot of people who have been to both the Steve Jobs Theater
and the live presentations and reported on them
versus reporting on this, where this is awesome
and the experience of, hey, everything works.
We have everything at our disposal to live tweet it
or to share what we're thinking of it as it's happening.
I hope these happen,
you know, almost as often as the live shows. These are, these are super helpful. So yeah, it's going to be really interesting. I mean, we went into it saying, well, we'll see what we learn
and try to figure out what it means for, for the future when, when we're not forced to do it this
way, but what, what part of this can, can we continue to apply in the future? I think that's
going to be some, some pretty interesting discussions going forward, but I'm glad you
liked it. I'm really glad you liked it for sure.. So I want to jump right into, right at the top of the
presentation, we got right into iOS 14. And I was sort of thinking my overall theme of iOS 14,
now that I've used the developer beta for, I guess, two days now, is it just feels like it's
giving you more customization. And to me, that feeling came from having widgets on the home screen and being able to edit them
and put them wherever we want and the stacks and the app library. But maybe you can shed some light
on if you have sort of an overarching theme of iOS 14 or what comes to mind when you first talk
about it. Yeah, you know, I think personalization and convenience are huge. So when certainly things like having more information at a glance, that's really convenient.
It's also very personal how you choose to configure that.
But things like app clips where we certainly envision you being able to with much greater ease now move about the world and discover things you can do with your phone and take action super quickly, I think that's going to be really big over time in terms of just
making your phone that much more useful in the moment for you. And so I think convenience is
a huge theme. And we just continue to want to refine the experience. We've been on, obviously,
we just continue to want to refine the experience. We've been on obviously a many, many year arc of kind of perfecting in our, in our vision, uh, the iOS experience. And so it's, it's been great to
continue to move it forward. For sure. Uh, I got to ask, you called it jiggle mode on stage. Is
that the first time you even called it that or like named it? Well, externally, yeah. I didn't
even realize until this thing aired and people started
sort of laughing at jiggle mode that it wasn't, that's what we call it internally all the
time.
In all our design meetings, we're always talking about jiggle mode.
And so that just sort of came out as we were filming because that's how we talk about it.
And it didn't occur to me that that hadn't actually crossed out of Apple before.
But there you go, world.
You now know.
It's for us, it is jiggle
mode. I'm calling it, I'm calling it jiggle mode. Excellent. Um, yeah, for, uh, so for these widgets
and this customization, it does feel like not only as an extra layer of personalization, but also
potentially of complexity. So I'm curious what, what you think the average person will use of
this new set of features? Like, do you think most people will
start adding widgets to their home screens? Or do you think only some people will use a few widgets?
Yeah. Or will they suddenly be everywhere? Yeah, no, certainly, that's a big source of
internal speculation. But I, you know, we do focus on trying to have kind of a very easy path in and then sort of successive discovery and people
taking on whatever degree of richness and experience or complexity that they're ready
for when they're ready for it. You know, we don't want to dump a complex new user into a complex
experience. We want them to have the easiest path in. But then some people, they're like yourself.
I mean, you're a power user.
You're an expert user.
You're going to take the time to customize
and tailor the device to be what you want it to be.
And we want to give you more control to do that
while other people aren't burdened with it.
And so how many people will do it?
Well, you know, the first thing we did is we said,
well, we have left of home, what we call left of home,
and it's pre-configured to be useful. But we decided that we'll put the smart stack on the
left of home by default. So everybody immediately gets a degree of that smartness and personalization
with sort of no increase in complexity, no need to figure out how to configure anything.
Now, what will most users do?
It's been funny actually watching my kids debate, actually. Some of them are saying, you know,
I just want to protect the serenity of my home screen. And then, you know, another one said,
yeah, I want my page one just to be some apps. And then on page two, maybe I want to put a couple
of widgets because that'll be my, you know, so I think everybody's going to approach it, approach it very differently. But the key for us is that there's
this very gentle ramp up that that iOS is the right sort of meets everybody where they are in
terms of what they're ready for and makes it really gentle for them to find their way into
personalizing it as they wish. For sure. And I'll add another another great piece of that
personalization,
which kind of snuck into one of those slides,
is you can now default your mail and browser app
to a different app.
Once developers add those flags,
you'll be able to change your default mail
and default browser. I did hear
that you were looking forward to using alternatives.
I was one of those.
Yeah, well, there you go.
Something for everybody.
I love that extra layer.
I think my natural question to that is, okay, it's only mail and browser.
Is there a reason you didn't have full-on chaos or even just maps?
Because I think maps would have been nice to also be able to set as a default.
You know, honestly, great point.
I mean, I think for us, we looked at what were the top things that we'd been hearing people say they wanted to configure.
And there's definitely those two that rose to the top.
So I'll certainly take the input about Maps as well.
This was just where we started.
I think your point on chaos is an important one.
I mean, obviously, with iOS, we're very careful about trying to keep, we know how platforms to hook into being your browser because maybe they could redirect you to a different tracked ad experience when you click on something or bounce you into, you know, who knows what.
And so we are very careful about making sure that that experience that we don't have people getting misled or have their device gets configured into a place where, boy, they just don't even like using their phone
anymore because it's gotten so wonked up. So we proceed cautiously on these things for sure.
Does that mean there will be, I assume, well, maybe I shouldn't assume that not every app can
add that flag to potentially be a default browser, but only certain approved ones?
Yeah, you're exactly right. So we will have criteria for the,
you have to be a general purpose browser,
and they'll be, I mean,
the ones you would think of as using as your browser
will of course all qualify.
But we don't want a random game to just claim like,
yeah, I'm a browser, you know,
I'm willing to throw up a WebKit view now and then
in the middle of my game experience,
I'm gonna be your browser. Because we think that could could readily be abused. So we want real general purpose
mail apps and real general purpose browsers to be able to present themselves to the user with
this functionality and keep out all the rest of the confusion. So I think the that sort of segues
nicely into iPad OS, which is where I feel like the complexity but also personalization steps up a
notch. And I actually use my iPad a lot more, my iPad Pro a lot more now than I did about two years
ago because of iPadOS. But talk me through, iPadOS has a lot of the same changes that you see on the
iPhone, but not quite. So you can't put widgets quite everywhere. They're only still on that side view. What's the philosophy behind those changes?
Well, I think we were first to bring widgets really to iPadOS was the first that really got the widgets right on the same screen alongside last year.
felt like that actually had a really good balance of giving you access to information at a glance while preserving a really coherent icon grid. And so, you know, whether over time we want to push
that further with letting you further move the widgets out of their designated spot right
alongside the app icons or not, we'll see. But we felt like we really had a great balanced solution for this already,
I think, is the thing with widgets. But with iPadOS, we really wanted to push on some
experiences that were distinctly iPad. And you certainly saw some in terms of how we changed
some of the app design language, brought in sidebars and more
efficient pop-up controls, but then also with Pencil, how, you know, there's, for many users,
Pencil is something that they distinctly love using on iPad. And we wanted to make sure that
both taking notes could be really convenient and expressive, but they could still work with text
like text, which for me as a note taker,
that's just huge. And then the ability that when you have a pencil in your hand, that you can just
write anywhere. You don't have to like kind of switch modes from using the keyboard, you know,
using the thing, the pencil. Well, let me put that down to a little keyboard because I want to write
something in a search field. Now you don't have to. And we think that's just going to be huge for
many people who are pencil lovers.
Yeah, I am a pencil lover on the iPad,
but as a non-artist,
it's really hard for me to find,
my handwriting is terrible too.
So I'm like, I'm looking for ways
to use the pencil more.
And I think scribble will help
just for like,
just not having to put it down as much.
Yeah, I think so.
Yeah, that's just,
I just wanted to throw that out there.
I like using the pencil.
I'm just looking for more ways to use it. Siri to throw that out there. I like using the pencil. I'm
just looking for more ways to use it. Um, Siri also gets a new compact UI both on the phone
and on the iPad. Um, but something that we've noticed since using it is it is a compact UI,
but you can't interact with things underneath or behind it. Um, is that intentional? Is that
a limitation? What's no, no. And in fact, you know, we tried it both ways.
We had internally, we had prototypes running where you would scroll behind the Siri answers as you brought them up.
And initially we thought that was going to be really great.
And so we implemented it that way.
And then what we found was that for most of the interactions we were having with Siri, that then created this kind of extra heaviness to it.
Because if you just said, wanted to check the weather or look up a piece of information, and then you were ready to move on, your scroll gesture wasn't going to move on.
The Siri result was going to stick around there.
So you always had this additional step of dismissing the result.
And we found that to be extra heavy. And so,
you know, we'll continue to listen to what people have to say through the beta period,
because like I say, I mean, we actually have it working both ways. But our feeling was that
we wanted to achieve a great lightness, not just visually, but in terms of you could dip into Siri,
get an answer, and move on quickly without
any kind of overhead in the subsequent interaction. So there's definitely a real balance there.
Gotcha. I see. Yeah, I felt that the experience was a little different on the phone versus the
tablet. You know, on the phone, it felt like it made sense. I'm not necessarily reading or
scrolling or doing things behind Siri very often, but the tablet with the bigger screen,
to me, felt like an opportunity to give me a little more of like the the multitasking feel that I
talked about on iPad where you do feel like you have a little more control over
leaving Siri there while you do other things and coming back to it did you
have a thought yeah did you have a thought about what you how you would
have expected if you were to let's say start you know you got your answer and
then you started scrolling and doing other things on your iPad, at what point you would expect Siri to kind of get itself out of the way
or whether you would have preferred to, you know, have it hang out for, you know, minutes and then
you go over there and manually put it away? Yeah, so I think because that animation came in from the
bottom and then the answer came in from the top, I almost felt like it would be different behavior
on the phone, but I almost felt like just being able to swipe it out of the top where it came from
to dismiss it, sort of like a notification, even though it isn't one, or bringing that
Siri animation from the bottom corner and just swiping it down out of where it appeared.
So that's, again, there's probably a thousand ways to also consider doing it.
But I think that just because I'm such an iPad multitasking advocate,
I think that would be something I'd be interested in.
Thank you for the advice.
All right, so anytime.
macOS Big Sur.
If we move right to what I think is,
debatably, but I think is the biggest announcement
from this WWDC, macOS 11.0.
I gotta ask, just because, you know, naming is fun,
what's your favorite landmark in California
that hasn't been a Mac OS name yet?
I can't possibly reveal our future list
of Mac OS name candidates.
No way, man.
Okay, naturally.
It's the most highly protected corporate secret in fact is the the
secret yeah it has to be that's right it has to be no i like i like that it's 11.0 it feels like a
bigger a big a big refresh a big new step um and seeing all those visual changes it got a very
mixed reaction online and i'll share some of mine after but there's a there's a sort of an overarching
theme of these rounded corners and a new transparency and a different sort of look to it.
Can you talk about that theme of macOS Big Sur?
Yeah.
Well, I think the first thing, just to address the 11.0, I mean, we do feel that between the new design and the beginning of a new chapter with the introduction of Apple Silicon. I mean,
I think this is, the Mac has been around, of course, for decades now. But to me, this is
just the beginning. I mean, this is a real renewal of the platform in many ways. And so
we're really excited to mark this with the next chapter, the turning
to the next chapter with 11. We love Mac OS X. And needless to say, we all have internally like
huge positive associations and an attachment to that name. So it wasn't easy to let it go even
this long in. But the moment was right. As far as the design goes, I think there is, first I'll say that we are
all so attached to the Mac UI. I mean, we use it all day long. There's something very,
it's a huge part of our visual scenery of our lives at this point. And so what seems right
is partly what we're used to seeing on that at this point. And so what seems right is partly
what we're used to seeing on that screen every day. And when it changes, immediately, there's
all kinds of little pattern recognizers in our brain that go like, hold on, something's different,
something. I feel like after you use the UI for, and I've been living on it for months,
it feels natural, it feels fresh, and yet, clearly distinctly Mac. And I love it. And I think that
it's natural the first time you see it. And of course, the internet reacts on like they see a
single screenshot and then let's start a tweet storm and then let's pile on. They don't necessarily
live on it, right? And so I will love to hear the feedback of people as they've really made it their system.
Like they have the previous Mac UIs for weeks and come back and say, how do you feel about it now?
I think the design team did amazing work.
And I find things like rounding, some of those choices may seem arbitrary.
But in fact, it's extremely consistent throughout that whole experience. And I think it's really organic, you know, straight edges like this, or like the
process of human manufacturing processes. You know, uh, if you look out in nature, if you look
at our own faces, it's a lot of curves, uh, right. And natural curves. And so I think there's
something really beautiful and organic about the, the look of the UI. Uh I think the use of the materials is really great.
The clarity of some of the unified toolbars,
I think is just clean and fresh
and really differential to content.
And then of course, I mean,
it's a big step to change the icons of the Mac.
That's certainly a signature change.
But what we found when we live on it is we're all
moving back and forth between our iPhone, our iPad, our Mac, and having that consistency and
familiarity just takes a level of sort of mental mapping energy out of the whole thing. And it's
just, it's relaxing, it's comfortable, it's clear. And so we approached that decision with a lot of debate.
But in the end, we tried it, and it just felt right.
And I think as people use it, they're going to come to the same conclusion.
Yeah, those new icons are not from iPad or iPhone, right?
They're a totally new icon set as far as like Finder and Spotify and Final Cut, like all these new
apps on the Mac? We did not create a Spotify icon. We would not make that step. I mean,
it might be fun to try, but I don't think we're allowed to do that. You're right. So there's some
icons like Finder exactly where there's no analog. And so we got to imagine with the new shape and aesthetic,
how should the Mac look?
And I think I love what we came up with there.
Then there are other icons, like, say, Safari or Messages,
where we took the iOS icon and the typical, you know, chiclet shape,
but applied a little bit of the traditional Mac craft to, uh,
to it. And I think that's been where there's some of the controversy right now where people are
saying, hold on. I'm, I know what that iPhone icon looks like. And this one seems just a little
different. Something's tripping here and going like, this isn't quite right. Um, and I, you know,
that's, that's natural and understandable, but we, we did want to pay homage to that history of great craft and detailing that's been part of the history of Mac icons.
And so we kind of brought those two together and hopefully in the end successfully. is like you know in their lineup you know we talked about ios and then ipad os bringing like
the next level of customization uh and and personalization and capability and then moving
to mac os is like the ultimate in that um is does that does that find its way into any any decisions
you made in because i know there's the the new control center is it called control center now
yeah the control center so that So that has a bit of a
new redesigned look to it. Does that play a part in the decisions where you change the UI a little
bit in Mac OS? Yeah, I mean, we wanted to certainly take some of these core ideas and then do them in
a way that's very true to the Mac. And, you know, part of what Mac users expect is that next level
of configuration to their environment. So one of the things for instance we
do is while control center has all of your controls you may have certain controls that
based on how you use your mac you want to get to all the time you know maybe you want to get
at the displays preferences all the time because you're moving between airplay displays or external
displays and changing resolution and so you don't want to have an extra drill in into control center
to get there. And so on the Mac, we let you drag that out, put it on your menu bar and make it a
top level item. And we feel that's, that's kind of to the spirit of, of the Mac in terms of, uh,
configurability for sure. Nice. Yeah. I caught, I saw that during the keynote and I realized I
wanted that ability when I saw it. So that was well-placed.
And we also brought it up a couple of times,
but Macs switching to Apple Silicon just generally,
I think you also mentioned the first Mac with Apple Silicon coming out by the end of this year.
So naturally with moving to a new version number
and a new name and this new future,
everything's very future looking right now.
So I figured I'd bounce some terms off of you,
and you can tell me if these things will be affected
by the move to Apple Silicon or the new name
or the new version.
I'll lay down a disclaimer going in,
which is today's or this week's announcements
have been about getting our developers started,
getting down the path to this new system.
We, everybody is eager to learn
about the details of future hardware.
And honestly, I'm really eager to tell you about it,
but I am not going to do that
because that will happen today.
So if you try to tempt me into that area,
I'm gonna pull myself back and not give you satisfaction.
I'll scribble that one out.
I'll scribble that out with the Apple Pencil, yeah.
But, I mean, the first one is pretty simple, performance.
Like you can imagine a future-looking improvement in performance thanks to moving to Apple Silicon.
Power per watt was something you guys talked about.
Talk about what it means for performance.
Yeah, and I think Johnny Cerugie had a chart up there where we said the where you want to be is here, and that's where we're going to be.
And it was about both high performance at low power. Andreas Venker talked to Sri, who's on the silicon team. Sri talked about how in modern systems,
and that's true whether you're talking about a light notebook, a MacBook Pro class machine,
or even a Pro machine with a larger enclosure, in the end, thermals become a limiting factor. I mean, battery life and power
delivery, but also thermals become the limiting factor for performance. And so the fact that we
are, our silicon team is so best in class in delivering power per watt doesn't just mean
they deliver power efficient designs, but that they deliver designs that can actually achieve better real world performance in practice. And so I think, I think
performance thumbs up. Yeah. I think that's what I'm looking most forward to is the performance
gains, but then also you look forward and app support is something talked about a lot where
there's already a version of the Adobe suite. I think you said it was completely compatible with Apple Silicon and is working.
Wait, first of all, we should call it something
because I feel like I keep saying Apple Silicon Max or Max with Apple Silicon.
Is there like a shorthand internal word I should use or just keep calling it all that?
I do not have a jiggle mode equivalent to reveal to the world right now on that topic.
So I think we're going to say max built with Apple silicon, which is
Amount right perhaps. Okay, so there's just right now. I mean, yeah, but max max with Apple silicon, you know
You'll have the Adobe suite built out for it. You have Final Cut
built out for it
but also developers over the next year or two you said a two-year transition will have to
Decide to build out for it and also because over the next year or two, you said a two-year transition, will have to decide to build out for it.
And also because of the binaries, build for Intel Macs, hopefully effortlessly.
But talk about that transition and how app support is affected by switching to Macs with Apple.
Yeah, so we feel really great about how the transition is already starting and how it will go.
The most applications out there have really modernized over the years to use our latest
developer tools, to be 64-bit clean, to use our modern set of frameworks. And it turns out that
that means moving to Apple Silicon, in some cases, is literally recompiling, you know,
open your project and recompile. And we've seen many examples of that.
More sophisticated apps like Office and the Adobe Suite, you know, some of these apps have
decades of engineering, you know, hundreds and hundreds of people working for decades creating
code and sometimes having dependencies on different
libraries and so forth. And those are bigger projects. But I think the amazing thing that
I hope everyone could take away from the presentation was that those apps have already
been completely brought over. And we did it with, and they did it with us, with a person or two.
You know, it wasn't like they had to mobilize, you know, the entire engineering team because this was incredibly secret.
And so we said, could you give us a person or two and let's get those apps up and running?
And we could do it in a relatively short period of time.
And those are some of the hardest apps you could imagine bringing over.
And so we're really confident about the path for developers to bring this over. But we do understand developers sometimes work on their own time scale.
They have their own engineering cycles. And so that's where Rosetta comes in, Rosetta 2,
where if you're running an app and the developer hasn't gotten to it yet at the time that you get
your first Apple Silicon-based Mac, Rosetta works great. And I hope it came through in the presentations just how well
things like Maya, things like Tomb Raider, were working on an iPad chip and a development platform
running in a translated mode, and yet we're achieving great performance.
So I think the transition for customers
is going to be really quite seamless.
Yeah, hopefully completely frictionless.
It's like a fingers crossed from me.
I'm hoping that all the apps I use,
I use a pretty good amount of apps,
and I love that Final Cut,
which is one of the apps I use the most,
is already gonna be right on top of that.
But yeah, that's hopefully the precedent.
This is something that obviously we pride ourselves in.
We've done these transitions before.
We've done them successfully before.
We're actually getting better at it every time.
And we've been working for years toward this moment to make this transition smooth.
And we're feeling very good about how it's going so far. So the last term I'll throw out to you is update cycle.
And this, again, you don't have to say anything about future hardware. But to me, I love that,
you know, when you remove a dependency on an external company like Intel, we've seen, you know,
on an external company like Intel.
We've seen the iPhone and the iPad have such lockstep update cycles,
especially the iPhone.
And to me, it feels like that also opens the door
for the Mac to have a more predictable update cycle,
whether it's the MacBook Pro
or whatever other future hardware there is out there.
Does that sound like a change
that you guys would decide
to make or does it not matter as much? I think, you know, you've just you've crossed into that
that domain of future hardware speculation. So so I won't say but I am I'm very excited to work
with our silicon team on future future Macs. Got it. All right. I got I got a couple of fan
questions as well. I asked, I put
it out on YouTube. We had some, some questions and we're going to have Craig on the podcast.
First one, the iPad still does not have a default weather and calculator app and they want to know
why. You know, there's some things that we, we have not done because we, to do it, we would want to do something really distinctly great in that space.
And I think it's obviously easy to create a calculator app, but creating one that feels like, wow, this is this is this is the greatest iPad calculator app that it felt like.
I think we we want to do it when we can do it really, really well.
And we we honestly have just haven't gotten around to doing it great.
So that day may come.
And weather.
It would be easy enough to scale up our existing weather app.
But we feel like what would a great weather app for iPad be?
Let's do that before we do it.
And otherwise, there are great options on the do it. And otherwise they're great options.
There are thousands of options on the app store. In fact, so very true. I think this one resonates to me because one of my favorite apps, you guys just acquired dark sky. So it's no longer on
Android. So I'm like this, this iOS weather app better turn into this amazing thing. So I'm,
I think, I think it may be time for an iPad weather app. That's just me.
Well, and it could be time for you to go iPhone exclusive, I think.
That would be another good move.
That's a big point of leverage.
You make a great point.
Another question is there's a very small group of people out there,
apparently, that have an iPad and want to use an Apple Watch
but don't have an iPhone. Is this a workflow you guys think about or are there groups of people
who maybe that's too small of a group of people to cater to but will there ever be an iPad
Apple Watch experience? I mean I get it. I think there's an interesting place where
Apple Watch can for many people take that kind of the device that I need to have with having LTE.
It can be that device that gives you the degree of connectedness on the go, and then you've got your iPad when you want to get deeper.
It's a sensible point. It is not one that we have pursued yet.
I mean, I wouldn't rule it out, but so I get it.
I love using my iPad and I love using my Apple Watch, so I could understand that.
I mean, that's where my questions end.
They started to get a little ridiculous.
I'll give you one more, which is nothing to do with the keynote.
Does the name Alvin and the Chipmunks imply that Alvin is not a chipmunk?
That's where the YouTube comments went. Really? That quickly? It just fell right off the cliff?
Right off the cliff, yeah. So, I mean, I feel like that's where, unless you want to answer,
that's probably where we'll end it. I don't think I have a lot of value to add in answering that
particular question. That's perfectly fine. Craig, thanks for joining me on the Waveform
podcast. I'm sure you have a busy week, and we've thoroughly enjoyed the production of the keynote,
and we look forward to what else is coming from you guys for the rest of the year.
It's been great to speak with you and very much appreciate your work.
All right.
Well, that's been it for the interview part.
Thanks again to Craig.
I'm sure he's a super busy guy, as we know, and he took some time out of his day to chat
about everything.
And I'm sure we'll do it again sometime, But we're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we'll talk
with Andrew. And we'll get our full reactions, our true reactions to all things Apple. Be right back.
This is an ad from BetterHelp. This holiday season, do something for a special person in
your life. You. Give yourself the gift of better mental health. BetterHelp. This holiday season, do something for a special person in your life.
You.
Give yourself the gift of better mental health.
BetterHelp Online Therapy connects you with a qualified therapist via phone, video, or live chat.
It's convenient and affordable and can be done from the comfort of your own home.
Having someone to talk to is truly a gift, especially during the holidays.
Visit BetterHelp.com to learn more and save 10% off your first month.
That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com.
Support for the show today comes from NetSuite.
Anxious about where the economy is headed?
You're not alone.
If you ask nine experts,
you're likely to get 10 different answers.
So unless you're a fortune teller and it's perfectly okay that you're not,
nobody can say for certain.
So that makes it tricky to future-proof your business
in times like these.
That's why over 38,000 businesses
are already setting their future plans
with NetSuite by Oracle.
This top-rated cloud ERP brings accounting,
financial management, inventory, HR,
and more onto one unified platform,
letting you streamline operations and cut down on costs.
With NetSuite's real-time insights and forecasting tools,
you're not just managing your business,
you're anticipating its next move.
You can close the books in days, not weeks, and keep your focus forward on what's great about ambition?
You can't see it.
Some things look ambitious, but looks can be deceiving.
For example, a runner could be training for a marathon,
or they could be late for the bus.
You never know.
Ambition is on the inside.
So that thing you love, keep doing it.
Drive your ambition.
Mitsubishi Motors.
All right, welcome back.
So that was fun.
Craig's a nice guy.
He gave us a lot of his time and we appreciate that.
Now we can get into our real reactions
when Craig's not listening.
Yeah, I can give my comedic relief
without being worried about offending him i'm trying to figure out where should we start we
have ios 14 we have ipad os 14 we have watch os 7 we have mac os big sir 11 i can't it sounds weird
every time i say it out loud big sir sounds weird i mean there's the l cap always sounded weird
l cap sounds cool to me i feel like they've had some pretty cool names like they grow on us i It sounds weird every time I say it out loud. Big Sur sounds weird. I mean, there's the, El Cap always sounded weird.
El Cap sounds cool to me.
I feel like they've had some pretty cool names.
Like they grow on us.
I don't like saying Yosemite out loud very much,
but now we all just kind of know Yosemite is an OS,
but Big Sur just, I don't know.
It's a little weird.
Or we could talk about, we could talk about the new Silicon,
but where do you want to start?
We got a lot.
Let's go iOS.
You know, I'm not big in the Apple ecosystem ecosystem like we said but like everyone uses phones i feel we do so many phone reviews i feel much more comfortable
in the ios system also i've always like teetered on possibly switching to iphone and like i found
this interesting yeah like android customization is the biggest reason i'm staying there i always
say i like my home screen to have almost nothing on it.
I have my dock at the bottom and two folders, I think, and that's it.
So there's a lot more, I'm doing air quotes when I say this, customization,
bringing widgets to iOS, bringing that what's called app library to iOS
is basically an app drawer so you can get rid of home screens now.
So you can kind of get closer to what you're describing,
but not quite all the way.
One of the big reasons for that
is you can't move anything by itself
lower on the home screen.
Like I always have my apps,
my app icons on my Android phone,
close to the bottom, it's a reachability.
Yeah, exactly.
And I have any widgets or stuff
I just want to display up at the top and you can't do that quite yet on the iphone if you
want to have apps at the bottom you need widgets at the top to push those apps to the bottom and
if you just want things at the bottom and nothing at the top you can't do that yet so yeah it is a
step towards getting closer it's funny that you mentioned widgets
almost acting as a way to bring apps to the bottom which helps with reachability because
we've talked about before how phones are just so big and people have a really hard time reaching
things anymore so just like i mean they show the picture of just like uh you know weather and a
clock so if you put that at the top now you have all your apps at the bottom and the top is, to me, still cluttered,
but much better probably for a lot of people.
I think these are better looking widgets
than a lot of Android widgets.
Yeah, I actually don't really use Android widgets at all.
Okay.
I think a lot of people actually probably don't.
This is why I asked Craig about it.
I was like, how many people do you think
are going to go in and long press
and add widgets to their home screen?
And I think that's a question, you know, with a possibly really interesting answer, either
a really surprisingly high amount or the almost nothing that I'm predicting because most iPhone
users don't do that much customization anyway, and they're fine with it.
So I would say you also mentioned before when we were just talking, will new iPhones potentially
come with default widgets set up on the home screen already?
Right.
I was saying that would be cool.
That would be the best way, I think.
So not saying everyone who owns an iPhone would hate widgets, but a lot of people that
own an iPhone aren't that tech savvy.
This is going to update, and they're never going to know they can put widgets on their
home screen.
They're not going to go into the settings and find out all the new stuff from the update.
So while they'll like it,
it's just gonna look the same to them.
So I'm saying Apple should put one widget
on the default home screen.
They never change the default home screen, by the way.
For years of iOS,
it's been the same FaceTime clock camera
all the way at the top.
Every time you set up a new iPhone,
that's what it's looked like.
I think just toss one widget in the default ios home screen for new phones but then so what about
people who have their phones already like someone already has an 11 and they're gonna update it now
do you think they're ever gonna find out about widgets i don't i don't think by accident i mean
craig talked for a little bit about discoverability and i think that's important when you add
complexity you want to not shove it in people's faces, but make it easy to discover that you can
add this complexity or extra level of personalization if you want.
And, you know, when you long press, you do have that plus up there.
It is pretty easy to find.
But it's not it's not just going to show up by accident.
Like you do have to kind of look around for it.
So that'll be interesting.
But the other thing, the other conversation that comes up when you say you're an android person yeah yeah
is all the the talks about who's copying who i'm actually kind of glad i took a step back on this
like this conversation or more of memeing at this point of look how much our subreddit is just like
because it's so easy to make fun of it's like very easy. It's like look at this widget that I've had for nine years and just now, oh, iPhone's
just now got the thing I've had for nine years.
Yeah.
Here's the thing.
First of all, both of these are very mature operating systems.
We've seen OSs not get to this point like Windows Phone and Palm OS or whatever not
quite get to this point.
And when you get to this point, all you really have left to do is little tweaks and like little adjustments here and there. And to be honest,
both Android and iOS have been copying from each other for years. Where do you think the swipe up
in Android came from to go home now? It's because people just didn't quite lock into embracing the
attempted different ways Android was doing it. So to say, you know, iPhones are getting things now that Androids have had for a while. Yes. But that's also true about
Androids getting things that iPhones have had for a while. So also look at hardware. How many times
have, how many times have we seen Android phones that look just like iPhones? And remember that
Motorola one? Like when, uh, when iPhone first came out with the notch and like the, the camera,
the dual camera on the back, there was a Motorola phone that looked literally exactly like it.
Immediately.
So yeah, I'm not too worried about copying.
Matter of fact, a lot of times copying is one of those forms of competition where if
you can copy and then innovate a little bit on top, that suddenly sets the original to
try to want to get better and one up you again.
So I wouldn't be surprised if we start seeing the whole widget experience in Android start to get refined a little more.
So I'm totally fine with the whole copy. So anyway, we have a bunch of new iOS features.
Widgets are clearly one of them. I feel like I've said widget so many times, like I'm starting to
lose the meaning of that word. Another big one, and if you don't use iPhones,
this probably won't mean much to you, but actually what phone do you use right now?
Pixel 4. So when you get a call, it takes over the whole screen, right? Like on Samsung,
when you get a call, it just gives you a little notification. Yeah, I think it,
no, I think it takes over the whole screen. We're in a year where phone calls are just so-
Yeah, I don't do phone calls yeah i really don't
call people on the phone very often but so on ios 14 when you get a phone call or a facetime it
won't take over the whole screen it will just give you that slide down notification like a samsung
phone and so now you can just swipe it up to dismiss it or accept or deny right there i i have
to say i have a friend who is a huge apple fan he buys literally everything
that apple comes out with um the first thing he said he was excited for was that it doesn't take
up the whole screen when someone calls you that was the top number one post on reddit for a minute
there really yeah is that this no longer is full screen also wow everything apple buys everything
apple makes okay he had airpods then he bought our matte black airpods because
he liked them so much and then he instantly bought the airpods 2 and then airpods pro right after oh
wow just this man has a home pod i can tell this is incredible i believe he does and i think he
defends it as well so i probably can't talk to this guy um so compact ui is cool picture in
picture here's another one of those things that we've had forever on Android, but that's cool because
now it's, it's getting its little tweaks and it's doing it the iOS way.
You can have a picture in picture video, but there is a little bit of confusion about whether
or not picture in picture will work with YouTube.
And if you have a premium account versus if you don't, because if you don't have a YouTube
premium account, picture in picture is disabled on the YouTube app.
But when I went on. Is that different? Has that changed have a youtube premium account picture and picture is disabled on the youtube app but when i went on is that different has that changed because i can do picture and picture on android and i don't have youtube premium uh it might be different on
android i don't even know but i i went in safari and i was logged in and i could picture and picture
any video but i'm not sure now if that's because i have a premium account or if that's just because
picture and picture works with everything now but either way the feature works with with videos online with the apple tv app with
all kinds of stuff you can shrink down that video just by going home and moving it around and
changing the size and I like that you can change the size that's something you cannot do on android
right yeah and it's it's really actually very responsive like when I pinch in and like make
it a little bigger like it doesn't work that well in Android. And when I just pinched in and in picture and picture in the iPhone,
it just got a little bigger. It's just like the way I asked it to. So that was nice. Nice. So
you also get this picture in picture with FaceTime. Again, if you don't use an iPhone,
you probably won't even know about this. But if you're on a FaceTime and you want to just go
answer a text, as soon as you leave the FaceTime app, it pauses your video.
And whoever's FaceTiming you doesn't see you anymore.
So people do this all the time.
This is a staple of FaceTime.
It's like you leave, your video's paused,
you go text somebody, you come back,
your video starts up again.
You could do anything during that pause.
But now your video continues.
So if you're zoning off on Instagram
or texting somebody while you're on FaceTime,
they're going to see you.
So anyway, that's a new picture-in-picture feature
There's also a bunch more messages features improvements here. You can tap you can pin message conversations to the top
There's a bunch of new group message features
Threads and inline replies people can mention you in a group chat now and you can turn off notifications
Unless someone mentions you in the group chat. That's's great those blue bubble conversations are about to get even
better uh and of course memojis got their improvement aging actually is is one that i
didn't think i would appreciate that much but now you can you can really lock down you can really
fine-tune the age of your memoji uh and you can also put a mask on. So great. So I just I just hit 30. Now I can
make it look like you can bump up. Oh, yeah. Happy belated birthday. Yeah, you can you can bump up
your Memoji's age in the aging feature in iOS 14. Actually, so maps got some pretty interesting
updates. One is like maybe the most San Francisco feature ever, but it makes perfect sense is
cycling. Lots of cycling. So I actually this is something that caught my eye you meant it's bike lanes right
yeah bike lanes i guess new york city probably wouldn't really have to abide by that i would
be interested in how if it's only like city-based bike lanes or because i i recently went camping
and our our friend johnny came with us except he biked to the place in the Poconos.
It took him two days.
And what I was thinking, I'm like,
how does he bike on the highway this entire time?
But there's not.
There's like specific bike trails.
He went on a two-day bike ride?
He did a two-day bike ride and then he biked back.
He's actually leaving today to bike to West Virginia for two weeks.
Okay.
I'm going to assume that Apple Maps
probably doesn't have all that much mapped out.
But like, yeah, that's a little hardcore
and I'm sure the user base would be way too small for that.
So I'm assuming this is just quick bike lanes
in cities and such.
Yeah, in cities and it'll tell you
if there's like stairs along your route
and you can hit avoid the stairs on your route
so it can tell you where to go.
So this is all pretty cool.
The one I really think that I said over and over,
I want Google Maps or somebody else to copy
is electric vehicle routing.
So we already know you can tell Google Maps
when you drive somewhere to make sure you stop
or make sure you avoid tolls
or make sure you avoid highways or something like that.
So now if you tell it,
and I couldn't find this in the beta that I was using,
but this is on their site.
If you tell it that you drive a certain type of electric car,
it can route you and tell you where to stop
and charge along the way
so you can plan your trip accordingly.
And this is one of the most asked questions
whenever someone asks about my car.
It's how far does it go on a battery
and where do you charge it?
And if this feature now is built into apple maps and and hey build it into google maps and build it into ways so that
normal people are aware of how many chargers there are around you have you don't have to
download charge point or some other random third party app to know that there's chargers everywhere
i think that's huge for electric vehicles it's pretty pretty big and something that i think
needs to be done
because of the influx of EV cars we're seeing.
Yeah, and I kind of want to try it to see if I put in that I have a Tesla,
will they put in Tesla superchargers?
Because right now...
I can only imagine it would have to be ones that are compatible with your car.
Yeah, and there's a lot.
Like if I don't have a Tesla, if I have a Volt or something
and I go plug in that I have a Volt,
I assume it will not tell me to stop at a Tesla supercharger.
I would hope it wouldn't tell you because you literally can't do it, right?
Right.
So I'm curious about this feature, but I generally think it's a pretty big win for electric cars to have this feature built in.
So that's cool.
Next up, tell me if you've heard this before, Translate app.
There's 11 languages built into it right now, but basically it's going to give you on-device
libraries so you can instantly quickly translate and converse with people in different languages.
Pretty simple basic app, but it's like, hey, while we're adding stock apps, might as well
add a good Translate app.
And that seems to be what they've done here.
And then Siri has gotten some improvements, not just to the design but just to the general usefulness of siri i'll say look i haven't
tried it much yet i just kept asking it how old is betty white because i was so fascinated
but uh it apparently has 20 times more facts than just three years ago which is great uh and it'll
be able to give you those facts from the knowledge graph faster and more readily.
So I'm hoping Siri gets a little better.
You know what I think it's time for?
Another one of those big voice assistant
comparison challenge videos.
That would be cool.
With Google Assistant now, Siri now,
throw in Alexa and Bixby now.
I kind of want to do something where in that test,
we also say a bunch of words that kind of sound like them
and see how many accidental trips we can do
and see if any of them have gotten better.
I think Siri is the most often accidental trip.
Here it is.
At my home, I get Google pretty often.
A lot.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't use Siri that much, to be perfectly honest.
I don't have a HomePod.
I don't really trust Siri that much yet.
But you can use it to do things like text people and just look up the weather and quick facts.
So for those types of things, it's better.
And it's also now, in case you didn't see the video, like a smaller UI down at the bottom of the phone.
So that's pretty cool.
But that's mainly it.
There's some privacy improvements some safari improvements
oh what did you think of uh the car key feature oh my favorite tweet about that was great now
when someone steals my phone they can also steal my car that's what that's what i was saying in
the video it's like all right i guess on one hand that's pretty bad that you can steal someone's
phone and then steal their car from that
but if you if you if your phone dies anyway think about it you're already losing your phone
your camera oh i don't even think about it just dying yeah or your communicate like if you don't
have a separate set of keys you just lost your car keys you just lost your wallet potentially
you just lost maybe your some people keep their id like there's a lot of things people keep in
their phone like what's the car keys adding to that list like you're already losing so much i
i agree with you until you say your phone dies though because if my phone's dead and i have like
oh you're saying like apple wallet like specifically on the phone yeah yeah yeah i don't know it's it's
tough having a backup obviously yeah someone's to get stuck in a cruddy situation
because their phone dies when they're out.
Yeah.
That's rough.
Yeah, it's going to be interesting to see.
That's rough, but like you said, yeah, people are doing it.
And I mean, phone batteries are lasting so well
and we have chargers everywhere.
It's going to become less and less often.
Yeah, and the BMW, they showed for it,
you tap it like on the car door you tap
your phone it unlocks the car then when you get in the car you put the phone like in this little
cubby in the middle where wireless charges and then it connects to carplay so now you're
instantly like using the maps from ios and you're charging the phone already and it's the push to
start works because you're in the car with the phone so the whole the whole thing is like the
car is just waiting for the phone to be there to do everything uh i assume there's a backup where
you also have a physical key that represents all the same things to the car yeah i'm pretty sure
yeah yeah obviously i think that is kind of cool to have that's pretty it makes you future cars
makes you really think like if apple ever created a car how integrated it would be with the rest of
the ecosystem and just like all the crazy stuff they could pull off.
Like just imagine how much you use your car
and how much that could be connected into your...
Your car's got HomePod speakers.
Your car's got Siri built in to the steering wheel.
So when you press it, it just asks,
what would you like to do, beep?
Your car's got no brakes on the wheels.
Your car's got real expensive wheels too it's uh it would be expensive and white it would only come in white or space gray exactly
exactly yeah uh one other thing i thought was kind of interesting but not for the reason you'd think
is um the sound alerts notifications you know you said said for generally people who are hard of hearing,
they can, what it could say like dog, cat,
doorbell, water running.
My reason I would like that is because how often I'm way too into a video game
with the volume on way too loud
that I miss the doorbell.
I miss Claire getting home.
Who knows someone could be literally
breaking into my house and I don't know them. So to have a notification like, hey moron, I just heard getting home. Who knows? Someone could be literally breaking into my house and I don't know them.
So to have a notification like,
hey, moron, I just heard glass break
and you didn't hear it.
I did not think of this use case
until I saw some comments.
I thought it was a cool feature by itself
and I tried it.
It does tell me when it thinks
there's a faucet that's running.
I thought that was cool.
I played a doorbell sound in the video.
Immediately, it was like I heard a doorbell and it just gave me the notification. And I was like, that's running, I thought that was cool. I played a doorbell sound in the video, immediately it was like I heard a doorbell.
It just gave me the notification.
And I was like, that's cool,
but I didn't really think about
why wouldn't I hear the doorbell myself
unless I needed the accessibility feature.
And then, like you say, you could have headphones on,
you could be gaming, and it's telling you,
I just heard someone shouting, I just heard glass break,
I just heard a doorbell.
That's actually a pretty good use case for that.
That's good.
I think they'll come in more handy than people think.
Nice.
All right.
I think that's about it for iOS, right?
Yeah.
I think we got, there's app clips, a couple of the small things.
I highly encourage you guys to watch the video, which goes over all of the best features of
it.
It's been up for maybe three days now that when you hear this on Friday and plenty of people
are, are adding to that list in the comments. So check that out. And I think the most important
thing you said in the video is how many phones it is compatible with, which is something we talk
about on here all the time. Yeah. We say a lot of things are coming to Android or coming from
Android to iPhone 10 years late. What was I, I had a great witty line.
Hold on, I gotta think about it.
So a lot of things people say,
I need to, the Android OS had a lot of things first,
but the iPhone will have a lot of things last.
I think that's basically what I wanted to say.
That's a pretty good way to say it.
This is going all the way back to the iPhone 6S.
The chances of a lot of these features,
you're just now seeing an Android 11 going way back to a phone that old, the chances of a lot of these features you're just now seeing in Android
11 going way back to a phone that old, very, very low. So anyway, that was another neat thing you
should check out. All right. iPadOS, a lot of the same features. I'm just going to say it's got a
different name, but yeah, a lot of the same stuff. You can't move widgets to the home screen like I
talked about with Craig, but you still have the new widgets.
You still have widget stacking.
You still have Safari improvements.
You still have Siri improvements, FaceTime, not taking up the whole screen, all that stuff,
picture in picture.
Good stuff for iPadOS.
And then on top of that, you have a lot more Apple Pencil features like Scribble.
We can write in any text field.
I think that's awesome.
Any text field. You can just take the pencil and just start writing in it,
and it'll handwriting recognize and put in some text.
That's pretty sweet.
It's cool.
I can't wait to test that more as someone with miserable handwriting.
A lot of people are.
Yeah, that's going to be tough, a challenge for Apple's handwriting recognition.
If Apple wants any testing on somebody with really bad handwriting
to improve its AI,
I fully volunteer.
I would be willing to bet that's
a whole building on Apple campus
of just people writing with the Apple
pencil and them trying to figure out
how to improve their OCR. Sounds like a nice little
temp job. Nice
air conditioning,
really sick work environment, and you just write all day
my answer you're just writing on a treadmill basically with an apple pencil all day um yeah
no ipad os gets a lot of the same stuff you want to jump to let's just do watch os real quick just
because there's a couple small things uh and by a couple small things i mean really just a couple
new watch faces no third- party watch faces and sleep tracking.
Sleep tracking.
That's the big one.
Do you do sleep tracking with anything?
I don't think you wear like a fitness band.
I wear a Garmin smartwatch sometimes.
I haven't been wearing it as much because I've been doing way less physical stuff with
everything.
It's hard to close your rings, man.
So like I was doing that and I have to say the sleep stuff is some of the coolest things like it's super interesting to watch that and
being like i'm tired today look back it's like because i slept really poorly last night and with
everything that apple watch tracks and how well they track everything i'm very surprised they
haven't had this so there's been third-party apps that have done sleep tracking to varying degrees of success
and i think just having it built in now with all the rest of the stuff apple tracks is just
comforting to a lot of people so that's cool um i'll try it i'll track my sleep for i don't really
like wearing stuff when i sleep so i probably won't end up i got used to it pretty quick
actually yeah you don't really notice i think it's more of just like giving my wrist a break
from having this thing tied to it all day.
And I try to switch wrists.
You can kind of tell I have like a little watch tan on the other wrist.
I still have mine and I've barely even worn my watch.
So like I'm looking ridiculous out here with two watch tans
and I only have one watch on.
So I don't know.
I'll give my wrist a break at night.
But that's watchOS 7.
No new hardware.
And then macOS big sir 11 i can't stop saying it weird big sir big sir yeah it sounds kind of weird if you really say it like that i'm just gonna say
mac os 11 i'm just gonna call it that for the rest of this podcast um but yeah it's a big old
visual overhaul and if you if you watch any of the previews or if you watch our WWDC recap video, you
see a lot of this new, new UI, rounded corners everywhere, uh, new icons everywhere.
And a lot of this, you know, new transparency, it's getting mixed, mixed reactions.
I, my first impression of it was, oh, this looks nice.
It's a little, it's a little it's a little
cleaner but i think that came from me just looking at a nice wallpaper and like some pretty clean
menus and thinking that's fine i can deal with that but then when you take a second look a lot
of these icons i'm gonna be honest now that craig's not listening i really don't like a lot
of these icons like i'm just not feeling the the shadows i think is what it is yeah there's
like kind of a weird like shading slash shadow on some of them yeah and it just doesn't yeah they
don't all like fit together and i realize you know craig what he was talking about is is a lot of
people see the newness of a lot of things and we'll just think you know it looks different but
we'll cognitively get used to it and we'll we'll return to it being the new normal like think about when we got rid
of skeuomorphism you know all these weird textures and leather and stitching in mac os all that was
gone and we're like nice everything's flat now but now we're going back into these textures and
this 3d look and i don't know i liked the flat so we'll see if my eye we'll see craig we'll see if my eye
does get used to this but my first impression is pretty mixed wait if we're gonna talk about
poor design now i forget this might be an os as well because of laptops but it might be ipad what
is that battery design the battery is the worst one getting thrown around is the worst one i think
it's in settings it just doesn't fit with
all the other things like it's just completely different we'll link a picture of this ridiculous
battery icon in the show notes so bad i i don't it's like uncomfortable i think they're gonna fix
it i think they're gonna change that i think that's the only one that's getting roasted that
let's make t-shirts about it before it gets fixed. I'm in. Okay.
I'm in.
And then I got to change it.
And shop.mkbhd.com.
Yeah.
Let's do it.
No, there's other changes to macOS Big 11.
There's other changes to macOS 11 also.
There's new Safari features.
You have favicons and thumbnail previews for tabs now.
Also much better performance.
And I think that really just leads us to the big conversation about max
switching to apple silicon they had that moment on stage they were like and it was introduced by
tim cook and everything like they went back to tim on the main stage and they were like this is a big
moment in the history of max and they did this majestic drone shot to the underground lab
and yeah it was craig talking to us about
look we've made the transition before from power pc we've made the transition we're going now from
intel to our own apple silicon max still no name for apple silicon max can we please create a name
before it actually gets announced it's weird because i just want to keep saying apple max
but they're already Apple Macs.
So they probably just have to make up a name like Bionic.
No, I think it's a big moment.
I think I've been looking forward to seeing
just what they can do with Apple Silicon
in a big thermal envelope.
Like that's the big question.
It's like iPads, iPad Pros have been crushing
in the performance per watt department with no fans
and exporting 4K video.
I think John from TLD, he talked about this in his video.
Exporting like a 4K video a couple minutes long, no fans, whisper silent, faster than
a MacBook, which would have had its fans spinning real hard.
So imagine that level of performance per watt in a laptop with the efficiency that
the iPad Pro gets. That's already hugely promising. And then imagine that in a desktop scale.
Just a whole world of possibilities. So that brings us to the question, what would be the
best ideal first Mac with this Apple Silicon? And I think the answer for me, or at least for what a lot of
people would look to this for, would be like a 12-inch MacBook. Yeah, I think a MacBook for sure.
A small, thin laptop. Doesn't need that many, you know, one fan maybe. And it gets this incredible
iPad Pro-like, even better than iPad Pro performance because you have that bigger
thermal envelope, bigger chip, bigger battery, more RAM, all this more space to work with.
Throw a nice screen in there and that's going to be a heck of a computer.
I think that would be a great first computer.
Now, of course, Craig was never going to tell me what the first one's going to be.
I mean, and then you can even like the MacBook Air form factor that is just a tad thinner.
I guess you have more ports on a regular macbook
but like you can start getting slimmer and slimmer and then you even look about how we talked about
the like ipad looking imac like right now that has it kind of lumps out in the back
apparently like presumably for for thermal so like yeah if you have less of that you're just gonna get thinner sleeker which is
apple's mo so yeah that's all gonna look better i'm really hoping that that's coming soon but
yeah that's that other big rumor we talked about that in the last episode right like an ipad pro
looking mac that would be also potentially uh an apple silicon based computer but i'm just not
sure about the desktop stuff yet because they also need a GPU.
We could see the return of the trashcan Mac.
Oh, no.
Please don't, Apple.
Yes. Please don't.
Do it.
New trash Mac.
I don't think that thing...
The biggest issue with that was thermal, right?
But I guess GPU-wise...
It was thermal.
It was a thermal issue. It was definitely a thermal. They tried to cool
the entire computer with one fan. They tried to cool a workstation computer with dual workstation
GPUs and a Xeon processor with one fan. So yeah, that, I don't know if that's the solution.
I'm calling it first, first Mac coming back. Trash can. I hope they're not listening at this
point. Um, yeah, it is a, it's a big moment for Apple is what I'm, is what I'm coming back. Trash can. I hope they're not listening at this point.
Yeah, it's a big moment for Apple is what I'm coming back to.
I'm looking forward to the first one.
That being said, they still have Intel Macs in the works.
There will still be updates for the foreseeable future for Intel Macs as they do this transition. But yeah, I'm looking forward to whatever that first one is and hopefully seeing what sort of performance per watt.
I think that's going to be the headlining feature of it
when it does get announced on stage.
So looking forward to it.
But yeah, that's basically it for what we saw at WWDC.
Overall, I'm giving my, let's rate the show.
I'm going to rate the production of the show itself
and then the announcements at the show.
Cool.
So production, I'm rating, tell me if you're shocked, A plus.
Not shocked.
Yeah.
I totally agree.
Yeah.
And then I'm going to give the announcements.
This is one of the better shows.
I had the thought driving home yesterday, was this the best WWDC ever?
But I haven't been alive long enough to really say.
Okay, well, so just say ranked in your lifetime.
In my lifetime of WWwdc is this is one
of like the top three for me i think the mac pro reveal is like it just shoves that one up to the
top of my list even though i didn't ship it but i'm gonna say as far as announcements switching
to arm ios 14 and all the widgets i'm gonna go a minus i think that's even more impressive because
there was zero hardware announced true like if
it's that good yeah that's that's a great great show it's pretty good i'm looking forward to the
rest of the year too though because we're gonna get some serious hardware from the rest of these
companies so and now i'm looking forward to the rest of the uh online productions and i cannot
wait to rank them oh god i'm looking forward to it yeah all right well that's been it thanks for
listening to this episode of waveform we'll be back with our next episode in two weeks as scheduled but
until the next one feel free to tweet us get in touch and we'll see you back on the channel
take it easy waveform is produced in part with studio 71 and our intro outro music was created
by cameron barlow