247: A Place to Stick Your Gum
10 Nov 2017iPhone X: The ATP Review
Episode Description:
- Follow up:
- Apple TV 11.2ß makes John happy
- Time Machine local snapshots
- App Camp for Girls fundraiser
#askatp- iPhone X cases (via Nathan Walls)
- Apple Leather Case (Casey bought black)
- Impact of Siri's ineptitude (via Kapila Wimalaratne)
- Sony A7R III (via Ananda)
- iPhone X cases (via Nathan Walls)
- iPhone X: The ATP Review
- Post-show: Casey's odd in-flight activities
Sponsored by:
- Squarespace: Make your next move. Use code ATP for 10% off your first order.
- Warby Parker: Boutique-quality, vintage-inspired glasses at a revolutionary price. Try up to five pairs at home for free.
- Fracture: Photos printed in vivid color directly on glass. Get 10% off your first order with code ATP17.
Chapters
- Follow-up: tvOS output switching
- Follow-up: APFS Time Machine
- App Camp for Girls fundraiser
- Sponsor: Fracture (code ATP17)
- #askatp: iPhone X cases
- #askatp: Siri hurting iPhone sales
- #askatp: Sony A7R III
- Sponsor: Warby Parker
- Our iPhone X review
- Sponsor: Squarespace (code ATP)
- Our iPhone X review, cont’d.
- Ending theme
- Post-show: Casey edits video
Follow-up: tvOS output switching
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Fun fact listeners Syracuse is a much funnier person than you would ever expect like you you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey hear bits of that on the show
⏹️ ▶️ John But more in a laughing at me way than laughing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, that’s not true. That’s not right. You really like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But no really he is way funnier in person when when not
⏹️ ▶️ Casey performing as you have as we are all doing
⏹️ ▶️ John You’re trying to say I’m not funny on the podcast. He’s way funnier than he is in this podcast
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s not what I was going for, but if you want, I’m too tired to argue with you. So yes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Let’s start as we have to do with follow up. TVOS 11.2 beta is out.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Tell me about the output format switching, Mr. Syracuse, if you please.
⏹️ ▶️ John Not only is it out, but I actually got the update. I don’t know what caused me
⏹️ ▶️ John to get it, but I checked for updates and there it was. And I was very excited. So I immediately went into that setting screen that lets you say
⏹️ ▶️ John match source format, frame rate or whatever and then the HDR one is not
⏹️ ▶️ John applied to me so I couldn’t adjust, try that one. And then I played a
⏹️ ▶️ John movie and my television switched to what it displays
⏹️ ▶️ John as 24 hertz, which isn’t really true because I’m pretty sure it’s in some multiple of that refresh rate.
⏹️ ▶️ John But anyway, it works. It really, really works. Hooray! Of course, the
⏹️ ▶️ John movie I tried it with was a movie I purchased on iTunes. So I was using Apple’s built in movie app,
⏹️ ▶️ John which I assumed would have been updated to news the new API’s and I guess it has been. I haven’t
⏹️ ▶️ John had time to try it with Plex and infuse and all the other things because I just assumed they
⏹️ ▶️ John would not have had time to update but I’m just going to wait until 11.2 is out and try them as well.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I’m happy about this and I’m one step closer to the probably terrible mistake
⏹️ ▶️ John of losslessly ripping all of my blu rays so that I can watch them
⏹️ ▶️ John demand without touching a blu ray desk at full quality. But we’ll see how that goes. Uh, and
⏹️ ▶️ John one additional note from this, uh, Joe Rosensteil has confirmed confirmed a while ago and now is
⏹️ ▶️ John in the process of complaining and filing radars with apple about the fact that the previous generation
⏹️ ▶️ John apple tv, then not four K apple tv doesn’t get these features.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Oh, one pump
⏹️ ▶️ John me. And also doesn’t apparently get a manual 24 frames per second option. And like I said, a couple
⏹️ ▶️ John of shows ago, I I don’t get a manual 24 frame per second option either in earlier versions of tvOS
⏹️ ▶️ John even though my television supports it. But anyway, all these features are just
⏹️ ▶️ John for the fancy new Apple TV 4K.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think that’s unreasonable.
⏹️ ▶️ John Well it’s the Apple way to do things like why keep supporting the old thing, right? Although as Todd Vaziri
⏹️ ▶️ John unfortunately found out, they still sell the old one because he went to he was trying to order an Apple TV
⏹️ ▶️ John 4K and they didn’t have any in stock so he went to the store and bought one. He got a different size. He wanted to get the
⏹️ ▶️ John big one, I think, but he got the small one and brought it home, only to find that he just purchased the previous generation Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John TV, which looks very much the same if you’re not very careful to look at
⏹️ ▶️ John the box and make sure it says Apple TV 4K on it. So that’s a shame.
⏹️ ▶️ John And of course, they continue to sell the other one because it hits a price point, but they’re not going to support it with the latest version of the TVOS
⏹️ ▶️ John in the same way. Like maybe there’s a technical reason. I can’t really think of one, but it’s conceivable
⏹️ ▶️ John that there’s some unknown technical reason why they can’t do the switching but that’s that’s crappy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they also in the most Tim Cook move ever didn’t even lower the price of the now two-year-old one when they brought
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John well you know the currency they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have it to hit a price point but it’s a very not competitive price
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John point suddenly it looks good it’s anchoring the anchoring effect yeah right
⏹️ ▶️ John new marks man’s but plus you’ve got
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco inflation right so
⏹️ ▶️ John it was a long time ago so money is worth worth less now? Apple.
Follow-up: APFS Time Machine
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Alright, and then tell me about APFS snapshots as used by time machine and software update
⏹️ ▶️ John There were a couple of articles about this But eventually they could all be traced back to a handy
⏹️ ▶️ John tech note thing on Apple’s own site to explain How the cool APFS
⏹️ ▶️ John snapshots are being used by Apple’s software at the very least So time
⏹️ ▶️ John machine is using them I’m assuming I don’t know if this article says it but I’m assuming
⏹️ ▶️ John the obvious thing to do is take a snapshot and then do a time machine backup from that snapshot. So you don’t get the
⏹️ ▶️ John weird thing that used to get where a time machine backups takes a half an hour to run.
⏹️ ▶️ John And files that are copied to the beginning of the backup are 30 minutes newer than files that
⏹️ ▶️ John are copied at the end. And you sort of get this weird image of the disk that is like, it’s like a rolling shutter on a phone,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? It’s like a rolling backup, like I’ll start backing up. And while I’m backing up, you’re continuing to use your computer.
⏹️ ▶️ John But if I already backed up the file, you modify it, I’ll get it in the next backup. It’s weird snapshots, you don’t have to do that you can
⏹️ ▶️ John say drink point in time snapshot. That’s what I’m going to back up from. That’s exactly what this disk will look like at a particular
⏹️ ▶️ John point in time. And it will back up from that. But additionally, Time Machine takes snapshots
⏹️ ▶️ John every 24 hours while your computer is turned on. And it takes a snapshot every week
⏹️ ▶️ John as well. And the member snapshots are just like a point in time on your desk. It’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not a backup to your Time Machine volume. just snapshots of your regular disk as it was.
⏹️ ▶️ John And those are convenient for like, let me you can, you know, run time machine, even if you’ve never had your time machine
⏹️ ▶️ John disk, like your external time machine disk, attached to your computer for a long time, you can still use time machine
⏹️ ▶️ John to recover things from the local disk that were part of those snapshots.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I heard some report someone saying I deleted a bunch of stuff on my free disk space didn’t go down.
⏹️ ▶️ John It really depends on how they were checking their free disk space. Because if were checking it at the lowest level that would be true
⏹️ ▶️ John because if you make a snapshot and that snapshot includes like a 4 gig file then you delete that 4
⏹️ ▶️ John gig file you don’t get that space back because that snapshot is still holding on to those 4 gigs
⏹️ ▶️ John so that you could if you wanted to recover that file from the snapshot or whatever with time machine so that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John a case where if you were getting your disk free disk space the lowest level you would see that I deleted this
⏹️ ▶️ John file why didn’t I get the free space back but this tech note has a thing at the end that says basically
⏹️ ▶️ John you know are you worried about these snapshots eating all your disk space. Don’t worry, because if we the operating
⏹️ ▶️ John system need, you know, storage space gets low, which is what the tech note says, snapshots are automatically deleted,
⏹️ ▶️ John starting with the oldest. And I’m quoting right directly from the document. Now, that’s why finder and get info windows
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t include local snapshots in their calculations of the storage space available on disk. So yet another complication
⏹️ ▶️ John as foretold in many past episodes of how a BFS was going to make it much more complicated to even display
⏹️ ▶️ John things like free space having to do a bunch of math and subtract out space taken
⏹️ ▶️ John by snapshots and all that other stuff. So they just lie to you and say, Oh, yeah, no, we freed up that space. But
⏹️ ▶️ John they didn’t, they didn’t free it up. Unless you need more disk space, unless you really, really need it.
⏹️ ▶️ John It won’t delete the snapshots and deleting shops, that’s as easy as I guess to delete a bunch of files, it just says, okay, forget about that
⏹️ ▶️ John snapshot, all those disks, all those blocks that were part of that snapshot that are not part of any other snapshot are now free.
⏹️ ▶️ John So it’s the magic of APFS. And my final note on this, this tech note, which I think everyone should read
⏹️ ▶️ John is it has it is forced to explain the horrendous UI of time machine
⏹️ ▶️ John specifically the weird uh timeline scrolly thing on the right with like
⏹️ ▶️ John that like a little zoomie timeline some poor tech writer had to
⏹️ ▶️ John had to write out if you have one of these versions the operating systems a bright red tick tick mark
⏹️ ▶️ John means this a dimmed red tick mark means that if you have a different version of the operating system a gray tick mark
⏹️ ▶️ John means this a bright pink tick mark means this and a dimmed pink tick mark
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco means this word. These
⏹️ ▶️ John are these colors are very similar to each other having I would never have guessed all this stuff how you use
⏹️ ▶️ John the interface many many times and there’s not a lot of text it’s like time machine
⏹️ ▶️ John good technology even though they got rid of the swirling vortex which I would argue is the best part of this interface they got
⏹️ ▶️ John rid of that right so it’s not like completely frivolous but the rest of the UI is not it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John great I don’t know what these colors mean I’ve read this tech note. I’m never going to remember this. I don’t know what dimmed pink
⏹️ ▶️ John means. What is bright pink and dimmed pink? If you only have dimmed pink, how can you
⏹️ ▶️ John dimmed pink and it’s not bright pink unless you have a bright pink to compare it to? This is a bad interface. Apple,
⏹️ ▶️ John please work on this.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh, wow. How do you really feel, John?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco Just don’t hold back this time.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco This is like Time Machine is just one of the many things that like, as we have gotten,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco know the the transition of the whole world and all of Apple’s focus to iOS.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s one of the many things on Mac OS I look at and it’s I’m just kind of sad that like if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Mac OS was was still getting seemingly meaningful effort put into
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it this could be so much more by now like this this could be so much better but it just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seems like most of Mac OS is not only in maintenance mode but seems to have the B team working
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on it and it’s just it just makes me sad.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it’s a little bit buggy, too. Like I spend time in the interface trying to find things. And sometimes it does weird stuff. And you just
⏹️ ▶️ John just shake my head and try it for a second time. And it usually works a second time. And who knows why it didn’t work the first.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like there’s a lot of cool tech under there. And you could build lots of interesting UIs on top of it. And the initial UI was fun and
⏹️ ▶️ John cool and interesting, and had good ideas behind it and simplified it. But the way it’s evolved,
⏹️ ▶️ John or rather hasn’t evolved is kind of depressing. One minor more minor point on this, they do take snapshots before software
⏹️ ▶️ John updates as well. with that. Like, I don’t know if there’s any actual feature that says,
⏹️ ▶️ John you don’t like the software update you did. Don’t worry, we took a whole snapshot of your disk. And you can roll back to it
⏹️ ▶️ John right now. I don’t think there’s any UI to that. But if third party tools
⏹️ ▶️ John have enough access to snapshots, they could offer that option just by listing all your snapshots. And same thing with time machine.
⏹️ ▶️ John There was a backup program. I don’t know if it’s still in development called backup loop. That was like,
⏹️ ▶️ John hey, time machine is cool. Why don’t we make a cool powerful UI on top of it for people who want
⏹️ ▶️ John to nerd out a little bit more than is possible with the default UI. And that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the fun type of stuff that’s a third party opportunity. But also at this point, the built in one should be better to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know, I don’t mind time machine. But I think it’s because I’m almost never in time machine. So it doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have I don’t have to deal with the chromium I very often. But did you know about the dim dread?
⏹️ ▶️ John No. And the bright pink?
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey No, you didn’t know?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey No, I didn’t. But now Now I know, and knowing is half
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John the battle. You don’t know. That’s the whole thing.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey You didn’t read this document,
⏹️ ▶️ John and even if you read it, it will just bounce off your brain. There is no way anybody will remember this.
App Camp for Girls fundraiser
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is not a sponsor, but we wanted to take a moment out of our day to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey call your attention to the App Camp fundraiser. App Camp for Girls is an organization that’s near and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey dear to all three of our hearts. We tend to sponsor their get-togethers at WWDC
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when we can, and they are trying to expand to three new cities, and they need a whole
⏹️ ▶️ Casey pile of money to do that, because doing this sort of thing is not cheap. So we will put a link
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in the show notes to a fundraiser on Indiegogo that I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have not yet had the opportunity to back because I’ve been traveling for work, but I will do so as soon
⏹️ ▶️ Casey as I am human again. So anyway, they are only about a little under
⏹️ ▶️ Casey halfway there as we record today, and it would be pretty awesome if we made them
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all the way there by the time we record next. Hint, hint, hint, hint. So
⏹️ ▶️ Casey App Camp is a great organization that does really great work in trying to encourage young girls to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey young women to explore technology and try to maybe see
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if they have a future in creating the kind of apps that Mark will not create. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they’re smart enough not to ask these young girls to use Pearl because then they would never want to program
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ever again. So if you want to give money to people who don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John program in Pearl,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey please feel free to check out this link in the show notes and send them any of your money. Even a dollar
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would help and it would mean a lot to all three of us.
⏹️ ▶️ John You don’t know they don’t program in Perl. They could all be using Perl. There’s probably some framework that lets you write your iOS apps in Perl,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? That’s one for every other language.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’m sure there’s something on CPAN that makes it work. That’s how it is, right?
Sponsor: Fracture (code ATP17)
⏹️ ▶️ Marco We are sponsored this week by Fracture, who prints photos in vivid color edge to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco edge on pieces of glass. Visit fracture.me and use code ATP17 for 15% off
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco really do print photos on pieces of glass, and they print it on the backside of a thin piece
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of glass so the side that you see is very slightly glossy, but not so much that it’s like too glary or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reflective. Like you see the photo wonderfully, Their printing process really brings out the color and contrast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the photos and they just look great. They look modern. Because they go edge to edge, you don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco need any kind of frame or mat. It is a completed thing. So like, you know, before you’d have to like get things
⏹️ ▶️ Marco framed and it was expensive and time-consuming and kind of a pain and the things would be get there would be so heavy.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Fracture prints are nothing like that. They are affordable. They are great values. They look great. They go edge to edge and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they’re actually very lightweight because the glass is nice and thin. and it’s in front of this little kind of like foam board
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco look great. We get tons of compliments on them all around our house. We also give them as gifts very often. If you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have someone in your life who you want to give photos to as a gift, maybe it’s a grandparent or something like that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, giving photos of your family, this is a very common thing. And fracture prints are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wonderful for gifts. People love them. The only thing is every fracture is handmade.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And what that means is they can get backed up in the holidays, because they have people actually making these things from scratch.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s in the US, in Gainesville, Florida, from US source materials in a carbon neutral factory.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, all great things. But if you’re gonna order a Fracture as a holiday gift, get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your order in now. Right now, as I record, the holiday season’s about a month away, but Fracture
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gets backed up because everyone gives these as gifts. So, they want to let you know, they want me to let you know.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Please hurry up and get your orders in soon, because they are so good to make such great gifts that they might get
#askatp: iPhone X cases
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So check it out today, and really I mean today, not tomorrow, not next week. Check it out actually today
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⏹️ ▶️ Marco at checkout to get 15% off your first order. Thank you very much to Fracture for sponsoring
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So let’s talk about Ask ATP. Nathan Walls writes in, now that you have iPhones 10
⏹️ ▶️ Casey enhanced, is it iPhones 10? I know that’s the way they usually do it. No, it’s iPhone XS.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Exactly. I just know that the Apple guidance is always so bananas. Anyway, now that you have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iPhone X in hand, are you using or wanting to use a case with it? Which cases are you using? Thanks.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ll start off. If you recall, my iPhone 7 was the first phone in a long time that I had
⏹️ ▶️ Casey naked, and I paid the price because I dropped it on the pavement and shattered my first screen.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Luckily, I had AppleCare, and so that was taken care of. And then I quickly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey scratched the screen within about two weeks of getting it replaced, which is delightful. Anyway, for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the iPhone X, it’s apparently, I don’t recall if we talked about this last episode, but it’s like $200
⏹️ ▶️ Casey or something like that to do a front screen replacement and something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like $500 to do a back glass replacement.
⏹️ ▶️ John talk about it. You’re very tired. I can tell.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Yeah, I’m dying.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But anyway, so the point is that it’s extremely expensive to replace anything on this phone. I personally
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have not ordered AppleCare for my phone. I’ve been debating it and I don’t think I will, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey we can play this clip when I inevitably break this phone in a few months, but I have put
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the official Apple leather case on it. I do quite like the official Apple leather cases.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey However, the thing that bothers me about most cases, including
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the Apple leather case, is that it makes doing gestures from the edge of the screen considerably more difficult,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and that bums me out. but otherwise it’s a nice case. It’s expensive, it’s like 50 bucks, but it’s a nice
⏹️ ▶️ Casey case. Marco, what do you got
⏹️ ▶️ Marco going on? I am also caseless. That’s almost casey-less.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I bet you have thought of that many times. Sorry. So yeah, I’m also going caseless.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I too was cased only with the 6 and 6S, not before or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco after. The 7 I got in jet black because it was grippy and I love that. The X
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is, with the glass back and the smooth metal sides,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would say overall, so far, it does not seem as grippy as the iPhone 7,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it’s not as slippery as the 6 and 6S. So I’m a little…
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, slow down though, slow down though. It is way grippier than my beautiful, but bar
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of soap matte black, or whatever they call
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Right, yeah, whatever it was called. But the Jet Black is obviously a whole different animal. I’m not trying to argue
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that, but if you happen to be coming from a matte black iPhone or whatever the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey equivalent was, I would say that the iPhone X is considerably more grippy
⏹️ ▶️ Casey than that, but it sounds like you’re saying, Marco, it is less grippy than the Jet Black.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s what it feels like so far. You know, it could just be because it’s new and doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have all my hand oil on it from a year worth of hand oil, which is really gross, but that’s how it works.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It could be that, you know, but you know, compared to the jet black, it is not as grippy. And it could also be that, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco while the glass is kind of grippy, the sides are now just regular metal again.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so they’re not. So it could be that, I don’t know. I have considered
⏹️ ▶️ Marco looking into some kind of like film or maybe like a little stick on like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco leather thing, just for the back of it, with not even the sides. Like they may, you know, they make just like kind of single
⏹️ ▶️ Marco panel decals or stickers or protectors for phones generally. So I was thinking about doing
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that just to make the back a little bit grippier for and just for a small amount of protection.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I too did not get AppleCare as I explained last week. So I figure like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know I’ll see how it goes. If I drop it, everyone can make fun of me and maybe I’ll start
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know spending $200 a year on AppleCare from that point forward. But right but I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco mean it’s like until I start dropping my phones that I’m coming out ahead by not doing that. So
⏹️ ▶️ John you’re still doing your math wrong. You have to drop your phone enough times to equal all the money you would have paid for all your
⏹️ ▶️ John phones. It’s not $200 for each one because they used to be cheaper, but you have to add up all that
⏹️ ▶️ John money and then if you want to try to balance the scales, you should really only start buying AppleCare after you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Right, exactly. And so far, I haven’t had to do that yet. I would have to pay full price
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for a lot of replacements to make my policy worth reconsidering. And also, cases
⏹️ ▶️ Marco are also part of that too. are $50 at least for a decent one from Apple or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a decent one from anybody else. You’re generally looking at around that price range.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You’re paying for all these protective things, but you’re paying a lot for that protection.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And so you really have to be breaking things on a regular basis to make you come out ahead with that. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anyway, I am caseless. You are caseless.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You are also caseless. And… I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t know, I’m not caseless this time. I was caseless. Oh, that’s right. I am, I’m rocking the black leather this time.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. How, so how is it? It’s like every other black leather case I’ve had. I mean, I like it. It’s very
⏹️ ▶️ Casey nice, but… It’s like about
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one that they’ve been making since the sex, basically. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco That one was fine. And I choose,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah, I mean, I choose black because when it wears, it doesn’t really look any different.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I know there’s a lot of people that like, what is it, like saddle brown or whatever. And once it gets worn,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it kind of gets that, I don’t know how to describe it. It’s not really patina, but it has that look to it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And I know a lot of people that really like that. That’s not really my cup of tea. And I personally like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a very quiet case in the sense of visually quiet. So I’ve always had black leather cases.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Mike Curley is apparently, I don’t know if he’s received it at this point, but was looking into getting a bumper, which actually
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sounded really interesting to me. I don’t think it would be what I would choose because that, especially that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey back glass, if you shatter that, oof, that’s a bad day. So I’m gonna stick with the black leather
⏹️ ▶️ Casey case and we’ll see how that goes.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The other thing with any kind of case and bumper is that it does interfere with the side gestures.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And even though, like, you know, once you get one, like, you know, I used my 6 and 6S the entire time I had them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with Apple’s leather case. And you do get used to it. But it does make the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco swipe in from the side gesture a little harder to do and it gives you a little less room to do it. and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco also it just collects dust around that edge and everything. It’s I don’t know, I just, I prefer not to use a case unless I really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have to or unless I feel like I really have to. And so far with the 10 I don’t think I’ll need it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The only thing that makes me nervous is just how expensive it is to repair and that it is a new size
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that I’m still getting used to holding and using. So we’ll get to that later on in the show a little bit. But, uh, but so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco far I think I’m going to probably stay either caseless or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with some kind with some kind of minimal like stick-on decal thing on the back just to increase grip.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, moving on. John, you do not have an iPhone 10 in hand, is that correct?
⏹️ ▶️ John I thought you were gonna move on like last week where Marco edited out the part where I said whether or not I got AppleCare Plus.
⏹️ ▶️ John right on, yes. Let’s talk about the iPhone 10s. Marco and Casey get to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well, it was just, it was all about your wife. It wasn’t even about yours, so it wasn’t, you know.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s the iPhone 10 we’re talking about. It’s the only one I have. I didn’t get one. Anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ John to reiterate, we got AppleCare Plus because my wife drops her phone. She dropped her previous one twice. Also
⏹️ ▶️ John on the leather case, the leather case for the 7 is way better than the leather case for the 6 was.
⏹️ ▶️ John Because they changed to like metal volume buttons that poke out through, whereas the 6 had like these lumps in
⏹️ ▶️ John the leather. I don’t know what the leather case for the 10 is, but I can tell you that the leather case for the 7
⏹️ ▶️ John is a big upgrade over the 6 for all the buttons. And I heard people saying they really liked the leather case for
⏹️ ▶️ John the 10 had like aluminum buttons or whatever. Same thing with the 7 case, and that is much, much
⏹️ ▶️ John better than the lumps. As for cases, I’ve always used a case on all of my
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you’ve used a case and? And what? And you, whatever
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I saw, you had like a little baggie that you would put your phone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John in as well. Oh yeah, no, I do have that. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John had a little pouch. Yep. Yeah, I use the pouch mostly, I mean, I don’t know why I started using it. I think I got it from my iPod Touches.
⏹️ ▶️ John Mostly just so I can shove it in my pocket without worrying about anything hitting the screen. And also it basically cleans
⏹️ ▶️ John the screen every time I do that. Around the house I don’t use it obviously, right? It’s only, you know, when
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m going out or when it’s in my pocket. Most of the reason I’m getting the cases is for hand grip and
⏹️ ▶️ John for surface grip. But in the modern era, I think the main reason
⏹️ ▶️ John I probably will never go without a case despite everything Marco said about gestures, which is true,
⏹️ ▶️ John is because it evens out the camera bump. and that is super true on the X as we will
⏹️ ▶️ John talk about. So yes, I’m using a case on my iPhone 7. My wife got silicone cases for
⏹️ ▶️ John her iPhone X and because she is impatient and loves different colors, she got two of them just
⏹️ ▶️ John like she did. But I think maybe she got three for a 6S Plus. Anyway, so silicone case looks good.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, actually the leveling out the camera bump is a real thing and that’s another reason because the camera
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bump on the 6 is noticeably larger, I think, than the previous ones. And so like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for the first time I’m actually interested in leveling up the camera bump where I didn’t care before.
#askatp: Siri hurting iPhone sales
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, so we have our next to ask ATP from Kapila Wamala Ratne. Hope
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I got that right. Do you think Siri lagging behind Google Assistant will eventually hurt iPhone sales?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And this individual says, I’m currently very tempted by the Pixel 2.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know. It’s an interesting question. I can tell you that I’ve gone through, I feel like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my feelings about Siri go through kind of a sine wave where the peak of the sine wave
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is like begrudgingly accepting how bad Siri is and right now I’m in a valley
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because I friggin hate Siri and I feel like it’s constantly giving me wrong data or not understanding what I’m trying to tell
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. But I don’t have an Alexa in the house, I don’t have a Google Home in the house, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really ever use any Android or Amazon devices so I don’t really know what I’m missing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and because of that for me I mean obviously I’m all in on Apple anyway but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t think for me and people who don’t have like these multicultural
⏹️ ▶️ Casey households, if you will, in terms of, you know, assistance. I don’t know that anyone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really realizes how crappy Siri is, including myself, but I’m curious to hear
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for like you guys that have multiple, you know, talking tubes in the house,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do you think that this is a much bigger risk?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, for me it depends on what you’re using it for. You know, for me,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Siri is a is just one part of why I choose Apple products and why I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco love the iPhone so much and why I use the iPhone over other phones.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think Siri not being as good as it should be is a real problem, but it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a real problem that is of different degrees of severity depending on the product you’re talking about.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So for something like the HomePod, that’s a big problem. Like if Siri is not somehow
⏹️ ▶️ Marco miraculously way better way more consistent and way less sassy and with way less personality
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the HomePod than it is everywhere else right now, then the HomePod’s going to be, I think, really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco annoying to use in practice. Because when it’s the only interface you have to something,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it really has to be good and consistent and smart
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and it has to do the right thing like every time. And that’s what the Amazon Echo does.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like the Echo is really, really good. really consistent. It hardly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ever fails and when it does fail it doesn’t do so with a cutesy response
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where it’s trying to be funny that really just makes you want to set the world on fire.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Siri in that kind of context is going to be a problem I think. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know for my phone the the other reasons I choose the iPhone are
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so much greater than the variance between Siri and the other their
⏹️ ▶️ Marco voice assistants, that the other reasons will always overpower that difference.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Even if the iPhone didn’t have Siri at all, even if it did not have any voice interface
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at all, I would still choose the iPhone over anything else just because the rest of it is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so compelling compared to that. Now other people might have different responses to that, but for me,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I think for a lot of people, I think the voice features are really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco secondary and they’re convenience features on a phone. of what you do on a phone is not through that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco voice interface for most people. So, you know, again, like if your use case
⏹️ ▶️ Marco may vary, but for me, it’s like I want Siri to be better for lots
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of reasons, and I think it needs to be better for lots of reasons, but it’s not going to kill iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco sales in a meaningful way if it’s not.
⏹️ ▶️ John So you missed the key, uh, buoy trap in this question here, which is the word eventually.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yes, that’s right. It’s everybody’s favorite.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco an infinite time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco scale. We need like an infinite time scale horn or something.
⏹️ ▶️ John A gong. Do you think Siri lagging behind Google Assistant will eventually
⏹️ ▶️ John hurt iPhone sales? So there’s two aspects to this and the reason I picked this question. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wonder if I can fit a gong in my office. I have the bell up here, but the bell is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John nice and small. A gong is not small. The
⏹️ ▶️ John infinite time scale gong. Yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, you can get a little desk gong, but I mean, if you’re going to get a gong, get a real one. You know, get like the one on the floor
⏹️ ▶️ John your accessories need to be under control here. So
⏹️ ▶️ John the eventually part of this, if voice assistants become
⏹️ ▶️ John more and more important on phones, and Siri continues to lag behind Google Assistant,
⏹️ ▶️ John then I think your calculus might change Marco, if everyone else is talking to the phones constantly and get an awesome response
⏹️ ▶️ John from it, and it’s like the most convenient way to do a whole bunch of things. But Siri continues to
⏹️ ▶️ John lag behind that may change your calculus on exactly how important you feel it’s not that’s gonna make you buy an Android phone
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever but the other angle on this is that Google Assistant is available on iOS
⏹️ ▶️ John the only difference is that Apple privileges Siri to be the one with the good system integration so
⏹️ ▶️ John Apple’s ultimate out if it can never get Siri to be as good as Google Assistant
⏹️ ▶️ John and if a voice assistants on phones become much more important than they are are today. Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John always has the ability to say, assuming you know, Google deigns to continue to be on
⏹️ ▶️ John the on iOS, which I assume they will because if they’re on now and they have 80% market share, I don’t see why they wouldn’t be forever.
⏹️ ▶️ John Is okay, we will just make API’s so that any voice assistant has the same kind of integration
⏹️ ▶️ John that Siri does. And then voila, your iPhone has just as good a voice assistant as Google because it’s the same
⏹️ ▶️ John voice assistant. That would be kind of a failure scenario and showed that they couldn’t hack it with Siri. But
⏹️ ▶️ John I think it is likely that voice assistants will become more important
⏹️ ▶️ John on phones than they are today. I’m not sure how far it’ll go. But certainly become more important and more
⏹️ ▶️ John important. And to Casey’s point about having cylinders in the house, I continue to have really
⏹️ ▶️ John good customer stat, as Tim would say, for my silly Google cylinder that mostly I ignore the existence
⏹️ ▶️ John of. But every once in a while, in addition to asking you to set timers and do math for me, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John I will yell from three rooms away, not even yell, just like, like this is the most recent thing where I was blown away
⏹️ ▶️ John with it. Like I’m in my TV room, but just like two rooms away. It’s like kind of on the other side
⏹️ ▶️ John of the house, but on the same floor. And we were having debate about the ages of actors
⏹️ ▶️ John on the show we were watching. And I just asked to the air in a slightly louder voice than normal, but not screaming,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, name of actor, how old, how old is this actor and how old was that actor? It gave me the answers.
⏹️ ▶️ John it didn’t say I can’t find a person by that name or didn’t misspell it or mistranslate it because
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s powered by Google and Google is the ultimate engine for typing a bunch of characters that you
⏹️ ▶️ John think might approximate the spelling of a celebrity’s name and because they’re a celebrity it goes I think I know who
⏹️ ▶️ John you meant even though you got that name totally wrong and it works over voice too. That’s not a very
⏹️ ▶️ John you know amazing thing to do but if I had taken out my phone and asked Siri to do
⏹️ ▶️ John it or asked the HomePod I can just imagine it picking a name from my contacts that sounds
⏹️ ▶️ John like the celebrity name and giving me their age or saying there’s no birthday information or saying it couldn’t provide that information
⏹️ ▶️ John so I think the lead is real and I think it will eventually be a problem
⏹️ ▶️ John for Apple but I think Apple has the ability to turn back the clock to 2007 and say Google powers
⏹️ ▶️ John all of our cool cloud stuff because they’re great at that and we make the hardware in the OS which would be bad as far
⏹️ ▶️ John as Apple’s concerned but it’s always there as an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out. The other thing I would say, though, is in the context of phone sales,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is what the question was really about, we’ve had voice input on laptops now for a while,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but it hasn’t really resulted in people talking to their laptops very often. The primary
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way that people interact with their laptops, by far, is still typing and looking at things on the screen.
⏹️ ▶️ John My mom talks to her laptop a lot more than you would think. I think there is
⏹️ ▶️ John a kind of a divide of traditional computer users and
⏹️ ▶️ John people who, for whom even crappy voice is better than mouse and keyboard. It’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John widespread, you’re right, most people don’t talk to their computers, but if voice assistants become better, I feel like
⏹️ ▶️ John that could start to change too.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Well yeah, but I’m saying like it’s, we’ve had it now for a while and it’s still, while some people do it,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it still is not the primary way most people interact with it. And phones,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’ve now had voice assistants on phones for one day longer than Steve Jobs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco has been gone. So that’s a while now and they still have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not become the primary interface for interacting with phones. And I feel like every
⏹️ ▶️ Marco form factor of computing device, they become compelling, they become
⏹️ ▶️ Marco useful and popular to be used in certain ways. And you know the laptop is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco established as like the mainstream PC thing and there’s the way you use a laptop. It’s with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a keyboard and a trackpad and that’s been established for some time and nothing’s really going to change that meaningfully probably.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco A phone has been established to be a screen that’s handheld or
⏹️ ▶️ Marco approximately handheld that you can touch with your finger and do multitouch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco gestures and type on the glass and everything and like have that be the primary interface. You can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do other things with them, you can control it by voice, you know, you can do other methods with these things, but those have been the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco primary interfaces. And over time, we really haven’t seen anything to suggest that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco these basic form factor categories and the way you interact with them
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really meaningfully changes or dramatically changes over time. You know, a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco laptop that you buy today, while the keyboard sucks and it has no ports, is roughly the same proportions
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and form factor as laptops we had 15 years ago. It’s just better you know, but it’s the same
⏹️ ▶️ Marco general thing the same approximate size the same approximate you know class of device
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and you interact with roughly the same way. So a phone over time like if you think about like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even on your infinite timescale argument like you know phones might be replaced by something else down the road
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know eventually they probably will. Oh they’re pretty they’re pretty damn compelling now for and they
⏹️ ▶️ Marco probably will be for quite some time, a phone’s primary interface is very likely
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to remain touch for a very long time, probably for the entire rest of the time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that phones are relevant devices that people carry.
⏹️ ▶️ John But it doesn’t matter what the primary interface is, though. I agree with you. It’s a giant screen that you touch.
⏹️ ▶️ John Of course, that’s going to be how you’re going to interact with. But if voice becomes a more important part
⏹️ ▶️ John of how you interact with the phone, it doesn’t have to be the primary way. It doesn’t mean you stop touching the screen. You’re always going to touch the screen. It’s the whole point. Like you said, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John in your hand. It’s little thing in your hand until it’s replaced by like magic eyeglasses or some other thing in your ear or something or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John yes you’re gonna be touching it primarily but imagine I imagine very frequently how much
⏹️ ▶️ John better voice could be when I’m driving a car and I hear my little phone being in my pocket
⏹️ ▶️ John I would love to say read that text for me but I can’t say that I can’t even say
⏹️ ▶️ John hey Siri read that text for me because it won’t hear me because it’s in my pocket but it’s connected to Bluetooth through my car so it’s using my car’s crappy
⏹️ ▶️ John microphone, like, it could be it could be better. And for for, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John when voice didn’t exist on iOS devices, people were just touching them entirely, right? There was no no Siri, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John When voice was added, it didn’t really change our lives that much, except maybe we use set timers and stuff. But it radically
⏹️ ▶️ John changed the way my mother uses iOS devices and Macs because her primary typing interface is speaking
⏹️ ▶️ John to her devices. Now, doesn’t that not mean that the primary way she uses her laptop or her phone is by voice
⏹️ ▶️ John of course not she’s using the mouse or the trackpad or you know her fingers to use the iOS device but
⏹️ ▶️ John anytime text input comes along she dictates it I can tell because I see the Dictators and all of her
⏹️ ▶️ John stuff I’ve seen her do it you
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco know where I pick the wrong
⏹️ ▶️ John word like a you know homonym or
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco whatever I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Marco picturing as a vegetable even though I know what you meant but
⏹️ ▶️ John Titus yeah sometimes it’s funny you have to kind of sound it out to figure out what she was she doesn’t she doesn’t go back and edit
⏹️ ▶️ John because editing would require her to try to like place the cursor in iOS on her phone and it you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not going to work with her vision and her fingernails is just not going to happen. But I
⏹️ ▶️ John think that really has changed how she’s done things. And if you said you can have a computer or a phone, but it won’t do,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, speech to text, she would not like it. So all I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John saying is, I think it could potentially become more important. And if Google Assistant gets to the point where I can do things like
⏹️ ▶️ John who just texted me, was that my wife, like if I can interact with it in kind of a naturalistic way in a regular
⏹️ ▶️ John tone of voice and have an expectation that it’ll know what the heck I’m talking about and respond in a reasonable way.
⏹️ ▶️ John That is a game changer, right? You cross some threshold, just like touch responsiveness cross
⏹️ ▶️ John some threshold with the iPhone. It’s like, Oh, I see how touch is supposed to be voice. It’s not there yet. But I feel like
⏹️ ▶️ John it could get there and become a more important part of how your phone works. And if you saw everyone else driving with their Android
⏹️ ▶️ John phones, interacting, doing those interactions, not as their primary way of using their phone, but just like, sometimes it’s,
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s the most convenient way to do stuff. If you see that happening, and your iPhone can’t do it, it
⏹️ ▶️ John because every time you try to talk to it, it like bloops at the wrong time or like tells you it can’t help you or runs like a web search
⏹️ ▶️ John and says, I found five things about, is that from my wife? Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s fair. And I do, you know, you’re right that like if there’s radical differences between Siri and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco its competitors, that does start to become an issue. But it’s only an issue to the degree
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that voice input is important to that device. And so if voice input is always the secondary
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way you’re interacting with this thing, if you’re mostly still touching it and voice is just like the secondary set of features,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s way less important whether the voice input is mediocre or excellent. And so I think Siri
⏹️ ▶️ Marco can continue, and because the rest of the phone is so much better than its competitors,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for almost everybody, for almost every recent, sorry Android people, that’s the way it is,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because the primary interface is so advanced and so compelling, the secondary
⏹️ ▶️ Marco interface I think has way more tolerance to be mediocre and still
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not make people change their buying habits.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, it really like I’m always depressed that I can’t even get like my immediate family to to get
⏹️ ▶️ John on board with iPhones. And this is the thing where I start to worry that even though it seems clear to us
⏹️ ▶️ John that iOS has advantages, like there are, you know, advantages that we appreciate,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s very clear that they are advantages that most of the rest of the world does not appreciate. Or
⏹️ ▶️ John at least they do not appreciate them enough to pay for them. So I, you know, my sister has an Android phone
⏹️ ▶️ John and she replaced it with another Android phone and I couldn’t convince her to get an iPhone. You know why? Because she said, well I
⏹️ ▶️ John got this Android phone and it was $200 but I got $150 or Costco rebate so
⏹️ ▶️ John it even cost less than that. Can you show me the iPhone I can buy for $150. And I was
⏹️ ▶️ John like, No, I can’t show you the iPhone you can buy for $150. And there’s no way I could
⏹️ ▶️ John convince her that a difference between $50 net and
⏹️ ▶️ John $800 for an iPhone, like, but don’t you see how much better iOS is? It’s like, I do not see $750 worth
⏹️ ▶️ John why Android has 80% market share, like phones are such a commodity. Now, that people just want
⏹️ ▶️ John a phone, occasionally they want a new But it’s like it’s like who buys batteries from the Seinfeld episode like
⏹️ ▶️ John oh you pay money for your phone I got this one for 50 bucks, and it’s fine I got this one for 50 bucks, and it’s fine might
⏹️ ▶️ John as well be the Android slogan like it is an incredibly Like
⏹️ ▶️ John you cannot there’s nothing you can say to someone who says I got this for $50 And it’s fine because they don’t care about phones. They’re
⏹️ ▶️ John not phone enthusiasts.
⏹️ ▶️ John not phone power users They just want a phone that lets them do phone things and it’s $50
⏹️ ▶️ John And there’s nothing you can say to them to say this thousand dollar iPhone 10 that reads your face like magic
⏹️ ▶️ John is like don’t you? Want this now? It’s like hmm. Maybe if I have an infinite money, but I got this is $150 and it’s fine
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey a different show. That’s
⏹️ ▶️ John not this is the show. We’re about to talk about how much we love our iPhone 10. So
#askatp: Sony A7R III
⏹️ ▶️ Casey All right, well, we still have one more ask ATP to go through. Ananda would
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like to know, is Marco getting a Sony A7R III since they addressed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the battery concerns he had with the Mark II? So my understanding is your A7R II,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if memory serves, the battery was just woefully undersuited
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for the device and you were charging constantly. So is that an accurate retelling
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and does the A7R III fix that? Oh, by the
⏹️ ▶️ John way, before you answer, I love how this question calls his the previous version of the Sony camera,
⏹️ ▶️ John the Mark two that’s kind of crossing the streams there. It’s not the mark two.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s the little canon lingo. And before that many of the things anyway, the A7R2 I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had two main problems with it. The battery life was one and the other was the general
⏹️ ▶️ Marco speed of handling things like you know, like reviewing an image that I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco just shot or just you know speed and responsiveness of the controls in the system
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and shooting and everything else it was you know capturing those giant 42
⏹️ ▶️ Marco megapixel images off that sensor the the cameras image processor I think just couldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco handle that very well and so a lot of operations on the 5d mark or sorry Wow on the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a7r to are just really sluggish and when you when I switched back to Canon
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for and I got the 5d Mark 4 instead it’s night and day difference. I mean
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it isn’t as many megapixels. I think it’s only 30 you know quote only 30 instead
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of 42 but processing those pixels and navigating
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and shooting and reviewing the images and zooming into the images to see if they’re sharp and everything like it’s just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a million times faster on the 5d Mark 4 than it is on the a7r ii
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so the a7r iii was just announced I don’t know if it’s out yet but it’s either way it’s it’s out shortly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or now and I when I sold my a7r ii to Stephen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Hackett I kept my two favorite lenses the 55 and the 35 primes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because I thought you know lens lens resale value is not going to change much in a year
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and if I end up buying back into the Sony ecosystem you know I have of these lenses, I’d have to rebuy them.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I kind of left the door open that I could go back if I wanted to. The a7R III
⏹️ ▶️ Marco promises to, it uses the new batteries that the a9 introduced. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the a9 is like a fast sports camera and that’s not really what I’d be looking for.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It uses the same batteries that does, which have allegedly, I think like two and a half times the capacity
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the old ones. and allegedly the A7R III also has a faster image processor.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But until it’s actually out, and until people can actually review it, and maybe I can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rent one, it’s hard to quantify that. It’s like, well, how much faster is it?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And how much better are those batteries? If it’s only a little bit better, that’s not good enough for me.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco If it can make it to the speed and responsiveness level of a Canon full-frame SLR,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and with the battery life that could be similar, we’ll talk but it’s too early to know that yet.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I am very tempted though because as you know in the Canon world while I do absolutely love
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the speed and the handling and the basically infinite battery life the full size SLRs
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have compared to mirrorless I do miss those 42 megapixels when I try to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco shoot myself a new 5k wallpaper and I also miss the in-body
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stabilization to make every lens stabilized basically.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I’m curious to rent one when it comes out whenever I can get my hands on a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco rental it’s probably it might be a while but I’m not rushing out to buy it yet because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think the most likely outcome here is is that it will be better, but not better enough.
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Our iPhone X review
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⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s iPhone time it sounds like all three households have received at least one iPhone 10
⏹️ ▶️ Casey In the case of our house. I got one and Aaron got one. I got the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey whatever we’re calling it. Whatever the The Apple term is for black, 256. Aaron
⏹️ ▶️ Casey got whatever the Apple term is for white, 256. Marco, how did your house end
⏹️ ▶️ Casey up? White, 256. And then John, how did you end up?
⏹️ ▶️ John I didn’t receive a phone. I had to go out and get it. If you recall, I ordered a
⏹️ ▶️ John phone, but it was like two to three weeks wait. But in the days
⏹️ ▶️ John since ordering the phone, I’ve been using the store app to try to do in-store pickup. I forget
⏹️ ▶️ John what morning, like one weekend morning or an 8am. I did my typical order and went to see what’s
⏹️ ▶️ John available for in-store pickup. And I saw that my local Apple store has the phone that I wanted. So I said, please reserve
⏹️ ▶️ John that for me. I will come pick it up at the appointed time. And we did. And we came and picked up the appointed
⏹️ ▶️ John time. Now it was tricky because this is my wife. So I remember she had an outstanding order. And we did
⏹️ ▶️ John the Verizon way where you enter all the information so that when you get the phone, it’s basically already assigned to her phone number.
⏹️ ▶️ John When you take it out of the box and activate it, it deactivates your other phone and everything
⏹️ ▶️ John it was that’s we had that in process it would not let me reserve for in-store pickup a
⏹️ ▶️ John phone with her same number on it right because it says you already have a phone that’s you know in process
⏹️ ▶️ John the only way you can do this it said basically was to receive the order and then like i don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ John return it or something like it didn’t even give you the option to say if you cancel the other order we’ll let you go through this order it said no
⏹️ ▶️ John you cannot do another order until that order arrives or whatever so instead i
⏹️ ▶️ John ordered the iphone 10 for me with my telephone number because
⏹️ ▶️ John my wife just wanted to get the phone she’s like just do it just do whatever it takes to get the phone we’ll sort it out afterwards and so we did we
⏹️ ▶️ John ordered it with my phone number and my thing and took the iPhone 10 went to the store to pick it up took it out of the box
⏹️ ▶️ John it activated as my phone it deactivated my phone then we did some sim swapping and a
⏹️ ▶️ John couple minutes later we were busily updating the stupid thing to iOS 11.1 because it shipped
⏹️ ▶️ John with 11.0.1 and restoring from a backup and completely forgetting to do the watch thing
⏹️ ▶️ John which we’ll discuss in a little bit but all in all she eventually got her
⏹️ ▶️ John whatever the hell it is black space gray 256 that now is correctly assigned to her telephone
⏹️ ▶️ John number and I’m back on my iPhone 7.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Alright I’m going to just start with some of my impressions
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and if you guys let me I’ll carry on until I’m done but in all likelihood we’re gonna end up just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey all of us talking about everything
⏹️ ▶️ John so… Oh wait before you begin again, the point I wanted to make about the in-store pickup. If you have an order with Apple and you’re waiting
⏹️ ▶️ John like, Oh man, I gotta wait three weeks just every day in the morning, go to the Apple store app on iOS,
⏹️ ▶️ John try to order it and see it and do in-store pickup. It is before you complete the order. It will show you what stores
⏹️ ▶️ John have the model, the model and size available in your area available for pickup. There’s a lot of
⏹️ ▶️ John availability every single day. New stuff comes in every single day in the morning. Just do that. It’s really
⏹️ ▶️ John easy to get a phone for local pickup before your one that you ordered comes. You
⏹️ ▶️ John always just cancel your order, which is what we did. So I would encourage everyone who’s being impatient with the phone, do that. Look for in-store pickup
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So initial impressions at the time, I tried to take some very, very, very brief notes.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s heavy, or at least I feel like it’s heavy, not bad heavy, just, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this is heavier, kind of heavy. Curiously, though, the size
⏹️ ▶️ Casey doesn’t act, I don’t get actively reminded that it’s bigger, if that makes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey sense. Like if I think about it for a half second, oh yeah, this feels bigger than what I’m used to. But it’s not like the plus club
⏹️ ▶️ Casey where I feel like I’m holding a dinner tray. It’s just, it’s close enough to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my old one that it feels about the same. Do you feel similarly or do you feel like you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey definitely notice the size, Marco?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So, I took notes as I was like experiencing it just so I could, you know, get some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco down. My first two notes are, it looks great, period. It’s heavy, period.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco That’s my first initial reaction to it. Very, very
⏹️ ▶️ Marco clear. I actually just for the sake of comparison, I just pulled my iPhone 7 out of the drawer and first
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of all, man, this is way grippier. So,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John no question,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco way grippier. But yeah, the weight difference is immediately apparent going either
⏹️ ▶️ Marco direction. It’s definitely a weighty phone. But I will say about the size,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I agree with you, that it does not feel that, it doesn’t feel like a plus phone. I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco will say though, it is like having a regular iPhone 7
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in your pocket and in other places, like in docks and in cars and in cup
⏹️ ▶️ Marco holders. It feels like an iPhone 7 physically, but when actually
⏹️ ▶️ Marco using it, it feels like using a plus because it’s so much harder to reach
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So it’s like to summarize, like, it’s like having a plus in your hand, but a seven in your pocket.
⏹️ ▶️ John I mostly agree with that. But I think in, in my hand in my pocket, my main impression
⏹️ ▶️ John of it is, is that it’s taller, like, I know it’s not actually thinner. But because
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s taller, when I mentally envision it and think about holding it, I think, oh, that’s the one that’s like skinnier
⏹️ ▶️ John than my iPhone seven, but taller. It’s not right. But because it’s taller, that’s my impression. And Margo’s 100%
⏹️ ▶️ John right with, like, okay, that’s how it feels as a physical object. What happens when you start trying
⏹️ ▶️ John to touch a screen and you’re like, Oh, there’s a lot more screen than there used to be. And some of it’s harder to reach.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I can get behind that. I do feel like the width is is the thing that I noticed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey most or that makes me most uncomfortable. It’s not I don’t feel like I don’t have numbers in front
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of me. It’s not egregiously wider than what I’m used to. But it’s wide enough that it’s just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ever so slightly uncomfortable. And I think Marco, you’re 100% right that Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the screen is big enough that this is really a two-hand phone, but I think
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because I just knew that the screen was going to be much bigger, that I was like mentally prepped for that,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but I was not mentally or physically prepped for it being noticeably wider. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if there’s ever a time that I’m reminded about the physical differences of the phone, it’s because I’m trying to hold
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it and I feel like it’s just a hint wider than I want it to be.
⏹️ ▶️ John It also feels thicker to me. It may just be because my wife’s got a silicone case which might be thicker
⏹️ ▶️ John than the leather one that I’m used to. And I have no idea if it actually is thicker than the 7, but yeah, this
⏹️ ▶️ John is just how it feels. When I think about the 10 in the silicone case versus the 7 in the leather, like
⏹️ ▶️ John I said, I have the opposite of Casey that I feel like the 10 is skinnier, even though it isn’t, and like not as
⏹️ ▶️ John wide, right? And I also have the impression that the 10 is thicker. I didn’t notice the weight as much as you
⏹️ ▶️ John two. I recognize that it is heavier, and I guess if I did them side by side, I would notice that. the 10 by
⏹️ ▶️ John itself. I don’t notice the weight as much, but I noticed that it’s thicker and taller.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is thicker. I just put them on a desk with their Kimberbones hanging off to normalize them for the non-bump space.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And yeah, it is thicker noticeably. I will say that I don’t actually like when I’m not doing a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco flat on the desk comparison test, it doesn’t read to me as thicker.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, I would agree with that. I agree with what you said, Marco, that it’s beautiful.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey One of the first things I noticed, and somebody else had said this on Twitter, and I don’t recall who it was, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey they had said it looks, maybe it was Panzerino. They had said that it looks as though the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey screen is Photoshopped onto the device you’re holding. And I don’t know if I would have character
⏹️ ▶️ Casey characterized it that way. Had I not read it already, but that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was a perfect description of it. That it seems like the screen
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is just Photoshopped onto this like object that you’re holding. It is so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey close. I’m assuming it’s just that it’s so close to the glass, even closer than it ever has been.
⏹️ ▶️ John I can’t wait until they actually get a screen on the surface of something, because this is exactly what we used to say, like when they did the fused
⏹️ ▶️ John glass on the 4. I was like, wow, the pixels are cutting, they’re so close to your fingers. And it’s true, over time,
⏹️ ▶️ John the pixels have been getting closer to your fingers, and this is the closest yet. But I definitely, I think
⏹️ ▶️ John it was slightly overblown to say that it looked like it was Photoshop on. Yes, it does look like it’s closer than other phones, but
⏹️ ▶️ John it doesn’t feel to me as if I’m running my fingers over a magazine, picture cut out of a magazine,
⏹️ ▶️ John right? Like it doesn’t feel like the pixels are on the surface, they’re just barely below it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah, either way. I think it’s beautiful. The screen looks great. I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey don’t have a good enough eye to be able to tell you anything about color reproduction or anything like that.
⏹️ ▶️ John You don’t notice the blacks? You don’t notice the black levels? You didn’t watch a movie on
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it? No, I haven’t really
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John watched any movie on it.
⏹️ ▶️ John Just watch a movie with credits in a dark room that has a black screen with a white title in the middle
⏹️ ▶️ John then hold up your seven with the same movie and realize the seven is showing a gray background with white text in
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey the middle. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey yeah, I’m with you. I just don’t think I’m discerning enough to be wowed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey by that until, to your point, I do a side-to-side test, or side-by-side test.
⏹️ ▶️ John does HDR too. I realized that this iPhone X is the only HDR screen I have in my house.
⏹️ ▶️ John I watch some movies on it. I try to find some HDR movies on iTunes. It looks pretty good.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey turns out. But yeah, the screen looks great. I will say that when I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was on the plane earlier today, I happened to be sitting in the middle of two
⏹️ ▶️ Casey gentlemen that both had Plus phones. I couldn’t tell you specifically what vintage, but they were both Plus-sized phones.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And looking over at one of them, and this is probably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just telling you how much of a jerk I am, but I was kind of repulsed by how big the chin and forehead were.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I looked over and I was just like, oh, God, those look ancient.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s a place for you to stick your gum when you’re not using it. Just
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey put it right there. Better than under the table, right, John?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Because at least you know which one’s yours. Seriously, though, like they both look so ancient
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and just old. Like, oh, God, that looks so old.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And in mine, like, I feel like this unequivocally looks like the future. And we’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Casey see what happens with the notch. But it just looks way newer
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and way more modern.
⏹️ ▶️ John So while we’re talking about the screen, one of the typical Apple
⏹️ ▶️ John problem with the new iPhone stories that went around was about the blue shift in the
⏹️ ▶️ John quality of OLEDs, or apparently it is. I don’t have enough experience with OLEDs to know that
⏹️ ▶️ John when you look at the screen head on, it looks gorgeous. if you tilt the screen a little bit away from you or towards you or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John that the colors shift towards blue. And so when I got the phone,
⏹️ ▶️ John I tried this and they’re right. It shifts
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey blue. Oh, it definitely does. But without
⏹️ ▶️ John looking no cheating. What happens on a pre 10 iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ John when you tell the screen off axis? Don’t do it. Don’t pick up your phone and do it. Don’t look. Okay, just
⏹️ ▶️ John tell me this is the pop quiz. What happens on a pre iPhone screen when you tilt it away from you towards you?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have no idea because it doesn’t matter because I always look at my phone straight on or not at all. And if
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’m going to have to look at it diagonally, I won’t care if it shifts slightly. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John this is such a non-issue. I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t think you actually do always look at it on axis. Like, and I, because
⏹️ ▶️ John I think you do look at it tilted. I just think that changes in color, like
⏹️ ▶️ John this blue shift are subtle enough that nobody cares. And to spoil
⏹️ ▶️ John it for you what pre 10 iPhones do what essentially IPS LCDs do is they get
⏹️ ▶️ John dimmer. Instead of getting dimmer in all spectrums RGB spectrum
⏹️ ▶️ John equally the 10 gets dimmer in the R and the G leaving the B a little bit more
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not quite sure why it does this but that’s how it works but if you now
⏹️ ▶️ John take them both and put them in front of you and tilt them both they’re they’re off axis viewing
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s not great on either one of them right but as Marco said either you’re always looking at a head on or it’s tilted to such a degree
⏹️ ▶️ John that you don’t care. So if you read a story about the iPhone 10 OLED screen blue shifting,
⏹️ ▶️ John it does, but it is no more egregious than what every iPhone you’ve ever done has done. And
⏹️ ▶️ John I think most people will even if they read 100 stories about this and are terrified about it, you will not
⏹️ ▶️ John notice it in practice. And the screen looks amazing from from from any angle in all situations.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, it’s a total non issue. Because the fact that neither of us neither me or Casey could tell
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you what happened if you looked off access to all the previous
⏹️ ▶️ John screens. And I couldn’t have told you either. I had to do it. I’m like, well, maybe, you know, LCDs, especially IPS LCDs
⏹️ ▶️ John are well known for really good viewing angles. I’m like, oh, well, I guess it’s just a disadvantage of OLEDs. I’ll take it because I like the black
⏹️ ▶️ John levels, but LCDs don’t do that, right? Then I took my iPhone 7 and tilted. I’m like, nope, pretty bad, pretty
⏹️ ▶️ John bad. Tilt it and it gets very dim very fast. Like, oh, I’d never noticed that before. And why? Because
⏹️ ▶️ John you just don’t. You just don’t in normal usage.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, like after 10 years of using these things, none of us could tell you what happened. So it’s like, it’s obviously not a big
⏹️ ▶️ Marco problem in practice.
⏹️ ▶️ John And now that you look like, go look for it, go take your iPhone 7 and put it on a white screen, tilt it. It’s not subtle, like it gets
⏹️ ▶️ John really dark really fast, like noticeably. Like if you put this on camera, it’d be like terrible flaw, iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ John screen, like that’s just how the LCDs work, and we’re all just used to it, and it’s fine. And the blue
⏹️ ▶️ John thing should not bother most people.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So, speaking of things that should not bother most people, notched in portrait
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is a hundred percent a non-issue for me. Maybe you guys feel differently, I’ll give you a chance in a second, but for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me in portrait, a hundred percent a non-issue. In landscape,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s weird. I don’t think it’s as egregious as I expected, well, in either
⏹️ ▶️ Casey direction, but particularly landscape, but it’s definitely weird and noticeable
⏹️ ▶️ Casey in landscape. It doesn’t actively offend me, but it is kind of like, huh,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that’s funny. So John, in the in your usage, what have you thought of the notch?
⏹️ ▶️ John So the notch itself in portrait, the only way it
⏹️ ▶️ John manifests for me in a negative light is
⏹️ ▶️ John what it does to the UI in terms of, well, this is not really the fault of the notch,
⏹️ ▶️ John I suppose, but like the control center and the notifications, uh,
⏹️ ▶️ John as I said in past shows, I think it’s a really clever use of, you know, making lemons that are making lemonade out of lemons
⏹️ ▶️ John really clever use to decide, okay, now we have this physical blob there. We have two distinct regions that are distinguishable
⏹️ ▶️ John and can do different functions. So they put control center in one and, uh, and notifications on the other. But
⏹️ ▶️ John due to the very large size of the phone, I don’t want to go all the way to the up left to get notifications.
⏹️ ▶️ John If I could go to the top middle or top right for notifications, that would be way more convenient for me
⏹️ ▶️ John as someone who mostly holds their phone in their right hand. And that’s how
⏹️ ▶️ John the notch is annoying me because it’s pushing a semi commonly used control farther
⏹️ ▶️ John away from my thumb. So that’s, yeah, but other than that,
⏹️ ▶️ John like the actual notch itself, like mucking up my screen in portrait,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t even notice that it’s there and it’s a non-issue. In landscape, I don’t tend to use my phone landscape. Landscape
⏹️ ▶️ John the main thing that annoys me is the proportion of the phone in terms of like viewing video, which is what I’m going to do.
⏹️ ▶️ John It seems like a lot of the screen is wasted depending on what the aspect ratio is.
⏹️ ▶️ John All the chat room is saying that the entire thing is notification set for the right corner. Yeah, but I can’t use the right corner.
⏹️ ▶️ John And also it doesn’t occur to me to swipe my fingers over the notch to do it most of the time, even though you can, if only because I don’t want to smear my
⏹️ ▶️ John greasy fingers over the lenses of the camera, which probably makes no difference because of focal distances, but it’s still something
⏹️ ▶️ John that I am averse to. And like I said, it’s not like, oh, do you always use double
⏹️ ▶️ John right hand corner of your seven? No, but my seven is not this damn tall. So it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John stressing this out. In landscape, like I said, I feel like a lot of the screen is often wasted in landscape and
⏹️ ▶️ John applications that do go full width in landscape, I don’t need them to say, oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John I wish you could have used that last little bit. Imagine if you’re reading like a webpage in landscape Or
⏹️ ▶️ John very often I’m rotating some stupid person’s image of text, like they upload a heavily compressed
⏹️ ▶️ John JPEG of text that I can’t read in portrait, because the line length is 700 characters long. So I
⏹️ ▶️ John have to rotate the landscape just so their image can get big enough for me to read their paragraph of screenshotted text
⏹️ ▶️ John without scrolling the image left and right like
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey a typewriter.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yep, yep, yep. I’ve been here 1000 times, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Even then I don’t think that bothers me. It looks awkward in screenshots. And if you’re designing an app,
⏹️ ▶️ John I can imagine going, Oh, how am I going to deal with this thing in landscape. But so far in practice,
⏹️ ▶️ John the notch hasn’t bothered me. You know, its presence and it’s and the
⏹️ ▶️ John lack of me having those pixels between the two ears has not bothered me in any orientation. And just in portrait,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s the reachability thing. It’s bothering me a little bit.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I have basically the same opinion. The notch really has not bothered me
⏹️ ▶️ Marco much. It annoys me a little bit sometimes. But in practice, it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco almost like the iPhone 7 virtual home button thing. I thought beforehand, many of us
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thought beforehand, this is going to be a big problem, it’s going to be a huge thing to get used to, it’s going to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco be really annoying, and then in practice it just wasn’t. And that’s how the Notch is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco proving to be for me. As a developer, it’s a huge pain in my rear end.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s mostly in landscape. But as a user of the phone, it really is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco not that noticeable most of the time. I will say I do notice it when
⏹️ ▶️ Marco transitions happen that push content under it or pull content out from below it.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So leaving an app, opening an app, any kind of full screen that gets presented in an app
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then later dismissed like you kind of it when your eye is kind of drawn to notice
⏹️ ▶️ Marco vertical things like that that reach the top of the screen I do notice it more but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco most of the rest of usage I don’t notice the notch. It really isn’t a problem. The only other time I notice it is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when I try to tap it to scroll to top and doesn’t work like because the notch is not touch sensitive
⏹️ ▶️ Marco so you can tap near the notch and it will scroll to top you can tap the ears it’ll scroll to top
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but the actual not yourself is not touch sensitive
⏹️ ▶️ John they should just do it that the drawing app it does and make the camera button
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah where they just leave the camera on and just sense when you put your finger over it blacks it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco out oh what a what a what a hilarious but clever hack that was.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It didn’t make it through AppReview, turns out. What a surprise. But anyway,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, so yeah, Notch so far, I really, it really doesn’t seem to be a problem.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You can argue whether they needed it to be there, whether they could have done something more like the S8,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but I think what they did actually works. It pains me to say that because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the notch is so weird and in landscape it really is a mess but I never
⏹️ ▶️ Marco use my phone in landscape unless I’m watching a video in which case I can have it do the zoom thing where it doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco show over the notch which I think any right-thinking person should.
⏹️ ▶️ John But you wouldn’t want to you’ll never like video the video thing is not something that people should worry about because
⏹️ ▶️ John very little video unless you’re watching like Lawrence of Arabia or something it’s like you know really really wide
⏹️ ▶️ John aspect ratio. Right, right. The phone is not the same aspect ratio as most TV and movies it’s wider than
⏹️ ▶️ John most TVs and movies. The only time the notch would interfere with your video is if you’re zooming to cut off the tops and the bottom of your pictures.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s a really tall phone, and when you turn sideways, it’s really wide.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, so overall, notch, not really a problem. It
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is it isn’t perfect. It’s a little weird sometimes, but overall, it seems
⏹️ ▶️ John So unlike the iPhone seven home button or whatever it was that I’m moving home button was introduced, I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John think we’ll be here next year saying, and you know what? I actually prefer the notch to having no notch like it won’t
⏹️ ▶️ John become our preference. And as I said, I think when we were talking about the notch a couple episodes ago, Apple doesn’t want
⏹️ ▶️ John the notch to be there. It’s a compromise that is necessary for a whole bunch of other stuff that we’re going to get to in a little bit, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John If Apple can get rid of the notch, they will. And no matter how big a part it becomes a branding, eventually this notch is going
⏹️ ▶️ John away when the tech exists to do it. Because if Johnny eyes is still alive, bless his heart.
⏹️ ▶️ John The true elemental form of the iPhone is to be an unbroken, what it’s not
⏹️ ▶️ John a round rack, hyper ellipsoid, whatever that
⏹️ ▶️ John completely uniform. And by the way, speaking of completely uniform, that’s another thing about this phone.
⏹️ ▶️ John It is more symmetrical, more physically tactically tech.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco What’s the word?
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, tactically, touch sensitively, like the surface features of it are more
⏹️ ▶️ John symmetrical than almost any other phone. Certainly, I think than any other iPhone, right? Because they all had something
⏹️ ▶️ John that was indented in some way on the bottom to tell you that’s the
⏹️ ▶️ John chin. And then the thing without the indents is the forehead, or you could feel the little speaker slit for
⏹️ ▶️ John the forehead or whatever. It’s not like an Apple TV remote. And especially if you have a case,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s pretty easy to tell what’s up and what’s down because the case Apple’s cases at
⏹️ ▶️ John least don’t have anything on the bottom, which will become super important when we start talking about how you use the stamp phone.
⏹️ ▶️ John Um, but it have come closer than I’ve ever
⏹️ ▶️ John come before to briefly attempting to pick up a phone in the wrong orientation. So that is a factor.
⏹️ ▶️ John And when Johnny gets his way and it is really, truly uniform and there’s no notch and like everything
⏹️ ▶️ John is, it’s a completely featureless, beautiful polished stone. Um, I mean maybe it won’t
⏹️ ▶️ John matter because maybe like you can pick it up any way you want and the orientation won’t matter because at that point Johnny’s remove the volume buttons
⏹️ ▶️ John as well. And we just all talk to it to change the volume. It’s really convenient. Just tap triple tap three or tap out of the V
⏹️ ▶️ John and Morse code and it will change the volume or
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco just say, Hey, Siri,
⏹️ ▶️ John turn the volume up 80%. Anyway, I’m getting all snarky. But But either way, that is
⏹️ ▶️ John a factor with the 10 it is more symmetrical than previous iPhones. And there’s the possibility of you occasionally
⏹️ ▶️ John getting confused about which way is up, but only briefly, I don’t think it’s really a problem. But it’s in the first few days
⏹️ ▶️ John with the phone. I have that experience.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I will say one area where they changed the symmetry aspect a little bit, I think for the better,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is that unlike the 6, 7, and 8 and their plus varieties, the sleep wake
⏹️ ▶️ Marco button is now no longer perfectly overlapping symmetrically with the volume up button.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Now the sleep wake button has moved down slightly so it is centered between the volume up and down buttons.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So now it is substantially easier to hit sleep wake or volume
⏹️ ▶️ Marco up without hitting the other one accidentally.
⏹️ ▶️ John But then you do have to hit them for that’s how you get like the shutdown thing to come.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco Yeah, you will actually still be squeezing. But you still do it. Yeah, or
⏹️ ▶️ John doing the command all delete sequence or whatever the hell that thing does. What does that change to DFU mode where you do
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco like volume up, volume up, volume down, volume left,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco volume left, volume right, volume right,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey select start.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, anyway, yeah, but the only the other thing I will say about the sleep wake button, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do love finally that it is no longer lined up perfectly with volume up. However, it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is fairly difficult to double-click it, which makes it really annoying to use Apple Pay.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, you actually take seven screenshots when you try to pay for something.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I have found Apple Pay is fairly tricky to invoke with that double-click.
⏹️ ▶️ John poor wife, when I told her how to use Apple Pay, I didn’t tell her the
⏹️ ▶️ John story about the people being confused about the touch thing, but I did say, oh, when you do Apple Pay now, just
⏹️ ▶️ John so you know, you hit the power button twice, right? But you know what it’s like when you’re in like a checkout line and like
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s the pressure for you to perform,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey right, it’s your new phone.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s your new phone and you’re not, you know, you haven’t used it before but you don’t wanna look silly and you don’t wanna hold people up.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I think what she was doing was like, you know how it brings up that little thing on the screen that has like a highlight on the
⏹️ ▶️ John screen, says, here, press this button twice to activate the Apple Pay or whatever, you know that thing? I
⏹️ ▶️ John think she was tapping on that on the screen.
⏹️ ▶️ John course it’s not doing anything and she’s being flustered And I think she eventually figured
⏹️ ▶️ John it out. But first experience, I think that
⏹️ ▶️ John guide, that thing trying to tell you what to do, is a good interface and that will help people. But under pressure
⏹️ ▶️ John with people behind you at the checkout line, everyone can be a little silly. So
⏹️ ▶️ John tiny bit of a learning curve there. Practice beforehand and I’m sure it will be fine.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Also and it’s also annoying when you’re downloading a new app from the App Store. you know, after purchases have the same thing where
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you have to double tap that thing on that, you know, the side button. And if you hold your phone in your left hand, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco surprisingly hard to do without hitting any other buttons accidentally. So
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s just it’s not a good gesture. I also wonder like, why does that need to be there?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Why can’t you just tap on the screen?
⏹️ ▶️ John Or swipe up from the bottom or do any literally anything else?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, why can’t there be an on-screen gesture to do that? I don’t understand why that has to be the only way to approve payments.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like maybe if you’re like holding your phone down like on a subway turn style, you want something that’s not on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the screen to activate it. I
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, yeah, I think you want a hardware thing as a fallback.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But yeah, but like why can’t I just have a button on screen saying, you know, pay like what? I don’t understand
⏹️ ▶️ Marco why I need to double tap a hardware button while face ID has already authenticated me. That
⏹️ ▶️ Marco doesn’t make sense to
⏹️ ▶️ John me, right? Yeah, especially since you have to do face ID anyway
⏹️ ▶️ Marco before that. So it knows I’m right here like it’s just yeah that that that’s like the one it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco There’s one of two Changes to iOS that really I think were wrong calls
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to it to it to accommodate for this phone that and control centers location
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Though I really hope that iOS 12 Changes both of those things or gives us
⏹️ ▶️ Marco options to change those things Because like most of iOS has adapted
⏹️ ▶️ Marco somewhat gracefully at least to this phone but that double tap to confirm payment
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and the control center being completely unreachable is Those are
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Where would you put control center? If not there because I agree with you a hundred percent that it is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really an inconvenient location But I’m I’m at a loss as to where it should go
⏹️ ▶️ John You swap it for reachability swipe down on the home indicator, which doesn’t make sense physically, but you can
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah I turned on reachability to be I figured I might need to use it because the phone’s so tall and I really
⏹️ ▶️ Marco have a hard time activating that honestly it is not it is not an easy gesture to do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because the the area that you have to swipe down in doesn’t have a lot of height and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s already at the very bottom of phones if I reach all the way to the bottom which ironically for a future in reachability is actually not that easy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then swipe down which is also not that easy from already being at the bottom so it’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that’s not an easy gesture to do there’s lots of options where they could put control center I think
⏹️ ▶️ Marco some of them could be like, you know, certain, you know, maybe if you swipe up when you’re already on the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco home screen, you know, something like that, or it could be like the top half
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of notification center somehow. Like there’s other, you could like swipe and it could be on the widget screen.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like there are so many places that they could put it, you know, I hope they figure
⏹️ ▶️ Marco something out that’s better because where they put it now is, they basically taken
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the controls that you are more likely than average to have to use while holding the phone one handed
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the move and they have put them in the location that has the least possible to reach in that situation.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So I think where they put it now is so bad that pretty much any other
⏹️ ▶️ Marco option would be better.
⏹️ ▶️ John I think control center itself could use some help and other people mentioned this like the lock screen now suddenly becomes
⏹️ ▶️ John much more usable when like it’s not you know when face ID is in the
⏹️ ▶️ John mix like the fact that we can wake the phone up by touching the screen now means that suddenly if I could have configurable
⏹️ ▶️ John things from control center on the screen instead of just flashlight and what is the other one it’s flashlight and camera and
⏹️ ▶️ John camera which you don’t even need a camera there because because you can swipe from the side
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there are a few other options there’s like Apple TV remotes and stuff but like they made it slightly configurable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I was 11 which was nice it was welcome but yeah they could do a lot more
⏹️ ▶️ John there’s a lot of room on the screen and control center itself from from whenever they change this new control center. I guess it was iOS 11.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, you can configure it by saying which things you want in it, but you can’t rearrange it. And the ones you configure get to go down
⏹️ ▶️ John in like the the other area as they slowly built like it. There’s a lot of room for improvement and customization there.
⏹️ ▶️ John And some of that might actually help with the reachability controls that are not the activation. But once you activate
⏹️ ▶️ John it, if things can be nearer, the upper right, because that’s where your thumbs going to be because that’s where it just was
⏹️ ▶️ John to activate it. Like it just changes the calculus and how easy to reach things. And while we’re on this
⏹️ ▶️ John topic of Marco talking about the reachability gesture being tricky, before we get to face
⏹️ ▶️ John ID, the other important aspect of this phone, the lack
⏹️ ▶️ John of a home button manifests in in all of us learning about the lovely swipe up
⏹️ ▶️ John from the bottom of your iPhone 10 gesture, which is the replacement for hitting the home button and also depending
⏹️ ▶️ John on how fast you do it to get you into multitasking and stuff like that. But really, one of the most common operations
⏹️ ▶️ John we all do on iPhones and have doing for a long time is essentially hitting the home button
⏹️ ▶️ John to go home. Right? Face ID and touch ID, which we’ll talk about in a bit,
⏹️ ▶️ John is a separate thing. And when you talk about touching the home button,
⏹️ ▶️ John sometimes it gets confused with face ID. It’s like, well, you have to try face ID multiple times. Sometimes your finger is wet, and sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ John you just don’t have it at the right angle. All that is true. But there’s one thing I never have to try to
⏹️ ▶️ John do twice. And that’s pressing the home button for a non face non touch ID purpose.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yes, I do have to fuck with face touch ID. I do it all the time touch It is really fast. It works
⏹️ ▶️ John great most of the time, but everyone said I have to fuck with it But never when I’m using my phone I’m in an app
⏹️ ▶️ John and I still I still go back to the home screen I tend not to double tap for you know multitasking, but even if
⏹️ ▶️ John I did that single tap a double tap It works every time I never miss the tap I can feel
⏹️ ▶️ John where the button is and when I press it works physical button fake home button that doesn’t move either way it works
⏹️ ▶️ John with iPhone 10 That gesture to go home. I Don’t know how
⏹️ ▶️ John frequently but a non zero amount of the time I have to make a second or even a
⏹️ ▶️ John third attempt at the swipe up from bottom gesture and remember there’s no case they’re Interfering with me the Apple cases
⏹️ ▶️ John do not extend across the bottom and I watch my wife use the phone and she too Every once in a while
⏹️ ▶️ John has to try that swipe again It’s not particularly time-consuming but for a
⏹️ ▶️ John very common operation This is one of the aspects of using the phone that feels like a slight downgrade
⏹️ ▶️ John the reliability of what used to be a Very very reliable thing pressing
⏹️ ▶️ John the home button now Has entered the realm of sort of like touch ID where you might
⏹️ ▶️ John have to try it again And I’m not sure why I’m missing am I missing because I’m
⏹️ ▶️ John not shimmying my hand lower and the phone is larger I’m not getting good swipe on it Am I missing because
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m just not good at edge swipes because I’ve had a case and it’s a different thing thing when the edge Has no case
⏹️ ▶️ John and I’m missing the target area am I starting too high am I starting too low? I don’t know
⏹️ ▶️ John what it is But I’m having to swipe multiple times if you guys have this experience where you got to make a second attempt
⏹️ ▶️ John at the home gesture
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I feel like I have but it very quickly got a lot better over time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I I have not had any unreliability for that. I mean it took me maybe a half a day to get used to it
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, you should watch watch yourself or have someone else watch you to see if you’re just instinctively doing it
⏹️ ▶️ John not time consuming the second you’re already there the second swipe is pretty quick and I don’t think ever have to do it more than two
⏹️ ▶️ John or three times but I thought maybe it’s just me so I watched my wife without telling her that I’m watching her do this I’ve seen her
⏹️ ▶️ John do it as well to live in your house job it could it’s her phone so she’s mostly using it it could
⏹️ ▶️ John be a learning curve thing I’m willing to acknowledge that I’m just saying like first week impressions first few day day impressions
⏹️ ▶️ John that is happening to me a little bit.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean while we’re on the subject of the home swipe, I think the another kind of questionable area for me
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is the multitasking gesture. I know you know everyone has their little tricks for like oh you do a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco little circle or you hold press and hold or whatever else, but no matter how you do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it, bringing up multitasking takes a little bit more time now. It’s a little bit more error
⏹️ ▶️ Marco prone and if you want to force quit an app. Now granted, I know
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is a controversial topic, and you shouldn’t need to force quit apps, but sometimes you need to force quit apps.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And that is now significantly slower than it was before, because now you have to,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco unless I’m missing something, now you have to bring up the on-screen switcher, which itself is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco slow, then you have to like press and hold on the app to enable like a little wiggle mode like they have in the home screen, although they don’t wiggle anymore,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and then hit the minus button to force quit it. And that is significantly more gestures
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and more time than double tap the home button, swipe up, which is the previous way to terminate
⏹️ ▶️ John I like that because it’s punishing habitual force quitters. It
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is, but it is also like, you know, the problem with the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco force quit controversy, the reason why, you know, we can’t just say like, oh, you should never need to force
⏹️ ▶️ Marco quit apps is because sometimes you do need to force quit apps. It’s hard to look at something like this where it makes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the force quit a lot harder to do and a lot more hidden of a thing you can do it’s hard to look
⏹️ ▶️ Marco at that and say well it’s that’s a definite clear win because you shouldn’t need to do this because
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah you shouldn’t need to do it but you do need to do it you know it’s like and and maybe not for battery
⏹️ ▶️ Marco life reasons necessarily although sometimes that is the reason some apps you do need to do
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that battery life but you know it’s it’s a kind of thing where it would be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco nice if if you never had to do this and then you could make it impossible to quit an app because why
⏹️ ▶️ Marco even have a way if you never have to do it? But we do still have to do it. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to make it harder is annoying.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not that much harder. The press and hold. I’m the hater of press and hold as much as anybody. I hate any action where
⏹️ ▶️ John I have to do something for a set amount of time and there’s no way to speed it up. But for this action,
⏹️ ▶️ John I mean, I don’t do it often enough that I would be annoyed by the press and hold because once you press and hold, you’re in the
⏹️ ▶️ John mode and you can kill multiple apps by going kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill. So people can still do that. There’s just
⏹️ ▶️ John a slight delay when you do press and hold to get into the mode. I’m more with you on multitasking,
⏹️ ▶️ John which I find very difficult to get into mostly because you have to like, either pull up slowly,
⏹️ ▶️ John like there’s, there’s a whole bunch of moves you can still the thing that the added I think is nice is if you want to switch back and forth on
⏹️ ▶️ John apps, you can swipe side to side with no delay, like you don’t have to do any weird motion. But if you want to bring up
⏹️ ▶️ John the switcher, especially especially this kills me if you want to bring up the multitasking switcher from
⏹️ ▶️ John the home screen. I would wonder if you just surveyed people new iPhone 10 users, ask them it new is hard
⏹️ ▶️ John find new iPhone 10 users who know about the multitasking switcher. But don’t know that
⏹️ ▶️ John you whether or not you can bring it from the home screen and ask them Hey, can you bring up the multitasking switcher from the home screen?
⏹️ ▶️ John I bet people think you can’t do it. Because that gesture for some weird reason is so much harder for me to do
⏹️ ▶️ John than it is from within an application. Do you guys find that? No, you don’t have a go
⏹️ ▶️ John do it now. Take out your phone right now.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I’ve been doing it during this entire conversation and I have about a maybe two-thirds success rate.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey I’m doing it.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Wait, you’re talking about the come up and stop or the
⏹️ ▶️ John From the home, from springboard.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey Go to springboard and bring
⏹️ ▶️ John up the multitasking switcher. Mm-hmm, yeah.
⏹️ ▶️ John find that very difficult to do. Bring up the multitasking switcher from apps is just slow, but I don’t fail at it. From the
⏹️ ▶️ John home screen, I fail at it. It’s the same exact
⏹️ ▶️ John know, it shouldn’t be. What’s different? I don’t know what’s different. All I know is that I am not, is it because they
⏹️ ▶️ John hide the home indicator I somehow need that line on the bottom of the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey screen. I don’t know what the problem is. Interesting.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John understand that.
⏹️ ▶️ John Maybe I’m mis aiming like I’m swiping up is not my from
⏹️ ▶️ John the bottom is not my forte. Let me tell you.
⏹️ ▶️ John this could this could just be a learning curve. But but initially, like the first 10 seconds I’m using the phone, I thought,
⏹️ ▶️ John oh, you can’t bring up the multi text and switcher from that’s what I thought. And then eventually I figured out how to do it. But despite
⏹️ ▶️ John that, after figuring out how to do it, like, I would I would go to the home screen like, all right, we’re gonna do it. We’re
⏹️ ▶️ John gonna do it this time. And nothing I’m swiping up uselessly. All right, try again. Do I have to go faster
⏹️ ▶️ John slower? Am I starting in the wrong spot? And then eventually it comes up. But I’ll point out this is another area double
⏹️ ▶️ John tapping the home button works every time the first time I can find the button. I double tap it. It always
⏹️ ▶️ John brings the multitasking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco switcher. Not if you have a triple tap shortcut for an accessibility feature enabled. Oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco that. Then it fails a lot. You have
⏹️ ▶️ John these features enabled for app development. I’m sure that you have to test all this stuff, but I don’t have that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Oh, my life changed when I could just have Siri turn on a voice over. Then I could finally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco turn off the triple click, because there were so many times when I would try to open up the app switcher, accidentally
⏹️ ▶️ Marco triple click instead of double clicking, because the button was a little bit mushy or something. And then somewhere out in the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco world where I’m in public, my phone says, voice over on. Turn it off! Turn it off!
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I will say that I spoke to Erin very briefly before I recorded and asked her
⏹️ ▶️ Casey what she thought of her phone, and one of the things that she really did not like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was the change in multitasking, because she felt like it was considerably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey more fiddly. And there are, like Marco was saying, there are occasions when
⏹️ ▶️ Casey she will want or need to force quit an app, and it was really annoying to her
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that the new mechanism is so slow.
⏹️ ▶️ John What are these occasions, and why are you both encouraging
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people to do this? You know what’s going to be really bad? It’s going to be next fall when we’re trying to order a replacement to this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phone using the Apple Store app on the phone and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John trying to force quit it over
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey at 3 in the morning. It’s gonna be a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John disaster. Think about that. We’re all gonna fail.
⏹️ ▶️ John So Casey, when are you encouraging Erin to… when is she force quitting apps? Why? What is she doing this for?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t know why you’re so deeply offended by this. Like, she is not a habitual force quitter, but there are times when apps
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do things that are not right.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like what? When? Which apps? Does she use Facebook? I don’t have to… I don’t…
⏹️ ▶️ Casey use Facebook, but I don’t have to fricking justify her actions to you. You’re not the boss of her.
⏹️ ▶️ John I know, but I’m just saying like, shouldn’t you be like saying if you think if force quitting is such an important part
⏹️ ▶️ John of your iPhone workflow, what’s going on there? Are you using an application that
⏹️ ▶️ John always misbehaves that you have to use anyway? Like what’s the because I don’t think it should be a regular
⏹️ ▶️ John part of people. It’s only be like when an app is broken or misbehaving
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco and you know what a lot of apps are broken and misbehave
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John like Facebook
⏹️ ▶️ John yeah but if they’re broken or misbehaving frequently you stop using that app like broken means like I come back to the
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey app and this is like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco stop using Facebook good luck with that
⏹️ ▶️ John that’s why I’m asking that’s why I’m asking if it’s Facebook you can say oh it’s because she uses Facebook and I’d say okay well that’s why it’s
⏹️ ▶️ John important but if you I figured you’d know what it is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I don’t pay attention to how often I force quit apps but I feel like maybe once a day I’ll force
⏹️ ▶️ Casey quit an app and and I would say the only reason I do it is because I feel like that app is misbehaving.
⏹️ ▶️ John That’s where you start getting to the voodoo. You feel like like I feel like this app is bad.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey No, the problem, no John, you’re misconstruing. And I
⏹️ ▶️ John want to make it stop being bad and then you and then you force quit it and you’re like I’ve stopped it from being bad.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey You’re misconstruing me not being able to cite a specific example with me just doing it because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey magic. It’s not that I’m doing it because magic.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s not magic, but you don’t have enough instrumentation in iOS to really, really know
⏹️ ▶️ John whether what you’re doing is helping or not. It makes you feel better, but are you doing like scientific
⏹️ ▶️ John tests to, you know, AB test force quitting, not force quitting? No, you’re not. You’re just saying, I got the feeling
⏹️ ▶️ John that this thing is doing a thing that I don’t want and I want to stop
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it. No, no, no. That’s, but okay. So let me give you an example that does not happen often, but I know you’re not going to let
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this go until the king is satisfied. So as an example, on occasion, Tweetbot
⏹️ ▶️ Casey will be in, I know, okay, Twitter-ific, blah, blah, blah. Tweetbot will be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey confused as to whether or not it can be in streaming mode. And when I’m on Wi-Fi, I prefer to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John use Tweetbot in streaming mode. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco a buggy app. Yeah, all right. Oh my God. But it’s an example.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Like, you’re not letting this go until I cite a specific example. That is a specific example.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, all right, all right. I mean, what we’re saying is that you have a higher tolerance for using buggy applications And then you
⏹️ ▶️ John well, I know sometimes it gets confused when I change from cellular to wifi about whether I can use screening, but my
⏹️ ▶️ John fix is I just force quit it. And that becomes part of your workflow, essentially. You know that’s a thing that happens with the app, but
⏹️ ▶️ John you still wanna use the app, so you force quit it. And I guess I just don’t have apps that I use that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Maybe, and again, you’re overblowing the amount of times that I do this.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John Once a day, you said, average.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Maybe, yeah, maybe once a day across all the different apps that I use during the
⏹️ ▶️ John trying to think back to the last time I force quit anything on my phone. I guess it was probably the night we ordered the thing because
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, you had to make the Apple Store app refresh your stuff. But I think that’s the last time I did it. And had I not
⏹️ ▶️ John ordered an iPhone at 3 a.m., I would have like, what’s the time before that that I had forced quit? I would be hard pressed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And Marco, can you defend me on this one? Or you leave me
⏹️ ▶️ John He’s force quitting his own apps because he’s writing them and they have bugs.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco No, I don’t even
⏹️ ▶️ Marco force quit my own app. If you hit stop in Xcode, it force quits it. It’s a problem. Yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco No, I will usually force quit maybe one app every
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one to two days for some reason. And they’re usually, I think, decent reasons. And I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think that’s an unhealthy frequency or an unusual one.
⏹️ ▶️ John I would not have guessed those numbers. Because like I said, I just, maybe you use more apps than I do, or try
⏹️ ▶️ John more new apps, or more of the apps you use every day. Because if you use an app every day that has an annoying thing like that,
⏹️ ▶️ John like for example, the last time I force quit an app on my wife’s phone was we were setting up her
⏹️ ▶️ John iPhone 10. And for whatever reason, Twitterific, here you go Casey, Twitterific was having some problem
⏹️ ▶️ John where it was, we could switch to one of her Twitter accounts, but not to another one, don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John even ask. And like, it would just go on the screen, it would be like, it would say like,
⏹️ ▶️ John contacting Twitter servers or something like that. And I deleted the cache in Twitterific, which is a nice diagnostic tool that Twitterific
⏹️ ▶️ John gives you. And that did not help in this case. And so I had to force quit it,
⏹️ ▶️ John because it was just kind of like stuck on that screen. And I think that was like,
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey you ported your- You should use less buggy apps. Yeah, well, that’s like you ported
⏹️ ▶️ John your stuff from into a new phone and we’re trying, you know, like it was like restored from iCloud backup. And sometimes
⏹️ ▶️ John there are some problems like getting back up and running on that. But that’s it, like, and then after that, it’s fine. So that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John the last time I did it for a buggy app reason, but that wasn’t on my phone. And that was like a first setup where you’re,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, trying to make sure you sign into all the accounts and re-adding everything to Apple Wallet. And it’s in the middle of God knows whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John photo analyzing stuff that it’s doing. Like the initial setup is always kind of weird.
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Our iPhone X review, cont’d.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Squarespace, make your next move.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey In any case, so one of the things that Erin said was that she’s frustrated with the multitasking.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey She didn’t give a crap about the notch either, in a good way, you know, she doesn’t really notice it. She was
⏹️ ▶️ Casey very, and this is going to, I guess, segue us into Face ID,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey she was very grumbly about the angle of attack
⏹️ ▶️ Casey necessary for Face ID to work. So by that I mean, I think a lot of times
⏹️ ▶️ Casey she’ll be like sitting on a couch or something like that and maybe reclined or just in a position
⏹️ ▶️ Casey where the phone, she wants to unlock her phone, but the phone isn’t necessarily
⏹️ ▶️ Casey looking at her. And she was really annoyed that she has to have
⏹️ ▶️ Casey some amount of consideration of what the phone needs in order to unlock her phone.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And she found that really frustrating. And you know what, I think she’s right. Now, it doesn’t bother me as much, I don’t think, because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think more often than not, the phone is staring, I’m staring longingly into my phone’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey infrared eyeballs as I’m trying to unlock it. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I guess for whatever reason, I mean, because mom, because Erin, because any number of reasons, she
⏹️ ▶️ Casey felt like she was frequently getting tripped up by face
⏹️ ▶️ Casey ID not unlocking because the phone wasn’t angled exactly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right. And where it seemed to bother her quite a bit, it bothers me only a teeny bit.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And the other thing she said was, and not specifically around face ID, but mostly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey around face ID, like this did bleed into other places like multitasking as an example, but she just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey said that every, she said everything just seems slower. You know, so as an example,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey double tapping a home button is much quicker than the swipe up and stop.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey The most recent touch ID is instant and face ID is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not instant. And I was talking to somebody just earlier tonight, actually, and I was saying to them,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you know, if I take off my developer hat, I am actually
⏹️ ▶️ Casey lightly annoyed about how slow face ID is because it is noticeably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey slow. Is it egregiously slow? No it is not, but it is noticeably
⏹️ ▶️ Casey slower than the most recent Touch ID. Now when I put my developer hat back on, it is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a friggin’ miracle that this thing shipped in this quantity in the year 2017. Like how is this even
⏹️ ▶️ Casey possible? How is it this quick? How is it possible to do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, John all that computation that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey quick? But when I take my developer hat off, how is it this slow? Why would they have shipped it? It’s too
⏹️ ▶️ Casey slow. Does that make any sense at all?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, I think so. I mean, to me, I mean, first of all, so to get back to what Aaron was saying, the angles
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of it, I definitely hit that being like, this is now a thing I have to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco adjust with like, and consider. Yeah, adjust and consider. A
⏹️ ▶️ Marco couple of people in the chat were suggesting that maybe try turning off the attention detection to make you
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot happier. I think I’m gonna try that, because I honestly don’t need incredibly high security.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think, there has never been a situation somebody has forcibly unlocked my phone by
⏹️ ▶️ Marco showing it to my face or putting my thumb on it or anything like that. So I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think I really need that level of security. So I’m going to try that, but
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it definitely is like it takes some some habit changing. And you know with Touch
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ID maybe it did like that was so long ago now I don’t really remember like did I have to you know suddenly
⏹️ ▶️ Marco press my finger in a different way? The answer is probably that I probably had to adjust to that too.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And part of what makes you know you were saying like some of this is just you know it’s slower and with multitasking
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that’s slower some things are slower touch ID speed does I mean sorry face ID
⏹️ ▶️ Marco speed does seem to be certainly between touch ID first
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and second generation
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot closer to the first generation in the second
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey I would agree
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s it’s almost as slow as first generation touch ID which was still totally usable
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like it just we are spoiled by how fast second generation touch ID was
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John bingo so it is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It is a step back in that regard. Overall speed to unlock the phone,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco you know, in terms of taking it out of your pocket, unlocking it and going to the home screen,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t think it’s that different. I think it might be a little slower, but I don’t think it’s a big difference. You know, just
⏹️ ▶️ Marco because that swipe is so fast and integrated in like one continuous motion
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with Face ID being recognized, like I think that’s mostly fine. For accuracy,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think it’s pretty good. It seems, again, similar
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to Touch ID between first and second generations, and maybe closer to first.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But I have found that in, you know, I’ve had this phone now for a little less than a week, and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have mostly adjusted myself to optimize face ID recognition, you know, both
⏹️ ▶️ Marco accuracy and speed. Like, it did take some adjustment. I do have to then, you know, have it face me at a certain
⏹️ ▶️ Marco angle and everything, get within a certain angle. You know, like every other iOS developer
⏹️ ▶️ Marco who has phones tethered to a lightning cable sitting on their desk most of the day running apps on it,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it is really annoying that it doesn’t work while lying face up on a desk because the angle is just too steep
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to see you when you’re sitting at the desk and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey it’s like in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the middle. You are right, but I will say in the defense of this thing I was just lamenting
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that I have been pleasantly surprised by how aggressive the angle can be when it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is sitting on a desk. You are right that it does not work near as reliably as Touch ID, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was surprised that at a reasonably extreme angle, it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey would still unlock itself when it’s on the desk. So I’m not directly over the phone. I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey offset by 30, 40, 50 degrees, and it still was able to work, which
⏹️ ▶️ Casey doesn’t mean—nothing of what I said makes you wrong. All I’m saying is that even though
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it doesn’t work as much as I’d like, it worked better than I would have expected.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I haven’t been unlocking this phone with Face ID obviously because you can only put one face in it and the face is my wife’s phone.
⏹️ ▶️ John But what I have been doing is A. watching her use her phone and B.
⏹️ ▶️ John paying more attention I was doing this even before I got a phone paying more attention to the way that I have changed
⏹️ ▶️ John how I use iOS devices in response to Touch ID. Because we’ve all made changes
⏹️ ▶️ John to work with Touch ID even if those changes are the sort of instinctive thing
⏹️ ▶️ John I do when unlocking my phone that if it doesn’t immediately unlock, lift my finger and try again, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Or grabbing my phone in a way that my finger is on what would previously be a pointless place to put my finger
⏹️ ▶️ John like before there was a touch ID sensor. Why would I be picking up my phone and having any fingers on the home
⏹️ ▶️ John button, right? Unless that’s how I’m going to wake the phone up or something, right? So the
⏹️ ▶️ John but I have made adjustments in my life to accommodate touch ID to make it so you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John to give me the final experience so that when I take out of my pocket, I can start using it as soon as possible.
⏹️ ▶️ John And a lot of those are like you’re gripping the phone in a weird way and then you touch this thing and then you immediately bring your thumb up to touch
⏹️ ▶️ John other stuff because you expect the thing to be unlocked. The thing about face ID, before
⏹️ ▶️ John we get into all the techno mumbo jumbo stuff is you have to adjust yourself in the same way.
⏹️ ▶️ John But with touch ID, what you are adjusting is where and
⏹️ ▶️ John when your fingers touch different parts of the phone. face ID, you are potentially
⏹️ ▶️ John adjusting your entire body posture to a company to accommodate
⏹️ ▶️ John face ID. Like so when it’s on your desk, yeah, it can work at pretty steep angles. But
⏹️ ▶️ John for people who are accustomed to leaving their phone face up on a flat surface and
⏹️ ▶️ John waking it unlocking with touch ID and glancing on something and putting it back to sleep. That’s not going to work
⏹️ ▶️ John if you if the phone is like off to your right, like it’s by your right hand or whatever and you can just glance at it. You
⏹️ ▶️ John have to kind of not leer over your phone but you kind of got to get in
⏹️ ▶️ John the zone of the phone sensing and you can’t put your finger
⏹️ ▶️ John in the zone or your hand in the zone. You’ve got to put your head in the zone. Your head is connected to your neck
⏹️ ▶️ John which is connected to your body which means your entire body has to kind of lean over to be like, hi phone.
⏹️ ▶️ John Even if attention is off it needs to see the shape of your face from some angle and it is impressively wide
⏹️ ▶️ John but you do need to get not get in the phone’s face but you kind of got to hover
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco over the phone a little
⏹️ ▶️ John bit you kind of can be like here I am here I am phone and what I’m finding from watching my wife work with
⏹️ ▶️ John the phone and from listening to other people’s stories is that a surprising number of people use their phones
⏹️ ▶️ John in a way that does not involve their face being over the screen of their phone casually
⏹️ ▶️ John on the arm of a sofa unlocking it even just waking from sleeping glancing at what you can still do because you don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John need to unlock it to do that, like looking at your notifications or whatever, or really far down where you pull it out
⏹️ ▶️ John of your pocket, like but your hands are still down by like your thighs and you just turn the phone up and look at it or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John and it can’t get your face from that angle or it’s being blocked by your leg. These are habits that will have to change for people to
⏹️ ▶️ John use face ID because it’s got to see your face right and maybe the second
⏹️ ▶️ John gen will be better about seeing your face and more distances and more angles. But that is a change in
⏹️ ▶️ John habits, which we expected, but it’s a change in habits that involves more of your body than the change in house for
⏹️ ▶️ John touch ID. And I don’t want to minimize the changes for touch ID because as I’ve been noticing them, there’s a lot of them.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I find my characterization of how fast it is, again, just watching my wife do it, because
⏹️ ▶️ John I can’t be doing it myself. Well, I did use the demos in the store, which is which you can have a little thing that just you know, you
⏹️ ▶️ John learn to your face, then you just unlock this point of screen that just says says, we recognized you.
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m pretty surprised at how fast it is. Like a little
⏹️ ▶️ John bit is what Casey said, being a computer nerd, like, you know what it must take to do this.
⏹️ ▶️ John And it is awe inspiring that they are able to coordinate
⏹️ ▶️ John hardware and software and do this thing. It’s it’s really fast. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John when I see my wife use her phone, it really does look like what all the phoning stories say, which is like,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s like that phone has no lock on it. Because when I see her phone, you her user phone, and when everything
⏹️ ▶️ John works the way it’s supposed to, I never see her on locker phone, I see her pick up her phone, swipe
⏹️ ▶️ John and start using it. That’s what I see her do. I never I never see I don’t even notice the little lock animation
⏹️ ▶️ John thing here. It just seems like she picks up her phone. I guess you don’t have a lock on that phone, right? That’s how it’s supposed
⏹️ ▶️ John to work. But in all those other scenarios where your face can’t be over your phone, it’s not like it works too slow
⏹️ ▶️ John or recognition fails, it’s like, sorry, can’t, I don’t see
⏹️ ▶️ John a face anywhere around here. So and then your fallback, unfortunately, is not touch ID, which I
⏹️ ▶️ John said that, unfortunately, but I’ve been thinking about this to a phone with both touch ID and face ID would be bad for reasons that don’t really
⏹️ ▶️ John have time to get into right now. But when it’s in all the positions that we’ve trained ourselves to be able
⏹️ ▶️ John to, you know, unlock and use with touch ID, you’ve either got to loom over your phone a little bit more,
⏹️ ▶️ John or change your habits, bring your phone a little bit more closer or don’t leave it flat on the table or whatever. Um,
⏹️ ▶️ John and I think this trade-off will be worth it, but for now it seems,
⏹️ ▶️ John uh, I don’t know. I don’t, I don’t know. I, I wish I could, I should just have my wife come on the show and see
⏹️ ▶️ John what she really thinks of it. She’s only used it for a short period of time, but her only really strict complaints,
⏹️ ▶️ John and these are things that can be fixed in software is it doesn’t work when she’s laying down in bed. Cause I think it just doesn’t work sideways. Has that been your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Yeah. Yeah. it doesn’t work in port in landscape.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But when I am laying down and the phone is figuratively, laying
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it doesn’t work. And that drives me bananas, because I use my phone like that a
⏹️ ▶️ John lot. Yeah, not and she’s doing it laying on her side to be clear. So
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco she’s laying on her side on
⏹️ ▶️ John a bed and pulls the phone off her nightstand. And there’s no reason it can’t work like that. It should work fine. Like distances
⏹️ ▶️ John are all fine. Good view of the face, blah, blah, blah, blah, unless your face is squished into the pillow, maybe, I guess, and doesn’t
⏹️ ▶️ John have a good angle inside of it it feels like it should work like that so that’s one annoyance and
⏹️ ▶️ John she did have some complaints about using it in the dark but I I think that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John mostly about angle and distance because the phone doesn’t care about the dark because face ID is
⏹️ ▶️ John done entirely in IR and IR doesn’t care about the dark that’s my is that right
⏹️ ▶️ John am I getting that right
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey yeah yeah and I will
⏹️ ▶️ Casey IR I would also like to build on that and say so when I’m in bed I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I I don’t have my contact lenses in because I wear hard contacts because my eyes are really weird
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and What I’ll notice is in order to see well, I’ll
⏹️ ▶️ Casey have the phone Extremely close to my face like uncomfortably for any normal person
⏹️ ▶️ Casey And it’s way too close for face ID and that’s kind of annoying to like not annoying enough that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that It didn’t occur to me until you said something about it, but that’s also a little
⏹️ ▶️ Casey frustrating But I feel like I’m pooping all over face ID. It is a mate like truly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey even as a consumer It is amazing what’s happening? And then once you layer on top of that like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey John and I were both saying, you know How much computational how many computational things
⏹️ ▶️ Casey just how much? Effort must this take to work? How can it possibly
⏹️ ▶️ Casey be working this quickly
⏹️ ▶️ John and battery power? like you know it’s like spraying your face with this iron the IR flood illuminator
⏹️ ▶️ John and the dot thing and then you’re using the the the the IR camera to pick up the dots and then you’re processing
⏹️ ▶️ John them it’s like it’s like the being paralyzed by that first voice activated phone tree you’re like what but how
⏹️ ▶️ John how can this even work and but like i said when it works when i watch my wife
⏹️ ▶️ John use her phone and it works it’s like her phone does not have a lock on it and
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe i’m consciously making sure that it’s got a view of my face i’m hoping that will become like marco said
⏹️ ▶️ John more or less second nature and we will all adjust it our body posture to always make sure the camera can see us
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s pretty forgiving. Like if you get the impression like, oh, I have to be in just the right position, you don’t like you just
⏹️ ▶️ John have to be remotely in the ballpark and it gets the job done. That’s what’s so amazing about it. Do you feel like
⏹️ ▶️ John it couldn’t possibly be in reading my face because I wasn’t even I wasn’t even paying attention to like, exactly
⏹️ ▶️ John what viewer gets of my face. Like I’m just kind of using my phone normally. Like if you’re if you’re in the ballpark
⏹️ ▶️ John of holding your phone and looking at it in any way this is with attention on I haven’t tried to turn attention off.
⏹️ ▶️ John It is pretty magical. And in fact, I think the I have
⏹️ ▶️ John she’s told me face ID has failed for her several times. Mostly what I’ve seen happen
⏹️ ▶️ John is I’ve seen her miss the home swipe many more times than I’ve seen her fail face ID. I don’t know if that means is one
⏹️ ▶️ John is more likely than the other. Or maybe you just go home more often like you unlock it once but you go home seven times
⏹️ ▶️ John during that session or whatever. But I will, I will continue to survey her this is bad because I’m this is all
⏹️ ▶️ John secondhand account because again, I have never trained this thing on my face, and she’ll probably never let me do that. So
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll just have to live vicariously. But you two will be the real guinea pigs to see two weeks from
⏹️ ▶️ John now. Have you completely adjusted your entire body posture around face ID?
⏹️ ▶️ John Or and here’s the real thing. What happens when face ID doesn’t work? Like you’re laying down in bed or
⏹️ ▶️ John Casey’s got his phone really close to his face. I do that too. Because my vision is bad, not as bad as Casey’s, but still pretty bad.
⏹️ ▶️ John The fallback is like, okay, I couldn’t get face ID to work and it’s not just because like it was at the wrong angle like I’m not
⏹️ ▶️ John going to sit up on my bed to get face ID to look. The fallback is you have to type in your passcode, right? So the
⏹️ ▶️ John real test is pre face ID I typed in my passcode this number of times per day.
⏹️ ▶️ John Post face ID two weeks later, a month later, how many times per day do I type in my passcode? I’m going to
⏹️ ▶️ John say that pre, you know, like I’m still pre face ID with my touch
⏹️ ▶️ John ID iPhone seven, the only time I type in my passcode is when it insists that I do so
⏹️ ▶️ John because like it’s either in 48 hours since I unlocked it or it’s like an OS update or something. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John think there is any time even with wet hands with wet hands, I will do the thing where you remove your thumb, put it down,
⏹️ ▶️ John remove your thumb, put it down, try it out. I will, I will do a surprising number of attempts of like wiping my finger or whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John I will do anything to avoid typing in very long passcode, right? And
⏹️ ▶️ John so I basically never type in my passcode. But when face ID fails, if it fails for
⏹️ ▶️ John a reason that you know, like is not there’s no help like you don’t want to sit up in bed. The next
⏹️ ▶️ John thing you do is probably resign yourself typing your passcode, which means no more giant alphanumeric
⏹️ ▶️ John passcodes because you’ll drive yourself insane because who wants to like when you’re laying down sideways in bed and you’re all groggy,
⏹️ ▶️ John you do not want to type out a 17 digit alphanumeric punctuation capital and lowercase passcode that
⏹️ ▶️ John super secure so you feel awesome. Nobody wants to do that. So you’ll either downgrade
⏹️ ▶️ John to a shorter numeric passcode or you will really start to hate Face
⏹️ ▶️ John ID because there is no other option. It’s not like well Face ID failed I guess you can use Touch ID. You can’t. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s Face ID or it’s typing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Oh I actually have a tangential question about this. So what
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is the best protocol for when
⏹️ ▶️ Casey somebody has grabbed my phone and looked at it which is not unreasonable. Maybe I asked them to look
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at it or something like that, but Face ID has recognized them
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and the phone is still on and then they hand the phone to me and then
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I enter my password. Is it that the other person’s face is different enough
⏹️ ▶️ Casey that it’s not going to train on their face? Do you know what I mean? Because my understanding is —
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I had an item in the notes about that because there was that video or whatever
⏹️ ▶️ John where two siblings who they’re not twins but two siblings who look very alike said hey look at this my
⏹️ ▶️ John brother whoever was can unlock my phone with his face but we’re not the same person right
⏹️ ▶️ John and what was happening in that scenario is it’s one brother’s
⏹️ ▶️ John phone and he’s got trained on his face and it works fine and
⏹️ ▶️ John the other brother tries to unlock it and it doesn’t work because he’s got a different face but then he types in
⏹️ ▶️ John his brother’s passcode which he knows and and enters the phone and that happens a few time and
⏹️ ▶️ John so the theory goes what he’s doing is essentially train like Casey was saying he is training the phone like
⏹️ ▶️ John oh silly phone you said you couldn’t recognize this face but because I immediately
⏹️ ▶️ John enter the passcode what I’m telling you phone is no no it’s me it’s me you’re the owner of the phone so that
⏹️ ▶️ John face that you just tried to recognize that you said was not the right face it obviously was the right face because I just unlocked
⏹️ ▶️ John the phone I’m assuming just like Casey said that that this training
⏹️ ▶️ John only happens if the face is close to the face that it knows, but not quite. So that if
⏹️ ▶️ John an entirely different person whose face is nothing like yours, tries to use face ID
⏹️ ▶️ John fails, but then enters your code, which I’ve done with my wife’s phone many times because it always fails because my face has never
⏹️ ▶️ John succeeded in unlocking her phone. But I have unlocked her phone many, many times over the course of setting it up and playing with it
⏹️ ▶️ John and, you know, practicing my home gestures and all the other things that I do with her phone, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m pretty sure that I am not messing up her training, because my face is too different from her face and
⏹️ ▶️ John that the phone is not going to accept the fact that I unlocked after face ID failed as additional
⏹️ ▶️ John training data. I don’t know that for a fact, but that seems like the logical thing to
⏹️ ▶️ John do. And Apple is a smart company. So I think both things are smart thing is both to ignore my face because it’s different.
⏹️ ▶️ John And also it’s smart to train on that brother’s face, which so if
⏹️ ▶️ John you have a sibling who looks a lot like you do not let them repeatedly pick up your phone and fail face ID and
⏹️ ▶️ John enter the code because it may eventually learn that this alternate face that’s kind of like yours is also yours
⏹️ ▶️ John and it just looks different from time to time. So don’t do that.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So l bruise from the chat has pulled this quote, which I think is from the face ID security
⏹️ ▶️ Casey guide, which will put in the show notes. If face ID fails to recognize you but the match quality is higher than
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a certain threshold and you immediately follow the failure by entering your passcode face ID makes and takes another
⏹️ ▶️ Casey capture. So Oh, interesting. So that’s only once the passcode has been entered. So at this point, it
⏹️ ▶️ John anyway. Yeah, yeah, you have to successfully enter the passcode. Like if someone knows your passcode, like the sibling
⏹️ ▶️ John knew the passcode. Yeah. And so this is saying it has to pass a threshold. So that’s why I am not training my iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me. Right. But I’m on a different point, I had assumed that it took the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey so so our order of operations is picture of it takes a picture of Aaron, because
⏹️ ▶️ Casey she’s the one that’s trying to open the phone says you’re not Casey. The phone is handed
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to me and I enter the code. What what I’m reading here is that it actually takes a second
⏹️ ▶️ Casey picture. I had assumed it was still working off that original picture of Aaron. But this says
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a face I. D. Fails to recognize you with the match qualities higher than a certain threshold. Immediately follow the failure by entering your passcode.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Face I. D. Takes another capture and augments its enrolled face I. D. Data with a newly calculated mathematical
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, because you because it’s facing your face for the new capture. But if she knew your code and she entered your
⏹️ ▶️ John code, it’s still not going to pass the threshold. It’s not going to pass the threshold. So the match, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s higher than a certain threat. Hers is not within the threshold of learning of your face, I’m assuming
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey because yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey different. Yeah, I hear you. One of the one of the other things that’s been really great about face ID
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is it has been surprisingly willing, almost
⏹️ ▶️ Casey uncomfortably willing, to unlock when my face is occluded or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey otherwise messed with. And by that I mean I often have a finger
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on my chin or maybe I have a finger in my mouth because I’m biting my nails or doing something I shouldn’t be doing.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Or I went to a football game the day after we got the phones and I had a hat
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on and I didn’t have a hat on. hat and a hood and then just a hood. And so now granted a lot of this is over
⏹️ ▶️ Casey your face, but as in above my face. But my point is… And you got your weekend beard too, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey This is a multi… this might be a multi-month beard at this point, but it’s going to go soon.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Whenever we’re really close to Sprig’s time of arrival, I’m going to shave it all off because Sprig is going to meet
⏹️ ▶️ Casey me as I should be met, which is without hair on my face.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey going to work for a while.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco You know that, right?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Well, there’s that too. There’s that too. But
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco this is how it needs to be.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You’ve played this game before, you know how this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey goes. I know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I know. But anyway, the point is, it did a really, really good job,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and continues to do a very good job, of being willing to unlock
⏹️ ▶️ Casey when portions of my face are occluded. And so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like maybe I’m resting my hand on my chin and my fingers are kind of rolled up and in front of my mouth, you know, or something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like that. It’s done a very, very good job, surprisingly good job, of rolling with that,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to the point that it almost feels like, and I bet this isn’t true, but it almost feels like the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe eyes or or cheekbones are the things that matter most to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Face ID because it’s rare that I’ll have my hand in front of my eyes or like up
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on my cheekbones or anything like that, but it is not unusual for me to have my hands in or around
⏹️ ▶️ Casey my mouth. And so I don’t know if that’s true, but it just feels like eyes and cheekbones
⏹️ ▶️ Casey matter a lot more than mouth the the mouth area if you
⏹️ ▶️ John so on the topic of Aaron saying that things just seem slower what I thought she might have been getting at before you
⏹️ ▶️ John went off to describe the home multi asking thing which I totally agree with is
⏹️ ▶️ John the animations and I realize I probably only say that because I run reduced motion
⏹️ ▶️ John and have for a really long time so my iPhone 7 doesn’t do almost any animations everything
⏹️ ▶️ John is these silly crossfades right? But here’s the thing about the iPhone 10
⏹️ ▶️ John well first of all using it in its default out of the box thing
⏹️ ▶️ John the animations do not bother me as much as they did on the 7 and
⏹️ ▶️ John I guess the 6 or whatever like and why don’t they bother me? Like they’re even more egregious even more like swoopy woopy
⏹️ ▶️ John like things are flying in from here and going out to there. I think they bother
⏹️ ▶️ John me less because the gesture I’m performing, for example, to go back to the home screen, swiping
⏹️ ▶️ John up from the bottom, matches with the idea of chucking the current app
⏹️ ▶️ John back into its little hidey home inside the icon. You know what I mean? Like how it flies into the icon.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so I’m doing something that matches the gesture versus I press the button
⏹️ ▶️ John and everything went shrinky zoomy, right? They feel disconnected. Again,
⏹️ ▶️ John I haven’t it’s not my phone. I’ve just played with it a lot like but it doesn’t bother me as much but I’m like,
⏹️ ▶️ John okay, well, even though it doesn’t bother me if I got an iPhone 10 I’m sure return on reduce motion. So let me go into
⏹️ ▶️ John settings and turn on reduce motion. I doubt either one of you have tried this. But if you put reduce motion
⏹️ ▶️ John on this phone, very strange things happen. And there’s not really a good solution
⏹️ ▶️ John to make them not strange. You turn on reduce motion, what happens is this, you’re in an app, you do
⏹️ ▶️ John the home gesture to get back to home. And it starts to make,
⏹️ ▶️ John as you swipe up, it starts to make the app that you’re in kind of fly upwards and start
⏹️ ▶️ John heading back into its little icon home, right? But then
⏹️ ▶️ John abruptly, once that animation has started, it switches to a crossfade.
⏹️ ▶️ John And I thought, Oh, that’s stupid. Why don’t they just do the crossfade the whole time? But Because
⏹️ ▶️ John of the way the multitasking gesture like you know you can do it slow or whatever like I think it has to start the
⏹️ ▶️ John animation Because if it didn’t start the animation like If
⏹️ ▶️ John if it was going back to home screen it could say oh I’ll just wait until You cross the threshold of oh I see you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John going to the home screen and I’ll crossfade with doing no animation before him But if you’re going for the multitasking switcher once this oh,
⏹️ ▶️ John they’re not going to the home screen This is slow enough for me to bring up the multitasking switcher, and then it’s gonna be like oh Oh, crap,
⏹️ ▶️ John I didn’t do it. I haven’t been doing any animations this whole time, and they’re activating the multitasking switcher. Quick, catch up and
⏹️ ▶️ John make it look like they’re animated up to the point where their thumb is. And that would be weird too. So if you turn on, go turn
⏹️ ▶️ John it on on iPhone X, turn on reduce motion now and do the home gesture and just look at what it does. It is a mess.
⏹️ ▶️ John It is an animation mess. It’s half one animation interrupted by a crossfade.
⏹️ ▶️ John And honestly, I think if I had an iPhone X, I would not turn on reduce motion because that
⏹️ ▶️ John just, it doesn’t feel faster. I have an animation that feels worse than
⏹️ ▶️ John the full animation, and I don’t have a good solution. It’s not like Apple did something dumb
⏹️ ▶️ John here. I don’t know what they can do to fix this problem. I think we just
⏹️ ▶️ John all have to use the animations and like it, which I realize you two do anyway, but I haven’t been.
⏹️ ▶️ John So I don’t know. I have an animation dilemma with the iPhone X.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think maybe in the same way that before iOS 7, we realized that we
⏹️ ▶️ Marco had kind of gone too far with skeuomorphism. I think we might be at that point with animations,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco uh, where like the, the amount of unnecessary
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and almost like overly exuberant animations that we have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco for common actions in iOS 11, I think is a little excessive. Um, like one of the weird things is like when you go to the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco home screen, how your wallpaper kind of like slams up from beneath, I guess, like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s a very, It looks very weird and jarring and… I’ve never
⏹️ ▶️ John seen that one because I have a 100% black background. And I just realized why
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seen it. I actually recently switched to 100% black background in part for that and in part because it just looks so awesome on
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve always had a black background. Weren’t you not able to have a background in the early days of iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco OS? Yeah, it wasn’t until I think iOS 4 that you could have a background at all.
⏹️ ▶️ John And before that it was 100% black, right? Yep. that’s why I never change
⏹️ ▶️ John once you could get a background I think I tried some backgrounds couldn’t find any I liked I’m like well everything’s been 100%
⏹️ ▶️ John black for us let me try that and that’s it and now I’ve been using 100% black and the great thing is an iOS 11 you
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t have to upload a black image like I’ve had to do for every
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco version yeah they haven’t built
⏹️ ▶️ John in finally they have a solid color section and black is available to you and yeah it does look great in OLED
⏹️ ▶️ John but but no I didn’t notice that the slamming and so like it comes up from below kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah it’s it’s almost as though you’re falling onto your wallpaper It’s a very jarring animation,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I really don’t like it. And Tiff comes out on it too. It’s a very weird thing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Anyway, so I hope that we have reached the point with animations
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now where we can start to pull back. It’s almost part of what I was saying last week about how I wish Apple
⏹️ ▶️ Marco would have maybe a more confident design in that, confident
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the way that they don’t need to show off, that they know they’re good,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco need to show off how good they are to the world. They can just be good, right? I feel like a lot of these animations
⏹️ ▶️ Marco now have gotten to the point where they are just showing off like this is designer showing off and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’s getting annoying.
⏹️ ▶️ John How do you do the multitasking gesture if without animations? That’s what I’m stuck on. Like if if you
⏹️ ▶️ John do not change the way you get into the multitasking switcher, how do you
⏹️ ▶️ John do that with no animations? Because like you can do the home screen with no energy
⏹️ ▶️ John quick swipe up from the bottom and we cross straight to the home screen, or we just bring the home screen up, right. But a slow swipe
⏹️ ▶️ John up from the bottom bring you into multitasking, like, I don’t know, maybe that would feel kind of disconnected.
⏹️ ▶️ John Like what I get what you’re saying about the animations going too far. And again, as someone who’s run runs with reduce motion all the time,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not a fan of animation. But I was surprised by how much I like the animations
⏹️ ▶️ John in the 10 because they were connected to things my fingers were doing and like Twitter, if it can lots of other applications,
⏹️ ▶️ John where they actually make the animation track your finger, I don’t know if the iOS 11 ones are doing that on
⏹️ ▶️ John the iPhone 10, but they feel like they’re tracking your finger and that feels good that it
⏹️ ▶️ John doesn’t feel like you are triggering animation, it feels like you are moving things on the screen, which is a big
⏹️ ▶️ John kind of like sideswipe going from screens and like home screens on springboard, right? The reason that feels so good
⏹️ ▶️ John is you don’t feel like you are triggering the slide in animation, you feel like you’re
⏹️ ▶️ John moving the screen, you feel like you’re moving the icons with your finger. And it’s such a big difference and so
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m actually a pretty big fan of the animations maybe I wouldn’t be if I didn’t have a black background I’d
⏹️ ▶️ John seen that slam in and I think I would still prefer reduced motion if implemented like it is
⏹️ ▶️ John on the seven and earlier phones where it’s just you know like you really are triggering animations and they’re all crossfades
⏹️ ▶️ John but I think there’s something to be said for a UI that is so
⏹️ ▶️ John fundamentally based on swipey crap having
⏹️ ▶️ John crap make you feel like you’re moving things on the screen rather than triggering an animation
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve still prefer no animations at all but I honestly I with this many swipes I don’t know how I don’t know how you pull it off and don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John make it feel like disconnected from you know like that you are just drawing
⏹️ ▶️ John magic spells and hieroglyphics on the screen and your magic incantations cause things to change
⏹️ ▶️ John but there’s no real connection between them like it’s magic
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah and I don’t think it has to be that I don’t think it has to be dramatically like no animations ever again
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like I just think the animations to be toned down. You know, we’ve gone too far. They need to be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco brought back a little bit, you know, and not totally removed. Like so many of these things like multitasking and everything.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, they should be animated like that. And most of the things that are animated now should still be
⏹️ ▶️ Marco animated. It’s just a question of what that animation is and how many other things are happening when it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco happens and how long does it take? These things could all use some tweaking, I think, you know, so and some
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, the The home screen is probably the best example because what you want to happen is I want to go to the home screen, but you don’t
⏹️ ▶️ John need to see the home screen assemble itself like, you know, like a deconstructed sandwich at
⏹️ ▶️ John a fruity restaurant assembling itself, right? Like
⏹️ ▶️ John, Marco here comes the
⏹️ ▶️ John background and now the icons are falling onto it like it’s assembling like I know what springboard looks like.
⏹️ ▶️ John Just just show me that as if it’s already constructed, not as if every time we go back to the home screen is it is rebuilt from its
⏹️ ▶️ John component pieces like a weird CG transformer animation. So that’s probably too far.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah. All right, so let’s get back on track and finish up our iPhone X review. It’s very sweet,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco we’re running long. Casey, do you have any other… I have kind of like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a miscellaneous section here. Do you have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey anything else
⏹️ ▶️ Casey add? I will just say that I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey haven’t had a lot of time using my phone regularly because I was traveling
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and when I’m traveling I always have a lot more battery range anxiety than I normally do
⏹️ ▶️ Casey because it’s oftentimes less convenient for me to charge and oftentimes I’m
⏹️ ▶️ Casey out and away from my normal day-to-day life when I’m traveling, obviously, and I’m using my phone more. So for
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a lot of reasons, I get real battery anxiety when I’m traveling. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey maybe what I’m about to say is just that anxiety manifesting itself, but I feel
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like on both our 7s and on the 10s, battery life in iOS 11
⏹️ ▶️ Casey is still not great. It’s gotten better with 11.1, but it’s still just not great.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey That’s frustrating. But as a quick summary of my thoughts,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I really do like this phone quite a bit, and that screen is just so clearly the future. It is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey really, really great. And overall, I obviously have complaints. Nothing is so perfect, did you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey guys, that it can’t be complained about, but it is a really great phone. So with that in mind, Marco, tell me your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey miscellaneous section.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So first of all, on the battery. My theory with iOS 11, I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think one of the big reasons why people are seeing such reduced battery life on such
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a wide scale is that iOS 11 allows photos to be uploaded to iCloud
⏹️ ▶️ Marco when you’re not plugged in and when you’re not on Wi-Fi. And by default, I’m pretty sure it allows
⏹️ ▶️ Marco cellular data usage and also not plugged in usage. Whereas before, it would wait until the phone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was charging and on Wi-Fi to do any kind of uploads. So if you’re shooting pictures, which most people
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do all the time, now your battery life should be probably significantly worse.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Also encoding, HEAF, and HEVC are more processor intensive. So it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco seems like the combination of the iCloud photo uploads not being restricted by default
⏹️ ▶️ Marco anymore to a high power state and Wi-Fi, and also the complexity of the new formats,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think that explains a lot of the worst battery life people are seeing in reality
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with iOS 11. So that’s just, that’s my theory. Check the settings though for photo
⏹️ ▶️ Marco uploads if you want to conserve some more power. As for the battery life on the
⏹️ ▶️ Marco X, it’s a little soon to tell for sure, but it seems
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like it is overall fairly similar to the battery life on my iPhone 7.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It doesn’t seem like it’s dramatically better. I kind of expected going
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to OLED to bring more gain in that department. we’ll see over time as apps
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the OS maybe get darker with their themes overall, because one of the things with OLED is when it’s showing dark
⏹️ ▶️ Marco content, it’s using less power than when it’s showing light content, unlike LCDs. So maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’ll get better over time, but I did kind of expect OLED to bring a bigger jump in battery
⏹️ ▶️ Marco life than what we actually got here. So oh well. Anyway, battery life seems fine,
⏹️ ▶️ John you sure it’s still not analyzing your photos?
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I don’t know that. Probably not, but who knows? The
⏹️ ▶️ Marco setup experience, I did want to do a quick note on this. My phone immediately needed an
⏹️ ▶️ Marco update to iOS 11.1, which
⏹️ ▶️ Marco was fairly ungraceful. That’s the kind of thing that like, you know, anytime you get like a game console
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or pretty much any tech product from anybody else, it doesn’t usually immediately need a software update.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It kind of ruins the experience a little bit and just delays you getting things even more. that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of sucked. You don’t usually see it from Apple, so it was noteworthy.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco On the other hand though, the automatic migration from my old iPhone was amazing.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It worked perfectly in all respects, except it didn’t move my watch. Now, some
⏹️ ▶️ Marco people say the Apple Watch would move for them in that process, some people it wasn’t. It seems like it’s inconsistent,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco but whether it works or not. It is seemingly supposed to do it, it just doesn’t a seemingly a good portion
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the time. But with that one exception of the watch being moved, this is the first time
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I have not done iTunes backup method to transfer to a new phone.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Every other time I’ve gotten a new phone, I’ve backed up the old one to iTunes with a local encrypted backup using that checkbox so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it saved my passwords, restored to the new phone, et cetera. This is the first time I didn’t do that.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And the new, you know, with the combination of iCloud backups and with
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this new setup wizard thing where you put the phones near each other and they detect each other and offered to move it over,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that was actually, I think it was faster than an iTunes backup and restore would have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco been. And it was way less effort, and it actually was a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco better copy of everything. Like sometimes, you know, with iTunes, it gets weird with like, maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it’ll back up like a bunch of old apps that you thought you deleted and then put them back on your new phone and stuff like that. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco there’s occasional weirdness with iTunes backups, not to mention the fact that it takes up a giant amount of hard drive space,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco which is a problem in the age of SSDs, I think I’m gonna stop doing those. Like
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think I’m finally gonna, after all this time, finally gonna join the rest of the world and stop doing iTunes backups.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Because the restore process on the phone without that was flawless.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco You know, people have reported lots of problems in the past with like iCloud restores taking way too long on iPhone
⏹️ ▶️ Marco day one. I haven’t heard that this year. And I think whatever problems used to plague this don’t seem
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to apply anymore. So good job, whoever did this at Apple. This is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco great. Like the new setup process, the migration process is awesome. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco finally will replace iTunes backups for me.
⏹️ ▶️ John It is way faster than it used to be. And I have a lot of experience with both of them because I always do iTunes for mine, but then iCloud for my
⏹️ ▶️ John family’s, right? And so it was way faster than it has been in the past for the iCloud one. It did
⏹️ ▶️ John like the iTunes backup does sometimes. My iCloud one was confused about what apps it was restoring and ended up restoring
⏹️ ▶️ John a bunch of apps that my wife had uninstalled, mostly because we share an Apple ID for purchases.
⏹️ ▶️ John Even though she’s got her own, we have this legacy of when we only had one Apple ID, as many families probably do.
⏹️ ▶️ John And so it did the exact same thing as iTunes about being confused about what exactly she had installed. For the most
⏹️ ▶️ John part, it worked. But the watch part, it did ask about the watch, but at the time we were doing
⏹️ ▶️ John it in the Apple Store, it was asking about my watch, because remember, this is my phone, right? So
⏹️ ▶️ John process is all messed up. Like, whatever, fine. I’m fine that we’re doing a weird thing. Here’s my complaint about the process.
⏹️ ▶️ John If you don’t catch it in that moment, I don’t know how to transfer the
⏹️ ▶️ John watch without like resetting and restoring it. And I feel like there should be an easy way after the initial
⏹️ ▶️ John setup process to say, oh, and by the way, at the time I did the setup, I didn’t have my watch,
⏹️ ▶️ John but now I’ve got it or now everything, like whatever, I wanna do the thing now. You’ve got two phones,
⏹️ ▶️ John I got an old phone and a new phone, take the watch and move it from this phone to that phone. If there’s a way to do that,
⏹️ ▶️ John I don’t know it. And so I had to do it the long way and the long way is crappy. So that’s my only real complaint
⏹️ ▶️ John about it. But I’m mostly with Marco that iCloud, if you’ve been avoiding iCloud things and always doing iTunes backups,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m not gonna stop doing iTunes backups because they currently go to my Synology and what the hell. Like I do them only like once a
⏹️ ▶️ John month anyway. But iCloud backups and restore have gotten way better. They’re way faster, they’re way more
⏹️ ▶️ John complete. There’s less waiting around for apps to load themselves for like three days. Like
⏹️ ▶️ John it was good, I endorse it.
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey the watch to be
⏹️ ▶️ Casey better. The I did the same transfer thing that Marco did. It was the same
⏹️ ▶️ Casey story, right? I always do iTunes backups encrypted. This time I did not. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey the two things I noticed that bummed me out are in maybe it was user error, maybe I did something wrong. But the
⏹️ ▶️ Casey two things that bummed me out were it did not keep my Wi Fi passwords, those did not transfer.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Again, maybe I did something wrong
⏹️ ▶️ Casey But and then the other thing I noticed was because I do not use
⏹️ ▶️ Casey iCloud photo library. I only use what are the thing where it’s like
⏹️ ▶️ Casey initial? Yeah, yeah, thank you. It seemed like it just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey didn’t get most of the pictures off of my old phone, which is fine, because I can just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey put them in the in our main repository. But where an iTunes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey backup seems to have always included the pictures, which is I think part of the reason why takes
⏹️ ▶️ Casey forever to finish. It did not seem
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to work with this transfer migration assistant kind of
⏹️ ▶️ Casey thing. Oh, and apparently it’s iCloud Keychain, according to the chat
⏹️ ▶️ Casey, Marco that does Wi-Fi passwords.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco do use that now. Yeah, see, I do not. That was yet another thing that when it first came out was a complete mess, and you shouldn’t have used it when it first
⏹️ ▶️ Marco came out. But then they’ve been improving it over time, and now The combination of iCloud backups plus
⏹️ ▶️ Marco iCloud Keychain means that you basically have the benefit that you had before with iTunes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco encrypted backups. Now you have it with iCloud backups in the cloud if you use both of these things.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And in my experience, they’ve been flawless. It’s been great. I
⏹️ ▶️ John don’t know, I know some people have complained about iCloud Keychain and maybe it has been inconsistent, but I’ve been using it
⏹️ ▶️ John since day one and I’ve always thought it has more or less fulfilled the purpose it’s supposed to fulfill. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ve never regretted using iCloud Keychain But worst case, maybe I’ll feel like, oh, that
⏹️ ▶️ John should have been an iCloud key chain, but it wasn’t there. But that’s not like, if the 9000
⏹️ ▶️ John other passwords are there, then I’m good with it. And occasionally, like it’s like 17 level
⏹️ ▶️ John security to get iCloud backup onto things was is occasionally annoying. And I think it used to be more annoying than it
⏹️ ▶️ John is now. But I heartily endorse endorse iCloud key chain. I didn’t even realize that’s the
⏹️ ▶️ John magic that was bringing me the nice backup and restore just because I’ve always been using it. But now,
⏹️ ▶️ John now that I know that’s the case, I even more endorsed like you should definitely use this because who wants to do a
⏹️ ▶️ John restore and then have to like re-sign into all your crap and lose all your saved
⏹️ ▶️ John website passwords and all that other stuff. And as far as I can tell, with all the annoying hurdles that it makes me jump over, iCloud
⏹️ ▶️ John Keychain seems reasonably secure.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco The only thing that I did not like about the migration process, which I think was not
⏹️ ▶️ Marco actually part of the migration process is that all of my settings and everything were carried
⏹️ ▶️ Marco over except one the screen auto lock duration
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the iPhone 10 my screen auto lock which I believe I had set to five minutes which I think is the longest you can go without
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it being never screen auto lock was reset to the minimum of 30 seconds
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this seems intentional because this has never happened with any other migration I’ve done.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And let me tell you, using an iPhone with a 30 second auto lock sucks.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It’s really, really annoying.
⏹️ ▶️ John You don’t think that’s part of the new attention thing? Like feature not bug? Like, oh, we want everyone
⏹️ ▶️ John to experience our cool new attention thing, which is basically the screen will dim
⏹️ ▶️ John very aggressively to save your battery unless it notices that you’re looking at it. that’s the
⏹️ ▶️ John experience they’re going for, like, oh, we’ll save your battery life. But also we will be less annoying in terms
⏹️ ▶️ John of like, if you’re using your phone, we won’t dim it because we can tell you’re looking at us because we have the face and attention, you know, API’s
⏹️ ▶️ John and all that other stuff. So that’s what they’re going for. And that’s probably why they would if this is not
⏹️ ▶️ John a bug, assuming it’s not a bug, why they would do this on purposes, they want you to experience all this attention stuff. But this
⏹️ ▶️ John is another example of where people will have to adjust their body postures. Because now people are complaining, I put my phone flat
⏹️ ▶️ John on the table. And I like to glance at it. But then I look away for three seconds, I look back
⏹️ ▶️ John and it’s already dim the screen like wait a second, I was just I was just using you. Normally my phone because
⏹️ ▶️ John of my strict timeout would say I’m going to leave my phone on at full brightness for X amount of time. So you can look away,
⏹️ ▶️ John you know, go do something else, go eat a piece of food, then look back and your screen will still be on but the iPhone tenants
⏹️ ▶️ John haha I can tell you’re not looking at me anymore. I’m going to dim my screen to same power. And that’s annoying people. So I
⏹️ ▶️ John think these are all things they can either fix with software, or that apparently we can all fix by changing
⏹️ ▶️ John how we use our phones.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I mean, it was pretty clearly a choice to reset people’s defaults to this new value.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And you can go in and change it, but the default does appear to be the lowest, which is 30 seconds. And
⏹️ ▶️ Marco this is one of those things where, I think you’re partly right. It is nice that they can tell whether you’re looking at it and they can dim it
⏹️ ▶️ Marco as a result or not dim it as a result. But there’s a lot, this was one
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the biggest things that annoyed me about this. And at first, I’m like, let me just live with this.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And then the problem is like, you know, you’re then relying on unlocking the phone a lot more often.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So then you’re then you’re then you’re relying on Face ID being really super fast, which it isn’t. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco moderately fast, but it’s not really super fast. And so I feel like this this emphasizes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco one of the phone’s flaws, which is the Face ID is slower than Touch ID version two. And so like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco they and it seems like they did this as a not so subtle trick
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to increase battery life in practice or to reduce OLED burn-in, which is
⏹️ ▶️ Marco potentially a big problem down the road. I don’t know, it feels like kind of a cheap move to me. Like it feels like kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of like an unfair trick, you know, and if it works fine, but I found in my first day
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of leaving it that way, before I got annoyed and just went in and changed the setting back to five minutes, I thought
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it was ridiculously annoying. So I think it’s a bad default. I think it’s a
⏹️ ▶️ Marco bad, it’s a bad assumption or a bad trick. And they should not be changing people’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco settings on migrations for this one fairly critical part of
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the way the system behaves. You know, one thing I found that made it very annoying is like, you know, I would unlock
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the phone and then maybe I would set it down on a desk or the counter for
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a few seconds and then I want to go back to it and pick it back up again. And maybe he’s playing a podcast
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and I want the controls to still be on screen for a minute while I go do something with my hand and then go pick it back up again.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco It was very frequently turning off when I was not ready for that to happen yet.
⏹️ ▶️ John I kind of give them a pass on changing the defaults. I understand the reasons and I feel like if there’s some new feature of your phone,
⏹️ ▶️ John like oh we have a way to tell whether you’re looking at it and people won’t see it because their defaults will be
⏹️ ▶️ John configured for a phone without that feature, the only way you’re going to get people to give that feature a chance is
⏹️ ▶️ John by changing their defaults. It could be considered a little bit user hostile for power users, but for everybody else there’s no way
⏹️ ▶️ John they would even notice that other feature. Now, if that other feature worked the way they dreamed it did, like the best
⏹️ ▶️ John of both worlds, it will never dim while you’re looking at it, but it will dim immediately when you’re not looking at it, then it
⏹️ ▶️ John would have been a win. But it sounds like there’s still a couple of bumps in the road. And it also sounds like this is
⏹️ ▶️ John an aspect of your life and me and probably also Casey, where we’re all still using stick shifts. And that the reason
⏹️ ▶️ John you can get away with a five minute timeout is because you put your phone to sleep when you know you’re done using it, right?
⏹️ ▶️ John Like you’re manually shifting, you’d be like, Okay, I’m not going to glance at you anymore. And you hit the side button and it goes to sleep. I know
⏹️ ▶️ John I do that. I manually put my my time out is very long and I don’t worry about battery life because I control
⏹️ ▶️ John when I know if I am I going to look back at that phone now or am I done with it for now? So I turn the screen off essentially.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Yeah, all right, maybe. But anyway, I found that an annoying default and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I was extra annoyed that it overrode my previous setting and so yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I think that’s a I think that’s a bad move or bad trick and I wish wish they would change that. But otherwise,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco yeah, otherwise I’m really enjoying this phone. And you know, once I, once I changed that setting, that helped
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a lot on that front. Yeah, I really like it. It is certainly taking time to get
⏹️ ▶️ Marco used to in the way that, you know, as I mentioned earlier, how like the top area of the screen
⏹️ ▶️ Marco is so hard to reach for me, like holding it one handed. I am still doing the support
⏹️ ▶️ Marco pinky on the bottom. So basically holding the phone by the bottom half, which means that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and in my left hand, which means that I can use my thumb on my left hand to just barely reach
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the upper left ear next to the status bar, but I can’t reach the upper right of the screen anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So that’s a little bit annoying. And I feel like this is going to be an area, I kind
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of talked about this under the radar this week, I feel like iOS has to now adopt
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to a new reality that’s actually been building over the last couple years since we’ve had the Plus phones,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco where a lot of people can’t reach the top of the screen very easily anymore.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So iOS, I think, has to, and the built-in system apps and many other apps, have to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco reduce the dependence on putting frequently used buttons and things at the top
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of the screen. And this is some pretty fundamental iOS stuff that will have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to change the result of this, like navigation bars, or edit buttons, or done buttons, or cancel
⏹️ ▶️ Marco buttons that are up in the top bars. Like, that’s a pretty common design pattern. apps that have hamburger buttons
⏹️ ▶️ Marco in the upper left corner, like stuff like that. Like this is gonna be a major shift
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that all apps and the OS now have to do. So iOS 11
⏹️ ▶️ Marco kind of half designed itself for this by having those giant navigation bar titles that push
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the first row of content down. I see why they did that now. That makes sense now. I don’t
⏹️ ▶️ Marco think it looks very good, but it makes sense and it works well, even though it doesn’t look great. It does work better
⏹️ ▶️ Marco on the iPhone 10 to have the content push down a little bit for that first row to be more accessible to your thumb.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But they have to do a lot more. And so I feel like iOS 11 is like a baby step
⏹️ ▶️ Marco towards accommodating the new reality of larger screen phones where we can’t reach
⏹️ ▶️ Marco the top and bottom as easily as we used to. And this is, and I hope that iOS 12
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and beyond go further in that direction, because they need to.
⏹️ ▶️ John So the big text at the top, I don’t mind the looks that much and you’re right it makes much more
⏹️ ▶️ John sense in the context of taller phones like this but one thing I noticed when I was in the Apple store
⏹️ ▶️ John hanging around waiting to pick up the phone and looking at all the iPhone 10s is
⏹️ ▶️ John two things one I was surprised at how many of them had non default text size and I wondered if Apple had
⏹️ ▶️ John set that up or if people were just messing with the phones that set it up like the whatever the setting is for like large
⏹️ ▶️ John text and stuff I don’t know if it’s an accessibility or if it’s the zoom or whatever, like, and picking
⏹️ ▶️ John one up that’s like that. I was like, Oh, this iPhone 10, there’s something that looks weird about the
⏹️ ▶️ John screen, like all the letters are really big. I’m like, Oh, someone just changed it to be non default, right? But
⏹️ ▶️ John even on the ones that were in standard size, because then then I would like I would change the size to be standard or
⏹️ ▶️ John what I thought was standard. And I’d be like, Huh, the text that looks kind of bigger here, too. And I might have just been fooled by the fact
⏹️ ▶️ John that the screen is bigger. And that the applications I was using were all Apple apps that had the big
⏹️ ▶️ John chunky thing on it and I think in general making text bigger
⏹️ ▶️ John and more legible on larger screen phones is a smart move because while we may
⏹️ ▶️ John want bigger screens to get more screen real estate as we get older and as we get more Casey
⏹️ ▶️ John like bigger text on a bigger phone it becomes
⏹️ ▶️ John really important like the whole reason you want a bigger phone is not so you can see more text it so that
⏹️ ▶️ John the text on the phone can be bigger and bolder and easier to pick out. And
⏹️ ▶️ John moving the OS in the direction of having more bigger, bolder text, I know you’re not like even in the regular thing,
⏹️ ▶️ John the bold, big bold text on top is really big. It just makes it a lot more clear than it used to
⏹️ ▶️ John be. Where the heck are you and what are you looking at? And so I mostly endorse
⏹️ ▶️ John that direction, even if aesthetically, it sometimes it seems a little bit jarring, just because
⏹️ ▶️ John maybe it’s because I’m getting older, But I like the idea of not being, you know, it’s a continuing
⏹️ ▶️ John move on the spectrum from incredibly precious iOS 7 that we’ve slowly, gradually
⏹️ ▶️ John been moving away from to become like a more practical OS that is more
⏹️ ▶️ John usable for actual people, but it looks less good if you were to print it on a poster and treat it as like
⏹️ ▶️ John a beautiful, you know, typographic display of prowess and elegance, but if you
⏹️ ▶️ John just have to read the text, I kind of prefer the chunkiness that we’ve got now.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey We’ve spent a lot of time talking about the kind of gotchas and not oopses,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but you know, the things that I hadn’t heard a whole lot about, so it sounds
⏹️ ▶️ Casey way more negative, or at least I think I sound way more negative than I intend. This
⏹️ ▶️ Casey phone is tremendous, and if you have the means, I highly suggest picking one up, and that’s a reference, John.
⏹️ ▶️ John Yeah, I think you blew the quote slightly, But I couldn’t exactly correct you, so I won’t.
⏹️ ▶️ John So my impression, again, this is not my own phone. I’m of two minds about it. One,
⏹️ ▶️ John all the things that I just talked about and complained about, on the one hand, make me feel like
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m kind of OK with waiting out this gen and seeing how things shake out for the next
⏹️ ▶️ John one, because this changes a lot of stuff. And my sort of comfortable iPhone 7,
⏹️ ▶️ John it works great. I love my iPhone 7. I’m very comfortable with it. I don’t have to change any of my habits to continue using it.
⏹️ ▶️ John But on the other hand, the iPhone X is like the most interesting
⏹️ ▶️ John and exciting new piece of technology I’ve had in a long time. Just because from a tech nerd perspective,
⏹️ ▶️ John it’s so fascinating what it’s doing with all its different sensors. Even silly things like Animoji that we still haven’t
⏹️ ▶️ John talked about. Like and all the other third party applications that are using it and then Face ID and the
⏹️ ▶️ John dual cameras and everything. It’s an exciting tech gadget. If you are into tech gadgets,
⏹️ ▶️ John I would highly recommend the iPhone X even if it is quote unquote, a worse phone for you, because you have to retrain your habits
⏹️ ▶️ John or whatever. It is. It’s, it’s interesting and exciting in a way that iOS devices haven’t been
⏹️ ▶️ John in a long time. I’m trying to think of what the most recent one was, maybe the iPhone four when I went in retina.
⏹️ ▶️ John And maybe for me, for me personally, like the iPad Pro 9.7,
⏹️ ▶️ John which was just this little, you know, packed in powerhouse. But this is this is the most exciting iOS device
⏹️ ▶️ John in a really long time if you are a tech nerd, which everyone may not be. So if you’re on the fence
⏹️ ▶️ John about this, I mean, and you haven’t like tried it, and you want to just kind of judge, it will
⏹️ ▶️ John force you to change some habits and things will be different and weird, but it is really cool and exciting. And
⏹️ ▶️ John you will you will have fun playing with if you’re the kind of person who just really appreciates
⏹️ ▶️ John tech for tech sake. And I think in the end, this is also a very good phone,
⏹️ ▶️ John I will let my wife be the arbiter of that because she’s the one using it every day. But
⏹️ ▶️ John I’m pretty sure she’s not going to say forget this and go for an eight plus. But you know,
⏹️ ▶️ John I’ll give you I’ll give you weekly updates for a little while just to let you know what she’s thinking of it because
⏹️ ▶️ John she is not she is not one who’s like, Oh, I’m just excited about technology. She’s not excited about
⏹️ ▶️ John technology at all. Right. So she is a good test for I don’t care about tech stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ John Is this a good phone or not? And she really liked her success plus other than it getting slow.
⏹️ ▶️ John Um, so I think she’s a good test case. So more to come on this.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Uh, really quickly what you’re saying about the iPhone 10 being just a cool gadget.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think, uh, the guys on connected had some really great thoughts on this. And
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I think it was mostly Mike that was saying, you know, this is the first time in several years that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I’ve, that, that I’ve been like really, really amped and excited
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to get a new phone in a way we’re always amped and excited. But you know what I mean? Like, this is the first, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey new hardware where people are saying, oh, this is the new thing. Oh, is it
⏹️ ▶️ Casey good? Whereas, you know, in past years, it was, oh, is that the 7? Oh, is it cool?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey What makes it better again? You know, it’s not that anymore. And Connected did a really good
⏹️ ▶️ Marco thoughts? Yeah. I mean, the funny thing is, like, in a couple of these interviews, the Apple executives have said that,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like, they basically—that the iPhone X was originally supposed to come next year and they moved
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it up a year, imagine if it didn’t come out this year like it was originally scheduled.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Imagine if all we had this year was the iPhone 8. And the iPhone 8 is a fine
⏹️ ▶️ Marco phone, but man that would have been boring. That would have been a really,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco really boring year. And so I’m really glad we have this. But yeah,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco ultimately with a lot of Apple progress in
⏹️ ▶️ Marco recent years, it seems like it seems like we can’t take like unqualified
⏹️ ▶️ Marco progress anymore. It seems like every advancement comes
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with significant downsides
⏹️ ▶️ John or… Casey already said that you’re trying to say nothing is so perfect.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco no one’s ever said that before. Well, I’m sure someone invented it, just probably not you. Anyway, no like so
⏹️ ▶️ Marco So often we’ve had to like, you know, swallow a bitter pill to get the new stuff.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like there’s been some massive downside. And this still is the case with a lot of Apple’s product lines, the laptops.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco But with this phone, I really thought that would be the case. I really thought there would be much bigger downsides.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like I really thought that Face ID would be, you know, more limited
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or would have more gotchas or more places where it wouldn’t work right. I really thought that
⏹️ ▶️ Marco losing the home button accepting the notch would be worse and
⏹️ ▶️ Marco it mostly isn’t. There isn’t much downside of this with the one large exception
⏹️ ▶️ Marco of cost. That’s a big one. But with the exception of that, which is often an Apple thing you have
⏹️ ▶️ Marco to accept, we got a really, really awesome
⏹️ ▶️ Marco and notably new, as you said, like a new phone, really something new
⏹️ ▶️ Marco here, without significant downsides. And that’s pretty awesome.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco And most of the small annoyances that I have with it are really small,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or things that could be pretty easily fixed with just some software updates
⏹️ ▶️ Marco or redesigning some of the software aspects of it. So overall, I’m really happy
⏹️ ▶️ Marco with it. And it’s not like totally perfect, but it’s pretty
⏹️ ▶️ Casey great. Yeah, I mean, I know we are not the first to say it, and this is not the first time we’ve said
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it tonight, but it really does feel like the phone of the future. It really, really does, and that’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco awesome. And the great thing is, it’s the phone of the present. Yep. Thanks to our sponsors this
⏹️ ▶️ Marco week, Warby Parker, Squarespace, and Fracture, And we will see you next week.
Ending theme
⏹️ ▶️ John If you’re into Twitter, you can follow them at
⏹️ ▶️ Marco C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that’s Casey Liss,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T Marco
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-U-S-A
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s accidental, they didn’t mean to
⏹️ ▶️ John Accidental, check podcast so long
Post-show: Casey edits video
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So I have a brief story to tell. On the way
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to San Francisco, and on the way back actually, but
⏹️ ▶️ Casey each direction I spent time going through the just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey tremendous amount of footage I took of the Alfa Romeo because I’m trying to basically
⏹️ ▶️ Casey cut out the pieces that I will then put together to make the movie, you know what I mean? And so
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if I have like an in-car video that lasts 15 minutes, maybe a minute and a half
⏹️ ▶️ Casey of that is potentially usable. So I’m trying to amass all those like, you know, 30
⏹️ ▶️ Casey second, one minute, three minute clips. And so this way I’ll know what I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey can build the video out of. And so what that entails is going through and
⏹️ ▶️ Casey watching all of this video. So I flew direct from Dulles
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to San Francisco in back. And it wasn’t until almost the very end of the flight to
⏹️ ▶️ Casey San Francisco that it occurred to me, I am a passenger
⏹️ ▶️ Casey on an airplane that has like a couple hundred other people in it now, granted,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey not all 200 or whatever other people were near me, but there were 10 or
⏹️ ▶️ Casey 15 people near ish to me. And if you were one of those people
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and looked at me in my computer screen at any point for six hours straight.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was watching movies of myself for six freaking hours.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey imagine what you would think if you saw some moron watching movies of himself
⏹️ ▶️ Casey for six hours straight
⏹️ ▶️ John you were at you were doing it for the purposes of editing? Was there nothing on
⏹️ ▶️ John, Casey screen that made that
⏹️ ▶️ Casey well, at first I was doing some stuff in Final Cut Pro. But later what I was doing is
⏹️ ▶️ Casey I was watching these videos and I’m sure that this is not necessary and that I could have just done it in Final Cut Pro,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but this is the way I wanted to take care of it. I was watching the videos
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and then using FFmpeg to snip the beginning and end in order to get just the little
⏹️ ▶️ Casey clip I wanted, which is a hilariously slow thing to do on a MacBook Adorable,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey but nevertheless, that’s what I was doing. I recognize that is not the most efficient way. I recognize that maybe
⏹️ ▶️ Casey if I do more of these that I will laugh at how terrible an idea that was, but for this first one, that’s
⏹️ ▶️ John do. I don’t think that’s how video editors work. Does it losslessly cut it at least?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It’s, I don’t think it’s 100% lossless, but it’s whatever.
⏹️ ▶️ John It’s like virtually spotless, not 100% lossless, it’s called lossy. It’s
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, Casey it’s lossy. But
⏹️ ▶️ Marco wait, were you on the Wi-Fi or was this offline? No, this was offline. How the hell
⏹️ ▶️ Marco did you use FFmpeg without being able to search the web for how to
⏹️ ▶️ John use it? Yeah, right, he’s got a text file where he saved the commands, I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey guarantee. It’s close. So I’ve gotten good enough with
⏹️ ▶️ Casey FFmpeg that most basic things that I would ever want to do, including trimming from, you know,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey specifying a start time and then specifying a duration, I know those off the top of my head now because I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey do them somewhat regularly for reasons I don’t want to discuss on air, but I will tell
⏹️ ▶️ Casey you two later. You trim a lot of trucks? Well yes, actually. All
⏹️ ▶️ Casey right, well, okay, so now I’m committed. It turns out that certain
⏹️ ▶️ Casey PBS television shows that your child may or may not enjoy, there’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a new, well actually two new episodes shown every single week, but they’re
⏹️ ▶️ Casey two episodes in one file. So if
⏹️ ▶️ Casey one were to, I don’t know, maybe hypothetically use a tool to download things from sites
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like YouTube and then get a single file on your local machine.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey had two episodes. Yeah, and you should definitely keep it on the DL. And you had one file on your
⏹️ ▶️ Casey local machine that you then needed to split into two files to, I don’t know, hypothetically put into some sort of media
⏹️ ▶️ Casey management program. Anyway, you would need to know and use these FFmpeg commands.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey Point being, a lot of stuff I know offhand, but I also have a
⏹️ ▶️ Casey folder in my Apple Notes repository that is just
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a, you know, five or 10 different FFmpeg incantations
⏹️ ▶️ Casey and how to make those work. So as an example, I needed to twist
⏹️ ▶️ Casey a video 90 degrees because I had filmed it in portrait, so to speak. It
⏹️ ▶️ Casey was a GoPro, but it was the footage I took of the back of the car, so it was pointing
⏹️ ▶️ Casey at the exhaust. And the way in which I was able to quickly mount the GoPro, I effectively filmed in
⏹️ ▶️ Casey portrait. And so I needed to… Or well, I forget what it was.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey It was filmed in landscape, the subject was portrait, you get the idea. The point is just that I
⏹️ ▶️ Casey needed to rotate the video. And so that I ended up looking up like when I got to the hotel or something
⏹️ ▶️ Casey like that and put an entry for that in my little repository of FFMPEG incantations.
⏹️ ▶️ Casey So anyway, but the point is that I bring all this story up just to just to make everyone laugh because it occurred to me how
⏹️ ▶️ Casey self-obsessed and obnoxious, maybe not obnoxious, but ridiculous must I look that I’ve spent now 12
⏹️ ▶️ Casey straight hours effectively watching movies of myself because who wouldn’t
⏹️ ▶️ Casey want to watch movies of me am I
⏹️ ▶️ Marco right if I was on that plane if I saw you like you know that story
⏹️ ▶️ Marco like that some famous artists like in order to prove his art ability he drew a perfect
⏹️ ▶️ Marco circle freehand whatever that story was you know anyway if I’m sitting next to you on
⏹️ ▶️ Marco a plane and I’m seeing you use FFmpeg without doing a web search,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco that, like, it’s like, oh my God, this person is a genius. Like,
⏹️ ▶️ Marco, John I bow down to
⏹️ ▶️ Marco your skill, sir. Like, this is incredible. I’m witnessing history here.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco Like, that to me would be the equivalent of the freehand circle thing. Like, anything
⏹️ ▶️ Marco else you were doing, I wouldn’t even see. I wouldn’t even notice you were editing video of yourself for six hours.
⏹️ ▶️ Marco I would just be like, oh my God, Did he just do FFmpeg without a Google search first? How?
⏹️ ▶️ Casey this work? It’s really not that impressive, but I appreciate it nevertheless.
⏹️ ▶️ John There is a man page, right? I mean, you don’t need the internet
⏹️ ▶️ Casey to get there. Have you looked at the man, well. You need the internet. Also, let’s
⏹️ ▶️ Casey remember that this is John Syracuse who writes Pearl for a Living. So it wouldn’t surprise me if you
⏹️ ▶️ Casey could handle the man page, but my brain is too feeble for the man page. I need examples and I need
⏹️ ▶️ Casey clear examples of like, I want to trim a video. What do I do? Rather
⏹️ ▶️ Casey than if you would like to specify a start location and a duration, this is what you need to do, you know, like,
⏹️ ▶️ Casey it’s just, the, the man page is not. Not written in such a way that it’s easy to understand.