Putting Plastic on Your Couches
Marco:
Have you guys noticed that this is the 1,000-day anniversary of the Mac Pro?
Casey:
Oh, God.
Casey:
Do we really have to talk about that?
Casey:
I'm already all fired up.
Marco:
This is the longest the Mac Pro has ever gone.
Marco:
Although, if you count the 2012 as really just the 2010, which I would, that actually is a longer span than this.
Marco:
That was like 1,100.
Marco:
But if you count them separately the way Apple released them, this is the longest span by a good margin.
Marco:
Yay.
Marco:
Happy birthday, Mac Pro or something.
John:
was it you that was tweeting the other day that like uh you're talking about next spring or something because you thought they weren't going to update the mac pro until they get the sky like e in it whatever happened to them just using the chips that are available now you've given up on that now too we can barely get them to use anything the the last thing they're going to do is use a six month old chip i mean they're going to either wait a six month old chip is practically new in a three-year-old computer
Marco:
That's true, but this is Apple we're talking about.
Marco:
Apple, the wind could blow the wrong direction one day.
Marco:
Better delay the Mac Pro again for another generation.
Marco:
I don't know.
John:
I don't know if my poor computer is going to make it that long.
John:
I don't know if I can wait until mid to late 2017.
Marco:
i mean i'm getting like if i had to take a guess like if they're if they're truly waiting on sky lake e and they're going to do an update then knowing intel and also these days knowing apple with the mac i'm guessing that is not even a spring release i'm guessing that's june 2016 or 2017 i'm guessing that's a wbc release yeah i know i saw that i was like next wbc no just apple just release it with whatever's available now and a new gpu and
Casey:
So let's dig in, starting with Zach Waldowski.
Casey:
Doing what Marco wants with Windows is possible.
Casey:
Windows 8 and up support a deployment method called Windows to Go.
Marco:
I don't care.
Casey:
Moving on.
Casey:
iOS 10 home button behavior.
Casey:
This has been less of a cluster than I expected.
Casey:
So it used to be that on iOS 9, you would pick up your phone and the screen would not turn on.
Casey:
And you could press the home button or the sleep wake button, which a coworker of mine had no idea was also a wake button.
Casey:
He thought it was only a sleep button, which I thought that was kind of amusing.
Casey:
Anyway, you could press either the sleep wake button or the home button to turn the screen on.
Casey:
And then naturally, if you have Touch ID, particularly on, was it the 6 or the 6S that got super fast?
Casey:
6s was okay so at the 6s the thing that happened was the touch id was so darn fast that you would pick up your phone press the home button and touch id would almost instantly authenticate you and you would miss all your notifications so in ios 10 the way apple's fix this is when you pick up the phone and this is all with the default settings that is it does what i believe they call raise to wake and so the screen will come on and show your notifications and
Casey:
If you press the home button, then it will actually do what it used to do, which is bring you into the home screen.
Casey:
But you could just lightly press the home button and it will say in the bottom, press home to unlock.
Casey:
And then you can press home again to get into your phone.
Casey:
It's very wonky.
Casey:
I still, even a month or so in, don't particularly care for it.
Casey:
And I expected the entire world to lose their crap about this.
Casey:
And as it turns out, I haven't heard that much complaining all told.
Casey:
Have you guys?
John:
Everybody whose machine I've upgraded to iOS 10 has complained about this, which just includes the three members of my family.
Casey:
What do you think about it, Marco?
Marco:
I mean, I haven't heard that much because most of the complaining I heard was earlier during the beta period when all the people I know all installed the beta on their main phone against most advice.
Marco:
uh so most of the complaining i got through back then from my own personal getting used to it it took me maybe a couple days and it was fine like i and when i when it first started i thought for sure oh this is going to take me a long time to get used to because it's so different on on such a common interaction that i do constantly every day and it just turned out yeah it was like a couple days and it was totally fine
Casey:
I'm jealous because it is still taking me a while to get used to it.
Casey:
And in fact, I was reminded by somebody earlier, either today or yesterday, that it's so ingrained in me to do the swipe up to control center and hit the bottom right to get the camera from the lock screen.
Casey:
And it is so much nicer in iOS 10 to swipe from right to left, but I completely forgot that was a thing.
Casey:
And so I need to also retrain myself on that one as well.
John:
Yep, again, a few days.
John:
I complained about this thing on the last show.
John:
Last show, I had just upgraded to iOS 10.
John:
Was I on the beta?
John:
I forget.
John:
But anyway, it was an aside that I complained that this is the one thing that annoyed me about it.
John:
And that sentenced me and all of us, I guess, to a good solid week of...
John:
people telling us uh how to fix this which is what this actual follow-by name is about like if you don't like the new behavior in ios 10 there's a setting to change it back to the old behavior although interestingly the setting by the way is in under general under accessibility and there's a thing called home button and there's just one little switch you can change it back to the old behavior but if you switch it back to the old behavior the text on the screen still says like
John:
press to unlock which i guess is true it will still unlock it but you don't have to press it anymore that's the point it just makes it the old style thing yeah that's a little weird but i mean it makes sense there's all there's also a setting for raised awake too by the way my phone doesn't have raised awake and i don't quite understand why it annoys me a little bit
Marco:
It's only on the 6S.
Marco:
Oh, is that right?
Marco:
I didn't know that.
Marco:
Yeah, the 6S, you know, it added that low power processor to listen for, hey, Siri, all the time.
Marco:
And I think that same process is responsible for constantly monitoring the motion to do that.
John:
Yeah, so I miss out on that.
John:
But anyway, I changed it back just because I don't want to have to do like what I consider to be the extra press.
John:
And I also configured all of my family's devices to be like that after they complained.
John:
And so now, you know, as far as my family is concerned, nothing has changed about this.
Casey:
Yeah, see, I really want to change it back, but I'm trying to train myself like Marco has succeeded in doing and get myself used to it because I really prefer to tactically deploy my settings tweaks when I get onto a new device that's applicable to the Mac and to any iOS device.
Casey:
So I try to be cool with the defaults, but sometimes you just can't live with it.
Casey:
But this one I'm trying to get over, and I think I will.
Casey:
It's just taken me longer than I took Marco.
Casey:
So somebody asked a question, at least in the show notes anyway, why not five finger pinch?
Casey:
So on the iPad, I believe it's optional.
Casey:
It certainly used to be optional.
Casey:
You can enable multitasking gestures.
Casey:
And so as an example, I believe it's a four finger swipe.
Casey:
We'll go we'll swipe you between apps, which I love and use constantly.
Casey:
And I also use constantly five finger pinch on the iPad, which is you put all five fingers on the screen, bring them closer together, and that will bring you back to the home screen.
Casey:
Why not five finger pinch on an iPhone?
Casey:
Because it's just not that big, man.
Casey:
I mean, that's what I would think.
John:
That's not what the question is about.
John:
The question was about my last week's complaint about how I don't like hitting...
John:
It was all about the home button.
John:
I don't like hitting the home button, like actually pressing a physical button when I want to go back to the home screen, because it feels like when I'm on my iPad, I'm just like, oh, touch the screen here, touch the screen there.
John:
But this one thing that I want to do frequently, go back to springboard or whatever, I have to press this physical button.
John:
And especially if it's like the iPad is like...
John:
resting on a pillow or something and the home button could be like down in the little creases of the pillow it's just it's not as nice as touching everything else so the question is why not just use five finger pinch it gets rid of all that you don't touch the home button all your interactions with the screen um and i love five finger pinch but there has always been something stopping me from enabling it in the beginning it was fruit ninja obviously because if you want to have
John:
fruit ninja on your ipad and you want to let your kids play it you cannot enable these gestures because the kids will forever be going back to the home screen when they're trying to slice through watermelons or whatever um and these days uh i have twitterific my twitter application has many gestures you can do one of them i think is like a two finger vertical swipe or something to change twitter accounts and
John:
And when I do the five finger pinch, it sends me back to springboard.
John:
But when I go back to Twitter, it's on a different account.
John:
Oh, weird.
John:
And so, you know, is it just is it just the way that I'm doing the gesture?
John:
Am I tripping the two finger gesture recognizer before I trip the OS wide five finger thing?
John:
I don't know.
John:
But anyway, what it boils down to is I still cannot get clear of applications that I use every day that are sort of not nicely compatible.
John:
with a five-finger pinch which is not great because i really got addicted to it when i started using it before i realized i just had to disable it because essentially my ipad was broken for the purposes of small children playing fruit ninja um and now i really haven't gone back to it but that means i'm still stuck uh pressing the home button and what i learned from uh this home button behavior change in ios 10 is that a lot of people have ingrained habits for like
John:
pick up your device and unlock it um so a lot of people are complaining about this change in behavior the number one tip i've seen on twitter for ios 10 both directed at me and just you know going crosswise to everyone else is oh there's a setting to change it back to the old blade do it do it do it but if i had raised awake i'm not sure i would change it because i would try to pick up the new habit which is if you just want to see stuff on the lock screen don't touch anything just pick the phone up if that works consistently um
John:
that's better you know that's better than doing the reason i don't want to do the press thing on my phone is it's like it's an extra effort well this is one fewer thing that you have to do just pick up the phone um so i don't know i don't have a phone that has a feature eventually i probably will and i might go back and give it a try what do you mean probably are you moving to android next year no you know i'm just i don't eventually i'll have one
John:
But the other thing I learned is that lots of people have strange habits related to the home button.
John:
One, I didn't put this in the notes, so I don't have the URL, but did you guys read this story about habits related to the home button in the Far East?
Casey:
Oh, yes.
Casey:
This was talked about somewhere.
Casey:
I think Gruber had brought it up, and I'd heard it somewhere else as well.
John:
Yeah, so this was apparently in the Far East, like China, Japan, Indonesia, that whole region.
John:
Apparently, it's very popular on iOS devices to enable the assistive touch feature, which basically puts the equivalent of the home button somewhere on your screen.
John:
I think I enabled this way back when I haven't enabled it in years, though.
John:
But it's like if you if you have trouble using the home button, they will put some always visible controls on top of the screen that will do the same thing as the home button.
John:
And this is apparently very popular.
John:
Everybody does it.
John:
um and if so if you go if you go to the far east and you see people using an ios device and you see a bunch of junk on their screen i think it's like always on top always visible otherwise how would it work and so people are moving that stuff out of the way like when they want to see what's in the corner of their screen but this like ui is covering it they move it out of the way so they can see the other stuff like they're from my perspective they're making their phone
John:
is harder to use by putting some always visible ui on top of the screen that the people making the applications don't expect to be there they have to manage and move around and they're doing this because they think that using the home button will break it and this is one of those another one of those you know it's superstition based on uh real things because the i think it was the iphone 4 home button had some reliability problems for 4s and maybe 5 also it seemed to stop for sure when the touch id sensor came in the 5s yeah
John:
Although all iPhones forever have had some degree of failing home button things just because it's a very frequently used button and there's some failure rate for a certain number of clicks.
John:
But the 4 is the one I remember where it was way out of bounds for what you'd expect a failure rate to be.
John:
The story I read about this home button thing was like, their angle was...
John:
That people feel like a broken home button hurts the resale value, so they don't want to ever use the home button so that when they sell it later to trade it in for another phone or to sell it to get money to buy another phone, that they won't be hurting its resale value.
John:
which is a kind of a mercenary way to think of it, but it's also kind of like putting plastic on your couches.
John:
And like, if no one ever uses the home button, does it matter?
John:
How does it hurt the resale value?
John:
If everybody who will buy and use the phone will never use the home button because they're all preserving it just in case, you know, the Pope comes one day and wants to use the home button.
John:
It's like, it's never been used.
John:
Just finally, you can take the plastic off the sofa.
John:
Anyway,
John:
This is one article I read on the internet.
John:
I have no idea if it's remotely accurate.
John:
Anybody who lives in the Far East, by all means, send us an email and let us know if this is a real thing or if this is just one of those stories that one reporter happened to see one thing and now thinks the entire region does this.
Marco:
I mean, for whatever it's worth, I've heard now, since the story's been circulating, I've heard a lot of people who are confirming it from their own anecdotes.
Marco:
Like, oh yeah, I live in X place or a relative, a friend of mine lives there and this is totally a real thing.
John:
And this is also as an explanation of why would Apple get rid of the home button to try to encourage, like, try to encourage potentially millions of people to actually use the home button again, because maybe they'll feel like, well, this button doesn't move, so it won't wear out.
John:
Now, I don't think that's going to work, because if they have this superstition going for years and years, you know, I...
John:
obviously me being the unicorn that i am i've never had a home button fail on an ios device um and i don't think there are particularly bad problems in the post touch id age you know the iphone 4 was definitely the bad one and the 4s tried to improve it but not so great and like you said with the 500 things i don't know anybody who's ever had a failed touch id sensor but i'm sure it happens but because it is a physical button but anyway i don't know if this is going to change things but as people pointed out in the chat room
John:
Apple presumably has diagnostic information like that little thing where you I forget if it's opt in or opt out, but you can send Apple diagnostic information.
John:
They must know how many people in what regions are using these assistive touch features.
John:
And they'll know based on the percentage of the population that actually needs those features, you know, because they can't use the home button.
John:
Like the numbers must scream to them.
John:
A lot of people are using their iPhones in ways that you, Apple, probably didn't expect.
John:
So maybe address that with your next hardware model.
John:
And so that could be one possible thing added in support of getting rid of the button.
John:
The obvious reason to get rid of the physical button is just because if things don't move, it's more reliable and it's easier to waterproof, right?
John:
Yeah.
John:
another factor could be oh and by the way maybe we can encourage those millions of people who refuse to use the home button that maybe it's safe to use it again or they're going to spend the rest of their time sliding always visible palettes around their screen so they can see their content yeah i also i still do want to point out one thing though that a this won't solve the problem
Marco:
because people will still keep doing it because of superstition, as you mentioned, and B, the Taptic Engine now will have way more use.
Marco:
So, it's also full of moving parts, just differently moving parts.
Marco:
And the Taptic Engine in the watch dies all the time.
Marco:
Now, the one in the 6S seems to be okay so far, as far as I know.
Marco:
I don't think we've heard anything about that, but...
Marco:
I wouldn't necessarily rule out that a new Taptic Engine that is going to be used way more will somehow fail less than a simple button.
Marco:
I don't think we know that yet.
Marco:
Maybe Apple knows that from their own testing.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
But I think in the real world, we have yet to see that.
John:
I think it stands to reason that something that's sealed inside is better than something that your mucky fingers are touching.
John:
Especially buttons, when you press them, you open up a little gap for all sorts of lint and crumbs and muck and stuff to get into.
John:
It's...
John:
way easier to make an internally sealed thing and like the i remember the the bad vibrating things in the watch but that was that sounds like an early model miniaturization problem um and i also wonder if if the taptic engine feels a little bit weaker than normal does that you know do people care does that hurt the resale value of your of your phone i don't know
John:
Anyway, like I said, one article.
John:
I don't know if there's any truth behind this, but in my own personal life, I have learned, again, when messing with the settings for iOS 10, that people have weird ways of unlocking their devices that you don't learn until something changes about it and you have a discussion with it.
John:
presses the sleep wake button and then puts her finger on the touch id which doesn't make sense to me like why don't you like this is this is pre-iOS 10 right that's her that's her pattern picks up the device same here presses touch wake and then does touch id i pick the thing up put my thumb and i on the touch id button press it to wake the thing up and just leave my thumb there to unlock it
John:
Right.
John:
So I'm only going to one place.
John:
I'm not going to the top and then to the bottom.
John:
I'm just going to the very bottom.
Casey:
Well, OK, I can explain why.
Casey:
Well, for me anyway, why that is.
Casey:
So I'll sleep wake if I want to just see notifications and not insta clear them.
Casey:
And then if I know that I don't really give a crap what notifications I have, maybe I just looked at my phone 30 seconds ago.
Casey:
Then I'll do what you described, John, and just mash my finger down on the home button, and I'll just power right through to the home screen.
Casey:
But in the case that I care about notifications, and again, like you said, pre-iOS 10, I would use the sleep-wake button to just turn the screen on, let me see what I'm doing.
Casey:
And then if I want to act on one or perhaps just use my phone, then I will put my finger on the home button and unlock it.
John:
Does this habit come from the super fast touch ID sensor or were you doing it before the 6S?
Casey:
It's a great question.
Casey:
I definitely think it was influenced by the super fast touch ID.
Casey:
I would say I don't remember doing it before the 6S.
Casey:
I think I retrained myself after I got the 6S.
John:
Yeah, maybe I'll change to when I have the faster sensor, but on the 6, I don't have those problems.
John:
Same thing, if I just want to look what's on the screen, I just hit it and it doesn't go fast enough, so it's no problem.
John:
And my son refuses to use Touch ID.
John:
He enters his code every time.
John:
Seriously?
John:
He hits the sleep-wake button.
John:
In iOS 10, what he wanted to do was, how do I get to the screen that has the numbers?
John:
So he hits the sleep-wake button, and I forget, swipe or whatever to get to the number thing.
John:
He has an iPad with Touch ID, doesn't use it.
Casey:
That's crazy to me.
John:
I think he feels like the numbers are more reliable, like they work every time and that he's not pausing and waiting.
John:
It's kind of, you know, blame my genes for this, like that he's never waiting.
John:
He doesn't want to be waiting for the computer.
John:
And so putting your finger on touch ID and waiting to see if it succeeds and then picking up and putting it down.
John:
It's like the numbers are deterministic.
John:
It's going to take the same amount of time every time.
John:
During that time, he's always doing something like he's not waiting, even though if you were to stopwatch, it was probably faster to do touch ID.
John:
It just feels like I'm busy, I'm doing the thing to unlock the thing, and it's probably more reliable for him.
John:
He also has a slow touch ID sensor because he's got an old iPad.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Let's see what else we got here.
Casey:
Nick Guy, who is the Nick Guy on Twitter, writes in to say, this iPhone 7 smart battery case is 2,365 milliamp hours, which is up from 1,877 for the iPhone 6.
Marco:
i didn't notice it looking any bigger like maybe it's a little bit thicker i have one right here uh comparing it to the old one just visually uh it feels about the same the the only major difference is obviously the uh the headphone jack removal and so it switches to the two like line shaped girls in the bottom instead of the one line and the one dot and the giant camera cut out those are the major ones
Marco:
Because of the aforementioned giant camera cutout, if you have a smart battery case from the 6S, it will not fit a 7.
John:
It's interesting that they made the battery case bigger on the iPhone 7, which also has better battery life.
John:
So more battery for everybody.
Marco:
Well, it makes it more reasonable of a thing to buy, and it makes their price a little more reasonable.
Marco:
Obviously, you can get lots of cheaper cases for a lot of money, but to have only the $1,900 or whatever it was, now to have $2,400, that makes it a little bit better.
Marco:
Because before...
Marco:
The main complaints about it were it's ugly, it's ugly, it's also really ugly, and also that's not a lot of capacity for the price.
Marco:
So now you kind of help that last one.
Marco:
It's still not a great bargain price-wise if you look at other battery cases.
Marco:
But as I mentioned before, we're total converts in this family.
Marco:
They actually work really well.
Marco:
I think if you're going to use a battery case on a regular basis, I can recommend the Apple one.
Marco:
So it's nice that it has a little bit more capacity now.
Marco:
And it doesn't feel, like, noticeably heavier.
Marco:
I think they should make one for the Plus.
Marco:
I mean, obviously, it would be really big and really heavy.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
But it's interesting, you know, like, if you want the most battery life in a phone, a regular 6S or 7 in the battery case will last way longer than a Plus by itself.
John:
I know.
John:
That's why I think the Plus needs it, because I think of the Plus as, like...
John:
and the new ipad mini right like if you put a plus in a battery case that you could actually take that in a long car trip and like play games on it and not kill it like isn't the plus is supposed to be i don't mind the humongousness i don't mind the extra weight i just want as much battery life as possible and putting the battery case only on the smaller model muddies the water because like well you know i can imagine regular people who aren't like trying to do the math on the milliamp hours and stuff saying well which is longer
John:
the the gigantic plus or the regular seven with a lump on its back and the regular seven lump lines back wins but that's not obvious like they should make it for the plus and they should also have that lump go across the entire back i i can think of lots of reasons why they don't make it for the plus uh i mean chief among them is size obviously
Marco:
But also, I do think there's a lot fewer people who need it because the Plus does have longer battery life when the screen is on.
Marco:
Not by a lot, but slightly longer battery life when the screen is on.
Marco:
When the screen is off, it has substantially more battery life.
Marco:
Because, you know, things like, if the screen is off and it's just doing things like playing music over Bluetooth or something like that,
Marco:
It's going to use the same amount of power as the small phone or the medium phone now, the 4.7 inch version.
Marco:
It only uses more power when the screen is on.
Marco:
So it has a battery that is sized for the screen to be on and to roughly match or slightly exceed the power of the smaller phone.
Marco:
But if most of your usage of the phone is with the screen off, then it can last like 50% more.
Marco:
Like it's a huge difference in how much better it lasts that way.
Marco:
So it really depends on your usage, whether the battery case is even necessary for the Plus for most people.
Marco:
And I think enough people would fall into that usage pattern of it's not released for them, that there's a lot less demand for it, in addition to the massive size that it would be.
Marco:
The resulting device with the battery case would be quite ridiculous.
Marco:
And there are other people who make battery cases for the Plus, and they do look ridiculous.
Marco:
So I totally get why Apple does not release theirs.
John:
Yeah, like I said, I'm thinking of, like, a kid in the back of a car who wants to play video games for a whole, like, three-hour car trip, and they're just going to be, like, burning the battery the entire time.
John:
They love a battery.
John:
I mean, it's not any bigger than, like, a, you know, a traditional handheld game thing.
John:
Like, they're just sitting there.
John:
They already accept the plus.
John:
It's like, why not?
John:
Why not just carry around a 12.5-inch iPad Pro with you everywhere?
John:
You might as well.
Marco:
We are sponsored this week by Linode.
Marco:
Go to linode.com slash ATP.
Marco:
Linode is my favorite web host.
Marco:
Simple as that.
Marco:
I've been using them for a long time now.
Marco:
Years, many, many years, long before they were a sponsor.
Marco:
And all my stuff is hosted there now.
Marco:
Every bit of web hosting I have is at Linode now because it is just so good.
Marco:
I've just slowly moved all my stuff there.
Marco:
Plans start at just $10 a month.
Marco:
They have eight data centers you can choose from.
Marco:
You can get a server running in under a minute.
Marco:
And they have hourly billing with a monthly cap on all plans and add-on services.
Marco:
So if you want something for just a few hours, you can do that.
Marco:
If you want it for indefinite time, if you want it for a month, it'll just tell you what it'll cost you per month.
Marco:
Simple as that.
Marco:
They have backups.
Marco:
They have load balancers.
Marco:
They have stats.
Marco:
All these custom things that are really, really great.
Marco:
Not to mention, of course, you can run your own stuff because you have root because these are VPSs.
Marco:
uh linode recently switched from zen to kvm and unix benchmark showed a 300 performance increase it is really incredible what you get at linode for the price you have full root access you can run vms you can run containers and you can run of course regular apps you can run a private git server you can run blogs websites whatever you want databases anything i run all of overcast there market.org everything is at linode for me and it's fantastic
Marco:
They also now offer two gigs of RAM for only $10 a month.
Marco:
And of course, very regional prices above that for more specs.
Marco:
So go to linode.com slash ATP and you will get a $10 credit using promo code accidentalpodcast10.
Marco:
Once again, linode.com slash ATP.
Marco:
Use code accidentalpodcast10 for a $10 credit.
Marco:
Thank you very much to Linode, my favorite web host, for sponsoring the show.
Casey:
So some people have noticed that your wishes have been granted, John, and the Apple leather case now has metal buttons for the iPhone 7.
John:
That wasn't my wish, though.
John:
When I was talking about my pimply iPhone 6 leather case that looked really good right up until maybe three months ago when it started to get all rumply for some reason, it was in the discussion of the home button, like...
John:
how does it feel to press a button that doesn't actually move on a small device like this and i was saying that on my my rumply case when i press the volume buttons like nothing moves like i'm basically just applying pressure to these lumps and what i was saying it was like back to the discussion like why why did the volume buttons on the iphone 7 move at all if the home button doesn't move why do the volume buttons move what i was saying is that i think i would be okay if on the iphone 7 the volume buttons didn't move the sleep wake button didn't move like they were just pressure sensitive because obviously i'm okay with it on my six i mean it doesn't bother me
John:
not only am i okay with my six i can't even feel the edges of these buttons they're like they're just like the slightly more raised pimply area like they're very indistinct if they had sharply creased cut buttons that just did not move and were pressure sensitive i think i would be okay with that and so would apple was it be like hey fewer moving parts right everybody loves it um but instead what they did with the apple leather case for the iphone 7 is they made it so i don't have to deal with these rumbly things anymore and oh now you've got nice metal buttons which i think they did on the
John:
they did it on the bumper maybe or they had i think the bumper had some other kind of pass-through thing where there was like a a hard physical thing that when you pressed would slide down and press the button that was underneath rather than coating over with leather but anyway i think you're right that is that is sure to be the the new case is obviously an improvement it's sure to feel better it certainly looks better to have metal buttons poking out of your leather case and
John:
And I bet those won't have the same problem of getting all gross.
John:
But I still maintain that even more than the home button, I think, because the home button, I haven't tried yet.
John:
Maybe I'll hate it.
John:
Right.
John:
But the volume and power buttons, I've been using essentially non-moving volume and power buttons for a long time now.
John:
And I'm totally fine with it.
John:
On the other hand, my phone doesn't vibrate when I press them either.
John:
So that probably helps.
John:
So if on the fancy 10th anniversary iPhone 8 or whatever, iPhone 7S or whatever they call it, if that has sleep-wake and volume buttons that don't move, I'm already on board with that.
John:
Home button, jury's still out because I haven't tried it.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Are the Lightning EarPods digital?
Casey:
And follow on, why do we care?
John:
I cared mostly for curiosity.
John:
I mean, although, Marco, do you have an audio reason to care?
Marco:
Not really.
Marco:
I mean, so basically through various statements from ample PR representatives and various things confirmed by various people, the original story that we had heard and talked about on the show that Mac Okatora reported like forever ago, that the iPhone 7 lightning port was going to be special and that it was going to have a mode where
Marco:
It could output analog audio over the pins, and therefore the devices plugged into it, like the new Lightning headphones, and the headphone adapter could be really, really simple.
Marco:
That is apparently not the case, that apparently all the Lightning ports are treated the same.
Marco:
This port is not different from the rest of them, at least not in that way as far as we know, and that the Lightning headphones and the Lightning to headphone adapter for $9 are both...
Marco:
Full digital lightning devices that include an audio DAC and a little mini amp in there.
Marco:
A lot of people have asked me what I think about this, whether it's possible, whether it's good because it's so cheap.
Marco:
And the quick answer is, you know, with a disclaimer that I'm not an expert in manufacturing, little DAC amp chips are very plentiful, very common and very cheap.
Marco:
And the one on the phone before was already not like a $50 DAC or anything.
Marco:
The parts in the phone, most of them are very, very cheap parts.
Marco:
And the little audio codec chip that was in there is almost certainly not a very expensive part to begin with.
Marco:
The one that they put in the headphone adapter, which also must include an ADC going the other direction because there's a microphone involved.
Marco:
But the one they put in there...
Marco:
is probably going to be similar quality than the one they have already in the phone.
Marco:
I don't expect it to be noticeably different.
Marco:
I'm generally a DAC quality skeptic.
Marco:
A lot of audio people think that you have to have a really amazing, complicated, and key factor here, expensive DAC slash amp or both is
Marco:
in order to have good audio performance.
Marco:
And I am generally a skeptic on DACs and amps.
Marco:
It is very, very rare that I ever hear any difference whatsoever, even with very good ones versus very crappy ones.
Marco:
It is extremely rare to hear any difference whatsoever.
Marco:
And on the headphones that almost everybody is using with their iPhones, it would be extremely difficult for anybody ever to notice a real difference between DACs and amps.
Marco:
So that being said, it is indeed totally possible for Apple to make and sell a whole bunch of these little crappy adapters for $9 that include a digital DAC chip in there, especially since Apple themselves do not need to pay the MFI licensing fee for the Lightning chip that's in there.
Marco:
So that also helps a lot.
Marco:
For that reason alone, I don't expect to see a lot of third-party ones that are near that price point, but we will find out, I guess.
John:
So the interesting thing to me about this technically is one of the potential promises of digital audio is you can convert from digital to analog sort of at the last second, right?
John:
So you don't have to worry about transmitting an audio signal over a potentially long wire.
John:
Very thin wire probably doesn't have, you know, not a particularly sturdy wire that could potentially fray or, you know, like...
John:
everyone has had headphones or one ear starts cutting out or like the wire starts to fray or or if you have like a plug thing you plug things into your your car with right those wires can wear out because they're not super heavy duty and if what you're transmitting over there is analog audio as you're wearing down that wire or something bad is happening to or it's passing close to something that's magnetic or whatever it can mess with your signal uh and start to sound worse so this is theoretical right but it could happen um
John:
And so I was like, oh, we'll send digital.
John:
Digital is robust.
John:
All we got to do is be able to distinguish between a one and a zero.
John:
It's much easier than maintaining the fine details of frequency and amplitude of an analog signal.
John:
And then just the last second right before it goes into your ears, we'll convert that with our tiny little DACs into an analog signal.
John:
But did we say DAC is digital to analog converter?
John:
Yep.
John:
I don't know if people know that, but that's what we're saying.
John:
We're saying all caps DAC.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
And so you have to understand that in order to hear audio, you need to go from ones and zeros into a wave, into something that a speaker can play.
Casey:
And so the debate is, is the conversion from digital to analog by a digital analog converter, DAC or DAC, does that happen in the phone?
Casey:
Does that happen after it leaves the phone?
Casey:
So what's coming out of the phone through the lightning port is just ones and zeros, and then eventually it gets converted.
Casey:
And that's the crux of the conversation.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
And there's lots of different ways to do that.
Marco:
It is not actually a simple problem electrically to solve, to convert those ones and zeros to the corresponding waves.
Marco:
The main reality of it, though, is that even though there's lots of fancy DACs that can do a more accurate job, that can measure better on official scientific measurement machinery, the crappy, cheap $2 DAC amp chips all-in-one do a good enough job that most people can't hear the difference.
Casey:
And you'll find that Marco prefers digital analog converters that have tubes in them because it gives that nice, warm, rich sound that you don't get otherwise.
Marco:
Actually, I hate tubes.
Marco:
They're a giant pain in the butt.
Marco:
They pick up static.
Marco:
They burn out.
Marco:
They're asymmetric sometimes.
Marco:
Tubes suck.
Marco:
I'm all solid state over here.
Casey:
Just messing with you.
Casey:
Anyway, continue, John.
John:
So the $9 adapter, now that we have learned, basically conclusively, that has a little digital analog converter in it, like what's being sent out of the lightning port is digital, is...
John:
raises the question where is the DAC in the wired earpods that come it could be that the DAC is in the lightning connector and it's still sending analog audio across the wire to the wired headphones so it only gets like oh yeah seven millimeters out of the phone before it's converted by the not the DAC in the phone but by what is presumably an even cheaper DAC that's like seven millimeters away and then it just sends analog you know or they could also be in the earphones
John:
I don't know where it is like I really want iFixit to slice things open to see what the heck is inside them.
John:
But it would be kind of weird to to bundle the thing with like, you know, quote unquote, digital ear pods that merely move the DAC slightly outside the case.
Marco:
Oh, yeah.
Marco:
No, that's that's all marketing BS.
Marco:
Of course, it is very, very likely that the DAC is in the lightning connector end of it.
Marco:
That is extremely like, you know, just based on the way other lightning peripherals are built.
Marco:
That is that is very likely to be the case.
Marco:
The fact is, this isn't really solving a real problem.
Marco:
Just like fancy DACs and fancy amps are portable headphones that don't need more amps than what the phone can provide.
Marco:
This is solving fake problems.
Marco:
This is solving placebo problems for most people.
Marco:
The fact is, you are not going to pick up a meaningful amount of analog noise that will be audible in your headphones from the six feet of cable at best that are running from the phone to your crappy earpods.
Marco:
It is way more likely that any flaws in your sound will be masked by how crappy those drivers are than being audible by you.
John:
The practical reality of it would only be in the failure modes for people who are like their pets are chewing on their wires or they get it caught in a car door or whatever, any other sort of cable abuse.
John:
The failure mode for analog is like staticky or whatever, and the failure mode for digital is
Marco:
sounds different essentially like you could say that it anything that would cause noticeable degradation of sound in the analog from cable damage would destroy the digital signal also because you're talking like you know shorts and phrase and everything there's no way but it sounds different
John:
It's a difference between static, which we all know from our childhood, and the manufactured static that comes over with MPEG-2 compression on television sets.
John:
You know, when you turn them on, they have this fake MPEG of static, but static is, like, the worst-case scenario for video compression algorithms.
John:
They all look stupid.
John:
But anyway, yeah, like, I can imagine the failure modes sounding different.
John:
One possible way they could sound different is, like, oh, if...
John:
If the thing is damaged enough, the digital can't get through, you hear nothing or it cuts out or whatever.
John:
But I don't even know that to be the case.
John:
But I do know that they would sound different because analog has a different sort of degradation.
John:
Anyway, all that just means you should get a new set of headphones because if your wire is damaged, your wire is damaged.
John:
It doesn't really make any difference.
John:
But academically, it's interesting to me to think about this whole... Because that was one of the things I did.
John:
The digital audio... They didn't really push on it too much.
John:
But the digital audio is better than analog audio.
John:
And really...
John:
Like Marco said, it doesn't matter at all for these tiny light ear pods because the sound quality is so bad, relatively speaking, that all those other things are ridiculous and don't make a big difference.
John:
But, um, it does matter from Apple's parts perspective if they could have it.
John:
Like, I mean, I'm sure they could have, I'm, I'm,
John:
I'm interested in why they chose to go with tiny little decks instead of repurposing the pins.
John:
And maybe it really wasn't possible.
John:
I don't know.
John:
But, like, certainly if you're going to pinch pennies, you can make an even cheaper connector without little chips in it.
John:
Right.
John:
They could have gone that route, but they didn't.
John:
You know, maybe they don't.
John:
Maybe just they've...
John:
used up all their pins and resistor combinations on lightning and didn't have the ability to uh repurpose it in that way or maybe they really are all on board with a digital thing and they just want to say nope this it's digital from now on and even if it's digital only until it gets a couple millimeters outside the phone then it's fine
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, it's probably a combination of, you know, just not having anything modified about the phone, having it be compatible with any lightning output on any model phone.
Marco:
So if you plug it into, you know, also an iPad, or maybe down the road, if Macs have lightning ports, that would be kind of cool, you know, stuff like that.
Marco:
uh compatibility in that way and also i think the chip is just so cheap that it doesn't really matter like i really don't think the difference between like the basic job that all lightning peripherals have to do to connect to lightning that like there's already a chip in the connector to do that i bet the difference between that and a basic DAC amp is really not that big
John:
i bet the cost of the metal lightning connector is more than the cost of the chip probably like from apple's perspective in terms of like what it takes to manufacture because those little dax they could probably buy them for fractions of a cent each but to manufacture the lightning connector to the tolerances required for those little contacts on it that's probably the most expensive part of that entire you know nine dollar connector from apple's perspective
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Fair enough.
Casey:
Let's talk about those AirPods, which are the wire-free version of the lightning ear pods that we were just discussing.
Marco:
They have wire.
Marco:
They just move it.
Marco:
Now you have a wire to charge up the case that the beer pods plug into.
Marco:
So you have this intermediary object that's required to use it that has a wire.
John:
It's not a wire.
John:
It's a hole.
Marco:
Well, okay.
Marco:
But there's going to be a wire involved.
Marco:
That's the magic of Bluetooth.
Marco:
It just moves the wires around.
Marco:
Why do you park your car?
Marco:
Parking in the car hole.
Casey:
Good grief.
Casey:
Wow.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So regardless of whether or not they're wireless, Captain Pedantic, the question at hand at the moment is, do they or do they not have start, stop, and skip controls?
Casey:
From what I have understood, they do sort of.
Casey:
So if you have both AirPods in your ears and take one of them out, by default, it will pause whatever you're listening to, unless it's a telephone call, I presume, and
Casey:
And and you can choose to restart that via your phone or watch or Siri, I suppose.
Casey:
And then if you restart it with both headphones out of your I'm sorry, with one AirPod out of your ear, then it would convert to mono.
Casey:
Or alternatively, if you say are trying to listen to somebody who's talking to you and you pop one out and then pop it back in, then it will automatically start playing again.
Casey:
But skipping and volume control, all of that is done either via Siri or via the phone or watch, as far as I understood.
Casey:
Is that what you guys had as well?
John:
Yeah, in the presentation, all they showed was exactly what you described in the presentation, and I was hoping in the hands-on area that I would hear more details, and when I did, they basically echoed what Casey said, that what I'm looking for is not there, that you can do everything you said, and you can talk to Siri, and that's it.
Marco:
I'm looking forward to hearing stories about people who were on a bus full of other AirPods users.
Marco:
And I could hear everybody say, hey, Siri, skip forward.
Marco:
Hey, Siri, skip forward.
Marco:
Hey, Siri, wait, skip back.
John:
Yeah, this is what's making like the AirPods.
John:
I totally want to try them because it's like that's what I've been talking about with the wireless thing.
John:
I would love that.
John:
And yet I don't I can't get excited about them if I don't have the ability to pause and change volume.
John:
I don't care about skip forward and skip back.
John:
All I care about is pause and change volume.
John:
Pausing by taking the earpod out.
John:
Talk about a way to lose your AirPods.
John:
Don't do it.
John:
I'm not going to do that, right?
John:
Being able to tap, I think you can tap to pause, can you?
John:
Or can you not even do that?
John:
I think there's something like that, yeah.
Casey:
I thought it was strictly taking one out in order to pause.
John:
Yeah, like, I don't know.
John:
Again, none of us have them, so we can't tell.
John:
But it's like, it's tapped to talk to Siri.
John:
It's like, I don't want to talk to Siri.
John:
I just want to pause playback and changing volume.
John:
It happens if you're walking around and like you happen to come to a noisy section where you're closer to a road and you need to go up one notch on the volume.
John:
I don't want to talk to Siri to do that.
John:
It's like having to have a conversation with somebody to try to pick a forkful of food up into your mouth.
John:
It's like, just let me do it.
John:
It's one little click on the little thingy.
John:
Changing the volume with Siri is the worst use of speech.
John:
Anyway, the whole point is these things have accelerometers in them, and I desperately hope...
John:
that a future software update enables more useful functionality in these airpods if what we're all saying that we think the way these things work is is the truth because not being able to pause or change volume means i i just won't buy these like i i already know before buying them at all that i'm not going to talk to siri to do either one of those functions ever
Casey:
Well, but why couldn't you reach into your pocket and use the physical buttons on your phone?
Casey:
I mean, you could easily discover where they are and hit them.
John:
I can't go back to that.
John:
Are you kidding?
John:
Sometimes it's all, you know, sometimes it's in my back pocket.
John:
No, like the little, I will prefer to use the wired thing with the little clicker.
John:
Like this, it's no way.
John:
So this is really depressing me because it's not like they don't, it's like, well, how could they do it?
John:
They have a way to do it.
John:
They have a thing that you can tap and
John:
But, I mean, and by all means, make this the default.
John:
Tap for Siri is the default, but then have a setting somewhere like the iOS 10 Home button that says, actually, what tap does is pauses.
John:
And then for volume up and down, I don't know, two taps.
John:
I'm willing to tap the little thing in my ear however many times you want.
John:
Obviously, it knows when I'm tapping it, but...
John:
Play pause in volume, please, Apple, please.
Marco:
There's, you know, in all of my searches and tests of good Bluetooth headphones, it is pretty much impossible to find any that have good controls for playback and stuff like that.
Marco:
They exist, but there's very few.
Marco:
Because the main thing is, in order to have good, reachable, usable, reliable controls for seeking and volume and everything else, you really need physical buttons.
Marco:
You need real physical buttons and some kind of logical arrangement that you can feel on the headphone when you're walking so that you can just hit it and not have to think about it and not miss, not have to have a weird touch gesture or anything weird like that.
Marco:
And most headphone manufacturers don't do this because I guess it's more parts to have buttons.
Marco:
But also, I think one of the main reasons is that it just makes it uglier.
Marco:
And manufacturers are all doing these weird, overly clever, overly designed things with touch gestures and various tap commands and everything.
Marco:
But by far, the best headphones I have to walk with and to listen to podcasts on...
Marco:
are these ugly, really crappy-sounding Sennheiser PX210 BTs that are now discontinued, but the Sennheiser MM400 and 450 are very similar.
Marco:
They have these just nice big buttons on the ear cup, and it's great.
Marco:
I use those every day when I'm walking and listening to podcasts because it is so nice to just be able to reach up and feel the buttons and just hit the one and have it work every time, always hit the right one.
Marco:
It is so, so nice.
Marco:
And the advantage of Bluetooth is that you can do that.
Marco:
If you have wired headphones, there is no protocol that Apple defines for wired headphone makers for them to have buttons that do anything else besides the single clicker thing.
Marco:
But Bluetooth headphones have that spec built in.
Marco:
Any Bluetooth headphone can do that.
Marco:
But it requires some kind of large control and usually ugly big buttons for it to be any good.
Marco:
On AirPods, there just isn't room for that.
Marco:
And even if there was room for that, there is no way Apple would release a phone with no headphone jack and no buttons on it and then have AirPods with this giant wall of buttons on them.
Marco:
No way.
Casey:
So I'm being told via the chat that you can, in settings, turn off Siri and turn on double tap to pause.
John:
Cool.
John:
The ATP tipster is very adamant about that that setting is there.
John:
So that's nice to know.
John:
So that puts me back on the fence about buying them.
John:
that solves one of the reasons that that you might want to uh right so volume is still out there but play pause that goes 50 of the way there because i i need to be able to do that and i don't quite maybe i just haven't been reading enough articles about it or maybe not enough people have airpods yet no people have them they're separating them out into a separate review i guess i haven't read those yet but anyway
John:
um i'm happy to hear that i'm back on schedule to potentially buy them volume uh i'm not quite sure how they'd implement that two taps uh triple tap i don't quite know i i'm not sure if i can give that up i'm gonna have to start keeping track of
John:
how often i raise the volume i have the little clicker on my my bose headphones for plane flights too and i'm also glad that i have that clicker because my phone is like in my pocket or like somewhere tucked away like i can't really get to it easily and frequently i pause it and put the volume up and volume down over the course of the whole flight those seem like basic functions to me i wouldn't wear airpods on a plane anyway because i don't have the noise canceling but um
John:
yeah it's it's a problem to be solved for sure i i don't want a wire dangling from it and like marco said i don't want buttons they're not going to put buttons on it i certainly don't want buttons on it because how would you find them on these little tiny ear pods i can imagine maybe squeezing little little ends like if they were squishy no i mean trust me like you you don't want them to come up with clever gestures because they won't work on things that are that small they're not going to work reliably
John:
It's not a gesture.
John:
It would be a physical button, like a physical, squeezy little, you know, like if they were squishy ends.
John:
They have little squishy ends on them, you know, little rubberized things.
John:
Anyway, maybe that could be stop and then tap.
John:
Anyway, well, we'll see how this goes.
Casey:
Well, but then what happens when you're in mono?
Casey:
Because one of the benefits to my mind of the AirPods is that they will gracefully...
Casey:
switch to mono if you so desire and so then how do you which which end are you squeezing that you squeezing the top end of the headphone of the of the mono you know earpiece to go up in the bottom end to go down like that's never going to work the right answer to this unfortunately for you two is to just use your darn watch but since neither of you believe in the apple watch then that that doesn't really help is that any less conversant than the phone
Casey:
Actually, no.
Casey:
I would rather do the phone, to be honest with you.
Casey:
Even though I do love my Apple Watch, it would be easier to do it on the phone.
John:
If I could just turn the little crown to do volume up and down?
Casey:
Well, actually, I suppose my watch is actually in low power mode for the first time possibly ever.
Casey:
But in any case, if you left up the now playing glance app thing, I think you would be able to just raise your wrist and fumble with the crown.
Casey:
But I am not 100% sure about that.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
Either way, I mean, to be honest, to me, the easiest answer is to just use the volume buttons on your phone.
Casey:
I agree with you that it is kind of weird not to have any ability to change the volume on the device itself since we've all been programmed to be used to being able to reach to approximately our chin and grab the little, you know, bulbousy part of the cord and do it there.
Casey:
But I am not as bothered slash offended by this as you seem to be.
Casey:
There was a lot of contention, both online and amongst personal friends of mine.
Casey:
Oh, this is ridiculous.
Casey:
Apple is making a new standard and using their own proprietary junk, blah, blah, blah.
Casey:
Why does Apple hate everyone?
Casey:
Why does Apple hate open?
Casey:
Blah, blah, blah.
Casey:
So the AirPods do use regular old Bluetooth, just like everything else.
Casey:
Now, they do sprinkle a fair helping of special sauce on top.
Casey:
And hopefully, Marco, you can fill in a little bit about the codecs that they're using, because some of my neckbeard audiophile friends are very perturbed with some of the codec-related things.
Casey:
Really?
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Yeah, the thing that I want to make clear, which I don't think we were very clear on last episode, is that AirPods do use Bluetooth.
Casey:
And I'm actually now quoting the really good BuzzFeed article about why Apple killed the headphone jack.
Casey:
AirPods use Bluetooth for their connection.
Casey:
Bluetooth headphones have historically suffered from a conga line of connectivity problems.
Casey:
Onerous pairing, dropped connections, crappy sound.
Casey:
Apple's confident it solved them all with that W1 chip.
Casey:
Quote, as you can imagine, by developing our own Bluetooth chip and controlling both ends of the pairing process, there's a lot of magic we can do.
Casey:
Quote, somebody named Ternus says, quote, we use a Bluetooth connection but covered in a lot of secret sauce.
Casey:
And if you haven't read that article, it's not terribly long and very, very worth it.
Casey:
So it is regular old Bluetooth.
Casey:
And apparently there's a little button on the back of the case of the little pillbox that you can either press or hold down in order to pair the AirPods with any traditional Bluetooth device.
John:
Yeah, that was totally not clear from the talk, from the presentation, because the word Bluetooth, from my recollection, was not even spoken during the presentation.
John:
All they said is, wow, wireless things and we have another one of those chips that's like a letter in a number, W1.
John:
And so for all the world, it seemed like Apple was like, look, Bluetooth sucks.
John:
We have a better solution.
John:
Here it is.
John:
It uses these W1 chips.
John:
But very quickly after that, we learned, actually, W1 is just a Bluetooth chip.
John:
But there is some extra stuff that Apple is doing to smooth over the parts of Bluetooth that don't work.
John:
But it's nice that, as you said, that special sauce or whatever it is, like some other protocol that they use to negotiate and sync and handshake with their own devices...
John:
All that just goes away.
John:
If you take the AirPods and use them with other devices, they're just plain old Bluetooth audio headphones.
John:
You can buy AirPods in theory and use them with your Android phone or with any other thing that supports Bluetooth.
John:
This is my understanding of it anyway.
John:
So how special is the W1?
John:
Is the W1 just a really nice Bluetooth chip?
John:
Does it have any extra hardware features or is that all in magic software?
John:
I don't know.
John:
This is another one of those mysteries that Apple's not really interested in telling the world about at this point.
John:
Like I said, they weren't even interested in telling the world that they were using Bluetooth.
John:
So if they have managed to make Bluetooth, as they say, to fix all the things that bother people about Bluetooth, that's just as good, if not better, than having to roll everything your own from scratch.
Marco:
We are sponsored this week by Fracture.
Marco:
Vivid photo prints directly on glass.
Marco:
Go to fractureme.com slash podcast and then mention our show for 10% off your first order.
Marco:
Fracture is a photo decor company that's out to rescue your favorite images from the digital ether.
Marco:
They print your photos directly onto glass and a laser cut rigid backing.
Marco:
So they're ready to display right out of the box.
Marco:
No framing, nothing else.
Marco:
They're finished.
Marco:
Awesome looking, totally printed photos directly on glass, but you know, edge to edge.
Marco:
It looks fantastic.
Marco:
My office is full of these things.
Marco:
We give them as gifts.
Marco:
They're amazing.
Marco:
They even include the wall anchor.
Marco:
You need to hang them up.
Marco:
Just upload your digital photo and pick your size on fracture me.com slash podcast.
Marco:
It is that simple.
Marco:
The fracture process makes the color and contrast to your photo really pop, and the sleek, frameless design lets your photos stand out while still matching any decorating style.
Marco:
Bring a special memory to life.
Marco:
Give it as a unique gift.
Marco:
People love these things as gifts.
Marco:
Or decorate your home with the moments that tell your story.
Marco:
Fractures come with a 60-day happiness guarantee, so you're sure to love your order.
Marco:
Each fracture print is handmade in Gainesville, Florida from U.S.
Marco:
source materials in their carbon-neutral factory.
Marco:
For more information and 10% off your first order, visit FractureMe.com slash podcast.
Marco:
I know that's weird.
Marco:
It sounds like a placeholder, but it's not.
Marco:
FractureMe.com slash podcast.
Marco:
And then mention our show in the one question survey that you get there.
Marco:
To help support the show, let them know you came from here.
Marco:
So once again, go to FractureMe.com slash podcast and mention our show for 10% off your first order.
Marco:
Thank you very much to Fracture for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
Okay, so I have a handful of super neckbeard audio nerd friends, and they were really ticked off that the headphone jack was going away and that Bluetooth was the new thing, mostly because they felt like they were going to have to either have a lossy encoding of their source material or alternatively re-encode even if their source material was lossy in the first place.
Casey:
So to back up a half step, MP3s, most AACs, if I recall correctly, and jump in whenever you're ready if I start going off the rails here, are lossy, which is to say they know what a human ear should be capable of hearing.
Casey:
And if there's information that's outside the range of what a human ear should be able to hear, they'll just drop it on the ground and just not save it, not include it in these MP3s, in these AAC files, etc.
Casey:
Because in theory, there's no point to having it.
Casey:
You can't hear it anyway.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
Now, super nerds, and so as an example, if I were to download a Dave Matthews Band concert, I know that you could do this with Phish as well.
Casey:
They'll often save these files as FLAC, which I forget what that stands for.
Casey:
Maybe you know, Marco?
Marco:
Free Lossless Audio Codec, I believe.
Casey:
There you go.
Casey:
That sounds perfect.
Casey:
And you can guess where this is going.
Casey:
FLAC means there is no loss.
Casey:
Everything that the microphone or whatever mechanism that captured the audio could hear, it gets saved the whole way through.
Casey:
So these neckbeards, these audio neckbeards were complaining, oh, either my flax or whatever the source may be are going to have to be lossy encoded.
Casey:
And that's BS.
Casey:
Now I'm losing things.
Casey:
Or if I start with, let's say, an MP3, most Bluetooth headsets don't support MP3.
Casey:
So then it gets re-encoded to something else like AEC or what is it that's super popular?
Casey:
AptX, which is a terrible name.
Casey:
Then it's going to get re-encoded.
Casey:
No matter what, it's just lost all the way down.
Casey:
This is horrible.
Casey:
And then tables are flipped and everyone gets angry.
Casey:
So how much of this is a regular person?
Casey:
Let's leave aside audio files for a second.
Casey:
How much of this is a regular person should I care about?
Casey:
Because I'm assuming the answer is zero, because that's about how much I care right now.
Marco:
So not only should you care zero, but they should care zero as well.
Marco:
And here's why.
Marco:
Bluetooth is a digital protocol, and digital audio is kind of large.
Marco:
It takes a lot of bits per second.
Marco:
And so in order to improve the efficiency of Bluetooth and save battery, because the more you transmit, the more battery you need, and to make it less skippy, because you don't want to be maxing out all possible bandwidth.
Marco:
You want to send as little as possible to minimize power usage and to maximize reliability of the connection.
Marco:
There's all these different codecs that you can use to either lossily or losslessly compress the audio going between your transmitting phone or whatever and your Bluetooth headset so that way you can save bandwidth and have a more reliable connection and better battery life.
Marco:
Lossless compression really does max out at roughly 50% just by math.
Marco:
It's nearly impossible to have an average compression ratio that's substantially different than approximately 2 to 1 with lossless compression.
Marco:
lossy compression can go 10 to 1 easily.
Marco:
And some of the more advanced ones can even go better.
Marco:
So your friends are all upset because the idea of lossily compressing audio is horrendous to a lot of audiophiles.
Marco:
In reality, it is very, very hard for most people to tell the difference.
Marco:
Even extremely well-trained people who know exactly what kind of artifacts to listen for have a very hard time often detecting the difference between a well-encoded MP3 or AC file and the uncompressed version or the losslessly compressed version.
Marco:
So the question of whether lossless compression is even necessary and detectable at all is certainly up for debate.
Marco:
I personally lean more towards the fact that lossless is a waste of space for almost everything and that it's not really necessary and that most people can't hear the difference.
Marco:
anyway in the realm of phone audio and bluetooth people blamed bluetooth headphones for sounding like crap on these codecs that they use to compress audio and it is generally true that the old a2dp standard did indeed have crappy audio quality because it was such a primitive standard so long ago that it had to have very simple electronics on both sides that one did kind of suck but
Marco:
But since then, we've had a few advances.
Marco:
The aptX codec that you mentioned is a big one that it can sound very good.
Marco:
Problem with aptX is that for these codecs to be supported for playback, both the phone and the headphones have to support them.
Marco:
and there are a lot of decently high-end and mid-range headphones support app decks these days but the iphone as far as i know to the best of my knowledge the iphone doesn't support it there's licensing fees and patents and everything involved as far as i know last time i checked it didn't support it and that wasn't that long ago i'm guessing no iphone supports app decks apple does have a license to use aac so
Marco:
AAC is lossy.
Marco:
You mentioned earlier it might be lossless.
Marco:
Nope, you're thinking of various AAC containers like M4A that can also contain lossless audio like the Apple Lossless Audio Codec, ALAC.
Casey:
Oh, yes, that is what I'm thinking of.
Casey:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marco:
Pure AAC is indeed lossy, but it's a pretty good codec.
Marco:
It's similar in general genre to MP3.
Marco:
It's slightly newer.
Marco:
It has some advancements here and there.
Marco:
So AAC is a decent codec.
Marco:
And the fact is that, as I mentioned earlier about the DACs and amps on phones, the vast majority of Bluetooth headphones that sound like crap sound like crap because of their crappy driver design and cheap components.
Marco:
It's not because they really need higher fidelity being transmitted to them from the phone or through their codec.
Marco:
That's not the problem that you need.
Marco:
You can sound way, way better even with the most basic MP3 or the most basic AAC encoding if you just have better headphones to begin with.
Marco:
And the reason why your friends don't even need to care about this is because if they're truly concerned about all this crap anyway, they probably use external DACs and amps on their phones, which means that the phone not having a headphone jack doesn't affect them at all because they were already using the lightning port to have USB DACs and amps.
Casey:
You know that's not the case in this particular context.
Casey:
I mean, I agree with you, but these particular friends of mine, and they're...
Casey:
They're smart guys, and I really do enjoy their company, but they are using just traditional headphone jacks on traditional phones.
Marco:
Yeah, well, then in that case, then the adapter, the lightning to headphone adapter, should probably be totally fine because then you avoid this problem entirely.
Marco:
Like, you're not being forced to use Bluetooth with the new phone.
Marco:
You're just being forced to use the lightning port or Bluetooth.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And again, most high-end audio files or really picky audio files have already been using USB and portable DACs and amps in the lightning port for years.
Marco:
Now, just the ones that were using the headphone jack have to use a little $9 adapter that is probably using the same quality DAC and amp that was inside the phone to begin with.
John:
Yeah.
John:
So for the AAC transmission, can it does it take an AAC song and just transmit it as is or does it have to double encode it?
John:
Does it have to take an AAC and then encode that as AAC and then send it?
John:
Is it like is it downgrading it like I've got a 256 kilobit AAC and then it's got a.
Marco:
re-encoded as 96 to send it over bluetooth so it is certainly possible for the for the software stack involved there to detect whether something is aac and and is within all the all the right parameters to be compatible and to just send it without recompression that is possible but given the design of the various av foundation frameworks and core audio and everything i think it's pretty unlikely that's what's happening it's possible as i said but i think it's unlikely
John:
So you don't think you could hear the difference if you have a double encoded AAC?
John:
Because I grant that most people can't hear the difference of a single AAC if it's at a reasonable bit rate.
John:
But if you had a 128 and then re-encoded it again at 96, a double encoded, you think you can't hear any artifacts on that?
Marco:
If it's a lower bitrate, and especially if it's as low as 96, then you'd probably hear that.
Marco:
But if it's like 128, 160, 192, like in that range, especially the higher end of that rate, if it's like 160, I don't think you'd hear it.
John:
But like if you did double 160, double 128, like take a 128 and then re-encode it again as 128.
John:
Like you're getting a loss every time, right?
John:
Yeah.
Marco:
Well, not necessarily.
Marco:
I mean, there are small errors introduced in the decoding and encoding.
Marco:
But the way most of these codecs work is by discarding frequencies that they don't think you'll hear or reducing the precision in things that they don't think you'll hear.
Marco:
If the input audio is already lacking those frequencies or those details, you might not actually hear it very much.
Marco:
It's not going to be like generational loss of a cassette tape.
Marco:
It's going to be different errors and different imprecisions, but I bet it will be a lot less noticeable than you think.
John:
i've never actually done that experiment but i'm assuming that if you were just to run this on a loop it would be like generational loss it's just a question of what's the slope of the the line does it get crappy after five re-encodes or just take like 105 i don't know well sure yeah and and you know here the answer is two so it's like it's not it's very unlikely again it's very unlikely to be noticeable on even really good headphones it might not be noticeable on
Marco:
let alone the headphones most people are using to listen through Bluetooth.
Marco:
I mean, the realm of Bluetooth headphones is terrible.
Marco:
There are very few that even have, like, moderately good audio quality.
Marco:
And that's not because of the codecs.
Marco:
It's because of the crappy drivers.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
I wouldn't hold your breath on this being the answer to really anything.
Marco:
We're already at AAC, apparently.
Marco:
That's good enough for the vast majority of uses here.
Marco:
Most people are not going to notice any difference that is actually attributable to the codec itself or any possible transmission re-encoding that might be taking place.
John:
I would hope that one of Apple's advantages, maybe not in the W1, but in the W3 or whatever, once the minimum bandwidth requirement goes up a little bit, would be to go end-to-end and take your mastered for iTunes 256 kilobit AACs and just send them exactly as is.
John:
to your headphones like you know they if anybody could pull that off it's them because they would literally control every piece of hardware and software in that chain um and even though it may be simpler to just say oh just you will you just universally encode everything and it will be fine being able to do that is something they could tout in a presentation and whether or not you know they they will cater to audio files a little bit whether or not you would actually hear the double encoding
John:
especially if they get up to the point where they can handle the bandwidth of 256.
John:
It just seems like it would be more efficient to not have to encode to just send it as is if they know it's AAC already in it.
John:
And like you said, it fits within whatever the bandwidth constraints are.
Marco:
Yeah, sure.
Marco:
I mean, it's, you know, bandwidth experience also like AAC has a lot of optional features, you know, just like all the crappy video codec complexity that's out there.
Marco:
Like there's all these optional features and like kind of out of spec things you might get in a bit stream.
Marco:
So there is also a good technical reason why they would want to.
Marco:
Just always transcode what they receive into a certain profile that they know they support on the other end.
Marco:
And also, I think, again, with the design of these APIs, it would be difficult to have a way to pass through the original lossily encoded data without decoding it first.
Marco:
like all the way through AV player and everything.
Marco:
Like there might be some of that involved to do things like surround pass through, but I doubt there's much of it.
Marco:
And, and that would just be complexity for this very minor gain that most people wouldn't notice all to send very, very slightly, probably imperceptibly better sound to crappy little earbud drivers.
Marco:
our final sponsor this week is igloo go to igloo software.com slash atp for an intranet you will actually like anybody that's worked in a corporate environment like casey and john knows how painful intranets always are the content is stale the interface is ugly and you can't access it on your phone because they were built like in 1985
Marco:
igloo is an intranet you'll actually like it's designed for the user but it has the features to actually sell to the businesses so igloo gives you the flexibility to get your work done how you want where you want and on whatever device you want igloo truly is building a product meant for 2016 not 1997.
Marco:
You can share news, organize your files, coordinate calendars, and manage projects all in one place.
Marco:
Everything on Igloo can be optionally social with comments and like buttons, and anyone can add content based on their permission levels with drag-and-drop widgets and in what-you-see-is-what-you-get editor.
Marco:
and igloo makes use of responsive web design and modern web technologies so it looks fantastic on all your devices and everything works on all your devices you can annotate documents on a blackberry if you want to everything works on all your devices because of modern web technology at igloo so
Marco:
Sign up today at igloosoftware.com slash ATP for a free trial and get yourself started.
Marco:
Once again, igloosoftware.com slash ATP for a free trial.
Marco:
Thank you very much to Igloo for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
All right, so apparently there's a Jobs-related story about the AirPod design philosophy.
John:
Steve Jobs?
John:
Not Jobs-related, Jobs style.
John:
I was thinking after the presentation of the EarPods was if Steve Jobs had given that presentation, one thing he liked to do when introducing hardware products is to say something, especially if it's like a...
John:
funny or interesting anecdote about the process of designing it of like why did we decide that this product should look like the way you see it now and what did we you know what was our thinking we thought of this the obvious idea and why did we reject that why did we go with this the the probably the most famous one is his discussions maybe wasn't even the keynote but subsequently about the uh
John:
the flat panel imac the one that was on the time magazine cover that leaked it had the little semicircle base and then the uh the screen and talking about how the obvious it was in the presentation the obvious thing was just to take a big screen and put computers and it's crap on the back of it but they didn't like that so they rethought it you know anyway the ear pods the obvious story to me is uh you know if you can like make up the the design thing is like
John:
They're going to have these things in our ears and they're not going to have wires.
John:
Like that seems like that's the premise, right?
John:
There's not going to be wires on them at all.
John:
They're just going to be things in the ears.
John:
The part that goes in your ear is probably going to be the same shape that we figured out for the ear pods or whatever.
John:
But what about the rest of it?
John:
We have to find place for a battery and for all the chips and stuff like that.
John:
What shape should these be?
John:
A lot of the ones that are on the market that are similar to the AirPods are shaped like snails or little turds or acorns.
John:
Some of them have sticks coming out of them.
John:
But you can imagine if you just start with a clean slate and say, what shape should we make the little things that poke in your ears?
John:
There's lots of possibilities because obviously the part that's not in your ear can be almost any shape.
John:
They're not going to be that big.
John:
You want it to look nice and to be easy to grab and take in and out.
John:
And I can imagine if Steve Jobs was there, he would show slides of other competitors' things that look like snails and say, but we decided not to do that.
John:
We thought about it and tried lots of different designs, but in the end, we realized the solution was sitting there right in front of us.
John:
Just take the AirPods that we know and love, snip, snip,
John:
and cut off the wires done because conveniently the little white stem thing is a perfect place for a cylindrical battery and lucky apple finally gets to make a cylindrical battery i guess they did for the pencil too although i don't even know if they're cylindrical in there but hey cylinder is the shape of your traditional battery uh it's got a nice handle for you to grab it and i think there is a slightly better chance that you won't lose them when they're awkwardly shaped than if they were actually shaped like little snails
John:
you know like the fact that it's like longer and has this protrusion coming from it even though it might look a little bit more awkward it's just a generally a better design but like if you look at them they look for all the world like someone took
John:
uh you know the regular wired apple earpods and just cut the wires off of them on them and already people are selling wires that you can attach to them so you don't lose them which is ridiculous although i don't understand why the the we're talking about this thing we all saw like someone selling a sort of a clip-on wire that you attach to your airpods to keep you from losing them but it clips on like a little cuff like that clips on like there's little metal things on the bottom of them right they should be magnetic
John:
The little case has little magnets in it, right?
John:
You should make... I don't understand.
John:
That's staring you right in the face.
John:
Maybe they can't sell those little tiny, whatever they are, those rare earth magnet things that kids swallow and they go in their intestines and have to, you know, anyway.
Casey:
Well, they also don't want to cover the mics because I thought the microphones were at the very, very bottom of the little...
John:
i don't know protrusion yeah you'd have to make it like hollow or do something but it would be anyway that if apple made these things which is a ridiculous thing about it they would do that but anyway um that was not discussed like and uh in in the presentation there was no sort of job style story about how they arrived at the design that is essentially exactly like the airpods with the wires cut off but i think that's
John:
really like not obvious if you if you'd asked me what shape will the apple things be like i would have lots of ideas but it wouldn't occur to me to just take the existing ones and cut off the wires but of course after you see it you realize even though it looks kind of weird it does have a lot of advantages in particular i think having a little handle
John:
Like having a thing to grab it by the hand, an obvious place to grab it so you're not grabbing a little snail that's in your ear.
John:
You're grabbing a stick, right?
John:
That seems like a big win to me.
John:
And then, of course, the place to put the battery is probably easier to hide a battery in a little stick than it is to try to find a place in the snail shell to wedge the battery.
Casey:
That does make sense, especially since, oh, yeah, look at what we've done.
Casey:
It's so perfect.
Casey:
Now we're just going to make it perfecter.
Casey:
Goodness.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So let's round out by talking about the iPhone 7 Plus cameras.
Casey:
And there's been a plethora of debate over what they can and cannot do.
Casey:
And a mutual friend of all of ours, Matthew Panzarino, who is editor-in-chief of TechCrunch, wrote a really fantastic review of the iPhone 7.
Casey:
And you knew it was going to be good when it starts as follows.
Casey:
This is the very opening.
Casey:
My kid farts a lot.
Casey:
Farting and eating is pretty much all he does.
Casey:
And that's because he's four weeks old.
Casey:
But anyway, any iPhone review that starts with a story about flatulence is good with me.
Casey:
So in this story, he tells us a little bit more about the iPhone 7 camera.
Casey:
And so he says, every time you take a picture with the iPhone 7 Plus, both the wide angle and telephoto fire off.
Casey:
Yes, two 12 megapixel cameras for every shot.
Casey:
This could be a prime driver behind the increase in the iPhone 7 Plus's memory to three gigabytes.
Casey:
Both images are needed due to an Apple technique it's calling Fusion internally.
Casey:
Fusion takes data from both sensors and merges them into the best possible picture for any condition.
Casey:
If, for instance, there's a low-light scene that has some dark areas, the image processing chip could choose to pick up some image data, pixels or other stuff like luminance, from the brighter F1.8 wide angle and mix it in with the data from the F2.8 telephoto, creating a composite... I can't pronounce it.
Casey:
It's composite.
Casey:
Yeah, that's it.
Casey:
It's actually pronounced bazelle.
Casey:
On the fly, without any input from the user.
Casey:
This was debated a lot over the last week.
Casey:
Do both cameras fire, and do you get data from both cameras when you take a picture?
Casey:
And according to Matthew Panzarino, who I trust, the answer is unequivocally yes, both of them fire.
Marco:
Yeah, I saw there's actually a developer document somewhere along the way where basically at the API level you can specify, like if you need certain low-level access, things like raw controls and things like that, then you have to just pick one and use that one.
Marco:
But the default mode appears to really be this kind of mishmash that uses both and tries to be intelligent about it.
Marco:
So that's cool.
Marco:
I worry a little bit about if there's going to be any kind of artifacts from that.
Marco:
but I assume Apple thought of that and worked around that in software, so we'll see.
Marco:
That's pretty cool.
Marco:
The other thing that we need to cover with the camera, which is kind of big, which is kind of related to this, is that what they're calling the telephoto lens is...
Marco:
not as good in a few pretty critical ways.
Marco:
You might not want the data from it necessarily.
Marco:
I guess it depends on how they're combining it.
Marco:
And this has kind of actually got me into questioning whether I'm getting the plus or not.
Marco:
So basically, we know from the keynote that it was only f2.8 compared to f1.8 of the wide lens, and that results in a lot less light coming in, and therefore...
Marco:
In low light, you're going to have a lot more noise coming from that sensor because it's going to have to crank up sensitivity to make up for the lack of light coming in.
Marco:
The other problem is kind of related to that, which is that the telephoto lens does not have image stabilization.
Marco:
Basically, you know, it's the difference between what the 6 Plus and 6S Plus have had over the 6 and 6S camera because the pluses have always had optical stabilization on the main cameras and the minuses, I guess, have not until the 7.
Marco:
And so you can see in the reviews that compare the 6S to the 6S Plus camera, you can usually see in their low-light photos a pretty noticeable difference because the image stabilizer allows the camera to have a longer shutter speed, as long as nobody's moving, to have a longer shutter speed without the shake of your hands getting in the way and making it blurry.
Marco:
And so in low-light...
Marco:
Longer shutter speed means, again, lower sensitivity needed, you know, less boosting of the signal on the sensor and therefore less noise in the picture.
Marco:
So the fact that the telephoto does not have stabilization will generally mean that, you know, in any kind of moderate to low light, basically indoors, the pictures from the telephoto camera are going to be noticeably noisier than the ones from the wide camera.
Marco:
And additionally, because of that f2.8, it's going to make it even worse.
Marco:
So basically, the telephoto camera is going to be mostly an outdoor camera.
Marco:
You can use it inside, but it won't be very good.
Marco:
The second camera... Oh, and also, people on Reddit analyzed the...
Marco:
the exif data from some of those sports illustrated sample pictures and they seem to conclude that the telephoto sensor is also smaller there's some various conflicting reports about this from like apple pr statements so the sensor might be smaller if the sensor is smaller that also means generally speaking usually more noise because the pixels are smaller and collect less light so again more amplification necessary
Marco:
Anyway, so all of this... There's lots of good reasons why these might be the case.
Marco:
Space considerations.
Marco:
A longer lens involves differently shaped optics that are probably deeper.
Marco:
And these are... I mean, these aren't like...
Marco:
$1,000 cameras in here, they're probably like $40 or $50 cameras, and that adds up to the bill of materials, to these things.
Marco:
They're already adding a second one.
Marco:
To add a second one that's even more expensive and even larger and even more mechanically complicated would probably have a noticeable effect on their cost and on their margins they probably don't want.
Marco:
so it's probably i'm guessing cost is the secondary reason and that physical constraints are the primary reason but whatever the reasons it's kind of unfortunate um that the the telephoto lens is just not as well specced as the wide lens so i'm actually i've decided for myself that i'm probably going to do the regular size seven this year and not the plus also the plus is giant here's the thing about apple and this pr cycle the day of
John:
I heard from multiple different people who were in contact with Apple PR different things, which is not typical for Apple.
John:
Usually Apple PR has everything.
John:
I don't want to say specific people and specific facts.
John:
These are minor facts that don't really matter in the grand scheme of things, but where...
John:
Apple PR will tell one person one thing to a very specific technical question and tell a different person a different thing.
John:
Like, obviously, Apple PR is not a single person, so it could just be two different people.
John:
Like, anyway, it seems like their story was not exactly straight.
John:
But on the sensors, I have heard that Apple is very adamant that they are exactly the same sensor.
Marco:
All right, well, whatever the case, they still have the optical disadvantages where it's a much smaller aperture and the lack of image stabilization.
John:
Yeah, the image stabilization is the obvious one.
John:
I mean, that one, like Apple confirms, obviously, and you can look at it in Apple's little pictures.
John:
For the Fusion thing, last show we were talking about whether...
John:
the zooming was using was blending the two picture now it turns out like everything is blending the two pictures now forget about the zooming just in normal operation everything's blending like and like you said we'll put the link in the show notes to the av foundation you know uh documentation for using the camera in fuse mode and how you lose all this control or whatever what's interesting to me is if i have one of these one of the first things i would do is put my finger over one of the cameras take a bunch of pictures just to try to use the you know like that or at least like a color filter or something
John:
Right.
John:
Something that they hinted at in the thing like, oh, this whatever their image processor with billions of calculations and every single, you know, whatever.
John:
Yeah, because that's it is doing a fairly complicated task of what I assume is trying to see if there is anything worthwhile to combine from, you know, the potentially blurrier, differently zoomed in image from the other camera.
John:
to you know to put together to make a bigger better picture and so that algorithm has to be smart enough to like not make your pictures worse if it still happens that it's just below the light threshold of the the good camera you know or the the wide angle camera it can get enough light but the zoomed in one is all like noisy and gross i hope it will be smart enough not to make your what would be a perfectly good one camera picture worse by trying to blend it
John:
same thing if i cover up my one of the cameras with my finger i would hope it would be smart enough to say oh well there's no useful data and that other thing so don't combine it and have it look exactly the same i guess if you were a developer and you have control with these apis to say i want to either use this camera alone or this camera alone or do the fusion that would be fun to like you know do a series of three pictures with your finger over the thing obviously the picture of the just your finger is going to be all just you know
John:
black or pink or whatever color it happens to be depending on the lighting conditions of you know shining through your translucent skin and then uh the other one would be clear and then the fusion picture would it be the same as the single camera picture that had a clear shot or would it be like worse i don't know anyway this is all going on behind the scenes it's all supposed to be entirely transparent i understand why apple doesn't care to explain technical details if it just works it just works and that's great but i am very curious about exactly
John:
what they're doing under the covers and if like you said marco is it going to make your pictures better in a noticeable way or will you just never know that it's happening and you also have to trust that things would be worse if it wasn't combining all these pixels so ben mccarthy um has an iphone app called obscura and so he knows the programmatic interfaces to the cameras uh really really well
Casey:
And he had confirmed, and I just wanted to call this out, that in order to get manual exposure in focus, and this is what you were alluding to earlier, Marco, on the 7 Plus, you cannot use the fused camera mode.
Casey:
You have to say either I want the telephoto or the wide one.
Casey:
And so we'll put a link in the show notes to that.
Casey:
the depth mapping um buzzfeed says because both cameras in the 7 plus can be run simultaneously it can capture nine layers of depth from foreground to background i've also seen and i don't have a link handy but i've seen rumors that there is an ir sensor or something like that sitting in between the two lenses did you guys see that i took that out of the notes because i someone was just saying because looking at the parts there's like a hole in the middle but i don't know if that's for an ir like that's the question
John:
Where does it get the depth map from?
John:
Last show I said these cameras are really close to each other, so you can get depth from two cameras that are separated from each other.
John:
The more they're separated, the easier it is to get depth information out.
John:
You could also get it with an IR spray or something, but I have a feeling if that's what was going on, we would know about it by now.
John:
Anyway, another one of the mysteries of Apple's magical hardware.
John:
How are they getting the depth information?
John:
But the nine layers says they're not getting that much depth information.
John:
Nine layers is pretty granular for an entire scene.
John:
I think, like...
John:
the uh was it 360 had the uh the first uh what the hell was the thing called boy it's bad that i can't even remember the name of it you know what i'm talking about right you stand in front of the xbox and wave your arms around the connect connect there we go yes the first one of those had fairly primitive depth mapping to figure out where everybody was in the room but it was way more than nine layers so uh the camera this and these layers are going to be used for the
John:
the the fake depth of field effect that uh as far as i'm aware no one has actually tried yet right even reviewers don't have this yet because it's like later this year yeah so we still don't know how that works but that's what the depth is for um and you know and nine layers is from this buzzfeed article i assume we confirmed from apple so don't expect miracles in terms of uh a mapping of uh what's near and what's far
Marco:
Yeah, and you can kind of see that in their demo photos that show off the focay effect.
Marco:
You can tell the edge detection of the subject is kind of crude.
Marco:
Things are blurred that shouldn't necessarily be blurred depth-wise.
Marco:
What we're seeing there is probably just the effect of the depth map being fairly imprecise.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Dan Hickson has written about RAW, and he has pointed out to us that RAW is not a new feature of the iPhone 7, but a new feature of iOS 10 that works with any iPhones that have 12 megapixel cameras.
Casey:
So I believe that's just 6S and 7.
Casey:
Is that correct?
Casey:
that's right yes 6s and forward although i think also the se oh yeah i think you are right actually that's a very good point and consider that uh he says he's working on a raw camera app for ios 10 and here's why he and his partner are professional photographers the main reason we want raw on our phones is because apple's noise reduction algorithm is too aggressive it's optimized for iphone screens and looks good there but if you zoom in on a photo and you look that you took recently the edges are still milky and yucky
Casey:
I even have a friend who is also a pro photographer who has begun stockpiling iPhone 5Ss because the noise reduction is less aggressive there.
Casey:
And I feel like I've also seen previously mentioned Ben McCarthy say some of the same things, that the noise reduction is really aggressive on the Apple side of things.
Casey:
And so if you take the raw image, then you can apply whatever noise reduction you want.
Marco:
Thanks a lot to my three sponsors this week, Linode, Fracture, and Igloo, and we will see you next week.
Marco:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin because it was accidental.
Casey:
Accidental.
Casey:
Oh, it was accidental.
John:
Accidental.
Casey:
John didn't do any research.
John:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him because it was accidental.
John:
It was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
Casey:
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
Casey:
So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R
Casey:
We should perhaps talk about the ordering process and what we ended up doing.
Casey:
It sounds like.
Casey:
So what did you order, Marco?
Casey:
I thought you were ordering a plus.
Marco:
So I did order a Plus, but I decided at the very last minute to go for Jet Black because I wanted the grip.
Marco:
I was kind of on the fence between regular Black and Jet Black.
Marco:
And on the Plus, I really wanted extra grip because I really wanted to use a caseless just because it's so big.
Marco:
And as I mentioned, I had been using a Plus for the last week or so just to kind of add a sanity check to make sure, like, do I really want a phone this big?
Marco:
And the problem is that minute one, the earliest ship date anybody got on a Jet Black Plus was September 26th.
Marco:
By the time my order went through, mine, which had been quoted at that time, was actually moved up to October 4th through 10th.
Marco:
So, like, you know, I mean, granted that's only like three weeks away or something, but I really want this phone now, and I really have reasons to get it now.
Marco:
Like, for instance, Overcast has a prominent feature that depends on the hardware of the phone's built-in speaker and profiling it to minimize distortion during voice boost.
Marco:
I really would like the new phone so I can profile the speaker and I can get this feature out the door so that all the people who get these phones can have overcast sound good and correct out of their speakers.
Marco:
Plus, I just want the phone.
Marco:
I'm a nerd.
Marco:
I'm impatient.
Marco:
I want to talk about it on the show.
Marco:
I want it for the various minor business purposes.
Marco:
So yeah, to wait till early to mid-October kind of would suck.
Marco:
So in the meantime...
Marco:
I started thinking, you know, what else could I, you know, maybe could I, should I just like go into the store and try to get a reservation and everything and try to get like, get one in the meantime.
Marco:
And then whichever one comes first, just keep that one and cancel the other order.
Marco:
And the problem is I had all this crap with AT&T where like, basically they, Apple is not very happy to sell you T-Mobile unlocked ones in very much quantity because most of those are probably being resold on the gray market.
Marco:
Wait, wait, wait.
Marco:
Really?
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Oh, yeah.
Marco:
The T-Mobile stock went out way earlier.
Marco:
The T-Mobile ship dates went out way further ahead than everyone else's way faster.
Casey:
Oh, I see what you're saying.
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
A little secret between us and the listeners, which we're not going to tell anyone, is that I might have ordered a second phone for somebody else that lives in the house that may not know this yet.
Casey:
And that one, yeah, totally.
Casey:
And that one I ordered is T-Mobile because on the off chance that I get murdered for spending a lot of money on this phone that wasn't really asked for, then it would be a very easy return.
Casey:
It wouldn't be set up against her.
Casey:
Or his, but her phone number.
Casey:
And so I just got a completely vanilla T-Mobile phone and I don't remember what the ship date was.
Casey:
To your point, it was out of ways, but I did this like hours after waking up last Friday.
Marco:
Also, if it wasn't a plus, then the dates were a lot closer.
Casey:
Yeah, it is not a plus.
Casey:
And I bring all this up just to say that for one phone, like I was, as far as Apple is concerned, like a complete rando.
Casey:
And for one T-Mobile phone, they didn't blink an eye and it was super easy.
Marco:
That's good.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Anyway, so I was living with the Plus all weekend and I came to the conclusion that I can have a phone that big.
Marco:
If it's really compelling for all the other reasons, I can totally live with the plus size phone.
Marco:
so when i came home i lived there for a little bit longer and then i switched uh this morning back to my 6s just to kind of have the other side then and my god i love the 6s so much more like that a boy the same feeling that people get when they switch to the se after using a six for a while uh they're like oh my god i can reach everything and it fits in all my pockets and it's so small and light
Marco:
That's the feeling I got switching from the Plus back to the Success.
Marco:
It was such a big difference.
Marco:
And the Plus, yes, the screen is way bigger and way nicer.
Marco:
The cameras, even though the telephoto camera is not as optically high-spec as the other one, I would still love to have dual cameras and would gladly pay $100 extra if they could be in the same size body as the regular Success.
Marco:
The battery life is indeed better.
Marco:
Again, not as much if you're using the screen, but it is indeed noticeably better.
Marco:
But there are still some things about it that annoy me.
Marco:
I still hate that springboard rotates.
Marco:
I still hate that apps have that weird like half iPad view when you accidentally rotate them to the point where I typically have to keep the phone with rotation lock on, which I never have to do with my 6S.
Marco:
But on the Plus, I really just have to keep the rotation lock on just to tolerate all the various weird stuff that goes on.
Marco:
It is really substantially larger and noticeably heavier to the point where it's less comfortable to use while reading in bed while holding it up above me.
Marco:
And it does not fit in very many pockets very easily.
Marco:
And also, yeah, the battery life is much longer, but when you do want to charge it up, it charges a lot more slowly because it's a bigger battery and charges at the same milliamp hour rate.
Marco:
So it charges more slowly.
Marco:
The battery case is not available for it.
Marco:
And yeah, it's really big.
Marco:
And
Marco:
So I can totally do that.
Marco:
However, next year, it's going to be a lot smaller in all likelihood.
Marco:
If all these rumors are true, then the plus size screen will be available on a much smaller phone body next year.
Marco:
And we can already look and see what Samsung and everyone else does with getting rid of bezels and maybe slightly curving the screen around and all this other crap.
Marco:
You can get a big screen in a small phone body.
Marco:
And that's probably what Apple's doing with the next iPhone for next year with this big redesign with no bezels.
Marco:
And one more year would also give it a chance to maybe improve that telephoto camera a little bit.
Marco:
And for us to hear more from actual users and actual analysis and deep testing to see how good is that second camera in practice?
Marco:
How useful is it really?
Marco:
Is there anything weird about the dual camera setup?
Marco:
As I said, any weird artifacts with the picture being combined and everything?
Marco:
We will know all that in a year.
Marco:
and in a year i'll be able to get all the benefits of the plus phone in all likelihood in a much smaller physical shape and size so i think i'm just gonna wait till then always a plus made never a plus yeah so so i think i'm gonna i'm gonna go with the regular size the 4.7 inch 7 this this year and also
Marco:
the difference between the the 7 and the 7 plus like in in various specs and everything is a lot closer than it used to be like between the 6 and the 6 plus the battery life is way closer it's it's very similar now actually i mean the plus is still a lot more like if the screen is off as i said but like during for screen on use the battery life is actually very close uh and the battery got a lot bigger in the 7 and only a
Marco:
Oh, and also the 7 camera got the optical image stabilization, so that now the wide-angle camera is identical between the two, which it wasn't before.
Marco:
So combined with little annoyances about the Plus, like the weird iPad half modes and just the large physical size,
Marco:
I'm just a lot happier with the regular 6S size right now.
Marco:
And so again, next year when they change the sizes, maybe I will be less happy with it and I will go up again, you know, back to the plus there.
Marco:
Or maybe I will go down and use like, you know, basically like...
Marco:
So my theory is that the SE name will make a lot more sense in the future because the SE is probably a temporary model inserted as a bridge until we can get the smaller iPhone bodies that were supposed to be out maybe a year ago.
Marco:
So that's basically my theory on the SE there in four seconds.
Marco:
But basically, the next 4.7-inch phone might be close enough in dimensions to the SE that they don't need it anymore.
Marco:
So anyway, that's that's my my theory that the SE will never be updated.
Marco:
And it was just a bridge model to get them until next year when the 4.7 is small enough.
Marco:
The SE customers will tolerate it.
Marco:
So anyway, so the answer basically is right now I have nothing ordered because I couldn't once I can't.
Marco:
So I canceled my my six plus that was going to ship in October so I could basically reuse the AT&T verification on a on a different phone.
Marco:
but then that stopped working and for the last few days i've tried here and there placing orders and i've gotten the apple thing saying here's here's a reservation we couldn't kind of contact the carrier system but here's a reservation for you and then i'd go follow through and then it says you know what never mind we actually couldn't do it again um so i keep going through all these stupid processes and i still can't get an order in so i have i have like a last minute order for a t-mobile one that's going to arrive like in early october also you're so desperate to have this phone
Marco:
Well, it's the same phone.
Marco:
T-Mobile, it's the same phone as AT&T.
Marco:
I'm buying a full price anyway.
John:
I know.
John:
I'm just saying you need to have it now.
Casey:
If you had anything in front of you, if the world was your oyster, you would get a 128.7 Jet Black.
Casey:
Is that correct?
Marco:
That's right.
Okay.
Casey:
John, what about your household?
Casey:
Last I heard, you were going to wait on yourself because you wanted to see both in hand before you made a decision.
Casey:
But what about Tina?
Casey:
Did she order one?
Casey:
Was she planning to?
John:
No, she's got a 6S Plus.
John:
It's not her year.
John:
I mean, I'm assuming she's going to get a watch, but she's not ready to pick that out yet.
John:
So, yeah.
John:
No hurry.
John:
I didn't order anything.
John:
I'll just wander into a store at some point and take a look at them.
John:
I need to see them in person first and then decide what I'm going to do.
Yeah.
John:
I'm just going to wait and whatever shortage and shipping dates and other weird things are going on, I'll wait until that's all over and I don't have to deal with it.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
I ordered myself a matte black 7128.
Casey:
I am not a member of the Plus Club.
Casey:
I was flirting with it real hard for a little while.
Casey:
But when I saw the details about the camera, I felt like, you know what, there's nothing that's really enticing me about Plus Club except battery.
Casey:
But like Marco was just explaining, the battery's gotten a lot better than the 7 supposedly anyway.
Casey:
So it is apparently sitting in Louisville, Kentucky as we speak.
Casey:
Should be delivered Friday.
Casey:
And I am very stoked.
Casey:
And then if I had secretly ordered a phone for Aaron, which I totally did not do, it would be a 7-128 in rose gold.
Casey:
And that's delivered in like mid-October or something like that, hypothetically.
John:
Before we end, I just want to take one more run at justifying what I hope is the first software update.
John:
iOS 10 to allow me to send people lasers with reduced motion on it.
John:
Right?
John:
Because first of all, as we discussed last time, it's baffling to people that those two things are connected in any way.
Casey:
Why is that baffling?
John:
I don't get why that's baffling.
John:
Because all the people that I happen to know
John:
who have reduced motion on, have it merely as an aesthetic preference.
John:
They're not doing it because they experience huge amounts of vertigo.
John:
They just like it a little bit better.
John:
Like me.
John:
That's why I have it.
John:
I experience a little tiny bit of vertigo, but not enough that I would be better.
John:
I just like it better the other way.
John:
So it's a preference.
John:
It's like a preference in the literal sense.
John:
You just like it better.
John:
You don't need it, but you just like it.
John:
And I like it so much, I don't want to go back to the other way.
John:
Now, I totally understand that...
John:
have people who need the motion to be reduced because they it really affects their ability to use their phone also don't want to see lasers good all thumbs up but there i mean there have to be people out there like me who have reduced motion on just because they feel like it but it's a pretty strong preference but they also want to send people lasers so all you need to do is have a separate preference in messages and
John:
that you know off by default that says even when reduced motion is off give me lasers that's it it's one little toggle throw that in there uh because i have yet to meet a person who was able to figure out on their own without you know like scratching their head and just randomly guessing they reduce motion is the reason they can't send people lasers and then to agree that that's a thing that oh okay well i that's you know now that i understand it should just be that way because people just want it the way they want it they want reduced motion on they want to send lasers right
John:
they have to allow that they just have to i this cannot stand i don't think this is going to happen personally it cannot stand you can't leave it like this people want to like you know how many times i've been to the reduced motion setting sending people lasers i need to send lasers okay it needs to be done and yet i gotta go back to the setting app like i'm trying i'm working on like i leave it on the reduced motion toggle so i can turn it off go back to the app send my lasers it's just it's untenable this they can't leave it like
John:
i completely i completely disagree with you and it's best summarized actually by the tipster in the chat do not use accessibility features to tweak the phone problem solved i agree with tips no no no no no say like that's not problem solved people people want to do this i understand why they're there and i'm not arguing that this should be like the default obviously it should work this way the defaults are correct this is the way it should work but there are there are people who used we all know them who use accessibility features as aesthetic preferences and
John:
You can't just deny those people exist, so you shouldn't be using them that way.
John:
Look, they're there, they're switches people can toggle, and they're the kind of switches that people can toggle.
John:
Like, I've had reduced motion on since iOS 7.
John:
That, as far as I'm concerned, that is the iPhone experience to me, is with reduced motion turned on.
John:
Most people who have reduced motion turned on purely for, like, reasons of personal preference, that's how they've been using phones for years.
John:
To say that you have to choose between that and seeing confetti and balloons, it's just not...
John:
I really think they're going to change this because it just seems obvious to me that Apple has misestimated exactly how annoying it is not to be able to send lasers.
Casey:
I am, first of all, deeply amused that you are this fired up over something that is so kitschy and silly.
Casey:
But beyond that, I understand where you're coming from, but I completely disagree.
Casey:
And again, I think that the fact that you happen to prefer this aesthetically, well, tough noogies for you, because that's not the purpose of it.
Casey:
The purpose of it is to prevent issues.
John:
It doesn't matter what the purpose is.
John:
It doesn't matter how people use it.
John:
It doesn't matter what the purpose is.
John:
It only matters how people use it.
John:
You can make things for whatever purpose you want.
John:
It's like the force quit thing.
John:
It doesn't matter that the purpose is like if your app is frozen, use it.
John:
It only matters how people use it.
John:
And people use it to obsessively force quit all their apps to clear off their thing.
John:
You can design a feature with one intention, but when people use it, they're showing you.
John:
Well, you may have designed it that way, but here's how we're using it.
John:
And you have to take that input back into the system and say, well, if people really don't like a bunch of clutter on their app switchers, maybe we should give them a way to get rid of clutter or have an option that says never show more than three things in the app switcher, because it's clear that people are really annoyed by seeing little screens on the app switcher.
John:
And even though it's supposed to be there to exit an app that's hung, people use it for something different.
John:
So you have to reexamine.
John:
Now, maybe it's only me and literally the five other people that I know that do this and the rest of the entire world never runs with reduced motion on or they run with reduced motion on.
John:
And once they found out they couldn't send lasers, they either didn't care about the lasers or didn't care about reduced motion anymore.
John:
But I find it hard to believe that there aren't lots of people out there using accessibility features, quote unquote, for the wrong reasons.
John:
who are annoyed now that they can't use the new features and messages.
Casey:
So really, you just want to be able to tweak everything.
Casey:
So really, it comes back to what Marco said.
Casey:
This is not a million tweaks.
Casey:
This comes back to Marco suggesting you get an Android phone.
John:
I'm in the Marco camp on this one.
John:
I would gladly trade, for example, the home button tweak, which I'm amazed exists.
John:
Like, I'm amazed that home button tweak exists because it's totally like, look, with the raise to wake, you don't need it anymore.
John:
So why would we ever give you an option to go back to the old way?
John:
But they did.
John:
You know why?
John:
It's just one little switch.
John:
I will trade that in a second for not having a crippled version of messages with reduced motion on it.
John:
but so what i don't understand though is i thought you were made physically ill by having reduced motion off a little bit of vertical but not much oh see the truth comes out but anyway i don't want to turn the whole point is i don't want to turn reduced motion back off that's why i'm not doing that i just want i i'm not bothered at all i don't get any illness at all from balloons and confetti and lasers see what i'm saying
Marco:
I mean, you know, everyone has one of these things.
Marco:
Like, you know, I mentioned earlier my annoyance with rotation lock on the 6 Plus.
Marco:
I would love it if apps had individual rotation lock settings.
Marco:
It's not going to happen.
John:
Twitter used to have that.
John:
Twitter used to have that, and they got rid of it in favor of the OS one.
John:
I remember those days.
Marco:
So Overcast has one too, but there's not going to be a system preference somewhere that lists all my apps, just like the cell data thing.
John:
Right, but that's untenable.
John:
This is an easy, obvious one.
John:
It's one toggle switch, you know exactly where it would go, you're done.
Marco:
But what you're saying basically is you really want there to be no motion effects anywhere in the OS except this one app.
John:
But there's still motion effects in tons of apps, though.
John:
Like, I am not... Reduced motion does not... Do you run with reduced motion on?
John:
No.
John:
All right, so it does not remove all animations from the system, right?
John:
It reduces them.
John:
Plenty of apps have their own animations all over the place in them that are not affected at all by reduced motion.
Marco:
Right, but see, like, I get so many ridiculous feature requests for Overcast that basically are along the lines of...
Marco:
I like this one feature that you implemented here, but I want to have per podcast control over it or per episode control over it.
Marco:
That is by far the most common format of feature requests I get.
Marco:
The problem is that every one of those things is different.
Marco:
And if I actually satisfied these requests in any reasonable way, I would just have a wall of settings and options all over every single screen.
John:
and it's untenable and so what you're saying is you want that kind of granularity for your little pet thing here but everybody has one of those pet things no it's it's not it's not a granularity thing it's about the disconnect between reduced motion and app features right no it does it's it's that's absolutely ridiculous because no it isn't because reduced motion doesn't reduce motion does not reduce motion in apps like you're like oh i have reduced motion on i don't expect to see it does if they use the right apis
Casey:
Right, it's supposed to.
Marco:
The accessibility features are meant to be blunt instruments that are not meant for everyone to use them.
Marco:
And they're designed that way, too.
Marco:
So one of the accessibility features is bold text, right?
Marco:
Because the text got so skinny in iOS 7 and stuff.
Marco:
Turns out, if you want bold text in all of your apps except one, there's no option to do that.
Marco:
Because these are meant to be broad, blunt instruments for people who need them for accessibility purposes.
Marco:
Right.
John:
But there are plenty of applications that ignore the bold text setting because they don't use it.
John:
The same thing, reduce motion.
John:
If you turn on reduce motion and then play a game that's filled with motion, it's not reducing motion for you.
John:
There's motion everywhere, right?
John:
Well, that's true.
John:
This is the only case in which reduce motion has made entire headline features of any app, let alone an Apple app, completely inaccessible.
John:
like you don't even have a choice to use them they're not hidden they're not locked you just cannot use them you can't see them you can't even send them everything becomes sent with lasers in parentheses right this is it's unprecedented it's unprecedented that a feature like this would totally and like i said everybody who has discovered this you find out all the people are using reduced motion because the first time ios they upgrade to ios 10 they want to send lasers they can't and they can't figure it out you know how many times i've seen the same conversation in different slides
John:
slack channel on twitter oh yeah i'm trying to send laser i'm trying to send balloons and i can't oh do you have reduced motion on that's what it is and then those people are just stuck it's like well i guess i can't have reduced motion anymore i mean think of it this way what if you are made physically ill by the reduced motion effects but lasers and balloons don't bother you what about that
John:
No one cares about you anymore because those two things.
John:
Well, I'm sorry.
John:
You know, like, I don't think this is a question of granularity.
John:
I think this is a totally unprecedented linking of basically unrelated things for a feature that doesn't reduce motion across the entire operating system.
John:
But just this one app, the messages team said, you know what?
John:
Balloons is too much.
John:
Confetti is too much.
John:
We've got to reduce it, which, again, I'm on board with that.
John:
But you have to recognize that there are people out there for whom the constant zooming in and out motion of transitioning between applications is bothersome, but lasers are not.
Casey:
This is the most preposterous thing I've ever heard you say.
Casey:
So the name of the setting is reduce motion.
John:
So use fewer balloons.
Casey:
But you want it for balloons and lasers that are like on the verge of a strobe light.
Casey:
But you want that...
John:
to be okay the whole point not by default not by default just an option and why should it be an option for this one application because this is the headline feature of ios 10 the messages enhancements are a headline feature of ios 10 that regular people want to use they're sure to be very popular it's the first thing everybody tries when it's not like some obscure corner of the the os where i'm like this one app that nobody ever uses this is i i think this is unprecedented i think this absolutely has to change in a future version
Casey:
And I also would like to note that there is UI accessibility is reduced motion enabled, which is an official API that any developer worth their salt, which is really none of them because I don't know if I would bother with this, but anyway, any developer worth their salt would check and crank back on their own in-app animations if this is turned on.
Casey:
So maybe nobody does this, but strictly speaking, it is the responsibility of Marco, of me, of any other iOS developer to
Casey:
to check this and crank down on animations if it is turned on.
Casey:
So just because we're maybe bad citizens of the platform, and I shouldn't lump Marco in with this.
Casey:
Maybe you are using it.
Casey:
I'm not.
Marco:
Okay, there you go.
Marco:
I do use all the text features, dynamic text, buttons.
Marco:
I use all that stuff.
Casey:
Exactly.
Casey:
So if we're bad citizens of the platform and bank error in your favor win $200, well, good for you.
Casey:
But the fact of the matter is reduced motion is supposed to reduce motion.
Casey:
And that's what it's doing.
Casey:
It's reducing the motion of balloons and lasers and strobe lights and things like that.
John:
Doesn't reduce the motion of the messages sliding up when the things go by.
John:
This is like if you had a game where if you had reduced motion on, you could play the game, but you couldn't fire the rocket launcher because the rocket launcher had too many flashing lights.
John:
And you'd be trying to play the game and you can't figure out why you can't beat this boss.
John:
And you pick up the rocket launcher, but you can't fire it and you can't figure it out.
John:
And you write to the developer and they say, oh, if you have reduced motion on, you can't fire the rocket launcher.
John:
This is and that would be an obscure third party game.
John:
That's a bad decision by one obscure third party game.
John:
This is a headlining feature totally gone because you have because you don't want to see zoom animations when you go from springboard into an application.
John:
It's completely absurd.
Marco:
So how wrong you are aside, I cannot believe how much time and energy you're putting into trying to get these like tacky, horrible effects.
Marco:
This is like the worst part of iMessage.
John:
That's what everybody does.
John:
Do you know someone who got iOS 10 and didn't immediately try to play with those effects?
John:
That's what everybody did.
Casey:
At work today, a friend at work was at my desk talking to myself and a co-worker saying, why can't I get lasers to work?
Casey:
And we couldn't figure it out for a second.
Casey:
Wait, are you on a 6?
Casey:
So do I need to tap and hold?
Casey:
Are you on a 6S?
Casey:
So I need to depress.
John:
I found another person, another casual reduced motion user.
Casey:
Hold on.
Casey:
Yes, it was another casual reduced motion user.
Casey:
However, the moment that I pointed out it's a choice between reduced motion or lasers –
John:
immediately reduced motion was canned lasers it is i'll roll with it these people are have more drive for lasers i i am about 50 50 i don't want to turn reduced motion off but i also want lasers so so i go back to some preferences i turn reduced motion off i send the lasers and then i turn it back on that's ludicrous i cannot believe you are that dedicated to freaking lasers i agree it's ludicrous and there should be a preference for it and i can understand i'm not saying like oh apple should have known because maybe they just don't know how many people are using reduced motion
John:
for, like, you know, who... Put it this way.
John:
Who are bothered by the motion, the reduced motion stops, but are not bothered by lasers.
John:
Right?
John:
And maybe they just didn't know how many people do that.
John:
And the ATP teacher keeps saying accessibility as if accessibility is a different class of people.
John:
Accessibility is for everybody.
John:
Every single human being is going to need, eventually, one or more accessibility features.
John:
There's not a separate class of people.
John:
The normal people and the accessibility people.
John:
Everybody needs accessibility features.
John:
Every single person.
John:
So they are not separate.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
The accessibility options in iOS are designed for non-mainstream use.
John:
So they don't put... No, it's not non-mainstream.
John:
It is 100% mainstream.
John:
There is no distinction between normals and people who need accessibility features.
John:
If you like the accessibility feature because it makes the experience of using the phone easier or more pleasant for you, then that's fine.
Marco:
But if Apple actually wanted this to be like a really good setting that had granularity and features to satisfy everybody, they wouldn't bury it in accessibility.
Marco:
They would make it a regular setting.
John:
This is the headline feature of their new operating system.
John:
This is not an obscure tweak or setting.
John:
And the fact that it is totally absent is different from I wish it behaved in a little bit different a way.
John:
This is not I want per podcast setting for every single thing.
John:
This is not I want per conversation red receipts, which, by the way, they have.
John:
This is not that.
John:
This is those lasers that you keep seeing.
John:
Have fun banging your head against your phone trying to figure out how to send them.
John:
You can't.
John:
And guess what?
John:
It's because of that because you didn't want to see Zoom animations when you go between apps.
John:
Who is sending you all these lasers?
John:
I haven't gotten any lasers.
John:
What if you're talking to Casey?
John:
I've sent you, like, one.
Casey:
Come on.
John:
You sent lots of drawings and little heart things, and everybody's playing with it.
John:
Everyone wants to play with it.
Casey:
Dude, I have not sent you any of that stuff.
Casey:
I can't even find... Oh, I haven't sent John that stuff.
Casey:
I was sending Marco stickers.
Casey:
Where are the lasers?
Casey:
So I will send you a laser.
Casey:
And by the way, I am as deeply pissed off as you are about this, which is preposterous, I maintain.
Casey:
I am as deeply pissed off, if not more so, that they removed the sweet techno beats from the laser's sound effect.
Casey:
And now it just sounds like garbage.
Casey:
So, Marco, I will send you lasers by typing the word garbage, deep pressing on the blue up arrow, hitting the segmented control, swiping over, and then hitting the blue button.
Casey:
So I have just sent you lasers.
Marco:
Oh, my God.
Marco:
Look at all that motion.
John:
It's not being reduced at all.
John:
Nope, not a bit.
John:
So if you have your phone in silent... Casey, how would you feel if you had your phone in silent mode if you couldn't send lasers now?
John:
Like you couldn't... You no longer had access to any bubble effects or any screen effects if your phone is in silent mode.
Casey:
That is not an analogous argument.
John:
It is because the feature totally disappears because some aspect of it is potentially harmful.
John:
You said you didn't want any noise and noise comes with the sync, so sorry.
Casey:
An analogous argument would be...
Casey:
You know, John, I would really love to be able to send lasers.
Casey:
And even if the phone is silenced, it should play the audio for the lasers.
John:
No, no, no, no.
John:
Because reduced motion is not like the mute switch.
John:
Again, there's motion all over the place for reduced motion.
John:
Even in apps that honor it, it is impossible to eliminate motion.
John:
Like I said, when you send a message, the bubbles slide upwards.
John:
That's motion.
John:
My goodness.
John:
Okay.
John:
My goodness.
John:
I can't even believe you two are disagreeing on this, because A, Apple needs to change this, and B, I think they will change it, because it's so easy to change, and it's so obvious, and I think they just did not correctly estimate how many people are casual reduced motion users who want lasers.
Marco:
Look at all these balloons and confetti.
Marco:
I'm having all this fun over here with all this motion.
Casey:
I will bet you one American dollar that your delightful setting will never exist, ever.
John:
I will take that bet.
John:
I will take that $1 bet, and my time frame for that bet is before iOS 11.
John:
That's all I'm saying.
John:
I don't know what point release this is going to be.
John:
10.0, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4.
John:
I don't know what numbers they get up to, but that is a $1 bet that I will take.
Casey:
I will absolutely agree to this $1 bet.
Casey:
Oh, my God.
Casey:
This is ridiculous.
John:
Will you give me any odds on that?
John:
No, I will not, but gosh.
John:
It's 10,000 to 1 in my favor, right?
John:
Because Apple not doing something is always the safe bet, so...
Marco:
Oh, God.
Marco:
Just turn off reduce motion.
Marco:
You don't need it.
Casey:
Yeah, seriously.
Casey:
Thank you.
John:
I tried.
John:
I can't take it.
John:
I can't take it.
Casey:
Just close your eyes when you hit the home button.
John:
No, I can't take it aesthetically.
John:
Like, I believe I can.
John:
Yeah, that's what it really is.
Marco:
That's the problem.
Marco:
You don't need it for an accessibility reason.
John:
You just have a preference.
John:
Well, you know, I mean, it does.
John:
It's borderline because, like, I do feel a tiny, tiny little bit of vertical, but I would get over it.
John:
like it's not it's not debilitating when's the last time you used it like i don't know like 15 minutes ago like i keep going back to the reduced motion because again when you send lasers it's pain to go back and forth so i leave it and then i realize that it's still on i go oh then i turn it back off for people who are so sensitive that they would need that for the actual accessibility purpose i think it's a reasonable default to disable as many full screen animations as possible
John:
Oh, no, it's totally a reasonable default.
John:
Totally a reasonable default.
John:
But I don't think that if you do the Venn diagram of people who actually need that feature versus people who are also bothered by lasers, it's not 100% overlap.
John:
So that's why the non-overlapping region is the place for the second setting.
John:
And again, I will gladly sacrifice the home button setting if you want to keep your number of toggle switches to a constant level.
Casey:
Ooh, there's fireworks.
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
Look at that.
Casey:
This is the most preposterous argument I think I've ever heard you make, John Syracuse.
Casey:
This is truly ridiculous.
John:
By the way, when a reduced motion is on, you can send the sparkly little dewdrop message thingies.
John:
No problem with that.
John:
It's exactly the same motion as fireworks.
John:
Speaking of fireworks, sparkly little lines that when you do the tap on the little black screen, it makes a little bloop.
John:
That's basically a firework.
John:
That's apparently fine with reduced motion on.
John:
No lasers.
Casey:
I can't handle this.
Casey:
Oh, my God.
Casey:
I literally cannot even.
Marco:
I'm worn out from the ridiculousness of this.
Marco:
How many windows do you have open right now, John?
Marco:
I just need something else.
John:
Most of the reason I'm so angry is I can't believe that you two are both against me on this.
John:
One, I would say odds of one, fine.
John:
But both of you, it's just ridiculous.
Marco:
You know what it is?
Marco:
I have had to support an app that sometimes didn't look quite right or didn't work quite right with some of these obscure accessibility options turned on.
Marco:
And then people just turn them on and then forget that they're on.
Marco:
And then they send in support emails saying, hey, there's a visual bug in your rendering.
Marco:
Here's a screenshot.
Marco:
And they blame me.
Marco:
And the reason it looks that way is because of an accessibility setting they set.
Marco:
So as a developer, I don't have a lot of sympathy for people who set these settings without knowing even what they are, just as little preferences, who don't need them for the actual accessibility purpose, because those people tend not to forget why they set them.
Marco:
Then email me saying, hey, this is a problem in your app because...
Marco:
I set the setting that I forgot about that I'm not really using for its purpose.
Marco:
So I do have a hard time feeling bad for you.
John:
Not using... You keep getting back to the not using for purpose.
John:
I don't think that's a valid anything.
John:
Like, not using for purpose... Look, it's a setting.
John:
If people want to use it, they want to use it.
John:
Oh, well, it doesn't count because you're not using it for its intended purpose.
John:
Look, they're using the setting.
John:
Anybody can change the switch on the thing.
John:
Like, and again, I think from UI-wise, people...
John:
not being able to figure out why they can't send lasers is just a plain ui problem forget about whether you think it's like they should have something in the ui that says i see that you're trying to hold down on this little up arrow like you know like they have a little cap locks indicator like it's the user's fault they have cap locks on they don't realize they're not mistyping their password the cap locks is on
John:
you put a visual indicator it's not even that obvious but you put something on the screen to let them know rather than just leaving them there stranded holding their thumb down a little upward facing arrow and messages and not understanding why they can't send stuff like that's a ui issue independent of what you think whether they think it should be supported there should be something in the ui to tell people you may not realize this but the reason you can't do this thing we know you're trying to do it and we know exactly why you can't do it and it's totally not obvious and no one will ever think of that setting that they that they changed in ios 7 haven't thought about since so
John:
That is a separate thing entirely, and I hope both of you can agree that that interface needs to be there because I think you've both dealt with people who have not been able to figure out why they can't send lasers.
Casey:
I mean, I think it should be— You won't even agree on that?
Casey:
Both of you won't agree on that?
Casey:
It should be more obvious what the cause of not being able to send lasers is.
John:
Thank you.
John:
Thank you for the voice of reason, finally.
John:
Marco still won't agree on it, but you will.
John:
It should be more obvious what the problem is.
John:
We didn't even give him a chance.
John:
We didn't even give him a chance.
John:
He just sighed at me, and he is angry at people who turn on settings and then forget about it in his app.
Marco:
I'm sighing because, like, yes, I think that is bad UI to have this just silently fail and not tell UI.
Marco:
However, I disagree with your entire premise of why this matters as much as it does.
John:
Yeah.
John:
But that's not what I was asking about.
John:
I was asking about the narrow case of you agree that it should be.
John:
Because, again, that's just a UI problem.
John:
People are confused by an interface.
John:
People are trying to accomplish a task.
John:
They know this task is possible because they've seen it demonstrated.
John:
They're trying to accomplish it, and they can't figure out why they can't.
John:
And there is a reason, and you can decide whether this reason is good or bad, but a good UI will let those people know what the reason is.
Casey:
Yeah, again, I concur that the failure is too hidden.
Casey:
I think, you know, let's take a success.
Casey:
If you mash down hard on that send button, maybe the first time or perhaps every time it says, well, you know, this is where you would normally be able to do things.
Casey:
But because you're you're just.
Casey:
ridiculous and you're john syracuse so we're not going to let you um but here's where you would need to go to fix it that i concur but i still find your entire argument about a sub toggle or what have you to be preposterous yes yes yes i see i know you you'll be one dollar dollar poorer later you'll see
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
Yeah, we'll see indeed.
Casey:
Oh, my God.
Casey:
The sad thing is this entire argument has to go on the show because it is so ridiculous.
Casey:
Oh, yeah.
Casey:
Now we have a long show again, despite our every effort to keep it short.
Casey:
And we actually did a reasonably okay job.
Casey:
And here it is two and a half hours later.
Marco:
Worth it.