01:37 - Apple Watch

08:55 - iPhone 6s + 6s Plus

19:06 - iPad Pro

29:20 - Apple TV

Picks

Oktoberfest Beer (Jaim)
 CodeCombat (Alondo)
Airplay Tutorial: An Apple TV Multiplayer Quiz Game (Alondo)
Beginning tvOS Development with TVML Tutorial (Alondo)
Pebble.js (Chuck)
Basecamp (Chuck)

 

I think that to get an offer in for the game? I wish I could gone. Honestly.

Oh well, what if I did?

A ticket to what game?

Oh, the Twin Circuit for last night.

Oh.

It would’ve been a long flight from Orlando. [Laughter]

Hey everybody and welcome to Episode 122 on the iPhreaks Show. This week on our panel we have Alondo Brewington.

Hello, from North Carolina.

Jaim Zuber.

Hello, from Minneapolis.

I’m Charles next would from Devchat.tv. And this week we're going to be talking about the Apple event that happened on, what, September ninth? So we're a few weeks behind; a lot of people been talking about it but, yeah, we thought we were just kind of dig in and see what there was to talk about.

Where do you guys want to start? Do you want to start with the iPhone's? With the Apple TV? The iPad Pro?

We can always knock out the really quick thing which is the Hermes wrist watch straps. I don’t know how much interest there is. They actually had not heard of that style of – when I saw it, and my first reaction was why would anyone wear that sort of a watch strap as nice as it is in leather. And then I was told on a couple of occasions that, oh yeah, that is very in fashion. People really like it and it’ll probably sell very well.

Well, I thought it was interesting like the Hermes – I think that's how you say it. I’d only ever heard of them with the high-end, super nice scarves for women. And I was like, “Oh, are they going to come out with an Apple scarf?” [Laughter]

That will be a [crosstalk].

It’s coming. Just wait.

To see the Jony Ive video announcing the scarf [crosstalk]

Justice made the call.

That’s right, yeah.

Next dub dub – Apply scarf. [Laughter]

I had a conversation with Jonathan Stark on The Freelancers’ Show. In fact, it's actually going to be in the Q&A because we do a Q&A every month. And I don't remember exactly how we got on the topic; I think we were talking about Pebble Time. But yeah, we were talking about the watches and stuff and he basically pointed out that he has some beefs with the Apple Watch in one of them was is that why are you going to wear the super expensive watch when you're just out and about? And a super expensive watch with a super expensive band on it – it just makes a whole lot less sense because you don't want to ruin it, you don’t want to get it dirty, you don't want to get it – whatever. And so I thought that was an interesting take on things

Efficient take for most of us but I think if you're dropping ten grand on a watch, you're not that great about getting that stuff. I think my Apple Watch often when I mow the lawn, but otherwise, wearing it out.

That’s interesting you said it because I've been doing a lot of innovation in the house and I've been painting and doing all kinds of things and I don't take the watch off. I haven’t really been concerned about it – it's been knocked around a little bit but it's pretty sturdy. I don't have any scratches on it.

I’ve been pretty impressed with it.

Yeah. I wound up getting Pebble Time and the thing, he said, you may have made the best choice. You may not have – it depends on what you want. It doesn't do the voice recognition so I can't talk to Siri, I can't talk to Google on my watch like you can with the Apple or Android watches. But the battery life is phenomenal. I mean, I plugged this in last Thursday or last Friday and I'm probably forty percent battery just because it's e-ink instead of LED whatever. And the backlit portion of it only turns on at night after sunset, and if I move my watch. Otherwise, it doesn't really drain the battery much and I get all the other benefits we talked about with Neil Ford.

You have to say with the release of a Watch OS 2, which I was able to install two days ago. I'm really liking the enhancements. I haven't had an issue battery life but typically only have to remember to plug in any real day. And I just have to say, for a device that I didn't even think I would use much at all, I found myself missing it when I don't wear it.

So what are the highlights for Apple Watch? Watch OS 2, and what does it mean for developers like us?

I think the biggest thing is just the fact that now, you're able to provide functionality that doesn't have to depend so much on the phone so the lag times that people have been experiencing with different apps in just that you're a bit freer now with the watch and I think that's going on. We have noticed they already have.

I'm still waiting for many of the app's to actually get their updates out. I know Apple has been pushing a bunch of them fairly quickly and I've just had a chance to sample a few, but so far really have liked the performance on. I love the news interfaces; you can now – there's a watch face now where you can actually have your own–.

Going to your photo album, so a little randomly put – pica photo from your photo album that you select and it's really nice. A few more faces; the complications were great. And it's just been an allaround –. I think this is the, what some people would probably argue, as what should have been the first release of the Apple Watch.

Yeah I've heard several people say that. But I don't know that to the point that Neil made when we talk to him. I don't know that they really understood what the watch was going to mean to people until they actually put it out there so.

Yeah, I would agree. When it when it was first announced, my first thought was why are they doing this? I know that there was long rumors about iWatch being in the works. And then I initially say, “Well, I’ll just use it for fitness,” but I'm finding more and more that it's really, really nice to get than Ambient Information and it’s super convenient for a lot of times.

I'm looking forward to adding I did a hack-a-thon weeks ago where we actually wrote an app for the watch that provided the ability to do some integrations with our training programs or sports. And it’s really neat and opened the door for the type of things that we can do on the watch where we don’t necessarily need the phone; we have to carry it around, and people can get additional a benefit from it.

So besides the complications – I think those are what they call them where this is kind of the extra information that you can put on to your watch faces and things. And the new watch faces, are there any major things that you can do with a watchOS 2?

That actually, I don't – I'm not aware of any additional major features.

It sounded like it might be a little bit more battery friendly or maybe a little bit more performant but that was –.

I think performance has improved. It seems to be working better; things are a little bit faster. But I’m definitely using watchOS 2 in classic mode. I really have not dug into the new functionality that much. If I do my time travel by moving forward, I don't really have any complications set up so just going forward in time, not giving anything useful. But that’s how I’m used against so I'm not the best resource for this.

Yup, but it was definitely interesting. I was like, “Oh, okay. They’ve figured out what people are looking for.”

This is definitely against the [inaudible].

Anything else we should talk about on watchOS 2 before we move on to something else?

Development is hard.

Yes. [Laughter]

It's a nightmare. Lets you have lots of time and the budgets. Be wary; people have a lot of troubles right now. That's how it goes.

Yeah, and I would say – I would add, you definitely need to think about what you – what sort of subset of functionality want to make available from you’re – if you have an existing app. To make sure that it makes sense – I know it is going to harking back a conversation we had with Neil, but it really does need to make sense.

Not all use cases are going to benefit being on the watch. It's important to really give it a thought. Think through the user interface and the user experience and the type of information you can convey and making sure you can get there quickly, because that's really all there – it’s really made for really short iterations of consuming data or interaction with data.

Definitely. No, that's definitely the approach. You're app probably doesn’t need a watch and a lot of apps that are out there are just writing apps to play well with Apple's ecosystem because if you do things their way, they make things easier on you. A lot of apps – there’s really a reason to have a watch app here. But people are just putting them out there.

They love experimenting too – we don't really know. Like if it is to say, the real simple things are where you want to be at and I agree with that but there's more use cases that were not thinking yet so it'll be cool to see what develops down the road you.

Yup. One feature that I know exists on Apple Watch that it looks like they kind of brought into iOS was the Force Touch. They called it 3D touch on the phone; is it the same thing or is it not the same thing?

I believe it's similar; I’m actually struggling with that with the newest Macbook Air. There’s a bit of a – there's a similar Force Touch or 3D typing. It’s called Force Touch on the Mac as well. And it's definitely – there's a learning curve to that.

We are looking forward to having that available though in iOS just because it's going to provide an opportunity for us to engage in a couple different ways, sourcing menus and their ability to not clear up [inaudible] with menu options, but still provide an actual functionality that's right. It was just a touch away.

Yeah, I have to say that the idea of the 3D Touch is something that I'm excited about. I honestly haven't tried to do it on my – I have an iPhone 6+ and I don't know if it will do that or if you have to have the 6S or 6S+ to do that.

I believe it is only available in the 6S and the 6S+.

That was the impression I got from the event. I was kind of hoping. [Chuckles]

No I haven't got my hands on the 6S yet so we're still waiting to see how I was going to work out. I agree; it's a definite – a new paradigm in which to see what comes from it.

Yeah. One thing that I did notice, too, in watching the event that I really like; in particular when they were demoing the 3D Touch was that a lot of the UI really looked fleshed out like they are finally getting around to realizing the vision of iOS 7 with all the changes that we’re making.

For so long, the UI looks incomplete. I know there was a lot of [inaudible] when it first came out but even as late as eight, it still looks sort of undone. We’re talking about affordances and these types of things but I couldn't really see Apple’s vision for it until this last event. It really looks like, okay, it's realized it now there’s some depth to it – parting the references to the actual affordances in depth and things like that but it makes sense and that's why I think that Force Touch really shines when you're watching it when they're demoing.

Yeah, I still feel like – so my first my phone I have to say was an Android phone. And there are definitely things I like about iOS better than Android, but I have to say that their home screen on Android devices, it does give you a few options that I wish you had on iPhones. The iPhone's home screens are basically just a grid of icons and I keep hoping that they're going to enhance that in some other ways to give you better options. But the 3D Touch is definitely a step in that direction where it's like ‘hey, you want to kind of get a glimpse of what's going on in this app? Well here you go.’

Defiant, and also has the added benefit of all those supporting older apps that, okay, no need to add all this new functionality just to keep it feeling modern because once people start doing it, they get addicted to it and are expected to be there. So I was pushing the paradigm forward.

Is there a backwards compatibility issue here where if you build 3D Touch into your app where you 3D Touched something in a game or in an app, in a table view and it gives you a peek into what's inside and that becomes a critical piece of the way that you interact with it but at the same time you know you have people still on iPhone 5, iPhone 6, iPhone 6+ that don't have that feature. Do you feel like you have to maintain usability across multiple systems? It seems like people abandon the older systems at some point and I'm worried a little bit that people who are on iPhone 5, 5S and 6 are going to get left behind because this feature isn't available.

Yeah, I would definitely say that if you're doing apps at this stage, you probably should – you really would do well to look at using the 3D Touch as a way to enhance the experience but not provide the way that we often provide multiple ways. There are certain gestures – we have these gestures where you can go through menus and get the functionality which can also provide gestures, and those gestures are not always discoverable.

So by large, in effect they’re not necessarily available features; you just don't know about them. So we can take the same approach with the 3D Touch and make – we enhance functionality or alternate ways to accomplish tasks in the app but not lead people out. Give them an alternate way even if it requires a few more texts to get to the menu item a little deeper and some hierarchy to do the same things. They’re not necessarily left behind but they just don't get that same sort of efficient interaction.

Yeah, I agree with that. I think at this point the Force Touch is just – you're adding on some syntactic sugar to the UI experience that's not irreplaceable. We can get people to info faster, the way they want to but not necessarily given the [inaudible] they can't do. Or if you just want to – force you update your app – throw at cellphones at Apple, can’t use these features until you have a success.

This is true; the dropping of the prior supported OS's is also one of those things that were continually having to do. We're looking – now we've stopped support for iOS 7 and depending on the adoption rate which seems to be moving pretty quickly, there maybe dropping an update in the near future as well.

Yeah I have an old iPod 2 and you can hardly get apps for it anymore because of the way that that's moved along. On super old devices, that's definitely a concern. I think most people though have newer devices then just update and get all the stuff.

Yeah, I still got my first iPhone 4 and it's become basically useless even as a testing device.

There's nothing I want to run to test – just will run on it like it can run iOS 8 so I kind of have luck.

So another thing I saw and I'm I don't know that we'll spend a ton of time on Live Photos but are those things you can actually incorporate into your apps? Set it as a background or something? Or do we know yet?

I'm not really sure about the live photos. This is one of those things – those features that I saw and did not really connect with a use case. I was like, “Okay, it looks a neat thing that I wouldn't see as solely getting a lot of value out of the long term. It was almost like a novelty, and I hate to say that but I didn't see a really profound use case there.

So like, “Hey! Here is our proprietary gift.” [Laughter]

Yeah, basically.

“See how much cooler it is than the regular old gif or fir or whatever you want to call it.

Yeah, then also just the feature of having the – where you can talk to Siri without having your phone plugged in.

I thought of – that I like.

Yeah.

I find it – there's a lot of situations, I forget – I was always constant; I go, “Oh, [inaudible],” and not having to worry about that is a nice answer; he's gotten so much better as well. I’ve finally been using it a lot more. In the early stages of Siri, I didn’t have a lot of success and so I just decided, “Okay, I’ll only use it for directions but now I'm finding it using a lot more often even to answer sports related questions when getting into an argument with ten year olds about basketball. [Laughter]

Nice, nice, nice. So are there other features of iOS nine or iPhone 6S that you're excited to develop for? You didn't see that the nicer camera or anything else really will make a huge difference for developers?

No, when I saw those things, I sort of like this part of the progression what you would expect in an S version of the phone.

Yeah. I’m interested to see how the multitasking works as far as developing, being sure that works in older devices because if you deal for an iPad, do you not that worry about never constraints or CPU constraints for most apps? But also now you might have some other memory hog app going alongside with your app so it’s interesting to see how our development practices have to tighten up where a lot of times we don’t have to think about performance. I’ve had apps where it had to do a lot of thing about performance but for the most part use those to find out how screening go. And by the video you see how performance centered our development has to be.

That’s a good point because the new phone, it's got that bumped up in ram. And so it can be easy if you're like most developers, you’ve got ways and ways in your hand, you still got to make sure you’re testing on those other supported devices or the older and performance becomes a factor.

I, honestly though, my biggest gripe with anything else – and it's not a point of excitement – this is the fact that I still do not understand why the low-end device is 16 GB of storage. It just bothers my mind. [Chuckles]

Yeah, exactly. I mean I don't even think that’d be enough for my grandma. [Laughter] Who is going to install a whole lot? My wife had the 16 GB iPhone 5 and she was constantly running out of space. I got 32 GB and I would bump up against my boundary every so often. It just didn't make sense to me to have anything less than 64.

Yeah, so we’ve jumped, too from 16 to 64 and that no one creates – I don't understand.

Yeah, I’ve got a 64-bit device and even with that I have to go through and delete a bunch of photos after three or four years. You’ve built up quite a few that don't really need but yeah I did go through and – tell us [inaudible]. And that’s just people who don't use the photos or don’t do any videos.

Yeah.

Or it’s a ploy to get people to buy the low income and then get them to up their – to increase their iCloud storage.

Who's going to wind up with these 16 GB phones, right? It's going to be the people who are buying phones for other people. [Laughter]

True.

Corporate people or people buying for their kids.

Yeah, well it’s true a lot of kids will probably get that 16 GB phone,

Yeah. And yeah the multi-tasking on the iPad is going to be nice. I was kind of hoping that I'd get in on them iPhone 6+ but nope; it's just the iPads. And even then it's only on specific models. Like the iPad mini 4, I think. And then I don't remember for the rest the iPad's – existing iPad variations.

Yeah, the mini 4 is probably my next iPad purchase. I'm working on the first generation mini and I really do like that size and it's a nice jump from that 6 – I don't have a 6+ that means it’s just too large of a phone for myself. But I've a been having discussions with some of the other devs and he's just trying to get that the right mix of personal devices to carry around which leads me to the big announcement which is the iPad Pro.

Whether or not anyone was going to get one, it served any purpose for them.

I don't know; are you guys planning on getting one?

I'm not getting one but I know another dev who is so they're getting the 6+ and the iPad Pro. I did like a lot of the – it’s a large device I can seem a lot of a particular type of user. I think the only thing I limit is just affected by Pencil is not available for the new small iPad because it’s pro only because I really was excited about Pencil.

Yeah, I'm with you on that one. I watched it and it was funny because they got done talking about the iPad pro and I was like, “Eh, I don't need one of those.” And really, what it came down to for me is, okay what do I spend? Because the iPad pro it feels like it's, ‘okay, we're going to give you exactly what you need to not have to carry around a laptop anymore.’

Yeah.

And looking at that I'm like, ‘okay so what do I use my laptop for and what do I use my iPad for?’ I watch shows on my iPad and I've got apps for some of the other things that I have to interact with online so it's just kind of a surrogate that's got a native interface for whatever website I want to user interact with.

And then the other thing I do on my laptop is code. And there was no indication whatsoever that I'm going to be able to do that on the iPad Pro and so it was kind of like ‘well, you know fifty percent or more of what I am doing I'm – I can't do on the iPad pro anyway,’ and so it just didn't seem like a slam dunk to me.

There were definitely features that I liked about it, for example the full sized keyboard on the screen; I thought that was awesome. And then just more resolution more features. The pencil was cool but I don't do a lot of drawing or anything like that so even that wasn't that impressive for. So yeah it's not on my radar until I see somebody using it in a way that I'm going ‘okay I got to be able to do that.’

Well I guess it speaks to something that I've been thinking a lot about me in light of a some of the more recent time conversations and conferences that I’ve been going to, talking about sort of the app store and the ability have success in the app store and the place of the iPad. And for all of the demos that were shown there really neat applications that are written for the iPad that provide an immersive experience that are the most effective ones, the successful ones.

This idea that you just going to write your iPhone and then have an iPad app that does similar things, I don't think it flies. I think that there's a targeted audience for that iPad Pro and I think there's a target audience for iPad software in general that Apple sees, and I think that if – as a developer that's really where you have to focus on if you want to go into those arenas. I don't think it's the same type of scenario as Whitney with the phone were – because this is a huge breadth of types of apps that you can make for the phone. I just don't think that's the case for the iPad and iPad pro even less so.

Yeah, I agree. I'm just saying; I'm not a consumer that's going to buy an Apple or an iPad pro because I want one. If I'm buying one is because I'm writing one of those niche apps and I actually want to nail it for the iPad pro and I anticipate that when I do nail it, it's going to pay for itself.

Yeah, I don't want to go to your point about being able to code; how much longer do we have to wait rebuilt that we can just fire up and write at least Swift and into other – I'm sure there's other languages as well on the iPad because I think that would be a great experience to be able to make companies like iPad onto the train or board.

Oh yeah, and why not right?

Yeah. I don't know what the hold-up is at this point, what the real reason that we can't do that at this point.

Well the other thing is is that if you're writing and apps for the iPad, then your simulator is the device you're writing it on. You just load up your app and you can tell it, okay well actually want this to run on an iPhone and so it should be intelligent enough to limit the memory and stuff to meet the constraints. Maybe you can't quite simulate the processor but you say ‘look, you can't go over this much memory and we're just going to show it in this corner of the screen.

It’s true, it would truly be constrained. You get a real world constraint there if you’re trying to test for a smaller device.

Yup, but yeah I don't see where that makes a big difference now. For a lot of my web development I actually have a machine in the cloud that I do development on. So if it had an SSH program on it and there are SSH apps for the iPad, because I've used them I know they're out there – I could see that as possibly being a reasonable development environment but then you know a laptop does that just as well in the terminals built in.

Who got the smaller Macbook Air? Now it’s bigger than the iPad.

Yeah, and that's I think the decision point which is kind of weird because that's just like what's a differentiator per user to decide the iPad pro is going to be the choice to be made versus getting an Air.

Yup.

Yeah, I think it comes down to the niche marketing and I think the iPad pro, the obvious, the associate becoming important in is a graphic design. There's lot of focus put on that and creating things and build things – see things on a big screen. Can I think of very many other ones that a

iPad Pro’s a clean win four. I'm not sure; maybe sales apps.

A lot of companies have sales teams, like they sell everywhere they’ve got all the stuff on their iPads so having a bigger screen can help. You can bring it along with you, put it on the desk where you try to sell to and show what you want to show. So that might be nothing but I'm not sure exactly who needs to use iPad pro.

Yeah, I can see that that's same case though. I see a lot of out here industry, a lot of workers in construction and things like that – of course as long you got the right protection, they do have what these larger clip wars for like inspections and these types of things.

IPad does the price but I noticed that they do a lot with what looks like paper that's a bit longer, like legal size or something like that where maybe about iPad pro screen would be a lot more attractive and with the addition of the pencil, being able to have that right here, being able to complete forms and doing the types of field update they need to do.

Yeah, the other thing I can see. Basically, the reason they're doing graphic design is because that can become very computationally heavy. And the iPad pro has – it’s just a beefier machine. And so I can also see if you have large data sets that you need to crunch a bunch of numbers on and build a report on, or some of the other – the video editing, they showed that on there and I could see that you know where it can render four videos at a time or something. I don't remember. So those kinds of things where you need the power of a laptop or something this gets you there. And so I you know a lot of those types of applications makes sense, too on the consumer apps.

So do you think you're going to wind up developing differently for the iPad pro or is it only in those cases where you're actually going to be doing something specialized either because you want the pencil to be able to be used on it or because you know that you have more resources to kind of make it extra awesome.

I think if you're outside of a particular niche is that really utilize the form factor. I think that's type of thing gets a check to make sure your on-layouts are not awry.

Yeah

For most of your apps we just have to make sure it behaves reasonably. They might have an iPad pro, we want our iPad app to work as expected but we have the most part; I don't see targeting that at least for the most apps that I'm working on.

Right.

Yeah, I would agree. I think that unless you're giving a specific case for a client or you have a particular app in mind that you're developing, I don't see that the stakes – that could change depending on the on the popularity of the device.

Yeah.

Yeah, I’m excited to see what comes of it, what things are we completely not thinking of or are we completely missing that are perfect match for this new device.

Yeah, I'm waiting for that forehead smacking moment, when that happen and I go ‘ugh, why didn’t I think of that?’

Of course! Of course it’s obvious in hindsight.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, I'm just trying to think of why else you would want one of these devices and I'm kind of coming up short. So unless you have some specialized application, like you said, that has an app that's designed specifically for the iPad pro that gives you the experience you want. Yeah I just.

I think medical. If you have medical information or a doctor looking at extras [crosstalk].

Oh yeah, they have that example, too, right?

There's some great demos even the [inaudible] there was a watch demo around as well. Medical is really one of those forward thinking, forward acting industries where they've been adopting the use of these devices for a while and there were some pretty impressive demos there.

Yeah, so I guess that's true too if there's some pretty intense graphical interaction that you have.

Yeah, and after twenty five years every lawyer will catch up. [Laughter]

Can you fax through the iPad pro? [Laughter]

Nice.

Yeah, you just put that – you put your iPad pro in the tray and then you tell people to send it. Feeds it right through. I hope that created the mental image that makes me laugh.

I can imagine myself doing that; something's used to fax them. You are doing our mortgage like hit the fax stuff and like really? What year is this?

I have clients; can you fax me back copy of the contract? I'm like, “Um, no.”

Email?

Yeah. I can scan it and email it to you.

[Inaudible] with Apple when I was getting my business – setting up for a business account or a developer business account. And they asked me to fax information and I just paused for a second.

I’m on the phone with Apple; they asked me to fax something; this is not compute.

I remember doing that you had to get my Apple developer account because I got a corporate account – a business account. I didn't just get it for me and so I had to fill out all this extra work paperwork for my business and send it in and then send it in. I had to go find someplace that could fax it in.

Exactly. It’s like we have to mail a letter. I’m like I don't know how to do that right now.

Yeah. I think I went to the UPS store. And they just took it in stride I guess they get that pretty regularly which is kind of sad.

Alright shall we get to the Apple TV?

Oh yeah. Let’s do it.

I was watching that and I was like I want one of those. It was just – I want one of those I still want one of those.

Yeah. Without revealing too much, yes. They're exciting and during the event now it was announced I have an older model and so I was really excited for the improvements and what's available. Even the new remote, even I think it's an improvement.

I'm not sure quite yet, even with the game demos. One of the game demos they did was very similar to the Wii. One of the things that I’m wrestling with right now is how to have a single player game experience is going to mimic – using as a game controller what type of support we have to put in the app to allow the user to make use of that remote, to continue to play it.

It's not a physical throwing and swiping and mimicking a tennis racket or something.

Yeah. The other thing I can see is that on most traditional game controllers, the buttons that take you out of the game or back to the main screen or anyhing – those are reasonably small buttons. And is just so that you don't accidentally mash them when you're playing your game. And these – looking at their remote for the new Apple TV, they're all the same size buttons and I wonder a little bit if that's going to cause you problems or if they fully expect you to just mostly work off of the little touch pad on there.

Without revealing too much, the test [inaudible] is fairly small and so it's a situation where the buttons are really close together; you can see that in some of the images. So I think that is a valid concern having the new – making sure the game quite –.

I'm not really sure how useful that – the touch area is going to be for a gaming situation. The thing that got me excited about it though with, at least as far as gaming is concerned, was just the ability to do games that are more social where people are together in the same place and can do something, like a multiplayer game that has more – promotes more user engagement with each other, not necessarily just depending on feedback from the screen.

Yeah. I'm trying to see exactly how big it is compared to the little aluminum one that comes with the older models. It looks like it’s a little bit bigger than that, surface area wise on the top. I haven't been able to see anything really because the only people who have them are the people who got in on the developer program. And so I don't see anything from Apple showing one next to the other, but it looks like it's reasonably larger but not it a –.

It's a little bit larger, it’s a bit wider. The original silver one, I stopped using all of the [inaudible]. I started using the remote app on my phone.

Oh yeah.

Just because having to use the navigation for shows going through the different channels and the different software application that are available on the TV just became cumbersome. And the touch gesture interface really works a lot better than – it felt really dated using it particularly in comparison to using every other Apple device that you have. I'm having to just – remember the old iPod, the wheel clicker; it sort of have that feels to it.

Well the other thing is the remote app works over WiFi and so there's no range issue. I've got the little Apple TV on the back of the TV; I got a little clip that just hangs there. And so I have to hang it on the back of the TV in the master bathroom in my house. And yeah, you have to do this funky crap with the little remote in order to make it work whereas if I am sitting in there doing something or if I'm in in the bath, I just try my hand off. And then handle my phone for a minute and it just works and I don't have to hold it so that it's pointed under the TV to you get the right signal on it.

Yeah, absolutely. It’s definitely an improvement and I’m looking for to though. I'm super excited about the type of apps that we can develop there. I'm currently working on a game as well as one of another application for work to take advantage of the TV. I was one of the lucky few that actually got one of the devices. I think I can say I have one of those, something that I can talk about anything in detail.

Yeah, right.

But it's super, super cool and I'm looking forward to what – I'm actually been [inaudible] to see what other people develop as well. I think having access to this new device in a way that we haven't before, to be able to push content there is going to open up a lot of doors. I know Charles, you can probably speak to that as well.

Yeah, for me – I have this content network for programmers and so I have five podcasts, I have videos that I'm putting out there for developers for Ruby on Rails. I'm looking to expand both of those. I have two new show starting this month or next month and I've got a whole bunch of other stuff going on and it would be really nice to be able to actually get in and beyond the Apple TV. And so if people want my content, sure, the Apple TV has always been able to pull podcasts and stuff off of your other devices and you can do AirPlay with them but it’d be nice if people could just pull it open, check it out, maybe do a little bit of data sinking over iCloud and just pick up where they left off.

And so if it's like, “Hey I'm in the mood to sit down and watch a development video,” or I'm in the mood to turn on a Ruby Rogues episode while I'm doing the dishes. I remember that there was an iPhreaks episode that talked about something that I needed to cover in this application that they could pull it up on the Apple TV and/or the iPhone or anything else just have that up there is a resource.

The other thing is is that I now that they have to search capabilities in iOS 9 – and we talked about that a week or three ago – it's the same kind of thing. It's like, “Okay, so now I can drive people to my website through that search. I can have them able to find an episode just because I have the information in the app.” And they can actually go and search on the Apple TV and it'll pull up, “Okay, there's this Ruby Rogues episode about whatever or this iPhreaks episode about whatever. So if they do a search for Neil Ford would show up in that content system and say ‘hey, this is available in this app’.

All of that stuff just – it really speaks to a complete solution for giving people the experience they want to consume content. And so it's my way of getting a channel on all of those different systems and I think that's going to be a game changer here for the way that people produce content, to be honest.

It's a different fit for the content. I've got an Xbox which I use some apps, but it’s mainly to watch things – Netflix or Baseball or something, or games. And is it interesting to see how that expands when people aren't used to having their TV and then Apple TV comes up, I mean what more can they do with it?

Or is it just having something more – you see it on your couch and you don’t have your phone near you, you can see on a bigger screen.

Yup.

What are the options? What’s going to happen? I think like the immersive experience – you're on your couch, listen to the Ruby Rogues – oh, I got to do the dishes. So you go to the other room and maybe get your iPad there, your phone where you can continue what you're doing. That that's the goal.

Yup.

That we're going to get to eventually, but how do we get there?

Well, I think it's going to be one bit at a time; the AirPlay thing is part of it. How long until you can essentially pull what you're playing on your Apple TV and say, “Now, I want to play it on my iPad and I got the companion app to it. I wouldn’t be shocked at all if that's coming down the road.

Or I start watching a YouTube video on the Apple TV and I can pull that to my iPad or my iPhone and vice versa. I start watching something on my iPad while walking up the stairs because I don't want – I don't need to pay attention to the toys the kids left on the stairs. But anyway, so I come up the stairs and once I get into my bedroom then I can just pass it to the Apple TV in the Apple TV says, “Okay, you're watching it on the Amazon app or the Netflix app,” and it just opens it up, signs in, pulls it up in plays it.

Yeah, I think you're right. I think hand off for a bit for the Apple TV can't be [inaudible] and that would make for a great user experience because it is definitely a scenario a lot of people experience. I do that quite a bit actually where I may be listening to a podcast in the kitchen or talk and then I want to keep watching it. I want to [inaudible] to the room for television.

One other thing I want to throw up there is just that there's no Amazon instant video app on the Apple TV and I'm wondering if them opening this up will allow Amazon onto the platform or not.

Yeah, it was one of the things that a lot of people – I didn't realize until the event how popular Amazon on TV was and I know Amazon or Google were amongst the friends that were invited onstage to any event.

I’m not really sure if that was – it looked like for a moment though all of these Adobe and Microsoft is just like ‘okay, are they settling all these old scores and everything's okay’, and I was waiting to see if that would happen but maybe eventually. I don't see a reason why it wouldn’t – I can't be of any real impediments to doing it.

Still waiting in review. [Laughter]

Now, I have to point out, Apple pretty much owns the music space. There are things like Spotify and Pandora out there but if people are buying albums, they’re most of them are buying them on iTunes. And then there are people who use the other competitors like Amazon to buy – or Google to buy their music. With books, I think Amazon pretty much just owns that as much as Apple would like to have iBooks via major player.

But they are – you can see them fighting really hard to get licensing for these other channels. They’ve gotten some licensing with some of these but not others and Amazon is a major competitor there. People either play ball don't with Netflix but a lot more people play ball with Amazon. And so I'm wondering if it's a little bit anti-competitive.

Well, the thing about that, too is you have to make a decision though like which is more important? Do you want to cannibalize the potential sales for this Apple TV? Because if I'm a consumer and I happen to just like the Amazon TV for the channels and things that it offers, but I love the integrated experience of having ample devices; now we’re going to make a choice and that's a choice that I shouldn't necessarily have to make as a consumer.

Yeah. I can see that I do watch videos off of Amazon Instant Video on my Apple TV through AirPlay and that's how I get around that. The problem is is that a lot of those systems like Netflix, it'll autoplay the next episode and it won't do that over AirPlay on my iPad. So if I'm watching something on AirPlay off of my iPad, when the episode gets over I actually have to go back to my iPad, fire up the next episode and then do AirPlay again.

We are like an animal. [Laughter] The dark ages. I know right? Why should I have to do any more work than I have to? Because picking on my iPad and touching it a couple of times is work.

That’s right. [Crosstalk] all the way down there on your lap.

Yeah, but the thing is is it is an interruption to the experience and I think that's the thing to think about there.

One of the things that I'm seeing because I’ve been Googling around at the same time is that the new Apple TV will support third party controllers that fit the MFI which is made for iPhone, I whatever system so I wouldn’t be shocked if you start seeing controllers that look like Xbox controllers that work for the Apple TV. And then you can have full game experience and then you just – you control it to go back to the menus and stuff with the remote.

Sounds like more testing. [Chuckles]

Yeah. But yeah, the other thing that really blew my mind was when they did the search and it was like, I don't remember the look up some movie or some actor or something, and then when they tapped on the movie it showed all of that are – you could watch it on iTunes or Amazon or Hulu or whatever. And I was like, “That is nice.”

That is a really good feature because that actually happens. One of the things that I, even with using a remote app on the phone, having to go through that search menu just to find out A, if this movie is even available for me to watch on one of these things and then how I can do it just to be able to have that a higher level and convenient –.

I actually was really happy; I smiled when inaudible] I think of a little bit [inaudible].

Yeah, and the other [crosstalk].

I can’t wait until all the Amazon, Netflix user on Spotlight search, “Who has this? Do they have it?

Oh no.

Yeah, the only other thing that I would want on that is like with Netflix, if you have a membership and they have it then you can watch it. But with Amazon Prime, some of them are free for prime and some of them aren’t that would be a nice feature, too, so that it's like ‘hey, you have a prime account so I know that it's free here’.

You could write it on iTunes, it's free on Amazon, it's available on Netflix, it's available to Hulu Plus. I don't know that there are any other content systems because Hulu Plus is you either have a membership or you don’t. But for Amazon It’d be nice to know whether it's prime before I go and try and watch it on Amazon.

But there's my wishlist Apple, if you're listening.

And they always are. [Chuckles]

I am wondering a little bit, I don't know if there's an answer out there for it but we have talked about the handoff thing. Are there going to be other ways where you can have maybe your iPhone app on your Apple TV app interact?

That actually is a really good question and I'm hoping that it will be supported because that's actually part of the idea for the game I'm working on is that if users bring their phones to play that they can do that and making updates on their phone as well.

Yeah, I can see putting out a server on the web or maybe allowing people to install a server on their network and then it is able to discover the server and the talk through some third party system. But it would be really convenient if it was able to detect other iPhones on the network and then say, “Oh yeah; why don't you participate in this way with this app?”

Yeah, that would be a really cool functionality especially for a game where you can have what's happening on the TV and you've got more [inaudible] controls in your iOS device.

Yes.

Yeah.

Or you can do your – different things.

We’ll also get around the ability to support gestures that you can't support and app right now.

Yup. The other thing that occurs to me too is that your phone has an accelerometer and a camera in it and so you could conceivably use any and all of those to enhance the experience with the Apple TV for different games. But anyway hopefully, it's not just wishful thinking.

Yes, I agree. I hope that if it's not available now as I continue doing, that it would be available soon.

One other thing that I kept hearing about with the Apple TV was – and they didn't bring this up at the event. But people kept talking about how was – it might become a hub for HomeKit. Is there any indication whatsoever? I know you can't do a review on the unit but is there any indication that you guys have seen whatsoever that indicates that this might actually be used to control other devices in the home?

I'm not saying a lot as far as products. I was expecting to see a lot more products like when they go to like a [inaudible] home depot expecting to see more proactive advertising ‘hey, this is supported by Apple HomeKit. You can control these devices because I'm in a process of trying to automate a lot of these things in the house, being able to control them all on a single system and it's just like I'm not finding those products. And this is been what – when was the announcement made. It was over a year ago, right?

For HomeKit?

Yeah, the initial HomeKit was –.

Yeah, it was two years ago. I don't remember which.

So I don't know what the hold up is, their source. Like the product adoption or introduction for a marketplace but I’m not saying that it’s not there but I would have expected a lot more out there even as a casual shopper in the stores.

Yeah, a lot of those that I see, they work with other third party hubs but I don't see a lot either with HomeKit integration. Most of the reviews that I've heard of any HomeKit enabled systems are mostly – it's toys right? And so they're almost like, “Yeah, Siri turn on the whatever light and it’ll turn it on and off. But it's pretty limited to what you can get which is basically, you can get a smart thing that plugs into the wall that your device plugs into and then it'll turn power on and off to it and things like hue lights are the only things that I’ve really heard about.

Yeah, same here. It’s pretty [inaudible] exposed to at this point.

But yeah, lots of interesting stuff going on there. Anything else from that event you want to talk about?

I think that's most of it.

Yeah, I think so.

Alright, well I am going to recommend that maybe we'd take some time to go play with the TV OS simulators and stuff and development kits in XCode and then maybe do an episode on that in a month or two here.

Yes, and by then hopefully I’ll have an app to be fully fleshed out [inaudible] and recommended it to people. One of the apps to check out. [Chuckles]

Our resident expert.

I'm not yet.

Well, he has a real toy to play with.

It is true.

Alright, yeah I don't think there's anything left to go over so let's go ahead and get to some picks. Jaim, do you want to start us off with picks?

Sure I can start us off with some picks. But anyway, I was going to do the same pick I do every year. It’s about that time, maybe changing the deer season, Oktoberfest time. One of my favorite beer’s like the German Oktoberfest Spot n’ [inaudible]. It’s just a great beer, not super happy, that’s all. The Americans drink these days are the quadruple IPAs and all that but I really enjoyed the Oktoberfest; they’re probably at any reasonable – like a star at this point. That's my pick.

Alright, how about you Alondo?

This week I have two picks. They are both tutorials but they’re geared a little bit differently. I've been – snagged another one of my younger cousins into learning to develop, so my first pick is a site called CodeCombat which is basically a way for people to code by playing a game. And so it's a little more engaging if you're intimidated by code or is just a way to keep kids engaged and kind of get them to want to jump in feet first and start coding.

And then my second pick is actually a tutorial for developing for the Apple TV from the Ray Wenderlich site. And it’s basically a quiz game and it uses TVML which is one of the ways in which you can develop for the TV. And I was just checking out some of the other tutorials on the site as well; there’s a couple more articles but it’s a good way to get started. You get an idea of what you can do so I’ll link those as well and those are my picks.

Very cool. Well, I think I mentioned in a previous episode that I got the Pebble Time Steel watch and I just found out that there's actually a development kit for it that’s not C; it’s JavaScript. Anyway, I'm super excited about that, so I’m going to pick Pebbles TS. I'm also looking to get some people from Pebble on to the show so we can talk about that. And yeah I also think we ought to talk about WatchKit and stuff like that down the line as well.

And then I'm also going to pick Basecamp. I’ve started using it for managing my stuff and it's pretty cool so I'm going to pick Basecamp. And yeah those are my picks; that's what I got.

So we'll wrap of the show. Thanks for coming fellows, and we’ll catch you all next week.