01:25 - Open Source Swift

06:13 - Is Apple going to continue being innovative?

09:46 - Will Apple gain or lose market share in 2016?

13:01 - The Apple Watch

16:33 - The iPhone

22:05 - iOS10

24:22 - Frameworks Rewritten in Swift

26:46 - Writing Objective-C

28:37 - Siri

30:50 - Force/3D Touch

32:39 - Apple Watch (Cont’d)

34:54 - Purchasing Options/Financing

36:04 - The App Store

41:24 - Apple TV

Picks

Tortuga Travel Backpack (Alondo)
Twelve South PlugBug World Charger and Power Adapter (Alondo)
Creating App Previews with iMovie (Andrew)
Know It All! (Andrew)
RushMyPassport (Chuck)
Trello (Chuck)

 

Hey everybody and welcome to episode 141 of the iPhreaks Show. This week on our panel we have Alondo Brewington.

Hello from North Carolina

Andrew Madsen.

Hello from Salt Lake City.

I’m Charles Max Wood from DevChat.TV. This week we’re going to talk about— since we had a New Year turnover, of course we’re already most the way through January at this point. But since we had a New Year turnover, how has the Apple and iOS ecosystem changed last year? What do we expect to see this year? I think we can also throw Mac in there and just talk about Apple in general.

We talked last week, I think it was about Open Source Swift. I think that’s, that might be an interesting place to start and maybe summarize stuff that we didn’t bring in last time. I’m also curious because I don’t think you were there Alondo as to what your thoughts are with Open Source Swift and where that’s taking us with Apple.

Well I, I definitely am excited about what’s happening with open source’s Swift. I don’t— I haven’t been keeping up with all of the latest changes follow the GitHub repo. The biggest prospect though is, to me, just being able to use Swift on some other platforms and as it sound a little bit [inaudible]. But if I could use Swift for Android development or even just half away to that— extend my ability to use it on some other platforms like Windows as a teaching tool, it would be really, really nice. I’m running some robots right now which finds it help some younger people with Swift coding. Having to have a Mac, it’s really putting a damper on my ability to be in certain things.

Got you. But yeah, that’s definitely interesting; it’s funny because I talked to a lot of people in the JavaScript community and what they tend to bring up is that you can write apps in JavaScript to take advantage of JavaScript bridges to— like JavaScriptCore. You also have JavaScript bridges in the same way on Android devices and their working on getting into things with— I forgot what the JavaScript engine is on —Windows phone. But getting into all of these platforms, you can just do it with JavaScript. They can abstract the way – the difference is enough to where you can do it. This is not the hybrid app web view. It’s actual native stuff where the processing and event handling is all done in JavaScript.

So with Swift going open source and possibly being able to be used in some of this other ecosystems, it really is exciting to think that people who have been writing iOS apps for a while can, to a certain degree, then take what they’re doing and just apply it to Android without having to go learn Java or Dalvik or whatever the heck they call that thing now.

I think the big thing there for me anyways is I don’t have to write JavaScript cause— [Laughs]

I’m not exactly a fan of doing that.

I have heard that sentiment from many people and I’ve heard as many sentiments the other way. I don’t have to go learn Objective-C or Swift. So, it’s funny but yeah.

Yeah. I think a lot of us feel JavaScript is successful because it’s a language of the web not because it’s a good language. To some degree that’s probably true but Objective-C is popular because it’s on iOS. But with Swift, although I really like Objective-C, but with Swift— this is Apple having the chance to start a language without a lot of the encumbrance that they had with Objective-C or the— even JavaScript has. Node uses JavaScript because web developers use JavaScript not because JavaScript is a great choice for that, that application. So Swift is Apple’s chance to start over and to design a language that’s really good for what it’s being used for.

Yeah. There are a lot of changes coming in JavaScript that make it a whole lot more palatable. But I definitely agree with you that it definitely has some history that they are not going to be able to completely erase in the way that you have to things. It, it will be interesting—

Do you think [crosstalk]

To see where things go here within the next year.

I agree with your point. I think its chance to evaluate Swift on its merit as well. Because it’s not going to get that hat that, oh this is the lingua franca of this platform. If people are going to adopt it, it’s going to be because it’s palpable to being trends players.

Yeah. I think Swift going open source beyond just the language. That signals a change in Apple that has been going on probably since Steve Jobs died? Seems maybe it accelerated a little bit.

That is that Tim Cook really has instituted some changes at Apple.

Culture wise, something’s have not changed and other things really have changed. I think there has been somewhat of an opening up and I don’t know, willingness to work with others where it makes sense, of course, Swift going open source. But even just hearing Apple executives make the rounds and the press and on podcasts; that kind of thing that just never really happen before.

Yeah. To say that was surprising. I was [chuckles] I’ll say a little shocked when that started happening for a company that’s been so secret for so long. It’s refreshing to see them start to open up.

Yeah but the thing is, is that these VPs and other executives can come out and they can talk about what we do and how we do it without talking about what we’re doing and what we’re inventing. So, there’s definitely some of that. The other thing is, this may make some listeners a little bit uncomfortable, but I have to wonder a little bit and I’m going to do this verbally – I have to wonder a little bit if Apple is going to continue to be the innovation pusher. With iPhone, they really did.

They revolutionized things, iPod. They revolutionary— revolutionized the way things work, iTunes. Though it still has its issues, I will admit it really changed the way that, interface with your devices.

The Apple watch came out well after a lot of other watches were out. I’m sure a lot of those watches came out on the rumor that Apple was creating it but by the time the Apple watch came out, it really wasn’t that innovative. It did a lot of the same things a lot of the other devices do. Sure it has a lot tighter and a lot nicer interface between it and the phone, but ultimately I just don’t see them leading the way the way that they did with the iPod and iPhone. So, when these executives go out, is there really that much to keep secret? Because the stuff coming up in the new iPhone and the stuff coming up in the new iOS is just not as mind blowing as a new device category or a

new way of doing things.

I definitely think that’s true. I think that the, the challenge for Apple, quite frankly, is it’s going to be hard to keep moving that meter, moving it further and further down and people continually say, “Oh, this is an innovation.” “This is an innovation.”

With people settling in to a way we – we’re settling to a way that we interact with our devices now. It would be pretty drastic to move the ground from under the user’s feet as it were at this point. We’re settling in to these different types of devices. I personally think that the watch quite frankly – although I enjoy that. I can see it’s a bit underwhelming for a lot of users because it really isn’t this drastic change.

But that in some ways like the iPod and the way it is being used, it really, really depends on developers to push the envelope and really change the way that people are going to work with those devices. I don’t know if we can dep— really expect Apple to do that for us.

Yeah. To the point of iPad, iPad came out and then we got Android tablets and things like that. But iPad pro? I, I just didn’t feel that was even all that innovative. They saw that category basically get innovated by Microsoft where Microsoft came out with the surface pro tablets that did a lot of the things that the iPad pro does. They have a pen device which is similar to the Apple pencil and Apple said, “Oh we should do something like that, too.” Then they came out with it.

Oh I think it’s easy to forget in hind sight that Apple has very rarely actually created entirely new devices. The iPod was far from the first mp3 player. It was not the first—.

That’s true. [crosstalk]

Mp3 player with a hard drive. It was the first one to be successful.

That’s true—.

And same with the iPhone. The iPhone was not the first smart phone. In fact, the BlackBerry had higher market share than iPhone for quite a while after the iPhone was released.

The iPhone, of course, the UI was very innovative but just as a device when you only list features. It was maybe nothing to write home about and I remember people complaining all out that it was not— it didn’t have 3G, it didn’t have multimedia messaging and all these other stuff that was pretty standard for a smart phone at that time.

So, I’m not so sure that just because the Apple watch was not the very first smart watch that that means Apple has somehow changed. They’ve, they’ve a long history of entering markets that are already established. But doing what they do well and using that, to be successful, whether that happened with the Apple watch or not is still to be seen.

Right. So I want to ask for your first predictions on the show. Do you think that iOS and iPhone are going— and iPod I guess, too, are going to gain market share or lose market share over the next year? Or do you think they’re going to hold pretty much steady?

I think the first part there as far as the iPhone and gaining share has a lot to do with emerging markets where it’s available and the growth in those markets, I think quite frankly [inaudible] we’re talking— we’re running to a pretty saturated market where the growth— I don’t expect a lot of growth here. You have that [inaudible] people going through their own upgrade cycle but that’s about it. But in emerging markets I think there are still a lot of opportunity. From everything that I’ve read and seen that it’s a desire to [inaudible] so I think there’s opportunity for growth there.

A couple interesting things. Apple’s earnings [inaudible] was yesterday and they announced that sales in India were up a lot which is interesting. That’s a huge emerging market and they also said that sales in China were up. But along with that they’re, they’re guidance for next quarter is that iPhone sales as a whole will probably go down here over year for the very first time in history.

I do think, at least in developed countries the market is already pretty saturated and any movement of market share really has to come at the expense of essentially Android users. You have to convince Android users to switch if you’re going to get better market share like in the US. Because there’s not this whole pool of people who just don’t have a smart phone at all. All you need to do is convince them to buy an iPhone.

That said, I think the numbers I have heard are that a lot of people switch from Android to the iPhone than vice versa. So if the need don’t moves at all, it probably will move in favor of the iPhone in the US but I don’t think it’s going to be a huge, huge thing. I think the market is starting to get pretty stable.

The iPhone now will be 9 years old this year and if you think about where the Mac was 9 years after it came out. It was already pretty clear that the PC was the— have the huge market share. Mac had the small market share. It didn’t really change a lot after that. So my hunch is that as long as it’s been long enough that the market has probably reached its stable point, at least, for the next decade or so.

Interesting. Yeah. I tend to agree. I think, I think the people there in the Apple camp are going to stay there for the most part. I think people there in the Android camp are going to stay there for the most part unless there is some really compelling feature that makes it so that they want or need to switch for whatever reason.

Yeah. I think those kinds of shifts happen long term and I don’t know— Even an amazing feature that came out on the Android, is that really going to convince you to ditch all of the apps you already have and all of this— everything you’ve already built up by being in the Apple ecosystem or vice versa?

Right.

Yeah. There’s really a [inaudible] to me for, for iOS or Apple ecosystem and the deep integrations.

I’ve talked to people who have had Android devices and move and got an iPhone, iOS devices this year? Well, not this year, 2015 [chuckles]. For that reason they really like being able to not have to worry about where their information is.

And for all the little things that they’ve complained about, they decided there’s better, more robust ecosystems that’s a lot better than having maybe one or two features that they didn’t have and convince them to switch.

I do think the Apple watch, in particular, was one of the big stories of the year. It was the first completely new Apple product category since the iPad, I think, which was in 2010. So it’s been 5 years and it came right out of the gate. There is developer support for it. So it was interesting to us.

That said, my impression has been, in large part, the API ecosystem on the Apple watch is not a big deal, at least right now. It just doesn’t really work well enough. I know I’m not very interested in developing an app for it and I barely if, if at all really use a third party apps. I think I used Dark Sky and then other than that, it’s just a notifications from apps that are on my iPhone. But as far as running apps on my Apple watch, it’s not something I really do. Cause you wait so long for them to even start up.

Yeah. I have to say that the biggest benefit to me is, is— has been tracking fitness and small notifications like you say. I was about to buy it when they announced the release of the Apple watch. I just decided the whole topic because again, the prospect of it in reading my fitness in tow just, was just more compelling. I was, “Okay it’s worth it.” Plus I have a watch, something that I haven’t had in a long time. So, to me it was worth it but I can see how it may not be that compelling to a lot of people. But I still hold— I’m still pretty positive a long term about the, about it improving and just getting better apps as they improve the watch OS.

Yeah. I don’t have an Apple watch. I have a Pebble Time Steel and I’m pretty happy with it for a lot of the same reasons that you outlined. It also tends to have better battery life. But it doesn’t have all of the sensors in it. I think it mostly just goes off of the accelerometer in the watch. So, by that it tracks my steps and movement, things like that as well as my sleep where the Apple watch has a, what do you call it, where it tracks your pulse?

Heart rate sensor.

Yeah. Heart rate sensor and things like that. Where it’s probably getting a little bit more detailed reading off of what’s going on with you, than my watch does. But I think it will be interesting also to see what integrations come to iOS from devices that aren’t Apple products. We’ve already seen that take off and I don’t foresee that slowing down at all over the next few years.

That’s interesting. I think one of the things that’s really different now from 10 or 15 years ago— it used to be that if you bought a Mac, getting accessories or just other things that supported that software and hardware was a little bit difficult. Everything was just designed for Windows.

Now, even though Apple, tightly control things the Apple watch and the iPhone are really closely integrated and are able to do some things that other people aren’t because of that. Pebble has always supported iOS and I think Samsung— their smart watches either support iOS or they’ve announced support for iOS. That’s interesting to see these competitors— Apple now is so powerful that even competitors are —support their platform.

Yeah. I think its Android Wear which is variation on Android and all of those are built to support iOS and Android.

Right. Samsung is using their own OS, called Tizen but they announced the iOS support for that and for a bunch of stuff they’re doing.

Well it seemed Motorola and Samsung and a lot of these others— if you bought their watch, you had to buy one of their phones. So, it’s really interesting to see that they are opening up to these other systems.

So what are we going to see on the iPhone? I keep hearing rumors that they’re going to get rid of the headphone jack in favor of just using the Lightning connector. Is that going to happen this year?

Well, I certainly won’t be surprised. But I can’t honestly say I’m looking forward to it.

[Chuckles] That’s about where I am at. I’ve got three or 4 different headsets that all have the quarter inch jack on them.

It’s funny is the fir— I don’t know if too many people remember but the original iPhone had a regular headphone jack but it was recessed. Most headphone plugs would not plug in to it. You had to use and adapter. I don’t think Apple put the adapter in the box. Maybe they did; I can’t remember now. But, anyway, you could get an adapter from Apple so you can plug in regular headphones in to the original iPhone.

So, practically it was the same situation and that annoyed me to no end. Then I was so glad when 3G came out and fix that. You could just plug regular headphones in so it seems we’re going backward in that way.

I know there are some advantages to doing everything with the Lightning cord but personally it seems to me that their idea is going to be, buy them an iPhone and you buy a pair of Beats phones with a Lightning plug and I’m not really impressed. I’d, I’d really rather just keep stuff I’ve got. But we’ll see. It certainly would be an Apple move.

Yeah you’re right. This might be the first time that I just— for that and other reasons that— I’m just going to wait. [chuckles] That I won’t get a new device when it comes out.

Do you think there’s going to be enough pressure to make them switch back?

No. Apple doesn’t do that unless the sales just drop to zero which they’re not going to— Apple won’t —they, they’re famous for this stuff and it’s not always a bad thing. The first time Mac had no floppy drive which was crazy at that time. They’ve dropped optical drives from their stuff earlier than a lot of people, I think, would have thought it was a good idea. But in hind sight, it was fine. I don’t have an optical drive in any of my Macs now. It just really doesn’t affect me. But yeah, we’ll see. The headphone jack has been around for 50 years or something and it works fine.

Yeah. [Chuckles] I agree. It makes sense. The move makes sense even the foresight. But it’s just going to be— it’s just aggravating it has to go through yet another period of, “Okay I’ve got to update a certain set up cables and devices. I’ve got to get these new things or adapter.”

To think that’s a little interesting to me is why you require Lightning for the headphone jack and not just use Bluetooth for everything. Cause it seems that has already been pushed.

Yes.

Bluetooth headphones. The Apple watch for example, can use Bluetooth headphones.

Well when I’m out running, my hand doesn’t get caught in the cord of my Bluetooth headphones.

Yeah, exactly. I don’t know. Whatever they do, obviously there’s going to be a 29 dollar adapter you can buy that takes the Lightning cord and turns it into a regular headphone jack.

Yeah. My understanding in the thing that ticks me off about it little bit is that, the rumor is that they’re going to take the headphone jack out so they can get more space in the phone. That didn’t improve my experience at all with the phone.

Well yeah. Chuck, I agree with you because I don’t really want them to make the iPhone thinner. I want them to make it have longer battery life.

Yes, with you on that.

I think a lot of people feel that way but it remains to be same whether if they would do that. Of course, if they’re moving the headphone jack it means they can give me another 5 hours of battery life, then I’m all for it.

Totally. So, are there other features you think they’re going to add to the phones? To make them nicer, better, faster, longer lived?

I have heard a lot of rumors this, this time around and it’s a little early for that too—.

Yeah [crosstalk].

Doesn’t come out for presumably it won’t come out until September or October. I think it’s— if they follow the cycle that they followed since the 3G came out then, it will be a new design cause the 6 that will lead 7 so it will have a new physical design. It should be faster, better graphics. I saw rumor that it will have dual camera— two cameras in the back.

CHUCK: Hmm.

From some company or technology that they acquired. I don’t— I didn’t really read the details but I do think Apple’s push better camera quality on the iPhone is a long term thing that they tend to keep up. I think they take it really seriously. That’s a good thing and I think it’s also a compelling among several reasons. Every era it’s a compelling reason to upgrade your iPhone cause you get a better camera. It is, for most people I think their smart phone is their camera.

Yeah. It is for me.

Yeah. I have a serious camera— a few serious cameras but 99.9% of the time I don’t want to carry those around and the iPhone does a great job. So, really it is my de facto camera mosaic going somewhere or wanted to take serious pictures but most of the time, that’s not true. The better they can do with that, the bigger competitive advantage they have and I think they’ve done a good job so far. There are obviously good cameras in other phones but in general you can buy an iPhone and know if you’re not getting the very best camera out there, you’re getting an excellent one anyway.

Well, you’re making me feel a lot less serious of photos [laughs] because all I have is the iPhone.

No, I don’t think that means you’re not serious at all. I just think for most people they wanted take snapshots of their family and things they’re doing, vacations they go on and at these point the iPhone is really good enough for most of that. I’m not sure taking sports photography or really low white stuff or whatever. But most people aren’t doing that.

Yeah. They’re zooming in on things that are really small. They use to want the high detail or whatever.

Yeah if you’re taking pictures of wild life or something. You’re not going to do with your iPhone but—.

Yup. I’m also wondering with—it seems iOS —what are looking at now? Ten?

Yes [crosstalk]

iOS 9 point whatever that has awesome new features maybe that, I guess it would come out in iOS 10. But I’m curious— do you see anything changing there? I keep hearing people asking for specific things like on the Android phone you can put widgets on your home screen or I keep hearing people saying, “Well it’s just time for refresh on that anyway because there are other things we wish it would do or with different ways we wish it would work.” Do you see them changing that anytime soon?

Personally I don’t foresee any fundamental change the way iOS works. If you think about it, really even on the Mac, the Mac came out on ’84, you put the Mac UI from ’84 next to one form today. Obviously, the one today has way higher resolution and works way better, refine and everything. But it’s still a bunch of icons on a desktop and menu bar up top. So, I don’t think it’s going to be anything too big.

I do think, though, the last two or three releases we’ve seen this move toward opening up, opening— things beside apps to developers which is something for a long time Android has had and Apple and iOS has and widgets on the home screen or custom keyboards, that kind of thing.

iOS now has support for custom keyboards and not widgets on the home screen but in the today view and the drawer that comes down. Essentially what you call a photo plug in that other apps can use.

They added support for custom audio units they’re called audio plug ins which have been on the Mac forever but they added those to iOS and iOS 9. So, I won’t be surprised to see further expansion of that, of the things you can do to extend other apps and to extend system functionality without, without your only option being writing an app. I certainly hope to do that. It just makes it possible to make more and more powerful capabilities available as a developer. But I don’t have any specific predictions in that regard. It’s a little hard to say. I think Swift is probably taking up a lot of resources in terms of Apple’s work on software.

On that note do you think we’ll see frameworks coming out rewritten in Swift anytime soon?

My hunch is that we will not see it this year but next year. The, the big issue right now is that Swift is not AVI stable. So, it’s not binary stable meaning that if an app is linked with one version of framework and it’s installed on a device with a newer version of the framework? It won’t work. For that reason, when you build an app using Swift right now, the Swift standard libraries get bundled into the app itself. But that doesn’t work well when your system frameworks are written using Swift.

So binary stability is part of the Swift 3.0 release which presumably will come out at WWDC. I think it will take another year for that to be usable but I could be wrong. It might be that all they need is 3.0 to be done and have that available and they can start doing system frameworks in Swift.

I think there’s also a further complication on the Mac where you have 32-bit apps and they support the— you might call the legacy, the old Objective-C run time. I’m not exactly sure how that all shakes out but there are some pretty serious complications for using Swift for system stuff on Apple’s part right now. I think they’re working hard on fixing those. But they’ve still got some work ahead of them.

Craig Federighi, when he was doing the rounds talking about open source Swift back in December, he mentioned some of that about— he at least alluded to the fact that Apple’s internal use of Swift is fairly limited for stuff – at least for stuff they’re shipping. I think they’re using it for internal tools and whatever they can use it for. There are those web walks for using it more widely for system frameworks and system apps and all that.

I do think Swift is really the biggest story in the Apple ecosystem for 2015. It came out in 2014 but it really came into its own in 2015 with the release of Swift 2.0. I think that was the point where a lot of developers looked at Swift and a lot of the downsides that were there in Swift 1.0 had been fixed and it really started to be an attractive option. I know that for me, personally at my job, we didn’t really start using Swift in a really serious way until Swift 2.0 shift and—.

The same here [crosstalk] we were the same.

Yeah. Well, I don’t think I heard a whole lot about anybody using until there the bleeding edge people that just wanted to be in it and on top of it, but yeah. This year was the year that we really heard about people really going for it.

I’ve been writing Objective-C for 10 years, a little over 10 years and I have not written any Objective-C since probably the middle of November which is a pretty big change for me and it’s not because I changed jobs or anything. I’m working on the same stuff but Swift has just gotten good enough that it’s really attractive and nice to work with. I think that’s true of a large portion of Apple ecosystem developers. I don’t think it’s everyone, though. I think there are people who have not switched to Swift and I think 2016 will just be we’ll just see more of that, more people switching to Swift and Objective-C will become less and less important.

That’s pretty impressive. We’re already at a point where pretty much all of our new files are in Swift but I still do a lot of coding in Objective-C. It’s probably about, honestly about, probably 75-25 right now Objective-C and Swift. I hope it change that as we move forward.

Well I don’t wat to oversell it. As a company, we’re still using a lot of Objective-C because of all the code we’ve already got but it’s just bit, for me personally for the last few months I’ve been working on something that was brand new from scratch. So, I had no reason not to just start with Swift from the very beginning. I spend—.

Okay Andrew [crosstalk], stop being modest. We know you don’t write bugs. So you never have to revisit the Objective-C.

Yeah right. Now, I don’t write bugs but some of my co-workers do. So, I have to fix— no, I’m just kidding.

Yeah. That’s what I thought. That’s what I thought.

[Chuckles] Yeah. We, we have hundreds and thousands of lines probably of Objective-C that we are certainly not going to rewrite of throw away anytime soon. So working on the features is going to require Objective-C for some time to come but more and more and more further development will switch to Swift as time goes on. It’s going maybe faster than I would have expected in 2014 when Swift was first announced.

So, do you, either of you, think that Siri is going to learn English this year?

Serious does really well for me except for names. It gets— names are hard. I don’t have major issues with it. [crosstalk 28:46]

I don’t have major issues with it now but that’s going to change in a week because I’m going to stop speaking to Siri in English.

[Chuckles] So I’ll tell you how well she does in Spanish starting next week.

Do you already speak Spanish, Alondo?

I was really good in them and really bad. I think [chuckles] for February – about February I always speak back to what I would consider a decent conversational Spanish again.

Well I’ll interested how to hear how it goes. I’ve never tried using Serial in another language and I know Siri is not available in all that many languages. It’s only the big ones— the dictate them or whatever. But—.

Do you speak another language Andrew?

I speak Japanese. I think Siri can do Japanese. I should switch it on and try it sometime.

I was thinking the same thing if it’s available in Italian. But yeah, I’ll ask it for directions to something. Then, next thing I know I’ll follow the directions for that. Ten minutes and, “Okay, this isn’t right,” and, I’ll pull out the direction and it’s well okay but I don’t want to go to Texas. I just want to go to the, the place I named that’s in the town I’m in [chuckles].

AB Oh yeah. Siri, doing what you ask is different than it understanding what you said, I do sometimes have a problem with that.

Yeah. The other one is that sometimes I’m like ‘navigate to whatever’. So, I expect it to open up the navigation and start navigating. No, it just finds the directions; doesn’t tell me anything. Then it sits there and wait for me to decide what I want. So, there’s definitely still issues there in my experience.

Yeah. I have the same issue with names, too, as Andrew.

Yeah.

Even when I have it— I do have it in Spanish currently. They’ve had it that way for a while so it is easy to understand directions. But to tell it, especially in making phone calls and I’m trying to find other people inside of my address book, I’ve not quite figured out how to refer to my family and friends in a way that it understands in English name but the Spanish pronunciations. So we’ll see.

Yeah that makes sense. I really want to switch it over now and see what it does. The other thing that I am wondering a little bit about is, they introduced the— what do they call it —the long touch at the last WWDC.

It’s, it’s forced touch or 3D touch depending on which device you’re on.

Okay.

Which is stupid because it’s all the same the same thing. But—

So 3D [crosstalk] force touch. Are they going to add other gestures— do you think —to the system that may or may not require new hardware? Because the 3D touch on the phone definitely require new hardware.

Well I expect that the support for 3D touch on iOS will – and probably OS 10 for that matter will probably expand so you’ll be able to do more, you’ll see more places in the system where it can be used. I think maybe even more importantly than that, more and more third party apps will, will adopt it. That’s already been on going— third party apps have been adopting it and continue to. To be honest I really like that feature. I use it quite a bit on my success but that said, I don’t think its ground breaking. It’s a small, small evolution.

I have feature in the—. [Crosstalk]

Yeah. I definitely think it’s [crosstalk]. Yeah, I love it. It’s a great feature on the, on iOS devices. I turned it off on my Mac. I’ve just found it too hard to migrate my practices to it and I’ve got frustrated but on iOS I think it’s really nice and its implementation expands for different apps. We’re looking at ways to do it in our app work just to make functions a lot easier.

Of course there is a learning curve but I think it’s well worth. We’re now just making sure to offer ways to do something. One way, it’s a navigational menu and other ways with the force touch.

Yeah. Right now of course it’s only on the 6S and 6S+ meaning you can’t make some feature only be accessible with force touch or you’re cutting out a huge percentage of users. I think Apple might even complain if you try to submit something like that to the app store but that won’t be true forever so maybe it’s a thing wherein three or 4 years when everybody has a success or better it can become more important, more deeply engrained.

I also wonder, do you think they’re every going to get to the point where you can install an app on your watch that doesn’t require a phone app?

Not with this watch because it barely can do anything without a phone. It does have Wi-Fi connection but only, that’s only active if you’re on a known Wi-Fi network.

So definitely—

Yeah [crosstalk]

— not soon?

I would say no. But I’m also wondering how long before we get the next generation of the watch and make some hardware. I don’t think it’s coming this year.

Well, the rumor is that it’s coming in the fall. There is one that is coming in March which I thought sounded ridiculous from the beginning. Fall, I could see but is it really going to be, is it going to be like Apple watch two or is it going to be Apple watch 1S? Nobody knows and when I say 1S is it really going to be a big revision or is it or are they going to come up with some new case colors and bands again?

I won’t be too surprised if it’s not a huge update cause I, I feel unlike a phone, people are really don’t want to replace their 600 dollar watch every year.

Yeah. That’s true.

I certainly don’t.

Yeah. Certainly.

It’s the most expensive watch I’ve ever worn.

Well a lot of watch people though it’s not really but it’s a small market of people but there are plenty few of if you really watch people and those watches not better be expensive compared to somebody that watches.

I know. Among watch people, at least the cheaper Apple watches are not expensive but for most people who are buying them, I think they’re pretty expensive unless they do something really way better. They’re going to buy a new one every year. Cause unlike a phone they’re not subsidized. You can upgrade your iPhone every two years and pay nothing. You’d be able to do that. You’re not really paying nothing but psychologically you’re paying nothing. You’re going to your carrier and say you want a new one and you don’t have to fork over any money. You just extend your contract or whatever. It’s not going to be true on the watch. So, it’s going to be interesting to see. I think the iPad has been like this where the upgrades cycle has been a lot longer than it has been for the iPhone and it has hurt iPad sales.

That’s one thing that I thought was interesting to change— as far as phones and carriers —is that not only now do a lot of the carriers offer a month-to-month deal that you pay a certain amount of the payment against the phone. You’re not in the contract and then Apple came out and did the same thing. So, are we going to see more financing and purchasing plan options from Apple than we’ve seen in the past? Were you can now get your iPhone and you just pay them a certain amount every month and then you get the new upgrades forever.

I don’t think so. I think that, I think part of our early discussion about saturation with these devices and with Apple moving the services? I think that they are thinking long term, seeing that saturation at play. Moving with these other areas where they maybe financing everything from these watches to iPads. So, eventually you’re getting your TV servers and think like that from Apple. So I see the company moving into larger space and playing a bigger role in, in having direct that so the consumer which they prefer quite frankly.

One thing I want to talk about a little bit which is appears speculation but something that has been on my mind and particularly Mac developer is—I don’t know if you guys have seen in the past several months especially but really since the launch, there have been a lot of complains about the Mac app store. About the app store in general including on iOS but the situations were way worse on the Mac app store than it is in the iOS app store where in, in knowledge part feels like Apple is not doing a lot of the things that would really help developers make viable businesses on the app store. And one of the latest developments in that story was that Apple’s screwed something up and let a certificate expire.

I don’t think I fully understand the technical details of what happened but the, the end result was that you’d go, there’s a day where you start your Mac up and click on an app that you’ve bought on the app store and it would say, “This application is damaged blah, blah.” It won’t run and it was the app store’s fault. There were some works around but they weren’t great. I dealt with it as, as a developer that sells an app on the Mac app store. I dealt for customer support for that.

It was really lousy to have to email people and say, “Well this is Apple’s fault. Here’s how you fix it,” and they don’t believe you that it’s Apple’s fault cause why would it be Apple’s fault? Of course it’s your fault. But of course, the lack of paid upgrades and the lack of free trials and all that, has been a big deal. There is a development recently where Phil Schiller were, where Apple did some reorganization internally. I think Phil Schiller now is essentially in charge of the divisions that work on the app store.

It’s made me a little hopeful and wonder perhaps there would be developer focused app store improvements this year or sometime in the near future. It would be pretty nice if that were to happen.

Yeah. I don’t have an app in the Mac app store. I’m hoping to change that in the next year. I’ve been keeping track of some of that. I’ve seen people with frustrations have decided they’re just going to remove their apps and sell them directly.

I’m wondering if with you who does have an app, is it worth the 30%? I think it’s a lot easier to make that decision in the iOS app store. You can say, “Yeah. I have to do it in certain things.” It works fairly well. You may have some [inaudible] but the Mac app store seems she said to have bigger issues. One, you don’t have direct access to your customer but then we have upgrades for software that you really— there’s still higher prize point. It just seems to be a hassle and I don’t know before I step into this. As a new Mac developer, is it worth it? Or should I just go ahead and learn how to set up a store and sell directly to my potential customers?

I will say that I’ve been in the app— the Mac app store since day 1. Before that, was already selling app outside the store. So I had already— because at that time there was no other options —I had already figured out how set up my own store and do licensed codes and all that.

It’s a little hard to compare. I would say that the app store did give me a boost in sales especially at first because people were using it. It was the new thing and I’m not really sure that’s true anymore. I still sell about 50-50, I’d say, app store sales versus direct sale. It’s really evenly split. I’m not sure what would happen though if I pulled out of the app store. Would my sales – overall sales go down or would all those app store sales just shift to my websites. It’s a little hard to say without trying it.

That said, I’m actually – all in all I’m glad I’m selling on the app store but if I were going to stop one channel, I would definitely stop the app store before I stop direct sales. Further than that, if I were starting a new app from scratch, I would now even consider making it exclusive to the Mac app store. I’m definitely going to sell it outside the store then also possibly in the Mac app store. But there are just so many advantages to having your app outside the app store that I am not going to give that up.

Even if you’re selling on the app store, just being to, for example, send your users beta versions that outside the app store is really nice. That’s another big complain about the app store on the Mac is that there is no test flight. So if you’re using any of the provision services that Apple offers like iCloud or push notifications, that kind of thing. There’s really – there are ways like the free test flight way of testing things but it’s so much harder than it is in iOS. Why not have test flights for the Mac. I think Apple said that test flights for the Mac was coming but it was two years ago or something and where is it?

I also want to point out though that as a consumer a lot of times I prefer buying my apps on the app store because then, it just comes in with one dialog that says, “Upgrade everything,” and I go, “Okay,” then it’s done. As opposed to getting the notification on every app when I open it saying, “Oh, there’s a new version of this too. Go upgrade it now.”

So there are also pressing cons for the consumers and I think – I know I’ve talked to a few people that won’t buy it if it’s not on the app store unless they absolutely have to have it. So I think there are some definite tradeoffs one way or the other depending on where your audience is and what you’re doing.

I completely agree with you and that’s one of the reasons why developers were excited about the app stores because there are so many advantages for customers. But I think that some of us feel even those advantages have started to become not such a thing anymore like this thing where everybody’s app just magically broke one day. Well, that’s definitely not an advantage when every single app you’ve bought on the Mac app store no longer launches.

Yeah. I can definitely see that as a frustration. I’m trying to think Apple TV, we haven’t talked about yet. Anything going on there over the next year?

Hopefully we get enough [chuckles] to control a television.

Well, they did update the old remote app so it works but it’s not— you can tell that they did the bare minimum to make it work with the new Apple TV but it doesn’t take advantage of any of the stuff that is new about the app— the new Apple TV. So it’s got the same of – you swipe but it’s not like swiping on the Apple TV or remote; it’s like using the old Apple TV remote on the new one where you swipe to move one item at a time. Obviously there’s some work to be done there to make it really a first class experience but they did, they did that support for it.

More broadly the Apple TV has been— my impression is that’s it been pretty successful. I certainly like mine a lot and I have been using the Apple TV since the first one came out at the beginning of 2007. They did a great job. They address some of my biggest complaints, the biggest of which was there is no universal search.

So, I would want to watch a movie I didn’t know if it was on iTunes or Netflix or whatever. I’d just have to go look and check for it on each one or google it. But now you can say, “Show me such and such,” and it will tell you which servers it’s on.

I do think though that probably, at least for the foreseeable future, the two big app categories for the Apple TV that will really be worth anything are games and video content apps. So, hoo-woo HBO and Netflix and those apps. Nobody really wants to browse the web or check their Facebook account on their Apple TV; at least I don’t think so.

Yeah. I definitely agree. I think I haven’t had the original – the older version of the Apple TV as long as you have. I’ve had it for two years and I really am enjoying the new one. I agree that the categories. I’m looking to an idea for a game that I think may work but I haven’t got around to developing it. I don’t do any shopping or any of the other types of things that I’ve seen as available. They just don’t seem— they don’t seem interesting. I definitely don’t want to go to the user interface and do a lot of those things. Consuming content like sports, movies that seem perfect and it works really, really well. This is definitely an improvement. I just would like to be able to, it enter data. It’ll be easier either from my watch or my phone or remote.

Cool. I have one but I haven’t actually used it [chuckles] so got no thoughts there.

Well, I got one of the free developer units. So, how can it be free? I do use it.

Same here. I’ve been enjoying it and it’s been really good.

Yeah. I think I’m going to start on working on an app for it pretty soon here. I’ve been playing around with one, it’s nothing serious. It’s nothing that I’ve really devoted enough time to get it wrapped up and shipped. But all in all, it’s not very different from developing from iOS. It’ a really nice experience.

Yeah. For me, since I created media, I think it would be nice to have an app on the Apple TV where people can listen to or watch the media.

Yeah. I think that’s a great idea. DevChat.TV app would be really cool.

Yeah. I think it’d be great. Then, I can put up all my videos and things like that. Then for the audio, we’d probably look something like the Pandora app or something. Is there any area of Apple or development that we want to talk about before you wrap up?

There’s plenty we could talk about but nothing that I think we really need to.

Yeah. No cars in 2016.

[Chuckles] Yeah.

No. I think that’s going to ship in first half of 2017.

[Laughs] I’m not driving that one.

Yeah.

Yeah there you go. It had a bug but it had an air bag.

Yeah. I’ll wait ‘till version two for the car

Yeah. Same here.

Alright. Well let’s go ahead and get into the picks then. Alondo, do you want to give us some picks?

Sure. I have two picks and they are both travel related. The first pick is the bag pack that I’m using, taking with me for year long trip on Saturday. It is the Tortuga Backpack. It’s a really nice; it’s not that large. It fits in the— as a carry on so don’t have to check it. I’m hoping to get pretty much everything with exceptional few items and the one bag. I’m looking forward to putting spaces in the next 12 months.

My second pick is a world charger and power adapter so I can power my MacBook and my iPod while I’m on the road. It’s from Twelve South and it’s available from Apple. It’s definitely something. It’s got all the adapters that I think I’ll need so I’m going from to country to country as well. So, those are my two picks this week.

Alright. Andrew what are your picks?

Got two picks today. My first pick is iMovie but specifically the app preview feature Apple. I don’t really realize it was in here but today I’ve been working on an app preview video for an iOS app that I’m working on. It’s where you record a video and then put it on the app store as part of your listing. Well iMovie has built in support for creating these and it’s pretty cool because they added some specific features to make this whole work easier and it automatically exports in the right format for the iTunes store and all that— for the app store. So, that’s iMovie with app preview – iMovie support for app previews.

My second pick is an Apple TV app for the new Apple TV. It’s called Know It All. It’s a trivia game that is meant to be played with your family and friends in front of the TV. You download an iPhone app that’s you buzzer where you buzz in your answer. Then, it’s jeopardy style with a grid of questions but I just think it’s really well done. My wife and I have fun playing it together. We’ve never done a bigger game but I think you’re going to do more than two players. They’re continuing to add new question packs so there’s a lot there. I just think it’s well done and it’s one of the first of Apple TV specific games that couldn’t really be done as well on another platform that I’ve enjoyed. Those are my picks.

Alright. I’ve got a pick but before I make my pick, I’m curious Alondo, on the Twelve South PlugBug world charger and power adapter? Does it work in most regions of the world? Or do you know?

It’s supposed to work for most regions. Count on it [chuckles] because I’m going to be in most regions. It was recommended to me by some other people who are travelling the same trip.

Okay. Cause I am going to be going to Europe next month. That’s what I’ve wanted to mention really quickly. So I want to just make sure that it will work if I take it with me to Europe.

Yeah. I think you’re covered for Europe but I was more worried about myself in America and Asia.

Okay, sounds good. So, real quick I just want to mention, I’m going to be in Amsterdam on the 16th, 17th, 18th of February. We’re going out there for the ng-nl conference; that’s an Angular.js conference for those of you who aren’t in the web world. I’m going to be doing a meet up on the 17th in the evening. Yeah, Alondo’s pick made me think, yeah I might need to charge my laptop while I’m out there. So it definitely be adding this to my cart and buying it.

Anyway, if you want to meet me, you want to hang out, I’m not doing anything too formal. I haven’t even picked a place yet so you probably going to either need to follow me on Twitter. My Twitter handle is cmaxw or if you get on the mailing list for the show, if you go to iphreakshow.com and then get into mailing list where you get the episodes. That will get you on the list where I also send out the announcement when I know where I’m going to be doing this meet up. But it will be somewhere in Amsterdam, probably pretty close to either to the hotel or the conference venue.

Anyway, so yeah, I’m excited about that and I’m excited to meet people. So yeah, if you can get there— it will be in the evening on the 17th; that would be awesome. I am also bringing cool little [inaudible] that I’m going to be hanging out. So if you have just as a hint you’re about to with an actual [inaudible] on them or anything like that then this is going to be pretty nice for you. So yeah, that will all be fun.

While I was figuring all this out, I realized that I could not find my passport which is important if you want to leave the country and comeback. So I looked around and I found out that if you expedite your passport in the US it takes some three to five weeks. Well, I was doing this on Monday, January the 25th and if the conference is on the 18th, then that’s cutting it really close if they get, if they get it in as fast as they can.

So I look around and I found a webpage called rushmypassport and they will shipper your passport through. So I will be getting my passport next Monday. So it’s going to go through all the way through in a about a week. That’s with me mailing it on Monday. So, super happy with them. It did cost a few hundred dollars but totally worth it to get my passport in time to be able to go. They wouldn’t even book my travel until I gave them or send them a copy of my passport which is part of the conundrum. Otherwise they’d be booking me last minute on their airlines to Europe. Anyway rushmypassport.com is another pick.

Finally, I’m pretty sure I picked this on the show before but lately I’ve been using Trello for quite a bit of stuff, mostly development projects. So I’m just going to pick Trello cause it’s awesome and it’s simple and it’s free. So yeah, so those are my picks. Yeah, that’s all I’ve got. So, we’ll go ahead and wrap up the show.

I do want to do a quick shout out for iOS Remote Conf, coming up in April. I’m going to try and rope this two gentlemen in and our other past guests and hosts in to speak. If you want to speak, the call for proposals is open. I look forward to seeing you there. If you’re into Ruby, then check that out too. If you’re into freelancing, you have about a week to get the tickets before the conference occurs.

Anyway, that’s all my stuff. We’ll wrap up the show. We’ll catch on next week.