01:10 - iPhone

08:34 - FBI Case and Security

15:19 - iOS 9.3

17:44 - iPad Pro

22:40 - Apple Watch

24:10 - Apple TV

27:48 - ResearchKit and CareKit

30:49 - April 1st Intro

Picks

Uvex S0360X Ultra-spec 2000 Safety Eyewear (Jaim)
Andyy Hope: Swift: Selector syntax sugar (Andrew)
OLO - The First Ever Smartphone 3D Printer (Andrew)
Shapr3D (Andrew)
Taking a break (Chuck)
Facebook Groups (Chuck)
iPhreaks Show on Facebook (Chuck)

 

Hey everybody and welcome to episode 148 of the iPhreaks Show. This week on our panel we have Jaim Zuber.

It’s March 23; I’m [inaudible].

Andrew Madsen.

Hello. I’m enjoying the snow here.

Yeah, there’s definitely snow here. I’m Charles Max Wood from Devchat.tv. If you’re wondering why I’m concurring with Andrew, we don’t look that far apart. So this week we’re going to talk about the Apple Event that happened this week. There were some things that came through. We have yet another screen resolution deal with for one.

Is that true? No, I don’t think that’s true, is it?

Is it? It’s a smaller phone, I just assumed.

Yeah, but it’s the same as the iPhone 5 and 5S which everybody was already supporting anyways.

Okay. Never mind then, I’m only mostly dumb, not all dumb [laughs].

Well, in Chuck’s defense he already told us that he missed the Apple Event.

I did. I was at Mt. Western V Conference on Monday and Tuesday so I had gotten around to going and watching the thing. I don’t understand why they’re putting out the 16 gigabyte phone.

Yeah, neither do I and the crazy thing is that on iPad Pros they have— now have a 256 gigabyte option which is first time they’ve had that, that big of space for iOS. Now, there’s 16GB iOS devices and 256GB iOS devices being sold. The thing that’s crazy to me is I have original iPhone. The first generation iPhone has 16 gigs so it was the top end option at that time but still I can’t believe that you can by a phone with the same amount of storage as an original iPhone.

This is the gold stuff operating headaches are the future. [Chuckles] Perhaps the smartest thing forever because no one else will update the iOS version if they put more than two photos on it.

I know right. The thing that I don’t understand, I had a 32GB iPhone 5, I have a 64GB iPhone 6+ and on both devices I will admit that I’ve run out of space on them.

Yeah. I have 128GB phone and have for the last quite a few generations since as long as they offered it in I think.

Yeah, I’m wishing that I had gotten one but such is life so yeah. So I just— I didn’t get it. I know that some people like this smaller form factors in the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6+ were just too big for them but yeah, come on put some real space in it. I guess you can get a 64GB one if you want.

Yeah. Actually I’m one of the people who does the small form factor. We’ll see. If I had not already gotten success, I would strongly consider this new SE – iPhone SE just because I do small size.

So one thing that I’m wondering though is that the— so the iPhone, what are they calling it? iPhone SE?

SE.

SE.

One thing I’m wondering is does it have the – what do they call it? Force touch, 3D touch?

No, it does not have 3D touch.

So is it a step backward step technologically? Is it just to be released about iPhone 5?

No. It’s actually – now we’re just diving into the event but the iPhone SE is apparently essentially the same internals as the iPhone 6S, meaning CPU, amount of RAM, all of that. So video graphics, its performance wise, it’s identical to the 6S except that they do not have 3D touch and they are using the first generation touch ID sensor. So the finger print sensor on the home button is the first generation which was in the iPhone 5S and iPhone 6.

Okay.

It works just as well. It’s just slower.

Yeah.

I don’t [crosstalk]

Mine is a 6+ so it’s got that sensor [inaudible].

Yeah. But if you try a 6S or a 6S+, the sensor has gotten so fast that you really can’t tap the home buttons out of your finger so I got at a 6 here. If I just tap the button it comes up the lock screen and it did not read my finger print.

On a 6S, I can tap it quick and it already read messenger just as quick as I can tap it. So it’s cool that it’s fast but some people complain about it because it makes it— essentially makes it so you cannot do it quick tap on the home buttons just to see your lock screen to see what time it is or open your notifications or anything.

Get one of your kids to do it [crosstalk].

Yeah. Get one of your kids or use a finger that you haven’t programmed and touch IDE or of course you can always push the power button on the side but anyway so there are— there’s some argument you made that the slower touch IDE sensor’s featured.

I also heard that they— is there anything else to say about this?

Well [crosstalk].

Does it change much for the developer experience?

No. [Inaudible] was anything for developers. We’re already all supporting iPhone 5 and iPhone 5S anyway so screen size is the same as those.

Yup. And the hardware’s nicer so if anything you have better resources to run on.

Yeah. It’s a good thing. It brings up the— it’s going to bring up the average performance of iPhones because the cheap phone now performs as well as the expensive phone.

You think people are going to upgrade? So people have been holding on to their iPhone 4 or iPhone 3 forever? Because it’s—.

Yeah [crosstalk]. My impression of the cheap phone which previously was the iPhone 5C and then with 5S, It was the 5S until a few days ago when SE came out. My in-laws, my mother-in-law has one of that. She always has whatever the cheap phone is. So she gets her upgrade every two years but she doesn’t want to pay any money so she goes in to the cellphone store.

Okay [crosstalk].

And gets the cheap phone. So next time her upgrade is up she’d probably go get an iPhone SE where she’s using, I think the 5 or a 5C. She might even be using a 4S for all I know, right now. I think that’s exactly their targeting with that phone.

Yeah. It makes sense.

In addition, people would just want a smaller one.

The other thing is that for the most part of the people are buying the newer phones— buy the newer phones— and the people who are buying the cheap phones are buying the cheap phones. So you don’t see a lot of increased iPhone sales year over year anymore especially in the US and other countries where we’ve got smart phone saturation. You have a few people still trickling in from the feature phones but for the most part it’s not. So I’m also wondering if this is going to affect their bottom line this year, seeing more people come in and buy these phones as some of the others.

I don’t know. I think it’s the cheapest phone they’ve ever done. It’s 399 and subsidized which I think, I’m probably wrong, but I think that’s a hundred dollars cheaper than the previous cheap unsubsidized phones so that’s something – the difference. But I think more importantly, the cheap phone is now not a crappy low performance phone which always has been before.

I think yeah. People who have smart phones have their smart phones but it’s a chance for people to switch over from Android, we have a good performing iPhone. People might want the iPhone but not want to pay for it or not want the old version, performs well. Then people— this might be a chance to switch.

How does this rank against some of the top Android phones? Do you guys know? Because I don’t.

I don’t know at the moment because I don’t really keep up with what the Android phones are doing. They release— there’s a new Android phone coming out every other day. When the 6S is released last fall, I think, it was the fastest store basically tied for fastest phone available. That’s pretty typical when an actual new iPhone generation comes out. It’s the fastest phone you can buy because Apple is doing so well if there cheap design now. They’ve ahead of everybody in terms of designing their CPUs but they only release a new phone once a year so they give it for about a

year to catch up and pass them.

We’re in the middle of that now so my guess is that there are some Android phones that are faster than the— than this new SE and 6S but I think probably not by a lot. I think it’s probably up there in terms of performance.

Anything else you want to talk about with the SE before you run something else?

Yeah. I want to mention that I really like the name iPhone SE. The first thing that I though of when I heard it was the Mac SE which is a Mac model from the 80’s and I don’t know, I just like this little— seem like a little [inaudible] an old Mac. Apple doesn’t really— they often pay tribute to some of their stuff they did before especially when Steve Jobs was not around. But Phil Schiller said that SE stand for Special Edition and it’s an [inaudible] to that Mac SE that they released in the 80’s so that was kind of fun.

Cool. Alright, so the next thing I want to talk about and of course this is just me being a news junkie I guess, but think I’ve mentioned the FBI case?

Yeah. That was one of the first things they talked about. They restated, reiterated that they were standing on the side that they’ve chosen which is keep our data safe. It was good to see him stand up and restate that they’re going with it.

I’m curious, where do you two come down on this? Because part of me just to give some context from what I’ve been hearing. Part of me is hearing that the FBI wants to put a back door into the encryption which, of course, everybody who knows stuff about techno so it’s a horrible idea. Then I’m also hearing that instead what they want is they want Apple to create a firmware that can be signed to only run on that iPhone so that they can basically reinforce the password to get the data.

I’m a little bit on the fence with that. I don’t think it’s fair to forcibly make Apple a consultancy to crack phones but I also think that there may be something on that phone that keeps us safer. I’m just not willing to give up security entirely in order to get some [inaudible] of “Oh we could go arrest this other guy before he does something bad.”

Yeah, without running – the discussion gets you into politics. Personally, well I won’t claim to be a technical expert on all aspects of this because I’m not a security expert. I am 100% on Apple side and I don’t— if I had my way the government would get nothing and I don’t— I’m just not— I’m personally not very convinced by the argument. Well, we’re going to stop terrorists so we got to do what we say because – use that argument anytime the government wants something; wants to increase its power.

Well, terrorists are at stake. It really bothers me and I don’t like it. So I’m happy that the FBI ended their— whatever their law suit and I’m interested to hear what happens next. I know Apple’s probably going to want to find out how they claim that they came up with an alternate way to get into the phone and get the data out of it but they’re not seeing what that is other than that it was a third party that keep them.

I’m sure Apple’s going to be very interested to know the details of that and the government’s going to try to keep it a secret. I’m not completely convinced that it’s true. I think it maybe just their strategic thing where the government decided they were losing this battle. They want to save it for another day so this was a way out for them to save face; claim they’re going to be able get into it anyway.

Yeah, I did hear that they had suspended the case. But that does make me happy because then, like you said, using the argument that we’re going to catch terrorists isn’t exactly— you’ve got to have some solid— we know this information’s on the phone or we very highly suspect this information on the phone and it’s going to directly lead to the capture of these people. But there’s totally speculating that it’s on the phone and I don’t see that as a strong case for opening up phones. It does put a burden on Apple as well because one of Apple’s selling points is their security and even knowing that Apple can certain that your security is, I think will blow to that reputation.

Yeah, I really like at least thinking, hoping that it’s true that Apple cannot access my data even if they opt to.

Yeah. Jaim, we didn’t hear from you. Where you at?

Yeah. I stand with Apple. It’s easy to make a case that ‘show us the bad guys, [inaudible] the data’ but there’s a lot of bad people trying to get data, too. We have mafia, Russian mob. You have totalitarian governments over the world that can get data so it’s easy to make the case that just this one thing, just for these terrorists. Who wants to stand behind a terrorist? No one but once you do that, it is like, “Okay. Well, how about drug dealers? Okay the drug dealers then you go after on the criminals. Who’s going to find these people?”

Well, just you make the stand the first thing. I just – but I believe and I think security’s important. It is important for people fighting for freedom and places where they’re under oppressing regimes.

Bad people can get this data, too. It’s not just the big guys. Well I stand with Apple on this.

So one thing that I’m really curious about because even though the FBI basically backed out and said, “No, we’re not going to press this issue,” I’m curious if something like this did go through, do you think developers of specific apps would then go out of their way to make their app’s data encrypted? So that not even Apple could get to it?

If you’re selling point security, I think you would. There’s not a huge market for that but there’s to give people significant amount of people that would care about having their data safe from whoever, whatever they’re doing. So I think there’s a market for it. Most people don’t care and I see generally showing people care less and less about security so it’s a losing battle is the other perception.

Yeah.

Yeah. I think one of Apple’s point has been the technology to do strong encryptions already out there and it’s public. So, in terms of making it so bad guys cannot keep the data secret, doing this to Apple won’t really help. They’ll just get an app or get other software that allows them to do strong encryption a day or currently relying on Apple to do. Meanwhile, the millions of regular users, you can’t probably to do that will have their data exposed to malicious people

Yeah, the other thing that I see is that if you make Apple circumvent their security even in this one case, the worry is that somebody’s going to figure out how to basically get a hold to that code even if Apple has to sign the firmware. There’s still one step closer to being able to do it to other phones and once that technology is out then nobody’s data is safe. I think they’re legitimate cases where people have a right to privacy and circumventing it in this one case, I think opens up a lot of dangerous possibilities for that.

Yeah, that know-how would be worth millions, possibly billions. Someone’s going to get that data they wanted.

So I also heard related to this that you can now write encrypted notes that you have done a lot with your thumb print or whatever.

Yeah, that’s new in 9.3.

I thought that was interesting and it’s an interesting Segway, I guess, from the discussion over security to the discussion over iOS 9.3 is that there’s now a second layer, so to speak, of security even though it’s the same security that gets you into the phone. But you have to unlock and then unlock again. Do you think you’re going to open that up so that people can write apps so that their apps can have data secured touch ID? In other words, if I unlock my iPad and handed off to somebody and then they try and open up, I don’t know, super-secret client data app, will developers eventually be able to secure that data by touch ID or password or something else?

That exists now. So, if you go to [inaudible], if you hand your iPhone to someone and you go to [inaudible], it’ll last for year of thumb prints.

Oh yeah. My bank does this.

I can’t remember exactly the name of the framework but this exists. You can put that in your apps now.

Yeah, it’s been around for a while. One password uses it.

Yeah [crosstalk]

I think they want added it in, [inaudible] it on.

Yeah, LastPass does it as well. I just had – I just didn’t think it through. I don’t know why.

Well, let’s talk about.

Were there any major things in iOS 9.3 or is it just one of the mill stuff with maybe a few tweaks and security fixes?

It was a fairly— semi-major release.

Yeah, I was pretty excited about the new Night Shift because I had been big issue of f.lux or flux which will, if the sun goes down and your area would move the light from your display so it’s less harmful on your eyes. Some studies have shown that it reduces having the bright lights. Harsh wide light can decrease the melatonin that your body naturally produces when the sun goes down so it makes it harder for you to sleep.

I’ve been using f.lux for a while and I really enjoy it. So I’ve been wanting this for Apple. They released an f.lux [inaudible] I don’t know how to say it.

Just call it flux.

F.lux released an app agent [inaudible] outside the app store once Apple open up that functionality. Apple should have gone pretty quick before I ended up doing it. But this is something I was on defensive [inaudible] breaking for just to get, just to if you’re something by at night. It’s nice to not have those bright lights because I like to sleep. Sleep’s good so I was pretty happy about that. I haven’t edited in the 9.3 yet; I was waiting for people, if things are going to explode and so far they haven’t. So I probably do that pretty quickly but I’m pretty happy about the Night Shift.

Is that an available update now or is it still in beta?

Came out on Monday, the day they have the event.

Okay. So my phone will probably sometime soon.

Yup. So another thing that was added to 9.3 that has not gotten a lot of press but I think will become more important in the future is that there’s some new support for Color Profiles. And maybe this— maybe it’s not fully done on 9.3, I should have looked into the details of this before I

brought it up but the new 9.7 inch iPad Pro has, what they’re calling a true tone screen. And I think it’s their first step for legitimate real color handling for iOS devices which is something, of course, Mac’s had made forever but we’ll make iOS devices more appropriate tool for graphics professionals, photographers, film makers, that kind of thing. Some of that is going to require developer— developers to support as they write those kinds of apps.

I never thought about that being a problem with my iPad with the white but that’s one of the things that I want to see but you’ll probably get it by the way.

Some iPhones do that?

Only in iPad Pro as far as I know.

Yeah. The underlying support for it, of course, is in iOS now but the only hardware that has this new screen is the 9.7 inch iPad Pro. So— which is an interesting point. We haven’t talk about this 9.7 inch iPad Pro at all yet but it’s one of the big announcements at the event. There are two areas where it’s better than the 13 inch iPad Pro and that is the screen and the camera.

Oh really? Because usually when they scale something down like I remember when they scaled down the iPad, the iPad Mini, you originally couldn’t get it with the Retina screen and a few other things. So I find it interesting that when they scaled down to iPad Pro that got some nicer features on it.

Yeah, but it’s half the Retina so it does have one down the side.

But you really feel that? Or I guess it depends on the app.

Well, it’s the iPad Pro so here you’re running Pro apps and more RAM’s better.

How does it compare in size and weight to the iPad Air?

I haven’t looked at way but it’s exactly the same size.

Right. It has the— I’m looking at a little run down here— it has the same four speakers and you can use the Apple Pencil on it.

Yeah. It has a new— they made a keyboard for it just like that. They got the big iPad Pro keyboard, smaller, of course.

So it weighs under a pound?

0.96 pounds for the Wi-Fi model.

I’d really be interested to see what [inaudible] put it to but when I originally bought an iPad, full size iPad – of course granted it was the first iPad – I just didn’t find that much use for it.

I read a lot on my iPad but I’m really quite intrigued by the Apple Pencil and some of the capabilities that probably opens up. I saw a demo, probably picked it but I saw a demo about 3D modelling that is designed to work on the iPad Pro. In fact, it requires the iPad Pro. You can’t run it as a viewer but full featured app will only work on a device that supports an Apple Pencil. It looks really cool. Well done. So I hope that the powerful device combined with the new input method continues to spur developers to create really good stuff. Of course, the open question is, is Apple going to fix some things so that it’s possible for people to make money doing that or not?

Yeah. I’m also really curious if you can do 3D modeling on the iPad Pro. Can you hook that up to a 3D printer? Because that would be really cool.

I don’t know if anybody’s doing that now but I don’t see why it should be technically impossible.

So is there anything else in iOS 9.3 or the iPad Pro that should be discussed because it sounds like other than the size and the difference in RAM, it’s got pretty much featured parity with the iPad Pro. They didn’t really add a whole lot to it.

Yeah. It’s basically an iPad Pro shrunk down to the same size as previous iPads. I’m really excited about it. The iPad Pro is a little bit big and a little bit expensive for me but I’ve been wanting a new iPad.

Well, what is your current model? I’m just curious.

I have an iPad 3 which is the first Retina iPad. But it’s the same performance specs essentially as the iPad 2 so it’s really slow. And I have an iPad mini, the first generation which is also essentially the same hardware as iPad 2 so it’s also very slow.

Right. I think I have an iPad mini 3. It runs pretty well. I do reading and stuff on it. I don’t really feel the need to get something new to replace it because it does what I want.

Yeah that’s a good point. I’ve had my iPad 4. I’ve had it for a number of years like a new iPad. Yeah, that’s great. It works what you use it for. I use my phone for reading a lot of stuff that I deal with my iPad before. I think I‘ve got more used to the small factor.

Interesting about the Apple Pencil is when I try to take an iPad for a conference or a talk or something and take notes, I bought a Pencil. Fancy one but I look on the screen and it’s just a complete failure. Taking notes with this was a nightmare. So I’m trying to see if the iPad Pro will become more useful for things like that, just jotting down notes.

Yeah. The only other thing I see on the iPad Pro that really does appeal to me is when I travel, I like to download a bunch of movies. Then when I’m in the hotel room at night and I can’t sleep because inevitably the first night in hotel room, I can’t sleep. I’d like to have something with the four speakers in it and the nicer screen to play a movie but other than that— yeah. If they could do note-taking [inaudible] where it could take my semi-intelligible scrawl and turn it into something that I could— turns it into actual text, that would be cool.

The technology to do that is out there but I just found it to be not worth it. It doesn’t feel like pen and paper which is great but that point they need to go to the hassle of transfer and into your digital stuff so you can get out of this. So note-taking has been kind of a disappointment so far but hopefully that can improve.

Yeah. The other thing that I’ve heard, though, is that if you have the Apple Pencil and you rest your hand on the screen, then it does some weird multi-touch stuff.

That’s not what I’ve heard.

Oh, really?

Apple really emphasized that in this event because I don’t think they talked about it when they initially announced the iPad Pro. People were saying that but the Pro is supposed to have excellent palm rejection.

Oh, nice. That would be cool.

If you have not tried out the Apple Pencil, you do can purchase yourself. Go down to the Apple store and play with one because it’s really well done.

That’s not a bad idea because then you can fire up the notes app and just start writing and see what you got. I also heard stuff about the Apple Watch?

Oh, yeah, on the new bands.

Bands, I heard they lowered the prize.

I think that’s it. I think you covered it.

Whoooh! Chuck nailed it.

So at cheaper price, the Apple Watch is pretty expensive for a watch that doesn’t do a whole lot. People use it for notifications and some exercise stuff but the apps are not that compelling at this point. I like the baseball app, the majorly baseball app but that’s not it. I use it to interact with the phone and get messages. So getting it into a cheaper price point, it gets more risks even though it’s – you mentioned, it is the number one selling smart watch out there. So it’s becoming more of a thing. More people are buying it which is good for all of us, I guess.

I think Chuck definitely hit it with they make— they came out new bands and made it cheaper. They only made the smart model cheaper. It’s $50 cheaper. All the other models stay the same.

New bands are nice. It’s not the first time they’ve released new bands but if there were something interesting about this, it’s that they did not announce anything else and yeah— Apple watch is now are year old and they did not update the hardware. Just something people were talking a lot about when the watch was first announced because it seemed hard to believe that Apple would expect people to pay $600 or even $10,000 for an Apple Watch then have to be obsolete year later and just lets them buy a new one. I was a little glad to see that Apple did not do that. For all I know, this fall though they’ll be coming out with a new one but if the upgrade cycle is not every year like it is with the phone, that’s good enough for me.

We keep pushing along. I hear there’s news about Apple TV.

Well that could be considered part of the 9.3 update although, they didn’t get the same features. But they released an OS update for the Apple TV that includes some Siri enhancements. I think the big one that everybody was excited about was that they added Siri dictations. So when you have to type things in including passwords, you no longer have to scroll through the horrible on screen keyboard with the remote. You can now just dictate it into the microphone.

How does it work with hard passwords? Capital letters? Dollar signs?

Yeah. I wondered about that. I have not tried it and then the other thing that’s funny is they’ve got in the UI just like all password entry UIs. They use the little dots instead of actually showing you password to keep people from looking over your shoulder. Seems a little bit useless if you’re saying the password out loud.

Right?

“Capital A, 1.” Yeah, with case sensitivity.

Apple TV shows the letter as you press it so you can— if you were near the shoulder, you could see what they’re typing in.

True. iOS devices – iPhones do that too. That’s part of the normal security text field thing but I just thought it was funny. The other— they did actually had Bluetooth keyboard support. That’s another thing they added.

Oh, nice.

That’s a nice thing.

Well I could see that I‘ve been wanting to build an Apple TV app for a while. What I’ve been thinking is that it would be nice to put something up there so that I could have different shows for Devchat.tv so people could search. But sometimes the dictation search is hard and sometimes we have guests with funny last names or first names. So it’s hard for people to say something the series going to pick up and “Oh you mean this episode.” But if you know how it’s spelled or you have some idea, it’d be nice if people could just effectively select the search box then type in. It’ll also be nice if you were typing in password.

Yup. I don’t know how many people, though are actually going to bother to get a Bluetooth keyboard and pair it with their [crosstalk].

No. I fully accept that when it comes to technology, I’m a total weirdo.

Somebody, I think it was Craig Federighi when he was on the talk show, John [inaudible] podcast a few weeks ago. He talked about how they could— I can’t remember now the details but they were looking at metrics – analytics and they found that the only time people wanted a Bluetooth keyboard was when they’re doing – trying to pair a Bluetooth keyboard was during WWDC— so to the old Apple TV. So it was clear that the only people who cared about putting the pairing up a

Bluetooth keyboard with their Apple TV were developers which is a tiny part of their market but they still are throwing us a bone.

Yeah. Well the other thing is that if you type in or if you have an app that puts up a dash board or something, it’d be nice to go with control keyboard because the remote’s a little bit restrictive when it comes to its capabilities. Then— yeah— Siri search sounded cool.

I was at a neighbor’s house, we had a get together. We were watching NCWA and the NCWA app were you could switch between the games and stuff, that was really cool but that wasn’t really something announced; I just thought it was interesting with the Apple TV with its capabilities.

Yeah, to be honest I wasn’t paying super close attention to any of that. I don’t follow sports at all and I like math TV but that whole event was not as exciting as some that I’ve watched.

[Chuckles] Well I do really follow college basketball to be specific in the US but my church group— the men’s group at the church. They pull together a bracket so I filled out a bracket. At this point, I think I’m losing miserably but it was fun to go over and to see what was going on. I was much more interested in, “Oh, there’s an app for that than the actual game?” Anything else that is interesting to talk about?

Yeah, CareKit was a big thing that they announced. So CareKit is follow on to ResearchKit which they announced last year. If you remember, ResearchKit is an open source framework that helps medical researchers build iPhone apps that help them do medical research studies. And I think that was – at the time, that was a really big crazy announcement because the whole project was on GitHub and Apple was accepting pull requests. And before Swift was open source is the first time Apple had done real all in open source project.

Now, we’re all used to do that because Swift is open source. It’s on GitHub and everything but CareKit is a follow on to that. It’s the same thing but it’s to help people write apps that are for— rather than medical research studies, they are to help people manage their care of various problems they talk about people— when you get discharged from the hospital after surgery, right now you get a piece of paper that has of the list of medications you’re supposed to take and any exercises you’re supposed to be restrictions on, things you shouldn’t do whatever. It’s just a piece of paper and people don’t really adhere to it very well. So with CareKit, you could write an app where the doctor sends you [inaudible] his app. It helps you remember to take medications at the right time and gives you instructions what you’re supposed to be going, not doing during the day to recover and whatever.

Hopefully, that will lead to better participation rates. So I’m just glad to see Apple continue to do something which I’m sure is good for the iOS ecosystem. That’s people using iPhones, iPads and stuffs. But it also just seem they’re truly motivated by making the world better and helping people and the whole thing’s open source. It’s a cool project.

Yeah, definitely. This is something that’s been a problem in the Health Care industry, like your doctor will prescribe something— if you came out from new surgery, you exercise, you take some pills – people don’t follow it. They got other things to do, they forget about it. They take the pain pills so it doesn’t hurt that bad. They forget about things. This is a good way – and this is something that a number of startups have tried doing but – tried to increase this because if you don’t take care of yourself after surgery, you have to go back in and do some more work.

[Inaudible] company’s not happy. It’s a problem all around so if people can go and do what the doctor tells them to do, the doctor can keep [inaudible] on it, that’s a huge win. That could really drive down cost so it’s really a valuable preposition. So it’s good to see this supported because starting from ground zero trying to go into apps like this or a doctor, seldom a clinic, it’s been tough because clinics and doctors are in the Stone Age with a lot of technology, but this could— can move us a little bit closer where it’s more comfortable. We could build more apps like this.

Well, the other thing that I see is that if you have some complication then you can report it and say, “I’m feeling light headed” and the doctor can basically say, “Well, that’s a common symptom so don’t worry about it.” Or they can say, “Hey, well that means that you might have some kind of internal something or other.” They can put the thing out there and make it work. So I really like the idea behind a lot of initiative here.

Yeah, definitely but looking forward to see what comes with this.

Anything else?

I like the little intro they gave. I wondered if they would say anything, April 1st is the 40th anniversary of the founding of Apple. They started out the event about the video about that. Trace the history of— it was actually mostly just text but it traced the history of Apple through with its products starting with the Apple 1 all the way up until today. I’m glad they did that. I would have liked the picture of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in the garage or something like that but at least they’ve mentioned it.

Yup.

There was no one more thing.

So very pleased about that after some recent 30 minute boring AQ dancing to that music. One more things.

Nice. So we covered it? Should we get to picks?

Sounds good to me.

Alright! Jaim, do you want to start us off the picks?

Alright. I’m going to do one pick. I mentioned earlier, I was a fan of f.lux and I run it on OS X and I didn’t see the Night Shift happening with iOS. But if you’re watching TV or something, you don’t really get the same effects. I’ve noticed if I dropped the screens at a certain hour to before I go to bed, I do sleep better and I get to sleep better. But if you are watching TV and get [inaudible] googles and seems a little weird but I have them at home. My wife bought a couple of cheap ones and expensive ones. They work pretty well. There’s not exactly a major difference but it’s noticeable so I just wear googles that can block the blue light. So if you’re watching TV close to bedtime, the effect is not that much. So I’m able to get to sleep a little bit better. So I’m a fan.

Nice. Andrew what are your picks?

I’ve got a few picks today. I’ll start with a blogpost about Swift by somebody named Andyy, Andyy Hope. Anddy with two y’s which is an interesting [inaudible].

Selector Syntax Sugar. One of the things that we really didn’t even touch on which we probably shouldn’t have was that with the release of iOS of 9.3 on Monday, Xcode 7.3 was also released and that includes Swift 2.2 which is the first official release of Swift that includes contributions from the community.

One of things that’s changed in Swift 2.2 is that instead of passing strings for Objective— for APIs that take an Objective-C selector instead of passing the string, there’s some new syntax and Swift for that where you do pound selector, then parenthesis and the name of the function and it’s good. It’s type C. [Inaudible] Compile and check it but it’s a little bit unwieldy and long and hard to type and hard to read. So this blog post is about the – this guy Andyy’s solution for that where he does something that is pretty cool and elegant so that you can create and simplify that syntax so that it becomes very nice and readable, concise.

My next pick is something that Chuck reminded me of as we were talking. So it’s a box that’s called the OLO. I think they’re doing a crowdfunding campaign that’s still going on our Kickstart our project. But anyway, the thing’s supposed to be $99. It’s a 3D printer that you stick your smart phone in and your smart phone actually becomes part of the 3D printer which is crazy to me.

So essentially your smart phone goes under the bed of the printer then they use the light from their phone’s screen to hard resin. So it’s not the kind of 3D printer that squirts out melted plastic; it’s the kind where they use light to cure resin selectively. Anyway, we were trying to hook it up on an iPad to a 3D printer. This is not quite that but still 3D printing meets iOS and mobile devices which is cool.

Then along those lines, something I also mentioned, my last pick is an app called Shapr3D. It’s a 3D modeling app that is specifically for iPad Pro. I have not used it because I don’t have an iPad Pro. But I have been doing some 3D modeling fairly seriously, recently which is new to me. I think there is whole lot of room for improvement in 3D modeling software UI especially for new people, for beginners. They look like they had done a really good thoughtful job of making a touch controlled 3D modelling program that takes advantage of the Apple Pencil. So I’m excited to try this out if and when I get an iPad Pro. Until then, they’ve got a video. It’s pretty cool. So those are my picks.

That sounds awesome. I’m going to just do a couple of quick picks. I was at Mt. Western V Conference. Like I said, it was a lot of fun. There was a talk there by Jamis Buck. If you don’t know who he is, he’s been pretty involved in the Ruby community. Not so much in the mobile development communities but he gave a talk about burn out that I actually missed. And as people filled me in, it filled me in on exactly where I’m at these days. So I’m just going to pick taking a break. Probably not going to get one this week; probably not going to get next week because we’re going to be at Build conference then I’m going to Las Vegas for other— another conference.

So I’m really looking forward to getting a break but that’s just something you keep in mind if you are unhappy with where you’re at or you just— you’re experiencing feelings or other things where you think you should be. Maybe feeling better about things or different about things, just go out and take a break. Just find some time and take a break. I’m probably going to take Friday off actually, just to get a little bit of a break. But other than that I just don’t think I’m going to get a long enough break to completely recharge. It’s painful. So anyway maybe we should do an episode on burn out. I don’t know but— yeah— so that’s one pick.

I’m also going to pick Facebook groups. A lot of people seem to be using them lately. I used to really hate them but it’s been a really great way to connect with people. So yeah— I really like Facebook groups. There’s actually a Facebook page for this podcast. If you want to go, check it out. I think it’s facebook.com/iphreaks— don’t quote me on that. I’ll give the right link in the show notes so you can just go to iphreaksshow.com and find it there. But yeah, those are my picks.

So one more thing to put out there really quick, this episode will probably will come out on March 30th or 31st. In fact, I’ll just make a note to Mandy to make it come out on the 30th. The reason that I want to do that is because we are going to do a meet up on the 30th. I’m going to be calling the restaurant today and making a reservation. I’m going to try to do it at House of Shield which is a place that Pete Hudson recommended to me. That’s relatively close to the conference venue. He said it’s close enough to walk, far away to where nobody else’s going to book a party on which sounds good to me. And he says they have great food and great alcohol if you’re— it that’s you’re [inaudible] so looking forward to meeting you.

Let’s put a few spirits [inaudible] in San Francisco. You can’t pick a number of times so I’m a really big fan.

I like it, too. Good place, good cocktails if you like that sort of thing.

I’m excited about this. Is Pete going to be there?

Yeah, he said he was going to be there.

Nice.

So Pete will be there. You might have to put up with some JavaScript people because I’m doing JavaScript Jabber meet up at the same time.

We’ll make them sit down table.

Or a barricade, maybe?

Yeah. I don’t know what else but then— but anyway— yeah. So I’m looking forward to it. I really love meeting people. So if you’re listening to this today it comes out which is day early then, by all means come out and meet us.

Thanks guys.

Yeah. We’ll wrap it up. We’ll catch you all next week.