It wasn't until 2013 that Apple unveiled two new iPhones simultaneously. And it took years before the company sold more than three handsets simultaneously. Today, however, there's an iPhone for every budget. But what about the iPhones Apple no longer offers but are still for sale on websites like Amazon? Surely these iPhones are considerably discounted over many of the current models but does this mean you should still buy them? Admittedly, this is a somewhat loaded question, but one I'll attempt to answer.

What is a current iPhone?

Apple has followed a similar pattern in recent years when it comes to which iPhone models it continues to sell. This starts with the latest iPhone and iPhone Pro versions, which are currently the iPhone 13, iPhone 13 mini, iPhone 13 Pro, and iPhone 13 Pro Max. From there, you can throw in the latest iPhone SE, followed by the two more recent generations: the iPhone 12, iPhone 12 mini, and iPhone 11.

This means, at least until September, when new handsets are announced, Apple's selling eight iPhone models, ranging from the 2019 iPhone 11 to the 2021 iPhone 13 series.

What about software support?

Buying a new iPhone means very little if the latest software that runs on it, iOS, can't be installed. The oldest iPhones to support iOS 15 are the 2015 iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus. This will change, however, with the arrival of iOS 16 later this year. The upcoming update, currently in beta, drops support for the iPhone 6s series, iPhone 7 series, and first-generation iPhone SE. When the switch is made, the oldest supported iPhones will become the 2017 iPhone X, iPhone 8, and iPhone 8 Plus. Based on current practice, those are the three iPhones that will lose upgrade support in 2023 with the arrival of iOS 17.

What about hardware support?

Eventually, Apple products become "obsolete" or "vintage." The differences between the two are minimal but important.

Vintage products are no longer distributed by the mother ship and are between five and seven years of age. In some cases, but not all cases, iPhones in this group are serviceable and replacement parts are available. By contrast, obsolete models are those devices Apple has stopped distributing for sale and are no longer available for service or parts.

Which iPhones to definitely avoid

Adding together the information above, the following iPhones should definitely be avoided:

• iPhone 4 (8GB)
• iPhone 4S
• iPhone 5
• iPhone 5C
• iPhone 6/Plus

• iPhone
• iPhone 3G (China mainland) 8GB
• iPhone 3G 8GB, 16GB
• iPhone 3GS (China mainland) 16GB, 32GB
• iPhone 3GS (8GB)
• iPhone 3GS 16GB, 32GB
• iPhone 4 CDMA
• iPhone 4 CDMA (8GB)
• iPhone 4 16GB, 32GB
• iPhone 4 GSM (8GB), Black
• iPhone 4S (8GB)

Which iPhones you should probably avoid

iPhones that are losing iOS 15/iOS 16 support this year or next should also be avoided unless your budget requires it:

• iPhone 6s series
• iPhone 7 series
• First-generation iPhone SE
• iPhone X
• iPhone 8 series

Additionally, I would suggest not buying three other iPhones, including the iPhone XS series, iPhone XR, and iPhone SE (2nd generation). The first two because they are nearly four years old, and the last one because the newer iPhone SE (3rd generation) can be purchased for just a little bit more.

"Old" iPhones that are okay to buy

If you're looking to purchase an older, unused (or renewed) phone that Apple no longer offers, you should consider the last few Pro lineups. For those who might not know, Apple has made it a habit of retiring iPhone Pro models one year after their release, going back to the iPhone 11 Pro in 2019. Remember, these were the best iPhones you could buy when they were first announced. Therefore, the iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 12 are highly recommended if you can find new ones on sale.

All iPhones you should buy

Without factoring in what each smartphone can do, I have no problem recommending the following iPhones for purchase. Besides the iPhone 11 Pro and iPhone 12 Pro series, each model listing below happens to be on our list of the best iPhones on the market!

• iPhone 13 series
• iPhone 13 Pro series
• iPhone 12 series
• iPhone 12 Pro series
• iPhone 11
• iPhone 11 Pro series
• iPhone SE (third-generation)

Bottom line: Buy the iPhone that best matches your needs and budget while trying to avoid phones that are considered totally obsolete by Apple.

Happy shopping

Hopefully, this guide will help you in purchasing your next new iPhone — even if it's one Apple no longer sells! Just keep in mind that if the phone is considered obsolete or vintage, you may have trouble finding certain parts if you need to replace them. Also, remember that they won't be running the newest and most powerful iOS software, which is something to consider.

Another week has gone by, bringing us one week closer to Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) 2022. As of this writing, Apple's developer conference will be taking place in just a week, where all of the next iterations of software for Apple's devices will be shown off. Let's dive in.

This iOS 16 concept is what Apple should do

This week, we saw a very cool concept of what iOS 16 could be from Nicholas Ghigo. In this concept video, he showcases customizable buttons on the Lock Screen, interactive widgets, a redesigned Control Center, Always On display, multiple timers, and more. A lot of these features are things that I'm hoping to see in iOS 16 myself, so it looks like I'm not the only one out here.

While my biggest customization request was for more streamlined theming and icon customization, I would love to be able to reconfigure the shortcuts on the Lock Screen too. Though I'm not sure if I'd actually change them from the Flashlight and Camera, as I use those quite frequently, but I know others would love to have the choice to do so. Kind of like changing our default apps, which to this day, still only remains the browser and email app. iOS just needs a bit more flexibility when it comes to letting us customize our devices the way we want them.

Another big one is interactive widgets. Even though I currently use a few widgets on my Home screen right now, they're just kind of there, showing me information and looking cool. But I can't do much else with them because they're not interactive. The concept video shows off the potential of interactive widgets, such as a Music widget with playback controls — this is what widgets should have done from day one! Right now, I find the Music app widget pointless, because it just sits there and shows off Listening Activity. Like, what good is that for? Tapping on an album just opens up the Music app. In its current state, the Music widget is nothing more than a larger, more glorified way to open up Music. Seriously, if interactive widgets become a thing in iOS 16, I can't wait to see what other possibilities developers can come up with.

You'll also see a better App Switcher in that concept video, which is reminiscent of what the iPad App Switcher is at the moment. I end up with so many open apps, that closing them is a pain in the current state — having an iPadOS-like App Switcher on the best iPhone would make it easier to see what I actually have open so I can close certain apps faster.

With WWDC just a week away, I hope Apple takes some ideas from the concepts out there. Developers who are curious about what will be taking place during WWDC can also check out the full program now.

A fresh serving of iPhone 14 rumors to satiate your appetite

Though WWDC is around the corner, don't expect any hardware announcements, at least not any new iPhones. After all, there's a separate event in the fall for that. But that won't stop the rumor mill from churning.

In the past week, we got two nice little nuggets of iPhone 14 rumors. The first is that the iPhone 14 Pro may have a 1Hz refresh mode allowing for an Always On display. This is a feature that I've been hoping to see on an iPhone for a few years now, and it looks like we might possibly see it later this year. Ross Young was asked to confirm if the iPhone 14 Pros will go down to 1Hz, to which he replied, "Can't confirm, but expecting it." Young has a pretty good track record when it comes to his knowledge of the supply chain and relevant technologies, so it's a high possibility. While nothing is confirmed until Apple announces it, of course, this may be one to put on your bingo card this fall.

The next rumor is that the iPhone 14 Pro may come in a purple color this time around. I really wish that Apple would just make the Pro models in pink or rose gold, but hey, purple? I'll still take it, as it's one of my top three favorite colors. I just wish it could be a more saturated, deep purple instead of pastel lavender, but hey, beggars can't be choosers I suppose. I tend to buy the new iPhone in whichever new color is offered, so I will look forward to this one.

Some random tidbits from the week

• Apparently a woman dropped her Hermès Apple Watch while on a ride in Walt Disney World's EPCOT, then her husband tried to retrieve it (a big no-no at Disney parks), and she now claims there were $40k of fraudulent charges since she had an AMEX with an unlimited credit line on it. This is a hilariously fishy story to me, because either she had a really bad passcode, or she's trying to get a free vacation. The best Apple Watch locks the moment it's off your wrist and you need a passcode for Apple Pay. Yeah, I'm just not buying it.
• There was another school shooting in the U.S. I won't say too much on the subject, but I'm honestly tired, sad, and angry. Something needs to be done, and it needs to be done NOW. How many more innocent children need to die before the U.S. gets its shit together?

After all of this, I need a well-deserved break, especially for my mental health. I hope that you all take care of yourselves, and make sure to hug your loved ones a little harder each day.

Until next time,

- Christine Romero-Chan

With the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) just a few weeks away, it's getting to be that time on the calendar when sites like iMore start predicting the changes expected to come to Apple's biggest operating systems. Today it's macOS 13, which should be announced alongside iOS 16, iPadOS 16, tvOS 16, and watchOS 9 on Monday, June 6.

Guessing Apple's plans for Mac seems to get more difficult each year. Two years ago, no one expected the massive changes that came with macOS Big Sur. A year later, macOS Monterey turned out to be a much bigger update than many of us had predicted, especially following Big Sur, although it was still a minor update.

For macOS 13, I'm only making five general predictions. Admittingly, many of these are being made by others across other tech sites. But, no, we're not copying one another. Instead, after 13 macOS iterations, there are only so many headline-grabbing changes Apple has yet to make on this long-running operating system. And predictions like these are always about possible game-changers, not the minor updates Apple also always packs into new macOS versions of the best Macs.

1. macOS name: Mammoth

Since 2013, Apple has named macOS versions after breathtaking locations in California, such as Yosemite, Mojave, and Catalina. In the past, the iPhone maker has trademarked the names of other places that haven't yet been used as a macOS name, such as Redwood, Condor, and Skyline.

As 9to5Mac explained in 2021, over the years Apple has abandoned most of those trademarks. At the time, two names remained alive at the U.S. Trademark Office: Monterey and Mammoth. With the former taken for macOS 12, the even-money says we could be introduced to "macOS 13 Mammoth" sometime after 10 a.m. PDT on June 6. Mammoth refers to the Mammoth Lakes region of California, which is known for its skiing and outdoor recreational activities.

If Apple chooses this naming route, macOS Mammoth will likely be an undoubtedly more extensive update than macOS Monterey.

2. Big changes to Time Machine and backups

Apple's built-in backup system still gets the job done, although it's not the most user-friendly feature Mac offers. And it lags behind how backups get handled on iPhones and iPad, which is arguably a much speedier process. Perhaps 2022 will be the year Apple brings iCloud Backup to Mac through a reinvention of Time Machine. However, what this would mean for the price of iCloud+ subscription plans remains unknown.

3. Better widgets

Macs have widgets and have for some time. Unfortunately, they lag far behind what's offered on iPhone and iPad. That will probably change with macOS 13. Expect better widgets with more flexibility; which could mean that the new widgets will be moveable anywhere on the desktop and offer more interactivity options. Currently, they serve as a speedy way to glance over notifications or a condensed version of information. For example, the Calendar widget will give you a peek into your week's upcoming events and reminders.

4. Please give us the weather, Apple

It's hard to believe there isn't a native Weather app on macOS. Although my heart will forever remain with Carrot Weather, a Weather App directly from Cupertino for Mac would be well-received by the public and would look gorgeous on MacBook Pro and Studio Displays. Currently, you can quickly check the weather on a Mac by using the Weather widget in the notifications center, but there is no actual app for it. When you click on the widget to discover more, it leads you to Weather.com in the browser.

5. One Mammoth new feature

There's a reason Apple has been holding back on using the word Mammoth in a macOS name — and it probably wasn't so it could fully develop a Time Machine option that includes iCloud Backups. So instead, I'll predict what's mammoth about this year's update is just how much closer it'll bring macOS to iOS/iPadOS from a design and feature standpoint. This could mean getting App Library and Apple Health on Mac for the first time, more Control Center options, etc.

Will macOS look exactly like iPadOS? Nope, but the similarities will be striking and will tell us a lot about where Apple plans on taking iPad and Mac in the coming years.

macOS — always getting better

MacOS will continue to evolve with each update, bringing minor tweaks such as security fixes to massive updates such as better widgets and brand new apps. With the exciting WWDC around the corner, it'll be interesting to see what we've gotten right about the new update and what we missed. What would you like to see in macOS 13?

WWDC 2022 is just over a month away and with it will come our first glimpse at the future of Apple's software across its various platforms.

After a less-than-groundbreaking iPadOS 15 release last year, I'm hoping that Apple has something special up its proverbial sleeve for the iPad. Before we get the official unveiling in June, let's take a look at all the areas in which iPadOS is crying out for some attention in 2022.

Improved multitasking views

iPadOS 15 did address iPad multitasking, but it didn't go far enough to really revolutionize the experience of using multiple apps side-by-side.

While the new multitasking controls made using Split View and Slide Over easier and more discoverable, the end user experience remained the same.

In iPadOS 16, I'd love to see Apple overhaul multitasking with more ways to display multiple apps on-screen at once. This could take the form of a more freeform Split View, with support for three or four apps sharing the screen, or even see Apple move to a floating window approach.

Parker Ortolani has offered the best concept I've seen so far as to how this could work without having to throw out everything good about the simplicity iPadOS offers right now.

iPad hardware, particularly that of the iPad Pro and iPad Air 5 which both run the desktop-class M1 chip, is more than powerful enough to run several apps simultaneously. Productivity on the iPad is being artificially held back by the software at this point.

Granted, Apple has to make its iPad multitasking a touch-first experience if it is to run across all of its supported devices. That being said, multitasking is already mostly hidden away and is opted into by those that know about it and want to use it. It could get a significant redesign while remaining that type of opt-in power-user feature.

Desktop mode

One thing I love about the iPad is that it becomes whatever you need it to be. Whether you want to use it as a handheld web browser, snap on a keyboard and use it as a laptop replacement, connect an Apple Pencil and use it as a drawing tablet, or pair a Bluetooth controller and play games, the iPad can do it all.

As MacStories editor-in-chief and noted iPad enthusiast Federico Viticci wrote a couple of years ago, the iPad is a modular computer:

This is exactly why I think iPadOS 16 needs to offer a desktop or "pro" mode. As Bloomberg's Mark Gurman theorized earlier this month, a special mode could be activated when the right accessories are paired, such as Apple's Magic Keyboard or Apple Pencil.

This could allow for more Mac-like multitasking, a more advanced Home screen experience, and even allow for an iPad to properly extend its screen to an external monitor (rather than just mirror the display as is the case now).

As I have written before, the people who spend laptop-like prices on an iPad and a Magic Keyboard today expect a laptop-like experience. iPadOS does not really provide one just yet.

Interactive widgets

Speaking of the Home screen, it's high time that Apple enabled interactive widgets. iPhone widgets launched with iOS 14 and came to iPad, in full, in iPadOS 15 but they aren't as functional as they could be.

While widgets, in their current form, offer convenient glanceable information, they do little else. You can't, for example, check an item off your to-do list in the widget or skip a song. Instead, tapping any part of the widget opens the corresponding app, disrupting your flow.

On the iPad, with its plentiful Home screen real estate, it would be extremely useful to be able to set up a dashboard of glanceable info and interactive widgets for these types of quick actions.

The Apple Music app on Android has an interactive widget, so there is at least hope that Apple will have considered bringing the same functionality to its own OS.

Pro apps

It's so long past due for Apple to bring its first-party pro apps to the iPad that it's possible it never will, but if it wants to continue to tell the pro story of the iPad then it shouldn't wait any longer.

For many years, Apple has pointed creative users to GarageBand and iMovie for making music and movies, but these apps are not as advanced as the pro-grade Logic Pro and Final Cut Pro that Apple makes for the Mac.

Third-party apps have filled some of the holes Apple has left, such as Ferrite and LumaFusion, but many professional users of Apple products already use Apple's apps on their Macs and could stand to benefit from the same apps being available on the iPad.

The same goes for app developers. While Swift Playgrounds 4 was touted as a proper developer tool last year, rather than a purely educational app, it's still not as fully featured as Xcode is on the Mac. The iPad, particularly on the Pro end, is powerful enough for dev work, so let's see Xcode for iPad finally.

Multiple user account support

People have been clamoring for multiple user account support on iPadOS for a long time, and I'm not sure it's ever coming. Though Apple offers the feature on macOS and on Apple TV, the company has always presented the iPhone and iPad as individual devices.

While that may be true for phones, tablets are often used by multiple people in one household. As a former Apple Genius, I have seen the havoc this can wreak on a person's Apple ID or personal privacy.

Multiple account support would be one way that iPadOS could differentiate from iOS, further justifying the name change, while offering more "proper computer"-like functionality. With Family Sharing, Apple could make it really simple to set up, too.

That being said, if a family can all use one iPad, Apple risks selling only one iPad to that family which is likely why this feature has yet to, and may never, appear.

HomeKit hub mode

This is perhaps a niche feature, but one that I would personally love to see in iPadOS 16: a HomeKit hub mode for iPad.

In my home, I have repurposed an old iPad model and turned it into a dedicated HomeKit device by keeping it permanently docked and locked to the Home app via Guided Access. It gives me easy access to my HomeKit accessory controls and is often easier to use on the way out of the door instead of barking Siri commands or fiddling with my phone.

We've seen a lot of dedicated smart displays crop up in recent years for the Alexa and Google Assistant ecosystems, but the only way to replicate it thus far for HomeKit is with something like I have set up.

The problem is, it's a bit of a hacky solution and requires having a spare iPad laying around to do. The Home app is also very information-dense and not all that glanceable. What I propose is an optional mode that the iPad can default to when left docked that shows pertinent HomeKit-related information on the screen.

Amazon does something very similar with Show Mode for its Fire 8 HD Plus and charging dock. With its famed hardware and software integration, Apple could shamelessly crib this idea, sprinkling in some Apple design sense to make it functional and good looking, and even make some money on a first-party docking solution if it wanted to.

Hopefully not more of the same

With WWDC 2022 just over a month away, we have some hopes for the unveiling of the new iPadOS 16. Ever since Apple spun iPadOS out of iOS, we've only really seen iterative updates to the tablet-specific OS.

After a less-than-exciting iPadOS 14 cycle that focused more on refinement, and an iPadOS 15 release that improved some foundational experiences without reinventing the wheel, it's time for a fundamental rethinking of iPadOS with version 16.

Nintendo claims that the Switch is still only halfway through its lifecycle, but outside of the huge library of great games, things haven't changed much. The Nintendo Switch still lacks basic customization features that both its handheld and console predecessors had, and although the console continues to be one of the best-selling consoles ever, the price of its games hasn't changed at all. And while current players may be satisfied with the games they do get to play, lots of potential players are still being left out.

That's a lot of Bells, Mr. Nook

Games are expensive. They cost a lot to buy, they cost a lot to make, and their development costs developers a lot, both physically and psychologically. It's only natural that games are sold at a cost that lets the studios developing them pay their employees and recuperate costs. Except they don't need to cost $60 forever. A lot of the time when I hear arguments in favor of high, or even rising, prices of games, people tend to cite their wish to support the developers, or make note of the fact that games continue to cost more to make as time goes on. But developers are paid for the work they do on a game currently being developed, and AAA studios are making more money than ever.

Consider Grand Theft Auto 5, which cost $265 million dollars to make, with $137 million going into development, and $128 million being allocated to marketing. Upon its release in 2013, Grand Theft Auto 5 made one billion dollars in three days. Its online component, Grand Theft Auto 5 Online, made almost $600 million dollars in 2019 alone. I think it's safe to say that the studio recuperated its costs and made more than enough to pay for the development and marketing of whatever the sequel will inevitably be. So it's understandable that after a little under four years, the base cost of the game was permanently cut in half — outside of sales, of course.

Sales — the very word seems to leave a bad taste in Nintendo's mouth. The company is notorious for rarely, if ever, reducing the price of their games, even after selling tens of millions of copies. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is the oldest Nintendo-published game on the Nintendo Switch, having released alongside the console at launch. Despite having sold around 25 million units, the game has gone on sale a grand total of five times on the Nintendo Switch eShop, an average of once a year, and never below $40 dollars.

God of War, which was released a mere three months after Breath of the Wild, had its first permanent price cut as soon as 2018 and has gone on sale more than 20 times. In 2019, it was reduced to around $20 and added to the PlayStation Hits collection, a group of games with high sales numbers offered at a reduced price for potential newcomers. Nintendo has a similar program in the form of Nintendo Selects, but it seems to have forgotten all about it in light of the success of the Switch.

What a Happy Price Selection!

Nintendo Selects originally started as a program called "Player's Choice" in 1996 for games on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and Game Boy. Games that sold more than one million copies — wow, remember when that was a huge achievement? — would be branded with the Player's Choice label, signaling to others that lots of people liked this game, so they might, too. This practice continued on the Nintendo 64, Nintendo GameCube, and the Game Boy Advance, with games from franchises like Pokémon and Mario being added.

Player's Choice was rebranded to "Nintendo Selects" in 2011 on the Nintendo Wii, featuring games like Animal Crossing: City Folk, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, and Wii Sports. It continued on the Wii U and the Nintendo 3DS, where it was called the Happy Price Selection in Japan. And happy they were — games were reduced to $20, making it attractive for newcomers and late adopters for the consoles the games were on.

Nintendo Selects came to the Wii U around four years after the console's release and was released for the Nintendo 3DS five years after launch. Five years into the Nintendo Switch's lifecycle and there are still no Selects titles in sight. Compared to the short time between release and price reduction on competing consoles like the PlayStation and Xbox, it kind of stings that the "Nintendo tax" still applies. Some argue that Nintendo refuses to reduce their prices in order to uphold a perception of high-quality games associated with high prices. The problem with that is that for economically disadvantaged consumers, there's a chance they won't be able to experience that quality for themselves at all.

No worms for the late bird

Accessibility is important, whether it's access to games for people with disabilities, access to basic resources for everyone, or access to entertainment, regardless of socioeconomic status. Sales are not only there for people with means who are being frugal for frugality's sake — they're sometimes the only way that people with lower incomes can afford things. To reduce a product's price, in my opinion, is not to devalue it, but to ensure that as many people as possible can enjoy it. That's not to say that games should be free or anything, as people should be paid fairly for the work they put into something. But when something is still inaccessible half a decade after those who worked on it have been paid, that's a problem.

Of course, this is all a simplified view, as I know that live service games and games with post-launch DLC still have people working on them after the game is initially released. This isn't a rallying cry for indie devs to continuously give their games sales and price cuts, either. But for multi-million and -billion-dollar corporations, their games have more likely than not sold millions of copies by the time the three- or four-year mark has passed. These companies are not depending on the money, especially not Nintendo, which profits from software, hardware, accessories, and merchandise.

The Switch has sold over 103 million units and the reason is simple: a lower price compared to other consoles and tons of great games. Nintendo claims to want to introduce multiple Switch systems per household so that as many people as possible can enjoy their games. But if the games themselves remain just as expensive as they did almost five years ago, can they really achieve that goal?

Worth its weight in fool's gold

We all know that the Switch isn't going anywhere anytime soon, no matter what the competition does. And with games like Nintendo Switch Sports releasing soon, people who remember the Wii fondly are sure to pick up a console. Though what can they do, when they cast a glance across the shelves in-store, or the pages on the eShop, and see a bunch of games still at $60? At the end of the day, the consumer suffers, and Nintendo's image as a family-friendly company that makes games for everyone starts to fade away.

While Apple dropped some fantastic new hardware at its Peek Performance spring event, it's now in the rearview mirror as we press forward. Since it's March, we're just a few months away from Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) 2022, so it's time to start thinking about the next iteration of software, including iOS, iPadOS, and macOS primarily.

A few months ago, I had some suggestions on what Apple should take from the book of Android 12, but that's not all. There's still quite a bit that I want to see in the cards for iOS, so here's my iOS 16 wish list.

More customization for iOS

With iOS 14, one of the biggest features was the ability to customize your Home screen through app icons and widgets, all without the need to jailbreak. Changing app icons was possible through the Shortcuts app, and with Home screen widget apps, the possibilities were endless. However, while it's something that can be done, the process to do so is still rather tedious and very time-consuming.

I was hoping for more customization options when iOS 15 rolled around, but it seems that Apple wanted to refine iOS with that release, and that's okay. To me, iOS 15 is like the Snow Leopard release for iOS 14, and Apple wanted to put some focus on other areas instead. But iOS 16 is coming, and honestly, customization could be so much more streamlined.

Look, I just want to be able to apply a singular app icon theme across the board, without having to create them myself one by one. Or even if I wanted to customize app icons, why do I need to use the Shortcuts app? Why can't I just natively choose an icon from the app settings? Or perhaps I just want to apply an entire theme to my device — there should totally be a section of the App Store that lets you browse and download or purchase themes from creators, and then apply it to your device in a few taps. This would benefit not only creators of said themes, but Apple as well, at least when it's a paid theme. I would not hesitate to drop a few bucks here and there for a well-designed theme, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

C'mon, Apple. People love customizing their best iPhone, as was evident with the entire "aesthetic AF" Home screen trend, so just make it easier. Pretty please?

Magic Eraser in Photos

Ever since I've seen the Magic Eraser in action on the Google Pixel 6, I've been quite jealous of my Android brethren. I go to Disneyland very often just to take photos, but my number one problem is the fact that there are always going to be people in the background. I know there are photo editing apps on the App Store that have such a feature, but the problem is that they are usually locked behind some kind of paywall or subscription, unfortunately, and I don't want to pay for just that tool.

Honestly, Apple seriously needs to have a native Magic Eraser tool in the Photos app. Apple likes to talk about various computational photography processes that are possible because of the latest silicon, so a Magic Eraser kind of feature should be a no-brainer at this point. Let me get rid of the people in my Disneyland Sleeping Beauty Castle photos, Apple!

Interactive widgets

When we got Home screen widgets in iOS 14, I was ecstatic. This was a feature that I saw on Android devices that I always wanted on iOS, and it finally arrived. However, I was super disappointed when I learned widgets would just display information and you can't actually interact with them. If you tap on a widget, it just launches the app — a glorified app icon, basically.

With iOS 16, I hope Apple takes it a step further and makes widgets something that you can actually interact with. For example, let me control my music playback with the Music widget, or allow me to jot down a quick note without launching Notes. Don't get me wrong — I still like having the data at-a-glance from various widgets show up on my Home screen, but is a little interaction too much to ask for?

QuickNote for iPhone

QuickNote was a new feature in iPadOS 15 and macOS Monterey that allows you to invoke a new note from anywhere, even while you're in another app, through a simple gesture. Like how App Library first appeared on iPhone with iOS 14 and then later for iPad with iPadOS 15, I am hoping it's the same with QuickNote.

After all, iPhone models with Face ID already make use of swipe gestures to navigate around — I don't think adding one more gesture from the bottom right corner will be a big deal. Notes has become my go-to for jotting down little snippets of text, web links, lists, and pretty much anything that I want to refer back to later. If QuickNote came to the iPhone, it would be much more useful, considering that I have my best iPhone with me at all times, which I can't say for the iPad.

The Home app needs a major overhaul

One of Apple's own native apps that seems to have been neglected as of late is the Home app for HomeKit devices. It hasn't had any major changes for a few years, and it definitely needs some TLC.

While I don't have many HomeKit accessories, I know others do, and from what I hear, the Home app becomes more cumbersome when you add more accessories to your system. It sounds like at the time Apple made the Home app, there weren't a ton of things that you could use it for. But now, you have many different best HomeKit devices, like cameras, door locks, lights and bulbs, light switches, and more.

For me, personally, I just use the Home app for my single HomePod mini unit. But for those who are heavily invested in the HomeKit system, hopefully the Home app gets a little facelift in iOS 16 — it's much needed.

iOS 16 needs to do more than just refine the base

WWDC 2022 is just a few months away, and we are going to see the next iteration of iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, macOS, and tvOS. I hope that iOS 16 brings some big new features that I've mentioned above, as well as some TLC for some things that haven't been given much attention in recent years.

As WWDC22 approaches, stay tuned here on iMore for all of your WWDC needs.

Talk of Apple only putting its hot new A16 chip into the iPhone 14 Pro models has a lot of people hot under the collar. But really, it's a change that makes more sense than you might think. And it's definitely one that Apple shouldn't be afraid of making, no matter how much the silicon junkies shout about it.

Backing up, let's get back to the news itself. A recent post to Twitter by well-respected analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has people frothing. Tweets upsetting people aren't new, of course. That's basically what Twitter is here for. But this one is interesting in that it claims Apple will only put its latest and greatest silicon-on-chip (SoC) into the Pro versions of this year's iPhone 14 models. That would mean the iPhone 14 Pro and iPhone 14 Pro Max getting the A16 and the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Max — yes, I'm guessing on the names but I'm fairly confident — making do with the same A15 Bionic that powers the iPhone 13 lineup. And the newly-announced iPhone SE, for that matter.

Except, it isn't really making do at all, is it? The A15 Bionic is still the fastest chip on the planet in terms of something that fits into a smartphone — both physically and thermally. It's lightning-quick and despite what Samsung and Qualcomm like to think, it seems unlikely to be bested this year. Except when Apple releases the A16, which is really the whole point — people want the hot new iPhones to have the hot new chips. And they will. You'll just need to get the Pro models to get them.

But why does that really matter? Apple has always been about features, not specs. That means that it only puts newer and faster chips into products when it needs the silicon to do the bidding of new features. New camera feature? Apple builds the hardware to match what's required. It doesn't add the super-fast chip and then ponders what it could be used for, unlike some other companies.

Put another way, nobody picks their iPhone 13 up today and wishes that it was faster. If the new iPhone 14 models can power all of the features they'll ship with while still using an A15 Bionic, why not use an A15 Bionic? It's presumably cheaper and in a world where chips are hard to come by, it leaves extra silicon for the Pro models where, again presumably, the more beefy features will be. Those features need more power, so they get the new chips. It's all really simple, especially in Apple's eyes.

The only people that will have a problem with it are those who are preoccupied with specs over capabilities and what's really required. And I get it. I grew up overclocking PC hardware to get an extra two frames out of 3DMark or to prove that my computer was faster than anyone else's. But we aren't talking about hobbyist computer people here. We're talking about normal people buying what is at this point an appliance. And if those people can do everything they want to do in a brand new iPhone with all that comes with it, without a hot new chip — who are we to argue?

Upgrade to the Pro for the latest and greatest

If it really bothers you, buy an iPhone 14 Pro or iPhone 14 Pro Max and get the very best iPhone you can, just like I will. That's where all the really cool stuff is going to happen anyway!

With the number of usernames and passwords we have to use these days, it's practically impossible to remember them all. That's especially true if you use a different password with every service you sign up for (if you don't, you really should!).

Instead of doing the wrong thing and reusing passwords, it's highly recommended that you use a password manager. That way, you can have strong, unique passwords for all of your accounts without having to rack your brain every time you log in somewhere. While third-party password managers have existed for a long time, Apple has its own built-in solution in the form of iCloud Keychain.

It's a great tool that encourages you to have better password hygiene. However, the fact that it operates mostly in the background and doesn't make it clear where to see and amend your data means it still falls short of dedicated apps like 1Password and LastPass. That's why it's finally time iCloud Keychain got its own app.

The promise of iCloud Keychain

I use Apple devices pretty much all day and iCloud Keychain has become an essential tool for creating strong passwords. It remembers all of my log-in credentials so I don't have to by allowing me to auto-fill them. iCloud Keychain is integrated into Safari, as well as within apps on iOS and macOS. My stored passwords sync across my devices, so I can pretty much always log in with just a scan of my face or fingerprint, depending on which device I am using.

For me, it works basically as well as Apple's pitch describes:

That sounds pretty amazing. How many times have you, or someone you know, been staring at your phone wondering what password you might have used or going through the rigmarole of resetting it (only to be told you can't use the same password again...)? Show that short description to anyone who struggles with their passwords and they'd probably ask where they can sign up immediately.

Of course, it's only really a great solution for those that are all-in on Apple devices since it uses iCloud to keep everything in sync, lacking the cross-platform smarts of some of the third-party solutions. But it is free for Apple users and lowers the barrier to using a password manager.

Except, it also doesn't. iCloud Keychain in its current form, I'd argue, potentially puts off more folks than it attracts given the confusing implementation and obfuscated organization of data. Putting an app on the Home screen, protected by Face ID, Touch ID, a passcode, or even a unique master password would make a world of difference for discoverability and ease of use.

A confusing Settings experience

iCloud Keychain has become much more than a simple storage and syncing solution for your credentials over time. With iOS 14, the service gained security recommendations to alert you to compromised, easily-guessed, or reused passwords. iOS 15 brought two-factor authentication codes and the latest beta software allows you to add notes to your passwords in iOS 15.4. There's a lot going on in iCloud Keychain and the experience of using it isn't as seamless as it could be.

The main argument against consolidating the iCloud Keychain experience into its own app is that you can already manage your information via the Settings app. While true, it's not exactly a pleasant experience.

Say you wanted to manually update a password for one of your many internet accounts. That's pretty straightforward to do since there's a top-level Passwords tab in the Settings app. But how about changing the credit card details that iCloud Keychain stores? Well, that's hidden away somewhere entirely different (it's three layers deep within Safari's AutoFill settings, for those wondering).

iCloud Keychain also stores your Wi-Fi passwords. Where are these kept? On macOS, they are hidden away, managed via your advanced network settings within System Preferences. And good luck managing them on iOS because you can only forget or change the passwords for Wi-Fi networks in your immediate vicinity.

Features of iCloud Keychain being split out into various different sections of your devices' settings may have made sense at first but it makes no sense today, worsened by the fact that functionality can differ from device to device. It's time Apple brought all of iCloud Keychain together in one easy-to-understand app for a straightforward and consistent experience everywhere.

Where is the dedicated iCloud Keychain app?

There's no sign of a standalone iCloud Keychain app in the latest iOS 15.4 beta, but perhaps it's on the docket for iOS 16 later this year. I certainly hope so.

The app would soon become the best iPhone app for security, making it easier for folks to create, store, and save passwords securely, find out if a password has been compromised and take action, make use of two-factor authentication, manage their Wi-Fi networks, and easily update their credit card information. A dedicated app even opens up the possibility for added functionality like the storing of sensitive documents, sharing and updating select passwords between family members, or sharing account access between colleagues.

Given security is a lever Apple likes to pull when it comes to differentiation and marketing, it would suit the company's privacy-first mantra to offer a Keychain app that makes it easier for more people to make better security decisions.

Foldable phones are nothing new. We had them back in the early 2000s and they've been making a comeback in the world of Android. Samsung has made several folding smartphones at this point and Motorola even brought back a modernized version of the iconic RAZR with 5G connectivity. But one question remains: When is Apple going to release a foldable iPhone?

Honestly, at first, I thought the idea of a folding iPhone to be quite silly. But as there have been more and more flip smartphones out, I'm kind of having that FOMO feeling and wish Apple made a foldable iPhone. However, it seems that we won't get a folding iPhone until at least 2025, at which point, will they even be popular anymore? Who knows, but here are some of my thoughts on why a folding iPhone would be nice to have.

Apple is always last, but usually does it best

While Apple introduced the original iPhone and changed the entire industry for the better, they seem to have fallen one step behind most Android smartphones nowadays. The same can also be said about the original iPad and the tablet space, as well as the Apple Watch and wearables. Historically speaking, when Apple revolutionizes one product category, others come in and then end up ahead of Apple's own products, resulting in Apple playing a little bit of catch-up.

With rumors saying that it may still be at least another three years before we see a foldable iPhone, Apple will certainly be late to the market, that is for certain. But Apple also doesn't exactly release half-baked products that have growing pains either. After all, do you remember the first Samsung Galaxy Fold that had durability issues with the folding screen itself?

I hope that whenever Apple releases a folding iPhone, it would have worked out all of the kinks and durability issues that may arise with a folding screen. I mean, Apple surely must have been observing what the competition has been doing and will release something that won't have the same flaws, right?

A flipping iPhone would be great for photography

There are two ways that a folding iPhone can go: a vertical fold, making the iPhone more like an even smaller iPad, or a horizontal fold like the traditional flip phones from back in the day. I personally would like to see a horizontal folding iPhone, because it would make iPhone photography easier in certain situations.

You may be wondering, "How would a flippable iPhone be better for photography?" Well, right now, even with the best iPhone, the iPhone 13 Pro, you need to use something like a MagSafe tripod or mount to truly stabilize your iPhone enough for fantastic Night mode shots or time-lapse videos. However, if you had an iPhone that can fold or flip open, it can literally prop itself up without the need for extra accessories. It would be so much easier for me to get photos by myself, especially at a place like Disneyland, if the iPhone could do this, so I eagerly await a foldable iPhone primarily for this reason.

A folding iPhone would be even more compact

There are definitely people out there who want the smallest iPhone they can get. I honestly would love a smaller iPhone but I also want to have the best camera system there is, which is why I currently use the iPhone 13 Pro. But if Apple made a foldable iPhone, preferably with a horizontal fold like the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3, then it would definitely become the smallest iPhone yet.

I personally prefer smaller devices because of an obvious reason: I'm a woman and I wear women's jeans and leggings. A humongous phone simply doesn't work for me, because I can hardly get my current iPhone in pockets sometimes as it is. If Apple were to create something like this conceptual folding iPhone, then I would absolutely buy that without skipping a beat. While yes, it would mean the device is thicker when folded, that isn't the problem when it comes to fitting it in a pocket most of the time. For me, personally, the problem is the overall length of the device — not necessarily thickness — which is hard to cram into a small pocket.

I suppose this is a personal preference thing, so your mileage may vary, but it's something I want to see.

The evolution of the iPhone continues

When the idea of a foldable iPhone first started floating around, I really thought it would be an unwise idea. But I'm slowly changing my mind about it because I think Apple could do it right, especially if it would be a horizontal fold rather than lengthwise.

After all, the iPhone is constantly evolving — every few years, we get a new design. A folding iPhone would be a huge change, but then again, the iPhone itself was a revolutionary new product to begin with. And maybe Apple could offer a folding and non-folding iPhone to appease everyone, just like they have tiny and huge iPhones in the lineup right now.

2021 was a big year for iPad hardware with almost every line seeing a significant upgrade. We got new M1 iPad Pro models, a totally redesigned iPad mini 6, and a solid entry-level iPad spec bump that will keep it relevant for years to come.

The only model that went untouched was Apple's mid-range iPad Air. With the latest iPad Air having launched in the fall of 2020, Apple didn't see fit to upgrade it last year. The iPad Air 4 is still pretty solid spec-wise so that decision makes sense, but there are a few areas where upgrades are becoming due.

Fortunately, it looks like an iPad Air 5 isn't too far away with a rumored Apple spring event on the horizon. Here's what I want to see the new installment of the device bring to the table in 2022.

Center Stage

One of the most delightful iPad features to launch in 2021 was Center Stage. Using a mixture of machine learning software smarts and Ultra Wide camera hardware, Center Stage keeps you and anyone else with you in the frame on your video calls.

With iPads becoming the go-to FaceTime machines for many people in recent years, it was a pleasant surprise that Apple brought the feature to all of its iPad models launched in 2021, including the entry-level 2021 iPad.

The full list of Center Stage-compatible iPad models looks like this:

• 11-inch iPad Pro (3rd Generation)
• 12.9-inch iPad Pro (5th Generation)
• iPad mini (6th Generation)
• iPad (9th Generation)

Since Center Stage is a 2021 feature and the iPad Air 4 launched in 2020, there's no iPad Air on that list. Apple will surely want to fix that at the next opportunity.

Expect other likely camera upgrades that will bring the iPad Air at least up to the same standard as the iPad mini 6, which recently got a 12MP Ultra Wide FaceTime camera and a quad-LED True Tone flash on the back. I also anticipate 1080p video recording in 25 fps and 30 fps, in addition to 60 fps, in order for the iPad Air 5 to reach parity with the latest mini.

5G

Next on the list of upgrades that will bring the iPad Air 5 in line with other models is the inclusion of 5G in the cellular configurations.

The iPad Pro was first to get 5G in spring 2021, with the iPad mini 6 following suit in late 2021. While the 9th-gen iPad didn't get 5G, Apple has shown it isn't a feature only Pro models will benefit from so I'd expect it to make an appearance on the next iPad Air's spec sheet.

The processor question: A15 or M1?

The current iPad Air runs the A14 Bionic system-on-a-chip, Apple's top-end mobile chip from 2020. At the time, it was a significant upgrade with 40% faster CPU performance and 30% faster graphics than A12, according to Apple. Since late 2020, though, Apple has shipped both A15 Bionic and M1 chips in its iPad models.

I expect that the 2022 iPad Air will get the A15 Bionic chip, again bringing it up to parity with the late-2021 iPad mini. It's unlikely that it will get the as-yet-unannounced A16 chip — Apple will save that chip's debut for the iPhone 14 in the fall — and it's also doubtful that Apple would want to move the M1 chip down the iPad line just yet.

Apple has to strike a tough balance between reserving its best features for its top-of-the-line iPad Pro and gradually moving technologies down to its other models. The iPad Air sits at a rather awkward spot in Apple's lineup — just below the iPad Pro in terms of size, specs, and price — so every upgrade the device gets eats into the market for the 11-inch iPad Pro.

Perhaps once M1 Pro and M1 Max chips, or a possible M2 series of chips, start to appear in the iPad Pro, the M1 chip will begin rolling out to future generations of iPad Air models. Not in 2022, though.

OLED display

Over the last year or so, rumors have flip-flopped on the issue of the iPad Air 5's display technology. At one point, an OLED upgrade looked nailed-on for this year but more recent reports suggest that has been pushed back and we'll instead likely see the iPad Air 4's existing Liquid Retina display feature in the 2022 iPad Air.

The mini-LED display of the 12.9-inch 2021 iPad Pro has still not made its way down to the 11-inch variant so it's unlikely we're going to see a breakthrough technology like OLED hit the 10.9-inch iPad Air before the similarly-sized iPad Pro gets that spec bump.

I'd really love to see OLED come to the iPad Air or any iPad, and I'd love for Apple to surprise us with it this spring. However, it certainly seems like an OLED iPad is a way off for now.

Face ID

Similarly, Face ID is a feature I'd love to see Apple bring to the iPad Air this year. Though it didn't ship Face ID with the iPad mini 6, instead opting for the button version of Touch ID like the iPad Air 4, it definitely feels like the sort of feature Apple could move down the lineup at this stage.

Apple doesn't restrict which iPhone models get Face ID each year (ignoring the made-to-be-affordable iPhone SE) with both the standard iPhone and iPhone Pro models getting the facial unlock feature, so it's not such a Pro-specific sell.

As I noted in my iPad mini 6 review, I found switching between Face ID-enabled devices and the Touch ID-based iPad mini 6 to be a jarring experience. With more physical space and a higher starting price, Apple could potentially justify its inclusion in the next iPad Air.

More colors

Let's face it, the iPad colors on offer at the moment are super boring.

For the entry-level and Pro model, you have just two shades of gray to choose from, and it doesn't get much better with the iPad mini 6 and iPad Air 4 offering a muted color palette across the board.

Apple has a history of using color to great effect and has even shown as recently as 2021 with the M1 iMac that it is willing to let loose with color every once in a while. Since the iPad mini 6's color range is so dull, I'd love to see the iPad Air become a more vibrant product for Apple with some rich, saturated aluminum chassis.

March can't come soon enough

The iPad Air is the Apple product primed for an update next and all signs point to an Apple media event in early March. Even if the iPad Air 5 doesn't get all of the updates I'd like to see, it's still likely to become the de facto recommendation as the best iPad for most people to buy.

Apple is rumored to be holding an event in March, which would be its spring event. This wouldn't be too far off, as Apple has several events each year, including the spring season. While this time of year isn't usually when Apple announces brand new iPhones, we may be seeing an updated iPhone SE 3 this time around.

The iPhone SE (2020) has been a popular budget iPhone. It was the first update for the SE line since 2016, and it brought an upgraded body from the original, as it was basically an iPhone 8 exterior. So instead of the tiny 4-inch screen, we were upgraded to a 4.7-inch display, with A13 Bionic and a 12MP wide-angle camera.

But the time has come yet again for the iPhone SE to get a refresh and it appears to be just around the corner at this point. Here's what I'm hoping to see in an iPhone SE 3.

An iPhone SE with 5G connectivity

I think this one is a given, but nothing has been confirmed yet, just rumors. However, it just makes sense. The rest of the current iPhone lineup has 5G capabilities, so it would only be right for this feature to arrive with an updated iPhone SE too.

With 5G, the iPhone SE would be able to download iOS updates over cellular, and users would be able to browse, work, and play at faster speeds than ever before. Plus, a lot of affordable Android devices also have 5G connectivity, so Apple would need the iPhone SE to be 5G capable as well in order to remain competitive.

A new design for the iPhone SE

This is less likely, but I honestly would prefer to see the new iPhone SE have a different body. Right now, the iPhone SE (2020) is just recycling the old iPhone 8 chassis and is still the only iPhone that Apple sells with a Home button. For some people out there, that is the primary reason to consider an iPhone SE — they would rather stick with Touch ID instead of Face ID.

But honestly, I would like to see the iPhone SE switch over to a design that is like the iPhone 13 mini. Even though the mini devices are physically smaller than the iPhone 8 body that the SE current has, they still have a larger display at 5.4-inches, rather than 4.7-inches. I believe everyone could benefit from a larger display and the mini-sized iPhones do just that while retaining one-handed use.

I know, I know — people still want to use Touch ID over Face ID. But I think if Apple changed the SE design to replicate the mini devices, they could do something like what they did with the iPad Air 4 and iPad mini 6 and move Touch ID into the side or power button. This way, iPhone SE users would get a larger display without losing Touch ID. Of course, they would have to learn all of the navigation gestures, but that's something that one can get accustomed to over time. After all, will Apple continue to have a Home button 10 years from now?

iPhone SE camera advancements

Though the iPhone SE got some decent camera upgrades in 2020, it would fall behind a lot if there were no improvements this year. I am not expecting a triple or even dual-lens camera system (otherwise there would be no major reason to get the current flagships), but there are some things I hope are coming.

For one, I would like to see Deep Fusion and Night mode become available with the new iPhone SE. After all, while the iPhone 8 did not originally have Portrait mode, the iPhone SE (2020) ended up getting the feature, so it's definitely more of a software thing instead of hardware.

Deep Fusion debuted with the iPhone 11 and is a computational photography process that required at least an A13 Bionic, which the second-generation SE had, but oddly enough, did not have the feature. Hopefully, it will be included with the third-generation iPhone SE, as it would give photos an even higher level of finer detail for things like skin, clothing, and foliage.

Night mode also launched with the iPhone 11 lineup and is another computational photography process. Again, this would be something I want to see in the iPhone SE 3 because it's been fantastic on the flagship devices and a feature that should just be on all iPhones at this point.

Upgraded internals in the iPhone SE

With the iPhone 13 lineup currently having A15 Bionic, it would only make sense for the iPhone SE to get bumped up to the A14 Bionic that came with the iPhone 12. This would mean a slight speed bump over the previous iteration of the iPhone SE, and the 16-core Neural Engine over the previous 8-core would mean better machine learning. The average consumer won't necessarily notice or even care, but it would be nice to see the improvement on the spec sheet.

Let's bring Apple's budget iPhone up to speed

The iPhone SE is a cult classic and it's due for an update to modernize it to be on par with today's standards. While I won't be downgrading from an iPhone 13 Pro to an iPhone SE 3, I'm still excited to see what Apple has in store for us next month and I'm sure iPhone SE fans would agree. It's time to get excited for a refresher on Apple's best budget iPhone.

The month of January used to be a time when Apple revealed revolutionary new products that changed everything. More recently, it's been the month that the company announces phenomenal holiday financials, and sites like iMore begin to anticipate what's to come from the iPhone maker in the spring and beyond.

The last week of January 2022 had a little bit of everything. First, Cupertino announced record holiday profits while introducing its first new betas of the year. Among other goodies, those betas offered a long-delayed new feature first introduced at the Worldwide Developers Conference in June. There was also a Joe Rogan spat that could have a positive (or negative) effect on Apple Music, and a new Apple TV series debut that looks oh-so-good.

Let's get to it!

1. Money, money, money

Despite the continued pandemic, Apple saw record revenue of $124 billion in the October through December quarter, up 11% year-over-year. The company's profits also hit a record of $34.6 billion, rising a remarkable 20%. No doubt, the best iPhones played a role here. Though iPad sales were surprisingly weak during the quarter, despite the launch of the latest iPad mini. Mac sales posted a record $11 billion thanks to the all-new MacBook Pro (2021).

Looking forward, Apple CEO Tim Cook told CNBC that he expects supply chain bottlenecks to ease up in the current March quarter, which should have "solid year-over-year revenue growth."

2. Hello, Universal Control

Slipped into the new developer betas for iPad and Mac this week was Universal Control, which apparently isn't the next AirPower. The new feature makes it possible to automatically use a single keyboard, mouse, and trackpad across your tablet and computer.

Meanwhile, the first iOS 15.4 beta for iPhone included the ability for users to use Face ID even when wearing a mask. The new feature, however, will only work on the iPhone 12 and iPhone 13 series, not older phones with Face ID.

Other new beta features revealed this week include a new way to use Up Next on Apple TV, more 120Hz ProMotion display support on iPhone 13 devices, and much more.

Watch for public versions of macOS 12.3, iOS/iPadOS 15.4, tvOS 15.4, and watchOS 8.5 to launch in the coming weeks.

3. Neil Young vs. Joe Rogan / Apple Music vs. Spotify

Singer Neil Young forced Spotify's hand this week when he demanded the top music streamer pull Joe Rogan's top-rated (and exclusive) podcast from the service — or risk losing his music. Young believes the "The Joe Rogan Experience" spreads misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines. In the end, Spotify stuck with Rogan and removed Young's music from its service.

Naturally, this led Apple Music to welcome Young's fans with open arms. By the end of the week, a special "We Love Neil" section arrived on the Apple Music app.

4. Welcome to the "party"

Finally, Apple TV+ has dropped the first three episodes of one of its most anticipated new series of the still-young year. "The Afterparty" is a murder mystery comedy headlined by Tiffany Haddish. A classic whodunit, the eight-part series takes place at a high school reunion after-party, with each episode telling a story from a different character's perspective.

Happy February, folks!

When Samsung first announced the Galaxy Z Flip, it made big waves for being a different kind of folding phone. Instead of folding vertically (the long way), it folds horizontally. It's an ingenious idea from Samsung for multiple reasons, one of them being that it's visually appealing. It's so different that it screams, "Look at this brand new tech that I'm holding!" New tech, however, is not the only reason it's such an exciting design. It is also, decidedly, a fashion statement. It looks like the compact mirror that many women carry around in our bags. Samsung is even marketing the Z Flip as a fashion accessory, saying it's "The phone that embodies fashion."

From a woman's perspective

Some of my male counterparts expressed concern that Samsung's women-centric marketing might be a little distasteful, that it assumes women are less interested in a phone's technical abilities and more in what it looks like. Yes, women are just as interested in how powerful and advanced our phones' technology is. On the other hand, however, making a phone that looks like a compact mirror is the most interesting marketing angle I've seen for a phone.

As soon as that Z Flip appeared, I was immediately drawn to it. It felt familiar — comfortable, even. Most women will agree that, even if we don't carry a compact mirror in our purse or bag, someone we know does. It's ubiquitous. Seeing a phone that reminded me of something so ordinary, so feminine, was like realizing that someone out there finally made a phone for women.

I never even thought I wanted a phone made just for me, but now that there is one, I want more.

Not just for women

Though the revelation I had when seeing the Z Flip was unique, it's not that women are the only ones for which a fashion phone is special. Years ago, when smartphones were first hitting the scene, and even before smartphones, we chose our phones based on what they looked like, not whether they had better cameras.

Of course, what's inside the phone has always counted, but there were visually unique options back then. Today, most smartphones look nearly identical. We sit around arguing over whether a camera bump should be a "squircle" or a line, or whether a front camera should be a notch or a hole. That's because the rest of the phones look so similar that it's all we have to identify ourselves with.

All of us, no matter our gender identity, are craving the option to pick a phone that fits our style. That's why phone cases are so popular. Sure, they protect from scratches, but if that were the only reason, there'd only be one style of phone case. Instead, we have cases that look like cupcakes, that have floating glitter, that are made from leather, that are so thin it doesn't look like there's even a case on the phone. We're trying to make our phones fit our fashion.

Wouldn't you like to be able to show off your phone's unique style instead of showing off a case that hides your $1,000 investment?

Your phone is your most personal possession

In 2020, our phones are the most personal things we have. They know when our next appointment is, carry our most precious pictures, let us know when we should leave, remind us to get milk when we get to the store, and even turn on our lights and unlock our doors. They help us pay our bills, know every single password for every single account we have, even accounts we don't remember we have (if we're using good password managers), know our music tastes, entertain us, and can even save our lives.

The phone you choose to carry today is also a reflection of how you want to be perceived by others. Whether you carry an iPhone, one of the many varieties of Android phones, or even if you're refusing to move into the smartphone century and are still carrying a non-smart cellular phone, these are all statements, which tell others what is important to you.

Whether we want to admit it, the phone we choose already does represent us, to some degree. It makes a statement of what we consider to be important in mobile computing.

Fashionable future

Why then, are there so few choices in what a phone looks like? I can understand that, as technology progressed, and specific phone designs captured everyone's attention, different phone makers wanted to capitalize on the popularity, but it's gotten out of control. Phones are too similar in design today. They are, across the board, a bit of a bore. Not because of what they can do. That's exciting! Technical advancements in mobile computing, however, are the only thing truly exciting about most new phones.

That's why foldable phones, and for me, the Z Flip in particular, have such an exciting future ahead. I love seeing new and different styles of phones that have become somewhat stale. It's less about the ability to fold glass (which is pretty amazing) and more about seeing how companies are solving for fashion.

Today, there are only a few foldable phones that you can buy and a few prototypes in the pipeline. There are two phones with the compact design: the Z Flip and Motorola's Razr. There are also a couple of phones that fold vertically, providing a much larger screen than any phone you could fit in your pocket right now, like the Galaxy Fold and the Huawei Mate X, the latter of which has a screen that folds outward instead of inward.

There are also phone concepts with two separate screens that work as a sort-of paired screen experience, like LG's V50 ThinkQ. There are actually quite a few prototypes and concepts for foldable phones out there.

If we're lucky, foldable phones will kickstart a new trend to make phones more fashionable and representative of our personal style.

More navigation links:

• A history of the folding phone
• Galaxy Z Flip vs. Moto RAZR
• Why your next phone should be a foldable
• Why your next phone shouldn't be a foldable
• More reasons why you should hold off on a foldable
• Our phones are our most important fashion accessory
• The clamshell foldable is the new 'small' phone
• Foldables aren't the 'small' phone you want (yet)
• All the differences between foldable devices
• MrMobile explains foldables
• Should you buy a foldable phone in 2020?
• Are foldable phones the next big thing?
• Folding phones are saving us from several years of boring slabs
• Samsung is leading the charge with foldable phones
• Microsoft's approach to foldables with the Surface Duo is better

While it's easy to look back on the decade and remember all the great hardware and new devices that came out from Apple, it's easy to overlook the software that makes the iPhone what it is.

In 2014, iOS 8 was released alongside the iPhone 6, and it came with some huge improvements and new features that would prove to be instrumental in how people use their Apple devices and what direction the company would take in the future.

The start of Continuity

When you ask people why they have stuck with Apple, you'll get a lot of different answers, but one answer you hear a lot is that people love the "Apple ecosystem." The way different Apple devices work hand-in-hand with other Apple devices makes life easier for a lot of people and is a huge draw for Apple. Well, iOS 8 was a huge step forward for Apple's ecosystem since it brought the launch of Continuity.

Continuity is what allows communication between Apple devices. It's the reason you can take phone calls on your Mac and iPad and the reason you can send SMS messages on your Mac and iPad. More importantly, Continuity launched with the Handoff feature, which allowed you to start a task on one device and continue on another. If you started writing a note on your iPhone, you could easily finish typing it on your Mac and vice-versa.

Since iOS 8, Continuity has only become more and more useful, and Apple has doubled down on expanding its ecosystem. The future of how we use our Apple devices (especially different devices together) has forever been shaped by iOS 8.

Apple gets healthy

When Apple launched the Health app (and HealthKit), it may have been pretty barebones compared to what it is today, but there's no question that, when it was announced in 2014, it started Apple on a health journey.

The Health app was about more than just counting steps or how many floors you climbed — which the app would do using the iPhone's internal sensors — but was a place for developers to aggregate health data from different fitness apps. Little did we know at the time that the Apple Watch was going to come out the next year, and completely blow the lid off of Apple's dedication to health.

Over the years, HealthKit and the Health app have gone through a ton of changes, and Apple keeps pumping out new features for iPhone and Apple Watch to help users get a better insight into their health.

A strong year for iOS

You may not think of every new version of iOS is something to write home about, and you'd be right. Plenty of years, the innovation of the newest iOS can feel minimal when you look at it in a vacuum; however, when you look at the bigger picture, something like iOS 8 looks pretty monumental.

Continuity really solidified Apple's commitment to making your workflow feel way more seamless when using multiple devices. The Health app was the very beginning of Apple's commitment to using its products to help people with their health — even if, at the time, it was a little barebones.

Those are only two big changes that were included in iOS 8, plenty of other changes were brought in during the lifetime of iOS 8 that changed the Apple software forever. That's why, when it comes to significant Apple innovations over the years, I'll always remember 2014 for bringing us iOS 8.

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What you need to know

• Analyst Hilary Kramer was talking to Yahoo Finance.
• "Apple is a hardware company."
• 12-25 year-olds want Android and Windows, apparently.

Sometimes you read or hear something and you just have to re-live it to make sure you didn't imagine it. That's definitely the case here after analyst Hilary Kramer told Yahoo Finance that "it's over for Apple" with a straight face.

The video, shared to Twitter and then taken apart by John Gruber, is one that is absolutely worth watching. In it, Kramer makes some rather interesting claims.

They say that:

• People aged from 12 through 25 don't want iPhones. They want Android instead.
• Not content with Android, they're also going into Microsoft Stores, too. They didn't say whether they were actually buying anything, though.
• People are "upset" at something. Presumably Apple.
• Everyone has found there are vulnerabilities in Apple devices.
• The batteries "go really quickly" on iPhones.

Here it is in full. The fun starts around the 1:50 mark.

That's quite the rant. And we're not even sure the part about Apple being a hardware company is correct, either.

Apple makes so much money from services that it could be its own business and still do extremely well. In fact, Apple's services business grows 88% year-over-year. And as John also points out, the whole reason people buy Apple hardware is because of the Apple software that runs on it.

Apple is arguably more of a software and services company than one that focuses on hardware. And we don't even have Apple TV+ or Apple Arcade yet!

As for the future, Kramer thinks that the next generation of buyers are going elsewhere. In fact, a recent Piper Jaffray survey found that 83% of teens in the United States already own an iPhone. And 86% expect their next phone to be an iPhone, too. But sure, they must be picking up those iPhones running Android.

But remember, Apple's done.

APFS is the Apple File System. It was introduced at WWDC 2016 and, starting this year, it will replace the existing HFS+ file system on Apple Watch, Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, MacBook, iMac, and Mac Pro.

Apple made a developer preview available for macOS Sierra back at WWDC 2016. With iOS 10.3, Apple's released APFS to every modern iPhone and iPad owner on the planet as well. Yeah, pedal to the metal.

Most of us don't need to know much about Apple File System. It's an implementation detail that will be largely transparent as it rolls out. Any future features it enables, like smarter backups and faster updates, and things we haven't even thought about yet, will no doubt get marketed all on their own anyway. For them, APFS will likewise be an implementation detail as well.

For anyone interested in file systems, though, there's a lot in APFS to find interesting.

What's new with APFS?

At WWDC 2018, Apple announced big changes coming to macOS Mojave, including a systemwide Dark mode, redesigned Mac App Store, new Finder and Desktop tools, and a whole lot more. One note Apple dropped during the Mojave presentation, almost as an afterthought, is that APFS will finally support Fusion Drives with Mojave.

Apple's senior vice president of software engineering, Craig Federighi, has reportedly shed a little bit of light on what's happening with APFS support for Fusion Drives on the Mac. The news comes by way of an email response.

From MacRumors:

In response to Jonathan's question, Federighi gave a short but enticing answer, which we verified:

Hi Jonathan,

We intend to address this question very soon...

Thanks,

• craig

Previously, Apple published a support document stating that APFS will not be supported on Fusion Drives at High Sierra's launch. If you've converted your files to APFS on a Fusion Drive in the High Sierra beta, you'll have to revert them back to HFS+.

How to revert your Fusion Drive back to HFS+ file system in macOS High Sierra

Why is Apple replacing HFS+?

HFS+ has been around since 1998 — almost twenty years ago — and has been updated and McGyver'd in almost every way imaginable since then in order to try and keep up with the demands of modern computing.

Since then we've gone from the Mac to iPhone, Apple TV, iPad, and Apple Watch, from a few million devices to over a billion devices, and from kilobytes and megabytes of data to gigabytes, terabytes, and beyond.

We've also gone from hard drive platters to solid state disks, from physical installs to digital downloads, and from manual backups to Time Machine and iCloud. We've gone from rigid, single-threaded data structures to more flexible approaches.

Through it all, HFS+ and its valiant crew have kept it running. Running in the red, maybe, held together with bubblegum and paperclips, but running.

But running in the red is no way to get to the future. For that, you need something new.

Sometimes, to make it to the future, you need a fresh approach.

What makes APFS more consistent?

While HFS+ runs on all of Apple's current devices, from Apple Watch to Mac Pro, there are differences in how it's been implemented across those devices, including key areas like encryption. That means different source code and separate maintenance and development.

APFS was designed to scale more consistently across Apple's platforms, now and into the future. That should allow for a single code base with fewer resources need to develop and maintain it and allow it to grow faster and better.

Will APFS be faster?

A great deal of speed has to do with perception. It's faster to reach for a drink on the table next to you than to have to get up and go get it from the fridge. APFS does several things to make Apple devices feel faster.

APFS, for example, focuses on low-latency. So, it prioritizes things like app launches and data delivery. That should minimizing beach balls and spinners.

It also does fast directory re-sizing, which means you shouldn't have to wait to see how big a directory is, if you're in the habit of looking.

How does APFS better suit SSDs?

Apple says APFS has been written with solid state storage in mind. That's the flash storage chips inside Apple Watch, Apple TV, iPhone, iPad, MacBooks, and high-end Mac desktops.

What Apple means by this is that APFS writes in a way optimized for solid state, and supports the TRIM command which is helpful for people who delete a lot of files and like to keep a lot of space free.

Snapshots and clones... What about the snapshots and clones?

Two of the most high-profile features of APFS are snapshots and clones.

Snapshots create a read-only copy of the system at that single point in time. It's initially more space-efficient, because it doesn't duplicate any data until changes begin to be made. It also means changes can be reverted.

Clones are copies of "files" (both real files and the Mac's bundled folders-as-files). They're similarly more space-efficient at first, also not duplicating data until changes are made.

This makes creating both snapshots and clones far faster and more efficient than making traditional copies.

Will APFS help with storage space

For macOS users who employ partitions, AFS fixes a long-standing limitation. Basically, APFS sidesteps the issue of one partition running out of space when there's free space elsewhere on the drive by creating a container around all the partitions. If a partition needs more space it can claim it from the container, regardless of whether or not that space is physically adjacent to the partition.

Questions remain about how APFS will handle recovering storage from deleted files that have been cloned, though, since space can't be reclaimed as long as a single clone still exists.

APFS also supports sparse files, so storage is only allocated when it's really needed.

What about data integrity and crash protection?

APFS has atomic-level save state. That has to do with how it handles committing writes for files — they're either verified as completed or it appears as though they never happened at all. In other words, files use copy-on-write so a new version is created and the old version only released when the save is successful.

There are also checksums on metadata, though not on user-data.

APFS is better for encryption, though, right?

Apple makes security and privacy first-class, public facing, top-down features for their products and APFS is no different. Unlike current implementations, where macOS has disk-level encryption and iOS has file-level encryption, thanks to differences in implementation and hardware capabilities, APFS has a more consistent single-key and multi-key implementations for system-level, file level, and even specific data and metadata.

The type of encryption can vary between AES-XTS and AES-CBC depending on hardware.

Is APFS missing anything?

APFS is in its first generation, and that means not everything is included yet. Things like compression aren't yet available, which feels like an obvious next step. Likewise checksums on data. (Though Apple seems to believe Error Correction Code — ECC — on modern flash storage currently handles that well enough.)

It also doesn't currently support Fusion Drives or mechanical hard drives.

Will APFS be open sourced?

APFS is not currently open source. Over the years, Apple has either kept open and continued to contribute to, or themselves open sourced, the Mach Kernel, WebKit, LLVM, and Swift, among other projects.

Whether that will eventually include APFS we'll have to wait and see.

Should you use APFS?

If you've updated to iOS 10.3, you're on APFS. iOS is well contained and controlled environment, so it makes sense for Apple to start there. No transition is 100% safe, but iOS is as safe as they come.

If you're on the macOS Sierra beta, you can play around with APFS but the limitations listed above make it a relatively small playground. Just don't trust any important data to any APFS volumes until it's out of beta and into release.

Where can you learn more about APFS?

For more on the Apple File System, check out these resources:

• WWDC 2016 APFS introduction
• Apple APFS documentation
• APFS from a ZFS developer's point of view

According to a blog post, version 49 of Bohemian Coding's popular digital design app Sketch is rolling out today, and it features a plethora of improvements and bug fixes — including Apple's official UI design resource for iOS 11.

Prototyping

Okay, so your design looks great. But will it actually work well? Now, with Prototyping, you can find out for sure. Prototyping for Sketch allows you to transform your static designs into interactive, clickable prototypes, allowing you to preview them thoroughly without ever needing to leave the app. You can even use Mirror, Sketch's iOS counterpart app, to see how your design looks and functions on the mobile device it's made for. If you're looking for a second opinion, you can also share your demo with colleagues, clients, and whoever else may like to weigh in. Here's how to use the feature, according to Bohemian Coding:

You can find out more about Prototyping in Sketch's support documentation.

Apple iOS UI Library

Another exciting feature of Sketch 49 is the addition of an integrated Apple iOS UI Library, complete with Apple's official iOS 11 design template. When designing any project for an Apple device, access to the Apple iOS UI Library is invaluable. it includes everything you need to make sure your work coincides with Apple's UI, "from tab bars and status bars to buttons and switches."

All you need to do to download the Library is navigate to the Libraries tab in Preferences and select it. The best part: when Apple updates UI documentation, you'll be notified, and you can then update your designs to the latest version so you won't ever lag behind.

Shared Libraries in Sketch Cloud

When you download Sketch, you also get free access to Sketch Cloud, where you can view, download, and comment on Sketch documents which have been shared publicly or privately. All this happens within the Sketch app. Now, though, you can now subscribe to specific Documents uploaded to Sketch Cloud and they'll be added directly to Sketch, as Shared Libraries:

Bug fixes and other feedback-based improvements

In addition to the big cool features, there are also a ton of small cool features and bug fixes that come along with this update. Here are the highlights, according to Bohemian Coding:

• The performance of the app as a whole has been massively improved, especially when working in complex documents with many nested Symbols.
• When vector editing, you can now bend a path segment by holding the Command key and dragging to create or adjust curves.
• When using the Pen tool, a preview of new points will be displayed on hover.

For an exhaustive and hyper-detailed list of improvements and bug fixes, you can check out Sketch's update page.

If you're looking for a full-featured digital design toolkit to add to your creative arsenal, you can try Sketch for free by downloading it directly from the developer using the link below (Sketch was removed from the Mac App Store back in 2015). Once your trial is up, though, you'll need to pay $99 for a license. Note that if you're a student or teacher you get 50% off a Sketch license, so make sure to take advantage of that option if you qualify.

• Sketch - Free Trial - Download now

Questions?

Have any questions regarding Sketch? Toss 'em in the comments below.

Watch the video version:

[music]

Leaving broadcast TV

Rene Ritchie: I'm Rene Ritchie, and this is "Vector." Joining me today, Clayton Morris.

Clayton, since last we spoke, you ditched your job at "Fox & Friends." You were the technology guy there. I saw you at all the Apple events. You were up at 3:00 AM covering the keynotes, and now you're doing something totally different.

Clayton Morris: Totally different, yeah. For the past 10 years, while I was in television, I became a real estate investor. It was actually because I lost my job 10 years earlier. I was at Fox in Philadelphia at "Good Day Philadelphia."

The week after I was hired, my news director was fired. She was the one that brought me there, so I was out of a job. She was out of a job, and I had no internal support there.

Then nine months later, they didn't renew my contract, because they're like, "We think you were sold a bill of goods. We brought you here to be the fun morning guy, but we want to take the show in a if-it-bleeds-it-leads direction."

I was like, "That's not what I want to do." They didn't renew my contract. I felt like someone punched me in the stomach. I was out of a job. I vowed then, I said, "I'm not going to allow somebody else to dictate my life for me."

Even while I was working in television at the network, then after that, I was buying properties, figuring out how to create cash flow and wealth. That's what I've been doing for the past 10 years.

All this craziness over the summer in politics, I was like, "I don't want to be a part of this anymore. I want to spend more time with my family and focus on the things that I can help other people." Launched my own YouTube channel, my own podcast, and everything else, and now I get to do this full time.

It's crazy. It's a crazy change, I'll tell you that much.

Preparing for launch

Rene: It's fun because I just launched my new podcast. I re-launched my podcast, which you were a guest on previously -- both the fun movie episodes and the deep dive technology episodes -- and my YouTube channel. I feel like we're almost in this together.

Clayton: Yeah, I was super excited because you and I were texting the other day. I loved the launch of your new YouTube channel. I love the look of it. We're trying to dial in our channel here, the new...

We built a TV studio here at the office. We've got all the new software. We're still trying to dial in the backdrop.

Rene: Yeah, you went with wood and I went with brick.

[laughter]

Clayton: I'm like, "What more, what other things should I put in here? Maybe more shallow depth of field?" I wanted to really do as much as I can for my audience.

Being able to come in here and have great 4K video, that's what we're doing on our YouTube channel now at Morris Invest. We're trying to make sure the audio quality is as good as possible, so I'm listening, dialing it in.

I know you were going through those same growing pains when you launched, too, the other day.

Rene: My last episode, I got the audio all wrong. [laughs]

Clayton: I know. I heard, but I was like, hey, you know what? That's how it happens.

The first live stream that I did -- I do a live stream every Wednesday at 11:00 AM -- the Internet, I got a gigabyte Ethernet connection from Verizon, from Fios. Yet, someone had punctured a CAT-6 cord in the house. It was causing, for some reason, the network to go down every 30 minutes on the dot.

It was so bizarre. Right in the middle of my live stream, I dropped three times. You have these growing pains, but it's part of the fun of this whole thing.

Rene: You've got an X-wing on your shelf so I feel like you've already succeeded.

[laughter]

Clayton: Here's my little X-wing. This was a gift. This was a limited edition that George Lucas gave out when they did the re-launch of the 1996. He gave these out to the whole team, and a friend of mine got this for me for Christmas one year. It's got to go up there next to my "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" book. [laughs]

Rene: I don't know because you mentioned that. I want to experiment. The reason I launched this channel -- not to go off in too much of a tangent -- was to make a variety show where I'd have some monologue, some deep dive, some interviews, some instructional stuff, and just all put it together. We even do monthly movie shows still.

Instant on

I didn't want to be afraid of getting things wrong, because I feel like if I worried about making it perfect, I would just never have an episode up.

Clayton: That's the thing. The beauty of setting up your own studio, too, is that you find that if you don't have something set up that's plug-and-play, ready to go?

If you have to get out lights, if you have to get out microphones, if you have to get out all of these things, guess what? Maybe the muse has struck you to just do a show, then you're not going to do it because you have to set up all of this crap.

Rene: Yeah.

Clayton: By having a studio set up, by being able to immediately come down here, the stock market was crashing like crazy last week like crazy. I did a live stream and was just talking with people, some people who had lost a huge chunk of change.

I was talking about why real estate, and the differences there. It was great to be able to come down, flip on a power switch, and just go.

Rene: Yeah, and have a conversation, have a community. How is that? With Fox, it was...

Clayton: Not have my hair done, bruises and all, who cares?

Inside Apple Events

Rene: That's just the thing. I remember you from Apple events. We used to commiserate -- you, me, Apple PR, the other media people -- that you were up doing the 2:00 AM hit, the 3:00 AM hit, the 4:00 AM. You had to be perfect every hour, on the hour, and then still cover the event.

Clayton: There was one time. I can't remember what launch it was. I think it might have been one of those mid, boring launches. I was asleep in the car, in the Cupertino parking lot. [laughs]

Rene: At one of the town hall events.

Clayton: At one of the town hall events, yeah, and I was in between live shots. What am I going to do, drive back to the hotel? I only had 40 minutes. By the time I get back there in 15 minutes, I can't sleep.

I just would go to my car. I'd set my phone. The one time, my phone didn't go off and my producers were calling me, "Hey, we need you on the platform. We're about to go live in two minutes." I just ran out of my car, sprinted over there, they slapped a microphone and an IFB in my ear. They're like, "You're on."

"We're out here at 1 Infinite Loop right now. We're..." blah, blah, blah. Holy smokes, I was out of breath.

Rene: For people who aren't familiar with it, whenever there's an event, there's a broadcast platform. That's where almost all the networks, all the outlets, the satellite trucks are all around it. There's PR people helping out, and there's directors of photography. There's producers, there's camera people, there's reporters.

You can't really tell by watching them on TV, but they're all packed in there like sardines. It's hot. You have the hardest job in baseball, sir.

Clayton: Well, it's so weird, too, because you're side by side with people who are shouting sometimes. There was a guy from CNBC who loved to hear himself talk.

He was so loud and boisterous. He didn't care that there was somebody else right next to him doing a live shot, as well, and also was broadcasting to their entire audience. His arms were flailing around.

Yeah, you're packed together side by side. Oftentimes, if you watch White House coverage, you'll hear another reporter in the distance, but they're really next right, arm lengths away from the person.

Rene: I remember I was with you when the first, it wasn't the one that Twitter bought. It was the company that came out later. You live streamed over Twitter immediately, and I'm blanking on the name. It was like...?

Clayton: Meerkat.

Rene: Meerkat, and the guy from "Mashable," and another magazine, they were, "I'm streaming live. I have 200 people." They almost rammed me over at the table. "This is mine." They were arguing over whose table it was to live stream, and I almost died.

Clayton: Then Apple PR was like, "No live streaming. Please shut that down."

Doing your own thing

Rene: What is it like to go from having an entire network -- not a small network, a major network -- behind you, to doing things on your own?

Clayton: The other day, Natalie, my wife, and I just had lunch. She and I, we do episodes together on Wednesdays. Where we talk about family wealth building strategies, tax, with the real estate, and how to put it all together with your LLCs, business structure and all that stuff because it can be incredibly complicated. We do that.

We were talking at lunch. She said, "If you would have asked me a year ago or even two years ago, during your lunchtime when the baby's asleep, we'd be able to go live and do our own show. Talking about the things that we want to talk about, helping other people, rather than having to talk about Trump or whatever's going on in Congress right now, I wouldn't have believed you."

Here we were. We just put the baby down, did this live show. We're having lunch together in the middle of the afternoon. It's weird. I don't have all the fancy bells and whistles of a multi-billion-dollar network behind me, but I can do my own thing. It doesn't matter that there's not swooping cameras and live trucks and all that kind of stuff.

Rene: Ready, one, go, one, motion graphics, focus on Clayton. You've got to go, and you've got to vamp, go, go. [laughs]

Clayton: Rene, you know with your HomePod stuff, it doesn't matter that you don't have a crane camera in the studio. What matters is the content. What matters is that people...

Where did I go to get my first HomePod information? It was to you because I know you're incredibly thorough and I know that, first of all, I can trust you. I'm going to you for the content. I don't care that there's not all of these additional bells and whistles.

Yes, I want this to look as good as it can be on my YouTube channel, on the Morris Invest YouTube channel, but the first videos that I ever did were just against a flat white wall. Those videos where I'm talking about return on investment or cash flow, they still drive the most traffic because the content was there. The white wall was boring, but who cares?

Going all-in on iPad

Rene: One of the things you mentioned, we've been talking about this for a while. The town hall event that you're talking about might have been the one for the 5K iMacs. I remember you were heavy into photography, and when you saw that machine and how it displayed photos, it was amazing.

You're increasingly going all-in on iPad. I wanted to ask you how that was working.

Clayton: I love it. If you're watching the video version of this, I've got my iPad Pro right here.

Rene: 12.9 inch?

Clayton: This is the 10.5 inch.

Rene: 10.5 inch.

Clayton: Yeah, the 10.5 inch. I love it. I had gone back and forth between the 12 and the 10. Ultimately, this, it's just the portability of it, being able to throw it in my bag. I can pull it out anywhere and start doing work.

For instance, I was working on this video series about cash flow. There was a lot of different series.

I'm building a whole series around it, these video and podcast series around it, so I was doing a lot of writing. Went to the office, was talking with my assistant. That's a whole new...

[laughter]

Clayton: Now, I have an office and an assistant also. She's fantastic. She was doing work. I pulled out the iPad. I started. I said, "I need to slam through these videos." I was putting all these things together. I had my notes out.

I love using the iPad. Literally, I run my whole company off of the iPad now. Traveling, on the airplane, it doesn't really matter. My whole team is scattered across the country in real estate. I'm able to do everything on the iPad.

Rene: It's remarkable. Ironically, I'm using the Macbook Pro right now because I'm recording the audio and the video. We just can't do that on iPad yet. I hope we can one day. I hope we get to be able to do all the fancy audio stuff, but we can't.

When I did the HomePod video, I was using my iPad because I travel with it. I take it on airplanes. I take it to coffee shops. It's got a constant Internet connection. It's super light. The battery lasts forever. It lets me do...

I can have a website on one, have Safari on one split view. I can have notes on the other split view when I'm writing. To me, it's not as...I go back and forth on this analogy.

When my father used to be an engineer at IBM back in the punch-card days, they moved to mainframes. Then, eventually, he got an Apple II Plus at home because there was a subset of things that he could do without having to drive downtown to IBM.

Then, I had computers for a long time. I got a Trio and then an iPhone. They couldn't replace my Mac, but they could do a subset of really important things that I didn't have to run back to my Mac all the time.

Now, I have iPad and Apple Watch, as well, and iPad can do a little bit more than my iPhone. Apple Watch can't do anything nearly what my iPhone can do, but there's still a subset of really important, really frequent, really repetitive tasks that I can do without even having to reach for an iPhone, an iPad.

I'm wearing this. I don't know if you can see this on the video. I'll turn this down for a second. I'm wearing this famous Phil Schiller graphics shirt, which shows the different screens.

He had this really great talk where he said that we want to make iPhone so good that it forces iPad to better, and iPad so good it forces Mac to be better. Then, Mac has to get so good that it puts pressure back on iPad. I like that philosophy so much.

Clayton: I love the back and forth between these devices. The things that we see are powerful on the iPhone, we hope will come to the iPad. The things that we saw that were powerful on the iPad, like True Tone display, being able to then move to the iPhone 10, which I love. The things that are powerful on the Mac, being able to go over to the iPad.

Just looking through some of the apps, to give you an idea of some of the workflow stuff, some of this might seem a little archaic. I created a new photos line for my contractors.

When we were rehabbing 15, 30 properties, they're coming across the finish line at any given time. It's hard enough makings sure the contractors get us photos when they're finished with their project.

I wanted to create one repository. Right now, we use...because contractors are also not terribly tech savvy. They're in the field working their butts off and they do fantastic work, but they're not using Dropbox, they're not using Slack. We created one Google Voice line. I use Google Voice on the iPad.

As the photos come in from different properties, my team is able to take those right off the iPad, drag them over, move them into Dropbox. Label that folder for that particular property. Go into the Slack channel in a third-pane window right there on the iPad Pro, be able to type in, "123 Main Street, photos uploaded," to the photos channel on Slack.

My team knows that property is ready to go. The Pro is incredibly powerful if you make sure that some of the apps are updated.

I wish that Google Voice could do drag and drop. Come on, that would change everything for me, if I could just drag those photos right over to Dropbox.

Machine Learning

Rene: I remember when they were first introducing the new generation of processors, the A11 Bionic. They were showing some of the core ML, the core machine learning technology.

One of the apps was real estate based. I was in the middle of selling my condo at my old place at the time, and buying this new place, where I'm shooting this video right now.

I had no idea which photos to use. Luckily, I had a real estate agent with 20 years of experience. He was like, "You want to start off with this kind of shot, you never want to start off with the bathroom, but you want to have it, you show the sun."

They had gone and ingested information from a thousand real estate agents about how they picked photographs and trained. They talk about machine learning. It's not like programming a computer. It's like training a pet. It's like, "Good computer, good computer, you got it, you got the right thing."

It knew what people liked in terms of photographs for real estate. It may not be perfect, but it would do all the heavy lifting. It would get you down to the 15 shots. You could tweak them if you wanted to, but it saved you the three hours of picking out all of those shots.

Clayton: It's incredible what's going to be able to be done with this device. I have a couple of my project managers in the field. I can think of them.

When I go out and visit our properties, we're in the truck driving around, all on iPads, being able to update in real time. "Drywall is in, plumbing is completed on this one, roof is done," right there on the iPad using LTE.

Obviously, there's all kinds of things that I don't even scratch the surface on, workflows, and all sort of different things. We're using a lot of Webhooks and Zapier automations now that integrate right with Slack. As these updates come in, it's notifying my entire team.

We're getting notifications right on the iPad, right on the iPhone, when we're out in the field. It's a game-changer.

Rene: It was funny because I actually sold this. They did briefings for the iPhone 10 in New York City. Apple has a lot of briefings in New York now. I had just finished at Serenity Caldwell's wedding.

I was planning to take the train straight to New York to the briefing, but they'd had hurricane-level winds. The trees fell down and the trains were blocked. They said, "The train is never coming," so I grabbed my bags and I ran.

I found a bus. I jumped on the bus going to New York, and they were like, "Oh, we sold your condo, but we need you to sign these papers."

Normally, I would be freaking out, but I just pulled out my iPad, literally tapped the screen with a pencil, because you have instant markup now. The email came in, I tapped the PDF, it blew up, I signed it. I tapped "send back." It sent the signed copy back to the real estate agent.

I was done in two minutes, on a rickety bus. It was 5:00 in the morning, in the wind and the rain, heading to New York City, desperate to make a briefing. It was one less thing I had to worry about.

iPad in business

Clayton: We looked at one thing for our business, our sales cycle, which was when a property comes in, we have it available for sale. What was the holdup?

A lot of it had to do with people needing to print out PDFs at home and then find a scanner to scan it back to us. When we moved away from that system and we moved to a dotloop or DocuSign -- people commonly know those -- our sales cycle decreased from four weeks down to four days.

Rene: Wow.

Clayton: A ridiculous drop because of technology, and because we were able to be more efficient in our business, our business improved. We were able to better serve out clients.

You'd have a lot of people that were like, "I'm just so frustrated. I want this property, but I don't have a printer. I have to wait till I get to work on Monday to even get this thing printed."

Rene: I haven't had a printer in 10 years.

[laughter]

Clayton: Right. In fact, I was just redoing my whole office, my home office. I was getting rid of so much clutter, taking everything out of there. I really want it to be a Zen, meditative space where I can sit and do morning meditation. Have it be clean of all this garbage, and just the desk with my 27-inch iMac.

I had it in the back corner I had a filing cabinet with a giant printer on it. I got rid of all of it. I pulled it out in the hallway and I said to my wife, "I don't need this printer anymore." She said, "Really?"

I said, "When? Why would I need a printer? Why? It's taking up so much space, it's annoying. Why don't I put it downstairs and plug it in? If it's still on WiFi, if I have to run down once a month to print something out, I won't have to see it. I'll run downstairs to the basement and grab it off in the furnace room."

Rene: Yeah, I got rid of mine. Once in a while, it has bitten me, especially for government stuff. Otherwise, it's incredibly liberating.

Because I know you're a photographer, do you move your photography stuff over to iPad now? Is that still on your iMac?

Clayton: That's something I've actually been really looking at in the past. Jason Snell and I talked about this quite a bit. Obviously, he's such a big photos fan and has written deeply about it. I think a few Apple events ago, we were talking about that workflow.

At the time, I was using Lightroom. I was taking a lot of landscape photography and things. I shifted over more to the kids because now we've got three kids. I'm doing a lot more portraits and stuff when I can, when I have the time, or when we're on vacations and things.

I was getting sick of having to use Adobe, having to use Lightroom, and having to pay for that subscription service every month. Then, ingesting those photos and being able to manipulate them at home when I get back to my iMac. Now, I just use photos on the iPad. I use Apple's photos app on the iPad.

We were in Turks and Caicos over Christmastime. I brought the camera connection kit, plugged my SD card right in there.

Imported the photos that I love, deleted the ones that I didn't. The raw files, able to go through and manipulate, add some different color, color correction and things, because I'm a big believer in, if you've got a raw photo, you should be color correcting it no matter what.

Being able to do that right on the iPad, or then, wait, now it's syncing. Now, it's all in the cloud. I could just wait till I got back to the United States in order to go into photos that way and manipulate some of the photos that I took -- incredibly powerful.

What's a computer?

Rene: I know people are upset with that ad that Apple ran, "What's a computer?" The line at the end, you can take many different ways. You can take it as Apple being provocative. You can take it as Apple being contentious just so that people talk about he ad, or you can take it just like the girl being sarcastic to her mother.

I love that ad so much because I think it was my favorite iPad ad since the one from iPad 2, where they had Peter Coyote going, "Technology alone is not enough." That was a brilliant ad.

This one, it showed the liberation that can come with an iPad workflow. I've been trying, I still can't do that awesome way she folds up the cover by smacking it on a table. She just takes it everywhere.

It's an exaggeration. Up into a tree, into an alleyway, all these things, but it shows that you can have this device with you all the time through the full range of activities that you want to do. It's perfectly capable of not only being with you, but scaling with you. I thought that was really topical in that commercial.

Clayton: I find it so intuitive and so powerful. I've got my little smart keyboard case and it goes with me everywhere.

I've got my Netatmo Weather Station, being able to check the weather, and then download a bunch of videos using YouTube Red before my flight. Then, being able to have a sidebar of Notes app running where I can do write-up, work on the speech that I'm working on, pull a keynote out, and build that out.

The other day, my assistant said, "We don't have any updated letterhead." I said, "I've got the logo stored on iCloud. I'll just do it right now on my iPad."

I pulled out Pages, using one of the letterhead templates was able to boom, boom, boom, add our logo. Here's our new letterhead. Save it over to iCloud and now you've got it on the Mac. Oh, I love it.

Rene: It's instant on, instant everywhere. That's the real benefit of it is, again, it doesn't do as much as a Mac, as an iMac Pro, for example.

The iMac Pro, you can carry it to Starbucks, you can be that person. Don't be that person, but you could be. The iPad is with you all the time. It can do enough stuff that you never have to slow down. You're never waiting for the computer. It's always with you.

Clayton: I love it as my backend for YouTube, as well. Google actually, it's funny how they do some things for iPad poorly and other things for iPad very well.

For instance, YouTube Studio, I'm not sure now with your YouTube channel if you're using it. Being able to go into YouTube Studio as an app on the iPad, I check it every morning to see what's happening within my channel, seeing the health, the audience, analytics.

It's incredibly powerful. I can change metadata. I can change descriptions. I can update all sorts of things right inside the YouTube app, on the YouTube Studio app. It's funny. That's right on my dock because I use it so much, this incredible app from Google. Yet, they can't do certain things with Google Sheets and Docs. [laughs]

I don't know what their intention is. I cant' figure it out.

What's next?

Rene: What's the next step, Clayton? What's the next big thing you're working on? Are you still working on your studio? Do you have any other projects or next levels you want to take stuff to?

Clayton: Yeah. For the company, I want to be able to produce, every Wednesday at 11:00 AM Eastern, a live stream that's consistent around wealth building to help people. I made it my goal this year to try to serve people as much as I can to help them build wealth.

We didn't get this financial education in high school, and so to help as many people as I can with all this free content. You can literally go through the channel and change your life, I hope. That's the goal.

Rene: Get a bachelor's degree in wealthonomics.

Clayton: Yeah. In fact, my video editor, he came to me. I didn't think he would, but he came to me six months ago and he's like, "I have to say this." I'm not saying this as a pat on the back, but because he has to edit every video, he's like, "My wife and I have completely changed the way that we think about wealth, and I want to do this now. I want to start here."

That's incredibly exciting to me. I'm working on a book because I retired at 40. The book will be around that idea of how to retire at 40 using cash flow and buying performing assets.

I've got to carve out some time. With me hiring my assistant, getting some other people in place, to carve out some of that white space time in 2018 where I can actually focus on writing. Get some of that stuff out to people and try to do a lot more speaking engagements, as well. I'm looking forward to doing more of that this year.

Rene: Is there anything you're looking or you're hoping that Apple will do either on iOS 12 or future iPad hardware, something that would let you do your job better, or more easily, more fully?

Clayton: That's a great question. I think we've all lamented the idea of getting podcast audio on the iPad, being able to do that. If I could just bring my iPad and travel, not have to worry about how I'm going to plug in a microphone and actually go live, do something like that. Being able to have that functionality would be fantastic, just some more refinements.

I'm really excited about iOS 12 from the rumors we're hearing that it's going to be a Snow Leopard update. I'm really excited about those refinements.

I'm sure that some of the speed, and bells and whistles, it will be major changes under the hood. Some of the things that I already love about iOS 11, I would love to see drilled in even more. Some of the things that I rely on, you know that I love voice text, sending voice messages.

I love I'll send you a voice message and you respond with text. My whole team uses that. Some of those added little bells and whistles that can really refine that experience for speed and efficiency when I'm out in the field or my contractors are out in the field, being able to use this technology more efficiently.

Rene: I'm terrible. I always answer your voice messages with texts. That's because I blame you. Your app, Quick Read, got me reading so quickly that I can just parse text so fast.

With the voice ones, I'm waiting for them. I'm starting to type and then I'm waiting for them to keep talking. I'm starting to type, so I revert to text, but I have to give voice more...I love the idea of voice. I have to give it more of a shot.

Clayton: I was a talker for a living, a writer for a living, so I guess that comes naturally.

Rene: [laughs] All right, Clayton Morris, if people are interested in checking out your YouTube channel, following you on Twitter, where can they go?

Clayton: I think the best thing if you love Vector, you love podcasts, come over and check out, if you're interested in creating wealth and passive income. We teach you how to do it. That's my podcast. It's called a very generic name. It's called "The Investing in Real Estate Podcast with Clayton Morris.'

It's very boring, but, hey, it serves its purpose. Then, my YouTube channel is Morris Invest on YouTube. We've got about 200 videos there. We publish three times a week to help you figure out this crazy world of real estate investing and how to start building monthly cash flow. That's really the best way to connect with me.

Rene: That's awesome. Clayton, thank you so much. Please give my best to Natalie and the kids.

Clayton: Thank you so much. Give my best to the whole iMore team. I love you guys.

Rene: Will do. Same here. Thank you.

[music]

How your child or children react to interacting with digital devices in general, and video games in specific, can vary. It's an intense experience and while some will do just fine and exhibit minimal behavioral changes, others will present with diminished focus, rudeness, or a loss of emotional control. The latter is something I saw in my own children, and something I knew I had to help them learn to overcome.

Update: Apple is under renewed pressure from activist groups to improve Parental Controls and combat screen addiction. But what's real, what's sensationalism, and what's an abdication of personal responsibility? I join iMore and VECTOR's Rene Ritchie to explain.

Video games and behavioral changes

As a psychotherapist, I've worked with numerous families struggling with the effects unrestrained video games (and television) have had on their children. Since the problems are behavioral, I've come to realize the solution has to be behavioral as well.

To preface this, let me once again say that I love video games and that I recognize they have some beneficial elements to them, including the ability to help regulate aggression, build problem-solving skills, and teach kids how to handle frustration. Playing video games (and board games) as a family can also be a terrific bonding experience.

If a child starts to display signs of addiction or other forms of negative behaviours after they play — if they get angry or agitated when they're asked to stop, if they lose the ability to focus or if their manners, mood, and behavior devolve when they do stop — then it's absolutely something that needs to be addressed.

Video games and addiction

Video games have addictive properties. They're made not only to appeal to us, but to encourage us to play more. The most addictive are no different than casinos and use many of the same principles to get and keep engagement. It creates an intense desire to keep playing and can make it extremely difficult to self-regulate, especially for kids.

Even games that don't deliberately try to increase addiction still feed our need for instant gratification in a way the real world often doesn't. They cause the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine, which is the body's natural reward system. In fact, the amount of dopamine released playing some video games can reach levels found in stimulants.

Helping kids cope with video games

Teaching children how to handle video games and their own emotions while playing video games can be tough. Some parents see their kids happily playing video games and don't want to upset or anger them by telling them to stop. Other parents use video games as a babysitter so they can get everything from cooking to cleaning to work done around the house. It's understandable because getting something — anything! — done when you have kids can be a real challenge, and it can make the idea of limiting game time as painful for parents as it is for kids. But if that game time is adversely affecting your child, it's a sacrifice you're going to want to make.

Personally, I found that my children became "zoned out" while they were playing and the longer they played, the more agitated and curt they became when they had to stop. Seeing that, I knew we had to set up a plan for the entire family.

Currency systems

Know up front that this is difficult. It takes a lot of time and effort to set up and see through. Don't think of it as the cost of parenting, though. Think of it as an investment in your children.

Every family is different and every child is different. Goals can also be different. For my family, I wanted my children to work on their manners and their ability to deal with disagreements in a pro-social manner. In order to facilitate this, I not only needed my children to spend less time interacting with video games, but more time interacting with each other.

So, I created a currency system that rewards my children for getting better at behaviors I wanted to encourage. We decided this as a family, so my children also had a say in which behaviors they wanted to work on.

There is some controversy with using currency systems as a way to improve behavior. In this case, some would worry the child wouldn't keep up the behavior if the rewards stopped.

In my experience, however, behavioral improvements become habitual, and a secondary social reward — positive interactions with other adults and children — continue to reinforce them even when the planned rewards change.

Children also become proud of their improvements and accomplishments, and once they learn that feeling, it becomes its own motivator.

Also, currency systems are very similar to how the real world works and can have the side benefit of helping them learn how those systems work.

Reward charts

Since my children are in elementary school, I used a reward chart to manage the system. The first thing that I did was write down all of the behaviors or skills that I felt my children had to work on.

I have two children and so I made a separate list for each child. From that list, I chose the three most important skills for each child. I also asked my children to talk to me about what they felt they needed to work on the most. This was an important step as I wanted to work together with my children to help them grow up stronger and more apt to deal with various situations.

The next step was choosing which skills were the most important and the easiest to moderate. Being polite, controlling their tempers, and keeping their voices down were the three we settled on to start.

I then created a monthly calendar using some Bristol board and a marker, and I bought some stickers as well. (You could use checkmarks or stamps if you would rather.)

We then agreed upon which good behaviors, specifically, would be rewarded with a sticker on the chart. For my children, we started by saying please and thank you, helping with a chore, discussing a problem calmly, and maintaining good table manners.

So, if my child said "thank you" without hesitation or being prompted. If they used their napkin while eating, they would get a sticker. If they brought their plate to the sink. If they held the door open for others, they would get a sticker and a thank you for their use of such good manners and being helpful.

My children put the stickers on themselves. I watched them and kept count at first, to make sure extra stickers weren't added by mistake, but they quickly learned to be accurate.

They also learned a real sense of pride. Each day they'd count their stickers and see the progress they made. Later, they paid less attention to the stickers and more attention to how other people would notice and comment on their manners, and how positive their reactions were. This was especially true when a waitress or parent at the school or someone else they didn't know well would comment on their politeness. (They even managed to score a scoop of ice cream once from an especially impressed restauranteur.)

So how does the reward system relate to video games? Video games, at least superficially, are the reward.

Cashing in

My children are no longer allowed to play video games (or watch TV) on their own. If they want to play, they have to use their stickers to "buy" time.

We negotiated how many stickers would equal how many minutes of video games or TV at the very beginning, and settled on one sticker per minute. We also settled on them needing to cash in 20 stickers at a time, no less, no more. That meant they could only ever play 20 minutes of video games or watch 20 minutes of TV on any given day, provided they had enough stickers and provided their homework was done.

As time went on, we slowly let them expand that to 40 stickers for 40 minutes of video games or TV. Again, provided they had enough stickers and that their homework was done.

If it's a birthday or a play date, we negotiate exceptions or make special allowances, but day in, day out, we stick to the system. Consistency is key for everyone.

My husband and I continue to evolve the system. The initial set of skills they were working on became habits, and so we moved on to new sets of skills. Now, they not only have to be polite but respectful. They not only have to help with chores but be organized.

Now, when they get enough stickers, and they're allowed to play games, they're not only proud of their accomplishment but appreciative of the time. They know they've earned it.

Success as its own reward

Because their video game and TV time are limited, it's also encouraged them to spend more time playing and learning. They build huge lego creations and write and illustrate their own comic books. They help with the garden and home and car repair. And they read books. A lot.

Since they're not getting instant gratification all the time from video games, and dopamine isn't hitting their system like a freight train, they're learning to be patient and invest their time rather than simply spend it.

I still love video games and so do my children, but video games have returned to being something they own, not something that owns them. We've empowered them to earn their play time and to choose for themselves when they're going to use it. It's made for a remarkable difference.

A while ago, out of the blue, my eldest turned to my husband and I and thanked us. He thanked us, he said, for caring enough to help him learn discipline and control. He'd come to realize just how important those skills were, and to value them beyond stickers.

As parents, that was our reward.

The HomePod is almost here, and that means that it's time for the first set of reviews. There's been a lot of discussion as to whether or not it will measure up to other smart speakers both in sound and in assistant capabilities. iMore's own Rene Ritchie called the HomePod "Retina for your ears," but what does everyone else have to say about Apple's first smart speaker?

CNET

Megan Wollerton, writing for CNET:

The Verge

Nilay Patel, writing for The Verge:

He also calls HomePod as a "lonely" product:

USA Today

Ed Baig, writing for USA Today:

The Wall Street Journal

Joanna Stern, writing for The Wall Street Journal:

But Stern also had some Siri-related frustrations:

TechCrunch

Matt Panzarino, writing for TechCrunch:

BuzzFeed

• Nicole Nguyen, writing for BuzzFeed:

The New York Times

Brian X. Chen, writing for The New York Times:

The Loop

Jim Dalrymple for The Loop:

But Dalrymple also ran into some head-scratchers, namely from Siri:

After you've checked out all of the reviews (including Rene's), come back and let us know: are you picking up a HomePod?

Recently, Business Insider published an opinion piece by writer Avery Hartmans about what visiting an Apple Store for a repair is like. The article, though an editorial, is not the kind of thing that should be covered on a news site. It's one person's experience, written from one person's perspective.

Here's what I mean.

Hartmans starts the story off describing how she went to an Apple Store for a repair without an appointment, hoping to be seen that day (there were no more online appointments available and she was in a hurry). She explains how Apple's Town Square approach was too confusing for her.

From my perspective, she was helped by four Apple employees who each gave her instructions on where to go and what to do. That's bad?

Without an appointment, Hartmans was seen right away and was told her screen could be repaired in just a few hours. Though it took longer than expected, she (again, without an appointment) was able to have her iPhone screen repaired in four-and-a-half hours. That's bad, too?

Then, even though she admits to having dropped her iPhone twice, Hartmans' iPhone went black and "bricked" —something she blames solely on Apple.

(That's a presumptuous assumption.)

She went to a different Apple Store, again without an appointment, to get her iPhone fixed. She waited "several minutes" (which is pretty good by retail standards) to talk to a greeter who gave her clear instructions on how to find an Apple staff person to help her see a Genius, which she considers to be confusing, as well.

Sounds like she was able to find who she was looking for right away. She was also able to get an appointment for just 30 minutes later.

When she came back for her official appointment, she checked in with the appointment receptionist, who told her to sit at a nearby table. She was then helped by another Apple employee who got some information about her issue (presumably to let the technician know what they should bring to the appointment). She was then helped by the official technician 20 minutes after the start time of her last-minute appointment. I've waited longer to pick up take-out that I order two hours ahead of time.

So, after being helped by a number of people that were trying to make the process quick and smooth, she was given a new iPhone at no cost (other than the original $150 that she paid for the cracked screen repair).

From my perspective, this is a perfect experience when dealing with an emergency repair. She was helped by multiple employees, all doing what they could to ensure that she was accommodated in a timely fashion, even though the store was busy and she hadn't made an appointment.

Hartmans, however, considered it to be "from hell" because she (of her own admission) would prefer to stand in line.

She prefers the stand-in-line method over Apple's way of freeing people up to wander around. By not making you stand in line everytime you want to speak to an employee, you're able to check out new accessories, sit on a stool for a bit, and play with iPhones, iPad, Macs, or whatever else catches your eye.

Would you rather stand in line?

I'm not trying to say that every Apple Store experience is wonderful, especially when we're referring to some of Apple's most popular locations. They are very busy and it can sometimes be difficult to navigate.

I don't think Hartmans' opinion is wrong. It's an opinion, after all. What she doesn't seem to understand, however, is that what she calls hellish, I call ingenious. Some people will agree with Hartmans' assessment that, "there's much to be desired with Apple's repair process." I also believe that some people will agree with me that everything she complains about is what I love about the experiences I have when visiting an Apple Store for a repair.

The real problem is that Hartmans' piece is written on a business news website and speaks about subjective matters in an objective way. It's just one perspective amongst many based on one single experience.

The first partially successful photograph was taken in 1816. Back then, as you've probably seen in period films and super old photos, the camera was a rather large and cumbersome contraption. Getting your photo taken was expensive and a novelty. The first roll of film was patented some 65 years later. The first Kodak camera went on sale in 1888.

From then until the early 2000s (yeah, like 120 years), photographs became a way of freezing memories so that we could make them last forever. We'd put them in albums, frame them, and slap our kids' hands when they'd get fingerprints on the glossy paper.

But the photograph has taken on an entirely new meaning with the advent of social media. For one, "graph" is long gone from the word. With digitization has come convenience beyond our wildest dreams. With convenience has come a sharp decline in value.

The way we were

I grew up in the 90s. We had photo albums galore around the house — my mom had a baby album for me and one for my sister, an album of old photos of her parents and their parents, an album of all the moves we made, and a few more just because. Photos were somewhat sacred — heaven help you if you smudged, bent, or ripped one. They encapsulated memories and they were really all we had of those fleeting moments. The act of taking photos — loading the camera up with film, getting everyone to pose — and then going and getting them developed was ritualistic and meaningful. We conserved film for those truly special moments and to wildly snap photos was a no-no (and got pretty expensive). Hell, we bought cheap cameras and then threw them out just for the film inside.

Point is, photos were tangible, lasting, real things that many of us valued above some of our most prized possessions. It's almost as if pieces of the loved ones in those pictures were physically carried with the photograph. To lose them was to almost lose the ones we loved.

On a commercial level, photographers once made quite the living (my wife's aunt saw the world and had her photos printed in National Geographic). The greatest photos were dubbed "iconic" and printed in textbooks and on posters and used to educate, encourage, or remind us of human history.

OMG, LOOK AT THIS SANDWICH I MADE

Now that everyone's walking around with a super computer in their pocket, with some of the best cameras available today, the meaning of the photo has done a 180. The pictures we take are no longer everlasting reminders of days gone by. They're now ephemeral blips of life in action, but not any action in particular. We'll take photos of just about every meal we eat, Starbucks latte we buy, funny cloud we see, and stupid expression into which we can distort our face.

Photo sharing apps like Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook have taken what was once glorified and sucked all the value out of it. You can open Instagram on your phone and swipe through thousands of photos, most of which you actually won't even take the time to look at. And so a photo is no longer intrinsically valuable, rather its value must be judged and categorized before being deemed worthy of a passing glance.

And our attitude toward taking pictures is expressly "millennial" for lack of a better term. I mean, with the storage capacity of today's smartphones, we can use the burst setting indiscriminately. Yesterday I took four photos of my cat in the same position, just to make sure I got the focus right and to nail the framing. And I haven't shown that photo to anyone. Look at my Instagram profile and it's really nothing but pictures of my pets in various sleeping positions. How completely pointless and meaningless is that? Even more so, why do I feel compelled to share? Because it's cute and cute does well online? Because it's just what you do with photos on your phone? Who knows anymore.

My Gallery app from the last two weeks... smdh.

As for a profession? Sure, there's still money in photography; I have friends who make solid livings as photographers, but once their photos make it online, their value is snuffed out in an instant. People will use just about any picture they find on the internet because it essentially "belongs to the internet," or so the mentality seems to be. And that attitude is pervasive.

Is it really so bad, ya f#*kin' luddite?

No, no it isn't. Sharing photos has become a part of our culture. Memes abound, funny dog videos pop up all the time, and "food porn" is just as good as regular porn. It's just fascinating to take a look at what humanity once deemed valuable and track its journey into ubiquity and routine.

I suppose you could argue that, since those with millions of Instagram followers can make a living off of that alone that their photos hold value, but if I asked you what your favorite Instagrammer posted last week, would you remember?

That being said, our own Daniel Bader argues something different:

Do you agree? I agree.

So what's the point?

Perhaps there is no point. Maybe this is just commentary. Maybe I wish people would more heavily consider their everyday, humdrum posts. Maybe I'm congratulating the folks who put time and effort into anything they post. Maybe I should stop being a hypocrite and get off Instagram.

I just felt like pointing out the paradigm shift. As the value is sucked out of more and more of our culture (don't even get me started on words and language), it seems like we drift further and further from what tethers us to one another. We experience each other's lives through glass and capacitive touch. I suppose we once did the same through glossy card stock, so have we really changed that much or just improved upon an idea?

What do you think? Sound off in the comments below or jump into our forums and discuss!

I've had my Apple Watch Series 0 since it launched three years ago. It's significantly improved my personal fitness. I recently upgraded to the Apple Watch Series 3 GPS + Cellular and wow, what a difference it has made!

With the Series 0, there are some glaring omissions that make it less than perfect. When exercising, I still had to have my phone with me when tracking any kind of outdoor workouts. I couldn't really rely on it for music as much as my iPhone. The battery life of the Series 0 is ok, but it often led to me babying it because it might run out of juice before I was ready to recharge it.

Upgrading from a Series 0 Apple Watch to a Series 3 has been an amazing leap for me. With the addition of an on-board cellular connection, better performance thanks to the faster dual-core S3 processor, and amazingly long-lasting battery life, if you're currently still working out with the first-generation Apple Watch, the Series 3 is going to revolutionize your experience.

Apple Watch Series 3 has tons of new features

Apple Watch Series 3 GPS + Cellular has more sensors, faster processing, and tracks your fitness data better than the Series 0 every could. The ability to see elevation changes without needing your phone thanks to the barometric altimeter inside makes it great for hiking, runs, and even biking uphill. Swim tracking, something I didn't have with Series 0, has encouraged me try swimming as a workout method simply because I can more easily quantify those results. With the new heart rate data results, I can tell when I'm more relaxed or when my heart is beating fast even though I'm not exercising (like, when I'm full of anxiety).

That battery!

The biggest improvement with Apple Watch Series 3 over Series 0 is its battery. My Series 0 had been used every day for nearly three years and it was definitely showing. Of course the CPU was aging, but the battery itself was not doing so well. I would use my external HR strap I have for working out as a way of saving battery, even when my routine wasn't very long. I'd be careful to not use all of the Apple Watch features in an effort to extend the battery life until the end of the day. I wasn't into the idea of carrying a battery pack around just for my Apple Watch.

With Apple Watch Series 3, I no longer have to worry about battery drain. This thing is a tank when it comes to staying juiced up! Recently, I went to the gym and spent 45 minutes in spin class, wore it throughout the rest of the day, tracked a short 20 minute bike ride with GPS, and then later tried out a cellular call — I still went to bed with 35% battery remaining. On Sunday, I went for a 4-mile run with GPS on, tracked an hour-long outdoor hike, and still had battery life to spare throughout the rest of the day. The hike, despite being an hour, didn't seem to affect the Apple Watch's battery life at all. I'm more encouraged now to track activities that I might have avoided before out of fear of an inevitable dead Watch.

Location tracking is like magic

Thanks to GPS and LTE connectivity, the Apple Watch Series 3 is significantly better at tracking long, strenuous hikes and provides much more accurate and useful data. I can just hop into my gym clothes and go out for a run without strapping an iPhone to my arm, but am still able to get the data I want from my runs.

I'm excited about the upcoming Apple Music streaming feature coming in watchOS 4.1, though I'm not sure how much I'll use it. Currently, my Apple Watch automatically syncs playlists that I listen to frequently while its charging overnight. It works so well that I'm not sure streaming Apple Music is even necessary.

There's one missing feature (and it's a big one)

One of my favorite activities to close all of my rings, or get motivated on weekend mornings, is to go on a longer walk than normal and listen to one of my favorite podcasts. Unfortunately, there isn't a dedicated podcast app for Apple Watch. This is one of those glaring omissions missing from the first-generation Apple Watch that Apple, unbelievably, hasn't yet fixed.

A dedicated podcast app on Apple Watch could work similar to the way playlist syncing currently works — new episodes of shows I subscribe to would sync to my Apple Watch while its on the charger. That way, when I'm ready for my weekend walk, all I have to do is put on my Apple Watch and go. No iPhone needed.

I've also not yet found any third-party apps that make the Apple Watch more useful. As Serenity Caldwell pointed out in her review of the Apple Watch Series 3 GPS + Cellular, there are still a ton of apps that need to be updated to even work over cellular without your iPhone. There are also apps that are either being discontinued or delayed, making the developer story on the Apple Watch still surprisingly blank.

I'm excited to see what that developer story ends up being, but for now I'm focused on Apple's built-in apps because they're doing the job just fine.

If you're wondering if you should upgrade, the answer is yes

Having an Apple Watch has been the motivation for why I've tried new workout routines from the start.I only got into indoor spin classes because it was a workout option on the watch, which I found out I really enjoyed. Now that I have a Series 3 with swim proofing, I'm ready to test out the swimming pool at my gym to see how much of a workout I can get.

The Series 3 is a major upgrade from the Series 0. The workout types, Activity coaching and features, and music upgrades are stellar. The fact that I can stay connected without relying on my iPhone for every little thing is, in a word, freeing.

The same week that Apple announced that the iPod nano and Shuffle would no longer be available for sale, I coincidentally came across my old nano at the bottom of a box. Before the announcement, I pulled my postage stamp sized nano out and took a small trip down memory lane. The iPod was my first step into tech gadget waters, which would eventually lead me to the career I have today.

I remember my first iPod

I was late to the digital music game. I thought the idea of a small but expensive device that only played digital versions of music was silly and inconvenient. I had my large collection of vinyl for listening to music in the house, and a Discman or Walkman for listening to CDs and tapes. Sure, I had to tote a book of heavy CDs or a lunchbox sized case of tapes everywhere I went, but I actually thought that was more convenient than having to load all my music onto a computer before transferring that music to a portable music device. Silly, right?

I finally took the plunge sometime in 2005 when I bought an iPod mini. I think I found it on sale. Even though I turned my nose up at the idea of MP3 players, I was secretly excited about this strange device. How does it work? How do I turn my vinyl, tapes, and CDs into something I can listen to on this tiny little box? I was excited to discover everything this new-fangled gadget could do.

It didn't take long for me to fall completely in love with the iPod. Less than a year later, I had moved on to the iPod nano, of which I bought two more. It became my favorite music listening device until I eventually upgraded to the iPhone.

The iPod nano will always be loved

Some people have a dedicated nano just for listening to podcasts while others use them exclusively for listening to audio books. If you search #iPodnano on Twitter and go back before Apple announced the end of this era (July 26, 2017), you'll see that lots of people still use it, even if it's somewhat ironically.

The nano is a memory. It's something most of us remember getting for the first time. I'll bet you can still remember the color of your first iPod nano and who got it for you. We've grown up and moved on to better technology and easier ways to sync our media, but we still love the nano the way we love the first stuffed animal we got as a child, or the first book we remember reading by ourselves (Mine was Sunshine Porcupine by Diane Gess)

That's why it truly seems like Apple is closing a chapter on its technological past. Sure, the iPhone is more convenient (you don't have to bring more than one device with you on the go), but the iPod nano is still a viable device for storing and listening to music, audio books, and podcasts.

It's time to move on

I admit I haven't used any of my iPods, not my nano, or my Shuffle, or my touch for a very, very long time. Ever since I got my first iPhone, it's been my main source for listening to music. I think I'm an example of why Apple made the decision to put that horse to pasture.

While the nano and Shuffle are probably still being used by a lot of people, it's not the most convenient way to take advantage of everything Apple has to offer. You can't download songs from Apple Music (I tried, you can't). You have to connect it to your computer and sync it with iTunes. You can't pair it with Bluetooth speakers or headphones. There is no way to get anything iCloud-related on it. In comparison, the iPod touch, which is essentially an iPhone without cellular capability, does everything the iPod nano did, but a lot easier, and with a lot more features.

It was the right move on Apple's part. We don't need to hold on to the past so tightly, especially when it comes to technology, which progresses so fast we can barely keep up with it. Instead, Apple is now free to dedicate more time, resources, and research to getting on with the future.

Maybe we'll get that Apple Car someday yet — or at least a new version of the Apple TV.

Do you remember your first iPod nano or Shuffle? What version and color was it?

I just went to my first D23 Disney convention last weekend. It was not, however, my first ever convention. I've been going to tech cons, comic cons, Star Wars Celebrations, horror cons, anime cons, and a plethora of other large meet-ups dedicated to one specific genre for years. I used to carry a backpack just for maps and schedules and was always just a little too late to find out about something cool that happened on the expo floor.

And then the iPhone was born.

Thanks to the advent of the smartphone, it is easier than ever before to navigate the stress-inducing, overly crowded waters of a convention, as well as find out about goings-on at the exact moment they happen, thanks to social media.

How my iPhone saved my D23 experience

Here's an example of a day at D23: To start, we took a Lyft to the convention so we wouldn't have to worry about spending extra money on parking. We arrived at the convention with just enough time to stand in line for a panel. While in line, I opened the D23 app and perused the rest of the day's schedule. Looks like we'd have just enough time to check out the Expo floor before heading to the next panel.

Once on the Expo floor, we discovered that there were also lines to see many of the exhibits. Well, we could stand in line here or stand in line for that other panel. Thanks to YouTube, we knew we could just watch the panel online shortly after it ended. Perfect. We stood in line for the exhibit instead.

Later, after not making it into one of the most popular panels, we saw a huge group of people heading to one location, many with green balloons. "What's this?" we said. Thanks to a little sleuthing on Twitter, we discovered that attendees of that panel were given special passes to the brand new Fantasmic show at Disneyland that night. Well, maybe we had a bit of FOMO, but we didn't have to wonder all day what that big crowd of green balloons was all about.

Come dinner time, we definitely didn't want to eat the expensive and less-than-tasty convention food, so we decided to find a restaurant nearby. Thanks to Google Maps and a little help from Yelp, we found a local haunt that filled our tummies for a quarter of the price of the convention food (don't get me wrong, I still ate my share of Mickey pretzels while I was there).

What's my favorite travel accessory? My iPhone, of course

As you can see, my iPhone is my most important travel gadget. It got me to the convention and around to other places. It told me what was happening at the convention, even when I wasn't able to attend a panel myself. It helped me find dinner at a place I'd normally have to ask a bunch of locals to find out about. Thanks to the tech age and the proliferation of smart phones, I was able to make changes to my plans on the fly without it throwing a wrench in my entire trip.

The iPhone, and smartphones in general, have become a vital addition to our go-bag, whether it's finding a building we've never been to or planning a road trip across the country. Sure, we can go without them, but life is much, much easier with one (I booked a cross-country tour for my band before there were smartphones — trust me, it sucked).

D23 was still a madhouse, but it used to be worse

D23 is a behemoth of a convention (it's funny that a company known for perfecting line management could fail so badly at managing lines at a convention). Though it was hectic and crowded and difficult to navigate, it was the D23 app, as well as various social media connections, that made it possible for me to have a good time at all.

It took a while for event promoters to take advantage of the fact that most of us walk around every day with a tiny computer in our pockets. It wasn't that long ago that I'd have to grab a souvenir schedule just to find out what was happening at a day-long event. Now fairs, theme parks, conventions, concerts, and all manner of events have an app dedicated to letting you know what's going on and how to find it. Many include promotions that work to our benefit, like discount coupons for purchases or a way to connect to celebrity attendees, or even the ability to make in-app upgrades to tickets.

The convention-going world is much better off thanks to the smart phone. I'll never walk through an expo floor again without my iPhone in my pocket.

After what feels like years of rumors and overhype, Apple's plans for Augmented Reality have been laid out for the world to see. There's no Iron Man-style fully transparent display coming to the next iPhone, no holographic projectors embedded in the next iPad, and at least for now there are no futuristic glasses to augment the world. What we are getting from Apple is, in many ways, much better. We're getting a platform no other company can deliver right now, Augmented Reality every iPhone owner can have all at once.

It's going to be a fun year, but the conversations that are bound to happen next require some perspective.

"Inventing" Augmented Reality

On stage at WWDC, Apple said ARKit would be the largest AR platform overnight. That is both true and not quite reality, depending on how you interpret what was said. If you look at the underlying technology driving ARKit, it will be nowhere near the largest platform. Qualcomm's Vuforia works on Android, Windows 10, and of course iOS. That's obviously a considerably larger collection of devices, but there's a reason you've never heard of Vuforia before — no one uses it unless they are explicitly told to.

Until Pokémon Go started grabbing eyeballs all around the world, Augmented Reality was almost entirely used for advertising. When Avengers hit theaters, Wal-Mart had a special collection of frozen pizza boxes that showed you the big Avengers Tower fight if you pointed your phone at it after installing an app. You can go just about anywhere and find lots of one-off examples like this, but they're all basically the same. Simple promotion things and very little else.

By rolling ARKit out to every iOS device on the planet, developers can build Augmented Reality features into anything. Instead of an app needing to be installed just for accessing something in AR, these features will just sort of be there the next time a user goes to look at something on their phone. This of course also means lots of full AR apps and games are coming, as we saw with the impressive Wingnut Studios demo on stage at WWDC.

Read More: Apple ARKit vs Google Tango vs. Microsoft Hololens

Even without a "killer app" there will be more people ready to use Augmented Reality just by owning an iPhone than has ever happened before. Providing access to AR clearly isn't enough to make it popular, or everyone would already be using it. The thing Apple is making possible here is a way for developers to integrate AR both simply and wholeheartedly. It will be the biggest platform overnight because there will be lots of people using it and lots of apps giving people a reason to either dip their toes into AR or take over the living room with a sci-fi western playing out on the coffee table.

No one is "winning" AR this year

Apple bringing a lot of people to Augmented Reality this year is going to cause a lot of thoroughly well-earned excitement, but it's also Day One in the life span of consumer AR. Everything up to this point, including Pokemon Go, included AR as a thing that hopefully caught the attention of a larger audience. Augmented Reality was not the feature — it was the pretty packaging to lure you in to something else. Until recently, that something else usually involved more advertising.

The grand experiment here is to see if people are really ready to see Augmented Reality as a product, which means showing them apps that are truly best experienced by integrating some kind of physical element in the real world. I can see the progress line from my last run on a 2D map on my phone, but is it more impactful if I see it on a 3D map drawn on my desk? Will being able to physically walk around that map help me make better decisions about my next run? Those are the kinds of practical questions developers will be encouraging users to answer when iOS 11 launches.

The same can be said for games — multiplayer games perhaps more so than single player. Will I be able to share a 3D map of my Minecraft world on the living room floor for everyone to enjoy, and will that be the new "must have" feature in my other games? What about streaming games in AR, so the user can choose the camera angle while I complete a puzzle or beat someone in a 1v1 fight?

This spike in users is all about answering these use case questions, and those answers will not be exclusive to ARKit. It will be a long time even after this initial spike of interest before Augmented Reality reaches the kind of user volume required to call any one company or technology in this space a "winner" and that's important. Apple and its developer partners are going to be learning from every minute of AR use in iOS 11, and using that to make ARKit even more impactful in iOS 12. This is a marathon, and it's pointless to call any participant the winner on the first step of the race.

There is no such thing as Apple AR

By far the most impressive thing from Apple's introduction of Augmented Reality on stage at WWDC was the refusal to brand this technology. What is coming to iOS 11 isn't Apple AR, or iReality, or anything like that. ARKit is something any developer can use to add any amount of Augmented Reality to every app. Augmented Reality is going to be just another tool instead of this standalone thing in need of a separate hype machine, and not only is that incredibly important but it's exciting to see Apple understand this so fundamentally.

Augmented Reality can't be the reason someone installs an app. Instead, it needs to be the reason someone keeps an app installed. Even during the WWDC demos, instead of saying "here's an Augmented Reality app," we got "here's a story we feel is best experienced with Augmented Reality" — that messaging is going to be a big deal moving forward. While Apple's competition is trying to brand the "spectrum" of experiences between Virtual and Augmented Reality technologies, this ecosystem will be filled with apps which either also happen to offer Augmented Reality experiences or will be best enjoyed when you have time to explore them with Augmented Reality tools. Users will proceed at their own comfort level without ever needing to think about the underlying technology. It's a smart and entirely unsurprising move from the Apple playbook.

It's a great thing to be excited about ARKit and what it will bring, but the larger message here is the way Augmented Reality will be woven into iOS experiences. It doesn't require special head gear, and the benefits to upgrading your phone for better AR experiences are a cherry on top of an already cool experience. Once users have these tools, Apple can focus on making them more impactful with things like special glasses.

For now, it's all about making AR a seamless part of your life.

Apple just released the brand-spankin'-new 10.5-inch iPad Pro and the freshly updated 12.9-inch iPad Pro. Between that roomier screen on the 10.5-inch, updated (read ridiculously powerful) display tech, and faster A10X Fusion chip, both seem to be calling my name. But I'm going to be equal parts frugal, wise, and annoyed with myself and choose to wait to upgrade to the latest iPad models from Apple.

"But why?" you and the less-responsible parts of myself ask. Well, I'll tell you.

See at Apple

I love my 9.7-inch iPad Pro and it loves me

I've said it before and I'll say it again: The 9.7-inch iPad Pro is my ideal Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I've rocked iPads Mini, Air, and 12.9-inch Pro, and nothing has been as perfect for me in both size and functionality as my 9.7-inch iPad Pro.

At WWDC in 2016 my 12.9-inch iPad Pro was stolen. It was a whole ordeal that eventually resulted in me replacing the tablet, but when I was presented with the option of replacing it with a 9.7-inch iPad Pro or another 12.9-inch iPad Pro, I had to think about it. See, I'd just been hanging out with Christina Warren and holding her legendary Rose Gold iPad Pro and there was something about the size, weight, and color (of course) that just felt right.

I realized I didn't want a viable laptop replacement (something that the 12.9-inch Pro could very easily be), I just wanted a consumption and creation device that existed between the space occupied by my iPhone 7 and my MacBook Pro. Apple's smaller Pro tablet with its True Tone display and Apple Pencil was calling my name and I couldn't ignore it. I'm not ready to replace my 9.7-inch Pro, because it still feels perfect to me. When (if) that changes, that's when I'll make the jump.

I'm not ready to be ruined

Apple's new iPads have some seriously powerful display tech and I hear it's going to ruin me the same way Retina displays ruined me when they came out: It made using non-Retina devices unpleasant at best and positively old-school at worst. You can read more about Apple's ProMotion by checking out Serenity Caldwell's guide here:

Apple's ProMotion is going to change how we use our devices

It's going to "change how we use our devices," she says. Yeah, that's what I'm worried about. Right now I exist in a world where my 9.7-inch iPad Pro, iPhone 7 Plus, and MacBook Pro are all shining beacons of newness. I bring that 120Hz refresh rate into my home and it's curtains! Our brains are remarkably adept at adjusting to new stimuli so we get used to new things quite quickly. Unfortunately that means we get un-used to old things. When Apple introduced the new non-button Home button on iPhone 7, it didn't take long for the physical button on my iPad Pro to feel too squishy. I'm a little worried the 120Hz refresh rate is going to do the same.

When (if!) I update to the 10.5-inch iPad Pro, it's going to be later this year. I'm holding out hope that Apple's next iPhone will feature the same ProMotion tech in the new iPad Pro. Maybe we'll get True Tone displays, too?

My 9.7-inch iPad Pro is still a viable iOS 11 machine

When iOS 11 ships this fall and I tap that little update button in settings, my 9.7-inch iPad Pro is still going to feel like a brand new device … I know that 'cause I've loaded up the beta and will be running it throughout the summer. No matter the device, iOS 11 is going to bring a boat-load of new features to iOS and to iPad in particular. Between Drag and Drop, the new Dock, the new File app, and updates to the way Apple Pencil and iPad interact, I'm going to have plenty of exciting new things to keep me distracted from ProMotion and the bigger, 10.5-inch screen.

I might want a 10.5-inch screen, I might want the 120Hz refresh rate, and I might even want the better camera system in the 10.5-inch iPad Pro, but do I need those things? No — at least not right now. If Apple reveals some new iOS 11 features at its fall press event aimed at the new iPads Pro, that could easily result in me ponying up the cash. I'm a sucker for FOMO — especially when it comes to new, exclusive features. If my 9.7-inch iPad Pro couldn't do all the new multitasking stuff available in iOS 11, you can bet I'd already be holding a 10.5-inch Pro in my hands … heck, I'd probably be typing this editorial on it. But since, iOS-11-wise, my Pro can do everything the new Pro can do, I can resist the temptation.

I've decided I can wait. What about you?

Are you already rippin', rollin', and scrollin' through your new 10.5-inch iPad Pro? Have you decided to wait to upgrade? Will the 10.5-inch Pro be your first iPad? I'm curious to hear your thoughts (unless you're trying to talk me into upgrading — have mercy!), so be sure to share 'em in the comments below or send me a Tweet!

Apple just launched the 10.5-inch iPad Pro alongside an updated 12.9-inch model. I've always been a proponent of the smaller-is-better campaign, but this time I'm trading up. Why am I switching to the 12.9-inch iPad Pro? It's all about productivity.

See at Apple

Because the 'Biggie Pro' now has all the same stuff as the 'Baby Pro,' but it's bigger!

When the 9.7-inch iPad Pro launch about a year ago, it had a couple of sweet features that weren't available on the 12.9-inch model, namely the True Tone display and front and back-facing cameras.

True Tone, which is the internal system that naturally adjusts the screen to the light around you, making everything look more like soft paper instead of a harsh, electronic screen, is now available on both models of iPad Pro. We no longer have to choose between a smaller screen with True Tone or a larger screen without.

The iSight cameras are both now 12 megapixels with a 1.8 aperture f-stop with five times digital zoom. They are both capable of 4K video recording at 30 fps and both have a 7-megapixel front-facing camera that supports 1080p HD video recording.

Almost everything about the 10.5-inch and 12.9-inch iPad Pro tablets are exactly the same, the only real difference being their physical sizes. You can't even say that about the iPhone lineup.

So, when it comes to choosing an iPad Pro, size becomes the only deciding factor.

Because productivity hits maximum overdrive with the 12.9-inch iPad Pro

Thanks to its size, the 12.9-inch iPad pro is capable of running full apps side-by-side in Split View mode instead of running an iPhone UI the way the 10.5-inch model does. Full apps means more productivity.

The screen runs natively at 2732 x 2048, which also runs video smooth as butter thanks to ProMotion technology and HDR support. We're talking about a pretty robust bit of technology that is the same screen size as the smaller MacBook Pro, but about one-third the thickness because all the guts and goodies are packed tightly behind the screen. Plus, it's got a touch screen.

The new iPad Pro line is now capable of up to 120 Hz refresh rate, which is also smart-adjustable down to as low as 24 Hz for those apps that don't need as much computing power. This means more power when needed without using up a lot of battery.

This amazing new display technology also lowers the Apple Pencil's latency to about 20 milliseconds, which is going to come in really handy when handwriting notes in the Notes app.

Basically, the advancements in technology now found in the iPad Pro devices make them a replacement for a laptop on paper (I've yet to test this in practice). So, why not get a screen that's the actual size of a laptop and get to work?

Because, why not?

I've always had an iPad with a 9.7-inch screen. I never even went in for the iPad mini. I've always thought the size was the perfect fit. It's portable, yet big enough to work on, less expensive, but not quite an entry-level device, and was Apple's initial screen size when the iPad first launched seven years ago.

So, this time around, it's time for a change. I'm ready to give a different iPad screen size a chance. I'd like to know what it's like to work in Pages, or actually manage the iMore site (Trello, Slack, and all of our back-end website tools) on it with nearly the same level of ease as working on my 13-inch MacBook Pro.

To be honest, the real reason I'm going with the 12.9-inch iPad Pro is that I already have a 9.7-inch model. Sure, I could trade it in for a 10.5-inch iPad Pro, but the physical screen real-estate increase is only about an inch and the speedy upgrade to the guts won't make it seem like enough of a change. If I'm going to get another iPad Pro only a year after my last one, I might as well make it completely different.

That's not to say the 'Baby Pro' isn't still my fav...

Some of the things I said about the 9.7-inch iPad Pro a year ago still hold true today for the 10.5-inch model. It is better as far as portability is concerned and it costs about $150 less than it's larger sibling.

I'm always going to love the "Baby Pro" form factor. Its size is just right, it is spec-for-spec nearly identical to the 12.9-inch model, and it costs less. What's not to love?

After thinking it over

I'll be picking up my 12.9-inch iPad Pro from my local Apple store on launch day. Though I won't be able to get one in Rose Gold to match my 9.7-inch iPad Pro and iPhone SE, I'll be getting it in Space Gray to match my MacBook Pro.

What about you? Are you thinking about getting the 12.9-inch or 10.5-inch iPad Pro? Do you have the previous model of either? Tell me why you're buying (or not buying) a new iPad Pro in the comments.

Won't you please welcome to the stage — my friend and yours, John Gruber!

John Gruber

Hello, and welcome to the Talk Show Live from WWDC 2017! Good show, I think! [laughs] We have a beautiful theater, I know.

So something to get out of the way, right out of the front: This show would not have possibly happened without our sponsors. We have three perfect sponsors for this show. Our first sponsor is JAMF: J-A-M-F. Jamf specializes in Apple Device Management: If you have multiple devices in a small company, and you need them, the MDM-management type stuff — go to them, they support Apple stuff, they're Apple-only — they support Apple stuff before it's out! They're probably already working on the betas for iOS 11. It's absolutely great.

Go to jamf.com/talkshow, and you will find out more.

Our second sponsor, another great sponsor, perfect for this audience is MacStadium. It is time to get your build server out of your office closet, or out from under your desk and put it in the hands of some professionals. Get a real build server. You can't just go and get some no-name Linux server and have Xcode running on it — you need a Mac! Go to them, MacStadium knows how to professionally host macOS X Server in a great colocation environment. All of their cloud accounts start with a 30-day free trial that is production-ready, so when your 30-day free trial is over and you're like "I wanna pay, I want to go with this," you just roll right over and you're already done.

Visit macstadium.com/df for more information.

[laughs]

You guys dying? You probably wanna know who's the guest? So I'll just tell you that, and then I'll do another sponsor?

[laughs]

Our third sponsor — great sponsor — are there any developers here in the audience?

[Voice: No. Laughs]

Our third sponsor is Setapp. Setapp, if you haven't heard about it, is a new subscription service for indie Mac apps. You pay $9.99/month as a user, and you get access — they have over 70 apps in the service — think of it as like, Netflix for apps. It is quite a deal, and they've got a ton of great apps in there. It's brought to you by MacPaw, a long-time independent Mac developer, the makers of CleanMyMac, Gemini, and a bunch of other stuff. So they know the indie Mac market. They are tried and true indie Mac developers; it's a great service; if you're a user — with is probably more people than developers — go there and check it out. And if you're a developer, certainly go there and look at it and see if it makes sense for your app to be part of their service.

Go to Setapp.com, and you can find out more.

And last but not least, and one of the great traditions of this show is I think every single time I've done it — I don't know, I've lost count, I think it's like the sixth one, maybe seventh, but I think every single time we've had an open bar, and that open bar has been sponsored by the same company — the great people at Mailchimp.

[Loud cheers.]

So if you've enjoyed a few beverages before the show, you can thank Mailchimp for that. I thank them. It's a great company. If you have email marketing needs, go check out Mailchimp. It's terrific. And I thank them for sponsoring the open bar here, because I certainly wasn't gonna pick up the bill. [chuckles] I know how some of you drink.

[Loud random noise over the speaker.]

I don't know what that was. We'll get past it.

So yesterday, when I was at the — there's one last group of people I wanna thank, and that's you. All of you. Those of you in this room, those of you listening at home. Yesterday, during the press event — there's all sorts of stuff back stage, and you have briefings, and there's schedules, and there's people and the press and you have to sit around all day.

While you guys are in the State of the Union, people like me are sitting around talking. And I got to talking with Walt Mossberg.

[cheers]

And it was a great talk, it always is. He's exactly like what you think he's like in person — he's full of [laughs] very strong opinions.

But he was talking about what we do, and I was telling him how what I loved about him was that he was a columnist, and that to me, there was something in my head about that style of writing that's writing a column, and that's what I always wanted to do with Daring Fireball, and he was very complimentary. He said "Yeah, I can see that, and I think you do a great job." But then he said "You know what I've really enjoyed these last few years? I've really enjoyed podcasting." And I said, "You know, I have too, but from when I was a senior in high school until I actually got Daring Fireball as a job off the ground, I've thought I want to be a columnist, I wanted to be a writer, and I wanna write, y'know, something like this." I never in a million years thought that I would be, like, a broadcaster as something that I should put on my tax return.

But there's no question that the podcast is half my job. And I enjoy it, and it's totally unexpected, and for some reason I love everybody who reads Daring Fireball — if you read it and you don't really listen to the show, that's fine. But for some reason, I feel like I have more of a connection with the people who listen to show. Like bumping into people on the sidewalk here in San Jose — and if you do see me anytime this week, please say hello.

But the people who say "I love your show" seem more connected, personally, than the people who say "I love Daring Fireball." I love both of them, and it's all complementary, but I just thank all of you for being here. I really cannot believe that I'm here in this theater for this show.

[huge applause]

I also feel like maybe listeners of the show have more of a sense of my actual personality? Like, maybe my writing kind of conceals it, and it's a little bit more formal. But if you do know me at all, you know that I… when I find something I like, I like to keep going with it.

And so, if you liked last year's show, I think you'll like…

[gigantic applause]

I think you're going to like this year's show, too. Let me introduce Phil Schiller and Craig Federighi!

[the house roars, whistles, etc]

Craig Federighi

Nice little place you have here.

[John laughs]

John Gruber

So, Craig, did you think my intro went on too long? Is that why you ran?

[laughter]

Craig Federighi

(It's gonna happen.)

Phil Schiller

Alright, big secret thing here: So whenever we do keynotes, Craig always bolts on-stage. He's always full of energy and he runs out there. And it's really impressive, right? Because he just — it just kicks things off, just like that.

And the rest of us… y'know, don't.

[laughs]

And in rehearsing for this keynote, someone — who will remain nameless — said "It's so great when Craig does that! We should all run on stage!"

[laughter]

And I said "No! Because I'll trip, and fall, and be an idiot, and then I'll regret it." So it's his thing, and it's Craig's thing, and it's impressive, so.

Craig Federighi

Well, thank you, Phil.

[applause]

John Gruber

Alright. I don't know about you guys, but I thought yesterday's keynote was longer than most podcasts.

[laughter]

Phil Schiller

Probably about the same. But we covered more stuff.

[laughter]

John Gruber

You covered a lot of stuff, which is going to make tonight very difficult.

Phil Schiller

Yeah. [laughs]

John Gruber

It also seemed as though there was… there could have bene more. What was like the first draft of the keynote?

Phil Schiller

[deadpan] Three and a half hours.

[laughter]

True.

Craig Federighi

It's true.

Phil Schiller

So we had to cut. Y'know, in a perfect world we would have liked to get it to two hours; it's a goal. But it's kind of hard to hold your bladder for some people for more than two hours. But that's as close as we got. We got — y'know, we got close, but not there, and we cut a lot. And we kind of ran out of — we just didn't want to cut any of this stuff!

John Gruber

Mm. I thought — running through some of the stuff from the keynote. I want to talk about the Mac first.

[Woos]

Because — not just — yesterday was a very strong day for the Mac on software, on laptop hardware, on desktop hardware, but in the recent months with, y'know, the discussions we've had and your announcements about the Mac Pro, I feel like the Mac — not that it's in a different place, but it's certainly in a different place, perception-wise, than it was a year ago. I thought that, let's just go with this right off the bat: I thought that the Mac stuff alone, yesterday, would have made a pretty good Macworld Expo keynote back in the day.

Craig Federighi

We used to find a way to stretch things out.

[laughter]

Phil Schiller

I don't know about Macworld, but at least an Apple Expo Paris, or Japan… [laughs]

John Gruber

So starting with macOS — Craig, when you introduced macOS High Sierra…

Craig Federighi

[dryly] Uh-huh.

[laughter]

Craig Federighi

Where are you going with this?

John Gruber

I was seated in the press area with friend of the show — sometimes guest of the show — Serenity Caldwell was right next to me, and you were thirty seconds into it after the name, and she says to me, "I can't believe it, I don't think he's going to make a high joke!" [Ed. note: The actual exchange.]

[laughter]

Phil Schiller

[laughs] She doesn't know Craig that well.

John Gruber

[on the verge of laughter] As soon as she said that to me… you made the joke.

[laughter]

Craig Federighi

[quietly] It's a tradition.

John Gruber

I was very happy about this announcement, because, if people listen to the show, my hope for the Mac is, look: The Mac has all the major tentpole-style features that it needs. I think what it just needs is sort of refinement. And is that — that's what the name High Sierra sort of sets the bar for?

Craig Federighi

It's a proud — it could have been Snow Sierra, or something…

[laughter]

We've done that. There's a proud tradition of Mac releases — that, I think, some of our most loved releases sometimes, are when we take a year to refine and perfect, and we wanted to do it again.

John Gruber

Mountain Sierra wouldn't have worked.

Craig Federighi

[laughs] That's the the thing: Snow Sierra, Mountain Sierra, where do we go with this… Our crack marketing team.

[huge laughter]

Phil Schiller

Augh.

[laughter and clapping]

Phil Schiller

First of all, I don't appreciate it when you use the crack word and point to me.

[more laughter]

And second of all, it is a sad state when you're naming products, and you're more afraid of what your head of engineering is going to say about it than all the press and all the customers…

[laughter]

But… truth be told.

[Craig holding back laughter]

John Gruber

Now, it's one of those things — and it happened repeatedly through the keynote, and this is how you can tell that it was a jam-packed keynote. One of the things you guys do in a keynote is, when you get to the end of a segment, and you still have 20 or 30 other things that are new about this subject, you'll put up, like, a catch-all slide.

And in the press area, people tend to take their phone out, or if they have the standalone camera, and then they'll point up and take a picture of that, and in their notes at the end they have these, go through all those catchup slides, see if there's anything in there.

And it went by so fast, where it kept happening — where people would be like "Oh, it's gone!"

But one of the little things you called out was a 35% improvement in the efficiency of storage of Mail…

Craig Federighi

Yep.

John Gruber

… And that's the sort of thing that's like music to my ears about this, because to me, it's not that there's all these people out there whose MacBooks are stuffed to the limits of the drive with Mail, but that that's the sort of thing that only happens when you really go through the code, and do a refactor.

Craig Federighi

Yeah, well, and really, starting out this year, every team went and said to me, "What do we want to make faster?" And our Finder guys were like, "Hey, y'know… it should be a little faster to open a Finder window." And so they put some folks on that. Every demo, the Photos team, they would bring me the slowest Mac they could find, and show me how fast it was launching.

Y'know, it's like that. Here's a 100,000 [photo] Photo Library, let's see how fast it launches, right?

So, yeah. When you start seeing stats like that, it is a sign of everybody in engineering putting their focus and going deep in their area.

John Gruber

And you're saying like, this is the type of release where teams can say, "Here's what we would like to throw effort at to, because we're not happy with the performance of this part of the system; if you can give us the time and let us do it, we can really get that going."

Craig Federighi

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, certainly at Apple there's a real blend of saying, "Hey, we're coming out with a new machine, a new iMac Pro with really interesting architecture; we gotta, we all have to do our part to make that possible. Or you look at the iPad Pro, and what it took to do ProMotion, huge effort, so this —

[woos from the audience]

[smiling] So this, yeah. It's, it's awesome.

John Gruber

You're skipping ahead! iPad…

[laughter]

Craig Federighi

Sorry, sorry man!

[laughter]

But so, there's definitely a fair amount where we have goals as a company and as a release, where we ask all teams to pull in, and what's so awesome about Apple is that the teams will all rally to the cause. But at the same time, this release, we said, listen: Here's 50% of the time off the top — tell us how you just want to make your stuff better. And the teams took to it, uh… it's great to have great people.

John Gruber

Safari got a pretty good chunk of that.

Craig Federighi

Yeah.

John Gruber

And it seemed like… you — just flat out said, y'know, "Safari is faster than Chrome."

Craig Federighi

You helped prompt me to do that!

John Gruber

Yeah?

Craig Federighi

Yeah! Yeah. It was a few weeks ago that you wrote something about Safari, and you were — you complimented Safari in one regard, and then you said "Yeah, and it's okay that Safari's not the fastest," and I'm like, "WHAT?!"

[big laughter]

And I realized, when every time one opens their browser and goes to a particular search engine, that there's an ad that says "Get a faster browser"…

John Gruber

Right.

Craig Federighi

… That eventually, it seeps in, and people stop —

Phil Schiller

[into the mic] MARKETING.

Craig Federighi

Marketing, where that's coming from. And…

[laughter]

And so we thought we'd bring some knowledge! And it's all true, man. I mean, that team is unbelievably obsessive about performance. They're absolutely the best in the industry. The Safari team rules, the WebKit team, the combination of them, they build the fastest browser on the planet, and honestly, I'm getting sick of people not giving them their due!

[large cheers and applause]

Phil Schiller

Beware a pissed off engineer.

[laughter]

John Gruber

And I thought that the Safari news yesterday hit on the major themes that Apple has been — I mean, performance is obviously something you guys always care about, so there's that, we just covered that — but then the other angle is the privacy angle, right?

And so, there's a new intelligent tracking prevention. And you talked about it…

Phil Schiller

Yeah.

John Gruber

… But can you nerd out on us a little more on what's intelligent about it?

Craig Federighi

Yeah. You know, actually, years ago, Safari was the first browser to have these mechanisms to try and prevent cross-site tracking. And there became a point where the tracking industry — the tracking industrial complex is pretty inventive!

[laughter]

And they came up with some pretty wild mechanisms. I mean, for awhile, it was "How do we use storage in Flash," how do we use any API you can imagine to try to maintain a tracking cookie effectively across everywhere you go on the web. And the Safari team has been really drawing deep to try and solve this problem.

And we figured out that through a combination of, essentially, double-keying the cookie, saying if you pulled a resource, and you were on — I don't want to pick a particular publication — you were on publication A, and it included some Javascript to try and to pull content from this tracker. Instead of allowing that to be a key by the tracker's domain, which would be the same domain when you'd pull that tracker from another site, we'd segregate it. We'd say "Oh, well this tracker's going to see a different cookie when you're on Site A than when you're on Site B, than when you're on Site C. We took to siloing that.

But these guys are even more insidious than that. And so we had to actually use some local machine learning to figure out which are trackers, to partition their data, to delete their data. But all of this is really just to me, I think what is many reasonable people's expectation, right, that's when I'm on this site, I know I'm seeing their ads, I don't expect that there's any record, anywhere else, about what I was looking at.

And we think that's the way the web should be. And the Safari team had to work incredibly hard on that, so.

[huge applause]

[More coming as the show progresses!]

[huge applause]

John Gruber

I use the word "creepy" a lot talking about the track, and I do think it's creepy. And I feel like, somehow, because it's online, and on a screen, and it's computerized, and nobody really knows what happens, that people aren't creeped out in the way that they would be in the real world.

Like, if I go to Macy's, and I'm looking at jeans, and I decide, "Eh, I'm not going to buy any jeans." And then I go into another store, and somebody comes up to me and says, "Would you like some jeans?"

Craig Federighi

Right.

[laughter]

John Gruber

That's creepy! I'm immediately thinking, "How do you know this, what is going on here — let me see the jeans, though."

[loud laughter]

But I am creeped out! Y'know, and that's why it works, though, because maybe… y'know, obviously sometimes it works, but I do think it's a reasonable — there should be a reasonable expectation of privacy in that regard, and just putting your browser in Private mode isn't a great solution to that, because then you lose all sorts of helpful user features that are based on, "Hey, we're remembering stuff!"

Craig Federighi

Yeah. And that was actually the hardest part about it. It's easy to do if you're willing to completely break the web.

John Gruber

Right.

[chuckling from the audience]

Craig Federighi

But what's the point of that. But the kind of thing that — it's not just, y'know, I go here and look at the jeans, I mean, it's you go here and they say "Hey, we noticed that your car — the lease on your car is nearly up." I mean, they don't say that, but they know that, right? They're like "We know you own —" I don't know what you own, if you own a car, but — do you own a car?

John Gruber

I was going to buy the Apple Car.

[lots of laughter]

Craig Federighi

Okay.

[huge applause]

Well, we're going to have to work on that, then. If, uh…

[more laughter]

They know, they know, they're correlating, "Hey, we know you what you bought at the grocery store, and we know this," and they tie it together, and it's like… yeah, it's creepy.

John Gruber

Yeah, well, it's great that Safari is working on it. And then, the other one too, and it got huge — I never know what you guys can tell, I mean here, we get pretty good audience feedback, but...

Craig Federighi

[laughs] It's very different.

John Gruber

… But the auto-block feature got a huge applause, and it's because people — so many people use their MacBooks all over the place, y'know, whether it's work, or a library, or something. And when all of a sudden you click a link, somebody's like, "check this out," and you get all this sound — it's embarrassing!

Craig Federighi

It is a great way to tell who's not paying attention in a meeting.

[laughter]

I kid you not — literally while we were reviewing this feature, slides for this feature in one of our rehearsals, and somebody's browser goes off playing an ad…

[laughter]

And this is someone who shall not be named who was not yet running the beta, and it was… it was a perfect proof point.

John Gruber

I'm gonna, I'm going to make a bet. I'm going to bet it was [SVP] Eddy [Cue].

[laughter, groans]

Craig Federighi

Eddy is… Eddy is one of our best beta testers.

[huge laughter]

He's already on the beta. Eddy is aggressive…

Phil Schiller

Oh yeah. He's usually the first on every beta.

Craig Federighi

No, in fact in most of our executive team meetings, Eddy is updating two or more devices…

Phil Schiller

While — DURING the meeting…

Craig Federighi

… On the board room table.

Phil Schiller

He's got his cables spread out, downloading the morning's update.

John Gruber

Alright.

Craig Federighi

It's true!

[laughter]

John Gruber

Is there anything in macOS High Sierra that either didn't get time on stage or didn't get enough review that you'd like to talk about?

Craig Federighi

Oh boy. Yeah, y'know, I, on the way over here I was tapping out Notes to myself on all the things I was going to forget to say when I got here…

[Gruber laughs]

… And I feel like I'm not going to pull my phone out right now and look at that list…

John Gruber

Oh, that's alright. What about the Face syncing across devices? That's something that we talked about here last year…

Craig Federighi

Yep.

John Gruber

And it was per-device. And so, you'd get a new device — and even throughout the year, it played into when the new MacBook Pros came out last fall, and some people were saying "Yeah, my battery life isn't that great" and you guys looked into it, and part of it is the first-run experience, and it's redoing Spotlight indexes and this stuff — clearly you guys were, it wasn't there last year simply because it wasn't done.

Craig Federighi

Yep.

John Gruber

It wasn't like you didn't have it on the…

Craig Federighi

No, we've been working on it. And it's actually something that's harder to get right right, because when you go through the process of classifying your photos, we offer up and we say "Hey, is this John?" And y'know, "Is this John?" And you say "Yes, yes."

But when you say yes to one face, we're actually saying "Okay, well, there are a thousand other photos we saw that we think are the same person as this, so we're going to count those all as John — but all you really told us is about that one photo. And so what we actually sync, and support, and so that we get this right — we sync only the specific photos you told us about, and then each… 'cos that's really the truth, y'know, that's what the user really told us.

And then we sync that information, and then each device, because they're independently doing photo recognition are talking that, and re-deriving the — coming to the final result on all your machines to synchronize. So synchronize is actually very little data, and it's all just the truth data, and we won't hold back the right solution.

But getting that architecture completely right was a — took a little longer than we would have liked, and so we're super excited to have it done now.

[Ed note: Remaining transcript coming soon!]

Apple Watch, and smart watches in general, are not ubiquitous enough yet for us to get what it means when someone looks down at their wrist. When we quickly glance down to see if an email or text message can be ignored temporarily, it might look to others like we are checking the time, like we are in a hurry to leave the conversation.

Which is ironic because one of the purposes of Apple Watch is to allow us to address our various notifications without being distracted from what's going on right in front of us.

Until most people have a smart watch and we all understand that looking down at our wrist doesn't mean we are in a hurry, checking a notification might seem rude.

I was recently on a nature walk, and was tracking my exercise with my Apple Watch. As I was hiking up a trail, a passerby caught my attention with a friendly how-do-you-do. I paused my exercise tracker so I could take a moment and chat with my fellow nature lover. To him, however, it looked like I was checking the time, to which he said, "Oh, I can tell you have somewhere to go, I'll leave you to it." I explained that I was pausing my timer so I could converse with him. He understood, but I still felt bad. For just a moment, he thought I didn't want to talk to him because I was in a hurry to get somewhere.

I've also been on the other end of the situation. I was having a conversation with a friend a little late into the evening. She glanced down at her Apple Watch, and for a split second, I thought she must want to go home. Turns out, she was just checking a notification.

We've had a hundred years of conditioning to understand that looking at your wrist meant checking the time, which sometimes means it's time to go. We've only had a few years, and not very many participants, to retrain our brains to understand that looking at your wrist doesn't necessarily mean checking the time, but instead means we're trying to stay present in the conversation.

So, how can we make use of Apple Watch's ability to keep us connected and not distracted, while not offending those around us who might take our watch checking actions the wrong way?

My first suggestion is to take a moment. It's instinctual to look down at your Watch as soon as you feel that buzz on your wrist, but that can seem abrupt and distracting to those around us. If you pause a beat before checking a notification, you can train your brain to wait until the right moment.

Which leads me to my second suggestion; Wait until the right moment. When you're in the middle of a conversation, it might be more polite to wait until the other person finishes a sentence before looking down at your watch. When there is a break, you can even let your companion know what you're up to — "I'm just checking this text" or the like. That way, you don't give off the impression that you're checking the time because you have to leave soon. Most people will be less offended by you checking a text then acting like you want to leave.

Someday, smart watches will be popular enough that we will be reconditioned to understand that looking at our wrist doesn't mean we need or want to leave. Just like taking your phone out of your pocket, someday checking your watch will only imply to others that you are reading a notification. But, for now, we should think about how we look to someone else when, in the middle of a conversation, we lift our wrist and look at our watch.

Have you had any experiences with people checking their Apple Watch or had someone seem offended when you look at yours? How did you deal with the situation? Do you have suggestions for Apple Watch etiquette? Let's discuss in the comments.

I got into the smartphone game late: My first foray was with the iPhone 5 back in April of 2013. Going from a Sanyo Juno to the iPhone 5 was like when The Wizard of Oz switches to color — to say I was enthused would be an understatement.

But two years later, I had become disillusioned with Apple. I was sick of all of the proprietary necessities, and I was damn sick of being asked to sign into iCloud every 5 minutes. I fell into the stereotypical Android mindset: "I want freedom and can no longer live in Apple's box."

So I got the Samsung Galaxy S5. I was thrilled with it, and used it until I started working here. As I wrote more for iMore, I found myself more and more glancing back to the world of iOS. My mobile allegiance wavered, and when the iPhone 7 was released, I fell in love with the iPhone all over again. I've now used it longer than any phone in the last year, and until recently, I've been plenty happy with it.

But as iOS's little irksome qualities rear their little heads, I once again feel the tug of the Android ecosystem.

• Samsung Galaxy S8 features I'd like to see in iPhone 8
• Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8+ review: Simply two of the best

Why I want to switch

I haven't just jumped back onto an Android phone yet. I've been mulling things over to see if it's what I truly want. Here's why I'm thinking of switching back:

Let's be honest: iCloud is annoying. (Throw Apple IDs in there too for good measure.) The fact that I have to sign into every little thing on iPhone drives me crazy; Touch ID has quieted that fire to a degree, but every time I get randomly asked to sign in (for whatever reason), my ire grows again.

I don't like using iCloud, and I hate even more that you only get 5GB for free. That's paltry compared to Google Drive's 15GB and photo storage capabilities. "Why don't you use both?" you might ask. I do. But why can't iCloud just be better so that I can buy in completely?

Google's suite of apps have worked flawlessly for me, and you only have to sign in once and you're in for everything. Not once, on any Android device that I've used, was I randomly asked to sign into my Google account unless I had actually signed out of it myself.

• Everything you need to know about iCloud on iPhone, iPad, and Mac
• Google Photos may be free — but there's still a cost

The more I think about it, the more I enjoy the Android user experience best. To me, it feels like they actually work more like Macs than iPhones do — and no matter my qualms with iOS, I love my Mac.

The biggest thing for me is the way notifications are presented. Android wins big time with its stacked notifications that are neatly laid out and easy to dismiss or act upon. I also appreciate that you don't have to swipe down an entire screen to see them. Lock screen access is just more pleasant on Android, too.

• Notification Center: The ultimate guide

There! I said it! Throw your daggers, light your torches, and sharpen your pitchforks.

Kidding. It's not about freedom in the sense that Apple is an evil overlord; I'm talking about the freedom to do the actions that make sense, like quickly tapping and holding to drag apps around the home screen. Moving apps around iOS's Home screen is a chore, especially if you have a 3D Touch-enabled iPhone, and there isn't any way to customize those actions.

The ability to see and manage the files stored on your device is also a massive boon to Android. I love that I can just throw songs on and then go into the internal memory as though I'm on a computer. It's especially handy for managing storage — something my iPhone constantly struggles with.

• Android Nougat: Everything you need to know!

This is, obviously, the nature of the Android ecosystem being detached from hardware manufacturing. But that said, I like that I have many phone options to choose from. Before the iPhone SE, users who wanted a small phone had to stick with old technology; in contrast, if I don't like the look or size of one Android device, I can just pick another of the many options available. It's almost like you can build your own phone; you pick the features you want, and find the device right for you.

There are downsides here, of course: Detaching hardware from software means that Android devices aren't always updated as quickly as they should be, and new hardware devices may not support new software features. But it's a tradeoff I'm willing to make.

It also means paying less for a great phone: If I don't want to spend the cash on the latest and greatest Galaxy S8, I can likely find an Android device with decent specs for much less.

• Android Smartphone Buyers Guide

Again, comparing iPhone and Android isn't exactly apples to apples, but I love the ability to truly customize your Android device. Between launchers, screen layout options, themes, and icon packs, you can personalize your smartphone experience, while iPhone, as a whole, is pretty cookie-cutter: You can change your background, but that's about it. Especially on larger phones, the ability to set up your screen the way you want it is paramount, especially when it comes to widgets — another boon for Android.

With an iPhone, I feel like I'm interacting with a phone. When I'm using an Android device that I've set up, I'm interacting with my phone.

• How to personalize your Android phone with themes, launchers, and more!

Android's native Google apps are better. Period. Google Calendar is far better than iOS's Calendar app, Google Maps is excellent, Google Photos is a better photo manager than the Photos app, Gmail is a fantastic mail manager, and Google Drive is easy to use, convenient, and intuitive.

Are these bold statements? Sure. And you may disagree with me. But Apple has some work to do in the native apps category, and while the company's working on it, it's not there yet. Google's apps, in contrast, have seen significant overhaul over the last few years, and have not only become functionally great, but nicely minimalistic in their Material Design looks.

Quick Charge and wireless charging. 'Nuff said.

Learn more

Currently, Siri is the superior assistant for me, but I feel like once Google gets Assistant on its feet, it'll far surpass any Siri functionality. Given Google's track record with quick iteration and its massive database to help augment Assistant, third-party app integration and other advancements should come quickly.

• Learn more

Why I'm hesitating

While those nitpicks may make it seem like I hate my iPhone and iOS, I don't. I actually really like my iPhone. In fact, I'm having a really hard time deciding whether or not I should switch back (and it's not just because I seem to have misplaced my SIM tool).

No matter how much I want to resist it, I've become part of Apple's larger ecosystem. I have an iPhone, Mac, iPad, Apple TV, and an Apple Watch, and they all work together beautifully. Aside from phones, I have no other Android devices (largely because, well, Canada), so if I make the abrupt switch, I lose all that cross-device functionality.

I love the convenience of texting on my Mac instead of having to stop what I'm doing and pick up my phone. I love wearing an Apple Watch when I'm out and really busy. Sure, I can still use the iPad, Apple TV, and Mac together, but I use my phone the most, so why wouldn't I want it tied in?

This sort of goes part and parcel with the ecosystem, but I feel that it's an important enough feature to mention. AirDrop is the BEST. If I'm out on the road with the magician I work for, and he's just received a standing ovation, which I've filmed, I don't have to painstakingly email it or transfer it to my Mac to then send to him. I just AirDrop it over, and a gigantic file near-instantly winds its way to him.

Additionally, throughout the course of my day I end up having to take an enormous amount of screenshots: Quickly sending them to my Mac via AirDrop instead of having to mess around with Dropbox or Google Drive or a USB cable is more than convenient; it's a lifesaver.

• AirDrop: The Ultimate Guide

One of the main features that brought me back to iPhone in the first place was iMessage. It's great to be able to send or receive video in full quality, and far superior to an MMS message. (On Android, you'll sometimes receive video that looks like it was shot with a toaster.)

iMessage is just plain more fun, too, thanks to group messaging, stickers, and games. Google's Keyboard is trying to replicate these things, but it's not doing the best job just yet.

• iMessage: The Ultimate Guide

Perhaps the best iOS feature of all is that when an update goes out, everyone gets it instantaneously. For security and functionality, there's no beating it: Android updates can take forever to get to certain phones depending on model and even carrier. Since manufacturers can put its own specific Android flavor on its devices, these updates have to go through its system first. For example: I didn't get Marshmallow on my Galaxy S5 until like 6 months after it rolled out, and when I did, it was super-buggy.

• How to update your iPhone

As much as I hate to base my decision on what other people are using, I do have friends who own an iPhone, and, much like my decision to delete Facebook, I feel like switching would arouse annoyance.

I share a Pages document with a friend for a project we're working on; I regularly send group texts to my band (who all use the iPhone); I also need to stay on top of updates, so I can help my mother and sister when they inevitably need it, and write for iMore. It's not so much peer pressure as the fact that I just hate to inconvenience that many people at once.

Setting up a brand new phone is often fun and a journey of discovery and amazement. When you've done it four or five times in the last year, however, it can get a bit tedious. You can't really just switch at the drop of a hat; you have to set everything the way you like it, download all your most-used apps, update some stuff, and it's kind of a chore.

Apple is a massive company with millions of customers, but when I've had to call support, I've felt like I'm the only one that matters. With a recent iCloud issue (surprise, surprise), the agent said she would follow up the next day, but actually called me back within 15 minutes to say she had been doing a bit more research and wanted to try something else before she made me wait any longer. That's excellent customer service.

In contrast, going to Google for support is like going to the Prime Minister or President to ask why your trash wasn't picked up yesterday.

Will I switch?

I'm still seesawing, but honestly — probably. I have a perfectly good Nexus 6P sitting on my desk, and its huge screen and rear fingerprint sensor are calling to me. But I've been thinking about it for almost two weeks and still haven't pulled the trigger. Yes, my iPhone 7 has its shortcomings, but there are also many things it does right that keep me from readily crossing sides. I'm living in the ecosystem, and there are some major conveniences and niceties that I'd miss. And if nothing else: The beauty of working for a company that covers technology is that I don't have to give up one phone for the other. I can always use both!

What do you think?

Have you thought about switching? What keeps you on your iPhone or keeps you on your Android phone? You can get in on the conversation in our forums or comment below!

If you're a fan of PayPal, Tesla, and SpaceX founder Elon Musk's many ambitious ventures, you may have read a piece or two by Tim Urban of Wait But Why; Urban focuses on existential, humanitarian, and scientific history — what's happening, how did we get there, and where do we go from there.

He also decorates his lengthy articles with delightful stick figures and graphs — because sometimes you need a bit of levity in-between understanding how artificial intelligence may be the doom or savior of us all.

Urban's latest Wait But Why opus is on Musk's newest venture, Neuralink, which is ostensibly creating more advanced brain-machine interfaces. But before talking about that, the article deep dives into (surprisingly understandable) neuroscience concepts, including why the human brain is so difficult to map and comprehend. Why would we want to map the human brain and hook it up to computers in the first place? Because we've been doing so already for decades — just very, very slowly. From Musk:

From this perspective, our iPhone and Android smartphones are a part of our neurological system already — they're just harder to interface with than, say, our limbic system or prefrontal cortex.

This concept defines everyone's rush to get into wearable technology, digital assistants like Siri, and AR: The easier it is for us to interface with the Internet-connected part of our brain, the faster we can collectively learn and evolve.

Though I've rarely thought of humanity like this before now, it's really rather true: We're the first fully cyborg generation. We recall information from the Internet as often as our own brains — we just use a much slower method of recall than our brain's neural pathways to get to that next section of information.

It's a bit terrifying to think about, honestly. As technology evolves to provide that bandwidth and connects us instantly to the Internet (and each other), it opens up a host of other frightening concepts:

If we can communicate telepathically and instantly, where does language go from here? Could we evolve to understand language as empathic signals, or circular concepts? Is this how we fix worldwide communication?

Does this open up an entirely new universe for the creatives and scientific pros in this world — or turn everyone into a person who can express themselves creatively?

If we can think collectively, does that mean we get further as a species, or instantly destroy ourselves? Do we essentially become the Expanse's protomolecule, or the Formics of Ender's Game, or Arrival's Heptapods (or any number of proto-futuristic science-fiction concepts) if we have communal processing?

I'm going down a rabbit hole here, so I'll stop before I disappear into Wonderland forever — but it's interesting to think about, no? We're on the precipice of technology not only changing our everyday lives, but the very way we think, communicate, and use the world around us. And smartphones are a pretty big stepping stone on that journey.

Come what may, I'm pretty excited for the moment that I get to call myself a cyborg. (And seriously, if you have a few hours, find a good place to sit and ingest Urban's incredibly comprehensive explainer on Neuralink and our potential machine-linked future.)

• Neuralink and the Brain's Magical Future - Wait But Why

With iOS 10.3, Apple is hoping to start analyzing user data to improve iCloud. Typically, large internet companies like Google and Facebook want to vacuum all our data up into the cloud so they can feed their search indexes, social graphs, and artificial intelligence projects. They claim to anonymize some of it by stripping off personal identifiers but, data at sufficient volume still paints precise enough patterns that identity can be sometimes still be determined.

Apple's trying to do it in a way that maintains effective anonymity for their users. And one of the ways they're doing that is with a technique called "differential privacy".

Here's what Apple says about it:

How does differential privacy work?

Unveiled at WWDC 2016, differential privacy works by adding a level of noise to data at the point of collection — like when you add a new word to the auto-predict dictionary in the QuickType keyboard.

Once large amounts of data from large volumes of users is collected, statistical analysis is then used to "see" the patterns through the noise. It's impossible to tell who was the source of any particular piece of data, but the frequency, popularity, and other meta-information about that data becomes usable by Apple to improve services.

That's... obscure. Example, please!

Let's say Apple wanted to know whether to suggest "Wars" or "Trek" more often as an auto-complete for "Star", but they want to make sure not to start any family feuds — because sci-fan fans are passionate!

With differential privacy, when collecting the data, Apple flips a virtual coin and then every time the coin comes up "heads", records the answer incorrectly. In other words, it records a "lie". So, when recording a million answers, half of them would be "lies", and it would be impossible to know if any individual answer was the truth or a "lie".

By collecting enough responses from enough people, and using statistical analysis to figure out how many lies there were, Apple could get really close to the proper answer, again, without ever knowing exactly which individuals answered which way.

Less noise could be added for areas of less popularity and frequency, more noise for areas with higher popularity and frequency. The system could automatically opt-out anyone who was contributing too much data to protect their privacy.

That's just one example of how noise and statistics can be added to protect privacy but still provide useful data. Apple wants to start using to it improve the quality of Siri responses and related services as well.

Privacy different

For end users, the benefits of crowd sourcing are tangible. If millions of people started typing or saying "shway" for "cool", Apple could quickly add it to dictionaries, without ever needing, or caring, to know whether you typed or said it or not.

In other words, differential privacy lets Apple provide most of the crowd-sourced, artificially intelligent services we want, but without the intrusive data collection practices that creep us out.

If done right, it'll be a real win/win for everyone.

Since Apple updated the Notes app to include the ability to share a note with others using an iCloud account, I've been trying to use it more often with friends and co-workers. "Try" is the important part of that sentence: I've frequently come across annoying restrictions that make it difficult to share a note, or ones that make working in real-time with others less than productive. Notes is fine. But there are dozens of really good, cross-platform note-sharing apps out there that make working in real-time with others a downright pleasure. If Apple wants me to use Notes as my go-to note-sharing app, it's got some work to do.

Did you get my invite?

Sharing a note in Notes can be frustrating. First off, you have to know the user's iCloud address — and make sure that said address or phone number you've used actually then connects to iCloud Notes Sharing.

Many companies (like iMore) have internal email addresses, which are not necessarily the same email address employees use for iCloud (like me). So, when trying to share a note with a co-worker using the only email address you know for that person, you might be thwarted. Additional steps are necessary to make that connection, whether it's because you need the recipient's iCloud registered email, or the recipient needs to register an email address with iCloud. And, even that doesn't work seamlessly.

Even if you copy the link to a note and try to share it, the recipient can't access it without your express invitation. So, when you see "Copy Link," in the share section, it's not as simple as sharing the link with any old person that has an iCloud account. You still have to invite the person through his or her correct iCloud-connected contact first.

I've never tried sharing a note via Twitter or Facebook because the invitation will post as public, and that's just weird.

You can't lock a note when sharing it

Apple also added a nice feature to the Notes app that allows you to lock a note with a password. That way, if someone has access to your device, they still don't have access to those private notes.

Unfortunately, you can't share a locked note ... at all. Apple's method for locking notes is to require the same password to lock and unlock all notes in your Notes app. This convenience makes it so you don't have to remember a bunch of different passwords for each and every note you lock. It also means there is no secure way of sharing a locked note with others.

I'd love to see the ability to create a shareable note with a password dedicated to that specific note. That way, when you're sharing a checklist of things to get for your best friend's surprise party, you're best friend won't be able to see that note when rummaging around in your Notes app (I know, why would your best friend be looking in your Notes app, but that's another story).

Working in real-time is clunky

When my co-worker Serenity Caldwell and I get together to brainstorm ideas, our thoughts are flying. In our shared note, one of us at any given time will be typing away, adding content or making changes to what is already there. Unfortunately, due to the sluggishness of the cloud, working in real-time is more like working in 10-seconds-later-time. So, when I'm adding an item to our brainstorming list, she's already added the same item, plus two more. Things start to get messy at this point. I oftentimes just stop writing and let her do all the work.

If you have a thought and tell your companion (in a video chat or on the phone, let's say) to add your thought, there is a pretty good chance that your companion already put that thought down and you just look like you're not paying attention (this has happened to me a number of times).

I'm not blaming Apple or the Notes app for the sluggishness of the cloud. That's just the way it is. What I'd like to see, instead, is some sort of visual queue that others are working in the note.

Google Docs does this fantastically. You can clearly see when others are active in a note (you can't tell when someone is active in a shared note in the Notes app; you can only tell if the note has been changed), and you can tell where their cursor is on the document. So, you don't find yourself accidentally working on top of each other.

I'd love for sharing in the Notes app to work more like sharing notes in Google Docs. It's easier to see what's happening in real-time and easier to avoid stepping on another person's productivity or creativity. Google just does it better.

Notes has potential, but only if Apple keeps working at it

All this aside, the Notes app is still very important in my daily life. It's is where I jot down a lot of my thoughts and ideas: I like how easy it works, and how it doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles to distract me. I also love being able to access my notes across all my devices thanks to iCloud.

What I don't like, pretty much at all, is sharing a note. The potential is there to make the experience work seamlessly — especially since sharing is exclusive to iCloud users and doesn't have a bunch of different platforms to consider — but Apple has a ways to go before I'm ready to ditch my other note-sharing apps. I just hope Apple continues to improve the Notes app's sharing features.

As part of Apple's spring updates across its iPhone and iPad line, it doubled the iPhone SE storage capacity without changing the price. This is fantastic news for 4-inch fans that need 128 GB of storage — you can have it all now. It also means Apple has officially done away with the 16GB storage option for all of its devices (except the iPod line), and the cost of doubling storage hasn't changed. In a world where photos, videos, music, and movies are taking up more space, it's good to see Apple making accommodations for that.

Why would anyone want 16GB of storage anyway?

"Gee, I could get 32GB of storage for the exact same price as the 16GB model, but I just don't need that much storage," said no one, ever. Price is the only reason I can think why a person would ever choose 16GB over a device with more storage.

Now that Apple has made the base iPhone of any model 32GB, every handset is on the same playing field, storage-wise. As an iPhone SE user, it seemed to me that Apple wasn't thinking right when it launched the 4-inch model with a starting size of 16GB of storage. Even though iCloud can reduce the amount of content we store on our devices, it still doesn't take into account such things as apps and books or media we want to download onto our devices for offline use.

One of the great features of Apple Music is that you can download your favorite albums and listen to them without depleting your cellular data usage. But anyone with only 16GB of storage will tell you that that precious space is likely used for such things as pictures.

Now maybe Google will stop making fun of Apple's low storage issues

Remember that commercial where Google spotlights its Google Photos app, which frees up space on your phone? That "Storage Full" pop-up hits a little too close to home for me. I've been on the receiving end of it before. If you only have 16GB of storage on your iPhone, chances are, photos and videos take up a large percent of it.

Critics (and fans) of Apple have been complaining about the 16GB iPhone for a while now. There never really seemed to be a reason to keep it around, especially in today's era of growing storage needs.

The iPhone 7 and 7 Plus started the trend last fall by having the base model start at 32GB. Many iPhone users celebrated the upgrade, but iPhone SE buyers missed out on the storage upgrade only a few months before, much to our chagrin.

It's about time

Though I would have been much happier if the premier iPhone SE started at 32 GB for the same price in March of 2016, it makes sense that the flagship iPhone 7 would get the upgrade first. I'm fairly certain there would be a level of outrage if Apple's entry-level iPhone got there first.

It's been a year since the iPhone SE launched and for some, that means upgrade time. Admittedly, I'm not planning on replacing my iPhone SE this year, but I'm not in a hurry to upgrade my storage right now.

If I had the 16GB iPhone SE, though, I'd be waiting in line on Friday morning for my chance at an upgrade.

In the meantime, I've got my eye on that Product(RED) iPhone 7. That beautiful color is hard to resist!

Are you happy to see the 16GB storage capacity option go the way of the dinosaur? Tell me how you feel in the comments section.

Russell Holly, Lory Gil, and Luke Filipowicz have all been drooling over Nintendo's latest console, the Switch, since the first murmurings of its existence. As soon it was possible to get one, they rushed to make sure they had a lock on it, even going to midnight sales events to stock up on everything they could.

One week later and we all have strong opinions about what we think of the Switch, but for different reasons. We are all gamers of a different ilk. Here's what we think of the Switch, and why.

Russell: I'll play just about anything, and often do play just about everything. I love playing fun party games with my kids, wasting a sunday to a massive open world adventure, and while I'm usually not very good at them I do occasionally enjoy a good first-person shooter. Puzzle games are usually my happy place, but I really do try a little bit of everything. My living room is home to an Xbox One, PlayStation 4 Pro, Wii U, NVidia Shield TV, and now a Nintendo Switch. Back in the office I keep all of the Virtual Reality hardware, as well as my gaming PC and gaming laptop to power it all. I don't really have a favorite game, but I have been known to blow off plans with friends so I can play through Myst or Riven.

Lory: You might call me a casual gamer in the sense that, for the past few years, I'd been focusing so much on mobile gaming that I stopped playing on consoles altogether. I used to spend hours every day at my PC and hours every evening on my XBox, but working as an app and game reviewer kept me from being able to make extra time for gaming for fun. Thanks to a shift in my career, I finally invested in my first console in years, a PlayStation 4. I love big console gaming. I love how epic these monstrosities feel, and how they take me out of the real world and into an adventure. I'm back to playing games for hours at a time, but not with the fervor I had in the past. I've always loved Nintendo's flagship titles, Pokémon, the Legend of Zelda, and Super Mario Bros and have kept up with those series on my DS or 3DS, even when gaming for fun was hard to come by. So, while I've been playing video games for most of my life (I got a ColecoVision the year it came out when I was eight), I fit best into the casual gamer category.

Luke: Being a millennial, I was fortunate enough to always have at least one (usually multiple) gaming consoles in my house. In fact, some of my earliest memories are of me sitting in front of the TV, playing Sesame Street 1-2-3 on the Nintendo Entertainment System. Gaming has always been my biggest hobby, it's what I sink most of my spending money (and sometimes a little savings money, whoops) into and to say I enjoy it is probably a huge understatement — I absolutely love it. Over the years I have collected a wide variety of consoles. I have owned every Nintendo system except the Wii U, I have every generation of Playstation, and I even have all my old Sega consoles, including a Dreamcast. Where I have fallen off the gaming path is in handheld gaming. The last handheld gaming platform I held in my hands before I got my Switch, was a GameBoy Advance SP and that's because I felt a disconnect with mobile gaming since with invention of smartphones. My iPhone has been my go-to mobile gaming device for years, and systems like the Nintendo 3DS or PlayStation Vita never appealed to me. My favorite games are typically story-driven adventures or RPGs. The Last of Us, Uncharted 4, Final Fantasy XV, and Resident Evil 7 have all taken up a significant amount of my free time, but I still have a love for Nintendo's franchises such as Mario, Metroid, and The Legend of Zelda.

Russell: I grabbed an extra set of Joy-Cons for the kids, a Pro Controller for myself, the collector's edition of Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and a copy of 1-2-Switch. A day or two later I downloaded SnipperClips and Fast RMX.

Lory: When the Switch first went on sale for preorder at 9AM on January 13, I rushed to stake my claim for the Switch. Unfortunately, the neon Joy-Con model was already sold out, so I opted for the gray model instead. I can always buy a set of neon Joy-Con controllers later. I also ordered The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (AKA: BotW), since I knew I'd need a game to play right away. So far, I haven't spent any more money on my Switch, but I'm already eying a couple of sweet accessories, like the RDS Travel Deluxe System Case and the HORI Compact Playstand. Oh, and I'm definitely getting Mario Kart 8 Deluxe when it launches on April 28.

Luke: I pre-ordered a Nintendo Switch the day they went on sale, but for some reason Best Buy Canada wasn't able to send it to me until a few days after launch. I decided that wasn't good enough for me, so I waited for five-or-so hours in line, outside in the cold, to hit up a midnight release at my local EB Games. For hardware, I have two Nintendo Switch consoles — one with grey Joy-Cons and one with neon — a Pro Controller, a cheap carrying case, and I recently ordered a tempered glass screen protector. As for software, I picked up a hard copy of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild at launch and then I downloaded Super Bomberman R the next day.

Russell: It's fantastic, in fact I use the Switch more in tablet mode than I do in TV mode. Being able to pull the tablet out of its dock as I walk out the door to take my daughter to Gymnastics is exactly what I wanted. It's better visuals and greater comfort than a 3DS, and it just plain looks nice.

Lory: I find myself using my Switch in tablet mode more often than I use it in TV mode. The screen is clear and bright, and the graphics of BotW look amazing on that size of screen. I actually remove the Joy-Con controllers and play split-handed with the Switch on my lap, propped up on a pillow. I'm not sure why Nintendo chose to make the screen touch capacitive. It almost seems like an afterthought. The touch screen is very responsive, but it's a secondary element to the system. There are a lot of items on the screen that aren't touch capable at all. It doesn't hurt my gaming experience, but it makes me wonder if the Switch might have been a little less expensive if Nintendo opted for a non-touch capacitive screen, since it doesn't make a difference whether I touch the screen or use the buttons on the controller.

Luke: I love it and hate it at the same time. The screen is big and bright and games look great on the 6.2-inch screen. Plus, the ease of carrying it around with the Joy-Cons attached is fantastic; however, portable gaming has never been my favorite way to enjoy games and the Switch hasn't convinced me otherwise. My hands cramp up after an about an hour of playing, and the tiny Joy-Con buttons and thumbsticks don't offer the most enjoyable experience for my large digits. I have come to the decision that tablet mode is best used for short periods of play, like on my 25-minute bus ride to the gym or the 15-plus minute wait I experience at the doctor's office.

Russell: I've got larger hands, and find they cramp up a little more frequently than I'd prefer when using the Joy-Cons on the tablet. The lower joystick on the right side isn't great for me. I much prefer grabbing a Pro Controller or even putting the Joy-Cons in the included Grip so my hands don't cramp up as easily.

I love the flexibility, though. Everything you can do with these controllers is crazy. Being able to split a Joy-Con so my kids can play together is amazing. The motion controls are really slick. We don't even have games to take proper advantage of all the sensors yet, so this experience is going to keep getting better and that's incredible.

Lory: I recently wrote about how I feel about the Joy-Con controllers. I absolutely love them. Specifically, I love that I can play games with the controls separated. I, personally, haven't had any issues with hand cramps or uncomfortableness, and I'll play BotW for hours at a time. The only awkwardness I've noticed is that, because the - button on the left Joy-Con is right above the thumb stick, I have to reach over the stick to press the button. It's a minor issue, but an issue just the same. Other than the awkwardly placed - button, the separated Joy-Cons are the best gaming experience I've ever had. I rarely place the controllers into the Grip, and when I do, it's only for purposes of comparing my experience.

Luke: Overall the Joy-Cons have been a pleasant experience when I play for short amounts of time. I love the versatility of using one Joy-Con for multiplayer games like Super Bomberman R, even though they are very small and simple, it's awesome to be able to play with a friend locally right out of the box. That being said, the layout of the Joy-Con controllers do make for some awkward reaching, specifically for the "-" button on the left one, and is a source of discomfort.

Russell: I lean more towards the Pro Controller at home, but would rather take the slimmer Grip with me when I'm out and about. It's a reasonably similar experience between the two for me, and I like having the options available.

Lory: As I mentioned above, I use the Joy-Con controllers almost exclusively, so I don't have much to say about the Grip, other than I was surprised at how comfortable it feels. We've all seen the pictures of how it looks. I mean, really? It looks like it would be super uncomfortable to hold. It's not. It's very familiar feeling, not entirely unlike a traditional gaming controller. Again, I've only used the Grip for small periods of time, so I'm not an expert in its overall satisfaction.

Luke: If I'm in TV mode or tabletop mode I'll be using my Pro Controller. It's a much more comfortable and familiar feeling experience for a serial console gamer like myself and it has great battery life (approx 40 hours). Plus, it has all the goodies the Joy-Cons have like motion control, HD rumble, and Amiibo support built-in with no connectivity issues to date.

I have used the Joy-Con Grip on a few occasions and I was pleasantly surprised at how comfortable it was. The Joy-Con Grip is good enough that I wouldn't call the Pro Controller an absolute necessity, but it certainly is useful and well worth the extra cash for serious gamers.

Russell: It doesn't really get easier. The TV Dock is the absolute definition of "it just works" when it comes to quick on and off use. The switch between tablet mode and TV mode is just about as instant as you can get, and I've yet to have a single problem with it.

Lory: Just like Russell said, it just works. Even though the Dock is your conduit to full-screen gaming, it really just feels like a charging dock. All you have to do is rest it in the slot and you're good to go. The connection port is so perfectly designed that sometimes I can't even tell whether I've set it in right (that's probably a bad thing). I'm not sure how anyone can scratch the screen by taking it in and out of the Dock. There is about an eighth-of-an-inch of room on either side of the slot. You'd really have to be mashing it around to press the screen against the Dock forcefully enough to cause it to scratch.

Luke: I dislike the TV Dock a lot. The fact that it stands up, makes it extremely hard to fit into my entertainment cabinet, so much so that I have to unplug the Dock and take it out of my TV stand to be able remove my Nintendo Switch. Plus, I disagree with Lory about scratching your screen. While there is clearance on either side, even being careful, I find it easy to drag my Switch across the cheap plastic when placing or removing the console from the dock. Although I haven't gotten any scratches yet, I ordered a glass screen protector because you can never be too safe. At the end of the day, I would have preferred that Nintendo just shipped the Switch with a USB-C dongle that had all three ports you need on it, inside of a cheap plastic box that essentially houses a dongle awkwardly.

Russell: While I know Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is actually the best game, there's a special place in my heart for SnipperClips. I absolutely love this simple little puzzle game. The multiplayer aspect is flawless, the puzzles are unique and require a lot of thought and communication, and it's just plain fun no matter who you are playing with.

Fast RMX is also a pretty great racing game, and handled multiplayer very well. It's got a great classic Nintendo vibe to it, and the races are plenty challenging.

Lory: The clear winner, so far, in the very limited launch release of titles is BotW. It is, hands down, the best Zelda title ever made. I don't care what you say about Ocarina of Time or A Link to the Past (believe me, I LOVE those games), Breath of the Wild is everything a Legend of Zelda title should be, and more.

As far as other games go, I've demoed SnipperClips and, contrary to how Russell feels, I was not into it. It is a spacial puzzle game. Players use adorable little half-Twinky shaped characters to fill in designated shapes by snipping away at parts of their construction paper bodies. It's cute, but not my type of game. To put it harshly, it's a $20 game that feels more like a $2.99 game you can play on your iPhone.

Luke: Unless you've been living under a rock this past week, you've probably already heard and read the overwhelmingly positive reviews of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. It's truly the best game out of the rather week launch titles, in fact, it's quickly becoming one of my favorite games of all time.

I'm glad I have Bomberman Super R lying around because it's a great multiplayer game that's easy to pick up-and-play with a group of friends. Plus, it lets you use the Joy-Cons as separate controllers in the best way possible because Bomberman only uses the thumbstick and one button and the games go by quickly. You can have a lot of fun with your group of friends in 20 minutes with Super Bomberman R.

Russell: It's hard to go wrong with 1-2-Switch as a party game. This is basically a collection of minigames, but the execution is a lot of fun and the desire to compete with friends is instant. This is the game you bust out when friends have come over and need to do something silly, and I love it.

Lory: I haven't had the opportunity to play any other Switch games yet, but I've been watching some gameplay videos of I am Setsuna. That one looks like a really fun JRPG that I might spend some time with in the future.

Luke: Although I don't personally have it, 1-2-Switch seems like the best way to introduce people to the Nintendo Switch and it looks like it recaptures some of the magic that Wii Sports brought to the table. Plus, there's no better way right now to experience the awesomeness of HD Rumble feature in the Joy-Con Controllers.

Russell: The most important thing here is fun. This console is a lot of fun, the games you can play on it are a lot of fun. It takes the things that were great about the Wii and the Wii U and makes it highly portable. It's also fun, not sure if I mentioned that.

Lory: To me, the biggest selling point of the Switch is the fact that you can transfer from TV gaming to tablet gaming seamlessly. I might be playing a game on the big screen when my significant other comes home, to which I used to stop playing – at least for a while so I'm not totally bogarting the TV all night. Now, when he wants to watch a horror film, I just grab my Switch from the Dock. No disconnecting any cables. No game saving. I can just continue right where I left off the very second it comes off the Dock.

Luke: Nintendo is the most important feature of the Nintendo Switch. Consoles don't sell themselves, games sell consoles. As long as Nintendo keeps putting out new franchise games like The Legend of Zelda and Mario, the Switch is worth having around.

Russell: I am thoroughly enjoying the console, and the rest of my family is as well. So much so, in fact, that it's likely we're going to grab a second console before Splatoon 2 comes out this summer.

Lory: As far as hard specs of console gaming goes, Switch is clearly a huge step behind the likes of PlayStation and Xbox, if for nothing more than the fact that there are only a handful of titles available right now. That being said, the unique hybrid aspect of the Switch makes it my new favorite way to play video games. Before, I had to choose to either play big games on my TV or smaller titles on my 3DS. Now, I can play the same exact game without missing a beat on my TV or handheld device. It's like I've got my cake and I'm eating it too. Om nom nom.

Luke: I have enjoyed my overall experience with the Switch, but a big part of that has been the sheer brilliance of the new Zelda game. The Joy-Con Controllers and the portability have been pretty fun to experience, but they still have shortcomings. The longevity of the hardware is in question and the direction they want to take the Switch is a bit of a blur. I still can't figure out if this is a replacement for the Wii U, the 3DS, or both; however, I'm very excited to see what Nintendo does with this system and am more than happy to go along for the ride.

Russell: If you're able to find one right now, and really like Zelda games, you should pick one up as soon as you can. If you love the idea, but aren't super excited by Zelda games, you'll be happier to wait for the Summer.

Lory: I'm glad I got my Switch on day-one, but I don't think it's a necessary purchase right out of the gate. There are too few titles available to make it worth investing in right now. I suggest waiting until Christmas time. By then, a lot more games will be available, the online game section will probably be full-swing, and some of the minor issues with connectivity will likely be fixed. If you're a huge Zelda fan, and have the Wii U, just get it for that console for now.

Luke: Waiting till there's more titles and a clearer direction of where Nintendo plans on taking this crazy hybrid machine is the smartest choice. I will echo Russell's sentiments though, if you're a huge Zelda fan, get the Switch now and play Breath of the Wild. You will not regret it.

What do you think of the Switch? Did you preorder one, or stand in line in the freezing cold at midnight? Are you hoping to get one when they come back in stock? Or are you planning on waiting until there are more games available?

I've been regularly using the 2016 MacBook Pro since it arrived on my doorstep nearly three months ago. I love many things about it, but I've been at odds with what I think about the Touch Bar since day one. I probably use it more often than most, but still don't use it often enough. One thing about the 2016 MacBook Pro I do use regularly, and consider it to be the most important new feature for Mac, is Touch ID.

Touch ID lets me create even more complex passwords

Thanks to Touch ID on the iPhone and iPad, I've been much better at creating long, complex passwords for my Apple ID. In the past, I still reigned it in because I knew I had to remember those passwords, or at least find them in my password manager app, while on my Mac. Now that I have Touch ID on my Mac, I use a nice string of complex numbers, letters, and symbols that I don't mind forgetting because I can simply use Touch ID to buy movies, music, apps, and more, even on my Mac. Sure, I have to manually enter my password once in a while, but I can look it up using my password manager, 1Password, which also supports Touch ID on the Mac!

I can also make sure my Mac is more secure by creating a complex password just to unlock the device at all. Touch ID makes it possible for me to log in with just a touch, even if my passcode is 25 characters long. Of course, just like on the iPhone, you still have to manually log in every time you restart your Mac or update your operating system, so I have my passcode written down, too.

More apps supporting Touch ID, please!

After experimenting with a couple of apps that support Touch ID (there are very few of them right now), I've discovered just how much I love having the ability to use my fingerprint to confirm my identity when logging in to something or making online purchases.

For example, I can, again, create a long, complex password for 1Password – more complex than I've ever made before – because most of the time, I'll be using my fingerprint to log in instead.

I love using Apple Pay on the web now. Sometimes, I even buy stuff from websites that support Apple Pay just because I can use Touch ID on my Mac to confirm. There is something special and elite about the process.

I really want to see more apps support Touch ID. Basically, any Mac app that requires a log in should also support Touch ID, like journaling apps, finance services, social networking accounts, and email clients. You can see just how many programs could benefit from being able to use biometrics to confirm your log in.

I wish I could use Touch ID for everything I log into. I wish I could use it with every website that allows online payments. I also wish every place I log in to or make purchases from would require two-factor authentication so I could doubly protect my information.

It's the convenience factor that wins every time

Touch ID on the Mac does not make it more secure, it simply makes it easier to create ultra strong passwords without worrying about having to type 25 or more characters each time. I never had a particularly long Apple ID password or Mac log in passcode before. Now, they are long and strong and much harder to hack.

I've been using a password manager for years, which allows me to create complex passwords for my many log in accounts, but that still requires multiple steps, whether I'm on my iPhone or my Mac. I absolutely love it when an app supports 1Password on my iPhone and really want to see more of this support on my Mac, but I'd be even happier if the app directly supported Touch ID logins.

I can say without question that I'd probably switch email or journaling Mac apps if there were any that supported Touch ID.

It's still smart to disable Touch ID sometimes

Just like it is a smart idea to disable Touch ID on your iPhone when going through Airport security, it is smart to disable it on your Mac sometimes. We live in a world of unknowns and vague regulations. Different countries have different laws about privacy. It is much easier to force you to place your finger on a key to unlock your Mac than it is to force you to give up your password.

To be clear, I'm not promoting the idea that Touch ID on the Mac somehow makes it more secure than a Mac that does not have it. I'm championing the fact that Touch ID makes it easier to use long, complex passwords for your logins, which in turn, makes your personal data more secure. It's important to continue to use the same security measures you've used with your iPhone.

Touch ID for everybody!

I love Touch ID on the MacBook Pro and hope that Apple really is working on a Magic Keyboard that will allow all Mac users the ability to strengthen their passwords and make their digital lives more secure. I'm also calling out to all Mac app developers to get your s#@t together and add Touch ID support if your app uses any sort of account log in!

When Apple first announce the TV app for tvOS and iOS, my first thought was, "meh." Especially after learning that it isn't even compatible with Netflix, which is one of the few streaming entertainment services I subscribe to. Considering I don't subscribe to any cable services, it didn't seem like it would benefit someone like me, a "cord-cutter."

Then it launched. I had to check it out — it's my job — and I was surprised at how much it opened my options. TV.app recommends shows based on my previous TV and movie watching activities, and suggests new stuff to watch, even from channels I didn't know I could access. I now have a lot more to look forward to than rewatching Always Sunny in Philadelphia again (which I could do forever).

More channels to watch, more shows to discover

If you visit the Store tab of the TV app, you'll see a section called "Start Watching Now." This lists a number of the most popular services that offer content without a cable subscription, either paid or free. Some have their own bite-sized monthly costs, like HBO Now, Showtime, and Starz, but others provide free content that can be watched without any kind of subscription whatsoever, like ABC News and PBS.

When you find a channel that looks interesting, download its app onto your Apple TV, iPhone, or iPad. Once it's installed, open it and confirm permission for Apple TV to access your activities on it. Then, the TV app will start recommending shows to you from that app.

When I first started, I was only offered content from Hulu. But, after downloading and installing a few channel apps on my Apple TV, I was recommended shows and movies from Fox and NBC, both of which offer limited free content that I can watch without a cable subscription.

Get right to it!

The Up Next feature in the TV app is like my dream come true. Sometimes, I'm watching something on Hulu, sometimes, I'm watching something on the CW. It used to be that, I'd sit down to watch some TV and I'd think, "What was I watching yesterday?" Or even worse, "Which app had that show?" I'd jump into the Hulu app, search around my recently watched list, not see it, jump into the CW app, search around for it, maybe find it. Then, I'd finally start watching TV.

With Up Next, I just open the TV app and browse my recently watched content across all of the apps I watch stuff in (except Netflix). Sometimes, I'll have forgotten that I was watching a show and can pick it up without missing a beat thanks to Up Next.

It's so much less frustrating and time consuming than having to search around a variety of apps looking for something to watch. I used to spend 15 minutes (or more) looking for something to watch. With Up Next, I spend less time looking for something and more time just watching.

Get more with more money

Because the TV app gave me a taste for more content than just what Netflix and Hulu have to offer, I actually decided to subscribe to a couple of services. I wanted to see what it would be like to have even more to watch. I now subscribe to Starz because it features a lot of those broad, blockbuster type movies that you can just numb out to. I love a good Soviet montage film from the 1920s (who doesn't!), but sometimes, I just want to veg out with something that will make me laugh, and Starz is full of the easily-digestible movies that make for a fun popcorn night at home.

I also started a subscription to Shudder, because horror. Unfortunately, Shudder isn't supported in the TV app, which is a bit of an irritation. Ideally, all of the services I subscribe to would be supported in the TV app, so I never have to leave Apple's user-friendly interface when I'm looking for something to watch, but that's an editorial for another time.

I regret nothing!

Even though I'm spending more money now on TV and movies than I used to, I still feel like I'm more in charge of what I watch than I would be if I just watched cable TV outright. I don't regret adding new subscriptions to my entertainment set up because now I have even more options available to me.

Though, I could go back to just Netflix and Hulu and be happy. Especially since there are so many channels that provide, at least limited free content in their apps, which I can find easily through the TV app.

It's not perfect, but it's a good start

The TV app, and Apple TV itself, are not perfect. There are still a lot of limitations and we are definitely at least a decade away (if ever) from any sort of real à la carte cable watching experience that we have always dreamed of. But, the TV app on Apple TV is about as close as it can get with the restrictions cable providers place on how we watch TV. I'm on board.

When I first got my grubby little fingers on the new MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, I was immediately drawn to that tiny OLED screen that replaced the row of function keys. In addition to just typing away at my keyboard, I can now, also tap away at various tools that make interacting with apps easier.

An unusual thing started happening to my brain as I used the Touch Bar more. I wanted to touch the screen, too. I'm not saying I felt like the MacBook Pro was missing a touch screen, I literally kept accidentally reaching up to touch the screen, as if I were working on my iPad Pro instead of my MacBook Pro, which led me to ponder: maybe Apple should make a touch screen laptop.

You either want it or you don't

Now, I know this is a sticky subject. There are two main camps here; those that think Apple should make a touch screen computer and those that think Apple definitely should not. I used to be in the latter camp. I didn't even thing Apple Pencil support was a good idea. I keep imagining my shoulder getting tired while I tap and swipe at my screen instead of using a trackpad that is already positioned where my hand naturally rests. But, the Touch Bar has given me a taste for what could be, and even shown me that comfortably working on a touch screen laptop is totally plausible.

Why is a touch screen computer a bad idea? Partly because it puts fingerprint smudges all over your screen. That's something I've gotten used to on my iPad. I keep a microfiber cloth nearby to wipe it clean every once in a while. It's not something I want to deal with on my $2,000 + computer screen, though. But, really, when you think about it, how is wiping your laptop screen any different then wiping your tablet screen? This would just require a shift in thought.

Another reason; comfort. I have never used a computer – desktop or laptop – with a touch screen, but I imagine myself getting tired of holding my arm out every time I want to scroll down a web page or swipe to go to a different window. It seems awkward and uncomfortable. But, isn't that exactly how I work on my iPad Pro? I have my tablet connected to an external keyboard case, essentially turning it into a very lightweight (though less productive) laptop. I type. I swipe. I scroll with my finger. And, there isn't even the option of using a trackpad. If I want to move a cursor, or otherwise access something on the screen, I have to reach up and touch the screen. At least a laptop with a touch screen would likely also include a trackpad so I could use both.

So why isn't Apple making a touch screen computer?

Well, if you're listening to Apple's Senior Vice President of worldwide marketing, it's because it just doesn't feel right. When talking with BackChannel's Steven Levy, Phil Schiller explained that a touch screen computer doesn't fit with Apple design process.

Schiller also explained that optimizing for touch screen would negatively affect the way people use a mouse or track pad to navigate their computers. You can't properly optimize for both. In the end, one method or the other (or both) would suffer.

Is there a touch screen Mac in our future?

I think Apple is working on a touch screen computer, even if Schiller has said they tested it, and don't think it's the right thing to do. I think the company will keep trying to figure out a way to make the software work with the hardware. The problem is not that the technology doesn't exist. It's that the technology isn't perfect, which is what Apple wants before it will delve into a new way of doing things.

Take the Apple Watch, for example. Smart watches had been flooding the market a full year before Apple finally released what it considered to be the perfect wearable device experience. The smart watch market took a nose dive in 2016, but Apple continues to sell record numbers of its watch because it didn't enter the market until it had perfected the technology.

I have high hopes that there is a touch screen Mac in our future. I believe it could be the best touch screen experience anyone has ever had on a computer, and it would last much longer than what the current PC companies have on the market. I also believe Apple's version would make computer companies rethink how their software and hardware work together to make a touch screen computing experience. But, I'm an optimist.

Last year, Apple launched the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, which came sans headphone jack. It did, however, come with a dongle, which would allow me to continue using my favorite wired headphones with my iPhone 7 Plus. Apple also launched the MacBook Pro, which came sans every type of port except USB-C/Thunderbolt 3. I purchased a dongle for $9, which would allow me to continue using my MacBook Pro with ... well, everything else I connect to my computer.

This is the first time in my life that I've had to use adapters in order to keep up my device-using status quo. I've had a few hiccups, like not being able to charge my iPhone while listening to music through wired headphones, but the transition has been less of an issue than I thought would be. The technology that comes along with the future of iPhone and Mac far outweigh my desire to use antiquated cables with older devices.

Transitioning to a life with dongles

With the iPhone 7 Plus, I've had the most problems with using a dongle. I keep my adapter with me at all times, so I've never had the experience of not being able to use headphones or another 3.5mm connected device just because I forgot the adapter. I have, however, had the very real and very burdensome experience of not being able to charge my iPhone while I'm using the Lightning port to listen to podcasts.

You see, my car is old enough to not have any way to connect a smart device without using a tape adapter (Yes, it's so old that it has a tape player). So, my normal routine is to connect the tape adapter, plug the cable into my iPhone's 3.5mm jack and my car charger into the Lightning port, start a podcast playlist, clip my iPhone to a dashboard mount, and drive all night. I can't do that with my iPhone 7 Plus without buying a splitter, adding yet another dongle to my life.

As for the MacBook Pro, I have not yet had an issue with using a dongle. I purchased the $9 USB-C to USB adapter from Apple the same day I purchased my new MacBook Pro because I knew I'd need something to adapt all of my USB-A gadgets with.

Even with only a single dongle, I've been able to work seamlessly on my Mac. My experience won't be the same as everyone else's. I don't connect my MacBook Pro to a second screen unless I'm connecting it to my iPad Pro using Duet Display. When I need to connect another device, like my DSLR camera, I just disconnect the iPad and connect the camera. I personally, haven't absolutely had to keep two gadgets connected to my MacBook Pro at the same time. If I did, though, it would mean having to buy another USB-C to USB adapter, adding yet another dongle to my life.

I wouldn't trade my dongles for any other devices

The payoff, however, comes with the technology improvements in the iPhone 7 Plus and the MacBook Pro. Both devices are far more advanced than my previous devices. My MacBook Pro is lightning fast, has a superb screen, has much better internal speakers, lets me securely log in and make online purchases using Touch ID, and is almost as lightweight as my iPad Pro.

Though I have since switched back to the four-inch iPhone SE, I still use my iPhone 7 Plus regularly to play games, listen to music, and take photos. It is lightning fast, has a gorgeous screen, comfort-inducing Taptic feedback, an amazing Touch ID Home "button," and the camera is unmatched.

Having to keep a couple of dongles lying around so I can connect my antiquated cables is a fair trade for the leap forward in technology. I'd rather have the best MacBook Pro Apple ever made sitting on my lap then a PC that is slow, heavy, and glitchy, oh but has a bunch of different types of ports and card readers.

It's time for the rest of the tech world to catch up

When my friends complain about Apple's newest devices and how burdensome it would be to have to carry around a couple of tiny little dongles, I smile and show them an action shot I took in low light with my iPhone 7 Plus, or securely make an online purchase with my fingerprint and ask, "Can your device do that?"

Instead of complaining that Apple has left the rest of the tech world behind, we should be telling other tech companies that it is about time they catch up. Until then, it's the dongle life for me.

I love — LOVE — the 4-inch iPhone. Though the larger 4.7- and 5.5-inch iPhone devices are great for most, there are some of us that still prefer a phone that can fit easily in a back pocket and can be used with one small hand effortlessly.

When the iPhone 7 Plus was unveiled, however, I was so enamored with its faster speed, amazing camera, and that Home button that's not actually a button, that I had to have one, even though it meant switching to a larger-size phone.

Three months later, and I've formed a solid opinion about whether I think 4-inch iPhone fans would be happy with or regret the decision to switch to the iPhone 7 Plus.

Why the iPhone 7 Plus rocks

First off, a larger phone would have to be pretty special to convince me to switch, and the iPhone 7 Plus is just that. What pushed me over the edge? The camera.

The iPhone 7 Plus has not one, but two camera lenses. They are both 12 megapixels. One is a wide-angle lens with an aperture of f/1.8 and the other is a telephoto lens with an aperture of f/2.8. Because of these two lenses, the iPhone 7 Plus has a 2X optical zoom. Not that fake digital zoom that leaves your pictures grainy.

Additionally, the iPhone 7 Plus has a bonus Portrait Mode in the Camera app that creates a faux depth effect that is pretty spectacular. Portrait mode, while not fully DSLR-grade, is about as close as you can get with a mobile phone.

There are a lot of other amazing things about the iPhone 7 Plus, like wide color gamut (DCI P3), better speakers (in stereo!), the the A10 fusion chip. But, honestly, If it weren't for the camera, I probably wouldn't have made the switch from the iPhone SE.

What daily usage on the iPhone 7 Plus is like.

In short: it hurts.

That's right. It actually hurts me to use the iPhone 7 Plus for extended periods of time. If I'm using the device in landscape mode with both hands, I'm fine. But, who uses their iPhone in landscape mode all of the time?

If I'm checking emails or chatting with my coworkers in Slack, my hand starts to cramp up and my wrist gets sore. I find myself setting my iPhone down on a table or my lap, just so I can continue working while giving my hand a rest.

If I'm playing a video game, I'll hold the phone in my left hand with my ring finger resting at the bottom of the phone for support. I've developed a sort of tough spot on that finger (not a callus). If I play a game for more than about 10 minutes at a time, that spot on my finger starts to feel irritated because it is rubbing against the rough edges of the Lightning port. Incidentally, I also have the same problem with my pinky finger on my right hand.

I know this sounds nit-picky and overly dramatic, but these are actual in-the-field experiences I'm having with the larger, heavier iPhone. It isn't the worst thing that's happened to me, but it is real (#firstworldproblems, I know).

Should I stay or should I go?

The iPhone 7 Plus has so many amazing features that the iPhone SE doesn't have. I love 3D Touch. I love the buttonless Home button. I love how fast it runs. I love the Taptic feedback. I love the bright colors and huge screen when I'm playing games or watching YouTube videos. I love the clarity and sound boost of the stereo speakers. I love that I can see everything on the screen without squinting. I absolutely love the camera. I really, really love that camera.

I don't love that it doesn't fit in my fanny pack very well (yes, I wear a fanny pack, but it's super badass and makes me look tough, I swear). I don't love that I tend to keep it out of said fanny pack because it is easier than trying to stuff it in and yank it out all of the time. I'm always worried that I'm going to leave it on a table somewhere. I don't love that I can't sit down with it in my back pocket or it might fall out. I don't love that I can't play Pokémon Go one-handed with it. I don't love that I get physically fatigued when I use it for lengthy periods of time.

After having spent a full three months with the iPhone 7 Plus, I've come to the conclusion that size does matter when it comes to mobile phones. I need something that is light, small, and easy to use with one hand. The iPhone 7 Plus is none of those things for me.

That is why I'm switching back to the iPhone SE. By the time you read this, I'll have already switched.

"But what about the larger screen, brighter colors and the faster speed?"

I have the 9.7-inch iPad Pro for that. In my opinion, the iPhone 7 Plus is about as portable as the 9.7-inch iPad Pro; in other words, not very.

"What about that camera you love so much?"

You got me there. I'm having to give up that oh-so-awesome 2X zoom 12MP camera with faux depth effect in exchange for a phone that fits in my pocket. It was a very tough decision. I'm not going to say it won't hurt a little.

Should you go or should you stay?

If you love the 4-inch iPhone, but have been tossing around the idea of switching to the iPhone 7 Plus because of the awesome camera and super cool hardware feature, consider this: Why are you still using the 4-inch iPhone?

If the answer is that you have small hands and are afraid that the iPhone 7 Plus is too much to handle, literally, then you might want to stick with the 4-inch form factor, or at the very most, upgrade to the 4.7-inch iPhone instead. I can say from experience that the iPhone 7 Plus is difficult to use for long periods of time and I find myself not wanting to pick it up as often.

If the answer is convenience (the 4-inch iPhone just fits better in my pocket), then you should think about an upgrade. As annoying as it was to squeeze the iPhone 7 Plus into my tiny fanny pack or even hold it because I didn't have a pocket to fit it into, I could have gotten used to the size. I would probably have eventually purchased a larger fanny pack, or move onto some other bag, to keep the iPhone 7 Plus in. Though it is less portable than a 4-inch phone, it certainly shouldn't be the only reason you don't upgrade.

If the answer is cost, then you might want to look into the iPhone 6s Plus. It has a ton of awesome hardware features that the 4-inch iPhone doesn't, like 3D Touch, a 5MP front-facing camera, and more. It costs $120 less than the iPhone 7 Plus model and you're getting a whole lot for a whole lot less.

TL;DR Wrap it up!

Even with the most amazing camera I've ever seen on a mobile device, the beautiful screen, the buttonless Home button, and the super fast speed, in the end, I've decided to go back to the 4-inch iPhone SE because the 5.5-inch phone actually hurts me to use it. That, coupled with the fact that it is too big to fit in my bag or back pocket, is enough to make me decide that portability is more important than a kickass camera.

My experience is not going to be the same as yours. If you've been thinking about switching to a larger iPhone, consider why you've stuck with the 4-inch iPhone this long. You may find that you love the 5.5-inch screen and it's worth a little inconvenience to have such an amazing piece of hardware.

Like that camera. Oh, that camera.

When you're in the market for a smartwatch, you've got a number of factors to weigh before making your decision. Does it have health sensors? What's the battery life? Does it fit on the wrist of a human being? How much is it going to cost me?

For some, nothing but the latest and greatest model will do. And if you have an unlimited budget, I consider the Series 2 Apple Watch the best smartwatch you can pick up for your iPhone. But as we approach the holidays, let's be real: Few of us have unlimited budgets when it comes to ourselves or presents for others. And a $369+ starting price — not including extra bands or different case designs — can prove steep for families on a budget.

What to do, then, when price is a concern but you still want a smartwatch for you or a loved one? For most of its other product lines, Apple's answer is usually to serve up the previous model at a discount; that said, much as I praised the promise of my Apple Watch "Series 0," the reality was this: It was slow, and its battery sucked. And the company knew it.

Rather than sell customers a vastly inferior product to its Series 2 smartwatch, Apple decided to nix the Series 0 altogether, presenting customers with a special Series 1 Apple Watch. Unlike its more expensive cousin, the Series 1 is limited to the company's aluminum casing (though that includes all four of its colors) and attached Sport band, lacks a bigger battery, and eschews the improved water resistance, brighter screen, and Series 2 GPS chip.

Where the Series 1 triumphs over the original generation, however, is in speed. It has the same snappier processor as the Series 2, though the system-in-a-package is slightly different in its tech specs owing to the lack of GPS add-on. Apple calls it S1P vs. the S1 of the original and the S2 of the Series 2.

Couple that with watchOS 3, and the Series 1 has one heck of an engine under its aluminum hood.

Testing ground

I originally picked up a Series 1 Apple Watch model to test it against the Series 2 model; as such, I've worn it on and off since mid-September. From mid-October on, however, I wore the Series 1 as my primary Apple Watch. I occasionally did the double-watch-on-a-single-arm trick for certain benchmarks, but by and large I used the Series 1 as if it were my one and only watch.

It trained at the gym and attended concerts. It timed boiling water and took Siri dictation. And, as any good smartwatch should, it told me the time.

Design

The Series 1 watch is nigh-identical to Apple's original Series 0 design, and looks the same as the Series 2, though small details give it away.

For one thing, it doesn't have the extra .9mm depth that the Series 2 acquired in its redesign, likely owing to the bigger battery in the higher-end model and the lack of improved water resistance. It also doesn't sport that fancy new water-spitting speaker (my secret favorite feature).

In the real world, this doesn't translate to much. The Series 1's on-board speaker is slightly more tinny and softer than the Series 2, though most users may never notice, given the Watch's few options for playing sound. You can probably take it in the shower — Apple CEO, Tim Cook always did with his Series 0, after all — though keep in mind that the Series 1's rubber gaskets may wear over time and expose the internals to water damage.

And of course, if you want the entry-level Apple Watch, you give up the option for nicer casings: the Series 1 is limited to just the silver, space grey, gold, and rose gold aluminum with one Sport Band pairing for each. Thankfully, the color choices are all quite nice — I've mostly stuck to the Pink Sand Sport Band with my 38mm rose gold Series 1 watch, from which I've gotten a smattering of compliments over my weeks testing it.

Outside of those changes, I'm going to refer you almost exclusively to my Series 2 review if you desire more information about the various casings and designs.

Speed and battery: The name of the game

If you're considering upgrading from a Series 0 this holiday, you're going to do it because of speed. I've tried very hard to produce variations in speed between my various watches, and the Series 1 and 2 are neck and neck in every single test. In some — booting, for instance — the Series 1 was regularly a good :20 to :30 faster than the Series 2 (which regularly boots in ~1:40), and a full minute faster than Series 0 (~2:20). A one minute boot time still isn't great for a smartwatch, but if you're lucky, you'll only ever have to reboot when installing a new update.

That's because, like the Series 2, battery life is much improved. But unlike the Series 2, you can't attribute this to a bigger battery; the Series 1 has the exact same size as the original Apple Watch. Instead, the praise can go to watchOS 3 and the S1P's incredible process optimization.

It's not really fair to compare a brand new Apple Watch's battery to that of a 17-month old version — wear and tear take their toll on batteries as much as anything else — but even taking the age of my Series 0 watch into account, the Series 1 gets monumentally better battery life. My 38mm original watch is often dead by 4PM after a morning workout; my Series 1 has only given up the ghost once, and that was after wearing it for a full day and night (though, I should note, not having it do much) and then working out the next morning. (And it did make it back home after my work out before dying!)

The Series 2 battery still bests the Series 1 if you avoid GPS workouts; even when adding GPS-intensive workouts into the mix, the Series 2 still gets an edge, though only an extra hour or two. Either way, if you want the best battery life Apple can offer, the Series 2 is the better bet — but its entry-level smartwatch is still a vast upgrade from the original.

If you're a workout fiend, Apple also offers a nice hack for saving battery life: Pairing an external Bluetooth heart rate monitor. I've been testing several in the last week for a separate iMore roundup, and on average, a paired Bluetooth heart monitor saved ~10-15% battery life during an hour workout (compared to an hour workout using the Apple Watch's built-in health sensors).

Nitpicks and grumbles

I don't have many nits to pick when it comes to the Series 1 in of itself: I do wish you could get it with a Woven Nylon bands rather than the Sport option, but that's a minor complaint in the grand scheme of things. Ultimately, the Series 1 fulfills its reason for existing — to be a usable, low-cost version of last year's model.

If you're in the mood for grumbles, however, I'll point you to my small problems with the Apple Watch platform, found in my Series 2 review.

Bottom line

For new Apple Watch owners, the Series 1's role is clear: It's the budget Apple Watch, there to offer a reasonable cost of entry to the Apple Watch platform. It's still an excellent product; it just doesn't have the extra bells and whistles the Series 2 offers. If you have the cash to spare, the Series 2 can be a more enticing package, but the Series 1 is no slouch — and makes for a pretty nice present.

For existing Series 0 owners, the waters are murkier. The Series 1 replaces their original model with something vastly better in some ways, like battery and speed, but is otherwise largely identical to the version they already own. Whether it's worth the upgrade largely depends on how you use your current Apple Watch.

As with my Series 2 review, I'd recommend an upgrade whole-heartedly to 38mm users who got rather short-shrifted on Series 0 battery. But if you're happy with your Apple Watch and watchOS 3, you can probably remain happy with it for another year or so. (Heck, if you manage to hold out until the next upgrade cycle, you'll likely get the perks of Series 2 at a Series 1 price!)

Whatever your circumstances, it's easier than ever to enter the Apple Watch ecosystem. No, watchOS 3 isn't perfect: But it's useable, fun to use, and a great overall smartwatch system for iOS users.

$269 from Apple

You may have noticed iMore doing a ton of Pokemon Go coverage lately. I may have noticed you noticing. Here's the deal: We've been covering Pokemon Go since there was a Pokemon Go to cover, but after it launched it quickly became apparent it was going to be big. Really big. The biggest iPhone-related product in a long time big. We started getting flooded with questions and comments and so, in typical iMore fashion, we leapt into action.

My colleague, Serenity Caldwell, deserves more than the lion's share of credit. She started playing and then, almost immediately, started writing. When we saw the reaction, it was an easy decision to treat it the way we treat all major launches — by covering it as best we can.

So, just like you saw the iMore home page lit up with Apple Watch on its launch, and iPhone 6s, and iPad Pro, and Apple TV, and iPhone SE, this time you saw it lit up with Pokemon Go.

And I'm guessing you'll be seeing it almost everyone for a while. Current internet trends are showing Pokemon Go well past Android, passed iPhone, and right up there with porn in terms of online interest. (As you can safely assume, porn has a ton of online interest.)

What it all means

Why Pokemon Go is hitting so hard so fast will likely be the subject of a ton of opinion over the next long while. With Flappy Bird, the last great casual gaming phenomena, it was rage-of-mouth marketing. Pokemon is popular, augmented reality (AR) is cool, there's scarcity in availability, there's ego gratification in getting the best pocket monsters, there's the thrill of being part of something, especially when it gets you out and about where you can meet more people who are part of it too, and the list goes on.

I can't say I understand it, but I respect it. Elitists may think Pokemon Go isn't as important to cover as iOS 10 or iPhone 7 or Tesla or whatever else would otherwise be dominating tech homepages everywhere, but it absolutely is. There's no one smarter than our readers and our community, and when they — when you — tell us there's something worth caring about, we listen. And then we bust ourselves making sure you get the absolute best coverage of it possible. And that includes Pokemon Go.

Some might roll their eyes so hard. Others might think it reason to burn the internet down. Still others might find ways to use it for harm. But I'm an optimist. If it brings a smile to a face, if it encourages us get out and about, if it helps us make a connection with our fellow human beings, if it lets us rediscover the sheer joy of being children and having adventures again, then more of it, please.

I'm also paranoid, though, so I find myself wondering, who exactly owns all this data that's being recorded by Pokemon Go? The Pokémon Company, who owns the franchise? Nintendo, who co-owns the Pokémon Company? Niantec, who developed the game and it's location-based predecessor, Ingress? Niantec's former owner, Google? And whomever owns it, what does it mean for our privacy and security?

Pokémon Go isn't just a game, after all. It's a social network, and one that's already speculated to be surpassing Twitter in active users on Android. Let that sink in for a moment.

I don't know how much longer Pokemon Go will be hot for or how much more we'll need to cover — I'll let you tell us both of those things — but we'll be keeping it in our sights. Along with iOS 10, macOS 10, tvOS 10, and watchOS 3, along with iPhone 7, Apple Watch 2, and whatever else comes next, we'll continue to bring you more of everything you care up. Sometimes in short bursts, sometimes in longer mixes.

Catching up

I've always been more of a Digimon person than Pokemon, and I've got a ton of new stuff from Apple to write about, but I'm glad you gave me the time to learn about "catching 'em all". The worst thing in the world is not getting when you don't get it. It's death for a writer — but only if you stop being a reader. That's what makes all of you so critically important.

So, I may even sneak out and train a few Pokemon of my own this week. That'll totally help me get my iOS 10 review done on time, right?

Unfortunately, you'll have to outrun her without our excellent Apple Music playlist "Georgia Dow, Zombie Chow." Because, try as we might, sharing playlists seems to be broken in Apple's subscription music service. It's the latest problem I've run into with Apple Music, which has lots of potential but remains plagued with persistent usability issues.

Trying (and failing) to make zombie playlists

Our Apple Music misadventure started when I was trying to share a playlist with iMore's Mikah Sargent. We're training for the Zombie Run Virtual 5k, and I wanted to share a playlist for it on Twitter. I expected a headache going in, since sharing is notoriously difficult on the service. What we found, however, is that sharing playlists on Apple Music is a huge pain and rarely works properly.

I whipped together a playlist of my favorite running tracks, and asked Mikah to look at them.

Hmmmm. Maybe some of the songs on my list just weren't licensed for Apple Music. I then sent Mikah all 17 of the songs individually, verifying that he could follow the link and listen to them on Apple Music. We removed all the ones he couldn't immediately play — a very time-consuming process.

Okay, that was awful. But at least, it will work now right? Right?

After reading Kirk McElhearn's excellent playlists explainer, it turns out the Mac seems to have issues in making playlists. So, I moved to my iPhone and repeated all of these steps, manually verifying each song and moving it to a playlist. I'll leave out the profanity that followed, but yep: right now, still broken on iOS, too.

We turned to iMore Serenity's Caldwell, an expert in Apple Music, to verify what we found. She was able to replicate our problems and errors on her devices, and even got this lovely error from Apple Music when loading her Mac-made playlist:

It's a dialogue box that doesn't go away when you hit "OK." It really sums up our experience with sharing playlists.

The playlist problem

To be fair, sharing playlists on Apple Music is a very hard problem to solve. iTunes has long been criticized for being too complicated, and in this case, 15 years of technical legacy is really working against them.

The songs in your Mac's library don't just come from Apple Music — they can come from CDs or MP3s you might have imported and put into iTunes, or even songs you bought on iTunes that aren't included in Apple Music.

While we can't know the legal agreements Apple has for Apple Music, we do know that negotiating rights with the music industry is notoriously difficult. I have obscure songs in my iTunes library that I can upload to my personal devices via Apple Music or iTunes Match, but Apple can't legally stream those uploads to the public without certain rights. And that's understandable: The company doesn't want to cheat those musicians by streaming their work without compensating them.

But a normal Apple Music user doesn't want to think about that — they just want to share music with friends. It's ironic that for a service whose main feature is curation, it's impossible to curate and share what you love.

Strangely, playlists I was able to share months ago will still show up on friends' computers, suggesting that our particular problem could be on Apple's server backend. With the upcoming overhaul to Apple Music, the company could be making changes that affect playlist sharing, with the holiday weekend exasperating what would have otherwise been a Friday-afternoon bug.

As a developer, I can appreciate the frustrations that come with nailing down obscure bugs. That said: I'm paying $9.99, and more than a year in. This feature should just work.

How to fix playlist sharing

There are several major changes coming to Apple Music this fall, including minor changes to song sharing; sadly, none appear to fix my major problem with playlist sharing. Because of the way Apple Music interacts with your computer's library, you're always going to have a jumbled mess of purchased iTunes content, Apple Music content, and content you've uploaded or matched to iCloud Music Library.

Fortunately, the fix here is potentially very simple: When I'm making playlists for my friends, grey out the non-Apple Music-licensed tracks that can't be played, rather than disable the entire playlist. That way, songs that Apple has legally licensed can be picked and played seamlessly. Better yet, this practice may encourage rights holders of greyed-out songs to work with Apple Music. After all, no one wants to be left out of the party.

Additionally, it'd be helpful to let us sort iCloud Music Library metadata on all platforms, rather than limit it to my desktop computer. On my Mac, I can see whether a song is matched (to Apple Music's catalog) or uploaded (which means I likely won't be able to share it), but no such toggle exists on my iPhone or iPad.

There's also the problem of catalogs: If I subscribe to both Apple Music and iTunes Match, my matched tracks connect to the iTunes Store track library — not Apple Music — and the iTunes Store has tracks that Apple Music isn't licensed to play. Unfortunately, there's no indicator in the iTunes app to tell you if an iTunes-matched track is also available in Apple Music: You just have to guess.

My last improvement is a big one, and a feature services like Spotify have already implemented spectacularly: Public playlists are searchable, and can be live-updated when added to a person's library. Apple has neither of these features at present: You can only share a playlist with someone by sending them a URL, and in my experience, that URL only parses about half the time on iOS and rarely on the Mac. And if that person adds the playlist to their library, it's fixed in time forever — if I decide to turn "Georgia Dow, Zombie Chow" into "Mikah Sargent, Zombie Ascent," poor Mikah will never know his fate has been sealed.

Just make it work

Apple Music's reputation has taken many hits since its debut, most unfair and inaccurate — like the erroneous claim that the service will delete your music tracks. For all my gripes, I find Apple Music a great service, one increasingly worth your $9.99 a month.

But it's also fair to say, like Georgia Dow in the zombie apocalypse, it keeps stumbling — leaving services like Spotify and YouTube Red to sprint ahead in market share, even when they're worse in many ways.

We're counting on you to fix this bug, Apple. Maybe Georgia Dow isn't, but the rest of us have some training to do.

The day after the keynote, Daring Fireball's John Gruber took the stage at Mezzanine in San Francisco with not one, but two special guests from Apple: SVP Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller, and SVP Software Engineering Craig Federighi. Below is a full transcript of their remarks, and check out the full Talk Show audio and video on Daring Fireball!

KAFASIS

Ladies and gentlemen: Welcome to Mezzanine! Won't you please take your seats and silence your cell phones.

John Gruber

[chuckles]

KAFASIS

Daring Fireball Productions, in association with The Daring Fireball Company LLC, is delighted to welcome you to a Daring Fireball presentation of The Talk Show — Live from WWDC 2016! And now: Won't you please welcome your host, Johnnn Gruuuuber!

[applause]

John Gruber

Thank you Paul! I actually needed that reminder; my cell phone was not on silent. Thank you, Mike.

I will start by thanking our sponsors. This is the fifth year I've been doing the show, fourth time here at Mezzanine, and I think that Mailchimp has been sponsoring our bar all along, and if not that, then at least as far back as I remember. So, just in case it isn't clear, the bar is on the house, it's on Mailchimp. Mailchimp, if you guys don't know, they are — do email newsletters, like my friend Ben Thompson over at Stratechery, those go out through Mailchimp. They also have a bunch of new features, stuff that integrates with with online stores, and integration with just about any online store platform that you might be familiar with. And then you can get your customers to get email when products that they're interested in are available, or... whatever.

[audience laughs]

Great company! If you need to send email, go to Mailchimp.com. And, please, let's hear it for them for the open bar!

[applause]

Also back with us for the fourth consecutive year as a sponsor of the show is Microsoft. And at four years, it's not even like a "Whoa, that's weird, Microsoft sponsoring..." Nah! It's like awesome. And it makes total sense.

They have this website. It's going to give you so much more information than I have time to give you now. Anydevanyapp.com.

That's the message that they're trying to give: That any developer, whether you're working on mobile or the web, for any type of app — if you need cloud services, it's now called the Azure app service. If you need that kind of stuff, go check it out — their website has so much information.

Here's a funny thing: They had the same website last year, but instead of anydevanyapp.com, I said anyappanydev.com.

[laughter]

And we are, in fact, streaming this live. And, y'know, the show went on, and in the meantime, I gave out the wrong URL for a pretty pricey sponsorship! [laughs] And what happened was there was some kid in Australia who was watching the live stream who quick, like, jumped on and registered the domain.

[laughs]

True story! This is an absolute true story. If you guys see Matt Hansing, he's here representing Microsoft; he's about this [gestures] tall, him and [Craig] Hockenberry are gonna have a fight after the show's over. You can ask him, he'll vouch for this.

So they got in contact with him, were like — oh, man, that's Microsoft now — "We better get this domain," and it was already gone. And they contacted the kid, and they were like "Oh, man, this kid is gonna, y'know, he's really gonna let us have it." And he was like, "Well, one of those Xboxes would be nice!"

[huge laughter from the audience]

So they sent the kid like, a box with an Xbox and all the cool stuff that you could possibly imagine that goes with an Xbox, and they got the domain. So I think it's safe that you can just go check out the information from Microsoft. Go to Anyapp... or anydev... dot com. [laughs] No, anydevanyapp.com! Microsoft, great sponsor.

And then last but not least, we have one more sponsor, this one's new. And surprisingly, this is the thing, because we think Microsoft, how are you going to go bigger than that. But this is actually one of the few — I mean, I'm guessing maybe three or four corporations in the world with a larger market cap than Microsoft.

It's Meh.com.

[surprised laughter.]

Meh.com is the store that I would run if I were going to run, like, an online store. And let me be clear, I have absolutely zero interest in running an store. It seems like a [laughs] seems like a terrible job. And a lot of hard work, and I don't like either of those things.

So, yeah, I'm not going to run a store. But if I did, it would be like Meh. And here's the way Meh works. They have one product a day. That's it. You don't even know what it is. You have to, like, go there at midnight and find out what they're selling today. One thing, daily deal, usually at like, an unbelievable price. I've said this before: I'm half-worried that they're, like, stealing these things — and I don't know if me endorsing it like this makes me complicit in a crime, because when you're selling, like, a $120 stereo for $14... usually it's like that scene in Goodfellas, where they're selling cigarettes out of the back of the truck.

[laughter]

But what they really do, the other thing they do, is they concentrate on making everything real funny, the descriptions of the products are real funny, they have funny videos every day, and I really do get the feeling that they'd be happy if you just go there and check them out every day and you never buy anything.

That's like the gimmick, or the thing, it's like: Here's the product. Buy? Or meh? And you can just, like, type MEH, and then they're like, well, that guy didn't like that. So my thanks to them.

On the guests for Talk Show 2016

John Gruber

So, last year was a little different than in previous years, because we had an actual special guest. What happened was, the back story on it, is it was a week before WWDC, and I still hadn't asked anybody to be on the show. And I was putting it off, because I kind of had it in my head that I kind of wanted to see if I could get Phil [Schiller, worldwide marketing at Apple]. And I put it off, because I didn't want to hear no. And it was like, a week before, and I was all "Well, this is ridiculous. I'll just ask."

And so, I sent an email to Steve Dowling. And I said: "Look, this is probably ridiculous, and so just feel free to say no. But: I do this show every year, and I think it would be really cool, I think it would work really well if Phil Schiller came on, and the day after the keynote, and we could talk about it, and nerd out, and go into detail that you can't get into in a keynote."

And he wrote back, and all he said was "Not ridiculous. Let's talk tomorrow." And next thing you know, a week later, Phil Schiller was screwing around, not coming out behind the [laughs] curtain, and making me wonder whether, like, maybe he went to the bathroom? Maybe we miscommunicated on what the cues were going to be. And it was GREAT! I mean, I don't know how many people were here last year?

[big cheers]

It really was great. It was the best time I've had on stage in my life, and then I watched the video, and I didn't even really die watching myself. I was like, "Oh, this is actually pretty good!"

And it ended, and it was a big surprise, we kept it under wraps, everybody seemed pleasantly surprised and it just made it all the more fun. And then, the show's over, and I go backstage, and people are like, "Wow, that was great, I can't believe it, that was amazing, that was amazing." And I start meeting people, and it was about three minutes — three or four minutes after the end of the show — when the first person came up and said: "Well, you're really going to have a hard time topping that next year!"

[laughter]

Annnd, I thought "Wow! That did... not occur to me, because this... this week has been a blur, like, I really just asked a week ago, and then we set this up, and I've been thinking up questions, uh... and you're right!"

And there's only so far up I can go, you know, there's only so many different ways that we could go up. And so, one of these years, it is absolutely going to be the case that it is not as good a guest as the year before. I mean, one of these times, it really is going to be John Moltz coming out.

[laughter and some awwws]

And that'll be great! And we'll have a good show. I mean, there might be more people leaving to go to the open bar mid-show — which you can do by the way, please! Really, run up a good tab, we're good here.

But! This is not that year. This year, I think it's a little better.

So, this year, how do you top Phil Schiller? Here's how. Ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm welcome to... Phil Schiller...

[bemused groans from the audience]

And! Craig Federighi.

[Huge applause and cheers as Federighi and Schiller enter, shake hands, sit on the couch.]

Craig Federighi

Wow!

[Audience hoots and hollers. Federighi laughs.]

John Gruber

True story. Got a text message about 45 minutes ago, an hour ago: "Do you guys have any food here?"

[Federighi chuckles.]

No. We don't. We have lots of booze, but... So when they get here, here's what Craig... Craig has a boxed lunch from WWDC.

[laughter and whistles]

And that's what he's eating! And friend of the show and announcer Paul Kafasis asked him, "Is that a WWDC boxed lunch?"

And the answer is:

Craig Federighi

It aged well.

[chuckles]

John Gruber

It was an old WWDC boxed lunch.

Craig Federighi

[laughing] Yeah.

John Gruber

So, let it be said — Apple does eat their own dogfood.

[Laughter, groans from the audience.]

Craig Federighi

True that.

Phil Schiller

I can absolutely validate that for over 20 years of doing surveys from WWDC, every single year, the number one complaint is the food. And so, we resigned ourselves to the fact that if that's the worst thing that comes out of WWDC, all is good.

[Craig laughs.]

It's tradition, so...

On the keynote

John Gruber

So I always start the show, I started it the same way last year: I always ask the guest "How do you think the keynote went yesterday?"

Craig Federighi

Good audience. [laughter] Great crowd.

Phil Schiller

Great presenters.

[wry laughs]

Craig Federighi

[gesturing to Schiller] We were missing one!

John Gruber

Once again, Phil Schiller was not on stage at the keynote. This is becoming a new tradition.

Phil Schiller

I was teasing with Tim that between Craig and Jeff Williams, and now Boz[oma Saint John, head of Global Consumer Marketing for Apple Music and iTunes], I don't meet the minimum height requirement to present.

[laughter]

John Gruber

But, Craig, I honestly thought — I spoke to you yesterday, briefly, and I told you I thought you did an amazing job. I mean, how many people thought Craig did —

[big cheers]

Because you — it's not just that you're up there and you're covering stuff, but you covered, like, three hours of stuff in 90 minutes, or however long you were on stage.

Craig Federighi

[pauses] Yeah.

[laughter]

It was a lot, yeah. I mean, the team did a tremendous amount of work, and we try to pack it all in.

John Gruber

Well, the article I saw on the Ringer did a — I don't know if you saw this — I'm not going to go into detail on the article, but the headline was "Apple's Craig Federighi is perfect."

[laughter]

Phil Schiller

I read that article, and I can only confirm that it's half-true.

[laughter]

On overriding themes

John Gruber

So, I didn't think about it yesterday, but today it occurred to me that there sort of was a recurring, overriding theme in the announcements yesterday. Which, in broad strokes, was that you guys have opened up a lot of stuff to third-party developers that was previously reserved for Apple's first-party code.

Craig Federighi

Yeah.

John Gruber

Quick list, and I might even miss some. CallKit, so that VOIP apps can get the same Lock screen privileges for incoming calls as the Phone app and FaceTime, which took years.

Craig Federighi

Yes.

John Gruber

Messages, so that WhatsApp can, you can specify a contact. When I text Craig, default by going to WhatsApp —

Craig Federighi

That's right.

John Gruber

— instead of iMessage?

Craig Federighi

That's right.

John Gruber

Siri API, iMessage apps...

Craig Federighi

Yeah.

John Gruber

Maps extensions.

Craig Federighi

Yep.

John Gruber

And even non-Mac App Store apps can now use CloudKit, and a bunch of other iCloud stuff.

Craig Federighi

Yep! That is true.

[big whoops for that]

John Gruber

Is that a coincidence? Or is that a strategic part of the plan for this year?

Craig Federighi

Well, with iOS 8, we started that with extensions, you know, opening up the Share Sheet, for instance. For awhile there, it was, if we didn't build it, it couldn't be in the Share Sheet. And so we had to build a Twitter interface ourselves, and a Facebook interface, and as of iOS 8, we started having extensions for extending the system with sharing, widgets... And so we built a lot of the technology with XPC services, if you folks know what those are, and autoprocess UI, and all the building blocks to make this possible.

And this year, we really felt like, uh, giving the developers more and more opportunities to let users do what they want to do across all these experiences. It was, y'know, a way that we could make the platform better for all of our users, so... yeah, it all came together nicely. With Siri, as well.

John Gruber

And a big part of it, it seems to me, as the platforms (plural) evolve — because it's definitely — especially iOS and Mac — what it means to have an app is more than [what it is] on a Mac: Okay, you launch an app, and a window opens up, and you are in this window, and it's yours as the developer. Where, on iOS, it's a little simpler. It's like, you get the screen.

But now, to be an app that's really taking advantage of the best and newest that the platform has to offer, you need to be inside other apps. Widgets inside iMessage.

Craig Federighi

Yup. I think that just makes sense for mobile. I mean, if you have an app, and the right place to interact is on the notification on the Lock screen, and you don't want the user to have to unlock the phone and launch your app in order to get something done — or invoking your app with Siri is going to be the quickest path to getting something done — we want to make that possible.

And so, I think that's what you're seeing here, as well as, what you say, inside of Maps. If you want to book a ride, or you want to get a restaurant, or any of those things, it's going to just be a quicker and smoother flow if you're integrated into the place where the user started instead of requiring switching around.

And so this is opening all that up, and I think developers are going to do a tremendous number of things with it that we didn't even envision. It should be an exciting year.

Phil Schiller

It's also just an evolution of the success of the app model, right? I mean, apps took off, been wildly successful, with this amazing software process, and then you want to have apps in your Maps, you want to have apps in your Siri situations, and you want to have apps in your messaging... and so we like apps, we like them everywhere, we want to use them in many places, so to me it's an evolution of what's going on with apps in general.

On XPC, bundles, and new technology

John Gruber

And you [Craig] mentioned XPC. And I know this is a fairly, fairly nerdy crowd. But I do think it's a years-long shift, where... in my layman's terminology, XPC is Inter-process communication, and it's a way for different processes that can be sandboxed and all of the privacy and "hey you, this process can't diddle with the data of this process without having it in a shared location" — that they can still communicate with each other in a rich way.

Compared to the old days, the Mac OS has always been extensible, and whether you want to go back to the Classic Mac OS with INITs), or the Nextstep days with...

Craig Federighi

Bundles, yeah.

John Gruber

Bundles, and input managers, and...

Craig Federighi

Mmmhmm!

John Gruber

Remember in the early days of Mac OS X, when we had the haxies, and the input managers....

Craig Federighi

Oh yeah.

[laughter]

John Gruber

And that was — in laymen's terms, the fundamental difference is those were ways to extend apps officially or unofficially, where the extension code was running within the process.

Craig Federighi

Yeah, and from a stability point of view, and a privacy point of view, really bad news. So, we started years and years ago, with Mach messaging, and on that, we built XPC as a form of remote procedure call, or an asynchronous messaging, structured messaging thing. But we then created what we internally called XPC Containers — which are really what you now think of as XPC services, which are the ability to package a whole bunch of code, and let the system manage launching that code, tearing that code down when it needed to, but exposing services in that way.

And that turned out to be really important — even internally within the OS! We were using it for quite awhile within the OS, before it was exposed as a mechanism for third-parties because it allowed us to set different security boundaries around different — this is really getting nerdy, but —

[cheers]

John Gruber

Nah, this is good!

Craig Federighi

— But around, uh, [laughs], because if you're going to go load some image format, even, or run a doc, run a Spotlight converter or something, that's going to run over all your documents, you want to make sure that if that thing crashes, it doesn't crash the overall process or Spotlight index or app, you don't want it to have any more access than anything but the one thing it's supposed to have to do the job.

So this was all part of our security and sandboxing architecture, but then, with iOS 8, we saw the opportunity to combine that with, essentially, remote views, the ability to say that the UI that you see on screen that looks like it's all from one app is actually composed from the main app, but also one or more XPC services serving UI into that, and we manage all that. And that gives you this single experience, but where all the stability boundaries, and the security boundaries are in place. And that's enabled us to take this extensibilty model from something that was really hacksy-prone in the Nextstep, and well, nit —

John Gruber

Yeah, nit was...

Craig Federighi

The old days. And make it much more stable. And so that's been, now, a building block for all these things that we're doing. And iOS 10 was just really stepping on the gas on the places where we could do that that made the biggest difference in user experience.

On the removal of stock (and Stocks) apps

John Gruber

One of the most surprising changes, and again, I think that this is in the spirit of openness, or flexibility on Apple's part, and relinquishing control that previously wasn't relinquished. And it surprised me, that you can now remove a whole bunch of the default apps on iOS from your home screen.

Craig Federighi

Though you would not want to.

[big laughs]

You have the freedom — just knowing you have the power that you'll never use, it's...

John Gruber

It's one of my favorite features on the What's New site. I love the page, because it even goes out of its way to say "Y'know, because of all the compression that we use, and the techniques that we use, and the shared frameworks, they only take up 150MB.

[laughter]

Craig Federighi

Yeah! Well, okay, so, this is true. This is true. We should be really, really clear on exactly what this feature is and what it's not. Because it's not everything you might think it is.

So what it is is, you are removing... when you remove an app, you're removing it from the home screen, you're removing all the user's data associated from it, you're moving all of the hooks it has into other system services. Like, Siri will no longer try to use that when you talk and so forth.

We're not actually deleting the application binary, and the reason is really pretty two-fold. One, they're small, but more significantly, the whole iOS security architecture around the system update is this one signed binary, where we can verify the integrity of that with every update.

John Gruber

Okay.

Craig Federighi

That there's no mixing and matching going on between all of these different pieces. And so, if you go and say, well, I don't like... what's an app that someone would really... I'm going to get myself in trouble here. Okay.

Phil Schiller

Hmm...

Craig Federighi

[fake smile] I can't think of one! I...

Phil Schiller

Stocks.

Craig Federighi

Stocks?

Phil Schiller

Stocks. Some people don't follow the stock market.

Craig Federighi

Fair enough. Some people do not follow the stock market, or there's not one in their country...

Phil Schiller

Which is good for them, yes.

Craig Federighi

And so they might remove that app. And when you do, it's hidden, and any user data and preferences and so forth associated with it is gone. If you want to get it back, we were thinking, well, how do we let you restore this. And we thought, "Well, people are naturally, when they want to go get it back, they're going to go to the App Store and search for it. And so, you go to the App Store and search for it, and it'll show up, and you'll say Get, and it will reappear [on your home screen].

John Gruber

'Cos that's how they know to install apps.

[laughter]

Craig Federighi

The download will be remarkably fast.

Phil Schiller

Exactly.

Craig Federighi

The compression technology... good stuff.

Phil Schiller

It's been... and it has lead some to mistakenly report that we're moving these apps out of the system bundle and into the store for downloading, and that's not really the case; we're just making that the easy mechanism for restoring, seeing it from the store side. But it's really still part of the system.

Craig Federighi

Good to set the record straight here.

John Gruber

That's interesting. Because that means there won't be, like, an update to Mail that comes through the App Store, it's just like it used to be: It'll be part of the system update.

Craig Federighi

That is correct.

On pre-announcing App Store changes

John Gruber

Well, speaking of the App Store, this last week...

[Craig leans precariously backward to reveal Phil, to laughter from the crowd]

A week ago...

Phil Schiller

There was a reason I sat on [the far] side! I just thought these two were going to totally nerd out, and I'm just gonna let them have fun. And I... have no problem with that.

John Gruber

A week ago, there were a bunch of changes, improvements to the App Store. And in a certain sense, one of them did not get mentioned in the keynote. But review times for apps submitted to the App Store are waaaaay faster than they used to be!

[huge applause and cheers]

Craig Federighi

We thought, this is one of those cases where we can address a problem before it starts to boil over.

[laughter]

Just in anticipation of potential future.

John Gruber

For the audience at the keynote, though, to not even mention and just take that applause is amazing, because you know that it's coming. And developers are pretty happy about that.

Phil Schiller

It would have been an easy way to get applause, but we didn't stoop to that trick.

[laughter]

So, yeah! It was exactly — people have all these awesome conspiracy theories, and they're fun to read, but it was exactly what we said, which was that we were working on the keynote, we actually thought about having a whole developer section to talk about the App Store and the Keynote, and looking at keeping it, we really wanted to get [the keynote] done in just under two hours if we could. And you couldn't really talk about that, and the subscription stuff, and the ad search stuff, and all that, in three minutes.

You really needed, probably, about fifteen minutes to explain, and it just wasn't worth losing fifteen minutes of product time to talk about that when if we could, instead, just talk it to people ahead of time.

And so we decided to do something we've never done before, which is before the keynote, explain some of this. However, it was kind of tough to do, because here we're talking to you and a few others, and saying "Here are things we're doing for the App Store," knowing that still had to come, a few days later, apps working with Siri, and apps working with Messages, and these are huge impacts on developers. And a new store for Message apps, we're going to come out with. So we couldn't really tell the whole picture of all the things we were doing.

So we told sort of half of it, and waited for the rest.

On App Store search ads

John Gruber

Well, part of it that goes together. So, one of the improvements last week was search ads. And...

Phil Schiller

I noticed — I don't know if any of you [gestures to audience] noticed before we came out, there was an ad that showed up first, as John, you did your ads before we started this session.

[laughter]

It was really nice, thank you!

[clapping]

And I found two of the three were relevant to what we were discussing!

[Craig cracking up]

I won't further — for the benefit of your advertisers, I won't mention which one I didn't find relevant to my interests, but...

[Gruber laughs]

John Gruber

I was going to be nice! I was going to say how there's a tie-in that you couldn't mention a week ago, where the idea of the search ads is that it improves discoverability. And there's a discoverability aspect with the iMessage apps, where if I send you a widget through an iMessage app —

Phil Schiller

That's right.

John Gruber

And you don't have it yet, there's a very subtle, y'know, I forget what exactly it says.

Phil Schiller

Yep.

Craig Federighi

Get.

Phil Schiller

Yeah. Two — couple of the very interesting things that the team did in working on these message apps is: #1, that if I send you something, if I send you a sticker, if I send you a JibJab, you get to receive it and experience it without having to download the app. And so, you can do that on a lot of these things. Where some other service, you're always being hit with a "Download this in order to see what someone is sending you!"

So the team really wanted to have a great experience for the receiver — you don't have to do that. However, there is attribution there, and you can choose to get it. If you're like, "Wow, those JibJabs are really cool, I want to download them too, and share them with friends." Hopefully that'll become a nice viral marketing, in addition to other ways for users to discover apps in messages.

John Gruber

On search ads: Make the case — when we talked last week, you did. On the phone call, I thought "Yeah, that makes sense." And then I went away, and looked at my notes, and I was like, I'm not sure I get it.

[laughter]

Make the case on this part, on this particular part, that the system that you guys have designed can, and should be, to the benefit of smaller indie developers and it's not going to be dominated by the biggest companies —

Phil Schiller

Mmhmm.

John Gruber

That, with the, y'know, budgets that are more than everybody here combined.

Phil Schiller

So, the two sort of priorties we set on the team as they were working on it was, if we're going to do this, we have to do it in a way that, number one, protects user privacy. There are many ways that companies do it where they're not protecting privacy and we need to understand that. And secondly, how do you do it in a way that gives advantages to small and indie developers, because it's easy to imagine a system that didn't do that.

And so, we set out to think of all the things we could do to make that possible. And there's a long list of things. And I won't go through all of them to bore you all, but there are many things.

Things like:

• First of all, there's no minimum bid. So we don't set a bar, if you have a very small amount of money, you can just do what you can with a small amount of money.
• The fact that we're going to work really hard to try to make relevance the top priority, over bid, for why something gets shown. That the users are the ultimate deciders of what gets shown, based on their clicks, they're a big input to what is relevant to the search result.
• The fact that we're going to work hard to try to police and improve the whole metadata system if we find, as it easily could be abused to hurt [small] developers.
• The fact that — and this has been a hotly-debated thing — the fact that you can do conquesting. You can use someone else's brand in your ad words that you want to use. As we thought about it, that is more likely to benefit the small developer than the big developer. Because the big developer isn't going to pick on a lot of small developer terms, but a small developer can try to latch on to a big developer's name. If I want to search for Angry Birds and your game, you can. Right? And so we think that that can help them.
• The fact that there's no exclusivity. So a large developer cannot say, "And I want to be the top bid, and I'm going to spend everything I can to buy out this term." There will be no exclusivity, there's going to be a rotation there, and as that rotation appears, the relevance will help drive it further.

We're trying everything we can, and I think one of the best things is, right now, once we're in beta throughout the summer, the downloads the users get from the ads are real downloads to benefit the developer, but we're not charging [for ads] during the beta time. So there's a chance for everybody to get in and try it out, help us learn from it, and drive real downloads and real business without any marketing spend.

So we're trying to think of things we can do, and we'll think of more. We'll take feedback and see what's happening, and where it works and doesn't work, and where it feels like they're getting stomped on, and we'll try to do all that we can to make it better.

[cheers and claps]

On App Store subscriptions

John Gruber

And the last bit of news with the App Store changes, y'know, big third of it, was an expansion of the categories that are allowed for subscriptions. I don't know if you noticed, but there was a little bit of confusion last week about the difference between apps from all categories versus "all apps."

Phil Schiller

Let me just, let me explain that. So, our intention is exactly as we talked about. Which is, we're opening up the subscription model to all categories, so what kind of an app you make doesn't directly have an impact on whether you can have a subscription model or not.

There are, we wanted to open up subscriptions to all developers of all apps. That is the hope. However, there are a couple of little "gotcha"s where we have to be careful. And so, that's why there's some caution here.

Number one: If you want to create a professional app, and you're going to to maintain it, and do updates, and you want to have an ongoing revenue stream, that's of course an intention of this.

[clapping]

Yeah, let's clap on that! But do users really want, and I'm sorry to pick on this category if somebody makes this app, because I'm sure there's examples where you would want it, but do you want a flashlight app to now be an app you have to pay for forever with a subscription model? Users probably don't want that.

And so, we have to be sensitive, first of all, to: Is there some minimum functionality where users now get pissed off, and say "Everything's turned to subscription, I don't want to buy stuff anymore, this is not okay," and now that's a drag on business on the App Store and therefore, we all lose. So we feel a responsibility. And I read your thing that says, "Hey, why don't you just let the market choose—"

John Gruber

Right.

Phil Schiller

Well, what if the market screws itself up and it does badly? And then we all lose. So we have to be able a little bit sensitive to not do something we think could backfire and hurt all of us. So we want to be careful about minimum functionality, so there will be some guideline around that.

Which we already have a guideline on minimum functionality for anything, you can't just wrap a website and call it an app. But there will be a little bit more minimum functionality for subscription.

John Gruber

I think the guidelines include, a longstanding guideline is that the App Store has plenty of fart apps already.

Phil Schiller

That is absolutely one of the rules.

[chuckles]

And then, there is a secondary issue. And we're working through this. There are certain states and governments where there are laws about creating a subscription revenue stream without a clear promise to the user of what they're paying for down the road.

And so, our legal team's been working with us on this, on trying to make sure we put in place in the store the right way for developers to make clear their intention to deliver value for that customer, or else they'll be breaking the law by asking for a subscription with no intention of delivering value down the road.

So we want to be careful of those things. So those are the kinds of reasons we have caveats on it, but the intention, I think, is what we all want.

John Gruber

Alright.

[cheering]

On the Mac App Store

John Gruber

The Mac App Store...

[chuckles from audience]

I'm not going to say it's been treated as the ugly stepchild, but maybe the slightly less attractive stepchild? And a couple of examples: TestFlight beta testing was in the iOS App Store. Craig [Hockenberry], is it in the Mac App Store yet?

Hockenberry

[from the audience] No, I don't think so.

John Gruber

I don't think so. Alright. So no TestFlight...

Phil Schiller

[dryly] Hi, Craig, how are you doing?

[laughter]

John Gruber

Video reviews. I know it seems like that really works, like there's just, instead of static screenshots to show your app on iOS, you can have a video that shows it in animation, and then lots of times, for developers who are doing the cinematic experience of really making the app feel great, the video can do so much more than a static screenshot.

Craig Federighi

Mmmm.

John Gruber

And all of the news last week applies to all of the App Stores.

Craig Federighi

Yes.

John Gruber

So that in of itself is a change, a change in the way that the App Store is distributing new features.

Craig Federighi

Yep.

Phil Schiller

So, we love all of our kids — I'm sure all of you do as well — equally.

[laughter]

And so, we love the Mac App Store, we want it to do well, we want to support the developers in it, we care a lot about it. We use it ourselves, it's a very important store for ourselves. We've moved all our software distribution into it, and are very happy with that. So, we're one happy software developer that's using it.

[scattered laughter]

And we still think, in the long view of all of this, it matters a great deal. We think it matters for privacy, we think it matters for security, we think it matters for quality on the store. We've all seen examples of apps that have been hijacked on servers, where people download stuff that have viruses injected in them, and we don't want any part of any of that, all of us.

So we think it's still an important solution, and we're dedicated to it.

There are things through the years in the Mac App Store that haven't been fully implemented because they didn't make as much sense on the Mac as they did on iOS, or the engineering effort was really high for a benefit that wasn't seen as as big, or whatever. Example: So, TestFlight. For the engineering involved there, people have felt that there are a lot of opportunities on the Mac from a website to download apps for test, and to distribute beta software, so the need wasn't as great. Right? It was a clear need on iOS, not clear on Mac.

So that's why some decisions were made and trade-offs, there. But, as you say, as I've been working more with the App Store team since December, I've really pushed the team to please make sure everything makes sense across all the stores as much as possible, and maybe there'll be some exception to that that we have to make, but we don't want to. We want to try to do everything the same on all the stores as much as possible, including the Mac App Store.

[applause]

On iPad app pricing and lack of pro apps for iOS

John Gruber

So, one thing the Mac App Store has been good for, and the Mac software ecosystem in general is good for, is that it seems to support higher prices of apps, for truly professional apps, deeper apps. And there's a consensus — or maybe not, consensus is the wrong word, maybe you'll disagree.

But there's a lot of people who think that one of the things that's holding back the iPad — especially now that it's the iPad Pro — from replacing a MacBook for someone who might want to, is that it lacks the same depth of deep apps for work that the Mac has. And the reason is that the pricing pressure is more like iPhone-style, couple of bucks, as opposed to Mac-style, where $50, $80, $100 software has long been the norm.

Phil Schiller

I think you see two things happening at the same time. Number one, the iPad's capabilities are growing as a PC replacement product for some people. I know some people have made some statements about that, I don't know who.

[laughter]

And so, we're trying to make it more and more powerful, making larger screens, keyboards, the more powerful processors, and all that's happening to drive it into a more capable product.

At the same time, you've started to see more professional applications begin to make their way onto it. And so, I think we're seeing changes there. We're seeing... certainly, apps that have a similar version on your iPhone that you want on your iPad will have similar pricing. But other apps that may be coming over from the Mac, or PC, are bringing on pricing models that are more like that.

And so you're going to see this duality with iPad, that there's a little of both happening. And we see an increase of the more professional apps happening. And we see stuff in flight with developers we're working on that's really impressive desktop-quality software, more and more coming to iPad.

John Gruber

Yeah, it's definitely not the hardware. 'Cos the iPad Pro stands toe to toe with the MacBooks on any technical measure you can give it. I mean, beautiful displays, powerful CPUs, and stuff like that. So it's not holding it back.

Craig Federighi

And I do think if you really look at some of the professional apps that are on the iPad, it's... I mean, some of them are really first-class. I think the iPad Pro's going to accelerate that, and we absolutely want to find any way possible to make deep investment by developers on the platform possible. Because, I think, we'll all win when that happens.

On passwords and macOS's auto-unlock

John Gruber

Alright. New topic. Privacy and security. I remember a couple of years ago, maybe more — I don't know how many years. But I was at WWDC, and I somehow wound up in a session on security. I don't even know why I was there. But it was interesting. I think I was talking to somebody, and he was like "I gotta go into this thing on security," and I was like, "Well, I'll go with you," and I went in and listened.

And at the end, it was when they were still doing Q&As, and I remember this very vividly. Somebody asked the question of somebody who was on the engineering team in charge of security, gave a rant about how passwords are terrible, and people pick bad passwords because they're easy to remember, and passwords that are hard to remember, or hard to crack, or hard to guess, are unusable, or less usable. "Have you guys given any thought to what's next beyond passwords?"

And there was this pause, and the speaker...

[Gruber intimates looking down toward the mic.]

"Yes."

[laughter]

And it was like, well that's an interesting — that's a very interesting and truthful answer. And we've seen, I think, in the intervenining years, some of the things that might have been circulating. Touch ID...

Craig Federighi

Yeah.

John Gruber

And now, one of my favorite features you guys announced yesterday, can't wait to use it, is...

Craig Federighi

Auto-unlock?

John Gruber

Auto-unlock.

Craig Federighi

Yeah! Yeah.

[big cheers]

John Gruber

So can you talk about how that came to be?

Craig Federighi

Which part of it? I mean, caring about security? Or, uh...

John Gruber

Well, no. With Auto-unlock in particular, the details of how — what are you guys doing to make Auto-unlock truly secure? That it's not, y'know, that I'm not over here opening Phil's MacBook because he's in the room.

Craig Federighi

Yeah. Yeah. Well, of course, this — it's a continuation of the work we did with Continuity to develop really low-power BTLE-based discovery protocol, so your devices could discover each other continuously with acceptable overhead from a battery point of view. And also, all the authentication mechanisms we put in place as far as having your devices know that they're your devices.

So that's kind of a foundation. The big challenge with Auto-unlock is you don't want a kind of, a relay attack, where Phil is actually, well far away from his office, and someone basically has a Bluetooth listener that's going to forward a signal to you, 'cos you're now by his Mac, and this Mac is having a conversation with Phil's watch over a very long distance.

John Gruber

Right.

Craig Federighi

And so, we're actually able to do time-of-flight calculation using peer-to-peer Wi-Fi, where we literally can measure how long (at the speed of light) it's taking for the signal to travel from your watch to your Mac and back!

[applause]

That's a very fast stopwatch! And so, because of that, if you interpose any kind of relay, it will introduce a delay that immediately would tell us, there's hijinks afoot, so.

John Gruber

Yeah, make sure they type in their password.

Craig Federighi

[laughs] Yes. Absolutely. And so, that piece is critical. But I think, y'know, on the bigger picture, Touch ID is one way that we've helped with passwords, but actually, on iOS, the Secure Enclave and that whole architecture, the fact that your device is not encrypted just with your passcode, which, honestly, whether it's four digits or six digits, it's short enough that if a brute force attack were possible, it would be — you readily could break into something.

But instead, it's entangled with a hardware key that only the Secure Enclave runs, and the Secure Enclave will only do its unwrapping when running Apple-signed software, and will only let you try ten times. And so, fundamentally, yeah.

[applause]

That was the first, yeah, very important step to saying you could have a practical-length passcode with really industrial-strength security. And so, we keep pushing on this.

On deep learning and photos

John Gruber

Continuing in the privacy vein, it's a good segue into Siri, "Deep Learning," AI, these sort of features that you guys... it was a big part of the presentation yesterday. Because a big part of your on-stage message about it was the emphasis on the way that the systems are designed to protect users' privacy, and the technical implications of that.

Craig Federighi

Yeah!

John Gruber

So one of my questions: When does deep learning happen? So, like, I'm on the phone and I'm taking a couple of pictures of the event and stuff like that — when does the...

Craig Federighi

That analysis occur? Yeah, so, if you upgrade your device to iOS 10, and you have your Photos library there with your 10,000 photos, or 100,000 photos on it, the analysis of that kind of backlog will occur when you're plugged in on AC overnight. 'Cos this is a considerable amount of computation that's going to occur that we would not have happen in your pocket.

But when you're out taking a fresh picture, at that point, we will instantaneously form the analysis on that hot photo as it's going into your photo library. We can do it that fast. It is, like scene classification, I mentioned yesterday — was it yesterday?

Phil Schiller

Mmhmm.

Craig Federighi

Yeah. [laughs] Long time ago. That it is, like about eleven billion calculations that have to occur to do that thing — "That's a horse! That's a mountain!" — but the GPUs on iOS devices these days really cook, so we can get through that essentially instantaneously with the photos.

John Gruber

And on the privacy part, my understanding — and correct me if I'm wrong — but my understanding from what I've learned is if you've got iCloud Photo Library, and I take a couple pictures with my iPhone, the photos will sync to the cloud, and then they will go to my iPad and my Mac, but the deep learning analysis doesn't go with them. Each machine performs its own processing on its own time when it's plugged in and appropriately. Is that true?

Craig Federighi

That is true right now. So each device does its own processessing. In the future, we could share the results of, like, the first one who does the work, just share, just to make that work go along for the ride. But today, it's gonna be each device doing it independently.

When you think about what's going to happen if we release iOS and OS X on separate days, everyone's iPhones will race to do all this work on their library first, and then the Mac will, it'll be fine at that point. So we wouldn't have saved the iPhones from doing the work if we'd had the Macs share their work, or share the work of the Mac.

Phil Schiller

And just to add on that view of someday they may not all have to do it, it's a view where we're not, Apple will never actually know that analysis ourselves. We won't see that data.

Craig Federighi

Right.

Phil Schiller

It's a way to do it, but we're out of the loop.

Craig Federighi

Yeah. To be clear, the photos themselves are, the architecture sets are encrypted in the cloud, and the metadata — any metadata about the photos that you create or that we create through deep learning classification is encrypted in a way that Apple's not reading it.

[applause]

On differential privacy

John Gruber

I wanna, I want to get... [laughs] I want to get nerdy on this differential privacy thing.

Craig Federighi

Yeah!

John Gruber

'Cos it's a phrase, it's like an official thing, I've learned a little bit more, it's not just a phrase you guys made up, it's like a...

[laughter]

Craig Federighi

[chuckling] It wouldn't have been the phrase we would have made up.

John Gruber

Right. [laughs]

Phil Schiller

We would have done a better name if that's what we did.

[more laughter]

John Gruber

But like, in the State of the Union yesterday, I mean there's real math behind it. This is not just a name that is applied to policies. This is —

Craig Federighi

That's correct.

John Gruber

A branch of statistical analysis —

Craig Federighi

Yes.

John Gruber

That, it... talk to me about it. Give me a little, I know you touched on it in the keynote. Give us like a slightly juicier layman's overview of differential privacy.

Craig Federighi

Sure. Yeah, of course the idea is that if we wanted to know what word, y'know, a new word that everyone was, that lots of people were typing, that we didn't know so that we would stop marking it as a spelling error. Or maybe we'd even suggest it on the keyboard.

Phil Schiller

Like "Meh." Or something.

[laughter]

Craig Federighi

Yeah, like now it's just, it's trending, it's hot, we want all our customers to be able to know that word, but we don't want to know you and Phil in particular are typing it. We want to have no way to have any knowledge of that.

You can imagine if what we're essentially assembling is a picture of little pieces of data, y'know, of the forest, but all we're getting is a little piece. And when we get that little piece, even each device will statistically, much of the time, even lie about its little piece. Right?

But those lies will all cancel out with enough data —

John Gruber

Right.

Craig Federighi

— and the picture will suddenly resolve, with enough data points, will resolve itself. And so, and yet, literally, if we were trying to learn a word, we would send one bit — we'd send a position and a single — we'd hash the word, we'd send a single bit from the hash, we'd say at position 23, Phil saw a 1. But Phil's phone would flip a coin and actually say, "Actually, I'm going to lie about that. I'm going to say zero even though I saw a one."

And that's the data that goes to Apple. And Apple, with enough of that data, can build a composite picture and say, "Holy smokes, we have a word here. And this many people roughly are seeing it." And that's typically what you want to know. You want to know what's happening at large, but we have no desire to know what, specifically, who is doing what.

John Gruber

Well, it's typically what you want to know. It's not typically [laughs] what your competitor would want to know.

Phil Schiller

And part of the reason that this is so important to get into is because, the theory that you can just anonymize the data and send it up, and all's good, and it's a bunch of crap —

[laughter and big hollers of approval]

Because I can send all this data, and say "Well, I don't know who you are, oh, but I happen to know the same location you go to every night, and I know the same place you go to work every day, I've got all this data, I just don't know your name, or ID. Boy, it's really hard to reverse-engineer that anonymous data!"

Right? So what you need to do is create a system that goes beyond anonymizing to really make it impossible to reconfigure who that user is.

[loud applause]

John Gruber

So the way I have it written down here is that if it works as you're describing it, it means it's not just that Apple doesn't use that information to reverse the anonymity, it's that mathematically you can't.

Craig Federighi

We can't.

John Gruber

It's — the design of the system is such that it's not even possible if new executives come in in a few years and maybe they would like to, y'know.

[Craig exhales, laughter]

Craig Federighi

[mumbles]

John Gruber

Well, companies change!

Craig Federighi

No, no! That's absolutely true. And the point of view, honestly, the point of view that someone says, "Hey, I know we know a ton about you, but don't worry! We're nice guys! And it's all good!"

Well, okay, maybe you're nice guys, ten years from now, who's running this thing? Or, what if someone breaks into your computers? Are they nice guys?

Phil Schiller

Right.

Craig Federighi

Right? So you just don't want to have any central source that has that kind of knowledge, because in the fullness of time, anything is possible.

And so, differential privacy is, I mean, there are mathematical proofs that will show that you cannot, with any confidence, determine anything about any of the people contributing to the data set. And we think that's important.

On Google and Facebook and cloud data-gathering

John Gruber

Alright. Speaking of companies that do collect some information about people, Google and Facebook —

[laughter]

— they're two competitors that, and I know a lot of times, when you talk about these companies, you might talk [vaguely] about search engines, and you might talk about social networks —

[more laughter]

Because you're gentlemen! But I will name names, and I'm going to just point out that Google and Facebook are both actively pursuing a lot of the same goals. I mean, just the image analysis, "That's a mountain, that's a horse" — those companies are showing similar things.

Craig Federighi

Yeah.

John Gruber

You guys are showing similar things. But it really is, I don't want to abuse the metaphor, but it's a 180-degree different tactic, where they're doing it with cloud servers, and doing the computing in the cloud on data that they've aggregated there, and your method is to do it, distribute it on the actual devices.

Critics are saying — and not me, I'm not saying this, I'm like, let's see —

[laughter]

No, I mean, I'm totally like "Okay, I saw your keynote, I'm looking forward to trying it, and let's see if it works for me!" I don't know. I think it might!

Craig Federighi

I think it will!

[laughter]

John Gruber

But critics are already saying, and they've obviously, since the keynote was just yesterday, I've seen it in a couple of articles that your strategy is doomed to keep Apple behind them, because the Google and Facebook way is the only way that works. And I'm not quite sure where that comes from, because...

Craig Federighi

Their PR department. I mean...

[huge laughter, clapping, Schiller makes a wry unintelligible comment]

[chuckles] of a prominent search engine or social network provider of... that we don't know about.

John Gruber

I think that part of it, in my mind, is maybe that there's an assumption on the part of some people in the press that a server farm has this massive amount of computational power, and that a puny little phone can't compete. But it's not like there's one person's iPhone who's trying to do the image analysis for all the photos on iCloud...

Craig Federighi

Like, there are a billion phones to throw at this problem.

John Gruber

Right, a billion active devices. So like, the billion active Apple devices that are out there in the aggregate have an enormous amount of CPU power.

Craig Federighi

That's right, that's right. The other thing is, there's this idea that, well, if you don't have the data, how would you ever learn? Well, turns out, if you want to get pictures of mountains, you don't need to get it out of people's personal photo libraries.

[laughter, clapping]

Like, we found out that we could find some pictures of some mountains!

[huge applause]

We did some tough detective work, and we found 'em.

[laughter]

So... [breaks down laughing] that's pretty good.

On Siri

John Gruber

So, moving on. Siri. Siri now has an API, and it's six categories. I don't know if I wrote any of them down. But it's like ride-sharing...

Craig Federighi

Messaging, photo search...

Phil Schiller

Voice calls.

Audience member

Payments!

John Gruber

Payments. And one more.

Craig Federighi

Sending money, yeah. No, we did payments. Alright. I can say it a few different ways, we can get past six.

[laughter]

John Gruber

Well, there's six distinct categories.

Audience member

Workouts!

Craig Federighi

Workouts!

Phil Schiller

Workouts!

John Gruber

There we go. Thank you. This is why I should have a live audience at all my shows.

Craig Federighi

This is crowdsourcing, right here, but it's totally anonymous.

Phil Schiller

And we don't know who said it, because...

[huge laughter and clapping]

John Gruber

So why restrict Siri to those six specific categories?

Craig Federighi

Yeah. It comes down to modeling the domains well. In order to understand what someone is saying — people are going to speak to Siri in a whole bunch of different ways, and even in a whole bunch of different languages. And when they say, when they want to say "Send a message to Phil" saying that "I'm going to be late for the interview," then we... I could have said that in dozens of other ways. I could have said "WeChat Phil that I'm going to be late for the interview," WeChat Phil using WeChat, telling him that, et cetera.

And I could say something like "WeChat Phil," and then I'd need to know, like, okay, well, what do you want to say to him? And Siri knows all of this because Siri understands the domain of messaging well. It understands all the vocabulary, it understands what the verbs are, what the objects are, and can collect them and can do so in a dialog.

And so, we want to make sure that when you're talking to your assistant, your assistant is consistently intelligent about understanding you and how flexible you can be in talking to it. To do that, we had to develop those domains.

And so, these are the domains that we've developed in a way that developers can plug in. We'll do more and more of that over time, and of course we'll search for more and more flexible ways to enable developers to do that time, but we want to make sure that what we do is preserve the intelligence of your assistant.

It would have been really super easy for us to say, "Hey, just tell us a trigger word, or the name of your app, and we'll hand you a string."

John Gruber

Right.

Craig Federighi

And good luck. And so you'd say something to Siri, and most of the time, you'd get back the app doing something crazy, and the user would say, "What in the heck, Siri doesn't understand me, I don't understand this."

In this case, we're able to be consistent about Siri's ability to understand you. And so, we'll make models more and more powerful, and we'll do more of them for more domains, but we start with a baseline and have a quality experience around what we cover.

Phil Schiller

And I think that this is an insight into how we... it's not right or wrong, how we approach things differently than some other companies do. We've all been seeing stories for awhile saying, "Hey, Apple, some other companies are doing some assistants, and they're allowing these other apps to be, these bots to hand off, and do things for them. You're not, you're behind."

Where, when we have thought about doing it for awhile, and we've thought about it since the very beginning of Siri, which is, we needed a solution to — how to keep Siri from being smart at one thing and stupid at another? That would be an inconsistent experience, and not what we want. We need Siri to be equally smart at all the things we do.

And as it gets expanded, that intelligence needs to extend, and so the team has been working hard at that, where others shoved in [trigger words] quickly to do things that don't translate that intelligence to third-party apps. And so, to do that means that you have to, with intention, add categories and domains. The hope is to add more and more so that users can ask anything they want over time, use any of their apps that they love, and it all works. It just takes time building domains. So we'd rather take the time to do it right than rush out just because it gets a good story to say you have something.

Craig Federighi

Yeah.

[applause]

On iMessage

John Gruber

One of the things I've — like, in the last year or so, maybe more, but I've noticed it, and I bang this drum a couple times a month on Daring Fireball, is why the industry as a whole doesn't seem to count iMessage as a messaging platform. And, y'know, the number that always gets thrown around is monthly active users, and WhatsApp has so many monthly active users, and so they're worth so many billions of dollars, and... iMessage has... it must have, it has to be right up there in terms of monthly active users, daily active users, hourly active users.

Craig Federighi

Yeah.

John Gruber

Users sending iMessages during the Talk Show...

[chuckles]

Is that frustrating?

Craig Federighi

I... I don't know. I mean. It's okay? [laughs]

Phil Schiller

No, because customers...

Craig Federighi

I mean, really...

Phil Schiller

Customers don't read those things. It's all inside the beltway kind of, like, who feels prouder that they made a list.

[laughter]

It doesn't matter to users.

Craig Federighi

Yeah. Messages is the most-used app on iOS, period. So, it's used a lot. And certainly, we saw that every time we'd add a couple new emoji, it would be the biggest thing. We work all year on, like, a new file system or something...

[laughter, cheers]

Craig Federighi

And it turns out the rest of the world outside this room was more excited about the two new emoji! So, we figured, y'know, if there's one place we can make a tremendous difference in how people experience iOS fundamentally, they're spending a lot of time in Messages.

And so, we put a ton of creative energy into it, and ultimately, through opening up to developers, I think the collective energy that will go into making Messages great is going to be phenomenal.

John Gruber

In the keynote, I was sitting in the middle of the floor. Halfway back, halfway in the center, just right in the middle. Really, it was a great place to hear the reactions. The biggest reaction I thought of the entire keynote was when you announced that emoji were going to 3x. [Laughter]

I'm not exaggerating. It was like a real, visceral buzz. Here's a crowd of people, you know, developers who are more technically minded, and are here to hear about technical details, and this thing that is really just, you know, just more fun, got this really powerful reaction.

Craig Federighi

Well, next year we're going to 4x. [Laughter]

Phil Schiller

See, this is why we don't let you out. [Laughter] Now we're going to be held to that and next year, when we don't, they'll be like "You said 4x! Apple, you're late, you're late!" and then it will be, "Finally, 4x!" [Laughter]

John Gruber

Coming down the home stretch—

Phil Schiller

There's a few competitors right now: "4x, let's beat 'em to 4x!" [Laughter]

John Gruber

The Onion story about the Schick CEO says "Screw this, we're going to 5 blades!" and, like 3-years later, she came out with a five-blade razor.

Craig Federighi

Yes!

John Gruber

Can't underestimate what people will stoop to.

Any of the other iMessage stuff that, I mean, clearly it's a lot of work, a lot of it is very fun, some of it is — you know, the developer integration — really turns it into a platform. It's not just a thing that people can text with any more, it's a thing that people in this crowd can write software for. Is there anything that stands out that maybe didn't get enough love in the keynote?

Craig Federighi

Well, we didn't talk about the way in which I think these apps can spread, kind of in a really great way virally, we didn't talk about that at all. I think that's going to be really powerful for developers and is going to make it worth developers' while to put some energy into it. We made them really easy to create, so if artists — we think there'll be a community of artists that will build sticker packs that are just really fun and they don't need to write any code to do it. So we think that will be really important.

Also, I think, the way that they are distributed — it's not just about the extension. The extension can be a part of your app and so, there's some cases where, you want a model where, the extension is sort of in cooperation with your larger app experience. I mean, one simple example would be like if you have your sports app, your sports app knows what your favorite teams are. Well, your extension in messages, that lets you share those clips, is going to know that as well. So, there's a connection there. We have one where something that people like to do a lot is share music. You hear something, you think, "wow, this is great" and you want to tell your friend about this awesome song. Well, if you go to the Apple Music extension, it knows what's now playing in your music, and it knows what you're listening to for your songs, so that's just one tap to share.

So, there'll be interesting integrations where the Message extension is sort of the tip of the iceberg for an experience you have in your app as well.

On watchOS

John Gruber

Moving on to watchOS. What you guys do year after year is make iterative improvements. You add features. You take what was slow and make it fast. You take what was ugly and you make it look better. But the performance improvement on app launch on watchOS 3 —

Craig Federighi

It's dramatic.

John Gruber

— Does not look like one year over year. It's crazy. And I really did, in the keynote, think "I gotta see this". And then, when I got a hands-on with a Watch running watchOS 3, it's for real.

Anybody in the audience, have you guys upgraded? [Applause]

Craig Federighi

It's for real.

John Gruber

How is that possible? [Laughter]

Craig Federighi

A couple of things. We actually had some RAM to spare.

John Gruber

Really?

Craig Federighi

Yeah! Turns out that if people are running… if they have their favorite ten apps, we can keep them mostly running. We can keep them mostly resident. We can halt them so they're not burning CPU, but we can keep them mostly resident. Which means you're not doing all the work that goes into launching an app when you take them live.

The other thing is, it turns out that when we first were coming out with watchOS we were being really conservative about understanding how people were going to be using the Watch and trying to make sure we could hit our goal of very solid all-day battery life. So that you could use it all day and charge it at night.

And we found that we actually really overshot the goal, which was an area of just massive focus and paranoia through the release. We needed to make sure we squeezed every little bit of juice out of the thing. So, realizing we had this budget, we said, look, we actually have enough to do background updates. We'd overshot enough that we could keep apps both in memory but also keep them up to date throughout the day. So, when you look at them, they're already there. It's not like, launch and then wait and have them get the information. It's, they already have the information.

So, those were two really vital techniques. The other thing is, as you build something new and different as the watch, you finish, and you live on it, and you figure out what's really the essence of this thing, and appreciate which problems are the most important to solve, we realized the watch is all about glanceability. It's useful to the extent that, okay, I can solve my task, I'm done. If I'm up here and I'm waiting and I'm fiddling around, my arm's getting tired, this is no fun anymore, I'm going to do this a different way. And with that as our obsession for the last year. We've taken all of those tasks and said you've got to be able to finish the task, end-to-end, in two seconds. Right? And that means the launch had better be instant part because now we need to let the user think and do something in two seconds and get it done. With that focus, you find a way. We chipped away.

John Gruber

What really struck me, once I got a hands-on with it and could really see it, was just how much the design changes to the navigation of the user experience are exactly coinciding with the engineering improvements to make it faster.

So, the fact that glances are no longer a separate thing is because the apps themselves in the dock can serve as glances because they're getting the background updates because you made the changes that let them stay resident in memory.

Craig Federighi

Yeah, it's nice when it all comes together.

John Gruber

It really is.

Phil Schiller

The other thing I'll add is that, once you start to use the new watchOS, in addition to having the apps come across faster and you can get access to them quickly, watch faces in a sense become apps themselves. In a sense that you change the ones you use, rearrange them, and change the complications. For example, I would normally keep the activity rings on my watch face, but now I can choose to make that the next [watch face] and swipe over to them and swipe back, because I use the activity watch face vs. needing the rings. And then I can have a different watch face for some other time of the day for when I need other actions and access to apps. So that becomes a much quicker and more useful way to expand the things you do with it. It's a really profound change throughout the interaction model.

Craig Federighi

Yeah, and really different complications too. So if you're going to be more in your workout mode, you would swipe over, and the complications that are relevant to that, and therefore the launchers that are relevant to that, are essentially right there. So you kinda go, here's what — I'm at work, and I'm going to be this way, I'm out with the family I'm going to go this way, and you have all the activities that are relevant to that, it's like you have almost a custom doc or custom launcher based on your watch face. So that's another element where I feel like it's really come together in a nice way. [Applause]

On Swift

John Gruber

Just wrapping up, coming down to the home stretch. Swift. Now, you were on my show a few months ago when Swift went open source. We had a good time.

Craig Federighi

Lot of dynamism.

John Gruber

And we talked about Swift use within Apple, and why you guys can't yet write the OS in Swift but that engineers are using it to write unit tests and things like that. It's getting used. But I saw in the announcement that the new Swift Playground app is itself written in Swift.

Craig Federighi

Yeah, well actually in OS X, like most of the Dock—

John Gruber

macOS?

Craig Federighi

—and most of Mission Control. Yeah, well, oh god. [Laughter]

Phil Schiller

Another dollar. [Laughter]

Craig Federighi

In our Sunday rehears—

Phil Schiller

Gee, when was that name first hinted at? [Laughter]

John Gruber

I don't know.

Phil Schiller

Last year, right here. I thought I was being so transparent, too.

John Gruber

I saw right through it.

Phil Schiller

I know. You were very polite.

Craig Federighi

In our runthrough for the show, when I say, "Oh, and we're changing the name to macOS" — and this is on Sunday — and my next slide is to say something about how we have these great new features in macOS. I literally go, "And so our new release is macOS. And so we have some great features in OS X." And I … it's tough. We spent a lot — 15 years — it's a long time and I think we all feel great about the new name.

Anyway, in macOS the Dock is substantially converted, and Mission Control, all those areas are using Swift a lot. So it's starting to spread a lot internally, there are some barriers, but I think this year the most important thing, and I think Chris Lattner really covered it in the State of the Union, is getting the source stability. And so we decided this year we're going to put that over all the priorities. Take what we've learned, y'know, when we first shipped Swift a couple of years ago, the objective was: Let's make sure that it's familiar from an API point of view. Y'know, minimize the kind of transition of, "Hold on, I've gotta learn all new method names for all the classes I already know?" And so we really bias toward that. Now people are so familiar with Swift, the priority is: Let's make sure those APIs are all very native to Swift in their feel. And so we've done all the hard work to update all the APIs, all the naming conventions, and take some major APIs like Core Graphics and libdispatch and make them just awesome for Swift. [Applause] Yeah, it's important stuff. But, what that means is we've achieved that level of source stability, so next year it won't be like, "Oh boy," y'know, as a developer. So that's the important thing.

ABI stability which means literally the Swift binary you built could be linked against the future libraries. That's one that we made a lot of progress, haven't gotten all the way there. But that's far more of an issue for us internally than it is for developers. It's important for developers, but I think the source stability one was the right priority and I feel really good about the progress the team made on that.

On topics from WWDC 2016 that deserve a little more attention

John Gruber

Last question: How about one thing that you guys announced yesterday, whether it was in the keynote or not, maybe something that missed the keynote, but one thing that you think deserves a little extra attention. And I'll let you guys think about it. I'll go first and your correct answer is probably new file system.

Craig Federighi

Is that right? [Laughter, Cheers]

John Gruber

I'm gonna say Universal Clipboard, because I've always wanted this. And for me it's links, it's like I'm on my phone, it's like, "Oh, I want to post this to Daring Fireball," but I'm in my office so why would I do it on a phone? I'll go sit down at my iMac and do it with a real keyboard, but how do I get this from here to there? Man, what I want to do is just copy it and go over there and hit CMD + V. And, again, the thinking through that you guys did of how to do this in a way that isn't going to surprise people in a bad way — there's like a two-minute timeout, so if I copy something on my phone right now and tomorrow I paste it in my Mac, I'm not getting that because it's really, like, a ways of detecting what's in your—

Craig Federighi

Well and even the communication is, like the other continuity features, peer-to-peer. So it's not like you're sending everything you copy up the cloud all of a sudden just so it can get down to the other device. It really is about [two devices right here] copy and paste, which I think is absolutely what people want. And it has the right privacy and performance characteristics. And, as you say, it gets rid of the surprises. And it just turns out to be the most … once you have it, it's the most natural way in the world to do these kinds of things. So I think the team did awesome work there. Yeah, I think that's great.

Do I have to say new file system again? [Cheers] No, I think the new file system is great. And by the way, I mean the prospect of … this is one you have to get right, let's say. [Laughter] And so we have an awesome file system team who really knew which problems we needed to solve for a world of flash storage and has done a super-solid job. And we're being conservative about how we're rolling it out as a developer preview, so people can kick the tires on it this year, but we look forward to making it part of the products going forward and I think it's going to great. And obviously we didn't talk about it, 'cause we don't talk about peer developer preview material there. But I think it terms of something that is important for the platform going forward, it's big.

John Gruber

What do you … so let's just say three years from now we're all using iPhones that are using APFS instead of HFS+. What would be a noticeable improvement to the experience?

Craig Federighi

So, it'll help with performance, it'll help with things like how we do software updates and other things, 'cause we can snapshot volumes and other things, we can roll things back. I mean, there are a lot of important attributes there. It's important when you think about multi-user — like how files are protected between multiple users on a Mac, because we actually have file-system-level encryption now standard across both platforms. So I think from a security point of view, it's big. And I think performance, I mean now you do a copy or even like the safe save operation, when you save documents in a lot of apps it's like, "Move that one aside, create another whole copy of all of that, now overwrite some of it, now delete the old directory." Now that's atomic and the clone file makes all of that super fast. I think it's just going to be great across the board.

Phil Schiller

I want to answer in a very different direction. Of the keynote, the thing we haven't talked about that to me was really amazing was we had a bunch of demoers who had never been in a keynote before. It was their first time. [Applause] And they were fantastic. Stacey did a great job, Bethany and Imran did a great job. Boz did an incredible job. [Cheers] And Cheryl did an incredible job. And all of them work on the things they demo, and they were fantastic. So that's my sort of unsung thing of the keynote was those presenters.

John Gruber

I said mid-keynote — I was sitting with Ben Thompson — and I said I can't believe that none of these people have ever done this before, because they are amazing. And they really did kick ass up there. That was great.

Craig Federighi

They sure did, they sure did.

John Gruber

That's it unless you guys have anything else from me.

Craig Federighi

Just thank you for having us.

John Gruber

I want to give some thanks here. I want to thank our sponsors: MailChimp, Microsoft, and Meh.com. Go there and buy some junk. [Laughter] I want to thank Jake Schumacher and Jed Hurt. They're doing the video here, so if you're watching at home, you can thank them. They are the co-makers of the upcoming documentary, App: The Human Story, which has been in the works for awhile. I've seen a rough cut, it is amazing. It is really coming along. Appdocumentary.com if you want to see more. Drew Bischof from Hybrid Events is here running whatever apparatus is involved in doing the livestreaming, which I've heard is very hard. [Laughter] I want to thank Mezzanine and the entire staff here who has been— they're led by Megan Rogerson she's been here all four years that I've been here. The staff is great, the bartenders are great, security … I mean, just a really great place and I really appreciate it. I want to thank Paul Kafasis and my wife, Amy Gruber of Just the Tip fame, their podcast that is on, I don't know, some kind of hiatus. But they're the ones who made this event run so that I can just sit back here and be nervous and make these cards with questions and not pay attention to any of the details. I don't know anything that's gone on out here. The fact that you guys even have seats is thanks to them. And I want to thank Phil and Craig for being here.

Phil Schiller

Thank you.

John Gruber

Unbelievable. Thank you. [Applause] Last, but not least, thank you for being here.

Phil Schiller

Now we've gotta find the way out.

It's that time of year: Some of us are about to board airplanes, others are frantically packing last-minute supplies, and others still are lounging about in Sacramento until they have to drive in. (Hi, Lory.) Apple kicks off its yearly developer conference this Monday, June 13, at 10am PT and we'll be here. You can follow our journey via the social accounts below, and read on for what we're planning!

When are you getting in?

Serenity

Friday evening! The conference doesn't start until Monday, but I like having the weekend to get situated to west coast time. (And as a plus, I get to spend time with good California friends, and go to wacky things like cat circuses. What is a cat circus? I'll let you know on Saturday night after I view one.)

Bader

I'm already here! I like to park my deck chair and beach umbrella outside Bill Graham a few days early to, you know, scope out the place! Kidding — I'm in SF for something else, which gives me a nice weekend to mentally prepare for Dub Dub. But now that Apple has pre-announced its App Store enhancements, I doubt there's much else to talk about, so I guess I'll be heading home.

Lory

Since I live about 90 miles from San Francisco, it's like I'm always there. I just have to hop in my car and drive into the city. I will, however, be staying in downtown San Francisco Sunday night because traffic is a nightmare during rush hour. Without exaggerating, it would probably take me four hours to go 90 miles on Monday morning. In fact, I made that drive during rush hour last week and it took 3.5 hours.

Mikah

Sunday, Sunday! Last to arrive, first to leave — so it goes for the non-blessed. By non-blessed I mean I won't be at the actual keynote, but I'll be tuning in close by!

Rene

Saturday. I'm always terrified that something will go wrong with my flight, and I'll be stuck somewhere and miss the keynote, so I try to fly in a day early. It's normally more likely in the winter with freezing rain, when I've been stuck in Montreal, or turned around before reaching Toronto, or stuck at Toronto for the better part of a day. But I take no chances!

What do you have planned for the week?

Serenity

I'm up early on Monday to cover the WWDC keynote with Rene and Bader, maybe do a little podcasting action with the folks at Relay, then visit with as many developers and SF-area engineering friends as I can! I'll also be volunteering at Layers on Tuesday and Wednesday: The design conference was my favorite non-WWDC hangout last year, and it's chock-full of wonderful talks and people. And snacks. Oh, the snacks.

Bader

Visiting San Francisco is always a treat, and I try to make the most of it whenever I can. During Dub Dub, that means talking to as many developers as possible, preferably over libations, and learning from my colleagues, whom I rarely get to see in person. Should be great fun!

Lory

Monday will be all about the Keynote, iMore Show podcast, State of the Union, and other WWDC stuff. I'm excited about the iMore/Loop Beard Bash Monday night. It will be great to mingle and meet new people. But really, I'm just there for the party snacks. I am a veritable WWDC noob and have no idea what else to expect for the rest of the week. I'll get to sit in on John Gruber's Talk Show Live, which promises to be very exciting. But really, I'm just there for the snacks. I also have loose plans to meet with friends that live in the Bay for lunch. Everything else is up in the air. I'm ready to embrace all that is WWDC and its outlying events with open arms and an open heart. But, snacks mostly.

Mikah

So, so much! I'm only in town until Wednesday (and I have to be at the airport pretty early on Wednesday), so you'd better believe I'm going to make the most of my first visit to WWDC! Monday we'll be tuning in for the Keynote and podcasting afterward. There's also RelayCon and the Beard Bash on Monday. I'll be doing a live show with Christina Warren and Brianna Wu on Tuesday at AltConf and sneaking in some libations and celebrations with colleagues and new friends throughout. I hope to see and meet some of you there!

Rene

I'm in full-on WWDC mode. I'll be covering the keynote with Ren and Bader on Monday Morning, trying to cram a podcast in with the whole team right after, then hitting State of the Union, the Apple Design Awards, and the iMore/Beard Bash until the wee hours. The rest of the week will be covering sessions, likely watching them multiple times each so I can start writing up all the "Explained" I'm compelled to write each year.

How will you be enjoying the keynote?

Serenity

WWDC was the first event I ever got invited to as a member of the press, so it always holds a special place in my heart: I've covered many conferences and keynotes, but I still love the magic that comes along with thousands of excited developers crammed into a room waiting to hear how the company is going to change their lives (hopefully for the better).

Bader

Feverishly trying to get the best photo of Craig Federighi's luscious hair from every angle. And perhaps some photos of new software announcements.

Lory

I'm honored to be able to crash the Relay FM remote watching party with my cohort Mikah. I've never met any of these awesome, intelligent, and funny people in real life (including Mikah), but I feel like I know them already. I hope they don't mind if I bring my flask of Jameson. Don't worry, I'll share.

Mikah

Lory and I are going to be the rowdy bunch at the Relay FM remote watch party. I was already excited to meet her for the first time, but now there's going to be a flask of Jameson. This meetup is about to be OFF THE CHAIN! (I never say off the chain. Who am I?)

Rene

It's funny, I can't enjoy a keynote when I'm covering it. I can barely even watch it. I need to get into a state where whatever is said is transmitted through my brain, out my fingers, and into the liveblog with as little interference as possible. I'll need to watch it later to enjoy it. Likely several times.

What are you most excited to see this week?

Serenity

Aside from Eddy's new colorful shirt? I can't wait to see what the company has in store for watchOS and the iPad Pro. After a year with both watchOS and the iPad Pro, Apple likely has some pretty solid data on how both devices are being used, and I'm hoping that translates to smarter design for the watch and more power features for the iPad.

Bader

I'm increasingly looking forward to seeing what the company has in store for OS X. Mac's OS has been riding a wave of incrementalism over the past three years — Mavericks, Yosemite, and El Capitan — and I'm ready to see some bigger changes. The aforementioned improvements to the Mac App Store will go a long way, but that and Siri, which is sure to arrive on the Mac in some form, will not satiate me.

I'm also terribly excited for watchOS 3, which should prove to be a fun little update to a fun little product.

Lory

Everything. Every year, Apple blows my mind with something new and exciting. This year will focus on software, and I'm looking forward to the milestone update of iOS 10. I'm also hoping for something big with tvOS. It is still in its infancy and could use a lot of brain-exploding new features. Updates to the Mac software is always a pleasant addition, but learning new stuff can affect my productivity. So, while I'm hoping for some big new features, I'm also hoping we don't get socked in the face with too many major changes all at once. As for watchOS 3.0, I just want them to tell me it will run faster.

Mikah

All. The. Things! I've got a watch on my wrist that's begging to be loaded with beta software, an iPhone that's thirsty for risk, and an iPad that's getting tired of the current way of things. My Mac, however, will not be tasting the beta life. I love it and need it too much to expose it to beta software.

Other than the obvious, I'm really excited to see what it's like being in the city where it happens.

Rene

What's next. Not in a cliched sense, but after redesigns and re-architectures, launches and relaunches, we now have iOS, macOS, watchOS, and tvOS, all in public, all for the first time. It'll still take some time to stabilize, polish up, and round out, but it feels like we're now in place where Apple can start pushing out the next phase of its software vision.

Technology aside, I'm also interested in seeing how Apple balances the keynote. There are those that feel the traditional Steve Jobs-style keynote is still best and any deviation from it is less than ideal. Others feel time has changed and Apple needs to change with it. Everything from SNL-style opening skits to dad jokes to Jimmy and Drake on stage are examples of that clash. Yet it feels like there's a unified approach, somewhere in the middle, that Apple could ride forward.

I'm hoping we see that this year.

What are you dreading?

Serenity

The inevitable post-WWDC hangover/sickness on Thursday when I fly home. (Also, that I have to immediately drive to Philadelphia after getting off a plane. But it's for roller derby camp, so not all bad.)

Bader

Having to go home just a day after the keynote, and the FOMO that comes with missing all the awesome WWDC festivities. Blame the weak Canadian Dollar, and a longing for my own bed.

Lory

Accidentally getting too drunk at the Beard Bash and making a fool of myself, and then having Mikah Snapchat it. I'd be mortified.

Mikah

Travel. Travel stresses me out, I get really anxious and become hyper-aware of everyone sneezing and coughing around me. I'm an anxious human. Can't help it.

I'm also dreading Lory catching me Snapchatting her Beard Bash antics. Something tells me she has a strong kick.

Rene

The pace! WWDC is non-stop from beginning to end. It's a blast, don't get me wrong, but trying to keep up with everything is almost impossible.

Also the internet getting vandalized by same-day hot takes that are really not takes, and think pieces with little thought. But that's the cost of silly Apple headlines getting clicks.

What non-WWDC event are you most looking forward to?

Serenity

There are a lot this year — so many that Apple itself is advertising them! RelayCon on Monday will be great fun, as will the combination iMore/Beard Bash party later that evening; in the daytime, Tuesday and Wednesday is all about Layers, with the evenings reserved for seeing old friends at various gatherings. I am especially looking forward to John Gruber's live Talk Show, and whomever he tricks into appearing on the stage this year. (And hey, now that I have an iPad Pro, I've got a pretty good rig for liveblogging and transcription on the go.)

I'm also looking forward to having the entire core iMore crew (minus the two Gs, Georgia and Gartenberg) in the same room for the FIRST TIME EVER. And I've never met Mikah in person yet; I expect to be Snapchat-tortured and face-swapped. Oh dear.

Bader

This is my first WWDC with the iMore team, so I'm excited about introductions to, and conversations with, new friends. Beard Bash should be a blast, so at the very least, I'll raise a Heineken to everyone who worked so hard to make it happen.

Lory

I'm most excited about spending some non-work time with the iMore team. Most of us are somewhat new to the crew and, since none of us live anywhere near each other, we only communicate via the internet. I've only seen Rene, Serenity, and Bader in real life on two occasions and I've never met Mikah in person. I'm sad that I still won't get to meet Georgia or Michael, but hopefully, that won't be for too much longer.

Mikah

Can I say all of them? Oh, looks like Rene did. ALL OF THEM! I know this is an extremely privileged thing to say, but I'm just looking forward to having a bunch of fun hanging out with my colleagues and friends in a tech-loving environment. These are my people.

Rene

All of them! From Layers to Alt, from parties like the Beard Bash we're co-throwing with Jim Dalrymple to the Talk Show Live, there's more than ever going on around WWDC this year.

It literally sucks that I have to work all week. I'm super-jealous of those that get to attend.

What are your must-eat places in San Francisco?

Serenity

I've been dreaming about Specialty's freshly-made oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, so I guess I have to go get one. Around Moscone, my secret favorite place is the Westfield Mall food court: They have a ton of delicious, high-quality food that's way under above-ground SF prices.

I also may have to get pizza at Zero Zero, since I've done it at every WWDC I've been to.

Bader

My favorite little spot is Naked Lunch, an awesome lunch spot with a great patio on Broadway near Columbus. It's a little out of the way, but being in such close proximity to the beautiful Telegraph Hill, with its gorgeous cross-city vistas, makes it worth the trek. Uphill. Both ways.

Lory

There is this little Mexican food restaurant in the Mission that I love going to called Taqueria Vallarta. They make the best tacos! It is also right up the street from one of my favorite record shops in San Francisco, Thrillhouse Records. There is this awesome crepe place in Japantown called Belly Good Cafe & Crepes. When you get a sweet crepe with a scoop of gelato, they decorate it to look like an adorable little monster.

Mikah

I lived in California growing up, but we never visited San Francisco! I have no idea what food places are must-eat. I do know I'm hunting down delicious macarons (no, not macaroons) and I'm definitely hanging out with Rene at Blue Bottle. Outside of that, who knows?

Rene

Blue Bottle for coffee, but really there's an embarrassment of riches around WWDC. You can find everything from great tea at Yerba Buena to great Mexican, Indian, and Bistro down the alley, to top-flight food of every type in the restaurants surrounding Moscone. And then there's the rest of San Francisco...

Any advice for first-timers at WWDC?

Serenity

Have fun, talk to as many people as your brain will allow (but don't forget to take breaks). Remember it's okay to be by yourself and breathe, and though the FOMO is real, it's not worth stressing over. See who (and what) you can, and enjoy San Francisco's strange pseudo-winter June weather!

Bader

Everyone knows each other, and you know no one. That's OK, because they were all like that, too. Inside, even the cool kids want to meet you; they just don't know it yet. It often seems like the Apple community is one big club to which you'll never know the right password. But the reality is that most people are pretty darn nice, and just take a bit of warming up — much like the pseudo-winter June weather in San Francisco. (Last phrase credit: Serenity Caldwell)

Lory

Since I am a first-timer to WWDC, I'll take any advice you can give me.

Mikah

reads everyone else's answers because he is a first-timer

Rene

Pick your shots. It's impossible to do everything. If you're attending WWDC, get to all the labs and ask all the questions you need to. The sessions are recorded and you can watch them on-demand. Getting to talk to the engineers who work on the frameworks, and getting help with your specific problems, is worth more than the price of the ticket — it's invaluable.

If you're not attending, then still pick your shots. There are so many parties and bars and surrounding events you can't make it to all of them, and you can seriously hurt yourself trying. Don't miss a day or more because you took yourself out on the first night. Think marathon, not sprint, and many things in moderation, not obliterating excess once.

Bottom line: Your top three predictions for WWDC 2016.

Serenity

watchOS 3 will make my Apple Watch Sport feel new again. Eddy will wear a colorful shirt and/or a Warriors jersey (that yellow is pretty colorful!) during the keynote. And I will end up bricking one of my devices with a beta before the end of the week.

Bader

The keynote will be overwhelming, in a good way. Apple Music will get its much-needed visual overhaul. And macOS will remind us how a minor rebranding can do a lot to re-energize a user base.

Lory

Apple will announce new features coming in iOS, watchOS, and tvOS. They will also officially reveal that they are renaming OS X to macOS. An indie game developer will get to show off their super cool, amazing game on the upcoming iOS 10 platform and we'll all go wild about it over the next few months. A band that I know very little, if anything at all, about will play at the very end of the Keynote.

Mikah

No hardware will be announced, Jony Ive won't physically walk across the WWDC keynote stage, and Rene will buy another Apple Watch band.

Rene

Our devices will become smarter again and even more secure. We'll be given more control and more options. Much medium-hanging fruit will be addressed, but not all of it. We'll love some of the new features immediately but others we'll come to appreciate down the road.

And we'll have a lot to talk about between Monday and the fall.

iPhone OS launched nine years ago this June; in that time, we've gone from iPhone to iPad, no third-party apps to the App Store, and from something brand new to something running on a billion devices around the world. Yet on the eve of WWDC 2016, there remain many features we'd love to see iOS 10 branch out and conquer.

Let's start with the setup assistant. It's gotten… rather long and involved. What could Apple do to make setting up a new iPhone or iPad easier and quicker?

Serenity

Much as I loathe the current setup assistant, I'm not sure what Apple could do to simplify matters without taking away initial device functionality. It's a pain for me, but I set up an iOS device as new almost every month; the average user may only see the assistant once a year, if that, and it may not be nearly as arduous a process for them.

I do think that Apple should make the process of restoring from backup a little swifter: Most backup-related material could hypothetically be done over the air (like restoring apps) after the system is in place, but iCloud backups still often take 45 minutes to two hours to restore properly. It'd be nice to see a faster method for getting the end-user a working device more quickly after restoring from backup.

Bader

I'm going to start off a little ranty: I really, thoroughly dislike the new iPhone setup routine. It's long, yes, but it's increasingly disjointed and confusing. Worse is when you need to restore from a previous device; setting up the device as new forces you to reinstall and reconfigure all of your apps manually, while restoring from iCloud (which is the more common scenario over a local Mac backup) is an all-or-nothing affair. The problem is that there is usually a considerable amount of cruft in my iCloud backups. I like Android's solution here: selective restoration of apps and settings. If that were possible, I'd probably spend less time downloading and logging into the 30 or so essential apps I use every day.

On the iPad, the setup procedure has not been optimized for the larger screen real estate, which is very unlike Apple, and gives an unfavorable first impression. So let's change that, too, while we're at it.

Lory

It's been a long time since I've set up an iPhone from new. I usually restore one from a recent backup. But, even when I'm syncing content from a backup, the setup process does take a long time. For a brand new iPhone or iPad owner, this could probably seem daunting. It might be helpful if Apple implemented a way to enable the setup features only when you are about to need to use them. For example, Apple could postpone requesting you to decide on Location Services until you actually open the Maps app or another app that requires the feature.

Mikah

Hold up, is it actually called setup buddy? You learn something new …

I do get tired of going through the setup process over and over and over and over again, but I think I prefer it to the alternative: not having nuanced control over the basic settings for my device. I mean, most settings have a Skip button — if you don't feel like setting something up, just skip over it. I guess if there's anything I'd like to see changed, it's that iOS would get a little smarter about knowing whether I'm setting up a brand new device or just updating the operating system on a device I'm currently using. Rene's Manual vs. Automatic paths are essentially what I'm looking for.

Gartenberg

It's actually gotten better over time. Remember the first iPhone. I talked to a few new users, they had no issues with the current setup. Longer time users might have some complaints but hard to do much better

Rene

I'd split Setup Buddy into two paths at this point: manual and automatic. Manual would let you individually toggle and set up each and every feature. Automatic would have you log into iCloud, setup Touch ID, Siri, and Apple Pay, and set everything else to default. Then, at the end, give the option to review settings, and the ability to go back through it at any time.

Siri is on everyone's short list. How can Apple's digital assistant capture more natural language hearts and minds?

Serenity

Siri needs reliability, speed, and smarts to truly vault over the rest of the voice assistant pack. And some sort of access to third-party apps.

Bader

We've spoken about this at length, but Siri needs to graduate from virtual high school. The assistant is pretty capable already, but I want Siri to be able to plug into third-party apps so, in addition to starting a playlist from Apple Music, I can do so from Spotify or TIDAL, or (god forbid) Google Play Music.

And let me input text to chat with Siri instead of relying almost entirely on voice. Spotlight search is already pretty good, but let's take that one step further.

Lory

Siri needs to be better at learning how we talk. If I use a lot of "ums" and "ers," it should learn my style and adjust accordingly. It should take into account regional accents and people who speak using a secondary language. It also needs to get better at understanding vagaries. I'd really be happy if the first time I asked Siri to do something, it got it right.

Mikah

Wait, didn't we talk about this recently? ;)

I want Siri to take a few pages out of the Amazon Alexa playbook. I want to trust my virtual assistant again; right now I opt out of using Siri as often as possible, because it disappoints me more often than it does what I ask it to do. If Apple could improve Siri's success rate, open it up to third parties, and improve upon its existing capabilities, I'll be a happy camper. But that's a lot to ask, so we'll see!

Gartenberg

Siri needs to become HAL 9000 but without the locking me out of myself and trying to kill me. For the foreseeable future? It's all more smoke and mirrors, AI is a long way off. I hope

Rene

Voice ID has stopped accidental and malicious activations, but intentional ones still aren't reliable enough. I'd also like to have alternate activation phrases and the ability to type rather than talk to Siri. And yes, Siri Voice Free.

An API would be great, since the more services the better the overall service, but it would need to handle competing and colliding apps and services gracefully, and work internationally. No small feat.

I'd also love more of "this". "Remind me about this" is great. "Share this", and letting me send anything to iMessage, Mail, Twitter, Facebook, etc., "Read this" and having any text converted to speech, "Protect this" and having it lock down, and so on would be phenomenally convenient.

What about the venerable Home screen? Can Apple let Siri and Spotlight slowly take over, or does it need a re-thinking? iPad-specific?

Serenity

I've spoken at length about my iPad home screen desires, so I won't expound on those too much more here. Needless to say, we're about to hit iOS 10 — not only is 10 a significant milestone, but it's a pretty good excuse for taking another look at the Home screen and the purpose it serves. Personally, I would love to see some widget/Notification Center integration straight on the screen, rather than endless rows of apps and folders.

Bader

I rarely use the homescreen to launch apps anymore. I either swipe down to launch from Spotlight, or already have it open and 3D Touch on the left side of my iPhone 6s Plus to quickly open the multitasking menu. The problem right now, though, is that many apps added Spotlight Search capabilities with iOS 9, but there is no way to prioritize those listings. I often want to jump into Transit app to check when the next 505 streetcar is coming (the name of the line), but typing that into Spotlight brings up a number of results before it figures out that I am talking about Transit App.

On the iPad, I want better density on the home screen, and improved keyboard shortcuts for getting around.

Lory

I love the idea of the Home screen being something more like a dashboard where you keep widgets similar to how the Today view in Notification Center works. I use spotlight more often than not when looking for an app I want to open, so there really is no need to keep apps on the Home screen at all. I would be much happier if I could use a widget that showed me the current temperature or upcoming calendar events instead.

Mikah

This is going to upset a few people, but I'd love to see an Androidy Home screen. I like widgets, I like nuanced control over the placement of my apps, and I like hiding or showing apps at my discretion. Forgive me for the blasphemy, but I think Android is superior when it comes to the Home screen paradigm.

As it stands, I mostly use Spotlight search to find and launch apps I use less frequently. My most used apps exist on their own on my Home screen; the rest are stashed in folders labeled with single letters (I don't have the time or the desire to organize them).

Gartenberg

a screen of icons worked… for the first iPhone. Even folders don't work. It's time to think beyond grids of apps and folders of apps

Rene

As much as some people turn their noses up at the Home page, the static grid of icons is what's made iOS accessible to the widest group of people in the history of computing. The "minus one" Home screen has recommended apps, that offer a dynamic alternative, and Spotlight and Siri allow for targeted launch on demand. 3D Touch even lets you launch straight into actions inside apps.

That said, I think I'd prefer recommended and favorite apps in Notification Center, so they're available everywhere and at any time. Rich notifications would be great as well. With extensibility, features can be pulled from apps and shown anywhere. Why not in notifications?

For iPad, I'd still love it if Apple gave it a distinct, tablet-optimized Home screen, the way the company has Watch and TV. I know Apple sees Home screen as a portal and not a destination, and I have a hard time imagining what would be valuable enough that sacrificing consistency with iPhone would be worth it, but it feels like there could be something there. And not just multiple picture-in-picture apps.

Speaking of which, better and more consistent ways of switching apps in Split View would be so nice. Left/primary one way and right/secondary another way just adds to cognitive load. Also, make it view based rather than app based, so multiple instances of the same app are possible, and add the ability to drag and drop data and objects between compatible views, and the sky's the limit.

I'd also love to be able to lock any app or data item with Touch ID or a password. That way, if I ever need to hand someone my iPhone or iPad, my messages, photos, documents, and other content could still be safe.

Control Center is easier — the evolution from static to dynamic content will make it more valuable all on its own.

Oh, and complications for the Lock screen please. Being able to see activity, weather, scores, calendar and reminders, and other small snippets of data and information would be fantastic.

Messaging is hot, hot, hot. Does iMessage need to evolve in a Google and Facebook bot world?

Serenity

Please! iMessage is one of my most-used chatting platforms, but I find myself missing bits from Slack, Facebook Messenger, and GroupMe, including support for inline links and gif searches. And what about emoji reactions? Third-party keyboards make this partially functional, but I'd much prefer a built-in iMessage toolbar for such things.

Also, I mentioned this in our OS X roundtable, but I would love for iMessage to treat group messages properly, and combine messages from the same person (but at different numbers) so they aren't all in separate threads.

Bader

I like iMessage, but I do want peer-to-peer money transfer support, in-line link expansion, and improved deactivation handoffs. This is a pretty specific problem, but as someone who regularly turns off iMessage while testing Android devices for Android Central, I often leave my friends in iMessage purgatory, where messaging me in an existing thread results in an error instead of automatically sending it as an SMS. I don't know what Apple can do to fix this, but perhaps even a prompt to create a new non-iMessage SMS thread would go a long way.

Lory

I don't think iMessage needs any kind of updates or changes. I am very happy with the features that Apple's native chat app comes with. You can send videos, audio clips, or text. You can use third-party keyboards to grab GIFs and stickers. I think bots have the potential to greatly improve convenience in our daily lives, but I don't think iMessage needs to participate in it. You have a choice when deciding to use a third-party chat app like Slack, Hangouts, or Messenger, but every cell phone uses some sort of texting feature and I wouldn't want to worry about what types of data my iPhone's text service was collecting in order to provide me with convenience.

Mikah

I don't need bots in my iMessage app, but man-oh-man do I want iMessage to be more like Slack! Heck, I've all but memorized all the Slack emoji shortcuts. It'd be so awesome to react to messages with emoji like I can in Slack. Doubling down, it'd also be nice to see link expansion in iMessage.

Daniel mentioned peer-to-peer money transfer; I don't know why Apple hasn't done this already. The latest hotness is totes sending money to your friends with an app or some other service. If Apple wants to supercharge Apple Pay adoption, peer-to-peer money transfer is a fantastic way to do so.

Gartenberg

I love messaging. It works. Please don't try to fix it.

Rene

I'd like confirmation dialogs so I can't accidentally send anyone a selfie or my location. The ability to favorite messages would also be helpful, as would moving VIP from a mail-only feature to a Contact-level feature so I can be notified for some but not all messages.

I'm not sure if "bots" of the future of messaging, but the ability to @siri, @notes, @calendar, etc. and immediately shoot text commands, queries, and strings without having to change contexts would be sweet.

Sending money would also be great, though would require far broader support, including peer-to-peer tap-to-Apple pay and a way to get money out of the system.

Camera and Photos, what needs to happen there?

Bader

I would like a native Professional Mode in the Camera app, or the option of defaulting to a third-party camera app from the lock screen. One or the other, Apple.

I'm thrilled with the Photos app, though. iCloud Photo Library works perfectly, and syncs quickly with its Mac counterpart.

Serenity

I'm with Bader: More manual features in the default Camera app, please. I love shooting with apps like Obscura, but the convenience factor is much lower; and when it comes down to it, I'm more likely to launch the Camera app from its shortcut than manually finding an app from the home screen.

On the Photos side, GIF support. Please. The lack of GIF display (and iCloud Photo Library archive support) is painful.

Lory

I've never been particularly impressed with the interface of the built-in Camera app. Zoom, for example, is painfully behind the times. You still have to use two-finger pinch to zoom in and out. How about a single-finger drag? I can't stand that all of the options and tools are right on the camera viewfinder screen when taking photos. I'd like to be able to hide them, so I can use the entire iPhone screen, unobscured.

The Photos app is pretty decent on iOS, especially on the iPhone. Content is organized chronologically in your personal collection, plus you can access content from various albums, including smart albums that automatically separate certain pictures based on available data, like Selfies, Panoramas, Snapchats, and more. The iCloud Photo Sharing feed is a little clunky. I'm not a fan of the Activity folder. It could use an updated interface design.

Mikah

Give me more power over my camera if I want it. I know there are loads of nifty third-party apps that offer up all the control in the world, but there's some sort of psychological block for me: I don't quite feel right taking control of the camera outside of the camera app. I know, weird.

As for Photos, leave it be! It's fast, it's friendly, and it's nice to look at. I guess if there's anything I'd like to see added here, it's more discovery features. I enjoy it when apps like Google Photos or Timehop send me a notification telling me to "remember X day." Apple should borrow this feature for Photos.

Gartenberg

The brilliance of camera is I don't need to futz with settings. If I want to do that, I'd use a Leica. I want camera to be simple and make all the hard decisions for me. I would like more control over cached files that Google Photos gives me

Rene

You can search for Faces in Photos, but only if you've set them up on the Mac. I'd love that to become native to iOS as well. Anything to make finding photos and videos faster.

I'd like a normalization of what starring means on iOS as well. In some apps it's bookmarking, in others biasing. What I'd really like is for anything I star to automatically go into an easy-to-find folder, and be cached locally and never purged.

Also, Live Photos folder please.

Okay, we've braced ourselves… Apple Music, go!

Serenity

Haven't I complained enough about Apple Music for one lifetime? No? Okay. My biggest picks for iOS 10 are an interface declutter, custom offline support for tracks, and making For You even better.

Bader

I'm with Lory: do a better job separating offline content from online, and break out iCloud Music Library content from Apple Music. And give me lyrics support.

Lory

I know that some people have been through a lot of pain and suffering in terms of Apple Music, but I've been fairly satisfied with the service, overall. I'd like Apple to get rid of Connect altogether because it seems like a waste of effort for all parties involved.

The user interface on iOS is a little awkward. It isn't easy to figure out how to access content by artist, album, or song unless you are familiar with the interface. If you turn on the "Only Downloaded Music" feature, you might accidentally confuse yourself when you can't find playlists you created, but haven't downloaded for offline listening. But the mechanics of the app work for me. I haven't spent the past 10 years crafting the perfect digital music library, though. So, I'm easier to please.

Mikah

Meh. Meh, meh, meh. Meh.

"Make it better" isn't a helpful request, so I'll say this: Restore my faith in Apple Music by making sure it does a better job letting me know what music is mine and what music isn't mine and helping me understand why sometimes I'll open up the app and all the music I downloaded for offline listening is suddenly not available locally anymore.

Oh, and I agree with my colleagues: HELLO, WHY DON'T I ALREADY HAVE LYRICS IN THE MUSIC APP‽

Gartenberg

ack. I don't like music anymore. The app that is. Too much pushing me to subscribe, a lousy UI. This needs a lot of thought, think first iPhone

Rene

Apple Music has an impossible job. Unlike most Apple apps, it lacks opinion and so tries to cater to too many disparate use cases for it to do any of them well.

I only ever use Music via Siri: "Play Mistachuck" and Mistachuck I get. Others want all nine versions of the same Ozzy song they've ripped and carefully tagged over the years. Let iTunes Match serve the old case, Apple Music the new, label both cleanly, and don't let them mess with each other's data.

For me, Continuity for media would be the biggest improvement Apple could do. That way I could start watching on my iPhone, handoff to Apple TV when I get into the living room, then handoff again to iPad when I want to retire for the evening, and never have to stop watching.

Any other Apple apps you'd like to see changed? Maps, Mail, Calendar, News?

Serenity

It'll never happen, but: Let me set my default routing app in Settings. I'd love to use Maps, since the app is actually quite good, but the data is just terrible in New England where I drive. On more than one occasion, I've been taken down strange side streets or unpaved roads; it's just not worth the hassle. The company could also improve its traffic data; Google is outright smoking Maps thanks to its Waze integration. (Google's new "multiple stops" and "search while on a current route" features are also must-haves for Maps.)

Bader

Let me hide or delete apps I don't use, like Maps, Mail, Calendar and News. I use third-party equivalents of all of these, and resent the increasingly-full "Rotten Apple" folder on my home screen.

As for the apps themselves, Maps needs better traffic data (for Toronto, at least) before it will replace Google Maps or Waze. Outlook or GTFO; I haven't used native Mail since Google turned off Exchange support for Gmail, because IMAP. Calendar? Fantastical 4 Lyfe. News? Bring it to Canada and we'll talk.

Sorry, I know that's not useful, but I can't talk about apps I don't use.

Lory

I don't use very many of Apple's built-in apps because there are so many third-party apps with better design aesthetic. I don't like the way the gestures work in the Mail app, or that you can't swipe to delete a message.

The calendar app is too plain. On iPhone, there is no weekly view in portrait mode and the combination monthly view with to-do list seems too packed. I'd also really like to be able to connect third-party apps like Trello or TripIt.

I was so disappointed with the Maps app when it first launched that I've never been able to get back into using it, even though I know Apple has made major improvements since it launched. However, it still lacks some important features that are essential for me. Until very recently, the Maps app didn't even have transportation data in my city, which is California's state capital. It's not like I live in a small, rural town or anything. The nearby business search feature could use some work.

What I'd really like, is to be able to hide built-in apps that I don't use. Sure, I can stick them in a folder and ignore them, but there should be an option to toggle them off on the Home screen if you don't use them. They could still be accessible from Spotlight search.

Mikah

Spoken like a bunch of power-users, I get the feeling most of us don't use many of Apple's built-in apps. As for me: * Maps: I use Google Maps. I used to use Apple Maps, but I started using Google Maps again four or so months ago and I've not looked back since. I find the voice direction and detailed turn-by-turn directions, coupled with the accuracy and always-up-to-date maps available on Google Maps to outweigh the benefit of Apple Maps OS-level integration. Bring all those things to Apple Maps and I'll switch back! * Mail: I use Airmail. Airmail syncs everything and then some across all my devices, it offers snooze support, it handles Gmail accounts better, it's feature-rich, and it gets me to Inbox Zero faster than any other mail app I've ever used. If iOS Mail brings in snooze support and syncing across devices (both iOS and macOS), I'd consider trying it out again. * Calendar: I use Fantastical. The day iOS Calendar makes it as fast and easy as Fantastical to set an appointment is the day I consider switching back. Probably still won't, though. * News: I use Twitter. No, seriously. I tried using iOS News for a time, but it always ended up giving me a bunch of news I didn't care about (no matter how many times I tried to provide feedback).

Gartenberg

It's hard to pick, so many third parties have exceeded but that's OK. Apple should be pushing developers to go far beyond native apps and show what's possible

Rene

When I clean-installed iOS 8, I started fresh and didn't download any apps I didn't need. Eighteen months later and I'm still using all of Apple's built-in apps and I'm as efficient and productive as ever. I don't use my inbox as a to-do list nor do I reduce it to zero, so I'm fine with Mail. But, as with all things Apple, search needs to be improved. I can find things faster using Spotlight from the Home screen than from within Mail, and that's flabbergasting.

I'd also like News to be a system-level service, combined with Siri recommendations, and Siri Reading List and Shared Links, then put the combined list back into all of those places. One News to rule them all.

Maps just needs to keep getting better. No mapping service is good enough, so constant improvement is all there is.

What about the App Store, what can Apple do there?

Serenity

In a nutshell, "Fix it." There's a lot of good inside the App Store — curated lists, great recommendations, and fantastic apps. But they often get buried in the noise. I'd love to see an App Store that looks more like For You in the Music app: a combination of custom-created and algorithmic information that gives you the best apps based on your tastes and past purchases.

Bader

Better search. Better search. Better search.

App discover has improved since Phil Schiller decided that the Featured panel should be updated more than once per week. I love the emphasis on local content and independent developers, and a renewed focus on pay-once utility apps over freemium games.

That said, discovering the myriad hidden gems on the App Store, especially on the gaming side, is still too difficult. I would love the equivalent of a personalized For You panel based on the apps I've downloaded and used.

Lory

Discovery in the App Store has been nothing short of abysmal since day one. I have been pleased with the way Apple staff takes care to spotlight certain apps and games that stand out, but it still seems like a lot of great content still gets lost in the constant barrage of daily app releases. I'd like one section that literally just shows every single new app that comes out every day. That section could have filters, like genres or current star ratings, but I want to be able to make those decisions myself. Why doesn't Apple let us see every single app that gets published in the App Store?

The search function in the App Store is also the worst I've ever used. How is it that I can type in the exact name of an app and it shows up tenth on the list, or sometimes not at all? Please, Apple, take some time to perfect the search function in the App Store.

Mikah

I want Genius for the App Store: "You launch this game more than any other game on your iPhone. You might also like …" I know, I know, we're pretty Google with that, but think about it: Apple already displays this information in your battery settings — why not make use of it to help you find apps that you'd enjoy?

Other than that, I hope Apple continues to do more of the same Re: App Store featuring. It's been nice opening up the App Store every day to find new apps worth checking out. It's a great change from the weekly features of yesteryear.

Gartenberg

It's tough. If I knew the answer I'd work for Ron Okamoto but it's hard to find new cool apps. It's something I hear over and over. "How do I stand out in the app store without knowing Phil Schiller's email?"

Rene

Yeah, better search. I get that iTunes infrastructure is from a previous age, but search is a solved problem. Like Serenity says, "For You" for Apps would be fantastic. So would App Store for iCloud.

I'm not sure what the future of apps is. Extensibility, which sets features free from binary blobs, Continuity, which syncs activities between devices, and App Thinning, which sends only the assets and content an app needs, when it needs it, have all fundamentally changed what it means to be an app.

How Apple continues to adapt to and push this future is what I'm most interested in seeing.

Xcode for iPad, is it time?

Serenity

I want it. But I don't know if we'll get a "full" version. I think something like Playgrounds for iPad is a much more likely start on the mobile platform, with full Xcode coming down the line.

Bader

The iPad a computer, right? So, yes.

Lory

The only thing I've ever used Xcode for is to take screenshots of my Apple TV, so I'm definitely not qualified to make a statement on whether it should be made available on iPad, but I will anyway. If Apple wants consumers to think of the iPad Pro as some version of a replacement for the laptop, then they should make programs like Xcode available on them. The iPad Pro doesn't have to look and act like a PC or Mac, but it should at least have most of the same content available in one form or another.

Mikah

Yes. Yes, please. If the iPad can run everything it needs to without a hiccup, this absolutely should happen.

Who knows, maybe Xcode for iPad is the thing that finally gets me to get serious about developing for iOS!

Gartenberg

iPad is a PC, treat it as such.

Rene

If it's done in a way developers can make full-on apps, then absolutely. A platform that can be used to develop its own apps is a full-on platform.

Developers will still want and need Macs for workflows and power, at least for a while, but the ability to code from iOS will be transformative.

HomeKit, how does it become more of a thing?

Serenity

More devices, and a central HomeKit app wouldn't be too shabby. The third-party options aren't bad at all, but this is a place where Apple could drive adoption of HomeKit acccessories with a great app and advertisements for the products in the HomeKit universe.

Bader

By talking about it! A HomeKit hub would be a good place to start (though an optional download, please!), but Apple really needs to take ownership of this category by grouping disparate experiences into a single place. The Apple Store app isn't the right place for this, either, because HomeKit products are primarily app- and Siri-based experiences.

Lory

The first suggestion on my list is price. Apple doesn't have very many partners in the internet-of-things department, and the ones they do have are producing high-end products. HomeKit would probably get more love from consumers if there were a bigger variety on what it costs to outfit your home with the latest technology. This would likely require Apple partnering with more companies and lowering the cost for developers to certify their products.

My second suggestion is a HomeKit app, one that acts as a hub for everything you have connected to it. It would be great to be able to open the HomeKit app and set a lighting scene, adjust the temperature, and time the door locks all at the same time, instead of having to open individual apps.

Mikah

Repeat after me: HomeKit app. HomeKit app. HomeKit app.

Did it work? I thought if we said it three times, a HomeKit app would appear.

Gartenberg

ack. It's a mess. I need to control all my stuff from one place. Third party apps shouldn't be needed

Rene

Home.app. There are third party apps that do the management, but if third-party apps are needed to do the management, it's a good indicator Apple needs to take ownership. So hopefully the internal tool gets polished and made external.

From there it's just the more accessories the better. Once you experience the magic of Siri controlling your home, you want it for everything.

Then you want it to do more of everything.

Bottom line time — what else would you love to see from iOS 10?

Serenity

Apple's direction for iOS for the next ten years. We got multitasking in iOS 4, iCloud and Siri in iOS 5, Maps in iOS 6, a new design interface in iOS 7, Continuity and HomeKit in iOS 8, and Smart Search in iOS 9. iOS 10 is a chance for Apple to take all of the features of the past and set a roadmap for future mobile greatness — and make the iPad a first-class computing citizen, while the company's at it.

Bader

iOS 9 introduced so many iPad-specific features, it almost felt like the iPhone was overlooked. Context and improved Spotlight Search have proven useful, sure, but I'd love to see Apple recommit to making the iPhone the best pocket computer in the world. A better home screen; more powerful camera app; improved notification workflow. Those are the easy ones. The one I'd really love to see, as a mobile payments geek? Making Apple Pay into a fully-functioning platform, with an open API that leverages its existing convenience and security.

Lory

I'd like to see better practical use for Siri, major overhauls for the built-in apps, and a bunch of new wallpapers, especially Dynamic wallpapers. I'm bored with floating bubbles. At least give me some new shapes.

Mikah

Make Siri great again for real this time. I think if I'm going to have a virtual assistant across my devices (including macOS if rumors hold up), I want it to be powerful and helpful and accurate and trustworthy. Apple, I hope you're looking at Siri and telling it to get its act together for the good of all Applekind.

Other than that, just the typical desires: more battery life, fewer crashes (already rare), feature-rich apps, and a matter transporter.

Gartenberg

A lot of things, I won't likely see. I think it's time for a new UI, something that feels well beyond the first iPhone. We're not there yet.

Rene

My list goes on! Lock screen complications, so I can get activity, weather, scores, and other data without having to open my iPhone or iPad. System-wide night mode or theme engine, a customizable Control Center, rich notifications with enough interface inside them for deeper interactions, FaceTime conference calls, leaderboards and challenges in Activities so those of us who are extrinsically motivated can compete with each other on the road to fitness, A Synergy-style hub where communications are aggregated by contact, not locked in app silos. Yeah, on and on...

iPhone is the most important device I have. It can never be too convenient, so anything that makes doing more easier, I'm all up for. iPad is the future of computers, so anything that makes it as powerful as possible without losing its approachability, I'm also all up for.

Those are the north stars. Make my life easier and let me do more from anywhere.

Every year, thousands of reporters and developers make the anguishing decision of what gear to carry with them to San Francisco before WWDC. This year is no exception: While there aren't likely to be any significant hardware product announcements during the keynote, I tend to carry a bare minimum of video gear with me wherever I go, just in case. So what's in my bag for WWDC 2016?

• Timbuk 2 Command TSA-Friendly Backpack: I bought this for my recent trip to Google I/O, and did not regret it for a second. This is my third Timbuk 2 bag, and I am more impressed with every purchase. Great design, with plenty of space and intelligently-placed compartments for all my minutiae, the Command has a 31-liter capacity for all my camera gear, and a separate waterproof side compartment for my MacBook, iPad and e-reader. The beauty of this bag is that there is really no compromise: while it's certainly bigger than any backpack I've owned before, it doesn't feel onerous, and my hefty payload is well distributed.
• 13-inch MacBook Pro: My single most important piece of gear, the MacBook is the epicenter of my professional life. As important as my iPhone is for casual tasks when I'm home, my mid-2015 MacBook Pro — with a Core i7 and 16GB of RAM — is essential on the road.
• iPhone 6s Plus: My next-most-important piece of gear, my iPhone 6s Plus is my main camera (despite appearances), my mapping tool, my lifeline home, and in many cases, my Wi-Fi hotspot. Not pictured: a 13,000mAh Anker battery pack to keep my iPhone charged at all times.
• iPad Pro 9.7: The smaller iPad Pro is, for me, all about typing. When I want to write long form in full-screen with no other apps open, I go to the iPad: There's something calming about writing on it. Of course, that longform productivity requires the optional Smart Keyboard, which is permanently affixed to my iPad Pro's Smart Connector. So much smartness.
• Apple Watch: Because you have to be able to tell the time. And receive notifications. And use Authy for quick two-factor authentication. And maybe even send a heartbeat to Rene or Serenity through Digital Touch (but probably not). But mainly to tell the time.
• Nikon D750 DSLR w/ 24mm f2.8 prime lens: My go-to shooter for most things, the Nikon D750 is a versatile and relatively compact full-frame camera. While it's not great for video, it does a decent job when paired with the 24mm f2.8 prime lens. I'll mainly be using it for any hands-on video I might take, or just for shooting photos of the iMore team as we dominate WWDC. For the keynote, I'll be using Lory's 55-300mm zoom lens, which on the full-frame D750 has a 82-450mm zoom range, due to the sensor crop. That means I'll be getting right up in Eddy Cue's nose hairs — if you're into that sort of thing.
• Zoom H5 travel microphone: Simply the best way to capture audio while traveling, the Zoom H5 is great on its own with its included stereo condenser microphone, which we'll be using for the iMore show after the keynote, and its optional XLR inputs for grabbing audio from up to two external microphones. An essential tool for any traveling podcaster/videographer.
• Padcaster shotgun microphone and LED light: The sidekicks to the video gear's superheroes, the Padcaster shotgun microphone and LED light combo are great for live indoor filming where the lighting isn't great, or it's impractical to use a lav microphone. I may not use these at all — we'll see.
• Audeze Sine headphones: A great pair of headphones on their own, Audeze's Sine on-ear planar magnetic 'phones are the first I've used with an optional Lightning cable. Plugged into the iPhone directly, the Sines bypass the phone's regular DAC, opting instead for its own more-powerful version built right into the cord itself. Great stuff.
• Not pictured: Lots of cables, cords and other accessories that will inevitably clutter up my bag. On trips like this, I always bring a Thunderbolt-to-Ethernet adapter, in case I come across wired internet somewhere and need to plug in. Also: good hand cream, because flying dries me out, man. Also also: a Kindle Voyage e-reader ((/imore-show-512-no-new-macs?utm_medium=slider&utm_campaign=navigation&utm_source=im)) and a portable tripod.

• Read: What's in Rene's gear bag
• Read: What's in Lory's gear bag
• Read: What's in Mikah's gear bag
• Read: What's in Serenity's gear bag

Smart home. An abused term to be sure, but given the burgeoning popularity of products like the Nest Learning Thermostat and Amazon Echo, to name but two, an important one.

With rumors swirling that Apple will release its own Siri-powered living room "hub" to compete with Amazon and Google, a new machine learning arms race is on. Despite claims by Google's CEO that the company is "orders of magnitude" ahead of the competition in terms of conversational A.I. and machine learning, Apple is no stranger to the space, having curated an increasingly capable Siri voice assistant for nearly half a decade.

And then there's the fact that Apple already has a huge head start when it comes to hardware penetration, with millions of people accessing Siri through their always-listening iPhones and easy-to-reach Apple TVs.

First, what's your current relationship with Siri? Casual acquaintance or something steamy?

Serenity

Oh, Siri. I really want to love Apple's voice assistant, but misunderstandings get in the way: This is the kind of product where if it screws up once, your confidence is shaken. Especially when you're attempting tasks while your attention is otherwise occupied. I do use Siri often in the car, and it sends me into frustrated rage approximately 40 percent of the time — usually when it horribly mangles music suggestions or aborted voice texts. When it works, it's glorious; when it doesn't, I give up.

I will say that I've had a much better experience with both Siri on the Apple Watch and Siri on the Apple TV: I'd attribute that largely to the microphone being held closer to your voice when you speak, and the relatively limited queries in contrast with the iPhone.

Rene

I use Siri all the time. I use it to control the lights in my house. I use it to call and text family and friends. I use it to dictate notes. It's gotten to the point where Siri has made me so lazy I can barely stand to type on an iPhone.

But, yeah, Siri is cruel. More often that ought to be possible, Siri won't respond. One minute I'm all "Hey, Siri this" and "Hey, Siri that" and it's working beautifully. The next minute, Siri acts like it doesn't know me. And that's frustrating.

Lory

I've got a somewhat casual relationship with Siri. I know it is a useful feature with lots of productivity tools at my disposal, but I've never really gotten the hang of talking into my iPhone when there isn't a human on the other end. If I'm trying to quickly find out some information, I'll turn to Siri for help because it can usually produce results faster than if I were to go through the steps of looking something up.

Bader

Like a child learning how to speak, count and perform simple tasks, Siri is a delightful and often vexing companion. She always listens, which is great, but more often than not misinterprets what I'm saying. That's why I keep my requests simple and to the point: set an alarm; turn on my lights; hold this grocery bag.

The contrast with Google's voice assistant, Now (soon to be known simply as the Google assistant) is also quite interesting. Because Android phones have access to Google's entire knowledge base and search results — and a bunch of your personal information — it can cater results more specifically. But I know that every time I make one of those requests, Google is slicing off a bit more of my privacy.

Mikah

You promise Siri's not going to see this? OK, cool.

See, Siri and I used to have a pretty good thing going, but our relationship has since faded. You know when you work really hard at a relationship and you make affordances for the sake of it? Well, that's Siri and me. Siri does a few things really well: setting timers, doing math calculations, transcribing text messages. The rest of it (setting calendar events, setting reminders, answering basic questions) has failed too many times for me to trust Siri can get the job done.

And, well, there's another virtual assistant in my life. And it has disappointed me far, far less. Its name is Alexa. Now, Rene would tell me it's not quite fair to compare Siri and Alexa, because the rest of the world (i.e. outside of the U.S.) doesn't have it — and that's a fair point. That said, I do have both and I do compare them. Alexa is bae, Siri is not.

Gartenberg

Siri and I used to be close but lately the relationship has cooled. It's like the more we speak the less we seem to understand each other. Sure, superficially it's fine but try to have an in depth conversation just doesn't work. Of course, I've yet to meet an AI that can really hold their own.

Where do you use Siri most? iPhone, Apple Watch… Apple TV?

Serenity

Currently, Apple TV and Watch. Once I got into the habit, asking the Apple TV for a show is infinitely easier than trying to remember which streaming service owns the media I want to watch, then navigating through its app to find the show page. On the Watch, I use Siri for text replies, timers, and weather questions.

Rene

iPhone 6s Plus, because of untethered "Hey, Siri". I just use it for everything. Apple TV is fighting it out with Apple Watch for second place. Apple Watch doesn't talk back, which I find a little weird still, and Apple TV requires the button be held down, which is terribly inconsistent with iPhone behavior. Whichever gets better first will win the silver.

Lory

Apple TV, hands down. I use Siri on my iPhone occasionally, mostly when I'm showing off to my friends. I'll also use it sometimes when I'm driving and need to access something on my iPhone right away. I rarely use Siri on Apple Watch. It's just too slow. On Apple TV, however, I use it all the time to search for content, play music, and open apps. I'm not sure why I'm more comfortable using Siri on Apple TV than anything else, but it seems easier to use than not use.

Bader

I tend to use Siri most on my Apple Watch, which feels incredibly natural. The things I use Siri for — setting alarms, timers, and checking the weather — are usually off-the-cuff interactions, where I don't always have my phone close at hand. And while I could use the always-on "Hey Siri" mode on my iPhone 6s Plus, there is something satisfying and tactile about holding down the Digital Crown to engage it.

I do use Siri on the Apple TV, because typing is so profoundly difficult on that on-screen keyboard (and the Remote app is a poor substitute). When search via Siri works, it's remarkable — play Chill playlist; find movies with Charlize Theron — but more often than not, Siri doesn't have enough hooks into third-party apps… which leads me to our next point.

Mikah

I use Siri on my iPhone more than anywhere else. It's fast, it hears everything I'm saying, and it just seems to work more often than not when compared to the other places Siri exists.

When it comes to Apple Watch, my arm gets tired by the time Siri finishes loading up my request … maybe I should exercise more often.

As for Apple TV, I never use Siri. Truly, I've never once activated Siri intentionally on my Apple TV. My Apple TV is mostly a Netflix box; I don't need no stinkin' Siri!

Gartenberg

Phone. Siri is great for telling me the weather, setting alarms and timers or placing calls. Perhaps one day there will be better Siri integration in Apple TV but at this point Siri just doesn't have hooks deep enough in all services.

When you do talk to Siri, what do you two talk about?

Serenity

On the iPhone and Watch, it's all about texts, weather information, and playing music. On the Apple TV, I'll ask for shows, have it bring up apps, and use that nifty voice rewind feature. Siri also loves to butt into my conversations, thanks to the always-on "Hey Siri" feature my iPhone 6s has — I know I can turn it off, but I've so far been stubborn (thinking, "Hey, maybe I'll need to remotely trigger Siri one of these days!").

Rene

Turn on my studio lights. Make them purple. Turn off the kitchen lights. Call Georgia on speaker. Text Serenity "I'm almost finished the round table, I swear!". Take a note: "Siri vs. Alexa is hilarious to people outside the U.S…" Play Smooth Criminal. Play Smooth Criminal by Alien Ant Farm. Play Smooth Criminal by Glee. Yes, seriously! What time is it in Hong Kong? Remind me to fix the cabinet when I get to mom's house. Add "read the roundtable" to my calendar on Friday at 4pm. Search Google for "which voice assistants actually work in Canada?"

Lory

I'm always asking Siri for suggestions for music, movies, and TV shows. It tracks down entertainment for me. I also ask Siri about celebrities. If I can't remember who was in a certain movie, Siri can find that out for me, as well as the age of the actor, all of the other movies he or she has been in, and more. Sometimes, Siri doesn't understand what I'm saying and I'll call it names or make fun of it. I like that Apple gave it a personality. It makes it fun to be silly with it.

Bader

What's interesting about Siri is how her practical utility depends on your expectations. Indeed, I derive a lot of utility from hooks into first-party apps like Music and Messages, but I skip right over her when I want to learn about something from the web — even if Wolfram Alpha would give me a decent response.

Mikah

None of your business.

OK, fine. Siri turns off my lights at night (because my Amazon Echo is downstairs out of earshot). Siri helps me set timers. Siri helps me dictate text messages. Siri occasionally launches apps for me. Did I mention it helps me set timers?

Gartenberg

Siri is wonderful at weather forecasting, quoting stock prices and placing calls. Too often though it's just easier for me to do the task myself after one failed listen.

What do you wish Siri could do that it doesn't today? Would more third-party hooks (from a public Siri API) solve those problems?

Serenity

Third-party integration would, of course, be huge. One of the things I love about Amazon's Echo is querying music from Spotify and its other third-party connectors; if Apple can find a way to not only access third-party apps without compromising security, but also build in tiered responses ("What's hot on Yelp tonight? Make a reservation at 7:30. Get me directions via Google Maps"), it could have a huge — international! — hit on its hands.

I also really want more expansive playlist selection. Currently, when I ask "Play me workout music," Siri picks the first Apple Music playlist with "workout" in the name that it can find. I'd much rather prefer Siri give me suggestions for multiple playlists, possibly even tailored to my taste.

Rene

I long for some of the functionality Siri lost when Apple bought the app and turned it into a feature. I'd love Siri to hail me an Uber. I'd delight in Siri ordering me a pizza.

A well designed API (application programming interface) that avoided collisions, respected my privacy, and allowed for even more sophisticated inference and chaining would be, as Serenity said, huge.

Lory

Because I don't use Siri all that often, I don't really feel like it's lacking many features. One thing that I do wish is for Siri to be able to access some of the other apps that I use. Sure, I can send a tweet or post a status update on Facebook, but I'd also like to be able to post to other social networking services, or dictate a journal entry.

Bader

I increasingly rely on Google services on my iPhone, which shuts me out of many things when it comes to Siri. I'd love to be able to add a note to Keep, Google's note-taking app, or send an email using one of my many Google Apps aliases.

Moreover, I think it's fair to assume that Apple knows its apps are not the only ones people use, but they are certainly in demand some of the time. I could have two Workout playlists spread across Apple Music and Spotify, and being able to tell Siri which app to open would be immeasurably useful. That's why contextual conversations, and the ability to integrate third-party apps into those message trees, would be so useful. "Play Workout playlist." Which app would you like the playlist played from? "Spotify" Aww, OK. See?

Ultimately, I want to be able to rely on Siri to get the job done; the more disappointment I feel, the less I want to use the service.

Mikah

Siri cops out too often when I ask it a question or send it a request. It's very rare that I expect my Siri requests will lead to a Google (or Bing [gross]) search, but very often that Siri says, "Here's what I found on the web for you." That's the thing about the Amazon Echo: It doesn't have a screen, so it can't cop out as often.

Still, I'm looking forward to third-party integrations. I think it could serve to improve the platform and maybe make me fall in love with Siri again. I'd like to imagine a world where I can use Siri to control Pocket Casts, ask it about my latest Deliveries, or even ask it to "send this selfie to [Snapchat](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/snapchat/id447188370?at=10l3Vy&ct=UUimUdUnU38232"

Gartenberg

Certainly other music services would be wonderful. Playing tunes only from Apple Music is limiting. We see what Siri can do with friends like Wikipedia, Wolfram and, Bing. Siri should be able to speak to anyone who wants to listen.

If Apple were to make a Siri-powered Smart Home Hub, what would you want from it? How would it differ from the combination of iPhone/iPad -> AirPlay -> Apple TV?

Serenity

Better microphones. The Echo blows Siri away when you're talking to it: You can speak almost anywhere in a room and Alexa will understand you. This could also be the way to really cement HomeKit (and remote HomeKit) access in your house: The Echo only speaks with some, not all, of Apple's HomeKit-certified partners. I'd also love Apple Music integration, or even — gasp! — Apple Music and Sonos, something the Echo is sorely lacking.

Rene

I'd want the option for a stand-alone hub as well as integration with next-generation Apple TV and AirPort Extreme. Basically, let me put it everywhere and have it in everything.

And, as much as I love privacy, if I enabled Hey Siri, don't make me hold down a button to talk to it. I don't have to do that on iPhone and it causes cognitive load every time I have to do it on Apple TV.

Combine Hey Siri with the constraint-breaking power of constant power and multiple, beamforming mics, and we're most of the way there.

Lory

First off, I'd want it to double as a speaker for listening to music. It would also have to be a lot better than Siri currently is at listening and understanding my requests. On Apple TV, I regularly have to repeat my query and I'll slow down and enunciate my speech, which always irks me a bit. I want to be able to talk to Siri with a normal conversation voice instead of having to talk at it.

I, of course, would want it to be HomeKit enabled so I could have Siri turn on lights, lock doors, and water the lawn. One of the great things about a smart home hub is that you can make your life more convenient with a digital assistant.

A Siri Smart Home Hub would differentiate itself from simply using Siri on the iPhone or Apple TV by being accessible to anyone in the room. If your kids come home before you and want to turn on the living room lights, they could request help from the Siri Hub instead of having to turn them on manually. If your partner is playing Drake and you really want to listen to something else, you can have Siri put something else on without having to pick up your iPhone.

Bader

Like the Apple TV is a hub for AirPlay, I see a potential Apple Home Hub as a conduit for Siri anywhere in the house. And by virtue of iCloud, Apple could easily pair a number of devices together to deliver a seamless smart home experience that incorporates microphones from the closest device, be it an iPhone, Apple Watch, Apple TV or some other box. That's the potential here: eliminating the Siri silo, sort of like the computer from Star Trek — just more sassy.

Mikah

I'd like Apple to take some cues from Amazon's Echo. Basically some sort of hub that's always ready for me, listening for the "Hey, Siri!" keywords. Since it's plugged in and serves the single purpose of being the central Siri hub for my home (so network activity isn't getting clogged up with a bunch of non-Siri stuff like my iPhone or iPad), I'd expect it'd be really good at the job. It should be a better music player than the Echo (hello, Beats acquisition) and it should work really well with my other devices. You know how the Amazon Echo has an optional voice-control remote? It'd be pretty damn swell if I could use my Apple Watch as a voice-control remote for the alleged Apple hub.

As for how it differs from the current state of things, I guess I'd say what I said before: Because it's focused on being the best Siri device it can be, it'd do a far better job of being a Siri device. More microphones, more internal processing power, more storage, etc. means Siri has more on-hand resources to respond quickly, helpfully, and smartly.

Gartenberg

Always on and listening has become table stakes for me. It would seem any Apple TV integration would ideally work even with the screen off. Of course, integrating services such as phone calls and FaceTime would be great.

Privacy is a huge concern with products like Amazon Echo and the upcoming Google Home. Can Apple be successful in this space without harvesting its customers' data?

Serenity

Don't expect Apple to compromise on its customer security just because it might venture more deeply into voice automation and AI. Siri has long anonymized user data, and I wouldn't be surprised to see this continue — or to have any specifically-personal data stored only locally on the device, so you'd need to be in its physical presence to try and get any user data off the drive.

Rene

Touch ID, Apple's biometric finger identity sensor, has shown Apple can meld convenience and security. Hey Siri is beginning to have workable Voice ID. Make Hey Siri a local-only command that, once uttered by a recognized voice, enables the mic, accesses the last few seconds of locally cached audio to make sure there's no gap in recognition, and then away we go.

Server-side is all the rage, but Apple's shown there's a way to mix local and server to increase both privacy and functionality. More of that, please.

Lory

Apple could potentially be the most successful at making consumers feel safe about their privacy. Apple has proclaimed, loudly, that it does not use your personal data - so much so that it is even unable to break into an iPhone remotely. Knowing how far Apple goes to keep your data private will entice tech fans that like the idea of an always-on home system, but don't trust Amazon or Google.

Unfortunately, I think this is also where Apple would fail at a Smart Home Hub. Any limitations that user privacy would impose would make a Siri Home device less usable, less useful, and less interesting than Google or Amazon. Just as we do with most technology, we have to choose privacy or convenience. And, for most people, convenience trumps privacy.

Bader

As Rene said, I think Apple is up to the task of delivering a viable compromise between privacy and convenience with this product. The bigger question is how Tim Cook and co. will sell it to the public without undermining the product's potential, or setting off proverbial alarm bells. There's a difference between a phone that's always listening and a dozen products working together to create a microphone mesh that does the same. Some people may be spooked.

Mikah

Privacy can be a huge concern, sure, but not for me. I know this is a relatively unwise belief/opinion to have, but I'm a young lad of the internet-times — I couldn't care less about the possible privacy implications. I'm not naïve; my Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Ello, YouTube, and Google Plus accounts are public. I'm already living my life pretty openly on the internet. I'm not afraid to let Google and Amazon have some of my data in exchange for a delightful experience.

But Apple is fundamentally different in its mindset when it comes to user privacy, and that does concern me ever so slightly when it comes to artificial intelligence/machine learning/internet of things products. Maybe the reason I'm so often disappointed by Siri is because it doesn't have the data it needs to provide a truly delightful experience.

But who knows, really? Apple's been pretty doggone good at balancing privacy and functionality. And regardless of that, I know it's not going to change its stance any time soon, so I've got to accept it whether I like it or not.

Gartenberg

I'd say beyond the Digerati privacy is a non issue. Many already give up far more sensitive things to Google than might be heard in their living room. We also know privacy is really important to Apple, Appld doesn't monetize our privacy at all so it will be interesting to see how that balances over time.

Read more of these Editors Roundtables from the full iMore team!

Leo Laporte, Clayton Morris, Georgia Dow, and Owen JJ Stone were talking about Apple's new retail store design on This Week in Tech when suddenly Leo was nude and surrounded by trees. Georgia Dow was the first to call it out:

You can check out the whole, hilarious video here:

All kidding aside, I'm really jazzed about the new store design. Apple's focus on community is apparent in all areas of the update; I'm looking forward to walking into the new store soon.