One of the Better Accessory Makers Out There Right Now

Apple has been partnering with accessory makers like Belkin on various products, such as the Crayon and the iPad case, smart keyboard, and more. However, when it comes to quality, I wouldn't consider Belkin to be a very high-quality accessory maker. They did have an advantage in the past, being one of the first companies to launch home automation stuff with Amazon for the Echo. Being the first to be compatible with Echo was a significant achievement for them.

Lynxis is another company that has been around for a long time and has made some notable moves in the technology industry. They were one of the first easy-to-use home Wi-Fi routers that wasn't an Apple device. More notably, they were the first to go ahead and support open-source firmware like DDWRT or OpenWRT on their router, which became known as WRT54G or the 54gL model. This allowed users to load the open-source firmware on it, officially supported by Lynxis.

What Becomes of Belkin Now

Foxconn is such a big company that it's easy for a brand to get lost within its massive operations. As a result, there's always a risk that a product might be produced by not the A Team but rather the C or D Team. Having your product worked on by the janitorial staff on weekends isn't exactly what you want. However, this is not the case with Belkin at the moment.

Personal Preferences for a Battery Case

My personal battery case is missing a button, and I would love to have one with a USB-C port instead of the current micro-USB port. Having a built-in Lightning Port or a USB-C port that can be used without needing Apple's approval would be fantastic. One example of a company that offers this feature is AlphaTronics, which has built-in Qi charging.

The Benefits of Using Chi Charging

I've been wanting a battery case that just leaves the Lightning port on the bottom and uses Chi charging on the inside to recharge the phone. This way, I wouldn't need to talk to Apple for any approval or certification process. This is possible with companies like AlphaTronics, which has developed products that can use Qi charging without needing Apple's involvement.

Apple Insider Podcast

The episode of the Apple Insider podcast discussed various topics related to technology and innovation. The hosts delved into the world of hacking and the latest breaches in the industry. One notable topic was the investigation into a huge American company's hack, which led to an exploration of a Russian conspiracy. This story showcases the importance of cybersecurity and the need for companies to be vigilant in protecting their data.

Meet Your Hosts

The hosts of the Apple Insider podcast are Neil and Victor. You can find Neil on Twitter at @NeilNEL. As for Victor, he's also available on Facebook or can be reached via iCloud. He can also be found on Instagram but is unsure if it will remain that way due to changes made by Apple.

Lessons from FaceTime

One of the major takeaways from the history of FaceTime and its development is the importance of being open and accessible to a wide range of users. The initial launch of FaceTime was met with excitement, but it eventually became exclusive to iOS devices. This move limited the app's potential and prevented it from reaching its full potential.

The Story of Google Buzz

Google's foray into social networking with Google Buzz serves as another example of what can happen when a company tries to push something new without being open enough. The app struggled to gain traction, partly due to its limitations and exclusivity to Android users at the time. If Google had been more open about the app, it might have achieved greater success.

Breach Podcast

The hosts also mentioned their favorite podcast called "Breach" which takes listeners inside the world's biggest hacks, exploring questions about a huge American company hack, and delving into a Russian conspiracy. The podcast is available on your podcast app, and viewers can subscribe to find more episodes.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enyou're listening to the Apple Insider podcast welcome to Apple Insider podcast episode 166 I'm your host Victor and joining me is the inestable the original the one and only Neil Hughes I am so glad you're here I really am it's it's something now right away I have to get a little piece of advertising out of the way and it's something that that you should look into so there's a new podcast and they've chosen to sponsor us so I thank them very much for that they're called breach and they are a podcast team that started looking into the biggest hack in history and they ended up in the middle of the story a mysterious voicemail disappearing files it got personal breach is a new podcast that takes you inside the world's biggest hacks they set out to answer questions about the hack of a huge American company and found themselves investigating a Russian conspiracy subscribe to breach that's b r a c in your podcast app right now that's really interesting I think I'm going to give that one a listen I I had I'm going to be subscribing to that one so today has been a big day and I say that because today has been software release day now I know that you went ahead and updated your Apple watch right away didn't you um I've actually been out uh traveling today so I haven't updated yet but uh I've been running the 4.3 beta on my my watch since it came out um and very very very happy with it uh much needed feature for browsing music on your phone from your watch which for some odd reason was taken away uh with watch OS 4 uh an oversight by Apple uh that has been fixed so I'm thankful for that yeah you've got the ability to browse the music that's on your phone without having to have it synced over to the watch very helpful you got a portrait nightstand view instead of the original landscape yeah which which I like because I have um some some dock that I reviewed a while ago I don't even remember which one it is um and it does not hold the watch in I guess you call it landscape mode but even though it's a square but uh yeah so it rests on there in portrait mode so now I get the benefit of nightstand mode while I'm using that dock so it's cool yeah and I was looking at these sort of watch docks and watch stands uh a while ago I I got one of my daughters an Apple Watch and most most of the ones that are out there the vast majority especially of the ones that were designed before Apple introduced watch nightstand mode are all this sort of portrait mode view they they hang the watch with the strap as you'd wear it on your wrist as opposed to the way it is lying down on the table and so because of that it seems like this is something that makes sense finally for all the people that bought those stands I'm going to derail this conversation right now do you mind if I complain about something that has nothing to do with the software releases that came out today but it just popped into my head do it so I'm trying to go all us BC right so I don't have a new Macbook Pro no I don't have a new Macbook Pro yet but I'm going to get one when they come out you know presumably in June or whatever right and so in preparation for that I'm only buying because I noticed that I have more and more devices that are USBC now and I love it um I like the reversible switch I like how small it is I like all that stuff right so uh I'm only buying things now that are USBC so as part of that um it's kind of difficult so I've been like looking for you know when I get a new mic Pro I'm going to get a dock for it like a thunderbolt 3 dock and and I want get like wall plugs that have USBC out and that sort of stuff you you can't find the stuff that you're looking for so like if I wanted to get a wall plug with like four or five USBC ports for when I travel I need to charge all my crap right they don't exist you can get it with one USBC Port you can get it with a USBC port and a usba a port but you can't get like these oh you're just all in on USBC type of accessories out there and to that same point and I will tell you why so there's PD or power delivery as a part of the USBC spec and that's the part of the spec that allows both fast charging and the higher and higher amperages like you need to power a laptop and the problem is that you end up if you're going to do that you end up putting six ports on there four ports on there whatever number you want and one of them is going to be the magic Port that can support power delivery for fast charge and for the greater amounts of amperage to charge a laptop and the rest of them will be amp yeah but I have this with tons of chargers out there that experience but that experience sucks because they're all the same shape port and so you want them to all behave the same way and in order to do that you're going to have to have a brick the size of a power strip it's just it's unfeasible to be able to uh build something like that with the power demands to support that power delivery across all the ports so you can make a worse product with a worse experience or just not make one at all I'll give you an example of my own experience and then this will bring it back to the Apple watch and why I was complaining about this so I was just at a conference Washington DC and next to the bed they had only one plug there for charging your stuff and I uh I was in Europe a few months ago and I had a multi USB adapter for the W for the wall and it broke and so I don't have one right now and uh I forgot that I didn't have one I should ordered one on Amazon but uh so anyhow I had to charge everything through my MacBook Pro so I have a 2015 MacBook Pro and it has fullsize USB a ports on it and so I plugg my MacBook Pro into that thing in the wall and then I used all the USB ports to charge my phone and my watch and all the other stuff right but there is no Apple Watch 2 USBC cable available it does not exist and so if you're on the road and you want to just plug in your Mac and then charge your watch through your Mac which let's be honest it's a common way of doing these types of things there's no way to do it the only way that you could do it I figured because I was trying to figure this out you would have to get a lightning 2 USBC cable and then get the official Apple Dock for your watch which has a lighting input no no no no H sounds sounds complex there is a 4 in long or 3in long cable that uh I have one of them belon makes them I don't want dles I don't want adapters it's it's the USBC to usba female and you just plug your Apple watch I'm not having that I'm not having that I want to go all USBC I'm tired of it no no dongles so you were going to use the lightning and and adapter dongle thing to adapt it over and I'm telling you that you can do it the other way and have the US BC One to usba that will be Universal for all of your usba stuff and you're going to need one of those as you go through this transition because it is a transitional period there should I mean let's be real there should be a Apple watch cable with USBC on the end there's no reason for there not to given that they've been selling a 12-in MacBook with USBC for how long yeah I agree so anyhow it's just a A Wasteland of USBC right now and it's not really entirely Apple's fault but Apple's not helping it so anyhow I realized that that totally derailed this discussion here but it was something that was top of mind because i' I've been thinking about this and then I had a situation where it's like oh if I had the new Macbook Pro then I would need a dongle right now and I don't want a dongle I just want to embrace it I I'm fine with USBC I want to go all USBC I I hear that and you're not the only person that's told me that but you really need to give it another year yeah and I hate being the person to say give it another year because give it another year is the the marching band slogan of Linux on the desktop and it's the marching band slogan of next year Android will be perfect but with USBC we are in a transitional period we really are because there are a ton of laptops that are usba and there are a smattering of laptops that are USBC right and it's just going to take a little bit longer you cannot buy a thunderbolt 3 doc that doesn't have a usba port they all have usba ports and I don't want one just don't give me of them I don't want them I think I think I can find one that doesn't have usba on it is it a thunderbolt 3 dock or is it a USB C dock it's probably a USBC doc I I can look we've reviewed both and I've I've been funneling those to Mike because I just don't have the the laptop to care about it I don't I'm still on a 2015 as well yeah I'm ready to embrace this future man when this new Macbook Pro comes out I'm going to go egpu I'm going to do all of it I'm going to go Whole Hog I'm excited uh and I'm trying to ease the transition cuz it's not like it's that like it's not it's that expensive to get a USBC to micro USB cable for my mic or whatever you can get it for like five bucks on Amazon you put like 30 bucks in cables and you're done my question to you is are you concerned at all about the keyboard yeah I'm very concerned about the keyboard which is why I am waiting for the next model one of the many reasons I'm waiting for the next model hopefully they fix it because uh I don't like the feel of it um it it's loud it's much louder than the previous MacBook Pro something a couple years ago I saw somebody like tested the decibels on and it was like way louder um yeah I'm I'm really hoping for changes to the keyboard um and you know obviously latest and greatest processor and all that stuff and hopefully at wwec where I expect we'll see some new Macbook Pros hopefully we get some more touch bar functionality as well or or get rid of it like do something with it right yeah it it's interesting there are people who who haven't used it at all and never got used to the idea of it being there and for most of them it's a waste right there are some people that I've talked to that really didn't care much about it at first but over time started paying attention to it and started actually finding ways to use it and have embraced it I think those people are vanishingly small compared to everyone else but I love the concept I think it's great um I think the the interaction with it great it's just that uh they need to do more with it it it needs it needs some it just needs some attention you know like think about all the changes that the watch has gone through over the last couple years and how much better it is now there's no reason they can't do the same thing with the touch bar other than the artificial elited out of space well yeah but I think that they could do a lot more with the touch bar and it's unfortunate that they haven't so I hope that uh the next Mac OS release uh plays a big part in in making it relevant or or they offer a high-end MacBook Pro without a touch Bar for a couple hundred bucks cheaper for those that don't want it yeah the Escape MacBook as it were yeah I mean they they already offer the low-end one and a lot of people opt for it now because of it but yeah you know the keyboard I don't think is that that big of a deal it's not going to be a deal breaker for me but I certainly hope it's improved well my concern about the keyboard is what happens with when you're out of warranty and the cost to repair the keyboard is Right several large hundreds of dollars because it got a speck of dust under one of them yeah I just lent my computer to someone the other day who's been using a 12-in Macbook and he started typing on my 2015 MacBook Pro and he was like o I like your keyboard I like the way this feels you know it's just uh it's physics like they did a good job with that keyboard and and and reducing the travel and all that kind of stuff but it's just not the same as the old keyboard and maybe it's one of those things where'll get used to it you know I used to only like typing on a big uh big switch keyboard and the laptop ones didn't have enough travel for me and all that but here I am using a laptop all the time so you know you do change you do evolve but uh the fact that you can get dust it and it breaks and then it's so loud I feel like they could probably fix those things at the very least yeah so getting back to where we were talking about software release yeah sorry about that because there was some software release today uh iOS 11.3 right AR kit 1.5 is a part of that mhm uh homekit authentication mhm and a health records feature yeah and most most important of all of these things new animoji characters great yeah just what I wanted I know but I I you know going through that list there's one thing in that list that I care about that we didn't to talk to so we'll go through this a little bit and then we'll get to the one thing that I actually care about so battery improvements which is marked as being a beta feature but these are the kinds of things we were promised back in December that said that instead of just limiting your CPU usage and throttling everything back and doing it because you have a bad battery we're going to start telling you and we're going to allow you to control what happens and so this is those features that's that's what we've got here finally is the ability to say don't throttle my CPU just turn my phone off when it when it runs out and I'll deal with the consequences right but don't make my phone slow whatever you do right good or bad what do you think uh I mean I I I don't I think it's kind of stupid but it's also stupid that it had to come to this because Apple was a little clandestine about how they went about it so uh you know certainly I think that Apple was in the right in what they tried to do but I think they should have been more transparent about it so certainly having a phone that doesn't crash and runs a little bit slower is much better for the user for the lifespan of the phone uh than the alternative which is a constantly crashing phone which you then you know throw it through a wall yeah I mean to me to me the the biggest thing here is the cheap battery swap they need to just keep that price permanently just going forward you know whatever the cost of of labor plus battery is just just eat that cost make it yeah make it a break even business essentially and don't profit from it and I feel like that's really good for the user experience it's uh really good uh you know it just makes you feel good about the company that you know you can go in and swap your battery because having had situations in the past where I go in and argue with them at the Apple Store my warrant is about to go up the battery is bad and they run a test and they say it's fine and they find out later like they did with the phone success the batteries are faulty and all that and it's like well you know maybe trust the customer who has the bad experience and who is bringing their phone in and give them the opportunity to pay you a nominal fee of $30 or whatever to replace the battery and use their phone for another year that's a win for everybody people are going to be happy they're going to keep using your phone and it's not costing very much so here's the verbiage they actually put in that part of the the settings they say phone batteries like all rechargeable batteries are consumable components that become less effective as they age and you can tap there to learn more they lay out the maximum capacity which in my case on this iPhone 6 is 94% and and this is a measure of battery capacity relative to when it was new lower capacity may result in fewer hours of usage between charges and then they have a Peak Performance capability label and it says your battery is currently supporting normal Peak Performance now what kind of phone do you have this is an iPhone 6 oh W how's it in such good shape um so how is it in such good shape I had Apple car on it and the week before Apple Care expired I walked into the store and said I'm at the end of my Apple care and I'm just not sure that I'm comfortable with how this is going can you just replace it and they looked at it and they looked it over and they said you know what it looks like you got a spot inside your camera sure here you go Fresh phone yeah nice and the truth of the matter is is it sounds like it ought to be perfect right mhm this thing makes me sick the the frame rate for animations in springboard when you press the home button or you launch an app or you switch between apps or anything that you actually do to try and interact with it feels sluggish feels jittery feels delayed and I want to throw it through a wall I really do this this it's my kids my daughter has an iPhone SE and she has offered to trade with me wow and I'm not doing that to her why why would I bless her with that she says but you need a good phone Dad no I am not taking your phone and giving you this no because parenting skills you can't give your kid the terrible thing no it's awful well that's very kind of you so that's that's what I have to say about this is that even though my battery is in tiptop shape and I could not I I would have a hard time arguing that they ought to replace the battery they probably would but at 90 for per there's really no good argument for it right this thing is just terrible the the updates over time have made it worse if they put out a se2 this year will you get it maybe I you know was really aiming at like a 7 plus M I was thinking I could go with a 7 plus or or you know an 8 plus when they update something uh an se2 is interesting but I like the larger display yeah and I like the the features of the good camera yeah the camera is what has sold me on the 10 I really like my 10 I I get it I do you know even at 94% I'm still running down the battery within the first half of the morning and and I know what it says is taking the most amount of battery but it doesn't make a lot of sense to me it's um I I will go from fully charged at 7:00 a.m. to 28% by about 11 wow that's terrible yeah it it is and I again I don't have a good argument for going into apple and saying fix this because they'll say but it's at 94% mhm so what can you do that's the battery health part of it the AR kit is is a kind of a question mark for me because Apple has done so little with AR kit yeah yeah you know that that was something that was heavily hyped and didn't really amount to a whole lot so I had much higher hopes for AR kit and uh it remains a novelty at the moment which is unfortunate I I think you know they they figured that everyone would jump on building AR kit apps and while that's nice what you kind of want is for them to get to a point where you don't need apps just as they finally integrated QR codes into the camera app right you hold up the phone against any with the camera app open to any QR code in existence and it will go ahead and do what that QR code says to do which actually is a a terrible thing and I'll tell you why in a moment but in terms of the ease of experience of just holding up the phone with the camera app and having it do something useful is a good experience and arkit needs to work the same way you don't need to download an app and then open the app and then go through finding the flat surface and choosing the object you want to land in the space and all of this stuff that's really like like 10 steps too long you need to be able to just open up the camera app and have it start doing augmented reality right there so basically what we need is some sort of a camera integration uh sub App Store in the same way as the iMessage App Store except that that message app store has sucked how many people have gone into the trouble of downloading apps for the messages part of it for the messages store I use them occasionally right occasionally so is that a good measure of success uh I don't know that I'm the target market for that stuff though okay it's it's a problem for me I I want it to be a lot easier to access so that it can be taken advantage of you know if you're going through a museum for example and there are displays and Exhibits in museums instead of the old guided audio tour that exists on a tape cassette somewhere right have your F phone camera app open and instead of taking pictures of the exhibit have it do something augmented to that exhibit and if it can do that then it can do that in real life as as well mhm so maybe that's my pipe dream but I I think that it needs to become a lot more universally applicable and a lot easier to access I would love to have a uh camera app store plugin type thing um you know certainly there are a lot of cool things that you can do with different camera apps um but I always just end up defaulting to Apple's camera app and I think it would be really neat to be able to you know do do your own things in there in addition to what apple offers well there's a lot of power in being able to swipe open open the camera from the lock screen mhm the thing that's wrong about QR codes is partly what's been wrong with QR codes for 100 years right a QR code is not human readable that is you you don't know what you're going to get just by looking at the code you might think you know what you're going to get by looking at the signage around the code but there's nothing that guarantees that's where you actually go and so a couple of things happen right one is the idea that you could scan the website of a QR code and you know scan a QR code and and it would take you to a website and the website could be malicious it could do all kinds of bad things or just take you to content that's not appropriate for you to see right you know my my daughter holds it up and scans a QR code and it takes her to Pornhub is not a good situation right we don't want that the thing about QR code is that it's not just the the bad intentions like that it's also the um the mistake in intention which which is if you go ahead and search QR code on Google it pops up a top result of a QR code and a lot of people who are graphic designers or marketing folks will take that first image of a QR code and use it as a placeholder and then no one ever replaces it and they ship the top rated search from QR code as their QR code on their product and the guy who owns that QR code does pretty well because what happens is people spend all this money and ship 5 th000 or 10,000 products with that QR code on it with his QR code on their product and so he charges rent and if you pay him he will redirect his QR code to point at whatever you want as long as you're paying so QR codes have a ton of problems they're just not I mean they they seem like they'd be really convenient except they just open to doing it wrong because they're not human readable and and I get why that is it's just that's the flaw and apple fell for it the same as everyone else did by integrating to the camera and good on them that they put it there because it is a little bit easy for some cases but it's it's it's a problem it's a weakness of that technology so that's my ranton QR codes thank you for hearing it out uh Apple music gained the ability to do music videos which feels a lot like just replicating what iTunes used to be able to do well so here's here's the concern right if Apple music has music videos fine whatever if Apple music is the vehicle that is used to do Apple's future content play for all of their TV shows they're supposedly making so we just got done with trying to cut stuff out of iTunes right they cut the App Store out of iTunes they cut you know the iBook stores not in iTunes all those things that were jammed into iTunes got ripped back out to turn around and jam them into Apple music yeah I you know iTunes was a problem in and of itself for a lot of reasons including The Branding like that once iTunes was established and it's like oh we now we do movies now we do podcast now we do whatever but iTunes you know implies Tunes music so Apple music is is kind of in that same situation where it's like you've got some documentaries and some series and they're part of Apple music and they're not music shows so what are we doing again uh I you know they already have a TV app on the phone um I don't know what you would Rebrand the subscription as but you roll whatever you're doing in apple music and and in video uh under some new Banner that's what I would do but I guess it doesn't really matter just the name right but it feels like there's not enough attention being paid it feels like a car moo I don't understand their content play anyhow you know I would I like to see a Revival of Stephen Spielberg's Amazing Stories yeah that sounds great uh but you know there's like a million other shows that are out there too I saw a sign the other day um an advertisement was like Mozart in the jungle season six on Amazon six seasons of this crap who's watched any of them like is is anybody really watching that show there there's so much content out there that I can't even there's no way that I could possibly keep up with all of it and Apple's getting into the game with uh shows that your dad would think are cool you know like it's like I don't even know I don't even know what they're what like they have no sense of real style which is unfortunate they get a guy like uh uh what's his face uh who directed the uh the homepod ad um Spike Jones Spike Jones one of my favorite directors right really cool guy that so favorite you can remember his name yeah well I'm terrible with names but thanks uh yeah he uh you know that was a great ad and that's really cool and so it's like just let's go down that road let's let's hire some cool filmmakers and make some cool stuff but everything that they're doing on the Apple music side seems to be all about mainstream popularity or something uh and I don't think that's that should be the approach that Apple takes but that's neither here nor there I don't really care I'm not going to pay for Apple music so I can watch carpool karaoke I know you're much more of a planet of the apps kind of guy yeah love love Jessica Alba and planet of the apps just just my kind of thing homekit authentication here's one that I know resonates with you mhm yeah I'm excited so the idea here is that peripherals that connect to iOS 11.3 or a tvos device can use software for encryption rather than the dedicated ship on board and so this should enable a lot of devices that have space in their their firmware chips to be able to update for homekit I am very hopeful that this takes off yes now recognize that there are a bunch of demands in terms of space for the firmware and enough processing power in the device to process the encryption so there there are limitations you know if if you've speced a device and you've done a cost down reduction so that your device can be afford made affordably and You' you've basically taken all of the room out of it to grow then you may not have the room to make it homekit compatible and that's a very real thing because when you're making Hardware you you start by designing it ideally and then along the way as you're doing the design you try and look for places to save just so that you can get it made affordably and then at the end of the process some sometimes people take a second pass of cost down reduction and so if you've optimized on cost twice you've taken all of the room to grow out of it you've taken pretty much you squeezed the rock as much you can possibly squeeze it and there's no more left to give uh the best products that I've worked on in the past were ones where we didn't do that first cost optimization step very much we did it a little bit for just finding things that were within a good range and then did it as a second part of sourcing okay we've speced out these things we've we've decided this is the price that we're willing to put together for this thing now let's go ahead and as we're sourcing what are the compatible parts the analogous parts that can be substituted that cost a little less still retaining the same features because they have to be part compatible so that way you don't take as much out of it you ship a slightly more expensive product but it's one that has longer legs to it it's it's a difficult thing because the margins are really tight on this stuff anyway you know it's it's they really are they're so thin because all along the way you have you have the profit for the manufacturer any changes that you make to the product the manufacturer uses as an excuse to raise the price and therefore make more profit um the there's there's all of the shipping that has to get k okay taking care of shipping and Customs there's the distribution costs there's the retailers margin and somewhere in there you're supposed to also save a little profit for yourself it's it's a difficult kind of thing and making it more difficult is is you know you you aren't the only one doing this kind of product there are presumably other people in the category making similar things to you and so you know Amazon is just as likely as not to recommend someone else's over yours and then you don't make sales at all you know it's it's it's very much uh a difficult kind of thing to to to even be successful at all and especially if your product costs more but the problem is that if you make it cost too little you've taken all the quality out of it and the thing will suck and then no one will want to buy it either so very hard ultimately this is a good thing for homekit and for manufacturers in homekit space because this will make it easier for them to support all of the smart home platforms which makes it easier for them to sell to a larger market which makes them more likely to make homekit devices yes yes whether you're invested in Google or Amazon or uh iOS you will be able to Cortana uh maybe I don't know sorry uh but yeah this is a good thing um for everybody consumers win Apple wins manufacturers win it's just a question of it being embraced right uh these things come out all the time Apple announces them and then they you know just take a little bit of time to get going especially especially when you're talking about accessories it takes a while for them to be developed and software updates and all that kind of stuff blah BL blah blah blah so we'll see what happens you know this is not going to be something that you you're not going to install iOS 11.3 and then be like Oh yay it'll be one of those things like a year from now where quietly you'll realize that uh now it's it's part of your life yeah these things pay dividends slowly they pay dividends quietly now one of the things that will pay dividends a little bit better is that when you update to 11.3 you you have to tap through continue to to finish the upgrade and there are a couple of screens that display that tell you about what these features are and one of them might be that tells you about the music app and another might tell you about the TV app but one of them one of them tells you about what Apple's doing about privacy and they have this neat little icon that's two people standing across from each other shaking hands you sort of view them the side and it says basically that that this is the icon that we're going to use when Apple is asking you for things that are private information or when Apple is is giving you a prompt that deals with your private information and when you see this icon you can be reassured that we're handling it in a secure method and that we're not asking for too much and that we're being responsible about it and and this icon is our way of making you aware of it that this is the time to think about privacy yeah you know this is the kind of transparency that I was uh talking about when it came to the battery stuff that I hope that that I hope that Apple will learn to apply to most of their business right like they should have just come out about the battery thing and said he here's what we did here's why we did it and then let there be no controversy but they didn't do that but here is you know they're doing it right if if something is going to be accessing your personal information you have a right to know and most people are probably going to be okay with it but if you're not being transparent with people about it and you're not letting them know about it then they're going to be surprised when they find out afterwards and they're annoyed yeah now the other thing that they're doing is is interesting you know there have been a lot of concerns about Facebook's news feed and Facebook's news algorithm right and so with apple Apple's Newsfeed has decided that what they're going to do is they're going to take the stories that are vetted the stories that are are ones that they've looked at and are certain are true and they're going to give those a blue background and they're going to place them in the top stories and they're going to them Pinn to the top and they're going to refresh them three times a day so that you can always be sure you're getting things at the top of your feed that are sure to be true nice little bit of shade they're throwing out is I think it's great I think that uh I think that curation and uh experts are something that um uh are sorely needed in our world uh so that we can vet things and be sure that the information is accurate I'm not a big subscriber to conspiracy theory or anything like that and uh so I think that when we have trusted sources of information that is a good thing and I think that when our devices uh will Spotlight trusted sources of information it doesn't prevent you from getting your news elsewhere but um for the type of person who may not you know who just kind of accepts what is given to them it's good to be in a in an ecosystem where you can have trust yes now I want to tell you about something that that was really cool that I experienced and recently and after I tell you about that we're going to join a few people for a special interview about social and privacy so first a away is a company that offers highquality luggage and it's designed to be resilient resourceful and essential to the way you travel and it's available in a variety of colors and four different sizes including carryon sizes that are compliant with all the major US Airlines and actually fit as as well within the regulations for Airlines around the world in my experience the the way suitcase is lightweight it's made with premium German polycarbonate that's unrivaled in strength and impact resistance and it's got a TSA approved combination lock uh for 360° spinner wheels and a patent pending compression system so that if you're having trouble stuffing it all in it will help you do that both sizes of the carryon are able to charge anything that's powered by a USB cord and a single charge will power your iPhone five times this is really cool so what they do is they took a uh a battery power bank and they have a slot underneath the uh the handle that you pull up to roll those suitcase and that slot is spring-loaded and and sort of has a catch and release kind of thing the same way a Micro SD slot does and you push the battery down in and it latches in place and when you want to remove the battery you can just tap it and pull it out and so it works very well in in the airports where they're very very uh concerned about batteries especially after like the Samsung incident from a year or two ago and so you just take the power bank out and and keep it with you and you don't have to worry about any kinds of regulations about batteries it's really super easy you can charge it wherever you are without having to have you know charge the suitcase and when you want you just put it right back in the suitcase and you can put your phone on top of your suitcase and charge while you're sitting in the lounge it's really it's really pretty cool um the thing is lightweight the finish on it is really sleek and I I have you know I have five or six different battery power Banks I have the big ones that can power a laptop I have the small ones I do this when I go to CES right I I use all these different Power Banks to try and charge everything because you run out of power so fast having one built into the luggage is really quite cool I am I am super pleased with this and they have this this try out policy so you know you can try one out for 100 days you can travel with it you can Instagram with it you can just you know chill with it and if you decide you don't like it even after you've traveled with it you can go ahead and return it for a full refund they're they're totally cool if the wheels are scuffed up and the whole thing got you know manhandled by the baggage handlers they're cool they're totally all right and lifetime warranty anything breaks they'll fix it that's just that's that's the policy and it's free shipping to the continental US so for 20 bucks off of a suitcase visit a away travel.com slapple Insider and use the promo code Apple Insider during checkout that's a awaytravel.com slapple Insider and the promo code is Apple Insider for $20 off your away suitcase I do too it's so good and I'm I'm really a Critic of suitcases because I have all these I used to travel uh internationally four or five times a year and I would travel domestically uh once a month like for a week out of every month and there was one year where I flew 105 times a year and and so I I was a suitcase connoisseur and travel bag connoisseur and I you know I used all kinds of companies other bag bags and really learned how to pack quickly um I once packed for an international flight with 10 minutes to spare I yeah I'm at the right now they got a monogram Edition too where you get your initials on it so you can distinguish at the airport and stuff I it's cool stuff I like it built-in TSA security locks definitely yeah so TSA has those 10 different keys or whatever it is and this is a combination lock that locks the P zipper PS but TSA can release it using one of their special keys I I tend not to lock things anyway just because I I am not convinced that the TSA guys know that they have those key those keys and they'll just break something open anyway but you know the the upside to that would be if they did break it the uh the way people would fix it yeah I use the TSA locks I've had stuff go missing from my bag before so then I have it with the lock um uh indicator so it lets me know when it's been used because they don't always leave a note when they open your bag so that way I can prove that they were in my bag because I had a dispute where some stuff went missing a few years ago and I tried to complain and I long story I never ended up getting anything back from them course to pound sand didn't they yeah they did there there's no when when something like that happens the first thing they do is they blame the airline I actually I actually spoke to the congressman who's on the TSA oversight committee about it yeah he was probably very uninterested in speaking to you about that was no he no no no that that is something um that a lot of people don't realize contact your local and National politicians reach out to their offices uh and they usually engage with you hm mhm a lot of people don't you know they don't try they don't think about it they don't whatever I usually even if it's somebody who politically I don't agree with they usually have uh good experiences with them calling me back or um giving me an answer at the very least or or showing some interest uh and I I I I like that so well I you know I I filed an FCC complaint against Verizon not too long ago and I want to encourage our listeners to remember that that's a power that they have as well right yeah you know so they're they're all sorts of ways to petition exercise your rights absolutely so thank you for joining me for this special segment of the Apple Insider podcast joining us are yav and om you are from my permissions is that correct that's correct great can you introduce yourselves a little bit and tell me about what you're doing and how my permissions came into being so hi this is Omar here uh thank you for having us my permissions uh was founded approximately 6 years ago uh when it was someone naviga uh basically opened his Twitter account and found that uh um there was some uh spamming uh tweets all over his account and he was trying to figure out hey what's going on how can how can it be that there is something that is spamming my own account my own Twitter feed so to speak and then uh they started figuring out what's going on and eventually they found that hey there is a third party application on top of Twitter that has access to my feed and can post on my behalf let's figure this out let's see what can what we can do about it the very first product line by my permissions was a uh my permissions. org which which B basically a portal of links to all the various Services uh privacy settings pages and this basically allowed users to quickly identify and find out uh um privacy settings for Facebook Twitter Instagram Google Dropbox Yahoo and other services and basically just uh uh um clean and revoke unnecessary or undesired apps um from their from their accounts um fast forward a few years and today my permissions has a very popular uh application mobile app for Android and iOS that allows consumers to basically scan their uh accounts again on Facebook on Twitter on Google uh Instagram and other services and find uh various third- party applications that uh access their data um and can potentially use it against them as we saw in the Cambridge analytica Facebook Scandal okay and is it primarily around just the the thirdparty permissions for those services or does it also cover things like what information is visible to which groups or which links between those Twitter is linked to Facebook or not or does it also cover things like Android where Android permissions allow Facebook Messenger to scrape phone logs mhm so you ask two questions here when you first discuss the the link between Twitter to Facebook so it basically means that Twitter is a third-party application that r on top of Facebook and may have access to your Facebook profile data so in this sense Twitter acts exactly the same like uh Candy Crash with your Facebook profile when it comes to Android application yes our Android version today does handle uh Android applications uh that are installed on your own device and does let you know and see whether your flashlight application has access to your contact list or GPS location uh but having said that it's somewhat different of course than the third party applications that r on top of of of your Social accounts social media accounts uh and therefore behave differently per the limitations of that platform and versus Facebook or Twitter and others MH and is is it also looking at things like what applications have access to my tweets or posts versus what applications have the ability to create their own posts and post for me yes so basically having access to your uh profile public profile for example they can see apps that have permission to see that public profile data can read your posts for example um some applications do have the permission or are granted the permission by by us the users to post on on our our own behalf so yeah definitely one of the things that I I think has made people aware of of how big Cambridge analytica is this this problem is is that you know they sort of knew peripherally they sort of knew off on the side that they were sharing all this information and that it was possibly being used but many people weren't really aware how much was being collected and how all the different ways that it could be used you know when when Cambridge analytics took the information that was gathered from a harmless quiz and then turned it into using it for something else entirely people weren't really aware of that do do you agree yeah I I agree and I think that people both uh weren't aware of it and also like maybe didn't even care they just wanted to use like free services um and it caused you know uh eventually this uh uh Scandal uh people wanted um to play games to play quizzes um and they didn't maybe even uh uh have um you know the the right knowledge about what's going on with permissions maybe they are not reading and we do see like um on our app on my permissions uh uh when someone is scanning um you know Facebook for example for the first time they see like tons of apps that they never knew uh that's running on top of their Facebook and and sending their data to third party applications so I think it's it's lack of awareness and understanding and I think that's one of the major problems of of uh the Privacy uh uh Market uh the solutions are too complicated um and I think that people needs uh better tools that are more easy uh to understand to use um that's part of what we're trying to build um in my permissions and in other tools that we are building right now to bring privacy to the Messes in a in a like more easy to use and friendly kind of experience um because people gave up on the the right for privacy mostly because they didn't know what to do and where to go um and we can uh you know expect U um companies like Facebook um to help uh um you know the consumers uh with all regards to privacy because that's that's their business it's kind of you know go goes against their interest um to you know help people protect their data they make a lot of profit with you know advertising that runs um on top of this data yeah the the the saying that we hear a lot over here these days is if if you aren't paying for the product you are the product right right and I think that's that's you know maybe a good opportunity to change the approach and and maybe be more aware and instead of waiting for a top down solution you know to use like a bottom up uh approach and and use tools like my permissions and others um to uh know more about what you're doing to read the permissions that you're granting when you download an app uh and so on and so forth so explain to me how my permissions Works what what is the the new users's experience like yeah so whenever you you go to my permissions um it asks you to scan um your uh social accounts either Facebook Google Twitter Instagram and Etc um and then it make um you know you put your credentials and we scan your profile and then uh you get like a list of all the apps the third party apps that runs on top of um the service that you picked um and it shows you uh who's access to which uh information who has access to your photos to your microphone to your location um who's more dangerous than the other B based on some risk assessment technology we have and from one place very easily can either um remove the app or or keep it um that's pretty much what we what we do in my permissions so F first of all you mentioned of course Facebook's business model is about collecting and then reselling the information right so what is your business model and how is that different so we uh let you uh scan everything on one place uh very easily um and whenever you want to remove something then uh we charge um 10 one time per year um so we have nothing to do with advertising we are the good guys um and we want to um you know let you uh uh um you know be more aware and to control your privacy um so we do it uh you know with the one time early payment of $10 if you want to remove the the services you don't want to use anymore um from one place either for Facebook or for Google or for for all the rest that we support okay and is is there there any concern about sharing the account login information with my permissions you know it seems like one of the things that I think about is the the centralization of all these things when we lump all of these things together is there a risk of having that information centralized so no uh the way it works is that we do not uh collect or store uh your information your credentials anywhere on our servers so there is no risk of centralizing the data um by potentially hacking to my permission servers uh you can cannot find anything there is nothing to to to steal from the servers because we uh store no information from the users whatsoever okay that's that's reassuring that's good to know you know it's it's questions like this that I I should be asked I want to give you the opportunity to tell us that because you know when when you say all you have to do is go to this one app this one site and give them all your information it's it's like well how's that work exactly yeah of course it's definitely scary it's like uh going to your to an online service that uh allows you to enter your uh email and or password just to let you know whether it was uh um it was included in some previous data breaches uh in the past uh right we have to be responsible online citizens we have to take control of our of access to our own data and we have to to to learn it's one of the skill I think today in this um day and age we need to learn uh the skill of who to give our trust and how things work and how our data is handled or mishandled and and yeah that's true uh I would uh definitely understand if someone would ask what are you going to do with our with my data and how are you going to protect it and we believe we do take measures in order to um um to to saf keep and Safeguard users data and if we do do not need to store the data we don't definitely don't intend to and uh and that's it so you you said something that really captured my attention for a moment there it was the the idea that people really need to learn more about this learn more about how to choose how to trust and choose where their data goes how how do you think people become more aware of this I think once again like the the the scandal with Facebook and Cambridge analytica is maybe awake up call for people to uh understand that um you know signing for to any free service um can cost and and I think that now the attention um is different it's all over the news everyone here uh hear about it I think I see like people that never said anything about privacy uh um you know twitting and posting all over the place um and I think that our uh responsibility um as a privacy company for consumers is to uh provide people with the right tools with an easy to use solution um and also it's it's you know the the consumers the customers uh the people um you know responsibility to read more to understand better and to understand that um even if Facebook uh you know uh wants to collect data um you know mainly to uh uh um personalize that the advertising we get um there are other apps and there are other services and Facebook is just you know the tip of the iceberg and it can be like um you know in any other uh um app or digital service that we're using so so it's it's important to read and and it's important to uh you know uh track what's going on um and not just you know press uh the download button and and you know that's it yeah this is my concern you know I'm I'm worried that this this Scandal happens we've had scand in the past that have happened and they all sort of blow over after a while and I think Facebook's counting on that that you know in in 3 weeks no one will remember this it will be over and people will be back to normal that that people aren't aware that you know Facebook owns WhatsApp that Facebook owns Instagram that that all of these things are intertwined and it's a little ironic to me that people are are posting these complaints about privacy and their concerns about privacy on social media mhm I think uh yeah I think we have to consider something like this um with the rapid uh rate of changes all the time there will always be new tools and new technologies and there will always be uh entities whether it corporations governments hackers individuals doesn't matter who will take advantage of those tools for their own benefits uh and more often than not uh on the at the expense of other people um this rate of change will only increase we will only see more tools and more technologies that will put significant uh benefit at the hands of others uh for us or or the masses all is left is to educate oursel that's one and we can discuss that and and use tools that help us bridge that Gap um in the past for example when you had new technologies like uh cars for example or you had the parents for kids right educating them to to be care care F and War them about the dangers same applies to parents trying to teach the kids not to talk to strangers or to uh uh um I don't know to to stay away from bullies um that's it's true that it's kind of tricky it's very hard to compare between the two online uh behavior and responsible online behavior and and crossing crossing the road right because it's kind of it's a kind of two new technologies and our parents in some way don't always know what's best for us online um so yeah it's up to a lot of different factors uh to educate the online community whether it's companies like us with tools like us whether it's uh parents to their kids whether it's people like you and uh representing the media that help educate the people and yeah people will have to I suppose will have to get burned and and learn from the lesson and grow from it and and and educate themselves and equip themselves better to to handle those new technologies and new threats that that are appearing in will continue to appear at a rapid at rapid pace and and I will add to it that um uh in a way the fact that it happened with Facebook which is one of the you know biggest companies in the world um that attract so many you know um attention maybe will will'll make it even uh better to um you know with this education process and also there are more uh things that that are happening in this uh world with the gdpr in Europe the the Privacy uh uh issue is is like uh starting to become uh more and more uh news and I think everything is you know backing everything and and I think that U you know that's maybe the time to change things people do have a short a short memory uh but I think because of the fact it's it's such a big Scandal and with such a big company that everyone is is pretty much using uh maybe uh it will change something maybe this time is different yeah so what what are some of the best practices what's what's the advice that you could give to our listeners how how should they govern themselves with social media well first they need to understand what uh problem social media solves for them and what uh uh people who use social media what kind of problem they solve for the social media websites right uh you mentioned where yourself earlier that social media such as Facebook is basically a company that uh profits from advertising um so as long as people will better understand that they are the product and not basically the customers it means that uh Facebook profits from them uh uh pouring personal information to the platform and I believe that people do understand in a way that posting their kids photos or posting that they going out on vacation is maybe not the best idea uh uh but at the same time people don't necessarily realize that just by the fact they are logged into Facebook and and browsing all over the web for Vacations or for a new a new shirt in their favorite fashion websites and reading uh content on the favorite News website is also a form of of pouring information and telling uh more about uh about them to to Facebook yeah for for many people it seems crazy that Facebook tracks you all over the web you know the idea if you ask someone but I don't have Facebook open I don't have it open open in a tab or a browser how could they know it it seems crazy to people who haven't thought about this before you're right and and again technology moves fast and there are always new technologies that uh will will try to get our data or will be used against us so we need to to be aware all the time it does not mean that every person and person needs to uh go to uh to to learn how to code and learn how web Technologies work it's enough to read the the the really lot lots of information out there how to how one can protect oneself from dangers online whether from uh list on how to protects when they download new Android apps and which permissions to give whether how it works and why uh uh certain ad is tracing and tracking them all over the web when they surf all the information is out there and it was really really made accessible and easy to read and easy to learn and easy to understand in just a matter of of uh one of those search one little query uh um on Google basically to to reach those uh those answers really simple there is one more thing we like to add um in a way uh those who some people who have interest uh uh are trying to tell us that privacy in a way is dead that we have no reason to fight for our our privacy but in a way the concept of privacy was made open to debate and infused with conflict the concept of PR private will forever be up to us to decide our private cars or private photos or uh private number or private everything basically it's it's ours it's it's us no one else will tell me that my private stuff is not mine anymore but the concept of privacy is debatable we always hear online there is no more privacy no more privacy but tell that to every person that they need to hand over their private stuff it's it's another kind of discussion so we need to uh um kind of switch our our approach uh or or change our mentality or the way we think and consider uh our private information and how and to whom we hand it to absolutely I I am so glad that you said that because that's one of the things that you're right it comes up all the time you know the old Eric Schmidt quote telling people that privacy is dead and you're you're correct privacy is what you reclaim you you have it if you want it exactly I I know people that refuse to put anything on a computer not not even online just if they have something that they want to keep absolutely private they only keep it as a copy offline off the computer and hard copy on paper because they're so concerned about this but it it seems to me that everything is going online you know we have we have uh Apple Health we have Google Fit we have all of our medical records which we would all pretty much consider to be private information becoming more and more connected through whether it's through Fitness devices like the Apple watch and then Partnerships with health insurance companies or or just the idea that medical record systems are becoming more connected and and you know even Apple's talked about making their own medical record system and their own health centers and wellness centers with their own staff of doctors we we really do need to to step back and think more about how our information is used and where it goes even more so than in the past with all these things coming together like that privacy isn't like uh cyber security it's not really a white privacy is more like 50 Shades of Gray and what I consider private or a danger to my privacy is not something that you would necessarily consider the same so it means that if you believe that uh using Apple health or Fitbit or uh other technology whatever other product if you believe it does not compromise uh your privacy and or if you're willing to compromise some of that privacy uh in exchange for that benefit for that value that you you're getting that's perfectly fine so one person may find Facebook great and post all their personal information online because they're getting something that they find and and deem valuable including uh which uh which uh t-shirt or a gadget that they would like or need to buy but another person may uh may consider Facebook as it's threat just by opening an account and would rather just stay away from it so it's really a subjective decision on the on the individual level thank you now where where can people find out more information about my permissions so we do have a website my permissions. comom and our apps um are on both Google and apple uh uh App Stores um you can also Google my permissions and you'll find like U many different uh um things about about it um so just look for my permissions my permissions. comom um and everything is there wonderful thank you so much thank you so much for having us thank you speaking of privacy as we were just a minute ago um there was a story that you're familiar with about Tim Cook speaking at the China development Forum this is this is back from over the weekend and he was speaking directly about Facebook's and their misuse of data so what did he say uh he was asked if uh he would uh what he would do if he found himself in a similar situation uh as Mark Zuckerberg and threw some shade and said he would not find himself in that situation and he's right um Facebook is not a very trustworthy company in my view um and with the Cambridge analytica information um it's only gotten worse uh I think that um Facebook certainly was uh taken advantage of by Cambridge analytica but Facebook also put themselves in a position for it to happen and did not put proper oversight uh in place to prevent that type of thing from happening in the first place which as stewards of personally identifiable information they should be doing that's kind of their obligation um you know whether or not the regulatory hammer in the US will drop on Facebook um we will see uh obviously right now you have a republican uh uh control of all branches of government and they're they're not particularly pro- regulation um and I understand that I'm not personally especially pro-regulation either but at some point you have to do something you know and uh this is a situation that's gotten a little out of hand um and it's unfortunate and apple obviously would never find themselves in this position which is why Siri is so bad you know if if Apple were willing to collect more data um then they would be able to hire more data scientists to have a fun sand sandbox to play in because they would just have a lot more data but Apple puts user privacy first they've proven that time and time again and what you've seen here is kind of it's interesting you know Microsoft and Apple are strange bed fellows obviously Rivals for many years and still Rivals uh but they are I feel like a lot of times you know because Apple has so much money and they were a company that was reinvented in the iPod people forget that they are the Old Guard of tech uh and the old guard of tech Microsoft and and Apple uh versus the new guard um and their more LAX policies on data when it comes to Twitter and Facebook and Amazon to an extent as well um you see how Microsoft and Apple kind of see eye to eye on that and uh align and so you know I think I agree with what Tim said I think that he was absolutely right and uh I think that uh Facebook finds themselves in a really bad position and I don't see it getting any better yeah and you know there was a Facebook scientist a Facebook former Facebook employee who worked on some of these these projects talking on Twitter today about how it's a little overblown that the Facebook doesn't sell users information directly that Facebook is basically saying we have all this information and if you'd like to buy an ad to Target these people then you can Target a specific demographic and we can help you do that very well they aren't actually telling you people you know here's your here's your people who have kittens pictures and you can see their pictures they're not actually selling the pictures um that that when you download your Facebook archive and scroll through all of the things that Facebook has on you the things to pay attention to are the ads section and when you look through the ad section you can see what Facebook thinks are relevant advertisements for you yeah you can see what categories they've bucketed you in it's it's pretty creepy stuff right it it is but to to also be aware that it's an inexact science it's imperfect for example if you liked the oatmeal which is a popular web comic it doesn't mean that you're a foodie but that Facebook doesn't understand the difference and will put you in a food category cashmir Hill as a tech journalist who's been around for a long time um and she is currently writing for Gizmodo and she did an article uh last year about she was on Facebook and had a recommended friend and it turned out that uh she connected with this person they started talking uh came to discover that her person that she met on there was actually a brother of hers that her father had had um in an extramarital affair with another woman and she did not know that this person existed uh they did not know anybody mutually that they could figure out other than obviously their father who is not on Facebook and so she tried to get in touch with Facebook to find out how they could have possibly done this when nobody else knew um and it's their special sauce and they won't tell yeah the people you may know feature is um is is not discussed publicly the there then there are real problems with it like that example like like the example of an adopted child finding their birth parents when the birth parents didn't want to be found or like an attorney whose clients start getting recommended as people they may know each other and you as an attorney do not want your clients talking to each other necessarily because that's like all kinds of things about attorney client privilege and keeping things separate you know um yeah I just saw a a speech by Scott Galloway a few days ago he's a u NYU Market marketing professor and head of a marketing firm L2 that Gardner owns uh research and stuff like that um and he has a talk that he does where he wants to see the big four tech companies in the US broken up he thinks that regulation should come in and split them up and the talk is interesting because obviously very relevant now with Cambridge analytica uh stolen identities on on Twitter where people are getting Twitter accounts made in their name uh you know Russian hacking that sort of stuff list goes on so he thinks that Facebook and Amazon Twitter and apple should be broken up but I feel like I mean I guess I'm biased because I'm an Apple fan but I feel like his case for breaking up Apple was pretty thin it's probably the weaker of those because of those four one of those things is not like the other he he he uh I think he he has it included in there because it's just kind of sexy to say oh conveniently is the four biggest companies they broken up but there's a point in his presentation he's a great talker and it was really engaging and I and I liked it uh but he he shows what he thinks they should be broken into as companies and they're all very logical but the only case he really makes for splitting up Apple is just Apple the hardware company and then the iTunes software company basically that's that's what he thinks it should be split up as and I'm just like doesn't really seem like that big of a deal to me but well fine but let's talk about Apple the Healthcare company cuz there's Apple the hardware company let's talk about Amazon the Healthcare company uh also also Poss Al though Apple's a little further along right you know Amazon does not collect your steps and your health data and does not establish medical record didn't they just make a big acquisition though they they've made an acquisition although I'm waiting for them to make another one I'm looking for them to make an acquisition in Pharma no they they and they announced that partnership with healthcare for employees it's like a mhm and and Apple has one as well JP Morgan and Berkshire hathway are in it I think uh yeah yeah so I would argue that they're more into the health business than Apple is at this point with with where they're going Apple's hiring Physicians assistants and doctors to help them get more accurate data that they collect no to provide wellness centers for employees well that's for their employees that's different that's not a consumer facing thing yet I don't think it will be I think no I no I think that what they're doing is they want to make sure they can have accurate data so that you the consumer can have your data because you got to realize this stuff doesn't get uploaded to the cloud or whatever right it's just saved on your iPhone and that data is crypted it's secure and you can share it with your healthc care provider to give you a better assessment of your own health or to help diagnose and find things that's good that's technology for a good purpose Apple's not collecting data to sell it or to uh you know Market it or whatever the Apple has always been a company where what they're selling you is very clear you can say what you will about their prices and everything's blah blah blah overpriced or whatever okay fine but at least you know where they're making their their money it's been said a million times but it's the truth when it comes to Facebook and Twitter you are the product the person using it is the product and their real customers are advertisers marketing think about all the industries that get destroyed by Facebook you know the publishing industry you know we're Apple Insider working in the publishing industry right uh the marketing industry you know advertisers that now have to deal directly with Facebook and all and Google and all that kind of stuff right um that is uh it's a problem it's a big problem and I don't see those same problems with with apple uh I don't see them as that kind of a company and so I don't think you know at least in terms of Scott Galloway's talk I don't think that it's fair to lump Apple in with the likes of Google Facebook Twitter Amazon that kind of stuff I'm just looking at the health records on iPhone which is in beta which says keep track of clinical health records from multiple sources and automatically receive updates right and you add your account information from participating heal networks and hospitals of which there are 39 so far yeah and and actually it looks like one of the uh no wow two two of the uh the networks that I'm in are are among those 39 and I and I wouldn't have any concerns about having my data on there because I know that Apple's not harvesting it if they did start harvesting it this would be a very different conversation yes the the information retrievable from iPhone or iPad can help patients better understand though health history have informed conversations with Physicians and family members and maybe make future decisions the data is is encrypted and protected with user iPhone passcode and and that's why what Tim said was absolutely right you know like he would never find himself in this position because they've proven that they wouldn't put themselves in this position they make plenty of money selling Hardware they make plenty of money selling hardware and they don't need to do that Facebook's entire business model is about getting you to engage with the platform so they can learn more about you that's what they want yes and the more information they can collect about you the better they can Target you know I had an ad a few years ago that I saw on Facebook that I was like wow this is part genius and part creepy they knew where I went to college they knew what year I graduated from college and so some company out there was selling a series of t-shirts that were the bars that were open in the town you went to college when the year you graduated and it was like remember when you used to go to this bar and that bar get the T-shirt you know Facebook doesn't know what college I went to or university I went to they don't know they don't know which town I was in at that time they don't know which town I live in now they they hilariously pick a random bunch of towns that I could have been in but none of them are the correct answer some of them are a little bit kind of close and neighboring to where I would have been but but they really have no concept at all they they've totally missed on that part of my profile because I have I have obscured it for years yeah they're they don't they're not transparent about it they they rope you into these features and don't really they're not really upfront about why they want this information and so it's like you know you go on there and you know they want you to tell your your favorite quote and uh give me a little bio about you and tell me where you live and if you don't fill it out it keeps like bugging you you go back to your own page it's like oh why don't you tell us where you liveing these days what's going on and you think oh well that's okay sure why not they they they make it uh fun and engaging and all that but then now you see the consequences of it now you see the problem with it now you see why you can't trust this company I've been beating that drum for years though this is nothing new yeah no I I get that it's not fair to people who are not techsavvy and don't really know they go on the platform they engage they connect with friends whatever and then all of a sudden this happens and it's like wow I didn't I didn't know that that was happening and how could they yeah so I've I've gone ahead and added that health record stuff while we were sitting here talking and I'm checking out all the uh all the the data they have on me but that's good that's helpful yeah you know uh one of the stories we have this week is Apple complying gdpr which is a new law in Europe where they're actually doing something about your data and does it stand for Neil uh it stands for General uh data protection regulation I think yes yes we have a winner okay so yeah and this is something that's going to affect in May that's going to have a big uh effect on a lot of technology companies and a lot of uh Services because they have a lot of personal information and uh there are two key parts to it that are very interesting and exciting and relate to this as well so these are what they are saying are basic human rights online one is that you have a right to be forgotten which means if you tell Facebook to forget about you you know that they will delete all your data and it's guaranteed supposedly and there will be regulation to make sure uh that this happens uh the other thing is that you have data portability which means that you can now take data from one service and then potentially bring it to another one um and take it with you as you see fit this is kind of a nightmare for companies because uh they don't have systems built for this but I think ultimately it's a good thing for consumers because you should be able to have control over that data and uh Apple has issued an update so that they are compliant with gdpr which is great um but I think that a lot of the stuff they were doing was already compliant with the spirit of this law and apple health is a great example of that um you the de the device saves all of the information it's not put in the cloud um it's encrypted um it is you have the ability to export it to other apps and services and that sort of stuff that's the way it should be absolutely health information is very very personal uh and it should be treated with the utmost respect and Apple is very transparent about the way that things work with the health app and the data they collect and I think that's a good thing and now I I downloaded all of my Facebook data I downloaded all of my Google data and downloading all of my Google data quite a while took me about 3 days to actually get it done over gigabit fiber because they just have so much um I've i' I've been doing this as a part of so I wrote an article that we published on our site last week well no we published this week actually about um scaling back your Facebook usage what what do you do to try and minimize your exposure if you're not able to actually remove yourself entirely right and I I've been thinking about doing something similar with uh an article about Google because I downloaded all of my Google Drive data I downloaded all of my Gmail and and synchronizing that was a little difficult because they throttle IMAP after a while but there's an open source projects that help you get around that problem and uh so I've downloaded my Google Drive and all of my email to a network attached storage device and if I wanted to I could vacate all of that data delete it all and totally bail out of Google of course I can't do that because I'm changing my ISP from AT&T fiber to Google Fiber which you know they they of the things they give you when you do that is they give you one terabyte of Google drive storage so now I've got more stuff that I'm thinking gosh am I going to get sucked in and use that but the uh you know the the the what it comes down to is that none of these are good actors right they all have their own motivations they all have their own things uh AT&T for years had had a bad reputation for both throttling and for their relationship with handing over all any customer data on a moment's notice you know they they were very happy to allow their whole line trunk to be tapped completely where Google is slightly more uh put off by that kind of thing so I I feel relatively comfortable and using Google as the ISP but I I'm going to be removing some of my information from there to to to minimize my exposure there now there are people who have the opinion that removing the data is not the right thing that that what you really want to do is is hide within the Noise by creating a profile that is very milk toast you know these are uh complicated issues right because your right to be forgotten is nice and principle but what about your right to know something about somebody right like if you commit a crime and you want it scrubbed from the internet do you have a right to do that do do consumers or other people have a right to find out about it uh so they are complicated issues this is not uh quite so simple uh but I think it's a step in the right direction to have a policy in place that uh puts consumers interests in mind absolutely AB we've talked about a lot of stuff though and we haven't even touched on the fact that there was new hardware announced this week so we should probably get to that Hardware well I I I got to tell you before we talk about that I want to tell you about the very best thing new ey workor Suite oo updates to Pages updates to numbers updates to Keynote oh boy you don't use those uh I use Pages really yeah what do you what you do with Pages uh I'll get like uh documents to me in stuff that are Microsoft Word and I open them in Pages oh okay I do all my writing and text edit though plain text okay I do all my writing in uh in IIA writer but gosh Pages wow okay I I Ed keynote a lot I used keynote quite a bit and uh I've I've Loved keynote for years ever since it was first released and the only product that I ever loved quite as much as I loved keynote almost as much was a product called 2 slides and 28 slides was a web app that looked remarkably like keynote and worked remarkably like keynote except it was on the web and I wish Apple had bought it and uh so I I the big update here is that you can use a pencil and hand markup any of these three types of documents and when you do you're not on on an iPad you're not just creating a another layer with markup that's overlaid over it the the handwriting that you do is actually tied to the text word or image or object that you're marking up which is unique uh you know Google allows for people to mark up things on documents but when they do they're just creating a layer over the top of it that's not actually tied to the object that's being marked up so this is kind of a big change for for markup and for editing and uh you know I was watching the verge's live stream of the event when this was announced and he commented something to the effect of I'm requiring all of our writers to compose everything in pages from now on so that he could then Mark it up and edit using the pencil it's it's a big change cool yeah I thought so yeah but this leads to the question it says you know if there's new hard if there's new applications and they require a pencil to do the markup what Hardware are people doing that on well uh if they are in a school maybe they'd be interested in a new $300 iPad yeah with $49 crayon yeah which could be cool no I'm um I thought that last year's $330 iPad uh with the A9 processor um and the Legacy uh 9.7 in design knocked out of the park uh I think that that is the absolute best value in Apple's entire product lineup uh I think that that price what that product offered uh was a complete home run and and I didn't think they'd update it this year because it was already more than capable Hardware I mean if you bought one last year U even if you bought one this year it's still a really good iPad but um clearly it's uh helping Drive sales for them and uh uh they wanted to push a little further in education so they held a special event this week a small one and it's not going to be super exciting to the type people that listen to this podcast who are into the as they say speeds and feeds but uh they it I think it's going to be a great entrylevel iPad I think it's a great addition I think adding pencil support is great um I I think it's a I think it's another home run I think this is a really great product I think it's a wonderful product and it's a big Miss and why is that so here's the problem the education Market is is really driven by a few different things and one of them is the affordability of the device MH and the ease of management of the device that's the it side of it and purchasing side of it and so Chromebook which is as we know a big success in education they cost around 130 bucks you know if you if you want to buy one retail on Amazon you can spend 150 bucks easy you can spend 140 bucks if you look a little longer you can spend 180 bucks and you'll be doing fine the the very best ones are closer to the 270 Mark but but there are plenty of them plenty plenty plenty of them available around that 150 mark and if you're in education you get a discount so let's just say 129 bucks okay and in terms of management Google has really got down the administration for these kinds of things you create your student roster you give them all accounts you issu those accounts at the beginning of the year they can sign into anything that will accept the Google account and it will be theirs they can do it whether it's apps on iOS they can do it whether it's a Chromebook they sign in with their school account job done and in terms terms of privacy Google doesn't collect any information on those School accounts they know that they're kids as far as those kids are concerned they they don't track the way that they would a Google account belong that that's belonged to that's owned by URI the downside in terms of privacy is is that single sign on works so if you take a student account and then sign into someone else's app using Google single sign on right Google connect then then those other third parties do track do kind of treated the same as always because they have no idea that it's a student account but in addition to the administration part of it Google Classroom is really quite good Google Classroom allows a teacher to assign a piece of work allows the student to submit that work allows the student to retract and resubmit and and turn in work all using this interface and it's really slick it's good um they have the typical docs numbers slides uh docs sheets and slides and and really the the biggest problem that the IT people have at a school is trying to manage the bandwidth within the school you know I was talking with the the it at guy at my kids school because I I was going to offer to do a wireless survey and and help him place his APS better place his access points better within the building and he said that's not my problem I don't care what the access points are we don't have enough access points anyway I don't really need to know where the signal drops are I said really that's interesting what's your problem he says well my problem is that I have a limited amount of bandwidth and I have to divide it up among all these students and so I've throttled them all down to um about 10 Meg he's he's throttled them down no he throttled them down to um around one Meg so Broadband from 10 years ago basically and you know stuff that's slow slow that we no longer consider it fitting the definition of broadband and he said he was doing that because you know if if they're all looking for YouTube videos to include in their slide presentation then it hammers the network he can't figure out how to handle it better so he's he's busy being gatekeeper and punishing them for using data rather than worrying about where the weak points are on his Network and that's my rant about that guy but the that that's the thing is that the purchasing decision is the it guys is going to recommend something that secures his job that's why for years and years and years school it guys always recommended Windows because they meant it meant that they would always have a job fixing Windows here they recommend Google because it's cheap and if a kid breaks a screen they just get another one for 120 bucks 130 bucks and they don't have to worry about it uh and in fact they send a letter home at the beginning saying get your kids a Chromebook get your kids a laptop do not send them with an expensive tablet because if they break the screen they're going to be out of luck and you know when they say expensive tablet they're referring to one specific device so that that happens at a lot of schools not just the one that my kids go to and apple is taking a different approach apple is approaching it from not what school are today with in terms of the the management of submitting work and stuff like that and the the administration side of it Apple's approaching it from what could we do that would allow classes to be more creative so what can we do to help teachers understand how to use shapes within keynote and then they can give a lesson on here's a presentation and the kids can all use shapes within keynote and it'll be awesome and that's cool but it's it's not really where curricular are today so Apple is is focused on what a classroom could be in the future what an ideal classroom would be that would also by the way take advantage of Apple hardware and Apple software but but they're not really you know they they can't address the $129 machine does a $129 machine have a touchreen no and it doesn't matter what if kids would rather interact with a touchscreen what if it makes it more engaging for them uh it hasn't made a difference as I said you know it's it's about what they're doing today is versus what they could be doing right I I don't see this as that big of a deal I this is not what what they did so they've Apple's divided among three roles they have the ASM or the Apple School manager and that's the person who's supposed to be the IT person setting up the accounts they have the classroom management side of it and the classroom management side of it is the side that says that teachers can peek into and have displayed on their iPad what's going on on the students iPad so they can monitor without having to look over everyone's shoulders virtually looking over the shoulder opposed to walking around kind of thing and then there there's the creative class lesson side of it and that's that's really what they're trying to ask of teachers is to learn all these tools and to do that they've created a site they've got Apple teacher which uses your Apple ID and offers all kinds of training across different applications so that you can and and some suggestions for lessons you know how to use Clips within your class kind of thing and it's a very nice site it's lovely the the quizzes for training are really well done they're short they're to the point they don't take so long the presentation of the information is easy so if if you were a teacher and not overburdened with everything else already going on in your life as a teacher which of course all teachers are because we ask a ton of teachers without necessarily accounting for how many hours there are on the day um it's pretty cool but it's it's it's ah you know it's sort of how much more do you want to lay on the teacher that they have to go learn keynote I think you're overthinking this maybe I I I think that uh you know that I taught High School right I know and and and I I I'm not really looking at this from a perspective of what's going to make sure that every student in every school has an iPad I'm looking at this from the perspective of it was 8 years ago now that the first iPad was introduced and when we knew there was an Apple tablet coming a mythical Apple tablet there were a lot of misconceptions about what it would be but the biggest one and arguably the biggest surprise at that first uh unveiling by Steve Jobs was the price at $4.99 and people like wow that's a great deal well here we are8 years later and with inflation and everything else and you're getting a extremely capable device that will last you for four or five years easily um that has a gorgeous display Touch ID thin design long battery life run down the list the thing's awesome and it costs you $329 or if you're a school $299 let's not lose sight of the fact that here we are8 years later and the device has gotten not only better but cheaper and considerably cheaper to a point now where it's like almost a no-brainer purchase for some people right but not not for strapped schools that are strapped on budget I understand that and apple certainly presented this as an education really the biggest Miss if there's a miss and that is they have Swift playgrounds yes and Swift playgrounds teaches you to do some stuff but it doesn't really allow you to actually write anything of your own that you could then share and run on another iPad and so if we're talking about you know having these kinds of of applications and having these kinds of learning is how we get to having future Engineers which is one of the things that Tim Cook talked about we really ought to be able to to take the one programming environment that we actually have on the iPad and turn it into something that allows kids to write and then run and share across other iPads and it's not there yet well yeah but the software you can really program well on a Chromebook either by the way I mean to to do that what you really need is to have a server somewhere that you can then remotely log into via the browser which is possible but it's a heck of an environment to set up yeah I mean there's a lot of changes that that need to come and will inevitably come to iOS and future software updates and you know hopefully uh Apple makes a point of that uh with iOS 12 this year and we see you know good multi-user support and you know some changes coming in that direction now you had questions about the Logitech accessories that were also announced at this event and one of the so there there were really two Logitech accessories right there's the crayon which looks a little like a pencil except that it's flat more like a Carpenters pencil than anything um and and and some of the comments online suggested that this was something that Johnny would never allowed out right because it's got the tethered cap for charging it's got uh this flat design as opposed to something round it's it's just something he would have had great disdain for but at 49 bucks Apple shared some of the technology that's in the pencil with Logitech and Logitech created a a stylist like device and it doesn't have all the same features but it has a bunch right it has the low latency it has Palm Rejection it has tilt um doesn't have the pressure sensor ing part of it but it's a really well-known stylus and what's cool about it is that instead of the pairing by having to plug it into the lightning Port of the iPad um these things use a different radio frequency and you can use them across many iPads which is great for the school environment where if you have you know 50 of the things and 50 of the Crayons 50 iPads and 50 crayons you don't want to you don't want to worry about matching them up that's going to be a nightmare yep there's no way you'll ever solve that problem in a school so this is the way they solve it by not making that an issue it sounds like a win to me I think that's great definitely the rugged case and rugged combo is basically designed to protect the iPad because you you and I both know if there's an LCD screen that can be broken it will be broken MH and I when I managed a lab I had uh 20 iBooks the iBook g3s back then and there were inevitably one or two that always got their screens broken and instead of trying to deal with Apple for fixing them it was easier to go and buy a used display and replace the LCD in the iBook back then here it's hard to do that on iPad so they've made this giant rugged case that goes around it it's kind of bulky kind of square has a kickstand kind of like a Surface Microsoft Surface has a keyboard that attaches to it and it's it's impact resistant and it's spill resistant and it's drop resistant and it's darn near impossible to take the case off unless you do it properly it's it's pry resistant you can't just pry it apart and you know that students would if they could so they've really designed this thing for the environment it's not something you'd necessarily get if you weren't in schools but it makes sense for that environment and and kids are terrible on Hardware my my daughter tells me all the time that she dropped her laptop it just slipped out of my hands Dad yeah I know I know and I have I have pushed out the dents on an aluminum MacBook and and I have I have given her a Chromebook to use for a little bit and there's there's always she drops them she does that's why I liked her going with the iPad but she says when she takes her iPad to school the Wi-Fi doesn't work for it because the guy who's Manning it doesn't put his APS in the proper place so there's just no win well this was a minor event um but I think it's a win um I you know it's not it's not for me I am not the market for this I'm really excited about a new 2018 12.9 in iPad Pro with face ID and we'll probably get that you know September I'd guess at this point um if not WWDC uh but I think for the market that they're going for here which is not just educ I mean obviously this is pitch an education Focus event but I think that for anybody just looking to get a regular iPad this is a great deal uh oh it's more affordable than an iPad Mini 4 it's a by about 70 bucks n this is a this is a knockout product another another great win for them um in the iPad lineup and uh yeah I I think that this is just I'm I I was I was not personally invested in the announcement but I think that at that price it's really hard to it's an easy recommendation right right if somebody said what do you think about this iPad you know I want to get a tablet whatever for 330 bucks go for it awesome yeah now I want to mention a little bit about the event because the event was run slightly differently than other events in the past yeah it was in Chicago and well at a typical event right at a typical Apple event they have these stage announcement the keynote and then they Shuffle everyone off into a room or tent or other area where they have the hardware set up and everyone fights over getting a few seconds of hands on time with it so they can photograph it and send it back to the website and say hey look we were there we had our hands on it right and this was more like a mini WWDC where instead of being shoved in that small tent with the devices instead they had classrooms because they're at a school and they used those classrooms with a teacher and an apple engineer to talk about what they were doing and why and how it could be used and applied and that seems like such a better approach it's it's neat it's cool I I think it's cool I really I think that there's a lot good about the way that event was run now let's change gears again and you know that that years ago I worked for a couple of different companies that made accessories for these devices right and my competitor was was always Belin in any of these things Belin was the competitor and I've had friends who worked for Belin and I I've known people there for years and they're they're good people and for a long time they made all these devices and and you know people said things like you know I would never buy a belcon device now because they were all you know it's too expensive compared to what you can get from any other competitor maybe so but for a long time they really cared about their design and and their quality they have been purchased by foxcon yeah so foxcon snapped up balcon and when foxcon snapped up Balon they snapped up lyus and weimo by extension now weimo was always started at Balon it wasn't an acquisition and weimo was the uh the home automation play that only recently only in January gamed homekit compatibility uh lynxis started off as networking equipment on their own they got bought by Cisco Cisco decided they were done with them and sold them onto belon so they've been all over but this is this is kind of a big shift because in this market so uh Incipio Incipio bought up um Braven bought up Griffin technology uh snapped up a few others and so they've been consulted all of those uh zag who did the invisible shield for so long bought up I frogs and mphi and they bought up iogs years and years ago but they bought up Mofi relatively recently uh foxcon snapping up these ones it's it's really an interesting weird period of consolidation at this time right I think it's a tough spot for the industry because there are so many cheap Chinese knockoffs that come out and oftentimes hit the market before because they don't follow the same licensing requirements uh with companies like apple so like for example um I'm sitting here right now and I popped my uh iPhone 10 out of a battery case that I used and the the power button overlay on this plastic case just broke off and I'm kind of ticked offed about it but the name of this company is appotronics and the reason I bought this case Mark of quality right there huh yeah and the reason I bought this case and not a uh mphi one or whatever was because a it was available like at launch I could get a battery case so I've had it for a while now uh and be it was cheap I think I paid like 30 bucks for this and if I was going to get a if I was going to get a Mofi one it would be like a hundred bucks or something I like Mofi products a lot uh but they didn't have anything out because they have to get the licensing and all that with apple and all and that kind of stuff so you know I'm guilty of it too I think a lot of people are guilty of it and that makes it a tough space to be in because you got to compete against the likes of this and they make good enough products for very cheap that ship before everybody else so you know good luck to foxcon I'm not a huge belon fan I I own a few belon things here and there but n they're they're in my view as an accessory maker pretty ho um I think that uh Logitech is one of the better accessory makers out there right now which is exactly why you see apple partnering with them on things like the crayon and the iPad case and the smart keyboard and all that kind of stuff uh Belin you know whatever happens with foxcon whether the quality changes or they take a different direction or whatever I I wouldn't consider Belin to be a very high quality uh accessory maker well they did have the advantage of for a long they were the first to launch home automation stuff with Amazon for the echo you know they they were the very first to be compatible as as any kind of device to work with Echo they have a long history of doing things that were cool to do um lynxis similarly has a long history they were the first easy to use home Wi-Fi router that was not an apple one they were the first to go ahead and support open source like uh DDWRT firmware or open wrrt firmware on the lynus router named because wrt because the the lyus model name was WRT54G or the the 54g L that stood for Linux which meant you could load the open source firmware on it you know that was officially supported these are cool moves they they are not a bad company and um what's going to be interesting to see is What Becomes of them now because foxcon is so big I I I worry that it's easy for a brand to get lost within foxcon you know you you end up having your stuff being produced by not the not the A Team not the B team but maybe the c or the D team kind of thing and you know having your product worked on by the janitorial staff on weekends is is not what you really want well now that my battery case is missing this button I want one with a USBC port on it because this micro USB port is garbage God or lightning Port that' be cool too yeah USBC wouldn't be impossible and actually what you could do is you could do USBC with a builtin chi charging so you don't actually have to talk to Apple for any of it this one hasqi charging built in this alphatronics one so if you did chi in the back of the battery case and USBC to the to the battery case you don't have to talk to Apple to do any of that approval you could totally make that thing not if you're using the chi charging oh oh oh so this one does chi to recharge the battery I'm saying use chi on the inside to charge the phone yeah that's what I've been wanting for a while now I want a battery case that just leaves the lightning pour on the bottom exp I'm saying you want to build that yeah let's do it okay all right on that note we have come to the end of another great Apple Insider podcast I'd like to mention again about breach the uh the new podcast that led off the the beginning of the show again they are a podcast that takes you inside the world's biggest hacks they set out to answer question about the hack of a huge American company and find themselves investigating a Russian conspiracy subscribe to breach b r a in your podcast app right now Neil we've missed you where can people find you you can find me on Twitter at this is Neil NE L and let me know if you have a USBC uh or lightning uh iPhone 10 battery case and I'm your host Victor and you can find me on Facebook um no Google uh I don't know Twitter's good this week maybe yeah maybe you can find me on iCloud at no you can find me on Twitter at vmar can we find you on iTunes ping you know you could you absolutely could for the longest time until that went away and I think that was a Miss by Apple I think they should have learned some lessons from that and and this is sort of a global lesson right you and I have talked before about how FaceTime should have been opened up the way they promised that it was going to be open right yeah yeah so I I think ping suffered in part from the problem of being Apple only and not just Apple only but iTunes only right yeah and had it been a social network that wasn't built into iTunes only or had it lived on the web and also used iTunes as a client that it should have been open to everyone it should have been open to Android users it should have been open to PC users it should have been open to anyone with a browser and had it been open like that it would have stood more of a chance it wouldn't have necessarily won the same way that that Google Buzz or Google Plus didn't necessarily win or orcut only really won in South America but it it's it it seems like it was crippled by being too insent so there you go find me on iTunes ping at V marks and we will be back next week with more thank you so muchyou're listening to the Apple Insider podcast welcome to Apple Insider podcast episode 166 I'm your host Victor and joining me is the inestable the original the one and only Neil Hughes I am so glad you're here I really am it's it's something now right away I have to get a little piece of advertising out of the way and it's something that that you should look into so there's a new podcast and they've chosen to sponsor us so I thank them very much for that they're called breach and they are a podcast team that started looking into the biggest hack in history and they ended up in the middle of the story a mysterious voicemail disappearing files it got personal breach is a new podcast that takes you inside the world's biggest hacks they set out to answer questions about the hack of a huge American company and found themselves investigating a Russian conspiracy subscribe to breach that's b r a c in your podcast app right now that's really interesting I think I'm going to give that one a listen I I had I'm going to be subscribing to that one so today has been a big day and I say that because today has been software release day now I know that you went ahead and updated your Apple watch right away didn't you um I've actually been out uh traveling today so I haven't updated yet but uh I've been running the 4.3 beta on my my watch since it came out um and very very very happy with it uh much needed feature for browsing music on your phone from your watch which for some odd reason was taken away uh with watch OS 4 uh an oversight by Apple uh that has been fixed so I'm thankful for that yeah you've got the ability to browse the music that's on your phone without having to have it synced over to the watch very helpful you got a portrait nightstand view instead of the original landscape yeah which which I like because I have um some some dock that I reviewed a while ago I don't even remember which one it is um and it does not hold the watch in I guess you call it landscape mode but even though it's a square but uh yeah so it rests on there in portrait mode so now I get the benefit of nightstand mode while I'm using that dock so it's cool yeah and I was looking at these sort of watch docks and watch stands uh a while ago I I got one of my daughters an Apple Watch and most most of the ones that are out there the vast majority especially of the ones that were designed before Apple introduced watch nightstand mode are all this sort of portrait mode view they they hang the watch with the strap as you'd wear it on your wrist as opposed to the way it is lying down on the table and so because of that it seems like this is something that makes sense finally for all the people that bought those stands I'm going to derail this conversation right now do you mind if I complain about something that has nothing to do with the software releases that came out today but it just popped into my head do it so I'm trying to go all us BC right so I don't have a new Macbook Pro no I don't have a new Macbook Pro yet but I'm going to get one when they come out you know presumably in June or whatever right and so in preparation for that I'm only buying because I noticed that I have more and more devices that are USBC now and I love it um I like the reversible switch I like how small it is I like all that stuff right so uh I'm only buying things now that are USBC so as part of that um it's kind of difficult so I've been like looking for you know when I get a new mic Pro I'm going to get a dock for it like a thunderbolt 3 dock and and I want get like wall plugs that have USBC out and that sort of stuff you you can't find the stuff that you're looking for so like if I wanted to get a wall plug with like four or five USBC ports for when I travel I need to charge all my crap right they don't exist you can get it with one USBC Port you can get it with a USBC port and a usba a port but you can't get like these oh you're just all in on USBC type of accessories out there and to that same point and I will tell you why so there's PD or power delivery as a part of the USBC spec and that's the part of the spec that allows both fast charging and the higher and higher amperages like you need to power a laptop and the problem is that you end up if you're going to do that you end up putting six ports on there four ports on there whatever number you want and one of them is going to be the magic Port that can support power delivery for fast charge and for the greater amounts of amperage to charge a laptop and the rest of them will be amp yeah but I have this with tons of chargers out there that experience but that experience sucks because they're all the same shape port and so you want them to all behave the same way and in order to do that you're going to have to have a brick the size of a power strip it's just it's unfeasible to be able to uh build something like that with the power demands to support that power delivery across all the ports so you can make a worse product with a worse experience or just not make one at all I'll give you an example of my own experience and then this will bring it back to the Apple watch and why I was complaining about this so I was just at a conference Washington DC and next to the bed they had only one plug there for charging your stuff and I uh I was in Europe a few months ago and I had a multi USB adapter for the W for the wall and it broke and so I don't have one right now and uh I forgot that I didn't have one I should ordered one on Amazon but uh so anyhow I had to charge everything through my MacBook Pro so I have a 2015 MacBook Pro and it has fullsize USB a ports on it and so I plugg my MacBook Pro into that thing in the wall and then I used all the USB ports to charge my phone and my watch and all the other stuff right but there is no Apple Watch 2 USBC cable available it does not exist and so if you're on the road and you want to just plug in your Mac and then charge your watch through your Mac which let's be honest it's a common way of doing these types of things there's no way to do it the only way that you could do it I figured because I was trying to figure this out you would have to get a lightning 2 USBC cable and then get the official Apple Dock for your watch which has a lighting input no no no no H sounds sounds complex there is a 4 in long or 3in long cable that uh I have one of them belon makes them I don't want dles I don't want adapters it's it's the USBC to usba female and you just plug your Apple watch I'm not having that I'm not having that I want to go all USBC I'm tired of it no no dongles so you were going to use the lightning and and adapter dongle thing to adapt it over and I'm telling you that you can do it the other way and have the US BC One to usba that will be Universal for all of your usba stuff and you're going to need one of those as you go through this transition because it is a transitional period there should I mean let's be real there should be a Apple watch cable with USBC on the end there's no reason for there not to given that they've been selling a 12-in MacBook with USBC for how long yeah I agree so anyhow it's just a A Wasteland of USBC right now and it's not really entirely Apple's fault but Apple's not helping it so anyhow I realized that that totally derailed this discussion here but it was something that was top of mind because i' I've been thinking about this and then I had a situation where it's like oh if I had the new Macbook Pro then I would need a dongle right now and I don't want a dongle I just want to embrace it I I'm fine with USBC I want to go all USBC I I hear that and you're not the only person that's told me that but you really need to give it another year yeah and I hate being the person to say give it another year because give it another year is the the marching band slogan of Linux on the desktop and it's the marching band slogan of next year Android will be perfect but with USBC we are in a transitional period we really are because there are a ton of laptops that are usba and there are a smattering of laptops that are USBC right and it's just going to take a little bit longer you cannot buy a thunderbolt 3 doc that doesn't have a usba port they all have usba ports and I don't want one just don't give me of them I don't want them I think I think I can find one that doesn't have usba on it is it a thunderbolt 3 dock or is it a USB C dock it's probably a USBC doc I I can look we've reviewed both and I've I've been funneling those to Mike because I just don't have the the laptop to care about it I don't I'm still on a 2015 as well yeah I'm ready to embrace this future man when this new Macbook Pro comes out I'm going to go egpu I'm going to do all of it I'm going to go Whole Hog I'm excited uh and I'm trying to ease the transition cuz it's not like it's that like it's not it's that expensive to get a USBC to micro USB cable for my mic or whatever you can get it for like five bucks on Amazon you put like 30 bucks in cables and you're done my question to you is are you concerned at all about the keyboard yeah I'm very concerned about the keyboard which is why I am waiting for the next model one of the many reasons I'm waiting for the next model hopefully they fix it because uh I don't like the feel of it um it it's loud it's much louder than the previous MacBook Pro something a couple years ago I saw somebody like tested the decibels on and it was like way louder um yeah I'm I'm really hoping for changes to the keyboard um and you know obviously latest and greatest processor and all that stuff and hopefully at wwec where I expect we'll see some new Macbook Pros hopefully we get some more touch bar functionality as well or or get rid of it like do something with it right yeah it it's interesting there are people who who haven't used it at all and never got used to the idea of it being there and for most of them it's a waste right there are some people that I've talked to that really didn't care much about it at first but over time started paying attention to it and started actually finding ways to use it and have embraced it I think those people are vanishingly small compared to everyone else but I love the concept I think it's great um I think the the interaction with it great it's just that uh they need to do more with it it it needs it needs some it just needs some attention you know like think about all the changes that the watch has gone through over the last couple years and how much better it is now there's no reason they can't do the same thing with the touch bar other than the artificial elited out of space well yeah but I think that they could do a lot more with the touch bar and it's unfortunate that they haven't so I hope that uh the next Mac OS release uh plays a big part in in making it relevant or or they offer a high-end MacBook Pro without a touch Bar for a couple hundred bucks cheaper for those that don't want it yeah the Escape MacBook as it were yeah I mean they they already offer the low-end one and a lot of people opt for it now because of it but yeah you know the keyboard I don't think is that that big of a deal it's not going to be a deal breaker for me but I certainly hope it's improved well my concern about the keyboard is what happens with when you're out of warranty and the cost to repair the keyboard is Right several large hundreds of dollars because it got a speck of dust under one of them yeah I just lent my computer to someone the other day who's been using a 12-in Macbook and he started typing on my 2015 MacBook Pro and he was like o I like your keyboard I like the way this feels you know it's just uh it's physics like they did a good job with that keyboard and and and reducing the travel and all that kind of stuff but it's just not the same as the old keyboard and maybe it's one of those things where'll get used to it you know I used to only like typing on a big uh big switch keyboard and the laptop ones didn't have enough travel for me and all that but here I am using a laptop all the time so you know you do change you do evolve but uh the fact that you can get dust it and it breaks and then it's so loud I feel like they could probably fix those things at the very least yeah so getting back to where we were talking about software release yeah sorry about that because there was some software release today uh iOS 11.3 right AR kit 1.5 is a part of that mhm uh homekit authentication mhm and a health records feature yeah and most most important of all of these things new animoji characters great yeah just what I wanted I know but I I you know going through that list there's one thing in that list that I care about that we didn't to talk to so we'll go through this a little bit and then we'll get to the one thing that I actually care about so battery improvements which is marked as being a beta feature but these are the kinds of things we were promised back in December that said that instead of just limiting your CPU usage and throttling everything back and doing it because you have a bad battery we're going to start telling you and we're going to allow you to control what happens and so this is those features that's that's what we've got here finally is the ability to say don't throttle my CPU just turn my phone off when it when it runs out and I'll deal with the consequences right but don't make my phone slow whatever you do right good or bad what do you think uh I mean I I I don't I think it's kind of stupid but it's also stupid that it had to come to this because Apple was a little clandestine about how they went about it so uh you know certainly I think that Apple was in the right in what they tried to do but I think they should have been more transparent about it so certainly having a phone that doesn't crash and runs a little bit slower is much better for the user for the lifespan of the phone uh than the alternative which is a constantly crashing phone which you then you know throw it through a wall yeah I mean to me to me the the biggest thing here is the cheap battery swap they need to just keep that price permanently just going forward you know whatever the cost of of labor plus battery is just just eat that cost make it yeah make it a break even business essentially and don't profit from it and I feel like that's really good for the user experience it's uh really good uh you know it just makes you feel good about the company that you know you can go in and swap your battery because having had situations in the past where I go in and argue with them at the Apple Store my warrant is about to go up the battery is bad and they run a test and they say it's fine and they find out later like they did with the phone success the batteries are faulty and all that and it's like well you know maybe trust the customer who has the bad experience and who is bringing their phone in and give them the opportunity to pay you a nominal fee of $30 or whatever to replace the battery and use their phone for another year that's a win for everybody people are going to be happy they're going to keep using your phone and it's not costing very much so here's the verbiage they actually put in that part of the the settings they say phone batteries like all rechargeable batteries are consumable components that become less effective as they age and you can tap there to learn more they lay out the maximum capacity which in my case on this iPhone 6 is 94% and and this is a measure of battery capacity relative to when it was new lower capacity may result in fewer hours of usage between charges and then they have a Peak Performance capability label and it says your battery is currently supporting normal Peak Performance now what kind of phone do you have this is an iPhone 6 oh W how's it in such good shape um so how is it in such good shape I had Apple car on it and the week before Apple Care expired I walked into the store and said I'm at the end of my Apple care and I'm just not sure that I'm comfortable with how this is going can you just replace it and they looked at it and they looked it over and they said you know what it looks like you got a spot inside your camera sure here you go Fresh phone yeah nice and the truth of the matter is is it sounds like it ought to be perfect right mhm this thing makes me sick the the frame rate for animations in springboard when you press the home button or you launch an app or you switch between apps or anything that you actually do to try and interact with it feels sluggish feels jittery feels delayed and I want to throw it through a wall I really do this this it's my kids my daughter has an iPhone SE and she has offered to trade with me wow and I'm not doing that to her why why would I bless her with that she says but you need a good phone Dad no I am not taking your phone and giving you this no because parenting skills you can't give your kid the terrible thing no it's awful well that's very kind of you so that's that's what I have to say about this is that even though my battery is in tiptop shape and I could not I I would have a hard time arguing that they ought to replace the battery they probably would but at 90 for per there's really no good argument for it right this thing is just terrible the the updates over time have made it worse if they put out a se2 this year will you get it maybe I you know was really aiming at like a 7 plus M I was thinking I could go with a 7 plus or or you know an 8 plus when they update something uh an se2 is interesting but I like the larger display yeah and I like the the features of the good camera yeah the camera is what has sold me on the 10 I really like my 10 I I get it I do you know even at 94% I'm still running down the battery within the first half of the morning and and I know what it says is taking the most amount of battery but it doesn't make a lot of sense to me it's um I I will go from fully charged at 7:00 a.m. to 28% by about 11 wow that's terrible yeah it it is and I again I don't have a good argument for going into apple and saying fix this because they'll say but it's at 94% mhm so what can you do that's the battery health part of it the AR kit is is a kind of a question mark for me because Apple has done so little with AR kit yeah yeah you know that that was something that was heavily hyped and didn't really amount to a whole lot so I had much higher hopes for AR kit and uh it remains a novelty at the moment which is unfortunate I I think you know they they figured that everyone would jump on building AR kit apps and while that's nice what you kind of want is for them to get to a point where you don't need apps just as they finally integrated QR codes into the camera app right you hold up the phone against any with the camera app open to any QR code in existence and it will go ahead and do what that QR code says to do which actually is a a terrible thing and I'll tell you why in a moment but in terms of the ease of experience of just holding up the phone with the camera app and having it do something useful is a good experience and arkit needs to work the same way you don't need to download an app and then open the app and then go through finding the flat surface and choosing the object you want to land in the space and all of this stuff that's really like like 10 steps too long you need to be able to just open up the camera app and have it start doing augmented reality right there so basically what we need is some sort of a camera integration uh sub App Store in the same way as the iMessage App Store except that that message app store has sucked how many people have gone into the trouble of downloading apps for the messages part of it for the messages store I use them occasionally right occasionally so is that a good measure of success uh I don't know that I'm the target market for that stuff though okay it's it's a problem for me I I want it to be a lot easier to access so that it can be taken advantage of you know if you're going through a museum for example and there are displays and Exhibits in museums instead of the old guided audio tour that exists on a tape cassette somewhere right have your F phone camera app open and instead of taking pictures of the exhibit have it do something augmented to that exhibit and if it can do that then it can do that in real life as as well mhm so maybe that's my pipe dream but I I think that it needs to become a lot more universally applicable and a lot easier to access I would love to have a uh camera app store plugin type thing um you know certainly there are a lot of cool things that you can do with different camera apps um but I always just end up defaulting to Apple's camera app and I think it would be really neat to be able to you know do do your own things in there in addition to what apple offers well there's a lot of power in being able to swipe open open the camera from the lock screen mhm the thing that's wrong about QR codes is partly what's been wrong with QR codes for 100 years right a QR code is not human readable that is you you don't know what you're going to get just by looking at the code you might think you know what you're going to get by looking at the signage around the code but there's nothing that guarantees that's where you actually go and so a couple of things happen right one is the idea that you could scan the website of a QR code and you know scan a QR code and and it would take you to a website and the website could be malicious it could do all kinds of bad things or just take you to content that's not appropriate for you to see right you know my my daughter holds it up and scans a QR code and it takes her to Pornhub is not a good situation right we don't want that the thing about QR code is that it's not just the the bad intentions like that it's also the um the mistake in intention which which is if you go ahead and search QR code on Google it pops up a top result of a QR code and a lot of people who are graphic designers or marketing folks will take that first image of a QR code and use it as a placeholder and then no one ever replaces it and they ship the top rated search from QR code as their QR code on their product and the guy who owns that QR code does pretty well because what happens is people spend all this money and ship 5 th000 or 10,000 products with that QR code on it with his QR code on their product and so he charges rent and if you pay him he will redirect his QR code to point at whatever you want as long as you're paying so QR codes have a ton of problems they're just not I mean they they seem like they'd be really convenient except they just open to doing it wrong because they're not human readable and and I get why that is it's just that's the flaw and apple fell for it the same as everyone else did by integrating to the camera and good on them that they put it there because it is a little bit easy for some cases but it's it's it's a problem it's a weakness of that technology so that's my ranton QR codes thank you for hearing it out uh Apple music gained the ability to do music videos which feels a lot like just replicating what iTunes used to be able to do well so here's here's the concern right if Apple music has music videos fine whatever if Apple music is the vehicle that is used to do Apple's future content play for all of their TV shows they're supposedly making so we just got done with trying to cut stuff out of iTunes right they cut the App Store out of iTunes they cut you know the iBook stores not in iTunes all those things that were jammed into iTunes got ripped back out to turn around and jam them into Apple music yeah I you know iTunes was a problem in and of itself for a lot of reasons including The Branding like that once iTunes was established and it's like oh we now we do movies now we do podcast now we do whatever but iTunes you know implies Tunes music so Apple music is is kind of in that same situation where it's like you've got some documentaries and some series and they're part of Apple music and they're not music shows so what are we doing again uh I you know they already have a TV app on the phone um I don't know what you would Rebrand the subscription as but you roll whatever you're doing in apple music and and in video uh under some new Banner that's what I would do but I guess it doesn't really matter just the name right but it feels like there's not enough attention being paid it feels like a car moo I don't understand their content play anyhow you know I would I like to see a Revival of Stephen Spielberg's Amazing Stories yeah that sounds great uh but you know there's like a million other shows that are out there too I saw a sign the other day um an advertisement was like Mozart in the jungle season six on Amazon six seasons of this crap who's watched any of them like is is anybody really watching that show there there's so much content out there that I can't even there's no way that I could possibly keep up with all of it and Apple's getting into the game with uh shows that your dad would think are cool you know like it's like I don't even know I don't even know what they're what like they have no sense of real style which is unfortunate they get a guy like uh uh what's his face uh who directed the uh the homepod ad um Spike Jones Spike Jones one of my favorite directors right really cool guy that so favorite you can remember his name yeah well I'm terrible with names but thanks uh yeah he uh you know that was a great ad and that's really cool and so it's like just let's go down that road let's let's hire some cool filmmakers and make some cool stuff but everything that they're doing on the Apple music side seems to be all about mainstream popularity or something uh and I don't think that's that should be the approach that Apple takes but that's neither here nor there I don't really care I'm not going to pay for Apple music so I can watch carpool karaoke I know you're much more of a planet of the apps kind of guy yeah love love Jessica Alba and planet of the apps just just my kind of thing homekit authentication here's one that I know resonates with you mhm yeah I'm excited so the idea here is that peripherals that connect to iOS 11.3 or a tvos device can use software for encryption rather than the dedicated ship on board and so this should enable a lot of devices that have space in their their firmware chips to be able to update for homekit I am very hopeful that this takes off yes now recognize that there are a bunch of demands in terms of space for the firmware and enough processing power in the device to process the encryption so there there are limitations you know if if you've speced a device and you've done a cost down reduction so that your device can be afford made affordably and You' you've basically taken all of the room out of it to grow then you may not have the room to make it homekit compatible and that's a very real thing because when you're making Hardware you you start by designing it ideally and then along the way as you're doing the design you try and look for places to save just so that you can get it made affordably and then at the end of the process some sometimes people take a second pass of cost down reduction and so if you've optimized on cost twice you've taken all of the room to grow out of it you've taken pretty much you squeezed the rock as much you can possibly squeeze it and there's no more left to give uh the best products that I've worked on in the past were ones where we didn't do that first cost optimization step very much we did it a little bit for just finding things that were within a good range and then did it as a second part of sourcing okay we've speced out these things we've we've decided this is the price that we're willing to put together for this thing now let's go ahead and as we're sourcing what are the compatible parts the analogous parts that can be substituted that cost a little less still retaining the same features because they have to be part compatible so that way you don't take as much out of it you ship a slightly more expensive product but it's one that has longer legs to it it's it's a difficult thing because the margins are really tight on this stuff anyway you know it's it's they really are they're so thin because all along the way you have you have the profit for the manufacturer any changes that you make to the product the manufacturer uses as an excuse to raise the price and therefore make more profit um the there's there's all of the shipping that has to get k okay taking care of shipping and Customs there's the distribution costs there's the retailers margin and somewhere in there you're supposed to also save a little profit for yourself it's it's a difficult kind of thing and making it more difficult is is you know you you aren't the only one doing this kind of product there are presumably other people in the category making similar things to you and so you know Amazon is just as likely as not to recommend someone else's over yours and then you don't make sales at all you know it's it's it's very much uh a difficult kind of thing to to to even be successful at all and especially if your product costs more but the problem is that if you make it cost too little you've taken all the quality out of it and the thing will suck and then no one will want to buy it either so very hard ultimately this is a good thing for homekit and for manufacturers in homekit space because this will make it easier for them to support all of the smart home platforms which makes it easier for them to sell to a larger market which makes them more likely to make homekit devices yes yes whether you're invested in Google or Amazon or uh iOS you will be able to Cortana uh maybe I don't know sorry uh but yeah this is a good thing um for everybody consumers win Apple wins manufacturers win it's just a question of it being embraced right uh these things come out all the time Apple announces them and then they you know just take a little bit of time to get going especially especially when you're talking about accessories it takes a while for them to be developed and software updates and all that kind of stuff blah BL blah blah blah so we'll see what happens you know this is not going to be something that you you're not going to install iOS 11.3 and then be like Oh yay it'll be one of those things like a year from now where quietly you'll realize that uh now it's it's part of your life yeah these things pay dividends slowly they pay dividends quietly now one of the things that will pay dividends a little bit better is that when you update to 11.3 you you have to tap through continue to to finish the upgrade and there are a couple of screens that display that tell you about what these features are and one of them might be that tells you about the music app and another might tell you about the TV app but one of them one of them tells you about what Apple's doing about privacy and they have this neat little icon that's two people standing across from each other shaking hands you sort of view them the side and it says basically that that this is the icon that we're going to use when Apple is asking you for things that are private information or when Apple is is giving you a prompt that deals with your private information and when you see this icon you can be reassured that we're handling it in a secure method and that we're not asking for too much and that we're being responsible about it and and this icon is our way of making you aware of it that this is the time to think about privacy yeah you know this is the kind of transparency that I was uh talking about when it came to the battery stuff that I hope that that I hope that Apple will learn to apply to most of their business right like they should have just come out about the battery thing and said he here's what we did here's why we did it and then let there be no controversy but they didn't do that but here is you know they're doing it right if if something is going to be accessing your personal information you have a right to know and most people are probably going to be okay with it but if you're not being transparent with people about it and you're not letting them know about it then they're going to be surprised when they find out afterwards and they're annoyed yeah now the other thing that they're doing is is interesting you know there have been a lot of concerns about Facebook's news feed and Facebook's news algorithm right and so with apple Apple's Newsfeed has decided that what they're going to do is they're going to take the stories that are vetted the stories that are are ones that they've looked at and are certain are true and they're going to give those a blue background and they're going to place them in the top stories and they're going to them Pinn to the top and they're going to refresh them three times a day so that you can always be sure you're getting things at the top of your feed that are sure to be true nice little bit of shade they're throwing out is I think it's great I think that uh I think that curation and uh experts are something that um uh are sorely needed in our world uh so that we can vet things and be sure that the information is accurate I'm not a big subscriber to conspiracy theory or anything like that and uh so I think that when we have trusted sources of information that is a good thing and I think that when our devices uh will Spotlight trusted sources of information it doesn't prevent you from getting your news elsewhere but um for the type of person who may not you know who just kind of accepts what is given to them it's good to be in a in an ecosystem where you can have trust yes now I want to tell you about something that that was really cool that I experienced and recently and after I tell you about that we're going to join a few people for a special interview about social and privacy so first a away is a company that offers highquality luggage and it's designed to be resilient resourceful and essential to the way you travel and it's available in a variety of colors and four different sizes including carryon sizes that are compliant with all the major US Airlines and actually fit as as well within the regulations for Airlines around the world in my experience the the way suitcase is lightweight it's made with premium German polycarbonate that's unrivaled in strength and impact resistance and it's got a TSA approved combination lock uh for 360° spinner wheels and a patent pending compression system so that if you're having trouble stuffing it all in it will help you do that both sizes of the carryon are able to charge anything that's powered by a USB cord and a single charge will power your iPhone five times this is really cool so what they do is they took a uh a battery power bank and they have a slot underneath the uh the handle that you pull up to roll those suitcase and that slot is spring-loaded and and sort of has a catch and release kind of thing the same way a Micro SD slot does and you push the battery down in and it latches in place and when you want to remove the battery you can just tap it and pull it out and so it works very well in in the airports where they're very very uh concerned about batteries especially after like the Samsung incident from a year or two ago and so you just take the power bank out and and keep it with you and you don't have to worry about any kinds of regulations about batteries it's really super easy you can charge it wherever you are without having to have you know charge the suitcase and when you want you just put it right back in the suitcase and you can put your phone on top of your suitcase and charge while you're sitting in the lounge it's really it's really pretty cool um the thing is lightweight the finish on it is really sleek and I I have you know I have five or six different battery power Banks I have the big ones that can power a laptop I have the small ones I do this when I go to CES right I I use all these different Power Banks to try and charge everything because you run out of power so fast having one built into the luggage is really quite cool I am I am super pleased with this and they have this this try out policy so you know you can try one out for 100 days you can travel with it you can Instagram with it you can just you know chill with it and if you decide you don't like it even after you've traveled with it you can go ahead and return it for a full refund they're they're totally cool if the wheels are scuffed up and the whole thing got you know manhandled by the baggage handlers they're cool they're totally all right and lifetime warranty anything breaks they'll fix it that's just that's that's the policy and it's free shipping to the continental US so for 20 bucks off of a suitcase visit a away travel.com slapple Insider and use the promo code Apple Insider during checkout that's a awaytravel.com slapple Insider and the promo code is Apple Insider for $20 off your away suitcase I do too it's so good and I'm I'm really a Critic of suitcases because I have all these I used to travel uh internationally four or five times a year and I would travel domestically uh once a month like for a week out of every month and there was one year where I flew 105 times a year and and so I I was a suitcase connoisseur and travel bag connoisseur and I you know I used all kinds of companies other bag bags and really learned how to pack quickly um I once packed for an international flight with 10 minutes to spare I yeah I'm at the right now they got a monogram Edition too where you get your initials on it so you can distinguish at the airport and stuff I it's cool stuff I like it built-in TSA security locks definitely yeah so TSA has those 10 different keys or whatever it is and this is a combination lock that locks the P zipper PS but TSA can release it using one of their special keys I I tend not to lock things anyway just because I I am not convinced that the TSA guys know that they have those key those keys and they'll just break something open anyway but you know the the upside to that would be if they did break it the uh the way people would fix it yeah I use the TSA locks I've had stuff go missing from my bag before so then I have it with the lock um uh indicator so it lets me know when it's been used because they don't always leave a note when they open your bag so that way I can prove that they were in my bag because I had a dispute where some stuff went missing a few years ago and I tried to complain and I long story I never ended up getting anything back from them course to pound sand didn't they yeah they did there there's no when when something like that happens the first thing they do is they blame the airline I actually I actually spoke to the congressman who's on the TSA oversight committee about it yeah he was probably very uninterested in speaking to you about that was no he no no no that that is something um that a lot of people don't realize contact your local and National politicians reach out to their offices uh and they usually engage with you hm mhm a lot of people don't you know they don't try they don't think about it they don't whatever I usually even if it's somebody who politically I don't agree with they usually have uh good experiences with them calling me back or um giving me an answer at the very least or or showing some interest uh and I I I I like that so well I you know I I filed an FCC complaint against Verizon not too long ago and I want to encourage our listeners to remember that that's a power that they have as well right yeah you know so they're they're all sorts of ways to petition exercise your rights absolutely so thank you for joining me for this special segment of the Apple Insider podcast joining us are yav and om you are from my permissions is that correct that's correct great can you introduce yourselves a little bit and tell me about what you're doing and how my permissions came into being so hi this is Omar here uh thank you for having us my permissions uh was founded approximately 6 years ago uh when it was someone naviga uh basically opened his Twitter account and found that uh um there was some uh spamming uh tweets all over his account and he was trying to figure out hey what's going on how can how can it be that there is something that is spamming my own account my own Twitter feed so to speak and then uh they started figuring out what's going on and eventually they found that hey there is a third party application on top of Twitter that has access to my feed and can post on my behalf let's figure this out let's see what can what we can do about it the very first product line by my permissions was a uh my permissions. org which which B basically a portal of links to all the various Services uh privacy settings pages and this basically allowed users to quickly identify and find out uh um privacy settings for Facebook Twitter Instagram Google Dropbox Yahoo and other services and basically just uh uh um clean and revoke unnecessary or undesired apps um from their from their accounts um fast forward a few years and today my permissions has a very popular uh application mobile app for Android and iOS that allows consumers to basically scan their uh accounts again on Facebook on Twitter on Google uh Instagram and other services and find uh various third- party applications that uh access their data um and can potentially use it against them as we saw in the Cambridge analytica Facebook Scandal okay and is it primarily around just the the thirdparty permissions for those services or does it also cover things like what information is visible to which groups or which links between those Twitter is linked to Facebook or not or does it also cover things like Android where Android permissions allow Facebook Messenger to scrape phone logs mhm so you ask two questions here when you first discuss the the link between Twitter to Facebook so it basically means that Twitter is a third-party application that r on top of Facebook and may have access to your Facebook profile data so in this sense Twitter acts exactly the same like uh Candy Crash with your Facebook profile when it comes to Android application yes our Android version today does handle uh Android applications uh that are installed on your own device and does let you know and see whether your flashlight application has access to your contact list or GPS location uh but having said that it's somewhat different of course than the third party applications that r on top of of of your Social accounts social media accounts uh and therefore behave differently per the limitations of that platform and versus Facebook or Twitter and others MH and is is it also looking at things like what applications have access to my tweets or posts versus what applications have the ability to create their own posts and post for me yes so basically having access to your uh profile public profile for example they can see apps that have permission to see that public profile data can read your posts for example um some applications do have the permission or are granted the permission by by us the users to post on on our our own behalf so yeah definitely one of the things that I I think has made people aware of of how big Cambridge analytica is this this problem is is that you know they sort of knew peripherally they sort of knew off on the side that they were sharing all this information and that it was possibly being used but many people weren't really aware how much was being collected and how all the different ways that it could be used you know when when Cambridge analytics took the information that was gathered from a harmless quiz and then turned it into using it for something else entirely people weren't really aware of that do do you agree yeah I I agree and I think that people both uh weren't aware of it and also like maybe didn't even care they just wanted to use like free services um and it caused you know uh eventually this uh uh Scandal uh people wanted um to play games to play quizzes um and they didn't maybe even uh uh have um you know the the right knowledge about what's going on with permissions maybe they are not reading and we do see like um on our app on my permissions uh uh when someone is scanning um you know Facebook for example for the first time they see like tons of apps that they never knew uh that's running on top of their Facebook and and sending their data to third party applications so I think it's it's lack of awareness and understanding and I think that's one of the major problems of of uh the Privacy uh uh Market uh the solutions are too complicated um and I think that people needs uh better tools that are more easy uh to understand to use um that's part of what we're trying to build um in my permissions and in other tools that we are building right now to bring privacy to the Messes in a in a like more easy to use and friendly kind of experience um because people gave up on the the right for privacy mostly because they didn't know what to do and where to go um and we can uh you know expect U um companies like Facebook um to help uh um you know the consumers uh with all regards to privacy because that's that's their business it's kind of you know go goes against their interest um to you know help people protect their data they make a lot of profit with you know advertising that runs um on top of this data yeah the the the saying that we hear a lot over here these days is if if you aren't paying for the product you are the product right right and I think that's that's you know maybe a good opportunity to change the approach and and maybe be more aware and instead of waiting for a top down solution you know to use like a bottom up uh approach and and use tools like my permissions and others um to uh know more about what you're doing to read the permissions that you're granting when you download an app uh and so on and so forth so explain to me how my permissions Works what what is the the new users's experience like yeah so whenever you you go to my permissions um it asks you to scan um your uh social accounts either Facebook Google Twitter Instagram and Etc um and then it make um you know you put your credentials and we scan your profile and then uh you get like a list of all the apps the third party apps that runs on top of um the service that you picked um and it shows you uh who's access to which uh information who has access to your photos to your microphone to your location um who's more dangerous than the other B based on some risk assessment technology we have and from one place very easily can either um remove the app or or keep it um that's pretty much what we what we do in my permissions so F first of all you mentioned of course Facebook's business model is about collecting and then reselling the information right so what is your business model and how is that different so we uh let you uh scan everything on one place uh very easily um and whenever you want to remove something then uh we charge um 10 one time per year um so we have nothing to do with advertising we are the good guys um and we want to um you know let you uh uh um you know be more aware and to control your privacy um so we do it uh you know with the one time early payment of $10 if you want to remove the the services you don't want to use anymore um from one place either for Facebook or for Google or for for all the rest that we support okay and is is there there any concern about sharing the account login information with my permissions you know it seems like one of the things that I think about is the the centralization of all these things when we lump all of these things together is there a risk of having that information centralized so no uh the way it works is that we do not uh collect or store uh your information your credentials anywhere on our servers so there is no risk of centralizing the data um by potentially hacking to my permission servers uh you can cannot find anything there is nothing to to to steal from the servers because we uh store no information from the users whatsoever okay that's that's reassuring that's good to know you know it's it's questions like this that I I should be asked I want to give you the opportunity to tell us that because you know when when you say all you have to do is go to this one app this one site and give them all your information it's it's like well how's that work exactly yeah of course it's definitely scary it's like uh going to your to an online service that uh allows you to enter your uh email and or password just to let you know whether it was uh um it was included in some previous data breaches uh in the past uh right we have to be responsible online citizens we have to take control of our of access to our own data and we have to to to learn it's one of the skill I think today in this um day and age we need to learn uh the skill of who to give our trust and how things work and how our data is handled or mishandled and and yeah that's true uh I would uh definitely understand if someone would ask what are you going to do with our with my data and how are you going to protect it and we believe we do take measures in order to um um to to saf keep and Safeguard users data and if we do do not need to store the data we don't definitely don't intend to and uh and that's it so you you said something that really captured my attention for a moment there it was the the idea that people really need to learn more about this learn more about how to choose how to trust and choose where their data goes how how do you think people become more aware of this I think once again like the the the scandal with Facebook and Cambridge analytica is maybe awake up call for people to uh understand that um you know signing for to any free service um can cost and and I think that now the attention um is different it's all over the news everyone here uh hear about it I think I see like people that never said anything about privacy uh um you know twitting and posting all over the place um and I think that our uh responsibility um as a privacy company for consumers is to uh provide people with the right tools with an easy to use solution um and also it's it's you know the the consumers the customers uh the people um you know responsibility to read more to understand better and to understand that um even if Facebook uh you know uh wants to collect data um you know mainly to uh uh um personalize that the advertising we get um there are other apps and there are other services and Facebook is just you know the tip of the iceberg and it can be like um you know in any other uh um app or digital service that we're using so so it's it's important to read and and it's important to uh you know uh track what's going on um and not just you know press uh the download button and and you know that's it yeah this is my concern you know I'm I'm worried that this this Scandal happens we've had scand in the past that have happened and they all sort of blow over after a while and I think Facebook's counting on that that you know in in 3 weeks no one will remember this it will be over and people will be back to normal that that people aren't aware that you know Facebook owns WhatsApp that Facebook owns Instagram that that all of these things are intertwined and it's a little ironic to me that people are are posting these complaints about privacy and their concerns about privacy on social media mhm I think uh yeah I think we have to consider something like this um with the rapid uh rate of changes all the time there will always be new tools and new technologies and there will always be uh entities whether it corporations governments hackers individuals doesn't matter who will take advantage of those tools for their own benefits uh and more often than not uh on the at the expense of other people um this rate of change will only increase we will only see more tools and more technologies that will put significant uh benefit at the hands of others uh for us or or the masses all is left is to educate oursel that's one and we can discuss that and and use tools that help us bridge that Gap um in the past for example when you had new technologies like uh cars for example or you had the parents for kids right educating them to to be care care F and War them about the dangers same applies to parents trying to teach the kids not to talk to strangers or to uh uh um I don't know to to stay away from bullies um that's it's true that it's kind of tricky it's very hard to compare between the two online uh behavior and responsible online behavior and and crossing crossing the road right because it's kind of it's a kind of two new technologies and our parents in some way don't always know what's best for us online um so yeah it's up to a lot of different factors uh to educate the online community whether it's companies like us with tools like us whether it's uh parents to their kids whether it's people like you and uh representing the media that help educate the people and yeah people will have to I suppose will have to get burned and and learn from the lesson and grow from it and and and educate themselves and equip themselves better to to handle those new technologies and new threats that that are appearing in will continue to appear at a rapid at rapid pace and and I will add to it that um uh in a way the fact that it happened with Facebook which is one of the you know biggest companies in the world um that attract so many you know um attention maybe will will'll make it even uh better to um you know with this education process and also there are more uh things that that are happening in this uh world with the gdpr in Europe the the Privacy uh uh issue is is like uh starting to become uh more and more uh news and I think everything is you know backing everything and and I think that U you know that's maybe the time to change things people do have a short a short memory uh but I think because of the fact it's it's such a big Scandal and with such a big company that everyone is is pretty much using uh maybe uh it will change something maybe this time is different yeah so what what are some of the best practices what's what's the advice that you could give to our listeners how how should they govern themselves with social media well first they need to understand what uh problem social media solves for them and what uh uh people who use social media what kind of problem they solve for the social media websites right uh you mentioned where yourself earlier that social media such as Facebook is basically a company that uh profits from advertising um so as long as people will better understand that they are the product and not basically the customers it means that uh Facebook profits from them uh uh pouring personal information to the platform and I believe that people do understand in a way that posting their kids photos or posting that they going out on vacation is maybe not the best idea uh uh but at the same time people don't necessarily realize that just by the fact they are logged into Facebook and and browsing all over the web for Vacations or for a new a new shirt in their favorite fashion websites and reading uh content on the favorite News website is also a form of of pouring information and telling uh more about uh about them to to Facebook yeah for for many people it seems crazy that Facebook tracks you all over the web you know the idea if you ask someone but I don't have Facebook open I don't have it open open in a tab or a browser how could they know it it seems crazy to people who haven't thought about this before you're right and and again technology moves fast and there are always new technologies that uh will will try to get our data or will be used against us so we need to to be aware all the time it does not mean that every person and person needs to uh go to uh to to learn how to code and learn how web Technologies work it's enough to read the the the really lot lots of information out there how to how one can protect oneself from dangers online whether from uh list on how to protects when they download new Android apps and which permissions to give whether how it works and why uh uh certain ad is tracing and tracking them all over the web when they surf all the information is out there and it was really really made accessible and easy to read and easy to learn and easy to understand in just a matter of of uh one of those search one little query uh um on Google basically to to reach those uh those answers really simple there is one more thing we like to add um in a way uh those who some people who have interest uh uh are trying to tell us that privacy in a way is dead that we have no reason to fight for our our privacy but in a way the concept of privacy was made open to debate and infused with conflict the concept of PR private will forever be up to us to decide our private cars or private photos or uh private number or private everything basically it's it's ours it's it's us no one else will tell me that my private stuff is not mine anymore but the concept of privacy is debatable we always hear online there is no more privacy no more privacy but tell that to every person that they need to hand over their private stuff it's it's another kind of discussion so we need to uh um kind of switch our our approach uh or or change our mentality or the way we think and consider uh our private information and how and to whom we hand it to absolutely I I am so glad that you said that because that's one of the things that you're right it comes up all the time you know the old Eric Schmidt quote telling people that privacy is dead and you're you're correct privacy is what you reclaim you you have it if you want it exactly I I know people that refuse to put anything on a computer not not even online just if they have something that they want to keep absolutely private they only keep it as a copy offline off the computer and hard copy on paper because they're so concerned about this but it it seems to me that everything is going online you know we have we have uh Apple Health we have Google Fit we have all of our medical records which we would all pretty much consider to be private information becoming more and more connected through whether it's through Fitness devices like the Apple watch and then Partnerships with health insurance companies or or just the idea that medical record systems are becoming more connected and and you know even Apple's talked about making their own medical record system and their own health centers and wellness centers with their own staff of doctors we we really do need to to step back and think more about how our information is used and where it goes even more so than in the past with all these things coming together like that privacy isn't like uh cyber security it's not really a white privacy is more like 50 Shades of Gray and what I consider private or a danger to my privacy is not something that you would necessarily consider the same so it means that if you believe that uh using Apple health or Fitbit or uh other technology whatever other product if you believe it does not compromise uh your privacy and or if you're willing to compromise some of that privacy uh in exchange for that benefit for that value that you you're getting that's perfectly fine so one person may find Facebook great and post all their personal information online because they're getting something that they find and and deem valuable including uh which uh which uh t-shirt or a gadget that they would like or need to buy but another person may uh may consider Facebook as it's threat just by opening an account and would rather just stay away from it so it's really a subjective decision on the on the individual level thank you now where where can people find out more information about my permissions so we do have a website my permissions. comom and our apps um are on both Google and apple uh uh App Stores um you can also Google my permissions and you'll find like U many different uh um things about about it um so just look for my permissions my permissions. comom um and everything is there wonderful thank you so much thank you so much for having us thank you speaking of privacy as we were just a minute ago um there was a story that you're familiar with about Tim Cook speaking at the China development Forum this is this is back from over the weekend and he was speaking directly about Facebook's and their misuse of data so what did he say uh he was asked if uh he would uh what he would do if he found himself in a similar situation uh as Mark Zuckerberg and threw some shade and said he would not find himself in that situation and he's right um Facebook is not a very trustworthy company in my view um and with the Cambridge analytica information um it's only gotten worse uh I think that um Facebook certainly was uh taken advantage of by Cambridge analytica but Facebook also put themselves in a position for it to happen and did not put proper oversight uh in place to prevent that type of thing from happening in the first place which as stewards of personally identifiable information they should be doing that's kind of their obligation um you know whether or not the regulatory hammer in the US will drop on Facebook um we will see uh obviously right now you have a republican uh uh control of all branches of government and they're they're not particularly pro- regulation um and I understand that I'm not personally especially pro-regulation either but at some point you have to do something you know and uh this is a situation that's gotten a little out of hand um and it's unfortunate and apple obviously would never find themselves in this position which is why Siri is so bad you know if if Apple were willing to collect more data um then they would be able to hire more data scientists to have a fun sand sandbox to play in because they would just have a lot more data but Apple puts user privacy first they've proven that time and time again and what you've seen here is kind of it's interesting you know Microsoft and Apple are strange bed fellows obviously Rivals for many years and still Rivals uh but they are I feel like a lot of times you know because Apple has so much money and they were a company that was reinvented in the iPod people forget that they are the Old Guard of tech uh and the old guard of tech Microsoft and and Apple uh versus the new guard um and their more LAX policies on data when it comes to Twitter and Facebook and Amazon to an extent as well um you see how Microsoft and Apple kind of see eye to eye on that and uh align and so you know I think I agree with what Tim said I think that he was absolutely right and uh I think that uh Facebook finds themselves in a really bad position and I don't see it getting any better yeah and you know there was a Facebook scientist a Facebook former Facebook employee who worked on some of these these projects talking on Twitter today about how it's a little overblown that the Facebook doesn't sell users information directly that Facebook is basically saying we have all this information and if you'd like to buy an ad to Target these people then you can Target a specific demographic and we can help you do that very well they aren't actually telling you people you know here's your here's your people who have kittens pictures and you can see their pictures they're not actually selling the pictures um that that when you download your Facebook archive and scroll through all of the things that Facebook has on you the things to pay attention to are the ads section and when you look through the ad section you can see what Facebook thinks are relevant advertisements for you yeah you can see what categories they've bucketed you in it's it's pretty creepy stuff right it it is but to to also be aware that it's an inexact science it's imperfect for example if you liked the oatmeal which is a popular web comic it doesn't mean that you're a foodie but that Facebook doesn't understand the difference and will put you in a food category cashmir Hill as a tech journalist who's been around for a long time um and she is currently writing for Gizmodo and she did an article uh last year about she was on Facebook and had a recommended friend and it turned out that uh she connected with this person they started talking uh came to discover that her person that she met on there was actually a brother of hers that her father had had um in an extramarital affair with another woman and she did not know that this person existed uh they did not know anybody mutually that they could figure out other than obviously their father who is not on Facebook and so she tried to get in touch with Facebook to find out how they could have possibly done this when nobody else knew um and it's their special sauce and they won't tell yeah the people you may know feature is um is is not discussed publicly the there then there are real problems with it like that example like like the example of an adopted child finding their birth parents when the birth parents didn't want to be found or like an attorney whose clients start getting recommended as people they may know each other and you as an attorney do not want your clients talking to each other necessarily because that's like all kinds of things about attorney client privilege and keeping things separate you know um yeah I just saw a a speech by Scott Galloway a few days ago he's a u NYU Market marketing professor and head of a marketing firm L2 that Gardner owns uh research and stuff like that um and he has a talk that he does where he wants to see the big four tech companies in the US broken up he thinks that regulation should come in and split them up and the talk is interesting because obviously very relevant now with Cambridge analytica uh stolen identities on on Twitter where people are getting Twitter accounts made in their name uh you know Russian hacking that sort of stuff list goes on so he thinks that Facebook and Amazon Twitter and apple should be broken up but I feel like I mean I guess I'm biased because I'm an Apple fan but I feel like his case for breaking up Apple was pretty thin it's probably the weaker of those because of those four one of those things is not like the other he he he uh I think he he has it included in there because it's just kind of sexy to say oh conveniently is the four biggest companies they broken up but there's a point in his presentation he's a great talker and it was really engaging and I and I liked it uh but he he shows what he thinks they should be broken into as companies and they're all very logical but the only case he really makes for splitting up Apple is just Apple the hardware company and then the iTunes software company basically that's that's what he thinks it should be split up as and I'm just like doesn't really seem like that big of a deal to me but well fine but let's talk about Apple the Healthcare company cuz there's Apple the hardware company let's talk about Amazon the Healthcare company uh also also Poss Al though Apple's a little further along right you know Amazon does not collect your steps and your health data and does not establish medical record didn't they just make a big acquisition though they they've made an acquisition although I'm waiting for them to make another one I'm looking for them to make an acquisition in Pharma no they they and they announced that partnership with healthcare for employees it's like a mhm and and Apple has one as well JP Morgan and Berkshire hathway are in it I think uh yeah yeah so I would argue that they're more into the health business than Apple is at this point with with where they're going Apple's hiring Physicians assistants and doctors to help them get more accurate data that they collect no to provide wellness centers for employees well that's for their employees that's different that's not a consumer facing thing yet I don't think it will be I think no I no I think that what they're doing is they want to make sure they can have accurate data so that you the consumer can have your data because you got to realize this stuff doesn't get uploaded to the cloud or whatever right it's just saved on your iPhone and that data is crypted it's secure and you can share it with your healthc care provider to give you a better assessment of your own health or to help diagnose and find things that's good that's technology for a good purpose Apple's not collecting data to sell it or to uh you know Market it or whatever the Apple has always been a company where what they're selling you is very clear you can say what you will about their prices and everything's blah blah blah overpriced or whatever okay fine but at least you know where they're making their their money it's been said a million times but it's the truth when it comes to Facebook and Twitter you are the product the person using it is the product and their real customers are advertisers marketing think about all the industries that get destroyed by Facebook you know the publishing industry you know we're Apple Insider working in the publishing industry right uh the marketing industry you know advertisers that now have to deal directly with Facebook and all and Google and all that kind of stuff right um that is uh it's a problem it's a big problem and I don't see those same problems with with apple uh I don't see them as that kind of a company and so I don't think you know at least in terms of Scott Galloway's talk I don't think that it's fair to lump Apple in with the likes of Google Facebook Twitter Amazon that kind of stuff I'm just looking at the health records on iPhone which is in beta which says keep track of clinical health records from multiple sources and automatically receive updates right and you add your account information from participating heal networks and hospitals of which there are 39 so far yeah and and actually it looks like one of the uh no wow two two of the uh the networks that I'm in are are among those 39 and I and I wouldn't have any concerns about having my data on there because I know that Apple's not harvesting it if they did start harvesting it this would be a very different conversation yes the the information retrievable from iPhone or iPad can help patients better understand though health history have informed conversations with Physicians and family members and maybe make future decisions the data is is encrypted and protected with user iPhone passcode and and that's why what Tim said was absolutely right you know like he would never find himself in this position because they've proven that they wouldn't put themselves in this position they make plenty of money selling Hardware they make plenty of money selling hardware and they don't need to do that Facebook's entire business model is about getting you to engage with the platform so they can learn more about you that's what they want yes and the more information they can collect about you the better they can Target you know I had an ad a few years ago that I saw on Facebook that I was like wow this is part genius and part creepy they knew where I went to college they knew what year I graduated from college and so some company out there was selling a series of t-shirts that were the bars that were open in the town you went to college when the year you graduated and it was like remember when you used to go to this bar and that bar get the T-shirt you know Facebook doesn't know what college I went to or university I went to they don't know they don't know which town I was in at that time they don't know which town I live in now they they hilariously pick a random bunch of towns that I could have been in but none of them are the correct answer some of them are a little bit kind of close and neighboring to where I would have been but but they really have no concept at all they they've totally missed on that part of my profile because I have I have obscured it for years yeah they're they don't they're not transparent about it they they rope you into these features and don't really they're not really upfront about why they want this information and so it's like you know you go on there and you know they want you to tell your your favorite quote and uh give me a little bio about you and tell me where you live and if you don't fill it out it keeps like bugging you you go back to your own page it's like oh why don't you tell us where you liveing these days what's going on and you think oh well that's okay sure why not they they they make it uh fun and engaging and all that but then now you see the consequences of it now you see the problem with it now you see why you can't trust this company I've been beating that drum for years though this is nothing new yeah no I I get that it's not fair to people who are not techsavvy and don't really know they go on the platform they engage they connect with friends whatever and then all of a sudden this happens and it's like wow I didn't I didn't know that that was happening and how could they yeah so I've I've gone ahead and added that health record stuff while we were sitting here talking and I'm checking out all the uh all the the data they have on me but that's good that's helpful yeah you know uh one of the stories we have this week is Apple complying gdpr which is a new law in Europe where they're actually doing something about your data and does it stand for Neil uh it stands for General uh data protection regulation I think yes yes we have a winner okay so yeah and this is something that's going to affect in May that's going to have a big uh effect on a lot of technology companies and a lot of uh Services because they have a lot of personal information and uh there are two key parts to it that are very interesting and exciting and relate to this as well so these are what they are saying are basic human rights online one is that you have a right to be forgotten which means if you tell Facebook to forget about you you know that they will delete all your data and it's guaranteed supposedly and there will be regulation to make sure uh that this happens uh the other thing is that you have data portability which means that you can now take data from one service and then potentially bring it to another one um and take it with you as you see fit this is kind of a nightmare for companies because uh they don't have systems built for this but I think ultimately it's a good thing for consumers because you should be able to have control over that data and uh Apple has issued an update so that they are compliant with gdpr which is great um but I think that a lot of the stuff they were doing was already compliant with the spirit of this law and apple health is a great example of that um you the de the device saves all of the information it's not put in the cloud um it's encrypted um it is you have the ability to export it to other apps and services and that sort of stuff that's the way it should be absolutely health information is very very personal uh and it should be treated with the utmost respect and Apple is very transparent about the way that things work with the health app and the data they collect and I think that's a good thing and now I I downloaded all of my Facebook data I downloaded all of my Google data and downloading all of my Google data quite a while took me about 3 days to actually get it done over gigabit fiber because they just have so much um I've i' I've been doing this as a part of so I wrote an article that we published on our site last week well no we published this week actually about um scaling back your Facebook usage what what do you do to try and minimize your exposure if you're not able to actually remove yourself entirely right and I I've been thinking about doing something similar with uh an article about Google because I downloaded all of my Google Drive data I downloaded all of my Gmail and and synchronizing that was a little difficult because they throttle IMAP after a while but there's an open source projects that help you get around that problem and uh so I've downloaded my Google Drive and all of my email to a network attached storage device and if I wanted to I could vacate all of that data delete it all and totally bail out of Google of course I can't do that because I'm changing my ISP from AT&T fiber to Google Fiber which you know they they of the things they give you when you do that is they give you one terabyte of Google drive storage so now I've got more stuff that I'm thinking gosh am I going to get sucked in and use that but the uh you know the the the what it comes down to is that none of these are good actors right they all have their own motivations they all have their own things uh AT&T for years had had a bad reputation for both throttling and for their relationship with handing over all any customer data on a moment's notice you know they they were very happy to allow their whole line trunk to be tapped completely where Google is slightly more uh put off by that kind of thing so I I feel relatively comfortable and using Google as the ISP but I I'm going to be removing some of my information from there to to to minimize my exposure there now there are people who have the opinion that removing the data is not the right thing that that what you really want to do is is hide within the Noise by creating a profile that is very milk toast you know these are uh complicated issues right because your right to be forgotten is nice and principle but what about your right to know something about somebody right like if you commit a crime and you want it scrubbed from the internet do you have a right to do that do do consumers or other people have a right to find out about it uh so they are complicated issues this is not uh quite so simple uh but I think it's a step in the right direction to have a policy in place that uh puts consumers interests in mind absolutely AB we've talked about a lot of stuff though and we haven't even touched on the fact that there was new hardware announced this week so we should probably get to that Hardware well I I I got to tell you before we talk about that I want to tell you about the very best thing new ey workor Suite oo updates to Pages updates to numbers updates to Keynote oh boy you don't use those uh I use Pages really yeah what do you what you do with Pages uh I'll get like uh documents to me in stuff that are Microsoft Word and I open them in Pages oh okay I do all my writing and text edit though plain text okay I do all my writing in uh in IIA writer but gosh Pages wow okay I I Ed keynote a lot I used keynote quite a bit and uh I've I've Loved keynote for years ever since it was first released and the only product that I ever loved quite as much as I loved keynote almost as much was a product called 2 slides and 28 slides was a web app that looked remarkably like keynote and worked remarkably like keynote except it was on the web and I wish Apple had bought it and uh so I I the big update here is that you can use a pencil and hand markup any of these three types of documents and when you do you're not on on an iPad you're not just creating a another layer with markup that's overlaid over it the the handwriting that you do is actually tied to the text word or image or object that you're marking up which is unique uh you know Google allows for people to mark up things on documents but when they do they're just creating a layer over the top of it that's not actually tied to the object that's being marked up so this is kind of a big change for for markup and for editing and uh you know I was watching the verge's live stream of the event when this was announced and he commented something to the effect of I'm requiring all of our writers to compose everything in pages from now on so that he could then Mark it up and edit using the pencil it's it's a big change cool yeah I thought so yeah but this leads to the question it says you know if there's new hard if there's new applications and they require a pencil to do the markup what Hardware are people doing that on well uh if they are in a school maybe they'd be interested in a new $300 iPad yeah with $49 crayon yeah which could be cool no I'm um I thought that last year's $330 iPad uh with the A9 processor um and the Legacy uh 9.7 in design knocked out of the park uh I think that that is the absolute best value in Apple's entire product lineup uh I think that that price what that product offered uh was a complete home run and and I didn't think they'd update it this year because it was already more than capable Hardware I mean if you bought one last year U even if you bought one this year it's still a really good iPad but um clearly it's uh helping Drive sales for them and uh uh they wanted to push a little further in education so they held a special event this week a small one and it's not going to be super exciting to the type people that listen to this podcast who are into the as they say speeds and feeds but uh they it I think it's going to be a great entrylevel iPad I think it's a great addition I think adding pencil support is great um I I think it's a I think it's another home run I think this is a really great product I think it's a wonderful product and it's a big Miss and why is that so here's the problem the education Market is is really driven by a few different things and one of them is the affordability of the device MH and the ease of management of the device that's the it side of it and purchasing side of it and so Chromebook which is as we know a big success in education they cost around 130 bucks you know if you if you want to buy one retail on Amazon you can spend 150 bucks easy you can spend 140 bucks if you look a little longer you can spend 180 bucks and you'll be doing fine the the very best ones are closer to the 270 Mark but but there are plenty of them plenty plenty plenty of them available around that 150 mark and if you're in education you get a discount so let's just say 129 bucks okay and in terms of management Google has really got down the administration for these kinds of things you create your student roster you give them all accounts you issu those accounts at the beginning of the year they can sign into anything that will accept the Google account and it will be theirs they can do it whether it's apps on iOS they can do it whether it's a Chromebook they sign in with their school account job done and in terms terms of privacy Google doesn't collect any information on those School accounts they know that they're kids as far as those kids are concerned they they don't track the way that they would a Google account belong that that's belonged to that's owned by URI the downside in terms of privacy is is that single sign on works so if you take a student account and then sign into someone else's app using Google single sign on right Google connect then then those other third parties do track do kind of treated the same as always because they have no idea that it's a student account but in addition to the administration part of it Google Classroom is really quite good Google Classroom allows a teacher to assign a piece of work allows the student to submit that work allows the student to retract and resubmit and and turn in work all using this interface and it's really slick it's good um they have the typical docs numbers slides uh docs sheets and slides and and really the the biggest problem that the IT people have at a school is trying to manage the bandwidth within the school you know I was talking with the the it at guy at my kids school because I I was going to offer to do a wireless survey and and help him place his APS better place his access points better within the building and he said that's not my problem I don't care what the access points are we don't have enough access points anyway I don't really need to know where the signal drops are I said really that's interesting what's your problem he says well my problem is that I have a limited amount of bandwidth and I have to divide it up among all these students and so I've throttled them all down to um about 10 Meg he's he's throttled them down no he throttled them down to um around one Meg so Broadband from 10 years ago basically and you know stuff that's slow slow that we no longer consider it fitting the definition of broadband and he said he was doing that because you know if if they're all looking for YouTube videos to include in their slide presentation then it hammers the network he can't figure out how to handle it better so he's he's busy being gatekeeper and punishing them for using data rather than worrying about where the weak points are on his Network and that's my rant about that guy but the that that's the thing is that the purchasing decision is the it guys is going to recommend something that secures his job that's why for years and years and years school it guys always recommended Windows because they meant it meant that they would always have a job fixing Windows here they recommend Google because it's cheap and if a kid breaks a screen they just get another one for 120 bucks 130 bucks and they don't have to worry about it uh and in fact they send a letter home at the beginning saying get your kids a Chromebook get your kids a laptop do not send them with an expensive tablet because if they break the screen they're going to be out of luck and you know when they say expensive tablet they're referring to one specific device so that that happens at a lot of schools not just the one that my kids go to and apple is taking a different approach apple is approaching it from not what school are today with in terms of the the management of submitting work and stuff like that and the the administration side of it Apple's approaching it from what could we do that would allow classes to be more creative so what can we do to help teachers understand how to use shapes within keynote and then they can give a lesson on here's a presentation and the kids can all use shapes within keynote and it'll be awesome and that's cool but it's it's not really where curricular are today so Apple is is focused on what a classroom could be in the future what an ideal classroom would be that would also by the way take advantage of Apple hardware and Apple software but but they're not really you know they they can't address the $129 machine does a $129 machine have a touchreen no and it doesn't matter what if kids would rather interact with a touchscreen what if it makes it more engaging for them uh it hasn't made a difference as I said you know it's it's about what they're doing today is versus what they could be doing right I I don't see this as that big of a deal I this is not what what they did so they've Apple's divided among three roles they have the ASM or the Apple School manager and that's the person who's supposed to be the IT person setting up the accounts they have the classroom management side of it and the classroom management side of it is the side that says that teachers can peek into and have displayed on their iPad what's going on on the students iPad so they can monitor without having to look over everyone's shoulders virtually looking over the shoulder opposed to walking around kind of thing and then there there's the creative class lesson side of it and that's that's really what they're trying to ask of teachers is to learn all these tools and to do that they've created a site they've got Apple teacher which uses your Apple ID and offers all kinds of training across different applications so that you can and and some suggestions for lessons you know how to use Clips within your class kind of thing and it's a very nice site it's lovely the the quizzes for training are really well done they're short they're to the point they don't take so long the presentation of the information is easy so if if you were a teacher and not overburdened with everything else already going on in your life as a teacher which of course all teachers are because we ask a ton of teachers without necessarily accounting for how many hours there are on the day um it's pretty cool but it's it's it's ah you know it's sort of how much more do you want to lay on the teacher that they have to go learn keynote I think you're overthinking this maybe I I I think that uh you know that I taught High School right I know and and and I I I'm not really looking at this from a perspective of what's going to make sure that every student in every school has an iPad I'm looking at this from the perspective of it was 8 years ago now that the first iPad was introduced and when we knew there was an Apple tablet coming a mythical Apple tablet there were a lot of misconceptions about what it would be but the biggest one and arguably the biggest surprise at that first uh unveiling by Steve Jobs was the price at $4.99 and people like wow that's a great deal well here we are8 years later and with inflation and everything else and you're getting a extremely capable device that will last you for four or five years easily um that has a gorgeous display Touch ID thin design long battery life run down the list the thing's awesome and it costs you $329 or if you're a school $299 let's not lose sight of the fact that here we are8 years later and the device has gotten not only better but cheaper and considerably cheaper to a point now where it's like almost a no-brainer purchase for some people right but not not for strapped schools that are strapped on budget I understand that and apple certainly presented this as an education really the biggest Miss if there's a miss and that is they have Swift playgrounds yes and Swift playgrounds teaches you to do some stuff but it doesn't really allow you to actually write anything of your own that you could then share and run on another iPad and so if we're talking about you know having these kinds of of applications and having these kinds of learning is how we get to having future Engineers which is one of the things that Tim Cook talked about we really ought to be able to to take the one programming environment that we actually have on the iPad and turn it into something that allows kids to write and then run and share across other iPads and it's not there yet well yeah but the software you can really program well on a Chromebook either by the way I mean to to do that what you really need is to have a server somewhere that you can then remotely log into via the browser which is possible but it's a heck of an environment to set up yeah I mean there's a lot of changes that that need to come and will inevitably come to iOS and future software updates and you know hopefully uh Apple makes a point of that uh with iOS 12 this year and we see you know good multi-user support and you know some changes coming in that direction now you had questions about the Logitech accessories that were also announced at this event and one of the so there there were really two Logitech accessories right there's the crayon which looks a little like a pencil except that it's flat more like a Carpenters pencil than anything um and and and some of the comments online suggested that this was something that Johnny would never allowed out right because it's got the tethered cap for charging it's got uh this flat design as opposed to something round it's it's just something he would have had great disdain for but at 49 bucks Apple shared some of the technology that's in the pencil with Logitech and Logitech created a a stylist like device and it doesn't have all the same features but it has a bunch right it has the low latency it has Palm Rejection it has tilt um doesn't have the pressure sensor ing part of it but it's a really well-known stylus and what's cool about it is that instead of the pairing by having to plug it into the lightning Port of the iPad um these things use a different radio frequency and you can use them across many iPads which is great for the school environment where if you have you know 50 of the things and 50 of the Crayons 50 iPads and 50 crayons you don't want to you don't want to worry about matching them up that's going to be a nightmare yep there's no way you'll ever solve that problem in a school so this is the way they solve it by not making that an issue it sounds like a win to me I think that's great definitely the rugged case and rugged combo is basically designed to protect the iPad because you you and I both know if there's an LCD screen that can be broken it will be broken MH and I when I managed a lab I had uh 20 iBooks the iBook g3s back then and there were inevitably one or two that always got their screens broken and instead of trying to deal with Apple for fixing them it was easier to go and buy a used display and replace the LCD in the iBook back then here it's hard to do that on iPad so they've made this giant rugged case that goes around it it's kind of bulky kind of square has a kickstand kind of like a Surface Microsoft Surface has a keyboard that attaches to it and it's it's impact resistant and it's spill resistant and it's drop resistant and it's darn near impossible to take the case off unless you do it properly it's it's pry resistant you can't just pry it apart and you know that students would if they could so they've really designed this thing for the environment it's not something you'd necessarily get if you weren't in schools but it makes sense for that environment and and kids are terrible on Hardware my my daughter tells me all the time that she dropped her laptop it just slipped out of my hands Dad yeah I know I know and I have I have pushed out the dents on an aluminum MacBook and and I have I have given her a Chromebook to use for a little bit and there's there's always she drops them she does that's why I liked her going with the iPad but she says when she takes her iPad to school the Wi-Fi doesn't work for it because the guy who's Manning it doesn't put his APS in the proper place so there's just no win well this was a minor event um but I think it's a win um I you know it's not it's not for me I am not the market for this I'm really excited about a new 2018 12.9 in iPad Pro with face ID and we'll probably get that you know September I'd guess at this point um if not WWDC uh but I think for the market that they're going for here which is not just educ I mean obviously this is pitch an education Focus event but I think that for anybody just looking to get a regular iPad this is a great deal uh oh it's more affordable than an iPad Mini 4 it's a by about 70 bucks n this is a this is a knockout product another another great win for them um in the iPad lineup and uh yeah I I think that this is just I'm I I was I was not personally invested in the announcement but I think that at that price it's really hard to it's an easy recommendation right right if somebody said what do you think about this iPad you know I want to get a tablet whatever for 330 bucks go for it awesome yeah now I want to mention a little bit about the event because the event was run slightly differently than other events in the past yeah it was in Chicago and well at a typical event right at a typical Apple event they have these stage announcement the keynote and then they Shuffle everyone off into a room or tent or other area where they have the hardware set up and everyone fights over getting a few seconds of hands on time with it so they can photograph it and send it back to the website and say hey look we were there we had our hands on it right and this was more like a mini WWDC where instead of being shoved in that small tent with the devices instead they had classrooms because they're at a school and they used those classrooms with a teacher and an apple engineer to talk about what they were doing and why and how it could be used and applied and that seems like such a better approach it's it's neat it's cool I I think it's cool I really I think that there's a lot good about the way that event was run now let's change gears again and you know that that years ago I worked for a couple of different companies that made accessories for these devices right and my competitor was was always Belin in any of these things Belin was the competitor and I've had friends who worked for Belin and I I've known people there for years and they're they're good people and for a long time they made all these devices and and you know people said things like you know I would never buy a belcon device now because they were all you know it's too expensive compared to what you can get from any other competitor maybe so but for a long time they really cared about their design and and their quality they have been purchased by foxcon yeah so foxcon snapped up balcon and when foxcon snapped up Balon they snapped up lyus and weimo by extension now weimo was always started at Balon it wasn't an acquisition and weimo was the uh the home automation play that only recently only in January gamed homekit compatibility uh lynxis started off as networking equipment on their own they got bought by Cisco Cisco decided they were done with them and sold them onto belon so they've been all over but this is this is kind of a big shift because in this market so uh Incipio Incipio bought up um Braven bought up Griffin technology uh snapped up a few others and so they've been consulted all of those uh zag who did the invisible shield for so long bought up I frogs and mphi and they bought up iogs years and years ago but they bought up Mofi relatively recently uh foxcon snapping up these ones it's it's really an interesting weird period of consolidation at this time right I think it's a tough spot for the industry because there are so many cheap Chinese knockoffs that come out and oftentimes hit the market before because they don't follow the same licensing requirements uh with companies like apple so like for example um I'm sitting here right now and I popped my uh iPhone 10 out of a battery case that I used and the the power button overlay on this plastic case just broke off and I'm kind of ticked offed about it but the name of this company is appotronics and the reason I bought this case Mark of quality right there huh yeah and the reason I bought this case and not a uh mphi one or whatever was because a it was available like at launch I could get a battery case so I've had it for a while now uh and be it was cheap I think I paid like 30 bucks for this and if I was going to get a if I was going to get a Mofi one it would be like a hundred bucks or something I like Mofi products a lot uh but they didn't have anything out because they have to get the licensing and all that with apple and all and that kind of stuff so you know I'm guilty of it too I think a lot of people are guilty of it and that makes it a tough space to be in because you got to compete against the likes of this and they make good enough products for very cheap that ship before everybody else so you know good luck to foxcon I'm not a huge belon fan I I own a few belon things here and there but n they're they're in my view as an accessory maker pretty ho um I think that uh Logitech is one of the better accessory makers out there right now which is exactly why you see apple partnering with them on things like the crayon and the iPad case and the smart keyboard and all that kind of stuff uh Belin you know whatever happens with foxcon whether the quality changes or they take a different direction or whatever I I wouldn't consider Belin to be a very high quality uh accessory maker well they did have the advantage of for a long they were the first to launch home automation stuff with Amazon for the echo you know they they were the very first to be compatible as as any kind of device to work with Echo they have a long history of doing things that were cool to do um lynxis similarly has a long history they were the first easy to use home Wi-Fi router that was not an apple one they were the first to go ahead and support open source like uh DDWRT firmware or open wrrt firmware on the lynus router named because wrt because the the lyus model name was WRT54G or the the 54g L that stood for Linux which meant you could load the open source firmware on it you know that was officially supported these are cool moves they they are not a bad company and um what's going to be interesting to see is What Becomes of them now because foxcon is so big I I I worry that it's easy for a brand to get lost within foxcon you know you you end up having your stuff being produced by not the not the A Team not the B team but maybe the c or the D team kind of thing and you know having your product worked on by the janitorial staff on weekends is is not what you really want well now that my battery case is missing this button I want one with a USBC port on it because this micro USB port is garbage God or lightning Port that' be cool too yeah USBC wouldn't be impossible and actually what you could do is you could do USBC with a builtin chi charging so you don't actually have to talk to Apple for any of it this one hasqi charging built in this alphatronics one so if you did chi in the back of the battery case and USBC to the to the battery case you don't have to talk to Apple to do any of that approval you could totally make that thing not if you're using the chi charging oh oh oh so this one does chi to recharge the battery I'm saying use chi on the inside to charge the phone yeah that's what I've been wanting for a while now I want a battery case that just leaves the lightning pour on the bottom exp I'm saying you want to build that yeah let's do it okay all right on that note we have come to the end of another great Apple Insider podcast I'd like to mention again about breach the uh the new podcast that led off the the beginning of the show again they are a podcast that takes you inside the world's biggest hacks they set out to answer question about the hack of a huge American company and find themselves investigating a Russian conspiracy subscribe to breach b r a in your podcast app right now Neil we've missed you where can people find you you can find me on Twitter at this is Neil NE L and let me know if you have a USBC uh or lightning uh iPhone 10 battery case and I'm your host Victor and you can find me on Facebook um no Google uh I don't know Twitter's good this week maybe yeah maybe you can find me on iCloud at no you can find me on Twitter at vmar can we find you on iTunes ping you know you could you absolutely could for the longest time until that went away and I think that was a Miss by Apple I think they should have learned some lessons from that and and this is sort of a global lesson right you and I have talked before about how FaceTime should have been opened up the way they promised that it was going to be open right yeah yeah so I I think ping suffered in part from the problem of being Apple only and not just Apple only but iTunes only right yeah and had it been a social network that wasn't built into iTunes only or had it lived on the web and also used iTunes as a client that it should have been open to everyone it should have been open to Android users it should have been open to PC users it should have been open to anyone with a browser and had it been open like that it would have stood more of a chance it wouldn't have necessarily won the same way that that Google Buzz or Google Plus didn't necessarily win or orcut only really won in South America but it it's it it seems like it was crippled by being too insent so there you go find me on iTunes ping at V marks and we will be back next week with more thank you so much\n"