Episode 178 - Large Apple drones, Jony Ive and post-Jobs products, and AI that phones people to sc...

The Nexus 6p's O Problem

Google has decided to limit its release of O (Android) on specific phones, and the Nexus 6p is not one of them. I'm completely not shocked at this revelation given the fact that O is on 3% of their installed base. It was released three whole months after it was announced, which is a significant delay considering the device's launch with Android Marshmallow.

The 6p launched with Android Marshmallow and got Nougat later on. Given its age as a two-year-old device, one would expect Google to be able to support O on it. What's interesting is that in the source code for the AOSP (Android Open Source Project), it shows that they did attempt to compile it against Nexus 6. The decision might be due to performance issues or politics, and we may never know for sure.

Chrome OS Android Applications

Google has also made another move regarding Chrome OS on Chromebooks. They're allowing the running of full Linux desktop applications on it, a feature that was previously only available for Android apps. This change is significant, especially for education customers, business users, and security professionals who rely heavily on Linux in their workflows.

Chromebooks are primarily used by education institutions, which would greatly benefit from this new feature. Security professionals also love it because they can reboot the device securely without worrying about compromising the rest of the system. Administrators appreciate the secure boot feature, similar to Mac OS X 10, and the ability to wipe the device and sign in on another machine without risking security.

The move might not have widespread appeal, as education institutions don't necessarily require Linux for their workloads. However, it's an intriguing development that could lead to new possibilities for users who need Linux applications. The pitch from Google is that this will be great for education, but it remains to be seen whether they'll achieve their goal of making this feature widely adopted.

The Past Comes Back Around

Looking back 20 years, it's fascinating to consider the "year of Linux on the desktop" that was once predicted. That prediction might seem laughable now, but it highlights the cyclical nature of technology and how companies like Google can revisit old ideas with new twists.

Google has been exploring Android's capabilities for some time, and this latest move shows they're committed to making Android accessible to a broader audience. The company has made significant strides in recent years, from improving security to enhancing user experience. As the tech landscape continues to evolve, it's essential to recognize that companies like Google are constantly adapting and innovating.

The Thunderstorm of News

There are several other developments brewing on the horizon, including the Intel flaws that have been affecting various systems. These issues have led to delays in fixes, leaving users waiting for a resolution. While this news might not be as attention-grabbing as the latest Google announcements, it's essential to stay informed about these issues and their potential impacts.

As we head into the next week, Apple Insider will continue to provide in-depth coverage of the tech industry's top stories. From smartphones to laptops, and from emerging trends to company news, our team is committed to bringing you the most accurate and up-to-date information available. Follow us on social media, and don't hesitate to reach out with tips, questions, or suggestions for future content.

Until next time, when we'll catch you all again, farewell, and goodbye everybody!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enyou're listening to the Apple Insider podcast okay beginning welcome to the apple and solder podcast I'm your host Victor and joining me is Mike Worley hello everybody Mike have you ever used udemy no well now is the best time for you to try it so the Apple Insider podcast is brought to you by udemy and they are the largest Marketplace for online learning whether you're looking to learn something new or just sharpen your skills udemy has over 65,000 courses starting at just $111.99 students around the world choose udemy to discover new passions expand their skills and even change careers visit ud. myapple Insider or download the udemy app to learn anytime anywhere and you know listeners if you haven't joined Stitcher premium yet now is also the perfect time Stitcher premium gets you completely adree episodes of hundreds of shows like comedy bang bang WTF with Mark Marone and how did this get made you also get 21,000 hours of exclusive content new exclusive Originals like Marvel's Wolverine and iser's fruit are launching every week for Stitcher premium members if you love podcasts you're missing out when you listen to add free episodes in Stitcher premium your favorite podcasters get paid you can help support your favorite shows and join Stitcher premium today for a free month of listening go to Stitcher premium.com and use the promo code Apple Mike hello you remember way back in the dawn of time in 2016 when we were both much younger and dinosaurs roamed the Earth seems that way doesn't it I know and the Earth was green we had yet to spoil the Environ um Apple had announced that they were going to make two data center projects and they were going to put one in Viborg Denmark and the other in athenry Ireland I do the Denmark one is actually up and running it got built in contrast with the one in athenry and the one in athry was blocked because there there was a there were residents in in athenry that appealed to the Irish planning cils to um try and and block the whole thing they they were concerned about the environment and the environmental impact of the uh the center they were concerned about the strain on the Irish electrical grid they were concerned about no plans being made public to cope with greenhouse gas emissions from the data center yeah yeah you sound you sound frustrated frustrated I'm skeptical daily has a lot of money Daly is American Born an environmental engineer and I think this has got more to do with his property values than anything else so it it's I I don't feel like apple is going to drop down a data center without environmental concerns like for instance in the other data center that's already done they're using the waste heat to heat local homes so assuming that Apple's just going to plunk this down and use Briggs and Straton 16 stage re reciprocating diesel engines for the power for this unit and is it it seems like a ridiculous assumption at its face especially given that every other data center that Apple has built doesn't even use the local electrical grid primarily they're all based on solar power installs that they're doing well I mean obviously the nature of solar power means you don't have it all the time right but so there's got to be a tap into the local electric grid but I don't see where there's going to be any notable impact on on their Grid at all but in any event the courts didn't necessarily agree nor disagree there's been a long back and forth on this since the announcement and now that the high court in Ireland has ruled that yes you can appeal this again now we're looking at another several years of the process so Apple said yesterday as we record this on Thursday morning that they were done and they're just going to do something else elsewhere right so what happened is that the appeals process began there were over two years of appeals two years of going back and forth on this and the project was initially approved but they they were basically told that they would have to start the appeals process over and so that meant another two years easy at which point Apple just washed their hands and said we're taking our ball and we're going elsewhere thank you very much yeah on the other hand I'm not sure that I Apple I'm not sure that I agree with Apple's statement saying that how many jobs they've added to the local economy with Apple's previous projects and things like that that's kind of a red herring the data centers don't require a cast of thousands to maintain there will be temporary construction jobs and then there'll probably be a hundred staffers in the data center and in places like primeville and in and in Maiden North Carolina they weren't necessarily locals that had the high-paying jobs or people that came in from elsewhere to take the high-paying jobs so I mean obviously there's DA's point of view there's Apple's point of view and somewhere in the middle of those two points of view is accurate right now Apple was being technically accurate which is of course the best kind of accurate but not telling the story that you were just saying right there they were saying we've spent over $550 million with local companies which is true if you're doing construction it costs right and they said that they've added 25,000 jobs up and down the country which is I'm sure also accurate right but not talking about what the employment looks like at a single data center either right this is the entire Ireland Affair this is Apple's European headquarters so of course it's G to have support for 25,000 jobs up and down the country one would think but this wasn't the only thing that uh Dy was trying to stop Dy is also battling a$1 billion Amazon data center in Dublin now this this is interesting to me because it it says that Dy is on a crusade and not so much about his property values because what you know saying that he has property in D in athenry and in Dublin which is possible but it's it's more about da is fighting the big companies I'm going to leave this as research to the reader if people want to delve into Ireland's history with daily that's entirely up to them I'm not in Ireland I can't justify the travel go check on this in person the guy is on a crusade of some sort but I have a hard time believing that it's an entirely benevolent one in environment Center well I mean there's there's always the personal investment in this kind of thing where it's to the greater glory of Da that he's the environmental Crusader possibly which isn't necessarily monetary reward but it is one of those things that keeps people warm at night sometimes yeah okay whatever it's all speculation it's all speculation and apple is completely justified in moving elsewh at the data center as as companies are want to do when faced with long delays and they need something sooner rather than later right absolutely we can find an expensive battle now or we can go to those things so moving next mhm there's a rumor that suggests that the 6.1 in LCD iPhone which we've talked about at length before will employ a mlcd plus display that's the same kind of display that's on LG's G7 think phone now this is a Korean report and the the point of this display is that it offers 30% less power consumption while still being bright and hitting 100% of the P3 color gamut so it it does have reasonable qualities to be considered uh the the question is if you do that is that a more affordable display I I have serious doubts about this report in its entirety the so business Korea is talking about this on Thursday morning and they cited industry sources for the claim that Apple's going to switch from IPS which has been used from for iPhones for a long time the iPhone 10 has got OLED business Korea has got decent sources inside the supply chain but they're terrible at guessing what Apple's going to do based on those sources what we know for sure is that the G7 uses this display what we know for sure is that LG makes this display what we know for sure is that LG makes this phone what we don't know is any kind of yields exactly how much the screen cost in comparison to LED which is a more mature technology we don't know anything about reliability of the technology and and this is completely out of the blue there there are no contract suggesting that Apple's going to do this Apple has just told LG in accordance with some other supply chain sources that your LED screens are not meeting our quality standards and we need to work on it a little bit more there's there's a lot of ifs here there's a there's a lot of questions here and there's nothing suggesting that is headed to the iPhone other than this one report well and equally important is the the number of suppliers that can supply this part we know that apple does not like to have a single supplier nominated for a part uh unless there's a real reason for it and it you know they they you know they have the Qualcomm modem and the Intel modem they have had Samsung and tsmc doing different contracts for chip production there there's benefits in in making sure that you're not exposed by having a single supplier yeah and Apple has been burned in years past by having single suppliers so to switch to an mlcd plus part that can only be supplied by LG is a is a risk and would you do that on a phone that's not your flagship phone but is instead your phone that's meant to be more affordable yeah there's there's a lot of ifs here like I said that just that don't make a lot of sense and don't add up for me here if nothing else you cannot say that Tim Cook is not a master of supply chain you you you can't say that he's terrible at the supply chain because he's reduced the amount of inventory that Apple has on hand at any given time he's struck deals far in advance for things like memory chips and screens like the OLED screens that are used in the iPhone 10 that deal was struck with Samsung a long time ago and the deal for Samsung was struck for about 160 million screens which means that we're continuing in the future with OLED with apple I just I'm just not seeing it it's it's possible I think that we could see it at some point in the future I just don't think we're going to see it here I I I I too am a little skeptical I I feel like the yields question is a valid one and the the costs have to work it just doesn't it doesn't quite add up for me yet um it's entirely possible that it could happen and I'm all wrong but it just doesn't making sense well sure that's the paril of rumors right I mean some of them are right and some of them are wrong and LG is going to sell maybe a million of these phones of the G7 think phone or the thin Q or however you pronounce it I guess I don't even know how you pronounce it t h i n capital Q so we know that they've made a million screens but are they able to scale the technology for the screens to make 40 million of them in three months we have no idea yeah and and just because you can put out a million is a good indicator it really is but to be able to open up 40 more production lines and train workers and have everything's going to make that all happen is um it's scale introduces problems yeah and scale shows you problems it magnifies everything it really does you know your your parts yield may be perfectly sane at a smaller number orders right if you're doing you know that that that million doesn't say over what time period that million was produced was that million produced over 3 months what's what's the per week kind of production scale yeah and you know if your yields fine at the per week but you start speeding it up to turn out more units does your yield go down do you get less good units out at the end when you're trying to go faster you you really see all the problems when you try and Crank It Up and especially when you're trying to go to 40 million like you say so this is definitely going to be we're going to toss this one on the weight and SE pile but I like I I'm not thinking for the 2018 flagships the I'm reasonably certain that whatever Apple has in mind for the 2018 flagships is at the very least 95% solidified and it 6 months ago this screen wasn't even a consideration with when they started looking at the next design conservatively 6 months ago probably longer this this was the screen wasn't even on the radar so seem it seems unlikely to me yeah and well it it is possible for them to to turn fast if they need to you know the but but it is unusual there needs to be a real motivation for that you know if if it was the same connectors and the same physical size and a drop in replacement then then sure it could happen but uh I'm with you wait and see now yesterday there was formally announced a drone program that consists of 10 projects across the US where drones are going to be used for commercial purposes beyond the existing kind of testing that the uh us FAA currently allows and one of those projects has Apple participating working with a firm in North Carolina the the participation looks like it's intended to help improve Apple Maps by taking high resolution images from the Drone that can be used to acquire data on road layout changes and increase the quality of the apps fly over future yeah apple also says that things like faces and license plate numbers are going to get blurred and that's great it's how they've always done it it I think that this might be more of a case that Apple wants to see exactly what they can get away with this isn't going to be a national project it's going to be more local to the North Carolina data center with a possibility of expansion and and again this is just early testing this isn't this isn't a wide roll out we're not going to expect to see apple drones buzzing down your street except you know maybe more than once or twice to get these Maps it's I mean we'll see Apple has been using drones for Apple Maps data for a while in addition with the minivans that it uses it it's you I I keep saying we'll see but this is only part of a larger project obviously so it it's what else we got here that was declined is Amazon was told that it could not use drone deliveries in New York uh DJI has been completely rejected but they've had problems with the Army and the Navy as far as location identification goes so this rigorous process this is just the start now this is them using drones in a limited test kind of set this is a trial basically right um it's entirely possible that if the trial expands you know if they they they do well and they get approval for the trial to expand that you will see these kinds of things going around um I was a little bit interested in the words you used where you said this is Apple seeing what they can get away with what do you mean by that I I think that Apple applies for permission and do a lot of things and I think that they push the frontier like for instance famously with the original iPhone is they had a lot of discussions with AT&T about bandwidth on the on the then 2G network with the iPhone and they really really strain the network I and I there's a lot of things that Apple does because of the scale that you're talking about that I think that they look at asking for permission asking for forgiveness later rather than full permission before does that make sense and I and does anyone really see a big future for Apple drones are we expecting to see one on the retail store with a big old Apple logo on the top of it well so here's the the thing right flying a drone is relatively inexpensive sure driving cars all around the country is quite expensive yes especially since they're manned uh well they're Mann and there's Fuel and maintenance Fleet costs and uh it's it's it's consuming it really is you know if you spend a couple Grand on a drone that flies in a limited area but can return home and recharge versus cars and hotels and Fuel and Main it's just a it's a different scale of cost and you don't do it once right you have to go back periodically and redo it because things change you know I have I have seen Google Maps Vehicles driving around my area several times over the past couple of years because they they know they need to go and remap yeah the the Google Maps for my house was taken 9 years ago um a couple miles away from my house is one of those laquina long stay hotels kind of things and I regularly see a Google Maps vehicle parked there okay now they don't do my house in my driveway every every 3 months you know it's closer to about 5 years because not a whole lot of changes around my house but in the area as a whole there's there's new construction so yeah they got to do it and and that's you know Google's idea was they wanted to map the whole earth that's why they were doing this with the oceans as well but I'm I'm kind of curious what I'd like to know is what local company they're working with they're Ser they're working with a firm in North Carolina as well I wonder who that is yeah we tried finding that information a little bit earlier today and we're going to keep pulling the thread on that we'll see we'll see what pops out on that one the one that I find fascinating is the use of a 1500lb drone to monitor mosquitoes in Florida that I mean that's not Apple that's one of the the projects that was flirty no that's not flirty that's that's yeah it is that is flirty isn't it they're using medical equipment to heart attack victims in Nevada and 1500lb drone in mosquitoes in Florida flirty is the medical equipment I don't know who's doing the Drone in in Florida but man that is a drone a 1500lb drone that's borderline helicopter right there that's that's not a quad rotor that's like an Octor rotor I would think at least a Deca rotor still want to see it I monitoring mosquitoes in Florida is serious business right we had the zika virus that was transmitted by mosquitoes a couple years ago um it didn't really reach the US very well it was mostly a South American problem I think but transmission of diseases by mosquitoes is a big deal monitoring them is huge yeah well with a huge drone so yeah and and of course the kinds of problems that the FAA is looking at are flights over people uh safety and and things like that they're they're really concerned about the safety of the airspace and the safety of people on the ground so these are the sorts of considerations that are involved and that's why you know you can't just go and and and use your drone for commercial purposes without getting some kind of clearance through them we really need to figure out who those firms are that are working with apple on this yeah we're gonna we we're we've got some people we're going to call about it but uh it wasn't it wasn't immediately obvious at press time other winning projects were things like agricultural package delivery you know as you said the uh the the New York one for Amazon was denied uh drone flights near airports I wonder what that's about don't know I mean I suppose you could fly them around the periphery of the airport for security purposes um Pipeline and environmental monitoring that makes sense oh yeah I'm perfectly fine with that one I I actually saw one where a nuclear plant is looking at provid looking at um monitoring and maintenance tasks with them which makes sense yeah how do you check the size of the cooling tower you send a drone up so yeah this is something that you and I have talked about in the past which is the Apple TV app and Apple's third party subscriptions and I think we we've talked about the the of weird Arrangement that you have where you can subscribe through things using your Apple ID for third party services so the the story here suggests that you'll be able to go ahead and subscribe to these thirdparty TV services through the TV app instead of having to also have the third party Service app do the subscription there and then just simply access the content through the TV app do this come as a big surprise to anybody I mean it's great that they did the work on this and they found the sources to say that the TV app is going to be a central spot for subscriptions to video but come on is this rocket science is this some kind of mass Revelation that this was the end goal for the TV app let's just looking at well I don't know that it's the end goal for the TV app it's just another goal for the TV it's if if you did not see this coming when the TV app was launched what three years ago now yeah come on this is this is obvious failure right this is and I sound frustrated about this because well because I am because it was reported Again by Bloomberg and it's another one of those things where they've got one little tidbit of information which which isn't really a source of said maybe sources did say but it's it's it's kind of a no s kind of thing it's it's so let me ask you're you're frustrated because this has become a story out of something that feels like it should not even be given the time of day this this became a story and is obvious this is the obvious Evolution and if you are an apple Insider reader you read this story yesterday and said okay no kidding but now we've got other venues outside saying wow what an amazing Revelation that we've got that the TV app is going to be used to subscribe for services oh my goodness what a shock let me ask you Mike do you subscribe to these third party services that you have subscriptions to through your Apple ID some I have and some I have not it it really depends on the situation I thing is I try and keep my subscriptions to a minimum for a number of different reasons it's it's easy for those costs to escalate out of control when you don't need something for more than the initial month yeah so where I will subscribe to things is where things are the easiest to subscribe to where I have the least amount of friction to subscribe to it the the benefit of using the appled ID to subscribe to all these things is that you then have the central location to manage those subscriptions however I have found the pitfall through personal experience um what happens when a subscription cancels or expires without your requesting it to be canceled or subscri or expired so here's what happens um the service provider points the finger squarely at well you subscribe through your Apple ID it's not our fault M Apple doesn't tell any anything except a cut off good luck and there's no one to talk to at Apple about it sure and so you're sort of left in the Middle with with no nothing to do other than try and resubscribe and I have had this happen now six times no six times is an exaggeration let's let's be player it's more like uh four times okay where I have subscribed using my Apple ID to a third party service and we'll use it for a couple of months and then be unable to use it and I'll go and check the subscription and find that the third party service provider believes that it's expired that it's canceled okay and I'll ask them what the deal is and they say well they point the finger at the other guys they point the finger over at Apple and so I'm in this sort of cycle where I keep redoing this and each time the third party service provider says but if you just subscribe directly through us you wouldn't have this problem and they're probably not wrong but the question is do I trust giving them all of my information in order to subscribe versus Apple protecting that information yeah that that's a whole other matter it's well but it's a part of it right so what's happening here I think this is my suspicion but if we're if we're putting on our our um aluminum foil hats or aluminum foil garments the uh the the third party service provider wants that information and without it they have no way of reaching or touching the customer sure right and so they are willing to to cut off the service provider that cut off the subscription on the basis that they think you'll notice and come back to them and then they can tell you to come and do it directly through them they're willing to take that risk of losing you in order to get the information doesn't that seem Bonkers I mean there's a lot Bonkers about a lot of different aspects of all this number you know number one is the shift to everything being software as a service or subscriptions to Media or that kind of thing but I mean that's a topic for another day which I'm sure will delve into it some length as this continues to escalate but you're right I mean dat data is a commodity your personal data for sure is a commodity so and you're right these these subscription Services they want your personal data to you know they say it's to tailor the service to what you want but I mean remk be honest yeah it's to remarket you and to try and upsell you on other services that that's really what it's about now the disconnect between Apple and the services that it would be great if that was better your your experience in that is not unique I'm sure but it's this is the thing is with apple doing this with the TV app with allowing for subscriptions to video services and ultimately its own videos which is really what this is about is is unsurprising as long as it works there there is a real benefit to being able to open up one app and go ahead and sign in or subscribe directly to all the services right there you know if if we're talking about what is the fastest outof the-box experience placing them all in one place really does work but it it's it's not there yet yet because in order to have the TV app be able to do that you still have to have those other apps installed and so you have to have gone and installed those applications unless Apple's going to ship them pre-installed sort of the way they they were hardwired in on the third generation and before Apple teams well given Apple's hooks with the App Store I don't think it would be a huge stretch to say hey I want to sign in to Larry's video provider and it downloads Larry's video provider app for you after you've signed up for the service I I don't think that's a huge stretch there if that's how they want to continue doing that I'll give you that that's not terrible H goodness but I mean here's the thing if you don't think that Apple wants to be the core of your daily life and your experiences and your subscriptions and if you don't think that Apple wants to take that percentage for enabling the subscription I I don't know what to tell you because this has clearly been Apple's goal for some time well it's the thing we talked about last week they're still trying to figure out how to win the battle for TV and by centralizing it through them as the portal that is that is one way of winning and and thinking about portals is really old school thinking right it goes back to you know Yahoo and Alta Vista what is your portal to the Internet so by making the TV app the portal to all of the third party Services they can that puts them FR center right between that and and Siri being able to index and search all of these third party services that makes them the portal it does they're I I I still wonder if they they are behind a little bit by not integrating into a television set so that you aren't compelled to go and buy the device after the fact kind of thing we talked about this a little bit last week that was last week's but I'm still thinking about it well clearly it's it's you know if we're talking about what's the fastest way to get someone into your your world into your world of services that would be it you know I I was thinking about this again when the uh the newest Android TV device surface this this week as a part of the Google IO stuff you know Google's in a weird place because they have chomecast which is embedded in all of Vio Soundbars and TVs but they also have this Android TV thing that they haven't done a whole lot with in a few years and so they're going to go ahead and make this push to put Android P the newest version of Android on this TV device and they sent out a survey to developers saying you know you're developing apps tell us what you like about Android TV and we'll see if we can get you review unit and it's it's still kind of unclear we saw last year's IO they had some nice things going on with voice they were trying to do things similar to what Apple's doing with their Google Play services but it didn't really materialize into anything yeah I it's Google's efforts there was a joke on Twitter that I saw that the the the commenter said something like hey look io's two hours old and Apple's and apple and Google's already released six incompatible messaging services and well the thing is the joke's not that far from the truth right yeah there's truth to that well that's what makes jokes funny in the first place right yeah there's a lot of scattershot that Google likes to do and and we'll be talking about Google a little bit more later in the podcast yeah Apple watch Johnny I had an interview with u with a watch blog and he said in there that the Apple watch was one of the first post Steve Jobs products that that Steve did not wear a wristwatch outside of the the early days pictures but during the time that Johnny knew you know 1997 forward that Steve wasn't really into wearing a wristatch at that point in his life and that they didn't really talk about watches until after Steve had already passed away I people have said to me recently that we're at the tail end of the Steve Jobs inspired projects and I think the tail end of the Steve Jobs inspired projects was years ago and and this is fuel for that fire I I don't now we know that the iPod 6th generation nano was worn as wristwatch companies like lunatic and uh you know famously made the wristwatch strap that was a huge Kickstarter project that eventually graduated to selling through Apple retail uh Apple's firmware update for the Nano gave it watch faces Bill Campbell who was on Apple's board told them that they should be a wristwatch and they said SM in the uh the keynote where they announced the Nano so they they certainly did have a little bit of thought for it and we also know that the lunatic wristwatch uh band was used when they were prototyping the Apple watch they they used Nano cases and put Apple watch guts in the early ones and put them in the lunatic wristwatch strap to practice wearing the Apple watch before they built the Apple watch um and that's fine and good but it it also doesn't necessarily mean that Steve was deeply involved in the project right by the time that stuff was happening Steve was really at his um worst declining health and and probably was not involved now I want to take a small bone to pick here because Johnny spoke with hinki which is run and founded by Ben Kimber and hinki builds itself as the uh world's leading online wristwatch magazine okay online magazines a little funny they're a Blog um world's leading is also a little funny because that that title goes to people like a Blog to watch where I used to write um so yes I'm a little bit biased it the biggest issue I had with the article was that the first five paragraphs which were like 10 sentences per paragraph are about the author not I well yeah because Ben climber it's great that you did this interview with I but realized that I is the show not the author that's if you're Ben Kimber Ben Climer is the show okay I I I don't know Ben I don't know I don't know a lot of his writing and to Ben's credit he's managed to get some cool Partnerships with some of the big Swiss watch companies to get them to make limited edition runs for hinki so they've they've made a a zenet watch which is a very nice beautiful watch they've made uh a I think they made a Philip pek with him and they're all about the greater glory of hodinky yeah I it's okay you know I I've said my piece I mean I'm not going to lie I put in personal anecdotes in some how-tos like my Home Server article of course but man not like this but especially relevant there because your home server has to be built to serve your needs just as it would be for any of our listeners right if our listeners are setting up home servers it needs to take in account their needs and your anecdote helps illustrate that it's perfectly reasonable right yeah I just didn't it's not about the glory of Mike setting up a home server is it no anyway yeah I mean all hail the glory of Mike setting up a home server but yeah anyway yeah was m at Mike side for the story the story is I and his early production of the Apple watch and the fact that there's entire team devoted to it that don't do anything else with an apple and nothing to do with what the author had for breakfast and the biggest part that we picked up on there is it's interesting that that that that I've said addressed publicly that this is the first post cheve product yeah well he he didn't say it was the first not the first no but that this was definitely the a post Steve definitely definitely a post Steve product so because they have really talked a whole lot about where that delineation lies do I don't think they ever will I I I think that will get it anecdotally in things like this but I don't I don't think that I think they go out of their way to not say what is a jobs project and what was a jobs project I I think they very specifically blur that line and I think they do it because there's a lot of talk about this wouldn't have happened if jobs was alive which is nonsense and we've talked about right this this feels like this is the most directly they've ever addressed that question it is the uh I I think they blur that line so to keep the threat of continuity going that that this terrible thing happened and they're all they all have a hole in their hearts over it but they they're continuing in the same thing yeah I and I completely agree that that's what it is but you know and you know what I'm I'm actually done on that tiate I'm not going to talk about the if jobs was alive arguments because I'm on record for saying that they're silly so I I think there is utility to them occasionally but I think that the vast majority of those arguments are poorly framed and poorly made that that that there is a place for them but they're rarely used correctly okay now this one this I love Google Assistant yeah uh this was a thing the what I'm I'm going to talk really quickly about what I thought was the impressive part it wasn't the natural speech that got me it was okay give you give us the background because I just said Google Assistant tell tell help bring bring our listeners in a little bit tell us what's going on Google iio is this week and that's their big WWDC like event and they have it outside and I always feel sorry for the poor sobs in the backg cuz man I tell you what get some Google sunscreen or something on those guys well it used to be inside mcone y but they've been putting it on at yena Gardens anyway that's neither here nor there but all I could see in the back when they scroll back is people holding a screen up to their eyes to block out the Sun but any event what they did is a a new update to Google assistant and they first talked about natural conversation they talked about having your kids say please and thank you to it and and accommodations to the children because of of it but most continued conversation continued conversation where you you engage and it remembers contextually what came before most importantly what they had is Google Assistant calling a real human and having a conversation with natural language with a real human to schedule something and they then they did two sample conversations which I guarantee were the best ones that they did the first one was very straightforward there was no miscommunication there were no assumptions there were no accents to deal with none of that and it was a hair salon appointment and the Google Assistant inserted ums and conversational pauses to make it sound like it was a real person whether or not vocalizations right the second one was in conversation with a restaurant where it was a loud environment in the restaurant the the hostess was accented and the Google Assistant still made it through and it was it was a very positive thing I'm not certain what the end goal of this is because it's ultimately going to end in two AIS talking to each other and why not just have those eyes no but I don't think it does end in that yet and here's why oh not this year hair salons and and food establishments restaurants and such are at the very end of the long tale for adopting technology you know I was reading online one of the the VC kind of guys was saying this is silly everyone should just use open table and if they aren't using Open Table why would you want to go to a restaurant anyway and that's super elus right that's a very San Francisco kind of attitude because first of all small business owners especially people like who are running hair salons do not want to buy into developing a website that can take scheduling or buy someone else's service that can do that because that's money out of their pocket you know their their their whole thing is being able to process payment like square or PayPal which a lot of them use to be able to take money and they'll answer the phone for scheduling the appointments and that's it and they schedule in a paperbook they don't schedule into a Google Calendar there's nothing about this that is interesting to them to turn technology on for so if you need to schedule a air appointment you you have to use the phone great let Google Assistant negotiate that for you and with restaurants open table great when it works but it's a cost the restaurant to be able to have open table compatibility and they hold tables back so there are tables that are allowed to be reserved for open table and when those fill they're filled and you don't see the availability but if you call you can skill get a table and so you your best bet is to call again restaurants don't have any interest in in dealing with technology seamless the and GrubHub the uh the the food ordering Services you know how they do this they take your order online and then they send a fax to the restaurant because the restaurants did adopt fax machines a few years ago and I understand that this does not end in two AI this ends in a in a person end point because restaurants are so long away from adop stuff I think it ends in a I think it ends in a $200 Google dongle that you plug into a television set that'll answer your phone so you don't have to I think that's how this ends for the hair salon not a not a standalone box not a square box not a cash register but a $200 box that you can let sit in the corner and you don't have to pay some to answer your phones or you don't have to stop fixing the 7-year-old lady's hair to go get the phone and tell Mary five seats down to make an appointment yeah so hair salons don't use landlines each each uh each person uses their own cell phone so what you need to have is Google assistant in your cell phone to answer your incoming call then then a plug connect Google assistant on your phone to the television and that's it done story's over so that's I think that's what we're looking at here I think we're looking at some kind of Google provided solution inexpensively to have these mom and poom shop mom and pop shops to take these calls and to take these answers for them so they don't have to deal with the phone it's not this year it's not next year it's not the year after that it's coming and it's coming sooner than maybe some of us are comfortable with I I think it's interesting solving this problem though and and we knew that Google was good at understanding humans with accents but being able to carry on the phone conversation contextually and reach a successful conclusion is very interesting oh sure and it's it's something that I I have to say I I think Siri is pretty far behind I think it is as well I it's I I think that given what Google just demonstrated even though Google doesn't necessarily ship everything they demonstrate for instance the photo rectification where taking a fence out of a photo you can do with Google photos the things they do at IO more than likely tend to ship okay not always but almost always that's kind of a side joint anyway there yeah it's it is it signifies what the technology can do and it also signifies that Siri at present is lacking yeah and you know yes I work at Apple and cider but yeah I also take apple to task when it needs to be and Siri is behind Siri was behind before IO and look at the primary complaints about the homepod Apple has said that it it's a limited subset of Siri well yeah you know what it's a little too far limited mhm and and I'm just not seeing the improvements in the iPhone that I was hoping I would see when they rolled it out the first time and did that first practical demonstration of the technology you know talk go ahead I yeah go ahead I'm done I I I want to keep us moving here so they also announced a couple of other things that I want to talk about briefly uh we still have a little bit of time here before we go Android P new version of Android uh does a number of things including things that that had been suggested that Apple should adopt in the past in terms of B battery management usage you know revealing usage to the user so that they can understand how much time they're spending in any given application um and and really making the the phone adaptive in terms of conserving battery I think that's coming I I I'm not too concerned about that because I think that has been in the works for a while one of the things I'm disappointed is that they've decided they're going to limit it to a specific set of phones that they're going to release it on and that the Nexus 6p is not one of those I'm completely not shocked at that Revelation given the fact that o is on 3% of their installed base I what 7 months after it was released three whole per. I have o on the 6p the 6p launched with with Android marshmallow it got nougat it got o but it's a 2-year-old device and as a 2-year-old device they really ought to be able to do it and what's interesting is that in the source code for the AOSP the Android open source program um it shows that they did attempt to compile it against Nexus 6 sure so I don't know if the decision is a political one or it's a um performance it it could be either and we're never going to not yet yeah uh the other thing that was interesting out of this is what they're doing with uh Chrome OS on Chromebooks and that's that's so we we've known in the past that they were going to allow the running of Android applications on Chrome OS but they are also now going to allow the running of full Linux desktop applications on it yeah I saw that I I'm not sure how huge an impact that's actually going to have I'm glad that they're doing it it's good that they're doing it but I I think this is another one of those things that a very small percentage of people are saying right now oh man what a good idea how great is that and well so 90% of them are just like whatever and 90% of them should be like whatever because 90% of them don't even need the Android applications for the most part but what it does is it says that so here here's the thing um people that use Chromebooks are by and large mostly education customers there are some business customers and there are many Security Professionals sure and Security Professionals love it for the same reason that it administrators do which is if something happens to it you reboot it it's got secure boot the same way Mac OS 10 does or Mac OS does and or you can just throw it away and sign in on some other machine and you're no longer vulnerable uh they're running Linux in a sandboxed VM if you need some application that runs on Linux as a part of your workflow you can have it without necessarily jeopardizing the security of the rest of the system and and what a nice convenient kind of thing for what is essentially a you know $150 to $300 computer yeah I mean I agree that it like I said it will have proponents it's just not are going to be Google wants us to be this widespread thing and it's the and that's how they pitched it hey look now everybody can run Linux this will be great for Education they don't care they do not care yes and no yeah and and education doesn't care about Linux because no one's shown how it helps them but it is it is an intriguing move you know I we go back 20 years to when we were talking about next year will be the year of Linux on the desktop and uh well that that's that's one way of framing this if you're looking at an IO properly through the right kind of lenses I guess like Google lenses I see what you did all right that's what I was hoping for we've reached the end of a perfectly good episode of the Apple Insider podcast it seems like we've just blown through this one well it it's a strange week for news it's not crazy like the last couple weeks have been but there are enough things with impact and we didn't even talk about the Intel flaws that are coming that's we still got to wait on that one I mean there's but because they've delayed their fixes we still have time to talk about I mean there there's a lot that you can kind of see rumbling on the horizon like the thunderstorms that are gathering outside my window right now but uh those are topic for another day Mike where can people find you on the internet can find me at Apple Insider well frankly every day of the week Monday through Friday and Saturday and Sunday or you can find me on Mondays at my slightly saltier podcast space javelin dcom there you go uh I'm your host Victor my Twitter is at V marks and I write here at Apple Insider and also at wristwatch review.com come check us out over there too thank you so much for joining us please email us at newsapple insider.com with tips questions requests anything that you'd like us to do differently or change coverage just for you we'd be happy to consider that and talk to you for it thank you so much we will be back next week we will catch you all later goodbye everybody theyou're listening to the Apple Insider podcast okay beginning welcome to the apple and solder podcast I'm your host Victor and joining me is Mike Worley hello everybody Mike have you ever used udemy no well now is the best time for you to try it so the Apple Insider podcast is brought to you by udemy and they are the largest Marketplace for online learning whether you're looking to learn something new or just sharpen your skills udemy has over 65,000 courses starting at just $111.99 students around the world choose udemy to discover new passions expand their skills and even change careers visit ud. myapple Insider or download the udemy app to learn anytime anywhere and you know listeners if you haven't joined Stitcher premium yet now is also the perfect time Stitcher premium gets you completely 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contrast with the one in athenry and the one in athry was blocked because there there was a there were residents in in athenry that appealed to the Irish planning cils to um try and and block the whole thing they they were concerned about the environment and the environmental impact of the uh the center they were concerned about the strain on the Irish electrical grid they were concerned about no plans being made public to cope with greenhouse gas emissions from the data center yeah yeah you sound you sound frustrated frustrated I'm skeptical daily has a lot of money Daly is American Born an environmental engineer and I think this has got more to do with his property values than anything else so it it's I I don't feel like apple is going to drop down a data center without environmental concerns like for instance in the other data center that's already done they're using the waste heat to heat local homes so assuming that Apple's just going to plunk this down and use Briggs and Straton 16 stage re reciprocating diesel engines for the power for this unit and is it it seems like a ridiculous assumption at its face especially given that every other data center that Apple has built doesn't even use the local electrical grid primarily they're all based on solar power installs that they're doing well I mean obviously the nature of solar power means you don't have it all the time right but so there's got to be a tap into the local electric grid but I don't see where there's going to be any notable impact on on their Grid at all but in any event the courts didn't necessarily agree nor disagree there's been a long back and forth on this since the announcement and now that the high court in Ireland has ruled that yes you can appeal this again now we're looking at another several years of the process so Apple said yesterday as we record this on Thursday morning that they were done and they're just going to do something else elsewhere right so what happened is that the appeals process began there were over two years of appeals two years of going back and forth on this and the project was initially approved but they they were basically told that they would have to start the appeals process over and so that meant another two years easy at which point Apple just washed their hands and said we're taking our ball and we're going elsewhere thank you very much yeah on the other hand I'm not sure that I Apple I'm not sure that I agree with Apple's statement saying that how many jobs they've added to the local economy with Apple's previous projects and things like that that's kind of a red herring the data centers don't require a cast of thousands to maintain there will be temporary construction jobs and then there'll probably be a hundred staffers in the data center and in places like primeville and in and in Maiden North Carolina they weren't necessarily locals that had the high-paying jobs or people that came in from elsewhere to take the high-paying jobs so I mean obviously there's DA's point of view there's Apple's point of view and somewhere in the middle of those two points of view is accurate right now Apple was being technically accurate which is of course the best kind of accurate but not telling the story that you were just saying right there they were saying we've spent over $550 million with local companies which is true if you're doing construction it costs right and they said that they've added 25,000 jobs up and down the country which is I'm sure also accurate right but not talking about what the employment looks like at a single data center either right this is the entire Ireland Affair this is Apple's European headquarters so of course it's G to have support for 25,000 jobs up and down the country one would think but this wasn't the only thing that uh Dy was trying to stop Dy is also battling a$1 billion Amazon data center in Dublin now this this is interesting to me because it it says that Dy is on a crusade and not so much about his property values because what you know saying that he has property in D in athenry and in Dublin which is possible but it's it's more about da is fighting the big companies I'm going to leave this as research to the reader if people want to delve into Ireland's history with daily that's entirely up to them I'm not in Ireland I can't justify the travel go check on this in person the guy is on a crusade of some sort but I have a hard time believing that it's an entirely benevolent one in environment Center well I mean there's there's always the personal investment in this kind of thing where it's to the greater glory of Da that he's the environmental Crusader possibly which isn't necessarily monetary reward but it is one of those things that keeps people warm at night sometimes yeah okay whatever it's all speculation it's all speculation and apple is completely justified in moving elsewh at the data center as as companies are want to do when faced with long delays and they need something sooner rather than later right absolutely we can find an expensive battle now or we can go to those things so moving next mhm there's a rumor that suggests that the 6.1 in LCD iPhone which we've talked about at length before will employ a mlcd plus display that's the same kind of display that's on LG's G7 think phone now this is a Korean report and the the point of this display is that it offers 30% less power consumption while still being bright and hitting 100% of the P3 color gamut so it it does have reasonable qualities to be considered uh the the question is if you do that is that a more affordable display I I have serious doubts about this report in its entirety the so business Korea is talking about this on Thursday morning and they cited industry sources for the claim that Apple's going to switch from IPS which has been used from for iPhones for a long time the iPhone 10 has got OLED business Korea has got decent sources inside the supply chain but they're terrible at guessing what Apple's going to do based on those sources what we know for sure is that the G7 uses this display what we know for sure is that LG makes this display what we know for sure is that LG makes this phone what we don't know is any kind of yields exactly how much the screen cost in comparison to LED which is a more mature technology we don't know anything about reliability of the technology and and this is completely out of the blue there there are no contract suggesting that Apple's going to do this Apple has just told LG in accordance with some other supply chain sources that your LED screens are not meeting our quality standards and we need to work on it a little bit more there's there's a lot of ifs here there's a there's a lot of questions here and there's nothing suggesting that is headed to the iPhone other than this one report well and equally important is the the number of suppliers that can supply this part we know that apple does not like to have a single supplier nominated for a part uh unless there's a real reason for it and it you know they they you know they have the Qualcomm modem and the Intel modem they have had Samsung and tsmc doing different contracts for chip production there there's benefits in in making sure that you're not exposed by having a single supplier yeah and Apple has been burned in years past by having single suppliers so to switch to an mlcd plus part that can only be supplied by LG is a is a risk and would you do that on a phone that's not your flagship phone but is instead your phone that's meant to be more affordable yeah there's there's a lot of ifs here like I said that just that don't make a lot of sense and don't add up for me here if nothing else you cannot say that Tim Cook is not a master of supply chain you you you can't say that he's terrible at the supply chain because he's reduced the amount of inventory that Apple has on hand at any given time he's struck deals far in advance for things like memory chips and screens like the OLED screens that are used in the iPhone 10 that deal was struck with Samsung a long time ago and the deal for Samsung was struck for about 160 million screens which means that we're continuing in the future with OLED with apple I just I'm just not seeing it it's it's possible I think that we could see it at some point in the future I just don't think we're going to see it here I I I I too am a little skeptical I I feel like the yields question is a valid one and the the costs have to work it just doesn't it doesn't quite add up for me yet um it's entirely possible that it could happen and I'm all wrong but it just doesn't making sense well sure that's the paril of rumors right I mean some of them are right and some of them are wrong and LG is going to sell maybe a million of these phones of the G7 think phone or the thin Q or however you pronounce it I guess I don't even know how you pronounce it t h i n capital Q so we know that they've made a million screens but are they able to scale the technology for the screens to make 40 million of them in three months we have no idea yeah and and just because you can put out a million is a good indicator it really is but to be able to open up 40 more production lines and train workers and have everything's going to make that all happen is um it's scale introduces problems yeah and scale shows you problems it magnifies everything it really does you know your your parts yield may be perfectly sane at a smaller number orders right if you're doing you know that that that million doesn't say over what time period that million was produced was that million produced over 3 months what's what's the per week kind of production scale yeah and you know if your yields fine at the per week but you start speeding it up to turn out more units does your yield go down do you get less good units out at the end when you're trying to go faster you you really see all the problems when you try and Crank It Up and especially when you're trying to go to 40 million like you say so this is definitely going to be we're going to toss this one on the weight and SE pile but I like I I'm not thinking for the 2018 flagships the I'm reasonably certain that whatever Apple has in mind for the 2018 flagships is at the very least 95% solidified and it 6 months ago this screen wasn't even a consideration with when they started looking at the next design conservatively 6 months ago probably longer this this was the screen wasn't even on the radar so seem it seems unlikely to me yeah and well it it is possible for them to to turn fast if they need to you know the but but it is unusual there needs to be a real motivation for that you know if if it was the same connectors and the same physical size and a drop in replacement then then sure it could happen but uh I'm with you wait and see now yesterday there was formally announced a drone program that consists of 10 projects across the US where drones are going to be used for commercial purposes beyond the existing kind of testing that the uh us FAA currently allows and one of those projects has Apple participating working with a firm in North Carolina the the participation looks like it's intended to help improve Apple Maps by taking high resolution images from the Drone that can be used to acquire data on road layout changes and increase the quality of the apps fly over future yeah apple also says that things like faces and license plate numbers are going to get blurred and that's great it's how they've always done it it I think that this might be more of a case that Apple wants to see exactly what they can get away with this isn't going to be a national project it's going to be more local to the North Carolina data center with a possibility of expansion and and again this is just early testing this isn't this isn't a wide roll out we're not going to expect to see apple drones buzzing down your street except you know maybe more than once or twice to get these Maps it's I mean we'll see Apple has been using drones for Apple Maps data for a while in addition with the minivans that it uses it it's you I I keep saying we'll see but this is only part of a larger project obviously so it it's what else we got here that was declined is Amazon was told that it could not use drone deliveries in New York uh DJI has been completely rejected but they've had problems with the Army and the Navy as far as location identification goes so this rigorous process this is just the start now this is them using drones in a limited test kind of set this is a trial basically right um it's entirely possible that if the trial expands you know if they they they do well and they get approval for the trial to expand that you will see these kinds of things going around um I was a little bit interested in the words you used where you said this is Apple seeing what they can get away with what do you mean by that I I think that Apple applies for permission and do a lot of things and I think that they push the frontier like for instance famously with the original iPhone is they had a lot of discussions with AT&T about bandwidth on the on the then 2G network with the iPhone and they really really strain the network I and I there's a lot of things that Apple does because of the scale that you're talking about that I think that they look at asking for permission asking for forgiveness later rather than full permission before does that make sense and I and does anyone really see a big future for Apple drones are we expecting to see one on the retail store with a big old Apple logo on the top of it well so here's the the thing right flying a drone is relatively inexpensive sure driving cars all around the country is quite expensive yes especially since they're manned uh well they're Mann and there's Fuel and maintenance Fleet costs and uh it's it's it's consuming it really is you know if you spend a couple Grand on a drone that flies in a limited area but can return home and recharge versus cars and hotels and Fuel and Main it's just a it's a different scale of cost and you don't do it once right you have to go back periodically and redo it because things change you know I have I have seen Google Maps Vehicles driving around my area several times over the past couple of years because they they know they need to go and remap yeah the the Google Maps for my house was taken 9 years ago um a couple miles away from my house is one of those laquina long stay hotels kind of things and I regularly see a Google Maps vehicle parked there okay now they don't do my house in my driveway every every 3 months you know it's closer to about 5 years because not a whole lot of changes around my house but in the area as a whole there's there's new construction so yeah they got to do it and and that's you know Google's idea was they wanted to map the whole earth that's why they were doing this with the oceans as well but I'm I'm kind of curious what I'd like to know is what local company they're working with they're Ser they're working with a firm in North Carolina as well I wonder who that is yeah we tried finding that information a little bit earlier today and we're going to keep pulling the thread on that we'll see we'll see what pops out on that one the one that I find fascinating is the use of a 1500lb drone to monitor mosquitoes in Florida that I mean that's not Apple that's one of the the projects that was flirty no that's not flirty that's that's yeah it is that is flirty isn't it they're using medical equipment to heart attack victims in Nevada and 1500lb drone in mosquitoes in Florida flirty is the medical equipment I don't know who's doing the Drone in in Florida but man that is a drone a 1500lb drone that's borderline helicopter right there that's that's not a quad rotor that's like an Octor rotor I would think at least a Deca rotor still want to see it I monitoring mosquitoes in Florida is serious business right we had the zika virus that was transmitted by mosquitoes a couple years ago um it didn't really reach the US very well it was mostly a South American problem I think but transmission of diseases by mosquitoes is a big deal monitoring them is huge yeah well with a huge drone so yeah and and of course the kinds of problems that the FAA is looking at are flights over people uh safety and and things like that they're they're really concerned about the safety of the airspace and the safety of people on the ground so these are the sorts of considerations that are involved and that's why you know you can't just go and and and use your drone for commercial purposes without getting some kind of clearance through them we really need to figure out who those firms are that are working with apple on this yeah we're gonna we we're we've got some people we're going to call about it but uh it wasn't it wasn't immediately obvious at press time other winning projects were things like agricultural package delivery you know as you said the uh the the New York one for Amazon was denied uh drone flights near airports I wonder what that's about don't know I mean I suppose you could fly them around the periphery of the airport for security purposes um Pipeline and environmental monitoring that makes sense oh yeah I'm perfectly fine with that one I I actually saw one where a nuclear plant is looking at provid looking at um monitoring and maintenance tasks with them which makes sense yeah how do you check the size of the cooling tower you send a drone up so yeah this is something that you and I have talked about in the past which is the Apple TV app and Apple's third party subscriptions and I think we we've talked about the the of weird Arrangement that you have where you can subscribe through things using your Apple ID for third party services so the the story here suggests that you'll be able to go ahead and subscribe to these thirdparty TV services through the TV app instead of having to also have the third party Service app do the subscription there and then just simply access the content through the TV app do this come as a big surprise to anybody I mean it's great that they did the work on this and they found the sources to say that the TV app is going to be a central spot for subscriptions to video but come on is this rocket science is this some kind of mass Revelation that this was the end goal for the TV app let's just looking at well I don't know that it's the end goal for the TV app it's just another goal for the TV it's if if you did not see this coming when the TV app was launched what three years ago now yeah come on this is this is obvious failure right this is and I sound frustrated about this because well because I am because it was reported Again by Bloomberg and it's another one of those things where they've got one little tidbit of information which which isn't really a source of said maybe sources did say but it's it's it's kind of a no s kind of thing it's it's so let me ask you're you're frustrated because this has become a story out of something that feels like it should not even be given the time of day this this became a story and is obvious this is the obvious Evolution and if you are an apple Insider reader you read this story yesterday and said okay no kidding but now we've got other venues outside saying wow what an amazing Revelation that we've got that the TV app is going to be used to subscribe for services oh my goodness what a shock let me ask you Mike do you subscribe to these third party services that you have subscriptions to through your Apple ID some I have and some I have not it it really depends on the situation I thing is I try and keep my subscriptions to a minimum for a number of different reasons it's it's easy for those costs to escalate out of control when you don't need something for more than the initial month yeah so where I will subscribe to things is where things are the easiest to subscribe to where I have the least amount of friction to subscribe to it the the benefit of using the appled ID to subscribe to all these things is that you then have the central location to manage those subscriptions however I have found the pitfall through personal experience um what happens when a subscription cancels or expires without your requesting it to be canceled or subscri or expired so here's what happens um the service provider points the finger squarely at well you subscribe through your Apple ID it's not our fault M Apple doesn't tell any anything except a cut off good luck and there's no one to talk to at Apple about it sure and so you're sort of left in the Middle with with no nothing to do other than try and resubscribe and I have had this happen now six times no six times is an exaggeration let's let's be player it's more like uh four times okay where I have subscribed using my Apple ID to a third party service and we'll use it for a couple of months and then be unable to use it and I'll go and check the subscription and find that the third party service provider believes that it's expired that it's canceled okay and I'll ask them what the deal is and they say well they point the finger at the other guys they point the finger over at Apple and so I'm in this sort of cycle where I keep redoing this and each time the third party service provider says but if you just subscribe directly through us you wouldn't have this problem and they're probably not wrong but the question is do I trust giving them all of my information in order to subscribe versus Apple protecting that information yeah that that's a whole other matter it's well but it's a part of it right so what's happening here I think this is my suspicion but if we're if we're putting on our our um aluminum foil hats or aluminum foil garments the uh the the third party service provider wants that information and without it they have no way of reaching or touching the customer sure right and so they are willing to to cut off the service provider that cut off the subscription on the basis that they think you'll notice and come back to them and then they can tell you to come and do it directly through them they're willing to take that risk of losing you in order to get the information doesn't that seem Bonkers I mean there's a lot Bonkers about a lot of different aspects of all this number you know number one is the shift to everything being software as a service or subscriptions to Media or that kind of thing but I mean that's a topic for another day which I'm sure will delve into it some length as this continues to escalate but you're right I mean dat data is a commodity your personal data for sure is a commodity so and you're right these these subscription Services they want your personal data to you know they say it's to tailor the service to what you want but I mean remk be honest yeah it's to remarket you and to try and upsell you on other services that that's really what it's about now the disconnect between Apple and the services that it would be great if that was better your your experience in that is not unique I'm sure but it's this is the thing is with apple doing this with the TV app with allowing for subscriptions to video services and ultimately its own videos which is really what this is about is is unsurprising as long as it works there there is a real benefit to being able to open up one app and go ahead and sign in or subscribe directly to all the services right there you know if if we're talking about what is the fastest outof the-box experience placing them all in one place really does work but it it's it's not there yet yet because in order to have the TV app be able to do that you still have to have those other apps installed and so you have to have gone and installed those applications unless Apple's going to ship them pre-installed sort of the way they they were hardwired in on the third generation and before Apple teams well given Apple's hooks with the App Store I don't think it would be a huge stretch to say hey I want to sign in to Larry's video provider and it downloads Larry's video provider app for you after you've signed up for the service I I don't think that's a huge stretch there if that's how they want to continue doing that I'll give you that that's not terrible H goodness but I mean here's the thing if you don't think that Apple wants to be the core of your daily life and your experiences and your subscriptions and if you don't think that Apple wants to take that percentage for enabling the subscription I I don't know what to tell you because this has clearly been Apple's goal for some time well it's the thing we talked about last week they're still trying to figure out how to win the battle for TV and by centralizing it through them as the portal that is that is one way of winning and and thinking about portals is really old school thinking right it goes back to you know Yahoo and Alta Vista what is your portal to the Internet so by making the TV app the portal to all of the third party Services they can that puts them FR center right between that and and Siri being able to index and search all of these third party services that makes them the portal it does they're I I I still wonder if they they are behind a little bit by not integrating into a television set so that you aren't compelled to go and buy the device after the fact kind of thing we talked about this a little bit last week that was last week's but I'm still thinking about it well clearly it's it's you know if we're talking about what's the fastest way to get someone into your your world into your world of services that would be it you know I I was thinking about this again when the uh the newest Android TV device surface this this week as a part of the Google IO stuff you know Google's in a weird place because they have chomecast which is embedded in all of Vio Soundbars and TVs but they also have this Android TV thing that they haven't done a whole lot with in a few years and so they're going to go ahead and make this push to put Android P the newest version of Android on this TV device and they sent out a survey to developers saying you know you're developing apps tell us what you like about Android TV and we'll see if we can get you review unit and it's it's still kind of unclear we saw last year's IO they had some nice things going on with voice they were trying to do things similar to what Apple's doing with their Google Play services but it didn't really materialize into anything yeah I it's Google's efforts there was a joke on Twitter that I saw that the the the commenter said something like hey look io's two hours old and Apple's and apple and Google's already released six incompatible messaging services and well the thing is the joke's not that far from the truth right yeah there's truth to that well that's what makes jokes funny in the first place right yeah there's a lot of scattershot that Google likes to do and and we'll be talking about Google a little bit more later in the podcast yeah Apple watch Johnny I had an interview with u with a watch blog and he said in there that the Apple watch was one of the first post Steve Jobs products that that Steve did not wear a wristwatch outside of the the early days pictures but during the time that Johnny knew you know 1997 forward that Steve wasn't really into wearing a wristatch at that point in his life and that they didn't really talk about watches until after Steve had already passed away I people have said to me recently that we're at the tail end of the Steve Jobs inspired projects and I think the tail end of the Steve Jobs inspired projects was years ago and and this is fuel for that fire I I don't now we know that the iPod 6th generation nano was worn as wristwatch companies like lunatic and uh you know famously made the wristwatch strap that was a huge Kickstarter project that eventually graduated to selling through Apple retail uh Apple's firmware update for the Nano gave it watch faces Bill Campbell who was on Apple's board told them that they should be a wristwatch and they said SM in the uh the keynote where they announced the Nano so they they certainly did have a little bit of thought for it and we also know that the lunatic wristwatch uh band was used when they were prototyping the Apple watch they they used Nano cases and put Apple watch guts in the early ones and put them in the lunatic wristwatch strap to practice wearing the Apple watch before they built the Apple watch um and that's fine and good but it it also doesn't necessarily mean that Steve was deeply involved in the project right by the time that stuff was happening Steve was really at his um worst declining health and and probably was not involved now I want to take a small bone to pick here because Johnny spoke with hinki which is run and founded by Ben Kimber and hinki builds itself as the uh world's leading online wristwatch magazine okay online magazines a little funny they're a Blog um world's leading is also a little funny because that that title goes to people like a Blog to watch where I used to write um so yes I'm a little bit biased it the biggest issue I had with the article was that the first five paragraphs which were like 10 sentences per paragraph are about the author not I well yeah because Ben climber it's great that you did this interview with I but realized that I is the show not the author that's if you're Ben Kimber Ben Climer is the show okay I I I don't know Ben I don't know I don't know a lot of his writing and to Ben's credit he's managed to get some cool Partnerships with some of the big Swiss watch companies to get them to make limited edition runs for hinki so they've they've made a a zenet watch which is a very nice beautiful watch they've made uh a I think they made a Philip pek with him and they're all about the greater glory of hodinky yeah I it's okay you know I I've said my piece I mean I'm not going to lie I put in personal anecdotes in some how-tos like my Home Server article of course but man not like this but especially relevant there because your home server has to be built to serve your needs just as it would be for any of our listeners right if our listeners are setting up home servers it needs to take in account their needs and your anecdote helps illustrate that it's perfectly reasonable right yeah I just didn't it's not about the glory of Mike setting up a home server is it no anyway yeah I mean all hail the glory of Mike setting up a home server but yeah anyway yeah was m at Mike side for the story the story is I and his early production of the Apple watch and the fact that there's entire team devoted to it that don't do anything else with an apple and nothing to do with what the author had for breakfast and the biggest part that we picked up on there is it's interesting that that that that I've said addressed publicly that this is the first post cheve product yeah well he he didn't say it was the first not the first no but that this was definitely the a post Steve definitely definitely a post Steve product so because they have really talked a whole lot about where that delineation lies do I don't think they ever will I I I think that will get it anecdotally in things like this but I don't I don't think that I think they go out of their way to not say what is a jobs project and what was a jobs project I I think they very specifically blur that line and I think they do it because there's a lot of talk about this wouldn't have happened if jobs was alive which is nonsense and we've talked about right this this feels like this is the most directly they've ever addressed that question it is the uh I I think they blur that line so to keep the threat of continuity going that that this terrible thing happened and they're all they all have a hole in their hearts over it but they they're continuing in the same thing yeah I and I completely agree that that's what it is but you know and you know what I'm I'm actually done on that tiate I'm not going to talk about the if jobs was alive arguments because I'm on record for saying that they're silly so I I think there is utility to them occasionally but I think that the vast majority of those arguments are poorly framed and poorly made that that that there is a place for them but they're rarely used correctly okay now this one this I love Google Assistant yeah uh this was a thing the what I'm I'm going to talk really quickly about what I thought was the impressive part it wasn't the natural speech that got me it was okay give you give us the background because I just said Google Assistant tell tell help bring bring our listeners in a little bit tell us what's going on Google iio is this week and that's their big WWDC like event and they have it outside and I always feel sorry for the poor sobs in the backg cuz man I tell you what get some Google sunscreen or something on those guys well it used to be inside mcone y but they've been putting it on at yena Gardens anyway that's neither here nor there but all I could see in the back when they scroll back is people holding a screen up to their eyes to block out the Sun but any event what they did is a a new update to Google assistant and they first talked about natural conversation they talked about having your kids say please and thank you to it and and accommodations to the children because of of it but most continued conversation continued conversation where you you engage and it remembers contextually what came before most importantly what they had is Google Assistant calling a real human and having a conversation with natural language with a real human to schedule something and they then they did two sample conversations which I guarantee were the best ones that they did the first one was very straightforward there was no miscommunication there were no assumptions there were no accents to deal with none of that and it was a hair salon appointment and the Google Assistant inserted ums and conversational pauses to make it sound like it was a real person whether or not vocalizations right the second one was in conversation with a restaurant where it was a loud environment in the restaurant the the hostess was accented and the Google Assistant still made it through and it was it was a very positive thing I'm not certain what the end goal of this is because it's ultimately going to end in two AIS talking to each other and why not just have those eyes no but I don't think it does end in that yet and here's why oh not this year hair salons and and food establishments restaurants and such are at the very end of the long tale for adopting technology you know I was reading online one of the the VC kind of guys was saying this is silly everyone should just use open table and if they aren't using Open Table why would you want to go to a restaurant anyway and that's super elus right that's a very San Francisco kind of attitude because first of all small business owners especially people like who are running hair salons do not want to buy into developing a website that can take scheduling or buy someone else's service that can do that because that's money out of their pocket you know their their their whole thing is being able to process payment like square or PayPal which a lot of them use to be able to take money and they'll answer the phone for scheduling the appointments and that's it and they schedule in a paperbook they don't schedule into a Google Calendar there's nothing about this that is interesting to them to turn technology on for so if you need to schedule a air appointment you you have to use the phone great let Google Assistant negotiate that for you and with restaurants open table great when it works but it's a cost the restaurant to be able to have open table compatibility and they hold tables back so there are tables that are allowed to be reserved for open table and when those fill they're filled and you don't see the availability but if you call you can skill get a table and so you your best bet is to call again restaurants don't have any interest in in dealing with technology seamless the and GrubHub the uh the the food ordering Services you know how they do this they take your order online and then they send a fax to the restaurant because the restaurants did adopt fax machines a few years ago and I understand that this does not end in two AI this ends in a in a person end point because restaurants are so long away from adop stuff I think it ends in a I think it ends in a $200 Google dongle that you plug into a television set that'll answer your phone so you don't have to I think that's how this ends for the hair salon not a not a standalone box not a square box not a cash register but a $200 box that you can let sit in the corner and you don't have to pay some to answer your phones or you don't have to stop fixing the 7-year-old lady's hair to go get the phone and tell Mary five seats down to make an appointment yeah so hair salons don't use landlines each each uh each person uses their own cell phone so what you need to have is Google assistant in your cell phone to answer your incoming call then then a plug connect Google assistant on your phone to the television and that's it done story's over so that's I think that's what we're looking at here I think we're looking at some kind of Google provided solution inexpensively to have these mom and poom shop mom and pop shops to take these calls and to take these answers for them so they don't have to deal with the phone it's not this year it's not next year it's not the year after that it's coming and it's coming sooner than maybe some of us are comfortable with I I think it's interesting solving this problem though and and we knew that Google was good at understanding humans with accents but being able to carry on the phone conversation contextually and reach a successful conclusion is very interesting oh sure and it's it's something that I I have to say I I think Siri is pretty far behind I think it is as well I it's I I think that given what Google just demonstrated even though Google doesn't necessarily ship everything they demonstrate for instance the photo rectification where taking a fence out of a photo you can do with Google photos the things they do at IO more than likely tend to ship okay not always but almost always that's kind of a side joint anyway there yeah it's it is it signifies what the technology can do and it also signifies that Siri at present is lacking yeah and you know yes I work at Apple and cider but yeah I also take apple to task when it needs to be and Siri is behind Siri was behind before IO and look at the primary complaints about the homepod Apple has said that it it's a limited subset of Siri well yeah you know what it's a little too far limited mhm and and I'm just not seeing the improvements in the iPhone that I was hoping I would see when they rolled it out the first time and did that first practical demonstration of the technology you know talk go ahead I yeah go ahead I'm done I I I want to keep us moving here so they also announced a couple of other things that I want to talk about briefly uh we still have a little bit of time here before we go Android P new version of Android uh does a number of things including things that that had been suggested that Apple should adopt in the past in terms of B battery management usage you know revealing usage to the user so that they can understand how much time they're spending in any given application um and and really making the the phone adaptive in terms of conserving battery I think that's coming I I I'm not too concerned about that because I think that has been in the works for a while one of the things I'm disappointed is that they've decided they're going to limit it to a specific set of phones that they're going to release it on and that the Nexus 6p is not one of those I'm completely not shocked at that Revelation given the fact that o is on 3% of their installed base I what 7 months after it was released three whole per. I have o on the 6p the 6p launched with with Android marshmallow it got nougat it got o but it's a 2-year-old device and as a 2-year-old device they really ought to be able to do it and what's interesting is that in the source code for the AOSP the Android open source program um it shows that they did attempt to compile it against Nexus 6 sure so I don't know if the decision is a political one or it's a um performance it it could be either and we're never going to not yet yeah uh the other thing that was interesting out of this is what they're doing with uh Chrome OS on Chromebooks and that's that's so we we've known in the past that they were going to allow the running of Android applications on Chrome OS but they are also now going to allow the running of full Linux desktop applications on it yeah I saw that I I'm not sure how huge an impact that's actually going to have I'm glad that they're doing it it's good that they're doing it but I I think this is another one of those things that a very small percentage of people are saying right now oh man what a good idea how great is that and well so 90% of them are just like whatever and 90% of them should be like whatever because 90% of them don't even need the Android applications for the most part but what it does is it says that so here here's the thing um people that use Chromebooks are by and large mostly education customers there are some business customers and there are many Security Professionals sure and Security Professionals love it for the same reason that it administrators do which is if something happens to it you reboot it it's got secure boot the same way Mac OS 10 does or Mac OS does and or you can just throw it away and sign in on some other machine and you're no longer vulnerable uh they're running Linux in a sandboxed VM if you need some application that runs on Linux as a part of your workflow you can have it without necessarily jeopardizing the security of the rest of the system and and what a nice convenient kind of thing for what is essentially a you know $150 to $300 computer yeah I mean I agree that it like I said it will have proponents it's just not are going to be Google wants us to be this widespread thing and it's the and that's how they pitched it hey look now everybody can run Linux this will be great for Education they don't care they do not care yes and no yeah and and education doesn't care about Linux because no one's shown how it helps them but it is it is an intriguing move you know I we go back 20 years to when we were talking about next year will be the year of Linux on the desktop and uh well that that's that's one way of framing this if you're looking at an IO properly through the right kind of lenses I guess like Google lenses I see what you did all right that's what I was hoping for we've reached the end of a perfectly good episode of the Apple Insider podcast it seems like we've just blown through this one well it it's a strange week for news it's not crazy like the last couple weeks have been but there are enough things with impact and we didn't even talk about the Intel flaws that are coming that's we still got to wait on that one I mean there's but because they've delayed their fixes we still have time to talk about I mean there there's a lot that you can kind of see rumbling on the horizon like the thunderstorms that are gathering outside my window right now but uh those are topic for another day Mike where can people find you on the internet can find me at Apple Insider well frankly every day of the week Monday through Friday and Saturday and Sunday or you can find me on Mondays at my slightly saltier podcast space javelin dcom there you go uh I'm your host Victor my Twitter is at V marks and I write here at Apple Insider and also at wristwatch review.com come check us out over there too thank you so much for joining us please email us at newsapple insider.com with tips questions requests anything that you'd like us to do differently or change coverage just for you we'd be happy to consider that and talk to you for it thank you so much we will be back next week we will catch you all later goodbye everybody theyou're listening to the Apple Insider podcast okay beginning welcome to the apple and solder podcast I'm your host Victor and joining me is Mike Worley hello everybody Mike have you ever used udemy no well now is the best time for you to try it so the Apple Insider podcast is brought to you by udemy and they are the largest Marketplace for online learning whether you're looking to learn something new or just sharpen your skills udemy has over 65,000 courses starting at just $111.99 students around the world choose udemy to discover new passions expand their skills and even change careers visit ud. myapple Insider or download the udemy app to learn anytime anywhere and you know listeners if you haven't joined Stitcher premium yet now is also the perfect time Stitcher premium gets you completely 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contrast with the one in athenry and the one in athry was blocked because there there was a there were residents in in athenry that appealed to the Irish planning cils to um try and and block the whole thing they they were concerned about the environment and the environmental impact of the uh the center they were concerned about the strain on the Irish electrical grid they were concerned about no plans being made public to cope with greenhouse gas emissions from the data center yeah yeah you sound you sound frustrated frustrated I'm skeptical daily has a lot of money Daly is American Born an environmental engineer and I think this has got more to do with his property values than anything else so it it's I I don't feel like apple is going to drop down a data center without environmental concerns like for instance in the other data center that's already done they're using the waste heat to heat local homes so assuming that Apple's just going to plunk this down and use Briggs and Straton 16 stage re reciprocating diesel engines for the power for this unit and is it it seems like a ridiculous assumption at its face especially given that every other data center that Apple has built doesn't even use the local electrical grid primarily they're all based on solar power installs that they're doing well I mean obviously the nature of solar power means you don't have it all the time right but so there's got to be a tap into the local electric grid but I don't see where there's going to be any notable impact on on their Grid at all but in any event the courts didn't necessarily agree nor disagree there's been a long back and forth on this since the announcement and now that the high court in Ireland has ruled that yes you can appeal this again now we're looking at another several years of the process so Apple said yesterday as we record this on Thursday morning that they were done and they're just going to do something else elsewhere right so what happened is that the appeals process began there were over two years of appeals two years of going back and forth on this and the project was initially approved but they they were basically told that they would have to start the appeals process over and so that meant another two years easy at which point Apple just washed their hands and said we're taking our ball and we're going elsewhere thank you very much yeah on the other hand I'm not sure that I Apple I'm not sure that I agree with Apple's statement saying that how many jobs they've added to the local economy with Apple's previous projects and things like that that's kind of a red herring the data centers don't require a cast of thousands to maintain there will be temporary construction jobs and then there'll probably be a hundred staffers in the data center and in places like primeville and in and in Maiden North Carolina they weren't necessarily locals that had the high-paying jobs or people that came in from elsewhere to take the high-paying jobs so I mean obviously there's DA's point of view there's Apple's point of view and somewhere in the middle of those two points of view is accurate right now Apple was being technically accurate which is of course the best kind of accurate but not telling the story that you were just saying right there they were saying we've spent over $550 million with local companies which is true if you're doing construction it costs right and they said that they've added 25,000 jobs up and down the country which is I'm sure also accurate right but not talking about what the employment looks like at a single data center either right this is the entire Ireland Affair this is Apple's European headquarters so of course it's G to have support for 25,000 jobs up and down the country one would think but this wasn't the only thing that uh Dy was trying to stop Dy is also battling a$1 billion Amazon data center in Dublin now this this is interesting to me because it it says that Dy is on a crusade and not so much about his property values because what you know saying that he has property in D in athenry and in Dublin which is possible but it's it's more about da is fighting the big companies I'm going to leave this as research to the reader if people want to delve into Ireland's history with daily that's entirely up to them I'm not in Ireland I can't justify the travel go check on this in person the guy is on a crusade of some sort but I have a hard time believing that it's an entirely benevolent one in environment Center well I mean there's there's always the personal investment in this kind of thing where it's to the greater glory of Da that he's the environmental Crusader possibly which isn't necessarily monetary reward but it is one of those things that keeps people warm at night sometimes yeah okay whatever it's all speculation it's all speculation and apple is completely justified in moving elsewh at the data center as as companies are want to do when faced with long delays and they need something sooner rather than later right absolutely we can find an expensive battle now or we can go to those things so moving next mhm there's a rumor that suggests that the 6.1 in LCD iPhone which we've talked about at length before will employ a mlcd plus display that's the same kind of display that's on LG's G7 think phone now this is a Korean report and the the point of this display is that it offers 30% less power consumption while still being bright and hitting 100% of the P3 color gamut so it it does have reasonable qualities to be considered uh the the question is if you do that is that a more affordable display I I have serious doubts about this report in its entirety the so business Korea is talking about this on Thursday morning and they cited industry sources for the claim that Apple's going to switch from IPS which has been used from for iPhones for a long time the iPhone 10 has got OLED business Korea has got decent sources inside the supply chain but they're terrible at guessing what Apple's going to do based on those sources what we know for sure is that the G7 uses this display what we know for sure is that LG makes this display what we know for sure is that LG makes this phone what we don't know is any kind of yields exactly how much the screen cost in comparison to LED which is a more mature technology we don't know anything about reliability of the technology and and this is completely out of the blue there there are no contract suggesting that Apple's going to do this Apple has just told LG in accordance with some other supply chain sources that your LED screens are not meeting our quality standards and we need to work on it a little bit more there's there's a lot of ifs here there's a there's a lot of questions here and there's nothing suggesting that is headed to the iPhone other than this one report well and equally important is the the number of suppliers that can supply this part we know that apple does not like to have a single supplier nominated for a part uh unless there's a real reason for it and it you know they they you know they have the Qualcomm modem and the Intel modem they have had Samsung and tsmc doing different contracts for chip production there there's benefits in in making sure that you're not exposed by having a single supplier yeah and Apple has been burned in years past by having single suppliers so to switch to an mlcd plus part that can only be supplied by LG is a is a risk and would you do that on a phone that's not your flagship phone but is instead your phone that's meant to be more affordable yeah there's there's a lot of ifs here like I said that just that don't make a lot of sense and don't add up for me here if nothing else you cannot say that Tim Cook is not a master of supply chain you you you can't say that he's terrible at the supply chain because he's reduced the amount of inventory that Apple has on hand at any given time he's struck deals far in advance for things like memory chips and screens like the OLED screens that are used in the iPhone 10 that deal was struck with Samsung a long time ago and the deal for Samsung was struck for about 160 million screens which means that we're continuing in the future with OLED with apple I just I'm just not seeing it it's it's possible I think that we could see it at some point in the future I just don't think we're going to see it here I I I I too am a little skeptical I I feel like the yields question is a valid one and the the costs have to work it just doesn't it doesn't quite add up for me yet um it's entirely possible that it could happen and I'm all wrong but it just doesn't making sense well sure that's the paril of rumors right I mean some of them are right and some of them are wrong and LG is going to sell maybe a million of these phones of the G7 think phone or the thin Q or however you pronounce it I guess I don't even know how you pronounce it t h i n capital Q so we know that they've made a million screens but are they able to scale the technology for the screens to make 40 million of them in three months we have no idea yeah and and just because you can put out a million is a good indicator it really is but to be able to open up 40 more production lines and train workers and have everything's going to make that all happen is um it's scale introduces problems yeah and scale shows you problems it magnifies everything it really does you know your your parts yield may be perfectly sane at a smaller number orders right if you're doing you know that that that million doesn't say over what time period that million was produced was that million produced over 3 months what's what's the per week kind of production scale yeah and you know if your yields fine at the per week but you start speeding it up to turn out more units does your yield go down do you get less good units out at the end when you're trying to go faster you you really see all the problems when you try and Crank It Up and especially when you're trying to go to 40 million like you say so this is definitely going to be we're going to toss this one on the weight and SE pile but I like I I'm not thinking for the 2018 flagships the I'm reasonably certain that whatever Apple has in mind for the 2018 flagships is at the very least 95% solidified and it 6 months ago this screen wasn't even a consideration with when they started looking at the next design conservatively 6 months ago probably longer this this was the screen wasn't even on the radar so seem it seems unlikely to me yeah and well it it is possible for them to to turn fast if they need to you know the but but it is unusual there needs to be a real motivation for that you know if if it was the same connectors and the same physical size and a drop in replacement then then sure it could happen but uh I'm with you wait and see now yesterday there was formally announced a drone program that consists of 10 projects across the US where drones are going to be used for commercial purposes beyond the existing kind of testing that the uh us FAA currently allows and one of those projects has Apple participating working with a firm in North Carolina the the participation looks like it's intended to help improve Apple Maps by taking high resolution images from the Drone that can be used to acquire data on road layout changes and increase the quality of the apps fly over future yeah apple also says that things like faces and license plate numbers are going to get blurred and that's great it's how they've always done it it I think that this might be more of a case that Apple wants to see exactly what they can get away with this isn't going to be a national project it's going to be more local to the North Carolina data center with a possibility of expansion and and again this is just early testing this isn't this isn't a wide roll out we're not going to expect to see apple drones buzzing down your street except you know maybe more than once or twice to get these Maps it's I mean we'll see Apple has been using drones for Apple Maps data for a while in addition with the minivans that it uses it it's you I I keep saying we'll see but this is only part of a larger project obviously so it it's what else we got here that was declined is Amazon was told that it could not use drone deliveries in New York uh DJI has been completely rejected but they've had problems with the Army and the Navy as far as location identification goes so this rigorous process this is just the start now this is them using drones in a limited test kind of set this is a trial basically right um it's entirely possible that if the trial expands you know if they they they do well and they get approval for the trial to expand that you will see these kinds of things going around um I was a little bit interested in the words you used where you said this is Apple seeing what they can get away with what do you mean by that I I think that Apple applies for permission and do a lot of things and I think that they push the frontier like for instance famously with the original iPhone is they had a lot of discussions with AT&T about bandwidth on the on the then 2G network with the iPhone and they really really strain the network I and I there's a lot of things that Apple does because of the scale that you're talking about that I think that they look at asking for permission asking for forgiveness later rather than full permission before does that make sense and I and does anyone really see a big future for Apple drones are we expecting to see one on the retail store with a big old Apple logo on the top of it well so here's the the thing right flying a drone is relatively inexpensive sure driving cars all around the country is quite expensive yes especially since they're manned uh well they're Mann and there's Fuel and maintenance Fleet costs and uh it's it's it's consuming it really is you know if you spend a couple Grand on a drone that flies in a limited area but can return home and recharge versus cars and hotels and Fuel and Main it's just a it's a different scale of cost and you don't do it once right you have to go back periodically and redo it because things change you know I have I have seen Google Maps Vehicles driving around my area several times over the past couple of years because they they know they need to go and remap yeah the the Google Maps for my house was taken 9 years ago um a couple miles away from my house is one of those laquina long stay hotels kind of things and I regularly see a Google Maps vehicle parked there okay now they don't do my house in my driveway every every 3 months you know it's closer to about 5 years because not a whole lot of changes around my house but in the area as a whole there's there's new construction so yeah they got to do it and and that's you know Google's idea was they wanted to map the whole earth that's why they were doing this with the oceans as well but I'm I'm kind of curious what I'd like to know is what local company they're working with they're Ser they're working with a firm in North Carolina as well I wonder who that is yeah we tried finding that information a little bit earlier today and we're going to keep pulling the thread on that we'll see we'll see what pops out on that one the one that I find fascinating is the use of a 1500lb drone to monitor mosquitoes in Florida that I mean that's not Apple that's one of the the projects that was flirty no that's not flirty that's that's yeah it is that is flirty isn't it they're using medical equipment to heart attack victims in Nevada and 1500lb drone in mosquitoes in Florida flirty is the medical equipment I don't know who's doing the Drone in in Florida but man that is a drone a 1500lb drone that's borderline helicopter right there that's that's not a quad rotor that's like an Octor rotor I would think at least a Deca rotor still want to see it I monitoring mosquitoes in Florida is serious business right we had the zika virus that was transmitted by mosquitoes a couple years ago um it didn't really reach the US very well it was mostly a South American problem I think but transmission of diseases by mosquitoes is a big deal monitoring them is huge yeah well with a huge drone so yeah and and of course the kinds of problems that the FAA is looking at are flights over people uh safety and and things like that they're they're really concerned about the safety of the airspace and the safety of people on the ground so these are the sorts of considerations that are involved and that's why you know you can't just go and and and use your drone for commercial purposes without getting some kind of clearance through them we really need to figure out who those firms are that are working with apple on this yeah we're gonna we we're we've got some people we're going to call about it but uh it wasn't it wasn't immediately obvious at press time other winning projects were things like agricultural package delivery you know as you said the uh the the New York one for Amazon was denied uh drone flights near airports I wonder what that's about don't know I mean I suppose you could fly them around the periphery of the airport for security purposes um Pipeline and environmental monitoring that makes sense oh yeah I'm perfectly fine with that one I I actually saw one where a nuclear plant is looking at provid looking at um monitoring and maintenance tasks with them which makes sense yeah how do you check the size of the cooling tower you send a drone up so yeah this is something that you and I have talked about in the past which is the Apple TV app and Apple's third party subscriptions and I think we we've talked about the the of weird Arrangement that you have where you can subscribe through things using your Apple ID for third party services so the the story here suggests that you'll be able to go ahead and subscribe to these thirdparty TV services through the TV app instead of having to also have the third party Service app do the subscription there and then just simply access the content through the TV app do this come as a big surprise to anybody I mean it's great that they did the work on this and they found the sources to say that the TV app is going to be a central spot for subscriptions to video but come on is this rocket science is this some kind of mass Revelation that this was the end goal for the TV app let's just looking at well I don't know that it's the end goal for the TV app it's just another goal for the TV it's if if you did not see this coming when the TV app was launched what three years ago now yeah come on this is this is obvious failure right this is and I sound frustrated about this because well because I am because it was reported Again by Bloomberg and it's another one of those things where they've got one little tidbit of information which which isn't really a source of said maybe sources did say but it's it's it's kind of a no s kind of thing it's it's so let me ask you're you're frustrated because this has become a story out of something that feels like it should not even be given the time of day this this became a story and is obvious this is the obvious Evolution and if you are an apple Insider reader you read this story yesterday and said okay no kidding but now we've got other venues outside saying wow what an amazing Revelation that we've got that the TV app is going to be used to subscribe for services oh my goodness what a shock let me ask you Mike do you subscribe to these third party services that you have subscriptions to through your Apple ID some I have and some I have not it it really depends on the situation I thing is I try and keep my subscriptions to a minimum for a number of different reasons it's it's easy for those costs to escalate out of control when you don't need something for more than the initial month yeah so where I will subscribe to things is where things are the easiest to subscribe to where I have the least amount of friction to subscribe to it the the benefit of using the appled ID to subscribe to all these things is that you then have the central location to manage those subscriptions however I have found the pitfall through personal experience um what happens when a subscription cancels or expires without your requesting it to be canceled or subscri or expired so here's what happens um the service provider points the finger squarely at well you subscribe through your Apple ID it's not our fault M Apple doesn't tell any anything except a cut off good luck and there's no one to talk to at Apple about it sure and so you're sort of left in the Middle with with no nothing to do other than try and resubscribe and I have had this happen now six times no six times is an exaggeration let's let's be player it's more like uh four times okay where I have subscribed using my Apple ID to a third party service and we'll use it for a couple of months and then be unable to use it and I'll go and check the subscription and find that the third party service provider believes that it's expired that it's canceled okay and I'll ask them what the deal is and they say well they point the finger at the other guys they point the finger over at Apple and so I'm in this sort of cycle where I keep redoing this and each time the third party service provider says but if you just subscribe directly through us you wouldn't have this problem and they're probably not wrong but the question is do I trust giving them all of my information in order to subscribe versus Apple protecting that information yeah that that's a whole other matter it's well but it's a part of it right so what's happening here I think this is my suspicion but if we're if we're putting on our our um aluminum foil hats or aluminum foil garments the uh the the third party service provider wants that information and without it they have no way of reaching or touching the customer sure right and so they are willing to to cut off the service provider that cut off the subscription on the basis that they think you'll notice and come back to them and then they can tell you to come and do it directly through them they're willing to take that risk of losing you in order to get the information doesn't that seem Bonkers I mean there's a lot Bonkers about a lot of different aspects of all this number you know number one is the shift to everything being software as a service or subscriptions to Media or that kind of thing but I mean that's a topic for another day which I'm sure will delve into it some length as this continues to escalate but you're right I mean dat data is a commodity your personal data for sure is a commodity so and you're right these these subscription Services they want your personal data to you know they say it's to tailor the service to what you want but I mean remk be honest yeah it's to remarket you and to try and upsell you on other services that that's really what it's about now the disconnect between Apple and the services that it would be great if that was better your your experience in that is not unique I'm sure but it's this is the thing is with apple doing this with the TV app with allowing for subscriptions to video services and ultimately its own videos which is really what this is about is is unsurprising as long as it works there there is a real benefit to being able to open up one app and go ahead and sign in or subscribe directly to all the services right there you know if if we're talking about what is the fastest outof the-box experience placing them all in one place really does work but it it's it's not there yet yet because in order to have the TV app be able to do that you still have to have those other apps installed and so you have to have gone and installed those applications unless Apple's going to ship them pre-installed sort of the way they they were hardwired in on the third generation and before Apple teams well given Apple's hooks with the App Store I don't think it would be a huge stretch to say hey I want to sign in to Larry's video provider and it downloads Larry's video provider app for you after you've signed up for the service I I don't think that's a huge stretch there if that's how they want to continue doing that I'll give you that that's not terrible H goodness but I mean here's the thing if you don't think that Apple wants to be the core of your daily life and your experiences and your subscriptions and if you don't think that Apple wants to take that percentage for enabling the subscription I I don't know what to tell you because this has clearly been Apple's goal for some time well it's the thing we talked about last week they're still trying to figure out how to win the battle for TV and by centralizing it through them as the portal that is that is one way of winning and and thinking about portals is really old school thinking right it goes back to you know Yahoo and Alta Vista what is your portal to the Internet so by making the TV app the portal to all of the third party Services they can that puts them FR center right between that and and Siri being able to index and search all of these third party services that makes them the portal it does they're I I I still wonder if they they are behind a little bit by not integrating into a television set so that you aren't compelled to go and buy the device after the fact kind of thing we talked about this a little bit last week that was last week's but I'm still thinking about it well clearly it's it's you know if we're talking about what's the fastest way to get someone into your your world into your world of services that would be it you know I I was thinking about this again when the uh the newest Android TV device surface this this week as a part of the Google IO stuff you know Google's in a weird place because they have chomecast which is embedded in all of Vio Soundbars and TVs but they also have this Android TV thing that they haven't done a whole lot with in a few years and so they're going to go ahead and make this push to put Android P the newest version of Android on this TV device and they sent out a survey to developers saying you know you're developing apps tell us what you like about Android TV and we'll see if we can get you review unit and it's it's still kind of unclear we saw last year's IO they had some nice things going on with voice they were trying to do things similar to what Apple's doing with their Google Play services but it didn't really materialize into anything yeah I it's Google's efforts there was a joke on Twitter that I saw that the the the commenter said something like hey look io's two hours old and Apple's and apple and Google's already released six incompatible messaging services and well the thing is the joke's not that far from the truth right yeah there's truth to that well that's what makes jokes funny in the first place right yeah there's a lot of scattershot that Google likes to do and and we'll be talking about Google a little bit more later in the podcast yeah Apple watch Johnny I had an interview with u with a watch blog and he said in there that the Apple watch was one of the first post Steve Jobs products that that Steve did not wear a wristwatch outside of the the early days pictures but during the time that Johnny knew you know 1997 forward that Steve wasn't really into wearing a wristatch at that point in his life and that they didn't really talk about watches until after Steve had already passed away I people have said to me recently that we're at the tail end of the Steve Jobs inspired projects and I think the tail end of the Steve Jobs inspired projects was years ago and and this is fuel for that fire I I don't now we know that the iPod 6th generation nano was worn as wristwatch companies like lunatic and uh you know famously made the wristwatch strap that was a huge Kickstarter project that eventually graduated to selling through Apple retail uh Apple's firmware update for the Nano gave it watch faces Bill Campbell who was on Apple's board told them that they should be a wristwatch and they said SM in the uh the keynote where they announced the Nano so they they certainly did have a little bit of thought for it and we also know that the lunatic wristwatch uh band was used when they were prototyping the Apple watch they they used Nano cases and put Apple watch guts in the early ones and put them in the lunatic wristwatch strap to practice wearing the Apple watch before they built the Apple watch um and that's fine and good but it it also doesn't necessarily mean that Steve was deeply involved in the project right by the time that stuff was happening Steve was really at his um worst declining health and and probably was not involved now I want to take a small bone to pick here because Johnny spoke with hinki which is run and founded by Ben Kimber and hinki builds itself as the uh world's leading online wristwatch magazine okay online magazines a little funny they're a Blog um world's leading is also a little funny because that that title goes to people like a Blog to watch where I used to write um so yes I'm a little bit biased it the biggest issue I had with the article was that the first five paragraphs which were like 10 sentences per paragraph are about the author not I well yeah because Ben climber it's great that you did this interview with I but realized that I is the show not the author that's if you're Ben Kimber Ben Climer is the show okay I I I don't know Ben I don't know I don't know a lot of his writing and to Ben's credit he's managed to get some cool Partnerships with some of the big Swiss watch companies to get them to make limited edition runs for hinki so they've they've made a a zenet watch which is a very nice beautiful watch they've made uh a I think they made a Philip pek with him and they're all about the greater glory of hodinky yeah I it's okay you know I I've said my piece I mean I'm not going to lie I put in personal anecdotes in some how-tos like my Home Server article of course but man not like this but especially relevant there because your home server has to be built to serve your needs just as it would be for any of our listeners right if our listeners are setting up home servers it needs to take in account their needs and your anecdote helps illustrate that it's perfectly reasonable right yeah I just didn't it's not about the glory of Mike setting up a home server is it no anyway yeah I mean all hail the glory of Mike setting up a home server but yeah anyway yeah was m at Mike side for the story the story is I and his early production of the Apple watch and the fact that there's entire team devoted to it that don't do anything else with an apple and nothing to do with what the author had for breakfast and the biggest part that we picked up on there is it's interesting that that that that I've said addressed publicly that this is the first post cheve product yeah well he he didn't say it was the first not the first no but that this was definitely the a post Steve definitely definitely a post Steve product so because they have really talked a whole lot about where that delineation lies do I don't think they ever will I I I think that will get it anecdotally in things like this but I don't I don't think that I think they go out of their way to not say what is a jobs project and what was a jobs project I I think they very specifically blur that line and I think they do it because there's a lot of talk about this wouldn't have happened if jobs was alive which is nonsense and we've talked about right this this feels like this is the most directly they've ever addressed that question it is the uh I I think they blur that line so to keep the threat of continuity going that that this terrible thing happened and they're all they all have a hole in their hearts over it but they they're continuing in the same thing yeah I and I completely agree that that's what it is but you know and you know what I'm I'm actually done on that tiate I'm not going to talk about the if jobs was alive arguments because I'm on record for saying that they're silly so I I think there is utility to them occasionally but I think that the vast majority of those arguments are poorly framed and poorly made that that that there is a place for them but they're rarely used correctly okay now this one this I love Google Assistant yeah uh this was a thing the what I'm I'm going to talk really quickly about what I thought was the impressive part it wasn't the natural speech that got me it was okay give you give us the background because I just said Google Assistant tell tell help bring bring our listeners in a little bit tell us what's going on Google iio is this week and that's their big WWDC like event and they have it outside and I always feel sorry for the poor sobs in the backg cuz man I tell you what get some Google sunscreen or something on those guys well it used to be inside mcone y but they've been putting it on at yena Gardens anyway that's neither here nor there but all I could see in the back when they scroll back is people holding a screen up to their eyes to block out the Sun but any event what they did is a a new update to Google assistant and they first talked about natural conversation they talked about having your kids say please and thank you to it and and accommodations to the children because of of it but most continued conversation continued conversation where you you engage and it remembers contextually what came before most importantly what they had is Google Assistant calling a real human and having a conversation with natural language with a real human to schedule something and they then they did two sample conversations which I guarantee were the best ones that they did the first one was very straightforward there was no miscommunication there were no assumptions there were no accents to deal with none of that and it was a hair salon appointment and the Google Assistant inserted ums and conversational pauses to make it sound like it was a real person whether or not vocalizations right the second one was in conversation with a restaurant where it was a loud environment in the restaurant the the hostess was accented and the Google Assistant still made it through and it was it was a very positive thing I'm not certain what the end goal of this is because it's ultimately going to end in two AIS talking to each other and why not just have those eyes no but I don't think it does end in that yet and here's why oh not this year hair salons and and food establishments restaurants and such are at the very end of the long tale for adopting technology you know I was reading online one of the the VC kind of guys was saying this is silly everyone should just use open table and if they aren't using Open Table why would you want to go to a restaurant anyway and that's super elus right that's a very San Francisco kind of attitude because first of all small business owners especially people like who are running hair salons do not want to buy into developing a website that can take scheduling or buy someone else's service that can do that because that's money out of their pocket you know their their their whole thing is being able to process payment like square or PayPal which a lot of them use to be able to take money and they'll answer the phone for scheduling the appointments and that's it and they schedule in a paperbook they don't schedule into a Google Calendar there's nothing about this that is interesting to them to turn technology on for so if you need to schedule a air appointment you you have to use the phone great let Google Assistant negotiate that for you and with restaurants open table great when it works but it's a cost the restaurant to be able to have open table compatibility and they hold tables back so there are tables that are allowed to be reserved for open table and when those fill they're filled and you don't see the availability but if you call you can skill get a table and so you your best bet is to call again restaurants don't have any interest in in dealing with technology seamless the and GrubHub the uh the the food ordering Services you know how they do this they take your order online and then they send a fax to the restaurant because the restaurants did adopt fax machines a few years ago and I understand that this does not end in two AI this ends in a in a person end point because restaurants are so long away from adop stuff I think it ends in a I think it ends in a $200 Google dongle that you plug into a television set that'll answer your phone so you don't have to I think that's how this ends for the hair salon not a not a standalone box not a square box not a cash register but a $200 box that you can let sit in the corner and you don't have to pay some to answer your phones or you don't have to stop fixing the 7-year-old lady's hair to go get the phone and tell Mary five seats down to make an appointment yeah so hair salons don't use landlines each each uh each person uses their own cell phone so what you need to have is Google assistant in your cell phone to answer your incoming call then then a plug connect Google assistant on your phone to the television and that's it done story's over so that's I think that's what we're looking at here I think we're looking at some kind of Google provided solution inexpensively to have these mom and poom shop mom and pop shops to take these calls and to take these answers for them so they don't have to deal with the phone it's not this year it's not next year it's not the year after that it's coming and it's coming sooner than maybe some of us are comfortable with I I think it's interesting solving this problem though and and we knew that Google was good at understanding humans with accents but being able to carry on the phone conversation contextually and reach a successful conclusion is very interesting oh sure and it's it's something that I I have to say I I think Siri is pretty far behind I think it is as well I it's I I think that given what Google just demonstrated even though Google doesn't necessarily ship everything they demonstrate for instance the photo rectification where taking a fence out of a photo you can do with Google photos the things they do at IO more than likely tend to ship okay not always but almost always that's kind of a side joint anyway there yeah it's it is it signifies what the technology can do and it also signifies that Siri at present is lacking yeah and you know yes I work at Apple and cider but yeah I also take apple to task when it needs to be and Siri is behind Siri was behind before IO and look at the primary complaints about the homepod Apple has said that it it's a limited subset of Siri well yeah you know what it's a little too far limited mhm and and I'm just not seeing the improvements in the iPhone that I was hoping I would see when they rolled it out the first time and did that first practical demonstration of the technology you know talk go ahead I yeah go ahead I'm done I I I want to keep us moving here so they also announced a couple of other things that I want to talk about briefly uh we still have a little bit of time here before we go Android P new version of Android uh does a number of things including things that that had been suggested that Apple should adopt in the past in terms of B battery management usage you know revealing usage to the user so that they can understand how much time they're spending in any given application um and and really making the the phone adaptive in terms of conserving battery I think that's coming I I I'm not too concerned about that because I think that has been in the works for a while one of the things I'm disappointed is that they've decided they're going to limit it to a specific set of phones that they're going to release it on and that the Nexus 6p is not one of those I'm completely not shocked at that Revelation given the fact that o is on 3% of their installed base I what 7 months after it was released three whole per. I have o on the 6p the 6p launched with with Android marshmallow it got nougat it got o but it's a 2-year-old device and as a 2-year-old device they really ought to be able to do it and what's interesting is that in the source code for the AOSP the Android open source program um it shows that they did attempt to compile it against Nexus 6 sure so I don't know if the decision is a political one or it's a um performance it it could be either and we're never going to not yet yeah uh the other thing that was interesting out of this is what they're doing with uh Chrome OS on Chromebooks and that's that's so we we've known in the past that they were going to allow the running of Android applications on Chrome OS but they are also now going to allow the running of full Linux desktop applications on it yeah I saw that I I'm not sure how huge an impact that's actually going to have I'm glad that they're doing it it's good that they're doing it but I I think this is another one of those things that a very small percentage of people are saying right now oh man what a good idea how great is that and well so 90% of them are just like whatever and 90% of them should be like whatever because 90% of them don't even need the Android applications for the most part but what it does is it says that so here here's the thing um people that use Chromebooks are by and large mostly education customers there are some business customers and there are many Security Professionals sure and Security Professionals love it for the same reason that it administrators do which is if something happens to it you reboot it it's got secure boot the same way Mac OS 10 does or Mac OS does and or you can just throw it away and sign in on some other machine and you're no longer vulnerable uh they're running Linux in a sandboxed VM if you need some application that runs on Linux as a part of your workflow you can have it without necessarily jeopardizing the security of the rest of the system and and what a nice convenient kind of thing for what is essentially a you know $150 to $300 computer yeah I mean I agree that it like I said it will have proponents it's just not are going to be Google wants us to be this widespread thing and it's the and that's how they pitched it hey look now everybody can run Linux this will be great for Education they don't care they do not care yes and no yeah and and education doesn't care about Linux because no one's shown how it helps them but it is it is an intriguing move you know I we go back 20 years to when we were talking about next year will be the year of Linux on the desktop and uh well that that's that's one way of framing this if you're looking at an IO properly through the right kind of lenses I guess like Google lenses I see what you did all right that's what I was hoping for we've reached the end of a perfectly good episode of the Apple Insider podcast it seems like we've just blown through this one well it it's a strange week for news it's not crazy like the last couple weeks have been but there are enough things with impact and we didn't even talk about the Intel flaws that are coming that's we still got to wait on that one I mean there's but because they've delayed their fixes we still have time to talk about I mean there there's a lot that you can kind of see rumbling on the horizon like the thunderstorms that are gathering outside my window right now but uh those are topic for another day Mike where can people find you on the internet can find me at Apple Insider well frankly every day of the week Monday through Friday and Saturday and Sunday or you can find me on Mondays at my slightly saltier podcast space javelin dcom there you go uh I'm your host Victor my Twitter is at V marks and I write here at Apple Insider and also at wristwatch review.com come check us out over there too thank you so much for joining us please email us at newsapple insider.com with tips questions requests anything that you'd like us to do differently or change coverage just for you we'd be happy to consider that and talk to you for it thank you so much we will be back next week we will catch you all later goodbye everybody the\n"