Episode 223 - iPad rumors for the March event, Jason Opdyke of Bearifi Wi-Fi, and Swift

The Evolution of Swift: A Look at the Future of Apple's Programming Language

Apple's programming language, Swift, has come a long way since its inception. The company's history with Cocoa and Carbon is well-known, and it's interesting to look back at how they've transitioned from one framework to another. System 9 for OS 9 supported Carbon, which was later dropped in favor of Objective-C, a language that would become the foundation of Apple's development efforts. However, with the release of Swift, Apple signals that it's time to move on and explore new possibilities.

The Transition from Objective-C to Swift

The shift from Objective-C to Swift has been a significant one for Apple. With each new version of Swift, the company is introducing new features and changes that are designed to make development easier and more efficient. This transition has not always been smooth, however. Developers have expressed concerns about compatibility issues and the need for additional support as they adapt to the new language. Despite these challenges, Swift has proven itself to be a powerful tool, and its adoption by Apple's development team is a testament to its potential.

The Future of Swift

Apple has announced plans to release Swift 5, which promises to bring significant changes to the language. The exact details of what these changes will entail are not yet clear, but it's likely that they will be substantial. As developers get their hands on Swift 5, they'll need to adjust to new syntax and features that may break existing code. This is a common pattern in software development, where changes to the language or framework can have far-reaching consequences.

The Role of Networking in Apple's Development Efforts

Networking has long been a challenging aspect of software development, particularly for Apple products. The company's networking capabilities are complex and multifaceted, making it difficult for developers to get things right. However, with the release of Swift 5, Apple is likely to introduce new features that will make networking easier to manage. This could have significant implications for the way developers approach this aspect of development.

The Importance of Documentation

As Apple continues to evolve its programming language and framework, it's essential to prioritize documentation. With changes coming to Swift 5, it's likely that there will be a need for additional resources and support. Developers who are already familiar with the language may find themselves facing challenges as they adapt to new features, and it's crucial that Apple provides clear guidance on how to implement these changes.

The Value of Community Feedback

One of the most significant benefits of Swift 5 is the opportunity for developers to provide feedback and shape the future of the language. As Apple continues to develop its programming framework, the company relies heavily on community input and suggestions. By engaging with developers and listening to their concerns, Apple can identify areas where changes are needed and create a more cohesive and supportive development environment.

The Role of Jason from Bifi

Jason from Bifi was recently joined by Victor as a guest on the podcast. Jason brought his wealth of experience in software development and networking to the conversation, offering insights into how Apple's products work behind the scenes. His expertise is invaluable to the community, and it's clear that he's passionate about helping developers understand the inner workings of Apple's technology.

The Benefits of Collaborative Development

Collaboration is essential for successful software development, particularly in an industry like Apple where innovation is key. By working together with developers and listening to their concerns, Apple can create a more cohesive and supportive development environment. This collaboration has already led to significant improvements in Swift 5, and it will be exciting to see how the language continues to evolve.

Conclusion

The evolution of Swift is an exciting journey that promises to bring new features and changes to the programming language. As Apple continues to develop its framework, it's essential to prioritize documentation and community feedback. By engaging with developers and listening to their concerns, Apple can create a more cohesive and supportive development environment. With the release of Swift 5, Apple is poised for continued growth and innovation in the world of software development.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enyou're listening to the Apple Insider podcast welcome to this episode of the Apple Insider podcast I'm Victor and joining me is the other faithful the ever loyal that that devoted friend to you and I William Gallagher now you say that just before you're about to say you're dumping me for half the episode to speak somebody more interesting but fine I said that you I said that you were devoted did I say that I was devoted particularly okay you know it's to like that that makes me want to reexamine my contract yeah okay William you know I know one of the things that you've talked about at some length with me when we're not doing these recordings because actually we socialize outside of the show is your interest in the iPads that are that are potentially coming up yeah it's actually not a personal interest because frankly I'm I'm spend out I have a ma all this well I'm still using the original iPad Pro large one and and I love it but yes I know many people my wife Angela included uh who are very tempted to buy an iPad right now but keep not buying it because I I keep saying I've heard other rumors that are things are coming and then you I'm you know if nothing happens on March the 25th I'm going to look like a right egot but you know that's not not for the first time okay but thanks it's all right when I say that okay say I you know you you are the greatest you really are I just sometimes it's so easy to go ahead and put those little things in there now there there's this March 25th event that we suspect is taking place and two iPad models have gained certification from the Bureau of Indian standards which is the um sort of the equivalent to the the FCC in the US it's it's or or CE in um in Europe you know the organization that approves a device is is safe for sale is not an unintentional radiator of radio waves things like that and U so there are models a2124 and a2133 which um are Apple branded manufactured by China's hung fuin Precision electronics and these same models were listed with the Eurasian economic commission the EC in in January so we don't know exactly what these models are but people are predicting that apple is going to launch not just a new budget iPad sized at 10 .2 in but possibly a fifth generation iPad Mini so the the Mini 4 continues to remain on sale but that thing last launched in 2015 which puts it pretty long in tooth to people yes but since then we've had the iPhone 10s Max which uh although substantially more expensive does similar sized jobs no no it really so despite the fact that these things both run iOS iPad remains a different interface space even when you have the large screen split screen when you rotate kind of view on an iPhone it does it I mean they're they're not exactly unified right they aren't it's still can can you do split view on your phone can you have two apps open side by side on your phone okay no but each app is exactly the same as it is you're saying that's it I mean I would like the iPhone 10s to rotate when you turn it in everything not just certain apps but other than that I can't point to a a substantial difference never notic the differences are getting smaller but I I think that there's still a difference between an iPad mini versus a large phone in terms of how they the OS handles some things I will tell you that everybody I know who's still got an iPad Mini really likes it um they are gorgeous little machines for what they do oh but I know what I was going to ask you about cuz you know these things uh all this stuff about um model numbers and things that come through certification and things around the world I was kind of vaguely aware of this but I only really concentrated I suppose is the word um just before I think was it October November's event uh when suddenly there were a lot of part numbers released that definitively proved there would be something like six new Macs and you were figuring that there were different versions of the Macs like the there might be a 21 and a 27 inch iMac and all this stuff but then that just didn't seem to happen so what's the kind of reliability level of all this stuff well so it it depends a little bit upon the sourcing for it right when something is going through one of these these organiz government organizations to be certified you can be more sure that something's actually taken place because when when the these government organizations certify a device they've had to Hands-On with the unit and they've taken it apart and they've before they've taken depart they've measured what it radiates in terms of radio waves Wi-Fi Bluetooth and unintentional they've measured power specs on it and seen that the power is is uh you know safe for release the same kind of things that to get tested at entertech and Underwriters labs and things like that the but but they've had one when a number gets released and it comes from someone's retail system it's less certain oh okay right right that makes sense you know when when someone's retail system leaks that there are skew numbers it's it's it's a good sign but it's not positive confirmation of anything because retailers put placeholders into their systems so that when a model is populated they can go ahead and have it for sale because it'll already set up right plus they can make mistakes I suppose as well like any human beings they they can make mistakes they could be using these placeholders for something else they there there's it's it's not EX exactly anywhere as as confident as you know the government organization had one in hand they could also just be kidding you know what the hell okay right can say that I don't know many retailers who just kid around with their inventory management but you know long day lot of customers uh so you're confident that um March the 25th will happen and that if it does happen there will be iPads so I no no no no no that's that's a step too far no so I'm confident that there will probably be a March 25th event because all things kind of lead to that we're going to see some invitations go out maybe what the 17th 18th something like that yeah doubtlessly it's it's always week before but yes so that would fit right right so but nothing says definitively that if these are iPads which we suspect that they are that these iPads will be released at set of ENT no I was just thinking about that you you can you can make a good yes about that but you know they they have released things just by posting those updates on the store in years past that you know sort sort of more silent updates or just advertised on the online store kind of thing they they don't necessarily need to use the event for that unless well who knows they want to well do you this is probably a detail that no human being can remember but uh based on past records when they announce an iPad what are the odds that it will be released the same day um as you say there have been many generations of iPad and it's not entirely certain this historically yeah is is mixed usually it's uh it's the the the thing they've been doing of late which is available in two weeks nuts I was afraid to say that avable on this date kind of thing and you know but but that goes backways right I iPad 2 which carried on for forever but when they I ad to was originally released you know there were people lining up for it day of that it was available and of course everyone knew to line up for it day of that it was available because they said it'll be available in a week or whatever the actual time frame was and so well well I imagine they'd like to have things available day of that there are a few days for this because it's not just lining up Apple stores that they got to line up they got to line up Walmart they got to line up Target they got to line up best by they got to line up all the other retailers that resell and you know so you don't know why I'm asking do you let's just make this very depressing you're buying me a present aren't you uh I'm actually not in that Financial for Victor thank you William that's so gracious of you gosh wow I'm in Britain do you know what's happened to at the time of recording what's scheduled to happen a couple of days after March the 25th uh is brexit and when you mentioned the yeah you guys are you're you're exiting something you're leaving something aren't you seriously when you mentioned the C Mark I suddenly thought I bet nothing's been done about whether we continue with that I mean you would expect that it would but I I was seriously looking up government websites today on another project and oh no the detail isn't there you know we've only had two years to sort all this out and every day something else comes up so um I would like please for Apple to announce new iPads that fit Angela's requirements and release them in time for her to definitely get them and know that they're safe before where out of Europe I mean you just you just need to pop over to um to one of those neighboring countries using your shiny blue passport and uh and pick one up there and take it back with you uhhuh right you you're just going to visit France aren't you well I like France uh I now have a choice of two passports to get me there this is true yes uh I have an Irish passport now oh going through the Press I was I was interesting congratulations okay so yeah you can pop on over to France and and pick up an iPad and uh FY it back yeah that won't add to the expense of buying one at all will it let please get me away from this what what do you figure the odds are um that when we've talked about this before the March 2th event there a really strong rumors that actually there was going to be no hard wether it was all surface All Surface excuse me all services that's a different company yes exactly and strangely I'm not as interested in that one I just don't know why um I haven't heard heard a stronger rumor since but I haven't really been following that particular Market are we still looking at uh all services and crossing our fingers for iPads or well I I would like to see something happen with this long gestating entertainment portion right sure yes the the the TV kind of thing the the star studded shows the Productions let's let's get an announcement about that wouldn't that be great yes um we know a lot about new shows I'm actually interested in the kind of the more um background stuff like they are it looks to me like apple will have bought a library of shows from somewhere because there was a story wasn't there last year that they were outbid for friends by Netflix uh so the fact that they were looking at it says to me they are looking for bankable they they were doing some syndication stuff well and you you you the problem is right you want to keep people in your ecosystem and you want to not run into a situation where people end up with with what I call the the 57 channels and nothing on yes I think other people have used that term before as well I can't think who but that term is a Bruce Springstein lyric it come it comes from one of his songs one of the innocent days when there were only 57 channels it seems so long ago but yes well so you know in in the dark days of 2008 I I spent 3 months convincing my wife that we could cancel cable service and the convincing argument was every night I turned on the Telly and and we sat down to watch and I'd say you know what's on and she'd look at me and I'd say well there's Law and Order because there was always a Law and Order playing somewhere in the world at every minute of the day yes right and and and basically nothing new so we could cancel it and with Netflix Netflix runs through these Peaks and valleys where they have a ton of shows people go and binge watch and then there's nothing on that people are interested in even though they have a wide catalog there's there's you sort of get fatigued and look at it and go you know I'm not interested in anything here and people say the same thing of Hulu and so what we we do is sort of we stack these Services you get Netflix you get Hulu you get one other and then you find something among all of the services or you spend your entire evening flicking through the cataloges and indexes and lists yes I I'm not saying I've done that no of course not so so Apple does need to have a back catalog of things to keep people there at after the the flagship shows have been binge watched I think so but like you say we'll see really um I'm looking forward to finding out more I hope obviously I hope it works you you always want everything to work uh but interesting to see what happens yeah one of the one of the big problems that I have with with these Services is that it's really hard to find the gems within them it's it's difficult to be able to search and find the good things yeah and there whole websites dedicated to here are the top 20 things that are awesome on Netflix this month kind of thing yes I've actually just searched through all of those because a friend was uh coming to the end of for Amazon Prime uh subscription and said well I haven't got time to binge anything other there any particular films we all recommended and it took me an hour and a half to find a film I really really like but I couldn't remember the title so I read through loads and loads of uh the best romcoms on Amazon Prime on Netflix all this and I finally found it and she's well she says she's added it to her list I don't know if she's watched it but I went and bought it off iTunes just so I could have it what was it your sister's sister I forgot the name of the woman who wrote it really talented gorgeous film very funny absolutely stunningly well acted uh love it your sister's sister available on iTunes you know that that's that's a real problem right is that it's so difficult being able to find the appropriate thing and uh you know this podcast episode is supported by Capa now Capa is the leading free online resource to help you find the best software solution for your business with over 700,000 reviews of products from real software users discover everything you need to make an informed decision and you can search more than 700 specific categories of software everything from project management to email marketing to yoga studio management software no matter what kind of software your business needs capara makes it easy to discover the right solution fast and join you can join the millions of people who use Capa each month to find the right tools for their business visit capa.com apppp inssider for free today to find the right tools to make 2019 the year for Your Business capa.com apppp Insider Capa that's capap p t a.com slapple Insider um not sure if I've ever mentioned this to you but I used to work a long time for radio times kind of UK equivalent of TV guide and uh it was always an interesting issue with them because they were throughout the time I was there was this ever burgeoning list of channels how you actually got people the stuff they wanted it sounds like we need a radio times for all of these yeah yeah it's true it really is joining us is Jason opik from bifi who is going to talk to us about both some of the the Wi-Fi systems that their company makes as well as some of some opinions on Amazon and and sort of the Wi-Fi space in the whole and I'm really glad that he's available to join us welcome to this segment of the Apple andyer podcast I'm Victor and joining me is Jason opdik of Bari hi Victor how are you thank you for having me on today oh I'm really glad you could join us so we we were talking uh a couple of episodes ago about Wi-Fi in the past we've talked about how airport well Apple rather made the airport and Airport Express devices and they've kind of exited the market and there's there's been sort of a gap left by them um how would you describe that yeah that's very interesting I remember um I remember when Apple left the market it kind of came as a surprise to me because Apple at the time had a tendency to be ahead of the game so when they made a move that usually foretold something and the it was kind of hard to figure out exactly why they were getting out um I know they had some public statements and things of that nature but we kind looked at it as there just were a lot of competitors in the game a lot of routers a lot of technology and perhaps they just didn't feel like it was a profitable segment you know I don't know the exact reasoning but being somebody that had used the airport and I felt like they were ahead of their time when they came out but I did feel like a lot of competitors had caught up and just to give you a brief background about our company we actually haven't been in the router game until now so we've made we've focused our specialty has been on other types of Wi-Fi extension products so we actually watched that news and witnessed that news from an outside perspective we were not in the you know the router game at the time yeah and I you know I think back historically when Wii first started to be a thing you didn't have a whole lot of choices right you had Cisco aeronet which was uh we had to go to Cisco University to learn how to configure and there were a few other ones out there you know I think my first 81b station was a buffalo tech product years and years ago and back then they they weren't very complex right you you got a product and if you open it up it was a reference design with a pcmcia wireless card stuck inside and and apple changed things by using that same reference design and making software that everyone could go ahead and understand how to configure and they did a fantastic job with that and um one of the reasons that we had not gotten into the router game early on is just because the technology was so difficult even just to get set up with a modem nowadays you have all-in-one devices you have modems that can act as routers you have of course you know the mesh Wi-Fi which is you know what we'll discuss in just a little bit but you know back then you had the convoluted process of hooking up you know cables into a ethernet router you had excuse me into a um you know into the ethernet ports on a modem you had to configure your modem you had to go in and you know if you were using DSL you had to do like a PP um you know setup as opposed to static IP there was all this complication and apple really did streamline that and that's actually how we kind of got to um come about being into business our company bifi actually started uh in 2009 as a company called be extender my former business partner and co-founder was a student at University of California Berkeley and um customers or excuse me students that were getting uh weak Wi-Fi reception like in dorms and on campus if they had PCS there were some range extenders for PCs available but there was literally nothing for mac Apple had come along and done a great job with their airport line but if you weren't able to get a good enough signal to a network uh you know with your Mac directly there was really no option for you to get any type of extension and our very first product was just simply called be extender and it was a long range USB Wi-Fi extender for Max you plug it in you got a familiar looking software screen that allowed you to connect to network so we kind of got to witness the evolution of the airport line while we were making you know Wi-Fi extenders for Max and how long you been doing that so we started in 2009 doing that we phased out the Mac USB line around 2014 and during the years in between I believe it was 2011 I'd have to double check my timeline but um we started to get a lot of demand for PC versions even though there were some PC products out there you referenced the pcmcia we were just going from the pcmc standard on PCS to a lot of companies manufacturers phasing that out in favor of just USB ports and though there were some options there weren't a ton available so we launched bare extender PC a couple years after the Mac version and then we came out with a bare extender outdoor which was an outdoor all-in-one antenna and receiver was useful like campgrounds RV parks and just had a simple USB cable to come back into the computer so that's what we've kind of done in between and in 2015 we started to get into the repeater game that was when customers started to shift from wanting better range on their Mac or their PC to wanting better range for everything they're you know iPhones their iPads their tablets the smart TVs and so in 2015 we launched our first extension product which was be extender Edge which was a single point range extender and now we have the verify Edge mesh which is you know the mesh kit that you and I had discussed via email oh okay so for for me and for our listeners can I ask you to explain to me for just a moment what the difference is between a repeater and a mesh system excellent question excellent question so a repeater is basically a device that picks up a signal and it sends it out as another Wi-Fi signal so in the early days of repeaters you know when we were coming into the technology in 2014 2015 if somebody was trying to pick up signal on one side of their house and they couldn't get it they would often times go get a repeater and your listeners are probably familiar with this they probably gone to Best Buy and tried one from one of the big Brands it's a device you plug into a w and you set up and it sends out a separate Network usually with like the letters EXT on the end of it and they may work okay there's some of that drop and speed problem that you referenced on a previous uh uh podcast but the biggest issue is if you you know have a home with multiple floors or you know you're trying to get signal from one side of the house to the other often times the repeater wouldn't be enough so you'd have to go get another repeater and then you'd have to program that one separately and they wouldn't be talking to each other you'd have three different sub networks going on in your house so that was kind of the original repeater technology and then the mesh technology gets more into it still operates on the same basic premise the idea of you know repeating a Wi-Fi signal or extending one but it does it all without you having to configure each different device with each different extender node on your network they're all programmed to communicate out of the box with each other so everything stays on the same subn network and you don't have to go configure multiple devices and set up you know three four five different networks in your house now when we've done some some mesh node testing in the past with other people's manufacturer with other people's products with other manufacturers products there their software setup has frequently led to anywhere from 10 to 25 different app screens that you have to step through and you know they they take five steps to set up the initial node the initial Network B base that connects to your network and then repeat them all for each additional node kind of thing is there anything you can do to make that easier well we've done it actually with the verify Edge mesh this setup is something we paid very close attention to like I said we got our start appealing directly to Mac users we were all Mac users when we launched the original Barrack Center so we've tried to keep a close eye on the user experience over the years and with our berck sender Edge repeater from 2015 even though you know historically from a performance standpoint you know I have to admit it was probably just average maybe a little above average what I really loved about it was the user interface this single kind of setup design that we had and we've tried to carry that over to the edge mesh so simply when you open the product up and you plug it in there's going to be a Wi-Fi signal by default that broadcasts in your home called verify you connect to it you sign in um because of the crack vulnerability which your readers may be familiar with it does uh make you change the password when you log in we don't want to have users leave these with any type of default administrator password so it requires you to change the password and then you just get a choice of two different modes our router is the first dual mode uh mesh router available um I can get more into that in a little bit but you pick the mode you want whether you want the Wi-Fi extender mode or the router mode and based on what mode you select there's one more screen where you you know either set the router option if you're doing in router mode or you pick out the Wi-Fi network you're extending if you're doing cender mode and then you're basically finished so we really try to cut down all the different screens that users see and cut down on that complex nature that users may be familiar with in setting up products in the past yeah networking is one of those things that that has traditionally been um difficult for consumers and and I know in my history where I was making products we tended to avoid it just because we knew how much of a support nightmare it could become true true it's difficult for manufacturers too because we want to do so many things for the user especially if our competitors are offering various features as manufacturers we want to make a product that's going to wash your dishes set your alarm do all these things and also extend your Wi-Fi and when you try to the more you try to do the more complex you know it can be for a user because now they have all these options and settings to choose from and they're not really sure what option they can do and I learned from my early years in manufacturing you know number of the calls we'd get I try to listen in as often as I could on our technical support calls users just simply wouldn't know what to click here or here and I'd find out that there was a gap between engineering and the product design team that wrote the manual so there was something in an early product we had which was called a turbo boost well the users weren't really sure if they should enable that or not now it may seem obvious well let's just go ahead and click it and see what it does but even in that case you know we didn't do a good job explaining what it was now this was 10 years ago and we've learned a lot but you're absolutely correct that sometimes there can be so much so what we've tried to do with this product is just kind of strip down what the user is seeing and just really get at the core of giving good coverage and the best speed possible as well cool now I I you mentioned dual mode right whether it was a router or or uh extending a network can you speak a little bit about that absolutely so when we looked into doing a mesh product you know we looked out there and we saw there was already the Google home Wi-Fi there was already the EO we were kind of listening from our customers that were asking for a verifi mesh product like what specifically they would want that they couldn't already get from you know an existing product that was on the market so with the Dual mode we have two options we have the router mode and that's pretty much default the default mode that any mesh setup works with you simply replace your existing router with the main unit of the mesh kit and then you the extender unit somewhere else in the house and everything's on the same sub Network and you just have one network in the house so that's that's the router mode the Wi-Fi extender mode allows you to use the mesh kit to repeat an existing Wi-Fi signal so for example if you have a high-end gaming router in your home already and you're just looking to extend coverage you don't really want to replace that router you can set up the main verifi Edge mesh unit further away from your home router and enable the Wi-Fi extender mode and basically extend that signal that's coming from your existing router so it allows you to cover more area with fewer mesh units and as long as you make the SSID during setup the same as your home network you can roam throughout the house um you know and you can either that that basically means your computer if you're close to your main router it'll be on your main router if you're closer to a bifi device it'll jump over to that seamlessly um so that's what the Wi-Fi extender mode does and then of course the router mode is basically if you want everything to be on the same IP chain if you have uh you know any music servers set up in your house something like that where you want everything to be on the same subn network then you would just simply replace your main router with a verify Edge mesh main unit and then plug in satellites wherever you'd like to have extension so you might need an extra satellite in that type of case but you'll still get good coverage overall when you're doing that extender mode do does does everything that's verified Downstream from that extender act as a mesh or or does it act more like the extenders of old um so everything it's it's still a mesh Network that's what's really cool about it so everything on the network is still going to work just like it's a mesh Network and there are some cool tricks that you can do to kind of still if you're trying to keep everything on the same sub Network you can do some pretty cool things that allow you to do that in fact I was um listening in on a call a couple weeks ago and the gentleman did not want to um have his devices on you know two different sub networks but he was trying to extend coverage in such a way that just wasn't possible he had a three-story house and one of the issues you run into with Wi-Fi regardless of what any marketers tell you is that Wi-Fi signals generally don't go up and down very well they go across just fine but vertically they don't go up and down very well so if you have a three-story home it can be difficult to put a mesh router on the first floor and still get good coverage on the third floor because satellites don't chain you can't go from a main unit to a satellite to another satellite to another satellite the way mesh technology works is everything you know communicates with the main router so it's kind of like a spider effect where your you know main mesh router is your core and then you have satellites in a circular pattern so in in in the case of a three story home you would have to put the mesh unit you know the mesh uh main mesh router on the second floor and then you could still have a satellite downstairs and upstairs and because they're ethernet enabled you could still make use of your main router by sending the signal from the main router upstairs to the bifi and then from there the bifi will send it to the satellites on the other floors that would be in the Wi-Fi extender mode yeah we used to call that Hub and spoke in the old days right right which just shows how how I'm dating myself now but uh MH can you can you use ethernet between the main router and between the bifi satellites is that possible you know if you had a home home and I know they're very few now but if you had a home that had ethernet in the walls could you go between the floors doing that if you mean to create like a a separate back hole um with ac1200 you you can't as far as I understand um you can set up the verifi main unit uh as an access point off of any ethernet source whether it's a router or if you wanted to plug one in upstairs but if you you know if you had a satellite upstairs that would not you wouldn't have you wouldn't have two data streams one by Wi-Fi and one by ethernet if that makes sense okay yeah that was kind of the question was if you could use the ethernet as the back hall but uh yeah I I would have to double I would have to double check on that with our engineering team um I'm not 100% sure on that but I'm fairly certain that the satellites you know they can uh they can Source or they can output to ethernet but they can't input while they're also communicating with the main router okay well I I apologize for ambushing you with the feature request oh no not at all that's something I like I said I'm I'm 90% sure on that I do want to double check on that because it's the first time that I've been asked it outright but I do believe from my familiarity with the development of the product that that was not something we were able to do I just want to put that disclaimer in there in case I get a text in a few minutes from one of our Engineers you know chewing me out or something like that nice so so I I I ask that in part because I'm interested but also because that's the kind of question that I get from some of our listeners and uh one of the things that I I also have been asked recently is is you know we saw that Amazon news about them purchasing a Wi-Fi provider and one of the questions that that people have asked me is why should we be concerned about that or why should anyone care and I I wondered if you could give an opinion about that just speak a little bit about what what that makes how that matters and and you know your take on security and and what security means absolutely so that was that was fascinating news to me you know Walmart launched in the fall their own series of Wi-Fi routers um they're not making them themselves they're uh basically sourcing them from Chinese manufacturers but they're branding them as Walmart and I long thought that Amazon might try TR to do the same thing they have 76 I believe at last count private label Brands I was surprised to see them acquire such a major player and ero and you brought up on a previous podcast the concern of data snooping the idea that they may closely monitor not only the traffic you know that's going on on Amazon but possibly other things as well and when I was listening to that and even in the news of the acquisition you know I think that's a huge concern um you mentioned in the show something along the lines of you have to trust someone right like so if you're not going to trust Amazon you have to trust Netgear you have to trust verify somebody's going to be processing your data and that's all very true but I think most consumers don't want to have all their eggs in one basket I I know just speaking for myself as a private citizen I don't want to have every single device in my home coming from one manufacturer I want them to work well but there is some concern and I think it's a founded concern too because you know without getting into you I don't really like to get into criticizing Amazon so much but when you look at how they've taken uh search metrics the their ability to see what consumers are buying and what they're searching for and then establish their own competing Brands to compete directly with sellers on their site it goes to show you I think your guest on the show said something along the lines of just because they can will they um they've shown in the past that almost everything they've done has a purpose and they've they've done something off of that so I I would be concerned and I think you know I've read a lot in the blogosphere and on Facebook and Twitter there is some concern out there and it's you know it's merited concern it doesn't mean anything bad's going to happen but as an individual consumer trying to separate myself from my role here at verifi I definitely would be concerned and at verifi what we're looking for in future versions is to kind of Shore that up um you know possibly offer VPN service things that would give the user uh better access to logs ideas of where their data is going if anyone's looking at it and who things like that so our R&D department is really busy looking at ways that if customers do come over to verify products perhaps they own ano or perhaps they're just getting into the market they can have a level of satisfaction that yeah they have to trust someone but you know here's why they can trust us is because we're going to be very transparent and we don't have any ulterior motive we don't really want any of our users you know online habits because we're not going to do anything and we're not in any other business we're only in the business of making your Wi-Fi better thank you so much I I really appreciate you're making time to speak with us and and help me better understand about this um what would you say is the number one compelling reason that when it comes time to replace our Wi-Fi we should go ahead and get a verify unit that's a great question too and uh it's hard to narrow it down to one compelling reason what we try to do with this product is like I said make something that offered Dual Purpose whether users are trying to repeat an existing signal set up their own router um we have over 10 years of proprietary range extension technology in our company's portfolio so we wanted to make something that would offer greater coverage with fewer uh mesh units so the user wouldn't have to go purchase three or four or five units um we also wanted to come in at a lower cost lower price point so we've really tried to be competitive in that regard we've seen some competing systems go for $300 $400 and this customers don't need to pay that much for good coverage in their home so I don't know if I could narrow it down to one specific reason but I would say for all those reasons I definitely think it's worth uh your viewer your listeners checking out our brand online and definitely have them reach out to us with any questions and if you if we have a chance to be back on your show to talk about any other uh news related to the industry certainly love to do that thank you so much let let me ask one final question uh where where is bifi available where should people go to check it out absolutely so ironically um Amazon is a great opport is a great option right now to buy that's where people tend to go we get a lot of people asking if it's on there people love that Prime shipping so we are on Amazon you can go online at verify.com that's just the word bear with IFI like from wify on the end verify.com uh we're also available on NewEgg eBay other online channels as well fantastic well Jason thank you so much for joining us I I really appreciate you being here today all thank you Victor I appreciate it and love listening to the show Travelers are going to have headaches as if traveling wasn't difficult enough they're now FAA Federal Aviation uh Administration rules Banning fully charged lithium ion batteries as cargo as stow away um in the hold cargo yeah mean yeah in the hold all right CU previously that's where I've always chucked my bigger anchor battery and kept the smaller one in carryon in case I needed it but um yeah yeah so there are rules that say that any devices that end up being shipped via plane have to be at 30% or less in order to fly wow now practically speaking that that makes sense if you were an Electronics firm right if you were Apple using planes to move your product then you can say yeah we verify that all the devic 30% charge if you're a traveler and you Chuck a device in the the the yes storage hold um my expectation is that instead of checking that it's at 30% they're just going to tell you no you can't because practically there's no way to investigate all that right no there isn't but I'm also tickled by the idea after all these years of us wanting more charging points in airports thing now we're going to want places where you can discharge a bit more so okay yeah no and there are limits on the amount of battery that you can take on board right e uh the battery is has to be less than 27,000 milliamp hours and uh I'm aware that there have been rules um I haven't really paid attention because I don't think anything I've got has exceeded them but I'm bit self-conscious about that now I should look into it well there there are companies that make batteries like uh like zendure for example that make them just up to that limit so that these are the ones you take on the plane and they they're very popular with Pilots for example who use applications on their iPad as the fight book oh fair enough you mean to say aircraft don't have a USB socket that you can just plug in for a quick charge when you're flying over the Atlantic god well some of them do okay you know that that Dreamliner right that Boeing Dreamliner does I'm sure one of the Airbus has but who knows who knows man um well gosh this has been a a big episode um I I want to point out that we are coming up you know in the summertime so we're begin to creep towards that WWDC and we're going start hearing more rumors about WWDC and uh Apple's head of Swift development Ted kremc has provided insight into the development of Swift 5 which is an upcoming major Milestone release for Swift and they they're doing their own podcast about what coders should expect and how apple is figuring out which features to add to versions and and so they talk a little bit about how they use Swift internally and I think that's interesting oh absolutely have you used Swift much um I I have used the playgrounds application a little bit I haven't gotten into it U one of the things that I watch is I I listen to a lot of developers and and talk with them as they talk about the cost of switching to Swift and the the problems have been that the language has not really been stable oh I didn't know that oh okay that's well they they keep developing it and as they keep developing it so much changes that from one build to the next that that from one version of the language to the next all their stuff breaks which means you have to spend a lot of time on on maintaining applications and updating things and figure out why something broke and for some developers that's a giant pain and they could do whatever they've been trying to do in Objective C much easier I'm really surprised about that I knew about the continual developments but I I unthinkingly assumed it was incremental uh stuff not that it was you know Ro and brentt changes in the middle that's very interesting so do we know whether Swift is going to s that out that's kind of the hope is that it's more mature and that these These Things become less of an issue because Apple really does position this as you know the thing for younger coders to learn right it's part of the everyone can code sessions it's part of the playgrounds app it's it's it's basically the path forward now you may remember way back in history in the dawn of everything where Apple used to have cocoa oh yes yes and and carbon as their to libraries for for doing this kind of graphic stuff and carbon was supported from system 9 for os9 rather all the way into uh to OS 10 for several versions and then they finally ended it right but they sort of signaled that it was coming to an end for a long way off and could they get rid of objective c and make everyone use Swift well I think that's maybe a longer term plan but I don't think Swift 5 is the one where they do that I think that they would have to set developers up with a much longer lead to do that well it's been quite a while I'm astonished that it's Swift 5 already CU I looked at it seriously at the time Swift first came out I was involved in an app project um and in the end I actually got somebody I hired somebody to complete it for me and I can't remember he Swift or not but there was no time uh for me to learn it to hit the deadlines to do it but it what I saw of it looked really interesting and I always intended when that project was done to go back and have a play myself and now here we are five stand the London I haven't got around to it so well just just for you know anecdotal point the the first comment on the story that we ran about this says in this next version of Swift will I suddenly get 4,000 errors due to fundamental syntax being changed and if so will the change be documented or will I have to go to stack Overflow for the correct replacement code because that's been the the the history of the transitions between versions is that stuff changes so wildly everything breaks now the second comment says chains has become less onerous with new versions but they're still there well that is the the real issue right the point the point is kind of valid well I guess we'll we won't see on March 25th or whenever they announce this but shortly afterwards when people got their hands on it and using it then we'll see yeah well this this brings us to the end of a fantastic podcast I'm so glad we had you know you here I'm so glad that we had Jason from bifi here yes I love it when you get people on like that it's so interesting to hear them you know go straight to the people who are actually doing this stuff love it well you know they they have the Battle Scars they've shipped product they know what's involved and and especially a networking product where networking is not an easy topic it's it's one of those things where you know the support calls will kill you if you're not prepared for for how to handhold someone through all the different variations of networking right and and sorry I just gives me the Bic twitch even considering it yes okay right why why am I not online well okay how is your cable modem working is your DSL modem working is your phone you know just the basics right what's connected to what what's plugged into what is it getting an IP address from the other thing it's it's not exactly easy and so it's a real accomplishment to be able to take something like that and make it approachable there's an IT sport guy a corporation I used to work at a long time ago uh who I deeply liked and trusted completely and really really admired what he knew and he actually offered me a job on his support team and I just looked at him as much as I would like to work for the guy the idea of comprehending the network problems they were having then is just impossible I can write about it but he's the one who can actually do it well you saved yourself innumerable headaches and prevented hair loss I'm sure because you would have been pulling it out I'm I'm recovering slowly from development and part of the recovery was hovering up the circle of hair around my chair yeah William where can people find you on the internet I am now looking at Swift a lot on uh Twitter where I'm W gallago or of course Pi an email uh William appleinsider.com which actually I really like love that it's nice start to the day coming see p of messages thank you for those I'm Victor you can email me at William appleinsider.com and uh I am also found on wristwatch review.com seriously though I'm V marks on Twitter and and Victor apple insider.com and I love hearing from you guys it's so nice to hear from you especially when when you tell us where we're doing well and where we can improve thank you so much uh please leave great reviews at iTunes we' really appreciate that it helps us out and we will be back next week with more thank you William thank you bye I'myou're listening to the Apple Insider podcast welcome to this episode of the Apple Insider podcast I'm Victor and joining me is the other faithful the ever loyal that that devoted friend to you and I William Gallagher now you say that just before you're about to say you're dumping me for half the episode to speak somebody more interesting but fine I said that you I said that you were devoted did I say that I was devoted particularly okay you know it's to like that that makes me want to reexamine my contract yeah okay William you know I know one of the things that you've talked about at some length with me when we're not doing these recordings because actually we socialize outside of the show is your interest in the iPads that are that are potentially coming up yeah it's actually not a personal interest because frankly I'm I'm spend out I have a ma all this well I'm still using the original iPad Pro large one and and I love it but yes I know many people my wife Angela included uh who are very tempted to buy an iPad right now but keep not buying it because I I keep saying I've heard other rumors that are things are coming and then you I'm you know if nothing happens on March the 25th I'm going to look like a right egot but you know that's not not for the first time okay but thanks it's all right when I say that okay say I you know you you are the greatest you really are I just sometimes it's so easy to go ahead and put those little things in there now there there's this March 25th event that we suspect is taking place and two iPad models have gained certification from the Bureau of Indian standards which is the um sort of the equivalent to the the FCC in the US it's it's or or CE in um in Europe you know the organization that approves a device is is safe for sale is not an unintentional radiator of radio waves things like that and U so there are models a2124 and a2133 which um are Apple branded manufactured by China's hung fuin Precision electronics and these same models were listed with the Eurasian economic commission the EC in in January so we don't know exactly what these models are but people are predicting that apple is going to launch not just a new budget iPad sized at 10 .2 in but possibly a fifth generation iPad Mini so the the Mini 4 continues to remain on sale but that thing last launched in 2015 which puts it pretty long in tooth to people yes but since then we've had the iPhone 10s Max which uh although substantially more expensive does similar sized jobs no no it really so despite the fact that these things both run iOS iPad remains a different interface space even when you have the large screen split screen when you rotate kind of view on an iPhone it does it I mean they're they're not exactly unified right they aren't it's still can can you do split view on your phone can you have two apps open side by side on your phone okay no but each app is exactly the same as it is you're saying that's it I mean I would like the iPhone 10s to rotate when you turn it in everything not just certain apps but other than that I can't point to a a substantial difference never notic the differences are getting smaller but I I think that there's still a difference between an iPad mini versus a large phone in terms of how they the OS handles some things I will tell you that everybody I know who's still got an iPad Mini really likes it um they are gorgeous little machines for what they do oh but I know what I was going to ask you about cuz you know these things uh all this stuff about um model numbers and things that come through certification and things around the world I was kind of vaguely aware of this but I only really concentrated I suppose is the word um just before I think was it October November's event uh when suddenly there were a lot of part numbers released that definitively proved there would be something like six new Macs and you were figuring that there were different versions of the Macs like the there might be a 21 and a 27 inch iMac and all this stuff but then that just didn't seem to happen so what's the kind of reliability level of all this stuff well so it it depends a little bit upon the sourcing for it right when something is going through one of these these organiz government organizations to be certified you can be more sure that something's actually taken place because when when the these government organizations certify a device they've had to Hands-On with the unit and they've taken it apart and they've before they've taken depart they've measured what it radiates in terms of radio waves Wi-Fi Bluetooth and unintentional they've measured power specs on it and seen that the power is is uh you know safe for release the same kind of things that to get tested at entertech and Underwriters labs and things like that the but but they've had one when a number gets released and it comes from someone's retail system it's less certain oh okay right right that makes sense you know when when someone's retail system leaks that there are skew numbers it's it's it's a good sign but it's not positive confirmation of anything because retailers put placeholders into their systems so that when a model is populated they can go ahead and have it for sale because it'll already set up right plus they can make mistakes I suppose as well like any human beings they they can make mistakes they could be using these placeholders for something else they there there's it's it's not EX exactly anywhere as as confident as you know the government organization had one in hand they could also just be kidding you know what the hell okay right can say that I don't know many retailers who just kid around with their inventory management but you know long day lot of customers uh so you're confident that um March the 25th will happen and that if it does happen there will be iPads so I no no no no no that's that's a step too far no so I'm confident that there will probably be a March 25th event because all things kind of lead to that we're going to see some invitations go out maybe what the 17th 18th something like that yeah doubtlessly it's it's always week before but yes so that would fit right right so but nothing says definitively that if these are iPads which we suspect that they are that these iPads will be released at set of ENT no I was just thinking about that you you can you can make a good yes about that but you know they they have released things just by posting those updates on the store in years past that you know sort sort of more silent updates or just advertised on the online store kind of thing they they don't necessarily need to use the event for that unless well who knows they want to well do you this is probably a detail that no human being can remember but uh based on past records when they announce an iPad what are the odds that it will be released the same day um as you say there have been many generations of iPad and it's not entirely certain this historically yeah is is mixed usually it's uh it's the the the thing they've been doing of late which is available in two weeks nuts I was afraid to say that avable on this date kind of thing and you know but but that goes backways right I iPad 2 which carried on for forever but when they I ad to was originally released you know there were people lining up for it day of that it was available and of course everyone knew to line up for it day of that it was available because they said it'll be available in a week or whatever the actual time frame was and so well well I imagine they'd like to have things available day of that there are a few days for this because it's not just lining up Apple stores that they got to line up they got to line up Walmart they got to line up Target they got to line up best by they got to line up all the other retailers that resell and you know so you don't know why I'm asking do you let's just make this very depressing you're buying me a present aren't you uh I'm actually not in that Financial for Victor thank you William that's so gracious of you gosh wow I'm in Britain do you know what's happened to at the time of recording what's scheduled to happen a couple of days after March the 25th uh is brexit and when you mentioned the yeah you guys are you're you're exiting something you're leaving something aren't you seriously when you mentioned the C Mark I suddenly thought I bet nothing's been done about whether we continue with that I mean you would expect that it would but I I was seriously looking up government websites today on another project and oh no the detail isn't there you know we've only had two years to sort all this out and every day something else comes up so um I would like please for Apple to announce new iPads that fit Angela's requirements and release them in time for her to definitely get them and know that they're safe before where out of Europe I mean you just you just need to pop over to um to one of those neighboring countries using your shiny blue passport and uh and pick one up there and take it back with you uhhuh right you you're just going to visit France aren't you well I like France uh I now have a choice of two passports to get me there this is true yes uh I have an Irish passport now oh going through the Press I was I was interesting congratulations okay so yeah you can pop on over to France and and pick up an iPad and uh FY it back yeah that won't add to the expense of buying one at all will it let please get me away from this what what do you figure the odds are um that when we've talked about this before the March 2th event there a really strong rumors that actually there was going to be no hard wether it was all surface All Surface excuse me all services that's a different company yes exactly and strangely I'm not as interested in that one I just don't know why um I haven't heard heard a stronger rumor since but I haven't really been following that particular Market are we still looking at uh all services and crossing our fingers for iPads or well I I would like to see something happen with this long gestating entertainment portion right sure yes the the the TV kind of thing the the star studded shows the Productions let's let's get an announcement about that wouldn't that be great yes um we know a lot about new shows I'm actually interested in the kind of the more um background stuff like they are it looks to me like apple will have bought a library of shows from somewhere because there was a story wasn't there last year that they were outbid for friends by Netflix uh so the fact that they were looking at it says to me they are looking for bankable they they were doing some syndication stuff well and you you you the problem is right you want to keep people in your ecosystem and you want to not run into a situation where people end up with with what I call the the 57 channels and nothing on yes I think other people have used that term before as well I can't think who but that term is a Bruce Springstein lyric it come it comes from one of his songs one of the innocent days when there were only 57 channels it seems so long ago but yes well so you know in in the dark days of 2008 I I spent 3 months convincing my wife that we could cancel cable service and the convincing argument was every night I turned on the Telly and and we sat down to watch and I'd say you know what's on and she'd look at me and I'd say well there's Law and Order because there was always a Law and Order playing somewhere in the world at every minute of the day yes right and and and basically nothing new so we could cancel it and with Netflix Netflix runs through these Peaks and valleys where they have a ton of shows people go and binge watch and then there's nothing on that people are interested in even though they have a wide catalog there's there's you sort of get fatigued and look at it and go you know I'm not interested in anything here and people say the same thing of Hulu and so what we we do is sort of we stack these Services you get Netflix you get Hulu you get one other and then you find something among all of the services or you spend your entire evening flicking through the cataloges and indexes and lists yes I I'm not saying I've done that no of course not so so Apple does need to have a back catalog of things to keep people there at after the the flagship shows have been binge watched I think so but like you say we'll see really um I'm looking forward to finding out more I hope obviously I hope it works you you always want everything to work uh but interesting to see what happens yeah one of the one of the big problems that I have with with these Services is that it's really hard to find the gems within them it's it's difficult to be able to search and find the good things yeah and there whole websites dedicated to here are the top 20 things that are awesome on Netflix this month kind of thing yes I've actually just searched through all of those because a friend was uh coming to the end of for Amazon Prime uh subscription and said well I haven't got time to binge anything other there any particular films we all recommended and it took me an hour and a half to find a film I really really like but I couldn't remember the title so I read through loads and loads of uh the best romcoms on Amazon Prime on Netflix all this and I finally found it and she's well she says she's added it to her list I don't know if she's watched it but I went and bought it off iTunes just so I could have it what was it your sister's sister I forgot the name of the woman who wrote it really talented gorgeous film very funny absolutely stunningly well acted uh love it your sister's sister available on iTunes you know that that's that's a real problem right is that it's so difficult being able to find the appropriate thing and uh you know this podcast episode is supported by Capa now Capa is the leading free online resource to help you find the best software solution for your business with over 700,000 reviews of products from real software users discover everything you need to make an informed decision and you can search more than 700 specific categories of software everything from project management to email marketing to yoga studio management software no matter what kind of software your business needs capara makes it easy to discover the right solution fast and join you can join the millions of people who use Capa each month to find the right tools for their business visit capa.com apppp inssider for free today to find the right tools to make 2019 the year for Your Business capa.com apppp Insider Capa that's capap p t a.com slapple Insider um not sure if I've ever mentioned this to you but I used to work a long time for radio times kind of UK equivalent of TV guide and uh it was always an interesting issue with them because they were throughout the time I was there was this ever burgeoning list of channels how you actually got people the stuff they wanted it sounds like we need a radio times for all of these yeah yeah it's true it really is joining us is Jason opik from bifi who is going to talk to us about both some of the the Wi-Fi systems that their company makes as well as some of some opinions on Amazon and and sort of the Wi-Fi space in the whole and I'm really glad that he's available to join us welcome to this segment of the Apple andyer podcast I'm Victor and joining me is Jason opdik of Bari hi Victor how are you thank you for having me on today oh I'm really glad you could join us so we we were talking uh a couple of episodes ago about Wi-Fi in the past we've talked about how airport well Apple rather made the airport and Airport Express devices and they've kind of exited the market and there's there's been sort of a gap left by them um how would you describe that yeah that's very interesting I remember um I remember when Apple left the market it kind of came as a surprise to me because Apple at the time had a tendency to be ahead of the game so when they made a move that usually foretold something and the it was kind of hard to figure out exactly why they were getting out um I know they had some public statements and things of that nature but we kind looked at it as there just were a lot of competitors in the game a lot of routers a lot of technology and perhaps they just didn't feel like it was a profitable segment you know I don't know the exact reasoning but being somebody that had used the airport and I felt like they were ahead of their time when they came out but I did feel like a lot of competitors had caught up and just to give you a brief background about our company we actually haven't been in the router game until now so we've made we've focused our specialty has been on other types of Wi-Fi extension products so we actually watched that news and witnessed that news from an outside perspective we were not in the you know the router game at the time yeah and I you know I think back historically when Wii first started to be a thing you didn't have a whole lot of choices right you had Cisco aeronet which was uh we had to go to Cisco University to learn how to configure and there were a few other ones out there you know I think my first 81b station was a buffalo tech product years and years ago and back then they they weren't very complex right you you got a product and if you open it up it was a reference design with a pcmcia wireless card stuck inside and and apple changed things by using that same reference design and making software that everyone could go ahead and understand how to configure and they did a fantastic job with that and um one of the reasons that we had not gotten into the router game early on is just because the technology was so difficult even just to get set up with a modem nowadays you have all-in-one devices you have modems that can act as routers you have of course you know the mesh Wi-Fi which is you know what we'll discuss in just a little bit but you know back then you had the convoluted process of hooking up you know cables into a ethernet router you had excuse me into a um you know into the ethernet ports on a modem you had to configure your modem you had to go in and you know if you were using DSL you had to do like a PP um you know setup as opposed to static IP there was all this complication and apple really did streamline that and that's actually how we kind of got to um come about being into business our company bifi actually started uh in 2009 as a company called be extender my former business partner and co-founder was a student at University of California Berkeley and um customers or excuse me students that were getting uh weak Wi-Fi reception like in dorms and on campus if they had PCS there were some range extenders for PCs available but there was literally nothing for mac Apple had come along and done a great job with their airport line but if you weren't able to get a good enough signal to a network uh you know with your Mac directly there was really no option for you to get any type of extension and our very first product was just simply called be extender and it was a long range USB Wi-Fi extender for Max you plug it in you got a familiar looking software screen that allowed you to connect to network so we kind of got to witness the evolution of the airport line while we were making you know Wi-Fi extenders for Max and how long you been doing that so we started in 2009 doing that we phased out the Mac USB line around 2014 and during the years in between I believe it was 2011 I'd have to double check my timeline but um we started to get a lot of demand for PC versions even though there were some PC products out there you referenced the pcmcia we were just going from the pcmc standard on PCS to a lot of companies manufacturers phasing that out in favor of just USB ports and though there were some options there weren't a ton available so we launched bare extender PC a couple years after the Mac version and then we came out with a bare extender outdoor which was an outdoor all-in-one antenna and receiver was useful like campgrounds RV parks and just had a simple USB cable to come back into the computer so that's what we've kind of done in between and in 2015 we started to get into the repeater game that was when customers started to shift from wanting better range on their Mac or their PC to wanting better range for everything they're you know iPhones their iPads their tablets the smart TVs and so in 2015 we launched our first extension product which was be extender Edge which was a single point range extender and now we have the verify Edge mesh which is you know the mesh kit that you and I had discussed via email oh okay so for for me and for our listeners can I ask you to explain to me for just a moment what the difference is between a repeater and a mesh system excellent question excellent question so a repeater is basically a device that picks up a signal and it sends it out as another Wi-Fi signal so in the early days of repeaters you know when we were coming into the technology in 2014 2015 if somebody was trying to pick up signal on one side of their house and they couldn't get it they would often times go get a repeater and your listeners are probably familiar with this they probably gone to Best Buy and tried one from one of the big Brands it's a device you plug into a w and you set up and it sends out a separate Network usually with like the letters EXT on the end of it and they may work okay there's some of that drop and speed problem that you referenced on a previous uh uh podcast but the biggest issue is if you you know have a home with multiple floors or you know you're trying to get signal from one side of the house to the other often times the repeater wouldn't be enough so you'd have to go get another repeater and then you'd have to program that one separately and they wouldn't be talking to each other you'd have three different sub networks going on in your house so that was kind of the original repeater technology and then the mesh technology gets more into it still operates on the same basic premise the idea of you know repeating a Wi-Fi signal or extending one but it does it all without you having to configure each different device with each different extender node on your network they're all programmed to communicate out of the box with each other so everything stays on the same subn network and you don't have to go configure multiple devices and set up you know three four five different networks in your house now when we've done some some mesh node testing in the past with other people's manufacturer with other people's products with other manufacturers products there their software setup has frequently led to anywhere from 10 to 25 different app screens that you have to step through and you know they they take five steps to set up the initial node the initial Network B base that connects to your network and then repeat them all for each additional node kind of thing is there anything you can do to make that easier well we've done it actually with the verify Edge mesh this setup is something we paid very close attention to like I said we got our start appealing directly to Mac users we were all Mac users when we launched the original Barrack Center so we've tried to keep a close eye on the user experience over the years and with our berck sender Edge repeater from 2015 even though you know historically from a performance standpoint you know I have to admit it was probably just average maybe a little above average what I really loved about it was the user interface this single kind of setup design that we had and we've tried to carry that over to the edge mesh so simply when you open the product up and you plug it in there's going to be a Wi-Fi signal by default that broadcasts in your home called verify you connect to it you sign in um because of the crack vulnerability which your readers may be familiar with it does uh make you change the password when you log in we don't want to have users leave these with any type of default administrator password so it requires you to change the password and then you just get a choice of two different modes our router is the first dual mode uh mesh router available um I can get more into that in a little bit but you pick the mode you want whether you want the Wi-Fi extender mode or the router mode and based on what mode you select there's one more screen where you you know either set the router option if you're doing in router mode or you pick out the Wi-Fi network you're extending if you're doing cender mode and then you're basically finished so we really try to cut down all the different screens that users see and cut down on that complex nature that users may be familiar with in setting up products in the past yeah networking is one of those things that that has traditionally been um difficult for consumers and and I know in my history where I was making products we tended to avoid it just because we knew how much of a support nightmare it could become true true it's difficult for manufacturers too because we want to do so many things for the user especially if our competitors are offering various features as manufacturers we want to make a product that's going to wash your dishes set your alarm do all these things and also extend your Wi-Fi and when you try to the more you try to do the more complex you know it can be for a user because now they have all these options and settings to choose from and they're not really sure what option they can do and I learned from my early years in manufacturing you know number of the calls we'd get I try to listen in as often as I could on our technical support calls users just simply wouldn't know what to click here or here and I'd find out that there was a gap between engineering and the product design team that wrote the manual so there was something in an early product we had which was called a turbo boost well the users weren't really sure if they should enable that or not now it may seem obvious well let's just go ahead and click it and see what it does but even in that case you know we didn't do a good job explaining what it was now this was 10 years ago and we've learned a lot but you're absolutely correct that sometimes there can be so much so what we've tried to do with this product is just kind of strip down what the user is seeing and just really get at the core of giving good coverage and the best speed possible as well cool now I I you mentioned dual mode right whether it was a router or or uh extending a network can you speak a little bit about that absolutely so when we looked into doing a mesh product you know we looked out there and we saw there was already the Google home Wi-Fi there was already the EO we were kind of listening from our customers that were asking for a verifi mesh product like what specifically they would want that they couldn't already get from you know an existing product that was on the market so with the Dual mode we have two options we have the router mode and that's pretty much default the default mode that any mesh setup works with you simply replace your existing router with the main unit of the mesh kit and then you the extender unit somewhere else in the house and everything's on the same sub Network and you just have one network in the house so that's that's the router mode the Wi-Fi extender mode allows you to use the mesh kit to repeat an existing Wi-Fi signal so for example if you have a high-end gaming router in your home already and you're just looking to extend coverage you don't really want to replace that router you can set up the main verifi Edge mesh unit further away from your home router and enable the Wi-Fi extender mode and basically extend that signal that's coming from your existing router so it allows you to cover more area with fewer mesh units and as long as you make the SSID during setup the same as your home network you can roam throughout the house um you know and you can either that that basically means your computer if you're close to your main router it'll be on your main router if you're closer to a bifi device it'll jump over to that seamlessly um so that's what the Wi-Fi extender mode does and then of course the router mode is basically if you want everything to be on the same IP chain if you have uh you know any music servers set up in your house something like that where you want everything to be on the same subn network then you would just simply replace your main router with a verify Edge mesh main unit and then plug in satellites wherever you'd like to have extension so you might need an extra satellite in that type of case but you'll still get good coverage overall when you're doing that extender mode do does does everything that's verified Downstream from that extender act as a mesh or or does it act more like the extenders of old um so everything it's it's still a mesh Network that's what's really cool about it so everything on the network is still going to work just like it's a mesh Network and there are some cool tricks that you can do to kind of still if you're trying to keep everything on the same sub Network you can do some pretty cool things that allow you to do that in fact I was um listening in on a call a couple weeks ago and the gentleman did not want to um have his devices on you know two different sub networks but he was trying to extend coverage in such a way that just wasn't possible he had a three-story house and one of the issues you run into with Wi-Fi regardless of what any marketers tell you is that Wi-Fi signals generally don't go up and down very well they go across just fine but vertically they don't go up and down very well so if you have a three-story home it can be difficult to put a mesh router on the first floor and still get good coverage on the third floor because satellites don't chain you can't go from a main unit to a satellite to another satellite to another satellite the way mesh technology works is everything you know communicates with the main router so it's kind of like a spider effect where your you know main mesh router is your core and then you have satellites in a circular pattern so in in in the case of a three story home you would have to put the mesh unit you know the mesh uh main mesh router on the second floor and then you could still have a satellite downstairs and upstairs and because they're ethernet enabled you could still make use of your main router by sending the signal from the main router upstairs to the bifi and then from there the bifi will send it to the satellites on the other floors that would be in the Wi-Fi extender mode yeah we used to call that Hub and spoke in the old days right right which just shows how how I'm dating myself now but uh MH can you can you use ethernet between the main router and between the bifi satellites is that possible you know if you had a home home and I know they're very few now but if you had a home that had ethernet in the walls could you go between the floors doing that if you mean to create like a a separate back hole um with ac1200 you you can't as far as I understand um you can set up the verifi main unit uh as an access point off of any ethernet source whether it's a router or if you wanted to plug one in upstairs but if you you know if you had a satellite upstairs that would not you wouldn't have you wouldn't have two data streams one by Wi-Fi and one by ethernet if that makes sense okay yeah that was kind of the question was if you could use the ethernet as the back hall but uh yeah I I would have to double I would have to double check on that with our engineering team um I'm not 100% sure on that but I'm fairly certain that the satellites you know they can uh they can Source or they can output to ethernet but they can't input while they're also communicating with the main router okay well I I apologize for ambushing you with the feature request oh no not at all that's something I like I said I'm I'm 90% sure on that I do want to double check on that because it's the first time that I've been asked it outright but I do believe from my familiarity with the development of the product that that was not something we were able to do I just want to put that disclaimer in there in case I get a text in a few minutes from one of our Engineers you know chewing me out or something like that nice so so I I I ask that in part because I'm interested but also because that's the kind of question that I get from some of our listeners and uh one of the things that I I also have been asked recently is is you know we saw that Amazon news about them purchasing a Wi-Fi provider and one of the questions that that people have asked me is why should we be concerned about that or why should anyone care and I I wondered if you could give an opinion about that just speak a little bit about what what that makes how that matters and and you know your take on security and and what security means absolutely so that was that was fascinating news to me you know Walmart launched in the fall their own series of Wi-Fi routers um they're not making them themselves they're uh basically sourcing them from Chinese manufacturers but they're branding them as Walmart and I long thought that Amazon might try TR to do the same thing they have 76 I believe at last count private label Brands I was surprised to see them acquire such a major player and ero and you brought up on a previous podcast the concern of data snooping the idea that they may closely monitor not only the traffic you know that's going on on Amazon but possibly other things as well and when I was listening to that and even in the news of the acquisition you know I think that's a huge concern um you mentioned in the show something along the lines of you have to trust someone right like so if you're not going to trust Amazon you have to trust Netgear you have to trust verify somebody's going to be processing your data and that's all very true but I think most consumers don't want to have all their eggs in one basket I I know just speaking for myself as a private citizen I don't want to have every single device in my home coming from one manufacturer I want them to work well but there is some concern and I think it's a founded concern too because you know without getting into you I don't really like to get into criticizing Amazon so much but when you look at how they've taken uh search metrics the their ability to see what consumers are buying and what they're searching for and then establish their own competing Brands to compete directly with sellers on their site it goes to show you I think your guest on the show said something along the lines of just because they can will they um they've shown in the past that almost everything they've done has a purpose and they've they've done something off of that so I I would be concerned and I think you know I've read a lot in the blogosphere and on Facebook and Twitter there is some concern out there and it's you know it's merited concern it doesn't mean anything bad's going to happen but as an individual consumer trying to separate myself from my role here at verifi I definitely would be concerned and at verifi what we're looking for in future versions is to kind of Shore that up um you know possibly offer VPN service things that would give the user uh better access to logs ideas of where their data is going if anyone's looking at it and who things like that so our R&D department is really busy looking at ways that if customers do come over to verify products perhaps they own ano or perhaps they're just getting into the market they can have a level of satisfaction that yeah they have to trust someone but you know here's why they can trust us is because we're going to be very transparent and we don't have any ulterior motive we don't really want any of our users you know online habits because we're not going to do anything and we're not in any other business we're only in the business of making your Wi-Fi better thank you so much I I really appreciate you're making time to speak with us and and help me better understand about this um what would you say is the number one compelling reason that when it comes time to replace our Wi-Fi we should go ahead and get a verify unit that's a great question too and uh it's hard to narrow it down to one compelling reason what we try to do with this product is like I said make something that offered Dual Purpose whether users are trying to repeat an existing signal set up their own router um we have over 10 years of proprietary range extension technology in our company's portfolio so we wanted to make something that would offer greater coverage with fewer uh mesh units so the user wouldn't have to go purchase three or four or five units um we also wanted to come in at a lower cost lower price point so we've really tried to be competitive in that regard we've seen some competing systems go for $300 $400 and this customers don't need to pay that much for good coverage in their home so I don't know if I could narrow it down to one specific reason but I would say for all those reasons I definitely think it's worth uh your viewer your listeners checking out our brand online and definitely have them reach out to us with any questions and if you if we have a chance to be back on your show to talk about any other uh news related to the industry certainly love to do that thank you so much let let me ask one final question uh where where is bifi available where should people go to check it out absolutely so ironically um Amazon is a great opport is a great option right now to buy that's where people tend to go we get a lot of people asking if it's on there people love that Prime shipping so we are on Amazon you can go online at verify.com that's just the word bear with IFI like from wify on the end verify.com uh we're also available on NewEgg eBay other online channels as well fantastic well Jason thank you so much for joining us I I really appreciate you being here today all thank you Victor I appreciate it and love listening to the show Travelers are going to have headaches as if traveling wasn't difficult enough they're now FAA Federal Aviation uh Administration rules Banning fully charged lithium ion batteries as cargo as stow away um in the hold cargo yeah mean yeah in the hold all right CU previously that's where I've always chucked my bigger anchor battery and kept the smaller one in carryon in case I needed it but um yeah yeah so there are rules that say that any devices that end up being shipped via plane have to be at 30% or less in order to fly wow now practically speaking that that makes sense if you were an Electronics firm right if you were Apple using planes to move your product then you can say yeah we verify that all the devic 30% charge if you're a traveler and you Chuck a device in the the the yes storage hold um my expectation is that instead of checking that it's at 30% they're just going to tell you no you can't because practically there's no way to investigate all that right no there isn't but I'm also tickled by the idea after all these years of us wanting more charging points in airports thing now we're going to want places where you can discharge a bit more so okay yeah no and there are limits on the amount of battery that you can take on board right e uh the battery is has to be less than 27,000 milliamp hours and uh I'm aware that there have been rules um I haven't really paid attention because I don't think anything I've got has exceeded them but I'm bit self-conscious about that now I should look into it well there there are companies that make batteries like uh like zendure for example that make them just up to that limit so that these are the ones you take on the plane and they they're very popular with Pilots for example who use applications on their iPad as the fight book oh fair enough you mean to say aircraft don't have a USB socket that you can just plug in for a quick charge when you're flying over the Atlantic god well some of them do okay you know that that Dreamliner right that Boeing Dreamliner does I'm sure one of the Airbus has but who knows who knows man um well gosh this has been a a big episode um I I want to point out that we are coming up you know in the summertime so we're begin to creep towards that WWDC and we're going start hearing more rumors about WWDC and uh Apple's head of Swift development Ted kremc has provided insight into the development of Swift 5 which is an upcoming major Milestone release for Swift and they they're doing their own podcast about what coders should expect and how apple is figuring out which features to add to versions and and so they talk a little bit about how they use Swift internally and I think that's interesting oh absolutely have you used Swift much um I I have used the playgrounds application a little bit I haven't gotten into it U one of the things that I watch is I I listen to a lot of developers and and talk with them as they talk about the cost of switching to Swift and the the problems have been that the language has not really been stable oh I didn't know that oh okay that's well they they keep developing it and as they keep developing it so much changes that from one build to the next that that from one version of the language to the next all their stuff breaks which means you have to spend a lot of time on on maintaining applications and updating things and figure out why something broke and for some developers that's a giant pain and they could do whatever they've been trying to do in Objective C much easier I'm really surprised about that I knew about the continual developments but I I unthinkingly assumed it was incremental uh stuff not that it was you know Ro and brentt changes in the middle that's very interesting so do we know whether Swift is going to s that out that's kind of the hope is that it's more mature and that these These Things become less of an issue because Apple really does position this as you know the thing for younger coders to learn right it's part of the everyone can code sessions it's part of the playgrounds app it's it's it's basically the path forward now you may remember way back in history in the dawn of everything where Apple used to have cocoa oh yes yes and and carbon as their to libraries for for doing this kind of graphic stuff and carbon was supported from system 9 for os9 rather all the way into uh to OS 10 for several versions and then they finally ended it right but they sort of signaled that it was coming to an end for a long way off and could they get rid of objective c and make everyone use Swift well I think that's maybe a longer term plan but I don't think Swift 5 is the one where they do that I think that they would have to set developers up with a much longer lead to do that well it's been quite a while I'm astonished that it's Swift 5 already CU I looked at it seriously at the time Swift first came out I was involved in an app project um and in the end I actually got somebody I hired somebody to complete it for me and I can't remember he Swift or not but there was no time uh for me to learn it to hit the deadlines to do it but it what I saw of it looked really interesting and I always intended when that project was done to go back and have a play myself and now here we are five stand the London I haven't got around to it so well just just for you know anecdotal point the the first comment on the story that we ran about this says in this next version of Swift will I suddenly get 4,000 errors due to fundamental syntax being changed and if so will the change be documented or will I have to go to stack Overflow for the correct replacement code because that's been the the the history of the transitions between versions is that stuff changes so wildly everything breaks now the second comment says chains has become less onerous with new versions but they're still there well that is the the real issue right the point the point is kind of valid well I guess we'll we won't see on March 25th or whenever they announce this but shortly afterwards when people got their hands on it and using it then we'll see yeah well this this brings us to the end of a fantastic podcast I'm so glad we had you know you here I'm so glad that we had Jason from bifi here yes I love it when you get people on like that it's so interesting to hear them you know go straight to the people who are actually doing this stuff love it well you know they they have the Battle Scars they've shipped product they know what's involved and and especially a networking product where networking is not an easy topic it's it's one of those things where you know the support calls will kill you if you're not prepared for for how to handhold someone through all the different variations of networking right and and sorry I just gives me the Bic twitch even considering it yes okay right why why am I not online well okay how is your cable modem working is your DSL modem working is your phone you know just the basics right what's connected to what what's plugged into what is it getting an IP address from the other thing it's it's not exactly easy and so it's a real accomplishment to be able to take something like that and make it approachable there's an IT sport guy a corporation I used to work at a long time ago uh who I deeply liked and trusted completely and really really admired what he knew and he actually offered me a job on his support team and I just looked at him as much as I would like to work for the guy the idea of comprehending the network problems they were having then is just impossible I can write about it but he's the one who can actually do it well you saved yourself innumerable headaches and prevented hair loss I'm sure because you would have been pulling it out I'm I'm recovering slowly from development and part of the recovery was hovering up the circle of hair around my chair yeah William where can people find you on the internet I am now looking at Swift a lot on uh Twitter where I'm W gallago or of course Pi an email uh William appleinsider.com which actually I really like love that it's nice start to the day coming see p of messages thank you for those I'm Victor you can email me at William appleinsider.com and uh I am also found on wristwatch review.com seriously though I'm V marks on Twitter and and Victor apple insider.com and I love hearing from you guys it's so nice to hear from you especially when when you tell us where we're doing well and where we can improve thank you so much uh please leave great reviews at iTunes we' really appreciate that it helps us out and we will be back next week with more thank you William thank you bye I'myou're listening to the Apple Insider podcast welcome to this episode of the Apple Insider podcast I'm Victor and joining me is the other faithful the ever loyal that that devoted friend to you and I William Gallagher now you say that just before you're about to say you're dumping me for half the episode to speak somebody more interesting but fine I said that you I said that you were devoted did I say that I was devoted particularly okay you know it's to like that that makes me want to reexamine my contract yeah okay William you know I know one of the things that you've talked about at some length with me when we're not doing these recordings because actually we socialize outside of the show is your interest in the iPads that are that are potentially coming up yeah it's actually not a personal interest because frankly I'm I'm spend out I have a ma all this well I'm still using the original iPad Pro large one and and I love it but yes I know many people my wife Angela included uh who are very tempted to buy an iPad right now but keep not buying it because I I keep saying I've heard other rumors that are things are coming and then you I'm you know if nothing happens on March the 25th I'm going to look like a right egot but you know that's not not for the first time okay but thanks it's all right when I say that okay say I you know you you are the greatest you really are I just sometimes it's so easy to go ahead and put those little things in there now there there's this March 25th event that we suspect is taking place and two iPad models have gained certification from the Bureau of Indian standards which is the um sort of the equivalent to the the FCC in the US it's it's or or CE in um in Europe you know the organization that approves a device is is safe for sale is not an unintentional radiator of radio waves things like that and U so there are models a2124 and a2133 which um are Apple branded manufactured by China's hung fuin Precision electronics and these same models were listed with the Eurasian economic commission the EC in in January so we don't know exactly what these models are but people are predicting that apple is going to launch not just a new budget iPad sized at 10 .2 in but possibly a fifth generation iPad Mini so the the Mini 4 continues to remain on sale but that thing last launched in 2015 which puts it pretty long in tooth to people yes but since then we've had the iPhone 10s Max which uh although substantially more expensive does similar sized jobs no no it really so despite the fact that these things both run iOS iPad remains a different interface space even when you have the large screen split screen when you rotate kind of view on an iPhone it does it I mean they're they're not exactly unified right they aren't it's still can can you do split view on your phone can you have two apps open side by side on your phone okay no but each app is exactly the same as it is you're saying that's it I mean I would like the iPhone 10s to rotate when you turn it in everything not just certain apps but other than that I can't point to a a substantial difference never notic the differences are getting smaller but I I think that there's still a difference between an iPad mini versus a large phone in terms of how they the OS handles some things I will tell you that everybody I know who's still got an iPad Mini really likes it um they are gorgeous little machines for what they do oh but I know what I was going to ask you about cuz you know these things uh all this stuff about um model numbers and things that come through certification and things around the world I was kind of vaguely aware of this but I only really concentrated I suppose is the word um just before I think was it October November's event uh when suddenly there were a lot of part numbers released that definitively proved there would be something like six new Macs and you were figuring that there were different versions of the Macs like the there might be a 21 and a 27 inch iMac and all this stuff but then that just didn't seem to happen so what's the kind of reliability level of all this stuff well so it it depends a little bit upon the sourcing for it right when something is going through one of these these organiz government organizations to be certified you can be more sure that something's actually taken place because when when the these government organizations certify a device they've had to Hands-On with the unit and they've taken it apart and they've before they've taken depart they've measured what it radiates in terms of radio waves Wi-Fi Bluetooth and unintentional they've measured power specs on it and seen that the power is is uh you know safe for release the same kind of things that to get tested at entertech and Underwriters labs and things like that the but but they've had one when a number gets released and it comes from someone's retail system it's less certain oh okay right right that makes sense you know when when someone's retail system leaks that there are skew numbers it's it's it's a good sign but it's not positive confirmation of anything because retailers put placeholders into their systems so that when a model is populated they can go ahead and have it for sale because it'll already set up right plus they can make mistakes I suppose as well like any human beings they they can make mistakes they could be using these placeholders for something else they there there's it's it's not EX exactly anywhere as as confident as you know the government organization had one in hand they could also just be kidding you know what the hell okay right can say that I don't know many retailers who just kid around with their inventory management but you know long day lot of customers uh so you're confident that um March the 25th will happen and that if it does happen there will be iPads so I no no no no no that's that's a step too far no so I'm confident that there will probably be a March 25th event because all things kind of lead to that we're going to see some invitations go out maybe what the 17th 18th something like that yeah doubtlessly it's it's always week before but yes so that would fit right right so but nothing says definitively that if these are iPads which we suspect that they are that these iPads will be released at set of ENT no I was just thinking about that you you can you can make a good yes about that but you know they they have released things just by posting those updates on the store in years past that you know sort sort of more silent updates or just advertised on the online store kind of thing they they don't necessarily need to use the event for that unless well who knows they want to well do you this is probably a detail that no human being can remember but uh based on past records when they announce an iPad what are the odds that it will be released the same day um as you say there have been many generations of iPad and it's not entirely certain this historically yeah is is mixed usually it's uh it's the the the thing they've been doing of late which is available in two weeks nuts I was afraid to say that avable on this date kind of thing and you know but but that goes backways right I iPad 2 which carried on for forever but when they I ad to was originally released you know there were people lining up for it day of that it was available and of course everyone knew to line up for it day of that it was available because they said it'll be available in a week or whatever the actual time frame was and so well well I imagine they'd like to have things available day of that there are a few days for this because it's not just lining up Apple stores that they got to line up they got to line up Walmart they got to line up Target they got to line up best by they got to line up all the other retailers that resell and you know so you don't know why I'm asking do you let's just make this very depressing you're buying me a present aren't you uh I'm actually not in that Financial for Victor thank you William that's so gracious of you gosh wow I'm in Britain do you know what's happened to at the time of recording what's scheduled to happen a couple of days after March the 25th uh is brexit and when you mentioned the yeah you guys are you're you're exiting something you're leaving something aren't you seriously when you mentioned the C Mark I suddenly thought I bet nothing's been done about whether we continue with that I mean you would expect that it would but I I was seriously looking up government websites today on another project and oh no the detail isn't there you know we've only had two years to sort all this out and every day something else comes up so um I would like please for Apple to announce new iPads that fit Angela's requirements and release them in time for her to definitely get them and know that they're safe before where out of Europe I mean you just you just need to pop over to um to one of those neighboring countries using your shiny blue passport and uh and pick one up there and take it back with you uhhuh right you you're just going to visit France aren't you well I like France uh I now have a choice of two passports to get me there this is true yes uh I have an Irish passport now oh going through the Press I was I was interesting congratulations okay so yeah you can pop on over to France and and pick up an iPad and uh FY it back yeah that won't add to the expense of buying one at all will it let please get me away from this what what do you figure the odds are um that when we've talked about this before the March 2th event there a really strong rumors that actually there was going to be no hard wether it was all surface All Surface excuse me all services that's a different company yes exactly and strangely I'm not as interested in that one I just don't know why um I haven't heard heard a stronger rumor since but I haven't really been following that particular Market are we still looking at uh all services and crossing our fingers for iPads or well I I would like to see something happen with this long gestating entertainment portion right sure yes the the the TV kind of thing the the star studded shows the Productions let's let's get an announcement about that wouldn't that be great yes um we know a lot about new shows I'm actually interested in the kind of the more um background stuff like they are it looks to me like apple will have bought a library of shows from somewhere because there was a story wasn't there last year that they were outbid for friends by Netflix uh so the fact that they were looking at it says to me they are looking for bankable they they were doing some syndication stuff well and you you you the problem is right you want to keep people in your ecosystem and you want to not run into a situation where people end up with with what I call the the 57 channels and nothing on yes I think other people have used that term before as well I can't think who but that term is a Bruce Springstein lyric it come it comes from one of his songs one of the innocent days when there were only 57 channels it seems so long ago but yes well so you know in in the dark days of 2008 I I spent 3 months convincing my wife that we could cancel cable service and the convincing argument was every night I turned on the Telly and and we sat down to watch and I'd say you know what's on and she'd look at me and I'd say well there's Law and Order because there was always a Law and Order playing somewhere in the world at every minute of the day yes right and and and basically nothing new so we could cancel it and with Netflix Netflix runs through these Peaks and valleys where they have a ton of shows people go and binge watch and then there's nothing on that people are interested in even though they have a wide catalog there's there's you sort of get fatigued and look at it and go you know I'm not interested in anything here and people say the same thing of Hulu and so what we we do is sort of we stack these Services you get Netflix you get Hulu you get one other and then you find something among all of the services or you spend your entire evening flicking through the cataloges and indexes and lists yes I I'm not saying I've done that no of course not so so Apple does need to have a back catalog of things to keep people there at after the the flagship shows have been binge watched I think so but like you say we'll see really um I'm looking forward to finding out more I hope obviously I hope it works you you always want everything to work uh but interesting to see what happens yeah one of the one of the big problems that I have with with these Services is that it's really hard to find the gems within them it's it's difficult to be able to search and find the good things yeah and there whole websites dedicated to here are the top 20 things that are awesome on Netflix this month kind of thing yes I've actually just searched through all of those because a friend was uh coming to the end of for Amazon Prime uh subscription and said well I haven't got time to binge anything other there any particular films we all recommended and it took me an hour and a half to find a film I really really like but I couldn't remember the title so I read through loads and loads of uh the best romcoms on Amazon Prime on Netflix all this and I finally found it and she's well she says she's added it to her list I don't know if she's watched it but I went and bought it off iTunes just so I could have it what was it your sister's sister I forgot the name of the woman who wrote it really talented gorgeous film very funny absolutely stunningly well acted uh love it your sister's sister available on iTunes you know that that's that's a real problem right is that it's so difficult being able to find the appropriate thing and uh you know this podcast episode is supported by Capa now Capa is the leading free online resource to help you find the best software solution for your business with over 700,000 reviews of products from real software users discover everything you need to make an informed decision and you can search more than 700 specific categories of software everything from project management to email marketing to yoga studio management software no matter what kind of software your business needs capara makes it easy to discover the right solution fast and join you can join the millions of people who use Capa each month to find the right tools for their business visit capa.com apppp inssider for free today to find the right tools to make 2019 the year for Your Business capa.com apppp Insider Capa that's capap p t a.com slapple Insider um not sure if I've ever mentioned this to you but I used to work a long time for radio times kind of UK equivalent of TV guide and uh it was always an interesting issue with them because they were throughout the time I was there was this ever burgeoning list of channels how you actually got people the stuff they wanted it sounds like we need a radio times for all of these yeah yeah it's true it really is joining us is Jason opik from bifi who is going to talk to us about both some of the the Wi-Fi systems that their company makes as well as some of some opinions on Amazon and and sort of the Wi-Fi space in the whole and I'm really glad that he's available to join us welcome to this segment of the Apple andyer podcast I'm Victor and joining me is Jason opdik of Bari hi Victor how are you thank you for having me on today oh I'm really glad you could join us so we we were talking uh a couple of episodes ago about Wi-Fi in the past we've talked about how airport well Apple rather made the airport and Airport Express devices and they've kind of exited the market and there's there's been sort of a gap left by them um how would you describe that yeah that's very interesting I remember um I remember when Apple left the market it kind of came as a surprise to me because Apple at the time had a tendency to be ahead of the game so when they made a move that usually foretold something and the it was kind of hard to figure out exactly why they were getting out um I know they had some public statements and things of that nature but we kind looked at it as there just were a lot of competitors in the game a lot of routers a lot of technology and perhaps they just didn't feel like it was a profitable segment you know I don't know the exact reasoning but being somebody that had used the airport and I felt like they were ahead of their time when they came out but I did feel like a lot of competitors had caught up and just to give you a brief background about our company we actually haven't been in the router game until now so we've made we've focused our specialty has been on other types of Wi-Fi extension products so we actually watched that news and witnessed that news from an outside perspective we were not in the you know the router game at the time yeah and I you know I think back historically when Wii first started to be a thing you didn't have a whole lot of choices right you had Cisco aeronet which was uh we had to go to Cisco University to learn how to configure and there were a few other ones out there you know I think my first 81b station was a buffalo tech product years and years ago and back then they they weren't very complex right you you got a product and if you open it up it was a reference design with a pcmcia wireless card stuck inside and and apple changed things by using that same reference design and making software that everyone could go ahead and understand how to configure and they did a fantastic job with that and um one of the reasons that we had not gotten into the router game early on is just because the technology was so difficult even just to get set up with a modem nowadays you have all-in-one devices you have modems that can act as routers you have of course you know the mesh Wi-Fi which is you know what we'll discuss in just a little bit but you know back then you had the convoluted process of hooking up you know cables into a ethernet router you had excuse me into a um you know into the ethernet ports on a modem you had to configure your modem you had to go in and you know if you were using DSL you had to do like a PP um you know setup as opposed to static IP there was all this complication and apple really did streamline that and that's actually how we kind of got to um come about being into business our company bifi actually started uh in 2009 as a company called be extender my former business partner and co-founder was a student at University of California Berkeley and um customers or excuse me students that were getting uh weak Wi-Fi reception like in dorms and on campus if they had PCS there were some range extenders for PCs available but there was literally nothing for mac Apple had come along and done a great job with their airport line but if you weren't able to get a good enough signal to a network uh you know with your Mac directly there was really no option for you to get any type of extension and our very first product was just simply called be extender and it was a long range USB Wi-Fi extender for Max you plug it in you got a familiar looking software screen that allowed you to connect to network so we kind of got to witness the evolution of the airport line while we were making you know Wi-Fi extenders for Max and how long you been doing that so we started in 2009 doing that we phased out the Mac USB line around 2014 and during the years in between I believe it was 2011 I'd have to double check my timeline but um we started to get a lot of demand for PC versions even though there were some PC products out there you referenced the pcmcia we were just going from the pcmc standard on PCS to a lot of companies manufacturers phasing that out in favor of just USB ports and though there were some options there weren't a ton available so we launched bare extender PC a couple years after the Mac version and then we came out with a bare extender outdoor which was an outdoor all-in-one antenna and receiver was useful like campgrounds RV parks and just had a simple USB cable to come back into the computer so that's what we've kind of done in between and in 2015 we started to get into the repeater game that was when customers started to shift from wanting better range on their Mac or their PC to wanting better range for everything they're you know iPhones their iPads their tablets the smart TVs and so in 2015 we launched our first extension product which was be extender Edge which was a single point range extender and now we have the verify Edge mesh which is you know the mesh kit that you and I had discussed via email oh okay so for for me and for our listeners can I ask you to explain to me for just a moment what the difference is between a repeater and a mesh system excellent question excellent question so a repeater is basically a device that picks up a signal and it sends it out as another Wi-Fi signal so in the early days of repeaters you know when we were coming into the technology in 2014 2015 if somebody was trying to pick up signal on one side of their house and they couldn't get it they would often times go get a repeater and your listeners are probably familiar with this they probably gone to Best Buy and tried one from one of the big Brands it's a device you plug into a w and you set up and it sends out a separate Network usually with like the letters EXT on the end of it and they may work okay there's some of that drop and speed problem that you referenced on a previous uh uh podcast but the biggest issue is if you you know have a home with multiple floors or you know you're trying to get signal from one side of the house to the other often times the repeater wouldn't be enough so you'd have to go get another repeater and then you'd have to program that one separately and they wouldn't be talking to each other you'd have three different sub networks going on in your house so that was kind of the original repeater technology and then the mesh technology gets more into it still operates on the same basic premise the idea of you know repeating a Wi-Fi signal or extending one but it does it all without you having to configure each different device with each different extender node on your network they're all programmed to communicate out of the box with each other so everything stays on the same subn network and you don't have to go configure multiple devices and set up you know three four five different networks in your house now when we've done some some mesh node testing in the past with other people's manufacturer with other people's products with other manufacturers products there their software setup has frequently led to anywhere from 10 to 25 different app screens that you have to step through and you know they they take five steps to set up the initial node the initial Network B base that connects to your network and then repeat them all for each additional node kind of thing is there anything you can do to make that easier well we've done it actually with the verify Edge mesh this setup is something we paid very close attention to like I said we got our start appealing directly to Mac users we were all Mac users when we launched the original Barrack Center so we've tried to keep a close eye on the user experience over the years and with our berck sender Edge repeater from 2015 even though you know historically from a performance standpoint you know I have to admit it was probably just average maybe a little above average what I really loved about it was the user interface this single kind of setup design that we had and we've tried to carry that over to the edge mesh so simply when you open the product up and you plug it in there's going to be a Wi-Fi signal by default that broadcasts in your home called verify you connect to it you sign in um because of the crack vulnerability which your readers may be familiar with it does uh make you change the password when you log in we don't want to have users leave these with any type of default administrator password so it requires you to change the password and then you just get a choice of two different modes our router is the first dual mode uh mesh router available um I can get more into that in a little bit but you pick the mode you want whether you want the Wi-Fi extender mode or the router mode and based on what mode you select there's one more screen where you you know either set the router option if you're doing in router mode or you pick out the Wi-Fi network you're extending if you're doing cender mode and then you're basically finished so we really try to cut down all the different screens that users see and cut down on that complex nature that users may be familiar with in setting up products in the past yeah networking is one of those things that that has traditionally been um difficult for consumers and and I know in my history where I was making products we tended to avoid it just because we knew how much of a support nightmare it could become true true it's difficult for manufacturers too because we want to do so many things for the user especially if our competitors are offering various features as manufacturers we want to make a product that's going to wash your dishes set your alarm do all these things and also extend your Wi-Fi and when you try to the more you try to do the more complex you know it can be for a user because now they have all these options and settings to choose from and they're not really sure what option they can do and I learned from my early years in manufacturing you know number of the calls we'd get I try to listen in as often as I could on our technical support calls users just simply wouldn't know what to click here or here and I'd find out that there was a gap between engineering and the product design team that wrote the manual so there was something in an early product we had which was called a turbo boost well the users weren't really sure if they should enable that or not now it may seem obvious well let's just go ahead and click it and see what it does but even in that case you know we didn't do a good job explaining what it was now this was 10 years ago and we've learned a lot but you're absolutely correct that sometimes there can be so much so what we've tried to do with this product is just kind of strip down what the user is seeing and just really get at the core of giving good coverage and the best speed possible as well cool now I I you mentioned dual mode right whether it was a router or or uh extending a network can you speak a little bit about that absolutely so when we looked into doing a mesh product you know we looked out there and we saw there was already the Google home Wi-Fi there was already the EO we were kind of listening from our customers that were asking for a verifi mesh product like what specifically they would want that they couldn't already get from you know an existing product that was on the market so with the Dual mode we have two options we have the router mode and that's pretty much default the default mode that any mesh setup works with you simply replace your existing router with the main unit of the mesh kit and then you the extender unit somewhere else in the house and everything's on the same sub Network and you just have one network in the house so that's that's the router mode the Wi-Fi extender mode allows you to use the mesh kit to repeat an existing Wi-Fi signal so for example if you have a high-end gaming router in your home already and you're just looking to extend coverage you don't really want to replace that router you can set up the main verifi Edge mesh unit further away from your home router and enable the Wi-Fi extender mode and basically extend that signal that's coming from your existing router so it allows you to cover more area with fewer mesh units and as long as you make the SSID during setup the same as your home network you can roam throughout the house um you know and you can either that that basically means your computer if you're close to your main router it'll be on your main router if you're closer to a bifi device it'll jump over to that seamlessly um so that's what the Wi-Fi extender mode does and then of course the router mode is basically if you want everything to be on the same IP chain if you have uh you know any music servers set up in your house something like that where you want everything to be on the same subn network then you would just simply replace your main router with a verify Edge mesh main unit and then plug in satellites wherever you'd like to have extension so you might need an extra satellite in that type of case but you'll still get good coverage overall when you're doing that extender mode do does does everything that's verified Downstream from that extender act as a mesh or or does it act more like the extenders of old um so everything it's it's still a mesh Network that's what's really cool about it so everything on the network is still going to work just like it's a mesh Network and there are some cool tricks that you can do to kind of still if you're trying to keep everything on the same sub Network you can do some pretty cool things that allow you to do that in fact I was um listening in on a call a couple weeks ago and the gentleman did not want to um have his devices on you know two different sub networks but he was trying to extend coverage in such a way that just wasn't possible he had a three-story house and one of the issues you run into with Wi-Fi regardless of what any marketers tell you is that Wi-Fi signals generally don't go up and down very well they go across just fine but vertically they don't go up and down very well so if you have a three-story home it can be difficult to put a mesh router on the first floor and still get good coverage on the third floor because satellites don't chain you can't go from a main unit to a satellite to another satellite to another satellite the way mesh technology works is everything you know communicates with the main router so it's kind of like a spider effect where your you know main mesh router is your core and then you have satellites in a circular pattern so in in in the case of a three story home you would have to put the mesh unit you know the mesh uh main mesh router on the second floor and then you could still have a satellite downstairs and upstairs and because they're ethernet enabled you could still make use of your main router by sending the signal from the main router upstairs to the bifi and then from there the bifi will send it to the satellites on the other floors that would be in the Wi-Fi extender mode yeah we used to call that Hub and spoke in the old days right right which just shows how how I'm dating myself now but uh MH can you can you use ethernet between the main router and between the bifi satellites is that possible you know if you had a home home and I know they're very few now but if you had a home that had ethernet in the walls could you go between the floors doing that if you mean to create like a a separate back hole um with ac1200 you you can't as far as I understand um you can set up the verifi main unit uh as an access point off of any ethernet source whether it's a router or if you wanted to plug one in upstairs but if you you know if you had a satellite upstairs that would not you wouldn't have you wouldn't have two data streams one by Wi-Fi and one by ethernet if that makes sense okay yeah that was kind of the question was if you could use the ethernet as the back hall but uh yeah I I would have to double I would have to double check on that with our engineering team um I'm not 100% sure on that but I'm fairly certain that the satellites you know they can uh they can Source or they can output to ethernet but they can't input while they're also communicating with the main router okay well I I apologize for ambushing you with the feature request oh no not at all that's something I like I said I'm I'm 90% sure on that I do want to double check on that because it's the first time that I've been asked it outright but I do believe from my familiarity with the development of the product that that was not something we were able to do I just want to put that disclaimer in there in case I get a text in a few minutes from one of our Engineers you know chewing me out or something like that nice so so I I I ask that in part because I'm interested but also because that's the kind of question that I get from some of our listeners and uh one of the things that I I also have been asked recently is is you know we saw that Amazon news about them purchasing a Wi-Fi provider and one of the questions that that people have asked me is why should we be concerned about that or why should anyone care and I I wondered if you could give an opinion about that just speak a little bit about what what that makes how that matters and and you know your take on security and and what security means absolutely so that was that was fascinating news to me you know Walmart launched in the fall their own series of Wi-Fi routers um they're not making them themselves they're uh basically sourcing them from Chinese manufacturers but they're branding them as Walmart and I long thought that Amazon might try TR to do the same thing they have 76 I believe at last count private label Brands I was surprised to see them acquire such a major player and ero and you brought up on a previous podcast the concern of data snooping the idea that they may closely monitor not only the traffic you know that's going on on Amazon but possibly other things as well and when I was listening to that and even in the news of the acquisition you know I think that's a huge concern um you mentioned in the show something along the lines of you have to trust someone right like so if you're not going to trust Amazon you have to trust Netgear you have to trust verify somebody's going to be processing your data and that's all very true but I think most consumers don't want to have all their eggs in one basket I I know just speaking for myself as a private citizen I don't want to have every single device in my home coming from one manufacturer I want them to work well but there is some concern and I think it's a founded concern too because you know without getting into you I don't really like to get into criticizing Amazon so much but when you look at how they've taken uh search metrics the their ability to see what consumers are buying and what they're searching for and then establish their own competing Brands to compete directly with sellers on their site it goes to show you I think your guest on the show said something along the lines of just because they can will they um they've shown in the past that almost everything they've done has a purpose and they've they've done something off of that so I I would be concerned and I think you know I've read a lot in the blogosphere and on Facebook and Twitter there is some concern out there and it's you know it's merited concern it doesn't mean anything bad's going to happen but as an individual consumer trying to separate myself from my role here at verifi I definitely would be concerned and at verifi what we're looking for in future versions is to kind of Shore that up um you know possibly offer VPN service things that would give the user uh better access to logs ideas of where their data is going if anyone's looking at it and who things like that so our R&D department is really busy looking at ways that if customers do come over to verify products perhaps they own ano or perhaps they're just getting into the market they can have a level of satisfaction that yeah they have to trust someone but you know here's why they can trust us is because we're going to be very transparent and we don't have any ulterior motive we don't really want any of our users you know online habits because we're not going to do anything and we're not in any other business we're only in the business of making your Wi-Fi better thank you so much I I really appreciate you're making time to speak with us and and help me better understand about this um what would you say is the number one compelling reason that when it comes time to replace our Wi-Fi we should go ahead and get a verify unit that's a great question too and uh it's hard to narrow it down to one compelling reason what we try to do with this product is like I said make something that offered Dual Purpose whether users are trying to repeat an existing signal set up their own router um we have over 10 years of proprietary range extension technology in our company's portfolio so we wanted to make something that would offer greater coverage with fewer uh mesh units so the user wouldn't have to go purchase three or four or five units um we also wanted to come in at a lower cost lower price point so we've really tried to be competitive in that regard we've seen some competing systems go for $300 $400 and this customers don't need to pay that much for good coverage in their home so I don't know if I could narrow it down to one specific reason but I would say for all those reasons I definitely think it's worth uh your viewer your listeners checking out our brand online and definitely have them reach out to us with any questions and if you if we have a chance to be back on your show to talk about any other uh news related to the industry certainly love to do that thank you so much let let me ask one final question uh where where is bifi available where should people go to check it out absolutely so ironically um Amazon is a great opport is a great option right now to buy that's where people tend to go we get a lot of people asking if it's on there people love that Prime shipping so we are on Amazon you can go online at verify.com that's just the word bear with IFI like from wify on the end verify.com uh we're also available on NewEgg eBay other online channels as well fantastic well Jason thank you so much for joining us I I really appreciate you being here today all thank you Victor I appreciate it and love listening to the show Travelers are going to have headaches as if traveling wasn't difficult enough they're now FAA Federal Aviation uh Administration rules Banning fully charged lithium ion batteries as cargo as stow away um in the hold cargo yeah mean yeah in the hold all right CU previously that's where I've always chucked my bigger anchor battery and kept the smaller one in carryon in case I needed it but um yeah yeah so there are rules that say that any devices that end up being shipped via plane have to be at 30% or less in order to fly wow now practically speaking that that makes sense if you were an Electronics firm right if you were Apple using planes to move your product then you can say yeah we verify that all the devic 30% charge if you're a traveler and you Chuck a device in the the the yes storage hold um my expectation is that instead of checking that it's at 30% they're just going to tell you no you can't because practically there's no way to investigate all that right no there isn't but I'm also tickled by the idea after all these years of us wanting more charging points in airports thing now we're going to want places where you can discharge a bit more so okay yeah no and there are limits on the amount of battery that you can take on board right e uh the battery is has to be less than 27,000 milliamp hours and uh I'm aware that there have been rules um I haven't really paid attention because I don't think anything I've got has exceeded them but I'm bit self-conscious about that now I should look into it well there there are companies that make batteries like uh like zendure for example that make them just up to that limit so that these are the ones you take on the plane and they they're very popular with Pilots for example who use applications on their iPad as the fight book oh fair enough you mean to say aircraft don't have a USB socket that you can just plug in for a quick charge when you're flying over the Atlantic god well some of them do okay you know that that Dreamliner right that Boeing Dreamliner does I'm sure one of the Airbus has but who knows who knows man um well gosh this has been a a big episode um I I want to point out that we are coming up you know in the summertime so we're begin to creep towards that WWDC and we're going start hearing more rumors about WWDC and uh Apple's head of Swift development Ted kremc has provided insight into the development of Swift 5 which is an upcoming major Milestone release for Swift and they they're doing their own podcast about what coders should expect and how apple is figuring out which features to add to versions and and so they talk a little bit about how they use Swift internally and I think that's interesting oh absolutely have you used Swift much um I I have used the playgrounds application a little bit I haven't gotten into it U one of the things that I watch is I I listen to a lot of developers and and talk with them as they talk about the cost of switching to Swift and the the problems have been that the language has not really been stable oh I didn't know that oh okay that's well they they keep developing it and as they keep developing it so much changes that from one build to the next that that from one version of the language to the next all their stuff breaks which means you have to spend a lot of time on on maintaining applications and updating things and figure out why something broke and for some developers that's a giant pain and they could do whatever they've been trying to do in Objective C much easier I'm really surprised about that I knew about the continual developments but I I unthinkingly assumed it was incremental uh stuff not that it was you know Ro and brentt changes in the middle that's very interesting so do we know whether Swift is going to s that out that's kind of the hope is that it's more mature and that these These Things become less of an issue because Apple really does position this as you know the thing for younger coders to learn right it's part of the everyone can code sessions it's part of the playgrounds app it's it's it's basically the path forward now you may remember way back in history in the dawn of everything where Apple used to have cocoa oh yes yes and and carbon as their to libraries for for doing this kind of graphic stuff and carbon was supported from system 9 for os9 rather all the way into uh to OS 10 for several versions and then they finally ended it right but they sort of signaled that it was coming to an end for a long way off and could they get rid of objective c and make everyone use Swift well I think that's maybe a longer term plan but I don't think Swift 5 is the one where they do that I think that they would have to set developers up with a much longer lead to do that well it's been quite a while I'm astonished that it's Swift 5 already CU I looked at it seriously at the time Swift first came out I was involved in an app project um and in the end I actually got somebody I hired somebody to complete it for me and I can't remember he Swift or not but there was no time uh for me to learn it to hit the deadlines to do it but it what I saw of it looked really interesting and I always intended when that project was done to go back and have a play myself and now here we are five stand the London I haven't got around to it so well just just for you know anecdotal point the the first comment on the story that we ran about this says in this next version of Swift will I suddenly get 4,000 errors due to fundamental syntax being changed and if so will the change be documented or will I have to go to stack Overflow for the correct replacement code because that's been the the the history of the transitions between versions is that stuff changes so wildly everything breaks now the second comment says chains has become less onerous with new versions but they're still there well that is the the real issue right the point the point is kind of valid well I guess we'll we won't see on March 25th or whenever they announce this but shortly afterwards when people got their hands on it and using it then we'll see yeah well this this brings us to the end of a fantastic podcast I'm so glad we had you know you here I'm so glad that we had Jason from bifi here yes I love it when you get people on like that it's so interesting to hear them you know go straight to the people who are actually doing this stuff love it well you know they they have the Battle Scars they've shipped product they know what's involved and and especially a networking product where networking is not an easy topic it's it's one of those things where you know the support calls will kill you if you're not prepared for for how to handhold someone through all the different variations of networking right and and sorry I just gives me the Bic twitch even considering it yes okay right why why am I not online well okay how is your cable modem working is your DSL modem working is your phone you know just the basics right what's connected to what what's plugged into what is it getting an IP address from the other thing it's it's not exactly easy and so it's a real accomplishment to be able to take something like that and make it approachable there's an IT sport guy a corporation I used to work at a long time ago uh who I deeply liked and trusted completely and really really admired what he knew and he actually offered me a job on his support team and I just looked at him as much as I would like to work for the guy the idea of comprehending the network problems they were having then is just impossible I can write about it but he's the one who can actually do it well you saved yourself innumerable headaches and prevented hair loss I'm sure because you would have been pulling it out I'm I'm recovering slowly from development and part of the recovery was hovering up the circle of hair around my chair yeah William where can people find you on the internet I am now looking at Swift a lot on uh Twitter where I'm W gallago or of course Pi an email uh William appleinsider.com which actually I really like love that it's nice start to the day coming see p of messages thank you for those I'm Victor you can email me at William appleinsider.com and uh I am also found on wristwatch review.com seriously though I'm V marks on Twitter and and Victor apple insider.com and I love hearing from you guys it's so nice to hear from you especially when when you tell us where we're doing well and where we can improve thank you so much uh please leave great reviews at iTunes we' really appreciate that it helps us out and we will be back next week with more thank you William thank you bye I'm\n"