Gadgetory

good morning or good afternoon my name is Steven Beecher producer of the Apple byte extra crunchy podcast as you can see on this graphic behind me that Brian Tong emailed me this morning right extra crunchy podcast with your host mr. Brian Tong what's up everybody welcome to the show hey beach and tong in the house you know how we do it it is episode 118 for those of you who are watching when my guess 119 119 oh my gosh and you're right it is 119 I read the wrong numbers all good one thank you for correcting me where would I be without you Beach where would I be it is 119 I in case you guys and gals watch this actual podcast let us know if something looks different does my camera look better slightly it looks way better man that's okay good that that's the whole point because people been complaining something like fine I'll I'll dish out some of that some of that cheddar and make it better yeah some squirrel so again this is the Apple byte extra crunchy this is our complimentary piece to our weekly video podcast we know there is so much going on this week but again the number to be a part of our show and you keep the calls coming and we love it just like a faint white circle it's a very obvious deliberate white circle and everyone's like I was like dude Apple like even this like one week in we're seeing this right so it's not it doesn't even feel like a week man it's not even a week it's been on what Tuesday or Wednesday with this would this started happening yeah like so okay fine let's just talk about this really quickly so they showed the pictures they said this has got to be an issue Apple did give comment to both websites they first told pocket-lint that it's not unusual for a speaker with the silicone base this is the keyword the silicone base to leave a mild mark when placed on certain oiled or wax surfaces so suggesting that there's this chemical reaction that happens between silicon and some of these different types of treated wood which is exactly what is happening um it's happening to multiple people I have the home pod that I reviewed on a wood surface but I mean I'll be honest with you it's like on a target table so it's probably not that it's probably not a fancy table like yeah but some people are gonna be you know some people have really expensive nice wooden tables and that would really piss my white we just got a like a new dining-room table if the the home pot did that to my wife's new table I would probably be dead I wouldn't be here I'd be good you know she would freak out now you'd be in trouble bro we wouldn't have this podcast would be no longer he'd be like he done he Tong it wouldn't be beach in time to be talking you'd be mad sitting in the corner with like a dark light on face so they also commented to wirecutter that the marks can improve over several days after the speaker is removed from the wood surface and if they don't fade on their own apples advice was to try cleaning the surface with the manufacturer's suggested oiling method so you're basically telling me to refinish my wood tables that I probably don't have the finish for I Ritz I read something like use a damp cloth or something like that or a dry cloth maybe that wasn't from Apple no you're right you're right that's your actually your foreseen the future but Apple did say that about cleaning the actual outside of the home pod not the bottom of it though but you're right so they're like yeah use a dry cloth um Apple even released this document called cleaning and taking care of home pod and um this is there's a great this is so great like I know people are rolling their eyes like I can't like seriously I still when I heard this I couldn't believe it but it is what it is so there's a section in this article that talks about taking care of the home pod and it says learn where to put home pod and what to avoid to keep home pod safe again we are gonna kind of jump ahead through this whole statement but um they did mention that the marks can be caused by oils diffusing between the silicone base and the table surface if the marks persist clean the surface with the manufacturers recommended thing we talked about that I love this is the last line if you're concerned about this we recommend placing your home pod on a different surface but it's somewhere else you're putting it on the wrong place to listen to it wrong like you're holding it wrong I was like in gate putting in the wrong place I also like that they're referring it to as as home pod and not the home pod you know it's kind of like that iPhone it's it's it's not plural it's not singular so that that was like you know and this is right out of the gates again this is a three hundred and forty nine dollar smart speaker I'm gonna be kind right now but this is I also want to make this clear actually the home pot isn't the only one that is having this issue you know Apple gets a lot of attention with it but an article that was just posted out by Tom's guide and other people are kind of rumbling about this I've also confirmed that the Sonos one the sonís ones bass also can damage some wood surfaces as well there's a little picture of a home pod and a Sonos one right next to each other you can see the ring on the home pod you can kind of see the the rounded square corners of so no swine but this is this is a thing that is affecting speakers when there's a silicone base on it of any kind so it's just something now to know I just don't want to make it like oh my gosh Apple you suck although I will say like bruh you had six years to try it and put this on like every sir they had six years to try this you're telling me no one and apple HQ with the really big houses haven't tried to put it on like a fancy wood surface oh you know they had it you know they had an on some fancy wood maybe they just didn't want to just they just didn't want to say anything maybe they were scared I don't know either way we did I did come up with a solution on Twitter yesterday I posted immediately I am pretty sure there's gonna be something like the Apple coaster that comes out just a nice just call it the Apple coaster get it over with charge like 40 bucks for it to put your home pod underneath it a company called pad and quill decided to instantly capitalize on this and they're releasing a like leather coaster to prevent the home pod from marking your surface and that's gonna ruin the leather man that's a well yeah the leather piece of the sacrificial lamb maybe what is it gonna be friendly finished what table or what sometimes putting a speaker on those like diffuser pads makes them sound even better you know so I mean maybe Apple come out with something like that but that is a huge bummer I mean yeah you're saying they had six years to test this thing out like they they've they've to work on this for security okay fine I'll give him even three years I'll give up three years for like at least having a form factor - I'll be kind - ahead two years you know it's weird though this rubber that they make speakers and like even headphones out of it does like deteriorate over time it just kind of like starts degrading so it's strange that these oils are coming out of the speaker's already you know within a few days and it's just a tearing and it's just gonna like crumble on your desk over a period of years and years like I mean even these headphones like they just kind of start falling apart you could start ripping the pieces out you know yeah so it's it's kind of a thing with speakers in general I believe you know but it's not happen to my echo I'm sorry my echo dot is not leaving the market yeah they don't have silicone on the bottom yeah it's just a fact right it's a chemical reaction between that so that's what happens hey a beach have you actually heard the home pop that much I have heard the home pod because we were using during this infinite loop video right now that's streaming yeah it sounds fantastic it really does like compared to the Google home compared to the other things I've heard the sound is superior it sound the bass the everything it just sounds really good it's a hundred percent agree with you um like I think what what's weird is that a lot of reviewers write like let's be I'm not trying to rip on them because a lot of them are my friends but you know they get this product from Apple they don't have to buy it and they pop it out and when you first play it I mean it sounds it sounds awesome like for its size you're like holy crap I can't believe something this size has this much boom and just like this full feeling of sound it's really nice and then what I did is after you know I got past that I actually put it side-by-side to a Google home Mac's not a Google home cuz we know look this this the Apple speaker is pretty much gonna dominate the regular Amazon echo the regular Google home so you've got to put it also against things that are kind of more around its price point so I put it next to Google home acts and then what I kind of found over time is when I'm just listing the home partment itself I'm like oh this is awesome right and I listen a lot of deep heavy bass stuff so it it's the mids are sick and everything but then I popped out the Google home Mac side by side and I was playing like some classical music so I'm kind of like more classic rock even some pop stuff and what I found is that the home pod sounds great but when you put it next to something like the Google home acts like the highs the troubles like the vocals there's a lot of detail that's lost in the home pod so it's kind of only when you have it side by side can you say oh it does sound a little muddy or like I can't I can't hear Adam Levine's voice as clearly as I would like I can't believe I'm admitting that I did it just actually was a random track that happened to pop up on my it just happened to pop up right duh but um so people reviewed it audio files they've done all these like different types of testing and no one doubts that the sound is really great but I can't beat you of all people know this right isn't sound also kind of subjective to not only how your ear hears things but also the genres of music you listen to oh definitely I mean bass is gonna sound different and hip hop than it is in metal and other things in classical music like um I would use something that you've listened to like all your life that you're just used to what it sounds like you know like I don't know maybe like dr. Dre would be a good example for for using the home pod to compare to other things yeah but yeah I mean it definitely is your ear and you know what you're used to hearing what you want to hear you're kind of like listening for what you want to hear you know sure that's solely true so uh but the home pod definitely had a fullness that I was not expecting like the fullness of the sound is really startling you know I'm like oh my god it does sound really great yeah 100% 100% agree with that and so you know other outlets like consumer reports they said pretty much what I had found in what I put in my video before their article even dropped is right just not as much detail with the highs or vocals and they even outright said look the home pod sounds good but they felt that the Google Mac home acts and the Sonos one sound better than the home pod but again this is just one outlet saying that you have other outlets saying other things and I just don't like the fact that people kind of get caught up like Oh specifically with audio and sound quality they hear one thing and they believe it it's like you just gotta hear this stuff for yourself you don't listen to anyone about this crap I haven't heard the Sonos or the Google max but I do feel like like they really spent a lot of time focusing on the low end because that's what like gets people you know like when you walk into like a concert and you hear all that low-end it's like oh like there's something magic happening up there you know yeah I feel like Apple definitely focused on the low end and maybe they didn't focus so much on the high end yeah III agree with you and you know it's even in a way it's kind of how look Apple has this beats acquisition they've worked closely together you even people know that if historically purchased beats music they're tuned to give you deeper bass more boom and a full mid but the guys are kind of lose that detail and I think that kind of DNA from their beats acquisition that is floated into their headphones was also part of this as well I mean you can again you can feel it's a tiny speaker that give you some real boom and you're like damn thank you you know that consulted Dre man they but you know they brought him hid in a room and him and Jimmy Jimmy Iovine or like what do you guys think of the low end you know and he's like oh let me turn this up a little let me turn this up so you guys can check out you know the review that I put out the thing is that we know a lot of the things and I don't want to go into detail right it doesn't support bluetooth so Android phones or non iPhones can't use it but there were a few nuggets of things that I found that I thought were interesting that people weren't really talking about as much when the verge put out their review they talked about how if someone is using the home pot it is linked to really a specific user and one I Oh s account yeah it's someone could walk by it and say like Oh read the latest message or let me send a message like someone could basically hijack a few of your things with messages notes and reminders well what I what we found is that sure that might be the case but once I leave let's say I take my phone away and I go down to the grocery store people won't be able to play around and add notes or reminders or check my messages when I've gone you have to actually be in range of the whole pod yeah we were running into that problem doing the this infinite loop thing that we're doing I couldn't trigger it you know like we had to get Lexi there yeah we also had to have the phone sitting next to them for the whole period of time which is kind of pain in the ass but you know it is what it is it's I mean I guess it's a security thing to a certain degree but I just again I don't want to beat it beat it beat it - cuz I think we beat it to that before it even came out everything that we had expect about the home pod was pretty much true right it's limitations it's a lack of smarts when it comes to a voice assistant the other thing I thought that was they didn't really they weren't gonna promote it but I thought something like adding speakerphone to the home pod would have been so easy like it does support it but you can't talk to it and say hey call you can't say hey Siri call blankety-blank you actually have to call from your phone physically and then use airplay to send the sound from your phone to the speaker whether you are making a call or whether you're receiving a call so that's you know that was an easy low-hanging fruit like just make it a cool speakerphone it can't even do that and then the other thing I'm not expecting it to work with Android phones but I feel look if you have if you made Apple music as a service for Android users you've got to make it easier for someone to use that product like it's not that hard to do whether it's fine if you don't believe in Bluetooth fine but give other users a way to use it so the fact of the matter is that if you have Apple music and you're an Android user you can actually use the home pod but you need someone with a phone to set it up for you it has to run iOS 11 and then they can enter in your Apple music credentials but that's the only way an Android user could use a home pod I know guess I know it's not supposed to be for everyone but it wasn't that hard to let them do that so amongst all the other things again it's a really limited product it's right now for me it's definitely not worth 349 I mean I put down my money for it because that's how I look at it I review it based on okay I've dropped this much cash on it is it really worth it it's definitely not like you could literally buy an echo and probably a starter light kit like a smart light kit with like two or three light bulbs a starter kit but the same price as the home pod okay think about that like you want to get involved in the smart home it's a better smart home and you get light bulbs like come on so yeah light bulb really cheap where does the smart light bulbs they're not cheap you got to be so diehard Apple for this product it's it's so narrow of a focus and it's so locked down so just check out the review there's a lot of nuggets in there but I think people that have been listening to us already know where we stand and I don't want to keep on making them feel like we're negative about it we're just telling you there's even more things that make it even more limited than what we thought so yeah it just sounded right it sounds awesome good good I mean if that was their goal if that really that was their only goal then they definitely did it all right bro should we take a little breather to show some love to our sponsor that keeps the lights on let's do all right let's check this out today's show is brought to you by champ now Apple's device management can be time-consuming work especially if it isn't your day job like if IT isn't your thing yeah it's tough so with champ now keeping up with your equipment is a breeze champ now helps you manage your Apple devices from anywhere you need to secure that iPad that your sales rep lost while visiting home for the holidays sure visiting home for the holidays champ now allows you to configure settings protect sensitive information even lock or wipe a device no matter where you are now even as your business grows you'll be able to keep track of everyone's IMAX iPhones iPads with ease we've talked about it CNET uses Jam actually and that way you can focus on your business with no IT expertise needed so check it out our listeners Apple buy nation you can set up your first three devices for free you can add more for just 2 bucks a month per device and you can start securing your business today so go to jamp that's J AMF dot-com slash crunchy to create a free account and setup your three free devices today that jamp j MF comm slash crunchy booyah sweet thank you yep Thank You Jam jammin Jeff man so we talked about a bunch of home pod stuff I mean that's really the hot thing that's going on this week even last week but we wanted to transition over to some more news obviously we're getting close to March we're probably gonna see some interesting stuff just because March historically has been a time period where Apple has announced new products we'll see I mean maybe we'll see some new iPads maybe we'll see an iPhone se - there's it's not really clear maybe we'll see the air power can we get a air power by margin scooter air power please maybe maybe alright but the latest report this is kind of a follow-up to what Bloomberg had talked about earlier is how Apple is now changing their development their fundamental development strategy to root out bugs and revamp the iPhone software now we talked about either it was either last week or a couple weeks ago how they're gonna push back certain features folk some core ones and move those secondary features over the next year because really they want to focus on fixing the bugs like their annual soft grade this software upgrade this year will feature a new single set of apps that works across iPhones iPads and IMAX so write a universal apps as one of their targets that's gonna be met this is according to Bloomberg report there also is going to be a digital help tool to show parents how much time their children have been staring at their screen and I know you want this the most beach improvements to an emojis oh yes that's what I've been waiting for I've been waiting for that whole my let's hold my light so they also said some of the features that will be kind of pushed on the back burner is Apple's whole redesigned home screen that they were talking about for their iPhone iPad and carplay carplay I mean people have called it so much about how they're just like they've turned their backs on carplay there it's like I don't even care anymore that's just like that's like a slap in the face to Apple users like they have shown it no love and also a revamped Photos app that can yet suggest which images to view depending on what you're looking at and this has kind of been put down by Craig federighi look I think in the past the whole promise and what differentiated Apple from other companies and when I say back then I'm saying as far back as maybe four years four or five years ago but when you go further back what was the reason or the allure of Apple it was easy to use it was run free and it was secure like those tended to be those tenants like and specifically like bug free virus free blah blah blah that was one of the big things well you only get like iOS 11 and just all the software things that they've been dealing with you can argue that over time Android is Android but specifically Google's stock Android is cleaner it's a little more simplified yeah it has its own issues but it didn't launch with like basically five or six major bugs consecutive week after week after week in a weird way even Apple users that are have been around for a while have felt like because they're being spread so thin this evolution of apples turn like um apples more like Windows now than it ever used to be and I'm not saying they're Windows but they are moving along that path where they are so big and they're trying to get everything out every year and it's not just four or five product categories now it's ten or twelve yeah and it's gonna take its toll yeah I remember when I first started working here we were talking about that a lot like fragmentation of Android you know and now it feels like that's happening the Apple and everything that's coming out is buggy and it has an issue but yeah back in the day when Apple came out it was like this is how easy it is to use you have this mouse and you click here and everything just works there's no problem the whole thing what you just said bro it just works that's like a classic phrase and now everyone kind of throws it in their face because it's it doesn't just work anymore you know it takes a lot of setting up and like troubleshooting now it's you know especially like older I don't want to be like ageist or anything but people who are you're going to be right now people who haven't grown up with it you know they have a lot harder time setting it up now so it's not like your grandma's phone anymore you know what I mean people are having trouble setting up the home pod still honestly like it's supposed to sync kind of like your air pods right you hold it right next your phone the w1 chip is the communication kind of bridge it pops up and supposed to be easy to set up it's actually not easy to set up like a lot of people having problems even getting their home pod set up so you know even something like that it's it's a new it's a new age so you know we'll see I think this slow burn strategy if this is really what they're committed to can help them in the long run but look they're still selling tens of millions of phones per quarter like they're still dominating so no matter what we say and then in a funny way we can talk about them we can make fun of them we can like celebrate them whatever we say right now still doesn't matter it literally doesn't matter cuz who's buying who's still buying their phones their brand cachet is just so powerful now it's like you're locked in a new story that just dropped just a belief today Apple is going to require all new apps to natively support the iPhone 10 display as of April of this year so this was a note that was dropped to developers by Apple that starting from April 2018 if you have an app that comes out it must support the rich own tens Retina display that means right it has to go all the way to the edges none of these like weird proportions or legacy stuff from earlier phones it has to support that form factor as well as others apples also not set a deadline when the updates for current existing apps must support iPhone 10 natively but at least from April this year all new apps being built against the iOS 11 SDK will have to support that screen know that um but here's the thing Beach if there was one feature that you think samsung was jealous of Apple like iOS feature what you think would be I have no idea the face unlock and I don't know what if I told you an emojis well would be jealous of that I don't know if they're jealous per se but a report from ET news claims that the new Samsung Galaxy S 9 that is expected to be announced on and revealed on February the 25th we're gonna actually have our own live coverage because guess what we do stuff beyond just Apple in case you didn't think that I mean come on you already know that so it's a new 3d emoji system that they are claiming is more advanced than an emojis they don't have a name out for it yet but is expected to come on February 5th and Samsung will be loaded with their own facial recognition emoji platform alright good for Samsung congratulate you game ma'am congratulations Samsung you did it dude what do you want - I have a name for them but what you--what would you want to call them beach for the first Samsung's how what would you want to call them man I don't even know I have to think about that for a while I have no idea what would you call I think they're gonna call them samajis cheese something tells me there gonna be some oh jeez yeah cuz he is an emoji like copy written by Apple or something it's an emoji was stolen by Apple from a developer from Japan who owned it for at least three or four years do you remember this story um well I mean there's so much something-something about it yeah his developer had literally an app that was like cute cartoon characters it was a kind of a keyboard app that you could type out different characters that were a kind of emoji space but he called them an emojis an Apple tried to act as a shell company to buy the trademark of an emoji from him without telling them telling him that they were Apple that's right right they're like posed they were like cozy and like us they had a secret name for this company a shell company and then they decided to try and go after him for that without acknowledging that it was actually Apple that was trying to go after him and it's like he's like dude what the hell that's it's they're sitting on 280 billion dollars just pay the man and take the name an emoji don't try and like hustling like that that's just so that's such crap man yeah that's crazy dude I forgot about that story not to 280 Billy I mean it just came to my head right this stuff's like this is like there's like a treasure chest of crap in here now right 280 billion throw them throw them couple million you know throw em some box man it's like it's like it's like Tim Cook is like flicking the dust off his wrist yeah it's like emptying that chant has changed drawer or something all right in some iPhone news we talked about how iPhone continues to just be gangbusters no matter what we say the Apple platform is alive and well according to Linda sweet of strategy analytics Apple has taken more than half of the global smartphone revenues for the fourth quarter of 2017 over half basically the fourth quarter of 2017 is Apple's q1 of 2018 which is really that period from October November to December the firm says the iPhone captured a record 51% share of all smartphone wholesale revenues worldwide noting that Apple had racked up 61 billion in the fourth quarter also Apple's average selling price for phone right it's getting close to $800 that's three times the industry average Samsung's average price selling price per phone is 254 dollars so that's why they're dominating in revenue is because one of their closest competitors really their closest competitor their phone is basically a third of the prices what they're getting from an average selling price perspective in again Samsung sells all different kinds of phones from a wide range from high to low low but uh that's that's that's beast man that is beast my friend and I were just talking about this last night like that's like a few hundred phones a week or a few hundred thousand phones a week or something like that I didn't I kind of did the math but not know how many iPhones they sell like per week or something oh yeah it's got to be like in the hundreds of thousands I don't know I'm probably I could be totally wrong but not that it will affected not that affected too much but this next story may be that his numbers might dip like just like just like a teeny teeny bit that's because Verizon is no longer planning to sell unlocked iPhones and this is actually a big deal for a lot of people and why is that okay so Verizon was one of the few carriers that sold an unlocked version of the phone you would have to first like lock-ins like a one-month data plan with them but you could then once that one month was done you could then take this phone to other carriers you could put it on AT&T you can put it on t-mobile you could put on it was basically a global unlocked phone right that's cool so Verizon though is preventing that from happening now they said they want to get ahead of theft that's been happening where people are stealing their phones this is not just I phones too this is unlocked phones period people are but it's targeted more towards iPhones people are stealing their phones getting them unlocked and used on other carriers or trying to sell them overseas right they work so they're trying to prevent this the thing about this is they also say Verizon is expecting to if you have the phone for a certain amount of time they will offer the ability to unlock the phone they have not been specific on how long that will be whether it's like six months nine months a year but they're not gonna completely lock them down it's just that out of the box if you get a phone and you try and do something shady with it or if you try and be a you know a good customer about it the phone is still locked to Verizon that's crazy well like unlocked phones are worth a lot more and if you if you actually get your phone unlocked after you've used it for a while you're trying to sell it or something everyone from another country is gonna want to try to buy it it's true that was my experience I unlocked my iPhone five and I put in I advertised it unlocked and I got so many calls and emails from people from other countries saying can you ship it to Brazil or ship it here you know and I was like sure you know it's like so unlocked phones are definitely a huge value and it's a bummer that Verizon is just gonna lock them down now did you uh do you happen to get any emails from a Nigerian prince no want to make sure I think that they've caught that actually my dad was telling me he's like did you hear that they caught the Nigerian prince it's like actually a dude yes yeah the emails camera guy again he got busted finally after all these years I don't know how much he made from it but man my dad was saying every time like a new company would go public or just you know put their information and like when you start a new company you have to build a website and do all this stuff and you have to like report in the newspaper that the company is live he said the Nigerian prince would just look for that stuff and as soon as a new company would come into existence he would contact them and so like my dad does a lot of like consulting for business and stuff and that people always just joke and he they would start a new company and he'd be like have you heard from the Nigerian prince yet and sometimes it'd be like yes I have did you just registered your company it's funny so the this last kind of story before we get into the calls you Apple had their shareholders mean this is how much like attention get to pay to Apple right I think it's is it yearly quarterly where they hold no searly they hold a meeting on Apple campus and if you are shareholder whoever amount you have in the company you're able to actually go in attend this and like ask questions it's kind of like right you're you have a public investment in the company so he sometimes you hope that there's nuggets that come out of this there weren't too many our own CNET's Shire tip Ken was there and some of the notes that she had pulled right you may give an overview what's going on with the company they vote for the board members and then they also ask you know the asked him cook some questions so some of the things that Tim Cook touched upon and I'm not gonna go into the questions but just some of the responses so you guys can all hear this he says that the iPhone 10 customer satisfaction is at ninety nine percent I saw that I don't know about I honestly I know that's not true it's nine percent it's not but depending the thing is the customer satisfaction surveys start from satisfied somewhat satisfied totally satisfied satisfied beyond belief satisfied beyond like human recognition I mean it's it's that whole scale so that was one of the points that came out of it Apple also had asked why 19 companies in 2017 this a lot 10 of those are unknown or 10 of those are known nine of them are unknown Apple also holds almost a quarter of a billion subscriptions now across all services so this could be like anything from iTunes Match to iCloud to Apple music almost a quarter of a billion there people asked like hey Tim because there's criticism about you blah blah blah do you guys have a successor in place and he says that they actually have internal candidates that are ready to succeed Tim Cook some people might want to see that sooner rather than later oh wow but they do have a succession plan but they're not gonna tell us who it is they just want that's an awkward question to get at the shareholders meeting is there someone who's available to replace you Tim yeah we've been working on that they also talked about their retail stores saying their physical stores are never gonna go away they believe that the interactions with people still be to anything and then this is a fun was like one of the shareholders right straight up like ask Tim Cook if he could get a tour of Apple campus like Apple Park behind the scenes and Tim Cook basically said that they're not going to open their main big ring-shaped building for tours because we have so much confidential stuff around oh wow she said keeping stuff confidential is the bane of my existence now and it's worked wonderfully well under your run [Laughter] back you should have never said we're gonna double down on secrecy so bad the place is a fortress now so you can't even get in matter if you get it out every everyone leaves them from Asia they can't control that they've never been able to control that yeah I'd be I'd be curious to see where like when an Apple employees goes through just to get into the building and like you know are they screened or what happens cavity search I'm pretty sure daily I'm ready for my daily cavity search oh yeah all right let's do get to the calls let's do it yes the phone calls let's show some love the Apple by nation man again if you guys gals want to be a part of the show the number is full review the Apple byte full review I'll be out okay here we go here's cone number one hey guys this is Bob calling from Stanford Connecticut I just finished watching this week's show picked up my home pod yesterday and been playing around with it having a little bit of fun but do have one complaints the right word question maybe is a called Apple support just now because I was hoping to use it in my bedroom and have it play music while I'm falling asleep at night be able to set a sleep timer to shut it off it doesn't have a sleep timer apparently and the tech on the support line said that you can go into the whole map and set up a routine or whatever they call it to have it shut off but it doesn't appear in the section of the app that does that so since it's an always-on product I kind of get it that that doesn't that it doesn't work that way so interestingly the main thing that I was hoping to use it for isn't going to work for me but otherwise it sounds great it looks cool and pretty happy with it otherwise but if you know anything at all about the the possibility of how to do a sleep timer function or whether that might possibly end up being a future software update which would be great because that would be a feature I think a lot of people would use anyway take care guys yeah man we didn't touch mine but I do think it does look really good in person especially in a home it just kind of it looks modern but it doesn't look it look I mean it does look like a toilet paper roll but but a fancy one it's something familiar and soft to touch but to his point he did call back later and let us know just for people that are wondering is you can actually you can't do a sleep timer directly through the home pod but if you're playing music over airplay to the home pod which you can do you can actually set a sleep timer on your phone and I don't know if any of you have actually done this but if you actually go into your your clock right the clock app and you go all the way over here to your little timer there where it's orange you can actually here's the trick down here on the bottom it says when timer ends and so what this when timer ends there's an option where you can actually change it to stop playing select that and then just set the time and it'll stop playing like that again it shows how limited some basic stuff like that is not on the home pod I'm sure that's got to be one of those things that they will put into the next software update you if they don't it's a crime like if they don't allow multiple timers in this next update even though they've never done it in the history of Siri it's stupid so hopefully they bring that but you can't do it using airplay and then using the timer function on your phone or iOS device not even phoned like your iPad or your iPhone cool you know one thing people haven't mentioned is how heavy the home pot is was that like when you're gonna pick it up your first reaction it was it was it was hefty but I'm not gonna pick it up all the time I just once I put it down I put it down it's funny that when every time someone would hold it they were like first thing oh my god oh my god yeah and then it's like anyway okay next call here we go yo Brian I just switched over to the iPhone 10 from Android I love it just really not like in theory the Google assistant is so much better do you think Apple will ever invest some of its billions of dollars into creating a better Siri let's hope thanks for taking my call bye bye yeah yeah I said look they the thing is that they've known they've been behind for years that's what that's what it's probably the most frustrating thing for me is that they haven't done anything about it and they let everyone take their lunch like Siri came out first right yes they let everyone take them lunch and now they are so it's not even like a little behind guys it's a lot it's a significant gap it's like if you're I mean when I use Amazon echo and Google home together see Amazon is all hooked up with all the services and how will the apps but the Google home platform is smart it has you know Amazon has the platform out but you know who knows how it plays out over time but the Google home has the potential to be the platform just purely because it's smarter but everyone is locked in and lots of like I'm a locked in and Alexa but I also have a home because it's freaking smart so they they need to get better but I just don't see it's not their expertise it's not their specialty how they can make such a dramatic leap to even be remotely close to either Amazon er or a little home right now I just don't see it but hey I'll let them prove me wrong yeah Google assistants definitely might go too right now when I have random questions because it understands context it understands a lot of things that's right it's really interesting how much it understands what you're trying to ask you know I mean even stuff like I mean yeah fine it will maybe actually I don't I shouldn't even assume this it might end up getting it but you can order pizza you can order a car ride service from these devices like Apple you can't even put a calendar appointment on it from a home pod right now you can't even do a calendar appointment you could do to the to-do list I think that's bad you know reminder you can't add some of your calendar okay that's pretty low hanging fruit yeah all right let's keep moving along we got a couple more calls here we go hey guys it's David from Jersey on the last show someone mentioned they lost all their iCloud photos and the iCloud backup and what I do for my photos is I make sure that I back it up to a different service other than the Apple iCloud first because if you backup all your photos to iCloud and you have the photo optimization setting turned on you're only going to get backups of the lower resolution versions of your photos so what I do is I back them all up to Dropbox and also to Amazon Prime photo prior to plugging my phone in and connected to Wi-Fi for where it will naturally do a backup automatically with the iCloud photos just oh that's a good little tip there so people get the full resolution backups next what both the couple by I dig that man yeah that's smart that's the community looking out for each other I love that thanks so much for that call we appreciate stuff like that it's funny though that he's backing it up to other places before he backs up to iCloud though well you got it but you know it's to the point is yeah you've got to you have to you know even uh before we could do cloud storage we would have I have two hard drives that were redundant on top of my actual hard drive so I have all my files and stuff yeah I do the same oh cool all right and now Amazon Prime photos is pretty awesome too like I have gigs on there it's pretty awesome yeah but I got unlimited at least for X amount of years on Google baby oh yeah but does that resizes though is it resizing Noah Flores back full res full res man nice full resolution cool all right I think we have one more yeah one more here we go bitch and talk Mike from New York City was just listening to the extra munch again crunchy and I have a comment you guys were talking about Apple not having a streaming service yet still and actually I think they're pursuing the right direction with the Apple TV app the idea of having a la carte services whether it's Hulu or Netflix or HBO or whatever I want to choose having that and a single sign-on is really the direction I think that this really needs to go rather than have some service that they're just another you know outlet out there that you can choose from if they come up with a single service option and all it cost you know price plans where you can just pretty much have single sign-on and get whatever services you choose I think that's the direction that I would want to spend my money on as as opposed to any service where they're kind of pre dictating what you actually get before for the money all these other guys are cables clones so to speak so I think Apple has the right idea they just have to be able to close the deal with all the programmers so let me know what you think great show keep it up love you guys peace out love you back bro you know what I think you make a great point and I think in a perfect world yeah they could do it but the person's the people that are really controlling this is the cut the cable networks and the content holders because right when you have a cable package and he probably already knows this obviously is that you have a lot of networks that are like lost leaders and so you get something like even though they're not doing so hot anymore ESPN right is one of those networks that that's why people get cable or that's why people use to get cable and you have all these other networks that ABC says okay well if you're gonna get ESPN you're gonna also take on these five or six other networks alongside of it and until Apple is willing to pay them enough for a single network that also covers the cost for people not picking up their other networks that are normally bundled in a cable plan that they've already kind of have in place Apple's got a dish out major boo cose in order for that to happen and up to this point they've shown that they can't do that right they have shown that they can't even come up with a regular deal I don't even mind if that is the goal or that's the vision for Apple to get to the point that you're talking about I think it was was it Mike in New York I hope I'm right because I heard a bunch of names but if I think that even if that was the goal that they were trying to get to they should have still done the cable streaming service because people are doing it and it's another revenue stream that they just don't have anymore because they decided to not cut a deal with the cable networks and yeah they have this grand vision but we've seen how the TV networks and canta providers aren't gonna play the same way with Apple that maybe the music labels did because of how much the music labels needed Apple the time at the time you can go to Roku you can go to Hulu you go to chromecast you can go to Amazon fire stick they don't need Apple so yeah it's all sheer oh man that's all right guys thank you so much for calling in making the show pop as usual that's gonna do it it is Apple byte extra crunch remember call us again 1-866 to 638 we'll put you on the show but until then hey if you guys other people finally picked up a home pod call us let us know what you think we'd love to hear about it we want to talk about it more and hopefully there will be no other white ringing issues hopefully not but let's just hope let's it's aw it's only been a week Apple come on all right take everybody be safe today's show is brought to you by jamp now Apple device management can be time-consuming work especially if IT 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