Full Transcript:
Jeff Thompson:
Oh, yeah, because that water just went in there and went whoosh–
Raqi:
And the coffee was lousy too, because it didn’t even send it through the coffee, it sent it all through the Keurig so it was like it was just barely coffee tasting hot water, it was disgusting.
Jeff:
Our podcast is about the wrong stuff, you know what I mean?
Serena Gilbert:
Really.
Raqi Gomez:
It is.
Jeff:
This is the good stuff right there
Raqi:
Well, you got filler now, whenever you need it.
Jeff:
There it is.
Raqi:
There it is.
Jeff:
Welcome to Tech Abilities, I’m Jeff Thompson, and in the studio with me is Serena Gilbert. How are you doing, Serena?
Serena:
I’m doing very well Jeff. How are you?
Jeff:
I’m doing good, back here in Minnesota, we’re the Northern Star State, you know that? Did you know that?
Serena:
You know, had I thought it through, I probably would have figured it out at some point, but no, I didn’t.
Jeff:
What are you, Rocky Mountain High, John Denver?
Serena:
We’re the Centennial State.
Jeff:
The Centennial State, hmm.
Serena:
Because we were formed in 1876, see?
Jeff:
18—oh!
Serena:
Centennial State, get it?
Jeff:
Mm-hm, 100 years.
Serena:
There’s history.
Jeff:
What were you doing during the Bicentennial?
Serena:
I wasn’t born yet. I had to do the math. I don’t think I was born yet that would be 19—so, yeah, I was not born yet.
Jeff:
I think California is the Golden State, isn’t it Raqi?
Raqi:
it is the Golden State, yeah, the hot Golden State at the moment.
Jeff:
And that’s Raqi Gomez from California, welcome to the show Rocky.
Raqi:
Thank you, Jeff. It’s great to be here.
Jeff:
Raqi, why don’t you tell the listeners a little bit about yourself, what you do?
Raqi:
Ha! A little bit about myself, put me on the spot.
Serena:
Do you have two hours?
Jeff:
Start with your stamp collection!
Raqi:
I work for—some of you actually will recognize the Lighthouse of San Francisco, I manage the adaptation store there so for those of you that have been over in the San Francisco area that have popped into the store you likewise met, either myself or one of my two co-workers that run the adaptation store along with me. Currently we’re closed for face-to-face business so we are operating remotely, so I’m here at my home in Sacramento, California, and we’ll be here until we resume our face-to-face operations, but the online store is active so we’ve been pretty busy taking orders, and just recently we have also begun taking a profile on the Be My Eyes network, so we also take calls for four hours a day, from 8 am to noon, Pacific time, and take a lot of international calls from people who have questions about products or maybe want referrals or information so it’s kind of a great thing for me, it’s a really wonderful position—sometimes you find your dream job and you can just have a good time and geek out with something that you really enjoy, I feel like I get to get paid to do all of the strange hobbies and things and play with all the weird technology and devices that I like to play with so I really enjoy it.
Jeff:
And that’s at San Francisco Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired that adaptation dot-
Raqi:
Adaptations.org-
Jeff:
Adaptations, plural.
Raqi:
Adaptations, plural, that’s it. We have more than just one.
Jeff:
Gotta get that in there.
Raqi:
Yep, adaptations.org is the store’s website, and if you want to visit the Lighthouse actually we have a pretty rich calendar program, so I’ll just plug the whole company—since everybody’s operating virtually these days and will be for a while we welcome people from all over the country. We have a number of community activities too that take place so you’re welcome to check out lighthouse-sf for San Francisco lighthouse-sf.org, and hop into the calendar of events and see if anything interests you there and RSVP and get a Zoom link. Check it out.
Jeff:
You know, I get your newsletter all the time and it’s always neat to sift through and just kind of see the topics, the happenings, the events that are going on—now it’s a lot of virtual stuff, but you just started a fitness program on there and all sorts of stuff. The whole world is getting creative but getting that newsletter just makes me stop for a minute, take a break, have a latte or something, you know?
Raqi:
7:00 at night, and I want a latte!
Serena:
Stop bragging about the lattes, just had to rub that in again, Jeff, didn’t you.
Jeff:
Yeah, well, we were just talking before the show, I got a new Keurig machine and it has a latte maker on the side of it, and I think it’s really cool. I do think it’s really cool. I wouldn’t suggest drinking one before you go onto a podcast because it kind of smooths your voice out, you know—my morning voice is gone, then again it’s not morning either, so-
Serena:
I’m still waiting for you to send me that latte.
Jeff:
Oh, the virtual latte!
Serena:
This will go back—when you and I first started recording shows together you were supposed to send me a latte via the Hyperloop, I’m still waiting.
Raqi:
Via the Hyperloop—how far does the Hyperloop extend?
Serena:
It’s not even around yet.
Raqi:
We can just beam it out here too so that I can have a latte?
Serena:
Exactly, like it can stop in the Springs, then you just head up to Sacramento-
Raqi:
Oh, man, I could go for a latte!
Serena:
It’d be about, you know, 10 minutes.
Raqi:
That sounds good. You know I could really use that when we fire up our face-to-face operations again and I have to start with my super-commuting to work. I could—Hyperloop would be really nice for me, on that 85 mile journey.
Jeff:
It would be like four minutes.
Serena:
Awesome.
Raqi:
I could beam myself over there in 10 minutes-
Jeff:
[singing] That’s George Jetson!
Serena:
And enjoy your latte on the way!
Raqi:
Right, it would still be warm when I got to work.
Soothing Voice:
And now, for all of you who are health conscious about the coffee you drink, especially in the time of the pandemic, Blind Abilities brings you virtual lattes. No sugar-
Serena:
What, no sugar,?
Soothing Voice:
No water-
Serena:
No water?
Soothing Voice:
No coffee-
Serena:
No coffee?
Soothing Voice:
No nothing.
Serena:
No!
Soothing Voice:
Blind Abilities virtual lattes, only $300.00.
Serena:
No nothing is right.
Jeff:
Well, Raqi, it’s great to have you on the show. Serena, you too. With this virtualization that everyone’s been doing, something that came to mind—John Panarese has Mac For The Blind, and he’s been around since 2011, he came on and we had a chat for a while and that podcast will be coming out a little bit that I’m going to insert here, I’ll edit that in.
Serena:
Make it purty?
Jeff:
Make it pretty.
Serena:
I said purty.
Raqi:
Purty, make it purty.
John:
I am John Panarese from Mac For The Blind, and you can go to www.macfortheblind.com and find the audio tutorial series, and the Apple Slices, or you can sign up for free or some low-cost online courses to teach you how to use your Mac and your I-device properly.
Jeff:
John, I was talking to a friend of mine, Callie Gray, and it came up that she was looking for training on the Mac, and she found Mac For The Blind, and she was raving about it because it was exactly what she wanted.
John:
I mean, I was saying, “Oh, you know, if I get 20, 25 people interested in doing this, it’ll be worth at least something for me,” and lo and behold, the Mac courses, I think I had said 145, somewheres around there signed up in total. And then the iOS was close to 100, so that just blew my mind, I did not expect that kind of an interest from everybody out there.
Jeff:
There’s a need!
John:
Yeah, and it’s got me motivated now to do more of this stuff, you know?
Jeff:
So you’re not the Apple almighty god, as Callie told me?
John:
No, no—
Jeff:
Raqi, you’ve heard of John before.
Raqi:
Yeah, he’s an amazing guy, that’s a great resource actually and I think not as well known as some of the others, but he has a—if you’re a Mac user—plug for the Mac, yay! If you’re a Mac user, I would say definitely check out Mac For The Blind, there are a lot of really valuable resources.
Jeff:
And he’s gonna have a lot more stuff going on in the fall here, he was surprised when he did it for the Mac and the iOS, he was like “Wow.” He just went “Wow.”
Serena:
Wow.
Jeff:
So that’s pretty cool. Another group is called CommTech USA, they’re doing free stuff, I believe that’s on Tuesdays and Thursdays and I’ll correct that in the editing room if I’m wrong.
Gabe:
This is something that I’m very proud to say, that this is, you know, we’ve been doing this literally since November 2005.
Jack:
Hello folks, this is Jack Falejczyk, and I’m a course creator here at CommTech USA. The amount of staff that we have, the cohesive team that we have, all the different resources that we provide.
Raven:
My name is Raven Wilson, and I work for CommTech USA as a course creator and tech trainer.
Gabe:
CommTech USA has an iOS, iPhone, iPad, and Mac App in the app stores that lets you have access to the latest news from CommTech, the latest technology news, technology views, technology tips and tricks, audio and video sample trainings in our podcast from real course creators and real assistant technology trainers.
Robotic Voice:
CommTech USA, C-O-M-M-T-E-C-H USA dot net. commtechusa.net.
Jeff:
And that’s Gabe Vega, and he’s been doing this for years himself, so they’re making it free, making it available to people. Rakeb Max, a fellow Minnesotan—from Minnesota, is also part of that group and they do demonstrations and help people out, teach them stuff, and they have programs that you can buy too so, I had a chat with them. Have you guys ever went on to learning session, learning technology this way?
Raqi:
So just in the last, I would say few months, there have been so many virtual things from, you know, the people out there working with kids in the education space like APH to all of the tech companies to the consumer groups and conventions and stuff, and it’s really kind of put a neat spin on something beyond, let’s say, college courses online where they’re really virtual and interactive and I really found it just a positive experience across the board, I found that I’ve learned a lot and I think it’s actually easier to kind of zero in on the speakers. I really have been kind of attending conference after conference, I think sometimes I hear Zoom in my sleep, but it’s been a really interesting way to learn. I’m kind of biased, I’m really in favor of online courses and online lectures and webinars, and I just find them a really good way to get a lot of helpful information and also go back and review it if you need to. I found it to be a really positive experience. I know a lot of people have mixed feelings about it but I’ve just really found that— especially since the pandemic has started there’ve been a lot of great resources coming together and serving a lot of people who are brand new in this space. And I just think that’s really helpful.
Jeff:
Serena, you have a lot of side jobs—are you doing webinars and everything like that?
Serena:
You made that sound super suspicious, like “You have a lot of side jobs.”
Raqi:
Like she’s connected or something.
Serena:
So funny.
Raqi:
She’s got a hustle or something.
Jeff:
A side hustle.
Serena:
With all of my side jobs, as Jeff likes to refer to them, I actually have not had the time to engage in as many webinars as one would think. The last thing I did, and this is maybe March or April, right when the pandemic started, is I did have a one-on-one virtual lesson with a trainer on how to use Google Sites with JAWS, as far as creating a Google site and trying to work through some of those shortcut keys and things like that, and that was super helpful because we were able to use Zoom, and when something got stuck and wasn’t working the way it should, he was able to use remote control through Zoom in figure out like, oh, that’s weird, that’s something that’s broken, let me email Google about that, you know? Things like that. Prior to the pandemic, though, I did attend the Freedom Scientific webinars that they would do. They had a lot of them, they had started doing a lot of them actually on the Google products and working through those, so I learned a little bit from those as well.
Jeff:
Yeah, it’s really interesting, the times we’ve changed, you know, as someone who’s been blind or visually impaired for over 20 years, I’ve always wished more things were online, I never wanted to do an online course, but I think with this pandemic going on all the cracks have been exposed and everything’s pretty brittle, and now you can actually get the year of developers or people who are in charge of it, and they pretty much are starting to listen because everyone’s in this space now, so it’s really cool. I’m running the iOS 14 beta, and there’s some really cool stuff—they got the built in translate app, and when you can talk, and it translates in real time, and then you hit a button and it speaks it to you it’s like, okay, I’m using this.
Raqi:
That’s amazing. The first time I saw real time translator, you know, a lot of people have played with the translate apps for a couple years, back and forth, and they do okay, and we all kind of laugh at how bad of a job—they bungle it sometimes but I saw someone come into the store, actually, and do a complete transaction. I walked in with in the middle of it and they were talking to one of my co-workers and he was a Chinese speaker, and she speaks English and there was just absolutely no crossover whatsoever, but he had a smartphone that—he was using Android and I don’t know what he was using but I mean, back and forth, they were going and it was the neatest thing to watch, because the phone was just doing all the heavy lifting and they were able to get their transaction. I mean, she took this credit card and took the payment and rung him up and gave him his stuff and, you know, got his questions answered and it was really a neat thing to see a little glimpse of how easy it will be in not a very long time, you know, in a very short period of time we’ll have tools that aren’t just sort of mediocre resources but really thorough adequate translators that do a pretty decent job at conveying what it is you want to say. I’m really looking forward to this. There’s so many things that are finally in this beta that I’m excited about, this one of them.
Serena:
Well, I know in—was it 13 or 12, I don’t know, those just blur together because 13 was just such crap. And one of those, Siri was able to start doing kind of, sort of translating, I don’t know how accurate it was or anything like that. Is it pretty fluid, Jeff, like where you just double tap like with a voiceover and push a button or is it kind of clunky, where you have to find the button and, you know, make it stop,make it start kind of thing—does it use magic tap, or-
Jeff:
It’s one of those pages that, you know, you don’t find a menu, you don’t find settings, you don’t find anything like that, you just pick your language, you just—it says English button, so I hit it and I can switch it to Spanish, English to Spanish, that would be where you switch it to. And then, there’s a button that says, basically, you start talking. And I started talking, and when I got done, you know, there’s voiceover just rattling it off but there’s another button that you hit—speak, so it speaks to you. So if you wanted to learn short sentences and just hear the feedback, I mean this is the way to go. I mean, like Raqi, you were saying, to be able to be sitting next to someone that—if they’re sighted, whatever, talking to you, you could have that conversation. And it’s built in-
Raqi:
It was amazing. Yeah, it’s amazing.
Jeff:
I just saw a thing come out on Microsoft Word on the web that it’ll translate audio to text—now you have to have the 365 subscription, and it’s not out yet totally for everybody, but it’s coming, and they say it’s just, you know, something that’s been pressed—like we’re using Zoom right now, Zoom has a translate type up for caption, putting text to the words and stuff like that.
Serena:
Yeah, it’s like a plugin and you have to pay—a service you have to pay for to kind of plug into that API and everything-
Jeff:
But if you have 365 subscription, it’s yours. And then they say that it’s going to probably be, by the end of 2020 it’ll roll out for everyone and probably go into the apps that are in your computers, which would be cool. Are you guys there?
Serena:
You left us speechless, I guess.
Jeff:
Well, it just seems like something—like it’s a need—it’s gonna put a lot of companies that have been charging 35 bucks a month or 20 bucks a month and now they put it out there for free, it’s like another big giant.
Raqi:
Yeah what’s it gonna do to all those transcriptionists or audio transcribers that transcribe, you know, seminars for a living, I mean I don’t know how well it’s gonna do until people learn to give people their own mics and actually pay attention and just transcribe each channel at a time, and then they won’t do that for a while, they’ll put one mic in the middle of the table and be baffled by the fact that it can’t unscramble and discern who all of those 12 people are that are speaking, but I have to wonder what it’ll do to the professional transcriber in the end because it is a really easy problem to solve. I mean, giving everyone their own clean channel and the transcription software will do pretty well. I use the Just Press Record app and there’s a button in there, where you can have it transcribe also— I’ve always been a little skeptical because I know certainly what long dictation strings of stuff can turn out like, but it’s kind of a neat thing in the making, and I think for things like captioning and stuff it’s just such a lifesaver, somebody doesn’t have to sit there and do all that transcription by hand. Again.
Jeff:
It’s like we all got the United Nations in our own phone, right?
Raqi:
We speak any language, we write any word you want, that’s great.
Serena:
It will be interesting to see how well it does—like I agree with you, Raqi, because take Spanish for example, there’s so many different unique ways to say different things, like if it’s a formal person, if it’s a friend, if it’s family, right, there’s different—I forget the terms because I am horrible at languages, my brain doesn’t work that way, but Spanish just is one example. even the Spanish speaking Mexico is slightly different than what they speak in Spain, or you know, there’s just subtle differences that it could be obvious that it was done by a computer as opposed to a human.
Raqi:
Well, there’s a lot of use of idiom too, and that’s where it starts to get really interesting, it’s like okay, how well is this gonna tap into some of the nuances of speech or some of the slang or some of the language that may not necessarily literally mean exactly what it is that you’re saying, but everybody knows what that phrase means, you know? How thorough is it? I’d like to believe that since it’s based on, you know, we have these engines that are able to do this real time translation that will have, you know, pretty decent updating of things that are indicative of different pieces of linguistic—what’s the word I’m looking for, I’m looking for a word, it’s too late in the evening, see, I need my latte—but their character, there are for stylistic differences depending on where you are, like you said, what country, what region, and I just wonder how well they’re going to keep up with that vernacular.
Jeff:
I wonder “If I had my druthers” would come across in Spanish.
Raqi:
Right?
Jeff:
Yeah. Another thing about translation is, I had some followers on Blind Abilities that are from Japan, and I can hear their names and you always hear voiceover switch over to a different voice and try and say it correctly or whatever. So I go into their tweets but if you go through the tweet and keep swiping it’ll say translate, and if you hit it, it’ll—in text, it’ll translate that tweet and they’re saying like, you know, you don’t know what they’re saying because if you don’t know Japanese, then all sudden it comes out saying stuff like “We have to have the rights for the blind just like everybody else to get our test on time” you know, it’s like, they’re seeing the same stuff we are.
Raqi:
It’s the same thing, that’s interesting.
Jeff:
Yeah, it’s like wow, these people are cool. The only thing is, when someone responds to it, it doesn’t give you the option to follow the thread, you know what I mean? To keep translating, so I wish, you know, I’m glad they have that for the initial tweet, initial blast that the person is putting out, but I wish that you could actually switch the language around in that.
Raqi:
On the fly, and follow the translation.
Jeff:
Follow the thread.
Raqi:
Give it a year. Give it a year, it’ll be there.
Jeff:
We’re going somewhere.
Raqi:
If—here’s the thing about translate, we’re going places. Eventually translation is going to be a seamless, you know, it’ll just be a no-brainer thing that, because the knowledge is already there, the intelligence is there, the linguistic structure. it’s there, it’s just—give it time, give it a year.
Jeff:
I could freely drop into Colorado and talk to anybody then.
Raqi:
Right?
Serena:
Really.
Raqi:
They could come to Minnesota and talk to you.
Serena:
Nobody will ever be able to translate his Minnesotan verbiage.
Jeff:
Does anybody ever say “Oh wait, wait, slow down. Are you from Colorado?”
Serena:
No one ever says that. There’s no Colorado accents.
Jeff:
They’re not like “Oh she’s from the other side of the mountain.”
Serena:
They might if, you know, your speech is a little bit slower and you’re super chill, then they might ask. They might ask you if you’re from California too, if that happens.
Raqi:
I was gonna say, that’s starting to sound like California now, a little slower and super chill, now you’re going Los Angeles on us.
Jeff:
There’s one other thing in iOS 14 that I really found was—audio customization. I thought, well, what’s that for, why is it in accessibility, and I was like, huh, and they said “Well, you have to have AirPod Pros,” well, I have AirPod Pros so there I am going down the accessibility line, you know, I go down there and they have this one called audiovisual, so I tap on that. Then there’s audio customization, and you can manually do this, like for phone calls, you can bring up the mid-range, and you can listen to
Raqi:
Equalize it a little bit.
Jeff:
Yeah, so—and the highs can be pushed a little bit, so I went through the manual self and I slightly, slightly, slightly, I didn’t need anything and I don’t like a heavy mid-range, I’m just not that guy, but then they have this, where you can go into the customization and you go into this and it actually plays a song for you, and then you get to go with or without, you know, and you get to pick this stuff, and it’s neat. And they also have people talking, and if you can’t hear it that well, just say so, and it’ll tweak it for you. So if you’re in a crowded area and people are having conversations, you can’t pick it out, it enhances that tone, that certain color of voice, so it’s really neat. It’ll work on phone calls, movies, music, it’s kind of cool.
Raqi:
You know, I like to pride myself on knowing what’s going on. I’ve been doing this for a lot of years, and I saw this, right before we started the podcast, and I went “What!?” I have the original AirPods and I have the second generation, and then I have the AirPods Pro, so I cycle between all three of them, and when one dies I go grab the other pair, you know, and I’ve seen some really interesting customization for the AirPods Pro, but some of this is brand new, and so I got really excited because I really—especially where AirPods are concerned, I mean have them in my ears almost 23 and a half hours a day, unless I’m in the shower. I mean I sleep with them, it’s crazy, I wear them everywhere. So this makes me really excited because I’ve always found that the new AirPods Pro are a little bit heavier on the low end which is okay with me—I’m like you, Jeff, I like to cut a lot of the mids out and bring the highs and the bases up. It’s just a curve that I like for music and stuff, but I’ve always wished I could bring the highs up a little bit, I don’t know, maybe I’m just old and losing my hearing-
Jeff:
No, you can, you can-
Raqi:
-but I’m so excited, and I saw it about a half an hour before the show and I went “Darn it, I don’t have time to go play with this now because I-” so I’m, you know, I’ll be drinking lattes and playing with my AirPods as soon as we get off the podcast because I’m really excited about this, I think this is awesome. I don’t know how many people use the pass through feature, whose name escapes me—transparency, thank you slow brain—but I use it all the time and I find it just—I can’t imagine now going back to headphones that don’t have the ability to mix, you know, what’s going on around me with what I’m always listening to.
Jeff:
Yeah, you can have the pass through on, I do that when I’m on a walk or if I’m doing other things, and I can pick it up because I had it on noise cancellation, and this mail truck was coming. And they have those fake motors in them, you know, they got the LP gas. And I’m going along, doot-doot-doot, and I’ll say it was like oh, mail truck, and the guy, as soon as I stepped around it he vrooooom-
Serena:
Who was your O and M teacher, Jeff? Like, come on now.
Raqi:
He’s not listening to the podcast, whoever it was.
Serena:
Oh man.
Jeff:
This Week in Tech was going and I was really into it, and it’s like, I forgot. But, you know, some people just put one in so they can hear the sounds. I just happen to have noise cancellation on but now another setting in the air pods settings, you can turn on for one ear, if you just have one in you can have noise cancellation on one ear, that wasn’t there at first, so it’s neat.
Serena:
That would throw me off.
Raqi:
That would make me feel really lopsided. I’m like you, Serena, I would have a really hard time with that.
Jeff:
Keep walking to the right all the time.
Raqi:
Right? My head would be on the ground like “What? What?”
Serena:
With the original air pods, I used to wear one all the time because it didn’t really plug your ear, it just kind of sat there, but with the AirPod—air—man. AirPod Pros, jeez, they have that silicone whatever it is, silicone tip, that does kind of plug your ears, so-
Raqi:
They’re in your ear.
Serena:
Yeah, it’s hard to wear just one of those, I just feel weird with it.
Raqi:
I’ve gotten spoiled, I think. You know, for years it was okay because that was what we had to do, and, you know, you’d get a single BlueTooth earpiece or, heaven forbid, even before then, you know, most things you’d have one thing in your ear and the other ear was there for traveling or talking or whatever, but once you have the ability to have the sound inside your head like that. I mean, for me once I was able to mix and balance at the same time and have it in both ears, but be able to regulate it—it’s so hard to go back now, I put one in my ear, even the original air pods, you know, like Serena said, which don’t really block your ears, they just sort of sit there, but it bugs me. I want the sound to be in both ears or not at all, I think because I start to have it split my attention between two sound sources, one for each ear. And such a long time, I’ve gotten really used to having both ears, able to balance, and so I’m kind of spoiled now, with that transparency feature.
Jeff:
It’s the way of the times, I tell you. When I saw the price of them, at first I was holding back but after about five seconds of debating I dropped it.
Serena:
I was going to say, I’m pretty sure I remember when they came out, it was last October-ish, right? I’m pretty sure you got them—didn’t you do two hour delivery or something?
Jeff:
You just punch it in and all of a sudden, two hours later I got them. I had him before we did the show.
Raqi:
Oh, that’s awesome.
Serena:
It was like the day that they released it—he’s like “I held back.”
Raqi:
See, I waited.
Serena:
I didn’t get mine for like two week.
Jeff:
She was gonna wait till Christmas.
Raqi:
Wow.
Serena:
And then I was like, screw that.
Raqi:
I don’t feel so guilty then, I feel like a nerd buying all these—especially with headphones, the AirPods really are like the cool new product for me of the decade, the way the iPhone was of the first decade of this generation. AirPods have just revolutionized—honestly I have them in my ears all the time, you know, all the time.
Jeff:
Yeah, I don’t believe all those stories about the bacteria buildup that they warn you about.
Raqi:
They’re clean, you can clean them!
Serena:
I don’t even want to know what mine look like.
Raqi:
That’s what soap and alcohol are for.
Serena:
I gave my husband my first AirPods, and I was all offended because he was cleaning them diligently. He was like “Did you ever clean the case?” and I was like, no-
Jeff:
Hydrogen peroxide, toothbrush.
[doorbell sound]
Marlon:
Hey Jeff, it’s Marlon. As you were on the topic of AirPod Pros, I’ve had my AirPod Pros for quite a while and I’ve not been given admittance into the AirPod Pro Pals Club. Can I have the password? Please? Please please please? So I can be part of the club with both you and Side Hustle Serena, thank you.
Raqi:
That’s funny.
Jeff:
Another thing that’s coming out, you know, the speculation, the theory of things to come, we got Apple rolling out some new products, one of them is the nether—air tags, you know-
Serena:
Sure, Jeff, mm-hm.
Raqi:
So it’s been—you know, I think maybe they went the way of airpower-
Serena:
Don’t say those words around Jeff.
Jeff:
Well, they say they’re coming, but someone’s actually starting to describe them now. They’re quarter inch thick, they’re in a circle pattern, they’re using the U1 chip, which is going to give them a better location if you lose one and stuff, that’s what I like.
Raqi:
Yeah, through walls, and that’s going to be fabulous for people who can’t see, you’ll be able to get so close to things and pinpoint-
Jeff:
Yeah, angles-
Raqi:
I’m excited, I’m really excited. Seriously, for all that I’m a skeptic too, but I’m excited.
Jeff:
And any Apple device that has that chip in it will be able to tandem up-
Raqi:
It’s right here. Yeah!
Jeff:
Like hey, we’re looking for the air tags, and then your other Apple device is over the going “I can help!”
Serena:
It’s like they’re a superhero team.
Jeff:
Yeah, Marvel is gonna work out a deal with Apple.
Serena:
But can they—I just don’t understand, and I know two things. Number one, why can’t they put a GPS chip in those, like I just wish—I know they probably be more expensive, but that would be crazy helpful if you lost them on a train or something, and then, why isn’t it just built into the Apple TV remote? Those things—and I know you’re gonna talk about this a little bit later. Maybe this is why they’re doing it. But that Apple TV remote, when you have a seven year old, gets lost way more often than it should.
Raqi:
How come nobody likes—will somebody tell me what it is, with the Apple TV remote that nobody likes?
Serena:
It’s just too small.
Raqi:
Is that what it is? I’ve just heard nobody likes it.
Serena:
Yeah, no, I don’t mind the design of it and stuff, it’s just too small. It’s easy to lose
Jeff:
It’s like a tongue depressor, you know? You just kind of-
Raqi:
Everybody hates it. Everybody, I even listened to Leo Laporte on Twit, all the time all those guys just rag on—If you listen to Mac Break Weekly, man, they just tear up the poor Apple TV remote and I think “Why? It’s kind of cool,” but I don’t have children, and that makes, you know, I get it, it’s tiny, and if it goes under the couch or something you probably won’t see it again forever.
Jeff:
Well, or until you’re not looking for it and then, oh, there it is.
Raqi:
Right? Or until the vacuum runs it over or something.
Serena:
Well, and we have the old silver one and you know, the fourth generation one or whatever it is, they have so many different ones-
Raqi:
With the touch surface?
Serena:
Yeah, and I don’t mind the touch surface one. I think it’s super—it’s fluid, like, I have no problem using it. Now my husband, the sighted person here, always has it upside down. He’s always pushing the wrong button, I’m like, that is not the right button. “Oh, I had it upside down. I’m sorry.”
Raqi:
Mine can’t use it either.
Serena:
I’m like, you can’t tell the difference? I mean, they feel—it’s more matte on the touch part, like it’s—
Jeff:
So I got this figured out if. If I was a single guy I would want to say I like beaches, sunsets, and I operate my Apple TV remote right side up.
Raqi:
And I need a girl who can operate my Apple TV remote for me
Serena:
I don’t think it’s that complicated to operate because there’s one long button for the volume, it’s not hard to figure out where it goes.
Jeff:
I saw the Apple TV remote has settings in my phone right now, and I thought, what? So I went into it, and I can turn off the slide-
Raqi:
Yeah, you can use your phone-
Jeff:
You know, the slide gestures on the remote, you can turn those off and use buttons instead.
Raqi:
On the remote, yeah.
Jeff:
Huh.
Serena:
That must be new for 14 and whatever the TVOS is going to be called.
Jeff:
I don’t know, I’m—the beta right now I think is working really good, I’m getting to that point where, when someone starts mentioning 13, I just go, eh, whatever.
Raqi:
You’re past it. So yesterday.
Serena:
They should have literally just skipped 13 like hotels do.
Jeff:
13 was bad.
Raqi:
It is bad. I hope the braille support is a little more fluid. It’s gotten better. There’s some issues, I would be okay with it except that it was really fabulous for a while and then things just started to go awry, and they just never got fixed and never got fixed, and then a few things got fixed and then things went awry again, and it’s gotten better, it’s gotten some attention, it’s better than it was in, you know, previous—I think it was iOS 12 where it was just, maybe it was 11, 11 or 12 it was just awful, I mean, to the point of being unusable by some people. But it still has some really odd, weird anomalies with voiceover and I just hope that—I don’t know if you’ve had a chance ever to play with it, with the display, but I’m curious, especially in apps like mail, how the braille support is, at what point does it break itself. If it breaks itself.
Jeff:
Well, that’s always been a touchy area and—go over to Android and a lot of people complain about that.
Raqi:
That’s unusable, that’s unusable. So…
Jeff:
You know, we’re talking about the Apple TV, they say they’re gonna be faster, I think, why does it have to be faster? Why do they need a bigger chip? I mean, I’m watching a TV show. I’m not gonna watch it in 12 minutes if it’s 60 minutes you know, that’s not fast, that’s fast forward.
Serena:
I will say, though—we’ve had, I don’t know if Hulu is just having problems or what, but on our newest Apple TV because we have two fourth generation ones, whatever, whichever one’s the newest one, sometimes we’ll click Hulu and it’ll just sit there, never load, you have to shut down the app. So I don’t know if that’s the chip thing, or if it’s Hulu that’s just horrible. But another thing that made me laugh kinda internally was, you mentioned, am I going to watch a 60 minute show in 12 minutes? And I’m not sure if you guys saw an article—this would have been a few weeks back about—the rumor about Netflix making it where you could speed up the audio.
Raqi:
Yeah, you can!
Jeff:
Could you imagine Robin Williams sped up?
Raqi:
Why would you do that?
Serena:
I would never—we chat about it, I would never do that, I think it ruins-
Jeff:
I don’t.
Raqi:
Oh, I do.
Serena:
-I don’t speed up podcasts, I don’t speed up audiobooks-
Raqi:
Oh my god, I do, I can listen to—oh man, if I listened to it at normal speed, I’d be—oh, I’d be gone.
Serena:
Oh, I can’t do it. My husband—oh man, my husband walks around listening to our podcast on fast speed and it irritates me to no end. I’m like, I need you to get out of this room.
Jeff:
So Raqi, you’re gonna listen back to this podcast probably at double speed, right?
Raqi:
Probably 2x, yeah.
Jeff:
[slowed down voice] So, I’m going to say this, just for you-
Raqi:
[slowed down voice] Really slowly.
Serina:
Oh my gosh, Jeff.
Raqi:
No, maybe 1.5, it depends on the narrator, and what it is and who it is. Some things you can’t speed up, and Netflix I think would be really awkward, because with books or something where it’s a single audio source I will absolutely speed up a human reader, but I think with a movie or a documentary or something that’s a little more difficult, you’ve got music and you’ve got ambience-
Serena:
Scene changes.
Raqi:
Right. And I think also when you do speed it up, unless they’ve done a really good job, you get a lot of compression, so [fast garbled voice]. So everybody starts to get all compress-y and you get that—where it just takes a good stereo image. Can you imagine a garbled movie that’s supposed to be in stereo and now it’s kind of sort of in stereo but it—you know, I think it depends what you speed up.
Jeff:
The first half of Castaway.
Serena:
The first half, try the first—it’s basically a 15 minute movie.
Jeff:
Yeah, you take that away from it, there you go.
Serena:
Just hear a bunch of ocean waves the whole time.
[seagulls and ocean waves]
Jeff:
[unintelligible] is gonna say “Don’t speed up my variations.”
Raqi:
I thought it was a weird place to put—I mean it really has nothing to do with anything, but I could see, you know, someone like YouTube even doing it because there’s a lot of spoken audio, but I thought it was a weird thing for Netflix to do, and I know that’s a little bit of a segue from say, Apple TV, but I really did think that was an odd thing to implement.
Serena:
And YouTube does have it where you can speed up the audio, because I’ve—again, my husband will watch like live video podcasts on there, and he always has it sped up.
Raqi:
Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense because it’s spoken audio but—I guess Netflix is too but it’s all movies and stuff, that just seems a little odd to me.
Serena:
Well, and you would think that the Hollywood producers and directors would not want that to be an option, because part of watching a movie is the dramatic effects, you know?
Raqi:
I don’t think they were happy about it, I think there was a lot of controversy about that. A little odd to me.
Jeff:
For anybody that’s older, maybe, Paul Harvey would be very upset. We only had three channels back then. Come on.
Raqi:
Those were the days, those were the good old days, Jeff!
Jeff:
Serena, the Bicentennial was 1976.
Raqi:
I was in kindergarten, thank you.
Serena:
I was not born in 1976.
Raqi:
Oh, god. I was in school and I remember sitting in kindergarten learning about the Bicentennial.
Jeff:
I was in school. Yeah.
Raqi:
First grade.
Jeff:
Oh, did you get to wear those triangle hats? Did you fold them up-
Raqi:
Yeah, god, I forgot all about that. Yeah, it was a big teaching experience for them to try to teach little kids history. We had no—we could barely say Bicentennial.
Jeff:
Serena, are you still sporting the HomePod in your estate?
Serena:
I am, and it’s still my favorite speaker, other than our very massive surround sound system.
Jeff:
Rumour has it-
Serena:
[singing] Rumour has it!
Jeff:
That-
Serena:
That was totally unscripted.
Jeff:
-that the HomePod is going to come out with like, kind of like a mini, or a HomePod 2, it’s not going to be focused more on the music, which is awesome music in itself right now, but it’s going to be focus more on being a personal assistant that people will have.
Raqi:
Is it portable then?
Serena:
Then I’m going to need them to actually make Siri a competent personal assistant first.
Jeff:
Yeah-
Serena:
She is by far the worst personal assistant, out of the home speakers or the smart speakers.
Jeff:
I mean I’ve got the Sonos with the Amazon on there, you know, the lady and then I have the Google, and these commands that I use throughout the house. I can change up the Amazon ones a little bit but if I say, “Hey, S-person,” my watch could go off, my phone could go off, now a device, it’s like whoa, it’s like there’s a tornado coming. This place lights up around this place, you know, my watch, my phone, everything. It was like wow, how many devices do I have? One more, I don’t know, I don’t know if I’m—I like the speaker part of it, I don’t know if I want one just for another device, though, an assistant.
Serena:
Yeah, they should focus on the audio, because the audio in the HomePod is absolutely amazing. Like, there’s nothing that I’ve heard that sounds anything like it, but whenever we’re trying to ask that lady something she fails every time, “Sorry, I can’t do that on the HomePod.”
Raqi:
But that’s not the fault of the HomePod. That’s her. So, do you find that even the HomePod supersedes your Sonos?
Serine:
I don’t have a Sonos-
Raqi:
Oh, Jeff’s got the Sonos, Jeff’s got the Sonos. Interesting.
Serena:
Because I never invested in the Sonos because I knew the HomePod was coming, so I was like I’m gonna get the HomePod, because I know the accessibility will be there.
Raqi:
You’re built into the Apple ecosystem like the rest of us.
Serena:
Exactly. Exactly.
Raqi:
So it’s easy to get Apple stuff because it all plays nice with each other. Jeff, is it slated to be portable or is it gonna be battery powered, can you carry it since it’s a little mini version or is it-
Jeff:
It might be right there with the air power, I don’t know, it might be something three years from now going, it’s coming, it’s coming.
Raqi:
Where is it because I would kind of like a battery operated version that I could pick up and carry, you know, back and forth to work when I have to stay over there for a couple days or whatever. I’d kind of like something that’s, you know—I don’t use speakers too much because I always have headphones on at home but that’s only because I live with someone else, you know, if I travel or whatever I do kind of like to have a portable speaker, so that would be sort of cool if it had battery power.
Jeff:
And a suction cup right in the shower, just put it up there right on the tile, there you go, right on the glass door above the spray, you know.
Serena:
Make it waterproof too. I do have a really nice portable speaker by Bose, SoundLink Mini I think is what it’s called.
Raqi:
Yep.
Serena:
They sound amazing, and the battery life is really good, so—it’s not as portable as others but I think it sounds really good.
Raqi:
It’s pretty good…
Serena:
Pretty tactile.
Raqi:
I have another one called the Fugu, the big Fugu XL, and it’s a little bit larger to carry around, I bring that when I exhibit, and stuff, because it can sit in the exhibit hall with me and lasts a little longer.
Jeff:
Is that the big circular one?
Raqi:
No, that’s probably the Bose Revolve you’re thinking of. The Fugu is a long, kind of shaped sort of like the JBL charge, but it’s got a number—it’s got tweeters that fire in all directions so it’s kind of neat because the casing—that fires from the ends and the sides so you have eight different tweeters in there.
Jeff:
Oh, wow. No wonder you’re losing your high pitches.
Raqi:
Right? You can only get—so this is the problem, right, it’s still only, you know, 14 inches long or whatever so even if it blasts the music out the sides, you can still only get so much separation from a speaker that is that narrow. It’s not gonna sound as good as something in your living room where you’ve got one on each side, but it’s good enough for traveling around and getting good audio.
Jeff:
The only reason I got the Sonos was someone was moving into the HomePod venue, and they sold them for half price to me, and they’re basically brand new, they came in the box, original box, so I got the Sonos ones up on the cabinets above the counters. It works really good, especially when—you can switch off if you want, you know, your Amazon or your Google Voice in there, whatever.
Raqi:
Yeah, no, it’s nice speakers,
Jeff:
I like it. I really wanted the HomePods because of the science and technology that they built into them, things, someone told me one time it was like $35,000 worth of technology built into just a unit, you know, it’s like, wow.
Raqi:
Yeah, and the people that have one will tell you there’s nothing better. I mean everybody that I know that has one says what Serena said, it’s just a great speaker, I mean I just have heard that from every single HomePod user, so I know there must be a little magic in there too, maybe?
Jeff:
I think it’s got seven Barfield microphones so it can-
Raqi:
Mics, yeah.
Serena:
Yeah, it’s base-y too, like, it’s the size of a—the easiest way to describe it is like a Costco sized pickle jar, but it has a massive-
Jeff:
It’s got some boom-boom.
Serena:
It must have a sub in there that has the same power of like, I’d say a 10 inch.
Raqi:
Is it that small though? You can pick it up and move it?
Serena:
Yeah, yeah, I mean, it probably weighs like maybe two pounds. I would guess.
Raqi:
See, I stayed away from this, you’re gonna make me go spend more money now, and I might just do it.
Serena:
Wait until the events, because they put them—I paid full price for it when it came out but they’re definitely a lot cheaper now, I’d wait until after whatever events Apple does this fall and see, but I love it, and the other thing you can do with it too is you can—say you’re listening to something on your phone, you get home and you’re like, I’m going to listen to-
Raqi:
Switch it over.
Serena:
-hold the phone above it and it transfers it.
Raqi:
Oooh, I love it, oh my god.
Serena:
Yeah, like magic. As long as your phone is unlocked it transfers it. It’s super cool.
Jeff:
Another apple for the orchard.
Raqi:
I can’t, I’m spending too much money lately, oh my gosh I want one now.
Jeff:
Where are you guys on your updates for your phone? I mean, I’m not necessarily ready to do it, but I’ve had mine for two years, and the 12 should be coming out, and there was something about some cases that—this one guy is, he’s well known, that they have an extra hole in one of the cases, and the other case didn’t have that hole and they’re wondering if it’s the LIDAR.
Raqi:
The LIDAR sensor in the 12 max or whatever it’s going to be, the biggest one.
Jeff:
That’s a big tease for me.
Raqi:
The 6.8 inch phone. 6.8 inches you know, it’s almost iPad mini size.
Jeff:
Wow. That should fit-
Raqi:
And they’re supposed to have square edges.
Jeff:
Square edges?
Raqi:
Yeah, they all are gonna supposedly have the square edges like the iPhone 5 had.
Jeff:
Is that so it stays in your pocket better?
Raqi:
No, I think it’s so you can stand it up on its edge, actually.
Jeff:
Oh really.
Raqi:
Yeah.
Jeff:
Huh.
Raqi:
For viewing, or whatever.
Serena:
What is this LIDAR sensor?
Jeff:
LIDAR is the ability to check distances out, like most of the time when something senses where things are in a room—this is going to be able to, like, say you want to find a chair, it might say it’s three feet in front of you, you know, it’s just more information for spatial recognition. It’s a new science, it’s something new, and how are they going to incorporate that into all these apps like Microsoft Soundscape or something.
Raqi:
Yeah.
Jeff:
Where will they go?
Serena:
Or imagine the pictures you could take if you knew relative…
Raqi:
I just want an empty seat finder for the Amtrak train when I go back to work. Let me just point the camera and see if there’s people sitting there or not when I’m walking by.
Serena:
How cool would that be? Like just some subtle vibrations or something on your Apple watch or-
Raqi:
Yeah, or give me a sense, is it empty, or is it—yeah, I’d love to know.
Jeff:
When I was talking to the people at Apple, when I brought up LIDAR, it went quiet.
Raqi:
No one’s gonna even acknowledge—what are you talking about, no speak English.
Jeff:
Moving on.
Raqi:
I ask too, whenever they come in the store, you know, we’ve got a couple folks and who’s, I won’t name any names but we got a few, and so I love to tease them, “Hey man!” and when they’re bugged I go “Hey check it out, look look look look it’s broken.” And it’s fun because I know that they’re gonna go back, you know, they’re leaving the store and they’re gonna go back to Apple Park or wherever they go. And it’s always fun to kind of bend the ear and hope that maybe that they’re listening to me and not just “Yeah, yeah, another one,” you know but it’s—I love to ask questions and of course I don’t get any, “I don’t know, I don’t know, maybe,” you know I get no responses but I love to try to finagle information about what’s coming. Of course I get absolute silence too but that’s to be expected, so that’s pretty cool
Serena:
You never know you might catch him on like a weak moment one day, and like-
Raqi:
Nope, they’re pretty guarded, they’re sealed.
Jeff:
They actually send in a droid of themselves first.
Raqi:
I think so, I think that’s what it is, they’re very careful.
Serena:
Are you sure it’s a droid though, because they’re from Apple, so-
Raqi:
Droids from Apple.
Jeff:
Yeah, the new conversion.
Serena:
Oh my goodness.
Jeff:
You got Android in my Apple.
Serena:
Oh, god.
Raqi:
You got Apple in my Android.
Serena:
So confused.
Jeff:
Oh no. Apple has the Translate app now.
Serena:
Stop.
Jeff:
It was due, it was due.
Serena:
You had asked about our upgrade status, and I am 100% upgrading. I don’t know what I’d choose, I have to see what comes out, but my phone’s three years old, I have the 10. But I tried to upgrade whenever the form factor changes is kind of my deal now. I used to upgrade every other year but then they stopped changing the form factor so I didn’t care anymore. So I’m due for one this year.
Jeff:
Yeah, but the thing is if those cases are true, and LIDAR would be that extra one, you know, that’s only going to come out in the 12 Pro, which usually comes out later, may come out later, and is the most expensive one of all, it’s like, oh no, here it goes. They’re digging in, they’re digging in, just that slight pull. It’s just a slight pull and pretty soon, it’s gravity and I’m sucked in.
Serena:
But for how long I keep my phones for now, I’m okay paying a little bit more to get the pro version. I probably wouldn’t get the Pro max or whatever, because like that’s just massive but I do keep them for longer than I ever did before, even when I had my 6 I think I had that for like four or five years, even, because I just was stubborn because they never changed the form factor.
Jeff:
I don’t think—size to me doesn’t matter anymore, I remember—remember the nanos? I mean, you could put those in your pocket.
Serena:
I was always afraid I was gonna lose that thing.
Jeff:
Yeah-
Serena:
It was the size of the Apple Watch, honestly-
Jeff:
Yeah, it was, it was, one circle-
Serena:
Little bit thinner-
Raqi:
They used to have wristbands for it.
Serena:
They had the Apple Watch before we even knew it.
Raqi:
That’s it.
Jeff:
And you know what the stock was back then, wow.
Serena:
Well they did just split again-
Jeff:
Four ways, didn’t they?
Serena:
Four ways, yeah.
Jeff:
Well, we need a two trillion dollar company but you can do anything you want,
Raqi:
They can just keep taking my money and taking my money and taking my money, it’s bad, but I’m so in it now, you know, I’m so dialed in-
Jeff:
It is.
Raqi:
-I’m looking at the phone, I’m thinking okay, I bought mine last year. So I really don’t have any business upgrading, I bought the 11 last fall. I’m very tempted though.
Jeff:
You’re not in line for a new one, then.
Raqi:
No. No, I’m not. But I am because-
Jeff:
There’s a rule, there’s a rule.
Raqi:
But I got FOMO, Jeff, I got FOMO really badly, I want to check it out and play with things and I’m kind of tempted to sell the 11. My rule is if you’re going to buy something—my rule is always sell it before it loses its resale value, because if you hold on to something too long, you get nothing for it and for the longest time I would sell items to replace them with the newer items, and I’m really tempted, I don’t know, I have friends that I could pass my 11 to who would really benefit from it. So I’m sort of tempted but there’s always that part of me too that says okay, first 5g phones and everything, maybe I’ll just sit on it and wait and see how that goes for everybody, but I do like the idea of the different form factor. I’m not sure how I feel about a 6.8 inch phone, or if I want to stay with the 6.1 inch size, but the battery life is the kicker that always gets me. My biggest problem with it is, there’s also that rumored new 12 inch MacBook on the horizon with the silicon chip and promised 15 to 20 hour battery life, and that’ll take a chunk of my money too. I was always a small MacBook Air person and I’ve held off on replacing my Mac for years, my Mac is seven years old now, but one of my Macs is five years old, the other one’s seven years old, so I’m ready.
Jeff:
I’ve got a seven year old Mac and a five year old MacBook Pro.
Raqi:
And a 2011 Mac, so it’s time and I’ve just held off.
Jeff:
Well, the thing is if you’re going to wait out for a silicon, it might take a couple years for the developers to catch up with that too, and everything.
Raqi:
But the form factor, I don’t want to carry—13 inches is certainly starting to get to be too big, I love the 11 inch size and they just—ever since they went to 13 and 14 and 16, give me a break, I don’t want, you know, something that big, so it—for me, when they talk about resurrecting the 12 inch, I did a happy dance all around my kitchen when I read that on Twitter, I was-
Jeff:
Lattes for everybody!
Raqi:
And I just hope they—whoa, man I was, right? Right? Drinks in the Vitamix or something, I was just excited. And I hope they get rid of that butterfly keyboard, but again, there’s another, what is it going to be, at least 1500 bucks right? At least.
Jeff:
At least.
Raqi:
So, you know, I’m thinking okay, just take my soul, take my firstborn, take my money, take, you know, they outta just hire me so that instead of giving me a paycheck I could—I mean, it’s crazy expensive so that’ll probably make me hold off on upgrading, just because I, at some point I have to stop it, you know, I could just go out and go crazy, but. So I may wait a year, because I’m really not in line like you guys are, where you really held out enough years that you’re probably due. I could get another year out of the 11 easily, so I don’t know. The jury’s out, but I probably will wait for a little while anyway and see how you all fare.
Serena:
Well, I know when I bought my phone last time, I did that—I always do the, I don’t even remember what it’s called but if you buy them directly from Apple you just pay a little each month and it includes the two years of the Apple Care and all that. And even after 24 months if you really wanted to you could upgrade, I was like, no, because I don’t want to turn my phone back in, but that’s exactly why it’s there, for, you know, the upgrade anytime piece where you get a new phone every single year. You never own your phone, but it’s an easy way to do it, though.
Jeff:
I mean, if you’re gonna get one of those maxes or something like that, you’re looking at 60-some dollars a month, you know-
Serena:
On the Apple card.
Jeff:
Yeah. You know, you’re not paying any interest and it’s just boom-boom-boom, but you know, after two years, you’re going to sit there, okay, you don’t have to pay anything, do you want to incur that again. That’s why a lot of people went with the SE this year because, gosh, it’s quite a phone. I mean, if you’re not worried about battery life as much as some of us, or the speakers or something. But Lori got the SE, and the speakers are louder than the 7, big time.
Raqi:
Touch ID, I’d love to have that. I don’t mind face ID at all, I’ve had nothing but good luck with it but oh do I miss Touch ID, it’s just so much faster.
Jeff:
But if people want an affordable phone and an affordable iPhone I think the SE is a good-
Raqi:
SE’s great.
Jeff:
It is, you got-
Raqi:
It’s a great phone.
Jeff:
It’s one of the fastest phones out there right now.
Raqi:
Yeah, and it’s small, fits in your pocket. Touch ID, so if you’re in a place where you don’t want to pull it out, hold it in your hand, you know, and use it out on the street, you just reach into your pocket and unlock it and do whatever you need to do. It’s a fabulous phone, it’s fast, people seem to like it. My only gripe I think would be going back down to a smaller battery again, because I have that thing about wanting a lot of battery life but it’s a, you know, it’s a great phone, so-
Jeff:
Well, Serena mentioned something about the real estate-
Raqi:
Affordable.
Jeff:
Yeah, Serena’s mentioned something about the real estate on it and I thought, I don’t know, I kind of liked it, but when I go back to my seven, and I start typing on certain apps, you know, you start typing, it’s like wait, why is the O there? It should be-
Serena:
Exactly. When you get used to the bezel-less screens and you go back to a phone that has a bezel, it’s different, you’re looking for the time way up where there’s no touchable screen-
Jeff:
No man’s zone.
Serena:
-it completely throws you off.
Raqi:
Yeah.
Jeff:
It’s dead space. And I always wondered, why are they taking this away, why do they need to go bezel-less, you know, and all that stuff and now I get it.
Raqi:
And then you use it, yep, and you use it for a while and it’s so hard to go back, I have an old iPad like that and it’s just a nightmare. It’s just so slow, it’s not really but I’m touching it, and I’m too close to the edge so I’m way off and there’s no icons there and it’s going doot-doot-doot-doot. It’s terrible. It’s like god, this thing is so slow, and I hit a button and it has to stop and think about it so you get spoiled with the quick interaction from the screen and stuff, it’s hard to go back, believe it or not.
Jeff:
Have any of you heard any rumored dates of the event?
Serena:
I read an article yesterday or maybe the day before, but it looks super shady, I’m not even gonna lie, like these always look super shady, that said the event might not be until October. And I don’t think that that’s the case because I think they want to get iOS 14 out, and I really think they’re going to have an event first, second week-
Raqi:
September.
Serena:
-well, I guess we’re already in the first week of September. But I really think they’re going to have it, they normally have it around the—I would predict it’d be around the 15th. Like, it’s always on a Tuesday. And I don’t think it’s ever been later than the second or third week in September because they want to talk—and what they’ll do is if they’re going to come out later they’ll just say, start shipping October 29 or whatever-
Raqi:
October 31st, yep, yep.
Serena:
You know, and people will be fine with that, they’ll —preorder starts in two weeks before that, it’ll ship the 31st, like that’s their norm, I don’t see them delaying a major event.
Raqi:
And they’ve done that before.
Serena:
Yeah, they did that with the iPhone 10, it didn’t come out until November when they had the event in September, because they released the 8 and then the 10 was delayed.
Raqi:
And I think they’re notorious for having events in September. So, you know, whether it’s first week or second week I’m kind of with you. My money’s on mid-September. You know, 15th, 21st, somewhere in there, like, I don’t see them letting September go by without announcing.
Serena:
No, because they want to boost the fourth quarter.
Raqi:
Right? Exactly and they want to have that—you know, it’s like having WWDC in June, it’s just something that they always do. And I will be really surprised if they wait to talk about it. I think they could wait till October, November easily to ship, but I’d be surprised if they waited longer to say, so let’s comment.
Serena:
Do you guys remember when their events used to be in June? This was—probably the iPhone 4 was the last one they did this with maybe. Their cell phone events used to be in June, and I remember when they shifted them to September-
Raqi:
Back when WWDC.
Serena:
I don’t know if WWDC was moved too or if they just did it at the same time, I don’t remember what the cycle was, but it used to be that the new stuff, the new phones would come out in the summer, and then I remember when they switched it to being in the fall, it was such a long wait, yeah.
Jeff:
Yeah, I don’t know when it’s gonna be. I was trying to figure it out with the betas and I thought I’d be getting a beta on Tuesday, but we haven’t gotten that beta, you know, and what do they call it, the gold master-
Serena:
The gold master should be coming out really soon.
Jeff:
-is not out yet.
Raqi:
Yeah, so it’s usually the week after, right? Isn’t the gold master the last one, and then it’s usually the week after that that they—isn’t that how it works?
Serena:
Yeah, when the gold master comes out, it’s usually about two weeks before it actually releases to the public, but it’s usually the same version that’s going to come to the public. And that should be hitting any day now, you would think.
Jeff:
Yeah and, like, if you haven’t had this life experience before, that’s what the Apple events do to me. I want to have this outer life experience, that wow factor that they used to have, like oh. My. Gosh. Nowadays when I see these events I’m like okay, okay-
Serena:
Oh, there’s another inaccessible video on the screen. Sweet.
Raqi:
Yeah. I’m gonna say that third week—what is that, the 22nd, 21st?
Serena:
My money’s on the 15th, the 22nd would be the one after that. I think the 15th, you think the 22nd.
Raqi:
Whoever wins, Jeff, you got to buy a latte.
Serena:
Yeah, Jeff has to buy the latte.
Raqi:
You make the lattes for the winner, and the loser. We all need lattes.
Jeff:
And any listeners want to guess, give us a call at 612-367-9063, and let us know what day you think the event’s going to happen. By the time I get this edited we’ll all probably know so I’m going to have to make a lot of lattes.
Serena:
We’ll all look like we don’t know what we’re talking about.
Raqi:
Give us a call and he’ll make you a latte too.
Jeff:
We can edit anything. We won’t look this stupid.
Raqi:
Yeah, unless we forget to take that out. Let’s just not even go there.
Serena:
Don’t say “We,” only one of us edits this.
Raqi:
That’s true, you’re the editor, right? You know what it is, tomorrow, my bet’s on this, tomorrow we get up, tomorrow’s Friday, so we’re gonna get up, last day of the week, feeling good, this is-
Serena:
Tomorrow is not Friday, that is very disappointing.
Jeff:
Yeah, they’re gonna announce probably announce-
Serena:
You have lost a day.
Raqi:
Tomorrow’s Thursday, I’m losing it, oh my god, like hey, tomorrow’s Friday, I have meetings tomorrow, too, come to think of it, so yeah, I’m just jumping—I need to sleep! So tomorrow, tomorrow’s Friday, let’s just say, we’re going to wake up and they’re gonna announce in the morning, or you know, the word will be out-
Serena:
And then everyone will analyze the-
Jeff:
Air power, now on sale!
Raqi:
We’ll jump on social media and all the announcements will be there about when the event’s gonna be.
Jeff:
Yep, and the price of the air tags-
Serena:
Jeff, you have got to give it up on air power, you’re not getting your air power, just give it up.
Jeff:
I heard they’re re-doing it and it’s gonna be vamped down a little bit, from what their dream was, you know?
Serena:
But they announced it, what, two years ago?
Raqi:
It’s your dream.
Jeff:
Yeah. Why don’t they just call up Samsung and say “Um, can we borrow your device?”
Raqi:
You know if they came out with it now after all this time, you know what a windfall—you know many people would run out and buy it?
Serena:
I don’t know though, because people already have their—like there’s tons of third party charging stations out there now-
Raqi:
But it’s Apple.
Serena:
-so if you want one you already have one.
Raqi:
I mean it’s true, they couldn’t charge a lot of money for it, because I think a lot of people-
Serena:
Oh no-
Raqi:
Apple’s notorious for charging—it’d 49 bucks, you know?
Serena:
But look at how much they charge for that smart case and people still buy it for the iPod, like they don’t care, people will still buy it. But it’s like I don’t know, do you really want to dismantle the nice one you already have set up on your nightstand just so you get the one that says Apple? I don’t know.
Raqi:
Some people would.
Serena:
Yeah.
Raqi:
Some people would. I don’t know, I don’t care too much, third party chargers, you know, I think work as well as anything. Unless for some reason the airpower—let’s say it came and it had a really good, you know, stellar way of connecting or didn’t drop—I know a lot of people have trouble with, you know, the intermittent charging thing or it’ll stop charging or maybe they have trouble with placement so it doesn’t stay on the charger. You know, if it solved a problem like that where it just always connected and always stayed charged and—I think people would if they wowed you with a form factor.
Jeff:
That lightning port just drives me crazy.
Serena:
Well, the wireless chargers, you know, they’re hard to position, the key wireless ones.
Raqi:
They are, that’s what I mean, it could slide off-
Serena:
Yeah, it’s hard to get it perfect on there. And if it’s your overnight charge and you didn’t realize you put it on wrong and you wake up and your phone’s dead—I had a friend that happened to. She was like “My alarm didn’t go off because my phone died overnight and I thought it was charging.”
Raqi:
Or it starts charging-
Jeff:
They probably send a backup lightning cord.
Raqi:
-they have that thing where they stop charging, you know, periodically-
Serena:
To optimize, yeah.
Raqi:
To try to, yeah, exactly, so I think people have that happen too, and then they get the charging sound always when it’s on the wireless charger, so that—I have a friend who complains about that, he says it starts and stops and starts and stops and it wakes me up because it’s noisy. Why don’t you make it silent? And he said, “It’s silent until I put it on the charger and then it’s noisy again,” so I don’t know.
Jeff:
Life in the big orchard, I tell you.
Raqi:
Real world problems.
Jeff:
I know. Well, Serena, Raqi, I think we had a great show here. Serena, this is for Raqi—Raqi, I think it’s latte time.
Raqi:
It’s latte time.
Jeff:
And time to put your AirPod pros in and check out that new device under the audiovisual section-
Serena:
She’s going to be up all night messing with that.
Raqi:
I got it! Cheers, Jeff!
Jeff:
Alright, take care, you guys.
Serena:
And then cue our funky music, right?
[funky music]
Jeff:
And for more podcasts with the blindness perspective, check us out on the web at www.blindabilities.com, on Twitter @blindabilities, and give us a call at 612-367-6093. Leave us a message, and let us know if we can put your voice on the next podcast. Drop us an email at info@blindabilities.com and download the free Blind Abilities app from the app store and Google Play store, that’s two words, blind abilities, and from all of us here at Blind Abilities, through these challenging times, to you, your family and friends, stay well, stay informed and stay strong. I want to thank you for listening, hope you enjoyed and until next time, bye-bye.
[Music] [Transition noise] -When we share
-What we see
-Through each other’s eyes…
[Multiple voices overlapping, in unison, to form a single sentence]
…We can then begin to bridge the gap between the limited expectations, and the realities of Blind Abilities.
Jeff:
For more podcasts with the blindness perspective, check us out on the web at www.blindabilities.com, on Twitter @BlindAbilities. Download our app from the app store Blind Abilities, that’s two words, or send us an email at info@blindabilities.com. Thanks for listening.
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