Eric and Jeff Chat About Video Streaming and Some Apple WWDC 2017

Greetings everybody. Welcome to the Wednesday, June 7th, 2017 episode of Free Webinar Wednesdays. This is Eric Cook, and I am with WSI Digital Marketing, where we work with businesses and organizations on helping them better understand and leverage the power of the internet as a strategic business tool. You can learn more about me and all the fun stuff we get to do here at WSI online at poweredbywsi.com. My good friend and Free Webinar Wednesday partner, Mr. Jeff Simpkins, is back today and joining me for the show. So Jeff, say hello to everybody out there in Free Webinar Wednesday world.

Greetings everybody, this is Jeff Simpkins and I'm with Community Bank Consulting, Inc. You can learn more about me and Community Bank Consulting, Inc. online at www.communitybankconsulting.com.

Cool. So what's new in your world, Jeffrey? I missed you last week. We talked all Google stuff. Googled out.

That sounds like fun. Wish I'd been around for that.

I kind of know what you might have been doing, and I suspect being on a show talking about Google would probably have been a preferred alternative. So we'll just kind of leave it at that. So, but I'm glad that you're back. It's good to hear your voice and glad I'm able to get you to chuckle a little bit. So that's even better.

So cool.

So the show today, I guess let's get the housekeeping items out of the way first. As a reminder, all shows are recorded and made available for free at webinarwednesdays.com. So here's last week's show if you wanted to hop on And kind of listen to some stuff we talked, or I talked, uh, we, me and the mouse in my pocket, as my grandmother used to say, uh, talked about Google's I/O conference, which is similar to the Facebook F8, and we're going to chat a little bit about Apple's version. Seems like they all kind of happen right around the same time. But this show and all shows are recorded and made available at freewebinarwednesdays.com if you want to hop out and check those out. And then if you are interested in asking a question or making a comment, please feel free to use the chat functionality in your control panel.

And let us know.

We'd love to hear from you if you're attending or listening to the show live today. So with those perfunctory housekeeping items out of the way, um, as Jeff and I were kind of kicking around what sorts of things we would like to talk about, sometimes we go into the current news media, determine if there's anything going on in the news that we would want to chat about, and we both kind of came to the consensus that what's basically been taking over the news hasn't really been such good stuff to talk about. So we're going to stay away from, with the exception of maybe the Apple Development Conference. But as I was kind of picking around the web and just looking at alternatives, I just did a Google search for feel-good news stories. And I came across this Sunny Skies. I'm not vouching for it. I don't know if it's loaded with malware and Bam. I don't know. It looks a little kind of clickbaity buzzy for me. Um, but what I liked about it was all of the news stories, um, seem to be feel-good related stories that don't focus on, um, political one way or another, controversy, people dying, bombing. Um, so if you're looking for just something that's kind of a feel-good story and you want to See how a 98-year-old turned $1,000 in stock into $2 million and donated it to help wildlife? Well, here's your story. Make you feel good. So I figured, Jeff, we'd start off with some feel-good, feel-good stories for today. So there we go. We got some feel-goods. So now I'm getting you to laugh quite a bit. I'm pretty impressed with myself.

Well, I've been convalescing on the sofa and I've watched— I'll have to admit, I have watched a few TV shows that are probably in the same category of credible news as that site. Yeah, yeah.

Too funny. So, well, let's shift over to kind of the real topic that you and I wanted to go over. But the last couple of episodes that we've had, I know we were together on the F8 discussion, and then I did Google I/O separately last week by myself. But there are some consistent themes that are being carried across here that all of the big dogs are coming out with. And Amazon, I've not really seen much on any particular event that they've held, but we've talked a little bit about the Amazon Echo and their calling feature and some of the new devices and video screens. So we're trying to tee up a conversation dedicated to that and have a conversation about how conversation is evolving. But for today, every year the folks at Apple have their Worldwide Developers Conference, which is where all the Appleites get together in California and basically talk about all the new things Apple— software, hardware, strategic direction changes or shifts. And so Jeff and I were kind of picking through this article earlier, and Jeff is an iPhone, iPad user. I am an Android phone and Android tablet user, but we both operate MacBook computers and, you know, are certainly not opposed to Leveraging what we can from an Apple device. So as we kind of scroll through, they've got this organized with some main headings. So what I'd like to do is just kind of look at each individual heading. We're going to have a little chat about it, what it, I think, means at a bigger picture, if it's an experience that Jeff can share, if he's using anything similar to that. And then again, if you've got a question or you want to talk a little bit further, by all means chime in. So the first item That made it to their list was their Apple TV. And I know this is one of the things that Jeff was pretty excited about. We have Roku devices as well as Chromecasts. We don't have an Apple TV in our home, so I don't have a whole lot to share on this, but I believe you do. And this seems pretty exciting to you.

I do.

Yeah. So let's talk about that.

Well, I'll start by just talking about TV in general. In my household, we have a current version Apple TV that is being used. We have a— I think it's a version 2 Apple TV that has never made it out of the box since it was moved to this house. We have a Roku box, a Roku Stick, and we have a Fire Stick. I'll preface my comments by just saying up front of, of our 3 different versions of TV devices, our favorite by far is the Roku. The, you know, the bottom line here on the Apple TV is, and this actually kind of surprised me, they're adding Amazon Prime Video to Apple TV. That's really exciting to me. I think that will probably bring up the value of Apple TV significantly because I've always just liked Amazon Video. What about you? Tell us about TV in your house. And I will— I probably should add, I made the conscious decision a couple years ago just to stop with cable TV and with Dish or DirecTV. I had DirecTV for years and years and years and just got tired of paying the bill. And we are a 100% streaming household now.

Yeah, I was gonna ask you if you've cut the cord. I know a lot of people have started doing that or have done that a while ago, and I've not. And maybe you have a different crowd, but I've not heard anybody that's cut the cord that has said, oh my God, I miss cable TV, and they've gone back once they've gotten to the point where they've decided, you know what, screw it, I'm not paying $90 or $100 or whatever. on a monthly basis anymore and they've cut the cord, they're done and they don't go back. So we still have not cut the cord. We're using satellite, but we have a couple of Roku devices and Chromecasts. And I would say from a simplicity, ease of use, only because it's always plugged in and it's always there, The Roku is probably our go-to device, and that pulls in, you know, an HBO Go, it pulls in Netflix, it pulls in YouTube, it pulls in the History Channel. And so each one of those extra channels, if it's part of a cable subscription, you have to sign in to make sure that the platform validates that you are a subscriber and can get access to those, which we are. So we still do that, but we watch A lot of Netflix and other shows on the Roku device. I will say, in a perfect world, if I had a Roku device and I had a Chromecast on the same television, the Chromecast likely would win out because the interface basically is my phone or my tablet or my computer. I can just go right directly to it and I can push whatever I want to watch on my device and send it directly to my television set. And, as I talked last week with regards to Google I/O, that's one of the big things that the Google Home device is looking to do, is instead of implementing a screen-based technology that allows you to see things like the Amazon— I think it's the View, or I can't remember the exact name. The Echo.

Yeah.

What they're doing is they're saying, we don't need a screen. You've got screens all over your house, so you just tell us what you want to see, and we'll push this wherever you want it. We'll push it to your television. We'll stick it in the man cave or the living room. And so over time, I'm almost envisioning as we replace televisions and we get new visual equipment, just putting those in with a Chromecast plugged in. It's there. It's ready to go. Give it its name. And then every television has a named device. And then we can go ahead and say, Send it to the Chromecast in the living room or the Chromecast in the den or the Chromecast in the bedroom, and it just sends it wherever we want it. So—

I will comment that on Firesticks and the integration with the Amazon Echo device that we often refer to as Sally on this program, I think a big disappointment of a lot of people have been They want the device we refer to as Sally to do exactly what you just described, and it doesn't. The only interface that, that the Amazon Echo person, virtual person—

Yeah.

Behind their company will work with TVs and digital devices aside from their soon-to-be-released Amazon What's it called? Amazon Look?

No, Look or View or— yeah, so something along those lines.

Actually, both of those, both of those are different devices that are about to be released. But the only way that you can interface it, Sally, with the TV is if you have a Sally-enabled remote for your Fire, Amazon Fire.

Yeah. And Just as a point of reference, I am actually out of the office today, not sitting next to my little dog.

So you can say the word.

So if you want to say it, go right ahead. I suspect if you're in your office and you've got the little black Echo device sitting there and I start talking the A-word, she might pay attention to me. And so I'll still use the code word, if you will, but that's okay.

Well, I'm on my headset, so it's fine for me to say her name.

Yeah, so we can talk about Alexa. There we go. Reset it. Reset it. Well, I think what I was also going to say before you made that really good point was I also like the portability of the Chromecast device. It's really small. It looks like, you know, about the size of a— maybe a little bit bigger than a silver dollar with a USB dongle that hangs off of it. So we've traveled to friends' houses and other places, even sometimes a hotel will allow you to plug into the HDMI port and change the input so you can actually watch stuff off of your own system and get access to your Netflix on the big screen instead of having to watch it on a tablet or a mobile device. So the portability of the Chromecast is also one that I really enjoy. And if some of our TVs weren't tucked away into armoires or on wall mounts or just so darn difficult to get to the back end, I probably would use it a whole lot more. But it's just such a pain in the ass trying to get behind some of those TVs and get it all plugged in because invariably you plug it in flipped so then it doesn't fit. And so, but it is what it is.

So anyway, the next item— Alex.

Go ahead. Anything else on that?

Before we move off of TVs, let's talk about some of the streaming services that are available, just kind of to be a little more comprehensive.

Cool.

So the streaming services that I have tried, I got really, really, really excited when DIRECTV announced their DIRECTV NOW service. Which in theory is supposed to be very much like— what's Dish's product called, Eric?

Oh, I don't know that one either. Dish To Go or something like that, where it allegedly plays off of an app on your phone. I don't know.

Um, hang on a second. Dish. They actually have a product that doesn't even have Dish in the name that is a streaming service.

Is that Dish Anywhere?

Dish Anywhere works with Sling TV. So DirecTV Now is supposed to be DirecTV's version of Sling, and I will have to say that was Absolutely the most disappointing product that I have ever bought that is affiliated with DirecTV or AT&T. Ended up having it for 3 months. That is actually how I got the current version of the Apple TV. And never successfully in 3 months got through a television show, period. Not a 30-minute show, not a 1-hour show, not a movie. So if you read the reviews online, the bad things that you read about DIRECTV GO are most likely— there's a good chance you'll have issues. Hulu, you popped up that site. It's worth noting Hulu just introduced a streaming site live streaming site. They're saying that it's in beta right now. Haven't read any reviews on that yet, Eric. Have you?

We tried Hulu for a period of time. I got a trial. I paid for it for a couple of months and I just didn't find the value in it. So I ended up discontinuing it and I've not gone back.

So what you've got on the screen right now, the Hulu with Live TV, that's their new service. What you would have tried Would be the $7.99 a month. And I will actually tell you that my experience with Hulu originally was very much like yours. When I, I was on a project in Minneapolis, I used it there. I had buffering issues. Decided to cancel it and then got a new subscription when we cut the cord on TV because I wanted to see— or on cable or satellite. Because I wanted to see things like Black-ish, Modern Family, some shows that are current, and got a new subscription to Hulu. Actually pay the $11— I think it's $11.99 a month for the commercial-free version. And I have to say, I absolutely love it. The Hulu with live TV, they've got several variations of that. That is not going to get you quite as many channels as DIRECTV GO offers. Another product that I actually have been trying for a couple months, and so far it is my favorite, is the Sony PlayStation Vue product. It would be a competitor to Sling TV, DIRECTV GO, and the new Hulu Live product. This is the best one that I've tried so far. It's available from $20-something to around $70 a month if you get their package that has HBO and Showtime included in it. It's got DVR service, so the virtual DVR included. There's no limit on the amount of DVR space that you have in terms of number of programs. The way you're limited on your DVR space is I think that after 30— I want to say it's 30 days— anything you have DVR'd is going to drop off. But so you're going to cut—

Talk to me a little bit about— yeah, so talk to me a little bit about you've got 3 or 4 TVs in the house. Are you using those now, or do you just watch primarily off of your mobile devices and tablets? And if you're using the TVs, are you tying that in through a Roku device, or do you have a Sony PlayStation connected? What's the functional process like there?

So I never ever watch TV on any of my mobile devices. Now, if I were traveling and in a hotel, I might. I've just never fallen in love with the process of watching TV on a handheld device. Thing that is watched inside the household is watched on ATV. The thing you need to keep in mind with— well, even with Netflix is, um, I don't think they've been all that strict in the past with limiting the number of screens. I think one of the big challenges that DirecTV Go has created for themselves is they're trying to limit the number of screens that you can watch on. And their product is so buggy that it doesn't end the sessions. So that's most likely why I and so many others experience problems with that. PlayStation Vue, it's really primarily designed for in-home use, either on a mobile device, on a Roku, on an Apple TV. They have an app that works with most of the streaming players, most or all of the streaming players. They If you read the reviews of PlayStation Vue, they get lots of praise because they probably allow the most number of screens of any of the subscription services for no additional charge. I think you're allowed to have— it's either 5 or 7 simultaneous streaming sessions. The one thing about PlayStation Vue is that it's really designed to be used from a single location. I think you may be able to stream on a mobile device from one mobile device outside of the home, but it's primarily designed for use inside of a single location. The new Hulu live TV package, they actually have done some tiered pricing on that. The base package for Hulu streaming live TV includes 2 simultaneous screens. And they have an upgrade for, I think it's $15 a month that you can get. I can't remember if it's either— it's either 5, 7, or 9 simultaneous screens. Wow.

So if I'm reading this right, for $65 a month, it's HBO and Showtime, so you get premium movie channels, and then all of these others with the ability to then obviously connect in through local, um, just over the air for your local NBC, ABC, CBS?

Well, it depends on where you live. It actually very much like the, the satellite TV, um, kind of depends on where you live as to, uh, what local stations you get. If you live in a big market and your local stations are owned by the networks, for example ABC, NBC, CBS, most likely with PlayStation Vue you're going to get local channel streaming as part of your package. If you live in a smaller network like, I would guess, Battle Creek Mission, I don't know, but Columbia, South Carolina for sure, where the local affiliates are not owned by the networks And most likely you're going to need to go over the air for getting your local channels.

Cool.

Interesting. A couple things I'll mention. I mean, that package you're showing right now really is a pretty good deal for $65 a month, including HBO and Showtime. If you're a household that does one of these streaming services like PlayStation Vue, Sling TV, or DIRECTV NOW, And you still subscribe to Hulu. I think Hulu has the best deal for getting Showtime. I think it's $8.99 a month to add Showtime to your Hulu package. The interesting thing— good interesting thing— is with PlayStation Vue, all the networks that you see listed, in my experience, you can actually stream that network using your PlayStation Vue login. So if I've got HBO and Showtime, I can use the HBO and Showtime apps on my phone, on my TV, or wherever and access their content.

Gotcha.

The FX app works, the CNN app works, and so forth. You just log in. One of the things that I've experimented with in the last week or so is Amazon TV, and anybody that's ever looked at Amazon services especially if you have a Fire Stick, you'll see that they have almost every network that you can get on cable available as a standalone subscription. HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, Sundance Channel, and things like that. And I just decided a couple days ago to try out one of their, their 7-day free trials of HBO, and I'll have to say I was disappointed. Because the way Amazon has set up their premium channels that you could— you can subscribe to through their service, you actually have to stream them through an Amazon video app. You can't access the HBO, Showtime, Starz, and other apps. There's— they don't allow the ability to log into those apps. Their content is mixed in with all the other content that you've either subscribed or bought from Amazon. But I will admit, I am a pretty big advocate of using the HBO app and the Showtime app as standalone apps. I didn't realize I was such an expert on streaming TV. You can tell that I've—

Yes, we should have just labeled this.

I've been dealing with that the last A few months.

Streaming TV with Jeff Simpkins, co-hosted by Eric Cook. So good stuff. I didn't— I've picked some things up myself that I was not aware of, so this is helpful to me as well. Oh, so thanks for sharing that, Jeff.

I'll share one tip that in trying these different streaming services, I've Kind of learned, and that is be very, very cautious of making any sort of extended commitment to get some sort of a free device. I paid for 3 months of DirecTV Go or DirecTV Now to get the Apple TV streaming device, and I would have— been much better off to spend my money buying an Apple TV and not making a commitment to a streaming service to get one that worked. The amount of time and frustration that it took made it absolutely not worth the experience of getting that Apple TV device.

Sure.

There are some things on the Fire Stick that are really great features. I just have never fallen in love with the Fire Stick like I like the Roku. The Roku is the first device I have, and still it is the one I like the best.

Yep, I would, uh, I would agree. I think my first one was the, uh, the Roku Angry Birds Edition, little red with a pre-installed version of Angry Birds back in the day when that was all the rage. That's before Candy Crush and Pokémon Go. Uh, you threw birds at pigs. So, too funny.

You ready to move on to the, uh, lots? Yeah.

So, uh, let's see, we took 28 minutes to talk about the first one. So we've got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. So we'll be here until about probably 4:30, everybody. So just, you know, go grab a cup of coffee, settle in. We're rocking and rolling.

I can tell you when it comes to the watch, I've never jumped on the watch bandwagon, and it's not really something that I'm looking to do. What about you? Are you on the smartwatch bandwagon?

I am, but I came to it somewhat differently. So I jumped on more of the fitness band bandwagon, if you will, using a Fitbit. And Tracking steps and monitoring sleep patterns, and probably I don't rearrange my day and go, oh crap, I need to get my steps, and I force myself to go for a walk. But it's nice to go back and look and go, hmm, I was kind of a sloth on Wednesday. I really need to do a better job. Or at least I've got access to that information. What I did is I wanted to get more, and, and I've got the Fenix 3 HR, not the Fenix 5, but this is the kind of the replacement of that. I went and actually kind of jumped over the Fitbits. I jumped over the Apple Watches, or I guess in my case it would have been the Gear 360 kind of Android Wear. And a couple of deal breakers for me were, one, I wanted the device to be fully waterproof. If I'm in the shower, if I'm swimming, if I'm out in the rain, get caught in a, you know, my bike ride, I don't have to worry about having a watch that's going to, you know, be damaged. And I also didn't want something that I would have to plug in every single day. And when I was looking at even the Android devices and the iOS, the Apple Watch, you've got about a day, day and a half of battery time, and you got to make sure that's one more charger you carry with you, and it's just a real pain. So I ended up going with the Garmin Fenix 3 HR, which has a wrist-based heart rate sensor. It tracks activity when I go for a bike ride, when I stand-up paddleboard, when I went to Colorado and went downhill skiing. Any of the activities that I'm doing on a regular basis, or occasional, I guess, is the case with skiing because I haven't skied in several years. It has tracking capabilities built within it so that it can give me metrics So, it tells me how many strokes per minute and distance per stroke I'm doing on my stand-up paddleboard. It tells me that when I kayak. It tells me how fast I'm running or what my speed is when it comes to running or bike riding. And so, it stays on me all the time. I get at least a good 6 or 7 days worth of activity out of it before I have to charge it. And it synchronizes with another third-party cycling app that I use called Strava. Okay. So when I go out for a bike ride or a run, it shares it to my friends that I'm connected with on Strava so that my activity goes into that activity community. And I've just been really happy with it. It's a little bit bigger. It has some smart notifications built within it where it'll give you a notification when somebody's calling you. It'll tell you when a text message or an email shows up. You can turn those on or off. Calendar notifications. A little more expensive than Some of the other devices that are out there. But it's one device— when we were on vacation a couple of weeks ago, I was snorkeling in saltwater and didn't even worry about it. It just stays on me 24/7 unless I'm charging it. And I have had it give me kind of a nudge when a phone rings that I didn't know that the phone was ringing, and I've been able to catch some calls or at least know that people were calling me. Otherwise, not being able to. And so it has been beneficial in that regard.

I actually used a Garmin device that I bought in 2011, early 2011, when I was training for a marathon. And it was just a fitness device. I think it tracked heart— it did track heartbeat. Distance, had a GPS built in, and I really liked it.

Yep.

I don't want to sound old, and you know, and most people that join us regularly know that I'm a big advocate of technology. But to me, a watch, aside from a fitness-type device that, that we're looking at here, Fitbit, something like that, I just, I don't want to be that tied to my email, phone, and the other things that the Apple device do. I'm not— I don't think they're bad. I think if you want that level of being connected, I think it's great. But it's just so far it's not for me.

Well, and that kind of is exactly the reason why I got one is I didn't buy it because I wanted text messages and emails to be vibrating on my wrist. I have that as an option that I can turn on or off, but I wanted more of the fitness that I could stay present. It lasts. I don't have to worry about charging it, and it tracks all of my physical activity. And then if I get a couple of notifications in there, then so be it, but it's not my driver. Now, I know people that have got the iWatch or the Apple Watch. And they're flipping it and doing things on it, and they love it. But I agree with you; it's not for me. So, you know, they're they're making some changes to the watch. If you have the watch, maybe you're excited about that. You know, some Siri-powered watch faces, some fitness. I know somebody that switched from a Garmin to an Apple because they thought it was going to be all that, and they were sorely disappointed. With the water resistance as well as the fitness activities and put it on eBay, sold it, and went back and upgraded his Garmin device. So I guess it just kind of depends on what you're looking for, but they are continuing to advance that forward. And those of you that have got Apple, you know, probably are going to be excited about it. So Their operating system.

And I'm excited about this one, I'll have to tell you, even though it doesn't sound very sexy when you go through the new features.

What is it that you are excited about?

So with macOS, I think the big thing that they're doing with this version of the operating system is they're— I'm gonna just kinda go out on a limb and say they're restructuring the behind-the-scenes file system. It's described in the article as a faster new behind-the-scenes file system. And I actually have had issues since I installed the last operating system with speed and some things like that on my Mac. So I'm hoping and going into this thinking this behind-the-scenes file system, I think it's actually a conversion that's part of this new release, is gonna be exactly what I'm looking for.

Wow.

One of the things that they mentioned is Photos. I, you know, I'm up to 32,000 or 33,000 photos in my Photos app, and it just is not hitting the bar. So I'm hoping that Some of the things that they're addressing in this release that doesn't sound all that sexy to me is going to end up being really sexy because it makes me love the products that I already like a lot more.

Yeah, yep. I will tell you, you should check out photos.google.com.

Google's, uh, actually my photos get uploaded to Google as well.

Do they? Okay, cool.

Yeah, I'm actually mirroring my photos on, uh, On Google and on Amazon. And Google does some cool stuff. I love some of the collages, some of the videos that Google surprises me and presents to me periodically.

Yep.

I've got a little ritual. If you're a Prime subscriber, just keep in mind that you can store unlimited photos on Amazon Prime Photo at no additional cost. And one of the things I love about the Amazon Photos app is that each morning, if you've got a photo from that tagged with that date from any year in the past, you get a message that says, check out your photos from this date in the past. And I absolutely love doing that. So my ritual at some point in the morning is to pop into Amazon Photos. Look at my photos from this day in the past. Then I'll pop into— oh, I forgot, my photos actually get uploaded to Microsoft as well. I'll pop over to Microsoft, do my upload for the day there, pop into Google Photos, do my upload for the day, and see if they've surprised me with any of their cool photo features that day.

Well, you're kind of a digital packrat, but at least you're not cluttering your house with stacks of magazines and boxes of Kleenex.

I am quite sure my mother is not listening to this program, so I will admit I have gotten possession of most of the family photos, and they have made their way into the recycle— many of them have made their way into the recycle bin because Oh man, I've just, you know, I, I had an experience cleaning out an old house recently and discovered that photos and paper are one of the favorite foods of silverfish. And call me a digital packrat if you want, I'll wear the badge proudly.

There you go. So there is a, a really cool Google app called, I think it's PhotoScan or PhotoScanner. Um, that does a really cool job of actually taking old photos that you've got just as regular photos and scanning them with your, with your camera on your phone. And, and it crops and colors and scratch corrects. And, uh, it's pretty sweet. So if you've got a box of pictures laying around that you just want to digitize and save for posterity and not put them on flatbed scanners and all that cropping and everything, Check out the Photoscan app. It's one that I've used and it's pretty sweet.

I've got that app on my phone. I really love the description and the concept of it. I just haven't tried it because I've had such a high volume of photos that I needed to get into a photo app. I've used the ScanSnap scanner that Greg Dickerson recommended to us years ago.

That works too. So, oh, iMac Pro. I, uh, this is, this is beyond me. I don't really, uh, I've got MacBooks. I've never done an Apple computer as a desktop. I know there are people doing significant photo editing and graphics design, but not really something I'm, I'm doing. Um, 18 processor cores, that's You gotta bolt that down to your desk because when you turn it on, if you're not careful, it'll fly right out the window.

Well, I just picked up on the line where it starts at 5 grand, uh, so I will not be— iMac is my primary computer now when I'm not traveling. Uh, I, I use the iMac and I absolutely love it. I've got the iMac with the, um, well, I don't even remember what they call the mouse, but, uh, Intelligent Mouse or something like that. Magic Mouse.

Magic Mouse.

And the wireless keyboard. And I love it. And I've got, I've got a MacBook Air that I bought in 2011. Bought it off of the scratch and dent portion of the Apple website. And I had to have it reconditioned about a year ago, but I have no regrets of doing that. Of course, everything I do at this point, I think this is true of you as well, Eric, is most everything I do is cloud-based. So it really doesn't matter what device I'm accessing on.

Yeah. As long as it's a comfortable experience, I would agree. So, right.

Yep.

This is the area where if you listen to the Facebook F8 or the Google I/O, augmented and virtual reality, video immersive experiences, whatever you want to call it, are becoming very commonplace, and Apple is no different, um, and continuing that trend as well. So when they talked about their mobile operating system, you can see right here in the headline specifically augmented reality for these devices to be able to interact with the environment and add layers of information or helpful data To supplement what you're seeing in the real world. So the Pokémon Go, where you've got little creatures that show up on top of sometimes your friends' shoulders, or information that overlays on top of a camera. You know, if you have a camera and you're pointing it at a restaurant, the device knows where you're at based off of GPS. The camera recognizes the restaurant and might See the sign, and then that augments a layer on top where you can see current reviews and ratings from people that had recently eaten there, a phone number, hours, maybe pull up their menu without you really having to do other things, anything other than just pointing your device at the restaurant, and the device takes care of it, basically the rest of it. So augmented reality is something that I'm pretty excited to watch develop. And I just hope that battery life and all the other stuff that has to process these cool new features catches up, because you're just going to chew through your battery that much faster and make us a slave to these backup batteries. But I think that's just a fact of life. So—

Yeah, I will have to say that I don't think I could make it through a whole day without plugging in on my iPhone 7 Plus now.

Yeah, so that's pretty much— so I am not an iOS user, so there's not a lot in here with me. I know the iMessage functionality for those that have it is one that they like. I see Apple Pay from P2P for iMessage. Facebook has offered that solution through its own Messenger. Jeff and I both coming out of the kind of the banking financial services You know, whether banks should or shouldn't be concerned as they kind of promote P2P payment solutions within their own institution. Now, if I'm using iMessages, I can just go ahead and send money to somebody, and do I even need to involve my financial institution in that process? So, I don't know if that's a service that you would use, Jeff, but, you know, it's got this Apple Pay Cash now, which could be very well a shot across the bar for traditional financial institutions.

So I will have to say, and this is another Greg McPherson thing, he introduced me to, and I think he may have mentioned on the show before, an app called Cash, C-A-S-H. It's from Square, the folks that were kind of, they're kind of a big name in mobile credit card processing for individuals and And small businesses. And I started using Square a couple months ago, and I— man, it would be hard for a financial institution to compete with that service. The big drawback of Square is your weekly limits. I don't know if they go up over time, but I know when you initially sign up, your weekly limit is only $250. But It uses a debit card. And for example, if I were going to send you money, Eric, I'd go into my Cash App, I'd put in either your email address or your number for an SMS text message, shoot it off to you, and it shows up in your Cash App immediately. If you don't have the Cash App yet, you sign up for it and the money is there. It uses the The ATM network for getting the funds out of the sender's account. You can either elect to use the Cash App. You can get a virtual— I'm not sure if it's a Visa or a MasterCard debit card number with your Cash App, so you could spend it immediately doing it that way. You can elect to pay a 1% fee and have the money put in your bank account immediately. Or if you're willing to wait overnight, the money will magically show up in your bank account the next morning, and all of it is free for P2P.

Wow, very cool. Yeah, I remember I had a lesson in that, but I've not moved forward with it.

Unless Apple's new product is going to offer some of the same features and the fast moving of money, I think Apple will actually have a hard time competing.

Cool.

Just one of the things that jumps out in the description of the iOS update is it doesn't say specifically. It says they seem to be moving away from a JPEG file format. That could be a problem for people like me that have my photos that are captured in iOS moving to multiple platforms. So I'm kind of— I'll be curious to see how that comes out.

Yep. The one that I saw that I particularly liked, because if I could just forcibly eliminate the distraction and I'm not I'm not gonna sit here and say I've never done it because I have, and I know all of us have, but you know texting and driving is not a good thing. And, oh, there's nobody on the road. Oh, everything's okay. I don't know why more developers, phones, iOSes, whatever, operating systems don't do this as part of a general availability. I know there's third-party apps that you can install, and maybe I've not spent enough time digging around within Pixel to determine exactly how I turn that on. But without having to set up a third party, this would be something that I would think would be very beneficial. And so, you know, I've not seen anything mentioned regarding I'm driving and, you know, like an autoresponder from the Android world. So this is, this is kind of cool.

Yeah, that is a cool thing. It removes the temptation.

So what else on iOS that jumps out, Mr. iPhone user?

Home Service Kit, I don't use that much. I primarily use the Amazon Echo. As the way to control the things that Apple would use in their home service kit. I have used Siri to control stuff in the home, but I've just never gotten in the habit because the Echo works so well. Talks about Apple Music getting more social. I do subscribe to Apple Music. They've got a great catalog. Greg is a huge advocate of— oh, what's the music service that he uses with the green logo?

Spotify. Spotify.

And Greg's a big advocate of Spotify. I like Spotify. They've got some interesting and eclectic music, and their catalog is growing. And I think you're a Google Play guy, aren't you?

Yep, I use the Google Play Music service.

Just glancing down, nothing else really jumps out at me.

Yeah, so they've not released anything exactly what they're going to do, so there's no like, and this is how we're going to implement But I think they're making it more open, more friendly for people that want to dive into AR to be able to build in the iOS environment. And, you know, Apple is notorious for being somewhat of a lockdown, closed ecosystem, and this is kind of a sign to developers that, you know, we want to support this, we know that this is coming along. So it'll be interesting to see how that rolls. Google announced kind of the next Daydream viewer, you know, support for other services. So I think in order to stay relevant, Apple's gonna have to make that move. Whether they do anything themselves is yet to be determined. The iPad Pro, the big dog. Something tells me you got one of these, but maybe I'm wrong. Are you using one of these big dogs?

I don't.

I don't.

I like my iPhone 7 Plus so much that I hardly even pick up the iPad anymore. I got an iPad Mini as a gift. It sits in the kitchen to control lights and music.

Yeah.

I don't carry it out of the kitchen. My bigger iPod is old and feels heavy. I sometimes use it if I wanna, on the rare occasions that I wanna stream some sort of entertainment on my desktop or someplace, I'll use it for that. But I am not as much of a tablet guy as I would have originally thought. Yeah.

The, I've got an old Nexus 7 that unfortunately the battery life is just terrible on it and I keep hoping that an operating system update will give it some additional life. But I may need to make the move into a different Android tablet or go cross-browser and at least bring an Apple device into my handheld environment. But yeah, everything pretty much is on my Pixel device at this point.

So if I were going to add another tablet for— it would probably be for controlling things inside the house, and I would probably go with One of Amazon's $79 to $99 devices. They still label it as a Fire device, but I think the underlying operating system is Google's operating system.

Yep, I would agree with that. So the new speaker, so they've got their own Alexa slash Google Home coming through with the voice control customizable options, kind of playing off of the whole Sonos speaker option here. Will be interesting to see if they can make a dent. I know a lot of people speculated when Google launched their home device, it was too little too late given the fact that the Amazon Echo device ecosystem had been out there for several months. And whether they can get caught up. And so they're making inroads, but I think that's still up for debate depending on who you talk to. Now you've got almost 3 years into it. Apple's finally getting into the intelligent home speaker device arena, and, you know, they've got the advantage of raving fans of using iOS devices, but will that be enough? or their home device to make a dent in what already is, I don't wanna say a mature ecosystem, but certainly well-established in some households.

So this looks to me like they're trying to introduce a single device to take on Sonos and the Amazon Echo at the same time. And at this point, I think Sonos is probably market leader, best of breed for wireless in-home speakers. I think this one will be a hard hurdle for Apple. I think they would have been better off to buy Sonos, to be perfectly candid.

Yep.

So do you use Sonos, Eric?

I don't. Nope, never went down that road. We looked at it, I kicked it around. Um, you know, I've got a couple of little Bluetooth speakers that are rechargeable that I'll carry with me and, you know, just kind of bring those into the room and stream that off of my device. Um, so it's, it's not something that, that I have done. We've got the full big size Amazon Echo, and that actually— I know some people don't think that the speaker is that great, but I think that pumps out some really good quality sound. And then the little dots that we have are connected to little Bose speakers, and the Google Home device actually sounds pretty decent on its own. So I'm not a huge audiophile. I like music, but, you know, I'm okay listening to it. And, you know, through a Bose device, or it doesn't need to be super, super big speakers. And if I need that, we've got a man cave downstairs with speakers from 15 years ago that are ginormously huge and way oversized, but that's the way they built them back then. And so they still pump out the sound, uh, so I can get my loud music fix there if I need I'm sort of like you with the dots.

When I did an inventory and consolidated all of the Bose Wave radios that I had either bought or been given over the years, I ended up with 3. So I've got all of my Echo Dots are connected to a Bose Wave at this point, so I get really good high-quality sound with those.

Exactly. So, well, and to play off of the Chromecast topic from earlier in the discussion, Chromecast actually makes a Chromecast Audio device that can plug into the aux jack on any speaker system, and it can turn that into a streaming device directly through your Chromecast app. So you can take your music and you could stream it that way if you wanted to as well. So there is another— I don't use any of those. I don't have a Chrome audio device, but those are also like $35. So they can take a high-fidelity, nice speaker system that maybe isn't getting any use because it doesn't have Bluetooth or HDMI connectivity and stream it through your home's Wi-Fi and turn that into a remote speaker.

I don't have one of the Echo Towers, but I do have the Echo Tap and use it in the bedroom. It's a Bluetooth speaker. It's what I listen to some of my morning podcasts through it. In the evening when I'm outside by the pool, I'll carry it out, and it's a good quality speaker as well. I think it's about $120 if I'm not mistaken.

Cool. Good. All right, well, we are, uh, we're at the top of the hour. Um, I had a couple of other wish list things that I, uh, I'm sticking on the Dear Santa list, prepping it, um, that maybe I will talk about a little bit later on. But just a sneak peek, um, I've always been intrigued by drones. I know I'll never get my real pilot's license, but just the idea of being able to fly is something that is— something that's always intrigued me. And so DJI came out with a mini drone that will actually be able to work with their first-person view goggles. So imagine, if you will, throwing a pair of goggles on, looking through the camera, and then taking off and flying, recording that. Playing off a video is kind of cool. And then this little guy might be somewhat difficult to see, but this is an Insta360 Air camera that basically plugs into the Type-C port at the bottom of a phone on an Android and gives you the ability to do 360 video. So Looks like I've got a little plugin issue here to look at the video. But so that's another little tool that, who knows, at some point in a future episode, we may be doing some 360 livestreaming video. So keep your fingers crossed for me. That may happen.

So, but— You want this really bad to be telling Santa already.

I know it. So somebody had a birthday recently and I'm also thinking maybe there may be some late birthday presents that haven't yet been delivered. So tossing it out into the universe. So that's right.

I said happy birthday on Facebook, but this is the first time we've spoken. So happy birthday a couple days late. Yes.

Thank you. Thank you. So cool. Well, that wraps it for the show, Jeff. We talked about a boatload of stuff. And, uh, I, I have a much greater appreciation for you as it relates to streaming television services now. I didn't realize you were the man when it came to that. So I'm, uh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna put you on my list the next time I think about buying a streaming device and make sure that I get Jeff approval before I roll forward on anything. So cool.

All right, well, it's been a fun hour.

Absolutely. Thanks to everybody that joined us live. Hope you enjoyed the show and share it with friends and others that might be interested in learning a thing or two about cutting the cord or any other fun stuff that we talked about. Keep your fingers crossed for a future episode. We're going to try to get our buddy Greg to come on and talk a little bit more specifically about Amazon's shift into messaging and The whole concept of communication. So I think that'll be a fun little chitchat as well. But then until then, make it a great week, and we will see you next week right here at freewebinarwednesdays.com. Bye-bye, everybody.