The HomePod and Sonos One both leave marks on wood surfaces (Apple Byte Extra Crunchy, Ep. 119)

[MUSIC] Good morning or good afternoon. My name is Stephen Beacham, producer of the Apple Byte Extra Crunchy podcast. As you can see on this graphic behind me that Brian Tong emailed me this morning. It's the Apple Byte Extra Crunchy podcast with your host, Mr. Brian Tong. What's up, everybody? Welcome to the show. Hey, Beach and Tong in the house. You know how we do it. It is episode. 118 for those of you guys who are watching the podcast. 119. 119. My gosh. You're right. It is 119. I read the wrong number. All good. All good. Thank you for correcting me. Here would I be without you Ditch? Where would I be. It is 119 in case you guys and girls watch this actual podcast. Let us know if something look different. Does my camera look better? Slightly? It looks way better, man. It does? Okay good. That's the whole point. People have been complaining so I'm like fine I'll dish out some of that cheddar and make it better. [INAUDIBLE] Yeah some [UNKNOWN]. So again this is the Apple Byte Extra Crunchy. This is our complimentary piece to our weekly video podcast. We know there is so much going on this week, But again the number to be a part of our show and you keep the calls coming and we love it. 1-800-616-2638 Your name, where your from, and get your comment. I think this week again you guys and girls like upped your game and you're like efficient To the point but you're also bringing new information and stuff. So we love it, we got a lot of calls in today. But let's talk about what do you think the big story is this week Beach? The lead story? Is it white rings on [CROSSTALK] [LAUGH] It's white rings man. It's leaving white rings. Okay, so we know the home pod came out Friday last week. And I did my review, so for those of you that watched the video stuff, You can check out my review we'll touch upon a little bit about it, but less than a week after it came out the headline that was popping all over the place was that Apple confirms that the Home Pod can leave white rings On some wood surfaces with oil or wax finishes. Now there are actual pictures, the reports first cam out of wire cutter and pocket lint we've got to gibe them props but MacRumors put their photos and put it in a single article. It's not like a faint white circle it's a very obvious Deliberate white circle and I was like dude Apple, even this like one week in, we're seeing this right so. It doesn't even feel like a week man. It's not even a week [LAUGH]. [LAUGH] It's some few days. It's not even a week. It happened on what Tuesday or Wednesday? When this start happening. Yeah. Again. So, lets just talk about this really quickly. So, they showed the pictures and they said, this gonna be an issue. Apple did give comments about the website. They first [UNKNOWN] that it's not unusual for a speaker with the silicon. This is the keyword, the silicone base to leave a mild mark when placed on certain oiled or waxed surfaces. Suggesting that there's this chemical reaction that happens between silicone and some of these different types of treated wood which is exactly what's happening. It's happening to multiple people. Have the homepod that I reviewed on a wood surface. But I'll be honest with you, it's like on a target table so it's probably not that, it's probably not a fancy table. Like but some people are gonna be you know, Some people are gonna have really nice, expensive nice wooden tables and that would really. My wife, we just got like a new dining room table, if the homepod did that to my wife's new table, I would probably be dead. I wouldn't be here. I beat [UNKNOWN] You, no, she would freak out. She would murder me. You would be in trouble, bro. We wouldn't have- This podcast would be no longer. It'd be like- It'd be done. etong. It wouldn't even be beach and tong, it'd just be tong. [LAUGH] It'd be me sitting in the corner, with like a dark light on my face. So, they also commented to Wire Cutter that the marks can improve over several days. After the speaker is removed from the wood surface and if they don't fade on their own Apples advice was to try cleaning the surface with the manufacturers suggested oiling method. Really? So, You're basically telling me to refinish my wood tables that I probably don't have to finish more. [LAUGH] I read something like use a damp cloth or something like that or a dry cloth. Maybe that wasn't from Apple but- You're right, you're right, you're actually, you're forseen the future but Apple did say that about Cleaning the actual, outside of the Home Pod, not the bottom of it though, but you're right, so they're like yeah, use a dry clothe, and Apple even released this document called cleaning and taking care of Home Pod, and this is, there's a great, this is So great. I know people are rolling their eyes, like, seriously. I still, when I heard this, I could not believe it, but it is what it is. There's a section in this article that talks about taking care of the Homepod. And it says learn where to put a Homepod and what to avoid to keep Homepod safe. Again, we're gonna jump ahead through this whole statement. But they did mention that the marks can be caused by oils defusing between the silicone base and the table surface. If the marks persist, clean the surface with the manufacturer's recommended thing, we talked about that. I love this, it's the last line. If you're concerned about this, we recommend placing your Home Pod on a different surface. [LAUGH] Put is somewhere else. [LAUGH] You're putting it on the wrong place to listen to it wrong. Like you're holding it wrong. [LAUGH] Was like a [UNKNOWN] Putting in the wrong place. I also like that they are referring it to as home pad and not the home pad, it's kinda like that iPhone It's not plural, it's not singular, it's like it's own thing- I have five HomePod. [LAUGH] [INAUDIBLE] So, that was like, this is right out of the gates. Again, this is $349 Smart speaker, I'm gonna be kind right now, but this is, I also wanna make this clear, actually the Home Pod isn't the only one that is having this issue, Apple gets a lot of attention with it but an article that was just posted out by Tom's Guide and other people were kind of rumbling about this, I've also confirmed that the Sonos 1 Sonos One bass also can damage someone's surfaces as well. There's a little picture of a HomePod and a Sonos One right next to each other. You can see the ring on the HomePod, you can kinda see the rounded square corners of the Sonos One. But this is This is a thing that is affecting speakers when there is a silicon base on it of any kind. So it's just something now to know. I just don't wanna make it like, my gosh, Apple suck. Although, I will say it like bru, you had six years to try and put this on. They had six years to try this. You are telling me. No one at Apple HQ with their really big houses haven't tried putting on like a fancy wood surface, I'm just saying. You know they had on some fansy wood, maybe they just didn't wanna say anything maybe they were scared, I don't know. Either way, I did come up with a solution on Twitter yesterday. I posted it immediately. I'm pretty sure there's gonna be something like the Apple Coaster that comes out. Just a nice, just call it the Apple Coaster, get it over with, charge like 40 bucks for it to put your HomePod underneath it. A company called Pad and Quill, Decided to instantly capitalize on this, and they're releasing a, like, leather coaster to prevent the HomePod from marking your surfaces. Then that's gonna ruin the leather, man. Yeah the leather piece of the sacrificial lamb maybe. [LAUGH] When is it gonna be, [INAUDIBLE] Sometimes putting a speaker on those diffuser pads make them sound even better, so I mean maybe Apple will come out with something like tht but That is a huge bomber I mean, yeah you're saying they had six years to test this thing out Like they've been working on this for six years dude, okay fine I'll give them even three years [LAUGH] I'l give them years for like at least having a form factor. Two I'll be kind two, they had two years. You know it's weird though that this wrapper that they make speakers and like give a headphones out of, it does like deteriorate over time and just kinda like starts degrading So, it's strange that these oils are coming out of the speakers already within a few days and it's just a tearing, it's just gonna crumble on your desk over a period of years and years. Like I mean even is headphones like they just kind of start falling apart and you can start ripping the pieces out you know? Yeah So, it's kind of a thing with speakers in general I believe you know but It's not happened in my Echo. I'm sorry my Echo Dot is not leaving marks. Yeah, they don't have silicone on the bottom of it. I know, I know. They don't. Yeah. It's just a fact, right? It's a chemical reaction between that. So, that's what I've been saying. Hey, Beach, have you actually heard the HomePod that much? Dude, I have heard the HomePod, cuz we were doing this thing. What'd you think? Join this infinite loop video right now that's streaming. Yeah. It sounds fantastic. It really does. Compared to the Google Home, compared to other things I've heard, the sound is superior. The bass, everything it just sounds really good. It's crazy. I 100% agree with you, I think what's weird is that a lot of reviewers, I'm not trying to rip of them because a lot of them are my friends, but they get this product from Apple, they don't have to buy it, and they pop it out, and when you first play it, I mean, it sounds awesome. 4X size, you're like, holy crap, I can't believe something this size has this much boom And just like this full feeling of sound. It's really nice. And then what I did, you know, after I got past that, I actually put it side by side to a Google Home Max. Not a Google Home. Cuz, we know, look, this The Apple speaker is pretty much gonna dominate the regular Amazon Echo, the regular Google Home, so you've gotta put it also against things that are more around its price point. So I put it next to Google Home Max, and then what I kinda found over time is when I'm just listening to Home [UNKNOWN] itself, I'm like, this is awesome, right? And I listen to a lot of deep, heavy base stuff, so the mids are sick and everything. But then I popped out the Google Home Max side-by-side, and I was playing like Some classical music, some kind of like more classic rock, even some pop stuff. And what I found is that the HomePod sounds great, but when you put it next to something like the Google Home Max, the highs, the trebles, the vocals, there's a lot of details that's lost in the HomePod. So only when you have it side by side can you say, it does sound a little muddier, like I can't hear Adam Levine's voice as clearly as I would like to. I can't believe I'm admitting that. It actually was a random track that happened to pop up, it just happened to pop up. Right? Duh. People reviewed it, Audiophiles, they've done all this type of testing. No one doubts that the sound is really great, but again, Beach, you of all people know this. Isn't sound Also kind of subjective to not only how your ear hears things, but also the genres of music you listen to. Definitely. I mean, bass is gonna sound different in hip-hop than it is in metal and other things and classical music. I would use something that you've listened to all your life that you're just used to what it sounds like. I don't know, maybe like Dr. Dre would be a good example for For using the home pod to compare to other things? Yeah. But yeah, I mean it definitely is your ear, you know, what you're used to hearing and what you want to hear. You're kind of like listening for what you want to hear, you know. That's true, that's totally true. So the home pod definitely had a fullness that I was not expecting. Like the fullness Of the sound is really startling. Like my God it does sound really great. Yeah 100% agree with that. And so other outlets like Consumer Reports, they said pretty much what I had found and what I had put in my video before their article even dropped which was, just not as much details with the highs or vocals. And they even outright said, look the Home Pod sounds good But they felt that the Google Home Max and the [UNKNOWN] sound better than the HomePad but again, this is just one outlet saying that, you have other outlet saying other things. And I just don't like the fact that people kinda get caught up like Like specifically with audio and sound quality they hear one thing and they believe it it's like you just gotta hear this stuff for yourself, don't listen to anyone about this crap. I haven't heard the Sonos so the Google Max but I do feel like they really spent a lot of time focusing on the low end because that's what gets people. [CROSSTALK] When you walk into a concert and you hear all that low end, it's like ooh there's something magic happening up there. Yeah. I feel like Apple definitely focused on the low end and maybe they didn't focus so much on the high end. Who knows? Yeah I agree with you. It's even in a way It's kind of how, look Apple has this Beats acquisition, they've worked closely together, people know that if it's totally purchased Beats music, they're tuned to give you deeper base, more boom, and a full Did but the highs kind of lose that detail and I think that kind of DNA from their Beats acquisition that is flowed into their headphones was also part of this as well. It's a tiny speaker that gives you some real boom. And you're like damn. You know they consulted Dre. You know they brought him in a room and him and Jimmy Ivey were like what do you guys think of the low end? And he was like it needs a little more. [LAUGH] Let me turn this up a little, let me turn this up. So you guys can check out the review that I put out, the thing is that we know a lot of the things and I don't wanna go into details right, it doesn't support Bluetooth so Android phones or non iPhones can't use it, but there were a few nuggets of things that I found that I thought were interesting that people weren't rally talking about it as much When the Verge put out their review, they talked about how if someone is using the Home Pod, it is linked to really a specific user and one iOS account. Someone could walk by it and say like, read the latest message or let me send a message, like, someone could basically Hijack a few of your things with messages, notes and reminders. But what we found is that, sure that might be the case but once I leave, let's say I take my phone away and I go down to the grocery store. People won't be able to play around and add notes or reminders or check my messages when I'm gone. You actually have to be in range of the HomePod Yeah, we're running to that problem doing this infinite loop thing that we're doing. I couldn't trigger it. Like we had to get Lexy [CROSSTALK]. We also have to had the phone sitting next to them for the whole period of time which is kind of pain in the **** but, it is what it is. I guess it's a security thing to a certain degree, but again I don't want to beat it dead. Because I guess we beat it to that before it even came out. Everything that we had expect about the HomePod, was pretty much true. Its limitations, its lack of smarts when it comes to voice assistant. The other thing that I thought that was They didn't really, they weren't gonna promote it, but I thought something like adding speakerphone to the Homepod would've been so easy. Totally. It does support it, but you can't talk to it and say, hey, call... You can't say, hey Siri, call blankety blank. You actually have to call from your phone physically and then use Airplay to send the sound from your phone To the speaker whether you are making a call or whether you are receiving a call. So that was an easy low hanging fruit, just make it a cool speaker phone. It can't even do that. And then the other thing, I'm not expecting it to work with Android phones, but I feel, look, if you made Apple Music as a service for Android users, You have got to make it easier for someone to use that product like it is not that hard to do whether you are fine, If you do not believe in bluetooth fine but give other users a way to do it so. The fact of the matter is that if you have Apple music and you are an android user you can actually use the home pad but You need someone with a phone to set it up for you, it has to run iOS 11 and then they can enter in your apple music credentials. Well that's the only way an android user can use the home pod, I know guess, I know it's not supposed to be for everyone but it wasn't that hard to let them do that. So amongst all the other things, again It's a really limited product. Right now, for me, it's definitely not worth 349. I put down my money for because that's how I look at it. I review it based on, okay, I drop this much cash on it, is it really worth it. It's definitely not. You could literally buy an Echo and probably a Starger light kit, like a smart light kit with two or three light bulbs. A starger kit but the same price as the HomePod Okay, think about that. Like you want to get involved with a smart home? It's a better smart home and you get lights bulbs. Like come on. Yeah lightbulbs aren't cheap either. The smart lightbulbs, they are not cheap. You've gotta be so die hard Apple for this product. It's so narrow of a focus and it's so locked down. So Just check out the review. There's a lot of nuggets in there but I think people that have been listening to us already know where we stand. And I don't wanna keep on making them feel like we're negative about it. We're just telling you, there's even more things that make even more limited than what we thought so. Yeah. [UNKNOWN] sound great. [LAUGH] It sounds awesome. It sounds good, it [UNKNOWN] sounds good. I mean if that was their goal If that really was their only goal then, they definitely did it. All right bro should we take a little breath there to show some love to our sponsors that Let's do it keep the life on? Let's do it. All right, let's check this out. Today show is brought to you by Jamf. 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So go to jamf, that's J A M F .com, /crunchy To create a free account and set up your three free devices today that jamup.com/crunch. [UNKNOWN] All right, sweet. [CROSSTALK] Thank you, Jam. [UNKNOWN] And so we talked about a bunch of HomePod stuff I mean that's really the hot thing that's going on this week even last week But we wanted to transition over to some more news. Obviously, we're getting close to March. We're probably gonna see some interesting stuff just cuz March, historically, has been a time period where Apple has announced new products. We'll see, I mean, maybe we'll see some new iPads. Maybe we'll see an iPhone SE2. It's not really clear, maybe we'll see the Air Power. Can we get a Air Power by March maybe? Let's get an Air Power, please. Maybe, all right. But the latest report, this is kind of a follow up to what Bloomberg had talked about earlier, is how Apple is now changing their development, their fundamental development strategy, to root out bugs and revamp the iPhone software. Now we talked about, either last last week or a couple of weeks ago, how they're gonna push back certain features, focus on some core ones, and move those Secondary features over the next year because really they want to focus on fixing the bugs,like their annual software upgrade this year will feature a new single set of app that works across. iPhones, iPad and Imax, right. So universal apps is one of their targets. That's gonna be met. This is according the Bloomberg report. There also is gonna be a digital help tool to show parents how much time their children have been staring at their screen and I know you want this the most Pete. Improvements to anemojis. Yes. That's what I've been waiting for. I've been waiting for that my whole, Been waiting for this all my life. So, they also said some of the features that will be kind of pushed on the back burner, is Apple's whole redesign the home screen that were talking for their iPhone, iPad and CarPlay. CarPlay, I mean people have called us so much about how, they're just like they've turned their backs on CarPlay. They are just like, I don't even care anymore, that's just like a slap in the face to Apple users. They have shown it no love And also a revamped photos app that can suggest which images to view depending on what you're looking at. And this is kind of been put down by Craig Federighi, look I think in the past, the whole promise and what differentiated Apple from other companies. And when I say back then, I'm saying A far back as maybe four, five years ago, but when you go further back what was the reason or the allure of Apple? It was easy to use. Yeah. It was bug free. And it was secure. Those tended to be those tenants and specifically bug free, virus free, blah, blah. Those One of the big things. Well, and you're looking like ios 11, and just all the software things that they've been dealing with, you can argue that overtime android is android but specifically google's stock android is cleaner, it's a little more simplified, yea it has its own issues but it didn't launch with like Basically, five or six major bugs, consecutive week after week after week. In a weird way, even Apple users that have been around for awhile had felt like because they're being spread [UNKNOWN] the evolution of Apples turning like Apple's more like Windows now than it ever used to be. And I'm not saying they're Windows but They are moving on their pathway, they are so big and they trying to get everything out every year. And it's not just four or five product categories, now it's ten or 12. Yeah. And it's gonna take it's [UNKNOWN] Yeah. Remember when I first started working here, when we're talking about that a lot like fragmentation of Android, and that was feel like that's happening in Apple and Everything that's coming out is buggy and it has an issue. But yeah, back in the day when Apple came out it was like this is how easy it is to use. You have this mouse, and you click here, and everything just works, there's no problems. The whole thing, what you just said bro, it just works. That's a classic phase and now everyone kinda throws it in their face because it doesn't just work any more. Yeah. It takes a lot of setting up and like trouble shooting out especially like, I don't wanna be like ages or something. But you are going to be right now. But people who haven't grown up with it, they have a lot harder time setting it up now. So it's not like your grandma's phone anymore, you know what I mean? People are having trouble setting up the HomePod still honestly. Like, it's supposed to sync, kind of like the AirPods, you hold it right next to your phone. The W1 chip is the communication bridge, it pops up and it's supposed to be easy to set up. It's actually not to set up. A lot of people are having problems even getting their HomePods set up. Even something like that it's a new age so we'll see, I think the slow burn strategy if this is really what they are committed to, can help them in the long run but look, they're still selling tens of millions of phones per quarter, like they are still dominating so no matter what we say in a funny way we can talk about them, we can make fun of them, we can celebrate them, even something like that it's Whatever we say right still doesn't matter, it really doesn't matter who's still buying their phones? Their brand cashiers is so powerful now, it's like the brand is so powerful. You locked in, a new [UNKNOWN] just dropped, just believe today Apple is going to require all new apps to natively support the iPhone 10 display as of April of this year. So this was a note that was dropped to developers by Apple that starting from April 2018 if you have an app that comes out it must support the iPhone 10's retina display. That means right it has to go all the way to the edges. None of these like weird proportions or legacy stuff from earlier phones. It has to support that form factor as well as others. Apple has also not set a deadline when the updates for current existing apps must support iPhone 10 natively, but at least from April this year, all new apps being built against the IOS 11 SDK We'll have to support that screen. All right. So we don't know that. But here's the thing [UNKNOWN] If there was one feature that you think Samsung was jealous of Apple, like an iOS feature, what do you think it would be? I have no idea. The face unlock? I don't know. What if i told you Animojis [LAUGH] [LAUGH] Why would they be jealous of that. I don't know if they're jealous per se but the report from ET news claims that the new Samsung Galaxy S9 that is expected to be announced and revealed on February the 25th, we're gonna actually have it on live coverage. Because, guess what, we do stuff beyond just Apple. Yeah. In case you didn't think that, come on, you already know that. So it's a new 3D emoji system that they are claiming is more advance than anamojis. They don't have a name out for it yet but is expected to come on February 25th and Samsung will be loaded with their own facial recognition Emoji platform. Alright, good for Samsung [CROSSTALK] Give me that emoji game man. Congratulation Samsung, you did it. [LAUGH] You did it. You made it. Dude, what do you wanna, I have a name for them but what would you wanna call them ****. For Samsungs? What would you wanna call them. Man I don't even know, I have to think about that for a while. I have no idea, what would you call them. I think I'm gonna call them samojies. Samojies [LAUGH] Samojies, something tells me they're gonna be Samojies. Yeah, cuz is an Animoji copyritten by Apple or something? Well Animoji was stolen by Apple from a develop from Japan who owned it for at least three or four years. Do you remember this story? Well, I mean, there's so much stuff that [CROSSTALK]. I do remember something about it, yeah. This developer had little [UNKNOWN] app that was like cute cartoon characters. It was kind of a keyboard app that you could type out different characters that were kind of emojis base, but he called them Animojis. And Apple tried to act as a shell company to buy the trademark of Animoji from him without telling them. Telling him that they were Apple. That's right, they are like post, and like they had a secrect name for this company, a shell company. And then they decided to try and go after him for that without acknowledging that it was actually Apple that was tring to go after him and it's like Dude, what the hell? [LAUGH] They're sitting on $280 billion. Just pay the man, and take the name Animoji. Don't try and hustle him like that. That's just crap, man. Yeah, that's crazy, dude. I forgot about that story. [CROSSTALK] 280 billion. I mean, it just came into my head, right. This stuff's like This is like treasure chest of crap in here now, right? [LAUGH] 280 billion, throw them a couple million, throw them some bucks, man. That's like ten coaches like flicking the dust off his wrist. [CROSSTALK] He just change drawer or something. [LAUGH] All right, and some iPhone uses, we talk about how iPhone continues to be gang busters no matter what we say The Apple platform is alive and well, according to Linda Sui of Strategy Analytics, Apple has taken more than half of the global smartphone revenues for the fourth quarter of Of 2017. Over half. Basically the fourth quarter of 2017, is Apple's Q1 of 2018, which is really that period from October, November to December. The firm says the iPhone captured a record 51% share of all smartphone wholesale revenues worldwide. Noting that Apple had racked up 61 billion in the fourth quarter. Also, Apple's average selling price for phone, right, is getting close to $800. That's three times the industry average. Samsung's average price, selling price for phone Is $254. Wow. So that's why they're dominating in revenue, because one of their closest competitors, really their closest competitor, they're phone is basically a third of the price is what they're getting from an average selling price perspective. And again, Samsung sells all different kinds of phones from a wide range. From high to low, low. But that's beast, man. That is beast. My friend and I were just talking about this last night. That's a few hundred thousand phones a week or something like that. Mm-hm. I didn't I kind of did the math, but not very good math. Wait what's the math? Wait what's the 100,000 phone? [LAUGH] How many iPhones they sell like per week or something. Yeah. It's gotta be like in the hundreds of thousands. I don't know. I could be totally wrong. Not that it will affect it too much, but this next story maybe about his numbers [UNKNOWN] like just like a teeny, teeny bit and that's because Verizon is no longer planning to sell unlocked iPhones. And this is actually big deal for a lot of people and why is that? Okay, so Verizon was one of the few carriers that sold an unlocked version of their phone. You would have to first lock into a one month data plan with them, but you could then, once that one month was done, you could then take this phone to other carriers. You could put it on AT&T, you could put it on TMobile, you could put it on And it was basically a global, unlocked phone, right? That's cool. So Verizon though is preventing that from happening now. They said they wanna get ahead of theft that's been happening where people are stealing their phones. This is not just iPhones too, this is just unlocked phones period. People [UNKNOWN] but it's targeted more towards iPhones. People are stealing their phones, getting them unlocked and use on another carriers or trying to sell them overseas. Yeah. Right, they worked. So they trying to [UNKNOWN] the thing about this is they also say Verizon is expecting to, if you have the phone for a certain amount of time They will offer the ability to unlock the phone. They have not been specific on how long that will be, whether that's six months, nine months, a year. But they're not gonna completely lock it down, so just out of the box, if you get a phone and you try to do something shady with it, or if you try to be a good customer about it, the phone is still locked to Verizon. That's crazy. Well Unlocked phones are worth a lot more. And if you actually get your phone unlocked after you've you used it for a while, you're trying to sell it or something, everyone from another country's going to want to try to buy it. That's true. That was my experience. I unlocked my iPhone 5, and I put it and advertised it unlocked and I got so many Calls and emails from people from other countries saying, can you ship it to Brazil or ship it here. And I was like, sure.So unlock phones are definitely a huge value and it's a bummer that Verizon is just gonna lock them now. [LAUGH] Do you happen to get any emails from a Nigerian prince. [LAUGH] No. Just wanted to make sure. I think that they caught that guy actually. They finally caught that dude. They did. My dad was telling me, did you hear that they actually caught the Nigerian Prince? It's like actually a dude. Yeah the email scammer guy? And he got busted. After all these years, I don't know how much he made from it, but man. My dad was saying every time a new company would go public or just Put their information. When you start a new company, you have to build the website and do all the stuff and you have to report to the newspaper that the company is live. You said the Nigerian press would just look for that stuff. And as soon as a new company would come into existence, they would contact them. [LAUGH] My dad does a lot of consulting for business and stuff, and People always just joking. They will start a new company, he's be like, have you heard from a Nigerian prince yet? And some times, they'd be like, yes, I have. [LAUGH] Cuz you just registered your company. It's funny. It's funny. So this last kind of story before we get into the calls Apple had their shareholders meeting. This is how much attention gets paid to Apple, right? I think, is it early or is quarterly? No, it's early, they hold a meeting on Apple campus, and if you're a shareholder, whatever amount you have in the company, you're able to actually go and attend it, and ask questions. It's kind of like. Yeah. You have a public investment in the company, so Sometimes you hope that there's nuggets that come out of this. There weren't too many. Our own CNET's Shar Tibkin was there, and some of the notes that she had pulled, right, they give an overview of what's going on with the company. They vote for the board members and then they also ask, you know, they'll ask Tim Cook some questions. So, some of the things that Tim Cook touched upon, and I'm not gonna go into the questions, but just some of the responses, so you guys can all hear this. He says that the iPhone X customer satisfaction is at 99%. I saw that. I don't know about, honestly, I know that's not true. That's funny. It's not at 99%, it's not. But depending, the thing is customer satifaction surveys start from satisfied, somewhat satisfied, Totally satisfied, satisfied beyond belief, satisfied beyond human recognition. It's that whole scale. So that was one of the bullet points that came out of it. Apple also had acquired 19 companies in 2017. Wow. They do this a lot. 10 of those are unknown, or 10 of those are known. Nine of them are unknown. Apple also holds almost a quarter of a billion Subscriptions now across all services so this could be anything from iTunes Match, to iCloud, to Apple Music, almost a quarter of a billion there. People ask like, hey tim, because there's criticism about you, blah blah blah. Do you guys have a successor in place? And he says that they actually have internal candidates that are ready to succeed Tim Cook. Some people might want to see that sooner rather than later. Wow. But they do have a succession plan but they're not gonna tell us who it is. They just don't. That's an awkward question to get at the shareholder's meeting. Is there someone who's available to replace you, Tim? Yeah, we've been working on that. [LAUGH] They also talked about their, Retail stores saying that physical stores are never gonna go away, they believe that the interactions with people still beats anything and then, this is the fun one like one of the share holders, straight up asked Tim Cook, if he could get a tour of Apple Campus, Apple Park behind the scenes. And Tim Cook basically said that they're not gonna open their main big ring shaped building for tours because, we have so much confidential stuff around. Wow. He said, keeping stuff confidential is the bain of my existance now and it's worked wonderfully well under your run. [LAUGH] [LAUGH] Man. It's so bad. He should have never said, we're gonna double down on secrecy. It was so bad! That place is a fortress now, so you can't even get in. It doesn't matter if you can get in now. Everone leaks information. They can't control that. They have never been able to control that. Yeah, I'd be curious to see what an Apple employee goes through just to get into the building. You know, are they screened or what happens? It's a cavity search I'm pretty sure. Daily. I'm ready for my daily cavity search. [NOISE] Should we get to the calls? Let's do it. Yes. Let's get to the calls. Show some love to Apple Byte Nation. If you guys and gals want to be a part of the show the number is 1-800 616-2638 name where your from, get right to it, let's go. Yeah. Thank you guys all for the calls, we've got a bunch of good calls and we narrowed it down to four or five. So let's start with number one, wait, we forgot to play this dude at the very beginning. And he wanted to know about the HomePad My bad. Right, he found out all about the Home Pod, in fact watch the full review of Apple Byte review it will out. Okay, here we go, here's caller number 1. Hey gys, this is Bob calling from Stamford Conneticut, I just finished watching this week's show picked up my Home Pod yesterday and have been playing around with it, having a little bit fun but I do have one, I don't know if complain is the right word, question maybe is I called Apple Support just now because I was hoping to use it in my bedroom and have it play music while I'm falling a sleep at night, and be able to set a sleep time or to shut it off, it doesn't have a sleep time apparently. And we check on the Support Line, said that you could go into the home app, and set up a routine or whatever they call it To have it shut off, but it doesn't appear in the section of the app that does that. So it's an always product, I kind of get it but it doesn't work that way. So interestingly. The main thing that I was to use for isn't gonna work for me. But otherwise, it sounds great, it looks cool and pretty happy with it otherwise. But if you know anything at all about the possibility of how to do a sleep timer function or whether that might possibly end up being a future software update, which would be great. Cuz that would be a feature I think a lot of people would use, anyway Take care guys. Yeah man. We didn't touch upon it. But I do think it looks really good in person. Yeah. Especially in a home. It's looks modern. It does look like a toiler paper roll. But a fancy one. Something familiar and soft to touch. But to his point. He did call back later and let us know Just for people that are wondering is you can actually, you can't do a sleep timer directly through the HomePod but if you're play music over AirPlay to the HomePod which you can do, you can actually set a sleep timer on your phone. And I don't know if any of you have actually done this but if you actually go into your clock Right, the clock app. And you go all the way over here to your little timer there where it's orange. You can actually, here's the trick. Down here on the bottom, it says when timer ends. And so, this when timer ends, there's an option where you can actually change it to stop playing. Select that and then just. Set the time and it'll stop playing like that. Again, it shows how limited some basic stuff like that is not on the homepod, I'm sure that's gotta be one of those things that they will put in to the next software update. They have to. If they don't, It's a crime. If they don't allow multiple timers in this next update, even though they've never done it in the history of Siri, it's stupid. So hopefully they bring that, but you can do it using Airplay and then using the timer function on your phone. Or iOS device, not even phone. Like your iPad or your iPhone. Cool. You know one thing people have been mentioning is how heavy the homepod is, was that like, Well you don't pick it up. Was that your first reaction? It was hefty but I'm not gonna pick it up all the time. Once I put it down, I put it down. It's funny now, every time when someone would hold it, the first thing, my god it's so heavy, my god. Yeah and then it's like, then what? [LAUGH] And then what. Okay next caller, here we go. Yo Brian and Beech, this is Brian in Chicago. I just switched over to the iPhone 10 from Android and I love it. Just really not liking Siri. The google assistant is so much better. You think apple will ever invest some of it's billions of dollars into creating a better Siri? Let's hope, thanks for taking my call, bye bye. Yeah. Yeah, look, the thing is that they've known that they've been behind for years, that's what is probably the most frustrating thing for me is that they haven't done anything about it and they let everyone take their lunch, like Siri came out first, right? They let everyone take their lunch and now they are so, it's not even like a little behind guys It's a lot. It's a significant gap. I mean, when I use Amazon Echo and Google Home together, the Amazon is all hooked up with all the services and they have all the apps, but the Google Home platform is smarter. It has Amazon has the platform out, but who knows how it plays out over time. But the Google Home has the potential to be the platform just purely because it's smarter, but everyone is locked in in Alexa. I'm locked in in Alexa, but I also have a Home because it's freaking smart. So they need to get better, but I just don't see. It's not their expertise. It's not their specialty. How they can make such a dramatic leap to even be remotely close to either Amazon or Glo own right now. I just don't see it but hey, I'll let them proof me wrong. Yeah, Google Assistance definitely my go to right now when I have random questions. Cuz it understands context, it understands a lot of Mm-hm. Things It's really interesting how much it understands what you're trying to ask. I mean even stuff like, yeah fine. Maybe. Actually I shouldn't assume this, it might end up getting it. You can order pizza, you can order a car ride service. From these devices, like Apple you can't even put a calendar appointment from a HomePod right now. You can't even do calendar appointment. You can do to-do list I think that's about it. Yeah, you can do a reminder. Yeah reminders, [INAUDIBLE]. But you can't add something to your calendar, okay? That's, Pretty low hanging fruit. [LAUGH] Yeah. All right let's keep moving along, we got a couple more calls. Here we go. Hey guys it's David from Jersey, on the last show someone mentioned they lost all their icloud photos and the icloud backup and, What I do for my photos is I make sure that I back it up to a different service other than the Apple iCloud first, because if you backup all your photos to iCloud and you have the photo optimization setting turned on, you're only gonna get backups at the lower resolution Versions of the photos. So, what I do is I back them all up to Dropbox and also to Amazon Prime Photo prior to plugging my phone in and connect it to WiFi for where it will naturally do a backup automatically with the iCloud Photo. Just that's a good little tip there so people get the full resolution backup. Thanks a lot. Hope it's helpful. Bye. I dig that, man. Yeah, that's smart. That's the community looking out for each other. I love that. Thanks so much for that call. We appreciate stuff like that. It's funny though that he's backing it up to other places before he backs up to iCloud though. Well you got to. [LAUGH] But you know, to the point is yeah, you got to. You have to. You Even before we could do cloud storage, I would have two hard drives that were redundant on top of my actual hard drive. So I have all my files and stuff. Yeah, I do the same. Cool. Alright. Amazon Prime Photos is pretty awesome too. Like, I have gigs on there. It's pretty awesome. Yeah, but I got unlimited, at least for x amount of years, on Google, baby. Yeah, yeah, but does that resizes, though, is it resizing? No, full res, man. Full res? Full res, man. Nice. Full resolution. Cool, all right, I think we have one more? Yeah, one more, here we go. Beach and Tong, Mike from New York City. Was just listening to the extra munchy and crunchy, and I have a comment. You guys were talking about Apple not having a streaming service yet, still. And I actually I think they're pursuing the right direction. With the Apple TV app, the idea of having, Ala carte services whether it's Hulu or Netflix or HBO or whatever I want to choose. Having that in a single sing on is really the direction I think that this really needed to go. Rather than have some service that they're just another outlet out there that you can choose from If they come up with a single service option and our card, price plans where you can just have pretty have single sign on and get whatever services you choose, I think that's the direction they. I would want to spend my money on as oppose to any service where there are kind of predictating what you actually get before the money. All these other guys are cable clone so to speak. So I think Apple has the right idea, they just have to able to close the deal with all the programmers. So let me know what you think Great show, keep it up, love you guys, peace out. Love you. Love you back bro, you know what I think you make a great point and I think in a perfect world, yeah, they could do it But the people that are really controlling this, is the cable networks and the content holders because, right? When you have cable package, and you probably know this obviously, is that you have a lot of networks that are like lost leaders, and so you get something like Even though they are not doing so hard anymore. ESPN right, is one of those networks are that is where people get cable or that is where people used to get cable and we have all these other networks that ABC says okay well if you can get ESPN you gonna also take on these five or six networks alongside of it and until Apple Is willing to pay them enough for a single network that also covers the cost for people not picking up their other networks that are normally bundled in a cable plan that they've all ready kinda have in place. Apple's a [UNKNOWN] major [UNKNOWN] in order for that to happen and Up to this point they have shown they can't do that,right, they have shown that they can't even come up with a regular deal. I don't even mind if that is the goal or if that is the vision for Apple to get to the point that you're talking about. I think was it Mike from New York I hope am right cuz I heard a lot of bunch of names. But I think that even if that is the goal they were trying to get to they should have still done The cable streaming service because people are doing it and it's another revenue stream that they just don't have anymore because they decided to not cut a deal with the cable networks, and they have this grand vision but we've seen how the TV networks and content providers aren't gonna play the same way with Apple than maybe the music labels did because of how much the music labels needed Apple at the time You can go to Roku, you can go to Hulu, you can to Chromecast. You can go to Amazon Firestick, they don't need Apple. So. Yeah, true. That's all she wrote man, we're done. That's all she wrote. That's all she wrote. All right guys, thank you so much for calling in, making the show pop as usual. That's gonna do it, it is, Apple Byte Extra Crunch, remember call us again at 1-800-616-2638. We'll put you on the show. But until then, if other people finally picked up a Home Pod call us and let us know what you think. We'd love to hear about it. We want to talk about it more. Hopefully there'll be no other [UNKNOWN] issues. Hopefully not. [LAUGH] Let's just hope. It's only [UNKNOWN] week Apple, come on. All right, take everybody, be safe. Peace. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] Today's show is brought to you by Jamf NOW, Apple device management can be time consuming were especially if IT isn't your day job. But with Jamf NOW, keeping up with your equipment is a breeze. Jamf NOW helps you manage your Apple devices from anywhere. Need to secure that iPad that your sales rep lost while visiting home for the holidays. Bah humbug, shame on you. And now our listeners can set up their first three devices for free. 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