The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► I'll tell you what, I don't understand how people who like,

00:00:02 ◼   ► let's just say like, like a Stephen Colbert or Jimmy Kimmel,

00:00:07 ◼   ► or who have you, Alan degenerate, how did how the hell

00:00:11 ◼   ► do they do a show every day? Because I do one show. And it,

00:00:15 ◼   ► you know, it in our world, it's kind of a big deal. It is a

00:00:18 ◼   ► beautiful theater. It's 1100 people, I feel an immense amount

00:00:23 ◼   ► of pressure. And then I do it. And it goes off. And then I feel

00:00:27 ◼   ► like that's it for the month. Like, I don't understand how these people come back and

00:00:33 ◼   ► then they're like, "Well, tomorrow I'll do the same thing."

00:00:35 ◼   ► So, one thing is they've got a big staff and the staff helps them prepare and do some of

00:00:40 ◼   ► the strain that maybe you and Amy have to do for this. And I don't know, does Kifasas

00:00:45 ◼   ► do anything but just sort of smile and then read the intro?

00:00:48 ◼   ► Ah, you know what I mean? Like, if there's anything that slips through Amy's fingers,

00:00:51 ◼   ► he's there for it.

00:00:52 ◼   ► Right, he's there to catch it. So, that's part of it. I think also, and I remember listening

00:00:56 ◼   ► to Letterman talk about this. It's like being a long-distance runner, or being a runner.

00:01:02 ◼   ► You build up some strength, but if you do it every day, you get those muscles and you're

00:01:09 ◼   ► able to pace yourself. That said, I also got the impression, especially from Letterman,

00:01:13 ◼   ► that after doing four days, five shows in four days, because they would require a fifth

00:01:18 ◼   ► show, so they only work four days, that he was kind of destroyed for the weekend, that

00:01:22 ◼   ► that was part of it was that.

00:01:24 ◼   ► And yeah, and the other thing I think must be,

00:01:28 ◼   ► and think back to like when you were doing

00:01:31 ◼   ► your college newspaper, like there is something you,

00:01:34 ◼   ► no pressure, John, but like if you say something dumb

00:01:39 ◼   ► and Phil Schiller says something and you walk off stage

00:01:42 ◼   ► at the end of the talk show live and you're like,

00:01:44 ◼   ► oh, what did I do?

00:01:46 ◼   ► You gotta live with it for a year.

00:01:48 ◼   ► And Letterman or Colbert or Jimmy Kimmel or whoever,

00:01:51 ◼   ► They have a bad show.

00:01:52 ◼   ► Guess what? There's no show tomorrow.

00:01:54 ◼   ► It's like a baseball player, right?

00:01:55 ◼   ► There's like, there's so many games.

00:01:56 ◼   ► You have a bad game, just there's another game tomorrow.

00:01:59 ◼   ► Just, and I think that there's some truth in that too,

00:02:02 ◼   ► that it's all, the whole year is magnified on that one show.

00:02:05 ◼   ► No pressure. Forget what I said now in a year.

00:02:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

00:02:11 ◼   ► - So I have that too.

00:02:12 ◼   ► You know, I've had two podcast interviews

00:02:14 ◼   ► with Apple employees set up by Apple PR

00:02:16 ◼   ► in the last three months.

00:02:16 ◼   ► And it's definitely like, on one level,

00:02:20 ◼   ► I interview people all the time.

00:02:21 ◼   ► and on another one it's like, "Boy, they're taking a chance, I'm taking a chance, I better

00:02:25 ◼   ► not screw this up." It's true, it's true. And then you're kind of destroyed afterward

00:02:30 ◼   ► where it's just like, "Oh my God." And hard to tell whether you did a good job or not,

00:02:35 ◼   ► honestly, because I think you and I are similar in this way. You're so self-critical that

00:02:39 ◼   ► you're always thinking like, "I could have done this differently, why did that go that

00:02:43 ◼   ► way, I didn't expect this," and you completely lose perspective. So when people say, "It

00:02:46 ◼   ► was a great show," you just have to say, "Thank you," because I don't know, it could be, "This

00:02:51 ◼   ► The first time and I forget how many years I've been doing it. There was the moment cable Sasser at 111 minute

00:02:58 ◼   ► Were you there for that one? Yeah first ever live talk show that was and then

00:03:03 ◼   ► And then I I think I had the ATP guys on

00:03:07 ◼   ► At

00:03:10 ◼   ► mezzanine right and then the third year was Schiller and which is crazy to me I think right unless I'm missing something that

00:03:16 ◼   ► Already by the third year of the live talk show was the famous

00:03:20 ◼   ► I shit you not, Phil Schiller introduction, which was amazing. Yeah, I think that's right.

00:03:30 ◼   ► And then next year was Schiller and Federighi. I'm going to draw a blank here. Maybe it was

00:03:38 ◼   ► Schiller and Federighi three years ago? I don't know.

00:03:41 ◼   ► No, didn't you have like Jaws at one point in there?

00:03:44 ◼   ► Well, Jaws was last year. Jaws and Mike Rockwell were last year.

00:03:49 ◼   ► But Schiller and Federighi made a comeback together the first year at San Jose at the

00:03:55 ◼   ► California Theatre.

00:03:56 ◼   ► Yeah, that sounds right.

00:03:57 ◼   ► Right.

00:03:58 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:03:59 ◼   ► Which is funny, every time you mentioned the California Theatre, you mentioned those Apple

00:04:01 ◼   ► events and I remember those so well.

00:04:04 ◼   ► The last one with Scott Forstall where he was around but not on stage because he was

00:04:09 ◼   ► being fired in the process of being fired.

00:04:11 ◼   ► He was a week away from being fired.

00:04:12 ◼   ► I remember that.

00:04:13 ◼   ► I saw him.

00:04:14 ◼   ► He was talking to Dr. Wave from Pixar out in the hallway.

00:04:18 ◼   ► And literally the whole conversation as I walked by was, "Did you see Prometheus?

00:04:22 ◼   ► Yes, it sucked.

00:04:23 ◼   ► Yes."

00:04:24 ◼   ► And then I was just like, "Okay, that was a weird…"

00:04:27 ◼   ► And then Force Club was gone after that.

00:04:28 ◼   ► He's out of there.

00:04:30 ◼   ► And the iPod photo was in that theater, too.

00:04:32 ◼   ► I remember with U2.

00:04:34 ◼   ► So that's a great venue.

00:04:36 ◼   ► It was good enough for Steve Jobs.

00:04:37 ◼   ► It was good enough for the talk show.

00:04:39 ◼   ► It's amazing.

00:04:41 ◼   ► And then in the workup to the show, I'm like, "Why do I ever do this?

00:04:46 ◼   ► This is the last year I'm ever doing this.

00:04:47 ◼   ► and they were doing this again.

00:04:48 ◼   ► I don't care how popular this is.

00:04:49 ◼   ► I don't care.

00:04:50 ◼   ► I'm just gonna bag. - It's not worth it.

00:04:52 ◼   ► - Then I do the show and it comes off okay

00:04:55 ◼   ► and I go backstage and it seemed like,

00:04:58 ◼   ► I was like, this year I really felt like,

00:04:59 ◼   ► hey, that might've been the best one I ever did.

00:05:01 ◼   ► I might've been the most comfortable.

00:05:03 ◼   ► It might've been the funniest.

00:05:04 ◼   ► And I'm like, why don't I do this all the time?

00:05:07 ◼   ► I should come out here once a month and do one of these.

00:05:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think so.

00:05:12 ◼   ► I mean, even though it's only once a year,

00:05:14 ◼   ► I do think that anything you repeat, you get better, ideally,

00:05:18 ◼   ► and you have definitely gotten better.

00:05:19 ◼   ► Not to say you were bad before,

00:05:20 ◼   ► but I do think you're less visibly nervous

00:05:23 ◼   ► than you were at the beginning.

00:05:24 ◼   ► - It feels that way.

00:05:25 ◼   ► It absolutely feels that way.

00:05:27 ◼   ► And I don't, anyway, again, I think what you should do is,

00:05:29 ◼   ► you know, do it like 52 times a year or something like that,

00:05:32 ◼   ► and then you get really good.

00:05:33 ◼   ► Doing it once a year probably isn't the best way

00:05:36 ◼   ► to build up muscle memory,

00:05:37 ◼   ► but yet somehow it feels like I have.

00:05:40 ◼   ► I do feel that way.

00:05:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, I think there's some shorthand there

00:05:43 ◼   ► where you're realizing like, oh, I already, you know,

00:05:45 ◼   ► you process it and like, this is how I do this part of it.

00:05:47 ◼   ► And then you just put that to the side

00:05:49 ◼   ► and it lets you focus on the rest

00:05:50 ◼   ► and get a little bit better.

00:05:51 ◼   ► I had an email the other week from somebody who said,

00:05:54 ◼   ► I love these people.

00:05:55 ◼   ► They're the best.

00:05:56 ◼   ► These are all like the disciples of John Siracusa.

00:05:57 ◼   ► They're like, hey, I finally found the incomparable.

00:06:01 ◼   ► And so I started listening from the first episode.

00:06:04 ◼   ► I'm like, what are you doing?

00:06:06 ◼   ► There's 460 plus episodes of this show.

00:06:09 ◼   ► It's been on since 2010.

00:06:10 ◼   ► What are you doing?

00:06:11 ◼   ► - It's like a thousand hours.

00:06:12 ◼   ► A thousand hours of audio. But what the email said was, and I've listened

00:06:17 ◼   ► to the whole thing, okay, amazing, you've gotten a lot better as a host since 2010.

00:06:22 ◼   ► And my response was, thank you, I can't believe you listened to all those episodes, that really

00:06:25 ◼   ► wasn't necessary. And I would hope that after a thousand hours of hosting a podcast, I would

00:06:29 ◼   ► at least get a little bit better. Right? Like, there's something really wrong. You should

00:06:33 ◼   ► give up if you're not appreciably better at anything after you've been doing it every

00:06:38 ◼   ► week for 10 years, right? Like, that's—we, as human beings, we should get better at things

00:06:43 ◼   ► as we do them.

00:06:45 ◼   ► We would hope so.

00:06:46 ◼   ► It doesn't always happen, but yeah, try something else, maybe.

00:06:51 ◼   ► We tweaked a few things at my live show this year. I don't know what was obvious. I mean,

00:06:55 ◼   ► you've been to them, right?

00:06:57 ◼   ► I've been to all of them. All of them.

00:06:59 ◼   ► So we tweaked a couple of things this year, which—in the theater. And the big one was

00:07:07 ◼   ► we moved forward on the stage. So at the California theater, it this, I don't know how much shows up on

00:07:14 ◼   ► video. It's like when you're there, you can see it. And it's very palpable is that they have what

00:07:19 ◼   ► they call an orchestra area, right at the front of the stage, and they can raise and lower that

00:07:25 ◼   ► part of the stage. And in years past, we've kept it lower and done our staging on the main stage

00:07:34 ◼   ► behind that. And then this year, it wasn't a conflict, but it was just a little bit of

00:07:42 ◼   ► a back and forth negotiation. The day after my show, the San Francisco 49ers were holding

00:07:47 ◼   ► something there. I don't know if that, how, if like people saw like 49ers in the area

00:07:53 ◼   ► Wednesday or not, but, but they were holding a big event there. I don't even know what

00:07:57 ◼   ► it was. Yeah. It's something I think involving their spring practices and I don't know whether

00:08:02 ◼   ► was a team thing or a charity thing, but there was like they were they were around it was

00:08:06 ◼   ► like when they fly the players in a couple months before their training camp. So yeah,

00:08:10 ◼   ► they were around. So they there was some talk like two months before my show of hey, the

00:08:19 ◼   ► 49ers or at first they just said a client, there's another client who has an event the

00:08:24 ◼   ► day after you. And they would like to do some setup the day before your day. You know, how

00:08:33 ◼   ► long you know, what hours do you need the theater? What can they do? And maybe you might

00:08:38 ◼   ► have to keep the curtains closed, etc, etc. And I was just like, at first, I was like,

00:08:43 ◼   ► f you, you know, I mean, like, I'm, I'm paying rack rate for this theater for the day. I'm

00:08:48 ◼   ► going to do whatever I want. But then I, you know, I, you know, I listened and I had an

00:08:52 ◼   ► open mind. And I thought, Hey, wait a minute. Uh, if we close the curtains and moved forward,

00:08:58 ◼   ► wouldn't that be a little bit more intimate? Wouldn't that, why haven't we done this

00:09:02 ◼   ► ever since we've been there? And then like, I started looking at like, um, like when standup

00:09:08 ◼   ► comedians play there and I'm not saying that my show is a standup comedy show, but it's closer,

00:09:13 ◼   ► you know, in terms of what type of event it is, it's people with microphones trying to be

00:09:20 ◼   ► entertaining and informative. Right. You know, with an intimacy with the crowd is like, why

00:09:25 ◼   ► aren't we closer? And they were like, Oh, yeah, every time a stand up comedian plays

00:09:28 ◼   ► here, they they raise the orchestra and play at the front of the stage. And I'm like, Why

00:09:31 ◼   ► haven't I been doing that for two years? I think this actually isn't even like a concession

00:09:36 ◼   ► to the people. You know, the 49ers having the event the day after this actually seems

00:09:40 ◼   ► like a better way to stage this, we should be closer. And then the other change we made

00:09:44 ◼   ► is we kept the house lights up a little bit higher this year. In years past, our perspective

00:09:50 ◼   ► me and my guests on the stage is pretty much the audience is just black, just a complete blackout.

00:09:56 ◼   ► And so we raised the lights sound. No, we raised the lights a little bit this year. And I don't

00:10:01 ◼   ► know what you thought from the audience. But from the stage, it made a huge difference. But I

00:10:05 ◼   ► specifically remember seeing you I, there was like a hand it was maybe the only thing that almost

00:10:11 ◼   ► threw me off was that I was like, Hey, there's john circu said, taking pictures in the front row.

00:10:18 ◼   ► I almost like every time I'd see like a friend I had and I you know had all these tickets in reserve for friends to put them in the front rows and and it was like at least three times in the opening five minutes I would be like hey there's my pal Jason that I should interrupt my

00:10:34 ◼   ► Interrupt this opening monologue and say hi to him go shake some hands work the crowd. Yeah. Yeah, that's what a monologue is for

00:10:40 ◼   ► Yeah, like hey, I see you over there. Yeah, I think it was fine

00:10:44 ◼   ► line. You know, I think you don't want the lights too high out there because you feel

00:10:48 ◼   ► almost like you're part of the show and you kind of overexposed a little bit. But, you

00:10:53 ◼   ► know, what you did, that's a movie theater scenario, so it doesn't need to be complete

00:10:57 ◼   ► darkness except for the stage. And it's funny, I was thinking about this because I went to

00:11:01 ◼   ► the ATP and relay shows too, and I was briefly on stage for the relay show, which those are

00:11:06 ◼   ► the Hammer Theater, which is on the San Jose State campus. It's a couple of blocks away.

00:11:09 ◼   ► It's a good, great little venue.

00:11:11 ◼   ► That was the venue that they used for the app documentary two years ago.

00:11:16 ◼   ► Right, exactly.

00:11:17 ◼   ► And now it's like podcasts all week long.

00:11:20 ◼   ► Yeah, well, Marco and Casey and John went to the relay thing last year and they said,

00:11:25 ◼   ► "Oh, this is good.

00:11:26 ◼   ► We should do this."

00:11:27 ◼   ► Because they were in the ballroom at Alt-Conf where everybody's on the same level and they've

00:11:31 ◼   ► got a stage that's like six inches off the ground.

00:11:33 ◼   ► It's a better venue.

00:11:34 ◼   ► So standing in the wings, I'm literally waiting to go on and do my little cameo.

00:11:38 ◼   ► I looked backstage where there's some there's some like audio equipment and stuff like that and a little video equipment that wasn't being used and

00:11:46 ◼   ► And I had that moment where I looked and I was like, oh my god

00:11:50 ◼   ► There's an enormous theater stage back here because of course there is

00:11:53 ◼   ► But you know the used part was this very small front of the stage and I think it makes it yeah same reason

00:12:01 ◼   ► It's more intimate. You don't have

00:12:04 ◼   ► You know somebody on a horse riding by or something like that is happening. It's just it's just people talking into microphones

00:12:10 ◼   ► So so get to the front of the stage and and I think it I think it works. I think it's great

00:12:14 ◼   ► It is amazing. There was a did you see that article? There was an article in a German newspaper?

00:12:19 ◼   ► That literally the whole article was basically like it was like a five-page long article on their website. It's a long article

00:12:25 ◼   ► It was basically can you believe that people want to listen to?

00:12:32 ◼   ► Basically dudes with microphones talking about computers. I thought I thought it was a great article. I really enjoyed it

00:12:39 ◼   ► I really did and I wish it it it made me god. I wish I could speak and read

00:12:45 ◼   ► Ten different languages. I'm so inept at

00:12:49 ◼   ► Multiple languages I took four years of Spanish in high school and all I can do is order

00:12:55 ◼   ► Amber Amber gay so's and

00:13:00 ◼   ► - Cervezos. (laughs)

00:13:02 ◼   ► - That's important stuff.

00:13:04 ◼   ► - (speaks in foreign language)

00:13:06 ◼   ► May I go to the bathroom?

00:13:07 ◼   ► I don't even know how to ask where the bathroom is.

00:13:10 ◼   ► (speaks in foreign language)

00:13:12 ◼   ► I guess is where's the bathroom?

00:13:14 ◼   ► - I took German in high school and college

00:13:15 ◼   ► and yeah, it's a good article,

00:13:17 ◼   ► but it is funny that the premise,

00:13:19 ◼   ► stepping outside our bubble for a moment,

00:13:20 ◼   ► the premise is did you know

00:13:24 ◼   ► that there are all these podcasts about Apple?

00:13:26 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:13:27 ◼   ► It's like, and it is weird, right?

00:13:29 ◼   ► think that people are going into big theaters to sit and watch a podcast, which is fundamentally

00:13:34 ◼   ► not a visual medium live on stage all week, but we do. Yeah. And you know, and I thought,

00:13:40 ◼   ► I thought it was a fascinating article and I really, you know, I don't know what nuance

00:13:44 ◼   ► I missed by reading it through Google translate, although I'm blown away by how good Google

00:13:49 ◼   ► translate has gotten. It's truly, truly one of the technical marvels of the world. It

00:13:56 ◼   ► It really is.

00:13:57 ◼   ► And I probably get a rep as somebody who's anti-Google

00:14:01 ◼   ► on the whole, in the tech world.

00:14:05 ◼   ► I have to say, I've always thought Google web search

00:14:08 ◼   ► is truly just a marvel of the world.

00:14:11 ◼   ► Like seriously, like if like Thomas Jefferson

00:14:14 ◼   ► or Ben Franklin time traveled to today,

00:14:16 ◼   ► what would you show them?

00:14:17 ◼   ► How would you ease them into the modern world?

00:14:20 ◼   ► Wouldn't Google search be one of the first things

00:14:22 ◼   ► you show them?

00:14:23 ◼   ► Just open up a computer or an iPad,

00:14:26 ◼   ► an iPad really if you really want to wow them single window one field show them how you can

00:14:31 ◼   ► search for stuff. Google Translate is absolutely astounding. It's truly amazing. It's it. I feel

00:14:38 ◼   ► like in the next five or 10 years we're going to get to the point where you could literally read

00:14:41 ◼   ► anything from anywhere in any language in your native language and it will be I mean already

00:14:46 ◼   ► it's readable but I think there's only a matter of time you would think before it's they've used

00:14:51 ◼   ► machine learning to scour every word, every sentence, every construction in English ever

00:14:55 ◼   ► and in German ever. And we'll be able to just basically be it maybe never as artful as a

00:15:02 ◼   ► human translator, but like for web articles, nobody else is going to translate them. And

00:15:06 ◼   ► if they're completely readable, that's miraculous, right? That's amazing. The article on these

00:15:12 ◼   ► live podcasts, and it started with the sort of a you are there, you're in the line for

00:15:17 ◼   ► my show, but he talked about all the other live shows that happened during the week at

00:15:22 ◼   ► WDC. But it was funny because there was like a little, if you want to call it a translato,

00:15:27 ◼   ► you know, a translation typo. It was like the snake winds around the block. And what

00:15:35 ◼   ► he meant was, I guess, I guess it somehow, my interpretation of how this got misinterpreted

00:15:42 ◼   ► was that in German it said something like the Q snakes around the block.

00:15:47 ◼   ► And somehow though the line for my show turned into a snake. And Paul Kefas is the announcer of

00:15:57 ◼   ► the show and my wife. We were on a group chat when the article came out. We all agreed that from now

00:16:02 ◼   ► on any sort of Q is a snake. Yeah, it's literally German uses a word for snake to mean Q. So in

00:16:12 ◼   ► instead or line. So instead of a line winding around, they say it's a,

00:16:15 ◼   ► a snake is a line as a snake. So it,

00:16:18 ◼   ► and that's one of those things that's interesting where Google translate didn't

00:16:22 ◼   ► get like dish longer Vindit.

00:16:23 ◼   ► It should be like your it's probably not a literally a snake

00:16:29 ◼   ► winding around. It's probably a line, but it didn't do that.

00:16:33 ◼   ► But it was a great article. It was,

00:16:36 ◼   ► and I think it's interesting cause I do think there's something true to that.

00:16:40 ◼   ► And the gist of the article in the bigger term was that Apple listens to

00:16:45 ◼   ► podcasts, popular Apple podcasts, and you know,

00:16:48 ◼   ► they don't respond on a weekly basis, but they, they clearly do listen.

00:16:52 ◼   ► Uh,

00:16:54 ◼   ► and I thought it was extraordinary and so delightful how much access the,

00:16:59 ◼   ► the Apple podcasts sphere got during WWDC.

00:17:07 ◼   ► I mean, just off the top of my head. Federico interviewed Craig Federighi on Tuesday. You

00:17:17 ◼   ► had an interview with Wiley Hodges and Josh, and I always forget Josh's surname.

00:17:23 ◼   ► It's Shaffer because it's spelled like Paul Shaffer, but it's not pronounced like that.

00:17:27 ◼   ► See, I get mixed up. But Wiley Hodges and Josh Shaffer, which I just want to just full stop,

00:17:34 ◼   ► Interrupt my show and say that upgrade episode. I think it's 249

00:17:39 ◼   ► Because one of the things I wanted to talk about is that you guys you guys are gonna lap me on

00:17:44 ◼   ► Episode numbers very shortly because this is you and I are talking right now in the midst of episode

00:17:49 ◼   ► 255 good number of my shot

00:17:52 ◼   ► Yeah, we're almost

00:18:01 ◼   ► Absolutely the best layperson

00:18:04 ◼   ► overview of Swift UI

00:18:07 ◼   ► written audio otherwise of any anything I've seen since

00:18:12 ◼   ► WWDC episode 240 the whole episode people should listen to nobody should skip around but if you were gonna skip around I would skip around

00:18:20 ◼   ► to the part where Jason interviews

00:18:22 ◼   ► Wiley Hodges who's a product manager in the dev tools team and

00:18:26 ◼   ► Josh Schaffer who you know

00:18:30 ◼   ► you know, his baby. Yeah, won't say nobody takes credit for it. They're an apple. It's

00:18:35 ◼   ► apples thing, but effectively Swift UI is his thing. And it is absolutely phenomenal

00:18:43 ◼   ► overview and answer so many questions. Every single question I had, even questions that

00:18:49 ◼   ► I didn't think to ask while I was with these guys in WWDC in San Jose, I was like, Oh,

00:18:54 ◼   ► I hope Jason asks by and every single one that popped into my head, you would ask within

00:18:58 ◼   ► 30 seconds of me thinking of it during this podcast. It's one of the best interviews I've seen.

00:19:03 ◼   ► Not a wasted question. Such a great overview. I appreciate that because I came out of it feeling

00:19:08 ◼   ► sort of the way that I described earlier, which is, was that good or was that a disaster? I don't

00:19:12 ◼   ► know. And then because those guys, what's funny is like Craig Federighi, by the way, he's kind of a

00:19:18 ◼   ► unicorn because he is a deeply technical guy, but he also like totally gets and, and, you know,

00:19:24 ◼   ► Schiller is like this, but Schiller's not like a super technical guy. He is a marketing

00:19:28 ◼   ► guy. But Craig is, like, you always feel it when he's walking around at WWDC. He's one

00:19:34 ◼   ► of us. He is a computer nerd. He is a developer. He's got cred in that area, but he also has

00:19:41 ◼   ► really blossomed as a spokesperson. And he straddles that line in a way that is, I call

00:19:47 ◼   ► him a unicorn because it's hard to find people who can communicate. As somebody who was a

00:19:52 ◼   ► magazine editor. So hard to find people who know the technical stuff and can communicate it well,

00:19:56 ◼   ► and Craig does it amazingly well. And these guys are lower down in terms of the details of this

00:20:04 ◼   ► tech stuff, but they also don't get out to communicate to the public a lot. And so that

00:20:09 ◼   ► was the challenge. I was telling you earlier before we started, there were a couple moments

00:20:14 ◼   ► where I'd ask a question and they'd look at each other and I'm like, "Uh-oh, what did I do?"

00:20:20 ◼   ► because I think it wasn't a problem with my question.

00:20:23 ◼   ► It was that they don't have the internal map,

00:20:26 ◼   ► maybe as much at hand as Craig does about what,

00:20:30 ◼   ► how you answer a question, what you say,

00:20:32 ◼   ► what you're allowed to say that won't get you in trouble.

00:20:35 ◼   ► And they were like thinking about it a little bit.

00:20:38 ◼   ► And that's what I really noticed about it

00:20:39 ◼   ► versus your interview with Craig,

00:20:41 ◼   ► where Craig is just like, I mean, he's super smooth.

00:20:44 ◼   ► And also he's got somebody next to him who's in marketing

00:20:46 ◼   ► who can pull the chain if he says something he shouldn't.

00:20:49 ◼   ► He was on fire on my show. He was. He was just absolutely on fire. Um,

00:20:53 ◼   ► you're right. You're right. And, and I,

00:20:56 ◼   ► part of it with Phil Schiller is not,

00:20:59 ◼   ► I don't think it's so much that Phil Schiller can't speak to the technical

00:21:02 ◼   ► details.

00:21:03 ◼   ► He almost certainly doesn't understand the software to a deep technical level

00:21:08 ◼   ► like Federighi does just because it's Federighi's job.

00:21:11 ◼   ► He's the head of software. But I think, uh, I think overall though,

00:21:16 ◼   ► Schiller, even when he's being relaxed and he's in a, "Hey, I'm going to do this podcast,"

00:21:23 ◼   ► you know, like he was on ATP a couple months ago, he still doesn't want to break that seal.

00:21:30 ◼   ► He's so old-school Apple that he really doesn't want to break the seal on how the magic is

00:21:35 ◼   ► done, you know?

00:21:36 ◼   ► Yep. Yeah, it's true. And this is something we witness when we talk to these guys. And

00:21:43 ◼   ► I should mention, I said "guys" there, I should mention that one of the people that

00:21:46 ◼   ► I got to talk to this year for upgrade was Colleen Novielli, who ended up on stage at

00:21:51 ◼   ► WWDC. And I definitely got the sense like that that this was one of the that our interview

00:21:57 ◼   ► was kind of like getting her feet wet in being doing public communication and that and then

00:22:03 ◼   ► she's on stage and I'm like, oh, and it was funny because a lot of people are like, hey,

00:22:07 ◼   ► we know her and it's because her voice was on a podcast. And I think that Apple that's

00:22:11 ◼   ► That's why we had so many podcast interviews at dub dub this year is because they tried

00:22:17 ◼   ► it out with Renee Richie and then they tried it out with with me and they've been doing

00:22:20 ◼   ► these on stage interviews to with you and I think they finally were like this is great

00:22:25 ◼   ► let's just go all in and so there were like a dozen different podcast interviews and that

00:22:32 ◼   ► was great to see too. Yeah so Colleen was the woman who introduced the pro display XDR

00:22:40 ◼   ► stage. She was the one who clicked that button to get past the 999 stand as quickly as possible.

00:22:46 ◼   ► But she's also, you know, if you're a close attention payer, you would know that she's also

00:22:55 ◼   ► the product manager for, is it the iMac Pro or the iMac as a whole? iMac and iMac Pro.

00:23:04 ◼   ► and absolutely knocked it out of the park. Kind of, you know, we can get into this, I

00:23:10 ◼   ► think, on the, like the price of the Pro Display XDR kind of had a tough, that's a tough thing

00:23:17 ◼   ► to pitch because you've got this amazing, amazing product and it's sort of a shit sandwich

00:23:23 ◼   ► when it comes down to how much it costs, et cetera.

00:23:25 ◼   ► And your audience for that product is not in the room, right? Like the developers primed

00:23:30 ◼   ► for a monitor that developers would want. If she was at NAB or something doing that

00:23:36 ◼   ► presentation...

00:23:37 ◼   ► People would have stormed the stage, right?

00:23:38 ◼   ► They would have been falling down, faint in the aisles.

00:23:40 ◼   ► Yeah, they would have run down the aisles and lifted her up on her shoulders like Vince

00:23:44 ◼   ► Lombardi after the Super Bowl 2 and taken her off the stage, right?

00:23:48 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:23:49 ◼   ► Absolutely. And it would have been because the price was so low. They'd be like, "Oh

00:23:53 ◼   ► my God, I might get one of these on my desk."

00:23:55 ◼   ► Yeah, it's a $30,000 monitor for $6,000. This is amazing. Whereas everybody else is like,

00:23:59 ◼   ► charging what huh so we can hold that thought but that was amazing and she was

00:24:05 ◼   ► great and then she also did the there were a lot of behind-the-scenes

00:24:12 ◼   ► briefings off-the-record briefings for members of the media yeah and I again

00:24:18 ◼   ► this sounds like looking a gift horse in the mouth to say that there were too

00:24:23 ◼   ► many but I had too many and again this I'd rather have too many than not enough

00:24:29 ◼   ► It is an absolute privilege this when I got into this racket, you know

00:24:33 ◼   ► 20 years ago or started thinking about it, you know

00:24:37 ◼   ► This is where I wanted to be and Mike this is where you want to be if you cover Apple as

00:24:41 ◼   ► as a career you would like to be in the circle where when

00:24:45 ◼   ► WWDC the Apple has

00:24:48 ◼   ► Behind the scenes off-the-record press briefings you'd like to be invited to them

00:24:51 ◼   ► Yep, I'm there and it's happy I was happy to be there but boy there were a lot but part of and I don't blame them

00:24:58 ◼   ► You know, and it was not like a, it was absolutely not like a shotgun approach. Like, here's

00:25:04 ◼   ► all this stuff and you figure it out. It was simply because they had so much to announce

00:25:09 ◼   ► this year. I think in hindsight, now that WWDC has settled in, everybody's immediate

00:25:16 ◼   ► impression that, "Holy crap, they did a lot this year and announced a lot this year,"

00:25:20 ◼   ► exactly spot on and it wasn't just our excitement over the first day or two and sort of, you

00:25:30 ◼   ► know, every year it seems like a lot, but it just seemed like this year it truly was

00:25:35 ◼   ► more than usual. There really was a lot that they couldn't fit in the keynote.

00:25:39 ◼   ► I feel like it was, and you know what they do of course, because they ask you, like they

00:25:43 ◼   ► ask me, whenever you see an Apple person afterward in one of those briefings, they say, "What

00:25:46 ◼   ► did you think of the keynote?" And you're like, "Oh man, now you're asking me to review

00:25:49 ◼   ► your thing that you just did. And what I said this time was, I think that might be the most

00:25:54 ◼   ► dense Apple presentation, keynote presentation I've ever seen. Just content-dense. There

00:26:00 ◼   ► have been more earth-shattering things like the iPhone launch. I mean, there are lots

00:26:03 ◼   ► of those. But in terms of just content density, like, we have spent the last two years-ish,

00:26:10 ◼   ► year and a half, how long ago was Gherman's first Marzipan report, talking about the implications

00:26:16 ◼   ► of Marzipan?

00:26:17 ◼   ► - At least a year and a half ago, yeah.

00:26:19 ◼   ► - The implications of Marzipan for Mac OS.

00:26:21 ◼   ► And did they give it even five minutes on stage?

00:26:25 ◼   ► And they're off to the next thing?

00:26:26 ◼   ► It was like, I had that moment,

00:26:27 ◼   ► I'm like, whoa, wait a second.

00:26:29 ◼   ► That was Marzipan and it's gone.

00:26:32 ◼   ► Catalyst is just like, here it is.

00:26:34 ◼   ► And we can't wait to see what you do with it.

00:26:36 ◼   ► Onto the next thing, we're gonna do Swift UI now.

00:26:39 ◼   ► And that was that thing, it was just super dense.

00:26:43 ◼   ► And that's why we all had like,

00:26:45 ◼   ► I don't know how it worked for you.

00:26:46 ◼   ► there's a little inside baseball,

00:26:47 ◼   ► but I got a little email from an Apple PR person saying,

00:26:50 ◼   ► "Well, here's what we've got you doing."

00:26:51 ◼   ► And there were like eight things on it.

00:26:53 ◼   ► And there was like a briefing and a demo

00:26:55 ◼   ► and another briefing and another demo.

00:26:56 ◼   ► Didn't even say what the briefings are,

00:26:58 ◼   ► 'cause of course they're secret.

00:26:59 ◼   ► And I just thought, what?

00:27:00 ◼   ► You know, like, well, they're filling my schedule.

00:27:03 ◼   ► It's like I'm at a conference or something

00:27:06 ◼   ► where that's not WWDC, I'm like at the Apple conference

00:27:10 ◼   ► that they are slotting me in all these slots.

00:27:12 ◼   ► But it's not like they didn't have stuff

00:27:14 ◼   ► to talk about to all of us.

00:27:15 ◼   ► There was they were really deconstructing those two hours for the rest of the week. Did you get the

00:27:20 ◼   ► privacy

00:27:22 ◼   ► briefing I

00:27:23 ◼   ► Don't know if I got that one. Yeah, I don't know if I got that one

00:27:26 ◼   ► I feel like that one might have been a shorter

00:27:28 ◼   ► I don't know why it just seems like a lot of the people I talked to didn't get it

00:27:32 ◼   ► But there was so much privacy and security stuff that and in theory all of it

00:27:39 ◼   ► Everything they told me could have been in the keynote because it's it's all useful. It's all

00:27:44 ◼   ► all very pertinent to the daily life of people using these platforms. And it's, of course,

00:27:52 ◼   ► strongly aligned with Apple's recent public push to emphasize their privacy and security

00:28:01 ◼   ► angle. And yet, none of it made the keynote. Yeah. It was insane. Yeah, there's a little

00:28:07 ◼   ► in State of the Union. And then there were a bunch of sessions I went to, like, because

00:28:11 ◼   ► the depth of like, even in Mac OS, you know, we focus on iOS so much, but like even in

00:28:15 ◼   ► Mac OS, there are so many security and privacy things that they've done to lock down certain

00:28:21 ◼   ► things but also allow apps to open up other things. And like it's very clear that at some

00:28:27 ◼   ► point, and I would love to know the backstory on this, at some point, the directive came

00:28:31 ◼   ► down from the top that said, we're going to impose some discipline on product design and

00:28:37 ◼   ► also product communication, where everything has a security and privacy story. Like you

00:28:43 ◼   ► can't have a feature or a product at Apple, you can't present it on stage, you can't

00:28:48 ◼   ► formulate it without telling the story of how this is secure and how this makes sure

00:28:54 ◼   ► that your information stays private. And the discipline has been very impressive. Like

00:28:58 ◼   ► in the last two years, not a thing gets announced without security and privacy being mentioned.

00:29:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, I totally agree.

00:29:05 ◼   ► It's very impressive to me

00:29:12 ◼   ► how much stuff they had to announce.

00:29:13 ◼   ► It's just crazy.

00:29:15 ◼   ► I know it's closer to the end of the month

00:29:18 ◼   ► than the beginning of the month,

00:29:19 ◼   ► and I still feel like I'm not done processing everything.

00:29:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, I came out of it in like a haze for,

00:29:25 ◼   ► I mean, I was watching videos after the week was over

00:29:27 ◼   ► to catch up on the sessions that I missed

00:29:29 ◼   ► because I was in briefings instead of in sessions,

00:29:32 ◼   ► because you can only be in one place.

00:29:33 ◼   ► And it is, even now, like somebody pops up with something,

00:29:36 ◼   ► they're like, "Oh, did you see that this thing

00:29:38 ◼   ► got announced in this session?"

00:29:41 ◼   ► And it's like, "No, I had no idea."

00:29:42 ◼   ► And it's amazing how much they held back.

00:29:47 ◼   ► And I think the truth is, one of the reasons it's like this

00:29:51 ◼   ► is because a lot of stuff has been on the boil

00:29:54 ◼   ► for years in the background.

00:29:57 ◼   ► And then this is the year where they just released

00:30:00 ◼   ► so much of it openly.

00:30:01 ◼   ► So this is not like the here's what we've been working on the last year.

00:30:04 ◼   ► This is like some of this stuff we have been working on for five years and now

00:30:07 ◼   ► you get to see it. Yeah. I,

00:30:09 ◼   ► I sort of have that feeling too that it's not necessarily indicative that every,

00:30:14 ◼   ► every June is going to be this much of a bonanza of news.

00:30:18 ◼   ► I think there's a little bit of that where I do feel like institutionally

00:30:23 ◼   ► they've gotten better at, uh,

00:30:26 ◼   ► as we've all said for a long time,

00:30:30 ◼   ► probably ever since the iPhone came out,

00:30:32 ◼   ► that they're getting better at walking and chewing gum

00:30:34 ◼   ► at the same time, doing two things.

00:30:35 ◼   ► Ever since that first iPhone came out

00:30:37 ◼   ► and they had to announce that the major Mac OS version

00:30:40 ◼   ► was gonna be postponed six months

00:30:42 ◼   ► because they had to pull engineers to finish iOS 1.0,

00:30:46 ◼   ► there's always been a sort of,

00:30:50 ◼   ► I don't even think it's unfair.

00:30:53 ◼   ► I think it's a little unfair

00:30:55 ◼   ► in so far as we don't know the backstory

00:30:57 ◼   ► because they're so secretive,

00:30:58 ◼   ► But from the outside, it's kind of fair to say that Apple has really only been good at

00:31:06 ◼   ► doing one thing at a time.

00:31:07 ◼   ► No matter how big the company's gotten, how wealthy they've gotten their profits, they've

00:31:13 ◼   ► had trouble over the last 12 years keeping all of the platforms moving together year

00:31:18 ◼   ► after year as opposed to just moving the iPhone OS forward.

00:31:22 ◼   ► forward.

00:31:23 ◼   ► I mean, who has succeeded at maintaining two separate user software platforms at all? Like,

00:31:28 ◼   ► Microsoft didn't do it. Yeah, and I think you can use that lens to look at Catalyst

00:31:34 ◼   ► and SwiftUI and all the stuff that they only talked about briefly last year, but like under

00:31:39 ◼   ► the hood, they've been trying to correct for all the drift that's happened over the last

00:31:43 ◼   ► decade between—because iOS was based on macOS, but it's drifted, and now you want

00:31:47 ◼   ► to bring the app platform back together, you gotta kind of have all the pieces be the same

00:31:51 ◼   ► version and react the same way. And they, you know, a lot of this is about Apple saying,

00:31:56 ◼   ► we can't maintain these two completely separate platforms. We just can't do it. So yeah. And

00:32:01 ◼   ► I, so it's almost like it's unfair to say they should have been doing better, but I

00:32:05 ◼   ► do, I feel like maybe they are, I, this was the year to me where they really showed that

00:32:10 ◼   ► they could move everything forward in an interesting way. And I think Swift UI is a big part of

00:32:16 ◼   ► because it was conceived apparently originally

00:32:21 ◼   ► for the watch, but then they were like,

00:32:23 ◼   ► this would work everywhere.

00:32:25 ◼   ► And right now, this summer with the developer betas,

00:32:30 ◼   ► you can use Swift UI on every single shipping

00:32:33 ◼   ► Apple platform, TV, watch, iPhone, iPad, Mac.

00:32:38 ◼   ► That's amazing.

00:32:40 ◼   ► And it's very different from the way stuff has rolled out

00:32:44 ◼   ► in previous years, where usually,

00:32:46 ◼   ► you know, whatever platform it was meant for first would ship first and then other things

00:32:50 ◼   ► would come a year later, maybe two years later. Swift UI debuting on all the platforms right

00:32:57 ◼   ► from the get go is, is a huge deal and, and beyond Swift UI itself, which I think is really

00:33:06 ◼   ► interesting, really appley technology. I think the fact that it's shipping on all their platforms

00:33:12 ◼   ► at first is one of the biggest stories of the month.

00:33:16 ◼   ► It also prevents kind of a platform, I don't know, like a not invented here effect that

00:33:25 ◼   ► you would get otherwise. Like if this was, if this was, and I'm not saying this is right,

00:33:30 ◼   ► I'm just saying this is what would happen. If they came out and said, here's a great

00:33:32 ◼   ► new way to write watch apps. And then a year later they said, it turns out you can write

00:33:36 ◼   ► Mac apps with this too. Or iPad apps. Mac and iPad people will be like, what? You want

00:33:41 ◼   ► us to have watch apps now? Why are you doing this to our platform?" Instead, they're like,

00:33:45 ◼   ► "No, no, no. It's for everybody from the get-go." And it defuses a lot of arguments about, like,

00:33:51 ◼   ► was this originally supposed to be for my platform and now you're – or for that platform,

00:33:56 ◼   ► you're importing it into mine. It's just like, no, it's for everybody from the beginning,

00:34:00 ◼   ► and those arguments just don't happen. And I think that's – and you can all mix and

00:34:03 ◼   ► match, which is something that I talked about with Josh and Wiley, right? That this is not

00:34:07 ◼   ► one of those things where it's like, "Well, if you want to build a new app, you can build

00:34:11 ◼   ► it in this, but your old app, too bad." It's like, no, you could literally, you can build

00:34:15 ◼   ► a Mac app for Catalina that is using Swift UI and Interface Builder that's written in

00:34:22 ◼   ► Objective-C, that's written in Swift, that uses UIKit as well as AppKit. You could literally

00:34:31 ◼   ► put all these different technologies, some stuff from iOS, some stuff from Mac, the new

00:34:36 ◼   ► stuff, in a single Mac app, and it'll just work. Like, that's the kind of amazing thing

00:34:40 ◼   ► here is they're not making you choose. You can actually mix and match this stuff if you

00:34:44 ◼   ► want to as a developer.

00:34:45 ◼   ► There's, you know, the more things change, the more they stay the same as the saying

00:34:53 ◼   ► goes. It's different, but in some ways it is philosophically exactly the mentality that

00:35:01 ◼   ► Apple has had ever since the next acquisition and or as I call it, like to call it the reunification.

00:35:08 ◼   ► Um, it, you know, this, this, uh,

00:35:13 ◼   ► this way and you emphasized it on upgrade.

00:35:16 ◼   ► I think when you were talking with Wiley and Josh,

00:35:19 ◼   ► like BB edit as an example of an app that has been in active development since I

00:35:24 ◼   ► think like 1991, 1990, 1991,

00:35:30 ◼   ► at least publicly 1992 was when rich released it and it's never really had a,

00:35:35 ◼   ► it's never really had a, okay, throw everything out.

00:35:40 ◼   ► We have to do it all over from scratch.

00:35:42 ◼   ► It has always been, okay, let's rewrite this part.

00:35:45 ◼   ► Let's rewrite this part.

00:35:47 ◼   ► Let's rewrite, let's redo these dialogue boxes

00:35:52 ◼   ► to make them use the modern UI toolkit

00:35:56 ◼   ► so that we can keep going.

00:35:57 ◼   ► And now all of a sudden here we are in 2019

00:36:00 ◼   ► and the app is 64-bit.

00:36:02 ◼   ► It's a 64-bit Cocoa app that never once got rewritten from being a 32-bit, pre-carbon

00:36:11 ◼   ► classic Mac OS app in 1992.

00:36:15 ◼   ► And in my Macworld piece last week where I referenced your classic, like, 2010, talk

00:36:19 ◼   ► about 10 years ago, piece, I call it the apotheseus, where it's like literally like you replace

00:36:25 ◼   ► every part of the ship as it's still the same ship.

00:36:28 ◼   ► And like, BBS is like that.

00:36:29 ◼   ► Like Rich Segal has replaced every part of that app, but he'd ever had a schism, I

00:36:34 ◼   ► feel, where it just, "Oh, old BB Edit is gone and here's new BB Edit."

00:36:38 ◼   ► He's just kept replacing the pieces, and that so reflects on how Apple does this, where

00:36:42 ◼   ► they roll this stuff through.

00:36:43 ◼   ► And as you said, it's that constant iteration.

00:36:47 ◼   ► And you wrote about that in 2010.

00:36:48 ◼   ► It was already clear that that's Apple's whole stock and trade is you make some leaps,

00:36:52 ◼   ► but really the key is that you then just keep pushing and keep iterating.

00:36:57 ◼   ► And you end up with these transitions that what my piece is about is like it's the invisible

00:37:02 ◼   ► transition strategy is like there's no Swift UI schism. What's going to happen is we're

00:37:06 ◼   ► going to sit around using our apps and in five years those apps are all going to be

00:37:09 ◼   ► like written in Swift and built with Swift UI. But we're not going to notice in a lot

00:37:13 ◼   ► of cases because it's just going to happen in the background. The developers will put

00:37:16 ◼   ► in the work but for us it's just like I'm just using my Apple stuff and it works and

00:37:20 ◼   ► that is how it should be. Yeah it's exactly right and you know so you can take an app

00:37:25 ◼   ► Like you said, it's written in Objective-C, has been around on the iPhone for 10 years

00:37:30 ◼   ► already, and you have a new feature you want to add, one new feature.

00:37:36 ◼   ► You could do just that feature, that view in SwiftUI, and just introduce SwiftUI into

00:37:42 ◼   ► this 10-year-old app for one view, and that'll be fine.

00:37:49 ◼   ► And the user won't know.

00:37:50 ◼   ► It won't be like, "Oh, all of a sudden when I go into this feature, everything looks different."

00:37:53 ◼   ► you know, it's just a very Apple-like way of introducing something that is truly, truly

00:38:02 ◼   ► significant. If there's one thing, and it's not a complaint, because I don't know what else Apple

00:38:06 ◼   ► could do, is I do feel that the nature of their public keynotes and the WWDC keynote, to me,

00:38:16 ◼   ► it's the most fun event of the year, because you never know what you're going to get, right?

00:38:21 ◼   ► September, probably September 7th or so, I don't know what day of the week it is, but

00:38:26 ◼   ► you and I are probably going to be standing around outside the Steve Jobs theater on some

00:38:30 ◼   ► Tuesday within, you know, nine days of the beginning of September.

00:38:34 ◼   ► Yeah, it'd be like the 10th of September this year is a Tuesday, so probably, let's say

00:38:38 ◼   ► that. I'll see you there.

00:38:40 ◼   ► Yeah, maybe I should book an air flight right now, book my plane, because that's probably

00:38:45 ◼   ► it, because they're not going to do it on the 3rd because it's too close to Memorial

00:38:48 ◼   ► day. And we know what we're going to get. We're going to get new iPhones, and they're

00:38:53 ◼   ► going to tell us, you know, whatever new features of iOS are optimized just for these new phones,

00:38:58 ◼   ► probably camera features and stuff like that. I mean, that's cool. I always have a good

00:39:02 ◼   ► time. It's like I said, I don't want to look at gift horse in the mouth. It is. I'm honored

00:39:07 ◼   ► to be at this position in in this field to get invited to these things. But WWDC is more

00:39:13 ◼   ► exciting because you don't know what you're going to get. Right? Like we know that September

00:39:17 ◼   ► event is going to be about iPhones. And if there's an October event, we'll probably have a good idea

00:39:21 ◼   ► of what it's about just from leaks. Is it new Mac books or something like that? WWDC, you just don't

00:39:28 ◼   ► know. And this year to me was just like the canonical example of, wow, we got everything.

00:39:36 ◼   ► I mean, you and Mike on upgrade do like the, what do you call it? Bingo? What do you guys have?

00:39:40 ◼   ► Yeah, the draft. Yeah, the keynote draft where we take turns picking what's going to be set on

00:39:45 ◼   ► But like everything hit this year. The score was 9 to 9. We had 10 picks each. It was 9

00:39:53 ◼   ► to 9. We had to go to a tiebreaker. And even then, arguably, it was almost 10 to 9. But

00:39:59 ◼   ► in the end, we decided that one of Mike's didn't make it. So yeah, which makes it a

00:40:02 ◼   ► lot less interesting when sort of like, yeah, we got all these things right. But that's

00:40:08 ◼   ► the funny thing is that big picture is not the details. And there are a lot of details

00:40:13 ◼   ► missing this time. Because it's software, right? You get the big picture. Bart Gurman

00:40:18 ◼   ► is talking to people who have a little bit of an idea of what's going on, and Guy Rambeau

00:40:23 ◼   ► is digging through codes somewhere. But it's just code, right? It's just like framework

00:40:29 ◼   ► decompilation. So what I always say is it's that parable of the blind men and the elephant,

00:40:34 ◼   ► which is like they're touching this giant animal and they can't tell what it is, and

00:40:38 ◼   ► one of them thinks it's a snake and one of them thinks it's a rhino. And it's like that,

00:40:42 ◼   ► like we got the details, but what's the story? And with software, there's no supply chain

00:40:47 ◼   ► to leak, and you end up with this, you know, it's much more kind of mysterious. And something

00:40:52 ◼   ► like SwiftUI. So you, back in like a long time ago, there was this whole question about

00:40:57 ◼   ► like what was Marzipan and what was SwiftUI? And you went back and forth with Germin about

00:41:01 ◼   ► it a little bit because Germin was like, oh, Marzipan, you said, well, that's not what

00:41:04 ◼   ► I'm hearing. I'm hearing it's this other thing. And that was Amber, right? Which turns out

00:41:07 ◼   ► to be SwiftUI. So we knew something about it, but what we knew, especially about SwiftUI,

00:41:14 ◼   ► was almost nothing, other than that it existed and maybe we'd see it sometime. That was it.

00:41:20 ◼   ► I knew a little bit more.

00:41:21 ◼   ► Well, I mean, what I mean "we," it's like the rest of us were on the outside looking

00:41:26 ◼   ► at it.

00:41:27 ◼   ► But I was given this information over a year ago on the condition that I not share it widely,

00:41:32 ◼   ► and I agreed to that, and I didn't share it widely, and it wasn't me trying to be a Weisenheimer

00:41:37 ◼   ► I it was the conditions under which I was told about it

00:41:41 ◼   ► But the long story short is that Swift UI is a much bigger project than marzipan slash

00:41:49 ◼   ► catalyst and way more people are involved and if you just think about I mean the fact that it is the UI framework for

00:41:56 ◼   ► all of these platforms and

00:41:58 ◼   ► They've already I forget how many frameworks they said that already includes

00:42:03 ◼   ► It's like 40 of the frameworks from UI kit and app kit are already in Swift UI

00:42:07 ◼   ► UI. The genius of this system is that for the ones that aren't in Swift UI as native

00:42:14 ◼   ► Swift UI, they just call down to the underlying platform frameworks that are already in UI

00:42:20 ◼   ► Kit and App Kit. You don't miss anything when you're writing an app in Swift UI, but a bunch

00:42:26 ◼   ► of the stuff is already like it's not just a wrapper that calls down to UI Kit and App

00:42:32 ◼   ► It's really, really a huge project.

00:42:35 ◼   ► It is truly,

00:42:36 ◼   ► what Federighi said when he introduced it,

00:42:41 ◼   ► that this is sort of a once every 20 years,

00:42:44 ◼   ► 25 year generational change.

00:42:46 ◼   ► I honestly don't think he oversold it at all.

00:42:49 ◼   ► I really think it's that big of a deal.

00:42:50 ◼   ► It is as big a deal as when Apple first said

00:42:53 ◼   ► the future of the Mac is these next technologies,

00:42:58 ◼   ► the next frameworks, CoCo, for writing apps.

00:43:02 ◼   ► It's that big a deal.

00:43:03 ◼   ► It's like the introduction of cocoa, in my opinion.

00:43:05 ◼   ► - It's hard not to imagine that in five or 10 years,

00:43:11 ◼   ► like anything can happen,

00:43:14 ◼   ► but it seems that the plan is that most of the software

00:43:18 ◼   ► written for Apple's platforms in the 2020s,

00:43:22 ◼   ► you know, as the 2020s go on,

00:43:24 ◼   ► is gonna be Swift and Swift UI.

00:43:28 ◼   ► Like not everything, but maybe, and certainly not at first,

00:43:31 ◼   ► but like this is their, you know, what, what Wiley said was,

00:43:36 ◼   ► what is it?

00:43:38 ◼   ► The future is great and also secret or something like that.

00:43:42 ◼   ► He basically, basically it's like the,

00:43:44 ◼   ► the struggle at Apple is you never want to talk about the

00:43:46 ◼   ► future, but you also want to pump up this thing that you just

00:43:49 ◼   ► announced and how important it is for the future.

00:43:51 ◼   ► And that's the balance they have to strike. But yeah, I mean,

00:43:53 ◼   ► that's the impression I get is they didn't do this, you know,

00:43:55 ◼   ► for a lark. This is their,

00:43:57 ◼   ► this is the future that they think unifies all their app

00:44:00 ◼   ► platforms in terms of what you need to know, which is not the same as building one-size-fits-all

00:44:06 ◼   ► apps, it's just in terms of what you need to know. Like, when we talk about AppKit and

00:44:10 ◼   ► UIKit and iOS developers and Mac developers, the thing I keep trying to emphasize with

00:44:14 ◼   ► people is, you know, it's not about, even Catalyst is not necessarily about like creating

00:44:21 ◼   ► a one-size-fits-all app. Apple went up there and said, "Look, you check the box, you're

00:44:25 ◼   ► not done. Then you need to make a good iPad app. Then you need to make a good Mac app."

00:44:29 ◼   ► The issue with Mac development for iOS developers is they don't know how to do it because AppKit

00:44:34 ◼   ► is not UIKit. They learn the other thing. And with SwiftUI, you learn the one thing

00:44:40 ◼   ► and you know how to build stuff on all of Apple's platforms and that's better. You still

00:44:45 ◼   ► want to build a good watch app, a good phone app, a good Mac app, but you don't need to

00:44:51 ◼   ► learn a whole separate set of tools for each one and that's huge for developers and I'd

00:44:55 ◼   ► imagine for everybody inside Apple too, who has to support these platforms?

00:44:59 ◼   ► All right, hold that thought. I want to pick that up right after this message from our

00:45:05 ◼   ► first sponsor, Away. I love this company. Away makes suitcases, and they've got two

00:45:11 ◼   ► types now. The original with durable German polycarbonate, and now they have aluminum

00:45:18 ◼   ► ones. I don't have an aluminum one. I've got the plastic one. They call it polycarbonate.

00:45:24 ◼   ► But again, they've been sponsoring the show,

00:45:26 ◼   ► I think for like four years, maybe even more.

00:45:29 ◼   ► They sent me one when they first sponsored the show.

00:45:31 ◼   ► I've taken it with me every single place I've gone

00:45:35 ◼   ► for the last four years.

00:45:37 ◼   ► Every airplane trip, every train trip to New York,

00:45:40 ◼   ► every time I leave my house for more than a night,

00:45:43 ◼   ► I take this suitcase.

00:45:44 ◼   ► It still looks brand new.

00:45:46 ◼   ► And it's not like I'm like babying it.

00:45:48 ◼   ► And the wheels, super smooth like butter.

00:45:50 ◼   ► I absolutely cannot believe how durable this suitcase is.

00:45:55 ◼   ► And the carry-ons that they have,

00:45:58 ◼   ► they have all three sizes, or actually four sizes,

00:46:01 ◼   ► two sizes of carry-ons, like a regular carry-on,

00:46:04 ◼   ► a bigger carry-on, the carry-ons all come

00:46:07 ◼   ► with a TSA compliant ejectable battery.

00:46:10 ◼   ► And when I say it's ejectable, it is so easy.

00:46:13 ◼   ► You just click it down, it pops right out.

00:46:15 ◼   ► Because the reason you want that is that

00:46:18 ◼   ► if you have to check your bag,

00:46:20 ◼   ► if it's your carry-on, you're hoping to put it over your head in the airplane. But they

00:46:24 ◼   ► say, "Hey, the overheads are full. We're going to have to check these things." They tell

00:46:28 ◼   ► you you can't have a battery in there. You just pop it right out. You keep it with you,

00:46:32 ◼   ► put it in your pocket or put it in a seat, a little folder there in front of your seat.

00:46:37 ◼   ► Pops right out. You don't need any tools, anything like that. Couldn't be better.

00:46:41 ◼   ► But having a 5X, like a thing that can charge your battery five times right there in your

00:46:46 ◼   ► suitcase is amazing because every single seat you could take at the airport, no matter where

00:46:51 ◼   ► you go, you've got a charger right there. You don't have to look for like an outlet

00:46:54 ◼   ► or something like that. And I'm it. There is no place in the world where you more need

00:47:01 ◼   ► extra battery power than airport because every single airport I've ever been to just it's

00:47:06 ◼   ► like you can just watch the battery on your phone just drain right down. Terrible. Love

00:47:10 ◼   ► this feature of their suitcases. Everything else, what else? They've got TSA approved

00:47:17 ◼   ► combination lock. They've got a great inside the suitcases. They have this patent-pending

00:47:23 ◼   ► compression system. All that means is that they're sort of compartments and then you

00:47:27 ◼   ► can put your shirts on the one side and then squeeze a thing down and cinch it up on top

00:47:31 ◼   ► of it. Keeps your shirts from getting wrinkled. You can kind of pack more stuff in the suitcase

00:47:36 ◼   ► by sort of squeezing stuff in there.

00:47:38 ◼   ► Once you have it, it's very obvious how it works.

00:47:40 ◼   ► It works great, keeps your shirts from getting wrinkled.

00:47:43 ◼   ► Really, really love My Away Suitcase.

00:47:46 ◼   ► Here's the deal, they've got a special offer

00:47:48 ◼   ► for listeners of the show.

00:47:50 ◼   ► Go to awaytravel.com/talkshow20.

00:47:54 ◼   ► Awaytravel.com/talkshow20.

00:47:59 ◼   ► The 20 is because you save 20 bucks off any suitcase.

00:48:03 ◼   ► Just use that code TALKSHOW20 during checkout

00:48:06 ◼   ► and you'll save 20 bucks on any suitcase.

00:48:10 ◼   ► I cannot recommend this product enough.

00:48:11 ◼   ► I would recommend it to people

00:48:13 ◼   ► even if they weren't a sponsor.

00:48:14 ◼   ► Love their products.

00:48:16 ◼   ► My thanks to Away Travel.

00:48:17 ◼   ► All right, so here's the thing that I was thinking about.

00:48:22 ◼   ► To me, one of the most telling things about SwiftUI

00:48:24 ◼   ► is the fact that it's the first native third-party API

00:48:29 ◼   ► for the watch.

00:48:30 ◼   ► And in fact, it's going to be the only native API

00:48:33 ◼   ► for the watch.

00:48:34 ◼   ► So up until now, third party developers

00:48:37 ◼   ► have had to use quote unquote, watch kit.

00:48:40 ◼   ► And it's not native.

00:48:42 ◼   ► It's a weird hybrid sort of development thing.

00:48:46 ◼   ► I've never really heard anybody,

00:48:48 ◼   ► any of my developer friends say good things about it.

00:48:51 ◼   ► And it's not what Apple itself uses

00:48:54 ◼   ► to write the first party apps on the watch.

00:48:58 ◼   ► And I kind of touched on this on my live show.

00:49:00 ◼   ► I don't know, time is limited.

00:49:02 ◼   ► But I really feel, and I've heard this

00:49:07 ◼   ► from my developer friends over the years,

00:49:09 ◼   ► that you can always tell which APIs Apple itself uses

00:49:13 ◼   ► and which ones they don't.

00:49:14 ◼   ► And it's just human nature.

00:49:16 ◼   ► You can think, you can be altruistic and think,

00:49:19 ◼   ► hey, we're not gonna use this API,

00:49:21 ◼   ► but we want our third-party developers

00:49:23 ◼   ► to have a great API for this.

00:49:24 ◼   ► We don't need it 'cause we're gonna use

00:49:26 ◼   ► this internal non-public API.

00:49:29 ◼   ► But we'll do as good a job as we can on this public API.

00:49:34 ◼   ► If they're not using it, it's just human nature.

00:49:38 ◼   ► It just isn't as good as when Apple itself is using it.

00:49:42 ◼   ► And I think it shows.

00:49:45 ◼   ► I think it showed, I think for all of the popularity

00:49:49 ◼   ► of the watch and the way that the watch

00:49:50 ◼   ► has really blossomed in the four or five years

00:49:53 ◼   ► since it debuted, the third-party app story

00:49:56 ◼   ► has always been a sore spot.

00:49:58 ◼   ► It was absolutely awful.

00:50:00 ◼   ► I honestly shouldn't have shipped the first year.

00:50:02 ◼   ► I'm sure there was some debate in the company

00:50:06 ◼   ► as to whether they should have even shipped

00:50:08 ◼   ► the original watch kit,

00:50:09 ◼   ► given how slow watch apps were to load.

00:50:13 ◼   ► So slow as to almost be unusable.

00:50:15 ◼   ► - Well, and keep in mind at that point,

00:50:16 ◼   ► they were just being run,

00:50:17 ◼   ► like the watch was basically an external display.

00:50:19 ◼   ► They were entirely run on the iPhone,

00:50:21 ◼   ► which is a root decision that I understand,

00:50:23 ◼   ► but it also, I feel like this is the moment

00:50:26 ◼   ► Apple's like, "All right, we are still dealing with that decision." And it made all of these

00:50:32 ◼   ► apps compromised. And so now we're over it. It's done.

00:50:35 ◼   ► Yeah. And there were good technical reasons for it. The original watch was so technically

00:50:41 ◼   ► at low battery life, it barely got through a day for most people. And that was with all

00:50:45 ◼   ► of the native code being Apple's own code that they sweated over every single detail

00:50:51 ◼   ► and every subroutine to make sure this isn't going to burn excess of battery life. We got

00:50:58 ◼   ► to be as cautious as we can. I get it, but I think it's so interesting that there is

00:51:05 ◼   ► never going to be an Objective-C interface to writing a native watch app for third-party

00:51:11 ◼   ► developers. It's the first platform where it's Swift all the way. And the thing that

00:51:19 ◼   ► Really popped into my head and again, it's it gets back to like what you said like with Wiley

00:51:24 ◼   ► you know, they're not going to talk about the future but

00:51:27 ◼   ► Implicit at this WWDC is whatever the next platforms are going to be from Apple whether it's like AR

00:51:34 ◼   ► Glasses or a car or something, you know, there's all sorts of stuff, you know that they're rumored to be working on

00:51:40 ◼   ► All of the anything that's coming from Apple in the future is going to be Swift UI

00:51:47 ◼   ► both first party and third party.

00:51:49 ◼   ► Yes, as soon as they can. And that they're,

00:51:52 ◼   ► you know, when I asked Josh and Wiley that question, I was like,

00:51:54 ◼   ► are people using this inside Apple? And they're like, well, some.

00:51:57 ◼   ► And I definitely got the impression. I think they suggested

00:52:00 ◼   ► the idea that some people were able to

00:52:02 ◼   ► use it. The other people were not aware it

00:52:04 ◼   ► existed yet and now would

00:52:06 ◼   ► learn about it and be able to do it. But it's

00:52:09 ◼   ► clearly, um, it's clearly where

00:52:11 ◼   ► they're going. I had a question for you about SwiftUI

00:52:13 ◼   ► and Catalyst, which is, you've been

00:52:15 ◼   ► a very cranky guy on Twitter and on Daring Fireball about Catalyst. You've been skeptical.

00:52:20 ◼   ► You're sort of like, "Are these going to be toy apps? Are these going to be bad apps?"

00:52:24 ◼   ► And I'm more positive about it as somebody who really likes my iPad and my Mac. I look

00:52:29 ◼   ► at it as this positive that there are apps that I would like to see on the Mac that aren't

00:52:33 ◼   ► there now because they're iOS apps. And bringing those over and having them be good Mac apps

00:52:37 ◼   ► makes my Mac better. That said, it's also very clear it's inevitable we're going to

00:52:42 ◼   ► get some really lousy catalyst apps on the Mac, right? That's inevitable that somebody

00:52:47 ◼   ► who doesn't get the platform is going to do a half-assed job and there's going to be bad

00:52:51 ◼   ► Mac apps. But my question for you is, is your concern about catalyst, was it more motivated

00:53:00 ◼   ► by the idea that in the end the only apps that Apple would really let anybody write

00:53:05 ◼   ► on the Mac would be these catalyst things that were built for a platform that is very

00:53:10 ◼   ► different from the Mac and that that would be the future of the Mac is just running kind

00:53:14 ◼   ► of iOS imports versus like is that mitigated now by the existence of something like Swift

00:53:20 ◼   ► UI where you say, "Oh, this is a transition technology. I don't need to be concerned about

00:53:25 ◼   ► it taking over the Mac. It's just for compatibility and transitional stuff." And the future is

00:53:31 ◼   ► this thing where the Mac isn't like an equal partner. It's one of the platforms and you

00:53:36 ◼   ► you know, you can write apps. Am I? I'm trying to kind of like deconstruct your attitude

00:53:40 ◼   ► toward these two things and why? Because I feel like you were really concerned that the

00:53:44 ◼   ► back was going to get screwed up by being kind of like just full of catalyst imports.

00:53:48 ◼   ► And now that's not a worry anymore because catalyst isn't the future. It's a bridge and

00:53:52 ◼   ► Swift UI is the future.

00:53:53 ◼   ► Trenton Larkin I think it's a great question. It's absolutely

00:53:57 ◼   ► one of the top reasons I wanted to have you on this, this first post WWDC episode.

00:54:04 ◼   ► I'm not so worried about, I'm very still, or remain to this moment, very skeptical about the

00:54:13 ◼   ► utility of catalyst. And I don't think it's going to be a very good thing for the Mac. But I kind of

00:54:21 ◼   ► also think it's almost like a non event. And I do feel like the one underlying mystery

00:54:30 ◼   ► of this year's WWDC is the relationship between Swift UI and catalyst and inside Apple and

00:54:38 ◼   ► what what their messaging is on it. And because they're clearly two entirely different products

00:54:46 ◼   ► that were absolutely developed independently

00:54:50 ◼   ► and neither one needs the other.

00:54:53 ◼   ► But they also clearly overlap in very broad

00:54:57 ◼   ► and obvious ways, which is, hey, if you wanna share

00:55:00 ◼   ► a code base between iOS and macOS,

00:55:03 ◼   ► this is a way to do that.

00:55:05 ◼   ► - Right.

00:55:08 ◼   ► - I think that we are definitely gonna see it.

00:55:13 ◼   ► I think most apps that are ported over with Catalyst

00:55:16 ◼   ► are gonna be bad, but I don't think that matters.

00:55:19 ◼   ► In one way I look back at this is that

00:55:23 ◼   ► I kinda got the whole App Store wrong,

00:55:26 ◼   ► just going back to the original 2008 iOS App Store.

00:55:30 ◼   ► I thought back in 2008 that Apple,

00:55:35 ◼   ► during their review process,

00:55:37 ◼   ► was going to be a lot more judgmental

00:55:42 ◼   ► about the quality of apps

00:55:44 ◼   ► and saying this isn't good enough

00:55:46 ◼   ► and we're just gonna reject this

00:55:47 ◼   ► 'cause it's like amateur hour.

00:55:49 ◼   ► - That didn't happen.

00:55:52 ◼   ► - That didn't happen.

00:55:53 ◼   ► I thought it would be more curated

00:55:56 ◼   ► like their retail stores, right?

00:55:58 ◼   ► Like so when you go into an Apple retail store,

00:56:01 ◼   ► most of the stuff they sell is actually from Apple,

00:56:03 ◼   ► but like when you go to the sides

00:56:06 ◼   ► and you look at like the third party iPhone cases they sell

00:56:11 ◼   ► and stuff like external hard drives,

00:56:13 ◼   ► You can go in there and buy SSD drives and cables.

00:56:18 ◼   ► And there's a bunch of stuff on the sides

00:56:20 ◼   ► that are from third party companies.

00:56:22 ◼   ► But it's all stuff that like you look at it

00:56:26 ◼   ► and you think, oh yeah, this belongs in an Apple store.

00:56:28 ◼   ► It's not like going to Amazon and shopping for stuff.

00:56:32 ◼   ► And you can find anything and everything

00:56:34 ◼   ► from any Chinese knockoff company that you can think of.

00:56:39 ◼   ► I thought the App Store was gonna be more

00:56:41 ◼   ► like the physical Apple retail stores curated

00:56:45 ◼   ► and trying to keep only high quality apps in the store.

00:56:50 ◼   ► And it obviously wasn't like that at all.

00:56:51 ◼   ► It's pretty much if it works and does what you say it does

00:56:55 ◼   ► and doesn't break any rules, then you're in.

00:56:58 ◼   ► And maybe that's the better way.

00:57:00 ◼   ► Maybe that's actually,

00:57:01 ◼   ► if Apple were more strict about keeping out stuff

00:57:09 ◼   ► that just was kept out just because the UI wasn't good,

00:57:13 ◼   ► maybe we'd be having more discussions

00:57:14 ◼   ► about antitrust sort of control over the store.

00:57:18 ◼   ► - Almost need to allow side loading

00:57:20 ◼   ► if they were that strict about it,

00:57:22 ◼   ► because you could just completely arbitrarily

00:57:24 ◼   ► knock software out of the store.

00:57:26 ◼   ► One thing that surprised me is that apps that use Catalyst

00:57:31 ◼   ► don't have to be in the Mac App Store.

00:57:32 ◼   ► That surprised me.

00:57:33 ◼   ► So it's open.

00:57:35 ◼   ► They could say, "Nope, this is terrible."

00:57:38 ◼   ► they won't, but they could do that and put it out of the Mac App Store.

00:57:42 ◼   ► They just bad apps won't get featured, I think is what's going to happen.

00:57:45 ◼   ► Right. And so, you know, basically I expect that there will be a ton of bad apps.

00:57:49 ◼   ► I don't think it'll matter any worse than it has mattered for all these years

00:57:54 ◼   ► that, uh, that there are tons of bad apps in the store.

00:57:57 ◼   ► And I think most catalyst apps are going to be bad apps and you know,

00:58:01 ◼   ► but somebody is going to make good ones and that's cool.

00:58:04 ◼   ► So I don't know if you saw it, the guy who does fair, right,

00:58:06 ◼   ► which is the app that I use on iPad to edit podcasts.

00:58:10 ◼   ► - No, I did not see this.

00:58:10 ◼   ► - He did a thread on Twitter about what his thoughts are.

00:58:13 ◼   ► And, you know, it's like people are asking me

00:58:15 ◼   ► and I will admit I went and looked

00:58:17 ◼   ► 'cause I was curious if he had talked about it.

00:58:20 ◼   ► And, and Ferrite's a really good app.

00:58:22 ◼   ► It's, honestly, I wanted it on the Mac

00:58:25 ◼   ► because I think I would use it instead of Logic if I could,

00:58:28 ◼   ► plus I would be able to edit on either platform

00:58:30 ◼   ► and there's no way to take a Logic project

00:58:33 ◼   ► and put it on a Mac and, or put it on an iPad

00:58:35 ◼   ► to go back and forth. So I'm really interested in this. And what he said was, first off,

00:58:40 ◼   ► he's got a lot of improvements on iOS to do for iOS 13, and he's going to focus on those

00:58:46 ◼   ► first. And then after that, he's going to look at the Mac and Catalyst and find a way

00:58:52 ◼   ► to do it. But he says, "I'm going to take my time and I want to do it right." And I

00:58:55 ◼   ► think like, that's going to be a good Mac app when it comes out. And I want to wait.

00:58:59 ◼   ► I don't want the lousy iOS port version. I want a really good Mac app so that I can just

00:59:05 ◼   ► switch my podcast editing over to it. I think there will be apps like that. I think there

00:59:09 ◼   ► will be developers like that who really care about it. And I'll just say, I think one thing

00:59:14 ◼   ► that Catalyst, because Catalyst is a bridge technology. If you're writing something brand

00:59:17 ◼   ► new you should probably try to do as much of it in Swift and SwiftUI as possible. But

00:59:21 ◼   ► there's so much code that was written for iOS that could be repurposed. And the one

00:59:25 ◼   ► area where I think it makes a lot of sense is going to be, you think about Apple combining

00:59:30 ◼   ► the message of "make a good iPad app" and "make a good Mac app," it's the addressable

00:59:34 ◼   ► market of iPad and Mac together is a better market than either of them separately. And

00:59:42 ◼   ► so, Ferrite is a great example. This is an app that totally could have a market on the

00:59:48 ◼   ► Mac, but he wrote it for iOS. So if he can take that and put it on the Mac, that's great.

00:59:54 ◼   ► And I think there are, it's going to be a class of apps that are more pro-focused, more

00:59:59 ◼   ► power user focused that are iOS apps that will be able to run on the Mac now and will

01:00:04 ◼   ► be welcomed by Mac users who, you know, because it makes more financial sense for the developers

01:00:10 ◼   ► to put in the work because they've radically increased the addressable size of the market

01:00:15 ◼   ► by writing something that goes to both iPad and Mac. So I think that's the, for me that's

01:00:20 ◼   ► the shining part of Catalyst, that and maybe some of the media apps just because like it

01:00:25 ◼   ► kills me that I can do picture-in-picture on my iPad for Major League Baseball or for

01:00:30 ◼   ► Netflix or for Xfinity for my cable streaming, and I can't do it on my Mac. I've got to

01:00:36 ◼   ► open Chrome and turn on Flash and then just stick a window in the corner, and it's terrible.

01:00:41 ◼   ► So if those media apps, you know, if this is what it takes for them to do picture-in-picture

01:00:46 ◼   ► on the Mac, I'll take it. But I think it's those two kinds of apps that are going to

01:00:50 ◼   ► be the ones that I want to see out of Catalyst.

01:00:53 ◼   ► Yeah, and the other one that I think is going to be a win but I could be totally wrong and and and it's almost

01:00:58 ◼   ► Irrelevant to my own personal usage is games and I feel like the game story could be huge

01:01:04 ◼   ► And I know I don't think it's a complete

01:01:06 ◼   ► coincidence I do feel like

01:01:09 ◼   ► You said this about half an hour ago

01:01:11 ◼   ► I think on the show where it was just like a bunch of a couple of multi-year projects that came together this year

01:01:17 ◼   ► Right, right and and when you've got projects that maybe you're on a hey

01:01:22 ◼   ► this is going to take three years. This might take four years before we can even get it to the shape

01:01:27 ◼   ► where it's ready to be unveiled. And you have a couple of projects on these multi-year development

01:01:34 ◼   ► before you even unveil it. It's just a matter of luck whether a bunch of them come out the same

01:01:42 ◼   ► year or not, right? It's just the way that the math works out that, wow, here's a three-year

01:01:47 ◼   ► project. Here's a four-year project. They're all ready in 2019. Here they are. Don't expect this

01:01:52 ◼   ► much new stuff every year. It just doesn't work like that. I don't know, though, that

01:01:58 ◼   ► it's a complete coincidence that in the year that they're pushing Apple Arcade as a new

01:02:04 ◼   ► major service that this technology that could really open up a bunch of iOS games to the

01:02:10 ◼   ► Mac is at the same time. I think that that's a major factor in the whole internal politics

01:02:18 ◼   ► of his catalyst worthwhile. Swift UI to me is a no brainer. And when you hear Craig Federighi

01:02:26 ◼   ► talk about it, it's clear that when he was shown it and he got it, he was like 100% on

01:02:33 ◼   ► board. He was like, I'll go down guns a blazing to make sure this happens. He's like a bigger

01:02:41 ◼   ► Swift UI enthusiast than Josh is, right? And Josh is the guy who made it. I think Catalyst

01:02:47 ◼   ► was was more of a political battle. I just from what they say publicly and just what

01:02:53 ◼   ► we know about it, I think because it's, you know, trade offs.

01:02:56 ◼   ► It's, it's a bridging technology. It's not, it's not really that exciting. It is

01:03:00 ◼   ► the solution to a major problem, which is Apple's biggest base of developers use Macs,

01:03:06 ◼   ► but don't know how to write Mac apps. And they've got a huge amount of code that isn't

01:03:10 ◼   ► existing. And even if you've got a new way to do apps that you're going to roll out,

01:03:15 ◼   ► even the same year, what do they do with all their existing code? Because then you're like,

01:03:19 ◼   ► "Hey, SwiftUI, but only the SwiftUI parts will work on the Mac. The rest of the work

01:03:22 ◼   ► you did won't translate." It's not like Catalyst isn't going to evolve, but Catalyst is all

01:03:30 ◼   ► about like, "We need to get this code base to be portable." And now it is. Great. And

01:03:36 ◼   ► that's what it's for. And because, again, the Ferrite guy, he will, like BBEdit, he

01:03:41 ◼   ► will probably over time, if that app still exists in 10 years, it will probably have

01:03:47 ◼   ► been rewritten to use Swift and Swift UI probably like, yeah, yeah, let's say that. But in the

01:03:54 ◼   ► short term, he's not going to rewrite it to bring it to the Mac. That's not going to happen.

01:03:57 ◼   ► So catalyst is there for that.

01:03:59 ◼   ► I, I only say this half joking, I think I wrote this at some point on during firewall,

01:04:04 ◼   ► but effectively, it was almost as though catalyst was announced at WWDC and effectively deprecated

01:04:11 ◼   ► later in the same keynote at WWDC. And that doesn't mean it don't use it, don't touch

01:04:16 ◼   ► it, don't you know, that it won't be an important thing for the next few years. But it's clear,

01:04:21 ◼   ► like you said, it's a bridging technology. We thought it was the future and it turns

01:04:24 ◼   ► out it is a transitional technology and that Swift UI is the future and Swift and that's

01:04:31 ◼   ► yeah, it that's why I think there is a strong argument that they that they really needed

01:04:36 ◼   ► to announce these things for developers simultaneously because what you don't want is to give the

01:04:42 ◼   ► developers this idea that what you really need to do is just start building iOS apps

01:04:47 ◼   ► for the Mac. That's how you get to the Mac. They're like, "No, no, no. This is for your

01:04:51 ◼   ► – basically, this is for your existing code. The new stuff, do it over here because this

01:04:57 ◼   ► is the future for everything."

01:04:58 ◼   ► All right, let me take a break. Thank our next sponsor, another long-time friend of

01:05:03 ◼   ► the show are good friends at ero, e r o, ero gives you Wi Fi at your house and they do

01:05:10 ◼   ► it in the best way with a mesh network. Instead of having one base station somewhere, maybe

01:05:17 ◼   ► by your TV because that's where your cable boxes or something like that and then trying

01:05:21 ◼   ► to saturate your whole house with a network from one device.

01:05:26 ◼   ► Euro gives you multiple devices, some of them just tiny little like nightlights literally

01:05:31 ◼   ► that optionally have a nightlight that you can just plug in a socket and control through

01:05:36 ◼   ► the app and just have it show a little light to walk your foot way down the hallway or

01:05:41 ◼   ► wherever you put it in your house. Absolutely a better way to do wifi in a house that's

01:05:49 ◼   ► more than like one room. And they have also got the new product, Euro plus, which is a

01:05:55 ◼   ► service and it's it it defend your network against security threats blocks

01:06:02 ◼   ► malware you can configure it to block phishing attacks you can configure it per

01:06:07 ◼   ► device so like you could say like your kids maybe their devices aren't allowed

01:06:12 ◼   ► to access adult content stuff like that you can configure it all it sounds like

01:06:18 ◼   ► oh boy that would be complicated you'd have to be like a network administrator

01:06:21 ◼   ► You do it all through the app on your phone and in my opinion as much as I love Eros hardware

01:06:28 ◼   ► their software is better than the hardware because it

01:06:31 ◼   ► simplifies

01:06:34 ◼   ► Wi-Fi network management to the level you want it to be simplified to while giving you the control that you would want

01:06:41 ◼   ► I don't know why I have mine set up. I love it

01:06:44 ◼   ► I like to have a notification every time a new new device joins my network and

01:06:49 ◼   ► Like maybe my son has a friend come home after school

01:06:52 ◼   ► Gives them the password to our Wi-Fi and I get a little notification that there's a new Apple iPhone that joined the network

01:06:58 ◼   ► I like knowing that I don't know why I love it

01:07:01 ◼   ► It's it but if you don't want to know stuff like that, you can configure it not to do it

01:07:05 ◼   ► Eero plus even has content blocking so that you can do stuff like block ads right at the network level

01:07:13 ◼   ► It's it's really great. They offer VPN protection if you want from encrypt dot me

01:07:18 ◼   ► They have integrated when you have

01:07:21 ◼   ► Hero plus you can even get password management from one password all best-of-breed software

01:07:27 ◼   ► It really is a great product

01:07:30 ◼   ► You're listening to me talk to Jason right now over in the ero network that I've had for years right here at my house

01:07:36 ◼   ► and

01:07:39 ◼   ► Everything you want all the WPA to encryption. They've got all these other talking points anything you want. That's like secure like that

01:07:44 ◼   ► They've got it and they even offer great customer support

01:07:48 ◼   ► I really doubt you need it. I've only had I think I had to call them once I forget where it was for

01:07:52 ◼   ► but I did call them once like a year or two ago. Fantastic customer support. It took me like five

01:07:58 ◼   ► minutes to get whatever it was. I don't even remember what it was. But for the most part,

01:08:01 ◼   ► you don't even need it. But if you do need it, you can get a hold of a Wi Fi expert within 30

01:08:06 ◼   ► seconds typically. And they'll talk you through everything you need to do. So honestly, I think

01:08:12 ◼   ► it's a great product really, really like it. So never think about Wi Fi again, if you need a new

01:08:18 ◼   ► Wi-Fi system at your house, you can get $100 off the Euro base unit and two beacons package

01:08:24 ◼   ► That's a base station little thing about the size of an Apple TV

01:08:28 ◼   ► And then the beacons are the little nightlight things you can plug in around your house that gives you three little devices

01:08:33 ◼   ► Saturate your whole house if you need more or you need less

01:08:36 ◼   ► fewer devices

01:08:39 ◼   ► They'll talk you through it on the website

01:08:41 ◼   ► But that that Euro base unit two beacons package with one year of Euro plus service

01:08:47 ◼   ► You can get for $100 off by going to ero.com

01:08:51 ◼   ► The talk show and just remember that code the talk show when you check out and you'll get that hundred dollars off the the

01:08:59 ◼   ► That package my thanks to era

01:09:02 ◼   ► You've got the era right I do there there my whole house now. I realized I put in this smart irrigation

01:09:09 ◼   ► Controller and as I'm you know attaching it to the wall

01:09:13 ◼   ► I thought, "Oh no, is there Wi-Fi over here?" But there is because there's an Eero beacon

01:09:17 ◼   ► in my bedroom and it's right behind that. So yeah, I can sit in the backyard and do

01:09:21 ◼   ► my stuff on my Wi-Fi.

01:09:22 ◼   ► You were just talking about that on one of your podcasts, right?

01:09:25 ◼   ► Yeah. I just never even thought about like, "Oh no, what if there's no Wi-Fi out here?"

01:09:29 ◼   ► Because this is not a place where anybody goes. It's the side yard with the gravel and

01:09:34 ◼   ► like the tool shed and stuff like that. And now this irrigation controller. But yeah,

01:09:39 ◼   ► it gets it. It's not a problem.

01:09:41 ◼   ► service. All right. Here's my thing about the Catalyst apps, though, is I have to say

01:09:48 ◼   ► this. The apps that Apple is shipping using Catalyst, there's four that debuted last year

01:09:55 ◼   ► at WWDC and they shipped as part of Mojave and they're still there in Catalina. News and Stocks,

01:10:03 ◼   ► which are very similar apps. I don't even know. I bet they share a lot of code because the Stocks

01:10:09 ◼   ► The podcast app is mostly, it shows you stock prices,

01:10:13 ◼   ► but for the most part shows you business news.

01:10:17 ◼   ► It's just like the business section of Apple News.

01:10:20 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:10:21 ◼   ► For the most part.

01:10:22 ◼   ► News about stocks is what it is.

01:10:23 ◼   ► Voice memos and home.

01:10:26 ◼   ► And then there's a new one this year, the podcast app,

01:10:31 ◼   ► which we can get to, but of those original four.

01:10:33 ◼   ► And Find My is also a catalyst app.

01:10:36 ◼   ► Okay, Find My is, all right.

01:10:38 ◼   ► I

01:10:40 ◼   ► I'm absolutely

01:10:43 ◼   ► boggled that the original for marzipan apps were touched so

01:10:48 ◼   ► Barely in in the intervening year because there were so many problems with it with them

01:10:54 ◼   ► so many ways that they are just bad Mac apps and

01:10:58 ◼   ► At some point in recent months. I just sort of gave up and I thought well

01:11:03 ◼   ► I'll just shut up until I see what they ship at

01:11:05 ◼   ► WWDC and

01:11:08 ◼   ► If anything, they're worse.

01:11:11 ◼   ► I mean, like the Apple News app, at some point,

01:11:14 ◼   ► one of the complaints I had, I know other people had,

01:11:17 ◼   ► was that there was no way to copy the original URL.

01:11:20 ◼   ► So like, let's say you're reading a story

01:11:22 ◼   ► from the Washington Post, and it's in Apple News.

01:11:25 ◼   ► You can copy the apple.news URL

01:11:29 ◼   ► and then paste it to somebody,

01:11:31 ◼   ► and then if they're on an Apple device,

01:11:33 ◼   ► it'll open in the Apple News app.

01:11:36 ◼   ► But what I would wanna do is send them the original story

01:11:40 ◼   ► at washingtonpost.com.

01:11:41 ◼   ► And certainly what I would wanna do

01:11:43 ◼   ► if I wanna link to it at Daring Fireball

01:11:45 ◼   ► is link to that original story.

01:11:47 ◼   ► - Sure.

01:11:48 ◼   ► - On iOS, it was possible,

01:11:51 ◼   ► it's always been possible to get those URLs.

01:11:53 ◼   ► You could just say open in Safari

01:11:55 ◼   ► and then it opens in Safari

01:11:56 ◼   ► and then you have the original URL.

01:11:57 ◼   ► On the Mac, you couldn't, which seems crazy.

01:12:00 ◼   ► It seems like if either of the platforms

01:12:01 ◼   ► was gonna have a more powerful nerdy,

01:12:05 ◼   ► give me a different, you know, give me the original URL, it would be the Mac. They didn't

01:12:09 ◼   ► have it. And we complained about it. And then they added it. I think it was in the file

01:12:14 ◼   ► menu or something. It was it was weird. It would also it was in the whole way that catalyst

01:12:19 ◼   ► just seems weird. It was like the way they added the feature still seemed weird. It was

01:12:23 ◼   ► like, why is it in the file?

01:12:25 ◼   ► Yeah, it's in the file menu. It's open in Safari and there's no keyboard shortcut.

01:12:29 ◼   ► Yeah. Why is this in the file? Shouldn't this be an edit? Shouldn't it be like an alternate

01:12:34 ◼   ► to copy URL and copy original URL.

01:12:37 ◼   ► - Right, and shouldn't it also be in the share button

01:12:39 ◼   ► that's right there?

01:12:40 ◼   ► - Right, it should be in, yeah.

01:12:42 ◼   ► Why is it not in the share button?

01:12:45 ◼   ► But anyway, now that that's gone.

01:12:48 ◼   ► We're back to not even having it.

01:12:49 ◼   ► So when you're in Catalina,

01:12:51 ◼   ► there's no way to get the original URL anymore.

01:12:53 ◼   ► And I realize now, all of a sudden,

01:12:55 ◼   ► I just suddenly popped into my head

01:12:57 ◼   ► that like a month ago, Moltz was on my show

01:13:00 ◼   ► and I promised that I would share my script

01:13:03 ◼   ► for turning an Apple News URL into the original URL.

01:13:06 ◼   ► And I still haven't done that.

01:13:08 ◼   ► So, all right, I've popped it back into my head.

01:13:10 ◼   ► I'll get that out one of these days.

01:13:13 ◼   ► - The one that drives me crazy is that in automation

01:13:15 ◼   ► in the home app, when you set a time, it's the spinner,

01:13:20 ◼   ► which is a delightful, delightful touchscreen interface.

01:13:24 ◼   ► It's whimsical and functional and much better

01:13:28 ◼   ► than having to type in a time on the keyboard or something.

01:13:31 ◼   ► On the Mac, it is a disaster.

01:13:32 ◼   ► Like it is malpractice for that to still be in there.

01:13:37 ◼   ► And I am also, I'm like, I hope,

01:13:39 ◼   ► I am trying to heap scorn on it this summer

01:13:42 ◼   ► in the hopes that somebody at Apple will hear

01:13:45 ◼   ► the rising scorn and be like,

01:13:46 ◼   ► "Guys, can you just fix that, please?"

01:13:48 ◼   ► - Did you see that?

01:13:49 ◼   ► I tweeted a day or two ago,

01:13:51 ◼   ► just like a screen recording of that interface

01:13:54 ◼   ► in the home app.

01:13:55 ◼   ► And also in addition to the fact

01:13:56 ◼   ► that it is a very bad control,

01:14:00 ◼   ► the iOS touch date picker is a very bad control

01:14:04 ◼   ► for a mouse pointer interface.

01:14:06 ◼   ► But in addition, when you resize the window,

01:14:09 ◼   ► it does really bizarre things

01:14:12 ◼   ► when you get to a certain minimum height.

01:14:15 ◼   ► It suddenly jumps to a different size class.

01:14:18 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, it snaps to the sides of the window

01:14:20 ◼   ► instead of floating in the center.

01:14:21 ◼   ► - Right, but and in addition to the fact

01:14:23 ◼   ► that that's not, that shouldn't be what it does on the Mac,

01:14:26 ◼   ► it's just not a good Mac interface.

01:14:28 ◼   ► The fact that there's no animation also,

01:14:31 ◼   ► it just seems so junky.

01:14:32 ◼   ► - It's also a fake window inside a window, right?

01:14:35 ◼   ► It's this fake window that looks like a window,

01:14:37 ◼   ► but you can't click on it, you can't slide it around.

01:14:39 ◼   ► It's not really a window.

01:14:40 ◼   ► They've just grayed out the back

01:14:41 ◼   ► and locked this modal thing.

01:14:42 ◼   ► And yeah, it's bad.

01:14:43 ◼   ► And again, I was forgiving in Mojave

01:14:46 ◼   ► 'cause it's like, well, this is bad.

01:14:48 ◼   ► But first, during the beta, it was like,

01:14:49 ◼   ► surely they'll fix this by the time they ship.

01:14:51 ◼   ► That didn't happen.

01:14:52 ◼   ► But at least we get the functionality

01:14:53 ◼   ► and it's not for third parties yet.

01:14:54 ◼   ► So surely next year, when they improve this technology

01:14:57 ◼   ► and hopefully give it a name, which they did,

01:14:59 ◼   ► it will be better.

01:15:00 ◼   ► And those apps still don't seem to have been touched.

01:15:02 ◼   ► And Craig Federighi has said some very weird things

01:15:05 ◼   ► to journalists where he said,

01:15:06 ◼   ► "Well, a lot of those things that you have ascribed

01:15:10 ◼   ► to a catalyst is really actually just a design decision."

01:15:14 ◼   ► And I think to myself,

01:15:16 ◼   ► is he kind of throwing his designers under the bus there?

01:15:18 ◼   ► Because what he's basically saying is,

01:15:20 ◼   ► "Oh, our technology is great.

01:15:21 ◼   ► We just made terrible choices."

01:15:23 ◼   ► Like, really?

01:15:25 ◼   ► They've spent the entire Mac OS X era,

01:15:30 ◼   ► I mean, ever since Aqua was unveiled, right?

01:15:34 ◼   ► I mean, there was this, back when it was called Rhapsody,

01:15:38 ◼   ► there were a couple of developer betas

01:15:40 ◼   ► that used the old platinum UI interface,

01:15:45 ◼   ► and they were kind of fascinating builds,

01:15:48 ◼   ► 'cause they were super fast.

01:15:51 ◼   ► It was really an exciting time to be a Mac user.

01:15:54 ◼   ► It's like 1999 and there's like Rhapsody developer beta two.

01:15:58 ◼   ► And it looked like Mac OS nine,

01:16:00 ◼   ► except it was a little slightly different platinum interface,

01:16:03 ◼   ► but it was super fast.

01:16:05 ◼   ► It was very snappy, but it was like,

01:16:07 ◼   ► but this isn't what we're gonna ship, wait for it.

01:16:10 ◼   ► And then they showed us Aqua

01:16:11 ◼   ► and Aqua was way more eye candy, right?

01:16:16 ◼   ► Everything was anti-aliased instead of bitmap fonts

01:16:19 ◼   ► and there were shadows and transparency and all this stuff.

01:16:23 ◼   ► and it looked way fancier, but it was slow, right?

01:16:28 ◼   ► I mean, that was the early era of Mac OS X

01:16:31 ◼   ► was that even on like the fastest hardware

01:16:33 ◼   ► you could buy from Apple, it was kind of a slow interface

01:16:36 ◼   ► because they so emphasized the visual effects,

01:16:41 ◼   ► you know, the shadows and the transparency

01:16:44 ◼   ► and the animation, right?

01:16:45 ◼   ► The animation was a huge part of it.

01:16:47 ◼   ► Everything that could be animated was animated.

01:16:50 ◼   ► You hit Command + S and the save sheet drops

01:16:53 ◼   ► out of the top of the menu and comes down.

01:16:55 ◼   ► And if you hit the cancel button,

01:16:57 ◼   ► it doesn't just disappear,

01:16:58 ◼   ► it slides back up into the top of the thing.

01:17:02 ◼   ► And all these years later, effectively almost 20 years later

01:17:07 ◼   ► and if anything, iOS took the animated aspect

01:17:13 ◼   ► of the interface and went even further with it.

01:17:18 ◼   ► And I think it was so important

01:17:22 ◼   ► to the way that people could just look at the original iPhone

01:17:25 ◼   ► 10 years ago and just get it,

01:17:28 ◼   ► was the way that almost most of the major apps in iOS,

01:17:33 ◼   ► on the iPhone kind of work in a column view sort of way,

01:17:38 ◼   ► where this column view metaphor

01:17:40 ◼   ► that just take it from the finder,

01:17:41 ◼   ► where at the top level it's on the left

01:17:43 ◼   ► and you drill into a folder and it fills in to the right

01:17:47 ◼   ► as you keep going down in the hierarchy.

01:17:51 ◼   ► most iOS apps work like that.

01:17:53 ◼   ► Like you're in mail and you see a list of accounts

01:17:56 ◼   ► and you tap one of your accounts

01:17:57 ◼   ► and then it slides over to the left

01:18:00 ◼   ► and then you got your inbox for that account

01:18:03 ◼   ► and it has a bunch of messages and you tap on a message

01:18:05 ◼   ► and it slides over to the left and now you see the message

01:18:08 ◼   ► and you keep, you know,

01:18:10 ◼   ► but the actual animation gives you a mental layout

01:18:14 ◼   ► of the app and you kind of understand

01:18:18 ◼   ► when you're in mail or messages or even in the settings app

01:18:22 ◼   ► that you're in this sort of left to right,

01:18:24 ◼   ► the deeper you go, the further right you are

01:18:26 ◼   ► and you just keep going back to the left

01:18:27 ◼   ► to go back to the root level.

01:18:29 ◼   ► The animation reiterates all that.

01:18:32 ◼   ► To have this thing now in a Mac in 2019

01:18:37 ◼   ► where the view doesn't animate at all,

01:18:39 ◼   ► you just suddenly snap between the minimum height

01:18:42 ◼   ► requirement of the window and it just snaps

01:18:46 ◼   ► to be full screen with no animation at all,

01:18:50 ◼   ► it feels like the most unhappily experience I can imagine.

01:18:54 ◼   ► It really just, you know, I get it, I see what's going on.

01:18:59 ◼   ► I understand that it's because I made the window too small

01:19:02 ◼   ► and now it's at this point where the little sheet

01:19:05 ◼   ► is gonna be full width

01:19:06 ◼   ► instead of looking like a fake window in a window.

01:19:11 ◼   ► But the fact that there's no animation between it,

01:19:13 ◼   ► even though it's not a good experience overall anyway,

01:19:17 ◼   ► but the lack of animation just feels so anti-Apple.

01:19:22 ◼   ► It's really hard to believe that it came out of Apple.

01:19:25 ◼   ► I'm baffled by these apps.

01:19:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, the one that I've noticed,

01:19:29 ◼   ► and again, it's beta, it's early,

01:19:30 ◼   ► but the podcast app on Catalina,

01:19:34 ◼   ► so that's a catalyst app.

01:19:39 ◼   ► And you remember back in the early days of OS X,

01:19:44 ◼   ► the interface convention for showing more information

01:19:47 ◼   ► was these drawers that slid out.

01:19:49 ◼   ► - Right.

01:19:50 ◼   ► - And it was an animated process

01:19:52 ◼   ► and they had a lot of Chrome on them.

01:19:53 ◼   ► And we've gone away from that.

01:19:55 ◼   ► You don't do that anymore.

01:19:56 ◼   ► But I was thinking about them because in podcasts,

01:19:59 ◼   ► if you want to see, and this is actually true,

01:20:04 ◼   ► actually this is true in the music app too.

01:20:06 ◼   ► So I should use the music app as an example,

01:20:08 ◼   ► even though that's not catalyst

01:20:09 ◼   ► because it's using this like design language

01:20:12 ◼   ► that Apple has worked on

01:20:13 ◼   ► that seems to be very influenced by iOS.

01:20:16 ◼   ► In the music app, up next and lyrics when you show them,

01:20:20 ◼   ► in iTunes, it's a popover

01:20:22 ◼   ► that comes down from the center of the screen

01:20:25 ◼   ► and it pops over and it's like a temporary view.

01:20:27 ◼   ► In music, it's this drawer that slides out

01:20:32 ◼   ► from the inside of the window over the UI

01:20:36 ◼   ► and the UI stays active, but is covered partially

01:20:41 ◼   ► by this thing.

01:20:42 ◼   ► And I thought, okay, one, I see why you would need this

01:20:45 ◼   ► on a full screen app, like you would have on an iPad.

01:20:50 ◼   ► But two, it's a drawer and it's going the wrong way, right?

01:20:55 ◼   ► Like it's like, why would you build an interface?

01:20:58 ◼   ► And I know the answer is because this was built,

01:21:01 ◼   ► we're using iPad conventions here.

01:21:04 ◼   ► And even though this is not a Catalyst app,

01:21:06 ◼   ► we're using those conventions

01:21:08 ◼   ► so that it feels like the music app on the iPad.

01:21:10 ◼   ► But on a Mac, I look at it and I just think,

01:21:13 ◼   ► no, this is wrong.

01:21:16 ◼   ► I've got a 27-inch monitor here.

01:21:18 ◼   ► Why are you covering my content

01:21:20 ◼   ► to show me what's up next with the lyrics?

01:21:23 ◼   ► It doesn't make any sense from that perspective.

01:21:26 ◼   ► It's a choice made for good reason on a different platform

01:21:28 ◼   ► and then applied to this platform,

01:21:31 ◼   ► kind of like, I don't know,

01:21:33 ◼   ► Consistency over usability, I guess,

01:21:35 ◼   ► is what's happening there.

01:21:36 ◼   ► It's frustrating, it's really frustrating.

01:21:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, because it's a perfect example.

01:21:40 ◼   ► I know exactly which thing you're talking about.

01:21:43 ◼   ► There's a button right above it,

01:21:45 ◼   ► and it is animated, and it looks nice,

01:21:48 ◼   ► but on the iPad, typically your music app is full screen.

01:21:53 ◼   ► It is, the size of your iPad is the size of your music app,

01:21:58 ◼   ► or the podcast app, if that's what you're listening to.

01:22:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, and certainly, even if you did a split view

01:22:02 ◼   ► or something like that, there's no concept on iOS

01:22:06 ◼   ► of a window kind of like

01:22:08 ◼   ► extruding into another space. - Growing, yes.

01:22:10 ◼   ► - That's just not, doesn't happen.

01:22:12 ◼   ► - Exactly, even if you're in split view,

01:22:14 ◼   ► the app is given, okay, you've got a two-thirds

01:22:19 ◼   ► of the size of the screen square,

01:22:21 ◼   ► or you've got a one-third over on the right column.

01:22:25 ◼   ► You can't grow as the app.

01:22:27 ◼   ► You've got this space, so if you want to show more,

01:22:30 ◼   ► It needs to overlap the content.

01:22:33 ◼   ► But on the Mac, a roughly,

01:22:36 ◼   ► and I'm talking to you on a 5K iMac,

01:22:40 ◼   ► and I'm holding up my iPad right in front of it,

01:22:43 ◼   ► and a roughly iPad-sized window is a perfect window size

01:22:48 ◼   ► for the music app or the podcast app on the Mac

01:22:51 ◼   ► if you have a nice big iMac display.

01:22:55 ◼   ► Perfectly reasonable size.

01:22:56 ◼   ► But if you need to show more,

01:22:58 ◼   ► there's plenty of room on the screen to show more

01:23:01 ◼   ► off to the side instead of overlapping the content.

01:23:05 ◼   ► It seems like a very strange concession for the Mac to make

01:23:10 ◼   ► in the grounds of consistency.

01:23:14 ◼   ► - Right, right, 'cause it's across,

01:23:16 ◼   ► I mean, this is the problem with cross-platform interfaces

01:23:18 ◼   ► is every platform is different

01:23:20 ◼   ► and has unique characteristics.

01:23:21 ◼   ► And I wouldn't want some sort of weird drawer exclusion,

01:23:26 ◼   ► sorry, extrusion thing on my iPad.

01:23:28 ◼   ► That would make no sense.

01:23:30 ◼   ► But on the Mac, I look at it and I immediately,

01:23:32 ◼   ► like I used this app for the first time the other day.

01:23:35 ◼   ► And I immediately was like, whoa, like why is that happening?

01:23:39 ◼   ► And it's not like I haven't seen,

01:23:40 ◼   ► like the music app in iOS 13 puts up

01:23:43 ◼   ► this little slide over thing for now playing.

01:23:45 ◼   ► And it literally grays out the rest of the interface

01:23:47 ◼   ► and you can't interact with it,

01:23:48 ◼   ► but it's not actually a slide over and you can't move it.

01:23:51 ◼   ► It just sits, you can dismiss it and that's all you can do.

01:23:53 ◼   ► And I had that same thought of sort of like,

01:23:56 ◼   ► Is this what we want is these weird things that float on top of other things and block

01:24:00 ◼   ► them but at least in the iPad I can understand some of the rationale on the Mac the only

01:24:04 ◼   ► rationale is well that's how we do it on the iPad.

01:24:09 ◼   ► And so there's a weird thing I tweeted about it I tweeted this movie I recorded with the

01:24:14 ◼   ► home thing and absolute genius Steven trout Smith who's spent more time deconstructing

01:24:23 ◼   ► how these apps work before they were even announced.

01:24:27 ◼   ► Like he knows as much about how these Marzipan apps

01:24:30 ◼   ► used to work and how they work now as anybody outside Apple.

01:24:35 ◼   ► And he said something, I can't find the tweet right now,

01:24:37 ◼   ► but said something to the effect that the podcast app

01:24:40 ◼   ► seemingly is written using some catalyst features

01:24:44 ◼   ► that aren't publicly available.

01:24:47 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:24:48 ◼   ► - So like the fact that the, like the catalyst app is,

01:24:51 ◼   ► or the podcast app is the saving grace of Catalyst so far,

01:24:54 ◼   ► because you can look at it and say,

01:24:55 ◼   ► "Well, this feels like a Mac app."

01:24:56 ◼   ► There's some things that are a little off,

01:25:01 ◼   ► but they're at the edges.

01:25:03 ◼   ► They're truly edge cases of the interface.

01:25:06 ◼   ► - Sure.

01:25:06 ◼   ► - And overall, this seems like a real Mac app,

01:25:09 ◼   ► and it doesn't feel like an iOS app running on the Mac.

01:25:12 ◼   ► - Although some of that is that,

01:25:14 ◼   ► what we were talking about a second ago,

01:25:16 ◼   ► some of that is that you compare it to music,

01:25:19 ◼   ► which is not Catalyst,

01:25:20 ◼   ► and you compare it to TV, which is not catalyst,

01:25:23 ◼   ► but they've got new interfaces

01:25:25 ◼   ► that are the same interface that podcast does.

01:25:27 ◼   ► So some of it is moving the goalposts a little bit, right?

01:25:30 ◼   ► - Right, because they've matched the...

01:25:33 ◼   ► The podcast app has some superpowers, seemingly,

01:25:39 ◼   ► to be more Mac-like, and then the other side,

01:25:42 ◼   ► it seems like they took the music and TV apps

01:25:44 ◼   ► and made them a little less Mac-like to even it up.

01:25:47 ◼   ► - To just get them to be a little bit closer together, yeah.

01:25:50 ◼   ► - 'Cause they do feel of a kind, right?

01:25:51 ◼   ► They're all from the same sort of design language.

01:25:53 ◼   ► They're all trying to hit the same target,

01:25:55 ◼   ► even though one of them is catalyst.

01:25:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, they're clearly from the same team.

01:25:59 ◼   ► They're clearly from the iTunes team.

01:26:00 ◼   ► I have to mention this.

01:26:04 ◼   ► If I didn't mention it, I would kill myself after the show

01:26:07 ◼   ► for not mentioning it, but I love,

01:26:10 ◼   ► so we know Apple effectively admitted, I think,

01:26:13 ◼   ► it certainly is true.

01:26:15 ◼   ► I think they more or less admitted though

01:26:17 ◼   ► that what they did is they took the old iTunes app and,

01:26:21 ◼   ► and took out a bunch of features, redid the interface,

01:26:25 ◼   ► but it's not just the music app, it's also the TV app. So effectively,

01:26:30 ◼   ► we've got two versions of iTunes now on Catalina.

01:26:33 ◼   ► Yeah. Plus a bunch of code that runs in the finder now. So, right.

01:26:36 ◼   ► I tunes now too, a little bit. Right. So they, yeah.

01:26:40 ◼   ► So what we used to know is iTunes for

01:26:44 ◼   ► geez, what, uh, 18 years, you know, right.

01:26:48 ◼   ► 2001, right.

01:26:50 ◼   ► It was before the iPod iPod actually.

01:26:54 ◼   ► Right. Right.

01:26:54 ◼   ► iTunes came first. So almost 20 years. Yeah.

01:26:57 ◼   ► So 20 years of iTunes, they've taken the code and they've,

01:27:01 ◼   ► they've forked it once to make the music app and it has all the music

01:27:06 ◼   ► features that we used to know from iTunes.

01:27:07 ◼   ► They forked it a second time to make the TV app,

01:27:11 ◼   ► which is interesting to me because it seems to me like the TV app maybe could

01:27:15 ◼   ► have gone the podcast route.

01:27:16 ◼   ► And I'm very curious why they decided to

01:27:20 ◼   ► do, you know, do it the way they did.

01:27:23 ◼   ► Me too.

01:27:24 ◼   ► My theory is that there are projects at Apple that have been in the works for

01:27:29 ◼   ► long enough that they had already gone down the path of building a Mac version.

01:27:33 ◼   ► And so why throw that work out when you already did it? So that that's,

01:27:37 ◼   ► that's my theory is like the TV app, they were already working on it.

01:27:40 ◼   ► and then Catalyst comes along and they're like,

01:27:41 ◼   ► "Well, you're still working on Catalyst.

01:27:44 ◼   ► "We're already down this path.

01:27:45 ◼   ► "We'll just keep going down the path."

01:27:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, and then they took all of the device management stuff

01:27:51 ◼   ► and put it in the Finder, which is brilliant, right?

01:27:53 ◼   ► Doesn't that seem like the way it should have been?

01:27:55 ◼   ► I don't know why I never,

01:27:56 ◼   ► I wish, as soon as I saw that in the keynote

01:27:58 ◼   ► and they put that in the Finder,

01:28:00 ◼   ► so if you want to manually manage

01:28:03 ◼   ► the backup of your iPhone or your iPad

01:28:08 ◼   ► or whatever device you connect to your Mac,

01:28:10 ◼   ► you do it in the Finder now, and that seems so perfect.

01:28:13 ◼   ► It's like, yeah, that's exactly the job of the Finder.

01:28:16 ◼   ► That would be, that's great.

01:28:18 ◼   ► - It breaks the metaphor a little bit,

01:28:19 ◼   ► 'cause the Finder windows are supposed to have,

01:28:20 ◼   ► like, files in them, and now suddenly

01:28:22 ◼   ► there's a device management window in the Finder.

01:28:25 ◼   ► But on another level, I agree with you,

01:28:26 ◼   ► 'cause like, I've always been frustrated

01:28:28 ◼   ► that you couldn't just plug in an iPhone to a Mac

01:28:30 ◼   ► and drag files onto it.

01:28:31 ◼   ► - Right, it just seems right.

01:28:33 ◼   ► - You have to go to iTunes and do it, so now you can.

01:28:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, without going into a four hour,

01:28:39 ◼   ► we should add John Siracusa to the show.

01:28:43 ◼   ► - Dial him in.

01:28:45 ◼   ► - Digression on the user interface of the Finder

01:28:50 ◼   ► in the Mac OS X era, vis-a-vis the classic Finder

01:28:53 ◼   ► and all that.

01:28:54 ◼   ► Again, it would easily be four hours.

01:28:59 ◼   ► We would have to get John Siracusa.

01:29:01 ◼   ► Given the OS X Finder,

01:29:03 ◼   ► it just seems right that a device you plug in

01:29:06 ◼   ► should show up in the finder sidebar.

01:29:08 ◼   ► It's really--

01:29:10 ◼   ► - For sure, yeah.

01:29:11 ◼   ► Well, it certainly makes more sense than a weird button

01:29:13 ◼   ► that grows out of the iTunes title bar, right?

01:29:16 ◼   ► Like, what is that? - In your music playing app.

01:29:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, it doesn't make sense.

01:29:20 ◼   ► But you're right, the TV app is iTunes.

01:29:23 ◼   ► Like, it's the TV parts of iTunes that they've just,

01:29:25 ◼   ► TV and movie parts of iTunes that they've taken

01:29:27 ◼   ► and added some other stuff to.

01:29:29 ◼   ► - So the thing I wanna mention, and I just love it,

01:29:32 ◼   ► and I really almost wonder whether they're trolling us

01:29:35 ◼   ► at this point, is the fact,

01:29:37 ◼   ► you know what I'm gonna say, right?

01:29:39 ◼   ► The preferences window is still a modal dialogue.

01:29:44 ◼   ► - Of course, of course.

01:29:45 ◼   ► - So music and TV have modal dialogues for preferences.

01:29:49 ◼   ► And I think most people listening to the show

01:29:52 ◼   ► already know exactly what I'm talking about

01:29:54 ◼   ► and why it's a little antiquated.

01:29:56 ◼   ► But if you don't, just the basic idea

01:29:59 ◼   ► is that a modal dialogue is one that when you open it up in an app,

01:30:04 ◼   ► you can't do in anything in any other windows until you

01:30:07 ◼   ► cancel or okay. The, the app. So when you open preferences,

01:30:12 ◼   ► and this is all iTunes has always been this way,

01:30:14 ◼   ► going back to what before MacOS 10,

01:30:17 ◼   ► when it was a classic app is you'd open the preferences and you could change

01:30:21 ◼   ► settings, but then there's an okay and cancel button at the bottom. So you could,

01:30:26 ◼   ► you could hit cancel and then any of the changes you made

01:30:30 ◼   ► wouldn't actually be registered

01:30:32 ◼   ► because you canceled it instead of okaying it.

01:30:35 ◼   ► And in the '90s, maybe even going back to the '80s,

01:30:38 ◼   ► that was a very common,

01:30:39 ◼   ► I mean, the further back in time you go in Mac history,

01:30:42 ◼   ► the more stuff was modal as opposed to non-modal,

01:30:45 ◼   ► where it would come up and you had to do it

01:30:48 ◼   ► or cancel it right then and there

01:30:50 ◼   ► and you couldn't do anything else until you did.

01:30:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, everything else stopped while you were in there.

01:30:54 ◼   ► I have a little real-time follow-up. They bought I they bought sound jam MP in 2000

01:31:00 ◼   ► But the first version of iTunes actually did come out in 2001. It was January 2001

01:31:04 ◼   ► But not a lot before the iPod only a little less than a year Mac World Expo

01:31:11 ◼   ► 2001 yeah ten months before the iPad or iPod ship. Yep. Yep

01:31:16 ◼   ► a lot of email so

01:31:20 ◼   ► The fact that iTunes stuck with a modal preferences dialogue

01:31:24 ◼   ► And I believe it's the last app Apple has with a modal

01:31:28 ◼   ► I mean, maybe there's some kind of obscure app is somewhere in in slash applications slash utilities

01:31:35 ◼   ► Maybe some of those still have it

01:31:37 ◼   ► I don't know but in terms of the ones that would ever even vaguely have a chance of being demoed in a keynote

01:31:43 ◼   ► iTunes was far and away the last app Apple made with a modal

01:31:48 ◼   ► Preferences dialogue and they clearly did a complete UI

01:31:53 ◼   ► Reskinning of the you know, the the the brand new Catalina music and TV apps don't look like iTunes on

01:32:01 ◼   ► Mojave right the fact that they left the preferences as a modal dialog box. I love it. I

01:32:07 ◼   ► acts

01:32:09 ◼   ► You know what?

01:32:10 ◼   ► I mean like I feel like we've circled the globe on this and we've gone away from like complaining like isn't it time for the

01:32:16 ◼   ► iTunes preferences not to be modal and just, you know, just it's out. It's literally outlasted

01:32:22 ◼   ► iTunes now. The preferences box has outlasted its app. I at this point, I'm actually so charmed

01:32:31 ◼   ► that they kept it as a modal dialog box. And then of course, I checked podcasts and podcasts

01:32:36 ◼   ► is not modal, you know, the podcast, which is catalyst app, but looks a lot like the music app

01:32:41 ◼   ► and the TV app, not modal. It charms me now at this point. And I really, if anybody at Apple

01:32:50 ◼   ► is on these teams, I would love to know the story behind this because technically it can't be that

01:32:56 ◼   ► hard. It can't be that there are—with all of the work that went into splitting the music and TV

01:33:03 ◼   ► apps from what was iTunes, surely part of that work could have been making the preferences non-modal.

01:33:10 ◼   ► I feel like it's a deliberate choice at this point, and I kind of love it.

01:33:13 ◼   ► When you talk about coming all the way back around the world, I will point out that automation

01:33:18 ◼   ► box that we were talking about in the Home app. I mean, we're back there now, because that is

01:33:25 ◼   ► literally a modal. It blocks out everything else that happens in the Home app while it's open.

01:33:30 ◼   ► So, you know, the modal dialogues are back in style, is what I'm saying.

01:33:36 ◼   ► - And what if you never left?

01:33:37 ◼   ► Well, iTunes never left and now it's back.

01:33:40 ◼   ► It's like, you know, 80s comes back in style,

01:33:42 ◼   ► 90s comes back in style, wait long enough

01:33:45 ◼   ► and you'll be back in style.

01:33:46 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:33:50 ◼   ► - I absolutely love it that it's...

01:33:52 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:33:54 ◼   ► What are you running?

01:33:57 ◼   ► I'm curious what betas you're running personally.

01:34:00 ◼   ► - So I had installed...

01:34:05 ◼   ► the Catalina beta on an external SSD. That's sort of my first step because with the Mac,

01:34:13 ◼   ► you don't have to commit your whole device to being on it. You can use a partition or

01:34:18 ◼   ► an SSD. Marco Arment realized that APFS will let you partition things, and I realized I've

01:34:25 ◼   ► just been so trained from HFS to not ever, ever touch the partitions of my internal hard

01:34:31 ◼   ► drive that I just have a Samsung SSD that is so small that I can tuck it in the back

01:34:37 ◼   ► of my iMac's little VESA mount and it's like it's not even there. So I can reboot into

01:34:45 ◼   ► Catalina and that's step one. Step two will be that I'll move, but step one I reboot into

01:34:49 ◼   ► Catalina and it means I can attach that drive to my wife's MacBook Air when she's at work

01:34:54 ◼   ► and I can boot into it on that one and use it as reference. And then for iOS, I have

01:34:59 ◼   ► test devices that have been running it, but yesterday I put it on my iPad, mostly at the

01:35:04 ◼   ► urging of Federico Faticci, who was talking about this on a podcast and basically said,

01:35:09 ◼   ► "Well, if you're a regular person, you shouldn't install this beta yet, but if you're right

01:35:13 ◼   ► about this for a living, you should probably do it." And I thought, "Oh, he's talking to

01:35:16 ◼   ► me." So I did it. And it's, you know, once you go over the beta, I firmly believe that

01:35:21 ◼   ► you have to use the beta on your main system to really understand anything, right? Because

01:35:26 ◼   ► Otherwise you're just kind of noodling around in an empty shell and then you leave it. And

01:35:31 ◼   ► you don't. I've already learned in 12 hours or 18 hours of using it on my main iPad, I've

01:35:36 ◼   ► already learned like a dozen things I didn't notice in the last week and a half because

01:35:40 ◼   ► it's my iPad now. So at some point you got to cut over. But like I'm going on vacation

01:35:46 ◼   ► next week and I'm not going to put it on my phone like no way. But on the iPad I figure

01:35:52 ◼   ► Because I do need to immerse myself in this stuff,

01:35:55 ◼   ► I need to get there.

01:35:56 ◼   ► And I feel like in the next few weeks,

01:35:57 ◼   ► I will probably do a thing where,

01:35:59 ◼   ► let me know what you think about this strategy.

01:36:02 ◼   ► What I'm thinking of doing is I bought a,

01:36:04 ◼   ► so this external drive is a terabyte

01:36:07 ◼   ► and my internal iMac Pro drive is a terabyte.

01:36:09 ◼   ► So what I'm thinking is cloning my existing Mojave

01:36:13 ◼   ► onto that external drive and then upgrading to Catalina,

01:36:18 ◼   ► because that'll let me live with Catalina,

01:36:20 ◼   ► but also like have a place I can retreat to

01:36:24 ◼   ► for things like doing podcasts

01:36:26 ◼   ► where you don't want your apps to crash and stuff like that.

01:36:29 ◼   ► - That sounds a lot like my strategy.

01:36:30 ◼   ► Let's take a third break here

01:36:32 ◼   ► and thank our third and final sponsor of the episode,

01:36:35 ◼   ► another one of my very favorite companies, Mack Weldon.

01:36:39 ◼   ► Mack Weldon makes, they call them men's essentials.

01:36:43 ◼   ► Look, T-shirts, underwear, socks, that sort of thing.

01:36:46 ◼   ► And they're just super high quality.

01:36:50 ◼   ► They are the nicest stuff I have ever owned.

01:36:53 ◼   ► I love it.

01:36:55 ◼   ► I'm wearing them right now.

01:36:56 ◼   ► I got a pair of Mack Weldon underwear on.

01:36:59 ◼   ► Whoever thought I'd grow up and part of my life

01:37:01 ◼   ► would be to tell everybody what kind of underwear I've got.

01:37:04 ◼   ► Well, that's where I am.

01:37:06 ◼   ► I love Mack Weldon products.

01:37:08 ◼   ► They'd started from scratch.

01:37:11 ◼   ► They've looked at this market

01:37:13 ◼   ► and this is why I like this company.

01:37:16 ◼   ► They engineered everything, even their own fabrics.

01:37:19 ◼   ► They start from the ground up, they make their own fabrics,

01:37:22 ◼   ► they make their own designs,

01:37:24 ◼   ► they control all of the stitching and the sizing,

01:37:27 ◼   ► and they truly believe that the difference is in the details

01:37:30 ◼   ► and they obsess over every stitch and seam

01:37:33 ◼   ► until they've reached their definition of perfect

01:37:36 ◼   ► for products like underwear, t-shirts, socks.

01:37:40 ◼   ► I almost guaranteed that whatever you're wearing right now

01:37:43 ◼   ► as you listen to this, Mack Weldon products are better

01:37:46 ◼   ► than what you have on right now.

01:37:47 ◼   ► Great stuff, I love 'em.

01:37:49 ◼   ► And they've even got, their silver line

01:37:55 ◼   ► is made of naturally antimicrobial fabrics.

01:38:00 ◼   ► That means they eliminate odor.

01:38:03 ◼   ► Sounds like BS, you think like,

01:38:05 ◼   ► how can you make a t-shirt that stays odor free

01:38:09 ◼   ► as opposed to another thing?

01:38:10 ◼   ► I don't know how they do it, but it works.

01:38:12 ◼   ► It's great stuff, love them for summer.

01:38:15 ◼   ► that silver line of products, especially the shirts,

01:38:19 ◼   ► absolutely terrific for hot weather.

01:38:21 ◼   ► Super comfortable, super stylish.

01:38:24 ◼   ► Anything you could ask for in these products,

01:38:27 ◼   ► MAC, Weld-In stuff is great.

01:38:29 ◼   ► And the ordering process is great.

01:38:31 ◼   ► They have a wonderful website.

01:38:32 ◼   ► Once they know what you've got,

01:38:33 ◼   ► so like stuff like underwear and socks,

01:38:35 ◼   ► you kind of have to reorder every year or so.

01:38:38 ◼   ► They remember what you've got.

01:38:40 ◼   ► You can remember what you like,

01:38:41 ◼   ► just reorder the stuff that you already like.

01:38:44 ◼   ► Really just a great shopping experience. I

01:38:46 ◼   ► Like everything they have I like their t-shirts like their underwear like their socks

01:38:50 ◼   ► And they have a special offer for listeners of the talk show 20% off your first order 20% by going to Mac

01:38:58 ◼   ► Weldon calm and enter the code talk show know the just talk show at checkout and you'll save 20% off your first order

01:39:06 ◼   ► absolutely love their products and

01:39:09 ◼   ► Glad they're still a sponsor to the show Mac Weldon calm and remember that code

01:39:13 ◼   ► talk show what were we talking about before the break beta strategies beta

01:39:21 ◼   ► strategy that's exactly right so I feel like everybody in our racket has these

01:39:25 ◼   ► exact same Samsung drives right everybody up it's the Samsung t5 I'm

01:39:31 ◼   ► looking at it right now I've got like three of them connected to my iMac right

01:39:35 ◼   ► now so I've got one for Catalina I got my time machine is on one uh-huh I have

01:39:39 ◼   ► a two gigabyte, two terabyte one for storage. I just bought another one for time machine

01:39:45 ◼   ► because I realized I was backing up time machine to my server over my network and that because

01:39:49 ◼   ► it's a raid, it's actually kind of slow. And I thought, why, why do I not just have an

01:39:53 ◼   ► SSD tucked behind my iMac for backup? So now I've got two of those guys. They're great.

01:39:58 ◼   ► All things considered, I don't, I just don't like Samsung as a company. I don't like their

01:40:03 ◼   ► television sets. I certainly don't want their phones. Don't really like their computers.

01:40:08 ◼   ► I there's a, you know, I just not a fan of the company, but you know, they make good

01:40:14 ◼   ► SSDs. And I think that they're portable. These t five portable SSDs are one of the best products

01:40:21 ◼   ► I've ever had in my life. And it's funny because like, I've been buying them for at least a

01:40:26 ◼   ► year or a couple of years now. They're so much cheaper than they used to be. It is absolutely

01:40:31 ◼   ► ludicrous. I went to Amazon, I bought a new one just to install Catalina, and it was like,

01:40:38 ◼   ► I got a two terabyte drive for one third of the price that I bought a one terabyte for

01:40:45 ◼   ► 18 months ago. It's absolutely ridiculous how cheap they're getting. And they're just

01:40:50 ◼   ► these tiny little things with one USB-C port in the back. They come with both cables that

01:40:57 ◼   ► that you would possibly want, which is USB-C to USB-C

01:41:01 ◼   ► and USB-A to USB-C.

01:41:04 ◼   ► So you can connect it to, they have nice little cables

01:41:07 ◼   ► that are, to me, a very smart length.

01:41:09 ◼   ► They're not too super short, but they're not like six foot.

01:41:12 ◼   ► One of the great products that I could recommend

01:41:18 ◼   ► are these Samsung T5 drives.

01:41:20 ◼   ► I did the same thing, I've got Catalina running

01:41:22 ◼   ► on an external SSD.

01:41:23 ◼   ► I did the same thing as you, where there was no way,

01:41:27 ◼   ► as a, and again, I admit technically, I think we're wrong

01:41:30 ◼   ► and Marco's probably the right way

01:41:32 ◼   ► that we should just trust APFS

01:41:34 ◼   ► and trust that you can repartition your internal drive

01:41:39 ◼   ► with APFS and have a safe thing where you can put Catalina.

01:41:44 ◼   ► But I'm so old school that I not only install it

01:41:48 ◼   ► on an external SSD, I unmount my internal hard drive.

01:41:51 ◼   ► I reboot, you know.

01:41:53 ◼   ► One of the weird things about installing Catalina

01:41:55 ◼   ► is you couldn't just install it on a blank drive.

01:41:57 ◼   ► you had to start with Mojave.

01:41:59 ◼   ► I think you went through the same thing.

01:42:00 ◼   ► I think you were talking about this on a podcast.

01:42:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, I installed Mojave and then I installed

01:42:04 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:42:05 ◼   ► - You had to though.

01:42:06 ◼   ► - Although Marco says that you can download the Mojave

01:42:10 ◼   ► or the Catalina installer and then point it

01:42:12 ◼   ► at a blank drive and it will actually do it.

01:42:14 ◼   ► But I decided I was not gonna risk getting my Mac

01:42:19 ◼   ► in a position where it was gonna try to install Catalina

01:42:22 ◼   ► on itself because that would be disaster.

01:42:24 ◼   ► So I, yeah, we've been trained by the Mac for 20 years

01:42:27 ◼   ► to not do that.

01:42:28 ◼   ► - We've just got terrible, terrible battle scars

01:42:30 ◼   ► where we're just like, whatever you say,

01:42:32 ◼   ► you know, like if they tell you that you're supposed

01:42:33 ◼   ► to stand on one leg and hop up and down

01:42:36 ◼   ► as the installer runs, I would do it.

01:42:37 ◼   ► - I think that's how you zap the PRAM.

01:42:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, zap your PRAM and hold down six buttons

01:42:44 ◼   ► on your keyboard as it restarts.

01:42:46 ◼   ► - And just hope that it all works.

01:42:47 ◼   ► So yeah, yeah, you use an external drive and it's like,

01:42:50 ◼   ► and like you said, in the racket we're in,

01:42:54 ◼   ► You gotta do it, right?

01:42:56 ◼   ► But you gotta have strategies for it

01:42:58 ◼   ► because you are going to have an unstable system,

01:43:01 ◼   ► like even a good beta, it is an unstable system.

01:43:04 ◼   ► I had that happen, I wanna say three summers ago,

01:43:07 ◼   ► I finally cut over to the beta

01:43:10 ◼   ► and realized that all of my podcasting broke when I did it.

01:43:14 ◼   ► So I spent like two months

01:43:16 ◼   ► where every time somebody wanted me to do a podcast,

01:43:20 ◼   ► I said, "Okay, I will be back in five minutes

01:43:22 ◼   ► "after I reboot."

01:43:23 ◼   ► because I ended up with an external drive

01:43:27 ◼   ► that was just a generic version

01:43:28 ◼   ► of the shipping operating system

01:43:30 ◼   ► that would actually work with podcasting.

01:43:32 ◼   ► So that's the problem of having your test machine

01:43:35 ◼   ► be your production machine, as it were,

01:43:37 ◼   ► is that you're just, yeah,

01:43:39 ◼   ► at some point you gotta use the betas though,

01:43:41 ◼   ► because you gotta write about them.

01:43:43 ◼   ► But if they break part of your,

01:43:44 ◼   ► like if I couldn't write articles,

01:43:46 ◼   ► if like BB Edit didn't open in the beta,

01:43:48 ◼   ► that would be really bad.

01:43:49 ◼   ► And I would have to have like another system

01:43:51 ◼   ► to use to write my article

01:43:52 ◼   ► because you can't, you know, you gotta use the beta stuff,

01:43:56 ◼   ► but you've also got to work.

01:43:58 ◼   ► - So I've got Catalina on an external drive,

01:44:02 ◼   ► but as we podcast talking to you from Mojave,

01:44:06 ◼   ► because I'm not gonna risk--

01:44:09 ◼   ► - You did that, you did that.

01:44:10 ◼   ► You're like, "I'll be back in a minute.

01:44:12 ◼   ► "I gotta reboot into Mojave so that we can do a podcast."

01:44:14 ◼   ► - And I've got iOS 13 or AKA iPad OS 13

01:44:19 ◼   ► honest, on my year-old iPhone X and a Mac Mini, or iPad Mini. I mean, not a Mac Mini.

01:44:27 ◼   ► Right. So it's not your actual iOS devices, but—

01:44:30 ◼   ► Right. But I'm thinking—the one I'm almost certainly going to upgrade first before

01:44:35 ◼   ► we start our family vacations is I think I'm going to put iPadOS on my main iPad. Because

01:44:41 ◼   ► A, I don't—if it gets buggy, there's no scenario where that really adversely affects

01:44:48 ◼   ► I mean, maybe there'd be a third-party app, I don't know, that I would wish worked but

01:44:53 ◼   ► didn't. But it's the device that I can get by with in bugginess the most. I feel like

01:45:03 ◼   ► I know they had this weird warning this year. They called it thrill seekers and they kind

01:45:08 ◼   ► of made you jump through extra hoops to get the first betas of the iOS. You had to connect

01:45:15 ◼   ► to Xcode, you couldn't just download a profile and restart and do a software update on the

01:45:22 ◼   ► device. You kind of had to use a Mac. I find that on the iPhone, it's pretty stable. I

01:45:30 ◼   ► haven't really seen anything. I'm probably not going to put it on my main phone before

01:45:34 ◼   ► we start going on vacations next month, but it seems like I could. I don't know.

01:45:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's, I mean, it doesn't seem disastrous, right?

01:45:43 ◼   ► Like you always have to worry

01:45:44 ◼   ► that the next beta will have a terrible bug

01:45:46 ◼   ► and you'll update to that one

01:45:47 ◼   ► and suddenly you'll be in trouble.

01:45:49 ◼   ► - Their thrill seeker warning really turned me off.

01:45:52 ◼   ► I was like, holy shit, this is,

01:45:54 ◼   ► this must be really buggy, but it seems usable.

01:45:58 ◼   ► What are you thinking about dark mode on iOS?

01:46:02 ◼   ► - I am much more interested in dark mode on iOS

01:46:04 ◼   ► than I am on the Mac, to be honest.

01:46:07 ◼   ► Like I tried dark mode on Mojave

01:46:09 ◼   ► And it's a little bit better now that Safari

01:46:12 ◼   ► has dark mode support and websites are sort of

01:46:15 ◼   ► starting to come around to the idea

01:46:16 ◼   ► that you might wanna build in a dark mode.

01:46:19 ◼   ► I wondered, maybe Daring Fireball needs like a light mode

01:46:25 ◼   ► or something, I don't know what happens then,

01:46:27 ◼   ► but you're already kind of doing dark mode, so it's okay.

01:46:30 ◼   ► But on iOS devices, especially like on the iPhone,

01:46:33 ◼   ► like I already am using the dark interface

01:46:36 ◼   ► in a lot of my apps because they look really good

01:46:38 ◼   ► on the OLED screen and on the iPad somewhat too.

01:46:43 ◼   ► So I feel like I'm probably gonna use dark mode

01:46:46 ◼   ► a lot more on iOS than on Mojave, but what about you?

01:46:49 ◼   ► - I think it works better on iOS.

01:46:53 ◼   ► So I think it's interesting,

01:46:55 ◼   ► like I was just saying to you earlier in the show

01:46:57 ◼   ► where in years past,

01:46:59 ◼   ► and dark mode is a perfect example of this,

01:47:00 ◼   ► where it just seems like Apple can't do it all at once.

01:47:04 ◼   ► They can't say, okay,

01:47:05 ◼   ► all of our platforms now have dark mode.

01:47:07 ◼   ► It was, you know, Dark Mode's a perfect example

01:47:10 ◼   ► where TV OS had it and then Mac got it

01:47:15 ◼   ► and now iOS gets it.

01:47:17 ◼   ► But it seems like iOS is the platform

01:47:19 ◼   ► where people really wanted it.

01:47:20 ◼   ► I know people cheered for it with the Mac,

01:47:23 ◼   ► but the cheers that it got in the keynote,

01:47:25 ◼   ► even though it was widely expected,

01:47:27 ◼   ► the rumors were super rampant that, you know,

01:47:30 ◼   ► this is the year iOS was gonna get Dark Mode.

01:47:33 ◼   ► But man, when Craig Federighi announced it,

01:47:35 ◼   ► the crowd went nuts.

01:47:37 ◼   ► I mean, it was absolutely bonkers.

01:47:40 ◼   ► I mean, if there was anything that competed with it,

01:47:43 ◼   ► it was when they announced the PS4 controller

01:47:45 ◼   ► for Apple TV.

01:47:47 ◼   ► I think it works so much better on iOS than Mac

01:47:53 ◼   ► because of the fact that iOS doesn't have

01:47:56 ◼   ► a windowing system.

01:47:59 ◼   ► It has this either full screen apps or tiled apps.

01:48:04 ◼   ► And the thing on the Mac, I honestly,

01:48:07 ◼   ► I mean, my eyes are bad and weird in a bunch of ways,

01:48:12 ◼   ► but on the Mac, I honestly can't get

01:48:14 ◼   ► how people run everything in dark mode.

01:48:16 ◼   ► I've been running BB Edit in dark mode,

01:48:18 ◼   ► effectively dark mode, for years.

01:48:20 ◼   ► Like, I have a dark background,

01:48:23 ◼   ► very dark gray with light-colored colors for the text.

01:48:27 ◼   ► And in recent years, BB Edit has detected that,

01:48:33 ◼   ► and if you have a dark theme,

01:48:35 ◼   ► it also shows you a dark interface,

01:48:37 ◼   ► even on older versions of macOS.

01:48:39 ◼   ► But having one app in dark mode

01:48:44 ◼   ► to make it jump out on my screen full of tiled windows

01:48:48 ◼   ► from a bunch of apps is different to me than having,

01:48:52 ◼   ► very different to me than having everything in dark mode.

01:48:54 ◼   ► And the way that you just don't see the three dimensionality

01:48:58 ◼   ► in dark mode as well, 'cause it's tough,

01:49:00 ◼   ► 'cause how do you show a shadow, right?

01:49:02 ◼   ► like in light mode on Mac when you have one window in front of another, the one that's

01:49:06 ◼   ► in front casts a shadow behind it. The fact that iOS doesn't have to worry about that

01:49:12 ◼   ► makes it work way better. And there are some interesting touches that Apple has done that

01:49:18 ◼   ► as you go into a view hierarchy and something pops up, it gets a little bit lighter. But

01:49:25 ◼   ► because they don't overlap the way that Windows on the Mac by definition have to be able to

01:49:29 ◼   ► overlap. I think it works way better. Yeah, yeah, it's, um, I think there's

01:49:37 ◼   ► context to like I'm I mean, the fact is I use my Mac mostly during the day,

01:49:42 ◼   ► and the brightness doesn't bother me. And I use my iPhone often in darker

01:49:47 ◼   ► circumstances, and it's also got the OLED screen. I don't know. I mean, the

01:49:50 ◼   ► nice thing about it. It's personal preference. Honestly, the Safari thing

01:49:53 ◼   ► for me is huge because apps have been updated to support dark themes. But

01:49:58 ◼   ► then you go to a web page and it just blasts you with white background and black text.

01:50:03 ◼   ► And it's terrible, like enough for me to be like, "No, no, no, I can't look at the world

01:50:09 ◼   ► this way and I'll just go back to the light theme on Mojave." So it's getting better.

01:50:13 ◼   ► And I feel like once iOS is supporting dark themes, all the web developers are going to

01:50:18 ◼   ► be like, "Look, we really need to do this," because now everybody's using their iPhone

01:50:21 ◼   ► in dark mode. And it also, I mean, it's on Windows. I don't know if it's currently on

01:50:26 ◼   ► But I have no doubt that they will support it as well

01:50:28 ◼   ► It's it and there are web standards to support it and that that's the thing is I think dark mode is good when?

01:50:34 ◼   ► Everybody's on board with dark mode the problem is that if you have as long as you have outliers

01:50:39 ◼   ► It's like it's just like oh, this is terrible get me out of here

01:50:41 ◼   ► And and so I haven't used it on my Mac at all. It's kind of interesting too though for me because I

01:50:48 ◼   ► There are certain apps that have always been white background

01:50:55 ◼   ► with

01:50:56 ◼   ► Colors in the front like messages. I mean messages goes back to when it was called

01:51:00 ◼   ► I chat right and has sort of had the same interface. I mean the only

01:51:04 ◼   ► the only big difference between today's messages and I chat from

01:51:09 ◼   ► 20 years ago is

01:51:12 ◼   ► That they don't use the aqua style the 3d bubble effect on the text bubbles

01:51:17 ◼   ► Right. It's it's always been a light

01:51:21 ◼   ► White background app mail has always been a white background app

01:51:25 ◼   ► So looking at those apps when I'm running my iPhone or the iPad in dark mode it at first it is just like bizarre

01:51:34 ◼   ► It is like I can't believe that messages has a black background, but it it doesn't take long to get used to it

01:51:39 ◼   ► I kind of like it and then with mail

01:51:42 ◼   ► I realized that it really kind of harkens back to even earlier like

01:51:45 ◼   ► Go back to like the early 90s when I would connect to mail and it was always through a terminal window

01:51:50 ◼   ► and it was a black background with white text.

01:51:53 ◼   ► It was like, "Hmm, male seems kind of natural

01:51:56 ◼   ► with white text on a black background."

01:51:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

01:52:01 ◼   ► It's, although even there, like with male,

01:52:04 ◼   ► there is HTML mail, so you end up with those things

01:52:06 ◼   ► where it looks bad because it's mis-rendered and yeah.

01:52:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, you're like going through messages like this one,

01:52:13 ◼   ► it looks good, looks good, and then you pop one up

01:52:15 ◼   ► that's like HTML formatted and it's white

01:52:18 ◼   ► and it's like, ah, who invited you to this party?

01:52:21 ◼   ► This looks terrible.

01:52:23 ◼   ► But there's other things though

01:52:26 ◼   ► that I think are a little bit more complicated.

01:52:30 ◼   ► Like I get it, it's a weird feature in my opinion.

01:52:33 ◼   ► I mean, like I said just a couple minutes ago,

01:52:36 ◼   ► the enthusiasm that people have for it

01:52:38 ◼   ► is almost off the charts.

01:52:41 ◼   ► But there is something to be said

01:52:43 ◼   ► for having a unified, look, the standard interface

01:52:48 ◼   ► is a white background with black text,

01:52:52 ◼   ► and then sometimes we'll go to a black background

01:52:55 ◼   ► with white text for certain contexts, and it informs you.

01:53:00 ◼   ► So the one that bothers me in this regard is photos,

01:53:05 ◼   ► is the standard photos interface has always been

01:53:09 ◼   ► a white background, and then you go into edit mode

01:53:12 ◼   ► a photo and it turns black and then you know you're in edit mode. And now that we you can

01:53:19 ◼   ► have a dark background at the beginning, you kind of lose that instantaneous, hey, I know

01:53:23 ◼   ► whether I'm in browse mode or edit mode, because whether the interface is white or black. And

01:53:30 ◼   ► I don't know what the solution to that is. Like, I kind of feel like that's a casualty

01:53:36 ◼   ► of supporting dark mode is that you kind of lose this instantaneous, hey, you know, this

01:53:42 ◼   ► This is a special mode where we switch to a black background.

01:53:45 ◼   ► You're right, right, because there's that whenever you edit it, it switches like that.

01:53:50 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know.

01:53:51 ◼   ► And do you invert that?

01:53:52 ◼   ► I mean, this is—I joked about creating the light mode version of Daring Fireball, but

01:53:56 ◼   ► I do think that is a legitimate question, which is—I was being snarky, but I'm also

01:54:02 ◼   ► kind of serious.

01:54:03 ◼   ► When they went to Logic Pro X from Logic Pro version 9, they remade it from this kind of

01:54:08 ◼   ► a very gray platinum interface to an interface

01:54:11 ◼   ► that's a dark interface.

01:54:12 ◼   ► And they said, you know, we have a lot of people working,

01:54:14 ◼   ► audio engineers working in windowless rooms

01:54:17 ◼   ► and like, it was too much.

01:54:18 ◼   ► It's like, it was sort of the argument for dark mode.

01:54:20 ◼   ► But my question when they announced this last year was,

01:54:23 ◼   ► okay, when can we expect a light mode for logic, right?

01:54:26 ◼   ► Because it's, if you're letting me choose

01:54:29 ◼   ► and your app currently is dark,

01:54:31 ◼   ► should you not now do a light version for me

01:54:34 ◼   ► if I prefer light interfaces?

01:54:36 ◼   ► And not a lot of people are paying attention to that,

01:54:39 ◼   ► but I think it's legitimate.

01:54:40 ◼   ► Like what do you do when you edit a photo in photos

01:54:42 ◼   ► now that you're in the dark mode?

01:54:44 ◼   ► How can you indicate,

01:54:45 ◼   ► and you've seen Apple's written about it

01:54:47 ◼   ► and developers have written about it,

01:54:48 ◼   ► the issues of like,

01:54:49 ◼   ► how do you differentiate a floating window

01:54:52 ◼   ► when you used to differentiate it by casting a shadow,

01:54:55 ◼   ► but now there's nowhere to cast the shadow

01:54:57 ◼   ► because it's dark.

01:54:59 ◼   ► Like there are, you know,

01:55:00 ◼   ► it's more complicated than you'd think

01:55:02 ◼   ► to just go into dark mode.

01:55:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, absolutely.

01:55:05 ◼   ► The one that I was very curious to see

01:55:07 ◼   ► was the Apple Watch app on iPhone,

01:55:11 ◼   ► which has always had a dark interface.

01:55:15 ◼   ► Not quite black, but that's why they don't call it

01:55:17 ◼   ► black mode, it's dark mode.

01:55:19 ◼   ► And I thought, well, what are they gonna do

01:55:21 ◼   ► with the Apple Watch interface?

01:55:23 ◼   ► Is when you go into dark mode,

01:55:24 ◼   ► is the Apple Watch app going to go light?

01:55:27 ◼   ► Because the point is to make it

01:55:30 ◼   ► the inverse of what's regular?

01:55:32 ◼   ► But instead, it just stays dark.

01:55:34 ◼   ► It's like the Apple Watch app doesn't make any difference

01:55:38 ◼   ► whether your system is dark mode or not.

01:55:40 ◼   ► That's the answer that they came up with.

01:55:43 ◼   ► But it's still, is that the right answer?

01:55:46 ◼   ► In a way, it seems like it should be light, right?

01:55:50 ◼   ► - Right.

01:55:51 ◼   ► Right, I mean, it's not always gonna be

01:55:54 ◼   ► that the right answer is the inverse,

01:55:56 ◼   ► but it's certainly, like you have to,

01:55:58 ◼   ► every time you do something like this,

01:55:59 ◼   ► you have to ask yourself that question of like,

01:56:01 ◼   ► well, what do I do here to indicate,

01:56:02 ◼   ► Like with the drop shadow, it's like,

01:56:04 ◼   ► you don't have to have a drop glow or something,

01:56:08 ◼   ► but you do need to invent some way to indicate

01:56:11 ◼   ► that thing that you can't indicate anymore

01:56:13 ◼   ► using the darkness,

01:56:14 ◼   ► because the darkness is now something else.

01:56:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't know.

01:56:17 ◼   ► I like it more than I thought I would.

01:56:18 ◼   ► I'm running it on my iPad with the setting

01:56:22 ◼   ► to have it turn on automatically at night.

01:56:25 ◼   ► And so at nighttime it's dark,

01:56:26 ◼   ► and in the daytime it's day,

01:56:28 ◼   ► which I've actually been running on my Apple TV

01:56:30 ◼   ► for years, I believe.

01:56:33 ◼   ► And on Apple TV in particular,

01:56:35 ◼   ► I go months with even forgetting that I have that set

01:56:38 ◼   ► because it seems so natural for it to be light

01:56:41 ◼   ► in the daytime and dark at nighttime.

01:56:43 ◼   ► On the iPhone, it's a little bit more glaring

01:56:45 ◼   ► because you can't miss it when you're in messages

01:56:48 ◼   ► and it's a dark background.

01:56:50 ◼   ► But I dig it, I dig it more than I do on my Mac.

01:56:53 ◼   ► I really can't see using it system-wide on my Mac,

01:56:56 ◼   ► but on the iPhone, I can definitely see it.

01:56:58 ◼   ► All right, what else is on your agenda as a high-level WWDC follow-up type thing? We

01:57:08 ◼   ► can talk about the Mac Pro and the Pro Display XDR.

01:57:11 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, it is… I think they're worth talking about, although on one level, I feel

01:57:18 ◼   ► like giving them more oxygen just kind of like repeats the problem that we've had,

01:57:23 ◼   ► which is so much of attention is given to the Mac Pro

01:57:28 ◼   ► and now to this display that is out of whack

01:57:31 ◼   ► with how many people will ever use them.

01:57:34 ◼   ► And this is not new.

01:57:35 ◼   ► That's the thing that gets me is it's like

01:57:37 ◼   ► the trashcan Mac Pro.

01:57:39 ◼   ► It's been so long that people have forgotten Apple's strategy

01:57:41 ◼   ► about the Mac Pro, but like there is a real continuum

01:57:44 ◼   ► from the time when most power users used a power Mac

01:57:49 ◼   ► and the time when most power users use an iMac.

01:57:53 ◼   ► The iMac used to be a consumer Mac.

01:57:55 ◼   ► It is now the mainstream Mac.

01:57:57 ◼   ► And you could start that continuum wherever you want,