0:00:00We gotta pack a three hour show into about 90 minutes here,
0:00:02Rene.
0:00:03- We can do it.
0:00:04- I think we can.
0:00:04No baseball, no sports, no movies, nothing like that.
0:00:08We gotta get right to work.
0:00:10- Okay.
0:00:10- Got a good list of topics.
0:00:12I'm gonna say number one, I wanna talk about
0:00:15MacBook keyboard failures.
0:00:18It's a recurring theme on the show.
0:00:20And in between the last episode of this show
0:00:22and us talking today, a fellow I know
0:00:26(laughs)
0:00:28got hit by the speck of dust of doom.
0:00:31And that fellow would be you.
0:00:34- Yeah, like you, I think we both had a bunch
0:00:37of different review units since they came out in 2016.
0:00:41They were the original Skylake ones,
0:00:43they were last year's Kaby Lake ones.
0:00:45Between MacBooks and MacBook Pros, my own and Apple's,
0:00:48I've probably gone through eight,
0:00:50and I've used two or three of them consistently,
0:00:52and I never had any problem, and then two weeks ago,
0:00:56the control key stopped working.
0:00:59And I don't use the control key often.
0:01:00I use it for terminal and ludicrously to pick up,
0:01:03to pull out the emoji keyboard picker.
0:01:05- Yes, yes, yes. - Yeah.
0:01:06(laughs)
0:01:07And I wasn't able to do that anymore.
0:01:10- For people who do not know, you can type on a Mac,
0:01:15you can type control command space
0:01:18and it brings up the emoji picker.
0:01:19And it's a fantastic feature.
0:01:23It's funny, I've kind of gotten away from tips and tricks
0:01:25in recent years. I don't know why, but it's like I've started, I'll get to some later
0:01:30that are on the show notes, but that's another one. And it's like, I know that there's some
0:01:35cool third party utilities that help with emoji and stuff like that. But I think if
0:01:38people knew about the command control space and the fact that you can search, yes, it's,
0:01:45it's a fantastic feature. It's so it's like, you know, you type flower and it's like all
0:01:49the flower emoji show up. Oh, I love this feature. Anyway, I can't reassign it. So if
0:01:54control key is gone you just you can't use it which exact model was this it was
0:02:03a MacBook Pro correct yeah it was a 13 inch MacBook Pro with the touch bar all
0:02:08right almost so what's the current status you made a video I have it in the
0:02:11show notes it will be there and you can you know you went through the rigmarole
0:02:15with the Apple support document where you hold the the MacBook at a precise 61
0:02:21degree angle and then hold the can of air at a 57 degree angle.
0:02:27Yeah, and you can't go too far because then it'll push cold out and not dust and you'll
0:02:31get, not that I did this too often, but you'll get like frozen stuff all over your keyboard.
0:02:35I think that's why some people like, you know, it's just like everything in life where it's
0:02:40like you can go really cheap or really expensive. But I know some people have those, instead
0:02:45of buying the aerosol cans of compressed air, you can get like an actual mechanical device
0:02:51know, which I think solves that problem of when you hold it at a weird angle, it turns
0:02:55to ice and you worry that you're about to give yourself frostbite or something like
0:02:59that.
0:03:00Ben Stuart Yeah, no, I went through all of that and it
0:03:02worked-ish. If I hit the control key a little more briskly than I usually hit keys and I
0:03:08bias towards the left side, it works, but it's not comfortable. I have been shown how
0:03:15to take the key off. I have friends in the industry and they've shown like an easy way
0:03:19taking the key off. So I'll probably do that next. Pop it off, clean it more thoroughly,
0:03:22pop it back on.
0:03:23You know, I've heard that taking the keys off this model of keyboard, it's in the
0:03:28litany of things that are bad about this keyboard design. What I've heard is that it is a precarious,
0:03:35it is very precarious and that you can damage it. You know, and that in fact, it's so
0:03:41easy to do that even people who take it in for service, like the genius or might try
0:03:46to do it and therefore it's covered but then it's like oh broke a little piece of plastic
0:03:50now the whole top piece has to go back and be replaced yeah like apparently the space
0:03:54bar is just impossible because it will break if you try to take it that's what i've heard
0:03:57yeah yeah some of the other keys aren't as dangerous um so i might try that or i might
0:04:02just take it to the gym i i use my space bar yes so does casey nice that apparently he
0:04:10had huge complaints about the space bar all right so your current status is you haven't
0:04:14- You haven't taken it in for service.
0:04:15You're thinking about performing surgery.
0:04:17And you know what the worst part is?
0:04:18Control is the one, you know,
0:04:20there's option and command on both sides,
0:04:22but only one control key.
0:04:23- Yeah, absolutely.
0:04:24And I should preface this by saying that
0:04:26I didn't have any problems at all with these keyboards.
0:04:29My previous generation MacBook before this new keyboard,
0:04:31the scissor switch one, I had the E key fail
0:04:34and I took it in and I had, it was like $500
0:04:38because they had to swap out the entire top case
0:04:40and battery assembly as well.
0:04:42And it took 24 hours.
0:04:43It was covered by AppleCare.
0:04:45So I just thought I was lucky, but now apparently there's no generation of MacBook whose keys
0:04:50I can tolerate.
0:04:51Darrell Bock Well, and we have WWDC next week, so you need
0:04:54this thing, right?
0:04:55I mean, do you have like a Plan B?
0:04:57David Schanzer Yeah, I still have the review unit they gave
0:05:01us last year for Mac OS High Sierra, which I haven't used very much.
0:05:06But it's 15 inches, which I don't usually travel with, but I might do that and just
0:05:09bring my MacBook Pro with me.
0:05:11Darrell Bock Comfortable on the near.
0:05:12my iMac Pro. Well, I would just use it. Sorry. I use the iPad Pro on the airplane now because
0:05:16the seats have gotten so small. It feels like they're not Mac friendly.
0:05:19No, that's true. It's very true. I can't remember the last time I used to. I guess
0:05:23the only time I sometimes use a Mac on a plane is very specifically the return flight home
0:05:31after an Apple event if I haven't finished writing about it. That's like the one time.
0:05:35Like I don't do any kind of general productivity with a Mac on an airplane. It's just too
0:05:41unwieldy. Even when I get upgraded and I'm in first class and there's plenty of room,
0:05:48it's just ungainly. It's not your shorter room, but there's no good place to put it.
0:05:54You can literally put it on your lap and it's not really a great angle. And then you put
0:05:59it on the tray and I feel like I'm a little kid at the lunch table and my arms are up
0:06:03at my shoulders. It's too high.
0:06:05- And the funny thing for me is I'm keyboard agnostic.
0:06:08Like I can use the iPad Pro fine.
0:06:10I do tons of writing on it.
0:06:12I can use the old MacBook keyboard, the new one.
0:06:14I was setting up the review unit
0:06:16that I hadn't used in a long time.
0:06:17And those keys are just super tight.
0:06:19And then I went back to the 2016 one
0:06:20that I've been using for two years.
0:06:22Like all these butterfly keys feel all loosey goosey now.
0:06:24It's amazing how fast your brain acclimatizes.
0:06:27- Oh yeah, I totally, I mean,
0:06:28I've never really used the new one.
0:06:30And Ben Thompson and I talked about this,
0:06:31I think on the last episode.
0:06:32I've never really used one as my main machine.
0:06:34I've only used review units.
0:06:36My personal MacBook Pro is still a 2014.
0:06:38But even after just a few minutes with the other one,
0:06:41this keyboard, I love it because I feel it's 100% reliable.
0:06:45But it does feel like the keys are all ready to fall off.
0:06:50They're so jaded. - See, they both betrayed me
0:06:52now, so I have no safe harbor.
0:06:53- All right.
0:06:56- But it is, I mean, a lot of people are complaining
0:06:59that you do have to replace the entire top assembly.
0:07:02And that's an industry-wide problem,
0:07:04it's a trans industry problem because Apple made unibodies and
0:07:07they're much better structurally, but they're huge
0:07:08things you have to replace. And your car now has these huge
0:07:11crash panels and crumple zones. If you get a little dent, you've
0:07:14got to replace the entire panel. And as we get better and better
0:07:17manufacturing, stronger and more efficient devices, we lose we
0:07:21lose the miniature like the modularity of them.
0:07:24You know, this is I'll hear from it. And I know that there are
0:07:28people listening to the show who are on the other side of the
0:07:30fence and who are angry if you know better to have very strong
0:07:35feelings about the entire industry but Apple and Apple
0:07:39specifically is move away from modular devices meaning you know
0:07:47the best example this primary example is room removable
0:07:50batteries right i mean again it was a topic on my show one of
0:07:55the most recent episodes but it's funny the way that it used
0:07:57be like it seems so antiquated now but part of like the pre WWDC trip checklist is make
0:08:06sure both of your MacBook batteries are fully charged. Right? Where's that spare? Where's
0:08:10the spare that I haven't used since the last time I went on a big trip? Oh, there it is.
0:08:13What's the charge on that one? You know, it just seems so ridiculous now. Now it's the
0:08:19external USB C battery. Right. But you know, and it's the same, you know, with the phone,
0:08:24It's just, you know, there's just something goes wrong
0:08:27and usually a lot of it has to be replaced.
0:08:29And I get it, you know, and there's trade-offs, you know.
0:08:32There were advantages to being able to just swap out
0:08:35the keyboard without swapping out everything else,
0:08:37but there's also disadvantages.
0:08:39And like you said, you know, the structural integrity
0:08:41of the unibody designs is incredible.
0:08:42Like, you pick up an old, you know, MacBook
0:08:46from 10, 15 years ago, and not only does it feel
0:08:49thick and heavy, but it just feels sort of--
0:08:51- It's creaky.
0:08:51- Junk, yeah, creaky, exactly.
0:08:53It's like, man, I can't believe that we tolerated this.
0:08:56We were spending $3,500 on these things back then
0:08:59and they creak.
0:09:00- And that's the opportunity cause.
0:09:01It's like everybody wants everything, but you can't.
0:09:03Everything's a trade-off.
0:09:04Apple can design for structural integrity
0:09:06or they can design for modularity.
0:09:08You can't have both.
0:09:09You gotta have trade-offs.
0:09:10- So I'm on board with that.
0:09:12That's the trend.
0:09:12I see why.
0:09:14I see that the train left the station years ago.
0:09:16I'm on board with it.
0:09:18But that to me, it's not an argument
0:09:20that Apple should go somehow figure out a way
0:09:24to make a keyboard that can be swapped in
0:09:26if the keyboard goes bad.
0:09:28The argument is that they, with this design,
0:09:31the keyboard needs to be more reliable than ever.
0:09:33- Yes. - Right?
0:09:34Like, it's not just that this keyboard
0:09:36isn't reliable enough, it's that it really should be,
0:09:39given how hard it is to replace
0:09:41and how integrated it is with the whole top piece.
0:09:44It really oughta be more reliable than the previous design.
0:09:48- And that was the worst part.
0:09:49Apple Insider did a great job with the numbers,
0:09:51but almost nobody actually bothered to read the article.
0:09:53It didn't say that there were more,
0:09:56so just to back up for a second,
0:09:58in every way the new MacBook Pro
0:10:00looks to be way more reliable than previous generations.
0:10:03The number of incidents in their sampling pool
0:10:04were way down in everything except for keyboard.
0:10:08In 2016, they were way up.
0:10:09In 2017, they looked like they approached 2015 levels again,
0:10:14but that's when the rest of the computer
0:10:15got way, way better and the keyboard really didn't.
0:10:18So we're just left to see that maybe it was worse,
0:10:21maybe they've slowly improved it,
0:10:22but it hasn't seen anywhere near the improvements
0:10:24of the rest of the body.
0:10:25- Yeah, the one that I like the most is the hinge.
0:10:29And when they first came out with these devices,
0:10:32and I had my briefing, and they said,
0:10:34"This is, you know, we can't put everything in a keynote."
0:10:36And there's some things that would sound silly
0:10:38in a keynote, like bragging about the hinge,
0:10:40but that the new hinge compared to like my 2014,
0:10:44A, the biggest difference is that it's so much easier
0:10:47to open the screen without like with just a thumb,
0:10:50without the bottom moving and to with like one finger
0:10:54to position it at exactly the angle you want
0:10:57and it'll stay there, right?
0:10:59Like, so it's easier to move, you know,
0:11:02to adjust the angle that it's open,
0:11:04but yet also just as stable in terms of,
0:11:08oh, it's not gonna droop a little bit when you let go.
0:11:10It's truly a fantastic hinge
0:11:11and I believe it's actually more reliable.
0:11:13I think that's one of the,
0:11:15Because it's a common source of failure.
0:11:18Because there's so much that goes,
0:11:19passes between the display and the bottom part.
0:11:23All right, that's it for the keyboard.
0:11:27(laughing)
0:11:28Oh, here's one.
0:11:29Here's a tip and trick I posted over the weekend.
0:11:32I've avoided this feature my entire life.
0:11:34There's a feature in iOS that you can turn on in security,
0:11:37in the settings,
0:11:39that after 10 failed passcode attempts, wipe the device.
0:11:45And I forget when they added that.
0:11:46I think it was back around IS4.
0:11:49- It's when they added the hardware encryption
0:11:51'cause they could just throw the keys away.
0:11:53- Right.
0:11:53- They didn't have to actually wipe the device.
0:11:54- Right, that's the way that works is it,
0:11:57everything on your SSD and your phone is encrypted.
0:12:01And rather than sit there and wait for a 256 gigabyte drive
0:12:08to be wiped, they can just throw away the key
0:12:11and without the key, there's no way
0:12:13It's effectively unreadable.
0:12:15- It's pseudo random gibberish to anybody who looks at it.
0:12:18- Right.
0:12:19I avoided this feature for the reason
0:12:23that it seemed like a good idea.
0:12:25And I'm trying to think, what are the hypothetical cases?
0:12:30Like personally, I'm not really worried
0:12:33about law enforcement to my knowledge.
0:12:36I have broken any laws other than the speed limit
0:12:39in a number of years, but it's possible.
0:12:42It's, you know, I don't know, something could happen, you know. And if my phone were taken by,
0:12:49you know, I don't know, TSA agents or something. Even just a thief who wants to not have to bother
0:12:54with activation lock to get into the phone. But the most common scenario for me would be a thief,
0:13:00you know, and it could be something like it falls out of my pocket in a cab and I leave it and
0:13:05somebody else picks it up. In theory, I don't want to be paranoid. But, you know, remember when Matt
0:13:11Honan from now at BuzzFeed got targeted as a journalist a couple of years ago and had
0:13:16his iCloud account hacked. And once his iCloud account was hacked because they had access
0:13:20to his email and he used that email for a whole bunch of other services, you know, he
0:13:24got owned in a bunch of ways. It's possible that somebody, you know, WWDC who knows who
0:13:29I am could try to take my phone or something like that. I never turned it on. But then
0:13:35I looked at it and I just have been reevaluating my security stuff overall, just sort of a
0:13:41a self-audit on what do I do. I'm looking at two-factor stuff too, like how do I keep
0:13:47track of those one-time codes. But I looked at this feature and I realized that I had
0:13:52misinterpreted it all along, ever since until this weekend. I thought that if you turn this
0:13:57on, somebody who got your phone, like a prankster at a bar, a "friend" who just leaves your
0:14:04phone, that they could sit there and enter "1234 1234 1234 1234 1234" 10 times and then
0:14:10and boom, your phone's erased. Turns out it doesn't work like that at all. And the difference
0:14:17is—well, number one, I asked in a poll on Twitter, which I find fun sometimes, "Do
0:14:22you enable the feature?" And I got, "Do you use that feature?" And out of 4,700
0:14:29votes plus a bunch of Tweetbot users who just wrote yes or no, no problem. But it seemed
0:14:37to run like this. Almost exactly, it was 34% and 66%, so exactly one-third, two-third.
0:14:43One-third enable it, two-third don't. And the number one reason people gave for not
0:14:48is no, I have kids. Meaning they don't want their kid, you know, you're sleeping, kid
0:14:53comes into bedroom, picks up your phone, starts playing with it, trying to unlock it, and
0:14:56then all of a sudden your phone's erased. Well, here's the thing that this feature is
0:14:59so much more clever than I had thought, and I shouldn't be surprised. You get five free
0:15:06attempts at your passcode. Five as fast as you can enter them. But after that fifth failed
0:15:12one, you're putting a one-minute timeout where the only thing you can do with your
0:15:15phone is make a 911 call. And if the sixth one fails, you go to a five-minute timeout.
0:15:22And if that one fails, you go to a 15-minute timeout. And I think it—I didn't press
0:15:28my luck further than that. But apparently, the timeouts escalate to the point where no
0:15:33matter how long you wait between tries, it takes at least three and a half hours to get
0:15:3710th to enter the 10th one. Once I realized that, I turned it on instantly on every iOS
0:15:45device I have because I cannot imagine a scenario where the phone is out of my hands without
0:15:53my knowledge for three and a half hours and where I wouldn't want this feature enabled.
0:15:58- Yes.
0:16:00No, I mean, there's a classic debate
0:16:01and I have to credit Dave Nainian, a super duper,
0:16:03for opening my eyes to it.
0:16:04I was all about everything has to be encrypted,
0:16:07everything has to be safe, everything has to be secure.
0:16:09And when I was talking to him for an article,
0:16:11he said, "Well, no, because in a lot of cases,
0:16:14you don't want fail secure, you want fail safe."
0:16:16There are circumstances where your worst nightmare
0:16:19is information being stolen from you.
0:16:21But in other situations, your worst nightmare
0:16:23is you losing access to that information.
0:16:25And it's why some people will never encrypt backup drives
0:16:28because if those have your wedding photos
0:16:30or the photos of your children being born,
0:16:32you cannot do disc recovery on an encrypted drive.
0:16:35So if somebody else deals those photos,
0:16:36yeah, they have your photos,
0:16:37but if you lose them, you're getting divorced.
0:16:39Like there's just no way to come back from that.
0:16:41And this to me, I think people were worried
0:16:43that they would lose their data.
0:16:45Someone like their kid would type it in,
0:16:46but this is really a case where you can have that security.
0:16:49You're not risking the deletion of your information.
0:16:51- One of my favorite tips along those lines,
0:16:53and I remember when I first read it, I was just like,
0:16:57No, but it was because it was from somebody who I trust implicitly, Bruce
0:17:02Schneier, security expert, great writer. But he wrote a couple of years back and
0:17:08he's referenced it since that for a lot of typical users a great way to keep
0:17:13track of your passwords, especially important ones, is to write them down on
0:17:17a piece of paper. And you think like, "No!" But his explanation, it makes sense, is
0:17:24is that people have been good at keeping physical objects,
0:17:29important physical objects secure
0:17:32and in a known location forever.
0:17:35Like we're kind of hooked up evolutionarily
0:17:37to be able to keep a physical object safe.
0:17:40It's the digital stuff that we can make goofy,
0:17:44absent-minded mistakes or be tricked into fishing
0:17:47or something like that.
0:17:48But like if you keep your passport safe,
0:17:52Why not keep a piece of paper with your most important passwords wherever you keep your
0:17:57passport?
0:17:58It's probably way safer than any digital and less likely to be victimized by phishing
0:18:04or something than anything you could do digitally.
0:18:07And this is also part of when you listen to Apple's rationale for why they stay in countries
0:18:11like China or the data repatriation thing, France wants citizens' data to be local
0:18:16to that country.
0:18:17And you can understand this on a global scale.
0:18:19In some countries we happen to like better than others or we are less afraid of than
0:18:23others but no one really likes the idea of a foreign government having ownership of their
0:18:26data but one of the things that big companies have to factor in is for an average citizen
0:18:31even in China, even in the EU, even in North America, South America, whatever, some of
0:18:35them care less about security than they do about backup and them keeping access to iCloud
0:18:40photo library as silly as it sounds is so much more important to them than them having
0:18:45Access to a VPN app. Yeah, and they have to balance the interests of a very large customer base. Hmm. Totally true
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0:22:37Next on the list. We got to keep going. We got so much, so much.
0:22:44Do you know what I, while we're talking about security,
0:22:49there's these apps. One of the things that I've done,
0:22:54I just isn't even on the notes, but
0:22:56One of the things that I've been convinced of is that using your phone number as a second
0:23:03factor in two-factor auth, meaning you say, "Oh, I'll use two-factor with this service
0:23:09and I'll enter my name, my password, and then it'll send me an SMS message with a code and
0:23:16I can enter the code." It's better than not having two-factor, but SMS, I've been convinced,
0:23:25not something you should rely upon because of how many times I've seen stories of people,
0:23:31their carrier getting social engineered effectively. So somebody who wants to steal Renee Richie's,
0:23:39you know, Dropbox account, and they know your phone number, they could call your carrier
0:23:44and say, Hey, this is Renee Richie, is it my phone number? I need to, you know, I need
0:23:49to get a new SIM because I got this new phone, you know, what do you know, and you'd think
0:23:53that shouldn't work. But and I don't think it's easy. I don't think it always works.
0:23:58But I've read enough horror stories that it's not trustworthy.
0:24:01Jared Ranerel I'll go a step further. I mean, I refuse to
0:24:03use that because I've heard stories about people who are traveling and you know, they
0:24:07have their tickets on their phone, they present it, and the custom person will just seize
0:24:10the phone and then they see two factor, they can type in a request for it, get it on the
0:24:15phone and get into your account. So it's I just don't think it's secure at all. It's
0:24:19out of band, but it's doesn't add doesn't add any security to your device.
0:24:22Yeah, that's interesting
0:24:24And it's also the case I I you know and it's rare
0:24:30I mean it's it's you know
0:24:31This is not something you want to optimize for but it is an issue is you're in an airplane or you're overseas
0:24:38Where you're just on Wi-Fi, so you don't have to incur roaming fees
0:24:43And you've got Wi-Fi, but you can't get an SMS right? It's because you can't get a phone call up in the air
0:24:52It's just not great. So I've tried to get rid of my phone number as a second factor
0:24:58on any service that will let me, including Google. Like my Google accounts, I have a
0:25:03few, but my Google accounts, none of them know my phone number anymore. I don't use
0:25:08my phone for anything related to my accounts if I can. But then what do you use for a second
0:25:15factor. Well, Apple uses Apple lets you not think about it because Apple uses just the
0:25:23devices themselves, right? The assumption is if you have more than one Apple device
0:25:27and you can say that you trust one, it will send push notifications. You may know people
0:25:33out there may not even realize they're not using SMS for this, that it's just sort of
0:25:37a magic right to your device. You know, if your phone's your trusted device and you're
0:25:42setting up a new iPad and you're logging into iCloud, it'll send a push notification
0:25:47to your other trusted devices. You might get the same thing on your Mac and your phone,
0:25:53but then you answer it on one, put the code in, and then it's all good. And then the
0:25:56new device is added to your list of trusted devices. That's something Apple can do,
0:26:03and I think they've done a great job and it's sort of unheralded, but it wouldn't
0:26:07for somebody like Dropbox or something like that. So what you can do, and again, I'm not
0:26:14an expert on this, but they have these things, I forget the name of the protocol, it's like
0:26:18T-O-T something, but effectively it's a standardized way to get one-time expiring passwords that
0:26:27only last for like 30 seconds. Google has an app called Google Authenticator. Have you
0:26:32ever used that?
0:26:33I used to I use aussie now. That's where and that was what I'm switching to. That's exactly
0:26:38great minds think alike. So but they generate the same type of codes. There are six digit
0:26:44numbers, they only last for 30 seconds. And then the apps, all the apps I've tried,
0:26:49show you like so if you have, you know, whatever your name is, at gmail.com,
0:26:54you open up the app, and it'll say whatever your name at gmail.com. And it might say, you know,
0:27:01729123. But it'll tell you that it's got 20 seconds left. So if it says it only has three
0:27:07seconds left, just wait three seconds. It'll give you the new one for the next 30 seconds,
0:27:12then enter it in and you're in. So I've been using Google Authenticator for this for about
0:27:19a year. And as part of my reevaluating my security stuff, the one thing that annoys
0:27:26me about it is that Google Authenticator is tied to one phone. So like I have it on my
0:27:34iPhone but then when I get a new iPhone it's like I have to kind of be careful because
0:27:40I don't want to wipe the old phone until I've set up the new phone and used the old phone
0:27:45to get the Google Authenticator codes because they're only being generated on that one device.
0:27:54If I lost the phone, if somebody stole it, if it broke, if I dropped it and it just shattered,
0:27:59somebody steals it, whatever. You're not locked out of your accounts. There's recovery codes
0:28:05that you can print. And again, like the thing I just said, like keep them in a secure location.
0:28:11There's ways to recover, but there's no easy way to get right in. Wouldn't it be better
0:28:16if you could get it from any device? And that's what Authy does. Authy syncs these things
0:28:20so you can install the Authy app, A-U-T-H-Y. And then you can get the same codes on multiple
0:28:29devices. So I'm in the midst of moving everything from Google Authenticator to Authy for that
0:28:34reason.
0:28:35I use 1Password for passwords and they now have two factor built into them. They didn't
0:28:41at the time, so I just got started with Authy and I stayed that way because I like having
0:28:45a separate app for that.
0:28:46Yeah, well, I know a couple of people, Ben Thompson, in particular, he uses one password,
0:28:50and he uses authy for the one time fee. He's the one who kind of pushed me towards this.
0:28:54And his explanation is exactly what he's just it. Maybe it's not even logical, but he just
0:28:59doesn't want to have the password and the second factor in the same app. You know, like it somehow
0:29:06feels more compartmentalized to have your password and one password and have your, you know, one time
0:29:13authentication code in a separate app. I looked at one, I don't use one password for my passwords,
0:29:18I just use the keychain. But I looked at one password as a rival to Authy, because I could
0:29:27have it on my phone and my Mac and get, you know, just use it for these one-time keys. And it's a
0:29:34great app, I could see why people like it, but it doesn't make sense to use it only, in my opinion,
0:29:39to use it only for the one-time things.
0:29:41Like you're either buying into the one password lifestyle
0:29:43and putting everything in one password or it's overkill.
0:29:47- So for me, I didn't, I liked the idea of iCloud Keychain,
0:29:50but until iPhone 10 and Face ID,
0:29:53they never put any sort of security intercept
0:29:55between the device and the password.
0:29:58So let's just say, you know, someone's lost
0:30:00and they wanna use your phone or you're at a conference
0:30:01and someone wants to show you a website,
0:30:03you hand them your phone and they have immediate access
0:30:06to your passwords and your credit cards,
0:30:08where with something like 1Password or LastPass
0:30:11or Dashlane, all those things,
0:30:13they'd have to enter in another password
0:30:14or use Touch ID or Face ID to get it.
0:30:17But now with iPhone 10 and the Face ID thing,
0:30:19if it had launched like that,
0:30:20if it had launched with Touch ID support,
0:30:22I would have probably gone all in on it.
0:30:24- Well, I get away from that
0:30:25because I don't let anybody use my phone.
0:30:27(laughing)
0:30:28- That's fair.
0:30:30- Not really a problem.
0:30:31But anyway, Authi, I recommend it.
0:30:34So the takeaway from this segment of the show
0:30:37is if you're using SMS as a second factor
0:30:39on various services, I say look into taking an afternoon,
0:30:43cleaning this up, get rid of SMS as your second factor.
0:30:46There's also just the fact that SMS isn't encrypted.
0:30:50And again, what, is the Russian spy agency gonna come in
0:30:55and put a tap on the line and intercept this unencrypted SMS?
0:31:01I really doubt it, but still, it is unencrypted.
0:31:06It just seems wrong in principle to use an unencrypted protocol to send something that
0:31:14should definitely be encrypted.
0:31:17And we're living in a time when we have vast data storage capabilities and it seems like
0:31:22organizations just collect this data and sit on it.
0:31:25And no one's doing anything criminal here, but you never know when something's going
0:31:29to happen, an accident will happen, or a lawsuit or a criminal prosecution will ensue, and
0:31:33they'll be able to go backwards in time and just look at all the data they collected on
0:31:37you and find something to support whatever they want to get you on. And I don't even
0:31:40want to risk that.
0:31:41Right. All right. Next topic. Anyway, so take away, get rid of SMS as a factor and look
0:31:48into Aussie if you're looking for a client to sync these things. I suppose there's some
0:31:55mild security trade off between the way that Aussie syncs these things. Now what they sync
0:32:00to the server is encrypted. So there's nothing on Authy's server. It's end-to-end encrypted,
0:32:05so it's not like your code—somebody can log into your Authy account and see your codes,
0:32:12or if their server was compromised, that your codes would be exposed. I suppose there's
0:32:17some kind of security advantage to Google authenticators only on one device thing, but
0:32:22it's just so inconvenient when that's the device you're looking to replace.
0:32:25— especially if you lose it, then you're done.
0:32:27Right. Especially if you lose it. Right. Anyway, next topic. Gotta get this out. I don't
0:32:35think I talked about it. I think this whole thing erupted in between the last show and
0:32:38this show. I've had a bit of a gap in the programming schedule. But this whole thing
0:32:44with Google's duplex demo on stage at I/O, which I raised some questions about.
0:32:50I hadn't even thought about it until you said it. I was just all hooked right in.
0:32:54I it took me a day the first day I watched and it was in my opinion
0:32:59I know that there for Android, you know, I owe is Google's version of WWDC and there's two types of news
0:33:06There's you know it to
0:33:08Use two very broad buckets. There's general-purpose news
0:33:12Of interest to anybody who uses the platform and then there's developer news
0:33:17And so the developer news for Android is a bit outside my wheelhouse
0:33:22Like I don't know how big a deal the new Android and Chrome OS features are app slices
0:33:28But in terms of stuff that broke through out of you know, developer news into mainstream news
0:33:34I don't think there's any question that this duplex demo was the one that got the most attention
0:33:39It for two reasons it seemed like just the fact that it
0:33:45Supposedly worked that you could say, you know, hey dingus
0:33:49Call whatever hair salon and try to get me an appointment Wednesday afternoon
0:33:54And that it would actually place a phone call and have this interaction and make a phone call according to the recordings
0:34:02They played that's interesting enough because that's that that's a serious
0:34:06Break, that would be a serious breakthrough in
0:34:09In this voice driven assistant stuff like nobody has anything that does that does that right now?
0:34:15That's that's a breakthrough and then the second factor
0:34:18is the vocal intonations where the assistant was doing these umms and you know these verbal tics
0:34:29that gave it a life rather uncanny lifelikeness like and you could hear gasps from the audience
0:34:38and I think that's why it was so engaging and I realized and and day one the the you know the
0:34:45takes were wow, Google has this amazing voice assistant that can make phone calls and it
0:34:49sounds human. And immediate 15 minutes later, followed up by wow, this thing is really creepy.
0:34:56You know, yes. Right. And I get that take the Hey, this is creepy. We shouldn't is,
0:35:04you know, some people were outright some people just reasonably just reasonably asking it.
0:35:09it ethical to create an AI that would trick the receptionist?
0:35:18It tries to masquerade as human.
0:35:19Right, but is that ethical? I don't know.
0:35:24It's such a nuanced argument because for a normal person using it, maybe it isn't. But if you have
0:35:32accessibility issues, like you don't speak the language, or you have a speech impediment, or
0:35:35you're mute? Is it ethical to force someone to disclose that they're using an assistant?
0:35:39Dave Asprey And what is the difference? What is the difference
0:35:42between using it as an accessibility thing? To me, those ethical questions are not clear
0:35:50cut. And we're running right up to questions that science fiction writers have been dealing
0:35:59with since the dawn of science fiction.
0:36:02I think that's what was off-putting about at least for me
0:36:04What was off-putting about the discussion is that Google was sort of treating it as cocky
0:36:08What look at we can do with technology and they didn't exhibit any humanness any respect any
0:36:12I didn't give us any idea that they understood the responsibility of what they were doing, right?
0:36:16It seems very clear to me that they hadn't really thought about that. Yeah, and and again
0:36:21even if the conclusion is
0:36:24That a service like this shouldn't masquerade as human
0:36:31without at least disclosing it up front, like this is a call from the Google, your Google assistant,
0:36:36you know, I'm working on behalf of a client or something, you know, whatever
0:36:39preface they would say to make clear that this is what's going on.
0:36:41In the aftermath of that ethical criticism, Google came out with the statement that, oh, yeah, yeah,
0:36:48we're going to have it, we're going to have it to disclose itself. But if they were thinking of that,
0:36:53why would they have added all of these ums and ahs that make it sound human?
0:36:57Right. And if you had any basic, like even basic PR, anyone who's doing a keynote, you go through
0:37:01objection handling, you go segment by segment, and you realize what the reaction will be to each
0:37:05segment as you try to get the best language possible. So either they were completely inept
0:37:10and didn't think about it, or they didn't care. Yeah, I don't know. But put all that aside,
0:37:16put the ethical questions aside. It is damn cool, if it works as they're recording shows, which I
0:37:24do believe as time goes on is a bigger and bigger if, but put it aside as to whether it should do
0:37:30that. And maybe it shouldn't, but if the fact that they could do it is amazing, it really is the
0:37:37stuff of science fiction. I mean, it is... Could be one of the most fundamental technologies of
0:37:42our time. Yeah, it's really a very cool thing if it works. Well, just to add further to it,
0:37:50to this whole issue, what happens if something goes wrong? Like, you're calling to make a
0:37:54hair appointment. I spoke about this with Steve Aquino on his show, and all of a sudden
0:37:58it books you a perm and a blonde dye job, and that's not what you want. And should
0:38:01it just—at that point, when it's failing, does it have to tell you it's not human?
0:38:04Dave: Right. Or, you know, I don't know. I just imagine there's so many ways that
0:38:08it could fail. But anyway, the next day—I don't know what made me go back to it, but
0:38:14I was like, you know, sometimes that's how I start the day is I just review, "Well,
0:38:18what the hell did I write about yesterday?" And I thought about it, and I watched that
0:38:22segment of the keynote again, and my spidey sense just went nuts. Like, as I studied it
0:38:30the second time and stopped, wasn't, you know, no longer was wowed by the humanness of the thing,
0:38:35I just actually listened to the details of the call. And I thought, and the fact that Sundar
0:38:42Pichai said, "This is a actual call to an actual hair salon," that, you know, he emphasized it
0:38:48multiple times that this is these are real calls. And they were just so many red flags to me,
0:38:54like the way that they didn't answer the phone with the name of the establishment.
0:38:58Like the fact that like, I, you know, I don't I haven't done a survey of 100 hair salons,
0:39:06but I, you know, there's places that you can just walk into without an appointment. And then there's
0:39:10places where you need an appointment. And when you book an appointment, they usually ask like,
0:39:15you know, if there's a particular stylist who you want, you know, like your reg, if you're a
0:39:19regular customer or something like that, you know, and I'm sure you could say, I'll just take whoever
0:39:25is available, you know, at one o'clock on Wednesday. But that that that just wasn't
0:39:30brought up in the call, you know, and just, and then I there was a CNET store, I forget who wrote
0:39:37it, but somebody at CNET got access to this a couple of days before IO, which is, you know,
0:39:43a very typical PR move for tech companies. Apple, to my knowledge, doesn't do it before
0:39:51keynotes because they're so super secretive about keynotes. But they'll have stuff ready
0:39:59to go.
0:40:00They'll sometimes see a wired piece or some big magazine thing.
0:40:02But Matthew Panzareno recently got access to... What was it that he got access to?
0:40:11The Mac Pro.
0:40:14That's right.
0:40:15And Infinity War.
0:40:16The man is intolerable.
0:40:18The Mac Pro and the Mac Pro team and the Pro Tools team that has, you know, and you got
0:40:25this scoop on how they've hired actual professional music producers and film editors and have
0:40:34hired them as contractors to just work right across the hall from like the Final Cut Pro
0:40:38team and the logic team. When they run into a problem, to be able to just grab an engineer
0:40:46or one of the managers or somebody and say, "Here, here. This annoys me. I clicked this
0:40:51button. I clicked this menu." Every time, it takes eight seconds for the menu to finish
0:40:56filling in, and I clicked this menu 30 times a day. That was an actual example that they
0:41:03came up with. Then they figured out what the bottleneck is, and then all of a sudden, they
0:41:05it so the menu just opens instantly. Companies do this. They'll seed an exclusive to somebody.
0:41:13So this guy for CNET got an exclusive on Duplex a couple of days before I/O, but all he got to do
0:41:20was hear recordings. He didn't get to hear a live call happen. It just seems very strange to me.
0:41:27And I realized, I mean, it's like, I don't know if you saw the Twitter debate on this, but it was
0:41:35so bifurcated between people who are like, "Hmm, you're right. This is a little fishy.
0:41:42I wonder what's going on." And the people who are like, "You're nuts." The comparison that kept
0:41:48coming up was that I had gone full birther. Well, that's a reference to the…birthers are the people
0:41:55who think Barack Obama was not born in the United States. But the people who insisted that he had to
0:42:03show a birth certificate to prove that he wasn't born in Kenya or whatever.
0:42:09At the Apple events, if they showed you Face ID on stage, they have working examples backstage
0:42:14and people explain how they work and walk you through it and you see live. Even if you
0:42:17don't get to do it yourself all the time, you get to see it done yourself.
0:42:21Right. Again, I wasn't comparing it to Apple at all. It's just, I guess, because that's
0:42:27what I typically write about everybody makes it about Apple, especially the Googler type
0:42:33people who read my stuff. But they're like readers. Well, what
0:42:37you know, what about HomePod? HomePod? You know, where's the
0:42:40to HomePod support? Well, which is actually
0:42:42to see that at WWDC. They walked us in the back and they showed
0:42:45it. Right. We got to hear it at WWDC. And even when HomePod
0:42:50first shipped earlier this year, at the product briefings, you
0:42:55know, and you know, it famously Airplay two didn't ship until
0:42:58literally yesterday. Yeah, I think right. It's been a long
0:43:02week. It's been a long week. So yes, HomePod shipped and spent months on the market without
0:43:08any of the AirPlay 2's features, which include pairing two of them in stereo or pairing multiple
0:43:15ones throughout a home to play the same music simultaneously in multiple named rooms, you
0:43:21know, and being able to tell your dingus to move the song to the dining room or whatever.
0:43:27of those features shipped with HomePod because AirPlay 2 didn't ship. But at the briefing when
0:43:34HomePod shipped, and I think you did too, got to see ones running obviously beta software,
0:43:44but paired in stereo or in multiple rooms, and could see it in action and could tell Siri to
0:43:50play a certain song and it all worked. I mean, again, it wasn't shipping. Nobody said it was
0:43:56shipping. Everybody said this is coming. But there were, you
0:43:59know, everybody who was everybody in the media who got a
0:44:02briefing got to see that it actually live demo, right? Yeah.
0:44:06It's very strange not to play a recording and not have a demo.
0:44:11And and again, there are certain types of demos that don't scale.
0:44:14So self a perfect example is self driving car. There's no
0:44:18they can't bring a self driving car on stage at IO and have the
0:44:21car drive around the I mean, I guess I could have it move
0:44:25forward six inches or something, but you can't do a road test for an audience of 4,000 I/O
0:44:32attendees. That's why the trusted people in the media exist, that somebody who writes
0:44:40for whatever website and you know them, they have a body of work behind them and they say,
0:44:45"I got invited to Google's test track or whoever's test track and I got to see this
0:44:50car and it did this and it did that and I was in the back seat and this is what happened.
0:44:57That's why the media are there. You don't just take the company's word for it, but somebody
0:45:01gets a demo and gets to report on how it went. This duplex thing, nobody did it. And there's
0:45:06still to this day, as of May 30th, to my knowledge, there's still not one person in the media
0:45:13who has seen or heard a duplex call take place live, which really makes me think that something
0:45:20really, really screwed up. A number of mistakes were made in between "Let's put this in the
0:45:27I/O keynote and here's what Sundar is actually going to say." I think there were a number
0:45:32of mistakes. My guess is that it doesn't sound nearly as good as the recordings they played.
0:45:42Either longer pauses between segments, either more awkward inability to parse certain questions
0:45:50like, do you have a particular stylist in mind or something like that. And I wouldn't
0:45:54even be surprised if the human-like audio, you know, voice quality doesn't sound like
0:45:59the recordings. That this was sort of, these recordings were sort of idealized versions
0:46:05of what they're trying to build and somehow between making them and then Sundar getting
0:46:11up on stage, it turned into these are actual calls. And once they realized this and, you
0:46:17know about the only one raising questions there was a great story at
0:46:19axios with a bunch of just just perfect I love axios because they just they have
0:46:24this style of like just getting right to the point and if the whole point is only
0:46:29200 words it's a 200 word story and there's no padding but they just had a
0:46:33great list of questions of you know you know just more or less how do we know
0:46:37that this actually is is real because you guys said it's for Google is
0:46:40answering right which is the astounding part because usually yeah you you talk
0:46:45to the—and even if you don't get a statement on the record, you get enough background information
0:46:49to be able to convey, like, yes, it really is working, or no, or this. And it's astounding
0:46:53for two reasons, because first, like, there's this whole trust but verify thing, and Google
0:46:58has enormous credibility with assistants, but you can't go on stage and show a product
0:47:03that's not real. That's just—you lose so much credibility. But also, you can't
0:47:08not demo it at all for anybody. That product is not real unless you've shown it to somebody
0:47:13outside the company.
0:47:14- Right, and it's like I wrote in my last,
0:47:16hopefully last piece on this
0:47:17until something actually ships.
0:47:19As far as I'm concerned,
0:47:23unless it comes out maybe in the next week or so,
0:47:26I was right.
0:47:29It wasn't listenable as recorded in May.
0:47:34Like if it ended up that it's shipping
0:47:35in some limited means in August,
0:47:39that doesn't mean that I was wrong
0:47:40that it wasn't ready in May, right?
0:47:42Like it famously, and people aren't angry about it,
0:47:45but back in 2002, there was a New York Times story
0:47:48that claimed that Apple was working on a cell phone
0:47:53that ran Mac OS X.
0:47:55And I wrote, it was really one of the first articles
0:47:59at Daring Fireball 2002 was the year I started the site,
0:48:01and I called it iPhony.
0:48:04And I just tried to explain,
0:48:05this is, what they're describing is impossible.
0:48:10Then people stumble on that site that it's four years before the iPhone
0:48:15People stumble on that article and they're like, you know, usually in good in good cheer, but they're like, wow you really blew that one
0:48:22Because it's you know, what they're describing does sound a lot like the iPhone
0:48:26It's a cell phone that runs a modified version of OS 10
0:48:29But I wasn't wrong in 2002
0:48:32It literally was impossible to get Mac OS 10 back Mac OS 10 barely ran on piece on Macs in 2002
0:48:39right? It was barely running on Macs. That was pre-Lobot, pre-Purple, pre-everything.
0:48:47Right. And it was a technical miracle that it ran in 2006, or 2007, I guess,
0:48:56when it actually shipped. It was unbelievable feats of hardware and software engineering to
0:49:04to get it working the way it was in 2006.
0:49:06In 2002, ARM hardware and mobile GPUs
0:49:11and display technology, none of it was there.
0:49:14Like, just because it happened four years later
0:49:17doesn't mean that I wasn't right in 2002.
0:49:19And I feel like the same thing is gonna happen
0:49:20with this Google Assistant, where again,
0:49:22I don't dispute that among all companies
0:49:25or include university AI labs and stuff like that,
0:49:31that if anybody's close to getting a vocal assistant
0:49:35that can do this, I would bet on Google.
0:49:37There's no doubt in my mind.
0:49:38I think you'd be a fool not to make them the odds on favorite
0:49:41to get something like this working first.
0:49:43Like that's where it's so exasperating
0:49:47where it felt like, you know,
0:49:49there'd be people on Twitter telling me
0:49:51that I'm just bent out of shape
0:49:53because Siri is so far behind.
0:49:56I, you know, I don't understand
0:49:57how far ahead Google Assistant is.
0:49:59It's like, no, that has nothing to do with it.
0:50:00I just smell a fishy demo.
0:50:02- There was a whole feeling about that show.
0:50:04They mentioned the word AI so often
0:50:06that they thought we were afraid,
0:50:07like it felt like they were afraid
0:50:07we were gonna forget that AI existed.
0:50:09And the entire thing was so cocky
0:50:11and so full of hubris that they were just,
0:50:14it felt like we wanna show off our technology,
0:50:16we wanna show that we're the leaders.
0:50:18And that's not what these things should be about,
0:50:19at least in my opinion, they should be about,
0:50:21like again, like the responsibility
0:50:22that comes with these things.
0:50:23I think that's the gist of why
0:50:24we felt uncomfortable with it.
0:50:26- Well, and think about it this way too,
0:50:27in terms of how would they get there?
0:50:29You know if you're thinking like I am like that they probably made some kind of catastrophic not catastrophic but a terrible
0:50:34Mistake in terms of overselling where they were and like one way to think about it is just which tense
0:50:40Verb do you use you know like you know nobody was saying in February HomePod?
0:50:47Includes do present tense include the support for stereo pairing. Yeah
0:50:53Everybody wrote it in the future tense that Apple says it will ship an update later this year to enable
0:51:00dual speakers whereas the headlines for this duplex thing I have I cited a whole bunch of examples and I don't blame them I
0:51:08Kind of got hooked into that
0:51:10Present tense on day one where I just kind of trusted Google
0:51:13But they're all written in the present tense Google assistant can now make phone calls, you know to make appointments for you
0:51:19And that's I really think that's wrong. They didn't show that
0:51:23that and I think it makes a difference. Yeah, no, totally. I mean, AirPower still hasn't
0:51:28shipped but they were sitting there on the tables when we went backstage. Right, and
0:51:32you could pick up the phone and see that it stopped charging and put it back down and
0:51:36see that it started charging and pick up their sample watch that was on it and, you know,
0:51:41it was there for us to play with and, you know, again, it was obviously a prototype
0:51:47but they had prototypes that, you know, and again, I didn't have a stopwatch to see,
0:51:51know, how fast it charged. I don't know. But I mean, at least in terms of what you could
0:51:55do in five minutes hands on time, it was, it was there to play with. All right, enough
0:52:00on that. Let me let me take another break here and thank our good friends, such good
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0:54:17You don't waste time with stuff
0:54:19that you shouldn't be wasting time on.
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0:55:06of the talk show.
0:55:08Do you see this thing where there was Motherboard got some court documents on the iPhone 6 bendgate
0:55:16and the story, the headline they use, "Internal documents show Apple knew the iPhone 6 would bend."
0:55:22Which, I mean, I didn't, I wasn't a huge fan of how the story got covered. Like, my understanding is
0:55:28Apple has this materials department and they understand materials. So, for example, when they move from
0:55:33moved from the aluminum iPhone to the plastic iPhone 2G,
0:55:37they knew that plastic was more likely to crack,
0:55:39but it had some benefits over aluminum for them.
0:55:41Then when they moved to glass,
0:55:42they knew that glass was more likely to break,
0:55:44but there were benefits to moving to glass anyway.
0:55:47Same thing when they moved from the iPhone 5 design,
0:55:51which had the, I forget if it was aluminum
0:55:52or stainless steel band on it, and the aluminum back,
0:55:55they knew that the larger surface and the lack of the frame
0:55:59was gonna allow it to bend more because physics.
0:56:01They knew these things, but they were trade-offs
0:56:04that they thought were important to make.
0:56:05And over the course of the iPhone 6 lifespan,
0:56:09when they had millions of people using it,
0:56:11they found out exactly where those issues were.
0:56:13And just like they made every product,
0:56:14like the iPhone 8 glass is way better
0:56:16than the iPhone 4S glass,
0:56:18the iPhone 6S aluminum frame is way better than the 6.
0:56:22So it's like they knew
0:56:22because they understand material sciences,
0:56:24but this made it sound very conspiratorial.
0:56:27- Right, it makes it sound conspiratorial.
0:56:29And the problem starts right in the headline,
0:56:30where it says Apple knew the iPhone 6 would bend.
0:56:33Well, everything can bend.
0:56:35- Yes.
0:56:35- Right?
0:56:36- Well, like ceramics shatters, right?
0:56:37Apple.
0:56:38Every material has a problem.
0:56:40- The problem is that you need to say relative to what?
0:56:43And the article does then go on to say
0:56:45that it bends more easily than the iPhone 5S,
0:56:48which is the model it was replacing
0:56:50at the top of the product line.
0:56:51Well, duh, of course it bends more easily than the 5S.
0:56:55I mean, we know that, right?
0:56:56We know that from all the videos.
0:56:57Like you can, a strong person can take an iPhone 6,
0:57:01or at least the ones that shipped originally,
0:57:03and if they really try hard,
0:57:04they could bend it with their own hands.
0:57:07And an iPhone 5S doesn't bend like that.
0:57:09Of course it bends more easily than a 5S.
0:57:11It's bigger, it has a bigger surface area.
0:57:13- And it's metal.
0:57:15- The comparison isn't does it bend more easily
0:57:18than the 5S, it's, the comparison is does it bend too easily
0:57:22to have shipped as the design?
0:57:24That's the question.
0:57:25and it's not answered at all in these documents.
0:57:28And I would say that the fact that the iPhone 6
0:57:31remained in the product line until last year
0:57:34would suggest that it was fine.
0:57:36It was obviously a con to the new design,
0:57:41but not catastrophic.
0:57:44- Yeah, and again, the iPhone 3G cracked.
0:57:49The plastic would crack along the buttons.
0:57:51The iPhone 4 had the antenna issues,
0:57:53and Apple kept that in the lineup after the 4S.
0:57:55All of design is compromised, material science is compromised, and this is a normal process
0:57:59of development for a product.
0:58:02There is, now there is the case that they did somewhat, at some point in the iPhone
0:58:086's product lifespan, they did alter it with some kind of reinforcement at the bend point.
0:58:16But I believe, I think that anybody who had problems up until that point, if it was still
0:58:21under warranty could get it replaced, I believe, right? I think it was covered.
0:58:28I believe so. I mean—
0:58:30And if not, then that's—
0:58:32I guess that's a problem, but I believe it was covered.
0:58:35Yeah, Apple is usually pretty good. And this is the same thing with the keyboard issue.
0:58:39They have internal metrics, and when something becomes an issue, it's an automatic alert,
0:58:43and then people have to make a decision about it. But it has to reach that level. Apple
0:58:46is just too big a company. Sad to say this, but like 1% of Apple users is a huge amount
0:58:50of people, but if an issue fluctuates one to two to three percent within a product lifestyle,
0:58:55that's not exploding phones. There's always some battery failure in every phone. It's
0:58:59when it's catastrophic that it becomes a problem.
0:59:02Dave Asprey The iPhone 4 and Tennegate is my favorite
0:59:05example of that because it's like the tech press became—it was like blood in the water,
0:59:12a bunch of sharks attacking it. I mean, the extraordinary—truly extraordinary in hindsight
0:59:19that Apple held the special press event
0:59:20just to address Antennagate.
0:59:23- I mean, they had to because Antennagate was reproducible.
0:59:26You could take any iPhone 4 and reproduce attenuation.
0:59:30It didn't affect everybody
0:59:32because it would only lower the signal by a certain amount.
0:59:34And if you had a good signal, you didn't even notice it.
0:59:36But if you were barely online,
0:59:39you could use it as a play/pause button.
0:59:40- Right, to me, it's a casebook example
0:59:43of how to handle a PR crisis, right?
0:59:45It's take your time, get your ducks in a row,
0:59:47but then get out in front of it, as far out in front of it as you can.
0:59:51But the thing in hindsight that to me proves that it wasn't really a catastrophic or scandalous
0:59:56problem is that the iPhone 4 was the top of the line iPhone for a longer stretch of time
1:00:04without any alteration to the antenna design than any other phone because it was the last
1:00:10one that shipped in late June and then the iPhone 4S was the first one that shipped in
1:00:17the fall and I think even that one that was late and shipped in October yes so
1:00:24it was the top-selling iPhone for like 16 or 17 months on the market for years
1:00:29especially and then stayed on the market for years afterwards as a lower priced
1:00:34option in the line with a completely undesired unchanged antenna design now
1:00:41yes they did change that style of antenna design starting with the Verizon
1:00:47iPhone 4 that came out, you know, like six months off cycle, and then they used that
1:00:52Verizon-style antenna with the 4S, and that was better. And it's, you know, to me very
1:00:58much analogous to the way that the iPhone 6S used a higher grade aluminum than the iPhone
1:01:056. That's just progress, you know? Yeah. But was it bad enough that it never should
1:01:09have shipped in the first place? No.
1:01:11Yeah, but at the same token if if a hundred percent if you could show keyboard failure to 100% level like you could go to
1:01:17An Apple store and make any Apple keyboard fail or you could go to an Apple store and make every iPhone 6 Bend
1:01:23You'd have to treat it similarly
1:01:24But these things have so so few instances compared to something like the like the antenna issue
1:01:30That you just can't hold them in the same sphere
1:01:34All right, let's move on Apple accepts then rejects valves steam link app boy
1:01:42This is a weird story. Yes, cuz it's not like
1:01:46you know like it, you know me and you decide to make an app and we're indie developers and we have a
1:01:53rejection problem over questionable grounds
1:01:56You know, which is bad enough and as often, you know something that we'll write about or talk about or whatever
1:02:02But this is Steam.
1:02:03This is not-- or Valve.
1:02:04You know, this is not like a little indie developer.
1:02:07This is a huge game developer.
1:02:12Probably one of the most important game developers
1:02:15in the world.
1:02:15Right.
1:02:16And they don't interact with Apple the way
1:02:18that indie developers interact with Apple
1:02:21through the black hole of the iTunes submission thing.
1:02:25And both sides are pros.
1:02:31Valve is so far, at least publicly, is taking this with a stiff upper lip.
1:02:34They didn't make it public. They did bring the negotiations public.
1:02:40Well, they had to though. They had to because the part that's so weird is it seems clear. I don't,
1:02:48this isn't fair, but it seems clear that they had been in contact with Apple in advance while
1:02:53they were working on bringing Steam Link. And just, I'm not an expert on these things, but
1:02:58Basically, my understanding is that Steam Link is like VNC for gaming.
1:03:03So if you have a Mac or PC in your house with Steam installed, and Steam is like a Netflix
1:03:08for video games type thing, except you can buy, but you can go there, you can publish,
1:03:14it's like their own little app store for games, for PC games.
1:03:18Very well respected company, people love it.
1:03:19There's all sorts of cool indie games that are on Steam.
1:03:24It's a great service.
1:03:25Steam Link is a way you have your Mac or PC somewhere on your land, in your house, with
1:03:31Steam installed. You put Steam Link on your iPhone and now you can play these games. And
1:03:36I guess where it would really be cool would be on Apple TV where you could use a controller.
1:03:41But then you can play these games and it just streams over your Wi-Fi. And you can't do
1:03:48it outside your house. You can't like go to three blocks away and then get on cellular
1:03:54and do it from anywhere. It's not streaming from Valve's servers. It's only a way to connect
1:04:01to the thing that's already in your house when you're in your house. It seems pretty
1:04:05clear that somebody, some connections at some levels, Valve and Apple were in communication
1:04:11on this in advance. Then they finished and submitted it and it was accepted. And that's
1:04:17when Valve announced it. And then the next day, it's it, you know, see, again, we don't
1:04:23know this but it seems pretty clear that some other you know it was like the left
1:04:26hand at Apple was like yeah yeah this is great can't wait to have it we'll
1:04:29promote it we've got a you know we've probably had like an App Store promotion
1:04:32ready to go and then the right hand was like what is this and then it got
1:04:38cancelled and I kind of feel like apples in the wrong on this one I get it and
1:04:43again this isn't about whether they should be protecting the App Store's 30%
1:04:49you know, revenue share for any kind of in-app purchase in general. Let's just say for the
1:04:54sake of argument that we all agree that that's fine, and it's a good business practice, and
1:04:59you know, Apple is well warranted to protect it. I don't think this is that. I don't think
1:05:04this is an end around the app store's 30/70 split.
1:05:08Yeah, it's super interesting to me. Famously, when in-app purchases first came out, you
1:05:14couldn't do it with free apps because Apple didn't want an end run around the app store.
1:05:18They thought maybe paranoid or maybe not
1:05:21that the minute you could make transactions
1:05:25outside the app store, everyone would make a free app.
1:05:27They would have their own commerce running on their backend.
1:05:30And Apple would essentially be maintaining
1:05:31the world's largest free app store for no money.
1:05:33And Apple doesn't operate things at a loss.
1:05:35So then when they did make it free,
1:05:37apps could use in-app purchases.
1:05:38They said you can't run your own store
1:05:40because again, they knew that everyone would just make
1:05:41a placeholder app and do all their commerce.
1:05:44This has some slight flavor to that
1:05:47because you can go and buy all your games on Steam
1:05:49and then play them on iPhone.
1:05:50And games is by far the biggest revenue generator
1:05:53for the App Store.
1:05:55But I think with Apple, it's not always about money.
1:05:57It's about control of the platform.
1:05:59And the only thing I can see with this
1:06:01is that they don't wanna cede control of iPhone gaming
1:06:04to Valve.
1:06:05And in a paranoid world, this might be that.
1:06:07- Games might be number one overall,
1:06:09but I did look, I was curious the other day,
1:06:12and I looked at the top grossing,
1:06:13which you can't get to on the iPhone anymore
1:06:16far as I can tell. They have top paid apps and top free apps on the iPhone App Store,
1:06:21but they don't list top grossing anymore. But they still do have it on the website and
1:06:27I guess in iTunes. And I thought it was pretty interesting in the top five. And this is related
1:06:32to something Ben Thompson and I were talking about, which is that these pay-to-play games
1:06:36like Candy Crush are kind of an ethically questionable territory.
1:06:40- Yeah, the casino game.
1:06:41- Yeah, it's like a casino game.
1:06:43And it's kinda off-brand for Apple
1:06:46to be involved in that to any degree.
1:06:49And my analogy to that would be like,
1:06:52you go on a cruise ship,
1:06:54and they usually have a,
1:06:56almost always have a casino somewhere on board the ship,
1:06:59because once you're in international waters,
1:07:01there's no laws, and I don't know if you've ever heard this,
1:07:04but casinos can be rather profitable for the casino owner.
1:07:08The Disney Cruise Line does not have casinos.
1:07:12Not because it's not profitable, but because I believe that they've concluded, probably
1:07:18correctly, that it's too off-brand for them, for the Disney brand.
1:07:27But anyway, I looked at the top grossing apps, and number one was Netflix.
1:07:32Hulu was like five, and Pandora was three.
1:07:36So three of the top five.
1:07:38Again, I don't know how that goes with the long tail.
1:07:41I bet the long tail has a lot more games than streaming services.
1:07:48There just aren't that many streaming services like Netflix and Pandora and Hulu.
1:07:53But I thought that was a pretty good sign in terms of there's a source of revenue where
1:07:57there's no moral qualms about it.
1:08:00When you pay 10 bucks or 12 bucks a month for Netflix and you get Netflix, that's a
1:08:05fair deal.
1:08:06You knew exactly what you're getting into.
1:08:08You're not getting badgered.
1:08:10Give us another dollar and we'll take out the commercial.
1:08:15You're getting what you paid for.
1:08:17So anyway, I'm not quite sure.
1:08:18- They figured out early on in the app store,
1:08:22they, I mean, game developers,
1:08:23that people would not pay $10 for a game.
1:08:25They wouldn't even pay $5 for a game,
1:08:27but they would pay $50 to $100
1:08:29to have a better farm than their friends.
1:08:30They'd lord it over them,
1:08:31or to get their car back on the track faster
1:08:34'cause they were bored.
1:08:35We will pay for ego gratification and instant gratification,
1:08:38and that's the best way to separate a human being
1:08:40from their money.
1:08:41And everyone has gone all in on this,
1:08:43and it's led to the detriment of the gaming industry.
1:08:46But to your point, yeah, Disney does not have casinos.
1:08:48Usually profitable does not have them.
1:08:50And there's an argument to be made
1:08:51that Apple could run an app store that's very different
1:08:54than this just by policy decisions alone.
1:08:56But to the previous thing,
1:08:58this whole thing with Valve is so bizarre
1:09:00because you have Phil Schiller commenting on it now
1:09:02saying that they're discussing it with Valve,
1:09:04and they're working on problems in the app store.
1:09:06And I like to give Apple, not the benefit of the doubt,
1:09:09but I like to assume that I don't know everything.
1:09:10Like famously, everyone got super upset
1:09:13when Apple banned a popular app from the app store.
1:09:15And it turned out that that developer
1:09:16had a ton of shady stuff going on as well.
1:09:19And we just all thought Apple was guilty immediately
1:09:22until all of that came out.
1:09:23So you never know if there's like a privacy concern
1:09:25or a security risk or something like the VPN connection
1:09:28isn't secure and they wanna work on it.
1:09:30I just don't know here,
1:09:31but I'd like to find out what's happening.
1:09:32- The Schiller thing came in an email to a Joe Random customer
1:09:37who just wrote to Schiller knowing that he's the direct,
1:09:42the app store, the buck stops with him,
1:09:44with the app store.
1:09:45And when people like Phil Schiller
1:09:48write back to somebody like that,
1:09:49they know there's a chance that the guy's gonna turn around.
1:09:51And he actually sent it to me too.
1:09:53I didn't realize till yesterday
1:09:54'cause I was catching up on email.
1:09:56But he sent it to me, he sent it to MacRumors.
1:09:58I don't, you know, I wouldn't do that personally,
1:10:01But it's clear from the way Schiller wrote the email,
1:10:03he knew that I could leak.
1:10:05And it was written very carefully.
1:10:07There's nothing embarrassing.
1:10:08I thought it was interesting that he listed
1:10:10user-generated content as a problem.
1:10:12And I don't know enough about Steam.
1:10:13I don't know if they've got games
1:10:14where you get to dress up as a Nazi or--
1:10:18- Or adult content or something.
1:10:19- Yeah, or something like that.
1:10:20But that user-generated content,
1:10:23it sounds like it might be a little bit more than just,
1:10:26"Hey, we think it's an end around the 70/30 split."
1:10:29So there have been issues with apps that include discussion groups previously.
1:10:33Like it's interesting because Apple has Safari and you can get anything in the world on Safari.
1:10:38But when it comes to the app store, even embedding web views for a while was controversial.
1:10:41They wanted you to put that 18 and over sticker on it and then it was discussion groups.
1:10:45What was the content of the discussion groups?
1:10:47So it seems like that's something they still wrestle with.
1:10:49All right, let me take a third and final break here and thank our third sponsor.
1:10:54This is really a trifecta of great sponsors on this episode.
1:10:57This one is for Eero.
1:10:59Now Eero is a Wi-Fi system for consumers that lets you build out what's called a mesh network.
1:11:09That basically, you've probably heard about this, but you get a couple of pieces of hardware.
1:11:14They're all about little puck size things about the size of an Apple TV, the main ones.
1:11:18You put a couple of them throughout your house and their website will make it clear.
1:11:22You give it the square footage or how many floors you have or something like that.
1:11:26they'll help you decide how many you might need.
1:11:28You set up, one of them is the main one
1:11:31that connects to like your cable modem
1:11:33or your files connection or whatever,
1:11:34but it's the same, it doesn't matter which one you pick,
1:11:37it's the same hardware.
1:11:38And then the other ones in the house,
1:11:40they just talk to each other and they create one network.
1:11:44So it's not like you've got like three,
1:11:46if you've got three of them that you have three networks
1:11:48and your phone has to be ready to switch
1:11:50from one network to another.
1:11:51The way these mesh networks work is three devices
1:11:55work together to create the illusion of one network
1:11:58that your devices use and it could just fill your house
1:12:01with really solid wifi.
1:12:02There is no way in my current house
1:12:04that one base station could ever,
1:12:07it's a row home in Philly and it just goes up
1:12:11and it just, signals don't go through floors very well.
1:12:14There's just no way that one base station would work.
1:12:19It just wouldn't.
1:12:20So we've switched to Eero a while ago.
1:12:22Apple's out of the base station game now.
1:12:25I really can't think of a better one
1:12:29than Eero to recommend.
1:12:30I know they're the sponsor,
1:12:31I'm getting paid to tell you this,
1:12:32but I'm telling you, even if they weren't,
1:12:34it's what I would tell you to look at first.
1:12:36You set it up with a really nice iPhone app.
1:12:39They have an Eero iPhone app,
1:12:40you manage the network with it,
1:12:42but you don't feel like you're a junior network engineer.
1:12:46It really is a setup process
1:12:48that an Apple user would appreciate.
1:12:51You're not typing in weird 192.168 IP addresses to log into a skanky web server running on
1:13:00the thing. It's a really nice app. You can name the devices, tell them which room they're
1:13:04in, all very graphical. You could even run like a speed test to see what type of performance
1:13:10you're getting right within the app. And the second generation products that Eero has include
1:13:18something called the Eero Beacon. It's half the size of the regular Eero base station,
1:13:23which is already pretty small, but it's even more. It's half the size and you can simply
1:13:27plug it into a wall outlet to expand coverage into any room. So if you just need a little
1:13:32oomph just to get to like the fourth floor of your house or something like that, you
1:13:35can just add as many of these beacons as you want. If there's an outlet, there's Wi-Fi.
1:13:40And since the beacon doesn't have an Ethernet port, you do need at least one regular Eero
1:13:47to connect at the modem. But other than that, you could just use these beacons. And they're
1:13:52even included, you think it sounds like a nightlight, you just put it in a socket. Well,
1:13:55guess what? They have an LED nightlight in the device, so you could use it as a nightlight.
1:13:59And of course, if you don't want to, you can turn it off very easily right in the app.
1:14:05They even have an ambient light sensor though, so that if you want to use it, it'll just
1:14:09intelligently adjust the brightness automatically depending on the time of day and how much
1:14:13light there actually is in the room where you have it. Just a great idea, really a great
1:14:17way to go. The second generation is such a great upgrade in terms of just being easy
1:14:22and small and convenient. I really love this product, I love the company. Very happy customer,
1:14:30me. They even have incredible customer support so if you do need help, and you probably won't,
1:14:36but you can get a hold of a WiFi expert in 30 seconds or less most times of the day.
1:14:42I have one running right now. I'm talking to Renee over in euro Wi-Fi network.
1:14:46Really recommend it. So here's the deal. Their code is the talk show. They have the the.
1:14:53So what you do is go to euro.com. Remember that code, the talk show,
1:14:58and you can get free overnight shipping to the US or Canada. Hello, Renee. Just visit
1:15:05euro.com and at checkout, select overnight shipping and enter that promo code, the talk show,
1:15:10and you'll get the shipping for free. So overnight you'll have it tomorrow listening to you. Whatever
1:15:15day of the week you're listening to me right now, you could have an Eero network in your house
1:15:18tomorrow with free shipping. So my thanks to Eero. Mine actually just arrived yesterday. I haven't
1:15:24set it up yet, but the box came yesterday. Isn't it nice? It's nice packaging too. Yeah,
1:15:29it's beautiful. Looking forward to it. Really, it's great stuff. I was just looking at it the
1:15:34other day in my bedroom and I was like, you know how you know this is nice is that my wife doesn't
1:15:38complain that we have a Wi-Fi base station in our bedroom. Well, we were just talking about it after
1:15:44Apple discontinued the airport line. Like, which company do you trust? Because this is your data.
1:15:48It's your data on the front line of the internet. And there's a lot of companies whose business is
1:15:52predicated on the collection and use of your data, to put it delicately. And Apple was a company that
1:16:00you could trust. They didn't care what data you had. And it was hard finding another company like
1:16:03that but Euro is so former Apple engineer and Apple's mindset centric that it was an easy choice.
1:16:10Yeah. Anyway, before we move on to WWDC rumors, of which there's not a lot to talk about really,
1:16:20which is kind of exciting, iOS 11.4 and AirPlay 2 shipped yesterday. And finally, I think this is
1:16:28truly an unironic finally. But in my practice so far, we have two home pods in the house.
1:16:36I moved the one from the bedroom down into the kitchen, so we have two in the kitchen
1:16:40to play with the stereo. Everything works exactly as it says on the tin. It was just
1:16:46as easy to set up a stereo pair as Apple had promised, even with one that had already been
1:16:52configured in another room. Once I got the software update on the home pod, it immediately
1:16:57prompted me, "Hey, I see you're in the same room as the other HomePod. Do you want to
1:17:01set them up as a stereo pair?" And I was like, "Yes." And then I immediately said, "Play
1:17:05whatever," and whatever immediately started playing in stereo on the two devices. I cannot
1:17:12imagine how it could be easier to set them up. I really can't because if it was any more
1:17:17automatic it might do it when you didn't want it to.
1:17:20And you can go in and tweak it. Like you can go in and switch the left and right and make
1:17:23them say tones to test and you can do all that. But the automatic setup is amazing.
1:17:27Yeah, the automatic setup is amazing. You know, it's a shame it took as long as it did,
1:17:32but apparently they wanted to get it right. And I have to say, day one, it works seamlessly.
1:17:37I mean, it's exactly as promised.
1:17:40The interesting thing is they made a conscious decision to have Siri only respond from one
1:17:44of them. So by default, the left channel will be the one that has Siri. You can change it.
1:17:48Like when you ask Siri something, the docs, I think, say you hold down on it and it will
1:17:52I couldn't get that to work, but if I went to the right
1:17:54HomePod and I said turn on Siri it would switch Siri to there and stay there so you can move it back and forth
1:18:01But that was an interesting choice. I the way I it is interesting that they don't both talk at once I can see why
1:18:07And it seems like it's a little smarter than that. It seems like in in in
1:18:12Like when I was up in New York yesterday for a demo of this
1:18:16And they had it set up like on two ends of a yeah of a table against a wall
1:18:21Which I think is a very typical distance for stereo speakers in my kitchen. I set them up on different sides of the room and
1:18:28It seems to me whichever one I'm facing is the one that answers me which makes sense
1:18:34Like because I'm not I can't face both of them at the same time
1:18:38So if I turn around and look at the one that doesn't seem to answer by default when I'm in a neutral physical position
1:18:45It that's the one that answers me though because my voice is coming right at it
1:18:48- That's interesting.
1:18:49So when I pair it, as far as I know,
1:18:51once you pair them, it just picks one,
1:18:53but it does use the microphone system
1:18:55from both of them all the time to make sure it hears you.
1:18:57- Yeah, well, try putting them on opposite sides of a room,
1:18:59and I suspect you'll see that.
1:19:01I think it's just that if your voice is coming
1:19:03at both of them more or less
1:19:05like from an equilateral triangle position,
1:19:08there is a default one that always seems to answer.
1:19:11- Yeah.
1:19:12I like, some of it is just so cool.
1:19:13Like you can do with Apple TV, you can do it with iPhone,
1:19:15but then you put them in other rooms
1:19:17And you can just say play whatever song in the bedroom or play this song in the living room
1:19:21And it just I mean like people who are not Apple people who've been doing this with the Amazon or Google forever
1:19:27They're laughing
1:19:27But there's something about having it so deeply embedded in the Apple ecosystem and the way that Apple handles interface that makes it just as a very
1:19:34fluid experience yeah, I don't want I wouldn't have a lot of time so I'm not gonna go on with it more but
1:19:39I like it
1:19:43WWDC rumors or lack thereof is my heading in the show notes. They double down
1:19:48so who knows you know that stuff is the closer we get the more likely stuff is to leak because it's just the nature of
1:19:55The game that they you know
1:19:57rehearsals and who know and marketing material
1:20:01Start getting finalized and more people are exposed to it
1:20:05And you know, it's no coincidence that like in the 48 hours before a keynote. There's often last-minute leaks
1:20:11Which is I think attributable simply to the fact that people who are less invested in it
1:20:16I've suddenly have access to it and you know are willing to spoil the surprise, but we'll see you know Apple famously is as
1:20:24you know issued that report earlier this year about leaking and how many leakers they've caught and
1:20:30Fired yeah
1:20:34So we'll see I don't know
1:20:37I'm really hopeful though that not much more will leak because I think this is more exciting
1:20:42I think it's way more exciting to like kind of not even to know what's coming
1:20:47I mean do I don't there's I don't know if you know anything
1:20:50There's two sorts of leaks like there are leaks when something is doing something wrong and you it needs to get out like people who?
1:20:56Are whistleblowers and stuff like that, but this is always more like spoilers, right?
1:21:00Do I want to read the plot to the next Marvel movie or the next?
1:21:02Star Wars movie and then go see it and think the whole thing is boring. So already know it. No, I really don't
1:21:07I have to monitor these things because it's my job, but if I didn't have to do this
1:21:11I wouldn't want to know anything about the show
1:21:12I'd want to go in there and really enjoy the hell out of it
1:21:15So I'm kind of happy when stuff doesn't leak because it makes the show more exciting for me
1:21:19Yeah
1:21:19I wrote something this week or that Koi Vinh friend of the show had a really nice article about the custom illustration work that
1:21:27They're doing in the App Store and that he you know had when I first this is with the iOS 11 App Store that debuted
1:21:33last year
1:21:34and
1:21:36Effectively, they're running it as a periodical.
1:21:40I don't think I know anybody in particular who's on that team, but I know that they've hired people from actual magazines.
1:21:48People who worked at like Cone Nast and other really high-end design magazines.
1:21:52It's run as a real editorial operation.
1:21:55And they have, I don't know if they're on staff or if they're all contract work, but they hire, pay real illustrators to do real custom illustrations to accompany the articles that they write.
1:22:05that they write. And it's really nice. And it's, as Coy says, in this world, it's so
1:22:10many people just go write the clip art instead of commissioning original artwork. It's nice
1:22:13to see somebody do that. And I just wrote offhandedly that one of the things I'm looking
1:22:17forward to at WWDC is seeing the iOS App Store 2.0 come to the Mac. And somebody, I think
1:22:24it was like 9 to 5 Mac, was like, "Oh, maybe Gruber knows something that we don't know."
1:22:30often coyly drops them like that. This isn't the secret. I don't know if it's coming this
1:22:36year. I don't. But it was on my show last year where I asked Phil Schiller about it.
1:22:44And he just said, "We thought it was the right thing to do to bring it to iOS first, but
1:22:48we're invested in the Mac App Store. It's important to us." He didn't say it'll come
1:22:53next year, but he said, he very strongly suggested that it will come, this sort of thinking will
1:22:59come to the Mac App Store.
1:23:01- I thought it was almost understood
1:23:02'cause during the briefings last year,
1:23:04I think everybody asked about it
1:23:05and they said it was being worked on
1:23:07and it feels like a this year thing.
1:23:10- So it wasn't, you know what I mean?
1:23:11This isn't like a deep dark secret little birdie.
1:23:14This was Phil Schiller on stage at a public event,
1:23:18strongly insinuating that they were already
1:23:20at work on the Mac one.
1:23:21- And they're doing all of them.
1:23:22Like the bookstore is getting,
1:23:23every store is gonna get this makeover.
1:23:25- Right, and I completely agree with him.
1:23:28I think it's very obvious that it was very, you know, it's the biggest and most important
1:23:32store to store. So of course the iOS one got the treatment first. So that's something I
1:23:39expect next week. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if maybe it's more than the Mac App Store.
1:23:44Maybe there is a new bookstore and other stuff. What else? There's rumors about a Beats branded
1:23:52Siri speaker sort of like a little brother to the home pod that would come at a lower price
1:23:57yeah, I guess the same way that the
1:24:00W1 chip went into beats products and made air pod equivalents. There'll be some beats equivalent of the home pod, right?
1:24:06there's the the
1:24:10Thing from months ago that Mark Gurman called marzipan
1:24:14Which he says was is some sort of secret effort to get iPhone apps
1:24:20running on the Mac, and there were certain people who got very excited about this. I
1:24:24don't believe that's coming next week, and B, I don't believe it actually is a
1:24:31way to get iOS apps running on the Mac. I think it's more of like a cross-platform
1:24:38UI toolkit that would help you share code and components between Mac apps and iOS apps,
1:24:44I don't think it's like, boom, here's your iOS app running on the Mac with a recompile
1:24:51and Xcode or something like that.
1:24:53My understanding is that since Apple did that reorg, they've had this problem.
1:24:56The iMessage team has to build iMessage for iOS and iMessage for app and they've across
1:25:00the company, they've built new and undisclosed tools that helps them do all this.
1:25:04And they're going to pick one.
1:25:05I don't think it's ready for this year either, but they're going to pick the ones that are
1:25:07best and write them as public tools, not internal tools, which are often, you know, see to your
1:25:12pants stuff and then we'll get this.
1:25:14but there's several interplaying projects.
1:25:16- Yeah, I've been talking, bottom line is that Apple's,
1:25:19you'd think that they would have internalized this by now,
1:25:23but Apple, when they ship the stuff
1:25:27that they actually use themselves,
1:25:29it's the best developer stuff that they ship.
1:25:31And when they ship stuff that's like,
1:25:33good enough for you people, but we don't use it,
1:25:36it's buggy. - Including frameworks.
1:25:39- It's buggy and incomplete.
1:25:43The best example I could think of, or just, well, maybe it's not the best example, but
1:25:47a simple example is that a year after the iPhone shipped and the App Store came, you
1:25:52know, was announced, you know, in February or whatever, and by the time the one year
1:25:56anniversary rolled around, they opened the App Store and developers had had three or
1:26:00four months. The, you know, the App Store, you know, the eight, the public APIs for writing
1:26:05iPhone apps in 2008 right away, it didn't include everything Apple could do because
1:26:09obviously Apple has to write the system level software that operates at the lowest levels.
1:26:15But for the most part, though, it gave third party developers ability to write apps as
1:26:20good as Apple's apps. And that, you know, maybe a lot of maybe some of Apple's apps
1:26:24were written completely within the API limitations of the public APIs. Compare and contrast with
1:26:32the original Apple Watch, where the original watch kit wasn't really native at all, but
1:26:36All the apps that Apple had on the watch were native.
1:26:39And so you'd launch one of Apple's apps on the watch
1:26:41and it would open up and you could use it.
1:26:43And you'd launch a third party app
1:26:45and it would spin for 30 or 40 seconds and maybe open.
1:26:50- But I mean, iOS, iPhone OS too, that was a complete,
1:26:53Henri Lamoureux's team had to do
1:26:54a second forest march basically.
1:26:56And I think Scott Forestall wrote scroll and table
1:26:58and they had to rewrite UI scroll and UI table
1:27:01and make them public.
1:27:02They were in no shape for public at first.
1:27:03- Right, so the thing I've heard from a few
1:27:05developer friends about this cross-platform UI toolkit, whatever it's called, is that
1:27:11they hope it's something that Apple themselves are using, because there's a good chance
1:27:15then it'll be good, and they really hope it is not a, "Well, we don't use this,
1:27:19but you dummies who want a shared UI code between two platforms can, here you go."
1:27:23It's my understanding that there's a bunch of stuff Apple's using that they're going
1:27:26to sort of rewrite for public consumption over the next year or two.
1:27:31Other than that, man, what the hell else is coming?
1:27:33I guess...
1:27:34to me because like there was rumors of the new MacBook Air but that sounds like
1:27:37it was pushed off there were rumors of the new iPad pros but there have been
1:27:40zero leaks and usually there are some hardware leaks from from the supply
1:27:44chain right and a curious thing if they don't do iPad pros is then presumably
1:27:50the next time it could happen would be September typically Apple these days
1:27:55they used to sometimes have August event but they don't have it in years and even
1:28:00then they were like software like for iLife apps or something so if they don't
1:28:04do it at WWDC, then they're pushed back to September, and that would mean that the iPad
1:28:08Pro either skips an entire generation of A11 processors and goes right to the A12, or the
1:28:18iPad Pro gets the A11 an entire year late and remains a year behind CPU-wise the iPhone
1:28:26whatever comes after the iPhone X and 8. It's just curious.
1:28:33And the Macs are a huge question mark now because Intel is just having the worst, ever
1:28:37since they went to 14 nanometer, they've had the worst time.
1:28:39They went from TikTok, TikTok to TikTok, optimize, optimize, optimize.
1:28:43And I've talked about this before, but every time I fall asleep, I'm afraid I'm going to
1:28:46wake up and they will have sandwiched another lake in between Coffee Lake and Cannon Lake.
1:28:51So they've been, a lot of the Mac delays we've seen lately are entirely because Intel hasn't
1:28:55had the chips ready.
1:28:56And I don't know if the Coffee Lake Mac chips are ready at this point.
1:28:58insert we don't have time to go on a long tangent about the hypothetical move to ARM
1:29:04for the Mac except to just say that at a certain level you can wave your hands over some of
1:29:11the technical complexities. It certainly would make sense for the MacBook. The MacBook would
1:29:16actually get a performance bump, I think. My guess is that a MacBook running an Apple
1:29:22a 12 processor or even an A11 processor would get a nice performance boost across the board.
1:29:28The problem would be that there's no known ARM chips that compete with Intel at the high end,
1:29:35for let's just say the iMac Pro, the Mac Pro, devices that Apple has publicly recommitted to
1:29:41very recently. So it's not like the story is, well, they're getting out of the pro hardware game.
1:29:46theory apples chip team could have secretly been working on arm based chips that actually do compete at the highest levels of
1:29:54performance
1:29:56But that would be shocking. I mean it would be great news. It'd be terribly exciting, but
1:30:01It would be a thunderbolt out of the sky in terms of being
1:30:05shaking up the industry and and
1:30:08Just to put a little bow on it. I think it would be really difficult for Apple to move
1:30:14to arm without moving the entire platform to arm I
1:30:18Think it could also be super interesting if the MacBook and maybe sort of an Apple TV Mac mini hybrid
1:30:24We're running purely on arm if the intermediary devices were fusion cores where you had arm cores for
1:30:29Look for power efficiency and you still had legacy Intel cores for compatibility and performance and on the high end
1:30:36They stay at Xeon because if there's one area that Intel is investing in it's still the Xeon chips
1:30:42Yeah, so it's possible that they have something it would be terribly exciting. But again, there's no there's no leaks about it
1:30:48I mean, it's all just spike. It's just
1:30:50podcasters
1:30:53Podcasters and Twitter users saying well, maybe they'll switch to arm
1:30:55Yeah, no, I mean they've had the same way they had Intel Mac. They had Intel Macs in the closet for years
1:31:02They've had arm maps in the closet for years. It just depends
1:31:05They hold them over Intel's head to say what you guys aren't done yet, but actually shipping it raises a lot of
1:31:12implementation questions right and every other time that they've switched from 68k to power PC and then from power PC to Intel
1:31:18There was like a one year transition period and then after that your tradition transition period everything was running the new platform
1:31:25Yeah, it just and again they could do it
1:31:27You know, it doesn't have to go that way but for a bunch of reasons that we just don't have time to expand upon in
1:31:32Detail it just makes a lot more sense though that if you're going to move you move the entire platform from top to bottom
1:31:37So I don't know
1:31:38It also depends on they position it because you can do pitch you could position it as an iOS clamshell
1:31:42And then you nicely sidestep a lot of the Mac issues. So what are we we're got Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Monday
1:31:48So we're five days out from the keynote. I'm gonna say five days out from the keynote
1:31:53We have less we have fewer rumors about what might be in the keynote than any year. I can remember. Yeah
1:31:59Terribly exciting. Yeah
1:32:02I'm thrilled. All right, anything else? I got it. Yeah. Yeah, you got to go
1:32:07- I know, so I'm looking forward to seeing you on Monday.
1:32:09- All right, yeah, I can't wait to see you eat too.
1:32:12It'll be fun.
1:32:13Everybody can follow René on Twitter @RenéRichie.
1:32:18And of course, you can see all the fine work from him
1:32:21and his very talented staff at iMore.com.
1:32:24I'm sure they'll have extensive coverage of the keynote
1:32:27and all the news on Monday.