The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► As we record, we are recording on Thursday, November 19th.

00:00:03 ◼   ► I have seen reports now on Twitter that people are saying that the Apple pencils are actually

00:00:08 ◼   ► starting to appear in retail stores.

00:00:11 ◼   ► I saw that somebody was in San Francisco and there's a whole bunch of them available.

00:00:15 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:00:16 ◼   ► Yesterday, the Wednesday, the 18th, there were a lot of reports that it looked to me

00:00:20 ◼   ► like they were making an effort to get them out.

00:00:25 ◼   ► Like there were a whole bunch of reports of like I saw five of them here and there were

00:00:28 ◼   ► or 20 of them there.

00:00:29 ◼   ► And I thought that was a good sign

00:00:31 ◼   ► and there's more of that today.

00:00:32 ◼   ► So it looks like whatever was going on,

00:00:35 ◼   ► whatever logistical bottleneck was there maybe has,

00:00:40 ◼   ► if not, if it hasn't solved itself at least

00:00:43 ◼   ► has widened the bottleneck a little bit.

00:00:46 ◼   ► - I'm curious to see what happens to people who like

00:00:49 ◼   ► were promised three or four week shipping dates

00:00:52 ◼   ► like a week or two ago,

00:00:53 ◼   ► whether they start getting them way earlier than promised

00:00:56 ◼   ► whether the shipping ones still take as long as they had thought. Yeah, that's the—

00:01:00 ◼   ► I wonder sometimes if Apple has really thought through the whole dichotomy of

00:01:05 ◼   ► shipping versus Apple Store, you know, retail store pickup, because with the

00:01:11 ◼   ► Apple TV, I wonder how many returns they're gonna get, where people bought

00:01:14 ◼   ► them the moment that it was for sale, had them shipped on the cheaper

00:01:19 ◼   ► shipping so they would get them the next week, and then found that they were all

00:01:21 ◼   ► in the Apple stores on the day. That's what happened to me. I just—I got my box

00:01:26 ◼   ► and just put the label back on it and send it back out because three days earlier I just walked into

00:01:30 ◼   ► my local Apple store and picked one up. And this is like that too a little bit where it's like,

00:01:36 ◼   ► you know, if you could get one in the retail store and your order says it's going to be four weeks

00:01:40 ◼   ► out, that's, you know, that's sort of silly. I mean, I get why they don't want to turn people

00:01:45 ◼   ► away who want to buy an iPad Pro at the retail store and want a pencil with it. They want to

00:01:49 ◼   ► kind of have a pencil for them, but it would be frustrating if you were waiting at home for it for

00:01:54 ◼   ► months. Yeah, and it just it like when you show it to people, it's like just showing it to somebody.

00:02:03 ◼   ► If you if I didn't have the pencil, I would I honestly don't even know what I would tell them.

00:02:07 ◼   ► It's like here's a big iPad. Yeah, I mean, and they keep having gotten smaller. People definitely

00:02:13 ◼   ► want to try the keyboard and you know, yeah, it's you know, and it's interesting to you. It's easy

00:02:18 ◼   ► to imagine a big iPad, it is different to actually sit down in front of it and and use it.

00:02:23 ◼   ► it. But just for like the first minute or two, everybody wants to use the pencil.

00:02:28 ◼   ► Yeah, how could you not? And even though it's not like there haven't been styluses for iPads

00:02:35 ◼   ► before, but this is, you know, it's the Apple stylus, so it's got that kind of attraction

00:02:39 ◼   ► around it. And the idea is, and it sounds like this is bearing out for everybody we

00:02:43 ◼   ► know who actually knows about drawing things like Serenity Caldwell, that it really does

00:02:48 ◼   ► deliver on that, that its precision is pretty amazing and that on the apps that

00:02:53 ◼   ► have been updated, the lag is very, very minimal. Yeah, yeah, totally. I think

00:03:01 ◼   ► it's bearing out, and the palm rejection is all bearing out as promised. I've been

00:03:07 ◼   ► trying to like figure this out and look at how they're doing the palm rejection

00:03:11 ◼   ► and it, I'm sure it's probably more than this, but it seems like the two things I

00:03:16 ◼   ► I can tell that they're doing is, and the one is obvious,

00:03:20 ◼   ► which is kind of looking for what I'll just call a fat touch,

00:03:24 ◼   ► meaning like the meaty part of your palm

00:03:26 ◼   ► and just rejecting it outright.

00:03:28 ◼   ► That, wow, that is either an enormous thumb

00:03:31 ◼   ► or that's the palm.

00:03:33 ◼   ► But the other thing that they're doing is,

00:03:36 ◼   ► like in a drawing mode, I could see it in the Notes app

00:03:38 ◼   ► when you're in the little sketch mode in Notes,

00:03:41 ◼   ► is sometimes when you've pushed your palm down,

00:03:44 ◼   ► you'll get a false hit,

00:03:47 ◼   ► and it'll put like a little drawing mark there.

00:03:50 ◼   ► It's hard to see sometimes, you know,

00:03:51 ◼   ► you kinda have to look at it at an angle

00:03:52 ◼   ► because your palm actually covers it,

00:03:55 ◼   ► but it puts like a little false pen mark down,

00:03:58 ◼   ► but then as soon as the pen touches,

00:03:59 ◼   ► it just says, "Oh, okay, you're using the pen.

00:04:01 ◼   ► "Throw that last mark away."

00:04:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, which I think has something to do with their,

00:04:06 ◼   ► they've got this whole touch coalescing thing.

00:04:08 ◼   ► I mean, they're trying to view,

00:04:10 ◼   ► it's not a one-to-one, it's a little bit like autocorrect

00:04:12 ◼   ► for typing, I think, where it's trying to look holistically

00:04:16 ◼   ► at sort of like what it's getting input on the screen

00:04:18 ◼   ► and make some judgments.

00:04:19 ◼   ► And they may be sort of in real time,

00:04:21 ◼   ► they're trying to figure out what actually is going on

00:04:23 ◼   ► instead of just it being,

00:04:25 ◼   ► I think the old style touch screens were much more

00:04:27 ◼   ► of a one-to-one kind of thing.

00:04:28 ◼   ► It's what it's not, I'll tell you what it's not is,

00:04:30 ◼   ► it's not locking out everything but the pencil

00:04:33 ◼   ► because you can actually,

00:04:35 ◼   ► I don't know if you've tried this,

00:04:36 ◼   ► but if you put two fingers down on the screen in notes,

00:04:39 ◼   ► you'll get the ruler.

00:04:41 ◼   ► It'll actually bring up the ruler

00:04:42 ◼   ► and then you can, with your other hand, you can draw on the ruler,

00:04:46 ◼   ► and it'll snap with the pencil. So it's not like it's locking out the screen

00:04:51 ◼   ► from other, from fingers. Like, that's not it. It is looking for that meaty blob of

00:04:56 ◼   ► the side of your hand or of the butt of

00:05:00 ◼   ► your palm and realizing what it is and saying, "I'm

00:05:05 ◼   ► just going to ignore that." Right, and if it does get, I wonder if it,

00:05:11 ◼   ► Hmm maybe

00:05:13 ◼   ► But it's I think it's probably some kind of reasonable distance

00:05:16 ◼   ► You know like if you had if you had a finger way apart from the pen

00:05:20 ◼   ► It's gonna know that that's not a touch from the hand holding the pen because it's too far away

00:05:24 ◼   ► It's like that distance of when you're gripping a pencil in a you know a pencil grip that that touch

00:05:30 ◼   ► That's maybe like what is that about two or three inches away?

00:05:33 ◼   ► Okay, that's and it happened a half second before the pen began drawing. That's the one to throw away

00:05:39 ◼   ► way. Yeah, you're right. I just actually did it where I put my finger and the pen

00:05:45 ◼   ► down simultaneously very close to each other and started moving and

00:05:50 ◼   ► that the finger mark started and then vanished because I realized you're

00:05:54 ◼   ► kind of going along with the pen. You weren't meant to be there. Yeah, I

00:05:59 ◼   ► think long story short, and we can go long after the short version, but I

00:06:06 ◼   ► I think that even though I'm not an artist,

00:06:09 ◼   ► I just appreciate it and I just like playing with it

00:06:13 ◼   ► and I'm excited by it,

00:06:15 ◼   ► that it's one of the most exciting things

00:06:16 ◼   ► Apple's done in a long time.

00:06:17 ◼   ► Like this is the sort of thing that we look to Apple to do

00:06:20 ◼   ► and now they've done it.

00:06:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, this is, I feel like, right,

00:06:27 ◼   ► so much of the story of this product, I think in hindsight,

00:06:31 ◼   ► is stuff that Apple really didn't make much of an effort

00:06:34 ◼   ► to integrate into the iPad until the moment when Apple wanted

00:06:38 ◼   ► to build its own thing that was integrated hardware

00:06:41 ◼   ► and software.

00:06:42 ◼   ► And so you get all the keyboard stuff in iOS 9

00:06:45 ◼   ► is really leading to the smart keyboard.

00:06:47 ◼   ► And the reason that they haven't done higher resolution

00:06:50 ◼   ► digitizer, more 240 megahertz or 240 hertz scanner

00:06:57 ◼   ► on the digitizer, why didn't they do all that stuff?

00:06:59 ◼   ► Because they weren't ready for it.

00:07:01 ◼   ► And now they're ready for it.

00:07:02 ◼   ► And so the pencil gets to be first out the door,

00:07:06 ◼   ► because of course it is, because it's the Apple accessory.

00:07:09 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:07:10 ◼   ► I saw something.

00:07:11 ◼   ► Is it-- was it--

00:07:12 ◼   ► was there like a teardown of the pencil finally?

00:07:15 ◼   ► I think there was one.

00:07:16 ◼   ► I'm not sure I read it.

00:07:17 ◼   ► But they did--

00:07:18 ◼   ► I think they did take it apart.

00:07:21 ◼   ► I still don't think anybody has figured out

00:07:23 ◼   ► exactly how it works.

00:07:25 ◼   ► But from what I've been able to piece together,

00:07:27 ◼   ► I don't--

00:07:28 ◼   ► I think I was wrong in my review when

00:07:30 ◼   ► guessed that there's like some kind of new sensor like something in the iPad to

00:07:39 ◼   ► detect the pencil instead I'm almost certain that what's going on is that the

00:07:45 ◼   ► regular touch sensors in the glass are still touch still detect skin the same

00:07:55 ◼   ► way but that they've added into the exact same layer the ability to detect

00:08:01 ◼   ► the pencil and the way that the pencil makes itself known is it emits some kind

00:08:05 ◼   ► of like a radio wave of some sort at a known very specific frequency but that

00:08:13 ◼   ► it's not a different thing that's picking that up it's actually the same

00:08:17 ◼   ► as the touch sensors and that somehow it's like the the radio wave stuff is so

00:08:24 ◼   ► precise is that that's what allows it, like if you imagine that it's a grid of

00:08:28 ◼   ► sensors with capacitive touch where it touches your finger, it's always looking

00:08:34 ◼   ► for a bunch of them to light up at once because you're, you know, it's like your

00:08:39 ◼   ► little quarter of an inch round fingertip that's touching and so it's

00:08:43 ◼   ► lighting up all of these at once. And then with a pencil it's right down to

00:08:48 ◼   ► the actual pixels, including the ability to sort of tell when it's between pixels.

00:08:53 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, I don't know enough about this to—something funny is going on, of

00:08:58 ◼   ► course, and we know that because you can't use it on another screen. It is not trying

00:09:03 ◼   ► to trick the device into thinking that it's a really thin finger, right? Whether it's

00:09:10 ◼   ► a radio signal or it's an electric signal of some kind that's not the kind that you

00:09:17 ◼   ► would pick up from a finger, there's something going on where it's doing it and getting

00:09:22 ◼   ► that precise, you know, it knows exactly where that pencil is. And then it also is talking

00:09:28 ◼   ► via Bluetooth and registering the pressure so it knows when it's down and not.

00:09:31 ◼   ► Right. Long story short, I'm nearly certain that they didn't add a second sensor grid

00:09:36 ◼   ► for it. What they did is make the existing sensor grid smarter and have it looking for

00:09:43 ◼   ► this other new thing, this short-term radio burst. Here's a weird thing that I didn't

00:09:49 ◼   ► about I haven't really seen anybody else write about but I still am not sure what

00:09:53 ◼   ► to think about it but it really seems very strange to me is the fact that

00:09:59 ◼   ► there is no there is no interface to the pencil other than plugging it into the

00:10:04 ◼   ► lightning port so you you charge it that way and you register it with the iPad

00:10:11 ◼   ► that way but then once you do that once you have a fully charged iPad or pencil

00:10:15 ◼   ► Once you have a fully charged pencil and it's paired

00:10:17 ◼   ► You never turn it on never turn it off and you never get any indication that it's on/off low on battery or anything

00:10:25 ◼   ► yeah, it's like a I

00:10:27 ◼   ► Mean we joke sometimes about Apple saying magical a lot and about how it wants to make

00:10:33 ◼   ► its products kind of black boxes that you can't look into but this pencil is is like

00:10:41 ◼   ► I'm gonna I'm gonna pander to you and say this is the this is the pencil that's on the desk that Dave Bowman

00:10:46 ◼   ► Wakes up in right it is like it look human

00:10:49 ◼   ► We have made a pencil and it's this perfectly white and a little bit silver slick

00:10:54 ◼   ► Kind of object that it does it I know it's shaped like a pencil

00:10:57 ◼   ► But it can't really be a pencil right and it that's what it feels like to me is it has no interface

00:11:03 ◼   ► You're right. It has no kind of markings other than the little silver circle

00:11:07 ◼   ► And yeah, you can get to the the lightning port if you take the cap off and you can unscrew the tip

00:11:10 ◼   ► but it is featureless. It is just, I mean, it is literally featureless, like not just like it's

00:11:16 ◼   ► looks of features, but it's features. It's, you don't do anything with it except draw. It's,

00:11:21 ◼   ► it's very clever, and I think it's also very much in line with Apple's design philosophy, which is to

00:11:27 ◼   ► have as little there as possible. Yeah, it's, we've, we often joke about Apple stuff that,

00:11:32 ◼   ► you know, they, they try to ship stuff with one button, but ultimately they want to ship something

00:11:36 ◼   ► with no buttons. And the pencil is the no button device. And there is this part of me that kind of

00:11:44 ◼   ► wants it to light have like a green just a little green dot that lights up when it's on and being

00:11:52 ◼   ► used and then it turns off when it's sleeping or whatever. But now here I am you know two weeks

00:11:59 ◼   ► later and I don't have that and it's never been an issue. Like I kind of see why they didn't do that.

00:12:05 ◼   ► that.

00:12:06 ◼   ► But I just assume it wakes up based on some, but based on motion or something or based

00:12:11 ◼   ► on based on I don't even know what it is.

00:12:12 ◼   ► I don't know because it saves some battery when you when you lay it down, it doesn't

00:12:16 ◼   ► move for a while or something, right?

00:12:18 ◼   ► It because it seems I still haven't even recharged it and I've been playing with it for two weeks

00:12:22 ◼   ► or something.

00:12:23 ◼   ► I don't I don't it definitely gets a long battery life.

00:12:27 ◼   ► So it can't be sitting there emitting these waves, you know until it's in use.

00:12:33 ◼   ► But on the other hand too, like if it was just in your backpack though, moving around

00:12:39 ◼   ► as you walk around, I don't think it's on.

00:12:42 ◼   ► I'm not quite sure when it turns on or what that means.

00:12:45 ◼   ► Or maybe like a lot of these things, like in the way that your iPhone can use the motion

00:12:57 ◼   ► co-processor to count your steps and it's not really having a significantly adverse

00:13:02 ◼   ► effect on the battery life of your phone compared to all the other things that can actually

00:13:06 ◼   ► drain your phone.

00:13:07 ◼   ► Maybe they put the equivalent of a little M6 in the pencil and it's always there kind

00:13:13 ◼   ► of detecting similar things.

00:13:15 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:13:16 ◼   ► But it's kind of crazy.

00:13:17 ◼   ► Isn't that wild though that it doesn't even tell you if it's on, off, or low on charge?

00:13:22 ◼   ► Yeah, it's featureless.

00:13:24 ◼   ► It's empty.

00:13:25 ◼   ► It's just a blank, right?

00:13:27 ◼   ► It's just an implement that you hold in your hand and use it against the glass surface

00:13:30 ◼   ► and things happen.

00:13:32 ◼   ► - So it is that.

00:13:34 ◼   ► - The big downside to it is that if it is out of battery,

00:13:38 ◼   ► the only way you're gonna know that

00:13:40 ◼   ► is by like having it fail on screen.

00:13:44 ◼   ► Like you're gonna go to use it

00:13:46 ◼   ► and you're gonna stab at the screen

00:13:48 ◼   ► and it's like the experience of figuring out

00:13:52 ◼   ► that your pencil has run out of power

00:13:55 ◼   ► is exactly the same as the experience of having a pencil

00:13:58 ◼   ► that isn't yet paired with your iPad.

00:14:01 ◼   ► I think the difference is that your iPad knows how much battery is in there.

00:14:06 ◼   ► And if you not only can you swipe down in Notification Center, it will there's a batteries

00:14:12 ◼   ► thing that will show you the iPad's battery and also the Apple Pencil's battery.

00:14:17 ◼   ► And I would imagine I would imagine that it tells you that the iPad tells you when you

00:14:23 ◼   ► need to charge your Apple Pencil.

00:14:24 ◼   ► So I just swipe down and I can see that this pencil that I'm holding in my hand is 26 percent

00:14:28 ◼   ► battery.

00:14:29 ◼   ► But that's the interface.

00:14:30 ◼   ► on the iPad, it's not in the pencil.

00:14:33 ◼   ► - I think I screwed myself by like,

00:14:35 ◼   ► at one point in my review process,

00:14:39 ◼   ► I just left it plugged in, and I'd used it a lot,

00:14:42 ◼   ► the pencil, and then I plugged it in for no reason.

00:14:45 ◼   ► It wasn't like it was out, I just plugged it in

00:14:47 ◼   ► and left it plugged in, and so it obviously filled back up,

00:14:49 ◼   ► and so I haven't run it back down yet.

00:14:52 ◼   ► But yet, I say I screwed myself

00:14:54 ◼   ► because I really did wanna kind of see

00:14:56 ◼   ► what, you know, does it give you a warning like that?

00:14:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, so I haven't seen it give me a warning yet,

00:15:04 ◼   ► but I can see that it's at 26%.

00:15:06 ◼   ► So that's like the one place where I can tell

00:15:09 ◼   ► that it's communicating beyond the actual drawing

00:15:11 ◼   ► is that it tosses in a little battery info

00:15:14 ◼   ► into the notification center.

00:15:16 ◼   ► - I had lunch today with Lauren Brikter,

00:15:22 ◼   ► formerly of Twitter, inventor of pull to refresh,

00:15:28 ◼   ► Tweety, et cetera, et cetera.

00:15:29 ◼   ► He hadn't seen it yet, so I brought it along

00:15:31 ◼   ► and he got to play with it.

00:15:33 ◼   ► And his first comment was,

00:15:35 ◼   ► and it's sort of like what you said about sort of like this,

00:15:38 ◼   ► you know, the 2001 style industrial design,

00:15:42 ◼   ► or like, you know, futuristic space aliens

00:15:45 ◼   ► have made this pencil.

00:15:46 ◼   ► That it is absolutely, it's so,

00:15:48 ◼   ► he said that this is such an Apple device.

00:15:50 ◼   ► It is so beautiful, but also,

00:15:53 ◼   ► this is not a material that anybody has ever used

00:15:55 ◼   ► to create a pen out of before.

00:15:57 ◼   ► Like nobody's ever made a pen or pencil that is slick.

00:16:01 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:16:02 ◼   ► - And it's not to say that it's slippery,

00:16:04 ◼   ► and I don't know that it's even a problem,

00:16:06 ◼   ► but it is a sort of material that nobody

00:16:08 ◼   ► would ever have used for this before.

00:16:11 ◼   ► - It's a little slippery.

00:16:14 ◼   ► I mean, I guess it reminded me of, I mean, pencils,

00:16:17 ◼   ► depending on you get a brand new pencil out of the box,

00:16:19 ◼   ► and it's got that fresh coat of enamel paint on it,

00:16:22 ◼   ► it's not that far off from that.

00:16:24 ◼   ► I think the difference is that I'm used to pencils

00:16:26 ◼   ► that have, you know, that they're not round.

00:16:29 ◼   ► They're flat.

00:16:30 ◼   ► They're whatever, hexagonal or octagonal.

00:16:33 ◼   ► They've got the little flat surfaces

00:16:34 ◼   ► that come together to make the pencil.

00:16:35 ◼   ► And this is just perfectly smooth and perfectly round.

00:16:38 ◼   ► And it would roll right off your desk,

00:16:40 ◼   ► except it's weighted so that it will stop.

00:16:43 ◼   ► - Right.

00:16:44 ◼   ► I will say this, and you know, we could do a whole,

00:16:48 ◼   ► I could do a whole two-hour show

00:16:49 ◼   ► just on stationary pens and pencils.

00:16:52 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:16:53 ◼   ► But a very, very popular style of ink pencil,

00:16:58 ◼   ► I mean, talking about real pens here,

00:17:01 ◼   ► are like Pilot G, what do they call them, G3s.

00:17:06 ◼   ► I don't use the Pilots anymore, but the gel,

00:17:09 ◼   ► the clicky gel pens. - Yeah, I've got a G2

00:17:10 ◼   ► right here. - Yeah, the G2.

00:17:11 ◼   ► Which, and I use the ones from Zebra,

00:17:15 ◼   ► there's a couple of other brands,

00:17:17 ◼   ► but they started in Japan, now they're very popular

00:17:21 ◼   ► around the world, but my point is,

00:17:22 ◼   ► all of them share a design thing, which is that down where you grip it, there's a piece

00:17:27 ◼   ► of rubber, which just to me seems like total common sense.

00:17:33 ◼   ► But it's, I don't know, I'm curious what people, like one of the things I'm curious now that

00:17:38 ◼   ► the pencil is going from, "Okay, Apple released a new thing, it's a novelty," to, "Okay, people

00:17:43 ◼   ► are actually using it."

00:17:45 ◼   ► What are the people who are going to use this thing for like hours at a time for work going

00:17:49 ◼   ► to say about the ergonomics of the materials and stuff like that.

00:17:53 ◼   ► I'm not so sure that it's comfortable.

00:17:56 ◼   ► I'm not either, but again, I don't think pens in general are comfortable. I don't

00:18:00 ◼   ► like handwriting once I could stop turning in my papers in school, handwritten, and could

00:18:05 ◼   ► start typing them all. I was a very happy person. But yeah, it struck me right away

00:18:09 ◼   ► that there was no—I've gotten used to the grip on the G2 at the bottom, there's

00:18:15 ◼   ► clip on it. And I guess maybe that goes back to this sort of Apple philosophy of the, I

00:18:22 ◼   ► think it's what our friend John Ziracusa calls the naked robotic core, like make it, build

00:18:28 ◼   ► the product for its essence, almost knowing that if you want to add something to it, people

00:18:32 ◼   ► will build things to add to it. But that Apple, if Apple adds those things on, then you can't

00:18:37 ◼   ► opt out of them. And this definitely feels like somebody's going to want to make a grip

00:18:41 ◼   ► for it and somebody's going to want to make a clip for it and a little inkwell kind of

00:18:44 ◼   ► thing for people to stash it when they're not using it. All of those things will be

00:18:48 ◼   ► made for it, but Apple wanted to kind of get it all the way to its base. And whether that's

00:18:53 ◼   ► right or wrong, I mean, I think it depends on whether you like holding it in its base

00:18:58 ◼   ► form. If there are a lot of people who think, "No, no, I just want this and nothing more,"

00:19:02 ◼   ► it would kind of be a shame if it had other things on top of it.

00:19:05 ◼   ► Yeah. I wonder, I don't know, it's another one of those things that probably, if it's

00:19:10 ◼   ► not out already, there's going to be, there's got to be like some Kickstarters from people

00:19:13 ◼   ► who are going to make replacement caps that the only difference is that it has a clip.

00:19:21 ◼   ► Or even just some kind of asymmetrical nubbin so that it doesn't roll at all.

00:19:25 ◼   ► Right, a little clip-on clip so you can put it in your pocket or something I think would

00:19:29 ◼   ► be a natural one. I'm sure somebody's already got that 3D printed and ready for Kickstarter.

00:19:37 ◼   ► It's almost like, and I feel like that's also sort of Apple's decision on the much observed

00:19:45 ◼   ► point that there's nowhere to put it officially.

00:19:49 ◼   ► Meaning, let's just say compare and contrast with the Newton, where there was an official

00:19:54 ◼   ► place to put the stylus with the Newton.

00:19:56 ◼   ► It was a socket right in the top of the Newton.

00:20:00 ◼   ► And obviously that design wouldn't work for this because the pencil's actually thicker

00:20:03 ◼   ► than the iPad.

00:20:07 ◼   ► if it isn't, it's so close that there's no way that a socket would have would

00:20:10 ◼   ► have worked. But they wouldn't have done that anyway, just because I think that

00:20:15 ◼   ► there's that's not really their style anymore. Yeah, I'm a little surprised

00:20:19 ◼   ► there isn't an optional, you know, something and probably they looked and

00:20:22 ◼   ► just couldn't find a way to make it make sense. I mean you could use the magnets

00:20:26 ◼   ► and clip it to the side magnetically but they're probably not strong enough to

00:20:29 ◼   ► really reliably leave it there and the last thing you want to do is have it

00:20:32 ◼   ► fall off and break on the floor.

00:20:34 ◼   ► So, you know, instead it's just,

00:20:36 ◼   ► you find another place to put it.

00:20:38 ◼   ► And people will figure it out.

00:20:40 ◼   ► - Well, and I was a little surprised.

00:20:44 ◼   ► I mean, this goes all the way back to September,

00:20:46 ◼   ► because I could see, you know, in the hands-on area

00:20:48 ◼   ► that this was the case, 'cause they had the covers for it.

00:20:51 ◼   ► But on that day, I was a little surprised

00:20:53 ◼   ► that they didn't have, on the smart cover

00:20:55 ◼   ► and smart keyboard, something.

00:20:58 ◼   ► You know, whether it's just a flap

00:20:59 ◼   ► that you could stick it in, or a magnet,

00:21:01 ◼   ► or something on the cover that is meant for a,

00:21:04 ◼   ► well, okay, you can't connect it to the iPad Pro itself,

00:21:08 ◼   ► but if you get our cover or our keyboard,

00:21:10 ◼   ► there's a little place here where you can put your pen,

00:21:14 ◼   ► pencil.

00:21:15 ◼   ► And they didn't do that.

00:21:16 ◼   ► And I guess it's because not everybody gets the pencil.

00:21:21 ◼   ► And so then the thing where you would put the pencil

00:21:23 ◼   ► would look, if you got the cover, but not the pencil,

00:21:26 ◼   ► it would look like you're missing a pencil.

00:21:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think that's behind a lot of these decisions

00:21:30 ◼   ► It is not, as much as we all talk about it

00:21:34 ◼   ► and write about it,

00:21:35 ◼   ► it is not an essential feature of this product.

00:21:37 ◼   ► And so you can't build it with the assumption

00:21:40 ◼   ► that everybody's gonna have one.

00:21:42 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:21:44 ◼   ► All right, let me take a break here

00:21:46 ◼   ► and thank our first sponsor.

00:21:48 ◼   ► And it's a new sponsor.

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00:22:41 ◼   ► These guys are talking points for this, are hell-bent on how easy this is to implement.

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00:23:40 ◼   ► >> So you had a piece -- one of the reasons I wanted to have you on the show and I thought

00:23:43 ◼   ► it really, really echoed my thinking on this, and I kind of touched on it but skipped about

00:23:50 ◼   ► it is this whole issue of okay now with the iPad Pro and with iOS 9 and where it

00:23:58 ◼   ► is today can you use your iPad can you use an iPad Pro for work which is sort

00:24:04 ◼   ► of I think the problem is that that's not a fair question I feel like you need

00:24:08 ◼   ► to specify what the work is but I thought you had a good piece that was

00:24:11 ◼   ► more or less for some definition of work yes and for your work mostly yes but

00:24:19 ◼   ► that it's with 20 some years of Mac experience

00:24:24 ◼   ► under your belt and all of this stuff,

00:24:27 ◼   ► maybe the answer is still just that you don't want to.

00:24:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, I counted it's 26.

00:24:33 ◼   ► Fall of '89 is when I started using the Mac.

00:24:37 ◼   ► - I remember, I actually remembered from your article

00:24:39 ◼   ► that it was exactly 26 because it was such an uneven number.

00:24:42 ◼   ► I figured it must've been exactly right,

00:24:44 ◼   ► but I didn't wanna say that because it makes us sound old.

00:24:47 ◼   ► So I just, I went with 20 some.

00:24:49 ◼   ► - I know 20 some, well, it could be even worse,

00:24:51 ◼   ► but it's probably better.

00:24:52 ◼   ► Yeah, it was, 'cause it was my sophomore year in college

00:24:55 ◼   ► and I was, I started working at the newspaper

00:24:57 ◼   ► and they were all Mac there and I had an Apple II.

00:24:59 ◼   ► So I'd used a Mac a couple of times before,

00:25:01 ◼   ► but that was the point where I stopped using my Apple II,

00:25:03 ◼   ► basically, and I did all my work on the Macs

00:25:06 ◼   ► at the newspaper office, even my schoolwork,

00:25:08 ◼   ► because I didn't wanna go back.

00:25:10 ◼   ► But that's a lot of history.

00:25:13 ◼   ► Yeah, I think it's absolutely true that you can't say

00:25:17 ◼   ► the iPad and iOS in general are not possible tools to use to do your job. I mean, yeah,

00:25:23 ◼   ► they're going to be jobs where the software isn't there and they're very particular. This

00:25:27 ◼   ► is the internet, right? So people are going to say, "Well, actually, my profession, I

00:25:31 ◼   ► can't do on that." It's like, I'll grant you, there are professions where you can't. But

00:25:35 ◼   ► if you're talking about general kind of, I look at spreadsheets and I write documents

00:25:39 ◼   ► and I answer email and the kind of businessy jobs we think of and I'm on the web, of course

00:25:46 ◼   ► of course iOS can do that, of course the iPad can do that. I think my realization in spending,

00:25:50 ◼   ► like so many of us who write about these products, have done over the last few days, which is

00:25:55 ◼   ► use the iPad Pro a lot to try to do things that we don't normally do on an iPad, it became

00:26:00 ◼   ► clear to me that it was not, the issue wasn't could it do it, the issue was the migration

00:26:06 ◼   ► thing. It's like, you know, for something to be worth migrating to from a place where

00:26:11 ◼   ► you're really comfortable and you've set up like, I've got scripts and you're like this

00:26:16 ◼   ► too. I know I've got scripts, I've got a workflow, I've got apps, I've got everything set up.

00:26:20 ◼   ► I feel like I've super optimized what I do on my Mac for me over the course of 26 years.

00:26:28 ◼   ► And for me to switch from that to something new, you know, there's the hit you have to

00:26:33 ◼   ► take. You have to learn new apps, you have to learn new automation processes. You've

00:26:38 ◼   ► got to put in, invest hours and hours of time to get back to where you were. And that's

00:26:45 ◼   ► a pretty decent calculation that you can make. You can say, "Look, even if it's as good

00:26:50 ◼   ► as the Mac is today, and let's just grant it that, that might not be worth it because

00:26:56 ◼   ► there's too much effort that's going to have to go into it to move over there." Or when

00:27:00 ◼   ► you get there, it's going to turn out that you're not quite as effective, you're not

00:27:04 ◼   ► as fast as you were on the Mac. And so I would say that I came to the realization because

00:27:12 ◼   ► I edit a lot of podcasts in Logic and I've had a bunch of people say, "Well, you should

00:27:15 ◼   ► really try Audition from Adobe." And I have the same sort of thing, which is Audition

00:27:20 ◼   ► might be better than Logic. I'm not sure if it is for what I do, but let's say it's

00:27:24 ◼   ► arguable that I would be better off editing in Audition than Logic. That's not good

00:27:28 ◼   ► enough. It's got to be a lot better because I'm going to take a huge hit when I move

00:27:32 ◼   ► and have to learn a new thing. And sometimes it doesn't, I mean, you never want to say

00:27:38 ◼   ► no to learning a new thing, but sometimes the math doesn't work where it's like,

00:27:41 ◼   ► it's incrementally better, but I will be so far in the hole in terms of my learning that

00:27:47 ◼   ► I'm never going to be, it's never going to pay off or it won't pay off for years and

00:27:50 ◼   ► years and you don't know until you try whether it's actually going to be better or not. So

00:27:55 ◼   ► that was my realization with the iPad is that probably 90% of the things that I've got set

00:27:59 ◼   ► up to do on my Mac I don't use very often and I don't need to bring over. I don't need

00:28:04 ◼   ► to list like, "Oh, I've got a hundred scripts in BBEdit that I need to change." It's probably

00:28:08 ◼   ► not that, but there are things that I would have to adapt to and, you know, that I think

00:28:13 ◼   ► is going to be a problem for everybody. Fortunately, we don't have to switch, right? I mean, I

00:28:20 ◼   ► can foresee using an iPad when I travel now in a way that I couldn't foresee it a year

00:28:26 ◼   ► or two ago. Not abandoning the Mac entirely, but using the iPad as a substitute when I

00:28:31 ◼   ► want to travel light. I could see that now, but, you know, that requires me to put in

00:28:36 ◼   ► some time and change my workflow and some of the things that I do and adapt to new tools.

00:28:42 ◼   ► But it's a matter of choice. And for somebody who's younger and who doesn't really have

00:28:46 ◼   ► those ties and hasn't super automated their computer experience, then that barrier is

00:28:54 ◼   ► completely gone.

00:28:55 ◼   ► Yeah, and in a couple of ways

00:28:58 ◼   ► podcasting is a

00:29:01 ◼   ► pretty fun example, right because

00:29:04 ◼   ► editing podcasts now you'd mentioned that people are saying that you should recommending you switch from logic to

00:29:11 ◼   ► Adobe addition on that's on the Mac, but you did find you there is a new iOS app

00:29:18 ◼   ► And so you actually edited an episode of was it the incomparable? Yeah

00:29:23 ◼   ► on the iPad. What's the name of the app? The app is called Ferrite. F-E-R-R-I-T-E.

00:29:29 ◼   ► Yeah, and it's free with two in-app purchases. It's basically,

00:29:33 ◼   ► if you want to unlock all the features, it's $20. But you can try it without, and

00:29:37 ◼   ► you can unlock half the features for 10 and then

00:29:39 ◼   ► go buy the other half for 10. And,

00:29:42 ◼   ► yeah, I tried it. I actually, I tried it and I was thinking, "Wow, these guys who wrote

00:29:46 ◼   ► this

00:29:46 ◼   ► totally read my mind." And then later I discovered that they actually had

00:29:50 ◼   ► had read my site and had seen my--

00:29:53 ◼   ► - And had been like listening to your shows

00:29:55 ◼   ► and listening to your, you're like, well,

00:29:58 ◼   ► one of the things that would keep me

00:30:01 ◼   ► from being able to work on an iPad

00:30:04 ◼   ► would be I need to edit podcasts,

00:30:05 ◼   ► and if I wanted to edit podcasts on an iPad,

00:30:08 ◼   ► I would need this, this, this, this.

00:30:10 ◼   ► - And all those features are in Ferrite,

00:30:12 ◼   ► which is, it was that moment of like,

00:30:13 ◼   ► are they reading my mind?

00:30:14 ◼   ► And it turns out, no, they're actually reading

00:30:16 ◼   ► what I've written, and they were working on it,

00:30:18 ◼   ► but that was like, I think it was a good,

00:30:20 ◼   ► I didn't inspire the app to be created,

00:30:23 ◼   ► but I think I maybe inspired some of the feature choices

00:30:25 ◼   ► that they made, which is awesome because that's great

00:30:27 ◼   ► for me, it's really nice when somebody builds an app

00:30:29 ◼   ► and keeps you in mind when they're doing it.

00:30:31 ◼   ► But I also forgot that in June, the guy wrote to me

00:30:34 ◼   ► and said, "Do you have any sample files?

00:30:35 ◼   ► "'Cause I wanna use like real world examples."

00:30:37 ◼   ► And I sent him an episode of The Incomparable

00:30:39 ◼   ► that was down just to the tracks.

00:30:41 ◼   ► And I said, "Here it is."

00:30:42 ◼   ► And I totally forgot about it.

00:30:44 ◼   ► And I sat down and edited, not remembering any of that,

00:30:47 ◼   ► I edited an episode and you know, it's the thing. I did this with Logic once. I did this

00:30:53 ◼   ► with Audition once. Before I switched to Logic, I definitely tried it where you take a run

00:30:57 ◼   ► at it and you're like, "All right, experiment. Could I use this other tool to do this thing

00:31:01 ◼   ► that I do every week that is mission critical, that if I'm 25% slower, I'm going to not

00:31:08 ◼   ► be able to do my job?" Because literally, I've got it totally wired and it needs to

00:31:13 ◼   ► be fast and it needs to be like this or I can't switch.

00:31:16 ◼   ► And I expected to get 10 minutes in and be like,

00:31:19 ◼   ► well, it was a nice try iPad,

00:31:21 ◼   ► but this is not gonna happen.

00:31:23 ◼   ► And like an hour and a half later,

00:31:24 ◼   ► which is about maybe two hours,

00:31:26 ◼   ► it's the standard time it takes me to edit an episode

00:31:28 ◼   ► of the incomparable.

00:31:29 ◼   ► I had edited the entire episode.

00:31:31 ◼   ► And about halfway through, I was like,

00:31:32 ◼   ► oh man, I'm actually gonna edit this whole thing right here.

00:31:35 ◼   ► And it was pretty great.

00:31:36 ◼   ► I mean, there were some issues.

00:31:38 ◼   ► It went a lot faster when I had the keyboard

00:31:40 ◼   ► than when I was just doing touch.

00:31:42 ◼   ► but it was pretty great.

00:31:44 ◼   ► And some of that was the screen size,

00:31:46 ◼   ► and some of that was the power,

00:31:47 ◼   ► although I think I could probably do it on the iPad Air.

00:31:50 ◼   ► But that was a funny moment where I realized

00:31:53 ◼   ► that when I had the right tool,

00:31:56 ◼   ► the iPad was great for that sort of thing.

00:31:59 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:32:00 ◼   ► I do think, I think there's,

00:32:03 ◼   ► just to step back a little bit

00:32:06 ◼   ► to where we were five minutes ago,

00:32:07 ◼   ► which was this, when did you first start using a Mac?

00:32:10 ◼   ► and that transition from using something

00:32:13 ◼   ► with like a command line interface

00:32:15 ◼   ► as the main interface to the computer to the GUI,

00:32:18 ◼   ► I do feel that this is the same type of transition.

00:32:21 ◼   ► - Absolutely, absolutely. - Overall.

00:32:22 ◼   ► Except that one was,

00:32:25 ◼   ► it was different in a few ways for me at least,

00:32:29 ◼   ► where the difference with the command line

00:32:32 ◼   ► to GUI transition was that it was going to replace it

00:32:37 ◼   ► for everybody, that this is clear

00:32:39 ◼   ► that for almost everything, and obviously, you know,

00:32:42 ◼   ► Macs today still ship with a terminal app.

00:32:44 ◼   ► And I know that for, you know, the main use I can think of

00:32:48 ◼   ► is people who do like system administration type things,

00:32:51 ◼   ► just use, you know, terminal and SSH connection.

00:32:54 ◼   ► And for good reason, that there's, you know,

00:32:56 ◼   ► that that's actually a really good remote interface

00:32:58 ◼   ► to something that might be slow.

00:33:00 ◼   ► And there are things that you can do

00:33:03 ◼   ► remotely administering a faceless server

00:33:06 ◼   ► that the command line is just fine for,

00:33:08 ◼   ► if you're an expert.

00:33:10 ◼   ► But from 99 point, some very large 10th digit,

00:33:15 ◼   ► nobody needs to ever see that.

00:33:18 ◼   ► Whereas with this transition, I really do think

00:33:21 ◼   ► that Steve Jobs's trucks and cars analogy

00:33:26 ◼   ► is just an amazingly good analogy,

00:33:29 ◼   ► which is that for whatever odd reason,

00:33:31 ◼   ► we made everybody drive a truck for a long time

00:33:34 ◼   ► until we finally got good enough at this

00:33:36 ◼   ► and came up with ideas that were more like a car.

00:33:39 ◼   ► But, you know, just go out on a highway

00:33:42 ◼   ► in any state in the country,

00:33:44 ◼   ► and you're gonna see an awful lot of people

00:33:45 ◼   ► who drive pickup trucks.

00:33:47 ◼   ► But it's clearly not the majority,

00:33:51 ◼   ► and there's no reason for it.

00:33:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, the command line thing,

00:33:53 ◼   ► what struck me about it is,

00:33:55 ◼   ► so many of the arguments were the same, right?

00:33:59 ◼   ► It was like, well, when you start using a Mac,

00:34:01 ◼   ► back in the day, it was, well, you can't do,

00:34:03 ◼   ► I can delete every file with this name in it

00:34:06 ◼   ► by just typing a quick command in DOS.

00:34:09 ◼   ► Can you do that?

00:34:10 ◼   ► I can write a program and run it,

00:34:12 ◼   ► but you can't do that on the Mac.

00:34:14 ◼   ► And totally true, right?

00:34:16 ◼   ► Totally true.

00:34:17 ◼   ► But the answer was we had our own ways, right?

00:34:19 ◼   ► We had our own nerdy things that we did

00:34:20 ◼   ► that weren't those ways,

00:34:22 ◼   ► and they were right about those,

00:34:23 ◼   ► but the Mac was just different.

00:34:25 ◼   ► It didn't do those,

00:34:26 ◼   ► and that's the same argument, right?

00:34:27 ◼   ► It's like, oh, well, the iPad, it's not powerful.

00:34:28 ◼   ► You can't do this thing you can do on the Mac.

00:34:30 ◼   ► It's like totally true.

00:34:31 ◼   ► - Right, you could.

00:34:32 ◼   ► The argument about being able to delete every file

00:34:37 ◼   ► with the same extension--

00:34:40 ◼   ► what was the DOS command for it?

00:34:42 ◼   ► Dell was the equivalent of rm.

00:34:44 ◼   ► rm, right.

00:34:45 ◼   ► Right, that you could do--

00:34:47 ◼   ► star.star, sure.

00:34:49 ◼   ► Dell or dell-star.txt or something like that.

00:34:53 ◼   ► It's such a bad argument because that was a command that was--

00:35:02 ◼   ► there was no undo.

00:35:03 ◼   ► It was, you know, it's like how fast can you--

00:35:06 ◼   ► - It's a nerd argument though.

00:35:07 ◼   ► It's like power.

00:35:08 ◼   ► I can, you know, I can take this thing,

00:35:10 ◼   ► right, my car can go 150.

00:35:12 ◼   ► It's like, okay, well, good luck with that.

00:35:15 ◼   ► You know, if you're not on the Autobahn,

00:35:16 ◼   ► that's probably not that practical,

00:35:18 ◼   ► and you might get yourself killed.

00:35:20 ◼   ► But good, you know, good for you

00:35:21 ◼   ► that your car can theoretically go that fast.

00:35:23 ◼   ► But it was a point of pride and flexibility.

00:35:26 ◼   ► And I hear the same things when people,

00:35:27 ◼   ► when I write about the iPad,

00:35:29 ◼   ► and I'm not Federico Vittucci, right?

00:35:30 ◼   ► I'm not 99% on the iPad, but I'm open-minded enough about it that I hear from people who

00:35:37 ◼   ► are like, "No, never because of X and Y that it doesn't do the Mac."

00:35:41 ◼   ► It's like, you're right, the Mac does those things and it doesn't.

00:35:44 ◼   ► I'm not sure in the end that for the people who are going to want to use the product,

00:35:48 ◼   ► those things are going to matter.

00:35:49 ◼   ► The fact that it doesn't do AppleScript and it doesn't have some of the automation utilities

00:35:56 ◼   ► that run in the background and stuff, that's true, but it's got its own scripting and its

00:35:59 ◼   ► own automation utilities.

00:36:00 ◼   ► They're just different.

00:36:01 ◼   ► And there are, OS, iOS nerdiness is there already.

00:36:06 ◼   ► It's just not the same as Mac nerdiness.

00:36:08 ◼   ► And, you know, that's gonna be off-putting for some people.

00:36:12 ◼   ► I don't know, the truck metaphor,

00:36:14 ◼   ► I see what you're saying in some ways,

00:36:17 ◼   ► but I don't think it's gonna be a matter of

00:36:20 ◼   ► that the touch interface is inappropriate

00:36:23 ◼   ► or that the devices aren't powerful enough.

00:36:26 ◼   ► I'm starting to think,

00:36:27 ◼   ► and that's why I mentioned 26 years of using the Mac,

00:36:29 ◼   ► I'm starting to think that it's gonna be

00:36:31 ◼   ► in some ways generational.

00:36:33 ◼   ► That it's like, I'm more comfortable using these tools

00:36:37 ◼   ► in this way and this industry is more comfortable

00:36:39 ◼   ► with these tools that are used this way.

00:36:42 ◼   ► And I'm not sure that people who are, you know,

00:36:46 ◼   ► your kid's age, my kid's age, are going to feel that way.

00:36:50 ◼   ► Or even people in like in their 20s or 30s,

00:36:52 ◼   ► people who haven't invested like in their computers

00:36:55 ◼   ► as a nerdy platform, but just as a, you know,

00:36:58 ◼   ► a standard tool that they use to get things done.

00:37:00 ◼   ► Because it's, you know, I do think that these,

00:37:05 ◼   ► that the iOS devices are capable of doing this stuff.

00:37:08 ◼   ► That's not the issue.

00:37:09 ◼   ► It's not like, you know, you can't load a couch

00:37:11 ◼   ► into the back of your car, but you can into a pickup truck.

00:37:13 ◼   ► It's more like, maybe like how we'll get

00:37:16 ◼   ► with self-driving cars, where some people

00:37:17 ◼   ► are gonna wanna drive their own car,

00:37:18 ◼   ► and other people are gonna be like, "Eh, I don't care."

00:37:21 ◼   ► Where it's about like, what's your preference,

00:37:23 ◼   ► and what tools are you comfortable with?

00:37:24 ◼   ► And I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

00:37:25 ◼   ► I don't think anybody should feel threatened

00:37:27 ◼   ► that, I mean, Apple feels very strongly like the Mac is a tool and iOS is a tool and you

00:37:35 ◼   ► can use them as you choose and for the right jobs. And I think that's a good attitude to

00:37:39 ◼   ► have that, you know, it's not either or and, you know, people shouldn't feel threatened

00:37:44 ◼   ► by one or the other.

00:37:46 ◼   ► But they do. Some people.

00:37:47 ◼   ► They totally do.

00:37:48 ◼   ► Right? And like I heard from some of the, like some of the, you know, and I, if you're

00:37:54 ◼   ► If you're listening, if you're one of the people

00:37:55 ◼   ► who's emailed me and sort of angrily denounced Tim Cook,

00:37:59 ◼   ► this was all, it started with Tim Cook telling

00:38:02 ◼   ► the newspaper in England that he,

00:38:05 ◼   ► you know, he was, I don't know,

00:38:06 ◼   ► maybe he's still in Europe, I don't know,

00:38:08 ◼   ► but he was on like an extended trip in Europe.

00:38:10 ◼   ► He was, you know, visiting a couple countries over there.

00:38:13 ◼   ► And he said that for this trip,

00:38:14 ◼   ► all he carries with him was his iPhone and his iPad Pro,

00:38:19 ◼   ► and presumably his watch.

00:38:22 ◼   ► In fact, somebody pointed out that in one of the pictures,

00:38:25 ◼   ► he's clearly wearing his watch, no surprise.

00:38:28 ◼   ► And I heard from readers who were like,

00:38:31 ◼   ► "That's BS, maybe if you're an executive

00:38:33 ◼   ► "and you've got a staff that travels with you

00:38:35 ◼   ► "that can do your work, you can do your work with it."

00:38:37 ◼   ► But it's like, I think people underestimate,

00:38:39 ◼   ► a lot of people underestimate how,

00:38:43 ◼   ► there are a lot of jobs in a lot of places

00:38:45 ◼   ► where you really could just do your job

00:38:47 ◼   ► with nothing but communication tools, really.

00:38:51 ◼   ► If you can read on the device and you can, you know, send email and do iMessage and Slack

00:38:58 ◼   ► or whatever similar type thing, if it's mostly about communicating, you can easily do all

00:39:05 ◼   ► your work with an iPad and a phone or even just a phone.

00:39:09 ◼   ► Yeah, and our audiences are, you know, they're more advanced than a lot of people.

00:39:17 ◼   ► They care about this stuff to a degree that a lot of people don't.

00:39:21 ◼   ► I think that that's all true, but that's why when I,

00:39:25 ◼   ► I hate to be so reductive because everybody's different.

00:39:27 ◼   ► Everybody has different needs.

00:39:28 ◼   ► And there are gonna be some people,

00:39:29 ◼   ► I talk to them and they say, "Can I do X?"

00:39:32 ◼   ► It used to be, "Can I switch to the Mac from a PC?

00:39:34 ◼   ► "I have these needs."

00:39:35 ◼   ► And sometimes I would just say,

00:39:36 ◼   ► "I don't think it's a good idea."

00:39:38 ◼   ► Right? - Right.

00:39:38 ◼   ► - Because sometimes it's just, the tools aren't there.

00:39:41 ◼   ► My dad was a dentist and they talked to other dentists,

00:39:45 ◼   ► would say, "What about this?"

00:39:46 ◼   ► And I'd be like,

00:39:47 ◼   ► "You know, all the dentistry software is on Windows,

00:39:49 ◼   ► "so you should probably just get PCs."

00:39:51 ◼   ► wish I could help you, but you know,

00:39:52 ◼   ► this is probably the safest option.

00:39:54 ◼   ► And the same is true with going to iOS.

00:39:56 ◼   ► But when I look, I mean,

00:39:58 ◼   ► I was talking to David Sparks the other day,

00:40:00 ◼   ► and he said to me, it was funny,

00:40:01 ◼   ► he said to me something I had been thinking

00:40:03 ◼   ► in the last few days using the iPad Pro,

00:40:05 ◼   ► which is, he said, you know,

00:40:06 ◼   ► I think Word is better on iOS than it is on the Mac.

00:40:10 ◼   ► And I totally agree.

00:40:11 ◼   ► I think Microsoft Office on the iPad

00:40:13 ◼   ► is way better than Office is,

00:40:15 ◼   ► at least for my uses and in my testing with it,

00:40:18 ◼   ► than it is on the Mac.

00:40:19 ◼   ► It just, it feels really good.

00:40:21 ◼   ► It's really, these are class of the platform kind of apps.

00:40:25 ◼   ► And I think, you know, there are a lot of people

00:40:26 ◼   ► whose jobs are entirely Microsoft Office and email,

00:40:30 ◼   ► and you can use Outlook for that or whatever, and the web.

00:40:32 ◼   ► And those are their jobs.

00:40:35 ◼   ► And they're not specialized in any way.

00:40:37 ◼   ► And those kind of jobs where you're not having to dive deep

00:40:40 ◼   ► into a particular vertical, you know, platform thing thing,

00:40:43 ◼   ► why not do that on an iPad?

00:40:47 ◼   ► I mean, whether you want to use an external keyboard or not,

00:40:50 ◼   ► not to say that you have to, but you could.

00:40:52 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:40:53 ◼   ► So I'm gonna take another break, but when we come back,

00:40:57 ◼   ► and this is where my podcast amnesia strikes in,

00:40:59 ◼   ► what I want to talk about next is,

00:41:01 ◼   ► I want to go right from there into,

00:41:03 ◼   ► to me, the lack of thought that Apple,

00:41:09 ◼   ► or maybe not thought, but the lack of running code

00:41:14 ◼   ► that lets you use the iPad with a keyboard connected.

00:41:18 ◼   ► In other words, that you can't,

00:41:19 ◼   ► more or less, why can't you navigate

00:41:21 ◼   ► the whole interface with the keyboard?

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00:43:38 ◼   ► All right, so I wanna talk about this.

00:43:41 ◼   ► I touched on this in my review.

00:43:44 ◼   ► And more and more, I think,

00:43:45 ◼   ► if I continue writing about the iPad Pro,

00:43:47 ◼   ► I think it's the main thing I wanna write about.

00:43:49 ◼   ► I love the pencil, but I feel like,

00:43:51 ◼   ► because I'm not an artist,

00:43:52 ◼   ► it's not really for me to go into depth about it.

00:43:55 ◼   ► But I do use a keyboard sometimes.

00:43:59 ◼   ► And the more I think about it, the more it drives me crazy

00:44:03 ◼   ► that this is not more deeply integrated into the iPad.

00:44:08 ◼   ► And here's what I'm thinking.

00:44:10 ◼   ► I think it comes down to, all right,

00:44:13 ◼   ► when they first made the iPhone and they said,

00:44:17 ◼   ► Steve Jobs is up on stage,

00:44:19 ◼   ► and he's talking about what they did.

00:44:20 ◼   ► And he says, it runs OS X.

00:44:22 ◼   ► And it's this, you know, for years and years and years,

00:44:25 ◼   ► everybody would, you know, we'd had this,

00:44:27 ◼   ► what if Apple could do a stripped down version of macOS

00:44:30 ◼   ► that would run on a smaller device?

00:44:31 ◼   ► I mean, I say Mac OS because I would say that the dream

00:44:34 ◼   ► of a quote unquote stripped down Mac OS

00:44:38 ◼   ► that runs on a handheld device even predates Mac OS 10.

00:44:41 ◼   ► And here it is, they've finally done it.

00:44:44 ◼   ► And it's, you know, it's wow, how did they do it?

00:44:48 ◼   ► And it's not by running Mac apps, right?

00:44:51 ◼   ► And there's no menu bar.

00:44:53 ◼   ► It's like they went back to ground zero

00:44:54 ◼   ► and rethought the entire user interface.

00:44:58 ◼   ► And there are certain things that carried over,

00:45:01 ◼   ► like the idea that there's an app and to launch the app,

00:45:06 ◼   ► you would double click on the Mac,

00:45:09 ◼   ► you just tap it on the phone, very similar.

00:45:11 ◼   ► Other things, very different, right?

00:45:13 ◼   ► Like buttons were the same, like a push button.

00:45:15 ◼   ► You tap, what do you do with a push button?

00:45:17 ◼   ► Well, the same obvious thing you do on a Mac.

00:45:20 ◼   ► But you would click on the Mac, you tap here.

00:45:22 ◼   ► Other things, though, very different.

00:45:24 ◼   ► I feel like with the iPad, and to me,

00:45:28 ◼   ► especially with the iPad Pro,

00:45:31 ◼   ► and when it's hooked up to a keyboard,

00:45:33 ◼   ► if all you did was lock up some good designers

00:45:38 ◼   ► and say, "Here's the form factor.

00:45:39 ◼   ► "We've already finished the hardware.

00:45:42 ◼   ► "It's this 12-inch piece of glass with a touchscreen,

00:45:47 ◼   ► "and it has this incredible resolution,

00:45:49 ◼   ► "and here's the keyboard it can connect to."

00:45:52 ◼   ► What does the user interface look like to this?

00:45:55 ◼   ► Like, what is the home screen?

00:45:57 ◼   ► What's the root level?

00:45:58 ◼   ► like when you're just starting.

00:46:01 ◼   ► I don't think anybody would come up with what the iPad home

00:46:04 ◼   ► screen looks like.

00:46:06 ◼   ► It's so clearly-- like when the iPhone was not the Mac OS--

00:46:14 ◼   ► what we think of as Mac OS just shrunk down

00:46:16 ◼   ► to fit on the screen with a menu bar at the top

00:46:18 ◼   ► and little draggable windows.

00:46:20 ◼   ► That's exactly what they've done with the iPad, though.

00:46:22 ◼   ► They've just taken the phone interface

00:46:24 ◼   ► and moved it to this new thing.

00:46:26 ◼   ► And now that it's more capable, and now

00:46:28 ◼   ► that it really is fast enough to be treated as a Mac,

00:46:32 ◼   ► I feel like it's almost painful

00:46:35 ◼   ► that Apple hasn't been more ambitious

00:46:37 ◼   ► with the interface to this.

00:46:39 ◼   ► - Well, I think this goes back to,

00:46:42 ◼   ► this is the iPhone OS, right?

00:46:46 ◼   ► It's the iPhone OS,

00:46:47 ◼   ► and it was formulated for a very small screen.

00:46:50 ◼   ► And when they took it up to the iPad,

00:46:52 ◼   ► they didn't do a lot to change it,

00:46:54 ◼   ► other than to say, you've got more room

00:46:55 ◼   ► to spread out your interface.

00:46:57 ◼   ► And we've gone with that.

00:46:59 ◼   ► iOS 9 shows some signs, right?

00:47:01 ◼   ► That they're like, "Oh, we need to really address this now."

00:47:04 ◼   ► But it took them,

00:47:05 ◼   ► people are out there using keyboards

00:47:07 ◼   ► on this thing for years and got very little support

00:47:10 ◼   ► beyond the most rudimentary like,

00:47:12 ◼   ► "Yes, we will support Bluetooth keyboards."

00:47:15 ◼   ► And it's only with iOS 9

00:47:18 ◼   ► that they really have been kicked into gear.

00:47:20 ◼   ► And so they're kind of behind in it.

00:47:21 ◼   ► But you're right.

00:47:23 ◼   ► It's not the interface that you would build

00:47:27 ◼   ► for this device. It's an interface that's evolved from the original iPhone, essentially,

00:47:32 ◼   ► and there's still parts of it that haven't evolved very much. I mean, the springboard,

00:47:35 ◼   ► the home screen, is not evolved, essentially, at all. And there are lots of other parts

00:47:41 ◼   ► that on the iPad Pro, it's just sort of a stretched out version of what was on the iPad

00:47:44 ◼   ► Air. So, you know, it's... I don't know. I've seen people suggest that they ought to make,

00:47:52 ◼   ► know, they ought to consider this, you know, iPad OS and that it's something that needs

00:47:56 ◼   ► to be, whether you call it something different or not, it needs more investment into features

00:48:02 ◼   ► that only matter for the iPad. On one level, it's totally understandable. The iPhone is

00:48:07 ◼   ► so huge that you want to devote so much iOS development time to features that the iPhone

00:48:12 ◼   ► will use. But I wonder sometimes if it's a self-fulfilling prophecy a little bit that

00:48:19 ◼   ► the iPad isn't growing because they aren't putting the work in and making it more of

00:48:25 ◼   ► a product than it could be. And, you know, it's always the iPhone that gets the priority,

00:48:29 ◼   ► it seems, except with these new features in iOS 9, it's felt like, you know, it really

00:48:34 ◼   ► is about the iPhone and the iPad is lucky to kind of come along. And the iPad Pro could

00:48:38 ◼   ► be a lot better if there were more features that took advantage of things like an external

00:48:42 ◼   ► keyboard. And I'm not saying it needs a mouse and drop-down menus, which, you know, because

00:48:48 ◼   ► than it's a Mac, but more than it's got now.

00:48:50 ◼   ► Dave Asprey Right. I definitely think that a mouse pointer

00:48:54 ◼   ► is not the right way to go. I feel like that's this. I'm fully on board with exactly what

00:49:01 ◼   ► Apple's executives, Tim Cook, Phil Schiller, I think even Eddie in a couple of interviews,

00:49:07 ◼   ► Eddie Q. I really don't think it's spin. I think they truly believe this. I do too,

00:49:14 ◼   ► the Mac and iPad OS are not going to converge. There's not going to be any sort of point

00:49:20 ◼   ► in the foreseeable future. I mean like years and years out where everything is just one OS and you

00:49:26 ◼   ► can touch your iMac 5k. I really think that it and I think the mouse pointer interface isn't going

00:49:34 ◼   ► anywhere and that's in Apple world that's called the Mac and the touch interface isn't going

00:49:40 ◼   ► anywhere. But there needs to be some kind of directional input that's not touching

00:49:45 ◼   ► the screen. And I think, you know, Apple TV shows how that's possible, right? And I

00:49:50 ◼   ► know that it's... even the old Apple TV which just had the... with no swipe pad, it

00:49:57 ◼   ► just had up, down, left, right, you know, you could do it. And I feel like the new

00:50:00 ◼   ► one with the touchpad, it even shows even more how possible it is. And this focus

00:50:06 ◼   ► engine that they have where you have these selections and it just shows you based on

00:50:10 ◼   ► the depth. I'm not saying that that's exactly what they could move to the iPad because then

00:50:15 ◼   ► I don't think it would work with touch, right? I think if they put the focus engine UI on

00:50:20 ◼   ► the iPad for use with a keyboard with the arrow keys or with a trackpad, a trackpad

00:50:26 ◼   ► that isn't there but if they added a hypothetical trackpad, you could do the focus. The focus

00:50:32 ◼   ► thing would definitely work and I think that would be pretty useful and then you could

00:50:35 ◼   ► use the trackpad to move the insertion point around

00:50:39 ◼   ► in text editing views.

00:50:40 ◼   ► And all of that would work and be useful

00:50:41 ◼   ► and not introduce a mouse pointer,

00:50:43 ◼   ► which I think is problematic in a lot of ways.

00:50:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, in some ways,

00:50:49 ◼   ► the trackpad's already there, right?

00:50:51 ◼   ► Because if you put two fingers down

00:50:52 ◼   ► on the software keyboard,

00:50:54 ◼   ► you can move the text insertion around.

00:50:57 ◼   ► And so there is a pointing device.

00:50:59 ◼   ► It's not gonna, you know,

00:51:00 ◼   ► it's not a cursor that's available everywhere,

00:51:02 ◼   ► but it is there.

00:51:04 ◼   ► And in that way, if you're using an external keyboard,

00:51:08 ◼   ► you lose that feature.

00:51:09 ◼   ► And there isn't the support.

00:51:10 ◼   ► I was arguing with somebody on Twitter,

00:51:12 ◼   ► I think you were part of that chain too,

00:51:13 ◼   ► about this idea of a trackpad on a keyboard from Apple,

00:51:18 ◼   ► which I think is less likely,

00:51:19 ◼   ► but I kind of feel like they might as well

00:51:22 ◼   ► just support Bluetooth trackpads,

00:51:23 ◼   ► because just for text insertion,

00:51:25 ◼   ► because it's not as if it's not there,

00:51:27 ◼   ► the alternative would be something like,

00:51:29 ◼   ► I think there was a patent for a keyboard,

00:51:32 ◼   ► an Apple patent for a keyboard

00:51:33 ◼   ► that you could also just move your finger across

00:51:36 ◼   ► and it would act like a track pad,

00:51:39 ◼   ► which that's how the software keyboard works.

00:51:42 ◼   ► So if you had a hardware keyboard that you could do that,

00:51:44 ◼   ► that might solve it too.

00:51:45 ◼   ► It's like, look, if you wanna move

00:51:46 ◼   ► the insertion point around,

00:51:47 ◼   ► you just, you don't push down on the keys,

00:51:49 ◼   ► you just drag your fingers over them and we'll,

00:51:52 ◼   ► that's close enough for us to figure out what you're doing.

00:51:55 ◼   ► So maybe there's something there because that,

00:51:57 ◼   ► I mean, it doesn't get enough publicity,

00:51:59 ◼   ► but that's like one of the biggest breaks

00:52:00 ◼   ► with the iOS interface metaphor that has ever been is the idea that suddenly you've got

00:52:05 ◼   ► a little cursor that you move around on screen. That's not something that we've really had

00:52:10 ◼   ► on iOS before. And once that's out of the box a little bit, and I think it's great for

00:52:14 ◼   ► productivity, I think it's fantastic on the iPad Pro. It's the easiest movement of that.

00:52:19 ◼   ► I find it harder to move around on the iPhone and on the smaller iPads, but it's really

00:52:23 ◼   ► good because you've got that space and it totally works. So, I'd like to see more of

00:52:29 ◼   ► in more places, plus simple stuff like if I do a spotlight search. I can't arrow down

00:52:33 ◼   ► into one of the results.

00:52:34 ◼   ► I can't help but feel that that's just coming. It has to be coming.

00:52:39 ◼   ► Sure. I think a lot of these are very clearly like they're very close and they're just not

00:52:45 ◼   ► quite there yet. Autocorrect is one. I just wrote a piece about this yesterday on the

00:52:49 ◼   ► iPad Pro for Macworld where autocorrect is one where there's this whole autocorrect system

00:52:55 ◼   ► that's been built up for the software keyboard because it's really important for the

00:52:59 ◼   ► software keyboard. But right now there's no system level way to assign autocorrect

00:53:03 ◼   ► on or off for hardware versus software keyboards. So every time I use a hardware keyboard I

00:53:08 ◼   ► have to go turn it off because it is terrible when I'm using the hardware keyboard. It

00:53:12 ◼   ► corrects things that I type correctly into other things and I type so fast that I go

00:53:16 ◼   ► right over it. My incidence of typos goes up. I'm correcting things all the time.

00:53:21 ◼   ► And it's just one of those things that like that's a pretty simple thing. I don't

00:53:24 ◼   ► know, again, I don't know how deep into the text code, maybe it would be hard to implement,

00:53:29 ◼   ► but from a user perspective, it's like, it makes sense that my rules for my software

00:53:33 ◼   ► keyboard and my hardware keyboard would be different, and it goes to like the auto-capitalization

00:53:39 ◼   ► stuff. I don't know if you've tried this, but if you type, if you hold down the shift

00:53:42 ◼   ► key a little too long, so the first two letters of a word are capitalized, and you're like,

00:53:47 ◼   ► "Oh, I meant that to be lowercase," you lift the shift key off, you backspace, and

00:53:51 ◼   ► and then you type the key again on the iPad,

00:53:53 ◼   ► it just stays in capital letters.

00:53:55 ◼   ► - Oh, yes. - Right?

00:53:58 ◼   ► And that's been a problem from the iPhone

00:53:59 ◼   ► since the beginning, which is like,

00:54:01 ◼   ► no, no, you toggled the shift key up.

00:54:02 ◼   ► You probably wanna type a capital letter here.

00:54:05 ◼   ► And-- - Right.

00:54:06 ◼   ► Like, Sir Cusa has spoken about this,

00:54:08 ◼   ► where when you get to know in a rich text editing interface,

00:54:11 ◼   ► like Word or TextEdit,

00:54:13 ◼   ► where there's bold, italics, and underline,

00:54:15 ◼   ► there are implicit invisible marks, effectively.

00:54:21 ◼   ► And in the old days, like when we used to write

00:54:23 ◼   ► on our Apple IIs, you could see them.

00:54:26 ◼   ► - Show codes.

00:54:27 ◼   ► - Right, show codes.

00:54:28 ◼   ► - It was a classic.

00:54:29 ◼   ► - But in other words, if I start typing Jason

00:54:34 ◼   ► and I type, for whatever stupid reason,

00:54:38 ◼   ► I just want the first two letters to be bold.

00:54:42 ◼   ► If I go back and delete the A that's bold

00:54:45 ◼   ► and I type it again, it's still gonna be bold

00:54:47 ◼   ► until I hit Command + B again before I type it, right?

00:54:51 ◼   ► And the shift key is like that on iOS.

00:54:53 ◼   ► The shift key is sort of like an invisible marker in there.

00:54:58 ◼   ► It's like a mode that you go into and stays on.

00:55:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it's, I mean, that's just a bug, right?

00:55:04 ◼   ► I mean, it's really just a bug,

00:55:05 ◼   ► but it stems from the fact that there's this whole

00:55:08 ◼   ► infrastructure of input that has been built up

00:55:12 ◼   ► around the iPhone originally, and then the iPad,

00:55:16 ◼   ► and the external keyboard thing is just kind of

00:55:17 ◼   ► this weird thing that's grafted on,

00:55:19 ◼   ► which in the context of the time made sense.

00:55:21 ◼   ► But when you're trying to think of this

00:55:23 ◼   ► as more of a productivity device

00:55:25 ◼   ► and that a lot of people are gonna be using a keyboard,

00:55:28 ◼   ► that Apple sells a keyboard now,

00:55:30 ◼   ► it's all stuff that just needs to be better.

00:55:31 ◼   ► And I keep coming back to the iOS 9 thing.

00:55:33 ◼   ► I feel like what the real story here is just

00:55:36 ◼   ► that Apple already has gotten their religion about this,

00:55:39 ◼   ► but they didn't really get it until iOS 9.

00:55:41 ◼   ► And that before then,

00:55:42 ◼   ► they sort of just kept their hands off of it.

00:55:44 ◼   ► And then since they only got that religion for iOS 9,

00:55:48 ◼   ► they haven't had time to build this stuff.

00:55:50 ◼   ► And I was hoping to see a little more of it

00:55:51 ◼   ► in the build of iOS that ran on the iPad Pro.

00:55:54 ◼   ► And I'm still hopeful that maybe 9.2, maybe 9.3,

00:55:58 ◼   ► we'll just see this stuff trickling out

00:56:00 ◼   ► instead of having to wait for an iOS 10.

00:56:02 ◼   ► But that's the optimist in me is that

00:56:05 ◼   ► I feel like maybe they have got it, right?

00:56:07 ◼   ► They've got the product out there.

00:56:08 ◼   ► They've got that keyboard.

00:56:10 ◼   ► And they do know that this is important to the iPad Pro

00:56:13 ◼   ► and that they're gonna prioritize more of these features

00:56:15 ◼   ► to make it better.

00:56:17 ◼   ► - I think that one of the most telling things,

00:56:20 ◼   ► and to me it contrasts with,

00:56:23 ◼   ► this episode of the show almost,

00:56:25 ◼   ► it looks like it was organized.

00:56:27 ◼   ► I think it contrasts so poorly with the pencil,

00:56:30 ◼   ► where to me, every aspect of the pencil seems so thoughtful.

00:56:34 ◼   ► But the thing is, is that the pencil is this all new thing

00:56:40 ◼   ► that slips into the touch world established by the iPhone,

00:56:46 ◼   ► I'm not misspeaking, but like the 2007 iPhone,

00:56:48 ◼   ► in theory, would work great with the pencil, right?

00:56:51 ◼   ► And my guess is that going forward,

00:56:54 ◼   ► all future iOS devices will be,

00:56:56 ◼   ► have the touch sensor that the iPad Pro does

00:57:01 ◼   ► and will work with the pencil.

00:57:02 ◼   ► Or at least they could.

00:57:03 ◼   ► And at least all iPads, I think.

00:57:05 ◼   ► I don't know, maybe not the phone,

00:57:07 ◼   ► but I don't see why not with the phone.

00:57:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, I agree. - Why not?

00:57:10 ◼   ► - And it's not the Apple Pencil for iPad Pro

00:57:13 ◼   ► or something like that.

00:57:13 ◼   ► It's the Apple Pencil, period.

00:57:15 ◼   ► But it doesn't force any kind of rethinking of the interface,

00:57:19 ◼   ► of the touch-centric interface.

00:57:21 ◼   ► It's all on new.

00:57:22 ◼   ► Whereas the keyboard is so in conflict with that.

00:57:26 ◼   ► And not that I don't think--

00:57:28 ◼   ► I think that in theory, there's a way to arrive at a--

00:57:32 ◼   ► this works.

00:57:32 ◼   ► It works just as well with the touch and the keyboard,

00:57:35 ◼   ► but different ways.

00:57:37 ◼   ► And I'll give you an example of that in a second.

00:57:39 ◼   ► But the other example-- and it just

00:57:41 ◼   ► reeks to me of the, wait a second,

00:57:46 ◼   ► didn't somebody think that this is crazy?

00:57:47 ◼   ► So in theory, if you have the hardware keyboard attached,

00:57:51 ◼   ► typing should be better in every way,

00:57:54 ◼   ► because it's an actual keyboard.

00:57:55 ◼   ► Or at least, or if in theory, you are the world's,

00:58:00 ◼   ► a world-class type on the iPad screen typist,

00:58:03 ◼   ► then it should be at least as good.

00:58:05 ◼   ► But in a huge way, it's worse,

00:58:08 ◼   ► because when you're using the on-screen keyboard,

00:58:11 ◼   ► you can put two fingers down and move the insertion point.

00:58:14 ◼   ► And you just spent three minutes praising.

00:58:16 ◼   ► I'll just say ditto, it's one of the greatest inventions

00:58:20 ◼   ► of the touchscreen era.

00:58:21 ◼   ► And then if you have the hardware keyboard,

00:58:23 ◼   ► there's no way to do that.

00:58:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, there's not-- - I find that to be

00:58:27 ◼   ► absolutely crazy.

00:58:28 ◼   ► And again, whether it,

00:58:32 ◼   ► I'm not saying it's an easy thing to solve.

00:58:34 ◼   ► It's, like you said, maybe it's some kind of weird

00:58:36 ◼   ► patented material that turns the surface of the keyboard

00:58:39 ◼   ► into a touchpad sensor just for going,

00:58:43 ◼   ► just for moving around.

00:58:45 ◼   ► You don't have to do anything else.

00:58:46 ◼   ► I don't know what the answer is,

00:58:49 ◼   ► but boy, that seems crazy that you get

00:58:52 ◼   ► this really cool feature with the onscreen keyboard,

00:58:54 ◼   ► and when you hook up a hardware keyboard,

00:58:55 ◼   ► you completely lose it.

00:58:57 ◼   ► So the other example, and this one really bothers me,

00:59:02 ◼   ► is for Command Tab.

00:59:08 ◼   ► So the command tab that they've added to iOS

00:59:13 ◼   ► is just, it looks exactly like the Mac's command tab,

00:59:17 ◼   ► which in and of itself, not, you know, okay, it's familiar.

00:59:20 ◼   ► Your apps start with, they go left to right,

00:59:24 ◼   ► with left is your current most app,

00:59:26 ◼   ► and then as you move to the right,

00:59:28 ◼   ► you see your, the apps you've used in whatever,

00:59:33 ◼   ► you know, the order in which you've used them.

00:59:34 ◼   ► So one command tab gets you to the one you used

00:59:37 ◼   ► most recently to get you to the second most recent, etc. But there's the double

00:59:46 ◼   ► tap the home button switcher which provides the exact same task, the exact

00:59:50 ◼   ► same, solves the exact same problem which is I want to switch to a recently used

00:59:55 ◼   ► app. But on iOS it's completely different. It looks different. It's this 3D stacked

01:00:01 ◼   ► view and it even goes in a different order starting with Mac OS 9 it goes

01:00:07 ◼   ► from right to left but they had a left to right version in Iowa 7 & 8 with the

01:00:17 ◼   ► old card style interface to me as a general principle there's absolutely no

01:00:23 ◼   ► reason why that shouldn't be the exact same interface whether you're using

01:00:26 ◼   ► command tab or using the screen and double clicking the home button it

01:00:31 ◼   ► should be the and they had it they had it right there they had the iOS 8

01:00:35 ◼   ► switcher and I think the only reason they switched it for iOS 9 was for the

01:00:41 ◼   ► iPhone 6s with the force touch where you can force from the edge and I don't

01:00:49 ◼   ► think that that's I don't think that's worth it I feel like maybe they should

01:00:53 ◼   ► have just made it so that you instead of force touching from the left edge you

01:00:56 ◼   ► have to do it from the right edge so that the order could be the same between the two.

01:01:02 ◼   ► I don't know. But somehow, if they wanted to add the force touch switcher, they should

01:01:07 ◼   ► have done it in a way that they could use the same switcher for double tap home, go

01:01:13 ◼   ► from the edge, and definitely from command tab. The command tab switcher should be the

01:01:16 ◼   ► same as the double tap, the home button switcher. And it's, to me, a lack of thoughtfulness

01:01:23 ◼   ► that it's not so.

01:01:24 ◼   ► Well, I mean, it is more dense to have just the icons up there and not the previews. And

01:01:28 ◼   ► if they had it, you know, although you could have that same sort of stack of, you know,

01:01:33 ◼   ► angled textures of what those apps were or something, I'm sure they could unify it if

01:01:38 ◼   ► they really wanted to. But it's funny when you think about Apple taking the approach

01:01:42 ◼   ► that each device is its own thing. And unlike Microsoft's approach, the Mac's going to be

01:01:48 ◼   ► the Mac and the iPad's going to be the iPad. This is a case where when you've got an extra

01:01:54 ◼   ► keyboard attached. The iPad kind of is a Mac, sort of. It's using the Mac

01:01:58 ◼   ► switcher instead of... And I don't know whether that's a good thing because the

01:02:02 ◼   ► people... Depends on if your attitude is people who use external keyboards are

01:02:05 ◼   ► fossils. They're old people who want the old ways and this is providing

01:02:10 ◼   ► some continuity for our users who are less comfortable with the new ways of

01:02:14 ◼   ► text input or whether, you know, it's just a nice accessory for people who want to

01:02:19 ◼   ► input text faster. And if it's the former, then the app switcher makes sense,

01:02:24 ◼   ► because it'll scare them less. But it's not the same metaphor as the rest of the

01:02:29 ◼   ► system. It's this bizarre thing that kind of got imported from the Mac.

01:02:33 ◼   ► In a way, I'm glad that it's there, you know, and I'm glad that

01:02:39 ◼   ► while I've been trying to use my iPad Pro as, you know, like, how much of my

01:02:44 ◼   ► work can I do on it, you know, to try this thing out? I'm certainly glad that

01:02:47 ◼   ► that Command Tab works.

01:02:48 ◼   ► - Oh yeah.

01:02:50 ◼   ► - But I think that just stick,

01:02:52 ◼   ► we'll just stick a Mac style switcher in there is crazy.

01:02:55 ◼   ► Especially when iOS 8 had a switching,

01:02:59 ◼   ► an app switching metaphor that would have worked perfectly

01:03:01 ◼   ► with Command Tab.

01:03:03 ◼   ► And I really think that that's a lot slicker

01:03:05 ◼   ► and I feel like it really,

01:03:06 ◼   ► I feel like the beauty of it is,

01:03:10 ◼   ► and even the new iOS 9 switcher

01:03:13 ◼   ► still has the same quality where you can see the apps

01:03:16 ◼   ► as you're switching between them.

01:03:18 ◼   ► And that doesn't really translate well to the Mac

01:03:20 ◼   ► because Mac apps can have lots and lots of windows open,

01:03:24 ◼   ► but every single iOS app only has one screen

01:03:27 ◼   ► at a current time.

01:03:28 ◼   ► And I feel like the visual aspect of that,

01:03:31 ◼   ► where it's like a layer of abstraction has been removed

01:03:34 ◼   ► and you actually see the apps,

01:03:36 ◼   ► Safari looks like the currently showing Safari tab,

01:03:40 ◼   ► is so much more iOS-like.

01:03:44 ◼   ► it's so much more what iOS is supposed to be

01:03:47 ◼   ► rather than this extra layer of abstraction

01:03:50 ◼   ► where Safari is represented by its home screen icon.

01:03:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I don't even wanna get into that

01:03:57 ◼   ► when you've got two apps running in split view,

01:03:59 ◼   ► the iOS-based switcher is even weirder

01:04:03 ◼   ► because I think the split view on the right

01:04:05 ◼   ► just sort of vanishes.

01:04:07 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:04:08 ◼   ► - Because of what it show and would it show the split view

01:04:11 ◼   ► or would it show the last time it wasn't in split view

01:04:14 ◼   ► And it's a, there's a lot going on and you do get the sense.

01:04:17 ◼   ► You said it.

01:04:17 ◼   ► And I had, I had been thinking that you do get the sense that there was a long

01:04:20 ◼   ► debate at Apple about the app switcher stuff and about, uh, productivity for

01:04:24 ◼   ► keyboard people. And at some point somebody said, look, just put the Mac app

01:04:28 ◼   ► switcher in there for the keyboard people.

01:04:30 ◼   ► Just, just it's good enough for them.

01:04:33 ◼   ► So I hopefully there are people and it's just, hopefully that it's just some sort

01:04:39 ◼   ► of, look, we, you know, we can ship this big iPad now.

01:04:43 ◼   ► We're ready to do it.

01:04:44 ◼   ► We have the--

01:04:45 ◼   ► I think-- and again, this is the sort of thing

01:04:51 ◼   ► that even when you know people at Apple and friends,

01:04:54 ◼   ► and they just don't like to talk about timelines.

01:04:56 ◼   ► But I think that the iPad Pro has been something

01:05:00 ◼   ► that they've been thinking about ever since they started

01:05:03 ◼   ► working on the iPad in terms of what size of these devices

01:05:06 ◼   ► would we like to ship.

01:05:07 ◼   ► And having to make something that's this big,

01:05:12 ◼   ► but weighs as little as it does, right?

01:05:15 ◼   ► Because think about the fact that the original iPad,

01:05:17 ◼   ► famously now everybody says,

01:05:19 ◼   ► talking about the weight of the iPad Pro,

01:05:21 ◼   ► weighs almost exactly the same as the original iPad.

01:05:24 ◼   ► Well then obviously at this size back in 2010,

01:05:28 ◼   ► it would have been way too heavy.

01:05:31 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:05:31 ◼   ► - Right, 'cause it would have been as thick

01:05:33 ◼   ► and as dense as that iPad and now it's heavier.

01:05:36 ◼   ► So it took them a while to be able to make something

01:05:39 ◼   ► that was this big and that would be tolerable weight.

01:05:42 ◼   ► And clearly, once they've gone to the retina era,

01:05:45 ◼   ► they ran into these incredibly difficult things

01:05:49 ◼   ► with the graphics to be able to drive a screen this size that's

01:05:52 ◼   ► retina.

01:05:52 ◼   ► They had to do the same thing with this

01:05:54 ◼   ► that they did with the retina 5K iMac, where they have

01:05:57 ◼   ► their own timing controller to control the whole thing,

01:06:00 ◼   ► because nothing on the market could drive that many pixels.

01:06:03 ◼   ► So I think that this year, I think 2015,

01:06:07 ◼   ► they've shipped a big iPad the first year

01:06:11 ◼   ► that they could have. That, you know, with all the engineering constraints that they

01:06:16 ◼   ► had to work with to be able to ship something that meets their definition for, you know,

01:06:21 ◼   ► here's an IP, here's what we could, we would be willing to ship as an iOS device. To make

01:06:25 ◼   ► one this size, it took until now. And because they could do it now, they're shipping it

01:06:29 ◼   ► now, even though the software on the software side, clearly they're, they're not caught

01:06:34 ◼   ► up to the level of, well, what could we do with an iPad of this size?

01:06:38 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that's exactly right that this is this feels like like I was saying like I with iOS 9 and with a putting the

01:06:45 ◼   ► iPad Pro into getting it ready for production that would there was a moment of like, okay

01:06:48 ◼   ► this matters to us now and the problem was that they weren't laying the foundation before and

01:06:53 ◼   ► and you can't you can't turn on a dime and add all those features in and so the software is lagging behind and it's a

01:06:58 ◼   ► Shame that it wasn't you also feel like the iPad air 2 was so over specked that that was almost like the pilot program

01:07:07 ◼   ► of the iPad Pro a little bit.

01:07:09 ◼   ► It was like, whoa, where did this thing come from?

01:07:10 ◼   ► It's like, oh, I understand now.

01:07:13 ◼   ► But the hardware is spectacular.

01:07:15 ◼   ► It really is a great piece of hardware.

01:07:16 ◼   ► And that's why I think it is striking that we come back to

01:07:19 ◼   ► the software kind of hasn't caught up.

01:07:21 ◼   ► And it's not just like,

01:07:22 ◼   ► there's the whole other debate about professional software

01:07:25 ◼   ► in the app store and all of that.

01:07:27 ◼   ► But like the iOS itself is kind of just,

01:07:30 ◼   ► it's a little bit behind what the hardware can offer.

01:07:33 ◼   ► And it's not surprising because I think they got a late start

01:07:38 ◼   ► because it wasn't a priority until they decided.

01:07:42 ◼   ► I wonder, I really wish,

01:07:45 ◼   ► I would be fascinated to know the stories behind it.

01:07:48 ◼   ► My gut feeling is also that Apple has changed its philosophy

01:07:51 ◼   ► about its product lines,

01:07:52 ◼   ► where it feels that they don't have to be as focused,

01:07:55 ◼   ► that every product doesn't have to be for every person.

01:07:58 ◼   ► And I think that evidence one of that

01:08:00 ◼   ► was the existence of the iPhone 6 Plus,

01:08:03 ◼   ► where it was not the flagship, it was this oversized phone,

01:08:06 ◼   ► and I think that Apple felt bitten by the fact

01:08:09 ◼   ► that they were so maniacally focused on having one iPhone

01:08:11 ◼   ► that they got behind in the large phone category,

01:08:14 ◼   ► and Samsung showed them that people wanted that.

01:08:17 ◼   ► And I wonder if that bleeds down to the iPad a little bit too

01:08:20 ◼   ► and it gives them the freedom to have this product exist,

01:08:22 ◼   ► where it's like, look, we can have

01:08:24 ◼   ► a bunch of different iPads.

01:08:25 ◼   ► And the Mini was the first example of that.

01:08:28 ◼   ► And then this is another example where it's like,

01:08:29 ◼   ► look, we can have a lot of these iPads,

01:08:31 ◼   ► we can't ship them all the same year

01:08:32 ◼   ► 'cause it's too much, but we have to ship like a couple,

01:08:35 ◼   ► one or two a year.

01:08:36 ◼   ► But I wonder if there's a story there

01:08:39 ◼   ► that maybe it's just me seeing things,

01:08:40 ◼   ► but I feel like there's something there about Apple

01:08:44 ◼   ► shifting gears from sort of like, this is the iPhone,

01:08:46 ◼   ► to saying, we have many iPhones you can choose from,

01:08:48 ◼   ► we have many iPads, choose the one you like.

01:08:51 ◼   ► And that's not where they were two, three years ago,

01:08:54 ◼   ► but that's where they are now.

01:08:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's a fascinating device, the iPad Pro.

01:09:02 ◼   ► and pencil and the keyboard.

01:09:04 ◼   ► And there's so much to think about.

01:09:06 ◼   ► But it is as interested and fascinated in it as I am,

01:09:11 ◼   ► I think you're exactly right,

01:09:12 ◼   ► is that it is the device I would recommend

01:09:15 ◼   ► to the fewest people for one of their big things.

01:09:20 ◼   ► I guess the only thing, again, I think the iPhone Plus,

01:09:26 ◼   ► the 6S Plus and 6 Plus are similar,

01:09:30 ◼   ► where, but even, maybe even a little bit less.

01:09:34 ◼   ► You know, like I feel like it's,

01:09:35 ◼   ► the people who want the plus size phone, they know it.

01:09:38 ◼   ► Right?

01:09:39 ◼   ► It's just a gut feeling.

01:09:40 ◼   ► If your gut says I wish my phone was really big,

01:09:42 ◼   ► then go ahead and get it.

01:09:44 ◼   ► Whereas this is a little bit,

01:09:45 ◼   ► it's a little bit more complicated.

01:09:48 ◼   ► Like I, I don't, I really don't think,

01:09:50 ◼   ► it's not just an issue of,

01:09:52 ◼   ► like in the old days I think it used to be,

01:09:56 ◼   ► in the PowerBook days,

01:10:00 ◼   ► The only reason to get like, you know, the old,

01:10:02 ◼   ► you know, back when we used to call them iBooks,

01:10:04 ◼   ► remember that?

01:10:05 ◼   ► - Oh yeah. - Or even the MacBook.

01:10:08 ◼   ► The only reason to get one other than a MacBook Pro

01:10:11 ◼   ► was, I think, you know, about cost.

01:10:14 ◼   ► Did you, you know, if you can afford the MacBook Pro,

01:10:16 ◼   ► you're gonna want that MacBook Pro

01:10:18 ◼   ► 'cause you're not really saving much else.

01:10:19 ◼   ► It wasn't like they were lighter, you know, or thinner.

01:10:23 ◼   ► They were just slower.

01:10:25 ◼   ► - No, the only time I had a MacBook

01:10:26 ◼   ► was there was the period where there was,

01:10:28 ◼   ► the MacBooks were smaller,

01:10:30 ◼   ► and the MacBook Pros were not smaller,

01:10:32 ◼   ► and that was the reason to get it was,

01:10:34 ◼   ► you want a smaller laptop, we've got it.

01:10:36 ◼   ► But if all other things are equal, then, I don't know.

01:10:40 ◼   ► Do you think the iPad Pro is a little bit

01:10:41 ◼   ► like the old 17-inch?

01:10:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, maybe. - MacBook, right?

01:10:44 ◼   ► Where it's sort of like, who wants this?

01:10:46 ◼   ► And the answer is, there are some people

01:10:47 ◼   ► who really want this.

01:10:49 ◼   ► But most people are probably not gonna want it.

01:10:51 ◼   ► And you could do the industries.

01:10:52 ◼   ► And with the iPad Pro, it'll be different industries.

01:10:53 ◼   ► But you could say, people who do wanna do video editing,

01:10:56 ◼   ► this might actually be on the road,

01:10:58 ◼   ► this might actually be great for it,

01:10:59 ◼   ► it's got the big screen and people who want to draw, graphic artists and

01:11:04 ◼   ► comic book artists and colorists and all sorts of different jobs with

01:11:09 ◼   ► the pencil and the giant screen, perfect. And like a thousand other niches plus

01:11:14 ◼   ► the power user type people who can do their whole jobs with it and then over

01:11:20 ◼   ► time maybe it becomes more than that. But that's my gut feeling now is

01:11:23 ◼   ► like, yeah, like, Federico, I mean, he's the poster boy for it, right? But I

01:11:27 ◼   ► I think there are other people and, you know, people who just like having their iPad and

01:11:31 ◼   ► realize they've got Office on there and that's all they need.

01:11:34 ◼   ► I think it will find lots of surprising audiences.

01:11:37 ◼   ► I'm really looking forward to actually in the next six months, there will probably be

01:11:40 ◼   ► a lot of stories about, "Oh, did you realize the iPad Pro is actually great for X?"

01:11:44 ◼   ► And you'll be like, "Oh, that is, of course, it makes perfect sense.

01:11:47 ◼   ► I didn't think of it at the time, but it's the perfect product for that."

01:11:51 ◼   ► But you know, that 17-inch PowerBook was like that too.

01:11:53 ◼   ► It weighed a ton.

01:11:54 ◼   ► It was huge.

01:11:55 ◼   ► It was ridiculous.

01:11:56 ◼   ► wanted it. It was in the price list forever because people just did not want to give up

01:12:01 ◼   ► the 17-inch in certain audiences. And it wasn't really until finally the 15 was so powerful

01:12:07 ◼   ► and the 15 with retina and all of that that it was no longer the cafeteria tray laptop

01:12:13 ◼   ► was no longer relevant.

01:12:14 ◼   ► Dave: Yeah. I think it's maybe that's... The 17-inch PowerBook or no, I guess, did

01:12:20 ◼   ► they... Yeah, there was a Mac. Yeah, the last one was still was a Macbook. They definitely

01:12:24 ◼   ► had Intel versions.

01:12:25 ◼   ► I think that's probably a little bit more niche than the iPad Pro, but I think it's

01:12:30 ◼   ► along that spectrum, though, that you kind of need to have an exceptional need to justify

01:12:34 ◼   ► it.

01:12:35 ◼   ► I agree.

01:12:36 ◼   ► It's not as expensive compared to the other products, I think, and it is not as kind of

01:12:40 ◼   ► unreasonable.

01:12:41 ◼   ► It's big, and some people are going to get turned off by its bigness, but there are other

01:12:45 ◼   ► people for whom having the bigger screen, it's just going to be good.

01:12:50 ◼   ► It's an iPad, right?

01:12:51 ◼   ► In all other ways, it is an iPad, and it's got this big, bright, beautiful screen.

01:12:56 ◼   ► If you don't care about the weight and the size of it, it does what it says.

01:13:01 ◼   ► It is a big iPad.

01:13:02 ◼   ► I loved—I linked to it and even said it was just my favorite observation.

01:13:07 ◼   ► The one person's observation about the iPad Pro that I was jealous of that I didn't

01:13:11 ◼   ► think of was Horace Dejus, that it's a desktop iPad.

01:13:16 ◼   ► Not desktop, meaning like it runs desktop—you know, desktop, it gets so overused because

01:13:20 ◼   ► That's what we mean when we say Mac and Windows.

01:13:23 ◼   ► - Right.

01:13:24 ◼   ► - But he just meant literally that you put it on a desk

01:13:27 ◼   ► and it's meant to be used.

01:13:28 ◼   ► - And so much of what we do now on desktops

01:13:30 ◼   ► is actually a laptop.

01:13:32 ◼   ► - Right.

01:13:33 ◼   ► I thought that was so keen.

01:13:35 ◼   ► And I have to say in all my time,

01:13:37 ◼   ► and again, when you're doing these things

01:13:40 ◼   ► and you're in an R racket

01:13:41 ◼   ► and you wanna write a review of this thing,

01:13:43 ◼   ► you do, you spend an,

01:13:44 ◼   ► I spend an awful lot of time on it,

01:13:47 ◼   ► especially that first week where I had the review unit.

01:13:51 ◼   ► And I did everything on it, even things

01:13:53 ◼   ► that I knew while I was doing it, like, wow,

01:13:55 ◼   ► in the long run, I am not going to use this to do this.

01:13:58 ◼   ► But I was doing it just to see what it was like.

01:14:00 ◼   ► And I really have to say that the stuff that I usually

01:14:04 ◼   ► do with an iPad on a normal day, just

01:14:07 ◼   ► sit there at the end of the day and just sort of--

01:14:09 ◼   ► if I'm watching sports on TV and I'm just paying attention

01:14:12 ◼   ► to Twitter on the other, you know,

01:14:14 ◼   ► the quote unquote second screen and I'm on the couch,

01:14:17 ◼   ► the big iPad Pro is cumbersome.

01:14:21 ◼   ► It's hard to hold in one hand.

01:14:22 ◼   ► I mean, this is not like something that you couldn't foresee

01:14:26 ◼   ► but it's kind of wants to be used on a desk

01:14:29 ◼   ► or like on your lap with the keyboard attached

01:14:33 ◼   ► so that it's resting on it.

01:14:35 ◼   ► And that's to me is different than from what most people

01:14:38 ◼   ► I think do with their iPad.

01:14:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, everybody's ergonomics are gonna be different

01:14:43 ◼   ► but it feels comfortable, yeah, on a table, on a desk,

01:14:48 ◼   ► it's totally comfortable.

01:14:51 ◼   ► I think sitting up, it is, for me, ergonomically,

01:14:54 ◼   ► it's fine if I'm sitting upright in a chair

01:14:57 ◼   ► or even on my couch in my living room.

01:15:00 ◼   ► When I'm leaning back, like I'm laying on the couch

01:15:03 ◼   ► or I'm laying in bed and I'm like checking email

01:15:05 ◼   ► in the morning or something like that,

01:15:06 ◼   ► it's kind of ridiculous, I can get used to it,

01:15:09 ◼   ► but it's like, it probably doesn't fit as well there

01:15:12 ◼   ► And I'm not sure people really wanna have two iPads, right?

01:15:15 ◼   ► They're big iPad and they're small iPad,

01:15:18 ◼   ► but it almost comes across like that.

01:15:19 ◼   ► But this is not an iPad you use everywhere, probably.

01:15:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it does seem like in some ways,

01:15:27 ◼   ► Apple is sort of optimizing for the case

01:15:29 ◼   ► where you're gonna have a whole house full of Apple products

01:15:33 ◼   ► and just pick the one that, you know, a downstairs,

01:15:35 ◼   ► you know, like that, like the daytime, nighttime iPhone guy,

01:15:40 ◼   ► you're gonna have an upstairs iPad and a, you know, a downstairs iPad,

01:15:44 ◼   ► which is terrible. It's so gratuitous, but I do kind of feel that way.

01:15:50 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

01:15:51 ◼   ► All right.

01:15:52 ◼   ► Let me take another break here and thank another one of our longtime friends of

01:15:56 ◼   ► the show. The good folks at Warby Parker.

01:16:00 ◼   ► Warby Parker believes that prescription eyeglasses simply should not cost $300

01:16:05 ◼   ► or more.

01:16:06 ◼   ► They bypass their traditional channels and they sell high quality,

01:16:10 ◼   ► great looking prescription eyeglasses direct to you at a fraction of the usual

01:16:16 ◼   ► retail prices. Uh, starting at just 95 bucks.

01:16:19 ◼   ► And you can go from there and there's, you know,

01:16:21 ◼   ► you get the lenses that go darker or something like that and it costs a little

01:16:25 ◼   ► more and the bifocals cost more. Um,

01:16:28 ◼   ► but 95 bucks is a starting price for a regular pair of glasses.

01:16:32 ◼   ► And that comes with everything.

01:16:33 ◼   ► They don't upsell you on anti-reflective coatings

01:16:37 ◼   ► or anti-glare.

01:16:39 ◼   ► They don't make you pay more for the good

01:16:41 ◼   ► polycarbonate material that the lenses are made out of.

01:16:44 ◼   ► They all come with that by default.

01:16:45 ◼   ► They even come with nice cases and a nice cleaning cloth.

01:16:49 ◼   ► Just really, really great stuff.

01:16:51 ◼   ► Buying eyeglasses online.

01:16:52 ◼   ► Sounds crazy, right?

01:16:53 ◼   ► Everybody's, or most people I know,

01:16:55 ◼   ► are really super picky about something

01:16:57 ◼   ► that they're going to put on their face.

01:16:59 ◼   ► And how do you get around that?

01:17:01 ◼   ► Well, you go to their website

01:17:02 ◼   ► and they've got some really cool tools.

01:17:05 ◼   ► You can use webcam or just upload a picture of yourself

01:17:07 ◼   ► and you can preview what some of the glasses

01:17:09 ◼   ► will look like on your face.

01:17:11 ◼   ► They even have a tool that lets you measure your eyes

01:17:14 ◼   ► 'cause part of the trick about getting glasses,

01:17:16 ◼   ► you wanna know exactly how far apart your pupils are.

01:17:18 ◼   ► They have a little thing where you use a credit card.

01:17:20 ◼   ► It's really clever 'cause every credit card

01:17:22 ◼   ► is sort of a standard width

01:17:23 ◼   ► and you hold a credit card up to your face

01:17:25 ◼   ► and they can measure your pupils.

01:17:28 ◼   ► It's funny 'cause I got that measurement.

01:17:30 ◼   ► I did it with Warby and long story short,

01:17:34 ◼   ► I've been to the eye doctor a lot in the last year.

01:17:36 ◼   ► The measurement I got from my eye doctor,

01:17:38 ◼   ► exactly the same as Warby Parker's

01:17:40 ◼   ► seemingly gimmick-like online thing.

01:17:43 ◼   ► Really, really cool.

01:17:44 ◼   ► Now, the best part though is they have this Tryon program.

01:17:49 ◼   ► You go to their website, you measure your eyes,

01:17:52 ◼   ► you look at all of the glasses they have

01:17:54 ◼   ► on their website in the catalog.

01:17:55 ◼   ► You pick five pairs that you like,

01:17:57 ◼   ► they send them to you risk-free.

01:17:59 ◼   ► They just ship them to you with clear non-prescription lenses like the ones you would try on in a

01:18:06 ◼   ► store.

01:18:07 ◼   ► You try these five on at home.

01:18:08 ◼   ► You have five days.

01:18:09 ◼   ► You just look around, see what other people think, see what the people in your family

01:18:13 ◼   ► think, pick the one you like best.

01:18:15 ◼   ► You send them all back with a prepaid return label.

01:18:18 ◼   ► It couldn't be easier to send them back.

01:18:21 ◼   ► But you send them back.

01:18:22 ◼   ► You go to the website and say, "Here's the one that I actually liked."

01:18:25 ◼   ► And next thing you know, a couple days later, you get your eyeglasses in the mail.

01:18:30 ◼   ► Could not be easier.

01:18:31 ◼   ► Really, really easy way to get new glasses.

01:18:36 ◼   ► They've also got prescription and non-prescription sunglasses.

01:18:41 ◼   ► Anything you want that's eyeglass related, Warby has it.

01:18:44 ◼   ► And they even do this cool thing where every time they sell a pair of eyeglasses to someone

01:18:48 ◼   ► like you, a regular customer, they give a pair of prescription glasses to someone in

01:18:56 ◼   ► need through various vision charities that are around the world, which is a really great

01:19:03 ◼   ► thing.

01:19:04 ◼   ► If you think about that, imagine being so poor or living in a country where you can't

01:19:07 ◼   ► even see sharply because you can't afford or can't get access to prescription glasses.

01:19:13 ◼   ► Well, these charities help and Warby does like a one for one matching with them, which

01:19:17 ◼   ► is really great.

01:19:18 ◼   ► So here's where you go to find out more. Go to warbyparker.com/the-talk-show, warbyparker/the-talk-show,

01:19:26 ◼   ► and check them out next time you need eyeglasses. My thanks to Warby Parker.

01:19:34 ◼   ► Anything else you want to talk about this week? I have a couple of other things that

01:19:36 ◼   ► are sort of maybes.

01:19:37 ◼   ► No, I don't have anything more on my list. I mean, iPad Pro has been at the top of mind,

01:19:43 ◼   ► I think, for so many of us the last couple of weeks.

01:19:48 ◼   ► Because the issue that you touched on about this sort of, and I feel like everybody's

01:19:55 ◼   ► been talking, I mean this is like a perennial topic, but the whole idea of is there a market

01:19:59 ◼   ► for professional software for the iPad? And if so, why does it seem like it's worse than

01:20:06 ◼   ► on the Mac? Just to name a price. There's a lot of apps that sell for 20, 25 bucks on

01:20:11 ◼   ► the Mac and there are indie developers using that 20 to 25 dollars per sale to build a

01:20:16 ◼   ► a healthy business. And on iOS, even on iPad, it seems like it's the, you know, $5 is considered

01:20:28 ◼   ► expensive and you sell an app for $10 and nobody buys it and it just doesn't seem like

01:20:33 ◼   ► there's a market.

01:20:34 ◼   ► I don't know. If you look at the size of the iPad market, I mean, there's this argument

01:20:39 ◼   ► that because the iPhone is so big,

01:20:42 ◼   ► that people are building for iPhone

01:20:47 ◼   ► and they're not worried about the iPad,

01:20:49 ◼   ► but the iPad market is what,

01:20:51 ◼   ► bigger than the Mac market on its own?

01:20:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, definitely.

01:20:55 ◼   ► It has to be. - Because its average

01:20:56 ◼   ► selling price is way less

01:20:57 ◼   ► and the revenue is about the same.

01:20:59 ◼   ► - Right.

01:21:00 ◼   ► - So I'm not sure I buy,

01:21:01 ◼   ► I mean, I buy the argument that the iPad Pro

01:21:03 ◼   ► is not gonna have such a huge user base

01:21:04 ◼   ► that products just built for the iPad Pro

01:21:07 ◼   ► are going to not be able to sell well.

01:21:09 ◼   ► I will agree with that, but I'm not sure I buy it

01:21:12 ◼   ► when it comes to the iPad in general

01:21:14 ◼   ► because the iPad Air 2 is very functional,

01:21:17 ◼   ► and so is the iPad Mini 4.

01:21:19 ◼   ► And, you know, there are issues with the Mac App Store.

01:21:23 ◼   ► There's no doubt about it that Apple could do a better job

01:21:26 ◼   ► of making --

01:21:28 ◼   ► I mean, about the App Store in general, not the Mac App Store.

01:21:31 ◼   ► There are lots of issues with the Mac App Store,

01:21:32 ◼   ► but, you know, the idea that you can't do tryouts

01:21:35 ◼   ► and you can't do paid upgrades, and, you know,

01:21:37 ◼   ► the same stuff we've been complaining about forever, but I'm not sure that I... I'm not

01:21:42 ◼   ► saying it's easy, but I'm not sure I buy that it's not possible for software companies to

01:21:47 ◼   ► make money building iPad software.

01:21:50 ◼   ► I don't know, and I know none of these observations are original, but it does kind of ring some

01:21:57 ◼   ► alarm bells for me that... just with the iPad Pro, like, what are some of the apps that

01:22:04 ◼   ► that people are talking about.

01:22:05 ◼   ► Well, Adobe has the Adobe Sketch app,

01:22:07 ◼   ► which is a really cool demo app for the pencil.

01:22:10 ◼   ► And one of the reasons it's cool to demo

01:22:12 ◼   ► is that Apple has been working with Adobe long,

01:22:14 ◼   ► you know, more than just last week or two,

01:22:16 ◼   ► they let Adobe in early.

01:22:17 ◼   ► People are saying--

01:22:19 ◼   ► - I mentioned Microsoft Office, right?

01:22:21 ◼   ► They were up on stage two.

01:22:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, and like you said,

01:22:24 ◼   ► you can make an argument that the Office apps

01:22:29 ◼   ► are better on iPad than they are on Mac.

01:22:31 ◼   ► But those two companies, A, they're huge,

01:22:34 ◼   ► and B, they've both kind of switched

01:22:37 ◼   ► to this subscription model, right,

01:22:39 ◼   ► where you just pay Adobe for the Adobe Cloud

01:22:41 ◼   ► and you have a subscription

01:22:42 ◼   ► and then you can use all of Adobe software.

01:22:44 ◼   ► Well, that's fine for Adobe, to borrow a phrase.

01:22:49 ◼   ► But how many companies can get away with that?

01:22:54 ◼   ► And I don't mean get away with it that they're cheating,

01:22:57 ◼   ► but that they have a rich library of apps

01:23:02 ◼   ► and decades of trust with certain user bases

01:23:06 ◼   ► that people will look at the price of that

01:23:09 ◼   ► and knowing, go into it with their eyes open

01:23:12 ◼   ► and know that it's going to renew

01:23:14 ◼   ► and they're gonna pay this every year

01:23:15 ◼   ► and they'll say, well, that's worth it

01:23:16 ◼   ► because I use Office all the time.

01:23:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, like I said, I think it's not easy

01:23:23 ◼   ► and I think that Adobe and Microsoft have this advantage

01:23:26 ◼   ► in that they have a subscription relationship

01:23:28 ◼   ► with their customers.

01:23:29 ◼   ► That means they have ongoing revenue from these things

01:23:31 ◼   ► and not everybody, you know, most companies can't offer that sort of thing. They don't

01:23:36 ◼   ► have the ability. But, you know, again, I think there are plenty of things to criticize

01:23:41 ◼   ► and ways that the market could be better. But, you know, there are professional-level

01:23:48 ◼   ► iOS apps that come out that people love and that people are charged a decent amount of

01:23:55 ◼   ► money for. And on top of that, I'm not sure this is any different than a lot of other

01:24:02 ◼   ► difficult software environments to work in. When I went to the release notes conference,

01:24:09 ◼   ► what I heard loud and clear from a lot of the developers there is, "Focus on niche markets.

01:24:14 ◼   ► Don't try to build a hit app. Focus on these niche markets that want your stuff and that

01:24:19 ◼   ► will give them a reason to adopt iOS." Or, "They're frustrated because they're using

01:24:23 ◼   ► tools that aren't targeted at them. And that's true on the Mac too, but you've got big players,

01:24:30 ◼   ► and then you've got some players that build a better mousetrap so well that they grow

01:24:35 ◼   ► a following, and then you've got apps that are not necessarily the most exciting, but

01:24:39 ◼   ► they do the job for a particular area. And I think there's nothing in the iPad market

01:24:49 ◼   ► dissuades me from the belief that people can still have a success making

01:24:53 ◼   ► professional software on the iPad. I think if it's just the iPad Pro it's

01:24:58 ◼   ► more problematic. It would be advantageous if that app also ran on the

01:25:02 ◼   ► iPhone, of course. But I don't know. I guess I'm just... I'm not saying that it's

01:25:08 ◼   ► not hard and there aren't issues. I just don't think it's quite as extreme as

01:25:12 ◼   ► all that. That there isn't a place for good professional apps to make money. But

01:25:16 ◼   ► That's a, it's a very different game, right?

01:25:18 ◼   ► The volumes are gonna be a lot less,

01:25:19 ◼   ► and the price is gonna be a lot higher,

01:25:21 ◼   ► and you know, but I don't know.

01:25:24 ◼   ► I just, I have a hard time saying

01:25:27 ◼   ► it's gonna be a barren wasteland,

01:25:28 ◼   ► but I think it could be better.

01:25:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I just, I don't know.

01:25:35 ◼   ► I feel like, I wanna say that the iPad Pro will help,

01:25:40 ◼   ► but then I, then I try to,

01:25:42 ◼   ► well, how am I gonna explain why I think that's so,

01:25:45 ◼   ► and it's just, it more or less comes down to,

01:25:49 ◼   ► 'cause it's a really cool computer.

01:25:50 ◼   ► And so I don't know that that's,

01:25:53 ◼   ► I don't know what the path forward is.

01:25:55 ◼   ► I can't explain it, but I,

01:25:56 ◼   ► it, I think it needs to happen though, right?

01:26:00 ◼   ► Like, but you know, one example of it would be,

01:26:03 ◼   ► and it's that app we just mentioned earlier in the show,

01:26:06 ◼   ► Ferrite, now there's, that's the exact type of app

01:26:08 ◼   ► that I'm talking about, an app that somebody could use

01:26:12 ◼   ► to do serious editing of a podcast using this device.

01:26:16 ◼   ► So my hope is that those guys do just as well

01:26:21 ◼   ► as they would if it was a Mac app

01:26:23 ◼   ► and that people don't hesitate to make these $20

01:26:27 ◼   ► in-app purchases to unlock the full app.

01:26:29 ◼   ► I don't know though.

01:26:31 ◼   ► Like I just worry though that the consensus seems to be

01:26:35 ◼   ► that people in large enough numbers

01:26:38 ◼   ► won't do that for an iPad app.

01:26:41 ◼   ► - I think some of it is about the fact

01:26:45 ◼   ► that there aren't trials,

01:26:46 ◼   ► although Ferrite gets around that by making the app free

01:26:50 ◼   ► and it's very limited.

01:26:51 ◼   ► And I think you can even do that with the Office apps

01:26:54 ◼   ► that for really basic use, you can just use them.

01:26:58 ◼   ► You don't even need an Office 365 account.

01:27:00 ◼   ► And their point is that once you use them,

01:27:02 ◼   ► you're gonna wanna connect to their services

01:27:04 ◼   ► and do all these other things,

01:27:05 ◼   ► at which point you need an Office 365 account.

01:27:07 ◼   ► I think there are ways around it,

01:27:09 ◼   ► But I get that it's scary and moving something like Sketch

01:27:12 ◼   ► from the Mac to the iPad,

01:27:14 ◼   ► they've said they're not gonna do it

01:27:15 ◼   ► because they're afraid that, you know, for $100,

01:27:18 ◼   ► that their app would be,

01:27:20 ◼   ► nobody would pay that sight unseen.

01:27:23 ◼   ► I think there's some truth to that,

01:27:24 ◼   ► although I think, again, people,

01:27:28 ◼   ► there are ways, there are ways.

01:27:29 ◼   ► But yeah, it's very easy to say,

01:27:33 ◼   ► "Look, they should radically change

01:27:35 ◼   ► "how they handle apps for the iPad,

01:27:37 ◼   ► "and they should allow sideloading,

01:27:38 ◼   ► or something like Gatekeeper, where on the Mac you can download apps from third parties

01:27:44 ◼   ► and depending on your security settings you can just run them. And that is a breach in

01:27:48 ◼   ► this semi-impregnable wall of the fortress of iOS and the App Store. And it would bring

01:27:57 ◼   ► problems, but it would also bring some freedom and latitude that some of the professional

01:28:03 ◼   ► software developers might like. I don't know. It's complicated, and I think it's

01:28:09 ◼   ► interesting to look at it through the lens of what we were doing just a little while

01:28:13 ◼   ► ago about the keyboard thing, which is, is the iPad being allowed to be its own thing?

01:28:21 ◼   ► If we start with the iPad, do we come up with some different answers than we might for the

01:28:25 ◼   ► iPhone, and does it need to be, like, "No, if it's this way on the iPad, it's always

01:28:29 ◼   ► this way on the iPhone," or does it become a little bit more like the Mac and the attitude

01:28:33 ◼   ► Toward things like software is a little bit different. I don't know and I don't know if that would solve it

01:28:38 ◼   ► I don't know if opening up, you know the ability to download software from the internet

01:28:43 ◼   ► Rather than over the App Store. It would be a cure-all it might help but I'm not sure it it's enough

01:28:51 ◼   ► Yeah, and I wonder too how much of it is that independent developers whether it's like a small like two-person

01:28:58 ◼   ► You know true indie

01:29:00 ◼   ► App making you know

01:29:03 ◼   ► duo, sort of like the Tapbots gang,

01:29:06 ◼   ► which I know is a little bit more than two guys now.

01:29:09 ◼   ► Or bigger, true companies where there's maybe

01:29:14 ◼   ► like 10 employees or something like that.

01:29:16 ◼   ► But all the way up to a company as big as Apple itself,

01:29:19 ◼   ► that there's the whole mythical man month aspect

01:29:26 ◼   ► to software development that you cannot just

01:29:28 ◼   ► throw engineers at a problem.

01:29:32 ◼   ► At some point, when there's too many chefs in the kitchen,

01:29:34 ◼   ► you can't cook anything.

01:29:36 ◼   ► It gets bogged down by the bureaucracy

01:29:38 ◼   ► of managing the team.

01:29:41 ◼   ► And the world keeps moving, and the industry moves.

01:29:44 ◼   ► And it's not all in isolation.

01:29:48 ◼   ► And I just wonder how much of it is that by wanting

01:29:52 ◼   ► to keep your iPhone app up to date, and moving forward,

01:29:56 ◼   ► and adding features, and wanting to have maybe

01:29:59 ◼   ► for some services like something like Slack where, you know, the big their big

01:30:04 ◼   ► screen interface sort of defaults to a web view, you know, even their native Mac

01:30:09 ◼   ► app is a web view whether it's a website or a Mac app that by the time you do

01:30:14 ◼   ► these things at the at the ends which would be like one end would be the

01:30:19 ◼   ► smallest screen like the iPhone and the other would be the big screen like what

01:30:23 ◼   ► are you gonna do when you're sitting at your desk that the iPad gets lost in the

01:30:26 ◼   ► middle. And maybe that's the exact same reason that some of these that we seem to bemoan

01:30:31 ◼   ► a lack of professional strength apps for the iPad. And like we talked about an hour ago,

01:30:37 ◼   ► that just iOS itself that seems to have sort of like they just never seem to get around

01:30:43 ◼   ► to making the iPad optimized.

01:30:46 ◼   ► Yeah, I think I think there's a chicken and egg problem there a little bit. And then there's

01:30:52 ◼   ► also this issue of getting lost in the shuffle that of course you prioritize the iPhone over

01:30:58 ◼   ► the iPad. But if you do that, then you lose the iPad because it needs love too. And you

01:31:04 ◼   ► know, it's got to have some percentage of it if it's gonna succeed, but it's the same

01:31:09 ◼   ► platform as the iPhone. And so it's not as if you can send a team off to do the iPad

01:31:14 ◼   ► on the side. It's all part of the larger whole. And it is, yeah, back to the chicken and egg

01:31:23 ◼   ► problem that you almost need more people saying, "This is a place where I'm doing work in order

01:31:29 ◼   ► to create a place where developers want to be." But I think there will be some developer

01:31:33 ◼   ► success stories, and I think maybe, in a strange way, the existence of the Microsoft and Adobe

01:31:39 ◼   ► apps on there makes it a more welcome place, because that gets you a long way between that

01:31:44 ◼   ► and all the stock Apple stuff, you can go a long way with what's already on the iPad

01:31:50 ◼   ► Pro. You can go a really long way. And that might make it easier for people to start using

01:31:57 ◼   ► the iPad Pro and the iPad Air to do even more of this stuff, and the more welcoming a place

01:32:02 ◼   ► it is, then maybe the more welcoming a market it is for people building other software.

01:32:07 ◼   ► But it's not going to be easy, there's no doubt about it. I'm just not sure whether

01:32:10 ◼   ► there are a lot of things that can be done to make it easy. I think it's going to always

01:32:15 ◼   ► be hard because business is hard. And it comes back again to what we've been saying, which

01:32:21 ◼   ► is what level of attention does Apple want to devote to this market and this product

01:32:25 ◼   ► line? Because on one level, if you look at the numbers on their own, it is a very sizable

01:32:31 ◼   ► business and on another level, it is in the shadow of an enormous business. And I think

01:32:36 ◼   ► that's been to the detriment of the iPad all along.

01:32:39 ◼   ► The existence of the iPhone is as great as it is for Apple,

01:32:42 ◼   ► it makes it just so easy to ignore the iPad.

01:32:45 ◼   ► - Right, and I wrote about,

01:32:47 ◼   ► I forget, Brian, somebody's article,

01:32:51 ◼   ► I wrote a piece on Daring Fireball,

01:32:53 ◼   ► sort of taking an article apart

01:32:56 ◼   ► for arguing that Apple is in trouble

01:32:58 ◼   ► because the iPhone is so big.

01:33:00 ◼   ► But I think that there,

01:33:03 ◼   ► I do think that it's not that Apple is actually

01:33:06 ◼   ► in danger because the iPad or iPhone business is so big.

01:33:09 ◼   ► But I do think that there are plenty of arguments to make

01:33:12 ◼   ► that it's not good overall that the iPhone is so big,

01:33:17 ◼   ► but they're subtle arguments.

01:33:19 ◼   ► And for example, one of them is that

01:33:22 ◼   ► the iPad lacks attention.

01:33:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, and it's not, right, exactly right.

01:33:28 ◼   ► The danger of having such a wildly successful business.

01:33:31 ◼   ► I wrote a piece about this like a year ago on six colors,

01:33:34 ◼   ► and it was all just about the crushing math of the iPhone.

01:33:37 ◼   ► It's like, it's so big that it's very hard

01:33:40 ◼   ► if you're a responsible manager at Apple

01:33:43 ◼   ► not to always choose the iPhone.

01:33:46 ◼   ► Because every little bit you do improves,

01:33:50 ◼   ► if you do a thing that improves the iPhone by 1%,

01:33:52 ◼   ► you've made up, you'd have to improve the iPad sales

01:33:56 ◼   ► by 40% or whatever, I don't know, whatever the number is,

01:33:58 ◼   ► but it would be, it's just an enormously different scale.

01:34:01 ◼   ► And so you need the discipline to say,

01:34:03 ◼   ► this business is also important and it deserves a percentage of our time. But I can tell you

01:34:09 ◼   ► as the guy who worked at Macworld that once we were part of PC World, which was larger than us,

01:34:15 ◼   ► it became very difficult to get people to pay attention to us because we were a small fraction

01:34:22 ◼   ► of the business. And if you, you know, it takes some discipline to say, "I have two businesses

01:34:27 ◼   ► that I run and I need them both to succeed." And it's very easy to say, "Well, where can I

01:34:33 ◼   ► I get the most return. It's the big business. So let's just invest in the big business

01:34:37 ◼   ► and not worry about the small business." And sometimes I see that with the iPhone and

01:34:40 ◼   ► the iPad.

01:34:41 ◼   ► Yeah, it's a much more nuanced argument to be had, but I do think it's there, and

01:34:49 ◼   ► it clearly sort of stands out. So switching gears a little bit, there's this article

01:34:54 ◼   ► I have not written about it, and I didn't even read it until just before we recorded,

01:34:59 ◼   ► Fast Company had an article this week by Bruce Tognazzini, aka Tog, and Don Norman of the

01:35:08 ◼   ► Norman, whatever group. What's it called?

01:35:11 ◼   ► It might be the Norman group. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:35:15 ◼   ► It's the Nielsen Norman group.

01:35:19 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:35:19 ◼   ► And this article broke my heart. Because, I mean, were you a fan of Tog back in the day?

01:35:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, I guess, I guess.

01:35:31 ◼   ► Ask Tog, right?

01:35:32 ◼   ► - Tog on Design.

01:35:33 ◼   ► Tog was a guy who was at Apple in the '80s

01:35:37 ◼   ► and really kind of spearheaded

01:35:38 ◼   ► the original human interface guidelines.

01:35:42 ◼   ► And Tog on Design, I don't know how I got my hands on it

01:35:46 ◼   ► because sometimes it was hard to get those books back then.

01:35:48 ◼   ► I don't know, but at some point in high school,

01:35:51 ◼   ► I got my hands on Tog on Design.

01:35:54 ◼   ► And I realized, I was like so,

01:35:58 ◼   ► It was the sort of thing I loved thinking about,

01:36:00 ◼   ► but it was like, this is what I wanna do with my life.

01:36:05 ◼   ► I guess at the time I thought more

01:36:07 ◼   ► I wanted to design interfaces and do that,

01:36:10 ◼   ► and instead, but I was right in a way though.

01:36:13 ◼   ► Instead of really doing much design work,

01:36:15 ◼   ► I just think about them and comment on them.

01:36:17 ◼   ► But I knew that this was the field

01:36:19 ◼   ► that I wanted to dig into.

01:36:22 ◼   ► And what I remember in particular about Talgun design

01:36:26 ◼   ► was he had this whole chapter about how they started

01:36:31 ◼   ► with check boxes and a check box was on or off,

01:36:36 ◼   ► zero or one and not very hard at all.

01:36:41 ◼   ► And I think it even got into, like remember in the old Mac,

01:36:44 ◼   ► it used to be filled in with an X instead of a check.

01:36:47 ◼   ► - Like a phantom, oh no, yeah, right.

01:36:51 ◼   ► It was an X inside the square, yeah.

01:36:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, we were talking like system six, system seven

01:36:56 ◼   ► before they went to color. But then the other thing, but the meat of the chapter though

01:37:02 ◼   ► was that they encountered, there were certain scenarios where something that clearly was

01:37:08 ◼   ► asking for a checkbox could have an indeterminate state. And it wasn't on or off, but it was

01:37:16 ◼   ► like halfway. And I can't think of an example off the top of my head, but he had a good

01:37:20 ◼   ► example.

01:37:21 ◼   ► I remember the idea of a roll-up where you've got a couple boxes that are checked underneath,

01:37:28 ◼   ► and the roll-up is where you can toggle something on and off.

01:37:32 ◼   ► And some of them are checked and some of them are not, so you can't say that the roll-up

01:37:35 ◼   ► is on or off.

01:37:36 ◼   ► It's in this indeterminate, some on, some off.

01:37:40 ◼   ► Right.

01:37:41 ◼   ► Here's an example.

01:37:42 ◼   ► An example would be, let's say I select the name Jason, and I hit Command-I, and I italicize

01:37:50 ◼   ► it in the middle of a sentence where the sentence wasn't italics. And then when I

01:37:55 ◼   ► still have Jason selected or I select just the J and I go up to the menu where

01:38:00 ◼   ► it shows me italics, the word italics in the menu would have a check next

01:38:04 ◼   ► to it. Now that's not a check mark, a check box, but it still is a check and

01:38:07 ◼   ► it's the same problem. What do you do though when I select your name and the

01:38:12 ◼   ► next word where one of them is, so one word is italicized and one is not, what

01:38:18 ◼   ► you put next to the word italic and they were stumped by this and then the

01:38:22 ◼   ► solution they eventually came to and I they still use is to use like a dash so

01:38:27 ◼   ► there's a check to say that it's on but then there's a dash to show that it's

01:38:32 ◼   ► sort of on it yeah it's complicated I did that chapter and the fact that they

01:38:39 ◼   ► some company that you know and I well I knew who Apple was at the time and I

01:38:43 ◼   ► knew Apple was the computer company that I was most interested in but the fact

01:38:46 ◼   ► that they had clearly spent as much time thinking about this problem as in my imagination Apple

01:38:52 ◼   ► spent on problems like this. That you could just go off and have like a team of your top people

01:38:57 ◼   ► spend like a week trying to figure out how to solve the problem of what do you use when a check mark

01:39:02 ◼   ► isn't quite right. I was like this is what I want to do. I don't want to say he was a hero, but he

01:39:07 ◼   ► was clearly somebody who inspired me to get into this industry. This article of Fast Company, it

01:39:14 ◼   ► It breaks my heart.

01:39:16 ◼   ► It's so bad.

01:39:18 ◼   ► I just told you to read it before the show.

01:39:21 ◼   ► What did you think?

01:39:22 ◼   ► - Yep.

01:39:23 ◼   ► Yeah, I think what my response was,

01:39:25 ◼   ► it's just as bad as I had feared

01:39:26 ◼   ► from seeing it linked everywhere.

01:39:28 ◼   ► You know, there are a couple things going on here.

01:39:32 ◼   ► It's how Apple is giving design a bad name.

01:39:35 ◼   ► - That's the headline.

01:39:35 ◼   ► That's the actual headline of the article.

01:39:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, a lot of the way it's played,

01:39:40 ◼   ► and I can't tell how much of this is the writers

01:39:42 ◼   ► and how much of this is the editors.

01:39:44 ◼   ► They want this story to be how current Apple design

01:39:49 ◼   ► is a failure.

01:39:50 ◼   ► They want this to be about the sort of last couple of years,

01:39:54 ◼   ► functional high ground, skeuomorphism debate kind of issues

01:39:59 ◼   ► have left Apple in a place where it's kind of lost it.

01:40:02 ◼   ► That's the story that they want to tell

01:40:05 ◼   ► and that Fast Company Design wants to tell, right?

01:40:09 ◼   ► That's the story.

01:40:10 ◼   ► The problem is, and this is, I saw Richard Karras who used to work at Apple, he tweeted a link to this,

01:40:15 ◼   ► and my response was, "I love those guys, but you realize they've been complaining about Apple design for like 20 years now."

01:40:22 ◼   ► And that's one of my problems with it is, I think it's, well, I know, it is disingenuous,

01:40:28 ◼   ► I'm just not sure exactly who's being how disingenuous, it is disingenuous to suggest that this is a comment about anything Apple has done just in the last couple of years.

01:40:39 ◼   ► because these guys have been complaining.

01:40:42 ◼   ► These guys have not been at Apple since basically

01:40:44 ◼   ► right when Steve Jobs came back.

01:40:46 ◼   ► And they have been complaining about Apple's bad design

01:40:49 ◼   ► for a very long time.

01:40:51 ◼   ► They have been complaining about it.

01:40:53 ◼   ► They complain about the iPhone design, you know,

01:40:55 ◼   ► and I don't wanna say that they don't have valid complaints.

01:40:59 ◼   ► Some of their complaints about usability are right.

01:41:02 ◼   ► There are some aspects where there's the old man

01:41:05 ◼   ► yells at cloud kind of thing, where they're like,

01:41:07 ◼   ► it's totally Apple's fault.

01:41:09 ◼   ► but why is Google following them?

01:41:10 ◼   ► And Microsoft is also doing things that aren't that great.

01:41:13 ◼   ► Where it's like, oh, so everybody then, except you,

01:41:15 ◼   ► because you know how to do this and nobody else does.

01:41:17 ◼   ► And, you know, again, there's plenty to criticize here,

01:41:21 ◼   ► but I'm not sure this is the article

01:41:23 ◼   ► that does the best job of it,

01:41:24 ◼   ► because it's not new for them to criticize Apple Design.

01:41:28 ◼   ► They've been doing it a very long time.

01:41:29 ◼   ► I think a lot of the things they criticize are not recent.

01:41:32 ◼   ► They're root issues about the touchscreen interface

01:41:35 ◼   ► where they don't like it.

01:41:36 ◼   ► And there's this little veneer that I have to say,

01:41:39 ◼   ► find kind of distasteful where I feel like, you know, they're really mad that there aren't

01:41:44 ◼   ► drop-down menus. And that there's not the discoverability, because what they did with

01:41:48 ◼   ► the drop-down menus and stuff in the early Mac, that was aces. And now, you know, now

01:41:54 ◼   ► these devices aren't discoverable like that. And they're right that they're not. But, you

01:42:00 ◼   ► know, it's, we've come a long way since then, and there are kind of different metaphors

01:42:05 ◼   ► at work there. And you can dislike them all you like, but it's very difficult to play

01:42:10 ◼   ► this as being like Apple is in a design tailspin the last couple of years, because if you really

01:42:15 ◼   ► went back and looked at what these guys have been criticizing, they've been saying Apple's

01:42:18 ◼   ► been in a design tailspin for like 15 years. Or 20.

01:42:23 ◼   ► In theory, if you had told me a few years ago that Bruce Tognazzini and Don Norman would

01:42:30 ◼   ► write this article about Apple design in 2015, I might have thought a few years ago, "Ooh,

01:42:37 ◼   ► that might be really good."

01:42:39 ◼   ► And the reason why, and I think at a fundamental level, they have a sort of—they approach

01:42:47 ◼   ► design from what I would describe as a sort of academic background, and they use a sort

01:42:52 ◼   ► of academic level of rigor and they are both famously very, very strong proponents of user

01:43:01 ◼   ► testing where you get real people and you study them in a very formal way and with a

01:43:11 ◼   ► real procedural aspect to it and you study AB test, all sorts of different things and

01:43:17 ◼   ► and measure response times and stuff like that.

01:43:21 ◼   ► And Apple, the modern Apple that they're comparing to,

01:43:28 ◼   ► it's not quite, I wouldn't call it cowboy,

01:43:30 ◼   ► but it is definitely not academic.

01:43:32 ◼   ► It is a lot more of a liberal arts style approach to design.

01:43:37 ◼   ► And that to me, there are differences

01:43:40 ◼   ► and there's definitely some things,

01:43:42 ◼   ► I think you could, there's on this general subject,

01:43:47 ◼   ► a book could be written, a wonderful, thoughtful book

01:43:51 ◼   ► that would be worth referring to for decades to come

01:43:55 ◼   ► by talking about the differences between the old Apple

01:44:00 ◼   ► that was more academic in its approach

01:44:02 ◼   ► to user interface design and the new Apple, which is not.

01:44:06 ◼   ► And this article is not it.

01:44:09 ◼   ► This article is definitely more old man yells at the cloud.

01:44:15 ◼   ► And it really just broke my heart.

01:44:18 ◼   ► - I remember, so I started at Mac User

01:44:20 ◼   ► as an intern in the summer of '93.

01:44:23 ◼   ► So it was like right when the Newton came out

01:44:24 ◼   ► and it was in the Scully era.

01:44:26 ◼   ► And then I got to work there through the sort of darker,

01:44:30 ◼   ► even darker times and they got darker still

01:44:32 ◼   ► and then jobs came back.

01:44:33 ◼   ► And these guys are both representatives

01:44:35 ◼   ► of that kind of like first half of Apple's existence.

01:44:38 ◼   ► And you're right.

01:44:39 ◼   ► You know, I don't know how much you had,

01:44:42 ◼   ► if any interaction with Apple at that time,

01:44:43 ◼   ► I was just a super junior editor.

01:44:45 ◼   ► So I didn't have a lot of it, but that Apple was so unlike the Apple that Steve Jobs

01:44:49 ◼   ► fashioned when he came back because it was like super, they had pie in the sky R and

01:44:54 ◼   ► D. They were super academic focused.

01:44:57 ◼   ► And the problem was that they spent a whole lot of money and they had a hard time shipping

01:45:02 ◼   ► products.

01:45:03 ◼   ► And I'm not saying that these guys aren't brilliant and that they don't make some

01:45:08 ◼   ► good points, but it was a different company then.

01:45:12 ◼   ► And the results of—when Steve Jobs came back and said, "We're not going to be

01:45:19 ◼   ► like that anymore.

01:45:20 ◼   ► We're going to be like this," they started to ship some really great products.

01:45:23 ◼   ► Now, were they compromised in ways that perhaps some of the earlier Apple products weren't?

01:45:28 ◼   ► Maybe, but those early Apple products were compromised in all sorts of other ways.

01:45:31 ◼   ► So the academic Apple, I would say, as much as I appreciate it conceptually, I got to

01:45:40 ◼   ► live through the latter days of it, and it was bad. I mean, they did a bad job with products,

01:45:46 ◼   ► and they might have been thinking about it really hard, but the actual company was falling

01:45:50 ◼   ► apart and the products were bad. And I don't know, Tog was long gone, I think, by then,

01:45:54 ◼   ► but I don't know. This article, yeah, there's some old manuals at cloud in here where it's

01:46:00 ◼   ► like why is nobody listening to us and why are all the touchscreen interfaces bad, and

01:46:03 ◼   ► I don't agree that they're bad. There's some valid criticism in there. They pick on some

01:46:08 ◼   ► very specific things that are very obviously problematic in the way Apple's products

01:46:15 ◼   ► are designed, I think, and totally valid. And then there's this third thing at work

01:46:20 ◼   ► and that's what I can't tell, whether it's how much of it is Fast Company and how much

01:46:23 ◼   ► of it is the writers, which is what's the news peg for this? How do we make this relevant?

01:46:28 ◼   ► And the answer is to sort of play up that Apple has suddenly gotten to this point and,

01:46:32 ◼   ► you know, these aren't the guys who cried wolf. This is an alert about what's going

01:46:38 ◼   ► on at Apple right now. And the fact is these are the guys who cried wolf. These guys have

01:46:41 ◼   ► been complaining about Apple design for years.

01:46:43 ◼   ► Yeah, and there's aspects of it though, of their criticism that to me are just wrong.

01:46:48 ◼   ► Like they're complaining about that on like the iPhone and I guess iPad, but like on iOS

01:46:53 ◼   ► that the fonts are too thin to read. And I think that was true of the iOS 7 public beta,

01:47:02 ◼   ► or I guess it wasn't a public beta, but like when iOS 7 was first shown two years ago at

01:47:06 ◼   ► and they were using the really lightweight version,

01:47:10 ◼   ► the weight of Helvetica Neue throughout the UI,

01:47:14 ◼   ► including it was like the default font

01:47:15 ◼   ► for the body of an email.

01:47:18 ◼   ► I would totally agree.

01:47:19 ◼   ► I think that that was too thin,

01:47:20 ◼   ► but they changed that before it even shipped.

01:47:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, that was two years ago.

01:47:24 ◼   ► - The fonts are not too thin,

01:47:26 ◼   ► and they kept saying that the contrast is too low.

01:47:29 ◼   ► Almost all the text I read on my phone

01:47:31 ◼   ► is black text on a white background,

01:47:33 ◼   ► or even in like messages

01:47:35 ◼   ► where you've got these colored backgrounds.

01:47:36 ◼   ► I don't think it's a lack of contrast.

01:47:38 ◼   ► And I think that the font size choice

01:47:43 ◼   ► for system-wide control of the font thing

01:47:48 ◼   ► is really great in iOS.