The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► All right, no jackhammers, no lawn instruments.

00:00:06 ◼   ► Thank God.

00:00:07 ◼   ► That was the funniest coincidence ever.

00:00:09 ◼   ► So anyway, Serenity Caldwell is here.

00:00:11 ◼   ► Yesterday we tried to record this episode and I had a jackhammer outside my window.

00:00:16 ◼   ► And when that stopped, a lawn crew showed up outside Serenity's window with a riding

00:00:22 ◼   ► mower.

00:00:23 ◼   ► The biggest lawn mower I have ever seen for a portable lawn crew.

00:00:27 ◼   ► was quite something but not very conducive to podcasting.

00:00:31 ◼   ► What that big John Deere that Tony Stark was supposed to fix.

00:00:36 ◼   ► Never did.

00:00:37 ◼   ► Yeah, pretty much that.

00:00:38 ◼   ► Only noisier and louder.

00:00:40 ◼   ► That's right, he never did fix the lawnmower, the tractor,

00:00:44 ◼   ► whatever it is.

00:00:45 ◼   ► The McGuffin tractor.

00:00:47 ◼   ► Right.

00:00:49 ◼   ► So I don't know, a lot's going on.

00:00:51 ◼   ► New iMacs?

00:00:54 ◼   ► No new MacBooks, though.

00:00:56 ◼   ► No new MacBooks.

00:00:57 ◼   ► They are still on the watch list.

00:00:59 ◼   ► I don't know if we'll get new MacBooks

00:01:00 ◼   ► before the end of the year.

00:01:01 ◼   ► - I would have guessed, I think if we would have,

00:01:03 ◼   ► it would have happened all at once.

00:01:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, I don't see it.

00:01:07 ◼   ► There's no need to have a third non-existent event.

00:01:10 ◼   ► - This is where, being a podcaster,

00:01:12 ◼   ► I'm starting to get lazy.

00:01:13 ◼   ► I am not super well informed on the new iMacs, are you?

00:01:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, I'm fairly--

00:01:19 ◼   ► - It's good that you're here.

00:01:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, I got you covered, John.

00:01:23 ◼   ► No, Renee got the information a little bit early

00:01:26 ◼   ► and was able to basically give me an FAQ of epic proportions to fill out. So we've got

00:01:32 ◼   ► new 21.5 inch iMacs is the biggest news and they are 4k Retina. It's only like the original

00:01:40 ◼   ► 27 inch iMac, it's only the top end model that's Retina so you can still get 21.5 inch

00:01:46 ◼   ► iMacs that are your normal poorer than average resolution quality in comparison to the rest

00:01:54 ◼   ► of the Mac and iOS line. But those started I think $1499 and 4k or slightly more than

00:02:00 ◼   ► 4k. I think it's like 4k point five. With improved color definition, they're using the

00:02:09 ◼   ► same I don't know the phrase off the top of my head because I'm a bad film student, but

00:02:14 ◼   ► they're basically using the same color profiles as you would with the digital projectors.

00:02:19 ◼   ► So it allows it to be more true to life when you're editing when you're color correcting

00:02:23 ◼   ► both video and photography. And the 27 inch IMAX get that too. They don't get a boost above

00:02:28 ◼   ► their 5k, they're still 5k and magical and far too able to just get sucked into their

00:02:35 ◼   ► beautiful screen. But they also have improved color definition and they get Skylake, Intel's

00:02:41 ◼   ► next generation processor, which has been a long time coming. But no Thunderbolt 3 and

00:02:48 ◼   ► the 21.5 inch iMacs are still stuck on Broadwell because the integrated Intel processor, the

00:02:55 ◼   ► graphics processor doesn't play nice with Skylake yet because roadmaps.

00:02:59 ◼   ► Yeah, so now my year old 5k iMac that I'm looking at is outdated.

00:03:06 ◼   ► A little bit outdated. I was actually I was looking at some of the I think Jason Snell's

00:03:09 ◼   ► review had initial benchmarks from Geekbench and it was saying, oh yeah, the new 21.5 inch

00:03:14 ◼   ► I'm back out paces some for our 5k 27 inch I'm accent like I guess I'm kind of glad I waited now

00:03:21 ◼   ► Though yeah, I I'm still I'm gonna go in for the 21.5 inch

00:03:26 ◼   ► so the 27 inch is still gonna cook kick my bacon with

00:03:30 ◼   ► Fancy sky like mumble-dee-jumble. Yeah, I don't feel too bad about it. I mean, it's inevitable

00:03:36 ◼   ► It's a whole you got a whole year as the king of the hill

00:03:38 ◼   ► Exactly. And I still subscribe to the I like to buy a Mac, Macs it out and then use it until you know, for years until it gets low because I still find it even with Dropbox and iCloud and other things, I still find that it takes me forever to get a Mac set up just the way I want it.

00:03:55 ◼   ► Yeah, even I mean, it's been it's gotten a lot better than it used to be where I still remember the days of just having to clone my hard drive because the idea of in reinstalling all of my applications and tweaking my preferences just made me want to throw up.

00:04:10 ◼   ► But yeah, I feel the same way.

00:04:13 ◼   ► I still have a 2008 MacBook Pro,

00:04:16 ◼   ► Unibody MacBook Pro that I put an SSD in three years ago,

00:04:20 ◼   ► and it's still almost as fast as my MacBook Air.

00:04:23 ◼   ► I mean, it's a pain in the butt because it's 15 inches and it's not really a

00:04:28 ◼   ► super portable machine and it's not retina.

00:04:30 ◼   ► But it's still one of those things where I'm like, well,

00:04:33 ◼   ► it's still perfectly good and it's still fast.

00:04:36 ◼   ► I feel weird just being like, no, sorry,

00:04:39 ◼   ► you're gonna go in a drawer, I'm not gonna use you anymore. You really can't do that for an iMac.

00:04:43 ◼   ► No, I really, what I did last year when I bought this is I just bought the best one that they would

00:04:49 ◼   ► sell me. I just maxed out the RAM, I got the one terabyte SSD. So you know, I forget how much that

00:04:57 ◼   ► cost. I think it was like $3,000, $3,500? Sounds about right. Some obscene amount of money.

00:05:02 ◼   ► But my thinking is just max it out and I'll use it for at least four years. And yeah,

00:05:08 ◼   ► and then by the time I upgrade it'll be nice. But anyway, the color stuff hurts a little bit.

00:05:12 ◼   ► So I think, correct me if I'm wrong, you probably know more about this than me. To me,

00:05:18 ◼   ► the old consumer gold standard was the SRGB color space. Yes, correct. And the basic gist,

00:05:27 ◼   ► if you just want to get a handle on this, is that the new color space that all of these

00:05:31 ◼   ► retina displays both the 21 inch and the the 27 inch is significantly bigger than sRGB.

00:05:39 ◼   ► It's it's much more of a pro color space. Very much so and very very similar to the kind of

00:05:45 ◼   ► output that you're going to get on digital projectors. I'm looking up I'm looking up

00:05:48 ◼   ► Renee's FAQ now so I can actually have specific terms. They're using DCI-P3 which is the same

00:05:57 ◼   ► color space used by digital movie theaters. And they're using a different LED type display now.

00:06:04 ◼   ► It's a more advanced red green phosphor LED, which allows them to do better color balance

00:06:11 ◼   ► and hit wider ranges of colors, which that combined with the new color space really,

00:06:15 ◼   ► really makes for some crystal clear photos and video. Not that the 5k was hurting in that before,

00:06:23 ◼   ► but I do feel that professional professional editors are going to hear that and just be like,

00:06:29 ◼   ► damn it, why do I own a Mac Pro? Why do I own a five? Why don't I own this machine? Why can't

00:06:35 ◼   ► I just replace it? Oh, wait, I can I just have to spend a ton of money.

00:06:38 ◼   ► And I think it's funny. It's funny the way that even with the max, they're sort of as they

00:06:44 ◼   ► march towards this all retina lineup. I mean, and it's it's a year by year March, where now it's by

00:06:52 ◼   ► far the overwhelming majority of the project products are all retina. Finally, yeah. And it's

00:06:59 ◼   ► funny the way it sort of follows like the precedent that they've set with the iPads.

00:07:03 ◼   ► Like to me, the 21-inch iMac is sort of like the iPad mini compared to the iPad Air,

00:07:12 ◼   ► which is the 27-inch iMac. So it gets everything a year ahead. It goes retina first. Now,

00:07:19 ◼   ► year later you can only get the 27 inch in retina and the 21 inch does exactly

00:07:25 ◼   ► what the 27 inch did last year which is there's a high-end model with a retina

00:07:30 ◼   ► display but you can still get the non retina so my guess is by next year there

00:07:35 ◼   ► will be no more non retina IMAX yeah there will only be even higher resolution

00:07:39 ◼   ► retina IMAX yeah yeah I I really like this it's a from a business standpoint

00:07:44 ◼   ► it seems like a good way to roll things out where they're like oh these displays

00:07:48 ◼   ► are too expensive for your average user to want to ponyate to up $3,000 plus dollars.

00:07:54 ◼   ► So we're going to put them in the high end models for the people who are really going

00:07:57 ◼   ► to appreciate them and be able to spend money on them. And then the more money they spend

00:08:01 ◼   ► on them, the more orders that we can place with our suppliers. And the more orders we

00:08:04 ◼   ► can place with our suppliers, we can bring the cost down and it just trickles down into

00:08:08 ◼   ► the rest of the rest of the line.

00:08:10 ◼   ► The what do you call it? The low end model, I don't even know what it used to be, but

00:08:15 ◼   ► it's it is kind of a, it's it seems kind of wimpy. It's only 1.6. And I know, you know,

00:08:21 ◼   ► like that none of us really talk about gigahertz anymore. I mean, it's it's gotten away from

00:08:27 ◼   ► us. But when it's half half the speed in gigahertz as the one that's only $400 more, it kind

00:08:35 ◼   ► of sticks out.

00:08:36 ◼   ► Definitely an upsell. I mean, I have to assume that these the low end models are really designed for the education market or they're designed for the folks who oh, well, you just need an iMac in your place of business or you need an iMac that's essentially a glorified display to play a movie on.

00:08:53 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:08:54 ◼   ► - Because--

00:08:54 ◼   ► - I don't know about education anymore

00:08:56 ◼   ► because I think that so much of education

00:08:58 ◼   ► has gone to laptop form factors of some kind.

00:09:02 ◼   ► You know, a lot of Chromebooks, let's, you know, for sure.

00:09:05 ◼   ► - No question.

00:09:06 ◼   ► - But, you know, it doesn't seem to me like school,

00:09:09 ◼   ► and there's like a practical aspect of that too.

00:09:11 ◼   ► Like if you're gonna go with iMacs,

00:09:14 ◼   ► you need to set them up in a permanent spot.

00:09:17 ◼   ► Whereas the whole gist of moving, you know,

00:09:20 ◼   ► especially like in what I'm familiar with with my son

00:09:22 ◼   ► with the elementary school,

00:09:24 ◼   ► it's that they can take the Chromebooks

00:09:27 ◼   ► and the MacBooks out when they need them

00:09:31 ◼   ► and set them up on the regular desks

00:09:34 ◼   ► that they use for everything else.

00:09:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, you don't need to go into a separate computer room.

00:09:37 ◼   ► I think I'm more thinking administration-wise.

00:09:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

00:09:40 ◼   ► - Where you're looking at, yeah, nonprofits,

00:09:42 ◼   ► or people who really don't have a big budget

00:09:45 ◼   ► for their electronics, which is sad a little bit in 2015.

00:09:48 ◼   ► - Or if you're just gonna use it

00:09:50 ◼   ► as the machine at the front desk

00:09:52 ◼   ► for people to sign in when they come into the office or something and you really don't

00:09:55 ◼   ► need performance.

00:09:57 ◼   ► If you haven't switched already to an iPad.

00:10:00 ◼   ► What else are people complaining about?

00:10:02 ◼   ► I know people are complaining that the hard drive is 5400 RPM.

00:10:09 ◼   ► I would rather complain that they're not SSDs in the iMac by default.

00:10:15 ◼   ► But you know, I guess if we want to complain about hard drive speed, we can complain about

00:10:19 ◼   ► hard drive speed.

00:10:20 ◼   ► it has something to do with the 21.5 inches a 2.5 inch hard drive as opposed to a 3.5

00:10:26 ◼   ► inch hard drive. So a little bit trickier there.

00:10:29 ◼   ► Yeah, and in a weird way, even though it's 21 inches, it's sort of like the in some ways,

00:10:35 ◼   ► I think the guts of a laptop.

00:10:38 ◼   ► Yeah, well, when you think about how thin the 21.5 inch iMac is, and just how much space

00:10:44 ◼   ► of that has to be filled with, oh, you know, giant retina display and cooling said giant

00:10:50 ◼   ► retina display, you really don't have all that much more area to put in high level chips

00:10:58 ◼   ► without necessarily unless unless they figure out a way to flatten silicon even more like

00:11:02 ◼   ► Oh, yes, we're going to line line the edges of the iMac display with with silicon chips

00:11:08 ◼   ► now.

00:11:09 ◼   ► I did notice too on the 21 inch the storage for flash only goes up to 512

00:11:15 ◼   ► So if you want a terabyte you're looking at but I guess that kind of makes sense

00:11:19 ◼   ► I feel like because a terabyte of flash storage is still very expensive

00:11:23 ◼   ► Relative to hard drive prices for sure

00:11:26 ◼   ► And I guess once you're in that sort of budget range, you're looking at the 27 inch anyway

00:11:32 ◼   ► Yeah, when I was pricing out my 21 5 and for me, I I prefer slightly the 21 5

00:11:38 ◼   ► space for my desk because I I don't know the 27 inch like is gorgeous

00:11:43 ◼   ► But I feel myself getting lost in that space especially in retina

00:11:46 ◼   ► Or it's just it's too much too much for me unless I'm editing video in which case oh

00:11:50 ◼   ► This is nice pixel for pixel 4k is great

00:11:53 ◼   ► But when I was pricing out my 21.5 inch iMac

00:11:57 ◼   ► I I was looking at the price and I was like alright

00:12:00 ◼   ► So I'm upgrading to a fusion drive and I'm upgrading the memory and you know

00:12:05 ◼   ► Put in on a magic trackpad because so magic mice and then I'm looking at the price

00:12:10 ◼   ► I'm like, this is basically the price of a mid-level to high-level

00:12:14 ◼   ► 27 inch stock iMac. Yeah, and

00:12:18 ◼   ► I yeah, I think you're absolutely right where people look at that price and they're like well

00:12:22 ◼   ► But I could go bigger and bigger would make you know bigger is always better, right and

00:12:27 ◼   ► For the most part I you know again there are certain circumstances where I actually think a twenty one point five is better than a twenty

00:12:34 ◼   ► But I think for the vast majority of users, they're like, oh, I can get a bigger screen

00:12:37 ◼   ► for the same amount of tweaking as, you know, I would pay for trying to upgrade the internals

00:12:42 ◼   ► of a 21.5. Sign me up.

00:12:45 ◼   ► Yeah. Is all of the RAM Do you know this is the RAM soldered onto the motherboard?

00:12:51 ◼   ► It is in the 21.5. It is not in the 21.7 which I did or 21.7 the 27 inch. Yeah.

00:12:59 ◼   ► So it's just another way where there is sort of a consumer slash pro split between 21 and

00:13:04 ◼   ► 27.

00:13:05 ◼   ► Mm hmm.

00:13:06 ◼   ► It's very I think the 21 is still very much marketed towards the entry, not even the entry

00:13:11 ◼   ► level user, but the user who either has their first Mac or is about to get their first Mac

00:13:16 ◼   ► and needs a desktop over a laptop or an iPad.

00:13:20 ◼   ► Right.

00:13:21 ◼   ► I kind of feel I understand, you know, the there's a couple people on Twitter and who've

00:13:28 ◼   ► emailed me about the soldering of the RAM and it seems like that's a real sticking point

00:13:32 ◼   ► for a certain segment of the audience. But I really feel like it's almost like we're

00:13:37 ◼   ► lucky that you can do it on any of the machines anymore. It's just not the way of the future.

00:13:44 ◼   ► Your computers from Apple come out of China completely set for the most part. So the fact

00:13:54 ◼   ► that you can still add your diddle with the RAM on your own on the 27 inch take that as

00:13:58 ◼   ► a win and I wouldn't lose much sleep over the 21.5 being you know, you choose eight

00:14:04 ◼   ► or 16 and live with it forever.

00:14:06 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly. I would I would much prefer to be able to remove and twiddle with RAM

00:14:12 ◼   ► and there's an there's a model to do that. But for the again, the average user, I just

00:14:17 ◼   ► don't think cares. No, and I feel like it's another it's another way that the iOS devices

00:14:23 ◼   ► again, I you know, Apple, people keep asking and Apple keeps saying, No, we're not going to have one operating system for everything. And I really think that they're serious about it. But they are you can see where, you know, one platform is going by where the other platform has gone first. And the iOS hardware model of there's nothing that you can alter or adjust, there's no way to put a memory card in to expand

00:14:52 ◼   ► the storage or anything like that is definitely the way the Mac is heading.

00:14:57 ◼   ► Yeah, and I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing anymore.

00:15:02 ◼   ► I know there's a lot of people who have been arms, "Oh, it's less repairable,"

00:15:06 ◼   ► and "Oh, what if I want to tinker with my computer?"

00:15:09 ◼   ► Well, there's still ways to build your own computer.

00:15:11 ◼   ► It's just not going to be from Apple.

00:15:15 ◼   ► I don't see that there's something wrong with Apple saying, "You know what?

00:15:19 ◼   ► We know what the best processors in the market are going to be.

00:15:21 ◼   ► know what the the best memory is going to be and we're going to package it up in a you know in a

00:15:26 ◼   ► package that actually makes sense for you as a user that would give you real world usage. I mean,

00:15:31 ◼   ► we've never been able to tinker with an iPhone's internals. I don't think anybody's complaining

00:15:35 ◼   ► about that because most people wouldn't know how to even begin to solder micro architecture. It's

00:15:40 ◼   ► only because the IMAX architecture is big enough that we at one point were able to feasibly play

00:15:45 ◼   ► around with it that we're like, yeah, we can totally build a better computer than Apple,

00:15:48 ◼   ► no problem. Apple's totally wrong. You don't need a gigabytes, you need more than eight gigabytes of

00:15:52 ◼   ► RAM. And in that I kind of agree with the general population on but, but still, I don't think that

00:15:58 ◼   ► it's necessarily a bad thing. And then lastly, you touched on this a few minutes ago, but it's

00:16:04 ◼   ► at this point, and I don't think the Mac Pro is dead. I think that there will be a new one

00:16:09 ◼   ► at some point, but who knows when and you don't have to just look at the new Darth Vader Mac Pro,

00:16:17 ◼   ► You could just look back at maybe even going back close to 10 years now that the Mac Pro

00:16:23 ◼   ► just does not see updates anywhere near on a yearly schedule.

00:16:27 ◼   ► No, it will.

00:16:29 ◼   ► It does make sense also, to be perfectly honest, because the Mac Pro has such different internals

00:16:34 ◼   ► than the other than the other two lines.

00:16:37 ◼   ► And because their internals are very, at least at this point, very hog tied to Intel's rollout

00:16:42 ◼   ► schedule.

00:16:43 ◼   ► Like it doesn't make sense for the for the Mac Pro to be updated until they can have

00:16:47 ◼   ► processor that has full Thunderbolt 3 functionality so they could you know say release a retina display

00:16:52 ◼   ► with with Thunderbolt 3 so that people could have their their 4k display without an iMac.

00:16:57 ◼   ► But it doesn't like I don't know it seems it seems silly to me to push like incremental updates to

00:17:03 ◼   ► the MacBook Pro or the Mac the Mac Pro because the only the only people who are buying it are

00:17:09 ◼   ► at this point are serious pros because the my Mac has filled that kind of semi pro hole.

00:17:14 ◼   ► So if you're buying a serious pro machine, you're only going to upgrade your serious pro machine

00:17:19 ◼   ► like we were talking about earlier when your old pro machine is about ready to die or it does

00:17:24 ◼   ► something so spectacularly different that it's going to be better for you. Yeah, but for some

00:17:29 ◼   ► people I think it's clearly, you know, the big iMac, the 27-inch iMac is the proper pro machine

00:17:37 ◼   ► for them. Like I'm thinking like especially like photographers and video editors. Oh yeah. Because

00:17:43 ◼   ► of the extra color space because there is no retina display from Apple, you know, the only way

00:17:48 ◼   ► to get it anything like a retina display is sort of a hack at this point. With the Mac Pro. It's,

00:17:57 ◼   ► I think it's clearly the better machine. But then I wonder if they buy them now are they going to

00:18:02 ◼   ► be mad if you know, Mac pros are announced at WWDC or something like that? Yeah, where it's like,

00:18:07 ◼   ► oh, now we have a Thunderbolt three retina display. I mean, when you're talking about

00:18:12 ◼   ► that kind of a space. It depends on what project you're working on right now, right? If they need

00:18:17 ◼   ► retina support, if they're working on 4k video, and actively, you know, doing that for their job,

00:18:23 ◼   ► they're going to want a good 4k monitor. And the real question is, well, can I get that from a

00:18:28 ◼   ► third party? And is it still going to look great? Or do I want to go to, you know, a machine that

00:18:33 ◼   ► has DCI color space and use that instead? And I think that might be the selling factor. Will they

00:18:39 ◼   ► will they be then grumpy if Apple's like,

00:18:41 ◼   ► "Yes, now we have a pro that supports a Retina display there."

00:18:44 ◼   ► But if they needed that functionality six months ago,

00:18:48 ◼   ► then that announcement six months later

00:18:50 ◼   ► isn't gonna help them.

00:18:51 ◼   ► Like it isn't gonna help them finish this project today.

00:18:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, maybe, and you know,

00:18:56 ◼   ► maybe this is wishful thinking, but maybe once,

00:19:00 ◼   ► like I feel like in a lot of ways, all of these machines,

00:19:04 ◼   ► the move to Retina has been difficult

00:19:07 ◼   ► for every single thing because it's always a lot

00:19:09 ◼   ► because you're effectively going to four times the pixels.

00:19:12 ◼   ► At some point you're gonna say,

00:19:14 ◼   ► here's a new machine that replaces one from last year

00:19:18 ◼   ► and it has four times the pixels.

00:19:21 ◼   ► Right?

00:19:21 ◼   ► I mean, and so like it was a huge deal

00:19:23 ◼   ► when the iPhone 4 went red in 2010

00:19:26 ◼   ► and the iPad took a while to follow.

00:19:30 ◼   ► Macs took a long time to follow

00:19:31 ◼   ► and it was only on one model,

00:19:33 ◼   ► the 15 inch MacBook Pro at first.

00:19:37 ◼   ► And I feel like the Mac Pro is the last

00:19:40 ◼   ► and it's the hardest because they can't just seal it all up.

00:19:43 ◼   ► Like with the, you know, remember the crazy story

00:19:46 ◼   ► about how they got the 5K iMac last year

00:19:49 ◼   ► was with this weird internal, you know,

00:19:52 ◼   ► how are they driving all those pixels

00:19:54 ◼   ► when it seems like there isn't a graphics card to do it

00:19:56 ◼   ► and they had to write their own, you know.

00:19:58 ◼   ► - Their own, yeah, their own piece.

00:19:58 ◼   ► - Video controller.

00:20:00 ◼   ► Right, they had to invent hardware to do it.

00:20:03 ◼   ► With a Mac Pro, they really are stuck waiting

00:20:05 ◼   ► on Thunderbolt 3, because it has to be a cable.

00:20:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, they can't write their own graphics controller

00:20:12 ◼   ► in a machine that they're not, you know,

00:20:14 ◼   ► they just don't have the flexibility right now

00:20:17 ◼   ► without having a display that they connect via Thunderbolt 3

00:20:20 ◼   ► or something along those lines.

00:20:22 ◼   ► - So maybe once they make, this is where I'm going,

00:20:24 ◼   ► maybe once they make that leap and maybe, you know,

00:20:26 ◼   ► I can't help but think of it, it's a 2016 thing

00:20:30 ◼   ► that at some point in 2016, whether it's early in the year

00:20:33 ◼   ► WWDC or next October at the latest that they'll have a Mac Pro update and a you

00:20:39 ◼   ► know whatever they're gonna call it cinema display, Thunderbolt 3 display

00:20:43 ◼   ► whatever but a standalone retina display comparable or even better than the 5k

00:20:49 ◼   ► iMac display for Mac Pros but then maybe once they make that leap maybe then the

00:20:56 ◼   ► Mac Pro can see a slightly more regular incremental updates because they've

00:21:00 ◼   ► already made that jump and they can just sort of keep, keep maintain, right, keep dipping in with

00:21:07 ◼   ► the latest and greatest incremental updates from Intel.

00:21:10 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, until until they decide to make another logical leap, which Intel is unable to,

00:21:17 ◼   ► it's it feels like that we're talking about power PCs, and we're suddenly in early 2000s. It's,

00:21:23 ◼   ► it's so weird to me that all of a sudden, you know, Intel, which we used to hold up this kind of

00:21:27 ◼   ► the gold standard of like regular tik tok updates is now very much a little hamstrung

00:21:32 ◼   ► where I what the MacBook Pros were waiting on broadwell chips for a very long time. The

00:21:39 ◼   ► new IMAX were waiting on Skylake and eventually shipped half and half. Like that kind of stuff

00:21:45 ◼   ► is so crazy. The Mac Bros are probably waiting on Skylake and Thunderbolt three to build

00:21:50 ◼   ► proper cinema displays. I wonder also how long Apple is going to continue being like,

00:21:56 ◼   ► We have to wait around for our manufacturing partners because they've really they've cut most of that out on the on the iOS line

00:22:03 ◼   ► You know, they're they're not waiting around for a lot of people because they're building their own chips

00:22:06 ◼   ► Yeah, well, I don't know. I don't think they can do that on the high-end pro side within you know with Intel

00:22:12 ◼   ► Yeah, not certainly not right now, right? And then even in the foreseeable future if you know we and this is a

00:22:18 ◼   ► Rabbit hole we don't have to go down but the whole idea of arm based max

00:22:23 ◼   ► clearly in the same way that retina came in at the you know it step-by-step arm-based max if it ever happens are gonna come in not

00:22:31 ◼   ► All at once but step by step and it's gonna start with the you know one port MacBook

00:22:36 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, it'll start at the very low end

00:22:38 ◼   ► I don't even yeah, I can't I can't imagine an art an arm-based Mac Pro is definitely a ways away

00:22:44 ◼   ► Yeah, it's possible. But it's you know, that's that's like outside the event horizon. Yes, I

00:22:51 ◼   ► I guess the thing that leaves people with a bad taste in their mouth though is that if you are a premium customer at Apple

00:22:57 ◼   ► and you have money to burn, it's easy to feel confident that you've got the best thing.

00:23:03 ◼   ► Like you can just go in and you know if you're gonna buy an iPhone.

00:23:07 ◼   ► If you're willing to...

00:23:10 ◼   ► If you like the bigger size or just willing to put up with the bigger size, if you get the 6S+

00:23:15 ◼   ► and you max the storage, you know you're getting the best of everything.

00:23:19 ◼   ► You've got the image stabilization on the camera

00:23:22 ◼   ► and all the best performance.

00:23:25 ◼   ► And if you don't like the bigger size,

00:23:27 ◼   ► you know exactly what you're missing out.

00:23:28 ◼   ► All you're missing out on is the image stabilization.

00:23:31 ◼   ► And you've got the best iPhone.

00:23:33 ◼   ► iPad, it's really easy to get the best iPad.

00:23:36 ◼   ► Everybody knows that the new iPad Pro

00:23:38 ◼   ► is going to be the most powerful iPad.

00:23:41 ◼   ► And it's the only one that has the new pen-based screen,

00:23:47 ◼   ► pencil based screen. I keep calling it a pen. Yeah. So you know, and you know what the trade

00:23:52 ◼   ► off is, it's the physical size of the device. And I think what leaves people with a bad

00:23:56 ◼   ► taste in their mouths when they've dropped a lot of money on a Mac Pro rig is that they

00:24:01 ◼   ► look around and they're like, I don't have the best of anything.

00:24:03 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm kind of in this. I'm in this purgatory, this pro purgatory hell. Yeah, I mean, I've

00:24:11 ◼   ► talked to a lot of, I have a lot of friends in the film industry and a lot of people have

00:24:16 ◼   ► been slowly but surely switching away from Mac Pros. And I guess Mac Pros make sense

00:24:22 ◼   ► to a certain extent, I guess, if you want to rig up, you know, a massive,

00:24:24 ◼   ► Yeah, and I shouldn't say that they don't have the best of everything. They do have

00:24:27 ◼   ► the best expansion. And they do have like, for certain computationally intensive tasks,

00:24:36 ◼   ► the having eight cores or however many cores you can max the thing out.

00:24:40 ◼   ► 16, 32. Yeah,

00:24:41 ◼   ► right. You can really you know, you can do there's certain tasks that if you can split

00:24:45 ◼   ► them up in parallel like that really you can see tremendous advantages. So there are some

00:24:49 ◼   ► but it's a mixed bag where you're trading off like you don't have a display anywhere

00:24:53 ◼   ► near as nice as the retina 5k Mac and the fight you know, like a, you know, for $2,000

00:25:00 ◼   ► you could buy an iMac with a better display than then the you know, a $20,000 Mac Pro

00:25:05 ◼   ► setup could have.

00:25:06 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, the 12 12 core Mac Pro is very impressive inside as you were saying in some

00:25:12 ◼   ► respects. But it's interesting to me as somebody who used to live almost obsessively off of off of

00:25:20 ◼   ► towers and then later with the Mac Pro, the original sort of pre pre cylindrical pro machine,

00:25:27 ◼   ► how much I don't fit into that mindset anymore. Even you know, I don't do nearly as much film

00:25:33 ◼   ► editing and editing as I used to. But still, like the iMac really has become I think the desktop

00:25:38 ◼   ► machine for 80 85% of the population, including the pros.

00:25:43 ◼   ► Yeah, or it just it makes more sense. You don't need well, you

00:25:46 ◼   ► don't need the I mean, you think about where the iMac debuted,

00:25:49 ◼   ► right. And Apple had this great, this great then and now website

00:25:54 ◼   ► that they put up alongside the new iMac. So they're like, let's

00:25:57 ◼   ► remember back to 1997 and the original iMac and how much

00:26:01 ◼   ► faster our new iMacs are versus that. The iMac when it came out

00:26:05 ◼   ► was very hamstrung and very much a consumer friendly, this is the intro, this is your

00:26:10 ◼   ► introduction to the Mac line device. And as it's grown throughout the years, it really

00:26:15 ◼   ► has, you know, it's been able to beef up what it can do and how it can compete against the

00:26:20 ◼   ► Mac Pro. And I mean, retina is only the latest here in a series of dynamic and smart improvements

00:26:26 ◼   ► that move it on up, you're still you're not going to get the most cores and you're not

00:26:30 ◼   ► going to get the most RAM and you're not going to be able to slot things in and out because

00:26:33 ◼   ► the screen is what like an inch thick but but it's it's the better computer for the majority of

00:26:40 ◼   ► people and I mean that's that's Apple's goal right they don't want you to have to fiddle around with

00:26:45 ◼   ► things yeah I linked to that site the other day the the the then and now comparison to the 98 iMac

00:26:52 ◼   ► and it is it's a cool comparison to you know wow how quickly we've you know you know I say quickly

00:26:58 ◼   ► but it's been 17 years.

00:27:00 ◼   ► But it's-

00:27:00 ◼   ► It feels quick.

00:27:01 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:27:02 ◼   ► But it is interesting to compare it in the context of this discussion of what do you get if you're a

00:27:08 ◼   ► pro and you want to drop, you know, get the best rig you can.

00:27:11 ◼   ► In 1998, anybody with a Mac Pro or is that what we call Mac Pros back then?

00:27:17 ◼   ► They were G4, G3 towers at that point.

00:27:19 ◼   ► Power Macs.

00:27:20 ◼   ► Yeah, Power Mac G3s.

00:27:21 ◼   ► Yeah, Power Mac G3.

00:27:23 ◼   ► Would look at the iMac and say, "Wow, that's cute."

00:27:26 ◼   ► But there wasn't one single thing about it that was better than, you know,

00:27:30 ◼   ► performance wise or decides it display wise that you could drive, you know,

00:27:35 ◼   ► you have fun with your little hockey puck mouse and all in one computer. No,

00:27:38 ◼   ► you used to get the hockey puck with the power Mac too. It was just, yeah,

00:27:42 ◼   ► that's right. That's right. But yeah, but ever anybody I knew with a,

00:27:45 ◼   ► with a power Mac upgraded to a Kensington is like, Oh yes,

00:27:48 ◼   ► ball mice are superior. Do you know,

00:27:50 ◼   ► I I've brought this up many times before over the years, but my wife, Amy,

00:27:54 ◼   ► she loved the hockey puck mouse. It is not universally loathed. There were people and

00:28:00 ◼   ► my wife was one of them. She used it for years afterwards like on subsequent you know she

00:28:03 ◼   ► kept she kept her iMac mouse and moved it from computer to computer.

00:28:08 ◼   ► Oh, I still have my hockey puck mouse. I did like it. I didn't like it for certain tasks.

00:28:15 ◼   ► But it's cute in its own way. It's it's it's part of the joy of the iMac. I don't know

00:28:20 ◼   ► the haters. The haters can go hate somewhere else.

00:28:23 ◼   ► Well, hold that thought.

00:28:24 ◼   ► I'm gonna do a sponsor read,

00:28:25 ◼   ► but we'll go back and we'll talk about the new mouse.

00:28:28 ◼   ► It's a good segue.

00:28:30 ◼   ► But first, let me tell everybody

00:28:31 ◼   ► about our good friends at Harry's.

00:28:34 ◼   ► You guys know Harry's.

00:28:35 ◼   ► They offer high quality razors and blades

00:28:38 ◼   ► for a fraction of the price

00:28:40 ◼   ► of the big name brand razor brands.

00:28:43 ◼   ► Harry's was started by two guys

00:28:46 ◼   ► who just wanted a better product

00:28:48 ◼   ► without paying an arm and a leg.

00:28:50 ◼   ► 'Cause shaving stuff, razor blades are super expensive.

00:28:52 ◼   ► There's no reason for it.

00:28:54 ◼   ► So Harry's is super serious about this.

00:28:56 ◼   ► They're not just like some kind of thing

00:28:58 ◼   ► where they buy white label razor blades

00:28:59 ◼   ► and put their own logo on them or whatever.

00:29:01 ◼   ► They actually were sourcing them

00:29:03 ◼   ► from an old, really old razor factory in Germany.

00:29:07 ◼   ► And they liked the product so much

00:29:09 ◼   ► that they bought the factory.

00:29:11 ◼   ► So these are high quality, high performing,

00:29:13 ◼   ► German made razor blades that Harry's supervises themselves.

00:29:18 ◼   ► The reason they can sell stuff for so much less

00:29:20 ◼   ► is that it's like the whole internet model.

00:29:23 ◼   ► It's just direct.

00:29:24 ◼   ► You go to Harry's website, you sign up,

00:29:27 ◼   ► and they ship it to you.

00:29:28 ◼   ► So there's no middlemen.

00:29:30 ◼   ► There are no distributors.

00:29:31 ◼   ► There's no retail.

00:29:32 ◼   ► Like every step of the way when you buy razor blades,

00:29:35 ◼   ► like at a Walgreens or even at like Amazon

00:29:38 ◼   ► or something like that,

00:29:40 ◼   ► it's a little bit of markup each step of the way.

00:29:42 ◼   ► It goes to a distributor, goes to the retailer,

00:29:44 ◼   ► and everybody takes a little cut.

00:29:45 ◼   ► Harry's just sells these things direct,

00:29:48 ◼   ► right from them, right to you.

00:29:50 ◼   ► and the prices are amazing.

00:29:51 ◼   ► They have a starter set.

00:29:53 ◼   ► 15 bucks gets you a razor,

00:29:56 ◼   ► your choice of moisturizing shave cream or gel,

00:30:00 ◼   ► and three razor blades.

00:30:02 ◼   ► And when you need more blades,

00:30:03 ◼   ► they are two bucks each or less.

00:30:05 ◼   ► You can get an eight pack for just 15 bucks,

00:30:07 ◼   ► but if you wanna buy in bulk,

00:30:08 ◼   ► they get cheaper and cheaper.

00:30:09 ◼   ► 16 pack is 25 bucks.

00:30:11 ◼   ► If you go to Amazon,

00:30:15 ◼   ► Gillette Fusions 12 pack of blades is 41 bucks.

00:30:19 ◼   ► So it's like half the price of a Gillette Fusion.

00:30:22 ◼   ► Totally serious, I use it myself.

00:30:23 ◼   ► Very, very comparable quality-wise.

00:30:26 ◼   ► I've had mine, I don't know,

00:30:28 ◼   ► long-time listeners of the show know

00:30:30 ◼   ► that Harry's has been sponsoring the show

00:30:31 ◼   ► for at least two years, maybe even longer.

00:30:34 ◼   ► And they sent me one way back when they started.

00:30:36 ◼   ► I still have that razor handle and I look at it now.

00:30:40 ◼   ► It looks brand new, looks mint condition.

00:30:42 ◼   ► It looks like I could just package it up

00:30:44 ◼   ► and sell it as mint.

00:30:45 ◼   ► Really high quality stuff.

00:30:46 ◼   ► So go check them out at harrys.com.

00:30:50 ◼   ► And the code, the promo code is the talk show.

00:30:54 ◼   ► And if you are a first time customer,

00:30:56 ◼   ► you will save five bucks off your first purchase,

00:30:58 ◼   ► which means you can get that starter kit for just 10 bucks,

00:31:01 ◼   ► which is amazing.

00:31:03 ◼   ► So go to harrys.com and the code is the talk show.

00:31:06 ◼   ► So the other new stuff that Apple announced this week

00:31:11 ◼   ► with these iMacs are all new wireless peripherals,

00:31:16 ◼   ► - New keyboard. - Accessories.

00:31:17 ◼   ► - Accessories, new keyboard, a new magic track pad,

00:31:22 ◼   ► and a new magic mouse.

00:31:25 ◼   ► - I just can't call it the magic mouse.

00:31:26 ◼   ► It just makes me crack up every time.

00:31:28 ◼   ► I think of like the little cartoon characters.

00:31:30 ◼   ► - It's funny because I feel like we get used

00:31:36 ◼   ► to Apple's names, and I remember MacBook was--

00:31:41 ◼   ► - Oh, MacBook was so hard.

00:31:43 ◼   ► - It just seemed, I don't know,

00:31:44 ◼   ► it just was really hard for me to get it.

00:31:46 ◼   ► And now, you know, it's just,

00:31:49 ◼   ► your brain gets bludgeoned into accepting it over time.

00:31:52 ◼   ► - It's second nature.

00:31:53 ◼   ► You're like, all right, I've given up.

00:31:54 ◼   ► I won't call it a PowerBook anymore.

00:31:56 ◼   ► Sorry, Apple.

00:31:57 ◼   ► - And I understand the logic of it

00:31:59 ◼   ► because the power in PowerBook was from PowerPC

00:32:02 ◼   ► and it wasn't really branded by Apple,

00:32:05 ◼   ► whereas putting Mac in the name really does help.

00:32:07 ◼   ► It actually makes some kind of sense

00:32:09 ◼   ► that all of the Macs would have the word Mac in them.

00:32:13 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Right?

00:32:14 ◼   ► I understand that, but MacBook was somehow a mouthful.

00:32:17 ◼   ► It just doesn't seem like two words

00:32:19 ◼   ► that fit quite as well together as PowerBook did.

00:32:23 ◼   ► But to me, calling these things magic,

00:32:28 ◼   ► it always embarrasses me every time

00:32:30 ◼   ► I have to type it or say it.

00:32:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, it feels very, oh yes,

00:32:34 ◼   ► these are different than normal accessories.

00:32:37 ◼   ► How you ask?

00:32:38 ◼   ► They have magic.

00:32:40 ◼   ► The magic trackpad, yeah, it still makes me smile.

00:32:44 ◼   ► The trackpad, I can kind of understand it because yes, it does, especially with the

00:32:48 ◼   ► new improvements to this version of the trackpad where it gets the MacBook's Taptic Engine

00:32:54 ◼   ► and Faux clicking so you're no longer depressing a button, you're using the magic of Force

00:33:00 ◼   ► Touch and the Taptic Engine to make it feel like you're clicking.

00:33:04 ◼   ► Like that, I would actually genuinely use "It feels like magic" because you're not actually

00:33:09 ◼   ► clicking on anything.

00:33:10 ◼   ► But the mouse is still just a mouse.

00:33:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I guess that their claim for the magic

00:33:16 ◼   ► is that you get both the mouse that moves

00:33:18 ◼   ► and you get the, you know,

00:33:21 ◼   ► you can do the gestures on the surface.

00:33:24 ◼   ► But to me, it's like, that's just the way you, Apple,

00:33:29 ◼   ► have chosen to implement the scroll wheels.

00:33:32 ◼   ► And, you know, mice have done more

00:33:34 ◼   ► than just move the cursor around for--

00:33:36 ◼   ► - For a very long time. - A very long time.

00:33:38 ◼   ► And it's just an implementation detail,

00:33:40 ◼   ► whether you're gonna use a wheel or that,

00:33:43 ◼   ► remember that little ball they had for a while?

00:33:46 ◼   ► - Oh, so bad.

00:33:47 ◼   ► - So truth be told, I have not used an Apple

00:33:52 ◼   ► manufactured mouse on a regular basis since the ADB era.

00:33:57 ◼   ► - Wow.

00:33:58 ◼   ► - The last ADB Apple mouse, which was a one button mouse.

00:34:02 ◼   ► I loved it.

00:34:03 ◼   ► - Had a good click.

00:34:05 ◼   ► - It had a great click and it had a great form factor.

00:34:08 ◼   ► it fit my hand the way that I like to hold a mouse.

00:34:11 ◼   ► I know ATP has gone long on this a while ago,

00:34:14 ◼   ► that depending on when you learn to use a mouse,

00:34:16 ◼   ► you grip it in a certain way,

00:34:18 ◼   ► whether you rest your hand on it or something.

00:34:20 ◼   ► I need like a big, I don't know,

00:34:26 ◼   ► like a much bigger mouse than the Magic Mouse

00:34:29 ◼   ► to be comfortable. - You need to fit your hand.

00:34:30 ◼   ► Yeah, you need it to have a good arc,

00:34:32 ◼   ► because it's the exact opposite problem of RSA on a keyboard

00:34:37 ◼   ► where you don't necessarily want your wrist arced up.

00:34:40 ◼   ► With a mouse, I feel like you need the comfortable arc

00:34:43 ◼   ► to rest your hand on it

00:34:45 ◼   ► if you're going to be resting your hand on a mouse

00:34:47 ◼   ► for a while and going around and clicking.

00:34:49 ◼   ► It needs to feel good,

00:34:50 ◼   ► and it needs to not feel like your hand

00:34:51 ◼   ► is dwarfing the mouse

00:34:52 ◼   ► so that you can't actually find the buttons by touch.

00:34:55 ◼   ► - So I will confess, the mouse that I use,

00:34:58 ◼   ► I don't know if I can get a picture of this.

00:35:00 ◼   ► I guess I'll try to, maybe, for the show notes.

00:35:02 ◼   ► The mouse that I use is at least,

00:35:06 ◼   ► It absolutely, positively, I bought it in the 90s.

00:35:10 ◼   ► It's from Logitech.

00:35:13 ◼   ► And even in the 90s when I bought it,

00:35:15 ◼   ► I don't think I paid more than $14 for it.

00:35:18 ◼   ► And it's so old, I swear to God I'm not making this up,

00:35:21 ◼   ► it doesn't even have a laser, it has a ball.

00:35:23 ◼   ► - Oh man.

00:35:25 ◼   ► - And it is super, super precise.

00:35:28 ◼   ► I actually, because of RSI issues,

00:35:30 ◼   ► I use a third party mouse driver to,

00:35:35 ◼   ► What's it called?

00:35:37 ◼   ► I had to switch at one point.

00:35:38 ◼   ► It's called Steermouse.

00:35:40 ◼   ► S-T-E-E-R-M-O-U-S-E.

00:35:42 ◼   ► It's from some guy in Japan

00:35:43 ◼   ► that lets you set your mouse speed significantly faster

00:35:48 ◼   ► than the system mount,

00:35:50 ◼   ► the very fastest speed of the system mouse.

00:35:54 ◼   ► So I could go, even on my 5K iMac,

00:35:56 ◼   ► I can go corner to corner,

00:35:57 ◼   ► pretty much without even using my wrist, just my fingers.

00:36:01 ◼   ► And the ball on this thing, it's so super precise.

00:36:05 ◼   ► It's like a giant 27 inch screen.

00:36:08 ◼   ► I have the speed ramped up so far.

00:36:10 ◼   ► My son cannot even use it.

00:36:11 ◼   ► He thinks it's crazy.

00:36:13 ◼   ► 'Cause he just, it immediately rams from corner to corner

00:36:18 ◼   ► by moving it because it's so, the differences is so subtle.

00:36:21 ◼   ► And this mouse, it just has never broken.

00:36:24 ◼   ► The buttons still work.

00:36:25 ◼   ► I mean, at some point, I guess it's going to break.

00:36:27 ◼   ► I mean, every button fails eventually, but it's ancient.

00:36:30 ◼   ► But I haven't used an Apple mouse since the '90s.

00:36:32 ◼   ► - What is it connected via USB?

00:36:34 ◼   ► USB to USB.

00:36:35 ◼   ► Okay, so at least it I was gonna ask if you were connecting via SCSI, you know, to some

00:36:39 ◼   ► like crazy, crazy setup.

00:36:41 ◼   ► I do still have my ADB keyboard.

00:36:43 ◼   ► Oh my god.

00:36:44 ◼   ► Yeah, you know, I was talking to my dad the other day, right after the new accessories

00:36:49 ◼   ► came out.

00:36:51 ◼   ► And he's like rolling his eyes.

00:36:52 ◼   ► He's like, No, nothing can nothing can be better than my my Kensington trackball.

00:36:57 ◼   ► And he still you and this that thing is probably from 1999 too, because I remember using it

00:37:02 ◼   ► playing like Star Wars Episode I podracer or something crazy like that. So it's definitely,

00:37:09 ◼   ► I feel like people have very specific preferences with their mice.

00:37:12 ◼   ► Yeah, I think what I have to do is I gotta get on eBay and start hunting around for like

00:37:17 ◼   ► for another copy. Yeah, but I have to get I have to get a new inbox because I mean,

00:37:24 ◼   ► there's nothing grosser than using somebody's some mouse that somebody's actually used.

00:37:29 ◼   ► years of fingerprints and greasy Cheeto fingers and oh God.

00:37:34 ◼   ► - Like I'm, I think I'm pretty,

00:37:36 ◼   ► I think I have good personal hygiene.

00:37:40 ◼   ► I'm not a real germaphobe,

00:37:42 ◼   ► but like I do have some previously used

00:37:45 ◼   ► Apple extended keyboard twos, so to back up.

00:37:49 ◼   ► But whenever I get a new one, I really do,

00:37:51 ◼   ► I get all sort of like CSI, like crime scene,

00:37:55 ◼   ► like cleaning up a, like I,

00:37:58 ◼   ► I break out the alcohol and the cotton swipes and I go,

00:38:03 ◼   ► I get in Q-tips and I get in there and I'll clean,

00:38:06 ◼   ► even if it's-- - You just scrub it.

00:38:07 ◼   ► - Even if it looks like really like very lightly used,

00:38:10 ◼   ► which are the best ones, very lightly used,

00:38:12 ◼   ► I'm gonna get in there and scrub it

00:38:13 ◼   ► 'cause who the hell knows what people

00:38:15 ◼   ► were doing with these things.

00:38:16 ◼   ► - Oh my God, I mean, I no longer eat food while working

00:38:19 ◼   ► or any of that and like my,

00:38:21 ◼   ► my keyboard should be pristine

00:38:24 ◼   ► and then I'm looking down at it as we're talking

00:38:26 ◼   ► and it's like some of the number pad,

00:38:28 ◼   ► is just absolutely disgusting, like brown.

00:38:30 ◼   ► - I do not eat at my desk either.

00:38:32 ◼   ► I gave that up many years ago

00:38:33 ◼   ► and I still can't believe how disgusting my keyboard can get

00:38:36 ◼   ► if I get real close to it.

00:38:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's a little bit frightening to me.

00:38:39 ◼   ► Well, I know what I'm doing after this podcast.

00:38:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, now it does sort of put the heebie jeebies in me

00:38:45 ◼   ► and I'm looking at it and I'm thinking,

00:38:46 ◼   ► maybe I should just clean, like my own key,

00:38:47 ◼   ► even my own keyboard grosses me out

00:38:49 ◼   ► like somebody else's.

00:38:50 ◼   ► So it's hard for me to really get excited

00:38:54 ◼   ► about the new Magic Mouse

00:38:55 ◼   ► 'cause I know I'm not gonna use it

00:38:57 ◼   ► because I know it's the same form factor as the old one.

00:38:59 ◼   ► And I know that the old form factor to me

00:39:01 ◼   ► is extremely uncomfortable to use.

00:39:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't like it at all.

00:39:05 ◼   ► My boyfriend has one that he will use on occasion.

00:39:08 ◼   ► But I don't know, it just doesn't fit right.

00:39:12 ◼   ► The only mouse that I have on my desk right now

00:39:15 ◼   ► is a very poor man's attempt at a gaming mouse

00:39:19 ◼   ► from Mac Alley from like, I don't know, 2004.

00:39:22 ◼   ► That somehow is still working.

00:39:23 ◼   ► It's just a four button mouse and a scroll wheel that I used to use for

00:39:27 ◼   ► World of Warcraft of all things.

00:39:29 ◼   ► Cause you know, you have to do something in college, but I've been,

00:39:32 ◼   ► I've been a trackpad user pretty much since,

00:39:34 ◼   ► since the original Magic Trackpad came out. Um, I mean,

00:39:38 ◼   ► I was on a laptop for most of college and up until, uh,

00:39:42 ◼   ► I got hired at Macworld in 2010 and when they hired me, they're like, Oh,

00:39:46 ◼   ► you get an iMac. Uh, do you want a mouse or a trackpad? And I'm like,

00:39:49 ◼   ► trackpad cause that's all I, that's all I'd been using,

00:39:52 ◼   ► aside from the occasional gaming.

00:39:53 ◼   ► And that's what I like.

00:39:55 ◼   ► I like swipe gestures.

00:39:57 ◼   ► And even the mouse with its tiny little swipe

00:39:59 ◼   ► just did not feel comfortable to me.

00:40:02 ◼   ► And I feel like the original Magic Mouse

00:40:04 ◼   ► didn't even have like expose or mission control support.

00:40:08 ◼   ► Like it could two finger swipe between Safari windows,

00:40:11 ◼   ► but it couldn't do any of the really cool things

00:40:13 ◼   ► in the Magic Trackpad.

00:40:14 ◼   ► So it always has felt kind of hamstrung to me

00:40:17 ◼   ► in comparison to the Trackpad.

00:40:18 ◼   ► Like Apple was really only having it to throw a bone

00:40:21 ◼   ► to the users who still wanted a mouse to come with their desktop Mac, but especially with

00:40:28 ◼   ► the new features of this generation's Magic Trackpad, it just feels like the trackpad

00:40:32 ◼   ► blows the mouse out of the water.

00:40:34 ◼   ► This is what you should be using with an iMac.

00:40:36 ◼   ► I agree with that.

00:40:39 ◼   ► I'm sure there are other people who are just so used to a mouse that they...

00:40:41 ◼   ► I'm sure that's why Apple hasn't gone all trackpad and why the Magic Mouse still exists

00:40:46 ◼   ► and is a thing, but that is the other thing I do have at my desk.

00:40:50 ◼   ► I have a magic trackpad.

00:40:51 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:40:52 ◼   ► I can't say without laughing.

00:40:54 ◼   ► I have the old one.

00:40:55 ◼   ► I don't have the new one.

00:40:56 ◼   ► I have the old one that takes the AA batteries.

00:40:59 ◼   ► And I don't use it all the time,

00:41:00 ◼   ► but I have it there because for certain tasks

00:41:02 ◼   ► in certain apps, I find it nicer to have that.

00:41:06 ◼   ► Like if I'm editing an image or something like that,

00:41:09 ◼   ► it's nice to have it and be able to zoom in and out.

00:41:11 ◼   ► - The zoom, yeah.

00:41:12 ◼   ► And for me, I use Mission Control so much

00:41:15 ◼   ► 'cause I got used to it on my tiny laptops

00:41:18 ◼   ► that being able to four finger swipe and get to the desktop and move around and all of

00:41:22 ◼   ► that is second nature to me and especially with El Capitan adding in things like swipe

00:41:28 ◼   ► to mark as read in mail that it just it just makes it more of a compelling feature for

00:41:33 ◼   ► me and now that force touch is added I'm still rocking the the jelly roll the jelly roll

00:41:41 ◼   ► magic trackpad with the AA batteries but the idea of force touch being able to do different

00:41:48 ◼   ► things in the apps. Right now it's very, very limited because third party app developers

00:41:53 ◼   ► really haven't taken advantage of it at all because the trackpad's only been in the in

00:41:57 ◼   ► the MacBook, which only a small subset of the population owns. But now that that trackpad

00:42:03 ◼   ► is now potentially on potentially compatible with every single Mac in the lineup that runs

00:42:09 ◼   ► OS X El Capitan. Every single Mac in the lineup that has Bluetooth 4 and runs OS X El Capitan

00:42:14 ◼   ► now has the power of force touch and seeing what it can do just in a couple of different

00:42:19 ◼   ► apps, you know, even just QuickTime player, the demo they love, both in the retail stores

00:42:24 ◼   ► and when they were demoing the MacBook trackpad is the press a little bit to fast forward

00:42:30 ◼   ► and then press really deeply and you can fast forward up to you know, 300 times and then

00:42:34 ◼   ► you can lift your finger a little bit and use it like a gas pedal. You know, that's

00:42:38 ◼   ► that's a cool proof of concept. But I feel like especially pro level applications, design

00:42:44 ◼   ► drawing applications, photography,

00:42:47 ◼   ► Force Touch is gonna be a big deal.

00:42:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, I agree.

00:42:50 ◼   ► I'm tempted by that.

00:42:51 ◼   ► Have you seen that there are people complaining,

00:42:56 ◼   ► I know Anil Dash tweeted about it, a lot of people.

00:42:59 ◼   ► Have you seen it?

00:43:00 ◼   ► - The charging?

00:43:01 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

00:43:02 ◼   ► Oh my God.

00:43:03 ◼   ► Okay, so yeah, the charging port.

00:43:05 ◼   ► Go ahead.

00:43:06 ◼   ► - The charging port, it charges by all these new devices,

00:43:08 ◼   ► if you're not familiar.

00:43:10 ◼   ► One of the big changes in all three of these

00:43:11 ◼   ► is that you no longer put batteries in there.

00:43:13 ◼   ► batteries. So now does Apple make anything you put batteries in anymore?

00:43:17 ◼   ► Maybe the remote? No, because the remote's lightning. Yeah, the new remote for Apple

00:43:22 ◼   ► TV is lightning as well. I think we have gotten away from AA batteries, which I am thrilled

00:43:27 ◼   ► by because I have so many useless, slowly dying rechargeable batteries. I did

00:43:35 ◼   ► that a couple years ago. I bought a whole bunch of rechargeable batteries and it

00:43:39 ◼   ► was good when Jonas was a real little kid and was using all sorts of toys that

00:43:42 ◼   ► took them. I really don't regret it but no but they they they lose their

00:43:47 ◼   ► efficacy. Oh so it's so bad I have a serious I probably have 12 or 14 and

00:43:53 ◼   ► it's gotten to the point where I don't know which ones are almost are really

00:43:56 ◼   ► poorly charged and which ones are still kind of new. Right because once you've

00:44:00 ◼   ► charged them they're all good. Yeah exactly. Yeah there's I wish that they

00:44:03 ◼   ► like like like turned a rotten color like yeah. Slowly slowly turned like egg

00:44:08 ◼   ► shell yellow or something weird like that. Yeah, my trackpad, I'm lucky if my trackpad

00:44:13 ◼   ► and my keyboard last a day.

00:44:15 ◼   ► If I had been smart, what I would have done is maybe gotten in the habit of...

00:44:21 ◼   ► Marking them or something?

00:44:22 ◼   ► Yeah, like a tally mark with a Sharpie. Every time I charge this battery, do a tally mark

00:44:26 ◼   ► and you can see which ones you've done the most. But anyway, I've sort of...

00:44:28 ◼   ► But now you don't need to do it.

00:44:30 ◼   ► But now I've gotten off, I've gotten back to just using door cells. And then I feel

00:44:34 ◼   ► guilty about it, though. I really do because I know that, you know, that it's sort of a

00:44:39 ◼   ► rotten environment.

00:44:40 ◼   ► JADE Well, I don't know, is Philly one of the places

00:44:43 ◼   ► in in Boston, you can't throw them away, like you have to dispose of them in a special place.

00:44:48 ◼   ► So if you use a non rechargeable battery, at least in my house, it's very much like

00:44:52 ◼   ► either. It goes in a bucket where we're like, yeah, we'll take this to the special recycling

00:44:57 ◼   ► department someday. And then it just sits there in your house forever and ever just

00:45:01 ◼   ► kind of gathering dust.

00:45:02 ◼   ► In Philly, we take them to sporting events and throw them at the opposing

00:45:06 ◼   ► That sounds like you guys. It's like peanuts, except they're a little bit more

00:45:12 ◼   ► more potential of explosion if you set them on fire.

00:45:15 ◼   ► Yeah, so the thing with so that here's the thing that is a minor design

00:45:21 ◼   ► controversy is that the new Magic Mouse has I think the exact same when it's

00:45:27 ◼   ► sitting on a desk it looks identical to the old one has the exact same profile

00:45:31 ◼   ► as different feet according to the design.

00:45:35 ◼   ► - But I don't think they look different.

00:45:37 ◼   ► I think that there's, you know,

00:45:39 ◼   ► Steven Levy at Backchannel on Medium

00:45:42 ◼   ► had a great behind the scenes talk with the team

00:45:47 ◼   ► that made these things.

00:45:48 ◼   ► And they talked about how they somehow

00:45:50 ◼   ► with the weight being different from the new battery

00:45:53 ◼   ► that they had to redesign the feet

00:45:55 ◼   ► to make the click sound right.

00:45:57 ◼   ► But anyway, the complaint that people have

00:46:01 ◼   ► is that the lightning port is on the bottom.

00:46:03 ◼   ► So if you want to charge this thing,

00:46:05 ◼   ► you have to turn it on its side or turn it upside down

00:46:07 ◼   ► and stick a lightning port in.

00:46:09 ◼   ► And therefore, while it's charging,

00:46:11 ◼   ► you cannot use it as a mouse.

00:46:13 ◼   ► And what everybody seems to,

00:46:14 ◼   ► or the complainers seem to think is common sense

00:46:17 ◼   ► is that the lightning port should be

00:46:18 ◼   ► at the front of the mouse so that you could plug it in

00:46:23 ◼   ► and use it like you would a wired mouse.

00:46:24 ◼   ► - Just use it like a mouse.

00:46:26 ◼   ► Yeah, except for the fact that I've seen an Al's mock-up

00:46:31 ◼   ► where it's like, yeah, just have this little hole

00:46:33 ◼   ► in the front of the mouse.

00:46:34 ◼   ► It'll be fine, except I can just see

00:46:37 ◼   ► five different people at Apple being like,

00:46:39 ◼   ► that is the most hideous thing I've ever seen in my life.

00:46:42 ◼   ► And I don't know, it just,

00:46:44 ◼   ► on top of that, we should also mention the fact

00:46:48 ◼   ► that this mouse does not take

00:46:50 ◼   ► a extremely long time to charge.

00:46:53 ◼   ► - Two minutes supposedly gives you nine hours.

00:46:55 ◼   ► - It gives you a day.

00:46:56 ◼   ► So the idea--

00:46:58 ◼   ► - So you can charge it.

00:46:59 ◼   ► If you came to work and your mouse was dead,

00:47:02 ◼   ► you could charge it and you would have to wait

00:47:04 ◼   ► to start using it, but you could just use that

00:47:06 ◼   ► as like your minute to get your standing points.

00:47:08 ◼   ► - Get coffee, yeah, exactly.

00:47:09 ◼   ► Or standing points. - Get your standing points

00:47:10 ◼   ► for your watch.

00:47:11 ◼   ► And then by the time you've got your standing point,

00:47:13 ◼   ► your Apple mouse, your magic mouse too,

00:47:18 ◼   ► would be charged for the day.

00:47:20 ◼   ► And it does give you, the other thing too is,

00:47:23 ◼   ► it gives you just, you know,

00:47:25 ◼   ► for any of you who haven't used these peripherals,

00:47:27 ◼   ► They do, the system is in touch with them

00:47:30 ◼   ► and when they get low, you do get a warning on screen

00:47:34 ◼   ► and it's not like an emergency warning.

00:47:36 ◼   ► It's like, you know, you're gonna wanna charge this thing.

00:47:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, you know, I'm actually, I'm kind of mad

00:47:42 ◼   ► that the ports are on the back for the Magic Trackpad

00:47:45 ◼   ► and the Magic, is it a Magic Keyboard

00:47:47 ◼   ► or is it just a keyboard?

00:47:48 ◼   ► - Oh, let's see, it's just called a keyboard.

00:47:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, this is the keyboard. - No, it is a Magic Keyboard.

00:47:52 ◼   ► It's a Magic Keyboard.

00:47:54 ◼   ► - It's Magic, Magic all the way down.

00:47:56 ◼   ► I think that might be a new name though, because it's the magic trackpad 2 and the magic mouse

00:48:01 ◼   ► 2.

00:48:02 ◼   ► But just the magic keyboard.

00:48:03 ◼   ► The magic keyboard.

00:48:05 ◼   ► Because it has the new not butterfly mechanism, but different scissor mechanism than previous

00:48:10 ◼   ► keyboards.

00:48:11 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, I kind of feel like I'm in tune with the standing notification idea where

00:48:17 ◼   ► why don't why aren't all of the ports on the underside and then then it just forces you

00:48:22 ◼   ► to get up off of your desk while you're charging your accessories.

00:48:25 ◼   ► Sorry, your accessories literally are going to stop working unless you get out of your seat.

00:48:30 ◼   ► And it seems subversively funny to me. But I honestly don't know what the fuss is about.

00:48:37 ◼   ► I think that Apple first and foremost wants to obviously design functional things,

00:48:42 ◼   ► but also design accessories that are going to look nice. And the worst thing I think in the world

00:48:49 ◼   ► would be to give you a wireless mouse and then be, "Here, we're going to make it so that you

00:48:55 ◼   ► that you can absolutely use it as a wired mouse

00:48:57 ◼   ► because how many, I don't wanna say stupid idiots,

00:49:00 ◼   ► how many stupid idiots are just going to plug in

00:49:03 ◼   ► their peripherals and then just keep them plugged in

00:49:05 ◼   ► the entire time?

00:49:05 ◼   ► Oh, I don't wanna charge them.

00:49:07 ◼   ► They are, you know, things always burn down.

00:49:09 ◼   ► - I think that if the existing profile of the Magic Mouse

00:49:15 ◼   ► had a flat front, then they might've just put the port there.

00:49:20 ◼   ► But it's the fact that they're clearly happy

00:49:23 ◼   ► with the profile of the Magic Trackpad,

00:49:25 ◼   ► where the front and back, it's exactly symmetric.

00:49:29 ◼   ► And it has, there is no, there is nowhere for it to go.

00:49:34 ◼   ► So anybody who's asking for them to put the port

00:49:38 ◼   ► so that you can use it while it's charging

00:49:41 ◼   ► is asking for them to redesign the whole mouse.

00:49:45 ◼   ► - Yeah. - And I'm not saying that's a--

00:49:46 ◼   ► - That's a bad thing.

00:49:47 ◼   ► - But it's, it doesn't,

00:49:49 ◼   ► it just does not seem like a problem.

00:49:51 ◼   ► And I also think, on the other hand,

00:49:54 ◼   ► I think exactly what you said,

00:49:55 ◼   ► I think it might even be deliberate.

00:49:56 ◼   ► It may actually be that they want to discourage people

00:50:00 ◼   ► from using it while charging.

00:50:02 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:50:03 ◼   ► - But I'm not quite sure then why they didn't do the same

00:50:04 ◼   ► with the keyboard and the trackpad.

00:50:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, which is my wonder.

00:50:08 ◼   ► No, I honestly think that, you know,

00:50:10 ◼   ► if you're talking about technology

00:50:13 ◼   ► that went into these peripherals, again,

00:50:15 ◼   ► the mouse feels like the odd man out here,

00:50:17 ◼   ► where the trackpad gets force touch and all of this new,

00:50:19 ◼   ► and the keyboard is completely redesigned

00:50:22 ◼   ► and should type better.

00:50:23 ◼   ► And the mouse is, it has lightning now.

00:50:27 ◼   ► I know that there was design work going

00:50:32 ◼   ► that went into the mouse

00:50:33 ◼   ► because of Steven Levy's excellent article.

00:50:35 ◼   ► And also I know that even if something looks identical,

00:50:38 ◼   ► Apple spends a lot of time on it regardless.

00:50:41 ◼   ► But I do think what you were saying is absolutely correct.

00:50:44 ◼   ► Where in order for them to put a lightning port

00:50:47 ◼   ► the front and make it not look like a piece of crap, they're going to have to redesign it. And

00:50:52 ◼   ► if they're going to redesign the mouse, then they might as well redesign it in such a way that they

00:50:57 ◼   ► can also put force touch in it, which I think right now is probably too challenging given

00:51:01 ◼   ► the curvature of the mouse and the, you know, current initial limits of force touch. So I mean,

00:51:08 ◼   ► it may eventually happen, but I just I think they ran up against time and hardware limitations to

00:51:14 ◼   ► to actually put that together.

00:51:16 ◼   ► And it's like, well, do you want a mouse

00:51:18 ◼   ► that has a port on the front of it

00:51:21 ◼   ► for slightly easier charging?

00:51:23 ◼   ► Or do you want force touch on your trackpad?

00:51:25 ◼   ► Pick one, you can only have one.

00:51:27 ◼   ► And I'm guessing the majority of people are going to say,

00:51:31 ◼   ► yeah, we'd prefer force touch on the trackpad.

00:51:34 ◼   ► Why do we care about a charging port location?

00:51:36 ◼   ► - The other thing, last thing about these three peripherals

00:51:41 ◼   ► is the price.

00:51:42 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:51:43 ◼   ► And this is very classic Apple.

00:51:46 ◼   ► The keyboard is 99 bucks.

00:51:48 ◼   ► - Of course.

00:51:49 ◼   ► - Which is a lot for a keyboard.

00:51:50 ◼   ► - Was it 79 before?

00:51:52 ◼   ► - I think so.

00:51:52 ◼   ► The trackpad is $129.

00:51:55 ◼   ► And the mouse is, how much is the mouse?

00:52:00 ◼   ► - 59, 69?

00:52:01 ◼   ► - 79.

00:52:02 ◼   ► - 79.

00:52:03 ◼   ► So the mouse and the keyboard are the same price.

00:52:06 ◼   ► - No, the keyboard's 99.

00:52:07 ◼   ► - 99.

00:52:08 ◼   ► The keyboard used to be 79.

00:52:10 ◼   ► So the mouse moves up to the keyboard's price.

00:52:12 ◼   ► The keyboard's a hundred bucks and the trackpad is a very, very quintessential Apple number,

00:52:18 ◼   ► $129.

00:52:19 ◼   ► Yeah, it's a lot.

00:52:22 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, I understand the technology in the mouse, or in the trackpad at least.

00:52:29 ◼   ► Force touch to me seems like the kind of thing where you might need to charge a premium for

00:52:33 ◼   ► it based on all of the mechanics that are under the hood.

00:52:36 ◼   ► It's not just a mouse, but it's still $129 for a slab of a metal.

00:52:41 ◼   ► The Amazon basics three button USB wired mouse is $6.99.

00:52:46 ◼   ► What's the Amazon basics wireless mouse?

00:52:51 ◼   ► Now it's expensive.

00:52:52 ◼   ► That's $11.49.

00:52:54 ◼   ► - So if you want a mouse,

00:52:58 ◼   ► I seem to remember that in previous iMac versions,

00:53:01 ◼   ► you could choose between the mouse, the keyboard

00:53:03 ◼   ► or the trackpad and they wouldn't charge you.

00:53:05 ◼   ► And now they upcharge you 50 bucks.

00:53:08 ◼   ► If you wanna go from the mouse to the keyboard.

00:53:11 ◼   ► - You mean the trackpad? - Sorry, that mouse

00:53:11 ◼   ► to the trackpad, yes.

00:53:12 ◼   ► The mouse to a keyboard is 50, no.

00:53:14 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, that used to be like a, that used to be a--

00:53:17 ◼   ► - It's a perk, you choose your poison.

00:53:19 ◼   ► And now they're actually discouraging people

00:53:22 ◼   ► from going to the trackpad, which seems like such a,

00:53:25 ◼   ► seems like such the wrong thing to do

00:53:27 ◼   ► if you wanna get more people using Force Touch

00:53:29 ◼   ► and more people comfortable with a trackpad.

00:53:31 ◼   ► Or, and, or you could get both the Magic Mouse 2

00:53:37 ◼   ► and the Magic Trackpad 2 for $129.

00:53:39 ◼   ► in case you wanted multiple peripherals.

00:53:41 ◼   ► Or you could get a wired Apple mouse for no money.

00:53:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think you're right.

00:53:44 ◼   ► I think you're right though

00:53:45 ◼   ► that it fundamentally comes down to the fact

00:53:47 ◼   ► that Force Touch is the, or 3D Touch,

00:53:50 ◼   ► whatever we're calling it, is the new hotness.

00:53:54 ◼   ► And it's, you know, it probably is more expensive.

00:53:58 ◼   ► I really doubt that it costs $129.

00:54:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's that much more.

00:54:02 ◼   ► - You know, but multiply it by Apple's standard margin

00:54:05 ◼   ► and maybe it is the right price.

00:54:09 ◼   ► But it really does, it is one of those remaining things

00:54:11 ◼   ► that stands out from the Mac

00:54:13 ◼   ► and the commodity mouse market.

00:54:17 ◼   ► As I sit here and look at this,

00:54:18 ◼   ► I just opened up an amazon.com tab and just type mouse.

00:54:23 ◼   ► It's like you can find, here's a Logitech for $22.

00:54:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, if you want an, and you know what,

00:54:30 ◼   ► the high quality mice, that's the funny thing,

00:54:32 ◼   ► it's like Rick has a high quality,

00:54:34 ◼   ► silent wireless gaming mouse on his on his desk that I'm pretty sure he paid maybe $70 for.

00:54:41 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm sure you can but it's it.

00:54:44 ◼   ► But even that that's less than the price of the Apple Magic Mouse too.

00:54:49 ◼   ► Right. I mean, here's one. It looks like something from Iron Man. YCC team 4000 DPI 10 button LED

00:54:57 ◼   ► optical USB wired professional gaming mouse. Why does a gaming mouse need dots per inch?

00:55:02 ◼   ► Well, it's for the it's it's the dots per inch is the sensor the laser. Oh, yeah, precise it is. It actually is pretty important. Oh, yeah

00:55:10 ◼   ► I've never I've never heard that term because I am a very casual Mac gamer, but that's that makes sense

00:55:16 ◼   ► I'm not a gamer

00:55:17 ◼   ► I haven't played a game on my Mac and I think over 10 years maybe longer

00:55:21 ◼   ► But I'm very sensitive to that because that's why I use my old mouse with the ball because it has a really high

00:55:25 ◼   ► Absolutely so I can Jack the speed up with the mouse. So I

00:55:30 ◼   ► I that's one of the weird things I know about the gaming world. But anyway, all these mice,

00:55:34 ◼   ► like $7

00:55:36 ◼   ► Oh boy, but Apple can do it. That's the thing is that they I mean, these the peripherals I know,

00:55:43 ◼   ► Renee has been going to the store pretty much every day to try and get them and they are their limited supply every day and every day sold out, sold out, sold out. So people are buying these horrendously expensive peripherals.

00:55:55 ◼   ► Yeah, Magic Mouse.

00:55:57 ◼   ► Well, I don't even know if it's it is expensive. Yeah, there's no way around it. I don't know

00:56:02 ◼   ► that it's too expensive, though. I'm not complaining about it. But it's, you know, it's the price

00:56:07 ◼   ► you pay for, you know, Apple's cutting edge stuff

00:56:10 ◼   ► for not for for no batteries for lithium ion batteries in a keyboard and a trackpad. I

00:56:16 ◼   ► would pay, you know, what 100 $229 for that set. Yeah, um, if I was buying it to upgrade

00:56:22 ◼   ► to my current Mac, yeah, I would do that in a heartbeat because anything that requires

00:56:25 ◼   ► me never to use batteries again, is worth that upcharge. And Force Touch is worth that upcharge.

00:56:31 ◼   ► I do hate that they're referring it to Force Touch as Force Touch on the Mac and 3D Touch on the

00:56:37 ◼   ► phone. That is driving me crazy. Well, I think I've asked about it. And it's one of those

00:56:42 ◼   ► questions that they have a prepared answer for that doesn't really answer it. Yeah. But they're

00:56:47 ◼   ► ready for it. But I think translating it from their non answer to a real answer is, I think

00:56:54 ◼   ► it's twofold. I think one, they were calling it Force Touch Everywhere, and then they decided that

00:57:00 ◼   ► I think they kind of bought into or at least recognized the arguments that people have that

00:57:04 ◼   ► it sounds like it could be a little creepy or violent or something.

00:57:07 ◼   ► There's other ways to interpret those words that aren't a positive connotation.

00:57:14 ◼   ► And I think secondarily, they've talked themselves into not just renaming it 3D Touch Everywhere,

00:57:23 ◼   ► because I think force touch is sort of binary

00:57:28 ◼   ► where it's either a regular touch or a force touch

00:57:31 ◼   ► and that's it.

00:57:32 ◼   ► And 3D touch has, I just read it--

00:57:36 ◼   ► - 3D.

00:57:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, well it has, it measures degree of touch.

00:57:40 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:57:41 ◼   ► - So like just the one way that Apple exposes it

00:57:44 ◼   ► currently in iOS 9 is with the peak and pop.

00:57:46 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:57:47 ◼   ► - Where there's two levels of touch.

00:57:48 ◼   ► And I just read an article,

00:57:52 ◼   ► I guess I should try to find it in the show notes.

00:57:53 ◼   ► I read an article where somebody was playing with the APIs

00:57:55 ◼   ► and effectively a developer could probably get

00:57:59 ◼   ► six levels of touch if you wanted to.

00:58:01 ◼   ► And where you might wanna use that, maybe in a game,

00:58:05 ◼   ► some kind of game where you have six levels,

00:58:07 ◼   ► maybe for acceleration in a driving or racing game.

00:58:11 ◼   ► Maybe in some kind of musical app

00:58:13 ◼   ► where you're playing the force touches

00:58:15 ◼   ► is trying to get music out of it.

00:58:17 ◼   ► - Drums or something like that.

00:58:18 ◼   ► - But you can pretty much go like one to six

00:58:20 ◼   ► and that's 3D touch.

00:58:23 ◼   ► Like it had, you know, and force touch, though, is either just it is a force touch, or it's

00:58:26 ◼   ► a regular touch.

00:58:27 ◼   ► And that's it.

00:58:28 ◼   ► Yeah, well, that's, but that's what it is on the watch.

00:58:30 ◼   ► And that's what interests me about the desktop is that the force touch trackpad on a MacBook

00:58:34 ◼   ► is not you press or you're not like it does have it does have degrees of sensitivity and

00:58:39 ◼   ► layers in it.

00:58:41 ◼   ► But they're still kind of playing with that idea.

00:58:43 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know that the API's are there on the Mac, though.

00:58:45 ◼   ► Maybe I'm wrong.

00:58:46 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:58:47 ◼   ► I think they should just call it 3d touch.

00:58:48 ◼   ► Yeah, I like 3d touch.

00:58:50 ◼   ► I think 3d touch is appropriate.

00:58:51 ◼   ► And the interesting thing, it's funny that developers can only access six levels of pressure

00:58:57 ◼   ► in sort of apps, because Peter Skinner from 10.1 did, of course, an initial test for the

00:59:03 ◼   ► pressure sensitivity in drawing apps.

00:59:05 ◼   ► And he was able to detect over 400 potential levels of pressure sensitivity when it came

00:59:10 ◼   ► to drawing alone.

00:59:11 ◼   ► So there's actually a lot of functionality built into that little screen that maybe isn't

00:59:16 ◼   ► quite exposed to developers for regular apps, because maybe it just doesn't make sense to

00:59:20 ◼   ► to have that kind of finite pressure.

00:59:23 ◼   ► I mean, most, that's so many levels of pressure

00:59:25 ◼   ► that the average human is not gonna understand

00:59:28 ◼   ► that they've shoved through 50

00:59:30 ◼   ► to get from step one to step two.

00:59:33 ◼   ► But from a drawing perspective,

00:59:35 ◼   ► that's actually really exciting.

00:59:36 ◼   ► And one of the things I kind of wanna play with

00:59:38 ◼   ► once we get the new,

00:59:39 ◼   ► I almost called it the Force Touch trackpad.

00:59:43 ◼   ► Once we get the new Magic Trackpad,

00:59:45 ◼   ► I'm really curious to see how, you know,

00:59:48 ◼   ► if if precious, sensitive drawing is going to be enabled if it's something that the that

00:59:54 ◼   ► the Magic Trackpad can do or whether they're going to just limit it to the iPhone for this

00:59:57 ◼   ► this time around. Yeah, well, what do you think you would do the drawing with though?

01:00:00 ◼   ► I guess? No, I mean, you could do it with a faint to see the thing. The interesting

01:00:04 ◼   ► thing for me, at least on a on a Mac, you could use a stylus arguably because that that

01:00:10 ◼   ► glass is now so big that it kind of it almost reminds me of like a Wacom Bamboo bamboo tablet,

01:00:16 ◼   ► a really early 512 levels of pressure sensitivity tablet.

01:00:21 ◼   ► But what would be cool for me is using it in something like Pixelmator or Lightroom,

01:00:27 ◼   ► where you use it to shade or to do color correction in various levels where you don't need the

01:00:32 ◼   ► specific pinpoint accuracy if you were just drawing very tiny lines.

01:00:39 ◼   ► But if you're color correcting or if you're removing splotches or anything like that,

01:00:44 ◼   ► being able to have levels of pressure like this is how this is how much I want to you

01:00:49 ◼   ► know, this is how much color I want to take away and a desaturation.

01:00:52 ◼   ► Yeah, the pressure is more important than the than the pixel precision. Exactly, exactly.

01:00:57 ◼   ► At least in these early days, at least in certain tasks like that. Yeah, exactly. And

01:01:02 ◼   ► even the pixel precision is not too bad when you have zoom at your disposal. And I can

01:01:06 ◼   ► very easily see you pinch and then you use one finger to sketch. Yeah, that's what I've

01:01:12 ◼   ► been doing on the on the phone and it's been working really

01:01:14 ◼   ► well.

01:01:14 ◼   ► All right, let's take a break. And I will thank our second

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01:04:37 ◼   ► Anything else on the peripherals?

01:04:43 ◼   ► No, I think I'm good.

01:04:45 ◼   ► There are peripherals after all.

01:04:46 ◼   ► I was thinking-- it seems a little silly

01:04:48 ◼   ► because it's only October.

01:04:50 ◼   ► And I'm not like a big year in review sort of person.

01:04:53 ◼   ► I usually don't do anything like that.

01:04:55 ◼   ► But I think we're at the point now, though,

01:04:56 ◼   ► where we kind of know everything that Apple's done for 2015.

01:05:00 ◼   ► I mean, we're still waiting.

01:05:02 ◼   ► Or that they have coming, yeah.

01:05:03 ◼   ► The iPad Pro is obviously a huge thing that's coming.

01:05:06 ◼   ► It's probably the--

01:05:07 ◼   ► It's looming.

01:05:08 ◼   ► Right.

01:05:08 ◼   ► It's the biggest, literally--

01:05:12 ◼   ► well, biggest iOS device, I guess.

01:05:13 ◼   ► It's not bigger than a 27-inch iMac.

01:05:15 ◼   ► But it's probably the biggest hardware announcement

01:05:18 ◼   ► of the year.

01:05:19 ◼   ► And we don't have it in our hands yet.

01:05:21 ◼   ► But we know it's coming.

01:05:25 ◼   ► I think the Apple has shown all of their cards.

01:05:27 ◼   ► And it actually is, to me,

01:05:29 ◼   ► as much as like for the year or two prior,

01:05:33 ◼   ► there were a lot of complaints

01:05:35 ◼   ► that Apple was sort of silent for a while.

01:05:37 ◼   ► - Wasn't innovating, yeah.

01:05:38 ◼   ► - Wasn't innovating.

01:05:39 ◼   ► Phil Schiller's "Can't Innovate Anymore My Ass" thing

01:05:42 ◼   ► at WWDC, it was obviously frustrating to them.

01:05:45 ◼   ► I don't see it.

01:05:46 ◼   ► It's one of those things where I feel like

01:05:48 ◼   ► you can complain about it when they're quiet for a long time

01:05:50 ◼   ► but then when they have a busy year,

01:05:52 ◼   ► nobody really says, "Wow, they've really done a lot

01:05:54 ◼   ► this year, but they've done a lot this year.

01:05:57 ◼   ► - And a spectacular amount when you really think about

01:05:59 ◼   ► all of, I mean, they launched an entirely new product,

01:06:04 ◼   ► the Apple Watch.

01:06:05 ◼   ► - Right.

01:06:06 ◼   ► - We got new iPhones, we got new dev kits,

01:06:11 ◼   ► two new versions of iOS and OS 10,

01:06:14 ◼   ► which people, I think, overlook just how much work

01:06:19 ◼   ► goes into creating solid software,

01:06:22 ◼   ► and they really did, I feel like make solid software

01:06:24 ◼   ► this time around on both iOS and OS X.

01:06:28 ◼   ► It doesn't feel nearly as as bunky to me right off the line.

01:06:32 ◼   ► We got new iPhones.

01:06:33 ◼   ► - Apple TV, I forgot about that.

01:06:35 ◼   ► That's still to come too.

01:06:36 ◼   ► - That's looming end of October, early November.

01:06:39 ◼   ► - I also, I wanna emphasize that as we record this,

01:06:41 ◼   ► I do not have an Apple TV.

01:06:43 ◼   ► I worry that somebody is gonna go,

01:06:44 ◼   ► "Oh, you know, Gruber says, you know,

01:06:46 ◼   ► "he's only waiting on an iPad Pro,

01:06:48 ◼   ► "he must have an Apple TV in the house."

01:06:49 ◼   ► I do not, I do not.

01:06:52 ◼   ► But no, but that's coming.

01:06:53 ◼   ► And the other two really big things to me

01:06:56 ◼   ► are the photos, the new photo, integrated photos

01:07:01 ◼   ► that launched in iCloud Photos and Apple Music.

01:07:05 ◼   ► And so there's these two things that,

01:07:09 ◼   ► music and your photos and videos,

01:07:12 ◼   ► that in 2015 Apple has introduced entirely new,

01:07:17 ◼   ► and not necessarily in either case seamlessly.

01:07:20 ◼   ► - Perfect, yeah.

01:07:21 ◼   ► But they've certainly laid the foundation for the future of how people in the Apple,

01:07:27 ◼   ► customers in the Apple ecosystem are going to manage their photos and music.

01:07:30 ◼   ► Absolutely.

01:07:31 ◼   ► And I did a lot of work on both of those topics right as they were coming out.

01:07:37 ◼   ► And as the year has progressed, Apple has been very, very good about listening to customer

01:07:44 ◼   ► feedback and implementing changes or fixes or bug fixes to make the experience better.

01:07:55 ◼   ► I think about the initial iCloud photo library and the new Photos app, I couldn't turn around

01:08:00 ◼   ► on the internet, virtually turn around without seeing someone being like, "How dare you!

01:08:04 ◼   ► This sucks!

01:08:05 ◼   ► I miss Aperture!

01:08:06 ◼   ► I'm moving to Lightroom!

01:08:07 ◼   ► Everything is terrible!"

01:08:09 ◼   ► And now I feel like quite a few people are using Photos, or they're using Google's photo

01:08:14 ◼   ► service or they're using you know they've found their photo service or

01:08:17 ◼   ► they're willing to give photos a try and there's there's no big calamity.

01:08:20 ◼   ► Apple hasn't lost someone's entire photo library. There's no there's been no

01:08:25 ◼   ► insanity there. There was a little insanity over Apple music. Yeah let's do

01:08:30 ◼   ► photos first because I feel like it was the smoother launch. It was. And I I'm

01:08:35 ◼   ► really impressed by it. I really am. I know it works really really well for me.

01:08:40 ◼   ► There was one time early on with a photo on my iPhone where I had it... let me see how

01:08:53 ◼   ► many photos I've got in there now just to put a scale on.

01:08:56 ◼   ► Oh yeah, we can compare.

01:08:58 ◼   ► You probably have more, I'll bet.

01:09:00 ◼   ► I've got 16,956 photos and 237 videos.

01:09:07 ◼   ► You might have me beat on videos, but I'm pretty sure I have you beat on photos.

01:09:10 ◼   ► I don't have a lot of videos because I used to store them separately.

01:09:14 ◼   ► I do have videos in here.

01:09:15 ◼   ► Nevermind.

01:09:16 ◼   ► I'm guessing most of that was recently shot, but 26,896 photos, 855 videos and three items.

01:09:26 ◼   ► I don't actually know what items are.

01:09:28 ◼   ► I had it.

01:09:29 ◼   ► I had it.

01:09:30 ◼   ► I had a situation early in the summer.

01:09:32 ◼   ► Or no, maybe it was at the point where I upgraded to iOS 9 beta on my phone.

01:09:39 ◼   ► And it was a beta, so this is why I didn't complain about it publicly.

01:09:43 ◼   ► But I had a situation where the count wasn't the same across all my devices.

01:09:48 ◼   ► It was slightly off.

01:09:50 ◼   ► And I figured it out that it came down to a photo I had taken on my iPhone about two

01:09:56 ◼   ► weeks prior, in which I had edited.

01:09:59 ◼   ► I forget if I only edited it, I did it on the phone and I forget if I use the photos

01:10:03 ◼   ► app on the phone to adjust the color or something or if I used like Afterlight or one of those

01:10:09 ◼   ► third party apps that lets you modify images on your photo roll in place without making

01:10:14 ◼   ► a copy. But it was edited and for whatever reason it was not able to sync that photo

01:10:20 ◼   ► to iCloud. So I emailed it to myself so I'd have a copy of the edited version. Then I

01:10:28 ◼   ► deleted it. And then everything got caught up. And then I took

01:10:33 ◼   ► the emailed photo and put it back into photos. So one time,

01:10:36 ◼   ► and it was with a beta. So I'm not complaining. And ever since

01:10:38 ◼   ► then, it's, it has been great.

01:10:40 ◼   ► Yeah, well, I and I think, you know, comparing this a little

01:10:44 ◼   ► bit to the Apple Music Rollout, the beta process was really

01:10:48 ◼   ► important for this, being able to have the months where they're

01:10:52 ◼   ► like, Yes, this is beta, we definitely want people to come

01:10:56 ◼   ► play and in the beta. So please, if you're interested, but this is a beta service, and

01:11:01 ◼   ► please be advised, this is a beta service and please back up your photos. And once people

01:11:07 ◼   ► I think, realized, well, first of all, knew that going in and also were able to figure

01:11:14 ◼   ► out Oh, this is the difference between storing all of your photos on your device and optimizing

01:11:19 ◼   ► storage. And this is what this app gets me that aperture Lightroom does not. They had

01:11:25 ◼   ► more time to kind of figure all of that out. I too had I had one really bad

01:11:29 ◼   ► photos experience. And that was mostly I had at this at the time that photos was

01:11:36 ◼   ► released, or initially sort of announced, I was really excited about this because my

01:11:41 ◼   ► photo library had been spread across four different computers. And I thought at one

01:11:46 ◼   ► point, I had it all localized on the 15 inch iMac. But as as time went on, it kind

01:11:50 ◼   ► of more and more got over to my 15 inch MacBook Pro. As time went on, it became more on on

01:11:56 ◼   ► my old 21.5 inch iMac and a little bit on my on my, my MacBook Air and I was just saving

01:12:03 ◼   ► like giant folders of iPhone images. Every time my iPhone would get full, I'd I just

01:12:08 ◼   ► dump everything up via image capture into a folder and just shove it into Dropbox. So

01:12:13 ◼   ► it was like there was some canonical version of my photos somewhere. And when I went to

01:12:19 ◼   ► merge everything into photos, one, my MacBook Air library wouldn't sync. And eventually I just had

01:12:25 ◼   ► to create a new, I had to create a new library and pull down all of the photos from the cloud and

01:12:32 ◼   ► then upload everything it was trying, it just got into a terrible loop where it was trying to

01:12:36 ◼   ► download and upload at the same time. And they just, you know, essentially the, you know, the

01:12:40 ◼   ► virtual pipe was clogged, so nothing could get anywhere. And it just said uploading forever. But

01:12:45 ◼   ► But again, once I like that was a very simple troubleshoot,

01:12:49 ◼   ► and I talked to Apple, almost immediately got that fixed.

01:12:52 ◼   ► And once I got that fixed, no problems.

01:12:54 ◼   ► Everything's great.

01:12:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, the other thing that really works well,

01:12:57 ◼   ► and it sounds simple,

01:12:58 ◼   ► and I know there's other services that do this.

01:13:00 ◼   ► I'm not saying Apple has invented anything.

01:13:02 ◼   ► I'm just saying that at scale,

01:13:04 ◼   ► for all of the people who use iCloud Photos,

01:13:07 ◼   ► it seems to be working well,

01:13:08 ◼   ► is the way that like you can say

01:13:11 ◼   ► whether or not you want all of your photos

01:13:13 ◼   ► on this device or not,

01:13:14 ◼   ► or you would just want the thumbnails

01:13:16 ◼   ► and pull them down over the cloud as needed to save space.

01:13:19 ◼   ► And having gone through the, again,

01:13:24 ◼   ► I'm not complaining, it's great that I get access

01:13:27 ◼   ► to the iPhones and stuff beforehand,

01:13:29 ◼   ► but I set up an awful lot of iOS devices every year

01:13:32 ◼   ► 'cause I get two new iPhones and then I buy my own iPhone.

01:13:34 ◼   ► Having set up my own iPhones for personal use a lot

01:13:40 ◼   ► and over the last month or two,

01:13:42 ◼   ► it's worked really, really great

01:13:44 ◼   ► where it's obviously they're not, you know, 16 or 17,000 photos, even the thumbnails are not there, you know, a minute or two after you unlock, you know, unwrap the phone. But, you know, within a very reasonable amount of time they are and it's, it's, to me, really impressive. And it solves a problem that we've, you know, had for a long time.

01:14:03 ◼   ► Yeah, well, just the not having to worry about what device I take photos on is huge. And not like in it just in every day to obviously, most people don't necessarily have a job where they're taking tons of product photos on maybe and then uploading them to one machine and maybe need access to them on another machine at a later point in time.

01:14:25 ◼   ► But that kind of workflow, I feel like,

01:14:27 ◼   ► is universal for different documents,

01:14:29 ◼   ► and Apple seems to have really done a great thing

01:14:32 ◼   ► with photos where I can, again, snap a screenshot

01:14:35 ◼   ► or snap a photo of an Apple Watch dock,

01:14:39 ◼   ► and three seconds later it shows up on my Mac

01:14:41 ◼   ► where I need to upload it to our CMS for our website.

01:14:46 ◼   ► And that, it just, it makes it easier.

01:14:49 ◼   ► I don't have to worry about where my photos are,

01:14:51 ◼   ► 'cause I know that, okay, they're all in the cloud,

01:14:54 ◼   ► And then I have a backup, a physical backup on one of my computers, and then I have a double backup in Dropbox.

01:15:00 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:15:01 ◼   ► And it's like, that's, it's just, it feels really nice.

01:15:04 ◼   ► The one, the one niggle that I have with Optimize Storage is that I do wish that your favorites album was automatically stored on device.

01:15:13 ◼   ► Like, I wish there was an album that you could just be like, "This album needs to be stored locally."

01:15:18 ◼   ► because the annoying thing of like tapping something

01:15:22 ◼   ► that you wanna share with somebody

01:15:23 ◼   ► and then seeing the slow download icon

01:15:26 ◼   ► and realizing currently iCloud Photos is limited to Wi-Fi

01:15:30 ◼   ► to download any photo.

01:15:32 ◼   ► So if you wanna get an old photo from 1996

01:15:35 ◼   ► or something that you have stored,

01:15:37 ◼   ► chances are if you haven't looked at it frequently,

01:15:39 ◼   ► it's stored up in the library.

01:15:41 ◼   ► It's not stored on device if you have Optimize on.

01:15:43 ◼   ► And if you're not on Wi-Fi, you can't download that.

01:15:46 ◼   ► And so all you can see is this really blurry picture.

01:15:48 ◼   ► Even if you're just looking at,

01:15:50 ◼   ► you wanna just browse photos

01:15:51 ◼   ► while you're stuck on an airplane or something.

01:15:53 ◼   ► That's a little frustrating, but it's not, you know,

01:15:57 ◼   ► it's not a deal breaker.

01:15:58 ◼   ► It's not necessarily something where I'm like,

01:16:00 ◼   ► "Apple, how could you?"

01:16:01 ◼   ► But it would be nice to have like,

01:16:03 ◼   ► to have a space of like,

01:16:04 ◼   ► "These photos will always stay on my device.

01:16:06 ◼   ► I always wanna look at these pictures of my pets."

01:16:08 ◼   ► - That's the, it's either the default

01:16:11 ◼   ► or it's the only way you get photos

01:16:12 ◼   ► onto your Apple Watch too.

01:16:14 ◼   ► - Yeah. - At least the default

01:16:15 ◼   ► is that you favorite them

01:16:17 ◼   ► and then the favorites are on the watch.

01:16:19 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:16:20 ◼   ► - I don't know if you can also,

01:16:20 ◼   ► is there a way that you can manually

01:16:23 ◼   ► specify a different album?

01:16:24 ◼   ► - You can specify a different album on the Apple Watch,

01:16:27 ◼   ► but it is albums only and favorites is the first option.

01:16:30 ◼   ► - Right. - Yeah, the default.

01:16:31 ◼   ► - So out of the box, that's what happens.

01:16:33 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm looking at it right now.

01:16:35 ◼   ► Yeah, synced album, favorites.

01:16:37 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:16:38 ◼   ► - But anyway, long story short,

01:16:40 ◼   ► I think it's really been a good year for photos

01:16:43 ◼   ► and I am really intrigued to see where they go going forward

01:16:48 ◼   ► because it's one of those things where I feel like,

01:16:50 ◼   ► it's the same thing as I trying to get everything

01:16:52 ◼   ► across the board to go retina,

01:16:53 ◼   ► where you need all of these things in place first

01:16:56 ◼   ► and some of that stuff you just have to wait for.

01:16:58 ◼   ► And I feel like being able to say, it doesn't matter,

01:17:01 ◼   ► you know, like if you have a standalone camera

01:17:05 ◼   ► and you then hook it up to your Mac

01:17:07 ◼   ► and you import them into photos,

01:17:10 ◼   ► a week or two later, you forget what you took the photos of.

01:17:12 ◼   ► just know you took a photo of, you know, your relatives birthday

01:17:16 ◼   ► party. And the fact that it's just there on your phone, what

01:17:19 ◼   ► even if you didn't take the photos with your phone is great.

01:17:22 ◼   ► I'm really interested to see though, if if what they do like

01:17:26 ◼   ► for next year with photos is start beefing up, especially the

01:17:31 ◼   ► Mac version to be more of a prosumer photo editing tool.

01:17:36 ◼   ► I'm hoping so.

01:17:38 ◼   ► I hope so too. And my concern though, is that because

01:17:41 ◼   ► everything is everywhere and that they're non-destructive that the Mac,

01:17:45 ◼   ► what the Mac version of photos can do isn't limited by what the Mac can do but

01:17:49 ◼   ► it's limited by what iOS can do. Yeah well I mean there's already there's

01:17:55 ◼   ► already some disparity there because the iPhone has of course non-destructive

01:18:00 ◼   ► third-party edits and the Mac did not get that option for app extensions until

01:18:05 ◼   ► this fall and even then there those are limited to device so if you if you end

01:18:11 ◼   ► edit something on your iPhone, say with like the Pixelmator extension for iPhone, and then

01:18:17 ◼   ► you import it or you open it up in the Mac. You can't open it with the Pixelmator extension

01:18:22 ◼   ► for Mac inside the Photos app. You can revert it so you can take off all of the edits, or

01:18:28 ◼   ► you can add a top of it, but you can't, once you've changed those sliders, if you open

01:18:32 ◼   ► it up in the Mac and start to apply new more edits, you lose the previous ability to edit

01:18:40 ◼   ► - But if you just look at it, you do see the edits

01:18:44 ◼   ► that you did in Pixelmator.

01:18:45 ◼   ► - Yes, you do.

01:18:46 ◼   ► - So I guess that's one way to do it,

01:18:48 ◼   ► where the Mac could gain a lot of built-in serious stuff,

01:18:52 ◼   ► and then when you open it up on the iPhone, you'd see them,

01:18:54 ◼   ► but then if you tried to edit it, it would warn you

01:18:57 ◼   ► that you either need to make a copy of it

01:18:58 ◼   ► or revert or something.

01:19:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

01:19:01 ◼   ► - I could live with that.

01:19:03 ◼   ► And that's sort of, I think, the best we can hope for.

01:19:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, I mean, I wouldn't necessarily rule out

01:19:10 ◼   ► pro version of photos. But I do think there's enough there are enough things to make improvements

01:19:16 ◼   ► to in the initial app where I think the initial app is a very solid one over lease. But there

01:19:21 ◼   ► are still there are definitely there are definitely tools that a that would be great for a prosumer

01:19:25 ◼   ► app, or a you know, a consumer leading to like doing the slow stepping stones, they've

01:19:31 ◼   ► already done a great job, even with the editing menu of making potentially, you know, severe

01:19:36 ◼   ► and an expansive color correction available to somebody who doesn't really know much.

01:19:43 ◼   ► Where you just start with this slider from light to dark and then you can drop it down

01:19:48 ◼   ► and it becomes more expansive and more in depth and then you can add extensions if you

01:19:51 ◼   ► really want to play around.

01:19:53 ◼   ► And oh, I've messed this up.

01:19:54 ◼   ► It's just a reset button away.

01:19:56 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:19:57 ◼   ► So huge year for photos, in my opinion, Apple Music, the next thing.

01:20:02 ◼   ► This is the part.

01:20:03 ◼   ► Apple Music to me still, it confuses me.

01:20:06 ◼   ► Yeah, you know, this is really the main reason I wanted you on the show is I want you to

01:20:10 ◼   ► explain Apple Music to me.

01:20:12 ◼   ► Okay, well, what would you like to know about Apple Music?

01:20:16 ◼   ► How am I how am I supposed to use it?

01:20:19 ◼   ► Okay.

01:20:20 ◼   ► So do you do you want to use Apple's catalog of song?

01:20:27 ◼   ► Like would you like to access Apple's catalog of artists?

01:20:29 ◼   ► I guess I think what I need to do here's what I think I need to do.

01:20:32 ◼   ► I think for safety sake, I have backups, but I think I need to make like an entire copy

01:20:37 ◼   ► of my music library.

01:20:38 ◼   ► Yes, I think that's wise.

01:20:40 ◼   ► Which is largely ripped, but I have had the match service for, you know, ever since it

01:20:46 ◼   ► came out.

01:20:50 ◼   ► And make a copy, and then I have all of my ripped stuff that I've had for, I don't know,

01:20:54 ◼   ► 15 years now.

01:20:57 ◼   ► And then just go with Apple Music.

01:20:59 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:21:00 ◼   ► What I would suggest, if you're starting from scratch and you want to go into Apple Music,

01:21:05 ◼   ► you make a copy of your library.

01:21:08 ◼   ► For that new copy of your library, if you want to start just absolutely clean, what

01:21:13 ◼   ► you can do is create that new library and then I think there's a checkbox that allows

01:21:17 ◼   ► you to add songs but keep the linked locations absolute, which is to say if you have all

01:21:25 ◼   ► of your songs packaged in your original iTunes Music Library. When you add them to the second

01:21:32 ◼   ► library, it doesn't create a second copy of those songs. It's just it's it has a provisional or I

01:21:37 ◼   ► forget what that's called a symbiotic link from from the original library to your to your new

01:21:43 ◼   ► library and alias basically,

01:21:45 ◼   ► John "Slick" Baum: similar to to the way again, to compare it to photos similar to the way that

01:21:49 ◼   ► when you imported your iPhoto library to the new photos, it didn't make copies of everything.

01:21:54 ◼   ► It used Simlinks to have what looks like two copies of it,

01:21:58 ◼   ► but both pointing to the same stream of bytes on disk.

01:22:02 ◼   ► - Exactly, so you can faux do this.

01:22:05 ◼   ► And then once you have that second library,

01:22:06 ◼   ► you turn Apple Music on for that library and your Apple ID.

01:22:10 ◼   ► It's tied to your Apple ID.

01:22:11 ◼   ► That's the, I think, one of the most important things

01:22:13 ◼   ► that people kind of overlook.

01:22:14 ◼   ► It's tied to your Apple ID, you turn on Apple Music.

01:22:18 ◼   ► And the big difference between having just Apple Music

01:22:23 ◼   ► as your Apple Music service of choice,

01:22:26 ◼   ► or having iTunes match, or having both of them together,

01:22:30 ◼   ► is that Apple Music alone gives you access

01:22:32 ◼   ► to Apple's catalog, so you can stream any of their songs

01:22:35 ◼   ► or their artists.

01:22:37 ◼   ► It lets you play songs that you yourself own,

01:22:40 ◼   ► as well as the Apple Music catalog

01:22:42 ◼   ► on any of your devices, up to 10.

01:22:45 ◼   ► But when you, or if you cancel that service,

01:22:51 ◼   ► that streaming on extra devices thing goes away.

01:22:55 ◼   ► And all of those songs that you've streamed

01:22:57 ◼   ► or downloaded to another device gets deleted,

01:22:59 ◼   ► whether or not you own them.

01:23:01 ◼   ► Extra auxiliary devices

01:23:04 ◼   ► and all of your Apple Music catalog goes away.

01:23:08 ◼   ► So you're left with just the original songs you had

01:23:11 ◼   ► on your original computer.

01:23:13 ◼   ► The difference between that and iTunes match

01:23:17 ◼   ► is that of course in iTunes match,

01:23:19 ◼   ► when you you're able to stream or download your songs that you own to any other computer that has your Apple ID. But when you download those songs onto an auxiliary computer, those songs stay there forever, whether or not you cancel out iTunes match or not, they are they are forever on your auxiliary computer unless you delete them. They are there they are DRM free, they're awesome. So if you just use Apple Music and you cancel iTunes match, then your your

01:23:48 ◼   ► collection, the songs you own that you stream or download to other computers will show up

01:23:53 ◼   ► as Apple Music tagged if they can match to that catalog. And if you cancel Apple Music,

01:24:00 ◼   ► those songs on those auxiliary computers will disappear. So if you want them to retain whether

01:24:06 ◼   ► or not you choose to keep Apple Music, then that's when you keep the two subscriptions

01:24:10 ◼   ► running concurrently. So you have Apple Music and iTunes match.

01:24:13 ◼   ► Do you think it makes sense? Do you have both? Do you still have both?

01:24:17 ◼   ► I still have both in part because I'm testing a million things. But no, I, I have both because

01:24:25 ◼   ► I have a canonical music library on my iMac. But I still I will download some things to

01:24:31 ◼   ► other to other computers. And I don't want my you know, the my local music library on

01:24:36 ◼   ► an auxiliary computer to vanish if I decide to cancel Apple music, because then I would

01:24:41 ◼   ► have to go and re you know, re import everything onto an auxiliary computer or I'd have to

01:24:45 ◼   ► enable iTunes match. And that seems like a like work. And it's like $25 to never have

01:24:52 ◼   ► to worry about that work again. Yeah, I can I can pay 25 bucks a year.

01:24:56 ◼   ► Yeah, 25 bucks a year is like underneath my I give a shit threshold. Yeah, exactly. The

01:25:02 ◼   ► 1499 a month for the family plan of Apple Music is I want to make sure we're actually

01:25:07 ◼   ► listening to this. Yes, exactly. It's like this is actually this is a bill this adds

01:25:12 ◼   ► up to a significant amount of money per month. I like despite all of the insanity with Apple

01:25:17 ◼   ► Music, and I really do think that the difference between the the photos around the photos rollout

01:25:23 ◼   ► and the music rollout is that music didn't have a beta period with people. And if they had had

01:25:30 ◼   ► a beta period with enough with a cup, you know, a couple hundred, like even 510,000 subscribers

01:25:37 ◼   ► would be enough to hash out most of the terrible bugs they saw. Like the fact that Apple Music

01:25:43 ◼   ► or Apple Music and iTunes match users were seeing their songs matched as Apple Music. That was a bug

01:25:50 ◼   ► that was fixed within the first 48 hours. But despite it being fixed in the first 48 hours,

01:25:55 ◼   ► people went crazy over it for about a month and a half.

01:25:58 ◼   ► Yeah, that's a really keen observation. I really think it's that, you know, that iPhoto or Photos

01:26:05 ◼   ► had a beta and they worked out these kinks and music was like all of you go sign up for this

01:26:11 ◼   ► free service now for three months and they worked out the kinks like on the fly and it really did

01:26:17 ◼   ► leave a sour taste in people's mouths. Yeah and honestly because it was free they really could

01:26:21 ◼   ► have just said three free free or free three month trial and this is our beta period. This summer is

01:26:28 ◼   ► our beta launch off period for Apple Music. That's what I mean looking at Beats 1 I listened to Beats

01:26:33 ◼   ► one a lot in the early days, in parts because I was writing about it, but in part just because it was

01:26:37 ◼   ► it was such a curiosity to me. As someone who hasn't listened to terrestrial radio in about 12

01:26:41 ◼   ► years, it was such a curiosity and such an interesting like highbrow, can you make this work?

01:26:46 ◼   ► But but beats one was very much in their initial two months. And even I mean, that interview with

01:26:52 ◼   ► same low that he gave recently at the BBC, or he was basically like, we are figuring this stuff out

01:26:59 ◼   ► by the seat of our pants. This is very much a beta for us. And we won't know exactly what

01:27:04 ◼   ► Beats 1 is or how it fits into the overarching theme of Apple Music for about a year. Like,

01:27:09 ◼   ► we need this time to build it. We built the station in 12 weeks. We need this beta period.

01:27:15 ◼   ► And so that side was very, very honest and straightforward, even on the air,

01:27:20 ◼   ► being like, "We're just trying this out. Let us know what you like. Let us know what you don't.

01:27:24 ◼   ► we can, you know, we want to work with you. We want to be your station. And the rest of

01:27:29 ◼   ► Apple Music was very like, this is how it is. This is Apple Music. Enjoy Apple Music.

01:27:34 ◼   ► How do you think it's going now that the for everybody who signed up right away the three

01:27:40 ◼   ► month beta, or not beta, but trial, yeah, reading your mind. The trial, the three month trial is

01:27:47 ◼   ► over. And people got the notices like, hey, you're gonna get charged unless you cancel.

01:27:53 ◼   ► How do you think they're doing now? It's hard to say because I don't think they've announced

01:27:56 ◼   ► anything. No, and I don't think they will for a little bit. I do think that probably 50 plus

01:28:02 ◼   ► percent canceled. But I don't actually think that's a bad thing. I think that they need to do a

01:28:07 ◼   ► little bit of retooling. And they, I pretty sure kind of realized that they need to do a bit of

01:28:12 ◼   ► retooling in terms of what's really valuable. Their streaming catalog is fantastic. You know,

01:28:17 ◼   ► as someone who is still an Apple Music member, their streaming catalog is fantastic. The four

01:28:21 ◼   ► you suggestions are very, very good, especially if you continue to listen and like these things

01:28:28 ◼   ► and like and try and and try and refine your tastes. Their their curation engine is is

01:28:34 ◼   ► really pretty good. And Beats 1 is really fun. Despite not being a terrestrial radio

01:28:39 ◼   ► person, like I will tune into that because it feels it almost feels like being in an

01:28:44 ◼   ► office as a work at home person where it's like, oh, there are people occasionally talking,

01:28:48 ◼   ► And they're talking about interesting music related things.

01:28:50 ◼   ► It's not like the daily local news in your area.

01:28:53 ◼   ► And it's not something so depressing as NPR to get you kind of,

01:28:57 ◼   ► to get your stomach in knots.

01:28:59 ◼   ► It's just kind of light, fun, interesting content and

01:29:02 ◼   ► good music you might not have otherwise heard.

01:29:05 ◼   ► So I think there are quite a few people who are still kind of hanging on and

01:29:08 ◼   ► have gotten addicted to certain aspects of the service.

01:29:12 ◼   ► But for the wide audience, Apple needs to put a little bit more work into it.

01:29:17 ◼   ► to really make it launch off.

01:29:19 ◼   ► And one of the biggest things they can do

01:29:22 ◼   ► is revamp iTunes on the Mac,

01:29:24 ◼   ► because right now it's still a mess is the polite word.

01:29:29 ◼   ► I could say much more horrible things, but I will decline.

01:29:36 ◼   ► But the music app, the new music app in iOS 9,

01:29:41 ◼   ► people are still complaining that it's messy,

01:29:43 ◼   ► but it's slightly, it's less messy.

01:29:44 ◼   ► It's slowly like they're iterating on this

01:29:46 ◼   ► and being like, okay, this is what works,

01:29:47 ◼   ► this is what doesn't.

01:29:50 ◼   ► Turns out we don't need a more button

01:29:52 ◼   ► that's gonna last 15 links worth of more button.

01:29:56 ◼   ► We can work around this.

01:29:58 ◼   ► iTunes still feels gigantic and bloated and uncomfortable.

01:30:03 ◼   ► - And it's just awkward in weird ways.

01:30:05 ◼   ► I think I told you this story over the weekend

01:30:06 ◼   ► when you were here in Philly for the Coco Love Conference.

01:30:09 ◼   ► - For Coco Love, yeah.

01:30:09 ◼   ► - And we hung out a little bit.

01:30:12 ◼   ► But long story short, my wife had a playlist,

01:30:16 ◼   ► new playlist she made on her Mac and she just wanted to send it to her phone and go to the

01:30:20 ◼   ► gym. And the way the new iTunes works, it's like you, there's like this weird dot dot

01:30:26 ◼   ► dot button, and you select the playlist and then you go to the dot dot dot. And then it

01:30:32 ◼   ► just says send to device and then there's her iPhone and she'd click it. And it which

01:30:37 ◼   ► seems like that's what you do. And then if you Google, you know, search for how you're

01:30:40 ◼   ► supposed to do this, it says that's how it's supposed to do. And it never just it just

01:30:44 ◼   ► never showed up on our iPhone. And long story short, I think that solution was to turn off

01:30:49 ◼   ► Apple Music on all of our devices and just do it the old fashioned way and connect it

01:30:55 ◼   ► to USB and then the dot dot dot send to this phone worked.

01:30:59 ◼   ► Yeah, because you're actually sending it over tethered connection. It's such a mess. It's

01:31:02 ◼   ► such a mess. But if you have Apple Music turned on, it's like even having a tethered connection

01:31:06 ◼   ► doesn't make it work. That's even worse sometimes like some of some of my playlists show up

01:31:10 ◼   ► some of my playlists don't still at this at this day. It's like Apple, this is the

01:31:14 ◼   ► that's the kind of stuff that could have been really valuable during a three month

01:31:17 ◼   ► beta test of like me. Hey, there's some playlist problems. Let's actually find

01:31:22 ◼   ► out. And I find it really interesting. I don't know if you saw this week. Apple

01:31:26 ◼   ► launched an Apple Music Help Twitter account. No office hours. No. Yeah. So

01:31:33 ◼   ► app at Apple Music Help for people's Apple Music questions. And they have

01:31:38 ◼   ► office hours from I think eight to six either GMT or ESTI. I need to actually

01:31:43 ◼   ► look. But I saw that and I quite literally laughed out loud because

01:31:50 ◼   ► that's what I have been doing for the last three months on

01:31:54 ◼   ► and off is being people's like Apple Music guru on Twitter and now I can be

01:31:58 ◼   ► like go talk to them they've actually built this thing like I will

01:32:02 ◼   ► happily help you stumble like try and stumble through your problem with you

01:32:06 ◼   ► But maybe the people who have access to the engineers can fix your more high-level problems,

01:32:12 ◼   ► like the fact that pressing the "Like" button refines your tastes, but also there's no way

01:32:16 ◼   ► to save a song you like as a favorite without adding it to your library, and then it goes

01:32:21 ◼   ► into the mass of the bottomless pit of library.

01:32:26 ◼   ► That's really awesome.

01:32:28 ◼   ► The Top Pin tweet, in fact, answers my question.

01:32:31 ◼   ► It is, "Create a playlist with your favorite songs in Apple Music."

01:32:35 ◼   ► Huh, there you go

01:32:37 ◼   ► Obviously, obviously, it's a frequently asked question

01:32:39 ◼   ► Anyway, but isn't that that is sort of a fun, you know again not to really pretend like it's

01:32:48 ◼   ► New Year's already but and and get all sanguine about and talk about 2015 in the past tense, but

01:32:54 ◼   ► Among other things that have happened this year. There's you know, it has been a sort of

01:33:04 ◼   ► quote unquote, new Apple, you know, things that Apple does that they wouldn't have done

01:33:07 ◼   ► before. And I think having a Twitter account with office hours is file that under things

01:33:13 ◼   ► Apple wouldn't have done before.

01:33:14 ◼   ► Yeah, the new giving, given Steven Levy access to the the design team and actually having

01:33:21 ◼   ► like people's not only people's names associated to what they were doing, but people's faces

01:33:25 ◼   ► and pictures inside. It was just one of those things where I'm like, I would have never

01:33:29 ◼   ► seen this story five or six years ago. And I'm really glad to see this story and hear

01:33:33 ◼   ► more about the inner workings of Apple. I'm really glad that Apple is reaching out for

01:33:38 ◼   ► help and support beyond just the standard disclaimer, "Go see AppleCare." I'm glad that

01:33:44 ◼   ► developers are getting more of a voice on Twitter without worrying that the full wrath

01:33:50 ◼   ► of PR is going to come and eat them alive and then they'll never be seen or heard from

01:33:53 ◼   ► again. It's a really interesting sea change. And then you... Sorry, go ahead.

01:33:59 ◼   ► - Well, one of the things, I would like to see it,

01:34:02 ◼   ► and I've been on this for years,

01:34:03 ◼   ► I haven't talked about it frequently,

01:34:05 ◼   ► but years ago, I don't know, five or six years ago,

01:34:07 ◼   ► I did a talk at Macworld back when Macworld,

01:34:11 ◼   ► San Francisco was still a thing.

01:34:13 ◼   ► It was like my top 10 things to be,

01:34:16 ◼   ► things to look at for the future,

01:34:18 ◼   ► things to worry about Apple, top 10 list.

01:34:20 ◼   ► And one of them was that I wanted Apple to go back

01:34:26 ◼   ► to letting the people who make the software

01:34:30 ◼   ► put their credits in the about box.

01:34:33 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:34:33 ◼   ► - Like, the whole reason about boxes were there,

01:34:36 ◼   ► that that's a thing in Mac apps,

01:34:38 ◼   ► originally it was so that the people who made the things

01:34:43 ◼   ► could get credit for them.

01:34:45 ◼   ► And it went away when Steve Jobs came back in 1997, '98.

01:34:50 ◼   ► And now the about boxes are almost useless,

01:34:54 ◼   ► and it's standard across all of their software,

01:34:55 ◼   ► where it just has the icon, the name of the app,

01:34:58 ◼   ► the version number, and a copyright, and that's it.

01:35:01 ◼   ► It's almost like, why do it?

01:35:03 ◼   ► It's just the only thing you really get out of it

01:35:05 ◼   ► is a version number.

01:35:05 ◼   ► And the idea that Jobs gave back in '98

01:35:09 ◼   ► was that Apple was in bad shape, and their talent,

01:35:11 ◼   ► they did it, the one thing the company had,

01:35:13 ◼   ► the company was in bad shape,

01:35:14 ◼   ► but it had lots and lots of talent,

01:35:15 ◼   ► and he was really almost pleasantly surprised

01:35:18 ◼   ► by the amount of talent, engineering,

01:35:20 ◼   ► and the fact that Johnny Ive and his team are already there.

01:35:23 ◼   ► - Didn't want them to be stolen?

01:35:25 ◼   ► Well, yeah, it was like an anti-poaching thing.

01:35:27 ◼   ► But that is such-- the way the world works today, nobody needs

01:35:32 ◼   ► to-- nobody who's a recruiter trying to poach Apple employees

01:35:35 ◼   ► needs the About box to figure out who wrote this app.

01:35:39 ◼   ► No.

01:35:40 ◼   ► And there is obviously-- I mean, I don't use LinkedIn,

01:35:44 ◼   ► but I mean, thousands and thousands and thousands

01:35:47 ◼   ► of Apple employees are on LinkedIn.

01:35:48 ◼   ► I mean, there's all sorts of-- and I'm

01:35:51 ◼   ► sure that the best recruiters don't even need to do that.

01:35:54 ◼   ► They have other--

01:35:54 ◼   ► - They know it.

01:35:56 ◼   ► - Right, like the difference between the current world today

01:36:00 ◼   ► and the world where Apple employees got to put their credits

01:36:04 ◼   ► in the about boxes for the apps that are in the system,

01:36:06 ◼   ► the difference in the amount of talent that gets poached

01:36:10 ◼   ► is I think effectively zero.

01:36:13 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:36:14 ◼   ► - Like that's not a good reason to do it.

01:36:15 ◼   ► And I think that being able to sign your work,

01:36:17 ◼   ► to me it's just an important part of,

01:36:22 ◼   ► It's just like a point of pride.

01:36:25 ◼   ► - Absolutely.

01:36:26 ◼   ► Well, it's also nice.

01:36:27 ◼   ► I mean, you know Apple employees,

01:36:30 ◼   ► I know Apple employees and former Apple employees.

01:36:33 ◼   ► And when you're working on something that's secret,

01:36:36 ◼   ► all you can really say is I work in this team

01:36:39 ◼   ► and you don't want them to say anything more

01:36:41 ◼   ► because you don't want them to get in trouble.

01:36:42 ◼   ► But after a feature ships, you know,

01:36:45 ◼   ► they can say like, "Hey, I worked on that.

01:36:47 ◼   ► "That thing in the keynote,

01:36:49 ◼   ► "that was partially my, you know, something that I did."

01:36:52 ◼   ► And I like that.

01:36:54 ◼   ► I like, again, like you said,

01:36:56 ◼   ► I like the idea that our friends and Apple,

01:37:00 ◼   ► people who work at Apple can sign their work

01:37:01 ◼   ► and can be proud about their work

01:37:03 ◼   ► because they spend so long and under such levels of secrecy

01:37:07 ◼   ► to get it right and get it perfect

01:37:09 ◼   ► and just make a great product,

01:37:12 ◼   ► whether that's hardware or software.

01:37:14 ◼   ► And when it comes out,

01:37:15 ◼   ► I love what Tim Cook has been doing

01:37:17 ◼   ► at the last couple of events,

01:37:18 ◼   ► which stand up if you worked on this.

01:37:20 ◼   ► Like let's acknowledge these people

01:37:21 ◼   ► and not have them hide in the shadows.

01:37:24 ◼   ► - Jobs did that too sometimes.

01:37:25 ◼   ► But I don't know, I just feel like letting,

01:37:29 ◼   ► making the about box is relevant again

01:37:30 ◼   ► as just the credits,

01:37:32 ◼   ► let it be the credits for the software, I don't know.

01:37:34 ◼   ► And I feel like that kind of fits with the way

01:37:37 ◼   ► that Steven Levy's behind the scenes of the new peripherals

01:37:40 ◼   ► got to talk to people who actually designed them

01:37:43 ◼   ► and worked on them and stuff like that.

01:37:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's very cool.

01:37:49 ◼   ► Let me take another break here and thank our next friendly sponsor.

01:37:53 ◼   ► And it is our good friends, longtime sponsors of the show,

01:37:56 ◼   ► mail route R O U T E. Some people might pronounce that mail route.

01:38:00 ◼   ► I don't know. I say mail route. Um, here's what they do.

01:38:04 ◼   ► They are email nerds who do nothing but email.

01:38:08 ◼   ► That's and what they want to do is they want to handle your email.

01:38:13 ◼   ► They've created, uh,

01:38:17 ◼   ► the first cloud-based email filtering solution years ago,

01:38:20 ◼   ► then they sold it to Microsoft.

01:38:23 ◼   ► Then the same team went back

01:38:25 ◼   ► and they created a really clear product,

01:38:30 ◼   ► just as one thing.

01:38:31 ◼   ► It is an innovative and effective spam

01:38:34 ◼   ► and virus filtering mail filter.

01:38:37 ◼   ► Here's how it works.

01:38:40 ◼   ► You have your own email server, your domain name,

01:38:42 ◼   ► and you get your email.

01:38:43 ◼   ► You keep running your own email server,

01:38:45 ◼   ► But what you do is you take your DNS records

01:38:48 ◼   ► and you point the ones for email at mail route.

01:38:53 ◼   ► And then mail route, you point them

01:38:56 ◼   ► at your regular mail service.

01:38:57 ◼   ► So mail route isn't actually hosting your email.

01:38:59 ◼   ► It just goes through mail route first,

01:39:01 ◼   ► then on to the email server you already have.

01:39:05 ◼   ► Works with any mail server, doesn't matter.

01:39:07 ◼   ► All mail route does is filter out all of the crap,

01:39:11 ◼   ► spam, the virus stuff.

01:39:14 ◼   ► I mean, Mac users don't really have to worry

01:39:15 ◼   ► about the virus stuff, but spam is an enormous problem.

01:39:18 ◼   ► And mail routes spam filtering is, I would argue,

01:39:22 ◼   ► second to none.

01:39:23 ◼   ► It is really, really amazing.

01:39:27 ◼   ► If spam filtering, for example, is the only reason

01:39:29 ◼   ► that you use Gmail instead of hosting your own email,

01:39:32 ◼   ► you should really take a look at mail route

01:39:34 ◼   ► because it is super effective.

01:39:35 ◼   ► I mean, almost nothing gets through.

01:39:39 ◼   ► And they have really cool stuff, very configurable,

01:39:41 ◼   ► so that you can get--

01:39:43 ◼   ► for example, you could get like a daily report just emailed to

01:39:45 ◼   ► you at the end of the day with here are the ones that mail

01:39:49 ◼   ► route was it's like, maybe about, you know, 99% of spam,

01:39:53 ◼   ► they can just nuke and they're 100% certain that this is spam.

01:39:56 ◼   ► If there's anything that they are like, Hmm, I think this is

01:39:59 ◼   ► spam, but maybe not. They you can get a report every day. And

01:40:03 ◼   ► then you see it and you say, wow, that wasn't spam, you know,

01:40:06 ◼   ► click it, you go there and mark it as not spam, and it goes

01:40:09 ◼   ► through to your email. And then they'll remember that and it

01:40:11 ◼   ► keeps going. Really, really easy to set up. The hardest part is

01:40:15 ◼   ► probably just figuring out, going to where your domain is

01:40:18 ◼   ► registered and getting the DNS records pointed the right way.

01:40:22 ◼   ► But they have all sorts of stuff to help you get that going. It's

01:40:26 ◼   ► easy to set up, it's reliable, and it's trusted by really,

01:40:29 ◼   ► really, there's large corporations, large

01:40:31 ◼   ► universities, entire universities with 10s of

01:40:33 ◼   ► 1000s of students, and all the mail, all the stuff goes through

01:40:36 ◼   ► mail route first because they're so good at what they do.

01:40:41 ◼   ► Really is an amazing way.

01:40:42 ◼   ► It just returns email to like the old days

01:40:45 ◼   ► when there was no such thing as spam.

01:40:47 ◼   ► They support all sorts of nerdy stuff too

01:40:49 ◼   ► if you're like a sysadmin and these things

01:40:51 ◼   ► mean anything to you.

01:40:52 ◼   ► They've got LDAP, they've got Active Directory,

01:40:55 ◼   ► they support TLS, they support mail bagging,

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01:41:01 ◼   ► from the people handling your email.

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01:41:07 ◼   ► It just takes all the junk out of your email

01:41:10 ◼   ► and then you don't have to worry about spam anymore.

01:41:13 ◼   ► Where do you go to find out more?

01:41:14 ◼   ► Very easy.

01:41:15 ◼   ► Go to mailroute.net.

01:41:18 ◼   ► It's .net because they're like a networking service.

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01:41:37 ◼   ► for as long as you use them.

01:41:39 ◼   ► Could be decades to come.

01:41:41 ◼   ► So my thanks to MailRoute.

01:41:42 ◼   ► Go check them out if you host your own email server.

01:41:45 ◼   ► What else do you wanna talk about?

01:41:50 ◼   ► - Gosh, we can talk about the Facebook brouhaha.

01:41:53 ◼   ► - Ooh, that's a good one.

01:41:55 ◼   ► If you're talking about the same thing I'm thinking about,

01:41:57 ◼   ► which is the thing-- - Yes, we were talking

01:41:58 ◼   ► about yesterday.

01:41:59 ◼   ► - With Federico pointed this out.

01:42:02 ◼   ► - Yes. - Do you wanna summarize this?

01:42:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, so Facebook eats a lot of an iPhone's battery

01:42:08 ◼   ► and it's traditionally eaten a lot of the iPhone's battery

01:42:12 ◼   ► which is why at least I'm more we recommend

01:42:14 ◼   ► turning off background processes.

01:42:16 ◼   ► But in iOS 9, we were able to see not only is Facebook

01:42:21 ◼   ► eating a lot of your battery and you can see

01:42:23 ◼   ► in terms of the battery screen and percentages,

01:42:26 ◼   ► but you can now tell what specific processes

01:42:28 ◼   ► Facebook is using and it turns out even if you have

01:42:32 ◼   ► background processing turned off, Facebook can still eat your battery with

01:42:36 ◼   ► background audio. And what Federico Petici theorized, and based on some very

01:42:44 ◼   ► clever sleuthing on his part, is that Facebook is likely playing silent audio

01:42:50 ◼   ► to keep the app running and active in the background. And I don't know if that

01:42:55 ◼   ► that is helpful for them on the ad side too, but it's insane to me. Like what

01:42:59 ◼   ► It's such, I feel so dirty.

01:43:02 ◼   ► - It feels downright malicious.

01:43:04 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:43:05 ◼   ► - And honestly, the thing that occurs to me is,

01:43:09 ◼   ► it doesn't really matter what they're doing.

01:43:11 ◼   ► If it's like they're, check out this tweet.

01:43:14 ◼   ► And this is a tweet from somebody.

01:43:16 ◼   ► I actually checked with this guy.

01:43:17 ◼   ► I don't know his real name.

01:43:18 ◼   ► His Twitter account is just his first name, Chad.

01:43:21 ◼   ► But he tweeted a screenshot.

01:43:24 ◼   ► He added me and Jim Dalrymple and Phil Schiller.

01:43:27 ◼   ► - Yeah. (laughs)

01:43:28 ◼   ► And this is his usage from, I guess that's an iPad, right?

01:43:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's an iPad mini.

01:43:36 ◼   ► - His battery usage on iOS 9 was 75% of his entire battery

01:43:44 ◼   ► was consumed by Facebook,

01:43:47 ◼   ► and it was only two minutes on screen.

01:43:50 ◼   ► This is so, if you haven't looked at this,

01:43:52 ◼   ► if you go to the usage in iOS 9,

01:43:55 ◼   ► Apple's really gotten this to a very fine-grained breakdown.

01:44:00 ◼   ► And the number one thing to remember is in most apps,

01:44:04 ◼   ► the thing that kills your battery the most

01:44:06 ◼   ► is making the display go.

01:44:09 ◼   ► And so knowing how much of your time,

01:44:11 ◼   ► so now that they tell you how much of the time

01:44:13 ◼   ► was on screen and how much was in the background,

01:44:16 ◼   ► it can really tell you, hey, maybe it's actually okay

01:44:20 ◼   ► that Tweetbot used 38% of my battery because,

01:44:24 ◼   ► "Wow, I was on it for three hours."

01:44:26 ◼   ► And at the screen level.

01:44:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, you're like, "All right, all right, I understand."

01:44:31 ◼   ► - And so for example, if you sit there and read a book

01:44:33 ◼   ► in iBook for a long time,

01:44:35 ◼   ► it makes sense that it's gonna use a lot of battery,

01:44:37 ◼   ► even though that is obviously not a CPU intensive application

01:44:40 ◼   ► because it's powering the screen.

01:44:42 ◼   ► This guy sent me this screenshot,

01:44:44 ◼   ► Facebook, two minutes on screen,

01:44:46 ◼   ► 15.9 hours in the background.

01:44:49 ◼   ► It used up 75% of his iPad's battery

01:44:51 ◼   ► And he has the Facebook consent not to be able

01:44:55 ◼   ► to use background updates.

01:44:57 ◼   ► - Which is insane.

01:44:58 ◼   ► - That is insane.

01:45:00 ◼   ► And it actually, to me, I honestly think it shows

01:45:05 ◼   ► who holds the power in the Facebook Apple really.

01:45:11 ◼   ► If you think of Apple as this mighty corporation

01:45:14 ◼   ► and they think of the App Store as this powerful tool

01:45:17 ◼   ► that they wield with their own utter discretion,

01:45:21 ◼   ► I actually think that this makes Apple look bad and weak.

01:45:25 ◼   ► It's almost like because Facebook is so essential

01:45:28 ◼   ► to what people use their iPhones for.

01:45:30 ◼   ► It's, you know, by almost every account,

01:45:32 ◼   ► the single most used third party app on iPhone,

01:45:36 ◼   ► that I almost wonder whether Apple knows

01:45:39 ◼   ► that they're doing this and feels like they can't do it.

01:45:42 ◼   ► What are they gonna do?

01:45:42 ◼   ► Kick the Facebook app out of the app store?

01:45:45 ◼   ► - Well, unfortunately it harms them.

01:45:47 ◼   ► I'm looking at my battery for the last seven days on this.

01:45:49 ◼   ► This is crazy.

01:45:50 ◼   ► minutes on screen for Facebook 3.2 hours of background. There's no reason it's not as

01:45:55 ◼   ► and do you have background updating turned off? I turned I have it turned off for Facebook.

01:45:59 ◼   ► So it's you know, which this is mind boggling to me and it's I don't know I still don't

01:46:05 ◼   ► have a Facebook account. So I have not encountered this first and it does not inspire me to change

01:46:11 ◼   ► after all these years to change my mind and maybe sign up for Facebook. Yeah, and I that's

01:46:16 ◼   ► the sad thing is like I was off Facebook around 2010. I was done with it and I only went back

01:46:22 ◼   ► because the people that I play roller derby with that is the roller derby community is

01:46:26 ◼   ► on Facebook. It's not a Twitter based place. So I only use Facebook for for derby and even

01:46:34 ◼   ► so it ends up murdering my battery.

01:46:36 ◼   ► And I totally understand that and I know how much of stuff like that I was just at I don't

01:46:41 ◼   ► we can talk about in a bit but I was at a screening of the Steve Jobs movie last night

01:46:45 ◼   ► over at University of Pennsylvania. And it was, I thought it was like a press screening,

01:46:48 ◼   ► but it was really more for like, it was like students could get in, it was mostly just

01:46:51 ◼   ► college kids. And they have like a, it was like put together by like their, their film

01:46:56 ◼   ► club or something like that. And the pre-announcement like, "Hey, welcome, you know, glad everybody

01:47:01 ◼   ► could be here." It was like, how do you get involved if you're a student and want to get

01:47:05 ◼   ► involved with the club? It was Facebook. Yeah, Facebook group, you know, I'm sure that there

01:47:09 ◼   ► are 10,000 other examples of groups where if you want to get involved and stay in touch,

01:47:14 ◼   ► has to be Facebook, so I understand that.

01:47:16 ◼   ► And not everybody can be an antisocial hermit like I am.

01:47:20 ◼   ► But this is criminal.

01:47:21 ◼   ► This is absolutely insane that they're working around.

01:47:27 ◼   ► People who are specifically saying,

01:47:29 ◼   ► I do not want you to update in the background,

01:47:32 ◼   ► and they're doing it anyway by cheating.

01:47:34 ◼   ► I mean, it doesn't matter whether the only way they're

01:47:38 ◼   ► doing it is Federico's theory that they're

01:47:40 ◼   ► playing silent audio, which lets them stay running

01:47:43 ◼   ► in the background as a separate thing from the background updating option, which clearly

01:47:50 ◼   ► is not in the user's interest. Nobody wants that. They've said, "We want you to shut up

01:47:55 ◼   ► in the background. Just stop." And the other thing too that struck me about this is this

01:48:02 ◼   ► because of the insane popularity of Facebook and how many people use it and clearly how

01:48:09 ◼   ► detrimental it is to your battery. This has to be I don't even think it's a maybe this has to be a

01:48:14 ◼   ► main reason for the the the stress about the iPhone's battery. No, the fourth the force

01:48:19 ◼   ► quitting apps thing. Oh, that too. Yeah, I really surprised that this whole entrenched, what would

01:48:27 ◼   ► you call it the way that so many people leave? It's a it's a tenant of like using a smartphone

01:48:31 ◼   ► where Oh, I have to force quit my apps because it'll make the thing run faster and the battery

01:48:35 ◼   ► last longer. Right. On ATP the other week, Casey Liss was saying he was at a

01:48:41 ◼   ► football game and the guy in front of him, every time he would take his phone

01:48:44 ◼   ► out, he'd unlock it, do whatever he was gonna do, and then double-click the home

01:48:48 ◼   ► button and force quit whatever app he just used, and then turn the phone off

01:48:51 ◼   ► and put it back in his pocket. Every single time he said, and it was like

01:48:54 ◼   ► driving him nuts. But can you, so, and my thought was this is voodoo and Apple

01:48:59 ◼   ► needs to stop this because it's not helping anybody. Whereas it must be

01:49:02 ◼   ► helping people because it that way you can actually nuke the Facebook app and

01:49:07 ◼   ► it wouldn't be playing the silent audio anymore and you actually would see

01:49:10 ◼   ► better battery life. Yeah I mean I used to use the force quit apps

01:49:15 ◼   ► technique way back when when I would go over the border between US and Canada so

01:49:20 ◼   ► that I wouldn't accidentally use data usage because that you know that like

01:49:23 ◼   ► that is the way to ensure that someone's not leeching in the background so you'd

01:49:28 ◼   ► cut everything on that but yeah I mean that it seems like that's the only

01:49:32 ◼   ► way to ensure that Facebook's not leeching leeching data and looks at not even battery life data. Like

01:49:39 ◼   ► you think about how much how much data I don't care if the audio is silent, you're still streaming

01:49:43 ◼   ► something, you are still requiring a call. And it'd be really interesting to compare this with

01:49:48 ◼   ► also the numbers of the the cellular data. But I but I do think you're absolutely right. And that

01:49:53 ◼   ► the it it emphasizes and it it validates the force quit theory, where Oh, well, of course,

01:50:01 ◼   ► this is how I have to use my iPhone. And I also I think that it might actively be skewing iPhone

01:50:08 ◼   ► battery numbers enough people use Facebook. Yeah, that I wouldn't be surprised if that's cutting

01:50:12 ◼   ► half an hour an hour off of your battery every day. And if you're going from you know, you think

01:50:17 ◼   ► you're getting a phone with a 14 hour battery and you end up getting, you know, closer to 11 or 12.

01:50:21 ◼   ► That's I mean that that it's a bigger problem than I think. Yeah, we've made it out to be before

01:50:29 ◼   ► this. Yeah, I really was not aware of it. But it's it really

01:50:32 ◼   ► seems like I don't use the word lightly, but it seems

01:50:35 ◼   ► scandalous. It really does. And I think it's clearly dark matter

01:50:40 ◼   ► to most people like they're not going to figure this out. Like

01:50:42 ◼   ► just going to settings general.

01:50:46 ◼   ► Yeah, setting settings battery to find the usage now. Right.

01:50:51 ◼   ► Oh, right, right, right settings battery. But people, you know,

01:50:54 ◼   ► how many people go there? I don't think it's a lot.

01:50:57 ◼   ► You stumble across it occasionally. You're like, Oh,

01:50:59 ◼   ► that's fun. Yeah. The only the only app that has more I'm looking at cellular

01:51:03 ◼   ► data right now the only app that has more than Facebook right now and

01:51:06 ◼   ► Facebook has 420 something megabytes. I've got I've got the music at 430 and

01:51:13 ◼   ► tweetbot at 551 megabytes but I use those apps probably 15 times as much as

01:51:20 ◼   ► Facebook on my phone. That's crazy.

01:51:25 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm looking at it. Yeah, it's crazy. Anyway, I think that

01:51:33 ◼   ► this is not the last we've heard of this. I think that this story has legs,

01:51:37 ◼   ► as they say in politics. But it's just crazy. Like this guy with the two minutes on

01:51:42 ◼   ► screen and 15 hours in the background is crazy. Yeah, and the usage. The

01:51:47 ◼   ► fact that, you know, it's not just 75% but he's only used it

01:51:51 ◼   ► two hours. Like he has the time since last full charge there and that's the

01:51:55 ◼   ► really like, uh,

01:51:57 ◼   ► yeah. And if you it's, you have to tap it if you're just looking

01:52:01 ◼   ► at it. If you'd look at the iOS nine, if you tap it, and you get

01:52:05 ◼   ► this little there's a little blue clock thing that shows you

01:52:07 ◼   ► the the how long on screen and how long in the background

01:52:12 ◼   ► breakdown. Yeah, doesn't show that by default. Yeah, for me,

01:52:16 ◼   ► it's tweet bot and and Safari.

01:52:18 ◼   ► Yeah, tweet tweet bot the last 24 hours have been maps because

01:52:22 ◼   ► I've been using my phone a lot. But tweet bot Safari maps music

01:52:25 ◼   ► Facebook. Right. And then mail is the only one to me that has the big difference between on screen

01:52:31 ◼   ► and background because I don't Yeah, you know, but that makes sense. Because I have mail set to to

01:52:35 ◼   ► download my mail in the background. Exactly. Like mail has a good reason to download stuff in the

01:52:40 ◼   ► background. Right. And I know how to shut it off. And if I told it not to, if I said, you know,

01:52:44 ◼   ► which I do it again, which I do when I go to a foreign country, and I'm on like 100 megabytes

01:52:49 ◼   ► SIM card, and I'll just have my email set. Don't don't load email until I, you know,

01:52:54 ◼   ► - Until I ask for it, yeah, fetching.

01:52:57 ◼   ► - And then it does that.

01:52:59 ◼   ► Again, it's so easy for someone like me

01:53:03 ◼   ► who's never used Facebook

01:53:05 ◼   ► and has always been sort of skeptical of the company

01:53:07 ◼   ► to sit here and complain about it.

01:53:10 ◼   ► - This proves my point, yeah.

01:53:11 ◼   ► - But this really does seem scandalous.

01:53:13 ◼   ► I mean, this seems, it's almost outrageous.

01:53:16 ◼   ► - Well, yeah, I mean, I look at the battery

01:53:18 ◼   ► and I'm like, "Maps, you can have background activity.

01:53:20 ◼   ► That makes sense.

01:53:21 ◼   ► Mail, you can have background activity.

01:53:23 ◼   ► music, you can have background activity podcasts. Yes, all of

01:53:26 ◼   ► these make sense. Facebook having background. I don't know

01:53:29 ◼   ► what Facebook would do with background activity, like

01:53:31 ◼   ► actively be useful for me, maybe load more of my timeline so I

01:53:35 ◼   ► can read it when I don't have a data connection, but I don't

01:53:38 ◼   ► care.

01:53:38 ◼   ► It would be curious to see what they are doing and why they're

01:53:41 ◼   ► doing it. But yes, you know, I don't know. It's really, really

01:53:46 ◼   ► interesting. Yeah. I agree. I don't think we've heard the last

01:53:49 ◼   ► of it. But you know, get get get get get your pitchforks out.

01:53:54 ◼   ► Seriously, let's say yeah, let's enact change on this. Let's