The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► breaking news to see Steve Ballmer step down from the Microsoft board. I did. I did. I

00:00:05 ◼   ► love him so much. So it's hard for me. I'm kind of happy for him though, because I feel

00:00:09 ◼   ► like he's already he's already got like a big new thing. Yeah, no, he's found he's found

00:00:17 ◼   ► his next windows, you know? Yeah. Did you see the video of him at the like, yeah, so

00:00:24 ◼   ► good. He's gonna be such a great owner. Clippers fans don't know how good they're gonna get

00:00:29 ◼   ► I mean this just could have been like this probably what he should have been doing for 20 years. I

00:00:34 ◼   ► Do I kind of I do kind of feel like that I do and I feel like you know, yeah

00:00:39 ◼   ► As a Yankees fan, I'm partial to the bigger-than-life

00:00:45 ◼   ► owner like George Steinbrenner, which is exactly what Ballmer is except maybe he's maybe a little a little bit

00:00:53 ◼   ► Believe it or not a little bit less angry

00:00:57 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:00:59 ◼   ► - I mean, the guy goes how to keep his cool though.

00:01:02 ◼   ► Have you ever seen the video on YouTube

00:01:04 ◼   ► where he's at like a German press conference

00:01:07 ◼   ► and somebody throws something at him?

00:01:10 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, yeah.

00:01:12 ◼   ► - And he's completely unfazed.

00:01:15 ◼   ► Like it doesn't really bother him.

00:01:16 ◼   ► - Right.

00:01:17 ◼   ► - You know?

00:01:18 ◼   ► And he just like keeps spouting Microsoft propaganda

00:01:21 ◼   ► and like it doesn't really matter at all to him

00:01:23 ◼   ► that he just got hit in the face by some German.

00:01:25 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:01:26 ◼   ► And I can't help but think too, I mean, number one, he's a super competitive guy.

00:01:31 ◼   ► I mean, he wants to win.

00:01:32 ◼   ► This is a guy, he didn't buy the Clippers just to own a team.

00:01:35 ◼   ► He wants to win NBA titles.

00:01:37 ◼   ► Whereas the old owner, the dingbat racist guy, Sterling, for decades, the Clippers were

00:01:44 ◼   ► like a joke in the NBA, and they only got good in the last few years by luck, by a trade

00:01:49 ◼   ► that nobody thought was going to be good that turned out to be fantastic for him.

00:01:54 ◼   ► So it's great news for the Clippers fans, because he's going to want to win.

00:01:57 ◼   ► And I can't help but think that his tech background is going to make, as the NBA pushes

00:02:04 ◼   ► in that moneyball direction of looking at stats and metrics that people didn't look

00:02:10 ◼   ► at before.

00:02:11 ◼   ► And I think that's one reason Mark Cuban has been a good owner for the Dallas Mavericks,

00:02:15 ◼   ► that they've been pretty successful.

00:02:16 ◼   ► Now, I've gotten into this rapid thing of finding, there was that thing that he threw

00:02:20 ◼   ► I threw a chair across a room a couple of years ago, right?

00:02:24 ◼   ► It was like when I when there was like a key employee

00:02:26 ◼   ► Who he wanted to he wanted to keep and the guy was like, you know what?

00:02:29 ◼   ► I think I'm going to Google and and right the guy's like, you know what? There's nothing you can say

00:02:34 ◼   ► I'm going to Google and he like through a chair, right?

00:02:36 ◼   ► But to your point like there's no you know, this is a passionate passionate passionate man

00:02:41 ◼   ► Yeah, and chair throwing has like a nice history in basketball Bobby Bobby Knight the old college coach at Indiana

00:02:48 ◼   ► I used to like throwing chairs at referees.

00:02:51 ◼   ► I'm not sure that'll fly on the court.

00:02:53 ◼   ► But I think I will definitely disappoint you for the next hour or whatever.

00:02:57 ◼   ► We're going to be talking about talking about sports because no, we're talking about

00:03:01 ◼   ► Steve Ballmer's personality.

00:03:02 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, I'm just saying I can't really throw the same.

00:03:06 ◼   ► No, you know, curveball, if you will.

00:03:09 ◼   ► Is that good?

00:03:10 ◼   ► Is that good?

00:03:11 ◼   ► That's perfect.

00:03:12 ◼   ► Can we edit in some laugh track there?

00:03:15 ◼   ► And I do think, I think it's kind of, there were rumors that he was not going to be long

00:03:22 ◼   ► on the Microsoft board that, you know, that they did public relations wise, it's, you

00:03:27 ◼   ► know, it was it was a orderly transition.

00:03:30 ◼   ► But it was it's more like a divorce than a, you know, amicable break up transition.

00:03:41 ◼   ► Which is sad.

00:03:42 ◼   ► Yeah, it kind of is. Because boy, they have a good run.

00:03:46 ◼   ► Yeah, a good run. And you know, that's talk about dedication to a company. I mean, like, you know, that's what we're talking about this passion. He's, he's so passionate about Microsoft, like, it. And I even, you know, when he had stepped down, or when the resignation thing happened, I was like, you know, that's, that's a sad thing to lose for a company, which is like a CEO that is just that incredibly passionate about, about

00:04:11 ◼   ► everything that comes out of that company.

00:04:13 ◼   ► Yeah, like he, you know, he was never one of these guys who was just going to be a CEO

00:04:19 ◼   ► of a company and that maybe someday he would leave and go to Oracle.

00:04:24 ◼   ► Another company.

00:04:25 ◼   ► No, that was never going to happen.

00:04:27 ◼   ► He was a Microsoft guy.

00:04:29 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:04:30 ◼   ► Well, he has, you know, I love this company.

00:04:32 ◼   ► It was like, yep, he did.

00:04:35 ◼   ► He really, oh, he does.

00:04:36 ◼   ► I'm sure he still does.

00:04:37 ◼   ► That's what he says in that letter.

00:04:38 ◼   ► Did you read the letter he posted on OneDrive?

00:04:40 ◼   ► No, I did not.

00:04:44 ◼   ► I obviously tweeted that he could have used Clippy's help to format the letter because

00:04:48 ◼   ► the letter is literally like, "Dear Satya, paragraphs, Steve."

00:04:54 ◼   ► Like it's like, really?

00:04:56 ◼   ► After all this time, you couldn't have just used one of the templates in Word?

00:05:00 ◼   ► I tweeted the link here, but…

00:05:05 ◼   ► Well you have been super busy this month.

00:05:08 ◼   ► I guess you're always busy, but you're not one of these taken off for August people.

00:05:12 ◼   ► No.

00:05:13 ◼   ► And guess who's getting married right before or right after the iPhone launch or the rumored

00:05:18 ◼   ► iPhone launch?

00:05:20 ◼   ► Right before or right after?

00:05:22 ◼   ► Well, if things go according to rumor and speculation or if they follow a historical

00:05:30 ◼   ► pattern, we will see an announcement on Tuesday.

00:05:35 ◼   ► September 9th.

00:05:36 ◼   ► married on that Sunday on the 14th, and then an iPhone would probably, as historically

00:05:43 ◼   ► has happened, launch the week after or the week after that. I'm assuming the week after.

00:05:48 ◼   ► Yeah, I think, yeah, usually on a Friday, so I'm guessing the 19th.

00:05:51 ◼   ► Yeah, so I, you know, I picked a great time to get married.

00:05:57 ◼   ► Are you immediately, well, congratulations, number one, but number two, are you—

00:06:01 ◼   ► Thank you.

00:06:02 ◼   ► Are you immediately leaving on a honeymoon or—

00:06:05 ◼   ► No.

00:06:06 ◼   ► The honeymoon is scheduled for a different time.

00:06:09 ◼   ► Honeymoon is scheduled for the end of October, beginning of November.

00:06:13 ◼   ► So your iPhone review, in theory, your camera pictures could be from the bride's perspective

00:06:20 ◼   ► of the wedding.

00:06:21 ◼   ► That would be kind of amazing.

00:06:23 ◼   ► Well yes, but the other bride, my fiancé, she will probably murder me if I'm reviewing

00:06:31 ◼   ► an iPhone during the week of the wedding.

00:06:36 ◼   ► Pete: Yeah, that reminds me of, that reminds me of the funniest thing from this summer,

00:06:43 ◼   ► which was you were a bridesmaid in a friend's wedding and you were testing the Android Wear

00:06:49 ◼   ► smartwatches.

00:06:50 ◼   ► She told you that if you tried to wear it during the wedding, you were out, right?

00:06:55 ◼   ► Sarah; It totally happens.

00:06:57 ◼   ► Like, I wore that to the rehearsal dinner the night before and she was like, "What

00:07:01 ◼   ► is that?" I was like, "It's just my new watch. It's my new smartphone glued to my wrist."

00:07:07 ◼   ► And she's like, "If you wear that tomorrow, don't even come." And so, yes, I had to stage a little

00:07:15 ◼   ► bit of the soundbite when she was in her beautiful dress, but that was very much a true story.

00:07:20 ◼   ► Pete: Yeah. But anyway, congratulations. But you're going to go, you'll probably go,

00:07:25 ◼   ► you'll still be out for the event, assuming everything, again, assuming every, we talk about

00:07:29 ◼   ► it like it's a done deal but assuming everything happens as expected you'll be out for the event

00:07:34 ◼   ► and then come back east later in the week right yeah yeah if yes exactly i do think i do think

00:07:43 ◼   ► that that is going to happen that you know the rumors are true and i mean that makes sense given

00:07:50 ◼   ► the timing but um and it's funny too of watching the rest of the industry line up around that

00:07:56 ◼   ► because everybody, I think Samsung has an event or a phone announcement.

00:08:01 ◼   ► I'm very busy leading up to this wedding. I'm very busy.

00:08:05 ◼   ► I think that the Samsung one is going to be on the third. Do you want to go after or do you want to

00:08:10 ◼   ► go before? And I think most people are like, "Oh, we want to go before."

00:08:12 ◼   ► Well, Samsung has usually done this before because IFA out of Berlin is the same time

00:08:18 ◼   ► every year. And so they do the note announcement there and Sony announces some stuff that I'm not

00:08:24 ◼   ► really sure people notice and who else does stuff around there sometimes HTC but I guess not really

00:08:31 ◼   ► this year. And then Motorola has an event like that Friday or that Thursday before. That's the

00:08:41 ◼   ► fourth. So yeah, good times. Yeah. And there's the added possibility that that this will be the

00:08:47 ◼   ► event. And again, this is just speculation, but it could be that coincident with the iPhone, Apple

00:08:53 ◼   ► that will have their wearable stuff long, long rumored, supposedly imminent wearable stuff if you

00:09:00 ◼   ► know, which would probably Well, I don't know, you know, questionable whether that would come out at

00:09:05 ◼   ► the same time, maybe the reviews would be, you know, maybe they'd announce it then and it would

00:09:09 ◼   ► come out a different time. But could be a lot of stuff to review. Well, everyone jumped on something

00:09:13 ◼   ► you said a couple of weeks ago, right? Yeah. And by the way, I didn't really read that as like,

00:09:19 ◼   ► that was your inside sources and I know you kind of refuted that.

00:09:23 ◼   ► That's because you're not stupid. I mean, I was cracking a joke.

00:09:28 ◼   ► Yeah, I would think that was not going to happen at the same event as the iPhone. But that said,

00:09:34 ◼   ► I really don't know much. And I think it's really hard to talk about some of this health kit stuff

00:09:39 ◼   ► without talking about that product. But again, I don't really know.

00:09:42 ◼   ► Yeah, I talked about this a little bit last week. But it's to me, it was just just a guess trying

00:09:47 ◼   ► to crack a joke about what if the Moto 270 doesn't come out until after Apple announces their thing.

00:09:53 ◼   ► Well, it looks like the Moto 270 will come out before and it will be close to $270.

00:10:00 ◼   ► Yeah, I saw that too and it made me laugh. No, when do they say that the Moto 360 is going to,

00:10:08 ◼   ► the rumored release date? It's like imminent? It's like sometime in the next week or so?

00:10:14 ◼   ► I think they are holding this event on September.

00:10:18 ◼   ► I got to look through my inbox, but they're holding an event in September in Chicago,

00:10:25 ◼   ► I believe.

00:10:26 ◼   ► So that's...

00:10:27 ◼   ► I didn't see that.

00:10:28 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:10:29 ◼   ► And then the pricing leads this weekend on Best Buy for $250 for the Moto 270 or 360.

00:10:34 ◼   ► I'm actually excited about this.

00:10:35 ◼   ► I mean, I know a lot of people when I put it on at Google I/O, people were saying that

00:10:41 ◼   ► I was wearing a what were they saying I was wearing on my on my wrist. Some you might have made a great

00:10:47 ◼   ► joke about what I was wearing on my wrist.

00:10:49 ◼   ► That's possible. I don't remember.

00:10:51 ◼   ► I don't know a monocle or something like that. But I mean, you know, it's I think it's the first smart

00:10:58 ◼   ► watch that comes closest to looking like a watch definitely is very big. The face is big. And I know

00:11:04 ◼   ► there's been some issues about how the screen isn't really fully a circle. But it looks cool.

00:11:12 ◼   ► Definitely looks better than the than the two the LG and the Samsung that I've that I've worn

00:11:17 ◼   ► throughout the summer. Yeah, but I still I concur with your review of the earlier two, though,

00:11:23 ◼   ► where it's just highly questionable, whether I mean, for some people, of course, some people,

00:11:29 ◼   ► you know, you can find some people who want everything, you know, any idea under the sun,

00:11:32 ◼   ► But the idea of getting a buzz on your wrist every single time you get a notification is

00:11:38 ◼   ► to me, it's, it sounds like punishment.

00:11:40 ◼   ► It is.

00:11:41 ◼   ► It does.

00:11:42 ◼   ► It doesn't appeal to me.

00:11:44 ◼   ► And I don't have the type of job.

00:11:45 ◼   ► And I don't think many people do where I'm always on, on the alert for like an emergency.

00:11:53 ◼   ► You know, I could totally see how like, I don't know, somebody who works in a hospital

00:11:58 ◼   ► might want to have a watch that, that every single time that buzzes, they really do want

00:12:02 ◼   ► to look because it could be a serious emergency.

00:12:05 ◼   ► I could see that.

00:12:06 ◼   ► Me, I don't need that.

00:12:07 ◼   ► And when I've had my pebble hooked up to my iPhone and just moving alerts to my wrist,

00:12:15 ◼   ► it just feels like I'm punishing myself.

00:12:17 ◼   ► Right.

00:12:18 ◼   ► And that's one of the things I had spoken to Google about before the review and then

00:12:23 ◼   ► obviously pointed out in the review is that there needs to be deeper customization of

00:12:28 ◼   ► that.

00:12:29 ◼   ► you really wonder, do we wanna be sort of futzing

00:12:31 ◼   ► with that kind of settings type of thing?

00:12:34 ◼   ► I mean, even just dealing with notifications on my phone

00:12:38 ◼   ► and setting them up and what apps ping me when they do this

00:12:41 ◼   ► or if it's my retweets or if it's mentions

00:12:44 ◼   ► or if it's email from this account,

00:12:47 ◼   ► that in itself is a big task to do.

00:12:50 ◼   ► So it's easiest for these companies to just say,

00:12:53 ◼   ► if it hits the front lock screen of your phone,

00:12:55 ◼   ► then it will hit your wrist.

00:12:58 ◼   ► But it needs to be deeper than that,

00:13:00 ◼   ► but they have to do it in a way where it's not really

00:13:02 ◼   ► completely frustrating to figure out

00:13:05 ◼   ► how to get those things there.

00:13:06 ◼   ► Of course, a lot of people, and I would argue

00:13:08 ◼   ► that a lot of people who own Android phones

00:13:10 ◼   ► don't mind tinkering with that kind of stuff,

00:13:12 ◼   ► but I would also say that even then,

00:13:15 ◼   ► that that's overwhelming.

00:13:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it is so true too that you get a new app

00:13:21 ◼   ► and you launch it and you're using this new thing

00:13:24 ◼   ► and it's going to be sending you notifications

00:13:26 ◼   ► and it just says, "This app would like to send you notifications. Allow or disallow?"

00:13:30 ◼   ► And then your one tab, you say, "Okay, yes, because I want to get these notifications."

00:13:33 ◼   ► That's super easy. It's easy to opt in. But then everything after that in terms of

00:13:39 ◼   ► fine-tuning how much and what you get, it just always seems like busy work. And what

00:13:46 ◼   ► seems like a good idea when you first install the app, it just sometimes can be one of those

00:13:52 ◼   ► frog in a slow-boiling pot type thing where at first you don't really notice, and then

00:13:55 ◼   ► like a month or two in you're like, why am I getting all these notifications from this

00:13:58 ◼   ► app? This is this is overkill. My whole my whole lock screen is dominated by these stupid

00:14:05 ◼   ► notifications from this one app.

00:14:06 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, I've gotten pretty good about on my iPhone customizing what hits the lock

00:14:11 ◼   ► screen. But that was after quite a bit of tweaking and settings stuff. But I still you're

00:14:20 ◼   ► I get like random alerts from apps I haven't, you know, I've once downloaded for testing or

00:14:25 ◼   ► something and it's like, you know, do this. Like brush my teeth. I reviewed that Bluetooth

00:14:32 ◼   ► toothbrush a couple of months ago. And I actually am still using the toothbrush, but I don't always

00:14:38 ◼   ► use the app with it. Even though I said I was going to in my review and I really do like brushing

00:14:44 ◼   ► my teeth with my phone in my hand, but my phone keeps reminding me that I haven't brushed my teeth

00:14:48 ◼   ► in like a month, which is like somewhat true. I mean, but as far as your phone, it's like,

00:14:53 ◼   ► I don't think I told that app that you should be on my lock screen.

00:14:56 ◼   ► I recommend you brush your teeth at least I would say at least once before the wedding.

00:15:01 ◼   ► You should brush your teeth. I mean, at least once before the Apple event. Let's let's set

00:15:08 ◼   ► priorities here. I'm going to take a break here and tell everybody about our first sponsor,

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00:18:31 ◼   ► Alright, we're back.

00:18:33 ◼   ► One of your recent pieces, probably the most recent, I think, was your review of the, I'm

00:18:42 ◼   ► going to get the name wrong, the HTC One something something Windows Phone.

00:18:47 ◼   ► You can do it.

00:18:48 ◼   ► You can do it.

00:18:49 ◼   ► It's the HTC, so here, it's the HTC One, parentheses, M8, close parentheses, for Windows.

00:19:00 ◼   ► not with Windows Phone and it's not with Windows Phone 8.1. It is for Windows for Windows for

00:19:08 ◼   ► Windows. So yes, the review did not include a review of the phone name as somebody I think

00:19:14 ◼   ► Renee Ritchie tweeted that to me, but it should have the gist of it is it's pretty much the

00:19:20 ◼   ► exact same hardware as the HTC one M8 that we know from Android, except it's running

00:19:28 ◼   ► Windows phone. It's got the same size screen.

00:19:29 ◼   ► It's exactly right. I'm looking at both of them right now.

00:19:31 ◼   ► Right. And it has the same gimmicky… Well, I shouldn't say gimmicky. It has the same

00:19:36 ◼   ► trick with the camera where there's two cameras. One that's like the really… What do they call

00:19:42 ◼   ► them? Ultra pixels. The one that takes the main picture. And the second one that's used for some

00:19:47 ◼   ► kind of trickery about changing the focal point, focal distance after you've snapped the photo.

00:19:54 ◼   ► Exactly, exactly. It's like the depth of it collects depth information and then it

00:19:59 ◼   ► sort of layers it and so you can refocus which it doesn't really work all that well. But

00:20:05 ◼   ► yes, exactly. Carbon copy of the Android version just running different software.

00:20:09 ◼   ► All right. I saw you had a little back and forth with Twitter on Twitter with somebody

00:20:16 ◼   ► from from HTC about that it was a great review but the headline because the headline is what

00:20:24 ◼   ► what was the headline to another another great phone you probably won't buy? Yep. Yep.

00:20:30 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, and that's not because of the hardware. I you know, I actually sat around

00:20:36 ◼   ► pretty much similar thing about the first HTC one, the M8 that came out in March, because it was the

00:20:43 ◼   ► same situation with the HTC one last year, the Android version of the phone was really, really

00:20:48 ◼   ► good. But nobody bought it because instead, they listened to the marketing that they saw

00:20:52 ◼   ► everywhere from Samsung and they bought Galaxy S5s or S4s or S3s, whatever was out at the time,

00:20:57 ◼   ► instead of buying the HTC One. So I think, you know, HTC is sort of, always seems to get caught

00:21:02 ◼   ► in the middle of these things where it's like they make really good stuff, but nobody really buys

00:21:05 ◼   ► them, whether it's because of the marketing or whatever. But I think that's actually changed a

00:21:10 ◼   ► lot with the recent phone. They had a lot more stock than they had with the original one. They

00:21:15 ◼   ► did a better job of marketing it, the reviews are really good. But obviously, for this piece,

00:21:20 ◼   ► that headline was really about Windows Phone,

00:21:23 ◼   ► because nobody has Windows Phone.

00:21:26 ◼   ► And I'm really sorry to offend anyone

00:21:29 ◼   ► who might be listening to this that has a Windows Phone.

00:21:31 ◼   ► When I say nobody, I don't mean nobody in the world.

00:21:34 ◼   ► I mean, really the general public

00:21:36 ◼   ► does not have Windows Phone.

00:21:38 ◼   ► And for this piece,

00:21:39 ◼   ► I don't even know how I sort of came up with the idea,

00:21:41 ◼   ► but I went to Times Square

00:21:44 ◼   ► and I wanted to do the video in Times Square.

00:21:47 ◼   ► And then the column kind of turned

00:21:49 ◼   ► into the same thing as the video,

00:21:50 ◼   ► because I sat in Times Square, we shot for about an hour, we took a break, we sat down,

00:21:55 ◼   ► and I didn't see one single person with a Windows phone.

00:21:58 ◼   ► Well, you were stopping people.

00:21:59 ◼   ► And I was stopping people.

00:22:01 ◼   ► But I honestly couldn't stop that many people because most people have their phones out.

00:22:06 ◼   ► So most people have iPhones or Android phones out because they're taking photos, they're

00:22:10 ◼   ► taking selfies.

00:22:11 ◼   ► I mean, it's like, you know, it's the best place on earth and also the worst place on

00:22:14 ◼   ► earth.

00:22:15 ◼   ► And so, you know, I really had to kind of find people that weren't holding their iPhones

00:22:19 ◼   ► because I didn't want to be like, Oh, do you have a Windows phone when clearly they have

00:22:22 ◼   ► an iPhone or they clearly have a Galaxy S five or actually did see a lot of HTC ones.

00:22:26 ◼   ► I saw, you know, all types of phones, but no Windows phones. Interesting. And so you

00:22:32 ◼   ► know, this piece was really about and I started using the one I have had the one for about

00:22:37 ◼   ► a week. I also have had used the the Lumia icon since 8.1 came out. And you know, the

00:22:43 ◼   ► software is really good. I really like the software. And at this point, there's a lot

00:22:48 ◼   ► of features there that you certainly don't miss. I didn't end up missing my iPhone's

00:22:52 ◼   ► email apps or all these types of basic core apps. It makes you wonder why don't people

00:22:58 ◼   ► have this. Of course, it comes down to the app ecosystem. To me, I think it's a lot

00:23:02 ◼   ► more than that and I talk about that in the column.

00:23:04 ◼   ► Dave Asprey I do think it's complicated and it's multifaceted.

00:23:11 ◼   ► Market share is not it alone. The one thing, whenever I talk about market share, people

00:23:17 ◼   ► People accuse me, people who are not like big Apple fans, accuse me of, and other people

00:23:24 ◼   ► who tend to write about stuff from the Apple perspective, of cherry picking the stats that

00:23:29 ◼   ► Apple, you know, the only ones that matter are the ones where Apple's ahead.

00:23:32 ◼   ► So when, if iOS isn't leading in market share, then we'll pick profit share, and now profits

00:23:40 ◼   ► is all that matters.

00:23:41 ◼   ► And if it were the other way around, that if it was like when the iPods had a market

00:23:47 ◼   ► share lead, then market share mattered.

00:23:49 ◼   ► And it's not like the mistake that people make is if I say market share is not everything

00:23:56 ◼   ► and it's not even the single most important thing, that doesn't mean that I'm saying market

00:24:02 ◼   ► share doesn't matter at all.

00:24:03 ◼   ► It does matter, obviously.

00:24:06 ◼   ► But it's not the only thing.

00:24:09 ◼   ► But the big thing, I think the big thing is there's like a minimum viable market share.

00:24:14 ◼   ► And you know, if the overall smartphone market is right now somewhere around like 80% Android,

00:24:20 ◼   ► 12—this is worldwide—80% Android, 12% iPhone, and 2.5% Windows Phone, 12% isn't

00:24:28 ◼   ► as big enough and it's so many hundreds of millions of people.

00:24:33 ◼   ► It's a pretty big market and 2.5% may not just be enough.

00:24:37 ◼   ► Yeah, and I think you know what, right, you're right, this is the global market share. So when you you also have to factor in and this was something we're talking about earlier today with with some people in the office, factoring in the lower end of the market and lower cost areas where you look at, you know, the, you're not looking at the top end of the market, and you're not looking at sort of these halo flagship devices. And that's where obviously Android has captured a large part of the market. And that's a place that Microsoft is

00:25:07 ◼   ► also said they've intended to go.

00:25:11 ◼   ► So that's certainly a different look at market share than when you look at either US or you

00:25:16 ◼   ► look at country by country.

00:25:18 ◼   ► Dave Asprey I do think there's also—I've thought about

00:25:22 ◼   ► this so much over the years, and I feel like every market ends up playing out differently.

00:25:26 ◼   ► There's some similarities between this and the PC wars of the '90s between Mac and Windows,

00:25:32 ◼   ► and similarities.

00:25:33 ◼   ► But there's so many other factors that are different that there's only loose similarities.

00:25:39 ◼   ► And every market plays out differently.

00:25:42 ◼   ► But the one thing that I do think holds true in just about every category through the decades

00:25:50 ◼   ► is that you somehow have to get early adopters—usually have to get early adopters first.

00:25:56 ◼   ► You've got to get some enthusiasts on board—nerds, right?

00:25:59 ◼   ► people who listen to stuff like this show and and who who like to geek out and and review

00:26:05 ◼   ► twenty nine laptops or something like that you have to get them first and that's the

00:26:10 ◼   ► one you know and i_o_s_ clearly has that and had it right from day one when people you

00:26:15 ◼   ► know those are the people who lined up around the block in two thousand seven to buy it

00:26:19 ◼   ► and roid definitely has that you know there's you know and that's the whole you know coke

00:26:24 ◼   ► versus Pepsi flame wars that you see in the comments on general purpose tech review site.

00:26:29 ◼   ► I think that's step one of the windows from problem is that there aren't any of them.

00:26:35 ◼   ► Right. And and I think

00:26:37 ◼   ► Dr.

00:26:37 ◼   ► Well, they are there. I just think they—I think it's still a timing thing. Like,

00:26:44 ◼   ► they might have come along too late. Right? Because those people are there. I've heard

00:26:49 ◼   ► from them today. Well, again, when we say nobody, we don't really mean 0.0. We mean

00:26:58 ◼   ► practically nobody. Like, effectively, you can round down to zero.

00:27:02 ◼   ► Yeah, you're right. You're right. I just, I come back to a lot of it being timing. And I think,

00:27:10 ◼   ► you know, and Microsoft admits that it was timing, right? You know, they'll say, well, we

00:27:16 ◼   ► actually were we had Windows Phone, the idea, but then, you know, Android came out and stole a lot

00:27:22 ◼   ► of the market and partners and etc. And I think, you know, part of that is that, by now, when

00:27:28 ◼   ► we're looking at this five years or six years deep into the smartphone market, now finally

00:27:33 ◼   ► Microsoft is good enough on the platform level to be in line with the competition.

00:27:40 ◼   ► And at this point, what does that matter?

00:27:43 ◼   ► It's not necessarily pushing ahead the smartphone in some radical way that I'm going to say

00:27:49 ◼   ► to someone, "No, you've got to get this phone."

00:27:54 ◼   ► And frankly, even I think we're starting to see with iOS and Android as we see these

00:27:58 ◼   ► updates coming in the next couple months, like there's so

00:28:00 ◼   ► much feature parity, right? There's so many things that you

00:28:03 ◼   ► can get now in one or the other, whether it's different keyboards

00:28:07 ◼   ► or it's different notification customization, and all of these

00:28:10 ◼   ► sorts of things that, you know, people will argue, "Oh, I wonder

00:28:13 ◼   ► where they got that idea from." You know, we're getting to that

00:28:17 ◼   ► point where it's so it is so reliant on the apps that we have,

00:28:21 ◼   ► but there's still nothing that has pushed smartphones so far

00:28:25 ◼   ► ahead into the future. And I'm not even sure, I can't even

00:28:27 ◼   ► imagine like I don't look at my phone say I mean I look at my phone and say

00:28:30 ◼   ► these are the things I would want but they're not necessarily radical ideas

00:28:34 ◼   ► yeah it's just refinement refinement refinement you know right it's like

00:28:38 ◼   ► refinement and and there are basic things but I don't think even for basic

00:28:43 ◼   ► things I would I would switch to a different platform if it didn't offer

00:28:47 ◼   ► everything and more yeah yeah somebody else pointed that out like post Google

00:28:56 ◼   ► I/O because Google I/O was after WWDC this year. But you look at the checklist and there's

00:29:00 ◼   ► you know there's 10 or 15 things that you could see starting around 2011 or so that

00:29:07 ◼   ► these platforms needed to do to get to do more of the stuff that it was everybody wanted

00:29:12 ◼   ► it you know better notifications and on iOS people wanted a you know third-party keyboards

00:29:20 ◼   ► and stuff like that and you could just see that the two companies you know Google and

00:29:24 ◼   ► Apple, they just had a different order, different priorities of which ones they were going to

00:29:28 ◼   ► do first. And eventually they just, you know, they both checked off all of them. And some

00:29:34 ◼   ► of them, you know, were first on Android and some were first on iOS. And we're getting

00:29:38 ◼   ► to the point this year where they've sort of gotten to the bottom of that list. Not

00:29:42 ◼   ► that that there's nowhere for these things to improve, but all the big obvious ones from

00:29:47 ◼   ► about four or five years ago, they've gotten to.

00:29:50 ◼   ► Right, right.

00:29:51 ◼   ► And that's one of the lines I had in this piece was like, switching to Windows Phone

00:29:56 ◼   ► at this point is like just getting a comfortable home, your same comfortable home in one right

00:30:01 ◼   ► across the street that's basically the same thing.

00:30:03 ◼   ► There's no real reason to switch at this point.

00:30:06 ◼   ► Plus, you're not getting all those extras if those are important to you.

00:30:09 ◼   ► If those brand new apps, if those updates to your apps are extremely important to you,

00:30:15 ◼   ► there's no real reason to leave where you've been so comfortable.

00:30:17 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:30:18 ◼   ► an enthusiast and you're kind of, you know, the sort of person who likes to get new apps and stuff,

00:30:23 ◼   ► you know, follows new companies and stuff like that. Windows Phone has all that stuff. You know,

00:30:29 ◼   ► like you pointed out Instagram, which is a great example, where Instagram was iOS-only, famously,

00:30:34 ◼   ► for the first couple of years, and then the Android version came out and, you know, it was huge,

00:30:40 ◼   ► and then it, you know, fueled the billion-dollar acquisition by Facebook. And eventually, now there

00:30:45 ◼   ► There is a Windows Phone version of it, but it was way after even the Android version.

00:30:51 ◼   ► Even now, it still lags because they've added these new... the latest version of Instagram

00:30:57 ◼   ► has a bunch of new editing features that aren't in the Windows Phone version.

00:31:01 ◼   ► Right.

00:31:02 ◼   ► Right.

00:31:03 ◼   ► You see that across apps.

00:31:04 ◼   ► My RDO app, I spent like 10 minutes in the car trying to find my top, where I usually

00:31:09 ◼   ► go to find pop music.

00:31:11 ◼   ► I could not find the playlist in the Windows Phone app.

00:31:15 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure it's not there, but I gave up.

00:31:17 ◼   ► - And I think you said that there's still not a Lyft app

00:31:21 ◼   ► for Windows Phone.

00:31:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, all of those.

00:31:23 ◼   ► - And I know, what do you call it,

00:31:24 ◼   ► was late on Windows Phone, Uber.

00:31:27 ◼   ► And if you're the sort of person

00:31:30 ◼   ► who wants to use stuff like that,

00:31:32 ◼   ► like you've heard about Uber, you're traveling,

00:31:34 ◼   ► you're in San Francisco on vacation

00:31:37 ◼   ► or in business or something like that,

00:31:38 ◼   ► and everybody else is using Uber,

00:31:41 ◼   ► and you can't because you're using Windows Phone.

00:31:43 ◼   ► It's like, it's just a steady drip drop of annoyances of knowing that you're always going

00:31:49 ◼   ► to be the last to get stuff like this.

00:31:51 ◼   ► And you know, circa, what is it now?

00:31:54 ◼   ► It's late, we get second half of 2014.

00:31:57 ◼   ► By 2015, I'm sure there will be a Lyft app, but then there's going to be something else

00:32:01 ◼   ► that's new that's only on iOS, it's only on Android.

00:32:04 ◼   ► Marie Forleo Totally.

00:32:05 ◼   ► And that's the number one reservation I have about the platform.

00:32:09 ◼   ► But you know, the funny thing is that I think maybe two years ago, we would have said, well,

00:32:12 ◼   ► this is an okay platform, this is an okay phone,

00:32:16 ◼   ► regardless for people who have not had a smartphone yet.

00:32:18 ◼   ► It's a good beginner phone.

00:32:20 ◼   ► But I think we're at this point, we're in the market

00:32:22 ◼   ► where already those people have a phone,

00:32:24 ◼   ► and they probably have an iPhone,

00:32:26 ◼   ► or they probably have a basic Android phone.

00:32:28 ◼   ► And at this point, those people don't wanna switch.

00:32:32 ◼   ► So that's where I think so much of this was a timing game.

00:32:34 ◼   ► And it's unfortunate for Microsoft,

00:32:38 ◼   ► I mean, I'm not gonna sit here crying for them,

00:32:39 ◼   ► but it's unfortunate that they got together

00:32:42 ◼   ► a really good operating system so late in the game.

00:32:45 ◼   ► Because there are a lot of things here

00:32:46 ◼   ► that I actually really like now.

00:32:47 ◼   ► And yes, some of them are the same as you'd get on others,

00:32:50 ◼   ► but Cortana's a really nice blend of Siri and Google Now.

00:32:54 ◼   ► I like a lot of features that they built into Cortana.

00:32:58 ◼   ► I like a lot of things when it comes to the customizations

00:33:01 ◼   ► and the notifications and all the base OS stuff.

00:33:05 ◼   ► It's just how much time are you usually spending

00:33:06 ◼   ► in that stuff?

00:33:07 ◼   ► The thing I noticed when I last spent some time with Windows phones was when I was at

00:33:12 ◼   ► the Build conference back in May.

00:33:18 ◼   ► And Windows Phone was always better to me than Android in this regard, but the latest

00:33:22 ◼   ► – I don't think we had 8.1 yet.

00:33:23 ◼   ► Maybe – I forget the version number, but we were playing with phones that had an as-yet

00:33:27 ◼   ► unreleased version of it.

00:33:29 ◼   ► So maybe it was like an early version of 8.1.

00:33:31 ◼   ► But the little animations, like stretching when you get to the bottom of a list and the

00:33:36 ◼   ► the bouncing and stuff like that is so much nicer than stock Android. It's really good.

00:33:43 ◼   ► And the frame rates, I mean, just frame rates across the board. It's really, really snappy

00:33:48 ◼   ► UI. And it's something that Microsoft has been good at for a long time. But it really

00:33:52 ◼   ► shows.

00:33:53 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. And I like the keyboard too. I mean,

00:33:56 ◼   ► yeah, I will say that one thing whenever I try switching to an Android phone, and this

00:34:00 ◼   ► isn't better or worse, is it just habit, but I find myself really struggling to type because

00:34:05 ◼   ► I find the Android keyboard, at least the default one to be so different. Whereas Windows

00:34:10 ◼   ► Phone, my iOS typing habits, I just instantly was typing as well as I do on an iPhone.

00:34:17 ◼   ► It's funny, you know, I think we talked about this the last time I was on my keyboard situation.

00:34:22 ◼   ► I have serious keyboard problems. And I made the switch to the iPhone keyboard after using

00:34:29 ◼   ► Android physical QWERTY keyboard on the Android phone for three or four years. And now I'm

00:34:35 ◼   ► I'm great on the iPhone, and now when I go back to my Moto X Android phone, I'm really

00:34:40 ◼   ► bad, so I've been using SwiftKey, which is better.

00:34:43 ◼   ► I'm actually really excited.

00:34:44 ◼   ► I'm hoping SwiftKey builds an app for iOS 8.

00:34:48 ◼   ► But I still don't think I've found the perfect software keyboard.

00:34:54 ◼   ► That said, I'm just going to go get that new BlackBerry that's in the shape of a square,

00:34:58 ◼   ► and I think that'll solve all my problems.

00:35:02 ◼   ► Let's hold off on that.

00:35:03 ◼   ► that's not being released during my wedding weekend. Thank God.

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00:38:47 ◼   ► What is it?

00:38:48 ◼   ► I was kind of hoping that would be out by now.

00:38:51 ◼   ► We were talking about the square blackberry.

00:38:53 ◼   ► I know.

00:38:54 ◼   ► Where is it?

00:38:55 ◼   ► Where is it?

00:38:56 ◼   ► As soon as I saw it, my first thought was, "That's interesting."

00:39:01 ◼   ► And my second thought was, "Ooh, I can't wait to talk to Joanna about that."

00:39:04 ◼   ► But you think maybe you're over physical keyboards now?

00:39:07 ◼   ► Maybe your habits have finally switched?

00:39:10 ◼   ► I mean, they had to, right?

00:39:13 ◼   ► We have to adapt.

00:39:14 ◼   ► So I had to adapt.

00:39:16 ◼   ► And I'm really fast on my iPhone now.

00:39:18 ◼   ► I'm actually really fast on SwiftKey too,

00:39:20 ◼   ► if the phone can not be so slow.

00:39:24 ◼   ► The MIMOTO X is really slow now.

00:39:26 ◼   ► But I'm really fast on my iPhone.

00:39:29 ◼   ► I'm excited about the iPhone's predictive tech stuff

00:39:33 ◼   ► with iOS 8 as well.

00:39:34 ◼   ► So I mean, I can't say that.

00:39:36 ◼   ► I haven't done a typing test, me versus myself,

00:39:39 ◼   ► the iPhone versus an old Blackberry, but that's a good idea.

00:39:46 ◼   ► Yeah, but I, there's certain parts of user interface design where it's almost more important,

00:39:52 ◼   ► or not even almost, but it is more important how fast you think you are versus how fast you really

00:39:57 ◼   ► are. And if you feel like you're fast enough on the iPhone, that's really all that matters.

00:40:01 ◼   ► Even if you found out that like on a stopwatch, you're still not as fast as you were on Blackberry.

00:40:07 ◼   ► Right.

00:40:08 ◼   ► So a famous example of this is, I might botch some of the details, but this is like a really

00:40:13 ◼   ► old Apple story, like from the '80s.

00:40:17 ◼   ► And I think I got the story from Bruce Togge—well, I'll just call him Togge.

00:40:22 ◼   ► Everybody knows Togge.

00:40:23 ◼   ► But a human interface design guru, he used to be at Apple, and now he's at the Nieman

00:40:28 ◼   ► whatever group.

00:40:32 ◼   ► And Apple used to test an awful lot of stuff

00:40:37 ◼   ► with cameras behind glass and just test real people doing

00:40:41 ◼   ► stuff.

00:40:42 ◼   ► And what they found out is that people were way faster.

00:40:47 ◼   ► Let's say they wanted to print.

00:40:48 ◼   ► They'd say, here, make a new document in MacWrite

00:40:51 ◼   ► and then go and print it.

00:40:53 ◼   ► And they would tell some of the people to use the mouse

00:40:57 ◼   ► and go up to File, pull it down, go down to Print,

00:41:00 ◼   ► and tell other people to use the keyboard shortcuts.

00:41:03 ◼   ► And they found that using the mouse to go up to File,

00:41:07 ◼   ► Print was faster than using the Command-P to print,

00:41:12 ◼   ► or File, Save with the mouse was faster than Command-S.

00:41:18 ◼   ► But then when they asked the users which was faster,

00:41:21 ◼   ► it was almost unanimous that they said using a keyboard

00:41:23 ◼   ► shortcut was faster.

00:41:25 ◼   ► Because when they first had the research that said,

00:41:28 ◼   ► hey, it's always faster to use the menu,

00:41:29 ◼   ► They thought about getting rid of all the keyboard shortcuts and saying, "Forget all

00:41:34 ◼   ► these keyboard shortcuts.

00:41:35 ◼   ► We'll just make the user use the mouse all the time because it's faster."

00:41:38 ◼   ► But it felt slower.

00:41:40 ◼   ► And the best that they could figure it out is that when you use a keyboard shortcut,

00:41:45 ◼   ► it's like two parts of your brain at once.

00:41:47 ◼   ► There's the first part where you have to remember what it is.

00:41:52 ◼   ► You know you want to save this document, and then your brain pauses and goes, "All right,

00:41:56 ◼   ► it's command s, you use your left thumb, put it on the command key, and then you hit the

00:42:02 ◼   ► s. And then you do it.

00:42:04 ◼   ► This isn't true now, though.

00:42:05 ◼   ► Well, it might be different now because people are so used to computers. Who knows? But the

00:42:10 ◼   ► point is, though, that it ends up that people don't remember the time they spend remembering

00:42:16 ◼   ► the keystroke. It's like that didn't happen. And so the only part that they feel like they

00:42:21 ◼   ► remember is the actual using their fingers. There's like a blank spot there where you

00:42:25 ◼   ► don't remember it. I think I think it might be for a lot of people, maybe for power users,

00:42:30 ◼   ► it's not true. It's definitely not the case for me. I mean, right. But I think for typical people,

00:42:35 ◼   ► it might be, but they still feel better. That's the difference between learned. Yeah, learned and

00:42:42 ◼   ► whatever. What's the learned action? And what becomes habit? Yeah, that's not the right word.

00:42:51 ◼   ► But you know what I'm saying?

00:42:52 ◼   ► Yeah, but like Command S is maybe a bad example because for a lot of us, we don't even think

00:42:57 ◼   ► about it.

00:42:58 ◼   ► Like my friend Michael Lop, the ran-zero-imposed guy, when he's writing, he just writes a sentence

00:43:03 ◼   ► and then when he's thinking about what to write next, his fingers just do Command S.

00:43:08 ◼   ► Because like, you know, in the old days when computer crashes would just bring down your

00:43:11 ◼   ► whole computer, you were always one crash away from losing what you've written.

00:43:17 ◼   ► So there's an aw—I have that habit.

00:43:18 ◼   ► I hit Command S.

00:43:19 ◼   ► But now that I work so much in Google Docs, I guess I've kind of killed that habit

00:43:23 ◼   ► It's to me

00:43:25 ◼   ► It's an important thing like us on a Mac any Mac app

00:43:27 ◼   ► Even if it's not like a file based app if it's like some kind of thing where you just it's like a library

00:43:32 ◼   ► You know type thing

00:43:35 ◼   ► You should at least even if command s doesn't do anything

00:43:38 ◼   ► Don't beep or anything like that when you hit command s even if it isn't necessary if everything you type gets saved automatically

00:43:45 ◼   ► Let me hit command s anyway, because I feel better

00:43:49 ◼   ► Interesting, but that's I don't even do it when I'm gonna go into Google Docs now

00:43:53 ◼   ► Yeah, I have a horrible command it but Michael Lops is like pathological Michael up does command s probably like

00:43:59 ◼   ► 30 times a minute. He's just type type type command us type type type command us. Hmm

00:44:05 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean

00:44:09 ◼   ► So what are you typing test? I'm gonna have to do a typing test when this when this new blackberry comes out though

00:44:14 ◼   ► Who knows when that's happening? I do think it's a shame

00:44:18 ◼   ► This is another one of those things where it's like maybe too late

00:44:20 ◼   ► But it's like man if only blackberry had come out with a phone in that form factor a couple of years ago

00:44:25 ◼   ► Doesn't it software that was decent. Yeah. I mean, that's the big if

00:44:31 ◼   ► But boy form factor wise it really looks to me like hey, here's somebody who's not just trying to copy the 2007 iPhone

00:44:39 ◼   ► Right, but what I mean, I know they've made some arguments that the square shape and their aspect ratio of the screen is better for like

00:44:47 ◼   ► I think it's Excel documents. Yeah, really like yeah

00:44:51 ◼   ► Really? That's where you're I mean, it's it's right on marketing message for them. I guess

00:44:55 ◼   ► better for Instagram

00:44:58 ◼   ► That's a good point it's it's a it's exact square shape for an Instagram. Yeah. Sure. The camera is gonna suck

00:45:06 ◼   ► Yeah, probably well, maybe it won't

00:45:09 ◼   ► I do feel like that's part of the irony of Instagram lagging on Windows Phone is that

00:45:13 ◼   ► Windows Phone as a platform is known for having good cameras.

00:45:17 ◼   ► Great cameras, yeah.

00:45:19 ◼   ► Like just platform-wide.

00:45:20 ◼   ► I mean, that's actually one of the things that's hard about this HTC is that you can

00:45:24 ◼   ► get way better cameras on the Lumias.

00:45:27 ◼   ► But I prefer the design of this HTC to the Lumia design.

00:45:32 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:45:33 ◼   ► HTC is interesting.

00:45:36 ◼   ► I know we're a little all over the map here, but HTC is an interesting company because

00:45:39 ◼   ► I've said this for years and it sort of is, it just goes to show how, how again, you can

00:45:46 ◼   ► say, I say design is very important, but it's not, it doesn't mean everything. Right. And

00:45:50 ◼   ► there's, HTC is a great example of a company who I think has every year, year after year

00:45:55 ◼   ► has produced better designed phones than Samsung and just gotten, just gotten annihilated in

00:46:01 ◼   ► the market.

00:46:02 ◼   ► the start from from the start of even even if you think about when those both of those companies

00:46:07 ◼   ► were making the original windows phones. You know, when you think about what was it? Was it them?

00:46:14 ◼   ► What was that HTC with the slider? Oh, that was a really good phone. The diamond? No,

00:46:22 ◼   ► it wasn't the diamond. It was in that same family. Yeah. Well, the thing I remember, and this this

00:46:30 ◼   ► goes back to that that the the sort of transition years when the iphone had the modern smartphone

00:46:38 ◼   ► market to itself because android wasn't out yet and microsoft was still on windows mobile

00:46:43 ◼   ► you know 2007 2008 2009 htc tilt yeah htc tilt htc back then was a good phone

00:46:53 ◼   ► they were by far and away the number one Windows Mobile hand made maker.

00:46:59 ◼   ► Yeah, that's what I was talking about. I didn't mean Windows, Windows Mobile,

00:47:02 ◼   ► right. But they were to Windows Mobile, what like Samsung is to Android.

00:47:06 ◼   ► Absolutely. Because they made these types of phones. They made the good keyboard at a stylus

00:47:11 ◼   ► that came out the was the other one after the tilt. I'm losing my memory was the the arrive was the

00:47:22 ◼   ► Windows Phone

00:47:24 ◼   ► Whatever they made great keyboards on these

00:47:26 ◼   ► Yeah, I think this is basically what I'm getting at here is that I really want

00:47:31 ◼   ► HTC to make an old slide-out keyboard

00:47:36 ◼   ► phone

00:47:38 ◼   ► with Windows Phone with apps that I want to use and

00:47:41 ◼   ► I'll be happy I

00:47:44 ◼   ► Do think there's and you know they've used better materials in Samsung

00:47:48 ◼   ► I mean, it's just, you know, the there's to some degree. I mean, it's not the most important thing. I mean, it's it's

00:47:55 ◼   ► It's not logical

00:47:57 ◼   ► I guess to say how good does the phone look when it's not even on before you even know which operating system it is

00:48:02 ◼   ► But for something you carry about with you all day and that you do hold in your hand all the time it matters

00:48:07 ◼   ► I think you know, does it feel good in your hand and HTC's phones feel way better than Samsung's

00:48:12 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, Samsung's are I mean, I know now like last week

00:48:15 ◼   ► They announced this one that has a little bit of metal on it. Yeah, just the frame just the it's almost like they're

00:48:22 ◼   ► They're like four years behind right? They're sort of like the iPhone 4s and 4, you know with the metal

00:48:27 ◼   ► Outside but the back is still plastic. Yeah, I mean

00:48:32 ◼   ► Samsung phones feel like

00:48:35 ◼   ► Even the reviews I cuz I read all the you know, the reviews of these things

00:48:40 ◼   ► I don't necessarily link to all of them

00:48:41 ◼   ► But even from people who are big fans and you know like a really glowing review of like a new Galaxy phone it

00:48:48 ◼   ► Inevitably mentions in a kind of a cheap build quality feel to it. I

00:48:52 ◼   ► Don't I haven't really read glowing reviews of the Samsung phone not recently not recently

00:48:59 ◼   ► Right, but I mean it is it it was baffling to me how many more people I mean even

00:49:07 ◼   ► appreciated the Galaxy s4

00:49:10 ◼   ► design over the HTC One about two years ago.

00:49:14 ◼   ► That people even when all things that other things were equal, people were recommending

00:49:19 ◼   ► the Samsung over the HTC.

00:49:23 ◼   ► And part of that was marketing, part of that might have been some of these software features

00:49:26 ◼   ► that no one ever figured out how to use and now they're not even in the phone.

00:49:30 ◼   ► But yeah, I mean, Samsung's biggest problem to me at this point isn't hardware design,

00:49:36 ◼   ► it is 100% software design.

00:49:39 ◼   ► Galaxy Tab S is a really nice piece of hardware. If you can look aside the plastic backing,

00:49:46 ◼   ► the software is just a nightmare.

00:49:48 ◼   ► That's the one that has two sizes.

00:49:51 ◼   ► Yeah, two sizes. It's exactly going head to head with the iPad Mini Retina and with the

00:49:56 ◼   ► Air.

00:49:57 ◼   ► Right. But they still have that build quality stuff. Remember the one and it had the...

00:50:03 ◼   ► It's thin. I mean, when you look at how thin it is and you think, "Okay, well, they had

00:50:08 ◼   ► to do maybe some of this plastic tooling on the back and to make it a little bit lighter.

00:50:13 ◼   ► That doesn't bother me as much as the software.

00:50:16 ◼   ► Dave Asprey I think part of it too, I do think part of

00:50:19 ◼   ► it is A, it's an institutional lack of taste. Because even like materials aside, even if

00:50:24 ◼   ► you say cost wise, we've got to build this out of plastic. They've done things where

00:50:28 ◼   ► they've made the back look like fake leather and even have like fake stitching. And it's

00:50:33 ◼   ► just tacky.

00:50:34 ◼   ► Nicole Stelzner Right. So tacky.

00:50:35 ◼   ► Dave Asprey But I think another thing

00:50:36 ◼   ► We're not going to discuss the Band-Aid back either again.

00:50:40 ◼   ► We're not going there.

00:50:41 ◼   ► I think another factor, though, is that they put out so many things a year, that they don't

00:50:47 ◼   ► just concentrate on one or two flagship new devices that—I forget how many tablets Samsung

00:50:52 ◼   ► has put out in the last calendar year.

00:50:54 ◼   ► Somebody, when they came out with the Tab S, tallied them all up.

00:50:57 ◼   ► I did.

00:50:58 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:50:59 ◼   ► And I don't remember.

00:51:00 ◼   ► I think it was like nine, nine or ten.

00:51:02 ◼   ► Actually, I said to my editor this morning, Wilson, in case you ever hear this, I said,

00:51:08 ◼   ► "Oh, well, there's this Barnes & Noble event tomorrow, and they're releasing the tab."

00:51:13 ◼   ► According to the rumors, it seems like they're releasing the tab four with some Barnes & Noble

00:51:19 ◼   ► software.

00:51:20 ◼   ► And he's like, "Wait, the tab four?

00:51:21 ◼   ► Didn't we just review that?"

00:51:22 ◼   ► And I was like, "No, we reviewed the tab S." He's like, "Oh, right, there's a difference."

00:51:27 ◼   ► I think that when they put out that many devices a year, if they put out 10 tablets a year,

00:51:33 ◼   ► I don't know that they can ever put enough time into getting any one of them up to the

00:51:39 ◼   ► standards that people who've seen HTC devices and Apple devices and even Nokia devices expect

00:51:45 ◼   ► because it's too scattered.

00:51:48 ◼   ► Right.

00:51:49 ◼   ► That was the argument they made with this Tab S. They said, "This is the flagship tablet,"

00:51:55 ◼   ► like the flagship phone with the Galaxy S5 or whatever, you know, the four or whatever

00:51:59 ◼   ► that they do every year. This is the flagship tablet. You know, for these flagship phones,

00:52:05 ◼   ► pay a little bit more attention to that. I mean, I imagine somewhere deep there, they

00:52:09 ◼   ► are really working on these software issues because the reviews are all bashing them for

00:52:15 ◼   ► it.

00:52:16 ◼   ► Yeah, but it's hard though, because that's you can say we have to get better at software,

00:52:22 ◼   ► But doing it is a different thing.

00:52:26 ◼   ► And they've never really shown an aptitude for it.

00:52:30 ◼   ► And it makes me wonder whether they might not, you know, I don't know that that's what

00:52:35 ◼   ► they're thinking, but I would wonder whether they're looking at some kind of big acquisition

00:52:40 ◼   ► to get to bring in software talent that could just hire, figure out some company that does

00:52:48 ◼   ► mobile software well enough and at that sort of scale that they could have enough people

00:52:53 ◼   ► to do it and bring in a new team because I don't think the people who are already there

00:52:57 ◼   ► have shown anything that they're even on a path to getting where they need to be.

00:53:03 ◼   ► Right.

00:53:04 ◼   ► Or with the improved relations with Google and Google, what they seem to be doing is

00:53:09 ◼   ► really cleaning everything up.

00:53:10 ◼   ► And I was actually going to write a piece on this a couple of months ago when the LG

00:53:14 ◼   ► G3 came out.

00:53:16 ◼   ► That phone is really clean now.

00:53:18 ◼   ► LG cleaned up their act there and didn't throw on all these types of widgets and these little

00:53:24 ◼   ► buzzing things they used to have on their phones.

00:53:27 ◼   ► They really did a nice job sort of cleaning the interface up.

00:53:30 ◼   ► I mean, there's still some of it and you got to go through and delete it all.

00:53:34 ◼   ► But for the most part, they've done a good job.

00:53:36 ◼   ► And when you look at some of the other stuff that's been coming out, I mean, the L version

00:53:41 ◼   ► of Android, a lot of the stuff is looking really clean and polished.

00:53:46 ◼   ► There's no reason Samsung couldn't just stick with that.

00:53:49 ◼   ► Of course, they want to put their mark on it.

00:53:51 ◼   ► Yeah, see the problem then is that they're not differentiated.

00:53:53 ◼   ► There's nothing, you know.

00:53:54 ◼   ► But maybe they work closer with Google to figure out what that is for them instead of

00:53:58 ◼   ► just making these things ugly.

00:54:00 ◼   ► Right.

00:54:01 ◼   ► Somehow get most, somehow work out a thing with Google to get most favored handset maker

00:54:05 ◼   ► status and I don't know, get a new version of Android first or something.

00:54:09 ◼   ► Right.

00:54:10 ◼   ► And maybe this stuff just bothers us.

00:54:13 ◼   ► I see a lot of people and I have friends with Galaxy phones and they still have the crap

00:54:18 ◼   ► just sitting there.

00:54:19 ◼   ► They just have those S widgets and S Health widgets just sitting there on the home screen.

00:54:24 ◼   ► It's like, you guys know you can move that, right?

00:54:27 ◼   ► It doesn't bother you?

00:54:28 ◼   ► Is it like looking at a really ugly painting on your phone or your wall every day?

00:54:34 ◼   ► It baffles me to no end.

00:54:35 ◼   ► But it's true that I think probably most people don't even think about stuff like that.

00:54:40 ◼   ► They don't see it, and if it registers at any level, it doesn't register at the level

00:54:43 ◼   ► where they want to figure out if they can do something.

00:54:46 ◼   ► But the problem is those aren't good customers because if they don't even care that you gave

00:54:50 ◼   ► them crapware on this year's LG, whatever, two years from now or three years from now

00:54:57 ◼   ► when they get a new phone, they're not going to have any kind of loyalty to that device.

00:55:01 ◼   ► They're not going to come in and say, "I want the new LG thing."

00:55:04 ◼   ► They're just going to say whatever.

00:55:06 ◼   ► If they said whatever when you showed them this phone that has all this crap, they're

00:55:10 ◼   ► going to go into the Verizon store and say, just give me whatever three years from now.

00:55:14 ◼   ► And it's not a LG if it's a Samsung now or if it's an HTC, that that's why they're they're

00:55:20 ◼   ► they're all trying to differentiate on software.

00:55:22 ◼   ► Marie-Claire And and when you the irony here is when you

00:55:24 ◼   ► think about it, when you take a Windows phone out of the box, you don't you don't get a

00:55:27 ◼   ► cleaner experience. I mean, you do you get iOS has a similar clean experience. But like,

00:55:32 ◼   ► this is a really polished experience. There's not a lot of crap anywhere, even if there

00:55:37 ◼   ► there is sort of hidden below the main center tiles.

00:55:42 ◼   ► It's a really clean experience.

00:55:44 ◼   ► And I think an easier one for people out of the box,

00:55:46 ◼   ► and I said that in the review this week,

00:55:47 ◼   ► is that I would rather teach someone

00:55:49 ◼   ► how to use a Windows phone than an Android phone.

00:55:52 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:55:53 ◼   ► Yeah, I would, I have, everything I've seen,

00:55:55 ◼   ► yeah, definitely.

00:55:56 ◼   ► It's a lot, it doesn't go,

00:55:58 ◼   ► it doesn't seem like stuff is as nested.

00:56:00 ◼   ► - Right.

00:56:01 ◼   ► - Right, it's a lot flatter conceptually.

00:56:04 ◼   ► Not flat and visual, you know, iOS and all the,

00:56:08 ◼   ► not the flat UI design, but flat in terms of

00:56:10 ◼   ► if you're just gonna map it out on a whiteboard,

00:56:13 ◼   ► here's the--

00:56:14 ◼   ► - How to find things.

00:56:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, here's how to find things.

00:56:17 ◼   ► Yeah, it's a lot simpler.

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00:59:15 ◼   ► credit card, just download it and try it out. And here's where you go. Go to backblaze.com/daringfireball.

00:59:22 ◼   ► backblaze.com/daringfireball. Really encourage everybody. If you haven't done it already,

00:59:29 ◼   ► try them out. One of the other pieces I've seen this month, you did a piece on I think

00:59:34 ◼   ► this was probably in the aftermath of your mega what how many pieces how many laptops

00:59:39 ◼   ► Did you review 29?

00:59:40 ◼   ► Dr. Justin Marchegiani I—I had about 20 laptops, Windows laptops

00:59:45 ◼   ► sitting at—at my desk.

00:59:46 ◼   ► Dr. Justin Marchegiani You did a—Yoman's work.

00:59:50 ◼   ► You did—here's all—20 laptops of, you know, right now today, it's back to school

00:59:55 ◼   ► season, it's early August, people—a lot of—a lot of kids are gonna be buying—getting

01:00:00 ◼   ► new laptops.

01:00:01 ◼   ► Here's, you know, the summary.

01:00:02 ◼   ► We can talk about that in a bit.

01:00:04 ◼   ► But in the aftermath of that, you also did a, "Hey, enough with the crapware piece."

01:00:07 ◼   ► Dr. Justin Marchegiani Yeah.

01:00:08 ◼   ► Dr. Justin Marchegiani And—and with advice on that.

01:00:09 ◼   ► And that's like one of those things where it's like as a long time Mac user, it's like,

01:00:13 ◼   ► I can't believe that that's still a thing.

01:00:15 ◼   ► I know.

01:00:16 ◼   ► I can't believe it's still a thing.

01:00:17 ◼   ► You know, I used to review PCs like one a week, right?

01:00:20 ◼   ► And I just used to be something I like knew I would be dealing with.

01:00:24 ◼   ► And I guess I just, I thought maybe when Windows 8 came, like, where were they going to put

01:00:29 ◼   ► the crap where were they going to put it on the tile screens?

01:00:31 ◼   ► Well, they just kept putting it on the tile screens and on the on the desktop.

01:00:37 ◼   ► But yeah, it's just, you know, nothing,

01:00:41 ◼   ► it could be one of the things that makes me,

01:00:44 ◼   ► I don't know if I get more angry

01:00:46 ◼   ► at the pop-ups that come up.

01:00:48 ◼   ► Like if you're doing something,

01:00:50 ◼   ► like I was writing my column in something

01:00:51 ◼   ► and then like three Mackenzie or Norton pop-up ads

01:00:54 ◼   ► come at you and you're like, you know,

01:00:56 ◼   ► I already told you I'm not gonna reboot the system

01:00:59 ◼   ► or give you my email address right now.

01:01:02 ◼   ► Or when you open up the laptop

01:01:04 ◼   ► and you have eBay ads on your desktop,

01:01:07 ◼   ► it's like, really eBay?

01:01:10 ◼   ► Why is that the strategy at this point?

01:01:13 ◼   ► - Why does eBay even wanna be involved in that?

01:01:15 ◼   ► - I understood five years ago why eBay was doing that, right?

01:01:19 ◼   ► But now, really eBay?

01:01:22 ◼   ► Let's get with the times.

01:01:23 ◼   ► Who is really getting invested in eBay

01:01:27 ◼   ► because it's sitting on their desktop?

01:01:29 ◼   ► - I've heard it said though,

01:01:30 ◼   ► that the reason that it's such a problem

01:01:32 ◼   ► that whole that whole race that the race to the bottom pricing wise sure in the PC market

01:01:38 ◼   ► and I don't know if it was Ben Thompson or somebody but I've heard it said before and

01:01:42 ◼   ► it makes sense intuitively at some level that that when you're selling a laptop for $350

01:01:48 ◼   ► or something like that you you're really not making any money on the hardware at all and

01:01:54 ◼   ► that the only money somebody like Dell makes when they sell a $350 laptop is whatever they

01:01:58 ◼   ► they get from stuff like McAfee or Norton or whoever else is in those things.

01:02:04 ◼   ► The money they get from those deals is really the only money they get, period.

01:02:08 ◼   ► But I come back to eBay because it's eBay's fault for keeping—I mean, they must get

01:02:16 ◼   ► a lot of traffic from these things, right?

01:02:17 ◼   ► They must get—there must be some reason.

01:02:20 ◼   ► There must be getting some return on their investment here.

01:02:23 ◼   ► But I just think that this could be the problem why eBay has fallen behind some of these other

01:02:29 ◼   ► retail or e-tailer sites is like figure out a better marketing method than spamming me

01:02:34 ◼   ► as soon as I open my Windows 8 computer.

01:02:36 ◼   ► Yeah, no, I think it's, it's, it, you've got a problem not just with your marketing, but

01:02:43 ◼   ► probably with your product as well if your marketing campaign is you strategizing against

01:02:49 ◼   ► your users.

01:02:50 ◼   ► Right.

01:02:51 ◼   ► You know, it doesn't matter what field really bothers me

01:02:53 ◼   ► You know, no one's opening their computer maybe maybe this is happening

01:02:58 ◼   ► Maybe someone is opening their computer seeing ebay and being like, you know what? I should really go sell that old coffee maker

01:03:05 ◼   ► I have on ebay

01:03:06 ◼   ► Thank you for interrupting me in the middle of

01:03:08 ◼   ► Me trying to do something else to to do that. I'm reminded of a couple years ago for a while long while it seemed

01:03:16 ◼   ► the only pop-up ads I ever saw, like our pop-under ads,

01:03:20 ◼   ► it was, uh, were from Netflix. Like, and that, you know, I had Safari and

01:03:26 ◼   ► Chrome with built-in pop-under blocking and it, you know, somehow, and it doesn't

01:03:30 ◼   ► surprise me that Netflix was able to figure out,

01:03:33 ◼   ► you know, was the, you know, a company that was smart enough to figure out

01:03:37 ◼   ► loopholes through the pop-under blocking. But it always struck me as, why are they

01:03:42 ◼   ► doing this? Why is Netflix, of all companies, a company that I want to

01:03:45 ◼   ► like that I do like. Why are they paying for these pop under ads?

01:03:49 ◼   ► No, you're totally right. I would come back to my computer and I'd have a Netflix ad up

01:03:53 ◼   ► on my screen.

01:03:54 ◼   ► It was, they were the only ones I ever saw. Like, and I, you know, I got on the one hand,

01:03:58 ◼   ► I sort of salute their, their ingenuity for being the one company that was figuring out

01:04:02 ◼   ► how to get around the built-in pop up and pop under blockers. But on the other hand,

01:04:07 ◼   ► it's like,

01:04:08 ◼   ► Good work, Netflix.

01:04:09 ◼   ► Yeah, but why are they doing this thing that makes me think about maybe going over to Netflix

01:04:13 ◼   ► and canceling my subscription?

01:04:15 ◼   ► Yeah, and that was probably before Netflix really had hit it big.

01:04:19 ◼   ► I mean, I don't know.

01:04:20 ◼   ► I don't know the last time I've seen it.

01:04:22 ◼   ► No, yeah, it's been a long time.

01:04:24 ◼   ► But at the time when I remember seeing them and being annoyed, they were still more of

01:04:28 ◼   ► a disk service than a streaming service.

01:04:33 ◼   ► But it just seemed like a very odd branding choice to associate themselves with a form

01:04:38 ◼   ► of advertising that browsers explicitly advertise, we block this stuff.

01:04:46 ◼   ► Right.

01:04:47 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, it's very frustrating too that even on the highest end Windows laptops, you're

01:04:54 ◼   ► still getting some of these crapware pieces.

01:04:58 ◼   ► Yeah, that surprises me too.

01:05:00 ◼   ► I'm thinking, you know, the Acer that I talked about in that quick sidebar that I wrote to

01:05:04 ◼   ► the laptop piece, that's a $1,300 computer. You can get it now for $999 or I think it

01:05:11 ◼   ► was $899 at Microsoft stores. And I really did a lot of shilling there. I'm basically

01:05:18 ◼   ► telling everyone go buy your computers at Microsoft stores because A, you're getting

01:05:22 ◼   ► these really good deals on them and then B, they're not selling them with junkware. So

01:05:26 ◼   ► everyone, buy your computers from Microsoft stores if you're in the market for a Windows

01:05:30 ◼   ► PC, but I had gotten this one from Acer. And I mean, this is a

01:05:35 ◼   ► third, it comes with a nice case, the box smelled good. I

01:05:38 ◼   ► mean, like the whole thing is like a really premium package,

01:05:40 ◼   ► you cannot even believe Acer made this computer. I mean, I

01:05:44 ◼   ► can remember reviewing some of the worst, some of the worst

01:05:47 ◼   ► technology that I remember reviewing came from Acer, like

01:05:50 ◼   ► terrible laptops years ago. And so like, you look at this

01:05:54 ◼   ► beautiful piece of hardware, you open up the thing, and then you

01:05:56 ◼   ► see Norton, eBay, tons of third party apps that you're just

01:06:00 ◼   ► like, where, you know, I think they were from some sort of

01:06:03 ◼   ► Chinese. What's a a, a B word processor or something like

01:06:10 ◼   ► that. I can't really remember the name of the company. But,

01:06:13 ◼   ► you know, like, you've just paid really, like, you paid a lot of

01:06:16 ◼   ► money for a really nice computer. Why is this stuff still

01:06:19 ◼   ► sitting here? Clearly, I'm very angry about it.

01:06:23 ◼   ► I do. Well, I think I think it's worth getting angry about,

01:06:27 ◼   ► I do because especially you know especially for the ones that you pay a premium for

01:06:33 ◼   ► Like if you're if you're buying a two or three hundred dollar laptop. It still stinks that you're getting

01:06:38 ◼   ► Loaded with the getting it loaded with crapware, but you can understand the economics of it

01:06:43 ◼   ► But again, like you said a nine hundred ninety nine dollar laptop if your laptop is a hundred dollars more than the entry-level macbook

01:06:50 ◼   ► That's that's you know, you're in a premium price zone like famously apples

01:06:55 ◼   ► you know, Mac books are start at the high end of prices.

01:06:59 ◼   ► And there's really, I just can't see how it's, why are you nickel

01:07:03 ◼   ► and diming them? Yeah, yeah, but it's exactly what you said before. It's that

01:07:07 ◼   ► that's where many of these companies are making profit and the sales teams from Acer to Dell

01:07:11 ◼   ► to all these are convincing these people that it's great real estate. But on a $9.99

01:07:15 ◼   ► laptop or a $13.99 laptop, that shouldn't be where they're making their profit. They should be able

01:07:19 ◼   ► to, you know, make a profit selling that with a clean version of Windows.

01:07:23 ◼   ► That's true.

01:07:24 ◼   ► Here's a question.

01:07:25 ◼   ► But these are the add-ons that they're, you know, it's better for them.

01:07:29 ◼   ► And then on top of it, they skin the browsers.

01:07:32 ◼   ► That's another thing Acer does.

01:07:34 ◼   ► Still?

01:07:35 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:07:36 ◼   ► Really?

01:07:37 ◼   ► What does that mean?

01:07:38 ◼   ► That means there's like a toolbar that's preloaded in the browser.

01:07:41 ◼   ► What year was it?

01:07:43 ◼   ► 1998?

01:07:44 ◼   ► Yet again with eBay.

01:07:45 ◼   ► Wow.

01:07:46 ◼   ► I mean, the eBay stuff really bothers me.

01:07:49 ◼   ► I'm not sure why.

01:07:52 ◼   ► Like maybe if it was a link to a better, I just don't do that much stuff on eBay anymore.

01:07:56 ◼   ► Amazon's in the same business.

01:08:01 ◼   ► Maybe it was Toshiba preloads an Amazon app.

01:08:07 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:08:09 ◼   ► Wow.

01:08:10 ◼   ► Yeah, I should have done this more scientifically and done it slow.

01:08:13 ◼   ► What about the Chromebooks?

01:08:15 ◼   ► Now Chromebooks are really low price points, for the most part.

01:08:19 ◼   ► I mean, you know, like the, what's the Google one, the pixel aside, but most of them, you

01:08:26 ◼   ► know, the whole point of them is that they're sort of the new netbooks pricing wise.

01:08:32 ◼   ► Do they come with crapware?

01:08:33 ◼   ► No.

01:08:34 ◼   ► No.

01:08:35 ◼   ► And Google is very strict about what these OEMs can put on.

01:08:42 ◼   ► They are just like Android in some ways, you know, where they have sort of these strict

01:08:46 ◼   ► guidelines. I mean, obviously, you know, they let people customize, they're way more controlled

01:08:51 ◼   ► when it comes to Chromebooks.

01:08:53 ◼   ► So I wonder if Microsoft can't enforce it, just because of the remaining fallout from

01:08:59 ◼   ► the 1997 antitrust stuff, that they can't, maybe they can't bring the hammer down and

01:09:06 ◼   ► say you can't because I know, you know, because Ben Thompson used to work at Microsoft, and

01:09:10 ◼   ► he's, you know, been explicit about it publicly that it's a huge frustration inside the halls

01:09:15 ◼   ► in Redmond that the windows that most people see is so junked up right from the start.

01:09:24 ◼   ► Well, I mean, it does affect performance.

01:09:27 ◼   ► There's no doubt that it affects performance.

01:09:29 ◼   ► You know, this was just stuff that you could just sweep away and put it in like a little

01:09:33 ◼   ► folder.

01:09:34 ◼   ► That's one.

01:09:35 ◼   ► But this stuff affects performance.

01:09:36 ◼   ► You have these things popping up.

01:09:37 ◼   ► You know, one of the apps opened because it told me I had to like, you know, do I want

01:09:41 ◼   ► to agree or whatever.

01:09:43 ◼   ► And the wild tangent games, that's a whole other situation where if you open that up,

01:09:48 ◼   ► that's running in the browser and they've got another app that's running.

01:09:51 ◼   ► So yeah, I mean, no doubt Microsoft has been upset about this stuff for forever.

01:09:56 ◼   ► And that's why they're offering it in their stores without this.

01:09:59 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:10:00 ◼   ► And I think that it's, you know, for a long time, I mean, Apple's always focused on a

01:10:07 ◼   ► lot of effort on a first run experience on good stuff like good packaging and stuff like

01:10:12 ◼   ► even before you turn the device on, that you should already be having a good experience

01:10:18 ◼   ► just opening the box.

01:10:21 ◼   ► And for a long time, they were unique in that regard because they were sort of the wild

01:10:24 ◼   ► stepchild of the industry.

01:10:26 ◼   ► But anybody who's successful, people are going to start studying what they do, and

01:10:30 ◼   ► clearly Apple's, over the last 10 years, is the most successful gadget maker in the

01:10:36 ◼   ► industry.

01:10:37 ◼   ► And I think it's caught on in everybody's… the average packaging in general, like you're

01:10:42 ◼   ► saying that even an Acer comes with good packaging now.

01:10:44 ◼   ► I think that's packaging. I think that's the Apple effect.

01:10:47 ◼   ► It smells almost as good as a Macbook. And yes, you know, this thing about laptop smells

01:10:52 ◼   ► is very important.

01:10:53 ◼   ► You know, I remember I used to have in college, I had one of my jobs, like an internship was

01:11:01 ◼   ► more or less like an IT job. And so sometimes I give a new department was getting a new

01:11:06 ◼   ► shipment of computers in. I know exactly what you're talking about. We used to get Dells

01:11:11 ◼   ► at this place. And we'd have like eight boxes to open. And they did. There was like

01:11:15 ◼   ► a bad smell, like an acidic, plasticky smell.

01:11:21 ◼   ► Yeah. I think there was an HP a couple of years ago. No, no, no, no. It was Dell last

01:11:30 ◼   ► year where people were complaining that the new laptops were smelling like urine.

01:11:35 ◼   ► I can remember that. I do remember that.

01:11:40 ◼   ► And people were writing in and it had something to do with the glue or some sort of thing.

01:11:47 ◼   ► You can get a bad smelling laptop.

01:11:49 ◼   ► Mostly though, I just love the smell of a new laptop.

01:11:52 ◼   ► It's like a new car.

01:11:54 ◼   ► I'm really showing my hands here on this podcast.

01:11:58 ◼   ► I know exactly what you mean though.

01:12:00 ◼   ► I do know what you mean.

01:12:02 ◼   ► A new MacBook smells really good.

01:12:05 ◼   ► And a new MacBook Air even better.

01:12:08 ◼   ► no coincidence, you know, that's not just by chance. It's about you caring about stuff

01:12:13 ◼   ► like that and using good materials and not using cheap glue. But I do remember that like

01:12:19 ◼   ► when we would have like, hey, eight new PCs came in, we got to set them up. And it was,

01:12:24 ◼   ► you know, it wasn't like, like, you know, there's people who work with raw sewage. I

01:12:27 ◼   ► mean, there are a lot worse smells that people have on a regular basis on their job, but

01:12:32 ◼   ► it wasn't pleasant.

01:12:33 ◼   ► Right. We're terrible people. We sit here, we are horrible people complaining about the

01:12:37 ◼   ► We have to open up a laptop that doesn't smell good. Oh my job is so hard

01:12:42 ◼   ► But that's interesting it is interesting to me though that a Chromebooks don't have that problem, you know

01:12:50 ◼   ► And and the first run experience like here. I've got this new thing

01:12:53 ◼   ► I you know, I just bought it and that's when you're like, you know, it's it's a psychological thing first impressions really do matter

01:13:00 ◼   ► Okay, turn it on. Here's how I turn it on. What's the first thing I see?

01:13:04 ◼   ► see am I getting Barack, you know, a barrage of ads or am I getting a, you know, professional

01:13:09 ◼   ► designers have, you know, given you this onboarding experience to make it pleasant. It matters

01:13:16 ◼   ► because that's like your first impression of the device. The first time you turn it

01:13:19 ◼   ► on is, is like the starting point of the graph of your customer satisfaction with it. Right.

01:13:26 ◼   ► It's not like you, your customer satisfaction doesn't start at zero and start inching up.

01:13:31 ◼   ► it it starts somewhere based on that first experience, you know,

01:13:37 ◼   ► right? Or the excitement that you've got a new product and you're excited to open it and then

01:13:41 ◼   ► it's like, you know, is there the record scratch? Or are you you know, is there no happy music? Are

01:13:46 ◼   ► you are you enjoying getting this new thing? Yeah, that's a good point. Because when your

01:13:52 ◼   ► devices, it's just like a brand new car, you're excited, you're excited to just go to the grocery

01:13:56 ◼   ► store and drive to the grocery store when you have a brand new car, because it's you got a new car.

01:14:00 ◼   ► are.

01:14:01 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:14:02 ◼   ► I mean, I open phones all the time, but when I get my own new phone, that is a different

01:14:06 ◼   ► experience.

01:14:07 ◼   ► Right?

01:14:08 ◼   ► I'm like, "This is mine.

01:14:10 ◼   ► This is going to be mine for however long."

01:14:12 ◼   ► Right.

01:14:13 ◼   ► The foreseeable future.

01:14:14 ◼   ► For years, many people keep their laptops.

01:14:17 ◼   ► You know?

01:14:18 ◼   ► All right.

01:14:19 ◼   ► I think that's what it used to be.

01:14:20 ◼   ► I don't know now if that's the case, but…

01:14:21 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:14:22 ◼   ► I think it's longer and longer.

01:14:23 ◼   ► I think that's part of the problem that the PC industry is facing.

01:14:26 ◼   ► Right.

01:14:27 ◼   ► Right.

01:14:28 ◼   ► because they're doing stuff like, you know, they don't feel like they need a new PC that

01:14:31 ◼   ► often because they're doing so much on their tablets.

01:14:33 ◼   ► Right.

01:14:34 ◼   ► Or surfing, or they're just, you know, in the web browser and they don't need half the

01:14:38 ◼   ► other power that they have.

01:14:42 ◼   ► But that is interesting to me that Google enforces that pretty tight, even on these

01:14:45 ◼   ► devices that are selling for as low as 250 bucks.

01:14:48 ◼   ► Yeah, definitely.

01:14:49 ◼   ► I mean, mostly also they don't, you know, the hardware is so low end.

01:14:54 ◼   ► You know, even this Acer, I have the 299C720, the Chromebook.

01:15:01 ◼   ► I mean, this is not a nice feeling computer, but it's fine for the price.

01:15:08 ◼   ► I've seen it, and I know that it's the, I think it's one of the main ways that Chromebooks

01:15:15 ◼   ► are starting to actually have an effect on the industry is like K-12 education.

01:15:20 ◼   ► Sure, yeah.

01:15:21 ◼   ► Like at my son's school, they do have some iPads, but it's an awful lot of Chromebooks.

01:15:26 ◼   ► And like when they do writing and stuff like that, it's in a Chromebook and in Google Docs.

01:15:33 ◼   ► And I can't really blame them.

01:15:35 ◼   ► And it's funny talking to my son about it.

01:15:37 ◼   ► He and his friends, they do complain about them because most of these kids have like

01:15:40 ◼   ► Apple stuff at home.

01:15:42 ◼   ► And they even complain about the things being—this isn't like my son playing to me and knowing

01:15:47 ◼   ► this.

01:15:48 ◼   ► he would tease me and if he if he knew better he'd tease me and tell me how

01:15:52 ◼   ► much he likes the Chromebook it's just hit you know me subtly gauging his

01:15:56 ◼   ► opinions like oh yeah it's a real piece of junk you know like the trackpad you

01:16:02 ◼   ► know and the kids are not I've said this before kids today are nuts about things

01:16:06 ◼   ► like frame rate because it's all from the games and you know even even just

01:16:09 ◼   ► using the Chromebook for schoolwork it's like he's like on terrible frame rate

01:16:12 ◼   ► yeah he says frame rate yeah oh today kids today are nuts about frame rate

01:16:18 ◼   ► rates and they all know 60 everybody knows that 60 is what you want that you want 60

01:16:22 ◼   ► frames per second.

01:16:23 ◼   ► I hold on. I think I think kids definitely know slow now because like they're like my

01:16:29 ◼   ► iPad doesn't do that. But do you think maybe only your kid knows the word frame rate?

01:16:34 ◼   ► No, definitely not. Because they watch they all watch YouTube videos nonstop of video

01:16:41 ◼   ► games. Yep. And while they this is this is what kids like Minecraft. It doesn't matter

01:16:46 ◼   ► whether yeah, Minecraft, the you know, the Arkham Batman game, it doesn't matter what

01:16:50 ◼   ► games you play. What you do as a kid today is you start playing a video game on device

01:16:55 ◼   ► A, could be your phone, and it could be your iPad could be you know, like a Wii U or whatever.

01:17:02 ◼   ► And then on device B, you watch videos of people playing the same game at the same time.

01:17:08 ◼   ► And it's you know, it's nonstop chatter about things like frame rate and stuff like that.

01:17:12 ◼   ► It's not from like a, trust me, he's not unusual.

01:17:16 ◼   ► He's 10.

01:17:17 ◼   ► - Oh my God.

01:17:19 ◼   ► - And trust me, frame rates are a huge deal.

01:17:22 ◼   ► - That's so funny.

01:17:23 ◼   ► - This is really funny.

01:17:25 ◼   ► - I didn't even think about that.

01:17:26 ◼   ► I mean, at work, the makeup artist,

01:17:29 ◼   ► her daughter talks to me about Minecraft constantly.

01:17:33 ◼   ► And she's constantly telling me,

01:17:35 ◼   ► "Oh, well, I saw this video of Minecraft

01:17:36 ◼   ► "and they built this and they did that."

01:17:39 ◼   ► So I totally know what you're,

01:17:41 ◼   ► the idea that like a kid would be sitting like, oh yeah, the frame rate on this Chromebook

01:17:44 ◼   ► is terrible. Like the fact that a kid would be saying that is amazing to me. And so I

01:17:48 ◼   ► thought in my head like, oh yeah, of course, of course John's.

01:17:51 ◼   ► No, but it's not. Yeah, you would. That would make some degree of sense, but it's not. It

01:17:57 ◼   ► isn't. It's just common. Like one of the most disparaging words like a fourth or fifth grader

01:18:02 ◼   ► can use to describe something is laggy. Laggy is lagginess is a huge issue.

01:18:08 ◼   ► All these kids are going to be way better reviewers than I am.

01:18:12 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:18:13 ◼   ► It's a huge deal with all the kids who are into Minecraft, because Minecraft is so extensible.

01:18:17 ◼   ► You can plug in new shaders so that you can get a totally different graphics engine.

01:18:25 ◼   ► But it slows the hell down.

01:18:26 ◼   ► Right.

01:18:27 ◼   ► It's, you know, if you're running it on a MacBook Air or something like that, you

01:18:30 ◼   ► get laggyness.

01:18:31 ◼   ► And that's the worst thing that could possibly happen.

01:18:35 ◼   ► It's horrible.

01:18:36 ◼   ► But anyway, I can totally see why schools are loading up on these things because if

01:18:39 ◼   ► I were going to put devices in the hands of fourth and fifth graders, it makes an awful

01:18:45 ◼   ► lot of sense to give them a $200 thing that if they drop and it needs to be replaced,

01:18:50 ◼   ► it's not going to crack like an iPad.

01:18:53 ◼   ► Right.

01:18:54 ◼   ► Hmm.

01:18:55 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:18:56 ◼   ► And that also ties into another thing that you've written about recently, which I wanted

01:19:01 ◼   ► to mention which is the…you did a whole thing on…do you still need that Microsoft

01:19:06 ◼   ► Office?

01:19:07 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:19:08 ◼   ► You see the pattern here.

01:19:09 ◼   ► It was Microsoft August in my life.

01:19:14 ◼   ► It just happened that those topics sort of were in a good succession because I did the

01:19:17 ◼   ► laptop piece and obviously, you know, the piece led with recommending the Air and I

01:19:24 ◼   ► got a lot of emails from people saying, "Well, how am I supposed to use the Air without Microsoft

01:19:29 ◼   ► Office?"

01:19:30 ◼   ► And so I had to write back to people and explain to them Microsoft Office has been available

01:19:34 ◼   ► for the air for a really long time.

01:19:36 ◼   ► And

01:19:37 ◼   ► forever.

01:19:38 ◼   ► For Yeah, yeah, I'm pretty sure Microsoft Excel shipped on the Mac first.

01:19:43 ◼   ► It was,

01:19:45 ◼   ► you know, and well, and to their credit, some people wrote back and said, yes, but it's

01:19:49 ◼   ► a far inferior product on on the Mac.

01:19:51 ◼   ► And I said, I actually agree.

01:19:53 ◼   ► I have I use Microsoft Office on on my Mac, and I actually run parallel sometimes to run

01:19:57 ◼   ► Windows, I mean, Microsoft Office 365, because you get a better outlook experience, blah,

01:20:02 ◼   ► blah, blah. So it just started getting, you know, my, we thinking, Okay, well, maybe we

01:20:08 ◼   ► should do a piece right now explaining to people that maybe they don't need Microsoft

01:20:11 ◼   ► Office. And so yeah, that was that was that piece. And then it just happened to be that

01:20:16 ◼   ► that Windows 8 was Windows Phone 8 was launching on this HTC. And so every week, I feel like

01:20:22 ◼   ► as if I've been giving a nice look at what's going on in Redmond.

01:20:27 ◼   ► Well, and I do think that there's an interesting angle there on education where, you know,

01:20:33 ◼   ► like in my son's school, like a lot of the stuff he does, it gets turned into the teacher

01:20:38 ◼   ► by Google Docs, that you don't have documents, there's no, you don't save stuff to your hard

01:20:45 ◼   ► drive and then print it out and hand it in.

01:20:48 ◼   ► I'm not even sure exactly what the steps are that he does, but it's completely through

01:20:56 ◼   ► the school's Google Docs thing, Google Office thing.

01:21:02 ◼   ► Rachel Tompa Yeah, I mean, my entire editing process is

01:21:05 ◼   ► now done in Google Docs.

01:21:08 ◼   ► When I deal with the print editors, we move back to Word, but when I deal with my direct

01:21:13 ◼   ► we're just completely in Google Docs and it's a great,

01:21:17 ◼   ► I mean, I compared Office or Word Online

01:21:20 ◼   ► and Excel Online and PowerPoint Online to Google Docs

01:21:23 ◼   ► and then also what Apple's been doing with iCloud pages

01:21:27 ◼   ► and spreadsheets and, or I mean, with numbers and Keynote.

01:21:31 ◼   ► And all of those platforms have added

01:21:34 ◼   ► really substantial sharing and collaboration features,

01:21:37 ◼   ► but Google still has just,

01:21:39 ◼   ► it's really built into the platform.

01:21:41 ◼   ► Like you can tell that that's where this was built.

01:21:44 ◼   ► Like that was the main reason they built

01:21:47 ◼   ► some of these features or these platforms.

01:21:49 ◼   ► Like it's almost like, and I think this is actually true.

01:21:52 ◼   ► I think Google built Google Docs

01:21:54 ◼   ► so they would be able to collaborate on documents

01:21:56 ◼   ► rather than just have something that lived in the cloud.

01:21:59 ◼   ► And it feels that way.

01:22:01 ◼   ► Like the sharing capabilities are better,

01:22:03 ◼   ► being able to comment on what somebody's written,

01:22:05 ◼   ► being able to live edit and watch them live edit.

01:22:08 ◼   ► It all works better still on Google stuff.

01:22:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I do think that it's a good,

01:22:13 ◼   ► I think you're exactly right,

01:22:15 ◼   ► that it really matters where the product started.

01:22:19 ◼   ► - Right.

01:22:20 ◼   ► - Right, where the-- - Though I have to say,

01:22:21 ◼   ► Apple, the new iCloud pages,

01:22:23 ◼   ► I don't know if you've tried the sharing functionality,

01:22:25 ◼   ► but they have some interesting stuff in there

01:22:26 ◼   ► that I actually, you know,

01:22:27 ◼   ► there were a couple small features,

01:22:28 ◼   ► I'm like, "Oh, I wish Google Docs had this now."

01:22:31 ◼   ► So, you know, they've got a,

01:22:33 ◼   ► they're still playing catch up on some of the other things,

01:22:35 ◼   ► like commenting, like seeing some of that live editing,

01:22:38 ◼   ► But if I sent you my iCloud Pages thing now,

01:22:41 ◼   ► you don't have to log in at all.

01:22:43 ◼   ► You can just create a name.

01:22:44 ◼   ► You can just write Gruber,

01:22:46 ◼   ► and you can just jump into the document

01:22:48 ◼   ► without having to log in at all.

01:22:49 ◼   ► And I think that's actually a feature

01:22:51 ◼   ► that Google has ranked over.

01:22:53 ◼   ► - And the big thing too is that you don't,

01:22:55 ◼   ► I mean, the whole basis of all of that sharing

01:22:57 ◼   ► is that you don't have to coordinate any,

01:23:00 ◼   ► okay, I'm gonna open it now.

01:23:01 ◼   ► Don't make any changes on your site.

01:23:03 ◼   ► But Dropbox is an amazing, amazing service.

01:23:07 ◼   ► But if you're sharing a document between two people on Dropbox,

01:23:11 ◼   ► like an app that's not meant--

01:23:13 ◼   ► doesn't really-- isn't aware of Dropbox,

01:23:15 ◼   ► just open it up in numbers or whatever,

01:23:18 ◼   ► you can easily run into problems, even just

01:23:21 ◼   ► with yourself, if you have it open on two machines

01:23:23 ◼   ► at the same time, where you make changes on one side

01:23:26 ◼   ► and different changes on the other side.

01:23:27 ◼   ► And now you're overwriting it, as opposed to--

01:23:32 ◼   ► It all being in one place.

01:23:34 ◼   ► - Well, and having it set up, you know,

01:23:36 ◼   ► Google Docs from day one,

01:23:37 ◼   ► where as you type in the document on your end,

01:23:41 ◼   ► the keystrokes show up on mine.

01:23:43 ◼   ► - Right. - Right?

01:23:44 ◼   ► And it's meant to be used by different people

01:23:49 ◼   ► at the same time and meant for that,

01:23:50 ◼   ► as opposed to the problems you can run into with apps

01:23:54 ◼   ► that are rooted in a design

01:23:57 ◼   ► where it's your file on your computer.

01:24:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's a great point.

01:24:02 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:24:03 ◼   ► Yeah, and I think, you know, I mean, I was actually really impressed where Apple's

01:24:07 ◼   ► gone with that.

01:24:08 ◼   ► I mean, Microsoft has had a lot of these features, and they're getting better, but the problem

01:24:13 ◼   ► with Microsoft is they're still trying to bring these features to the desktop version,

01:24:17 ◼   ► and it just doesn't work there.

01:24:18 ◼   ► It just really doesn't work there.

01:24:20 ◼   ► Yeah, and the other thing, too, and you see it, you know—

01:24:23 ◼   ► There's actually the same problem with pages.

01:24:25 ◼   ► You know, the sharing is really good in iCloud pages, but when you try and do it from the

01:24:28 ◼   ► desktop app, it's not as good.

01:24:31 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:24:32 ◼   ► real problem. I think it's a real problem because the desktop version in every other

01:24:35 ◼   ► regard is better, in terms of just going back to lagginess and stuff like that. Native apps

01:24:45 ◼   ► run better than apps that are jury rigged through HTML and JavaScript and CSS. But you're

01:24:51 ◼   ► right though that the sharing stuff doesn't work as well in terms of live updates and

01:24:54 ◼   ► stuff that they're still like these roots of an old school, you know, your file saved

01:25:01 ◼   ► to your hard disk mentality there.

01:25:03 ◼   ► Right.

01:25:04 ◼   ► But I mean, you know, when you look at the whole ecosystem of things, I mean, you know,

01:25:10 ◼   ► as I talked about in this piece is like, you know, it ultimately comes down to what what

01:25:15 ◼   ► would you want to pay for and I and I conclude, you know, there's no reason to pay for office

01:25:21 ◼   ► anymore if you just need the basics. And you can get those, and even if you prefer using

01:25:26 ◼   ► the Office interface, you can get all of that for free now through Word and Excel and PowerPoint

01:25:31 ◼   ► Online.

01:25:32 ◼   ► So…

01:25:33 ◼   ► Yeah, that's interesting.

01:25:34 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:25:35 ◼   ► But I do, and I wonder too, how it's going to play out with…because it's the sort

01:25:40 ◼   ► of thing like, it doesn't happen…everything…I try to focus on the big picture as much as

01:25:46 ◼   ► I can. I think I do a better job than a lot of people who write about tech. But it's

01:25:51 ◼   ► so hard to look past just even the next year. But some things take five, six, seven, ten

01:25:58 ◼   ► years. What happens when today's ten-year-olds are freshmen in college eight years from now?

01:26:05 ◼   ► I think Microsoft Office is going to seem like using a mainframe from the '60s. Nobody's

01:26:11 ◼   ► going to be using that.

01:26:12 ◼   ► I couldn't agree more. I think when you look at, well, it's two things. One, it's

01:26:18 ◼   ► the idea of installing software in the regards that you would have to somehow install with

01:26:24 ◼   ► Office. Of course, now kids are really used to using apps. But I think the idea that kids

01:26:31 ◼   ► have started to get used to is that they can just get a lot of that stuff through the web

01:26:35 ◼   ► browser. And then second of all, the idea of paying for something like that. I don't

01:26:42 ◼   ► think it's the reality in 10 years.

01:26:45 ◼   ► Well, and I think the other thing too is that with the file system mentality to submit your

01:26:51 ◼   ► work to the teacher, whether it's printed or even if it was like, you know, I'm sure

01:26:57 ◼   ► there's a lot of people who, you know, certainly since I've been in school, but who've been

01:27:00 ◼   ► able to email their homework to their teachers and stuff like that. But when you do something

01:27:05 ◼   ► like that, you're sending a copy. It doesn't matter whether it's a hard copy or still a

01:27:08 ◼   ► a digital copy, it's, "Okay, I've sent a copy of this document as an email attachment,

01:27:14 ◼   ► and now there's a copy of it." That whole "there's a bunch of different copies of it"

01:27:19 ◼   ► mentality is…

01:27:20 ◼   ► Right. It's not like the live living thing.

01:27:23 ◼   ► Right. Right. Here's this one URL, and it's the same URL. From my end, as a student, it's

01:27:29 ◼   ► where I go to type, and from the teacher's end, it's just where they bring it up to read

01:27:33 ◼   ► it and put their remarks. And you'd not, you know, the whole issue of having various versions

01:27:40 ◼   ► of a document copied and, you know, who's got the right version, and now the teacher

01:27:44 ◼   ► sent me a new copy back with, you know, right, with their comments. It's craziness from I

01:27:50 ◼   ► think from kids perspective today, right? They're just not even going to get it. They're

01:27:53 ◼   ► not even going to understand it. Right. And that's where, you know, who knows if we'll

01:27:57 ◼   ► be paying for cloud storage then I mean, if it all signs point to us not really paying

01:28:01 ◼   ► for cloud storage even now at this point. I mean, we're paying what, for a terabyte

01:28:06 ◼   ► of storage $10 a month, expecting that to go down. I mean, so the that sort of equation

01:28:13 ◼   ► where you think, I'm not paying for the software, but I'm paying for this platform to keep these

01:28:19 ◼   ► documents alive and not save them to my, like, as you're saying, and not saving them as a

01:28:24 ◼   ► file, I'm not saving them as a copy, seems to make more sense for the structure of these

01:28:29 ◼   ► types of services, which is where Microsoft is going with this Office 365 thing.

01:28:36 ◼   ► Yeah, I think that they see it, but I still think, even though that they see it and I

01:28:40 ◼   ► think they're doing great work with it, they're still in a dangerous spot where they seem

01:28:46 ◼   ► to need to, financially, they need to protect the existing operations and the existing business,

01:28:52 ◼   ► and it's in conflict with the future.

01:28:54 ◼   ► Absolutely.

01:28:55 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:28:56 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:28:57 ◼   ► Hmm.

01:28:58 ◼   ► - Now it's been an interesting couple of columns

01:29:03 ◼   ► to look at Microsoft and how they try and figure out

01:29:07 ◼   ► how they form or fit into the future.

01:29:10 ◼   ► Even from the Windows laptop piece that I wrote,

01:29:16 ◼   ► when you look at the problems and the thoughts

01:29:20 ◼   ► that they had about Windows 8

01:29:22 ◼   ► and where they've sort of ended up now,

01:29:24 ◼   ► which is really kind of coming full circle back to,

01:29:27 ◼   ► "Okay, we can't abandon core windows,

01:29:30 ◼   ► "and we got to sort of come back

01:29:32 ◼   ► "to the traditional desktop."

01:29:35 ◼   ► And you look at all of these devices

01:29:37 ◼   ► that are supposed to be tablets,

01:29:38 ◼   ► that are supposed to be hybrid machines,

01:29:40 ◼   ► and really, I think a lot of people

01:29:41 ◼   ► are just using them as traditional laptops.

01:29:44 ◼   ► It makes you wonder how cyclical

01:29:49 ◼   ► some of this stuff is gonna be.

01:29:50 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:29:52 ◼   ► Let me take a last break right here.

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01:33:46 ◼   ► Here's two more things I wanted to talk to you about after having gone through all those

01:33:49 ◼   ► laptops. First, trackpads. Is that still a problem on Windows PCs where the trackpads

01:34:00 ◼   ► are just grossly inferior to the MacBook ones, or have they finally caught up a little bit?

01:34:05 ◼   ► No, it's still one of tech's greatest unsolved problems or mysteries. I do not understand

01:34:12 ◼   ► why Windows PC makers cannot figure out how to make a trackpad as good as Apple's.

01:34:17 ◼   ► And it's not purely software, because everything I've read is that when you reboot your MacBook

01:34:25 ◼   ► in Windows through Bootcamp, it's the best Windows trackpad you'll ever use.

01:34:30 ◼   ► Yep, yep. I did a piece right before I left The Verge a couple of years ago on why the

01:34:34 ◼   ► MacBook Air was almost as good of an ultrabook as any PC maker could make.

01:34:38 ◼   ► Right, and the trackpad and keyboard were a big part of it.

01:34:41 ◼   ► Right. I even recommended in this laptop piece that just buy one of these Windows 8 laptops

01:34:48 ◼   ► with a touchscreen. First of all, they're all competitive on pricing. Basically, even

01:34:53 ◼   ► from the $500 range even down, you can get a Windows laptop with a touchscreen. So just

01:34:59 ◼   ► buy one with a touchscreen because if you run into these problems with the trackpad, you can reach out

01:35:02 ◼   ► and touch the screen. It's almost like a like a small bandaid on the problem. But yeah, I you

01:35:10 ◼   ► know, in some places it's been fixed, like Lenovo's works better than some. Asus is I don't understand

01:35:17 ◼   ► why that trackpad is it's like trying to use sandpaper. Who else made a decent one? Acer's kind

01:35:25 ◼   ► of breaks a little bit. It's just like it seems to be the last place they're focusing on and it's

01:35:31 ◼   ► like that's one of them. I mean, if you can't navigate your computer, why do you have a computer?

01:35:37 ◼   ► Pete: Yeah, it should be one of the first. I especially, I find, you know, because I have a

01:35:43 ◼   ► desk, I still have a real keyboard and stuff at my desk where I try to do most of my writing.

01:35:47 ◼   ► But when I'm on my MacBook Air, it's more, if anything, more than at my desk, it's a little

01:35:54 ◼   ► bit more consumption. And that means like needing to scroll and stuff like that. And

01:35:59 ◼   ► if the trackpad, every time the trackpad gives me trouble, it's always annoying. You know,

01:36:03 ◼   ► I can't, it's central to the experience to me.

01:36:07 ◼   ► The trackpad on the air, I mean, I actually now this is an example. I have a Thunderbolt

01:36:11 ◼   ► display at my desk at work. And you know, some might, I think the IT guy said, well,

01:36:17 ◼   ► just close your MacBook and just use that and we'll get you in a spare keyboard. And

01:36:21 ◼   ► said no I don't want to use the the trackpad the magic trackpad and I really

01:36:27 ◼   ► like my heirs keyboard so I want to use that as the home base and just look at

01:36:31 ◼   ► at the the screen because I I live with the trackpad I can't use a mouse yeah

01:36:38 ◼   ► well you know what I've seen and I'm like you you know like you in Times

01:36:41 ◼   ► Square just looking at you know can I find anybody using a Windows Phone when

01:36:46 ◼   ► When I travel, I do, I—airports, I love to just look.

01:36:50 ◼   ► What are people using?

01:36:51 ◼   ► And on vacation, like at Disney World, what are people taking their pictures with when

01:36:55 ◼   ► they're holding their cameras and tablets up?

01:36:57 ◼   ► What kind of device is that?

01:37:01 ◼   ► I see so many people, but always with PCs, almost never with a MacBook.

01:37:05 ◼   ► With mice.

01:37:06 ◼   ► With mice, right.

01:37:07 ◼   ► I do too.

01:37:08 ◼   ► I—this is like my thing too.

01:37:09 ◼   ► I pretty much count laptops when I go in coffee shops, and like I will just do like the mental

01:37:15 ◼   ► like, okay, yeah, right, three, like, you know, looking at this place, 30% of the people

01:37:20 ◼   ► in here using PCs and, and they're at the end, then 50% or 100% of those 30% are using

01:37:26 ◼   ► are using mice.

01:37:29 ◼   ► I saw two guys, you know, I, who are obviously colleagues, setting up in like the hotel,

01:37:39 ◼   ► I forget where I was, but it was like in a hotel bar, last lounge, you know, but a relatively

01:37:44 ◼   ► small table. They both had huge laptops, 15 inch PCs, you know, big, not air style ones,

01:37:50 ◼   ► big ones.

01:37:51 ◼   ► I know exactly what you're going to say. With a tiny mouse.

01:37:53 ◼   ► With a tiny mouse, but they were on the same table like Battleship style.

01:37:57 ◼   ► Right.

01:37:58 ◼   ► Right, you know what I mean.

01:37:59 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, totally.

01:38:00 ◼   ► But it was a small cocktail table with two big laptops. They only had like a few inches

01:38:05 ◼   ► and they both had mice and they're just, they had to pick up the, you know, they had to

01:38:10 ◼   ► keep picking it up to move it around.

01:38:11 ◼   ► Right. It's like a Charlie Chaplin skit.

01:38:13 ◼   ► Right. And I was like, wonder what they're doing. You know, just curious, as I went to the rest of

01:38:17 ◼   ► I'd like look over and they were both doing something in Excel or some other spreadsheet.

01:38:21 ◼   ► I don't know. But clearly they were doing spreadsheet work. But they both with these

01:38:25 ◼   ► huge laptops and no room on the table were using mice. And I thought, man, that has got to be a

01:38:30 ◼   ► sign that, you know, that they've got terrible trackpads. Right. Or it's habit. Like, I think

01:38:35 ◼   ► people have this habit of using mice. They know how to use their keyboard shortcuts with their

01:38:40 ◼   ► their left hand and they have their right hand on the mouse.

01:38:42 ◼   ► But I don't, I don't know why. I, I would say if you asked, most

01:38:49 ◼   ► people who own a MacBook or a MacBook Air, like the number one

01:38:52 ◼   ► thing they like about it is the touchpad or the trackpad. But,

01:38:56 ◼   ► you know, this is how the other half lives. I don't know. I

01:39:02 ◼   ► used to tackle it more when I would meet with companies like

01:39:06 ◼   ► Synaptics who make the sensors and the touch panels for the PCs.

01:39:11 ◼   ► And I actually think they do work with Apple as well.

01:39:14 ◼   ► And for a while, I'd heard that Apple had some extra IP on certain types of touch and

01:39:20 ◼   ► stuff like that.

01:39:21 ◼   ► I simply think for most of these, it's just getting the hardware and the software to work

01:39:26 ◼   ► better together.

01:39:27 ◼   ► And I thought, that's why I was upset a little bit that Microsoft just didn't turn the Surface

01:39:33 ◼   ► Pro 3 into a laptop. You know, because my biggest problem with that is like, you went

01:39:39 ◼   ► pretty far here, you've got a really nice system, but this is not a laptop replacement

01:39:43 ◼   ► because the keyboard and the trackpad are so crappy. And that's, I see that also in

01:39:49 ◼   ► New York a lot. If I do see someone with a Surface, and there's one person at my local

01:39:54 ◼   ► coffee shop, and she has a Surface 2, and she hangs a little mouse from the side. And

01:40:01 ◼   ► And she, you know, because the USB ports are on the screen, right?

01:40:05 ◼   ► So you have the mouse hanging from the side of the screen.

01:40:09 ◼   ► And it's just like, this is exactly the problem right here.

01:40:15 ◼   ► That's just the photo to explain the entire review.

01:40:17 ◼   ► Like, it's not as good of a laptop because the parts that make this a laptop, which is

01:40:22 ◼   ► a keyboard and a trackpad, are not as good as real laptops.

01:40:26 ◼   ► Right.

01:40:27 ◼   ► Well, and that brings me to the flip side of the same thing.

01:40:29 ◼   ► the other thing the other thing I wanted to ask you about is the laptop devices

01:40:36 ◼   ► with touch screens and Apple's explanation for why they haven't done

01:40:42 ◼   ► that I mean and this is many this is a years old explanation I mean Steve Jobs

01:40:46 ◼   ► I think was the one who delivered it and so it's you know gotta be you know three

01:40:50 ◼   ► four years is that you know they've tried it and ergonomically it's

01:40:54 ◼   ► unpleasant to just have to stick your arm out it's it's just a weird angle and

01:40:58 ◼   ► and it's not it's not good. And do you find that that's true?

01:41:03 ◼   ► Actually using devices like say Chromebooks that have

01:41:06 ◼   ► touchscreens?

01:41:07 ◼   ► More, you know, so I, the number one PC that I did like was the

01:41:11 ◼   ► Lenovo yoga, which, if anyone from Lenovo, I'm just gonna keep

01:41:15 ◼   ► saying this, like, you should have called it Lin the Lenovo.

01:41:17 ◼   ► I've been calling in the video by accident, I'm sure nobody

01:41:24 ◼   ► noticed, because well, no, a lot of people did watch that video.

01:41:28 ◼   ► I called it Lenovo twice.

01:41:31 ◼   ► Pete: I did hear that. I did hear that. Lenovo.

01:41:34 ◼   ► StephanieH: And one of the editors was like, "Oh, you need to re-go do that." I was like,

01:41:37 ◼   ► "Oh, no, it'll notice." And it's like, you know what, even if they do notice,

01:41:40 ◼   ► this is what they should have called it. This is what they should have called it.

01:41:43 ◼   ► Either the Lenovo or just change your name to Lenovo.

01:41:45 ◼   ► Anyway, I really like that device because it does do that flipping thing, but the touch screen,

01:41:55 ◼   ► The touch screen is really nice and so I ended up using the touch screen more when I would

01:42:01 ◼   ► I did do the flip thing you know the you flip it around and you can use it as what they

01:42:05 ◼   ► call it tablet or stand mode and you know I did take advantage of that I you know would

01:42:10 ◼   ► end up just kind of surfing the bed surfing the bed surfing the web in bed and just do

01:42:15 ◼   ► it that way.

01:42:16 ◼   ► Isn't it weird though having the buttons of the keyboard sticking out on the back?

01:42:20 ◼   ► Yeah it is weird and this is something that like none of these have figured out I mean

01:42:25 ◼   ► And one of the ThinkPad ones, they actually go up into the thing.

01:42:31 ◼   ► What do they call it?

01:42:33 ◼   ► Recess?

01:42:34 ◼   ► Yeah, they sort of recess, but like, yeah, I mean, they don't work, right?

01:42:40 ◼   ► Like the keyboard is disabled in that mode.

01:42:42 ◼   ► Right, once you fold it around, the keyboard, the keystrokes don't register.

01:42:47 ◼   ► Right, and I haven't used these like long enough to see if the wear and tear of, you

01:42:52 ◼   ► if I were to do that at a coffee shop,

01:42:54 ◼   ► or if I would be doing that on an airplane table

01:42:56 ◼   ► or a tray table, if that would be uncomfortable.

01:43:00 ◼   ► But when I was using mostly just to surf the web in bed,

01:43:04 ◼   ► I liked the experience.

01:43:06 ◼   ► And like I said, I would find myself reaching out

01:43:09 ◼   ► to use the screen more when, let's say,

01:43:10 ◼   ► the trackpad wasn't working in Internet Explorer,

01:43:13 ◼   ► or when I'm trying to scroll down a long document,

01:43:15 ◼   ► and that's just an easier way to get through things.

01:43:18 ◼   ► - The thing that I've heard from,

01:43:20 ◼   ► like in the email I get from readers.

01:43:25 ◼   ► Because there's been a lot more speculation, growing speculation, as ARM processors get faster and faster

01:43:31 ◼   ► and they have such energy advantages over Intel processors.

01:43:35 ◼   ► Speculation, would Apple ever make a Mac with ARM processors?

01:43:40 ◼   ► And every time I link to something like that or speculate about it myself, I usually get a couple of emails

01:43:45 ◼   ► from people saying, "Well, what if they do switch and start making laptops with ARM processors,

01:43:52 ◼   ► but they don't run macOS, they run iOS?" That's what a lot of people want. It's not

01:43:59 ◼   ► like the Surface where it's a cover that you detach with a keyboard, but an actual

01:44:04 ◼   ► MacBook Air form factor, but it's running iOS.

01:44:08 ◼   ► But you know and and I was just listening to eight the accidental tech podcast

01:44:15 ◼   ► The most recent episode John, Syracuse have pointed out on the show first question is well

01:44:21 ◼   ► Then what's the input is there is there do you add a mouse? There is no mouse in iOS and

01:44:26 ◼   ► you know, do you have to reach out and you do you have to reach out and

01:44:29 ◼   ► Touch the screen all the time

01:44:32 ◼   ► Like how pleasant is that in real life to use the touchscreen while it's a true laptop form factor?

01:44:39 ◼   ► Right. Well, I mean

01:44:41 ◼   ► Part of part like part of what I'm saying with Windows 8 is that the touchscreen is still very much a crutch, right?

01:44:46 ◼   ► Like it's a crutch for for the trackpad issues and it's also a crutch for the fact that Windows 8 was not designed

01:44:52 ◼   ► You know, they they tried to layer on top a touch interface

01:44:56 ◼   ► so one of the easiest ways to swipe through apps is just to you know, swipe them from the side and

01:45:02 ◼   ► And those are other situations where I find

01:45:04 ◼   ► when I'm using Windows 8,

01:45:05 ◼   ► I just reach out and use this and touch the screen.

01:45:07 ◼   ► So it's definitely for me,

01:45:09 ◼   ► now that I'm really thinking about it,

01:45:10 ◼   ► those are the two main times

01:45:12 ◼   ► when I would use the touchscreen to scroll through things

01:45:15 ◼   ► or to swipe in other apps from the sides.

01:45:17 ◼   ► Yeah, I think,

01:45:20 ◼   ► I guess the question,

01:45:25 ◼   ► when I think about iOS,

01:45:30 ◼   ► I can't really imagine using it with a mouse.

01:45:34 ◼   ► - No, I can't either.

01:45:36 ◼   ► And it's really unpleasant if you,

01:45:38 ◼   ► like as a developer, if you just, you can do it,

01:45:41 ◼   ► you can run iOS apps as a developer on your Mac

01:45:44 ◼   ► when you're testing it, and it's horrible.

01:45:45 ◼   ► It's really, really bad sitting there

01:45:47 ◼   ► and clicking around things with a mouse.

01:45:50 ◼   ► And I'm sure they could somehow make it a little better

01:45:52 ◼   ► and add shortcuts so that you could,

01:45:54 ◼   ► two finger scroll or something like that.

01:45:56 ◼   ► I don't know, but--

01:45:57 ◼   ► - The only place you would wanna do it,

01:45:59 ◼   ► And I don't work on my iPad that much anymore, but when I used to write things on my iPad,

01:46:04 ◼   ► you know, I guess I would want it for maneuvering through tighter menus in Office or whatever.

01:46:10 ◼   ► Well, and a mouse cursor is way easier for exact placement.

01:46:14 ◼   ► Copying, pasting.

01:46:15 ◼   ► Yep, and for getting the insertion point right in the middle of the word between the two

01:46:19 ◼   ► letters where you want to, you know, fix a typo or something like that.

01:46:23 ◼   ► Right.

01:46:24 ◼   ► But I don't know, it just seems to me like two different universes.

01:46:26 ◼   ► But the other thing I hear from readers a lot is that they'll say stuff like, "Hey,

01:46:30 ◼   ► it's funny.

01:46:31 ◼   ► I never thought that I'd like a touchscreen Mac either, but I was on vacation for a week

01:46:36 ◼   ► and I didn't take my Mac.

01:46:37 ◼   ► I only took my iPad.

01:46:38 ◼   ► And I came back to work and I, without thinking, found myself reaching out and touching my

01:46:42 ◼   ► screen and expecting stuff to move."

01:46:46 ◼   ► It's like, you know.

01:46:47 ◼   ► I mean, that's a real thing.

01:46:48 ◼   ► I understand that, but it still seems to me like two different worlds.

01:46:53 ◼   ► It does seem like two different worlds, but there are certain places, I think we're

01:46:56 ◼   ► describing it, where there are certain apps that we feel really comfortable reaching out

01:47:00 ◼   ► and touching the screen.

01:47:02 ◼   ► Then there are the certain apps where we feel way more comfortable using a keyboard and

01:47:07 ◼   ► touchpad or a cursor.

01:47:12 ◼   ► And that's, you know, Microsoft likes to give you that option.

01:47:17 ◼   ► But of course, Microsoft designed the operating system around touch.

01:47:20 ◼   ► Yeah, and I think that's what Apple says.

01:47:26 ◼   ► You know, Apple says this operating system was just not designed for touch.

01:47:33 ◼   ► Right, and this other one is.

01:47:35 ◼   ► Right, and this other one is.

01:47:37 ◼   ► That said, I'm still, you know, I mean, and that's one of the problems I sometimes have

01:47:43 ◼   ► with some of the keyboard docs for the iPad is like you start to want to do more, and

01:47:47 ◼   ► I wrote that piece a couple months ago.

01:47:48 ◼   ► I know we talked about it, which was like tablets for work,

01:47:51 ◼   ► that when you attach a keyboard to a tablet,

01:47:54 ◼   ► you start to want to do more.

01:47:56 ◼   ► And sometimes that wasn't designed for that, right?

01:48:00 ◼   ► Like if I attach a keyboard to my iPad,

01:48:03 ◼   ► I start to want to be able to multitask better.

01:48:06 ◼   ► I start to want to be able to type and do keyboard shortcuts

01:48:09 ◼   ► and easily swipe up on some sort of trackpad

01:48:12 ◼   ► to get to something versus the opposite,

01:48:18 ◼   ► which is when you don't have the keyboard,

01:48:22 ◼   ► you sort of feel more limited,

01:48:24 ◼   ► but you're not trying to do more.

01:48:26 ◼   ► - I think that about brings us to an end.

01:48:28 ◼   ► Anything else you wanted to talk about this week?

01:48:29 ◼   ► Anything else on your mind?

01:48:31 ◼   ► - Anything else on my mind?

01:48:32 ◼   ► I don't know, I've got an ice bucket challenge to do.

01:48:37 ◼   ► - Oh, I saw that.

01:48:38 ◼   ► - I've been, you know, I have to say,

01:48:40 ◼   ► you're like sort of like, I'm the last person to be picked

01:48:44 ◼   ► for the gym class team, you know,

01:48:47 ◼   ► 'cause I hadn't been tagged in the ice bucket challenge.

01:48:50 ◼   ► But I also had like two weeks to sit back and watch it,

01:48:53 ◼   ► what I thought was very stupid videos.

01:48:55 ◼   ► So I'm not really sure what I'm gonna do with this.

01:48:59 ◼   ► - I saw something about that.

01:49:01 ◼   ► I can't imagine there's anybody who hasn't seen this yet,

01:49:05 ◼   ► but it's for ALS, the AKA Lou Gehrig disease.

01:49:09 ◼   ► And I've seen some people,

01:49:11 ◼   ► and not people who are trying to be cynical,

01:49:13 ◼   ► but people who are like, you know,

01:49:16 ◼   ► is the point to raise money or is the point to make these goofy videos, but I saw somebody

01:49:21 ◼   ► say that they've raised like this year, it's like an annual campaign to raise money for

01:49:26 ◼   ► ALS and that this year's campaign is something, it's already like 10 times more money than

01:49:31 ◼   ► they raised in 2013. So it is, you know, it is in fact proving to be incredibly successful

01:49:39 ◼   ► from their perspective as a fundraising thing.

01:49:41 ◼   ► Well, the thing that really confused me, you know, early on in the week or was the end

01:49:45 ◼   ► of last week, which was like, okay, the celebrities were getting in on the game. And, you know,

01:49:50 ◼   ► from the start, it was from from what I'd understood from Facebook videos that I'd

01:49:54 ◼   ► watched from my friends, it was like, either or right, either you dump this on your head,

01:49:58 ◼   ► or you give the money.

01:49:59 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. And I think that's what's what's making some people like, hey, shouldn't

01:50:05 ◼   ► Tim Cook instead of dumping ice on his head? Shouldn't he give the money? But I said

01:50:08 ◼   ► that he gave the money. Yeah, I think what most people I think everybody who cares enough

01:50:12 ◼   ► enough to actually make a video and dump the ice water on their head is also giving money.

01:50:16 ◼   ► And then I had tweeted last Friday or something like, "Why is no one dumping money on their

01:50:21 ◼   ► head?" And then finally, of all people, what's his name, dumped some money on his head. Charlie

01:50:32 ◼   ► Sheen. So, you know, I guess I could dump money on my head, but I don't really have

01:50:41 ◼   ► that much money. We're gonna get 100 singles. Does anyone know a strip club I can go to?

01:50:46 ◼   ► I'm sure somebody does. I think you could just go to the bank though.

01:50:49 ◼   ► Okay, well now I'm sharing too much. Yeah, I think that's all I have here to discuss.

01:50:56 ◼   ► A bucket of ice water singles.

01:50:59 ◼   ► Yeah, well then no one's done that. Wet money.

01:51:04 ◼   ► Yeah, wet money. All right, well thank you, Joanna. Everybody can

01:51:11 ◼   ► follow you on Twitter at at Joanna Stern and

01:51:15 ◼   ► And everybody can read your weekly columns and watch your excellent excellent videos

01:51:21 ◼   ► At the Wall Street Journal. Thank you. Yes, Sarah special special URL or just

01:51:27 ◼   ► like what's the homepage of the

01:51:30 ◼   ► wsjd.com

01:51:33 ◼   ► wsjd.com yeah

01:51:36 ◼   ► Really and great where the videos are my favorite part. I don't know. I'm glad to hear that. Yeah

01:51:41 ◼   ► No, we put a lot of effort into those. So

01:51:43 ◼   ► Yeah, I do think that's weird. You know, I was thinking about that before I cut you short. I

01:51:47 ◼   ► Before I cut the show. I do think it's weird and you're you're at the center of it of the way that the

01:51:54 ◼   ► established

01:51:56 ◼   ► publication or not even publication media brands

01:51:58 ◼   ► There's this incredible convergence between

01:52:02 ◼   ► writing and TV, where it used to be totally different. I mean, because your prior gig

01:52:07 ◼   ► to the Wall Street Journal was ABC, I mean, which is as, you know, old school TV as you can get.

01:52:12 ◼   ► Right.

01:52:13 ◼   ► But the video work, you know, and The Verge certainly raised the bar on the quality of that.

01:52:20 ◼   ► And you were there at the outset, you know, when they started that. But they really raised the

01:52:24 ◼   ► bar on the quality of the video work that went along with print, or not print, but written stuff

01:52:31 ◼   ► That was you know detailed and as long as it ever was but there's this

01:52:35 ◼   ► Incredible convergence going on and I feel like I'm left behind on that

01:52:39 ◼   ► Well, you can put video on your site. I could I don't know. I guess I'm making up for it with podcasts, right?

01:52:45 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, you know and and it's not something I feel like I have figured out and every week

01:52:51 ◼   ► I'm trying to try new things though

01:52:53 ◼   ► There's you know

01:52:53 ◼   ► obviously

01:52:54 ◼   ► restrictions on time and

01:52:55 ◼   ► You know how long people will watch a video for and what kind of things are more visual than what you can put into print

01:53:01 ◼   ► I mean, I don't think anyone's really mastered it yet, but it's a fun time to play around

01:53:06 ◼   ► with it for sure.

01:53:07 ◼   ► And they're letting me do some fun stuff, so I'm okay with it.

01:53:10 ◼   ► Well, and the production value is just excellent.

01:53:12 ◼   ► I mean, it doesn't seem like, "Oh, here's newspaper people doing video."

01:53:17 ◼   ► It's top tier.

01:53:19 ◼   ► This could be on any TV broadcast quality video.

01:53:22 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:53:23 ◼   ► My producer, Drew Evans, who will never listen to this because he will—maybe we'll get

01:53:29 ◼   ► him to listen to this.

01:53:30 ◼   ► to get him on Twitter. But he's amazing. He's really, really good.

01:53:34 ◼   ► Right. There's no compromise. No, "Well, we're just doing a video as an extra" type thing.

01:53:40 ◼   ► We expect this to be as excellent as the writing, which in the Wall Street Journal has always been

01:53:45 ◼   ► known for just no-holds-barred, excellent writing quality.

01:53:52 ◼   ► Yeah. I mean, he's amazing. And I mean, it's fun to be able to have a producer and a producer with

01:53:59 ◼   ► skills that can actually kind of just make certain things happen, which is really cool

01:54:03 ◼   ► too.

01:54:04 ◼   ► Yeah, so.

01:54:05 ◼   ► So keep up the good work.

01:54:08 ◼   ► Thank you very much.

01:54:09 ◼   ► WSJD.com and hopefully I'll see you in a couple weeks.

01:54:13 ◼   ► You mean for my big day, which is the iPhone launch, right?

01:54:16 ◼   ► Exactly.

01:54:17 ◼   ► The most important thing going on for you in September.

01:54:19 ◼   ► And then followed by the launch of the Square Blackberry.

01:54:23 ◼   ► Exactly.

01:54:24 ◼   ► Right.

01:54:25 ◼   ► God, I hope you have one of those with you.

01:54:27 ◼   ► Oh, that would be amazing.

01:54:29 ◼   ► I don't know if I'll be invited to the Apple event, but if I am invited, maybe I'll

01:54:35 ◼   ► have to turn it down if there's a BlackBerry event that day.

01:54:38 ◼   ► Dave Asprey That would be just like BlackBerry to schedule

01:54:41 ◼   ► it on the same day.

01:54:42 ◼   ► Rachel Teagle Oh, totally.