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82: ‘We're Allowed to Make Stuff Up; It's a Podcast’ With Dan Frommer

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0:00:00Well, I enjoyed the first new show on the new network.

0:00:04Did you notice any difference?

0:00:06No, not at all.

0:00:07The RSS worked and sounded good.

0:00:11A couple of people--

0:00:12It was funny.

0:00:14Put a little extra effort into it.

0:00:16It seems like it went pretty well in terms

0:00:20of all the stuff that was supposed

0:00:22to forward getting forwarded.

0:00:25The RSS feed redirects.

0:00:27And it's just crazy though, because it's like there's like four different redirects. There's like feeds dot mule

0:00:34Radio dot net slash the talk show is really a C name

0:00:38Is that feed burner now feed

0:00:42Press. Okay. Feed press is like the new indie

0:00:46Totally indie version of feed burner. I should probably get on that. I'm still using feed burner. I still don't know though. It's like

0:00:55Mike I'm torn because they do seem to have some good analytics, but on the other hand I always like just controlling my feed

0:01:03Totally and they you know and their defeat press seems like the best option for something like this by far

0:01:08And you know you could there's like a you you know they have an API so you can always do a manual rebuild say hey

0:01:15look, I you know I made an edit to my last entry rebuild the feed so that you have the

0:01:19Current version of everything you know I don't know I might

0:01:25Seems like they do a decent job estimating subscribers, which is the big thing

0:01:28Right. Yeah, and that's and I think you're on SoundCloud as well. Yeah. Yeah

0:01:34That's why I signed up there because they're the only ones who even try to tell you how many times it's been played

0:01:40Yes, I don't know how they are

0:01:42Determining, you know, what counts as a play. This was like the old YouTube question of

0:01:472006 like right how much of the video do they actually watch?

0:01:53And I actually owe the listeners a correction on that.

0:01:57I was at the Moltz last week, I said SoundCloud was free.

0:02:01And they do have a free tier, but for like unlimited downloads, it's not free.

0:02:07It's $30 a month, I think, which is what I have now for this show.

0:02:13But compared to what I would pay to host the audio on S3, which I think

0:02:20would probably be around two or three grand a month.

0:02:23It is free, right?

0:02:24When you're comparing two or three grand

0:02:26for hosting on S3 versus $30 a month for SoundCloud,

0:02:30all right, that's free, you know, with an asterisk.

0:02:35- Yeah, it's crazy that S3 gets expensive.

0:02:39It doesn't really scale that well

0:02:40in terms of pricing for media.

0:02:43- No, not yet.

0:02:45- Like video, I mean, I can't even imagine

0:02:47what a popular video download would cost.

0:02:51- Yeah, 'cause I would think video would have to be

0:02:53at least an order of magnitude bigger than audio.

0:02:58- Right.

0:03:00All of which just makes YouTube's infrastructure

0:03:03more impressive when you think about it.

0:03:05- Yeah, absolutely.

0:03:06Yeah, 'cause my show, this show is usually

0:03:09around 70 megabytes, 60, 70, 80 megabytes

0:03:14depending on how far past the hour mark we blow.

0:03:18- The one hour, you mean the two hour mark?

0:03:22- Yeah, two hours, you know,

0:03:23you're still, I think it's usually under,

0:03:25still under, I think it's like 50 megabytes

0:03:28for about an hour, and then,

0:03:29with the audio compression settings we use.

0:03:34And so, you know, somewhere between 50 and 100

0:03:36for an hour plus show.

0:03:39- My first big story at Forbes when I was there was trying,

0:03:43and this was early 2006, trying to guess

0:03:48how much YouTube's bandwidth bill was based on their,

0:03:53and this is YouTube pre-Google acquisition,

0:03:57they're a venture-funded company,

0:03:59and back then there were very few options

0:04:01for hosting video, so they were using

0:04:04these content delivery networks,

0:04:06and I think the one they were using was Limelight.

0:04:09The big one is Akamai, which is,

0:04:11actually they're both public companies now,

0:04:13but and they refuse to talk to me, they wouldn't tell me.

0:04:18And so I just use kind of publicly available data

0:04:22of how many hours of video they streamed a day,

0:04:27the kind of rate, going rate for video streaming or video,

0:04:32they actually did not stream,

0:04:34it was a progressive download,

0:04:36which was cheaper than streaming

0:04:38because back then to stream,

0:04:40you had to have some Adobe license.

0:04:42And then yeah, and I made a guess,

0:04:46and I guessed that it was a million dollars a month.

0:04:50An educated guess based on interviews

0:04:53with all these experts and that kind of stuff.

0:04:55And we published this article and people went crazy.

0:04:59It was just a huge, it got a lot of attention

0:05:02because I think the Digg headline was something,

0:05:05this was when Digg was massive,

0:05:07it was like YouTube burning up cash,

0:05:10spending a million dollars a month on,

0:05:13of their VC money on bandwidth.

0:05:15And the first thing I heard of back,

0:05:20kind of through like a second degree grapevine

0:05:24was that I was kind of off by 10x,

0:05:28which is kind of not ideal.

0:05:30It was very clear that it was an estimate

0:05:33and you never wanna be off by that much.

0:05:36So, a million dollars a month would have been a lot

0:05:40back then especially, this was before the era

0:05:42of the $50 million VC round.

0:05:45- So which way were you off though?

0:05:47You were off high?

0:05:48- I was high, yeah.

0:05:49- So they were running YouTube pre-Google,

0:05:52they were running it for $100,000, roughly a month?

0:05:55- Maybe, something like that.

0:05:57But then-- - That's impressive.

0:05:59- Yeah, yeah, well it was much smaller then.

0:06:01But then I think I saw an interview more recently

0:06:04with one of the founders where they said

0:06:07that it cost almost a million dollars a month

0:06:09in the early days.

0:06:10So I don't know, I don't really know.

0:06:12I mean, someone has the bill somewhere, so we know.

0:06:16But then if you looked at Limelight's financials,

0:06:18there was no way that YouTube was that big of there

0:06:22'cause they were not a huge company at that point.

0:06:25There was no way that YouTube was generating

0:06:26like a third of their revenue or whatever it was.

0:06:28So anyway, it was like one of the first business tech stories

0:06:33I did where we kind of played the wire,

0:06:37the follow the money game.

0:06:38and it was a lot of fun.

0:06:40It was a really fun story, it got a lot of attention.

0:06:43I hope it was more accurate than it was,

0:06:45and I actually don't even know how accurate it was,

0:06:48'cause people from YouTube just would never comment

0:06:51or give a suggestion either way, but it was fun.

0:06:56- Yeah, it's a fun, like, modern equivalent

0:06:58of how many jelly beans are in the jar type of question.

0:07:01- Totally, yeah.

0:07:02And back then, now video delivery is a lot cheaper, I think,

0:07:06And video is bigger too 'cause it's HD,

0:07:10but it's, you know,

0:07:13and I'm sure there are quite a lot of companies

0:07:15with billion dollar AWS bills.

0:07:18- Oh, it's gotta be.

0:07:19- Yeah.

0:07:20- Well, Google, I wonder what,

0:07:21you know, a good question now is what is Google paying

0:07:24for bandwidth for YouTube a month?

0:07:26- I wonder because I think that a lot,

0:07:30and this is where now I'm making stuff up

0:07:32'cause I don't actually know,

0:07:33but I think a lot of their bandwidth is on a peering basis.

0:07:38So they don't have to pay actual cash.

0:07:40They just kind of plug in to the other ISP

0:07:43and they, I don't know, great question.

0:07:46Probably, I'm not sure.

0:07:48- It must be.

0:07:49And yeah, you might be right

0:07:51that Google is in such a unique situation

0:07:53that they don't pay for bandwidth like normal companies do.

0:07:56- Yeah, and there were always all these murmurs

0:07:58that like Google was buying up all kinds of dark fiber

0:08:03and I would not be surprised if they have

0:08:05the most advanced network infrastructure of any company

0:08:10that's not like a straight up telecom company.

0:08:15So I don't know.

0:08:17Now I'm just making stuff up.

0:08:18Which is, you know, that's commentary, right?

0:08:23That's how.

0:08:24- Yeah, we're allowed to make stuff up.

0:08:25It's just a podcast.

0:08:28I wonder too, like for user submitted videos to YouTube, they still have the 10 minute

0:08:35limit, right? I don't know. I haven't uploaded a video to YouTube in a long time. I know

0:08:43that for stuff that there's like a commercial partnership, I mean when some people can host

0:08:49their whole movie on YouTube. Right. But that's not just like guy signs up for YouTube account

0:08:54and uploads an hour video.

0:08:56Like the 10 minute thing is still a real limit.

0:09:00But I'm not quite sure when--

0:09:01- I think so because you still see videos chopped

0:09:05into multiple parts when they're clearly not partner videos

0:09:09like some rip of a Apple keynote or something like that.

0:09:14A lot of them are still chunked up.

0:09:17I don't know though, good question.

0:09:22making web videos is one of those things that every like two or three weeks I'm

0:09:26like oh man I wish I was making cool videos and then that's the end of that

0:09:31but someday maybe I don't know yeah I don't know the podcast audio thing you

0:09:40know again we talked about I talked about it last week but it's it's it's

0:09:44weird I don't know but SoundCloud is cool and you're right that they do just

0:09:48to circle back five minutes that they seem to do more work trying to figure

0:09:52out how many downloads you have than anybody else.

0:09:55And it isn't just, okay, you started a download.

0:09:59- Right, well, we think, you know.

0:10:03But it's important because a podcast

0:10:06is delivered many different ways.

0:10:08I'm sure some people are actually listening to it

0:10:10via the actual SoundCloud player, but a lot of people,

0:10:14probably most people are just pulling the file

0:10:18through either iTunes or the iOS podcast app

0:10:22or any other pod catching type thing.

0:10:24So that's where--

0:10:25Well, and the other thing too is it gets to be like RSS too,

0:10:28because podcast is RSS.

0:10:30But the same way with RSS feeders,

0:10:34the numbers don't equate to people.

0:10:36Because let's say you signed up in Apple's podcast app,

0:10:39and you have a subscription to the show,

0:10:41and now you're using Castro or something else that's new.

0:10:47People don't unsubscribe from the other one.

0:10:50So you might be copying it twice.

0:10:52you might be downloading it once in iTunes on your Mac

0:10:54where you don't even listen to it.

0:10:55And then once in Castro on your iPhone,

0:10:58you're just one person, you're only gonna listen once,

0:11:00but you might have two or even three copies of it.

0:11:03- Yeah, and I often listen to this show

0:11:07on three or four different devices

0:11:09throughout the course of the show.

0:11:11So who knows what?

0:11:13Well, it's better for everyone

0:11:15if all of those count as a place.

0:11:18- No, but yeah, I mean, I'm not complaining about it.

0:11:21I'm just only pointing out that it's a very hard thing to put a number on and it always has been I mean even the

0:11:26Nielsen numbers for TV they were

0:11:28Nonsense, you know, oh, I mean have you ever been part of the arbitron radio survey where you actually have like a paper book?

0:11:35And you're supposed to fill in what you're listening to on the radio. No, I think I heard that when I was like 12

0:11:40It's like oh yeah fine for five bucks, I'll write down the radio

0:11:47Right shows that I'm not listening to all right. That is actually how radio ratings. I don't know if they're still

0:11:52Computed that way, but they might be I think I think it's a little more digital now, but it's still

0:11:57They're still I believe I was talking to someone about this somewhat recently

0:12:03I don't remember if it was radio or TV though, but it's still based on I think it's I think we were talking about TV

0:12:08Nielsen I think it's still based on like, you know Nielsen households that have

0:12:14Some sort of equipment or yeah now it's it's at some point in the 80s or 90s

0:12:18They switched to equipment, but it know when I was a kid in like the 70s

0:12:24I remember reading that it was like Nielsen. It was a log book that yeah, the family would do it and that it

0:12:29Not that there was it back in those days not that there was a lot of inappropriate stuff on but that people would

0:12:36Because you had to self-report it people would write

0:12:39Wouldn't write the trashy stuff that they watched that they were embarrassed and they'd say oh

0:12:43"Oh, I watched the MacNeil-Lanier report on PBS."

0:12:46- Right, yeah.

0:12:48- When in fact--

0:12:49- I watched Rick Steves all night.

0:12:50That's all I was watching.

0:12:51- When in fact they were watching, you know,

0:12:52Brady Bunch reruns or something.

0:12:54- Yeah.

0:12:55- Let's take a break.

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0:15:55Last month out in San Francisco and I was out there for the build conference

0:15:58If you can do it if you're listening right now, you're going to WWDC

0:16:02You should quick order one right now. See if you can get it before you before you get out there

0:16:06I can't believe that's a week away. I

0:16:08Cannot either a week from we're recording on Memorial Day. This is Monday the 26th of May

0:16:14So literally one week from today. It'll be

0:16:17Keynote will be over right? It'll be one one o'clock Pacific as we speak

0:16:24week. So we will be cracking open the health book app and pricking our fingertips and measuring

0:16:31our blood, doing a blood test on the, no I don't know. I use an app called Ida. Ida?

0:16:40Ida? I don't know how to pronounce it. I-T-A. IOS app and it lets you make little checklists

0:16:48and you can sit, you know, probably dozens of apps that make checklists but I have one

0:16:53like packing for a conference and then when I'm done and then I just uncheck

0:16:57them all and then the next conference I can do it again. Last year like a dumbass

0:17:01I did not bring an old iPhone to the WDC and so I had to sit there and

0:17:08think well I did there's no way you have to be a crazy person to install the

0:17:12first beta of iOS on your daily use iPhone especially when you're like away

0:17:20from home away from you know you're on your phone all day it's insane and

0:17:25especially when it's iOS 7 exactly well exactly when it's a major release like

0:17:30that right so I never others I don't know why but it so I've added a

0:17:33checklist to my car and that you know all year long every time I go to

0:17:36anywhere else any kind of business trip I get the spare iPhone for iOS beta

0:17:40check thing and I just check it off because I know I don't want it but then

0:17:44when I pack for for next week I'll I'll bring my nice iPhone 5 I guess I ran out

0:17:50and bought a iPod touch for that and then there were so many people last year

0:17:56who went to the one that I guess it's closed now the Apple store on Market

0:18:00Street in San Francisco yeah I think they're remaking it right right they're

0:18:04moving up to where Levi's used to be a Union Square I'm not sure if they're

0:18:08done with that yet that I don't have no idea but anyway the one that's right up

0:18:11there on Market Street a couple blocks from Moscone I don't know if they sold

0:18:15out or they came close to but there was like a just you know 40 50 60 people

0:18:21from WWDC going in to buy the the super cheap owed 199 iPod touch that's awesome

0:18:29the one that doesn't even it doesn't even have a camera yep that's when I got

0:18:33right took it back like a week later when I realized that there was no need

0:18:39to have an iPod touch but but you took it back running the iOS beta yeah well I

0:18:45- Oh, I wiped it, I don't know what it wipes to.

0:18:47- It wipes back to the iOS beta.

0:18:50- Oh well.

0:18:51(laughs)

0:18:51I'm sure they, yeah, I wonder what they do with that.

0:18:53- They can figure it out.

0:18:55I'm sure Apple can figure it out.

0:18:56- Yeah.

0:18:57- Yeah, I can't help but think we're gonna get betas

0:19:04of all that stuff next week.

0:19:06- Yeah, so I'm wondering, the big question I have,

0:19:09and I'm thinking about writing about this tonight

0:19:12or tomorrow is how drastically different the new OS X

0:19:17is gonna seem.

0:19:19Like just thinking about how when iOS 7 came out,

0:19:24people freaked out.

0:19:26And obviously not the Mac nerd types,

0:19:28but a lot of other people did.

0:19:32And I wonder if changing someone's Mac that drastically

0:19:36would also cause people to freak out.

0:19:39And so I wonder how different it'll be.

0:19:42Theoretically, they would change a lot of the Mac OS stuff

0:19:48to more closely resemble iOS 7 or whatever iOS 8

0:19:53is going to look and feel like, but I don't know.

0:19:56- Yeah, I do not know what to expect

0:20:00and my spidey sense is failing me.

0:20:04I mean, clearly it's gonna change to some degree

0:20:06cosmetically, but just how radically, I don't know.

0:20:09- Yeah, and also the idea of running this now

0:20:15almost four year old MacBook Air with a new software

0:20:20running it also seems strange because OS X has really

0:20:25not changed that much visually since then.

0:20:29They've added a lot of stuff that I don't use,

0:20:31like the launcher and all that kind of stuff,

0:20:33but I don't remember a different feeling Mac OS.

0:20:38- Right, yeah, I think that when they,

0:20:43I forget which version number it was,

0:20:45might have been 10.6, maybe it was 10.5,

0:20:48but one of them, when they got rid of

0:20:50the separate metal windows and just said,

0:20:53all the windows just have one appearance,

0:20:55and it's this gray, you know what I mean?

0:20:59There's not gonna be two types of windows anymore.

0:21:00We're gonna-- - Yeah, it's simple.

0:21:01- That was Leopard, right?

0:21:02Yeah, it was probably 10.5 and then 10.6 was Snow Leopard.

0:21:06Yeah, so 10.5 was the one where they made it look...

0:21:10And it certainly looked different than what came before it

0:21:13because I got rid of a lot of the candy colored stuff.

0:21:16But it was like a gentle flattening.

0:21:20It wasn't a radical flattening.

0:21:22- Right. - It was, this is the sort of...

0:21:24And I think that's what a lot of people were expecting

0:21:27with iOS 7, was that kind of flattening.

0:21:31And a perfect example of that, if you can,

0:21:33anybody wants to look it up,

0:21:34just look up the screenshots from last year's WWDC app.

0:21:39- Ah yes, I remember this.

0:21:42And everyone was like, oh,

0:21:45this is what iOS 7 is gonna look like.

0:21:47- Yeah, and I even saw on Twitter,

0:21:48Mark Gurman from 9to5Mac the other day was writing,

0:21:51'cause he had written about it, you know,

0:21:53that hey, this is what iOS 7's going to look like.

0:21:56And he still thinks it did,

0:21:57that it was a clue as to what iOS 7 looked like.

0:22:00And I would say no, it was a step in that direction,

0:22:04but like a half step as opposed to the actual iOS 7,

0:22:07which was like--

0:22:08- Holy shit. - Yeah, holy shit.

0:22:10- That was my, you know, and a lot of people's reaction

0:22:12when that video came out, just showing all the new graphics

0:22:17and all that kind of stuff.

0:22:20- Right, and I've said this before

0:22:22over the last couple of weeks on this show,

0:22:23like, flat is overused in talking about these interfaces

0:22:28used in talking about these interfaces. But there's no other word to say it. In a lot

0:22:34of the ways in iOS 7 on the iPhone and iPad, it is flatter. There's a lot less 3D treatments

0:22:43between elements. That when something scrolls underneath a navigation bar, there's no shadow

0:22:48there. It's just a one-pixel line. I just don't see how the Mac can get away with that

0:22:54that much flatness when you have by definition

0:22:56these overlapping windows.

0:22:59- Yes, yeah.

0:23:00By the way, I love, this is like,

0:23:03as someone who learned web design in the mid 90s

0:23:06and didn't really learn much since then,

0:23:09no 3D or gradient modeling or any of that kind of stuff,

0:23:13I love flat design 'cause it's all I've ever known.

0:23:16So I'm actually a competent designer again.

0:23:19But, and I'm already nervous about

0:23:23when it's gonna start getting more technical again.

0:23:26- And textured, yeah.

0:23:27- Yeah, we still have an original iPad running,

0:23:31well, I guess it's iOS 5 now,

0:23:35and I use it every few weeks and it's super weird.

0:23:38- Yeah, I think it's weirder.

0:23:40- In many ways great, but in also many ways,

0:23:42I'm very used to iOS 7 now and I really like it.

0:23:45There are some annoyances,

0:23:48but that's probably never not gonna be the case,

0:23:50but I really like the way it feels.

0:23:52- Yeah, I think that it's for all the,

0:23:56I'm gonna botch this, what's the German term,

0:23:58Sturmendrong?

0:23:59- Yes, something like that.

0:24:03- Well, you guys know what I'm talking about.

0:24:04Well, for all of the consternation that iOS 7 caused

0:24:07and as vocal as some of its critics are

0:24:11about the plainness of its visual style,

0:24:13in hindsight, when I go back and fire up

0:24:15one of those devices from my stack of old iPhones

0:24:18and look at iOS 6 or look at an old original iPad

0:24:23that has to be running iOS 5 or whatever the last version

0:24:28that it supports is.

0:24:29It looks so much older.

0:24:31It just looks way more than,

0:24:34it's hard to believe that until like eight months ago,

0:24:37that was what everybody was using.

0:24:39It really feels like it's just the distant past,

0:24:45visual style-wise.

0:24:47- Yeah, and I don't see that changing.

0:24:50I mean, they might perhaps make some tweaks.

0:24:52Like there are some of the iOS 7 icons

0:24:56that just don't really make sense.

0:24:58Like I think Game Center and then maybe also

0:25:04the Newsstand one which is hiding all the apps in there.

0:25:08I don't know what's gonna happen with Newsstand.

0:25:10They might just vaporize, but.

0:25:12- Yeah, maybe with Newsstand it's actually appropriate

0:25:14because I feel like they don't know what to do

0:25:16with Newsstand and so an icon that sort of doesn't really know what it is either, kind

0:25:20of it, not to be a jerk, but it kind of fits. Whereas Game Center, yeah, I don't know. I

0:25:26kind of feel like they punted on it. It's attractive to me, but it doesn't say Game

0:25:31Center.

0:25:32No, it says balls.

0:25:33Yeah, it just says like, I don't know, it just looks like something, you know, we don't

0:25:38have an icon yet, but we want to start giving beta builds out. So, you know, it could be

0:25:41any app. It could be any app at all. It could be a photo app, a notes app, could be a game.

0:25:48We'll just put this placeholder icon here. I'm excited about it though. I do think, in

0:25:54a big part, I think it's really cool. Here we are one week out from WWDC. We have no

0:25:59idea what this Mac OS X thing is going to look like. And as a long time Mac guy, as

0:26:06someone who really got drawn into the whole

0:26:09following Apple closely, specifically,

0:26:12and only because of the Mac.

0:26:14I think it's pretty awesome that here we are in 2014

0:26:16and the most exciting thing we have coming up next week

0:26:18is a Mac interface overhaul.

0:26:22- Oh yeah, yeah, I'm pumped.

0:26:23I remember when I switched from six to seven on the Mac

0:26:28and that was crazy, 'cause that was the first one

0:26:32where the folders were colored in.

0:26:34Six was, system six was traced outlines,

0:26:39and then seven had the beginning of that

0:26:43kind of 3D folder look, and that was just--

0:26:46- Yeah, six supported color on certain models,

0:26:49but it was, you know what's funny?

0:26:50It was a very flat color, because remember like,

0:26:52the, when they, yeah, it was very, very flat.

0:26:57I think it still had a black and white Apple logo, though.

0:27:00I think the color Apple logo didn't come in,

0:27:02You know for the menu bar until system 7 but but everything was flat

0:27:07You know the wind even though you had color the windows were still drawn just blue not grayscale black and white

0:27:12it was just black pickles pixels and white pixels for the windows and and

0:27:17Open and save dialogues and everything and then 7 had like the scroll bar had a gradient to it

0:27:24Yeah, yeah, I know the folders the window title bar had a gradient

0:27:29- Yeah. - Sort of thing.

0:27:30And it was clearly an evolution of the System 6 look.

0:27:35They just kind of colored in certain parts,

0:27:37but they didn't color in much.

0:27:38I think it was sort of,

0:27:40I wouldn't call that an exciting overhaul though.

0:27:43To me going from six to seven, it was a huge change,

0:27:45but the interface wasn't really that hugely changed.

0:27:48- I also think that it slowed down our old Mac so much.

0:27:52- Yeah, that was the thing I remember

0:27:56is that System 7 really slowed down your computer.

0:28:00- Yeah, I don't remember, I think that was,

0:28:02I think we had a LC running 6,

0:28:04or maybe a plus or something, I don't know.

0:28:08- Yeah, 'cause people used to,

0:28:10people used to complain

0:28:13about the old original open and save dialog boxes, a lot,

0:28:19because they were modal and they were kind of ugly.

0:28:23And it was System 7 actually originally didn't fix that.

0:28:26I forget when the nav services open

0:28:29and save dialog boxes came about,

0:28:30which were a little bit more modernized UI wise.

0:28:33But the thing about the old open and save dialog boxes

0:28:36was that if you knew the keyboard commands,

0:28:38the command up arrow and down arrow,

0:28:41and you knew that you could type ahead

0:28:43to match items in a list, right?

0:28:45Like to match, if it's a list of people's last names,

0:28:49I could just type fr and get fromer.

0:28:52you could really fly through those dialog boxes

0:28:55because when you'd hit command up to go up a level

0:28:58in the hierarchy and down, down, down, command down,

0:29:00command down, it would update instantly.

0:29:03It was like you could, if you knew the incantation

0:29:06and knew your way around that,

0:29:07you weren't using the mouse, you were using the keyboard,

0:29:09you could kind of zip around your hard disk

0:29:12at the similar pace as to somebody who was an expert

0:29:15on like a command line system.

0:29:17And then when system seven came out,

0:29:20just seemed like everything got slowed down

0:29:21and you'd hit command up and you'd get the watch cursor

0:29:24for a little bit.

0:29:26Just little, all sorts of little things really slowed down.

0:29:28- And that was the thing that I hated

0:29:30about visiting friends houses with PCs

0:29:33was that even though Windows was pretty awful,

0:29:36it felt so fast versus System 7.

0:29:39And I wonder if maybe that's the kind of thing

0:29:41that the new Mac OS, will it be a 10 or are we at 11?

0:29:46- No, it'll be 10.10.

0:29:50I wonder if that's the kind of thing that a flatter, simpler UI could actually achieve.

0:29:54Like, hey, P.S., we made your computer faster.

0:29:57I don't know.

0:29:59Maybe not.

0:30:00Yeah, I don't know.

0:30:01I feel like we've gotten to the point where even the cheapest Mac can render.

0:30:05Pretty quickly.

0:30:06Yeah.

0:30:07And especially if they're going to go in a less exuberant style.

0:30:10Like there's certain things in the transparency in iOS that maybe they're pushing the limits

0:30:14on -- not even maybe.

0:30:15They kind of are pushing the limits on some of the iOS devices that support it.

0:30:20True.

0:30:21And the parallax and stuff like that.

0:30:23Like they didn't have good frame rate on some of those effects.

0:30:27And it's gotten better with 7.1, but they were pushing.

0:30:30But any Mac, you know, even the cheapest Mac mini, which hasn't even been updated in 600

0:30:36days or something like that, can just chew that stuff up.

0:30:40I mean, the days when a Mac can't render,

0:30:43Windows dropping down and stuff like that,

0:30:45menus dropping down quickly, I think we're past that.

0:30:50- Yeah, I think so too, with SSDs and all that.

0:30:53- Yeah, and that's definitely a big change.

0:30:56- I think it's kind of cool though that we,

0:31:00hopefully that's the reason that it's kind of cool

0:31:03that we haven't seen any major leaks yet

0:31:06about what's going on.

0:31:09That could just mean that there's nothing worth knowing.

0:31:12I don't know if that's true. - Yeah, I don't know.

0:31:13- But I think it's kinda cool.

0:31:17- Yeah, and I'd be curious.

0:31:18The leaks often come closer to the event.

0:31:22- Right, yeah, especially when they're software leaks.

0:31:24The hardware leaks kind of have been coming too early

0:31:29'cause of the supply chain stuff.

0:31:31But when it's stuff that never left Cupertino to begin with,

0:31:35that typically is like the night before.

0:31:38Like wasn't last year, didn't someone nine to five

0:31:42or someone else have all the icons

0:31:45either the night before or the morning of?

0:31:47- Yeah, but I think that they had it

0:31:49as recreations somehow.

0:31:52- Right, yeah, someone had like dictated to them

0:31:54and then they drew them.

0:31:56- And they did really good.

0:31:58I think they even joked about it with Mark Gurman.

0:31:59It was like a police sketch where the,

0:32:02and it's like a dead ringer.

0:32:05It's like, holy hell, that's the guy.

0:32:07You know, they like they like police sketched the icons and they did a really good job and it was

0:32:12And they nailed it and there was so many people of course because the icons are probably it's either the first thing you see and

0:32:20be they are were kind of radically simplified and

0:32:25There were so many people who are like no way is Apple gonna do icons that right like that

0:32:31- That was awesome.

0:32:33Yeah, and then you gotta wonder,

0:32:34for the apps that have the same app in OS X and iOS,

0:32:39do they have the same icons now?

0:32:43Like does Safari get this new icon the same as iOS

0:32:48or is it still Mac has their own icon set?

0:32:51- Right, and are they going to do a thing

0:32:53like give Mac icons an official shape, like a circle?

0:32:57- Oh yeah, interesting.

0:32:59- They've done a lot of circles,

0:33:01like the iBooks is new and has a circle

0:33:03and App Store's been a circle.

0:33:05- Though the iWork numbers and that kind of stuff

0:33:10are still freeform shapes.

0:33:13- Yeah, arbitrary shapes, I don't know.

0:33:15- Yeah.

0:33:16- I don't know, I feel like,

0:33:17well, I don't know, I wouldn't be surprised,

0:33:21but I feel like there's so much,

0:33:24I mean, there's, what, there's gotta be 30 years of history

0:33:27of Mac icons taking whatever shape they want.

0:33:31Whereas iOS always had, you're gonna make it

0:33:35a little round cornered square.

0:33:37- Right, that's true.

0:33:39Yeah, I used to make Mac icons.

0:33:41That was a weird hobby in like high school, I think,

0:33:46with ResEdit, just kind of goofing around.

0:33:50'Cause there was, I forgot which,

0:33:52maybe it was eight or eight, five,

0:33:55had kind of these 3D folders.

0:33:57and I would draw the icons of apps.

0:34:01Back then, I wouldn't keep my apps in the apps folder,

0:34:04I would just keep them in their own folders

0:34:07in Macintosh HD, so there was the QuarkXPress folder.

0:34:11And so I made a special Quark icon for that folder.

0:34:15Actually, I think Quark had a good icon.

0:34:17Some of them had awful icons.

0:34:18- Yeah, I remember customizing icons, though.

0:34:20Same thing.

0:34:21You'd either go in and actually be an idiot

0:34:25and go in and edit the actual resource in the application,

0:34:29or you would make your own icon

0:34:31and then copy and paste it in the finder's get info.

0:34:34- Yeah. - And then you could

0:34:35just delete it and it would go back

0:34:36to the regular icon for the app.

0:34:38- Right, and then some of them I even made aliases,

0:34:40and I think an alias could even maybe have its own icon.

0:34:43- Yeah, yeah, I think it could.

0:34:45Yeah, I think I'm almost sure you could,

0:34:47which was crazy and confusing.

0:34:50- Right, well, yeah, anyone who would sit down

0:34:53my computer wouldn't have no idea how to use it.

0:34:55But did you ever, do you remember when,

0:34:58I don't remember which Mac OS, maybe it was 8.5 or 8,

0:35:03which had, it shipped with maybe one or two themes,

0:35:08and then there was the idea that there would be

0:35:10more themes coming, but then they just never came?

0:35:13- Yeah, that was, I think it was system, or Mac OS 8.

0:35:20They didn't expect when they stopped calling it system aid and right the first version of Mac OS 8 and

0:35:25Sir, Syracuse is listening to this show right now and his head is exploding because he can't just jump in and correct us and tell

0:35:34us exactly what I think it was 8.0 and it was called the

0:35:38Appearance manager. Yes, and the appearance manager was a control panel and it had a list of themes and there was platinum

0:35:47Which was the default look?

0:35:50Gizmo which was the one that was like a

0:35:52kids theme look like something from like Nickelodeon and I think it was called techno which was sort of the

0:36:00I

0:36:02don't know looked like something from

0:36:04That would have been art directed for like

0:36:07Like a Terminator movie or something like that like a sci-fi movie where they have you know a custom theme for the GUI that the compute

0:36:15You know that the characters are using now. Did you know about the?

0:36:19leaked unofficial fourth theme though?

0:36:24- No, I don't-- - There was the drawing board.

0:36:28- Oh, of course, yes.

0:36:29- That was awesome. - Of course I knew that.

0:36:31- I love that.

0:36:32I wish I could run that now.

0:36:33If OS 10.10 was drawing board, I would take that.

0:36:37- Right, drawing board made it look

0:36:39like an architectural sketch.

0:36:41Like the windows were made out of paper

0:36:43and that the buttons and everything were sketched in

0:36:47by an architect.

0:36:48And it even shipped with an architect handwriting font.

0:36:51I forget the name of the font.

0:36:52- Yeah, I don't remember.

0:36:53- It set the system font to that.

0:36:55So like your menus and your window titles

0:36:57were in that architect handwriting font.

0:37:00But that never shipped to customers.

0:37:03It shipped as like developer betas.

0:37:06So like, you know, people who were in the developer program

0:37:08got those themes so that you could make sure

0:37:10your app looked good in gizmo and techno.

0:37:13You're right that the architectural one

0:37:15was the one that actually was like,

0:37:16Maybe, maybe I would use that.

0:37:18- I mean, it was totally, it felt like playing

0:37:21one of those old SimCity games where it was like

0:37:24back in the, or maybe, I don't know,

0:37:26one of those Sim games where it was like the expansion set.

0:37:29- Yeah.

0:37:30- And, you know, just was never as fun as the main SimCity.

0:37:33But it was cool.

0:37:34I think I ran it for a couple months.

0:37:36- I'm not looking this up.

0:37:38I'm going from memory here.

0:37:39I'm trusting my memory, which is dangerous.

0:37:41But my recollection though is that this,

0:37:45Mac OS 8 didn't come out until after the next acquisition.

0:37:49And the next team had come in,

0:37:50and Steve Jobs was the interim CEO,

0:37:52and Avi Tavenian was the CTO, or whatever his title was.

0:37:56And while most of their efforts were focused

0:37:59on getting this next step, Mac OS, Carbon,

0:38:04next generation OS that they kinda had to start in '96

0:38:10and build it, and they were hoping to ship it in a year,

0:38:12and they wound up not even shipping it until 2001 or whenever.

0:38:16They were four or five years out from it.

0:38:18But in the meantime, they had to keep the company running.

0:38:20And so that team took over,

0:38:22or at least overseeing the last few years of Mac OS evolutions.

0:38:27Mac OS 8, 8.1, 8.5, and 9, I guess, was the last one.

0:38:328.6.2.

0:38:34Right, and they were ready to ship it with these themes.

0:38:36And Steve Jobs was like, "What is this bullshit? Get it out. Get it all out.

0:38:40It ships with platinum.

0:38:42That's what it looks like.

0:38:43And so it shipped with an appearance manager,

0:38:47and it would say theme, and there was one choice.

0:38:50So they ripped the themes out.

0:38:52The alternate themes were ripped out at the last minute,

0:38:54but they couldn't rewrite all the software.

0:38:56So it was this interface that looked like

0:38:58it was meant to have a list of themes, and it did,

0:39:01but there was only one to choose from.

0:39:02- Yeah, it was hilarious.

0:39:05And was that when you could change the colors

0:39:09to match the different iMac colors as well,

0:39:11like tangerine and lime and that kind of stuff?

0:39:15Or was that later?

0:39:16I don't remember.

0:39:17- I think that was later because they didn't come out

0:39:18until, '98 was the original iMac,

0:39:21and then '99 was when the colored ones came out.

0:39:23But then they did, yeah, they had like,

0:39:26I forget if the software could tell

0:39:28what color your iMac was though and default to it.

0:39:31But yeah, you could pick like highlight colors

0:39:34that matched your candy colored iMac.

0:39:38Now you can't do any of that stuff.

0:39:39That's probably okay.

0:39:40- Yeah, well, I don't know.

0:39:42Is there anything?

0:39:43I've gotten old and crotched-y, so I don't--

0:39:45- I don't know, I don't look either.

0:39:46Maybe there is.

0:39:48- I wonder whether there's still something like that,

0:39:50'cause there used to be something in the early days

0:39:52of Mac OS X where you could switch the theme.

0:39:55It was from Sanity. - Right, yeah.

0:39:57Oh yeah, hey, look at that appearance.

0:39:59You can go, oh, guess, these are many different options here.

0:40:03You can pick blue or graphite.

0:40:05(laughing)

0:40:07and then you can change the highlight color.

0:40:09But yeah, blue or gray are your choices now.

0:40:13That's all right.

0:40:13Maybe, yeah, and this is obviously now

0:40:18just fan fiction almost,

0:40:22but I wonder if the Mac hardware

0:40:26will ever kind of more closely reflect the iOS hardware,

0:40:31like the 5C type plastic,

0:40:33like the return of the iBook or something like that.

0:40:36I was testing out that new Microsoft Surface this week,

0:40:41and it reminded me just how old the MacBook Air design is.

0:40:46I mean, it's now six years old, almost,

0:40:51the current MacBook Air.

0:40:53So it's funny 'cause Microsoft's like,

0:40:55"Hey, look, this thing is lighter than a MacBook Air."

0:40:59But I'm like, "Yeah, that MacBook Air is six years old, man."

0:41:02- Yeah, and it looks, to me,

0:41:04the part that really kind of looks a little dated is the the bezel around the

0:41:09screen right is right so they over yeah you've got like this inch thick frame

0:41:14around this screen and that the only part that is black glass or plastic I

0:41:18guess it's not glass but you know shiny black screen is the screen whereas on

0:41:24the MacBook Pros they've got this much to me much more modern look which looks

0:41:31like it matches the phone, it matches the iPad, it matches the iMac, which goes edge

0:41:37to edge now, matches the current displays, where the whole front surface is black glass

0:41:47or black shiny screen material. And then not all of it is actually screen pixels, but it's

0:41:52just surrounded by, you know, black screen.

0:41:56- It strikes me as a kind of thing that they've learned

0:41:58so much since then with the iPhone and with the other Macs

0:42:03that there's a lot of improvements they could make

0:42:06if they were redesigning the laptop from scratch today.

0:42:11- Yeah, my guess though is that they're waiting

0:42:15for retina errors to update that.

0:42:19Because they just came out last month

0:42:21with new MacBook Airs.

0:42:24- Yeah, I don't think they're gonna--

0:42:25And their latest CPU kit from Intel and et cetera, et cetera.

0:42:30But it's what we call in the business a speed bump update,

0:42:38not a major update.

0:42:39But given that it just came out last month,

0:42:41I can't imagine they're gonna go retina soon.

0:42:43And I can't, therefore I think that when they do go retina,

0:42:46they'll get the modern look where the whole front,

0:42:49when you open it up, is black.

0:42:51- Yeah, unless they introduce that as a new line,

0:42:55which they kind of did with the retina pro

0:42:58because they kept the older pro around.

0:43:02Who knows, now this is silly.

0:43:04- Well, that's the sort of thing, that's a good ques,

0:43:07I mean, if they did it with the pros, they could do it.

0:43:10They could. - They could do whatever

0:43:10they want, right?

0:43:11- But I kind of think they wouldn't

0:43:13because it seems to me that that sort of bifurcation

0:43:17of the product line, you can do it with a device that's pro

0:43:22and you kind of can't with the air

0:43:24because the air is just sort of the default. The air is you walk

0:43:27in the Apple Store and they say, How can I help you? And you say,

0:43:30I want to get a laptop. They're gonna you know, the odds are

0:43:34pretty good. You're coming out with a 13 inch MacBook Air.

0:43:37Yeah. Because it's just the default. It's the one that's the

0:43:40cheap, it's cheaper, you know, and and I know that the pros

0:43:44have gotten it's crazy. If you remember how much powerbooks

0:43:47used to cost back in the day. It's crazy that you can get a 13

0:43:51MacBook Pro with a retina display for $1,299, I think the starting price is,

0:43:55which is crazy, but $999 is a lot less than $1,299. You know, you're talking 25%

0:44:02less. Yeah. More than 25%, right? Yeah, and when you add $100 for tax or

0:44:07whatever, it's, you know, you know, and it's that there's, you know, there's, it's

0:44:13just one of those, all those, every time you go up a digit, it's a magic price.

0:44:17Like 999 is a lot less than $1,000 in people's minds

0:44:23Yeah

0:44:27In real life it's a dollar. A penny if you charge the 99 cent, but it just feels it just feels like it's cheaper

0:44:35So are you shipping a new Vesper by WWC this year?

0:44:41It could be any day

0:44:44Because I remember that's when you launched last year, right? Yeah, I would if if we were approved I would tell you right now

0:44:50but we're not but it should be

0:44:52Knock on wood if everything goes through it should be before WWDC should be well before WDC last year was it was pretty tight

0:45:00And this but is not the sync update or maybe you shouldn't tell me what it is

0:45:05I'll tell you don't tell anybody else though. All right, it is the sync update. Oh, wow. Okay

0:45:12While we were let me take another break before we keep going

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0:47:37that? Go to Linda calm l y n da.com slash the talk show linda.com

0:47:46with a y slash the talk show, you'll get seven days free. The

0:47:51whole library unlocked. If you're anything like that you're

0:47:54curious about and want to learn. I cannot recommend it highly enough. It's great, great

0:47:58stuff. My thanks to lynda.com. So you mentioned your Surface Pro review or first look. This

0:48:07is not a review. Well, let's take a step back though. So since last you were on the talk

0:48:12show, you've picked up a new gig. You're now I don't know, forget your title, but you're

0:48:17like the new technology columnist at Quartz.

0:48:20- Yes, this started a week ago.

0:48:23I'm the tech editor at Quartz,

0:48:25which means I'll be writing several posts a week,

0:48:30probably one a day, maybe a little more than that,

0:48:32maybe less depending on the news flow.

0:48:35And then also building out a team of journalists

0:48:39around the world actually.

0:48:40That's one of the really cool things about Quartz,

0:48:42which I guess I should explain what Quartz is.

0:48:46It's a relatively new business news site

0:48:49owned by the Atlantic that started in 2012.

0:48:54And their whole thing is that it is what,

0:48:58they sat down and they said,

0:49:00if you were starting a business news site in 2012,

0:49:03what would it be?

0:49:04Well, it would be designed first for phones and tablets

0:49:09and less for a desktop computer because--

0:49:12(coughing)

0:49:13- Talk show during fireball.

0:49:15I'm sorry, keep going, Dan.

0:49:19'Cause that's where people will be reading it.

0:49:21It'll be global because people fly around a lot

0:49:24and real business leaders are thinking about

0:49:26what's going on in Asia just as much as

0:49:29what's going on at home.

0:49:31And it'll have new forms of advertising

0:49:37and they've never really, I've never seen

0:49:40in the history of the site any standard banner ads

0:49:43on the site.

0:49:43They do these special custom kind of big ads

0:49:47that work for a mobile site and for a desktop site.

0:49:52So it's really cool.

0:49:53The staff is pretty small.

0:49:55It's really smart people there.

0:49:58The editor in chief is this guy, Kevin Delaney,

0:50:00who was at the Wall Street Journal for a long time

0:50:02and was one of their leading tech journalists there.

0:50:06So I was not looking for a job.

0:50:08I mean, I've been working on my startup, City Notes,

0:50:12for a long time now,

0:50:13and we're gonna be shipping a brand new app

0:50:16in the next few months that could be a big thing someday.

0:50:20But when the existing tech editor from Quartz left recently

0:50:26for the Wall Street Journal, I emailed Kevin and said,

0:50:29"Hey man, let's get together and talk."

0:50:31Because I've long been a huge fan of the site.

0:50:34I think they do really cool stuff.

0:50:36One of the really interesting things there

0:50:39is that they have a team of engineers

0:50:41that sits in the newsroom and work with journalists

0:50:44and our journalists themselves and make little apps

0:50:48and interactive stories and tools for the newsroom

0:50:52to either do reporting or to tell stories.

0:50:56Like we have a chart building tool that, you know,

0:51:01was made by one of the courts engineers

0:51:05for the courts newsroom.

0:51:06So it's really cool.

0:51:07It's kind of, you know,

0:51:09if you were taking all the elements of a news organization

0:51:12and creating them from scratch in this era.

0:51:17It's a really good representation of that.

0:51:18So I'm really excited to join the team.

0:51:21I have not been writing much lately, so I'm quite rusty,

0:51:25but I posted a few things last week

0:51:27and hope you'll all follow me there.

0:51:30It's a very simple URL designed for the mobile era.

0:51:34It's qz.com, the element courts, I believe.

0:51:39Is that there?

0:51:41Is that the--

0:51:42- That's where I was.

0:51:42- It's been a while since the periodic table,

0:51:45but it's really cool.

0:51:47I'm really happy to be there.

0:51:49I'll be covering the same stuff that I did

0:51:52on my old site SplatF, which is Apple, Microsoft, Google,

0:51:57kind of big tech, mobile.

0:51:59And I'll hopefully get to do some travel as well,

0:52:03looking up cool stories around the world

0:52:06that most desk-bound tech sites aren't really talking about.

0:52:11aren't really touching.

0:52:12- They do.

0:52:13Quartz has been interesting to me ever since it debuted.

0:52:16And it's cooler for me that somebody who I know like you

0:52:21is gonna be writing there.

0:52:22But they've always had good stuff.

0:52:23They've always had an interesting design

0:52:25where it doesn't really look like anybody else's stuff.

0:52:28They were really early to me on that, the infinite scroll,

0:52:34where when you get to the end of an article

0:52:37and instead of a bottom of the page,

0:52:38they just sort of algorithmically predict,

0:52:41well, this might be something else you're interested in.

0:52:44You can close the window if you want,

0:52:45but if you wanna keep scrolling down,

0:52:47here's another article.

0:52:48- Yeah, and that's for better or worse.

0:52:50I think it works really great on mobile

0:52:53when, hey, if you're still connected to the network,

0:52:57here's something else to read.

0:52:59Sometimes with a computer, it's a little frustrating

0:53:02'cause you wanna share the previous story that you'd read

0:53:05and then all of a sudden you're at the next one.

0:53:07But they've written, again, they have engineers

0:53:10in the newsroom, so they're making changes in real time

0:53:13as they decide whether something's working or not.

0:53:16- Well, that reminds me of Adrian Holovaty.

0:53:19Do you know Adrian Holovaty?

0:53:20He was like-- - I know the name.

0:53:22- Co-creator of the Django Python framework

0:53:25and a bunch of other stuff, he's from Chicago.

0:53:27But he's been on, I mean, longer than anybody,

0:53:30and maybe even close to a decade,

0:53:31but at least from like 2006, 2007,

0:53:34on programming as journalism.

0:53:38Now that the output device for so much journalism

0:53:46is a computer, that it's not a piece of paper with ink on it

0:53:49and it's not a TV screen getting something broadcast

0:53:54to millions of people identically,

0:53:55that it's this device that can compute,

0:53:58that it's almost criminal not to take advantage of it.

0:54:01that you can't just hire, or not can't,

0:54:04but that the way to take advantage of it

0:54:06is not just to hire programmers to build you a CMS

0:54:10and then they go away and you just sit there

0:54:12and type text into it and paste pictures into it,

0:54:16but that they're a full-time part of the team.

0:54:18In the same way that a TV studio, a TV news

0:54:22is always gonna have cameramen,

0:54:23that a website should always have programmers.

0:54:26- Yeah. - And that you wouldn't,

0:54:27the same way that you wouldn't get rid of cameramen

0:54:29at a TV station, you wouldn't just have them come in

0:54:32at the beginning and set the cameras up in the studio

0:54:35and say, here's the angles they should be at.

0:54:36Now you're on your own, just hit this button

0:54:39when you want the camera to record.

0:54:41You wouldn't want it, you don't want to dismiss

0:54:43the programmers after they've built the system.

0:54:45- No, and I think like having worked in a few newsrooms now,

0:54:49in many organizations, there tends to be

0:54:52a combative relationship between product

0:54:54and the journalists because sure,

0:54:59every CMS has flaws.

0:55:00So if you're just sitting around

0:55:02and ragging on this crappy CMS,

0:55:05you're probably not thinking the nicest thoughts

0:55:09about the people who made it for you.

0:55:11And often are trashing them.

0:55:14Whereas if they're sitting next to you

0:55:15and you are working on stuff together,

0:55:19it's a really cool opportunity.

0:55:21It's also made me personally realize

0:55:24that I need to learn to code too.

0:55:28I've been programming websites since the mid 90s.

0:55:31So I've known HTML and later CSS since it was a thing,

0:55:36but I never took the dive into kind of more advanced stuff.

0:55:42And now I realize, especially the last six months

0:55:46working with my friend, Mark Dorison on City Notes,

0:55:50kind of feeling like a helpless loser,

0:55:52not being able to help out with building our iOS stuff.

0:55:56So I know it's gonna take a lot of time,

0:55:59and it's kind of corny, but in this era,

0:56:02it feels like coding skills are almost like freedom.

0:56:06So that's one of the things I'm gonna spend

0:56:09some of my spare time on now.

0:56:12I've already started actually.

0:56:13- I don't wanna abuse the metaphor,

0:56:15but I'll compare it to camera work again,

0:56:18where there was a time when it was so comp,

0:56:22in the film days when you had so much going on

0:56:24just to take pictures where not many people

0:56:26learned to take photographs.

0:56:28But now everybody has cameras with them all the time.

0:56:31And not that everybody is going to be a pro photographer,

0:56:34and not that you are going to become a top notch developer,

0:56:37but it's like you should have-- maybe everybody should

0:56:40have a basic fluency in it.

0:56:42Be able to write a little code.

0:56:43And everybody should learn a little bit

0:56:45so you can take a decent picture.

0:56:47Like maybe--

0:56:47Especially-- oh, yeah.

0:56:49Well, you're out.

0:56:50You're a journalist.

0:56:51You see something.

0:56:52You should be able to get as good a photograph

0:56:54as your iPhone is capable of taking.

0:56:57- I think also the mobile era has a lot to do with it,

0:57:01at least for me, because back in the day,

0:57:04I would buy, oh boy, I bought student edition of,

0:57:09what was it, Code Warrior?

0:57:10What was the old, and I tried learning that.

0:57:13I bought books like Learn C on the Macintosh.

0:57:15- MetroWorks.

0:57:17- Yeah, right.

0:57:18And it never took, I never got past Hello World,

0:57:21in part because I'd sit there at my desk and think,

0:57:25well, if I could make a Mac app, what would I make?

0:57:28I'm not gonna make like an email client

0:57:30or something like that.

0:57:31So, and then the web came out,

0:57:33so I just kind of started goofing around on the web.

0:57:36But now in the iPhone era,

0:57:38like I have an unlimited list of cool apps

0:57:41that I would wanna make.

0:57:42And so one of the things that has kind of stuck with me

0:57:47over the last week is I've been starting

0:57:50to learn JavaScript, just kind of getting my feet wet,

0:57:54is it's strange and unfortunate that there is no

0:57:58kind of iPad native programming environment.

0:58:01And maybe I'm totally missing it,

0:58:03but I've never heard of one that has any traction

0:58:06or has any acclaim.

0:58:08And so I'm like starting with these programming lessons

0:58:13and I have to sit at my computer at a desk.

0:58:16It feels weird in this, okay.

0:58:19Yeah, I don't know about that.

0:58:20C-O-D-E-A. Definitely worth checking out.

0:58:24OK, cool.

0:58:25I forget the one.

0:58:26This wouldn't be good for you.

0:58:27It's more for kids.

0:58:28There's a great one for kids that Jonas has on his iPad.

0:58:31Oh, cool.

0:58:32It's less code and a little bit more visual.

0:58:35Codea is probably the one worth checking out.

0:58:38People who are out there, send us Twitter.

0:58:41Hit us up on Twitter.

0:58:43Yeah, FromDome on Twitter is my Twitter handle.

0:58:46Let me know what I should be doing.

0:58:48All right.

0:58:49- Yeah, that's a good question.

0:58:50- Any noob tips.

0:58:51But you know, and this is one of the things

0:58:53like I cover during the day is the post PC shift,

0:58:58like I did an article this week at Quartz

0:59:01about tablet sales are actually on pace

0:59:05to match PC sales this year, or at least come very close.

0:59:09And by next year, far surpass them.

0:59:12But you still can't make a tablet app on a tablet.

0:59:16- Yeah.

0:59:16Well, and that's the problem that CODEA ran into,

0:59:19is that they ran into-- it's out, you get it,

0:59:22but they've run into a lot of hassle with the App Store

0:59:25in terms of--

0:59:27Oh, like the interpreting code or something like that?

0:59:30Well, I think that they're using JavaScript.

0:59:33So there's a rule that you're not

0:59:35supposed to include a third party interpreter.

0:59:38But if you want to have interpreted code,

0:59:40you could use WebKit's JavaScript and have at it.

0:59:43But you can't-- they wanted to have it where you could maybe

0:59:46like save your sample project and then I could download your sample project and

0:59:51run it in Kodiya but then all of a sudden that runs afoul of the hey are

0:59:55you distributing apps right yeah like you make a game in Kodiya and then you

1:00:00send me the game thing and now I can open it in my copy of Kodiya and I have

1:00:04a new game running and I didn't get it through the App Store and so that was

1:00:09like they so I forget all the crazy hoops they have to jump through but it's

1:00:13It's all worse for the overall experience,

1:00:17for the benefit of Apple's control overall app distribution.

1:00:22- And there are constraints,

1:00:25like typing in stuff on an iPad is kind of annoying still,

1:00:29and I get it, but it'd be cool if either Apple

1:00:33or a third party were to come out

1:00:34with a fairly sophisticated yet iPad designed coding app.

1:00:39yet

1:00:41iPad designed coding environment. Yep. Well remember remember I'll do it right remember when we were kids

1:00:47And we would get magazines with programs in them, right? It would be yeah, you know, here's a program that you know

1:00:54Here's a simple one. I mean, this is stupid

1:00:55You could write this in ten lines or you know, three lines of basic, you know, but you know enter your weight on earth

1:01:02Here's what you weigh on the moon and here's what you would weigh on Jupiter and then you would type it into your you know

1:01:07your Apple 2 or your TI 99 for a basic and then you'd save it and then you type run the name of the program and

1:01:15It would run but to duplicate these programs

1:01:17they were printed in magazines and you'd sit the magazine next to the computer and type them in and

1:01:22That's how I learned of a lot of HTML actually from the net magazine. It's teaching me like tables and that kind of stuff

1:01:29you know and it's crazy that when when now that we've invented things like the internet and copy and paste and

1:01:35downloading and stuff like that, that that's sort of how you have to use Kodiya because

1:01:39they don't want you to distribute things that you just tap and open and run. And so you're

1:01:46stuck retyping all this stuff. It's, you know, but anyway, it's worth checking out.

1:01:50Yep. Yeah. And I remember actually, I think Google made some sort of very simple Android,

1:01:56you know, like almost drag and drop programming tool, but I don't think it took off and they

1:02:02probably shut it down.

1:02:03what that's an interesting point because Android doesn't have the iron-fisted

1:02:09control over executing code that by design not like it's you know right

1:02:15this is a weakness this is a difference of opinion you know so you know you

1:02:21could buy a Nexus and you know stock app you know this is the stock Google

1:02:25Android device a Nexus whatever the latest phone is and you can go into

1:02:29settings and say allow, you know, applications from third

1:02:33parties. And then it'll say, sure, this is, you know, could

1:02:36open up to security problems, you say, Don't worry, I know

1:02:38what I'm doing. And then you can install apps from anywhere. And

1:02:42you, you know, with no developer signing and stuff like that, you

1:02:45can just install apps on your device. So there's an

1:02:50opportunity there where they could have something like a sort

1:02:53of next generation hypercard, right? I mean, that's, that's

1:02:56what everybody always comes back to is they come back to

1:02:58hypercard because hypercard and the reason people keep coming

1:03:02back to hypercard is that hypercard when people you know,

1:03:07if if if I don't know what the percentage of people who can

1:03:12program is let's just ballpark and say 5% of people if they

1:03:16want to can program like an objective see apps probably

1:03:19lower than that. I would say less than one. Yeah, let's say

1:03:22all right, let's be more realistic 25% let's say 1% of

1:03:26people have that that aptitude and it's a combination of ability and desire

1:03:33because it's so hard and complicated you just can't make yourself do it unless

1:03:37you're driven to do it and absolutely you know hyper card was a thing where

1:03:43way more maybe five percent of people who looked at hyper card and had ideas

1:03:48for a little thing they could program or you know if you click a button this

1:03:52happens and you could click this button and then you'd have a list of things

1:03:55that you could drag and drop to rearrange, that there was way more people

1:04:00who could just look at it, get it, and not in terms of intelligence, I think

1:04:06entirely, although part of it is clearly intelligence, but it's also that

1:04:11level of obsession where if it was so much easier to do it and you didn't have

1:04:18to commit so much and learn at such a low level, you'd be willing to do it.

1:04:23You'd be willing to try you know a little less abstract

1:04:26It's not you know a text editor with gibberish in it it. There's a lot more visual

1:04:32aspects they just removed a lot of friction and

1:04:36It just and the lack of friction would encourage more people to try it in the same way that digital photography

1:04:42You know

1:04:44Ultimately the best pictures we take are they any better than the best pictures that were taken 50

1:04:4960 years ago no, but way more pictures are being taken period because there's so much less friction

1:04:56you just turn on these simple devices and

1:04:58Exposure is computed automatically

1:05:01you know the the aperture is computed automatically and

1:05:06It's friction is removed

1:05:09And so people do it and that's what hyper card was hyper card was like a point-and-shoot camera for programming

1:05:15And there's yeah, well, let's get that for iOS

1:05:18So if Phil Schiller if you're listening, I'll help you out with this. We'll

1:05:22We'll do it

1:05:24Yeah

1:05:24I think and I think people you know if people have tried stuff like that and I think sometimes people maybe get caught up because

1:05:30They want to boil the ocean all at once and they think well, let's not just do iOS

1:05:33Let's do iOS and Android and let's have run in web browser too so that anybody you could open it

1:05:38I say start simple and maybe you know do that down but get do it and have it just run on the iPad

1:05:43Right and then worry about worry about

1:05:47Other things next get it running on the iPad and then expand to the iPhone and then think about Android and then you know

1:05:54But get it running one place at first

1:05:56anyway, I think Google has an opportunity there to do something Apple couldn't because Google could build a thing like that and

1:06:03not worry about

1:06:05The distribution of these you know the in hyper card parlance the stacks right you hyper card was the app and it ran stacks

1:06:13Whatever you want to call them, but you know that you they could allow people to distribute these things to other Android users

1:06:19And not they don't care if you're not going through the Play Store anymore

1:06:22Totally yeah, and I think they started to try it, but then they I don't know what happened with that weird

1:06:30Thing that they made maybe it was just too simple. I remember

1:06:34I think it was a typical Google thing where somebody you know some three people built the thing and there was never really anything behind

1:06:39and they were like, well, ship it, who cares?

1:06:42And then nobody ever even remembers it anymore.

1:06:45- Yeah, and the Mac kind of has that with Automator,

1:06:48but that's, well, not really,

1:06:50that's not even close to HyperCard,

1:06:52but I remember in the early Automator days,

1:06:55actually my friend ran a site called Automator World,

1:06:59which was a community of Automator recipes

1:07:04or whatever they were called, and that was pretty cool.

1:07:06Automator is cool and AppleScript still remains,

1:07:10it's alive and well, but it's not thriving.

1:07:13- Right, no, not at all.

1:07:15- But there's little signs of health for it.

1:07:19Like for example, I mean,

1:07:20the biggest sign of health for AppleScript to me is

1:07:24that when the new versions of iWork apps came out,

1:07:28the new pages, numbers and keynote

1:07:33with this unified file format across iOS and the web

1:07:38and the Mac apps.

1:07:39And they took out all these features that were in the Mac

1:07:42were gone because they solidified the whole platform

1:07:47on this common denominator of features.

1:07:51AppleScript was gone.

1:07:52But in the months since, they've brought it back.

1:07:55I don't think that they've brought entirely back,

1:07:57but it's mostly back.

1:07:58That most of the things you could do in AppleScript

1:08:00those apps before you can do again. You know it clearly wasn't enough of a priority to

1:08:06be there in their initial release but it's enough of a priority that they got to it with

1:08:11before before the end of the year. Yeah that's good. Do you buy into the concept of multi

1:08:18view you know two apps two up apps on iOS or because I've been playing with that surface.

1:08:28hold that let me do the third sponsor. Okay, let's combine that with that for iOS combined

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1:11:44- The other Harry's guy, the non Warby Parker guy,

1:11:49is an old friend of mine.

1:11:50- Oh really?

1:11:51- Yeah, his wife married me.

1:11:54Not married me, she officiated our wedding.

1:11:56- There is a big difference.

1:12:00- There is a big difference, yeah.

1:12:01He was there too, it was cool.

1:12:02- Well, that's actually, you know,

1:12:04That's not like, hey, I met him the one time.

1:12:06That's actually like the guy was there

1:12:07for an important person in your life.

1:12:10- Yeah, no, he's a good guy.

1:12:11That's a really neat company that is

1:12:15smartly vertically integrated, much like Warby Parker

1:12:20and a massive industry full of a bunch of clowns.

1:12:24So I hope they do really well.

1:12:26- I love all these stories of people

1:12:29who are getting into hardware of any kind.

1:12:31- Oh yeah.

1:12:32And and I feel like there's so many opportunity

1:12:35You know, we are our whole generation

1:12:37We were all digital for so long and the web was such an eye-opener and we all built websites and spent

1:12:42You know first decade two decades of our professional careers shipping ones and zeros and it was awesome

1:12:48And I still you know, everything I do is still mostly ones and zeros right vespers digital

1:12:53Daring fireballs digital even the show is digital

1:12:58Although not entirely and I'll get back to that

1:13:02But I just love these people who are taking the same sort of,

1:13:07let's just stay lean and mean and vertically integrated

1:13:11and not have the waste of like a Proctor and Gamble

1:13:14gazillion headcount conglomerate behind it.

1:13:19- Yeah, let's take this thing and let's just do it right.

1:13:24Let's start without all the baggage and do it right.

1:13:28and ultimately it ends up being cheaper for the consumer

1:13:33and in many cases better.

1:13:35- I feel like it's like something

1:13:37that nobody really imagined,

1:13:39but like to me going down the consumer aisles

1:13:43and like a drug store or like a Target

1:13:46if you're in the like shopping for deodorant

1:13:48or toothpaste or shaving cream or something like that,

1:13:51like 40 or 50 years ago,

1:13:53it would look like something out of science fiction,

1:13:55like the way that when you go to buy Crest,

1:13:57you have to choose between literally like 12 or 15 kinds of crest.

1:14:02You know, that used to, you know,

1:14:04used to be you'd switch between crest and Colgate, right.

1:14:07And they were the rivals and then like they've,

1:14:09they've gotten into this race to take up shelf space and the only way they'll

1:14:13get the shelf space is if they have a bunch of varieties.

1:14:16So they have like 20 each other own aisle at this point. Yeah.

1:14:1920 different kinds of crest to choose from or, or ed shaving gel. There's,

1:14:24there's 17 kinds of it. And like, I mean,

1:14:27I don't know which one to get. I mean, I'm not an expert on it

1:14:29Like I like these startups that are you know, it's like here look here's good shave cream. Here it is. Yeah Harry's

1:14:35Yeah, there's one flavor. Yeah, here it is and it's good. Here it is it and that's it

1:14:40Yeah, I love it

1:14:44Anyway, I mean it I know they're a sponsor

1:14:47I am literally getting paid to tell you to go check them out

1:14:49But I mean it there it's it's what I love about the show and doing this and getting these sponsors like this

1:14:54is that to me they're doing fascinating and great work.

1:14:57- But that's actually, and not to plug your show,

1:15:00but that's part of doing that right

1:15:03is actually being in the right place

1:15:05to promote your company.

1:15:07Procter & Gamble, to my knowledge,

1:15:10is not sponsoring tech podcasts,

1:15:13but if you wanted to reach the types of people

1:15:16that load up Amazon and drop 100 bucks on nonsense,

1:15:19that would be a good place to start.

1:15:22- Okay, tablets.

1:15:25- Yes.

1:15:26- So you were at the Surface announcement?

1:15:30- Yeah, it was very strange.

1:15:32It was like one of the first emails I got

1:15:34to my new Quartz address was,

1:15:35"Hey, do you wanna come to this Surface thing next week?"

1:15:38And I said, "Yeah, sure."

1:15:40And I didn't even know what it was.

1:15:42I thought, I had no idea.

1:15:44I didn't realize it was the unveiling of a new Surface.

1:15:48I didn't realize that.

1:15:49- 'Cause you're not as tuned into that world

1:15:51as you are the Apple world where--

1:15:53- No, right.

1:15:54- And they're not on that regular schedule

1:15:56that Apple has, right?

1:15:57- Yeah, and it's in New York, and it's Tuesday, I don't know.

1:16:01So I just wasn't expecting that.

1:16:03And then I showed up and they're like,

1:16:04"Here's the new Surface, and here's one to take with you."

1:16:08And it was interesting.

1:16:10- So they did give you one to take with you?

1:16:13- Yeah, I have one, it's in my desk at the office.

1:16:16I don't have it here in front of me, but it was,

1:16:20And Satya Nadella, the new CEO of Microsoft was there.

1:16:24He kicked off the event.

1:16:26And what he said sounded good actually, which was,

1:16:30I had seen Balmer and Gates speak a few times

1:16:33at various things.

1:16:34And it always seemed like a lot of puffed up

1:16:37kind of corporate speak.

1:16:39And Satya actually sounded more human.

1:16:42And what he said was smart,

1:16:45that they're making these devices

1:16:46and that every single product has to fit

1:16:49into their cloud strategy and all this stuff.

1:16:52And then the guy who came on and kind of demoed

1:16:55the hardware was kind of a bozo

1:16:56and they were making all these really stupid jokes

1:17:00about Joanna Stern, the new Wall Street Journal reviewer.

1:17:04I don't know if you watched the video.

1:17:05It was just really awkward and not funny at all.

1:17:08- I didn't watch the video,

1:17:10but I was following along on Twitter

1:17:13and I got the gist that they were referencing Joanna a lot.

1:17:18- Yeah, and it was kind of funny the first time,

1:17:20but then they did it like four more times.

1:17:23Can you imagine like, you know,

1:17:25Phil Schiller stopping an Apple keynote four times

1:17:29to rib Walt Mossberg about something?

1:17:32- Right, or me, right, what if he did it to me, right?

1:17:35- Hey, John, remember that post you wrote?

1:17:37- Right.

1:17:37- And maybe once, it's kind of funny.

1:17:39- Well, and I guess it's because Joanna,

1:17:42she was just on the show a couple months ago,

1:17:45but talking about these issues with tablets

1:17:47laptops and kin tablets. It was right after she had done I'm

1:17:50sure this is why they referenced her is that she's done. She's

1:17:53been on this beat for a couple of years now of, you know,

1:17:57what's the ideal form factor for like a one and a half one to two

1:18:01pound portable computer that you're going to do real work on?

1:18:04Is it a tablet? If so, how do you put it in a lab? How do you

1:18:07get a keyboard? How do you type fast? If it's not if it's a

1:18:09laptop, you know, does it have a touchscreen? What what where's

1:18:12this going? She's written a lot about it. And she's done. I it's

1:18:16fantastic work reviewing a wide variety of stuff.

1:18:19So I'm sure that's why--

1:18:21- Yeah, I think she came from reviewing laptops.

1:18:24So she has probably, if not the best,

1:18:27one of the best kind of histories in her brain

1:18:31of the evolution of these devices.

1:18:33So it makes sense that they would reference her

1:18:36during a keynote, I suppose once.

1:18:38But then, I don't know, it was very--

1:18:42- Weird.

1:18:43- I think I tweeted something like,

1:18:44"Microsoft, you're still so Microsoft,"

1:18:46or something like that.

1:18:47- Right, and she was there.

1:18:48- She was there in the front row,

1:18:49and she was curious why she was in the front row,

1:18:53and then she found out why.

1:18:54It's 'cause she was part of the play.

1:18:57- She went to take a regular seat in the middle,

1:18:59and they're like, "No, no, no."

1:19:00- Yeah, right.

1:19:01- Down in front, Joanna.

1:19:02- Yeah, so some of the stuff they did

1:19:04was actually kind of funny.

1:19:05They made a kind of self-deprecating comment

1:19:09about how everybody in the audience

1:19:10was typing on a MacBook Air,

1:19:13But then, I don't know, then I kind of dragged along

1:19:18and then I grabbed my Surface and got out of there.

1:19:21- Yeah, that's funny.

1:19:24That's like an interesting,

1:19:25and I definitely noticed that they made a joke

1:19:29about the fact that the MacBook Air is like stock issue

1:19:34for mid, I don't know what we call this decade, the 10s.

1:19:39In the 10s, tech journalists have MacBook Airs.

1:19:42It's just ridiculous what percentage.

1:19:47And most of my press events are Apple events,

1:19:50but even at like Build, when I was at Build,

1:19:52in the press room, not everybody,

1:19:55and clearly there's a lot of Windows devices

1:19:56in the Build press room,

1:19:58but there was a crazy amount of MacBook Airs too.

1:20:01- Crazy, yeah.

1:20:02And at this thing, it was pretty much all Macs.

1:20:04I rarely see Windows PCs in my life,

1:20:10which is kind of funny, but good life, I guess.

1:20:13- The thing to remember is that journalists,

1:20:16most of them are on a tight deadline.

1:20:19They've got to file, if they're there today

1:20:22to cover the Microsoft Surface event,

1:20:24they've got to have something ready to go

1:20:27pretty soon after the end.

1:20:29And a lot of people now, most sites now,

1:20:31they're taking photos and they're putting photos in,

1:20:33and it's more than just typing in a text area field

1:20:37and hitting a button.

1:20:37There's a CMS production system,

1:20:40And you kind of need your--

1:20:42I don't test that many devices, but a lot of people do.

1:20:48But in terms of actually doing the work of covering the event,

1:20:51you want your go-to trustee, this is my main thing.

1:20:55And it's got all the apps I need to get into the CMS

1:20:59to format this the way I want it formatted,

1:21:03to get the photos into where the photos go in the CMS

1:21:06so I can put them in the article and all this.

1:21:08And for most of the people working today,

1:21:10it's a MacBook Air.

1:21:12- Totally, and especially if you're carrying it around,

1:21:15the Air is an amazing portable computer.

1:21:20So then, Microsoft's argument seems to be

1:21:25that a tablet with a keyboard is better than a laptop.

1:21:31Because, and then they have different,

1:21:35One was that it's lighter than a MacBook Air,

1:21:38which I don't, when you put that big keyboard thing

1:21:42on there, I don't think it's lighter.

1:21:44I don't know.

1:21:45- Well, their comparison, and this is, to me,

1:21:48everybody called this out, is that their weight comparison

1:21:51was the uncovered surface compared to the MacBook Air,

1:21:56which has an attached cover.

1:21:58And if--

1:21:59- The 13-inch, six-year-old MacBook Air,

1:22:03versus the brand new uncovered 12 inch surface.

1:22:08- Well, the fact that the design is six years old,

1:22:10doesn't, that's fair game.

1:22:14- Oh yeah, I mean, it's still shipping, so.

1:22:16- Right, and they just came out with new ones last month.

1:22:18- Right. - That's fair game, but,

1:22:20it just doesn't seem like a fair comparison to say,

1:22:25here's this device where a big part of it

1:22:28is that we've built this great cover with a keyboard

1:22:31and a great, much improved over last year's trackpad.

1:22:34And then when we compare it to this device

1:22:36that has a built-in keyboard and trackpad,

1:22:37we're not gonna put the cover on

1:22:39when we talk about the weight.

1:22:41- Right, yeah, so that's, I mean,

1:22:43and that's also the kind of thing like,

1:22:44okay, but in your backpack with a few other things,

1:22:47there's really, in use, I will say,

1:22:49there's no noticeable difference in, you know,

1:22:53how light one of those things feels next to the other one.

1:22:56And that's not even really the point.

1:22:58Like weight is not really the deciding factor in this.

1:23:02It's is this better for,

1:23:05and I guess they're straight up just going after people

1:23:08who are using this for work.

1:23:10Like if you're the kind of person

1:23:12who is doing work on a laptop,

1:23:14which is really the only thing I use my laptop now for

1:23:17is straight up work,

1:23:19is a tablet with a keyboard better.

1:23:21And it's still, to me, it just felt off.

1:23:25And I haven't used it much and I really should use it more.

1:23:28but the idea of balancing this heavy screen

1:23:32and with this lighter keyboard

1:23:34that's kind of attached to it, but not very rigid

1:23:38just seems very awkward.

1:23:40I just, I would always rather have a laptop.

1:23:44And then, you know, for the stuff that I use

1:23:46a touch tablet for, have a separate tablet that is,

1:23:51you know, really designed for that.

1:23:54and hardware and software and size

1:23:58and all that sort of stuff.

1:23:59- For weight to really matter,

1:24:01it has to be like a next level.

1:24:05I mean, it's all a little arbitrary,

1:24:07but it's gotta be like,

1:24:09hey, this is actually like a game changer.

1:24:11And an example I'll bring up is the MacBook Air.

1:24:15- Totally.

1:24:16- Where a year ago when it was the iPad 3 and then the 4,

1:24:20and these were the,

1:24:21the Retina iPad still had the full bezel around the whole size.

1:24:25It doesn't matter.

1:24:26They were the same weight, the three and the four.

1:24:28Versus the first generation iPad Mini, it was like, "Wow, this one has...

1:24:35It's a lot faster and has a beautiful retina to screen, but man, it's so much heavier than

1:24:40the Mini, which doesn't have a retina screen and it's using year-old system on a chip,

1:24:47but man, is it light."

1:24:48And it just seemed like a real easy, easier decision.

1:24:53You want to go lightweight and easier to carry around or do you want to go beautiful screen,

1:24:58little bit heavier.

1:24:59Whereas this year with the Air, it was so much lighter.

1:25:02Like everybody who was at the original press event, you know, last October for the iPad,

1:25:09everybody was like, "Geez, I don't know how to decide which one of these to get now because

1:25:13the Air is so much lighter."

1:25:15The whole reason I wanted a Mini in the first place

1:25:17was it was easy to hold in one hand,

1:25:19but this is easy to hold in one hand.

1:25:21'Cause it was so much lighter than what it came before.

1:25:23The Surface Pro is not like that.

1:25:25The Surface Pro is over a pound.

1:25:26So it's, you know, it's not heavy.

1:25:29- And it's thick, it's not, it's not, and that's fine.

1:25:33I mean, it's, you know, I guess it's thinner than a laptop

1:25:37and maybe a little lighter than one,

1:25:39but it's not the difference between,

1:25:41to me the best example is still actually

1:25:44the MacBook Air versus my old plastic MacBook,

1:25:48which was so heavy that I dreaded carrying it around.

1:25:51Whereas the minute I got the 13-inch MacBook Air,

1:25:55it was the first computer I'd ever owned

1:25:57that I'm happy just to take anywhere.

1:25:59It never is annoying to carry it around.

1:26:02And there were other benefits too,

1:26:04like the battery life and that kind of stuff.

1:26:06But this, so the surface is not like that.

1:26:10And I don't know, again, I should use it more

1:26:14and I'm not a Windows guy,

1:26:15so the OS is kind of foreign to me still.

1:26:19Although I did pop open Twitter

1:26:22and Internet Explorer side by side,

1:26:25and that was actually pretty cool.

1:26:26Like I would totally--

1:26:27- So how does, what is the interface

1:26:29for putting two apps side by side

1:26:32instead of taking over the full screen?

1:26:35- I'm sure there is a way to do it

1:26:37that is the actual way to do it,

1:26:39but in my case it was poke around

1:26:41until it happened by accident.

1:26:44It's some secret gesture like swiping in from one of the sides or something like that, which,

1:26:48again, I'm sure there's an actual right way to do it.

1:26:51I just haven't figured that out yet.

1:26:53So...

1:26:54See, that's my...

1:26:55And you asked, and I wrote about this this week, is that I'm not opposed to it.

1:27:00I got some pushback, but I wrote something.

1:27:03I was like, "To put it in Randzian terms, to steal Michael Lop's Twitter schtick, you

1:27:09I want to run two apps side by side on my iPad and I hear I want

1:27:15The iPad to become more complicated

1:27:18Right, and that doesn't mean that I think that they shouldn't do it or that they're not going to do it

1:27:23But all I want to shine a light on is that if they do it no matter how clever it is

1:27:29It will therefore make the iPad more complicated than it was before maybe justly so maybe it's a good decision

1:27:36You know when when when the iPhone couldn't copy and paste when you couldn't select text and copy and paste

1:27:42Adding

1:27:44That made the iPhone more complicated and I think everybody would agree

1:27:50It was complication for the better. Yes, it's more complicated, but it's better now because it's just so essential

1:27:57Maybe Apple will come up with something for side-by-side apps that we'll look at the same way and it'll work for everybody

1:28:03But to me, I think about it as a UI designer and I can't think of anything that really is

1:28:08Approachable that most people would use it to me

1:28:15the only things I can think of are something where you double tap the home button to go into the multitasking thing and then

1:28:22drag

1:28:24drag those little window versions that you see in the

1:28:28Multitasking somehow drag two of them together and they yeah, and I just thought of that too independently. So maybe we're onto something there

1:28:34Yeah, but I would I'm gonna go out in a limb and say it's only gonna work for apps that explicitly support it because it's a

1:28:41New yeah

1:28:41Half the screen is gonna be a new

1:28:43Pick and what if it's an app that you ran a long time ago the other one that you want on there, right?

1:28:48And it's not up to find it, right?

1:28:50How are they gonna tell you how are they gonna suggest to you that this app is you can select it?

1:28:56- Ah, yeah.

1:28:57- You know, I don't know.

1:28:57Turn the other ones black and white, I don't know.

1:29:00Have them bounce.

1:29:01It's a complicated, complex question, UI design wise.

1:29:05- I mean, it's kind of like how you join phone calls

1:29:09that are in session.

1:29:10- Yeah.

1:29:10- You can either put one on hold, start another one,

1:29:13and then join the two of those,

1:29:15or you can put one on hold and create a new one

1:29:18and then join them.

1:29:19But it's not that simple because that's just kind of

1:29:22audio running in the background, whereas this is--

1:29:25If it takes three or four taps to get two of them together,

1:29:29you don't wanna have it completely undone

1:29:31by just hitting the home button once to do something else.

1:29:34Right?

1:29:35If you've set this up and it's taken three or four taps

1:29:38and you've got your Twitter client running next to Safari.

1:29:41And oh, I gotta check--

1:29:43- Which is like my ideal like living room setup.

1:29:46- Right, but I quick wanna check my email

1:29:49because there's a thing I wanna copy and paste

1:29:51from the email to put into Safari

1:29:53and then you hit the home button.

1:29:54You don't wanna have to rebuild that Twitter thing.

1:29:57You wanna be able to somehow go back to it.

1:29:59And I don't know what that is

1:30:00because the only thing you can go back to

1:30:02in iOS as we know it is an app.

1:30:05- Right, and on the surface, if I recall correctly,

1:30:08the way that that works is that it basically starts

1:30:10a third window and you can then decide

1:30:13where that third window goes, if anywhere.

1:30:16I don't have it in front of me,

1:30:17so maybe that's a false memory,

1:30:19but that's what it seemed like.

1:30:21So, I know Mark Gurman said they're working on it,

1:30:24although he did not say that they're doing it for sure.

1:30:27It seems to me like he doesn't even have that much stuff

1:30:30this year in terms of what's for sure

1:30:32other than like the health book thing.

1:30:34- Yeah.

1:30:35- So I wouldn't be surprised.

1:30:36I wouldn't like to bet on that.

1:30:37I wouldn't bet on seeing that next week.

1:30:40- Right, yeah, I mean, I would like it if it were elegant.

1:30:43Twitter on the iPad is the same with column

1:30:51That it should be on a phone and then it's taking up the rest of the screen

1:30:55So it'd be really cool to have Twitter as like a side

1:30:58bar while I'm you know, whatever using Safari or

1:31:02Email or anything like that

1:31:05But as you say they'll have to do it in a way that that is elegant and makes sense

1:31:09Otherwise they're messing with their clean OS

1:31:13other thing that they would be messing with and

1:31:16Gurman acknowledged this in his report where he's like I don't even I don't know and there's no word on whether it would be for

1:31:21The full-size iPad air only or for the iPad mini too

1:31:24But the thing is is just in terms of the physical just physical size

1:31:28Half of the iPad mini screen is not a lot of screen

1:31:31Yeah, but in terms of pixels, it's the same as an air, isn't it? No, I don't know. Yeah

1:31:38Yeah in terms of pixels is the same but now you're talking about a lot a very small physical space and yet date

1:31:45The the OS is exactly the same pixel for pixel is exactly the same between the two

1:31:50There's nothing you can do on the one on the air that you can't do on the other just because it's bigger

1:31:54Everything is the pixel for pixel the same right? I can't help

1:31:57I think that if you're gonna split it in half, it may not work out as well

1:32:01Yeah, that would be an interesting thing to do some some mock-ups of I mean and that was the most compelling thing to me about

1:32:07That surface is wow. This is what a 12-inch touchscreen feels like this is kind of cool

1:32:13Like I could see a big iPad,

1:32:17but that was kind of the angle of my piece about this was,

1:32:19hey, I could actually see a big iPad being useful.

1:32:21Like my kind of dream setup now would be a big iPad

1:32:26that I don't really take places.

1:32:28And then a big iPhone that kind of replaces my small iPad.

1:32:32But now I'm just fantasy designing Apple hardware,

1:32:37which is not something that I'm probably supposed

1:32:41to be doing.

1:32:42But I'm excited for it though. I mean just in terms of if it does come out, I can't help

1:32:47but think that the only, if it is going to come out, that they've got something really

1:32:51thoughtfully designed. Because I don't think they're under any market pressure to do it.

1:32:55No. Right? So Microsoft has been banging the drum for this sort of not technical multitasking,

1:33:03not computer science two processes running on the same operating system at the same time,

1:33:09But visual multitasking, two things on screen at the same time.

1:33:14Twitter and a YouTube video or your email and a web browser on screen at the same time.

1:33:21Yeah, or for my work, a web browser and Excel or something like that.

1:33:25So I could get data and spreadsheet it at the same time.

1:33:29Right, and it certainly hasn't.

1:33:30Microsoft having gotten to it first two years ago, I guess, or a year and a half ago,

1:33:35hasn't really helped them make a dent, put a dent in the tablet market. So it's not like Apple's

1:33:40under market pressure to do so in the same way that they seem to be under market pressure to

1:33:47come out with a bigger iPhone. Right. And that is, you know, that there are people who are buying

1:33:53other brand phones because they want a bigger phone. You know, how big of that market, you know,

1:33:59how many people there are you could argue about,

1:34:01but it's inarguable that it's a number worth caring about.

1:34:06- Totally, yeah.

1:34:07- Whereas I don't see that

1:34:09for this multitasking on tablets.

1:34:10To me, they're not gonna do it

1:34:13unless they have something clever.

1:34:14So I'm excited because if they show it,

1:34:16I feel like we're gonna see something pretty interesting.

1:34:20- Yeah, I hope so.

1:34:21And one of the things I was thinking about then is,

1:34:24and as you mentioned,

1:34:26Microsoft has not caught any traction with tablets

1:34:31or phones.

1:34:32I wonder if they should make a laptop

1:34:35or is that too competitive with all their partners?

1:34:39- I don't know how is it.

1:34:41To me, they've already broken the seal.

1:34:43- I think they kind of have, haven't they?

1:34:44- But see, here's the thing I think though,

1:34:46and this is what I took away from the coverage last week

1:34:49and your piece in particular is that to me,

1:34:53Seems like what they were saying at last week's event is that they think this is the future of the laptop right a tablet

1:35:00That attached, you know, you know, the screen part is a tablet and the keyboard part to detaches

1:35:07yeah, and it's a cover and

1:35:09To me that's why they kept bringing up the MacBook Air or not Mac

1:35:14Yeah MacBook Air not the iPad that they weren't talking about iPads

1:35:17Really they were talking about the MacBook Air that they're saying if you want to do work

1:35:21This is the form factor, you know and like the way I put it is that they're saying this tablet form factor

1:35:27Isn't just for iOS type devices media

1:35:30Simplified well and not just media stuff but simplified one thing at a time a

1:35:35Simple system that anybody can kind of get the gist of you know, you you tap an app

1:35:41You're in the app you tap home you go back to your apps and that's it

1:35:44They're saying this form factor is useful for more complicated systems like Windows

1:35:51Or you know in theory now Microsoft isn't saying it but in theory that they're there they're by implication

1:35:57They're saying that Apple is wrong

1:36:00Not to be doing a Mac OS device in this form factor. Yeah, and that this is your next laptop. It's this

1:36:07Tablet right that Apple Apple's stance is that the form factors are tied to the complexities of the systems

1:36:15That the simple tablet form factor is meant for the simple iOS

1:36:21interface and that the more complicated MacBook form factor with the attached

1:36:27keyboard and a trackpad and this layer of abstraction between the trackpad and

1:36:32the pointer on screen is inherently suited to the more complex OS Mac OS.

1:36:37Yeah. And Microsoft is saying that I you know that to me is what I took away from

1:36:41it is they're saying no this form factor is the future of portable computing for

1:36:46any level of complexity. Yeah and then well the trick the trouble I had with

1:36:50that was that the minute they got into anything

1:36:53rather complicated,

1:36:55immediately the stylus came out and the keyboard.

1:36:57So is that better than just a keyboard

1:37:02that's not a touchscreen?

1:37:05I suppose for some applications it is,

1:37:08like you linked to the people drawing on it

1:37:11and that kind of stuff.

1:37:12I don't know if that's better

1:37:16than a purpose designed drawing tablet,

1:37:20like one of the Wacom, Wacom, whatever they're called.

1:37:23- Yeah, long term though,

1:37:24what I've always thought about with that,

1:37:26and yeah, Wacom and I forget who else,

1:37:28and apparently the Surface is really good for this.

1:37:32I think it's Gabe, the Penny Arcade guy who's the artist,

1:37:35who's been using one for a while,

1:37:36and he has got the Surface Pro 3 right away

1:37:39and says it's really good for precision drawing

1:37:43in a way that the iPad screens are not precise like that.

1:37:48But there's nothing that stops Apple

1:37:50from eventually making an iPad that has a screen

1:37:53that is that precise.

1:37:55And I don't think they'll ever ship with a stylus,

1:37:58but they could make one

1:38:00that you could get a third party stylus

1:38:02that would have professional level precision.

1:38:05- Yeah, I actually bought a Kickstarter stylus

1:38:08that was the most precise iPad stylus I've seen so far.

1:38:13Very small tip.

1:38:15And it's all right,

1:38:16but I just don't really have any use for it.

1:38:18I never use it, but--

1:38:20- Syntec, is that the other one?

1:38:23It's like a, I think the Pixar people use.

1:38:26- I don't remember.

1:38:27Oh, cool.

1:38:28Yeah, so that's, I don't know.

1:38:30I'm not sold on that.

1:38:33I'm not sold.

1:38:34And I'm sure there, my guess is that this will be

1:38:39the most successful tablet PC ever made

1:38:43because that's basically saying that more than 20 people

1:38:47but when I think about writing a lot

1:38:52or building a document in a spreadsheet program

1:38:57or doing graphic manipulation,

1:39:01I'm still much happier with a keyboard

1:39:04and a real trackpad than what they're shipping.

1:39:09That's not to say that they can't keep improving it,

1:39:12but it just like that,

1:39:14that keyboard still feels like a cheapo add-on keyboard

1:39:18relative to the real rigid kind of bottom half

1:39:23of a good laptop.

1:39:25- Let me just stop right here

1:39:26and cut off all the people

1:39:27who are probably already halfway through emailing me.

1:39:30Cintiq, C-I-N-T-I-Q is,

1:39:35it's a line of touchscreen tablets from Wacom.

1:39:40- Oh, cool.

1:39:41That's that that's that's what I was thinking of but that's why you thought Wacom. It's Wacom's line of touchscreen tablets

1:39:48Do you think they would do that Apple would do a touchscreen?

1:39:51Mac OS device whether it's a

1:39:55Macbook thing with no

1:39:57Yeah, I really think no. I think we're I think we're more likely to see a laptop

1:40:03iOS device than

1:40:06Touchscreen Mac, huh? Interesting. I just you know what though? Well, I

1:40:11I don't think that they'll announce the hardware next week, but that's something to keep an eye on when they show us Mac OS 10.10 is look at what

1:40:20Ah, the chips?

1:40:21Well, no, look at how big the screen the elements are on screen

1:40:25Are they spaced in such a way that they look like they're amenable to big fat fingers?

1:40:30Ah, interesting. Yeah, because

1:40:32Mac OS as we know it is totally, totally horrible for fingers

1:40:36Like just the simplest thing like the red yellow green buttons in the windows for yeah closing not gonna happen

1:40:44Well, they're so close to each other you'd know nothing on iOS is ever that close to each other because you're they're all right next

1:40:50I mean

1:40:51I'm looking at a Safari window right now and the close button the minimize button and the back button are all

1:40:57You know within all of those three buttons are all within the target area of one button. That's the size of my fingertip, right?

1:41:04Yeah, and the menu the little icons in the menu bar, you know with the

1:41:09Sound and the Wi-Fi and that kind of stuff. None of that would really be right and

1:41:14Combine it. Yeah combine it with the file menu like the top window in Safari on my Mac right now

1:41:20The the close button is right under the file menu

1:41:23So there's actually three touch targets for touch targets that are all within you know

1:41:29- With drastically different consequences.

1:41:32- Right, right.

1:41:33- Open and do, oh, I didn't mean to close that whole app.

1:41:36Yeah.

1:41:37- Right, it would be a recipe in frustration

1:41:39if they just turned on touch.

1:41:41They'd have to resize everything and it would just be,

1:41:45I'm not saying it's impossible,

1:41:46but you'll be able to tell just by looking at iOS 8

1:41:49if it's designed with future touch in mind.

1:41:53- Yeah, that's interesting.

1:41:54And if they were to ever converge them into one,

1:41:59whether it's fully the same operating system

1:42:02or at least the same look and feel,

1:42:05that's where we would start to see the cues there.

1:42:09I thought you were gonna say,

1:42:10look and see if it'll run on non-Intel ARM chips.

1:42:15- Well, we wouldn't be able to know that.

1:42:17- Yeah, they're not gonna mention that.

1:42:19- I will eat my hat if they don't have a version

1:42:21of Mac OS X running on ARM chips,

1:42:24probably in the same freaking lab where they used to have.

1:42:27That's how Tim Cook's MacBook Air lasts all the way to Taiwan or whatever.

1:42:32Right. They'd be nuts not to have it compile, especially now. I bet.

1:42:36And maybe they couldn't do it. In fact, I was thinking about it.

1:42:40Maybe they couldn't do it until the arm went 64 bit with the last year's

1:42:45devices because Mac OS 10 had already gone 64 bit and there was no way they

1:42:50could keep 64 bit Mac OS 10 running on 32 bit arm chips.

1:42:55But now that they have 64-bit ARM chips,

1:42:57if they don't already have it running,

1:42:59they're full steam ahead making it running.

1:43:01- It's on.

1:43:02- But we won't know that because in the same way

1:43:04that we never knew that iOS 7 was gonna be 64-bit

1:43:09until they shipped those devices,

1:43:12till they announced the iPhone 5S,

1:43:13because the versions, the betas they shipped

1:43:16starting at WWDC last year and all summer long,

1:43:19they just shipped 32-bit betas.

1:43:21And they never--

1:43:22- And nor did we know that there would be

1:43:23an Intel version of macOS.

1:43:25- Right.

1:43:26- Versus the old PowerPC chips.

1:43:28- Right, 'cause they just never distributed

1:43:30outside their internal lab.

1:43:32Hey, so speaking, I mentioned before about the fact

1:43:34that everything's mostly ones and zeros,

1:43:36but I do have a physical thing to announce,

1:43:39which is the live version of the talk show.

1:43:41I said this in the last episode.

1:43:43- Whoa.

1:43:44- I would have ticket information.

1:43:45I've done this--

1:43:46- Oh, okay.

1:43:48I thought this show was live and then we had an audience.

1:43:52- Oh, God, no, I would never do that.

1:43:54- Oh cool, you launched a new podcasting suite.

1:43:57Nice, man.

1:43:58- No, it's a live event next week in San Francisco.

1:44:02Tuesday, six to nine p.m. at Mezzanine,

1:44:06which is right there on, what's it, Mint Square,

1:44:10or whatever the hell it's called.

1:44:11I don't know.

1:44:12Well, the address will be on the website.

1:44:14Here is where you go.

1:44:15This is the announcement for ticket information.

1:44:17Selling the tickets on a new system from my friend

1:44:22Paul Campbell, the guy behind the Wool Conference, Tito. So you go to ti.to, super short domain

1:44:29name, ti.to/daringfireball. And right now, as soon as--if you're listening to this, you

1:44:36can go and you'll see a link to the talk show live from WWDC and you can buy tickets. It's

1:44:44going to be a limited space. We sold out pretty quickly last year, same facility. I think

1:44:50have at least 350 tickets, maybe more, but probably 350 to start.

1:44:56So if you're hearing this now, you should go and check it out if you want to come.

1:45:01And anybody can go.

1:45:02You don't have to be a WWDC attendee.

1:45:03I think most people this year don't have badges.

1:45:06Yeah.

1:45:07Do you?

1:45:08It's complicated.

1:45:09Okay.

1:45:10Don't ask.

1:45:11I have been told that I will have a press badge for the keynote.

1:45:18And I don't have a paid attendee badge.

1:45:21- Okay, got it.

1:45:22- But we'll see.

1:45:23- I'm gonna scalp some tickets to this thing now

1:45:25'cause it's gonna sell out by the time anyone--

1:45:27- Are you going?

1:45:28You're gonna be in San Francisco?

1:45:29- No, I'm actually gonna be in Seattle that day

1:45:31because Quartz is having a conference there.

1:45:34- Monday and Tuesday?

1:45:36- Monday, and then I'm actually spending Tuesday in Seattle

1:45:40and then coming back.

1:45:41I should have gone to San Francisco from Seattle.

1:45:46But I've been to the one that you did two years ago

1:45:48and it was super fun, it was really great.

1:45:50- Last year's was better at-- - Cable Sasser, right?

1:45:52- Yeah, two years ago it was Cable Sasser

1:45:54and last year I had Guy English.

1:45:56Better facility, we're at the same place

1:45:58we were last year, Mezzanine.

1:45:59More seats, better acoustics, it's a really great place.

1:46:05It's gonna be an open bar, everybody, you know,

1:46:08you can enjoy any adult beverage of your choice.

1:46:11Top shelf liquor, we're gonna have great sponsors.

1:46:15Although I think the bar sponsorship is still open, so anybody who wants to sponsor it,

1:46:20I'll be promoting this on Daring Fireball this week, should get in touch with me through

1:46:25the usual channels on the website.

1:46:29So we're still looking for a sponsor for the bar.

1:46:32And special guests, special guests this year at this live show.

1:46:37This is amazing.

1:46:38I don't know how it's going to work, but I'm going to have the whole ATP crew.

1:46:44Arment, John Siracusa and Casey Liss. Oh yeah yeah Casey Liss all three of them

1:46:57will be joining me on stage at the beginning of the show for the nerd the

1:47:01nerd part we're gonna talk about the day before his news at WWDC and then and

1:47:06then my pal Scott Simpson's gonna come on and and lighten it up a little bit

1:47:10And musical guest dr. Dre musical drink musical guest dr. Dre everybody will get a free pair of Beats headphones. Yeah

1:47:18Cool. Well, that sounds fun. I'm bummed. I'm missing it but Tito ti.to

1:47:24Slash during fireball and if you're in Seattle come to the courts

1:47:3069 Tuesday in San Francisco

1:47:36So there will be that that'll be the show part come out tomorrow

1:47:39So you'll have one week in advance to make your make your get your tickets

1:47:43Anything else no, that's good. It feels like a Memorial Day. Yeah. Happy Memorial Day to you happy

1:47:51Congratulations on the new gig always good to see you writing more. I'm excited

1:47:56I've kind of have had a lot of thoughts in my head over the last six months that have been too

1:48:02Kind of busy lazy to express so now I have to do it and you know, can I just say a big picture?

1:48:07I've been doing this for a while during fireball and even the talk show

1:48:11I

1:48:11Am more excited about what's going on in all this stuff that we talked about this year than I've been in a long time because I

1:48:18Feel like I don't know. I feel like there's a lot a lot of turning points. I

1:48:22Agree, I had less the last I would say the second half of last year

1:48:27I was super bored.

1:48:28Like I just did not really,

1:48:30I was almost offended by kind of how little progress

1:48:34was going on, but I don't know what,

1:48:36maybe it's just the spring after an awful winter,

1:48:41but I'm really, I'm excited.

1:48:43I think there's a lot of,

1:48:45and I hope I'm not disappointed by what ends up

1:48:48coming out of it, but I think that Apple in particular

1:48:51and other companies, Google and Microsoft and Amazon

1:48:54and even Facebook and Twitter are in a position

1:48:57to really do some cool stuff now.

1:48:59So I hope they don't disappoint.

1:49:02- I compare it to 2007 when the iPad,

1:49:05our iPhone first came out and nobody,

1:49:07we knew it was awesome.

1:49:08It's a little different 'cause there's not one device

1:49:10that to me has centered our attention.

1:49:13But it was like, we just didn't know where it was gonna go.

1:49:17It was clearly going somewhere new

1:49:19but we couldn't tell where.

1:49:21And I kinda have that feeling--

1:49:21- Right, we knew there was a phone coming

1:49:23but we didn't know how drastically new it was gonna be.

1:49:27- I feel that way with the interface stuff for Mac OS X,

1:49:30I feel that way with the health monitoring stuff

1:49:33that everybody says is coming to iOS.

1:49:35So it's coming and it feels like it's cool ideas,

1:49:38but I can't tell where it's going.

1:49:40And so I feel like it's a very exciting time

1:49:42to be writing about and talking about this stuff.

1:49:45- Me too.

1:49:46- Yeah, all right, well thank you, Dan.

1:49:48- Yeah, thank you.

1:49:49- QZ.com.

1:49:50- QZ and @fromdome on Twitter

1:49:52where you can sound off and tell me I'm a moron.

1:49:55- Right, what do we ask people?

1:49:56We want them to send us their, oh, programming on,

1:49:59if you have any ideas for--

1:50:00- We had nuke tips for early coding.

1:50:03- Yeah, like hypercard type stuff like Kodiya

1:50:06and stuff like that, like ways that you can

1:50:07teach yourself programming on iOS.

1:50:10- Awesome, thank you everyone.

1:50:11- Yeah.

1:50:12- Thanks, John.

1:50:13- I'm hitting stop.