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The Talk Show

3: Superman Didn’t Even Make His Own Logo, with John Moltz

 

00:00:00 ◼   ► "Only if you're desperate" - 2 stars.

00:00:03 ◼   ► Love Gruber on MacBreak Weekly, but this show is very slow and the content is iffy compared

00:00:08 ◼   ► to other tech shows.

00:00:10 ◼   ► Just my opinion.

00:00:11 ◼   ► By Jackdaddy5462.

00:00:15 ◼   ► Nearly content-free - 2 stars.

00:00:17 ◼   ► By Imabuddha.

00:00:19 ◼   ► Unfocused, surprisingly incorrect about many details, a nearly complete waste of time.

00:00:27 ◼   ► Was the Buddha so critical?

00:00:29 ◼   ► I don't know a lot about Buddhism, but I know a little bit.

00:00:34 ◼   ► Here's a review of the last episode by Sam Hill.

00:00:38 ◼   ► Gosh, I'm not exaggerating, that was written in all caps.

00:00:41 ◼   ► That's me reading in my all caps voice.

00:00:44 ◼   ► Gosh, what a waste of time.

00:00:46 ◼   ► Give me a break.

00:00:47 ◼   ► You guys talk about yourselves, your show, and your sponsors for the majority of the

00:00:51 ◼   ► time.

00:00:52 ◼   ► Completely self-absorbed trite crud.

00:00:58 ◼   ► Totally without direction.

00:00:59 ◼   ► a two-star review by CM Harrington. The hosts sound almost identical and their short run

00:01:06 ◼   ► length is taken up by rambling about their sponsors. In the latest episode, the hosts

00:01:11 ◼   ► arrogantly say the listeners who want more focus don't get it. No, John, we do get it.

00:01:18 ◼   ► We simply don't like it. There is a reason most "professional" podcasts This Week in

00:01:24 ◼   ► Tech, MacBreak Weekly, etc. conform to a formula even if informally because there

00:01:31 ◼   ► is an expectation on behalf of the listener. We want to know who is talking,

00:01:34 ◼   ► we want the topics to be front-loaded, we don't want 10% or more of the podcast to

00:01:39 ◼   ► be rambling about your sponsors. And lastly, Could Be Better, three stars, nice,

00:01:46 ◼   ► out of five by Neri. John Gruber is Tomas de Torquemada to Paul

00:01:53 ◼   ► Thurat's Don Quixote. When it comes to thoughtful and authoritative commentary

00:01:58 ◼   ► on technology, the world of Apple would be a cold and vulnerable place without

00:02:01 ◼   ► his insightful observations. That being said, the podcast is underwhelming due to

00:02:06 ◼   ► its subpar production values and planning. There are a lot of dead air,

00:02:12 ◼   ► um's as off-topic remarks that stretch for a long time and other minor annoying

00:02:17 ◼   ► things which could hopefully be fixed in future episodes wait a minute

00:02:22 ◼   ► yeah shoot I blew it these reviews are all from the old talk show these are all

00:02:33 ◼   ► - these are how did that happen I don't know

00:02:37 ◼   ► hold on a goof on your part let me get to the page for the new what a terrible

00:02:42 ◼   ► goof here we go here's the new here's some reviews for the new talk show new

00:02:47 ◼   ► listener four stars by Iannic I thought episode one was pretty good I really

00:02:52 ◼   ► don't mind the quote rambling as some call it fun listening here's one yeah I

00:02:57 ◼   ► was gonna say I was wondering how many people who write those reviews are just

00:03:01 ◼   ► simply don't like you I don't know I wonder here's another one by Patrick I

00:03:07 ◼   ► Igo, seems like one of the rare individuals who puts his name on these.

00:03:12 ◼   ► One star review, rambling, painful recording quality.

00:03:15 ◼   ► If you've ever wondered whether Dan Benjamin was critical to the talk show, now you know.

00:03:20 ◼   ► He was.

00:03:21 ◼   ► The new guy can't keep Gruber on track and seems to record himself through his built-in

00:03:26 ◼   ► laptop mic.

00:03:27 ◼   ► Okay.

00:03:28 ◼   ► All right.

00:03:29 ◼   ► That was not my built-in laptop mic.

00:03:31 ◼   ► It was, however, a microphone on the wrong setting.

00:03:35 ◼   ► So today, and to the person who insinuated that I did not have enough money to buy a

00:03:40 ◼   ► good mic, I actually have two mics, and today I'm using the better of the two, which is

00:03:45 ◼   ► slightly trickier to set up.

00:03:47 ◼   ► But I went the extra mile today, and I should have gone the extra mile the last time.

00:03:52 ◼   ► And I should say this is a…

00:03:53 ◼   ► So that's a spot on criticism.

00:03:55 ◼   ► I'm joined again by my good friend John Moltz.

00:03:58 ◼   ► I'm John Gruber.

00:03:59 ◼   ► This is the talk show, the new talk show.

00:04:02 ◼   ► Let me read one more of these.

00:04:05 ◼   ► This is, this is for the new one. This is for, uh, this is from Jim Lipsie. "Amateurish,

00:04:09 ◼   ► one star. No one knows his subject matter as well as John Gruber. When he's focused

00:04:13 ◼   ► and on point, it's great listening. Dan Benjamin is why the show used to consistently reach

00:04:17 ◼   ► its potential. He kept things on track with just the right amount of conversational tension

00:04:22 ◼   ► and he made it look easy. Now Gruber is trying out the driver's seat in a format that features

00:04:27 ◼   ► rotating guests and the whole thing has become a meandering mess. It's exactly like listening

00:04:32 ◼   ► to two guys bs each other at the next table at Starbucks for 90 minutes hmm I

00:04:38 ◼   ► see that I see a pattern from the old reviews but maybe that's just me

00:04:43 ◼   ► there's a good one full of hot air one star by Donald Rabideau it was good when

00:04:49 ◼   ► Dan Benjamin was on it now it's just Gruber stroking his own let go oh you go

00:04:56 ◼   ► Oh, I got you good because I I didn't want it to pay extra my wife when I told

00:05:03 ◼   ► her two weeks ago and you know big I mean that was a big deal I mean it was

00:05:07 ◼   ► the first episode of the newly relaunched talk show and she said who's

00:05:10 ◼   ► gonna be on and I said moltz and she was like oh my god that's great perfect

00:05:15 ◼   ► choice and then last week she was like who's who's on I said sandwich and she

00:05:19 ◼   ► goes she like plopped and then this week yeah she said who's on and I said moltz

00:05:23 ◼   ► and she says him again thanks for as well all your listeners thanks for being

00:05:32 ◼   ► here sure so what do we got this week I think probably the big thing if you're

00:05:36 ◼   ► an Apple Apple nerd has got to be Tim Cook's appearance at all things D uh-huh

00:05:41 ◼   ► so you know that's the big conference out there in California I think it's in

00:05:46 ◼   ► Southern California I'm not even sure where that is yeah it is it's someplace

00:05:49 ◼   ► in Southern California sand sand something yeah that's everything isn't

00:05:54 ◼   ► everything right everything in sudden yes exactly

00:05:56 ◼   ► sand something California Tim Cook I think it's actually that it's sand

00:06:01 ◼   ► something which is Spanish for something else actually and they you know and

00:06:10 ◼   ► that this is the only conference that I can ever recall that Steve Jobs ever

00:06:13 ◼   ► regularly appeared at that was not an Apple thing like Macworld or WWDC. And in fact,

00:06:21 ◼   ► they did a very – what I think is a very nice thing is they packaged up his six previous

00:06:25 ◼   ► appearances and they've made them available as high quality as they could get them free

00:06:29 ◼   ► of charge as like a podcast on iTunes.

00:06:32 ◼   ► Going back to 2003 or something like that or 2002, I forget which. But yes, so pretty

00:06:38 ◼   ► far back. I've seen a number of them, but I have not seen them that far back. So, I'm

00:06:43 ◼   ► to be interested to watch those.

00:06:45 ◼   ► Yeah, I think the older ones have got to be the ones that are most interesting.

00:06:49 ◼   ► Right.

00:06:50 ◼   ► Because, you know, Apple was a very different company in 2003.

00:06:53 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:06:54 ◼   ► Before the iPod.

00:06:55 ◼   ► Well, no.

00:06:56 ◼   ► The iPod was just – was pretty much brand new.

00:06:58 ◼   ► Yeah, you know what?

00:06:59 ◼   ► A couple of years.

00:07:00 ◼   ► A couple of years.

00:07:01 ◼   ► One of those weird things that I remember – I don't have a great memory for stuff

00:07:03 ◼   ► a decade ago, but I remember that the iPod is exactly as old as 9/11 because the launch

00:07:09 ◼   ► was apparently pushed back by a month because of 9/11 that they you know we're

00:07:14 ◼   ► gonna do it in September or so and they pushed it back to November so it's 2011

00:07:18 ◼   ► or 2001 did you buy one when right when it came out not for myself I bought that

00:07:25 ◼   ► first one though for Amy as a Christmas present and I think historically and you

00:07:30 ◼   ► know we've been together a very long time I believe that easily goes down as

00:07:34 ◼   ► maybe the greatest Christmas present I ever purchased that right for 99 I

00:07:40 ◼   ► believe yeah not bad I mean that's that's that's pretty good chunk of

00:07:43 ◼   ► change yeah cuz she's still have you had a still have mine what was the name of

00:07:50 ◼   ► that brand it was a solid stereo yeah I had one of those two it was a Rio and

00:07:56 ◼   ► she you know wore it to the gym and really liked it because you know you

00:08:01 ◼   ► didn't have to have it you know disc players were never good for like working

00:08:04 ◼   ► sound and tape players sound like crap. And we had the Napster, so we had tons of MP3s

00:08:10 ◼   ► and everything like that. But you got the Rio, and the Rio, I swear this is not exaggerating

00:08:17 ◼   ► for the sake of humor, it held eight songs. I mean, that's no exaggeration.

00:08:23 ◼   ► Add like 64K or something like that. Not good quality either.

00:08:29 ◼   ► Right. It was like 128 kilobit per second mp3s and it hold around eight to ten of them and

00:08:35 ◼   ► And the interface for getting songs in and off on and off of it from a Mac was just awful. I think until

00:08:42 ◼   ► That what was the app that became iTunes sound jam yes sound jam helped with that

00:08:50 ◼   ► But then getting her upgrading her to to a real original iPod was a huge one

00:08:58 ◼   ► She will also if you ever catch her if you

00:09:00 ◼   ► Catch her, you know at some place where you run into me and my wife and ask her

00:09:05 ◼   ► She will sing the praises endlessly of the original click wheel

00:09:08 ◼   ► The one that actually spun really

00:09:11 ◼   ► Just because of the physical feed the feedback. Yeah, she always enjoyed that she thought that was a

00:09:16 ◼   ► She's always been a much bigger iPod user than I was so hurt

00:09:20 ◼   ► She has much stronger opinions on the various iPods through the years than me

00:09:25 ◼   ► So Tim Cook at all things D. Yeah

00:09:28 ◼   ► My take on this I thought it was pretty interesting. I watched it. I read the live blog

00:09:33 ◼   ► And I think much like Steve Jobs he's he's good

00:09:38 ◼   ► You know and it's you know, it's an interesting choice and a huge score for that conference, you know for Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher

00:09:45 ◼   ► That Apple's CEOs two of them trust them so much to make this, you know, it truly is extraordinary

00:09:54 ◼   ► They don't really speak elsewhere. Tim Cook, I guess, speaks regularly at the Goldman Sachs

00:09:58 ◼   ► conference, so it's not quite as exclusive a get as it was for Steve Jobs, but it's pretty

00:10:05 ◼   ► exclusive. And I think they do a good job. But I also think that they waste an awful

00:10:10 ◼   ► lot of time asking him questions that they know he's not going to answer.

00:10:14 ◼   ► Right.

00:10:15 ◼   ► Like, if you've got Tim Cook on stage for 70 minutes, why keep repeatedly…

00:10:21 ◼   ► try to get information about new products out of them right I mean that's

00:10:27 ◼   ► a good I mean I guess they feel that they have to do that I mean it's sort of

00:10:30 ◼   ► like this it's the same thing on the quarterly conference calls where they're

00:10:33 ◼   ► constantly trying to get information about coming products and they say sorry

00:10:37 ◼   ► we're not gonna we're not gonna give you that information I mean I guess they

00:10:41 ◼   ► feel that that's their they have to they have to do that don't you think though

00:10:45 ◼   ► that they could get it out of the way and maybe all right you have to at least

00:10:48 ◼   ► acknowledge it and but you have to eat even if he comes back next year get it

00:10:51 ◼   ► out of the way early and just say you're not gonna talk about anything that's

00:10:54 ◼   ► coming are you and he'll say no and then that's it and then you don't really have

00:10:57 ◼   ► to to do it yeah I think they they sort of feel like that's the tough question

00:11:03 ◼   ► that they're gonna ask him I mean these things are not exactly controversial

00:11:08 ◼   ► adversarial it's not 60 minutes with my wall it's not and that's as that's as

00:11:13 ◼   ► tough as they're gonna get with him is trying to drill him on new products and

00:11:18 ◼   ► so they they try and do it I almost think that it's a waste of time though

00:11:23 ◼   ► and and I feel like he's actually and jobs too often is completely tight-lipped

00:11:29 ◼   ► about anything forthcoming but is surprisingly honest and to the point

00:11:36 ◼   ► about what they've done and why so for example just one recent I think

00:11:42 ◼   ► tremendous example that we're still going to be talking about repeatedly for

00:11:46 ◼   ► the next couple of years. That's the conference where Jobs gave his cars, trucks analogy.

00:11:54 ◼   ► That post PC devices like the iPad, he sees them and the iPhone, he sees them like cars

00:11:59 ◼   ► and he sees old traditional PCs, Windows and Mac as like trucks. And for a long time, all

00:12:05 ◼   ► we had were trucks, but it ends up most people don't need a truck. They're better off with

00:12:10 ◼   ► a smaller car and that's what people are switching to. They're more simple and people who really

00:12:15 ◼   ► do need trucks, there will still be trucks, but it's going to switch. And I think the

00:12:20 ◼   ► analogy is terrific. I think it is a very apt analogy, and it came at that conference.

00:12:26 ◼   ► And I think Tim Cook is similarly open.

00:12:28 ◼   ► Yeah. So, you think, I mean, you think it's just a waste of time for them to ask that

00:12:33 ◼   ► question. I agree that it is a waste of time for them to ask that question. I'm just saying

00:12:36 ◼   ► that that's probably their motivation.

00:12:39 ◼   ► Right. Our friend Mike Daisy is still at it. He was not happy with the interview with Tim Cook,

00:12:48 ◼   ► felt they should have been harder on him. Surprise, surprise regarding the Asian suppliers

00:12:57 ◼   ► and the working conditions there. I'm not opposed to some, I mean, I think in a way he's right, but

00:13:02 ◼   ► it's obviously not the venue for that. And obviously, what's going to happen is if they

00:13:09 ◼   ► they start asking questions that are these CEOs don't like they're gonna stop

00:13:14 ◼   ► showing up to those conferences right so in a way they're they're just doing it

00:13:20 ◼   ► because they have to in order to pull the conference off and get a bunch of

00:13:23 ◼   ► big names that they want right there's somebody somebody should be I agree with

00:13:27 ◼   ► him that somebody should be asking them those questions it's not obviously not

00:13:30 ◼   ► gonna happen at that conference right he actually lost in the lost in this point

00:13:35 ◼   ► that Mike Daisy has pretty much lost all of his personal credibility. He

00:13:41 ◼   ► actually has some decent questions that could have been asked as a follow-up.

00:13:46 ◼   ► Because I think the one thing, and Cook, you know, is absolutely right about this,

00:13:50 ◼   ► that Apple is leading the industry in this regard right now. No other company

00:13:54 ◼   ► that's in the same racket as Apple is open about the working conditions in

00:14:00 ◼   ► in their factories in China as Apple is.

00:14:05 ◼   ► And they're getting more aggressive about it.

00:14:07 ◼   ► Instead of doing annual updates, they're doing monthly updates.

00:14:10 ◼   ► And I think that's terrific.

00:14:11 ◼   ► I do think it's a step in the right direction.

00:14:13 ◼   ► And I think he was pretty open about the issues of manufacturing in the United States and

00:14:21 ◼   ► admitted – and I know this isn't a secret anymore.

00:14:23 ◼   ► That was an answer to a specific question about why they don't have factories in the

00:14:29 ◼   ► United States. Right. But he did. Which is not exactly the same question. Right. He made

00:14:35 ◼   ► a point of emphasizing that the Gorilla Glass that you use for the touchscreens is literally

00:14:40 ◼   ► made in the USA, not just designed in the USA. And the chips, the A5. Right. But I think

00:14:45 ◼   ► for the most part it was a pretty good interview. He also said, the big thing he said that I

00:14:50 ◼   ► took away was that there as a company doubling down on product secrecy. Yeah. That phrase

00:14:58 ◼   ► is slightly annoying, but –

00:15:01 ◼   ► Doubling down?

00:15:02 ◼   ► Doubling down.

00:15:04 ◼   ► Somebody pointed out – I wish I knew – I could remember his name.

00:15:06 ◼   ► Somebody pointed out to me on Twitter that he's doing an awful lot of doubling down.

00:15:09 ◼   ► Yeah, and he used it more than once, right?

00:15:12 ◼   ► Right.

00:15:13 ◼   ► They're also doubling down on Siri and I forget what else.

00:15:17 ◼   ► Maybe that might be the only two, but somebody said maybe you don't want to go play Black

00:15:20 ◼   ► Jack with James Cook.

00:15:22 ◼   ► It's like any two cards he gets, he's doubling down.

00:15:28 ◼   ► got a 15 against the dealer's King I'm doubling down sure yep they've got a

00:15:35 ◼   ► pretty good hand though well at least they have a big pile of chips in front

00:15:40 ◼   ► of them and that too so you can afford to double down when you have a gigantic

00:15:45 ◼   ► stack of chips but I do think I I do think it's true that secrecy if anything

00:15:53 ◼   ► and that's one of those things these these like what's going to be different

00:15:56 ◼   ► when Steve now that Steve Jobs is gone are they going to be less secretive or

00:16:01 ◼   ► people I know there were some people who were speculating that maybe they don't

00:16:04 ◼   ► want to be less secretive but people aren't going to be it was fear that kept

00:16:07 ◼   ► what the the planets in line you know fear of this Death Star you know where

00:16:13 ◼   ► the Death Star was Steve Jobs screaming at you and firing you the leaks will

00:16:19 ◼   ► happen but I from everything I've seen that has gotten more secretive over the

00:16:23 ◼   ► last year. Like the big one to me is Mountain Lion, that nobody knew that

00:16:28 ◼   ► Mountain Lion was coming until they briefed the press on it. There were no

00:16:34 ◼   ► rumors that hey you know Apple is actually gonna do 10.8 this year. Yeah

00:16:38 ◼   ► and you've pointed out I mean there's there seems there's a number of open

00:16:42 ◼   ► tracks at WWDC and nobody really seems to know what's going to be. No, we can

00:16:47 ◼   ► come back to that in a minute. Yeah. But I want to talk about the the rumor thing

00:16:51 ◼   ► The other thing, though, that is definitely true, and you see it this week with—I know

00:16:55 ◼   ► 9to5Mac had a bunch of images—the one thing that does leak is hardware, pre-release hardware,

00:17:04 ◼   ► because they just don't have as much control over that once it's in Asia and they're

00:17:08 ◼   ► prototyping stuff as they do the software.

00:17:11 ◼   ► The software in Cupertino, I think, is as secret as it's ever been.

00:17:16 ◼   ► You'd think that because that's the biggest vector for leaks that Digitimes would do better

00:17:21 ◼   ► than it does.

00:17:22 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:17:23 ◼   ► That actually is true.

00:17:25 ◼   ► That's their source.

00:17:26 ◼   ► I mean, why are you not actually capable of managing that better?

00:17:33 ◼   ► The best and most accurate source of leaks about forthcoming Apple products is the Asian

00:17:40 ◼   ► supply chain.

00:17:41 ◼   ► And Digitimes, which is based in Asia and pretty much covers the Asian supply chain,

00:17:46 ◼   ► is the least accurate and that's always their source and it's always what they

00:17:50 ◼   ► say what their sources are sources in the supply chain right I wanted to talk

00:17:53 ◼   ► about this with you the first episode and didn't get around to it because the

00:17:57 ◼   ► show is rambling and unfocused of course and I'm a bad host but and I'm a bad

00:18:04 ◼   ► guest so but you ran and I know that you you just because of that your your

00:18:10 ◼   ► history that you like me are in a way obsessed with Apple rumor sites and have

00:18:16 ◼   ► long been like from the 90s yeah but almost in a meta sense where almost

00:18:23 ◼   ► what's most interesting about them isn't the actual rumors it's the rumor sites

00:18:27 ◼   ► yeah it wasn't always like that for me I think during the 90s I read them

00:18:31 ◼   ► obsessively just because I really wanted to know what Apple was gonna release next

00:18:35 ◼   ► and I took them much more seriously back then than I do now.

00:18:40 ◼   ► The thing that always...

00:18:42 ◼   ► And it was different back then. I think it was easier to get actually to get good rumors back then.

00:18:46 ◼   ► Maybe.

00:18:47 ◼   ► Before Steve came back.

00:18:48 ◼   ► At least enough to keep some semblance of credibility.

00:18:54 ◼   ► Right.

00:18:55 ◼   ► You know, that if only one out of so many actually ends up turning out,

00:18:59 ◼   ► it's enough to keep people coming back it's that whole you know risk versus

00:19:06 ◼   ► reward type thing where you you all right I'm gonna read this rumor and hope

00:19:11 ◼   ► that it's true but I'm kind of taking a risk by wasting all my time reading all

00:19:16 ◼   ► these rumors and you want to get the payoff of actually having some of them

00:19:19 ◼   ► be accurate but it's what always shocked me though is that in the grand scheme of

00:19:24 ◼   ► things they were all even the ones that were good were mostly inaccurate you do

00:19:29 ◼   ► Do you remember one, I distinctly remember this and I have not been able to find it,

00:19:35 ◼   ► that Apple would come out with crank powered laptops.

00:19:38 ◼   ► I do remember that.

00:19:39 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:19:40 ◼   ► I definitely remember that.

00:19:41 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:19:42 ◼   ► And I have not, that seems to have been 86 and I can't look at them.

00:19:46 ◼   ► But yeah, it was 90s though.

00:19:47 ◼   ► That was, to me that was the pinnacle.

00:19:49 ◼   ► That was the late 90s and I was just, and that was I think the cracking point for me

00:19:53 ◼   ► where I, and that's how I ended up starting to make fun of.

00:19:59 ◼   ► I remember too, I remember that rumor and correct me if, I'm pretty sure that it was

00:20:03 ◼   ► also pitched as being a big deal for education.

00:20:06 ◼   ► Yeah, sure.

00:20:07 ◼   ► I'm not quite sure why because I think it had something to do with kids' desks not being

00:20:12 ◼   ► near power plugs.

00:20:14 ◼   ► Yeah, kids sitting under trees cranking their laptops up.

00:20:18 ◼   ► Begin your day with the Pledge of Allegiance and then you'd crank your laptop.

00:20:24 ◼   ► I guess it's not the craziest idea, but I do remember that one.

00:20:28 ◼   ► I remember it was somehow pitched as being a huge deal for schools that schools can't

00:20:32 ◼   ► can't get kids power plugs or something.

00:20:36 ◼   ► Budget cutbacks.

00:20:37 ◼   ► Yeah, well that was before the dark days.

00:20:38 ◼   ► No, there's no power.

00:20:39 ◼   ► None of the schools have power.

00:20:40 ◼   ► That was before the dark days.

00:20:41 ◼   ► Back then schools had money.

00:20:43 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:20:44 ◼   ► No, but you ran, in a sense, the only Apple rumors site that had a perfect record.

00:20:54 ◼   ► Because everything.

00:20:55 ◼   ► Perfectly wrong?

00:20:56 ◼   ► on the Crazy Apple Rumors site was completely made up.

00:21:00 ◼   ► Yeah. Yeah.

00:21:02 ◼   ► So did you ever have any on Crazy Apple Rumors that you made up but then turned out true?

00:21:07 ◼   ► I think so. The one thing, I mean, I wrote – it wasn't on Crazy Apple Rumors, but

00:21:15 ◼   ► I wrote this for Macworld during the – because they do this annual – and you do this. They

00:21:20 ◼   ► these annual predictions for the coming year.

00:21:23 ◼   ► And the one they did for the January 2007 issue, I said that Apple would release an

00:21:31 ◼   ► iPhone and it would have one button.

00:21:35 ◼   ► And that was, at the time, that was the craziest thing I could think of.

00:21:39 ◼   ► I just thought, "One button?

00:21:40 ◼   ► I mean, you can't have a phone with one button.

00:21:43 ◼   ► How stupid is that?

00:21:44 ◼   ► That's great."

00:21:45 ◼   ► And lo and behold, iPhone with one button.

00:21:49 ◼   ► That's kind of awesome.

00:21:50 ◼   ► Basically.

00:21:51 ◼   ► I do remember that.

00:21:52 ◼   ► That is actually spectacular.

00:21:55 ◼   ► That's my one claim to fame, and I repeat that every chance I get.

00:21:59 ◼   ► And don't you just hope, you really hope that a guy like Schiller happened to catch that

00:22:04 ◼   ► one?

00:22:05 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:22:06 ◼   ► Because he knew?

00:22:07 ◼   ► Oh, yeah.

00:22:08 ◼   ► He must have seen it.

00:22:09 ◼   ► He used to ... I don't want to ... I don't want to get into that.

00:22:12 ◼   ► You can say it.

00:22:13 ◼   ► No, you can say it.

00:22:14 ◼   ► He used to read the site.

00:22:15 ◼   ► He was actually a big fan of the site.

00:22:17 ◼   ► Crazy Apple Rumors.

00:22:18 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:22:19 ◼   ► would print, I mean, they would print out some of the good ones and post them on people's doors if

00:22:24 ◼   ► I wrote something about one of the executives. And I don't know how far it went. I don't know

00:22:29 ◼   ► which ones. At one point, he told me that somebody, I mean, some of them liked it and some of them

00:22:34 ◼   ► definitely did not like it. So, I always wondered which ones enjoyed it and which ones did not.

00:22:41 ◼   ► No, Piltz-Sholorak definitely has a good sense of humor.

00:22:46 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:22:46 ◼   ► There's no doubt about it.

00:22:47 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:22:48 ◼   ► And the thing that made cars so funny was that it was often, to me, it was the gist of each story was

00:22:56 ◼   ► about a crazy Apple product prediction or something that somebody in Apple was going to do. But what

00:23:02 ◼   ► made them funny was the way that they played off the way that the so-called serious rumors sites

00:23:07 ◼   ► presented their stuff. And the only other thing that struck me is that the thing that makes a

00:23:16 ◼   ► website popular. This is the thing I've learned running Daring Fireball, which is not and

00:23:21 ◼   ► has never been a rumor site, but I've always had this infatuation in my head of, "Well,

00:23:25 ◼   ► how would you run a rumor site that was actually accurate?" In some sense, for a couple of

00:23:29 ◼   ► years there, maybe that's what Daring Fireball was, was that I had "little birdies" and

00:23:35 ◼   ► almost everything I got from the little birdies ended up being true. But the way that I did

00:23:39 ◼   ► that is only printing stuff that I knew to be true. That meant that I don't…

00:23:44 ◼   ► Then you can't print enough.

00:23:45 ◼   ► Right.

00:23:46 ◼   ► I would only drop one of those things every couple of months.

00:23:50 ◼   ► And so if all there was at Daring Fireball were the rumors, it would be a ghost town

00:23:55 ◼   ► because it would be a site that was updated at best once every six weeks or something

00:23:59 ◼   ► like that.

00:24:00 ◼   ► And you can't run a website like that.

00:24:02 ◼   ► What makes a website successful is regular publication.

00:24:06 ◼   ► You'd have to have some other hook.

00:24:08 ◼   ► Some other.

00:24:09 ◼   ► You'd have to do news and rumors.

00:24:11 ◼   ► Right.

00:24:12 ◼   ► No, I mean, does anybody do... I mean, I guess there are some sites that will report on the rumors.

00:24:18 ◼   ► But it seems so haphazard and not...

00:24:21 ◼   ► Well, I think that's what makes arnoldkimsmackrumors.com so popular.

00:24:25 ◼   ► Actually, that's a good example, yeah.

00:24:27 ◼   ► Right? Arnold Kim had what I think is the best idea, which was to do a meta site where it's...

00:24:34 ◼   ► here's what's the rumors being reported elsewhere, here's their track record, and that's it.

00:24:40 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:24:41 ◼   ► But even Mac rumors if you look at just read it every day a lot of it is actually just news

00:24:47 ◼   ► You know it's like here's you know

00:24:49 ◼   ► Here's some new stuff that's going on in the in the community because you can't you just there's just not enough rumors to

00:24:55 ◼   ► Only have rumors and keep the site going right

00:24:58 ◼   ► unless you

00:25:01 ◼   ► Once you just make crap up like me

00:25:04 ◼   ► All right, let me thank our first sponsor our first sponsor is

00:25:08 ◼   ► pixel mentor

00:25:11 ◼   ► Pixelmantor is an inspiring, easy to use, beautifully designed image editor built to

00:25:17 ◼   ► help you create stunning new images and edit your existing photos on your Mac.

00:25:22 ◼   ► I'm just going to come out and say it.

00:25:25 ◼   ► Here's the thing.

00:25:26 ◼   ► It's like Photoshop, but it's 30 bucks and it's Mac only and it's built on all these

00:25:31 ◼   ► great Mac technologies.

00:25:34 ◼   ► And for years and years and years, and John, I think you'll agree with me.

00:25:37 ◼   ► People used to say, as Photoshop got more expensive, and Photoshop's a great app, but

00:25:42 ◼   ► it's very expensive.

00:25:43 ◼   ► Right now, a new copy of Photoshop from Adobe costs $45,000 for a single-seat license.

00:25:49 ◼   ► $45,000.

00:25:51 ◼   ► People would say, "Why can't an indie developer, why isn't there an indie developer out there

00:25:55 ◼   ► who's going to make something that competes with Photoshop?"

00:25:57 ◼   ► It doesn't have to do everything Photoshop does.

00:25:59 ◼   ► Just do most of it and do it really cool, put it in a beautiful Mac interface.

00:26:04 ◼   ► That's what Pixelmantor does.

00:26:05 ◼   ► It's a great app.

00:26:06 ◼   ► It's 30 bucks in the Mac App Store.

00:26:08 ◼   ► You can find out more at their website, www.pixelmator.com.

00:26:19 ◼   ► It has replaced Photoshop for me.

00:26:24 ◼   ► I used Photoshop originally and then that became too much for me and then I went to

00:26:28 ◼   ► the what's the their consumer Photoshop light something like that and and even

00:26:36 ◼   ► that was was too much and pixelmature is even less than that even more less

00:26:41 ◼   ► expensive than that it does everything that there as far as I know it does

00:26:45 ◼   ► everything that there the Photoshop light version does because that's all I

00:26:49 ◼   ► ever used anyway and I think I think that the the the short answer to the why

00:26:55 ◼   ► Why aren't there some indie developers doing a sort of stripped-down something like Photoshop, but far less expensive and Mac-specific,

00:27:04 ◼   ► was that there was just even just the rudimentary, just the least version 1.0 you could feasibly ship was just too much work for a small team,

00:27:15 ◼   ► And so, it's not that it's not a big deal, but it's a big deal.

00:27:20 ◼   ► And so, it's not that it's not a big deal.

00:27:22 ◼   ► It's not that it's not a big deal.

00:27:24 ◼   ► And so, it's not that it's not a big deal.

00:27:26 ◼   ► It's not that it's not a big deal.

00:27:28 ◼   ► And so, it's not that it's not a big deal.

00:27:30 ◼   ► It's not that it's not a big deal.

00:27:32 ◼   ► And so, it's not that it's not a big deal.

00:27:34 ◼   ► It's not that it's not a big deal.

00:27:36 ◼   ► And so, it's not that it's not a big deal.

00:27:38 ◼   ► And so, it's not that it's not a big deal.

00:27:40 ◼   ► It's not that it's not a big deal.

00:27:42 ◼   ► And so, it's not that it's not a big deal.

00:27:44 ◼   ► saying pixelmator. Let's find out. You want to bet five bucks on it? Sure, what the heck.

00:27:52 ◼   ► Alright. Like pixelmator, like the video game version of the truck from cars. Yes. What's

00:28:01 ◼   ► next? What about Windows 8? You wrote a piece for Macworld about Windows 8. Which I think

00:28:07 ◼   ► is hilarious. That was my hope. Right, that Macworld is running articles on Windows 8,

00:28:13 ◼   ► Which I think though is--

00:28:14 ◼   ► Oh, you just think that they ran it was funny.

00:28:16 ◼   ► Right.

00:28:17 ◼   ► But I do think though, I think that the arc of the industry in broad terms is that there

00:28:24 ◼   ► was sort of a, I think the Mac OS X era and the Windows XP era, starting around 10 years

00:28:33 ◼   ► ago, really kind of separated.

00:28:36 ◼   ► And Mac people were just Mac people and Windows people were Windows people.

00:28:39 ◼   ► I think a lot of Mac people just tuned out of Windows.

00:28:42 ◼   ► I mean, I've gone a long time without even touching a version of Windows.

00:28:45 ◼   ► It just wasn't even interesting to me.

00:28:48 ◼   ► I feel like with Windows 8 and with all these people switching to iOS, it's coming back

00:28:55 ◼   ► together and there's a lot of people – I think there's a lot more interest in Windows

00:29:00 ◼   ► 8 from Mac people than anything Microsoft's put out in a long time.

00:29:03 ◼   ► I think that's true.

00:29:04 ◼   ► I mean, heck, I was interested and I was not – I mean, I had to use Windows at work where

00:29:10 ◼   ► I worked and so I got to know it that way but I would never have gone out and

00:29:15 ◼   ► found out about it on my own probably and this version I think is there's a

00:29:20 ◼   ► lot there's like I said it's it's so vastly different from previous versions

00:29:26 ◼   ► of Windows that it's it obviates all that stuff that we as Mac users found

00:29:32 ◼   ► distasteful. Well give me an example. Well just the whole the whole metro

00:29:37 ◼   ► interface. So basically the fact that you could really use it without ever having to touch the

00:29:43 ◼   ► Windows desktop. Which is one of the things that we just never really clicked for us. So,

00:29:49 ◼   ► and there's some great things about it. I think there's some really nice things about the Metro

00:29:54 ◼   ► interface. And I would be interested to try it on a tablet. I don't have a tablet I could try it on,

00:30:00 ◼   ► But it's, there's some strange, strange anachronisms on a desktop device because

00:30:08 ◼   ► it seems really oriented towards a touch device. Right, that to me is, and I haven't

00:30:13 ◼   ► spent a lot of time using it, but it just looks to me like it is meant for a

00:30:20 ◼   ► tablet. Duh, I can see why. And it is definitely, all credit to Microsoft, I

00:30:25 ◼   ► repeat this over and over again, it is like nothing I've seen before. And I also

00:30:30 ◼   ► think a lot of people when the first Windows 7 phones came out which is the

00:30:35 ◼   ► same Metro basic UI style or Metro debuted on the phones I think a lot of

00:30:41 ◼   ► people looked at it in their first impression was this looks cool but it

00:30:44 ◼   ► almost looks like something that's meant for a bigger screen because the on the

00:30:48 ◼   ► phone Metro often has like if you have like a little left to right thing that

00:30:51 ◼   ► you can flip through the next thing to the right you see like the first I don't

00:30:56 ◼   ► I don't know, 15 pixels of it over there on the right edge.

00:31:00 ◼   ► Like it's sitting there to give you that visual clue that there's something over there.

00:31:03 ◼   ► But it almost makes it look like you're getting too tight of a crop on the interface.

00:31:08 ◼   ► It really looks like it was meant to run on a tablet.

00:31:12 ◼   ► I guess we'll find out.

00:31:13 ◼   ► Did you see this thing by this guy, Michael Mace?

00:31:16 ◼   ► Yeah, you sent that to me.

00:31:18 ◼   ► So that was the first I had seen it.

00:31:20 ◼   ► It's a great post.

00:31:21 ◼   ► It's long.

00:31:22 ◼   ► It's very long.

00:31:23 ◼   ► Very detailed.

00:31:25 ◼   ► I think I completely agree with it.

00:31:28 ◼   ► Right.

00:31:29 ◼   ► Here's the thing he says, and I write in the middle, but I think it's the most important

00:31:33 ◼   ► thing.

00:31:34 ◼   ► He says, "The most important message I want you to understand is this.

00:31:37 ◼   ► Windows 8 is not Windows.

00:31:39 ◼   ► Although Microsoft calls it Windows, a lot of Windows code may still be present under

00:31:42 ◼   ► the hood, Windows 8 is a completely new operating system in every way that matters to users."

00:31:48 ◼   ► Do you agree?

00:31:50 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:31:51 ◼   ► Well, I don't know about completely new operating system, but it is a largely new operating

00:31:55 ◼   ► system.

00:31:57 ◼   ► That was one of the points that I made in my piece is for enterprises, which is where

00:32:01 ◼   ► most of Microsoft's customer base or their biggest paying base, they are going to be

00:32:07 ◼   ► faced with a real challenge in implementing that operating system because they don't want

00:32:11 ◼   ► to have to go through and retrain everybody on how to use Windows.

00:32:19 ◼   ► A lot of them, they stuck on XP for so long that they, and then Vista came out and they

00:32:25 ◼   ► were like, "Oh, that doesn't seem to be working very well, so let's wait for the next thing."

00:32:28 ◼   ► They waited for Windows 7, and then a lot of them have just finished migrating to Windows

00:32:32 ◼   ► 7, and now they're faced with this thing that's completely new.

00:32:36 ◼   ► I think a lot of them are just going to give it a pass right now and see what happens with

00:32:39 ◼   ► the next version.

00:32:40 ◼   ► Yeah, I really wonder.

00:32:44 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:32:45 ◼   ► And it just seems like because it's like a tablet looking OS, it just seems like it would

00:32:50 ◼   ► be silly on like a 27 inch screen on your desk.

00:32:54 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:32:55 ◼   ► Just like it just doesn't seem like the iPad.