0:00:00Egg salad is not delicious.
0:00:02Salt and mayonnaise are delicious.
0:00:04That's what you're tasting.
0:00:04Egg salad is not delicious.
0:00:06- Egg salad is awesome, what are you talking about?
0:00:07- Egg salad's good.
0:00:08- Egg salad's fine, but it's not delicious.
0:00:10I wouldn't, I'm not gonna rave about it.
0:00:12That's ridiculous.
0:00:13- I wouldn't say it's delicious, but it's quite good.
0:00:14- Right, exactly, yeah, it's not delicious, see?
0:00:16- I went through several containers
0:00:18of your actual chicken salad, which is good.
0:00:20It's good chicken salad, but I also had egg salad
0:00:23to compare it with, and when it came time,
0:00:24like, you can tell, you know, like,
0:00:26if you feel like you don't have a preference,
0:00:27you can go either way, depends on what I'm in the mood for.
0:00:29when it came time to pick, I was kind of leaning towards the egg salad a lot.
0:00:31It's the yolks, man. That's what does it. It's the yolks.
0:00:34We should talk about t-shirts.
0:00:38All right.
0:00:39Yeah. So, uh, it was late breaking news, uh, after we had recorded that we were
0:00:44able to get everything squared away, um, between ourselves with cotton Bureau,
0:00:49who, um, who have been excellent so far. So many things to Jay and team at cotton
0:00:52Bureau. Um, we have two shirts up for sale in case you haven't heard or haven't
0:00:57looked. One of them, which we kind of call "Watches," is inspired by Ricardo Melo's tweet,
0:01:06and then Jay designed it as pixel art. As everyone expected, John has thoughts about this pixel art,
0:01:13but it's the three of us with our respective choices of wristwear. And then the other one
0:01:19is just kind of our logo shirt, which is a kind of combination of our automotive heritage and
0:01:25our current, our automotive and current and Macintosh heritage for those of us who are
0:01:32around in the Six Colors days, which is basically just John. So they'll be up for sale until what,
0:01:373rd of June, I believe? So as this episode is released, probably about another week.
0:01:43Don't delay, don't forget. I cannot tell you how many people have said after the last round of
0:01:48shirts went up, "Oh yeah, I just never pulled the trigger on ordering it. I just forgot."
0:01:54And so can you make them again? No, we can't. So pull the trigger as you're thinking of it,
0:02:00get yourselves a shirt if you want. I am really happy with this year's shirts, especially since
0:02:05up until like a week and a half before they went up for sale, we had no freaking clue what to do
0:02:10for shirts. So I'm really happy with them and you should buy one to support the show. So thanks,
0:02:15everyone who has bought one and everyone who will buy one. Yep, thank you. So far we haven't repeated
0:02:20any shirts. So again, the same thing. Like, I don't know, maybe from this year on we'll
0:02:26just repeat the same shirts over and over again. But so far we haven't repeated any.
0:02:29So if you like one of these shirts, don't assume I'll just buy it next year because
0:02:32it might not be the next year. Or it might. But anyway, same thing with hypercritical
0:02:36shirts that I sold just once and I still get people tweeting me to this day, years later,
0:02:40like "Oh, I missed out buying those shirts." And make no mistake, these are expensive t-shirts.
0:02:46Especially if you're shipping them far away.
0:02:49All podcast t-shirts are expensive.
0:02:50I know.
0:02:51I have literally boxes in the attic filled with podcast and website t-shirts.
0:02:58But they're cool to have.
0:03:00And in the grand scheme of things, they're actually pretty rare because who listens to
0:03:03weird tech nerd podcasts and then who buys a t-shirt for a tech nerd podcast?
0:03:07Not a lot of people.
0:03:08So it's kind of a shame we didn't make it for WODC, but I think they're fun shirts.
0:03:12And I had a question for you guys, but I haven't talked about this on Twitter.
0:03:17No one, I believe, has spelled out the visual metaphor of the ATP logo shirt.
0:03:23And I've been hesitant to do so because I feel like explaining it kind of makes it
0:03:28worse.
0:03:29But maybe I'm wrong.
0:03:30Maybe people would be more excited about the shirt if they understood what we were going
0:03:33for.
0:03:34So would you like to explain?
0:03:35Yeah.
0:03:36It's a pretty obvious connection if you're in the right mindset.
0:03:38But if you're not thinking that way, it might not occur to you.
0:03:40And of course, if you don't know anything about cars and you don't care, then explaining
0:03:43to someone who doesn't know anything about cars, it's pointless because they don't
0:03:46there, right? So I guess we're not explaining it then?
0:03:49No, feel free. Okay, well since I am the only current…
0:03:52Chief Summarizer in chief. Yeah, exactly. So since I am the only current
0:03:55BMW owner, this is a play on the BMW M symbol, which we'll put a link to that in the show
0:04:03notes. Basically, BMW M is their motorsports group, and so Marco's M5, which we've
0:04:09talked about ad nauseam on the show, and certainly was kind of the driving arc behind neutral.
0:04:15The way that logo looks is it's three colors and there's a story behind them.
0:04:20I think one was Bavaria, one was Texaco, which had a deal with BMW at the time that M was
0:04:26created, and one was just like a purple to kind of blend the two.
0:04:30So Jay at Cotton Bureau, completely on his own accord, like with zero input from us,
0:04:35thought, "Oh, well I can take the six colors from the original Mac and then do a kind of
0:04:42of stylized ATP and kind of blend our automotive history coming out of neutral and get that
0:04:49like old school Mac flair going and get kind of a mashup of the both.
0:04:54You keep saying Mac like those PC users who say, "Do you like Mac computers? Is Mac making
0:05:00an iPod now?"
0:05:01In all capitals.
0:05:02"Have you been to the Mac store?"
0:05:03In all capitals.
0:05:04I heard Mac makes phones now.
0:05:05I am sorry to offend you old man. What was the appropriate poem?
0:05:08the apple logo it's a rainbow striped apple logo it's a logo they had for like the first
0:05:13you know 15 or whatever years of the company's existence fair enough i i regret the error thank
0:05:18you and god i'm gonna get so many emails no i saved you from the emails now they feel like it's
0:05:22been addressed um my apologies for that but anyway the point being that it's a combination
0:05:27of the original apple logo and the bmwm logo or inspired it's not the original apple logo i'm
0:05:33I'm saving you again.
0:05:34The original Apple logo was that pen and ink drawing of the guy under the tree.
0:05:41It's like a coat of arms.
0:05:43Some emails.
0:05:44No, it's not a coat of arms.
0:05:46Anyway, Apple was selling t-shirts with the original Apple logo on them, along with the
0:05:51rainbow striped Apple logo and a bunch of icons and other stuff on their 40th anniversary.
0:05:56I tried to get some.
0:05:57I tried to have my minions in Cupertino buy them from the Apple store at Infinite Loop,
0:06:02but they were too late.
0:06:03out.
0:06:04Jared Ranerelle Actually, if we have minions there, I need
0:06:06somebody to get me some pens for TIFF, but yeah, let me know.
0:06:08John
0:06:33shirts this year.
0:06:34There are other t-shirt vendors that people use and
0:06:37that we have used that have overseas presses or printing or
0:06:41whatever you call it.
0:06:43We wanted to go a different route this year and try
0:06:46something different.
0:06:47And I really, really, really appreciate anyone from Europe
0:06:52or Asia or really anywhere other than North America that
0:06:55has bought one of these shirts, because I know shipping
0:06:57is just out of control.
0:06:59And I am sorry for that.
0:07:00But look at it this way.
0:07:01These shirts, I am super proud of them, and if it wasn't for Jay at Cotton Bureau, they
0:07:06would not look anywhere near as good.
0:07:09You should see the illustration Marco sent as a, like...
0:07:13You should save that as a great example of patent hands.
0:07:17Yeah, really.
0:07:19Just as an example of what we gave Jay with regard to the three hands or three wrists
0:07:25shirt.
0:07:26It's really bad.
0:07:27I mean, I wouldn't, I would have done worse.
0:07:28I'm not trying to, like, throw stones.
0:07:30I would have done a much worse job, but that illustration with respect Marco was pretty freakin bad and Jay made it
0:07:35Yeah, because because the best the best part about it is that he meticulously drew I'm assuming on the iPad
0:07:40Yeah, bro with like the pencil. He meticulously drew his watch cuz like that's what he cares about
0:07:45Hands misshapen mutant paddles. It's like hands hands. Whatever. I can't draw well you spent so long in that watch
0:07:54I get to see you like zooming in and carefully drawing the hands trying to draw your beautiful little Swiss
0:07:58whatever the hell watch it is, and then the hands are just a mess.
0:08:01First of all, that is not an exact representation of any of my watches, and I didn't take that
0:08:06long to draw.
0:08:07Well, it took longer than you took to draw the "hands."
0:08:11Well, yeah.
0:08:14So suffice it to say, look in the show notes, you can see Marco's original illustration
0:08:18to Jay, and we never told him pixel art or anything, he just took that upon himself and
0:08:23did a just killer job with it.
0:08:26So again, just to bring this back around and try to redeem myself as summarizer and chief,
0:08:31we are very sorry about the shipping costs.
0:08:33We really, truly are.
0:08:34And we are super appreciative of anyone to buy shirts, but particularly those overseas,
0:08:38because I know it is a big ask.
0:08:40And we really thank you.
0:08:43And hopefully if we do shirts again next year, we'll have some different mechanism for doing
0:08:47this, but no guarantees.
0:08:49We'll see how it goes.
0:08:51Moving right along, we should probably do some follow-up.
0:08:53up. Clace Jacobson, I'm so sorry, had written in, I don't know if this was via Twitter or
0:09:00an email, but they said, "After submitting a burst of 20 installs" — this is submitting
0:09:06an iOS app — "a burst of 20 installs from California occurs. This has happened recently,
0:09:11but did not happen between October and February." So perhaps there's some sort of automated
0:09:16testing going on when you submit to the App Store, more than just like the checking for
0:09:20private APIs and things like that.
0:09:22more recent or more rigorous or perhaps more timely automated testing.
0:09:28That's another theory that's not in the follow-up here that I heard a lot is that a lot of people
0:09:32under the impression, I'm not sure if it's founded or not, that the delays in review,
0:09:37like in the olden days, several months ago, you'd submit an application and it would take
0:09:41like a week or whatever to get through the review process.
0:09:44And a lot of people think that's because Apple intentionally doesn't look at your application
0:09:49for a long time as a form of training to make you think twice before you submit.
0:09:55Don't waste our time submitting your application
0:09:57if you're not super duper sure that it's ready to go up.
0:10:00And to teach you that lesson, no matter when you submit,
0:10:03we're just going to sit on it and do nothing.
0:10:04Even if we don't have anything else to do, even if we have the capacity,
0:10:06we're just going to intentionally ignore your app for a week
0:10:09just to teach you a lesson to say,
0:10:11"See, it's always going to take at least a week, so don't submit in haste.
0:10:14Always, you know, make sure your I's are dotted and your T's are crossed."
0:10:18That doesn't sound like something that makes sense to me
0:10:21for Apple as a business to do.
0:10:23Maybe, again, I don't know if these reports
0:10:27were based on inside information or testing or theories
0:10:30or whatever, or it was just a feeling they get,
0:10:32but that doesn't strike me as something that reasonable.
0:10:36Maybe if there was something like that,
0:10:37it would be like, we don't bother looking at your application
0:10:40for the first four hours to give you a chance
0:10:42to think better of it if you accidentally submit it,
0:10:44but I can't imagine them sitting on it
0:10:46not doing anything for a week.
0:10:47So I'm still thinking that the decreased review times have to be the result of something
0:10:55that Apple is intentionally doing because they want the review times to be shorter,
0:10:58not longer.
0:10:59Well, I mean, there was—so this past week on the talk show, Rene Ritchie was the guest
0:11:04with John Gruber.
0:11:05And Rene, they were talking about this, and you could kind of tell that Rene has information
0:11:11about this that he has heard.
0:11:13in the best Renee way, he basically suggests
0:11:17what the information is generally,
0:11:19what category it is, but doesn't actually tell you
0:11:23anything that would get him or anybody else in trouble,
0:11:24but it basically sounds like there was a significant
0:11:28management change in App Review,
0:11:31in some kind of, and this wasn't Phil
0:11:34taking over the App Store, I mean,
0:11:35it might have been related to that in some way,
0:11:37but it wasn't that change, but it was some other change
0:11:41happened further down the line in App Review that basically got some people out of the
0:11:47way who would cause holdups. And that is apparently, and seeing some policies, and that is apparently
0:11:54what the result of this was if you read between the very, very obvious lines that Rene drew
0:11:58on the talk show last week. So that I think is very interesting. Also, I agree with what
0:12:03you said, John. I don't think they were ever like artificially delaying things necessarily
0:12:08to a week because if they were, you would have never seen a review time less than a
0:12:12week and that wasn't true. If you would look at the history on that Shiny development site
0:12:18that was collecting all the stats from everybody, it fluctuated and sometimes it would go down
0:12:27to like six days, five days and then go back up. I think what instead was the case was
0:12:34We know that Apple is very performance metric driven
0:12:37these days, especially in the middle management levels.
0:12:40So I think they had just defined the performance metric
0:12:43to be 90% or more, or 95, whatever the percentage is,
0:12:47we want X percent of apps to be reviewed within a week.
0:12:50And we consider that success, so that whenever
0:12:52they would start getting way above that,
0:12:54and that number would start suffering,
0:12:56maybe they would add more staff,
0:12:58or maybe they would make changes
0:12:59to get that number back down.
0:13:01But it seemed like they considered that good enough
0:13:03for all this time.
0:13:04And so a combination of maybe changing that opinion,
0:13:07maybe changing that metric to something lower,
0:13:09as well as whatever this management change was
0:13:12that happened, that I think is very plausibly
0:13:16what went on here to cause app review times
0:13:18to drop from a week to less than a day.
0:13:21- It doesn't have to be like a week specifically,
0:13:23just the idea that there's excess capacity,
0:13:26that Apple could review your application,
0:13:28but instead, let's either decrease staffing
0:13:30or send people home early, or like,
0:13:33they're intentionally, like the delay is actually
0:13:35part of their policy with an intent.
0:13:37That's the theory, that Apple always could do this,
0:13:40but they were intentionally not doing it.
0:13:42That's slightly different than they had a metric
0:13:44that meant people got to go home without staying
0:13:46for overtime as long as they hit X percent,
0:13:48because I can imagine Apple being what it is,
0:13:50they probably staff so that the people had to work
0:13:52really, really hard to hit whatever the numbers were.
0:13:55They're not like overstaffing and then giving them
0:13:56a low goal and letting the people go home at three every day
0:13:58like that's not the way it's working.
0:14:00- Right, also the idea of automated app review
0:14:03or adding another automated step of app review
0:14:08before it gets to the humans.
0:14:09That I think has a lot of merit.
0:14:11It's not an easy problem to solve,
0:14:12but if you can have some kind of automation
0:14:15that basically just tries to push a bunch of buttons
0:14:18in an app, Apple has said on a number of occasions
0:14:21that the most common cause of app rejections
0:14:25is that the app crashes during review.
0:14:27So if they can automate a process
0:14:29where they just bring up an end of the app
0:14:32and just push some buttons and attempt to,
0:14:34in an automated way, basically guess how to use the app
0:14:37and just navigate to different screens.
0:14:39If they can cause a crash to happen during that,
0:14:42it never even has to get to a human.
0:14:44It can be rejected right then,
0:14:45go right back to the developer and say,
0:14:46all right, this failed, here, try again.
0:14:49And that could also result in a major time savings
0:14:52for the humans and therefore better throughput
0:14:54for the apps that get through that test.
0:14:57- Cool.
0:14:58So Drew Hanae wrote in, they said, among other things,
0:15:02it's always been pretty complicated to understand
0:15:04what exactly swiping an app out of recents
0:15:07actually does under the hood.
0:15:09Was this with regard to Android, actually?
0:15:11- It was on Android, 'cause we were asked last week
0:15:12about the Clear All button, like wouldn't it be fun
0:15:14to clear all, just got rid of the pictures on your screen,
0:15:16but did nothing to the processes.
0:15:17- We are now the premier Android podcast, by the way.
0:15:20- Sorry, Material.
0:15:22So anyway, so they said it's always been pretty complicated
0:15:24to understand what exactly swiping an app
0:15:25out of the recents actually does under the hood.
0:15:28One important distinction on Android is that the thing that
0:15:30shows up in your recent screen isn't actually an app, it's a task.
0:15:34And remember on Android, an app can have multiple tasks and recents at the same time, like having
0:15:39multiple Google Docs open at once.
0:15:41When you swipe away an app, it finishes the task, which tells the app that the user is
0:15:45done with that workflow and it doesn't need to worry about restoring that UI state.
0:15:49If the app is doing background work or has other open tasks, its process would not be
0:15:53killed.
0:15:54If there's no more open tasks or background jobs, swiping away an app will let the system
0:15:58know it is the option of killing the process, but it doesn't guarantee that it will.
0:16:01So the clear all button shouldn't have a dramatic effect on system performance on Android since it usually won't mean that all that processes
0:16:08are killed, but it does have the downside of losing any user state from their open tasks.
0:16:12That's very interesting to me that the way Android works because I didn't know most of that. And it was also interesting to me
0:16:19how many
0:16:20people who seem to claim or seem to view themselves as you know nerds nerds
0:16:26tweeted about how, oh yeah, I do that too, and I'm sorry, Jon, which I thought was quite funny.
0:16:33The only feedback that I saw that I thought was very interesting was people who said they wanted
0:16:37to clear it out, not for like battery, not for memory or anything like that, but just because
0:16:42they didn't want that view, that drawer, if you will, to have a bunch of things in it. They just
0:16:47wanted it to be clean, so they didn't have clutter there, which still to me seems a little bit
0:16:53peculiar but makes a lot more sense than thinking oh this is gonna save my
0:16:57battery or prevent something weird from happening. Well if they changed the iOS
0:17:01policy it'd be more like Android. Like an Android when you're when you're clearing
0:17:04these things it's explicitly not killing your application. Like if your
0:17:07application is running background jobs it lets them keep running right and it
0:17:10just gives it the all it's basically saying is when I relaunch that don't
0:17:14bring you back to exactly where I was. Which is still kind of punitive because
0:17:17it like you're punishing people for like I don't like the visual clutter so I
0:17:21I want to get the rectangles away, right?
0:17:23And there is a punishment for that,
0:17:25which is next time you launch that application,
0:17:26they won't remember where you left off.
0:17:28It will, you know,
0:17:28just bring it back to a fresh state or whatever.
0:17:32It would be nice if all these operating systems,
0:17:34I guess maybe either took this feature away entirely,
0:17:37in which case, like you just deal with the clutter,
0:17:39or gave people a way to like, like the new Android N,
0:17:43like, I don't know if it's hard coded to seven
0:17:45or if you can adjust it, but only show a certain number,
0:17:47so it never gets more cluttered than some small amount,
0:17:50you know, or just make it get rid of the pictures and do nothing else.
0:17:55And as Drew said, there is still of course an Android way to actually force quit to kill
0:17:59things.
0:18:00It's more deeply buried, but it's there.
0:18:02And as many people pointed out to us on iOS, there is another way to force quit applications
0:18:06besides flicking them up.
0:18:07You can also do the hold down the power button thing, but instead of swiping to turn off
0:18:10the phone, you hold down the home button.
0:18:12Or anyway, there are lots of ways to force quit things.
0:18:16the flicking up of the squares half of it is the force quitting habit and the the voodoo and
0:18:21Superstition about that and the other half is just people like things to be neat and tidy and both of those things have I feel
0:18:27like detrimental effects on the
0:18:29Experience of using the phone probably I would say more detrimental than the mental distress caused by having lots of rectangles
0:18:35But I guess that's up to each person to decide on their own
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0:20:24(upbeat music)
0:20:27- So there's been rumors about new MacBook Pros.
0:20:32They're coming eventually.
0:20:34- First of all, if you go back to the original article,
0:20:38I believe it clarifies that it's Q4
0:20:41of Apple's financial calendar that they are coming,
0:20:43which is July.
0:20:45- Oh, okay.
0:20:45- So the rumor is that in quote Q4 of this year,
0:20:50which everyone interprets to mean October through December,
0:20:55Apple will be releasing new MacBook Pros
0:20:57that are substantially redesigned
0:21:00so that they're gonna be thinner, they're gonna be lighter,
0:21:01they're gonna have the new Skylake CPUs,
0:21:04and they're gonna have a few other interesting changes
0:21:07we will talk about in a second. So before you before you move on, how confident are
0:21:12you about this whole Q4 confusion? Because when I read this article, my my overwhelming
0:21:16sense of sadness was like, Q4? Seriously? How long have we been waiting for the MacBook
0:21:21Pro to get updated? And now I have to wait until like the end of the year, like the fall
0:21:26and winter time. And then you telling me, oh, no, Q4 is not that it's a financial Q4,
0:21:30which is different. It makes me feel better. But how sure are you about that? Because I
0:21:33have to know how to feel before you move on to what these computers are going to be like.
0:21:38I'm just repeating what other people said, so maybe I'm not so sure.
0:21:41I don't know.
0:21:42Now I'm doubting everything.
0:21:43Anyway, all I can say is that if people can't get one of these things in their hands until
0:21:49the end of the year, that seems bad.
0:21:53You can blame Intel for a certain amount of the delay, but really?
0:21:57We can't get new MacBook Pros until the end of 2016?
0:22:00if I had told you at the end of 2014
0:22:03that there's not gonna be new MacBook Pros
0:22:05until the end of 2016, yeah, I don't like it.
0:22:08- Well, especially, I think it's made worse
0:22:10because of the fact that there was such this long delay
0:22:13with Intel's CPUs here that they're currently shipping
0:22:18basically three-year-old CPUs.
0:22:20Like the guts of the MacBook Pro that you buy today,
0:22:23there was like the one minor update in mid-2015,
0:22:26but it was a very minor update.
0:22:28It changed almost nothing about them.
0:22:30And so basically you're buying
0:22:32like two to three year old hardware today.
0:22:35- That's the curse of the Pro label, right?
0:22:37As soon as you put Pro on it,
0:22:38the CPU ages to be three years old in the market.
0:22:41I think that's the new rule.
0:22:41(laughing)
0:22:42- Yeah, which is, I mean like,
0:22:44cosmetics aside, I mean, you know,
0:22:45we can talk about cosmetics in a minute,
0:22:46but like, just the fact that Apple continues to sell
0:22:50really pretty ancient hardware by computing standards
0:22:53for so long now, you know, we talked about it before,
0:22:55like I know why some of these things are this way.
0:22:58I know that they generally wait until there's like
0:23:01a substantial CPU update from Intel
0:23:05and that those have been delayed in recent years,
0:23:07but that has to change because I know they do care,
0:23:12but when they let the hardware age for this long
0:23:15still at the top of the line,
0:23:16it looks like they don't care anymore about it.
0:23:18And again, I know they do care,
0:23:20but this is how it looks to buyers.
0:23:22This is how it looks in the market.
0:23:23It looks like Apple is just ignoring the Mac
0:23:25and letting these things languish.
0:23:27- Eh, I don't know if that's true.
0:23:29- It looks that way to nerds, to tech nerds.
0:23:31Other people don't even know what the heck is in them.
0:23:33But, I mean, we're a tech nerd podcast.
0:23:35- No, people do, people do research, you know?
0:23:37You gotta give people credit.
0:23:39They do their research, and when people are looking
0:23:41to buy an Apple computer, they go online and they look,
0:23:44and they find things like the MacRumors Buying Guide
0:23:46that says, like, all this stuff is three years old.
0:23:47Like, people do their research, they find stuff out.
0:23:50They know.
0:23:52- Anybody who finds the MacRumors Buying Guide
0:23:54is pretty far over into the computer nerd thing.
0:23:56It's a factor. I'm just saying like there is there is a whole other section of the population that never looks at that stuff
0:24:01But in the grand scheme of things even if they don't know they're still even if you don't know or care about the age of
0:24:06The CPU you are still affected by it because it essentially affects the useful lifetime of your computer because it is a three-year-old CPU
0:24:12Whether you know it or not and so three years later
0:24:15You're using a six-year-old CPU whereas if Apple kept up to date you would have more life left in your laptop
0:24:19and
0:24:21It's not as bad as spinning disk versus SSD where you're you know you sort of prematurely aged when you realize that everyone else
0:24:27Has SSDs, but you know maybe you can upgrade yours or whatever
0:24:30CPUs don't age your laptop as bad as other things
0:24:33But it's all cumulative and basically what we're what we're doing is here as people knowledgeable about
0:24:38you know the platform and the products is we're judging the products how good a product is this and
0:24:43You can't judge it to be a particularly stellar product if the innards are really old and out of date
0:24:50And as time marches on and competitor products get better innards for usually less or the
0:24:56same money, you have to judge Apple's products more harshly.
0:25:00And as other people might ask about computers, who might say, "Now is not a good time to
0:25:05buy the MacBook Pros because we think they're going to be updated soon."
0:25:08But if we've been saying that for two years, at a certain point we're like, "I don't know
0:25:12if it's bad advice or good advice."
0:25:13We're trying to kind of predict the future of like, you know, should you buy this or
0:25:16should you not?
0:25:17once it's a three-year-old CPU, even if new Mac approach didn't come out for
0:25:21another year, you can't really in good conscience tell people you should buy
0:25:27this computer because it's a great product. You could say you should buy this
0:25:29computer because it basically it's your only choice if you want a Mac laptop.
0:25:31Like you know, these are the laptops they sell and a whole bunch of them are
0:25:34better and compromised in a bunch of reasons, but if you need a laptop now
0:25:37you got to get one. But I can honestly say that this is not actually a stellar
0:25:40product, unlike say the 5k iMac which came out of the gate and was you know
0:25:44good in all the ways we expected it to be good, right?
0:25:48- Oh yeah, I mean like the 5K iMac has been fantastic.
0:25:51And that has, like that is, you know,
0:25:53it originally came out a year and a half ago,
0:25:55and then six months ago they made the updated version,
0:25:57and it's a fantastic computer.
0:25:59It has new up-to-date components.
0:26:02It was updated one year after it came out
0:26:04with even newer, even more up-to-date components.
0:26:06Like that is a healthy release cycle.
0:26:08- Yeah, you know, with regard to the date,
0:26:10something to consider is,
0:26:12And we're gonna get to some interesting new hardware tidbits
0:26:16in a second, but what if one of those hardware tidbits
0:26:19requires a major release of OS X,
0:26:21and that doesn't typically ship until the fall?
0:26:25So maybe it is the fall, because they need the software,
0:26:29and I know they'll do like a point release ahead
0:26:32for a lot of things, but I can't--
0:26:33- I don't think today's Apple is delaying hardware
0:26:35for software, except-- - Oh, absolutely they are.
0:26:38- Except for new devices like the watch,
0:26:40I know you're gonna say the watch,
0:26:41for laptops, I'm saying, even if they have a weird screen
0:26:45above the keyboard that we'll get to in a minute,
0:26:47they'll just work that into the old OS
0:26:50if they needed to ship them.
0:26:51They've done that so many times where some boring old Mac
0:26:55is ready to ship, but they would ship it with the new OS,
0:26:58but it's not available with it, so they'll end up shipping it.
0:27:01They usually do it with OS versions.
0:27:02They'd end up shipping it with Tiger,
0:27:07even though the leper was about to come out.
0:27:09And then people would get it.
0:27:10by the time they'd get it in the store,
0:27:12it would still have the old OS with it,
0:27:13and then you'd get it, and they would upgrade you
0:27:15for free or whatever.
0:27:16I don't think, especially with OS X,
0:27:18I don't think that's why they would be holding back
0:27:20this hardware to wait for the software.
0:27:22Unless there's some amazing new feature.
0:27:23- No, but here's this scenario here.
0:27:25All right, so the new laptop, suppose it has touch ID,
0:27:29like this report says, and everyone says
0:27:32there's gonna be Siri in new OS X.
0:27:34So suppose it has a touch ID button or surface
0:27:37or circle or something, maybe the power button, who knows?
0:27:39Somewhere there's a Touch ID thing there, right?
0:27:42And then also somewhere on the keyboard in the F in row,
0:27:45which we'll get to in a minute,
0:27:46in the F in row, maybe there's a Siri button,
0:27:48there is no OS X version until the fall
0:27:52that will support those things in all likelihood.
0:27:55The OS X version that comes out in the fall,
0:27:58they can't bring those things forward,
0:27:59or they won't bring those things forward,
0:28:01they don't feel like bringing those things forward
0:28:02to be released earlier,
0:28:03because the OS X version in the fall
0:28:05also has stuff that integrates with the iOS version
0:28:08that's coming in the fall,
0:28:09and the iOS version coming in the fall is tied to the iPhone hardware schedule, and
0:28:12the entire company is dictated by the iPhone hardware schedule.
0:28:15Yeah, that seems plausible. I forgot about the Touch ID thing, but the Secure Enclave
0:28:19is the other thing, like assuming there's a Touch ID thing that's probably a Secure
0:28:23Enclave thing, and that's, yeah. The screen, I say no, because the screen you can write
0:28:27a driver for in any OS, but the Touch ID and the security stuff, yeah. All right, well,
0:28:33that's crappy, but that's life. So that's it.
0:28:36So we've bounced off the outer atmosphere of the changes here, but we should probably
0:28:41talk about it.
0:28:42So it's going to be really Q4 probably.
0:28:44It's probably going to be like September, October.
0:28:46Okay.
0:28:47Fair enough.
0:28:48So there's apparently going to be a replaced f in row where all the f1, f2, f3, etc. keys
0:28:56are now little mini OLED displays.
0:28:58I'm not sure what to make of that.
0:29:00I feel like there was a keyboard that, like in the pre-Kickstarter days, but it was a
0:29:05Kickstarter kind of project where there was a keyboard that they wanted like the
0:29:09entire keyboard to have little mini displays on each key and the theory was
0:29:13which made a lot of sense to me it was the optimus keyboard was it okay by the
0:29:18art libid of studio yes yes that's right you're absolutely right did that ever
0:29:23ship yeah it was delayed for like years I think and it ended up being very
0:29:27expensive but I think it did in fact ship and now now there's like now like a
0:29:31a bunch of keyboards now do the exact same thing
0:29:33since then.
0:29:34- Yeah, so the idea being that all of these
0:29:37different displays can be reprogrammed.
0:29:38So think of sort of kind of having all the benefits
0:29:43of a keyboard on screen, like on a phone or tablet,
0:29:47but it's still a physical keyboard,
0:29:49but you can reprogram what the keys show
0:29:51and potentially what they do.
0:29:53And so I can see maybe you have,
0:29:56like on the current keyboards, the F, what is this,
0:30:00F8 key is play/pause. Well, maybe it's play/pause in Finder or by default, but maybe in other apps
0:30:07it does other things and it shows you right on the key like a little logo or
0:30:12maybe even a logo in the words as to what it does. So I can see this being neat,
0:30:17but I also am not sure that this is something I really need, but I'm anxious to see what they're going to do with it.
0:30:25What do you guys think? Marco, you have tweeted about this and don't sound too enthusiastic. Is that fair to say?
0:30:30say? Well, so the initial reporting of this rumor had it as the F and key row would disappear.
0:30:38Like the keys would no longer be there. It would just be one screen, not keys with screens
0:30:42on them, right? Exactly. That's the initial rumor was that it would be one long strip
0:30:47of OLED screen and it would be touch sensitive and so you would just like push it like it's
0:30:53a skinny iPad screen basically. If this thing is real and if that ends up being the way
0:30:59it's done, I don't like that very much, at least on principle. We'll see, you know, if
0:31:04they actually do something like that, we'll see how it turns out. I could change my mind,
0:31:08but I, and there was a good discussion about that particular rumor on Clockwise this week,
0:31:13today actually. So that I think, like, not having physical buttons to push there on this
0:31:20keyboard that you're probably not looking at, like, yeah, the keys in the F in a row
0:31:26are not that frequently pushed by most people.
0:31:28But for the people who do frequently push them,
0:31:31and the F&R includes some pretty important keys
0:31:33like escape, which is like your shortcut
0:31:35to cancel dialog boxes, which is kind of frequently hit,
0:31:38also frequently hit if you're a Vim user,
0:31:41among other things, a lot of programmers
0:31:43use it for code completion, so like,
0:31:45there are, and as you said, like the media keys,
0:31:48the volume up and down, the play/pause, the mute,
0:31:52anybody who uses the various things
0:31:55that used to be called Exposé that are now lumped into all these other things, and I
0:31:59always use F11 for show desktop, like, those things, those are very frequently hit by a
0:32:06good number of users, I think. And so if you remove those as keys at all, and it's just
0:32:11this touch surface that you need to, you pretty much would need to look at it to see what
0:32:16you're hitting, and you wouldn't get that physical feedback of a key press to know that
0:32:19that you did hit it correctly, that is,
0:32:24I really hope we never get to that point
0:32:26because there's a reason why in all these,
0:32:30all the effort that we've put into making things thinner
0:32:34and lighter and mechanically simpler and removing buttons,
0:32:37there's a reason we still have keyboard buttons
0:32:40on computers, even when you look at the MacBook One
0:32:44and you see we barely have keyboard buttons,
0:32:46but we still have keyboard buttons for a reason.
0:32:49And that is that when you are not looking,
0:32:51when you're typing blind, it is way easier
0:32:54and more accurate and faster and ergonomically better
0:32:56to have key switches that move up and down
0:32:58that you can feel when you push.
0:33:00So the idea of replacing this strip with something,
0:33:04with an OLED strip to accomplish various goals.
0:33:09The benefits here would be you could put stuff
0:33:13under that part and make, 'cause it would be thinner,
0:33:15I wouldn't need any kind of travel under it,
0:33:17and presumably the screen component could be very thin,
0:33:19thinner than a keyboard row could be,
0:33:21so you could shove more of the computer's guts or battery
0:33:24under that area, so you save something there.
0:33:27It would look cool, maybe, if it wouldn't look tacky,
0:33:31so you'd save, you know, you'd gain something there.
0:33:33- You could put banner ads on it.
0:33:35Oh, it's not a Chromebook, nevermind.
0:33:36- Yeah, there you go.
0:33:38Yeah, so like, you could see the reasons to do this,
0:33:40and I should point out also, like,
0:33:41and you know, you could use it for like status things,
0:33:43And PC laptops have had displays above the keyboard
0:33:47that show statuses of things for a long time.
0:33:50- Also on the covers and on the back and on the sides,
0:33:53there's been displays on every possible surface
0:33:54of PC laptops.
0:33:55There was a Windows feature they were touting
0:33:57like one or two or three years ago.
0:33:59They were like, the new Windows feature
0:34:00is like secondary screens on laptops
0:34:02and it's OS supported and basically PC manufacturers,
0:34:05go ahead, figure out where it's a good idea to put a screen
0:34:08and you just try to sell things like this
0:34:09and the iOS will support them
0:34:11and it doesn't seem like it really caught on that much.
0:34:12- Yeah, so anyway, Apple could do this that way
0:34:16with replacing the F&K row entirely with a screen.
0:34:20I hope they don't do it that way.
0:34:22Unfortunately, we've heard from a certain tipster
0:34:24that that's not how they're going to do it.
0:34:26That the tipster suggested that what he saw around
0:34:31was not that version of it, but was instead,
0:34:38you still had the physical buttons
0:34:41and the screen augmented the buttons in some way.
0:34:45So that, I'm hoping that is correct,
0:34:49and that I wouldn't mind.
0:34:50If Apple does this right, I think it's gonna be fine.
0:34:55I really hope they don't get rid
0:34:56of the entire F in key row itself,
0:34:58'cause I really want those keys to be there,
0:35:00but I don't really care how they're labeled.
0:35:02- I've got an idea.
0:35:03You could sell an external keyboard like this
0:35:05and call it the Apple Extended Keyboard,
0:35:07and then finally Apple would sell a keyboard
0:35:09that is not a tiny little piece of crap with no inverted T arrow keys on it.
0:35:13Oh, don't even get me started. Don't even get me started. You are wrong, sir.
0:35:17Some chat room credit. Windows Sideshow was a great name.
0:35:21That's fantastic.
0:35:22The name for the external, like the support for weird secondary displays on laptops. And
0:35:28Nathan A. in the chat room pointed out that what I was trying to think of was a OS X Lion
0:35:32came out with Retina support 10.7.5 because basically the fully Retina supporting OS X8
0:35:38wasn't out yet.
0:35:39And the old the App Store came to 10.6.
0:35:41- 10.6.8, yeah, I think.
0:35:43- Yeah, anyway, so that's the F and key row.
0:35:46I think we have that well covered.
0:35:47Let's see if you guys have other comments on that.
0:35:50- I think the idea of having a big,
0:35:52that Artipius says they're not doing,
0:35:55but just having a big flat screen,
0:35:57there's the obvious reasons that's bad
0:36:00and you went over them.
0:36:01Like, did you feel if your keys,
0:36:02you wanna feel what the edges are,
0:36:03it's a pain in the butt if it's just one big flat screen.
0:36:05But I have to think, and we've joked about this
0:36:08so many times and talking about the MacBook keyboard and everything like, "Well, why even
0:36:11have keys at all if there's going to be so little travel?" And part of the whole big
0:36:15sales pitch of the original iPhone presentation was like, "Oh, look at all these phones. They
0:36:18have all these buttons on them, but you kind of have to pick the buttons when you make
0:36:21the phone and you can't change them after the fact. Well, what if we made the whole
0:36:24surface of the phone a screen? Then you don't have to worry about what the buttons are because
0:36:27it's all software and we can change them all the time." And everybody said, "Yeah, all
0:36:30software, but then how the hell can you feel the keys when you're trying to type on the
0:36:32thing because it's just a big flat screen. We work that out as a society. We now know how to
0:36:39type on a on flat screen phones. It's a little bit different because the focal distance between
0:36:45looking at the keyboard and looking at the screen is a little bit better on a phone than it is on a
0:36:51laptop combination. Like you're kind of looking in the same place at the same distance as opposed to
0:36:55you know looking at the keyboard. Obviously touch typists are going to say "oh I don't like this
0:36:59this is like I'm a touch typist,
0:37:01I don't have to look at the keyboard.
0:37:02I wonder what percentage of the world population
0:37:05looks at the keyboard when they type,
0:37:07not on a phone, on like a regular laptop or desktop keyboard
0:37:11maybe it's pretty high, maybe it's not, I don't know,
0:37:13but you still have the same focal distance question.
0:37:15Anyway, there was the final thing
0:37:17that I can't remember the source of this,
0:37:18maybe one of you will, was it on iMore?
0:37:20Somebody did a survey of how fast can you touch type
0:37:25on an iPad keyboard, like on a totally glass keyboard
0:37:29by age, and they split it up by age.
0:37:31And the old people, of course, were horrendously bad
0:37:33at touch typing on it.
0:37:34And the younger you got, the bigger the bars get,
0:37:37up to the point where people were typing faster
0:37:38on the iPad keyboard than I can type on a real keyboard.
0:37:42I'm a terrible typist, so that's not a big judge.
0:37:44But they were into like, you know, over 60 words a minute.
0:37:47- This was Cortex, by the way.
0:37:48- Oh, was it Cortex?
0:37:49- Yep.
0:37:50- Yeah, anyway, it makes me wonder about the future.
0:37:53Like, for now, we're all glad if they do
0:37:56the separate buttons with little LED things in them,
0:37:58it looks cool, we can feel the button edges, and I know I don't look at the keyboard when
0:38:01I hit the escape key and many other things, like I'm not really a touch typist, I don't
0:38:05type the right way, but in practice I can program without looking at the keyboard, even
0:38:09though my fingers are doing completely the incorrect thing down there.
0:38:16But we're gonna get old and retire and die, and eventually I don't think it's too unrealistic
0:38:21to imagine that it's possible, not guaranteed, but possible that future future future Apple
0:38:26laptops could either A) not exist or B) just have an entire screen for the keyboard area
0:38:35because it would be thinner and it would be infinitely reconfigurable and people do get
0:38:39used to them and people can actually get fast with them and it makes me wonder about the
0:38:43future.
0:38:44Yeah, I mean like I think my ideal setup here, because I do recognize like the advantages
0:38:50of having like dynamic soft keys where maybe some of them the system defines as always
0:38:56having pretty much the same functions, things like volume controls, and then some of them
0:39:01are application defined. And applications can say, "All right, well, when you have
0:39:05like Photoshop or Logic or whatever active, then you can map these buttons to these commands
0:39:09and actually show them on there." And that makes it easier to learn the keyboard shortcuts
0:39:13and these functions become more accessible and everything.
0:39:16So like there is...
0:39:17>> You can also do the fuzzy targets too, just like a phone keyboard does. That was
0:39:20another big selling point of the phone keyboard. It's like, "Oh, we know that most likely
0:39:23in the English language, the next letter has a much higher percentage chance to be, you
0:39:27know, an R than an X. So even though you're a little bit off of the key that you were
0:39:32trying to hit, will, you know, like the sort of fuzzy matching for where your fingers tap,
0:39:38and you may think, "Oh, I don't need that when the keys are full size." But maybe you
0:39:42do, maybe it would help. Like, there are things you can do with a completely software-controlled,
0:39:47completely flat glass keyboard that you can't do with a physical one.
0:39:50Well, right.
0:39:51That might be good.
0:39:52- To me, I think the happy medium here would be
0:39:56that you still have the physical buttons there.
0:39:59If you're doing the entire keyboard,
0:40:04not just the F in row, if you're doing the entire keyboard,
0:40:07I think your argument makes more sense,
0:40:10even though I think I would hate that,
0:40:11but it would be so much more powerful
0:40:13'cause you could do things like,
0:40:15well, the entire left half of this
0:40:16is going to be a jog wheel instead of keys.
0:40:19You could do dynamic stuff.
0:40:21- Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
0:40:23The entire thing would be just,
0:40:25it would just be like, be, you know,
0:40:26just like typing on an iPad.
0:40:27It's just one big flat piece of glass for the whole thing.
0:40:29Not a bunch of individual keys.
0:40:31Because it almost feels like a weird in-between state
0:40:33to have the Optimus keyboard where it's like,
0:40:35we want the keys to be infinitely reconfigurable,
0:40:38but they'll always have to be the same size and position.
0:40:40- Right, but I think in the context of a Mac,
0:40:43and especially a Mac laptop where whatever keyboard
0:40:47they ship in a Mac laptop, you're stuck with.
0:40:50I mean, you could put other keyboards on desks
0:40:53when you go park it on a desk,
0:40:54but when you are out in the world
0:40:57or when you're using your laptop on the couch
0:40:59or by itself with no additional hardware on a desk,
0:41:02whatever keyboard that has in it, you don't have a choice.
0:41:05So I think in the current context
0:41:08of how people use Macs and PCs,
0:41:12I think it's important to have a physical keyboard.
0:41:14And I think looking at things like the MacBook One
0:41:16where Apple goes to incredible lengths
0:41:19make a really crappy physical keyboard, but it's still better than typing on glass, I
0:41:25think Apple probably agrees, I think that's the sign Apple agrees, that in the Mac landscape
0:41:30you need physical keys. So if you're going to have physical keys and you want this key
0:41:34strip to be dynamic, it makes sense to also keep those as physical keys because the way
0:41:40people are going to be using that keyboard is still going to be based on feel for the
0:41:44for the most part, and you're not really gonna gain much,
0:41:48you know, if you only have a thin strip
0:41:50on top of the keyboard to customize in software,
0:41:54you're not really gonna gain much
0:41:56by having that be a flat touch surface
0:41:59that you wouldn't also have by having them be physical keys.
0:42:01And you also won't, there will be no cost to it then,
0:42:04to the user, like there will be no downside
0:42:06if there's still physical keys
0:42:07and you're just changing the labels on them.
0:42:09Then there's no complaint, there's no downside
0:42:12except cost and complexity,
0:42:13but seems like Apple's okay with that.
0:42:15I think that sounds fine.
0:42:18I think that would be my happy medium is,
0:42:20sure, if you're gonna do this at all,
0:42:22make it like the Optimus keyboard.
0:42:23Put some kind of screens on each key
0:42:26or put a big screen below all the keys
0:42:27and make them clear or something, I don't know.
0:42:29But that's, yeah.
0:42:31- It'll be a screen on each key.
0:42:33But for the big, flat glass thing,
0:42:35you can also get rid of the trackpad at that point, too.
0:42:38It's a simplification that may prove
0:42:39irresistible eventually. If the customer base eventually gets to the point where they feel
0:42:44like we can sell this product and not too many people will complain except for the really
0:42:48old people. I just want an extended keyboard. Is that too much to ask? Is that just not
0:42:51a thing anymore that Apple doesn't really, it's like they want their keyboards to be
0:42:54super small because they're all used on submarines or whatever. I don't know what the use case
0:42:58is for constantly making the keyboard not just thinner, fine, whatever, I don't really
0:43:02care that much about that, but narrower. Am I using it in coach class on United? I don't
0:43:06I don't know what, why does it have to be so,
0:43:08I've got this big desk here.
0:43:10Like, take off the numeric keypad, fine,
0:43:13but give me an inverted T, I use those keys
0:43:16when I type and program.
0:43:17- Also, a quick comment on the thinness of keyboards here,
0:43:20just for a second.
0:43:22Articles are saying that this new MacBook Pro
0:43:25has a thinner keyboard that is like the MacBook One keyboard.
0:43:30This would normally freak me out,
0:43:32except the tipster has said many times in the chat
0:43:35that yes it is that general type of keyboard,
0:43:38however it is much closer to the new
0:43:41standalone Magic keyboard than the MacBook One's
0:43:45total crap keyboard.
0:43:46I've tried the Magic keyboard in the store,
0:43:48I know Casey you love yours right?
0:43:50- I cannot say enough good things about it,
0:43:52with the exception I agree I would prefer the inverted T
0:43:55but I've learned to move on from it.
0:43:59- Page up, page down, home and end,
0:44:00don't you miss those guys and being in a normal place
0:44:02where you can find them really easily?
0:44:03- No. - Nope.
0:44:04- Really honestly don't. - Yes.
0:44:05- What year is this? - Seriously.
0:44:06- You don't use page up and page down?
0:44:08- No.
0:44:09I even have them on my keyboard, I never use them.
0:44:11- You swipe on your silly little mice?
0:44:13- When I used Windows, I used home and end all the time,
0:44:16but now I use command left, command right,
0:44:17and that's, you know. - Right.
0:44:18- No, home and end doing what they're supposed to do,
0:44:20not what they do on Windows.
0:44:21It doesn't make any sense
0:44:22what they do on Windows. - Okay.
0:44:23(laughing)
0:44:24- Go to the beginning of the line, that's not home.
0:44:26What world is that home?
0:44:27Home is the top, end is the bottom.
0:44:28- That's command up and command down, easy peasy.
0:44:31So the point is, I love the Magic Keyboard. It is my favorite keyboard that I've ever used.
0:44:36And I have tried just about any of the popular keyboards, or close variants thereof.
0:44:42And I grew up on the IBM, what was it, the IBM M or something like that? The ridiculous--
0:44:46Buckling springs! You love 'em.
0:44:48Yeah, and so, I mean, I'm not a keyboard snob,
0:44:52and I don't really typically care for really loud, clicky keyboards.
0:44:56However, I love the Magic Keyboard more than anything.
0:45:00and the only flaw I see in it is I do agree with you that I wish I had the inverted T.
0:45:04So I love this thing.
0:45:05Yeah, I'm totally with you on that.
0:45:07But overall, like, the Magic Keyboard, I think, is fine.
0:45:11Like I have no problem with that.
0:45:12So if the tipster is right that the new MacBook Pro keyboard is much closer to that than to
0:45:18the MacBook One keyboard, that's fine.
0:45:21However, I would just generally like to say, like, there were a few people on Twitter who
0:45:24were kind of saying worrying things to me earlier about how keyboards should keep getting
0:45:28thinner, it is great to have laptops that are thin and light, but in general what matters
0:45:35more is the light, not the thin. And keyboards weigh almost nothing, no matter how thick
0:45:41they are. Like the keyboard component of a laptop is mostly empty space, and the key
0:45:46travel is all empty space, of course, because the keys have to move up and down.
0:45:50All matter is mostly empty space.
0:45:52Thanks Sean.
0:45:53Thanks.
0:45:54(laughing)
0:45:55I'm so happy you added that.
0:45:57(laughing)
0:45:59- I was on the kick of trying to stop email from people.
0:46:02You have to have the new level of,
0:46:05well actually, well actually all matter.
0:46:07It's mostly empty space.
0:46:08Anyway, go on.
0:46:09- Okay.
0:46:11How am I supposed to get to, anyway.
0:46:12(laughing)
0:46:14All right, so anyway.
0:46:15So yeah, keyboards are extremely lightweight.
0:46:19If you're talking about making laptops thinner and lighter,
0:46:22Again, lighter matters more than thinner.
0:46:25And if it gets to the point where you start sacrificing
0:46:29the usability of the keyboard,
0:46:31if you have to ship a crappy keyboard
0:46:34in order to make the laptop appealing visually
0:46:38to make it thinner from the side,
0:46:39which is an angle which nobody ever looks at it,
0:46:42I think that's a bad choice.
0:46:43I think Apple went too far with that, but--
0:46:45- It's also harder to pick up, by the way,
0:46:47as they get thinner.
0:46:48It gets harder to, eventually it's like,
0:46:49I know they cup the edges and they make it,
0:46:51but like at a certain point,
0:46:52if you keep being thinner and thinner,
0:46:54you don't have enough edge left to even cup.
0:46:56And if you put it down,
0:46:57it's like trying to pick a coin off a very smooth table.
0:47:00It's hard to do.
0:47:00- Yeah, it also makes it harder to open the lid.
0:47:02But anyway, and that's, well, weight too.
0:47:04Anyway, so my point is,
0:47:06I think if you are optimizing your laptop for thinness,
0:47:10I think you're optimizing it for the wrong thing.
0:47:12You should let thinness follow from battery removals,
0:47:16which will result in more efficient CPUs,
0:47:18more efficient components, things like that,
0:47:20and things like getting rid of the optical drive
0:47:22and making other components thinner.
0:47:24But I don't think you should ever be at a point
0:47:26where you are making the keyboard hard to use
0:47:29or less ergonomically friendly or otherwise horrible
0:47:33for the sake of shaving another millimeter
0:47:35off the case thickness.
0:47:36Because if the laptop is still very light
0:47:40and is just like a millimeter thicker
0:47:41to accommodate better key switches, that's fine.
0:47:45That's an acceptable trade-off for a laptop
0:47:47because you want laptops to be light,
0:47:50but you don't need them to be paper thin.
0:47:53And if you just, like,
0:47:54we're not talking about a big difference here.
0:47:56We're not talking about, like,
0:47:57going back to the old PowerBook G4 thickness
0:47:59to have a decent keyboard.
0:48:00You don't need that.
0:48:01You can look today, you can look at the MacBook Air,
0:48:04and you can look at the MacBook Pro today,
0:48:06and, you know, presumably what it's about to be
0:48:08in a few months.
0:48:09You can make a great laptop with a great keyboard
0:48:13that's very, very thin,
0:48:15but I think the MacBook One took it too far.
0:48:17And it sounds like with these newer MacBook Pros,
0:48:20if all the rumors are right, if Tipster's right,
0:48:23I think we'll be okay again.
0:48:24I think we will have re-achieved a good balance here.
0:48:27So I'm looking forward to seeing how that turns out.
0:48:29I hope Apple does it right.
0:48:30And in general, I've been very critical to MacBook One,
0:48:35even though people love it, that's fine.
0:48:36If you love it, good for you, I'm happy for you.
0:48:38In general, I expect the new MacBook Pro to be awesome,
0:48:44both 13 and 15.
0:48:46based on both what we've heard, what's been reported,
0:48:49and just based on, you know, Apple,
0:48:52the things that really matter, things like the iPhone,
0:48:56Apple is really, they have a fantastic track record.
0:48:59You know, Apple has never made a bad iPhone.
0:49:03And similarly, I don't think Apple
0:49:05has ever made a bad MacBook Pro.
0:49:08There have been a few that have been slightly imperfect,
0:49:10but for the most part, the MacBook Pro,
0:49:13They just nail it.
0:49:14It has such a good history, such a good track record.
0:49:19And it has to because the MacBook Pro is like
0:49:23the workhorse of the entire industry.
0:49:26Pretty much every web developer,
0:49:29almost every Apple developer, tons of people inside Apple,
0:49:33tons of journalists, tons of people, tons of students.
0:49:36The MacBook Pro is such the workhorse of so many people,
0:49:40they can't screw, like, they like,
0:49:42legally, they just can't screw it up.
0:49:45And they know that.
0:49:46Apple, I think, would not take lightly
0:49:49major changes to the MacBook Pro.
0:49:51And their track record on it is so good
0:49:53that I am confident that this is going to be awesome.
0:49:55Even though I am skeptical of many of the things
0:49:59that Apple does these days,
0:50:01I definitely give them the benefit of the doubt
0:50:04that whatever we hear about this new MacBook Pro
0:50:07that might sound a little bit weird,
0:50:09it's probably gonna be awesome.
0:50:11- Yeah, I agree, I'm really looking forward to this.
0:50:15To me, I feel like I would just be thrilled
0:50:19if the next MacBook Pro had a keyboard
0:50:22as close to the magic keyboard as possible,
0:50:24and also an SD card slot that didn't trip
0:50:26my damn SD card read switch.
0:50:28- SD card slot, no, no, you get USB three ports,
0:50:33USB-C, Type-C connectors, and that's all,
0:50:36and you'll like it, mister.
0:50:37- Probably right, and I was being silly
0:50:38about the SD card thing, but anyway,
0:50:40I think an improved keyboard would be great, and I don't think the current keyboards are
0:50:43bad.
0:50:44I just freaking love the Magic Keyboard.
0:50:46But I agree with you, Marco.
0:50:47I think that they have a great track record, and I can't see them releasing a dud.
0:50:54And even though some of these rumors are making me scratch my head a little bit, I'm really,
0:50:58really amped to see these.
0:51:00And also miserable, because I'm not getting a new Mac from work for another two years,
0:51:06I think, and I'm certainly not buying one for home.
0:51:08So I'll be sad.
0:51:10I'm still looking for a retina air.
0:51:14I know the 13 will be so thin it'll almost be air-like, but now that the air has been
0:51:17freed up, you know, we have the 5K iMac, we used to have the air connected to a Thunderbolt
0:51:22display and now just the air is like rattling around the house and my daughter is smearing
0:51:25her yogurt-covered fingers on it and I'm routinely cleaning it.
0:51:28Anyway, 13-inch air is such a great form factor for a laptop.
0:51:32It's such a good machine.
0:51:33The screen is crap, but everything else about it, this is like a 2011 model, right?
0:51:38That screen is not good.
0:51:39everything else about it is just so nice and because it's a 2011 model, it's like a five-year-old's
0:51:43computer, it looks great. And so now hopefully maybe these 13s will get down to the point
0:51:49where it's getting close to that because the Airs haven't been updated. And you said that
0:51:52the Pro is the workhorse, it's the workhorse of like, you know, professional people or
0:51:55people who need some sort of computing power to do their job. But the Airs were the sort
0:52:00of computing for the Apple laptop for the rest of us, where you're not going to be compiling
0:52:08you just want to like browse the web and write papers for school or whatever.
0:52:12It was such a great student computer, it was such a great computer for people who don't
0:52:15have particularly demanding needs.
0:52:16It's a real high point, I think, when we look back on the grade max, the 13-inch Air, that
0:52:23design, if not the particular innards, but like when they redesigned the case and everything,
0:52:27that was a great computer.
0:52:29And so like the pros, the first Retina ones were pretty impressive, and now they're going
0:52:34to go super thin and just have the USB-C ports on the side and just shave off all those things
0:52:38these have the potential to be really great long-lasting computers to remember.
0:52:43The touch ID and the weird, you know, screen keys and stuff also has the
0:52:50potential to have them go wrong until they sort that out, but like you said,
0:52:54like they're surely they've had enough time to work out these kinks and this is
0:52:57the type of thing they could have been working on for a long time so I have
0:53:00some confidence that they're gonna be good as well. Although I have to admit
0:53:04when I saw you Marco tweeting about the thin keyboard thing,
0:53:08I thought you were talking about
0:53:10their external desktop keyboards
0:53:12that also keep getting thinner for even, as I said,
0:53:15even more mysterious reasons.
0:53:16Not just like, you know, I talked about the width before
0:53:18with the United Airlines,
0:53:19but they're also getting like thinner
0:53:20as in lower to the desk.
0:53:22They're just wasting away.
0:53:24Soon they're just gonna give you a bunch of key caps
0:53:25and you'll throw them on your desk.
0:53:26(laughing)
0:53:28- No, I mean like in Apple's defense,
0:53:30I mean one of the reasons I don't use their desktop keyboards
0:53:32is that the ergonomics are horrible on them,
0:53:34and I need something with better ergonomics
0:53:37to prevent RSI problems.
0:53:39In their defense though, the worst thing about ergonomics
0:53:42of most desktop keyboards is when the back
0:53:45is higher than the front, the forward tilt.
0:53:48That's terrible for ergonomics.
0:53:50And by the way, anybody listening,
0:53:51if you have the feet flipped up on the back
0:53:54so that your keyboard is tilted even more,
0:53:55for God's sake, flip those feet down.
0:53:57- Put something under the front to make it level.
0:53:59- Yeah, there's a reason why,
0:54:00if you look at natural keyboards now,
0:54:02like the Microsoft Sculpt and everything,
0:54:04there's a reason why they come with this big riser
0:54:06on the front that lifts the front up
0:54:08so it's actually tilting away from you.
0:54:10And everyone thinks it looks weird,
0:54:11and it does the first time you see it,
0:54:13but way better for ergonomics, there's a reason for that.
0:54:16Anyway, if Apple makes their keyboards thinner,
0:54:20it actually reduces the tilt inherently.
0:54:23And so it slightly improves the ergonomics.
0:54:27- They can still be totally level.
0:54:28Like I have a really old translucent plastic
0:54:30Apple USB keyboard I saw in the attic when I was cleaning stuff up. Those were pretty
0:54:34much perfectly flat as well, although they did have stupid feet in the back. But anyway,
0:54:37you can make a keyboard that is level, it just doesn't have to be level and also the
0:54:41thickness of three credit cards. Because again, I fear that they're going to get to the point
0:54:45where they're starting to sacrifice travel on the desktop model. So it's like, what space
0:54:48are you saving? The airspace above my desk? You want to save two millimeters of airspace?
0:54:52Please, width-wise and height-wise, don't go nuts with the thing. And I understand the
0:54:56part sharing with the laptops. Like that's why I think it could literally be the same
0:55:00exact part. I haven't seen the Magic Keyboard, I can't tell if it's actually a laptop-worthy
0:55:04part, but anyway. I understand the economies of scale going on here, I just think that
0:55:09the desktop keyboards, and also the little edges around it, people are like "sometimes
0:55:12it's hard to pick up my keyboard if I want to move it, because how the hell do you pick
0:55:14it up, because the keycaps go right to the edge." It's a little bit extreme, it's a little
0:55:18bit, we're getting into the realm of form over function, where like "what do I have
0:55:22to do with the keyboard? I want to type on it, sometimes you have to move it around."
0:55:26I don't really care if it looks like,
0:55:29I mean I do care if it looks like a beautiful piece of art,
0:55:32but when that look starts to compromise
0:55:35the basic things I do with my keyboard,
0:55:37including occasionally picking them up
0:55:38or moving them around, it's silly.
0:55:40- But that is today's Apple.
0:55:43Like the desktop keyboards, I mean,
0:55:45if there's ever a thing that they make
0:55:47that that form of a function wins,
0:55:50it's like the desktop input peripherals
0:55:53because the function part doesn't really matter.
0:55:57Anybody who cares about the ergonomics or the size
0:56:01or the layout or the key switches or the thickness
0:56:03of their desktop keyboard,
0:56:04they're just gonna use a different keyboard.
0:56:05And this is exactly the kind of area
0:56:08where Johnny Ive's gonna come in and be like,
0:56:10"All right, well, this needs to look even thinner
0:56:12"and even sleeker so that it looks great
0:56:13"in all of our press shots and so the iMac looks great
0:56:16"and they look great in the stores
0:56:17"and the boxes can be smaller and all this stuff."
0:56:20This is exactly the kind of area
0:56:22where Apple would absolutely go nuts
0:56:24and sacrifice functionality for form,
0:56:27and the cost of that isn't so big.
0:56:31It's way worse than laptops, whereas I said,
0:56:33you're kind of stuck with the keyboard
0:56:35that's in a laptop.
0:56:36So that, I think, is the bigger area
0:56:38we have to watch out for.
0:56:39And I do feel like, even though I just got done
0:56:41praising Apple for how awesome they're probably
0:56:42gonna be with this, I do feel like
0:56:46that I'm kind of always on edge trying to defend
0:56:49and hold onto things on Apple products that work well
0:56:54or are ergonomically friendly.
0:56:56Because I feel like I'm always battling Johnny Ive
0:56:59on like, no, please stop making things worse
0:57:03or harder to use or more slippery or, you know,
0:57:07with the Apple TV remote where you can't even tell
0:57:10which way is up and you're pressing things wrong.
0:57:12Like, please, please, Johnny, stop, stay away from my things
0:57:16you're standing off all the things that make them usable.
0:57:19And I am a little bit worried about that angle of Apple
0:57:23kind of taking over more than it should.
0:57:25And that, I think, long term,
0:57:28both present and into the near future,
0:57:30I think that is a major concern
0:57:31that many of us should have about Apple,
0:57:33that real world usability and ergonomics
0:57:37seem to be a very low priority and an ever shrinking one
0:57:40that they're happy to borrow from
0:57:43to make gains in thinness and appearance.
0:57:45- Or they've just forgotten how to do it,
0:57:47like the keyboard I have, the Apple Extended Aluminum Keyboard, I've bought many of these.
0:57:51I've gone through a couple of them actually breaking the keys, which maybe doesn't speak
0:57:55to the reliability of the keyboard considering I used the Apple Extended 2 for years and the only
0:57:59way I broke it is because I dropped my pocket knife off of a shelf onto it and snapped off one
0:58:03of the function keys. But I like the Apple Extended Aluminum Keyboard in every aspect except for the
0:58:09fact that the stupid top row of function keys is too close to the number keys and is not full size.
0:58:15but every other aspect of it, I like that it's thin and small and doesn't have any excess room,
0:58:20it doesn't have any excess sort of trimming and stuff around it, it could be a little bit flatter
0:58:24because it does tilt up a little bit, but it is, I think, a reasonable interpretation of the
0:58:29minimalist flat thing. I like the fact that the keys have low effort because that helps my RSI
0:58:33and I can't type on a keyboard. So like if given the choice, if you can have any keyboard in the
0:58:39world with your new Mac, this is still the one that I would pick because it's still basically
0:58:43my favorite keyboard out of all the ones that I've tried, and I can't use my Apple Extended 2 anymore.
0:58:48But they went a little bit farther. The next keyboard was like, "Well, the other one had a
0:58:53little bit of a rim around the edge so you could pick it up. Can we shave that off?" And the answer
0:58:57is, "Yes, we can." And can we put it directly down to the ground instead of having a lip where you can
0:59:01get your fingers underneath it? "Well, we can do that too." And can you take off all those useful
0:59:04keys that people use sometimes? "Yep, they can do that too." And now I'm sad. But you still buy this
0:59:09one by the way like you can still buy the extended keyboard with your new
0:59:12computer it's just it's like you feel like you're getting the last generation
0:59:15thing you can buy this shiny new keyboard that if Casey has and he loves
0:59:18so much with these cool key switches that I like to I tried them the Apple
0:59:21store I think they're great too or you can get this old keyboard that silly
0:59:25people use with the extra keys on them yeah I one of the things I love about
0:59:29this keyboard is that it is so darn flat now I wouldn't say I'm I ever was
0:59:35seeking out a keyboard that's flat, but now that it's in front of me, I like that it's
0:59:40so flat because I feel like it works better for me ergonomically. Now, maybe that's wrong,
0:59:45maybe I'm crazy, but it feels good to me, and I like that if I decide to take my iPad
0:59:53on a trip, for example, and I don't want to take my full-on 15-inch work computer, I can
0:59:58just throw this keyboard in my bag and it's like it's not even there. It's thin, it's
1:00:03and it's my favorite keyboard I have ever used.
1:00:07So I know I talk about it constantly,
1:00:09but I cannot say enough good things about this keyboard.
1:00:12- It's a great portable keyboard,
1:00:13but I'm not buying it for portable,
1:00:15I'm buying it as like, this is the one
1:00:16that's gonna be attached to my,
1:00:17and by the way, I like when they're attached with the wire,
1:00:19because again, I have a place for the wire to go,
1:00:21and I don't need to deal with Bluetooth,
1:00:23and I don't need to deal with batteries,
1:00:24'cause it's never gonna go anywhere.
1:00:25It's always gonna be plugged into my computer.
1:00:26It'll be fine.
1:00:27So yeah, and the flatness again is not an innovation
1:00:32of this particular keyboard,
1:00:32because like I said, there's been flat keyboards
1:00:34from Apple and others forever and ever and ever
1:00:36without any feet, without anything that are just nice
1:00:38and level, it's the tucking in of the edges
1:00:42and the bringing of the edges straight down to the table
1:00:44and the trimming off of the keys
1:00:46and the not having a space between the numbers
1:00:49and the function keys
1:00:49because that would make the keyboard ever so slightly bigger
1:00:52it's like, yeah, all right
1:00:53if you're making a portable keyboard, I see that trade off
1:00:55you want it to fit in your backpack,
1:00:56every millimeter counts, it's gonna be on my desk
1:00:59every millimeter does not count in the same way
1:01:01and it just strikes me as a bad trade off.
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1:03:10(upbeat music)
1:03:13- So you had written a post, Marco,
1:03:16about whether or not Apple's kinda allowing themselves
1:03:19to get left behind on this whole intelligent assistant thing.
1:03:23- Can't we just talk about the MacBook Pro some more instead?
1:03:25- No, I think we've beaten that to death at this point.
1:03:28So I don't necessarily need to get into the article too much
1:03:32but I thought it was reasonable.
1:03:35And then curiously, a day or two later,
1:03:38there's a article on the information
1:03:42about Apple's opening up Siri
1:03:44and it's developing an echo rival.
1:03:47Interesting.
1:03:48- Yeah, I mean, this could be a coincidence.
1:03:52It could be a controlled leaking response.
1:03:54I have no idea.
1:03:55It's probably a coincidence, being realistic here.
1:03:58But yeah, I mean, so I don't wanna go too far into it.
1:04:02The gist of my article was, this was another one
1:04:04of these situations where I write something critical
1:04:07about Apple in my blog and it just goes everywhere.
1:04:10This time, I don't feel bad about it.
1:04:13This time, with the whole functional high ground thing,
1:04:16I mainly felt bad about it because A,
1:04:19I did not expect that at all.
1:04:22I had never seen that kind of response before,
1:04:24it was more of a shock. B, the bigger reason is that I just didn't write it very well,
1:04:29I didn't do a very good job of writing it, and so I was kind of embarrassed that a lot
1:04:34of people, including people at Apple, saw this, and it wasn't very good work. So that's
1:04:39why I kind of had a hard time back then with the high ground thing. But this time, I wrote
1:04:46this piece knowing that there was a chance that it might spread, although I didn't expect
1:04:51the spread of God at all. But knowing there was a chance it might spread, and I wrote
1:04:56it very carefully, much more carefully than the high ground thing, and I think what came
1:05:01out, I stand by it. The only thing that I regretted was the, I had originally titled
1:05:06it "Avoiding BlackBerry's Fate." That kind of implied that if Apple doesn't make this
1:05:12big shift, they will definitely fail the way BlackBerry did exactly, and that was not my
1:05:18point that I was trying to make, so I retitled it about a day in to something more closer
1:05:25to what I actually meant. The rest of it I totally stand by and I don't regret it at
1:05:30all and so I feel pretty good about it. And it did spread way further than I thought and
1:05:34many of the crappy rewrites of it have been crappy. Business Insider did what they always
1:05:41and that's fine. I sent their visitors to the fish meat stick video. And you know, all
1:05:48the sensational news sites and all the crappy TV people and all the other crappy sites,
1:05:55they're going to do what they're going to do. And all I need is to be comfortable myself
1:06:02in standing by what I wrote, in knowing myself that I did good work, that I wrote it, that
1:06:08that I express myself properly
1:06:10in the way I wanted to explain myself,
1:06:11you will not get that reference at all.
1:06:13- Hi.
1:06:14- And I'm happy with what I wrote.
1:06:16And so what I wrote basically,
1:06:18which I realized now I forgot to say
1:06:20at the beginning of this giant rant, sorry.
1:06:23See, I don't stand by this giant rant now.
1:06:25(laughing)
1:06:25But so what it, you know,
1:06:27what I wrote was basically,
1:06:29I think, you know, Google and Amazon and Facebook
1:06:34and as many people pointed out, which I didn't, Microsoft,
1:06:37they're all making these huge developments in AI-like big data services. So things like,
1:06:44you know, obviously in the old days things like search and maps and directory stuff and
1:06:48then now in recent times these like, kind of like, these virtual assistants, chatbots,
1:06:54things like Siri and Cortana and Google Now and stuff like that, and the Amazon Echo and
1:06:59the Google Home, Webull thing and whatever Amazon and Apple and Facebook and everybody
1:07:04else we're gonna come up with next.
1:07:06If the industry shifts to prioritize the functionality
1:07:10of these virtual assistants,
1:07:12of this kind of big data AI problem,
1:07:15as the primary thing people care about
1:07:18or the primary functionality people want,
1:07:20Apple is not in a good place for that.
1:07:22I made the BlackBerry analogy,
1:07:25'cause I was like, when the iPhone came out,
1:07:28BlackBerry was on top of the world,
1:07:30and they were doing really well.
1:07:33The reason BlackBerry was so screwed is because when Apple came out, they changed the game
1:07:39completely to raise everyone's expectations of what phones could and should do in areas
1:07:46that rim, you know, they could not catch up at that point if they wanted to because, like,
1:07:53Apple had moved the goalposts into this area where, okay, now to be competitive you need
1:07:57to have a desktop class operating system,
1:08:00this incredibly complex manufacturing pipeline
1:08:04to make these incredibly precise, high quality devices,
1:08:07this massive store ecosystem with all these credit cards
1:08:10on file and all these developer tools
1:08:12and the ecosystem of computers surrounding them
1:08:14and like all this crazy stuff that like,
1:08:18you know, that the iPhone was,
1:08:20all the stuff that enabled the iPhone
1:08:22with assets that Apple had been building up
1:08:24for like a decade before that.
1:08:26No matter what Blackberry did at that point,
1:08:29because they weren't building that kind of assets
1:08:31for a decade, they were not gonna catch up.
1:08:33The writing was on the wall as soon as Steve showed
1:08:37the iPhone in early '07, before it even blew up
1:08:40with the App Store a year later.
1:08:42The writing was on the wall for Blackberry
1:08:44'cause the gap was too wide, they would not be able
1:08:46to catch up to what the iPhone had now redefined
1:08:49smartphones to be.
1:08:51You look now and you see these services,
1:08:54Apple started out this whole thing with Siri,
1:08:57and yes, I know Google was doing voice stuff before that,
1:09:00yes, thank you.
1:09:01But, you know, Apple kind of started
1:09:02like the virtual assistant revolution with Siri in 2011.
1:09:07Yeah, 2011.
1:09:08It has progressed, it has gotten better,
1:09:10it has gotten more advanced,
1:09:11it has added more languages around the world,
1:09:13which is not an easy thing to do.
1:09:15But, ultimately, Siri still feels like
1:09:18a first generation version of this product,
1:09:22while the competitors are all moving past that
1:09:25in certain attributes.
1:09:27So you look at the Amazon Echo,
1:09:28and the Echo only supports basically US English,
1:09:33and only is useful to people in the US
1:09:35for most of its functionality.
1:09:37But the functionality it does
1:09:40for those US English speakers,
1:09:42it does that stuff better and more reliably
1:09:44and faster than Siri does most of the time.
1:09:47You look at Google,
1:09:50is gonna be way better at international support,
1:09:53way better at different languages,
1:09:55and Google's also doing a lot of this stuff better,
1:09:58faster, more reliably now with their Google Now stuff
1:10:02and all the other Android things that I don't understand.
1:10:05You know, it's hard to look at this and to see,
1:10:09yeah, if we all start using these virtual assistants
1:10:12as our primary interfaces like in two years or whatever,
1:10:15like, is Apple really gonna catch up
1:10:18to what Google is doing and what they will have
1:10:20two years? I don't think so. Because Apple, Apple is not good at big data problems. You
1:10:29know, number one example of this is the App Store search. You could argue, okay, well
1:10:34maybe that's like one department that has these technical burdens or whatever else.
1:10:38Fine, maybe that's true. Okay, what about Siri, where it really matters a lot? Siri
1:10:42again, it's kind of a Gen 1 product in a Gen 2 world now. And so it is possible, we've
1:10:49heard lots of rumblings that Apple has made some key acquisitions and investments over
1:10:56the last year or two and that this WDC, they're going to come out with something major and
1:11:01it's going to be amazing and that might be true. But just as I said earlier, that Apple
1:11:05has an amazing track record of MacBook Pro updates. Apple has a really terrible track
1:11:11record of big data AI problem updates. You hear, "Oh, we've improved Siri, we've
1:11:17"Now I added these capabilities," or "Now it's better,"
1:11:19or "Now you can do this," and yet,
1:11:21somehow it's still unreliable and inconsistent
1:11:24and sometimes not that smart.
1:11:26Apple has the opposite problem here of any hype
1:11:29that's about what Apple might do at WBC
1:11:32to all of a sudden show us that they're like an amazing AI
1:11:37and big data company.
1:11:38I don't believe that for a second.
1:11:40I would love to be proven wrong.
1:11:42I really hope I'm proven wrong
1:11:44because I would so much rather have Apple do well
1:11:47stuff than have to switch all my garbage to Android. But I don't have a lot of confidence
1:11:54in Apple doing this stuff because their track record just is not very strong.
1:11:58So there was an interesting article that I saw today, and I'm assuming it was posted
1:12:02today, no it was yesterday, on Pixel Envy, and it was titled "Meet Vocal IQ". Vocal
1:12:08IQ is a small Cambridge-based startup launched in 2011 that specializes in natural speech
1:12:11recognition and conversational interactions. From a Times article, this is Times UK, published
1:12:19in June, blah blah blah blah blah, this is a quote from one of their employees, "One
1:12:25of our key projects is to develop a car that can talk to you like in Knight Rider." Awesome.
1:12:32So these people got acquired by Apple in October.
1:12:38And so there was a quote by someone who's been following this, "If Apple utilizes just
1:12:45a small subset of the technology developed by VocaliQ, we will see a far more advanced
1:12:49Siri.
1:12:50However, I'm quite certain that the amazing work of Tom Gruber will also be utilized.
1:12:53Additionally, the amazing technology from Emolient, Perception, and a number of other
1:12:57unannounced and future Apple acquisitions will also become a big part of Apple's AI future.
1:13:02So, Perception apparently was actually a Perceptio, which was a photo classification startup,
1:13:11which reminds me a lot of Google Photos, which I've also been talking about constantly lately,
1:13:16because it is amazing. So you put all this together and this article, which is very short,
1:13:21ends with, "So, who's excited for WWDC?"
1:13:25And I just think it's interesting.
1:13:27They've been making a lot of acquisitions
1:13:29that are right in this wheelhouse,
1:13:31and we don't know what they've been up to,
1:13:33but hopefully there's something there.
1:13:36- I hope that's right.
1:13:37I mean, again, I really hope I'm wrong on this.
1:13:40I really hope Apple just suddenly comes out
1:13:42and is really good at this stuff.
1:13:45Unfortunately, I don't think it works that way.
1:13:47I don't think this is the kind of thing you can do quickly.
1:13:50one thing that's worth investigating is,
1:13:52yeah, they've made acquisitions like this
1:13:54and like the Siri people.
1:13:56Why do these people not stick around?
1:13:59You know, like is there something about Apple's culture
1:14:01that, or their organizational structure,
1:14:04or the departments that these people are hired to work in?
1:14:08Like why don't they stick around?
1:14:10Why does Apple need to go buying people
1:14:14in order to get this kind of talent in the company?
1:14:16Like is this a problem?
1:14:17And are there other ways to fix this?
1:14:19or are there other problems that need to be solved first?
1:14:20I don't know.
1:14:21I don't know enough about how they work internally
1:14:23to really, to have good insight into this,
1:14:26but what I can see is from the outside.
1:14:28And again, like, I mean, every time anybody criticizes any,
1:14:32or has some kind of fear about Apple,
1:14:34or tries to, you know, or is pessimistic about Apple
1:14:38in the springtime, everyone always says,
1:14:41"Oh, just wait, oh, just wait, you're gonna see.
1:14:43"This is so stupid for you to be thinking about this now,
1:14:46"'cause just wait 'til everybody see."
1:14:47"You know what, WWDC is not like Santa Claus.
1:14:50"It's not magic.
1:14:52"They're not gonna solve every problem
1:14:53"that everybody wants them to solve in one keynote,
1:14:56"and that's not realistic."
1:14:58People say that I am naive for thinking
1:15:03Apple's not working on this stuff.
1:15:05I think thinking Apple's gonna magically solve everything
1:15:07in two weeks is naive.
1:15:09I think we can look at what Apple services are today
1:15:13and what they have been, things like Siri,
1:15:16things like search and relevancy and predictive inputs
1:15:20or things like proactive on the phones and everything.
1:15:23We see what, and Apple News, Apple Music even,
1:15:27like the recommendations, so we see Apple's
1:15:30current capabilities, and we know their past capabilities,
1:15:34in big data, AI-based web services.
1:15:39And we see that they can do it, they can manage
1:15:43to have a service out there, and it can work
1:15:47most of the time and be up most of the time
1:15:49and be fast most of the time.
1:15:52But that's like what was good enough five years ago,
1:15:5610 years ago.
1:15:57And now the companies who were really good at this stuff,
1:16:01like Google, they have moved to a different level
1:16:05of sophistication and performance and consistency.
1:16:09And we haven't seen Apple match that level.
1:16:12And it took them a pretty long time
1:16:13to get to the last level.
1:16:14So again, look at their track record.
1:16:18And I don't think it's unreasonable
1:16:20to be concerned about this.
1:16:21- David Schaub made a good point in the chat.
1:16:25Startup people from all these acquisitions
1:16:28often aren't compatible with big companies
1:16:31or perhaps moving to the Cupertino area.
1:16:34So maybe you're happy in Boston
1:16:36like this VocalIQ company was.
1:16:38You get bought up by Apple, you're expected to move.
1:16:41And sometimes people just like the chase of a startup.
1:16:45Sometimes they just don't like being always on vacation in California.
1:16:48And it could be that it has nothing to do with Apple at all.
1:16:51And it's just the kind of mindset or, or, or geographical situation from the,
1:16:56from these companies that are being bought.
1:16:58Or it could be that there's the, their new corporate overlords are killing them
1:17:02and they just can't handle it anymore.
1:17:04I don't know.
1:17:05What do you think, John?
1:17:07On an upcoming episode of another podcast on another network, I had a long discussion
1:17:13about Apple not talking about, you know, agents or services or things like the Google Home
1:17:22thing or the Amazon Echo or Siri or Cortana or any of that stuff, but about the more mundane
1:17:30aspects of cloud computing that it seems that Apple still has yet to master, and in particular
1:17:35the simple idea of that you have an Apple ID, that you were signed into the Apple ID
1:17:41in various applications on your phone and that it lets you do things like see your past
1:17:45purchases, make new purchases, download your music for you know Apple Music or iTunes Match,
1:17:53see your photos, all those things.
1:17:55And the utter mess that the whole identity and login system is, both on the web, on your
1:18:04Mac, but especially on your phone with the series of dialogues popping up and you entering your
1:18:09password and having no idea why you're being prompted and why you're being prompted again.
1:18:12That is not just like level 1 or 1.0 or whatever. That's like level 0 many, many years ago
1:18:21that Apple still hasn't gotten right. So I continue to think I've, you know,
1:18:27I've been being the shrimp for ages about Apple and services,
1:18:32that just sort of having something that looks on the outside, just like everyone else's service,
1:18:36like "Yay! We've done it! We have a service! We're a services company!"
1:18:39You have to keep evolving the basic parts of your system, sort of in the same way that, you know,
1:18:45in the beginning Google was the search box that you type terms into. Eventually there was something
1:18:50to sign into. I forget what the first Google thing to sign into was. Maybe it was Gmail,
1:18:53maybe it was something else. Eventually there was the concept of a Google account that was unifying
1:18:58all the various Google things together.
1:19:01And the way Google authentication works
1:19:03and the way it's consistent, referencing some tweets
1:19:05that Craig Hockenberry had been doing recently
1:19:07about how many different ways can you log in
1:19:10with your Apple ID just on websites alone
1:19:12and his speculation that each of those talks
1:19:14to a different backend and that they're all sort of diverse.
1:19:16And it's just such a big mess compared to how Google's
1:19:21authentication and login system has evolved over the years
1:19:25to get sort of more sturdy, more centralized, more comforting, more reassuring, more reliable,
1:19:32more predictable, whereas Apple's has gone in the opposite direction. It started off
1:19:36as small and humble and has become fragmented, confusing, and broken a lot of the time and
1:19:41inexplicable. And like, we're just talking about logging in. We're not talking about
1:19:47understand my natural language query that I'm speaking into my phone, which seems like
1:19:50it's a harder problem, but if you neglect the fundamentals, if you don't, but Margaret
1:19:55was talking about like the, why are these people not staying in the company as top of
1:19:58this comp on past shows as well. Like, you know, it could be that a serial entrepreneur
1:20:02doesn't want to move on to other things, but Apple as an organization has never seemed
1:20:05to value the type of infrastructure work that is necessary to be a world-class services
1:20:10organization that you, you can't have every project to do everything on its own. You have
1:20:14to sort of build up a common core infrastructure like it has, like, again, this is a repeat
1:20:18of shows from many years ago, but like it has on the OS side.
1:20:21They had a Core OS.
1:20:23They developed it.
1:20:24They used it as the underpinning for their new Mac operating system.
1:20:26It eventually ended up being the underpinning for their phone operating system, also for
1:20:29their watch operating system, also for their H.264 HDMI adapter cable for, you know, whatever.
1:20:35Does that one have iOS in it?
1:20:36I forget.
1:20:37I think it does, yeah.
1:20:38Like, Core technologies, Cocoa, Objective-C, their compiler infrastructure, their development
1:20:42tools, like, on the client side, in the non-service world, they understand that it's stupid for
1:20:47every product to have its own little thing.
1:20:49Unify, share where possible.
1:20:53It just makes more sense.
1:20:54And on the services side, they haven't quite gotten that.
1:20:56Down to the most basic thing you could possibly do with a service, which is log in and have
1:21:00an application that knows that you're logged in, that doesn't ask you to log in repeatedly
1:21:03for no reason, doesn't lose your login credentials, doesn't get confused, that you don't have
1:21:06bad weather iCloud days where things just don't seem to be working.
1:21:12I don't know how many more people get sick of hearing it about this and me listing off
1:21:15all the technologies that Google has had and developed over the years that are not for
1:21:19a specific project, that are so that anybody at Google can make a scalable, worldwide,
1:21:24reliable, redundant, performant network service on top of these things that they build and
1:21:29this whole section of the company at Google, all they do is make that infrastructure better
1:21:33and better and revised and replace this one with a better version than that. And just
1:21:37it's a rising tide lifts all boats and apples just like you're chucked out into sea with
1:21:41life preserver and sent to fend for yourself. Even the whole, the Siri people touting like
1:21:45they're moving to the Apache, was it Mesos or something or whatever? Like, I get the
1:21:49impression that that team is like solving a problem for themselves. Like why is there
1:21:52not an Apple-wide solution to anybody who wants to write a service like this that is
1:21:56infrastructure for the whole company? Why is a product team doing it? I don't know.
1:22:01It seems to me they just don't get it. And that to me explains partly why people who
1:22:04aren't serial entrepreneurs but just merely want to work in a company that values that
1:22:07type of work would definitely go to work for Google or even Amazon or Facebook before they
1:22:11they would go for Apple because those companies
1:22:13are so much more focused on valuing those server side
1:22:16and operations and data center things.
1:22:18Whereas Apple's like, we kind of try to do it in house
1:22:20and we kind of farm stuff out to Azure and Amazon,
1:22:23but we're not really good at that stuff.
1:22:24We mostly make cool devices
1:22:25and that's just not gonna cut it long-term.
1:22:28Regardless of whether AI is awesome or anything,
1:22:30I think it's not cutting it today
1:22:31and it's just not gonna cut it
1:22:32even for basic stuff like photos,
1:22:34which even if you set aside all the cool stuff
1:22:36that Casey loves about Google Photos,
1:22:38just the basics of doing photos right
1:22:40and having them in the cloud and everything,
1:22:41took them so long to even get like sort of a passable level
1:22:45of having things working and so many different tries.
1:22:48And I guess, you know, cloud kit is an attempt
1:22:51to do that type of infrastructure,
1:22:53but it's like they're just taking too long
1:22:55and they're moving too slowly
1:22:56and everyone else is too far ahead of them.
1:22:57Again, repeats of stuff I said last week,
1:22:59but it's on my mind a lot
1:23:02'cause I use a lot of Apple products.
1:23:03And every time I think about,
1:23:05I'm starting to think about are there aspects of my life
1:23:08that I use Apple with that I would be better off
1:23:10using someone else with.
1:23:12Down to things like Google Photos
1:23:13with Casey talking about that.
1:23:15But all the way up to should I stop trying to use Siri
1:23:18and should I use Google Now?
1:23:20I'm not gonna go out and get an Android phone at this point,
1:23:22but I already used Gmail for my mail.
1:23:24I would never use Apple's mail system for my mail
1:23:26for a variety of reasons.
1:23:28Apple's losing on a lot of these fronts.
1:23:31- Yeah, Google Photos, and I think I may have briefly
1:23:35mentioned this last episode.
1:23:36It's really rocked my world in a comfortable way because it really makes me wonder like,
1:23:43am I missing out on just giving Google everything about everything and having that kind of intelligent
1:23:50assistant thing for me?
1:23:54Should I be looking at Android?
1:23:56You should use the Gmail web interface because it knows when your flights are coming and
1:24:01it puts a little thing there and you can unsubscribe to lists from like little buttons on your
1:24:05like it does smart things with your email and gives you little buttons without having to go into them to
1:24:09and it can put things on your calendar based on what's in there and that may sound annoying and everything but
1:24:14It's it's actually really convenient
1:24:16Yeah, Google Photos has shown me like if you're willing to give Google in this case all of your pictures
1:24:22It's stunning how much intelligence they can provide you based on that, you know, if I want to search for
1:24:29Picture taken on a patio
1:24:33in 2012 I probably could search for that and it would probably find it pretty quickly. It's
1:24:39unbelievable the things that can put together just from the metadata in my pictures.
1:24:44And so it's not hard to extrapolate well if it's able to get all this from my pictures
1:24:49what could it do with my email and
1:24:51maybe with searches and things. And so on the one side every ounce of me is like no that's a terrible idea.
1:24:57You don't want Google looking at all those things. And then the opposite side of me thinks
1:25:02It is pretty damn convenient.
1:25:05Is it really that big a deal?
1:25:06I mean, they already have my email.
1:25:07Why not take the rest?
1:25:09So it's very weird what Google Photos has done
1:25:12because it's really made me start thinking about
1:25:14is it worth trading some of that privacy
1:25:16and some of that data to get something
1:25:18that is actually useful out of it.
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1:26:03Thanks a lot to Hewitt for sponsoring our show.
1:26:05(upbeat music)
1:26:08- I was gonna say one other thing that came up last week.
1:26:11Again, I feel like I mentioned this to Marco and Slack.
1:26:14I just feel the crushing invisibility of podcasts
1:26:17'cause I feel like we had this discussion
1:26:19on last week's ADB and nobody knew or cared.
1:26:22Like it has to be written down somewhere
1:26:23that people can link to before anyone cares about it.
1:26:26But anyway, something else that was discussed last week
1:26:28that I also saw written down in places
1:26:31was I was reminiscing about the old days when
1:26:34Apple and Google were friends.
1:26:35And when Apple introduced the iPhone,
1:26:37it was like we made this amazing hardware and this amazing OS
1:26:40on this device that's like nothing you've ever seen before.
1:26:42And it's powered by these Google services.
1:26:45And what a great partnership isn't that?
1:26:47Isn't that great?
1:26:47We make the OS and the hardware, Google does the services.
1:26:50And together, you have the best of all possible worlds.
1:26:53Because we are the best at making hardware.
1:26:54We are the best at making native client-side applications.
1:26:57Google is the best at maps.
1:26:58They're the best at online services.
1:27:00They're the best at search.
1:27:01And we're so integrated that we have--
1:27:03our Maps application is essentially
1:27:05Google's map application.
1:27:06Google provides the data.
1:27:07We wrote the application.
1:27:08It's a marriage made in heaven.
1:27:10And they got divorced, and we were all sad.
1:27:13And I don't know if that's what we're moving towards,
1:27:15if Apple can never figure this stuff out,
1:27:18and if Google continues to not be
1:27:21able to make the money in inroads
1:27:23that it wants to from Android, and instead
1:27:25the money from Android ends up going to other people.
1:27:27Could we end up years and years down the road
1:27:29where they come back to the table and say,
1:27:31you know what, we should have never broken up.
1:27:34I've learned that it's really hard to make money
1:27:35selling hardware, especially when you give away the OS
1:27:37for kind of free and in China, they make Android phones
1:27:41without using any of the Google services.
1:27:43And we kind of let this whole thing get away from us.
1:27:44And Apple's like, we tried to make services,
1:27:46but it's really hard and we're not good at it.
1:27:47So why don't we just do what we're each good at
1:27:50and together we can make a great phone platform
1:27:53where Siri will be powered by Google Now
1:27:56and iMessage will be replaced with a decent service
1:27:58it doesn't send messages out of order and has actual new features in it.
1:28:01But it'll be end-to-end encrypted and, you know, all this, like, I want the best of both
1:28:07worlds.
1:28:08And for a brief time, it seemed like that's what we were going to get until both Android
1:28:11and Apple decided they were both going to do everything that the other person does,
1:28:14only better.
1:28:15And thus far, their strengths remain the same.
1:28:20Google is getting better at hardware, Apple is getting better at services, but if you
1:28:23were to lay them down again, you would say, "Who's the best at making hardware and operating
1:28:26systems and all that stuff?"
1:28:27Apple, who's the best at making services, still Google, so I don't know what the long-term
1:28:31solution is. But as a customer and not someone who really cares about either one of those
1:28:36two companies ruling the entire world, it would be nice if we could turn back the clock
1:28:40on that relationship.
1:28:41Well, the good thing is, like, I feel like, you know, if you look at the situation on
1:28:45the Mac, you know, ignoring iOS for a second, look at the Mac. And on the Mac, you have
1:28:51pretty much what you want.
1:28:53You have tons of people who use Macs running Mac OS X
1:28:58with all Apple stuff under it,
1:28:59maybe even use iCloud for certain things,
1:29:02but who use Chrome as their browser,
1:29:03who use Gmail for their mail,
1:29:05maybe have Google Photos, whatever,
1:29:06uploader, however that works installed.
1:29:09On the Mac, you have that world of choice
1:29:12where you can totally be bought into the Google ecosystem
1:29:16and still be using a Mac with Mac OS as your computer
1:29:19and have all the Google stuff running there if you want it.
1:29:22- They had Siri OS X though,
1:29:23we're not gonna be able to replace it with Google now.
1:29:24Like that's the strategy text type of thing,
1:29:26where like, oh, well if you want a voice assistant
1:29:28that helps you on your Mac,
1:29:30you only get to choose the Apple one.
1:29:31The only, it's almost like it's an accident of history.
1:29:33- Well that's not true though.
1:29:34Because on the Mac, you have like the system ability
1:29:38for like, there's nothing stopping Google
1:29:40from running their own daemon in the background
1:29:42that's listening on the microphone for its own commands.
1:29:45Like, on iOS that is not possible,
1:29:48in the software environment.
1:29:50- There's gonna be OS level integration though
1:29:52that Siri's going to be favored with.
1:29:53And I guess you could say like, yeah, on the Mac,
1:29:55all is fair if you get admin access
1:29:57and you could bypass the system integrity protection
1:30:00and hack the finder and get your things into the Docker.
1:30:02Like whatever, Apple always still has an advantage.
1:30:05Even for things like Spotlight and stuff like that,
1:30:07like Google tried, didn't Google have
1:30:09like a Spotlight competitor that was trying
1:30:10to use the public APIs to do stuff like that?
1:30:13It's really hard.
1:30:15And that's what I'm saying,
1:30:16like it's almost an accident of history
1:30:17that the web browsers can,
1:30:18'cause a web browser is just a plain old application.
1:30:20And so there's no real barrier to entry there,
1:30:22especially since Apple still has the way for you
1:30:24to pick what your default browser is on the Mac,
1:30:26unlike iOS.
1:30:27But as you get more and more integrated
1:30:28into sort of system components,
1:30:29it becomes harder for any third party,
1:30:32no matter how good they are,
1:30:33to compete with the built-in one.
1:30:34Not only because it's built-in,
1:30:36but also because there are deep hooks
1:30:38that you can't get at,
1:30:39or you can only get at doing nasty hacks
1:30:41that you have to maintain.
1:30:42And so in practice, it's really hard,
1:30:45no matter how bad Spotlight is,
1:30:46and no matter how good Google's thing could have been,
1:30:48it's been really hard for them to make a better spotlight.
1:30:51And I imagine Siri will be similar,
1:30:53it will be harder for them to integrate their voice up.
1:30:56And then on iOS, forget it,
1:30:57you don't have a choice of so many things,
1:30:58you can't change the default to anything,
1:31:00and it's just frustrating.
1:31:03- But I think on the Mac, I think the gap there
1:31:06between what we have possible now
1:31:10and the world you imagine as the ideal world here,
1:31:13that gap is pretty small.
1:31:15I think we're almost there, we're pretty much there now.
1:31:18Where if Google wants to make all their stuff for Mac OS X
1:31:22and integrate their own alternatives
1:31:23in as many ways as they possibly can,
1:31:26there are lots of ways to do that right now.
1:31:27And that's pretty much possible now,
1:31:29and in many ways it's already done.
1:31:31Things like Chrome and Gmail and stuff like that.
1:31:33That's pretty much done.
1:31:34- But I'm worried about it actually getting worse.
1:31:37It's the next topic that we probably won't have time
1:31:38to get to in this show, but the next topic
1:31:40maybe we'll get to next week is about
1:31:41Chromebooks outselling Macs in school.
1:31:43The problem is that Google, because Apple and Google both want to do everything that
1:31:46everybody does, Google's like, "We should sell laptops, and we should have..."
1:31:50And it's like, "Well, we don't have a desktop OS.
1:31:52What should we do?"
1:31:53Well, can we make a Chrome OS, or can we put Android on Chromebooks?
1:31:57We have an OS.
1:31:58It's not really a desktop OS, but maybe that everyone wants to be in everything.
1:32:01It's almost kind of like only by the good graces of Google, that Google is so nice to...
1:32:06Not that they're doing it out of the goodness of their heart.
1:32:08They want our information and our eyeballs, everything else, whatever.
1:32:11they make their applications for iOS and for the Mac.
1:32:16Apple is not making FaceTime for Android.
1:32:19You know, like it's not an open standard that ever,
1:32:21you know, can't go back to that.
1:32:23Well, but like Apple keeps itself to its,
1:32:24it's stuff to its own platform when it's feasible,
1:32:26whereas Google, it's more important
1:32:28to get its thing everywhere.
1:32:29So we are blessed with these gifts from Google,
1:32:33but like, oh, I can use, you know,
1:32:35there's a native quote unquote,
1:32:36native Gmail application for iOS,
1:32:38and there's Google Now and there's Google Maps for iOS,
1:32:41even though Apple took the mapping thing back
1:32:43and did their own native thing.
1:32:44And I worry that someday, like the Cold War
1:32:46will get even colder and Google will start behaving
1:32:49even more like Apple and will be even more siloed
1:32:51and then the Mac will be, like even the things we enjoy now
1:32:55will be pulled away from me.
1:32:56And I feel like with system integrity protection
1:32:58and other things, it's getting farther and farther away
1:33:01from the world where anybody could compete
1:33:02with built-in Apple stuff.
1:33:04All you can really compete with is Apple applications.
1:33:06- Yeah, but I feel like Google and Apple
1:33:10are both under different leadership
1:33:12than where they were when this feud
1:33:14really was at its hottest.
1:33:16And I think you can look at both companies now
1:33:20and see that they're very pragmatic
1:33:22in a lot of their decisions.
1:33:25And I don't think you're ever gonna see
1:33:27some kind of grand reunification
1:33:30where Tim Cook comes out and is like,
1:33:32"Oh, now we've partnered with Google to replace."
1:33:35You're never gonna see that,
1:33:36but I think what you will see is Apple
1:33:39kind of like yielding certain ground
1:33:41to enable people to do that kind of thing if they want to.
1:33:44So, you know, I'm not saying they're gonna suddenly
1:33:47have everything this fall where like,
1:33:49oh, you can set your default mail to be Gmail,
1:33:51you can set your default browser to be a Chromic.
1:33:53I expect we probably will get to that type of thing
1:33:58slowly over time as the market kind of
1:34:01directs Apple to do that.
1:34:02Like, you know, there's enough demand now.
1:34:05Like Apple now offers their own versions
1:34:08of all these different services.
1:34:09Google's offering their versions of all these
1:34:11different OS's and hardware and stuff.
1:34:13So you're right, there's a lot of duplication here.
1:34:15And that's great because the people who really love Google
1:34:17can go buy a Chromebook or whatever,
1:34:19an Android phone and get all their Google stuff.
1:34:21The people who really love Apple can go buy Apple hardware,
1:34:24run Apple software, run all Apple services.
1:34:26Most people are somewhere in the middle.
1:34:28Most people love some stuff from multiple companies
1:34:31and aren't purists of either company or any company.
1:34:34So the more that both companies do to address that giant
1:34:38middle where most of the customers are, the more they both
1:34:44really benefit.
1:34:45And both companies' leadership are smart enough to know that
1:34:47and they're also, I think, realizing, in the same way
1:34:51when Steve came back and gave that big speech with
1:34:53Bill Gates on the big screen and said, for Apple to win,
1:34:57Microsoft doesn't have to lose or vice versa,
1:35:00whatever that quote was, I think Tim Cook knows
1:35:03that even though it's pretty clear that like,
1:35:06he obviously thinks a lot of what Google does
1:35:09is distasteful and he's right,
1:35:10and Google obviously thinks a lot of what Apple does
1:35:12is arrogant and technically inferior, and they're right,
1:35:17but the reality is I think both companies,
1:35:19Google knows that as a services company,
1:35:21it has to be everywhere, it has to be where the people are,
1:35:24and a lot of the people are on Apple stuff.
1:35:26And Apple knows that a lot of its customers
1:35:29who buy its devices really want to use
1:35:31some of Google's stuff on them.
1:35:33So they're both gonna address that.
1:35:35They're not gonna let that demand go totally unanswered
1:35:38in the name of like spite over a 10 year old battle
1:35:43that neither company's CEO was really part of.
1:35:47- Well, but the thing that's motivating,
1:35:49seems to be motivating Apple now to bestow its gifts
1:35:54onto other platforms is the things that are services
1:35:56like Apple Music.
1:35:57This is Apple Music for Android, right?
1:35:59- Yeah. - Am I not imagining that?
1:36:00- Yes, there is.
1:36:01because apple music is a service once
1:36:04for products that are like services
1:36:07you end up using the google rationale well it's a service and the most
1:36:10important thing is that we have a lot of customers so it has to be everywhere
1:36:14right same thing that motivated itunes for windows
1:36:17like it
1:36:18when you're in the service mindset for your service products the calculus is
1:36:22different and you end up putting it everywhere
1:36:24uh... but the other calculus when it is like this is the reason someone would
1:36:29buy a mac we know
1:36:30or this is the reason someone will buy a phone,
1:36:32we use FaceTime or whatever,
1:36:33when it's more linked to hardware, software,
1:36:36proprietary platforms where it's not a service,
1:36:38where your main goal isn't to get everyone
1:36:40in the world using it, you want people to buy iPhones,
1:36:42you want people to buy Macs
1:36:44when it's like your hardware business,
1:36:45then the opposite motivation comes in.
1:36:47So Apple is getting a little bit of the services motivation
1:36:50saying, if we have services products,
1:36:52we need to have them more than just on our platforms
1:36:54if you want a large customer base.
1:36:56And again, Google,
1:36:57because they wanna do everything Apple does,
1:36:58is starting to make hardware products
1:37:00and I wonder if they say, well, normally,
1:37:02our culture and our motivation,
1:37:04everything we do as Google is get as many users as possible
1:37:06because their data is the most important thing to us
1:37:08and we can sell based on them and blah, blah, blah.
1:37:10But when we do these hardware products,
1:37:12if we actually want to,
1:37:14if we can overcome our own company culture
1:37:16and motivate these hardware products,
1:37:18like to say, you have to make a great product
1:37:20that people wanna buy and we didn't wanna sell
1:37:22a lot of them, you have to think in a different mindset.
1:37:24Thus far, Google has not been able to get into that mindset,
1:37:26which is why most of their hardware
1:37:27has not sold like hotcakes, right?
1:37:30And thus far, mostly Apple's not been able
1:37:32to get into the right mindset
1:37:33to be really successful at services either.
1:37:35So as Apple learns, if Google continues to learn too,
1:37:40it will mean that they will start doing some of the things
1:37:42that I don't like about Apple not sharing their stuff.
1:37:44So I'm not sure the net sharing between them will be better.
1:37:46I think the only thing that is going to make
1:37:49the net sharing between them improve
1:37:51is for the power balance to shift.
1:37:53Kind of the same way that the net sharing
1:37:55between Apple and Microsoft
1:37:57really started to move once the parents' power balance
1:37:59shifted, once Apple was almost going out of business,
1:38:01Microsoft was like, "Aw, Apple, I remember them.
1:38:04"All right, we'll make Office for you.
1:38:06"Here's $150 million, we'll sell our shares too early
1:38:08"and regret it."
1:38:09(laughing)
1:38:12I think someone did the math of what that would be worth
1:38:13if they had kept it.
1:38:14Anyway, if the power balance is way off,
1:38:17suddenly you can come to the table,
1:38:19or right around, it's like the cold war,
1:38:20where everyone wants to show strength,
1:38:23everyone wants to do anything,
1:38:25And it's not a particularly comfortable time.
1:38:27But you're right.
1:38:28In the meantime, I will continue to use Chrome and Safari
1:38:31and the Gmail and the web interface.
1:38:34What else do I use from Google?
1:38:36Google Drive, Google Docs.
1:38:38We're using it right now for the show notes
1:38:40that Marco's not looking at.
1:38:42The Google search engine.
1:38:44Google Maps.
1:38:44Google search engine, obviously.
1:38:46It's a mix.
1:38:47But on iOS, definitely, it's much harder to achieve that mix.
1:38:50And I worry about the mix.
1:38:51And what I'm saying is I look forward
1:38:52to the time that this balance shifts in some way
1:38:55and the companies can go back, can get out from this sort of megalomaniacal mindset that
1:39:01the old Microsoft mindset that not only can we do everything because we are the mighty
1:39:06insert company name, we should do everything and we're going to be awesome at it.
1:39:10And that's a bad attitude for any company, Google, Apple or anything and it mostly leads
1:39:14to bad things.
1:39:15But the iPhone is a rising tide that lifts a hell of a lot of boats and so far Apple
1:39:21is not feeling this thing from that.
1:39:22Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, Fracture, FreshBooks, and Hover.
1:39:27We will see you next week.
1:39:28Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin
1:39:35'Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental
1:39:41John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him
1:39:46'Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental
1:39:51And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm
1:39:56And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S
1:40:06So that's Kasey Liszt, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M
1:40:10Auntie Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C
1:40:16USA, Syracuse, it's accidental
1:40:21♪ They didn't mean to ♪
1:40:24♪ Accidental ♪
1:40:25♪ Accidental ♪
1:40:26♪ Tech podcast ♪
1:40:28♪ So long ♪
1:40:30- Man, I feel like Casey,
1:40:32I feel like I have to save you in some way
1:40:35from tripping and falling into Android.
1:40:38In the same way, remember about two years ago,
1:40:42you started talking about not wanting a BMW,
1:40:46but instead wanting one of those weird, sporty new Cadillacs
1:40:49that's like all straight lines and angles.
1:40:52And I'm like, you look at that and you're like,
1:40:54I was like, just no, I have to save you.
1:40:56Back away from this cliff,
1:40:57I'm like holding the back of your shirt.
1:40:59Like, no, I'm not gonna let you go over this cliff.
1:41:00Like you are not doing, trust me,
1:41:02you will thank me later, you're not doing this, right?
1:41:05I feel like this might be that moment for tripping
1:41:07and falling into the Google pit of insanity here.
1:41:11- I know you're being silly, but--
1:41:14- Only a little bit.
1:41:15- And I'm not actually looking to buy an Android
1:41:19or anything, but it is striking to me how me, I guess I could say forced, I mean I don't have to
1:41:29be a Google Photos user, but you know Picture Life is a dumpster fire and Everpix is dead and so,
1:41:37and I don't particularly care for Flickr, just me, you may love it, that's fine, but I backed into
1:41:43Google Photos and then I started to just really love what it was providing and it's really made me
1:41:49me, like I said earlier, kind of question, am I holding on to Apple being the best thing
1:41:54ever because it's just what I'm used to?
1:41:57And I don't think so.
1:41:58And I think that if I were to go Android, it would be death by a thousand very, very
1:42:02deep and very wide paper cuts.
1:42:05But nevertheless, it's made me think.
1:42:07And then there was that great episode of Connected this week where Federico got himself an Android
1:42:13phone and had positive things to say.
1:42:15And I think his experience is probably what mine would be, in that, you know, there's
1:42:23a lot here to like, but it's not enough to sway me.
1:42:29But man, it's stunned me how much I've just like subconsciously been thinking, "Man, this
1:42:35is really convenient."
1:42:37And all I've given them is photos.
1:42:39Now granted, it's tied to my ID that probably has everything I've ever done on the internet
1:42:43ever.
1:42:44But all I've knowingly given them is my photos
1:42:47and the stuff that they can put together is just stunning.
1:42:50- No, I mean, I think what you're doing now,
1:42:55which is using Apple hardware and OSs,
1:42:58but using selectively the Google things
1:43:00that you like best on them,
1:43:02that is generally the best combo for most people, I think.
1:43:06- Yeah, I agree.
1:43:07- Well, even with photos though,
1:43:08don't you feel the pain of iOS integration?
1:43:11One of the main reasons I'm sticking with Apple Photos
1:43:13is, well, part of it is I'm actually hoping they're gonna get on the ball and start integrating
1:43:17some of these features like the rumors say. But the other thing is like, it's integrated
1:43:20with your phone and the native photos application has this stuff. And I don't know, maybe I
1:43:23think there's a bigger barrier than there really is to like, what if I just don't use
1:43:28the Apple Photos application? Does the photo picker always show you only Apple photos from
1:43:32the thing or did?
1:43:33Yes, the way I think the problem is my mental model, for better or worse, is that the pictures
1:43:41that are on my phone in like the photos stock photos app those are the pictures
1:43:46that were generated on that phone or have been beamed to that phone via
1:43:52airdrop or Wi-Fi from the big camera or something like that but it's not all
1:43:55your photos correct and to me something else outside of the stock photos app is
1:44:01all of my photos and it was picture life and now it's Google Photos now I'm not
1:44:06saying that's right I'm not saying that that's how you would treat it but that's
1:44:09That's the way I like to treat it.
1:44:10But do you have share sheet?
1:44:11I guess you have with extensions.
1:44:12Don't you have a share sheet?
1:44:13Like say you want to tweet something and you want to tweet and it's a picture from like
1:44:16three years ago that's in your All My Photos collection.
1:44:20When you tap the little camera icon in your Twitter application of choice, does it bring
1:44:24up a photo picker?
1:44:25Do you have the option to picking from your Google Photos or do you only get to pick from
1:44:28the phone things?
1:44:29I think only the phone things, but my workflow, let me see.
1:44:33Yeah, so on Tweetbot I can only choose from library.
1:44:37But my workflow would have been, if I were to do something like that, find the photo
1:44:43on Google Photos, download it onto my phone, and then take it from there.
1:44:47Yeah, no, I mean, I want it to work both ways.
1:44:49Like I said, it's either a real or perceived barrier to the fact that Apple's photos are
1:44:55integrated into iOS in the most convenient possible way, and all third-party things are
1:45:00slightly less convenient or that I have to think about more or whatever.
1:45:03And that's another area where eventually, like Marco said, it could be that the sort
1:45:06of detente comes in and they start allowing you to pick, "Hey, what do you use for your
1:45:12photos?"
1:45:13And it just has to be conformant to this particular interface or API or whatever.
1:45:18And then when you say, "Pick photos," we won't just show you your collection of quote-unquote
1:45:22Apple photos.
1:45:23Same thing with contacts, same thing with everything else.
1:45:24Although contacts is different because Apple actually gives you access to the underlying
1:45:27data from any application, so you can use different calendars and stuff.
1:45:30What I'm saying is I'm sticking with the Apple apps in a lot of cases, not because I think
1:45:35they're the best, because I would like to try Google Photos, but I know that I can't
1:45:39try Google Photos without having a split-brain situation where now I have two collections
1:45:43of photos to manage and I'm not going to do that.
1:45:45So I just have the one collection and maybe I would upload them as a redundant backup.
1:45:51I think I'm still paying for a terabyte of Google storage for various reasons.
1:45:55But yeah, it's a barrier.
1:45:58It's a barrier to me trying what is almost certainly a product that I would enjoy more
1:46:02than what I'm using.
1:46:03And also I have to say, a lack of a really cool native application like Photos is a barrier.
1:46:07The Photos drives me up a wall, but there is no equivalent to that for Google Photos
1:46:11as far as I'm aware.
1:46:12Well, whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down.
1:46:13Well, what are you looking for?
1:46:15Because there's absolutely a native app, but it may not do the sorts of things that you
1:46:18want it to do.
1:46:19Yeah, I mean like the Photos application, like with all the adjustments and all the
1:46:23like, it's not that they're fancy, but it's a native application rather than a weird web
1:46:26interface and it has all sorts of, you know, photo-arranging and printing, you know, booklets
1:46:32and doing all the stuff that, like, iPhoto used to and that photo still sort of does.
1:46:36Yeah, so it does a lot, but not all of that. So it is native and I'm sure, knowing that,
1:46:41given that it's Google, I'm sure there's web views that I'm just not realizing, but it
1:46:45doesn't feel like they're web views. It feels, honest to goodness, native. You can do some
1:46:51modifications but here again, that's not something I typically do on my phone, even in the photos
1:46:56apps, so that's not an itch I need to scratch.
1:47:00I'm talking about the Mac app, not the iOS app.
1:47:03Oh, I'm sorry.
1:47:04Yeah, on the desktop, you're absolutely right.
1:47:07It's all web.
1:47:08I thought you were talking about iOS.
1:47:10No, that's what we're doing with the photos.
1:47:11We're going to the 5K iMac and you load photos,
1:47:13and that's how I sort through them to pick out the photos.
1:47:15I gotcha, I gotcha.
1:47:15So like, a yearly calendar and arranging things.
1:47:17And I guess also photo stream.
1:47:19And this is sort of a family inertia
1:47:20in that we finally got everyone set up on photo stream,
1:47:22so now when we post a picture, everyone can see it.
1:47:25and it's so much better than every other system we've tried previously to get pictures of
1:47:29like grandkids to grandparents.
1:47:31This is the best system because we just do a thing and then a thing pops up and then
1:47:35they see the thing and so much easier than sending them URLs or knowing when they need
1:47:39to go there or whatever.
1:47:41And again if we just got them onto the Google system they could do the same thing but it's
1:47:44like well everyone's already set up with their iOS devices.
1:47:47It's like it's platform inertia and lock-in keeping you away from superior applications.
1:47:51are working sort of as designed for Apple, but I'm a little bit bitter about it.
1:47:56Yeah, I think the problem is—I shouldn't say problem—but the difference between you
1:48:01and I is a couple of things. One, I view the file system on my—actually, it's sitting
1:48:07on the Synology, but effectively on the iMac—I view the file system as the canonical representation
1:48:12of my photos. I don't use Photos app on the desktop. I actually really don't like
1:48:17it very much at all. And so to me, Google Photos is just a portable search tool and
1:48:25view into that repository. And that works really well for me. And I've always treated
1:48:33my one true repository as segregated, like I was saying earlier, from the phone. And
1:48:40that just works really well for me. Additionally, you do a lot more stuff with your photos than
1:48:45I tend to. I'll share them on social media. I have a shared album for pictures that we
1:48:50like of Declan that we've shared with friends and family like you guys. But I don't do a
1:48:55whole lot of heavy photo editing. I think it was Marco or somebody taught me how to
1:48:59do white balance correction for when I take pictures at night. That's like a big new advancement
1:49:03for me.
1:49:04I didn't teach you. I just said you should look into this. It makes a big difference
1:49:08and it's not that hard.
1:49:09Yeah. Well, okay. Maybe that's why.
1:49:10That was like, when I first started taking decent photos,
1:49:13or photos with decent cameras, like in 2006, 2007,
1:49:18I look back at all those photos and they're all orange,
1:49:20because I didn't know how to do white balance,
1:49:22and I eventually learned white balance,
1:49:24I'm like, oh, that makes a huge difference,
1:49:27and I didn't know that for a very long time.
1:49:29So I was basically trying to like,
1:49:30jump you up the queue of learning how to do photo stuff.
1:49:33Just be like, here, let me save you three years,
1:49:35just look at white balance. - Exactly.
1:49:37It absolutely did but you know, but I bring that up to say that that's about as heavy an edit as I usually get
1:49:43We don't do the yearly calendar thing
1:49:45We probably should and I'm jealous of your yearly calendars or like the underscores were showing us
1:49:50We were up there this past weekend
1:49:51They do yearly like photo books and we should do that
1:49:55But I was asking I was asking Dave and Lauren, you know
1:50:00How long does that take you and they said about a week week and a half every single year?
1:50:05and I don't know how they find the time for it.
1:50:08But I wish I had it, so I guess they make the time for it.
1:50:11But I don't use photos heavily.
1:50:15I find that for me, photos are just, I want to have them to help jog my memory.
1:50:20I want to be able to get to a relatively arbitrary photo very quickly.
1:50:25So oh, that restaurant we went to when we were on our trip to Paris.
1:50:29I'd like a picture of that.
1:50:30Well, I can just type in "Paris" in Google Photos.
1:50:34And maybe you can do this in regular photos too.
1:50:35In fact, I think you can.
1:50:36But I could type in Paris in Google Photos.
1:50:39- Only if it's geo tagged,
1:50:41and only if you actually happen to be in Paris.
1:50:42Like these are all things that,
1:50:44like if Apple wants to catch up,
1:50:46and if they're actually, you know,
1:50:47of all these rumors are true,
1:50:48they should show, hey, the next version of photos
1:50:50knows what the hell's in your picture and can do something.
1:50:52And then it's just a competition of who does it better.
1:50:54Spoiler alert, it's gonna be Google.
1:50:55But at least just having that feature
1:50:57is better than not having it at all.
1:50:59- Right, so here's a great example.
1:51:00So earlier today, I forget why,
1:51:03but I wanted to see if I had a picture of the Rotunda at UVA.
1:51:07So UVA is the University of Virginia.
1:51:10It's where Aaron went to school.
1:51:11It's about an hour west of where we live.
1:51:13And their most famous building is a building
1:51:18called the Rotunda, which is modeled after the Pantheon
1:51:23or Parthenon.
1:51:24I always get it wrong.
1:51:25I'm so sorry.
1:51:25Please don't email me.
1:51:26The Pentagon.
1:51:26It's modeled.
1:51:27Yeah, the Pentagon, totally.
1:51:29It's modeled after one of those.
1:51:30old kind of Greek-looking structure with the columns and all that.
1:51:35Well anyway, so I did a search for "retunda," and I have not knowingly tagged these pictures
1:51:42in any way.
1:51:43It doesn't—oh, never mind, it does say "pretty retunda" on this picture.
1:51:46Just kidding!
1:51:47But this is a terrible example.
1:51:51So the file name in this case did tag it, and my bad.
1:51:55But I have seen other situations—just let's pretend that's not the case—I've seen
1:51:59Maybe in other situations, when I haven't given Google any information about the photo,
1:52:05but it has figured out, "Oh, this is the Rotunda."
1:52:09Well, as an example, so the pictures of the Pantheon Parthenon, I always get it wrong,
1:52:14we were there in Italy, I believe.
1:52:17God, Federico's going to be so mad.
1:52:19Anyway, point is, we were at the inspiration for the Rotunda, and I just did a search in
1:52:22Google Photos for Rotunda, and one of the things that comes up are pictures of this
1:52:27old, old, old ancient building, which looks just like the UVA rotunda.
1:52:31So Google has said, presumably, "Hey, what does the UVA rotunda look like?
1:52:36Oh, this looks like that.
1:52:38Let's bubble these up as well."
1:52:40And you could take this either way, right?
1:52:41You could either say, "Well, this is a false positive," or you could take that as, "Well,
1:52:45this is an ancillary picture that you may have wanted, so I'm going to give it to you
1:52:49anyway."
1:52:50And just that machine learning, which we heard a thousand times during Google I/O, it really
1:52:54does freaking work.
1:52:55And the fact that I can just search the word "retunda" and get not only pictures that we've
1:52:59taken in front of the "retunda" but pictures we've taken in front of this other building,
1:53:04I just find that to be amazing.
1:53:06And it makes it so, so convenient.
1:53:10Rather than having to think to myself, "All right, when were we in Paris?" or "When were
1:53:15we in Rome?" or what have you.
1:53:17"Ah, that was 2012.
1:53:18Shoot, what month was it?"
1:53:20"Ah, I think it was July."
1:53:21"No, it was August."
1:53:22Now I got to go through every picture in August to figure out where it was that we went to
1:53:27Rome and now I got to search through, okay, which day was it in this week that we were
1:53:31there?
1:53:32Now granted, another approach could be what I suspect you do, Jon, which is to catalog
1:53:36and tag and do a lot of this stuff by hand, but I don't have the patience for it.
1:53:41And so I love that Google Photos can just figure it out for me.
1:53:44Jon Streeter That's why I don't want to do all that work.
1:53:47I would like a reliable way to do it.
1:53:48Like I remember when Picasa came out with face detection, I'm like, "Oh, that's awesome,"
1:53:52all they don't have it in Apple's photo as I wish they did and then Apple came
1:53:54out with the feature I'm like yeah finally you caught up and then what face
1:53:57detection brought was a fan spinning CPU grinding feature to iPhoto that
1:54:03nevertheless failed to accomplish the task that I wanted it for which is
1:54:07basically find me all the pictures of a particular person because you had to
1:54:11train it and it would miss a bunch and bottom line is my manual tagging of
1:54:15who's in what picture was better and faster and did not destroy my computer
1:54:20during the process. So it's like you brought the feature but your
1:54:24implementation is bad enough that manual tagging still wins. Whereas with the
1:54:27Google thing there's no way I'm gonna tag everything like you know I'm not
1:54:32gonna tag all the hugs and all like the the nighttime things and put geotags on
1:54:37my you know pictures that don't have tags because they're from cameras that
1:54:40don't have a GPS. I'm not gonna do that. If Google can do it it's not as if it's
1:54:44competing with a better manual tagging alternative. It's competing with there's
1:54:47There's no way in hell you could do this manually.
1:54:50And so you're not comparing it to essentially 99% accuracy, you're comparing it to nothing.
1:54:55You got nothing.
1:54:56Now when I'm looking for pictures, like where is that picture of my television so I could
1:55:01see what arrangement of AV equipment I had three years ago.
1:55:06I just have to scroll.
1:55:07I just have to scroll with my eyeballs and look at the date and say like, "This is around
1:55:11last year."
1:55:12And let me just sort of scroll through the pictures and look for something that looks
1:55:14like a TV.
1:55:15And sometimes you miss it.
1:55:16just type TV and you know TV 2013 Google photos would do it photos on the Mac
1:55:24will not yeah I just typed television 2013 and I'm looking at pictures I took
1:55:29of our TV among other things of course you are anyway I like face recognition I
1:55:35fully expect Apple to add this feature to photos I just hope they do better
1:55:39this time than last time well the tough thing is how does how does photos get
1:55:44better at figuring out what's in the photo because it does it can't really
1:55:50aggregate what it learns over gajillions of photos it can just do a best guess
1:55:55based on what's been programmed into the photos there has to be a server-side
1:55:59component there has well right and then at that point how are they any better
1:56:03than Google and if you put on your tinfoil hat I don't I don't consider it
1:56:08bad or like apples got all my photos anyway where do you think they're all
1:56:11stored there on Apple servers I don't I assume they're not even encrypted
1:56:14They're just like, "I'm signing up to say, 'Here, Apple, take all my photos and start
1:56:18them on your cloud infrastructure.
1:56:19Now, Apple, you have all my photos, and I'm trusting you won't do anything nefarious with
1:56:23them.'"
1:56:24That's it.
1:56:25That's the deal.
1:56:26So that's not a hang-up for me at all.
1:56:27They're like, "Oh, I don't want to give my photos to Google."
1:56:29No, I'll gladly give them to Google.
1:56:30The reasons I don't are for everything I just said, like iOS integration and sharing photos
1:56:34with family and all that other stuff.
1:56:36Yeah, so here's a great example.
1:56:37So I typed in "Deckland List," and I've told Google—you know, it discovered that there
1:56:42is someone who looks like this in a lot of pictures, and I told Google, "Okay, that's
1:56:47Declan."
1:56:48And so I typed in "Declan List, Beach, 2015."
1:56:52And it came up with our beach trip from last year, but it interestingly also came up with
1:56:56a shot of Declan sitting at a pumpkin patch where the ground was indistinguishable from
1:57:03sand at a glance.
1:57:05So it has looked at this picture and said, "Hmm, that looks to me to be a beach, that
1:57:10looks to me like that's Declan in there and it is one of the results that came back. And
1:57:14here again, like I said earlier, you could treat that as a false positive, but I think
1:57:17it's great because it shows that there is some amount of like reasoning going into tagging
1:57:24that picture as being at the beach. I don't know, it's good stuff. So it makes you wonder,
1:57:29you know, hey, would it be cool if it just searched my email and said, hey, you know,
1:57:34you better leave now for that flight that's coming up. And to be fair, what is, I forget
1:57:37what they call it, but Apple's doing that now as well.
1:57:39- Proactive or whatever.
1:57:40- Yeah, yeah.
1:57:41So like when I get in the car on the way home,
1:57:44it'll say, it sees, the phone will see
1:57:47that I've connected to a car Bluetooth,
1:57:49and it'll say, well, about this time,
1:57:51he tends to be heading to my home address,
1:57:53and it'll tell me, oh, it'll be about eight minutes
1:57:55to get you home.
1:57:56Like that's awesome, and that's the same sort of thing
1:57:59that I'm thinking about when I say,
1:58:00oh, extrapolating Google Photos advantages out,
1:58:03what could that get me?
1:58:05And that sort of thing.
1:58:06"Oh, I see you're in the car.
1:58:07"I know what you're probably gonna do.
1:58:09"It'll probably take you about 10 minutes."
1:58:11That is awesome, and it doesn't have to be Google,
1:58:14and it doesn't have to be server-side in every single case,
1:58:18but I can see how in a lot of cases, like photos,
1:58:21there are many advantages of it being server-side
1:58:24from a company that does this sort
1:58:26of machine learning all the time.
1:58:28- Every time I get into my car,
1:58:30Proactiv tells me how long it takes
1:58:31to get to the chicken salad deli.
1:58:33So it actually knows me pretty well.
1:58:34- Are you being serious?
1:58:35Does it really?
1:58:36That's the main place you go.
1:58:38I mean, I would argue it's probably working as designed.
1:58:42It tells me the work one though, I think.
1:58:43I feel like it tells me at times when it should know that I'm not going to work.
1:58:46I don't know how it should know, like maybe it's a national holiday, maybe it's Christmas.
1:58:49Oh, you get in the car, it's, you know, X number of minutes to work.
1:58:52It's like, come on, it's Christmas, I'm not going to work.
1:58:53[BEEP]