0:00:00I also like the idea of titles that make people not want to listen.
0:00:03You know what?
0:00:04You don't want to listen?
0:00:05Fine!
0:00:06Capital F, capital C, that's what you get.
0:00:07It's obscure.
0:00:08It's for the connoisseur, man.
0:00:10Alright, anyway, first item of follow-up, the most followed-up item last week was both
0:00:18Marco's description and my reinforcement of the idea that if you lose the tiny little
0:00:23Apple remote in your couch cushions or it's just dark and it's somewhere on your couch
0:00:26on the arm of your couch or on a coffee table and you go reaching for it and you feel around
0:00:31to try to find it and you accidentally swipe your fingers across touchpad while you're
0:00:35watching video that will move the playhead on the video.
0:00:38And many many people were going to tell us that if you hit the menu button it would just
0:00:42go back to where it was.
0:00:44When you move the playhead it doesn't actually start playing again until you tell it to play
0:00:48but then you're still kind of faced with the situation of "oh well how do I get the playhead
0:00:51back to where I want to put it?"
0:00:52I don't think you even have to put it back first of all but second of all if you accidentally
0:00:56do that if you're reaching to the remote and you swipe your hands across touchpad and it
0:01:00moves the playhead somewhere just hit the menu button and it will go back to where it
0:01:03was.
0:01:04I think you can probably also just hit, well maybe you can't hit play.
0:01:06Anyway, menu button, the largest followed up item.
0:01:09I didn't know that in my one hour of using it but since then I have used it and it works.
0:01:15Have you used Plex yet?
0:01:16I haven't, I keep meaning to install that.
0:01:18I haven't installed it.
0:01:19And the thing that keeps me away from Plex, I went through this big long painful experience
0:01:22to install it on my PS4 and then was disappointed in the client.
0:01:26The main thing that keeps me from installing it is my Plex server would be my Synology,
0:01:30but I use the DS video server instead, and the kids use the DS video server.
0:01:34Like you can play video from it from my television from ten different places.
0:01:39And I think, I don't like to mess with that setup, because I think by enabling Plex there's
0:01:44a potential that I could screw up my existing video thing, or maybe it'll show up as two
0:01:47DLNA servers.
0:01:48I don't know.
0:01:49Anyway.
0:01:50two DLNA servers because my dad uses DLNA and he has Plex running, I believe hosted
0:01:56on the Synology of Memory Serves, and there are two separate DLNA servers for sure.
0:02:01Yeah, so I'm always just afraid to touch what works, especially if it involves things
0:02:05that my kids are using, but I will eventually try.
0:02:07Really you should get yours first and try it and tell me about it.
0:02:11Right.
0:02:12Let's, we'll figure that out.
0:02:14At some point maybe, I'm sure I'm going to get one.
0:02:16It's just, haven't done it yet, trying to hold out, trying to wait for the holidays,
0:02:20probably won't work, we'll see.
0:02:22What did your kids say about the remote?
0:02:25- This I thought was interesting
0:02:26because I've seen a lot of things about the Apple TV
0:02:30or about just technology in general
0:02:32where it's like we old people don't understand it
0:02:35and only the kids truly understand it.
0:02:38And I thought one of my kids' reaction
0:02:40to the new remote was interesting.
0:02:43They're used to having lots of different remotes
0:02:47'cause I don't have a universal remote,
0:02:49I have a bunch of different remotes.
0:02:50They have learned more or less to navigate my crazy television setup to get what they
0:02:54want on the television.
0:02:55They're not really that into it.
0:02:57They don't want to know how it works.
0:02:58They just want to know the minimum possible to get it to work.
0:03:01Anyway, I said, "Here, here's the new Apple TV."
0:03:03And I showed it to them and we were watching some video and at some point they wanted to
0:03:06watch a video by themselves.
0:03:08And I said, "Oh, just use the new Apple TV."
0:03:09And they didn't know what the remote looked like because they're used to the TiVo remote.
0:03:12Anyway, I gave them the remote and showed it to them.
0:03:15And immediately, this is my daughter.
0:03:18She was super angry that this remote did not work like the other one.
0:03:21She was just trying to navigate the grid of items to, you know, go up and to the left.
0:03:25And I was like, all right, go over to Netflix.
0:03:27Why she was watching Netflix, now everyone knows she knows how to do it from the T-02.
0:03:30But anyway, just moving the sort of selection to the Netflix icon on the main screen using
0:03:36the touch pad did not, was not immediately apparent how that worked, even though I kept
0:03:40showing her swipe your thumb left or right or tap or whatever.
0:03:43And she got so angry, she was like, why can't it just be buttons?
0:03:45I just want to go up and left.
0:03:47She was just so angry that it didn't work the way the other one did because she was competent with the other one
0:03:51She knows how to go again. It was a TiVo remote not the little Apple thing
0:03:54She knows how to go up up left left and then hit the button in the middle to select and this tiny little remote
0:03:59Was thwarting or it had taken away her skill and made her back into a novice and that is a phenomenon that we're all very
0:04:06familiar with in the adult world or the world of people who aren't in elementary school anyway
0:04:11where they have a set of computer skills that have been built up over many years and
0:04:16The the introduction of anything new even if the new thing is better is seen as a threat or as a bad thing
0:04:22Because it puts them back into the role of novice. They know how to use the old system
0:04:27They know how to use
0:04:28You know a particular interface or a piece of hardware or a piece of software or whatever and that expert they start that expertise starts
0:04:34To feel like they start to internalize that as like I am a competent person. I know how to do this job
0:04:39I can't whatever whatever task I need to accomplish I can accomplish it and I use it and any tool you give them even if
0:04:44the tool is actually better once you learn it, because it makes them feel like they can
0:04:47no longer do the task they could previously do, that tool is bad. And it was amazing to
0:04:51me to see that happen in an eight-year-old. You know, it's not—we're not that different,
0:04:57you and I, the old people and the young people. Even an eight-year-old can be super angry
0:05:01that her hard-earned skills of using the directional pad and the select button on a T-bar remote
0:05:07can be erased in a moment by new technology. Anyway, she's used to it now. It's fine.
0:05:11Just like that.
0:05:12All is right in the world.
0:05:13Well, yeah, I mean, you know, she's eight.
0:05:14It takes three seconds.
0:05:15You learn how to do it.
0:05:16It's like she was still angry about it for that day, but now she's over it.
0:05:19Oh, goodness gracious.
0:05:21All right, any other follow-up, or are we already done?
0:05:23If we are done, that is world record follow-up.
0:05:26I'm very proud of us.
0:05:27I think Marco's been doing more Apple TV gaming.
0:05:30Do you have anything more to add on it?
0:05:32Yeah, so basically what happened between last show and this show is that my family discovered
0:05:38that the Apple TV can in fact be a good gaming system because we discovered the game that
0:05:42everybody else discovered two years ago, Badland. This was especially good because none of us
0:05:47had actually played it on iOS, so it was all new to us. Badland is a fantastic game for
0:05:52the Apple TV.
0:05:53I don't think I've ever even heard of this.
0:05:55So it's kind of like the art style, almost of limbo but with color, and it's this kind
0:06:02of intricate, really fancied up version of the basic gameplay mechanic of Flappy Bird.
0:06:09And this is really minimizing its goodness, but it's like, so you know, you are this bird
0:06:13and you like, you push the button to go up and you let go of the button to fall and you
0:06:18know, just like this kind of inertia based flying game. And you just fly through these
0:06:21side scrolling levels and there's all sorts of different obstacles and things that you,
0:06:26you know, things you pick up to change, the behavior of things and you multiply and divide,
0:06:31It's crazy.
0:06:33It's just a really, really good game and it is incredibly good even on the Siri remote.
0:06:39We've actually tried it with the gamepad and with the Siri remote and we actually find
0:06:42it's better with the Siri remote and I can't explain why.
0:06:45I don't know why.
0:06:46Is it tap to click or is it click to click?
0:06:48You have to actually click the button and it doesn't just tap.
0:06:51But again, it doesn't make sense.
0:06:52I don't know why it's better but for some reason it just feels better.
0:06:55It feels right on the Siri remote.
0:06:57Well, doesn't it feel weird to hold a traditional console style controller in two hands and
0:07:02the only thing you're doing with it is pressing one button with one thumb?
0:07:05Maybe. That might be it. So anyway, it really is a fantastic game. I highly recommend it
0:07:11for any Apple TV owner. It's accessible, like, you know, kids can play it, adults can
0:07:16play it, non-gamers can play it. It is really a very nice, well-done game. I think it's
0:07:21like five bucks. Who cares? Just get it. Like, it's really good. By far, the best Apple
0:07:27TV gaming experience that we've had so far.
0:07:29Interesting. This looks aesthetically, just reading the, um, or excuse me, not reading,
0:07:35but watching the little video on their website, this looks aesthetically a lot like World
0:07:39of Goo to me. Did either of you play that?
0:07:41Yeah, it's, yeah, and I, honestly, I wouldn't expect World of Goo to work because of the
0:07:45lack of a pointer, but it is kind of in that, in a similar art style, or maybe that was
0:07:51one of the influences on it. Certainly, it's just a, it's a gorgeous, you know, artistic
0:07:56design game. It's really, really -- and it's kind of funny, it's kind of sick, like, it's
0:08:01really good. Just get Badland. There aren't that many things you can do in the Apple TV
0:08:05that are really excellent right now, because we're just waiting on a lot of software to
0:08:09get ported or written for it. This is one of those things. This highly recommended Badland.
0:08:14>> There's another one of those one-button-press games.
0:08:17>> Yes.
0:08:18>> Because, you know, and designed for -- I'm assuming this was designed for touch originally,
0:08:21but it lends itself well, because you are forced to go forward. Like, there is no move
0:08:26forward thing, like isn't going forward, isn't that like part of the the gameplay itself, and that
0:08:30the screen moves on whether you're ready or not, so if you have to backtrack or something to get
0:08:34around an obstacle and the screen is moving on, tough luck, right? Yeah, exactly. And so this is
0:08:40a type of game that I think traditional gamers who are used to having more control over their
0:08:45environment might find off-putting, but is ideal for the phone where you don't want to make someone
0:08:50try to use a virtual d-pad, and now on the Apple TV where we actually have a real d-ish pad or
0:08:55or whatever. If you just want to use the remote, hey, we already have a game already tuned
0:08:59for single button press and now that button doesn't even block any of the screen. So,
0:09:03an ideal Apple TV port.
0:09:05- Yeah, and it's, you know, it's watchable by people, like it's fun to watch someone
0:09:08playing it. Nothing about it needs to be on a personal device that's only in your hands.
0:09:16You know, it really is very much like a TV friendly, family friendly, general audience
0:09:22kind of game. It's just really good. Highly recommended. I also tried Provenance more
0:09:27this week. So the provenance is that emulator, so you can't actually get it on the app store.
0:09:31It's one of those, it's one of the relatively few apps I think that is published with the
0:09:36intention of everybody, it's open source and to install it you have to download the source
0:09:42code, register for an Apple developer account, have Xcode build the game and connect your
0:09:49TV via USB to your computer and have Xcode install the game onto your Apple TV with provisioning
0:09:55profiles generated from your developer account.
0:09:57My goodness.
0:09:58It is definitely not something that you can just like tell a non-developer to just go
0:10:04do this and expect them to figure it out. They might, but the chances are not great.
0:10:10So it is very much a cumbersome process. I know Flux, the F.lux, that I believe just
0:10:17came out with something similar for iPhones and iPads
0:10:20where they had this open source version
0:10:23that they just say here you can side load this
0:10:26with Xcode and a developer account
0:10:28if you want this on your device without jailbreak
0:10:30and something like that.
0:10:31So it's a pretty cumbersome process
0:10:35and then it's nerdy, then you have to like
0:10:37tell it to import your ROMs
0:10:39that you wanna play in the emulator
0:10:40and then it like creates a web interface
0:10:43and you have to like go from your Mac and upload them
0:10:46So it's definitely a little bit cumbersome to get set up.
0:10:49But when it is set up, you have an emulator on your Apple TV.
0:10:52And it covers all the popular 8 and 16-bit systems.
0:10:55It doesn't go into-- like, it doesn't have N64 or anything
0:10:59more advanced.
0:11:00I think it stops at, like, Super Nintendo and Genesis level.
0:11:03But it is really quite good.
0:11:06I've played better emulators.
0:11:08If you have a computer with a game pad on your computer,
0:11:11you can do a lot better.
0:11:12Because like, Providence, it lacks
0:11:14a lot of customizable control that a lot of emulators have. You can't, for example, customize
0:11:19the controls. So if you don't like how they map the buttons onto the gamepad, tough luck.
0:11:24Oh, I guess you have the source code. I guess you could change it. But I am a developer
0:11:30and I wouldn't bother doing that. They also don't appear to have any of the really nice
0:11:35scaling modes. So like, you know, all these old games, they were made for much lower resolution
0:11:39screens and if you run them on a modern emulator, you get all these like fancy, like the 2x
0:11:44AI and Super Eagle, like all these fancy scaling up modes to make the graphics look better
0:11:49on higher resolution larger screens that we have these days. And so that is not present
0:11:55on this. So you're just looking at like a pixel quadrupled version of the game or whatever,
0:12:00you know, just scale it up like in the dumbest way possible, scale it up to the big screen.
0:12:06So it doesn't look great, but you know, it looks no worse than the original system did.
0:12:11So overall, it's fun.
0:12:12It's a fun way to get a whole bunch of games on an Apple TV
0:12:15if you have a game pad.
0:12:16Don't even bother if you have the Siri remote.
0:12:18Just don't bother.
0:12:19But if you have a game pad, check out Provenance.
0:12:21Oh, if you have a game pad and an Apple TV
0:12:24and you're a developer and you have a USB CD, USB cable.
0:12:28- And you have a bunch of backups of your old video games.
0:12:31- Yes, and if you have legally obtained backups from,
0:12:35I don't even know what hardware that would be
0:12:37to create those, if you have all of those,
0:12:40which are really small. It's funny, like, I loaded up every game I wanted from Genesis,
0:12:48Super Nintendo, and NES, and even Sega Master System, and these games are like a few hundred
0:12:52kilobytes each. Like, I played through Sonic 1, which by the way, Sonic 1 is a hard game.
0:13:00I used to be a lot better at Sonic than I am now. Wow. When it turns out we don't play
0:13:05games for like a decade, it really impacts your ability to play them. I almost got a
0:13:10the game over in labyrinth zone, that's how bad it was. I died in marble hill zone, I
0:13:14mean that's, this is how bad I've gotten. So I played through that and it's like you
0:13:18know a few hundred kilobytes. So it's a quick, it's a great way if you are this geeky to
0:13:21set this kind of thing up, it is a really cool thing to do for a little while at least.
0:13:27That being said, overall I am, so now that I've had good game experiences on the Apple
0:13:33TV, I am more optimistic for its future, but it's going to depend a lot on how many people
0:13:39actually buy these game controllers and then how many developers can afford to make games
0:13:46for it.
0:13:48Certainly there's going to be games like Badland where you don't need the game controller and
0:13:51that's good but it's so limited because you see if you don't have one of these yet, you
0:13:57look at that remote and you might think oh games can use six buttons or whatever.
0:14:01No games can use basically I think two buttons.
0:14:04The D-pad simulator, or you know, they have the track pad, and the play/pause button,
0:14:09and I think that's it.
0:14:10I think everything else is off limits to games, because everything else has a meaning into
0:14:15the system that you aren't allowed to override.
0:14:18And of course there's the accelerometer stuff, so you know, you could kind of do like Wii
0:14:21game kind of stuff, some of it, not even all of it, because some of it requires more buttons
0:14:25and more precision and everything, but you could do some of the kind of stuff we saw
0:14:28on the Wii, but it is pretty limited.
0:14:31So I do hope we see more good games, I'm sure we will, and there's probably even more out
0:14:35now that I haven't tried yet, but I do think it's gonna be, I do think it has the potential
0:14:41to be a really fun gaming platform, and I just hope it pans out.
0:14:44Yeah, I was struck again by the stories this weekend about video game sales, like, thinking
0:14:51of the Apple TV and iPhone gaming and everything else as kind of like gaming for the masses,
0:14:56where it's like, "Yeah, I'm not that into games, but if you have a fun game to play,
0:14:59check it out, the Apple TV, you buy it for other reasons, if it plays games it's cool.
0:15:02But you know, I think the general impression of the people who are not in the video game industry
0:15:10is that most people play phone games. You know, you got a phone, everyone's got a smartphone,
0:15:15you can play games on it. Do you know anyone who has a smartphone who hasn't had at least one game
0:15:19that they've played briefly, like had a week where they were addicted to insert name of your favorite
0:15:23game here, whatever that may be? Even if it's just some random Zynga thing or Flappy Bird you
0:15:28you mentioned before, the idea that for the mass market,
0:15:32they're what we used to call casual games,
0:15:35but there's so many more of those people, right?
0:15:37And then there are the hardcore people,
0:15:39the weirdos who have actual game consoles
0:15:42and stuff like that.
0:15:43But when you look at it from the numbers side of it,
0:15:46it is flipped around.
0:15:48There was this Call of Duty, Black Ops 3 came out
0:15:52and sold like $550 million in the first weekend
0:15:56and it's on track to earn a billion dollars.
0:15:59It's almost as if, like if you took it in the movie sense
0:16:02where people said, people have the impression of,
0:16:04well, most people go to see these small independent movies
0:16:09'cause they're just movie casuals
0:16:10and only the real hardcore people go to see "Jurassic World."
0:16:13But no, no one has that impression.
0:16:14Everyone says, well, movies?
0:16:15Well, "Jurassic World," that's a smash hit.
0:16:17Like that's for the masses, that's for the mainstream.
0:16:20Gaming is so weird in that the thing that everyone thinks
0:16:23is kind of like a dying industry of these, you know,
0:16:27hardcore gamers.
0:16:28There's only a couple of, you know,
0:16:30tens or hundreds of millions of those,
0:16:31as opposed to the billion people who play cell phone games.
0:16:34And yet that's where all the money is.
0:16:36Though these, you know,
0:16:37Call of Duty Black Ops is making more money
0:16:39than probably the entire top 10 in the iOS,
0:16:44you know, gaming charts.
0:16:46And that's just one game on this supposed platform
0:16:49that is dying PCs and consoles.
0:16:53So I don't know how we're gonna square that circle.
0:16:55Like, I don't think we can extrapolate and say,
0:17:00well, consoles are going away and PCs are going away.
0:17:02And pretty soon the mass market will take over
0:17:05and everyone just plays "Badlands" on their Apple TV
0:17:08and plays "Flappy Bird" and "Candy Crush".
0:17:12And that is the gaming industry.
0:17:14When the money people are like,
0:17:16give me this year's call of duty any day,
0:17:18it is a money-making machine on the scale of a blockbuster movie and as far as the money people are concerned
0:17:24That's the mass market of gaming. So I don't know it's hard
0:17:28It's hard for me to get a handle on this because as a gamer I do see these other sort of
0:17:33not lesser games, but smaller games as
0:17:37as
0:17:39The the the thing that's weird and I see Call of Duty as exactly the same as Jurassic World
0:17:45The only thing that doesn't fit with that is the popular notion that console games and PC games are somehow going away to be to be wiped away by
0:17:52lesser devices like the
0:17:56Smartphone and iPad games that kids play and Apple TV games and whatever
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0:20:27- So as we record big day today,
0:20:30The biggest of all though for our friend Federico Vatici,
0:20:34his dreams have come true.
0:20:37Today is iPad Pro Day.
0:20:39I did not have the time to go and take a look at the store
0:20:43to see if they had any in stock.
0:20:44I did not pre-order one.
0:20:46I have no experience with this whatsoever,
0:20:48but one of us does.
0:20:50- So I actually went, Tiff won an iPad Pro,
0:20:53and so we decided, like any Apple product,
0:20:57if you're going to get it at all,
0:20:59Get it when it's out because the price is not gonna change
0:21:02between now, well actually, nevermind.
0:21:04The way Apple is these days, this'll be for sale
0:21:06for the next five years.
0:21:07And it will drop by 100 bucks next year.
0:21:10But anyways, so we decided, Tiff was interested
0:21:15in larger screen iPad, so this morning,
0:21:18woke up, ordered it for in-store pickup,
0:21:20'cause I was surprised, they said it would be available
0:21:22for online ordering today in stores later this week.
0:21:26and they surprised everyone, including the stores,
0:21:29based on the employees I talked to,
0:21:31by having it available in stores today.
0:21:33That was great, so I went and ordered it,
0:21:35like still in bed in the morning
0:21:36with the Apple Store app for the iPhone,
0:21:38which was the best way to order things.
0:21:39Unfortunately, the pencil was already back ordered
0:21:43at eight in the morning,
0:21:44already back ordered three to four weeks.
0:21:47And the stores, I asked around,
0:21:49and it sounds like most stores
0:21:52actually got zero pencils to sell today.
0:21:55it's not like they sold out, they actually just didn't get any.
0:21:58So what makes you think the pencil is back ordered as opposed to nobody has been able
0:22:01to order it?
0:22:02The people in my store said that they think the big stores in Manhattan might have gotten
0:22:07a small number. And I heard some people from maybe some stores in Europe that are really
0:22:11high profile, that they got a couple. So it does seem like they are coming to some stores.
0:22:19They came to some stores today and the early orders this morning had some people said they
0:22:23got a one to two week delay window rather than my quoted three to four weeks. So they
0:22:28are coming but I can't help but feel like Apple keeps botching the releases of these
0:22:34things. You know, like in the same way that the watch launch was totally botched. I mean
0:22:40the watch launch was a disaster where yeah it officially launched on this day but you
0:22:45couldn't actually get one for like months and if you wanted certain ones you waited
0:22:50even longer for things like the modern buckle or leather loop or the black link that were
0:22:55very back order, delayed. And now, so now with the iPad Pro, it's nice that it's available
0:23:04today that that was a nice surprise that we were able to pick one up today, but two of
0:23:08its main selling features, the smart keyboard, is that what it's called, the smart keyboard?
0:23:12I believe that's right. The keyboard from Apple and the pencil were both totally unavailable
0:23:18for most people who try to buy it today.
0:23:21And who knows how long it'll be.
0:23:24It does kind of put a damper on it.
0:23:25Like, Tiff was really excited about the Pencil,
0:23:28and so was I, honestly, to try the Pencil.
0:23:31And it does put a damper on it to be like,
0:23:32"Okay, now we finally get this device
0:23:34"that, by the way, was announced two months ago."
0:23:37It's not like this was announced last week
0:23:39and we've been really impatient.
0:23:40This was announced two months ago,
0:23:41and it just barely shipped, apparently.
0:23:44And they couldn't even get the store stock
0:23:47with the really critical accessories,
0:23:50like that just seems like a botched launch to me.
0:23:53And this, like, the operations guy is running the company.
0:23:57How does, like, how does this happen?
0:23:59I don't know.
0:24:00I'm probably being too critical of this,
0:24:03but it really does put a damper on it.
0:24:06When you go to the store,
0:24:07all happy to get this new device
0:24:08that you could do this cool new thing with,
0:24:11and then it says, oh, you can't get your pencil
0:24:12for another month, you know, that's--
0:24:14- That's a bummer for you,
0:24:15but what does that mean in terms of things
0:24:18that Apple cares about?
0:24:19Does it mean fewer sales?
0:24:21- I did see a number of people today,
0:24:23I tweeted early in the morning like,
0:24:24this kinda sucks, and I did see a number of people
0:24:28responding saying that they were going to go
0:24:30pick up an iPad Pro today, but since they can't
0:24:32get a pencil, they're just going to wait until they can.
0:24:34So they're just delaying the sales,
0:24:37they're still gonna sell those probably,
0:24:38but they will just be delayed.
0:24:40But I have to imagine, first of all,
0:24:42Apple really wants a big opening weekend.
0:24:44They want to be able to brag that they sold
0:24:46X million iPads in a weekend, if they do.
0:24:49So it's gonna hurt them in that way,
0:24:50but also there is gonna be a certain degree of,
0:24:53like right now there's inertia.
0:24:55It's day one and people are really excited about it
0:24:58and they wanna go get it.
0:24:59Maybe some people who were on the fence
0:25:01about whether they wanted to get it,
0:25:02maybe they now won't get it,
0:25:04'cause maybe as this inertia dies down
0:25:06over the next three to four weeks
0:25:08before they can get the accessories that they want,
0:25:10maybe in that time they'll actually decide,
0:25:11you know what, maybe I don't really need this anymore.
0:25:14It's probably not going to be a massive portion of their sales,
0:25:16but I do think it will hurt them in some way.
0:25:18- Well, so how does that balance with the other side
0:25:20of which I think happened with the watch?
0:25:22There are positive aspects of things not being available.
0:25:25There is the perceived scarcity that essentially,
0:25:29you know, that this product is playing hard to get
0:25:31and it makes you want it even more because you can't get it.
0:25:34There is, for the people who weren't even
0:25:35that interested in it, there is the meta story about,
0:25:40I don't want to watch, but people who do want watches
0:25:43are not able to find them.
0:25:44It's the Cabbage Patch Doll phenomenon.
0:25:46Like it becomes like a frenzy, like,
0:25:48"Wow, this must be really popular
0:25:49"'cause people really want it
0:25:50"and it's sold out everywhere."
0:25:52And that creates a positive buzz about it.
0:25:54And then finally, as like, you know,
0:25:56oh, someone finally got a modern buckle, right?
0:25:59As these products trickle out
0:26:02when they're ready to ship or whatever,
0:26:03you get repeat stories.
0:26:05I know we already covered the Apple Watch seven times,
0:26:07but here's the first person
0:26:08to have the Darth Vader link bracelet.
0:26:09Here's the first person to have the modern buckle.
0:26:11So on and so forth.
0:26:12Not that I'm saying Apple is doing it on purpose,
0:26:14like that it's artificial scarcity.
0:26:15It totally seems like this is just,
0:26:17as soon as they're able to manufacture them in volume,
0:26:19they ship them.
0:26:20But I would say against the idea
0:26:23of someone being disappointed
0:26:25that they can't get what they want,
0:26:26and then just saying, well, nevermind, and not coming back,
0:26:29balance that against the positive effects
0:26:31of the perceived desirability and value,
0:26:35and the repeat press on the sort of the trickle
0:26:37of stuff coming out.
0:26:38So I have to think,
0:26:40I think it's bad for it not to launch all at once,
0:26:43mostly just because it reflects poorly on the company
0:26:46and might give someone a bad impression about Apple.
0:26:48But I think overall,
0:26:50I don't think it's actually hurting their sales
0:26:51as long as, I mean, obviously,
0:26:53as long as by the time the holidays come,
0:26:55as long as everybody who wants to get an iPad Pro
0:26:57with a pencil for the holidays can get one.
0:26:59They may cut that close,
0:27:00'cause that's where you could actually get hurt in sales,
0:27:01'cause things are seasonal like that.
0:27:03If they miss the holidays,
0:27:04obviously they've really messed up.
0:27:05But as long as they make the holidays
0:27:06with a reasonable amount of time,
0:27:07I think people not getting their pencils for a couple weeks
0:27:10is not that big a deal.
0:27:11The main thing I'm annoyed about as a lazy person
0:27:13who stays at home all the time is I seem to remember
0:27:16in the old days that Apple would, if not favor,
0:27:20online orders, then at the very least,
0:27:23sort of give them equal footing,
0:27:24where now with the Apple TV, I experienced this myself,
0:27:26I ordered an Apple TV and before my Apple TV arrived to me,
0:27:30they were already showing up in stores.
0:27:31So rather than, you know, like, and so now I bet
0:27:34if you were to order a pencil now,
0:27:36you would get it sometime within the delivery window,
0:27:38but then this weekend, if you go into a big Apple store,
0:27:41you might be able to pick one up
0:27:42if you just happen to go in the morning.
0:27:43And so it's, they're definitely favoring retail, it seems,
0:27:47over mail order.
0:27:49- Yeah, and that's, again, like the Apple TV,
0:27:51it was not a big botch, but I heard a ton of stories
0:27:54like that from people who ordered online,
0:27:57and then they had weird shipping issues,
0:27:59they didn't ship on time, and then, yeah,
0:28:01the stores got them first, like that's, it just--
0:28:03- Well, that makes sense, though.
0:28:04I'm like, I'm saying this is what they do,
0:28:05and annoys me because I stay at home, but people who order online, who are those people?
0:28:10It's better to put them in the stores because most people are just like wandering through
0:28:13the mall and they see the Apple store and they wander in and they have no idea when
0:28:16a product launch or anything about it.
0:28:17It's only us who like order the second it's available online because we just want to,
0:28:21we want to do the action that we think is going to give us the product as soon as possible
0:28:25because we're tiny little children at heart, right?
0:28:27And so it's like, oh, it's available for ordering to stay up at 3am and order, order, order.
0:28:30No one else is like that.
0:28:31No one knows when these things are.
0:28:32They just like, they go into the Apple store and they say, "Whoa, there's a new iPhone.
0:28:35Are the new iPhones out?
0:28:36Oh, they're not out?
0:28:37Okay, well, I'll check back next weekend.
0:28:38Oh, they are out.
0:28:39Oh, here's the new Apple TV."
0:28:40They don't know or care when things launch, so it's much better to have them available
0:28:43in the store for sort of, not impulse purchases, but, "Hey, let me wander into the Apple store
0:28:47and see what's available," as opposed to trying to cater to people who stay up till 3 a.m.
0:28:51to order a phone.
0:28:52Yeah, I don't know.
0:28:54Just the whole thing, it just puts a damper on.
0:28:57You know?
0:28:58Like, it's not that, it doesn't ruin things.
0:28:59It's not going to kill all their sales, but it just puts a damper on the enthusiasm.
0:29:04It's like, "Oh, this is great!"
0:29:05Except, "Oh, no, bad news."
0:29:07You know, it's --
0:29:08It puts a damper on your enthusiasm.
0:29:09The rest of the world doesn't even know the iPad Pro exists yet.
0:29:12They'll know when the ads start running on TV, and when they wander -- even when the
0:29:14ads run on TV.
0:29:15I think people are perfectly accepting of seeing an ad on TV for a cool Apple thing,
0:29:20then wandering into the Apple Store and saying, "Is that thing I saw an ad for on TV yet?"
0:29:23And having the Apple Store say, "No, we don't have those yet."
0:29:25And they'll be like, "Oh, all right."
0:29:26And they'll come back the next weekend.
0:29:28That's how I feel like the vast, vast majorities of Apple sales operate.
0:29:35Tiff just wants a pen, I understand.
0:29:37All that being said, I was able to try the Pencil and Smart Keyboard in the store because
0:29:43they had a demo one that some of the staff were playing with out on the floor.
0:29:48And so I went up and I got to play with it too.
0:29:51They wouldn't sell it to me.
0:29:53I offered.
0:29:54But they were not allowed to sell it to me.
0:29:57million dollars for one night with your iPad Pro.
0:30:00- Oh my god, that's a reference.
0:30:02- I know it's a reference.
0:30:03- Hey, we saw a movie together, yay.
0:30:05- I've actually never seen the movie,
0:30:06but I know what you're referring.
0:30:08- It isn't that good.
0:30:09(laughs)
0:30:11Please email Jon.
0:30:12So I will say, having now played with the pencil
0:30:16and keyboard, very briefly, I mean,
0:30:17I had about five minutes with the pencil
0:30:21and about two minutes with the keyboard.
0:30:23I will say the keyboard is not as bad as I expected.
0:30:28I expected it to be terrible
0:30:29'cause I heard it had similar key switches
0:30:31to the MacBook One and possibly even worse key feel
0:30:35than the MacBook One.
0:30:37I think it's probably about the same,
0:30:39maybe a little bit better even.
0:30:41I don't know, it didn't feel as horrible to me
0:30:44than the MacBook One, but it was very close.
0:30:46Doesn't matter, you know, it's an iPad keyboard.
0:30:48It's going to be a compromise in a lot of different ways.
0:30:50So that's fine.
0:30:52I know there is a Logitech one,
0:30:55the Apple stores are even selling it.
0:30:56Like they had that in stock.
0:30:58They were out of stock of every other iPad accessory,
0:31:02including the Smart Cover and the Smart Case,
0:31:04which are now two separate, like,
0:31:06now the Smart Case is only the back part.
0:31:10- Oh, that's weird.
0:31:11- And so if you want both the back and the front covered,
0:31:15you have to buy both parts for a total of like $150.
0:31:19- Yikes.
0:31:20- Yeah, so that's annoying.
0:31:21(laughing)
0:31:22Like, it's almost as expensive as just buying the keyboard,
0:31:25which covers both.
0:31:26So you might as well just buy the keyboard at that point.
0:31:29Anyway, the keyboard was very securely attached.
0:31:32It only really holds the iPad in one angle though.
0:31:35As far as I can tell, I wasn't sure
0:31:36if you could adjust it at all.
0:31:38It seemed like it was fixed to this one particular angle
0:31:41that it would hold it at.
0:31:42- You could shove the pencil behind it
0:31:43because there's no place else to put that pencil,
0:31:45so just pull the iPad forward,
0:31:48put the pencil in there, push it back, it'll be fine.
0:31:50- Yeah, I mean, this is gonna be the kind of product
0:31:52where there's a huge opportunity here for third parties
0:31:55to make way better cases and keyboards than Apple did.
0:31:58Because you're gonna want a place to put the pencil
0:32:01and there isn't one anywhere on the iPad,
0:32:04anywhere in any of Apple's cases.
0:32:06You know, it's similar to how the iPad One
0:32:10just kind of, they had that terrible gray
0:32:13like wraparound case and the iPad One was just clearly
0:32:16not designed with a case in mind at all
0:32:18and they just kind of threw one on.
0:32:19That's how the pencil feels today, which is like,
0:32:21here's this awesome thing that almost everyone is,
0:32:24well not almost everyone, but a lot of people
0:32:25are going to want for this iPad,
0:32:27and the iPad was seemingly designed with no regard
0:32:31to how this thing would actually be kept
0:32:33on or near or in the iPad.
0:32:35- As Dan Morin pointed out today, it goes behind your ear.
0:32:38(laughing)
0:32:40- Right, well it's too heavy for that, first of all, I think.
0:32:42- Is it?
0:32:42- So it is heavy.
0:32:44It's not like uncomfortably heavy.
0:32:47It doesn't feel like a lightweight pencil
0:32:48or a plastic stylus.
0:32:50It feels dense and not too heavy, but almost too heavy.
0:32:55- Your ears can take it, I have faith in them.
0:32:57(laughing)
0:32:58- But it really does feel incredibly good
0:33:01to use that pencil.
0:33:01I would say the keyboard,
0:33:03if I were really into this thing myself,
0:33:06I'm probably not going to be,
0:33:07but if I was really into this thing myself,
0:33:09I would probably skip the keyboard,
0:33:11but I would definitely get a pencil
0:33:13because I'm not an artist of any kind.
0:33:16I have no illustrative abilities at all.
0:33:19I hardly ever hand write anything.
0:33:21This made me want to hand write things
0:33:23and draw diagrams and become some kind of artist
0:33:26even though I probably won't ever be.
0:33:28The pencil is great.
0:33:31And combining it with palm rejection,
0:33:34other touch input, everything,
0:33:36I could not in my five minutes of using it,
0:33:38I never encountered an error in thinking
0:33:42that a touch was the pencil or rejecting the palm properly,
0:33:46Like it was flawless.
0:33:48And they were using the Adobe,
0:33:50oh God, it's like an Adobe Sketch something.
0:33:52- Adobe Sketch is the app, yeah.
0:33:53- That, yeah, that's what we were using to draw with.
0:33:57And it worked very well.
0:33:58There is a little bit of lag still,
0:34:01but it is the best stylus slash pen tablet thing
0:34:06for a computer.
0:34:07By far the best I've ever seen.
0:34:09Not even close.
0:34:10Way better than the Wacom tablets that I've seen.
0:34:13way better than any previous iPad or iPhone stylus
0:34:16that I've tried.
0:34:17It just, completely different experience, far better.
0:34:22I was able to rest my palm on it, flat on the table,
0:34:25and just write, just hand write.
0:34:26Like Gruber mentioned in his review, which is very good,
0:34:29he mentioned that he tested by drawing his signature,
0:34:32and that when you draw your signature on most touch devices,
0:34:35or pen terminals in stores, it always looks horrible,
0:34:39crazy, nothing like your real signature.
0:34:40And he said on the iPad Pro,
0:34:41it looked like his real handwritten signature.
0:34:44In my very brief testing here,
0:34:46I tried handwriting things,
0:34:48like just handwriting a few sentences,
0:34:50and it looked just like my handwriting on paper.
0:34:53It is incredibly good.
0:34:56I wish I had a reason to use it.
0:34:57And right now I don't think I do.
0:35:00- So it's time for you to go look at the show notes, Marco,
0:35:01if you haven't already,
0:35:03because there are two videos related to this topic
0:35:05in the show notes.
0:35:06These were from tweets.
0:35:07One is from Steve Strese saying he was not impressed
0:35:10with the pencil latency.
0:35:11So it's, I think it's an animated GIF
0:35:13because Twitter is stupid.
0:35:14But anyway, take a look at that tweet
0:35:16and look at his video.
0:35:17I don't, I can't tell what app he's using there,
0:35:18but the lag on the thing that he's doing
0:35:20is just horrendous.
0:35:22- That is really rough actually.
0:35:24- All right, now scroll down and here's Matt Panzareno
0:35:27saying really, because when I was using it, it was awesome.
0:35:29And then look at his video, also of an iPad Pro,
0:35:32presumably with a different app,
0:35:34and look at the lag there.
0:35:35- It looks like a different app.
0:35:36- Yeah, it might be, although they later in the discussion,
0:35:38they're like, I was using Adobe Sketch
0:35:40and then Panzer says, "Oh, I was using Adobe Sketch 2.
0:35:43I don't know if it's in this picture."
0:35:44And anyway, I think what this shows is
0:35:49that from application to application,
0:35:52there can be a big difference in latency and responsiveness.
0:35:56In other words, the hardware is capable,
0:35:58but depending on how the application is programmed,
0:36:01you could get the latency you see.
0:36:02'Cause I don't think these are broken iPads.
0:36:04I think you could get the latency you see
0:36:05in the first video, which is really, really bad,
0:36:07or with the same exact hardware,
0:36:09you can get the latency you see in the second video,
0:36:10which is really, really good.
0:36:12- Yeah, I mean, it's gonna depend entirely on good coding.
0:36:15Like, you know, at some point,
0:36:18the hardware is going to be the limiting factor,
0:36:20but yeah, I mean, my experience matches
0:36:22Panzareno's video there of it just being,
0:36:24you know, it does, you can feel that there is some latency,
0:36:28but it is really small,
0:36:30and it's perfectly fine for handwriting, I think.
0:36:33- And when I saw the first video, I'm like,
0:36:34oh, well, maybe that's slow
0:36:35because it's trying to do like a brush type thing
0:36:37where it's like pressure sensitive,
0:36:39there's like bristles you can see it's trying to be like a brushed ink thing
0:36:41where the leading edge has things but then look at the panzerinos video and
0:36:46he's doing like translucent smeared ink looking like he's not just doing solid
0:36:50black lines either and what in whatever application he's using it seems to be
0:36:53doing even fancier effects and this is yet another opportunity to link that
0:36:58Microsoft video showing the different latency things if you watch I always go
0:37:02back to that Microsoft video to calibrate my eyeballs to hard numbers
0:37:05because they tell you they have like the thing with adjustable latency here's one
0:37:08millisecond here's 10 here's 100 mm-hmm to my eyes the good video of the iPad
0:37:13Pro here is still not down to one millisecond but it's much better than a
0:37:17hundred milliseconds so it's somewhere in that range and the idea that the
0:37:22application can affect what the latency is like shows that this is really just
0:37:27the dawning of the mass market perhaps I'm sure Apple hopes it is but perhaps
0:37:32the dawning of the mass-market era of pen computing as I was able that that
0:37:37started with Windows for pen or whatever or the grid pad or that started with the
0:37:40surface or whatever really it remains to be seen if this will actually popularize
0:37:44the pen to any significant degree but in all cases I think pen input is not yet
0:37:53at the level has not crossed the threshold that the mouse did when the
0:37:56Mac was introduced because there were you know mouse type input devices before
0:38:01and after the Mac but one of the things that the Mac has been excellent at from
0:38:06day one is when you move the mouse the cursor on the screen moves. There's no stuttering, there's no lag
0:38:12It's a seemingly direct connection and that was very important at the dawning of the Mac to making a Mac feel like a Mac
0:38:18It's one of the reasons that like, you know
0:38:19Windows always felt weird and different until they got their cursor stuff nailed down a couple of years later and on the Mac
0:38:25There was nothing you can do in a program to make that mouse cursor screw up
0:38:29Like it's not like well if you program your application badly the mouse cursor won't be responsive not drawing with the mouse
0:38:36Because yeah, you could screw that up because you know on the original Mac if you tried to draw with a fancy brush tool
0:38:39It would be all lagging gross and everything. I'm talking about
0:38:41The mouse itself like just moving the cursor around
0:38:44That stayed solid like there's nothing you could do an application to screw that up
0:38:48I'll short of crashing or grinding a disk or something terrible
0:38:51Like I would even even that they tended to even when the disk was grinding it the mouse would still move smoothly
0:38:54All of us have experienced a crash where the entire computer is frozen, but the mouse cursor still works. That's an important part of the
0:39:01Sort of physical interface to computers with a mouse is the reliability of you move the mouse or you swipe on the trackpad
0:39:08And the cursor was it's also by the way why it's so incredibly disconcerting
0:39:12When your mouse cursor freezes we've all had it happen many times many more times in the bad old days of classic Mac OS
0:39:18It almost feels like the world is broken for a second where you move your mouse and the cursor doesn't move you're like oh
0:39:23No, this is not right something. It's like you've been knocked off kilter or something
0:39:28It violates this constraint of the world
0:39:30that you believed in when I moved the mouse
0:39:32that the cursor moves.
0:39:33Well, for pen computing or any kind of pen input
0:39:37to really become as sort of second nature and boring
0:39:40as mouse input is nowadays,
0:39:42we have to eventually get past the idea
0:39:46that the responsiveness will be different.
0:39:49And it's different with the pen
0:39:50because pen's not a pointing device.
0:39:51Pen is a drawing device.
0:39:52So where I was giving the mouse a pass before and say,
0:39:54"Oh, well, of course, if you wiggle the mouse really fast
0:39:56that's in super paint with the spray can thing,
0:39:59it would be all lagging gross and that's fine.
0:40:01That's because the mouse isn't primarily a drawing thing.
0:40:04It's for moving things around and clicking and pointing,
0:40:06but the pen, it's not a pointing device.
0:40:08There is no cursor on the screen,
0:40:09it's entirely about drawing.
0:40:10So I want all pen input to be, you know,
0:40:14like the second video or better.
0:40:16And it's clear that we're not quite there yet,
0:40:19which is kind of a shame, but this is early days,
0:40:21at least as far as Apple's concerned with pen input.
0:40:24Although the Newton sitting on my desk right now
0:40:26might disagree, but that had pretty bad latency too.
0:40:31- So a couple thoughts on this.
0:40:32First of all, to double down on what you were saying
0:40:35about the world being completely wrong
0:40:37when your mouse freezes, imagine how weird it is
0:40:40when not only is the mouse frozen,
0:40:41but your mouse button doesn't exist anymore
0:40:44because it's a software fake button.
0:40:47Like that has happened to me a handful of times
0:40:48on this MacBook Pro that I have for work and it is weird.
0:40:53- So you just press and the little vibratey thing
0:40:55doesn't vibrate underneath it?
0:40:56- Correct, so it's like pushing on a plate of glass,
0:40:59nothing happens.
0:41:00And that's when like everything is broken.
0:41:03On the plus side, you have a physical indicator
0:41:06that everything's broken, but on the downside,
0:41:08this thing that you forget is all software
0:41:11suddenly stops working and it's very weird.
0:41:14And the other thing I wanted to throw out is,
0:41:15I believe it was after the iPad Pro was announced,
0:41:19I'd remembered seeing something about like
0:41:20advanced multi-touch or something like that.
0:41:22And I went back and watched the WWDC session on it
0:41:25and we'll link it in the show notes.
0:41:26It's session 233, I believe.
0:41:29And it was really, really interesting.
0:41:31And they talked in the session,
0:41:32I don't remember who gave it,
0:41:33a lot about these infinitesimally small windows of time
0:41:38with which you have to process touch input
0:41:40and how they coalesce it
0:41:41and this and that and the other thing.
0:41:42And I watched it like a month or two ago,
0:41:44so I'm a little fuzzy on it now,
0:41:45but it was really, really interesting.
0:41:47And if you have the time, it's worth watching.
0:41:49And I bring this up because it very well could be,
0:41:53If both these videos are using the same Adobe app
0:41:56or whatever it is, if it's the same app,
0:41:58then this is irrelevant.
0:41:59But if it is different apps,
0:42:01it would not surprise me at all
0:42:02if there are very different performance characteristics
0:42:05between two different apps,
0:42:07because the way they handle it can change
0:42:10very, very dramatically,
0:42:11depending on whether or not they're good developers,
0:42:13whether or not they're using new APIs, et cetera.
0:42:15- Yeah, Fraser Spears says that,
0:42:17just to confirm that, he's used the iPad Pro as well,
0:42:20latency is very app dependent.
0:42:22He says the latency is undetectable in Notes,
0:42:24meaning the Apple Notes application, I assume,
0:42:26but very laggy in paper by 53.
0:42:29I don't know which apps are used in this video,
0:42:31but I'm totally willing to believe
0:42:33that it's entirely app dependent
0:42:35and that what we're not seeing is like,
0:42:37oh, bad or buggy hardware or something.
0:42:38It's just, you know, it's just software.
0:42:40Like Casey said, if you're not pulling, you know,
0:42:42processing the events in a particular way
0:42:44or using whatever the fast path is for doing input.
0:42:46And like I said, this Panzareno video,
0:42:49that's like something that looks like a magic marker
0:42:52where it's like smeary and thicker towards the edges,
0:42:54something that looks like grease paint,
0:42:56something that looks like watercolors.
0:42:58So it's not like it only works
0:42:59if you're drawing a solid black line,
0:43:01but if you're doing anything fancy, it's slow.
0:43:02So I really have no idea why the slow one is slow
0:43:05and why the fast one is fast,
0:43:06other than just maybe using the wrong APIs or something.
0:43:09- Yeah, well, anyway, regardless,
0:43:12we at least know that when properly handled
0:43:16by the software side, the pen, the pencil,
0:43:19can be really great.
0:43:21and in a few apps already, it already is.
0:43:23And that, I mean really, using this blew my mind,
0:43:28like how good it is.
0:43:30It is, I just, again, I wish I had a reason
0:43:33to hand write things.
0:43:33I've never even, I've never been like a notebook
0:43:35at my desk kind of person.
0:43:36Like a lot of people will sketch things out
0:43:38on paper notebooks.
0:43:39I've never even done that.
0:43:40I never took notes in school.
0:43:42But man, I do wish that I had a reason to use it
0:43:46'cause it really is awesome.
0:43:47- You just need to do a video Pictionary.
0:43:50someone who needs to make a Pictionary application for iPad Pro people so you can do Pictionary
0:43:54with people across the country.
0:43:56Like draw something basically?
0:43:58You didn't get to see their face, you know?
0:44:00Right, right.
0:44:01iPad Pro you can put up on an easel.
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0:46:10So, iPad Pro software-wise.
0:46:14I got TIFF's iPad Pro,
0:46:16wasn't able to get anything else for it,
0:46:17so we have no case, no cover, no pencil, no keyboard,
0:46:21but we're probably not gonna get the keyboard anyway.
0:46:23Brought it home.
0:46:24So far, I would say, based on my quick experience with it,
0:46:28it is really a mixed bag.
0:46:30Most of the reviews seem to back up
0:46:32what I've experienced so far.
0:46:34First of all, it is huge.
0:46:36And because it is so huge,
0:46:38Certain aspects of things that you could do well
0:46:41on iPads before are actually worse, in my opinion.
0:46:44I think it was definitely worse for reading,
0:46:47unless you're reading things like comic books or magazines
0:46:49where you need as much space as possible.
0:46:51But just for reading regular column articles,
0:46:54or iBooks looked kind of ridiculous on it, to be honest.
0:46:58Because iBooks does not seem to offer margin control, so.
0:47:01- You gotta crank the font size up, though.
0:47:03That's what it lets you do.
0:47:04It lets you keep the same number of words per line,
0:47:08but make the text way bigger so it's easier to see.
0:47:11- Yeah, but then you're just holding it back further?
0:47:14I mean, you know--
0:47:15- No, it's for people who have,
0:47:17your eyes will go eventually, young man,
0:47:19and you will appreciate it much better.
0:47:21- No, absolutely, I mean, you know,
0:47:22if you actually need a bigger size
0:47:24just to make it legible in general
0:47:26for vision accessibility reasons, that's a different story.
0:47:29But if you have vision within kind of the normal range
0:47:34and you don't need it to be really huge,
0:47:36I would say in general that the other iPads are better reading devices for that reason.
0:47:42This is obviously better for video.
0:47:43>> Well, for reading, though, what if you want to have Twitter along the side while
0:47:46you read?
0:47:47>> That's a terrible idea.
0:47:48Why would you want that?
0:47:49>> People do that.
0:47:50I'd do it.
0:47:51Or if you just want to have Twitter and Slack and the same thing split, each one gets a
0:47:55reasonable-sized column.
0:47:56Like you're still thinking as if the screen is one thing that the application can fill.
0:48:01Apple hasn't done much to dissuade you from that notion, but they have at least cut the
0:48:05screen in half or thirds or whatever. So I think you have to, in considering software,
0:48:10which granted I'm sure you read this, has not been updated very well for the iPad Pro
0:48:14and sometimes looks ridiculous, at the very least you can say, "All right, well, it may
0:48:19not be a good reading experience for this thing, but that's only because I'm letting
0:48:23it have the whole screen. Why don't I divide the screen up and let something else have
0:48:26that thing and now I have two good reading experiences at the same time?"
0:48:29Yeah, I mean that's that's kind of the idea but like one of the things that made
0:48:33iPads and and e-readers so good for reading books compared to computers is
0:48:39That you could only do that one thing on the screen
0:48:42You could fill up the screen with one reading app and you like if you try nobody reads books on their computers for the most
0:48:48part because
0:48:49You have these giant screens that are filled all these all these little windows of all these all these distractions and it's not a very
0:48:54Good reading environment for that. Do you think that's why people not read books on computers?
0:48:58I think that's one of the reasons.
0:48:59I think the main reason is that it's uncomfortable to sit at a desk staring at a screen that's
0:49:03in front of you.
0:49:04Okay.
0:49:05Similarly, it's uncomfortable to hold this iPad up for a long time because it is not
0:49:12light or small.
0:49:13And so, you know, different reviewers have agreed and disagreed on this point that I've
0:49:17seen so far.
0:49:18Some of them say it's okay.
0:49:19Some of them say it's heavy.
0:49:20You know, Tiff's initial impression, my initial impression so far, is that it's pretty heavy
0:49:25to hold up for more than a minute or two.
0:49:28Like you wanna have it on some kind of propped up case
0:49:31or desk or stand or something,
0:49:34not just holding it up in bed for a long time
0:49:36or anything like that.
0:49:37So for a lot of things,
0:49:40if you've ever done anything on an iPad
0:49:43and the smallness of the iPad screen
0:49:46has been a limiting factor for you,
0:49:48then this will be an improvement.
0:49:50That's not true for everything.
0:49:52- Andy Anako had a good picture though, speaking of that.
0:49:54Recently he tweeted a picture of,
0:49:56I think his tweet was the text was "living the dream" and what he had was his iPad Pro
0:50:00showing a comic book and next to it a physical comic book, which you could see, you could
0:50:06take that physical comic book and basically place it on the screen and it was pretty much
0:50:09exactly the same size as the screen.
0:50:10So if you're a comics reader and you're tired of looking at comics either shrunken or cropped,
0:50:14you can't get two page side by side, but at least now you can get one full-size real-life
0:50:19comic book page at a one-to-one ratio on your iPad Pro.
0:50:24- Yeah, and for people who mark up PDFs,
0:50:28this would be great for them, because it's like,
0:50:30you want that to be kind of life-size
0:50:33or close to it at least, and the 10 inch iPad was almost,
0:50:36but not quite the right size to do that.
0:50:39So stuff like that, there are things
0:50:42that are gonna be better on this for sure,
0:50:43and there's probably gonna be a lot of those things,
0:50:45but what all I'm saying is that
0:50:47not everything is better on it,
0:50:49and it's important, if you're thinking about
0:50:51one of these devices, it's important to know that going in,
0:50:53just because certain things, there is such a thing
0:50:56as too big of a screen for certain things.
0:50:58And you might hit that.
0:51:00But as you alluded to earlier, Jon,
0:51:02one of the bigger challenges up front here is that iOS,
0:51:07while it's nice to have things like the split view
0:51:09and the slide over and everything,
0:51:11these features are pretty basic so far.
0:51:15They still could, especially things like the slide over,
0:51:18the app launching experience there,
0:51:20if you're having to scroll through this giant long list
0:51:23of these apps that are capable of doing this.
0:51:26Like this interface, I don't know who designed
0:51:29this interface because it should have been obvious
0:51:31to anybody that as soon as you have more than a handful
0:51:35of apps that support this feature,
0:51:36this does not work very well.
0:51:39But anyway, there are affordances for the big screen
0:51:43and things that take advantage of the big screen in iOS.
0:51:46But the iPad has always kind of been
0:51:49the second class citizen of iOS.
0:51:52It has always gotten, oftentimes delayed hardware
0:51:56capabilities or less good hardware in certain ways.
0:51:59Like the cameras are never as good as the iPhone cameras.
0:52:02It got touch ID late.
0:52:04The new one, even the iPad Pro, as the reviews have noted,
0:52:07doesn't have the touch ID sensor from the 6S,
0:52:10the good new one.
0:52:11It has the slower old one from the iPhone 5S and 6.
0:52:15And that seems crazy.
0:52:16This is like a new flagship iOS device
0:52:19that there is a substantially better touch ID sensor
0:52:24that launched two months ago,
0:52:26and the iPad Pro doesn't have it.
0:52:27And 3D touch, it doesn't have either.
0:52:29That might be 'cause they couldn't get it
0:52:31to work on the big screen.
0:52:31That's a little more understandable, I think,
0:52:33'cause you can see the challenges involved there.
0:52:35- I think the touch ID sensor makes sense too, though,
0:52:38because-- - Why?
0:52:39- Volumes, because how many,
0:52:42I don't think there is an entire world
0:52:43of vendors making this touch ID sensor.
0:52:46I think there's a limited number of people
0:52:47who even can make it.
0:52:48maybe like patent encumbered or whatever,
0:52:50who has the ability to manufacture, who has the expertise.
0:52:52And the iPhone is just so damn high volume
0:52:55that it's going to get every single one of those things
0:52:56so they can manufacture for the foreseeable future.
0:52:58That, I don't know if that's true,
0:53:00but that is a plausible explanation as to why,
0:53:03why you wouldn't, you know,
0:53:05the iPhone would absorb everything because it has to,
0:53:06because it is the most important product.
0:53:08And if there's any part that is in limited supply,
0:53:10iPhone gets it and don't even bother,
0:53:12don't even worry about the iPad,
0:53:14just give them the old sensor.
0:53:15It doesn't even matter, the iPhone is what matters.
0:53:17because if you had to think of a part on the iPhone
0:53:19that is supply constrained, the touch ID sensor,
0:53:22especially the brand new one,
0:53:23is one of the top ones that I would pick.
0:53:26- I don't know, I think it's equally likely
0:53:28that this was just an area where somebody decided,
0:53:30you know what, people aren't unlocking their iPad
0:53:34via touch ID as often as they do it on their phone,
0:53:36so it's not that important, we can save a dollar.
0:53:38It feels more like that.
0:53:39- Is it cheaper?
0:53:40Is the new one actually more expensive, though?
0:53:43It might even just be the same, I don't know.
0:53:45It seems more like iPhone gets all the good stuff,
0:53:49all the best stuff first.
0:53:49It is the oldest favorite child.
0:53:51If anything is in short supply,
0:53:53iPhone gets the stuff first.
0:53:55- Right, so regardless of the reason of that,
0:53:57on the software side, unfortunately, that's also true.
0:54:02And you see things like, even back forever ago,
0:54:06when the iPad launched with 3.2, iOS 3.2,
0:54:11then iOS 4 with multitasking came out for the iPhone,
0:54:14And it wasn't until, what about four months later,
0:54:17something like, or maybe even six months later,
0:54:19in like 4.3 was when they unified it,
0:54:22where they brought all those features to the iPad.
0:54:25Look at when iOS 7 launched, and then in the early betas,
0:54:29they wouldn't even give you the iPad beta,
0:54:30'cause it was so unfinished,
0:54:32they wouldn't even give you the developer betas at first.
0:54:35And then later on in the iOS 7 developer process,
0:54:37they eventually released the iPad version of it.
0:54:40And I would say the iPad version has always,
0:54:43and still lags behind the iPhone version
0:54:47ever since the iOS 7 redesign.
0:54:49There are certain things about it that just seem half-assed.
0:54:53Things like Control Center, things like that,
0:54:56that swipe over, app picker, UI,
0:54:59notifications have always been kinda weird on it.
0:55:03There's still, I think as Gruber pointed out in history,
0:55:05there's still no calculator or weather apps.
0:55:08It just seems like in so many ways,
0:55:10The iPad is trying to be this higher end device,
0:55:15and in many ways it's achieving that.
0:55:17But on the software side,
0:55:19it's being held back by these limitations.
0:55:22And they did make great strides with the split view
0:55:26and with the slide over in iOS 8.
0:55:28That does help a lot, but in general,
0:55:31it just seems like it's not getting a lot of attention
0:55:34in its software.
0:55:35And you get there, here we are, flagship product.
0:55:39This is obviously very important to Apple
0:55:41to get the iPad sales boosted again,
0:55:44get them going again, keep the iPad alive, keep it going.
0:55:48So you have this flagship product.
0:55:50It launches right before the holidays, peak time.
0:55:54First of all, yeah, no accessories available, right?
0:55:56Problem number one.
0:55:57But then second of all, hardly any apps are updated for it.
0:56:00So already you have this weird experience
0:56:02where when you launch most iPad apps,
0:56:05they come up in the blurry, blown up way
0:56:07and it just looks terrible.
0:56:09It looks ridiculous.
0:56:11That's a problem.
0:56:12And just going through Tiff's initial setup here at home,
0:56:15we've seen a lot of those apps.
0:56:16Almost every app she uses has not been updated.
0:56:19And that includes both games and browsing apps
0:56:22and magazines and shopping apps.
0:56:23There's so many apps that have just not been updated.
0:56:26So that's problem number one.
0:56:28But even just iOS, Tiff's first impression
0:56:31when she saw the springboard home screen,
0:56:34she was looking at how many icons you get across the top.
0:56:37And the number of app icons has stayed the same
0:56:41in how many you get per row and column in Springboard
0:56:44hasn't changed, even though the screen size
0:56:46got almost twice as big.
0:56:47So everything's just this giant,
0:56:49spread out, weird arrangement.
0:56:52And she immediately started looking for a setting
0:56:54to change it, 'cause she assumed,
0:56:56of course there has to be a setting.
0:56:58Of course this would not be the only way
0:57:00you would ship this thing.
0:57:01Nope, there's no setting to change it.
0:57:02That is the only way it's shipped.
0:57:03It just seems like there is just not enough resources
0:57:08at Apple being devoted to making iOS better
0:57:12specifically for the iPad.
0:57:14It's hard enough for developers to justify
0:57:18putting a lot of work into iPad apps a lot of the times.
0:57:20And that's gonna be another problem this has
0:57:22because now, for the first time, I think in a while,
0:57:27with Split View coming a few months ago
0:57:30and now with the iPad Pro having a whole new screen size,
0:57:34not to mention if you wanted to take advantage
0:57:35of things like the pen and keyboard in significant ways,
0:57:38app developers need to catch up.
0:57:41They need to do a lot of work to get their iPad apps
0:57:44to be really great now, to keep them current,
0:57:46to keep them running well in the newest hardware,
0:57:48to keep them taking advantage of the newest hardware.
0:57:50The iPhone does this to us every year in some way,
0:57:52but the iPhone has a lot more people using it,
0:57:54and therefore it's a lot easier to make money on the iPhone
0:57:56for a lot of kinds of apps.
0:57:57But the iPad, because it's a smaller platform
0:58:00by install base, it's always been a little bit harder
0:58:04for a lot of people to justify doing work on it,
0:58:07and doing work on iPad apps.
0:58:09And the problems in Apple's software ecosystem
0:58:12of app pricing, sustainability, over-competition,
0:58:16everything, all of those problems are magnified
0:58:20on the iPad side, because the install base isn't as big,
0:58:24so you can't just make it up in volume.
0:58:26It's harder to make it on the iPad side.
0:58:29There's less competition, I think, which helps,
0:58:30but it's just harder.
0:58:32Look at how many iPad apps have just been
0:58:35just totally abandoned and just are getting
0:58:38no meaningful updates because their developers
0:58:40just can't afford to work on them.
0:58:43I think this is ultimately going to be
0:58:46what decides whether the iPad Pro succeeds or fails
0:58:49is will developers, including Apple with iOS,
0:58:54will developers be able to justify
0:58:57investing a lot of resources into making really great
0:59:00software for the iPad Pro.
0:59:02'Cause it's kind of a chicken and egg problem.
0:59:05If they don't, then the iPad Pro,
0:59:08it will probably not do substantially better
0:59:11than the other iPads have done.
0:59:13And it's not like they're bombing,
0:59:14and everyone always says, "Oh, well it's a bigger business
0:59:15"than McDonald's," or whatever.
0:59:16You know, they're doing okay, but it seems like
0:59:18the point of this product was to really juice
0:59:20the iPad lineup, really give it a substantial boost.
0:59:22And unless the software comes,
0:59:25I don't think that's going to happen.
0:59:27I also don't see what in the software ecosystem
0:59:31will meaningfully change that will suddenly make this
0:59:35a great platform that is worth developers,
0:59:38both large and small, spending a lot of time
0:59:41creating and maintaining professional quality apps
0:59:43for this platform.
0:59:45- Seems like Apple's been coasting on the,
0:59:47not coasting, but like benefiting from the inevitability
0:59:50of the iPad that they apparently feel
0:59:52that I've always felt, even from like the original iPad
0:59:55Remember when the iPad was coming out, it was like Apple's tablet, we didn't know what
0:59:58the name of it was going to be.
0:59:59One of the topics of discussion around that time, although we didn't have a lot of podcasts
1:00:02talk about it on, was what is the home screen going to look like on an Apple tablet?
1:00:08And the reason that was a discussion, because the second thing anyone would say in that
1:00:12conversation is they can't just do what they do on the phone and have just a grid of icons
1:00:16because the screen is massive.
1:00:18So what are they going to do?
1:00:19Like it was fun to think about what is the sort of the home experience, the root level,
1:00:26the bottom level, the thing you see when you turn the thing on.
1:00:30What does that look like when you have a tablet-sized device?
1:00:32And Apple's answer was it looks like a phone, we spread stuff out a little bit more, right?
1:00:37And as the iPod, iPad changed sizes, when it got smaller, you know, the icons were there,
1:00:42now it's gotten bigger, the icons just spread out.
1:00:45There's a couple aspects of that.
1:00:47One is if they actually did put things in at the same density they are on a phone, that
1:00:54would be an object of ridicule.
1:00:56People like, "That big iPad, you can't tell where anything is because there's a million
1:00:59icons on the home screen."
1:01:01So they can obviously not do them.
1:01:03That just goes to show that the density that works well on a tiny thing in your hand, you
1:01:06can't use that same density when the thing is the size of an actual notebook piece of
1:01:10paper.
1:01:11But surely, looking at the iPad Pro, you could fit a few more in there, can't you?
1:01:14is just huge white space between them, but it all gets back to the same root problem,
1:01:19which is trying to figure out, which Apple has been trying to do and mostly failing for
1:01:24many many years now, how to take this computing device that Apple and I at least think is
1:01:30the future of computing, as obvious as anything else, but that it has to grow up and it has
1:01:37to start taking on more of the capabilities of desktop computers and it has to do that
1:01:41at the same time as it doesn't take on all of their crap.
1:01:44The whole reason we see it as the future of computing
1:01:46and inevitability is that there's some things
1:01:49you won't be able to do on a phone,
1:01:50which is, we don't have to call inevitable,
1:01:52it's already here, boom, done, right?
1:01:54Some things you can't do on a phone that's too darn small,
1:01:56and PCs are still too hard to use, including Macs.
1:01:59So here's this thing that's in between.
1:02:01It takes all the good stuff from your phone
1:02:03that everyone knows how to use and is comfortable with,
1:02:04gets rid of all the legacy crap,
1:02:06but how can you make it have more capabilities?
1:02:08And designing the home screen with the iPad
1:02:10was one of the first times that I've always faced with that thing.
1:02:12Hmm.
1:02:13All right.
1:02:13What do you see when you turn on the iPad?
1:02:15We have this big screen.
1:02:16Can we do something different in this realm?
1:02:19And that realm is like the place where people go to launch their apps
1:02:21or to rearrange things or whatever.
1:02:24And they punted on it.
1:02:25They said, well, I don't know.
1:02:26We don't really have any good ideas right now.
1:02:28So let's just make a degree out of icons.
1:02:30And they just continued to kick that down the road, all the while knowing
1:02:33that surely there's something more they can do.
1:02:35But it's like, but you don't want to make it into--
1:02:36what, are you going to have a Finder on the iPad?
1:02:38No, no.
1:02:38We don't want that crap.
1:02:39The whole reason people like the iPad is that it's simple, right?
1:02:42So it has to be straightforward.
1:02:44And like, all right, yeah, we're fine with that.
1:02:46But now we're getting to the point in the iPad's evolution, it's like, but we have to
1:02:49make it more capable.
1:02:51So bigger, good, yes, thumbs up.
1:02:52I've always been a big fan of the iPad Pro.
1:02:54You have to make it bigger because there's more stuff you can do.
1:02:56And then what can we do with that real estate?
1:02:58That's a harder problem.
1:02:59I've got this extra real estate.
1:03:00Apple's like, "No, we could split the screen and make it like a divider that you can kind
1:03:04of like..."
1:03:06It's better, better than nothing, but it still shows that they haven't figured out how to
1:03:12add capability without adding complexity.
1:03:14The beauty of the thing we all know, the Windows pointer mouse, you know, WIMP interface pioneered
1:03:19by the Mac or popularized by the Mac, is that evolved over time with a vocabulary that we're
1:03:25all familiar with.
1:03:26Like, you know, it's easy for us to think like, "Oh, Macs aren't that hard or PCs aren't
1:03:29that hard.
1:03:30Everyone knows how to use Windows and menu bars."
1:03:34And like, there's a vocabulary for dealing with windows that, you know, that they have
1:03:37widgets on them that you can resize them from various edges, you can move them around tabs
1:03:42or another vocabulary that was added.
1:03:43And we all understand how tabs work.
1:03:45But that's us, everyone else.
1:03:47And same thing with the file system, file system and folders and, you know, navigating
1:03:50the hierarchy, a very simple, consistent vocabulary for people who are into computers.
1:03:55For everyone else, it might as well be, you know, inscrutable.
1:03:58And just like some people just never fully grasp it.
1:04:00So that's why we know that like the smartphone and the iPad
1:04:04are inevitably the future because history has shown over,
1:04:08you know, decades that just people,
1:04:11not enough people grok computers the way we grok them.
1:04:15This interface is, you know,
1:04:17it's much better than what came before.
1:04:18The command line, even a small number of people grok.
1:04:21The GUI with the mouses and the scroll bars,
1:04:23a larger reveal grok,
1:04:24but everybody gets the smartphone, right?
1:04:26And, but there are those of us who use computers
1:04:29to do our job, so they have to figure out a way
1:04:31to make these things more capable
1:04:33without making them more complicated.
1:04:34And that is a really difficult job, and that's on Apple.
1:04:36Like, individual developers, they can make their applications
1:04:40to use the old parlance iPad Pro savvy,
1:04:43and they need to all do all that stuff or whatever,
1:04:44but it's kind of on Apple to show how this can really be
1:04:49the future of computing, and so far,
1:04:50they've been timid about it, because it's safe to say,
1:04:54we'll just do what we did on the phone and bigger,
1:04:55'cause people already understand it, and it works fine,
1:04:57but you're not gaining any new capabilities then,
1:04:59Even though they said, "Well, when you rotate mail sideways,
1:05:00"you get a new sidebar."
1:05:02Or even on the 6S Plus,
1:05:04they did a couple of different layouts and whatever.
1:05:07This is so massively huge, you can't just say,
1:05:09"All right, well now all our apps
1:05:10"will have a little bit different layout."
1:05:11'Cause sometimes you don't even have anything
1:05:12to go over there.
1:05:13Inevitably, you have to get to some solution
1:05:14that gives us what we do with Windows,
1:05:17but in a simpler way.
1:05:18And the splitter is their first crack at that,
1:05:19and I haven't used it, so I don't know how successful it is,
1:05:22but boy, I just feel like they have a long way
1:05:24to go in this area.
1:05:25and most of the complaints surrounding software
1:05:30on the iPad Pro,
1:05:31I don't think it dooms the tablet as a platform,
1:05:33it just goes to show that this is a hard problem
1:05:37and it's easy to take for granted
1:05:39the breakthroughs and conventions that came with the Mac
1:05:41and with the original GUI that had so much time to evolve.
1:05:44I remember we had two arrows on both ends of the scroll bars
1:05:46and we had proportional scroll thumbs
1:05:48and then we got rid of the scroll bars entirely
1:05:50and all that.
1:05:51Even just something as simple as moving windows around
1:05:53and scrolling.
1:05:54There's a lot of cracks at that.
1:05:56Like what we have now is not what was first there,
1:05:58and we tried all sorts of different things
1:05:59to try to find something that was better.
1:06:02Proportional scroll thumbs were a pretty big revolution.
1:06:04Apple didn't invent those obviously,
1:06:05and they were really late adopting them.
1:06:08But that was a significant enhancement
1:06:10over the original scroll thumb,
1:06:11and the original Mac scroll bars
1:06:13were a significant enhancement over the weird ones
1:06:14on the Xerox systems that you had to like middle click
1:06:16or whatever to scroll.
1:06:17So I don't expect anyone to nail this in the first try,
1:06:22But the iteration time has definitely slowed down,
1:06:26I think mostly because the smartphone and its interface
1:06:29became so iconic that Apple's like,
1:06:32"Well, worst case, it's like a phone,
1:06:34"but on a bigger screen, everybody understands that
1:06:36"and it'll be fine."
1:06:37But we won't make significant progress
1:06:38towards the future of computing, capital F, capital C,
1:06:43that Tim Cook and I and several other people believe
1:06:46must come someday.
1:06:48- Yeah, I don't know.
1:06:49I mean, a lot of these problems,
1:06:52people assume to be problems, like my old
1:06:55launch an app without a setting screen design problem,
1:06:58where you assume, oh well, computers are too hard to use,
1:07:01so the way to make them easier to use
1:07:03is to get rid of all these files and windows and everything,
1:07:07get rid of all these things people are confused about.
1:07:10But if you look at it only in that way,
1:07:12that's kind of a naive 22-year-old smart person
1:07:17way to look at things, of like, well, this is all stupid,
1:07:19we'll just get rid of it.
1:07:21And then you do and you realize,
1:07:22oh, now we have a lot of problems to solve.
1:07:26And the solutions that you build up
1:07:28end up being oftentimes more complex or worse,
1:07:32or at least no better than what was already there.
1:07:35Because what was already there
1:07:36was actually there for good reasons.
1:07:38And so a lot of these problems, I think,
1:07:40have to be backtracked in some way.
1:07:42For example, iCloud Drive, perfect example of this,
1:07:45where you have, okay, well, there's no more files.
1:07:48each app just has its own content in the app.
1:07:51And then, oh, now we have a sync engine
1:07:53and well, it'll just sync.
1:07:54There's documents still in the app.
1:07:56And then, oh, it turns out having a folder
1:07:59that just syncs everywhere, like Dropbox, is really useful
1:08:02and makes a lot of things way easier
1:08:05than all these apps having their own little sandbox silos.
1:08:08And also those little sandbox silos
1:08:10bring lots of other limitations
1:08:11and challenges to the platform.
1:08:13And, oh, by the way, all this contributes very heavily
1:08:16to why a lot of people can't get their work done on iOS.
1:08:18- Don't you feel like it's tempting
1:08:20to slide back to the old solutions?
1:08:21- Yeah.
1:08:22- I think that was, you know, Sync is a great example
1:08:24where it's like the new stuff is supposed to work
1:08:26but doesn't and Dropbox used the old paradigm
1:08:29plus reliability to say, look you guys,
1:08:32you guys haven't figured it out.
1:08:34I know this is an old paradigm that is confusing
1:08:35but it's reliable and at least, at the very least,
1:08:38the people who understand files and folders
1:08:40will understand Dropbox and the other people,
1:08:41they'll muddle along because we'll be reliable enough
1:08:43but it's so easy to go back to that.
1:08:46Apple doesn't like to do that.
1:08:47That's why the iPad Pro doesn't come with a bunch of windows
1:08:50with widgets that you slide around on the screen, right?
1:08:52They totally could.
1:08:53It could, you know, they could make like a touch,
1:08:55an OS X designed for touch
1:08:57where all the window widgets are gigantic or whatever,
1:08:59but you have actual windows.
1:09:01Apple doesn't wanna do that to its credit,
1:09:03to its detriment or demerit
1:09:05or whatever word you wanna insert there.
1:09:07They don't seem to have quite an idea
1:09:10what to do going forward.
1:09:12and they've been really cautious about like poking their way towards the edges of like,
1:09:17I mean, Microsoft has been much more daring in thinking the old paradigms are cruddy,
1:09:23we want to try something new, and they went hog wild with the whole Metro stuff.
1:09:28I don't think that was successful either, but they certainly, you know, came, went forward
1:09:34much more boldly than Apple.
1:09:35Apple's just been like, it's just, we'll just use the smartphone stuff.
1:09:38Everyone likes that.
1:09:39the compromises we made to a small screen, we will port to the big screen and don't
1:09:43complain that it can't do anything more than a phone.
1:09:45Yeah, I mean at this point, I would say the main thing that holds iOS back from more pro
1:09:51adoption is the OS. It's not that the screens weren't big enough. Those things help. And
1:09:58things like the iPad Pro and the pencil and finally a decent keyboard, those things will
1:10:06all help and they will all bring in certain portions of the workforce and population that
1:10:12couldn't have done it before or didn't want to do it before.
1:10:15But fundamentally, the main reason why so many people say, "I can't get my work done
1:10:20on an iPad," or "It would be very clunky for me to get my work done on an iPad,"
1:10:25fundamentally that comes down to iOS and the structure of iOS, how things like files and
1:10:30documents and sandboxing and apps, how those things are all -- and multitasking, like how
1:10:35how these all work together, the things they can do,
1:10:38the things they can't do, that is ultimately
1:10:40what it comes down to for a lot of people.
1:10:41And that is really hard to change meaningfully
1:10:45without, as you said, without just basically
1:10:47making it a Mac, like without redoing
1:10:49all these old complexities.
1:10:51Now Apple is trying to figure out
1:10:54which of those old complexities were actually not necessary
1:10:57and which are necessary to have a productive
1:11:01kind of pro work machine.
1:11:03- I don't think any of them are necessary.
1:11:04The question is simply, like, because all they are is a means to an end.
1:11:07The end is I need to have a way to use multiple, to do multiple things at once.
1:11:14We call it multiple application, but there's no reason that paradigm you need to stick,
1:11:17although Apple seems married to that.
1:11:18You could have gone, Apple could have gone the OpenDoc route where everything is inverted
1:11:21and the document is king and there's no real applications.
1:11:24And anyway, they didn't.
1:11:25The point is they have applications.
1:11:26So we're faced with, basically the high level problem we're faced with is how do I do more
1:11:29than one thing at one time?
1:11:31before these things start sharing with each other,
1:11:32just simply, how do I go to a web browser,
1:11:36to my text editor, to my email, to my photo editor?
1:11:39How do I do more than one?
1:11:40Windows solves that problem,
1:11:41not capital W, Windows for Microsoft,
1:11:43but Windows is the solution that people came up with,
1:11:46that there's going to be application content,
1:11:47it's in these little rectangles
1:11:48that we can change the size of.
1:11:50When we change the size to small,
1:11:51scroll bars are there to move around.
1:11:52They have a thing that you can drag them on.
1:11:54They have little buttons that you can close
1:11:56and minimize and match.
1:11:58That was the old solution to that.
1:12:00Old solution, if I've seen anybody use computers,
1:12:03Windows are not something that most people deal with well.
1:12:07And it has simply not gotten better.
1:12:09You can't blame it all,
1:12:10it's because old people didn't grow up with computers.
1:12:12There are many, many people who grew up with computers
1:12:14who cannot manage Windows.
1:12:15I, as we all know, am an expert at managing Windows.
1:12:17- Oh my God.
1:12:18- Because I grew up with it,
1:12:20and because I have an aptitude for it.
1:12:21But, and it makes me keenly aware
1:12:23that pretty much everyone else I see
1:12:25has no idea what to do with Windows.
1:12:26Even young kids at work, like kids just out of college,
1:12:29I see how they use computers
1:12:31and they have these massive screens
1:12:32and they have like maybe two windows on them.
1:12:34That's why people love tiling window managers
1:12:36and things like Windows 10
1:12:37where you jam the window against the side of the screen,
1:12:39it fills the half.
1:12:39Managing Windows is, it is not easy to do,
1:12:44to have a bunch of windows all shuffling around.
1:12:45It's like having 17 papers on your desk
1:12:47all overlapping with each other
1:12:48and trying to manage it, right?
1:12:50That is, it's not like that people
1:12:51are gonna get better at that.
1:12:53So I'm not saying it's a bankrupt paradigm.
1:12:54It's way better than people managing
1:12:57the mental state required to deal with a command line,
1:12:59right, big advancement over that.
1:13:01But you can't go back to it,
1:13:04but we still have the root problem of,
1:13:05what if I wanna do a bunch of stuff at once?
1:13:07So how do you let me do a bunch of stuff at once
1:13:09without asking me to manage Windows?
1:13:11And so far, we don't have a good answer to that.
1:13:14The iOS multitasking switcher, splitting the screen,
1:13:18none of those things, like we recognize all those things
1:13:21are better than nothing,
1:13:23but still not as capable as Windows,
1:13:25even to people who aren't good at managing windows
1:13:27and don't like to have a lot of windows,
1:13:29if you're at all used to windows, you're like,
1:13:31I wish I could just have windows on this thing,
1:13:32but then you realize it doesn't work
1:13:34with the finger or whatever.
1:13:34So that's just one root problem.
1:13:36How do I give something that's the equivalent of windows?
1:13:40Like, I don't wanna say it that way,
1:13:41but how do I let people use this computing device
1:13:45to do more than one thing at the same time
1:13:47and move between those tasks in a nice way?
1:13:49So set that aside, we don't have a good solution.
1:13:51The other one you were talking about, Marco,
1:13:53How do I deal with the data?
1:13:55How do I take some piece of data?
1:13:57How do I synthesize like pictures from here,
1:14:00text from there, a link from here?
1:14:01How do I move stuff between applications,
1:14:04keep track of where things are, save things,
1:14:06have, you know, like, and the old solution
1:14:08that was files and folders in a file system.
1:14:10You had images, you had text documents, you know,
1:14:12and that was the old paradigm.
1:14:13And as we all know, people aren't good at the old paradigm.
1:14:16Files and folders, people make a big giant mess.
1:14:17They can't keep track of where they are.
1:14:19Lots of people can deal with it,
1:14:21but lots of people just can't.
1:14:22And again, we've had computers long enough not to say like,
1:14:24"Oh, we just gotta wait for the old people to die.
1:14:26Young people will know how to deal with files and folders."
1:14:28Nope, we ran that experiment.
1:14:29Human beings are not changing that fast.
1:14:31Files and folders, a lot of people can use it,
1:14:33but a lot of people can't.
1:14:35It's much easier when there's no saving.
1:14:37You open the Notes app,
1:14:38you type a bunch of notes in with your thumbs on your iPhone
1:14:40and you close the Notes app.
1:14:41No one is begging for a save button
1:14:43on the Notes application.
1:14:44I've said this a million times.
1:14:46And it just goes to show that like,
1:14:49those are complexities that we don't need.
1:14:51But when you want to do something that would traditionally be done with files and folders in a file system,
1:14:55what is the solution for that?
1:14:57So Apple should really probably have like teams of 50 really smart people,
1:15:02multiple ones of them, working on all these problems.
1:15:04Because right now they're either not solving them at all or making the most timid move in the direction of solving them.
1:15:11And then just kind of being like, I don't know, like it's a little bit more complicated than the iPhone,
1:15:17but it's not as good as a Mac. What do you guys think of that?
1:15:20And it's just not the same as the bold vision of the Mac of saying the command line is crap forget about it what we're
1:15:24Doing has nothing to do with the command line here are you know we've seen the future and just gooeys
1:15:29And we're gonna this is the direction we're gonna take and it's way better than everything came before it and so far
1:15:34We haven't had that moment for the post you know the post wimp world
1:15:39So two questions for you John first of all on an infinite time scale would we get good at using Windows I?
1:15:47Don't think so because I don't think there's any I don't think there's any evolutionary pressure
1:15:51Like there's there's nothing about being good at windows that makes your genes more likely to be passed on
1:15:58So in the absence of that pressure
1:16:01I don't see how the genetic makeup of humans would change over any period of time to become better at managing
1:16:08multiple traditional windows and the second reason of course is that
1:16:12We will come up with different interfaces that are better than windows and simpler and better suited to us
1:16:17So it's not you there's nothing holding windows steady of saying I demand that windows as they currently exist stay there for the next
1:16:23You know three billion years to wait and see if human evolution will make us better at handling them
1:16:28You took that question way too seriously, but I gave you I gave you the answer, but I appreciate it
1:16:34I mean, that's nothing less. Yeah, exactly the other question I had and I am being serious now is
1:16:39you seem
1:16:41really disappointed with the multitasking paradigm in iOS and
1:16:45You know, I have this iPad mini the first one with the retina display and it doesn't support
1:16:51God, I always get the terminology wrong. So it does do slide over. It doesn't do split view
1:16:56I'm pretty sure I got that right. That's right
1:16:57And so I've only had limited experience with the multitasking on an iPad, but I feel like I really like it
1:17:05I will say that the multitasking switcher when you're switching between apps and in the slide over or what have you is
1:17:11is stupid. Like, I agree with you there. That's dumb. But the general premise behind it, I
1:17:17don't think it's so bad. I'm not saying there couldn't be better, but I mean, I think it's
1:17:20a pretty solid first step. Do you not think that?
1:17:23I don't know. Like, it's easy to see that it's not as capable as multiple windows, right?
1:17:29Sure. Because two, like, it's better than one, but not as good as three. And what if
1:17:33you've got four, and so on and so forth. Sixty. Yeah. And it doesn't help you with the, it
1:17:39doesn't help you yet with the, you know, sharing for one thing to the other, dragging and dropping
1:17:44across that line, or somehow because things are visually next to each other, all the same
1:17:49things we do in the desktop.
1:17:50Like drag and drop is, again, not saying drag and drop is what they should bring over because
1:17:54it's the old thing that worked, but they need something that fills the same role as drag
1:17:57and drop in that like, you know, I have something over here, I'm going to drag it over there
1:18:02and I'm going to chuck it into this thing and now this image I dragged out of photos
1:18:06onto the desktop, I drag from the desktop into photos.
1:18:09That's not a particularly efficient move,
1:18:10but it's using a vocabulary that we understand to do that.
1:18:13The reason I'm mostly disappointed in it as,
1:18:15not disappointed, like it's better than nothing,
1:18:17but it's so clearly still less capable
1:18:22than a desktop computer,
1:18:25but I feel like almost as hard to explain
1:18:27to people who aren't familiar.
1:18:29Like I just tried to show my daughter today
1:18:31for whatever reason, she decided to use the laptop
1:18:36to write something instead of writing it on a piece of paper.
1:18:39I don't think she writes on her iPod.
1:18:41But anyway, she decided to use a laptop.
1:18:43And she asked me how to make the window cover the whole screen.
1:18:46Because that's just a user.
1:18:47She's grown up on iOS.
1:18:48So I showed her the full screen thing.
1:18:49She's in full screen mode.
1:18:50And then she wanted to look something up in Safari.
1:18:53And I wanted to show her, you can actually
1:18:54see the text editor in Safari at the same time.
1:18:58But then I realized, to show her that, I have to show,
1:19:00all you have to do-- again, all you have to do
1:19:02is arrange the windows.
1:19:05Arrange the windows.
1:19:07She doesn't know how windows move.
1:19:09She doesn't know windows can be resized.
1:19:11I resized a window and she asked me how I did it.
1:19:12How did you change the size of the window?
1:19:14Like it's another thing, you know, like.
1:19:17So trying to show someone how to use windows,
1:19:19obviously very complicated.
1:19:20Trying to show her how to use split view on the iPad
1:19:23would, it results in almost the same conversations.
1:19:26Like it's already, already too complicated I feel like.
1:19:29That people aren't gonna figure it out on their own.
1:19:32And I think it suffers in comparison to windows
1:19:34and that it doesn't really give you a sort of functional vocabulary that you can apply
1:19:39repeatedly because once you figure out how a window works, you still may not be good
1:19:43at arranging windows because just knowing how to a window works is like I know how to
1:19:47form all the letters.
1:19:48It's not the same as knowing how to write, you know what I mean, or knowing how to hit
1:19:50one piano key is not the same as knowing how to play a piano.
1:19:53But you know that any key on the keyboard, if you hit it with your finger, will make
1:19:56a noise.
1:19:57You figured out the vocab, the functional vocabulary, the basic functional vocabulary
1:20:00of a piano.
1:20:01Once you figure out how windows work, you can drag them by the title bar, you can resize
1:20:04them, you can close them, you can move them around, you learn the parameters, can I move
1:20:08it all the way off the screen?
1:20:09No, no, I can't.
1:20:10Can I get the title bar underneath the menu bar?
1:20:12Not unless there's like a bug in the OS, which happens sometimes.
1:20:17Is it really that much easier?
1:20:18Don't think about the split view as like, "Oh, it's pretty cool.
1:20:20I kind of like it."
1:20:21You know how to use desktop computers.
1:20:22Think about it as if you had to show somebody who had only ever used a smartphone, how to
1:20:28use split view with their eyes glazed over and they'd be like, "I don't get it."
1:20:31And then secondarily, could they transfer those skills?
1:20:34Like if you say you show them how to use split view
1:20:35and they figure it out, could they,
1:20:37are those skills useful for anything else?
1:20:38So they're gonna say,
1:20:39"Now I can split view any two applications,"
1:20:41or would you have to show them again?
1:20:42Okay, well, this is how you do a split view,
1:20:44but what if you want to, like when you come back to it,
1:20:46will the same two things be in the split view?
1:20:47Or what if you want to put something different
1:20:48in the split view?
1:20:49What if you want to have multiple,
1:20:50like I think it's already too complicated
1:20:53and still less capable.
1:20:55Now, I'm not entirely sure about that,
1:20:57but that's my sense of it so far is that
1:21:01It's not like it's on its way to being as good as the Mac.
1:21:03I think it's not as capable as the Mac
1:21:07and not really easier to explain than Windows.
1:21:10So I feel like it's a bad solution at this point.
1:21:13- You know, I've been talking about it before,
1:21:14like there seems to be a certain baseline level
1:21:17of required complexity.
1:21:19And that's not to say that for things like multitasking,
1:21:22that we have Windows or SlideOver
1:21:24or everything's full screen.
1:21:25Like that's not to say that these things
1:21:28cannot be improved upon,
1:21:29but I do think there is a certain ceiling
1:21:32that we cannot surpass of how simple can we make this?
1:21:37Because the fundamental fact is these are advanced concepts.
1:21:42They're going to have some inherent level
1:21:43of minimum complexity.
1:21:45Oh, oh, we're gonna have multiple things that are separate,
1:21:49that are running on this screen at once,
1:21:50and there's going to be some way
1:21:52to divide the screen space between them,
1:21:54and you're gonna have to be able to pick out
1:21:57which ones to open somehow,
1:21:59figure out if you wanna open them one at a time
1:22:02or if you want to add multiple ones to the screen
1:22:04in some way, then figure out how to switch between them,
1:22:07how to close certain ones or all of them.
1:22:09Like there's going to be some baseline level
1:22:12of complexity to this no matter how it's designed,
1:22:14no matter what system it is.
1:22:16There's going to therefore be some kind
1:22:18of basic learning curve, no matter how easy to make it.
1:22:21So again, this isn't to say that we can't improve
1:22:24systems we have now, but I think people are assuming that there is some endgame here that
1:22:31we should be going for where anybody can just pick it up and all of a sudden it's perfect.
1:22:36And that's never, we're never going to reach that.
1:22:39I think you're mistaking intuitiveness in the old parlance for just a better UI, because
1:22:44you could say all the same things back before the GUI existed. Like there's some inheriting
1:22:48complexity in a time-sharing system where multiple programs are running at the same
1:22:53time and we're never gonna make that easier because this you know like and
1:22:56then the GUI came along and it's like oh well I guess if you totally rethink
1:23:00things then I guess you can make it massively easier for a huge number of
1:23:03people still too complicated for all people but so much better you know like
1:23:08you really there is no I don't think there's any limitation and you know the
1:23:13endgame obviously would be like you know some crazy neural interface where you
1:23:16just think stuff and imagine what happens or or the endgame is all the
1:23:20extinction of human life and the computers take over. Anyway, there's definitely an endgame,
1:23:24you may not like it. But for things like interfaces, I think they're absolutely,
1:23:30I think that kind of thinking that is just like, there's a certain amount of complexity and there's
1:23:35no way we're going to make it simple, is just absolutely the wrong way to look at this. Because
1:23:39having lived through the GUI revolution and having seen how, that's why the original GUI
1:23:44and the Mac was so brilliant, that it did find a way. Lots of people tried to find ways to do it,
1:23:49And then the Mac finally did find a way
1:23:52through the use of metaphor and through what
1:23:55I've maintained is one of the best interfaces ever,
1:23:58the spatial finder, giving people
1:24:01an interface that played to the strengths of the knowledge
1:24:07that they have from living in the actual world
1:24:09and let them use those skills to manage
1:24:11this virtual world of the computer in a way
1:24:15that wasn't possible before.
1:24:17And it made them much more capable.
1:24:19It didn't just make the capabilities easier,
1:24:21it added new capabilities.
1:24:24And what we needed is the next one of those revolutions.
1:24:26Arguably, the smartphone was the next one
1:24:27of those revolutions.
1:24:28It just happened to be in a constrained environment
1:24:31where the thing has to fit in your hand
1:24:32and you carry it around with you,
1:24:33which let us avoid a lot of the more difficult problems.
1:24:37It was a very difficult problem in itself.
1:24:38Like that was the second revolution, the smartphone, right?
1:24:41Making people be able to do stuff with computers,
1:24:44people who couldn't even use computers,
1:24:45or making you not even think of it as a computer.
1:24:47But in the larger realm, we still have these other computers
1:24:50that have changed into this incredibly capable
1:24:53general purpose thing we have
1:24:54that we still think is too complicated.
1:24:55So that is the next frontier.
1:24:57So I'm not as fatalistic as you are about like,
1:25:01yeah, there is some inherent complexity
1:25:03and people aren't going to change,
1:25:04but I really truly believe there absolutely is a way
1:25:07to leverage what humans are good at
1:25:10to let them do all the things they do
1:25:12with desktop computers in an easier way.
1:25:15To go back a step, it is absolutely insane to me, John,
1:25:18that you would take Windows as the introduction
1:25:23to multiple things happening at the same time.
1:25:26To me, the iPad multitasking interface
1:25:29is so much easier to understand
1:25:31and makes so much more sense.
1:25:34Yeah, it's a little bit weirder
1:25:36in that there's not a lot of visual cues as to what to do,
1:25:39but in every other measurable way,
1:25:41I feel like it is so much easier.
1:25:42And for your daughter to be confused by Windows, that's not terribly surprising to me.
1:25:48But I think if you had done the reverse and started her on the iPad, and then said to
1:25:52her, "Alright, well this is kind of like the iPad, but you can have more than just two,
1:25:56and you don't have to do some weird gesture to slide them around, you just have to grab
1:26:01it and move it," I feel like that would have made a lot more sense to her.
1:26:04To me, I think you're looking at the iPad interface as a dumbing down of windowing,
1:26:12whereas I see, even though this obviously is chronologically the reverse, I feel like
1:26:17windowing is an extension of the more simple iPad interface.
1:26:23And it's a much easier paradigm to understand.
1:26:26And yes, it's not discoverable, but once you've discovered it, it is so simple to use.
1:26:31And it seems like it would be – a lot of the problems that people have with windowing
1:26:37systems, I don't think they would have them with the iPad.
1:26:40This is all guessing.
1:26:41I have no evidence.
1:26:42I've never asked my parents, "Hey, how do you have two apps open at the same time
1:26:46on the iPad?"
1:26:47This is all supposition.
1:26:48But it just seems so much more logical to me than the far more inscrutable task of managing
1:26:54windows.
1:26:55I think you're getting hung up again on the learnability and intuitiveness.
1:26:57It doesn't really matter how confused they are at first.
1:26:59matters is after you've shown them how to do it does this translate into sort of a new paradigm
1:27:05does it give them skills and vocabulary that they can then use to manage complexity in their life
1:27:09like not the computer complexity but the complexity whatever whatever thing it is that
1:27:13they're using the computer to do you want to you know there's always going to be some you know
1:27:19again that's the the saying from the old gooey days the only thing that's actually intuitive is
1:27:23the nipple everything else is learned and so intuitiveness is totally a red herring right
1:27:29All you want is something that most people can learn in a reasonable amount of time,
1:27:34and that after they learn it, it gives them a toolset because it defines a sort of
1:27:38understandable world that lets them use those skills to solve problems.
1:27:44So you can totally see how the GUI, the Mac GUI in particular, gave people that vocabulary.
1:27:49All applications work the same. The menu bar is always at the top. All the windows work the same.
1:27:52Scroll bars work the same. The mouse works the same. There's a simple vocabulary for same click,
1:27:56double clip, and then adding that right click and everything like that. That was a tool set.
1:28:01I don't think the split view thing, it's a vocabulary that works in that way because
1:28:06it doesn't create, I don't think there is an easily sort of, there's no user model,
1:28:12there's no mental model that people can latch onto for that. Mostly because there's kind of not
1:28:16really an analog in the physical world, but because they're like, well, what? Because the
1:28:19paradigm for iOS thus far has been the thing is the app, the app is the thing. And that is totally a
1:28:24a thing, a paradigm that people can hang on to.
1:28:28You wanna go back to the place
1:28:29where all the other things are, you hit the home button,
1:28:31and then when the thing goes, it is the device.
1:28:33That's a simple one, but that is a very solid paradigm.
1:28:36That is what is power, the smartphone revolution,
1:28:38you know, this incredibly good
1:28:41iPhone user interface paradigm.
1:28:42Split View, I think, does not fit with the old paradigm,
1:28:46and doesn't give the user a vocabulary or a mental model
1:28:49that they can then parlay into,
1:28:52now I can solve any problem,
1:28:54because I know how split views work.
1:28:55They're just more like a weird feature
1:28:57that has been added on top of the old system.
1:28:59Like, again, it doesn't have to do with learnability
1:29:02or having to explain it.
1:29:03It's just that it just seems like it is not of a piece
1:29:05with the rest of the interface.
1:29:07It is a tacked on kind of thing
1:29:09that I don't think represents a new interface paradigm,
1:29:12and therefore they haven't actually solved the problem.
1:29:14- See, and I think that where we fundamentally disagree is,
1:29:17to me, the only thing that you should be able to accomplish
1:29:21by understanding and grokking split view on the iPad
1:29:25is being able to put two arbitrary apps next to each other.
1:29:28That is it.
1:29:29I don't care if that lets you leap into new worlds
1:29:32and go out into the great unknown and apply this knowledge.
1:29:35All I care about is can your daughter have Safari
1:29:38and Notes next to each other?
1:29:39And then later on, can she have YouTube
1:29:41and Tweetbot next to each other?
1:29:44- But she has to understand why they're no longer
1:29:46next to each other or why something else
1:29:47is next to something else or how long they're expected
1:29:50to be next to each other.
1:29:51Like, you know what I mean?
1:29:51There's, there's so many questions surrounding that in terms of like, what,
1:29:54what is the paradigm, what is the user model?
1:29:56What is the mental model?
1:29:57How does this work?
1:29:58Just because you can, I know how, if I'm using this application,
1:30:01I can make another appear.
1:30:02If there's no actual understanding or there really is no solid paradigm
1:30:06underneath it, then every time you use some other application, you're faced with,
1:30:09why is the thing not next to it now?
1:30:11Well, I'll just go through that same motion I knew before to
1:30:13put the thing next to it.
1:30:14Why is this next to that now?
1:30:15Well, I know how to get rid of the thing next to it and it becomes, it's
1:30:19like you're fighting with the computer instead of it helping you. You're not
1:30:21using it as a tool to help you solve a problem. It's just like every time you
1:30:25know this is capability but when it doesn't work the way you expect it to
1:30:29work because you have a different model of like the persistence or the or how
1:30:33the interaction between the different applications is, when they're not that
1:30:36way you can stab at the screen a few times to make it be that way but it's
1:30:40not it's not as like it's not as straightforward as the the windows model
1:30:44which again people aren't good at but at least is an understandable model. You
1:30:47make the windows the sizes you want, you put them where you want. At face value, like that's,
1:30:52you know, it's enough rope to hang yourself because if you don't know what size they should
1:30:55be or where you should put them, an old Steve Jobs thing, you have to be the janitor. You
1:30:58have to put things where you want them. We don't want you to have to be the janitor.
1:31:01Well, whether you're the janitor or not, everyone can understand the model of windows. It's
1:31:05just that the model doesn't help them manage their complexity if they're not good at managing
1:31:09windows, which is why windows are generally a failure. But I just don't feel like the
1:31:12split view gives any kind of understandable model. It gives a little bit more capability,
1:31:17not as much as multiple windows, but does not give you a new model for managing complexity
1:31:21going forward.
1:31:22Yeah, I don't know.
1:31:23I still disagree with you, but I don't know.
1:31:27Either of us could be right on this.
1:31:29The way we'll find out is, as you see people using iPads that are increasingly capable
1:31:33of split view, see how many people you see using split view or using it confidently.
1:31:37Well, see, I think that's two very different discussions, right?
1:31:40Using split view, as I said, it's not terribly discoverable.
1:31:43So that's one thing.
1:31:44using it confidently, that's where I think that's, that is what will differentiate which
1:31:48one of us is right. Because if somebody stumbles upon it and is like, Oh God, what has happened?
1:31:53And then is trying, is obviously trying to switch what app is there, what have you, and
1:31:56it's not working. Okay. Then you're absolutely right. It's, it's completely inscrutable.
1:31:59But if someone has discovered split view and without too much effort is now using it confidently,
1:32:05then I think then that indicates that I'm right. And that it really is useful and it
1:32:08really is a paradigm that they've learned to help them get work done.
1:32:11It may still be useful, but we all agree that it is less capable than multiple windows,
1:32:14if only because it's only two things, right?
1:32:16So the confidence I'm saying is if you see someone using it, you see someone doing their
1:32:20work in a cafe, in the same way you'd see them using a Mac.
1:32:23Now whether they're using full screen and they're swiping between, which by the way
1:32:26I've seen a lot of the younger people who I work with, they're very confident in that
1:32:29because they're the smartphone generation, I guess.
1:32:31They do full screen everything on their Mac laptops.
1:32:33They do do the multi-finger swipe between the applications, which I see is incredibly
1:32:36inefficient.
1:32:37But what they're basically doing is turning the Mac into a paradigm that they understand
1:32:41because Windows are too difficult to manage.
1:32:43But for split view, you'd want to see somebody
1:32:45doing their task, using split views
1:32:51to help make their task more efficient.
1:32:52Not just one split view that they keep permanently
1:32:54and their whole thing is like,
1:32:55I need to have Slack and Twitter next to each other
1:32:57forever and ever and ever and amen.
1:32:58I wish I could tell the OS to never launch them separately
1:33:00and to launch them as a single application.
1:33:02That I would say is a super degenerate case
1:33:04of using split view.
1:33:05But just to say that they're arbitrarily
1:33:09putting applications next to each other
1:33:10as is appropriate for the task they're doing.
1:33:12If it's too difficult to rearrange
1:33:14to put this thing next to that thing
1:33:15and that's next to this thing,
1:33:17then people won't do it and they'll be like,
1:33:18well, it's too onerous to constantly,
1:33:22the same way that people find it too onerous
1:33:24to constantly rearrange windows,
1:33:25it's too onerous to constantly rearrange split views
1:33:26for whatever reason,
1:33:27so therefore I'm just gonna have one split view
1:33:29when everything else is non-split view.
1:33:31And I would say that's not a confident use of things.
1:33:33But anyway, even if they're using split views like that,
1:33:35even if they're using them
1:33:36to always put the two most convenient applications
1:33:38next to each other they need at any moment of time
1:33:40and they have no problem doing it, and it's second nature, and they don't have to think about it, and it's very intuitive,
1:33:44that's still only two things at once. And so it's still worse than Windows.
1:33:47Yeah, but it's worse by your metric of how many thousands of things can I get distracted by at once.
1:33:53No, no, it's worse because we know people need to do more than one thing at once.
1:33:57Windows are a failure because people can't use them to do more than—some people can't use them—I keep saying "people,"
1:34:02you know, we're trying to talk in aggregates here, obviously. Obviously all of us can use Windows to do more than two things at once.
1:34:07We do it all the time, but most people,
1:34:10when they deal with computers, are not successful at that,
1:34:12which means Windows is successful for the people
1:34:14who are good at using computers in the old way of like,
1:34:17he knows computers, but worse for everybody else.
1:34:20Smartphones, I would say, pretty much 100% of the population
1:34:24is successful at both using and installing applications.
1:34:27I pretty much think we've solved that there,
1:34:30not that it can't be improved,
1:34:31but we've hit the mainstream in that,
1:34:34oh, are you good at using smartphones?
1:34:36Do you know smartphones?
1:34:38Very few people say that unless they mean like developing for it or hacking them or
1:34:40something like that.
1:34:41Everybody knows how to launch the Facebook app.
1:34:43Everyone knows how to send text messages.
1:34:45Like we have crossed the effectively 100% barrier there.
1:34:48We have not even come close to crossing that at the "can I use a general purpose computing
1:34:52device to do arbitrary things?"
1:34:54And so we're still struggling to get larger adoption than we have with the world of PCs
1:35:00and Macs.
1:35:01I think I agree with you that the smartphone full screen everything model is pretty close
1:35:07to ideally usable for a lot of people, but I think the windowing model is doing a lot
1:35:13better in practice than you're giving it credit for.
1:35:16I think a lot more people than you seem to be suggesting have figured it out well enough
1:35:20to get stuff done.
1:35:22And maybe not ideally, you know, I'm sure you look at everyone's window setups and
1:35:26it makes you cringe, but you would look at my setup and it would make you cringe.
1:35:31But I think people figure it out.
1:35:34They've been figuring it out for decades.
1:35:36Most people who use a computer on a regular basis are able to figure out windowing enough
1:35:42to do what they want to do.
1:35:44Well, you can get by with anything.
1:35:45You can figure out, like the upsides is that you muddle through, right?
1:35:49But what we see, we all know the things that are bad about windows.
1:35:53Like the reason people use the desktop so much and the desktop is filled with icons
1:35:56and that they feel nonconfident navigating the file system.
1:36:01My desktop is filled with icons.
1:36:02Yeah, I know.
1:36:05It's basically, it's the reason everybody found smartphones to be such a breath of fresh
1:36:09air.
1:36:10It's because all that crap that they have been sort of muddling through on their PCs
1:36:14at work or whatever is not there on the smartphone.
1:36:18There are no files and folders, there's no save button, there's no desktop.
1:36:22It was just, it got rid of all that stuff.
1:36:25And so even though they could manage with PCs, that's why I'm calling the PC interface
1:36:30not like a failure in the sense of like it was terrible and nobody could use it, but
1:36:35to understand how much better it is, compare it to people's reactions to smartphones.
1:36:39Like smartphones aren't even considered computers.
1:36:41It is a discontinuity.
1:36:43They have transcended the idea of a general purpose computer.
1:36:45So you're right that people do get by zooming all their windows to full screen and playing
1:36:50Minesweeper and clicking around in their web browser.
1:36:52And the web is another paradigm, like a little miniature paradigm of like clicking on an
1:36:55and underline words and stuff.
1:36:56That was another simple enough one
1:36:57that I think was more successful.
1:36:58But it's not like the PC or Mac is a dead end,
1:37:04but we've clearly pushed the limit of how many people
1:37:08are going to feel comfortable using that interface,
1:37:11not to its fullest, but just even in a merely competent way.
1:37:14Like I think there are people who use like a computer
1:37:17every day for multiple decades,
1:37:19who still have no idea where the hell anything is
1:37:21in their disc and can't navigate the file system
1:37:22and are terrified by an open state of dialog box
1:37:24just definitely want everything to be either in that one place they know how to get to
1:37:27or on the desktop or something and that shows that interface is not succeeding because that's
1:37:31not the way it's supposed to work whereas people are using smartphones essentially the
1:37:35way they're supposed to work under the sort of very simplified iOS paradigm of a big grid
1:37:40of icons that you swipe between and you launch and they fill the screen.
1:37:43Like they're not using the phones in the degenerate case they're using the phones the way they
1:37:46were designed whereas the Macs and Windows I think people are muddling through.
1:37:50Not everybody, not the people that we know, but the entire mass of humanity, like thinking
1:37:56everybody's a whole.
1:37:57Yeah, I could see that.
1:38:00I think I'm mostly with you on that.
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1:39:42So I just, I can't tell you enough, they sponsor us a lot
1:39:45and I try to drill this into everyone's heads every time
1:39:48because it is so good and I can't overstate
1:39:51how good mail route spam filtering is.
1:39:54It makes email usable again,
1:39:55I mean as much as email can be usable.
1:39:57(laughs)
1:39:58It makes, it gives you the best chance of email
1:40:00being usable for you by taking out all the spam
1:40:03and delivering only people's annoying requests
1:40:06for you to do things.
1:40:07So really I can't say enough good things about mail route.
1:40:09They support everything you want them to support.
1:40:11You point your MX record at them,
1:40:13they deliver mail to you,
1:40:15and they support things like LDAP, Active Directory,
1:40:17TLS, mail bagging, outbound relay,
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1:40:21So go to mailroute.net/atp.
1:40:24You will get a free trial,
1:40:26and if you use that link,
1:40:27you'll get 10% off for the lifetime of your account.
1:40:30Thanks a lot to MailRoute
1:40:31for sponsoring our show once again.
1:40:33- So any other thoughts about this new iPad Pro?
1:40:36- I was gonna talk about hardware,
1:40:37but I think we should save it for next week,
1:40:38'cause I think there's a lot to talk about
1:40:39on the iPad Pro hardware,
1:40:40but that'll keep.
1:40:41- Yeah, I mean, I think it's worth, you know,
1:40:44giving us more time to use it first.
1:40:46I would say, you know, my very, very early impression
1:40:50as like an overview of it is, you know,
1:40:53like whether you should buy one, whether I want one,
1:40:56for me, the question is no.
1:40:59Tiff, I think, will probably keep this,
1:41:02although even she's a little bit unsure right now
1:41:03'cause it is so big and the software is so
1:41:06not taking advantage of it yet.
1:41:09These things will change over time.
1:41:10I mean the bigness won't, but over time software will take more advantage of it.
1:41:14I would say if you're not in a huge hurry, getting next year's is probably going to be
1:41:20a bigger improvement than most single year improvements would be for these things, simply
1:41:26because not only will the hardware probably be a little bit better, maybe it'll add some
1:41:29cool stuff like force touch and better touch ID, but the bigger thing is I think we need
1:41:35a year for both Apple and third-party developers to write good software for this thing because
1:41:40it isn't there yet. There's some right now but it's going to be a while and it's going
1:41:45to be a while before everybody can actually afford to take advantage of it. So the only
1:41:52exception I would make to that would be if you are already a heavy iPad user, somebody
1:41:58like Federico Fattici, if you already are able to do a ton of your work or all of your
1:42:02your work on an iPad.
1:42:04And you already are doing things like using third party
1:42:07keyboards with it and doing multitasking and you need more
1:42:12screen space.
1:42:13If you already are using styluses to do artistic work or
1:42:17note taking or annotations.
1:42:18So if you are already an iPad power user, then by all means
1:42:23consider this now.
1:42:26But if things about the iPad have prevented you from
1:42:32getting into it as a serious productivity device
1:42:34for your work, I don't think this will change that.
1:42:38At least not yet.
1:42:40And maybe down the road it will
1:42:41once the software gets there,
1:42:43but I don't think it's gonna be there for a little while.
1:42:46- And hopefully by next year they'll have
1:42:48the iPad Air size device with a pen.
1:42:52That would be something.
1:42:52- Yeah, and that could change everything.
1:42:54I mean, right now, if you want this awesome pencil input,
1:42:57you have to get the giant iPad.
1:43:00And so like for me, if I were to ever get into pencil stuff,
1:43:04I would much rather have the iPad Air sized one.
1:43:06- You start doing art snacks with TIFF.
1:43:09- But you don't need an iPad.
1:43:10They send you actual like paint brushes and stuff.
1:43:12- I know, but the equivalent of like just having
1:43:15a small task that someone else sends you to do
1:43:17to draw something for the day, you know.
1:43:20- I'd rather just play Pictionary.
1:43:22- Yeah.
1:43:22- No, actually I have kind of a fun idea for a game
1:43:26that I might want to do, but it would require the pencil
1:43:30and it would also require me to develop a game.
1:43:32So I think this is unlikely.
1:43:34(laughing)
1:43:35But that's the only thing I could really see doing on it
1:43:38and that's probably not gonna happen.
1:43:39- Combination of flight control and worms, go.
1:43:42(laughing)
1:43:43- Sounds kind of fun actually.
1:43:44No but, (laughing)
1:43:46you actually found two games that I've played to me.
1:43:49- I was like, you would draw the paths
1:43:50that the projectiles take
1:43:52and the other person can set up barriers
1:43:53and you'd have to quickly draw between them.
1:43:55The game writes itself.
1:43:56Wow.
1:43:58Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, Casper, Lynda.com, and Mailerout, and we will
1:44:03see you next week.
1:44:04That game probably already exists too.
1:44:06Oh, I'm sure there's like ten of them.
1:44:08At least.
1:44:09Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin, 'cause it was accidental.
1:44:18Oh, it was accidental.
1:44:20John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him, 'cause it was accidental.
1:44:27'Cause it was accidental, it was accidental
1:44:32And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm
1:44:37And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them
1:44:42@C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S
1:44:46So that's Casey Liss M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M
1:44:51♫ Anti-Marco Armin
1:44:54♫ S-I-R-A-C
1:44:57♫ U-S-A-C-R-A-Q-S-A
1:44:59♫ It's accidental
1:45:01♫ Accidental
1:45:02♫ They didn't mean to
1:45:04♫ Accidental
1:45:06♫ Accidental
1:45:07♫ Tech podcast so long
1:45:10- So, in other news, I got my car back a couple hours ago.
1:45:16- Is it still white?
1:45:18- It's still white.
1:45:19The fender is repaired.
1:45:21All is right in the world once again.
1:45:23- I saw that picture of your car thing,
1:45:25and I really, and people were tweeting like,
1:45:27"Oh, if that happened to John's car,
1:45:28"he would have burned it to the ground."
1:45:29People don't understand how much damage to my car
1:45:33I am both willing to tolerate and I'm forced to tolerate.
1:45:36I have so many things on my car that are worse
1:45:38than that thing that you just spent $1,000 to get repaired.
1:45:41And the reason I don't get them to repair it
1:45:42is 'cause I know it will cost an obscenely amount of money.
1:45:44And I say, you know what?
1:45:45I'm just gonna live with that giant white paint streak
1:45:49that was added to my car by someone
1:45:50park next to me the second week I got it. I'm just gonna live with the huge gouge in
1:45:54my bumper from the person who re-entered me because my deductible won't cover it. It's
1:45:58like just that's why I think about getting a nice car. I would just never be able to
1:46:03drive it. Like just the world the world that I drive around in is just filled with too
1:46:08many hazards. I mean hell my brand new car I dented the rim of my fancy alloy wheels
1:46:13like in the first month that I got it from hitting a pothole. I had to get a new wheel
1:46:17for 650 bucks. So I couldn't believe that you, is this the thing that only people in
1:46:22the South or people who live in the desert do, like "Oh I have a tiny ding to my car,
1:46:27my perfect car that is preserved as if it's in a museum because we have no weather to
1:46:30speak of and no humidity" or "You have no humidity" and then it just, I don't know,
1:46:35how can you be spending a thousand dollars to repair a quarter size nick to your fender?
1:46:40Because it was down to the metal and for me it was a hundred bucks. Who cares, it was
1:46:44the size of a quarter. No, it was really obvious if you had seen it. I know that picture was
1:46:49not that impressive, but I assure you it was obvious. A thousand dollars. It's $900 of
1:46:54all states' money and $100 of my money. Who cares? Your deductible is only $100? Yeah.
1:46:59That's pretty good. That's fancy insurance. Yeah, I would have done it for that. I'm sure
1:47:03I probably am paying too much for said insurance, but nevertheless. The problem that you have,
1:47:09John, is that you drive in an area that doesn't believe in roads that make sense, roads that
1:47:13function or drivers that know how to drive. They're not called "mapples" because they're
1:47:18good at driving.
1:47:19I agree. No, but roads are my enemy, other cars are my enemy, and I swear, more damage
1:47:23has been done to my car while parked than anything else. Because the parking garage
1:47:27at work has the spots, you know, when they paint the lines on the spots, they look like
1:47:30they're made for, like, motorcycles, because they can fit more spots in the parking garage
1:47:34that way. And the court is not a big car. It's a full-sized car, but it's not humongous.
1:47:39And I swear, every time I park, I am making decisions about how many inches on either
1:47:44side I have to.
1:47:45You have to judge because you want, like, you have to think, most people are driving
1:47:48are single drivers, so they're not going to open their passenger door.
1:47:51So I want to get closer, but what if the guy backs in?
1:47:54Then I got to figure out if he's a backing, if it's a Casey person, then his driver's
1:47:57side is on my side.
1:47:59So I have to, like, figure out where in between the lines I want to be just perfectly.
1:48:04And then looking at the type of car, if I'm parking between two cars, how likely is this
1:48:07person to be one of those people who doesn't even look and just swings their car door open
1:48:10and jams it into mine. Anyway, everyone has their things they want to be perfect and I
1:48:14admit I kind of did it with my mirror. That was my fault where I clipped the mirror coming
1:48:17out of my garage, which is also sized for a motorcycle or a horse carriage or something.
1:48:22I got that repaired, but that wasn't $1,000 and that damage was way more noticeable than
1:48:27your little neck. But all this is to say that you are obviously care very deeply about the
1:48:32particulars of how your car looks and I would like to care very deeply about how my car
1:48:36looks but I just cannot bear the amount of money it would take to do that. And time,
1:48:40frankly, to keep bringing the car in to get fixed and everything.
1:48:43Yeah, well, one of them was the mechanical issue, which was weak, and then this was three
1:48:47days for the body issue. However, I'm not the only one who is ogling white cars today.
1:48:52Am I, Marco?
1:48:53I drove a white car. I wouldn't say I was ogling. Is it ogling? Ogling? However you
1:48:58pronounce that, I wouldn't say I was doing that to it. It just so happened that the test-driveable
1:49:04model was white. Just like all of your cars just happen to be white when they fall into
1:49:08your lap and you buy them.
1:49:09Right. Yeah, I agree. I totally understand what you're going with here. I really do.
1:49:13Anyway, so the whole family went for this test drive, though. Is that correct?
1:49:17Anyway, yeah. So ever since I test drove the P85D last February, I think it was, I was
1:49:24very impressed by it. But I also, at the time, I said that the P85D is so fast, I actually
1:49:32found it unpleasant. I was like, I would probably never do this from a stop. Flooring it like
1:49:38that, it hits you in the face so hard with inertia that I didn't really want to do that.
1:49:47And I am, since then I've been thinking more about it, doing more research. I am almost
1:49:52certainly going to get a Tesla next. I mean, I'm basically ready to place the order. Because
1:49:58My lease is up in late March and there's like a two month lead time on them so I have to
1:50:03decide pretty soon what I'm doing.
1:50:05Today I went up to test drive, to first of all see a bunch of like colors and stuff in
1:50:09person and also to test drive the non-P version.
1:50:14This was a 90D so it's just like the 85 but with a little bit more battery so slightly
1:50:19heavier probably but you know no speed difference really.
1:50:23So overall I think I'm going to get that one.
1:50:26I think I'm gonna get the--
1:50:28- Really?
1:50:29- Yeah, in Tesla's line it's not the slow one,
1:50:30it's like the middle one, and none of them are really slow.
1:50:32I mean, the slowest one I think is roughly
1:50:33the speed of your car, Casey, right?
1:50:35- I think that's right, I don't have the numbers
1:50:36in front of me, but I believe you're right.
1:50:37- Yeah, so none of them would be called slow
1:50:39by anybody, really, but it's all relative.
1:50:41So the middle one, I would say, in general,
1:50:44the 90D is not as fast as the M5 at the M5's peak power.
1:50:52So the M5, when you get that massive kick in the butt
1:50:57of turbocharged torque, it is stronger feeling
1:51:01and faster feeling than the 90D.
1:51:03But the 90D, it's available right from zero.
1:51:07And the M5, if you floor the M5 from a stop,
1:51:09you'll just spin the wheels.
1:51:10It doesn't have any traction,
1:51:11and it's only rear wheel drive.
1:51:13The 90D is all wheel drive with a really, really good
1:51:17all wheel drive system, and you have all that power
1:51:20right from the start, and it actually can put it down.
1:51:21and actually can use it.
1:51:23Overall, I would say it didn't feel like
1:51:25I was really missing anything in the middle version
1:51:29other than that extra big kick from really flooring it.
1:51:34- Is that ugly or wheels?
1:51:37- All the wheel options are all the same.
1:51:39Now, I am torn on which wheels to get,
1:51:42and I'm sure you have opinions.
1:51:45I don't think they have any great wheel options.
1:51:47- I agree, I think all the wheels
1:51:49are middle of the road to ugly.
1:51:51- Yeah, I would agree with that.
1:51:54The base ones that Johnson in this picture,
1:51:57they kind of look like the M5's winter wheels,
1:52:00like it's a very similar design.
1:52:02In person, it kind of looks cheap.
1:52:06They don't look like premium quality wheels.
1:52:09None of them do really, but I think the base model
1:52:12looks the least good of all of them.
1:52:15the 19 inch Silver Cyclone is kind of the halfway point
1:52:19between everything.
1:52:20Now the bigger ones do look substantially larger
1:52:23and more aggressive in person.
1:52:25And so the question is, how aggressive and sporty
1:52:27do you want your car to look?
1:52:28Also, I'm not quite sure I can pull off thin 21 inch wheels
1:52:33on New York roads, which are only marginally better
1:52:35than John's roads.
1:52:36- Yeah, you're gonna dent the rims.
1:52:38You should test drive the 21s,
1:52:40'cause a lot of car makers are doing this now,
1:52:43offering you obscenely large wheels
1:52:45they look cool and everything, but they just turn the wheels into rubber bands and you
1:52:49can't drive on railroads with that.
1:52:51Yeah, exactly. So I think I'm probably going to go with the 19 Sliver Cyclone. So yeah,
1:52:56that's probably what I'm going to do. The red looks really awesome in person. The black
1:53:01doesn't look as bad as I thought, so I'm kind of torn between those two, leaning towards
1:53:05red. Otherwise, I'm pretty much sold. I think I'm almost certainly going to do it.
1:53:09What does Tiff say about the color? We never hear what her color choices are.
1:53:13If she were buying a car for herself--
1:53:16- The Kia, I know, yeah.
1:53:16- Yeah, the blue is a very nice blue.
1:53:19I just don't care for blue cars for myself.
1:53:21Tiff really is being very supportive of me
1:53:25getting the red, because--
1:53:27- Of all your midlife crises, a red car is like,
1:53:30good, this is good, go with that one.
1:53:31- Yeah, exactly.
1:53:32You know, like, the black is fine.
1:53:36If I want to be subtle, to be mostly subtle,
1:53:40or to maximize the subtlety of this car,
1:53:43the black would be the right approach to that. But I've been getting black cars for so
1:53:47long I think I'm ready for something different, unlike Casey, who always gets white.
1:53:52So should we start reading the manual for you now?
1:53:54Yes.
1:53:55Yes. Casey will just download PDF.
1:53:58Yep. I'll send it to you as soon as I find it.
1:54:01[door closes]