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ATP

112: The Problem Is You

 

00:00:00   What was the other one you liked about the watch, Sean?

00:00:02   It can't be the one.

00:00:04   I like that because it sounds like, you know, the one as in the person you're going to marry.

00:00:07   This watch can't be the one.

00:00:08   Not like the Matrix?

00:00:09   No, not that one.

00:00:11   That would work too.

00:00:13   The way you get the watch to be the one is by telling it that it's not the one.

00:00:18   I understood that reference.

00:00:20   Boom.

00:00:21   We have a not a tremendous amount of follow-up today.

00:00:27   Everyone look at the time.

00:00:28   And I think we should start by genuinely saying that we got a lot of really, really lovely

00:00:35   and wonderful feedback with regard to our Twitter conversation that happened in the

00:00:40   after show in the last show.

00:00:43   And I hope I don't sound sarcastic because I'm really being genuine.

00:00:46   We got a ton of really great feedback.

00:00:49   And even the feedback that I saw that was constructively criticizing us was constructive.

00:00:57   And I was appreciative of that.

00:00:59   We had a lot of drive-by tweet thanks and tweet love, and that was extremely refreshing

00:01:06   given that we spoke a lot about drive-by tweet hate.

00:01:10   So I just want to thank everyone that you guys were really kind to us last week.

00:01:13   And I'm pretty sure I speak for the other two to say it's very kind of you and we really

00:01:18   appreciate it.

00:01:19   Yep.

00:01:20   Cool.

00:01:21   We also got a lot of feedback about how many external displays modern

00:01:27   Macs can drive and I don't we got this from several different people, but I think just moments ago

00:01:35   We got a pretty good summary. John. Do you want to go over that?

00:01:37   Yeah, I think this was the most popular correction from last week

00:01:41   Everybody just wanted to come in and say that they have a macbook pro and that they have more than two external displays on it

00:01:48   Some people are sending us pictures

00:01:51   of their setup. Some people were confused about which MacBook Pro we were talking about in the

00:01:55   last feedback, talking about the most recent models, but even among those people they sent

00:02:00   here, "I bought the most recent model and here it is with more than two external displays.

00:02:05   What's up with that?" And so of course if you go to the MacBook Pro specs page at apple.com,

00:02:11   for both the 13-inch and 15-inch it talks about their external display capabilities and it says,

00:02:17   up to two external displays, up to two external displays for both of them. So what's the deal here?

00:02:22   And Nathan Anderson is not the only person who sent in this information, but it happened to come

00:02:27   in late breaking and it was a reasonable summary. The deal, as far as I can tell, based on all the

00:02:33   people who sent in both their pictures and their information, is that if you have a 13-inch MacBook

00:02:38   Pro, you can only do two external displays. If you have a 15-inch, you can do more than two if you

00:02:45   if you have the discrete graphics with the NVIDIA chip,

00:02:48   and only two if you have the integrated graphics.

00:02:53   And there's some strangeness about past models

00:02:57   where they could or couldn't do integrated.

00:02:58   So it seems like the Apple's page

00:03:01   is giving a conservative answer.

00:03:03   If you read that and think you can only

00:03:05   use two external displays and you happen

00:03:06   to get one with discrete graphics

00:03:07   and you can do more than two, you'll be pleasantly surprised.

00:03:09   But you'll never be disappointed because the up

00:03:12   to two external displays is true for all the models.

00:03:14   And if you could do more, I mean,

00:03:15   maybe it's not even officially supported according to Apple,

00:03:17   but it does work.

00:03:19   So there we go.

00:03:20   For all the people who wrote in,

00:03:22   you know you're not crazy,

00:03:23   your particular model may be able to do more than two,

00:03:26   but it is apparently a variation

00:03:28   that Apple does not consider important enough

00:03:31   to delineate on their customer-facing spec page.

00:03:35   - Also, let me just point out how amazing this is,

00:03:37   because it was only a few years ago

00:03:40   when if you wanted to have more than one external display,

00:03:43   so more than two displays total, you had to have a Mac Pro.

00:03:47   And usually with more than one video card.

00:03:49   (laughs)

00:03:50   So this is pretty amazing that ever since,

00:03:53   I believe the introduction of Thunderbolt,

00:03:54   I don't think the mini DisplayPort line

00:03:57   could daisy chain them, I don't know if that's correct,

00:03:59   but it's only very, very recent since the era of Thunderbolt

00:04:03   on all the MacBook and MacBook Pros,

00:04:05   that you can have more than one external monitor hooked up,

00:04:08   and that's pretty amazing.

00:04:09   - Yeah, that is progress, man, it's good.

00:04:12   They definitely have the external monitor high ground.

00:04:14   - Oh God.

00:04:15   - We have some people at work who are trying to do

00:04:19   like six external monitors and they're reaching,

00:04:23   I'm not sure which limits they're reaching,

00:04:24   but basically many of the people who sit around me

00:04:26   have reached the limit of what their machines can do

00:04:30   output wise either physically speaking or for a GPU wise

00:04:34   and it is comical to see where the limits are.

00:04:36   This is a little tiny machine with this huge array

00:04:39   of displays on this crazy arm that puts them in a big grid

00:04:42   five or six things and what's attached to that giant rat's nest? A tiny little laptop.

00:04:46   - Yeah, I mean, I think the actual limit of displays there is like sanity, desk space

00:04:53   slash arm capacity. You know, like, I mean, external monitors are kind of like cats. Like,

00:04:59   you know, most people should have between zero and one and, you know, it's really, really

00:05:04   easy once you have more than one to be like, "Well, what's one more? I could, you know,

00:05:08   all this extra fur in my house. Like there's some people like no number of monitors is

00:05:14   enough for them because they haven't adopted a system like yours, Jon, where like they

00:05:18   have some way to manage lots of windows on whatever space they're given. No, they need

00:05:23   more space and they always need more space and it's like, oh, I have two, why not three?

00:05:28   Oh, monitors are pretty cheap these days. Why not add two more and let's get a double

00:05:32   decker arm. Now we can have eight and it's just never enough. Then all of a sudden you

00:05:36   have 15 cats.

00:05:37   - It's like the physical incarnation of spaces.

00:05:39   They're like, I'm gonna have one monitor for iTunes,

00:05:41   one monitor for Safari, one monitor for a mail app,

00:05:44   one monitor for a text editor that will be in portrait,

00:05:46   but I'll only ever have one document open at once

00:05:47   because I use VI and relaunch it every time

00:05:49   I want to edit a file,

00:05:50   and one monitor open for like my fun window.

00:05:52   And like they'll pretend windows don't exist.

00:05:55   And if I need to have another window open,

00:05:57   I need another monitor now

00:05:58   because everything is full screen.

00:05:59   These are probably ex-Windows users.

00:06:01   - Oh God.

00:06:02   All I know is I kind of, I want a rig.

00:06:06   I would never do it, but I want a rig that's like six monitors, a wall of monitors in front

00:06:10   of me.

00:06:11   I would get lost in it, but god, it sounds so awesome.

00:06:14   You'll never find your cursor, let me tell you.

00:06:15   People have that at work, you can never find your cursor.

00:06:17   You'd have to turn on the giant cursor mode that my mom uses.

00:06:21   What was the setup that the really nerdy guy in Grandma's Boy used?

00:06:25   He had like a chair that was reclined and he had like two or three monitors pitched

00:06:31   down at him or something like that.

00:06:32   God, I'm going to have to watch that movie again.

00:06:33   Did you ever see that?

00:06:34   sounds like a back problem.

00:06:36   - Well, trust me, it was like this whole pod thing

00:06:39   that the dude had.

00:06:40   Have you seen "Grandma's Boy," John?

00:06:41   Do you know what I'm talking about?

00:06:42   - I do not know what you're talking about.

00:06:44   Although I've seen people,

00:06:45   I can picture the arrangement you're describing

00:06:48   because I've seen pictures on the internet

00:06:49   of similar arrangements of people that are reclining

00:06:52   and having monitors suspended above them

00:06:54   or the reverse where the monitors are below them

00:06:56   and they're leaning face down.

00:06:57   Yeah, all not good, ergonomically speaking, probably.

00:07:01   - Does this count as a reference that I made

00:07:03   that you didn't get?

00:07:04   I think so.

00:07:05   Admittedly, it was a very shaky and poor reference, but...

00:07:07   Well, I mean, is it something that you had an expectation that I would get?

00:07:11   Is this a staple of pop culture?

00:07:13   Oh, yeah.

00:07:14   Grandma's Boy?

00:07:15   Are you kidding?

00:07:16   It's a wonderful movie about computer geeks.

00:07:17   All right, if you say so.

00:07:19   I'm going to count that as a win in the Casey column.

00:07:21   Anyway, we should probably move on.

00:07:23   And speaking of movies and video, Jon, why don't you tell us about your whole scrubber

00:07:28   conundrum?

00:07:29   Yeah, we talked about that last week with the streaming television boxes and my big

00:07:33   complaint aside from the video not playing at all is that any of these streaming television

00:07:39   solutions, none of them do moving around in the content in a reliable manner.

00:07:45   And I compared it to YouTube on a web browser, which sometimes is weird and flaky, and the

00:07:49   HTML5 player may or may not be playing nicely with your browser, but there's a little scrubber

00:07:53   thing that you can, you know, the little circular handle on the timeline, and you can move to

00:07:56   different positions, and the video moves around eventually.

00:08:01   in these streaming television boxes, very frequently attempting to do anything with

00:08:05   your position other than play at 1x speed not only doesn't work and results in a series

00:08:10   of spinners or blank screens but can very often lose your place.

00:08:14   And then you're chucked back to the beginning.

00:08:16   This happens, by the way, the worst case scenario is this is your children are on the couch

00:08:19   watching a movie.

00:08:20   They're 30 or 40 minutes in.

00:08:22   One of them accidentally sits on part of the remote and because you have too many Bluetooth

00:08:25   remotes or because they happen to get unlucky and it was still pointing at the TV, it starts

00:08:30   too fast forward or rewind or do something, do one of those actions and that throws the

00:08:35   thing into a tizzy and then you try to hit pause and hit play again but maybe it has

00:08:39   gone too far forward or back or something and it just loses its place.

00:08:43   And now your kid is angry because they want the movie to resume playing where it was but

00:08:47   you're back at the beginning of the movie and you can't get to where they were even

00:08:51   if you know the exact timestamp because hey how would you get there?

00:08:53   You would have to move the scrubber essentially to that position and you have no way of doing

00:08:58   that because fast forward doesn't work, it just, you know, there's no jump, there's no

00:09:01   whatever.

00:09:02   So this little item in the follow-up was me just to emphasize that like I'm not asking

00:09:07   for, "let me smoothly scan through while seeing the video go by really fast," like the equivalent

00:09:13   of video smart speed.

00:09:14   Like I understand that there's something transcoding down there, it's not like you can just magically

00:09:20   slide forward and backward in time while seeing the video flash before your eyes at variable

00:09:25   rates of speed when the video is actually being transcoded on the fly by some weak CPU

00:09:29   in a NAS in your basement or something, right?

00:09:32   The minimum, all I'm asking for is, one, don't lose my place no matter what I do, and two,

00:09:38   give me the ability to, in sort of QuickTime player parlance or YouTube parlance, move

00:09:43   the scrubber to an arbitrary position and start playing from there.

00:09:47   I don't have to see anything when that happens.

00:09:48   Make the screen entirely black.

00:09:50   In fact, I prefer that.

00:09:51   hate it when I can't move the little scrubbery thing, both on the desktop and on a streaming

00:09:55   TV box, where it says, "No, no, no, you can't move that thing.

00:09:59   You have to wait for me to load some more thumbnails or stream some content or transcode

00:10:03   things.

00:10:04   Just stop.

00:10:05   Stop with the video entirely.

00:10:06   I'm going to move the scrubber to a position.

00:10:08   It's going to change the timestamp in the corner.

00:10:11   Change the timestamp by all means as I move the scrubber around.

00:10:14   When I'm done, I say, "Now, try to start playing from 30 minutes and 42 seconds."

00:10:18   Now you can resume whatever it is you were doing.

00:10:21   And people wrote in telling me "oh you don't understand about B-frames and H.264 and blah

00:10:25   blah blah" I understand that this is also difficult, but this I think is the minimum

00:10:30   bar for any device that plays video.

00:10:33   Don't lose my place and give me some way to start at an arbitrary location.

00:10:37   Anything above and beyond that that you want to do, fine.

00:10:39   Do whatever it is you have to do to make that happen.

00:10:42   Pre-scan all the movies to find offsets, find the closest offset to the thing that I picked

00:10:47   and try to play from there and only show the picture once you get into it. Like, whatever

00:10:50   you gotta do, do it. But I just want to emphasize that I'm not asking for the magic ability

00:10:55   to see the video fly past my eyes at fast and slow speeds, because I understand that's

00:10:59   very difficult. Of course, that would be nice, and I'm hoping that will happen someday, but

00:11:02   we're very far from that now.

00:11:04   [Laughter]

00:11:05   fair enough. All right. And how about the Koenigsegg and the odd model name that none

00:11:13   of us could figure out how you pronounce it?

00:11:15   Yeah, apparently it's it's like we mentioned that it was like the ratio one horsepower to one kilogram or whatever

00:11:20   But the name o ne colon numeral one is pronounced one to one. It's not one one, although I like one one better

00:11:27   But anyway, if people want to know if you are considering buying what is it like a 2.4 million three million dollar?

00:11:33   Hyper car it's called the one-to-one not the one one that just sounds like

00:11:38   Going to visit a psychiatrist office or something like that. Let's have a one-to-one. That's your that's your one-on-one

00:11:44   Do you have one-on-ones at work?

00:11:45   I don't think we call them that, but yes, I do have a meeting with--

00:11:49   Check the parking lot.

00:11:50   Oh, God, Marco.

00:11:51   It's so hard to be retired, isn't it?

00:11:53   But yeah, we have meetings with our immediate supervisors,

00:11:57   which we call personal development something, PDP,

00:12:01   personal development planning, something like that.

00:12:03   That's worse.

00:12:04   That sounds awful.

00:12:05   Oh, it's sufficiently corporate speaky,

00:12:07   which is funny because our company is all of 70 people or something like that.

00:12:10   But yep, that's a thing.

00:12:12   Yikes.

00:12:13   Alright power PC max and x86 hardware compatibility. Yeah one person wrote with a story that I thought was funny

00:12:20   we were talking about the rarity of these Macs that had x86 hardware in them and they were indeed rare and

00:12:25   Martin wrote in to tell us about his experience with these things

00:12:29   He had a set of the I forget which model it was but it's the the the power max 6100 case

00:12:35   It was the first Mac to use this case you guys look at the picture that I linked there in the show notes

00:12:39   It was the pizza box Mac

00:12:41   very wide, very low optical drive in the middle, floppy drive on the right, and a hard drive

00:12:48   on the left.

00:12:51   And they had a bunch of people who were PC users essentially using these because they

00:12:55   sold a version of this with a different model number that had like a 486 inside it or maybe

00:13:01   it was a Pentium or anyway some x86 chip inside it.

00:13:05   And they had a problem when these PC users would use these machines and I mean I don't

00:13:09   I don't know if you read this feedback.

00:13:10   You probably did and you spoiled the surprise.

00:13:12   But if you haven't read the feedback, Marco, perhaps,

00:13:14   take a look at the picture and tell me,

00:13:16   this show notes, hey, maybe Marco

00:13:19   hasn't seen the show notes either.

00:13:21   Looking at this picture,

00:13:22   what problem might PC users have with this Mac?

00:13:25   - Yeah, as soon as I saw the picture,

00:13:26   I didn't actually make it to the rest of the feedback

00:13:29   to see why the picture was being cited.

00:13:32   And the moment I saw the picture,

00:13:33   I knew exactly where this feedback was going.

00:13:36   - Yeah, so I don't know if people remember this,

00:13:38   it was just so long ago, the big thing about the Mac platform was that it had auto-inject

00:13:45   and auto-eject floppy drives hardware-wise.

00:13:48   So auto-inject meant that when you pushed the floppy disk in, at a certain point the

00:13:52   mechanism would suck it out of your hand and seed it.

00:13:56   And auto-eject means that the ejection was initiated by the drive itself.

00:14:03   And in the operating system...

00:14:05   And the ejection would be triggered by the wonderfully intuitive to PC user's activity

00:14:09   of dragging the disk that had all the important files on it to the trash.

00:14:14   That was just a shortcut.

00:14:15   You could also select the disk and select eject from the file menu, which was totally

00:14:18   intuitive.

00:14:19   Anyway, yeah, so you would initiate the unmount essentially from the OS.

00:14:24   And unlike PCs where you could eject the disk at any time by pressing a button next to the

00:14:29   thing and, you know, the OS might complain if you did it when the light was blinking,

00:14:33   you may have hosed your data and all sorts of other things that relied on the user to

00:14:36   sort of know when it's safe to eject the disk.

00:14:39   The Mac operating system always took control over mounted media and you weren't involved

00:14:44   in the process of ejecting the disk from a hardware perspective.

00:14:46   From a software perspective, you unmounted the disk and the act of unmounting it also

00:14:50   ejected it because the mechanisms all had the ability to essentially spit the disk back

00:14:53   out at you.

00:14:54   So when PC users used this Mac, they would see the floppy drive, they would stick their

00:15:00   disk in and maybe they did or didn't notice the auto-inject, it might have been gone by

00:15:04   then I don't know, anyway, and they'd use their thing blah blah blah, alright, and when

00:15:07   they were done with their disk, they would do what all PC users do is I guess look at

00:15:11   the drive to see if there's any blinking lights near it, if there's no blinking lights, press

00:15:15   the button to eject the disk.

00:15:18   Unfortunately on this pizza box mac, the button that was in the lower right corner below the

00:15:22   floppy drive was not a disk eject button, there was no a disk eject button other than

00:15:26   the little tiny hole that you can see there where you stick a paperclip to get it out

00:15:29   when the thing freezes.

00:15:30   It was the power button to the entire machine.

00:15:32   So everybody, when they were done

00:15:34   and wanted to eject their floppy disk,

00:15:35   would press the power button in the machine

00:15:36   and turn the entire machine off.

00:15:38   - Nice.

00:15:39   - Which must have been hilarious, but still.

00:15:41   - In PC users at the time, Defense, which I was one,

00:15:45   if you look at this machine,

00:15:47   the CD-ROM drive immediately adjacent to this

00:15:50   has a physical eject button.

00:15:52   So it looks like two drives side by side

00:15:55   with an eject button.

00:15:58   - Yeah, if you're coming from the paradigm,

00:16:00   it does make sense, although, I mean,

00:16:01   there is a giant power symbol on the--

00:16:03   - No, no, paradigm, separately from the paradigm,

00:16:05   this is like a consistency design flaw,

00:16:08   which is that there is an eject button right next to it

00:16:11   in the spot you'd expect, and so it looks like,

00:16:14   here's the hole for disks, here's the hole for floppies,

00:16:17   here's the eject button for disks,

00:16:18   here's the eject button for floppies.

00:16:20   - They're very differently sized buttons,

00:16:22   and like I said, one of them does have a power button.

00:16:24   I believe if you press the optical drive button,

00:16:27   it wouldn't actually eject because I believe the operating system had control over it.

00:16:32   This hardware eject button on the optical drive is on my Mac Pro too. You just have

00:16:36   to slide open the little guillotine doors and shove your little finger in there and

00:16:39   you can find them.

00:16:40   [Laughter]

00:16:41   Yeah, and they also don't work until the OS ejects it, but still. You're saying this

00:16:48   is a problem with PC users. I'm saying this is a very confusing design for everybody.

00:16:52   Well, it wasn't confusing for Mac users. It's a paradigm thing. It's like, do you

00:16:56   Do you think the operating system has control over floppy disks or do you think the user

00:17:01   has control over it?

00:17:02   And the right answer is to have the OS have control over it, but if you come from the

00:17:05   other thing where you think the user has control over it, you're looking for a button and you're

00:17:09   going to hit whatever button you find.

00:17:10   And that's the only button that's remotely near there, so that's the one you're going

00:17:13   to hit and then you're going to be sad.

00:17:15   I think the right answer is floppy disks were always awful and we're so glad we're past

00:17:19   them.

00:17:20   You know, anything with, even thumb drives now I feel like, we have the same exact problem,

00:17:25   we haven't gotten rid of it.

00:17:26   stick a thumb drive into a computer and it mounts on desktop and they drag files back

00:17:29   and forth and they just want to yank the thumb drive out. And if you do that on a Mac, it

00:17:33   yells at you, it says "whoa whoa whoa whoa, that was not properly ejected, blah blah blah,

00:17:36   stay at blah blah blah, please plug back in, blah blah blah." But by then it's too late.

00:17:40   I do it with my cameras because some of my cameras can be unplugged at any time and other

00:17:45   cameras have to be unmounted from iPhoto or whatever before they can be unplugged. And

00:17:49   I forget which is which. And some importing programs will automatically eject the camera

00:17:54   logically after it's imported and some won't. So that's also another level of confusion

00:17:58   here.

00:17:59   And there's the power button on the camera. Even if you don't unplug the USB cable, what

00:18:02   if you just turn the power button on the camera? That will also end up effectively unmounted.

00:18:06   Yep, yep. Fun.

00:18:08   Anyway, removable media is confusing.

00:18:10   All right, and then the final piece of follow-up we have is an important service announcement

00:18:18   for listeners of the show. And I think, Jon, that you are best equipped to handle this.

00:18:23   I feel kind of bad talking about this. How many episodes are we in? We're over a hundred, right?

00:18:27   112.

00:18:28   Yeah, so someone who entered ATAX, A-T-T-A-X in our feedback form as their name,

00:18:33   says that he'd been listening to the show and he's using the iOS podcast app on an iPhone 6,

00:18:41   and he says, "I have a feeling that listening to ATP and only ATP, that the podcast app jumps

00:18:46   around wildly within the episode. The first few times I thought it was because one edition had

00:18:50   finished and it had jumped to the middle of the one before that I hadn't finished.

00:18:54   But with the Bombshell episode, I'm certain that I heard the outro and then again discussion

00:18:58   about Jobs vs. Cook and then about fabbing RAM.

00:19:01   This leads me to suspect that there's some evil commercial breaker chapter-fu going on.

00:19:07   This person thought their podcast app was buggy.

00:19:10   And this is a reasonable conclusion, right?

00:19:13   If you are new, especially if you're new to the show, and I think we talked about this

00:19:16   on Twitter and a bunch of people replied.

00:19:19   So I'll spoil the secret that's not really a secret.

00:19:24   The format of the show is we talk about technology stuff, we have a bunch of sponsor breaks,

00:19:29   then a song by Jonathan Mann plays where he reads out our Twitter handles and tells you

00:19:34   where you can find the show notes.

00:19:35   And says, "Now the show is over."

00:19:37   Right, he says, "Now the show is over."

00:19:38   Didn't even mean to begin.

00:19:40   The whole big deal.

00:19:42   And after that song is over, the show continues, often for a substantial period of time.

00:19:48   That's what we call the after show.

00:19:51   I likened it in the show, it's here, to the secret menu at In-N-Out, knowing that there's

00:19:55   an after show.

00:19:56   The secret menu at In-N-Out, which by the way I've never been to, I would like to try,

00:19:59   but have never been to.

00:20:00   Really?

00:20:01   Yep, I've never been, I guess I've been in California, but I haven't been to one of them

00:20:04   when I was there.

00:20:05   Anyway, it's not really a secret menu.

00:20:07   Everybody knows about it, but if you really, really don't know about it, it's not going

00:20:11   to occur to you that it exists.

00:20:13   So if you really, really don't know about the after show, when the song says, "Now the

00:20:16   show is over, you know, you turn the thing off or go to the next podcast, right? You

00:20:20   never know that there's anything after it. I think actually that's okay. If you want

00:20:25   to stop listening to the show there, whether accidentally or on purpose, I think that's

00:20:29   fine because the way we structure the show is we try to talk about all the things we're

00:20:32   going to talk about before the song and then after the song, we feel like we are free to

00:20:37   talk about whatever we want, whether that's cars, something silly that we did, but sometimes

00:20:42   it's also reflecting on the show we just had and talking about the same talk, it's from

00:20:47   a different angle and maybe in a more casual way.

00:20:50   That's the after show.

00:20:51   I was just on upgrade with Jason Snell and we were talking about the format of the show.

00:20:56   What distinguishes the after show from the rest of the show?

00:20:58   Isn't it just more of the same?

00:21:00   Sometimes it seems like that, but from our perspective, it's like we feel like the show

00:21:03   is over and now we are talking about, I don't know, like, even if we didn't record it, we

00:21:09   would probably have that same conversation after the show, right?

00:21:11   we do record it. And there's also stuff that happens after the song that we don't put in

00:21:16   the show, right? So there is some distinction between the after show and then the rest,

00:21:19   and then like the sort of stuff that's just for the live listeners. But anyway, if you

00:21:23   have been listening to the show for however many episodes and had no idea that after the

00:21:27   song we kept talking, we do. And you can feel free to listen to it if you want or not, like

00:21:31   whatever, right? You can listen however you want. But what I was surprised by on Twitter

00:21:36   was many people said they had been listening to the show for like 20 episodes before they

00:21:40   realized the show continued after the song. And that blows my mind, if only because like

00:21:45   the lazy thing to do is just like just let it keep playing, like play your next podcast

00:21:49   on your list rather than hit stop and manually delete the podcast or something like if you

00:21:52   just let it play, the song will end and we will continue talking. So anyway, we're gonna

00:21:57   do that again today. We've been doing this since the advent of the song, I think. There's

00:22:03   the show, there's the song, and there's the after show. And that is the podcast that you

00:22:06   that you were listening to, if you didn't know that,

00:22:08   your mind is now opened.

00:22:10   - Well, and we also, I mean, we exacerbate this problem

00:22:13   not only by never actually saying, you know,

00:22:16   oh, we'll see you in the after show.

00:22:17   Not by pre-announcing it, but also,

00:22:20   one common complaint that we get,

00:22:22   especially from other listeners of the show

00:22:24   who live in my house, are that the,

00:22:29   there's no like sound or anything to indicate

00:22:32   when the actual after show ends,

00:22:34   when the actual episode file ends,

00:22:37   there is no closing sound or goodbye.

00:22:40   So it's very easy to miss the end of one episode

00:22:44   transitioning into the beginning of the next one.

00:22:47   - Yeah, yeah, that's true, that is also true.

00:22:49   I don't particularly find that to be a bad thing,

00:22:52   but I understand people not being confused by that.

00:22:56   I guess what you can use is the visual marker

00:22:58   of looking in your playback app

00:22:59   when the little play head gets to the end

00:23:01   and the new episode starts.

00:23:02   There are audio markers for when we start talking about cars.

00:23:07   And there's an audio marker for when we mention HFS+.

00:23:09   [LAUGHTER]

00:23:12   Like the secret menu in In-N-Out, it is very similar.

00:23:17   Like, you learn these things either

00:23:20   by just listening to a lot of shows

00:23:21   or being in the community of people

00:23:23   listening to a lot of shows.

00:23:24   And it becomes just accepted as that's the format of the show.

00:23:27   But if you don't know the things,

00:23:28   you can still go there and order a burger and it tastes fine.

00:23:31   Stop listening whenever you feel like you want to stop listening.

00:23:33   But if you were unaware that we keep talking, we do because we can't shut up.

00:23:36   You know, there's two interesting pieces here to me anyway.

00:23:39   The first is for the three of you that listened to the show that also look at the

00:23:44   show notes, we clearly delineate that there is a post-show section that has

00:23:50   usually links and bullet items that are in no way related to anything that we have

00:23:57   said thus far in the episode.

00:23:58   And so maybe this is a lesson to everyone

00:24:01   that you should consider looking at the show notes

00:24:03   that Marco and I work on every single week.

00:24:05   - Mostly you.

00:24:06   Where can you find the show notes, Casey?

00:24:08   - You can find the show notes for your ATP program

00:24:11   at ATP.fm/episodenumber, which in this case will be 112.

00:24:16   So that's ATP.fm/112.

00:24:20   - You're supposed to sing the line from the song.

00:24:21   It's so informative.

00:24:23   - Oh. - Oh, yeah.

00:24:24   - Yeah, I can't sing,

00:24:25   but you can find the show notes at ATP.fm.

00:24:28   - That's right, that is really all you need to know.

00:24:30   You literally can find them there.

00:24:31   I believe in you.

00:24:32   You can find, even if you're listening to this episode

00:24:34   six months from now, I believe you can find them.

00:24:36   - Well, that's all that's there.

00:24:38   Like, that is the only thing on the site.

00:24:40   - Exactly.

00:24:41   It's a series of shows with numbers

00:24:43   and show notes after them.

00:24:44   Or if you're listening to this in Overcast,

00:24:46   you can swipe up on the album art.

00:24:47   Another thing that people don't know,

00:24:48   apparently that's not--

00:24:49   - Also my fault, yeah.

00:24:51   I do blink the scroll indicator the way,

00:24:53   as system standard is, like when the screen shows up,

00:24:56   but no one knows that, and it's really hard to,

00:24:58   It's really easy to miss.

00:24:59   So yeah, that is a bad design on my part

00:25:02   that I haven't yet to figure out how to resolve

00:25:04   in a way that I don't hate.

00:25:05   - But once you know that it's there, like the after show,

00:25:08   if you're using overcast

00:25:09   and you're looking at the now playing screen,

00:25:11   the one that shows the big level meters

00:25:12   and the big giant album art,

00:25:13   just put your finger on that album art and slide upwards

00:25:16   and you will see the show notes.

00:25:18   - Yep, and then the other interesting thing to me

00:25:19   that I find a little bit surprising,

00:25:21   this is kind of building on what you were saying, John,

00:25:23   is we start the after show or the post show

00:25:27   immediately after the song ends. This isn't like a 1997 secret song at the end of the CD that you

00:25:34   have like a 30-minute track, 25 minutes of which is, or 20 minutes of which is silence,

00:25:38   and then all of a sudden you have this new song 20 minutes after you thought the CD was over.

00:25:44   Like it's immediate, so I agree with you that it's a little kooky to me that people would think,

00:25:49   "Oh, the song's over. Well, better go change my podcast and not just let it run its course."

00:25:55   But you know or they stop it because they don't want to hear the song for the umpteenth time

00:25:59   It's just as soon as the song starts like well episode over. It is a reasonable assumption. So

00:26:02   Anyway attacks your podcast player is almost certainly not broken. That is just the way we structure the show why we do it that way

00:26:10   I'm not entirely sure but it is what we do and this is the show. Yeah. All right, let's talk about something

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00:29:12   All right, so we are recording this on Wednesday, April 8th, and this morning at about 8 o'clock

00:29:21   in the One True Time Zone, the watch embargo was lifted.

00:29:27   So we had a lot of reading to do, and I'm assuming, Marco, that you read none of it.

00:29:31   I actually read most of them.

00:29:33   Ah!

00:29:34   I read all the ones that I've found so far.

00:29:36   I really enjoyed the one at The Verge by Nili Patel, even though he hates me, because he

00:29:42   he really gave his and Joanna Stern's at Wall Street Journal, those I think were my two

00:29:47   favorites because they really gave a lot of like kind of like the everyday usage like

00:29:53   what like what really are the pros and the cons to the everyday usage of these things

00:29:59   and there's also both of them had really good videos and really good pictures so I was very

00:30:03   impressed by these and I don't know what do you guys think of what you've seen so far

00:30:09   Like does this make you, is it roughly what you expected?

00:30:12   Does it make you more or less excited about the watch?

00:30:14   'Cause one thing I noticed was that none of them really said,

00:30:17   "Oh my God, this is amazing, it's a blockbuster."

00:30:20   - Yeah, yeah.

00:30:21   - Almost all of them were like,

00:30:22   "Yeah, it's pretty good, it does certain things pretty well,

00:30:25   "certain things aren't so great,

00:30:27   "it's definitely a version one."

00:30:29   What do you think?

00:30:30   - You know, I read a handful of them.

00:30:32   I did not read Joanna Stern's.

00:30:33   I did read Nielle Patel's, and I agree with you, Marco,

00:30:36   that I thought that one was excellent.

00:30:37   I liked the way that he had phrased it,

00:30:41   or kind of covered it from the perspective

00:30:44   of here's what I did throughout the day.

00:30:46   It also really made me feel gross

00:30:47   that I kinda liked the scroll hijacking frames of video,

00:30:51   'cause I know I should hate that,

00:30:52   but I actually kinda liked it.

00:30:53   - Oh, I hated that so much.

00:30:54   That's the one thing, like,

00:30:57   I was ranting about this to you privately earlier,

00:30:59   but it, oh my god, modern web design drives me crazy.

00:31:03   (laughing)

00:31:03   - I know.

00:31:04   - Because it used to be, back in the day,

00:31:07   of, I don't know, five years ago, not that long ago.

00:31:09   It used to be that the most distracting things

00:31:12   on a web page that would make it difficult

00:31:13   to read articles were ads all over the sides and top.

00:31:17   Now, the most distracting thing about web pages

00:31:20   is the content, because it's jammed up

00:31:22   with all this crazy design, scroll jacking stuff

00:31:25   animating in when you scroll and flying in and everything.

00:31:28   It's horrendous.

00:31:29   Oh my god, it is so hard for me to read a modern,

00:31:34   like one of these over-designed web pages.

00:31:36   It's like these companies have way, way, way too much money

00:31:41   and resources devoted to overproducing these articles

00:31:46   when the reality is like,

00:31:49   if you would have put Eli Patel's article

00:31:52   into John Gruber's layout, it would have been just as good.

00:31:56   It gained nothing from having this giant,

00:32:00   like overwrought, scrolljacking, weirdly loading,

00:32:04   distracting animated garbage all in and out

00:32:07   and throughout it.

00:32:08   And it wasn't just him.

00:32:09   I saw the other one, I saw one at Bloomberg

00:32:11   that was pretty good by Josh Topolski.

00:32:12   That one also had not as egregious

00:32:15   but similar over-designed issues.

00:32:18   I don't know why this is in style right now, but--

00:32:21   - I can tell you, don't you remember,

00:32:22   I was trying to remember the term for this,

00:32:23   but I think they were, were they called splash things

00:32:26   or entryways or gateways?

00:32:27   I've mercifully forgotten this term.

00:32:31   When you made a site, you had to have a screen

00:32:33   that you had to go through to get to the site first.

00:32:35   The splash page, designers wanted to show off

00:32:38   and they wanted to like establish their brand.

00:32:42   They were accustomed to the more linear

00:32:44   kind of sort of linear storytelling thing

00:32:46   where you have like a title sequence

00:32:48   in the front of your thing,

00:32:49   or you have a cover page for a magazine or a book

00:32:52   or a title page for a magazine story.

00:32:54   And they said, before anyone gets to my whatever,

00:32:56   I want to show them our awesome logo

00:32:59   and maybe it will be animated

00:33:00   and maybe it will be sparkly stars around it

00:33:02   have to click through the logo to get through it.

00:33:04   Landing page, portal page, people are saying.

00:33:07   Anyway, I almost don't want to remember this,

00:33:08   because there was an epidemic.

00:33:10   And there was a lot of people who

00:33:12   were railing against this-- Zellman was one of them--

00:33:14   to say, this is not how you design the web.

00:33:16   First of all, people can come to your content from anywhere.

00:33:18   Second of all, just get to the content.

00:33:20   And that trend went away.

00:33:21   And people said, you can't do that,

00:33:22   because it makes no sense.

00:33:23   People don't go through there.

00:33:24   If you try to redirect them to it,

00:33:25   just get right to the content.

00:33:27   And we had sort of a middle period where things calmed down.

00:33:30   And now, like Margo said, people are able to incorporate

00:33:34   all those instincts to show off their brand,

00:33:37   to make things that are visually stimulating,

00:33:40   to highlight their technical chops,

00:33:42   to make a sort of a movie, to turn an article

00:33:45   into sort of more of a movie or a slideshow

00:33:46   where there's transitions between paragraphs and screens.

00:33:49   And one picture fades into the next

00:33:52   and the background is slightly animated,

00:33:53   showing a clip that's relevant to the thing

00:33:56   that the text is talking about next to it.

00:33:58   It's the resurgence of those landing pages or splash pages

00:34:02   only integrated into the article.

00:34:03   And I gotta go one further and say,

00:34:06   I have a theory about why this bothers me specifically,

00:34:09   and it's not just the stuff that's in the Verge.

00:34:11   This is why we're going way off on the watch thing,

00:34:13   but I wanna talk about this for a while,

00:34:14   so much for the tangent. - That's funny.

00:34:16   - I'm even annoyed by web pages where

00:34:20   when I scroll the web page,

00:34:22   basically position fixed in CSS,

00:34:24   where anything on the page doesn't move.

00:34:26   You're like, well, what's the big deal about that?

00:34:27   What about just like a top menu bar,

00:34:28   like a top navigation bar that stays there when you scroll,

00:34:31   right, or a footer that stays there when it scrolls.

00:34:33   I'm even annoyed by that because it breaks my,

00:34:37   it breaks the mental model, my mental model of the scrollbar

00:34:40   because the scrollbar is on the entire webpage

00:34:42   content region and yet some things within that region

00:34:45   don't scroll, the scrollbar is not embedded

00:34:47   and embedded scrollbars are an evil on their own.

00:34:49   It doesn't really make it better if you put like an iframe

00:34:51   in the middle of the page where your article content is

00:34:53   and then put the scrollbar there.

00:34:54   I conceptualize a webpage and this is, you know,

00:34:57   an old-fashioned notion or whatever,

00:34:58   but especially when it's a whole bunch of text,

00:35:00   as a scrollable region, and when I move the scroll bar,

00:35:03   the entire region moves as a piece

00:35:04   as if it was, yes, a printed page.

00:35:06   I was like, well, it's not a printed page,

00:35:08   the web is not print, you shouldn't expect it to be like that.

00:35:10   I don't expect it to be like print in all the ways

00:35:11   that people mean when they say that,

00:35:14   I wanna be able to change the font size,

00:35:16   I wanna be able to make the window bigger

00:35:17   and have the text change size,

00:35:18   I wanna have responsive design for the images

00:35:20   and so on and so forth,

00:35:21   but when I'm reading a long form article,

00:35:24   however the thing is rendered,

00:35:26   doesn't have to be rendered exactly like it would be on paper.

00:35:28   Once I start scrolling it, the scrolling model is,

00:35:30   I move scroll bar content moves, right?

00:35:33   And anything that doesn't move is a violation of that model.

00:35:36   And it's not so bad when you got a header or a footer.

00:35:38   But these models are like,

00:35:39   all the scroll bar does is like dragon's lair.

00:35:41   The scroll bar just triggers the next animation sequence.

00:35:44   You move the scroll bar a certain amount

00:35:46   and nothing happens, like driving an underpowered car,

00:35:48   you push the gas pedal and nothing happens.

00:35:50   And then all of a sudden,

00:35:51   the giant image that was entirely in the background

00:35:53   that wasn't moving slides up and a new one comes in

00:35:56   and maybe the text moves but then the background doesn't,

00:35:58   but then at a certain point the background does move

00:36:00   and then a new background comes in,

00:36:01   it's like, what, and the text fades out and moves up,

00:36:04   it's like, the model there is,

00:36:07   paw at the screen until you can see more text,

00:36:09   and a bunch of crap's gonna go on behind there,

00:36:11   the scenes that you have no idea has any relation

00:36:13   to how you're doing, it's just like,

00:36:14   just make more now.

00:36:15   I mean, Apple does it itself on their web pages

00:36:17   where you try to scroll and like,

00:36:18   these Mac Pro animations are going,

00:36:20   you just wanna get down to the text spec sections,

00:36:21   you're not sure if you have to click the dots

00:36:23   or scroll more, nothing's happening,

00:36:24   oh wait, now it's transitioning.

00:36:26   This breaks my model of the way pages look.

00:36:28   Maybe I'm an old fogey, but I feel like

00:36:31   I've seen enough people interact with those pages,

00:36:32   they're not sure what to do either.

00:36:34   And it's like, oh well, I guess I did something

00:36:35   and new text is here, maybe I can read it.

00:36:37   It looks cool, it's interesting,

00:36:39   Apple does it in a tasteful manner,

00:36:41   but I just wanna scroll and I just wanna see the page move.

00:36:44   - You know what, even Apple's product pages though,

00:36:46   like when the Mac Pro came out,

00:36:47   that was like one of the first ones that really irritated me

00:36:50   'cause it had like those sections you have to scroll between

00:36:52   and then wait for the scroll to logically catch up

00:36:54   from the JavaScript and everything,

00:36:55   'cause it scrolljacked everything and then loaded it,

00:36:57   and it's like, makes it impossible to like,

00:36:59   like if you like hit command F to find something

00:37:01   in the page you were actually looking for,

00:37:03   then everything would break and then it would have to reload

00:37:05   and it was just, ugh.

00:37:06   I wish people would just keep their brands to themselves.

00:37:08   I mean, if these companies that do this,

00:37:11   I mean, you know, it's one thing for a product company

00:37:12   like Apple, that's, you know,

00:37:13   they have different motivations like Guess,

00:37:14   that's still not good, but for a content company

00:37:18   like The Verge or Bloomberg or any of these like,

00:37:22   like big magazines, if they spent half of the money

00:37:27   and resources they spent on those over designs

00:37:31   on actually paying writers and hiring more writers,

00:37:34   I think they would see a bigger return

00:37:36   and the content will be better.

00:37:37   It just seems like a tremendous waste of money

00:37:40   to do things that ultimately annoy your readers.

00:37:45   And I guess you can look at it and say,

00:37:47   well, that kind of looks cool, yeah,

00:37:49   But if you actually try to read the articles,

00:37:53   it's miserable, it's full of problems.

00:37:56   And what we had before worked great.

00:37:59   There was no reason to change it.

00:38:01   Yeah, update it with the times, change the font,

00:38:04   maybe tweet the layout a little bit.

00:38:06   That's fine, you can keep it fresh and interesting

00:38:09   without making it unreadable.

00:38:11   - You know, I agree with everything you guys said,

00:38:14   but I gotta tell you, I actually did kinda like

00:38:15   the way the Verge looked.

00:38:17   - That's why they do it, because it does look cool

00:38:19   and it is interesting.

00:38:20   I think you can incorporate,

00:38:21   I can imagine, you know,

00:38:23   without breaking the scrolling paradigm,

00:38:24   I can imagine a pretty darn flashy thing

00:38:26   where there's video going in and when, you know,

00:38:28   I'll even allow you to start playing video

00:38:31   when I scroll to the region

00:38:32   to have it do something interesting, right?

00:38:33   Like I'm not even opposed to that entirely

00:38:35   if it makes for a cool layout

00:38:36   because people do find it interesting.

00:38:39   Like it keeps your attention, like, you know,

00:38:41   like jingling keys in front of a toddler, like, ooh,

00:38:43   you know, or just like sitting a kid in front of a TV,

00:38:45   like, oh, things are moving, things are colorful,

00:38:47   things are flashy, right?

00:38:49   Do those people actually read the articles?

00:38:50   I mean, that's why at the top of the article

00:38:52   they had the video review, which is like, you know,

00:38:53   most people just watch that and feel like they're done.

00:38:55   But I feel like it does a disservice

00:38:58   to the paradigm of the web

00:39:01   when you break scrolling in that way.

00:39:02   Not because scrolling is sacred or anything,

00:39:04   but just simply because you're inducing

00:39:07   a custom one-off mismatch between the user's mental model

00:39:11   of how a scroll bar works and how your thing works.

00:39:13   And your thing is gonna be different than Bloomberg's thing,

00:39:15   it's gonna be different than everybody else's thing.

00:39:17   And it's just, that's not good UI design.

00:39:21   Aside from all the other stuff of being,

00:39:22   is it good branding, is it good for traffic,

00:39:24   do we A/B test these things and see that more people click

00:39:28   when we have this crazy scrolling thing?

00:39:30   Like I believe it is possible to do something

00:39:31   that's still a noise Marko, but that is still good UI.

00:39:34   That's all my argument.

00:39:35   (laughing)

00:39:36   You'll never not, do something flashy that annoys Marko,

00:39:39   but do it in a way that doesn't break people's knowledge

00:39:45   about how a scrolling region works in a web page

00:39:49   or anything like that.

00:39:49   - It's like breaking the back button.

00:39:51   It breaks the way people interact with the web.

00:39:54   - Or it's like if you tried to move a window,

00:39:56   you grab the title bar of a window and tried to move it.

00:39:58   I know people don't do this anymore

00:39:59   because they don't understand that windows move.

00:40:00   But if you did actually try to move a window

00:40:02   and instead of the window moving, it didn't move,

00:40:05   but then all of a sudden it did move

00:40:06   when you got halfway across the screen

00:40:08   and it did that, those things for the Mac to do it well,

00:40:11   but the windows 8 thing where it snaps

00:40:13   to fill half the screen or whatever.

00:40:14   If it just didn't move, you'd be like, "Wait, I clicked and I started dragging it.

00:40:18   Wait, no, now it's moving.

00:40:19   Wait, no."

00:40:20   That's what it's like scrolling these things.

00:40:21   You're like, "Wait, I thought scrolling would make the content move, but now, wait,

00:40:23   no, it is moving.

00:40:24   No, it's fading out.

00:40:25   No, the background is changing."

00:40:26   It's terrible.

00:40:27   Don't do it.

00:40:28   So let me ask you guys, let me start with Marco.

00:40:30   When the 5K iMac came out, I remember vividly, and I was just looking for it and I can't

00:40:36   find it anymore, they had a picture of a guy in a nature scene, and it was hyper-zoomed

00:40:41   in on the guy and as you scrolled it zoomed out to kind of indicate how big a 5k image is. Do you

00:40:47   know what I'm talking about? Yeah it was in the keynote and then I did they put it on the web as

00:40:51   well? There was I'm almost positive it was on the web. Yeah I think I recall it being on the web as

00:40:55   well. Okay so so let me start with Marco and then Jon I'd like to hear your two cents. Did you like

00:40:59   that as well or do you also find that to be distasteful? So a certain point you're not Marco

00:41:04   you're not showing you're not showing text you're not it's not an article at a certain point what

00:41:09   what you're doing is you have an interactive ad,

00:41:11   like a little interactive movie, right?

00:41:12   And there's a lot, you get a lot of leeway

00:41:14   if it's like a marketing site

00:41:16   and you're trying to demonstrate a feature.

00:41:17   But if I find myself trying to read many,

00:41:20   many paragraphs of text that are, you know,

00:41:23   just a linear series of paragraphs of text

00:41:25   from top to bottom,

00:41:26   especially something the length of like

00:41:27   that Verge Apple Watch review,

00:41:29   like this is not a marketing site

00:41:31   with two tiny paragraphs of marketing text

00:41:35   with a bunch of, you know,

00:41:35   'cause that's fine, like infographics,

00:41:37   little animations of the machine spinning and exploding.

00:41:39   Like I give a lot of leeway for that type of thing.

00:41:42   But for specifically long form text articles,

00:41:47   you have to serve that need first.

00:41:51   And you have a lot less leeway, I think,

00:41:53   to people are less comfortable with the idea

00:41:57   that this doesn't work like a webpage anymore.

00:41:58   Now it's kind of like an interactive advertisement,

00:42:02   widget-y, flash, whatever thing, like a brochure, you know?

00:42:06   So real time follow up, a few people in the chat,

00:42:09   I think starting with Moyes,

00:42:11   have found the page that I was talking about.

00:42:14   And it is like a hiker explorer guy

00:42:17   with his arms in the air.

00:42:18   And as you scroll down, the image zooms way out

00:42:21   and you see just how big the 5K display is.

00:42:25   And I completely agree with what you guys are saying.

00:42:29   Like I understand what you're saying, I think you're right.

00:42:32   But there are times, and this is an example,

00:42:35   And I don't know, I really thought the frame by frame video

00:42:38   on the Verge article,

00:42:40   I just think they're really well done and interesting.

00:42:41   And I enjoy it.

00:42:43   And I know like conceptually in my head

00:42:45   that I probably shouldn't like these things,

00:42:47   but I don't know, I kinda like it.

00:42:48   - No, you should, that's why they put them there

00:42:50   because they're visually attractive.

00:42:51   But like, I like the IMAX site

00:42:53   because the whole point of that site

00:42:54   is you're gonna look at like beauty shots of this thing.

00:42:57   And they're emphasizing one particular part of it

00:42:58   and the zoom is cool

00:42:59   and it does emphasize the retina part

00:43:01   because I mean, it's a great example of like,

00:43:03   How do you show people the retina screen

00:43:06   when they're probably viewing it on a screen

00:43:07   that's not retina?

00:43:08   It's like trying to show them someone 3D television,

00:43:10   but they're watching it on a 2D TV.

00:43:12   And this is a clever solution.

00:43:13   We're gonna show it to you zoomed at like 1X pixels

00:43:15   on your screen, but then show you how much more

00:43:17   there actually is in a dramatic way.

00:43:19   And this page is mostly pictures and sort of infographics.

00:43:23   Right?

00:43:24   It's not text.

00:43:25   I think there's a little bit of a hitch in the middle

00:43:26   when you get down to the Yosemite section,

00:43:28   because the image stops scrolling,

00:43:29   but the text keeps strolling,

00:43:30   but then the image catches up again,

00:43:31   and that's a little bit janky.

00:43:32   but overall there's like less than a thousand words

00:43:36   of text on this, like it's probably less than 500 words

00:43:38   of text on this page.

00:43:39   Fine, for the Verge thing, that's thousands upon thousands

00:43:43   of words of text and it impairs the readability of that text

00:43:48   and the comfort of reading that text

00:43:49   and I get in the situation where I'm afraid,

00:43:51   did I miss a paragraph?

00:43:52   Did one of the animations scroll something away

00:43:55   and I missed an entire section because I didn't realize it

00:43:57   because I have no connection between my action

00:43:59   with either the page up or page down key

00:44:01   or the scroll bar or the scroll reel

00:44:02   or my finger swiping or whatever,

00:44:04   and what's happening on the screen.

00:44:05   It's very easy to actually miss stuff

00:44:07   if they start disconnecting those two things.

00:44:09   So time and a place for everything.

00:44:11   And you are not wrong to enjoy the cool animated effects.

00:44:14   You're not wrong to enjoy the video.

00:44:15   I thought the video was pretty well done as well,

00:44:17   but it does not serve the needs of the text very well.

00:44:21   - Yeah, I agree with that.

00:44:22   - And I should point out the 5K iMac site

00:44:25   that you're saying is fine.

00:44:26   The first time I loaded it, it didn't load properly.

00:44:29   and it mostly loaded and I started scrolling

00:44:31   and then it popped in and broke.

00:44:33   And then the thing in the middle where it catches

00:44:35   and then scrolls again, that broke.

00:44:37   And it's like, these are assuming,

00:44:39   this is like the Facebook designer problem

00:44:44   where all these new Facebook apps are so often designed

00:44:48   to assume that all your friends are beautiful models

00:44:52   with great photography that are always on vacation

00:44:53   in California.

00:44:54   (laughing)

00:44:55   You know, and with so many of these web designs,

00:44:57   it's assuming that it's all gonna load immediately

00:45:01   and the person navigating it is going to navigate it

00:45:04   exactly the way you expect them to

00:45:06   and exactly the way you want them to

00:45:07   to stop and see every section.

00:45:09   And it's just, reality doesn't work that way.

00:45:12   And the web to date, like the standard web,

00:45:15   is very adaptable to the way reality works.

00:45:18   When properly designed, it falls back

00:45:22   so that if things haven't loaded fully,

00:45:24   it still works for the most part

00:45:26   if you do your job right.

00:45:27   If you wanna jump around, you can do that.

00:45:30   If something weirdly breaks or is transformed,

00:45:33   or if you're using some kind of assistive technology

00:45:35   to actually transform the content

00:45:36   and read it in different ways,

00:45:38   nothing breaks for the most part.

00:45:40   Like if you do your job right,

00:45:42   the web falls back gracefully.

00:45:44   - Yeah, graceful degradation

00:45:46   does not work very well in these things.

00:45:47   - Exactly, it doesn't work at all usually.

00:45:49   Usually it breaks horribly,

00:45:50   and you're lucky if you can even see any of the content,

00:45:53   especially anything that's off the first page.

00:45:55   - And these are more like ads because they're optimized

00:45:58   for the first time experience,

00:45:59   but if you wanna go back to that page,

00:46:01   like this was the Mac Pro page,

00:46:02   as you talked about before, as the greatest example.

00:46:03   Like we all went to it and saw it,

00:46:05   it's like, you know, whatever, ooh nah.

00:46:06   But then the next time you go, you're like,

00:46:08   I wanna get to the GPU section as fast as possible.

00:46:11   And you can't just take the scroll through them

00:46:13   and yank it down to 75% down the bottom of the page,

00:46:16   'cause that's, you remember,

00:46:17   the GPU section was near the end.

00:46:19   You can't just do that, nothing happens.

00:46:20   You're like, oh, do I have to wait through these animations?

00:46:22   Do I have to click through them?

00:46:23   What do I have to do?

00:46:24   Now you're playing a game.

00:46:25   It's like a puzzle game on iOS where you're like,

00:46:27   you're like you're playing Myst where you have to figure out

00:46:29   what do I poke, which pixel do I hit,

00:46:31   what do I have to do, do I just have to wait here.

00:46:33   You just wanna learn about the GPU.

00:46:34   It is not, as soon as you start using it

00:46:36   as an informational thing, there is, you know,

00:46:38   it falls down.

00:46:40   - Exactly.

00:46:41   We are sponsored this week by Audible.

00:46:43   They are the leading provider of downloadable audio books

00:46:46   with over 150,000 titles and virtually every genre.

00:46:50   And they're always adding new titles.

00:46:53   So if you want to listen to something, Audible has it.

00:46:56   Now audiobooks are great.

00:46:57   I mean, you can listen to them anytime, anywhere.

00:47:00   Audible is offering our listeners a free audiobook

00:47:03   along with a 30 day trial.

00:47:05   Go to audiblepodcast.com/atp to get your free audiobook.

00:47:10   Once again, audiblepodcast.com/atp.

00:47:13   Now, there's a book that we are supposed to

00:47:17   have been reading but we haven't yet.

00:47:19   What is that book, Jon?

00:47:20   - Speak for yourself, I've been reading it.

00:47:22   - Yeah, same here.

00:47:23   - Well, I read the first few percentage points of it,

00:47:26   but had I been listening to it in Audible,

00:47:29   I probably would have gotten further.

00:47:30   What book is this, Jon?

00:47:32   - That's, my God, is the title Becoming Steve Jobs?

00:47:34   I don't even know what the title is.

00:47:36   - That's right. - Yep.

00:47:37   It is the latest Steve Jobs biography

00:47:40   that has been getting a lot of press.

00:47:42   This is the biography that has gotten

00:47:45   fairly unprecedented access to Apple executives

00:47:48   and people who knew Steve.

00:47:49   Obviously, he doesn't have access to Steve himself anymore,

00:47:52   but it is written by someone who has had

00:47:53   a many years relationship with Steve as a journalist.

00:47:57   And the Apple executives who did talk to this author,

00:48:02   it's a two author book actually,

00:48:03   I forget who the other one is,

00:48:05   who did talk to him have said,

00:48:07   have been saying in the press that they like this biography

00:48:10   and that they don't like the Walter Eisend biography.

00:48:12   Anyone who has listened to "Hypercritical"

00:48:14   knows that I also don't like the Walter Eisend biography,

00:48:17   but I'm also slightly uncomfortable

00:48:18   with the idea of Apple executives endorsing a biography

00:48:23   as being better than some other one.

00:48:25   I mean, I guess it makes perfect sense.

00:48:27   Like if you knew Steve Jobs, like if you actually knew him

00:48:30   and you know he's being not well represented

00:48:32   by another book and a new book comes out

00:48:33   that does represent him well, it's natural for you to say,

00:48:37   this is the better one

00:48:38   because this is more like the Steve that I knew.

00:48:40   But it's like, you know, the appearance of impropriety.

00:48:43   Like it's a little bit weird to be endorsing a biography

00:48:46   because then people might think,

00:48:48   this is just a rah rah, Apple is great kind of book.

00:48:53   I'm only about 10% into this book.

00:48:54   I talked about it on the episode of Upgrade

00:48:56   I was recently on with Jason Snell.

00:48:58   I talked about the first 10% of the book.

00:48:59   He has read, Jason had read the whole book,

00:49:01   so he talked about the entire thing,

00:49:02   and we went back and forth a bit.

00:49:04   But I am reading it,

00:49:06   and regardless of whether these two guys read it,

00:49:08   I'm gonna talk about the book when I'm done reading it,

00:49:10   and I'm going to talk about it on ATP.

00:49:12   So the reason you should get this book in Audible

00:49:14   is so that you, unlike those other two guys--

00:49:16   - Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey.

00:49:18   I am like 110 pages in, thank you very much.

00:49:21   - All right, well. - Because I actually bought it

00:49:23   on dead trees.

00:49:24   - Oh, well, that was a mistake probably, but--

00:49:26   (laughing)

00:49:27   Look at all these iOS devices,

00:49:29   all these different screenshots to choose.

00:49:30   Anyway, whatever it takes for you to get it.

00:49:32   If you buy an audiobook, you can listen to it

00:49:34   while you walk the dog or jog or whatever,

00:49:37   so that you, the listener, will have done your homework.

00:49:40   And when the time comes, and I'm, by the way,

00:49:41   a very slow reader, so you have plenty of time to do this.

00:49:43   Just go to Audible, get the free book.

00:49:45   When we talk about it, you'll be prepared.

00:49:47   - Perfect, go to audiblepodcast.com/atp

00:49:51   to start this book or any other one.

00:49:53   Thanks a lot to Audible for sponsoring our show.

00:49:56   - All right, I really am like 100 pages into that book.

00:50:00   So don't lump me in with that Marco character

00:50:03   who refuses to do any homework.

00:50:04   - He should get the audio book.

00:50:05   You never read books, do you?

00:50:07   - No, I read it on my giant iPhone on the plane

00:50:10   on the way to Ireland.

00:50:12   and then promptly forgot to keep reading it once I got there.

00:50:15   I think it gets better towards the end. Jason was saying that the beginning part, like the

00:50:17   authors don't have much first-hand experience, they just rehash a lot of stuff, but towards

00:50:21   the end they get all the good interviews and new stuff comes out, so you should read it.

00:50:24   Or listen to it. Yeah, I'll get there.

00:50:26   Yeah, I have to agree with you, Marco, that the beginning, up through around about the

00:50:31   time when Steve got fired, I didn't really care for it. But now I feel like it's getting

00:50:39   a little more opinionated, which I like, and it's getting a little more interesting. But

00:50:44   it was hard to get going for me. So I don't blame you for kind of forgetting to pick it

00:50:49   back up.

00:50:50   Okay, so now that we started to and then aborted talking about the watch...

00:50:54   We tried. It almost happened. We're going to do it again.

00:50:56   It almost worked.

00:50:57   All right, well, that's the end of the show. We'll see you guys next week.

00:51:00   Darn it, Marco. I was just going to have to make that joke. Oh, goodness. All right, so

00:51:03   we should probably talk about the lifted embargo in the reviews we've read.

00:51:09   So I think we've all read a smattering of them. I've read some of the ones that Marco's read

00:51:13   I've read I've not read some of the ones that Marco's read John

00:51:15   I assume you've read all the things because you do homework even when we don't want you to

00:51:19   So the interesting thing to me about this and we were talking privately about it

00:51:24   the three of us with a few other people and

00:51:26   Stephen Hackett said to us

00:51:29   It seems like a lot of the reviews are kind of disappointed a little bit

00:51:35   Especially about performance and he had said and I agree we should have seen that coming

00:51:41   But it still feels a little bit surprising

00:51:43   That's that's to me like the the most worrisome but also unsurprising part

00:51:48   Because I'm you know, I'm all excited as everyone else is, you know, oh which one do I get and I guess we'll talk about that

00:51:56   But like, you know, I want to get something it's gonna be really awesome

00:52:00   And if I'm gonna get like a nice steel one, I'm not getting addition

00:52:03   But if I was gonna get a nice steel one,

00:52:06   maybe the link bracelet one,

00:52:07   like go nice and high end on that,

00:52:10   I would really want it to be an amazing thing.

00:52:13   And it sounds like from all the reviews,

00:52:16   it's a first generation device.

00:52:17   And yeah, you're right,

00:52:18   we shouldn't be surprised by that,

00:52:19   but it's a first generation device.

00:52:21   And especially the things that caught out to me

00:52:24   or that I really noticed,

00:52:26   not only does everybody say

00:52:27   it's a little bit slow sometimes,

00:52:28   which is certainly disappointing,

00:52:31   but you can see it in some of the videos.

00:52:33   And one of the reviews, I forget which one,

00:52:35   it might have been Nilay, or maybe it was Topolski,

00:52:38   one of the reviews said that you can see the air gap

00:52:42   between the screen and the cover glass,

00:52:44   or the cover sapphire.

00:52:46   And I saw it in one of the videos too,

00:52:48   and it's very clear, you can see the rectangle outline

00:52:52   of the actual screen inside that nice big flat black top.

00:52:56   And it does kind of ruin the illusion

00:52:58   of this being one seamless thing.

00:53:01   And so I look at things like that,

00:53:02   like the screen air gap being visible

00:53:05   and the slowness people are talking about.

00:53:09   And I know also for the slowness thing,

00:53:12   watch kit apps, you can see even in the simulator

00:53:17   on watch kit apps, you can see that there's some inherent

00:53:19   lag in this process of throwing the interface

00:53:23   from the phone to the watch over Bluetooth,

00:53:25   which is how watch kit apps actually work.

00:53:28   That's probably gonna be sluggish too.

00:53:30   And so it seems like there's this kind of theme of,

00:53:34   this is a really cool device

00:53:35   with some really cool features.

00:53:36   However, it's a little bit slow sometimes.

00:53:38   Watch the apps are a little bit slow,

00:53:40   and there's a couple of like, you know,

00:53:41   little niggling points, like, you know, like that,

00:53:43   like the visible air gap on the display.

00:53:47   So I see all these things, and I think, obviously,

00:53:50   you know, speed and display lamination,

00:53:53   these are the kinds of things

00:53:54   that Apple always improves over time.

00:53:56   And so I know that version two is gonna come out

00:54:00   and be significantly better in some of these areas,

00:54:03   'cause that's what always happens,

00:54:05   probably only a year from now,

00:54:07   like it's probably not even gonna be that far from now.

00:54:09   And I think too, like the hard way,

00:54:10   so we've all heard the same rumors, I think,

00:54:13   the rumors that said that this was supposed

00:54:15   to come out last fall.

00:54:17   So we're kinda, we're like six months later than,

00:54:20   if that's accurate, we're like six months late

00:54:22   on original release.

00:54:24   When it was shown to the public last fall,

00:54:26   it sure looked like the hardware was pretty much done.

00:54:29   - Yeah, yeah.

00:54:29   it seemed like the software was probably

00:54:32   what was holding it up all this time.

00:54:34   And that's, as we know from engineering,

00:54:36   that's way more likely to be the case

00:54:38   than the other way around.

00:54:39   It seems like this was definitely,

00:54:40   the hardware was fine, the software needed more time.

00:54:43   Not a big surprise.

00:54:45   So I kinda think that we might be seeing

00:54:47   half generation old hardware.

00:54:51   If they were gonna ship this hardware last fall originally,

00:54:55   then what's the hardware gonna be like next spring,

00:54:59   presumably when there's Apple Watch 2 or whatever,

00:55:03   I feel like we're gonna jump ahead even further

00:55:05   than we usually do in the first

00:55:07   to second generation migration

00:55:09   because we've had that extra six months.

00:55:11   So rather than jumping ahead a year,

00:55:13   we might jump ahead 18 months.

00:55:15   Does that make sense?

00:55:16   - Yeah, it does.

00:55:17   And you very well could be right.

00:55:19   And I'm gonna give Jon a chance to talk here in a second.

00:55:22   But one of the things that I was really looking forward to

00:55:25   once I realized today was embargo day

00:55:27   was hoping that I could really solidify my plans

00:55:32   for what to do because I've talked on this show

00:55:34   and on analog about, well, maybe I'll get one,

00:55:39   but maybe I won't, which typically in my history means

00:55:42   I'm absolutely getting one,

00:55:43   but I just haven't convinced myself yet.

00:55:46   And I gotta tell you, after reading these,

00:55:48   I had been hemming and hawing between,

00:55:51   you know, maybe I will get a spendy one

00:55:52   because God, that $1,100 one looks so good.

00:55:55   - The black one? - Yeah, yeah.

00:55:57   Or at least it does on screen.

00:55:58   Who knows what it looks like in real life?

00:55:59   But on screen it looks so good.

00:56:01   And so I've been flip flopping back and forth

00:56:03   and back and forth.

00:56:04   And the one thing that I think I've concluded

00:56:06   based on all these reviews is if I'm gonna do it at all,

00:56:09   which knowing me I probably will,

00:56:11   I should definitely get a sport

00:56:13   because it sounds like I'm gonna wanna replace this

00:56:15   in a year, just like you were saying, Marco.

00:56:18   John?

00:56:19   - Yeah, I think for both of you

00:56:21   who are planning on buying one,

00:56:22   I imagine a lot of these early reviews

00:56:24   are pushing them to the sport.

00:56:26   of saying I had all sorts of plans about which one I was going to get, I was picking and

00:56:30   choosing, I was matching things, but now I read these reviews, you know, for tech people

00:56:33   who read five reviews about the watch, all of them are thinking, yeah, maybe I'll just

00:56:37   go with sport. And, you know, and hedge my bets, because you still want one because it

00:56:40   seems like it's cool, but it's so clear that you're only going to want it for a little

00:56:45   while. A couple things on the watch reviews. First is that due to knowing a lot of people

00:56:54   who have had interactions with the watch.

00:56:58   It was nice to see that there's nothing

00:57:01   surprising in the reviews.

00:57:03   If you know people who have gone to the press events, who

00:57:05   have touched the watches, who have experience with them,

00:57:09   everything that was in the reviews,

00:57:12   everything like sort of objective,

00:57:15   not like how does this fit into my life,

00:57:17   but like how does the device perform

00:57:19   and what features does it have, like we knew it all already.

00:57:21   And I think part of that has to do with Apple's big press push and this sort of long

00:57:25   slow-motion rollout where they just

00:57:27   Release information and you could go into the stores and mess with them and you can do all it like it was different than boy

00:57:33   No one has ever touched one of these things before now

00:57:35   I'm gonna read about it and learn about it all these stories were all kind of on the same page and are all things that

00:57:39   We kind of knew already

00:57:41   So that's good to see the one aspect that maybe people who are

00:57:45   Aren't in as close touch with people who play with the watches might have been surprised about it was a marker just mentioned

00:57:51   that they're a little bit slower than people expected.

00:57:54   And you didn't even see a lot of that

00:57:55   even in the press hands-on,

00:57:56   because it wasn't quite as hands-on as you would expect,

00:57:59   but the fact that it feels sluggish, I think,

00:58:01   is catching people a little bit by surprise

00:58:03   for a couple of reasons.

00:58:04   First, that the first iPhone,

00:58:07   despite if you go back and look at it now,

00:58:09   actually being more sluggish than, say, an iPhone 6,

00:58:12   it didn't feel sluggish

00:58:13   because they had removed everything

00:58:16   from the original iPhone,

00:58:17   except for the bare minimum,

00:58:20   the entire phone was concentrating as hard as it could

00:58:22   on doing whatever it is

00:58:23   that you just tap with your finger, like hardcore.

00:58:25   It was, you know, it was like the old Mac menu

00:58:27   where you hold down the button

00:58:30   to pull down a menu from the menu bar.

00:58:32   The entire machine stood still.

00:58:34   But you had really responsive animation

00:58:35   when you were scrubbing through that menu

00:58:36   and that was necessary on 128K Mac.

00:58:39   It just carried over for way too long

00:58:40   because Apple couldn't get a software act together.

00:58:42   But that whole idea of like version one of this product,

00:58:45   interactivity above all,

00:58:47   stop everything else that's going on in the machine

00:58:48   and just do this one thing.

00:58:50   Then with the watch because the screen is so small and because it's a version one like

00:58:53   There was an expectation. I think they would do the same thing

00:58:56   That because it's pushing so few pixels and because the watch does so little

00:59:01   Surely there won't be anything that can happen on the watch. That would be sluggish. I mean why would it?

00:59:05   but kind of like the you know the iPhone sort of

00:59:09   Push back the level out of traction by having incredibly weak hardware the hardware in in the watch is pretty darn weak

00:59:18   I mean people talk about what the s1 might be based on which a series chip it might be based on regardless of which one

00:59:22   It's based on it's surely under clocked right compared to what it was in

00:59:26   Whatever the top-end iPad or phone that had the same CPU architecture did it is a relatively weak CPU and GPU in there and

00:59:33   Unlike the original iPhone the watch has to do all sorts of stuff and that brings me to the second

00:59:39   sort of realization after reading all these reviews is that I

00:59:43   Don't think things are going to get all that much better for the worst-case

00:59:47   Scenarios of performance when people talked about I launched a watch kit app

00:59:51   And I just saw a spinner for a long period of time or lots of waiting screens and a lot of the video reviews you

00:59:55   Get to see the various waiting screens of the various apps one shows an animation of different modes of transportation

01:00:00   One shows a little dot spinner one shows just a black screen. Sometimes the thing doesn't launch at all

01:00:05   That's an architectural thing where watch kit apps are really iPhone apps that are sort of projecting their

01:00:11   their interface onto the phone or interacting back and forth across a wireless connection and

01:00:16   There's nothing you can really do with either the phone hardware or the watch hardware make them both infinitely fast

01:00:24   Make them both have huge amounts of RAM make them have incredibly powerful

01:00:27   CPUs and GPUs if you're trying to do sort of the remote control interface

01:00:31   You know you're gonna be constrained by opening and closing a connection communicating over Bluetooth having

01:00:38   Interference problems because your phone is in your pocket and your your pockets are lined with tinfoil like whatever it is

01:00:43   You can't that's like an architectural thing that version 2 of the phone is not going to fix that what's going to fix that is

01:00:50   Native phone apps and what's going to make native phone apps more feasible is going to be faster hardware more RAM so on and so

01:00:54   forth so the problem will fix itself but

01:00:56   This particular model of doing third-party applications by having them projected from the phone onto the watch not

01:01:03   Literally as in display postscript or anything

01:01:05   but like that whole model of two devices cooperating

01:01:08   to work on the UI together,

01:01:10   that puts kind of a ceiling on how nicely interactive

01:01:13   this is and then that insult to injury,

01:01:15   even on the native apps it seems like in the video,

01:01:17   sometimes it's like a little stutter with an animation

01:01:19   or with a swipe or something like that

01:01:21   and that could be solved by hardware and software

01:01:24   or that could help, that could be resolved by revision

01:01:26   to iOS to make things smoother in the same way

01:01:29   that they really hammered on smoothly scrolling table views

01:01:32   on the original versions of what was then called iPhone OS

01:01:34   for the iPhone.

01:01:36   So I think not only is the version one product

01:01:40   definitely kind of, not compromised, but like,

01:01:44   well, yeah, I guess I would say compromised

01:01:47   in more ways, in different ways than the iPhone was.

01:01:49   'Cause the iPhone, the original iPhone was compromised

01:01:51   by having no third party apps, no multitasking,

01:01:54   no nothing, right?

01:01:55   And so that was their compromise.

01:01:56   We're gonna make the things that we have really responsive

01:01:58   and the compromise is you lose all this functionality.

01:02:00   The compromise for the watch,

01:02:01   necessarily because of the way it's done

01:02:03   and because of the way it interacts with the iPhone is we can't sacrifice features and

01:02:07   interactivity.

01:02:08   We have to have apps because it's just like we created the app store age and now we're

01:02:11   living in it and if we launch these things without apps it would be a big problem.

01:02:14   So you've got to have apps.

01:02:15   We've got to have them in some way.

01:02:16   If we can't do native apps right away, do this weird watch kit app type thing.

01:02:21   We've got to have wireless communication and things going on in the background because

01:02:24   how do you know you tap a thing on the watch and we have to tell a thing on the phone to

01:02:28   launch.

01:02:29   Maybe the app's not even launched on the app.

01:02:30   launch the thing and load that code, have that code projectors display back here and

01:02:34   while that's going, like, that's the, that is their baseline functionality and it involves

01:02:38   a lot more things going on at the same time than the original iPhone did.

01:02:41   So it's a different set of compromises and I don't think that sluggishness is going to

01:02:46   get better until they change, until native watch kit apps, what are they going to call

01:02:52   them, I'm not going to call them native watch kit apps, they're going to call them native

01:02:53   watch apps get here, until those get here and those aren't going to really be great

01:02:59   until the hardware and software is revised. So I would say wait two or three versions

01:03:02   because I expect the next version to be the same physical form factor, just maybe with

01:03:06   a better CPU and a couple other tweaks and some software tweaks. And then the third one,

01:03:11   that's where you'll get into something that works like they thought the first one was

01:03:14   going to. But that's true all the time. People say like, we're not slamming it. Like that's

01:03:18   the true of all of these products, right? Like I don't think anyone is shocked by this.

01:03:22   When you say that people think you're telling them not to buy an Apple watch, but like,

01:03:27   you know, that was true of the first MacBook Air

01:03:31   or the first written MacBook Pro, first written iMac.

01:03:36   That's how things work in the tech world.

01:03:41   - As a first gen product, the things people are citing

01:03:43   as issues or shortcomings are not significantly worse

01:03:48   than other first gen shortcomings from other product lines.

01:03:51   It doesn't seem like there's one fatal flaw here

01:03:54   or one really big problem.

01:03:56   it just seems like, yeah, you know,

01:03:58   it's kind of slow sometimes,

01:03:59   certain things aren't that smooth yet, you know,

01:04:01   and some of it will be fixed in software

01:04:03   as the software matures,

01:04:05   some of it will just be hardware limitations

01:04:07   that you'll have to buy a new watch for,

01:04:09   and yeah, I guess we'll see,

01:04:10   and I agree that like, that the whole design of WatchKit

01:04:13   being this Bluetooth projection

01:04:16   with running on the phone back and forth,

01:04:17   like, that is so fragile and complicated

01:04:21   and there's so much inherent latency and weirdness there

01:04:25   that we really do have to wait for native watch apps

01:04:28   for this, and it's kind of, it's worth asking,

01:04:31   like, let's suppose watch kit apps really don't work

01:04:35   very well in reality, 'cause it seems from the reviews

01:04:38   that that might be the case, that they might just,

01:04:40   like, one of them, I think it was Neil,

01:04:42   I was really just saying, like, just how slow,

01:04:44   like, he said, like, you could take your phone

01:04:46   out of your pocket and do it on there faster

01:04:47   than you could do it on the watch, so,

01:04:49   let's assume the watch kit apps, in reality,

01:04:52   are a little bit iffy, or at least not quite worthwhile.

01:04:56   Do you think, you know, people are gonna judge

01:04:59   the Apple Watch based on WatchKit,

01:05:02   and if any flaw or shortcoming that WatchKit apps have

01:05:07   will reflect badly on the watch

01:05:09   and on people's perceptions of the watch as a whole.

01:05:12   Do you think releasing WatchKit the way they did now

01:05:16   is better overall than if they hadn't released it at all

01:05:21   and just said no third party apps yet except notifications.

01:05:24   - I think it's probably better to do what they did

01:05:27   because I think there is a chance

01:05:30   that people will get the watch,

01:05:33   fiddle with the third party apps enough to let them know

01:05:37   that they're not as useful as they thought

01:05:39   they were going to be,

01:05:40   but they may still end up with a product

01:05:44   whose functionality they're happy with.

01:05:46   I'm not entirely sure that the watch

01:05:50   loses any value by not being able to have a giant world of applications.

01:05:55   Like I think the core functionality of telling time, doing the fitness tracking,

01:06:00   providing a small window into notifications, tapping you, you know,

01:06:05   like that core set of functionality may be enough to, to make this product worth

01:06:12   its value because it is, it's a novelty.

01:06:14   So there'll be something into that.

01:06:15   And to let people know, do, do I want to wear a smart watch?

01:06:19   Is there a place for a smart watch in my life?

01:06:22   I don't think the answer to that question hinges on

01:06:25   the performance of or even the existence of third party apps.

01:06:30   It would be nice if they worked

01:06:32   and maybe there'll be one or two third party apps that work

01:06:34   and I think it's important for them to do it

01:06:36   because for the one or two things where like,

01:06:38   I mostly don't use third party apps

01:06:40   but I do use overcast when I go running

01:06:42   and I do this, you know, like one or two

01:06:44   that work well enough that they're willing

01:06:45   to deal with the compromises,

01:06:47   having them there adds value.

01:06:49   The fact that a bunch of other apps are flaky

01:06:51   or it would be faster to do on your phone,

01:06:52   people would just be like,

01:06:53   "Oh, I'll just do it on my phone."

01:06:55   Right, and they'll just move on.

01:06:56   And I think this product lives or dies

01:06:59   by the functionality that Apple is providing

01:07:02   in terms of is it a thing that people

01:07:04   are going to want to do?

01:07:05   And it will be a pleasant surprise

01:07:06   and it will open up new worlds of functionality

01:07:08   in the watch when three years from now,

01:07:11   third-party apps are really a thing

01:07:12   and do interesting stuff and have access to like,

01:07:15   you know, the speaker and the camera

01:07:17   that's on the third model and the third generation model

01:07:20   and all this other stuff like, this world will blossom,

01:07:22   but right now, out of the gate,

01:07:24   I think just the core functionality is enough

01:07:26   to set this watch on its way.

01:07:30   - Yeah, I mean, I think the built-in functionality

01:07:32   from day one and this world of apps

01:07:34   might even be like too much stuff.

01:07:36   It does seem, and a number of the reviews mentioned this,

01:07:40   including Neelay, I keep talking about his review,

01:07:42   it does seem like there's almost a lack of focus.

01:07:45   And maybe that's a good thing, you know, maybe,

01:07:47   'cause this is very much gonna have like the 80% problem

01:07:52   of like, you know, 80% of the users are gonna use

01:07:54   20% of the features, but it's gonna be a different

01:07:56   20% of the features for each user.

01:07:58   So I see why they gave us so many options

01:08:01   of what this thing could do for us.

01:08:03   And that also does support the idea of

01:08:06   it should support third party apps,

01:08:07   because like, what I'm going to do with it

01:08:10   is probably gonna use like four of the built-in functions

01:08:14   plus one or two third-party apps.

01:08:17   Like it's not gonna be a very large number of things

01:08:20   I'm doing with it, but it's going to include

01:08:23   at least one third-party app, you know, at least my own.

01:08:25   Okay, I'm gonna use Overcast's app.

01:08:27   And you know, maybe like, you know,

01:08:30   Clear and when I'm shopping for groceries

01:08:31   if they have an app, I hope they do.

01:08:33   But I suspect the number of apps

01:08:36   on the average person's watch is gonna be pretty small.

01:08:39   like the number of apps they actually use

01:08:41   is gonna be probably, certainly under 10,

01:08:46   you know, that they actually use on a regular basis.

01:08:49   I would say it might even be under five.

01:08:51   I think it's gonna be a small number.

01:08:53   Like to me, if you look at the watch,

01:08:55   the hierarchy, the navigational hierarchy

01:08:58   of, you know, you go through, you can see a lot of these

01:08:59   in their videos now, and you can see

01:09:02   if you play with WatchKit, you can see some

01:09:04   of the glance stuff, and you can see the hierarchy here

01:09:08   so that when you first unlock it, you see the watch face.

01:09:11   So that's like environment one is the watch face.

01:09:14   And you can get notifications from there,

01:09:16   and then you can go to glances from there.

01:09:18   And the glances are just in this page interface,

01:09:20   you swipe through and you see your glance,

01:09:22   and then you can tap on it to open the app or whatever.

01:09:25   That's all right there.

01:09:26   And then you hit the crown,

01:09:27   and then you go into the home screen.

01:09:29   Then that whole environment zooms out,

01:09:31   then you get the home screen,

01:09:32   you know, the home honeycomb thing.

01:09:35   And then you can log out from there.

01:09:37   What if the watch didn't have the home screen part of it?

01:09:40   What if it was only the watch face

01:09:44   with the notifications on top

01:09:45   and the glances on the bottom,

01:09:46   the way it is now,

01:09:48   the whole interface the way it is now,

01:09:49   but without a home screen,

01:09:51   so that the glances were your launchers?

01:09:53   I think that not only would that be an easier product

01:09:57   to navigate, but I think that might even focus it

01:09:59   a little bit and help people kinda prune the list

01:10:03   of what they wanna do to make it easier

01:10:04   and lighter weight and take up less space,

01:10:07   have fewer things that need to be updated

01:10:09   and need to be running and everything,

01:10:11   I think that might be a better product, but I don't know.

01:10:13   I mean, time will tell once we actually have these things.

01:10:15   - I think the other aspect to reading,

01:10:18   looking at all these reviews lined up here

01:10:20   that we have to keep in mind is when people

01:10:22   are reviewing a technology product,

01:10:24   it's part of their job to sort of take it through its paces.

01:10:27   They're going to dig into all the menus.

01:10:29   They're going to try all the advertised features.

01:10:31   They're going to evaluate, you know,

01:10:32   Here's the umpteen things that Apple says this can do.

01:10:35   It's good at this one, it's not so good at that one,

01:10:37   it's gonna go through every single one.

01:10:38   That's not how regular people use products,

01:10:39   that's how product reviewers use products.

01:10:41   I think people are gonna buy this thing

01:10:43   and maybe fiddle around with it a little bit,

01:10:48   but mostly it'll sort of be like ambient feature discovery.

01:10:52   When a notification, they'll pair it with their phone,

01:10:54   like when a notification appears,

01:10:56   they will discover the sort of

01:10:57   context sensitive replying things

01:10:59   and how the wheel scrolls through things.

01:11:02   When they hit that button on the side,

01:11:04   it will bring up the little contact thing,

01:11:06   and they'll say, "Oh, I can text my contacts.

01:11:09   "Oh, I can call them from the watch too."

01:11:11   They will discover things as they do them,

01:11:13   but they're not gonna go into every single menu

01:11:15   and find every single feature

01:11:16   and try them all out extensively.

01:11:18   People who don't have any interest in fitness tracking

01:11:19   may not even know that it's counting their steps

01:11:21   'cause they don't even care.

01:11:22   It will be...

01:11:23   Smart watch is not a thing

01:11:26   that most people have any familiarity with at all.

01:11:29   They're just regular watches.

01:11:30   Just look at them for the time.

01:11:31   This is like, all right, well, we're starting from there.

01:11:33   Regular watch, I look at it from the time,

01:11:35   Gruber's Review had a lot of good content

01:11:37   concentrating on how well does it fulfill that job.

01:11:39   The answer is not really that well

01:11:40   because the screen can't be on all the time,

01:11:41   but I'm sure that will get better as time goes on anyway.

01:11:44   But that's where they're starting from.

01:11:45   Like, well, I can tell time on this watch too,

01:11:48   and it looks kind of nice.

01:11:50   Apparently, you know, the one I bought,

01:11:51   I bought the one I thought looked nice.

01:11:53   And also I can get notifications,

01:11:55   and apparently I can text people.

01:11:56   Ooh, look, I can scribble things too.

01:11:57   Like everything is a bonus above I can tell timeline, right?

01:12:02   I don't think people are gonna buy it and be like,

01:12:04   well, it wasn't worth $350

01:12:05   'cause every single one of the apps that I tried,

01:12:07   it didn't work to, it didn't meet my expectations.

01:12:10   Like they're just gonna,

01:12:12   they're gonna use a small corner of the functionality

01:12:14   slowly revealing itself all the time.

01:12:16   By the time people even make it to that home screen

01:12:18   and get obsessed with like,

01:12:18   maybe they'll try a few of the apps,

01:12:20   they're like, oh, that didn't work here,

01:12:21   let me just go back to doing these things.

01:12:23   Whether they'll regret purchasing it

01:12:24   because they think there's not enough functionality,

01:12:26   I don't know, but I just, I feel like people are not going to,

01:12:31   they're not gonna use it like a tech reviewer.

01:12:33   They're gonna use it like a regular person.

01:12:34   And if you see regular people use their phones even,

01:12:37   if you give a person an iPhone and you don't like,

01:12:40   say, oh, you gotta have this app,

01:12:41   or you gotta have that app,

01:12:41   or if you don't have like a tech nerd setting it up

01:12:43   for them, you just give them an empty phone

01:12:45   and let them use it, it may be a long time

01:12:47   before they even tap one of the icons

01:12:49   that comes on the phone.

01:12:49   It could be months before that happens, right?

01:12:51   That's how regular people use products.

01:12:52   And all of that is in Apple's favor here

01:12:57   because the longer people take

01:12:58   to sort of take the watch through its paces,

01:13:00   the more equipped Apple hopefully will be

01:13:02   with its hardware and software stack

01:13:03   and potentially its next model of watch to say,

01:13:06   oh, that's actually much better now.

01:13:08   - Yeah, I don't know.

01:13:10   I'm really curious what to make of all of this

01:13:12   because like I was saying earlier,

01:13:16   I feel like my anticipation, which was tempered,

01:13:20   but enthusiastic nonetheless,

01:13:22   I feel like there's been some water poured on that fire

01:13:25   and now I'm a lot less sure what I wanna do.

01:13:28   And I'm pretty darn sure,

01:13:31   unless I have some sort of epiphany tomorrow,

01:13:34   that come Friday morning, whenever it is I wake up,

01:13:37   I'm not gonna be waking up in the middle of the night,

01:13:39   I think I'm just gonna schedule a try-on

01:13:41   and then see where to go from there.

01:13:43   Because my livelihood doesn't depend on it

01:13:46   like Marco's sort of does.

01:13:48   And I don't know if this is,

01:13:51   if it's really worth jumping in on the first generation.

01:13:54   And you could consider all of that claim chatter

01:13:57   to use against me in like three weeks.

01:13:59   But for now, I'm really not sure what to make of it.

01:14:03   And one of the things I wanted to discuss

01:14:05   was a few of the more interesting things I've noted,

01:14:08   or that all of us have noted in these reviews.

01:14:10   And one of the common themes I heard was,

01:14:12   well, you know, it's being sold as a way

01:14:15   to get back to real life.

01:14:16   Oh, you can just quickly glance at whatever it is

01:14:19   that's just come in,

01:14:20   and then you can go back to the things that actually matter.

01:14:23   And I was really looking forward to that

01:14:25   because I don't have a lot of self-control

01:14:27   when it comes to looking at my phone.

01:14:28   And I thought, oh, well, maybe I'd be able to glance down

01:14:30   at my watch and move on.

01:14:32   And a lot of these reviews are saying, well, maybe not.

01:14:36   In fact, to quote Nielle,

01:14:37   "So far, I've mostly used the watch

01:14:40   either alone or in an office environment,

01:14:41   but it's really different to have a smartwatch in a bar.

01:14:44   Here, even small distractions make you seem like a jerk.

01:14:48   Sony's trying to describe the project to me

01:14:50   and find ways to work together, but I keep glancing at my wrist to see extremely unimportant

01:14:54   emails fly by. It turns out that checking your watch over and over again is a gesture

01:14:58   that carries a lot of cultural weight. Eventually, Sony asked me if I need to be somewhere else.

01:15:02   We're both embarrassed, and I've mostly just ignored everyone. This is a little too much

01:15:06   future all at once. Now, in a large way, I think that's kind of a self-created problem,

01:15:11   because if you allow all the notifications to come through, then that's what's going

01:15:15   happen and I think we're gonna have to be pretty good janitors and stewards of what

01:15:21   notifications come in. But it was kind of disappointing to me that it seems like the

01:15:27   black hole that I'm so tempted to allow myself to get sucked into, it's just moved from my

01:15:32   pocket to my wrist.

01:15:33   Yeah, you should never look for a product to change your habits in that way, you know

01:15:38   what I mean? Because there is a kernel of truth to that aspect of it. It's the kernel

01:15:42   truth is what we talked about when we were first entertaining the idea of an Apple watch like what what use could this thing possibly

01:15:47   have and

01:15:48   The the core kernel is that it really is

01:15:52   much easier better lower friction more convenient

01:15:55   To just pick your wrist up to your face and look at something and deal with there than it is to fish your phone out

01:15:59   Of your pocket by now

01:16:00   We are all experts at extracting our phone with whatever hand we prefer from whatever pocket we always put it in whether that's our pants

01:16:06   Pocket or a jacket pocket depending on the weather or whatever. We're all experts are doing that right, but it's a pain, right?

01:16:11   And there's a potential that you could drop the thing when you're trying to pull it out quickly

01:16:14   That having a thing on your wrist. This is this is the big key killer feature of the thing

01:16:18   Like it is more accessible. It is smaller. It's lighter weight. It's there. You don't have to do anything. It's attached to you already

01:16:24   You're not gonna drop it, right?

01:16:26   That's the core everything else is people projecting like now I'm going to be better about

01:16:33   You know

01:16:34   not having

01:16:35   notifications and paying more attention to people and I'm going to pay attention to my family because I have a phone like if if your

01:16:40   idea is that you will be able to surreptitiously steal glances at

01:16:45   notifications in a way that doesn't annoy people whereas previously you had

01:16:47   to more obviously fish out your phone or do that thing where you put your phone

01:16:50   in your thigh and you glance down on it to the edge of the table. Like that's you doing

01:16:54   that and you're gonna do the same exact things with this thing and it's just

01:16:56   like wherever you go there you are. This device is not going to help

01:17:00   you change your life in that way. But that story spins out from the

01:17:04   kernel of truth about yes it really is way more convenient. In the same way that

01:17:07   like small changes in screen size can be revelatory

01:17:11   with the whole, you know, small iPhone to the big iPhone

01:17:13   six plus and all that, like small changes in form factor.

01:17:17   And I would say a watch is a pretty darn big change

01:17:19   in form factor in a very fundamental ways

01:17:20   from a little rectangle glass thing you hold

01:17:23   can make big differences.

01:17:24   But you have a separate problem with how you balance people

01:17:28   who are not there and their electronic communication

01:17:31   with you and people who are there.

01:17:32   Like that is a separate issue.

01:17:34   No product is probably ever gonna change that for you.

01:17:36   and you can solve that problem or not

01:17:38   with any set of products, whether you have a flip phone

01:17:41   that you're texting people on,

01:17:42   or a pager that you're looking at,

01:17:43   or if you're just daydreaming

01:17:44   and you can't pay attention to people

01:17:45   because you're thinking about a programming problem

01:17:47   and you're head's all,

01:17:48   they're trying to ask you what you want for dinner.

01:17:49   Like, these are all problems that are,

01:17:50   does that happen to lunch?

01:17:52   Just, this is totally, they're all hypothetical scenarios.

01:17:54   (laughing)

01:17:55   No, you know, no resemblance to real person or events,

01:17:58   blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

01:17:59   Anyway. (laughing)

01:18:01   Those problems are gonna be there no matter what.

01:18:03   So, you shouldn't feel disappointed

01:18:05   that this doesn't solve that problem for you.

01:18:07   And even, I would even say the fitness tracking thing

01:18:09   as well, like the Fitbit or whatever,

01:18:11   like if I get a fitness tracker,

01:18:13   it's gonna help me exercise.

01:18:14   They do, like it can motivate you.

01:18:15   It can gamify things, right?

01:18:17   But if your problem is that I had a Fitbit

01:18:20   and I used it for a while,

01:18:21   but then I got bored and I stopped exercising.

01:18:23   When I got the Apple Watch,

01:18:24   then I'm really gonna do fitness stuff

01:18:26   'cause I'll be so excited about it.

01:18:27   It's like, if you already traveled that route,

01:18:29   like the problem is not the fitness tracker.

01:18:30   The problem is you.

01:18:32   - Yeah, exactly.

01:18:33   And we're gonna see this story unfolding

01:18:36   over and over again over the next year

01:18:39   of somebody getting an Apple Watch,

01:18:41   thinking it will solve their overly distracted

01:18:43   by notifications problem, and it just makes it worse,

01:18:46   or it doesn't have any meaningful improvement.

01:18:48   Because this requires a level of presence

01:18:53   and self-discipline that if you don't already have it,

01:18:59   this is not going to give it to you.

01:19:01   Like if your phone, first of all,

01:19:03   if you're getting notifications constantly,

01:19:05   notifications should be meaningful.

01:19:08   It should be actions or events that you need to

01:19:12   or really want to be notified of immediately.

01:19:15   Not something you can check when you have a chance,

01:19:19   something you actually need to be notified.

01:19:20   So like for example, almost nobody needs to be notified

01:19:23   about a Twitter @ reply, 'cause that's something

01:19:26   you can just check later when you have a chance.

01:19:29   I think framing it the way as like need to or want to,

01:19:31   like that's gonna be so different for people

01:19:33   that it's probably not a useful definition.

01:19:35   What it really comes down to is,

01:19:37   are you serving the device or is the device serving you?

01:19:40   Because framing it that way lets people decide

01:19:43   for themselves, no, the device is serving me

01:19:45   because I really need to know

01:19:47   every single ad reply or whatever, right?

01:19:49   You have to be honest with yourself about that.

01:19:50   You have to say, well, like,

01:19:52   I guess what it comes down to is,

01:19:55   if something happens on one of your electronic devices

01:19:57   and you find yourself compelled to address that

01:20:00   on those devices, no matter what that thing is,

01:20:03   and you find yourself regretting while you're doing it,

01:20:07   like that you feel compelled that like,

01:20:10   you are being torn away from something else,

01:20:13   that you say in yourself,

01:20:15   I would rather not be torn away right now,

01:20:17   but I have to because whatever.

01:20:19   Now sometimes that's a real have to,

01:20:20   like you have one of those jobs

01:20:21   where your boss can call you at all hours,

01:20:22   in which case you should get a different job.

01:20:24   But for the Twitter @ replies,

01:20:28   people turn that on because they rarely get @ replies.

01:20:30   But if an @ reply comes and they're in the middle

01:20:32   of a meaningful conversation with their spouse

01:20:34   and they feel like they have to go get that thing

01:20:36   and then their spouse gets angry,

01:20:39   you will regret having gone to look at that notification

01:20:42   even though you set that up yourself.

01:20:43   So at a certain point, you are serving the device.

01:20:47   The device has a mastery over your life.

01:20:49   You have given it more power than you really want to.

01:20:52   And then you have to start to question

01:20:54   When whatever that thing was happened,

01:20:56   and I did it like sort of compulsively and instinctively

01:20:58   and went to look at it, was I being thoughtful about that?

01:21:01   Did I think about the fact that,

01:21:03   did I weigh the potential importance of that Twitter @reply

01:21:06   against what I was doing at this moment?

01:21:09   Because just having notifications of Twitter @replies,

01:21:12   yeah, it's not for most people, I think,

01:21:14   but just having it in and of itself

01:21:16   is a reasonable thing to do,

01:21:18   especially if you don't get a lot of them,

01:21:20   but feeling compelled to look at it in a context

01:21:23   where if removed from the situation, you would say,

01:21:25   that was a bad call.

01:21:27   Now is not a time to look at Twitter @mentions,

01:21:29   but you just do it compulsively.

01:21:30   That's when you know you have a problem.

01:21:32   And the way to address that problem

01:21:33   is probably to turn off that notification.

01:21:35   And I think every individual person

01:21:37   have to decide for themselves

01:21:38   at what point they feel like the device

01:21:39   is now in control of them,

01:21:41   rather as opposed to them being in control of the device.

01:21:44   - Yeah, that's a really good way of looking at it.

01:21:47   And now I'm feeling terribly, terribly guilty.

01:21:49   So thanks for the shaming,

01:21:50   because hopefully this will cause me to reform my ways.

01:21:54   - I mean, that's why I want everyone to judge for themselves.

01:21:58   Do you feel that?

01:21:59   Don't let other people tell you,

01:22:00   don't let other people tell you

01:22:02   that you're looking at your phone too much, right?

01:22:03   But if someone tells you

01:22:05   you're looking at your phone too much

01:22:06   and you feel bad about it,

01:22:07   that means you agree with them, right?

01:22:10   Because then, even if it's just like,

01:22:12   is your phone making your life worse or better?

01:22:16   And only you can decide that.

01:22:18   But if enough people are annoyed at you,

01:22:20   them being annoyed at you is making your life worse.

01:22:22   So it's an indirect thing, you know what I mean?

01:22:23   Like that's how you have to balance this.

01:22:25   And I don't wanna get back to the kernel of truth

01:22:27   about the phone, about the watch being,

01:22:29   you know, having it closer to you.

01:22:31   If you have a problem with notifications

01:22:33   and sort of like electronic balancing with like life

01:22:37   that's happening in front of your eyes,

01:22:39   the phone is probably,

01:22:40   the watch is probably gonna make that worse

01:22:41   because it gives you more vectors

01:22:43   for the hardware to control you.

01:22:45   If you don't have a problem with that,

01:22:47   the watch has the potential to make it much, much better

01:22:49   because you're gonna be doing the same things,

01:22:51   you're managing your notifications,

01:22:53   you're not dealing with electronic devices

01:22:54   when you don't want to, they're not controlling you,

01:22:56   you're controlling them.

01:22:57   It's just that one aspect of it now becomes more efficient.

01:23:00   Now you don't have to fish your phone out of the pocket.

01:23:02   So like say you have 10 notifications during the day,

01:23:04   if six of them, you don't have to fish your phone

01:23:06   out of the pocket, that's a big win.

01:23:08   And you think, well, who cares?

01:23:08   Is it a big win?

01:23:09   It's like, who cares if the phone,

01:23:10   screen on my phone is like a couple of millimeters bigger.

01:23:13   Does that really make a big deal?

01:23:15   Small changes like that can make a big difference.

01:23:17   that's that's the big win of the watch it like, you know, I think a panzerino had the article about

01:23:23   Giving you time back

01:23:25   it will because it will if you take the same interactions you were going to have and make a whole bunch of them way more

01:23:30   efficient and

01:23:31   faster and like less less unlocking your phone and doing touch ID and or entering your code if you don't have touch ID and then

01:23:38   Swiping the notification and blah blah if you just turn your wrist up that is a huge win

01:23:42   But if your problem is that your hardware is controlling you now

01:23:46   you just took another piece of hardware, you just took another eel and slapped it onto

01:23:49   your wrist and brought it on the line parlance and that's just going to make your life worse,

01:23:52   not better.

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01:27:14   All right. Any other interesting bits that came from the review? The only other one that

01:27:20   I saw was on Gruber's review. He was extremely effusive about the sport band, and I'll read

01:27:29   a small segment here. "The sport band is a downright revelation. I'd go so far as to

01:27:34   call it the most comfortable watch band I've ever worn. I've rolled my eyes at

01:27:37   Apple's use of floor elastomer in lieu of rubber to describe the material of

01:27:41   these bands, but it truly does have a premium rich supple feel to it. The way

01:27:45   the end of the band tucks under the other side of the strap, a design Mark

01:27:49   Neusen first used at Ike Pod, is brilliant. Up until now it struck me as

01:27:53   odd that the $10,000 edition models came with the same bands as the entry model

01:27:57   349/399 sport watches. Having worn it, it now strikes me the other way around, that

01:28:02   the 349/399 sport watches are equipped with straps that can genuinely be described as

01:28:06   luxurious, flouro elastomer, or not.

01:28:10   That was pretty surprising because I have tried to dig and figure out from people who

01:28:16   may have had one of these on at one point or another whether or not the sport band was

01:28:20   any good.

01:28:21   And that seems to be, nobody has said, "Oh my God, it's the best."

01:28:25   A lot of people have said, "No."

01:28:28   And a lot of people have said, "Yeah, it's pretty good."

01:28:30   But this was like really excite,

01:28:33   John was really excited about it.

01:28:35   And that surprised me.

01:28:36   And I don't know if you guys had any interesting thoughts

01:28:37   to add on that.

01:28:39   - I mean, I've heard, I've also been poking around

01:28:41   with anybody who I can find.

01:28:43   And I've heard all over the map responses.

01:28:46   It really does seem very polarizing.

01:28:48   Some people just hate it.

01:28:51   Some people love it.

01:28:52   Some people think it feels good but looks bad.

01:28:55   I've heard the entire range.

01:28:56   It just seems very polarizing.

01:28:58   I think this is gonna be the case with a lot of the bands,

01:29:00   and part of the reason why I've had such anxiety

01:29:03   trying to figure out what the heck to pre-order

01:29:05   at 3 a.m. if I do that,

01:29:06   because you gotta basically pre-order something,

01:29:08   and then before you can even try it,

01:29:10   then go try it, and then maybe cancel or modify your order

01:29:14   if you change your mind.

01:29:15   And then who knows if there's gonna be

01:29:17   a four to six week delay on shipping, as some rumors say.

01:29:21   I don't wanna be without a watch for a while

01:29:24   as people are getting my app

01:29:25   and telling me all the ways it's breaking.

01:29:26   So it is tempting to pre-order something at 3 a.m.

01:29:31   and I don't really know which one yet

01:29:33   because again, the bands are gonna be

01:29:35   just all over the map with personal preference.

01:29:38   Some people are gonna think certain ones are ugly

01:29:40   that other people think are beautiful.

01:29:42   Some people are going to,

01:29:44   you're gonna think something will be good

01:29:46   until you actually try it and then realize,

01:29:47   oh, this either doesn't look good on me

01:29:50   or I don't like the way it feels

01:29:52   or I don't like the way it works or whatever.

01:29:54   and it's gonna be all over the map.

01:29:58   I think we're not gonna get a major consensus

01:30:00   on banned opinions because it is really

01:30:03   so up to personal preference.

01:30:06   - Yeah, I tend to think you're right.

01:30:07   Jon, anything to add?

01:30:09   - Yeah, just that people, you would think that wrists

01:30:11   are generally the same shape, right?

01:30:15   You would think, oh, well, all that matters

01:30:16   is maybe amount of arm hair or something like that,

01:30:18   but in my experience, as someone

01:30:20   with very strangely shaped wrists,

01:30:23   variations just just variations in like bone structure of the wrist can make one type of band

01:30:28   so uncomfortable that it is not feasible or it can make one type of band feel really good and so

01:30:35   i think park was right that like any watch uh the fact they have a million bands is good because

01:30:42   some bands are going to look really good but be uncomfortable or the opposite and that's why i

01:30:48   think for people who are thinking of buying one you should probably try them on just to make sure

01:30:54   because not only are these bands differently designed than a lot of watch bands that i've seen

01:30:58   but also especially for women are used to wearing a woman's watch which are very with a very thin

01:31:04   band all these bands are pretty wide and the same type of uh strap that you liked on a when you had

01:31:11   a very thin band you might not like that same material when it's thicker it might sit differently

01:31:15   on your wrist and of course the watch itself is much larger than some ladies' watches are,

01:31:20   like even the small one, it's a big rectangle of metal, so by all means everybody please go

01:31:25   to the store and try these on and spend some time with them. The best of course is to find a friend

01:31:29   who's an early adopter who bought their sight unseen and try theirs on because then maybe you

01:31:33   can use it for like a day or a couple hours instead of just trying it on for a few minutes

01:31:37   in the store. Yeah. Any other thoughts on the watch reviews? If I was going to write a review

01:31:42   of this the angle that i would take is relevant to this whole the idea of like a launch and launch

01:31:47   excitement so the way apple framed this and a group mentioned this as well as like that slide

01:31:53   they had about like well big revolutions in products we had like the original mac and the the

01:31:58   ipod and the iphone and the ipad and the watch is the next one and you see that grouping and it seems

01:32:04   like a reasonable grouping of things and they were talking specifically with the input methods of like

01:32:08   like the mouse and the click wheel and the iPod

01:32:11   and the touchscreen and now the digital crown or whatever.

01:32:13   But I think the watch is more derivative than any of those.

01:32:20   The reason the phone was so, technology and input wise,

01:32:24   the reason the phone was so exciting was because it was the,

01:32:27   you know, it was a confluence of several events.

01:32:30   It changed the form factor, made the phone all screen.

01:32:34   What it put on that screen was a touchscreen

01:32:35   that wasn't actually annoying to use.

01:32:36   Like it was a genre-defining interface.

01:32:41   And so people were just excited about it

01:32:44   because it was like the future.

01:32:45   It's like, what is this crazy thing?

01:32:46   I've never seen anything like this.

01:32:48   You know, the famous story about the other phone makers

01:32:50   thinking all the demos were faked

01:32:51   because there's no way they could make a real thing

01:32:53   like this, like it was amazing, right?

01:32:55   And that's why the iPhone launch was big

01:32:57   because people were just blown away by the tech

01:32:59   and it was just something they had never seen before,

01:33:02   incredibly radical and new.

01:33:03   And even, you know, it was ridiculously priced,

01:33:06   It was singular only, like it was a slow sales burn,

01:33:08   but there was huge amounts of excitement about it.

01:33:10   You know, the whole snarky thing of calling it

01:33:12   the Jesus phone, right?

01:33:14   With the watch, touch screens are not that new.

01:33:18   iOS we've seen, the app paradigm, as you know,

01:33:22   we understand that in many respects,

01:33:24   it looks like a differently sized iPhone

01:33:25   that you can strap on your wish.

01:33:26   And more importantly, it looks like other smartwatches.

01:33:30   Yeah, it's a screen thing with a band around it.

01:33:31   It looks like a watch.

01:33:32   There've been a bunch of other ones of those.

01:33:36   There's not as much excitement in terms of,

01:33:38   everyone's gotta be there on day one

01:33:42   to get this thing at launch.

01:33:43   And what I'm saying is I don't expect,

01:33:46   I don't think this is going to be as big a bang,

01:33:49   PR wise, launch wise, as the phone was.

01:33:52   It'll probably sell more than the phone

01:33:53   just because Apple is so much bigger now or whatever.

01:33:55   But I think this will be a slow burn

01:33:58   is what I'm getting at.

01:33:59   And it's because it doesn't have the,

01:34:02   it's not such a radical break as the other ones.

01:34:04   The Mac was a big thing, it was like this crazy computer with a mouse and the graphical

01:34:07   interface and bitmap displays and like just so much new all at once.

01:34:12   I think the watch will be more like the iPod where it's like, "Oh, it's an MP3 player.

01:34:16   I've seen those before.

01:34:17   What's the big deal about this MP3 player?"

01:34:18   "Oh no, this is an MP3 player you're like."

01:34:20   The wheel, eh, it's a wheel I guess.

01:34:23   How does that change things?

01:34:24   And it was like, "Well, you don't understand.

01:34:25   It changes things because we've got the hard drive and the firewire loading and the interface

01:34:30   and the integration with iTunes and eventually we're going to have the store."

01:34:32   Like it's a big story, you don't see the whole picture now,

01:34:34   but eventually the iPad's gonna be a big deal.

01:34:36   But the iPad was a slow, the iPad,

01:34:38   the iPod was a slow burn, right?

01:34:40   The watch is gonna be like that.

01:34:41   Well, it looks like a smartwatch, kinda like the iPhone.

01:34:43   I understand you got a little dial in there, so what?

01:34:45   I guess you'll probably have apps,

01:34:46   but what's the big deal?

01:34:48   And if all goes to plan, this will be a,

01:34:53   I think the launch is going as well as Apple

01:34:55   could have hoped it was,

01:34:56   and people are gonna try them on and sort of come in

01:34:58   and there'll be a big sales day or whatever,

01:35:00   and it's just, it's gonna have to gain momentum

01:35:02   build it's not going to be as big of a PR bang as the Mac or the iPhone was and

01:35:08   hopefully the press and the public will give the watch time to grow into what

01:35:14   Apple thinks it can be because if they like Parker said before if they sour on

01:35:19   it because of a bad version one it's much worse to have to dig yourself out

01:35:22   of the hole the momentum of the the phone was such that even though the

01:35:26   first one was kind of cruddy in retrospect the momentum was just so huge

01:35:29   It just carried us through the 3g 3gs and by the time people started really paying attention. The phone was actually good, right?

01:35:34   The watch may not have that luxury because the scrutiny is higher, but I fully expect the watch to

01:35:41   to reveal itself slowly to customers rather than to be a

01:35:46   Gigantic bang out of the gate and these reviews these crop of reviews for the first version

01:35:51   fit into that

01:35:54   Idea of the watch revealing itself slowly because I feel like it's revealing itself to these reviewers

01:35:59   Slowly as well and it will you know, maybe this one the version one won't you know?

01:36:03   I think these reviews are all accurate. They're an accurate reflection of the version one product, but I don't think that that reflection

01:36:09   Says much about the future of this product line as a thing inside Apple

01:36:16   Alright, so before we go

01:36:19   I have already spilled the beans and told you that I'm intending as I sit here tonight

01:36:25   to simply schedule a try-on appointment and then

01:36:28   Regret not having pre-ordered one as I fall in love with with the watch what you've told us so far

01:36:34   Is that is everything from you're not getting the first version?

01:36:37   You're getting the sport version to you're getting the black link bracelet, which is the highest anyone that's not ridiculously gold, right?

01:36:45   And and the the one that I'm sticking by is I'm going to make a try on appointment and see how I feel

01:36:50   But you're getting the link bracelet. Hmm

01:36:53   I hope not because God even though I am such a sucker for the look of it

01:36:57   I think first gen is that's that's aggressive. You might be able to reuse the bracelet with the next gen maybe

01:37:04   Yeah, and that's that's an interesting point like that. But the problem is that's still just a maybe right? That's a pretty big problem

01:37:11   - I'm just trying to bring Casey into

01:37:14   his Link bracelet destiny.

01:37:15   - I know, I mean, the reality is Casey,

01:37:18   like when there is one that you really, really want,

01:37:22   I think you should get the Link bracelet.

01:37:24   The question is whether this is that one.

01:37:27   And I think that's where we're all hesitating.

01:37:29   - It's definitely not that one.

01:37:30   It's certainly, you know, everybody knows

01:37:34   this is not that one.

01:37:35   It can't be, it can't possibly, it's the first version.

01:37:37   Like you absolutely, positively know

01:37:39   this is not going to be like,

01:37:41   you're not gonna get this and be super happy

01:37:43   with it for five years.

01:37:44   Guaranteed, like you specifically, Casey,

01:37:46   are not going to be super happy with this for five years.

01:37:48   Because in five years, can you imagine how much better

01:37:51   this watch is gonna be?

01:37:52   You're gonna know how much better it is,

01:37:53   and you're gonna be looking at your old cruddy thing going,

01:37:55   ugh.

01:37:56   (laughing)

01:37:57   So, yeah, just, yeah.

01:38:00   That's not gonna happen, so buy accordingly.

01:38:03   - But at the same time, though, it's a balance.

01:38:05   You know, this is a fashion item,

01:38:08   And many of us, myself included, Casey I think you too,

01:38:12   John, we'll see, but many of us, you know,

01:38:16   the fashionability to ourselves is important.

01:38:19   You know, like to me, and I think Casey, please let me know,

01:38:22   but I bet you'll agree, it's less about how it looks

01:38:26   to other people and more about how it looks to us,

01:38:29   how it makes us feel.

01:38:31   And so with a watch, with something like this,

01:38:33   like, you know, a lot of tech geeks like us

01:38:36   are gonna just go with the Sport because it's cheapest

01:38:39   and it does the same things as the other ones

01:38:40   and that's fine.

01:38:41   Or they wanna wait 'til version two and that's fine too.

01:38:43   I still might go with the Sport,

01:38:45   we'll get to that in a minute, I'll see what happens.

01:38:46   But you can't deny that a big part of the appeal

01:38:50   of these devices at all is the way they make you feel

01:38:54   about seeing it on your wrist.

01:38:57   And so I think you have to balance that

01:38:59   with the realities of the technology

01:39:02   and the realities of this being the version one.

01:39:04   You shouldn't get something that you're gonna really

01:39:06   not like wearing, you know, but at the same time,

01:39:09   you should be cognizant of the fact

01:39:11   that you're probably gonna be replacing it

01:39:12   in two years, say, or possibly less.

01:39:15   - Yeah, I completely agree, and I think you guys

01:39:17   both hit the nail on the head that if I was convinced

01:39:21   that I was going to just fall in love with this device,

01:39:24   leaving aside the aesthetics of it,

01:39:26   but I knew I'm just gonna freakin' love this thing,

01:39:29   then I would probably get the ridiculously expensive,

01:39:34   what is it, space black, something black.

01:39:36   - Yeah, the space black link bracelet with 1100 bucks.

01:39:40   - Right, if I was convinced

01:39:42   that I was going to love this device,

01:39:46   I would have to think long and hard

01:39:49   about whether or not I really wanna spend

01:39:50   over a thousand dollars on this thing,

01:39:52   but I would do it because I think it would make me happy

01:39:56   every time I looked down at my wrist,

01:39:57   and Marco, you hit the nail on the head.

01:39:58   The problem I'm having though,

01:39:59   is I'm getting less and less convinced

01:40:01   that I'm going to really fall in love with this device.

01:40:03   and if I'm not gonna fall in love with the device,

01:40:04   and if I were to get one at all,

01:40:06   which I'm still telling myself is questionable,

01:40:09   even though it probably isn't,

01:40:11   then why not get a Sport,

01:40:12   and so I don't regret it down the road.

01:40:15   Now, with that said, Marco, what's your plan?

01:40:18   - My plan changes like every day, so take this

01:40:20   with a career assault. - That sounds familiar.

01:40:23   - 'Cause as the new information comes out,

01:40:25   or as I think about some other consideration,

01:40:27   like, oh, wait a minute, what about, blah, blah, blah.

01:40:30   My worries here, as somebody who has not worn a watch

01:40:34   for 20 years, primarily for comfort and convenience.

01:40:38   And so comfort includes both the weight

01:40:41   and the type of band, and then convenience includes

01:40:44   how easy is it to take on and off,

01:40:47   and the sizing that goes along with that.

01:40:49   So like I said a number of times earlier,

01:40:51   my ideal band would be one that is fixed in size

01:40:55   so that I set it however fits me best,

01:40:58   and then I can attach it and detach it

01:41:00   without that size changing.

01:41:01   So I don't have to like find my size

01:41:04   every time I put it on and off.

01:41:05   The only bands that do that are the modern buckle,

01:41:08   which is too small for me, and the link bracelet.

01:41:11   From that point of view, the link bracelet is tempting

01:41:13   because I think it'll be really convenient

01:41:15   'cause you're gonna be taking this thing off every night

01:41:18   and possibly, you know, if you're gonna like,

01:41:19   you know, submerge your hands for some reason,

01:41:21   you know, you could take it off,

01:41:22   then like you're gonna be taking these things

01:41:24   on and off a lot, possibly more than other watches

01:41:27   depending on what your habits are with other watches.

01:41:29   But either way, it's gonna be going on and off a lot.

01:41:32   So you want it to be as unannoying as possible

01:41:36   during that process.

01:41:37   So with that said, I think the Link Bracelet

01:41:40   would be the ideal choice for that.

01:41:42   However, I also am worried about comfort

01:41:44   as a non-watch wearer and weight.

01:41:47   I'm worried, I kinda run hot compared to other people,

01:41:50   I guess, so I'm worried about sweatiness

01:41:52   and I'm worried about just feeling really heavy.

01:41:56   The link bracelet is the heaviest one,

01:41:58   that's not an addition.

01:41:59   I worry about that.

01:42:01   And I also, again, like you,

01:42:03   I don't want to have spent $1100

01:42:07   on this first generation watch,

01:42:10   and then in a year, or at most two years,

01:42:14   a much better one comes out,

01:42:16   and then this thing is worthless.

01:42:17   And I look back and I'm like,

01:42:18   I was such a fool for spending that much money

01:42:21   on version one.

01:42:22   So, and also, you know, you gotta figure out,

01:42:24   like you know from a non watch wearers point of view there are other

01:42:28   considerations for example if you ever type on a laptop metal watches click

01:42:33   against the wrist rest it's not a wrist rest I know the the wrist area below

01:42:37   your wrist that is made of metal that many people rest their wrists on you can

01:42:41   scratch the heck out of one of those things with a metal watch it at least

01:42:44   clicks and is very annoying if you're you know resting your arm on a hard

01:42:48   service a desk or a table it can click there with metal and you can get you

01:42:51   it over time like a wedding ring but it's still like you will be clicking a metal thing

01:42:55   against a surface a lot. Every single band they offer has something on the bottom, even

01:43:01   the sport band has a metal pin on the bottom that will hit whatever surface you're near

01:43:06   except the leather loop. Every other one has something like that. So that is a concern

01:43:11   as well. You know, sweatiness concerns. That's one of my worries with the fluridastomer band

01:43:18   sweatiness having that rubber there you know against my skin that I think that

01:43:21   would be a problem and for me having all those all those considerations the the

01:43:27   three that I was that I'm considering finally are the Milanese loop the

01:43:32   leather loop and the link bracelet the link bracelet I have basically ruled out

01:43:37   for for cost reasons I also like other people love the way they look to me I I

01:43:42   don't have any association with that except for older men like older men

01:43:46   always seem to have watches with link bracelets. I don't care either way on them, so I look

01:43:52   at link bracelets and they kind of look old fashioned to me and because of the weight

01:43:56   and the price as well, I'm ruling that out. And Milanese versus Leather Loop, they're

01:44:02   very similar, just one's made of metal and one's leather really, like they work the same

01:44:05   way basically. And I think between those two, I think I'm going Leather Loop because I believe

01:44:10   it will be more comfortable on me, even though it might be slightly sweatier, but I think

01:44:13   it'll be more comfortable. I think it will probably look better on me because I really

01:44:17   dress very casually and the Milanese is a little bit formal. So I dress very casually.

01:44:23   I wear a black t-shirt and jeans most of the time. So I think Black Leather Loop, and sorry

01:44:29   for this massive discussion but this is actually all I thought I put into this. So anyway,

01:44:33   what I will be preordering will be the 42 Black Leather Loop and I'm going stainless

01:44:39   So one of the options that I could do instead,

01:44:42   get one of the sport watches and then add a leather loop band

01:44:45   separately for $150 more.

01:44:48   You can do that with any of the bands except for the

01:44:50   Black Link or the Additions.

01:44:52   And that would cost about $150 less if I did that.

01:44:56   The problem is I think of, like what I said earlier

01:45:01   about balancing, how much will I be happy looking

01:45:04   at this thing on my wrist?

01:45:05   How much am I gonna want to wear this thing

01:45:07   this thing has a fashion item versus not wanting to spend

01:45:11   too much on generation one, I think the sport,

01:45:16   I'm just not gonna feel good about.

01:45:18   I don't look at the sport and say,

01:45:20   wow, I want that on my wrist.

01:45:21   I just don't.

01:45:23   That applies to both the bands and the appearance

01:45:25   of the watch body itself, even though it would be lighter.

01:45:29   I think the maximum comfort option,

01:45:32   for people who are very concerned about comfort,

01:45:34   the maximum comfort option, I believe,

01:45:36   will be the sport. And even if you don't like the sport band, then get a sport watch and

01:45:43   get the leather loop and you're still coming in cheaper than the steel with leather loop

01:45:48   and it's going to be lighter. But for me to strike that balance between what I actually

01:45:54   want to see on my wrist, what I actually think will look good on me, what I will be proud

01:45:59   to wear, but not having spent too much money on it, I like the 42 steel leather loop black.

01:46:06   was meandering but I hear you and it makes sense and I'm with you. Now John is the hairiest

01:46:14   of the three of us who is probably most concerned about the status of your arm hair. What is

01:46:20   your intention?

01:46:21   Well, it would be nice if Apple would just send me one to review and I would talk about

01:46:26   it on the show because like I'm not a watc-

01:46:30   Wait, wait, why are you the only one? I would like one too.

01:46:32   You guys are going to buy one anyway. They don't need to send you one but I'm not a-

01:46:36   They have to woo you.

01:46:37   - Yeah, I'm not a watch wearer.

01:46:38   I don't wear watches.

01:46:39   I'm really curious about this device.

01:46:43   You have to get it 'cause you're making an app for it.

01:46:45   You have to get it, right?

01:46:47   But I'm curious about the device.

01:46:50   I'm curious if this can make me wear a watch.

01:46:53   But it's very likely that if I were to get one,

01:46:56   it would end up in a drawer, right?

01:46:58   Like I would, that it would not take.

01:47:00   There would be like, I would try it out.

01:47:01   I would understand the experience it's providing.

01:47:03   And I would say, you know what?

01:47:05   still don't like ever wearing anything on my wrist because I don't generally

01:47:09   like wearing things. That's why I don't wear something on my wrist but I'm

01:47:12   I'm willing to believe that this could change my mind about that so if I did

01:47:16   get one I think I would just have to get the cheapest possible one because I have

01:47:20   no faith in this thing being a long-standing thing. I know the next

01:47:22   versions are gonna be better. I don't want anything that's sluggish. It's

01:47:27   actually worse if I did end up really liking the watch like oh this is really

01:47:30   now an integral part of my life for whatever reason I would regret even more

01:47:34   getting the crappy model, or the fact that the version one is crappy, I would be like,

01:47:40   "Man, if I knew that the watch was going to be such an important part of my life, I should

01:47:44   wait until version two or version three."

01:47:45   Hell, I waited for the iPhone 6 to get an iPhone, right?

01:47:48   And I probably would still be getting iPod touches if I had, like, I just don't entirely

01:47:54   see the place this fits into my life, but because it's an interesting gadget, I would

01:47:57   like to play with it for a week.

01:47:59   So it would be ideal if Apple would send me one, and then I would play with it for a week,

01:48:03   then guilt-free when that week is over send it back to Apple and say I've

01:48:06   gotten the Apple watch experience at the end of that experience I'll either know

01:48:09   that I should go out and buy the sport model because I really like this watch

01:48:14   and I'll buy the cheapest one now I'll get a version 2 or I would know that I

01:48:19   should go out and buy the sport model because that model is actually going to

01:48:23   be sufficient for my needs and I could use it for a long period of time there's

01:48:25   pretty much no world in which I pay a thousand bucks for one of these things

01:48:30   without knowing first that it's, there's no way,

01:48:33   because I know that it's like sluggish and doesn't quite,

01:48:37   you know, it's a version one product.

01:48:38   There's no way I can justify spending $1,000 on it.

01:48:41   Even though I really hate the look of the sport models.

01:48:44   I don't like the sort of non-shiny aluminum.

01:48:48   I don't like the fluorescent bands,

01:48:50   the fluorescent, floristomer,

01:48:51   whatever it is, fluorescent bands.

01:48:53   I don't like the colors, I don't like the white.

01:48:54   The black is the only one I could tolerate.

01:48:56   I don't really like the sport band.

01:48:58   I have wrist shape and hair concerns.

01:49:01   Like it's just, you know, I'm almost, it's almost like I would buy the thing, take off

01:49:07   the straps and then like use it as a pocket watch or as like the world's tiniest iPod.

01:49:11   You know, I guess you have to strap it.

01:49:13   Isn't that an iPhone?

01:49:14   No, you know what I mean?

01:49:16   I like, I just, I just not a watch guy.

01:49:18   I don't know.

01:49:19   So right now I really, especially if you two get them, I feel like we'll have the show

01:49:23   cover that you guys can talk about them and I can, you know, I'll go to the store and

01:49:27   and I'll play with them, but man,

01:49:29   I really don't see myself getting one of these.

01:49:30   Although I would definitely like to play with one for a week.

01:49:32   So that's the situation I find myself in.

01:49:35   If I do get one, it's gonna be the cheapest possible one.

01:49:37   And then I look at the cheap ones,

01:49:38   I don't even know what the heck I would get.

01:49:40   I guess the gray aluminum was black,

01:49:43   which I don't find attractive at all,

01:49:45   but at least it's not Day-Glo green or white or, ugh.

01:49:50   I don't know.

01:49:51   I really do like the stainless steel ones

01:49:52   as a little piece of sculpture.

01:49:55   Still wouldn't want it on my wrist,

01:49:56   but I think those look the nicest.

01:49:58   - All right, so in summary,

01:50:00   I definitely won't be getting

01:50:02   the 42 millimeter black link bracelet.

01:50:04   Marco definitely will be getting

01:50:06   the 42 millimeter stainless steel

01:50:07   with the black leather loop.

01:50:08   - Well, hold on, I said I would be pre-ordering that one,

01:50:11   but that's gonna be before I have a chance

01:50:12   to try any of them.

01:50:14   So I might change my mind, but I don't think so.

01:50:17   I bet this is gonna be the one I end up with.

01:50:19   - And Jon definitely, and when I say definitely,

01:50:22   I really mean it this time,

01:50:23   won't be getting the 42 millimeter space gray sport.

01:50:28   - And I haven't even seen these watches in person either,

01:50:30   by the way, in any context.

01:50:32   So I would- - Nor have I.

01:50:33   - I will look at them at the store in person.

01:50:35   It could be that maybe I'll be won over by something

01:50:38   that I think is ugly in pictures or vice versa.

01:50:41   But either way, no plans to buy one.

01:50:44   - All right, now I think it would be silly of me not to ask

01:50:48   are spouses looking into buying them?

01:50:51   and I can tell you that Aaron is completely uninterested

01:50:54   in every plausible, impossible way.

01:50:57   So Marco, what does Tiff think?

01:50:59   - She is interested in general in the concept,

01:51:03   but not that excited about version one,

01:51:06   and she knows, see she's playing it smart.

01:51:10   She said she knows version two is gonna be way better,

01:51:13   and so she is going to wait.

01:51:16   She really actually doesn't want version one,

01:51:18   and she also has a little bit of skepticism

01:51:20   about whether she wants to wear a watch at all

01:51:22   'cause she also right now doesn't.

01:51:24   We are a watchless family right now.

01:51:26   So she's going to at least sit out version one

01:51:29   as far as she knows so far.

01:51:31   And of course, look, all of our opinions could change.

01:51:34   Maybe once we see them, things will be different.

01:51:36   But right now she is saying wait for version two.

01:51:40   - Well, version three though, because like you imagine,

01:51:43   do we agree that version two

01:51:44   will have the same case as this?

01:51:45   - No.

01:51:46   - You don't think so?

01:51:47   - The iPad two didn't have the same case as the iPad one.

01:51:50   the iPhone 2 didn't have the same case as the iPhone 1.

01:51:52   - I know, but I think of the watch specifically.

01:51:54   I mean, with the exception of possible changes

01:51:56   to the air gap, I expect the second version,

01:51:59   especially if it comes, like you said, as early.

01:52:01   You know, if you consider this a six months delayed product,

01:52:03   I think that the next version of this watch

01:52:05   will externally look more or less the same

01:52:08   and just have an upgraded CPU

01:52:09   and maybe a slightly better slash different screen

01:52:12   and come out fairly shortly after this one.

01:52:14   That's my prediction there.

01:52:15   So if that's the case,

01:52:17   version three of the watch is the one you want

01:52:19   because you're hoping at that point it slims down

01:52:21   or it has a different look.

01:52:22   I guess it depends on how much you like this look.

01:52:24   - See, I think that the next one, version two,

01:52:27   will retain the same connections for the bands,

01:52:32   but I think its physical dimensions may change.

01:52:35   So it'll be a little thinner,

01:52:36   but the bands will remain functional on the new one,

01:52:40   on the second gen.

01:52:41   - They could shave a few millimeters

01:52:43   if they did the screen lamination, I suppose.

01:52:44   So then in that case,

01:52:45   it wouldn't strictly be exactly identical, you know?

01:52:48   like that it would actually be thinner, but not,

01:52:50   but like the same little Airstream trailer,

01:52:53   same number of buttons, same digital crown design,

01:52:55   like the whole, you know,

01:52:56   that it would be recognizably the same watch.

01:52:58   - Yeah, maybe.

01:52:59   I wouldn't really bet confidently either way.

01:53:04   - All right, and then Jon, what is Tina planning?

01:53:06   - I tried to pitch her on it,

01:53:07   like because it's better for me

01:53:10   if I can convince someone else

01:53:12   that they really want that,

01:53:14   like if she was super excited about it,

01:53:16   by all means we would get whatever one

01:53:17   she's super excited about as long as it's not gold, obviously. And then she would be

01:53:22   the guinea pig and be like, "What do you think? How is this working?" You know, blah, blah,

01:53:25   blah. And I wouldn't have to have something on my wrist, but she is not excited about

01:53:27   it, so she's not getting one either.

01:53:29   - So only two of the six of us are getting one.

01:53:32   - I'm not admitting it to myself, and you're probably right, but sitting here now, no,

01:53:38   it's only you.

01:53:39   - Oh, you're definitely getting one. I think the only question is which one.

01:53:43   Yeah, we'll see. Remind me of all of this in like two weeks.

01:53:48   Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, Igloo, Audible, and Hover, and we will see

01:53:52   you next week.

01:53:54   [MUSIC]

01:54:04   Oh it was accidental.

01:54:06   Accidental.

01:54:07   John didn't do any research.

01:54:09   Margo and Casey wouldn't let him.

01:54:12   Cause it was accidental.

01:54:14   Accidental.

01:54:15   Oh it was accidental.

01:54:16   Accidental.

01:54:17   And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm.

01:54:22   And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at

01:54:28   [Music]

01:54:56   I have no doubt that the best selling one among nerds, best selling one among listeners

01:55:04   of our show, among listeners of any tech podcast, possibly among listeners of any podcast, and

01:55:10   definitely among attendees of WWDC this year will be the 42mm space gray sport model with

01:55:18   the black band. That is, like, we're going to see a million of those things among people

01:55:23   we know.

01:55:24   I think you're probably right because of the sport. I think the space gray is far and away the best-looking one

01:55:29   They just sound like little inert ones kind of like the empty

01:55:32   What were they the empty lifesavers? I'm a cases

01:55:35   Do you remember those like comp USA when the I'm a came in a whole bunch of colors?

01:55:38   They gave retailers empty I'm at cases with no guts inside them

01:55:43   But just the case themselves to see what the different colors look like

01:55:45   I would like a watch that is a strap the case the glass but nothing inside it. No screen

01:55:51   no internals right just so you could have it on your wrist occasionally like fiddle with the dial

01:55:56   i guess they would still have to have the dial connected to something or whatever press the

01:55:59   button maybe they leave a vibration engine in there too and it would also occasionally vibrate

01:56:03   but but nothing you know it doesn't actually doesn't actually function just to get you used

01:56:07   to the idea of like do you want something on your wrist because that's what i need i need it's like

01:56:11   a training bra for watches i need something oh my god get me used to the idea or whatever the

01:56:17   equivalent is in like horse bridles or whatever someone who knows someone who plays polo can tell

01:56:21   tell us all about it. Like, just something to put on and get me used to the idea that

01:56:24   something's going to be gripping my risk. And if I get used to that, then maybe I'll

01:56:27   pay the extra money to get the fully functional version.

01:56:29   I find it a little weird that you're so stressed out, both of you are so stressed out about

01:56:33   having something on your wrist. Because I was a watch person for forever. And I gave

01:56:38   it up for years. I couldn't tell you how many, I'd say maybe four or five years I gave it

01:56:43   up, probably more than that, actually. And I didn't wear a watch. And when I started

01:56:48   wearing a watch again, which was maybe a year or so ago, at first I was like, "Oh, God,

01:56:54   what is on my wrist?" And that lasted like two days, and that was it. And then suddenly

01:56:58   I was extremely happy about having a super convenient timepiece right on my wrist. So,

01:57:04   John, your hair challenges aside, I think that you're overblowing a bit. You're overblowing

01:57:10   a bit how difficult it is.

01:57:12   >> John

01:57:12   Keep in mind that I don't even wear my wedding ring anymore.

01:57:16   I wore my wedding ring for years after getting married.

01:57:19   And you're right, you do basically get used to it.

01:57:22   Eventually, I got unused to it again.

01:57:25   And even the wedding ring went off.

01:57:26   So like this type of thing where you do kind of get used to it, but it is still kind of

01:57:33   slightly inconvenient and occasionally snags on things and occasionally pulls an arm hair

01:57:38   and you gotta, you know, remember it and deal with it.

01:57:41   That's the type of thing that I say that I have antibodies against that.

01:57:46   That I will eventually say, "You know what?

01:57:48   Yes, it's not a big deal that I have my wedding ring all the time.

01:57:50   Yes, it's a very comfortable ring.

01:57:52   It's fine.

01:57:53   But every once in a while, it annoys me.

01:57:54   So why am I doing this?"

01:57:55   And so, no, I don't wear my wedding ring.

01:57:57   And this watch would have to earn its place to my wrist by doing something useful for

01:58:03   me.

01:58:05   I'm not even entirely sure that my phone has earned its place because, honestly speaking,

01:58:09   they continue to update the iPod Dutch,

01:58:10   I would probably still be buying them.

01:58:12   - Now, when you go out, do you feel naked

01:58:16   if you don't have your phone on your person?

01:58:17   Because when I-- - Absolutely not.

01:58:19   - Okay, now what about you, Marco?

01:58:21   - Oh yeah, I would, when I go walk the dog,

01:58:26   I don't bring a wallet or usually any kind of keys

01:58:29   or anything, no cash, no identification,

01:58:32   but I bring my phone.

01:58:34   Like, I feel okay leaving the house

01:58:35   without a wallet, on foot at least,

01:58:37   but I would not leave without my phone.

01:58:40   - Yeah, see, and I think that, well, John is John,

01:58:43   but Marco, I think that you will come to that point

01:58:46   with the watch very quickly, much quicker than you expect.

01:58:49   - If it does something useful for you,

01:58:51   I mean, think of all the times you saw me

01:58:53   before I got my iPhone 6.

01:58:55   It's not like I was carrying my other cell phone with me

01:58:57   most of the time, it's like I didn't,

01:58:59   a phone, I didn't care.

01:59:01   I have to--

01:59:01   - Well, you were hiding it from us.

01:59:03   - Well, no, but like I was, you know,

01:59:04   how many times did you see me take or make a call

01:59:06   on that phone.

01:59:07   Most of the time it wasn't with me,

01:59:08   and if it wasn't with me, it wasn't doing anything.

01:59:09   Or it'd only be with me at like,

01:59:12   like that little thing you keep in the pocket by your door

01:59:14   to break the glass in case your car goes off into the water.

01:59:17   Like it's only there for emergencies.

01:59:19   It's not there to actually be used,

01:59:21   or it doesn't have a place in my life.

01:59:22   I have to remember to bring my wallet with me

01:59:23   so I don't get, you know, pulled over

01:59:25   and not have my license, right?

01:59:27   I travel light.

01:59:29   And the watch, it has the advantage

01:59:33   that I guess I would have to strap it to myself

01:59:35   in the morning and it would just always be with me but I can imagine forgetting to do

01:59:38   that and getting to work and going "Oh, another morning I forgot to put on my watch, that

01:59:41   thing that I bought for 300 something dollars that I still haven't found a use for."

01:59:44   [ Silence ]