0:00:00This episode is brought to you by audible the leading provider of downloadable audiobooks go to audible podcast.com
0:00:06Slash ATP to learn more
0:00:09And you're gonna have like 16 hours in your car. Oh, yeah, you're gonna be gonna burn out the butt massager
0:00:15So true
0:00:21Should we tell the public when we were actually recording this so that if anything big happens next week that they know
0:00:29Yeah, we probably should. So today it is June 21, which is a Friday.
0:00:35The longest day of the year.
0:00:36Is it really?
0:00:37By some times, yes. It is the solstice.
0:00:40Ah, right, right, right. So we are recording today because John is traveling next week,
0:00:45and we didn't want to leave our beloved fans/listeners without an episode next week.
0:00:51So we're recording very early, and we'll release a week from today.
0:00:55So, when Apple buys Nintendo on Monday, we won't know about it.
0:01:00Well, I thought the plan was you were going to buy Nintendo on Monday, then sell it to
0:01:04Apple, and then they would just shut it down and eat it alive.
0:01:08Is that not the plan?
0:01:09Not a bad idea.
0:01:10I mean, that would give us more to talk about, at least.
0:01:12But then John wouldn't be able to talk about it.
0:01:14I would just call you and just talk alone without John.
0:01:16Oh my God, that would make him so angry.
0:01:18It would be so funny.
0:01:20I guess somebody bought Nintendo, huh?
0:01:22Anything to say about that?
0:01:23Nope, not really.
0:01:24Not really, okay. I guess we'll move on. Let's talk about the Mac Pro some more.
0:01:28John, what would you do? I mean, honestly, you'd be so upset.
0:01:31I would think I would actually write a blog post about that. That's how momentous that
0:01:36would be. You'd be so angry it would drive you to write
0:01:38a blog post. No, I'd be so motivated. Yeah, there's so
0:01:42many things I want to write about, but it's like, "Eh, don't have time. Gotta go back
0:01:45to fretting about my review." That's true. How's that going?
0:01:51I'm fretting about it.
0:01:52Well, at least it's not July.
0:01:54Yeah, no, that's why I didn't say I'm writing.
0:01:58I'm fretting about it as a full-time activity.
0:02:02I'm still gathering resources and trying to come up with an outline and thinking about,
0:02:07"Oh, God, look at all the stuff I have to write."
0:02:10And then also thinking, "Maybe it'll be really short this year.
0:02:12I don't know."
0:02:13I mean, you've got to figure, they're changing less and less in each release as the release
0:02:17time has gotten shorter, right?
0:02:20Yeah, more or less, but like, I don't know. I'll have to see. I think it will be shorter.
0:02:24I think that's been the trend, because they have, like you said, they've been doing less,
0:02:28but you never know when I'm going to go off on some weird tangent.
0:02:30Yeah, maybe knowing you, you're probably not going to make the review shorter. It'll just
0:02:35give you more space and time to expand on things that you would have otherwise not gotten
0:02:39– not had time to get to.
0:02:40Well, like the 10.6 review, I thought that was going to be super short, because like
0:02:44Apple's coming out up front, zero new features. Like, oh, this is going to be a short review.
0:02:47And it was shorter, but it wasn't as short as I thought it was going to be.
0:02:51Was it like a few thousand words less?
0:02:53It wasn't a whole lot shorter?
0:02:55Yeah, and this one I think will be shorter still, but we'll see.
0:02:58Quantity is not the thing.
0:02:59Just quality.
0:03:00I want it to be interesting and good.
0:03:02So I'm going to concentrate on that, assuming I ever finish fretting and start writing.
0:03:06Fair enough.
0:03:08So speaking of shorter things, this might be a short episode, because we have a laundry
0:03:12list of miscellaneous topics, but I don't know how much we'll actually get to.
0:03:14Casey, come on.
0:03:15You know us.
0:03:16Now that I've stated it's a shorter episode, we're going to go for two hours so everyone
0:03:19buckle up.
0:03:20Any time John and Dan would say, "Oh, this is going to be a short one of Hypercritical,"
0:03:25I would always immediately take out my iPhone from walking the dog and just look at the
0:03:30timestamp and just see how much… and it's always like 110 minutes remaining or something
0:03:35like that.
0:03:36We went through this.
0:03:37My listeners did a good job and did statistical regression analysis to see that me saying
0:03:42it was going to be a shorter show did not, in fact, make the show longer and actually
0:03:47made it slightly shorter. And I don't know enough about statistics to know whether—like,
0:03:51the statisticians argued amongst themselves whether it was significant or not, but there
0:03:55was no clear trend of the opposite. It just seems that way. It's like, you know, it
0:03:59seems like it because it's the opposite of what you would expect and it stands out
0:04:03in your memory. But in reality, they were actually not way longer.
0:04:07I love that both your audience and you know that.
0:04:11That somebody actually went…
0:04:13Several people, several people, yes.
0:04:15Someone put the link in the show notes about it.
0:04:18Oh, that's fantastic.
0:04:19All right, so one of the things I wanted to ask you guys what you thought about, and this
0:04:24may or may not take very long, but there's been a couple, or there were a couple of new
0:04:29Apple videos that were shown on the Keynote Monday, or I believe they were both Keynote
0:04:35Keynote Monday. And the first one was the one that was at the very beginning of the
0:04:41keynote itself. And I don't know if it has a title, it probably does and I'm not aware
0:04:45of, but it was a fairly abstract black and white kind of almost essay about what Apple
0:04:54does in order to design products. And to my recollection, I don't remember them ever having
0:04:59started with a video. And I think we talked about this briefly one or two episodes ago,
0:05:03but they actually started with a video this year and I thought it was a very interesting
0:05:06video that basically said, "Hey, listen."
0:05:09The way I interpreted it was, "This is how we do our thing and if you don't like it,
0:05:14tough nuts."
0:05:15And I was curious what you two had to say about that.
0:05:17They used to start with the Mac PC ads.
0:05:21Remember when they started a couple of keynotes with those?
0:05:24Didn't they start last year's keynote with the—
0:05:26Oh, with the GarageBand thing?
0:05:27No, no, no.
0:05:28The guy walking in the woods who was blind, using an iPhone.
0:05:30That wasn't the start.
0:05:31the start. I mean, "start" means like lights dim, everyone gets ready to hear something,
0:05:35and instead of a person walking out on stage, they just play a video. And I think the only
0:05:39other times they've done that are when they were showing ads, like the old Mac PC ads
0:05:45with Justin Long and Hodgman.
0:05:46Well, you can kind of argue that they're all ads, right?
0:05:50But like television ads that were going to run on television, they would play that. Or
0:05:53custom ones where this was not going to actually run on television, but those characters come
0:05:58But the difference about this one is it wasn't it wasn't fun. It wasn't supposed to be like funny and it wasn't an
0:06:04advertisement using known properties or showing a product or something it was more like a
0:06:09Mission statement kind of a
0:06:13statement of philosophy or whatever and I
0:06:17Thought as I said, I think on the first in the podcast we did right after the keynote that that was like, okay
0:06:24This is gonna be something big like, you know
0:06:26Like when a video begins with in the course of human events like you know
0:06:30Well, oh my god
0:06:32Apple is start opening an Apple store on the moon and they're whatever like it's gonna be something
0:06:38momentous or significant for the company or that maybe they were buying Nintendo like you know
0:06:42I mean like something at that level and what followed in the keynote did not live up to that lofty goal
0:06:47and so then in hindsight the video which is beautifully produced and very interesting and
0:06:51and contains a lot of accurate content about how Apple sees itself and how we see Apple
0:06:57comes off as pretentious because what they released was great and awesome, but that video
0:07:05should have been saved for when they do something more momentous.
0:07:10So you did or did not like it all the time?
0:07:12I loved the video.
0:07:13I thought it was beautiful.
0:07:14It was nicely done.
0:07:15You understand what it's saying, but I feel like it was out of balance.
0:07:18You can't start with that.
0:07:22And everyone's like, "Oh my God, what is it going to be?"
0:07:25And what it is is great, but not like, you know, I don't know.
0:07:29I mean, maybe when could have Apple have gotten away with that?
0:07:31They can get away with it at the original Mac intro and probably the iPhone intro.
0:07:36That's about it.
0:07:37You really think it was overblown?
0:07:38I didn't think it was overblown at all.
0:07:40Slightly.
0:07:41It was just slightly overblown.
0:07:42Not ridiculously overblown, but slightly.
0:07:43I don't know.
0:07:44I wouldn't say that either.
0:07:46And by the way, I should point out, the chatroom is saying that last year, the Siri comedy
0:07:51stand-up video, that was the intro last year, wasn't it?
0:07:54Yeah, because they did a little GarageBand bit, like, well, it was like a rimshot drum
0:07:59roll.
0:08:00Yeah, it was like "Series Comedy Act."
0:08:03Thanks for that.
0:08:04Right.
0:08:05I believe that was the intro, so I think they're right.
0:08:07Anyway, I don't think this year's intro video was overblown or overstayed in the case at
0:08:12all.
0:08:13I mean, looking at the keynote, right afterwards, we were all excited, and as you said, we all
0:08:20thought it was pretty great. Now, with some time for it to sink in and get a little bit
0:08:24less shiny looking back on it, I still think it was awesome. I still think it was a really,
0:08:28really great keynote. It was one of the best ones we've had for years.
0:08:31I agree.
0:08:33And there was a lot. Not only was the energy really great, and the showmanship was really
0:08:39with the exception of that weird car demo.
0:08:41But besides that, everything was great.
0:08:44And then what they showed us was also pretty great.
0:08:47You had this revolutionary change in iOS,
0:08:53a nice update to OS X with mediocre scale improvements,
0:08:58but a nice update.
0:09:01But the big thing was iOS.
0:09:02And then this surprise Mac Pro, which to most people
0:09:05doesn't matter, but to a few people,
0:09:07including the three of us, it's really interesting and extremely surprising. Plus, better MacBook
0:09:14Airs. I think it was a really good keynote.
0:09:16Yeah, but if you're going to explain your philosophy, the products they introduced were
0:09:22not out of character for the company or shocking or going to knock the industry on its ear
0:09:28or anything like that. And so that's why it's out of balance a little bit.
0:09:32Maybe iOS 7 might.
0:09:33I think it would be better if that video was just on their website, it would be fine, but
0:09:39using it as a lead-in to introduce a bunch of products that more or less everybody expected
0:09:43and that aren't like the original Mac or the iPhone, where it's just like nobody saw that
0:09:50coming and it was just out of left field and it far exceeds these expectations.
0:09:54I don't think it's crazily out of balance, it's just a little bit out of balance.
0:09:57I do think the keynote was great.
0:09:58I think all the announcements were great.
0:10:00I think it was very impressive again, except for the car thing.
0:10:04But it's tough to pull that off.
0:10:06Because all those things they said, you want to say those things, and it's difficult to
0:10:10say them without sounding a little bit full of yourself.
0:10:14You're telling them why you're great, and you have to do it in a way that isn't insulting,
0:10:18and it's very difficult to pull that off.
0:10:21Think different is kind of similar.
0:10:23Think different kind of pulled it off because there was no attachment.
0:10:25It wasn't leading to any sort of product.
0:10:26It was just pure, "This is the philosophy of the company."
0:10:29That didn't sound pretentious, that sounded foolhardy, perhaps.
0:10:32Because you almost went bankrupt.
0:10:34You've got nothing.
0:10:35What the hell do you think you're going to make?
0:10:36A teal computer?
0:10:37So what, right?
0:10:38And in hindsight, it looks good, right?
0:10:40But here, I was just in the context of using that as the lead-in.
0:10:45They didn't put anything in there that they needed that video.
0:10:50The Johnny Ive videos where he tells you about their philosophy are more product-focused
0:10:54and would match up better with a bunch of product announcements versus like the philosophical
0:10:59thing with something revolutionary that, you know, if they're going to enter some new business
0:11:03or something, maybe I can see that. But anyway, I like the video. I watch it again. Every
0:11:07time I watch it, I'm impressed by whoever made this video did an awesome job. It's very
0:11:10clever and nice and tasteful, and I do like it.
0:11:14Well, wouldn't you also, I mean, the video also sets the stage for iOS 7 specifically.
0:11:20It's specifically about, you know, clearing away everything, starting over again, you
0:11:23You know, taking away what's unnecessary.
0:11:25But they had their own iOS 7 intro video, which was also very good, but so much more product-focused,
0:11:29and it kind of hit some of the same points.
0:11:31Yeah, I mean, I think that's why it was there.
0:11:33This was like laying the foundation for the iOS 7 video later on,
0:11:37and for us to accept that the iOS 7 design decisions were correct and inevitable.
0:11:44Well, here's what I think that video was a lead-in for.
0:11:47I think it was a lead-in for the Tim Cook era,
0:11:49where this is the first big party for Tim Cook's newly rearranged Apple and what they can do.
0:11:55And that, I mean, it wasn't stated as such, but in hindsight it looks like if you had to say,
0:12:00"What was that video about?" Because it wasn't about a new Mac Pro, and I think it was kind of
0:12:05about iOS 7, but the iOS 7 video was more about that. It was more about, it's like Tim Cook's
0:12:11thing different, not really, but like he's saying, "Here we are, this is the new Apple,"
0:12:16the forestall-less Apple, I guess, the new Tim Cook Apple with something new showing
0:12:21that we really can move on from all the things that Steve Jobs created just to do something
0:12:26great in his absence, something that he didn't foresee and didn't have a hand in.
0:12:31In hindsight, I think that's what that video will match up best with.
0:12:35See, and what I think what the video did for me was, you know, Apple hadn't said anything
0:12:42since what, October, November, something like that?
0:12:44What was it, the iPad Mini release?
0:12:45Is that right?
0:12:46was the last Apple event. Right, so this was, to me it kind of set the stage for
0:12:51here's, here's Apple. I know we haven't said anything for almost a year now or
0:12:56eight months, whatever the number was. Here's kind, let me, let's just remind
0:12:59everyone this is how we roll and this is what we do and we're gonna keep that
0:13:04mindset while we show you all this cool crap with the exception of the weird car
0:13:08demo. And I think it was a really nice way to set the stage. Was it overblown? I
0:13:13I mean, I don't think it was, but I can see your point, John.
0:13:16But I think it was all about setting the stage for,
0:13:19this is Apple.
0:13:20This is-- we are Apple.
0:13:22This is what we care about.
0:13:23And if you don't like that, shove off.
0:13:25But this is how the rest-- the next two hours are going to be.
0:13:29I don't know, that's what I thought.
0:13:31OK, so what about-- did you guys watch the video that they did
0:13:34not show during the keynote, which is called making--
0:13:37or I don't know if it's called making a difference one app
0:13:39at a time, but--
0:13:40Something like that, yeah.
0:13:41It was something like that.
0:13:42It was like an eight minute video or something along those lines.
0:13:45I haven't even watched it.
0:13:47It's interminable.
0:13:48It's long.
0:13:49It's ten minutes long, but it seems long.
0:13:52T-L-D-W?
0:13:53But I watched the whole thing.
0:13:55It is beautifully produced.
0:13:56It is nice.
0:13:57It's heartwarming.
0:13:59But it really depends on your goodwill towards Apple to accept the connection between Apple
0:14:04and all the good things that they're showing happening in there.
0:14:07They are good things, but are they necessarily related to Apple?
0:14:11helps people in all sorts of ways, and all sorts of companies are behind that technology.
0:14:15It's good that Apple's technology helps people in that way, but I don't think it's a distinguishing
0:14:23characteristic that makes Apple stand out, unlike the design video which shows what they
0:14:30put in that design video are the ways that Apple is different than most other companies,
0:14:35whereas I think any company that makes a technology product that can be used to help people could
0:14:39could have made a video like the one that Apple made there. Although at least it shows
0:14:42that Apple cares that this is how their products are, this is what they're thinking of when
0:14:46they're making their products, they want to see this type of outcome. But it's easy to
0:14:48be cynical about it. And you know, like Monsanto could have made the same ad, it would have
0:14:53been like, "Damn them, this is not really what Monsanto is like." And with Apple, like,
0:14:57that's kind of what Apple's like. But on the other hand, what technology company, Microsoft
0:15:01could have made the same video. Their products are helping people in similar ways, you know?
0:15:05Yeah, I really liked it. Part of the reason I liked it was because it featured Charlottesville, Virginia,
0:15:09which is just an hour west of here, and I used to live there. But beyond that, I thought it was really
0:15:14touching and heartwarming, much like the Blind Hiker guy from last year's keynote.
0:15:20I just thought it was well done. And you're right that, you know, anyone could have made a video
0:15:25like this, but I love that Apple cares enough to not only make a video that's like one or two
0:15:30minutes, but they made like an eight or nine minute video all about why and how their devices
0:15:37literally improve people's lives.
0:15:39And I just think it's cool that they even pay lip service to that being a priority,
0:15:43whether or not it is a priority.
0:15:46Although I would argue it is, given all their accessibility work and things of that nature.
0:15:50I don't know, Marco, what did you think?
0:15:51Well, you didn't see the videos.
0:15:53Never mind.
0:15:54I don't care about you.
0:15:55It would have been, I mean, like the reason the hiker thing worked for me, I think, is
0:15:57because Tim was there doing the intro and afterwards talking about it to say, "This
0:16:03is not just a heartwarming video. Let me tell you personally from my heart in a convincing
0:16:06way that this is what makes me get out of bed in the morning. This is what I'm trying
0:16:11to do with the company." And he's the CEO. That makes that one land more, whereas having
0:16:16this video is kind of out there as a corporate statement.
0:16:19It's nice and all. I think it's fine, but especially at 10 minutes long, if you're going
0:16:24to use it as a something to represent your company. No one's going to watch that 10-minute
0:16:29long video. Very few people are, I think.
0:16:31Well, except you and me, apparently. Certainly not Marco.
0:16:33I haven't even watched it. I have so many Apple videos that I want to watch. I still
0:16:39have like eight or nine sessions that I wanted to watch that I didn't get a chance to see.
0:16:43Yeah. See, that's another thing I'm doing instead of writing.
0:16:44I felt the entire plane ride home, I was watching sessions. And even like the day after I got
0:16:50home watching sessions. See, now remember we were talking before about how once you
0:16:55leave that week, it's no longer your job to be in those sessions, and so you just never
0:17:00get around to doing it. Well, I'm seeing that now. I have these eight more sessions that
0:17:04I really want to watch, but when's going to be a good time to do it?
0:17:08I'm assigning it to you. It's your job, since you don't have any other job.
0:17:11Hey, you're unemployed. What else do you have to do?
0:17:13That's right. Exactly. I'm supposed to be making an app or something, but I'm saying,
0:17:16That job starts in a few weeks.
0:17:18This week, your job is to watch WRC.
0:17:20And then give Jon the cliff notes for anything
0:17:22related to this team.
0:17:23No, I've got to watch it myself.
0:17:25I know you do.
0:17:26All right, there were a couple other videos
0:17:28I wanted to briefly touch on.
0:17:29The first was-- I don't remember if they showed this
0:17:31during the keynote.
0:17:32I believe they did at the very end,
0:17:33but the new commercial about design
0:17:35by Apple in California.
0:17:37And this kind of ties in with the one
0:17:39we mentioned at the beginning, and that
0:17:40was at the beginning of the keynote, where they said,
0:17:43at the end of the video, something along the lines of,
0:17:45only then we sign our work, and then they flash up
0:17:47"Designed by Apple in California."
0:17:49In this other video, they show people
0:17:52just using their products in everyday things
0:17:54and everyday scenarios.
0:17:55And again, at the end, it's "Designed
0:17:56by Apple in California."
0:17:58So one of the things you can easily
0:17:59see between these two videos that literally bookended
0:18:02the keynote and then OS X Mavericks,
0:18:04which was in the middle-- by the way, I still hate that name.
0:18:06Anyway, all of this is "Go California, Ye California,
0:18:10Ye California."
0:18:11And why or when did they get so excited about California?
0:18:15Not to say that's bad before we get
0:18:17a zillion angry Californians, but when
0:18:20did this become a thing?
0:18:21That's been on the back of their products
0:18:23since Jobs came back practically,
0:18:25or maybe even more of that.
0:18:26But I mean, it seems like there's
0:18:28a new emphasis behind it.
0:18:29And I don't know what brought that on.
0:18:31Well, it's less about California and more about made in the USA
0:18:34at this point, I think.
0:18:36I mean, the California pride has always been there.
0:18:38And you're right, that was a lot of jobs right there.
0:18:41But I think at this point, this is them saying,
0:18:44kind of responding to all the Chinese worker controversy
0:18:48kind of things in the last year, saying, you know what?
0:18:51No, we can bring something to the US.
0:18:52And now, this is something they can say,
0:18:54especially with the Mac Pro, now they can really say,
0:18:58look, this is like a whole US computer right here.
0:19:01As long as you don't check where the--
0:19:04Where all the components inside it.
0:19:05--was made.
0:19:07Yeah, I mean, because what else?
0:19:08So it's like, what, the ASIC CPUs, I think,
0:19:11aren't they manufactured in Texas?
0:19:12They are, but what about all the RAM, the flash and the DRAM?
0:19:17This gets back to what Casey just said about,
0:19:19like, he liked the video because it showed a part where
0:19:21he lived.
0:19:22Like, this silly notion that we have of attachment to place
0:19:27and extension into jingoism and nationalism of pride
0:19:32in countries, really pretty much nonsensical
0:19:35if you think about it for more than 10 minutes.
0:19:37But it is definitely a real thing.
0:19:38So I don't blame them for playing into it.
0:19:42But in the cynical view, as Marco said, you can view it as damage control for the Chinese
0:19:47factory things or whatever.
0:19:48Pride in California is no more or less ridiculous than pride in the United States is probably
0:19:53no more or less ridiculous than pride is made on earth.
0:19:57It doesn't really matter where it's made or where you're from or anything like that.
0:20:00Is it a good product?
0:20:01Is it not a good product?
0:20:02Are you treating workers well?
0:20:03You're not treating workers well.
0:20:05Our country needs to have a good economy, so keep the business in our company, not in
0:20:08Stonehenge's country because of imaginary lines or oceans or whatever.
0:20:16I find that's why designing California bothers me a little bit.
0:20:20Who cares?
0:20:21What is it about the borders of California that exist for historical reasons that have
0:20:26nothing to do with anything that makes you proud that the people who made it were in
0:20:30California when they made it and perhaps live somewhere else now and perhaps were born somewhere
0:20:34else. As Dented Meat said in the chat room, I'm so ready to join Starfleet, apparently.
0:20:41I think the Buy California takes away from their message. What they are is they're proud
0:20:50that we made this thing, and this thing is good in these ways. They show the people using
0:20:53their products and having fun with them. It's also beautifully shot, and all the people
0:20:57are beautiful. That part of it is a legitimate message. "Hey, we made something nice, and
0:21:03products enhance people's lives. So thumbs up, right guys? That's advertising. It's
0:21:08fine. You can see it on Mad Men. But the geographic part of it, I find a little off-putting, but
0:21:14probably other people don't.
0:21:15Well, California is itself also part of the advertising. And it's not like they chose
0:21:20California just for this, but I think they're using it to their advantage now that they're
0:21:25there. California has a really great reputation among, I think, most people, most Americans
0:21:30especially, of being this really nice place,
0:21:34and kind of this cool place, and this kind of liberal, hippie,
0:21:37but cool, great weather place.
0:21:40And that's the way things happen.
0:21:41Except for LA, right?
0:21:42Are we leaving out LA?
0:21:43Who cares about LA?
0:21:46No.
0:21:48There aren't that many states in the US
0:21:51with that great of a reputation, where you can say, oh, yeah,
0:21:55we're from Minnesota.
0:21:56And you're going to have everyone in the whole country
0:21:59saying, "Wow, Minnesota, they made that in Minnesota? That's so cool." This isn't
0:22:03a major effect or a major part of their marketing or branding efforts, but it is a small contributor.
0:22:11And especially in the wake of both the Chinese worker thing and the wake of Samsung becoming
0:22:16this major competitor, this is them saying, "Don't support that Korean company. We're
0:22:22an American company in California."
0:22:23Yeah, don't you find that slightly off-putting? That's where it starts to get into... Anyway,
0:22:28I think it's fine.
0:22:29Well, I find it off-putting that all of our politicians have to end everything with "God
0:22:32bless America."
0:22:33Yeah, no, that's a little older.
0:22:36But you can see why they do it.
0:22:38Send email to Marco, please.
0:22:42I think the California thing, to my memory, came in around the time Jobs came back again
0:22:48and has stayed throughout.
0:22:50It's shorthand for "We're proud that we did this," and they need some way to identify
0:22:55themselves, and they are a California company founded in California, and so that's what
0:22:59they've chosen, because their employees come and go, their executives come and go,
0:23:03a lot of the people who work there weren't born in California.
0:23:06They don't have much to hang their hat on, but insofar as a corporation can be seen as
0:23:11an entity with a place, Apple's place is California.
0:23:13So that's their shorthand for trying to refer back to themselves and their tribe as
0:23:18a collective entity.
0:23:19Well, and to that end, I mean, when you think of California and you think of business, other
0:23:23than Hollywood and perhaps music, what's your first thought?
0:23:27I'm a kiddo, so I don't know.
0:23:30Fine.
0:23:31Alright, never mind then.
0:23:32No, but I mean, when I think of a big, well, maybe not a big business, but when I think
0:23:36of business in California, I think Hollywood, I think music, and I think Apple.
0:23:41And I would think that most Americans would agree.
0:23:44I don't know.
0:23:45Alright, there's one other video I wanted to ask you guys about, and then perhaps Marco
0:23:49you can tell me about something that's cool.
0:23:51But the other one I wanted to ask about is today, which again is quite a long time before
0:23:56most of you will actually hear this episode, the trailer for the Ashton Kutcher Steve Jobs
0:24:01movie came out.
0:24:03Did either of you see this two-minute trailer?
0:24:04Please, Mark O'Tommi.
0:24:05Oh my God.
0:24:06I did watch it.
0:24:07Didn't I thought that maybe this is that other Steve Jobs movie, you know, the good
0:24:11one because didn't this show in a film festival and everyone panned it like a year ago?
0:24:15Well, like, "Panzerino," I think, said mixed about it.
0:24:18He said it was—if memory serves, he said it was entertaining but not great.
0:24:22I never had high hopes for this movie, and the trailer did not change my mind about that.
0:24:27I don't think I'll even bother watching it.
0:24:29So our friend Brad that—well, Jon, you've never met him, but Marco and I and David Smith
0:24:35went and spent some time with Brad the Sunday before WWDC.
0:24:39He had commented on Twitter that the musical selections were just terrible, or the musical
0:24:46editing was terrible, and I think he's right.
0:24:48I actually didn't think the trailer was bad. I mean, it is clearly taking a lot of creative
0:24:52license with the actual reality of what happened. But I don't know, I thought it would be enjoyable.
0:24:58So here's the question, Casey. If you were tasked with making a parody of this trailer,
0:25:03how would you do it?
0:25:04I would have made the same trailer.
0:25:05That's what I'm saying. It is not, like, it is so overblown. And like, ignore the fact
0:25:11that it's just, like, the people who made the movie just, I mean, clearly the people
0:25:14who made this movie do not and cannot understand what it was that was important about all these
0:25:19things that Apple did, which is fine, I guess, because if other people don't care, like,
0:25:23just treat it as fiction. But even within the realm of fiction, it's so overblown where
0:25:26everyone is just screaming and so emotional and dramatic about things, and they're saying
0:25:31nonsense the whole time, right? Because, again, people, they don't understand what was important
0:25:35about the Apple, what was important about the Mac, what was important about the iPhone.
0:25:39They have no idea, like, no earthly clue. It's kind of like the Steve Jobs biography
0:25:42where, but even more extreme, the Eilikson biography, where if you don't understand
0:25:47what was important about the original Mac, there's no way you can make a movie about
0:25:50it, right?
0:25:51Well, but that's not their—their goal is not to be accurate. Their goal is to be,
0:25:53is to be, like, good to watch, to be an interesting movie.
0:25:56Well, like, it's like, based on a true story, but it's not, it's not like, you know,
0:25:59a res—I think it's not so much—that's not the case in a lot of other movies. Like,
0:26:03a lot of political dramas or things about important parts in American history, like,
0:26:08like the Lincoln movie, which I didn't see. I'm assuming that that movie understood
0:26:12that what was important about the civil war was like you know keeping the union
0:26:15together and slavery and like the major issues were there and understood right
0:26:19but because it's about technology and it's
0:26:23it's not as important as the things that everyone can relate to it they don't
0:26:26know what was important what was important about the apple to they're not
0:26:28quite sure
0:26:29uh... but they know is important you know people got rich from it
0:26:32and they know something with nerds and electricity and so let's just go you
0:26:36know i mean whereas no one's like something about slavery but was slavery
0:26:39I think slavery was bad. Like, I don't remember. Something about that. But anyway, that's not
0:26:43really important. We just want to show the dramatic scenes of Abraham Lincoln. No! You
0:26:46have to understand what's behind it. Otherwise, you're not, you know, you're making a movie
0:26:49loosely based on the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln not really, you know, so, whatever.
0:26:54Like, I don't think this movie is going to make any waves. It will come and go. We will
0:26:58forget it, mercifully.
0:26:59John: How about just a blanket rule that I'm just going to not even watch any trailers
0:27:04for any of these Steve Jobs various things. Just if anybody makes a good one, just let
0:27:07me know afterwards.
0:27:08There's the the Sorkin one. Isn't he doing one? Yes. Yes. Yes. He did
0:27:13He didn't know this is not that he did the Facebook's are there. No, this is a terrible one with Ashton Kutcher
0:27:19Well, no, no, no, that's not fair
0:27:20There was one made by funny or die that I wasn't dumb enough to watch in its entirety and I want that hour back
0:27:26It's supposed to be a joke like it is and it was so
0:27:30Painfully bad and the comedy of it is Justin Long is Steve Jobs Justin Long the I'm a Mac Justin Long was Steve Jobs
0:27:37And I should have known from the title, which I think was "I, Jobs," that it was going to be friggin' terrible.
0:27:43And "friggin' terrible" doesn't begin to describe how bad that movie was.
0:27:47It's like an SNL skit that goes on for an hour.
0:27:49Yes, but during that terrible time in SNL when it was not even in the realm of funny.
0:27:54Oh, God, I don't even--I feel like John Syracuse right now. I'm so fired up and angry about this.
0:27:59Well, let's take a break from talking about terrible entertainment.
0:28:02Yes, let's do that.
0:28:03To talk about good entertainment.
0:28:04And this episode is sponsored by Audible.
0:28:08They're the leading provider of downloadable audiobooks.
0:28:10They have over 100,000 titles in virtually every genre.
0:28:14So if you want to listen to something, Audible has it.
0:28:16Listen to audiobooks anytime, anywhere.
0:28:19You can listen to them on iPhones, iPads, computers,
0:28:21Kindles, lots of things.
0:28:23Even the old iPods, they even work on those.
0:28:25They're offering ATP listeners a free audiobook,
0:28:28along with a 30-day trial.
0:28:31Go to audiblepodcast.com/ATP to take advantage of the special offer.
0:28:36Get a free audiobook, free 30-day trial, audiblepodcast.com/ATP.
0:28:44Now Audible likes if their hosts have something to recommend, a certain book.
0:28:47It helps to get started because then you know, like, OK, what do you want your free audiobook
0:28:50to be?
0:28:52So do you guys have any great recommendations of great audiobooks you've heard recently?
0:28:58I have recommendations of books I've read.
0:29:00I've not heard them on audiobooks, but I'm confident that they are excellent.
0:29:03I have two.
0:29:05The first one, which everyone will judge me for, is the new Dan Brown book, which I believe
0:29:09is called Inferno.
0:29:10Judge, judge, judge.
0:29:11I know, I know.
0:29:15So I actually quite like that one, but I'm a sucker for Dan Brown books.
0:29:18They're easy reads, they're exciting, and so I like that.
0:29:22The other one is a book that my wife recommended, which is called The Art of Racing in the Rain,
0:29:29And it was a little bit on the emotional side and a little less on the racing side, but
0:29:34there was enough racing to keep me excited and entertained.
0:29:38And I actually really like that one as well, so I would recommend both of those.
0:29:41That's so you.
0:29:42Yeah, I know.
0:29:43So here's what Audible is good for.
0:29:47I would never recommend someone read this recommendation, I'm going to say, but on
0:29:51audio, this is the ideal place for it.
0:29:54So what I did when I was looking at this, I went to the Audible Ocon website and I searched
0:29:59for Stephen King, who's one of my favorite authors.
0:30:01Again, feel free to judge.
0:30:02And I got 145 results, which I guess doesn't surprise me, because he's got a lot of books,
0:30:09but they have—I mean, I don't know if they have all of them, but they have a lot,
0:30:12all right?
0:30:13And what I'm going to recommend is the Dark Tower series by Stephen King, which is like
0:30:16a gazillion pages.
0:30:18And if I line them up on the shelf in hardcover and I said, "Oh, you should really read
0:30:21this book series," you'd be like, "Okay, whatever.
0:30:23There's no way I am reading that, because it's just too much.
0:30:27You can recommend one book and they're like, "Oh, maybe I'll read it and see if I like
0:30:29it," but recommending a seven-book series that took place basically over the course
0:30:33of my entire life, from 1970s and it ended in the 2000s.
0:30:39But an audio, they have every single one of these in audio, and if you're on a long car
0:30:43trip or you're going to be traveling or you're just going to listen to it over the summer
0:30:47at the beach or when you're out mowing the lawn, you just get every single one of the
0:30:50seven books and just plow through them.
0:30:53That is probably the only way most people are ever going to read a multi-thousand-page
0:30:58epic like The Dark Tower.
0:31:01We haven't done the Incomparable podcast about this series yet.
0:31:04We will eventually.
0:31:06I think it's great.
0:31:07Even when it goes off the rails a little bit, I think it all comes together in the end.
0:31:11So that's my recommendation.
0:31:12JAYLEE STEWART-G
0:31:14that one reason I do like audiobooks, especially, first of all, traveling and cars and everything,
0:31:19it's awesome for all that, but one thing I like about them is I actually like when
0:31:22a lot of books are abridged, because a lot of books need to be abridged.
0:31:25No, I hate when they're abridged. I was going to specifically mention these Darktar
0:31:30ones are unabridged, which I like, but I guess Audible has both, so if you're the kind
0:31:34of person who doesn't want to hear all the words in the book, then they have that for
0:31:38you, but I highly recommend the unabridged.
0:31:39Hudge, hudge, hudge.
0:31:40The unabridged. Show title, there you go.
0:31:43Alright, well thank you very much to Audible for sponsoring this episode of ATP. To get
0:31:48a free audiobook and 30-day trial, go to audiblepodcast.com/ATP. Thanks a lot.
0:31:54Alright, so what's next?
0:31:56Alright, so the other thing I wanted to ask you guys about, and perhaps more Marco than
0:32:01anyone else since you haven't done any of your other homework, is what do you suspect
0:32:08people will do—and I think we've touched on this briefly—but what do you suspect
0:32:11app developers will do with regard to dropping support of old versions of iOS when iOS 7
0:32:17comes out.
0:32:18I feel like we've glanced off the outer atmosphere of this topic, but I think there's more to
0:32:23be said.
0:32:24So let's suppose that you haven't sold everything that you own, and let's suppose you still
0:32:30had at least one popular app, be that Insta-something else or Instapaper or whatever.
0:32:36What do you think you would do?
0:32:37I mean, you've said in the 300 other podcasts you were on this week that you're probably
0:32:41probably going to stick with iOS 7 for this new thing.
0:32:44Definitely.
0:32:45But what do you think you would do if you had a successful existing iOS app?
0:32:54That's a really good question.
0:32:55Because, yeah, obviously, I think if you're making a new app and you have no legacy to
0:33:00support, I would say no question, make a brand new one and require iOS 7, period.
0:33:07No question?
0:33:08No.
0:33:09You can't say no question.
0:33:10say you're EA and you're going to release a game, you've got to support iOS 7. So you're
0:33:14talking to an independent developer, like a one or two person shop, making an application,
0:33:19yeah, then they should go iOS 7 only. But--
0:33:21And especially I am also referring to applications where they aren't custom making most of their
0:33:29entire interface. Like, you know, a game has usually an entirely custom interface that
0:33:34doesn't use any standard widgets or anything, at least in most cases.
0:33:38But even not a game.
0:33:39Like, say Evernote didn't exist, but they formed a company six months ago, and they're
0:33:44about to come out with their first product.
0:33:45It's going to be called Evernote.
0:33:46It's a note-taking type of thing.
0:33:50And I would still say don't make it iOS 7 only.
0:33:52I think that is a luxury that you have if you know that—well, you'll get into this,
0:33:59I'm sure, eventually, because the other side of this coin is you can stand out from the
0:34:04the pack by being iOS 7 only and being the only app that
0:34:06accurately links up with iOS.
0:34:08But I guess Microsoft Office would be another example,
0:34:11even though their new iOS office is not all that impressive.
0:34:14If Microsoft Office came out like the real Microsoft Office,
0:34:17not just like a SkyDrive application that
0:34:18lets you view and minimally edit apps,
0:34:21they have to support iOS 6.
0:34:23They can't say, oh, no, Microsoft Office for iOS 7 only,
0:34:26because that offers no advantage and it
0:34:29offers a mostly disadvantage.
0:34:30So it's not quite as universal, I think, as you're saying.
0:34:32But for you, it definitely is universal.
0:34:34And for lots of other people, it's
0:34:37a way to stand out from the pack.
0:34:38Because if you were the first to-do app that is truly
0:34:40iOS 7 native in look, feel, and functionality,
0:34:43you stand out more than if you just make another to-do app
0:34:45that works on iOS 6 and 7.
0:34:47Yeah.
0:34:48And part of it also is about why your app exists.
0:34:54If you are somebody like Evernote, or like Instagram,
0:34:57or Twitter, like a big web service,
0:35:01where your primary business is not selling your app for a few bucks, your primary business
0:35:05is this big web service, especially if it's something social where you need to have as
0:35:09many people as possible, then you should be compatible with as many versions as possible.
0:35:15Then you might still need to run an iOS 5, who knows? Probably not 5, but you at least
0:35:20couldn't go 7 only so soon because that would really hurt your bottom line to lose all those
0:35:26free users, that would hurt the bigger product too much,
0:35:30probably, for a while.
0:35:32And similarly, if you're that kind of company,
0:35:35you should probably also have an Android app and a Windows
0:35:37Phone app and even a Windows 8 app,
0:35:41because you need to be everywhere.
0:35:44But for most people, most iOS developers
0:35:48are in one of two situations.
0:35:51Either they're doing contract work for somebody else,
0:35:53which is, I would assume, based on just anecdotal evidence
0:35:58and talking to people everywhere,
0:36:00I would assume that contractors are probably
0:36:03the bulk of the people programming for iOS.
0:36:05If not the majority, I bet they're a massive portion.
0:36:12Anyway, so if you're contracting for somebody else,
0:36:14you might not be able to make this choice, or at least not
0:36:17yet, or you might not be able to be that aggressive with it.
0:36:20So that'll just depend on your client
0:36:23on your business needs.
0:36:24But if you're in the segment of developers,
0:36:26like what I usually do, which is you sell an app for money,
0:36:31in some form, whether it's the magazine with an app purchase
0:36:34or something else with an app purchase
0:36:36or whether it's a few bucks up front for the app,
0:36:38like Vesper, Instapaper, that kind of stuff.
0:36:41If you're in that business where you need to make money
0:36:43from the app and you're better off having a better app
0:36:48that people will talk about and think is worth money
0:36:51and you're better off targeting people who will spend money on an app,
0:36:55then not only does that weight you more towards newer devices
0:36:59and people who upgrade quickly anyway,
0:37:02but then you really can stand out by, as you said,
0:37:04you really can stand out by having a really, really nice iOS 7 app
0:37:09from early on in that OS's release cycle.
0:37:13So if you're in that kind of situation,
0:37:18and obviously I think it's very important to recognize
0:37:20whether you are or not.
0:37:22But if you're in that kind of situation where you can benefit
0:37:25from having a really great app for the new OS
0:37:27and you're targeting people with money,
0:37:29then I think it's very safe to require it within about a month
0:37:34of the launch.
0:37:35I think one thing everyone can agree on,
0:37:37assuming Apple's numbers are accurate
0:37:39and I have no reason to doubt them,
0:37:40is that it's probably safe for everyone,
0:37:43if you're making a new application, to drop iOS 5.
0:37:46Oh, yeah.
0:37:47because 6, 93%, it doesn't matter who you are,
0:37:51that's safe at this point.
0:37:55Unless you're targeting the iPad,
0:37:56then it's a little bit less safe.
0:37:58Yeah, I guess if you have an app that's iPad only,
0:38:00and specifically targeted to people
0:38:01who are likely to have old iPads.
0:38:03But it's not going to get any safer than that.
0:38:05When are you going to have a higher number than that
0:38:07in adoption?
0:38:08As a lot of people were pointing out on Twitter today--
0:38:11maybe it's just one person.
0:38:12I cannot keep track before I read these things.
0:38:14iOS 7 probably won't be like that,
0:38:16Because iOS 6 stretched back pretty far,
0:38:18like a surprisingly far amount down to lower, crappier devices.
0:38:22Whereas iOS 7 draws the line a little bit closer up.
0:38:24And so we'll have to wait for those old devices to age out.
0:38:27And it will probably be a long, long time before iOS 7 or greater.
0:38:31That's not true.
0:38:32You don't think so?
0:38:33No, no, no.
0:38:34I'm thinking specifically of my cruddy iPod Touch that runs
0:38:38iOS 6 and totally shouldn't.
0:38:40The 3GS?
0:38:41No, well, iPod Touch--
0:38:43No, no, no, I'm saying--
0:38:453GS is the other example, like that it could run iOS 6,
0:38:48but you know.
0:38:49But what does 7 go down to though?
0:38:51It goes down to the iPhone 4.
0:38:53- It supports everything that 6 does,
0:38:54except the 3GS and that iPhone 4 cord touch.
0:38:58- And any iPod touch except for the most reason.
0:39:01- Right, yeah, yeah, the one that was based
0:39:02on the iPhone 4 internals.
0:39:04It does not support that one.
0:39:05But it supports all the recent ones,
0:39:07which is, everything has been for sale
0:39:09except for the cheapest one until two weeks ago.
0:39:11- Well, the only iPod touch it supports
0:39:13is the absolute most recent one.
0:39:15It doesn't support any of the--
0:39:16Yes, but that's a little bit distorted
0:39:17because they skipped a year of the iPod Touch,
0:39:19which, as you know--
0:39:21Maybe my view of things is--
0:39:22maybe my view of things is also skewed because I'm an iPod
0:39:25Touch household.
0:39:26So it seems to me it's like if they came out with Mavericks
0:39:29and the only Macs it ran on are the absolute latest model
0:39:32that they're still currently selling in each product line.
0:39:34And you feel that way.
0:39:35But we'll see.
0:39:36But the proof is in the pudding.
0:39:38How well does it run is what really matters.
0:39:40Because I wish I had not upgraded my old Touched
0:39:43iOS 6 because it chugs. And so, yeah, it can run it, and I was initially happy that it
0:39:49was supported. And I guess I probably still am because there are probably a lot of apps
0:39:51that are iOS 6 only. At least I can run them, but it is not happy at all.
0:39:56Yeah. So, yeah, I think 7 cuts off about the same number of people, probably as 6 did.
0:40:04And I don't--
0:40:05If you're not an iPod touch user.
0:40:06Well, but if you're an iPad user, it cuts off nothing. So, maybe that balances out.
0:40:10Anyway, I'm not that worried about cutting off new devices for 7, because I don't think
0:40:17it's substantially different than every other OS release in that regard. So yeah, I don't
0:40:24know. And I think we are going to see some people holding back because they don't like
0:40:28the changes. Just like some people held back because they heard about maps or whatever
0:40:33on 6, or their jailbreaks don't work until a certain date afterwards or something like
0:40:39Those are all going to be like small slices.
0:40:43And they're all going to add up to something significant, but they're all going to deteriorate
0:40:47over time. Like once there's a jailbreakout for seven, if there isn't
0:40:51already, there might already be one. But once there's a jailbreakout,
0:40:55then one of those big slices goes away. Once there's, you know,
0:40:59to various degrees of tethering for the jailbreak, then
0:41:03everything all changes. Once most people get a little more comfortable with the idea of
0:41:07of how it looks, then another slice starts falling away.
0:41:10Once a new device comes out that replaces something
0:41:13that was old and unsupported, like maybe
0:41:16when the next generation of iPod Touch comes out,
0:41:18possibly this fall, who knows, maybe then
0:41:21some of the old iPod Touch users who can't run the new one,
0:41:23maybe they upgrade.
0:41:24And so then that slice falls away.
0:41:26And that's always what happens with every release.
0:41:28There's always these segments of people
0:41:30who either can't or won't run the new OS
0:41:32for a limited amount of time until either they
0:41:35change devices, their old device dies, or some condition changes that was holding them
0:41:39back.
0:41:40So the way you're talking, it almost sounds like if you still had Instapaper, you would
0:41:43make it iOS 7.
0:41:44Well, no. Instapaper still doesn't require iOS 6. Instapaper, I was set on requiring
0:41:515 for a while. I forget when I started requiring 5, but it was before 6 was out, but not by
0:41:58that much. I think a few months before 6 came out.
0:42:01With the magazine, I was able to require six because I just didn't care and I wanted all
0:42:07the new stuff and I wanted to use Avenir next without having to pay for it for iOS 5.
0:42:15But again, I think there's a few different factors here, right?
0:42:21Obviously, again, if you don't need tons and tons of people necessarily, if you just need
0:42:28good app sales, that's different.
0:42:30Instacaper was a brand new app being released today, I would probably require, well, today
0:42:36I'd require six, but I don't know. I think if it already required six, and therefore
0:42:42if it had already cut off all the iPad One people, then I wouldn't have that much of
0:42:47a problem requiring seven within about two months of seven's release.
0:42:52But you also have to consider that the fallback, or the, I can't think of the word I'm looking
0:42:59for. But in order to support both iOS 7 and iOS 6, it stands to reason it's a lot more
0:43:04challenging than simultaneously supporting 6 and 5. You know what I mean? So in other
0:43:09words, two...
0:43:10Well, not necessarily. I mean, it really depends, right? The magazine supports 7 with a very,
0:43:14very small code change. It's literally just like, you know, it's hidden under the status
0:43:19bar accidentally, so you've got to like change that. That's it. That's a very small change.
0:43:23And you can conditionally do that, you know, if I'm running on 7, do this. Otherwise, do
0:43:27this. You know, if there's few enough of those conditions, that's manageable. I think the
0:43:34big problem with trying to support 7 and 6 at the same time isn't necessarily the code
0:43:40complexity, because you can make that work. You know, for the most part, you can deal
0:43:44with that. The big problem is by not fully adopting 7's new interface stuff, your app
0:43:52will look old and feel old. That's the big problem. It's not about code. Well, it would
0:43:59be about code if you actually need to rewrite, if you write two separate interfaces, then
0:44:03it is about code. Please don't do that. But if it's just about, you know, we have to work
0:44:09on both, then what you're going to have is an iOS 6 app that happens to be compatible
0:44:14with 7, and it's going to look and feel like an iOS 6 app for the most part. You'll get
0:44:17like the new bar styles once you compile it for 7 and stuff. But you won't have any of
0:44:24the new navigation stuff. And it'll be a lot harder for you to add that in to an existing
0:44:31code base that has to also run on 6 all the time.
0:44:33But there's a potential pitfall in this, though, that you could also end up with, to use in
0:44:38OS X analogy, an application full of drawers. Do you remember? Maybe that was before your
0:44:43time. Do you remember the drawers in OS X?
0:44:45Yeah.
0:44:46They very heavily used the 10.3 days?
0:44:49It was like one of their flagpole UI elements.
0:44:52They said, here's Mac OS X, and it's
0:44:53got a thing called Sheets that come down from the window.
0:44:55That was a new element.
0:44:56It's got this thing called the Dock.
0:44:57That's new.
0:44:58It's also got this thing called Drawers.
0:45:00And the mail application, Apple's mail application,
0:45:02originally featured a drawer.
0:45:03And everybody said, oh, I'm going
0:45:04to have these drawers in my application.
0:45:06So any kind of application that would today have a sidebar
0:45:08ended up with a drawer.
0:45:10And drawers ended up being not such a great idea.
0:45:12And so all these people were like,
0:45:14I'm going to be a native application,
0:45:15not going to be carbon application where I'm going to use it, it's going to be Kogo, and
0:45:18I'm going to get to use drawers and do all this stuff and look at I'mNative. And then
0:45:21everyone's like, yeah, no, not so much on that drawer thing. And then you're stuck with
0:45:25an application with drawers and you go, oh, I've got to change this to a sidebar. So we
0:45:28don't know what is the equivalent of drawers. If anything, maybe there's no equivalent of
0:45:31drawer in iOS 7. There might be something in there that's like that, that seems like
0:45:36a good idea, and everyone jumps in the bandwagon and says, oh, look at this, I'mNative, I'm
0:45:40a real iOS 7 application. And then everyone goes, ooh, actually not so great. And then
0:45:44you're forced to rewrite parts of your UI because that entire interface element or some
0:45:49aspect of it falls out of favor or is determined to not be a good idea.
0:45:53Not that that argues against doing it.
0:45:54You really should go whole hog into iOS 7 because someone's got to find out if there
0:45:59are any drawers to continue to talk to this analogy lurking.
0:46:03The only way you're going to find out is for people to make real applications using the
0:46:06system that Apple has devised, and we'll find out what works and what doesn't, right?
0:46:11If I were to wager a guess, I think what will happen is a lot of these big apps, say like
0:46:16Evernote, maybe that's a little too big, but take Instapaper for example, maybe they'll
0:46:21try to dance the, you know, "We'll still look like iOS 6 for the most part.
0:46:27We're not going to look like the fancy new iOS 7 thing."
0:46:30And I don't think that's going to work for very long.
0:46:31I think that even your average customer is going to say, "Why does this look so old?
0:46:36Why doesn't it look better?"
0:46:38And I suspect that people will hedge in the direction of not requiring iOS 7.
0:46:44And then Marco, I think you'll end up right, that people will quickly end up requiring
0:46:47it after just a couple months.
0:46:50And also, it's going to take a little while for developers to realize what they should
0:46:55do under iOS 7.
0:46:57This is why I've said, as soon as we get beta 2, which actually might be before this
0:47:00podcast is released, but as soon as we get beta 2, I'm installing it on my main phone,
0:47:05because I need to start learning it.
0:47:07I have it on this 4S, but I hardly ever use the 4S for anything because it has no data
0:47:11plans. It's basically an iPod touch, but I have an iPhone. So it's never in my pocket.
0:47:16I'm never using it. I need to immerse myself in iOS 7 as a user so I can start to understand
0:47:23how my app should be. It's going to take developers a while to get into that, I think.
0:47:30Tim Cynova Do the 4S and the 5 have the same size SIM?
0:47:34I don't remember.
0:47:35I'm not sure. I guess I could pop it over if I do.
0:47:37That's what I was going to say is if it were me, I mean, I don't have a--
0:47:40But it's so chunky.
0:47:42The screen's so short.
0:47:44Oh, it's so terrible.
0:47:46The short screen is the one that's going to kill you.
0:47:48I still like the four design better than the five design in terms of, like, an object.
0:47:54But yeah, the short screen, you're like, you can't go back once you get the taller one.
0:47:59It's going to be the same way when the iPhone Plus comes out.
0:48:01By the way, the chat is correcting us that actually know that they're not the same sim size.
0:48:05Oh, then you won't have to suffer through the small screen then.
0:48:08Keep in mind that my carry phone is a 4S, you spoiled jerks.
0:48:12That's alright. You'll probably upgrade this fall, right?
0:48:15Are you on a two-year cycle? Yes, sir.
0:48:17It'll be fine. Alright, we have a second sponsor this week. This is a new sponsor.
0:48:22It's called Transporter.
0:48:25And you might have heard about this from other tech podcasts because they're sponsoring all of my favorite shows,
0:48:29so you probably have heard of them already,
0:48:31but we're going to tell you about them anyway.
0:48:33This is Transporter.
0:48:34So here's the idea.
0:48:35Sharing the occasional photo, movie, or document online
0:48:38is simple enough, but trying to share and protect
0:48:41entire collections of files is far from simple.
0:48:44There are solutions out there to do this,
0:48:46but most of them are cloud solutions.
0:48:47They require either recurring fees or a lack of privacy
0:48:51or a lot of complexity.
0:48:53Transporter is special.
0:48:55It's your own private shared drive that you own and control,
0:48:59but it's available from all your devices
0:49:00and can even share folders with other transporters you choose
0:49:03anywhere around the world.
0:49:05So basically, it's like a hard drive enclosure
0:49:08with special software on it and a network port.
0:49:11And so all your data is stored directly
0:49:13on the transporter's hard drive.
0:49:15It's only shared with people you specify,
0:49:18and so it's completely private, unlike most cloud services.
0:49:22And best of all, it's really, really easy to use.
0:49:24You can just send an invitation to somebody
0:49:26that you want to share a folder with or anything,
0:49:28and they accept it, and that's it.
0:49:30So obviously, there's an obvious comparison here to Dropbox.
0:49:34And what I love about Transporter
0:49:36is that they are not afraid for us to talk about Dropbox.
0:49:39They aren't afraid to themselves talk about Dropbox
0:49:42and how they compare, because obviously one question is,
0:49:44why not just use Dropbox?
0:49:46They attack this question head on
0:49:47because they are confident in their product
0:49:49to say there actually are a lot of advantages here.
0:49:52So one of the biggest advantages is that you own and control
0:49:55the hardware.
0:49:56And that gives you a level of control and privacy that you really can't get with most
0:50:00other services, including Dropbox.
0:50:02And any time data is transmitted, you can have two transporters that share a folder.
0:50:07So then the files will sync every time you modify something.
0:50:11Or you can have a transporter at home and be somewhere like on your iPad or your laptop
0:50:16and pull files off of it using one of their apps.
0:50:18What's great about this is the file never passes through transporter servers.
0:50:22And all data along the way is encrypted end to end.
0:50:26And only you have the key.
0:50:27And it's only stored locally in those app storage.
0:50:30So it's never transmitted over the internet.
0:50:32Nobody at Transporter, nobody on their servers,
0:50:34has access to the data.
0:50:36Nobody has the keys over there.
0:50:37Their staff can't read your data.
0:50:39If they get some kind of weird government request,
0:50:41they can't do anything because they can't read the data.
0:50:43It's really great end-to-end encryption.
0:50:46So it's a level of privacy and control
0:50:48that a lot of businesses need and a lot of people
0:50:50feel safe having.
0:50:52So Transporter is sold in three different configurations.
0:50:55You can get one empty for 200 bucks-- well, $199.
0:50:58So we've got 200 bucks.
0:51:00It can use any 2 and 1/2 inch hard drive.
0:51:03So you can supply your own drive.
0:51:04And you can also upgrade these later.
0:51:06Or you can get a one terabyte model for $299 or a two terabyte
0:51:11model for $399.
0:51:13Anyway, to learn more, go to filetransporter.com/atp.
0:51:18And they have a special deal for all of you wonderful listeners.
0:51:22If you buy them from their online company store
0:51:24at filetransporterstore.com, you can use the coupon code ATP,
0:51:28all lowercase, after you select the model that you want to buy.
0:51:32And you get 10% off.
0:51:34And this is pretty good.
0:51:3510% off the two terabyte model is $40.
0:51:37So that's a lot of money off.
0:51:39So go to filetransporter.com/ATP to learn more
0:51:43about this cool thing.
0:51:44Or you want to buy one directly with our coupon code,
0:51:46go to filetransporterstore.com and use coupon code ATP.
0:51:50Thanks a lot for the transporter.
0:51:53I should say that they sent, apparently I'm their favorite because they sent me a demo
0:51:57unit to play with and I have never really played with network attached storage before
0:52:03and this thing was set up pretty much immediately and it is basically private Dropbox in the
0:52:09best possible way. It really is pretty nice. And aren't they coming out with a new version
0:52:13of their software? Am I making that up?
0:52:14Yes, there's a 2.0 version. It might be out by the time this podcast airs. I spoke with
0:52:19them today and they think it might be. They're very, you know, they're storage people so
0:52:22So they're very conservative with what they release.
0:52:24They want to make sure it's stable and everything
0:52:26like that.
0:52:28So yeah, so there's going to be this big 2.0 version that makes
0:52:30the software even better and gives you
0:52:32a lot of the conveniences that the Dropbox integrated software
0:52:35does with things like Finder integration
0:52:37and things like that.
0:52:38Also worth pointing out is that these capacities--
0:52:40I mean, to get two terabytes on Dropbox,
0:52:43you're going to end up paying quite a lot.
0:52:45And because this is all your local storage,
0:52:47they can give this to you.
0:52:48And there's no recurring fee for the service.
0:52:51You buy the enclosure, and then just the price
0:52:55of the enclosure covers lifetime service from their servers
0:52:59to do the relaying and coordination of the handshaking
0:53:03and the DNS stuff to say for your app
0:53:05to be able to find your transporter and everything.
0:53:08So there's no monthly fees.
0:53:09You could buy the enclosure up front and you're set.
0:53:13So anyway, really great product.
0:53:14Yeah, it's really nice.
0:53:15It really is.
0:53:16All right.
0:53:17Before we move on, I have one brief thing
0:53:19to say about the Transporter. I know a lot of nerds who hear about this, and I think
0:53:23the first time I heard about it on a podcast ages ago, I thought, "It sounds like a step
0:53:28backwards, because it's like, 'Oh, a Dropbox, everything's in the cloud. I don't have to
0:53:31worry about storage anymore.' And then these people want to sell me a hard drive in a box?
0:53:35Didn't we already do that? I'm removed on from having a hard drive in a plastic box
0:53:39or whatever." But as I've learned more about the product and looked at it, what I do is
0:53:47I fast-forwarded my mind like 10, 20 years, and what got me to watching the video on their
0:53:53site where they show like, you know, they're always doing these videos where they show
0:53:56a nice house with transporters all over it, and everyone's work desk has a transporter
0:53:59on it or whatever.
0:54:00So if you think about it, these things are already pretty small.
0:54:02Like if you look at them, you know, it's a 2.5-inch drive, they're already pretty small,
0:54:04but shrink these things down in 10, 20 years to be like similar capacities, but now they're
0:54:08the size of a thumb drive, and like they barely need any energy, or maybe they like get all
0:54:13their energy wirelessly or something like that, and have way more of them.
0:54:17And that is actually more of the future, because instead of having a single central service
0:54:21using Amazon S3 as its back end or whatever, you have a real truly completely distributed
0:54:27system where everyone's house is just littered with these little things that deal with their
0:54:31storage and they're all redundant and talking to each other and completely secure, and there
0:54:34is no central point of failure.
0:54:36And people aren't in control of their own data because they control, "Oh, I put these
0:54:39three at home, these four at work, these up in the vacation house," or whatever.
0:54:43your own data, you get all the benefits of a cloud where you can get at it anywhere and
0:54:47it's redundant and you don't have to be like, "Oh, my power went out of my house, but I
0:54:51still have access to my work transporter and it's synced with my home or whatever." And
0:54:54that actually sounds more like the sci-fi books where it's like a distributed network
0:54:58of completely independent little tiny storage pods instead of relying on a single company
0:55:03to do your cloud hosting stuff.
0:55:06Oh, yeah. And plus, you get one of these at home, one of these at work. That's going to
0:55:10to be way cheaper than having two terabytes of S3 storage that you have to pay for every
0:55:16month.
0:55:17Yeah, and it might actually be faster, too.
0:55:21Dropbox occasionally gives me data rates that I know are not anywhere close to maxing out
0:55:24my Fios connection, and I don't know if they're throttling it or if S3 is cranky or if I'm
0:55:30talking to a server in Seattle and it's far away from me and it's a lot of hops, but
0:55:33I'm like, even just waiting for the audio files to upload to you, they're not going
0:55:38at the speed of my upload connection.
0:55:39Whereas if we both had transporters,
0:55:41like the only thing--
0:55:42Oh, yeah.
0:55:42--would be stopping, it would just be our internet guys.
0:55:44That's a great example, because that's
0:55:46one of the problems I have with a lot of online backup services
0:55:49and things like that, is that I have this awesome fat files
0:55:53connection, and a lot of servers can't-- or services
0:55:55can't accept my files fast enough.
0:55:58That's one of the reasons why previous sponsor Backblaze,
0:56:00why I like them so much, because Backblaze can actually
0:56:03accept my uploads really quickly and usually
0:56:07as fast as I'm willing to send them, whereas a lot of other services can't do that. But
0:56:12yeah, this is even better. This is just going direct from your pipe at home to wherever
0:56:16you're requesting it from. Anyway, moving on. Thanks to the transporter.
0:56:21Well, yep. Thank you very much. And thanks for sending at least one of us a demo unit.
0:56:25I really do like it. So...
0:56:27I think pretty much anything called the transporter is cool, because you had the movies, right?
0:56:32I mean, that was...
0:56:33Oh, you're going to get so much email.
0:56:34When you Google for it, the movie isn't the number one hit, but they're the number two,
0:56:36They're doing pretty well. That's pretty gazie. Oh, that was a very very popular movie series
0:56:40It's so bad
0:56:43It was entertaining. It was bad. Why that's me. That's it's the it is like the pinnacle of bad entertaining movies and
0:56:50Jason Statham is that he says him he he is in so many bad entertaining movies
0:56:55that but this I think this I think the transporter especially the first one is just like
0:56:59The the the best example of this category, but didn't use out ease the whole time so we can't yeah
0:57:05I believe it was a, I believe there were eight with the W12.
0:57:08Yeah, they were all, they were all the big outies of memory.
0:57:13So I only saw the first one I think, and it was an A8 if memory.
0:57:16But it had the W12 engine, I believe. So it was like the souped up A8.
0:57:19Yeah, whatever. Anyway, uh, I have another couple of things we can talk about,
0:57:24but I've been captain dictator.
0:57:26So do you guys have something you would like to share?
0:57:28John?
0:57:29Did I complain about the iOS 7 calendar already?
0:57:33No, you did not.
0:57:36I had this in my mind as soon as I saw the keynote.
0:57:39And I was like, well, it's just a little thing, not a big deal.
0:57:41It's a beta, whatever.
0:57:42But it's just been gnawing at me.
0:57:43And then I always thought, well, maybe I already
0:57:45complained about it.
0:57:45But anyway, if this is a repeat, I apologize.
0:57:47I'm old.
0:57:48I'm senile.
0:57:48And blame the other two for not reminding me
0:57:50that they already talked about it.
0:57:51So in the Google Docs file that I know you all constantly
0:57:54have open, there's a link to an Apple Insider article
0:57:58that has the picture I want that I'm pretty sure
0:58:00was shown publicly so we're not breaking in at the end of the
0:58:02day.
0:58:02But anyway, you can just go to appleinsider.com and the link will be in the show notes.
0:58:06Do you guys have this picture up now?
0:58:08Yeah, I got it.
0:58:09It took me a while to figure out how to click a link from Google Docs.
0:58:11Or Marco can just pull up his iOS 7 device and look at the calendar.
0:58:15But look at the middle picture of the calendar showing the month view.
0:58:19I think I complained about it on Twitter.
0:58:20Maybe that's what I'm remembering.
0:58:21Did you see that?
0:58:22The month view?
0:58:25We were all in the sessions and heard about the philosophy of iOS 7.
0:58:28And even in the keynote, they talked about it, about clarity and deferring to the content,
0:58:33not having a lot of Chrome getting in the way, what's important about this, I just want
0:58:36to see this stuff.
0:58:37And so a good example of that is the red dot on the number 17 in the screenshot showing
0:58:40you that today is the 17th.
0:58:42You look at the screen, you can immediately find what day today is.
0:58:44It's not like a subtle gray highlight or a little tiny underline.
0:58:47It's like, boom, red circle, today is the 17th.
0:58:51Not a lot of vertical lines separating anything, and it's very clean, the numbers are laid
0:58:56out there.
0:58:57But to me, and this happens to me in lots of calendar apps, on the Mac, in menu bar
0:59:01icons, anywhere, the most important thing, especially in stupid outlook for the Mac,
0:59:06the most important thing for me to know is, "What the hell month am I looking at?"
0:59:10That's really important to me.
0:59:11Like, "Oh, don't you know what the current month is?"
0:59:13If you see the current day, don't you always know what the current...
0:59:14No, I don't always know what the current month is, especially when it's on month boundaries
0:59:18or have we crossed over and stuff.
0:59:19And if you're paging through and you're not on the page with today, what month am I looking
0:59:23at?
0:59:24That is super important.
0:59:25That is like the most important piece of content on this page with the possible exception of
0:59:28what today's date is.
0:59:30But even today's date is meaningless if you don't know what month it is.
0:59:32And look how they treat the month in the month view on the calendar.
0:59:36Do you see where it is in the screenshot?
0:59:38I'm looking at the old calendar app on my phone next to this to see for comparison.
0:59:42I don't know if it's better or worse the same, but all I know is it's bad.
0:59:45No, the old one, there's like a second title bar below the main bar, and it just says in
0:59:48big bold letters, "June 2013," right in the middle.
0:59:51And this one says, "June."
0:59:53It does not say June, it has the three-letter abbreviation.
0:59:56And it's like, of all the content on this page, it should be just gigantic and bold
1:00:02and not abbreviated, right?
1:00:04Well, also, it's going to change positions as you flip through the months of where it's
1:00:07at.
1:00:08Yes, because it's like, I was asking people on Twitter, why in the world, like, this is
1:00:11so in conflict with their stated philosophy.
1:00:14Like they taught, I think they even brought this up when they're talking about the philosophy
1:00:16of like, "Defer the content.
1:00:17The content is king.
1:00:18We really just want to see, people just want to see their content."
1:00:21And the photo's like, "Look, we want to see your photos.
1:00:22"Here, I want to see what the friggin' month is."
1:00:24Like, "Oh, well that's not so important.
1:00:26We're going to abbreviate it because it's more important for us to attach it right above
1:00:30the number one in the month."
1:00:31And you're right that it will...
1:00:32Not only is it small, not only is it not emphasized, like it's even less distinct than the back
1:00:36button, for crying out loud, it's going to move on every single page because if the first
1:00:39day is a Friday or Thursday or Wednesday, it's going to move around and continue to
1:00:43be abbreviated.
1:00:44And that, I mean, it's...
1:00:46So what?
1:00:47They made one choice that is counter to what they're doing, and I thought it wouldn't bother
1:00:50me.
1:00:51decision in one application, those guys will fix it. I mean, the Notes app could be argued
1:00:55as even worse with the weird letterpress style and the inset shadows and stuff or whatever.
1:00:59But like, what? Big deal. Nobody's perfect. They have a philosophy. They're saying, "This
1:01:03is what our philosophy is. This is our ideal. Okay, we failed to achieve it." But as time
1:01:08has passed, it continues to just stick in my craw that I'm just like having them up
1:01:13there showing this application and saying those words. Like, you'd want to hide this
1:01:18one. You'd want to be like, "Oh, don't look at that one. That one we know doesn't conform
1:01:21to our philosophy. Don't show it and say, "Isn't this beautiful? Isn't this nice?"
1:01:25No, it's not. It says "JUN." It's bothering me more and more.
1:01:33And so I know everyone is talking about the icons on the home screen, and are they going
1:01:36to change those? Oh, don't worry. It's just a beta. They'll have plenty of time to refine
1:01:38them. This is what I'm looking at.
1:01:40They won't, though.
1:01:41Well, anyway, this is what I'm looking at as my bellwether, because this doesn't require
1:01:45you redrawing a whole bunch of icons. This just requires someone to go, "You know what?
1:01:49month is a pretty darn important thing in month view. It does not deserve to be abbreviated.
1:01:53It should be bigger. It should be bolder. And that's the kind of—I mean, just center
1:01:57it. Put it on the same line. Center it. Let them spell it out. Plenty of room for German
1:02:00month names, which I assume are much longer than ours. Whatever.
1:02:03But faster. Yeah.
1:02:05And they all move over to the right when you come up behind them.
1:02:09I don't know. It bothers me. And I expected after the keynote to see a million people
1:02:13slamming this because it is the most obvious example of "Do what I say, not as I do."
1:02:19and yeah.
1:02:21Well, you know, people have been pointing this out a lot,
1:02:24and not just-- well, this is actually the first time
1:02:26I've seen the calendar complaint.
1:02:27But people, us included, have pointed out lots of just design
1:02:33flaws in iOS 7 so far.
1:02:36And I think it's important to consider that similar to how
1:02:40Apple, the company, they always look out for-- people think,
1:02:44oh, they do everything, whatever is best for users.
1:02:47But that's not quite true.
1:02:48they do what's best for Apple first,
1:02:50and then secondarily what's best for users.
1:02:52And if those priorities are ever challenged,
1:02:55what's best for Apple always wins.
1:02:57Similar to that, I think we all think of Apple
1:03:01as this company that has this really great design sense,
1:03:03and they do mostly, but there's always been
1:03:06this kind of competing interest at Apple
1:03:10of what looks cool.
1:03:12And what looks cool, I think, is more important overall
1:03:17then what's a great design to them in many instances,
1:03:21and especially in software.
1:03:22Hardware, they can often find the right balance.
1:03:25In software, they often don't.
1:03:27And I think this is one of those examples a lot about iOS 7.
1:03:31For example, I think using the super thin font everywhere,
1:03:34I find the extremely thin font extremely hard to read.
1:03:38And the fact that there is that adjust legibility setting
1:03:44to just make the font a little bit thicker,
1:03:46That alone says they know this too,
1:03:49and somebody's fighting about it internally.
1:03:53There's always things like this with Apple software.
1:03:56Almost everything they've removed
1:03:58from this quotes, geomorphics stuff from desktop calendar
1:04:03and stuff like that, almost all these things
1:04:05are things that were put in there because they look cool.
1:04:08And high enough up people, oftentimes Steve in the past,
1:04:13high enough up people thought they looked cool enough
1:04:15to push them through even though people knew that it wasn't as good of a design or it wasn't
1:04:19as functional or it wasn't as usable or it wasn't as legible.
1:04:23In the case of Jun, the cool thing that they are preserving, which many people pointed
1:04:28out and which I think is totally not a justification for it but is possibly an explanation, is
1:04:33that when you go from the month to the year view, like they want to do the transition,
1:04:36it looks like you're just zooming out. And in the year view, the months are abbreviated.
1:04:40And I think there it kind of makes sense because you can do the abbreviation in a much larger
1:04:44font. You can put three big letters. You see it to the left there. It would be harder to
1:04:49read September spelled out on the year view, but you can make SCP really big for September.
1:04:53So they want the dynamic transition, that jun to go right into the little jun on the
1:04:58year view in a transition. And it's like, "Oh, see? It's perfect." Just like how the
1:05:02title slides over with the back button to become the title of the previous page and
1:05:05all that stuff. It's just perfect, right? And someone was so married to that perfect
1:05:09transition that they could not bear a crossfade into J-U-N-E, right? You know what I mean?
1:05:13Like, a crossfade from year view into month view, where the three-letter abbreviation
1:05:17crossfades into the full month name, is not the end of the world.
1:05:20But someone was like, "No, we're married to me.
1:05:23This is the transition.
1:05:25No crossfades.
1:05:26It's got to feel like it's a real thing."
1:05:28And that's the wrong call, because it's better to sacrifice the purity of that transition
1:05:33to conform to your other supposed purity, which is clarity and deferment to the content
1:05:37and what is important and just show what's important to the user.
1:05:40But if something is almost as usable and looks really cool,
1:05:45they will always opt for that every time.
1:05:48- Yeah, it's just a bad call, it's just a bad call
1:05:50in one app, it's not a big deal, but like,
1:05:51that's my canary in the coal mine.
1:05:53I'm gonna be watching to see when that abbreviation
1:05:55gets bigger.
1:05:57- I'll be watching to see when the default font is thicker.
1:06:01- I agree.
1:06:02But to go back to the calendar,
1:06:03I do think it was very cool, and John,
1:06:05you touched on this briefly, the way the transitions worked,
1:06:08and I don't have an iOS 7 device here,
1:06:11but my memory tells me that when you went
1:06:13from the day view to the month view,
1:06:15you kind of zoomed out and back towards your face.
1:06:18That's a terrible description,
1:06:19but you kept zooming outwards,
1:06:21and like you said, Jon, you went from the month view
1:06:23and then you zoomed out to the year view,
1:06:25and then the way the transition for the home screen is,
1:06:27when you hit the home screen from the year view,
1:06:29or when you hit the home button from the year view,
1:06:30you would kind of zoom out again into Springboard,
1:06:32and I just thought that was really well done
1:06:34and really cool, but before you said Crossfade,
1:06:37I was thinking to myself, "You know, that's weird. Why didn't they do a crossfade from
1:06:40month to year?"
1:06:41Because it's not… But, you know, real Zooms don't crossfade, right? The thing about
1:06:47all those things is I think they are good and they are really neat to see, but all the
1:06:51previous versions of iOS have pretty much demonstrated that the conceptual model of
1:06:57home screen application, like that one level of you're either in an app or you're in
1:07:00a home screen, people get that, even with the transitions that are not as beautiful
1:07:05perfect as they are on iOS 7.
1:07:07Because like you said, if you tap on it in iOS 7, the calendar in particular, because
1:07:10it's icon looks like you had simply zoomed in on the day view in a month calendar, and
1:07:16it's just all like, "Oh, I'm just pushing back, pushing back, zooming in, zooming in,"
1:07:19and just one smooth, continuous experience.
1:07:22That's great and all, but it's fixing something that wasn't really a problem, because everybody
1:07:28very quickly rocks screen with a bunch of icons, you're in an app, you hit that button,
1:07:32you go back to the screen with a bunch of icons.
1:07:34Everybody gets that.
1:07:35It's not super duper, you know, even ignoring folders, which I think people still also kind of get, but just that model of like you're either
1:07:41on springboard or you're in an app and if you're in an app and you want to get to springboard you hit the button, you don't
1:07:46need the transition like, you know, like the genie effect to say where the hell did my window go?
1:07:50I think that is still necessary because people click a button on their window and the window just has appeared
1:07:55they will not notice that a little square appeared in the lower right, but I think everybody even if there was zero transition
1:08:00Grok's the model eventually and certainly now of just like oh, I get it now. I'm in an app
1:08:06I hit that button. I'm back on the screen with the icons. I get how those two things are arranged and so this
1:08:10Marriage to this particular transition is like it's too much
1:08:13It's killing an ant with sledgehammer like we get it
1:08:17We understand how you get to and from the home screen and so like I don't say you shouldn't do it. It's good
1:08:21It's nice and everything, but do not sacrifice aspects of the application for it. You know
1:08:25Yeah, I think it's gonna be a lot like like you know what like when I when I made the magazine 1.0
1:08:30and my goal was to have no settings screen.
1:08:32And then that actually turned out to cause
1:08:34a few other bad design decisions,
1:08:36because I was trying to reach that one goal,
1:08:39and reality interfered,
1:08:42and I had to compromise in other ways.
1:08:45And that turned out to be the wrong decision.
1:08:48I think there's a lot of cases like that in iOS 7
1:08:50where they're trying to preserve something
1:08:54about the appearance or the structure or their principles,
1:08:58and they're trying to say, "Well, we need to do,
1:08:59We need to make this choice because of this principle, that this was one of our goals.
1:09:03So therefore, because this animation is going to be this certain way, then it'll look
1:09:08best to have Jun there instead of Jun.
1:09:10And so this is what we're stuck with.
1:09:13This is the right thing to do.
1:09:15And eventually they're going to start refining that and cutting back on some of these things,
1:09:19I think, or finding new ways to satisfy both.
1:09:24Like they've got principles that they laid out, and some of the principles sometimes
1:09:27come in conflict.
1:09:28question of which one wins. And picking the right winner is just as important as picking
1:09:32the correct principles. Because we all agree with the principles, "Oh, the transition
1:09:35should be smooth and obvious, and also we agree with, oh, the content should be emphasized
1:09:38and not the Chrome." Like, if you're on board with the iOS 7 idea, we're on board
1:09:41with both of those. And it's like, okay, when they come in conflict, we maybe don't
1:09:46agree with picking the transition one over the content being king. Or deciding that their
1:09:52entire treatment of text also clashes with someone being able to look at this thing at
1:09:58a glance and all they see is the content. Like, what they want to know is there, and
1:10:01they're not distracted by the interface. And if people are having trouble reading these
1:10:04spindly little fonts, then some other aspect of the philosophy has stomped on the one we
1:10:09think should be more important.
1:10:11Right, exactly.
1:10:12Are we really that surprised either that Apple, when creating this new whizbang thing, has
1:10:18favored the new whizbang thing over what is arguably right? In other words, I don't think
1:10:22surprising that they're choosing Jun over doing something that doesn't really fit the
1:10:30whizbang as well, but is really the right answer, and that's putting Jun in.
1:10:33Does that make sense?
1:10:35But they picked these tenets.
1:10:37They really hammered on deferring to the user and the content and emphasizing the content
1:10:42over the Chrome.
1:10:43That's them.
1:10:44No one's putting that on them.
1:10:45They're not burdened with that.
1:10:46They've chosen that as a tent pole of iOS 7.
1:10:49And it's up to them to figure out, like, if they give us all these philosophies and tenets
1:10:56of iOS 7, they have to figure out how to reconcile these in a pleasing way.
1:11:01And it seems to me that they're picking the wrong ones.
1:11:04Like, the one that most people could be on board with, I think the one that most people
1:11:07are on board with is, "Okay, good.
1:11:09No more weird leather and felt and stuff.
1:11:11That's not important.
1:11:12It's distracting.
1:11:13We just want to see the information.
1:11:15Show me my calendar.
1:11:16Show me what the month is.
1:11:18Show me what today's date is.
1:11:19show me if I've got it in the com— like, I just want the information, don't distract
1:11:22me with fancy looking buttons and stuff.
1:11:24I think that's the one that we all agree is a good idea in iOS 7.
1:11:28And the other ones they latched onto about their particular treatment of typography and
1:11:31how things are transitioned were like, "Those are good and everything, but we really like
1:11:36the one where you emphasize the content and not the Chrome."
1:11:39And their prioritization of those, the tenets that they chose, seemed to be different than
1:11:46everyone else's at this point.
1:11:47Well, and this is, I mean, all design for all apps, every, design is a whole bunch of
1:11:53series of choices, and most of them are not easy choices. And, you know, because with
1:11:59those, with those principles they have, almost none of them are, you can just say, "All
1:12:05right, well, you know, how should this thing behave? Well, we're going to satisfy all
1:12:07three of those things perfectly and make everything great by just doing this one option here."
1:12:11Like, every time you're designing something, developing something, you're always having
1:12:15to compromise on those things.
1:12:17And good design is about figuring out the right compromises.
1:12:21'Cause there's always gonna be lots of conflicting rules
1:12:24and principles and factors and everything like that.
1:12:27And what makes a good designer a good designer
1:12:30is having great judgment there,
1:12:34and then also being able to look back
1:12:35when they've been wrong and say, you know what,
1:12:38that was the wrong choice, this is overall better
1:12:40to do it this other way.
1:12:44Is that all we got?
1:12:45I guess.
1:12:46We good?
1:12:47I think we're good.
1:12:49Alright, well thanks a lot to our two show sponsors, Audible.
1:12:53Go to audiblepodcast.com/atp and File Transporter or just simply Transporter.
1:12:59Go to filetransporter.com/atp and thanks a lot guys.
1:13:03Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin
1:13:10Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental
1:13:17John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him
1:13:22Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental
1:13:28And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm
1:13:31And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them
1:13:38@CASEYLISS
1:13:41So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M
1:13:46Auntie Marco Arment
1:13:48S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-Racusa
1:13:53It's accidental
1:13:56They didn't mean to
1:13:59I don't have any objections to it. If we have the blessing of the person in the chat
1:14:10room who will never get credit on the show, will just have to tell his grandchildren,
1:14:14"They used my title once." Didn't hear that on the show, grandpa.
1:14:17Oh, trust me. I do kind of like "I Feel Like John Syracuse
1:14:24Now," but I don't think that really makes sense in the grand scheme of things.
1:14:28know how I feel. You don't know what it feels like to be me.
1:14:33No one really does. Oh my god, I'm losing it. That's not even that late. We've had
1:14:40some fun reviews lately. Really? I don't even read them. I always
1:14:44forget that that's a thing that I can go check.
1:14:46Not that many reviews. Maybe we should have every three months begging for people to review
1:14:51us because I remember that they existed recently, too. I usually check them pretty obsessively,
1:14:57I had a long spell where I didn't.
1:14:58I mean, WWDC had an interruption.
1:14:59I went back, and there weren't that many new ones.
1:15:01So maybe we have to go back to that section of the show where we beg everybody to leave
1:15:04iTunes reviews.
1:15:05Well, the problem is that they're not in the theme song, that there's no call-out in the
1:15:09theme song.
1:15:10We're getting tons of Twitter followers.
1:15:11Our site's doing great.
1:15:12Yeah, I don't know.
1:15:13You don't need to call it the theme song.
1:15:15But every once in a while, you mention the review, and people go, "We have a lot of reviews.
1:15:20All our reviews are good."
1:15:21And most of them—the good thing about having a show with three people on it is that in
1:15:25In most reviews, your chances of them saying something nice about you are good.
1:15:29The reviews always say something good about two out of three people.
1:15:32That's true.
1:15:33And then someone gets thrown under the bus.
1:15:36That is true, actually.
1:15:37Usually, it gives good odds.
1:15:40That's mostly true.
1:15:41However, I cannot remember seeing a bad comment about John Ever.
1:15:46And if there's a bad comment, I'd say it's two-thirds about how much of a [censored] Marco
1:15:50is and one-third about how ignorant and stupid I am.
1:15:53My bad comments are pretty great.
1:15:55My grand
1:16:03I know, but that's the bad thing that they say, is that my performance in this show is
1:16:08lesser and it doesn't satisfy their need for whatever it is they need.
1:16:13I'm getting off with the least bad reviews.
1:16:17But what I'm saying is, most of them, two out of three people, they say something nice
1:16:21about.
1:16:22Yeah, but some of the—God, I'm trying to find one or two of them that were interesting.
1:16:26Oh, here you go.
1:16:28Marco is so full of himself, but John makes up for them all.
1:16:31Seriously, a good listen.
1:16:32That's the entire review.
1:16:33Yeah, I feel like that's pretty standard, I would say.
1:16:36I feel like nobody really insults you, Casey.
1:16:39The only thing people say about you is, "You want to read some bad Casey ones?
1:16:44Go find some.
1:16:45They're in there."
1:16:46I would love to read some bad Casey ones.
1:16:47I just thought the only bad Casey ones were like, "Who's this guy?"
1:16:49Who the hell is Casey?
1:16:51No.
1:16:52Now they know who he is and they don't like him.
1:16:54Oh no.
1:16:55So in the middle of a very long review, I think Armit and Sirkusa feel that they need
1:16:58a moderator of sorts to keep the show moving.
1:17:00I agree, but they picked the wrong guy.
1:17:02They picked a friend rather than someone with the requisite skill set.
1:17:05Casey is in over his head.
1:17:06I would have been too, but I would have declined the offer.
1:17:10First of all, that's why you're wrong.
1:17:12None of us like Casey.
1:17:13First of all, suppose his entire premise is true.
1:17:17Do you think anybody could like reign us in when John and I are both talking forever about
1:17:23something like that?
1:17:24It's an impossible job.
1:17:26I don't know how to approach this diplomatically and delicately.
1:17:29So I'm just gonna say you too impossible sometimes
1:17:31Actually this was legitimately good feedback and actually to be fair made me try to work on on something that I do think is an
1:17:40Issue Casey's diplomatic to the point of blandness always tempering his point of view as if to not upset anyone ever
1:17:45Which continues I miss hypercritical but having John Syracuse on any podcast is better than none and I actually think he is
1:17:52That that was a reasonable point. I just like it's like the Dark Crystal though
1:17:56You guys that before you guys time you know dark crystal no
1:17:59Not Marco nothing what chat room this is what I have to work with here
1:18:05God
1:18:10questioned whether I should preface that with like oh have you guys heard of that because I would be like
1:18:13Insulting it's like have you guys heard of Star Trek like you'd be like oh come on like of course we're gonna start
1:18:17I don't be stupid, but nothing all right nevermind
1:18:19The chat room is catching up in there. They all hate us now so although
1:18:24I will say, to go back a step, Ben Rice said, "I still think Casey List is Marco's imaginary
1:18:28friend."
1:18:29Well, I'll try my dark or something anyway.
1:18:35What we have here with the three of us together is all the ingredients that are needed, they're
1:18:39just not evenly distributed.
1:18:41Some of Marco's self-confidence needs to go into Casey, and some of Casey's ability to
1:18:45shut up needs to go into me and Marco.
1:18:47That's about right, I'd say.
1:18:49See what I'm saying?
1:18:50That's fantastic.
1:18:51If we find them, then we would have the ultimate podcast host who would then be very lonely.
1:18:56Oh, God, that's so true.
1:19:00And Dented Meat is right.
1:19:01We all thought he was the imaginary friend around here, and then we met him.
1:19:04Yeah, I met him for like ten seconds, but we did meet him.
1:19:08Oh, by the way, Casey's real and he's spectacular.
1:19:12You get that reference.
1:19:13Yes, he's got that reference.
1:19:14Oh, my God, I'm losing my crap over here.
1:19:17Can that please be the show intro?
1:19:19Oh, God.
1:19:20We have so many great show interns.
1:19:23I'll have to save them up.
1:19:25We might have to do an "after the evening" or whatever, or "subsequent to the evening"
1:19:30or whatever we're calling it.
1:19:32This is good.
1:19:33It's called "Before Midnight."
1:19:34Before Midnight, yeah, exactly.
1:19:36Oh, goodness.
1:19:37I should find some of these bad reviews and pull up Gruber and read them all.
1:19:41No, I mean, people aren't really mean.
1:19:45You know what I mean?
1:19:46No, for the most part.
1:19:47There were a couple that actually stung, but genuinely, there were a couple that actually
1:19:50They only think if there's a kernel of truth.
1:19:52You know what I mean?
1:19:53Well, yes and no.
1:19:54But people aren't being like, "Go read some reviews to other podcasts, and you'll
1:20:00see much more."
1:20:01That's the problem.
1:20:02Nobody hates us enough to write a really funny bad review.
1:20:06They only hate us enough to write kind of mean reviews.
1:20:09Well, because all listeners are all discerning and intelligent and attractive people.
1:20:13Of course.
1:20:14Even the ones who hate us are articulate enough to leave a reasonable review.
1:20:19I think the only one that stung-- I shouldn't say it stung.
1:20:23The one that I read about me hedging too much,
1:20:27that was absolutely valid.
1:20:28And it kind of stung, but more was like, dude,
1:20:31I really do need to work on that.
1:20:33The one about me being over my head kind of hurt.
1:20:36It's OK, though.
1:20:37I'll be all right.
1:20:38But the premise there just is not valid.
1:20:40Doesn't make any sense.
1:20:41Like, I don't think people understand
1:20:43that you're a programmer for a living.
1:20:44They think you're just some guy off the street.
1:20:47Well, I don't know.
1:20:48most of the time. Still, come on. You know what I mean.
1:20:51He writes Perl! How are you shitting your ass on me? He writes Perl. Come on.
1:20:55But people think I'm an iOS or OS X developer, and I'm not.
1:20:58No, actually, all kidding aside, forgive me for starting mutual admiration society,
1:21:03but you know a d*** about Objective-C and Coco and Coco Touch for someone who never does any of this.
1:21:08I know. I don't know if they know that or want to do it.
1:21:12He says "prejudice me."
1:21:14That's also a thing that non-programmers don't understand, is that at a certain point, when
1:21:18you have a certain level of experience in programming, the mysticism of different APIs
1:21:23and languages falls away, and you just kind of realize that it's all more or less the
1:21:27same stuff.
1:21:29That's the whole thing.
1:21:30Employers are like this, too.
1:21:32Once you've been a professional programmer for, I don't know, five years, certainly for
1:21:35ten, assuming you've been keeping your skills up or whatever, you can learn any language,
1:21:44because it's like, "Okay, well, what's the equivalent of whatever in this language?"
1:21:49Conceptually you understand everything you need to know, and it's just a matter of syntax.
1:21:51The same thing with APIs.
1:21:52Once you've used an API that has all these concepts in terms of callbacks and notifications
1:21:57and event loops and background processes, conceptually, once you understand the concepts,
1:22:05it's not like, "Oh, but you're an iOS programmer.
1:22:08You'll never understand OS X," or "You'll never understand .NET."
1:22:11It's all the same stuff.
1:22:12there's very rarely some new revolutionary idea that you can't even grok, and it's just
1:22:16a matter of the details. Oh yeah, and going back to our design discussion,
1:22:19I think it's a similar thing with like, you know, most programming languages don't come
1:22:23out and do like radically totally unheard of ideas. It just, they're all trade-offs.
1:22:28And it's like, all right, well, wickshadow trade-off, you know, like what are your priorities
1:22:31for what you're doing, and therefore wickshadow trade-off is the best for you to use for this,
1:22:36you know? Like there's, like, that's why it's so hard to say that one language is, quote,
1:22:40better than another because usually they just have made different trade-offs.
1:22:45And I think there is a thing where if someone just uses one language forever and that language
1:22:49doesn't have anonymous functions or closures or currying or pick your whatever feature,
1:22:54then you won't have seen that concept. And if some of the language is heavily based on
1:22:58it, you will not grok it and you will have to first grok that concept. But that's why
1:23:01I was saying if you've been in the industry for a long time and used lots of different
1:23:04languages, eventually you didn't spend your entire time and see eventually you run across
1:23:08a language that has these features. Or even if you're just in a language that never had
1:23:11lexical scope and you don't understand how that works or why it might be useful.
1:23:16But I feel like, especially in today's development, like the web where you encounter seven languages
1:23:20running one application, you get all the concepts or whatever. But I think for non-programmers
1:23:26listening, they will assign you an expertise in a particular realm and decide that you
1:23:31can't possibly have any intelligent comment on the other realm. So because Casey's a .NET
1:23:34net programmer, like what could he possibly have intelligent to say about OS X? Well,
1:23:39it's not as evolved, that's totally foreign, I can't possibly understand what's going
1:23:44on there. Like, GUI API is a GUI API, right? You know, talking to a database from programming
1:23:49languages, talking to a database, you know, have you used an ORM before? Well, we have
1:23:52ORMs here too, you know, it's just all the same stuff.
1:23:55As long as we can all agree that PHP does suck.
1:23:58Yes, well, we do. Everyone agrees. No one disagrees.
1:24:01There is no better or worse language, except PHP, which is worse.
1:24:07Are you feeling okay?
1:24:08Look, I still use it, because again, it's the trade-offs, right?
1:24:11There's joke languages that are worse, right?
1:24:14There's like brain f***.
1:24:17That's worse.
1:24:18Right.
1:24:19You know, there is levels to go down farther, but yeah, at a certain point.
1:24:21I mean, arguably, PHP is kind of a joke language.
1:24:24Actually, here's an interesting question, which maybe we should say for a show.
1:24:27Which is a worse language, PHP or JavaScript?
1:24:30Oh, PHP, no contest, come on.
1:24:33Really?
1:24:34I think that might require some thought.
1:24:35No, because JavaScript just has so much fewer moving parts.
1:24:39So even if you think all those parts in JavaScript are worse than the parts in PHP, PHP has so
1:24:43many freaking parts.
1:24:44Well, JavaScript has browsers, you know?
1:24:46I don't know.
1:24:47I think—
1:24:48No, no, the language.
1:24:49We're just talking about the language.
1:24:50The language is just—
1:24:51No, no, we're talking about—if you're talking about moving parts, we're talking
1:24:52about it in practice here.
1:24:53No, I mean like the language, like think of the size of the API, you know?
1:24:57PHP is just crazy.
1:24:59Yeah, but think about how much in JavaScript is just not accessible from the API. I don't
1:25:05know.
1:25:06That's what JavaScript is. JavaScript is a simple language that's crappy, but at least
1:25:09it's small.
1:25:10I mean, PHP might be worse than JavaScript, but I would really have to make a pros and
1:25:16cons list or something. Really think about it and really weigh it. I think their badness
1:25:22is closer than you might assume.
1:25:25Well, you know, it's the same thing with the PHP discussion we had way back when.
1:25:28It's like, I'm talking about just the language and the abstract, like in terms of here are
1:25:32the keywords, here's the syntax, here's the concepts it embodies, and not any of the practical
1:25:35concerns.
1:25:36Once you throw the practical concerns into it, other things come in, because like JavaScript
1:25:40as a language is better than PHP as a language, but you may say developing a real application
1:25:45in JavaScript is worse because of variances in browsers, whereas PHP is always the same,
1:25:48or whatever.
1:25:49You know, like then you can make different arguments.
1:25:50But when I'm talking about the language, I'm always talking about the language in the abstract.
1:25:53You're a language designer. You want to make a thing that executes. There are no real-world concerns at all
1:25:58You're just designing a language the same way you design a written language
1:26:01Here's the syntax here are the nouns and verbs and here's how it's structured and you know the whole nine yards
1:26:06I want to piddle with some of the server-side
1:26:09piddle
1:26:11screw around with
1:26:13You're so hyper this is a whole nother show
1:26:17It really is well, you know what?
1:26:19We should just bank this for the next time one of us isn't around
1:26:21But anyway, I want to screw around with Node.js
1:26:24or one of the new hotness web frameworks.
1:26:28- Node.js is so two years ago, come on.
1:26:30- Whatever.
1:26:31I live in the .NET world.
1:26:32- Isn't the Windows Azure thing,
1:26:34isn't that Node on the server?
1:26:35I think it is, right? - I believe that's right.
1:26:37Yeah, I think so.
1:26:39- It's certainly interesting.
1:26:41Whatever I see about Node.js,
1:26:43it looks like it's probably really interesting right now,
1:26:46but when you're programming something
1:26:49and you don't want to spend a ton of time
1:26:50like on the nuts and bolts of it,
1:26:53you don't really want interesting.
1:26:54You want something that was interesting five years ago.
1:26:57And so I think Node.js, whatever project
1:27:01I start five years from now, I'll probably use it then.
1:27:03Well, here's the ideal project for something like Node
1:27:05if you want to experiment.
1:27:05It would be something like Matt and Reece's TweetMarker type
1:27:08service, where conceptually, again, there's
1:27:11not a lot of moving parts.
1:27:12Like you're going to be storing an offset or a position
1:27:14for people in some sort of server back end.
1:27:16And what your server software has to do
1:27:18is basically accept a request, maybe
1:27:20with some minor authentication, and then
1:27:22get and store a number for somebody.
1:27:24You know what I mean?
1:27:24Right.
1:27:24It's not going to--
1:27:25That's your problem.
1:27:26You're not going to hit a problem where, oh, crap,
1:27:28the icons library sucks for this.
1:27:29Right.
1:27:30So then you can write that in Node
1:27:32and be like, my first Node application.
1:27:34It's one step above writing an echo server.
1:27:36But you get all the advantages that are supposedly in Node.
1:27:38You can say, OK, does this scale really awesome?
1:27:40It can.
1:27:40Is this super easy to deploy, and I can run it everywhere?
1:27:43And you can really torture test it and say, all right,
1:27:46I could have written this in anything,
1:27:48because the amount of code, it's like three pages of code for the server part of it, not
1:27:51the storage part, not the all the other stuff, just for the web app part.
1:27:55And that's a perfect opportunity to try out something new, because you're like, "If it
1:27:58doesn't work, I'll just rewrite it and pick your favorite language and it won't be a big
1:28:01deal.
1:28:02But if it does work, maybe I'll get all these advantages that everyone says about Node."
1:28:06You know what I think we should do is we should write websites in just straight C, because
1:28:12that sounds bright.
1:28:13I did that.
1:28:14Been there, done that, yep.
1:28:15I know.
1:28:16I'm trying to troll you.
1:28:17Nothing better than string manipulation in C.
1:28:20Oh yeah.
1:28:21Really secure too.
1:28:22No buffer overflows in my query parsing code, no sir.
1:28:25(laughs)