The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► - You a doc, where do you put your doc?

00:00:02 ◼   ► - Bottom.

00:00:04 ◼   ► - Oh, bottom.

00:00:06 ◼   ► Dan, I don't know if I could be your friend anymore.

00:00:09 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:00:10 ◼   ► I'm a doc on the right, man.

00:00:12 ◼   ► Doc on the left is acceptable,

00:00:14 ◼   ► but doc on the bottom, you're losing,

00:00:16 ◼   ► I need, to me, what I crave the most

00:00:18 ◼   ► is vertical real estate.

00:00:19 ◼   ► - It is tricky on the 12-inch MacBook,

00:00:23 ◼   ► although I had the doc pretty small,

00:00:26 ◼   ► but I don't know, I never,

00:00:27 ◼   ► I could never get used to the symmetry

00:00:29 ◼   ► of having it on one of the sides

00:00:31 ◼   ► and not having Windows take up the full width.

00:00:33 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:00:35 ◼   ► - Like the right side of my screen

00:00:36 ◼   ► has been the AIM buddy list for 20 years,

00:00:39 ◼   ► or more than that.

00:00:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, my dock icons are so small.

00:00:44 ◼   ► And I don't even keep many apps in the dock,

00:00:48 ◼   ► you know, like permanently,

00:00:51 ◼   ► but just the running apps is enough

00:00:53 ◼   ► to make 'em tiny little targets.

00:00:55 ◼   ► And it's not like that I lack the motor skills to do it,

00:00:58 ◼   ► It's just that part of what I love about the Mac,

00:01:01 ◼   ► and we could probably do all show about why I love the Mac,

00:01:03 ◼   ► but it's like I feel like I can just fly through the Mac.

00:01:05 ◼   ► You know, like I'm always clicking

00:01:07 ◼   ► and moving my mouse extremely fast.

00:01:09 ◼   ► - Same, whenever I get a new job,

00:01:12 ◼   ► I demand the fastest Mac possible

00:01:14 ◼   ► because my brain is basically

00:01:17 ◼   ► at the same speed of the computer.

00:01:19 ◼   ► But whatever it is about dock clicking,

00:01:23 ◼   ► it's just not, it's never gonna work.

00:01:25 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:01:26 ◼   ► - Always the wrong icon.

00:01:27 ◼   ► I'm just noticing now that Apple has added,

00:01:30 ◼   ► it's very kind of them to do so,

00:01:32 ◼   ► auto added the iWork apps to my doc again

00:01:35 ◼   ► for the 10th time.

00:01:36 ◼   ► - Oh, nice of them.

00:01:38 ◼   ► Very kind.

00:01:39 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:01:41 ◼   ► It's been a while since I've noticed that,

00:01:43 ◼   ► but yeah, it's probably right there.

00:01:45 ◼   ► I do use Numbers, that's the only one.

00:01:47 ◼   ► - I use Numbers a lot.

00:01:48 ◼   ► I use it by far and away more than the others.

00:01:51 ◼   ► Even though I think Keynote is probably the best of the apps

00:01:53 ◼   ► I use Numbers quite a bit.

00:01:56 ◼   ► I keep my sponsorship schedule in a numbers spreadsheet.

00:01:59 ◼   ► So that's the one that gets updated all the time.

00:02:01 ◼   ► But I don't need it open all the time.

00:02:03 ◼   ► - Just notice I have iBooks in there.

00:02:07 ◼   ► - Yep, they did that to me too.

00:02:09 ◼   ► Very nice of them. - Probably a mistake.

00:02:11 ◼   ► - Kind of them to put in an app

00:02:13 ◼   ► that I never use on the Macintosh.

00:02:14 ◼   ► - How's your housework?

00:02:20 ◼   ► Is it, are we gonna be interrupted by hammers?

00:02:24 ◼   ► - No, I don't think so.

00:02:25 ◼   ► They did not show up today.

00:02:26 ◼   ► Oh, good.

00:02:27 ◼   ► So I've been very lucky in the game of roulette that is try to schedule a recording of the

00:02:33 ◼   ► talk show on a day when the guys banging away at my house are not here.

00:02:41 ◼   ► So…

00:02:42 ◼   ► I forgot to check.

00:02:43 ◼   ► Are we holiday partying or no?

00:02:44 ◼   ► I'm not, but you're certainly welcome to.

00:02:47 ◼   ► Oh, man.

00:02:48 ◼   ► No, I'm just kidding.

00:02:49 ◼   ► I do have a fizzy water, though.

00:02:51 ◼   ► No, I have a fizzy water and I have a, I don't know, some kind of fruit juice blend smoothie

00:03:01 ◼   ► that I paid a lot of money for.

00:03:02 ◼   ► Should we pour one out for the deck?

00:03:04 ◼   ► Yeah, I know.

00:03:05 ◼   ► I poured one out for the deck with Jim yesterday.

00:03:07 ◼   ► I saw you had a nice post.

00:03:09 ◼   ► I am.

00:03:10 ◼   ► You know, when I started Splat F, well, you know, your history with the deck goes back

00:03:16 ◼   ► quite far.

00:03:17 ◼   ► splat f in 2011, my only dream was to be deck worthy. And I never got enough, well, I got a

00:03:26 ◼   ► different deal from another company rather quickly. So I never got to work with the deck, but

00:03:31 ◼   ► it was always something I aspired to work with.

00:03:36 ◼   ► Yeah, I, well, I mean, I relayed a lot of the history on my post. I mean, it's a fine first

00:03:44 ◼   ► topic for those who don't, you know, who are listening who didn't pay attention.

00:03:47 ◼   ► The Deck Network, a little ad network that, I mean, if you're listening to this

00:03:52 ◼   ► and you don't know the little ads that have been on Daring Fireballs for 11

00:03:55 ◼   ► years, then I don't know how, you know, I can't help you, but... Then you're part of

00:03:59 ◼   ► the problem. Right. Although I suppose there are people who might be, just read

00:04:04 ◼   ► the whole thing by RSS, so it's possible. Anyway, the Deck was an ad net, well, it still

00:04:10 ◼   ► is, as we speak, it's alive until tomorrow, end of March,

00:04:15 ◼   ► an ad network for independent websites

00:04:19 ◼   ► with a couple of very simple rules.

00:04:20 ◼   ► Only takes ads from sponsors that we think are interesting.

00:04:25 ◼   ► In the old days, we used to actually have a rule

00:04:27 ◼   ► that it was somebody-- some member of the deck network

00:04:30 ◼   ► had to actually be a purchaser or user of the product.

00:04:34 ◼   ► And that sort of went--

00:04:35 ◼   ► that wasn't really sustainable.

00:04:36 ◼   ► But we had to at least think, hey, this is something

00:04:39 ◼   ► that the people who read the sites in the deck

00:04:41 ◼   ► might actually like.

00:04:42 ◼   ► One ad per page, so you're not allowed to join other networks

00:04:50 ◼   ► and have 20 different ads on a page.

00:04:51 ◼   ► The whole point was to make it exclusive

00:04:53 ◼   ► and charge money for the exclusivity of, hey,

00:04:56 ◼   ► if you want to get a little graphical ad on a site

00:04:59 ◼   ► like kotke.org or Daring Fireball,

00:05:02 ◼   ► there's only going to be one ad per page,

00:05:04 ◼   ► and it's going to be through the deck.

00:05:05 ◼   ► And that's it.

00:05:07 ◼   ► Very small, relatively small bit of real estate on screen.

00:05:11 ◼   ► No animation, no tracking, no JavaScript payloads, nothing like that.

00:05:17 ◼   ► And it was a pretty good run, 11 years.

00:05:19 ◼   ► But it's kaput.

00:05:20 ◼   ► Do you think, you know, obviously you're not Jim, but was there ever a point where you

00:05:27 ◼   ► debated, okay, the screen sizes are getting bigger or the formats of the web are changing,

00:05:33 ◼   ► should we make the ad bigger or...

00:05:36 ◼   ► You know, Kottke actually did that.

00:05:38 ◼   ► If you look, Kottke, I don't even know how he's doing it.

00:05:41 ◼   ► I think maybe because we did switch to retina images

00:05:46 ◼   ► a couple of years ago for the obvious reason

00:05:49 ◼   ► that the ones that weren't retina

00:05:52 ◼   ► didn't look good on non-retina screens.

00:05:54 ◼   ► There was some talk of it, but I think that it,

00:06:01 ◼   ► like the last year or so, as Jim wrote in his post,

00:06:04 ◼   ► his sort of goodbye post to it,

00:06:05 ◼   ► The bigger problem was just that the interest from advertisers

00:06:13 ◼   ► was dwindling.

00:06:14 ◼   ► And so worrying about what the physical format--

00:06:16 ◼   ► I mean, I suppose you could say, well, maybe

00:06:18 ◼   ► if you fixed the format, there'd be more interest.

00:06:20 ◼   ► But it seemed pretty clear that that wasn't the issue.

00:06:24 ◼   ► The issue was that the money wasn't going

00:06:26 ◼   ► to traditional web ads, period.

00:06:29 ◼   ► It was going to social--

00:06:31 ◼   ► Facebook and-- and obviously, online advertising

00:06:35 ◼   ► is still going to Google too.

00:06:37 ◼   ► That was the bigger part.

00:06:39 ◼   ► - I would also not be surprised if the,

00:06:41 ◼   ► 'cause I remember the gist was that the target audience

00:06:45 ◼   ► was kind of a creative design crowd.

00:06:49 ◼   ► I would not be surprised if the advertisers

00:06:51 ◼   ► who were using the deck to reach that crowd

00:06:54 ◼   ► are now advertising on things like this podcast

00:06:56 ◼   ► instead of buying banner ads online,

00:06:59 ◼   ► or at least putting some of their money into that.

00:07:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah.

00:07:03 ◼   ► And if you look, that's actually what Codkeep's doing.

00:07:05 ◼   ► Kottke is put somehow in his template.

00:07:07 ◼   ► He's taking the ad and taking the retina size ad

00:07:11 ◼   ► and running it at 2x.

00:07:12 ◼   ► So it's a little bit blurry because it's double-sized,

00:07:17 ◼   ► but it's, at least after you're looking at it

00:07:20 ◼   ► on a retina screen, it's, you know,

00:07:22 ◼   ► but he made it physically twice the size.

00:07:26 ◼   ► - That Kottke is very clever.

00:07:28 ◼   ► - He is.

00:07:30 ◼   ► He does this thing that I'm not familiar with,

00:07:31 ◼   ► which is change the design of his website

00:07:33 ◼   ► every couple of years.

00:07:35 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:07:37 ◼   ► No, I am sad, I don't know.

00:07:39 ◼   ► I probably came across in my post.

00:07:41 ◼   ► It's a sad thing.

00:07:42 ◼   ► It is not a surprise though.

00:07:44 ◼   ► And it's like, and you know, I don't know.

00:07:46 ◼   ► I'm often uncomfortable talking

00:07:48 ◼   ► about the behind the scenes stuff.

00:07:49 ◼   ► I'm always uncomfortable talking

00:07:51 ◼   ► about the business aspects of this stuff.

00:07:53 ◼   ► Because I don't think, not so much out of

00:07:57 ◼   ► sort of not wanting to talk about money, period,

00:08:01 ◼   ► but just more that it's navel gazing into some ways.

00:08:05 ◼   ► And then people write to me and they're like,

00:08:07 ◼   ► "No, no, I'm fascinated to hear about it."

00:08:09 ◼   ► But it's like, I just worry that me talking

00:08:11 ◼   ► about the behind the scenes stuff

00:08:14 ◼   ► is of great interest to me,

00:08:15 ◼   ► but maybe not so much of interest to people on the outside.

00:08:18 ◼   ► But maybe not.

00:08:22 ◼   ► But anyway, behind the scenes, Jim is--

00:08:24 ◼   ► - It's definitely interesting to--

00:08:26 ◼   ► - I'll just say this, Jim kept us,

00:08:27 ◼   ► the members of the deck, up to date.

00:08:29 ◼   ► Like, we've known for the last year

00:08:31 ◼   ► that the last year has not been good.

00:08:33 ◼   ► There were a couple people who were worried

00:08:37 ◼   ► that maybe this thing came as a surprise to me

00:08:39 ◼   ► or everybody else in the deck,

00:08:41 ◼   ► and it wasn't a surprise at all.

00:08:43 ◼   ► We knew that it might be coming to an end

00:08:45 ◼   ► from six, seven months ago,

00:08:48 ◼   ► and then Jim let us know,

00:08:50 ◼   ► I think it was early February even,

00:08:51 ◼   ► that hey, end of March is it.

00:08:53 ◼   ► - What I was gonna say is,

00:08:59 ◼   ► There's definitely an industry of people

00:09:02 ◼   ► who are super curious about how small

00:09:05 ◼   ► or independent publishers operate.

00:09:07 ◼   ► But especially as a former independent publisher,

00:09:11 ◼   ► you never want that to be the most attention you get

00:09:14 ◼   ► is when you're talking about yourself.

00:09:16 ◼   ► - Right.

00:09:17 ◼   ► - You always want your work to get the most attention.

00:09:19 ◼   ► And even though it's sometimes fun and interesting

00:09:22 ◼   ► to talk about the operational elements of what you do

00:09:27 ◼   ► and what the industry does, it definitely feels weird

00:09:31 ◼   ► when that's where you're getting the most attention.

00:09:33 ◼   ► So I understand.

00:09:36 ◼   ► - And you're right, podcasting is one of the areas

00:09:40 ◼   ► where online money is going that's not social or Google.

00:09:44 ◼   ► And it's growing.

00:09:45 ◼   ► I mean, the demand for spots on this show

00:09:48 ◼   ► is higher than ever.

00:09:50 ◼   ► I forget how far ahead we're sold out,

00:09:52 ◼   ► but probably too far even.

00:09:53 ◼   ► And that's great.

00:09:55 ◼   ► You know, I mean too far in the sense of...

00:09:58 ◼   ► Let's play two.

00:09:59 ◼   ► Right. In my theory on selling sponsorships, if you sell too far ahead, your rate's too low.

00:10:04 ◼   ► You should raise the rate. The calculus of how high the price per spot is and versus how far

00:10:12 ◼   ► ahead you're sold is a tricky business. But if you're... You certainly don't want to sell out

00:10:18 ◼   ► two years ahead and have 100 weeks of shows sold out at the current rate. That means you should

00:10:24 ◼   ► should have raised the rate for the ones in the future higher.

00:10:29 ◼   ► Totally.

00:10:29 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:10:30 ◼   ► It's not doom and gloom for the Daring Fireball company.

00:10:36 ◼   ► It's just, I think, a sad day for web advertising, period,

00:10:39 ◼   ► simply because I think the deck did it right,

00:10:42 ◼   ► and what's left is not so good.

00:10:47 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:10:47 ◼   ► So what are you going to do?

00:10:48 ◼   ► Just going to leave an empty spot there?

00:10:50 ◼   ► I guess come April 1st, yeah.

00:10:54 ◼   ► I don't know, I've been thinking about it a lot.

00:10:56 ◼   ► I mean, as I want to do, I'm indecisive

00:11:01 ◼   ► as to what to do with that.

00:11:05 ◼   ► - You know what I did?

00:11:07 ◼   ► Well, I do not recommend the first part of this.

00:11:09 ◼   ► The first thing I did was learn how to use

00:11:11 ◼   ► DoubleClick for publishers, which is Google's ad server.

00:11:14 ◼   ► Try to avoid doing that if you can.

00:11:17 ◼   ► But back in the day when I was running SplatF

00:11:19 ◼   ► and I had an ad network that did not have

00:11:22 ◼   ► 100% fill rate, I made a bunch of house ads

00:11:25 ◼   ► that were super minimalist, clean ads,

00:11:28 ◼   ► and they were actually for Amazon affiliate links

00:11:31 ◼   ► to products I liked.

00:11:32 ◼   ► So I linked to my favorite pen, this Pilot Ballpoint pen,

00:11:37 ◼   ► and I linked to some other random stuff,

00:11:39 ◼   ► probably the new MacBook Pro.

00:11:41 ◼   ► And, you know, people bought some pens,

00:11:46 ◼   ► and I think I sold some books,

00:11:47 ◼   ► but it probably would have been nicer

00:11:51 ◼   ► just to leave that space empty.

00:11:52 ◼   ► - I've thought about that.

00:11:55 ◼   ► I mean, that is putting, you know,

00:11:57 ◼   ► picking out things from Amazon and putting,

00:11:59 ◼   ► you know, using the spot to promote something like that

00:12:02 ◼   ► is a possibility.

00:12:04 ◼   ► There was a time when I made,

00:12:06 ◼   ► again, my strategy from the beginning was,

00:12:11 ◼   ► you know, maybe the stool analogy is a little broken

00:12:14 ◼   ► 'cause stools usually only have three or four legs

00:12:17 ◼   ► and the legs have to all be the same size

00:12:20 ◼   ► or the stool isn't balanced.

00:12:22 ◼   ► But I'll stick with that analogy.

00:12:26 ◼   ► My theory from the beginning was to have,

00:12:29 ◼   ► don't depend on one source of revenue to run the site

00:12:32 ◼   ► because if something goes wrong with it, you're screwed.

00:12:34 ◼   ► It's healthier to,

00:12:36 ◼   ► I think this is just common business sense.

00:12:38 ◼   ► It's healthier to have multiple revenue streams.

00:12:41 ◼   ► And at one point, like 10 years ago,

00:12:43 ◼   ► in the early days of me going full-time on Daring Firebolt,

00:12:45 ◼   ► Amazon affiliate revenue was,

00:12:48 ◼   ► It was never like the highest, but it was noticeable.

00:12:53 ◼   ► It was, wow, this is worth doing

00:12:57 ◼   ► in terms of how much money it makes per month.

00:12:59 ◼   ► And there were bursts around December

00:13:04 ◼   ► because I'd be purposefully linked

00:13:06 ◼   ► to a couple of Christmasy-type things.

00:13:10 ◼   ► And what happens, I don't even know

00:13:13 ◼   ► if it works this way anymore, but at least it used to,

00:13:14 ◼   ► is if you link to something at Amazon

00:13:17 ◼   ► your affiliate code you get more if they buy that exact product that you link to

00:13:23 ◼   ► but whatever else they buy at Amazon until they next click some other

00:13:30 ◼   ► affiliates affiliate code you get the affiliate revenue from that too

00:13:36 ◼   ► and so at Christmas if somebody was like oh I'll help during fireball out I'll

00:13:40 ◼   ► click is this link you know where I would say hey but you know in

00:13:44 ◼   ► parentheses you know that I get a kickback from Amazon if you click this

00:13:47 ◼   ► link blah blah blah. You know, if people then did Christmas shopping and bought other stuff,

00:13:53 ◼   ► it was occasionally, you know, a pretty good amount of money. And because it's percentage-based,

00:13:58 ◼   ► if people did stuff like buy a MacBook, it was a lot of money.

00:14:05 ◼   ► I think it's a little different now, but yeah, same idea. If you link to one thing, you get

00:14:09 ◼   ► the whole shopping cart.

00:14:11 ◼   ► I think I met … That was great. I actually remember linking

00:14:13 ◼   ► to my wedding registry with my affiliate link. So not only did I get an extra commission

00:14:21 ◼   ► on the gifts people were buying me, but I could see ahead of time what was coming. That

00:14:26 ◼   ► was pretty good. I think I mentioned this on the show, I forget,

00:14:33 ◼   ► a couple of weeks ago with somebody. I don't remember exactly. But the funny part though

00:14:37 ◼   ► So if I wanted to do that, I've got to get in touch with Amazon and reinstate my affiliate

00:14:46 ◼   ► account.

00:14:47 ◼   ► They unceremoniously shut my affiliate account down in October.

00:14:51 ◼   ► Yikes.

00:14:52 ◼   ► Oh, right.

00:14:53 ◼   ► I remember that.

00:14:56 ◼   ► Did you ever figure that out?

00:14:57 ◼   ► No, because I don't.

00:14:58 ◼   ► I've been wavering on whether I want to write about it, because to me it's sort of

00:15:07 ◼   ► an interesting story, but on the other hand, writing about it also feels like I'm pulling

00:15:13 ◼   ► this special, you know, it's obviously going to get a lot of publicity if I write, you

00:15:21 ◼   ► know, "Look what Amazon did to me. They, you know, unceremoniously dumped me." But I still

00:15:27 ◼   ► think it's kind of an interesting story. I've never heard of this before. So for anybody

00:15:31 ◼   ► who didn't listen to the previous episode here, I just looked up the email. On October

00:15:35 ◼   ► I got an email from Amazon Associates that said your associates account has come up for review in connection with our ongoing

00:15:40 ◼   ► Monitoring of the Amazon affiliates program during our review

00:15:44 ◼   ► We have determined that you are not in compliance with the operating agreement that governs your participation in the associates program and your associates

00:15:52 ◼   ► Program account has been closed

00:15:54 ◼   ► You will not receive further payment of advertising fees

00:15:58 ◼   ► You are not in compliance because you are encouraging

00:16:01 ◼   ► customers to bookmark your Amazon links as opposed to clicking through your website to

00:16:05 ◼   ► reach Amazon.

00:16:06 ◼   ► This is not the intent of the associates program.

00:16:09 ◼   ► Section 7 of the operating agreement states that a qualifying purchase occurs when a customer

00:16:13 ◼   ► clicks through a special link on your site to the Amazon site.

00:16:18 ◼   ► Purchases resulting from clicks through bookmarked links do not fit this criteria.

00:16:22 ◼   ► You can find the terms and there's a link to their terms.

00:16:26 ◼   ► We ask that you immediately remove all Amazon content from your sites.

00:16:30 ◼   ► other accounts you have or may open in the future may be closed and you will not receive

00:16:35 ◼   ► any advertising fees.

00:16:37 ◼   ► We reserve all other rights and claims we have.

00:16:40 ◼   ► We appreciate your understanding in this matter.

00:16:45 ◼   ► Warmest regards, amazon.com.

00:16:49 ◼   ► That's my favorite.

00:16:51 ◼   ► Warmest regards.

00:16:52 ◼   ► There's your headline right there.

00:16:53 ◼   ► So the thing that's interesting about this is they never point to anywhere on my site

00:16:57 ◼   ► where I've done this, I encourage people to bookmark it.

00:17:02 ◼   ► So it doesn't say, hey, on this page,

00:17:06 ◼   ► you encourage people to bookmark it.

00:17:09 ◼   ► There's no opportunity to edit the page,

00:17:13 ◼   ► to remove that, and there's absolutely no recourse here.

00:17:18 ◼   ► There's no, if you, you know.

00:17:19 ◼   ► That day, my Amazon account was shut down.

00:17:25 ◼   ► There's no, you know, here's where you go

00:17:28 ◼   ► if you want to appeal, if you want to argue about this.

00:17:31 ◼   ► Just gone.

00:17:33 ◼   ► And one of the things that I think is funny about this

00:17:36 ◼   ► is that people think that the App Store from Apple

00:17:38 ◼   ► is capricious in their, you know,

00:17:41 ◼   ► the way they deal with people.

00:17:42 ◼   ► But I've never heard of anything like this.

00:17:44 ◼   ► Weird, right?

00:17:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's nuts.

00:17:47 ◼   ► I'm actually surprised you haven't,

00:17:50 ◼   ► through the, just through the popularity of your podcast,

00:17:53 ◼   ► gotten that resolved by now.

00:17:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't know.

00:17:56 ◼   ► Anyway, I think I know what site it was.

00:17:59 ◼   ► I think I know what webpage it was.

00:18:00 ◼   ► It's a post I wrote in December of 2004.

00:18:07 ◼   ► I swear to God, I'm almost sure this is it,

00:18:10 ◼   ► because I literally do tell people

00:18:12 ◼   ► that they can bookmark my affiliate code.

00:18:16 ◼   ► I wrote, "If you're going to purchase holiday gifts

00:18:18 ◼   ► "at Amazon and you'd like to support Daring Fireball,

00:18:20 ◼   ► "please consider using these links

00:18:22 ◼   ► "to get to Amazon's website.

00:18:23 ◼   ► after clicking, you'll proceed to Amazon's homepage, blah, blah, blah.

00:18:30 ◼   ► So it was like a 12-year-old post that suddenly, I don't know, I guess they probably had like

00:18:35 ◼   ► a spider or something that found it.

00:18:39 ◼   ► Or an intern.

00:18:40 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know.

00:18:41 ◼   ► Amazing.

00:18:42 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:18:43 ◼   ► But I don't know.

00:18:44 ◼   ► But the other reason I didn't take any action immediately is I've, in recent years, stopped

00:18:50 ◼   ► really using the affiliates code because I've been a little bit uncomfortable

00:18:56 ◼   ► because Amazon has since 2004 whenever I joined the affiliate program has become

00:19:03 ◼   ► a lot less of just an online store and a lot more of one of the leading players

00:19:09 ◼   ► in the industry I write about and so I I don't know I there's all sorts of sites

00:19:16 ◼   ► I mean the New York Times does you know bought the wire cutter which is run, you know runs on like affiliate links

00:19:21 ◼   ► I like I don't think it's

00:19:23 ◼   ► Unseemly but I it also just seems to me like it's cleaner if I just don't even use the the affiliate link

00:19:33 ◼   ► So I haven't been using it in recent years and the money I get from it has been you know at one point

00:19:40 ◼   ► it was like hundreds of dollars a month and maybe like a couple of thousand around the holidays and

00:19:46 ◼   ► And in recent years, it's just been like, I don't know,

00:19:49 ◼   ► $15 a month or something like that.

00:19:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's one thing to say,

00:19:55 ◼   ► here are all the new Kindles and an affiliate link,

00:19:59 ◼   ► and then three minutes later criticize the company

00:20:02 ◼   ► for a practice of one of its HR practices

00:20:06 ◼   ► or something like that.

00:20:07 ◼   ► It's a little-- - Yeah, or, you know,

00:20:10 ◼   ► like if I, I don't know,

00:20:13 ◼   ► or if I say something really good about a book

00:20:15 ◼   ► or a Kindle or something like that and include the code,

00:20:20 ◼   ► it's easier to say that, look, I'm telling you this is good

00:20:25 ◼   ► because it's good if there is no affiliate code.

00:20:28 ◼   ► You know, and I'm not saying, you know,

00:20:30 ◼   ► I mean, I'm not saying that people who include it

00:20:32 ◼   ► are doing something unethical, you know,

00:20:34 ◼   ► and I think that in the long run, you know,

00:20:36 ◼   ► like the wire cutter gets by in the long run

00:20:39 ◼   ► because it's their long-term reputation that matters.

00:20:42 ◼   ► If the wire cutter tells you to buy, you know,

00:20:44 ◼   ► a certain blender and you get it through an Amazon link

00:20:48 ◼   ► and they get $3 from their purchase

00:20:51 ◼   ► and then you get the blender and it's a piece of junk,

00:20:54 ◼   ► the wire cutter suffers from that

00:20:57 ◼   ► because you're not gonna trust them in the future.

00:20:59 ◼   ► The post, I'll put the, I have it in the show notes already

00:21:08 ◼   ► so it'll be there, it's this Amazon debauchery,

00:21:11 ◼   ► I don't even know how to pronounce that word,

00:21:13 ◼   ► but I used it, post from 2004.

00:21:16 ◼   ► And among the links in the post is the 20 gigabyte iPod U2

00:21:20 ◼   ► special edition.

00:21:22 ◼   ► Wow.

00:21:24 ◼   ► Nice.

00:21:25 ◼   ► One of the things about writing about the deck yesterday

00:21:28 ◼   ► and thinking about it and going back and looking

00:21:30 ◼   ► at my old posts about the early years

00:21:33 ◼   ► and the early years of sponsorships and advertising

00:21:36 ◼   ► on Daring Fireball is it really, A, it was a rabbit hole.

00:21:39 ◼   ► And I lost a lot of time rereading 10-year-old posts

00:21:42 ◼   ► on my own site, but B, a lot of them just gave me

00:21:46 ◼   ► that feeling of holy shit, it's been a long time.

00:21:48 ◼   ► Like the U2 hard drive iPod feels like another era.

00:21:54 ◼   ► I mean, that really, that was a long time ago.

00:21:58 ◼   ► - What do you think of that new red iPhone?

00:22:01 ◼   ► - Well, let's hold that thought, and we'll talk about that

00:22:03 ◼   ► after I talk about one of our friends.

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00:23:37 ◼   ► That's J-A-M-F dot com slash the talk show.

00:23:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, let's talk about the new Apple stuff.

00:23:44 ◼   ► - So--

00:23:45 ◼   ► - Do you have any of it?

00:23:46 ◼   ► - I have a red iPhone.

00:23:47 ◼   ► I did get a little briefing up in New York

00:23:50 ◼   ► from some fine folks at Apple.

00:23:54 ◼   ► - Oh, the 17-inch iPad?

00:23:56 ◼   ► - No, no, no, there was nothing secret like that.

00:23:59 ◼   ► And they did not give me a review unit,

00:24:02 ◼   ► which I was hoping they would not,

00:24:04 ◼   ► of the 9.7-inch iPad,

00:24:07 ◼   ► because it's, you know, I mean,

00:24:09 ◼   ► I've got too many review units as,

00:24:12 ◼   ► you know what I mean?

00:24:12 ◼   ► There's nothing I don't know about it.

00:24:13 ◼   ► I don't need to use it to get it.

00:24:15 ◼   ► They had them there for me to examine and look at

00:24:18 ◼   ► and they're fine products,

00:24:18 ◼   ► but they did give me a review unit of the red iPhone.

00:24:21 ◼   ► It's quite nice.

00:24:22 ◼   ► - How's the texture on that?

00:24:25 ◼   ► - It feels to me exactly like the black one.

00:24:29 ◼   ► And I don't have,

00:24:31 ◼   ► actually I just packed it up to send backs,

00:24:33 ◼   ► but the black one.

00:24:34 ◼   ► I don't have the silver or gold, but it feels about the same.

00:24:41 ◼   ► I think blindfolded, I would not be able to tell the difference between the red one and

00:24:45 ◼   ► the other non-jet black iPhones.

00:24:52 ◼   ► I personally feel that it would look better with a black face than the white face, and

00:24:57 ◼   ► I wrote that on Daring Fireball, and I got a ton of responses, and everybody feels very

00:25:02 ◼   ► strongly about the matter. But a lot of people feel very strongly that I'm exactly right.

00:25:08 ◼   ► And what is wrong with Apple? Are they blind? Why wouldn't they make this phone with a black

00:25:13 ◼   ► face? And the other half are very strong saying, "Oh my God, no, this is beautiful exactly

00:25:18 ◼   ► as it is. Don't encourage them to change a thing."

00:25:21 ◼   ► I've never had a white iPhone and I don't think I'd ever want one. It seems like an

00:25:28 ◼   ► unnecessary distraction when you're trying to just see the screen.

00:25:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, for me, that's exactly how I feel.

00:25:33 ◼   ► Well, A, my general rule is when in doubt, buying anything,

00:25:38 ◼   ► if there's a black option, get it in black.

00:25:40 ◼   ► I just live by that motto.

00:25:43 ◼   ► I have a black car.

00:25:46 ◼   ► I just generally buy stuff in black.

00:25:53 ◼   ► But for that reason, every time,

00:25:56 ◼   ► I've had review unit iPhones that are white,

00:26:00 ◼   ► white face like with a gold background or something like that and I don't hate

00:26:04 ◼   ► it but I do feel that it distracts because when the screens off you can see

00:26:08 ◼   ► exactly where the screen is like you've got this white thing and then a black

00:26:13 ◼   ► thing within it whereas when the black phone is off it's just a black thing

00:26:19 ◼   ► it's great if you're trying to watch a video on a dark airplane why would you

00:26:24 ◼   ► want a weird white frame around the screen.

00:26:29 ◼   ► - But obviously they're very popular.

00:26:33 ◼   ► So I mean, there's no accounting for taste.

00:26:36 ◼   ► But I would point that out as a good,

00:26:39 ◼   ► there's a reason why it doesn't seem to me

00:26:40 ◼   ► like anybody makes white-framed televisions.

00:26:43 ◼   ► To me it's unnecessarily distracting,

00:26:46 ◼   ► but it is what it is.

00:26:48 ◼   ► But anyway, I think that this red in particular

00:26:50 ◼   ► would look good with a black front.

00:26:52 ◼   ► I've also thought though,

00:26:53 ◼   ► I've been saying this for years.

00:26:54 ◼   ► I mean, and again, it might just be that I just like black

00:26:57 ◼   ► over white anyway, but I think that the gold tones

00:27:01 ◼   ► would look good with a black front,

00:27:03 ◼   ► sort of a Pittsburgh Steelers look.

00:27:05 ◼   ► - I would definitely buy the silver stuff

00:27:09 ◼   ► if it had a black front too,

00:27:10 ◼   ► the whatever it's called these days.

00:27:12 ◼   ► - Right, right.

00:27:14 ◼   ► But-- - I bought the aluminum,

00:27:15 ◼   ► the main silver colored MacBook the last two years,

00:27:18 ◼   ► and it's great with the black screen frame,

00:27:21 ◼   ► but if it had a white screen frame, no thanks.

00:27:24 ◼   ► - Did you see the thing, I didn't bother to do my homework,

00:27:30 ◼   ► but there's a thing where it's obviously,

00:27:33 ◼   ► it's product red, and so the proceeds go

00:27:36 ◼   ► to help fight AIDS in Africa,

00:27:39 ◼   ► except that in China, it's not a product red product.

00:27:45 ◼   ► But I heard somewhere, somebody said that

00:27:50 ◼   ► Even though it's not marketed as product red,

00:27:52 ◼   ► Apple still is going to send the same portion

00:27:56 ◼   ► of the proceeds from the red one sold in China

00:27:58 ◼   ► to product red.

00:28:00 ◼   ► So I don't know what the deal is there.

00:28:01 ◼   ► I think it might just be,

00:28:02 ◼   ► I don't know if that's true or not true,

00:28:04 ◼   ► and if it is true,

00:28:05 ◼   ► I don't know why they don't stamp product red on it,

00:28:08 ◼   ► but I don't know.

00:28:10 ◼   ► There's a lot of people who think

00:28:11 ◼   ► that the main target for this phone is China,

00:28:13 ◼   ► just because red is such a popular color in China.

00:28:16 ◼   ► It's the most popular color by far.

00:28:19 ◼   ► I can't recall a time when Apple made something that specific red and it wasn't a product

00:28:27 ◼   ► red co-branded thing either.

00:28:29 ◼   ► No.

00:28:30 ◼   ► I guess maybe the U2 iPod.

00:28:32 ◼   ► No, because that was before I think product red existed.

00:28:35 ◼   ► Everything has always been product red.

00:28:37 ◼   ► I think even the old iPods.

00:28:42 ◼   ► Yeah, I think they just do it because I don't know what percentage of the money goes to

00:28:46 ◼   ► a product red but whatever it is it's within their whatever they want to give you know they want to

00:28:50 ◼   ► give that amount to product red anyway you know like even little rinky-dink things like the red

00:28:57 ◼   ► iphone cases are product red or like the if you buy the the the the sports strap for your apple

00:29:05 ◼   ► watch that's red it's product red so it must just be some i don't know if it's a legal thing in

00:29:09 ◼   ► china or if it's a marketing thing in china where they feel like marketing wise that that wouldn't

00:29:14 ◼   ► go over well for some reason. Yeah, it's interesting. I don't know. Could be both.

00:29:19 ◼   ► My guess is it's probably a legal thing, but I don't know why China would be different than

00:29:25 ◼   ► every other non-US entity. They also minor tweak to the iPhone SE, where they changed it from a 16

00:29:37 ◼   ► or 64 gigabyte storage tier option to 32 and 128.

00:29:42 ◼   ► Which--

00:29:45 ◼   ► - Unironic, finally.

00:29:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, no more 16 gigabyte iPhones.

00:29:50 ◼   ► No more 16 gigabyte iPads either.

00:29:52 ◼   ► I think the last, there is still,

00:29:53 ◼   ► you can still buy a 16 gigabyte iPod Touch,

00:29:55 ◼   ► but does anybody buy iPod Touches anymore?

00:29:58 ◼   ► I guess some people do for kids, but.

00:30:02 ◼   ► - Not even Syracuse, though, so I don't know.

00:30:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, but that's a nice thing.

00:30:09 ◼   ► But it also strongly suggests that

00:30:11 ◼   ► they're not gonna update the iPhone SE

00:30:15 ◼   ► other than the storage.

00:30:16 ◼   ► I think it's the last of the phones of that size.

00:30:21 ◼   ► - I tweeted this yesterday, or maybe the day before,

00:30:26 ◼   ► I said I miss Mark Gurman, but for real,

00:30:30 ◼   ► I wanna know why there's no new iPad Pros,

00:30:33 ◼   ► because that seemed like the main function

00:30:35 ◼   ► of the spring rev cycle now and we don't have it.

00:30:39 ◼   ► Just as I was about to impulse purchase

00:30:41 ◼   ► a mid-sized iPad Pro with a pencil,

00:30:45 ◼   ► I was hoping for an update and now it's,

00:30:49 ◼   ► seems like it's not happening.

00:30:51 ◼   ► - There were a lot of the supply chain rumors for months,

00:30:55 ◼   ► I mean dating back to like August,

00:30:57 ◼   ► were saying that there's going to be,

00:30:59 ◼   ► I guess some of them didn't say an iPad Pro,

00:31:02 ◼   ► a 9.7 inch iPad Pro.

00:31:04 ◼   ► Some of the rumors did say that there was a low cost

00:31:06 ◼   ► 9.7 inch iPad coming in March.

00:31:08 ◼   ► But they all said that there was an updated

00:31:11 ◼   ► 12.9 inch iPad Pro coming from March.

00:31:15 ◼   ► And I thought it just made common sense,

00:31:17 ◼   ► like not talking to little birdies or anything,

00:31:19 ◼   ► but just, you know, Apple is a company of patterns.

00:31:22 ◼   ► And they've had March new products for a while.

00:31:25 ◼   ► They had March new products this year too.

00:31:27 ◼   ► And it just seemed like a year old iPad Pro,

00:31:31 ◼   ► and a year and a half old big iPad Pro

00:31:34 ◼   ► seemed due for updates.

00:31:36 ◼   ► - Especially with that Pro name.

00:31:38 ◼   ► - Right. - It seems.

00:31:40 ◼   ► - And some people are saying that it's still coming.

00:31:42 ◼   ► There's somebody who said it's coming

00:31:43 ◼   ► in an event in April.

00:31:44 ◼   ► I don't think that that's going to happen at all.

00:31:46 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:31:47 ◼   ► But I mean, I could be wrong, but I don't think it's coming.

00:31:51 ◼   ► So maybe a WWDC?

00:31:52 ◼   ► - Well, the other spring thing recently

00:31:56 ◼   ► has been that the MacBook, the 12-inch MacBook,

00:31:58 ◼   ► which doesn't seem to have an update

00:32:01 ◼   ► spring either so yeah maybe yeah who knows it seems like there's a couple of

00:32:05 ◼   ► products that could be updated and they aren't in the you know oh my god let's

00:32:11 ◼   ► how old is the Mac Pro type era just you know products that we know Apple still

00:32:15 ◼   ► you know cares very much about seem to for an update but do you know that like

00:32:21 ◼   ► if you're in the market for an iPad Pro right now what do you do I'm waiting I'm

00:32:25 ◼   ► I'm I refuse to buy something oh I don't know last night I almost bought one but

00:32:30 ◼   ► But I think I have to wait.

00:32:33 ◼   ► I think so too, unless you have--

00:32:35 ◼   ► It's not going to be a whole other year.

00:32:36 ◼   ► It's not like I really need it.

00:32:38 ◼   ► This is like an impulse purchase, if anything.

00:32:43 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:32:44 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm going to hold off, because whether they change the design of it or not, all those

00:32:52 ◼   ► rumors of the 10-whatever-inch thing, it seems like it's probably not going to be an entire

00:32:59 ◼   ► extra year, so I might as well hold off for whatever sort of speed bumps they put into it.

00:33:04 ◼   ► Dave: Yeah. I don't know. It's hard to say. I don't know. It seems like all of the rumors

00:33:10 ◼   ► are coming from the supply chain. And I do feel like if... Who knows where Germin sources have

00:33:15 ◼   ► been. But it seems like in years past, Germin had sources from somehow not just from the supply

00:33:24 ◼   ► supply chain. The supply chain ones get all the product marketing wrong because they don't

00:33:30 ◼   ► know. All they know is somebody at a Sharp display factory in China talks to Ming-Chi

00:33:41 ◼   ► Kuo and tells him, "Hey, Apple is buying a ton of these 10.5-inch LCD panels. Go from

00:33:48 ◼   ► there." But they don't know anything about what product it's for or anything like that.

00:33:53 ◼   ► obvious in hindsight that they don't know when the hell the products are coming out either.

00:33:57 ◼   ► At least- You know my favorite one of all time.

00:34:00 ◼   ► Which is that? The naming, the iPhone Math.

00:34:05 ◼   ► Which I guess in hindsight was the iPhone 6 Plus.

00:34:13 ◼   ► Yeah. But they got the plus name right, but the iPhone Math.

00:34:17 ◼   ► Oh, I never thought about that. Every once in a while I think about that and I just

00:34:21 ◼   ► I just slapped my ass off walking down the street.

00:34:23 ◼   ► I phone math.

00:34:25 ◼   ► - I never thought about it.

00:34:26 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:34:28 ◼   ► That that's what, they saw the plus symbol.

00:34:30 ◼   ► And who knows, maybe it was like a language thing too

00:34:33 ◼   ► where in Chinese or whatever language in Asia,

00:34:38 ◼   ► if it was Korean or whatever,

00:34:40 ◼   ► but there's some kind of translation

00:34:42 ◼   ► from an Asian language to English

00:34:45 ◼   ► where plus, a number and a plus sign

00:34:48 ◼   ► got turned into math.

00:34:50 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:34:52 ◼   ► It's just the best.

00:34:54 ◼   ► - I don't know what to do.

00:34:56 ◼   ► People often ask me, I feel like almost every product

00:35:00 ◼   ► except the iPhone is getting harder and harder to predict

00:35:03 ◼   ► when the hell Apple's going to come out with updates.

00:35:07 ◼   ► - Do you use an iPad Pro for anything?

00:35:11 ◼   ► - Right now, no.

00:35:12 ◼   ► I've never bought one and I've packed up the ones,

00:35:16 ◼   ► I've turned the review units that I've had.

00:35:20 ◼   ► I regretted it, and then I thought,

00:35:22 ◼   ► and then my thinking was, I don't really use an iPad a lot.

00:35:25 ◼   ► So that's an Apple device that I only buy one

00:35:28 ◼   ► every couple years.

00:35:29 ◼   ► Like my, the iPad I'm using right now is an iPad Mini.

00:35:33 ◼   ► And I don't even know what model it is.

00:35:38 ◼   ► It's fairly recent.

00:35:40 ◼   ► I don't know, no, it's not that recent.

00:35:42 ◼   ► I don't know, it's an iPad Mini from a couple years ago.

00:35:45 ◼   ► So I'm due to get a new one.

00:35:46 ◼   ► I think I'm done with the iPad Mini size.

00:35:49 ◼   ► I think I want the 9.7 inch size.

00:35:52 ◼   ► Just because I like having everything bigger.

00:35:55 ◼   ► It's like the years since I've had this many,

00:35:57 ◼   ► or the years where I'm starting to need, you know,

00:36:00 ◼   ► bigger stuff to be able to read.

00:36:02 ◼   ► But I don't wanna buy now.

00:36:04 ◼   ► And I don't use an iPad enough to be tempted at all

00:36:08 ◼   ► to buy before they come out with the new ones.

00:36:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, same.

00:36:13 ◼   ► It is, I think it was a good move,

00:36:16 ◼   ► and an interesting move that they went to

00:36:18 ◼   ► move the price down as opposed to maxing out any sort of specs on this new revision.

00:36:25 ◼   ► But it makes total sense.

00:36:28 ◼   ► It's clear that the two places they need to go with the iPad is they need lower prices,

00:36:32 ◼   ► and that's what this product is all about.

00:36:34 ◼   ► And they need to keep pushing the Pro capabilities at the high end, because it runs from, "Hey,

00:36:39 ◼   ► this is just a $300 thing for a classroom full of kids in elementary school," to...

00:36:45 ◼   ► - Or any coffee shop with a square reader, which is, you know.

00:36:49 ◼   ► - Right, right, like just to put like--

00:36:51 ◼   ► - Almost every one I go into now,

00:36:52 ◼   ► they're using an actual iPad as the point of sale stuff.

00:36:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it's, you know,

00:36:57 ◼   ► they're only $300, it's super easy,

00:37:02 ◼   ► it seems to me like every place I go into

00:37:04 ◼   ► that uses them as a reader, they work very well.

00:37:07 ◼   ► They're fast, you know.

00:37:09 ◼   ► But in cases like that, yeah,

00:37:13 ◼   ► price is a bigger difference than power.

00:37:18 ◼   ► I think they did a good job too of figuring out

00:37:20 ◼   ► what are the things that are pro

00:37:23 ◼   ► and which are the things that are not.

00:37:25 ◼   ► If there's anything I'm a little bit,

00:37:27 ◼   ► like I'm not surprised at all

00:37:28 ◼   ► that it doesn't support the pencil,

00:37:30 ◼   ► because the pencil, I can only imagine

00:37:33 ◼   ► that the support inside the iPad for the pencil

00:37:36 ◼   ► is relatively expensive, you know,

00:37:38 ◼   ► that it's not like super cheap.

00:37:40 ◼   ► And the pencil itself isn't cheap.

00:37:43 ◼   ► And so, I don't think schools, for example,

00:37:46 ◼   ► elementary schools that are so price sensitive

00:37:49 ◼   ► and we're hearing so much that they're super,

00:37:50 ◼   ► they're more price sensitive than ever,

00:37:52 ◼   ► they're not gonna buy Apple pencils for the kids

00:37:54 ◼   ► because surely they're gonna get lost.

00:37:56 ◼   ► Snapped, you know.

00:37:59 ◼   ► Maybe the stolen, who knows?

00:38:03 ◼   ► So I don't think pencils--

00:38:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, keep that for pro.

00:38:04 ◼   ► I mean, you can use a dumb stylus

00:38:06 ◼   ► with a regular iPad if you need to.

00:38:08 ◼   ► - Right.

00:38:10 ◼   ► My only regret, my biggest regret

00:38:11 ◼   ► for not having an iPad Pro right now,

00:38:14 ◼   ► myself, is the new app from the icon factory, Linea,

00:38:18 ◼   ► which is a very cool drawing app.

00:38:20 ◼   ► But, and it works just fine, as best as it possibly could

00:38:25 ◼   ► on a non-Pro iPad using these big fingertip-shaped styluses

00:38:30 ◼   ► like I have.

00:38:31 ◼   ► But clearly it is meant for the pencil,

00:38:35 ◼   ► 'cause it's a very, very nice drawing app.

00:38:37 ◼   ► And I don't really, it's not like I'm an illustrator,

00:38:40 ◼   ► but it's my favorite drawing app

00:38:42 ◼   ► that I've seen to date for the iPad.

00:38:43 ◼   ► And so just as like a user interface nerd,

00:38:47 ◼   ► I like playing with it to see what they've done.

00:38:49 ◼   ► But it's clearly, I'm only getting half the experience

00:38:55 ◼   ► by not having an Apple Pencil right now.

00:38:57 ◼   ► There's a thing that I saw where Apple told me

00:39:03 ◼   ► about it really that, I don't have a link to it,

00:39:06 ◼   ► But there's a Logitech case that Apple

00:39:09 ◼   ► is promoting, especially in education, with this new iPad.

00:39:15 ◼   ► And it's sort of--

00:39:16 ◼   ► you can see why Apple wouldn't make it itself.

00:39:18 ◼   ► It's thick.

00:39:19 ◼   ► And so it's-- in terms of like--

00:39:21 ◼   ► it's both a case around the iPad itself.

00:39:26 ◼   ► And it's more like one of those like gorilla cases,

00:39:29 ◼   ► or whatever they call them, where it's like a rugged.

00:39:32 ◼   ► And it's really quite thick.

00:39:34 ◼   ► But it also, it plugs into the lightning port.

00:39:38 ◼   ► So it just wraps around sort of like a battery case.

00:39:40 ◼   ► Maybe it might even be a battery.

00:39:41 ◼   ► I don't even know, it might.

00:39:42 ◼   ► But it definitely plugs into the lightning port.

00:39:45 ◼   ► And then it has a keyboard.

00:39:47 ◼   ► There's two versions.

00:39:48 ◼   ► There's one that's just a rugged case,

00:39:50 ◼   ► and then there's one with a physical keyboard

00:39:52 ◼   ► so you can prop it up like a laptop.

00:39:53 ◼   ► And the reason why it plugs into lightning port

00:39:57 ◼   ► is that for standardized tests in K through 12,

00:40:03 ◼   ► It's the ones that are computerized

00:40:05 ◼   ► have to be done with a keyboard that

00:40:07 ◼   ► has a physical connection to the computing device.

00:40:10 ◼   ► You're not allowed to take-- the standardized tests do not

00:40:14 ◼   ► allow the use of Bluetooth keyboards or mice.

00:40:17 ◼   ► Huh.

00:40:18 ◼   ► I presumably for like cheating type thing.

00:40:24 ◼   ► Like you're not allowed-- I guess

00:40:26 ◼   ► the idea is that when the device is in testing mode,

00:40:30 ◼   ► it is not allowed to have any wireless IO,

00:40:35 ◼   ► which I guess makes some amount of sense.

00:40:39 ◼   ► Just, you know, I'm not quite sure how they enforce it

00:40:42 ◼   ► in software, but that's the idea.

00:40:44 ◼   ► - I mean, it's not dumb.

00:40:45 ◼   ► We used to beam Palm Pilot answers

00:40:47 ◼   ► to each other in high school, so.

00:40:49 ◼   ► - You were ahead of the curve.

00:40:51 ◼   ► - Not a dumb idea.

00:40:52 ◼   ► I definitely was ahead of the curve.

00:40:53 ◼   ► The teacher had no idea what that thing was,

00:40:55 ◼   ► but it's interesting.

00:40:58 ◼   ► And I asked, so the smart connector counts as a wired connection.

00:41:06 ◼   ► So if you wanted to, you could use an iPad Pro and a smart keyboard through the smart

00:41:11 ◼   ► connector.

00:41:12 ◼   ► That would count.

00:41:13 ◼   ► That's not wireless because it is electricity flowing through a connector.

00:41:18 ◼   ► But it's the iPad Pros and the expensive keyboard and everything is way outside the budget for

00:41:24 ◼   ► elementary schools.

00:41:26 ◼   ► But I thought that was interesting that they can't use Bluetooth.

00:41:30 ◼   ► So I guess I'm a little surprised that the cheaper iPad, this new one, doesn't have the

00:41:34 ◼   ► smart connector.

00:41:35 ◼   ► I can see why it doesn't have the pencil.

00:41:36 ◼   ► I'm a little surprised it doesn't have the smart connector, but maybe the smart connector

00:41:40 ◼   ► adds enough to the cost that to get all the way down to $329, you really do have to make

00:41:45 ◼   ► hard decisions like that.

00:41:46 ◼   ► Yeah, it's interesting.

00:41:48 ◼   ► And obviously the screen not having anti-reflective coating on it.

00:41:54 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:41:55 ◼   ► it doesn't have the lamination of the display to the glass.

00:41:59 ◼   ► So there's that very narrow air gap between the,

00:42:04 ◼   ► it just looks like the pixels are slightly lower,

00:42:08 ◼   ► they are in fact slightly further away

00:42:10 ◼   ► from the surface of the glass

00:42:12 ◼   ► than they are on the iPad Air 2, the iPad Pro,

00:42:16 ◼   ► and all the iPhones from recent years.

00:42:19 ◼   ► But on a device that big, I saw one last week,

00:42:21 ◼   ► it doesn't, it's not very noticeable.

00:42:24 ◼   ► I don't know if I, you know, I guess I could do it side by side, but if you just gave me

00:42:28 ◼   ► one iPad and asked me to guess, I'm not sure if I could see it.

00:42:32 ◼   ► Pete: Oh, it's new too.

00:42:36 ◼   ► Mine has, I think, some permanent fingerprints on it at this point, even with the anti-reflective.

00:42:43 ◼   ► So…

00:42:44 ◼   ► [Laughter]

00:42:45 ◼   ► I've told this story before, but it's one of my favorites.

00:42:53 ◼   ► So one of the two times that I met Steve Jobs personally was after the keynote when they

00:43:00 ◼   ► announced the iPhone 4, which was the first Retina iPhone and the first one where the

00:43:06 ◼   ► screen was fused to the glass.

00:43:09 ◼   ► And it's the hands-on area.

00:43:11 ◼   ► He was on the side hallway beside the big keynote area

00:43:14 ◼   ► in Moscone, and I was just hanging around.

00:43:18 ◼   ► And I got to talk to Scott Forstall,

00:43:20 ◼   ► and I'd never talked to him before,

00:43:22 ◼   ► and he obviously knew who I was,

00:43:24 ◼   ► and he said he reads "Daring Fireball," likes it a lot,

00:43:27 ◼   ► and it was very complimentary.

00:43:27 ◼   ► We had a great little discussion.

00:43:29 ◼   ► And Katie Cotton was talking to me then,

00:43:36 ◼   ► and then she said, "Would you like to meet Steve?"

00:43:38 ◼   ► And I just said, "Has anybody ever said no to that?"

00:43:42 ◼   ► And she laughed and said, "No, actually nobody

00:43:44 ◼   ► "has ever said no to that."

00:43:45 ◼   ► And I said, "Sure."

00:43:46 ◼   ► So she walked me over and introduced me,

00:43:48 ◼   ► and I was talking with Steve Jobs and Forstall.

00:43:51 ◼   ► And he asked what I thought of the phone.

00:43:55 ◼   ► I said it was beautiful.

00:43:56 ◼   ► I've been waiting for retina screens forever,

00:44:01 ◼   ► high resolution screens.

00:44:03 ◼   ► We talked about it, I don't know,

00:44:04 ◼   ► probably about five minutes,

00:44:05 ◼   ► but it felt like it just rushed right by.

00:44:07 ◼   ► But I said, like about the lamination,

00:44:09 ◼   ► and I had a question about that,

00:44:10 ◼   ► and he had all the details, he knew exactly how it worked.

00:44:13 ◼   ► In fact, he said they had to invent the machines to do it.

00:44:18 ◼   ► There was no factory in China could do it,

00:44:21 ◼   ► so they invented their own machines

00:44:23 ◼   ► and filled the factory in Foxconn

00:44:26 ◼   ► with these Apple-invented machines to do it.

00:44:29 ◼   ► And I said, so there's literally no air gap anymore.

00:44:32 ◼   ► It's impossible for like a piece of dust

00:44:34 ◼   ► to get between the screen and the glass.

00:44:36 ◼   ► And he said, "Nope, it's absolutely impossible."

00:44:39 ◼   ► And so I took out my personal 3GS,

00:44:42 ◼   ► and I said, "So I can't get like this."

00:44:44 ◼   ► And I showed him the piece of dust

00:44:45 ◼   ► that he'd be doing. (laughing)

00:44:47 ◼   ► That was sort of like,

00:44:49 ◼   ► right in the center of the screen horizontally,

00:44:52 ◼   ► or yeah, horizontally,

00:44:53 ◼   ► and about two inches up from the bottom.

00:44:55 ◼   ► And he laughed, and he said, "No, that can't happen again."

00:44:58 ◼   ► But I-- - That's awesome.

00:45:00 ◼   ► - I love that I got to show Steve Jobs

00:45:01 ◼   ► the pieces of dust in my iPhone.

00:45:06 ◼   ► Nice.

00:45:06 ◼   ► A good use of a rare opportunity.

00:45:10 ◼   ► Uh, what else did they have?

00:45:14 ◼   ► They had the, uh, was there any more hardware?

00:45:16 ◼   ► I think the only way they had the, they had the app, which was interesting.

00:45:21 ◼   ► And to me, this, the app is a sign that there's not an event coming before WWDC.

00:45:27 ◼   ► Cause that's the kind of thing that seemed like it would have been

00:45:29 ◼   ► dems for live demo, demo, totally demo.

00:45:33 ◼   ► And in fact, in the briefing that I had, by far and away, the overall majority of the

00:45:38 ◼   ► time was talking about clips and demoing clips and going through a sort of, you know, here's

00:45:44 ◼   ► how you use it type thing.

00:45:46 ◼   ► Which is it out now?

00:45:47 ◼   ► Because it's now three.

00:45:48 ◼   ► It is coming out in quote unquote April.

00:45:51 ◼   ► Oh, it was funny.

00:45:53 ◼   ► So they said it, you know, it requires 10 three.

00:45:56 ◼   ► And I asked if that meant,

00:45:58 ◼   ► is it going to come out the same day 10.3 comes out?

00:46:03 ◼   ► 'Cause they didn't have an announcement date for 10.3.

00:46:06 ◼   ► And it was so typical Apple where the answer was,

00:46:10 ◼   ► it's coming out, they said to me,

00:46:15 ◼   ► it's coming out in April and requires iOS 10.3.

00:46:18 ◼   ► And I said, does that mean it's gonna come out

00:46:19 ◼   ► the same day 10.3 comes out?

00:46:21 ◼   ► And their answer was, it's coming out in April

00:46:23 ◼   ► and it requires iOS 10.3.

00:46:26 ◼   ► - Amazing.

00:46:26 ◼   ► - You've had those answers too, right?

00:46:30 ◼   ► - Of course.

00:46:30 ◼   ► - And when they repeat the answer once,

00:46:33 ◼   ► and they do it, they don't do it like you're a moron.

00:46:35 ◼   ► They don't do it as though

00:46:38 ◼   ► they haven't told you that before.

00:46:39 ◼   ► They do it with a, please take a hint that this is all,

00:46:44 ◼   ► I can't give you a yes or a no.

00:46:46 ◼   ► So I took it to mean that maybe it was going to,

00:46:51 ◼   ► and then maybe that's what they were shooting for.

00:46:53 ◼   ► But I think what happened,

00:46:55 ◼   ► They did know it wasn't coming out till April already.

00:46:58 ◼   ► I think I was there last Wednesday or I forget what day, but it was last week.

00:47:05 ◼   ► They did know that Eclipse wasn't coming out till April.

00:47:08 ◼   ► And I think that maybe what happened is that 10.3 was ready first and they didn't want

00:47:12 ◼   ► to hold it back.

00:47:13 ◼   ► I don't think they like holding back iOS updates because of the security stuff in them.

00:47:18 ◼   ► When they get the go-ahead from their testing people that, "Hey, this is ready to ship,"

00:47:24 ◼   ► they ship it. But anyway, I think it's a great app. I know that at first there was

00:47:30 ◼   ► sort of, it seemed like some of the initial reaction on Twitter was sort of

00:47:33 ◼   ► a, "Oh, Apple's piling on this me too Snapchat/Instagram/every single product Facebook-owned stories sort of multimedia posting things."

00:47:51 ◼   ► And there's some part of that that's obviously there because Apple is emphasizing that you

00:47:57 ◼   ► can share these—they're just videos, and you can share them to any service you want.

00:48:04 ◼   ► But they're not making their own social network to do it.

00:48:07 ◼   ► It has nothing to do with the networking.

00:48:09 ◼   ► It has just to do with the creation of this new sort of hybrid media format.

00:48:15 ◼   ► And I find it fascinating.

00:48:16 ◼   ► And in the time I got to play with it, I was super impressed with the app.

00:48:20 ◼   ► It is, to me, it is the software equivalent of AirPods, where hardware-wise, AirPods are

00:48:29 ◼   ► my favorite new Apple product in a long time, and to me, is Apple at its best.

00:48:37 ◼   ► I think clips is the same thing with software.

00:48:39 ◼   ► Sure, it's just a little thing.

00:48:41 ◼   ► It's not like a major, a super major new thing in the same way that, hey, they're just headphones,

00:48:47 ◼   ► right?

00:48:48 ◼   ► It's just a little way to make little animated movies.

00:48:51 ◼   ► But it's so well done.

00:48:54 ◼   ► Like I described it on Twitter.

00:48:55 ◼   ► I worked on this tweet for a while,

00:48:57 ◼   ► but I described it as it's as though

00:48:59 ◼   ► Keynote and iMovie had a baby

00:49:01 ◼   ► and the kid got all the best genes from both parents.

00:49:03 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:49:06 ◼   ► - And if you wanna look at it deeper

00:49:09 ◼   ► and more strategically, it's also one of the first,

00:49:12 ◼   ► if not the first augmented reality software tools

00:49:16 ◼   ► from Apple in a sense.

00:49:18 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:49:19 ◼   ► If you believe that they are building AR glasses and that the new iPhone might have some AR

00:49:26 ◼   ► features in it, it seems pretty obvious to start shipping that kind of stuff.

00:49:31 ◼   ► Well, I guess it kind of is an AR feature.

00:49:34 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:49:35 ◼   ► It does.

00:49:36 ◼   ► It definitely ... Is it AR?

00:49:42 ◼   ► I don't know if it qualifies, but for example, if I would ...

00:49:45 ◼   ► AR is kind of a murky thing to define. In some senses, Pokemon Go was AR, but in others,

00:49:51 ◼   ► it's not really. It's just a game. Right. In some sense, I almost feel... Yeah,

00:49:57 ◼   ► let's not worry about what is and is not augmented reality in a capital-A, capital-R sense,

00:50:04 ◼   ► but instead just think about the ways that these devices with... Especially the camera,

00:50:13 ◼   ► and the microphone, the camera and microphone are obviously the two main inputs, but other sensors

00:50:17 ◼   ► as well are aware of where they are and how they're being used. And so the example with clips is,

00:50:22 ◼   ► if I'm shooting you and I'm putting you in a clip, it does real-time facial recognition and knows

00:50:29 ◼   ► that Dan Fromer is in the clip. And so it's already there. And I forget exactly how that comes into

00:50:38 ◼   ► I know one way that it comes into play is when I'm done making the clip it and I go to share it

00:50:43 ◼   ► It'll if it knows that you were in the clip. It'll suggest sending it to you

00:50:47 ◼   ► That's cool

00:50:50 ◼   ► There might be other things too though that you can do within the clip to somehow get you labeled or something like that

00:50:56 ◼   ► You know my number one feature request from the internet is still the feed of photos that I'm in the background of

00:51:05 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Taken by all random people.

00:51:07 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:51:09 ◼   ► - Somewhere that exists that just hasn't been turned on yet.

00:51:12 ◼   ► - It's called the NSA.

00:51:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, okay, yeah, true.

00:51:16 ◼   ► Yes.

00:51:18 ◼   ► - But somebody's gonna make a public version of that,

00:51:20 ◼   ► and it'll be weird, but you know.

00:51:22 ◼   ► I remember reading a story, it's sort of a tangent,

00:51:28 ◼   ► but I remember reading a story in Wired magazine,

00:51:31 ◼   ► I'm gonna say 10 years ago,

00:51:32 ◼   ► but I don't even know if I was still reading

00:51:34 ◼   ► Wired 10 years ago,

00:51:35 ◼   ► so it might have been 15 or 20 years ago.

00:51:38 ◼   ► But somebody was writing about,

00:51:40 ◼   ► as municipalities and cities put cameras at intersections

00:51:47 ◼   ► and stuff like that,

00:51:49 ◼   ► you know, and that there's video monitoring of public spaces,

00:51:53 ◼   ► that the right way to, you know,

00:51:55 ◼   ► it's right for everybody to be concerned about privacy

00:51:59 ◼   ► and access to the footage,

00:52:00 ◼   ► but the way to deal with it isn't to lock it down

00:52:03 ◼   ► super tight and only allow the police to see it.

00:52:07 ◼   ► And the way to do it is to make them public

00:52:09 ◼   ► so that if there's a traffic camera at 15th and Locust

00:52:14 ◼   ► and the police can get the footage of it,

00:52:17 ◼   ► everybody should be able to get the footage of it

00:52:19 ◼   ► over the internet.

00:52:20 ◼   ► 'Cause if I was standing there,

00:52:21 ◼   ► I could see what's going on at the corner.

00:52:23 ◼   ► So if there's a camera there

00:52:24 ◼   ► and it's a publicly owned camera,

00:52:26 ◼   ► why can't I get the footage of the camera?

00:52:28 ◼   ► And there's some sense to that, to me.

00:52:32 ◼   ► You know, I'm not saying I completely agree with it, but I can see the logic behind it,

00:52:35 ◼   ► and I can sort of see the logic of, look, if some entities are collecting background information

00:52:40 ◼   ► about who's in all these pictures that are being posted to Twitter, maybe everybody should have

00:52:45 ◼   ► that information. Because the picture's on. If it's a public picture, right? If the picture's

00:52:51 ◼   ► been posted to Twitter, it's there, why not notify me of it? I'm not sure about that.

00:52:57 ◼   ► Anyway, clips. I think clips is pretty exciting.

00:53:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm pumped for that one.

00:53:02 ◼   ► That should be cool.

00:53:03 ◼   ► But that's the kind of thing where, you know,

00:53:06 ◼   ► I guess that if there was gonna be a time

00:53:09 ◼   ► to show that publicly and give a 10, 15 minute demo of it,

00:53:14 ◼   ► - It would be on stage.

00:53:15 ◼   ► - It would be more desirable, yeah,

00:53:16 ◼   ► it would be on stage and that would be more desirable

00:53:18 ◼   ► than, you know, whatever, however many places

00:53:21 ◼   ► were pre-briefed and got to demo it.

00:53:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, 'cause it's hard.

00:53:25 ◼   ► 'Cause even if they have exciting new,

00:53:29 ◼   ► Like, all right, it's just a red iPhone 7, really.

00:53:33 ◼   ► I mean, the red is nice, but it's not really demo-able

00:53:37 ◼   ► on stage.

00:53:38 ◼   ► Ultimately, it's the type of thing

00:53:39 ◼   ► you really need to see in person.

00:53:40 ◼   ► Everybody needs to go to a store and see it

00:53:42 ◼   ► to really appreciate it.

00:53:43 ◼   ► Because you know it's going to look good in the product

00:53:46 ◼   ► photography.

00:53:46 ◼   ► So the real question for anybody who's actually

00:53:49 ◼   ► thinking about buying one is, what

00:53:50 ◼   ► does it look like in person?

00:53:51 ◼   ► So showing it on stage doesn't really help.

00:53:53 ◼   ► iPhone SE has more storage.

00:53:55 ◼   ► Well, you can't demo that.

00:53:57 ◼   ► That is at best one slide and what,

00:54:00 ◼   ► seven seconds is stage time.

00:54:02 ◼   ► Software like Clips is what you need

00:54:04 ◼   ► to actually fill a presentation.

00:54:06 ◼   ► - Which also says that there's too much

00:54:10 ◼   ► at WWDC to save that for.

00:54:13 ◼   ► - Maybe, I don't know.

00:54:14 ◼   ► Or maybe it's one of those things

00:54:16 ◼   ► where it's ready to go and they wanna get it out.

00:54:18 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:54:19 ◼   ► - One of the things that worked well for me,

00:54:21 ◼   ► at least in my brief demo time,

00:54:24 ◼   ► in admittedly an enclosed environment

00:54:26 ◼   ► so it wasn't lots of public noise or anything like that.

00:54:29 ◼   ► But the way that you, when you speak,

00:54:33 ◼   ► when you can set, it doesn't do it all the time,

00:54:35 ◼   ► but you can turn on like a title style,

00:54:37 ◼   ► and while the title style is on,

00:54:39 ◼   ► it will, you speak to the camera,

00:54:41 ◼   ► what you're saying turns into these animated titles.

00:54:46 ◼   ► - Oh, cool.

00:54:47 ◼   ► - It works very well.

00:54:48 ◼   ► And it does it in a, depending on the style, I think,

00:54:53 ◼   ► but at least in certain of the styles,

00:54:55 ◼   ► The words only appear as you speak them.

00:54:57 ◼   ► And one of the things that they're super cognizant of,

00:55:03 ◼   ► and it's clearly designed for, is that

00:55:07 ◼   ► these videos, they have sound,

00:55:12 ◼   ► and they even have all these cool music soundtracks

00:55:14 ◼   ► you can do with them, but that the assumption is that

00:55:16 ◼   ► in many contexts, they're going to be played

00:55:18 ◼   ► with the sound off, because people are at work

00:55:20 ◼   ► or they're in public, and nobody likes a video

00:55:24 ◼   ► that auto plays with sound.

00:55:26 ◼   ► And so that's why I think they put so much emphasis

00:55:29 ◼   ► on these titles.

00:55:31 ◼   ► But it's really pretty cool the way that the titles

00:55:34 ◼   ► sync up with the words you're saying as you're saying them.

00:55:37 ◼   ► And it seems like the sort of thing

00:55:40 ◼   ► that would take a lot of fiddling with

00:55:42 ◼   ► in the software to do, but you don't.

00:55:46 ◼   ► You just turn on the title,

00:55:47 ◼   ► and as you're holding the button, it happens automatically.

00:55:50 ◼   ► You get, the result is you get an effect

00:55:54 ◼   ► looks like it took a lot of precision editing and instead you got it automatically.

00:55:57 ◼   ► That's cool. That sounds as close to magic as we can get these days almost.

00:56:05 ◼   ► Yeah. I think maybe the single most appley thing about it is that among the soundtracks that

00:56:12 ◼   ► they've commissioned, number one, they've commissioned a whole bunch of these soundtracks

00:56:16 ◼   ► of different styles, but they've had the artists who make them make them in a whole bunch of

00:56:21 ◼   ► different lengths. So the same song, if you make just a little four second clip,

00:56:27 ◼   ► there's a version of it that maybe isn't recorded as exactly four seconds,

00:56:34 ◼   ► but there's a version for, "Hey, what if the clip is only like three to five

00:56:37 ◼   ► seconds long? We'll use this one." And there's a beginning and an end that makes

00:56:41 ◼   ► sense. But if you have a 30-second clip, it's the same song, but it's a

00:56:45 ◼   ► different version that is meant to be roughly 30 seconds long. But the part

00:56:50 ◼   ► Super Appley is that they have ones that were created by Hans Zimmer. They actually paid Hans

00:56:57 ◼   ► Zimmer to do some of these. Every other tech company in the world, I think, might have hired

00:57:04 ◼   ► somebody like, you know, Zahn Himmer, you know, make us something that sounds like a Hans Zimmer

00:57:10 ◼   ► song. And instead, Apple went and paid Hans Zimmer to do it. It's pretty cool.

00:57:14 ◼   ► Did you get a sense it's mostly for tall screen video, for mobile video, or is it also for

00:57:21 ◼   ► uploading to YouTube and stuff?

00:57:23 ◼   ► It is, in fact, the app only works when you're holding it tall screen. The app does not rotate.

00:57:32 ◼   ► But the format is like old school Instagram. It is only and always square.

00:57:39 ◼   ► Oh, wow.

00:57:41 ◼   ► And it is intended for consumption on mobile first.

00:57:48 ◼   ► And I asked about that.

00:57:50 ◼   ► This is great that you asked, because it

00:57:52 ◼   ► was one of my big questions.

00:57:54 ◼   ► If you import-- so anything you shoot while you're in clips

00:57:58 ◼   ► is always automatically square.

00:58:00 ◼   ► If you import from your library a photo or a video

00:58:07 ◼   ► that you shot in a rectangular format,

00:58:10 ◼   ► it crops to a square, but you get to pan and scan within it to where you want it. And if it's a

00:58:16 ◼   ► video, you can, it's not just like you pick the square and the whole thing, you can change it as

00:58:21 ◼   ► the video plays, like which, which portion of it appears in the square. That's what I mean about

00:58:27 ◼   ► it being a very, you know, like a keynote/iMovie-esque caliber app. Like, every little thing

00:58:34 ◼   ► like that that I could think of during the demo, they were like, "Yes, it already does that." Like,

00:58:38 ◼   ► I thought I had them pegged on a whole bunch of these things.

00:58:41 ◼   ► I thought, oh, well, what happens

00:58:42 ◼   ► if the beginning of the video, the center, is the best part,

00:58:45 ◼   ► but at the end of the video, the best part's over on the right?

00:58:48 ◼   ► It handles that.

00:58:51 ◼   ► And so the idea is they said-- this

00:58:53 ◼   ► is one of the things they said about going with Square--

00:58:55 ◼   ► is that on mobile, Square always looks good.

00:58:59 ◼   ► And what they've noticed is that a lot of people,

00:59:04 ◼   ► in their observations, even when they're

00:59:06 ◼   ► watching 16 to nine horizontal video on their phone.

00:59:11 ◼   ► If it's a short clip,

00:59:12 ◼   ► they don't even bother rotating the phone.

00:59:14 ◼   ► They just watch it tiny and centered in their phone

00:59:19 ◼   ► as it's held tall,

00:59:21 ◼   ► because it's so much more comfortable

00:59:23 ◼   ► to hold your phone tall than to hold it sideways.

00:59:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, I definitely do that.

00:59:29 ◼   ► What sense do you get on why they made something like this?

00:59:33 ◼   ► It seems kind of, you know,

00:59:35 ◼   ► used to make stuff like this,

00:59:37 ◼   ► like Photo Booth on the Mac,

00:59:39 ◼   ► because there was a camera on the front of the MacBook

00:59:43 ◼   ► and you needed something to do with it,

00:59:44 ◼   ► but it seems like they do this less often now.

00:59:48 ◼   ► - I do think so, and I think that's why I'm so,

00:59:50 ◼   ► that's why it makes me so happy,

00:59:51 ◼   ► because I do think that making creative tools

00:59:53 ◼   ► is what Apple does best, and I think it's a sense,

00:59:56 ◼   ► you know, they don't really,

01:00:00 ◼   ► they generally, Apple doesn't generally like to explain

01:00:03 ◼   ► the why behind a lot of things, but I just think it's because they could, and they knew

01:00:06 ◼   ► that they could do a good job.

01:00:08 ◼   ► I think they saw an opportunity.

01:00:09 ◼   ► And I think that what they saw—this, I guess, they kind of did say—was that they could

01:00:14 ◼   ► kind of see that this hybrid format is becoming a new thing.

01:00:20 ◼   ► You know, that it's like at a meta level above a video or a still photo or even just

01:00:27 ◼   ► a still photo with a static annotation over it.

01:00:31 ◼   ► You know how you can make in Mail now?

01:00:34 ◼   ► Like if I paste an image in Mail,

01:00:36 ◼   ► I can edit, click the little toolbox,

01:00:39 ◼   ► and draw like an arrow or circle something on the image.

01:00:42 ◼   ► That a sort of combination between a video

01:00:49 ◼   ► and an annotated image is becoming a new format

01:00:52 ◼   ► and that they could make a tool that does it better.

01:00:57 ◼   ► And it really does.

01:00:58 ◼   ► It does all the things that you think you could do.

01:00:59 ◼   ► Like when you drag out a thought bubble or something like that,

01:01:07 ◼   ► you can pinch it to scale it.

01:01:09 ◼   ► You can two-finger twist it to rotate it.

01:01:13 ◼   ► You can drag it anywhere you want on the canvas.

01:01:15 ◼   ► Everything you think you should be

01:01:17 ◼   ► able to do to the little things you drag out and put

01:01:20 ◼   ► on the canvas, you can do.

01:01:23 ◼   ► So I know.

01:01:24 ◼   ► And I think some of it is we know how to do this already.

01:01:28 ◼   ► Like the end result is a format that's sort of new,

01:01:32 ◼   ► but the little things you can do,

01:01:35 ◼   ► Apple already had some of the software to do it.

01:01:39 ◼   ► - It's interesting though with the square aspect ratio

01:01:45 ◼   ► because then I don't know if you can make much use

01:01:49 ◼   ► of this uploading to an Instagram Stories

01:01:52 ◼   ► or Snapchat or something like that.

01:01:55 ◼   ► So it is not super useful for that, I guess.

01:02:00 ◼   ► - Well, I wonder though, maybe what people will do

01:02:01 ◼   ► with them though is upgrade them

01:02:03 ◼   ► as a regular Instagram post.

01:02:05 ◼   ► - True, which I'm doing less of now because of the stories,

01:02:10 ◼   ► so maybe that'll be useful.

01:02:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't know.

01:02:14 ◼   ► I don't know if I've ever even posted an Instagram story.

01:02:16 ◼   ► I don't know what to make of it.

01:02:18 ◼   ► With Instagram Stories-- - I love it.

01:02:21 ◼   ► I think it's great, but I can see why people don't do it too.

01:02:24 ◼   ► But with Instagram Stories, correct me if I'm wrong,

01:02:26 ◼   ► you can't pick from your library.

01:02:28 ◼   ► You've gotta create a new thing right now on the fly.

01:02:31 ◼   ► - No, you can use anything from the last 24 hours.

01:02:34 ◼   ► That was kind of something they did differently

01:02:36 ◼   ► than Snapchat.

01:02:37 ◼   ► Snapchat won't let you,

01:02:39 ◼   ► used to not let you pick from the library.

01:02:41 ◼   ► Now you kinda can, but it's not super great.

01:02:44 ◼   ► - So if I make a clip and save it to my library,

01:02:46 ◼   ► I could upload it as an Instagram Story.

01:02:49 ◼   ► - Yes.

01:02:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think people might do that.

01:02:51 ◼   ► I really do, 'cause I think that it's a richer editing tool.

01:02:53 ◼   ► It's got--

01:02:55 ◼   ► - But it'll be, it'll zoom in then,

01:02:58 ◼   ► 'cause Instagram Stories will take up

01:02:59 ◼   ► the full 16 by nine vertical frame.

01:03:02 ◼   ► So it'll-- - Ah.

01:03:03 ◼   ► I wonder if it'll zoom in or if it'll just crop it.

01:03:06 ◼   ► Or you know, like letterbox it.

01:03:07 ◼   ► - It will zoom in.

01:03:10 ◼   ► - Oh.

01:03:10 ◼   ► Well, then maybe--

01:03:11 ◼   ► - Well, at least that's what it does with still photos.

01:03:13 ◼   ► I have not actually tried it with a square video.

01:03:16 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:03:17 ◼   ► - I think it will zoom in.

01:03:18 ◼   ► - Well, I don't know.

01:03:21 ◼   ► - But some people who do like some more,

01:03:23 ◼   ► I've noticed some people I think using either iMovie or Final Cut to make crazy effects

01:03:30 ◼   ► in their Instagram stories and then popping it in there. Obviously, using tools you couldn't

01:03:35 ◼   ► use in the native Instagram app, but most people obviously don't do that. Most people

01:03:39 ◼   ► are using the Instagram tools.

01:03:41 ◼   ► Well, I don't know. Again, I'm not a story user, so maybe I'm the wrong person to judge

01:03:46 ◼   ► it, but I would think that if you take the time to use clips, which is a little bit more

01:03:49 ◼   ► effort than just whipping it out, you know, just doing it live in the Instagram app. If

01:03:54 ◼   ► you're going to take the time to use clips, you probably want to post it as a regular

01:03:57 ◼   ► post anyway and not have it disappear.

01:03:59 ◼   ► Yeah, that makes sense.

01:04:02 ◼   ► I don't know. I am really excited about it, and I just think from what I saw, it is really,

01:04:07 ◼   ► really well done. It's not just that the features are well done, but even the user experience,

01:04:16 ◼   ► I don't know what you call it, but the layout of the app

01:04:20 ◼   ► is very, very, very thoughtfully done.

01:04:23 ◼   ► In a way, it's the best sort of structure to the entire user

01:04:29 ◼   ► interface, which is that I think most people will never even

01:04:32 ◼   ► think, wow, this has a really nice interface,

01:04:34 ◼   ► because it's just so obvious.

01:04:37 ◼   ► When you do it right, it just disappears.

01:04:41 ◼   ► All it is is just two layers.

01:04:43 ◼   ► It's like at the root level, there's

01:04:45 ◼   ► just a horizontal stream of your clips

01:04:48 ◼   ► that you've already made.

01:04:50 ◼   ► So you can select a clip that you're like halfway through.

01:04:53 ◼   ► Clip meaning a project, right?

01:04:55 ◼   ► So you can select one that you've already made,

01:04:58 ◼   ► and it opens back up again.

01:04:59 ◼   ► And then that's the only two layers.

01:05:02 ◼   ► There's one for choosing, and then you tap one

01:05:05 ◼   ► or add the plus button to create a new one,

01:05:08 ◼   ► and you're in the Clips Editor.

01:05:10 ◼   ► And within the Clips Editor,

01:05:11 ◼   ► there's only just a few things you can do.

01:05:12 ◼   ► and there's no way to get lost.

01:05:15 ◼   ► I feel like apps like Instagram,

01:05:18 ◼   ► like Instagram has broken all the rules

01:05:20 ◼   ► of what Instagram is by adding all these new features.

01:05:23 ◼   ► When you swipe from the left to go to the thing

01:05:28 ◼   ► where you edit your stories or whatever the hell that is,

01:05:31 ◼   ► like where are you in the app spatially?

01:05:33 ◼   ► It's just something they made up.

01:05:35 ◼   ► There's no on-screen indication of where you are.

01:05:39 ◼   ► As opposed to the old Instagram,

01:05:41 ◼   ► where you were always in one of the five tabs

01:05:43 ◼   ► at the bottom of the screen.

01:05:44 ◼   ► - Well, actually, if you do it now,

01:05:48 ◼   ► there's a little slider that kind of suggests

01:05:51 ◼   ► that you're going toward the camera.

01:05:53 ◼   ► There's a little slider thing.

01:05:55 ◼   ► But yeah, I kind of get what you're going at.

01:05:58 ◼   ► They definitely borrowed a lot of this navigational

01:06:00 ◼   ► concept from Snapchat, which was very confusing at first,

01:06:04 ◼   ► but now...

01:06:06 ◼   ► - Well, and the other one, too,

01:06:07 ◼   ► is you can slide to the other side, too,

01:06:08 ◼   ► in your direct messages.

01:06:10 ◼   ► And I know what you mean, I see what you mean.

01:06:12 ◼   ► I'm looking at it right now.

01:06:13 ◼   ► Yes, I see the little indicator that it's over there.

01:06:16 ◼   ► And Instagram to me is certainly better than Snapchat.

01:06:20 ◼   ► I mean, Snapchat feels like a fever dream to me.

01:06:22 ◼   ► I mean, I honest to God feel like I'm losing my mind

01:06:25 ◼   ► when I A, just try to understand the app,

01:06:28 ◼   ► and B, try to understand how it's fabulously popular.

01:06:33 ◼   ► It really does make me feel like I'm losing my goddamn mind.

01:06:39 ◼   ► Whereas Instagram was always--

01:06:41 ◼   ► I mean, right from the first day that it shipped, I was like, oh,

01:06:43 ◼   ► I love the design of this app.

01:06:45 ◼   ► I get it.

01:06:46 ◼   ► And my design sensibilities are sympathetic with the people

01:06:51 ◼   ► who designed this.

01:06:52 ◼   ► Even now that they've added these things,

01:06:53 ◼   ► I still think that the people who design Instagram

01:06:56 ◼   ► are of a like mind to me.

01:07:00 ◼   ► But I still feel like it's kind of confusing.

01:07:03 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:07:05 ◼   ► I guess the other thing that I saw along these same lines

01:07:07 ◼   ► is I did see some day one criticism from people on Twitter

01:07:11 ◼   ► of why is this a separate app?

01:07:13 ◼   ► Why didn't they just make this part of the camera app?

01:07:15 ◼   ► And I think that that's, what I'm talking about

01:07:18 ◼   ► is exactly why I'm glad Apple did not do that.

01:07:21 ◼   ► I think the camera app already kind of has

01:07:23 ◼   ► a lot of stuff going on.

01:07:25 ◼   ► And this is very different than,

01:07:28 ◼   ► the camera app is all about getting one shot,

01:07:30 ◼   ► either a still or a video clip.

01:07:33 ◼   ► And clips is all about making,

01:07:34 ◼   ► editing multiple clips together into a thing.

01:07:37 ◼   ► I feel like separating it into its own second app is exactly the right thing for Apple to

01:07:44 ◼   ► do.

01:07:45 ◼   ► And I think it's exactly why iOS is so much less cluttered than the Mac.

01:07:50 ◼   ► That whole, "Why don't you put it in the same app?" is exactly how iTunes got from a simple

01:07:55 ◼   ► music library.

01:07:56 ◼   ► Right.

01:07:57 ◼   ► I was going to say, these are the same people who are complaining about iTunes bloat, maybe.

01:08:01 ◼   ► There was a time when iTunes was the perfect example of an app that did one thing really

01:08:07 ◼   ► It really was. Okay, instead of having a giant folder full of MP3s, just throw them all into

01:08:14 ◼   ► iTunes. It'll sort them all out, and you've got a nice little music library that's organized by

01:08:20 ◼   ► artist, by album, and every other feature they added, like the visualizers and stuff, was at

01:08:28 ◼   ► least related to music playback. And so, you know, I always do—whenever you think, like,

01:08:33 ◼   ► Why not add that to the camera app just think that's that's how camera app turns into iTunes in five years

01:08:39 ◼   ► Plus if it

01:08:43 ◼   ► Extends to new sensors like you know, IR facial stuff or whatever that you may not want in the main camera app

01:08:50 ◼   ► Yeah, either. No

01:08:53 ◼   ► So anyway, I think clips is gonna be pretty popular, but it's not out yet. So I guess we should stop talking about it

01:08:57 ◼   ► All right

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01:10:04 ◼   ► It sucks all the air out of the room. So be careful. Hold your breath while it unfolds.

01:10:11 ◼   ► And then you've got a full-size mattress right there in your room. It's a great mattress.

01:10:17 ◼   ► I've talked to, I've convinced family members to buy these things and everybody's like,

01:10:21 ◼   ► "Wow, that is an amazing mattress." I mean, this is probably like the one product that I

01:10:26 ◼   ► Hawk here on the talk show that I've actually gotten the most people that I know personally

01:10:33 ◼   ► to buy. It really is. It is such an easier way to buy a mattress, and it is a great mattress.

01:10:39 ◼   ► Everybody I've personally convinced to buy one loves it. Even if you don't, though, what

01:10:45 ◼   ► they have is a 100-night home trial. So you have 100 days after you get it, and if you

01:10:50 ◼   ► don't like it, you call them up, and they just come, send somebody to pick it up at

01:10:54 ◼   ► your house, get it out of your house, and they give you a full refund. No questions

01:10:57 ◼   ► asked. That's how confident they are in the quality of the mattress.

01:11:03 ◼   ► Go to casper.com/thetalkshow and use that code, thetalkshow, for 50 bucks towards your

01:11:09 ◼   ► next mattress. The only downside to that code is it doesn't work on their dog mattresses

01:11:13 ◼   ► because the dog mattress already costs so little. I'm telling you right now, if you

01:11:17 ◼   ► have a dog and you need a mattress for your dog, get the Casper. Your dog will love it.

01:11:22 ◼   ► I keep talking about this, but everybody who has dogs who listens to the show is like,

01:11:26 ◼   ► my dog loves this thing, he won't get up from it.

01:11:30 ◼   ► So there you go, my thanks to Casper.

01:11:33 ◼   ► What else do we have to talk about this week, Dan?

01:11:35 ◼   ► I gotta get Ralph for one of those dog beds.

01:11:38 ◼   ► You should!

01:11:39 ◼   ► Although I just got him one of these wacky ones that they crawl into and it's like,

01:11:45 ◼   ► almost a sleeping bag.

01:11:46 ◼   ► He's not into it.

01:11:47 ◼   ► He thinks it's ridiculous.

01:11:50 ◼   ► So, I'll check it out.

01:11:54 ◼   ► Well, we should talk about the Samsung thing.

01:11:56 ◼   ► I think it's kind of interesting.

01:11:58 ◼   ► So I think it was yesterday?

01:11:59 ◼   ► I wrote a, yeah, yesterday, I actually forgot that the event was yesterday, which I was

01:12:08 ◼   ► invited to it.

01:12:09 ◼   ► I forgot to put it on my calendar.

01:12:10 ◼   ► I would have totally gone and checked it out in person.

01:12:13 ◼   ► So whoops.

01:12:16 ◼   ► And also we probably lost a lot of traffic on Recode because I didn't write up a preview

01:12:20 ◼   ► for it.

01:12:21 ◼   ► But it looks like it was pretty much solely focused on the new Galaxy S8, I think it's

01:12:29 ◼   ► called, which usually is the phone they show off in February at Mobile World Congress.

01:12:33 ◼   ► It's Samsung's big phone, especially important this year because their last big phone, which

01:12:40 ◼   ► which was the Note 7 was the one that was catching on fire.

01:12:45 ◼   ► So not only was this an important flagship phone for them,

01:12:50 ◼   ► but also kind of a back from the dead moment.

01:12:54 ◼   ► Also, they have all kinds of weird corporate shit going on

01:12:57 ◼   ► that's not good.

01:12:58 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:13:00 ◼   ► So anyway.

01:13:02 ◼   ► - The only company that thinks Samsung's had a good run

01:13:06 ◼   ► in the last year is probably Uber.

01:13:10 ◼   ► Those lucky SOVs.

01:13:11 ◼   ► But yeah, Samsung's had people go into jail,

01:13:14 ◼   ► or at least getting criminally investigated

01:13:17 ◼   ► for bribery scandals.

01:13:18 ◼   ► The Node S7 thing is, I've seen it in several cases,

01:13:24 ◼   ► and everybody, and this is the worst part if you're Samsung,

01:13:26 ◼   ► is every single article about the S8 mentions

01:13:29 ◼   ► that six months ago they had to recall

01:13:31 ◼   ► their last flagship phone because they were exploding.

01:13:34 ◼   ► And so it's like--

01:13:37 ◼   ► - So a lot riding on this one.

01:13:38 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:13:39 ◼   ► I have not seen it in person, but people who study these things really like it.

01:13:47 ◼   ► You know, it's still, for me, the biggest problem is that it's running Android, so I

01:13:52 ◼   ► would never use it.

01:13:53 ◼   ► Yeah, and not just Android, but Samsung's, like, corrupted version of Android.

01:13:57 ◼   ► Do you know what I mean?

01:14:00 ◼   ► And now that gets to, now that becomes even more problematic, because here they have their

01:14:03 ◼   ► their own version of Google Assistant called Bixby,

01:14:08 ◼   ► which is a strange name.

01:14:11 ◼   ► But people are saying the hardware looks nice,

01:14:16 ◼   ► and so I wrote a post yesterday on Recode,

01:14:20 ◼   ► basically pointing out, here we are again,

01:14:23 ◼   ► where Apple is now behind the industrial design

01:14:28 ◼   ► kind of trend with phones again.

01:14:31 ◼   ► Last time, I would say last time I was more important,

01:14:33 ◼   ► last time is when it took Apple, I think, a year or two,

01:14:38 ◼   ► probably too long to see that people

01:14:40 ◼   ► were really into big phones.

01:14:43 ◼   ► That's more of a functional design thing than cosmetic.

01:14:47 ◼   ► But now we're at a phase where, you know,

01:14:51 ◼   ► Apple theoretically has a new phone coming out this fall

01:14:54 ◼   ► that's gonna look more like these newer ones

01:14:57 ◼   ► with no bezel and edge-to-edge screen,

01:15:01 ◼   ► But maybe not, I don't know, what if something happens

01:15:04 ◼   ► and it doesn't happen?

01:15:05 ◼   ► And now here we are where they are six months behind,

01:15:09 ◼   ► maybe a year and a half behind the trend.

01:15:12 ◼   ► And is that a huge problem?

01:15:16 ◼   ► Probably not in the grand scheme of things,

01:15:18 ◼   ► but if I'm Apple, I wanna be ahead.

01:15:23 ◼   ► I don't wanna be coming from behind all the time.

01:15:26 ◼   ► So I don't think it's great.

01:15:28 ◼   ► - Whether it'll affect sales or not,

01:15:30 ◼   ► which is ultimately, I think what matters,

01:15:34 ◼   ► I think it probably won't,

01:15:35 ◼   ► but I think at a personal level, Apple wants to unveil,

01:15:40 ◼   ► all the rumors seem to suggest that this is the year

01:15:45 ◼   ► when there's gonna be a new iPhone that looks instantly,

01:15:47 ◼   ► before you even turn the screen on,

01:15:48 ◼   ► looks like a new iPhone.

01:15:50 ◼   ► Not just a new color, but it's a new form factor

01:15:54 ◼   ► with some quote-unquote edge-to-edge display.

01:15:59 ◼   ► And I think Apple, when they have a product like that to unveil, in particular, the most

01:16:07 ◼   ► important product in the company, and the most popular product in the company, they

01:16:11 ◼   ► want the biggest wow factor as possible during the keynote, when they do the unveil.

01:16:19 ◼   ► And I can't help but think that you're right, that this Samsung Galaxy S8 in particular—I

01:16:24 ◼   ► I know there are other Android phones that are creeping closer to an edge-to-edge design

01:16:29 ◼   ► and have smaller chins and foreheads and use curved OLEDs to get the display closer to

01:16:35 ◼   ► the sides, but this seems like the one that is closest in general principle to the vague

01:16:43 ◼   ► descriptions we've heard of what Apple's doing.

01:16:46 ◼   ► I don't know that—

01:16:47 ◼   ► This one will ship in volume.

01:16:48 ◼   ► I mean—

01:16:49 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:16:50 ◼   ► I don't know if you saw the tweet from Andy Rubin, who, for most people, should know Andy

01:16:53 ◼   ► room. Maybe he created the sidekick and then Android and ran Android for a long time. Now

01:17:01 ◼   ► he's working on a new handset company, supposedly. I think it's called Essential or something

01:17:06 ◼   ► like that. And he tweeted a couple of days ago, this thing that was basically a fake

01:17:12 ◼   ► spy shot of an edge to edge Android phone and said, "Can't wait for everyone to get

01:17:18 ◼   ► their hands on this and then yesterday Eric Schmidt tweeted it out and you know

01:17:22 ◼   ► looks looks nice I haven't seen it in person I don't know how well it works

01:17:26 ◼   ► but looks damn good and I think Xiaomi had one too but the Samsung ones the is

01:17:31 ◼   ► the first one that's gonna ship in volume you know especially approaching

01:17:35 ◼   ► volume of an iPhone so I think it's a bummer to be able to not be able to be

01:17:41 ◼   ► the first to make you know a really truly impressive industrial design these

01:17:47 ◼   ► days. But who knows, maybe Apple has something that will even next to this,

01:17:52 ◼   ► you know, look like a next generation thing. You don't know. But I can't entirely possible,

01:17:59 ◼   ► but I can't help but think that that's that they're getting beaten to the punch in some way,

01:18:04 ◼   ► at least. And I think it's I got a little pushback on that, but I second day I hold,

01:18:10 ◼   ► I hold pretty strong to it. I think that no, I'm not the best. I think I think it, you know,

01:18:17 ◼   ► Who knows?

01:18:19 ◼   ► I think one of the areas,

01:18:20 ◼   ► with the race to bigger iPhones,

01:18:22 ◼   ► Apple was obviously caught flat

01:18:25 ◼   ► because I think that they really didn't foresee

01:18:29 ◼   ► that significantly bigger screens were going to be popular.

01:18:34 ◼   ► I really do think they got caught by surprise by that.

01:18:38 ◼   ► - Wasn't that kind of by accident too?

01:18:40 ◼   ► Didn't Android phones have to be bigger

01:18:41 ◼   ► because they couldn't get,

01:18:44 ◼   ► what was it, the battery or the LTE

01:18:46 ◼   ► or something like that had to be--

01:18:47 ◼   ► - That's my theory.

01:18:48 ◼   ► My theory was that Android phones,

01:18:50 ◼   ► to keep up with the performance of iPhones,

01:18:53 ◼   ► had to be bigger.

01:18:54 ◼   ► - But it turned out people liked them, and I love it.

01:18:57 ◼   ► I'm a seven plus guy, no regrets.

01:19:01 ◼   ► - Right.

01:19:02 ◼   ► But I think Apple clearly got caught flat on that,

01:19:05 ◼   ► because I think bigger Android phones

01:19:07 ◼   ► started getting popular around 2011,

01:19:10 ◼   ► and Apple didn't come out with one until 2014.

01:19:13 ◼   ► And we even learned from the lawsuit--

01:19:17 ◼   ► I forget if the email came from Schiller or just somebody

01:19:19 ◼   ► in Schiller's product marketing group,

01:19:21 ◼   ► but there was an email that was entered into evidence

01:19:24 ◼   ► from Apple product marketing that the public wants what

01:19:30 ◼   ► we don't have bigger phones.

01:19:32 ◼   ► And the success of the iPhone SE,

01:19:37 ◼   ► which sold in greater quantity than Apple expected--

01:19:40 ◼   ► They even said that during a quarterly report last year,

01:19:43 ◼   ► like three months after the iPhone SE came out,

01:19:45 ◼   ► that they were having trouble keeping them up to demand

01:19:47 ◼   ► 'cause it was more popular.

01:19:48 ◼   ► That's not to say everybody likes big phones.

01:19:50 ◼   ► People like small phones too.

01:19:51 ◼   ► They like, you know, it's a Goldilocks type thing.

01:19:56 ◼   ► Small, medium, large, people have different tastes.

01:19:58 ◼   ► But I think in this case, they're not caught flat.

01:20:04 ◼   ► They've clearly been working towards reducing

01:20:06 ◼   ► the bezel size on their devices every step of the way.

01:20:10 ◼   ► The iPads used to have the thick bezel around all four sides,

01:20:14 ◼   ► and years ago, reduced the bezel on the side.

01:20:17 ◼   ► The side bezels on this side of the iPhone

01:20:20 ◼   ► have gotten closer to the edge over the years.

01:20:23 ◼   ► So I don't think they got caught flat,

01:20:28 ◼   ► I just think they got beaten to the market.

01:20:30 ◼   ► And I think part of it is because the Apple can't make,

01:20:33 ◼   ► like Samsung has a bit of an advantage

01:20:35 ◼   ► in terms of being aggressive with their designs

01:20:40 ◼   ► because they don't bank on just one phone per year

01:20:43 ◼   ► as being the new design.

01:20:45 ◼   ► They come out with the Note 7 and Notes in the fall

01:20:49 ◼   ► and come out with the Galaxy S models in the spring.

01:20:53 ◼   ► - And then whatever, 200 other models in between.

01:20:58 ◼   ► - And when they first came out with the Edge,

01:21:00 ◼   ► they even called it the Edge, whatever,

01:21:02 ◼   ► Samsung Galaxy Edge, I think might have been

01:21:04 ◼   ► the full name of the device.

01:21:06 ◼   ► It wasn't the only one.

01:21:07 ◼   ► there was a sibling to it with very similar specs

01:21:10 ◼   ► that came out at the same time

01:21:12 ◼   ► that didn't have the edge-to-edge

01:21:14 ◼   ► and I guess sold for less money.

01:21:15 ◼   ► But that way they didn't have to come up

01:21:18 ◼   ► with as many of the presumably more expensive,

01:21:21 ◼   ► harder to make, flexible displays to do the edge thing

01:21:26 ◼   ► to account for all of their sales.

01:21:28 ◼   ► Whereas whatever Apple's coming up with,

01:21:30 ◼   ► if it's supposed to be the flagship iPhone,

01:21:32 ◼   ► they have to be able to make 70 million of them

01:21:36 ◼   ► in the first quarter.

01:21:37 ◼   ► - Which I'm not really into that edge thing anyway.

01:21:41 ◼   ► I always found that to be obnoxious.

01:21:44 ◼   ► So it'd be interesting to see how much curvature

01:21:48 ◼   ► to the display Apple ends up going with

01:21:50 ◼   ► if they do something similar to that.

01:21:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, and what they use it for.

01:21:54 ◼   ► Are they gonna use it for content,

01:21:56 ◼   ► or is it going to light up with other colors

01:21:58 ◼   ► sort of just to show you,

01:22:00 ◼   ► I could see them doing it where it goes black

01:22:04 ◼   ► while you're using email, and only the flat part

01:22:08 ◼   ► is lit up with your email, but when you go

01:22:10 ◼   ► to your home screen, maybe your wallpaper

01:22:12 ◼   ► goes edge to edge, or something like that.

01:22:15 ◼   ► - And if you remember, Samsung actually started off

01:22:17 ◼   ► trying to get people to use it almost as a second screen,

01:22:21 ◼   ► like to have more information on it,

01:22:22 ◼   ► but I would've guessed no developers actually ended up

01:22:26 ◼   ► supporting that for anything worthwhile,

01:22:28 ◼   ► so they kinda gave up on that, it seems.

01:22:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, and then, you know, filed under the,

01:22:32 ◼   ► We actually don't have, even just speculative rumors,

01:22:35 ◼   ► we don't really have a lot of information

01:22:37 ◼   ► about Apple's next iPhone,

01:22:39 ◼   ► other than the supply chain stuff

01:22:42 ◼   ► that they're asking for a lot of these flexible OLED displays

01:22:47 ◼   ► but what they're actually going to use it for,

01:22:50 ◼   ► nobody knows, so who knows?

01:22:51 ◼   ► Maybe they'll replace the volume buttons

01:22:54 ◼   ► with virtual volume buttons.

01:22:56 ◼   ► I kind of dread that but on the other hand,

01:23:00 ◼   ► I'm totally on team, it took me a while to convince myself

01:23:04 ◼   ► that I'm 100% on the team, but I am after six months,

01:23:08 ◼   ► I'm on team virtual home button,

01:23:11 ◼   ► the button that doesn't actually move on the iPhone 7.

01:23:14 ◼   ► So I don't know, with some kind of proper haptics,

01:23:18 ◼   ► I could see, maybe, switching to virtual volume buttons.

01:23:22 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:23:23 ◼   ► - I like the virtual home button,

01:23:25 ◼   ► but I also like the fact that it is depressed a little there

01:23:28 ◼   ► that you have a border to press on,

01:23:30 ◼   ► so I don't know how that works on a bigger,

01:23:33 ◼   ► but the new Samsung does have that virtual,

01:23:35 ◼   ► it's all virtual buttons now, at least on the lower side.

01:23:40 ◼   ► There is a hardware button for the assistant,

01:23:42 ◼   ► which is weird, but.

01:23:43 ◼   ► - Here's an idea that occurred to me,

01:23:45 ◼   ► is you know how you can click the volume buttons

01:23:48 ◼   ► to snap a photo on the iPhone?

01:23:50 ◼   ► And that used to be like a hack,

01:23:52 ◼   ► like there were third-party camera apps in the App Store

01:23:55 ◼   ► that did it before Apple's built-in camera app did.

01:23:57 ◼   ► and then Apple like kicked them out because it wasn't allowed you're only

01:24:03 ◼   ► supposed to use volume buttons for volume

01:24:04 ◼   ► and then they like well maybe that's a good idea and they added it to the

01:24:07 ◼   ► actual system camera

01:24:09 ◼   ► I use it all the time okay but

01:24:12 ◼   ► they're not in a great location for snapping pictures like sometimes you do

01:24:16 ◼   ► want a button that's not

01:24:17 ◼   ► where the on-screen button is you want it on the side where you really want it

01:24:21 ◼   ► is

01:24:21 ◼   ► top right when you're holding the phone with the camera lens

01:24:25 ◼   ► at the top left.

01:24:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, I accidentally turned the power off

01:24:29 ◼   ► at least half the time.

01:24:30 ◼   ► - Right, because you squeezed.

01:24:32 ◼   ► Yeah, which is horrible and possibly disastrous

01:24:35 ◼   ► if you're trying to capture a fleeting moment.

01:24:37 ◼   ► So in theory, if Apple has a touchscreen

01:24:40 ◼   ► that wraps around the edge,

01:24:42 ◼   ► when you're in the camera mode,

01:24:44 ◼   ► they could make a virtual button at the top right.

01:24:47 ◼   ► - Or just the whole phone.

01:24:49 ◼   ► I mean, the penalty for shooting too many photos

01:24:52 ◼   ► is pretty low.

01:24:53 ◼   ► - Right, and just-- - Just delete 'em.

01:24:54 ◼   ► - Right, and give you haptic feedback

01:24:56 ◼   ► for when you actually snap the photo.

01:24:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, interesting.

01:25:00 ◼   ► Yeah, that could be kinda cool.

01:25:02 ◼   ► - Oh, let me tell you one of my favorite things in clips

01:25:04 ◼   ► was let's say you string together three pieces of video

01:25:09 ◼   ► in a clip and there's that little timeline at the bottom

01:25:11 ◼   ► that shows you the thumbnails.

01:25:13 ◼   ► So if you force touch on like the middle one,

01:25:16 ◼   ► it pops up and you can drag it to reorder them

01:25:19 ◼   ► and when it pops up,

01:25:20 ◼   ► you get like this beautiful little subtle pop.

01:25:24 ◼   ► It is a super, super terrific and subtle use

01:25:27 ◼   ► of haptic feedback.

01:25:29 ◼   ► - I've noticed several app makers trying to tap

01:25:34 ◼   ► into that recently.

01:25:35 ◼   ► In fact, I think Twitter just added haptics

01:25:38 ◼   ► when you star a tweet, when you fave a tweet,

01:25:42 ◼   ► which is not called faving anymore.

01:25:43 ◼   ► - No.

01:25:44 ◼   ► It's always-- - It only works--

01:25:47 ◼   ► - It's always faving in my heart.

01:25:49 ◼   ► - It doesn't work most of the time.

01:25:51 ◼   ► It works sometimes,

01:25:52 ◼   ► - Nothing.

01:25:54 ◼   ► Bunch of the time it just doesn't pop the taptic engine,

01:25:57 ◼   ► so I don't know.

01:25:58 ◼   ► But it's been interesting to see.

01:26:01 ◼   ► A lot of polar refresh haptics and stuff like that.

01:26:06 ◼   ► Sometimes it's nice, but a lot of times it seems--

01:26:09 ◼   ► - So one of the things that the Galaxy S8 does,

01:26:12 ◼   ► and in the leaked screenshot from Andy Rubin of their phone,

01:26:16 ◼   ► which I can't help but think was purposefully timed.

01:26:19 ◼   ► - Oh yeah.

01:26:22 ◼   ► And especially Eric Schmidt retweeting it yesterday on the day of Samsung's event was, you know,

01:26:30 ◼   ► Not only did Eric Schmidt retweet it, but here he said, "phenomenal new choices for Android users coming very soon."

01:26:41 ◼   ► An example, it's like, "F you Samsung."

01:26:44 ◼   ► Oh, then he said, "Big week for Android, Samsung looks great."

01:26:48 ◼   ► - Okay, thank you Eric. - Right, well.

01:26:50 ◼   ► - Someone whispered in his ear,

01:26:52 ◼   ► "Hey man, do you know who sells

01:26:53 ◼   ► "the most Android phones still?"

01:26:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, he tweeted the other one first.

01:26:57 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:26:58 ◼   ► - All right, I will put that in the show notes as well.

01:27:00 ◼   ► Here I am, I'm copying and pasting right now.

01:27:02 ◼   ► This is not a lie, it's really there.

01:27:04 ◼   ► There's just no doubt in my mind though,

01:27:08 ◼   ► that I really do, I don't think it's unfair

01:27:10 ◼   ► for you to have written it.

01:27:11 ◼   ► I really do think that Apple is gonna be late

01:27:14 ◼   ► to the edge-to-edge design.

01:27:15 ◼   ► I mean, maybe they've got something else

01:27:17 ◼   ► and they're gonna kick it to the next level.

01:27:19 ◼   ► But at the very least, as things stand right now, today,

01:27:21 ◼   ► at the end of March 2017, Apple is behind the curve

01:27:26 ◼   ► on the size of the bezels of the iPhone.

01:27:28 ◼   ► - Maybe the most convincing kind of counterargument

01:27:33 ◼   ► to that was, well, yeah, but then in December,

01:27:36 ◼   ► they'll have the newest one, which is true,

01:27:39 ◼   ► and that's when they sell the most phones,

01:27:41 ◼   ► in the fourth quarter, so they will have the newest one.

01:27:44 ◼   ► But I don't know, I don't think it looks great.

01:27:46 ◼   ► This is similar to when they used to

01:27:51 ◼   ► sometimes come close to not destroying

01:27:55 ◼   ► their quarterly numbers relative to

01:27:57 ◼   ► Wall Street's expectations.

01:27:59 ◼   ► And the whole point is that Apple is an exceptional company.

01:28:02 ◼   ► They're supposed to destroy expectations,

01:28:04 ◼   ► not just come close to them.

01:28:05 ◼   ► So, do you think they will,

01:28:09 ◼   ► see the Andy Rubin one's interesting,

01:28:11 ◼   ► 'cause it now has curved corners of the screen too.

01:28:15 ◼   ► Do you think we'll see rounded corners on iOS?

01:28:18 ◼   ► - We'll take a look at it.

01:28:19 ◼   ► The S8 has round corners too.

01:28:21 ◼   ► I don't know if that is a trend.

01:28:26 ◼   ► With the Andy Rubin one, if you guys look at it,

01:28:29 ◼   ► who knows, maybe we can get this.

01:28:31 ◼   ► Maybe you can just look down at your phone

01:28:32 ◼   ► and there's fancy new stuff, fancy technology

01:28:35 ◼   ► we can do in these podcasts right now.

01:28:37 ◼   ► We could, in theory, be showing you

01:28:39 ◼   ► Andy Rubin's leaked shot right now.

01:28:41 ◼   ► Just look at your phone.

01:28:42 ◼   ► You may not even have to go to a website.

01:28:44 ◼   ► Try that.

01:28:45 ◼   ► We'll see if we can get this to work.

01:28:46 ◼   ► With the Andy Rubin one, it literally is edge to edge.

01:28:50 ◼   ► There is no chin or forehead,

01:28:52 ◼   ► or at least there's no forehead.

01:28:54 ◼   ► We can't see the chin, but there's no forehead.

01:28:56 ◼   ► - Chin's like three inches long.

01:28:58 ◼   ► - Right, so the corners on the phone that he leaked,

01:29:01 ◼   ► the corners of the display have to be rounded

01:29:04 ◼   ► unless you are going to make a sharp cornered edge phone,

01:29:08 ◼   ► which is possible.

01:29:10 ◼   ► I've seen some Sony phones that have actual

01:29:12 ◼   ► squared off corners that look good.

01:29:15 ◼   ► But it has to be rounded.

01:29:18 ◼   ► Samsung seems more like a design choice,

01:29:20 ◼   ► like they wanted to round them off.

01:29:22 ◼   ► I honestly don't know what to think about that.

01:29:26 ◼   ► It doesn't really make sense to me in iOS

01:29:28 ◼   ► because things go corner to corner.

01:29:30 ◼   ► I mean, look at where the battery icon

01:29:33 ◼   ► and the little dots to indicate your cell signal are.

01:29:36 ◼   ► I mean, there's no room to round those off.

01:29:38 ◼   ► And I don't want them squished towards the middle.

01:29:41 ◼   ► Was it WebOS that had the rounded corners too?

01:29:46 ◼   ► - Well, the original Macintosh did.

01:29:48 ◼   ► - True, true.

01:29:49 ◼   ► And more recently. - And in fact, yeah.

01:29:52 ◼   ► The classic Mac had rounded off corners,

01:29:57 ◼   ► but the display wasn't really rounded off.

01:29:58 ◼   ► They were rounded off virtually.

01:30:00 ◼   ► It actually just painted black pixels in the corner

01:30:03 ◼   ► to give the overall display.

01:30:05 ◼   ► - I remember that during startup.

01:30:07 ◼   ► Sometimes you'd start up and it was square

01:30:10 ◼   ► and then you'd get the--

01:30:12 ◼   ► - And you could see it when you moved the mouse

01:30:14 ◼   ► to the corner too, because the white mask

01:30:19 ◼   ► around the black arrow would still light up

01:30:21 ◼   ► around the corner, if I recall correctly.

01:30:23 ◼   ► - Oh, really?

01:30:24 ◼   ► - Just so that you could still see the mouse

01:30:28 ◼   ► if it was hidden in the corner,

01:30:29 ◼   ► 'cause if they just painted it,

01:30:31 ◼   ► if it went underneath the black,

01:30:32 ◼   ► you might not see the mouse on screen,

01:30:34 ◼   ► if I recall correctly.

01:30:36 ◼   ► I don't know, I don't know what to think about that.

01:30:38 ◼   ► Sort of I certainly don't think they should fake round the corners

01:30:42 ◼   ► I think if they could make them square they should but I don't know it seems like a trend this year at least

01:30:46 ◼   ► Yeah, Samsung and they're actually using that forehead and chin

01:30:51 ◼   ► As kind of a branding thing somewhere around the office. I just saw like a booklet

01:30:57 ◼   ► they I guess they gave out yesterday of like the design process of the

01:31:00 ◼   ► S8 and they they're really highlighting that

01:31:03 ◼   ► forehead and chin as like

01:31:07 ◼   ► Line art, you know interesting. Yeah, it's a distinctive look

01:31:11 ◼   ► I mean it, you know, and it certainly can't be accused of copying Apple on that on that front

01:31:15 ◼   ► a couple of the other things that stuck out to me though with the s8 is that the

01:31:20 ◼   ► Removal of the or not removal because it does have a chin and forehead

01:31:24 ◼   ► But the forehead and chin they are symmetric

01:31:28 ◼   ► They're the same size, but the forehead is so small that no longer they've this is the first flagship phone

01:31:33 ◼   ► They've ever made that doesn't have a big ugly Samsung logo printed on the front

01:31:37 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:31:39 ◼   ► And I think it's so funny that of all the things

01:31:42 ◼   ► that they copied shamelessly from Apple over the years,

01:31:44 ◼   ► the one thing they never could bring themselves to do

01:31:47 ◼   ► was to have the brand humility to ship a phone

01:31:50 ◼   ► without a logo on the front face.

01:31:51 ◼   ► I've never understood that.

01:31:55 ◼   ► 'Cause, and A, because I think,

01:31:56 ◼   ► I don't wanna see a logo on the front face.

01:32:00 ◼   ► I really want the content,

01:32:02 ◼   ► and it goes back to you and me

01:32:03 ◼   ► talking about the black versus white borders

01:32:05 ◼   ► around the screen.

01:32:06 ◼   ► I just don't want anything to distract me from the content.

01:32:11 ◼   ► But secondarily, their logo is fucking ugly.

01:32:15 ◼   ► It's an ugly ass logo.

01:32:17 ◼   ► And these phones, and especially tablets,

01:32:19 ◼   ► are often used both horizontally and vertically.

01:32:23 ◼   ► And so the logo can't be right all the time.

01:32:27 ◼   ► And I realize that, yes, Apple prints their Apple logo

01:32:30 ◼   ► on the back of the iPhone.

01:32:31 ◼   ► And every time you hold the phone sideways,

01:32:33 ◼   ► the logo is sideways.

01:32:34 ◼   ► But it's not facing me, it's facing out.

01:32:37 ◼   ► I'm not saying they shouldn't do it.

01:32:40 ◼   ► I mean, people obviously love the Apple logo on their phones

01:32:44 ◼   ► 'cause so many of the cases I see have a circle cut out of it

01:32:46 ◼   ► for the damn thing.

01:32:48 ◼   ► So I thought that was weird.

01:32:53 ◼   ► There's no, not weird, but notable

01:32:55 ◼   ► that there's no Samsung logo on the front face.

01:32:58 ◼   ► And then the other thing is that the chin is so small

01:33:00 ◼   ► that there's no longer a physical home button

01:33:02 ◼   ► or fingerprint sensor.

01:33:05 ◼   ► It gets too small, presumably.

01:33:07 ◼   ► So now they've moved the fingerprint sensor to the back,

01:33:10 ◼   ► and it's off-center to the side of the camera lens,

01:33:12 ◼   ► which is totally a gross design, in my opinion.

01:33:16 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:33:17 ◼   ► That's not good.

01:33:20 ◼   ► - I have the Google Pixel,

01:33:22 ◼   ► and it's my favorite Android device I've ever used,

01:33:26 ◼   ► and that has a fingerprint sensor in the back of the phone,

01:33:29 ◼   ► roughly like where the Apple logo is on an iPhone.

01:33:32 ◼   ► But at least it's centered.

01:33:35 ◼   ► I don't love it, I think it's worse than having it

01:33:37 ◼   ► on the bottom of the phone.

01:33:39 ◼   ► But it's okay, but at least it's centered,

01:33:41 ◼   ► and at least it isn't going to cover up the camera lens

01:33:45 ◼   ► when you're using it.

01:33:47 ◼   ► - Where does the speaker go in the front-facing camera?

01:33:52 ◼   ► Does that go in the top of the phone,

01:33:54 ◼   ► or is that just built in with no grill on it?

01:33:57 ◼   ► I think it's at the top of the phone.

01:33:59 ◼   ► It's hard to tell.

01:34:00 ◼   ► At least when you look, there were leaks of Samsung S8s

01:34:04 ◼   ► that had a white face, and you could see

01:34:06 ◼   ► there's a whole bunch of holes in the top,

01:34:08 ◼   ► a whole bunch of sensors up there.

01:34:10 ◼   ► But it looks to me like, and again,

01:34:11 ◼   ► getting back to black versus white,

01:34:12 ◼   ► I think all of the Samsung Galaxy S8s

01:34:15 ◼   ► with the various color backs all have a black front.

01:34:17 ◼   ► Unless I miss something.

01:34:20 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:34:24 ◼   ► But I think it's all at the top.

01:34:26 ◼   ► and there's presumably a microphone

01:34:28 ◼   ► and speakers at the bottom too, I don't know.

01:34:30 ◼   ► One last weird thing I know about the S8

01:34:35 ◼   ► is that they've added a dedicated hardware button

01:34:39 ◼   ► for Bixby.

01:34:39 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:34:43 ◼   ► - That seems like a mistake.

01:34:45 ◼   ► 'Cause I'm guessing Bixby is gonna be crap.

01:34:48 ◼   ► - Is that the one that uses the Siri guy's thing or no?

01:34:52 ◼   ► - The, no.

01:34:55 ◼   ► Well, I don't know.

01:34:57 ◼   ► I don't know if they've had time to integrate that.

01:34:59 ◼   ► So what was that?

01:35:00 ◼   ► It was like the second, the guy who invented,

01:35:02 ◼   ► the team that invented the original Siri,

01:35:04 ◼   ► sold it to Apple, was with Apple for a while,

01:35:06 ◼   ► and then they all left and started a new thing

01:35:09 ◼   ► along the same lines again, and Samsung acquired them.

01:35:12 ◼   ► I don't know if Bixby's based on that already,

01:35:16 ◼   ► or if it's too soon and they haven't been able

01:35:18 ◼   ► to integrate it, but presumably,

01:35:20 ◼   ► if it's not already, it will soon.

01:35:25 ◼   ► Seems like a weird thing to have a dedicated

01:35:26 ◼   ► hardware button for.

01:35:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, I can't, Viv was the name of the other one.

01:35:33 ◼   ► - Viv, there we see.

01:35:35 ◼   ► - I'm looking at Google results.

01:35:40 ◼   ► - It doesn't seem to me that the features they're saying

01:35:43 ◼   ► that Bixby does doesn't sound anything like the stuff

01:35:47 ◼   ► that Viv was doing.

01:35:49 ◼   ► Like Viv was doing some pretty complex stuff

01:35:51 ◼   ► like booking flights for you.

01:35:53 ◼   ► And Bixby seems more like take me back to my inbox type stuff.

01:35:59 ◼   ► Sounds like Bixby is not a Viv thing yet.

01:36:04 ◼   ► Right.

01:36:05 ◼   ► And I don't know if it becomes Viv Power or if Viv replaces Bixby or...

01:36:10 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:36:12 ◼   ► Someone said yesterday, "Get me the first app that will remap that button to summon

01:36:17 ◼   ► Google Assistant so I can skip all this crap anyway."

01:36:21 ◼   ► - I was wondering if somebody would figure out a way

01:36:22 ◼   ► to hack it to map it to be a camera shutter.

01:36:25 ◼   ► - Oh.

01:36:26 ◼   ► - Because that's the one thing,

01:36:28 ◼   ► if I were gonna add another button to the iPhone,

01:36:30 ◼   ► I don't know that I would,

01:36:34 ◼   ► but if you said you have to add a button

01:36:36 ◼   ► and it does something,

01:36:36 ◼   ► I'd say, well, make it a camera shutter.

01:36:38 ◼   ► And if the camera's not open and I hit it,

01:36:40 ◼   ► it'll jump me to the camera.

01:36:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, the phones used to have that.

01:36:45 ◼   ► - Yes, they did.

01:36:46 ◼   ► I think the--

01:36:48 ◼   ► - Apple never did it, but--

01:36:49 ◼   ► Microsoft phones did it, I think.

01:36:51 ◼   ► The Windows phones had shutters.

01:36:55 ◼   ► The one button the iPhone has

01:36:57 ◼   ► that most other phones don't have,

01:37:00 ◼   ► but I love it, is the mute switch.

01:37:03 ◼   ► - Yes.

01:37:04 ◼   ► - I don't understand why the other,

01:37:05 ◼   ► I don't understand why other phones

01:37:07 ◼   ► don't have a mute switch.

01:37:08 ◼   ► I love the mute switch.

01:37:10 ◼   ► I cannot believe that all these other phones,

01:37:14 ◼   ► to mute the phone, you've gotta actually use the screen.

01:37:17 ◼   ► Even if it's a pretty simple unlock it, swipe down,

01:37:22 ◼   ► tap the, you know, like the equivalent

01:37:24 ◼   ► of putting airplane mode on an iPhone.

01:37:27 ◼   ► I'm not saying it's onerous, but I don't know.

01:37:30 ◼   ► I use the mute switch so many times,

01:37:31 ◼   ► and if I'm in a situation where I definitely

01:37:34 ◼   ► just want my phone to be muted,

01:37:36 ◼   ► I love that I can do it without looking at it.

01:37:39 ◼   ► - It's kind of the one thing you'd want to be able to do

01:37:41 ◼   ► without looking at the phone.

01:37:42 ◼   ► - Right.

01:37:43 ◼   ► - And making sure that it's not gonna embarrass you

01:37:45 ◼   ► in the meeting you're in.

01:37:46 ◼   ► - Right, or like you're at a wedding or something like that

01:37:48 ◼   ► and you're like, just let me double check for the 30th time

01:37:51 ◼   ► that my phone is definitely mute.

01:37:52 ◼   ► - I hate that they took it off the iPad

01:37:55 ◼   ► 'cause there I would use it for--

01:37:57 ◼   ► - I do too.

01:37:58 ◼   ► - Orientation lock.

01:37:59 ◼   ► - Nope.

01:38:00 ◼   ► - And to me that was a very, very everyday feature.

01:38:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, it was for me too.

01:38:05 ◼   ► And it's actually one of the reasons I've stuck with,

01:38:08 ◼   ► again, a throwback to an hour ago on the show,

01:38:11 ◼   ► it's why my iPad Mini still has a mute switch

01:38:13 ◼   ► and I love it.

01:38:14 ◼   ► - So you have the Mini too.

01:38:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, I guess so.

01:38:17 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:38:19 ◼   ► - I guess it's the first Retina Mini.

01:38:20 ◼   ► I think that's what I've got.

01:38:21 ◼   ► Whatever the first one.

01:38:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, the Mini 2.

01:38:23 ◼   ► - It's like, unlike with the iPhone--

01:38:25 ◼   ► - Well, maybe the 3.

01:38:26 ◼   ► - I have everything.

01:38:27 ◼   ► I can tell you what was new in every single iPhone

01:38:30 ◼   ► with the iPads, I have no idea.

01:38:32 ◼   ► They're all just, I know what they looked like,

01:38:34 ◼   ► but it's like telling the one Mini from another.

01:38:36 ◼   ► All I know is that they used to not have Retina screens

01:38:39 ◼   ► and now they have Retina screens.

01:38:41 ◼   ► And everything else is sort of irrelevant to me.

01:38:44 ◼   ► Anyway, I guess the only other thing I want to talk about with Samsung is that Samsung

01:38:51 ◼   ► has obviously done a lot of press review. They're not hiding the fact that their last

01:38:55 ◼   ► phone was a huge embarrassment and had an incredibly expensive recall. There was a great

01:39:06 ◼   ► story I thought in The Verge by, I think it was Dan Seifert, let me double check before

01:39:11 ◼   ► I keep going where he actually flew over to

01:39:16 ◼   ► Korea to visit with Samsung and see like the the testing rigs they have up for the battery

01:39:23 ◼   ► Yes, it was Dan Seifert at the verge got a link in the show notes

01:39:26 ◼   ► You know, they're obviously doing press specifically to assuage people's fears that that these might explode

01:39:39 ◼   ► Because it's one thing to have a product recall because it was a lemon just in period like like let's say the problem is

01:39:45 ◼   ► Too many of these phones that the screens just died and just turned in a total total blowout of the screen

01:39:52 ◼   ► And it just screen won't turn on they had to recall all of these phones

01:39:55 ◼   ► Well, that would be a huge expensive, you know PR disaster

01:39:59 ◼   ► But at least nobody is as is at risk of getting hurt

01:40:02 ◼   ► Right your house isn't going to burn down if if that's the problem with the phone the defect

01:40:06 ◼   ► Whereas if the problem if the defect with the phone is that the battery might explode and catch fire?

01:40:12 ◼   ► That's that's actually you know dangerous

01:40:15 ◼   ► Yeah, it's good. I mean

01:40:18 ◼   ► Obviously you don't want that to happen, but it's good to show off although presumably some of those tests were run

01:40:24 ◼   ► Or I don't know I I guess I should admit. I have not read the article yet

01:40:29 ◼   ► That's all I don't know if these are new tests, or if these tests were also performed on the yeah

01:40:34 ◼   ► I don't know about that either fire prone

01:40:36 ◼   ► device. I will read it now when it's in the show notes.

01:40:41 ◼   ► I did hear, I heard from a friend at Apple who works with, or knows a battery engineer at Apple, so it's secondhand, but that when the scandal first started breaking, there was a team of battery engineers at Apple who were like, "Well, we got it. Let's just see what this is like," and not as an official part of Apple's competitive, you know,

01:41:03 ◼   ► of, what would you call it, backwards engineering.

01:41:08 ◼   ► But just out of their own curiosity,

01:41:10 ◼   ► a couple of battery engineers at Apple

01:41:12 ◼   ► bought a Note 7 and opened it up

01:41:15 ◼   ► and looked at the battery and they were appalled.

01:41:18 ◼   ► They were like, I cannot believe

01:41:20 ◼   ► they put this battery in this case.

01:41:22 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:41:23 ◼   ► That it seemed very, you know,

01:41:25 ◼   ► just, you know, obviously the people making this judgment

01:41:28 ◼   ► are battery engineers, so it's not like me and you

01:41:30 ◼   ► looking at it, but that there were aspects of the size

01:41:34 ◼   ► and dimensions of the battery and the size of the enclosure

01:41:38 ◼   ► that it seemed like, just eyeballing it as an expert,

01:41:43 ◼   ► this seems like it's at risk of the sort of positive

01:41:46 ◼   ► and negative parts of the battery touching each other

01:41:50 ◼   ► that you just can't happen with a lithium-ion battery.