The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► In the old days if if I were gonna have a show it would we would have to be together

00:00:04 ◼   ► you'd have to be like in a studio with me and

00:00:06 ◼   ► You would think I would I would supply comfortable chairs for my guests and you you know

00:00:12 ◼   ► I feel like forcing guests to use Skype is like you get like a folding chair that was that was outside and as like

00:00:19 ◼   ► Rain scum on it, you know

00:00:22 ◼   ► Yeah

00:00:24 ◼   ► Yeah, it's nice to be on again

00:00:28 ◼   ► There's a couple of things we have to talk about, I guess.

00:00:32 ◼   ► There's always stuff to talk about, but there's a couple of recent posts that you've

00:00:36 ◼   ► had on your 500-ish word site.

00:00:39 ◼   ► Is that what it's called?

00:00:40 ◼   ► I know that's the domain.

00:00:41 ◼   ► Yep, 500-ish words.

00:00:43 ◼   ► But you wrote about the end of Virgin America.

00:00:51 ◼   ► Can you summarize this?

00:00:53 ◼   ► And again, it's a perfect piece, I will put it in the show loads.

00:00:57 ◼   ► But it is perfect insofar as you admit that Virgin America only flew between a very small

00:01:03 ◼   ► number of cities.

00:01:04 ◼   ► Right.

00:01:05 ◼   ► So there's a large number of people who, if you don't live in San Francisco, LA, or New

00:01:07 ◼   ► York, you probably haven't flown Virgin.

00:01:09 ◼   ► Right.

00:01:10 ◼   ► And so, yeah.

00:01:11 ◼   ► So basically, I'm assuming by this point, because it's been a month or so, everyone

00:01:16 ◼   ► knows that Alaska Airlines bought Virgin America.

00:01:21 ◼   ► And as a part of that, they sort of did this whole big branding thing, certainly around

00:01:25 ◼   ► in San Francisco and I assume other cities

00:01:27 ◼   ► in which Virgin operates where it's sort of like

00:01:29 ◼   ► the Alaska plus Virgin equals love type marketing campaign.

00:01:34 ◼   ► 'Cause obviously people were worried

00:01:37 ◼   ► when someone else bought Virgin America

00:01:39 ◼   ► that there would be the end of Virgin America.

00:01:42 ◼   ► And they were trying to sort of play it up,

00:01:44 ◼   ► no, this is just gonna make both sides even better.

00:01:46 ◼   ► And then whenever it was a few weeks ago,

00:01:49 ◼   ► they of course announced that they're going to be

00:01:51 ◼   ► shutting down the Virgin America brand entirely.

00:01:55 ◼   ► and basically merging the planes

00:01:59 ◼   ► and sort of merging all into one entity,

00:02:02 ◼   ► which of course I'm sure makes sense for the bottom line.

00:02:04 ◼   ► That's the reason why they're doing it

00:02:07 ◼   ► for cost efficiencies.

00:02:08 ◼   ► But yeah, I mean, so people who don't live

00:02:12 ◼   ► in one of the cities that Virgin America services,

00:02:14 ◼   ► which is, I'm not even sure what the current number is,

00:02:16 ◼   ► but let's say it's 10, maybe 12 or something like that.

00:02:19 ◼   ► It's not very many still.

00:02:21 ◼   ► Started in San Francisco.

00:02:22 ◼   ► The company was headquarters here.

00:02:24 ◼   ► Obviously, it was famously started out of Richard Branson's Virgin Group.

00:02:28 ◼   ► People who don't live in one of those 10 to 15, whatever it is now, cities,

00:02:35 ◼   ► don't really understand why people who do live in one of those cities

00:02:40 ◼   ► and take Virgin regularly are upset about this.

00:02:43 ◼   ► The best pushback that I found most amusing was on Twitter,

00:02:48 ◼   ► basically saying, "But Alaska Airlines is such a great airline too."

00:02:52 ◼   ► And you know, I've been on Alaska, certainly any flight that goes to sort of the Pacific

00:02:56 ◼   ► Northwest, you know, that's sort of one of the common carriers, and it's fine.

00:03:00 ◼   ► It's a nice airline.

00:03:01 ◼   ► You know, it's not United.

00:03:02 ◼   ► I'm sure we can talk about that in a second, but it's fine.

00:03:07 ◼   ► But it's not Virgin America.

00:03:08 ◼   ► You have to be on a Virgin America plane to know what that's like.

00:03:11 ◼   ► I mean, if you think back to when it started, whenever that was, several years back, you

00:03:17 ◼   ► know, the fact that they were all sort of new planes.

00:03:21 ◼   ► The basic thing that I highlighted in that post is,

00:03:24 ◼   ► I think people don't understand,

00:03:26 ◼   ► you got a level of consistency flying Virgin America

00:03:29 ◼   ► that you don't get with any other airline,

00:03:30 ◼   ► 'cause it's a total crap shoot,

00:03:32 ◼   ► whether you're gonna get an old rickety plane,

00:03:34 ◼   ► whether you're gonna get one with like,

00:03:36 ◼   ► still cigarette ashtrays.

00:03:37 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:03:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, ashtrays.

00:03:39 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:03:40 ◼   ► - And a sticker that says, "Do not use under federal law."

00:03:42 ◼   ► - Yes, and with Virgin,

00:03:45 ◼   ► sort of because it was a newer airline,

00:03:47 ◼   ► they had all the same,

00:03:48 ◼   ► I think it was A380 planes,

00:03:50 ◼   ► No, the A380 is the big one, whatever the Airbus is.

00:03:53 ◼   ► I think they're A321s.

00:03:55 ◼   ► It might be that, yeah.

00:03:56 ◼   ► Maybe--

00:03:57 ◼   ► It's one of the sort of standard, smaller Airbus planes.

00:04:02 ◼   ► And so they were all that.

00:04:03 ◼   ► They all had Wi-Fi, which at the time was a novelty, certainly.

00:04:08 ◼   ► They all had those televisions and the screenbacks,

00:04:10 ◼   ► not just in first class or anything.

00:04:11 ◼   ► All the screens-- all the seats, sorry--

00:04:14 ◼   ► had that.

00:04:14 ◼   ► And you had a very consistent experience.

00:04:16 ◼   ► You knew if you were getting on a Virgin America flight,

00:04:18 ◼   ► more likely to be a good flight. I mean, I'm sure that, you know, everyone will have a

00:04:22 ◼   ► horror story about every airline, but it's not like you hear about United and Delta and some

00:04:28 ◼   ► of the other ones that are just, you know, constantly a crummy experience. This was

00:04:32 ◼   ► a definitely a notch above. We had them in Philly until about two years ago, and we lost them. We

00:04:42 ◼   ► lost Virgin during the aftermath of the American--

00:04:46 ◼   ► Oh, the merger?

00:04:47 ◼   ► --US Air merger.

00:04:48 ◼   ► I've told this story before.

00:04:50 ◼   ► But long story short, it's very simple.

00:04:53 ◼   ► When US Air and American proposed merging,

00:04:57 ◼   ► one of the problem areas was that it

00:04:59 ◼   ► gave the combined airline too many gates at JFK in New York,

00:05:05 ◼   ► or the federal aviation.

00:05:06 ◼   ► There's some kind of limit to the percentage of gates

00:05:09 ◼   ► that any one airline can have at any airport.

00:05:11 ◼   ► And US Air and American both had a big presence at JFK

00:05:15 ◼   ► and it was too many gates.

00:05:16 ◼   ► So they had to get rid of some of the gates

00:05:18 ◼   ► and Virgin decided they would rather take more gates at JFK

00:05:22 ◼   ► but leave Philly entirely.

00:05:24 ◼   ► And they couldn't keep both because one of the problems

00:05:26 ◼   ► of being an airline is it's really hard to get more planes.

00:05:29 ◼   ► I mean, it sounds silly 'cause you think like,

00:05:31 ◼   ► oh, you just call Boeing up and buy a plane.

00:05:34 ◼   ► - Right. - You know what I mean?

00:05:35 ◼   ► Like if you and I bought or started a moving company

00:05:38 ◼   ► and it took off and we needed more trucks,

00:05:40 ◼   ► we could just go buy more trucks.

00:05:42 ◼   ► That's not a problem.

00:05:43 ◼   ► But in aviation, you gotta order an airplane

00:05:46 ◼   ► like a couple years in advance.

00:05:47 ◼   ► So there's nothing-- - Right, such a long

00:05:48 ◼   ► lead time.

00:05:50 ◼   ► - So I've been off Virgin for a while.

00:05:51 ◼   ► But I still get the emails.

00:05:52 ◼   ► Like I got the email the other day from Alaska

00:05:54 ◼   ► telling me not to worry, my points are okay.

00:05:56 ◼   ► - Right, yeah, I mean, we'll see.

00:06:00 ◼   ► Of course, Alaska's trying to say all the right things

00:06:04 ◼   ► in their sort of press statement about it.

00:06:06 ◼   ► They said, "We're going to be sort of bringing

00:06:08 ◼   ► the Virgin experience to Alaska flights.

00:06:11 ◼   ► And so, including the humorous bit about there being

00:06:15 ◼   ► mood lighting, that's one of the,

00:06:17 ◼   ► that's like the thing they decided to focus on,

00:06:18 ◼   ► 'cause Virgin America sort of famously has this

00:06:21 ◼   ► purple-hued mood lighting.

00:06:22 ◼   ► And so, Alaska's gonna do that,

00:06:24 ◼   ► but they're gonna have blue mood lighting.

00:06:25 ◼   ► So it'll be not the exact same,

00:06:27 ◼   ► but it will be almost as good.

00:06:29 ◼   ► And we'll see, I mean, they said that basically

00:06:32 ◼   ► nothing was going to change, and then of course

00:06:34 ◼   ► everything's changing, so don't have a lot of

00:06:38 ◼   ► hope for it remaining as it was.

00:06:41 ◼   ► The good news, if there is slight good news,

00:06:44 ◼   ► it's going to take them a long time to sort of phase

00:06:47 ◼   ► in and out those changes.

00:06:49 ◼   ► And so Virgin will remain operating

00:06:50 ◼   ► for I think at least a year, maybe a couple of years,

00:06:54 ◼   ► something like that.

00:06:55 ◼   ► But yeah, it'll be a big change.

00:06:58 ◼   ► And as we're seeing this week with the airline industry,

00:07:01 ◼   ► this is sort of par for the course,

00:07:03 ◼   ► just doing anything to screw over customers.

00:07:05 ◼   ► I think they only had two or three gates at Philly.

00:07:08 ◼   ► So it wasn't a lot of flights.

00:07:10 ◼   ► It wasn't a big presence.

00:07:11 ◼   ► And it was a small desk for check-in.

00:07:13 ◼   ► You know, it was usually like two people.

00:07:16 ◼   ► So it's not a fair comparison to like American,

00:07:19 ◼   ► which dominates Philly.

00:07:21 ◼   ► But every time I could fly Virgin, I did.

00:07:26 ◼   ► And I, you know, they had a great nonstop service

00:07:30 ◼   ► between Philly and San Francisco, which was, you know,

00:07:33 ◼   ► Duh is a very common flight for me for work.

00:07:36 ◼   ► Every time I could, I did.

00:07:39 ◼   ► And I never once had to wait.

00:07:41 ◼   ► It's just little things like that the people at the desk

00:07:44 ◼   ► were super efficient and nice, and you'd get up there

00:07:48 ◼   ► and they would be like, hey, and then you'd give 'em your ID

00:07:52 ◼   ► and then they'd take your bag if you had a bag to check

00:07:55 ◼   ► or give you a, and you were gone, and that was it.

00:07:57 ◼   ► And you only had no lines, never.

00:07:59 ◼   ► And good service on the plane.

00:08:01 ◼   ► My favorite story about Virgin was one time,

00:08:04 ◼   ► also I used to get,

00:08:06 ◼   ► I got the cheapest upgrades to first class.

00:08:08 ◼   ► I don't understand, they only had the way,

00:08:10 ◼   ► every plane, they're probably all the same.

00:08:12 ◼   ► They only had like eight first class seats.

00:08:14 ◼   ► It was like two rows of two.

00:08:15 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:08:16 ◼   ► - Or they still do, I guess.

00:08:17 ◼   ► And every, almost every time I flew,

00:08:19 ◼   ► I could get an upgrade from coach to first class

00:08:21 ◼   ► for like a hundred bucks.

00:08:23 ◼   ► And I'd be like, yeah.

00:08:24 ◼   ► - In general, the first class seats,

00:08:26 ◼   ► I mean, weren't super expensive when you compare it

00:08:28 ◼   ► to what they are on other airlines.

00:08:31 ◼   ► So yeah.

00:08:32 ◼   ► - I flew first class on Virgin as a percentage

00:08:35 ◼   ► higher than anywhere else,

00:08:36 ◼   ► and it wasn't 'cause I had the points,

00:08:37 ◼   ► it was because it was so cheap to upgrade.

00:08:38 ◼   ► And the service was super terrific,

00:08:40 ◼   ► the seats were super comfortable.

00:08:41 ◼   ► But one time I was up in first class,

00:08:43 ◼   ► and we actually pulled away from the gate a little bit.

00:08:47 ◼   ► And then all of a sudden there was some kind of,

00:08:49 ◼   ► not a unpleasant commotion,

00:08:51 ◼   ► but some kind of thing with the phone,

00:08:53 ◼   ► and they were like, hey, hey, let's go back.

00:08:55 ◼   ► And they went back to the gate,

00:08:56 ◼   ► and some poor sap who had a connecting flight that was late,

00:08:59 ◼   ► They went back to the gate.

00:09:01 ◼   ► I'd say it set us back about three minutes.

00:09:04 ◼   ► They went back to the gate and let this guy on the plane.

00:09:06 ◼   ► And this guy looked like he won the lottery because--

00:09:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, you never hear about that, never.

00:09:12 ◼   ► - I've never seen it before.

00:09:13 ◼   ► I mean, maybe I've never seen it before

00:09:14 ◼   ► because I wasn't in first class,

00:09:16 ◼   ► but I mean, I think even in coaching,

00:09:17 ◼   ► you kind of tell if they-- - No, yeah, I've never seen

00:09:19 ◼   ► that. - If the plane stops

00:09:20 ◼   ► backing up and goes forward again.

00:09:22 ◼   ► And it was a nice thing, and I was happy for it,

00:09:25 ◼   ► 'cause the three minutes, what's the difference

00:09:26 ◼   ► to the three minutes?

00:09:27 ◼   ► coming out of it was coming back from SFO to Philly and so you're probably going to wait that

00:09:31 ◼   ► time waiting to take off anyway but for that poor guy who almost missed his flight uh they just it

00:09:38 ◼   ► was you know thousands of dollars in happiness for that guy and i was i mean i've seen i've seen much

00:09:43 ◼   ► more of the sort of the opposite version of the story where the plane isn't even pushed back from

00:09:47 ◼   ► the gate but they just closed the door and they will not open it even though the person's there

00:09:51 ◼   ► the plane is still there and the door is closed and so it's just they will not reopen it for

00:09:55 ◼   ► for those people, not with Virgin,

00:09:56 ◼   ► but with countless other airlines have seen that.

00:09:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, and they were like,

00:10:01 ◼   ► the flight attendants were so nice.

00:10:02 ◼   ► They were like, "Hey, hey, you're here.

00:10:04 ◼   ► "You're on, you don't have to run anymore.

00:10:05 ◼   ► "Take your time, go find your seat.

00:10:07 ◼   ► "Do you want us to bring you a drink?"

00:10:08 ◼   ► And they were like, he was like, "This is amazing.

00:10:11 ◼   ► "Okay, sure, yes, I'll take a Coke."

00:10:14 ◼   ► And it was--

00:10:15 ◼   ► - But to your point, that was sort of like,

00:10:17 ◼   ► that's also definitely a part of sort of

00:10:19 ◼   ► the overall experience with Virgin,

00:10:21 ◼   ► and I don't know what it is.

00:10:22 ◼   ► I don't know if they just, if they hired

00:10:24 ◼   ► from a different crop of people in the industry or whatnot,

00:10:27 ◼   ► but people generally didn't seem to hate their jobs

00:10:30 ◼   ► and hate their lives when they were working at Virgin,

00:10:32 ◼   ► whereas they do very often, it seems like,

00:10:36 ◼   ► on many other airlines.

00:10:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, the big ones.

00:10:38 ◼   ► And I think Alaska, and it's like, to your point,

00:10:41 ◼   ► I would compare Alaska to Southwest.

00:10:43 ◼   ► I haven't flown Alaska a lot.

00:10:44 ◼   ► I've flown it, I think, at least twice to

00:10:47 ◼   ► when there was the XOXO Conference in Portland,

00:10:50 ◼   ► it coincided with XOXO at least for three years coincided with the tail end

00:11:00 ◼   ► of the iPhone introduction events in September where just by somewhat

00:11:05 ◼   ► coincidence or I guess not quite total coincidence but Apple targeting like the

00:11:09 ◼   ► second week of September for iPhone events and XOXO targeting the end of the

00:11:13 ◼   ► second week for XOXO at least twice for me to go to XOXO it made more

00:11:20 ◼   ► sense to fly out to San Francisco at the beginning of the week, wait, and then fly San Francisco

00:11:25 ◼   ► to Portland instead of flying all the way back to Philadelphia and then to Portland.

00:11:29 ◼   ► And Alaska was like, you know, was the best airline, you know, had the most flights for

00:11:32 ◼   ► that. So I've flown Alaska at least twice and I would compare it to Southwest. It's

00:11:36 ◼   ► fine. It's fine. I mean, Southwest, I've flown it a lot actually. And I like it. It's sort

00:11:44 ◼   ► of like, you know, it's like a nice commuter bus in the sky, right? Because they don't

00:11:49 ◼   ► have assigned seats, but you get sort of these numbers

00:11:51 ◼   ► and you stand and then you get on the plane,

00:11:53 ◼   ► you can just pick whatever seat you want,

00:11:54 ◼   ► and it's very simple.

00:11:56 ◼   ► I think you always get the same type of plane,

00:11:59 ◼   ► so that's sort of a similar experience.

00:12:01 ◼   ► But again, it's nice, but it cannot compare

00:12:06 ◼   ► to what Virgin America like.

00:12:08 ◼   ► The one that does, supposedly,

00:12:11 ◼   ► which I have not been on yet, I wonder if you have,

00:12:14 ◼   ► is the JetBlue Mint experience.

00:12:16 ◼   ► - Nope, 'cause we don't have JetBlue.

00:12:17 ◼   ► - I've not been on that.

00:12:18 ◼   ► Or maybe we do.

00:12:19 ◼   ► We have JetBlue, but they don't fly anywhere I go out of Philly,

00:12:21 ◼   ► I think.

00:12:22 ◼   ► Yeah, and I think San Francisco has JetBlue as well,

00:12:25 ◼   ► but I don't think the Mint thing is currently in play.

00:12:29 ◼   ► Or at least it's not like-- if I would take JetBlue,

00:12:31 ◼   ► I think I've taken it once before,

00:12:32 ◼   ► and I've taken it to New York, because obviously most

00:12:35 ◼   ► of the time I would take Virgin.

00:12:37 ◼   ► But I don't think the Mint service operates

00:12:40 ◼   ► between San Francisco and New York.

00:12:41 ◼   ► Hopefully they change that maybe with the Virgin news.

00:12:43 ◼   ► But it's like LA to New York, I think, has it.

00:12:45 ◼   ► And people rave about it when they take that.

00:12:47 ◼   ► They say it's at least as good as Virgin, if not better.

00:12:50 ◼   ► I don't really know all the perks and everything,

00:12:54 ◼   ► having not taken it before,

00:12:55 ◼   ► but I guess it's one to look forward to potentially.

00:12:58 ◼   ► - And it's just an industry.

00:13:01 ◼   ► You've made it, in your column,

00:13:05 ◼   ► you made it a sort of comparison to Apple and Dell

00:13:08 ◼   ► or something like that.

00:13:09 ◼   ► And maybe Alaska is maybe more like Lenovo,

00:13:11 ◼   ► where a ThinkPad is a nice laptop,

00:13:14 ◼   ► but it's not a Mac.

00:13:16 ◼   ► You know, it's what happens if somebody really tries to make something really good in an

00:13:23 ◼   ► industry where that was fine is generally considered good.

00:13:28 ◼   ► Wow, you got really lucky.

00:13:32 ◼   ► You know, my fight was fine.

00:13:34 ◼   ► It was more or less on time.

00:13:35 ◼   ► We landed more or less on time and none of my luggage got lost.

00:13:39 ◼   ► Right?

00:13:40 ◼   ► Yeah, it was funny.

00:13:41 ◼   ► were I was chatting actually with a in our internal work slack with some people

00:13:46 ◼   ► about the news and of course everyone sort of outraged right when it hits and

00:13:49 ◼   ► so like there's this long thread going on and that was the thing that I quoted

00:13:52 ◼   ► a co-worker mine Ken was like you know comparing it to yeah sort of the the PC

00:13:58 ◼   ► versus Mac thing which I thought would be fun because of course that always you

00:14:02 ◼   ► know draws such heated debate on both sides for that and whenever you compare

00:14:07 ◼   ► anything to that situation. But I mean I think it does feel fairly apt, you

00:14:14 ◼   ► know, having been myself, you know, a longtime PC user when I was growing up

00:14:18 ◼   ► and then switching to the Mac and just like I was PC user and it was fine and

00:14:22 ◼   ► like yeah I would get a faster PC and sometimes you know Windows would break

00:14:27 ◼   ► down and and that would suck but when it worked it was fine and then you know

00:14:32 ◼   ► it's uh it was a totally different experience once I switched over.

00:14:36 ◼   ► Yeah, it's, I mean, do you have AirPods? I'll bet you do.

00:14:39 ◼   ► Oh yeah, I love the AirPods.

00:14:40 ◼   ► Alright, so I do too. It's my favorite, my favorite thing in the last few years,

00:14:44 ◼   ► I think. Seriously, I love them so much. But that's, it epitomizes what Apple stands for,

00:14:49 ◼   ► to me, which is, let's try to make this as nice as possible, even if it's such a simple thing as just

00:14:56 ◼   ► putting two AirPods in your ear and having them just work when you hit play on your phone.

00:15:01 ◼   ► Yep.

00:15:02 ◼   ► and just taking it to like,

00:15:04 ◼   ► just keep going into tenths of a decimal,

00:15:08 ◼   ► 99.999% nice, 99.999% nice,

00:15:12 ◼   ► and sweating detail after detail.

00:15:14 ◼   ► That's the Apple way, and it's not like Apple's perfect.

00:15:17 ◼   ► My favorite example from recent years

00:15:19 ◼   ► of Apple totally falling short on this

00:15:21 ◼   ► is the remote control for the new Apple TV.

00:15:23 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, yeah, totally, right.

00:15:24 ◼   ► - Which is like, how did this ever come out of Apple as okay

00:15:28 ◼   ► because this is so, it is fine,

00:15:31 ◼   ► And it's not, you know what I mean?

00:15:33 ◼   ► And it's not like a Comcast remote with 127 buttons, right?

00:15:38 ◼   ► It is Apple-like in certain ways,

00:15:42 ◼   ► but it's totally un-Apple-like in other ways.

00:15:44 ◼   ► - It's Apple-like in certain ways,

00:15:45 ◼   ► although I feel like everyone who has one

00:15:49 ◼   ► has the exact same complaint,

00:15:50 ◼   ► and that complaint is that you never know

00:15:52 ◼   ► if you're holding it right side up or upside down.

00:15:53 ◼   ► And how did just user testing,

00:15:57 ◼   ► even amongst Apple employees, how did that not come up?

00:16:00 ◼   ► I mean, that's like the first thing that comes up for everyone.

00:16:02 ◼   ► Right.

00:16:03 ◼   ► But to me, Virgin was shooting for the AirPods like experience from check-in to,

00:16:11 ◼   ► you know, getting off the plane.

00:16:13 ◼   ► That's what Virgin still stands for while they, while they exist.

00:16:16 ◼   ► But, and something like Alaska or Southwest, which I'm, I'm a fan of, I'm a big fan of,

00:16:22 ◼   ► so I've flown tons of miles on Southwest.

00:16:24 ◼   ► I don't anymore just because they've sort of dropped nonstop routes between the cities

00:16:28 ◼   ► I go to and I'm as the longer and more I fly the more resistant I am to taking anything other than a non-stop

00:16:36 ◼   ► But I really I do like them and I know that they're not luxurious

00:16:41 ◼   ► But the main reason I like them is that that they do seem to hire really nice people and the planes are very consistent

00:16:48 ◼   ► The Southwest plane is always clean and always exactly the same, but it's nothing like virgin which was trying to say

00:16:55 ◼   ► Let's make this really nice

00:16:56 ◼   ► Let's make being in a coach seat like a decent humane experience

00:16:59 ◼   ► And the thing that's really a bummer about it is you know, so when Virgin launched

00:17:06 ◼   ► I remember it very well in San Francisco. There was a lot of pomp and circumstances there is with many sort of Richard Branson affiliated things

00:17:14 ◼   ► But you know deservedly so and the whole criticism at the time though was like, yeah, it's a great experience

00:17:20 ◼   ► But they'll never be able to keep this going. They're not going to be able to run it profitably and

00:17:25 ◼   ► This is just not the way the airline industry works,

00:17:28 ◼   ► you know, in this day and age.

00:17:30 ◼   ► And, you know, I think they were running unprofitably

00:17:33 ◼   ► for a long time.

00:17:34 ◼   ► I do think that they eventually turned a profit

00:17:36 ◼   ► or they were very close to it.

00:17:37 ◼   ► And so there was some hope, you know, that like,

00:17:39 ◼   ► look, you can actually build an airline

00:17:41 ◼   ► with a great experience that actually makes business sense

00:17:43 ◼   ► as well.

00:17:45 ◼   ► And then of course, that just got thrown out the window

00:17:47 ◼   ► and they merged, I mean, and all airlines continue

00:17:50 ◼   ► to constantly merge and continue to constantly charge

00:17:54 ◼   ► for more things, for overhead storage,

00:17:56 ◼   ► just adding on fee after fee after fee.

00:17:59 ◼   ► And that's just the, you know,

00:18:00 ◼   ► that's the state of the industry,

00:18:02 ◼   ► and Virgin, it seemed like, was trying to buck that trend,

00:18:04 ◼   ► and it ultimately, you know, just didn't end up doing it.

00:18:09 ◼   ► We'll see how Alaska sort of takes the mantle,

00:18:14 ◼   ► but that's what's the real bummer about it.

00:18:17 ◼   ► It just, it sort of showcases that I think

00:18:19 ◼   ► it just probably can't ever work.

00:18:22 ◼   ► - It seems like a lot of people I know,

00:18:24 ◼   ► - And it does make some sense, but it's, to me,

00:18:26 ◼   ► key to the continuing, I don't even know

00:18:31 ◼   ► if I wanna say success, 'cause I'm not quite sure

00:18:34 ◼   ► how profitable they are, but the continuing dominance

00:18:36 ◼   ► of the major mediocre carriers, your Americans,

00:18:41 ◼   ► Deltas, Uniteds, et cetera, is that they,

00:18:46 ◼   ► for obvious reasons, they largely depend

00:18:49 ◼   ► on regular frequent flyers, and people who,

00:18:53 ◼   ► once you start racking up points on a certain airline,

00:18:57 ◼   ► so many people-- - You're locked in, yeah.

00:18:58 ◼   ► - So I don't feel that way.

00:19:00 ◼   ► I've got platinum status-- - I don't either.

00:19:02 ◼   ► - On American, which is pretty nice,

00:19:05 ◼   ► and it gets me a couple of perks,

00:19:06 ◼   ► and I've got miles I can cash in, whatever.

00:19:10 ◼   ► But every time I book a flight,

00:19:12 ◼   ► I still search for other airlines just to look.

00:19:15 ◼   ► And if I found something better or cheaper

00:19:18 ◼   ► on a different airline, like I still check

00:19:21 ◼   ► to see if Southwest has restored a couple of non-stops

00:19:24 ◼   ► to San Francisco every day.

00:19:25 ◼   ► I look every once in a while.

00:19:27 ◼   ► Like I would think about going back to Southwest

00:19:29 ◼   ► on certain flights, especially if I could,

00:19:31 ◼   ► or if I could get a better time of day

00:19:33 ◼   ► or something like that.

00:19:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm in the same boat as you.

00:19:37 ◼   ► I am not sort of beholden to any sort of point system.

00:19:40 ◼   ► I have the virgin points, of course,

00:19:41 ◼   ► but as we just talked about,

00:19:42 ◼   ► like they didn't go all that many places,

00:19:44 ◼   ► so obviously you would have to take out their airlines

00:19:45 ◼   ► all the time.

00:19:46 ◼   ► And so I think I have rewards programs at all of them.

00:19:49 ◼   ► And I don't have huge status,

00:19:51 ◼   ► but I have status at some of them, I would say.

00:19:52 ◼   ► I fly quite a bit.

00:19:53 ◼   ► But I'm not one of those people who is so adamant

00:19:57 ◼   ► about maintaining that

00:19:59 ◼   ► versus just maintaining a good experience.

00:20:01 ◼   ► That said, I do know people who are the exact opposite.

00:20:03 ◼   ► I know people who take flights to and from New York City

00:20:07 ◼   ► just to maintain their status level.

00:20:09 ◼   ► Like they don't actually stay overnight in the city.

00:20:13 ◼   ► They just do a round trip flight on one day

00:20:16 ◼   ► just to be able to maintain their status,

00:20:18 ◼   ► - Which sounds absolutely insane.

00:20:20 ◼   ► - It's just not that important to me.

00:20:25 ◼   ► And I just don't get that much for it.

00:20:27 ◼   ► Even as a platinum status person on American,

00:20:30 ◼   ► I still don't get, I still would have to pay

00:20:32 ◼   ► to join their quote unquote admirals club

00:20:34 ◼   ► to get into the lounges.

00:20:37 ◼   ► And I tend not to need lounges

00:20:42 ◼   ► because I tend to just fly nonstop

00:20:44 ◼   ► from home to my destination, my destination to home.

00:20:48 ◼   ► And the only time I ever really need or wish I had access to a lounge is when my flight's

00:20:53 ◼   ► delayed. If I get to the airport on time and the flight is significantly delayed and I've

00:20:58 ◼   ► got two or three hours to burn, well then it would be nice to be in a lounge. In some

00:21:02 ◼   ► places I can get in the Amex lounge, but other airports don't have one. But it's not...

00:21:08 ◼   ► I don't even get it. I have platinum status and I still don't get it. So it doesn't make

00:21:11 ◼   ► any sense to me why people are so loyal like that. But it really does seem to screw the

00:21:15 ◼   ► upstart airlines. Like they can't, like one of the reasons they can't get

00:21:19 ◼   ► traction is people are like, I've heard Virgin is nice but I've got points on

00:21:22 ◼   ► United so here I go. Yep, yeah it's uh it's it's quite a racket that they that

00:21:28 ◼   ► they run and like you know I think you know there's certain other airlines that

00:21:32 ◼   ► go internationally that are that are obviously very nice. I'm actually getting

00:21:36 ◼   ► ready to go to London and I'm gonna be on Virgin Atlantic, it's sort of sister

00:21:41 ◼   ► thing. It was like the sister thing but they weren't exactly you know affiliated

00:21:44 ◼   ► for a long time their points didn't even transfer. I think they do now.

00:21:47 ◼   ► I think they set it up that way to make it easier to have happen what actually happened,

00:21:51 ◼   ► which was to sell one or the other without selling the other.

00:21:56 ◼   ► Yeah, and Branson wrote a post-mortem or whatever and sort of made some reference to it, like

00:22:05 ◼   ► losing a child. But there was all sorts of issues with his ownership of it and whether

00:22:14 ◼   ► or not he could have actually blocked anything. It seems like no, and so that's what happened.

00:22:18 ◼   ► I've never flown Virgin Atlantic, but I would love to. And my favorite story about that,

00:22:22 ◼   ► and it relates to the show, is way back in the day when Dan Benjamin and I were reviewing

00:22:28 ◼   ► all the James Bond movies, we were talking about Quantum of Solace.

00:22:32 ◼   ► Yes, I was just going to bring that up.

00:22:34 ◼   ► Bond is on route from England to, where was he going?

00:22:39 ◼   ► Somewhere in South America or the Caribbean, right?

00:22:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, 'cause he's with the elder gentleman.

00:22:47 ◼   ► - Yeah. - And they're having a drink.

00:22:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, and he's bereft and he's getting tanked.

00:22:54 ◼   ► There's a bar in the plane with a bartender

00:22:58 ◼   ► and he's sitting at the bar drinking Vesper Martini.

00:23:00 ◼   ► I don't know, like 18 of them or something.

00:23:04 ◼   ► And it's a beautiful looking bar.

00:23:05 ◼   ► And Dan and I were like, it was a cool scene,

00:23:07 ◼   ► you know, and it's kind of unusual to see Bond

00:23:11 ◼   ► actually get tanky.

00:23:13 ◼   ► He's always drinking, but he never seems to be drunk.

00:23:15 ◼   ► And here he is, you know, drinking himself into a stupor.

00:23:18 ◼   ► But we were like, how unrealistic is it

00:23:20 ◼   ► that there is a nice bar on a commercial air flight?

00:23:22 ◼   ► And then all these people wrote to me,

00:23:24 ◼   ► and they're like, oh no, no.

00:23:24 ◼   ► - They have it, yeah.

00:23:25 ◼   ► That's there, that's real. - Yeah, they were like,

00:23:26 ◼   ► that was actually shot on a real Virgin Atlantic plane.

00:23:29 ◼   ► It's like, oh my God, I've gotta get on that plane.

00:23:32 ◼   ► - I mean, yeah, I've been on them.

00:23:33 ◼   ► that's 100% legitimate, they have those bar areas,

00:23:37 ◼   ► and it's amazing.

00:23:38 ◼   ► It's not usually as quiet as it was, I would say,

00:23:41 ◼   ► in that scene.

00:23:42 ◼   ► There's usually much more people or activity around it,

00:23:45 ◼   ► but yeah, that's legitimate.

00:23:47 ◼   ► It's pretty amazing.

00:23:48 ◼   ► - That was some of my favorite feedback ever.

00:23:52 ◼   ► We were both like, totally preposterous.

00:23:54 ◼   ► Who would ever have a commercial airplane

00:23:56 ◼   ► with something like that?

00:23:57 ◼   ► It's like something out of the 1960s,

00:23:59 ◼   ► and all these people wrote to us,

00:24:01 ◼   ► and they're like, oh yeah, it is real, and it is nice.

00:24:03 ◼   ► It's fantastic.

00:24:05 ◼   ► Yeah, and the thing with Virgin is-- so I rarely--

00:24:07 ◼   ► Virgin Atlantic, I rarely take it because it's for--

00:24:10 ◼   ► for some reason, it ends up being usually far more

00:24:12 ◼   ► expensive than British Airways.

00:24:16 ◼   ► And we just so happened to find a ticket that

00:24:18 ◼   ► was roughly the same price.

00:24:20 ◼   ► And so we decided to book that because you haven't taken

00:24:23 ◼   ► Virgin, but if you ever go to London at Heathrow,

00:24:26 ◼   ► they have an amazing lounge, too.

00:24:29 ◼   ► It's probably the best lounge I've ever been in,

00:24:32 ◼   ► including you can get a haircut, you can shower.

00:24:34 ◼   ► You can-- (laughing)

00:24:36 ◼   ► - That's pretty nice.

00:24:37 ◼   ► - They have a spa, they have all this amazing stuff there.

00:24:39 ◼   ► - The shower mode would be nice,

00:24:40 ◼   ► 'cause sometimes, for whatever reason,

00:24:42 ◼   ► when you fly cross-country, especially for you,

00:24:44 ◼   ► 'cause you're coming from the West Coast,

00:24:45 ◼   ► I always feel like it's been like three days

00:24:48 ◼   ► since when I get off the plane in Europe,

00:24:51 ◼   ► I always feel like, man, that felt like it was 72 hours.

00:24:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, yes.

00:24:55 ◼   ► So yeah, I highly recommend that if you're ever

00:25:00 ◼   ► going overseas.

00:25:01 ◼   ► All right, let me take a break here

00:25:02 ◼   ► and thank our first friend of the show,

00:25:04 ◼   ► our good friends at Squarespace.

00:25:07 ◼   ► You guys know Squarespace.

00:25:08 ◼   ► It's the best place to go to make a website,

00:25:10 ◼   ► register, domain, anything like that.

00:25:12 ◼   ► When you make your next move, you're gonna need a website.

00:25:16 ◼   ► Why not start it at Squarespace?

00:25:19 ◼   ► They've got beautiful templates.

00:25:20 ◼   ► They've got beautiful types of sites

00:25:23 ◼   ► to choose from to start.

00:25:25 ◼   ► So if you're making an online store,

00:25:27 ◼   ► you can start with a store

00:25:28 ◼   ► and then choose a template from there.

00:25:30 ◼   ► if you're making a podcast.

00:25:31 ◼   ► You can start with something like a podcast

00:25:34 ◼   ► and boom, you've got a podcast site.

00:25:36 ◼   ► You didn't do any work.

00:25:37 ◼   ► You can host your podcast right there from Squarespace.

00:25:40 ◼   ► You name the type of site,

00:25:42 ◼   ► you can build it with Squarespace.

00:25:43 ◼   ► And I say this, this is what I think is

00:25:45 ◼   ► the resistance people might have to Squarespace

00:25:47 ◼   ► is you say, well, everybody signs up for Squarespace

00:25:50 ◼   ► and you choose from a handful of templates

00:25:52 ◼   ► and then my site's gonna look like a Squarespace site

00:25:54 ◼   ► 'cause it's not like that.

00:25:56 ◼   ► They've got so many templates to choose from

00:25:58 ◼   ► and so many ways to customize them

00:26:00 ◼   ► that you don't even know

00:26:01 ◼   ► when you're looking at a Squarespace site.

00:26:03 ◼   ► I was just looking at a,

00:26:06 ◼   ► I mentioned this on Daring Fireball last week.

00:26:08 ◼   ► There's a new cheesesteak place

00:26:09 ◼   ► pretty near our place here in Philadelphia called Cleaver's.

00:26:12 ◼   ► Really great new sandwich shop here.

00:26:15 ◼   ► I was looking at their website to place the takeout order.

00:26:18 ◼   ► And one of the things you click on to see the menu loaded,

00:26:22 ◼   ► instead of as a page, loaded as a standalone image,

00:26:25 ◼   ► and I could see the URL,

00:26:26 ◼   ► and I could see it was hosted at Squarespace.

00:26:27 ◼   ► I was like, whoa, and all of a sudden I view source

00:26:29 ◼   ► and look, and their whole site,

00:26:31 ◼   ► which is a really nice site,

00:26:32 ◼   ► but doesn't look anything like any other site

00:26:34 ◼   ► I've ever seen, it's very much strongly branded

00:26:36 ◼   ► like the restaurant built with Squarespace.

00:26:38 ◼   ► But that makes total sense.

00:26:39 ◼   ► Why would they waste time doing something

00:26:43 ◼   ► outside their expertise, like building a website,

00:26:45 ◼   ► when they could just do it at Squarespace

00:26:47 ◼   ► and stick to building a great restaurant?

00:26:49 ◼   ► So keep them in mind, next time you need a website

00:26:51 ◼   ► for anything, check out Squarespace.

00:26:54 ◼   ► Go to squarespace.com, you get a free demo,

00:26:57 ◼   ► And once you sign up, remember this code, Gruber, just my last name, G-R-U-B-E-R, and

00:27:03 ◼   ► you will get 10% off your purchase.

00:27:07 ◼   ► My thanks to them for their continued support of this podcast.

00:27:10 ◼   ► All right, next item on my list at least is your reaction to the new MacBook Pros.

00:27:18 ◼   ► Yeah, so, and I know you have thoughts on this as well, and you, sir, the one thing

00:27:26 ◼   ► that you linked to which I thought was interesting was a few weeks ago sort of a

00:27:31 ◼   ► poll right of people how they feel about it and so my general take is pretty

00:27:37 ◼   ► straightforward I just I don't hate the touch bar I just think it's totally

00:27:42 ◼   ► useless I have a few apps you know that are sort of tailored for it including

00:27:48 ◼   ► things like pixelmator handful of other things a bunch but a bunch more that

00:27:54 ◼   ► aren't of course but I honestly just switched the sort of the fluid setting

00:28:02 ◼   ► to be back to just the standard sort of F and or no I didn't sorry I didn't use

00:28:07 ◼   ► the the F keys I used the function is I use the actual brightness and all that

00:28:12 ◼   ► stuff because I like I just found myself going to that like way way more than I

00:28:17 ◼   ► would use any of the sort of dynamic options that the touch bar would off

00:28:20 ◼   ► offer and I just I don't I have a hard time I know it's early but I have a hard

00:28:26 ◼   ► time ever seeing that it becomes like this great feature of the MacBook Pro do

00:28:32 ◼   ► you disagree with that no I don't disagree I feel like it exists I feel

00:28:39 ◼   ► like the touch bar as we have it right now exists in a sort of no-man's land

00:28:44 ◼   ► where you cannot I don't think it's fair to trash it I don't think it's fair to

00:28:48 ◼   ► say this is great I feel like it's it's nuanced now that said I don't own one so

00:28:56 ◼   ► I've got I spent about two or three weeks when they first came out playing

00:29:00 ◼   ► with the review units I had multiple of them but mostly spent the time with the

00:29:04 ◼   ► 13-inch because that's the size I like and I love touch ID yes I don't use the

00:29:12 ◼   ► I don't use the escape key as much as some people do,

00:29:16 ◼   ► but I do use it, and I do still even now,

00:29:19 ◼   ► even as somebody who doesn't use the escape key

00:29:21 ◼   ► all the time, I question whether they should not have

00:29:25 ◼   ► left a hardware traditional escape key

00:29:28 ◼   ► and made the touch bar just run from escape,

00:29:32 ◼   ► have an escape key in the upper left corner,

00:29:35 ◼   ► the touch ID in the upper right,

00:29:37 ◼   ► and have the touch bar exist between the two.

00:29:40 ◼   ► I think that would have solved an awful lot of problems.

00:29:42 ◼   ► it more symmetry as well because it's you know they have one button on one

00:29:45 ◼   ► side why not have the escape button even if they change the size of it and made

00:29:48 ◼   ► it square sort of like the right touch ideas but make it something you can

00:29:52 ◼   ► actually click and I think that would have I I do feel like just reading

00:29:57 ◼   ► Twitter reading feedback from readers and stuff like that I feel like an an

00:30:01 ◼   ► awful lot of the criticism of the touch bar relates to the escape key as for the

00:30:07 ◼   ► utility of the touch part itself it's hard to say I do I find I do I remember

00:30:12 ◼   ► thinking it was really nice to adjust the brightness with the touch bar.

00:30:15 ◼   ► I find that so much more tedious honestly to do it that way.

00:30:21 ◼   ► So here's before I switched it back to being sort of the brightness as

00:30:27 ◼   ► sort of default buttons so it has like you know brightness and things like

00:30:30 ◼   ► bring up expose and stuff like that you can there's a setting that you can you

00:30:33 ◼   ► know move it to rather than being the dynamic touch bar it's it's sort of your

00:30:38 ◼   ► old standard buttons and I did that because I was actually using I think

00:30:42 ◼   ► it's when you hit the function the FN key I think that would bring up the old

00:30:46 ◼   ► ones and I was just using that all the time because even though there are what

00:30:49 ◼   ► there is a brightness button on the dynamic version of the touch bar when

00:30:54 ◼   ► you hit it then you yeah then you have to scroll sort of up or down and so

00:30:59 ◼   ► often I just want like you know one little knit more of brightness not like

00:31:03 ◼   ► I don't need the sort of scrubbing, you know,

00:31:06 ◼   ► to see all the way down and all the way up

00:31:08 ◼   ► what the difference is.

00:31:09 ◼   ► It's like one of those features that just seems like

00:31:11 ◼   ► a cool option on paper, but when you actually use it,

00:31:14 ◼   ► it's much less useful.

00:31:15 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:31:16 ◼   ► So I don't know.

00:31:17 ◼   ► I can see the mixed feelings about it.

00:31:19 ◼   ► I feel like the biggest thing that it needs

00:31:23 ◼   ► is haptic feedback.

00:31:25 ◼   ► I feel like, and I was reminded of it just recently

00:31:29 ◼   ► because I haven't used it a lot

00:31:33 ◼   ► 'cause I don't personally have a need,

00:31:34 ◼   ► but I'm fascinated by the new Clips app,

00:31:36 ◼   ► and I think it's really well done,

00:31:38 ◼   ► even though I realize some of the initial complaints

00:31:40 ◼   ► from other people are that they're a little confused by it.

00:31:42 ◼   ► But I think it's only confusing at first

00:31:45 ◼   ► because it's ambitious and tries to do a lot,

00:31:47 ◼   ► and so there's a lot in there,

00:31:49 ◼   ► but I feel like everything that they've done,

00:31:51 ◼   ► once you get it, it's pretty logical.

00:31:53 ◼   ► But the thing that made me think of the Touch Bar

00:31:56 ◼   ► is when you've got multiple clips in a project,

00:32:01 ◼   ► clips in a project in a row.

00:32:04 ◼   ► And if you want to rearrange them,

00:32:05 ◼   ► you can force touch on one,

00:32:08 ◼   ► and you get like a little,

00:32:09 ◼   ► you get the haptic feedback as you drag it along

00:32:12 ◼   ► to rearrange clips in the timeline.

00:32:14 ◼   ► And it feels like,

00:32:16 ◼   ► so you want to move the one that's in the fourth spot

00:32:18 ◼   ► to the second spot.

00:32:19 ◼   ► As you drag it between second and third,

00:32:21 ◼   ► you get a little--

00:32:22 ◼   ► - It rumbles and you can feel it, right?

00:32:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, you can feel like,

00:32:24 ◼   ► it's like you're dragging it over physical slots.

00:32:27 ◼   ► And it's so nice.

00:32:28 ◼   ► And I just thought,

00:32:29 ◼   ► boy, the touch bar would feel so much better

00:32:30 ◼   ► if it had a little bit of feedback like that.

00:32:33 ◼   ► - And that speaks to, I think it was Michael Lop, right,

00:32:37 ◼   ► who wrote a post about the usability factor

00:32:41 ◼   ► of the touch bar, because it's almost impossible to use

00:32:43 ◼   ► without looking at it, which is also very odd, right?

00:32:46 ◼   ► Like, because that's not what that row of buttons has been

00:32:49 ◼   ► for the entire life of a MacBook.

00:32:52 ◼   ► And so to your point, like, if they had some sort

00:32:54 ◼   ► of haptic feedback where you could actually tell

00:32:56 ◼   ► what you were doing while still keying on the screen,

00:32:59 ◼   ► like for scrubbing or doing some other action,

00:33:02 ◼   ► that would be significantly better

00:33:04 ◼   ► than having to look down

00:33:06 ◼   ► because you don't know where you are.

00:33:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I do feel like that's part of it.

00:33:10 ◼   ► Some of the ones in the middle, I almost never use.

00:33:16 ◼   ► On a traditional F key row,

00:33:18 ◼   ► I don't really, I almost never adjust

00:33:21 ◼   ► the brightness of my keyboard.

00:33:22 ◼   ► - Keyboard, yeah, same.

00:33:23 ◼   ► - Sometimes it's like I'll be on a dark flight,

00:33:29 ◼   ► all right, yeah, I'll adjust the brightness of my keyboard.

00:33:32 ◼   ► But I'll just do it once,

00:33:33 ◼   ► and it's fine for me to be looking at it.

00:33:35 ◼   ► But for like, micro-adjustments

00:33:37 ◼   ► to the brightness of the screen,

00:33:39 ◼   ► I can do it without looking,

00:33:41 ◼   ► just by going up with my left hand to the top left.

00:33:45 ◼   ► I know where the escape key is,

00:33:46 ◼   ► and the next two are brightness.

00:33:48 ◼   ► And even if I'm wrong,

00:33:49 ◼   ► even if I go up and I hit brightness up,

00:33:51 ◼   ► even though I wanted brightness down,

00:33:53 ◼   ► I can see what happened right away,

00:33:54 ◼   ► and I know I'm right next door,

00:33:56 ◼   ► and just slide my finger,

00:33:58 ◼   ► and do that without looking.

00:34:00 ◼   ► - And I'm with you with that,

00:34:02 ◼   ► and I'm the exact same way with volume,

00:34:03 ◼   ► and both of those are now problematic on the touch bar.

00:34:07 ◼   ► You know, they look nice, like that nice, you know,

00:34:10 ◼   ► little scrubber and everything, but it just,

00:34:12 ◼   ► I do not like it at all.

00:34:15 ◼   ► I mean, I don't hate it, but I just don't see,

00:34:19 ◼   ► like I said, I switch back to sort of the old standards,

00:34:22 ◼   ► and like you said, they're not physical buttons,

00:34:25 ◼   ► and there's no haptic feedback, so they're harder to use,

00:34:27 ◼   ► So I have to actually pay attention to what I'm doing.

00:34:29 ◼   ► And then I also, I do think, I agree that Touch ID

00:34:32 ◼   ► is by far the best part of it.

00:34:34 ◼   ► But the weird thing there is that I almost never get

00:34:38 ◼   ► to use it because I do have an Apple Watch

00:34:40 ◼   ► and I'm always wearing the Apple Watch

00:34:41 ◼   ► and that unlocks faster than the Touch ID does.

00:34:45 ◼   ► So before you can even reach up to the Touch ID, it's done.

00:34:48 ◼   ► So there's no point.

00:34:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, it's good for purchases or whatever.

00:34:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, for purchases.

00:34:52 ◼   ► - But logging in is the big, is the one that you do.

00:34:56 ◼   ► I log in and out or open it from sleep

00:34:58 ◼   ► and log in way more frequently than I buy stuff.

00:35:01 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:35:02 ◼   ► And so why do you think that they did the touch bar?

00:35:08 ◼   ► Because like so part of the thing that I wrote

00:35:10 ◼   ► was sort of the title of it.

00:35:12 ◼   ► It was a great laptop stagnation.

00:35:15 ◼   ► The notion being that we've sort of reached

00:35:19 ◼   ► peak form factor of the laptop.

00:35:21 ◼   ► And I know that's dangerous to say

00:35:22 ◼   ► for sort of any technology that we've reached peak

00:35:24 ◼   ► because there's always going to be some level of innovation.

00:35:26 ◼   ► And I think I made the quip that maybe we'll

00:35:28 ◼   ► have Phil Schiller on stage saying,

00:35:30 ◼   ► can't innovate anymore my ass when they do something

00:35:34 ◼   ► new with the MacBook.

00:35:35 ◼   ► But my only line of thinking is either they're

00:35:38 ◼   ► going to one day try to make it a bigger screen

00:35:43 ◼   ► area, like the keyboard tray being more maybe

00:35:46 ◼   ► like haptic digital keys, something like that,

00:35:51 ◼   ► or not even replacing the entire keyboard,

00:35:54 ◼   ► but just making that a bigger area, you know,

00:35:57 ◼   ► for different things that they can dynamically do.

00:35:59 ◼   ► I mean, that has to be some line of thinking, right?

00:36:03 ◼   ► It can't just be this touch bar,

00:36:04 ◼   ► which isn't that interesting.

00:36:06 ◼   ► - I guess, I don't know, but I find it worrisome

00:36:09 ◼   ► if their goal is to replace hardware keyboard

00:36:12 ◼   ► with a virtual keyboard,

00:36:14 ◼   ► because I can't see how that would,

00:36:16 ◼   ► like whatever my,

00:36:18 ◼   ► I kind of still prefer my older MacBook keyboard

00:36:22 ◼   ► to the new one.

00:36:24 ◼   ► shallow keys yeah it's in New York but it's deeper keys but after two or three

00:36:28 ◼   ► weeks my feelings went from I like the old one better - oh I have mixed

00:36:33 ◼   ► feelings because I also feel though that my old one they feel loose and jank

00:36:37 ◼   ► jank right and resin the new ones even though they have shallower feel so

00:36:41 ◼   ► clicking them feels worse because it's shallow but just resting my fingers on

00:36:46 ◼   ► them feels better because they don't wiggle around they feel more premium

00:36:49 ◼   ► Yep. And I had a problem at first. I had a really weird problem and I can't explain why, but the new keyboards in the Macbook and the Mac, the just plain Macbook and the Macbook Pro have bigger keys and less space between the keys.

00:37:07 ◼   ► The keyboard takes up the exact same amount of area.

00:37:10 ◼   ► And so the distance between just pick two keys,

00:37:13 ◼   ► like the center of the A key and the center of the F key

00:37:17 ◼   ► is exactly the same.

00:37:19 ◼   ► So your fingers resting on the home row

00:37:22 ◼   ► are exactly in the same position.

00:37:23 ◼   ► But for some reason, because the keys are bigger,

00:37:27 ◼   ► I felt for a while like my fingers were spread out more.

00:37:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, I get that.

00:37:35 ◼   ► I think that's something I needed to get used to.

00:37:37 ◼   ► - I especially notice it because I use the iPad keyboard

00:37:41 ◼   ► all the time and those are smaller keys, right?

00:37:44 ◼   ► And so that's when I really notice it.

00:37:46 ◼   ► And I honestly, I think I prefer the iPad keyboard,

00:37:49 ◼   ► as weird as that sounds.

00:37:50 ◼   ► It's not a perfect keyboard, but maybe it is,

00:37:55 ◼   ► like you're talking about, sort of the size of the keys,

00:37:57 ◼   ► just something about it feels more familiar

00:37:59 ◼   ► than typing on the newer keyboards.

00:38:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, I can kind of see that.

00:38:03 ◼   ► Like you're talking about like the smart keypad.

00:38:05 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, the one that Apple made.

00:38:06 ◼   ► It's almost like on the smart keyboard cover,

00:38:09 ◼   ► it celebrates the shallowness of the movement.

00:38:13 ◼   ► Whereas on the MacBook, it's like, man,

00:38:16 ◼   ► I still wish that these keys went in further a little bit.

00:38:19 ◼   ► But I can live with that.

00:38:21 ◼   ► The difference between my feelings

00:38:25 ◼   ► about the new MacBook Pro keyboard

00:38:27 ◼   ► and the previous generation MacBook Pro keyboard,

00:38:30 ◼   ► I have thoughts, but the thoughts are much narrower

00:38:35 ◼   ► than the thoughts between what we have now

00:38:38 ◼   ► and a hypothetical virtual touch bar

00:38:40 ◼   ► that was the whole keyboard.

00:38:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, what do you think about this?

00:38:44 ◼   ► So the other thing that I've chatted with some folks about

00:38:48 ◼   ► is the notion of one way that I think

00:38:51 ◼   ► they could have alleviated some of the touch bar criticism

00:38:55 ◼   ► is also just putting it at the bottom of the keyboard.

00:38:59 ◼   ► So in other words, keeping the function row as it was and just adding a new row because

00:39:03 ◼   ► like, and especially on the MacBook.

00:39:05 ◼   ► So here's the thought here.

00:39:08 ◼   ► Right now they made the touch pad itself, right?

00:39:12 ◼   ► Massive.

00:39:13 ◼   ► It's pretty big now.

00:39:14 ◼   ► I think it's bigger than it needs to be for anything.

00:39:16 ◼   ► And so you could shave that down a little bit.

00:39:19 ◼   ► And I think if you wanted to do some sort of touch bar type thing, put it just above

00:39:23 ◼   ► the touch pad and sort of make that the whole touch area, especially because Apple's whole

00:39:28 ◼   ► as we all know, is that they're not going to do a touchscreen Macbook or iMac, Macbook Pro, anything.

00:39:34 ◼   ► And the weirdness of this whole dynamic right now is that they made a touch area that's so close to

00:39:41 ◼   ► the screen but isn't the screen and you know they make they have the the famous sort of picture of

00:39:46 ◼   ► like you know with a crossed out arm or like pointing at the screen because it's just not

00:39:51 ◼   ► ergonomic right and it's not that much different in my book to sort of have to go up to this top

00:39:57 ◼   ► row and have to sort of manipulate touch that way, I would have been much more happy if

00:40:03 ◼   ► where my hands already rest, sort of at the bottom, you tried to do something with the

00:40:06 ◼   ► touch bar.

00:40:07 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:40:09 ◼   ► Just looking down at my MacBook as you say this, my problem with that is that my hands

00:40:12 ◼   ► would cover it most of the time.

00:40:14 ◼   ► I think the advantage of having it at the top is that you can see it, your hands don't

00:40:17 ◼   ► cover it, whereas this way your hands cover it until you go to look at it.

00:40:21 ◼   ► But maybe that's okay.

00:40:22 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:40:23 ◼   ► I don't know if they've tinkered with that idea or not, but maybe that's okay because

00:40:27 ◼   ► It doesn't matter if you see it or not because by the time you go to do something on it

00:40:30 ◼   ► You were already moving your hands

00:40:31 ◼   ► I don't know right especially if you have to I mean if they acknowledge that you have to be looking at it to use it

00:40:36 ◼   ► already

00:40:37 ◼   ► And I just I feel like I don't know I could see I think some people push back in that like with an ocean of

00:40:44 ◼   ► Well what your palms could rest on and it could mess it up or something obviously

00:40:47 ◼   ► Apple has all the palm detection stuff for the iPad already. I'm sure they could figure that out but

00:40:52 ◼   ► I just think like for certain types of things, certainly some of the things that they were showing off like the DJing and all that kind of, you know, fun stuff,

00:41:00 ◼   ► you might not be, you know, really needing to use the keyboard as much as sort of the touch area to toggle controls and stuff.

00:41:07 ◼   ► And so in that situation, it might make a little bit more sense.

00:41:10 ◼   ► But I don't know. I mean, I assume, like you said, they maybe tried something or thought about it at least, and they determined that that wasn't the way to go.

00:41:17 ◼   ► Man, I don't know. What do you think about the weight and the size?

00:41:22 ◼   ► The weight and the size are great. I mean it's not, so I have, right now I have a bunch of machines.

00:41:28 ◼   ► I have an older MacBook Pro for, that's my work machine that sort of was given to me by the

00:41:37 ◼   ► people who dish out computers at work. And so that's I think like a two and a half or three

00:41:42 ◼   ► year old MacBook, so an older style MacBook Pro. Then I have the MacBook, the small 13 inch one,

00:41:49 ◼   ► and then I got the Touch Bar MacBook Pro. And so my other issue there is that while it is obviously

00:41:59 ◼   ► more svelte and lighter than the older MacBook Pro I have, it's not anywhere near as light and

00:42:07 ◼   ► and is felt as the MacBook itself.

00:42:09 ◼   ► And so if I'm going somewhere where

00:42:12 ◼   ► I would want sort of the most portability--

00:42:15 ◼   ► obviously, I know that most people don't have three options,

00:42:18 ◼   ► of course.

00:42:18 ◼   ► But when people would ask, like, well, I

00:42:19 ◼   ► just want the most portability, I would say,

00:42:22 ◼   ► go with the MacBook.

00:42:23 ◼   ► I mean, it's still--

00:42:24 ◼   ► the main problem there now is the one USB-C port.

00:42:30 ◼   ► And honestly, I carry around the dongle, of course,

00:42:34 ◼   ► and it's mildly annoying from time to time.

00:42:37 ◼   ► But I'm not sure it would even be that much better

00:42:38 ◼   ► if it had four USB-C ports,

00:42:40 ◼   ► because USB-C is still not,

00:42:42 ◼   ► doesn't seem quite as ubiquitous,

00:42:44 ◼   ► certainly for the things like,

00:42:45 ◼   ► I have to loop in things for work all the time

00:42:48 ◼   ► and sort of hook up different USB-C stuff,

00:42:50 ◼   ► and I almost always need a converter still.

00:42:53 ◼   ► So I'm just not sure that that would even

00:42:54 ◼   ► sort of alleviate the pain.

00:42:55 ◼   ► So my biggest problem with the older MacBook,

00:42:58 ◼   ► and I have the one that came out a couple years ago,

00:42:59 ◼   ► so it's fairly slow, but I think a lot of people said

00:43:02 ◼   ► that this sort of newer version that came out

00:43:06 ◼   ► several months ago is significantly faster. So I would go with that one.

00:43:11 ◼   ► The thing I like the most about it, and I think it speaks to your point that we're

00:43:15 ◼   ► sort of approaching peak form factor, is—and it was to me the part that made my personal

00:43:24 ◼   ► 2014, I think—I get mixed up at how old a two-year-old—I think I got it in 2014.

00:43:31 ◼   ► Anyway, yeah, that makes sense. My 2014 13-inch MacBook Pro, the biggest difference to me

00:43:35 ◼   ► and it's petty and it has nothing to do with actual computing, but it's the ease with which

00:43:42 ◼   ► I can open the display. The display just lifts up perfectly and if I want to adjust it slightly,

00:43:50 ◼   ► I just put one finger on it, on the new ones that is. It's just absolute, the perfect amount

00:43:56 ◼   ► of resistance where it never moves if I don't want it to and when I do want to move it,

00:44:00 ◼   ► it's the least amount of energy possible. It makes my old one feel like it's way too

00:44:04 ◼   ► hard and heavy to lift. And to me, that's the ideal that the new MacBooks have ever

00:44:12 ◼   ► more closely approached to. I don't know about the regular MacBook. Like, when you

00:44:17 ◼   ► lift a MacBook, is it so light that the whole thing lifts up, or can you do it with one

00:44:20 ◼   ► hand?

00:44:21 ◼   ► Yeah, it's a—right. I would say it's a little bit too light for that. I still feel

00:44:25 ◼   ► the need to sort of, yeah, like, you know, weigh it down a little bit while I'm lifting

00:44:29 ◼   ► it up.

00:44:30 ◼   ► Whereas the new MacBook Pros, you don't have to do that. The new MacBook Pros, even

00:44:32 ◼   ► - [Peter] No, in theory, it's worse to be heavier,

00:44:35 ◼   ► all things considered.

00:44:37 ◼   ► - Right. - If they could make one

00:44:38 ◼   ► that was every bit as fast and powerful as the MacBook,

00:44:41 ◼   ► yes, they would do it.

00:44:42 ◼   ► They're not gonna make it heavier.

00:44:44 ◼   ► Just, the Apple is not gonna make MacBooks heavier

00:44:46 ◼   ► just to make it easier to open them in the future.

00:44:50 ◼   ► But right now, I feel like the MacBook Pros

00:44:52 ◼   ► are at this wonderful ideal between the weight of the base,

00:44:57 ◼   ► where the keyboard and the battery and everything are,

00:44:59 ◼   ► and the lightness of the display,

00:45:01 ◼   ► and the ability to lift it up.

00:45:04 ◼   ► - I agree, and so, right, so the form factor is great, right?

00:45:07 ◼   ► It's so great that it's like, it's been whittled down

00:45:10 ◼   ► to sort of this, you know, that level of sort of perfection

00:45:15 ◼   ► for exactly what you're talking about.

00:45:17 ◼   ► What else would they possibly do to it,

00:45:19 ◼   ► beyond like, you know, expanding Touch Bar

00:45:21 ◼   ► and doing other things to it,

00:45:22 ◼   ► but it's like, that's the form factor.

00:45:24 ◼   ► What else are you gonna do to that?

00:45:26 ◼   ► You can't really change that now.

00:45:28 ◼   ► - No, other than, and again,

00:45:32 ◼   ► it's not really a change of the form factor,

00:45:33 ◼   ► but in theory, at some point,

00:45:35 ◼   ► I presume that they're gonna,

00:45:37 ◼   ► it won't be aluminum forever.

00:45:39 ◼   ► I mean, I feel like the MacBook still has a decade

00:45:43 ◼   ► maybe more ahead of it.

00:45:45 ◼   ► Is it gonna really be aluminum for 20 or 30 years?

00:45:49 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:45:50 ◼   ► So new materials, you know?

00:45:52 ◼   ► But basically, I do think the form factor,

00:45:57 ◼   ► And for certain tasks, it is a wonderful,

00:46:00 ◼   ► wonderful form factor.

00:46:01 ◼   ► And I just feel like, don't mess with it.

00:46:02 ◼   ► And I do wonder, there's a part of me that wonders

00:46:05 ◼   ► if the touch bar is basically a mess with it

00:46:08 ◼   ► for the sake of messing with it change.

00:46:11 ◼   ► - Right, that's exactly what I was basically

00:46:13 ◼   ► alluding to in that post.

00:46:15 ◼   ► You know, they felt like, look, we're sort of

00:46:18 ◼   ► at the perfect storm of two things right now, right?

00:46:21 ◼   ► So what we were just talking about,

00:46:22 ◼   ► sort of the form factor is, we've whittled it down

00:46:25 ◼   ► to near perfection, right?

00:46:27 ◼   ► And then on the flip side, we have sort of the CPUs

00:46:31 ◼   ► and the internals are basically not getting

00:46:33 ◼   ► that much faster now because as Moore's Law has slowed down,

00:46:38 ◼   ► we're sort of at the point where it's very hard

00:46:44 ◼   ► to rationalize a year-to-year upgrade.

00:46:47 ◼   ► It's hard to rationalize a two year-to-year upgrade, right,

00:46:50 ◼   ► for a MacBook Pro because it's just not that much faster

00:46:54 ◼   ► than what the state of the art was two years ago.

00:46:57 ◼   ► And so we have those two things coming into play.

00:47:00 ◼   ► And so when Apple's trying to think about,

00:47:02 ◼   ► well, what do we do this year to get people excited

00:47:05 ◼   ► about potentially buying the new machine?

00:47:07 ◼   ► You can change the colors of it.

00:47:11 ◼   ► They've done that a little bit, of course,

00:47:12 ◼   ► with some gold and rose gold options.

00:47:15 ◼   ► And I don't think that that really moves the needle, though,

00:47:17 ◼   ► on making someone purchase a new one.

00:47:19 ◼   ► And so this Touch Bar thing,

00:47:21 ◼   ► it feels like to me that was some idea,

00:47:24 ◼   ► like let's try this, you know,

00:47:26 ◼   ► let's see if this is interesting.

00:47:28 ◼   ► And that's a dangerous game for Apple to play, I think.

00:47:31 ◼   ► - I totally agree.

00:47:33 ◼   ► And I wonder about it.

00:47:35 ◼   ► And it is clearly to me their most important product.

00:47:37 ◼   ► I know we just had the whole thing with the Mac Pro

00:47:39 ◼   ► and that there's iMacs coming out and stuff like that,

00:47:41 ◼   ► but the MacBooks are clearly the bread and butter

00:47:44 ◼   ► of the Mac lineup.

00:47:46 ◼   ► You know, if they had to cut back for some reason,

00:47:49 ◼   ► you know, that's the last Macs to go

00:47:51 ◼   ► are gonna be the MacBooks.

00:47:53 ◼   ► And I wonder, you and I have talked about this before,

00:47:56 ◼   ► and I know a lot of people obviously

00:47:57 ◼   ► have differing thoughts on this.

00:47:58 ◼   ► But like, so the other part, I think,

00:48:00 ◼   ► towards the end of that post I wrote was basically,

00:48:04 ◼   ► I'm very much in the camp of,

00:48:07 ◼   ► I would love to just do everything on an iPad.

00:48:09 ◼   ► I'm like 90, I'm 95, let's say, percent of the way there.

00:48:13 ◼   ► The problem is that other 5% matters,

00:48:15 ◼   ► and so I just can't do it yet.

00:48:17 ◼   ► I would love to be in that camp, though.

00:48:19 ◼   ► Are you, and I know you're definitely, you know,

00:48:22 ◼   ► still in the MacBook camp,

00:48:23 ◼   ► but if they could do, if they had full sort of parity,

00:48:27 ◼   ► maybe not quite as easy to do certain things and vice versa,

00:48:32 ◼   ► but if they had sort of full parity

00:48:34 ◼   ► in terms of functionality,

00:48:36 ◼   ► would you want to use an iPad more than you use the MacBook?

00:48:42 ◼   ► - No, I don't think so.

00:48:43 ◼   ► I think the longer time goes on,

00:48:45 ◼   ► the less likely I am to even want to use an iPad.

00:48:50 ◼   ► I feel like I have the clarity now,

00:48:52 ◼   ► And it might, I feel like, but I don't feel like

00:48:54 ◼   ► I speak to the mass market.

00:48:57 ◼   ► It's, I have so many little things,

00:49:00 ◼   ► little custom nerd scripts and things that I have

00:49:04 ◼   ► set to keyboard shortcuts on my Mac

00:49:06 ◼   ► that I can't do on the iPad.

00:49:08 ◼   ► And that even if I wanted to do through Workflow

00:49:11 ◼   ► or something like that.

00:49:12 ◼   ► And I'm super, super happy that Apple bought Workflow

00:49:14 ◼   ► and seems to want to keep it around

00:49:16 ◼   ► and maybe they'll integrate it in the OS.

00:49:19 ◼   ► But like, I have a shortcut that is a system wide service

00:49:24 ◼   ► that I made so that I can convert the selected text

00:49:28 ◼   ► in any app from Markdown to HTML.

00:49:31 ◼   ► And the key command I made for it is command shift K.

00:49:35 ◼   ► I don't know why, I forget why.

00:49:40 ◼   ► 'Cause M, 'cause command shift M is like minimize Windows.

00:49:42 ◼   ► And so I went to K, Mark.

00:49:45 ◼   ► I don't know, but I don't even have to think about it.

00:49:46 ◼   ► I had to pause to remember it

00:49:47 ◼   ► my fingers just know it and I've had it for years. Yeah, but you know, so the iPad Pros,

00:49:53 ◼   ► like we were just talking about, they, you know, you can get the the keyboard that's with it and

00:49:57 ◼   ► they, you know, they have Command and Shift and K still. I guess that in theory they could add,

00:50:03 ◼   ► that they could add stuff to the system software that would enable something like that in theory.

00:50:08 ◼   ► But the form factor doesn't speak to me either. Like, last week when I was flying home from

00:50:17 ◼   ► from San Francisco after the shindig at Cupertino.

00:50:22 ◼   ► I was at the gate at the terminal

00:50:27 ◼   ► and I had just a couple of minutes

00:50:28 ◼   ► before they started boarding.

00:50:30 ◼   ► And somebody DM'd me that I had a typo in a DF post.

00:50:35 ◼   ► And instead of fixing it on my phone,

00:50:38 ◼   ► I just, I knew I had like a couple minutes.

00:50:41 ◼   ► I just quick took out my MacBook from my backpack,

00:50:46 ◼   ► opened it and just without even sitting down,

00:50:48 ◼   ► just held it in the palm of my hand and opened it,

00:50:51 ◼   ► logged in, fixed it, shut it, put it back in my backpack.

00:50:56 ◼   ► Like I don't see how you could do that on an iPad.

00:50:59 ◼   ► You could do it, but you wouldn't have the hardware keyboard.

00:51:01 ◼   ► There's no way you can just sit there and stand

00:51:02 ◼   ► and connect the hardware keyboard and--

00:51:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, I get that.

00:51:06 ◼   ► And I'm sort of the same way.

00:51:08 ◼   ► That's one of the sort of 5% thing

00:51:09 ◼   ► is definitely on the writing side of things.

00:51:11 ◼   ► So I actually do a lot of writing on the iPad,

00:51:14 ◼   ► but I'll sort of write in the app Ulysses

00:51:16 ◼   ► and then I basically export it to Medium

00:51:20 ◼   ► or wherever I'm gonna publish.

00:51:21 ◼   ► And I don't publish though from there

00:51:24 ◼   ► 'cause I wait to do some of the formatting stuff

00:51:26 ◼   ► that I feel like I can just have a much better handle on

00:51:29 ◼   ► using on a MacBook.

00:51:30 ◼   ► And so I wait to publish until after there.

00:51:33 ◼   ► But that's sort of one of the larger parts of the 5%

00:51:38 ◼   ► that is still holding me back.

00:51:39 ◼   ► But in my book, I'm quite different, I guess,

00:51:43 ◼   ► from you in that regard

00:51:44 ◼   ► because I, like my ideal computing experience would be

00:51:48 ◼   ► where I could go on a trip,

00:51:50 ◼   ► not have to take any MacBook with me,

00:51:53 ◼   ► just take the iPad Pro with the keyboard cover.

00:51:58 ◼   ► And you know, I do it right now for short little trips

00:52:01 ◼   ► or you know, just on a daily basis,

00:52:02 ◼   ► like if I'm going to just do email

00:52:04 ◼   ► and then do some reading,

00:52:06 ◼   ► and I go to a sort of local cafe,

00:52:08 ◼   ► I just love grabbing that thing and walking out the door,

00:52:10 ◼   ► don't have to bring a bag.

00:52:11 ◼   ► It's so, it just feels like this is the way

00:52:15 ◼   ► I want to be doing computing in my life.

00:52:18 ◼   ► And I don't wanna have, you know,

00:52:20 ◼   ► even as we were just talking about,

00:52:22 ◼   ► even as felt as the MacBooks are now.

00:52:24 ◼   ► I just, there's too much going on.

00:52:26 ◼   ► I like the simplicity of doing everything through the iPad.

00:52:29 ◼   ► - I totally see the appeal of it,

00:52:30 ◼   ► but it doesn't, it just doesn't speak to me.

00:52:33 ◼   ► I, you know, and I like iPad.

00:52:35 ◼   ► But for me, and again, I'm a big proponent,

00:52:38 ◼   ► I have been for years, fighting against the argument

00:52:41 ◼   ► that it's fundamentally only good for consumption

00:52:43 ◼   ► and not for creation.

00:52:44 ◼   ► I've argued it, but for me personally,

00:52:46 ◼   ► that actually is very true, that I tend to use it.

00:52:49 ◼   ► I actually have left the cover of mine for a while now,

00:52:52 ◼   ► and I just have it with no cover, and I read tons on it,

00:52:55 ◼   ► and I read lots of Twitter, and I bookmark things

00:52:59 ◼   ► to post it during Fireball later

00:53:01 ◼   ► from a different machine from it,

00:53:02 ◼   ► but I tend not to do any actual typing on it.

00:53:05 ◼   ► But I can see the appeal.

00:53:06 ◼   ► I totally see the appeal.

00:53:08 ◼   ► And I would totally see the appeal

00:53:09 ◼   ► for long form writing too.

00:53:11 ◼   ► I feel like the longer the thing you're writing,

00:53:13 ◼   ► the more pleasant it is.

00:53:15 ◼   ► And like when I wrote, like I did,

00:53:16 ◼   ► I enjoyed writing my review of the iPad Pro

00:53:18 ◼   ► on the iPad Pro because it was a long review.

00:53:21 ◼   ► And I do kind of like that it is naturally distraction free.

00:53:26 ◼   ► I find I never use the distraction free full screen modes

00:53:30 ◼   ► on the Mac for any app ever,

00:53:32 ◼   ► because I find that it's just,

00:53:34 ◼   ► just gets in the way when I wanna get out of it.

00:53:35 ◼   ► Whereas on the iPad, it's totally natural.

00:53:38 ◼   ► It's, you know, and I'm a big believer in that in general.

00:53:40 ◼   ► I feel anything you tack on to a system afterwards

00:53:44 ◼   ► is never as good as if it was there from the beginning.

00:53:46 ◼   ► So full screen mode on the Mac, to me,

00:53:49 ◼   ► I use it for video and that's about it.

00:53:51 ◼   ► But otherwise, to me, it feels tacked on

00:53:53 ◼   ► because the Mac wasn't designed at the start,

00:53:55 ◼   ► it was designed to have everything in Windows

00:53:58 ◼   ► that are overlapping, you can drag around.

00:54:00 ◼   ► Whereas the iPad was designed from the ground up

00:54:02 ◼   ► to have full screen apps.

00:54:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I mean, I, so I do a lot of, you know,

00:54:07 ◼   ► anything that I write basically, like you said,

00:54:09 ◼   ► sort of that's longer than just a blurb

00:54:10 ◼   ► or something like that.

00:54:11 ◼   ► I try to do on the iPad.

00:54:13 ◼   ► And I just, it's something about it reminds me

00:54:14 ◼   ► of like when I was a kid growing up,

00:54:16 ◼   ► going to my father's office and like they had typewriters

00:54:18 ◼   ► and just using the typewriter, right?

00:54:21 ◼   ► I mean, I know it's obviously very different,

00:54:22 ◼   ► but something about this focus thing

00:54:25 ◼   ► and it's almost like, you know,

00:54:26 ◼   ► there's a blank sheet of paper in front of you

00:54:28 ◼   ► and the words are magically appearing on it.

00:54:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, and most things in my life,

00:54:33 ◼   ► most things in my life are,

00:54:35 ◼   ► that I'm in control of are a complete mess.

00:54:37 ◼   ► Like my desk is usually just a complete

00:54:39 ◼   ► Andy Rooney-style mess of papers and odd objects

00:54:44 ◼   ► and boxes and all sorts of stuff.

00:54:46 ◼   ► So lots of things I have are a complete mess.

00:54:50 ◼   ► Other things though, I try to keep obsessively neat.

00:54:53 ◼   ► And like the Daring Fireball homepage

00:54:55 ◼   ► would be a fine example.

00:54:56 ◼   ► There's no clutter, you know, I aspire to that.

00:54:59 ◼   ► I wish that I had the organizational ability

00:55:02 ◼   ► and the wherewithal to have everything in my life

00:55:05 ◼   ► be like that.

00:55:06 ◼   ► When I see pictures of people who have these minimal

00:55:09 ◼   ► offices, I covet them.

00:55:11 ◼   ► I do, I see the appeal.

00:55:13 ◼   ► And I do, I look at my Mac with all of these windows,

00:55:18 ◼   ► like if I go to Exposé or whatever and see how many apps

00:55:20 ◼   ► I have running and how many windows are actually

00:55:22 ◼   ► overlapping, sometimes my Mac looks like a mess.

00:55:26 ◼   ► And I do, I like the way that the iPad,

00:55:29 ◼   ► even if you open a second app, I love how neat it is

00:55:32 ◼   ► that if you have like the Messages app on the right

00:55:36 ◼   ► in a narrow iPhone width column,

00:55:39 ◼   ► and your other thing, whether it's Safari

00:55:41 ◼   ► or your writing app in a square to the left of it,

00:55:44 ◼   ► I love how neatly that's organized,

00:55:46 ◼   ► where there's no overlap, there's no shadows

00:55:48 ◼   ► from windows showing depth,

00:55:50 ◼   ► it's just two rectangles perfectly aligned.

00:55:55 ◼   ► I love that, and I can see how that is soothing,

00:55:59 ◼   ► mentally soothing to people and appealing.

00:56:02 ◼   ► Since it's sort of the perfect segue and there may not be much to talk about but

00:56:08 ◼   ► I'm just curious like so obviously Apple released the sort of you know the

00:56:13 ◼   ► cheaper iPad version but they didn't do anything you know as was rumored by many

00:56:18 ◼   ► various sites for actual new iPad hardware and so I presume now that

00:56:25 ◼   ► we're at the end of April we're not going to see any sort of event before

00:56:27 ◼   ► WWDC. Do they do that at WWDC? Do they wait for the fall?

00:56:32 ◼   ► I don't know. It's very intriguing to me that the supply chain rumor mill seemed to

00:56:37 ◼   ► think it was going to happen either last month or the first week of April or something like

00:56:44 ◼   ► that. I agree with you. I don't hear any rumblings to the ground that there's anything

00:56:48 ◼   ► coming before WWDC. I almost feel like it's something that maybe they've successfully

00:56:55 ◼   ► kept under wraps. So it could happen at WWDC, but if they wait until the fall, I almost

00:57:03 ◼   ► feel like they've got to wait until October because it sounds like...

00:57:06 ◼   ► So after iPhone. Right, because I don't think they'd want to

00:57:09 ◼   ► share the stage with iPhone because it sounds like they've got a very exciting iPhone to

00:57:13 ◼   ► unveil. And if it's on schedule, it'll be like the second week of September, as I said

00:57:18 ◼   ► before. I mean, they've been pretty consistent on that for three or four years. And I don't

00:57:23 ◼   ► think they'd want to share the stage but they could in theory you know it may not

00:57:28 ◼   ► be it may come naturally if there's you know like a shared design language of a

00:57:33 ◼   ► more edge to edge display it could make sense to unveil them side by side I

00:57:39 ◼   ► don't know but it would make more sense to me if they did iPhones in September

00:57:42 ◼   ► and iPads in October and you but you don't think that they would do it at

00:57:47 ◼   ► WWDC?

00:57:48 ◼   ► I guess they could,

00:57:51 ◼   ► but it depends how much these new iPads,

00:57:55 ◼   ► which at least some of the, you know,

00:57:57 ◼   ► one of them is rumored to be a more edge to edge display

00:57:59 ◼   ► where the, you know,

00:58:00 ◼   ► that the 9.7 inch iPad is still going to be 9.7 inches

00:58:04 ◼   ► as a device,

00:58:06 ◼   ► but that the screen will be 10 point something inches

00:58:09 ◼   ► instead of 9.7 inches,

00:58:10 ◼   ► because it's going to take up more of the front face.

00:58:13 ◼   ► But that sounds to me like what the rumor is

00:58:15 ◼   ► for the iPhone.

00:58:16 ◼   ► And if they don't want to spoil it, right?

00:58:19 ◼   ► That they want the iPhone to come out first.

00:58:22 ◼   ► But is that, am I overthinking it?

00:58:28 ◼   ► Am I overthinking their willingness

00:58:32 ◼   ► to just let the product that's ready to ship first

00:58:34 ◼   ► ship first, whether it's the iPhone or not?

00:58:36 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:58:38 ◼   ► - Yeah, and if there was some sort of marquee feature

00:58:41 ◼   ► in iOS 11, you know, that was sort of iPad,

00:58:46 ◼   ► more iPad focused maybe.

00:58:48 ◼   ► But yeah, there hadn't been much rumors about iOS 11 at all.

00:58:53 ◼   ► - No.

00:58:54 ◼   ► - Even though we're fairly close, which is interesting.

00:58:58 ◼   ► - Well, other than the fact that there, for a while,

00:59:01 ◼   ► I don't know if you've noticed this,

00:59:02 ◼   ► but I've heard rumors for a while that months ago,

00:59:06 ◼   ► I guess more or less when iOS 10 came out last WWDC,

00:59:10 ◼   ► there after the event was over there were rumors beforehand that that Apple

00:59:15 ◼   ► might unveil some iPad specific iPad Pro specific features you know and that the

00:59:24 ◼   ► keynote came and went and there were none and then in the aftermath the word

00:59:27 ◼   ► was well that got punted from 10.0 but it's gonna come in like 10.2 or

00:59:31 ◼   ► something 10.2 or 10.3 but we've gotten to 10.3 and it didn't happen and

00:59:36 ◼   ► and there's not going to be a 10.4 between now and June,

00:59:40 ◼   ► because all hands are working on iOS 11.

00:59:44 ◼   ► - Right.

00:59:45 ◼   ► - So whether that ships in iOS 11.0 or not,

00:59:49 ◼   ► or gets punted once again to the first big update

00:59:53 ◼   ► in December or January of 11.2, I don't know.

00:59:56 ◼   ► But that's the rumor.

00:59:57 ◼   ► But there have been rumors since this time last year

00:59:59 ◼   ► that they have iPad Pro-specific improvements to the OS

01:00:04 ◼   ► for multitasking and stuff like that.

01:00:07 ◼   ► And if that is the case, then we may have just answered our riddle, right, that they

01:00:11 ◼   ► would launch that and presumably they would want to have new iPad Pro hardware to show

01:00:16 ◼   ► whatever that functionality is off, since the iPad Pro would be relatively old at that

01:00:22 ◼   ► point, right, over a year between iterations.

01:00:26 ◼   ► Right.

01:00:27 ◼   ► Well, and the 12-inch one, the 13-inch one, would be a year and a half old.

01:00:32 ◼   ► at this point. I don't know, but I mean both of them launched with, I feel, a lot

01:00:38 ◼   ► of headroom to wait for the next version because they really are pretty fast for

01:00:42 ◼   ► iPads. I mean, you know, they're both, you know, faster than—I don't know if

01:00:45 ◼   ► they're faster than the current MacBook, but I think they are, and they're

01:00:48 ◼   ► certainly faster than the MacBook that you're talking about, the original MacBook

01:00:52 ◼   ► with one port. I mean, that's how fast they are. Yep, I'm using the big iPad Pro

01:00:57 ◼   ► right now, which I almost never use. Again, speaking to, obviously, as we all do, we

01:01:02 ◼   ► just buy a bunch of devices, probably more than we need, but it is nice when you're sort of sitting

01:01:08 ◼   ► at a desk. It's a nice sort of second screen. Yeah, I don't know. So I feel like they need

01:01:12 ◼   ► to though, and I feel like selling points on changes to the OS to make it a little bit more,

01:01:21 ◼   ► you know, bring the iPad, especially the iPad Pro, a little bit more towards the Mac in terms

01:01:28 ◼   ► of capabilities, not necessarily copying things from the Mac and how you do it,

01:01:31 ◼   ► but just making it easier. I mean the thing I would like to see them do, let me

01:01:37 ◼   ► take a break actually, I mean hold this thought and I'll take a break because

01:01:40 ◼   ► it's a good way to keep people in suspense. I want to talk to you about our

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01:02:08 ◼   ► choose which one. They just have one model right now. You go, you buy like a

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01:02:16 ◼   ► like an Apple TV or something like that. It almost looks like an Apple design

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01:02:23 ◼   ► cables they give you in the box are nice. It's like a nice ethernet cable. It's not

01:02:28 ◼   ► like a piece of junk thing that you got from Joe's cables on the corner. Nice cable, nice

01:02:33 ◼   ► power cable. You plug it into your router and now you've got, there's your primary ERO

01:02:37 ◼   ► base station. Then you take like the other two and you're like, maybe your router is

01:02:42 ◼   ► on the first floor. You put another one on the second floor and another one on the third

01:02:45 ◼   ► floor. Keep them near the steps. Try to minimize how many walls has to go through. And it creates

01:02:49 ◼   ► It's what's called a mesh network through your house.

01:02:53 ◼   ► And it is a huge difference.

01:02:56 ◼   ► Now I don't know what, maybe if you live in a studio

01:02:59 ◼   ► apartment, guess what, you don't really need an Eero.

01:03:01 ◼   ► It's a nice base station, but you really only need one.

01:03:03 ◼   ► And it'd be a nice base station for that.

01:03:05 ◼   ► But the mesh network thing isn't gonna help you out.

01:03:08 ◼   ► But if you live in a city like I do, we have four floors.

01:03:11 ◼   ► There's really no way to set up one router

01:03:17 ◼   ► that I've ever tried that gets a good Wi-Fi signal

01:03:21 ◼   ► everywhere in the house.

01:03:23 ◼   ► Personally, I just recently upgraded my Comcast service,

01:03:27 ◼   ► had Comcast come in, got new internet.

01:03:30 ◼   ► Comcast's new router, they gave me a router with the thing.

01:03:34 ◼   ► In the room where I have it set up in my home office,

01:03:37 ◼   ► I get like 150, 200 megabits per second over Wi-Fi.

01:03:42 ◼   ► It's amazing, that's an amazing performance.

01:03:43 ◼   ► It's like 10 times faster than what I had before.

01:03:46 ◼   ► One floor up, it's still pretty good.

01:03:48 ◼   ► It's like 50 megabits per second, something like that.

01:03:51 ◼   ► But in my master bedroom, this is no shit.

01:03:53 ◼   ► I swear to God, this is true.

01:03:55 ◼   ► I tested this with the speed test app.

01:03:57 ◼   ► I get 0.2 megabits per second WiFi from that router.

01:04:02 ◼   ► So it goes from 200 megabits per second

01:04:04 ◼   ► to 0.2 megabits per second.

01:04:07 ◼   ► So once the Comcast guy was gone

01:04:09 ◼   ► and I knew I had good internet, I'd reset up my Eros.

01:04:12 ◼   ► I put my Ero in there and I only have three.

01:04:16 ◼   ► Now I still get 200 or so megabits per second

01:04:19 ◼   ► in my office from Euro, but my master bedroom

01:04:22 ◼   ► is getting 60 megabits per second WiFi.

01:04:25 ◼   ► That's how great it is.

01:04:26 ◼   ► I cannot be, and I didn't have to configure anything.

01:04:29 ◼   ► You just follow the instructions in their little app,

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01:04:35 ◼   ► and they even tell you that they talk to each other,

01:04:38 ◼   ► and they fix it up, and after you've set it up,

01:04:42 ◼   ► like 24 hours later, the service is usually even better,

01:04:45 ◼   ► because the Eros have communicated with each other

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01:04:50 ◼   ► Cannot tell you how happy I am with this product.

01:04:53 ◼   ► I recommend it highly.

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01:04:57 ◼   ► If you need Wi-Fi, if you're unhappy with your Wi-Fi,

01:05:00 ◼   ► if you need new Wi-Fi, you'd be silly not to check it out.

01:05:04 ◼   ► Then what they do is they recommend one Ero

01:05:06 ◼   ► for every thousand square feet of your home.

01:05:08 ◼   ► Three packs of good starting point.

01:05:10 ◼   ► You can always buy more,

01:05:11 ◼   ► and you can hook up 10 in total if you need to.

01:05:15 ◼   ► So here's what you do.

01:05:16 ◼   ► Go to ero.com and use the code.

01:05:21 ◼   ► Actually, you know what?

01:05:24 ◼   ► Forget the code.

01:05:25 ◼   ► Screw it.

01:05:26 ◼   ► Here's what they've done.

01:05:28 ◼   ► They've gotten rid of these codes,

01:05:29 ◼   ► and to celebrate their first birthday,

01:05:31 ◼   ► what they've done is they've just

01:05:32 ◼   ► dropped their prices permanently.

01:05:34 ◼   ► So instead of using a code, you just go to ero.com,

01:05:36 ◼   ► and now you can get a three-pack for just $399.

01:05:40 ◼   ► used to be $4.99 and you can get a two-pack for $2.99. That used to be $50 more. So to

01:05:47 ◼   ► get Eero at this new price, just go to Eero.com and you can get them at Best Buy or even Amazon

01:05:52 ◼   ► if you want. They don't care. They don't even care if you buy them direct. So if you need

01:05:56 ◼   ► Wi-Fi, get an Eero. Love this product.

01:06:01 ◼   ► I feel like you and I talked about Eero before they were a sponsor of your podcast, which

01:06:05 ◼   ► is nice.

01:06:06 ◼   ► I remember the first time I read, you know what, I'll get back to my, the point I wanted

01:06:11 ◼   ► to make about iPad. I've got my finger in the air. This is my reminder. I know the point

01:06:14 ◼   ► I want to make. But we could go on a digression right now. I remember the first time I heard

01:06:19 ◼   ► about Eero was I read it in Walt Mossberg's column. And I read his description of it.

01:06:26 ◼   ► And I knew that I was suffering from the problem that he was talking about. For years, I had

01:06:31 ◼   ► an Apple airport whatever the best the best Apple I think it's the most still

01:06:37 ◼   ► the most recent one because they haven't updated it in years yeah the one that's

01:06:40 ◼   ► for extreme yeah the one is a real tall yeah I have the same one and I had the

01:06:44 ◼   ► same one now I have zero same thing I had it on the second floor our living

01:06:48 ◼   ► room of a four floor residence and it was okay and it my office was one floor

01:06:55 ◼   ► up and it got pretty good Wi-Fi our master bedroom on the fourth floor yeah

01:07:00 ◼   ► it wasn't bad wasn't like it is it like it was with this Comcast router but it

01:07:06 ◼   ► wasn't great and and for whatever reason our garage on the first floor one floor

01:07:13 ◼   ► down got no signal whatsoever I don't know if it's because the garage had

01:07:16 ◼   ► insulation I don't know what the heck it was I read Walt's column and I was like

01:07:23 ◼   ► This sounds amazing because A, it solves a problem I have,

01:07:26 ◼   ► but B, he's telling me that I don't have to configure,

01:07:29 ◼   ► there's no, you don't go into an admin interface

01:07:31 ◼   ► and start typing in IP numbers,

01:07:34 ◼   ► you don't start picking channels,

01:07:36 ◼   ► you don't have to set one of them in bridge mode

01:07:39 ◼   ► and one of them in something mode.

01:07:41 ◼   ► You just hook 'em up and tap buttons in the app

01:07:43 ◼   ► as you hook 'em up around your house

01:07:45 ◼   ► and follow their general advice of where best to put them,

01:07:48 ◼   ► and then all of a sudden you've got a network

01:07:51 ◼   ► every room in your house has good internet. I was like, that sounds so

01:07:54 ◼   ► amazing. And it was the literal truth. It's the exact experience of

01:07:59 ◼   ► using it. And it's anyway the digression would be Walt's announcement that he's

01:08:04 ◼   ► retiring. Yeah, obviously significant news within the world in which in which we

01:08:13 ◼   ► inhabit. Yeah, you know, like it's funny when I moved to go... So I was working as

01:08:21 ◼   ► as a web developer down in San Diego

01:08:24 ◼   ► and sort of writing on the side just for fun.

01:08:27 ◼   ► And at some point, you know, VentureBeat

01:08:31 ◼   ► at the time came calling and wanted me to sort of come up

01:08:35 ◼   ► and consider sort of writing full time.

01:08:36 ◼   ► And I just like sort of laughed to myself,

01:08:40 ◼   ► like thinking like no one can make a living

01:08:43 ◼   ► sort of doing that, right?

01:08:44 ◼   ► Like, I mean, you know, it's almost like too good to be true.

01:08:47 ◼   ► And you know, around, you know, the same time

01:08:50 ◼   ► I think there had been a profile,

01:08:53 ◼   ► or maybe I was even just Googling it,

01:08:55 ◼   ► but just the story of the rise of Walt Mossberg

01:08:58 ◼   ► sort of getting into,

01:09:00 ◼   ► obviously it wasn't blogging at the time,

01:09:01 ◼   ► it was for the Wall Street Journal,

01:09:03 ◼   ► but sort of making his way

01:09:06 ◼   ► into this thing that hadn't existed before, right?

01:09:09 ◼   ► He was covering politics,

01:09:11 ◼   ► and then all of a sudden he decided

01:09:12 ◼   ► he was going to cover personal technology,

01:09:14 ◼   ► and again, not blogging exactly,

01:09:16 ◼   ► but not too dissimilar from,

01:09:20 ◼   ► I think what sort of the ideal state for a lot of us,

01:09:24 ◼   ► certainly for me at the time,

01:09:26 ◼   ► that's what I aspired to do something like that, right?

01:09:31 ◼   ► - I just read, I will, I swear to God,

01:09:34 ◼   ► put it in the show notes.

01:09:35 ◼   ► There's an interview, I think it just came out today,

01:09:38 ◼   ► but if not, it came out last night,

01:09:40 ◼   ► an interview with Walt in the Columbia Journalism Review.

01:09:44 ◼   ► - Right, I haven't read it yet, but I saved it as well.

01:09:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, he was, in 1991,

01:09:48 ◼   ► He was the lead national security correspondent

01:09:52 ◼   ► for the Wall Street Journal,

01:09:53 ◼   ► which is the Columbia Journalism Review says

01:09:56 ◼   ► is literally one of the most coveted spots

01:09:58 ◼   ► in all of newspaper journalism.

01:10:02 ◼   ► I mean, it's probably, you could count it on one hand

01:10:05 ◼   ► as one of the most prestigious gigs.

01:10:09 ◼   ► The Journal, the New York Times, Wall Street,

01:10:12 ◼   ► or Washington Post, and a handful of the top jobs there

01:10:15 ◼   ► would be something like that,

01:10:16 ◼   ► because national security is of utmost importance.

01:10:19 ◼   ► And when something breaks, it becomes,

01:10:23 ◼   ► you own the top right corner

01:10:26 ◼   ► of the front page of the newspaper.

01:10:28 ◼   ► And there's no breaking news that's more important

01:10:30 ◼   ► than national security news.

01:10:32 ◼   ► So he had the job.

01:10:34 ◼   ► He obviously had decades ahead of him in his career,

01:10:37 ◼   ► and he gave it up to create what was then unheard of,

01:10:40 ◼   ► which was in a national major newspaper,

01:10:45 ◼   ► a personal technology column.

01:10:47 ◼   ► Everybody, you know, like the CGR said

01:10:49 ◼   ► that most people in the industry, you know,

01:10:51 ◼   ► news people were like, what did he do?

01:10:53 ◼   ► Why did he get this terrible demotion?

01:10:55 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:10:56 ◼   ► - Right.

01:10:57 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm trying to think of like

01:10:59 ◼   ► what the equivalent thing would be today.

01:11:02 ◼   ► And it's hard to come up with something

01:11:03 ◼   ► because honestly it's hard to envision something

01:11:06 ◼   ► that would sort of become as pervasive

01:11:09 ◼   ► as just technology in general, right?

01:11:11 ◼   ► Like you could say like, oh, I'm going to

01:11:14 ◼   ► stop the Apple beat because I want to write about Bitcoin.

01:11:18 ◼   ► And people would be like,

01:11:21 ◼   ► but you're covering the most valuable company in the world,

01:11:24 ◼   ► why do you want to write about

01:11:26 ◼   ► sort of this nascent technology thing?

01:11:28 ◼   ► And it was one hell of a leap of faith that he did.

01:11:33 ◼   ► And obviously, like I said,

01:11:35 ◼   ► he sort of was the pinnacle of doing that.

01:11:41 ◼   ► And I think the whole generations of Engadgets, Gizmodos,

01:11:46 ◼   ► all the people who were doing gadget reviews,

01:11:51 ◼   ► certainly that was the pinnacle.

01:11:54 ◼   ► And then just in general,

01:11:56 ◼   ► sort of writing a technology column.

01:11:58 ◼   ► - I can't say it better than him.

01:11:59 ◼   ► Here's Walt's exact words in this interview.

01:12:02 ◼   ► There were a bunch of computer columns

01:12:03 ◼   ► in a lot of other newspapers,

01:12:04 ◼   ► and certainly there were computer magazines,

01:12:07 ◼   ► but these were all written by geeks for geeks.

01:12:09 ◼   ► My pitch to the journal was that I wanted to write a column

01:12:12 ◼   ► that didn't use a lot of jargon,

01:12:14 ◼   ► that treated people with respect for their intelligence.

01:12:17 ◼   ► And I think that can not be understated,

01:12:20 ◼   ► that that was the gist of Walt's,

01:12:22 ◼   ► it still is the gist of Walt's writing,

01:12:25 ◼   ► that it was never computers for dummies.

01:12:27 ◼   ► It was, it was, his angle was that the problem

01:12:31 ◼   ► was with the complicated stuff,

01:12:33 ◼   ► not with the people who can't understand

01:12:34 ◼   ► the complicated stuff.

01:12:38 ◼   ► and that it did two things.

01:12:40 ◼   ► One, help people figure out how to make this journey

01:12:42 ◼   ► into technology by telling them what was good

01:12:44 ◼   ► and what was bad on the market,

01:12:45 ◼   ► explaining when some new development happened,

01:12:47 ◼   ► what it meant, what it was, who it might be for.

01:12:50 ◼   ► That was one of my goals.

01:12:51 ◼   ► And the other one was to use the power of the platform

01:12:54 ◼   ► and the voice that I would have in this column,

01:12:56 ◼   ► because it was an opinion column in a way,

01:12:59 ◼   ► to push the industry to stop ignoring normal people

01:13:01 ◼   ► and stop treating them like they were stupid.

01:13:04 ◼   ► That was it, that was my idea and it worked.

01:13:06 ◼   ► And I can't say it better-- - Yeah, I mean--

01:13:07 ◼   ► I cannot say about that.

01:13:08 ◼   ► - No, that's absolutely perfect,

01:13:09 ◼   ► because he basically, whether you could argue,

01:13:14 ◼   ► he certainly helped usher that era in,

01:13:17 ◼   ► but he also just, he foresaw the fact that

01:13:19 ◼   ► it would move from the enthusiasts and geeky people

01:13:24 ◼   ► just being really into technology

01:13:27 ◼   ► and reading things like PC World and things like that

01:13:30 ◼   ► to actually going into a mainstream thing.

01:13:31 ◼   ► And I mean, it is, one of the most mainstream things

01:13:35 ◼   ► right now is technology, right?

01:13:37 ◼   ► There's every single person in the world in some capacity uses some sort of technology

01:13:42 ◼   ► and

01:13:44 ◼   ► We could you imagine sort of if you know if the PC worlds

01:13:47 ◼   ► Were still sort of the the norm and sort of writing about that it would seem insane right now

01:13:52 ◼   ► Because no one would have sort of a guide to to figure out how to use any of this stuff

01:13:58 ◼   ► And the timing is just amazing that he did it and he'd made this decision in 1991 because in my opinion

01:14:03 ◼   ► What made computers mainstream?

01:14:07 ◼   ► Arguably twofold, but I think it's singlefold.

01:14:11 ◼   ► I think Windows 95 obviously had some part of it

01:14:13 ◼   ► where the mass market, lower cost PCs

01:14:16 ◼   ► jumped from having a really janky operating system

01:14:20 ◼   ► like Windows 3.1 to having something that looked pretty nice

01:14:23 ◼   ► and was a little, certainly a lot better organized.

01:14:26 ◼   ► But the bigger thing is just the internet itself,

01:14:29 ◼   ► which is that, and people who love computers,

01:14:32 ◼   ► I certainly didn't foresee it.

01:14:33 ◼   ► I was of the opinion as somebody,

01:14:36 ◼   ► a kid who grew up loving computers.

01:14:37 ◼   ► I couldn't understand why everybody else

01:14:38 ◼   ► didn't love computers and want to spend

01:14:40 ◼   ► as many hours a day as they possibly could on computers.

01:14:42 ◼   ► But for normal people, what made computers something

01:14:45 ◼   ► that they didn't care about,

01:14:46 ◼   ► something they cared about deeply,

01:14:48 ◼   ► was that they got turned into communication devices.

01:14:51 ◼   ► It's communication.

01:14:52 ◼   ► Everything, humans are creatures

01:14:56 ◼   ► we're born to want to communicate with each other.

01:14:59 ◼   ► And the technologies that allow us to do so

01:15:02 ◼   ► are the ones that rocket off.

01:15:04 ◼   ► I mean, you could even talk about the automobile

01:15:08 ◼   ► from the Henry Ford era a century ago

01:15:10 ◼   ► as ultimately as a communications device.

01:15:13 ◼   ► You know, that yes, you could use it to bring things

01:15:15 ◼   ► from one place to another faster than you could,

01:15:17 ◼   ► but the fact that you could go visit people

01:15:19 ◼   ► who you otherwise couldn't visit

01:15:21 ◼   ► because you wouldn't have time to get there

01:15:23 ◼   ► is a huge part of it, right?

01:15:24 ◼   ► And computers, before they were communication devices,

01:15:27 ◼   ► or in like the dial-up modem era,

01:15:30 ◼   ► when you had to dial in an telnet into a bulletin board

01:15:33 ◼   ► and use, you know, cryptic command line things

01:15:35 ◼   ► and nobody would understand it.

01:15:37 ◼   ► Geeks got it early.

01:15:38 ◼   ► We spent time on bulletin boards

01:15:40 ◼   ► communicating with each other,

01:15:41 ◼   ► but when simple, easy to understand

01:15:44 ◼   ► communication technology became available on the internet,

01:15:47 ◼   ► that's when it exploded.

01:15:48 ◼   ► But Walt had his column from 1991, five years before that.

01:15:52 ◼   ► And so he was already established as this voice of authority

01:15:56 ◼   ► when the explosion already happened.

01:15:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I mean, the most obvious thing in the world

01:16:01 ◼   ► is that the iPhone was the ultimate extrapolation of that,

01:16:04 ◼   ► right? - Right.

01:16:05 ◼   ► - Because then you had the,

01:16:06 ◼   ► not only was it a physical communication device,

01:16:09 ◼   ► it blended everything together

01:16:11 ◼   ► and you had it with you all the time.

01:16:12 ◼   ► Right.

01:16:15 ◼   ► One thing that I was curious to your take

01:16:17 ◼   ► about this topic on with, you know,

01:16:20 ◼   ► with Walt moving on was,

01:16:23 ◼   ► who do you think takes up the mantle then

01:16:25 ◼   ► as sort of the, I guess that go to

01:16:28 ◼   ► either technology columnist or reviewer?

01:16:29 ◼   ► We know the names who are sort of at the bigger places,

01:16:33 ◼   ► Farhad Manjoo at the New York Times.

01:16:37 ◼   ► Wall Street Journal is still doing the combo, right?

01:16:42 ◼   ► Of-- - Right, with Joanna and--

01:16:45 ◼   ► - With Joanna, right.

01:16:46 ◼   ► - And the other guy.

01:16:48 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:16:51 ◼   ► - But so, and then David Pogue is still at Yahoo, I guess?

01:16:58 ◼   ► Yahoo, I guess, or is he not?

01:17:00 ◼   ► I don't even know, like what's going to happen?

01:17:02 ◼   ► Is he going to be at a--

01:17:03 ◼   ► - I think so, but I feel like I don't know

01:17:04 ◼   ► because Yahoo's future is so uncertain.

01:17:08 ◼   ► - Right, is he gonna be at Ethos

01:17:10 ◼   ► or whatever the hell that company's gonna be called?

01:17:12 ◼   ► So, oh, Jeffrey Fowler.

01:17:16 ◼   ► - Yes, Jeffrey Fowler, sorry Jeffrey.

01:17:18 ◼   ► - Sorry Jeffrey.

01:17:19 ◼   ► But so like, so how do you think that that plays out?

01:17:22 ◼   ► Or is it not one of the giant, you know,

01:17:24 ◼   ► sort of old school publications?

01:17:26 ◼   ► Is it some other, is it so Mark Gurman,

01:17:29 ◼   ► you know, was announced this morning

01:17:30 ◼   ► that Bloomberg's launching a,

01:17:32 ◼   ► like a gadget show with Gurman.

01:17:35 ◼   ► - Oh, I didn't see that.

01:17:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, it was on like, I saw Axios.

01:17:40 ◼   ► So Axios, you know, the new newsletter thing

01:17:43 ◼   ► from Mike Allen and that group.

01:17:45 ◼   ► Yeah, they broke the story about,

01:17:47 ◼   ► it looks like it's going,

01:17:50 ◼   ► I don't know exactly what it's gonna be called.

01:17:51 ◼   ► Hold on, I actually had the link here,

01:17:53 ◼   ► so I can pull it up, but. - I got it.

01:17:56 ◼   ► I was just talking about Axios because Ina Fried took over and is running the technology

01:18:01 ◼   ► beat for them, and she was at the Appleschindig last week, and I was talking to her about it.

01:18:05 ◼   ► It's an interesting format, and I said to her, I said, "I'm not just saying this because you're

01:18:09 ◼   ► here, but I have to say that, especially politics-wise, I'm more keenly attuned ever

01:18:16 ◼   ► since November, and in the last few months, it's surprising how many of the links that have bubbled

01:18:22 ◼   ► up to the surface politically have been Axios sites. It didn't take very long after Axios

01:18:26 ◼   ► launched before I noticed it, and I was like, "How long has this been around?" Because all

01:18:31 ◼   ► of a sudden, it's popping up every day, and then I checked, and I was like, "Oh, it's

01:18:35 ◼   ► only two weeks old." It's not like I missed it. It's right from the get-go, though, Axios

01:18:41 ◼   ► has-

01:18:42 ◼   ► They're doing great. And not to do too much of an aside on the aside, but yeah, so in

01:18:47 ◼   ► my world, in my current world, in VC, obviously everyone was reading Dan Primack when he was

01:18:52 ◼   ► at Fortune, his newsletter, and he moved over to Axios sort of around the time of their

01:18:56 ◼   ► launch.

01:18:57 ◼   ► And then they have the Mike Allen guy who famously sort of wrote the Politico newsletter

01:19:03 ◼   ► for a long time.

01:19:04 ◼   ► And it's insane because he literally writes it every single day and just fills it with

01:19:07 ◼   ► a ton of content every single day and seems to get legitimate inside the White House scoops.

01:19:12 ◼   ► And obviously Primack gets his scoops, Eno will get hers, and it's just like on down

01:19:16 ◼   ► the line.

01:19:17 ◼   ► They have a pretty killer product and team.

01:19:19 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:19:20 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:19:21 ◼   ► did a very keen job of focusing on just getting great talent.

01:19:26 ◼   ► Just, you know, they have a great format and I like, you know, it's a good,

01:19:30 ◼   ► it looks good, there's not, I don't see any clutter on screen that is

01:19:33 ◼   ► annoying me. It's, they've got this focus on writing really short articles that

01:19:39 ◼   ► just get to the point which I think goes over really well.

01:19:42 ◼   ► Like, there's no padding in the articles,

01:19:45 ◼   ► but they've got great talent on all these beats which

01:19:49 ◼   ► which is, to me, a great combination.

01:19:51 ◼   ► It's a good format with a good focus.

01:19:54 ◼   ► It's user-friendly, and they've assembled

01:19:57 ◼   ► a really good team of talented people with deep sources.

01:20:01 ◼   ► So anyway.

01:20:02 ◼   ► - And they do a great job with brevity, too.

01:20:05 ◼   ► They don't just, they don't drag on.

01:20:07 ◼   ► - Right, that's what I'm saying.

01:20:08 ◼   ► - These long-winded things. - There's so much on the web

01:20:09 ◼   ► that drags on because it's like they want now.

01:20:11 ◼   ► It's like, I feel like in the old days,

01:20:14 ◼   ► the problem eight, nine years ago was that the sites,

01:20:18 ◼   ► because they were counting pages,

01:20:19 ◼   ► they would break up articles,

01:20:22 ◼   ► click here for next page, next page.

01:20:24 ◼   ► But now I feel like articles are padded

01:20:28 ◼   ► for the sake of being able to algorithmically interrupt

01:20:33 ◼   ► between paragraphs to insert either ads

01:20:37 ◼   ► or promotions for other thing on the site.

01:20:39 ◼   ► And so I noticed mostly reading on the phone is,

01:20:42 ◼   ► there was this, oh my God, I forget who it was.

01:20:45 ◼   ► I don't even want to mention it

01:20:46 ◼   ► because I don't want to give them any attention,

01:20:48 ◼   ► but there was an article I was reading last night

01:20:50 ◼   ► where they had three interruptions in the same article

01:20:52 ◼   ► to promote a new podcast that they were launching.

01:20:56 ◼   ► For the same podcast, three times in the article

01:20:58 ◼   ► between paragraphs, and on the phone,

01:21:00 ◼   ► it's a huge interruption between where your eyes

01:21:04 ◼   ► find the next paragraph.

01:21:06 ◼   ► Anyway, Axios does a good job on that.

01:21:09 ◼   ► - So Gurman's thing is called Gadgets with Gurman.

01:21:11 ◼   ► - Huh, that's a great idea.

01:21:13 ◼   ► - Bloomberg show, so it's gonna be a digital video series

01:21:16 ◼   ► that they're going to launch across all the Bloomberg stuff, including the terminal, it sounds like.

01:21:20 ◼   ► But then they're going to package it together and eventually sort of put it on Bloomberg television as well.

01:21:25 ◼   ► I know he's been very interesting. I know that's, you know, I can't say I'm close friends with him, but I certainly am friendly with him.

01:21:31 ◼   ► He's been on the show and whenever, you know, I like, and now that he's, you know, really gone pro, he's getting invited to Apple events,

01:21:39 ◼   ► and I always try to make a point of saying hi.

01:21:41 ◼   ► I know from talking to him that a big reason

01:21:44 ◼   ► he went to Bloomberg instead of anywhere else

01:21:45 ◼   ► was the promise of video and TV stuff.

01:21:49 ◼   ► He's super interested in that.

01:21:51 ◼   ► So I'm not surprised at all that he's getting his own thing.

01:21:55 ◼   ► - But so, amongst those people or someone else,

01:21:58 ◼   ► is there someone who takes up that mantle,

01:21:59 ◼   ► or are we just in an era now where it's such the norm

01:22:03 ◼   ► that there's going to be sort of the five to 10 go-tos

01:22:06 ◼   ► for sort of everything? - Yeah, I don't think

01:22:07 ◼   ► there's anybody who takes the mantle from Mossberg.

01:22:09 ◼   ► really don't and and I just don't I just don't see how it happens because I don't

01:22:14 ◼   ► see it's not like the New York Times on Wall Street Journal aren't still

01:22:20 ◼   ► important but they're differently important now where I don't feel like

01:22:25 ◼   ► they have singular voice maybe like on the New York Times op-ed page you know

01:22:29 ◼   ► like a Paul Krugman and Maureen Dowd still have that influence but I don't

01:22:36 ◼   ► in technology, I just don't see it. I think the fact that Walt was there so early and

01:22:44 ◼   ► was so established that it combined with the incredible power of the Wall Street Journal,

01:22:50 ◼   ► even today, I mean, Wall Street Journal is still super popular, but the fact that he

01:22:53 ◼   ► was doing it at the Journal, I just don't see how anybody's going to take that position.

01:22:56 ◼   ► It's almost like Michael Jordan retires. Who takes over as Michael Jordan? Maybe there

01:23:01 ◼   ► will be a LeBron who comes along, but I think whoever that is isn't here yet.

01:23:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it's gonna have to be sort of different thing,

01:23:08 ◼   ► maybe even a different format, you know?

01:23:10 ◼   ► And you know, maybe this German thing becomes interesting.

01:23:13 ◼   ► I do think like, you know, some of the other folks

01:23:18 ◼   ► who have great history, like Steven Levy,

01:23:20 ◼   ► who's a good friend of mine,

01:23:21 ◼   ► obviously he's still getting, you know,

01:23:23 ◼   ► some amazing stories for his back channel stuff,

01:23:26 ◼   ► which is underwired now.

01:23:28 ◼   ► And you know, so there's gonna be sort of,

01:23:31 ◼   ► there's still the group of folks

01:23:33 ◼   ► who have so much prestige around them

01:23:37 ◼   ► and the bigger companies are still comfortable

01:23:39 ◼   ► sort of talking to them versus just some random person,

01:23:44 ◼   ► like you said, when Mark Gurman was at 9to5Mac,

01:23:49 ◼   ► he didn't get invited to any of the Apple things, right?

01:23:52 ◼   ► Even though he's breaking every single story.

01:23:54 ◼   ► - Well, it was already too late to come to the events.

01:23:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, right.

01:23:57 ◼   ► - What he was doing that was adding to

01:24:02 ◼   ► the overall quantity of the information in the world.

01:24:05 ◼   ► It had nothing to do with what was at the events.

01:24:07 ◼   ► It was five months before the events.

01:24:09 ◼   ► - Right.

01:24:11 ◼   ► - I feel like the closest would be, and I wonder,

01:24:14 ◼   ► I think he did the right thing,

01:24:16 ◼   ► 'cause I think part of being prescient with Walt was that

01:24:20 ◼   ► I think he was smart to go to create the all things D brand

01:24:25 ◼   ► while at the Wall Street Journal.

01:24:28 ◼   ► And again, the Columbia Journalism Review mentions

01:24:31 ◼   ► that they did that, he and Kara Swisher did that,

01:24:33 ◼   ► when the consensus among print journalists

01:24:37 ◼   ► was still to treat the web as an ugly stepchild, right?

01:24:41 ◼   ► - Right. - That you're writing

01:24:42 ◼   ► primarily for print, and then there's some B team

01:24:45 ◼   ► that takes the print stuff after it's gone

01:24:48 ◼   ► through the print process, and I don't know,

01:24:50 ◼   ► put it on the web thing or whatever,

01:24:51 ◼   ► treat it as an ugly stepchild.

01:24:53 ◼   ► I mean, here in Philadelphia,

01:24:55 ◼   ► I don't wanna go on a super long aside,

01:24:57 ◼   ► but in Philadelphia, the two newspapers

01:24:59 ◼   ► the Inquirer and the Daily News. And they made a decision in the late 90s that rather

01:25:05 ◼   ► than focus on having like an Inquirer.com and PhillyDailyNews.com or whatever you want

01:25:10 ◼   ► to call the domains be a quality things, they made like a joint thing called Philly.com

01:25:16 ◼   ► and they had content from both newspapers, but they just sort of, it was never really

01:25:20 ◼   ► clear which articles were from which paper, even though they independently as print operations,

01:25:25 ◼   ► They were completely separate and rivals,

01:25:27 ◼   ► completely separate rivals,

01:25:28 ◼   ► even though they were under the same parent obligation,

01:25:31 ◼   ► our organization.

01:25:33 ◼   ► But the philly.com, and it was an ugly website.

01:25:35 ◼   ► It was slow to load.

01:25:36 ◼   ► They always, they were at the forefront of using paywalls.

01:25:40 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:25:42 ◼   ► And it almost bankrupted the company,

01:25:44 ◼   ► it did bankrupt the company.

01:25:45 ◼   ► The company is, they ended up having to sell

01:25:47 ◼   ► their magnificent headquarters

01:25:49 ◼   ► and move into janky office space.

01:25:53 ◼   ► and not treating the web seriously

01:25:56 ◼   ► really almost ran them into the ground.

01:25:58 ◼   ► I would say Walt was at the opposite,

01:25:59 ◼   ► where Walt was, with All Things D,

01:26:01 ◼   ► they were like, we'll write for the web first.

01:26:05 ◼   ► - Yep. - And we'll make

01:26:06 ◼   ► web-only content.

01:26:07 ◼   ► - That plus the conference business.

01:26:10 ◼   ► - Right, right. - I mean, they--

01:26:12 ◼   ► - Which came first. - They were ahead

01:26:13 ◼   ► of the curve on that, yeah. - Right, that was 2003,

01:26:15 ◼   ► and I think they started the All Things D website in 2007.

01:26:18 ◼   ► I also think that leaving the journal

01:26:20 ◼   ► the last five, six years of his career to start Recode, which they then merged with Vox and The

01:26:28 ◼   ► Verge, et cetera, was probably the right thing to do. I really do think so, and I think it had

01:26:33 ◼   ► an eye on the future. But I wonder how much it lessened his influence. I think for Kara,

01:26:43 ◼   ► and what she does best with breaking scoops, it's fine. I think in fact, it was all win.

01:26:50 ◼   ► And the fact that she's got equity in the thing

01:26:53 ◼   ► and the scoops go out to everybody who cares about scoops

01:26:57 ◼   ► when they come out.

01:26:58 ◼   ► But for Mossberg's thing of being a sort of

01:27:01 ◼   ► spokesperson for the everyman,

01:27:04 ◼   ► as a product reviewer, I do wonder whether

01:27:07 ◼   ► his voice was lessened by leaving the journal.

01:27:12 ◼   ► - Right, and I mean that's the hard,

01:27:15 ◼   ► the hard sort of gap to close because the everyman

01:27:19 ◼   ► He may not read the Wall Street Journal only,

01:27:23 ◼   ► but they know of the Wall Street Journal.

01:27:24 ◼   ► The other man knows the Wall Street Journal.

01:27:26 ◼   ► They'll know Walt Mossberg at the Wall Street Journal.

01:27:30 ◼   ► Certainly, he had a big enough name for when he

01:27:32 ◼   ► leaves the Wall Street Journal to take some of that audience with him,

01:27:35 ◼   ► but it will never be the full audience of a nationwide distributed paper.

01:27:41 ◼   ► So it was almost like was recode more of a,

01:27:48 ◼   ► you know, sort of back to the tech enthusiast crowd

01:27:50 ◼   ► versus the everyman crowd.

01:27:52 ◼   ► - Right, like Walt's writing didn't change.

01:27:54 ◼   ► Like, you know, I don't think that you could Pepsi challenge

01:27:57 ◼   ► the difference between Walt's columns

01:27:59 ◼   ► under the Recode or Verge banner

01:28:01 ◼   ► and his, you know, columns under the Journal banner.

01:28:04 ◼   ► He had the same style and the same approach

01:28:05 ◼   ► and the same attitude.

01:28:07 ◼   ► If you just look at the words,

01:28:08 ◼   ► but I think it reached fewer people.

01:28:09 ◼   ► I think it was almost like a magnifier

01:28:11 ◼   ► where he built the Walt Mossberg brand,

01:28:13 ◼   ► where if you put a quote up in a keynote

01:28:15 ◼   ► and just had a quote from Walt Mossberg.

01:28:19 ◼   ► That says a lot right there.

01:28:20 ◼   ► But Walt Mossberg, comma, The Wall Street Journal,

01:28:23 ◼   ► it's like a multiplier, because now you've got both

01:28:25 ◼   ► the power of the Wall Street Journal brand combined,

01:28:28 ◼   ► multiplied by the power of Walt's personal brand.

01:28:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, and so, I mean, that speaks to why

01:28:34 ◼   ► it was probably the smart move to then do the,

01:28:36 ◼   ► sort of, the Vox sale and merge, basically,

01:28:39 ◼   ► you know, with the Verge, because it is,

01:28:42 ◼   ► while we can argue about whether it's been successful yet in doing so, it is trying to

01:28:47 ◼   ► reach a more mainstream audience rather than what ReCode was doing itself, which was much

01:28:53 ◼   ► more targeted.

01:28:54 ◼   ► Right.

01:28:55 ◼   ► And obviously, I'm a big proponent of writers and independent journalists going off on their

01:29:03 ◼   ► own and building their own brands.

01:29:07 ◼   ► But I'm also keenly aware of the brand equity of things like the Journal and the New York

01:29:11 ◼   ► Times. I feel like Pogue is in the same boat where career rise, it might have been exactly

01:29:16 ◼   ► the right thing. I'm not criticizing him in the least. It might have been exactly the

01:29:18 ◼   ► right thing to go to Yahoo and it might be great for his career and his family and his

01:29:24 ◼   ► personal finances. But I can't help but think that if Pogue were still at the New York Times,

01:29:29 ◼   ► he might be in that position to sort of take over as the de facto. Like David Pogue at

01:29:33 ◼   ► the New York Times is a much more powerful voice and brand than David Pogue at Yahoo

01:29:39 ◼   ► tech or whatever the umbrella is. Yeah, it's sort of interesting. I know it's not a direct analogy,

01:29:45 ◼   ► and it's in some ways probably unfair, but it's like, you know, it reminds me of sort of like

01:29:49 ◼   ► the Siskel and Ebert thing, right? When they were at sort of the pinnacle of doing film reviews and

01:29:56 ◼   ► of course the getting the television show and everything, doing that, and then, you know,

01:30:03 ◼   ► know both unfortunately passed away and like who then takes up that mantle and

01:30:08 ◼   ► they're really you know there's some people like a o scott at the New York

01:30:12 ◼   ► Times who I think is great and and there's a handful of other people but no

01:30:14 ◼   ► one has that same influence a perfect example that I think because there is no

01:30:19 ◼   ► there's no no more Cisco on ebert and even after gene Cisco died I think

01:30:23 ◼   ► ebert ebert was enough of a voice where he was still yes he was still up there

01:30:28 ◼   ► - Right, but after he died, nobody really took that.

01:30:33 ◼   ► I can't think of who I would think, you know.

01:30:35 ◼   ► I personally do like A.O. Scott.

01:30:37 ◼   ► I personally, I love to hate read,

01:30:40 ◼   ► what's his name, Anthony Lane in The New Yorker.

01:30:46 ◼   ► - Oh, right, yep, yep.

01:30:48 ◼   ► I read those too, yep.

01:30:50 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:30:52 ◼   ► - I get to the end of every issue of The New Yorker

01:30:55 ◼   ► and I either, if I've,

01:30:57 ◼   ► I don't read them unless I've seen the movie.

01:30:59 ◼   ► But sometimes I keep old ones and I bookmark them.

01:31:01 ◼   ► And then when I do see the movie, I go back and read--

01:31:03 ◼   ► - I do the same exact thing.

01:31:04 ◼   ► - I go back and read Anthony Lane's review.

01:31:06 ◼   ► And then I rip it up.

01:31:07 ◼   ► - And I do the exact same thing for the same reason.

01:31:09 ◼   ► - I rip it up and I wanna just throw these

01:31:11 ◼   ► ripped up reviews in his face and say, "You joyless."

01:31:14 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:31:16 ◼   ► Don't you realize that sometimes a movie

01:31:21 ◼   ► is just meant to be fun?

01:31:22 ◼   ► But he's very good at writing those reviews,

01:31:25 ◼   ► so I still read them.

01:31:27 ◼   ► But I can't say that anybody's like Ebert.

01:31:30 ◼   ► I would say that Walt is sort of the Ebert

01:31:32 ◼   ► and Cisco combined, maybe.

01:31:35 ◼   ► Anyway.

01:31:36 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:31:36 ◼   ► - Anyway, good luck to him.

01:31:37 ◼   ► It's gonna be weird.

01:31:38 ◼   ► It's gonna be weird not seeing him around, I tell you that.

01:31:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'll be at the code conference for, I guess,

01:31:45 ◼   ► that's where he's saying the actual goodbyes.

01:31:47 ◼   ► So that'll be an interesting--

01:31:48 ◼   ► - I've never gone.

01:31:49 ◼   ► I should see if I can wrangle an invitation.

01:31:53 ◼   ► - You should, it is.

01:31:54 ◼   ► not to promote, not to be a promotion here,

01:31:58 ◼   ► but it is a very good conference.

01:31:59 ◼   ► They do a very good job with it.

01:32:00 ◼   ► - I think the reason I never have even thought about

01:32:02 ◼   ► seeing if I could go is that it seems so close to WWDC

01:32:05 ◼   ► and I'm sort of a homebody and I don't wanna go away

01:32:08 ◼   ► two times in short succession.

01:32:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it's in Southern California, not up here, so.

01:32:13 ◼   ► - Right, well I don't really care.

01:32:14 ◼   ► It's just, all that matters to me is that I'm

01:32:17 ◼   ► a gazillion thousand miles away from home, but.

01:32:19 ◼   ► - Can't be away from that U-Haul desk, if yours.

01:32:22 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:32:24 ◼   ► So do you wanna go back to your iPad point?

01:32:27 ◼   ► - Let me finish that.

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01:35:05 ◼   ► All right.

01:35:06 ◼   ► Back to the iPad.

01:35:07 ◼   ► Here's the thing I would like to see them do.

01:35:08 ◼   ► My biggest request would be to have a multitasking mode similar to the one they have now where

01:35:14 ◼   ► you arrange multiple apps in full height columns. But I would like to be able

01:35:20 ◼   ► to make them—I don't know exactly—I haven't envisioned or invented an

01:35:25 ◼   ► interface to make this—to figure out exactly how they would do it. But I would

01:35:29 ◼   ► like to have it be more arbitrary. So if you want to have three, you could have

01:35:35 ◼   ► three. If you want to drag one from the middle to the left, you could somehow

01:35:41 ◼   ► drag the you know put your finger in like the nav bar or something or do a

01:35:45 ◼   ► long press on it and drag it over rearrange them and I would like them to

01:35:52 ◼   ► do away with it bothers me somehow and I can't quite put my finger on it but it

01:35:56 ◼   ► just feels like the whole thing it still makes the whole field thing feel tacked

01:36:00 ◼   ► on to me that the left one is always main and the right one is like the junior

01:36:07 ◼   ► app. Right. And it doesn't feel right to me. It doesn't feel... it's like on the Mac, there's

01:36:12 ◼   ► never... there's a frontmost window and then there's all other windows and they're all

01:36:16 ◼   ► equal, and if you click on one, it becomes frontmost and it's every bit as legit as the

01:36:21 ◼   ► other ones. So if I have three apps on my iPad in columns side by side, when I'm in

01:36:28 ◼   ► the middle one, I feel like it should be every bit the real, the main app as it would be

01:36:33 ◼   ► if it were the left one. And secondarily, I would like them to figure out a way to

01:36:38 ◼   ► more visually clarify which one currently has the focus. Right, right.

01:36:43 ◼   ► But so with that three, the notion of three, does that work ratio-wise for sort

01:36:50 ◼   ► of the, you know, how big? Yeah, because I think that if you do the size classes

01:36:54 ◼   ► right, it could be it your app should rearrange themselves, you know, should use

01:37:00 ◼   ► using auto layout etc to any arbitrary width you shouldn't be worried about

01:37:04 ◼   ► exact whether it's exactly you know 767 pixels or I got that wrong but you know

01:37:11 ◼   ► that did you should be worried about hitting this short list of exact pixel

01:37:16 ◼   ► widths you should be in more like a Mac app you should be able to rearrange to

01:37:20 ◼   ► any arbitrary width I'm not saying that the that the iPad should let you drag

01:37:24 ◼   ► the little divider and change it from 750 pixels to 748 pixels I feel like

01:37:29 ◼   ► like the fact that the iPad isn't so fussy

01:37:32 ◼   ► and has these set sizes that the apps clip to

01:37:36 ◼   ► is actually nice.

01:37:38 ◼   ► - Yeah. - Right?