0:00:00Here we are. We're recording on Friday, June 5th. So three days before WWDC keynote and
0:00:07my guest is Mark Gurman from 9 to 5 Mac fame. Mark, I think it would have been about a year
0:00:15since you've been on the show?
0:00:17Yeah, I think last time was a little bit after the previous WWDC.
0:00:22Well, I couldn't think of anybody better to have for the WWDC "Prayload Show" as I would
0:00:28call it than you.
0:00:30Jared: I appreciate it.
0:00:31Pete: You've had a remarkable run this year, in my opinion.
0:00:34Well, we'll see how it comes on Monday, but it looks like you have scored an enormous
0:00:40number of scoops.
0:00:41Jared Thanks.
0:00:42I appreciate it.
0:00:43Pete People who don't want Christmas spoils should probably just stop listening now.
0:00:47Jared Yeah, I'd agree with that one.
0:00:50Pete Were you the type of kid who hunted through the house for Christmas presents?
0:00:56>> Chris I'm Jewish, so…
0:00:59>> Trent Okay, well Hanukkah birthday.
0:01:01>> Chris No, right, but we have Passover and the tradition is to hide the matzah
0:01:07somewhere in the house and I would always be the one to find it when I was growing up, so
0:01:12yeah, pretty much.
0:01:13>> Trent Yeah, but are you supposed to hide, you're supposed to find that.
0:01:16>> Chris Right.
0:01:17>> Trent What about like birthday presents?
0:01:19>> Chris Oh, eh, yeah, maybe I'd go digging sometimes for those. I don't really remember,
0:01:24But I get your point. I remember twice doing it and I
0:01:29The thing is that I found it the same place both times one time I found
0:01:35brand new dirt bike and uh
0:01:37Bicycle in the basement. There's this like
0:01:40like in the back of my parents basement, there's like a little like
0:01:44Extra room behind the door and I wasn't even looking for presents
0:01:48Uh, I just I don't know what I was just you know bored and like looking around the basement and I went in there
0:01:53And there was this awesome brand new shiny chrome
0:01:57dirt bike with red trim and red tires and
0:02:00I was so naive and this was I don't know like a couple of weeks before my birthday and I'm so naive
0:02:07I didn't think holy shit. They got me a dirt bike for for my birthday. I thought why is there a dirt bike in my
0:02:14How old are you at the time I was probably
0:02:20I'm gonna guess around like 10 or 11. Oh, wow
0:02:23Yeah, and then and then I knew though that's the room to look in and then that for that Christmas
0:02:28I went in there and looked around and I saw that I was getting the Millennium Falcon the big-ass Kenner Millennium Falcon toy
0:02:34and
0:02:37Then on this is true. I honestly thought you know what? I'm gonna stop looking for Christmas presents because now I feel terrible
0:02:43Yeah, I know what you mean
0:02:47It's a little different with the Apple stuff
0:02:50I mean, there's a lot of people who, you know, when all these stories are coming through,
0:02:54they're like, "Why are you publishing this?
0:02:56This is a lot of information.
0:02:58You're ruining the keynote."
0:02:59I don't look at it that way at all.
0:03:02There's movie spoilers, you know, people hunting for their birthday gifts.
0:03:05You don't have to read the stuff.
0:03:07But just doing my job as a reporter.
0:03:09I think what people are a little angry about is that you're so accurate.
0:03:13Yeah, yeah, maybe a little bit.
0:03:15We'll see.
0:03:16I have said, I was on Josh Topolski's New Tomorrow podcast
0:03:21earlier this week and then last week
0:03:24with Rene Ritchie here on my show.
0:03:27But both times you came up just in the,
0:03:30I don't see how you can't come up
0:03:32if you're gonna start saying,
0:03:33what do you expect for WWDC?
0:03:35But I mean this sincerely.
0:03:38I've been reading Apple rumor websites
0:03:42ever since Apple rumor websites started.
0:03:45And I'm not even saying 9to5back is more than a rumor website, but the type of sites that
0:03:50publish ostensibly, hopefully informed, well-sourced information about upcoming Apple stuff that
0:03:59is not intended to be public information.
0:04:03I've been following it since they existed, so it's at least what, like 20 years, the
0:04:07mid-90s when the web first came up.
0:04:11And I remember in the early days, nobody was accurate.
0:04:15site that existed at that time that was like focused on rumors I think there was like
0:04:19mac os rumors I always used to get it confused with with uh now the long-standing website mac
0:04:27rumors right but there was like mac os rumors and there were a couple more and their track records
0:04:33were atrocious to say and it's you know it's I didn't have the name claim chowder yet from
0:04:40from my good friends at Panic, Cable Sasser and Stephen Frank.
0:04:45But I've always been obsessed with the notion behind it, which is, why does nobody keep track
0:04:50of this crap and just remember that everybody's all excited about this site that is reporting
0:04:58something something about, at the time, like Mac OS 8.1 or something like that, when these were
0:05:04the same clowns who a year ago said this, that, and the other thing, none of which panned out.
0:05:08Right. Right. And in that time there have been others who've had better records. I've dabbled
0:05:14my toes in it in my own Koi way, but in my opinion nobody has had a run like you've had in the last
0:05:20two years with in terms of accuracy. Yeah, I appreciate that. So something I wanted to ask
0:05:25you about your run last year before the Apple watch came out you had some Koi line about oh
0:05:32something next month in September when everyone was expecting the watch to come out in October.
0:05:37of last fall. Did you make a mistake there and you happen to get it right or
0:05:41was that like a true like coy I know it's coming out in September type of
0:05:46thing? That's an excellent question mark. We want the truth here. I didn't know and
0:05:59you know what here's the thing here's the reason that I don't even I do less
0:06:04and less of that now than ever before is I found that it makes me unhappy in life unsettled
0:06:13because these things can change but at the time that I wrote that I happen to know that
0:06:20the watch was planned for September but not it was probably sometime in August when I
0:06:26wrote that and I do remember that it was sort of a you know got picked up by tech meme and
0:06:31all this stuff. I did know that that was the plan and I, you know, but it could change, you know,
0:06:42definitely I could have been wrong which is why I didn't want to put it in more concrete terms.
0:06:46What I knew was I knew that they had the bigger venue booked for September and I just, you know,
0:06:55not first day, it was very, very distant, but just, you know, I put it all together and it was very
0:07:01clear that it was September not October. I think Pat Tkowski had it as October.
0:07:09Well yeah, but when he said October that was like six months before the fall and
0:07:15right between two months worse like you said things can change so right well he
0:07:20knows what he's talking about for sure oh absolutely yeah he's you know rock solid
0:07:27So where do we start? I mean, there's actually a lot of stuff that has come out today. I mean,
0:07:32this is always the case before the keynotes. So there's two of the things that are today
0:07:39that I saw. I don't know if you saw these. So Business Week or Bloomberg Business,
0:07:44I don't know what they're calling it this week. Lucas Shaw and Tim Higgins have a report that
0:07:51Apple, as of today, Friday, June 5th, is still pushing to complete the music deals before
0:07:58Monday. That they don't have all of the music labels on board for the... I don't even see
0:08:05how it's... It's not even a secret anymore that they're going to come out with an updated
0:08:10streaming service.
0:08:11Right. Yeah. They've always been a sort of eleventh hour with those details. I know you
0:08:17love that word even with like the book deals back in the first iPad and the
0:08:21newsstand stuff over the last few years so I think this is typical Apple every
0:08:26year whenever they do a big media launch we see stories that say hey you know
0:08:29Apple still working on those deals faxing over some paperwork so this is
0:08:34not terribly surprising meanwhile edi-q is courtside at the Warriors game yeah
0:08:40so who are you rooting for oh I you know what I used to be I'm a I used to be a
0:08:44huge basketball fan and I kind of fell out with the NBA and I've kind of been getting
0:08:51back into it, especially this year. I felt like the playoffs this year have been terribly
0:08:55exciting.
0:08:56Oh yeah, absolutely.
0:08:57So I'm going with the Warriors. I like the way they play. But I have to say I do like
0:09:02the comeback story with James going back to Cleveland and making them an instant contender.
0:09:09I think it's two good teams and I like the way both teams play.
0:09:14I happen to really, really like the offense that the Warriors play though.
0:09:18I really like that penetrate and dish back out style of play.
0:09:23**Beserat Debebe:** Right.
0:09:24I mean, they're both fantastic teams.
0:09:26I agree with you on the comeback story with LeBron basically carrying the team through
0:09:30the East himself, but I'm honestly not a fan of the whole Stephen Curry playing tops and
0:09:35play on the Warriors.
0:09:36too flashy when he takes that 25 foot three pointer and then turns around before it's
0:09:41going in the basket. Like that's, it's pretty pompous and I'd say so.
0:09:46I don't know. I like it. There's something about that that it appeals to me. I feel like if I had
0:09:51actually been a good player, the player that I could have, you know, would have dreamed of
0:09:54being would have been like Curry. Yeah. You could have been in the NBA instead of writing
0:09:59during fireball. Yeah. Sort of a Reggie Miller style, wouldn't you say? You know?
0:10:03Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A bit Reggie Miller.
0:10:05Similar build, you know, dead shooter from, you know, incredible distance.
0:10:12Jared: Anywhere.
0:10:13Pete: Yeah.
0:10:13Jared; That's crazy.
0:10:14Pete; But anyway, there's a great picture that's been circulating in the AP today of
0:10:19Eddie Q's sort of cheering LeBron on from court side.
0:10:26Jared; Yeah, this is why the deals aren't done yet. Picture proof.
0:10:29[laughter]
0:10:31What a year Eddy Cue has had as a basketball fan. He's a Duke fan and a Warriors season
0:10:35ticket holder, so his college team already won the college championship, and his pro team is
0:10:44one game up in the finals.
0:10:45Jared: Yeah, yeah. Well, we'll see how that works out over the next couple weeks. I still think
0:10:50LeBron has a comeback in him.
0:10:52Pete; I'll tell you, that's the thing about the NBA Finals is it's where, you know, the team with
0:10:56the greatest with it's you know, it sounds stupid but it's the one sport where I think it's true
0:11:02where when it comes to the finals the team that if there's two teams with like a hall of fame
0:11:08type player and I wouldn't even say that curry is a hall of fame type player it's too early but
0:11:12right you know if he continues where he is he will be um but with the greatest of the greater
0:11:18of the two all-star stars usually wins regardless of the other peripheral players on the team
0:11:25Yeah, I'd agree with that.
0:11:26Right? I mean like, and you know, the Jordan teams were the perfect example. I mean Pippen was great
0:11:31and what was, what's his name? The crazy fella Dennis Rodman. Right. Rodman was an incredible
0:11:38force to be reckoned with. But the truth is, you know, Jordan, when it came down to it could carry
0:11:45the team on his back. Yeah, same thing with Kobe a few years. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Like the
0:11:52Kobe teams without Shaq. Right. I love Kobe. Huge Kobe fan. No, but he had that ability.
0:11:58There's that's the weird thing. And you know, maybe the quarterback in football is the closest
0:12:03that you can get to that. But the idea of keep it within a handful of points to three minutes to
0:12:11play and then let let him take over whoever you know that may be. Yeah, and it's game over. Right.
0:12:17Yeah, so I don't know do you think Eddie's gonna go to the Sunday night game? I
0:12:22Can't believe that I good question. I'm gonna watch out for that. That's the thing to watch the game
0:12:28Yeah, you know my understanding and Apple, you know, one of the things that they've always been pretty
0:12:33secretive about if not totally secret about is their
0:12:36The process that they go through to rehearse keynotes, you know, they just don't talk about it
0:12:43You know, they if it goes through the weekend though, they're there right now. They'll be there this weekend
0:12:47- Definitely goes through the weekend.
0:12:49But I've heard stories that there have been times
0:12:53where it goes almost surprisingly late Sunday night,
0:12:57given that, you know,
0:12:59you know, that it's, they're gonna be on stage
0:13:03and they wanna look fresh, you know,
0:13:0410 o'clock Monday morning.
0:13:06- Right, right.
0:13:07I don't know, we'll see if Eddie shows up
0:13:10in his Warriors jersey or not.
0:13:12You know.
0:13:13- Well, and I expect that Eddie would have
0:13:16major role in it because the way that apple does keynotes is whoever is i don't know if it's quite
0:13:23the it you know that internal lingo of dri but whoever the executive is who's in charge of
0:13:28whatever it is that's being keynoted is the one who presents it and if you know absolutely it
0:13:35seems like there might be a big chunk of the keynote that's going to be in eddie q's uh
0:13:40domain like what with eddy kidder's apple music and uh well it's about it yeah well i guess if
0:13:48if it's true that apple tv isn't uh making the cut yeah i think that those i mean there's three
0:13:55reports on it from three reputable sites and just in the days before the keynote so i think that
0:14:01that's probably right that they they cut it out i didn't see three i saw brian x chan at the new
0:14:05New York Times said no new Apple TV hardware what else did you see Pachkowski
0:14:12at BuzzFeed overrated that and then recode as well all the matter of minutes
0:14:16huh I did not see that so that that's really telling them I'm surprised you
0:14:22didn't have any take on Chen's report saying that they cut it out in mid-may
0:14:29uh what do you think of that i that sounds it's unusual i think right but it sounds about right
0:14:38given that what i had heard last i'd heard is it was set for wwdc but i haven't heard anything
0:14:44likewise likewise i even spoke to someone very reliable after those reports came out who said
0:14:50that the sdk's and all that they're preparing for monday still has or as of that day still had
0:14:57all the TV kit stuff intertwined in there.
0:15:01So when developers pull the thing apart, I wouldn't be surprised to see some references
0:15:05to that on Monday afternoon or whenever people get their hands on it.
0:15:08Hmm.
0:15:09Explain that to me though.
0:15:10What do you mean by that?
0:15:11So besides the Apple TV hardware, they're going to have, or they were planning an Apple
0:15:16TV SDK so developers could write, you know, apps for it that they control from an iPhone
0:15:21or that new controller.
0:15:24But now that they're pushing back the hardware,
0:15:27it seems likely that they're probably gonna push back
0:15:29the SDK as well.
0:15:31So what I heard was, in terms of this being
0:15:32like a late decision, that the SDK still has the tools
0:15:37for developing the Apple TV apps in it.
0:15:40The SDK for iOS 9, that they're gonna be releasing.
0:15:42- Oh, I see what you mean, iOS 9, I gotcha, gotcha.
0:15:45- Right, so now I assume, or it could be assumed
0:15:48that they're scrambling to remove that functionality
0:15:51from the build or releasing an older build without it.
0:15:54Or just they just say screw it and let everybody rip it apart Monday afternoon and so be it.
0:16:01Yeah we'll see.
0:16:02Because they know I mean there's no you know when everyone's something is left behind in
0:16:07an SDK and it seems pretty clear it's a mistake something like this would not be a mistake
0:16:12something like this would be what are we going to do.
0:16:15Right back in the day when I first got my start writing they would leave stuff back
0:16:19all the time. I remember with the iPad 2, every spec, wallpapers, everything was right
0:16:25and left in the SDK, but they've gotten better over the years. Like the last big leak I remember
0:16:30was the fingerprint sensor in the iOS 8 SDK, but even that was pretty hidden.
0:16:36Yeah, and even every once in a while it's something like icons or something like that.
0:16:40Right, right.
0:16:41shows something. So why I'm I didn't read patch cow I don't know how I missed it
0:16:49but what's the what did patch koski say about why there's no Apple TV hardware I
0:16:57don't remember exactly what he said but something in the lines of it not being
0:17:02ready for prime time or something like that yeah I think that there were some
0:17:06people who were speculating that it was because the TV service, you know, with this idea that
0:17:12they're going to have like, you pay $20 a month, or I don't know, I made the number
0:17:17up, but you pay X dollars a month to Apple, and then you get a package of 20 or 30 cable
0:17:24channels content.
0:17:25Yeah, I don't think that's the case at all. I think the plan along was to announce the
0:17:30hardware apps SDK in June, release it soon after the keynote, and then introduce the
0:17:36TV service and say, "Hey, you're going to get the hardware now," and then the service
0:17:40will come with a software update in the fall.
0:17:43And I think that was always the plan.
0:17:44And in the meantime, you can still get all of the iTunes content you already can.
0:17:49You can buy episodes, buy the episode, you can rent and buy movies.
0:17:54All the content you already know and love on Apple TV is already there.
0:17:57Exactly.
0:17:58marketing scheme, that would be amazing for them, totally Apple, to have it come out and
0:18:03roll out and then get all the exposure once again when the new service is ready in the
0:18:07fall.
0:18:08So I don't think the two are connected in terms of the WWDC announcement being pushed
0:18:13back.
0:18:14Yeah.
0:18:15I suspect the same thing.
0:18:18I have to say, and I'm not being coy here, I really do know nothing.
0:18:22I'm as surprised by this as anybody because I had heard just little things.
0:18:27months I had heard that Apple TV hardware was on pace for WWDC along with the SDK and etc.
0:18:33I think though just my spidey sense about the company is that if they're not announcing it
0:18:41on Monday that means it's not ready. Right, right. I agree because I think that they probably wanted
0:18:47to ship it just a few weeks or a few months after the WWDC keynote and they're probably not able to
0:18:53to hit that anymore, so they wanna just push back
0:18:55the announcement, and maybe they feel like
0:18:57if they wait 'til the fall to announce it,
0:18:59they can release the hardware like a week and a half later
0:19:01they could do with iPhones,
0:19:02and have plenty of quantity ready to go.
0:19:04- Yeah, yeah, and it might be the sort of thing where,
0:19:08you know, just loosely speaking, I have a sense that,
0:19:13I mean, iPhone is still a huge deal for the company,
0:19:17it's the biggest deal financially,
0:19:19but introducing new iPhones is harder and harder
0:19:23to make a big deal out of because it's a well-known product.
0:19:27And so just like my example, like I've said about last year,
0:19:30so again, the two most popular iPhones
0:19:33that I've ever introduced, you know, best selling,
0:19:36have propelled the company to new heights.
0:19:39But there wasn't that much to say about them.
0:19:42They were self-explanatory.
0:19:43It's the iPhone you know and love,
0:19:45except now it's thinner, and it's bigger, or really bigger,
0:19:50and it has an uncomfortable camera nubbin.
0:19:53- Yeah, that they hid in the marketing shop.
0:19:56- Right, so that's why I think that they wanted
0:20:01to pair it with the watch introduction
0:20:05and the fact that they could throw in Apple Pay
0:20:08in between them as an introduction is icing on the cake.
0:20:11'Cause then that way they can hold their biggest event
0:20:13of the year or at least the biggest standalone event
0:20:15if you don't count WWDC.
0:20:17And have big things to announce
0:20:20other than just the iPhone,
0:20:21because it's really, really hard to,
0:20:23I think it was, you know, however long Schiller
0:20:25was up there talking about the iPhones,
0:20:27I think it really would have been hard
0:20:29for him to go much longer,
0:20:30just because there's not that much more to say.
0:20:33- Right, I agree there.
0:20:34So this fall, probably, like you said,
0:20:36they'll probably double up on the iPhone and TV
0:20:39in September, and maybe have a big iPad event in October
0:20:43with the new Air Mini and the bigger one,
0:20:45the Pro, if that's ready.
0:20:46- Yeah, and whatever other, you know,
0:20:48but like a smaller event maybe on campus again.
0:20:51But I'd expect big event September.
0:20:53We are skipping WWDC and talking about September,
0:20:55but that's what I would think.
0:20:58But and I think, you know, if they're thinking,
0:20:59hey, the software's not ready, why release it now?
0:21:02The only reason to do it would be so that they could have,
0:21:06whatever they're gonna call it, TV kit, whatever,
0:21:08you know, it's called TV kit sessions at WWDC.
0:21:12But if they introduce a new developer API
0:21:15outside WWDC in the fall, so be it.
0:21:19You know?
0:21:20- Right, yeah.
0:21:21- I mean, they've done that before.
0:21:22I mean, they did that with the original iPad, right?
0:21:25They introduced the iPad and said,
0:21:27"You've got four weeks to update your apps to run on it.
0:21:30"Go."
0:21:31- Right, and I wouldn't be surprised
0:21:32if some big major app partners maybe get the SDK
0:21:35ceded to them in maybe July, August,
0:21:38late summer timeframe ahead of time.
0:21:39- All right, so I do think,
0:21:41I think the writing's on the wall, the TV is out.
0:21:45- Right, right.
0:21:46- Let me take a break and thank the first sponsor
0:21:49this episode.
0:21:51Haven't been here as a sponsor for a while
0:21:54but they used to be and I'm delighted to have them back.
0:21:57It's our good friends at Harvest.
0:22:00Harvest is a beautiful, well-designed business tool
0:22:04for tracking time spent on client projects.
0:22:07Started, I believe, I could be wrong,
0:22:11but my recollection is that Harvest started specifically
0:22:13as a product for designers tracking time,
0:22:16and then they've expanded it to be sort of
0:22:18a general purpose time tracking tool
0:22:19for anybody with a job where you wanna track time.
0:22:22But to me, the best part is that because they started
0:22:26with these designer-focused routes, it really is beautiful.
0:22:29It is a really, really good-looking app and system.
0:22:32And it's really, really focused on being
0:22:36as simple as possible so that it is as easy,
0:22:40and you don't even have to think about it to just get started.
0:22:42You just start a timer from anywhere, from your web browser, from a desktop app, your
0:22:46mobile device.
0:22:47They've got apps for everything.
0:22:50And you just start a timer, say what you're working on, and then when you're done, you
0:22:54hit stop, and all of your time is accounted for.
0:22:56So no matter where you find yourself working, your desktop where you've got a big 5K cinema
0:23:03iMac or in a coffee shop where you're on a different device, you can still use the same
0:23:08system to track all of your time and it's really really focused on just making it easy.
0:23:13Then after you've done all the work, your tracked hours appear in visual time reports
0:23:19designed to keep your projects on time and within budget and you can account for all
0:23:24your time. Your projects are all separated the way you want them to be. And then it's
0:23:30easy to use those reports to see which of your clients and projects are making you the
0:23:35the most money and which are the ones that are costing you. So it really helps you to
0:23:40be a more efficient consultant, whatever you want to call it, whatever you're doing that
0:23:45you're tracking your time with. You can also even create invoices with your billable hours
0:23:51right from a harvest. So you can track your time, report your time, and then even invoice
0:23:56it all from the same system. So here's where you go to find out more. Go to getharvest.com.
0:24:02at harvest.com and use this coupon code, the talk show, all one word, and you'll get a
0:24:1030 day free trial and you'll save 50% on your first month.
0:24:15So use the code, the talk show, 30 day free trial, 50% off your first month.
0:24:20All right, what else we got next week?
0:24:25Obvious stuff.
0:24:26Now here's the stuff that's no surprise.
0:24:27in broad strokes new version of iOS gonna be called iOS 9 and new version of
0:24:33OS 10 10.11 right so what's the OS 10 name you got last year you know what's
0:24:39your take this huh you know what so I mean in the spirit of openness I will
0:24:45tell you Yosemite was a complete guess on my part honest to God nobody's nobody
0:24:51from Apple nobody ever said I you know hey it's called Yosemite it did make a
0:24:56lot of sense. Well my thought was Mavericks gave away that they're the type
0:25:02of place they're looking for like a nature you know big scenic type thing I
0:25:07knew that it was going to be the version that has the big UI overhaul which at
0:25:14least you know in marketing terms means it's a big OS update sure because it
0:25:19looks new and so Yosemite to me was the it's the big obvious one sort of like
0:25:25with the cat names the way that like lion was a big one that they were waiting for tiger was you
0:25:30know tiger and lion were the two big ones yep so I just guessed Yosemite I have no idea this year
0:25:37because I really I don't I'm not even that familiar with with California's you know natural park
0:25:42system or or beaches so I know guests this year okay hmm you have a guess sir maybe Big Sur or
0:25:53or see LCAP, that's like a part of Yosemite, right?
0:25:56I'm not too caught up in the geography either.
0:25:58- Yeah, I think it is.
0:26:00- Right, and so this update from what I'm hearing
0:26:05is not gonna be a huge update functionality wise
0:26:08or user interface wise.
0:26:10So maybe going with OS 10 LCAP kind of like build off
0:26:14that Yosemite name could make sense.
0:26:16- Ooh, that's a good guess.
0:26:18I've heard the same thing and it's not just,
0:26:20I know you've reported this, but I've heard
0:26:22And especially, and we should definitely talk,
0:26:25we can tie this in together, but.
0:26:27- Sure.
0:26:28- I think you've, I don't wanna put words in your mouth,
0:26:31but I think you've reported that in both cases,
0:26:34with both OSs, there's more of a emphasis on
0:26:38cleaning up the edge cases and the details
0:26:43and bug fixes and refinements, you know.
0:26:46Not quite as drastic maybe as Snow Leopard was,
0:26:49but that sort of OS update.
0:26:51But I think it's def, from what I've heard,
0:26:53that's more the case with OS X than with iOS.
0:26:58- Yep, I heard the exact same thing.
0:27:00So on iOS, it's kind of like meeting in the middle maybe
0:27:04with a snow leopard and like a standard annual upgrade.
0:27:07So they're really focusing on making sure it works well
0:27:11through the QA processes and performance and efficiency wise
0:27:15but also adding new features.
0:27:17But on OS X, the only user facing new feature
0:27:20I've heard about is control center hmm interesting I don't I actually don't know of anything
0:27:27yeah I don't know of anything and I only know about control center because of you and there's
0:27:33like a lot of little things that they'll have on OS 10 like we talked about San Francisco
0:27:38for the font have you heard that as well by the way I have okay and I've spoken to people
0:27:45who've seen it on iOS 9 I don't know of anybody who's seen it on OS 10 yeah I mean
0:27:50I'm sure you can speak to this too, but it's not the exact same San Francisco as on the
0:27:55Apple Watch.
0:27:56It's kind of a little bit more curved.
0:27:58Maybe like the activity app that is on the iPhone right now?
0:28:02Well, I don't know the details of exactly what changes they made, but I am absolutely
0:28:07positively convinced that it's not the same digitized version that's on the watch.
0:28:14Because if you ran that hack that came out last year that let you...
0:28:20I don't think anybody, I don't know, I don't have a jailbroken device, so I couldn't try
0:28:23it on iOS 9.
0:28:24But I know on OS 10, there was a thing on GitHub, you download the version of the font
0:28:28from Apple with a developer account, you run a little script, and it makes a version of
0:28:33the font that if you put it in system library fonts, and when you reboot your Mac, it'll
0:28:38use that instead of the systems version of Helvetica, Noia.
0:28:43And it didn't look bad, but it didn't look right.
0:28:47kind of shift it off a little bit it screwed with the menu bar so yeah just
0:28:52just in terms of being like a person who's super finicky and about
0:28:58typography it just didn't have the right feel to it like it's just a feel of it
0:29:04thing not a think of it thing not there's no real way to put it in words
0:29:07and I think the reason why is that the version of San Francisco that Apple
0:29:11crafted for the watch is shockingly designed to look best at the tiny little
0:29:19sizes that you see it on the watch. Surprising right? Right which are way
0:29:24smaller than then that's what the 16 point font that you see in the menu bar
0:29:29on the Mac so that you know it's just like a lot of modern-day digital fonts
0:29:35it's you know different optical sizes have different kerning and different
0:29:39details to certain other glyphs.
0:29:41- Right, and I think you touched upon this
0:29:42in an earlier podcast.
0:29:44I think maybe it was with Dan Frum or something.
0:29:46They kind of, you said, I think it was you,
0:29:48I don't wanna put words in your mouth,
0:29:49that they're maybe partially doing this
0:29:51'cause they wanna own the whole experience,
0:29:53not have to license a font from other providers.
0:29:56- Well, they're still gonna have that font
0:29:58so they still have to license it.
0:29:59There's no way they're getting rid of Helvetica.
0:30:02But this way they have a look that can't be copied.
0:30:06- Okay, right, yeah, that's what you said.
0:30:06- You know what I mean?
0:30:07So like HTC has used Helvetica Neue for years
0:30:11in like their custom skin for Android.
0:30:15And honestly it makes their lock screen look a lot better
0:30:21than the other Android devices.
0:30:23- Yeah, absolutely, it's a good thought.
0:30:25But this will put like a similarity
0:30:27across Apple's platforms.
0:30:29It's good marketing wise.
0:30:31They did the whole revamp of the OS in 13 for iOS 7
0:30:35and last year for the Mac.
0:30:37I think changing up the font a little bit keeps everything fresh.
0:30:40Yeah, and I think that, you know, there's been other people have written about it in
0:30:46detail, but Helvetica is a it's almost hard to talk about it because it's so it's a ubiquitous
0:30:53font but it's not that perfectly suited as a UI font and a user interface font has to
0:31:02meaning the font for things like the labels on buttons, the menus,
0:31:06you know, the Chrome of the OS as opposed to the content within it.
0:31:11It's just not that great for it.
0:31:13It's not really a great font for that.
0:31:16It's not bad, and it looks better on retina screens than Lucida Grande did.
0:31:22Absolutely.
0:31:23But San Francisco does.
0:31:25It's sort of like being a little bit more industrial and a little bit more sturdy
0:31:29where it's--
0:31:30you wouldn't want to read long passages.
0:31:32I'm suspecting, for example, like when you open mail,
0:31:37you're still gonna see the contents of your messages
0:31:39in Helvetica Neue.
0:31:40It's the labels and the Chrome of the OS
0:31:43that'll be San Francisco.
0:31:44I could be wrong.
0:31:45Maybe they'll-- - Oh, really?
0:31:46- Maybe they'll go to San Francisco for content as well.
0:31:49Although I'd be really surprised
0:31:50if they did that on the Mac.
0:31:52- It's gonna be interesting to see
0:31:53if third-party developers come out with lots of updates
0:31:56to support San Francisco now,
0:31:58like there were all sorts of retina display
0:32:00and touch ID API updates over the years whenever they…
0:32:03Well, you should… it should just happen automatically because what they should be
0:32:07doing in the user interface is not specifying alvetic anoia but specifying system font.
0:32:12Right.
0:32:13Right.
0:32:14But not all developers do that.
0:32:15Right.
0:32:16Especially the custom graphics ones.
0:32:17No, but I've heard…
0:32:19I've heard the same thing.
0:32:20Yeah.
0:32:21Yeah.
0:32:22So tell me what you know about Control Center for OS X.
0:32:25So before Yosemite came out, they were like the internal builds for Apple employees.
0:32:30If you swiped on the left side of your trackpad, like the exact opposite for how you open a
0:32:34notification center, Control Center would come out and it would actually move some of
0:32:38the menu bar to the side.
0:32:40So the About This Mac, Wi-Fi controls, volume controls, I think some battery indicator things
0:32:48to access system preferences more quickly, brightness, music controls, similar to how
0:32:54it is on iOS, Bluetooth.
0:32:58Maybe they'll replicate the menu bar but not remove the menu bar so you can access it on
0:33:02either side or maybe they'll just won't ship it with control center altogether but it's
0:33:07basically what you think it would be.
0:33:09Yeah, I think that part of it is where whenever Apple comes up with something new it always
0:33:15helps me to think just take a big step back and just think well why and I one thing I
0:33:21could think of when I read that is all these tiny little icons in the menu bar have always been to
0:33:29me a bit of a hack user interface wise like the thing that makes sense in the menu bar are just
0:33:35the menus file edit view history bookmarks you can see I'm in safari right those little status things
0:33:44have never really felt at home up there and I know why they're there it's because you want them to be
0:33:51accessible quickly. Like here, quick, how do I turn my sound down? Okay, I'll go up
0:33:57there to this speaker thing and drag a menu down. But it's never really felt right to
0:34:02me, I don't know how to say it, semantically, grammatically, in terms of the user interface.
0:34:07And there was a time, I don't know if you remember this, there was a time in the early
0:34:11days of OS X where there were like, I don't remember the names, but there were two ways
0:34:15to write those menu things. And there was one that was using a private API and Apple
0:34:19used it and another using the public API and you know developers but they wanted to do
0:34:29the extra stuff the private API could do so they use that one and you know all sorts of
0:34:33ugliness ensued.
0:34:36Do you think they'll offer a way for developers to tap into control center on the Mac?
0:34:40Yeah, I do I think if they come out with it they definitely would in the same way that
0:34:45You know have with like today widgets, right?
0:34:48control
0:34:51Well, especially on the Mac
0:34:52I think they're way more likely to give developers access to new things like that on the Mac than they are on iOS
0:34:58Right because iOS control center is not it's not really touchable
0:35:02No
0:35:03But I think that they would and I think the reason that they would is I think going all the way back to Mac OS
0:35:0910.0 way back when you know when you were like two years old
0:35:14- Hold on. (laughs)
0:35:16- Thanks.
0:35:16- I don't think Apple has ever liked the idea
0:35:20of third parties putting stuff up in the menu bar,
0:35:23the little icon menus.
0:35:24Just is, you know, just like it's just a little bit gross.
0:35:28- And it kind of looks terrible too,
0:35:29just as an eyesore when they were doing
0:35:31the retina transition,
0:35:32some of those icons weren't retina yet.
0:35:34So you'd have like a retina Apple one
0:35:35and then a third party that's all pixelated.
0:35:38- Right.
0:35:38- And kind of looks gross.
0:35:39- And what's the, what is the highest profile piece
0:35:42hardware that Apple has released so far this year.
0:35:46Of course the Mark Gurman Macbook.
0:35:48The Mark Gurman Macbook.
0:35:51Guess what?
0:35:52The Mark Gurman Macbook has a very small screen.
0:35:57And those icons run up against the side of the app.
0:36:03It's very, very easy to have so many icons up there that an app with a lot of menus like
0:36:08Xcode or something like that that they run into each other.
0:36:10That's a good point.
0:36:11that yeah yeah I wonder I move it on the iPad too because on the iPad you swipe
0:36:17up for it what if they move it to the side on that as well hmm I don't think
0:36:22so I know I don't think so because I think the iPad follows the iPhone right
0:36:29a phone you know it really needs to come up from the bottom not from the side
0:36:33sure sure like I feel like with the iPad if the iPad lived in its own universe it
0:36:38wouldn't make much difference whether it was a thing from the side or a thing
0:36:41from the bottom, but because it's like,
0:36:43it's really just a big iPhone,
0:36:45it's gotta come up from the bottom.
0:36:47- Yeah.
0:36:48- I think the only things that Apple likes up there
0:36:50is the status stuff, the time, the battery,
0:36:55and the spotlight and what do you call it?
0:37:00What's the--
0:37:02- Notification center?
0:37:03- Yeah, notifications.
0:37:04- The spotlight icon being there is interesting
0:37:06because when they came out with spotlight with Tiger
0:37:10up through whatever was before Yosemite, a Mavericks,
0:37:14you would have a little pop out in the top right corner,
0:37:16but now you're clicking this magnifying glass
0:37:19in the top right corner,
0:37:20but the text field pops up in the middle of the screen.
0:37:23So that doesn't make much sense.
0:37:25- Yeah, you're actually right now that I think about it.
0:37:27- So maybe they'll get rid of that entirely
0:37:29and just tell people to do the command space bar.
0:37:32- Right, and if you're the sort of person
0:37:34who doesn't think about using a command line thing,
0:37:37then Spotlight's not for you anyway.
0:37:39- Exactly.
0:37:40- Or maybe it moves to the dock?
0:37:41- Yeah, you know, they have the icon for Spotlight
0:37:45in the file system anyways, they always have, so.
0:37:48- Right.
0:37:48- Maybe, or a quick mouse at the corner,
0:37:51hot shortcut or something.
0:37:53- Yeah, I don't know, that's a good point.
0:37:55Yeah, I haven't heard anything else about OS X.
0:38:00I think that there probably has gotta be a few things.
0:38:05You know, I do expect, I just think that there's gotta be
0:38:08few things but I do think that it's a lot more like a snow leopard style release.
0:38:13Yeah absolutely I mean I heard there's a big focus on security with this new
0:38:17feature called rootless which sort of blocks the file system from being as
0:38:22accessible as it is now. The finder won't go away people will still be able to get
0:38:27into the file system but like the root directories and such will be will be
0:38:31hidden. Yeah that's a good it's an interesting feature and that's in to my
0:38:36knowledge it's entirely a German scoop and you know everything I've ever seen
0:38:41about it ultimately it's somewhere at the bottom of the article says as first
0:38:47reported by Mark German and under five mark yeah it might be more of an iOS
0:38:50thing because it was designed initially to sort of break jail breaks in the
0:38:55future from people people being able to tap deep into the system but there's
0:38:59some ways to apply it to the Mac as well hmm yeah I can see it and I think it
0:39:04It ties into, obviously you first think of it
0:39:09as a security feature, but I think Apple more and more
0:39:14sees security and privacy as being intertwined.
0:39:18And it's the sort of doubling down on features like this
0:39:23has as much to do with their stance on privacy
0:39:29as it does on any sort of just the general principle
0:39:32that you want your OS to be secure.
0:39:34- Right, and it also goes back to the big picture stuff
0:39:37of a bigger quality stability focus,
0:39:39not letting people tap into the core parts of the system
0:39:43will likely keep the OS stabler overall.
0:39:46- Yeah.
0:39:47- The privacy thing is a good point
0:39:49because there's been a lot of talk about a Siri API.
0:39:53And I know, and I'm sure you heard this as well,
0:39:56that at some point they were considering a full-fledged way
0:39:59for developers to tap into Siri.
0:40:01- Yes.
0:40:01but from what I understand, they keep holding back on that
0:40:05because they're concerned about the privacy implications.
0:40:07So let's say you give a command to Siri
0:40:10and you're trying to tap into Yelp,
0:40:12but what if Siri misinterprets what you said
0:40:15and sends your data to another app, a Google app,
0:40:19or a Shazam or something like that?
0:40:22So they're concerned that Siri might send data
0:40:24the wrong place because it misinterprets what you said.
0:40:27- Yeah, I can see that.
0:40:29- That's an interesting thing.
0:40:30Or I just, off the top of my head,
0:40:33that if they opened it up to third parties,
0:40:35even if they made it, and I suspect that they would,
0:40:43I suspect that a Mac,
0:40:45well, on iOS, it would definitely,
0:40:50everything goes through the App Store.
0:40:53But even if they did it on a Mac,
0:40:54which doesn't really have proper Siri yet anyway,
0:40:57But if they did, I would see them as doing it
0:41:00only for Mac App Store apps,
0:41:02because I think they would want to approve the apps
0:41:05because they wouldn't want it used in any context
0:41:08where what you might be saying to Siri
0:41:10is stuff that Apple does not want going to their servers,
0:41:13for whatever reason.
0:41:14I'm not, you know--
0:41:15- No, that makes a lot of sense, yeah.
0:41:17- Read into that what you will,
0:41:18but I don't think that they want you saying,
0:41:21they don't want you, even some,
0:41:22I'm not even, there's porno or pirating movies,
0:41:27Or something like that any sorts of stuff that they might not want to be involved with but even something like that
0:41:31That on the surface is on the up and up like a medical records app. They're not gonna want you
0:41:36But on the other hand, I guess they still allow it for dictation and that stuff still round trips to the server
0:41:42So, I don't know right? I don't know. All I know is that
0:41:45the the privacy thing is
0:41:49From everything I've heard is super super super
0:41:54Top priority across the company. It's legit. It's not like a marketing thing. It's no it's what they really actually focus on
0:42:01You can't say that for everything they do, but this is this is a real this is a real concern for them
0:42:07I do think they will do something not a full-fledged your API
0:42:10But that deep linking app indexing feature that Google announced a couple weeks ago. I think that's gonna
0:42:17Be an iOS 9
0:42:19It's under the codename breadcrumbs which kind of is like leading a trail of your app to be able to be
0:42:24Indexed by Siri in spotlight. So something a little smaller scale. Hmm
0:42:29Yeah, I could see that and it sure would be good if you could
0:42:34You know
0:42:37like if you use
0:42:39Things, you know and that you could say hey Siri tell things to add blah blah blah to my
0:42:48Next up list right have that parse correctly and I know things maybe is a bad example because I know things like a bunch of
0:42:56To-do apps can integrate with your system-wide reminders list just to get stuff into your inbox
0:43:02But there's no way to do like a custom
0:43:04Just it only makes sense in the context of this app Siri input, right?
0:43:09And they kind of hacked it like I know and I use things in their settings
0:43:12They they talk about like reminders plus Siri integrating that with things so they recognize that I think
0:43:18apps as well have right and you know there's just all sorts of apps where
0:43:22we're Siri specific input like if Siri could be as smart about a third-party
0:43:27app as it is about some of the built-in stuff it would be great right well hold
0:43:35on and then let's talk about what's coming that's the up next remind me
0:43:38we'll talk about what what we think is coming up or what you know is coming up
0:43:41next in iOS 9 but let me take a second break here and thank our next sponsor
0:43:47These guys were here last week. They're back again our good friends at mail route ma. Il ro you te
0:43:55Here's their pitch, you know who should be handling your email email nerds who do nothing but email
0:44:02These guys and mail route that's all they do
0:44:06They created the first cloud-based email filtering solution and then they sold it to Microsoft now. They're back with mail route
0:44:12They've been there for a couple of years
0:44:14And it's such a simple
0:44:17beautiful pitch it's just
0:44:20super effective spam and virus filtering for your own
0:44:25Email that you host yourself
0:44:28so
0:44:29Imagine a world with no spam. No viruses. No bounce mail. That's what it's like with mail route. They don't host your email
0:44:35You have your own domain you run your own mail server or you have you know
0:44:40You go to somebody like fast mail or something like that where you have
0:44:43Email that's under your own control
0:44:45What you do, but you have your own domain name
0:44:47What you do is you point your MX records at mail route and then your mail goes through their filters first
0:44:54And then whatever passes through their filters goes on to your mail server
0:44:58Just a little front end just like think of it as like a screen in the window in
0:45:02Between the outside world and your mail server and it can make a tremendous
0:45:09Tremendous difference in the amount of spam that gets they're super accurate on both sides super low for false positives super low false negatives
0:45:17I don't even know how they do it. I don't know how their their spam filtering is as accurate as this
0:45:21They have a great feature. So everybody every every email account in under your control can get a
0:45:29Quarantine report on a regular basis and what that means is you get an email from mail route in your inbox
0:45:37that would just say here's the emails that we were sort of like maybe on and
0:45:42You can look through that list and instead of looking through like five thousand. I've got I've got an email address over here
0:45:48I swear to God and it's not on a in front of mail route
0:45:51Although I should I just don't use this domain that much anymore has over five thousand spams in the inbox right now
0:45:56I know that they're all almost all spam
0:45:58It's an address that I've used like just for ordering stuff online in the past
0:46:04Mail route can filter all that crap out
0:46:06But then you can get a report this quarantine report and it'll say here's seven that we were like a maybe on like these aren't
0:46:13We're not really sure
0:46:14Eyeball that list if you see one that actually wasn't spam
0:46:17You're like two clicks away from whitelisting that and then it'll never get flagged again
0:46:22But that way you don't have to go through all
0:46:245,000 emails that they did flag a spam and look for the false positives. They give you this quarantine list. That is great
0:46:30It just it just gives you the ones that they were like maybe on
0:46:33on. And there's very few of those. Super easy to set up, super reliable. And because you're
0:46:39just redirecting your MX record to go to mail route first, then onto your server, it's so
0:46:45easy to try. And if you don't like it, although I can't imagine why that would be, I've never
0:46:49heard of anybody who's tried it and not stuck with it because it's so accurate. But if that's
0:46:53the case, all you have to do is change your MX record back. You don't have to change your
0:46:59email settings on your phone and on your laptop and on your thing. You don't have to copy
0:47:03copy your mail from these big, huge gigabyte archives of your old mail from one server
0:47:09to another. You're just changing your MX records. It's super, super easy. If you're an IT pro,
0:47:15they've got all sorts of APIs and tools that anything you'd want to do if you're an email
0:47:20admin. Super, super advanced. But if you just want to hook it up and have it filter out
0:47:24all the junk, it's so easy to do. They've got all sorts of other stuff. LDAP and Active
0:47:29directory, TLS, mail bagging, I don't even know what that is, outbound relay, anything
0:47:35you want from people handling your mail, mail route handles it.
0:47:38They've got great customer support, really, really great.
0:47:41So here's what you do.
0:47:42Go to mailroute.net, mailroute.net/tts, tts for the talk show, and you'll get a free trial
0:47:52and then when you sign up to pay, you get 10% off for the lifetime of your account,
0:47:58My thanks to MailRout. Great service. Do you get spam?
0:48:04Me? All the time. Probably like a hundred of them a day.
0:48:10Sometimes I think about email. It's like, can you even imagine anybody setting up a
0:48:15new service today where it was like you have a public address and anybody else on the entire
0:48:20internet can just send stuff to you?
0:48:24crazy. I mean, I hardly read email seriously anymore. I go through it every morning when I
0:48:28wake up on my phone and I'm basically selecting all most of the time, looking out for names I
0:48:35recognize or important domains and such, but otherwise it's spam.
0:48:39Pete: Yeah, it's so crazy. John Siracusa and Merlin Mann have a new podcast and they were
0:48:45talking about, Siracusa was talking about being in college in the 90s. He was a little bit younger
0:48:50than me, but at his college to get on the internet before they had it and even like,
0:48:54you know, like ethernet connections in the dorm rooms, he'd go to the lab and there were these
0:48:57VT100 terminals. So do you ever see those? Really, it was just, you know, what you think of the
0:49:02terminal app? It was a computer that that's all it was, was a terminal.
0:49:05Yeah, sure. Those didn't have email.
0:49:07Well, you'd log in though, and then you'd get your email. You'd get your mail on, you know,
0:49:12using like Elm or Pine or one of those apps. But the fact was like that, and I remember this,
0:49:18It was the same way at Drexel where I went where the terminals themselves were
0:49:21world-writeable. So, if you knew the terminal name next to you, you could just write characters to
0:49:27the screen of that terminal. Oh, wow. And, you know, so it was a great way to prank people in
0:49:33the lab because the assumption was it's like the entire early internet was sort of like built on
0:49:39academic rules. Like, why would anybody do that? This is, you know, we're all in this together
0:49:44sort of thinking. Yeah, it's kind of like iCloud but vintage. Right, it's sort of like, you know,
0:49:51it's just was crazy and email is like this bizarre holdover from that system. Yeah, it's amazing to
0:49:59me that Apple isn't playing in that email space. You see Dropbox trying it, Facebook with their
0:50:05messaging and all that and iCloud email in the mail apps on iOS and OS 10 or it's basically
0:50:14just like how email was handled five ten years ago.
0:50:17I really think that if anyone would to you know come in here and innovate in some way
0:50:22in the email space it could be Apple but here they are doing nothing at least publicly.
0:50:27Yeah that's interesting I never really thought about that but presumably in the same way
0:50:32that anybody who can iMessage each other if they came out with their own Apple specific
0:50:38Apple to Apple email 2.0 type thing you know just as many people who can get blue bubbles
0:50:45with each other and iMessage could send you know some kind of new email type thing to
0:50:51each other.
0:50:52Or maybe they'll just you know beef up iMessage and try to make email go away.
0:50:56Yeah I almost feel like that would be the way that they would go.
0:50:59Yeah, probably because they just it would be easier for them to put it all in one or
0:51:04maybe not easier. That seems like the more Apple way. Yeah, like Mail's legacy and iMessage
0:51:09is the new thing.
0:51:10Yeah, I wonder how much I wonder how much of their communication takes place on iMessage
0:51:16internally now because I know that used to be they you know probably still are but I
0:51:21know they used to be an incredibly email-reliant company that they didn't really have any kind
0:51:27of complex, I don't know what you would call it, internet-style messaging type thing that
0:51:34you know most communication within the company took place by email.
0:51:36Yeah, they probably use Slack these days like everyone else.
0:51:40Well, they definitely have some teams on Slack because remember when there was that, there
0:51:46was a thing where you could type in a domain name and see how many people, you know, how
0:51:57many Slack teams were registered for that domain.
0:52:02And it was, the idea was Slack added the feature to make it easy for you to connect, you know,
0:52:08like if, I think it was like you would type in like @9to5mac.com and then it would like
0:52:15helped you know trying to help you it would be like ah here's the teams for your organization
0:52:20which one do you want to join but that meant though that you could just take a guess and
0:52:23type in at microsoft.com and it would like tell you here's all the teams from your company that
0:52:28are in slack oh wow i wish i knew that probably could have figured out they had a car team yeah
0:52:34i want no i don't think i don't think there was anything i don't recall anything yeah i don't
0:52:38think there was anything that uh was telling i think they were kind of smart about it but it
0:52:43Yeah, I'm just kidding. I'll try to look it up for the show notes. That's a big
0:52:47I can't believe slack even thought that would be a even half good idea to launch something like that publicly
0:52:51Well, you know what though? It's exactly like
0:52:54It's that it is you're right and I'm sure that they were slapping themselves on the forehead over it
0:53:00But it's like when you are a good person and you're just trying to help somebody it is right
0:53:05It's so easy to overlook the you know
0:53:09What if you're a jerk?
0:53:12Right, right that somebody wrote an article a while ago that everybody needs like a like a chief jerk officer
0:53:19Who looks at everything and just says okay, but what if I'm a jerk right? Right? That's a good point. Yeah
0:53:26So iOS 9 yeah, here's where there's a lot more action going on, right? So what do we know?
0:53:37We know San Francisco, right? We know that user interface wise besides the font. It's gonna look pretty much the same
0:53:44I heard some new splash of colors color changes on some icons some user interface elements
0:53:50But if you didn't know the difference between Helvetica and San Francisco, you'd think would be iOS 8
0:53:56What else do you know
0:54:00We know about maps maps is getting a big upgrade. So transit finally
0:54:06They wanted that out the door last year and I guess they're ready now, but it's only going
0:54:12to be in a handful of cities.
0:54:13So San Francisco, New York, Toronto, London, Berlin, Paris, and then they want Boston and
0:54:23Tokyo by the end of the year.
0:54:25Also they're going to have China launch sort of a small scale roll out.
0:54:29But at least they're starting.
0:54:31The funny thing though about hitting those cities is that yes, it sounds like a short list of cities and it's you know
0:54:39Clearly they are behind Google on this regard because Google has transit information all over the world
0:54:43but if you can get like the top ten cities you
0:54:47You hit an enormous number of the people who need the transit information because they're so population dense
0:54:53Right, and I think they're gonna move quickly on this because I know that this new version is gonna have a notification system
0:55:00That you can be alerted when transit arrives in your city
0:55:04So they're planning on updating this frequently over the year and they have a whole road map of where they want to hit
0:55:09What times in the future right like the big thing is having transit is it the architecture for transit in general?
0:55:16iOS and then after that they can do over-the-air updates, you know
0:55:21IOS 9.1 or even 9.0 - or something like that and it adds, you know new cities around right or even over the air without us
0:55:30software update just through the backend infrastructure right maybe yeah I
0:55:34wouldn't be surprised if that's the case right but I mean if you were to say
0:55:37three cities in North America that if you can only hit three I think they got
0:55:41those three which ones would you say New York or maybe Chicago yeah but you're
0:55:48thinking it Los Angeles what were you thinking you know Los Angeles because
0:55:51when I asked whoever I was talking to their Los Angeles is actually extremely
0:55:56and surprisingly low on the list of where they want to hit. But Los Angeles is a driving city,
0:56:02anyway. Right. That's exactly why I put Chicago above it. Yeah, I didn't even think of Chicago.
0:56:07But they got Toronto, San Francisco, New York, and maybe Chicago later. We'll see.
0:56:12Yeah. And I know Boston has a great infrastructure for it. Like, Philadelphia is a weird city for it.
0:56:19I know that there's some information. Our public transportation organization is called SEPTA,
0:56:24Southeast Pennsylvania Transportation Authority. But I think that there's really behind a lot of
0:56:32the other cities. Like when I was visiting friends in Boston last year, like you could,
0:56:37it says like, "Hey, your bus is coming in 45 seconds." And like, "Your bus is coming in 45
0:56:41seconds." Maybe that's why Boston's not ready because they want to integrate that functionality.
0:56:47Yeah, I don't know. I don't know why Boston, maybe, I think maybe it's still that goes by
0:56:52population though I mean I don't know I know they really wanted Boston it just wasn't ready yeah
0:56:57no I don't know and you know I think all these APIs are different you know and all the different
0:57:02or you know I I've from what I've read about it that there's no like unifying standard
0:57:07and that one of the reasons that Google has had a years long lead at this is that Google
0:57:14this is the sort of thing Google is good at and if every single city reports this transportation
0:57:19information in a different way. Google's really good at saying that's okay, we'll make sense of it.
0:57:23Jared
0:57:26Yeah.
0:57:26Pete: Even if it's not like uniform. I would guess that Apple could take, if they only did two cities,
0:57:30San Francisco and New York, it would hit an awful lot of the usage.
0:57:34Jared Right. And the entirety of China.
0:57:36Pete Right.
0:57:37Jared That's a big one there.
0:57:38Pete Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I would guess China, it might even be more important. I think China,
0:57:46that the number of people who take public transportation has got to be insane.
0:57:49Yeah, but the interesting thing about China is that there's some legal government monopoly
0:57:55on Alibaba who owns AutoNavi. So Apple is not allowed to do their own transit data collection
0:58:02in China. So they've actually struck a deal with Alibaba to get the data from them for China.
0:58:09Hmm. I wonder what the difference will be.
0:58:11Yeah, I don't know. Probably reliability.
0:58:14- Yeah. Anything else for maps?
0:58:19- Yeah, so those vans that they've been driving around
0:58:23are for a few things.
0:58:24One, they're redoing their entire base map,
0:58:26the geography fundamentals of the map app,
0:58:29and they're wanting to launch that by 2017 or 18.
0:58:33So the trucks are doing verification on that data,
0:58:37but they're also taking pictures of storefronts.
0:58:40So a lot of people thought these were street view cameras,
0:58:43like what Google does and they do collect data like that
0:58:46for 3D stuff that they're gonna do in the future.
0:58:48But the more short term thing is taking pictures
0:58:51of like a Chipotle or a storefront for an office
0:58:55to replace Yelp.
0:58:56So right now, when you go into a place in the Maps app,
0:59:00let's say you go to a restaurant,
0:59:01it'll show you a picture of a menu item at the top
0:59:04taken by someone who uploaded it to Yelp.
0:59:07And a lot of times those pictures are very poor quality.
0:59:10So Apple stepping back and saying,
0:59:12"Hey, we wanna do this ourselves."
0:59:14So they're taking stills of storefronts.
0:59:16And the plan was to start ruling that out with iOS 9,
0:59:20but it's more of a long-term initiative,
0:59:21so it might not be ready yet.
0:59:24And there's also a Browse Around Me feature.
0:59:27So let's say you're standing on a street
0:59:29and you wanna see a curated list of great places
0:59:33to go around you.
0:59:35So it's kinda like the app around me
0:59:38and it'll show you like a list of the best cafes,
0:59:40the best whatever around you best cell phone store and they've also been testing that with
0:59:47an augmented reality view so you can wave your phone around and see through the phone's
0:59:53camera lens the stuff around you kind of like Yelp tested a feature like this a few years
0:59:56ago and Google had something like this not sure if that's ready but those are some things
1:00:01they've been testing.
1:00:03Very interesting I do think with some of the mapping stuff it's understandable that they're
1:00:09still behind Google just because Google had a lead and I do think that they've
1:00:15sort of that they're roughly keeping pace like I don't think they're I my
1:00:20gut feeling is that they're closer than they were I mean when when Apple Maps
1:00:24debuted it infamously it was you know one of the worst received product
1:00:29rollouts in recent memory from Apple I think since then even if you don't count
1:00:36That first version even if you fast forward a year
1:00:39I still think that in the time since then they've caught up more to Google than Google has
1:00:44Pulled further ahead and I think that's just the way it is when you're behind that's fair. Yeah
1:00:48Here's my problem with that. My problem is that only now they're starting their own data collection to release
1:00:55more reliable version
1:00:58three four years from now
1:00:59Instead of going to Tom Tom and those other data sources back whenever they started this project in 2010 2011
1:01:06before the fall 2012 launch, instead of going to them,
1:01:09why didn't Apple start their own data collection process
1:01:13at the very beginning?
1:01:14That's what I don't get.
1:01:15- Yeah, and I would broaden it a little bit
1:01:17and just say that, and again,
1:01:19I do think that they've gotten better.
1:01:20I use Apple Maps, and I know with Topolski on his show,
1:01:23he just, he like laughed at me and said,
1:01:25"Nobody uses Apple Maps."
1:01:26But that's not true.
1:01:27If you look at the stats, like iPhone users
1:01:29overwhelmingly use Apple Maps.
1:01:31It's, you know, they use it. - Yeah, I use it.
1:01:33- They use it way more than Google Maps.
1:01:34And I've had some really good experiences with it.
1:01:37But the thing that gets me is it seems like
1:01:39some of the stuff that they've done,
1:01:40it could be expressed as that they've cheaped out.
1:01:43Like why not just, like you said,
1:01:46why not start collecting the money?
1:01:47Like some of this is just sort of a manpower issue.
1:01:50Like Google Street View is a pretty cool feature,
1:01:55but among many things that Google does,
1:01:57it to me is like, it's not the most technically impressive.
1:02:00To me, it's like manpower impressive
1:02:03They've sent so many cars out with so many teams to take so many pictures
1:02:09All around the world. It's just like
1:02:12It's like how many companies have the resources to do that?
1:02:16Well, guess what Apple is a company that you know
1:02:18It's it to me seems like a problem that you can solve by throwing money at it
1:02:21Absolutely, and who has more money than Apple should have started throwing money at this a bit longer ago and the the
1:02:29And again, I whenever this comes up on the show
1:02:32I always preface it by saying it is so much easier to spend somebody else's money than your own
1:02:36So every time I advocate Apple spending money. Yes, I understand
1:02:40And that the way that you build a massive war chest of money like they have is by not spending money frivolously
1:02:47But that said why not buy every map being company with decent
1:02:55You know why not buy as many of them as they can or at least more than they have why not buy TomTom?
1:03:00Whatever it costs because surely whatever it would cost would be affordable to Apple
1:03:04Right. I mean, I know they looked at more than they that they bought they looked at Foursquare for sure
1:03:10Yeah, they looked at they looked at Yelp or a deeper partnership with Yelp
1:03:14But I guess they felt they could do it better than their own better on their own
1:03:18And what's the point of buying TomTom if you can have a cheaper partnership with them anyways, I?
1:03:24Guess but on the other I don't know it just in the back of my head. It just seems to me like that they
1:03:29Yes, there's engineering problems
1:03:32but that some of the stuff with maps could have been accelerated by throwing money at it and
1:03:38Again, one thing is just putting manpower out there, you know and having more
1:03:42You know more of these teams with these
1:03:45Goofy looking bands covered with cameras out in the street, right? What they seem to be doing with these acquisitions is buying
1:03:52maps related technology and
1:03:55Resource and science companies from that instead of buying a data company. So Tom Tom's data companies
1:04:02So is four square and Yelp, but they bought all those transit apps who came up with like trip planning features and all that
1:04:08They bought spot setter which didn't provide data
1:04:12But it sort of aggregated points of interest what they'll be using for that other mass feature we talked about
1:04:16So they're sort of buying the means to build the data themselves
1:04:20Right, and they bought the company that had the thing that they use for the 3d view right c3 technologies
1:04:27Right, and I think that at the time that they're there live, you know
1:04:32it took Apple's acquisition of them for them to really beef up the
1:04:35amount of
1:04:37Imaging that they had but it was so is it? Yes, they had some but it was mostly a technology acquisition not a data acquisition
1:04:44Well, they bought c3
1:04:45Before the maps came out
1:04:48So they bought C3 in 2011 right now in 2012, but I guess it wouldn't have been as good without them, right?
1:04:55I don't remember during like the beta period for iOS 6
1:04:58They stripped all the 3d from one of the betas and then the next release
1:05:03All the 3d stuff came back and it was ten times better than it was before soon
1:05:07No, I don't remember that something probably fixed in the middle there
1:05:11I do remember that it was a major part of four stalls demo of it when he unveiled it
1:05:16Right at the iPhone 5 event and the WWDC right? Yeah, that was also his fault. So yeah
1:05:23Maybe a little bit. Well, you know, I might have been the straw that broke the camel's back is one way to look at it
1:05:31Sure. I think that even if maps I suspect though my hunches in the alternate universe where maps had a
1:05:37Let's say lukewarm response because I think that was the best they were gonna do
1:05:43There was no way that they were gonna it's just not feasible to come out of the gate with a with a
1:05:48Complete peer to Google Maps, but they had to make the switch because of contract reasons that they just couldn't they
1:05:56Were they did not want to give Google another year and what Google was asking for them?
1:06:02You know was more than they wanted to give and they wanted things like turn-by-turn directions
1:06:07So they needed to just rip the band-aid off and do it even if it had been a better launch like hey
1:06:11This is about as good as we could have done the first time I still think forest all would have been gone when he was
1:06:15Gone. Oh, yeah, I agree
1:06:17But I think that you know, it didn't help. I don't think it helped anybody. No
1:06:23What else in Mac, oh or not Mac OS iOS 9
1:06:30iOS 9 so we talked about San Francisco
1:06:34transit
1:06:36Oh
1:06:37- Oh, the proactive stuff.
1:06:39So last year's big term was continuity, right?
1:06:42- Right.
1:06:43- This year, the big term,
1:06:44now I don't know if this expands marketing-wise,
1:06:46but internally, something called proactive,
1:06:49and that Maps Browse Around Me features one component,
1:06:52but another component,
1:06:53now I don't know if this is 100% a lock for next week,
1:06:56but they have been working on this with the intention,
1:07:00back whenever they were working on this, for iOS 9,
1:07:02so I just wanna preface by saying that,
1:07:04but it's an entirely new spotlight.
1:07:07And instead of pulling down on the home screen,
1:07:10you swipe to the right to open the new screen on the left,
1:07:14kind of like how you open Spotlight pre-iOS 7.
1:07:17- Yeah, when I read this on your site,
1:07:19I misread it at first, and I didn't get it,
1:07:22and now I get it.
1:07:22It's sort of like, to me, it's like home screen zero.
1:07:26Like if you count your first home screen as home screen one,
1:07:28now there's one at position zero to the left.
1:07:31- Right, and I called it a layer in my story,
1:07:33and that probably was not a good way to reference it.
1:07:37Probably better would have been the first home screen.
1:07:40But it's part of the OS and at the top
1:07:43there's like the spotlight search bar that you have now.
1:07:47But beneath that is a bunch of timely functionality
1:07:50similar to Google Now.
1:07:51So your next calendar appointments,
1:07:54if you have an appointment at the airport,
1:07:56you're going on a flight,
1:07:57the passport card for the airline ticket could appear.
1:08:00If I call you John every day at 5.30 p.m.,
1:08:04a bubble could pop up saying it's time to call John.
1:08:07Or if it's 1 p.m. and it's lunchtime,
1:08:10another bubble with local restaurants
1:08:13around my location could pop up.
1:08:15So stuff of that nature.
1:08:17- Right, but that's where you'll go
1:08:19if you know that you want to launch this app
1:08:22and you don't know which home screen it's on.
1:08:23Instead of doing the pull down thing,
1:08:25you go over there to home screen zero
1:08:26and start typing the name of the app.
1:08:28Right?
1:08:30So, yep, there's that too, but there also will be,
1:08:34yeah, it's kind of like when you type in
1:08:37like a search term now, it'll show you like Wikipedia
1:08:40or other stuff like that.
1:08:42So if you were to type in, you know,
1:08:45like call or food or calendar or whatever,
1:08:47those relevant search results could pop up
1:08:49or they could just be there waiting for you.
1:08:51It's to be seen what they do.
1:08:52But it's a big emphasis on redoing Spotlight
1:08:55for more contextual features.
1:08:57- Yeah, I forget if we've talked about,
1:08:59I think I was with Renee last week
1:09:00where we talked about this,
1:09:01but the one reason that, to me, it makes a lot of sense
1:09:03is that just from a basic,
1:09:07I don't even know what you wanna call it,
1:09:11just a common sense user interface design thing,
1:09:13the way it is now and the way it has been since iOS 7
1:09:17doesn't make a lot of sense to me
1:09:19because if you pull down from the edge,
1:09:21you get Notification Center in Today View,
1:09:25but if you pull down in the middle,
1:09:27then you get the Spotlight Search.
1:09:28And to me, that pull down from two different places
1:09:32and you get two entirely different things
1:09:34is it's just a bad idea.
1:09:37- Oh yeah, yeah, for sure.
1:09:38- Right, so give it its own side
1:09:40and then all of a sudden to me it makes a lot more sense.
1:09:42- Right, and with the new functionality.
1:09:44So I think that if this does indeed launch next week,
1:09:47it will be the highlight of iOS 9.
1:09:50- Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised
1:09:51and that would be a good place too where,
1:09:54who knows if they have any new partnerships
1:09:56to announce from other third parties
1:10:00that could sneak into those results.
1:10:03- Right, have you seen the app Q
1:10:05that Apple acquired a couple years ago?
1:10:07- Only I think through your report.
1:10:11But it's spelled like Eddie's last name, C-U-E.
1:10:15- That's why he bought it, he wanted the domain name.
1:10:17(laughing)
1:10:19- Well, you have to clarify though that it's not Q-U-E-U-E.
1:10:22- Right, right, right.
1:10:25CUE, maybe they bought it for trademark purposes too.
1:10:28- So what's the Q app?
1:10:30- The Q app is basically a list of things in your day
1:10:35based on your calendar.
1:10:36So basically what I explained, kind of like Google Now.
1:10:39So you have a Facebook event coming up
1:10:41or a calendar event that you're going on a flight
1:10:43or you want to pull up the airline ticket
1:10:45or restaurants, cafes, or offices,
1:10:48or stores around you type of deal.
1:10:51Also local events or let's say in my calendar
1:10:55I have podcasts with John at 1.30 p.m.
1:10:59Around 1.30 p.m., I'll get a bubble
1:11:02saying podcasts with John.
1:11:04It'll show me your contact and phone number
1:11:07and maybe emails related to it as well.
1:11:10It's very contact app, email, and maps oriented.
1:11:13- Yeah.
1:11:14That sounds right to me and it's, you know, let's face it,
1:11:20a lot of this stuff is it's no surprise
1:11:24that iOS and Android are sort of coalescing around the same ideas.
1:11:30And I think in terms of UI niceness, iOS was way out ahead.
1:11:37And in terms of this sort of context about your life sensibility, Google was obviously
1:11:48ahead and is ahead.
1:11:50And so they're both playing catch up in each other's areas.
1:11:52So it's no surprise to me that,
1:11:55and I didn't even make hay about it.
1:11:56I pointed it out, but to me it's no surprise
1:11:58that the new copy and paste UI in Android M
1:12:03is really, it's just their version
1:12:05of the iOS copy and paste system.
1:12:07They tried their own thing with these inscrutable icons
1:12:10at the top of the thing,
1:12:11as opposed to putting it right above the selection.
1:12:14I think maybe they were trying to do the noble thing
1:12:16and come up with their own UI.
1:12:18And you know what?
1:12:20Bottom line is lo these five six years since iOS had copy and paste later. It's pretty clear
1:12:25this is the way to do it on a touchscreen and now they're doing it and I
1:12:28think that this sort of look your phone should know if you have a flight and
1:12:34Ideally, it should know if traffic is bad between where you are right now and the airport where you're going
1:12:41Well, you know that stuff will be there right like this is not super advanced AI like you, you know, you're in
1:12:48Centers, you know me I'm in Center City, Philadelphia. I have a flight today at five
1:12:53That leaves from the Philadelphia Airport well
1:12:58it's not that hard for like the phone to figure out that at some point I'm gonna need to leave where I am and get
1:13:04to the airport and
1:13:05It can check the map and say wow traffic is really bad. You should leave earlier than you think
1:13:10And they've been building up to this for the last few years
1:13:14Anyways with some of that data that you can see the places you go to often and all that
1:13:19Well, I think this ties into another bit of news this week, which is Tim Cook's speech at this epic
1:13:25EPIC dinner where where you know depending on you want to put it sort of a scathing critique of
1:13:31Without naming them I'd say Google and Facebook and the fact that they sell targeted ads based on what they know about you
1:13:40and
1:13:42You know, it's got a lot of coverage. I think deservedly so I think it's definitely an interesting issue
1:13:47I think it's one that that you know
1:13:49Whatever even if you're all in on the Google platform that you want to be aware of
1:13:54I do think I think Ben Thompson had a good piece
1:13:58It's behind his paywall for subscribers
1:14:00But he had a good piece that I would summarize like this that if Tim Cook's being disingenuous
1:14:04it is in
1:14:07The way that he's phrasing it and I think it's a sort of very astute point from from Ben which is
1:14:13that cook is saying that they're selling your information to advertisers and
1:14:19They're not actually what they're doing is promising advertisers that their ads will go to the people who are interested
1:14:28But they're not giving that information to the advertisers
1:14:31So an advertiser who pays for the targeted ad doesn't know a goddamn thing about Mark Herman
1:14:36Right? It's because that information is what enables them to sell the ads.
1:14:42They're actually, they do collect information about you.
1:14:45They do use that information to make money from advertising,
1:14:48but they're not giving that information to advertisers
1:14:51because it's that information that they have that is so valuable
1:14:56that if anything, they might be more motivated
1:14:58to keep your stuff private than Apple is
1:15:01because it's the fact that nobody else knows as much about you
1:15:05that's Facebook and/or Google in the different ways
1:15:08that they know stuff about you that makes them so valuable.
1:15:11It's actually an interesting point.
1:15:12But on the flip side, and where this ties in
1:15:14with what you and I have just been talking about,
1:15:16is I think some people are overlooking the fact
1:15:20that because Apple doesn't collect this stuff
1:15:23for the purpose of selling you targeted ads,
1:15:25that they're not even in the ballgame
1:15:27of this context-sensitive stuff.
1:15:30And I don't think that, I think that they're gonna be
1:15:33very very surprised by the next year or two from Apple. Yeah this is a differentiator here I agree
1:15:39is that it's all about the data that Apple already has with from you on the phone and maybe this will
1:15:44be on the Mac too. They're not really opening this up to third-party developers as much as they could
1:15:49if they wanted to not care about privacy as much as they do. I'll re-tell an anecdote I told to
1:15:57Topolski on his show earlier this week because I think it's so telling and it's an early example
1:16:01of this sort of thing. But back in April, early April, I had an appointment with my accountant.
1:16:08I live in Center City, Philadelphia. My accountant is out in the suburbs. I've been going to him for
1:16:13years. I know how to get there. But I was testing the Apple Watch. It was the first week. It was
1:16:17actually the week in between when I got the review unit and when the review was due. And I don't
1:16:21drive that much. I thought, well, here's the one. Here's a chance to try out driving directions.
1:16:26I'll let the watch give me driving directions there, even though I don't really need them.
1:16:31And it worked great, but then halfway there, it told me to get off the – we call it the
1:16:38Schuylkill Expressway. It's the main artery west out of Philadelphia. And it told me to get off
1:16:45and go a way that I never would have driven. I thought, "Well, I'll listen to Siri. Let's see
1:16:51see what happens. And as I took the exit, I looked ahead and I could see that it had
1:16:56taken me off an exit and traffic was at a standstill ahead. And I was like, "Hmm."
1:17:03And it took me this weird way through North Philadelphia that I never would have gone,
1:17:08I've never driven there in my life. And I ended up getting to my accountant maybe 10
1:17:13minutes later than I normally would have given when I left. But I was still early, I was
1:17:18on time and I checked on the news and on the maps and a tractor trailer had overturned
1:17:23on this Google Expressway and if I had just stayed on this Google, I never would have
1:17:27made the appointment. And it actually was kind of a big deal because like rescheduling
1:17:31an appointment with your accountant in early April is like you're asking a huge favor because
1:17:38Yeah, not easy.
1:17:39… pretty much he's already booked 14 hours a day. I was kind of blown away. It's very,
1:17:44very clear to me that the turn-by-turn driving directions I got from Siri took the traffic
1:17:49into consideration and gave me a bizarre, to me a bizarre plan B or route B until I
1:17:55found out that there is this traffic. And I think little things like that are the sort
1:17:59of things that people, I think a lot of people think Apple isn't doing at all and that's
1:18:04why they, you know, they think Google has a leg up in these regards.
1:18:07Right. So you think they need a better pronounce that they're doing this?
1:18:12Yeah, and you know, I think it's gonna sneak up on it might you know
1:18:15It might be the sort of thing that they never get credit for it because they might never completely catch up to Google
1:18:19But they're right. They'll keep pace and then these things are gonna get better, but there's no doubt that this is the future
1:18:25this is like the next few years of
1:18:27Like the whole ballgame, right?
1:18:30So maybe like this new spotlight screen will show
1:18:33Maybe leave a few minutes early because there is a car fire here and there. Yeah or something like that
1:18:39you know and I wonder how that ties into Siri too like this new spotlight screen yeah um Siri it's a
1:18:47compliment it's not a replacement or really anything like that it's more of a works with
1:18:53Siri type of thing right so it's I wouldn't call it a textual view of Siri and more so
1:18:58call it a compliment I think is a good way to do it but some of it's already tied in like when you
1:19:04do you know like and some of it's just product marketing what do they call what
1:19:09it what do they call Siri exactly right see like I honestly when I was writing
1:19:13this report I didn't have insight into how they're gonna market it because I
1:19:17don't even know if they settled on all that by the time this story was written
1:19:21but they could very well kill the name spotlight not username proactive and
1:19:26call all this stuff Siri like the new Siri screen on the home screen yeah or
1:19:31they could just keep this as, I mean I think they're just going to keep this as Spotlight,
1:19:35there's this whole thing called Spotlight. So what if they even integrate this onto the Mac
1:19:39too? I mean some of the stuff wouldn't make sense, but maybe a better view for appointments and such.
1:19:44Yeah, because some of the stuff definitely involves some of the same partners, you know,
1:19:49where the auto-fill results in Safari come from some of the same partners that they have for Siri.
1:19:58That's yeah, and that's the same deal. It's all it's all one back-end type of deal here the spotlight the new proactive stuff and the
1:20:05Results in Safari and a lot of this is really to try to tackle Google and reduce reliance on them
1:20:11Eventually, you know, it's very hard to just wake up one day and decide to drop Google search from your platform
1:20:17But year over year they're adding features that kind of reduce the reliance on Google
1:20:22Kind of teaching the consumer that Google is not necessary
1:20:26So last year they took some steps with the new spotlight with the Wikipedia results and all that and some news articles this year
1:20:33They'll have this next year. Maybe they'll have something else maybe a year two or three after that
1:20:38Everyone will be like there's no point for Google search and it'll be easy to go away. I've noticed and it's subtle
1:20:44And I use duck duck go a lot too, but on I don't even know why I don't really have a strategy for it
1:20:52But like on my Mac I have my default search for the search field in Safari
1:20:56it said to duck duck go and I have had it set for months and
1:20:59I've tried it on and off ever since they made it an option and at some point it was it got to be good enough
1:21:05Where it stuck?
1:21:07On the phone. I still have Google as my default search
1:21:10I I don't know why but I've noticed that even on the phone how many times the top result is
1:21:15Yes, that's what I'm looking for. And then I noticed that it's not going through Google. It's the
1:21:21Safari suggestion which is backed by Google that they're more or less it's
1:21:28like their version of I feel lucky right except you get to pre absolutely you get
1:21:32to preview it before you actually tap it and I I've noticed on the phone that
1:21:36it's it's exactly what I want an awful lot of time which right and there's a
1:21:41big emphasis right and there's also a big emphasis part of this proactive
1:21:44thing to improve that because right now it's not a hundred percent of the time
1:21:49that you'll get a Wikipedia result or a news article. The news article thing for a search term might only fire
1:21:5425% of the time. So they're working on improving the AI so you can get more quick results like you said more frequently.
1:22:02Let me take a break here and thank our third sponsor and it is our good friends at Squarespace. You guys know Squarespace.
1:22:09It's the all-in-one
1:22:10hosting website building platform.
1:22:13You need a website, you go to Squarespace and they got it all. Everything.
1:22:18You can register your domain name, your hosting is taken care of.
1:22:23They have all sorts of templates you choose from visually through drag and drop.
1:22:28You want to get in there, you want to mess with the code, you can mess with the code, you can do it all.
1:22:32But it's all there and the framework is there.
1:22:35And it's the difference between starting, like if you're building an app, starting with a framework like Coco or Coco Touch,
1:22:43or just starting with like a blank text file
1:22:48and building an app from scratch.
1:22:50That's the difference.
1:22:51That's what Squarespace is like.
1:22:52It's like a framework for websites.
1:22:54And you can use it to build almost any sort of website
1:22:58you can imagine.
1:22:59You wanna build a store?
1:23:00They've got it.
1:23:01They've got templates for that.
1:23:03They've got all of the commerce stuff
1:23:07built right into the platform.
1:23:08You don't have to pay extra
1:23:09to get an e-commerce enabled account.
1:23:11That's just built in to a regular Squarespace account.
1:23:14So if you have stuff to sell, you can sell it.
1:23:16You wanna set up a podcast, they've got that.
1:23:18You can set up a podcast right there in Squarespace.
1:23:21They've even got podcast-specific stuff
1:23:23like the audio player, analytics and stuff like that.
1:23:28Their analytics for any kind of website
1:23:31are absolutely drop-dead gorgeous.
1:23:33I just linked to a guy this week who,
1:23:35after I linked to his blog, which I didn't even know,
1:23:38but it happened to be hosted at Squarespace
1:23:41and it just sounds self-serving,
1:23:44but he went from serving a couple hundred hits a month
1:23:47to serving a couple thousand in a day
1:23:48because I linked to him from Daring Fireball.
1:23:50Well, A, his Squarespace blog held up perfectly.
1:23:53He didn't even notice it.
1:23:54It took a friend to text him that I had mentioned it.
1:23:57Your site doesn't go down
1:23:58if you suddenly get a lot of traffic.
1:24:00But then he posted these screenshots of his analytics,
1:24:03and they're gorgeous, just drop-dead gorgeous analytics.
1:24:07Just looks like something from Edward Tuff.
1:24:10Really, really great.
1:24:12Everything you need, all there in one platform.
1:24:15If you don't have any kind of coding skill, that's okay.
1:24:20You can go from signing up to having your completely
1:24:24launched and perfect looking website all in one.
1:24:26If you do have coding skill, there's all sorts of places
1:24:29where you can get in there and customize it
1:24:31to your heart's content.
1:24:32Here's the thing, I just don't even get this.
1:24:34Doesn't make any sense to me.
1:24:36All of this starts at just eight bucks a month and if you sign up for a year in advance you
1:24:42get a free domain name.
1:24:44I don't know how they provide all this.
1:24:46They've got great support 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.
1:24:51You just get on there and you can open up a chat with customer support agents.
1:24:57The way they do it to get it 24/7 is they have some in New York, some over in Ireland
1:25:01and some out in Portland I think.
1:25:04So that it spreads it all around the world, different time zones.
1:25:08If you have a website that you want to make, if you have a website you already have that
1:25:11you're not happy with the way it's hosted, give them a try.
1:25:14You get a free trial, no credit card required.
1:25:17Just go to squarespace.com and when you sign up to pay, here's the new code, Gruber, my
1:25:22last name, G-R-U-B-E-R, and you get 10% off.
1:25:26Use that code, my last name, Gruber, and you'll save 10% off.
1:25:30So go there, sign up for your free account, a free trial, and go try Squarespace.
1:25:37Can't recommend them highly enough.
1:25:40So iOS 9, we were talking about Proactive.
1:25:42That doesn't sound like a name that they would use.
1:25:44I don't know though.
1:25:45No, especially with the acne cream with the same name.
1:25:48Maybe it's just an internal thing.
1:25:50Yeah, you never know though.
1:25:52It's very hard to predict the product marketing stuff and it tends to be the tightest kept
1:25:56secret. Partly because they can just change it at the last minute.
1:26:00Right, right. Alright, what else is on the agenda for iOS 9?
1:26:05iOS 9, some minor things are on the edges. So they've been testing a new feature for
1:26:12iMessage where you can set read receipts per contact. So if I want messages sent to you
1:26:19for you to know that if they've been read, that's fine. But if I don't want my parents
1:26:24to see that I've read their messages can turn that off.
1:26:28Right, that makes a lot of sense.
1:26:31That also makes me think that they're using it a lot internally.
1:26:34Yeah, perhaps.
1:26:36Also this is maybe to your point about internal usage, they're also testing read receipts
1:26:41for group chats so you can see who in a chat has read each message.
1:26:47Yeah, that makes sense too, same thing.
1:26:50Yeah, same, probably the same infrastructural deal there.
1:26:54Yeah
1:26:56Forced touch support obviously they won't announce that on Monday, but right means that the success will have forced touch
1:27:02I'm sure there'll be a developer API for that as well
1:27:06Yeah, but I wonder and I wonder if that's the sort of thing that will I'm guessing no but it's you know
1:27:15Obviously they're not going to talk about it, right?
1:27:17But will it be in the beta builds? Will it will be people be able to look at it?
1:27:22My guess is no.
1:27:23I think they're--
1:27:24- I'm sure someone will find it hidden deep down.
1:27:27Trying to think, oh, on the HomeKit app.
1:27:31So a new app, at least they were planning this,
1:27:34now that they have HomeKit accessories on the market,
1:27:37which just happened to come out this past week,
1:27:39you'll be able to set up, install, organize
1:27:42through virtual rooms your HomeKit setups.
1:27:44So that's an interesting app.
1:27:48They have Home, and then HomeKit, Health, HealthKit,
1:27:51and all that.
1:27:53- I wonder how much HomeKit stuff
1:27:56they're gonna have to announce next week.
1:27:58- Yeah.
1:27:59- 'Cause that's another one where the word
1:28:01that I'd understood was that it was sort of tied
1:28:05to that new Apple TV, that the Apple TV would be the hub
1:28:09for that sort of thing.
1:28:10- Oh, right, right.
1:28:12Yeah, I did hear that as well.
1:28:14- And if they don't have the Apple TV,
1:28:18I don't know what that means for HomeKit,
1:28:19Even though they're already out, you know, publicly with the first HomeKit products are,
1:28:23you know, shipping imminently and stuff like that.
1:28:27It'll be interesting to see.
1:28:29Also on the iPad, it sounds like split screen apps are finally ready.
1:28:33Yeah, I saw that and I'm curious that that's not like a thing that they held for new hardware
1:28:38and that they might announce it next week.
1:28:40Oh, they may be holding it for new hardware.
1:28:43But you're saying it's definitely in the OS.
1:28:47Right.
1:28:48So they might not announce it.
1:28:49It might not be in the betas, but they're working on it with the OS. Another thing is
1:28:53multi users on the iPad
1:28:56That for sure isn't ready for 9.0, but they are working on that too. So maybe do you know it?
1:29:03Is it true multi-user support like like if if let's say somebody and their spouse both share an iPad and that they could
1:29:11You know person a can use it and then when they put it down
1:29:17their spouse can pick it up and switch and then it'll like, you know do something and then it's
1:29:22Completely the other person's iPad or is it just like a guest account? No, no, no
1:29:28No, it's true multi-user on a Mac with different home directories and all that. Of course the user can't see home directories on iOS
1:29:35But in terms of the infrastructure and the fundamentals of it, it's just like on the Mac from what I understand
1:29:41hmm
1:29:43All right, let's see if I still got a little game left. All right, what about this? Have you heard anything about?
1:29:48in iOS
1:29:51Getting a dedicated iCloud Drive app
1:29:54Yes that there was a dedicated iCloud Drive app
1:29:58But I'm not sure if that's internal only or if it's gonna be released the last person I talked to
1:30:06Said they didn't see an iCloud Drive app on the iOS 9 build they were using
1:30:10So maybe it's an app store download,
1:30:13you activate it in settings,
1:30:14but for sure they have one in usage internally
1:30:18and able to be used and ready to go.
1:30:20In fact, I'm surprised they didn't have
1:30:22an iCloud drive app released with iCloud drive last year.
1:30:26But I wouldn't be surprised by an iCloud drive app at all.
1:30:29- Right, which should probably be the closest
1:30:31that iOS is ever gonna get to having a finder.
1:30:34- Yeah, I'd agree on that.
1:30:36- Right, instead of access to the file system,
1:30:39you get the access to this abstract file system,
1:30:42which isn't really the file system, it's you know, like--
1:30:45- Dropbox.
1:30:47- Right, sort of, or like in the Finder,
1:30:51if you were just limited to the iCloud Drive
1:30:54source list item.
1:30:55- Right, it'll be interesting to see,
1:30:57I mean even thinking about myself,
1:30:58right now I use Dropbox.
1:31:00If they had a full-fledged iOS app,
1:31:02I'd absolutely consider switching to iCloud Drive.
1:31:06- Yeah, because why duplicate it?
1:31:09- Right, now let me tell you why I think
1:31:11that you could be right on this iCloud Drive app,
1:31:13if you were implying that you had heard this.
1:31:15They are kind of gonna be pushing iCloud Drive
1:31:20more as a service, as in right now,
1:31:23the Notes app and the Calendar app and all that,
1:31:27it uses an IMAP infrastructure through iCloud
1:31:30for syncing what your device is,
1:31:32but what they're wanting to do is remove that,
1:31:34in turn notes and calendar and reminders
1:31:37into what they're calling iCloud Drive apps.
1:31:40So when you launch notes on iOS 9 or OS 10, 10.11,
1:31:45it'll say, would you like to transition your data
1:31:48over to iCloud Drive?
1:31:50Now iCloud Drive, obviously they have more control over it.
1:31:52It's more secure, it goes back to the privacy
1:31:54and security stuff we talked about.
1:31:56And also it's probably quicker than IMAP syncing.
1:31:59- So I think it's gotta be,
1:32:01if it's not quicker than IMAP,
1:32:02then they've got a real problem.
1:32:03Because IMAP is not a quick syncing protocol.
1:32:07Right.
1:32:08So there could be a big iCloud drive portion then there.
1:32:11Yeah.
1:32:12And it's interesting and it's always hard to migrate.
1:32:15Right.
1:32:16Because I can see why that when you launch it they ask because it's a big deal.
1:32:22Right.
1:32:23But the thing is now, and Notes is the one near and dear to my heart as part of the developers
1:32:28behind Vesper, I know just how bad IMAP is as a note-syncing protocol. They've done what
1:32:36I think is the noble thing and allowed you for years to pick any of your IMAP accounts
1:32:41to be one of—it's an option with every IMAP account you set up. Do you want notes to use
1:32:46this too? Then they set up a secret mailbox called Notes, and it's actually a mailbox
1:32:52on your mail account that Apple Mail is smart enough not to show you, but the notes are
1:32:57overall IMAP messages and it's behind the scenes it's really a mess because IMAP was
1:33:01never meant to do that. Messages aren't meant to be read/write. Some email systems get screwed
1:33:06up and as anybody who's ever had anything to do with email development or APIs knows
1:33:13IMAP server A and IMAP server B never speak quite the same dialect of IMAP. So notes is
1:33:19trying to you know like a like a babble fish type thing and treat all these I map things
1:33:27as equivalent back ends when they're not right so I guess this serves to fix all that and
1:33:32it could be a bigger deal than what would yeah it should it if you switch I would switch
1:33:38immediately yeah you know and it should make anything that you switch that way what else
1:33:42is it besides notes would it I heard notes is the big one that that that's the one that
1:33:49they really focused on but assuming that they're wanting to get this across the board as a
1:33:56service, notes, reminders, contacts and calendars would all be part of it.
1:34:03What does reminders use now?
1:34:04Is reminders IMAP based?
1:34:06I think it is.
1:34:07I'm not 100% sure.
1:34:08I don't know or even if it's not, it's probably not using iCloud Drive which is…
1:34:13Right.
1:34:14It's like a directional shift to positioning iCloud Drive as the service for storing all
1:34:18this data now. Maybe some more developer enhancements to that as well.
1:34:23The other benefit to this is it's always good when Apple is dogfooding its own iCloud stuff
1:34:31because it means that any kind of bugs or even if it's not a bug, even if it's like,
1:34:38"Well, when you do this, it's actually kind of slow," makes it way more likely that it's
1:34:42going to get a higher priority to be addressed because, quite frankly, Apple cares more about
1:34:48their own stuff and then they do everybody else's.
1:34:50- Right, another big thing, I don't know if this
1:34:52interests most consumers, but big changes to Swift.
1:34:57So, you know, right now, this is not very well known,
1:35:00everyone hears the term Swift, Swift is Apple's new thing,
1:35:03but as you probably know, iOS is not written in Swift,
1:35:07the Apple's native apps, they're not Swift apps,
1:35:10they're still on Objective-C, because Swift is still
1:35:13in its early stages, but I believe that on Monday,
1:35:17they're gonna announce that Swift is moving into stage two,
1:35:20that it's meeting a new level of stability
1:35:23where Apple's actually gonna pre-install
1:35:25the Swift programming libraries into iOS 9
1:35:29so developers could write Swift apps
1:35:31and not have to include the Swift libraries
1:35:33in each of their binaries,
1:35:35which means that the OS will make app downloads
1:35:39for new iOS 9 apps about 10 megabytes smaller
1:35:42or eight megabytes smaller on average.
1:35:44And let's say you have 10, you know, Swift apps
1:35:48on your iOS 8 phone, that's about 80 megabytes back,
1:35:51which is great for people on smaller storage sizes.
1:35:55And then next year with iOS 10 and 10.12,
1:36:00they're hoping to hit like 3.0
1:36:02and ship their own apps written in Swift.
1:36:04So that's gonna be a major transition next year
1:36:06if they stick to that pace.
1:36:08- If they hit that, that's actually, you know,
1:36:11for anybody who's not a programmer
1:36:13and doesn't understand just how deep Apple's roots
1:36:15with Objective-C goes.
1:36:16If they started shipping Apple first-party apps
1:36:20written in Swift in 2016, that's startlingly fast.
1:36:25Really, really, really would be.
1:36:28I think even last year, everybody was blown away
1:36:31by the announcement of Swift and the keynote.
1:36:33Even then, though, I think most people's best case scenario
1:36:36was three or four years out.
1:36:37- Yeah, I guess the plan could change, but.
1:36:40- Yeah, no, I've heard the same thing
1:36:42about the libraries being built into the OS.
1:36:45And I think that there's two explanations for that.
1:36:49And I could be, I think I'm right on both parts.
1:36:52But I think one of them is that Swift was developed
1:36:55in secret and very few people knew about it
1:36:58before the keynote last year inside Apple.
1:37:01And so therefore there was no way that,
1:37:04no matter how stable it was when it debuted,
1:37:06there's no way that it was gonna make it into iOS 8.
1:37:10- Right.
1:37:11And number two, it wasn't that stable.
1:37:12It's a fast moving target.
1:37:14They said so, they did not over promise.
1:37:18They said, hey, some of this stuff is gonna change.
1:37:20We're showing it to you now because we want it to change
1:37:22based on the feedback we get from you guys outside.
1:37:26And so because it was changing so fast,
1:37:29I don't know that it was even feasible
1:37:31to include the libraries in the OS
1:37:33because if your app was compiled against
1:37:37earlier version of Swift from around September and mine was compiled with a newer version
1:37:44of Swift like the version 1.2 I think which came out in February. We need different libraries
1:37:50anyway and so yeah you're exactly right though that every single Swift app written to date
1:37:55includes the Swift libraries you know in the app bundle. Right. It definitely adds up over
1:38:02I mean when you're on cellular, right? Yeah, that's another big thing there. So
1:38:07Part of the same quality stability overall low-level improvements type of thing as well. Yeah, I definitely think so. Yeah, I
1:38:17Don't know. You never know. I mean who knows what the hell's gonna be in the keynote and anything that I mean
1:38:22All I know is iOS 9 and OS 10
1:38:24but I wouldn't be surprised if Swift made the keynote again and did not wasn't just relegated to the
1:38:30afternoon state of the platform's second keynote.
1:38:33Right. We'll see. Maybe they'll throw something up on that last slide they always do with the
1:38:38very small changes, smaller app downloads or something for Swift apps.
1:38:43Yeah, maybe. That's certainly one way to make it compelling. Who knows? And the Swift team was
1:38:49very secretive last year. And even though the public changes, there have been plenty of them
1:38:53in the year since it's come out. Who knows what other secret stuff they've been working on in
1:38:57in terms of performance or something like that.
1:39:00I mean, again, and it's so hard to say,
1:39:02'cause I know the conference is WWDC,
1:39:04and so ostensibly the whole conference is about developers,
1:39:07but let's face it, the Monday keynote
1:39:09is really a mass market Apple keynote.
1:39:12- Yeah, I mean, they're streaming it on their website,
1:39:14the whole Apple Music thing.
1:39:16- This, again, purely, completely pulled out of my ass,
1:39:19but it's just in terms of knowing
1:39:21what some of the weak spots in Swift currently are.
1:39:24I know that debugging is a real weak spot.
1:39:26It has nothing like the apparatus that Objective-C has for debugging.
1:39:31So if they added awesome, amazing leaps ahead of Objective-C debugging, again, this might
1:39:40make the general press who are there watching the keynote be like, "I don't know what that
1:39:45means."
1:39:46But it's going to make the developers and the audience go nuts.
1:39:48They did a pretty good job with that last year of trying to spin the developer-oriented
1:39:53announcements through consumer focus.
1:39:55So like when they had the whole developer portion of the keynote, they really focused
1:39:59on high level stuff such as like the Touch ID API.
1:40:03Media could understand that.
1:40:05But in like the cool graphics they showed with the Swift demo.
1:40:09So what else with iOS 9?
1:40:10New keyboard, better legacy device port.
1:40:15What have you heard about that?
1:40:16Now that's something that I guess you've reported on that they're targeting A5 devices.
1:40:22Right.
1:40:23So when they traditionally created a new iOS update, they would test all the features and
1:40:29all the devices they wanted to support and then pick apart features that didn't work
1:40:34well on the older hardware.
1:40:35And that's kind of why older iPhones got bloated and stale and sluggish.
1:40:40This year they're targeting at least the iPhone 4S and iPad mini specifically, to instead
1:40:47of throwing all the features on those from iOS 9 and then picking it apart, they're adding
1:40:52features one by one on top of the OS so on those older devices it should still
1:40:59be much faster than even iOS 8 so I'd go as far as to say is iOS 9 will make
1:41:05iPad minis iPhone 4s on older OS's even faster so that sounds like common sense
1:41:14like it just sounds like well duh but I there's no doubt if that's true that is
1:41:21is a seriously different strategy that they've pursued
1:41:25and in my opinion, extremely welcome.
1:41:29I mean, for me personally, it's irrelevant
1:41:30'cause I'm an idiot and I buy a new iPhone every year.
1:41:33But as an observer of the company and as somebody who,
1:41:37I always try to stay out of it,
1:41:40like when family members are like,
1:41:41well, should I get a new iPhone or what computer server?
1:41:43And I try to be like, ask somebody else.
1:41:46Because I feel like it's like you break it, you bought it.
1:41:48Like you tell them to buy a MacBook Air
1:41:50and then you're on the hook for all the tech support
1:41:52going forward.
1:41:53- Exactly.
1:41:54- But I hear it, you know what I mean?
1:41:54It's like, I don't know, I don't know,
1:41:56what do you say to somebody who is like,
1:41:58you know, like somebody in your family who's like,
1:42:02I don't know, my iPhone said it had an update
1:42:04and I said okay, and then 10 minutes later
1:42:07and now my iPhone is slow.
1:42:08And it's like, well that sucks.
1:42:11- They're gonna need to spend some time
1:42:12changing the narrative on that.
1:42:13Because even the people who don't follow Apple closely,
1:42:16there is this narrative going around
1:42:18like the mass market that iPhone updates screw with your phone. People don't want to update
1:42:23and so I think with this WWDC they're going to have to step back and really promote the new
1:42:29US as being a big quality and performance leap and I think that's exactly what they're going to do.
1:42:33Yeah and I think that that's one of those things where Apple gets and and it's this the the recent
1:42:40you know, thawing in the post-Katy Cotton PR apple, you know, and the sort of, you know,
1:42:49maybe you wouldn't call them open, but they're opener than they were, that they're sort of
1:42:55trying to get past that, which is that in the past it was very easy to mistake their complete
1:43:03and utter silence for ambivalence. Whereas they might care very deeply about something,
1:43:10but they're still not going to say anything. And you can't, how can you tell from the outside?
1:43:13And I think that that's one, this might be one of those things where they've been, they're
1:43:19aware of the criticism, they're aware of the problem, not just the criticism, but they're
1:43:23aware that it's a legitimate problem and now they're doing something about it.
1:43:26Right. And they were of course aware of this before, you know, it was written about. Like
1:43:31I know you were one of the first people to really highlight the the bugs right earlier this year in iOS 8
1:43:36You know some talking about that, but you know of course
1:43:39Engineers have been pushing for a step back like this for a while, but you know Apple's really governed by marketing right so
1:43:47No, well and perception you know right?
1:43:50While we're on that subject what about this whole crazy discovery do you think?
1:44:00Have you heard anything about that?
1:44:03Jared: Yeah.
1:44:04Uh, yes, I did hear something about that.
1:44:07The backstory, but I don't remember what I was told.
1:44:12Something about it being a mistake that wasn't the plan initially.
1:44:17I don't know, I have to go back and look, but I know that they knew this was a problem
1:44:21and they wanted to fix it.
1:44:22What have you heard while I try to think about this?
1:44:25Well, I rehashing a little bit from last week's show with Renee, but it's what I've heard is that
1:44:31it's become a whipping boy internally and as it is a it is a bad piece of software at the moment now
1:44:39that doesn't mean it's unfixable. It just means it shouldn't have shipped when it did. It should not
1:44:43have replaced MDNS responder yet. And the assumption that so many people had on the outside
1:44:49was that, okay, clearly this piece of software, Discovery-D, is buggy. But they must have
1:44:56shipped it because these continuity features must have depended on it. And these continuity
1:45:02features were a tent pole, so they had to ship Discovery-D when they did Ready or Not.
1:45:06And then it turns out that the third party people, the hacker crowd who figured out,
1:45:12If you put in mDNS responder from Mac OS 10.8 or 10.9
1:45:20and
1:45:23disabled discovery D everything still works and
1:45:25the bugs from discovery D go away and your printer doesn't disappear after a week and your Apple TV doesn't get renamed Apple TV 3
1:45:32And again, like I said to Renee, I would never recommend that that I'm too old for that
1:45:36That's the sort of you know, following advice like that is the sort of stuff
1:45:38That's a young man's game in my opinion, but it turns out with the the latest, you know
1:45:45That's exactly what Apple has done now for you know in a more official format and with more rigorous
1:45:50You know QA and stuff like that
1:45:51But more or less they've just taken out and which raises the question of how to if it wasn't needed for those continuity features
1:45:57How how did discovery D get through in the first place? So yeah, I just remembered
1:46:01Similar to what you said
1:46:04What I heard was that the guy in charge of the mDNS
1:46:09responder left Apple or retired or was moved off the project and then the airport hardware team and the airport utility
1:46:16software team somehow
1:46:19Inherited that whole infrastructure and they made the change because they weren't under great direction
1:46:24And then when stuff hit the fan about that earlier this year, then they realized they had to change it back with
1:46:31The software right and I again, I don't know anything about the internals of MDNS responder and discovery D
1:46:37But I can imagine though that maybe MDNS maybe there's like a theory that MDNS responder is old code. It's been there forever
1:46:44Maybe I don't know who knows maybe it even dates back to the next era
1:46:47And it's built up over time and is therefore sort of an ugly ugly
1:46:52But it works type thing and that discovery D was hey, let's start all over and make something beautiful and modern and elegant
1:47:01And, you know, a lot of times those things that sound like a good idea that involve let's
1:47:06start over or not, and turn out not being good ideas.
1:47:10That's my guess as to what happened is that somebody looked at MDNS responders code and
1:47:14thought this is a mess, it's too big, it's convoluted, we can replace this with something
1:47:20smaller and more elegant.
1:47:21And if it had worked, it would have been a great idea and the problem is that it didn't.
1:47:27But I have heard though that internally though that it became a whipping boy and took on,
1:47:32internally was deemed as being largely responsible for this whole, hey, Yosemite is an unstable
1:47:39release of the OS.
1:47:42And that instead internally it was chalked up to, it's not Yosemite's problem, it's
1:47:46Discovery D's problem.
1:47:48And that politically, you know, you don't really want to be the guy in charge of Discovery
1:47:51D right now.
1:47:52(laughs)
1:47:54Yeah, we'll see if they come out on stage and--
1:47:57- It's funny because we're not him.
1:48:00- Right, exactly.
1:48:01We wouldn't be laughing.
1:48:04- All right, let me take one last break.
1:48:06I have one more sponsor to thank
1:48:07and it is our good friends,
1:48:10really good friends of the show at Igloo.
1:48:12You guys know Igloo.
1:48:14They make the internet that you will actually like.
1:48:17You sign up for Igloo, you get an intranet,
1:48:20private intranet for your team
1:48:22and you can do things like share news,
1:48:23organize your files, share files, coordinate calendars,
1:48:28manage projects and to-dos, that sort of thing,
1:48:32all in one place.
1:48:33You can set up little micro blogs
1:48:34so you can have like the equivalent of Twitter,
1:48:37but just for your internal team.
1:48:40We're a great little place
1:48:41where you can have a little chronological thing,
1:48:43just like tweets where you share links,
1:48:44little comments, stuff like that.
1:48:47Their latest upgrade, they call it Viking,
1:48:49revolves around documents and how you interact with them.
1:48:53They really beefed up the ability to share documents,
1:48:56gather feedback, make changes.
1:48:58They've even added the ability,
1:49:00speaking of read receipts for iMessage,
1:49:02Igloo has read receipts now for documents that you've shared.
1:49:06So if there's a document that certain people on your team
1:49:09absolutely have to see or have to sign off on,
1:49:11they've got the ability now.
1:49:12You can mark it where you'll receive a read receipt
1:49:14from the critical people on the team who have to see it.
1:49:18It's just like read receipts for email or iMessage or something like that.
1:49:21Not annoying because it's your own private team.
1:49:23You're not getting them from everybody external.
1:49:25It's just a little thing for your team.
1:49:28If your company, if your company or team has a legacy internet, something that you're using
1:49:33that looks like it was built in the 90s, and if you have an internet, it almost certainly
1:49:36was something like SharePoint or something like that that probably was built in the 90s,
1:49:41you should give Igloo a try.
1:49:45Here's what you do.
1:49:46Go to their software.
1:49:47their website igloosoftware.com/the-talk-show. Igloosoftware.com/the-talk-show. You'll get
1:49:57a free trial and if your team is 10 people or under, you can just use it for free indefinitely.
1:50:03Just use it for free. That's it. And then if you have more than 10 people, their prices
1:50:07are amazingly low per person over 10. So go to igloosoftware.com. If you have a team,
1:50:13need to coordinate all the stuff that teams need to do go there check them out
1:50:18my thanks to them great friends of the show lots and lots of readers have
1:50:21signed up for this and have written to say just how much they love it though so
1:50:25that my thanks to igloo all right what else we got before we sign off for the
1:50:30for the episode new keyboard but I don't know much about that what do you what
1:50:35have you heard I don't know anything about it nothing not a call you how to
1:50:39just change yeah hopefully just a fixed shift key that's their fixed shift key yeah yeah it's it's
1:50:46funny but like the the dns guy or discovery d guy it's not funny for them they did fix it a little
1:50:55bit i find that the whatever they did when they made it go white i guess they fixed it and they
1:50:59broke it they fixed it again yeah i still don't know why they don't just make it blue yeah like
1:51:06Like the blue to me, like I just don't get that
1:51:09because to me when the arrow went blue
1:51:12when shift was engaged, it was so unambiguous
1:51:15that nobody, I never even had to think about it.
1:51:18It's like I never even, in the early years of iOS,
1:51:20it never even occurred to me that there was something
1:51:22to think about there.
1:51:23- Right, exactly.
1:51:24- Like and to me that's the hallmark of all good design
1:51:26is all good design, it took tons of good thinking
1:51:29and tons of work and prototypes to result in a thing
1:51:32that when you use it, looks like it wasn't designed at all.
1:51:35- Yeah.
1:51:35Whereas the iOS 7 shift key screamed I was designed by somebody who thought they were
1:51:46very clever.
1:51:49Now I haven't heard anything about new keyboard.
1:51:50I haven't heard that much honestly.
1:51:52I don't really know much.
1:51:55I know everything I know comes from you Mark.
1:51:57Well I'm happy to hear that.
1:51:58I hope I'm all right.
1:52:01I think you're pretty good.
1:52:02We should talk though before we go.
1:52:03talk to rap the show unless you have something else for wwdc um i mean we didn't really talk
1:52:08about the apple music stuff but that's uh pretty straightforward i guess yeah and that stuff leaks
1:52:13like a sieve because the the media companies in general are blabbermouths like the tv companies
1:52:20but the music companies are the worst the music companies it's like you can practically it's like
1:52:26eddie q isn't even out the door and they're calling people in the media to talk about the
1:52:30meeting that they just had yeah yeah or he's at a Warriors game and they're sitting right next to him
1:52:35i still i still i cannot wait to see if he's at the game sunday night yeah
1:52:42if you don't have anything else though i would just you know just briefly let's go back a couple
1:52:50months and talk about the the big feature profile you wrote i guess it was last year on apple pr
1:52:57Okay. Which was, I thought, you know, and there was, I have to admit, when you wrote it,
1:53:05there, you know, behind the scenes, you know, in my world, there, it definitely raised a lot
1:53:10of discussion. And the consensus, it was that you were half right, and a lot of it in ways that
1:53:18nobody had ever written about before, which is mainly because Apple PR doesn't want you writing
1:53:24about the way Apple PR works. And there is a little bit of you gotta play ball and you don't,
1:53:31you know, almost every interaction that I have with Apple PR is off the record, not for attribution,
1:53:38whatever you want to call it. And so therefore, writing about those machinations would therefore
1:53:44be a violation of what I've agreed to and therefore I don't write about it. I'm not hiding it, it's,
1:53:50you know, it is what it is. And if I felt otherwise, then I wouldn't agree to it in the first place.
1:53:55And a lot of the stuff that you wrote about in your piece was accurate in that way. Then there
1:54:02was a quarter of it, I would say, that was, I don't know. I don't even know what to say about it,
1:54:08because I just don't know. Could be right, could be wrong. And then there was another quarter of
1:54:12it, I would say, where I think you were wrong. So, which quarter of it? I don't remember
1:54:18specifically if we talked about it or…?
1:54:19Pete: Well, I think that your take on how they do review units was wrong.
1:54:28Jared; Okay.
1:54:28Pete; And obviously, this is a little bit self-serving. And so, you know,
1:54:33both you and anybody listening, feel free to take it, you know, with your eyes rolled or with a big
1:54:40grain of salt because obviously it's, I don't want to come across as defensive, but you can
1:54:44and obviously see how it might be.
1:54:47But not to put words in your mouth or in your piece,
1:54:49but the gist of it was that your take was that
1:54:52they cede review units to known friendly outlets.
1:54:57- That's fair to say, yeah.
1:55:00- Right.
1:55:01I don't think that's true, and in fact,
1:55:03I can think of some counter examples
1:55:05where they cede them to people who they, I think,
1:55:07know are actually sort of not friendly.
1:55:10And I would file, for example, The Verge under that.
1:55:13I wouldn't say The Verge is hostile, and I know that The Verge is under – has the most bizarre
1:55:17readership possible, where half of their readers think that they are in the bag for Apple,
1:55:23and the other half think that they're the worst anti-Apple agitators on the entire Internet.
1:55:29Pete: Right.
1:55:30Ted, in the background.
1:55:30And it's very bizarre to me. But I would say that The Verge, for example,
1:55:33and I think to placate the half that thinks that they're in the bag for Apple, that The Verge
1:55:39consistently bends over backwards to great Apple on a curve that doesn't apply to other devices and that if they
1:55:46It's been it's my and the fact though that they still have top tier access to Apple review units is
1:55:53Proved to me that they don't really
1:55:56Seed out friendly reviewers. Well, I mean my response to that now
1:56:00I don't want to say that I remember my discussions with whoever I talked to for these profiles
1:56:06However long ago this was six seven eight nine months ago, but if I remember correctly
1:56:11Apple stopped giving the virtual view units. They did there was the one
1:56:15That is true and it was so I don't think that counterexample is completely valid just to be it's it's a good point
1:56:23That's an excellent point. I forget when it was. I'm
1:56:2690% sure
1:56:29Topolsky was still there and if I believe I think it was two years ago. You should have asked him last week
1:56:35Yeah, I should have I forgot about it. I think it was two
1:56:38Two years ago that they didn't get early access to the phone
1:56:43right and then they but they did get day before access and
1:56:48So see there's different tiers, right?
1:56:51There's the right after the keynote or a couple weeks in advance
1:56:54Which I believe that you've been traditionally a part of the last few years
1:56:58all right, then there's the day before day of or a couple days before and
1:57:04Then there's the review units given after the products available. That's correct. I think that there are three tiers one
1:57:11And and to my knowledge, there's nobody
1:57:14nobody on the nobody is on a
1:57:18Pre-keynote tier even Mossberg
1:57:22Who I would think would if anybody would be it would be Mossberg and I think right?
1:57:27pogue post New York Times is I think you know, he still gets he's still on tier one, but I I
1:57:34Think everybody would agree that since he's gone to Yahoo. He's lost a bit of relevancy
1:57:38Yeah, I don't want to speak negatively
1:57:42Right. It's it's all catty and inside baseball, but it's right, you know
1:57:47Just being trying to be as honest as I can. I think Mossberg is the only one it's not like it used to be
1:57:52right it used to be that Mossberg pogue edbeg and
1:57:57Steven Levy while he was still at Newsweek that they're the four who got the iPhone and nobody else got the iPhone before the iPhone came
1:58:04out
1:58:06That there were only four reviewers who mattered and the world has changed greatly since then and Apple PR's
1:58:12Perspective on this stuff has changed greatly since then but as of right now, I think you're correct that there's three tiers post keynote
1:58:20day or two before which I think is
1:58:23Largely the reason it's like a day or two. Is that
1:58:27to my knowledge
1:58:30And again, I could be I could be wrong about certain people but I've never heard of an exception
1:58:36nobody ever gets a review unit of
1:58:38Serious hardware something that that is worth being in a keynote. There are minor things that they might ship to reviewers
1:58:45But if it's a flagship new product, the only way you can get a review unit is to have a product briefing with Apple
1:58:51sure, where they give you know, they give it to you by hand and
1:58:55Tell you in a put in a one-to-one or one-to-two, you know, whatever meeting
1:59:00You know what they think about it and what their main points are about it and therefore with an expanded
1:59:08Like I got the impression and I don't know when everybody got Apple watches
1:59:12But I got the impression that like the second tier for the Apple watch was spread over two or three days
1:59:17because I think they gave them to so many people that there was no way that they could do it all like
1:59:22two days before the watch came out like
1:59:24April 22nd some of the people got April 23rd because there just aren't that isn't that way to meet that many people with a briefing
1:59:31When did you get yours a week before?
1:59:33Yeah, like a week and a half before okay. Is that early a week and a half?
1:59:40It's normal for most products a lot of the time you could there's no
1:59:45The I don't even have to be secret I get with a watch
1:59:48I don't think I I think of the NDA I signed I can't say exactly when I got a business roughly a week and a half
1:59:53With most products. There's a keynote, right? So for example
1:59:58When the phones come out
2:00:01There's a keynote you get your review unit after the keynote in a product briefing and then the embargo is always like
2:00:10Wednesday I always I actually miss that I don't know but the products are you
2:00:14don't follow those riders you you wait till I try to I try my best mark I do
2:00:19the embargo is usually like Wednesday like like 48 hours before they go on
2:00:26sale on Friday or the pre-ordered one start shipping so like a Monday keynote
2:00:31or a Tuesday keynote with a Wednesday embargo the next day you know usually
2:00:35it's usually they're like eight or nine day periods yeah and I think that some I
2:00:39I don't even, I'd have to look at a calendar,
2:00:41but I think that the watch review units
2:00:44were eight or nine days, which felt way too short.
2:00:48It felt to me like I had the watch for two days.
2:00:51It was crazy.
2:00:52- Like I have my watch here.
2:00:53It took time to get used to it,
2:00:55to wanna wear it, to wanna use it, you know?
2:00:57So.
2:00:58- I've said before, and I'll say it again,
2:00:59hardest review I've ever written.
2:01:01And I think it stands up,
2:01:03and I'm pretty proud of what I wrote,
2:01:04but it's the pieces I wrote later in the month,
2:01:07I think are way more relevant.
2:01:09And years from now when I look back
2:01:11at what I thought of the original Apple Watch,
2:01:13it's the further pieces I wrote weeks later
2:01:17I think are more telling.
2:01:19- I think Apple did it themselves a disservice,
2:01:22waiting until that short before the launch
2:01:24to give it to their viewers,
2:01:25but maybe that has to do with the software not being ready.
2:01:29- Yeah, I really am not sure about that.
2:01:31And I wonder how much they went back and forth on that.
2:01:33And I think that they knew.
2:01:35In fact, just talking to people at Apple,
2:01:38I know that they knew that it takes time
2:01:42to really get that, you know,
2:01:44to acclimate it to your life.
2:01:48Like it really doesn't kick in
2:01:50until you stop thinking about it, honestly.
2:01:52And I know that sounds stupid, but it's, I think,
2:01:55everybody I know who has one agrees
2:01:56that it's when you stop thinking about it
2:01:59that it really starts hitting you.
2:02:01And you're like, you know what, I am walking a lot more,
2:02:04you know, and stuff like that.
2:02:06Anyway though, I, in my experience, and who knows,
2:02:10I don't think that they seed out
2:02:16known to be friendly reviewers.
2:02:19I think that they'd look for, and again,
2:02:22this is gonna sound self-serving for me,
2:02:23but I think they look in general for reviewers
2:02:26who are A, have a big following,
2:02:31and that they're gonna write, you know,
2:02:33get into tier one you have to have a certain amount of influence and so I'm weird because I
2:02:38don't have a large audience but I think that they consider the Daring Fireball audience to be
2:02:43influential. Again, this sounds terribly self-serving and I'm blushing as I say it but I
2:02:51don't like talking about myself like this but I don't think they look for a positive review. I
2:02:55think they look generally for people who are going to get it, who are getting what it is that they're
2:03:00they're going after.
2:03:01And I never get notes after I write my reviews, never.
2:03:06Not a word from them about anything.
2:03:09Honestly, I really think that they just want reviewers
2:03:15to be fair.
2:03:16That's to me the main thing that they're after.
2:03:18And the thing that makes this all so hard to judge
2:03:23is that for the last decade,
2:03:28but at least in the time that I've been doing it,
2:03:31it's been an unbelievable string of very good products.
2:03:36And I've done this occasionally.
2:03:37I've looked back at old reviews of things
2:03:39like what I wrote about, you know,
2:03:42like the Verizon iPhone or iPhone 4S and stuff like that,
2:03:49and did what I write hold up,
2:03:51or was I excited because it was new?
2:03:53And I've, so far, I have not found one
2:03:55where I felt like I missed the mark.
2:03:57And even looking at people who've been doing it longer
2:03:59than I have, like in rereading, like say,
2:04:02David Pogue's original review of the iPhone in 2007
2:04:05and stuff like that, I don't think that these reviews
2:04:08were positive just for the sake of being positive.
2:04:10I think almost all of them were spot on.
2:04:12And in fact, some of them, especially like the Mossberg ones,
2:04:17I think sometimes bend over backwards to emphasize things
2:04:20that just weren't that big a deal, like devoting time
2:04:24in a 2007 review of the iPhone to talk about
2:04:27it doesn't have a hardware keyboard like a blackberry which actually looked bad it was
2:04:31like wow here's the cons you know a blackberry has a hardware keyboard you can type faster
2:04:34on it and what about the map stuff a lot of people missed the the maps problems in their
2:04:40iphone 5 reviews i don't remember yours in particular i don't remember that either siri
2:04:46as well siri is not a great product at launch but people seem to have missed some of the
2:04:53lack of functionality or accuracy there. The iPhone 4 antenna, I mean I know that's a
2:04:59subject that we can spend another two hours on, but a lot of people miss that.
2:05:04Yeah, I think Siri's a good example. I remember with maps in particular, I think, I remember
2:05:09thinking I missed the boat on that because I don't think I said anything one way or
2:05:12the other, but part of it was that in the course of my testing, I didn't go anywhere.
2:05:16And I was at home in Philadelphia and their maps in Philadelphia as far as I did test
2:05:21them were pretty good. And it really seemed like the bigger problems with the initial
2:05:271.0 maps weren't so much in major metropolitan areas, but just about everywhere else.
2:05:32That's fair, yeah.
2:05:33And the driving turn-by-turn directions, I don't drive most days. But again, that doesn't
2:05:39necessarily – I'm not saying that that means I'm above blame. I mean, it was a – I
2:05:44would rather – my goal is always to be right, and I want my reviews to – I want my reviews
2:05:50like when people look back at them in 10 years to be like well he really nailed it and I think it's hard to say for the
2:05:56So what was that? I was six. Yes iPhone 5. Yep
2:06:01It's hard to say that a review of iPhone the iOS 6 and iPhone 5 that if it didn't mention
2:06:08Maps and the problems that it had that it's accurate in the long term
2:06:12But I don't think people avoided it trying to curry favor with Apple PR. I I don't I can't say that for everybody
2:06:18But I really don't I I've never felt pressure like that at all from from Apple, right? I
2:06:24Really don't think so. But the tell is going to be
2:06:28When the day comes that Apple releases a product that is not that good
2:06:33That's well the iPhone 5 and the Maps thing is a pretty good indicator there. But
2:06:39Yeah, but the iPhone 5 itself was actually a pretty it was a great device
2:06:43Yeah, but I mean maps was part of that Siri Siri was the iPhone 4s main feature really
2:06:50Yeah
2:06:52We'll see. We'll see
2:06:54I don't know. I just think that I just you know again
2:06:59I think it was an interesting piece and I will absolutely positively put this one in the show notes
2:07:04I'm making a note to myself right now because anybody who hasn't read it
2:07:07You certainly can go back and nobody has ever written anything like this before or since
2:07:11because I kind of get the sense that you've got a fuck it I don't care what they think attitude
2:07:17towards them. Like I don't think that you were trying to antagonize anybody with this article.
2:07:20I know not at all. This was about more so so I never had access like I mean you admit to having
2:07:29off the record conversations with them. I mean I've never had all sorts of access. This started
2:07:34as sort of a research project to understand how they operate and why they operate this way
2:07:41in order so I could better understand my work, my future work, what I've done in the past.
2:07:45But in terms of that attitude, it doesn't really stem from an attitude. It stems from not having
2:07:50anything to lose. I have no relationship to lose. I feel that my work is so much better off being
2:07:58independent, me doing what I want, how I get to spread information, not having to fear that Apple's
2:08:05maybe not going to give me a review unit or talk to me if I say something or position something or
2:08:10break something. You know, the day that I, you know, work with a company on a story and
2:08:16get it out there from their angles, the day that I don't want to do this anymore because
2:08:20I'm very happy with the way that I do my work and how I do it my way. It's not a "screw
2:08:26it" type of thing that's published this. It's more of a "that's just my mindset, how I like
2:08:31working independently."
2:08:32Pete: Yeah, my perspective on it is so weird because I never really expected that I would
2:08:38be in this position because when I started during Fireball, it was 2002 and it was before
2:08:47the Apple stuff was even that big of a deal, right?
2:08:51Like iPods came out at little miniature events in town hall and stuff like that.
2:08:57And then the iPhone came out and it was so big and such a huge deal, but they were reviewing
2:09:02it.
2:09:03Like I said, only went to four people.
2:09:07I'd built this whole thing up and turned it into you know something that I could call a career and
2:09:12it was successful all without any of that and in all the ways that it was successful before I had
2:09:18any kind of you know access to apple pr uh it's still the same way so like if I stopped getting
2:09:27I've said this you know uh you know like Jim Dowell and I have talked about it like I never have any
2:09:32assumption that I'm getting any future and I know this sounds like I'm now it
2:09:36sounds like I'm being falsely humble but honestly like I don't if I had to bet I
2:09:43guess I'll get the iPhone 6s come September but if I don't if like the
2:09:49call doesn't come and you know and I there's no brief there's no briefing
2:09:54after the keynote I'll be like well I don't know I must have I don't know I
2:09:58don't know what happened there but must have had mark on my podcast too many
2:10:01- Yeah, maybe, maybe it's 'cause I had you on my podcast.
2:10:04I don't know, but it's not gonna hurt,
2:10:06it's not gonna hurt my revenue at all.
2:10:08Like I don't have any kind of ad, you know,
2:10:11I do get a lot of hits on the reviews when they come out.
2:10:14- Sure.
2:10:15- But the deck ads don't go by page count.
2:10:18It's, you know, and by design,
2:10:21like I don't wanna have articles like that.
2:10:24I don't wanna have articles where I make more money
2:10:26if they get read more.
2:10:28- Right.
2:10:29- Just for one thing.
2:10:30if it dries up, it dries up, you know, or if, you know, if somebody leaves, somebody who's like a big
2:10:35fan of me in Apple PR is the reason I'm getting these things, and then they quit and take a job
2:10:39somewhere else and I stop getting them, so be it. Clearly wasn't Katie Cotton. I'm just kidding.
2:10:44I guess not. I don't know about when she left. I was blown away that she even knew who I was,
2:10:50but she was always very nice to me. I have no idea what she was like in private, though.
2:10:54Clearly, though, strategically, she had a different vision for Apple PR, and that's the
2:10:59That's the other reason I wanted to bring it up that you wrote about this.
2:11:02I kind of feel like your piece serves as, well, definitive is the wrong word because
2:11:08I do think that there are gaps.
2:11:09And I don't see how you could have filled them in.
2:11:11This is the thing.
2:11:12I don't mean this as like, "Hey, you could have done a better job."
2:11:13I almost feel like it's remarkable how much you got colored in.
2:11:21But I kind of feel like it was a kind of amazing timing coming at the end of the Katie Cotton
2:11:27era you know because clearly strategically apple pr has has taken a strategic turn since then right
2:11:33and in this story i know i talked about like who would replace katie cotton and i said it would be
2:11:37steve dowling and all indications are pointing to him instead of carris who was still at apple at
2:11:42the time and you know i got a lot of you know criticism privately saying how could you say that
2:11:48there's no way that's true and all that but you know look at the pr bios page now so oh my my
2:11:54impression and I again I it's funny because I have like an official relationship with apple PR that
2:12:00you don't have but like my unofficial you know back channel input into the way apple PR works is
2:12:09way cloudier than yours for sure like there were names that you had that I'd never heard of
2:12:13and stuff that you know asking around you know people like yeah yeah that's that's pretty
2:12:18accurate that I'd never heard of. But my sense from the outside was that it was,
2:12:25I'm almost surprised they didn't name Dowling sooner and my guess, I could be wrong, I could be
2:12:33so totally wrong here that it's, there's people at Apple who, you know, who are just laughing if
2:12:38they're listening to this. But my sense was that the delay in naming Dowling was simply out of
2:12:42of respect to Katie that her departure was not it was amicable it was we're
2:12:48gonna you know I think she had been there a long time I think she was ready
2:12:51for a break and I think Tim Cook was looking for a new direction but it
2:12:54wasn't like bad blood it wasn't like she was pushed out the door like forestall
2:12:58and therefore out of respect they didn't name a successor right away you know I
2:13:03honestly disagree with that okay I could be wrong no no I don't think that it was
2:13:08as bad blood as the Vorsal situation because you know they talked massive crap about him after the
2:13:15after his departure you didn't see any of that with cotton but I don't think it was amicable in
2:13:20any sense of the word. All right amicable but you're right all right I yeah I think we're in
2:13:25agreement here right I think we'd be in the middle but yeah I think the reason they didn't
2:13:30even Dowling how about respectful sure he was respectable that's very fair to say yeah she
2:13:35I'm still got like I don't know if severance is the right word but like advisor status or something right stock options
2:13:43But I think that they wanted to find
2:13:46like a cool
2:13:48big name
2:13:50Replacement for Katie cotton like they can make a splash with take the company a new friendlier direction
2:13:54There were those rumors of Jay Carney the White House guy, but they didn't find anyone better. So I think they waited
2:14:02Six months nine months and they didn't find anyone that they would think would be better
2:14:06So they named Dowling and they're gonna go through him
2:14:08My only thing about that and I thought about that but and again, I don't know but the only
2:14:15Thing about that that I can think of is I can't think of another big splashy name other than Jay Carney
2:14:20Yeah, who else?
2:14:22Maybe someone from a startup or something like the weird the weird world of PR in general. Is that?
2:14:30PR people stay under the radar. Yeah, you know and that there aren't you know, like maybe like inside baseball
2:14:37There's big names and if you work in PR, you'd be like wow, they got so-and-so
2:14:41But from the outside Jay Carney who was the you know, the White House
2:14:45Press what do they call his press secretary?
2:14:48Is the only big name that I even saw tossed about as a maybe and that certainly would have been a big get but other
2:14:55Than him I can't think of anybody else who it would have even been
2:14:57Yeah, I don't know but they I guess it would be fair to say like they did their due diligence
2:15:02Try to find someone new from out of the company. It wouldn't be a great move to just promote
2:15:07Steve Dowling without looking elsewhere first they need to be tactical about these types of things especially
2:15:13Exiting a regime that existed for 15 years
2:15:16Yeah, and I think the other thing too that you just it
2:15:22Just cannot be emphasized enough was how much that Katie cotton and Steve Jobs were like had like the symbiotic
2:15:30Relationship. Yeah that that she was as much Steve Jobs as press representative as she was apples
2:15:36and that it that's not necessarily a bad thing because they were
2:15:41You know Steve Jobs and Apple were so intertwined in the public eye. Yeah
2:15:45Like she even did all the press stuff for when Steve Jobs
2:15:49sold
2:15:51Pixar and Disney. That wasn't Apple, but that was Steve.
2:15:55Pete: Right. And according to the Becoming Steve Jobs book, she was one of only four Apple people
2:16:02who were at his private funeral.
2:16:04Matthew: Right. Her, Q, Cook, and who was the fourth one?
2:16:11Pete; Johnny.
2:16:11Matthew; Johnny, of course, Johnny. No Forrestal.
2:16:14Pete; Yeah. And no Schiller, no, I mean, there's all sorts of people who clearly worked with him a
2:16:20a long time but it was a very very short list. You overlooked Johnny because it was so obvious.
2:16:24Right right right. I saw that though I don't think the the book broke that as great as the book was
2:16:28I read it in your uh your post-it was great but I thought that was I thought that was I thought
2:16:33that was news because his family you know the private family thing was so so private.
2:16:39No yeah but I remember reading that in the journal back when 2011 or so.
2:16:45I believe well I could be wrong but I didn't know.
2:16:49Before we go while we're still on the subject of Katie
2:16:55when I interviewed
2:16:58Brent
2:16:59Schlender and Bruce Tedcini
2:17:01Pretend that's Ellie the authors of becoming Steve Jobs when I did the event at the Apple Store in New York a couple months ago
2:17:09I did a little you know interview with them in front of the crowd. I
2:17:16Asked them because they did get I forget who the list of people who were associated with Apple who they got interviews with
2:17:22But it's you know, there's Tim Cook
2:17:24Avi you know who's not there anymore, but but you know clearly, you know
2:17:31Had the permission from Apple to talk to them and Katie and so they had like a whole sit-down interview with Katie cotton
2:17:38And there's one sentence from her in the book
2:17:40And they but I asked about it and they both laughed
2:17:45and and the gist was that you know you could take Katie Cotton out of Apple but
2:17:51it doesn't change her take on the press like she gave them nothing that's funny
2:17:56that is funny it was like one sentence and it was like totally innocuous well
2:18:03anyway we've been going on long enough this has been great I think that
2:18:06everybody is now well prepared for WWDC Mark Gurman I thank you I will link to
2:18:13Probably the best thing I can link to is your pre WWDC wrap-up posts because you keep updating that right
2:18:19No, we posted a new one this morning. That's one post that has everything. All right, I will link to that in the show notes
2:18:26And then if anything breaks over the weekend, you'll update that same post. Yes. All right, that's great
2:18:32And people can read you regularly. I'm sure they already do they can either read you at the two places
2:18:38You can find mark at nine to five mac.com or at the top of tech meme
2:18:43I think that they have a new ratings thing at tech meme and I believe you came out on top was is this am I?
2:18:53Overstating it. No. No, that's right. And they have a section about you in the Q&A. Did you see? Yeah, I did
2:18:59I honest to god. I'm not bullshit. Yeah, I don't know that words pretty funny. Yeah. Yeah, what's it? Where does it say this?
2:19:05on that new leaderboard page, there's a question they did like a FAQ and
2:19:09The sample question is why I love John Gruber
2:19:13Why is he not on the top of the list and then they have like a whole answer about how?
2:19:17You stick to analysis of other new stories and that doesn't really fit in with tech memes
2:19:22Tech memes position her goal. I honest to God did not know that now I got to put this on the goddamn show notes
2:19:29There's a fact you got to send me the link. I can't find it about these lists
2:19:33Is it the blog post about it? You know what? It's probably the blog post. Yeah, I think they linked the blog posts on the site
2:19:41I don't know. Yeah
2:19:43Holy shit, there it is. Yeah, I did not see that
2:19:48Here's the answer it says I love John Gruber, he's great. Why isn't he on your leadership leaderboard?
2:19:55Although he's in the top 150
2:19:57He's not in the top hundred and we only show the top 100 while his posts that make tech meme do tend to be heavily
2:20:02cited in the tech world, they don't appear there too often. Just twice in the last 90 days, in part
2:20:07because he mostly posts links with short commentary, which doesn't work well for Techmeme. That's
2:20:13exactly what I've, I've never really worried about this because I've always thought it was exactly
2:20:17right. I've talked to Gabe about this. I met Gabe years ago at like an O'Reilly conference, the guy,
2:20:22you know, the guy behind Techmeme. And we talked about years ago about how I'm like an exception
2:20:28who doesn't fit into the tech meme thing. But I said, you know, I don't break news. That's what
2:20:32this is about is I get, you know, doesn't bother me at all. I don't expect to be there. I expect
2:20:37to link to people who are there. Like, that's fascinating. I did not realize that I was listed
2:20:44there. The next question. I hate TechCrunch. They're jerks. Why is TechCrunch number one on
2:20:51the publication leaderboard? Oh, that's great. I got to send that to Panzareno. That is fantastic.
2:20:57What a great question. I'm so glad they so glad they answered my question. You know, he's doing a great job there math
2:21:04He really is he's absolutely doing a great job there
2:21:07He broke that the Tim Tim Cook
2:21:11epic bright the privacy speech
2:21:14I think that would accept that was gonna come out no matter what but somehow he was on the ball and had that before
2:21:19Before the recording even came out, yeah
2:21:24All right, so nine to five Mac that's where mark is kicking ass as an Apple reporter who?
2:21:31Really doesn't give a crap what Apple thinks of them
2:21:34All for the better for the rest of us. I really do mean it. I think you're doing great work and like I've said
2:21:39Talking about you on these podcasts the last few weeks. I
2:21:43Here's the most amazing thing to me is I don't know where we would be without you
2:21:48Well, I know where we'd be we'd be in the dark, you know
2:21:50But it's absolutely astounding if somebody went around and assembled and I'm sure Mac rumors
2:21:55well, like what's the consensus on what's coming at WWDC a
2:22:00Remarkable majority of that information is is from you. So yeah, keep up keep up the good work. Thank you so much
2:22:08I appreciate it. All right mark. Thank you very much for your time and
2:22:11I'll see you after WWDC. Yep. I know that's a long long podcast, but people love them
2:22:19I'm hitting stop.