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114: ‘All of Us Assholes in Journalism’ With Guest Serenity Caldwell

 

00:00:00   I've at least three episodes in a row where Skype has totally crapped out at some point.

00:00:04   So that sounds like Skype.

00:00:05   Yeah.

00:00:06   Alright, so we'll just start the show.

00:00:09   Yeah.

00:00:10   So Serenity Caldwell, first time on a show.

00:00:13   Welcome.

00:00:13   Thank you.

00:00:14   I'm excited to be here.

00:00:15   Busy times.

00:00:16   Yes, yes.

00:00:18   Flying all over the place, looking at fancy technology.

00:00:22   I'm going to, I was looking at my schedule and I'm like, I'm going to be in a different country

00:00:27   and or state for the next like five weekends in a row,

00:00:30   half of for my job and half for like roller derby randomness.

00:00:34   And it's just like, it's too much traveling.

00:00:36   I don't even have an Apple watch to keep track of it yet.

00:00:39   - It's bad when you start like,

00:00:40   when you have stretches like that

00:00:41   and you start to get to know like certain TSA agents.

00:00:44   (laughing)

00:00:45   Right?

00:00:46   - Yeah, yeah.

00:00:47   Where you're like, hey, yep, I'm here again.

00:00:49   - Like you don't remember my name, but you know me

00:00:51   and they're just like, yeah, yeah, go on through.

00:00:53   - Yeah, exactly.

00:00:54   It's like, okay, all right.

00:00:55   Well, it's like with Boston, I fly Virgin pretty much anywhere.

00:00:58   And it's like, there's only-- there's

00:00:59   like this one tiny little security terminal

00:01:03   for Boston's Virgin area.

00:01:05   Like we have our own private security terminal,

00:01:07   which is really awesome.

00:01:08   Because it's like, all right, quick in and out, no problems.

00:01:11   But it also means that, yeah, there are like three TSA people

00:01:14   total.

00:01:15   So yeah, it's like maybe not by a name basis,

00:01:18   but you get pretty familiar.

00:01:20   Yeah, airports are so weird.

00:01:21   We have like eight terminals ABCD ENF here in Philly, but there's also

00:01:26   Like I think it's like a one or something. There's like a there's like in between like a and B

00:01:33   There's like this little tiny thing and it's like certain US air flights go out of there and when you go up it is

00:01:39   There it's like that

00:01:40   It's like literally like the security thing is like three TSA people and and the funny thing is is that they still divide it between

00:01:47   TSA pre and not pre and there's

00:01:50   never it's there's only three people there it makes no difference but yet

00:01:55   somehow they put the they put the lines in people need their status yeah the

00:01:59   Virgin there's you know there's the silver and gold elevate line which I

00:02:03   think I've used maybe once in my life because the line has been long but

00:02:07   otherwise yeah it's like two people that's negligible so you were out in

00:02:12   California last week for I was watch song and pony show what do they call it

00:02:18   - Something like that, yeah.

00:02:20   I like Song and Pony Show.

00:02:21   - What's coming up?

00:02:22   - All right, so I got Toronto this weekend

00:02:25   for a roller derby tournament.

00:02:26   Then Ireland, I'm going over to Ool,

00:02:29   which is gonna be fun.

00:02:30   It's my first time in Dublin

00:02:31   and just in Ireland in general,

00:02:33   other than like flying through.

00:02:35   So I'm psyched for that.

00:02:36   - Insert me crying here because I'm missing Ool.

00:02:39   - I know, can we like Skype you in

00:02:41   and have you still do your dinner?

00:02:43   - We're, I don't know.

00:02:47   - Yeah, yeah.

00:02:48   - We're trying to figure out something.

00:02:50   - It's a bummer.

00:02:51   But yeah, so it's that.

00:02:52   And then I think I have a one soul weekend

00:02:56   where I'm in Massachusetts,

00:02:58   and then I'm out in California for the Yosemite Conference

00:03:01   and also to see my parents.

00:03:03   And then potentially going to Oregon

00:03:05   for another roller derby thing.

00:03:08   So it's like, oh wait, excuse me, Pittsburgh,

00:03:11   then Yosemite, then Oregon.

00:03:15   It's a lot of stuff.

00:03:16   - Right, Yosemite is for the...

00:03:18   - The CocoConf.

00:03:20   - Yeah, CocoConf.

00:03:21   - Yeah, I'm really looking forward to that.

00:03:23   I remember Dave was pitching at me on it a while back

00:03:26   and I'm like, "This sounds amazing."

00:03:27   And it's like, why not do a conference

00:03:30   about technology in Yosemite?

00:03:32   Like if Apple is going to go to the trouble

00:03:35   of naming its OS updates after fancy California locations,

00:03:40   why not hold a conference there?

00:03:41   It's gorgeous.

00:03:42   - It makes me cry too, 'cause that was also with,

00:03:44   That's also something I wanted to go to,

00:03:46   something I was planning to go to,

00:03:47   and also within the Still Can't Fly.

00:03:51   - Ah, Amtrak, John.

00:03:52   Do an Amtrak blogging adventure.

00:03:55   - I looked into that.

00:03:56   I looked into that,

00:03:57   and Amtrak across the country is horrifying.

00:04:00   (laughing)

00:04:01   Like, it's clearly better to just drive.

00:04:04   - Yeah, it's a long experience.

00:04:06   My buddy Rich Stevens, who does like a webcomic,

00:04:08   he used to do that, I think,

00:04:10   the last two years that he went to San Diego Comic-Con,

00:04:12   He did that from Western Mass.

00:04:14   And he really liked it 'cause he's like,

00:04:16   it's basically, you know, I don't have to go anywhere

00:04:19   and it's wifi the entire time.

00:04:20   And I don't have to worry about driving

00:04:22   and I don't have to worry about like staying

00:04:23   in crappy motels 'cause I just have this like random bed.

00:04:26   And then I get to go eat in big cities

00:04:28   where they have like four hour layovers.

00:04:30   So, but I feel like you kind of have to,

00:04:33   you need to be in a certain mindset to be like,

00:04:35   yeah, I'm gonna basically live on a plane

00:04:37   or a train for nine days

00:04:38   and be surrounded by other people constantly.

00:04:41   I think the way to go is the way John Madden used to travel around the country.

00:04:46   Do you remember this?

00:04:48   John Madden, the football announcer, had a terrible fear of flying or just hated it.

00:04:52   It just hated, hated flying.

00:04:54   And so he had a, I don't know if it was, it was like a big bus.

00:04:58   He just had a bus and had lots of money because he was the top football announcer.

00:05:04   So he just had a crew and he just drove his bus everywhere.

00:05:08   this Sunday's game is in New York next Sunday's in Dallas and the next one's in

00:05:12   San Francisco they just you know after the game they just get in the bus and

00:05:15   drive there. Oh man I'm sure it was a pimped out bus too. Yeah exactly right like

00:05:19   with a kitchen and yeah hot tub in the back and like just that's that sounds

00:05:24   kind of amazing but I feel like you need it you need a certain amount of lifestyle

00:05:27   and money for you know ten thousand dollar Apple watches. Right it's not

00:05:33   don't think it's worth a short term investment for a six to eight week eye

00:05:36   injury. But no, that would be like a good feature though maybe Uber could look

00:05:40   into that and like a temporary like rock star tour bus. Yeah exactly. Bus John

00:05:45   Gruber around the country. Right. I bet you could you could do a Patreon, a

00:05:49   Patreon, a Kickstarter, one of those. Get me to Yosemite. It still wouldn't get

00:05:53   me to Ireland but get me to Yosemite. No. You don't want to go on a boat. Boats are scary.

00:05:57   Well you know what it's funny because we looked into it. I forget if I mentioned

00:06:01   on the show before, but we at least looked into, you know, it seemed ridiculous. I mean,

00:06:06   I've got my kid here at school, I can't, you know, I don't want to be away for weeks, but

00:06:10   even then it was hard because Ool is too close to winter. So like, there aren't any

00:06:16   any real cross cross Atlantic voyages.

00:06:20   Well, there are but only they only go to Great Britain. It's funny because when you're flying,

00:06:26   if you're flying to Ireland, it's like if your itinerary is like Boston to London,

00:06:35   what's the big one in London? Heathrow.

00:06:37   Rachel Teagle And then Heathrow to Dublin, you don't think twice about it, you know,

00:06:41   you know that there's a good chance you're not going to get a direct flight and you don't think

00:06:44   twice about the fact but if you can't get in a plane, the fact that Ireland and England are not

00:06:51   the same island, it makes all the difference in the world. It would have been terrible. It would

00:06:55   not terrible but it's like you take like a Caribbean cruise and it's like you lay out

00:07:00   in a deck and it's great. You take you know like the Queen Elizabeth to England in late

00:07:04   March and it's you know you don't go outside.

00:07:07   No you hide in your cabin and you pray that you don't hit icebergs.

00:07:13   So no it's probably.

00:07:15   Alright well we'll get you like a roving what are the iPad robots that just kind of glide

00:07:20   around and you'd like pop into the rooms just float float your Twitter avatar

00:07:25   yeah it's like that it's like a iPad on a little what's that scooter called like

00:07:32   a segue segue yeah yeah I know there's an official name for it actually it's

00:07:36   funny one of my former Mac world co-workers Roman Loyola reviewed one of

00:07:40   these things for Mac world and I feel it was something like two months after he

00:07:44   reviewed it he in it like accidentally ended up on the Colbert show because

00:07:50   they used our clip of like the crazy iPad segue robot so now he's forever like

00:07:56   he's infamously known as like the Colbert iPad robot guy just like he's

00:08:01   gotten recognized as that and it cracks me up so let's revisit last week because

00:08:11   I feel like everybody still it's funny I think now a week later people are more

00:08:17   upset about the MacBook part of the announcement than the Apple watch. Yeah I

00:08:20   feel like you know I was kind of expecting a lot of hoopla over the

00:08:24   $10,000 to $17,000 gold watch and instead it's everybody throwing their

00:08:29   hands up in uproar "one port on a MacBook how could you?" and I'm like do you

00:08:35   remember in 2008 when when they pulled a computer out of a manila envelope and it

00:08:42   only had two USB ports and had no no CD drive and everybody you know like I feel

00:08:48   like this is the exact same argument just four or five years later. Yeah I

00:08:51   remember that event I can't remember if it was WWDC or Macworld maybe it was

00:08:57   back in Macworld. I think it was Macworld because I remember I wasn't working in

00:09:01   the tech industry at the time but I seem to remember pictures of like the

00:09:04   MacBook Air is hanging on strings. Yeah yeah I remember before the keynote the

00:09:10   banners said there's something in the air and for some reason it's like the

00:09:17   rumor the the the 48-hour you know there's like that that like once

00:09:21   certain signs start going up at your babuena or in this case it was Moscone

00:09:27   West then the rumors reach a fever pitch because people start trying to read into

00:09:32   what it is that Apple is shown whereas anybody with any common sense would know

00:09:36   that whatever they're showing you that's not covered up is not going to give it away.

00:09:41   Rachel - Oh no. And if anything, they're outright teasing you because they know you're going to try

00:09:45   and "cremilinology" it to death.

00:09:47   Pete - Right. And I remember that the rumor, I remember this, I usually, the years blur together

00:09:52   to me, but I remember this very distinctly. It was that the rumor du jour was that "Air" was the

00:09:58   name of Apple's in-house flash killer. Rachel - Oh, I remember that.

00:10:04   And that it would be called air and it was gonna be and I remember saying I don't think so because if it was they

00:10:10   Wouldn't put the name of it on the banner and B

00:10:12   I really think they mean it that they that they it's not just flashing but did that they don't they don't want a proprietary

00:10:18   Binary blob thing on the web like they really do mean that they think HTML 5 is the way forward

00:10:26   And for the web like I really think this is wrong and then people were upset when they ended up being a notebook

00:10:32   They were like well what happened to the flash killer and it was like they never said they were gonna do a flash killer

00:10:38   No, you you whipped it up from thin air surprise. Hmm. I was promised a flash killer

00:10:45   You were promised nothing. All right play with your shiny new MacBook Air. Yeah, but the parallels to

00:10:51   To to that device the first MacBook Air

00:10:57   I did almost exact other than the fact that they didn't pull it out of a minimal envelope

00:11:02   It's pretty much exact same scenario.

00:11:05   - Oh, absolutely.

00:11:06   I mean, you have something that was like

00:11:08   the 2000 MacBook Air.

00:11:10   I was working at an Apple store at the time.

00:11:13   And I mean, it was underpowered, too expensive

00:11:17   and not really designed for the general public at that point.

00:11:22   And everybody just kind of poo-pooed it.

00:11:24   We're like, "Oh, this computer is ridiculous.

00:11:27   "How do they expect us to use it?

00:11:29   "It's thin and that's cool,

00:11:30   but it's impractical blah blah blah blah blah and now you know a couple years later the

00:11:37   entire laptop line is based off of the the innovations and the creations that originated

00:11:43   from that 2008 MacBook Air.

00:11:45   Here's where my memory gets fuzzy I know that the base model still had a spinning hard drive.

00:11:51   Yes.

00:11:52   Was there an SSD option?

00:11:53   I believe yeah there was an SSD option but it was expensive.

00:11:57   And it was like 64 mega or 64 gigs.

00:12:00   Yeah, maybe it was 128, I can't remember now.

00:12:03   I'm like, I sold I think four of these in the like two years I was working at the store.

00:12:10   And granted I wasn't on the floor a whole lot selling things, like I was like, I taught

00:12:14   classes most of the time.

00:12:15   But even so, it was like the only time that you got to get a MacBook Air out from like

00:12:20   the back of house storage was when like somebody in a fancy suit came in who was like, Oh,

00:12:25   I just need a I need a third laptop for travel.

00:12:28   it was definitely a high-end businessman's like I'm sitting on a plane for a long period of time

00:12:33   and I want to work on like a super light computer sort of thing. It was wicked expensive.

00:12:38   Here it is. Jackie Chang had an article on it for ours back in February 2008. I'm copying this URL

00:12:48   right now. The famous last words on this show is I say it's going to be in the show notes and then

00:12:53   and forget to put it in the show notes but I've got it my BB edit file right

00:12:58   now it costs 1,300 extra and it was 64 gigabytes oh my god so the high-end air

00:13:05   and in early 2008 was alright so the regular one MacBook Air or the hard

00:13:13   drive 1.6 gigahertz Intel core 2duo yep both of them only had two gigs of RAM oh

00:13:21   Oh, yeah, and it had the other the spinning hard disk one only had an 80 gig hard drive an 80 gig for

00:13:27   420 rpm hard drive and then the 64 gigabyte solid-state drive was an extra

00:13:33   $1,300 so in other words the cost of the entire new MacBook

00:13:39   Exactly the same price like for an entirely new MacBook. It was what it cost to upgrade to the SSD

00:13:46   So I guess that was like

00:13:49   $1,800 I want to say it was 17 or $1,800. I'm trying to pull this

00:13:56   See, I'm trying to pull this up somewhere

00:13:59   Of course I'm looking at an old Mac world review and of course we don't have the price anywhere that's helpful

00:14:07   That's it from now on I'm just making articles that have prices

00:14:12   No, it's but it was pretty here we go. Yeah

00:14:16   $3,999 was the base configuration. So it was $3,100 to get it with an SSD and

00:14:21   truth be told

00:14:24   You really weren't getting the MacBook Air experience without an SSD

00:14:28   Oh, no

00:14:29   And it's clear they came out with it and the reason they had the one with the hard drive was because SSDs were so insanely

00:14:34   expensive

00:14:36   2008 yeah 2008 that they really did not want to have the base model be

00:14:39   $3,100 it just the optics would just be bad, but that really was the one to get to

00:14:46   to get the experience like that was clearly where they were going and you know i think

00:14:51   it was within a year they dropped the hard drives oh yeah it was well i remember the

00:14:56   um the 2010 macbook airs and that was the first macbook air i owned when when they came

00:15:01   out with the 11 inch and the 13 inch and all of a sudden not only were the macbook air

00:15:05   is affordable but they were in super tiny you know court or uh powerbook duo style uh

00:15:11   builds and I was like, all right, I can deal with two USB ports if it comes in an 11 inch

00:15:18   size, sure.

00:15:19   I remember, I think it was Will Shipley, I think he had the first Air, but he had the

00:15:24   SSD one, and he was doing software development on it, which sounds crazy because like you

00:15:29   said, it was overall, in grand scheme of things, an underpowered device.

00:15:33   But I remember him, and if it wasn't the first Gen 1, he had a very early one, in the very

00:15:37   early days when they were relatively expensive and relatively slow in terms of CPU performance.

00:15:44   And he raved about it because the SSD was so great at like when you're compiling stuff

00:15:49   with Xcode, you're touching lots and lots, hundreds of little files very quickly. And

00:15:53   that's where an SSD blows a spinning hard drive away is touching lots of little files

00:15:59   and right one after another after another. And so for compiling stuff in Xcode, he's

00:16:05   I remember him writing about it.

00:16:06   He was like, "This is a fantastic machine.

00:16:07   "I cannot wait for the future when everything is SSD."

00:16:11   So there were definitely people who loved it

00:16:13   and it was there, but it was ahead of its time.

00:16:17   - Oh yeah.

00:16:18   Do you remember the first computer you had

00:16:19   that had an SSD in it?

00:16:21   'Cause I know for me it was life-changing.

00:16:23   - Yeah, it was a 15-inch MacBook Pro.

00:16:27   Or no, no, maybe it wasn't a MacBook Pro.

00:16:32   I mean, I was gonna say a PowerBook.

00:16:34   It was it was a MacBook Pro 15 inch MacBook Pro that didn't ship with an SSD I bought

00:16:41   it.

00:16:42   That's actually the last time I ever upgraded a Mac after I bought it too.

00:16:46   But I bought like an OWC upgrade package.

00:16:51   And it was like getting a new machine.

00:16:54   I got it did it like two years after I bought it.

00:16:57   And it really did.

00:16:58   You know, I don't know what it cost me maybe like $800.

00:17:01   And it felt like I just got a new $2,000 MacBook Pro.

00:17:04   It was crazy.

00:17:05   Like I actually I did the same thing after I bought my my 2010 MacBook Air.

00:17:10   And I you know, going from I had a 15 inch MacBook Pro that was running on a spinning

00:17:16   disk.

00:17:17   And once I got the air was it was like night and day where it's like the pro, the pro despite

00:17:22   being I think three or four times as powerful as the air felt like it was, you know, running

00:17:28   in molasses.

00:17:29   And I was just like, Ah, screw this computer, I'm just gonna use the air for full time,

00:17:32   you know, doing everything.

00:17:34   And when I started doing video development,

00:17:36   I was like, all right, you know what,

00:17:38   maybe I need to consider, can I put an SSD in the Pro?

00:17:42   And then when I did, it was exactly how you described.

00:17:45   It's like, it turns the machine upside down

00:17:48   into a brand new device.

00:17:49   Like it doesn't feel like you're working

00:17:52   on a two or three year old computer anymore,

00:17:54   despite the fact that the internals might be,

00:17:57   you know, severely outdated.

00:17:58   - Yeah, and it's like, and every, you know,

00:18:02   probably everybody listening is,

00:18:03   I mean, I wonder what percentage of people are on SSDs now.

00:18:06   - Yeah, well, I think, well,

00:18:07   most of the laptops now have SSD standard,

00:18:10   but it's the iMacs that are still a little tricky.

00:18:14   We were talking about this before the show,

00:18:16   where my iMac is fixing out right now,

00:18:19   'cause I think the hard drive is slowly dying

00:18:22   and it's a normal spinning platter.

00:18:25   And I didn't even realize that when I got the computer,

00:18:29   I thought that it came with an SSD standard.

00:18:31   And of course I had my company, you know, the company ordered it for me.

00:18:34   And I was just kind of like, everything comes with SSDs now.

00:18:37   It's 20, you know, 2012, 2013.

00:18:40   Like that's no question.

00:18:42   And then at some point I'm like, man, this iMac is really slow compared to my, you know,

00:18:47   my tiny little laptop.

00:18:48   And I finally realized, oh, it has a hard drive in it.

00:18:51   So I feel like people who have the desktop computers may not like the standard configuration

00:18:56   for an iMac is I believe a big hard drive.

00:19:00   like, yeah, terabyte hard drive is really tempting. But like, you don't need a terabyte

00:19:05   of space.

00:19:06   I'm just looking now there's the standard config for every iMac is a hard drive except

00:19:11   the retina 5k iMac, which still is a fusion drive, which is the the, you know, the crazy

00:19:17   it looks like one volume, but it's an SSD and a hard drive combined, right, which is

00:19:23   a really good, fascinating technology and really cool. And it seems, you know, a couple

00:19:29   years in it seems like it works really well in practice. Oh yeah well I'm there

00:19:34   so I know a couple people in the PC building industry and like that's that's

00:19:39   been really popular for a while putting in an SSD and a big hard drive but with

00:19:44   the PC market it was put the boot drive on the SSD and then all the other files

00:19:48   on the hard drive and the fusion drive as far as I understand it it all happens

00:19:53   under the hood and it and it's seamless so not only is the boot drive on the

00:19:57   SSD but any files that you're currently working on get pulled over magically to

00:20:03   the SSD and theoretically you shouldn't notice it so you're never you never

00:20:07   really should be drawing any files actively off of the hard drive it's just

00:20:11   where you know inactive files live kind of like old-school memory and I'm like

00:20:15   that's that's really cool that's a like that's a great piece of technology yeah

00:20:20   but it still doesn't save you from the lack of reliability oh no yeah and

00:20:24   performance stuff you're eventually you know depending on what you do it the

00:20:27   performance eventually but eventually you suffer and you get the performance

00:20:31   of a spinning hard disk depending on what you're doing yeah exactly all hard

00:20:35   drives eventually die right importing a bunch of file or photos into iPhoto or

00:20:41   exporting them out or something like that anything like that where you're

00:20:44   looking at you know you're gonna you know looking at a gig or two of data

00:20:47   it's you you know you clearly can't make you know can't put 50 pounds of data in

00:20:54   - No, it can only hold so much before it has to look

00:20:59   to the heavyweight, even if the heavyweight is, you know,

00:21:01   has a speed of one.

00:21:03   - Right, but all you're right though,

00:21:04   all the notebooks now are SSD.

00:21:06   I mean, I guess you can still get, like,

00:21:08   if you cheap out and get the cheap MacBook Pros,

00:21:11   they still come with hard disks.

00:21:13   The retina ones all are SSD and the Airs are all SSD.

00:21:18   - Yeah, I haven't actually looked at the store configuration

00:21:21   since last week event.

00:21:22   Does the 13 inch non-retina MacBook Pro still exist?

00:21:27   Is that still a configuration

00:21:29   or did the new MacBook officially just kill it?

00:21:31   - It still is there.

00:21:33   MacBook Pro 13 inch, 2.5 gigahertz.

00:21:36   It's only 1099,

00:21:37   but it's a 500 gigabyte 5,400 RPM hard drive

00:21:43   and four gigs of RAM.

00:21:45   I'm honestly, that's to me

00:21:47   sort of a baffling configuration to me.

00:21:49   I can't see why anyone would buy that.

00:21:51   Like if your price is 1099 and you're really kind of price sensitive and you don't want

00:21:57   that $1,300 retina one, I really can't see why you don't just get the air.

00:22:02   - Yeah, I suspect that that configuration must solely exist for education, maybe with

00:22:09   the idea of like education folks who want to do video editing or something like that.

00:22:14   But even then, like the airs are pretty good for video editing at this point.

00:22:18   Like the Core i7s that they have available, like I routinely use my 11 inch for a lot

00:22:26   of video intensive stuff that I'm probably not supposed to, but it's definitely like

00:22:33   it's functional.

00:22:34   It's not, you know, I don't know.

00:22:37   My son and I went into the Apple store just the other day because I forget we had a, he

00:22:42   had a weird issue with his Macbook Pro that we couldn't fix at home.

00:22:48   it ended up the genius just needed to you remember the SMC reset system memory

00:22:53   controller and the old way to do it in the old days was you take the battery

00:22:56   out or if it was a desktop you'd unplug it doesn't work so well with no and

00:23:02   there's a keyboard shortcut you hold down shift option control I think on the

00:23:07   left side of the keyboard shift option control not command and restart and then

00:23:13   the if you have it plugged in you know that it did the SMC reset because the

00:23:17   the color will change on the mag safe

00:23:22   from like green to orange or orange to green.

00:23:25   But it didn't solve it for him.

00:23:26   It just wouldn't turn on, the screen wouldn't turn on.

00:23:30   So I thought it was bad news, like,

00:23:32   God, it's gonna need to be replaced.

00:23:34   It's under warranty, it's relatively new.

00:23:37   But it ended up, he just needed to take it back

00:23:38   in their secret lab and take the battery out,

00:23:41   and then it just started right out.

00:23:43   So anyway, all wouldn't well with that.

00:23:46   But while we were there, I was like,

00:23:48   we gotta try out this new Force Touch trackpad.

00:23:51   And we went over to the table

00:23:52   with the 13-inch MacBook Pros,

00:23:54   and the first one we went to was the low-end one

00:23:56   that doesn't have the new trackpad

00:23:58   and doesn't even have a retina screen.

00:24:00   And we were both like, oh, gross.

00:24:01   (laughing)

00:24:03   I was so proud of him.

00:24:03   He was grossed out by the non-retina screen.

00:24:07   - Yeah. - He was like,

00:24:07   who would buy this?

00:24:09   - It really is starkly different

00:24:11   once you get used to the retina.

00:24:13   I remember having a conversation,

00:24:15   I want to say the year before we got the iPhone 4, I want to say, where I was talking with

00:24:21   a friend of mine and he's like, "I just don't understand why Apple just doesn't do retina

00:24:25   screens."

00:24:26   Like, we didn't call them retina at that point, but I don't understand why Apple doesn't do

00:24:29   high DPI screens because they have the technology and text looks terrible and as a designer

00:24:35   I want to see things clearly and that's the next generation of technology and like two

00:24:40   weeks after we have this conversation, the new iPhone comes out and he was like a kid

00:24:44   at Christmas he was just like oh my god I can't wait until I have this in my

00:24:48   iMac it's it's it really is you know it's

00:24:51   stark it's it's one of the few things that I'm

00:24:53   sorely kind of missing on my MacBook Air right now I don't I don't know if the

00:24:57   new MacBook is currently enough for me that I would

00:25:00   swap over but it's definitely tempting yeah just for right now yeah but force

00:25:04   touch oh my god all right hold that thought

00:25:07   let's talk about force touch and let me let me take a breakdown do the first

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00:28:07   any sort of desire to build a website go check them out all right force touch

00:28:11   force touch do you think that's a good name I am conflicted only if only

00:28:19   because they're calling they're calling this the gestures force touch and

00:28:23   and they're calling the trackpad force touch.

00:28:25   And I feel like the same problem with, you know,

00:28:28   having a collection of the watch just called the watch,

00:28:31   it's hard to describe the gesture

00:28:34   and also inadvertently describe the trackpad itself.

00:28:37   You know, like we gotta figure out specific language,

00:28:39   but I think that's just a, that's a journalist word problem.

00:28:44   It's not a bad name overall, I don't think.

00:28:47   - Right, so as a verb, it means to press a finger hard

00:28:52   either on your watch or on this new trackpad to engage whatever it is that

00:28:58   Forch Touch does in your current context. And the trackpad itself is called the

00:29:04   Forch Touch trackpad. Here's why I bring this up because Dieter Bone at

00:29:12   the Verge had an article that you know great trackpad except for the lousy name

00:29:16   or something like that. What are you talking about lousy name? Number one most people

00:29:20   like, have no idea what that it's not like they're really going to advertise, I don't

00:29:24   think that the name force touch trackpad. It's just a way to distinguish it. And then

00:29:29   like, you know, as the time goes on, if you have like a 13 inch MacBook Pro, you could

00:29:33   say, is that the one with the force touch trackpad or not? It just as a way to clarify

00:29:37   whether it can do it or not.

00:29:38   Yeah, it's like retina display or anything, anything else that that Apple's use descriptive

00:29:43   names for. Yeah, I see really no problem with it. And it's honestly it's a it I feel like

00:29:52   it's a good descriptor. What what how would you rather describe it like the taptic engine

00:29:57   trackpad the haptic trackpad like then you start

00:30:01   The only other thing I've heard that was even plausible would be to call it the taptic trackpad.

00:30:05   Yeah, it isn't bad. I bet it's close enough that it was probably like on the finalists

00:30:10   list, you know, like a whiteboard and fill Schiller's office and it says like force touch

00:30:15   trackpad taptic trackpad, taptic engine trackpad, t e trackpad. Yeah. And no, there's like a

00:30:21   circle around force touch trackpad. Exactly with stars. I Yeah, I like it better than

00:30:27   I used I think both descriptions when I was writing about it in our hands on and I like

00:30:31   force touch trackpad as a as a moniker or just force touch technology in general, because

00:30:37   especially, you know, we've seen it on the watch.

00:30:39   Now we're seeing it on a track pad

00:30:41   that's essentially the size of an iPhone 6 screen.

00:30:44   I don't think it's unlikely that we'll see it

00:30:46   on iOS devices in the next year or so.

00:30:50   And as a result, like you're gonna need a way to describe it

00:30:54   versus, you know, you've got a retina display

00:30:56   with force touch, multi-touch technology.

00:30:59   That's a lot of touches, but you know what I mean, right?

00:31:02   - Right. - Yeah.

00:31:03   - It's, and the complaint against it,

00:31:06   And I'm as juvenile as anybody, I think.

00:31:09   But the complaint is that it's like, har har, it sounds like rapey.

00:31:14   Force touch.

00:31:15   Right.

00:31:16   And I kind of feel like you can't--

00:31:18   anything touch can be made into that type of joke.

00:31:21   Like multi-touch clearly can.

00:31:22   And it reminds me of the complaints that iPad--

00:31:25   iPad, yeah.

00:31:26   --sounded like a feminine hygiene product.

00:31:29   And it's like, really?

00:31:34   I remember not being in love with iPad when they first said it but I didn't think well

00:31:38   this is awful.

00:31:39   Yeah it's not the worst name in the world.

00:31:41   There are plenty of more terrible names that I'm sure we would be much more in arms about

00:31:46   had Apple chosen to use those instead of their preformed ones.

00:31:51   When we were playing the what are they going to call their tablet guessing game I didn't

00:31:56   guess iPad but my only but it was one of the ones that was tossed out because it seemed

00:32:00   kind of obvious. And my only brush aside of iPad was it sounds and looks too much like

00:32:06   iPod, so they're not going to do that. And they just went ahead and did it and like I

00:32:11   spent two years on this show calling it an iPod. So I was right that it was very similar

00:32:18   but it's like they just didn't care. But that's how I feel about the Force Touch thing. It's

00:32:21   like come on.

00:32:22   It's not that bad a name. And it's yeah, as I said, it's a good descriptor of what it

00:32:28   I mean either that or they could have called it the magical what's-it trackpad. You won't believe is actually doing

00:32:34   Like I you I mean you got a chance to test it out in the store. It feels wacky, right?

00:32:39   It's crazy

00:32:40   You really it's just like Matthew pansarino said on my show last week that it's he didn't he didn't really wreck

00:32:46   He didn't know that it wasn't clicking until they you know

00:32:49   He kind of because you miss it when you're sitting there in the room watching the keynote like it's you you can't rewind

00:32:56   Right. I mean that it was the one thing that like having you know getting for the first time in years getting to watch one

00:33:02   Remotely instead of there you definitely it's easier

00:33:05   You know - you can pause for a second and write your note and then you know

00:33:09   Just fall behind by 10 seconds in the stream and go when you're in the room you miss stuff and he missed

00:33:13   The emphasis that it doesn't actually move and so he went in the hands-on area and was like, this is great

00:33:19   You know, it's neat the way it clicks and they're like, well, it doesn't really click and he's like

00:33:22   What are you talking about?

00:33:22   And then they told him and he was like that's not true and they like

00:33:25   Turned the machine off for him so he could try it when the machine was off and you know, it doesn't move

00:33:29   Yeah, that's uncanny

00:33:31   And that's the baffling part is I didn't get a chance to try it out until until this week with with the machine completely off

00:33:38   I went to an Apple store and that is when you realize oh, this is actually some high-level wizardry

00:33:44   Crap like this. I know what it is doing in theory. Like I know that you know the

00:33:51   It's not electromagnets, but it's something similar.

00:33:54   I know that it's basically sending vibrations to my finger

00:33:58   that make it feel like a click

00:33:59   even though my finger is moving sideways.

00:34:01   But in my brain, it feels like I am pressing down

00:34:04   and the trackpad is physically depressing.

00:34:06   And that's even more so,

00:34:09   I don't know if they had like different apps

00:34:11   at the Apple store that you were playing with,

00:34:14   but like I got to play with it

00:34:16   in a couple of different things, including QuickTime.

00:34:18   And the QuickTime one was the really sort of crazy wacky,

00:34:21   my brain is being slowly disassembled into mush thing.

00:34:24   Because when you're in QuickTime with Force Touch

00:34:27   and you press the fast forward button,

00:34:30   as you like put a little bit more pressure on the track pad,

00:34:34   it speeds up to the point where it like,

00:34:36   it speeds up like 60 times,

00:34:37   but you can slowly release that pressure

00:34:41   while your finger is still down

00:34:42   and the speed starts to slow down again.

00:34:46   So it feels almost like a gas pedal worth of trackpad

00:34:49   where you're like, vroom, vroom, vroom.

00:34:52   Like that, I don't know, it's such a different experience

00:34:56   than I've ever had on a computer.

00:34:59   Like, I mean, that's a technological,

00:35:01   like that's old school, right?

00:35:02   Cars have had that kind of control for years.

00:35:05   But being able to do that on a flat glass surface

00:35:08   was really kind of mind bogglingly,

00:35:11   you know, time bendingly crazy.

00:35:14   - Yeah, which in turn makes me wonder

00:35:15   about like the gaming implications.

00:35:17   - Oh yeah, the gaming implications,

00:35:19   the drawing implications.

00:35:21   - Yeah, drawing.

00:35:22   - Pressure sensitive, I love that on the MacBook website

00:35:26   where they're like pressure sensitive drawing

00:35:29   and then they show a picture of the preview signature

00:35:34   because that's the only thing that Apple has

00:35:37   in its default apps that can accurately show

00:35:39   pressure sensitive drawing.

00:35:41   But as soon as they started talking about that

00:35:43   and I like, I quiz the Apple reps pretty in depthly

00:35:45   being like, so pressure sensitivity,

00:35:48   how many levels do you have?

00:35:49   Like, what are we talking about here?

00:35:52   And they are of course, very, very charmingly vague

00:35:54   as always, but what I was able to get out is like,

00:35:57   there's a fair amount of ramp built into the,

00:36:01   built into the underlying software technology

00:36:03   of Force Touch, which means,

00:36:05   and the fact that it's available as an SDK

00:36:08   for developers to hook into.

00:36:10   It basically means that like developers can set

00:36:13   sort of click points and pressure points at any point like

00:36:16   along this curve

00:36:18   uh... this this you know pressure sensitivity curve

00:36:21   so in theory you could

00:36:23   you could have any number of pressure points or any number of uh...

00:36:27   you know multiple clicks

00:36:28   and i just think about like going back to games for a second i think about

00:36:32   huh

00:36:33   playing wow in college and having to go get like a six button mouse to like map

00:36:37   all of my

00:36:38   key combos

00:36:39   too

00:36:40   and i'm like

00:36:41   With a force touch trackpad in theory,

00:36:44   you could have like a different level of pressure touch

00:36:46   for each key combo or each like mouse combo

00:36:50   that you'd normally need like an up button,

00:36:51   a down button, a side button, a squeeze button.

00:36:54   Like that is really, really nifty to me.

00:36:58   - Yeah, and I think about like how

00:37:01   when you get really into like the type of software

00:37:06   you specialize in, like if you're an audio editor

00:37:09   or a video editor and you just live and breathe in your editing software.

00:37:14   And once that's force touched enabled for like scrubbing, which is clearly, like you

00:37:20   said, it's already built into QuickTime, so it's clearly, that's the way things are going.

00:37:25   But you'll be able, once you do it 40, 50, 60 hours a week, it's like you'll be able

00:37:31   to play that scrub controller like playing a musical instrument in terms of going faster

00:37:36   and slower with your touch.

00:37:38   Yeah, I mean, did you see the there was an iMovie update a couple days ago that came

00:37:43   out with support for Force Touch track pads.

00:37:48   And it offer it came with two different things, one of which I think is a scrubbing feature.

00:37:53   And the other was there's a little bit now when you kind of scroll through a clip, you

00:37:57   get a little bit of haptic feedback when you come to the end of a clip or you bump at the

00:38:01   end of the clip.

00:38:02   So I mean, I'm like, I didn't even think about that,

00:38:06   where it's again, texture as well as physical clicking.

00:38:11   - Yeah, it really brings back analog sensibility.

00:38:15   - Yeah, well, I mean, you remember the knobs,

00:38:19   like the USB knobs that I wanna say it's Kensington

00:38:23   that makes them.

00:38:24   - Where it glowed blue, right?

00:38:28   - Yeah, Kensington or Belkin or something like that.

00:38:31   But I knew editors who absolutely relied on those knobs

00:38:35   who were like, yeah, this is as close as I'm gonna get

00:38:37   to a physical editing machine.

00:38:38   And it's like, well, five years down the line,

00:38:40   now you potentially have a track pad

00:38:42   that can do all of that?

00:38:44   What, what is this madness?

00:38:47   - That's great, I never even thought about that though,

00:38:48   but that's brilliant though to have like,

00:38:50   just like a slight tick as you get between clicks

00:38:53   and then you can feel it.

00:38:54   And it's again, like you go back to like the analog era

00:38:57   when you people, you know, like to edit film,

00:38:59   you'd literally splice pieces of film together.

00:39:03   And at that splice, there'd be a physical,

00:39:06   like where you just pretty much just put tape around it.

00:39:09   - Yeah, well, it's funny to me,

00:39:11   because you think on the software side,

00:39:14   Apple has been working harder and harder

00:39:16   to kind of take the skeuomorphism out of the design.

00:39:20   But I feel like in a large way,

00:39:21   they're kind of putting that into hardware.

00:39:24   So it's like, we don't necessarily need our video clips

00:39:27   to look like analog video clips anymore.

00:39:30   But we're gonna give you more and more controls

00:39:33   on the physical side that make it feel like you're dealing

00:39:36   with tangible materials, that make it feel

00:39:38   like you're actually interacting with something

00:39:40   besides glass.

00:39:41   I don't know, it feels like the idea of the iPad

00:39:45   or the iPhone as blank slate was step one,

00:39:48   where it's like, okay, you can load anything on it.

00:39:50   Now we're gonna let you touch anything on it.

00:39:53   Now-- - God, what?

00:39:54   Where else could you do that?

00:39:56   Like I'm even imagining like in the future,

00:39:58   if it gets more refined, like as you,

00:40:02   like if you're editing text

00:40:03   and you have like a red squiggly underlined word

00:40:05   that's misspelled, like maybe you get like a slight,

00:40:08   as you move the arrow over it, it--

00:40:10   - It buzzes, yeah. - Yeah, or like

00:40:12   just a little bit of friction or something.

00:40:13   - Yeah, just a, well yeah,

00:40:15   it makes your scroll slightly slower.

00:40:17   - Right, like maybe you wanna stop here.

00:40:19   - Yeah, well and the accessibility implications too are huge

00:40:23   Like imagine instead of having to have a braille keyboard

00:40:26   or a braille touch pad, turning on maybe accessibility braille

00:40:31   or something like that and then all of a sudden,

00:40:33   you're moving your cursor over words

00:40:36   and it feels like the braille version of the word.

00:40:39   Like obviously that's probably years down the line

00:40:41   but it's still like the potential of that is really cool.

00:40:44   - Right, or anytime it hovers over a button really.

00:40:47   - Yeah, oh yeah, popping out buttons.

00:40:48   I'm sure just like with almost every SDK

00:40:52   that has weird, crazy things like this.

00:40:55   I'm sure that everybody and their mother

00:40:57   is going to make buttons that give you haptic feedback

00:41:00   for like the first year, right?

00:41:01   Where you like, you roll over it.

00:41:02   It's like every single button goes like,

00:41:04   bump, bump, bump, bump, bump.

00:41:06   But as people kind of get more used to it,

00:41:10   I feel like we can have some really,

00:41:12   really revolutionary stuff.

00:41:13   - Yeah, the thing that really blew me away was,

00:41:15   and I've known this 'cause I've never been fully on board

00:41:19   with their getting rid of the separate buttons.

00:41:22   for the trackpad.

00:41:24   So like, you know, like step one was they got rid of buttons

00:41:27   and made the whole trackpad a button.

00:41:29   - Yeah.

00:41:30   - And I've never been fully on board with that because,

00:41:33   and Schiller, you know, showed the mechanics of it exactly

00:41:36   because it's like a teeter totter

00:41:38   with the fulcrum at the top.

00:41:40   - Yeah, you can't click on the top.

00:41:41   - It's hard to click on the top.

00:41:42   And I click at the top way more than I click at the bottom

00:41:45   because the menus bars at the top, you know,

00:41:48   the close button for windows is at the top,

00:41:50   The tabs are at the top.

00:41:52   So I've never been fully on board with that

00:41:54   because the trackpad clicks better at the bottom.

00:41:57   And even for years, I guess I've kind of gotten away from it

00:42:01   but the way that you can still keep your thumb

00:42:04   at the bottom and just do all your clicks there,

00:42:06   even if you're moving it, they kind of let you treat it

00:42:08   like the buttons are still there at the bottom.

00:42:11   With the Force Touch trackpad,

00:42:13   the click is the same everywhere.

00:42:14   - Yeah.

00:42:16   - And it's like this is the first one

00:42:17   where not having the standalone buttons,

00:42:19   There's no trade-off involved.

00:42:21   - No, it is really cool.

00:42:23   Like I intentionally, when I played around with it

00:42:26   in the hands-on, I intentionally was like clicking

00:42:28   in corners trying to like see, all right,

00:42:30   well, is this really click anywhere?

00:42:33   Or is it like click in the center?

00:42:34   And it really is like, you can go to the top left corner.

00:42:37   And I think I only got one bad click out of like 10 minutes

00:42:40   of playing around with that track bad.

00:42:42   - My son was really skeptical.

00:42:43   So he's fifth grade and they have a bunch of Chromebooks

00:42:46   at his school.

00:42:48   And it's not because he's my son,

00:42:50   it just is, he said all the kids hate them.

00:42:53   'Cause all the kids have like Apple Slips at home.

00:42:55   And they all hate them.

00:42:57   And then like the one day, it was like they had like,

00:42:59   everybody got in trouble because a whole bunch of them

00:43:02   got like trashed.

00:43:03   And I was like, that's why you guys have Chromebooks

00:43:05   instead of MacBooks.

00:43:07   You're a bunch of reckless.

00:43:08   Anyway, but all the Chromebooks they have don't click.

00:43:11   They're tap track pads.

00:43:13   You move them around and then you just tap to do it.

00:43:16   And he said that's and that's what he thought this was going to be like.

00:43:18   And I said, No, I'm telling you, I was like, I haven't felt it yet.

00:43:21   But trust me, there's no way Apple would ship it like that.

00:43:24   And he was like, rolling his eyes.

00:43:25   And he was like, I'm so glad I already have my trackpad that clicks.

00:43:29   And then we got to the store.

00:43:30   And he was, you know, he was like, Okay, you're right.

00:43:32   This is nothing like the Chromebooks.

00:43:34   Yeah, I mean, I've hated tap like, I have tap to click on now.

00:43:38   But I this is like, after seven years of being like, tap to click is horrible, and you accidentally,

00:43:45   you know, brush on it and then your cursor moves everywhere.

00:43:48   And it's such an uncomfortable compromise.

00:43:52   Especially if you like have it,

00:43:55   like I like having my trackpad very responsive.

00:44:00   I like it being very quick.

00:44:02   So having tap to click on, it's like, oh, you move it once

00:44:05   and then all of a sudden your trackpad's over here

00:44:06   and you're selecting some texts that you never intended.

00:44:10   I don't know, I like the physical buttons.

00:44:12   I've always liked the physical buttons.

00:44:13   And so having Apple actually be able to build something that feels like physical buttons

00:44:18   but uses the technology of the multi-touch trackpad, it's really cool.

00:44:24   Yeah.

00:44:25   All right, let me take a break.

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00:47:16   so I I I think everybody's to thinking about this so

00:47:20   Usually, the last, I would say, you know, really pretty much since the iPhone came out,

00:47:27   iOS has sort of been the leading edge platform for new stuff.

00:47:34   And it was, you know, it wasn't like back to iPhone, it was back to the Mac when, you

00:47:39   know, stuff like multi-touch and things like that.

00:47:43   But here's Force Touch and iOS is last platform to the game.

00:47:48   Yeah, you could argue that the watch technically led with it, but the watch isn't out yet.

00:47:54   And the I mean, I guess the MacBook isn't out yet either.

00:47:57   But but yeah, I'm I think it's interesting because I mean, we've heard rumors about haptic

00:48:03   feedback coming to the Mac and iOS platforms for years.

00:48:08   I want to say the first the first patent over this thing came out, I want to say like three

00:48:13   or four months after the original iPad.

00:48:17   I remember looking over in a frenzy being like,

00:48:19   pressure sensitive screen,

00:48:21   pressure sensitive screen drawing, oh my gosh.

00:48:24   But yeah, I feel like this technology

00:48:28   has been very long in development.

00:48:31   And it just, it's which the platform

00:48:37   that made the most sense to launch it on,

00:48:39   I think is probably,

00:48:40   when I think about launching it on iOS

00:48:44   versus launching it on the Mac,

00:48:47   I feel like there's a lot more flexibility

00:48:52   on the Mac platform, if that makes sense, than iOS,

00:48:55   in that iOS has so many different multi-touch controls

00:49:00   at this point, especially when you translate

00:49:02   over to the iPad, that introducing Force Touch

00:49:06   on the phone first, being like,

00:49:09   not only do you have contextual menus with Force Touch,

00:49:11   but we're opening this up to app developers.

00:49:14   And I feel, I'm like, I'm trying to think about

00:49:16   when you would launch such a thing,

00:49:17   it would probably be WWDC because you know,

00:49:19   you want an SDK for this and all of that.

00:49:23   And the only real time to do that would have been last year

00:49:27   during the iOS 8 extravaganza explosion.

00:49:30   - That's actually, that's an interesting point.

00:49:33   I haven't thought about that.

00:49:34   So, hmm, how do you like, so they did last year

00:49:38   is a perfect example where they snuck into WWDC, not snuck,

00:49:41   but they had a whole bunch of sessions, important sessions

00:49:45   on the display sizes, you know, which really only made sense in the context of there are

00:49:53   going to be some new screen sizes.

00:49:55   Oh yeah.

00:49:57   But they didn't say that.

00:49:59   It was all sort of hypothetical.

00:50:00   Like if you had a device that was bigger than an iPhone but smaller than an iPad, blah,

00:50:06   blah, blah.

00:50:07   Hypothetically.

00:50:08   I'm not sure they could get away with that with Force Touch.

00:50:11   I don't know.

00:50:12   Yeah.

00:50:13   I mean, yeah.

00:50:14   For iOS.

00:50:15   where they're like, oh, potentially this thing is coming down the line,

00:50:19   hint, hint, nudge, nudge.

00:50:21   Whereas if you lead off with force touch in the watch and force touch in the Mac,

00:50:27   and you lead off in the spring with it, that gives people all of the spring,

00:50:33   all of the summer, some of the fall to get used to developing properly with it.

00:50:39   We were talking about Button-a-palooza,

00:50:42   Like it gets, it allows developers to kind of get all of their immediate must use this everywhere kind of out of their system.

00:50:50   And it allows them to get to know the Force Touch technology well enough so that when say, they come out down the line in September saying,

00:50:59   "Oh, guess what? You know that iPad Pro rumor or you know the iPhone, the iPhone it has Force Touch 2 now.

00:51:05   we have Force Touch across all our devices.

00:51:08   And we'll release an SDK for developers

00:51:11   to be able to build with it.

00:51:13   Any developer who's already been playing around on the Mac

00:51:16   is like, oh yeah, I know how Force Touch works.

00:51:18   I know perfectly how I could implement this into my app.

00:51:21   Whereas, you try and do it the other way around.

00:51:24   You try and launch a brand new technology on iOS

00:51:29   in advance, I don't know.

00:51:34   I lost my train of thought.

00:51:35   But I…

00:51:36   Well, one of the things…

00:51:37   I mean, you personally are like a…

00:51:39   I don't know.

00:51:40   I don't even know.

00:51:41   Like a hobbyist level illustrator.

00:51:44   You like to sketch.

00:51:45   You like to draw.

00:51:46   So clearly that's one of the things you're personally looking at this for.

00:51:49   Absolutely.

00:51:50   But it's way more interesting on iOS and especially the iPad than it is on the Mac

00:51:55   for drawing because drawing on a trackpad is always going to have…

00:51:59   matter how sensitive the trackpad is there's that layer of indirection where

00:52:04   you're drawing on this thing that doesn't show what you're drawing and

00:52:08   you're looking above it on a display where it shows what you're drawing

00:52:11   whereas drawing on an iPad it's right there. It's drawing directly on the

00:52:16   screen yeah it's the the contrast between anybody who's ever used a a

00:52:21   Wacom tablet it's the difference between an Intuos 2 you know just sketching on

00:52:26   on the static surface and having it reflect on the screen

00:52:31   versus like a Cintiq, which is a monitor.

00:52:34   So actually having it directly under.

00:52:36   When the Force Touch first came out, I got really excited

00:52:39   and I wrote an article on I'm more about, you know,

00:52:41   what does this mean for the rumored iPad Pro?

00:52:43   And what does this mean for iPads in general?

00:52:45   And someone was like, you can't use Force Touch

00:52:48   on a multi-touch screen with pixels,

00:52:51   it's going to damage the pixels.

00:52:53   And I got a really good laugh out of that.

00:52:56   I'm like technically a MacBook trackpad is a

00:52:59   There what my phone? Uh-huh

00:53:02   It's fine. It's in a case

00:53:05   The MacBook trackpad is a multi touch screen essentially

00:53:08   They're just there are no pixels underneath it. And again, the glass doesn't move it is glass. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure it's

00:53:15   engineering wise trickier because you've also got a display but it's sure you got a map you got a map the

00:53:22   your input to specific pixels on the screen, which is also, I mean, that's something, speaking

00:53:28   from putting my Illustrator hat on for a second, that's something that illustrators and stylus

00:53:34   makers have struggled with a lot with the iPad, because the iPad's initial touch targets

00:53:40   were very much built for finger-sized input.

00:53:44   So it's also why you saw like styluses with these big round sort of rubbery nibs the first

00:53:50   couple years. And also why if you have an iPad Air 2 and a stylus, all of a sudden the stylus like is cruddy. It doesn't work very well anymore. Because between the iPad Air and the iPad Air 2, they like completely changed how finger input was done. So, so on a from a finger point doesn't feel like anything but from a stylus all of a sudden, like, all the pixels are off mapped and everything's off center. And sometimes you won't even like it doesn't even connect like it's a bunch of bunch of gibberish, which

00:54:20   Anyway, like the point of that is just that,

00:54:23   actually having mapped pixels to pressure sensitivity

00:54:29   and a pressure sensitive screen would be huge for artists.

00:54:35   And like, I just, I dick around, I sketch sometimes,

00:54:38   I'm not a heavy duty illustrator,

00:54:40   but I talk to like, I have friends who are cartoonists

00:54:42   and web cartoonists who have been wanting

00:54:45   a pressure sensitive iPad screen for years,

00:54:48   because the idea, especially with something like Handoff,

00:54:51   the idea of being able to start a sketch on your iPad

00:54:54   and have the same amount of control and precision

00:54:58   as you do working on a Wacom Cintiq, it's a pipe dream.

00:55:02   It's like that is the thing that artists want.

00:55:07   - Yeah, and I think that it's only natural

00:55:10   that the smarts go into the drawing surface

00:55:14   and not the stylists.

00:55:16   - Yeah.

00:55:17   You know, and the only way to get any kind of pressure sensitivity up until now on iOS

00:55:21   is to use some kind of pressure sensitive stylus.

00:55:24   And it's just, I just feel like that's not right.

00:55:26   And it's, you know, it even harkens back to the analog days where the pressure is registered

00:55:30   on paper.

00:55:31   It's the pen isn't smart about it.

00:55:32   You know, it's the paper that absorbs the pressure if you're going to do a hard stroke

00:55:36   versus a light stroke.

00:55:37   Yeah, absolutely.

00:55:38   And actually, that's something going back to like force touch and haptics.

00:55:43   That's one of the things that got me super excited is not just that the screen is recognizing

00:55:48   your pressure and whether you're making a little light thin line or a dark thick line

00:55:53   based on your pressure.

00:55:54   But if the haptics can provide click feedback, it's a possibility that they can provide a

00:56:01   little bit of rumbling feedback while you're drawing too to give you a little bit more

00:56:05   or at least feel like you're getting a little bit more resistance, which I don't know if

00:56:09   you've ever tried drawing on an iPad screen, but one of my biggest criticisms has always

00:56:13   the fact that like, if you're drawing

00:56:15   with anything fine tipped, or even if, you know,

00:56:17   even with a rubber stylus

00:56:18   or one of those paintbrush styluses,

00:56:20   it feels like you're drawing on glass.

00:56:22   There's no pretending that.

00:56:26   Like even on a Wacom tablet,

00:56:28   it feels like you're drawing on glass or on plastic.

00:56:30   It doesn't feel like paper.

00:56:31   And like if haptics could do that,

00:56:33   even to like 50% of what paper feels like,

00:56:37   that could be really incredible, right?

00:56:39   Like that's a completely different experience

00:56:42   that we're feeling with what's otherwise a stationary glass surface. Yeah, so the

00:56:49   things that come to mind for me for the future of this Taptic Engine going

00:56:54   across everything Apple does for iOS, artists definitely. It also really

00:57:00   makes me think about, like you know, like you brought up the rumored you know

00:57:04   mythical iPad Pro, you know, which obviously is not coming out this spring.

00:57:09   maybe now if people are thinking maybe that's part of the big fall you know stuff this year

00:57:14   I you know everybody's been saying that for a long time and there have been rumors that apples you

00:57:19   know commissioning screens and stuff like that but then it's I've always thought well who's the market

00:57:24   right and artists would definitely be one right like I think and you know no question yeah right

00:57:29   no question um so I think that's got to be you know if if the device exists that has to be part

00:57:36   of it, I think. I feel like the iPad Pro market, the only way they're going to, like, Apple has

00:57:42   developed machines that are primarily designed for the creative area before, which is to say,

00:57:48   like the Mac Pro is for a long time was designed for software engineers and filmmakers and, you

00:57:56   know, people who were doing high level video intensive work. But, you know, people have argued,

00:58:01   well, Apple doesn't really care about creatives anymore. And I don't necessarily think that's true.

00:58:06   But I think their viewpoint has broadened a little bit.

00:58:09   And I kind of feel like for the iPad Pro to be successful,

00:58:12   it has to aggressively target business in a way.

00:58:15   And again, from an artist's perspective,

00:58:19   I see Force Touch being very useful

00:58:20   because of the haptics, because of the pressure, all of that.

00:58:24   But from a business perspective,

00:58:26   the thing that kind of caught my attention

00:58:29   when we were talking about bigger screens

00:58:31   and also haptic responses, digital keyboards.

00:58:36   The idea, like we've seen really,

00:58:38   really crappy implementations of this

00:58:40   in Blackberry a couple of years ago,

00:58:42   when they actually, you know,

00:58:43   they made the screen click for,

00:58:45   I think the Blackberry Storm and the Storm 2

00:58:47   had electromagnetic responses,

00:58:49   but it just didn't feel very good.

00:58:51   And it was really, really sketchy.

00:58:53   Didn't quite work when you're tapping on it.

00:58:56   But if you had an iPad Pro, say that was,

00:58:58   I don't know, 12, 13 inches,

00:59:00   and you had haptics available for drawing programs,

00:59:04   but then you pull up the keyboard,

00:59:05   and when you're typing, you get the feeling

00:59:07   that you're physically depressing keys,

00:59:10   and you get the feeling of being on a key

00:59:14   versus typing in between a key.

00:59:16   I feel like that could potentially be a game changer

00:59:21   for the iPad in regards to writing and functioning with it.

00:59:24   - Yeah, I thought of that too.

00:59:25   I think that would even, in theory,

00:59:27   I could see how that would even help on the phone.

00:59:29   - Oh, yeah.

00:59:30   But the big but is that it seems like you'd only get

00:59:34   that feedback after pressing.

00:59:37   - Yeah.

00:59:38   - So it's more, it's not like you'd know,

00:59:40   I don't see how they could do it unless they could actually

00:59:42   raise the screen in advance, which doesn't seem like

00:59:45   that technology exists yet, especially if you're talking,

00:59:49   you know, at the same time about Apple's desire

00:59:52   to move from glass to sapphire, which is hard.

00:59:54   Like you can't make sapphire raise up in a bubble

00:59:57   on the fly.

00:59:59   Some substance could, but you wouldn't get that feedback

01:00:02   before you press, you'd only get it afterwards.

01:00:04   It would just be a way to know that maybe you just,

01:00:07   you thought you were typing a D, but ooh,

01:00:10   it feels like I got the D and the F at the same time.

01:00:14   - Yeah, the other thought is you use the pressure sensitivity

01:00:17   to be that when you lightly brush your fingers

01:00:20   against the keyboard, it doesn't actually type down.

01:00:22   It just lets you feel those keys,

01:00:25   and then when you press a little bit harder,

01:00:27   it types for you.

01:00:28   That might be a little bit of a,

01:00:30   or it might be too much of an adjustment to do on an iPad,

01:00:33   but I like the idea, especially,

01:00:36   I was actually thinking about it after I got a chance

01:00:38   to type on the new MacBook, going back to that for a second,

01:00:41   because the new MacBook's keys,

01:00:44   I mean, they talked a lot about the butterfly design

01:00:46   and all of that,

01:00:47   but the keys are significantly shorter and thinner

01:00:50   than they are even on the current MacBook Air.

01:00:53   And initially, it took a second for me

01:00:56   to kind of get used to it

01:00:57   because I was really like hammering down on the keys

01:01:01   because it's what I'm used to with the air

01:01:03   and like the even the older keyboards

01:01:06   with like really thick manual keys.

01:01:10   But with the MacBook,

01:01:12   after a little bit of like tinkering with it,

01:01:14   like feeling it out,

01:01:16   I found that I was almost gliding around the keyboard

01:01:20   when I was typing.

01:01:23   So it didn't, you know,

01:01:24   it wasn't like physically picking my finger up,

01:01:26   tapping another thing physically, da da da da da,

01:01:27   but it was moving my fingers very quickly

01:01:31   and only pressing down when I felt kind of like the ridges

01:01:34   onto a certain key.

01:01:37   I don't know if that makes any sense,

01:01:39   but it feels to me like the new MacBook keyboard

01:01:43   is practically like a force touch trackpad.

01:01:47   It's so small and so thin that it like, I don't know,

01:01:53   It feels like that is potentially down the line

01:01:56   where Apple could go with keyboards.

01:01:58   - It makes me think I won't like it because I feel like,

01:02:01   but on the other hand, I've never liked typing

01:02:03   on any laptop keyboard ever made.

01:02:05   It's all just a degree of how little I like it

01:02:09   compared to a real solid clicky desktop keyboard.

01:02:12   It's intriguing to me though.

01:02:15   I do, and I love that slow motion video they made

01:02:18   of the fingers making the whole thing go down.

01:02:20   - The wobble of the keyboard, yeah.

01:02:22   Well, I would call it like, not a thinness,

01:02:24   but like a shallowness, that's the main thing.

01:02:26   - Yeah. - It doesn't,

01:02:27   it just, there's not that, there's just,

01:02:28   and there physically isn't the room to press down.

01:02:30   I just sent you a link, and this is way before your time.

01:02:33   This is like-- - Oh no, I know,

01:02:34   I know the ARRI 400. (laughs)

01:02:36   - The ARRI 400 was-- - Yeah.

01:02:38   - I remember wanting one, so, but I wanted every computer.

01:02:42   At like in your-- - Of course.

01:02:43   - I wanted one of everything, and I got none of them.

01:02:45   (both laughing)

01:02:46   But I remember when this came out,

01:02:47   and they had demo units at like, I think it was Kmart,

01:02:50   one of the stores had 'em. - Mm-hmm.

01:02:51   And there was the Atari 800 too.

01:02:52   The 800 had a real keyboard.

01:02:54   I'll put this in the show notes, the Atari 400,

01:02:56   which had, I don't even know what you would call that.

01:02:58   What would you call that keyboard?

01:03:00   - I feel like that was a touch type keyboard

01:03:03   before touch type was a thing on Macs,

01:03:06   where it's just like, it's a mat

01:03:08   with slightly raised indents for where keys should be,

01:03:11   but they're like little tiny buttons

01:03:15   hidden underneath the keys.

01:03:17   They're not even buttons, they're like dimples.

01:03:20   - Right, it was so bad.

01:03:22   And I remember all of my friends,

01:03:23   even though I was the one, the weird one,

01:03:25   who was obsessed with keyboard clickiness even at that age

01:03:28   and nobody else really cared, but everybody agreed,

01:03:31   my God, this computer's keyboard

01:03:32   is the biggest piece of crap ever.

01:03:34   Like this is insane.

01:03:36   I think it was like a classic,

01:03:38   I'm guessing internally at Apple,

01:03:39   it was like a classic upsell,

01:03:41   where the Atari 400 really only existed

01:03:44   to get people to buy the Atari 800.

01:03:46   - Oh yeah, where it's like, sure,

01:03:48   you could have this or for X amount of dollars more,

01:03:52   you could have a real keyboard.

01:03:53   You want a real keyboard, don't you?

01:03:55   - It was, so they advertised it

01:03:57   as an advanced childproof design

01:03:59   featuring a pressure sensitive wipe clean keyboard.

01:04:03   - Well, I mean, I guess it would be a lot harder

01:04:05   to spill applesauce on it, I don't know.

01:04:09   I mean, I feel like spilling something

01:04:11   on any computer in the 80s was bad news, period.

01:04:15   - Yeah, but that's, you know,

01:04:16   I think the new MacBook keyboard can beat that one.

01:04:18   - Yeah, well, so I completely under stand

01:04:21   your hesitation on it because I was deaf,

01:04:23   like I don't, I'm not a huge fan of the laptop keyboards,

01:04:26   especially the increasing obsession

01:04:29   with thinner and shallower keyboards,

01:04:33   but you need it for a computer that's so thin

01:04:36   that it makes the current MacBook Airs look like giants.

01:04:42   But I genuinely really, really enjoyed typing on it.

01:04:46   And I don't know if it's just,

01:04:48   I physically noticed the wobble of the keys

01:04:50   after using that MacBook,

01:04:52   like going back to my MacBook Air.

01:04:53   But there is something significantly faster feeling

01:04:58   about typing on it.

01:04:59   Once you get used to it,

01:05:00   the first five minutes,

01:05:02   it feels like you're typing in bizarro land,

01:05:04   or almost like you're typing on glass.

01:05:06   Because when I first started using it,

01:05:10   I was pounding so hard

01:05:11   that I was making the entire computer shake.

01:05:14   And I was really kind of surprised by that.

01:05:16   'Cause I'm like, I don't feel like I'm typing

01:05:18   that much harder than I do on my Air.

01:05:20   And then once I sort of lightened up my pressure on it,

01:05:22   I was able to go really fast.

01:05:25   - That's how I type on every device.

01:05:26   - Yeah, it's like, bam, bam, bam, bam, bam.

01:05:28   But no, it's, I don't know what,

01:05:31   it was just a really quick learning curve.

01:05:33   And I really enjoyed it.

01:05:36   To the point where I'm, now that I'm using my Mac,

01:05:39   But you know, going back to using my 11 inch MacBook Air,

01:05:42   I'm kinda jealous.

01:05:45   I really wanna use that keyboard.

01:05:47   Not enough to get a new MacBook,

01:05:49   but enough that I'm like, all right,

01:05:51   can it be next year already?

01:05:52   I would like to see this evolve into the other computers.

01:05:56   - So this brings us back full circle

01:05:59   to where we were half an hour ago,

01:06:00   talking about a week later,

01:06:02   how people seem more upset about the new MacBook

01:06:04   than they were on the day of the event.

01:06:06   Like as it settled in, people are upset.

01:06:08   And one of the things I've detected, a recurring complaint,

01:06:13   is that clearly what people wanted were the MacBook Air

01:06:17   as we know it with a retina screen.

01:06:19   - Oh yeah. - And they're not gonna get it.

01:06:21   'Cause I think they know in their heart

01:06:22   this means they're never gonna get it.

01:06:24   That as prices drop on the components for this new MacBook,

01:06:29   and once they can make it for like $999,

01:06:34   I don't know if they'll do it all the way,

01:06:35   maybe they'll keep the 11-inch Air around longer

01:06:37   at $899 or something, but once they can make this $999,

01:06:41   the MacBook Air goes away.

01:06:42   - Yeah, I have to assume so,

01:06:44   which makes me a little bummed to be honest.

01:06:47   I really liked the 11 inch computer,

01:06:48   but the 12 inch is not that much bigger, honestly.

01:06:52   It's not that much, it's not like,

01:06:55   you have a little bit of a width here and there,

01:06:58   but overall it has very similarly the same footprint.

01:07:01   - Yeah, it's a funny sort of way that like,

01:07:05   they've expanded a lot of other things.

01:07:08   Now there's two iPad sizes.

01:07:10   Now there's three iPhone sizes

01:07:12   and at least two at the current,

01:07:16   you know, the latest and greatest.

01:07:18   But now they're taking the standard MacBook

01:07:20   from two sizes to one size,

01:07:22   sort of splitting the difference.

01:07:24   - Yeah, bringing it down to, all right,

01:07:26   the Air is, if you want the light model,

01:07:28   you're just gonna have to make do with 12 inches.

01:07:30   And if you want more screen size variation,

01:07:33   then let's look at the pro line.

01:07:36   - Yeah, I think that's definitely it.

01:07:39   But I think that as that settled in,

01:07:41   people realize they're never gonna get an air as we know it,

01:07:45   where, okay, we're gonna sacrifice a little,

01:07:47   it's not gonna be the thinnest in the world,

01:07:49   but it has a separate power port, it has MagSafe,

01:07:53   it has a couple of USB ports,

01:07:55   has a Thunderbolt, this dongle, not a dongle, a port.

01:08:01   - A port, yeah.

01:08:02   'cause dongle is what you wanna avoid.

01:08:04   And it's just not gonna happen.

01:08:08   And I feel like as people, as that settled in,

01:08:10   now people are getting angry.

01:08:12   But I still think though,

01:08:14   like look at how different it is where in 2008

01:08:18   when Apple unveiled the Air.

01:08:20   - No one wanted an Air.

01:08:21   - It was $3,100 to get the good one.

01:08:23   And now you can get a good new MacBook for 1,300.

01:08:28   The base model is actually pretty good.

01:08:29   - Yeah, it's not bad at all.

01:08:31   I got, you know, my most recent Air is $1,400,

01:08:35   something like that for a completely maxed out.

01:08:38   And I loved it.

01:08:38   It was a great choice.

01:08:40   - Yeah, and the other thing I feel like people

01:08:43   cannot get through their head is the way

01:08:46   that Apple is clearly saying,

01:08:47   you're not supposed to work with a power connection.

01:08:51   You're, you know, the future is not just wireless peripherals

01:08:56   but wireless power, you know,

01:08:58   that you're gonna charge when you're, you know,

01:09:01   somewhere like overnight,

01:09:03   and then you're gonna use the thing all day

01:09:05   without having it plugged in.

01:09:06   - You're just gonna run with it, yeah.

01:09:07   And you know what, I was actually,

01:09:09   my one concern with the new MacBook

01:09:11   was the lack of MagSafe, especially,

01:09:15   I don't know if you saw on Twitter,

01:09:16   but yesterday I had a fun accident with my MacBook Air

01:09:19   where it flew like six feet out of a backpack.

01:09:23   - No! - Yeah.

01:09:24   So I picked up my backpack and it wasn't zipped all the way

01:09:27   And as I picked it up to swing it around onto my back,

01:09:30   my MacBook Air flew out of the backpack

01:09:33   and slammed onto the ground.

01:09:35   And it's fine, except for a corner dent,

01:09:37   because SSDs are magical things.

01:09:39   - Wow.

01:09:40   - Yeah, and thick bezels.

01:09:42   Thank God for not edge-to-edge glass screens.

01:09:45   But that said, as soon as that happened,

01:09:51   and I was like, after I got over the heart attack,

01:09:53   and they're like, "Oh my God, my MacBook's okay,"

01:09:56   I immediately thought of, oh God,

01:09:58   this is what's gonna happen to 100 MacBooks

01:10:00   when someone trips over the USB-C cord,

01:10:03   because they're just gonna go flying through the air,

01:10:05   aren't they?

01:10:07   And like, I'm kind of concerned still about the USB-C

01:10:12   being the power charging solution.

01:10:14   But it's like you said,

01:10:15   I really think that by taking away MagSafe,

01:10:18   Apple is basically saying,

01:10:20   yo, you don't need to charge this computer,

01:10:22   you know, nine to 10 hours of battery life,

01:10:24   That should be good enough for anyone using this.

01:10:26   And for me, I'm like, that's right on the edge.

01:10:30   I feel like I would have been a lot more comfortable

01:10:33   if they had released a machine that was like 14 to 16 hours

01:10:37   of battery life, light web browsing,

01:10:39   because 14 to 16 hours translates probably

01:10:42   into seven to eight hours of like heavy usage

01:10:45   or running multiple programs or watching video.

01:10:49   - Yeah, lots of Safari tabs open.

01:10:51   - Exactly.

01:10:52   basically how any moderate to pro user

01:10:56   destroys their travel machine.

01:10:59   So nine to 10 hours makes me a little bit nervous,

01:11:02   especially like, so during the keynote,

01:11:04   I had my 11-inch MacBook Air, which has the same,

01:11:07   this is last year's model,

01:11:09   has the same reported nine to 10 hours as the new MacBook.

01:11:14   And I had it tethered to a Canon Mark II

01:11:19   shooting the keynote.

01:11:20   And the battery went from 100% fully charged to 19% in an hour and 20 minutes with that tethering.

01:11:28   And I ended up having to take off the tethering and turn my screen down really low and just spend the rest of the keynote like,

01:11:36   "All right, I'm just gonna write color, no more photographs."

01:11:39   So I think about things like that where I'm like, "Yes, this is not the ideal use case for this new MacBook."

01:11:49   But still, it should probably last more than two hours

01:11:54   in high usage scenarios without needing to be plugged in.

01:12:00   And for people, like maybe Apple's just saying,

01:12:03   those people who need high usage, high battery things,

01:12:07   maybe you should still look at a computer

01:12:09   that has a MagSafe.

01:12:10   - Right, for now.

01:12:11   - Yeah, for now.

01:12:12   - And I'm not trying to say that it's not a loss

01:12:15   because like almost everybody,

01:12:17   I don't know if there's anybody who hasn't had one incident over the last the magsafe era where somebody tripped over a cable and

01:12:25   Magsafe just popped, you know as advertised popped right out and you were like wow that magsafe just might have saved my computer

01:12:31   It's happened to me

01:12:33   So I'm not under playing it. I definitely think that not having magsafe is in some ways

01:12:38   It's a loss because magsafe is amazing and what a clever idea and nobody else has it

01:12:43   Low these many years later

01:12:47   surprisingly but I really think that the message is you shouldn't be using it

01:12:54   while it's powering or at least while it's connected to a wall outlet and so

01:12:58   think about it and when this when when Mark Gurman's scoop on this design hit a

01:13:03   couple I think was in January mm-hmm during CES and everybody you know the

01:13:08   the first thing everybody said well this is this has to be wrong because there's

01:13:12   no mag safe and there's no way they're gonna get rid of mag safe and then the

01:13:15   The people who obviously had the right idea were like, "Well, iPad doesn't have MagSafe

01:13:22   and an awful lot of people use their iPad the way other people use a MacBook."

01:13:30   And you think about that and then you also think, "Well, then what do you do with an

01:13:33   iPad if you're using it all day as a writer, as a student, as whatever, and you're low

01:13:40   on power?"

01:13:41   Well, you don't plug it in a wall.

01:13:42   use like a mophie battery pack and plug it in. So and you're gonna be able to do that

01:13:47   with the MacBook.

01:13:48   Mophie MacBook case.

01:13:51   Well I don't know about a case.

01:13:53   Yeah but no I'm totally like I people what was it last week people were like oh Apple

01:13:59   is going to allow people to make battery cases for the MacBook and I'm like it's it's standard

01:14:04   it's USB-C. This is the first time like this is this is a charging port that they they

01:14:10   don't control or own.

01:14:12   So I kind of feel the power user move is not going to be to bring your charging cable along

01:14:18   with you with your USB only MacBook, but the power user move is to bring a high capacity

01:14:25   Mophie style power brick with you.

01:14:29   And then you have it, then you don't need MagSafe because it'll just be sitting there

01:14:33   right next to your MacBook on the table with a six inch USB cable.

01:14:39   Yeah, I was actually you know what who the person the person who is going to make bank on the

01:14:44   USB C accessories is who's going to make a hub a USB C hub that also has like a

01:14:50   10,000 milliamp battery in it. Oh yeah. Wouldn't that be great like you plug your

01:14:55   USB C into something like the size of a current Apple power brick maybe a little

01:14:59   bit longer and then out of that you get a 10,000 milliamp battery you get a

01:15:04   you a DisplayPort hub, you get USB ports,

01:15:08   that would be a killer accessory for me.

01:15:12   You can charge a couple hundred bucks for that.

01:15:13   - I'm looking at my Mophie, it's old,

01:15:17   there's a new one now with it's much more clever,

01:15:19   but I have this couple of years old

01:15:21   Mophie juice back power station.

01:15:24   And now I'm just looking at it thinking like,

01:15:26   well, look at all these sides,

01:15:27   they could just fill it with USB ports, that'd be great.

01:15:30   - Yeah. - It's like if Apple can,

01:15:31   you know, still fill ports while filling its laptops

01:15:34   of batteries, a battery manufacturer should totally be able to do that. No problem. That's

01:15:39   definitely I think that's the power user move going forward is to treat it exactly like you

01:15:44   would an iOS device, where you know, the if you expect to be running low on battery by the end of

01:15:50   the day, don't assume that you're going to find a seat next to a wall outlet, bring a battery pack

01:15:57   - Oh yeah, bring it.

01:15:59   You know, I'm trying to find this article right now.

01:16:02   Chris, what's his name?

01:16:07   Chris, Christopher Finn wrote a really nice sort of eulogy

01:16:11   for the PowerBook Duo on Macworld a couple days ago.

01:16:14   He's been doing this like old tech column,

01:16:17   like celebrating the history of past Apple devices.

01:16:21   And I was thinking about like the PowerBook Duo

01:16:23   was my first laptop and I love it very, very fondly.

01:16:26   I was thinking about, man, you know, again,

01:16:28   with the cool idea of like,

01:16:30   the MacBook is probably underpowered right now.

01:16:34   But you know, if people wanna take it to the next level,

01:16:37   wouldn't it be cool if there was a, you know,

01:16:39   PowerBook Duo doc style thing for the new MacBook

01:16:42   where it's like you plug it in

01:16:43   and then all of a sudden you've got all of these ports

01:16:45   and you've got a super huge retina monitor

01:16:47   and everything's magical.

01:16:48   And maybe not Apple,

01:16:49   maybe Apple is not the person to make the fancy retina,

01:16:53   you know, retina display adaptation for the MacBook,

01:16:57   but I'm sure somebody might, right?

01:16:59   - Yeah, I don't know, but I've got Christopher's article,

01:17:02   I'll put it in the show notes.

01:17:04   It was a cool machine.

01:17:06   - Yeah, it was.

01:17:07   I mostly liked it because it was not a ThinkPad,

01:17:11   I'll be honest.

01:17:12   - God, look at the bezel around that display.

01:17:14   - I know, that's beautiful, what, five pounds,

01:17:19   I wanna say? - Are those volume buttons

01:17:20   on the right? - 4.2 pounds.

01:17:22   - Oh yeah.

01:17:22   - It had bezel so thick.

01:17:24   - No, no, no, those were the screen brightness.

01:17:26   - Oh, all right.

01:17:26   - That's right.

01:17:27   'Cause you, my trick was always like

01:17:29   turn the screen brightness down really low

01:17:31   and then switch from 256 colors to black and white

01:17:34   so you could get like an extra hour

01:17:36   of playing Escape Velocity Nova.

01:17:38   I remember, I think I got like four hours

01:17:41   out of that battery once

01:17:42   by like keeping it on the lowest settings.

01:17:45   Oh God.

01:17:46   - Anything that docked was always a clever,

01:17:48   look at how thick those keys were though.

01:17:50   - I know.

01:17:51   keyboard was so fun oh my god look at that and it had little props i'm reading i forgot about that

01:17:57   i forgot about the little feet little feet to prop the keyboard up i don't i think that was before

01:18:01   we understood the ergonomics of props we used to type with our palms up completely ruining our

01:18:09   wrists yeah the removable battery packs that's amazing all right i gotta link it up i can't

01:18:15   tempted to just read it right yeah well and an educated reading on the air with john grueber of

01:18:21   of the PowerBook Duo.

01:18:22   - Anything with a dock though,

01:18:24   it always sounded like a great idea

01:18:26   and never actually took off.

01:18:27   - Yeah, unfortunately,

01:18:29   see, I feel like in the handoff era,

01:18:32   that would be so cool where you're just like,

01:18:35   even you just plug your USB-C MacBook in there.

01:18:38   Oh, I guess it does this all wirelessly at this point.

01:18:41   You know, I don't have to plug anything.

01:18:43   Like I don't have to plug my MacBook into my iMac

01:18:46   because all of the things here,

01:18:48   I can mostly get on my computer via handoff

01:18:51   or I can get everything from Dropbox directly.

01:18:54   Like I don't keep any files on my MacBook Air.

01:18:56   My MacBook Air has like a tiny little SSD, like a 128 SSD.

01:19:00   And then everything I just store in Dropbox

01:19:03   and I just grab what I want.

01:19:04   - And then do you have the air set up

01:19:06   not to mirror your entire Dropbox?

01:19:09   - It's selective sync.

01:19:10   So I have like my work files

01:19:11   and then occasionally I'll pull over.

01:19:13   Like if I'm working on a music project or a roller derby stuff

01:19:16   I have like that specific folder synced,

01:19:18   but everything else is just, if I need it,

01:19:21   I'll download it somewhere else.

01:19:22   - Yeah, that's the killer.

01:19:24   That was like the level up for Dropbox

01:19:26   that made it like infrastructure.

01:19:28   - Oh yeah.

01:19:29   - It's because then you could use it in scenarios like that

01:19:32   where you can't mirror it all.

01:19:33   And conversely, you can then use it in other scenarios,

01:19:36   like if you have a big iMac on your desk

01:19:39   and all of your photos are,

01:19:41   it's like a humongous terabyte collection of photos,

01:19:44   You can put them on Dropbox and not worry about what it's going to do to your SSD and your MacBook.

01:19:49   Oh, yeah, you don't you don't want to cry.

01:19:51   I'm I think I moved all of my photos to Dropbox last year after they acquired Loom, which was my sort of go to cloud photo.

01:19:57   So a solution that night.

01:19:59   I'm not crazy about Dropbox carousel because it's kind of it's kind of wonky and it's kind of broken right now.

01:20:04   But it does allow you to very quickly like go to years and dates and stuff and just knowing that all of my photos are backed up and away somewhere.

01:20:13   and then also locally onto my iMac.

01:20:15   So I'm like, all right, I like,

01:20:17   I don't have to panic about losing five years of photos

01:20:19   because hard drives start clicking or SSDs explode

01:20:23   or I don't know what SSDs do when they die.

01:20:25   They just turn off.

01:20:27   - Yeah, I think they just go corrupt.

01:20:28   I think it's like they just turned to static.

01:20:30   - Yeah. - I don't know.

01:20:31   I've never had one go bad, but.

01:20:34   - Nor have I.

01:20:35   - Yeah, I think it's just like a state of corruption,

01:20:39   but they don't click.

01:20:40   - No, they certainly don't click.

01:20:41   I never have to hear that sound again, knock on wood.

01:20:45   - Let me take another break here,

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01:23:24   While back I've been meaning to talk to you about this for forever. Serenity you had a story

01:23:29   This is all the way back at Macworld. You did a story on

01:23:31   The Lightroom for iPad. Oh, yeah. Yeah, so I don't get it. I've been a Lightroom user for years and

01:23:40   I've just it's like I'm starting to turn into an old man who's afraid to use new stuff. I like Lightroom

01:23:46   I've been using it since 1.0

01:23:48   It was like I tried aperture and I tried Lightroom and at least back then aperture was really slow

01:23:54   and Lightroom was really fast and I was like I'll go with this and I've been the Lightroom user ever since I

01:23:59   Don't get I don't get the iPad version

01:24:01   yeah, I'm I feel like

01:24:04   it's

01:24:06   It's something that you have to actively

01:24:08   insert into your workflow

01:24:11   and like, you know some things you just they work seamlessly with you where it's to pixel mater is a great example of

01:24:19   similarly

01:24:21   an app that's both available on the Mac and on iOS.

01:24:24   And I felt that it was like, it was really simple

01:24:28   in Pixelmator, you just, you know, you do this

01:24:30   and then Handoff does that magical.

01:24:33   Lightroom for iPad, I feel like it took me a good month

01:24:39   to really feel comfortable with it

01:24:41   and to really get used to it.

01:24:42   Like Jeff Carlson wrote our hands-on, I think,

01:24:46   for Macworld when it first came out.

01:24:47   And he kind of encouraged me to start using it.

01:24:51   And I have to admit, I still don't use it all the time.

01:24:55   And I still like, I'm still going between Aperture

01:24:58   and Lightroom also, to be honest,

01:25:00   because Aperture has better tethering workflow for me,

01:25:04   in part because Jason Snell was,

01:25:07   he wrote a bunch of Apple scripts for it.

01:25:09   But I don't know.

01:25:10   - Tethering meaning that you're shooting.

01:25:12   - Shooting live.

01:25:14   So like tether, yeah, exactly.

01:25:15   There's so many meanings of tethering nowadays.

01:25:17   Tethering, yeah, you're connecting your camera

01:25:20   via USB to your Mac so that anything that you take

01:25:24   is showing up immediately on your Mac

01:25:25   rather than having to take it and offload

01:25:27   and put back in into a via SD card.

01:25:32   I don't know, I feel like the app is really, really useful

01:25:37   for kind of seeing your library

01:25:39   and for editing, doing light edits.

01:25:41   But it again, like a lot of these

01:25:45   is dependent on your internet connection

01:25:47   and dependent on the closeness of your Lightroom library,

01:25:52   where like you can,

01:25:53   I don't feel like you could do everything

01:25:55   that I might wanna do on Lightroom

01:25:58   versus on Lightroom for the iPad

01:26:00   versus on Lightroom for my Mac.

01:26:02   I feel like I like the iPad a lot better

01:26:07   as a photo editing service or service,

01:26:10   a photo editing platform.

01:26:12   I really like being able to physically highlight areas

01:26:17   light areas with my finger and physically be able to like color things in or change

01:26:23   dials by sliding like multi-touch gestures feel like a more natural editing experience

01:26:29   because they feel more tactile than just pointing and clicking.

01:26:33   But I don't, I also don't necessarily think that Lightroom for iPad is the best way to

01:26:40   do it yet.

01:26:42   It makes me question in sort of a broader example,

01:26:47   I don't know if this is where you're going with this,

01:26:48   but it makes me sort of question the just companies

01:26:52   in general being like, well, we have a Mac app,

01:26:55   we have to be on the iPad,

01:26:56   and we have to have something on the iPad

01:26:59   that links to our Mac app.

01:27:01   And some people do this really well,

01:27:02   and I think Lightroom is a decent example

01:27:05   of a good adaptation and a good linkage to its Mac app.

01:27:09   But with other ones, it just, it feels kind of throwaway,

01:27:11   It feels like the company is just like,

01:27:14   we need to have a presence on here.

01:27:16   Actually, some of Adobe's other apps

01:27:18   are really good examples of that,

01:27:19   where a couple of their,

01:27:22   like Photoshop, Photoshop Express for the iPhone.

01:27:26   I remember being really excited when that first came out,

01:27:29   being like, yes, finally I'll be able

01:27:30   to have a good way to edit photos.

01:27:32   Like it was two or three years ago.

01:27:33   And then when I opened it, I'm like, this does nothing.

01:27:36   This does absolutely nothing that I want it to do.

01:27:39   - Yeah, my perspective is as like a decided,

01:27:42   prosumer is probably the wrong way to put it

01:27:45   because it puts the word pro before consumer.

01:27:48   It's more like a--

01:27:49   (Karen laughs)

01:27:51   - Consumer with occasional pro dabbling.

01:27:54   - Cons-fessional. (laughs)

01:27:56   But I'm into photography enough

01:27:58   that I still like to buy real cameras.

01:28:02   I don't just shoot everything on my iPhone

01:28:03   and I'll spend $1,000.

01:28:07   I have a Canon 5D.

01:28:08   It's years old now, the Mark II, but I have like a nice,

01:28:11   the 50 millimeter F1.2 lens, which was, I don't know,

01:28:15   I think it was like 1500 bucks.

01:28:16   - It lasts forever.

01:28:17   - All right, the glass definitely lasts.

01:28:20   But you know, I have a couple thousand dollars of cameras,

01:28:23   which is nothing compared to a serious photographer,

01:28:25   but it's a lot more than most people.

01:28:27   - It's an investment.

01:28:28   - Which, where should I be editing my photos,

01:28:32   has been a dilemma forever.

01:28:34   and iPhoto was never right for me.

01:28:37   And Lightroom at first really hit a sweet spot,

01:28:41   but the problem I've run into with Lightroom

01:28:45   is just that it ties my photos to my Mac,

01:28:49   and they're not everywhere.

01:28:50   Picture life doesn't really, I haven't really,

01:28:57   they have a new thing for Lightroom,

01:28:58   but it's like because I shoot in RAW

01:29:01   and a lot of the photo upload sites

01:29:04   want everything in JPEG, you have to like,

01:29:06   you have to like export manually,

01:29:08   which is way too much work.

01:29:09   Like I'm not gonna do that.

01:29:10   I just kind of, you know, I don't spend that much time.

01:29:13   I just go through, throw out all the ones that are garbage,

01:29:15   keep the ones that aren't garbage,

01:29:17   find the ones that are actually really good

01:29:19   and then maybe spend a couple minutes, you know,

01:29:22   tweaking them to make them perfect, you know?

01:29:24   So there's really like, I'll shoot, you know,

01:29:28   like over a holiday or a vacation,

01:29:30   I'll shoot like 300 photos.

01:29:31   I'll throw 100 out, maybe 150 out,

01:29:35   'cause they're garbage or duplicates,

01:29:37   equally good as another shot taken at the same moment.

01:29:40   And I'll find maybe a dozen that are really good,

01:29:42   and then I'll take those dozen and apply filters

01:29:45   and tweak the exposure to make it perfect,

01:29:48   and then that's it, that's all I do, and then I'm done.

01:29:50   I don't wanna sit there and have to pick

01:29:52   which ones to export and stuff like that.

01:29:54   So I'm hopeful.

01:29:55   I guess where I'm going with this whole thing

01:29:56   is that I'm kind of secretly hoping

01:29:58   that the new photos for Mac will be good enough

01:30:02   for all of that, that it'll make me wanna switch

01:30:04   from Lightroom, even if I miss some of Lightroom's

01:30:07   expert controls, that the overall flow

01:30:10   of having my photos sync to iCloud,

01:30:14   and then all I have to do is star them,

01:30:16   and then the starred ones will show up

01:30:18   on all my devices and stuff like that,

01:30:21   is kind of what I'm hoping.

01:30:23   - Yeah, so I've been testing the photos beta

01:30:26   since I think the first developer beta on the phone

01:30:30   and the first developer beta on the Mac,

01:30:32   which was last month, I wanna say now.

01:30:34   And Photos isn't perfect, but it feels,

01:30:40   so I used Loom last two years ago when it showed up.

01:30:45   I wanna say it started in 2013

01:30:46   and then Dropbox bought it last year.

01:30:48   And I really liked Loom for exactly the reason

01:30:51   that you were describing,

01:30:52   where it's like your photos are everywhere,

01:30:53   although Loom didn't have photo editing features.

01:30:55   So anytime I wanted to edit something,

01:30:57   I had to pull it down and edit it in like Photoshop

01:31:00   or something and then throw it back up.

01:31:01   And that was messy.

01:31:04   It didn't have the seamless experience that I really wanted.

01:31:08   And photos comes closest, I think,

01:31:11   especially like talking about what you really want

01:31:13   out of a photo editor.

01:31:15   The thing that really impresses me in photos

01:31:20   is how easy it is to get a really nice edit from it.

01:31:25   where like their editing controls are super simple.

01:31:28   If you want them to be super simple,

01:31:30   it's just, you know, it's three sliders.

01:31:32   It's like the light, the color

01:31:36   and the black and white slider.

01:31:38   If you wanna tint your photo into black and white.

01:31:41   But there's a lot of hidden stuff in there

01:31:44   if you drop it down.

01:31:45   Like if you drop down the light exposure,

01:31:47   you've got exposure, highlights, shadows, brightness,

01:31:49   contrast, stuff like that.

01:31:51   And on Photos for Mac, there's even some more stuff

01:31:54   that you can add like a histogram if you want,

01:31:57   you know, more in depth about what your color's doing.

01:32:00   You can add like sharpening and definition

01:32:02   and noise reduction and white balance and levels.

01:32:05   So you got a lot of controls there,

01:32:08   which is not, I mean, it's not as good as aperture

01:32:10   and it's not as good as Lightroom,

01:32:12   but I also feel like this is a 1.0 product

01:32:14   and it feels to me very much iMovie 08,

01:32:17   or not even iMovie 08, iMovie 11,

01:32:19   where it's like there's enough in there

01:32:21   for the con professional,

01:32:24   that you won't feel like you're just using baby tools

01:32:28   the way that iPhoto was.

01:32:30   My current struggle with photos for Mac

01:32:35   is that I love the syncing, I love the editing tools.

01:32:39   Favoriting is really easy,

01:32:40   albums are syncing, which is really cool.

01:32:43   Still no smart albums on iPhone,

01:32:45   which I'm kind of bummed by.

01:32:47   I feel like smart albums would be a really great way

01:32:49   to organize certain things like screenshots, for example.

01:32:52   But maybe it's too complicated on iOS right now.

01:32:56   Maybe it's like a back project.

01:32:58   But my problem is I already pay 10 bucks a month for Dropbox

01:33:03   for having a terabyte of storage.

01:33:06   And I have all my photos in Dropbox.

01:33:08   And now I'm currently paying four bucks a month

01:33:12   for iCloud Photo Library and the iCloud services,

01:33:15   but I'm sure I'm gonna have to upgrade to the next tier

01:33:17   as soon as I integrate my entire photo library

01:33:21   into Photos for Mac.

01:33:21   Right now I have about 5,000 photos

01:33:23   and I think I have like 35, 40,000 photos

01:33:26   sitting in Dropbox that I still have to integrate

01:33:30   into this new library.

01:33:31   And I'm a little afraid about how much money

01:33:33   I'm gonna have to pay Apple every month

01:33:35   to store all of those.

01:33:37   And also there's the, Apple has,

01:33:41   you know, Apple wants to make it really, really simple

01:33:43   when it comes to optimizing photos.

01:33:45   I had a big conversation with some of the Apple reps

01:33:47   about like how that checkbox that says,

01:33:50   optimize only like a certain subset of the photos

01:33:52   on your hard drive and how that works.

01:33:54   And basically it's dynamic.

01:33:59   So it depends on how much space you have free

01:34:01   and how much space you have on your hard drive total.

01:34:04   And it chooses the photos automatically for you

01:34:08   based on like what photos you've opened recently,

01:34:11   the photos in your favorites

01:34:12   and any photos that you're editing

01:34:14   immediately get pulled down from the cloud.

01:34:17   which is like, that's nice.

01:34:19   And I like the idea of having to take it

01:34:21   out of the user's hands, but at the same time,

01:34:24   it makes it a little hard to be like,

01:34:26   all right, well, I know I want a specific album

01:34:29   to show to people.

01:34:31   Do I have to star each one of those photos individually?

01:34:33   Like, do I have to copy all of those photos

01:34:36   and put them into a Dropbox album

01:34:38   to make sure that they stay locally on my machine

01:34:40   versus getting vanished up into the cloud?

01:34:43   Do I have to open all of them?

01:34:46   Apple tries to make things super easy and for the majority of people they're super easy

01:34:50   and it's great and then there are the weird use cases where you're like I just I really

01:34:54   just want to know that my photos are here so that I can use them.

01:34:59   It's a really hard problem.

01:35:02   It is.

01:35:03   Because it is really wide-ranging.

01:35:06   Once you start thinking about everything that you need in a complete photo system everything

01:35:13   from import and reading all the various raw formats

01:35:18   of all the various cameras and doing a good job of that,

01:35:20   which in and of itself is like an underappreciated thing

01:35:24   that Apple is doing.

01:35:25   How many times do you get like a Mac OS X update

01:35:27   that includes updates to--

01:35:29   - Support for raw cameras, yeah.

01:35:31   That's like 40 new raw cameras.

01:35:33   And you think, I didn't know that there were that many

01:35:36   raw cameras in existence. - Starting from that

01:35:37   to all the editing and the smarts of that that you want,

01:35:41   But then you get into the syncing stuff and it's so complicated.

01:35:44   You know, it's, you know, like this thing about like with Apple Watch, like, I know

01:35:49   that there's some people who are like, I think that they've said they've, you know, it's

01:35:53   officially documented that there's only 75 megabytes of storage for photos, photos.

01:35:57   Yep.

01:35:58   And everybody's like, well, that's crazy.

01:35:59   Because it's like, no, they're not going to give you're not going to put your full size

01:36:02   photos, they're going to scale them because it doesn't make any sense to have a tiny retina

01:36:07   screen.

01:36:08   Why would you have full size photos, 20 megapixel photos?

01:36:11   Right, even like eight megapixel photos right off the iPhone doesn't make any sense. It's only a it's a 42 millimeter screen

01:36:18   Yeah, you know you're gonna be able to fit a lot of photos in 75 megabytes

01:36:23   But how do you do that scaling though? Where does that where does that happen? And

01:36:27   You know, it's just so complicated

01:36:29   yeah, and I well, I feel like they've gotten they've gotten some of that kind of figured out already because

01:36:36   When photos aren't stored, so I have optimization turned on

01:36:39   for both my MacBook Air and my iPhone

01:36:42   because I don't want 5,000 photos worth of space

01:36:47   taken up on my computer.

01:36:48   And for all of the photos that aren't stored locally,

01:36:53   you still see like low res previews.

01:36:57   And I have to wonder if those low res previews

01:37:00   happen to be the same size as our nice little retina screen.

01:37:03   I feel like the 38 millimeter is something like 212

01:37:08   by 300 something.

01:37:10   So those are pretty small pictures to begin with.

01:37:14   So it may just be that like all of those low res snapshots

01:37:17   that photos for Mac and photos for iOS stores by default

01:37:22   may be the perfect size for retina on

01:37:25   and those don't take up very much space at all.

01:37:27   I think those are probably like kilobytes.

01:37:30   - Yeah.

01:37:33   So anyway, what is your overall verdict so far

01:37:35   on I found the beta for Mac?

01:37:39   - It's surprisingly solid actually.

01:37:41   I am, especially even from the first beta.

01:37:43   I had a couple of problems initially

01:37:46   with iCloud photo library randomly turning off

01:37:48   where I turn it on and then I'd relaunch photos for Mac

01:37:51   and it would be off and I turn it on again.

01:37:53   But aside from that, it's really fast.

01:37:57   Even I've got 5,050 photos in it right now.

01:38:00   And the thing scrolls ridiculously fast.

01:38:03   Like I'm in the big,

01:38:06   I'm scrolling through it right now while I'm talking to you.

01:38:08   And again, I'm on a MacBook Air.

01:38:09   It's not like I have a hundred cores at my disposal

01:38:14   or a really high level video card,

01:38:16   but it's speedy opening up photos that aren't stored.

01:38:21   Like I'm gonna go back, I don't know,

01:38:23   here's something from CES

01:38:24   that's almost definitely not stored.

01:38:26   And it took two seconds to load up from online.

01:38:29   It does like it's super fast.

01:38:32   Also, I really appreciate how well it syncs with iCloud.

01:38:37   iCloud has always been one of those things

01:38:40   where it can either work really well

01:38:42   or it can just completely wet the bed.

01:38:45   And especially I noticed this,

01:38:51   I was bored on a flight back from San Francisco

01:38:54   and the internet was completely failing

01:38:58   because Google Air is either great or it's terrible.

01:39:00   So I was just sitting on my iPhone

01:39:04   and playing a bunch of like Altos adventure

01:39:05   and then going into photos and being like,

01:39:07   you know what, I'm just gonna go through all the photos

01:39:10   I have on my phone and like delete and organize accordingly

01:39:15   because I've got nothing else to do

01:39:16   and I've got all of these photos

01:39:18   and I know I've got like duplicates and things like that.

01:39:20   And I did all of this with no internet access

01:39:23   and in the back of my head,

01:39:25   and this includes like photos that aren't stored locally

01:39:27   on the device that have like the little processing symbol

01:39:29   on them and in the back of my head, I'm like,

01:39:31   is this gonna accidentally screw over my entire library?

01:39:34   Well, it might as well find out it's a beta, right?

01:39:36   And it synced everything perfectly and all the favorites

01:39:40   that like I queued while I was offline,

01:39:42   it pulled all of those down as soon as I got off the plane

01:39:45   and like reconnected to LTE.

01:39:47   And something like that is really,

01:39:49   really a big market change for Apple, at least for me,

01:39:54   where I basically did all of that having implicit trust

01:39:58   that my photos wouldn't either disappear

01:40:01   or accidentally triplicate.

01:40:03   And I was right.

01:40:05   Granted, that may not be 100% of the time.

01:40:10   It worked for me, maybe it won't work for other people.

01:40:12   I'm kind of hoping that it's better though.

01:40:15   Like I haven't really run into any photo loss problems

01:40:19   with iCloud Photo Library.

01:40:20   And that was my biggest concern

01:40:22   'cause your photos are precious.

01:40:23   That's the one thing that I'm always super concerned about.

01:40:26   Your photos are potentially your life.

01:40:29   You know, they are, I mean, they are.

01:40:30   They're snapshots of your life.

01:40:31   - Well, it's true.

01:40:33   And it's like when you talk to people who've worked,

01:40:35   I mean, you even did.

01:40:36   So you've probably, maybe you have firsthand experience,

01:40:38   but you talk to people who work at Apple stores.

01:40:39   It's like the worst part of the job

01:40:42   is somebody who comes in and has a dead hard drive

01:40:45   and it can't be resuscitated.

01:40:47   And then they start to cry and they say,

01:40:49   my husband died a couple months ago

01:40:53   and I have my last year of pictures with them,

01:40:55   they're only on that hard drive or something like that.

01:40:58   And it truly, you know, you can't even overstate

01:41:02   how devastating it can be.

01:41:04   It really is like probably the most important data

01:41:07   that Apple keeps.

01:41:10   - Yeah, it's incredibly vital digital data.

01:41:12   And we think about, you know, old analog photos.

01:41:16   Oh, I've got, you know, boxes and boxes of snapshots

01:41:18   that maybe I'll never look at again.

01:41:21   But those boxes are there unless they get burned down

01:41:23   in a fire, you know.

01:41:24   - Which is a lot less, it's a real issue.

01:41:27   I mean, and it's definitely happened or water damage,

01:41:29   you know, I'm sure, you know, water damage and fire

01:41:32   are two huge things for, you know,

01:41:35   archive boxes or albums of photos.

01:41:37   - Yeah.

01:41:38   - But those things are less common

01:41:40   than hard drives going belly up.

01:41:41   - Yeah, exactly.

01:41:42   And you could argue, well, digital data is a lot easier

01:41:45   to replicate, which is true.

01:41:47   And it's like the more copies you have of something,

01:41:48   the better. But there's still that that fear. I mean, I lost

01:41:52   when my my last big hard drive crash and the one that kind of

01:41:56   forced me to think very seriously about good backup

01:41:59   solutions. I did an art project with a friend where we went

01:42:03   across the country and did a made comedy and tragedy masks

01:42:06   and like, took pictures in front of various historic landmarks.

01:42:10   So we had these wonderful photos of like hanging over the Niagara

01:42:15   falls with tragedy like looking and potentially like oh what how far down is

01:42:20   it and we had like a we had a digital camera and we took 80% of those photos

01:42:26   and all of them were lost in that hard drive crash and I did I was lucky that

01:42:30   we also were taking some backup photos with like a really crappy like 24

01:42:35   exposure instacamera because we just thought well that might be fun have some

01:42:38   like real media with the digital media when we do our exhibition and those are

01:42:44   the only records that I have that that trip even existed.

01:42:47   I mean, it's not nearly as heartbreaking

01:42:51   or as sad as like losing photos of a loved one.

01:42:54   - Like a loved one or something.

01:42:55   - Yeah, exactly.

01:42:56   But it's still a mark in your life.

01:42:58   Photos are one of the, photos and Twitter at this point

01:43:01   are like the mark points of where I can be like,

01:43:05   yes, this is how my life is going.

01:43:06   This is what I did last week.

01:43:09   Because sometimes things are so crazy

01:43:12   that you stop and you forget the day-to-day,

01:43:14   you forget the funny little moments

01:43:16   that happen in the in-betweens.

01:43:18   And I really, I love that Apple is putting

01:43:20   such a big emphasis on photos.

01:43:23   I think that if they manage to make this work,

01:43:28   I mean, they have such a wonderful camera

01:43:31   in the form of the iPhone.

01:43:32   Being able to actually have those memories stored

01:43:35   in an easily accessible place

01:43:38   and being able to share them very easily

01:43:41   is so much better than what it's been so far,

01:43:44   which is dumping them in folders and syncing them

01:43:46   with Dropbox and praying that like,

01:43:48   oh, I'll organize these eventually

01:43:50   when someone has a photo organization service

01:43:52   that I don't hate.

01:43:53   - And strategically, it becomes a powerful form of lock-in.

01:43:57   And the cynical out there can say

01:43:59   that that's the primary reason they're doing it.

01:44:01   I don't think so.

01:44:01   I think that their first goal is

01:44:03   let's build a complete workflow.

01:44:06   Everything from sucking in the photos

01:44:09   from your iPhone and iPad to the photos you import

01:44:13   from any standalone camera you might have

01:44:15   to where do you store them, which copies are where,

01:44:18   and how are they so that you can get them anywhere,

01:44:21   anytime from any of your devices,

01:44:23   and do a good job editing them.

01:44:25   I think that it's really about the customer experience,

01:44:27   but then once they have that in place,

01:44:28   and once people can trust it,

01:44:30   man, when would you ever wanna switch to any other device

01:44:34   if that's part of your workflow?

01:44:38   - Yeah, it's not just about, oh, I like iPhone

01:44:41   or I like iOS more than I like Android.

01:44:43   It's, well, my iPhone has all of my photos on it.

01:44:47   It has iCloud and it has my, you know,

01:44:49   it has the heartbeats that I've sent to my husband

01:44:51   on my Apple Watch.

01:44:52   Why would I wanna give that up?

01:44:55   And especially, I didn't even talk about, you know,

01:44:57   the project side of Photos for Mac,

01:45:00   which like they've carried over the same things

01:45:02   that you can do for my photo,

01:45:03   but they added a bunch of other prints and dynamic prints now

01:45:08   so that you don't have to,

01:45:09   instead of having to crop photos for a certain size,

01:45:12   you can print photos no matter what size or shape they are.

01:45:17   So you can print square photos,

01:45:18   or you can even print panoramas,

01:45:20   and Apple will automatically print any size photos for you.

01:45:24   And being able to not only store them digitally,

01:45:27   but also have the option of having those physical copies,

01:45:30   and you never have to worry about going to a Walmart,

01:45:32   or a Rite Aid, or anything like that.

01:45:35   It's just there.

01:45:37   That leads me to a serendipitous segue.

01:45:41   Our last sponsor of the show,

01:45:43   our good friends at Fracture.

01:45:47   So speaking of getting analog printouts of your photos,

01:45:52   Fracture is a service that takes your photos

01:45:58   and prints them directly on glass.

01:46:03   They don't take a piece of paper,

01:46:04   print it on paper and then put the paper behind the glass.

01:46:07   They've got some kind of crazy proprietary process

01:46:10   where they take frames of glass

01:46:13   and print your photos directly on them.

01:46:16   Very much like a retina screen

01:46:19   where it makes the picture look like it's on the glass,

01:46:22   not behind glass.

01:46:24   They have all sorts of sizes ranging from the small

01:46:28   to medium to classic to large.

01:46:30   Their large one is downright huge.

01:46:33   It's like 28 inches by 21 inches, something like that.

01:46:38   Really, really big though.

01:46:39   They also have square, and the square ones

01:46:43   go from very small, perfect for a desktop,

01:46:45   all the way up to, I think the biggest square size

01:46:48   they have is 23 by 23 inches.

01:46:51   Truly, truly wall size.

01:46:53   They ship with everything you need

01:46:57   to hang them on the wall, to prop them up on your desk,

01:47:01   to prop them up on a mantle or a shelf

01:47:04   or something like that.

01:47:05   It's all there right in the cardboard packaging

01:47:08   that your Fracture ships with.

01:47:09   Very, very clever.

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01:48:41   So here we are, we're an hour and 40-some minutes

01:48:46   into the show, hour and 50 minutes,

01:48:48   and we haven't even talked about Apple Watch yet.

01:48:52   I have been thinking about the timing of the event,

01:48:55   and I'm still confused why they held it when they did.

01:48:59   'Cause March 9th is just so far in advance

01:49:02   of them taking pre-orders a month later,

01:49:05   and six weeks ahead of them shipping.

01:49:07   And I can't help but think that,

01:49:11   and I've been talking with your colleague at IMA

01:49:13   or Renee Ritchie about some of this,

01:49:14   and the consensus seems to be that Apple kind of got locked

01:49:18   into that date because they expected maybe like when they locked in near Bubwena and

01:49:23   started making the plans for the event that they were sort of expecting to ship the watch

01:49:29   sooner than they're going to maybe like an early April thing instead of a late April

01:49:33   thing.

01:49:34   Sarah; Yeah I'm kind of I'm two minds on that on on that because on one hand I think that

01:49:42   yeah, they were timing to go for a specific date

01:49:45   and a specific time and say like,

01:49:47   hoping that we'll launch for a good solid spring.

01:49:52   But then I think as that kind of slipped a little bit

01:49:55   when we got Tim Cook saying April

01:49:57   in the last financial call, I wanna say,

01:50:00   for the watch's launch.

01:50:01   And then they're like, well, we've got this.

01:50:03   But honestly, my real thought is

01:50:08   it gives the appropriate buildup

01:50:11   for sort of the anticipation of the watch,

01:50:13   gives them time to roll it out in magazines.

01:50:16   And it also gives them the time

01:50:19   to showcase them in the stores,

01:50:21   not only to build and put in the tables

01:50:25   that they're gonna need to show off the watches,

01:50:27   but also, I mean, starting April 10th,

01:50:29   they're gonna have appointments

01:50:31   for people to be able to come in and try on the watches

01:50:33   and play with them and really get a sense for how they,

01:50:37   up till now, like I've played with some,

01:50:39   and you were at the September event, right?

01:50:41   and you've played with some.

01:50:42   But the majority of the public,

01:50:44   all they've seen about the watch is a ton of news articles

01:50:48   and a couple of maybe like 15 second,

01:50:50   very dark and blurry hands-on with the watches.

01:50:55   They really haven't had a chance to experience it themselves

01:50:57   in their hands.

01:50:58   And it's what makes the Apple stores magical

01:51:01   and has always made them magical

01:51:02   is that people can come in and actually like get to see

01:51:05   how this product might change their life.

01:51:07   And I think giving people two to three weeks

01:51:11   to really get a chance to have some hands-on time

01:51:14   and to see what, you know, not only see, all right,

01:51:17   what kind of band combination do I want?

01:51:19   Do I want the sport?

01:51:20   Do I want the watch?

01:51:22   Do I wanna like ogle the edition

01:51:23   'cause I'll never in a million years be able to afford it?

01:51:27   You also really get a chance to see what it's good for

01:51:30   and what it might actually do for your life versus,

01:51:33   you know, all of us assholes in journalism were like,

01:51:36   this is what the Apple Watch is going to do for you,

01:51:38   or this is what the Apple Watch absolutely won't do,

01:51:40   and this is why the Apple Watch is useless,

01:51:42   this is why the Apple Watch is wonderful.

01:51:45   But being able to sort of have a little bit of time

01:51:48   to play with it yourself and be like,

01:51:50   oh, oh, I see how useful this is.

01:51:53   Oh, Siri actually works?

01:51:56   - Yeah, I mean, it's definitely multi-variable.

01:52:01   I mean, retail's definitely part of it,

01:52:03   hype is definitely part of it,

01:52:04   Publicity is definitely part of it.

01:52:06   I think even the editorial schedule of fashion magazines

01:52:12   is part of it, 'cause they have a longer lead time.

01:52:15   But I've been thinking about it,

01:52:17   and I definitely detect,

01:52:20   I mean, I wasn't at the event last week,

01:52:22   but just from what I can tell from the outside

01:52:25   and from the small bits of communication I've had with Apple

01:52:32   in the last few weeks about the lead up to Apple Watch.

01:52:34   And just from what I've seen is that

01:52:37   they're doing a full court press on Apple Watch

01:52:44   that to me they only really bring out this level

01:52:49   of publicity and hype and PR emphasis

01:52:54   for brand new products.

01:52:57   And they don't really do brand new products that often.

01:53:00   I mean, the last 10 years, there's only three,

01:53:03   the iPhone in 2007, the iPad in 2010,

01:53:07   and now this, the watch in 2015.

01:53:10   And I just, I get the feeling that the difference is

01:53:13   that they, when you already have momentum,

01:53:17   and iPads are already selling,

01:53:18   and iPhones are already selling,

01:53:19   then you can just say new iPhone,

01:53:22   and you can assume they know what an iPhone is,

01:53:24   and you just tell them, well, here's the stuff

01:53:25   that's new and better in the new one.

01:53:27   Whereas with something altogether new like Watch,

01:53:30   they really feel like they have to do

01:53:34   an extra amount of effort just to get the baseline level

01:53:39   of consumer interest up and peaked at the right time

01:53:44   for when they're gonna start taking orders

01:53:47   and start letting people into the stores.

01:53:49   - Absolutely, I mean, you look at the sheer amount of press

01:53:52   that Tim Cook alone is doing

01:53:54   and the interviews that he's given.

01:53:56   every single interview there's at least one moment where someone's like are you

01:53:59   wearing the Apple watch?

01:54:00   and he's like yes I am and then proceeds to do a quick like

01:54:03   two-minute demo of something cool on it and it's every time it's a slightly

01:54:07   different

01:54:08   you know demo it's not he doesn't do the same like I can check my calendars

01:54:13   I can Apple Pay you know I think about the first one

01:54:16   I think the first one was Charlie Rose is that was that right the PBS one

01:54:19   yeah where he spent like two or three minutes and he did show off

01:54:23   Apple Pay in that one and then each subsequent one like Goldman Sachs he talked about like

01:54:28   why it was useful for him and there was that most the Fast Company article that came out

01:54:32   what yesterday or this morning that where he's talking about the watch glances and every

01:54:37   it always feels I really admire Tim Cook in that way for the very subtle way he's able

01:54:44   to do product marketing demos without making them feel like product marketing demos.

01:54:48   I don't know whether it's the way that he presents himself or just the the like it's

01:54:52   It's a very casual way of like, oh, I'm taught, you know, oh, the watch this old thing?

01:54:58   Yeah, let me talk about this.

01:54:59   And before you know it, I've given you a three minute demo and you you just think I'm talking

01:55:03   about myself and like what I'm doing.

01:55:06   It's it's really smart.

01:55:07   I don't think it's any coincidence that johnny Ive has done more press in the last two, three

01:55:13   months than in the rest of his year combined the rest of his career, I should say combined.

01:55:18   Of course, I well, I mean, you think there are a lot of things riding on this, right?

01:55:22   the first major post Steve new product launch.

01:55:26   I mean, I think that Tim Cook and his team

01:55:29   has done an incredible job in, you know, in jobs as absence,

01:55:32   but it's still like, this is their first product.

01:55:35   And I'm actually like, I'm proud of the press

01:55:39   for not being like the first post jobs, you know,

01:55:43   like making such a big deal of it.

01:55:46   But I definitely like,

01:55:47   it's gotta be weighing on them a little bit

01:55:49   to be like, we have to make this a success.

01:55:51   and we have to be sure that this really,

01:55:53   this launches out the door like gangbusters.

01:55:56   And it's also the, you know, how many,

01:55:59   I haven't worn a watch in 10 years.

01:56:02   A lot of people I know are, you know, watches,

01:56:05   watches are not a daily wear item like they used to be.

01:56:10   And smartwatches especially, I have not, you know,

01:56:14   up until I tried on the 38 millimeter Apple watch,

01:56:17   there was not a single smartwatch on the market

01:56:19   that would fit my wrist.

01:56:20   Like smartwatches just weren't targeted towards women at all.

01:56:25   Not even like in a misogynistic like,

01:56:29   "Ha ha, no women for smartwatches."

01:56:30   But it's just like, no one was thinking about small wrists

01:56:34   and how a smartwatch screen might work on a small wrist.

01:56:39   And Apple was the first one,

01:56:41   the Apple Watch is the first one, at least for me,

01:56:43   where I'm like, "Oh, this not only fits on my wrist,

01:56:46   but it's still functional, I can still do things on it."

01:56:49   It's not like they've squished the screen down so far

01:56:51   that it's now impossible to use,

01:56:54   even though it looks semi-nice.

01:56:56   So it's, I think they're facing the wearable issue too.

01:56:59   Like everybody needs a phone.

01:57:01   Everybody was gonna need a smartphone.

01:57:03   A tablet's a bigger one, but.

01:57:05   - I know it's just a few millimeters,

01:57:07   but a few millimeters here, a few millimeters there,

01:57:11   and at this size, it makes a big difference.

01:57:14   I think that the highest praised design

01:57:18   for a smartwatch to date, at least one that got a lot of mass market attention, is the

01:57:23   Moto 360, aka the Moto 270, because it has the flat bottom on the round screen.

01:57:30   And I don't really particularly care for it, but I think that a lot of people have praised

01:57:35   the design.

01:57:38   But in the grand scheme of things, it's a relatively large watch.

01:57:42   Yes.

01:57:43   And the first person who I've seen wearing it was Andy Annette.

01:57:49   Did you see it at the at the September event because that's when I saw Andy's

01:57:52   watch was actually right right before we went in the doors for the Apple event

01:57:56   and I was actually like hey Andy I've heard good things about this can you

01:58:00   take this off and can I put it on for a second and he gives the moto to me and I

01:58:05   put it on my wrist and the watch face itself the 360 to 270 you know is

01:58:10   is actually physically larger than the diameter of my wrist.

01:58:14   Like there were, there are parts hanging off each side.

01:58:18   And at that point I was just kind of like,

01:58:21   yeah, it's a pretty watch on you Andy,

01:58:23   but like this would basically look like

01:58:26   I'm carrying around half a handcuff.

01:58:28   - I think the bottom line is that the more we learn

01:58:30   about Apple Watch and the more we kind of get a sense of it

01:58:35   is that it's like you,

01:58:40   I feel like you can't overstate just how ambitious it is as a platform. It's not just

01:58:47   telling the time and getting your text notifications on your wrist at the same time.

01:58:52   It's a real platform, and there is an inherent complexity to anything that ambitious.

01:58:59   And I don't know that it's a problem, because I feel like the main things you're going to want to

01:59:04   do, you'll be able to figure out. You're going to be able to figure out how to adjust your watch face

01:59:10   and pick the one that you want and you're gonna be able to pick out the complications you want on the watch face, but I don't think it's

01:59:15   Quite as simple as the iPhone was in 2007 the iPhone you hit the home button and there were I think it was 13 apps

01:59:23   That were right there on the home screen and those 13 apps on the home screen gave you a quick one screen

01:59:30   Overview of the scope of what you could do with the app and just the names of the apps would let you know what they

01:59:35   were

01:59:36   I don't think Apple watch has that many more apps

01:59:38   But it's more and there are a couple of other contextual modes that the original iPhone didn't have like glances and

01:59:45   Notification Center that give you a little bit of extra complex complexity in terms of where are you and how do you get back?

01:59:52   to where you were

01:59:53   and I in some sense, I think it's almost more like a Mac in that sense of not being a

01:59:59   problem insofar as that you can be a Mac user and not have

02:00:04   explored the entire system and used every app.

02:00:08   And it doesn't mean that the Mac is too complex

02:00:10   or too complicated because you're able to figure out

02:00:13   the things you really want to do.

02:00:16   - Absolutely.

02:00:16   So I went to the Apple Watch page out of curiosity

02:00:19   and I was like, all right,

02:00:20   how many default apps are there?

02:00:22   And if you're not counting the clock functions,

02:00:25   there are 16.

02:00:26   And if you count the alarm stopwatch timer and world clock,

02:00:29   you get 20 total.

02:00:32   So you've got seven more apps off the bat.

02:00:35   Still, I mean, overall, you've got a very similar,

02:00:39   similar build to the original phone

02:00:43   in terms of like messages, SMS, phone, mail, calendar.

02:00:47   But you've got two apps dedicated to the exercise portion,

02:00:50   which you were just talking about,

02:00:51   and I think that's gonna be really key for the watch,

02:00:53   especially, we didn't really touch on research kit,

02:00:56   but that's something that really sort of

02:00:58   made an impression to me during the event.

02:01:01   The idea that Apple's not only gonna build

02:01:03   this revolutionary technology,

02:01:05   but they're actually going to put

02:01:06   this revolutionary technology to work at making our lives,

02:01:11   not only better, but potentially longer

02:01:13   by using all of this integrated stuff

02:01:15   that they've been putting together

02:01:16   over the last two or three years.

02:01:18   But yeah, you've got Maps, Passbook and Siri,

02:01:22   which of course are new in the last couple of years.

02:01:26   Camera remote, which hooks directly into your phone.

02:01:29   Apple TV remote, which I'm excited to actually see and play with.

02:01:34   Like there's, there's so much more, it's such a more mature, as you were saying, it's a more mature product.

02:01:39   I think that it's, Apple has, Apple's learned from its successes, its failures, its mistakes, its, its, you know, wins.

02:01:49   The fact that they're, you know, watch kit is still very rudimentary and it is built, you know, they're extensions, basically.

02:01:57   extensions basically they're not full apps and I don't even know yet whether

02:02:02   or not like third-party apps will be able to really run on the app if or on

02:02:06   the on the watch if your phone is not in Wi-Fi range. I don't know if that's

02:02:11   that's something that you can do with current watch apps, watch kit apps but

02:02:14   but the fact that there are watch kit apps at all for the first generation of

02:02:17   the Apple watch is huge. The fact that people have been able to develop for

02:02:21   them since November is huge and the fact that Phil Schiller basically said this

02:02:26   is step one and full native watch apps are going to be coming soon. Like that they're

02:02:33   there clearly. I mean, there's there's a lot of thought that's been put into this this

02:02:38   launch.

02:02:39   Yeah, just today in the Fast Company article, the interview with Tim Cook with the authors

02:02:44   of becoming Steve Jobs, Brent Schlander and Rick Tedzelli. Tim Cook specifically mentioned

02:02:52   the difference between iPhone launching without an app store, a year out from an app store, and

02:02:59   Apple Watch launching with an SDK that came out months in advance and maybe not full-fledged apps,

02:03:09   but watch with third-party developer support right there on day one. And they're already

02:03:16   promoting these apps, third-party apps, before the watch is even out. And just how different that is,

02:03:21   how much more fully formed this platform is at this point than iPhone was in in 2007.

02:03:28   Sarah

02:03:28   Especially Tim Cook's Fast Company article, I just it really it really spoke to me Cook throughout the article really emphasizes that the watch couldn't have been made without Apple's culture and without Apple's sort of big picture focus on what what did you say that not living in a small box.

02:03:51   box and he says it's a thing from Steve about putting your debt in the universe.

02:03:57   But that comes up repeatedly throughout the article about not limiting – like operating

02:04:02   as if you do not have limits.

02:04:04   And if you run into limits, acknowledging them and then moving past them and really

02:04:10   believing that you can work and live and build in a world where you're not boxed in, you're

02:04:18   not limited by outside factors.

02:04:22   I feel like that's a philosophy that can occasionally go a really bad way.

02:04:29   But with the watch, it really does feel like they, like always, Apple took their time.

02:04:35   They stepped back and they said, "All right, let's really machine this thing within an

02:04:40   inch of its life.

02:04:41   Let's make sure that what we're releasing is the absolute best product that we are most

02:04:46   proud to put you know our names on because yeah you're absolutely right

02:04:49   they could have released a watch last year and it could have been bare bones

02:04:52   and it probably you know it probably would have outsold the pebble two to one

02:04:56   but you talk about you know we look at you know the the most recent Samsung

02:05:01   Galaxy the s6 phone right it's at this point Apple has Apple has become a

02:05:06   company that everybody looks to whether or not they put out a gangbuster

02:05:10   blockbuster product or just a incremental revision people look to them

02:05:15   people copy, innovate, build off of their ideas.

02:05:20   And if they had put out,

02:05:22   if they had put out Apple Watch version 0.5

02:05:25   with no app store and with limited apps,

02:05:28   they probably still would have had the basic design down.

02:05:30   They would have had the digital crown,

02:05:31   they would have had the button.

02:05:32   And then they'd have to not only deal

02:05:36   with their own internal struggle of being like,

02:05:38   all right, well, we need to make this super,

02:05:40   we need to make this even better.

02:05:41   We need to figure out a way to elevate this.

02:05:44   But then they also would have to deal with the competition trying to copy the few things that made it unique in the first place

02:05:50   Do you see this article last week?

02:05:53   Greg Koenig wrote it how

02:05:57   Apple makes the watch

02:06:00   It's

02:06:02   Just great speculation

02:06:04   I mean he admits that speculation just but based on those three

02:06:07   videos that Apple put out with how they work with the aluminum how they work with stainless steel how they work with gold and

02:06:13   looking at the processes that they're used the the milling the

02:06:18   smelting whatever you want to call it and

02:06:21   Just talking about the details and Greg knows what he's doing

02:06:25   He's I've known him for years through he works with my friend Duncan Davidson on Luma loop these great custom-made high-end

02:06:33   Camera slings, you know and you put them around your chest and you can attach your camera to them

02:06:38   and Greg's the guy who designs all the little pieces,

02:06:43   the connectors, the O-rings,

02:06:44   everything that goes on it, the metal.

02:06:47   So he knows what he's talking about

02:06:48   when it comes to working with metals like aluminum and steel

02:06:50   and stuff like that and making high quality stuff.

02:06:53   And I thought one of the points,

02:06:56   his whole article's great, I'll put it in the show notes,

02:06:58   but the point that he makes that I thought really stood out

02:07:01   is that the smaller the device,

02:07:04   the more the attention to detail matters in the market.

02:07:09   And I've thought that firsthand,

02:07:12   having seen these watches in September,

02:07:14   that no matter how good Apple's product photography is,

02:07:17   and their product photography is top of the line,

02:07:20   it's as good as anybody's,

02:07:22   no product shot really does justice

02:07:24   to how good these Apple watches look in person.

02:07:29   When you feel them in your hand

02:07:31   and you look at them in your own eyes close up,

02:07:34   the attention to detail is really, really great.

02:07:36   And I think you need that firsthand experience,

02:07:39   which means going into an Apple retail store

02:07:42   or some other place where they sell them to see it

02:07:44   and to get excited about buying it.

02:07:46   And I think Apple knows this.

02:07:47   - It's just as beautiful a piece of jewelry

02:07:51   as it is a smartwatch.

02:07:53   And I think that, I mean,

02:07:54   you take Marc Newsome and Joni Ivan,

02:07:56   you put them in a room together,

02:07:58   obviously they're going to make something gorgeous,

02:08:00   something that you'd be proud to wear on your wrist.

02:08:03   But the fact that they were able to do this and include, you know, watchOS, you know,

02:08:11   include iOS, include all of this, all of the extra stuff, and make it look just as beautiful

02:08:16   in your hand as it is when you're actually physically interacting with the display.

02:08:21   It's absolutely incredible.

02:08:22   And those bands, that was another thing that I really noticed in April is I didn't get

02:08:25   a chance to play with a lot of the bands in September.

02:08:27   I think I, you know, I tried on the sport and I had two, maybe two minutes with it,

02:08:32   that so I was like pink sport band okay this is really nicely built for a sport

02:08:36   band but um in April I got a chance or in April in in March I got a chance to

02:08:41   play with I got a chance to see the leather band and the the both the modern

02:08:47   buckle and the classic buckle and I got a chance to try the Milanese loop which

02:08:51   I thought I was going to absolutely hate because I'm not a I'm like I'm not a fan

02:08:55   of metal bands they're cold you know they get caught in your your hair and I

02:09:01   I put that on and I'm like, oh my God, I like I was planning on getting a leather band and now

02:09:05   I have to completely reevaluate my whole my whole plan because they're those bands are beautiful.

02:09:11   I mean, yeah, I got to try the Milanese back in September. And I remember thinking I wouldn't

02:09:15   like it because I like to wear my watch not tight, but snug. And it seemed to me given that it was

02:09:21   magnetic, that if I close the Milanese loop to be snug enough to be pleasant, then when I'd flex my

02:09:28   wrist, the fact that it was only connected magnetically, it would slide, you know, the

02:09:32   magnetic closure would slide along the band and then it would be too loose. But that wasn't the

02:09:36   case at all. It's once you have it on somehow the magnet for lateral forces, it's very, very tight.

02:09:42   And if you flex your wrist, it doesn't change. But yet it's not so strong that if you want to

02:09:47   take it off that if you get your finger underneath it and pick it straight off that it's hard to get

02:09:51   off. No, it you really have to try it to believe it. Yeah, it's it's exactly like the force touch

02:09:57   trackpad. It's one of those things that I mean, I really sometimes I wonder if Apple intentionally

02:10:02   makes products where they're like, you have to come and try it out before you purchase it,

02:10:07   because we really want you to see just how ridiculously good it is.

02:10:11   Yeah, I don't I think the retail stores are important to everything Apple sells small,

02:10:16   big Mac, iOS, whatever. It's been important to the whole success for story over the last 15 years.

02:10:22   I mean, people don't talk about the halo effect anymore. But I think that definitely was what

02:10:27   fueled it where people would come in because they wanted to buy an iPod and back in the early days

02:10:32   they'd even call it the iPod store and eventually they'd say hey I like this store I like this

02:10:36   people discombing these products maybe I'll try one of their computers and I'll try one of their

02:10:40   phones and etc etc. So I'm not trying to underplay the importance of Apple's retail stores in any of

02:10:46   their products but I really do think that the hands-on nature of a watch and the personal

02:10:51   nature of it and the attention to detail that's only visible at real life distance and size

02:10:58   that the watch is the first Apple product where their stores their retail stores are

02:11:03   essential to the success of the product.

02:11:06   I don't think they could be doing this without retail without their own retail.

02:11:11   Yeah, I mean, I don't know.

02:11:12   I honestly don't think they would have been able to sell the iPhone or the iPad the way

02:11:16   they did without the Apple stores and just that the displays are one of the like the

02:11:22   multi-touch display when you try to explain to people oh yeah you can do this and you

02:11:26   can pinch and you can zoom and people would say oh yeah I've used quote unquote multi-touch

02:11:32   displays before those are those awful things you use at the movies and they scroll and

02:11:37   they lag and they're terrible and then you actually you know you'd go into a store and

02:11:42   try one and you realize oh this was you know this is so fast this is instantaneous.

02:11:48   I really do kind of feel like the experience with the watch is going to be very similar

02:11:52   where you know again with the with Force Touch with with the with the digital crown with

02:11:59   you know just all the interactions that you can use on the on the watch.

02:12:03   I did this week in tech last week and one of the commenters like during the show they

02:12:07   I have the live chat, one of the commenters was like,

02:12:10   you know, I was talking about how I'm really excited

02:12:13   to use the watch as a driving tool

02:12:16   because I hate mounting my phone.

02:12:18   'Cause it's just like, it's a big giant screen

02:12:20   and it's like, it's distracting you

02:12:22   even if you're trying to get directions or something.

02:12:24   And I'm like, oh, well, the watch is gonna be really cool

02:12:26   because it's gonna buzz you while you're,

02:12:28   to tell you to take a left or a right

02:12:30   and it's gonna do different buzzes.

02:12:31   So you're gonna know like which direction you need to turn.

02:12:36   And I really think that I was like,

02:12:41   oh yeah, and you can use it to Siri to dictate.

02:12:45   And someone says, oh, you're crazy.

02:12:47   You're gonna use a watch?

02:12:48   Why would you, you're gonna do something

02:12:51   while you're driving?

02:12:52   How dare, you're being an unsafe person.

02:12:54   And I'm like, how is that more unsafe

02:12:57   than looking at a built-in screen in your car

02:13:00   or looking at your phone mounted to a thing?

02:13:02   It's like being able to go to Siri

02:13:04   and pull your wrist to your mouth and say,

02:13:08   tell my boyfriend that I'm going to be 10 minutes late

02:13:13   because there's traffic on the highway.

02:13:15   And then it either sends that via,

02:13:18   it dictates it or you can send it as an audio message

02:13:21   if the Siri dictation screws up.

02:13:23   It's like, I don't even have to look at the watch.

02:13:26   It just does it automatically.

02:13:27   I don't have to look at a screen.

02:13:28   It's just stuff like that.

02:13:31   I feel like it's not,

02:13:33   There are scenarios you can't experience or envision

02:13:36   unless you go into the store and you try it.

02:13:38   - I just don't understand how they're going to handle

02:13:42   the crush of people that are gonna be coming into the stores

02:13:45   to look at the watch.

02:13:47   There was a report last week

02:13:49   that you were going to need an appointment.

02:13:51   I know they're definitely taking appointments

02:13:53   where you can make one and come in

02:13:54   and get some time scheduled

02:13:55   where you can try on various versions.

02:13:58   And now they're saying you don't need an appointment,

02:14:00   but if you don't have one, you might have to wait.

02:14:02   And so I get the feeling that it's sort of like a hair salon

02:14:05   where it's like, they'll take you if you're walking,

02:14:07   but appointments are highly recommended.

02:14:10   And I think apartments are highly recommended here.

02:14:13   - Yeah, well, I imagine it's gonna be very similar

02:14:16   to the press demo hands-ons,

02:14:19   where it's a crush of people in that demonstration area.

02:14:23   And the reps were basically like,

02:14:24   all right, we're gonna, you know,

02:14:26   those of you who are just plebeians

02:14:29   who happen to be writing for random tech blog,

02:14:32   you'll get five minutes and if you happen to be from the Wall Street Journal, maybe

02:14:35   you'll get like 10 minutes and if you're a celebrity, we'll give you like a full 15 minute

02:14:39   tour of the watch and several different bands and like what you can do with it.

02:14:43   Were there celebrities there?

02:14:45   Well Christy Turlington was walking around in the hands-on area and there were definitely

02:14:49   it was a fun game to play during the event being like, all right, press, Apple engineer

02:14:54   or fashion model.

02:14:55   There were definitely a lot of people from the fashion industry there who were VIPs and

02:15:01   weren't like there weren't any overt celebrities there that I could that I

02:15:04   could recognize but I'm also very bad at the celebrity face game so back in

02:15:10   September there were definitely celebrities oh yeah like I remember I

02:15:14   mean what Stephen Fry was there is that right yeah and a couple couple other

02:15:19   people so it's like I'm not I'm not surprised by that at all but in terms of

02:15:25   yeah how the how the tables are I mean they had the the retail store tables at

02:15:29   at the event, which is actually really cool.

02:15:31   They have tables that can only be opened

02:15:34   by like an employee badge.

02:15:35   So all of the watches are like hidden

02:15:37   and built into like secure safes

02:15:39   that if you have an employee badge,

02:15:40   you just like badge it in and then the table like rolls open

02:15:43   and you have this beautiful jewelry store hidden counter

02:15:47   of like all of the watches

02:15:48   in their little nestled containers.

02:15:51   It's very, very chic and very cool.

02:15:55   But also, you know,

02:15:58   I am going to be interested to see

02:16:00   how they can manage the crush of people.

02:16:01   You're absolutely right.

02:16:03   It seems like the day that, you know,

02:16:05   that April 10th that people are going to flood.

02:16:08   And maybe I'm overestimating the demand for the watch.

02:16:11   But I mean, you saw like that Reuters,

02:16:13   who had the like 65% of people

02:16:16   don't wanna buy an Apple watch.

02:16:17   And I'm like, so what you're saying is 35% of people do?

02:16:22   - Yeah, it wasn't quite 69% not interested,

02:16:27   31% interested, it was I think 69% not interested

02:16:30   in buying it, 25% interested in buying it,

02:16:34   and 6% undecided.

02:16:36   But even so, even though it wasn't a full 31%,

02:16:38   the fact that it was 25% is astounding.

02:16:40   In other words, one out of four people that they polled

02:16:43   said they were interested in buying Apple Watch,

02:16:45   which is a product none of them have ever

02:16:46   actually seen in person, none of them have used,

02:16:49   they're probably under informed about what it can do,

02:16:52   and it requires an iPhone 5 or iPhone 6.

02:16:55   So with all those things, if one out of four Americans

02:16:58   wants, is interested in buying an Apple Watch,

02:17:01   if anything, I mean, for them to spin that

02:17:04   as bad news for Apple, or as they called it,

02:17:07   a sign that it might be a tough sell,

02:17:10   it's astounding because I think it's,

02:17:13   if the poll is accurate,

02:17:14   it's jaw-droppingly good news for Apple,

02:17:17   maybe the best news in the company's history.

02:17:20   - That's a blockbuster product.

02:17:22   One in four, like, can you imagine,

02:17:24   Can you imagine one in four people

02:17:25   buying the original iPhone?

02:17:27   - So anything else you wanna talk about?

02:17:31   - No, I mean, I think we've covered most of the bases.

02:17:33   I don't know, I'm just really excited for this year

02:17:37   in terms of Apple products.

02:17:39   Like Apple has so much on its plate right now.

02:17:41   I was talking about this with Renee Ritchie the other day,

02:17:45   where we're just like, when we were trying to decide,

02:17:48   like we knew that something else was coming

02:17:50   at the Spring Forward event.

02:17:52   And we were like, all right, what of the potential like 12 products?

02:17:57   Like there's the Apple TV thing.

02:17:58   I guess we didn't talk about the Apple TV thing, but there's not there's not much to talk about other than HBO.

02:18:02   And also like clearly this proves that an Apple TV update is coming sometime down the line.

02:18:08   Yeah, the tell was that there was the slide at the event where they said starting at $69.

02:18:16   Starting at $69?

02:18:18   starting at $69 for a device

02:18:21   that there's only one configuration.

02:18:23   But that wasn't a mistake.

02:18:24   I mean, that to me is just a clear sign

02:18:27   that they know that there's new hardware coming

02:18:29   and that they just wanted to get this out

02:18:31   for the HBO Game of Thrones promotion.

02:18:36   - Yeah, let's get them off the shelves

02:18:38   and into people's living rooms in time

02:18:39   for them to watch Game of Thrones.

02:18:41   And then they're gonna be so hooked on the service

02:18:42   and using AirPlay that when we launch our new device,

02:18:45   You know, there's been rumored SDK for the Apple TV

02:18:48   for God knows how many years,

02:18:50   but like this is probably the year to do it.

02:18:53   You know, when you think about like,

02:18:55   now you have the watch as a potential controller too,

02:18:57   in addition to your iPhones, your iPod touches, your iPads,

02:19:01   like this is the year to probably launch games

02:19:04   on the Apple TV.

02:19:06   - So let's wrap it up.

02:19:07   Serenity Caldwell, you can read her writing at iMore

02:19:12   where she is a senior editor.

02:19:16   What's your title?

02:19:16   - I am the managing editor for iOS over at iMore.

02:19:20   - Managing editor for iOS at iMore.

02:19:23   Great stuff over there.

02:19:25   And on Twitter, you are a Saturn.

02:19:29   - Yep, Saturn, Saturn.

02:19:31   - S-E-T-T-E-R-N, great Twitter account,

02:19:36   highly recommended follow.

02:19:37   And my thanks to all of our sponsors.

02:19:40   Let's see if I can remember them all.

02:19:42   This week we have Squarespace, Foremost, Harry's,

02:19:47   and Fracture, so my thanks to them,

02:19:51   and my thanks to Serenity for all of your time.

02:19:55   - Thank you, Jon, this was a lot of fun.