57: One For The Pedants
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See I upgraded to the what do you call it, the Mavericks on this machine that I record
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the show on. I'm woefully under informed on Mavericks.
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I still have never even seen, I mean you know besides the keynote, I've never even seen
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it running because nobody I see in real life is brave or stupid, whatever, brave enough
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to run it on their computer yet and I'm not going to run it on anything that I need to
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use and I would normally just install it on my laptop because normally my laptop sits
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my desk closed not being used because I never go anywhere. But recently I've been going
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places. And so the last thing I want to do is blow up my laptop with some beta as I'm
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bringing it on a trip to work on it.
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I found this summer that I'm… I think it was clear from the last couple of versions
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of Mac OS X, but especially this one where it really coincided with a new version of
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iOS, that my attention is so much more on iOS than Mac OS X that… It's not that
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I'm not interested in Mavericks, but I'm willing to wait and then just have Syracuse
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to teach me everything about it.
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Oh, yeah. And the changes in OS X, it's so much more of a mature product. The changes
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are so much smaller in the grand scheme of things. In day-to-day use, what's really
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going to be different for me if I upgrade to Mavericks? Besides, it might not work as
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well at this point. Once it's out, I might even wait until point one just because I don't
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really have any motivation to update to it. Also, I've always felt, you famously have
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never let me forget about how I installed iOS 5 Beta 1 in California on my phone.
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That's the kind of thing I think every iOS developer does once. With iOS, I always felt,
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even though this device is always on me and it has to do things that are, I guess, somewhat
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important like phone calls. I don't know, phone calls aren't that important in my
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life, but supposedly they're supposed to be important. And I've always kind of felt
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like iOS, like I was safe to mess that up. But the Mac is where I get my work done. And
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so the Mac, I'm very conservative with upgrading. And even when a 10 point something point seven
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or point eight update, one of the mid-cycle updates, even when one of those comes out,
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I won't install it for a few days after it comes out.
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Just to see if anyone else has a whole bunch of major problems.
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Because there's just no motivation for me.
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There's almost always something in the App Store app bothering me
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that I have to reboot my computer for an update.
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I just put it off for like a week.
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It's always-- that's how things have been going with me, too.
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Because again, it's like, what am I really
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going to get if I upgrade to some bleeding edge
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version of OS X. Like if it's a security update, okay. But if it's just like, we added support
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for new printers, like who cares? Like I don't really need that. We fixed some things in
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Safari. Well, Safari is never fixed. So, you know, like…
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And I just feel like you need, I need, and I don't even know if I can logically defend
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this, but I feel like I need some stability in my computing life. And for me, that's
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become the Mac. Like I'll…
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Right, because that's your work.
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Right. So I didn't upgrade to iOS 7 on my phone right away. I think I waited till beta
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3. But I was running it most of the summer on my main phone. And I would say as the betas
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have gone over the years, even given how radical the UI changes are, it was actually, you know,
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it was not that bad of an experience. I mean, there were very few bugs that I ran into that
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were serious problems. Every once in a while, there'd be like a version would come out and
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one of the apps I use would crash all the time on it. And that kind of stunk. Because
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I'm not going to go, you know, you can't go and complain to developers that their app
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is crashing on a beta OS even though, you know.
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Believe me, people do.
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Oh yeah, I know.
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You know, so it was annoying, but it was, you know, but I felt like, you know, having
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my Mac still running the, you know, the standard 10.8 whatever, you know, was standard all
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summer, you know, gave me something stable to build on.
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So there's this iPad event coming up.
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Well, who knows what kind of event it is?
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Oh, did the invitation not specify iPads?
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No, they never do.
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Even for the iPhone one, which really was something.
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Well, usually there's some kind of really obvious hint in the text of it.
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What was the one this week?
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I don't even look.
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Every article about the invitations going out is usually so insufferable that I stopped
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reading them.
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It reads into everything way too deeply.
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And usually, if they're going to tell you anything useful,
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they'll beat you over the head with it, basically.
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It'll be really clear.
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This one, it says, we still have a lot to cover.
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So maybe they're not releasing new iPads,
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and they're only releasing new smart covers.
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I did see somebody on Twitter suggested exactly that.
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Like, imagine if it was just new smart covers.
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and then even reasonable people could say,
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you know what, this company's losing it.
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- Well, my theory, we did our show last night,
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and my theory was that they have the mini,
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which one of its most important roles
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is to try to close the price gap
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with the other crap tablets out there,
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and they have the high-end features
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they wanna cram in there, like retina screens.
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I assume they're trying to cram in there
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probably have done it by now, but trying to achieve super low cost and all these high-end
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features is always a challenge.
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Apple historically has just avoided the super low and just kind of gone for mid-range and
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upper range.
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And so my theory is that the existing iPad mini sticks around and just has a reduced
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And not 200 bucks probably, but maybe like 279 or 300 even, 30 bucks less.
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And then the retina can come in at a higher price to cover the retinas of it, maybe $399.
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Well, the only problem with that, and I think there's some logic to that, and I definitely
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think if they go retina with this year's model, which I now think they probably will.
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I have no inside juice about it, though.
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It's just a gut feeling, mostly informed by iOS 7, that I think iOS 7 just looks so thin
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and wispy on a non-retina screen that I really think that, I don't know, just gives me,
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just the look of iOS 7 makes me think they're not going to have a major iOS device.
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And I think the mini is a serious, you know, I think it's a huge part of the iPad mix.
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I just don't think that they're going to go another year without it as a retina.
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But I definitely think that if they do go retina, because retina is such a big jump
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and cost, I think, component-wise, that they'll definitely do that thing that they did with
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the iPad when it went Retina, which is keep the non-Retina one around at a lower price
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But the thing is, here's the other thing, though.
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When other devices have gone Retina, like the iPhone and the iPad, they kept older year
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models around to have lower prices, but they kept the prices the same.
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So I don't know if starting the Retina Mini at $399 would work.
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Well, when the iPad 3 came out, the iPad 2 dropped $100, right?
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So there is precedent for that.
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And also, I think everyone under the sun is arguing about how Apple should go lower end,
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as always, you know, netbooks, etc.
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But I think it might be problematic if they go into this holiday season with their cheapest
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tablet being $329.
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Like that, it feels like if they can bring that down any lower at all, they could just
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sell even more.
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And I know the minis sell ridiculously well even at $329, but that was also a year ago
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that that launched.
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And you look at what Google and Amazon and all the no-name people are doing with their
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crap tablets, and they're getting less crappy at those low price points.
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And again, I don't think Apple's going to have to hit $200, but coming down even just
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a little bit you know even from 329 to 300 or to 279.
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I think that could...
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I think might be a sweet spot for that device.
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That if they if they can do that I think that'd be great.
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Also it's got to help.
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One of the reasons I don't think they would push it even maybe that far down and certainly
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not lower than that is because the iPad mini kind of hurt their margins for a while didn't
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Well as best as we can tell they don't spell that out but...
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So assuming it did, then keeping the old one around for another year at a lower price,
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but where the delta there is less than the actual manufacturing delta of making it a
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year ago versus making it today, they can boost their margins a little bit just by having
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the cheap one be a little bit higher margin than it was last year, even if it's still
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I think part of the clues for that, too, is just as simple as the pricing.
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That $329 was such a slightly odd price for them.
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they like stuff to end in a 99. And if not 99, a 49. Right on the 100.
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Right, like a 359 is kind of inelegant.
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Yeah, and they've done it before. I don't think it's unprecedented. And as the iPods
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got lower and lower priced over the decade that they were so popular, especially once
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they got under $200, they had like 179 models and weird prices like that. Because once you
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that low in price, it's hard to drop another whole 50 bucks at a time.
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So I think that $329 price is probably because at their normal margins, it would have been
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$349, and they really wanted to push it.
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I don't think $299 would have been feasible for it.
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I don't think that they raised the price and milked it.
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I think that they took a hit on their margins so that it wouldn't be $349 to start.
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Yeah, that sounds about right. But I don't know, I'm having a hard time even getting
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excited about this because, you know, for the last year or so I've had this Mini and
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I've kind of made that my primary iPad, but I also hate the screen so much that I keep,
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I've used my iPad 3, I never even bought the 4, but I've used the iPad 3 as like games
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or sometimes reading, so it's kind of weird to have like two iPads and I'm actually,
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I hardly ever even use iPads.
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In fact, my iPad Mini has been used more
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for Verizon tethering than it has for any other purpose.
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It is a really nice little hotspot.
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It's wonderful.
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And having-- my phone's always AT&T because my house
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sucks for Verizon.
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So having both services available for tethering
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is awesome when you're traveling.
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Because you're in a spot where one of them sucks.
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And Verizon tends to be the better option for tetherers
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because way more of their network is LTE. And so Verizon's great for tethering, but
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I can't use it for voice. So it's really nice having the option for both carriers.
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Now, I remembered, I forget, I guess when I upgraded to the 5 and we switched our phones
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to Verizon, we went all Verizon. And there are some advantages to that billing wise.
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There's like this family plan thing. So instead of paying for my iPad data plan on the iPad,
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I just added the device to our Verizon plan.
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Yeah, Verizon has a thing where you can do that.
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And that's nice.
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It actually saves us a little bit of money.
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I mean, we still pay an ungodly amount of money to Verizon every month.
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But it's cheaper than it would have been to just have the iPad independently.
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But it was nice when I had a Verizon iPad and an AT&T phone like when I was on the train
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to like between Philly and New York.
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dead spots for both but you could you know I would like tether most of the way
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on Verizon and then when it dropped out drop off the tethering and see if AT&T
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had a signal yeah usually you can get at least one and like when you have both
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it's it's it's very it becomes very clear that neither network is overall
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better than the other like they both have yeah dropped spots and and crappy
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areas they're just slightly different right and you know it could just be like
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like where the antenna is. There are certain hotels that I've stayed at regularly where
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sometimes I'll get a room and get a good signal and same hotel, I guess maybe, I always get
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twisted around in a hotel, but I'm on the other side of the building and I don't get
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a good signal.
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Tim Weiss-Germain-
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Tower and I can actually like there's a window in my house from which I can just barely see a line of sight to the AT&T
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The AT&T covers the town fantastically and I guess Verizon didn't make a deal
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So they don't and yeah, it doesn't really matter
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But anyway, so I I'm having a hard time getting excited about the iPad because I've kind of stopped using iPads
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Yeah, there's a lot of my whole who love them who use them like for work
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work. And I've just, I've never really gotten, I've never crossed that line or gotten into
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that pattern I guess.
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Dave: It depends on what I'm doing. I do, some days I do a lot of reading on my iPad
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and some days, of all the, you know, of the three things Mac, iPhone, iPad, not a day
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goes by where I'm not using my Mac. Well, I guess like if I'm on my vacation or something
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like that. Actually, I guess iPhone is the one where every single day I use it. Mac,
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use every day that I'm "working." iPad, who knows? I get enough where I think it's
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worth it. I think it was well worth the purchase, but it's clearly, if I had to leave one behind,
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it was clearly what I would do.
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Tim Cynova I think, I mean, that same thing, part of
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that is why I like the Mini because it's at least smaller and lighter. So if I'm trying
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to make a bag reasonably light to carry somewhere, it's not that big of a deal to throw that
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in. But I don't know. I mean, I can totally understand the market for these giant screen
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phones because ideally, if Apple made a bigger screen iPhone, I'd almost certainly get it
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for myself because I do more of the things that people do on tablets. I do so much of
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that just on my phone with everything else.
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Dave: Yeah, I've come around on that too a little bit.
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Steven: I think I would – I wouldn't miss the extra pocket space because I'm a nerd
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and who cares? I have big pants.
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And even for like, you know, like ebook reading or Instapaper reading, that sort of thing,
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something that's like a big ass, that's to me is where the big ass phones really shine,
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I mean, maybe, certainly, but, and you know, now I'm thinking about, you know, maybe the
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problem, maybe the reason why I haven't used iPads for the last year for the most part
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is that I don't want to read on the mini because the screen sucks.
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And the big one, like now that I have this point of comparison of the mini, the big one
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feels so giant and heavy. It just feels ridiculous. So I don't know, maybe the Retina Mini will
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change things.
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I don't want to get too excited about a Retina Mini because I almost, for so long, I felt
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like if it took all the other iOS devices two years to go from non-Retina to Retina,
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it'll take the iPad Mini at least two years too. But maybe, you know, it's one of those
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Well, how big is your sample size here?
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Right. It's not very big. And it might be one of those things too where just the, you
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know, just the way that the whole industry, everything goes
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forward so much faster that, you know, that like, just let's just
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say not just the screen itself, but like the, the improvement,
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necessary improvement to the GPU comes faster to, you know, that
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it's not that surprising that it's just one year later.
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Also, you know, look at when the iPhone four with that with the
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first retina screen when that was launched, look at the
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landscape of what everyone else had, you know, everyone else had
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low resolution screens, right? You know, relatively speaking,
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Right, they were ahead of the curve.
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Now, all these cheap tablets have really high resolution screens that I'm pretty sure all
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of them are dense enough that they could be "retina screens."
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The iPad Mini is the only one that doesn't have it at this point.
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And the other thing, too, is that the difference between retina and non-retina is so dramatic.
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I've heard from a handful of people who are like, "You know, I really don't see that big
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a difference."
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think that they must be either visually impaired or mentally impaired.
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But it's a rare opportunity if they wanted to keep the old – if they're ever going
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to switch to a model where they have a lower price point and – but want to make a lot
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of people who could afford – who aren't overly price sensitive still splurge on the
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higher priced, higher margin ones,
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margin, retina versus non-retina is the moment to do that.
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'Cause I don't think there'll ever be a feature
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that's that easily, oh, I see exactly what this feature does,
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right there in the store.
00:17:38
◼
►
- I think also, you can look at how retina is scaling up.
00:17:42
◼
►
With the phone, it was basically free,
00:17:45
◼
►
because the amount of data, the size of the screen buffer,
00:17:50
◼
►
becoming four times larger, on a phone-sized screen,
00:17:54
◼
►
that was less of a big deal.
00:17:55
◼
►
And so, yeah, the GPU had to get better,
00:17:57
◼
►
but phone GPUs were kind of in that line anyway.
00:18:01
◼
►
Then you saw when it moved to the iPad size
00:18:03
◼
►
that there are substantial trade-offs.
00:18:06
◼
►
And still, I mean, who knows
00:18:07
◼
►
what they're gonna announce next week,
00:18:08
◼
►
but still, there are, even the best Retina iPad today
00:18:13
◼
►
is big and heavy, and is noticeably bigger and heavier
00:18:17
◼
►
than the comparable iPad that was not,
00:18:19
◼
►
the iPad 2. And then you look at the laptops and they have these Retina MacBook Pros which
00:18:24
◼
►
are basically MacBook Airs but thicker because they need way more power than a MacBook, way
00:18:30
◼
►
more battery power than a MacBook Air. And so obviously like as you go up, you know,
00:18:36
◼
►
multiplying the number of pixels you're dealing with by four matters more and takes more horsepower
00:18:40
◼
►
and is that exponential? I don't know. It's at least, you know, math is working against
00:18:47
◼
►
here. And so it's possible that at the iPad size, maybe they just, like at the phone they
00:18:55
◼
►
can just kind of make them all retina and be fine. But as you get upscale, you can't
00:19:00
◼
►
do that yet. And maybe in three to five years, it'll just be like you could fit a retina
00:19:06
◼
►
screen in something the size of the MacBook Air with no battery problems. But I don't
00:19:10
◼
►
think we're there yet, and I think it's still a couple years off.
00:19:13
◼
►
Yeah, I think there's a contingent of people who always complain.
00:19:18
◼
►
I love them because I do like, I love a pedant.
00:19:22
◼
►
Wait, is that how you pronounce that?
00:19:24
◼
►
I don't know.
00:19:25
◼
►
It might be one of those words.
00:19:26
◼
►
That would be the best word to mispronounce.
00:19:27
◼
►
How do you pronounce it?
00:19:28
◼
►
I thought it was pedant, but who knows?
00:19:31
◼
►
I really don't know.
00:19:32
◼
►
Oh, we'll figure this out.
00:19:34
◼
►
We should both mispronounce it, just to anger them.
00:19:38
◼
►
You say pedantic, so pedant, pedant, pedant.
00:19:42
◼
►
Anyway, I love picky people.
00:19:48
◼
►
And over the years, when writing about retina
00:19:52
◼
►
versus non-retina as these devices move,
00:19:54
◼
►
whenever I say that retina is double the resolution,
00:19:56
◼
►
there's a contingent of people saying, actually, it's
00:19:58
◼
►
four times the resolution.
00:20:00
◼
►
Because they're talking about area as opposed to--
00:20:04
◼
►
Linear resolution.
00:20:06
◼
►
That it's four times the pixel, so you
00:20:08
◼
►
should say it's four times the resolution.
00:20:09
◼
►
And I've always stuck to double because to me, by their logic, doubling the resolution
00:20:16
◼
►
would just be sort of an incremental increase.
00:20:21
◼
►
And I always felt like it was better to downplay the marketing-ese aspect of it.
00:20:28
◼
►
That if I say it's four times the resolution, it's going to seem like catering to Apple's
00:20:37
◼
►
you probably get way more angry emails from about saying that than you were
00:20:41
◼
►
saying twice the resolution. But I think it's useful to keep that in mind
00:20:45
◼
►
though when you think about things like the the graphics card and the power
00:20:51
◼
►
consumption. You know that you really are lighting up four times more pixels so it
00:20:55
◼
►
really might be four times the energy consumption. You know like from an
00:20:58
◼
►
engineering perspective in a lot of ways it does make sense to think of it as a
00:21:02
◼
►
4x increase not a 2x increase. Right like all the costs go up 4x. Right. You know
00:21:08
◼
►
you know not the backlight necessarily it goes up some but not 4x but still
00:21:11
◼
►
like so many other things the RAM all the pixels the GPU has to be pushing and
00:21:15
◼
►
rendering and certainly all like the little transistors in the actual pixels
00:21:19
◼
►
there's more of those so yeah you can basically assume it's four times as
00:21:22
◼
►
expensive to support it hardware wise. Like even now a year and a half after
00:21:26
◼
►
the iPad first went retina, it still is, it kind of blows my mind that a device that's
00:21:34
◼
►
never really operated while it's plugged in to power is pushing that many pixels at 60
00:21:41
◼
►
frames per second.
00:21:42
◼
►
Oh yeah, I mean even look at the 15 inch Retina MacBook Pro and that has a higher resolution
00:21:46
◼
►
than my 30 inch desktop monitor, which I cannot wait until they make a, every podcast I'm
00:21:53
◼
►
I'm on, I'm going to wish for a Retina desktop display until it happens.
00:21:57
◼
►
This is going to be my Gene Munster TV.
00:22:00
◼
►
Let's hold off on that and stick to iPads for now.
00:22:04
◼
►
Because the other thing, though, so I think the other product,
00:22:08
◼
►
I mean, you have to talk about, but it's the one that I'm finding the hardest to get excited about,
00:22:13
◼
►
is the regular iPad.
00:22:17
◼
►
They still making those?
00:22:18
◼
►
Yeah, but I think that they're still the best-selling models. I do.
00:22:22
◼
►
That would be news, I think. I don't know. I'd be curious to know that if anyone's run the numbers.
00:22:27
◼
►
I think that they still are, but it's hard to tell how many. And some of that is just from me eyeballing what people are using on airplanes and stuff like that.
00:22:35
◼
►
I don't know. I don't know how you would break that down. It's hard.
00:22:40
◼
►
I always hear from people that there's a ton of iPad 2 still being sold, especially to education, because it's big and cheap.
00:22:47
◼
►
and assuming they kill the iPad 2 this year,
00:22:51
◼
►
which I kind of hope they do,
00:22:52
◼
►
it's been around for quite a while,
00:22:54
◼
►
I'm getting a little tired of supporting A5s,
00:22:56
◼
►
but assuming they kill that,
00:22:59
◼
►
then what replaces it at that price point?
00:23:03
◼
►
Nothing, or does that become the Retina Mini?
00:23:06
◼
►
Like do they just tell education people,
00:23:08
◼
►
just buy the Mini, and then you can choose
00:23:09
◼
►
between the cheap one or the Retina one,
00:23:12
◼
►
and then do that? - I think it'll be
00:23:12
◼
►
It'll be a big tell as to how well that iPad 2 did continue to sell.
00:23:18
◼
►
If they keep a big sized iPad at that price point, whether it's the iPad 3 dropped in
00:23:24
◼
►
price or whether they actually still keep the iPad 2 around another year, it would be
00:23:30
◼
►
a sign of how well it's selling though, I think.
00:23:34
◼
►
So I think there's two big things I can think of to get excited about with the full-size
00:23:38
◼
►
I know that there have been leaks of the case,
00:23:43
◼
►
the hardware case that is now a lot more like a big,
00:23:47
◼
►
it's a big iPad mini, which sounds stupid,
00:23:49
◼
►
but the bevel on the side is narrow,
00:23:54
◼
►
and it's that same curvy sort of thing.
00:23:56
◼
►
I can't help but think it's gonna be a lot thinner too,
00:23:58
◼
►
and I would hope lighter,
00:24:00
◼
►
you know, because the screen is still gonna be the same,
00:24:03
◼
►
that they can pack everything into a smaller thing
00:24:07
◼
►
and get it back to like an iPad 2 weight and thickness.
00:24:10
◼
►
And I think that would be exciting,
00:24:11
◼
►
'cause I think it would be a dramatic, you know,
00:24:13
◼
►
percentage-wise, it may be measured in millimeters,
00:24:16
◼
►
but percentage-wise, it could be a lot thinner.
00:24:18
◼
►
- I think Apple also, you know,
00:24:21
◼
►
they wanna capture the margins of the high-end buyers,
00:24:25
◼
►
the early adopters, the nerds, the power users.
00:24:28
◼
►
They wanna get them back buying the big one,
00:24:30
◼
►
because they can get a lot more money out of that one.
00:24:32
◼
►
And we all bought the Mini this past year,
00:24:35
◼
►
because it was new and awesome and tiny.
00:24:38
◼
►
So I think they're gonna do some segmentation there.
00:24:40
◼
►
For instance, obviously if you look at the economics
00:24:42
◼
►
of the Mini, pretty sure it's not gonna have the A7.
00:24:45
◼
►
So if it doesn't have the A7,
00:24:46
◼
►
it's not gonna have Touch ID.
00:24:48
◼
►
And so I'm guessing if they bring Touch ID to the iPad,
00:24:51
◼
►
which I wouldn't actually think is a guarantee quite yet,
00:24:54
◼
►
but if they do bring Touch ID to the iPad this year,
00:24:57
◼
►
I would say it will be only in the big one.
00:24:59
◼
►
And that'll be kind of a way to help.
00:25:02
◼
►
And of course, it'll be only the A7 in the big one,
00:25:04
◼
►
or the A7X probably.
00:25:05
◼
►
And then the mini will still only have the A6X
00:25:10
◼
►
that's currently powering the iPad 4.
00:25:12
◼
►
- See, that's how I would bet that it's gonna play out.
00:25:15
◼
►
That, you know, but again, it's like you said earlier,
00:25:17
◼
►
it's a small sample size to draw on
00:25:19
◼
►
to look at last year's iPad mini
00:25:21
◼
►
and where it was on the annual chain of,
00:25:25
◼
►
you know, A whatever processors.
00:25:28
◼
►
You know, last year it was a year behind.
00:25:29
◼
►
It was still on retina, or non-retina.
00:25:32
◼
►
it might be dangerous to just take that one year of iPad mini and extrapolate from that,
00:25:37
◼
►
but I still, that's what I would bet.
00:25:39
◼
►
Well, you can look at the iPod touch also. The iPod touch has always been the low-cost
00:25:43
◼
►
phone-sized thing, and you can think of the mini as the low-cost iPad-sized thing. And
00:25:49
◼
►
the iPod touch always has like last year's CPU.
00:25:51
◼
►
Right. Now it has two years ago's CPU because they didn't revamp it.
00:25:57
◼
►
Although we could get to that soon, because that's another one of my items to speculate
00:26:01
◼
►
for next week is will they maybe, you know, will they do new iPods and maybe instead,
00:26:08
◼
►
you know, maybe the fact that they didn't appear alongside the iPhone at the quote-unquote
00:26:12
◼
►
music event, you know. I'm guessing no because they still did call that the music event and
00:26:17
◼
►
it would seem weird for Apple marketing-wise to have the music event without the iPods
00:26:23
◼
►
and then have the iPods come out five weeks later but...
00:26:25
◼
►
Well, on the other hand, how much does an iPod touch really have to do with music at
00:26:30
◼
►
Yeah, that's a good question.
00:26:32
◼
►
I mean, it's kind of more like an iPad at this point.
00:26:35
◼
►
Yeah, it's sort of like the iPad Nano in a sense.
00:26:39
◼
►
I can't see them going into a holiday season without new iPod touches.
00:26:43
◼
►
But I don't know, they could surprise us.
00:26:45
◼
►
Maybe they could drop the prices a little bit on the current ones.
00:26:47
◼
►
I think Touch ID for the full-size iPad, I think I'm going to bet yes on that.
00:26:53
◼
►
Because you know that the full-size iPad is going to get an A7 of some sort.
00:26:58
◼
►
sort. And so if it's going to have the A7, it seems like why not put the touch sensor
00:27:05
◼
►
Yeah, that's a good point.
00:27:06
◼
►
Unless they're really supply constrained on those touch sensors, which I don't know. I
00:27:10
◼
►
mean, it's one of those things where it's, you know, Tim Cook and like two other people
00:27:13
◼
►
know. But I think, though, that the full-size iPad, I think, so far has remained roughly
00:27:21
◼
►
in parallel to the top-of-the-line iPhone in terms of major advances.
00:27:27
◼
►
Although it didn't get Siri at first, but that was more of a software thing.
00:27:31
◼
►
Yeah, that was I think more Siri being beta.
00:27:34
◼
►
Yeah, like probably server load reasons.
00:27:37
◼
►
Although starting out on the brand new iPhone is probably not an easy way in for your servers.
00:27:43
◼
►
It's not like an easy ramp up there.
00:27:45
◼
►
Yeah, definitely not.
00:27:47
◼
►
But one reason for me, and I know a lot of readers of Darren Farbawl have just randomly emailed me or tweeted me the same exact thing,
00:27:54
◼
►
It was just that they bought an iPhone 5S and within like 48 hours, every time they
00:27:59
◼
►
go to unlock their iPad, they're just holding their thumb on the thing and they're like,
00:28:03
◼
►
"Hey, what's going on?"
00:28:04
◼
►
And then they realize, "Oh."
00:28:07
◼
►
And so, I mean, I'm not saying that they make product decisions based on experience like
00:28:12
◼
►
that, but you know within Apple, they've been using the iPhone 5S internally for a while
00:28:18
◼
►
and have surely had the same experience inside Apple, you know, that, "Hey, now that I've
00:28:24
◼
►
my phone this way. I can't get used to not unlocking my phone this way." And so, I don't
00:28:29
◼
►
know. I feel like it's addictive enough that it might push them to put it in in the first
00:28:35
◼
►
Yeah, I'd say it'll probably be there, but I wouldn't say it's a sure thing.
00:28:39
◼
►
I'll also bet, though, that however few—and I know they said, what, it was more than half
00:28:45
◼
►
of all smartphones don't have a passcode. I can't even imagine what the percentage of
00:28:50
◼
►
iPads that don't have a passcode is.
00:28:53
◼
►
And for some, you know, it's, you know, there's actually some logic behind that.
00:28:56
◼
►
You're a lot less likely to, you know, leave a bigger thing behind in a cab or something
00:29:03
◼
►
You know, it's, you know, a phone could fall out of a pocket in theory.
00:29:08
◼
►
An iPad is a lot less likely to fall out of your pocket.
00:29:12
◼
►
But you know, it's still, you know, when I travel, I always have to remember to do that.
00:29:17
◼
►
When I keep it at home, I turn the passcode off.
00:29:20
◼
►
But then when I travel, I turn a passcode on my iPad.
00:29:24
◼
►
I think yes.
00:29:25
◼
►
I never thought about that.
00:29:27
◼
►
No, you don't do that?
00:29:28
◼
►
Well, because my iPad usually-- well, I guess,
00:29:31
◼
►
what could possibly happen to this thing
00:29:33
◼
►
that I leave in my hotel room when I go out all day?
00:29:35
◼
►
But yeah, as a matter of fact, that
00:29:37
◼
►
might be worth considering.
00:29:39
◼
►
I wish-- I've said this before-- I
00:29:41
◼
►
wish that they would do something where you could name
00:29:46
◼
►
a safe Wi-Fi network and say that when you're on this Wi-Fi network, prompt for the passcode
00:29:55
◼
►
the first time since you were away from it, out of the range of this Wi-Fi.
00:30:01
◼
►
So the first time you – it could just be your phone. You leave the house. You go somewhere.
00:30:06
◼
►
You come home. You need to unlock your phone because you just came home. And then until
00:30:12
◼
►
you leave that Wi-Fi network just stay unlocked?
00:30:16
◼
►
That would actually be really good.
00:30:17
◼
►
I'm trying to think of all the different ways that could fail or be hacked.
00:30:23
◼
►
Making it prompt the first time you join it or every time you rejoin that network, I think
00:30:28
◼
►
that's pretty solid.
00:30:30
◼
►
Because that way, if somebody stole your iPhone but then stood outside the front door of your
00:30:33
◼
►
house, it wouldn't automatically unlock.
00:30:35
◼
►
I think the problem is when the phone's in your pocket for an hour and you don't even
00:30:40
◼
►
take it out at all, pretty sure it disconnects from your Wi-Fi network.
00:30:43
◼
►
Yeah, see that might be the killer.
00:30:49
◼
►
Might be, you know, maybe just tying it to Wi-Fi might be wrong.
00:30:51
◼
►
It might just be the basic location services thing.
00:30:56
◼
►
And even if it falls to the wider geofence, the phone's been sleeping for a while and
00:31:05
◼
►
it gets a little sloppier in terms of the precision of the geofence to keep the battery
00:31:11
◼
►
from draining too fast. Even that might be close enough.
00:31:14
◼
►
I think the other problem is, how annoying would it be if every time you took your phone
00:31:20
◼
►
into your pocket, you'd have to think about whether you need to unlock it or not?
00:31:26
◼
►
If it becomes like you have to unlock it a quarter of the time instead of most of the
00:31:32
◼
►
time, that's a little weird.
00:31:34
◼
►
Yeah, and maybe I'm overthinking it too now that Touch ID is out, because maybe Touch
00:31:39
◼
►
ID is the answer, which is put a Touch ID sensor in and then you don't have to worry.
00:31:43
◼
►
I don't know. I find Touch ID a little bit too much effort to be convenient. I used it
00:31:50
◼
►
when I went to Singleton, which all the cool people were at. I used it when I went there
00:31:56
◼
►
for the first time, and it worked out great. But as soon as I got in the car to drive home,
00:32:00
◼
►
I turned it off.
00:32:03
◼
►
because I was using my phone to play podcasts in the car using my new podcast app, which
00:32:11
◼
►
almost works. It's always fun using a beta app while driving.
00:32:19
◼
►
Even just common things like unlocking my phone to do something quick in the app when
00:32:25
◼
►
I'm stopped at a rest stop. It was so inconvenient to have to unlock it every single time that
00:32:32
◼
►
It was just not worth it.
00:32:34
◼
►
So you don't keep your phone locked?
00:32:38
◼
►
Now I'm only doing it when I'm out at conferences or something.
00:32:40
◼
►
Because normally I'm in my house all day.
00:32:42
◼
►
Who's going to steal my phone with the people at the deli?
00:32:49
◼
►
I'm one of those compulsive pocket people that I never leave my phone or my wallet on
00:32:55
◼
►
the table anywhere.
00:32:56
◼
►
I never even take them out really.
00:32:59
◼
►
When I'm out, my phone and my wallet and my keys stay in my pockets.
00:33:02
◼
►
Dave: Right.
00:33:03
◼
►
Either in pocket or in hand at all times.
00:33:06
◼
►
It's never out of my physical possession.
00:33:09
◼
►
Yeah, somebody could pickpocket me in New York, but I don't live in the city.
00:33:14
◼
►
I only go to the city once every three months.
00:33:17
◼
►
I'm hardly ever even in the city.
00:33:19
◼
►
When I travel, maybe when I go to the city, I'll turn it on.
00:33:24
◼
►
But day-to-day life, I'm sitting in my house and I don't really need to constantly be
00:33:28
◼
►
unlocking my phone. Let me take a break here to tell you about our first sponsor.
00:33:34
◼
►
It's our good friends, Backblaze. Not to be confused with, I think, I think the last
00:33:41
◼
►
time they sponsored the show I said Blackbaze. I forget what it was, but
00:33:46
◼
►
whatever I mispronounced, whatever I mispronounced, it ends up that Backblaze
00:33:50
◼
►
had registered that URL. Are you sure it's not Backblaze? It could be
00:33:55
◼
►
Macplaze. What do they do? It is unlimited, unthrottled backup for your
00:34:03
◼
►
Mac for $5 a month, which is a ridiculous price. What can you do once you've
00:34:09
◼
►
started using it? You can access all of your computer's backed-up data anywhere
00:34:13
◼
►
with their iOS app and web interface. So in other words, you back up your stuff
00:34:18
◼
►
with Backblaze. You're out, take out your iPhone app, you can get to everything on
00:34:23
◼
►
your computer. You can restore when you need to one file at a time or all your files easily.
00:34:29
◼
►
So if there's like one file you needed, threw it out and mistakenly you got to get it back,
00:34:34
◼
►
you can use Backblaze just to get that file back.
00:34:36
◼
►
I've actually done that. It's really good. Like if you've--like I forgot a spreadsheet
00:34:40
◼
►
on vacation. I was out somewhere. I needed to get a spreadsheet off my computer. It wasn't
00:34:44
◼
►
in Dropbox or anything. And so I just--I went to Backblaze and I downloaded just that one
00:34:49
◼
►
file. It worked great.
00:34:51
◼
►
If you drop your computer into a toilet or something like that, trash the whole hard
00:34:55
◼
►
drive, water leak or something like that, somebody steals your MacBook, you need to
00:35:00
◼
►
restore everything or hard drive failure, of course, probably the most common reason
00:35:05
◼
►
that we back up.
00:35:08
◼
►
You can restore everything easily.
00:35:11
◼
►
It's founded by ex-Apple engineers and that's a good talking point because to me, as soon
00:35:15
◼
►
as you say that, to me that says, "Okay, their Mac software is going to be legit.
00:35:19
◼
►
not installing some kind of janky thing written by people who mostly write
00:35:23
◼
►
Windows. It's already mavericks ready so that also tells you just how Apple
00:35:29
◼
►
friendly they are. There's no add-ons, no gimmicks, no additional charges. It's just
00:35:34
◼
►
a simple deal. You pay $5 a month per computer and you get unlimited
00:35:40
◼
►
unthrottled backup. It's super simple, easy to use, and you just install it and
00:35:45
◼
►
then everything is automatic. Oh, where do you go? Let me give you the URL. That would
00:35:51
◼
►
help, right? www.backblaze.com/daringfireball. That's the other thing that's memorable about
00:35:59
◼
►
Backblaze. Their code for the show is daringfireball as opposed to the talk show or talk show.
00:36:06
◼
►
So don't miss out on that. That way they'll know you came from here.
00:36:09
◼
►
Jeff: That's good. That avoids the ambiguity of whether the "the" is included.
00:36:13
◼
►
Exactly. I don't like to put the sponsors down who don't put the "the" in their code.
00:36:18
◼
►
I won't do that. They're a sponsor. I thank them. I appreciate it. I don't care what they
00:36:21
◼
►
say. They could say the code is – the grouper is a dummy and I'd still read it. But if
00:36:27
◼
►
you do put the "the" in, I like to compliment you for it.
00:36:32
◼
►
Attention to detail.
00:36:33
◼
►
Yeah. Backblaze.com/daringfireball.
00:36:36
◼
►
So, I don't know, maybe that covers iPads for next week, I think, right?
00:36:43
◼
►
Retina for the mini and a new, smaller, thinner case for the big one and maybe Touch ID.
00:36:50
◼
►
You know, I don't even expect the big one to get that much lighter because it is a really
00:36:55
◼
►
large Retina screen.
00:36:57
◼
►
It's gonna have a high-powered CPU with a high-powered GPU.
00:37:01
◼
►
I'm guessing it's probably, it's gonna be smaller, like physically smaller, but I bet
00:37:05
◼
►
it's not gonna be that much lighter, because most of that weight is the battery.
00:37:08
◼
►
Yeah, we'll see. I don't know. It certainly would be Apple-like to focus on that.
00:37:12
◼
►
Yeah, I would love to see it happen. This is one of the things I'd love to be proven
00:37:15
◼
►
wrong on that.
00:37:16
◼
►
Yeah. There's gotta be some Mac news next week, too. I would expect, at the very least,
00:37:21
◼
►
in the same way that Federighi was called up by Tim Cook to rehash what's new in iOS
00:37:30
◼
►
new in iOS 7. And here's the 8 or 10 features that they thought was most important. And
00:37:35
◼
►
he kind of ran through them in about 10 minutes. I would expect the same thing with Mavericks,
00:37:40
◼
►
where they're going to, and it's good marketing. You repeat your message. But I think it's
00:37:46
◼
►
going to be mostly, here's everything they told us about back at WWDC. They're going
00:37:49
◼
►
to tell it to us again more concisely. I definitely expect that. And I expect, clearly, since
00:37:58
◼
►
they've already shipped a GM, something called a GM to developers, it's probably coming soon.
00:38:04
◼
►
I don't know if it's going to be released next week, but if not next week, I would expect
00:38:07
◼
►
a week later at the latest.
00:38:09
◼
►
Yeah, it wouldn't surprise me if they, because the event's what, like on Tuesday or something?
00:38:13
◼
►
Wouldn't surprise me if it's available Friday.
00:38:14
◼
►
Yeah, that's what I'm thinking, that's probably my guess, is the event is Tuesday and then
00:38:19
◼
►
Friday it hits the app store.
00:38:22
◼
►
For people to, you know, buy and download.
00:38:25
◼
►
'cause they already told developers to submit their apps
00:38:27
◼
►
like almost a week ago now.
00:38:28
◼
►
And so that to me says this is it.
00:38:32
◼
►
'Cause like with iOS they gave you about a week.
00:38:35
◼
►
They released the GM, they say submit your apps
00:38:37
◼
►
to the App Store with the GM SDK today,
00:38:40
◼
►
and then a week later it comes out.
00:38:41
◼
►
- Yeah, that's what I think.
00:38:43
◼
►
- I'm guessing they're right on the edge here.
00:38:44
◼
►
- What is that, I think that's Friday the 25th?
00:38:46
◼
►
Yeah. - Something like that.
00:38:47
◼
►
- Yeah, that's my bet.
00:38:48
◼
►
I can't help but think since they also at WWDC
00:38:53
◼
►
pre-announced the Mac Pro and said it was coming this year, I can't help but think
00:38:58
◼
►
it's going to be at this thing next week. And whether it goes on sale immediately or
00:39:07
◼
►
I'm guessing the Mac Pro is never going to run 10.8. That's usually when they release
00:39:12
◼
►
hardware and a new OS at the same time. The hardware is tied to that OS. So I don't
00:39:18
◼
►
So I don't know if it'll be available for sale, you know, immediately after the show
00:39:22
◼
►
is over or like in a couple of days. But I expect that the new Mac Pro is going to go
00:39:27
◼
►
Although weirdly they did just release new iMacs. Like, not that long ago that didn't
00:39:33
◼
►
come with 10.9 obviously because that's not out yet. That was a little bit odd timing
00:39:38
◼
►
Yeah, I guess, you know, I guess there's always a fine line to balance between, you know,
00:39:43
◼
►
what they want to hold for an event and what they want to just release as it's ready.
00:39:47
◼
►
I wonder if, you know, the MacBook Air being released in June, that probably has a lot
00:39:53
◼
►
to do with back to school buying. And so the iMac being released like a month ago or whenever
00:39:58
◼
►
that was, I wonder if that has to do with like school budgets or something like that.
00:40:03
◼
►
Maybe, but I was always under the impression that schools, especially like K-12, do most
00:40:09
◼
►
of their purchasing in like April and May for the next year. That it's a months in advance
00:40:15
◼
►
sort of before the summer break, you know, that when... And that if there was any product
00:40:22
◼
►
that was sort of timed to that schedule, it was the old iPads, the first couple of years
00:40:27
◼
►
where they would come out in April, that that was education buying season. So I don't know.
00:40:33
◼
►
But on the other hand, I think, like that's institutional education. There's also the
00:40:37
◼
►
back to school angle of, "Hey, you know, my 18-year-old is going to college and needs
00:40:42
◼
►
a computer."
00:40:43
◼
►
But I think like, you know, the errors were timed well for that. The iMacs were too late
00:40:47
◼
►
Yeah, I think so too. And I think the percentage of college students today going with like
00:40:55
◼
►
an iMac style desktop computer has got to be like single digits. I think, you know.
00:40:59
◼
►
Oh yeah. I think everyone has laptops at this point. I mean, even when I was in college
00:41:02
◼
►
12 years ago, 10, 13 years ago, yeah. When I was in college forever ago, I was one of
00:41:09
◼
►
only people there with a desktop. I mean, that was forever ago. I mean, it's only
00:41:13
◼
►
been going more and more laptop heavy since then.
00:41:16
◼
►
I think it'd be weird if you brought a desktop today. It was weird then.
00:41:20
◼
►
I think maybe the iMacs coming out when they did was just a factor of, you know, it's
00:41:26
◼
►
just a speed bump. Nothing new. Because they came out, they were announced at last year's
00:41:31
◼
►
October event, the one that was in San Jose.
00:41:38
◼
►
Intel's also been staging out the new CPU releases.
00:41:41
◼
►
They came out pretty soon after the CPUs were available from Intel that it uses.
00:41:48
◼
►
It looks like the entire roadmap might just be being dictated by Intel releasing the low-voltage
00:41:53
◼
►
CPUs, and then the desktop CPUs.
00:41:55
◼
►
And the Mac Pro, the CPUs that the Mac Pro is going to use are not out yet for anybody
00:42:01
◼
►
You can't buy a workstation from Dell with that CPU today.
00:42:06
◼
►
It seems like maybe everything's just waiting on that.
00:42:08
◼
►
- Here's a big one tied to the Mac Pro.
00:42:11
◼
►
And I know you guys spoke about it
00:42:13
◼
►
on the Accidental Tech Podcast a couple times.
00:42:17
◼
►
Everybody's talking about that.
00:42:19
◼
►
4K cinema displays.
00:42:20
◼
►
You just mentioned it earlier in this show.
00:42:23
◼
►
I think that they've gotta do it.
00:42:26
◼
►
I mean, I guess got to is maybe a little strong,
00:42:28
◼
►
but I really, I can't help but think
00:42:30
◼
►
if they're gonna come out with this fancy new Mac Pro
00:42:33
◼
►
and spend the time to make cool commercials for it
00:42:35
◼
►
and stuff and go with the Syracusian--
00:42:39
◼
►
it's the race car in the lineup.
00:42:43
◼
►
And it's capable of driving three 4K displays
00:42:47
◼
►
at the same time.
00:42:49
◼
►
Why wouldn't they want to sell a 4K display, then,
00:42:52
◼
►
to be one of the 4K display you hook up to it,
00:42:57
◼
►
even if it's ungodly expensive?
00:42:59
◼
►
Because that's the thing is I think
00:43:01
◼
►
that they're going with the Mac Pro is it's really-- they're
00:43:04
◼
►
Pro back in Pro where it really is, you know, they can charge a lot more because they've
00:43:09
◼
►
got these consumer level products that are a lot lower priced and are great, right? The
00:43:15
◼
►
iMac is a great desktop computer. It has a beautiful display. And the MacBook Air is
00:43:19
◼
►
a great laptop and it has a good display. So they can charge a lot more or some sort
00:43:25
◼
►
of premium for devices with retina displays and, you know, if you think, well, I don't
00:43:30
◼
►
know what what do you think like a 4k Apple cinema display might run? Oh man it
00:43:36
◼
►
well it depends on the size and the density too you know like if if they
00:43:39
◼
►
just took the the 27 inch approximate size like the what they sell now give
00:43:45
◼
►
that 4k resolution and I think it comes pretty close to retina you know it's not
00:43:49
◼
►
quite it's not a doubling of that display today but it's it's like it's
00:43:54
◼
►
near a doubling yeah things on screen would have to be bigger just just like
00:43:59
◼
►
like the same thing with the 50 nukes laptops.
00:44:01
◼
►
- They can call it retina though by just fudging
00:44:04
◼
►
the distance of how far away your eyes are from the device.
00:44:09
◼
►
I think that a retina, and I don't even,
00:44:11
◼
►
I think by their definition of what retina means,
00:44:13
◼
►
I think that's actually not even like marketing trickery.
00:44:16
◼
►
I think it's fair.
00:44:18
◼
►
- You know, people tend to be about an arm's length away
00:44:21
◼
►
from a desktop display.
00:44:23
◼
►
- Right, so I think if, I mean, and you can look,
00:44:25
◼
►
there already are a few 4K displays in the market today.
00:44:28
◼
►
and most of them are like 32 inch size,
00:44:31
◼
►
like they're bigger.
00:44:33
◼
►
If Apple's able to get good panel deals
00:44:36
◼
►
and is able to make a 27 inch at 4K resolution,
00:44:40
◼
►
first of all, I'd buy it in a heartbeat.
00:44:42
◼
►
I might even buy two of them, God knows.
00:44:44
◼
►
Second of all, I would guess that's a $3,000 display.
00:44:48
◼
►
And that's why I think they probably won't do it yet.
00:44:51
◼
►
- See, I think maybe, why not?
00:44:53
◼
►
Why not do it?
00:44:54
◼
►
- Well, if you look historically,
00:44:56
◼
►
when the original 30 inch cinema display came out,
00:44:59
◼
►
I believe the initial price was $3,500.
00:45:01
◼
►
It was over $3,000.
00:45:03
◼
►
And that was, what, like 2005 or something?
00:45:06
◼
►
It was a long time ago.
00:45:08
◼
►
But that was back when Apple was still--
00:45:11
◼
►
like, Apple could release a $3,000 monitor
00:45:13
◼
►
and nobody would care.
00:45:15
◼
►
But Apple's a different company today.
00:45:16
◼
►
Not entirely different, but everything they sell
00:45:21
◼
►
is really designed much more for the mass market
00:45:23
◼
►
and is under much more scrutiny.
00:45:25
◼
►
and they try to bring those prices, the entry prices, down over time. And so you could really,
00:45:31
◼
►
you could make a good argument that maybe they won't do a retina desktop display at
00:45:36
◼
►
$3,000. Maybe they'll just wait until that can be $1200 and do it then. But just certainly
00:45:42
◼
►
not this year.
00:45:43
◼
►
Yeah, it's possible, but I tend to think, no, because I think the whole idea of the
00:45:47
◼
►
Mac Pro is, I would have been more amenable to that argument before they unveiled the
00:45:52
◼
►
the Mac Pro at WWDC because the new Mac Pro to me says we're serious about selling really
00:45:59
◼
►
expensive high-end stuff.
00:46:01
◼
►
Yeah, I could see that.
00:46:02
◼
►
For the professional Mac market.
00:46:05
◼
►
I think what we'll be telling also, if for some reason at the event they announce new
00:46:10
◼
►
Retina MacBook Pros but they don't announce a new cinema display for whatever reason,
00:46:14
◼
►
I think it will be interesting to see, I would assume, the new Retina MacBook Pros will have
00:46:19
◼
►
Thunderbolt 2 ports.
00:46:22
◼
►
And you can look at the Mac Pro.
00:46:23
◼
►
And Thunderbolt 2 is the update to Thunderbolt
00:46:26
◼
►
that's fast enough to support resolutions like 4K.
00:46:28
◼
►
The Thunderbolt 1 can't, or at least not at a good frame rate.
00:46:32
◼
►
So the Mac Pro, there's good reasons
00:46:35
◼
►
for that to have Thunderbolt 2 that aren't a monitor.
00:46:38
◼
►
You can argue that Mac Pro users might
00:46:40
◼
►
be using those ports for future high-end RAID arrays
00:46:44
◼
►
and to replace fiber channel cards and stuff like that,
00:46:47
◼
►
like high-end I/O. There's a lot less of a need for that
00:46:51
◼
►
on a modern Retina MacBook Pro, on a modern laptop.
00:46:55
◼
►
Unless the main reason Thunderbolt 2 is there
00:46:58
◼
►
is to drive giant Retina displays.
00:47:02
◼
►
And so I think if the laptop comes out
00:47:04
◼
►
with Thunderbolt 2 port, I think Retina displays
00:47:06
◼
►
are not that far behind.
00:47:08
◼
►
- Yeah, I would like to see 'em next week.
00:47:10
◼
►
So you think we're gonna see new MacBook Pros next week too?
00:47:14
◼
►
- Yeah, 'cause we, I mean, that was another thing.
00:47:16
◼
►
Intel didn't release those CPUs yet in June,
00:47:18
◼
►
so I think that's one of the reasons we didn't see it then.
00:47:20
◼
►
but I'm guessing we see... My ideal scenario is...
00:47:24
◼
►
I don't care about the iPad, they can do whatever they want. My ideal scenario...
00:47:28
◼
►
I would love to see a Retina Mini, that's about it. My ideal scenario for what we get next week is
00:47:32
◼
►
Retina MacBook Pro update with Thunderbolt 2. Mac Pro
00:47:36
◼
►
announcement, like price and ship date and you can
00:47:40
◼
►
go and pre-order it now, even if we can't get it immediately.
00:47:44
◼
►
And Retina Cinema Display is released at the same time with them. That would be my ideal event.
00:47:48
◼
►
However, if you look at where the technology is
00:47:51
◼
►
for those retina displays, where the pricing is,
00:47:52
◼
►
where the economics work out for those giant panels,
00:47:55
◼
►
I'm not that confident that we're gonna get them this year.
00:47:59
◼
►
I think we might still be another year out in there.
00:48:01
◼
►
So I would say that the chances of getting
00:48:03
◼
►
a retina display are like 50%, maybe.
00:48:05
◼
►
Not great chances.
00:48:07
◼
►
- I just, I don't know.
00:48:09
◼
►
I'm gonna put it higher than that.
00:48:10
◼
►
I'm gonna say it's like a two out of three chance
00:48:13
◼
►
that they come out with a new 4K cinema display
00:48:16
◼
►
to go along with it.
00:48:17
◼
►
And it might be, but it probably would be like $3,000 each.
00:48:21
◼
►
- The other thing is if they make like a big one,
00:48:25
◼
►
like a 32 inch 4K, that is kind of too big
00:48:29
◼
►
to be retina at that resolution.
00:48:31
◼
►
So they'd have to get it small.
00:48:32
◼
►
They'd have to like use the 27 inch size
00:48:34
◼
►
at that resolution to really get that to be meaningful.
00:48:37
◼
►
But we'll see what happens.
00:48:38
◼
►
I really hope that I'm proven wrong
00:48:41
◼
►
on almost everything I just said,
00:48:42
◼
►
just because I'm predicting things fairly conservatively
00:48:45
◼
►
that regard and so I'd love to be proven wrong on that. So we'll see.
00:48:51
◼
►
What about iPods? I could see them releasing new iPods but I know two years ago they didn't.
00:48:59
◼
►
They went two years without refreshing them and it wouldn't fit. And even if it's not
00:49:04
◼
►
for next week, here's just a basic idea, just a what if. Let me just throw a wildcard at
00:49:11
◼
►
is what about something that's more like an iPod Nano,
00:49:16
◼
►
but actually running iOS?
00:49:18
◼
►
- That's interesting.
00:49:21
◼
►
I mean, you could kind of argue that they almost
00:49:24
◼
►
like accidentally created the smartwatch movement
00:49:27
◼
►
by the old Nano, just happened to be watch sized kind of,
00:49:31
◼
►
and having a wrist strap that somebody made in Kickstarter.
00:49:33
◼
►
Like you can kind of argue like,
00:49:36
◼
►
that that would be an interesting way to get into that,
00:49:38
◼
►
that wearables area that everyone's talking about.
00:49:41
◼
►
Right, like with some of these smartwatches that have come out,
00:49:46
◼
►
I forget which one I said it about.
00:49:47
◼
►
But it's like, if you're not more elegant and look better
00:49:50
◼
►
on the wrist than a two-year-old iPod Nano that was never
00:49:55
◼
►
designed to be worn as a watch on your wrist,
00:49:57
◼
►
then you've got a problem.
00:49:59
◼
►
If you're designing a product that is specifically a watch.
00:50:03
◼
►
I-- here's why.
00:50:04
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I'll tell you the one thing.
00:50:06
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The reason I would like an iPod Nano that runs iOS
00:50:09
◼
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is for one thing and one thing only, and that's podcasts.
00:50:12
◼
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Is I would like to be able to just set up
00:50:18
◼
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an iPod nano size thing, and just have that
00:50:22
◼
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be the only place where I manage my podcasts.
00:50:25
◼
►
Or in theory, like if you, you know,
00:50:29
◼
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if we're really running iOS and you could have apps
00:50:31
◼
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running on it, then somebody like, say, you,
00:50:34
◼
►
could come out with a version of your app
00:50:36
◼
►
that ran on that too, and it would sync between that
00:50:38
◼
►
phone. You know, syncing would be great if it, you know, if there's multiple versions
00:50:42
◼
►
of a podcast app. But all I want is an iPod that automatically, without me plugging it
00:50:48
◼
►
into anything other than occasionally charging it, just is up to date with podcasts.
00:50:53
◼
►
Jared Ranerelle See, I think, first of all, I think there's
00:50:57
◼
►
a big issue with battery life in a watch. And so, I don't think we're anywhere near
00:51:03
◼
►
running a full featured OS like iOS on a watch.
00:51:07
◼
►
I think that the display is the biggest power grab.
00:51:11
◼
►
Yeah, probably, but also radios would be a power grab.
00:51:15
◼
►
So, I think if Apple goes into the watch area,
00:51:19
◼
►
whether it's with just like kind of a boosted up nano or whether
00:51:23
◼
►
it's a separate product, I think if they go into the watch area, I think it's just
00:51:27
◼
►
going to be like a satellite device for your phone.
00:51:31
◼
►
For your iPhone. Or, right, and I say
00:51:35
◼
►
And it could be that it's just more iOS-like and it's still running the the pixel OS or whatever
00:51:41
◼
►
That is the embedded thing that the iPod still run but has some more features like that like
00:51:47
◼
►
Maybe instead of you know, why Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and something else? Maybe it's just Bluetooth, but it uses the Bluetooth
00:51:56
◼
►
4.0 low energy and
00:51:58
◼
►
An iOS companion app can just push those podcasts to it
00:52:03
◼
►
Right or the watch does not store all the podcasts on it the watch is more like a Bluetooth headset
00:52:09
◼
►
It's like it just it can receive the audio from your iPhone, and I think you're right
00:52:14
◼
►
I think that you know if Apple were to release a watch today
00:52:17
◼
►
I think it's pretty obvious that Bluetooth for low energy would be its main communication protocol
00:52:23
◼
►
And it might even be its only radio, and if you think about like what would make an awesome smartwatch
00:52:28
◼
►
You can argue. You know the case you go outside and exercise right I?
00:52:32
◼
►
I do sometimes.
00:52:33
◼
►
Okay, well I'm not familiar with that world.
00:52:35
◼
►
I know a lot of people do that and a lot of people don't bring their phones because they
00:52:38
◼
►
don't want to drop them or damage them or, you know, sports clothes don't really have
00:52:42
◼
►
deep secure pockets.
00:52:44
◼
►
So I run buck naked.
00:52:46
◼
►
Yeah, well, I mean, you might as well.
00:52:48
◼
►
The pockets on most running shorts are terrible.
00:52:50
◼
►
So it's the same thing.
00:52:53
◼
►
So there's that market of, you know, people who want to exercise who don't want to have
00:52:56
◼
►
their phone on them.
00:52:58
◼
►
And so obviously a smartwatch in that kind of context would be less useful the way I'm
00:53:01
◼
►
describing it.
00:53:02
◼
►
I think Apple's whole thing with the digital hub,
00:53:06
◼
►
with the Mac being the digital hub back,
00:53:08
◼
►
I don't know, 15 years ago now, whenever that was,
00:53:11
◼
►
the thing is, that was a great idea,
00:53:13
◼
►
and that was correct for the time.
00:53:14
◼
►
Overall though, now, especially the modern era,
00:53:18
◼
►
that was correct, but the digital hub is now the phone.
00:53:21
◼
►
Your smartphone is your digital hub for everything now.
00:53:24
◼
►
- Because it's with you all the time.
00:53:26
◼
►
- Right, now I'm obviously very into the podcast thing now.
00:53:32
◼
►
My theory has always been, people ask me if I'm going to do, like Stitcher is a popular
00:53:36
◼
►
client, and they go and work with all the car manufacturers to try to get car integration
00:53:41
◼
►
for Stitcher so that you can run Stitcher right on your head unit or have your phone
00:53:48
◼
►
plug into your car and everything.
00:53:51
◼
►
I think the market for that is pretty limited, and I think it's not a great use of effort
00:53:55
◼
►
because ultimately, the best way to listen to podcasts
00:53:59
◼
►
in your car is to just use a phone that can play audio
00:54:03
◼
►
over Bluetooth and have your car, you know,
00:54:06
◼
►
a lot of cars now are getting Bluetooth,
00:54:08
◼
►
it's filtering down pretty well into even lower end models.
00:54:10
◼
►
And so the audio in the car problem is now being solved,
00:54:14
◼
►
and it's just your phone playing things over Bluetooth.
00:54:17
◼
►
Internet in the car is the same way.
00:54:19
◼
►
Car manufacturers try to put internet connectivity
00:54:21
◼
►
in the cars, and really the best way to do it
00:54:23
◼
►
is to just have internet on your phone
00:54:25
◼
►
maybe at best have your car tethered with your phone.
00:54:28
◼
►
You know, that maybe will go there in the future.
00:54:30
◼
►
But ultimately, the phone is the center of everything now.
00:54:33
◼
►
It's where you have the data connection.
00:54:35
◼
►
I don't think we're gonna see a future
00:54:37
◼
►
where everything has its own data radio.
00:54:39
◼
►
I think the carriers are gonna block that worldwide
00:54:42
◼
►
pretty effectively or make it really infeasible
00:54:44
◼
►
economically for customers.
00:54:46
◼
►
- Wait, what are they gonna make unfeasible?
00:54:49
◼
►
- Having like a billion devices that you own
00:54:51
◼
►
all have their own cell radios
00:54:52
◼
►
and all their own data connections.
00:54:54
◼
►
I don't think we're going to see that for a long time, if ever.
00:54:57
◼
►
Ultimately, I think, again, everything's
00:54:59
◼
►
going through the phone right now.
00:55:01
◼
►
That's the way to do it.
00:55:02
◼
►
It's really powerful.
00:55:02
◼
►
It's very-- that's where the market is-- that's
00:55:06
◼
►
what the market is doing.
00:55:07
◼
►
Whether it's technologically ideal or conceptually ideal,
00:55:10
◼
►
that's what the market is doing.
00:55:11
◼
►
So for a smartwatch to just be a phone accessory, basically,
00:55:15
◼
►
to just be a window into the data on your phone
00:55:18
◼
►
and for it to use all the radios on your phone,
00:55:21
◼
►
except for the one super low power Bluetooth LE one
00:55:24
◼
►
that it would have itself.
00:55:26
◼
►
Like a watch with GPS, that would never work,
00:55:28
◼
►
because the batteries are way too small.
00:55:30
◼
►
So you can look at all that stuff.
00:55:32
◼
►
I think a watch that-- any smartwatch that
00:55:34
◼
►
comes out in the next couple years that's actually good,
00:55:36
◼
►
it's probably going to have that kind of design.
00:55:38
◼
►
And so whether Apple's going to have your dream podcast set up,
00:55:41
◼
►
I don't think that's going to be it.
00:55:43
◼
►
I think it's going to be you're going
00:55:45
◼
►
to play podcasts on your phone and play it through your watch
00:55:47
◼
►
if that's what you really want.
00:55:49
◼
►
or you're just gonna ignore that capability
00:55:51
◼
►
and just play it with headphones on your phone?
00:55:54
◼
►
- I don't know, I just can't help but think
00:55:56
◼
►
that there's gotta be a way for the thing to,
00:55:58
◼
►
and you know, I, and this is really pushing it,
00:56:01
◼
►
to say that what if it was really more like a full iPod Touch
00:56:04
◼
►
but just shrunk to that nano size,
00:56:06
◼
►
and it had Wi-Fi too,
00:56:12
◼
►
that would, it would make it work,
00:56:14
◼
►
it would make it usable with iTunes radio.
00:56:17
◼
►
I mean, who knows?
00:56:19
◼
►
Is iTunes Radio something they see as that important
00:56:21
◼
►
that they would engineer the devices
00:56:23
◼
►
to be able to support it?
00:56:24
◼
►
I don't know, but it just seems--
00:56:26
◼
►
- That's a good question.
00:56:27
◼
►
- It just seems to me though that maybe we collectively
00:56:30
◼
►
have all sort of taken our eyes off the iPod lineup
00:56:34
◼
►
in terms of the potential for future improvements.
00:56:38
◼
►
And that there, you know,
00:56:40
◼
►
you couldn't make it much smaller, right?
00:56:43
◼
►
That's like the iPod Nano.
00:56:44
◼
►
If you're gonna put a screen on a device,
00:56:46
◼
►
there's not much room there for more than a finger.
00:56:51
◼
►
It's already so small that you kind of wish it was bigger if it was easier to use.
00:56:54
◼
►
Easier not to. I'd be less likely to lose it. My iPod Nano is literally, as I speak,
00:57:00
◼
►
it's been lost for like four days somewhere, hopefully here in my office. But I feel like
00:57:07
◼
►
maybe now that they've shrunk it to that size, now they can use advances in technology
00:57:11
◼
►
and battery life and stuff like that to get it to do more on the software, maybe put some
00:57:15
◼
►
some little antennas in there. I don't know, just something to spitball, I think.
00:57:19
◼
►
Maybe. I just don't see it happening. Just, you know,
00:57:23
◼
►
radios are so power hungry and watches are so small.
00:57:27
◼
►
Like, to make a... I mean, do you have a Pebble or have you seen one?
00:57:31
◼
►
I do have a Pebble. It's ridiculously big. Like, when you sit on somebody's wrist,
00:57:35
◼
►
unless they're like a giant football player, it looks like...
00:57:39
◼
►
it's like the modern calculator watch.
00:57:43
◼
►
It is. I actually have it right here in my hand as I speak. It's big, but there actually
00:57:50
◼
►
are a lot bigger watches on the market today. Like men's wristwatches, the trend over the
00:57:55
◼
►
last couple of years has been to get bigger. And some of them are actually preposterously
00:57:59
◼
►
big, way bigger than a Pebble. So it's not just size alone, but it's...
00:58:04
◼
►
Are they Samsung?
00:58:07
◼
►
If you just go and look at like, just go to the mall and look at like a watch store and
00:58:11
◼
►
just go look at a jewelry store and look at some of the men's watches. You'll see some
00:58:15
◼
►
that are really pretty, a lot bigger than a Pebble. But it looks, it doesn't sit right
00:58:19
◼
►
on the wrist. And the ones that are real big are watches as jewelry. They're big for the,
00:58:27
◼
►
they're purposefully big. It's not that they couldn't make them smaller. You're showing
00:58:33
◼
►
off that you have this watch. It's jewelry. Whereas the Pebble is just big. I don't know.
00:58:40
◼
►
Do you think it's possible to make a smartwatch that doesn't...
00:58:44
◼
►
to make a smartwatch that looks as nice fashion-wise
00:58:49
◼
►
as like a jewelry watch?
00:58:54
◼
►
No, in some ways, because jewelry watches are made out of materials like
00:58:58
◼
►
stainless steel
00:58:59
◼
►
or even higher-end gold.
00:59:02
◼
►
Well, I guess you could make one out of that. I mean, it could be a smartwatch
00:59:06
◼
►
with, you know,
00:59:07
◼
►
or like a, you know, certainly Apple works a lot with aluminum that has more of a refined
00:59:13
◼
►
metallic appearance. But it's one of the things where if you call it a watch, this is one
00:59:18
◼
►
of the reasons where I'm tossing out what if they really push the borders on what we
00:59:23
◼
►
think an iPod can do, like an iPod Nano, not iPod Touch, like an iPod Nano can do. It has
00:59:27
◼
►
been the way that I've been sort of thinking in my head of what could this so-called iWatch
00:59:32
◼
►
do because what's the difference other than whether it's on a strap that goes on your
00:59:35
◼
►
wrist or not. What we're talking about are little roughly inch-sized peripherals to your
00:59:42
◼
►
iPhone, right? It's the same thing. And so why not make one that doesn't even have a
00:59:48
◼
►
strap that you clip on for people who don't want to wear it on a wrist or whatever?
00:59:54
◼
►
I think the problem with calling it a watch in particular, and to me, if they came out
00:59:58
◼
►
with a thing and it was just called the new iPod Nano, and in fact, it has all of these
01:00:03
◼
►
or some of these smart watch style integration Bluetooth back and forth features makes a
01:00:10
◼
►
lot more sense marketing wise because you can sell and everybody knows what an iPod
01:00:14
◼
►
is and they cost like 200, 250, $300 depending on the size. And they can just put that right
01:00:19
◼
►
in there and it will just sell better than, you know, the two year old iPod Nano we have
01:00:25
◼
►
now sells. Whereas if they call it a watch, it's they run into this, it's a really hard
01:00:30
◼
►
market because most people who do wear a wristwatch, I'm guessing, probably spend somewhere around
01:00:36
◼
►
$50 to $100 on their watch. That's a typical price for a watch. If you just go to Amazon
01:00:43
◼
►
and search for watches, you see a lot of watches, $50, that's what people pay.
01:00:50
◼
►
I haven't bought a watch since eighth grade.
01:00:53
◼
►
But a high-end watch costs thousands of dollars, right?
01:00:57
◼
►
Like a new watch from Omega or Rolex or one of those type companies is two, three, four
01:01:03
◼
►
thousand dollars at the low end of their lines.
01:01:06
◼
►
And it goes up from there depending on whether it's made of gold or stuff like that.
01:01:11
◼
►
So how do they make a watch?
01:01:12
◼
►
When is the last time Apple's ever made a product that isn't the best of whatever
01:01:15
◼
►
it is on the market, at least in some people's minds?
01:01:20
◼
►
there are those like solid gold blackberries from that V company?
01:01:24
◼
►
Yeah, there's those. I mean, you know, they... Is that a fair parallel?
01:01:29
◼
►
I think it is in some sense, because I think the thing with Virtu is that what the iPhone revealed
01:01:34
◼
►
with Virtu, Virtu, whatever you want to pronounce it, wasn't that they were making actual luxury
01:01:40
◼
►
cell phones, is that they were pantomiming luxury cell phones. They faked it with just
01:01:48
◼
►
literally putting a luxurious shell around a $15 Nokia Symbian phone.
01:01:57
◼
►
That it wasn't actually luxurious.
01:01:58
◼
►
Whereas when you buy a Rolex and you spend $5,000, $6,000 or whatever on it, you're getting
01:02:05
◼
►
a watch that truly has, by all accounts, an exquisite mechanical movement inside.
01:02:12
◼
►
It's not just that you're paying for the brand and you get a nice gold exterior around the
01:02:18
◼
►
same internals as a $50 watch from Amazon. It really is a nice—now whether it's worth
01:02:25
◼
►
spending that money on, it's obviously something that appeals just to people who are into collecting
01:02:30
◼
►
watches and stuff like that. It's not like it keeps better time, but it is in a sense
01:02:36
◼
►
to some people clearly a superior product, whereas the Virtu was not. It was never actually
01:02:41
◼
►
a better product. It was literally just the exact same internal guts as phones that Nokia
01:02:45
◼
►
sold for like 15 bucks.
01:02:47
◼
►
Right. So, I don't know. I mean, do you think there's any way that Apple could even compete
01:02:54
◼
►
in that high-end watch market? Or do you…
01:02:56
◼
►
No. Because that's the…
01:02:57
◼
►
It seems like that would be the wrong goal.
01:02:59
◼
►
Right. Because even though… And I feel like it's different from, say, selling a $3,000
01:03:06
◼
►
4K monitor, which is only meant for like professional developers and film editors and photographers
01:03:12
◼
►
and graphic designers and stuff like that, people who really need pro tools. Whereas
01:03:19
◼
►
a watch or an iPod, there is no pro line. You can't come out with a pro version of the
01:03:24
◼
►
watch that costs $4,000 because it looks as nice as a Rolex.
01:03:29
◼
►
**Matt Stauffer** Maybe Virtu will.
01:03:31
◼
►
**Ezra Klein** Yeah. That's why I think it's better to think
01:03:34
◼
►
about Apple's entry in this as some kind of iPod, or even just call it an iPod watch.
01:03:39
◼
►
I don't know.
01:03:40
◼
►
**Matt Stauffer** I mean, certainly, even if they don't even
01:03:42
◼
►
call it a watch, even if they just let the iPod Nano, you know, give it a Bluetooth 4
01:03:49
◼
►
Let it show notifications from your iPhone if you want it to.
01:03:52
◼
►
And, you know, like let it do some basic interaction with your iPhone and then just keep it small
01:03:56
◼
►
and squarish and sell a watch band accessory for it.
01:04:01
◼
►
An armband accessory for it.
01:04:04
◼
►
And, again, the same way that they've designed the smart covers to be integrated, you know,
01:04:07
◼
►
it's part of the whole…
01:04:09
◼
►
…it wasn't just something they came up with at the end.
01:04:10
◼
►
The whole process of developing it was meant for that.
01:04:12
◼
►
It might be designed from the get-go to have a wrist strap.
01:04:16
◼
►
- 'Cause it's entirely possible
01:04:17
◼
►
that the smartwatch market is just non-existent.
01:04:19
◼
►
And it's entirely, we as the tech industry
01:04:23
◼
►
have been talking about this forever,
01:04:25
◼
►
but it's very possible that nobody wants these things.
01:04:28
◼
►
And so that would kinda be a way for Apple
01:04:30
◼
►
to dip their toe in it very gently
01:04:33
◼
►
and in a way that if it doesn't sell well,
01:04:35
◼
►
it's not like a massive PR problem for them forever.
01:04:38
◼
►
- Yeah, and I think that it's sort of, in a way,
01:04:40
◼
►
marketing-wise, the—and I know, I know, nobody has to write in. I know they filed
01:04:45
◼
►
a whole bunch of trademarks around the world for an iWatch.
01:04:48
◼
►
Let me just digress here for a second and say that I have received—I think this might
01:04:52
◼
►
be one of the most common, single most common emails I've received over the last like five
01:04:57
◼
►
months which is, "What if iWatch has nothing to do with the wristwatch but it's actually
01:05:03
◼
►
the name of the new Apple TV because get it, iWatch, you watch the TV."
01:05:07
◼
►
Well, also, like, you can't – you can't keep a trademark in most conditions without
01:05:13
◼
►
using it after a while. Like, you can – you can pre-file it but not that far before you
01:05:18
◼
►
start using it. And you have to use it, otherwise you lose it. Like, it's possible they could
01:05:23
◼
►
have filed them – filed those trademarks defensively so that no one else could create
01:05:27
◼
►
something called the iWatch.
01:05:28
◼
►
That's – see, that's what I think they did. And here's the reason why –
01:05:31
◼
►
But then they're going to have to use it for something.
01:05:33
◼
►
Let's or or at least it would keep people from coming out with an iWatch soon
01:05:37
◼
►
Right, right
01:05:39
◼
►
Like Apple comes out with the thing and at least for the next two years or whatever the limit is on those trademarks
01:05:44
◼
►
Nobody come out with an iWatch and by the time they're unused iWatch trademark expires
01:05:48
◼
►
It's too late because they've already, you know dominated the market with the product that did come out with under a different name
01:05:55
◼
►
but anyway, here's the thing about the iWatch being
01:05:59
◼
►
Right underneath our noses the name of the Apple TV product the trademark
01:06:02
◼
►
Applications that they filed around the world that you can't you don't just file a name you have to say what it does and they all
01:06:07
◼
►
Say something about you know that it's a watch
01:06:10
◼
►
Right. Yeah trademark like you. Yeah, you're right
01:06:13
◼
►
You have to because you could release something called the iWatch that's a watch and then somebody else could make like a piece of industrial
01:06:20
◼
►
equipment that makes bread called the iWatch and
01:06:23
◼
►
That would not be a likely conflict, right? There's Apple is still gonna
01:06:28
◼
►
Sure, but you have to specify when you file a trademark like what like what areas is being used in and
01:06:34
◼
►
The trademark office at least in the u.s. Tries to push that to be as narrow as possible. Yeah
01:06:40
◼
►
So no, I do not I think there's zero chance that I watch is actually Apple TV or some kind of TV product even
01:06:47
◼
►
You know that and I and I feel like it's it's not even a good name for that
01:06:51
◼
►
I think everybody who's come up with that you're being you're overthinking it. It's too clever
01:06:55
◼
►
No, it wouldn't it wouldn't work right as a name of an app of a product you watch on TV
01:07:00
◼
►
They've also never
01:07:02
◼
►
Never used the I prefix
01:07:04
◼
►
Have they ever used it as a verb like that? No
01:07:07
◼
►
No, and I think that it's another reason that they wouldn't
01:07:11
◼
►
It's kind of weird. Yeah
01:07:14
◼
►
That was why people say you shouldn't say I touch I
01:07:18
◼
►
Don't hear as many people saying that anymore, but maybe it's because I don't see many people using I follow there
01:07:24
◼
►
They're all in the Apple store.
01:07:26
◼
►
Where's the iTouch?
01:07:28
◼
►
It's horrible.
01:07:29
◼
►
I do think though, and I think just circling back a minute or two to something you said about the name and setting the expectations, I feel like it's almost the opposite problem with iPhone,
01:07:39
◼
►
where we all know now, and a lot of us realized early on, that the iPhone wasn't really a phone.
01:07:44
◼
►
It was a little pocket computer and it just had phone features.
01:07:49
◼
►
The brilliance of it was that they've taken all of being a cell phone and just turned
01:07:55
◼
►
it into two apps, phone and messages, or three if you count contacts, right?
01:08:00
◼
►
That they just took these phone features, including making phone calls, and now it's
01:08:03
◼
►
just an app on this general purpose device.
01:08:06
◼
►
But calling it the iPhone really helped pave the way for why, just entering the market
01:08:13
◼
►
and why people would want one because people already, the world, the Western world was
01:08:18
◼
►
already all set on, you know, I need a cell phone, I buy a new one every two years. And
01:08:25
◼
►
it framed it well. Whereas I feel like some kind of smart iPod style size thing that even
01:08:32
◼
►
if you wear it on your watch, calling it a watch sets up all of these wrong expectations
01:08:38
◼
►
that you don't want to enter the market with that name, I think. But I mean, I could be
01:08:43
◼
►
be wrong. I'm terrible at guessing Apple product names.
01:08:46
◼
►
**BEN HONG:** Yeah. I mean, and they also, you know, a lot of times they will choose
01:08:50
◼
►
the name that the market wants it to be called, like the iPhone 5, which I'm still mad about.
01:08:56
◼
►
**JEFFREY WISDOM:** Oh, because you thought it should have been iPhone 6?
01:08:59
◼
►
**BEN HONG** Well, it just, it wasn't the fifth iPhone.
01:09:00
◼
►
**JEFFREY WISDOM** Right.
01:09:01
◼
►
**BEN HONG** The iPhone 4 was the fourth iPhone. That made
01:09:03
◼
►
sense. The iPhone 5 was not the fifth iPhone. And the whole public was, like, for years,
01:09:10
◼
►
the foresters, "This wasn't a real iPhone 5. We want an iPhone 5." So the next year,
01:09:15
◼
►
Apple gave them something called the iPhone 5, and they complained a little bit less.
01:09:18
◼
►
It just felt like giving in to me.
01:09:21
◼
►
That would be like someday as like a "wouldn't it be great," like it would be great like
01:09:27
◼
►
10, 15 years from now to like get like Phil Schiller and just do like a—it probably
01:09:35
◼
►
You probably wouldn't be like a big book, but you could do like a little mini ebook and just do a book just
01:09:40
◼
►
Just based on how they can you know the fights they had over product names?
01:09:45
◼
►
For like 20 or 30 years because you know that there were you know people have pointed that out within Apple
01:09:51
◼
►
It wasn't like somebody you know oh, yes said iPhone 5 and didn't think about it
01:09:54
◼
►
But like just look at the fact like the way things are now where they've iPhone still gets a number
01:10:01
◼
►
Every year, but then it gets an s some years and the whole iPhone 5c doesn't make a lot of sense either
01:10:12
◼
►
At least up until the 5c then when they had you know with the 4 and a 4s and the 3g
01:10:18
◼
►
And the 3gs at least it meant they were case compatible that it was the same form factor
01:10:25
◼
►
And that's why they're not bumping the number so that if you found a case that fit your iPhone 4
01:10:30
◼
►
and now you have an iPhone 4S, you could just stick it right in. And with the iPhone 5S,
01:10:35
◼
►
you can put it in. Whereas the iPhone 5C, it has that name, but it breaks that. It's
01:10:39
◼
►
an all-new form factor. It doesn't make any sense at all.
01:10:42
◼
►
I think it's that they want the name to just make sense today.
01:10:47
◼
►
And they don't really care if it makes sense historically.
01:10:50
◼
►
You know, like so, you know, the iPhone 5 came out fine. Like that's why I think next
01:10:54
◼
►
year I think we're going to have, if they decide to use number six, which I don't
01:10:58
◼
►
I don't know, a lot of cultures find it unlucky,
01:11:00
◼
►
and so maybe they'll skip it, I don't know.
01:11:02
◼
►
But if they decide to use the number six,
01:11:04
◼
►
then I think we're gonna have the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6C,
01:11:07
◼
►
even though there was, like, the 6C would kinda be
01:11:11
◼
►
like the 5S's internals in something called the 6C.
01:11:15
◼
►
Like, it doesn't make logical sense, like, historically,
01:11:19
◼
►
but if you just look at the product line
01:11:21
◼
►
as it will probably exist next year,
01:11:22
◼
►
and you figure there's gonna be a cheaper plastic one
01:11:24
◼
►
and a nice metal one, it's probably gonna be the 6
01:11:28
◼
►
See, I was thinking maybe the 6 and the 5CS.
01:11:35
◼
►
I don't know.
01:11:36
◼
►
I mean, they've already, with the 5S,
01:11:38
◼
►
they've already ruined everyone's minds
01:11:40
◼
►
and editors and typists, or have no idea what to do.
01:11:44
◼
►
So having another one that ends in S,
01:11:46
◼
►
I guess wouldn't be that bad.
01:11:47
◼
►
But I just don't see it happening,
01:11:49
◼
►
because that would make it look old, I think, next year.
01:11:53
◼
►
But at the same time, with the siblings in the lineup, the iPads, they've dropped the
01:12:00
◼
►
numbers and it's just iPad.
01:12:02
◼
►
And then they...
01:12:03
◼
►
Well, 'cause there was iPad third generation.
01:12:06
◼
►
Well, the first was the new iPad.
01:12:09
◼
►
But it was...
01:12:10
◼
►
When they came out with what we all call the iPad 3, they just said, "Here it is, the new
01:12:15
◼
►
It was just called the new iPad.
01:12:16
◼
►
And then they awkwardly added iPad third generation and all the support documents.
01:12:21
◼
►
And that's what they have to do.
01:12:22
◼
►
done for years and years and years with Macs, ever since they stopped giving crazy names
01:12:27
◼
►
like the Mac 2FX and stuff like that to Macs.
01:12:30
◼
►
Right, you have an early 2012 MacBook Air or something.
01:12:34
◼
►
Exactly. And cars, of course, do the same thing, where there's models but they don't
01:12:41
◼
►
change every year when they're revamped, even though sometimes it's a total revamp. It's
01:12:47
◼
►
It's a total do-over in a brand new car, but it still is just called a Honda Accord.
01:12:52
◼
►
It's just a 2011 model, 2013 or whatever.
01:12:59
◼
►
Let's get back.
01:13:00
◼
►
We have a couple other things I want to talk about for the event next week, but let me
01:13:03
◼
►
take a break for the second sponsor.
01:13:05
◼
►
Our second sponsor is our friends at Fracture.
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You might remember them from a couple months ago when they first sponsored the show.
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What does Fracture do?
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One thing, and they do it great.
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send them digital photos and they print them directly on glass in vivid color.
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So they don't print, make a traditional print and then put it in a frame.
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They actually print the photo in color on glass.
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It's a picture, a frame and a mount all in one.
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It's incredibly clever and it's one of those things you really have to see it to believe
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it because it really looks great.
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It just looks – in some ways, it's sort of like the way that when the retina screens
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came and that everything was closer to the front, it just looked cooler because you don't
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have that parallax of the thickness of the glass between it.
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That's what fracture pictures look like.
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They really look great.
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You get – you send them the picture.
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You get a box that includes everything you need to get your photo on your wall, put it
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It's really great.
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They're a small team.
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and a lifetime warranty right so you get it if you don't think it's cool 30 days
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you could just send it right back and and you get your money back they have
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sizes starting at five by five small square I think that's new I think that's
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new from the last time they sponsor I think square photos I think Instagram
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has totally made this like the new aspect ratio for snapshots it's 12 bucks
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for a five by five small square and it goes all the way up to 22 by 29 which is
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huge I mean that's it's that's humongous and that's their extra-large that costs
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code, the talk show, and check them out. It's a great way to print things that you want
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printed and it's a – makes for a – trust me, makes for a great gift. Family will just
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Tim Weiss (guest): Yeah, they actually sponsored my site a while back and they sent me – they
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let me pick one of these for free and I put my own picture on it. I got like a nice big
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– it's like a 9 by 13 or something like that. And it's above my desk. People compliment
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it all the time. It's really great. I'm a big fan.
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Yeah, it's really neat.
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And the packaging was amazing. I was shocked. I was a little afraid chipping this big pane
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of glass through the mail. I'm like, "Oh, whatever. It's broken." And the packaging
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was awesome. Obviously, I bet they don't lose many of these. They really did include everything.
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It was nice. It was like instructions on how to open the box or ideal takeout. It had a
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little screw in there, so you can mount it if you want. It was great.
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It is a serious packaging. It's like a real serious, well thought out, almost like an
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origami cardboard arrangement that secures the thing and buffers it against any kind
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of mishandling.
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◼
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Right. There's pretty much no way you'd open the wrong end and it would fall out and shatter.
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They thought of that and they're preventing you from doing that. It's really great.
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Right. It's clearly a detail-oriented company.
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I can see why they've sponsored our stuff.
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They know their audience.
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If it sounds cool to you, trust me, you're going to like it.
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They really do a great job.
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◼
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It's a great service.
01:16:39
◼
►
So what else could they do next week?
01:16:41
◼
►
Well, they've got to have some software, right?
01:16:42
◼
►
Something's got to be demoed.
01:16:43
◼
►
You can't have a device without software to demo.
01:16:46
◼
►
But they've already unveiled iOS 7.
01:16:49
◼
►
So yeah, it looks--
01:16:50
◼
►
iOS is obviously different on an iPad than on an iPhone.
01:16:53
◼
►
But it's not that different.
01:16:55
◼
►
So I feel like they need apps to demo.
01:16:58
◼
►
Does iLife still exist on the Mac?
01:17:00
◼
►
And can they even do that with Mavericks or probably not?
01:17:03
◼
►
Are they still updating that?
01:17:04
◼
►
I wonder about the Mac.
01:17:05
◼
►
So here's what I think.
01:17:06
◼
►
I think they're going to do new iLife works for iOS and probably iWorks apps because they
01:17:14
◼
►
just made a big deal over the fact that they're like the most popular mobile office apps on
01:17:21
◼
►
smartphones.
01:17:22
◼
►
I think they said in the keynote at WBCC, I think they said that an update to iWork for
01:17:29
◼
►
the Mac was coming.
01:17:30
◼
►
Which was news because they're still like the '09 apps.
01:17:34
◼
►
They're very old, long in the tooth.
01:17:36
◼
►
I still use them all the time.
01:17:37
◼
►
They still work just fine, but they really could use an update.
01:17:40
◼
►
Just new features.
01:17:42
◼
►
The only thing they've done since 2009 is add iCloud support, really.
01:17:46
◼
►
I mean, I'm sure there's bug fixes and some minor things, but in terms of what you would
01:17:50
◼
►
actually think off the top of your head, it's just iCloud support.
01:17:53
◼
►
Right. It's still like the same features from all the way back then, the same, you know,
01:17:56
◼
►
like numbers still has all the same capabilities that it had back then, just plus iCloud. That's
01:18:02
◼
►
And I think that could make, if they did both iOS and Mac versions, and it doesn't seem,
01:18:07
◼
►
you might think like, well, you're asking for too much to hope that they did both. But
01:18:11
◼
►
on the other hand, it's been so many years since the Mac version had a major revision.
01:18:15
◼
►
It doesn't seem like you're asking for much. I mean, presumably, they're, you know, they
01:18:18
◼
►
still have full-time teams who work on the iWork Mac apps. They've got to be, have been
01:18:23
◼
►
working on something.
01:18:25
◼
►
of the problem that Microsoft has with upgrade revenue in Office. We haven't had a meaningful
01:18:31
◼
►
iWork update since 2009, and it's not that big of a problem. I still use numbers almost
01:18:39
◼
►
every day, and I use Keynote a couple times a year. I would like new features, but they
01:18:45
◼
►
still work just fine. Every time I use them, I don't notice, "Oh my God, this is so
01:18:52
◼
►
Whereas-- - Imagine Microsoft Office
01:18:54
◼
►
being released like every two or three years.
01:18:56
◼
►
Like trying to get people to pay for that upgrade
01:18:58
◼
►
is probably a nightmare.
01:18:59
◼
►
They're like, that's why they wanna move
01:19:00
◼
►
to subscription stuff.
01:19:02
◼
►
- Whereas the iOS versions look ancient
01:19:05
◼
►
because they look like iOS 6 apps.
01:19:07
◼
►
- And as time goes on, I mean, I think everybody agrees.
01:19:11
◼
►
Even people who don't like iOS 7,
01:19:13
◼
►
they don't like the visual direction they went.
01:19:16
◼
►
I think even they have to acknowledge
01:19:18
◼
►
that the old apps still stick out like sore thumbs.
01:19:21
◼
►
So I feel like they almost have to have iOS versions of these apps.
01:19:25
◼
►
Are they even built with the 7 SDK yet?
01:19:27
◼
►
Like, do they show the 7 keyboard?
01:19:30
◼
►
No, I don't think so.
01:19:32
◼
►
That's rough.
01:19:33
◼
►
That's the biggest problem when I'm using Tweetbot, which doesn't have a 7
01:19:36
◼
►
update out yet.
01:19:39
◼
►
The keyboard, if you look at all the resource files in 7,
01:19:43
◼
►
it includes a complete copy of the entire UI from 6.
01:19:48
◼
►
so it can run those apps in their simulation mode
01:19:52
◼
►
And it sucks because the keyboard is just so slightly
01:19:57
◼
►
different between six and seven in a few ways.
01:19:59
◼
►
And it's enough that once you're used to one,
01:20:02
◼
►
you make a bunch of typos in the other one.
01:20:04
◼
►
Have you found this to be the best way to run?
01:20:06
◼
►
- I have definitely found it to be a case.
01:20:08
◼
►
- It really sucks when an app is not updated for seven now
01:20:11
◼
►
'cause anything with text input
01:20:13
◼
►
because you hit that problem hard.
01:20:16
◼
►
Yeah, and especially, yeah, and Tweetbot's probably the one that I hit it the most in
01:20:23
◼
►
because that's probably the app where I type the most in an app that still has the old
01:20:29
◼
►
keyboard. Whereas a lot of my other typing on iOS is in messages and mail, and they're
01:20:35
◼
►
obviously, they're built in so they're updated. So that's where I've sort of acclimated to
01:20:39
◼
►
the new keyboard. Oh, and Safari, you know, typing in forms in Safari and stuff like that.
01:20:44
◼
►
So, Tweetpot's keyboard really does get me every time.
01:20:47
◼
►
- But yeah, besides that, besides like, you know,
01:20:51
◼
►
demoing iWork and maybe iLife for the Mac,
01:20:54
◼
►
on iOS, I don't really see it happening.
01:20:57
◼
►
I mean, like every year at the iPad event,
01:21:00
◼
►
they've brought out something new, right?
01:21:02
◼
►
Like was it last year that it was iPhoto,
01:21:03
◼
►
or was it the year before?
01:21:05
◼
►
There was like, there was GarageBand, there was iPhoto,
01:21:07
◼
►
like you know, in these crazy years.
01:21:09
◼
►
- iMovie. - iMovie, right.
01:21:11
◼
►
- I don't know what they're gonna do this year
01:21:14
◼
►
in that regard for the iPads. Maybe they have so much stuff in this event, like if they
01:21:19
◼
►
really are going to cram in MacBook Pro, Mac Pro, Mavericks, iPads, maybe even iPads, a
01:21:26
◼
►
smartwatch and a TV, if they're going to cram all this stuff into one event, maybe they
01:21:32
◼
►
don't have time to do in-depth software demos like that. And so maybe the iPad section of
01:21:38
◼
►
for the update will just be about a little bit of iOS 7
01:21:42
◼
►
plus new iPads, models, prices, specs, and then move on.
01:21:46
◼
►
- I think they've gotta have software to demo.
01:21:50
◼
►
And I, I don't know, I just fired up numbers on my phone.
01:21:54
◼
►
- I'm surprised you even have it installed.
01:21:57
◼
►
I deleted them a while ago.
01:21:58
◼
►
I'm just like, I never use them.
01:22:00
◼
►
- I have it because I keep the Daring Fireball
01:22:05
◼
►
sponsorship schedule in a numbers spreadsheet.
01:22:08
◼
►
And usually, almost, I don't remember the last time I opened it.
01:22:12
◼
►
It certainly hasn't been open since I bought this new phone.
01:22:15
◼
►
So it's probably been months. But I keep it in iCloud.
01:22:18
◼
►
And that way, if I ever do need to answer some sort of sponsorship question
01:22:23
◼
►
while I'm on the phone, I can access it.
01:22:25
◼
►
But it looks ridiculous. It is so over-the-top, skeuomorphic.
01:22:30
◼
►
Just to use the word to--everybody knows what I mean.
01:22:33
◼
►
But with the marker felt for the tabs and the paper texture on the tabs
01:22:37
◼
►
on the tabs and a wood background and everything's in there. It's got wood, linen, paper, the
01:22:44
◼
►
keyboard. I think they've got to have new versions of these apps. Got to.
01:22:48
◼
►
Well, but I mean, you could say that about a lot of things that they don't have new versions
01:22:53
◼
►
Right. There's a lot of things that have to be there.
01:22:54
◼
►
You could say that on the Mac for a while. But again, you're right though, that it's
01:22:59
◼
►
like more in your face there, that it's old. Like I said, on the Mac, you don't really
01:23:02
◼
►
notice day-to-day use on iOS 7, you really do notice when things are not updated.
01:23:08
◼
►
Yeah. And there's other little things, too, like that... So they... And I've seen people...
01:23:15
◼
►
Some people have written to me about the fact that iOS 6 apps get these old UI controls.
01:23:22
◼
►
Why not give them the new keyboard? Why do they make them have an ugly keyboard? And
01:23:28
◼
►
I'm not sure how much of that is technical about what version of the SDK apps are compiled
01:23:32
◼
►
against and what they can expect and how much of it is, well, they actually do kind of want
01:23:38
◼
►
to make your apps look dated because they want you to, you know, they want that gentle
01:23:44
◼
►
pressure to update and recompile and redesign for iOS 7.
01:23:48
◼
►
I don't think it's necessarily that. I think if you consider what an app would look like
01:23:53
◼
►
it had like half iOS 7 style stuff and half iOS 6 style stuff it would look bad
01:24:00
◼
►
and it would have potentially big problems and so I think they just did it
01:24:05
◼
►
this way because an app that has elements of both mixed in haphazardly
01:24:10
◼
►
is a way worse situation for everybody involved and then just making it look
01:24:14
◼
►
like a good like just making it look exactly like it did on iOS 6 and there
01:24:18
◼
►
are some things that are updated like UI Alert is new everywhere although you get
01:24:24
◼
►
a different tap-down color you get like that bright blue color when you're
01:24:27
◼
►
running a non updated app. And some of the things too like the the male compose
01:24:31
◼
►
sheet you can call up from an action sheet that's newer right seven you know
01:24:35
◼
►
but but still yeah most of it is iOS 6 style when you're running an old app and
01:24:39
◼
►
I think it's I think it's just because it would just break so many things if
01:24:43
◼
►
if they tried to mix in more elements of 7 into the UI.
01:24:47
◼
►
This is a complete utter digression
01:24:49
◼
►
from talking about next week's event, but it wouldn't
01:24:51
◼
►
be an episode of the talk show with a long parenthetical
01:24:58
◼
►
Guy English and I last week had spent some of the time
01:25:01
◼
►
on the show talking about the people holding out and not--
01:25:04
◼
►
willfully not upgrading to iOS 7.
01:25:08
◼
►
And how many are there?
01:25:09
◼
►
Is it going to be bigger this year?
01:25:11
◼
►
Yes, we did see another huge first week upgrade to iOS 7.
01:25:16
◼
►
And at one point it was tracking faster
01:25:20
◼
►
than iOS 6 did as updates.
01:25:22
◼
►
But maybe there will be,
01:25:23
◼
►
because the changes are so different
01:25:25
◼
►
and some people feel so strongly about them,
01:25:27
◼
►
maybe there will be a bigger contingent this time
01:25:29
◼
►
that holds on.
01:25:31
◼
►
More or less what we talked about.
01:25:32
◼
►
One thing we didn't talk about,
01:25:34
◼
►
and I guess I don't think it just didn't occur to us,
01:25:36
◼
►
but a bunch of people wrote to me and said,
01:25:39
◼
►
Here's why I'm staying with iOS 6.
01:25:41
◼
►
My phone is jailbroken, and I wanna keep it jailbroken
01:25:45
◼
►
for reasons X, Y, Z.
01:25:47
◼
►
And a lot of the people who wrote to me
01:25:48
◼
►
have perfectly valid reasons.
01:25:50
◼
►
Some people, it's because they live in a country
01:25:53
◼
►
or something where you need a jailbroken phone
01:25:55
◼
►
to get it on the network you want it on
01:25:56
◼
►
or something like that.
01:25:58
◼
►
But the thing is is that iOS 7 has not yet been jailbroken.
01:26:02
◼
►
- Really, I didn't realize that.
01:26:04
◼
►
I don't pay that much attention to it,
01:26:05
◼
►
but that surprises me.
01:26:07
◼
►
- 'Cause I don't jailbreak,
01:26:08
◼
►
I don't really care about it. I just don't have strong feelings about it. I I hadn't really thought about that
01:26:14
◼
►
but once the readers pointed it out to me, I realized that I I
01:26:18
◼
►
hadn't seen the
01:26:21
◼
►
Holy cow iOS 7 is jailbroken day on tech meme yet
01:26:25
◼
►
Which you know every every previous year it's always been presented as you know
01:26:30
◼
►
You know some kind of scandal that that the iPhone new version of iOS has been jailbroken
01:26:36
◼
►
Jailbreaking is always a lot more popular than people like us think it is. Oh, I definitely know that
01:26:43
◼
►
Definitely well, you know and I think in that you know and I even had I know that it's true
01:26:48
◼
►
But I know that I always lapse into forgetting that it's true. Just like on last week's show right right
01:26:54
◼
►
Right like I I it wouldn't surprise me at all if a sizable chunk
01:26:59
◼
►
What is iOS 7 at now like 70% or something? I think it's somewhere around there
01:27:05
◼
►
It wouldn't surprise me at all if like 15% of that like 15% total
01:27:09
◼
►
Was jailbroken and that's why those people are holding out that would not surprise me at all
01:27:13
◼
►
because it's really very popular especially in you know certain parts of the world really almost everyone's jailbroken and
01:27:19
◼
►
certain communities of like certain kinds of nerds and and certain kinds of
01:27:24
◼
►
People with certain needs or people who want like a tethering hack or something like that. Like it's very very popular
01:27:31
◼
►
Yeah, and so yeah, that wouldn't surprise me at all if that was a big chunk of it
01:27:35
◼
►
I didn't even realize that it wasn't job working it because they've gotten so fast at it generally with new releases, right?
01:27:40
◼
►
it always pops up whenever there's a
01:27:43
◼
►
Like a game developer and you know, I think because it's I think jailbreaking clearly skews younger, you know
01:27:50
◼
►
It's like a teenager and 20s type thing. I think just in broad terms
01:27:54
◼
►
I mean, I'm sure that there's people of every age who jailbreak for whatever reason but you know, it's a hacker type thing
01:27:59
◼
►
And so, games are popular. And one of the big things with jailbreaking is it becomes
01:28:07
◼
►
possible to pirate iOS games. And whenever developers release numbers, developers have
01:28:12
◼
►
like an online part of the game so they can see how many users they have. They end up
01:28:17
◼
►
with these user numbers that are way higher than the paid number of apps that they've
01:28:24
◼
►
Oh yeah, I mean even, like I had, when I was running Instapaper, I had integrated Crashlytics,
01:28:30
◼
►
which is this crash tracking thing, and they, in their analytics, they will tell you for
01:28:35
◼
►
each crash what percentage of the people who had that crash are jailbroken, because they
01:28:40
◼
►
just try to detect that, which is useful to know.
01:28:43
◼
►
So I had this one crash that was affecting, like, a nice, like, even slice of the market.
01:28:49
◼
►
Like, it wasn't just affecting a certain edge case, it was affecting, like, you know,
01:28:53
◼
►
tenth person or something like that every so often. So it was a nice, fair, random slice
01:28:57
◼
►
of the user base. And it was something like 20% jailbroken. And certainly Instapaper's
01:29:03
◼
►
user base is probably more geeky than the average, but not by as much as you'd think.
01:29:07
◼
►
And that's an incredible number for a non-game app that is pretty widespread and isn't
01:29:16
◼
►
nerds or isn't all people in a certain country. That's really incredible.
01:29:23
◼
►
So I wonder with iOS 7 not yet being jailbroken, is it just the luck of the draw? You know,
01:29:29
◼
►
like, I mean, the way that these jailbreaks work, my, you know, layman's understanding
01:29:33
◼
►
is, you know, the jailbreak community looks for or hoards even exploits where they can
01:29:39
◼
►
get code to run. And then once they can get code to run through some sort of exploit in
01:29:44
◼
►
the OS, they know the certain, you know, paths that they can take and which files to modify
01:29:51
◼
►
in the system to, you know, defeat the aspects of the OS that, you know, that jailbreaking
01:29:59
◼
►
is meant to defeat.
01:30:01
◼
►
Is it just the fact--and those bugs are so hard to find, and I'm sure that they're harder,
01:30:05
◼
►
you know, as the years have gone on and Apple's added more security features, you know, randomizing
01:30:12
◼
►
memory locations and stuff like that, that it's just gotten harder to defeat?
01:30:18
◼
►
Or maybe, has Apple done something specifically with the design of iOS specifically to make
01:30:24
◼
►
it harder to jailbreak?
01:30:27
◼
►
It's always been very unclear to me just how strongly Apple feels at the executive level
01:30:32
◼
►
about jailbreaking and how much they should bother to sort of try to defeat it.
01:30:38
◼
►
You should get Grandpa on here.
01:30:41
◼
►
he would be able to talk about that in a more qualified way.
01:30:43
◼
►
- Oh, obviously, 'cause he's actually like a wizard
01:30:46
◼
►
in the community.
01:30:47
◼
►
- Yeah, he was on some show.
01:30:48
◼
►
It wasn't yours though, was it?
01:30:49
◼
►
He was on a show I heard six months ago.
01:30:51
◼
►
It was really good.
01:30:52
◼
►
I think it might have been debug.
01:30:53
◼
►
Yeah, you should get him on here.
01:30:55
◼
►
But yeah, I'm curious about that too.
01:30:57
◼
►
But ultimately, so there's jail breakers
01:31:00
◼
►
and that's a whole thing.
01:31:01
◼
►
I think a lot of people, I saw my mom today
01:31:04
◼
►
and she has the free iPhone 4,
01:31:06
◼
►
which I told her not to buy, but she bought it anyway,
01:31:09
◼
►
like six months ago recently.
01:31:11
◼
►
Why did she ask?
01:31:12
◼
►
That's the thing when your parents go against you.
01:31:14
◼
►
I don't know.
01:31:14
◼
►
Why did you ask me?
01:31:16
◼
►
She said she was thinking about getting an iPhone.
01:31:18
◼
►
And I said, all right, whatever you do, don't get the free one.
01:31:21
◼
►
Get the one that's $100 if you want, like the 4S.
01:31:23
◼
►
At least get that one.
01:31:24
◼
►
And I showed her.
01:31:25
◼
►
She was at my house.
01:31:25
◼
►
I showed her all three.
01:31:26
◼
►
I have my drawer full of old iPhones.
01:31:28
◼
►
I'm like, here's the three phones that are available right now.
01:31:32
◼
►
Don't get this one.
01:31:33
◼
►
This one's $100.
01:31:34
◼
►
This one's $200.
01:31:35
◼
►
I'll even buy the $100 one for you if you want.
01:31:38
◼
►
just don't get the free one.
01:31:39
◼
►
And then she goes a few weeks later,
01:31:41
◼
►
not even telling me, and just gets the free one.
01:31:44
◼
►
Anyway, so she had seen the things
01:31:48
◼
►
on the news about motion sickness.
01:31:49
◼
►
And she said one friend on Facebook
01:31:51
◼
►
said that he had to restore his phone
01:31:53
◼
►
and wiped everything out.
01:31:54
◼
►
And I don't know if that's true.
01:31:55
◼
►
I have no idea.
01:31:56
◼
►
It doesn't really matter.
01:31:58
◼
►
She was scared by the media into not upgrading.
01:32:00
◼
►
So she's like, I'm going to hold on to this iOS 6 phone
01:32:03
◼
►
And I had to explain to her, you know, mom, first of all,
01:32:06
◼
►
All the things you've heard are overblown and not really a problem.
01:32:11
◼
►
Second of all, every time Apple releases anything new, you're going to see all these crazy
01:32:15
◼
►
news reports about it because that's how people make money in the media.
01:32:18
◼
►
Third, you can't hold onto the old version forever.
01:32:22
◼
►
Like there's going to be a point, and I did a whole episode of Build and Analyze about
01:32:26
◼
►
this forever ago, like it's really hard to be like a member of modern computing society
01:32:31
◼
►
in any way and hold onto a really old version of something forever, especially in the world
01:32:36
◼
►
- You can hold on for a year pretty easily.
01:32:38
◼
►
- Maybe, yeah, but if that phone ever gets damaged
01:32:43
◼
►
and has to be replaced, or if the screen fails,
01:32:46
◼
►
or the home button fails, like it did sometimes on the 4,
01:32:49
◼
►
if there's any failure that requires replacement,
01:32:53
◼
►
or if you ever need to do a fresh install,
01:32:57
◼
►
I think you can do a fresh install
01:32:58
◼
►
of the same version you have, but worst case scenario,
01:33:03
◼
►
when this phone is no longer that useful
01:33:05
◼
►
the battery is terrible in two years and you buy a new one because it's free, any new phone
01:33:11
◼
►
you get is going to have the new OS. So you can't really hold on to an old version for
01:33:16
◼
►
very long. In the grand scheme of things, that's just going to get harder and harder
01:33:21
◼
►
to do, and at some point you're going to be forced to upgrade, and you're going to realize,
01:33:25
◼
►
"Oh, okay, it's not that bad, and actually it's kind of nice in all these ways, and actually
01:33:29
◼
►
I kind of like it." That's always how it goes.
01:33:33
◼
►
Did you ever run into any problems with Instapaper or even the magazine app when you were running
01:33:39
◼
►
that where you had crashing bugs that only affected or seemingly disproportionately affected
01:33:45
◼
►
jailbreak users?
01:33:49
◼
►
Usually the problem where you hit that, usually the problem was, especially with the older
01:33:53
◼
►
devices that didn't have a lot of RAM, some of the jailbreak tools would stay resident
01:33:57
◼
►
in memory and would take up more RAM than an unjailbroken device would have, so you'd
01:34:02
◼
►
have less RAM available.
01:34:03
◼
►
And on iOS, there's no paging out to a page file
01:34:08
◼
►
or a swap file.
01:34:09
◼
►
It doesn't do that.
01:34:10
◼
►
You know, in iOS, if you ask for a certain amount of RAM,
01:34:12
◼
►
you don't get it.
01:34:13
◼
►
You know, tough shit.
01:34:14
◼
►
And you probably didn't accommodate for that.
01:34:17
◼
►
You'll probably crash.
01:34:18
◼
►
Instead of getting the memory back,
01:34:19
◼
►
you're just going to get the nope.
01:34:23
◼
►
Or iOS will say, oh, low memory warning.
01:34:26
◼
►
You better use less.
01:34:27
◼
►
And you're like, I can't.
01:34:28
◼
►
And then they kill you.
01:34:30
◼
►
So that's usually the problem with jailbreak stuff,
01:34:33
◼
►
is not that it necessarily interferes
01:34:35
◼
►
with things your code is doing, but it takes up so much RAM
01:34:39
◼
►
that your app doesn't have enough space to run
01:34:42
◼
►
and gets killed.
01:34:43
◼
►
And it's hard to test for that, and it's kind of hard
01:34:46
◼
►
to avoid that.
01:34:47
◼
►
Instapaper and the magazine never really used enough RAM
01:34:50
◼
►
for that to be a problem.
01:34:51
◼
►
It's more of a problem for games and really heavy productivity
01:34:54
◼
►
Yeah, I think the memory thing is probably
01:34:57
◼
►
one of the main issues.
01:34:58
◼
►
Because I think that they diddle with so little that it doesn't make it more likely you're
01:35:05
◼
►
going to crash.
01:35:06
◼
►
As opposed to—and this might be predating your time on the Mac, but when Mac OS X first
01:35:11
◼
►
came out, people ran these hacksies.
01:35:15
◼
►
That's actually what they were called, H-A-X-I-E from Unsanity.
01:35:20
◼
►
And there were other people, too.
01:35:21
◼
►
People used to run these—what were they?
01:35:23
◼
►
Symbol plug-ins, S-I-M-B-L-E.
01:35:26
◼
►
I got some of those.
01:35:28
◼
►
I guess people still use them, but they were a lot more common in the first five six years of Mac OS 10
01:35:34
◼
►
And I think they are now, but if you were a Mac developer
01:35:37
◼
►
You inevitably you'd get crashes
01:35:41
◼
►
You know some of these things would just make your app crash and your app would never
01:35:45
◼
►
You'd never see this crash unless you had like this specific
01:35:49
◼
►
Haxi or symbol plug-in in the stack trace that you got with the bug report all of them were there and the question is what?
01:35:56
◼
►
do you do? Do you support that? Do you work around it? Like at bare bones, they didn't.
01:36:02
◼
►
I'm pretty 99% sure they still don't. They'll be polite about it, but the response from
01:36:07
◼
►
support is that we can't support third party extensions that modify the system itself.
01:36:15
◼
►
Some people would—
01:36:16
◼
►
I don't really think you have a good alternative there as a software company. I think that's
01:36:19
◼
►
pretty much what you have to say. You can make some effort to be like, "All right,
01:36:22
◼
►
If you send me the crash log, if there's like an obvious easy way that we can work around
01:36:26
◼
►
this, we'll try, you know, but in reality it's pretty hard to support that kind of stuff.
01:36:31
◼
►
And from the user's perspective, they just want that one.
01:36:33
◼
►
They just want you to support that one system hack.
01:36:36
◼
►
And why can't you just support that one?
01:36:38
◼
►
The problem is, from the developer's perspective, it becomes an infinite array of platforms
01:36:43
◼
►
that you support.
01:36:44
◼
►
It's the one guy has the one extension and the other.
01:36:46
◼
►
The other guy has this one and that one.
01:36:49
◼
►
you've got to test it, you know, and sometimes to reproduce it, you've got to have that exact
01:36:54
◼
►
configuration.
01:36:55
◼
►
And then like when 10.n+1 comes out and all these extensions change the way they interact
01:37:01
◼
►
with things because something changed, then you've got to test it for all those versions
01:37:05
◼
►
So I don't think jailbreaking is a support problem that way. I think the memory is. But
01:37:09
◼
►
I do know that there are developers who detect it or try to detect jailbreaking. You know,
01:37:16
◼
►
know, there's various ways to take a guess. And then if they do, they won't give you support
01:37:21
◼
►
because they just don't want to support people. They don't want to spend tech support resources
01:37:26
◼
►
on people who pirated the app.
01:37:29
◼
►
- You know, I thought about doing things like that, but the problem is, as you said earlier,
01:37:34
◼
►
like there's a lot of fairly legitimate reasons why somebody would jailbreak you. One of the
01:37:41
◼
►
biggest being the phone's not available in their country
01:37:44
◼
►
or on their carrier of their choice.
01:37:46
◼
►
And usually for me the second biggest being
01:37:50
◼
►
tethering hacks, which I guess you could argue
01:37:51
◼
►
whether that's legitimate or not,
01:37:53
◼
►
people trying to get tethering for free.
01:37:54
◼
►
Okay, but so not every jail breaker is doing it
01:37:58
◼
►
quote, "optionally" in their mind at least.
01:38:03
◼
►
In fact, probably none of them are.
01:38:06
◼
►
So it's hard morally and customer satisfaction-wise,
01:38:10
◼
►
hard to say, "I'm just not going to support Jailbreakers," because in their minds, that's
01:38:17
◼
►
a pretty inflammatory view, and you're going to hear about it. They could still one-star
01:38:22
◼
►
you, and they could still trash you in public or something. It's not a great situation to
01:38:28
◼
►
put yourself in if you don't really need to.
01:38:30
◼
►
Even if it's not like... I'm pretty familiar with the Vesper reviews. Every developer knows
01:38:37
◼
►
what they're doing.
01:38:38
◼
►
You read your reviews?
01:38:39
◼
►
I did for a while. I haven't looked in a while. I looked at the first we have good reviews though because we're paid app if
01:38:44
◼
►
We were if we were free we would not
01:38:46
◼
►
That's true, but every once in a while
01:38:48
◼
►
I see him more often when I'm actually looking and thinking about buying an app and I'll say well
01:38:52
◼
►
What are the reviews and you can always tell that you know?
01:38:54
◼
►
It's all lowercase or else all uppercase and even before you start reading you can just see
01:39:01
◼
►
like sometimes you can just see how poorly punctuated a
01:39:04
◼
►
comment is, you know, and you just know to skip it. And they'll say stuff like, "Crashes
01:39:09
◼
►
all the time." And you just know that if it crashes all the time for you, but not for
01:39:13
◼
►
everybody, there's, you know, there's a chance that the problem is your device.
01:39:17
◼
►
Yeah, it's tough. It's... And the other problem is sometimes apps really do crash all the
01:39:25
◼
►
time because sometimes, like, the developer didn't test on, like, an iPad 1 or an iPad...
01:39:31
◼
►
The iPad 3 is actually very hard to support because it could handle retina but just barely
01:39:35
◼
►
and the CPUs were slow.
01:39:41
◼
►
There are these handful of devices that are way more likely that you're going to run out
01:39:46
◼
►
of memory on one of them or hit one of the timeout killers.
01:39:50
◼
►
If you take too long to launch, Springboard will just terminate your app and crash it
01:39:55
◼
►
So if you do a lot on startup or even if you don't do a lot on everyone's startup, but
01:39:59
◼
►
Let's say someone has a lot of data in your app.
01:40:02
◼
►
Maybe you'll have to do a lot on the startup.
01:40:04
◼
►
And then maybe on the lowest end device
01:40:07
◼
►
that it will run on, like a 3GS, maybe it will take too long
01:40:13
◼
►
And developers don't usually test those kind of edge cases.
01:40:16
◼
►
App review doesn't test those kind of edge cases.
01:40:18
◼
►
So a lot of times, that really is legitimate.
01:40:22
◼
►
And something that maybe only comes up on the low end device,
01:40:25
◼
►
you don't test for it.
01:40:26
◼
►
Maybe you test for the extreme data set,
01:40:28
◼
►
but you're testing on your phone, which is a 5S, and it's way faster than the 4, which
01:40:33
◼
►
is where the springboard is reaping the process.
01:40:38
◼
►
All right. A little bit more. I'll get back to our last thoughts on what we might see
01:40:44
◼
►
next week. But let me do the third sponsor.
01:40:47
◼
►
It's our good friends at Audible. They're the leading provider of downloadable audio
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audible offers a hundred thousand books covering virtually every genre now I
01:41:03
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just heard today on your show that they have a hundred and fifty thousand books
01:41:06
◼
►
I think they gave me bad data here yeah they told me a couple of months ago I
01:41:10
◼
►
could almost do this ad read it from memory they told me a couple of months
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◼
►
ago to to update the number to 150 that they had they had finally crossed that
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◼
►
barrier and you know they wanted me to put that in they have a lot of books if
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If you want to listen to a book, Audible has it.
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Listen to audiobooks anytime, anywhere.
01:41:26
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- I don't even know that there were
01:41:27
◼
►
that many audiobooks being produced.
01:41:29
◼
►
Like, it always seemed like when you go to the library,
01:41:31
◼
►
well, you know, back in the Stone Ages,
01:41:33
◼
►
there'd be like, you know, 30 of them, maybe.
01:41:35
◼
►
- It's a lot. - But they found all of them.
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You can listen to them on your iPhone,
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your iPad, computers, Kindles.
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They're just MP3 audio files, or AAC, or whatever,
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but you could play them on your iPad.
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You could have an iPod classic listen to the audiobook there.
01:41:53
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Anywhere where you think you could play downloadable audio, you can play an audible book.
01:41:57
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Here's the best part.
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By doing so, you get the chance to check out a great service and you support our show at
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all as well because they know you're coming from the show when you use that code to go
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◼
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there and get the deal.
01:42:30
◼
►
They always like us to offer.
01:42:31
◼
►
Every time they sponsor the show, they want a book recommendation.
01:42:35
◼
►
So I don't know.
01:42:36
◼
►
I didn't know what to suggest.
01:42:37
◼
►
I'm never sure.
01:42:38
◼
►
I read books, but I don't know what to suggest.
01:42:40
◼
►
But I thought of one.
01:42:43
◼
►
Here's one that I thought.
01:42:44
◼
►
And I know they have it.
01:42:46
◼
►
Stephen King is a sequel to The Shining.
01:42:49
◼
►
I haven't read The Shining since I was sometime in high school or junior high.
01:42:55
◼
►
Obviously, famously, I'm a big fan of the movie.
01:42:58
◼
►
But he has a sequel out to The Shining where little young Danny from The Shining is now
01:43:05
◼
►
tracked in real life and is now a 40-year-old man.
01:43:11
◼
►
In hindsight, I never really thought about it, but Danny in the real world is roughly
01:43:16
◼
►
was about my age when The Shining came out and now in this new sequel, Doctor Sleep,
01:43:20
◼
►
he's still my age. So there's actually two recommendations, The Shining and Doctor Sleep.
01:43:27
◼
►
I haven't read Doctor Sleep yet, but I'm going to. And the reason why I'm suggesting it is
01:43:33
◼
►
that Stephen King, as he makes the publicity rounds for Doctor Sleep, has reopened his
01:43:41
◼
►
beef with Kubrick's adaptation of the movie. He was never a fan. And apparently, he used
01:43:49
◼
►
to badmouth it all the time when it first came out. And then apparently, I guess what
01:43:52
◼
►
happened is that when he re-secured the film rights to the book so that he could make the
01:43:59
◼
►
god-awful ABC miniseries, like in the 90s, which was his vision for a movie of The Shining,
01:44:08
◼
►
like legally agreed to it or just like gentleman's handshake agreed to just
01:44:12
◼
►
stop talking about Kubrick's version but now with this doctor sleep promotional
01:44:16
◼
►
tour he's he's opened it up again I'm thinking about a show sometime in the
01:44:24
◼
►
next few weeks where maybe I'll have somebody on and talk about this whole
01:44:27
◼
►
thing and about like the obligations of you know what what are the obligations
01:44:32
◼
►
for a movie adept adapted from a book to sort of stay true to the material and
01:44:36
◼
►
and that sort of thing.
01:44:39
◼
►
But I think it would help.
01:44:40
◼
►
In the meantime, before I do it, though--
01:44:42
◼
►
I mean, I know the movie, like the back of my hand,
01:44:44
◼
►
but I feel like I should reread the book and maybe read the sequel, too,
01:44:49
◼
►
even though the sequel is, I guess, somewhat irrelevant.
01:44:51
◼
►
But why not, if I'm on a roll?
01:44:53
◼
►
Because I'd like to reread the original book before I read the sequel anyway.
01:44:57
◼
►
So there you go.
01:44:58
◼
►
If you want to be ready for that, ready for that discussion on the talk show
01:45:01
◼
►
sometime, I don't know, before the end of the year,
01:45:04
◼
►
you could do it by listening to the audio book. Audible has both. They have both The Shining and
01:45:09
◼
►
they have the new Doctor Sleep. So my thanks to them. And again, the URL is www.audiblepodcast.com/talkshow.
01:45:20
◼
►
Jared Ranerelle You know, in addition to podcasting, it's kind of hard to think of a medium
01:45:25
◼
►
that has taken more advantage of variable bit rate encoding than audio books. Because he's figured,
01:45:30
◼
►
like back in the old days when you couldn't make like a lower bit rate cassette that would
01:45:35
◼
►
play longer.
01:45:37
◼
►
So you'd have like these audio books where you'd have to, they'd all be abridged, and
01:45:39
◼
►
you'd have to get like the binder of like 14 cassettes out of the library.
01:45:46
◼
►
Well, on your show this week, you guys had Audible, I mean this is a coincidence, I mean
01:45:50
◼
►
this is not, I certainly didn't ask you to be on the show because we both had Audible
01:45:54
◼
►
as a sponsor, but I mean all of our shows have a lot of it.
01:45:56
◼
►
That would be a pretty weak reason.
01:45:59
◼
►
But on your show, John Siracusa recommended a book, and his book was an unabridged, thousand-page
01:46:05
◼
►
book, and it was 66 hours.
01:46:08
◼
►
And confirm...
01:46:09
◼
►
I mean, this is like totally true.
01:46:11
◼
►
That was not a joke.
01:46:12
◼
►
Like, it's actually 66 hours.
01:46:15
◼
►
So if you bought that on cassette tape, even if you got...
01:46:18
◼
►
I think the biggest tapes were 120 in that era?
01:46:25
◼
►
think they might have had some 120s, but I think the 120s would gum up some of the tape
01:46:30
◼
►
Yeah, if the tape was really thin to fit that much in there.
01:46:33
◼
►
But even if you did get it onto 120-minute cassettes, you're still talking about 33 cassette
01:46:38
◼
►
tapes. And if it was 60-minute tapes, it would be 66 cassettes.
01:46:42
◼
►
Yeah, that's...
01:46:44
◼
►
I mean, it would have to come with a free...
01:46:47
◼
►
It'd be like an encyclopedia. Like a big encyclopedia set.
01:46:51
◼
►
Well, you see, this is what this is. I'm sure this is way, way before your time.
01:46:55
◼
►
You're too young. But like when I was in high school and we all had cassette
01:46:58
◼
►
tapes, like we'd all had like these briefcases where you would keep your
01:47:02
◼
►
tapes, you know, and you could like take the briefcase in your car. You'd have to...
01:47:06
◼
►
So there was a cassette version of the CD binder? Yes, yeah, but it was a briefcase.
01:47:11
◼
►
It was more like a briefcase looking thing where you'd unclasp it and then
01:47:16
◼
►
they'd be in there, sort of like a shelf almost.
01:47:23
◼
►
That's amazing.
01:47:24
◼
►
Yeah. But anyway, go listen to Audible. I've always thought that was a great match. I've
01:47:31
◼
►
heard Audible sponsoring podcasts ever since before I even had a podcast, but it's such
01:47:36
◼
►
a natural fit. I don't think there's anybody who's ever been a more natural fit because
01:47:39
◼
►
the only people who hear the ad are people who are listening to spoken word audio material.
01:47:45
◼
►
It's almost like you're advertising for a competitor.
01:47:49
◼
►
I've thought of that too, but what I have come to realize from feedback from listeners
01:47:54
◼
►
of the show is that the show, I don't do enough shows.
01:47:58
◼
►
The people who listen to the podcast the most have so much time that they need to fill or
01:48:03
◼
►
want to fill, whether it's a long commute or whatever.
01:48:08
◼
►
Maybe they listen to podcasts while they work.
01:48:09
◼
►
Whatever it is, they can't get enough.
01:48:12
◼
►
- Yeah, most people either listen to no podcasts
01:48:15
◼
►
or a lot of podcasts.
01:48:16
◼
►
- Like none, one, or a lot.
01:48:19
◼
►
- Yeah, exactly.
01:48:21
◼
►
- What else?
01:48:22
◼
►
Do you think they're gonna do anything
01:48:22
◼
►
with Apple TV next week?
01:48:23
◼
►
- I doubt it.
01:48:25
◼
►
I don't know.
01:48:26
◼
►
I mean, it's possible, but I really doubt it.
01:48:28
◼
►
It's certainly like a TV set.
01:48:29
◼
►
I don't see that happening, possibly ever.
01:48:32
◼
►
But even with the Apple TV box,
01:48:34
◼
►
I mean, the figures did a big software update.
01:48:36
◼
►
I don't think we're gonna see new hardware.
01:48:39
◼
►
I don't think there's much of a reason.
01:48:41
◼
►
For what the box does today, I don't think there's a whole lot of motivation to have
01:48:46
◼
►
a hardware update.
01:48:47
◼
►
Yeah, I don't either.
01:48:48
◼
►
I think that the next one might be a year out or two years out, but at some point when
01:48:54
◼
►
they can put like an A7 into a $99 iPad TV box, and then maybe you'll have something
01:49:02
◼
►
that could really be different.
01:49:04
◼
►
Yeah, I don't know.
01:49:06
◼
►
Maybe it's just me being weird, but I don't see the TV market as this massively exciting
01:49:11
◼
►
thing for Apple. I think they're already in it a little bit with the Apple TV as we know
01:49:16
◼
►
it today. I don't think there's a massive amount more that they're likely to actually
01:49:22
◼
►
do and succeed at.
01:49:23
◼
►
I don't think so either.
01:49:24
◼
►
It's just such a messy market with so many entrenched interests and it's so hard to penetrate
01:49:31
◼
►
that wall and get anywhere useful. I don't really see it happening. And it's such a weird
01:49:38
◼
►
market too in the way that, you know, the reason why I don't expect them to make a TV
01:49:42
◼
►
set because how often do you upgrade your TV set and what's the margin on that? Like,
01:49:48
◼
►
it's not, you upgrade it like every, you know, five to ten years maybe and like it's different
01:49:55
◼
►
like with phones and iPads and computers where like you can buy a new one every couple years
01:49:59
◼
►
or even with phones like every year and it doesn't feel ridiculous or wasteful. If you
01:50:04
◼
►
buying a new TV every year, you'd feel like a dick. You have to take this, like where
01:50:09
◼
►
are you going to put the old one? You got to get rid of it. It's a big, I don't know.
01:50:13
◼
►
It just feels more wasteful when the things are that big and that expensive to just go
01:50:18
◼
►
through them every year. I don't see the business being that profitable in selling the TV.
01:50:25
◼
►
Dave: I think that I wouldn't be surprised if, and I've said this before, if Apple's
01:50:31
◼
►
Apple TV strategy is write what we see in front of us.
01:50:35
◼
►
- Yeah, I think you're right.
01:50:37
◼
►
- It's this $99 thing.
01:50:38
◼
►
They gotta have a better remote eventually,
01:50:40
◼
►
some kind of Bluetooth type thing.
01:50:41
◼
►
But a couple of channels, maybe no App Store.
01:50:46
◼
►
I'm not quite sure whether letting anybody write a channel
01:50:51
◼
►
for it makes sense, but it would be mostly
01:50:55
◼
►
for just for video content.
01:50:57
◼
►
- Yeah, I don't think an App Store makes sense today
01:50:59
◼
►
with the input method.
01:51:01
◼
►
Obviously, and you've had shows about this,
01:51:02
◼
►
I'm not gonna get too far into this,
01:51:04
◼
►
obviously if they were like,
01:51:07
◼
►
if they were to release a game controller for it,
01:51:10
◼
►
that would be a little bit different maybe,
01:51:12
◼
►
but I don't see them really having a ton of interest
01:51:14
◼
►
in that market even.
01:51:15
◼
►
I think you're right.
01:51:16
◼
►
I think what we see today is what they plan to do
01:51:20
◼
►
for the foreseeable future.
01:51:22
◼
►
Maybe they wanna break into the game market
01:51:25
◼
►
in a couple years more aggressively,
01:51:27
◼
►
but I think they already have with the iOS devices.
01:51:30
◼
►
Like I don't see that even being relevant.
01:51:32
◼
►
Like who cares about the console game market
01:51:34
◼
►
when they're dominating handheld games and casual games?
01:51:37
◼
►
- Yeah, and I think that they're selling
01:51:39
◼
►
and renting a ton of movies and TV shows.
01:51:42
◼
►
Obviously it could be a lot more,
01:51:44
◼
►
but the only way to get to a lot more
01:51:46
◼
►
would be to somehow break the cable TV monopoly.
01:51:50
◼
►
And that's just not gonna, it's just too complex an issue.
01:51:56
◼
►
And that might also cause them trouble
01:51:59
◼
►
in their content business.
01:52:00
◼
►
Like, it would make them a lot more enemies.
01:52:03
◼
►
And many of those enemies, like the cable companies,
01:52:06
◼
►
also own TV networks or production companies.
01:52:09
◼
►
And that would be a problem for their content business.
01:52:12
◼
►
But it's another example of Apple's incremental approach
01:52:16
◼
►
to improving products that I think
01:52:18
◼
►
gets overlooked because people keep waiting
01:52:20
◼
►
for this spectacular, amazing, this
01:52:22
◼
►
is from 25 years in the future, wow moment,
01:52:26
◼
►
Whereas if you compared today's Apple TV against an Apple TV from like four years ago, it's
01:52:30
◼
►
amazingly better.
01:52:32
◼
►
And it has things like HBO.
01:52:33
◼
►
And yes, you only get the HBO if you sign up for HBO on your cable contract or whatever.
01:52:39
◼
►
But there's no way Apple can't solve that on their own.
01:52:41
◼
►
If HBO says we can do it, but only if we ensure that the person has cable TV HBO, then, you
01:52:47
◼
►
know, what's Apple going to do?
01:52:49
◼
►
They can't go around them.
01:52:50
◼
►
But now we have it, you can get HBO on your Apple TV.
01:52:53
◼
►
There's also a lot of room for improvement just doing the same feature set they're
01:52:57
◼
►
doing now. Like, you know, as I said, if they improved text input, so when you're searching
01:53:02
◼
►
for a show, you can do anything besides that stupid way to do it, or pairing your iOS device
01:53:09
◼
►
and trying to use the remote app, which is clunky at best.
01:53:12
◼
►
And they can make it easier to scrub video. You know, go a little forward and a little
01:53:16
◼
►
There's so much, and also, you know, things like if they would, and this is questionable
01:53:20
◼
►
with business priorities, but if they would ever have a universal search where I can search
01:53:24
◼
►
one place and it would search iTunes and Netflix and, you know, if you're a member of Hulu,
01:53:29
◼
►
search that, stuff like that, you know, like that.
01:53:31
◼
►
Search everything that you're signed up for.
01:53:33
◼
►
Right, because otherwise, you know, people are doing this, now they're already going
01:53:37
◼
►
and typing in the same thing into Netflix and then if they don't see it on Netflix,
01:53:40
◼
►
then they'll go to the iTunes. Like, people already do this and it sucks, so maybe, this
01:53:45
◼
►
is wishful thinking, maybe they would someday have a universal search, but, you know, so
01:53:49
◼
►
You can look at the problem set as it exists today without adding any major new capabilities.
01:53:54
◼
►
You can say there's still a lot of room for improvement here in both hardware and software.
01:53:57
◼
►
You're right. I think this is what we're going to have for a while.
01:54:01
◼
►
Dave: Yeah, I think so too. I have two other things on my list. I know the show has been
01:54:06
◼
►
long. We'll just try to get through these quickly.
01:54:07
◼
►
Tim: See, I love how your show is unapologetically long.
01:54:10
◼
►
Dave; I really thought last week's with Guy was going to be short. There was a funny thing
01:54:16
◼
►
where Amy and Paul's Just the Tip ended with Amy saying to Paul, "We don't have
01:54:26
◼
►
anything going on." The first thing I said to Guy in the cold opening of last week's
01:54:33
◼
►
The Talk Show was me saying, "I don't think there's much going on."
01:54:36
◼
►
Steven: Yeah, that was pretty great. They were released like Just the Tip was released
01:54:40
◼
►
shortly before the talk show. If you had them both in a playlist, it would go one way or
01:54:44
◼
►
the other. Like it was perfect. I heard it that way like organically. It was. And it
01:54:48
◼
►
everybody thought we planned it but I don't know. You know it was I don't even
01:54:53
◼
►
I didn't even know where our show opened. Like you know I don't edit the show.
01:54:57
◼
►
Caleb Sexton does and he does a great job of it. But he'll be he picks a good
01:55:01
◼
►
part in the entry to do it. But but Paul and Amy edit their own show. So they and
01:55:07
◼
►
I didn't listen to it in advance. So it was truly just a coincidence but it was
01:55:13
◼
►
very funny forget where I was going with that oh I was gonna say that I thought
01:55:18
◼
►
last week's show with guy was gonna be short because I really didn't think we
01:55:20
◼
►
had a lot going on well but it was what's good about about your show you
01:55:26
◼
►
know being long is like you know you a show like twit which is boring as hell
01:55:31
◼
►
like you don't want that to go long sorry if you like that show anyone you
01:55:35
◼
►
know you don't you don't want the shows like that to go like two hours and
01:55:39
◼
►
especially because they often do, but you know like when your show with Guy ended I
01:55:46
◼
►
was like oh man I wish there was a little bit more of this discussion still happening.
01:55:50
◼
►
Like it's all about whether you want more of it or not. Like whether you noticed that
01:55:54
◼
►
it's been two hours.
01:55:55
◼
►
And it's been a while since I've gotten a complaint about the length of the show.
01:55:58
◼
►
Right, like for a good show like what you know once you blow past the cellular download
01:56:03
◼
►
limit which we're way past you know what once you blow past that then who cares that you
01:56:08
◼
►
You know, then that's the only complaint that's really valid for like show links besides it
01:56:12
◼
►
being boring.
01:56:13
◼
►
And so, you know, if people are liking what you're saying, keep going.
01:56:16
◼
►
You know, one thing, I have a third thing I want to say.
01:56:19
◼
►
And this is a couple of them from your show, the ATP.
01:56:22
◼
►
I'm going to call it ATP because I find accidental tech podcasts to be a mouthful.
01:56:27
◼
►
Yeah, it's fine.
01:56:30
◼
►
It makes me realize that, I mean, I try to do a show every week, but I end up not.
01:56:35
◼
►
I tend to back in my head I think I miss a couple weeks a year but then I
01:56:38
◼
►
realized I got a one year anniversary I was only at like episode
01:56:41
◼
►
forty I was like oh shit
01:56:44
◼
►
it's not even close to fifty two
01:56:47
◼
►
you guys are you guys are like catching up to to this show in episode numbers
01:56:52
◼
►
like on this run of the talk show
01:56:57
◼
►
I'm at this the episode you and I are recording as we speak is episode fifty
01:57:04
◼
►
And you guys at ATP are already at 37.
01:57:06
◼
►
And I still think of ATP--
01:57:07
◼
►
Well, no, last night we recorded 35.
01:57:10
◼
►
All right, well, you're close.
01:57:11
◼
►
But it's spitting distance.
01:57:14
◼
►
And I still think of your show as brand new.
01:57:16
◼
►
I still think of the car show you had before that ATP
01:57:19
◼
►
spilled out of as being kind of new.
01:57:21
◼
►
Right, that was in February.
01:57:23
◼
►
I mean, it is brand new.
01:57:24
◼
►
We're all the kind of nerd that never missed a day of school.
01:57:29
◼
►
But that's amazing to me.
01:57:31
◼
►
I can't believe--
01:57:32
◼
►
I still think of ATP as being brand new. I can't believe you guys are at episode 35 already.
01:57:37
◼
►
- Neither can I. It is brand new. I mean, we just started it. The first episode of ATP,
01:57:41
◼
►
I think, was in March. I mean, it was not that long ago. But yeah, it's going great.
01:57:48
◼
►
It's going fantastically. Our numbers are fantastic. It has gotten popular very quickly,
01:57:53
◼
►
way more than I thought. And what's funny is, all the reviews are pretty much the same. The reviews
01:57:58
◼
►
are like, "I'm an arrogant asshole. Who the hell is Casey?" But John Siracusa is
01:58:03
◼
►
amazing. Everyone loves John. No one has a complaint about him, ever. It's pretty comical.
01:58:11
◼
►
I remember an episode from a couple weeks ago where Casey was—wasn't he reading
01:58:16
◼
►
some of the bad reviews about Casey?
01:58:20
◼
►
I think he called it "Doing a Groover." I remember. I was like—and that's always
01:58:23
◼
►
a little bit of a jolt when I'm mentioned on some other show. Anyway, the thing on this
01:58:29
◼
►
week's show, I even wrote about it on During Fireball today. It was a bit about Syrian
01:58:35
◼
►
latency and it all came from a bit on your show where Casey mentioned that on this week's
01:58:38
◼
►
or last week's episode of the Agents From Shield show or whatever it's called, the Marvel
01:58:47
◼
►
Universe show that doesn't actually have superheroes on ABC.
01:58:49
◼
►
Yeah, you're asking the wrong person.
01:58:52
◼
►
You're asking the wrong person.
01:58:53
◼
►
Well, whatever.
01:58:55
◼
►
It's the shield show.
01:58:57
◼
►
Not to be confused, I guess, with the shit show.
01:58:59
◼
►
But there was a joke on the show that somebody
01:59:05
◼
►
said it had other agents whispering in their ear
01:59:08
◼
►
through an earpiece or something.
01:59:09
◼
►
And the agent was giving them information
01:59:12
◼
►
about what they were seeing.
01:59:13
◼
►
And it was like, this would be like, if Siri worked,
01:59:15
◼
►
this is awesome.
01:59:16
◼
►
Some kind of joke like that.
01:59:17
◼
►
And Casey observed, isn't that interesting
01:59:19
◼
►
that on national network TV shows, Siri is the butt of jokes, that people even know enough
01:59:24
◼
►
to get the joke. And you know, went on from there and it was just more or less a really
01:59:32
◼
►
great discussion of why doesn't, why can't Apple get something like Siri to work really
01:59:36
◼
►
good and really fast? Like let's say the way that they, you know, online stuff they don't
01:59:41
◼
►
do that well. On device stuff, they're great at, like for example, Touch ID. Touch ID is
01:59:46
◼
►
like a perfect Apple thing where yes, it's not the first cell phone that shipped with
01:59:50
◼
►
a fingerprint scanner. There were a couple others and they all sucked and everybody hated
01:59:54
◼
►
them and they were terrible. And they took long and they were finicky and you had to
01:59:57
◼
►
do funny things like roll your finger. And Touch ID, just put your finger on and then
02:00:02
◼
►
it works. They're great at that but why can't they get better at online stuff? And the thing
02:00:08
◼
►
I didn't write about today though is comparing them to Google. It's a funny inverse because
02:00:16
◼
►
Because on the other hand, Google gets that online latency and accuracy.
02:00:20
◼
►
It's just ingrained in their culture.
02:00:22
◼
►
It's the whole thing that they started with,
02:00:24
◼
►
is that they're going to give you accurate search results really fast.
02:00:28
◼
►
But on Android, the touch latency has always been terrible.
02:00:34
◼
►
>> Yeah, you're definitely going to hear about that.
02:00:39
◼
►
>> You think I'm going to hear it?
02:00:41
◼
►
Hear about it how?
02:00:42
◼
►
Well, every release of Android, Google says it's improving it.
02:00:48
◼
►
Well, Android's always getting better.
02:00:51
◼
►
And I'm sure that when Android 5 comes out, that there's going to, you know, it's as though
02:00:56
◼
►
they've never said it before.
02:00:58
◼
►
They're going to say, "This time we've solved it, and the latency, you know, the frame rate
02:01:02
◼
►
is up and latency is down."
02:01:05
◼
►
And, you know, like they had that, like, buttered toast release or whatever it was, and that
02:01:08
◼
►
was, like, it was measurably improved.
02:01:12
◼
►
They do improve it.
02:01:13
◼
►
But yeah, you're right.
02:01:14
◼
►
Overall responsiveness just seems
02:01:16
◼
►
like it's way more of a priority on iOS.
02:01:18
◼
►
And the entire OS is architected differently to emphasize that.
02:01:24
◼
►
Right, and there is something to it
02:01:26
◼
►
where even in a big company, and you somehow
02:01:29
◼
►
think from the outside that, well,
02:01:32
◼
►
if you had all the resources that Apple or Google had,
02:01:34
◼
►
aren't these solvable problems?
02:01:36
◼
►
Isn't it solvable to put an Android device next to an iPhone
02:01:42
◼
►
and say, look, by next year we want this Android to have just
02:01:46
◼
►
that type of frame rate, and put top engineers on it
02:01:49
◼
►
and give them a year.
02:01:50
◼
►
Isn't that reasonable?
02:01:51
◼
►
Sounds like it.
02:01:52
◼
►
But that's not really how problems get solved
02:01:55
◼
►
in real life engineering.
02:01:58
◼
►
And you also think, can't Apple just throw money at the Siri
02:02:01
◼
►
team and fix it?
02:02:04
◼
►
And it just doesn't work that way.
02:02:06
◼
►
There's something to do with the founding cultures of companies
02:02:11
◼
►
that it prioritizes what they're good at.
02:02:15
◼
►
- Right, and that tends to not change over time.
02:02:19
◼
►
Companies that are really good at one thing
02:02:22
◼
►
and really don't care about another,
02:02:24
◼
►
those priorities are rarely changed over time.
02:02:28
◼
►
Because the entire company is set up around that,
02:02:31
◼
►
and it's set up to reinforce their priorities
02:02:35
◼
►
and to support the things they want to care about
02:02:38
◼
►
and to ignore the things they don't.
02:02:40
◼
►
and it's just, once a company gets the size of something like Google or Apple, like, the
02:02:47
◼
►
chances of making a meaningful shift and going all of a sudden into, like, look at the great
02:02:54
◼
►
example of this, of an attempt to do this, I think, is Microsoft with the internet. You
02:03:01
◼
►
know, this is a very highly publicized thing where, like, Bill Gates ignored the internet
02:03:05
◼
►
for too long, realized he ignored it for too long, and, like, tried to turn the company
02:03:09
◼
►
on a dime to all of a sudden be like, "Oh crap, the Internet's a real thing and we have
02:03:13
◼
►
to get it on this quickly." And if you look at what they did, retroactively or retrospectively,
02:03:19
◼
►
you look at what they actually did here, and they really didn't embrace the Internet very
02:03:24
◼
►
well. They made Internet Explorer, which was doing what they already did well, a desktop
02:03:29
◼
►
app, integrating it into a desktop operating system. They were just playing the same game
02:03:34
◼
►
and they always play, just involving the internet,
02:03:38
◼
►
but not really being of the internet.
02:03:41
◼
►
And so then all the stuff that a true internet,
02:03:45
◼
►
like Google is a true internet company.
02:03:47
◼
►
They've been, the internet is their platform.
02:03:50
◼
►
Android is a side project.
02:03:52
◼
►
The internet is their platform.
02:03:54
◼
►
So that's their DNA.
02:03:57
◼
►
Everything they do is about internet services
02:03:59
◼
►
and the needs of internet services.
02:04:02
◼
►
And so Microsoft, they thought they were pivoting the whole company and focusing on the internet
02:04:10
◼
►
full steam, but if you look at what they actually did, they just kept doing what they were already
02:04:13
◼
►
good at, and they didn't become Google.
02:04:15
◼
►
They didn't launch major web services for years after that, and they still don't succeed
02:04:22
◼
►
that well in web services, and there's still a lot they don't do.
02:04:25
◼
►
They're still focused on desktop software only, or primarily on desktop software these
02:04:29
◼
►
days and server software, like the stuff they've always done. So even that giant, massive turnaround
02:04:36
◼
►
that we know about in computer history didn't really actually change the company that much.
02:04:41
◼
►
And so you can look at Apple and Google now and you can say, "Well, Google is all of a
02:04:47
◼
►
sudden shifting to focus on UI and Android." Well, you know, somewhat, but not great. And
02:04:53
◼
►
Apple trying so hard to focus on these new web services that power their cool stuff.
02:04:58
◼
►
well, you know, they don't seem to be putting that much of a priority on it. Like, the whole
02:05:02
◼
►
company's not going to suddenly turn around and Apple become fantastic at web services
02:05:07
◼
►
or Google become fantastic at UI and local software.
02:05:11
◼
►
Steve: Yeah. I think, you know, with your Internet Explorer example, in hindsight, especially
02:05:18
◼
►
with what they did once they got to IE6 and put Netscape under and really sort of got
02:05:24
◼
►
to the point where their browser had, just like Windows, 90-something percent market
02:05:30
◼
►
share. It was really... And then they stopped innovating with it. I mean, they really just
02:05:34
◼
►
stopped putting out new versions. They really just saw it as a way to sort of, not kill
02:05:38
◼
►
the internet, but to encapsulate it within IE.
02:05:42
◼
►
Right, to neutralize the effects of it. Right. Because they didn't do things. So,
02:05:49
◼
►
Bing is an attempt to be of the internet. And I want to make fun of it, because it's
02:05:54
◼
►
almost like God bless them because if not for Bing, what would be the number two search
02:05:59
◼
►
engine? I don't use it, but I'm glad it's there.
02:06:04
◼
►
Yeah, me too. I don't know what … I mean, Yahoo! stopped running theirs years ago.
02:06:10
◼
►
I know a lot of people don't know. Whenever their financial stuff comes out every quarter,
02:06:13
◼
►
a lot of people make hay about the fact that they continually just bleed money in Microsoft
02:06:18
◼
►
out of their Internet services division, like the Bing division. But I almost want to say
02:06:23
◼
►
like, "Hey, stop making fun of him for that," because if they weren't, who would be keeping
02:06:29
◼
►
Google honest as a second?
02:06:31
◼
►
It should be like a public foundation to fund Bing.
02:06:33
◼
►
Right. But they didn't even start that until much later. That wasn't, you know, they didn't...
02:06:37
◼
►
Yeah, that was like a decade after.
02:06:38
◼
►
Right. Imagine if they had tried to build Bing in 1995 or '96, whenever it was when
02:06:46
◼
►
Bill Gates had that memo. It could have been very different.
02:06:48
◼
►
Even right after it was clear that Google was becoming huge, like 2001.
02:06:53
◼
►
build it then. Nope. I mean, Bing, I think, came from MSN search and everything, but even
02:07:00
◼
►
that didn't start at that kind of scale until a few years after that.
02:07:03
◼
►
Dave: Right. And the MSN stuff wasn't really... MSN was really more of like an AOL, like an
02:07:10
◼
►
alternative to AOL, not like a part of the internet.
02:07:13
◼
►
Tim: Right. Well, and they applied the MSN name and then the live name and then the Bing
02:07:18
◼
►
name and then the Windows name all over so many things over the years. It's kind of hard
02:07:22
◼
►
to say what each thing was and wasn't.
02:07:26
◼
►
And so, I don't know. I think maybe the explanation... And I think they will get better in the long
02:07:30
◼
►
run. Give it some years and Android's frame rate and etc. is certainly going to get better.
02:07:36
◼
►
And there's a certain point where there's no point in getting better than 60 frames
02:07:41
◼
►
per second. And I'm sure that there was that interesting study from last month about the
02:07:49
◼
►
touch responsive times on devices. And at Apple's, you know, like an iPhone 5 was like
02:07:54
◼
►
five times more responsive than even the best Android phone in terms of the like milliseconds
02:07:59
◼
►
it takes for a touch to register on screen. But I'm sure that like those Android phones
02:08:06
◼
►
probably have a touch responsiveness that's better than the original iPhone from 2007.
02:08:11
◼
►
So you know, they're catching up and I'm sure Siri will keep getting better. But I do think
02:08:15
◼
►
that they're both just evidence that even in a big company like that, there's only
02:08:20
◼
►
so much attention to go around. If your attention is on making what your top priority is as
02:08:28
◼
►
best as it can be and insanely great, there's just not that much attention to go around
02:08:32
◼
►
to the secondary and tertiary priorities.
02:08:35
◼
►
Right. It can't be like, "Oh, everything's a priority." That's not a real thing.
02:08:41
◼
►
As Merlin tells us, that doesn't mean anything.
02:08:45
◼
►
And it can't be like Microsoft, no compromises.
02:08:49
◼
►
We know that that's bogus too.
02:08:51
◼
►
You have to focus on something and necessarily,
02:08:55
◼
►
if you're gonna do one thing really well
02:08:58
◼
►
and have an intense focus to be able to do it really well,
02:09:01
◼
►
chances are other areas are going to be neglected or ignored.
02:09:05
◼
►
Here's my last topic, and this is very specific to you
02:09:10
◼
►
as the arrogant asshole.
02:09:12
◼
►
Is the other thing you said on the show,
02:09:14
◼
►
Just as an example, you'd mention something about that...
02:09:18
◼
►
Same type of problem. You said like, "Hey, Microsoft, let's say they hire a new CEO,
02:09:24
◼
►
and the new CEO says, "You know what one of our problems is?
02:09:27
◼
►
One of our problems is that our products just are not as cool as Apple's,
02:09:31
◼
►
or some other companies too.
02:09:33
◼
►
We need to invest in cool and throw money.
02:09:37
◼
►
I'm going to put more money into cool."
02:09:41
◼
►
Well, it doesn't work like that.
02:09:42
◼
►
You can't just throw money at it.
02:09:43
◼
►
And it's really, if, and I agree with you that Microsoft, that actually is a problem
02:09:48
◼
►
that they have, is a sort of institutional deficiency of cool.
02:09:54
◼
►
It's ingrained in all of the people who are there, everybody.
02:09:57
◼
►
Now, I'm not saying that there's no cool people who work at Microsoft.
02:10:00
◼
►
In fact, I know the opposite, that there are very cool people who work at Microsoft.
02:10:05
◼
►
But on the whole, on average, if you took 40 Microsoft employees and 40 Apple employees,
02:10:11
◼
►
I would call, I think collectively, I would find the Apple people to be cooler.
02:10:17
◼
►
Yeah, like who would you rather hang out with at a party?
02:10:22
◼
►
And that's not to say that there's not somebody else who wouldn't find the Microsoft people
02:10:30
◼
►
to be cooler and say, "Well, those Apple people are assholes.
02:10:33
◼
►
you know, I don't know what the problem they would see them. But I think, and this is like
02:10:39
◼
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the sort of thing I don't even want to write. It's like I feel like it's, I'd rather just
02:10:43
◼
►
talk about it. And it's like, but I've thought for years that part of what gets Apple this,
02:10:49
◼
►
that fuels this, why in the world does Apple get treated so much differently than other
02:10:52
◼
►
companies in the press? And when they, you know, do things, everything is in different
02:10:58
◼
►
proportions to how other companies get treated. And it can't just be about the
02:11:02
◼
►
fact that Apple's the biggest company because it's been true from when Apple
02:11:06
◼
►
was far from the biggest company. It's always been true that Apple gets treated
02:11:10
◼
►
differently. I think it's because they get treated differently because they're
02:11:14
◼
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they are so cool. And it sounds so stupid to say but it is and you know like Steve
02:11:21
◼
►
Jobs was a cool guy. He really was. He was a very cool guy. Bill Gates was
02:11:27
◼
►
definitely not cool. I mean, Bill Gates is like the opposite of cool. And it just sort
02:11:33
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of infused the company DNA. But for people who aren't cool themselves, they either don't
02:11:39
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►
see it, and so it really is seemingly like a mystery, and hence all the, you know, Apple
02:11:45
◼
►
is a cult type thing. You know, because they just don't see it. They don't have that fine
02:11:50
◼
►
sense of what is cool and what's not cool. And so if they don't detect it, it does look
02:11:54
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►
like people are behaving irrationally or like religious zealots or something. Or if they
02:12:00
◼
►
do see it, they resent it.
02:12:02
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►
Steven: Right. That's the big thing. Cool is polarizing. First of all, you look at other
02:12:10
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►
things in our culture that get a lot of attention. Things like celebrities, the president. You
02:12:18
◼
►
You can look at other figures or companies that are very much in the public eye. It's
02:12:25
◼
►
often a very popular thing. It's a whole industry to take them down and point out all
02:12:32
◼
►
their failures. The whole tabloid industry is this massive, worldwide phenomenon. People
02:12:39
◼
►
love when the cool kid messes up or you get a bad picture of them. People crave that.
02:12:48
◼
►
it's really sad actually. It's pretty terrible for society. But that's how people are. And
02:12:54
◼
►
I think Apple has reached that point. They're popular, they are cool, they're very much
02:12:59
◼
►
in the public eye, and certainly you're right that a lot of that was Steve Jobs. But I think
02:13:06
◼
►
now that has transcended him and now it's just the company is that cool and is that
02:13:11
◼
►
public and I think they're bound to not only get a lot of negative attention at all times,
02:13:19
◼
►
just like celebrities do, just because there's a lot of money in it, but also there are a
02:13:25
◼
►
lot of people that really don't like Apple. And part of that, like I wrote this thing
02:13:30
◼
►
like a year ago, first for the magazine and then for my site, about how the culture of
02:13:33
◼
►
Apple is polarizing to people because Apple products say no a lot and they say we know
02:13:41
◼
►
better a lot. And a lot of people, that rubs them the wrong way. But cool itself, cool,
02:13:47
◼
►
and it's funny that you and I are talking about this because I don't know about you,
02:13:51
◼
►
but most of my life nobody would ever consider me a cool guy.
02:13:54
◼
►
No, I don't want to be there.
02:13:58
◼
►
Yeah. And I have to imagine that that is probably true for at least some portion of an audience
02:14:03
◼
►
of a technology podcast. But as far as I know, so take all my theories with a grain of salt
02:14:10
◼
►
because this is foreign territory, but cool also comes from a position of confidence.
02:14:18
◼
►
And there's a very fine line between confidence and arrogance.
02:14:22
◼
►
And even just the reasons you're confident, if someone disagrees with those reasons, then
02:14:28
◼
►
they will see your coolness as arrogance.
02:14:31
◼
►
And so it's a very fine line, and it's very polarizing, and it brings a lot of emotional
02:14:36
◼
►
responses in people.
02:14:38
◼
►
And I think that's really the root of the crazy amount of negative attention that Apple
02:14:47
◼
►
Well, I think there's a multitude of sources, but I think that the coolness angle is one
02:14:53
◼
►
that's underexplored and under-considered.
02:15:01
◼
►
But, you know, and certainly, you know, like with the Microsoft example, cool is not usually
02:15:09
◼
►
something that you can buy and it's not usually something that you can switch to easily.
02:15:15
◼
►
It's cool is kind of an inherent quality.
02:15:18
◼
►
Like people either are cool or they're not.
02:15:21
◼
►
And yeah, a lot of it is confidence and things like that.
02:15:23
◼
►
But yeah, usually these are like ingrained characteristics that are very hard to convincingly
02:15:29
◼
►
suddenly fake or to suddenly adopt out of the blue. And I think the same thing applies
02:15:35
◼
►
to companies and their products. Apple stuff is cool because Apple is cool and Apple's
02:15:39
◼
►
people are cool and Apple's leaders are cool. I don't see that happening at Microsoft.
02:15:47
◼
►
You might get a couple of cool employees here and there because there's a lot of people
02:15:50
◼
►
who work there. A lot of them are pretty awesome. But I think as a culture, it reflects the
02:15:58
◼
►
founders. Right. And a perfect recent example of that was that the sendoff that Balmer had
02:16:04
◼
►
at the big 14,000 person meeting. Did you watch that video? I still haven't, but I think
02:16:11
◼
►
I've heard enough descriptions of it from you and everyone else to have a pretty good
02:16:14
◼
►
idea of what's going on. I don't want to spoil it, but then he gets real emotional, which
02:16:19
◼
►
in and of itself isn't bad. It's not the emotional part of it, but it's the... And then he's
02:16:24
◼
►
talking about how he's wanted to play this song in an event for years, but just never
02:16:27
◼
►
had the right time but now it clearly it's perfect and this is one of his all
02:16:31
◼
►
time favorite songs
02:16:33
◼
►
i don't know who sings it it's i've had the time of my life
02:16:37
◼
►
haha that's the song but like
02:16:40
◼
►
the crowd and who knows it's always hard to tell it there's fourteen thousand
02:16:44
◼
►
people there and it could be that eight thousand of them were cringing and six
02:16:48
◼
►
thousand were cheering and six thousand cheering people is still going to sound
02:16:51
◼
►
like a lot of
02:16:54
◼
►
but it just seemed, at least on a video, that the crowd was just eating it up.
02:16:58
◼
►
And again, I didn't want to make fun of it when I linked to it, and I hope I didn't come across as that.
02:17:02
◼
►
I meant it sincerely, where it was, you know, it was definitely Balmer. He went out his way.
02:17:09
◼
►
That is a good send-off song. That is not a good song to say you've been trying to play at an
02:17:14
◼
►
event for years. Because what other context would that have ever been a good idea?
02:17:20
◼
►
The words, "I've had the time of my life here" and whatever, is, I guess, a good sentiment
02:17:26
◼
►
for a send-off.
02:17:27
◼
►
But the actual song itself is such a corny song that it's not cool.
02:17:33
◼
►
It's just not a cool song.
02:17:35
◼
►
Was it even cool when it was new?
02:17:37
◼
►
When it was new, like the '70s?
02:17:38
◼
►
Early '80s, maybe?
02:17:39
◼
►
It probably wasn't even cool then.
02:17:42
◼
►
It's like Celine Dion type stuff.
02:17:46
◼
►
It's just never been cool.
02:17:47
◼
►
be very popular, but it's not cool. Or at least not the kind of cool that I care about.
02:17:53
◼
►
Here, I'm going to Google it.
02:17:56
◼
►
You know, I think one of the—this is off the top of my head, so this may be poorly
02:18:00
◼
►
thought out, but—
02:18:01
◼
►
It's the finale from Dirty Dancing.
02:18:05
◼
►
When was that at?
02:18:06
◼
►
Like '83 or something?
02:18:09
◼
►
So, you know, I think Apple people are people.
02:18:15
◼
►
They're individuals.
02:18:18
◼
►
They are identified as individuals.
02:18:20
◼
►
And while they work at Apple and they respect it, I get the overall impression from the
02:18:24
◼
►
people I've met and from the executives I've seen in person that like, you know, if
02:18:29
◼
►
Apple went away tomorrow, they would be sad and then they would go do something else.
02:18:34
◼
►
They would like, you know, create something else. It wouldn't be the end of their careers.
02:18:38
◼
►
Whereas Ballmer using a song like that is kind of like saying, "I'm dying. Like,
02:18:43
◼
►
this is it. This company was my entire life and now my time here is over and therefore
02:18:47
◼
►
my life is over." And that's a very different attitude and it's this type of like loyalty
02:18:53
◼
►
and identification, like a self-identification with your workplace that cool people don't
02:18:59
◼
►
usually have. Cool people are like, you know, more into like self-identification as themselves
02:19:07
◼
►
and their personalities and not so much like team player at all costs.
02:19:13
◼
►
And I, yeah, that's, and another way to look at it is maybe to look at the opposite of
02:19:19
◼
►
it because cool is one of those words that maybe is so overused and means different things
02:19:22
◼
►
to different people.
02:19:24
◼
►
And like I said, one person's cool
02:19:26
◼
►
can definitely be different from another person's.
02:19:28
◼
►
But to me, cool is the opposite of corny and awkward.
02:19:34
◼
►
Yeah, that seems right.
02:19:38
◼
►
And corniness in particular is to me sort of the antithesis
02:19:42
◼
►
to corporate cool.
02:19:44
◼
►
And that's what to me Microsoft often is, is corny.
02:19:49
◼
►
And when there was somebody linked up last week,
02:19:52
◼
►
there used to be these spoof videos that Balmer and Gates would make when they were working
02:19:56
◼
►
together. There's one where they dressed up as Dr. Evil and Balmer was Dr. Evil and Bill
02:20:02
◼
►
Gates was Austin Powers. Just so corny. Or the video that they yanked last month where
02:20:10
◼
►
they had somebody in a fake Apple product meeting. They were trying to make fun of the
02:20:16
◼
►
iPhone 5S for only introducing the color gold or something like that. Did you see those
02:20:22
◼
►
No, that sounds like a train wreck. Well, it's really—and it was a train wreck
02:20:27
◼
►
in a corny way. What made it uncool was the fact that it was so corny. And I just feel
02:20:34
◼
►
like, though, that that's not something that's easily changed. It's just in the
02:20:39
◼
►
company's DNA. And cool is also—an easy way to be uncool
02:20:45
◼
►
is to be extremely insecure.
02:20:47
◼
►
And so many of Microsoft's actions have come off that way
02:20:51
◼
►
at the executive level.
02:20:53
◼
►
You see all the stupid comments that Ballmer's made
02:20:54
◼
►
over the years about their competitors,
02:20:57
◼
►
and especially about Apple products,
02:20:59
◼
►
and having the iPhone funeral and stuff like that.
02:21:03
◼
►
They keep doing this stuff every year or two.
02:21:06
◼
►
And obviously this is not like a one-time mistake they made.
02:21:13
◼
►
this is like their culture creates this stuff and encourages it and doesn't see what's wrong
02:21:19
◼
►
with that. And I've always heard from people who work there or who work nearby, I've always
02:21:26
◼
►
heard that Microsoft was very culturally insular. Like the whole area of Redmond where they
02:21:34
◼
►
are, that's where they are Redmond?
02:21:37
◼
►
Yeah. The whole area of Redmond where they are is like I basically heard it's like just
02:21:41
◼
►
a little biodome of Microsoft, like pure Microsoft culture right there. And they don't really
02:21:48
◼
►
know, like they don't really get any idea of how they're perceived outside of that.
02:21:55
◼
►
Because inside that little tiny hotspot of Microsoft activity, they are the world. And
02:22:00
◼
►
everyone loves them and everyone loves what they do and everyone loves Microsoft. But
02:22:05
◼
►
That's one of the reasons why I think their marketing is so weirdly out of touch so often.
02:22:13
◼
►
Because they're making stuff that would work in the world that they know, but they don't
02:22:18
◼
►
realize that's not the whole world.
02:22:21
◼
►
Yeah, and I think that that plays into even product decisions, too.
02:22:26
◼
►
It just came up again today as all the Windows 8.1 reviews came out, and most of them are
02:22:31
◼
►
are like, well, it's a nice improvement over Windows 8,
02:22:34
◼
►
but the fundamental weirdness of having two completely
02:22:37
◼
►
different interfaces that you toggle between in mysterious
02:22:41
◼
►
ways is just weird.
02:22:43
◼
►
Pogue said that, a couple other people said that.
02:22:46
◼
►
It just seems like that's the consensus again.
02:22:48
◼
►
And it just seems like that idea of, well, we'll
02:22:53
◼
►
do something better.
02:22:54
◼
►
We'll do an iPad-like OS.
02:22:57
◼
►
So far, so good.
02:22:59
◼
►
which they had very original ideas for. You know, nobody would claim that the Metro interface
02:23:05
◼
►
on Windows 8 and Windows Phone is a ripoff of anything Apple did. If anything, iOS 7
02:23:12
◼
►
is more along the lines that they carved out with this typographic heaviness and flatness
02:23:18
◼
►
and those type of things. But then did say, "But we'll just..." and then we'll make it
02:23:23
◼
►
even better by saying that you don't even have to leave your old Windows goodbye. We'll
02:23:27
◼
►
have that running one button away. And there you've just lost everything. And I think
02:23:33
◼
►
it probably made tons of sense inside. I think the fact that they didn't revisit it in
02:23:38
◼
►
a year just shows that they still think it's a good idea.
02:23:42
◼
►
Well, I mean, I had an interesting conversation a little while back with somebody at Microsoft.
02:23:48
◼
►
And we were talking about Windows Phone. And this person was saying that they were asking
02:23:56
◼
►
if I was going to make overcast for Windows Phone and I said that I have no plans to even
02:24:02
◼
►
address Android, let alone Windows Phone, and if I was going to make it for anything
02:24:08
◼
►
else besides iOS, it would probably be Android, because that's where all the people are.
02:24:13
◼
►
And basically I said that I don't really see a future where it makes sense for Windows
02:24:18
◼
►
Phone at all, because it's just not taking off at all. There's no motivation to develop
02:24:23
◼
►
apps for that. And this guy who worked at Microsoft and was pretty steep in their culture,
02:24:31
◼
►
he basically denied that. He basically said that, he kept repeating that it was like,
02:24:39
◼
►
it was just a matter of time before Windows Phone takes off and really takes over the
02:24:43
◼
►
market. And he really honestly believed that. And I think it's hard to look at Windows Phone
02:24:51
◼
►
objectively at all, and to have the opinion
02:24:55
◼
►
that it's just a couple years away
02:24:56
◼
►
from taking over the market.
02:24:57
◼
►
I mean, to even think that's in its future at all,
02:25:00
◼
►
let alone coming up soon, I think
02:25:03
◼
►
just does not reflect reality at all.
02:25:06
◼
►
And the problem with Windows Phone is that
02:25:11
◼
►
it doesn't do anything for the carriers.
02:25:12
◼
►
The carriers love control and lock-in and everything else,
02:25:16
◼
►
so it doesn't help them.
02:25:17
◼
►
It is as unhelpful to the carriers as the iPhone.
02:25:21
◼
►
However, the carriers reluctantly carry the iPhone
02:25:25
◼
►
because there's such incredible demand for it
02:25:28
◼
►
from consumers that they kind of have to.
02:25:31
◼
►
Windows Phone doesn't have that.
02:25:33
◼
►
So one of those two things has to change.
02:25:35
◼
►
Either it has to start bending extremely
02:25:37
◼
►
to the carrier's will, which I think is unlikely.
02:25:41
◼
►
And even if they did, I don't think they would be able
02:25:44
◼
►
to help the carriers as much as Android does.
02:25:47
◼
►
Or consumers have to suddenly out of the blue
02:25:51
◼
►
massively want those phones and I don't see that happening either. I think if it was going
02:25:55
◼
►
to happen it would have happened already. So I don't see a future where Windows Phone
02:25:59
◼
►
makes massive differences from where it is now. Similarly with Windows 8 on tablets and
02:26:05
◼
►
God knows what else, it seems like Microsoft is unable to see why that's a bad idea. And
02:26:14
◼
►
maybe we're wrong. Maybe they actually realize it's a terrible idea and are working on the
02:26:19
◼
►
next idea, but it's going to take a few more years. That's very possible. Obviously, a
02:26:24
◼
►
major revamp is going to take some time. But I don't ... I think the more likely explanation
02:26:32
◼
►
is that they don't see the problem. They really don't see why this is not selling. To them,
02:26:36
◼
►
it's just some bizarre fluke in the market that this hasn't sold so well yet. Why doesn't
02:26:42
◼
►
everyone want this? It's just a matter of time.
02:26:43
◼
►
Yeah, and I think part of that is sort of, again, it's like built into the company's
02:26:48
◼
►
DNA. And the company's DNA is, I mean, obviously, it wasn't always the case, because they, you
02:26:53
◼
►
know, were like a 13 person startup, you know, at one point, but the by the time their identity
02:27:01
◼
►
solidified, Mike, what was Microsoft, Microsoft was the 1600 pound gorilla of the software
02:27:09
◼
►
industry, right? Then they had the platforms that everybody ran.
02:27:14
◼
►
I mean, they basically dominated software for like 20 years. Like, they've had so much
02:27:22
◼
►
Right. And that if they were going to come out with an operating system for a form factor,
02:27:26
◼
►
that people who made devices were going to adopt it. I mean, even look at the early days
02:27:31
◼
►
of mobile, where like Palm at one point was making Windows mobile devices, right? And
02:27:38
◼
►
it's like...
02:27:39
◼
►
People who were fans of Palm, it was like, oh, it was as if Apple started making Windows
02:27:48
◼
►
It was just so gross.
02:27:50
◼
►
But that's the sort of success that Microsoft assumed and I think still assumes.
02:27:55
◼
►
And to drop a sports analogy on you, it's like with the Yankees, the Yankees have always
02:28:01
◼
►
been, at least since like the Babe Ruth era of the 1920s, the best team.
02:28:08
◼
►
the years where they didn't win a World Series, even though, you know, they've won an unbelievable
02:28:12
◼
►
number of them. 27 World Series since like the 1920s. But it's not a majority. But as a Yankee
02:28:19
◼
►
fan, and I think even as the Yankee institution, as an organization, they saw the years they didn't
02:28:25
◼
►
win as the flukes. The years they didn't win a World Series are always seen as a fluke. And that
02:28:29
◼
►
if they didn't, we'll get them next year. And, but then like when I was a teenager in the 80s,
02:28:35
◼
►
they went through this long drought where not only did they not win World Series, they
02:28:39
◼
►
were actually like a bad team. They had losing seasons. It wasn't like, "Oh, they missed
02:28:43
◼
►
the--" Finished second this year.
02:28:45
◼
►
Right. They missed by a lot.
02:28:47
◼
►
Right. They were below 500. They lost more games than they won. But I think institutionally,
02:28:53
◼
►
they just never computed for them. Rather than any kind of radical cleaning house, they
02:29:01
◼
►
would just do what they've always done and just spend a ton of money on one guy
02:29:05
◼
►
who they thought was maybe gonna you know hit a lot of home runs and as a fan
02:29:10
◼
►
it really you know even as a kid I got caught up in that sort of thinking but
02:29:14
◼
►
then like by the mid-80s I was like no this this team is bad but I think this
02:29:19
◼
►
wonder like does Microsoft even know how to be an underdog exactly that's Apple
02:29:26
◼
►
knows how to be an underdog Apple in fact Apple at its worst is when it's not
02:29:31
◼
►
the underdog. Like some of the worst things they do are when they have too much power
02:29:35
◼
►
and control and they need to be able to put a little bit into check and have some, you
02:29:39
◼
►
know, have a fire under their ass or whatever.
02:29:42
◼
►
Microsoft, like, in mobile, not only is Microsoft not number one, they're like barely number
02:29:48
◼
►
three. They're like a distant number three or four maybe. Are they ahead of BlackBerry
02:29:51
◼
►
finally? I don't even know.
02:29:52
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They might be. I think they might be. At least...
02:29:54
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Assume they are. They're like a distant number three.
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And I don't think they know how to be that.
02:30:03
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They don't know how to be a losing team.
02:30:06
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And I think in the same way, I think it actually in some ways, and I know a lot of...
02:30:09
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I'm not by far in a way not the first person to suggest this, but that Apple and people
02:30:15
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who've been there for a long time working in the company still have memory of when the
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company was smaller.
02:30:20
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And even for some people who date back long enough, was actually beleaguered, to use that
02:30:26
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I think that's kind of good for the company overall
02:30:29
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because it's like if they see themselves
02:30:32
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as the upstart still and the little guy,
02:30:35
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that it might be good for them
02:30:37
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'cause it keeps them from getting complacent
02:30:39
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and that in some ways the incessant media,
02:30:43
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any little thing wrong with Apple is somehow catastrophic
02:30:46
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and they're going to go out of business again
02:30:49
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or going to collapse and become small again
02:30:52
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might not actually be bad for the company.
02:30:54
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be bad for the stock price but in terms for the you know temporarily in the short term but in the
02:31:00
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long run it might be good for the company because it'll it's it's a way of emphasizing the fact that
02:31:06
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you cannot rest on your laurels and it keeps it fresh in everybody's mind right but i think that
02:31:13
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that actually is where apple gets today's apple i think run i think the worst of apple today is when
02:31:19
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when they still act like a small company in certain ways.
02:31:23
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And they're not.
02:31:28
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It's like they have to realize
02:31:31
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that they're in a position of power now.
02:31:34
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Like a lot with a certain,
02:31:36
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like in the early years at the App Store,
02:31:37
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I think that was the case where they were,
02:31:39
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and to their credit, they've gotten better with that.
02:31:45
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We don't see so many complaints
02:31:46
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about App Store rejections being arbitrary anymore.
02:31:50
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But that arbitrariness could fly when you're a small company
02:31:54
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and it doesn't fly when you're selling
02:31:56
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20 million iPhones a quarter.
02:31:59
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- Right, it stops working when every time you do anything,
02:32:03
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blocking any kind of rule,
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you get a Justice Department inquiry.
02:32:08
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- That's when it starts becoming a little scary,
02:32:09
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like, oh, this is really big that we're playing with here.
02:32:12
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I do think that in the last couple years,
02:32:16
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and maybe this is Tim Cook's personality
02:32:18
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showing through a lot,
02:32:20
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I think they've really ironed out
02:32:21
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a lot of those rough edges.
02:32:23
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- Yeah, I think so too.
02:32:24
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All right, well that's a short show.
02:32:29
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- Yeah, that's pretty short.
02:32:30
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Yeah, people should be able to listen
02:32:31
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to this in their commute for a month.
02:32:34
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- Marco Arment, thanks for doing this.
02:32:37
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- Anytime, it's been fun.
02:32:38
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- All right, thanks.