The Talk Show

00:00:00 ◼   ► Big upset last night, right? Wait, hold on. Big win last night, right?

00:00:05 ◼   ► What? Who?

00:00:05 ◼   ► The Yanks. Big win. Did you hear about Jeter this season? He's turning 37,

00:00:15 ◼   ► and he's still killing it. And let's see, his batting average, what? 341 batting average?

00:00:22 ◼   ► Are you kidding me? That's currently the ninth best average this season, John.

00:00:28 ◼   ► for pretty good oh my god i just put myself to sleep

00:00:35 ◼   ► i like the way that you uh you predicted the homework you needed to do before

00:00:39 ◼   ► appearing on the show yeah i asked i asked jp who works with

00:00:44 ◼   ► me i asked the the right-hand man jp to

00:00:48 ◼   ► give me some baseball material that actually was pretty good

00:00:52 ◼   ► okay good so now we're done with that we're done with that

00:00:56 ◼   ► Everybody can come back. What's new with you? Nothing. It's been a slow week.

00:01:02 ◼   ► Yeah, all right. Well, I'm sure we can find something to talk about.

00:01:09 ◼   ► Yeah, it's been a really slow week. But a good slow week, right? Oh, yeah.

00:01:13 ◼   ► Not at all stressful. Not at all stressful. Controversy-free.

00:01:17 ◼   ► Very quiet on the Twitter, too.

00:01:24 ◼   ► It must be a nightmare to keep up with your Twitter conversation, your stream. Do you even

00:01:31 ◼   ► bother? I usually do. Do you dip a toe or do you just obsess? Do you dive right in and spend six

00:01:39 ◼   ► hours? Usually it doesn't take six hours, but sometimes it does. Yeah. How responsive have you

00:01:47 ◼   ► you been to this last round of kerfuffling?

00:01:50 ◼   ► I've been, as I think a lot of people have observed, utterly unresponsive.

00:01:55 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:01:56 ◼   ► Mm-hmm.

00:01:57 ◼   ► Well, I mean, but by design.

00:02:00 ◼   ► Oh, definitely.

00:02:02 ◼   ► But probably slightly by mistake.

00:02:07 ◼   ► Talk to me.

00:02:08 ◼   ► Well, last week's show, I—very deliberate—I just didn't want to put good old Moltzi

00:02:15 ◼   ► on the spot. And I felt like that was a lot to ask to sort of face the unpleasantness

00:02:23 ◼   ► and address it. So we didn't completely ignore it. There was a little bit of banter at the

00:02:28 ◼   ► beginning about being new at this and doing things differently. But for the most part,

00:02:34 ◼   ► we just pretended like the great unpleasantness wasn't there. And that was my idea and I just

00:02:38 ◼   ► didn't want to put molts on the spot. And then I thought, you know what, that's not

00:02:43 ◼   ► right though. In a way, I think it ended up playing very poorly. Because my take on it is,

00:02:49 ◼   ► I'm not going to explain everything, but whatever I am going to explain is going to be completely

00:02:54 ◼   ► honest. And in a sense, ignoring that elephant in the room is a form of dishonesty. So then I

00:03:02 ◼   ► thought to myself, well, who can I put on the spot and make extremely uncomfortable?

00:03:07 ◼   ► Pete: Glee! I'm doing the thing with my shirt collar right now.

00:03:12 ◼   ► Exactly. And of course I thought of you and no one else.

00:03:16 ◼   ► I don't mind at all. Let's have it out. Let's come to some epiphanies. Let's cry a little.

00:03:25 ◼   ► We can just, or not, you know, you can just, you can come clean if you want to.

00:03:33 ◼   ► You can just air grievances if there are. No, I wouldn't do that. Don't air grievances.

00:03:38 ◼   ► I picked up a new hobby recently.

00:03:40 ◼   ► What's that?

00:03:41 ◼   ► drinking I'm just gonna tell you I've had a few already okay all right in

00:03:49 ◼   ► preparation because you knew you were gonna be as some unleashing some stuff

00:03:53 ◼   ► I'm getting I said you know I will tell you I will tell you the truth the truth

00:03:56 ◼   ► is but in that regard I we're recording here this is Wednesday the 23rd as we

00:04:02 ◼   ► record 2 p.m. my time East Coast 11 a.m. your your time West Coast and 15 minutes

00:04:10 ◼   ► ago in my copious show prep, I wanted to get a big glass of water. And I was thinking,

00:04:21 ◼   ► though, about what we're going to say and what we're going to talk about. And I got

00:04:24 ◼   ► halfway through making a martini. I actually filled the shaker with ice. Well, I shouldn't

00:04:29 ◼   ► say halfway, but I filled the shaker with ice before I realized what I was doing.

00:04:33 ◼   ► I think you have a problem.

00:04:37 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:04:38 ◼   ► Maybe.

00:04:39 ◼   ► No, but you know what we can do?

00:04:40 ◼   ► We can talk about it.

00:04:41 ◼   ► We should talk about it.

00:04:42 ◼   ► We should talk about it.

00:04:43 ◼   ► I don't mean to make jokes and be jokey and try to be funny, but I think there's

00:04:47 ◼   ► some things to talk about there.

00:04:49 ◼   ► Right.

00:04:50 ◼   ► And I feel like, you know, you can't, the show can't go on by pretending that it didn't

00:04:54 ◼   ► happen.

00:04:55 ◼   ► Right.

00:04:56 ◼   ► Right.

00:04:57 ◼   ► So now it's a new, it's a new venture.

00:04:58 ◼   ► It's a new show that, what is the idea?

00:05:01 ◼   ► Are you going to have, is it going to be you on mic with a different co-host for every

00:05:06 ◼   ► episode or do you have you planned that far in advance yet?

00:05:09 ◼   ► You know,

00:05:10 ◼   ► I haven't planned that far in advance.

00:05:14 ◼   ► Obviously it's not going to be john moltz every week.

00:05:19 ◼   ► So I don't know.

00:05:20 ◼   ► For now my my idea is I have a whole list of people who I would like to have on just

00:05:23 ◼   ► with me.

00:05:24 ◼   ► I haven't asked all of them yet.

00:05:27 ◼   ► I've asked some of them. But it's at least, you know, a couple of weeks of chock full

00:05:32 ◼   ► of brand new people who I could sit here and talk to for an hour.

00:05:38 ◼   ► Yeah, absolutely.

00:05:39 ◼   ► And it wouldn't be great. I have not asked him yet. This is the first public but just

00:05:43 ◼   ► as an idea haven't asked him. I hope he says yes. And I think it could be great. Terrific

00:05:48 ◼   ► fun would be me and Paul throughout.

00:05:52 ◼   ► Oh, I don't know Paul,

00:05:54 ◼   ► uh, uh, T H U R R O T T he's often mentioned on daring fireball. You don't know him or

00:06:02 ◼   ► you've never heard of him and during fireball. This is, this is a TV show.

00:06:06 ◼   ► Whoops. No. Hey Paul. I'm just kidding. See, this is good. This is, this is fun because this is going

00:06:17 ◼   ► to be largely, I think you teaching me about things that I should know as a guest on your show.

00:06:24 ◼   ► and you'll be mentioning names and products and things and they'll just go completely over my

00:06:29 ◼   ► head. But I'll pretend. I know now I should just pretend that I know what you're talking about.

00:06:32 ◼   ► Paul would be great. You and Paul would have a great dynamic. You know who I would like to

00:06:40 ◼   ► hear on the show? I would love to hear suggestions. I think that you and Lop would be great.

00:06:45 ◼   ► Oh, already on the list. Go good, good, good. Yeah. Michael Lop of Rand's and Rupose fame.

00:06:52 ◼   ► Yeah. But the common thread of the show is that you are on every episode, correct?

00:06:58 ◼   ► I guess so.

00:07:01 ◼   ► That's a consistent element.

00:07:03 ◼   ► Yeah, I believe so.

00:07:05 ◼   ► All right, good. So it's just, it's Gruber.

00:07:09 ◼   ► Yeah. And Futuro, bold, all caps, widely spaced.

00:07:15 ◼   ► Right. All right. So it's the Gruber show. There, it's just Gruber. Would you call your show

00:07:22 ◼   ► Gruber? In theory? Yeah. I feel like a lot of people just know you as Gruber. Like, did you

00:07:29 ◼   ► read Gruber? It's not even Daring Fireball necessarily. So did you read, did you see what

00:07:32 ◼   ► was on Gruber? It's not bad. Did you hear, did you Gruber this week? Oh yeah, yeah. On Gruber,

00:07:40 ◼   ► he was talking about Grubering. It might be that my, in theory, I, that's not a, that doesn't strike

00:07:50 ◼   ► strike me as a bad idea right off the top of the head. My only thing about that is I'm

00:07:54 ◼   ► not sure though that it would that people aren't already saying that about what I do

00:07:57 ◼   ► at Daring Fireball.

00:07:59 ◼   ► Pete: Mm hmm. What do you mean? Like, chain?

00:08:02 ◼   ► John: Well, that when people, people might say, like, if you work in an office doing

00:08:07 ◼   ► the sort of things where it's possible that multiple people you work with read Daring

00:08:11 ◼   ► Fireball, like maybe you make iOS apps or websites or something like that, that somebody

00:08:18 ◼   ► when they're referencing something on Daring Fireball might just say exactly what you said.

00:08:21 ◼   ► Hey, do you read Gruber today? Right. Well, that's what I'm saying. And if this but if

00:08:25 ◼   ► a show was called Gruber, it would be ambiguous whether it was the show or Daring Fireball.

00:08:31 ◼   ► Would it? And is that a bad thing? I don't know. I think it's a pretty strong brand.

00:08:35 ◼   ► What was your idea? You asked an email, you had an idea for a possible show title.

00:08:39 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, no, I suggested well, just as an example, but a bad one, I suggested,

00:08:44 ◼   ► I think picking boogers with John.

00:08:46 ◼   ► Right. And you said that even that would be successful.

00:08:49 ◼   ► Yeah, even that because, you know, well, what is the talk show say about that? I

00:08:55 ◼   ► to be honest, when and the talk show had, I've told you this before, I had a big impact on me

00:09:00 ◼   ► from the very beginning. stylistically influenced the way I wanted, you know, you look nice to sound.

00:09:10 ◼   ► And I just thought it was a beautifully devised podcast. It was unlike anything.

00:09:16 ◼   ► But I thought to myself at the time, "Why the hell is it called the top?" I mean, yeah,

00:09:22 ◼   ► it's beautifully simple and everything like that. But maybe a little bit more specificity or maybe

00:09:28 ◼   ► a little bit more of an anchor. And I feel like now with this opportunity, why not

00:09:37 ◼   ► do a little bit of a rethink on it? Well, that's one way I could have gone.

00:09:42 ◼   ► My take though is that I came up with the name. I art directed the great Greg's story

00:09:53 ◼   ► of Airbag Industries fame now at HappyCog for the original branding and visual design of everything

00:10:05 ◼   ► from the original run, right? There's two runs of the talk show. This is effectively where this is

00:10:10 ◼   ► talk show three or, or as Apple would call it the new talk show. That the first run was just

00:10:18 ◼   ► talk show because they don't put the in anything. Right, but to see that's the opposite with the

00:10:23 ◼   ► talk show where I always want the I paid extra money for the the. Okay. It was worth it.

00:10:30 ◼   ► it was worth it. So the first run was me and Dan from I believe summer of I could be wrong

00:10:35 ◼   ► by a year here summer of 2007 through the end of 2008. No network. Always had the idea

00:10:45 ◼   ► of trying to make it into a some sort of money making thing getting some sponsors and I think

00:10:50 ◼   ► I actually don't even remember specifically I think occasionally we found a sponsor or

00:10:55 ◼   ► but it was it was sort of like trying to light fire with wet matches just never took off and

00:11:00 ◼   ► Ultimately, I think that's sort of what led to the demise of the show where it went from being pretty consistently weekly

00:11:07 ◼   ► to

00:11:09 ◼   ► Couple of times a month and then very very quickly

00:11:12 ◼   ► after you after you lose that regular schedule it very quickly sputtered out to

00:11:16 ◼   ► All of a sudden there's two months between episodes and and and it was done. Oh, yeah

00:11:22 ◼   ► And you know that you know very well. It is very very hard to to keep that going. Yeah, it's like work

00:11:29 ◼   ► It's like it's like it's like exercise. It's like once you once you stop it just feels so much better not to do it

00:11:34 ◼   ► All right. Do you find that you guys?

00:11:36 ◼   ► Have reinvigorated you guys never you guys are like a band that never broke up

00:11:40 ◼   ► But there was sort of a hiatus with you look nice today, but you guys have have come back

00:11:44 ◼   ► I believe starting three months ago

00:11:47 ◼   ► Yeah

00:11:48 ◼   ► I think we've put out three episodes now and you've got a new schedule where it's gonna be on the second of every

00:11:52 ◼   ► month. That's right, dropping it on the deuce. It's just about managing expectations though.

00:11:56 ◼   ► But that was the Simpsonism, of course. All right. Is that why you picked the second of the month?

00:12:07 ◼   ► Or did that come after you picked the second? I don't think so. I don't think so. It just means,

00:12:11 ◼   ► you know, being on a call recording like we do and then everybody's sipping a little bit of something

00:12:18 ◼   ► and then Merlin says we should put it out on the second of every month and Scott goes, "Yeah,

00:12:24 ◼   ► the deuce, the deuce, drop it on the deuce." Well, what are you going to do in February when

00:12:28 ◼   ► there is no second of the month? Are you talking crazy right now?

00:12:33 ◼   ► I thought February only has one day.

00:12:36 ◼   ► For a second I had to go back through my elementary school education and think about

00:12:46 ◼   ► whether you were correct. Except in leap years. In leap years, yeah. Except in would-be leap

00:12:53 ◼   ► years that fall on the millennium. Right. In which case you start on February 3rd. Right. So,

00:12:59 ◼   ► essentially we only do 11 per year. Right. You'll worry about that when you come to it. Yeah,

00:13:04 ◼   ► that's like four years away. Right. But did you, the monthly thing is, do you think it's

00:13:08 ◼   ► going to work out? I think it will. It's hard though. It is. Right. Well, you know, to do

00:13:13 ◼   ► anything well, you've got to do it 10,000 times.

00:13:18 ◼   ► We're not even close.

00:13:20 ◼   ► But I find this in my own work, my professional thing.

00:13:27 ◼   ► If I get to do, let's say, four projects in a month, then by the fourth one, I'm cooking

00:13:34 ◼   ► with gas, as they say.

00:13:37 ◼   ► But if then I go with a month in between to the next one, then I'm just like, I'm having

00:13:43 ◼   ► to relearn everything.

00:13:44 ◼   ► And my muscles in the podcast thing are not that strong to begin with.

00:13:47 ◼   ► I feel like Merlin and Scott can just pick it up and run.

00:13:51 ◼   ► But my voice gets weak very, very quickly.

00:13:56 ◼   ► So it would suit the show better if we could actually find a way to record on a weekly

00:14:01 ◼   ► basis.

00:14:02 ◼   ► But my nerves just can't handle it.

00:14:07 ◼   ► having some sort of schedule though is essential. I really do. I mean, I don't I mean, maybe

00:14:12 ◼   ► there's I'm sure there's always an exception. And there's somebody out there with a popular

00:14:16 ◼   ► and long running podcast with a very inconsistent schedule. But I, I could never do that. Yeah,

00:14:22 ◼   ► I mean, it's got to be pretty regular, whether you're gonna say a weekly or bi weekly or

00:14:26 ◼   ► monthly or something. So do you do you get nerves when you're getting on mic when you

00:14:31 ◼   ► when you hit recording? Go? Do you feel like that? Do you feel a tremendous amount of pressure

00:14:36 ◼   ► to record an hour to two hours of quality material?

00:14:41 ◼   ► - Yes, definitely.

00:14:43 ◼   ► And without question, much more so all of a sudden.

00:14:47 ◼   ► - Right, well now it's more your thing, right?

00:14:52 ◼   ► - A little bit.

00:14:54 ◼   ► - Right, well you could consider yourself the host

00:14:59 ◼   ► rather than the co-host.

00:15:00 ◼   ► - Right.

00:15:03 ◼   ► And the whole thing is my responsibility.

00:15:06 ◼   ► No, I absolutely feel the pressure.

00:15:10 ◼   ► I feel the pressure every day

00:15:12 ◼   ► when I write on "Daring Fireball."

00:15:13 ◼   ► I mean, it's, you know, I can't quite say,

00:15:16 ◼   ► I mean, I often try to think about it this way

00:15:18 ◼   ► and it could freak me out.

00:15:19 ◼   ► But if I thought that all the people

00:15:21 ◼   ► who read "Daring Fireball,"

00:15:23 ◼   ► if they were in an arena,

00:15:25 ◼   ► and the truth is at this point,

00:15:26 ◼   ► it would actually take some sort of arena sized facility

00:15:29 ◼   ► to fit them all in there at once on one day.

00:15:32 ◼   ► And it doesn't really feel like that because, you know,

00:15:34 ◼   ► I'm actually in like the same office,

00:15:36 ◼   ► I'm using the same keyboard and actually even

00:15:38 ◼   ► the same monitor from when I launched the thing

00:15:43 ◼   ► and like was excited and nervous and palm sweaty

00:15:47 ◼   ► the first day that I had over a hundred page views.

00:15:50 ◼   ► Like, so the interface that I see while posting

00:15:53 ◼   ► looks exactly the same.

00:15:54 ◼   ► So like if you're in a band and you start playing

00:15:57 ◼   ► in a bar to a hundred people and that's kind of cool

00:16:01 ◼   ► and then you grow and you're successful and successful

00:16:03 ◼   ► and you start playing bigger and bigger venues,

00:16:05 ◼   ► you see it and it's palpable.

00:16:07 ◼   ► And everything, not just, you know,

00:16:09 ◼   ► you hear the audience and it's louder

00:16:11 ◼   ► and the acoustics are different.

00:16:12 ◼   ► When you have a successful website that you write,

00:16:15 ◼   ► it just looks exactly the same as the audience grows.

00:16:18 ◼   ► So that definitely keeps the nerves down a little bit, but.

00:16:21 ◼   ► But I realized, like I fully realized that if I were to,

00:16:25 ◼   ► something I've never done, but if I were to say,

00:16:27 ◼   ► take a week off and do like what Kottke does

00:16:29 ◼   ► just turn the keys over to somebody. And I think you, in fact, were the first person

00:16:34 ◼   ► he ever did that with.

00:16:36 ◼   ► I wasn't, I was the second.

00:16:37 ◼   ► Oh, you were the second.

00:16:38 ◼   ► Yeah, I actually, like, I applied to be the first one, and he skipped over me and picked

00:16:47 ◼   ► somebody else. And then, you know, and I was pretty crushed about it, but whatever. It

00:16:51 ◼   ► was a long time ago, and I forgive. And then, you know, a few weeks, maybe a couple months

00:16:56 ◼   ► later actually, he went on vacation again and wrote me and said, "Hey, how would you

00:17:01 ◼   ► like another chance?"

00:17:02 ◼   ► And that felt great.

00:17:04 ◼   ► I took a week off of work to do it.

00:17:06 ◼   ► Tom Bilyeu: But that was probably super nerve-wracking for you.

00:17:08 ◼   ► Aaron Alexander.

00:17:09 ◼   ► Oh my God, it was the most stressful thing I'd ever done in my life up to that point,

00:17:12 ◼   ► for sure.

00:17:15 ◼   ► Because his audience is revered.

00:17:17 ◼   ► I mean, his audience is reverent.

00:17:20 ◼   ► They revere a cot key.

00:17:22 ◼   ► And so to be handed those keys, you know, it's a big set of keys.

00:17:29 ◼   ► One giant novelty key.

00:17:31 ◼   ► Right.

00:17:32 ◼   ► And say compare and contrast with another big, like a site like Boing Boing, which probably

00:17:37 ◼   ► has more readers than Daring Fireball and Codkey combined, is and always has been a

00:17:45 ◼   ► collaborative blog with no singular voice.

00:17:51 ◼   ► all in fact almost deliberately a sort of widely varying voices of the various contributors and

00:17:58 ◼   ► editors so if somebody i i i would still be nerve-wracking and nervous to write before a

00:18:03 ◼   ► large audience but you feel like you know you're not i think it would be easier because you could

00:18:09 ◼   ► just be yourself and boing boing readers are used to new bylines showing up with varying styles

00:18:14 ◼   ► whereas you step step up to the mic at katki.org and you're supposed to be writing and sounding and

00:18:20 ◼   ► and appealing to the exact same.

00:18:22 ◼   ► - Right, there's one single spotlight on you.

00:18:24 ◼   ► But if you're writing for Boim Boim,

00:18:26 ◼   ► then you're in a kind of a bizarre environment,

00:18:28 ◼   ► like with where it's just brightly lit

00:18:30 ◼   ► and people are shouting from all directions.

00:18:32 ◼   ► - Are you nervous to appear here on the show with me?

00:18:34 ◼   ► - Almost definitely.

00:18:36 ◼   ► - All right, more nervous because it's like high profile,

00:18:38 ◼   ► because this is episode two of the reboot.

00:18:41 ◼   ► - Could be, you know, I don't, I, no, I'm.

00:18:45 ◼   ► - I think I'm more nervous than you.

00:18:47 ◼   ► And which is unusual.

00:18:49 ◼   ► And I feel like the next time you'll be back, right,

00:18:51 ◼   ► you'll be back next time.

00:18:53 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, of course.

00:18:54 ◼   ► I hope so.

00:18:55 ◼   ► If it goes well, I'll be back.

00:18:56 ◼   ► I'm friends with Dan and I respect him

00:19:04 ◼   ► and what he's created and everything.

00:19:05 ◼   ► I'm sad for how things have developed,

00:19:11 ◼   ► but I'm good friends with you

00:19:14 ◼   ► and I really have always enjoyed conversation with you.

00:19:17 ◼   ► It's just something that's a part of--it's on the list of one of the best things that

00:19:23 ◼   ► I have in my life.

00:19:24 ◼   ► So that opportunity, I would not pass that up for any reason.

00:19:31 ◼   ► Which is, I suspect, why your show will continue to thrive, because you're good at conversation.

00:19:40 ◼   ► I really like listening to you.

00:19:43 ◼   ► I really like your thoughts, and I think a lot of people do.

00:19:46 ◼   ► A lot of people just read you and listen to you because you're thoughtful about things.

00:19:51 ◼   ► And so putting a really thoughtful person in conversation with anybody who he feels like talking to is going to be entertaining, hopefully.

00:19:56 ◼   ► So did you feel any need to reconfigure the format at all in the new venture?

00:20:10 ◼   ► You're the format at all in the new in the new venture

00:20:14 ◼   ► Well, I think obviously some of that is

00:20:19 ◼   ► Inevitable because you know Dan's on-air job was definitely to

00:20:25 ◼   ► Organize the structure of the show to keep things moving to pick spots to jump in with sponsor reads

00:20:36 ◼   ► and

00:20:38 ◼   ► And he asked me far more questions than I asked him. So, obviously, it has to change. One of the

00:20:46 ◼   ► things, though, I want people to know when they come on the show, and my description of it, and

00:20:52 ◼   ► I think it always has been from the outset, is that in some sense it's still largely the

00:20:59 ◼   ► equivalent of a director's commentary on Daring Fireball. It works, yeah. Let's talk about all

00:21:08 ◼   ► that stuff. Well, if you want, do you have more questions about the show moving? I mean, you know,

00:21:13 ◼   ► your question was, but you, I feel like we should talk because I feel like this is the controversy.

00:21:18 ◼   ► The controversy is why did I take the show in the name? Right, right. That's what you want to know.

00:21:23 ◼   ► You want to be nice about it. And you don't want to, you don't want to poke your finger on this

00:21:27 ◼   ► gap. No, because you'll hang up on me. No, I won't. I, you know, and Jared, and in terms of my ability

00:21:34 ◼   ► as a host here's the the most helpful review on itunes of of the talk show this talk show

00:21:40 ◼   ► unfocused uninteresting and unlistenable one star by num number number that's sort of like the guy

00:21:49 ◼   ► from uh well his podcast sucks humbert humbert probably like a cousin from uh from lolita yeah

00:21:59 ◼   ► I'm sure you're not far off. This is very different from the talk show of the past,

00:22:03 ◼   ► which always had Dan Benjamin serving to keep the podcast focused. People didn't tune in just to

00:22:09 ◼   ► listen to John Gruber ramble about a million unrelated topics. They tuned in to listen to a

00:22:14 ◼   ► podcast that had at least some semblance of order. The talk show with Dan Benjamin was already one of

00:22:19 ◼   ► the less focused podcasts on five by five, where Dan would prepare a list of topics and show notes

00:22:24 ◼   ► beforehand and Gruber just showed up on a bad connection and mumbled his comments to

00:22:29 ◼   ► some of the topics while clearing his throat or snorting. Dan Benjamin was half of the

00:22:38 ◼   ► talk show since its inception and the new show has an entirely different dynamic. The

00:22:44 ◼   ► new show is John Gruber unhinged, John Gruber talking to himself, jumping from unrelated

00:22:49 ◼   ► topic to topic. It is unfocused to the hilt and embarrassing to listen to. So yeah, I

00:22:54 ◼   ► guess you're right. I think people do think I'm doing a good job.

00:22:59 ◼   ► Well, you know, that means you're doing something right if you get some one stars on there.

00:23:05 ◼   ► And you know what? Who needs them? Who needs them? You know, I was curious about like after

00:23:09 ◼   ► the first show came out last week, I did a little, you know, mention search on Twitter.

00:23:15 ◼   ► my favorite one that I came across was from I think like a teenage British kid

00:23:19 ◼   ► and he just said "Ruber your new show is bad and you should feel bad." I should

00:23:28 ◼   ► have read that one it would have taken less time. It's pretty good. I will tell

00:23:33 ◼   ► you what though everybody out there I encourage you be honest I'm not afraid

00:23:37 ◼   ► of honesty so be honest get on iTunes leave an honest review and I'll read

00:23:42 ◼   ► next week I'll read a few more of the the highest ranked or whether they call

00:23:47 ◼   ► it most helpful most helpful reviews on iTunes of that's a good idea it's a good

00:23:52 ◼   ► segment my favorite I guess line from last week's episode was when you guys

00:23:59 ◼   ► were talking about the Mac connection lady and you were describing you were

00:24:04 ◼   ► describing how they might have arranged the picture and and your voice you gave

00:24:10 ◼   ► voice for the team and they in your voice was just hey sally might have we take a picture

00:24:15 ◼   ► it was very lettermany letterman over here you know what and and that's an important thing i'm

00:24:21 ◼   ► so glad you mentioned that because this is an absolute i mean it just shows i quite frankly

00:24:28 ◼   ► just how how poorly i'm doing with this new show is is that we made a grievous error was not mac

00:24:34 ◼   ► connection it was Mac warehouse well same diff are you on the the instant

00:24:42 ◼   ► messenger at the moment I'm not can you be is it easy yeah sure I will send you

00:24:49 ◼   ► I have the picture do you remember this picture I don't know and it's hard to

00:24:52 ◼   ► tell because you're pretty young oh no no I definitely like my dad subscribed

00:24:57 ◼   ► to those catalogs and I definitely poured through them right did you just

00:25:03 ◼   ► email it to me? No, but you know what? Maybe if you do Mac warehouse cover babe.

00:25:12 ◼   ► Yeah, and I'm not, no, it didn't show up, damn it. I just want to get you this URL.

00:25:17 ◼   ► It's on Flickr. That's just the name of the Flickr page. I wasn't calling

00:25:23 ◼   ► her a babe. All right, how about Mac warehouse cover lady? See if that works.

00:25:27 ◼   ► Google it. I'll email it to you. I don't know. I don't know what I got in there by now.

00:25:32 ◼   ► Do you have email on this computer? All right, I do. All right, hold on.

00:25:37 ◼   ► All right, check your email.

00:25:43 ◼   ► And there she is. Oh my god, I always pictured her name is like Danica or something. She's

00:25:52 ◼   ► very Swedish looking. Right. And but exactly like Molson, I talked about, there's something about

00:25:57 ◼   ► out her where maybe it's clipart. Maybe she was a model brought in to pose for the picture. And

00:26:03 ◼   ► maybe she really was answering the phone. And they were like, you will take a picture of you.

00:26:08 ◼   ► I think that she probably worked there. I don't think they had the sophistication to come in.

00:26:13 ◼   ► Because you can see there's there's obviously like a system. Yeah, what is what OS is that system

00:26:19 ◼   ► six or something? I don't know. But that Photoshop wouldn't have been able to do that at the No,

00:26:23 ◼   ► that's far too sophisticated but she's and she's very attractive but has thin lips like her her

00:26:28 ◼   ► lips are too thin to be a model right and she's got like those 90s eyebrows peeking through her

00:26:35 ◼   ► church bangs right she's she is so 1989 it is unbelievable i love it i would go to homecoming

00:26:43 ◼   ► with her i really can't believe that i that i miss uh conflated mac warehouse with mac connection

00:26:50 ◼   ► That's why that connection was inferior. They didn't have the the lady

00:26:53 ◼   ► They had a lady now, you know what I would love to have her on the talk show

00:26:58 ◼   ► That would be a big get if you could find out who she is. Yeah, that would be fantastic anybody out there

00:27:05 ◼   ► Listening can find out who she is. And I mean, I don't know that we could do a whole hour

00:27:10 ◼   ► But maybe we could but we could certainly do a good segment

00:27:12 ◼   ► I'm gonna say she's like maybe 26 in this picture. So which would which would make her

00:27:19 ◼   ► uh you know in her late 40s by now right i would say so

00:27:25 ◼   ► great so what uh what uh things do you want to talk about other than

00:27:32 ◼   ► other than i mean like is there any is there any apple stuff you want to talk

00:27:35 ◼   ► about oh definitely maybe i should do uh maybe i should do the first sponsor read

00:27:39 ◼   ► though before it all right

00:27:43 ◼   ► and you you should give me some uh some pointers on this because i

00:27:47 ◼   ► This is one of those things without question that Dan Benjamin did better than I do.

00:27:53 ◼   ► He's a sponsor of these.

00:27:54 ◼   ► Man, Dan was good at that.

00:27:55 ◼   ► Like real-time, real-time companies?

00:27:57 ◼   ► Well, let me do one and then you can give me some feedback.

00:28:02 ◼   ► Okay.

00:28:03 ◼   ► Our first sponsor is Barebones Software, developers of leading-edge power tools for the Mac, such

00:28:10 ◼   ► as BBEdit, the professional HTML and text editor.

00:28:15 ◼   ► With BB Edit 10, you can be more productive in less time.

00:28:20 ◼   ► Whether you're slinging code or HTML or grinding big server logs, BB Edit provides a vast number

00:28:28 ◼   ► of helpful features for editing, searching, and manipulating text.

00:28:32 ◼   ► Whatever you choose to work on, BB Edit reliably transforms that text with high performance.

00:28:39 ◼   ► Download the free demo and see for yourself at barebones.com.

00:28:42 ◼   ► I'd say, I'd say maybe, you know, if I was your client, I would say just, you know,

00:28:54 ◼   ► put a little more heart into it, just like a little more back, you know, just to let

00:28:58 ◼   ► it breathe a little bit.

00:28:59 ◼   ► You're saying I should ham it up a little bit.

00:29:01 ◼   ► Ham it.

00:29:02 ◼   ► Right.

00:29:03 ◼   ► Like I'm not supposed to sound like John Gruber being his droll usual self, talking

00:29:10 ◼   ► extemporaneously. While I'm doing a sponsor, I should ham it up a little bit.

00:29:15 ◼   ► - Sure, we want to believe that you believe what you're saying. And I know you do,

00:29:21 ◼   ► because you wouldn't take sponsorships that you didn't think were cool.

00:29:24 ◼   ► - Right. Okay, I'll think about it. Gotta work on it. Gotta do what? I gotta do 10,000 of them.

00:29:31 ◼   ► - Yeah. Practice in front of the mirror. - Right.

00:29:34 ◼   ► - True, Liz. - Right. Well,

00:29:37 ◼   ► let's get the talk show meta discussion out of the way.

00:29:40 ◼   ► long story short, it was a business disagreement. Long-standing and significant. Dan, the co-host,

00:29:56 ◼   ► is obviously very popular and extremely talented. He is extremely good at what he does. And

00:30:03 ◼   ► I'm super proud of the work we did together. And I think we had some lots of good shows

00:30:08 ◼   ► and some great shows. Dan, the owner of a podcast network I have long-standing disagreements

00:30:19 ◼   ► with. Came to an end. Why did I take the talk show with me? Because I love it. And I felt

00:30:31 ◼   ► like if I felt like my choices were reduced to do no show go elsewhere do a

00:30:45 ◼   ► new show go elsewhere and do the talk show I didn't want to do no show and I

00:30:51 ◼   ► felt if I went elsewhere and did a new show I would be leaving my beloved talk

00:30:57 ◼   ► show behind at five by five.

00:31:00 ◼   ► And I don't think Dan would have kept doing the talk show without me.

00:31:06 ◼   ► But that's where it would have sat dormant.

00:31:10 ◼   ► And I just couldn't bear it.

00:31:13 ◼   ► Right.

00:31:14 ◼   ► Well, you could, well, first of all, yeah, bad business comes between, and I don't mean

00:31:19 ◼   ► bad as in nefarious, but disagreements in business come between good friends all the

00:31:26 ◼   ► time and it sucks when it happens, but it's a legitimate, legitimate reason.

00:31:34 ◼   ► Then there could have been measures put in place to, you know, to agree that if the talk

00:31:44 ◼   ► show is left behind, then it ceases to be.

00:31:50 ◼   ► So I don't think there would have been a worry of Dan taking it over and exploiting

00:31:54 ◼   ► the name.

00:31:55 ◼   ► worry wasn't that it would be taken over and exploited. My worry was to see something that

00:32:00 ◼   ► I view as my second most beloved child creation left in what I consider a bad spot.

00:32:13 ◼   ► Right, right. Well, do so so that you you you I understand and it's interesting that

00:32:24 ◼   ► You put it in, you frame it like that as a birth, as a child.

00:32:31 ◼   ► But I honestly think that you gave birth to something other than, something big other

00:32:35 ◼   ► than just what it was called.

00:32:38 ◼   ► And I think you definitely, you did, you made a big statement by taking the name with you.

00:32:47 ◼   ► And that statement has been made.

00:32:49 ◼   ► And now it's yours.

00:32:53 ◼   ► you can do what you want with it, including renaming it.

00:32:57 ◼   ► And now I don't want to, I mean like, you know,

00:32:59 ◼   ► you've said repeatedly, I'll think about it,

00:33:01 ◼   ► or like that's food for thought,

00:33:02 ◼   ► and I have a feeling that you're going to keep doing

00:33:05 ◼   ► exactly what you're doing, which is absolutely awesome,

00:33:07 ◼   ► that's what you should do.

00:33:08 ◼   ► But I'm speaking for myself as a fan,

00:33:12 ◼   ► when I say what you've created is going to live on

00:33:16 ◼   ► no matter what it's called.

00:33:19 ◼   ► Even if it's called Pickin' Boogers With John,

00:33:21 ◼   ► I think it should be. Still your baby. One star. Max stuff. Let's talk about the big

00:33:35 ◼   ► week. I think it was about two weeks ago, a little bit less than two weeks ago, I wrote

00:33:41 ◼   ► a thing about that called iOS six low hanging fruit trying to predict what Apple might be

00:33:46 ◼   ► doing next in iOS.

00:33:50 ◼   ► The idea being that the phone could seem to the casual observer to be feature complete

00:33:55 ◼   ► or very close to it.

00:33:57 ◼   ► Well, that it used to be the first few years that it was kind of easy to make predictions

00:34:03 ◼   ► about what they would do next because there were some glaring omissions.

00:34:07 ◼   ► And one of the reasons I want to talk about this with you is that one of the first times

00:34:10 ◼   ► I can recall seeing something that you had done online was back in, I think it was 2008,

00:34:16 ◼   ► It was early, definitely early, when you did a concept video on how copy and paste might

00:34:23 ◼   ► work on the iPhone.

00:34:25 ◼   ► Which is interesting in a few ways, because one, that whole, "Hey, let me just show

00:34:29 ◼   ► you, here's my UI idea and I'm going to put a concept video on YouTube or Vimeo or

00:34:33 ◼   ► one of these things."

00:34:35 ◼   ► You were early on that.

00:34:36 ◼   ► That was like a new thing at the time.

00:34:39 ◼   ► And number two, eventually they did add copy and paste.

00:34:44 ◼   ► And yours was kind of a sensation.

00:34:45 ◼   ► It got picked up everywhere.

00:34:48 ◼   ► Everybody I remember, Kottke linked it.

00:34:50 ◼   ► I'm sure I did.

00:34:51 ◼   ► I like it.

00:34:52 ◼   ► I hope I liked it.

00:34:53 ◼   ► No, no, no.

00:34:54 ◼   ► And we've never talked about this.

00:34:55 ◼   ► Oh, no.

00:34:56 ◼   ► No, it killed me.

00:34:57 ◼   ► It killed me that you did.

00:34:58 ◼   ► But what you did was you wrote a piece.

00:35:01 ◼   ► The next day, you wrote a piece on Daring Fireball about why you didn't think that Apple

00:35:06 ◼   ► would put copy and paste in the iOS in in like anytime soon.

00:35:13 ◼   ► And for a week, without knowing you, for a week, I just hated you.

00:35:23 ◼   ► But I kept reading.

00:35:25 ◼   ► And eventually we met each other and got to be friends.

00:35:30 ◼   ► When did they end up adding copy and paste?

00:35:33 ◼   ► It wasn't until the second version of the OS, right?

00:35:36 ◼   ► So it was 2008?

00:35:37 ◼   ► Well, the phone came out in 2007.

00:35:40 ◼   ► when I made the video, I think in like December or something.

00:35:43 ◼   ► Okay. And you know, it might've been another year. When would,

00:35:47 ◼   ► when did they release the next, the next phone? June,

00:35:52 ◼   ► June of 2008. So it might've been June.

00:35:54 ◼   ► But yeah, mine, mine, mine was an interesting idea with two finger taps,

00:36:01 ◼   ► but you know, they didn't, they didn't end up doing that, but

00:36:05 ◼   ► well, it was fun to do like your, your, your video. I love the idea,

00:36:10 ◼   ► but I feel like your idea, and I'll link to it in the show notes, people can go and watch

00:36:15 ◼   ► your original concept video, which was also very funny.

00:36:19 ◼   ► Thank you.

00:36:21 ◼   ► And it's only funnier in hindsight as your online persona has become more established

00:36:27 ◼   ► and widely known. Like at the time, it's very consistent with the Adam and Lisa Gore

00:36:34 ◼   ► I know, but at the time I didn't know Adam and Lisa Gore, and I'm not going to spoil

00:36:38 ◼   ► thing, but the way that it ends was it just seemed so absurd. Right, yeah, it was

00:36:42 ◼   ► absurd. But that's my dumb voice, my dumb Eeyore voice behind Bob

00:36:48 ◼   ► Borchers, I guess. Right. Your idea, though, was largely, and I know it's kind of hard

00:36:53 ◼   ► to explain, but it was gesture-based mostly. It was, let's take the loop, which

00:36:58 ◼   ► was already in iOS, for placing the insertion point. And as you're dragging

00:37:04 ◼   ► that around to figure out where you want to start a copy or selection to copy and paste you could

00:37:10 ◼   ► add a second finger to the screen which would put you in a different mode right at which point you

00:37:16 ◼   ► would just drag your finger like a highlighter to make the selection and uh and then cut correct

00:37:23 ◼   ► yeah uh and then when you wanted to paste you would place the insertion point with one finger

00:37:30 ◼   ► then still holding that first finger on screen,

00:37:33 ◼   ► add a second finger,

00:37:34 ◼   ► which would bring up a little dialog box

00:37:37 ◼   ► with your last few clipboards,

00:37:39 ◼   ► and then you could tap one of those to paste.

00:37:41 ◼   ► - Right.

00:37:43 ◼   ► - So the problem with it,

00:37:44 ◼   ► and the reason Apple went with something different

00:37:46 ◼   ► is that it's not visual.

00:37:49 ◼   ► - Right.

00:37:50 ◼   ► - It's something that you would have to know before using.

00:37:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's not discoverable at all.

00:37:54 ◼   ► - Right.

00:37:55 ◼   ► And there are things in iOS that are like that,

00:37:58 ◼   ► but they are either always or ideally always,

00:38:03 ◼   ► but if not always, almost always,

00:38:07 ◼   ► shortcuts to things that there is a visual way to do.

00:38:10 ◼   ► That if you can't see it, it might as well not be there.

00:38:14 ◼   ► So that's why the actual implementation

00:38:18 ◼   ► of copy and paste is very visual.

00:38:22 ◼   ► It's this right there in your face little pop-up thing

00:38:25 ◼   ► that makes these options explicit.

00:38:27 ◼   ► But it was well done.

00:38:30 ◼   ► I'm sorry I disappointed you.

00:38:32 ◼   ► No, it's all right.

00:38:33 ◼   ► It all worked out.

00:38:34 ◼   ► Speaking of working like a highlighter, isn't the highlighter in iBooks just the most delightful

00:38:41 ◼   ► UI thing that exists?

00:38:43 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:38:44 ◼   ► Except I invoke it accidentally too often, I think.

00:38:47 ◼   ► Oh, do you really?

00:38:48 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know.

00:38:49 ◼   ► But it's happening less and less, so I feel like I'm getting used to it.

00:38:53 ◼   ► I haven't figured out how to successfully un-highlight stuff, I guess.

00:38:57 ◼   ► So in that way, it's very much like a real skeuomorphic highlighter.

00:39:03 ◼   ► Do you do this?

00:39:04 ◼   ► I know I've spoken to Koi Vinh, formerly of the New York Times, and now he does Mixle,

00:39:13 ◼   ► a really cool collage, collaborative iPad app.

00:39:18 ◼   ► And Koi's even written about it.

00:39:19 ◼   ► But the New York Times added a thing a while back, it's like a JavaScript thing, where

00:39:25 ◼   ► as soon as you selected a word on a webpage on the New York Times, it would pop up a dictionary

00:39:30 ◼   ► definition of the word right there.

00:39:33 ◼   ► Which is stupid, right?

00:39:36 ◼   ► Because it breaks something that people know how to do.

00:39:41 ◼   ► So you just double click on a word to select it and all of a sudden, I think it was a double

00:39:45 ◼   ► click, not selecting a word.

00:39:46 ◼   ► It was like if you double click on a word, it would make a definition

00:39:48 ◼   ► Well double click already has a meaning it just means I want to select this

00:39:52 ◼   ► but the reason it was especially problematic for me is that while i'm reading an article I I

00:39:56 ◼   ► Didn't even really know that I had this habit

00:39:59 ◼   ► But I I just sit there and play with the mouse and like select words and and make text selections

00:40:04 ◼   ► While i'm reading just like like an idle fidgety thing sure you fondle you found koi does the same thing instead of drove him

00:40:13 ◼   ► nuts and he was going to crack some skulls over it. Oh, yeah.

00:40:16 ◼   ► Well, there have been all sorts of bad attempts at giving

00:40:19 ◼   ► meaning to words that are not links without any other extra

00:40:24 ◼   ► hotkeys to enable them or something and all the double,

00:40:27 ◼   ► the double underlined crap that advertisers are doing. Or even I

00:40:31 ◼   ► think there's this company, Apture, I don't know if they're

00:40:35 ◼   ► what's what's going on with them, but they're trying to

00:40:37 ◼   ► they're trying to enable search on top of every single word in a

00:40:42 ◼   ► in a site or whatever. Right. So like when I'm reading on the iPhone or iPad, like in Safari,

00:40:48 ◼   ► sometimes I'll just move my thumb up and down a little bit and just make the page go up and down,

00:40:52 ◼   ► just slightly, just like a fidgety type thing. And I feel like in iBooks, that's why I sort of

00:40:57 ◼   ► was making inadvertent highlights is that I would just sort of touch my, I just wanted to touch the

00:41:02 ◼   ► screen idly and then all of a sudden I've got a highlight. But when you do want to make a highlight,

00:41:06 ◼   ► I have to admit it is delightful. It really does. It just looks really good. Right.

00:41:11 ◼   ► And that they, and they somehow they're really, really good at, at this, at the,

00:41:16 ◼   ► the parallax offset of it's not really going underneath where you touch it's underneath

00:41:21 ◼   ► where you think you're touching. Right. Right. It's very accurate.

00:41:25 ◼   ► Um, I can't believe that it took the Mac OS so long to make like, um, control command

00:41:36 ◼   ► D over any word bring up dictionary and search. I use that constantly. It's one of my favorite features

00:41:43 ◼   ► Yeah, I do too

00:41:44 ◼   ► I used to always when I was reading paper books always had like a

00:41:47 ◼   ► Personal policy that if I ever encountered a word that I didn't know

00:41:50 ◼   ► I would either look it up if there was a dictionary handy or write it down and then look it up when I got

00:41:56 ◼   ► to a dictionary

00:41:59 ◼   ► And I wasn't always scrupulous about it

00:42:00 ◼   ► But it was I always thought it was a good policy that don't just pretend that you know the word if you you know

00:42:04 ◼   ► Encounter a new word look it up now you carry a dictionary in your back pocket as a kid. No, I did not

00:42:10 ◼   ► They were too big

00:42:11 ◼   ► Yes, well big pants. Yeah

00:42:14 ◼   ► So, what do you have do you have any idea what do you think Apple's gonna do next long story short

00:42:21 ◼   ► They're the low-hanging fruit is pretty much gone

00:42:24 ◼   ► Like everybody knew that's the thing about the copy and paste from 2007-2008

00:42:27 ◼   ► and it's kind of crazy to think back that we had these phones that

00:42:32 ◼   ► That we loved but they couldn't copy and paste text or anything

00:42:35 ◼   ► Yeah, it's kind of crazy to think about going back to that like oh

00:42:39 ◼   ► Yeah, as frustrating as it would be to travel back in time pre iPhone

00:42:43 ◼   ► It would be pretty frustrating to travel back to even the original iPhone. You'd be like it can't even copy and paste

00:42:49 ◼   ► So what do you think is coming next? I?

00:42:52 ◼   ► Don't I don't know. I mean like you obviously you talked about

00:42:57 ◼   ► everybody's sort of mentioning that maps, Google Maps,

00:43:02 ◼   ► are going to go out of the phone

00:43:05 ◼   ► and Apple's going to have its own solution.

00:43:07 ◼   ► And I think that it might not just be

00:43:10 ◼   ► like a one-to-one replacement

00:43:12 ◼   ► with just a new backend of a mapping service

00:43:15 ◼   ► and new, interesting, delightful Apple front end

00:43:18 ◼   ► that's going to replace this Google front end

00:43:23 ◼   ► that's basically been pretty much the same

00:43:23 ◼   ► since the first iteration, right?

00:43:28 ◼   ► I mean, with little accoutrements added,

00:43:29 ◼   ► the new, you know, in navigation on the new Google Maps,

00:43:34 ◼   ► it's nice to have three options of good routes.

00:43:38 ◼   ► Right.

00:43:41 ◼   ► But other than that, it's still frustrating to use.

00:43:43 ◼   ► It's not really intuitive.

00:43:46 ◼   ► Doing things that are sort of user,

00:43:48 ◼   ► very UI-sensitive just for usability.

00:43:53 ◼   ► While you're actually maybe in a car looking at a map

00:43:57 ◼   ► and you need to get over to list view,

00:44:00 ◼   ► it's like three taps.

00:44:03 ◼   ► And I think that Apple could definitely solve

00:44:07 ◼   ► those types of problems.

00:44:09 ◼   ► What if they're just going to put a new spin

00:44:12 ◼   ► on the whole idea of mapping that isn't super obvious?

00:44:16 ◼   ► I mean, what if this could be dumb?

00:44:21 ◼   ► But I mean, first of all, they're probably able to integrate

00:44:25 ◼   ► across all their services, like contacts and everything,

00:44:29 ◼   ► a little bit better, and tie in mapping and social.

00:44:32 ◼   ► And I don't know, but that's not really interesting.

00:44:37 ◼   ► Maybe, I mean, I know there's this sort of a movement

00:44:41 ◼   ► to figure out the problem of,

00:44:44 ◼   ► I don't know whether you would call it micro mapping or whatever, like locating things

00:44:48 ◼   ► and inside of a location.

00:44:53 ◼   ► Just very, very much refined geolocation.

00:44:58 ◼   ► They might have an interesting solution to that.

00:45:02 ◼   ► But no, it's not obvious to me.

00:45:04 ◼   ► Do you think, here's my big question with Apple taking the map data into their own hands

00:45:09 ◼   ► is do you think that they're also going to do a maps website?

00:45:12 ◼   ► Yeah, that is an interesting question.

00:45:15 ◼   ► And my first thought, my thought is no, because Apple doesn't do stuff like that, but if they

00:45:19 ◼   ► don't do a website, how would you email directions to somebody from your phone?

00:45:23 ◼   ► Right.

00:45:24 ◼   ► Well, you just have to hope that they're iOS as well.

00:45:29 ◼   ► Yeah, I guess it could operate on the Instagram model where there's maybe there's just a simple,

00:45:37 ◼   ► very, very simple web version of a map.

00:45:42 ◼   ► nowhere near as complex as Google Maps.

00:45:47 ◼   ► No, yeah, I mean, Apple doesn't traditionally do stuff like that well.

00:45:50 ◼   ► Right. But they don't even try, really.

00:45:54 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, there's like, locate my, find my iPhone and stuff.

00:45:57 ◼   ► And actually, the iCloud website is pretty robust.

00:46:00 ◼   ► If you ever spend any time on it, which you wouldn't need to because the front end for it is all of the apps that are on your Mac.

00:46:09 ◼   ► But when you actually spend some time in the browser and like fish around all those giant tabs,

00:46:13 ◼   ► it's actually quite pretty.

00:46:16 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:46:16 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:46:20 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:46:20 ◼   ► I feel like they kind of have to, but maybe I'm, you know, thinking about it wrong and maybe they were willing to do that and have it so that, you know, if you're going to send directions to somebody, they better have an iOS device.

00:46:30 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:46:31 ◼   ► Same goes for the iCloud.

00:46:34 ◼   ► Photo and video sharing,

00:46:36 ◼   ► which I know the Wall Street Journal reported a bit ago

00:46:38 ◼   ► was gonna be a major new feature that you'll be able to,

00:46:43 ◼   ► I don't know, I think they even explicitly compared it

00:46:47 ◼   ► to Flickr or maybe even Facebook or something

00:46:49 ◼   ► where you could take your family photos from your iPhone,

00:46:53 ◼   ► share them through your iCloud account.

00:46:55 ◼   ► And then the thing that caught my eye

00:46:57 ◼   ► was that it said two other iCloud users.

00:46:59 ◼   ► Because if it's not a website, how else would they do it?

00:47:04 ◼   ► let alone whether they even, you know,

00:47:06 ◼   ► whether they want to draw that sort of privacy circle

00:47:09 ◼   ► of everybody you're sharing with

00:47:11 ◼   ► has to have an iCloud account.

00:47:13 ◼   ► I think a big part of that is the practical point

00:47:15 ◼   ► that if you don't have an iCloud account,

00:47:17 ◼   ► how would you do it if they don't do it on the web?

00:47:18 ◼   ► But on the other hand, they do, you know,

00:47:21 ◼   ► they've already had things like, you know,

00:47:23 ◼   ► the Me.com photo albums,

00:47:26 ◼   ► which were on the web on your Me.com account.

00:47:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, and did you ever use any of that crap?

00:47:33 ◼   ► - Not really.

00:47:34 ◼   ► I mean, going back to iDisk days and all the way through, it seems like the kind of thing

00:47:38 ◼   ► that parents use.

00:47:41 ◼   ► But we don't use that stuff because there are way better solutions.

00:47:47 ◼   ► So I don't want to see what, I mean, I guess I'm curious to see what Apple's next iteration

00:47:52 ◼   ► of the gallery would be, but again, they don't do social well.

00:47:57 ◼   ► So how useful could it be?

00:48:00 ◼   ► It's just for one-to-one sharing

00:48:02 ◼   ► Then again, it's like it would be very hobbled. Yeah, that's it

00:48:07 ◼   ► It doesn't feel like they ever really did a good job with it

00:48:10 ◼   ► I mean my I don't jump on most social network type things

00:48:14 ◼   ► I mean most of them don't appeal to me, but when I find one I like then I just use it

00:48:17 ◼   ► So for me for sharing photos to people it's always been flicker just because you know, that's why flicker

00:48:23 ◼   ► Became so popular. It was it just seemed like the nice balance between

00:48:29 ◼   ► obviousness and ease of use and

00:48:31 ◼   ► Easy shareability that you can you know make things that you could

00:48:41 ◼   ► Share privately which required the other people to have I think a flickr account and then you know

00:48:46 ◼   ► If you didn't really care who saw the pictures you could just do it and point people at the URL and everybody could go see

00:48:52 ◼   ► It what could it be possible that?

00:48:54 ◼   ► Apple is planning big things for the web, but they still want everybody

00:48:59 ◼   ► to have an iCloud account even if it's not a mobile-based viewing experience.

00:49:04 ◼   ► Right, I don't know. I don't really think so. It doesn't seem to me like

00:49:08 ◼   ► Apple has done very much at all to encourage people to sign up for iCloud

00:49:11 ◼   ► if they don't have an iOS device. I mean, even can you? Can you just go to... I don't

00:49:17 ◼   ► even know if this is possible. I'm pretty sure. I feel like you can, but

00:49:21 ◼   ► I don't know. That's a guess. I've never not had an iOS device, like since I was a

00:49:27 ◼   ► a baby.

00:49:32 ◼   ► I'm trying to see what happens here.

00:49:34 ◼   ► Sign in or learn more.

00:49:37 ◼   ► Says right here iCloud.

00:49:39 ◼   ► This is me signing in on Chrome where I don't have, I'm not already signed in.

00:49:44 ◼   ► If you go to iCloud.com it says to use iCloud first set it up with your Apple ID on a device

00:49:51 ◼   ► with iOS 5 or a Mac with OS 10 Lion 10.7.2.

00:49:56 ◼   ► So no, it looks like to get an account, you need to be using a Mac or a...

00:50:03 ◼   ► But I mean, you could just use somebody's Mac, make a guest account, sign up for a free

00:50:08 ◼   ► iCloud account, and then go home to your HP, whatever the things are called.

00:50:18 ◼   ► I did think of another set of features or just a usability enhancement that I would

00:50:23 ◼   ► love to see in the next version.

00:50:26 ◼   ► it would be like instant on connectivity.

00:50:29 ◼   ► Like I'm a huge remote user, right?

00:50:31 ◼   ► The remote app, my Apple TV.

00:50:34 ◼   ► And that is, there's always,

00:50:38 ◼   ► as soon as the phone goes to sleep,

00:50:40 ◼   ► there's another three seconds, three to four seconds

00:50:43 ◼   ► of reconnection to do before you can use

00:50:46 ◼   ► the damn thing again.

00:50:47 ◼   ► Feel like they got to solve that pretty well.

00:50:51 ◼   ► - I wonder if they could, I wonder if a big part of that

00:50:54 ◼   ► be solved with the new Bluetooth. I forget if the new thing is Bluetooth 4, Bluetooth

00:50:59 ◼   ► 3, 4.

00:51:00 ◼   ► It's 4, yeah. Yeah, it's 4.

00:51:02 ◼   ► But the whole emphasis, the whole point of it is reduced power and prolonged battery

00:51:10 ◼   ► life during idle time. That sort of emphasis. But that would require new hardware. It's

00:51:16 ◼   ► not really a new software, not new software in and of itself. Although, maybe the new

00:51:22 ◼   ► phone does have the Bluetooth 4.

00:51:24 ◼   ► The new phone definitely has Bluetooth 4.

00:51:26 ◼   ► But the Apple TV doesn't.

00:51:31 ◼   ► So maybe the next Apple TV would have some of that stuff in it.

00:51:37 ◼   ► But it's weird.

00:51:38 ◼   ► It's so difficult to imagine an Apple where they're just relying heavily on Bluetooth

00:51:42 ◼   ► 4, even though they've had Bluetooth in all their devices since the beginning.

00:51:50 ◼   ► It just seems like such a kind of old and like a dinosaur of a standard to have to build

00:51:56 ◼   ► around.

00:51:57 ◼   ► Yeah, it definitely does.

00:51:59 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:52:01 ◼   ► There's something about it that doesn't add up.

00:52:04 ◼   ► But on the other hand, I think that the most surprising thing to me about the current Apple

00:52:11 ◼   ► TV is that it still uses infrared for the remote, which just seems so super antiquated.

00:52:17 ◼   ► It does.

00:52:18 ◼   ► But I think it's almost like a barrier to entry thing.

00:52:21 ◼   ► They just want to make it as easy as possible, which it is.

00:52:24 ◼   ► Like as long as you can handle interacting with a thing

00:52:27 ◼   ► with four buttons, then you're fine.

00:52:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, but you still, even with the IR, though,

00:52:32 ◼   ► you still run into problems where the lazier you get

00:52:36 ◼   ► and the more slumped down on your couch you are.

00:52:38 ◼   ► I mean, maybe this is just my TV posture problems.

00:52:42 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:52:43 ◼   ► - I'm picturing you watching TV with your legs

00:52:45 ◼   ► up at the top of the couch,

00:52:47 ◼   ► you're you're sort of hunched over with your head on the floor eating cereal the

00:52:51 ◼   ► coffee table starts getting in the way you know you've run into these weird

00:52:56 ◼   ► line of sight like line of sight seems like something that we shouldn't have to

00:52:59 ◼   ► worry about anymore right definitely and you know and if you get up and run to

00:53:03 ◼   ► the fridge for a refill you should be able to pause you know even though

00:53:07 ◼   ► you're not line of sight to the TV anymore

00:53:09 ◼   ► that's interesting that's interesting like you where's are you like automatic

00:53:15 ◼   ► pausing so it's so you well or if you just have the room if you have the

00:53:18 ◼   ► remote in your hand you should be able to do it and you can do that when you

00:53:21 ◼   ► use the remote app because it's over Wi-Fi not line of sight right sure so if

00:53:25 ◼   ► you've got some time in your hand like I'll be in the vibe every once in a

00:53:29 ◼   ► while I'll be in the bathroom like with my iPhone and I know that my girlfriend

00:53:34 ◼   ► is in the bedroom with the Apple TV on she's watching a show and I'll just I'll

00:53:40 ◼   ► I'll take a picture of myself and then airplay it to the TV just to say hi.

00:53:47 ◼   ► Is that weird?

00:53:48 ◼   ► She doesn't find it so funny.

00:53:49 ◼   ► Is this weird?

00:53:50 ◼   ► Is it weird though that I ask you to CC me on that list?

00:53:59 ◼   ► I'd like to be on that list.

00:54:01 ◼   ► Because I feel like that's a good chuckle.

00:54:05 ◼   ► It is a good chuckle.

00:54:06 ◼   ► I'll start a tumblr with all of my bathroom self-picks.

00:54:12 ◼   ► I'm really having a hard time coming up with ideas for what they might add.

00:54:16 ◼   ► I don't know if my creativity is atrophying.

00:54:20 ◼   ► I don't know if I'm missing something obvious.

00:54:24 ◼   ► One of the reasons I wrote that piece on "Daring Fireball" two weeks ago was to get people

00:54:29 ◼   ► to send me emails with all the obvious things I was missing.

00:54:32 ◼   ► And I got some good ones, but nothing that really jumped out at me as, "Oh my god,

00:54:37 ◼   ► how did I not think of that?"

00:54:39 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:54:40 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:54:41 ◼   ► It's just, I think that it just speaks to the pace at which they're catching up to

00:54:49 ◼   ► the ideal.

00:54:50 ◼   ► Again, it's like, remember there was a time when we were all waiting for the next Mac

00:54:54 ◼   ► to come out because we needed more speed and we needed more power, we needed more hard

00:54:58 ◼   ► drive space.

00:54:59 ◼   ► Right.

00:55:00 ◼   ► it just caught up and we were thinking,

00:55:03 ◼   ► geez, what is going to be in the new one?

00:55:06 ◼   ► I don't even know what I need anymore.

00:55:08 ◼   ► So then what happens?

00:55:10 ◼   ► I mean, like if you were to sort of pull out the camera

00:55:13 ◼   ► to the global picture, what did happen

00:55:16 ◼   ► is that they started concentrating on a new platform.

00:55:19 ◼   ► So is that the new way, is that the way to think about it?

00:55:24 ◼   ► I mean, is there a different,

00:55:25 ◼   ► like is there sort of a slightly different platform

00:55:28 ◼   ► that's coming next on which they're going to start iterating slowly.

00:55:32 ◼   ► That makes more sense to me and feels more right than anything else.

00:55:35 ◼   ► And one thing I definitely don't expect them to do is to make any kind of big changes to

00:55:40 ◼   ► the stuff that's already there in iOS as we know it on the iPhone and on the iPad, just

00:55:45 ◼   ► for the sake of saying there's something new.

00:55:48 ◼   ► Yeah, totally.

00:55:50 ◼   ► They know that that's not the game that they're in.

00:55:52 ◼   ► That's the other hardware manufacturers.

00:55:53 ◼   ► Right.

00:55:54 ◼   ► they get Apple get so much press when they make a big announcement I mean it

00:55:59 ◼   ► just almost unfathomable amount of worldwide media attention when they ask

00:56:04 ◼   ► for it they are not afraid of not making change they're not afraid to keep things

00:56:16 ◼   ► the same even though they people want to be wowed and blown away like I've asked

00:56:20 ◼   ► about you know the fact that the iPhone 4s when it's turned off looks almost

00:56:24 ◼   ► almost completely identical to the iPhone 4.

00:56:28 ◼   ► By far the biggest money-making product in Apple right now and I think arguably the single

00:56:37 ◼   ► most profitable product in any industry in the world and the brand new model for the

00:56:44 ◼   ► year looks exactly like the old one.

00:56:47 ◼   ► And the answer is if we could think of something that was way better and it was different,

00:56:54 ◼   ► would do it. And if we can't find if we're not ready to make anything that we think is

00:56:59 ◼   ► way better, we're not going to make something different just to have something different.

00:57:04 ◼   ► Right. Now, does John Grover ever sit at home and think about what's coming 10 years in

00:57:12 ◼   ► the future and 20?

00:57:14 ◼   ► I do and I come up blank. I'm terrible at that. Absolutely horrendous.

00:57:18 ◼   ► Well, I mean, like if you're, if you're just to like to pie in the sky, just like think,

00:57:24 ◼   ► you know, space exploration and robots are all around us. What is, what is human computing,

00:57:29 ◼   ► human computer interaction look like? I would think that it's, you know, it's essentially

00:57:34 ◼   ► invisible and the hardware is pretty much disappeared or is, is, is, uh, omnipresent.

00:57:41 ◼   ► Like it's that, it's, it's that level of pervasiveness that we don't even see it anymore. So I would

00:57:47 ◼   ► say that the next steps in the development of the world's largest tech company is going

00:57:55 ◼   ► to be incrementally reaching towards that.

00:57:59 ◼   ► And I think that the way they do that is in every new generation of technology.

00:58:04 ◼   ► They start with something small and not at all obvious and not at all populist.

00:58:13 ◼   ► I guess, historically speaking, at the tail end of the feature completeness of the Mac,

00:58:18 ◼   ► they started working on the iPad.

00:58:24 ◼   ► And people were saying, "It's ridiculously expensive, and why would you need that?"

00:58:26 ◼   ► And then eventually that developed with an ecosystem into what we're saying is a device that's nearing feature complete.

00:58:30 ◼   ► And so now it's time to come up with a new iPod.

00:58:41 ◼   ► come up with a new iPod.

00:58:43 ◼   ► And what the hell is that?

00:58:44 ◼   ► I mean, like I'm one of these people

00:58:45 ◼   ► who actually firmly believes that it's the TV.

00:58:47 ◼   ► Like the big screen now is gonna be the new thing

00:58:51 ◼   ► that it seems like the dumbest idea in the world,

00:58:55 ◼   ► but then slowly develops over the next 10 years.

00:58:59 ◼   ► - Right.

00:59:00 ◼   ► But there's some kind of angle that we're missing

00:59:02 ◼   ► that we just don't see. - Yeah.

00:59:03 ◼   ► - 'Cause I mean, I will admit,

00:59:04 ◼   ► I will fully admit that my idea for the iPhone,

00:59:08 ◼   ► you know, when it went 2006, like the year before it actually came out, when the rumors were super

00:59:14 ◼   ► rampant. I mean, people have been talking about an Apple cell phone for years, but then it really

00:59:17 ◼   ► accelerated, you know, for the obvious reason that they actually were doing it. And while the details

00:59:23 ◼   ► didn't leak, the fact that they were doing it just inevitably made, it permeated the collective

00:59:30 ◼   ► consciousness. My idea was an iPhone or an iPod that made phone calls. You know, and that you

00:59:38 ◼   ► would, you know, in the same way that you would spin the click wheel up and down to

00:59:41 ◼   ► pick a song, you would spin the click wheel up and down to pick one of your contacts and

00:59:46 ◼   ► press the middle button and it would call them.

00:59:48 ◼   ► And it would be great.

00:59:49 ◼   ► And all the same—sorry, go ahead.

00:59:51 ◼   ► And I thought it would be great.

00:59:53 ◼   ► And all the same barriers existed to achieving that that kind of exist in this nascent TV

01:00:02 ◼   ► world right now.

01:00:04 ◼   ► still have all the huge behemoth infrastructure to ingratiate themselves with.

01:00:10 ◼   ► Right.

01:00:11 ◼   ► And so my idea for Apple TV is, I don't know, I guess exactly like my TV with the

01:00:16 ◼   ► actual Apple TV connected to it, except you don't have to connect anything.

01:00:19 ◼   ► And that's super obvious.

01:00:20 ◼   ► And you can make phone calls with it.

01:00:22 ◼   ► Right.

01:00:23 ◼   ► And I'm sure it's just as wrong as my idea that the iPhone would be an iPod with the

01:00:26 ◼   ► click wheel.

01:00:27 ◼   ► So I'm, you know, I am not—

01:00:29 ◼   ► It's fun to be wrong, though.

01:00:30 ◼   ► Right.

01:00:31 ◼   ► That's like the fun part of what we do, I guess.

01:00:33 ◼   ► Right.

01:00:34 ◼   ► and at the least been embarrassed to be wrong about that.

01:00:38 ◼   ► 'Cause I get, you know,

01:00:39 ◼   ► might be, maybe it would be no fun at all

01:00:40 ◼   ► if you could accurately predict it.

01:00:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, gross.

01:00:43 ◼   ► - Right, I can honestly say that

01:00:45 ◼   ► the iPhone introduction day and event

01:00:47 ◼   ► was like one of the happiest days of my life.

01:00:49 ◼   ► - Me too.

01:00:50 ◼   ► - And if I had predicted it,

01:00:51 ◼   ► then it would have been like, well, I saw that coming.

01:00:54 ◼   ► (both laughing)

01:00:56 ◼   ► - By any chance, did you see the trailer for the,

01:01:00 ◼   ► or the teaser for "The Master,"

01:01:01 ◼   ► the new Paul Thomas Anderson?

01:01:03 ◼   ► No, I did not.

01:01:04 ◼   ► Well, go and watch it right this second. Well, not right this second, but...

01:01:08 ◼   ► I could.

01:01:09 ◼   ► So do you know anything about it?

01:01:11 ◼   ► No.

01:01:11 ◼   ► It's sort of the--it's loosely based on L. Ron Hubbard.

01:01:16 ◼   ► Huh.

01:01:16 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:01:18 ◼   ► Well, I could watch it and then we could have Caleb take care of the...

01:01:22 ◼   ► Oh yeah, go and watch it. Go watch it.

01:01:24 ◼   ► It's short. It's short.

01:01:25 ◼   ► [Music]

01:01:47 ◼   ► Well, that was terribly exciting.

01:01:51 ◼   ► That was really good.

01:01:54 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:01:55 ◼   ► I just find, I think that he's our most exciting director right now.

01:01:59 ◼   ► Like he's the younger version of a Terrence Malick or something, or, you know, dare I

01:02:07 ◼   ► say, Kubrick.

01:02:08 ◼   ► I agree.

01:02:09 ◼   ► I see a lineage of sort of Kubrick to Malick to P.T. Anderson.

01:02:17 ◼   ► Yeah, just the guys that are not afraid to take things very, very, very seriously.

01:02:21 ◼   ► Well, and in a way of an understanding of the art of cinema that can stretch a moment

01:02:32 ◼   ► to unbelievable lengths.

01:02:36 ◼   ► Oh, that's an interesting way of putting it.

01:02:38 ◼   ► Yeah, I like that.

01:02:39 ◼   ► And I'll tell you what, just I'll tell you what, that there's two parts of this

01:02:45 ◼   ► trailer.

01:02:46 ◼   ► a beach visually. It's one conversation, but what you see visually is, it looks like

01:02:51 ◼   ► some Navy guys or something on a beach, but then it cuts to, then it ends up, you see

01:02:56 ◼   ► then this interview that's taking place between two characters. Boy, didn't that

01:03:04 ◼   ► remind you a lot of the interview in The Shining?

01:03:06 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, definitely.

01:03:08 ◼   ► Yeah, The Room is very, very similar.

01:03:10 ◼   ► With Joaquin Phoenix as Jack Twines.

01:03:14 ◼   ► Jack, yeah.

01:03:16 ◼   ► I think that, I mean, you have to come to it with a little bit of knowledge of what

01:03:20 ◼   ► the story is.

01:03:22 ◼   ► And I think it's, well, it's the origin story of L. Ron Hubbard and his new, I don't

01:03:32 ◼   ► I don't know, is neophyte the right word?

01:03:35 ◼   ► His new like wingman that he finds, that he discovers to help him run his thing.

01:03:45 ◼   ► And I know that there's like in Scientology, there's this tradition of like very militaristic,

01:03:51 ◼   ► but not like a naval analogy to the whole structure of Scientology.

01:04:01 ◼   ► So I think that what we're seeing is that we're watching the background of the wingman

01:04:12 ◼   ► character.

01:04:13 ◼   ► Do you know?

01:04:15 ◼   ► I don't know anything about it.

01:04:16 ◼   ► Is it about Scientology?

01:04:20 ◼   ► No, it's not, but it's about a figure like L. Ron Hubbard.

01:04:25 ◼   ► Ah, got it.

01:04:27 ◼   ► So it's not really, it doesn't, got it.

01:04:30 ◼   ► So like what Citizen Kane was to Hearst.

01:04:33 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly, exactly.

01:04:34 ◼   ► Right.

01:04:35 ◼   ► That's the right comparison.

01:04:36 ◼   ► And it's Philip Seymour Hoffman

01:04:37 ◼   ► as the L. Ron Hubbard character.

01:04:39 ◼   ► Oh, perfect.

01:04:40 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:04:41 ◼   ► Perfect.

01:04:42 ◼   ► Man, all right.

01:04:43 ◼   ► So do you know when it's coming out?

01:04:45 ◼   ► When's the movie coming out?

01:04:47 ◼   ► Oh, pretty soon.

01:04:48 ◼   ► All right, so you gotta come back on

01:04:49 ◼   ► and we'll talk about the movie.

01:04:51 ◼   ► Okay, great.

01:04:51 ◼   ► All right, gotta get that back on the show.

01:04:53 ◼   ► We'll get these movie reviews back on.

01:04:55 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:04:56 ◼   ► In the meantime, you can always check out some VHS,

01:04:59 ◼   ► VHS cassettes of the master the TV show with Lee Van Cleef as an as a master ninja and Timothy band

01:05:06 ◼   ► Timothy van Patten as his sidekick from 1984. Oh, man, they don't make them like Lee Van Cleef anymore

01:05:12 ◼   ► No, they don't the mustache on that man. You kidding me. Well, he was and he was missing the tip of a finger

01:05:17 ◼   ► Didn't know that. Oh, man, that's what are the great things about him and you know, of course Sergio Leone loved his close-ups

01:05:24 ◼   ► There's a quick, you know

01:05:25 ◼   ► Anytime you see a close-up of Lee Van Cleef's hand going for his pistol, he's got a look.

01:05:31 ◼   ► He's missing a fingertip.

01:05:32 ◼   ► I mean, you can't fake that kind of badassery.

01:05:34 ◼   ► Because you know he lost that in a bar fight or something.

01:05:37 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:05:38 ◼   ► Somebody bit it off.

01:05:40 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:05:41 ◼   ► Probably him.

01:05:42 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

01:05:43 ◼   ► On a dare.

01:05:44 ◼   ► Right.

01:05:45 ◼   ► Like on a dare.

01:05:46 ◼   ► Like, "Yeah, I'll bite my fingertip off the halve of it.

01:05:47 ◼   ► I don't need it."

01:05:48 ◼   ► He was a badass.

01:05:49 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:05:50 ◼   ► Speaking of badass, let me do my second sponsor read.

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01:06:48 ◼   ► sweater software, red-sweater.com. Perfect. Perfect. You know what? Jelk, it's going to be

01:06:57 ◼   ► very pleased with that read. When you said the word comfortable in the beginning, I actually

01:07:02 ◼   ► relaxed a little bit. It's like I was my favorite red sweater. And when you said WYSIWYG, I kind of

01:07:09 ◼   ► tightened up a little. I aspire to be a quick learner. Yeah, no, that was great.

01:07:17 ◼   ► I got a couple more things I want to talk about. I want to mention the work that you're

01:07:26 ◼   ► doing at Sandwich Video. And what's the new thing?

01:07:35 ◼   ► The new thing is a production company started by Morgan Spurlock, the documentary director.

01:07:42 ◼   ► And he invited a small handful of directors that doing the, you know, working in various

01:07:47 ◼   ► disciplines to basically join this company and be represented by the company to do work,

01:07:55 ◼   ► broadcast commercial work for, you know, bigger companies.

01:07:59 ◼   ► One of the other directors is Gary Hustwit, who you know, the filmmaker behind the beautiful

01:08:05 ◼   ► trilogy.

01:08:06 ◼   ► Helvetica.

01:08:07 ◼   ► Helvetica.

01:08:08 ◼   ► Objectified.

01:08:09 ◼   ► And...

01:08:10 ◼   ► I was going to say buildings.

01:08:17 ◼   ► Right.

01:08:18 ◼   ► Right.

01:08:19 ◼   ► Urbanized.

01:08:20 ◼   ► Most of them are documentary directors.

01:08:22 ◼   ► I'm sort of like the small web spot guy.

01:08:26 ◼   ► So in your usual humble way, you've described it accurately.

01:08:30 ◼   ► I would describe it as that Morgan Spurlock has put together the Avengers of commercial

01:08:35 ◼   ► directors.

01:08:39 ◼   ► And you're in there.

01:08:40 ◼   ► I think clearly as the Hulk.

01:08:43 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:08:45 ◼   ► We'll see.

01:08:46 ◼   ► Right?

01:08:47 ◼   ► 99% of the time you're Bruce Banner.

01:08:53 ◼   ► Nobody would like you when you're angry.

01:08:56 ◼   ► Your pants are ripped.

01:08:58 ◼   ► Yeah, well, that part is true.

01:09:02 ◼   ► Right.

01:09:03 ◼   ► So, it could be interesting.

01:09:06 ◼   ► There's always been the thread of doing these small ones

01:09:11 ◼   ► that I do, but on a bigger scale.

01:09:15 ◼   ► Of course, it's a whole different ballgame

01:09:17 ◼   ► when you're doing that, because there's an ad agency in place.

01:09:19 ◼   ► And they're the ones that are delivering

01:09:22 ◼   ► a lot of the creative input.

01:09:25 ◼   ► And in my small, in my little company, in Sandwich Video,

01:09:29 ◼   ► I basically act as the ad agency, direct to the client.

01:09:33 ◼   ► So there's a lot of freedom in that.

01:09:36 ◼   ► There's a lot of responsibility.

01:09:37 ◼   ► And I'm just kind of curious about what happens in this.

01:09:41 ◼   ► Mostly that's it, it's curiosity

01:09:43 ◼   ► to see whether it's something that I can actually do.

01:09:46 ◼   ► - Can you say anything about what you're working on

01:09:49 ◼   ► right now?

01:09:50 ◼   ► You alluded at the outset of the show that you are editing.

01:09:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm editing two things here

01:09:59 ◼   ► at Pictures in a Row in Hollywood.

01:10:02 ◼   ► One of them is the most fun project I've ever gotten to work on because it's for a new video

01:10:09 ◼   ► game coming out, it's a trailer, and I've never gotten to do that before.

01:10:14 ◼   ► And I'm not a huge video game player, but this is an interesting take on an old format.

01:10:23 ◼   ► I can't say much more than that.

01:10:25 ◼   ► I want it to be a nice surprise when it comes, but some heavy hitters are behind it in the

01:10:30 ◼   ► the games and in the games world and like it's just a lot of fun because it's like

01:10:36 ◼   ► it's it's playing in a world that I've always been partial to since I was a kid

01:10:42 ◼   ► games are big business now huge right I mean am I wrong I might be I might be if I'm

01:10:48 ◼   ► wrong correct me and you should know this but there's more money spent on video games

01:10:52 ◼   ► now than spent on motion pictures well I don't actually know I don't know the number no

01:10:57 ◼   ► that could easily be true. It could be that a video game costs $200 million to do.

01:11:02 ◼   ► Well, but also that like the amount of money that US consumers spend on video games is more

01:11:08 ◼   ► than what they spend to watch movies. But at the very least, they're in the same ballpark.

01:11:14 ◼   ► Oh, absolutely. In the same ballpark. And the model is sort of similar to with the studios

01:11:18 ◼   ► cranking out the big hits and the sequels.

01:11:22 ◼   ► And big opening weekends and promotions to herald the arrival and teasers, exactly what

01:11:31 ◼   ► you're doing, trailers that will advertise, you know, release dates. Very similar.

01:11:38 ◼   ► Yeah. And well, do you play games with the boy?

01:11:40 ◼   ► We play some games on the Wii.

01:11:43 ◼   ► Wii is fun.

01:11:45 ◼   ► Yeah. But he's got a DS for Christmas and he loves it. And it was interesting to me because

01:11:52 ◼   ► Wasn't sure whether you know, he also has like old we have so many old iPhones sitting around

01:11:56 ◼   ► So he has access to iPhones and he does play iPhone games, too

01:11:59 ◼   ► But so it was interesting to me would the DS appeal to somebody who if you already have

01:12:04 ◼   ► unlimited access to an iPhone for games with the DS appeal to you as well and the truth is

01:12:09 ◼   ► Unsurprisingly it does because Nintendo is very good at what they do

01:12:13 ◼   ► And I think that the DS games he likes are far more immersive than the iOS games that he likes sure

01:12:21 ◼   ► Have you played with the 3d one? Yeah, that's what he has the 3d. Yes. Okay. Yeah, it's pretty neat

01:12:26 ◼   ► Yeah, it's and I generally don't like 3d but it

01:12:30 ◼   ► You know and I think part of the reason that I don't like 3d is is right down

01:12:36 ◼   ► Roger Ebert's alley where I go to a movie and you put these glasses on me and forget the whole 3d

01:12:42 ◼   ► 2d thing it's everything looks dark and there's no way

01:12:47 ◼   ► to make up for that that movies look better when the bulb is bright when the picture is super bright and

01:12:52 ◼   ► You put these glasses on and everything gets dark

01:12:54 ◼   ► And so I'm already disappointed every time I see a 3d movie because of that the 3ds doesn't involve any glasses

01:13:00 ◼   ► You just look at it and and to me that's a enormous difference

01:13:04 ◼   ► Right and to me any 3d technology that requires glasses

01:13:08 ◼   ► Everybody who is involved in making this stuff ought to be looking for ways to get rid of it for sure

01:13:13 ◼   ► what I

01:13:16 ◼   ► At the office at my at my office I have a

01:13:19 ◼   ► TV like a TV on the wall that's actually a 3d TV because it actually doesn't cost much more to

01:13:25 ◼   ► To for a 3d enabled TV and and then the glasses cost 50 bucks and I happen to be like I love 3d

01:13:32 ◼   ► I love 3d movies. I'm all-in and so I bought a few

01:13:36 ◼   ► blu-rays and

01:13:38 ◼   ► I I love the experience the glasses I can see how they get in the way

01:13:44 ◼   ► to domination. But when I tried out my friend's iPhone 3D, I mean, the 3DS, the Nintendo 3DS,

01:13:57 ◼   ► without the glasses, and it just works, you just have to have the right angle of view,

01:14:02 ◼   ► and then all of a sudden it's this new pop-out book. I mean, I guess that's the feeling

01:14:07 ◼   ► it gave me, is when you're a kid and you look at a pop-out book for the first time.

01:14:11 ◼   ► Yeah, and I remember I've played, you know, a couple of games. I've, you know, I'd, it's

01:14:16 ◼   ► one of those things though where I don't play as many, my whole reason I got on this was

01:14:19 ◼   ► that I don't play as many games with him on the Wii as much because he's on the 3DS and

01:14:23 ◼   ► it's, you know, he's just all for it.

01:14:25 ◼   ► Personal experience, yeah.

01:14:26 ◼   ► Right. But, you know, I've tinkered with it and with the Mario Kart and, but I think it's

01:14:32 ◼   ► most interesting for like a platform type game where the game is 2D but they show it

01:14:39 ◼   ► in a little bit of 3D and it really helps.

01:14:42 ◼   ► And it's like a little joyful extra touch.

01:14:45 ◼   ► Like in a way that it's just, it's not really useful

01:14:48 ◼   ► but it's just joyful when screens on the iPhone animate

01:14:52 ◼   ► and slide and it's very smooth.

01:14:54 ◼   ► Like from a practical perspective,

01:14:58 ◼   ► the 3D effects applied to a 2D game

01:15:02 ◼   ► doesn't really serve any purpose

01:15:04 ◼   ► but it just somehow makes it,

01:15:05 ◼   ► does make it seem more fun.

01:15:08 ◼   ► Right

01:15:09 ◼   ► It's a question. I have to go back to the iPhone for a second and just talking about that 3ds made me think of it

01:15:15 ◼   ► Why what the hell? Okay, so this is the rumors of the for the 4 inch 16 by 9 iPhone screen, right?

01:15:23 ◼   ► What the hell happens to the millions of apps?

01:15:25 ◼   ► that are coded for

01:15:28 ◼   ► You know one and a half by one or whatever three by two

01:15:32 ◼   ► Aspect ratio. Well, it's funny. You should ask I just wrote about it before we started recording

01:15:37 ◼   ► I think that for most of them that it's sort of like the way that you resize windows on

01:15:45 ◼   ► the Mac

01:15:47 ◼   ► that you know like Safari like the you know, the URL bar stays at the top and

01:15:53 ◼   ► the other buttons stay at the bottom and then there's just more room in the middle for content and

01:15:58 ◼   ► It's the same way that apps are already most apps are already flexible in that regard

01:16:03 ◼   ► Like if you are on a phone call, hit the home button while you're still on the call and

01:16:08 ◼   ► go to mail, the double height green status bar that says, "Hey, you're on a phone call,"

01:16:15 ◼   ► it's double height.

01:16:16 ◼   ► It doesn't cover mail.

01:16:18 ◼   ► Mail squishes the window down so that it gives the status bar an extra 40 pixels or whatever

01:16:25 ◼   ► it is.

01:16:27 ◼   ► So I think that if developers are using the API's right to respond to that sort of thing,

01:16:32 ◼   ► that when the app is launched on a phone with more pixels,

01:16:36 ◼   ► it'll just go up there and grow.

01:16:38 ◼   ► Now, the big exception,

01:16:39 ◼   ► and I'm sure it's why you thought about it, is games.

01:16:42 ◼   ► Because games don't have like a flexible content area

01:16:46 ◼   ► in the middle, right?

01:16:47 ◼   ► So like a list of mail messages.

01:16:49 ◼   ► Well, the screen shrinks or grows horizontally,

01:16:53 ◼   ► you just show more or fewer messages in the list.

01:16:56 ◼   ► But a game is sort of hard coded to a specific aspect ratio.

01:16:59 ◼   ► And I'm not quite sure what the answer is to that.

01:17:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's a tough one.

01:17:03 ◼   ► 'Cause for designers who are just precious

01:17:06 ◼   ► about every pixel,

01:17:07 ◼   ► I can see it being really, really frustrating.

01:17:10 ◼   ► How many extra pixels is it?

01:17:11 ◼   ► It's 1136 minus what?

01:17:14 ◼   ► - It's 176 pixels.

01:17:17 ◼   ► And it's about a half an inch in physical size.

01:17:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's a lot to deal with.

01:17:25 ◼   ► - So like if you letterboxed it or pillar boxed it

01:17:29 ◼   ► or whatever you wanna call it,

01:17:30 ◼   ► It would, you know, it wouldn't be,

01:17:32 ◼   ► I think that's one solution to it,

01:17:33 ◼   ► is if that an app is hard-coded

01:17:35 ◼   ► only to have three by two UI elements,

01:17:37 ◼   ► that it would just be letterboxed.

01:17:40 ◼   ► And, you know, it wouldn't be profound, you know,

01:17:44 ◼   ► wouldn't be, you know, like huge black bars,

01:17:46 ◼   ► but there would be black bars.

01:17:48 ◼   ► - I'm excited that the screen is going to finally

01:17:51 ◼   ► be 16 by nine for video.

01:17:53 ◼   ► 'Cause I always feel weird watching video

01:17:54 ◼   ► and you have to choose which of the lesser of two evils

01:17:58 ◼   ► do you crop into it?

01:18:00 ◼   ► - Hey, do you leave the letterbox?

01:18:01 ◼   ► - Right.

01:18:03 ◼   ► - Gross.

01:18:04 ◼   ► - I think that's one of the reasons they're gonna do it

01:18:05 ◼   ► is that, you know, and why didn't they do it

01:18:08 ◼   ► from the outset?

01:18:09 ◼   ► I don't know, and they're never gonna explain themselves.

01:18:11 ◼   ► But my thought is, perhaps it was just a technical problem

01:18:14 ◼   ► that, you know, and to me, it's about the tension

01:18:19 ◼   ► or a major source of tension in the design

01:18:22 ◼   ► of these mobile devices is that you want the smallest

01:18:25 ◼   ► physical hardware device possible,

01:18:28 ◼   ► and you want a big screen.

01:18:30 ◼   ► and that there's tension there.

01:18:32 ◼   ► So the way some of these Android phones have gone

01:18:36 ◼   ► is if they've just slackened the tension

01:18:39 ◼   ► on how big the device is and said, screw it,

01:18:41 ◼   ► we'll just make a phone that's actually not even

01:18:43 ◼   ► that comfortable to hold in one hand,

01:18:45 ◼   ► but you'll get a big screen.

01:18:46 ◼   ► And I expect, wholly expect,

01:18:52 ◼   ► that if it's true that Apple's doing a four-inch iPhone,

01:18:55 ◼   ► that the actual phone itself will not be any bigger.

01:18:59 ◼   ► It'll be the same size, if not even smaller, just so they can be coy about it.

01:19:05 ◼   ► Because if you just turn on your iPhone and look, there's plenty of room on the screen

01:19:08 ◼   ► for it to be a taller display.

01:19:10 ◼   ► They just shrink the chin and forehead areas a little bit.

01:19:13 ◼   ► Right.

01:19:14 ◼   ► Quarter inch.

01:19:15 ◼   ► Quarter inch up, quarter inch down.

01:19:18 ◼   ► Is any other phone maker doing a retina equivalent display yet?

01:19:22 ◼   ► I think so.

01:19:23 ◼   ► I think HTC.

01:19:24 ◼   ► I think some of the Android guys are up in the 300

01:19:28 ◼   ► and some pixel range per inch.

01:19:30 ◼   ► And that's, I think anything over 300

01:19:32 ◼   ► by Apple's definition counts as retina.

01:19:35 ◼   ► But a lot of those guys, it's, I'm just so glad

01:19:38 ◼   ► I don't have to really write about them

01:19:40 ◼   ► and try all those phones like the Engadget guys.

01:19:42 ◼   ► 'Cause some of them use the Pentile AMOLED

01:19:45 ◼   ► and that it doesn't really count as retina

01:19:50 ◼   ► because they're cheating on the sub pixels.

01:19:52 ◼   ► And it just looks gross

01:19:53 ◼   ► when you look at those AMOLED displays.

01:19:56 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:19:56 ◼   ► - But I don't know what the answer is for games.

01:20:00 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:20:01 ◼   ► And then what happens, 'cause the other thing too,

01:20:03 ◼   ► is then what happens to a game that is optimized

01:20:05 ◼   ► for the 16 to nine iPhone

01:20:07 ◼   ► when it runs on a three to two iPhone?

01:20:09 ◼   ► Does seem hard.

01:20:10 ◼   ► Gaming, I think is definitely the hardest thing

01:20:13 ◼   ► to answer on that.

01:20:14 ◼   ► 'Cause then you would run the same thing

01:20:17 ◼   ► as what are they gonna do?

01:20:18 ◼   ► Prop it on a three to two and you're missing some stuff

01:20:20 ◼   ► on the side of the game?

01:20:22 ◼   ► - No, that won't work.

01:20:23 ◼   ► Or you're going to have to code the game so that it does both.

01:20:26 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:20:27 ◼   ► It's weird.

01:20:32 ◼   ► But it's amazing still with those limitations

01:20:36 ◼   ► how extensible the platform is.

01:20:40 ◼   ► Definitely.

01:20:41 ◼   ► Just put all that power in the developer's hands.

01:20:45 ◼   ► And I do think, too, I think that the big, big use

01:20:51 ◼   ► use cases for these devices, especially the phone.

01:20:54 ◼   ► We always call it the phone, but the phone is just

01:20:59 ◼   ► the lamest of the things that it does.

01:21:01 ◼   ► But it's a camera, right?

01:21:04 ◼   ► It's everybody's pocket camera, right?

01:21:06 ◼   ► And I'm a little bit of a camera nerd,

01:21:08 ◼   ► and I have that Ricoh that I carry around,

01:21:12 ◼   ► a little pocket-sized camera.

01:21:14 ◼   ► I mean, I think I paid $800 for it.

01:21:17 ◼   ► So I mean, my point-and-shoot camera costs 800 bucks,

01:21:19 ◼   ► which I think qualifies me not as a professional,

01:21:22 ◼   ► but as a sort of prosumer idiot

01:21:25 ◼   ► who spends $800 on a point-to-shoot camera.

01:21:27 ◼   ► And I don't know when I bought that, around 2006, 2007,

01:21:33 ◼   ► long time ago, if you're a camera nerd type of guy.

01:21:39 ◼   ► And I'm just not tempted to replace it

01:21:42 ◼   ► because I use it less and less and less,

01:21:44 ◼   ► and I just shoot all the, you know,

01:21:46 ◼   ► If I'm not using an SLR, my big fat Canon 5D,

01:21:50 ◼   ► then I'm using the iPhone.

01:21:52 ◼   ► - Absolutely.

01:21:53 ◼   ► - And I think a 16 to nine display

01:21:55 ◼   ► makes way more sense for a camera.

01:21:56 ◼   ► - I agree.

01:21:58 ◼   ► It's not an aspect ratio that any,

01:22:01 ◼   ► I think there's like maybe one Panasonic stills camera

01:22:06 ◼   ► that shoots in 16 by nine natively.

01:22:08 ◼   ► - Right.

01:22:09 ◼   ► - But I can definitely see it becoming

01:22:12 ◼   ► more of a popular format.

01:22:14 ◼   ► - Oh.

01:22:14 ◼   ► because A, it's exactly the same as what we see on our TVs every day. I think that's awesome.

01:22:20 ◼   ► I would love, I even sometimes like when I shoot an iPhone still or a regular still with my normal

01:22:28 ◼   ► camera, I'll crop it to 16 by 9 just because I know it has more of a film look to it, a cinematic

01:22:35 ◼   ► look to it. Right. That was exactly, you just took the words right out of my mouth that I, you know,

01:22:42 ◼   ► But people have said to me, and I get all sorts of great smart emails from readers and

01:22:46 ◼   ► listeners, that one of the things that people have held up is, "I don't think Apple's

01:22:50 ◼   ► going to go 16 to 9, is that the 4 to 3 camera still photo ratio will be even worse, a worse

01:22:58 ◼   ► fit than on the existing phone."

01:23:00 ◼   ► So my answer to them is exactly what you said.

01:23:02 ◼   ► Who says that the camera's still going to shoot 4 to 3?

01:23:05 ◼   ► Why not just go 16 to 9?

01:23:07 ◼   ► the screen is 16 to nine, why not just go 16 to nine on the images too?

01:23:11 ◼   ► Yeah, it's a, it's a, well, it's an interesting question. So you know how if you're on your camera

01:23:19 ◼   ► and you're shooting a still, I'm just going to look at this real quick. So you're shooting a

01:23:23 ◼   ► still and you've got that full, um, I don't know if it's four by three, but it's like,

01:23:28 ◼   ► it's not a 16 by nine frame. It's taller than that. And then you switch over to video mode

01:23:34 ◼   ► And then the I'm trying to figure out does the sensor widen out? Are you getting more image in

01:23:41 ◼   ► video mode? Are you going to are you getting less? Hold on. Oh, no, you're definitely punching in.

01:23:47 ◼   ► Yeah, nevermind that. Right. I had a theory, but then it was a dumb theory.

01:23:52 ◼   ► Right. No, it's a crop. But that's why and that's just to throw in a what's that thing called the

01:23:59 ◼   ► the Ollo clip. You ever seen that? Yeah, that's the whole that's like the major point of that

01:24:06 ◼   ► fisheye lens on the Ollo clip. I didn't realize this and and many, many months ago on the

01:24:13 ◼   ► on this show, Dan and I talked about the Ollo clip and I said I love the wide angle. I love

01:24:18 ◼   ► the close up lens, the macro lens. I don't get the fisheye lens because it's so preposterously

01:24:26 ◼   ► fish eyed.

01:24:27 ◼   ► Yeah, it's a it's a comedy lens, right?

01:24:29 ◼   ► And then I went to Macworld Expo and I met the Olloclip guys and they're just two of

01:24:34 ◼   ► the greatest guys you can imagine, just the exact type of like entrepreneur making their

01:24:39 ◼   ► own thing, like just the type of guys I just love.

01:24:44 ◼   ► Two guys who just had the idea to make this thing and sell it and it became a hit.

01:24:48 ◼   ► And I said, "Look, I just don't get this fisheye lens.

01:24:50 ◼   ► It's so comical and yet it's a huge chunk of the actual hardware.

01:24:54 ◼   ► The thing would be so much smaller and more easy to put in your pocket without it."

01:24:58 ◼   ► And he said, well, people do use it for stills.

01:24:59 ◼   ► But the big point is that it's great for video because the video is on the iPhone is shot

01:25:03 ◼   ► crop censored.

01:25:04 ◼   ► And with that ridiculous fisheye, it actually just turns it into like wide angle lens for

01:25:09 ◼   ► video.

01:25:10 ◼   ► And then as soon as he said that, I was like, Oh, duh, I can't believe I didn't think of

01:25:14 ◼   ► that.

01:25:15 ◼   ► Super useful.

01:25:16 ◼   ► And that's, that's where people use that all clip fisheye lenses to shoot video.

01:25:19 ◼   ► Smart.

01:25:20 ◼   ► But anyway, if they just went 16 to nine across the board, all sorts of things become a lot

01:25:25 ◼   ► easier, right?

01:25:26 ◼   ► You shoot 16 to nine photos.

01:25:28 ◼   ► They show up on your phone and there's no crop and you just see what you shot.

01:25:33 ◼   ► And then when you show them on your TV, they show up exactly as they were shot.

01:25:38 ◼   ► And you know, it just looks better because our eyes are sideways.

01:25:42 ◼   ► That's why widescreen, it is, it's why widescreen looks better because you know, we're used

01:25:46 ◼   ► to seeing things panoramically.

01:25:48 ◼   ► Yep.

01:25:49 ◼   ► I love 16 by 9.

01:25:52 ◼   ► I'm going to name my first kid 16 by 9.