00:00:00 ◼ ► Skype doesn't ring anymore on my computer. Maybe you should get a new computer. Yeah, your Mac Pro is probably broken. Hmm. I'm not gonna blame Skype.
00:00:09 ◼ ► We should do some quick follow-up with regard to what's the official name for it? Voice memos or voice messages? Whatever it is
00:00:16 ◼ ► that Marco and I were running into. Raised to listen. Yeah, well, that's the thing that we solved by raised to listen, maybe. I will answer that I
00:00:31 ◼ ► I've not seen one of those since you and I had the simultaneous epiphany and invention of
00:00:39 ◼ ► Yeah, same thing. Raised to wake, I still use. Raised to listen is what we turned off in the messages preferences.
00:00:44 ◼ ► And yeah, I too have had no accidental doo-doo, you know, as I'm putting my phone in my pocket
00:00:54 ◼ ► very long audio message of my pocket, basically. Yeah, I've been very happy with that so far.
00:00:59 ◼ ► I wonder if they picked the wrong defaults on this one then because I understand the feature.
00:01:06 ◼ ► especially if you frequently need to like fire off a text message, but you don't have time to type it.
00:01:24 ◼ ► like it makes the phone seem like it's broken. You want to bring Daisy in? She seems to have an opinion.
00:01:40 ◼ ► there's more people walking by on the sidewalk all the time and there's more interesting smells out there
00:01:54 ◼ ► the tickets for Layers are available. This is a three-day conference that's during WWDC. A lot of people
00:01:59 ◼ ► seem to have come to the opinion that Layers is strictly a designer conference and although design is a heavy part of Layers,
00:02:09 ◼ ► what was it, 2016 I believe and the only reason I'm not going this year is because it's
00:02:26 ◼ ► They're oftentimes about stuff that I would never think I would find interesting and then I'm absolutely fascinated and riveted by them.
00:02:32 ◼ ► And so you should definitely, if you're going to be in the area of San Jose, if you like delicious snacks
00:02:45 ◼ ► if you want a snack for your brain, go to Layers. It's good stuff. Because Marco, you've been to at least one in the past, right?
00:02:50 ◼ ► Yeah, I've been to two actually. It's funny, the one you went to was the one I didn't go to.
00:02:55 ◼ ► I went to the one I did one year before that and then the year after that and they were great.
00:03:05 ◼ ► They're the partnership. They put on this great conference every year and it's great not only if you're a designer,
00:03:12 ◼ ► but if you are a single person and product person where you need to consider yourself for such things,
00:03:21 ◼ ► they really are great on the diversity front, both of people and of ideas, which is really nice.
00:03:32 ◼ ► And also, it is just such an incredibly fun conference because Jesse and Elaine, the organizers, are so...
00:03:44 ◼ ► And they know what people who go to conferences need and what you don't even realize you need,
00:03:49 ◼ ► but you really do need. And so you go there and the snacks are amazing. The coffee is amazing.
00:04:01 ◼ ► And they build in fun and socializing into the schedule as well so you're not just sitting in a chair all day.
00:04:07 ◼ ► It's just a great conference. It's really fun. And if you're going to be in San Jose, I highly suggest you check out Layers.
00:04:15 ◼ ► Yeah, it's really, really good. And if Marco says the coffee is amazing, you know that it's going to blow your frickin' mind.
00:04:20 ◼ ► It actually is amazing coffee. Like, you know I wouldn't say that lightly, but it actually is amazing coffee.
00:04:25 ◼ ► Indeed. And you know, the way that I knew that they really were not f***ing around was that the first,
00:04:34 ◼ ► or the only time I went, I should say, is that they had like a, I don't want to call it a snack table,
00:04:41 ◼ ► because it wasn't for snacks at the time. It was almost like a refreshments table, but they had like mints and aspirin,
00:04:48 ◼ ► for those of us who stay out too late drinking. They had Tylenol for hangovers. It was great.
00:04:54 ◼ ► And they also had these little, I don't know how to describe them, but like one-time-use, no-water-required
00:05:00 ◼ ► toothbrushes in case you needed to freshen up a little bit. Maybe you just rolled in from the bar directly to Layers.
00:05:06 ◼ ► So Layers is a truly great conference, and I don't recall how much tickets are off the top of my head,
00:05:17 ◼ ► So if you are at all interested, and you will be in San Jose, or could be in San Jose, I think it's the first three days of WWDC.
00:05:24 ◼ ► Yeah, I believe it's Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday usually. And yeah, it's great. And yeah, the tickets are,
00:05:32 ◼ ► So anyway, the URL is layers.is. And again, I cannot recommend it enough. Don't let anyone scare you.
00:05:40 ◼ ► I mean, I could see how at a glance you could look at their website and say, "Oh, this is for designers."
00:05:45 ◼ ► But that's not at all what this website is trying to say. And I think that the initial, maybe it was the first year,
00:05:52 ◼ ► it was very design-heavy. But even if it's about design, in my experience, it's about the sort of design
00:05:57 ◼ ► that everyone cares about. It's not about specifically UI design for a specific mobile app or anything like that,
00:06:04 ◼ ► or usually, anyway. It's just about all sorts of interesting and cool stuff. And it seems like, not unlike
00:06:10 ◼ ► Singleton from years past, the marching orders for speakers are basically, "Hey, talk about something cool."
00:06:19 ◼ ► I have to point out, too, if you happen to be at WWDC in San Jose last year, if you happen to notice,
00:06:27 ◼ ► as you're walking out of the convention center, that next door was this outdoor patio full of people
00:06:32 ◼ ► who looked like they were having a lot more fun than you. That was layers. And that happened.
00:06:40 ◼ ► They would have these amazing snacks brought in and everyone's hanging out outside and having fun.
00:06:44 ◼ ► And then the developers are slacking out with their box lunches. It was the more fun-looking party next door.
00:06:53 ◼ ► I swear on everything I consider holy, I swear that one time I was walking to the conference
00:07:00 ◼ ► and I passed this outdoor area, just like you described, and I'm like, "Wow! People are having a lot of fun out there,
00:07:05 ◼ ► just like you described. What the hell is going on? Oh, it's layers. Okay, that makes sense."
00:07:09 ◼ ► Yeah, everybody who walked past that kind of wished they were there instead. So you can be there by going to layers.
00:07:17 ◼ ► Yeah, indeed. Anyway, so we'll let this go, but layers.is. Jesse and Elaine are wonderful, wonderful, wonderful people,
00:07:24 ◼ ► and they find wonderful, wonderful, wonderful people to speak at their conference, so it's really, really great.
00:07:30 ◼ ► So today, there was a very interesting piece in, I believe it's pronounced Hodinkee, or is it Hodinkee?
00:07:42 ◼ ► Yeah, indeed. So, Hodinkee is, and jump in when you're ready, Marco, is a kind of online periodical website
00:07:55 ◼ ► Pretty much exclusively high-end watches. Yeah, so Hodinkee is like the daring fireball or tech crunch of the watch world.
00:08:02 ◼ ► And the person who wrote this, Ben Clymer, is either the founder or the head person now.
00:08:08 ◼ ► So anyway, so there was an article, I guess they do like a literal magazine, which is in print, question mark? Is that true?
00:08:15 ◼ ► This is volume two, like they literally just started doing this, but I guess this is also on the web?
00:08:24 ◼ ► Suffice to say, they ended up doing an interview with Jonny Ive, which is obviously relevant to all three of us,
00:08:41 ◼ ► what does Jonny consider important? And I have several poll quotes that I'm happy to go through in a minute,
00:08:53 ◼ ► I didn't think it was particularly well-written, but it did not strike me as egregiously poorly written.
00:08:59 ◼ ► I think I'm the only one that feels that way, because several people have spoken to not just you guys said it was very poorly written.
00:09:05 ◼ ► I thought it was fine. I do feel like this is a world I'm not used to, because, and I didn't call out examples of this,
00:09:13 ◼ ► but it was, there were very clear descriptions about very many expensive, tangible things that were not limited to wristwatches.
00:09:23 ◼ ► And I can't think of a specific example, but like clothes were described with excruciating detail.
00:09:28 ◼ ► It was like Sound and Vision magazine, where the magazine is funded by mentioning the latest movie on DVD or whatever,
00:09:36 ◼ ► so when they're reviewing a DVD player, they have to say, "I was watching Captain America,
00:09:41 ◼ ► and I could see the blue of Captain's shield and blah blah blah." It's a product placement, essentially,
00:09:46 ◼ ► and that's how they pay for the stuff. Only I think that's not what this was. It's just that this person couldn't help but saying,
00:09:52 ◼ ► "And the people came in and they were dressed in this and they were wearing these expensive boots by these brand."
00:09:56 ◼ ► And you could tell they weren't just regular PR people, they were Apple PR people. It was like, "Oh, someone killed me!"
00:10:03 ◼ ► They're veterans of places like GQ and Harper's Bazaar, and they've studied at the Sarban and served in the White House.
00:10:08 ◼ ► They're not dressed ostentatiously, but you know those understated boots must be Saint Lauren, or however you pronounce it,
00:10:14 ◼ ► or maybe Bottega Veneta, I'm sure I pronounce that wrong too. It's a subtle reminder that Apple isn't just a tech company,
00:10:18 ◼ ► it's potentially the greatest luxury brand in the world. Like that just seems so gross to me.
00:10:22 ◼ ► Maybe it's just that I'm not used to it, maybe it's a Casey problem, but it just made me feel gross.
00:10:27 ◼ ► No, you know what? It's not a Casey problem. Like, I read this site. I like watches. I like Apple.
00:10:33 ◼ ► I found this article insufferable. Like, it was just totally insufferable. And again, I read their site all the time.
00:10:43 ◼ ► But this was way... I mean, in every possible, horrible sense of the word, it was just like masturbatory.
00:10:53 ◼ ► It was just like... It was like a high school English student finally discovered the thesaurus feature, and it's...
00:11:04 ◼ ► You see, it wasn't the mechanics of the writing, it was the choice. It was the choice to say,
00:11:09 ◼ ► "What I'm going to write here is I'm going to write like several hundred words about every aspect of my personal..."
00:11:15 ◼ ► It's sort of like Gonzo journalism, but with less Gonzo. Like, every aspect of leading up to this interview
00:11:23 ◼ ► with my thoughts and feelings about how it was going and what I think about everything that I see.
00:11:28 ◼ ► And it's just like, look, people, you have an interview with Johnny Ive. All people want to see
00:11:35 ◼ ► is the interview with Johnny Ive. The 600 words of your personal experience leading up to that,
00:11:41 ◼ ► and all your opinions about everyone you see, and all the things they own, and how you feel about things you own,
00:11:45 ◼ ► and how you feel about things you might have owned, and how it's just like, oh my God, no one is reading for that.
00:11:55 ◼ ► The choice to take this very high profile interview with a person who doesn't give a...
00:12:05 ◼ ► Johnny Ive doesn't give a lot of interviews, period. He's not all over the news all the time.
00:12:09 ◼ ► He doesn't talk much in public. Get to the interview. So I totally disagree with that choice.
00:12:13 ◼ ► And then when you get to the interview, the little italic sort of thoughts put in between
00:12:29 ◼ ► you know, I think a lot of it was padded and fluffed up because this is a, you know, a luxury site
00:12:35 ◼ ► that is trying to expand into this long form magazine format. And so obviously it was puffed up
00:12:41 ◼ ► for that. I think also it was fairly clear that he didn't have a lot of time with Johnny. It seemed
00:12:48 ◼ ► like, I'm guessing based on the amount of questions and answers actually in this versus the amount of
00:12:53 ◼ ► fluff in this, I'm guessing he had like 10 minutes with him. It seemed like it was a really, you know,
00:12:59 ◼ ► It could have been 30 minutes. You know, Johnny gives good substantive answers in his way to
00:13:05 ◼ ► questions that could have been answered in an even more short manner. So I bet it was at least a half
00:13:10 ◼ ► an hour interview plus a half an hour photo shoot afterwards. Like, you know, this is a surprising
00:13:16 ◼ ► amount of interaction for a watch site. I wouldn't have guessed unless Johnny Iov is a fan of the
00:13:25 ◼ ► Yeah, I don't know. I just, I think the whole thing, like no one looks good from this. I don't
00:13:31 ◼ ► know who they're trying to relate to. Half people at least who read this are going to be people who
00:13:36 ◼ ► have never heard of Hodinkee who are reading the Apple news, right? So to be bragging about how you
00:13:41 ◼ ► really wish the Apple watch was available in solid platinum with a solid platinum bracelet
00:13:47 ◼ ► and that you, which by the way, that would probably cost like $75,000. Or to, you know,
00:13:53 ◼ ► it's a shame that you missed out on your bid for Steve Jobs' old Seiko watch that he wore once in
00:13:58 ◼ ► a photo shoot and the winning bidder was $42,000. You were the second place bidder. Like, that is
00:14:04 ◼ ► just so incredibly alienating and it doesn't make anybody look good. It's just showing off,
00:14:16 ◼ ► a lot of luxury products like, you know, fancy cars, fancy jewelry, a lot of these things are
00:14:21 ◼ ► very expensive. It's just incredibly tasteless to just be talking about numbers out there like that,
00:14:26 ◼ ► to just kind of be bragging about how much you spent on things or how much you can or want to
00:14:30 ◼ ► spend on such things. That's just, it's not a good look. And even for a watch site that is read by
00:14:37 ◼ ► people, like, you know, the watches they cover on the site in the news probably have an average
00:14:44 ◼ ► price of about $10,000. So, you know, they don't cover cheap things. But even for their audience,
00:14:51 ◼ ► not to mention the audience that this piece was likely to receive because it's about a high
00:14:55 ◼ ► profile Apple person, it's just incredibly off-putting and alienating to be bragging so much
00:15:01 ◼ ► about incredibly needlessly expensive purchases or wishes. And that didn't add anything to the
00:15:07 ◼ ► article at all. And I think Johnny Ive didn't come out looking that great on this either. I don't
00:15:14 ◼ ► think he gained anything from this. I think, you know, he had his typical kind of like, you know,
00:15:19 ◼ ► Johnny in space kind of philosophy statements where it sounds kind of interesting until you
00:15:24 ◼ ► try to parse what he said and realize he didn't say much of anything. And then I thought the way
00:15:37 ◼ ► it was a little subtle, but if you look at the way he worded things, it was incredibly condescending
00:15:42 ◼ ► and arrogant. And I don't think that came off as a good look either. I didn't personally get that
00:15:48 ◼ ► impression about what Johnny said, but the rest of what you said I agree with. This almost feels like,
00:15:54 ◼ ► and I don't know anything about Benjamin Clymer, but this feels like one of the rich kids of
00:16:00 ◼ ► Instagram grew up and actually sort of made a living for himself. But you can't change the fact
00:16:13 ◼ ► I don't know, it just feels gross. Now that being said, and even though I completely agree with what
00:16:19 ◼ ► you were saying about how tacky it is to talk about, "Oh, well, I lost that bid and it was
00:16:23 ◼ ► won for $42,000," thus implying he was willing to spend $30,000+ in a watch. Do you feel like that's
00:16:29 ◼ ► maybe just the Americans in us? You know how like it's very taboo in America to talk about how much
00:16:35 ◼ ► you make where I've heard in other countries that's far less the case. Do you think that's what this
00:16:39 ◼ ► is or do you think it's just freaking gross or both? I mean, there's probably a little bit of
00:16:42 ◼ ► that in it, but I don't think that's all this is. I mean, I think this was just really overindulgent,
00:16:48 ◼ ► alienating writing. Yeah, I don't think it was the money. I think it was the format, the choice to,
00:16:53 ◼ ► you know, like if someone who's reading this article is not interested in what the person
00:16:58 ◼ ► who's writing the article, the every detail of their lead up to the interview, they just want
00:17:02 ◼ ► to get to the interview. And speaking of the interview, this is the person I came here with.
00:17:06 ◼ ► I've read probably every interview with Johnny Ive. I've read the recent Johnny Ive book by
00:17:11 ◼ ► Leander Caney, I think, which I thought was a pretty good book about Johnny Ive and gives
00:17:15 ◼ ► lots of insight into his character that I didn't have before. And my impression of him in this
00:17:20 ◼ ► interview was he was his normal, thoughtful, you know, slightly Johnny Ive in space kind of
00:17:28 ◼ ► person that we always expect him to be. And that he actually really admires and is into
00:17:42 ◼ ► I didn't get anything that was making me think that he was looking down on other watches. If
00:17:49 ◼ ► anything, he revealed himself to be a bit of a, you know, watch fanboy, regular watch fanboy. And
00:17:58 ◼ ► I thought he kind of, that was the impression I'm getting of him because I didn't know how
00:18:02 ◼ ► into watches is Johnny Ive. And in this interview, I'm like, oh, he's actually more into watches than
00:18:05 ◼ ► I would have thought he was. And I didn't think he was crapping on other watches or he's not,
00:18:11 ◼ ► he's not a, he's certainly not a braggart. And I don't think he's particularly aggressively
00:18:18 ◼ ► arrogant. He, you know, like, so Casey pulled out a bunch of pull quotes here and I can see how you
00:18:26 ◼ ► might read one of these uncharitably and come away with the impression that he's crapping on other
00:18:31 ◼ ► watches, but this is on the Apple Watch versus mechanical watches. He said, "Sometimes you'll
00:18:36 ◼ ► wear an Apple Watch for outright utility and other times you'll wear something else for nostalgia and
00:18:40 ◼ ► affection." And it's like, oh, so if you want utility, you have to wear an Apple Watch, but the
00:18:45 ◼ ► only reason you'd wear some other watches, nostalgia and affection. That's, I don't read it
00:18:49 ◼ ► that way. I read it as he really likes mechanical watches and it's nostalgia for him because now he
00:18:54 ◼ ► wears the Apple Watch all the time because utility-wise it does a ton more stuff, even if
00:18:59 ◼ ► you could make the argument that telling time-wise it has less utility than a mechanical watch.
00:19:03 ◼ ► But affection, that he really does have an affection for mechanical watches and that he
00:19:11 ◼ ► understood what he was competing against because he himself is one of those rich people who buys
00:19:15 ◼ ► really expensive watches and cares about them. And his friends all design them and he's super into
00:19:19 ◼ ► them or whatever. I think that he was describing a reasonable way to deal with the dichotomy between
00:19:35 ◼ ► when we talked about this earlier in Slack, I came away from this article really disliking
00:19:39 ◼ ► the writer of the article and the choices he made and basically having the same opinion,
00:19:48 ◼ ► - Here's, I think, my main point about the condescension of him towards the other watch
00:19:54 ◼ ► brands. So that quote you said, maybe you'd wear another watch for nostalgia or affection. That's
00:19:59 ◼ ► a big thing, right? And you covered that. Also, there was one where he says, "I have so much
00:20:05 ◼ ► respect for many of the other brands, dash Rolex, Omega, because there is remarkable longevity
00:20:13 ◼ ► It's rare but inspiring when you see the humble self-assurance of a company that ignores short-term
00:20:18 ◼ ► market pressures to pursue their own path." That, to me, kind of, okay, so the combination of that,
00:20:24 ◼ ► along with the, like, maybe a mechanical for nostalgia or affection, the combination of those
00:20:29 ◼ ► things, to me, says, look at these quaint little companies making these quaint little watches.
00:20:35 ◼ ► They're not doing the correct thing. We're doing the correct thing that the market is saying they
00:20:39 ◼ ► want. They're humble, and they're pushing their own path because it's kind of based on an assumption
00:20:47 ◼ ► to not have an Apple Watch is inherently worse, and that the reasons that you would either choose
00:20:54 ◼ ► to not wear one or that you as a watchmaker would choose not to make a smartwatch are not out of
00:21:00 ◼ ► merit. They're not out of, like, whatever you are making as a non-smartwatch or wearing as a
00:21:06 ◼ ► non-smartwatch is just worse, and you're just doing it for irrational reasons, like tradition
00:21:12 ◼ ► or nostalgia or affection, totally ignoring the possibility that maybe, just maybe, there are ways
00:21:19 ◼ ► in which other watches are better than the Apple Watch. So I think you've got a chip on your watch
00:21:24 ◼ ► shoulder. I think that's the absolutely wrong read on that. Here's a chip on my wrist, John,
00:21:28 ◼ ► get it right. Come on, watch shoulder. Here's what I think the right read on that is. He is making a
00:21:34 ◼ ► favorable comparison, a backhanded favorable comparison between Apple and those watchmakers
00:21:41 ◼ ► that he admires. What he's basically saying is... By the way, he has the most boring taste in the
00:21:45 ◼ ► world. Like Apple, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, these other companies have a clear sense of identity
00:21:52 ◼ ► and think long-term and don't worry about... They do the right thing and they have an identity,
00:21:57 ◼ ► and they're all about longevity and the long-term and not about what I need to do next quarter and
00:22:08 ◼ ► these companies I admire because these companies like us have this philosophy to be sort of
00:22:14 ◼ ► long-term, secure in their own identities, humble. He's always saying his design group is humble and
00:22:20 ◼ ► they came up there with the product humble. Basically everything he says, the nice thing
00:22:24 ◼ ► he says about these things, he's also saying about Apple. So I think he really does admire
00:22:28 ◼ ► those companies for exactly the reasons he says, because that's the reason he admires his company,
00:22:32 ◼ ► because he thinks he's doing all those same things. Well, I guess you and I interpreted
00:22:37 ◼ ► this article differently. I see what you're saying. We can ask him, but... Oh yeah, that's likely.
00:22:49 ◼ ► I'll grab him in the hallway at WWBC. He hangs out with those sessions, I think. Oh yeah, totally.
00:22:53 ◼ ► These are just some quotes I thought that were interesting. With regard to the Apple watch,
00:22:58 ◼ ► Johnny said, "I don't think there was a problem specifically. It was more of a matter of
00:23:03 ◼ ► optimization of opportunity." And that seems to implicitly confirm what we all kind of suspected,
00:23:09 ◼ ► that Apple said, "Hey, we could put something on the wrist." That'd be neat. Well, what would you
00:23:15 ◼ ► use it for? I don't know, but it'd be cool, right? And so it seems like Apple watch was one of the
00:23:23 ◼ ► less opinionated products that Apple's come out with in recent years, insofar as they didn't
00:23:28 ◼ ► really know what it was for. And if you, you know, obviously look back to the release and
00:23:32 ◼ ► in the announcement, it's pretty clear, but, and we've talked about that, the three of us and many
00:23:35 ◼ ► others as well. But I feel the way I read that anyway, was kind of a tacit confirmation that
00:23:40 ◼ ► that is exactly what happened. I think it like to give more context to this. I think the question
00:23:45 ◼ ► was like, what problem was the Apple watch solving? Which is a good question and expected
00:23:49 ◼ ► question to come from like a traditional watch site, right? Because they're like, look, what's
00:23:53 ◼ ► wrong with watches? Why did you have to come here and make a different watch? What's wrong with
00:23:57 ◼ ► watches, how they've always been made? Like what's wrong with all the things that we love? And Johnny
00:24:02 ◼ ► again, being a fan of those types of watches is not going to say, well, here's, what's wrong with
00:24:05 ◼ ► mechanical watches. They can't do this. They can't do that. The blah, blah, blah. Here's the,
00:24:08 ◼ ► here's the problem they were solving. You have a problem with your mechanical watch and we're here
00:24:12 ◼ ► to solve it. And he says, no, that wasn't it at all. It was, you know, in his typical obtuse way,
00:24:17 ◼ ► a matter of optimization of opportunity, which is like, we've learned at Apple that, and I think he
00:24:24 ◼ ► did this analogy, some player somewhere else in the article, that taking computers from being,
00:24:29 ◼ ► you know, he made the comparison with clocks, which I thought was very clever. Like clocks used
00:24:32 ◼ ► to be one big clock tower in the middle of the square of the town, right? A giant thing that,
00:24:36 ◼ ► you know, no one person owned, but it was like, Hey, everyone can look up in the town square and
00:24:39 ◼ ► see what time it is. And then eventually you get clocks in your house, but they're expensive. And
00:24:43 ◼ ► maybe you only have one clock for your entire house. Then eventually you got clocks in multiple
00:24:47 ◼ ► rooms that eventually the clock is small enough that it's on your wrist. And at each stage of
00:24:55 ◼ ► putting it all on your wrist, it's enabled by technology and there's opportunities. Like what
00:24:59 ◼ ► does that enable? You know, how does it change your life? How does it change society? Right.
00:25:03 ◼ ► And similarly with computers going from mainframes to personal computers, to phones, down to all on
00:25:07 ◼ ► your wrist, that I thought was a good analogy and it made sense. And it tracked with me of like what
00:25:14 ◼ ► he was trying to say about, you know, we weren't trying to solve some sort of problem that we had,
00:25:19 ◼ ► like, Oh, how can I live my life when I only have one clock in my house? I'll never know what time
00:25:23 ◼ ► it is. Why do I need a clock on my wrist? It's so stupid, but it's an opportunity. It's a
00:25:27 ◼ ► technological opportunity. And I don't think they needed to say, well, what problem are you solving
00:25:32 ◼ ► in my daily life by putting this clock on my wrist or this clock in my pocket to go, you know,
00:25:36 ◼ ► pocket watches or whatever. It's like, well, you don't quite realize until you have that thing,
00:25:40 ◼ ► how it might change your life. And similarly for the Apple watch, how might it change your life to
00:25:44 ◼ ► have a little computer on your wrist? I already have a little computer in my pocket. Why do I need
00:25:48 ◼ ► my wrist? What can it do differently? And there are opportunities. And as Casey stated, maybe they
00:25:54 ◼ ► thought that the world of opportunities was slightly bigger than it actually turned out to be,
00:25:58 ◼ ► at least with current technology. But there were definitely opportunities and people do like their
00:26:01 ◼ ► Apple watches. And it turns out, you know, fitness and notifications ended up being the two big
00:26:05 ◼ ► opportunities that are sticky. But I think that was a fairly good answer to a fairly good question,
00:26:12 ◼ ► despite the terrible lead up to this interview. Not that we're bitter. With regard to just
00:26:18 ◼ ► designing new ideas, Johnny said things are exceptionally fragile as an idea entirely abstract.
00:26:23 ◼ ► But once there's an object between us, it's galvanizing. And to put a little more context
00:26:27 ◼ ► in this, he was saying, you know, once they build a prototype, and not necessarily like a
00:26:31 ◼ ► functional prototype, just like a, an object like think about when you're when you're designing a
00:26:35 ◼ ► car, and doing the like clay model or whatever it is, he was saying that, you know, you can just
00:26:40 ◼ ► kind of talk around and around about things prior to that, that model being in your hands, but the
00:26:47 ◼ ► moment you see it and touch it, it's, you know, that's when the conversation really starts. And
00:26:51 ◼ ► that's not surprising, but I just thought it was interesting. With regard to material science,
00:26:55 ◼ ► and this was the context here was talking about how there was the gold Apple Watch. Now there's
00:26:59 ◼ ► ceramic Apple Watch, etc. Johnny said, we have now worked with ceramic and with gold and our material
00:27:05 ◼ ► sciences team now understands these fundamental attributes and properties in a way they didn't
00:27:08 ◼ ► before. This will help shape future products and our understanding of what forms make sense.
00:27:13 ◼ ► I don't think that this is any particularly strong clue for any particular, any particular future
00:27:17 ◼ ► product, but I just thought it was interesting. And again, it's like, it's obvious, isn't it that,
00:27:21 ◼ ► oh, now they know how to work with gold, and maybe they'll do that again in the future. Oh,
00:27:24 ◼ ► now they know how to work with ceramic, and maybe they'll do that in the future. And certainly in
00:27:27 ◼ ► the lead up to I think was the iPhone 10 that we were going on and on about whether or not there
00:27:31 ◼ ► would be ceramic or some people were going on and on about whether or not it would be ceramic,
00:27:35 ◼ ► at least in part. And so I just thought it was interesting, you know, him directly addressing
00:27:47 ◼ ► This, I thought was the perhaps the biggest stretch of any answer that he gave because I
00:27:52 ◼ ► understand, I understand what he was saying that, you know, it's good for a design group to learn
00:27:56 ◼ ► about new materials, but the utility of learning how to work with gold is very limited. Like,
00:28:01 ◼ ► it's great. So you know how to make solid gold watches. Tell me how in any way that's going to
00:28:06 ◼ ► apply to any other product in your lineup. I mean, maybe it'll apply to gold glasses frames in 2050.
00:28:10 ◼ ► I don't know. But it's just, it's not particularly. Ceramic maybe has more applicability. I did also
00:28:16 ◼ ► like the bit that he threw in, which I think was, you know, a brief glimpse into the difficulty of
00:28:22 ◼ ► being Johnny Ive, that it was fun to do a product that you didn't have to make in large quantities,
00:28:26 ◼ ► talking about the addition. Like, this is like, everything we make, we have to make like 10 million
00:28:30 ◼ ► of them. It's nice to be able to make this gold thing that we have to make like 20 of them because
00:28:34 ◼ ► nobody buys them, right? Obviously, he wouldn't give sales numbers. But that was, that was a nice
00:28:38 ◼ ► glimpse into like, so much less stressful. Like, I don't, everything I do, I don't have to think,
00:28:43 ◼ ► you know, will this take an extra half a second manufacturing, which multiplied out by the number
00:28:47 ◼ ► we're going to make as an extra six months on the schedule or something? Right. It's so true. I
00:28:53 ◼ ► noticed that as well. And then my final poll quote, which I think might have been my favorite,
00:29:04 ◼ ► he was saying to the Hodinkee writer, who, whose name I've already forgotten, Benjamin. He said,
00:29:11 ◼ ► with regard to Ben's review of one of the prior Apple watches, this is now Johnny talking. That
00:29:17 ◼ ► was the other thing that struck me about the feedback to your review, the vitriol from some
00:29:21 ◼ ► of the commenters. It's not surprising, but it is unnecessary. That's unnecessary. Thanks, dad.
00:29:34 ◼ ► but here's the thing I was most surprised about is that he, A, read the review and B, read the
00:29:38 ◼ ► comments. All right, fine. You read the review. Maybe you read, because again, maybe he reads
00:29:42 ◼ ► this website because it's apparently the website that people who like expensive watches read,
00:29:45 ◼ ► right? But then you read the comments. Don't read the comments, Johnny. Everyone knows that.
00:29:52 ◼ ► Apparently not him. I mean, he's just like, yeah. And the thing is, it's not surprising. So it's not
00:29:58 ◼ ► like he's shocked that people are mean on the internet. But his advice, it's unnecessary. Oh,
00:30:05 ◼ ► We are sponsored this week by Mack Weldon. For 20% off your first order, visit mackweldon.com
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00:32:35 ◼ ► for keeping me comfortable and not stinking all summer. Google I/O is happening, or at least it's
00:32:45 ◼ ► happening as we record this, I watched bits and pieces of the general keynote and I only saw a
00:32:55 ◼ ► tiny bit of what I would call the State of the Union, which I forget what exactly what they
00:32:59 ◼ ► called it, but it's basically the nerd keynote that follows the general purpose keynote.
00:33:04 ◼ ► I don't know how you guys want to handle this. I guess I'll just go in the order of whatever,
00:33:31 ◼ ► So I watched as much of it as I could, which was maybe a quarter of it. But you laughed at
00:33:43 ◼ ► Yeah, I also had time constraints. I had a lot of napping to do today. It was more important than
00:33:56 ◼ ► so I put a bunch of comments in here from tweets and stuff when it was going on, but I think
00:34:01 ◼ ► clearly as far as everything that I've seen, and maybe Marco with the 14-minute supercut can tell
00:34:05 ◼ ► me if I'm missing something, there is one aspect of this keynote that I think is worth discussing
00:34:11 ◼ ► in isolation. And if we have more, next week after all of us have either seen more of Google
00:34:18 ◼ ► I think we should concentrate this discussion on one particular demo, and we all know the demo
00:34:24 ◼ ► we're talking about because I think it is the most interesting and it is emblematic of Google itself
00:34:29 ◼ ► and the whole rest of the thing and the other things that they announced similarly tie into it.
00:34:36 ◼ ► And I guess I'll let our chief summarizer and chief describe that demo since I'm sure he's seen it.
00:34:40 ◼ ► That is one of the things I saw, and my initial reaction—and I'll explain what it is momentarily—my
00:34:47 ◼ ► initial reaction was my chin hitting the floor and just like in Looney Tunes, my tongue rolling out
00:34:58 ◼ ► Yeah, right. I have since had some different thoughts about it, but my initial reaction was,
00:35:05 ◼ ► "Oh my God, I just witnessed the future and it happened today. So what am I talking about?"
00:35:10 ◼ ► I forget exactly how they set up the context, but what they were trying to say was, "Hey,
00:35:20 ◼ ► for four people at a particular restaurant and you knew you wanted it to be perhaps on a certain day,
00:35:36 ◼ ► So Google—I guess it's the Google Assistant, which is their kind of Siri, if you will,
00:35:42 ◼ ► if I'm not mistaken—it will actually, or it is capable of placing a telephone call to that
00:35:49 ◼ ► restaurant on your behalf. Which in and of itself, okay, fine, you know, that's not entirely
00:35:55 ◼ ► surprising. I can just imagine, you know, "Hello, Ritzy restaurant in New York City. Hello,
00:36:01 ◼ ► this is Google," you know, or something like that. But they played a recording of this conversation
00:36:05 ◼ ► and it could not have been further from what I expected. It sounded unnervingly like a human.
00:36:25 ◼ ► Uncanny Valley and went into, "Holy crap, that's real. That almost sounds like a recording of a
00:36:31 ◼ ► human being." And the most fascinating thing about it was, aside from the fact that it was
00:36:41 ◼ ► hmm." You know, like, where, you know, so the maitre d' or whomever on the other end of the line
00:36:48 ◼ ► says, "Oh, you know, we don't have any availability on the ninth with the tenth work." And then Google
00:36:53 ◼ ► said, "Hmm, yeah, that should be fine." You know, it inserted these synthetic pauses and stumbles
00:37:03 ◼ ► and umms and hmmms in a way that was mind-blowing. I could not believe what I was watching. And there
00:37:13 ◼ ► are implications, many implications of this, but if we could just for a moment focus on what we saw
00:37:19 ◼ ► and not really unpack the meaning of it, is that a fair characterization? Like, Marco, what did you
00:37:24 ◼ ► think when you saw the 14-minute demo or the recap? I, you know, I too am very impressed with the
00:37:32 ◼ ► technology behind this, but I think this is such a typical like Silicon Valley and in particular
00:37:40 ◼ ► Google thing to do where you have amazing technical smarts and you're applying them in a way that
00:37:48 ◼ ► probably has some unintended consequences or at least you don't care about the consequences,
00:37:54 ◼ ► whether you intend them or not, and is also kind of creepy and a little unsettling. You know, that's
00:37:59 ◼ ► it's so stereotypically Google. Great AI, great big data service, kind of creepy and not really
00:38:08 ◼ ► getting the human problems here. You know, there's lots of weirdness about this. So one big thing is
00:38:16 ◼ ► like, you know, some people pointed out like what they're basically doing is turning the workers at
00:38:23 ◼ ► restaurants and stuff into unpaid API endpoints. You know, so that's a little bit weird.
00:38:32 ◼ ► The other thing is like, you know, like, you know, I like when I get pizza, my pizza guy, he has like
00:38:38 ◼ ► two iPads at the register that are both running like different apps for all these different like
00:38:44 ◼ ► menu ordering services and pickup services and everything like he has to run like his side of it.
00:38:48 ◼ ► And like you look in like any restaurant these days, like they're busy. They have to be dealing
00:38:52 ◼ ► with all these online ordering systems, all these apps and everything in addition to people actually
00:38:56 ◼ ► calling them on the phone and people coming into the place. The last thing they need is for robocalls
00:39:04 ◼ ► that pretend not to be robocalls, which is a big problem, to be calling them and making these like
00:39:10 ◼ ► kind of human-like but a little bit off requests via voice and kind of taking up their time on the
00:39:17 ◼ ► phone. Like it's just it's kind of weird on a number of levels. It does seem like Google is
00:39:24 ◼ ► taking advantage of the people on the other end, you know, and these are people who don't have time
00:39:28 ◼ ► to deal with BS from Google. Like you as the user of this couldn't be bothered to not pick up the
00:39:36 ◼ ► phone because you're probably already holding the phone but to tap a different spot on the phone
00:39:46 ◼ ► Now I get we don't like making phone calls. I get that. I don't like making phone calls either,
00:39:52 ◼ ► but I would feel way worse about initiating one of these, you know, on the back end on my behalf
00:39:59 ◼ ► than than I would about actually placing that phone call. It's just it's dehumanizing to the
00:40:04 ◼ ► people on the other end. It's wasteful of their time and I think it's a little bit insulting
00:40:11 ◼ ► to try to hide the fact that you are a bot calling them. Like I think that what they should do,
00:40:17 ◼ ► if they're going to do this at all, and I'm not sure they should, but if they're going to do this
00:40:20 ◼ ► at all, they should begin the call with, you know, a quick way of basically saying what's going on.
00:40:26 ◼ ► To be basically saying, "Hi, this is the Google Assistant calling on behalf of John Syracuse. Do
00:40:31 ◼ ► you have a reservation for this date?" Like make it very clear and stop with the fake um's and m's.
00:40:37 ◼ ► All that is doing is trying to trick people and that is not in good faith. That is trying to take
00:40:44 ◼ ► advantage of people and try to trick them into playing into your API without being willing
00:40:49 ◼ ► participants of that. And that's just that's just kind of sleazy. I just I don't like that. And if
00:40:56 ◼ ► they did it the the robotic way, like where they actually just say what it is and they're upfront
00:41:01 ◼ ► about it, that at least is, you know, it's not trying to trick anybody. It is still wasteful of
00:41:07 ◼ ► people's time and I still would feel bad about initiating that call, but I at least wouldn't feel
00:41:11 ◼ ► like I was like, I don't know, just like yeah deceiving people. It's just it's just a weird
00:41:16 ◼ ► thing. And you know there's there's other feature that I think one of you wants to bring up about
00:41:21 ◼ ► calling about holiday hours where apparently like on holidays where hours might be different
00:41:28 ◼ ► they will call the the place like once in the morning to see what the hours are and then they'll
00:41:34 ◼ ► just cache those results so that allegedly it saves them from all these phone calls all day.
00:41:45 ◼ ► When you think about the ramifications of before if the person on the other end of the phone
00:41:51 ◼ ► you know said the wrong thing once in the morning to one person it affected one potential customer.
00:41:57 ◼ ► Now if you slip up and say the wrong thing once in the morning it could affect all your customers
00:42:01 ◼ ► that day who would have come there from search. There are ramifications to these kinds of things
00:42:06 ◼ ► that really just seem not really that good for the local businesses that are on the other side of
00:42:13 ◼ ► this. And it's all all of this is to create minor conveniences for lazy tech dudes who can't not
00:42:21 ◼ ► just pick up the phone because the phone's already in their hand but can't literally push one button
00:42:25 ◼ ► on the phone to tap that phone number and call them instead. And I think that I think this is
00:42:35 ◼ ► and potentially wasting their time. So I want to talk about the technology behind this because I
00:42:40 ◼ ► think that's you know Casey's first impression was based on the the dazzling tech and that's
00:42:47 ◼ ► how I like to think about these things and think about how they could find themselves in a position
00:42:52 ◼ ► where they're using this technology in this particular way. But first you have to talk about
00:42:54 ◼ ► the tech. And the tech they're showing is obviously you know speech to text because the person on the
00:43:04 ◼ ► other end of the phone call says things and Google Assistant has to figure out what it is they're
00:43:08 ◼ ► saying so it's going to convert their speech into text. Then it has to have some understanding of
00:43:13 ◼ ► what it is that they said and then it also has to have some understanding of what its mission is.
00:43:18 ◼ ► I'm going to try to get a reservation for this time for this many people right and the parameters
00:43:24 ◼ ► of that mission you know all the different things like what if nothing's available what if they don't
00:43:30 ◼ ► have they have a particular call where they couldn't reserve a table for that many people like
00:43:35 ◼ ► you know so it has to have that mission and has to understand what the person says and then it has to
00:43:39 ◼ ► be able to engage in a conversation a back and forth of saying you said this now I say this and
00:43:44 ◼ ► keeping the state of it all in its mind you know sort of semantic analysis of when when you say
00:43:49 ◼ ► that that you when you make that sound thing on the other end of the phone it means these words
00:43:55 ◼ ► and these words mean this actual you know message or meaning and that applies to what we've said in
00:44:06 ◼ ► researching and developing that tech I think is really important a really important area of
00:44:11 ◼ ► research because if you can do that better than we currently can by some appreciable degree
00:44:20 ◼ ► many interesting opportunities come up like if I told you that even if it's for a very narrow
00:44:26 ◼ ► domain like making an appointment or something like that whatever you know pick it pick the
00:44:29 ◼ ► narrow domain of your choosing if I told you I could get a computer to understand meaning
00:44:35 ◼ ► behind things that you say and to engage you in a conversation to to accomplish a goal if you've
00:44:41 ◼ ► been listening to me talk about cylinders in the show for a long time it's been my push in the past
00:44:47 ◼ ► several months worth of shows when we were talking about homepod and everything that I want to engage
00:44:51 ◼ ► my cylinder in a conversation and work towards a goal right it's the same exact tech only the
00:44:57 ◼ ► difference here is I'm initiating the conversation I know I'm talking to a cylinder because it's in
00:45:02 ◼ ► my own house and it's sitting right there there's no deception involved and I would find that
00:45:07 ◼ ► interaction better than having to initiate a series of commands or make a macro for myself
00:45:15 ◼ ► or no particular syntax or whatever and even just within the realm of the things that cylinders are
00:45:21 ◼ ► supposed to already do to to be able to have the extra smarts on display here to understand
00:45:26 ◼ ► nuances of speech and to to understand like the overall mission of what I'm trying to accomplish
00:45:32 ◼ ► and to help me refine it and narrow it and to be helpful that technology is incredibly important
00:45:37 ◼ ► and should be developed and so I applaud Google for doing that this of all the places where this
00:45:45 ◼ ► technology could be applied I would not have even predicted that this would be worthy because they
00:45:49 ◼ ► they have a thing called Google Assistant this is just like this they're a cylinder in my house with
00:45:53 ◼ ► Google Assistant on it they have phones like isn't that the first most obvious application of that
00:45:58 ◼ ► anyway but setting that aside second aspect related to the application that they that they
00:46:03 ◼ ► are showing here which is all we're going to make a phone call for you for you behind the scenes which
00:46:07 ◼ ► by the way you don't get to hear this phone call you just talk to the assistant and it says okay
00:46:11 ◼ ► I'll make that reservation for you and then you just wait and wait and wait and in the background
00:46:14 ◼ ► it's having a phone call that you don't get to hear and don't participate in any way right and
00:46:18 ◼ ► then it comes back to you and says yeah I totally made that reservation for you in that particular
00:46:24 ◼ ► application of this technology the pitch is that you know you don't have to be involved with this
00:46:32 ◼ ► don't worry about the details but Google Assistant will handle it and all the the things that Marco
00:46:37 ◼ ► was talking about you know how how deceptive it is and how disrespectful it is to the person at
00:46:42 ◼ ► the end and how it like how it isn't that hard to think of a much more respectful way to do this
00:46:47 ◼ ► like by pre-announcing yourself and so on and so forth but that's not what they chose to do that
00:46:51 ◼ ► they're really leaning on the fact that they can you know fake you out by pretending to be human
00:46:55 ◼ ► which by the way I think I think they're still are in the uncanny valley uh you can you can tell
00:47:00 ◼ ► these things are not quite human just like they're still in the uncanny valley it's not totally gonna
00:47:04 ◼ ► it's way better than it was before even even in the canned demo they did it like the way when when
00:47:10 ◼ ► they when it asked for noon and it said you know we don't have anything and like the way the way
00:47:15 ◼ ► that the assistant like re-asked yeah do you have anything between 10 a.m and 12 p.m like no one
00:47:21 ◼ ► talks like that like this is your demo this is your canned demo like it's obviously like almost
00:47:25 ◼ ► any response you get from a human being has a pretty high chance of not being of like being some
00:47:33 ◼ ► kind of like slightly exceptional condition or things that require more explanation that the
00:47:38 ◼ ► Google Assistant will respond in some way that makes it clear like either this is a really weird
00:47:42 ◼ ► person or this is not a person yeah it seems very unlike a person and that that leads me to my next
00:47:52 ◼ ► and it also you know is related to the deception angle here this thing no matter how good it is no
00:48:03 ◼ ► matter how long it's in beta it's going to fall over a lot and when it does because it's a really
00:48:11 ◼ ► hard problem like it's you you can you will be trivially easy to be able to to stump this thing
00:48:18 ◼ ► and to have it start saying nonsensical computery things that are not related to what you say that
00:48:23 ◼ ► to the point where the person would hang up on it right because everyone sees this demo it's like
00:48:28 ◼ ► whole it's how 9000 we're there it's like you are not there like that last 10 just like self-driving
00:48:33 ◼ ► cars the level five automation right that last little bit is that's a mountain that's way bigger
00:48:38 ◼ ► than you think it is right and so even though it seems like we're right around the corner it's like
00:48:41 ◼ ► oh morris love will be there in two seconds it's way harder than you think and so if you start off
00:48:45 ◼ ► this conversation with the deception like if that's your goal it will be 100 times worse when
00:48:51 ◼ ► the thing falls on its face and it will fall on its face a lot and from from the business's
00:48:57 ◼ ► perspective obviously ideally they would all have actual apis and not humans but if they don't want
00:49:01 ◼ ► to do that from the business's perspective they want your business they want this reservation
00:49:07 ◼ ► if you pre-announced and said this is the google assistant i'm a computer acting on behalf of a
00:49:12 ◼ ► person blah blah blah after the first four or five calls of that type the person at the other end
00:49:17 ◼ ► would know how to most efficiently deal with the stupid computer thing to get the reservation
00:49:21 ◼ ► because they want the reservation they want the money right it's the whole reason people set up
00:49:25 ◼ ► like with all these apps and everything right and maybe it will motivate them to get on one of these
00:49:28 ◼ ► apps to not have to deal with these stupid computer phone calls but they'll you know it's
00:49:31 ◼ ► better than not getting a reservation at all right um but if the thing's gonna fall over like like
00:49:38 ◼ ► like phone trees like when we you know when you call the support thing we all know their phone
00:49:42 ◼ ► trees and we all know their their various failure modes by this point and we know how to navigate
00:49:46 ◼ ► them efficiently i would much rather have that than something that tries to fool me into thinking
00:49:50 ◼ ► it's human but then like goes berserk and now i have to go oh i i waste all this time talking to
00:49:55 ◼ ► you like a human when i should have just been playing you like a video game to get to the point
00:49:58 ◼ ► where we we make the reservation like let's just let me you know text adventure all over again
00:50:03 ◼ ► uh so you know i don't even if people see this and they think this is a great feature and it has
00:50:12 ◼ ► important applicability in my life is that that's another point on this that some of the comments i
00:50:16 ◼ ► pulled out here like there are places where this exact feature is actually really important for
00:50:20 ◼ ► people who literally can't make that reservation themselves and do want to appear as human as
00:50:24 ◼ ► possible right there's an accessibility angle to this um but even in those situations even in the
00:50:30 ◼ ► most optimistic scenario my advice to anyone watching this is do not expect this to work
00:50:36 ◼ ► even as well as it did in the demos all the time because it won't like it will it will work and you
00:50:43 ◼ ► know it's like it doesn't always work with humans sometimes it's difficult for human to make
00:50:47 ◼ ► reservations sometimes you can't hear anything in the restaurant sometimes people are ornery
00:50:50 ◼ ► sometimes they hang up and you sometimes you lose your cell signal right but the success rate of
00:50:54 ◼ ► this thing is going to be way lower than people think it does we are a long way off from me even
00:50:59 ◼ ► with limited limited domain we are a long way off from basically from passing the Turing test now it
00:51:05 ◼ ► doesn't mean your reservation is not going to be a success because once the other person on the other
00:51:09 ◼ ► end figures out that it's a computer they'll play the little game and they'll get the reservation
00:51:12 ◼ ► because they want the sale right but don't get starry-eyed about how you know amazing i mean it
00:51:18 ◼ ► it is an amazing leap from anything that we may have seen before but it is still so far from the
00:51:24 ◼ ► whatever the equivalent of level level five self-driving automation is for having a conversation
00:51:29 ◼ ► with a human even within a limited domain begins humans are inscrutable and is really difficult to
00:51:35 ◼ ► you just can't account for everything they're going to say and do you can't account for all
00:51:38 ◼ ► the nuances you just it's like the reason they work at all is because when the computer acts
00:51:43 ◼ ► like a like a pig-headed computer the person eventually best case reverts to thinking this
00:51:48 ◼ ► is just a pig-headed person who's not listening to what i say and like they're just they just have a
00:51:53 ◼ ► one-track mind and they just want to make this reservation and they they didn't understand what
00:51:57 ◼ ► i said back to them because they're just they're not paying attention or maybe they're driving or
00:52:01 ◼ ► something and then you just roll their eyes like that's the best case scenario um but yeah the if
00:52:07 ◼ ► and when they actually launch this i can't wait to see all of the uh the conversations that the
00:52:12 ◼ ► people manage to get this thing into where it just goes completely off the rails because it's a hard
00:52:16 ◼ ► problem and that's why we're also impressed by it's such a hard problem it's like i didn't even
00:52:19 ◼ ► know we were this far along we're surely we're within striking distance and i think that we are
00:52:23 ◼ ► not within striking distance oh and you can even just picture like you know what if the person on
00:52:28 ◼ ► the other end has follow-up questions okay you want a reservation where what part of the restaurant
00:52:33 ◼ ► is simply like that or like oh do you want do you want table outside or inside you know or like
00:52:37 ◼ ► you're ordering a pizza oh do you want a medium or a large the most misguided one was when he's
00:52:41 ◼ ► you know obviously it's forward-looking this was sundar pichai was the person doing the thing i
00:52:46 ◼ ► think i don't know uh anyway the presenter said you know we don't have a lot of time so maybe like
00:52:51 ◼ ► your your kid is sick and you need to make a doctor's resume a doctor's appointment for them
00:52:56 ◼ ► like have you ever made a doctor's appointment for a sick kid that conversation involves a lot
00:53:04 ◼ ► of questions about what's wrong with your kid and did you take their temperature and how are
00:53:08 ◼ ► they feeling and when's the last time they threw up and you know but like no computer is for i
00:53:13 ◼ ► hell i get on that call and i feel like i have to have like information ready like to be like
00:53:19 ◼ ► when's the last time they came in when's this but you'd be like there is no way i would let
00:53:23 ◼ ► a computer make that call i barely think i myself am competent to make that call right maybe i would
00:53:29 ◼ ► let them make the call to the school to tell them that they're not going to be in that day but really
00:53:32 ◼ ► the schools just have a website where you can click something because that's stupid but uh
00:53:35 ◼ ► i'm like yeah that was that was the wrong example ordering food making a reservation something with
00:53:40 ◼ ► the business transaction where the person on the other end is motivated to deal with my crap
00:53:44 ◼ ► computerized crap or otherwise because i'm sure those people deal with people crap all the time
00:53:48 ◼ ► too people being rude when they make reservations externally being inscrutable right they're
00:53:53 ◼ ► motivated at least to do that but like my doctor is not motivated to listen to my computer my doctor
00:53:58 ◼ ► like the whoever answers the the desk has a ton of questions about my kid very specific questions
00:54:04 ◼ ► determine whether you should even come in oh we don't take pink eye in the office you should do
00:54:08 ◼ ► this and that and what do you want to do and what pharmacy is near like no way a computer can handle
00:54:12 ◼ ► that um so i think they're they're uh i hesitate to say the heart is in the right place i actually
00:54:20 ◼ ► think it is i think the heart is in the right place in terms of doing this research and and
00:54:23 ◼ ► having the overall goal of trying to help people but the way they're going about it baffles me
00:54:29 ◼ ► because like i said they have they have a cylinder that they sell you that i would love to talk to in
00:54:33 ◼ ► this way they would not involve deception at all and if my cylinder could talk to me like this
00:54:37 ◼ ► within the limited domain of music or appointments or whatever it would be an amazing advance of how
00:54:42 ◼ ► i talked over how i talked to my cylinder today but they didn't demo that they demoed it making
00:54:46 ◼ ► phone calls for you which just boggles my mind i think this is to my eyes a very good example of
00:54:56 ◼ ► just because we can doesn't mean we should which is basically the summary of all of silicon valley
00:55:02 ◼ ► in my personal opinion like it it's it's so obvious like you know after i saw the technology
00:55:11 ◼ ► which again i cannot stress enough i think the technology is amazing and like you said which is
00:55:16 ◼ ► what i was going to bring up you know there is an accessibility angle wherein i think this is
00:55:19 ◼ ► more reasonable like if i am mute if i literally cannot talk on the phone yeah or if you have a
00:55:25 ◼ ► speech impediment or if you have say like maybe you have to call a place where you don't speak
00:55:30 ◼ ► their language very well or you have a thick accent that's sometimes misunderstood a lot
00:55:33 ◼ ► like there's lots of accessibility reasons for this kind of technology but sheer laziness is not
00:55:40 ◼ ► it but the application would be different there you'd be speaking through it you would like you
00:55:43 ◼ ► would you would want to be in on the conversation in other words you wouldn't want to go off and do
00:55:47 ◼ ► it completely on its own you would want to like in most situations where someone has a synthetic
00:55:52 ◼ ► voice speaking for them they don't want to leave the room when it's happening like they if they
00:55:55 ◼ ► can be there and see your face or hear you or hear the other end of the conversation or monitor it or
00:56:01 ◼ ► otherwise nudge it in the right direction like they want to be some kind of participant and not
00:56:05 ◼ ► just like you know set it sail and just let the computer do what it's going to do like and getting
00:56:11 ◼ ► to cases like just because you can doesn't mean you should like it's it's more subtle than that
00:56:15 ◼ ► because they can and should develop this technology but it's exactly it's exactly how you choose to
00:56:21 ◼ ► apply it and the subtle difference between what they demoed and talking to your cylinder which
00:56:26 ◼ ► seemed like it's not the same thing it's a human talking to a computer having this conversation
00:56:30 ◼ ► but the difference like the difference is subtle and it's telling that this is how they chose to
00:56:35 ◼ ► show this off maybe because it's seemingly the most impressive but it is the the most ill-conceived
00:56:41 ◼ ► and like and and i don't even think like i say it's ill-conceived just because of the world we
00:56:47 ◼ ► were living now it could be as many have pointed out that like you know once this genie's out of
00:56:51 ◼ ► the bottle we will deal with it the same way we deal with the stupid phone trees which we could
00:56:56 ◼ ► have had the same exact conversation about because they have a lot of the same problems
00:56:59 ◼ ► it's disrespectful for the caller sometimes you get tricked into thinking it's human but eventually
00:57:03 ◼ ► we just all get used to it we get used to the disrespect we all learn to very quickly pick up
00:57:08 ◼ ► on the cues of whether this is a pre-recorded human's voice or not right despite how they try
00:57:13 ◼ ► to fool us and they do try to fool you on those stupid phone trees sometimes we just all get used
00:57:17 ◼ ► to it and we accept it and i fully expect that this turns out to be popular this could totally
00:57:22 ◼ ► happen with that technology as well but i still maintain that if you have this technology and are
00:57:27 ◼ ► advancing it this is not the most bang for your buck there are better ways to apply this technology
00:57:33 ◼ ► that will be more useful and more helpful to more people than this specific detailed implementation
00:57:39 ◼ ► even for the accessibility angle most people would want to probably identify themselves as i'm
00:57:45 ◼ ► speaking through this thing right maybe they wouldn't maybe i'm wrong with that i don't know
00:57:48 ◼ ► but it seems like that when things fall apart you'd want there to be some kind of explanation
00:57:54 ◼ ► like if you see someone in person and they're using an assistive device to talk to you understand
00:57:57 ◼ ► what the deal is and you can accommodate that right but if you think you're just talking to
00:58:01 ◼ ► a regular person don't realize that someone who has to use this to communicate with you give you
00:58:06 ◼ ► know have some sort of allowance so that i think that would help as well so you know i don't i'm
00:58:11 ◼ ► not even going to go so far as to say that this is a way this technology should never be used
00:58:16 ◼ ► i'm willing to believe that this is a way this technology will be used that when we're all 80
00:58:21 ◼ ► it will be so boring that no one will even talk about it anymore but right here and now
00:58:30 ◼ ► can you imagine if it was siri making these calls it'd be like you know hi can i have an appointment
00:58:35 ◼ ► between 10 and noon and the other person's like sure i have one at 10 and sierra would be like
00:58:39 ◼ ► what do you want to convert 10 to all right thinking ask again later i found this on the
00:58:45 ◼ ► internet for you i don't know it's just it's so tough because again i can't stress enough my
00:58:53 ◼ ► my initial reaction was so overwhelmingly positive but then the moment i really started thinking about
00:58:57 ◼ ► this i was like oh this is this is kind of creepy and i don't know i i maybe it's just me but i feel
00:59:05 ◼ ► like this is just silicon valley in a nutshell like it's a bunch of it's a bunch of people
00:59:11 ◼ ► probably dudes probably entitled dudes just thinking you know what i really just don't want
00:59:16 ◼ ► to be bothered making a reservation like i'm i'm too good for that my time is too valuable so what
00:59:20 ◼ ► can i do i can use the whole of human technology to fake something that sounds like a human to make
00:59:27 ◼ ► that reservation for me it's just so i guess i could see where you'd come away with that on this
00:59:32 ◼ ► but i i really think that there is actually a little kernel of the 70s era silicon valley
00:59:37 ◼ ► idealism in this as well perhaps a naive idealism which is also part of it but and you know it was
00:59:43 ◼ ► phrased as saving you time and you can say okay it's got to save you time because you're so
00:59:46 ◼ ► important your time is so valuable because you're you know a rich tech nerd but first of all this
00:59:51 ◼ ► technology is not exclusively available to rich people um sure is is android is very democratizing
00:59:58 ◼ ► technology it's available on cheapo phones everywhere it have a lot of it happens on the
01:00:03 ◼ ► servers you don't need to have an expensive device and the way it was framed for the most part was
01:00:07 ◼ ► we're trying to help people with their lives people have challenges in their lives everybody
01:00:15 ◼ ► does and we want to help them solve the problems they have whether this is you know the biggest
01:00:21 ◼ ► problem or the way people would want it to be solved that was the stage of motivation and
01:00:25 ◼ ► andy and ocho had very optimistic take on this when he was tweeting it in real time and he kept
01:00:35 ◼ ► not directly most of the time but more or less indirectly contrasting themselves with facebook
01:00:43 ◼ ► basically this is andy uh interpreting what they're saying it's like they mean google are trying to
01:00:47 ◼ ► say facebook uses its power to abuse your privacy and exploit you and undermine institutions we use
01:00:53 ◼ ► our power we mean google to help you and improve your life and that was the message use google
01:00:58 ◼ ► products because you have challenges in your lives and google products will help you overcome them
01:01:03 ◼ ► and again i see the elite angle on there but i think the the populist sort of techno optimism of
01:01:13 ◼ ► we take amazing technology make it available to everybody for free or cheap and it helps them with
01:01:19 ◼ ► their lives is a very sort of 70s silicon valley bicycle for the mind personal computer on every
01:01:25 ◼ ► desk utopian philosophy again perhaps naive but i think like i said the heart is in the right place
01:01:31 ◼ ► this type of thing um they you know there are other aspects of the presentation we'll probably
01:01:35 ◼ ► talk about next week like the digital well-being stuff um what was the other thing like the well
01:01:41 ◼ ► developing on chromebooks the whole chromebook angle too why they even do that they have a
01:01:45 ◼ ► cheapo computers like this i'm i mostly give google the benefit of the doubt on this front
01:01:50 ◼ ► especially because uh well i was gonna say especially because it's it's it is less clearly
01:01:57 ◼ ► tied to advertising it's still tied to commerce right but it's less clearly tied to this is a way
01:02:02 ◼ ► for us to show you more ads right i mean it's a way to gather more information about you so they
01:02:05 ◼ ► can show you more ads but anyway i really believe that people working on this project think that
01:02:09 ◼ ► the technology they're developing the ability of a computer to understand and negate in a conversation
01:02:14 ◼ ► a little problem limited problem domain can help humanity i believe it can help humanity
01:02:20 ◼ ► just i'm not sure they've figured out quite how yet we are sponsored this week by ero finally wi-fi
01:02:28 ◼ ► that works we all know that one wi-fi router does not cover most places very well because there's
01:02:35 ◼ ► things like walls that no matter how many antennas you put on your router there's going to be like
01:02:39 ◼ ► small dead zones or rooms where it doesn't reach or the very edge of your yard where you have a
01:02:44 ◼ ► smart bulb that you really want to reach but it just doesn't what you need is a distributed system
01:02:49 ◼ ► that broadcasts wi-fi from multiple physical points in a big mesh now this is what schools
01:02:54 ◼ ► and businesses and things have used for years but they have to use you know expensive and hard to
01:02:58 ◼ ► administer enterprise stuff ero brings enterprise grade hardware and features to consumers in an
01:03:05 ◼ ► incredibly easy to use package it's the easiest setup i've ever seen of any router let alone a
01:03:11 ◼ ► mesh system it's incredibly easy you launch the ero app it sets you through the whole thing you
01:03:15 ◼ ► start out with the ero base station you connect that the same way you can take any other router
01:03:19 ◼ ► you connect it to your internet connection then you plug in the ero beacons that you have the
01:03:24 ◼ ► additional ero beacons and these are going to communicate with that base station and broadcast
01:03:29 ◼ ► a nice mesh of wi-fi all around your house the app will help you place the beacons in effective
01:03:34 ◼ ► locations you can measure their speed to make sure you're putting them places where they're actually
01:03:37 ◼ ► going to work and not like stepping on each other's toes or anything and your experience is seamless
01:03:42 ◼ ► you walk around your house you're gonna you only see one network and it just covers everything it's
01:03:47 ◼ ► wonderful and again i can't stress how easy it is to use if you need any help they do have great
01:03:52 ◼ ► support as well but i have a feeling you won't need it so see for yourself how easy ero is i've
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01:04:20 ◼ ► our show so this past week was the uh 20th anniversary of the original iMac and lots of our
01:04:30 ◼ ► friends in the in the apple and writing world have given wonderful retrospectives and lots of our
01:04:37 ◼ ► podcasting friends have had lots of great talks about it when the iMac came out in 1998 right yeah
01:04:45 ◼ ► i was still a pc person i mostly ignored it like i ignored almost everything apple did back then
01:04:51 ◼ ► because i was a pc person but i do want to talk about one part of the iMac that did have a lot to
01:04:58 ◼ ► do with the pc world because we shared it with them i want to have retrospective instead on
01:05:03 ◼ ► it said about the iMac my retrospective is about USB and quite how much USB changed the world
01:05:10 ◼ ► back then like it was just it was like this new port and it was hyped and it was you know
01:05:15 ◼ ► everything that any new technology product got back then you know standard level of hype but
01:05:19 ◼ ► i didn't fully realize like until a few years in quite how how much USB changed things for one
01:05:27 ◼ ► it was a very inexpensive standard on all sides it was inexpensive to host in the computer side
01:05:39 ◼ ► it was just very cheap and simple to implement this is why it beat firewire at pretty much
01:05:48 ◼ ► USB is really cheap to implement it also uses really cheap simple cables and connectors
01:05:54 ◼ ► USB cables were standardized a long time ago and so even as the user when you're buying USB stuff
01:06:00 ◼ ► it's generally not only does it cost less to to buy up front but also like you probably already
01:06:05 ◼ ► have a cable for it so for things that don't come with cables you don't usually have to buy one you
01:06:09 ◼ ► usually have them and you can keep USB cables around and use them with lots of different
01:06:13 ◼ ► devices over time so it was just very inexpensive on all sides and that benefits pretty much
01:06:19 ◼ ► everybody also compared to other things at the time you know when USB was introduced in the late 90s
01:06:25 ◼ ► the competitors on the PC side were basically serial ports parallel ports and SCSI and and
01:06:34 ◼ ► SCSI was very rare on PCs like it was you'd see it like on high-end workstations and servers
01:06:39 ◼ ► i know max used a little a little bit more but on PC most almost no PCs sold to consumers had
01:06:44 ◼ ► SCSI cards you could buy one but it was just they were expensive and SCSI was you know it was like
01:06:48 ◼ ► a big ribbon cable interface it was just a big parallel thing it was a big pain in the butt
01:06:53 ◼ ► you had to have like SCSI terminators on the end of the SCSI chain it was just a big pain USB came
01:06:59 ◼ ► and replaced all of that on the PC side with these small connectors with small thin cables the cables
01:07:07 ◼ ► could be way longer they could be up to 15 feet long they were widely available pretty much
01:07:13 ◼ ► everywhere you can get them in lots of different lengths different colors if you wanted USB also
01:07:18 ◼ ► introduced i think for the first time in the PC side bus powered devices keyboards had their own
01:07:23 ◼ ► power through the ps2 port but like other low power devices could get their power from the port
01:07:29 ◼ ► so they wouldn't need their own power supplies this is again like another massive innovation in USB
01:07:35 ◼ ► and and i mean the number of innovations in USB this is why i i was thinking about this on my dog
01:07:40 ◼ ► walk yesterday like i was just enumerating in my head like all the all the things that USB changed
01:07:45 ◼ ► for the first time it's a huge list so another another big thing just the sheer number of ports
01:07:51 ◼ ► you could have on a computer you know until recently USB ports were quite plentiful you know
01:07:56 ◼ ► like couldn't help it could you no of course not most PCs sold back then had two serial ports and
01:08:05 ◼ ► one parallel port and two ps2 ports those are keyboard and mouse but then almost all your
01:08:10 ◼ ► peripherals had to be a serial port which you only had two of or the parallel port which was
01:08:13 ◼ ► usually your printer and that's it otherwise if you wanted to add on more than that you usually
01:08:18 ◼ ► had to buy an expansion card and stick it to one of your card slots with USB you could have more
01:08:24 ◼ ► ports and usually you know the the very first USB controllers came with two ports and fairly soon in
01:08:31 ◼ ► PC history four became standard and now there's even way more than that and then also huge game
01:08:37 ◼ ► changer hubs to add more ports this was not possible with serial ports or parallel ports
01:08:45 ◼ ► and and SCSI could do like a chain up to a certain amount but it was a pain and anyway again that was
01:08:51 ◼ ► pretty much unheard of in consumer PCs there was never there's no such thing as a serial port hub
01:08:57 ◼ ► or a parallel port hub that could multiply your parallel port into more more parallel ports again
01:09:02 ◼ ► adding more ports meant adding expansion cards or just not having more ports so that was another
01:09:09 ◼ ► massive change then on top of that was the whole family of things that went into what was called
01:09:16 ◼ ► at the time breathlessly plug and play and we made fun of Microsoft relentlessly for how bad
01:09:23 ◼ ► plug and play was in windows 95 and everything but the fact is there's a number of things about USB
01:09:29 ◼ ► that changed everything about peripherals number one you could connect and disconnect things
01:09:34 ◼ ► without turning off the computer or having to reboot to get them to start working this was huge
01:09:40 ◼ ► like if you wanted to install a new you know device on one of your other ports a lot of times
01:09:46 ◼ ► you'd have to reboot or turn the computer physically off to do it either safely or in a
01:09:50 ◼ ► way that worked and you know obviously also if you're putting in cards then you have to turn the
01:09:54 ◼ ► computer all the way off and but leave it plugged in so it's grounded uh nobody ever did that but
01:09:58 ◼ ► anyway that was a huge huge pain right there solved by actually hot plugging and unplugging
01:10:04 ◼ ► things then the way devices would communicate to the computer before USB there really wasn't
01:10:12 ◼ ► a way for devices to self-identify with the computer the way the architecture worked would
01:10:18 ◼ ► be like you'd install a sound card and the sound card would have jumpers or dip switches on it
01:10:24 ◼ ► that would pre-configure it like it would hard configure it to be addressable by a certain
01:10:29 ◼ ► i/o address and certain interrupts certain irq's and dmas remember all this oh yeah when you would
01:10:34 ◼ ► set up your sound card in your game that you were playing or whatever you would have to tell the
01:10:39 ◼ ► game okay i have a sound blaster 16 it's at i/o address 220 irq 5 dma1 and you had to make sure
01:10:48 ◼ ► that was right according to the jumpers on the card because if it wasn't it just wouldn't work
01:10:52 ◼ ► right there was no way for your card to tell the computer i'm a sound blaster 16 i'm an audio
01:10:58 ◼ ► device here's how you talk to me here's where i am usb brought all of that in one standard in
01:11:05 ◼ ► addition to you know the nice cables and ports and hubs and everything it brought device
01:11:11 ◼ ► self-identification and auto-configuring of things like how to address it that changed so many things
01:11:18 ◼ ► it made so many things better and then combined with that the other massive change with usb
01:11:25 ◼ ► is that it introduced something called standard class compliant profiles so this includes we
01:11:37 ◼ ► so what this means is that you could for the first time i think you could make like a standard usb
01:11:45 ◼ ► sound card and you could plug it into a computer the computer would see it because of plug and play
01:11:50 ◼ ► it would know how to address it and you could make it so that it required no drivers at all because
01:11:55 ◼ ► it could it could it would just conform to the usb audio class compliance standard same thing you
01:12:02 ◼ ► could do the same thing with keyboards mice game pads joysticks and then eventually mass storage
01:12:08 ◼ ► hard drives sd card stuff like that like anything that like there was this whole class network cards
01:12:14 ◼ ► video capture devices all of these things could be driverless that people could sell a you know
01:12:21 ◼ ► a device or whatever that you didn't have to install their terrible driver on i can't tell you
01:12:26 ◼ ► how much hardware that i had to either give up using or that never worked right at all because of
01:12:32 ◼ ► random problems with their drivers in the pc world like or the or they wouldn't update their driver
01:12:37 ◼ ► for windows 98 or whatever like it was just it was always a pain and so the more you could do without
01:12:42 ◼ ► drivers better usb brought that world before usb you had to do pretty much everything with custom
01:12:48 ◼ ► drivers with usb you had standard class compliant profiles that also meant that max and linux pcs
01:12:57 ◼ ► were usually able to use them too and we still see those advantages today because when you when
01:13:03 ◼ ► you have usb standard class compliant things they also for instance work on ios devices through the
01:13:08 ◼ ► camera connection kit with no configuration no drivers nothing like that all of this was back
01:13:13 ◼ ► like in 1998 and a lot of what made the iMac possible and what made it great and what made it
01:13:20 ◼ ► work was really usb and you know we complain a lot about the current standards and everything but like
01:13:26 ◼ ► usb still has all these things and all of that started back then so all of our friends are
01:13:31 ◼ ► talking about how the iMac changed everything for apple and that's great i think they're right but i
01:13:35 ◼ ► wasn't there for that part i was in the pc world and what we saw was that usb changed everything
01:13:41 ◼ ► for us well i have a couple minor corrections for uh marco in the pc world based on old mac stuff
01:13:48 ◼ ► the most part i agree with what you said but uh scuzzy on the mac scuzzy was everywhere on the
01:13:54 ◼ ► early days of the mac it wasn't just like a a niche feature that was on just the high end max
01:13:58 ◼ ► it was everywhere yeah because max were expensive lol yeah that's true um uh usb uh was part of
01:14:06 ◼ ► uh a transition that started slightly before usb when the the io chips and and basically the price
01:14:14 ◼ ► of compute and uh uh went down to the point where there was a realization that you could get uh less
01:14:22 ◼ ► expensive and faster io by having uh by doing a very fast serial interface than a parallel one like
01:14:31 ◼ ► scuzzy was kind of the culmination of like look we need lots of data and we needed to go fast so
01:14:35 ◼ ► let's send it all at once in parallel down these gigantic cables and be really careful with that
01:14:39 ◼ ► electrical interference induced terminators and blah blah blah right uh because that was the way
01:14:43 ◼ ► you know it's kind of like you know oh we need we need more traffic on this road let's add more
01:14:47 ◼ ► lanes right uh and then the uh the analogy falls down here with the cars thing but like imagine
01:14:52 ◼ ► you say no instead of having a bunch of lanes with lots of cars in them let's just have one lane and
01:14:58 ◼ ► send the cars at the speed of light and have something that can somehow deal with with shoving
01:15:03 ◼ ► the cars quickly into this little tiny string straw so the price of compute went to the point
01:15:06 ◼ ► where they realized serial interfaces were the future not parallel interfaces we'd basically
01:15:11 ◼ ► taken parallel interface as far as they could go we realized how how problematic they were
01:15:16 ◼ ► uh they're just finicky and big i mean i had scuzzy cables that were like the thickness of like a
01:15:29 ◼ ► very capable and you could daisy chain them which was interesting but but serial interfaces were the
01:15:35 ◼ ► future and on that front what apple had for a long time before usb came along which had a lot
01:15:40 ◼ ► of the benefits that you cited was apple desktop bus adb was used to connect essentially the
01:15:45 ◼ ► keyboard and mouse and they had serial ports that had a similar looking connector for printers and
01:15:49 ◼ ► stuff that worked more like you would expect a pc serial port to do but a keyboard and mice
01:15:54 ◼ ► uh i don't think there were any ever any adb hubs that i suppose there could have been but
01:15:58 ◼ ► the keyboard had an adb port on one side that you would connect to the computer and you could
01:16:03 ◼ ► connect your mouse to a port on the other side of the keyboard which should look familiar to anybody
01:16:07 ◼ ► who has a usb keyboard with two uh usb ports on it where you connect your your wired mouse to the
01:16:12 ◼ ► keyboard if you still have a wired mouse back in the day right you could plug and unplug adb
01:16:17 ◼ ► peripherals while the computer was on and sparks did not fly and the computer understood what you
01:16:21 ◼ ► were doing and whatever you plugged in your computer would find it and figure it obviously
01:16:24 ◼ ► it's apple desktop bus it's proprietary it's not an interesting standard so of course apple could
01:16:28 ◼ ► do this because they understood where all the peripherals came from and they had their own
01:16:31 ◼ ► standards for how they identified themselves um and adb was a serial bus mostly because you know
01:16:38 ◼ ► it was for low bandwidth things and they didn't have to make it parallel right uh but those
01:16:43 ◼ ► benefits a lot of the benefits of this sort of the usability of usb and the convenience of it
01:16:49 ◼ ► apple had been enjoying since the mac se and the mac 2 or whenever adb was introduced that's i
01:16:53 ◼ ► think that's when they they both came out um when usb came along it seemed like uh the next logical
01:17:01 ◼ ► step because it's a serial interface because we can make serial instances fast and cheap
01:17:05 ◼ ► the cables are thin and not giant thick disgusting scuzzy things the connectors were despite all our
01:17:12 ◼ ► complaints about you know the the externally symmetrical and internally asymmetrical incredibly
01:17:17 ◼ ► infuriating uh usb-a connectors they definitely looked more modern than adb because adb had like
01:17:23 ◼ ► actual little pins inside it it was like it was from the old era of like you know pins going into
01:17:27 ◼ ► little holes and the back of your thing with like a metal sheath around it and apple did a pretty
01:17:32 ◼ ► good job trying to make it so you understood the orientation because the connector itself was round
01:17:40 ◼ ► casing of them flat on one side so you always knew like the flat side went up right and that's
01:17:46 ◼ ► how you could figure out how to plug them in but it was a little bit fidgety but anyway usb
01:17:49 ◼ ► was an upgrade in that regard and and uh you mentioned firewire before and how you know usb
01:17:55 ◼ ► was more popular than firewire firewire was another one of those uh you know interfaces
01:18:02 ◼ ► that came out of the idea that we can make really fast serial interfaces and give up on parallel
01:18:06 ◼ ► but it was the high-end one it was like how do we replace the highest of the high bandwidth stuff
01:18:16 ◼ ► guarantees about timing and that can be chained together without and that you can have high
01:18:21 ◼ ► bandwidth without involving the then anemic cpu on the computer which is how usb saved a lot of money
01:18:26 ◼ ► by having the computer cpu do a lot of the work and not having to put that put those smarts in
01:18:31 ◼ ► the interface chips which made the interface chips cheaper on both the host device and the actual
01:18:35 ◼ ► peripheral right so it's not as if firewire quote-unquote lost to usb it was clearly aimed
01:18:42 ◼ ► at a different segment at the less populous segment the high-end segment you know it ended
01:18:47 ◼ ► up being used for digital video uh on camcorders and stuff like that and you know it lasted a
01:18:52 ◼ ► pretty long time all things considered because it was very expensive but it was like there was never
01:18:56 ◼ ► going to be a firewire mouse let's put it that way it's nonsensical right um but but it's part
01:19:00 ◼ ► of the same family of serial over parallel um and so and finally on the imac front yeah like
01:19:07 ◼ ► as you know the imac the most important thing about the imac was not the fact that it uh you know
01:19:13 ◼ ► that it came with usb let's say like but lots of other podcasts have talked about the more
01:19:18 ◼ ► important aspects of it that's what i thought we were going to talk about here but now we're
01:19:21 ◼ ► out of time so i'm not going to uh dwell on it any longer uh but uh the fact that uh it you know
01:19:29 ◼ ► not that it had usb but as as jason snell pointed out as macrocom that it dropped all the other
01:19:35 ◼ ► ports that are on max that was the in terms of ports the the most shocking factor about it for
01:19:43 ◼ ► an apple user because we had peripherals we had adb peripherals and the benefits of usb over adb
01:19:50 ◼ ► especially like when usb is first coming on the scene it's like what does this do that my adb
01:19:57 ◼ ► stuff doesn't do i've already got an adb trackpad an adb extended keyboard an adb mouse like but
01:20:02 ◼ ► why do i need this new interface i can't use any peripherals what the hell happened to my
01:20:06 ◼ ► scuzzy port i have stacks and stacks of scuzzy hard drives here i have a scuzzy raid how do i
01:20:10 ◼ ► connect these to my imac this thing is useless right and then i can't connect my printer to it
01:20:15 ◼ ► my printer's not usb whoever heard of a usb printer i have a serial printer and it got plugged into the
01:20:19 ◼ ► serial port the same serial port's been on my mac since you know 1986 right i can't plug this in
01:20:24 ◼ ► anywhere how the hell do i print and then of course the no floppy drive thing or whatever um so
01:20:29 ◼ ► as a mac user as jason pointed out the imac was met with some hostility by people who had a bunch
01:20:36 ◼ ► of peripherals that they can't plug in unlike our current usb-c situation there was not any real
01:20:41 ◼ ► hope of dongles there was adb usb dongles which i think we were still using to use his uh his uh
01:20:46 ◼ ► apple extended 2 keyboard right but in general it's not as if you bought a dongle for your your
01:20:52 ◼ ► style writer and just used it for years and years after that it's like no everyone got usb printers
01:20:56 ◼ ► like what happened is usb slipped through the whole industry for the reasons margo stated
01:20:59 ◼ ► and we just all got new stuff and we said oh yeah this is better because instead of having
01:21:04 ◼ ► a scuzzy port and two serial ports and adb ports now i just have usb and then firewire for the for
01:21:10 ◼ ► the expensive high bandwidth stuff and that was better and that was the future and like i think
01:21:14 ◼ ► this is like a positive version of this of what this of the usb-c story where there's a lot of
01:21:21 ◼ ► parallels and they seem very similar but it's sure taking a lot longer than it did with usb
01:21:25 ◼ ► for the usb-c revolution to uh to come along and sweep us all away and we're still kind of
01:21:31 ◼ ► grumbling about dongles and kind of wishing we had some of our other ports back it also just it says
01:21:36 ◼ ► quite a lot about just how how groundbreaking and forward-looking usb was that now 20 years later
01:21:47 ◼ ► you can take a usb device that was released 20 years ago for usb 1.1 and plug it in to an imac
01:21:55 ◼ ► pro without a dongle and it'll probably like if it still works at all it will work on that computer
01:22:02 ◼ ► that's that's mine like nothing else in computing has lasted as long as usb has it's incredible
01:22:10 ◼ ► vga yeah well yeah that's that's not really used anymore though oh you wish you wish it wasn't used
01:22:16 ◼ ► well yeah i know projectors and stuff but yeah like most like most people in their house are
01:22:20 ◼ ► not using vga for anything that's it's all hdmi and dvi and stuff even dvi is gone i'm amazed at
01:22:25 ◼ ► the number of people take like their you know their retina max and plug them into a series
01:22:30 ◼ ► of dongles that culminate in a vga port so they can project it happens all the time at work and
01:22:35 ◼ ► i'm just like just that is not the you are not getting the maximum value for your money out of
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01:24:47 ◼ ► all right let's do some ask atp and let's begin by kite with kimer who asks how do you find your
01:24:56 ◼ ► configured do you view is icons or list or columns do you show tab path status bars range by name
01:25:02 ◼ ► date none icons in the toolbar or tags etc does it differ per folder one config system wide or do
01:25:08 ◼ ► you adjust it as you go i adjust as i go i also don't find this question terribly interesting but
01:25:16 ◼ ► i try to keep the uh i try to keep the path bar whatever it's called at the bottom on the status
01:25:39 ◼ ► and uh i don't know that's about you know list view that's about it i uh i normally i'm sorting
01:25:45 ◼ ► by name but in open save dialogues when i'm viewing either the desktop or the downloads
01:25:51 ◼ ► folder i will sort those by date descending so that the new stuff always shows up on top
01:25:55 ◼ ► because usually what i'm dealing with is the newest stuff all right john you only have let's
01:26:00 ◼ ► let's cap you at 35 minutes if you don't know and i can't i can't go into all the details of this but
01:26:05 ◼ ► how i use the finder i continue to try to use the finder like i used to use the finder my first 16
01:26:11 ◼ ► years of mac use uh the the of course the current mac finder does not want to be used that way and
01:26:18 ◼ ► it fights me every step of the way but i continue to wage that battle mostly because it's you know
01:26:23 ◼ ► i'm i'm willing to forgive its forgetfulness and just you know repeat actions over and over again
01:26:29 ◼ ► just to get the experience i want so the experience i'm looking for for people to know how the finder
01:26:32 ◼ ► used to work is the two main views i use are icon view and list view uh icon view a couple of windows
01:26:39 ◼ ► i i try to keep the icons arranged and the windows size the way i want them like the applications
01:26:44 ◼ ► window and stuff like that sort of you know windows without a lot of stuff in them list view for
01:26:49 ◼ ► almost everything else for anything that has lots of stuff in it um and i'm very into the little you
01:26:53 ◼ ► know disclosure triangles of disclosing different hierarchies and changing the sort order and stuff
01:26:57 ◼ ► like that i never have the sidebar visible so i don't have the path bar anything like that i
01:27:02 ◼ ► always have the status bar visible because i always want to see the available disk space
01:27:05 ◼ ► so if you were to look at my finder desktop chances are good that you would probably see one icon
01:27:11 ◼ ► view window if any and just a bunch of this view windows with various parts disclosed all with the
01:27:17 ◼ ► little uh status bar visible on the top i'm surprised you closed the sidebar i actually like the sidebar
01:27:23 ◼ ► no i don't use it i don't use the finder as a browser is what i'm getting at i do not use it
01:27:27 ◼ ► as a browser i try to use it as the old finder which is very difficult because it did you know
01:27:32 ◼ ► every once in a while to give example the applications window which occasionally i find
01:27:35 ◼ ► myself in you know messing with applications or dragging something over disk image or whatever
01:27:39 ◼ ► right um every once in a while the application window which i have sized and arranged in a
01:27:45 ◼ ► particular way decides nope i'm going to be a different size in a different position i'm going
01:27:49 ◼ ► to have the sidebar now why does it decide that i don't know it just does and then i turn off the
01:27:55 ◼ ► sidebar on it and i put it back where i thought it was supposed to be and i readjust the view
01:27:59 ◼ ► settings for it and then i close it and hope it remembers again next time but you know at least
01:28:03 ◼ ► like once a month or something some window that i had previously positioned and and configured in
01:28:08 ◼ ► a particular way will decide now it wants to be this weird you know metal browser thing it's not
01:28:13 ◼ ► metal anymore anymore right now but no i don't i don't want to use it as a browser andreas ekigren
01:28:19 ◼ ► writes what are your thoughts on vulvo using android and google maps and google assistant
01:28:24 ◼ ► for their census system in the future i think it's a purse for car manufacturers so as chief
01:28:29 ◼ ► summarizer and chief what this is referring to is vulvo in the last few days has announced that
01:28:34 ◼ ► for their quote-unquote iDrive if you will they're going to be working with google to embed the voice
01:28:40 ◼ ► controlled google assistant google play store google maps and other google services into its
01:28:43 ◼ ► next generation census infotainment system which will be based on android as an owner of a almost
01:28:50 ◼ ► brand new vulvo i find this very interesting i am tentatively optimistic about this i would be very
01:28:59 ◼ ► perturbed if this meant as i presume it might that i couldn't use carplay anymore um i obviously this
01:29:06 ◼ ► is for the next generation so it's not going to affect aaron's car but in the future if it ends
01:29:10 ◼ ► up that you can only use android auto and not carplay that would really annoy me but that being
01:29:15 ◼ ► said it would be pretty sweet to have google maps as the actual onboard like first party sort of so
01:29:21 ◼ ► to speak mapping application um which i think would be super cool so like marco obviously this
01:29:26 ◼ ► isn't relevant to you because you don't own a vulvo but like how would you feel about hypothetically
01:29:30 ◼ ► tesla saying hey we're going to use google maps from now on or do they already and i don't realize
01:29:34 ◼ ► it they do use google maps for the map tiles and the map view they don't use it for navigation
01:29:40 ◼ ► oh interesting okay so does this do you think this would do anything for you then i guess it's sort
01:29:44 ◼ ► of already there for you huh it's well this is it's not using like you know android and google
01:29:49 ◼ ► assistant and everything else so uh yeah this this this would be a step forward or a step
01:29:54 ◼ ► significantly in that direction from where tesla is now uh ultimately i buy a car for its other
01:30:01 ◼ ► factors and i just deal with whatever entertainment system it has uh so i would just deal with
01:30:06 ◼ ► whatever they did i would like google assistant in my car because i think it does a really good
01:30:10 ◼ ► job of figuring out what the heck i want and doing it uh and my like my my hilarious infotainment
01:30:16 ◼ ► system on my accord like it lets you do voice calling uh which occasionally i use i know why
01:30:23 ◼ ► don't i just do talk to my phone i don't because i don't have hey dingus enabled and anyway it's a
01:30:28 ◼ ► whole bunch of reasons why i don't use the phone thing but my car itself has a way to do voice
01:30:33 ◼ ► calls and it is terrible it is it's a real it's like a difficult text adventure like it's really
01:30:40 ◼ ► hard i know exactly what to do and i still fail like 25 of the time but i use it because my hands
01:30:45 ◼ ► can be on the wheel uh and then i don't know anyway so i would love for my car or any future
01:30:50 ◼ ► car to have a google assistant and and google maps and google navigation because i think all
01:30:54 ◼ ► those things are really good and surely better than what any car manufacturer would come up on
01:31:03 ◼ ► third party like tom tom or whatever whoever is selling infotainment systems now so i applaud
01:31:09 ◼ ► volvo for making a deal with the best in class assistant and maps for their car and i wish more
01:31:14 ◼ ► people would do it cool hudson hayward asks do you buy it was asked as playstation 4 but i'm
01:31:20 ◼ ► going to expand it do you buy video games console video games on disc slash cartridge or is digital
01:31:27 ◼ ► downloads i generally like having physical cartridges or discs but find the noise of the
01:31:31 ◼ ► spinning disc to be excessive sometimes i generally speaking prefer cartridges for the switch because
01:31:38 ◼ ► i can hand them to somebody else so they can play it for a minute so i don't have to worry about
01:31:43 ◼ ► like installing an sd card or anything in the switch which is not difficult for the record i
01:31:46 ◼ ► just don't you know i don't have an extra micro sd whatever it is lying around however i will say
01:31:52 ◼ ► that i deeply deeply regret not downloading mario kart because a game like mario kart is it's one
01:32:00 ◼ ► of the only games i'm ever going to play with friends on the switch and it would be super
01:32:04 ◼ ► convenient if i could have say the zelda cartridge in the switch but then just pop over and play
01:32:10 ◼ ► mario kart for a minute with my friends and then go back to zelda when i'm by myself it's not i
01:32:15 ◼ ► will it's not a big enough deal that i would buy mario kart again in order to do it but i do wish
01:32:22 ◼ ► i had for games like that where i know i'm going to be playing with friends kind of at a moment's
01:32:26 ◼ ► notice i i would recommend downloading otherwise i personally like the cartridges but teach their
01:32:30 ◼ ► own john how do you feel about this i searched to see if we had been asked this question before
01:32:35 ◼ ► because it sounds familiar but i couldn't find it but anyway um we are only one or two console
01:32:39 ◼ ► generations away from these things not having a physical media port on them i have never had a
01:32:44 ◼ ► plastic disc inside my ps4 at all i download all my games if i can possibly do it the only card i
01:32:49 ◼ ► have for my switch is zelda because i bought the special fancy edition and you had to get a cart
01:32:54 ◼ ► with that like they didn't have a digital one because it came with this big box with a bunch of
01:32:57 ◼ ► accessories and doohickeys and stuff like that uh digital downloads they are the way to go i
01:33:02 ◼ ► recommended for everybody do not buy physical media if you can at all help it it does mean
01:33:07 ◼ ► that you might have to expand the storage on your system it does mean you have to understand how
01:33:11 ◼ ► this affects your ability to transfer games and have save state and what happens when you're on
01:33:15 ◼ ► a roof and so on and so forth but we are in we are in transition period and i feel like we're at the
01:33:20 ◼ ► tail end of the transition period digital only is the future yep i'm with you i the very first thing
01:33:25 ◼ ► i did when i got the switch was buy a 200 gig micro sd card once i knew i could do that uh i
01:33:31 ◼ ► i bought zero cartridges the only i have one game for switch on a cartridge and it's the mario
01:33:37 ◼ ► rabbids game that i bought on black friday because it was on sale i have yet to play it but the
01:33:42 ◼ ► cartridges has been in my switch since black friday because you know we all of our games
01:33:49 ◼ ► are downloaded so what's great is you know it kind of avoids casey's mario kart problem
01:33:53 ◼ ► all of your games are always accessible to you you can just always play whatever you want you
01:33:58 ◼ ► don't have to worry oh i left that one at home or i don't have that one with me right now there is a
01:34:02 ◼ ► real downside as casey said that you can't just hand your copy of the game to someone else to
01:34:07 ◼ ► play or you or you know if you don't if if you want to like have multiple switches in your family
01:34:14 ◼ ► and you you can't easily like just transfer the games between them um so you know that's that's
01:34:18 ◼ ► kind of that's kind of annoying in certain cases you also can't resell downloads you know back to
01:34:24 ◼ ► gamestop or whatever for zero dollars they can resell it for way more than that um you know you
01:34:28 ◼ ► can't trade with friends like there are definite downsides to the way downloads are usually
01:34:33 ◼ ► implemented but as somebody who doesn't usually do all those things and who is instead very lazy
01:34:44 ◼ ► and all the games that we have are just in a menu and you can just pick whatever you want to play
01:34:49 ◼ ► and it just starts and a lot of those limitations you mentioned are actually just policy ones
01:34:54 ◼ ► nintendo historically has not been the best in the policy but for example on playstation 4
01:34:58 ◼ ► there's many games that i bought one copy of that i can play on both of my ps4s in the house
01:35:03 ◼ ► my son can play on his account on his ps4 because it's like a sub account of mine or whatever like
01:35:07 ◼ ► they they have a way for a lot of games not all but a lot of games for you to buy one copy of it
01:35:13 ◼ ► and have two people playing it on different playstations on different accounts which is
01:35:16 ◼ ► a much better policy than the nintendo policy right so it really is up to and they could even
01:35:21 ◼ ► do reselling and stuff like that if they want so it really is up to the individual company that's
01:35:25 ◼ ► why i say become familiar with what the those the policies related to digital downloads on your
01:35:32 ◼ ► console and figure out if they're you know if they're an issue if you never resell them you
01:35:35 ◼ ► probably don't care about that but if you do want to buy one copy of a game and have multiple people
01:35:39 ◼ ► in the house playing it find out if that's possible and you might be pleasantly surprised
01:35:44 ◼ ► and by the way i know i said it myself earlier like you know i don't buy games on plastic discs
01:35:49 ◼ ► i prefer digital obviously the digital and plastic is too this is just like mechanical keyboards
01:35:54 ◼ ► another one of those nonsensical things it's like oh so you like digital games yeah i get my my my
01:36:00 ◼ ► games on vinyl they're all analog the graphics are way better that way much warmer it's more
01:36:05 ◼ ► about the ritual thanks to our sponsors this week mack weldon ero and casper and we'll see you next
01:36:11 ◼ ► week now the show is over they didn't even mean to begin because it was accidental accidental
01:36:22 ◼ ► it was accidental accidental john didn't do any research marco and casey wouldn't let him
01:36:40 ◼ ► and if you're into twitter you can follow them at c a s e y l i s s so that's casey list m a r c o
01:37:12 ◼ ► okay we just we just got another switch card in the house and i realized that i had had the zelda
01:37:23 ◼ ► we got some dancing game for my daughter she's gonna use it at a birthday party i'm trying to
01:37:32 ◼ ► physical card in the house now which i'm already regretting because then i have to take out my
01:37:35 ◼ ► tiny little zelda thing and put it somewhere where i don't lose it i can't wait for them to do the uh
01:37:40 ◼ ► i don't know if you've been keeping up with this but the uh the nintendo online service that we're
01:37:44 ◼ ► all currently enjoying a free trial of or whatever is going to become commercial and as part of that
01:37:49 ◼ ► there's going to be cloud saves thank god so finally my all my zelda progress will be somewhat
01:37:53 ◼ ► safer than it is now i just i fear like that the kids are going to spill a drink on my switch and
01:37:58 ◼ ► i'm going to lose like 150 hours of zelda yeah i'm worried about that for all of our saves too yeah
01:38:03 ◼ ► when is that launching it's not not soon right uh forget uh september maybe i don't know google for
01:38:09 ◼ ► nintendo switch online you'll see i wasn't paying too much attention i just saw the feature set but
01:38:13 ◼ ► it it's before the end of the year and i think maybe the fall and apparently we're going to be
01:38:17 ◼ ► able to play mario 3 multiplayer over the internet oh it's just more nes games by the way you'll be
01:38:23 ◼ ► able to play more nes games surprise yeah we all kind of saw that coming out i think they're giving
01:38:29 ◼ ► you a bunch of good ones are free i think they're giving you like mario mario 3 i figured what they
01:38:32 ◼ ► were anyway just google for the story to see details but anyway it's cheap it's like 35