0:00:00As we've already discussed, I have my paneled setup of Windows and the one...
0:00:05Where does that accent come from? It's not a Connecticut thing.
0:00:08I wasn't aware I had one.
0:00:09The word for the thing that you cook in and the first syllable for your arrangement of Windows.
0:00:14P-A-N-E-L versus P-A-N.
0:00:16Panel?
0:00:17Right.
0:00:18How do you pronounce it?
0:00:20Not the same way as the thing that you cook in.
0:00:23Well, he says "pan-el."
0:00:24Yeah, exactly.
0:00:25Wait, what do you cook in?
0:00:26A pan.
0:00:28Oh.
0:00:29Not a pan.
0:00:30So, wait, so I'm…
0:00:31You say them both the same. You say, "I cook in a pan, and I have a bunch of panels."
0:00:36Yeah. So how would you say it?
0:00:37"I cook in a pan, I have a bunch of panels."
0:00:40That sounded the exact… Are you trolling me right now? That sounded exactly the same.
0:00:44"Panelize the waveforms."
0:00:45No, I don't.
0:00:46"Pan panels, pan panels." Marco, you said it. What do you have going on over there?
0:00:54I cook in a pan.
0:00:55Yeah.
0:00:56And I have panels.
0:00:57Hmm, interesting middle ground. They're slightly different from each other.
0:01:01I don't understand what's—am I hammered? What is happening? I can't hear the difference.
0:01:05What is going on right now? Is this what being colorblind feels like? What the hell is happening?
0:01:12All right, so we talked a lot last week about onboarding screens and why they're there,
0:01:19what is their purpose, whether they're good, whether they're bad, etc. And I was informed
0:01:23that the reason that these screens are happening is because of GDPR, which I know almost nothing
0:01:32about, and I've been a little busy, and so I'm a poor chief summarizer-in-chief, but
0:01:36nevertheless, GDPR is a General Data Protection Regulation, which is something that the EU
0:01:43passed recently and has come into effect, or is coming into effect very, very, very
0:01:47soon.
0:01:48Oh, it becomes enforceable from the 25th of May, 2018, so we are coming up on it now.
0:01:53I guess this doesn't apply to Britain too soon.
0:01:56Anyway, the point is, the point is, sorry everybody, the point is, apparently it talks
0:02:02about how companies store your data and tries to give you more control of your data, and
0:02:08I've been told that that is the genesis of all of these onboarding screens.
0:02:12I'm not sure if I buy that because I bet that screen is going to be everywhere, not
0:02:16just in Europe, and it's not like Apple is above doing region-specific UIs.
0:02:20I do a bunch of stuff that I think is only visible in China, for instance.
0:02:24Interesting.
0:02:25Maybe, yeah.
0:02:26On the other hand, I feel like this GDPR thing, which I'm basically just learning about
0:02:30now, because I didn't actually follow your link in the show notes, reminds me of the
0:02:33European cookie regulation stuff.
0:02:35Do you remember that?
0:02:36Oh, yes.
0:02:37I think you have to remember, I think it's still in effect.
0:02:38Like if you go to—they got to throw up a pop-up that says, "Just so you know, this
0:02:42website is going to use cookies to keep track of you.
0:02:44Agree or disagree," right?
0:02:45It's another example of properly motivated but ill-conceived legislation where the motivation
0:02:53is pure, like there's these computers and they potentially could be storing us, personal
0:02:58information and tracking us, which by the way they totally do.
0:03:01Let's do something with the law to deal with that.
0:03:04But this, you know, the impulse to do this comes really early on in the history of the
0:03:10web, when the scariest thing out there is a cookie, right?
0:03:14And the legislation is, I know, let's make every website in the world annoying forever.
0:03:19And let's never do anything else related to other kinds of tracking that'll be much, much
0:03:22worse than cookies.
0:03:24And like so many other laws, it just sits there until someone who's going to have the
0:03:28motivation say, "You know, we should stop doing that because it's dumb."
0:03:32Or we should realize the folly of this particular technique of trying to get people to grapple
0:03:38with privacy.
0:03:41Because if you say this is the way we should deal with everything, then you've got to have
0:03:44stuff like that for all forms of JavaScript, every kind of local storage, all the Flash-based
0:03:49super cookie, whatever thing.
0:03:51It never ends and you'd have to plow through 50 layers of click wrap, as they call it,
0:03:57to get to the website that you want.
0:04:00So if there's some new kind of legislation that says, by the way, every time you launch
0:04:04an application you've got to throw a thing in someone's face, which I don't think that's
0:04:06what this GDPR thing says.
0:04:08But if there were such a thing, I think that would be sort of the modern equivalent of
0:04:12the cookie legislation, perhaps motivated by a noble intent, but ill-conceived, badly
0:04:21implemented, and sure to age badly.
0:04:24So we'll see.
0:04:25Maybe when these things roll out and Apple talks about them on stage, maybe they will
0:04:30make a pitch in that direction.
0:04:32But as far as I can tell, it looks a lot more like what we talked about last show, a way
0:04:36for Apple to advertise one of its competitive advantages and to provide some reassurance
0:04:40and to explain what the applications do in a more clear way than just showing an empty
0:04:45list view.
0:04:46Yeah, we'll see.
0:04:47But supposedly that is kind of the genesis for this.
0:04:51There's also going to be a link in the show notes.
0:04:53Smashing Magazine has "How GDPR will change the way you develop," which talks about
0:04:59kind of how all this will affect developers.
0:05:03And the rumblings I've heard through various sources is that this is a bigger deal than
0:05:07any of us Americans are realizing because it doesn't seem to apply to us, but it applies
0:05:13to any of us that have, you know, code that reaches more than one country, more than just
0:05:17America.
0:05:18So.
0:05:19And by the way, I think it is possible to make good legislation to protect consumers'
0:05:22privacy.
0:05:23It's just really hard to do when it comes to tech because, you know, the tendency is
0:05:27to pick whatever the specifics of the technology are at the moment and attack them and demonize
0:05:31them when really it's a much more general concern. And historically speaking, legislative bodies have
0:05:36not had a good track record with legislating technology, essentially. Like, understanding
0:05:42what the underlying issue is rather than attacking a specific technology as the one and only
0:05:47vehicle through which this issue will manifest. And that's never true. Like,
0:05:51maybe that, you know, cookies were how privacy manifested a long, long time ago. Privacy issues
0:05:57Choose manifest in the following decades in so many more important ways than cookies,
0:06:02and yet the legislation just sits there staring at cookies, which is why you can't really
0:06:06legislate to technical details.
0:06:09You have to figure out what it is that we're really concerned about and make a law such
0:06:13that it applies in a useful way to any future technology, but also at the same time doesn't
0:06:19preclude future technologies that may run afoul of the letter of law if not the spirit.
0:06:24Making laws is hard.
0:06:25Making laws about technology is doubly hard.
0:06:27One way to help with this, by the way, I'm saying this mostly from a US perspective,
0:06:30I have no idea what's done in Europe, is perhaps take the advice and consultation of people
0:06:35who know things about technology, who don't have a vested interest in one way or the other.
0:06:39Kind of like talking to mathematicians and cryptographic experts when you make any laws
0:06:44related to cryptography, which the US seems completely incapable of doing, or they talk
0:06:48to them and ignore what they say, and say, "I think I'll listen to industry lobbying
0:06:52groups instead."
0:06:53They have all the money, so they must know what they're talking about.
0:06:55I mean, to be fair, like, we can't even agree that facts are facts.
0:06:59I know, I know. I'm thinking back to a, you know, a more naive time when we could simply
0:07:07just complain about how technologically illiterate our legislative bodies are, and now we have
0:07:11much more pressing concerns.
0:07:13And now I'm sad. Thanks for that, Jon. All right, last week we talked about how if you
0:07:19are a member of one or 30 Slack teams, you can actually, a little known fact, you can
0:07:25access Slack via IRC. I don't know when this announcement actually happened, but as it
0:07:30turns out, we got word within moments of releasing the episode that that's going away now. So
0:07:38it has been disabled for Slack teams that haven't enabled it, and I think it will be
0:07:41the, it will be phased out in the next some duration of time. So, whoops.
0:07:47I'm not surprised by this because it totally seems like a thing that Slack might do early
0:07:54on as part of it.
0:07:56Let's make sure you have no excuse not to use Slack, right?
0:07:59And then as Slack becomes more successful and as they can compare the statistics of
0:08:03how many people use our IRC gateway versus how much does it take to maintain it versus
0:08:07how much does it help our strategic intent of the company, it's probably used by a
0:08:12vanishingly small percentage of Slack's customers.
0:08:15They no longer are in that mode where they need to convince people to use Slack because
0:08:18the ball started rolling and it probably does take some amount to maintain and it's just
0:08:22a distraction so it kind of makes sense that it goes away.
0:08:25But I bet if you use it, you're probably pretty annoyed by that.
0:08:27JONATHAN: Indeed.
0:08:28So that happened coincidentally right around the time we were bringing up on the show that,
0:08:32hey, you can do this too.
0:08:34Moving on.
0:08:35Amazon's Alexa is gaining a new follow-up mode, which no longer requires a trigger word
0:08:39after every request.
0:08:41So what will happen is Alexa will listen for five seconds after your previous request to
0:08:44to see if you're wanting to ask another question.
0:08:46The blue ring on your echo will remain lit
0:08:48and it will indicate that she is still listening.
0:08:51In this time period, you can ask her another question,
0:08:53otherwise she'll go back to sleep mode.
0:08:56That's cool.
0:08:56- See, this to me, this is, it sounds cool
0:09:01until you actually think about how that works in practice,
0:09:03and I think you can actually enable it now,
0:09:05but the problem with that is,
0:09:08it's not addressing what you actually want,
0:09:10which is what you actually want is to say,
0:09:12cylinder, play El Scorcho by Weezer,
0:09:15and turn the volume to five.
0:09:17You know, like you want to be able to do multiple commands
0:09:19in one sentence, or in one command,
0:09:22and they can't do that right now.
0:09:24None of them can, as far as I know.
0:09:26And that's what you actually want.
0:09:27What this feature does is,
0:09:29hey cylinder, play El Scorcho by Weezer,
0:09:31and then it says okay,
0:09:33and then it starts playing.
0:09:37Like you don't want that, like that is not what you--
0:09:41- I don't think it's stopping on the command.
0:09:43I think all it's doing is, I mean,
0:09:44my reading of this article is all it's doing is
0:09:47it will immediately start playing the song that you asked for
0:09:49but for the next five seconds,
0:09:51anything else you say will try to interpret as a command
0:09:54as if you had prefixed it with "Hey, cylinder."
0:09:55- Right, but then like, I'm pretty sure
0:09:57then the volume still stays ducked and it's just like,
0:10:00I feel like the percentage of the time
0:10:03that's going to actually do what you want
0:10:06versus the percentage of the time that it's going to either
0:10:08keep listening to something you say afterwards
0:10:10you did intend for it to be a command,
0:10:12or just delay what you were trying to do,
0:10:14or do something, or you thought it was still listening,
0:10:17gave it another command, but the five seconds had just ended.
0:10:21I feel like the failure rate of that,
0:10:23to do what people actually want,
0:10:25is going to be way, way too high to be acceptable.
0:10:30It's not gonna be good enough of the time.
0:10:33Whereas, and it's also, to me, that's not smart.
0:10:36That's just a very small implementation detail.
0:10:40That's not actually making the service smarter.
0:10:42What we actually need is for all these voice assistants
0:10:44to become smarter and to recognize compound commands.
0:10:48That's what people actually want.
0:10:51Play El Scorcho by Weezer and turn the volume to five.
0:10:53Set a rice timer for 10 minutes
0:10:55and a pasta timer for seven minutes.
0:10:57This is what people actually want to do.
0:10:59And so, you know, little tricks like this,
0:11:01like, that's a dumb hack.
0:11:04Really what we need is for the voice assistant to get better
0:11:07to actually recognize multiple commands
0:11:09the way humans will actually give them.
0:11:11So this is also not what I was asking for last week.
0:11:13I think that's why it was sent to us as follow-up.
0:11:15What I was asking for was context awareness such that follow-up commands could be aware
0:11:19of what you asked for previously and interpret your subsequent commands in light of what
0:11:24you had just asked it based on, like the way a person would.
0:11:27If you say something to a person and then an hour later you say something else, there's
0:11:30no way they're going to connect that to the context of the last thing you said to
0:11:32them.
0:11:33But if you say something to them and then add an addendum two seconds later, they have
0:11:36the context of the first command, you know, to understand what you mean. And the key part
0:11:41of that is that the second thing that you say is not itself a complete command. It relies
0:11:46on the knowledge of the context. That's why I said last week that it probably requires
0:11:50some more local hardware, because you would want, at least for privacy reasons or whatever,
0:11:54you'd want some of that local context awareness to happen, you know, locally. You don't need
0:11:59the server to keep track of like your session or whatever, so it can understand that. I
0:12:03I think we can keep some of that locally.
0:12:06Compound commands would also be good and actually seem much easier to me than what I'm asking
0:12:09for because it's two commands and there's a joiner and you can figure it out and break
0:12:14it up into pieces.
0:12:15But I think it's more natural to have a conversation to hone in on what you want because that's
0:12:20what you do with other people than to formulate even a single command, let alone a compound
0:12:27command as if, as I said a couple weeks ago, you're playing a verbal text adventure where
0:12:32maybe you don't have to get the syntax just right,
0:12:34but you understand that you're issuing a command
0:12:36and now maybe you can issue compound commands,
0:12:38but it's not the way you would yell into other room
0:12:41for Marco to add something to your shopping list.
0:12:43You don't have to formulate a command for Marco.
0:12:45You can basically say it in any way that you want,
0:12:47including addendums and revisions and you know what,
0:12:52nevermind about that, just get the other thing.
0:12:54You can say stuff like that
0:12:55and it knows what the heck you're talking about.
0:12:57And the cylinder does not.
0:12:58And that is a really tall order.
0:13:02delay mode or follow-up mode or whatever is not close to that, but it at least shows that
0:13:10they understand that the current mode of wake word or wake phrase followed by single command
0:13:17followed by I forget you exist is pretty primitive.
0:13:22(laughs)
0:13:23- Also, I feel like this has a Simon Says problem, where if you get accustomed to not
0:13:31not saying the wake word before every command you give,
0:13:35that doesn't work all the time.
0:13:37Like, you can't say, "Cylinder, play a scorcher by Weezer,"
0:13:40and then 10 seconds later say, "Volume five,"
0:13:44'cause it won't recognize it.
0:13:44- Yeah, you have to say, "Simon says volume five."
0:13:46- You gotta say, "Cylinder volume five," right.
0:13:49But sometimes you don't have to say that.
0:13:51If you say it within five seconds
0:13:53of the previous command being completed,
0:13:55then you can omit the word cylinder.
0:13:57And it's like, well, that's gonna be confusing.
0:14:00it's gonna trip you up when,
0:14:02like it's gonna increase your error rate.
0:14:03Like this is, again, this is just one of the reasons
0:14:05why this isn't a solution.
0:14:06I feel like, at a high level,
0:14:09I think what kind of makes me sad
0:14:11about the voice assistant market
0:14:13is that all of us, like Apple fans,
0:14:16are accustomed to somebody being,
0:14:18you know, historically Apple,
0:14:20being really good at designing really smart software
0:14:24and really good software experiences.
0:14:27And the rest of the industry
0:14:28has always been pretty crappy overall.
0:14:30there's been a couple of bright spots here or there,
0:14:32but not many.
0:14:34And I feel like we're all having to use
0:14:37Amazon and Google stuff,
0:14:39and Amazon and Google have always been pretty rough,
0:14:42especially Amazon, pretty rough at user interaction design
0:14:46and software usability design.
0:14:49And what we're seeing here is just like,
0:14:52you know, tech companies making stuff that's mediocre,
0:14:55which is what we've always seen,
0:14:56and Apple is always the one who could save us from that,
0:14:58but unfortunately in this particular market,
0:15:01they just seem not capable of that for whatever reason.
0:15:05And that just makes me sad, 'cause it's like
0:15:06usually Apple will be the ones to save us
0:15:08and to make the really good thing for people like us
0:15:12who cared about good experiences
0:15:14and all the details and everything.
0:15:15And in voice assistants, they just aren't capable
0:15:17of doing that for whatever reason, and it's kinda sad.
0:15:20- I continue to think that this is much more
0:15:21in Google's wheelhouse than Apple's,
0:15:23because yes, it's a part of user interface design,
0:15:25specifically this realm of translating words that a human comes up with into an intent
0:15:34is what the Google search box is all about. It frustrates some of us because it no longer
0:15:38works like AltaVista where you can formulate like a Boolean query with exact substring
0:15:41matching and get predictable results. But that Google search box is all about saying
0:15:46people just type lots of stuff there and you can type things there and I'm still amazed
0:15:52at the Google search box. I type things there and it finds what I meant for it to find,
0:15:57and I don't even know how it's doing it. Like, I didn't—it's not—you know,
0:16:01how did you get what I was trying—you know, you go to the page or whatever and like none
0:16:05of those words are on this page. Like, you somehow figured out what I meant. And granted,
0:16:10it's still a single command and response and it's not a conversation, but Google
0:16:14was founded on that strength of going beyond the sort of simple direct computer search
0:16:20to intelligent interpretation of human-generated words and translating that to an intent and
0:16:26satisfying the request, despite spelling errors, weird phrasing, you know, the foibles of humans,
0:16:34right? And the verbal one of that, now that speech-to-text is as good as it is, it maps
0:16:40very well onto the search problem in that you have to figure out intent, and you can
0:16:46get the words from it pretty well, and then you have to figure out intent, and same thing
0:16:48with spelling errors, same thing with homonyms or whatever, that Google's good at figuring
0:16:52that out.
0:16:53That's always been Google's strength, so I totally look to them to be the ones to figure
0:16:57out this aspect of user interface before Apple, and I think they are doing it better than
0:17:02Apple.
0:17:03But I agree that all of them are not as good as I could hope.
0:17:08Apple is way behind, and Amazon and Google have been ahead, but I'm waiting for them
0:17:13both to take the next small step.
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0:19:41(upbeat music)
0:19:44- Well, did you guys see there was some sort of like drama
0:19:47about Siri that happened today?
0:19:49I did not get a chance to look up what happened,
0:19:51but apparently someone was like,
0:19:53"Oh, Siri's garbage and it's not my fault."
0:19:56Did you know what I'm talking about?
0:19:57- Yeah, I know it's a story on the information,
0:20:00which when I see that website, I always think of Marco
0:20:02and I'm like, there's someone.
0:20:04- The website?
0:20:06- It's much worse.
0:20:06It's much worse than the magazine ever was
0:20:08because the information is like, anyway.
0:20:10- You know, the information is really spammy.
0:20:12I really don't like, like, they signed me up
0:20:14to their mailing list when they launched
0:20:16as if I had signed up saying I was interested.
0:20:18And as a result, even though I have never responded
0:20:20to anything, never signed up for anything,
0:20:22they still incessantly spam me.
0:20:25And I really, like, you know, I know it's kind of low
0:20:29to call them out publicly for this,
0:20:30but that is not okay for anybody to do.
0:20:33It just drives me nuts.
0:20:35- You can unsubscribe.
0:20:36I just unsubscribed today speaking of them.
0:20:37- I did, because it finally drove me that nuts.
0:20:40but I'm just like, I never signed up for this,
0:20:42and all you're doing is promoting articles
0:20:45that I can't see because I'm not gonna pay
0:20:4740 bucks a month to a spammer.
0:20:50And so, it drives me nuts.
0:20:52People play fast and loose with mailing lists all the time,
0:20:55and the mailing list companies,
0:20:57like MailChimp and everything,
0:20:58they're all complicit in this
0:20:59because they don't require double opt-in
0:21:00when you import a mailing list
0:21:01from another service, allegedly.
0:21:03And so, they're all complicit
0:21:04because they all make spamming people en masse really easy,
0:21:08And as a result, I get on all sorts of spam lists
0:21:10that appear like I signed up for them.
0:21:13And it's a dirty, scammy trick when you're launching
0:21:17something like this to use a PR list you find somewhere
0:21:20or you buy somewhere.
0:21:22And the information was one of the companies that does this,
0:21:24one of the many companies that does this.
0:21:25And so I just have zero respect for them, zero.
0:21:28And I know it's a dumb reason,
0:21:30but that's how nuts this drives me.
0:21:33- Well anyway, this explains why none of us
0:21:34actually read the article, because none of us have paid
0:21:36the information, but we know about it because they're good at spamming people and letting
0:21:41them know this already exists. It was, I think, summarized on 9to5Mac, which is also kind
0:21:45of a scummy practice of like taking a paywall article and then basically rewriting it worse
0:21:51on your site so that people read your site instead of the paywall thing.
0:21:54Yeah, I love this business. It's such a great business. I should really go back to publishing
0:21:59web content. That sounds like a lot of fun. I mean, I can understand like a paragraph
0:22:03and a link seems reasonable, but once you've gone on for a page and a half, laboriously summarizing
0:22:08an article that you didn't write, anyway. The story as far as I could tell was a bunch of reports
0:22:14from people inside Apple or ex-Apple people who know about the internal workings of Siri over the
0:22:19years saying how and where things went wrong with specific quotes from specific people assigning
0:22:24blame to other people, not to themselves, explaining the situation. It's just the typical,
0:22:29you know, things aren't going great inside a big company, you know, product launches and it's not
0:22:34scalable and it's band-aided and everyone points fingers about who set the priorities or what they
0:22:39should be doing and how often it should be updated. I mean, it's mostly details that may be, like,
0:22:44interesting, you know, or like from a business case perspective if you're learning about how
0:22:51businesses run, interesting, but like practically speaking, I care less and less about the internal
0:22:58political goings-on in Apple and mostly just say, "That's Apple's job to figure out. I'm not
0:23:04running Apple. I'm not an executive there. I'm not a high-level manager." That's their job as
0:23:09a company, to figure out how to corral the people to produce results. And if it doesn't go well,
0:23:16I'm not that interested in why it didn't go well, who was to blame, which person was more difficult,
0:23:20which person made the big wrong strategic decision at what point. They just need to figure that out.
0:23:25But on the outside, they say, "Look, how's the product doing?"
0:23:27And the product, as we've discussed in the past, not doing that great.
0:23:30And they've had a long time, so I hope they get it sorted out.
0:23:32I don't even want to get angry about Siri again.
0:23:35So let's just move on.
0:23:37And instead, let's get angry about keyboards.
0:23:38Marco, this is your cue.
0:23:41Apple apparently has patented a keyboard that cannot be defeated by crumbs.
0:23:46Marco, I know you have been celebrating.
0:23:49You are swinging from the rafters.
0:23:51You are so excited.
0:23:52So I don't know when we're gonna expect to see this,
0:23:55but hopefully it will mean that I don't need
0:23:58to invest in compressed air anymore.
0:24:00- I mean, this is a problem I don't have
0:24:01because I have a laptop that has a functioning keyboard.
0:24:03- That's true, I walked right into that one.
0:24:06- But why do you think Marco would be excited by this?
0:24:08This seems like Marco's nightmare to me
0:24:10because Marco loves the fact that the keyboard he hates
0:24:12also has a terrible reliability problem
0:24:14that allows him to righteously rail against it.
0:24:16Imagine if they made that keyboard 100% reliable.
0:24:18Then all he's got is,
0:24:20this keyboard works all the time, but I hate it.
0:24:22(laughing)
0:24:23I mean, to be fair, when it first came out,
0:24:24before where you knew how badly it would break all the time,
0:24:26that is what I did.
0:24:27(laughing)
0:24:28And also, the arrow key placement is still horrendous.
0:24:31Not having the gap above the arrows,
0:24:34above the left and right, is unforgivable.
0:24:36But anyway, look,
0:24:37I'm of two minds of this.
0:24:41You know, number one, John's right.
0:24:44In a way, I don't want to see this keyboard succeed
0:24:47and be fixed.
0:24:48I'm not gonna lie, that is part of my motivation,
0:24:50because I don't like it so much.
0:24:52But also, keep in mind I had those keyboards for,
0:24:55what, about a year before I finally gave up?
0:24:57- Across 13 different laptops.
0:24:59- Three, and so I had the keyboard,
0:25:02and I got used to it enough.
0:25:05I never liked it, but I was able to function with it
0:25:09until it stopped working reliably.
0:25:11And so the reality is I know,
0:25:15I gotta choose my battles here.
0:25:17I know that a lot of people out there don't care
0:25:19or even like this keyboard.
0:25:21I know that Apple is always going to press
0:25:25to make these things thinner,
0:25:26and I think Apple has shown across multiple years
0:25:30and multiple products that they only care
0:25:34about making the keyboard thinner,
0:25:36and they will make some efforts
0:25:38to make the thin keyboard tolerable,
0:25:41but that they are no longer interested
0:25:43in keeping it a good keyboard
0:25:45if that means they can't make it thinner.
0:25:48And so I just have to kind of resign myself to accept that.
0:25:51I'm not gonna rail on this for a half hour
0:25:53like I usually do because I fought this battle,
0:25:57I lost this battle, and I'm going to continue
0:25:59to lose this battle into the future.
0:26:01The last thing I think Apple's gonna do
0:26:03in the next MacBook revision
0:26:05is to make the keyboard thicker.
0:26:07It's just not gonna happen.
0:26:09And I fundamentally don't believe
0:26:11that they can make a keyboard with this little travel good.
0:26:17you just don't think they can do it.
0:26:18- Good as far as you're concerned though,
0:26:19because lots of people do really like the keyboard.
0:26:21I mean, Casey and I included have basically been converted
0:26:23to this new keyboard.
0:26:25It's just the reliability issues
0:26:26and as you said, the key layout.
0:26:28- Right, and so basically,
0:26:30if they can fix the reliability problems,
0:26:33yeah, I would love if they made the keyboard
0:26:35a different style,
0:26:36but if they can fix the reliability problems,
0:26:40that's the best I can hope for.
0:26:42- The key layout is just sitting right there too,
0:26:44because there can be divisive opinions about
0:26:46like how this keyboard feels or not. Like some people like it, some people don't, fine.
0:26:49But I feel like key layout changes, there are certain key layout changes that would
0:26:54be universally praised from the perspective of using the keyboard, and the only naysayers
0:26:59would be aesthetic. For example, inverted T, full size, breaking the rectangle of the
0:27:03keyboard. Aesthetically, people would hate that. It would be like the notch on the keyboard.
0:27:07It would be like an asymmetrical notch on the bottom of your keyboard, and those people
0:27:10would yell about it. But from the perspective of people who type, how does it feel to type
0:27:15I don't see anybody saying please bring back the half size arrow keys with or without the gaps above them
0:27:20I mean are there fans out there who would say please bring them back again?
0:27:23I guess yes that here active I can imagine it but not from a functional perspective
0:27:27Did you just say that you would bring asked to bring back the half hour keys?
0:27:31Though what you mean the way I have them on my 2015 where the left and right are half height
0:27:35No
0:27:36I mean make a full height and have that have the rectangular shape that the
0:27:40- These were defined to be broken.
0:27:42- So basically have the up key in line
0:27:44with the other ones now,
0:27:45but have the down, left, and right
0:27:46like in their own row below it?
0:27:48- Yes, exactly, and have all of them be full-sized
0:27:50and have gaps above them.
0:27:51- I mean, that would be cool,
0:27:52but they're never gonna do that, so yeah.
0:27:54- I know, I'm just saying,
0:27:55like there are key layout changes
0:27:57that I think would be universally praised
0:27:59from a functional perspective,
0:28:00but derided only from an aesthetic perspective.
0:28:02And I'm not even saying they're wrong,
0:28:03'cause I understand thinking that's ugly,
0:28:05but boy, would that be nicer for people who use arrow keys.
0:28:09which is, I think, everybody.
0:28:11Like, who doesn't use the arrow keys a lot?
0:28:13My son, oh god, when he's taking those online--
0:28:15[LAUGHTER]
0:28:16--those online coding courses.
0:28:18These days.
0:28:18He's using the mouse to move his insertion point in one space.
0:28:21I'm just like, use the arrow keys.
0:28:23Use them.
0:28:25Like, stop.
0:28:25He goes from the keyboard to the mouse to the keyboard
0:28:27to the mouse.
0:28:27Well, he can't reach them.
0:28:28He can't figure out where they are,
0:28:29because they're all the same height as everything else.
0:28:31Oh, no, he's using a full-size Apple extended keyboard
0:28:33with full-size arrow.
0:28:34Are you kidding?
0:28:35We're not using--
0:28:36Not in my house.
0:28:37Yeah, he's using real keyboards here.
0:28:40And I even showed him the modifier
0:28:42for moving a word at a time and beginning of end of line,
0:28:44but just for single characters, seeing him take the mouse
0:28:47and steer it to go to the left of the place
0:28:51where he needs to insert a quotation mark
0:28:52to match the other one.
0:28:53It's like, just hit the left arrow once.
0:28:55I swear to you, it will work.
0:28:57And he's just not on that page.
0:28:58This is what happens from not using computers
0:29:00and only using iPads and iPhones your whole formative years.
0:29:03You have no idea about moving the cursor with arrow keys.
0:29:07- Oh, anyway, yeah, I wouldn't expect Apple
0:29:10to do anything that's gonna make the keyboard
0:29:13less attractive to the current Apple design team's aesthetic.
0:29:18- I agree, unfortunately.
0:29:19- They're just not gonna do it.
0:29:22This is not a rare thing with Apple these days.
0:29:24Look at the Apple TV remote, look at,
0:29:26I mean, even look, there are regular keyboards
0:29:28and mice and everything.
0:29:30If they were willing to make it a little bit ugly,
0:29:31they could make it better economically or feel better
0:29:33or work better or whatever else, but they're not.
0:29:35And it's easy to see both sides of this argument.
0:29:37Like, we all argue like these things should work better,
0:29:40design is how it works.
0:29:41They argue we are printing money,
0:29:43and this is how we like to design things,
0:29:44and this is what looks good.
0:29:45And people buy our stuff in part because it looks good.
0:29:47- Yeah, and it is aesthetically better.
0:29:49I think we would all agree it does look better
0:29:51when the keyboard is just a rectangle.
0:29:52Like it just does, like as a piece of art, as a, you know.
0:29:55- Yeah, and look, Apple these days is really good
0:29:58at designing beautiful things that kind of suck to use.
0:30:00Like that's kind of what they're best at, right?
0:30:03- It could even be argued that the uniformity
0:30:05is the reason the right and left arrow keys
0:30:07became full height, because those little gaps
0:30:09were in asymmetry.
0:30:10- I guarantee you that's the reason.
0:30:12Because there's no other reason to do it,
0:30:14it doesn't make them easier to use.
0:30:16- The same reason that the bottom row of keys
0:30:17is now the same height as all the other rows,
0:30:18again, uniformity.
0:30:20- Yeah, oh totally, yeah.
0:30:21It's, you know, 'cause it's designed purely to aesthetics,
0:30:25it's egotistical design.
0:30:26It is indulgent design for the designers
0:30:29to indulge themselves in what they think looks the best,
0:30:32without regard to how things work.
0:30:35Someone I think also pointed out that even on the external keyboards for desktop computers,
0:30:41the bottom row of keys is now the same height as all the other ones.
0:30:44I didn't actually check this because I don't have one of those new keyboards to compare
0:30:48with, but I wouldn't be surprised if that were the case, if only for part-sharing reasons,
0:30:51because you all know Apple likes to use the same keyboard across all of its laptops from
0:30:5712 inches to 17, which I will, you know, forever remember as a ridiculous thing. And now it
0:31:02is only slightly less ridiculous. It's shared between the 15 and the 13 and the 12, I guess.
0:31:08Oh, so on this, before we leave this, this bit of follow-up error on this, this patent,
0:31:13the date of this patent is 2016, which makes me think like just as the original MacBooks
0:31:19were coming out, was that 2016 or was that later?
0:31:22They came out in early 2015, a year before, a year and a half before they brought this
0:31:26keyboard to all of their laptops, during which it was very clear, during that year and a
0:31:30half, that it failed a lot.
0:31:32Yeah, so, but in 2016, they introduced the MacBook Pros with the same keyboard at the
0:31:37same time they filed this patent. So it shows that they had been thinking about, at some
0:31:41point, you know, before 2016, they had been investigating these different ways to seal
0:31:47up the bottom of that thing. Now, I think I brought this up when we talked about the
0:31:51original slimline keyboard, or maybe it was when we talked about the Touch Bar, but I
0:31:55I think this is, I'll use this opportunity to once again promote the idea that I think
0:32:00Apple would benefit from on all of its laptops.
0:32:02This idea of sealing up the key caps with little membranes so that stuff can't get in
0:32:06there, just take it to the next level and make these damn things waterproof.
0:32:09If you can waterproof a phone, if you made a waterproof keyboard, which would also obviously
0:32:13include as a side effect the inability to get crap underneath the keys, I would imagine,
0:32:17I mean it doesn't have to necessarily, but I would imagine that could be part of it,
0:32:21people will love you for it.
0:32:23How many people, Casey, spill things on their laptops?
0:32:27Is it beyond us, technologically speaking, to make a sort of sealed keyboard that feels
0:32:32good?
0:32:33I mean, maybe these patents are just patents because Apple figured out if you do this,
0:32:35it makes the keyboard feel even worse.
0:32:36I don't know.
0:32:37We'll see if they ever produce something like this.
0:32:39But –
0:32:40Well, no, I mean, we kind of know that from the smart keyboard.
0:32:43The iPad Pro smart keyboard has, I think, but the same butterfly switches, or at least
0:32:48similar feeling switches, but it has like a membrane across the whole thing.
0:32:52And so it is, I think, roughly water resistant at least.
0:32:57But it doesn't get stuff under the keys.
0:32:59It at least doesn't do that.
0:33:00So we kind of know this is possible to do
0:33:03with just a membrane.
0:33:04I know that one of the Microsoft Surface notebook lines
0:33:07does it too, and they have issues with it getting dirty
0:33:10and looking really grimy and gross really fast,
0:33:12but that's not to say that it has to go that way.
0:33:15Maybe different materials choices
0:33:16could have different results there.
0:33:18Like, that's not actually that bad of a thing to try.
0:33:22I don't know if it would feel better or worse
0:33:24than what we have now, but like, the smart keyboard,
0:33:26like I use the smart keyboard all the time on the iPad,
0:33:29I wouldn't call it great, but it's tolerable,
0:33:32and that's about what I can say for the notebook one as well
0:33:35so it's just tolerable in slightly different ways,
0:33:37but you know what, the smart keyboard keys
0:33:39have never failed on me, not once,
0:33:40because stuff can't get in there.
0:33:42So it's not a ridiculous idea.
0:33:44- Do you have the problems with the smart keyboard
0:33:46with like, I think it was iOS 11 or something,
0:33:47People are complaining the smart keyboard
0:33:48doesn't work reliable anymore due to some change
0:33:50in the debouncing firmware or some crap.
0:33:53- Oh yeah, no, I mean, it's not, I haven't had,
0:33:55I don't know if it's related to debouncing or not.
0:33:57No, it definitely is less reliable.
0:33:59That seems like an iOS software thing,
0:34:02just like the way the apps behave
0:34:04with the keyboard attached or detached.
0:34:05It has been more buggy, rotation's been more buggy.
0:34:08Yeah, it's been kind of a mess,
0:34:10but I attribute that to iOS 11, but I don't know.
0:34:13Anyway, I think one challenge you might have
0:34:15with the idea of waterproofing a laptop
0:34:17ventilation and cooling. Yeah, no, I mean, obviously the MacBook is your easiest one,
0:34:22right? Because the reason I bring up this whole idea of waterproofing now is that Apple
0:34:27has slowly been sealing up its laptops, not for the purpose of waterproofing, but just
0:34:31for the purpose of Apple being Apple, like getting rid of moving parts and seams and
0:34:34making them unibody and then the battery's not removable and then... I think another
0:34:37way to look at this is decontenting? Eh, no, I mean, it's a simplification. It's moving
0:34:42towards this platonic ideal of like this is a featureless, you know, smooth. They are
0:34:47certainly featureless, right? And so the MacBook, no vents, right? You still have to deal with
0:34:52the ports, which I think might be challenging because Apple doesn't get to define all those
0:34:56ports. You have to come up with the sealed, but still repairable, internal or replaceable
0:35:00USB-C port or whatever. But there's not a lot of holes in a 12-inch MacBook, right?
0:35:05So I feel like that is a good candidate. If you can seal an iPad or an iPhone, you know,
0:35:10It has a similar number of holes to a MacBook Adorable, the 12-inch Apple laptop.
0:35:17For the ones with vents and fans, granted it's a lot harder, but even on those if you
0:35:21say, "Look, it's not waterproof," but the top surface, the keyboard surface, if you
0:35:27do a spill on it, you'll be okay.
0:35:30The water will shed away and not be sucked into the vents and the top is sealed so that
0:35:36it's waterproof so it can take a spill.
0:35:38You can't dunk the thing in water, but it's better than it was before, where if you spell
0:35:42on the keyboard, you're doomed and Apple will never repair your thing again.
0:35:45And if this membrane keyboard, like if they do this for crumb reasons, I say while you're
0:35:50in there, see what you can do about water, let's call it water resistance or something,
0:35:54you know.
0:35:56I just think it's kind of silly as time goes on that our phones can be dropped into a glass
0:36:03of water and come back out okay, but our much more expensive laptops, like a pin drop of
0:36:11water falls on the keyboard and filters down into the inside and starts corroding things
0:36:15and it's all over.
0:36:16One spec of dust, $700.
0:36:19One spec of wet dust, $1,200.
0:36:21Yeah, no, more than that.
0:36:22It's like total replacement.
0:36:23It's like, sorry, it's like probably like the phones.
0:36:25Water got in this and we don't cover water damage.
0:36:29I don't know if that's true of laptops, but I know the phones have those little water
0:36:31damage sensor thingies on them that they yell at you about if it turns out your thing has
0:36:35water damage.
0:36:36No, it is also true of laptops.
0:36:38Right.
0:36:39Use desktop kids, they don't get wet.
0:36:41Well, I don't know, they don't get wet unless Casey's around.
0:36:43I bet he could find some way to get water into one of them.
0:36:45Challenge accepted.
0:36:47I would say hold my beer, but I'm going to need it.
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0:39:02What do you guys think, I know this has been very well
0:39:07covered, especially on the talk show a few days ago,
0:39:09but what do you guys think of the rumors of a potential
0:39:12MacBook Air update?
0:39:14This to me I think is potentially very interesting.
0:39:17- Yeah, I heard that it was the talk show with--
0:39:20- With Jason. - Snell was on, yeah,
0:39:21Jason Snell and John Gruber were talking about that.
0:39:24I kind of agree with Jason about his consternation of this like somehow we can't kill this laptop
0:39:29and I'm mostly coming at it from a sort of Apple should be embarrassed angle.
0:39:34Not so much that the MacBook Air is a bad machine but there is one part of the machine
0:39:38I think is inexcusable and that's the screen.
0:39:40Not because it's not in retina, like they made all the points on the show, some people
0:39:43don't care about retina, some people can't even see the difference, but because it has
0:39:46has such incredibly bad viewing angles, brightness,
0:39:50and color reproduction, right?
0:39:52It's just, at this point, when it was introduced, fine.
0:39:55At this point, it is just a bad screen.
0:39:57It looks worse than basically any new PC laptop screen
0:40:01you could buy at any price.
0:40:02- Wait, hold on, honest question.
0:40:04Have you seen a 12-inch MacBook screen?
0:40:06- Yeah, sure.
0:40:07- Because if you look at the 12-inch
0:40:09compared to the other higher-end ones,
0:40:11the 12-inch screen is also noticeably worse
0:40:14at things like viewing angle, color, everything.
0:40:16It's not a good screen.
0:40:17- But it's better than the Air.
0:40:20- That's true, I'll give you that.
0:40:21But it's not, it's still like a crap screen.
0:40:24- It is not, oh, a slow down.
0:40:26It is not a crap screen.
0:40:28- When you compare it to a MacBook Pro screen,
0:40:31even the old ones.
0:40:32- I do that every day.
0:40:34I would take the MacBook Adorable One any day.
0:40:37- It's retina, so it's like way better than the MacBook.
0:40:39But I'm just saying for color reproduction and viewing,
0:40:41a thing that Apple used to pride itself on,
0:40:43that they never really had crap monitors,
0:40:44they always had pretty much the best monitors,
0:40:46and they wouldn't let a really old monitor
0:40:48stay around for a long time, that they would refresh.
0:40:50And they have been refreshing the MacBook Air,
0:40:52like ripping out the, you know,
0:40:53changing the internals and everything like that,
0:40:55but leaving that screen, like it just boggles my mind,
0:40:59'cause I feel like at this point,
0:41:01I would never wanna buy a thousand dollar laptop
0:41:04with that screen on it, it seems inexcusable.
0:41:06So if they had been updating the MacBook Air
0:41:09to keep it limping along on life support,
0:41:10and had also updated the screen,
0:41:12I would be like, "Well, this is not ideal," but they found themselves in a weird place
0:41:17with their product line, so let's see what they do with it.
0:41:18I think Jason and Gruber had a good analysis of that.
0:41:24It's conceivable they somehow found themselves in this scenario where any move to replace
0:41:30it would result in reduced margins on one or both lines as the pyre shifted.
0:41:35And then Tim Cook's philosophy is like, "If it ain't broke, if people are still giving
0:41:39us money for it, don't fix it, which is a terrible from a coherent product line directive.
0:41:43And if there is another live talk show with Apple executives on it, I really hope Jon
0:41:47asks them.
0:41:48I hope he doesn't ask them, because if you ask them, "It seems like your laptop line
0:41:53has no coherent story," you can make a coherent story like, "Well, the error is for people
0:41:58who like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah."
0:41:59And then you have the MacBooks.
0:42:00All you're doing is listing the pros and cons of your models, but there is no coherent story
0:42:05to the naming, features, or pricing of the current Apple apps hotline.
0:42:08It is a mess.
0:42:09And so I would state that and say, you know, there's no coherent story to the naming features
0:42:14or pricing of your laptop line.
0:42:16Why is that?
0:42:17And if they want to contest that, I would push back pretty hard to say, "Come on.
0:42:20One of them's called Air, but it's not the lightest, but it's super old.
0:42:23It's got MagSafe on it, but the other ones don't have MagSafe.
0:42:25One of them's called MacBook Pro, but it's got the internals of the Air, and it's just
0:42:28like, your brain explodes."
0:42:31So I think their line is in disarray, and I think they can make -- and I think the MacBook
0:42:37Air was a great model of laptop, but we have the technology now to make a line of computers
0:42:45that spans the exact same price range that offers a better computer at the $1,000 price
0:42:50point than they currently offer now.
0:42:52And also offers a better computer at all the other ones, depending on how you want to do
0:42:55it.
0:42:56"Hey, put on MagSafe and USB-C and let people charge from both.
0:42:58Let's see which one people like better."
0:42:59Because then you get the advantages of Casey using his Switch charger and the advantage
0:43:04of if you trip over my card, you won't break it.
0:43:06Maybe you can choose when you order it,
0:43:07whether you want the MagSafe or not,
0:43:08because maybe you just want to be able
0:43:10to use all your same chart anyway.
0:43:11Or put an SD card slot on the side of these computers.
0:43:14Or maybe have an HDMI port on one model.
0:43:16Like, I don't know, I'm going a little bit crazy here.
0:43:18But I long for the days when you could look at the line
0:43:22of Apple laptops and say, "I see how it goes."
0:43:24Big, small, low price, high price, not a lot of features,
0:43:28a bunch of features, and have them all look like a family.
0:43:31And that's not the case now.
0:43:34Not the case at all.
0:43:35So one, I think, curiosity that I had
0:43:39throughout the other nice discussions over this,
0:43:41and again, I think listening to the talk show this week,
0:43:42it's a really good discussion about this
0:43:44from a lot of different angles.
0:43:46But one thought I had was like,
0:43:48if they make a Retina MacBook Air,
0:43:52if they literally change nothing else about it
0:43:56except a Retina screen, and maybe replacing
0:44:00the two Thunderbolt 2 ports, or does it have one or two?
0:44:04replacing its Thunderbolt 2 ports with USB-C ports,
0:44:08and then of course, a modern chipset of the same type
0:44:10that's currently in the MacBook Escape.
0:44:13Would anybody still buy the MacBook Escape?
0:44:16- No, that's the problem we talked about.
0:44:19If you improve the MacBook Air,
0:44:22why would anyone buy a MacBook?
0:44:23Or a MacBook, why would anyone,
0:44:25no sorry, a MacBook Pro rather, not a MacBook.
0:44:27- The MacBook Escape, the 13-inch MacBook without touch bar,
0:44:30is by many measures a MacBook Air.
0:44:33It has the MacBook Air class processors,
0:44:35the MacBook Air class chipset and everything else.
0:44:38It's the same approximate size and weight.
0:44:41It's a little bit, it's slightly different,
0:44:43but roughly the same size and weight
0:44:45as the 13-inch MacBook Air.
0:44:46But if you put a Retina screen
0:44:51in the old, ancient MacBook Air body
0:44:53that was designed in 2010, I bet it would sell better
0:44:57than the 13-inch MacBook Escape.
0:44:59- It would be a better laptop.
0:45:01It has an SD card slot.
0:45:03It has MagSafe, the option for MagSafe.
0:45:05It has legacy USB ports, which Apple acknowledges is a thing that some people want, otherwise
0:45:10they wouldn't have put them on the iMac Pro.
0:45:13If you showed a regular person which one of these laptops do you think is better and which
0:45:16one do you want and didn't tell them about the price, and they weren't sensitive to styling
0:45:19cues that clearly indicate that the MacBook Air is super old, they would say, "Well, that
0:45:24one's got more stuff.
0:45:25It's got more features.
0:45:26It's got more things, and this power cable is really smart."
0:45:30Why would you ever pick the other one if we tell you, "Guess what?
0:45:32one's $300 more." You'd be like, "Well, who would pay $300 more to have no ports on the side
0:45:37for a computer that is basically the same size and weight?" And it perceptibly seems
0:45:41thicker because it doesn't taper, right? Like the MacBook Air is thicker on one end but thinner on
0:45:46the other, but it seems smaller because it gets skinny just for that perception type thing.
0:45:49And it's fine if they do that. If they want to remake their line in that way, you'd have to
0:45:56sort this type of thing out but instead they leave it in the current scenario where the
0:46:02old one is clearly old and has serious downsides versus the regular one in terms of the terrible
0:46:07screen they have on it, right?
0:46:09The new one is expensive for no perceptible reason and you trade off a bunch of stuff
0:46:13and then it gets even more super expensive and you still don't get your ports back and
0:46:16you still have nomadic safe and the keyboard is weird and breaks all the time.
0:46:19So they need to do something.
0:46:22I really want them to just clean house on the laptop line and say, "All new line.
0:46:27One nice family, unified in appearance features and has a coherent ramp from expensive to
0:46:32inexpensive."
0:46:34And by the way, at all price points and at all sizes, every one of them is better in
0:46:37some way, whether it has more features or better reliability or faster or whatever.
0:46:42David Schmittle Yeah, I suspect we're going to see some
0:46:46kind of major movement in the laptop line this year.
0:46:50I really hope we do.
0:46:52The current line has so many of these weird issues,
0:46:55not to mention some of the problems it has,
0:46:56but just these weird things that make it
0:46:59more or less compelling or seemingly weirdly priced
0:47:03in certain ways or really segmented in other ways.
0:47:06It needs help.
0:47:08And I have a feeling Apple knew that two years ago,
0:47:11like shortly after it launched,
0:47:13and I have a feeling they've worked to fix it.
0:47:15And so the only question is how they're fixing it.
0:47:17And I don't expect this to be giving me all my hopes
0:47:20and dreams or anything, but I do expect change
0:47:24and hopefully improvement.
0:47:25And so we'll see what that means.
0:47:27- Speaking of hopes and dreams,
0:47:28this is a tough question in the style of these recent ones
0:47:32that the listeners have been sending us.
0:47:34For the high-end laptops, which is where we're all shopping,
0:47:37well, you two are shopping 'cause I don't buy laptops.
0:47:40- I'm getting towards that point.
0:47:42If you had to pick one port to add to the current crop of MacBook Pro parts, let's
0:47:50just pick the 15-inch MacBook Pro because that is the most.
0:47:52You can only pick one.
0:47:54For your own personal purposes, not for like what would make a better laptop for Apple
0:47:57to sell, what would you pick?
0:47:59On a 15-inch, no question, an SD card reader.
0:48:03Casey?
0:48:04I'm torn between ancient USB and SD card reader.
0:48:08I would probably, or actually HDMI would also be convenient.
0:48:11- You're gonna pick one.
0:48:13- I know, I'm thinking, ah.
0:48:14- See, and to me, if it's less, if it's not the 15 inch,
0:48:17like if you ask me what port I would add
0:48:19to the MacBook Escape, it would be a third of anything,
0:48:22like a third USB-C port, just one more of anything,
0:48:25because that's what it most desperately needs,
0:48:26like the 12 inch too, right?
0:48:27- Yeah, yeah, yeah, the same thing.
0:48:28I would kill for a second USB-C port in my--
0:48:30- That's why I picked the 15, just to see,
0:48:32you know, you feel like there's enough USB-Cs on the 15,
0:48:36but you can add one more thing, you know, what would it be?
0:48:38I am very torn between SD, between old USB, and between HDMI, but I think if I had to
0:48:44pick, I think I would probably—for me, I would probably come down on SD card reader
0:48:49because I don't find a need for plugging in the HDMI that often, and I have a dongle
0:48:55for it.
0:48:56I don't have a need for plugging in legacy USB stuff that often, and I have a dongle
0:49:01for it.
0:49:02But I do have an SD card reader that I like quite a lot, but it would be more convenient
0:49:07to just be able to slot that thing right in the computer.
0:49:10- Yeah, to me, it's like, you can solve a lot,
0:49:12like a lot of the annoyances of the new laptop ports
0:49:17are solved by just having a lot of them,
0:49:19like when you have four of them,
0:49:20well, technically really you have three of them,
0:49:22because one of them has a power plug in it,
0:49:25but when you have three useful ones--
0:49:27- Well, unless you have pass-through,
0:49:28like I hear your point 100%.
0:49:30- Yeah, but then you're in dongle town, like, okay--
0:49:32- Well, you're gonna be in dongle town regardless.
0:49:34- Yeah, well, that's part of the problem.
0:49:35- All landowners in dongle town, my friend.
0:49:37(laughing)
0:49:39- But I feel like the other ports,
0:49:41you can fix a lot of the inconvenience
0:49:44of USB-C on laptops with getting new cables for old devices.
0:49:49Like you can go on Monoprice or Amazon or whatever
0:49:51and get inexpensive cables that have USB-C on one end
0:49:55and whatever your peripheral needs on the other end.
0:49:57And you can just replace your cables
0:49:58and there's some issues with hubs and multiplying those
0:50:01that I've talked about before which is still annoying.
0:50:03but I feel like you can reduce a lot of the annoyance
0:50:06with just new cables.
0:50:07But if you need SD cards as part of your workflow,
0:50:11there's no way to reduce that annoyance.
0:50:12You're always gonna have an SD card hanging out
0:50:14of the side of it through a cable or something.
0:50:16That sucks, and when it's built in, it sucks less.
0:50:19So other problems can be solved with either time
0:50:22or cabling choices or peripheral choices,
0:50:25but not having an SD card reader,
0:50:27if you use SD cards, is always a pain.
0:50:29- So the reason I asked this question is because
0:50:31I've been thinking about it a lot lately,
0:50:32I can tell you if you surveyed all the people at my office at work, they would all say HDMI,
0:50:37because every time, increasingly when we land in a conference room and someone needs to
0:50:41project, never mind the fact that they should really, with the number of Macs that are in
0:50:45this office, they should really have Apple TVs connected to every single thing so we
0:50:47could airplay to them because it would solve this problem in a much nicer way.
0:50:50Steve Jobs would approve, "You don't need an HDMI port, you just need to be able to
0:50:53airplay to everything."
0:50:54I agree, Steve, but you can't fight the IT department.
0:50:58Anyway, they would all say HDMI, because it's so frustrating, we all sit down there and
0:51:01and it's like we look around for the one person
0:51:03with the 2015 laptop who can actually plug in
0:51:06because everyone forgot their dongle.
0:51:07Wow.
0:51:08And it used to be there was just one person
0:51:10with the new laptop and we would laugh at them,
0:51:12and now there's like one person left with the old laptop.
0:51:14And once the old laptop disappears,
0:51:15there's gonna be a bunch of people sitting around
0:51:16unable to project.
0:51:17I don't understand why they don't put the adapters for this.
0:51:19But anyway, that's what people at work would say,
0:51:21but that's not what I would say
0:51:21because in my regular life, if I was buying a laptop
0:51:23for myself, I don't need to connect to HDMI.
0:51:25So I would never pick HDMI, but work totally would.
0:51:29I would have said in the past SD, right?
0:51:31Because I do have cameras that have SD cards.
0:51:34When I go on vacation, I like to offload pictures
0:51:36from my camera to my thing without a dongle.
0:51:37It's convenient, build it in, it's small, it's skinny,
0:51:40it'll fit fine.
0:51:41But the more I've been thinking about it,
0:51:42the more I've been getting attached to the idea
0:51:45of taking a 15-inch MacBook Pro and adding MagSafe
0:51:49and still having the ability to charge
0:51:51by any of the USB-C things, like not removing that ability,
0:51:54but adding MagSafe as an addition.
0:51:56Because I feel like you get the twofer.
0:51:58You get MagSafe, which is better to trip over and stuff.
0:52:01You get, as I think it was, was it Jason Snell?
0:52:03Or maybe it was Gruber saying, you get the indicator light,
0:52:06which I think is a useful feature
0:52:07when you have your closed laptop and you plug it in
0:52:08to make sure you see the little light
0:52:09that shows amber or green,
0:52:11to show whether it's fully charged or is charging, right?
0:52:14- Yeah, it's a great feature.
0:52:15It's not like, and Apple had that, what, 15 years ago?
0:52:18Like, it's not a new thing and laptop this size.
0:52:21- Right, and you also get one of your ports back.
0:52:23Now you really do have four ports instead of three.
0:52:26If you want the convenience of I just have USB-C charger with me on vacation, it can
0:52:30charge everything, you've got it, but also you could have the MagSafe.
0:52:34And then the only question is what do you ship in the box?
0:52:35Do you ship MagSafe, do you ship USB, or do you ship both, and probably Apple would make
0:52:38you pick or something.
0:52:40And I know it would be backsliding, and I know MagSafe had problems too, and that's
0:52:43why I feel like ship them both.
0:52:46Let people decide what they want to use.
0:52:48Hell, Apple can collect stats about what they use and anonymously send them back with its
0:52:52differential privacy for how often laptops are charging via MagSafe versus how often
0:52:56and they're charging via USB-C.
0:52:58I probably would get more benefit out of SD,
0:53:00but I'm finding the twofer of getting a port back
0:53:05and having the option of MagSafe irresistible.
0:53:08So now I'm envisioning, before I was envisioning
0:53:10Apple revising its laptops by adding an SD card slot,
0:53:12and now I'm envisioning them adding back MagSafe,
0:53:14which I think is astronomically less likely
0:53:16than adding an SD card slot, because it just,
0:53:19it would be like egg on face of like,
0:53:20oh, remember MagSafe, we're bringing it back.
0:53:23That would be a tough sell.
0:53:24Whereas SD, now there's so much room alongside those,
0:53:27the edges of those 15 inch laptops, right?
0:53:29It's just a giant expanse with these two little tiny
0:53:32USB-C holes, an SD card slot, even Johnny Ive could tolerate
0:53:36the aesthetic marring of a very skinny,
0:53:38discreet SD card slot in there.
0:53:40How it looks fine on Marco's 2015 MacBook Pro,
0:53:43I think it would be fine on a 2018 model.
0:53:46- One thing also that they could do that I think,
0:53:50it probably goes against their sensibilities,
0:53:53but I think it probably shouldn't,
0:53:54'cause I think it's one of the biggest engineering flops
0:53:56of the new lineup, is that the number of USB,
0:54:01like to me, like one of the biggest problems with these,
0:54:03as I've said numerous times,
0:54:05is just there aren't enough ports.
0:54:07Like if you're going to sell us on an all USB-C world,
0:54:11okay, we can adapt to that over time
0:54:13with dongles and stuff and new cables and everything.
0:54:15There still aren't enough ports,
0:54:16especially with one of them being lost to power.
0:54:18As you said, like you basically lose one
0:54:21during most practical usage for most people
0:54:23most of the time.
0:54:25So, you know, like the MacBook escape
0:54:27basically has one port.
0:54:28Casey's MacBook One has no ports.
0:54:31- Pretty much.
0:54:32(laughing)
0:54:33- Right, and so like, and the 15 inch has three.
0:54:36And if you look at, and you know, the 13 Pro also.
0:54:39And if you look at like, you know,
0:54:40what the previous ones had, like you could connect
0:54:43more than that amount of things to them without adapters.
0:54:46And I feel like one of the,
0:54:48if you look at the engineering behind this,
0:54:50One of the challenges, for example,
0:54:51one of the reasons why the MacBook Escape
0:54:53only has two ports is because of limitations
0:54:57of how many Thunderbolt channels you can deliver
0:55:00because Apple decided to make all of these USB-C ports
0:55:04also Thunderbolt 3 ports,
0:55:06except for the one in Casey's MacBook One.
0:55:09And that's a choice that they made.
0:55:10They didn't have to.
0:55:12It is possible to have a USB-C port
0:55:14that does not support Thunderbolt 3,
0:55:17like the one in Casey's MacBook One.
0:55:19And so Apple, no, trust me, this is in many ways
0:55:22a good thing, you just need more of them.
0:55:23And so I feel like one of the biggest ways
0:55:27to solve the annoyance of these laptops
0:55:29is to just, if you're gonna insist on USB-C,
0:55:32okay, but we need more of them.
0:55:34Two total, including your power hole, is not enough.
0:55:38If you can't make them on certain models,
0:55:41if you can't make them full-blown Thunderbolt 3 ports,
0:55:44which you already can't, they're already not
0:55:46Thunderbolt 3 and the MacBook One,
0:55:48and the ones on the right side of the 13 inch MacBook Pro
0:55:51are half bandwidth or whatever it is.
0:55:52So there's already exceptions.
0:55:55The cable that comes with it
0:55:57that charges from the brick to the computer
0:56:00is a USB-C cable that is not a Thunderbolt cable.
0:56:03In fact, it's a USB 2.0 USB-C cable,
0:56:05which shouldn't even exist, but they do,
0:56:08and that's what it is.
0:56:10You know, there's already all these exceptions
0:56:13to what the ports can and can't do.
0:56:15In addition, Thunderbolt usage in practice
0:56:18is pretty low, and it is not the common case,
0:56:22what most people are plugging into these things,
0:56:25it needs either just power, or power and USB.
0:56:28Most of the peripherals being plugged into these ports
0:56:32do not need Thunderbolt 3.
0:56:34And so by Apple taking these ports on most of these laptops
0:56:37except for Casey's and saying,
0:56:39"We can only have as many as the Thunderbolt controllers
0:56:41"allow us to with this chipset or whatever,"
0:56:43that's very limiting to the number of ports you can have.
0:56:47If they had like two to four of them
0:56:51that could do Thunderbolt 3,
0:56:53and two more that couldn't,
0:56:56maybe on the other side or whatever,
0:56:58that's not ideal,
0:57:00but I think that's better than not having enough ports
0:57:04to do basic things that you need.
0:57:06So I know it'd be more complicated.
0:57:08I know they wouldn't be able to put
0:57:09the little Thunderbolt lightning bolt symbol
0:57:11next to all of them,
0:57:13but I think that is the best compromise that we have.
0:57:16we're gonna do in all USB-C world,
0:57:18we need more of these ports.
0:57:20And it is a waste to suggest
0:57:23that they all need to have Thunderbolt 3.
0:57:24I mean, look, one of them, most of the time,
0:57:27is used for power and nothing else, no data at all.
0:57:31You're wasting Thunderbolt 3 bandwidth on a port
0:57:34that transfers nothing except power.
0:57:38So obviously, there's a major engineering inefficiency
0:57:42in tying Thunderbolt 3 to USB-C for all these laptops.
0:57:46If you can separate them, you could give us way more ports.
0:57:49Well, not way more, but you can give us two more ports
0:57:51at least on most of these
0:57:52without having any bandwidth challenges.
0:57:54- You could give way more.
0:57:55Like, they have USB inside these cases.
0:57:57You could give six USB-C ports
0:57:59along with four Thunderbolt ports.
0:58:01I feel like they have the controller capacity
0:58:02or space inside the case to put a controller
0:58:04that can support that.
0:58:05Like, USB connections are cheap
0:58:07in the grand scheme of things.
0:58:08- Yeah, I mean, it becomes, I think, more complicated
0:58:11with the wiring and stuff if the other ones
0:58:13could also do some of the other alternate modes.
0:58:15Like if they can take power input
0:58:17or if they can do certain video output types.
0:58:19But, 'cause I know Thunderbolt's required
0:58:21for some of the alternate modes, but not all of them,
0:58:23or it is one of the alternate modes,
0:58:24I don't know, something like that.
0:58:25But like, tying this to Thunderbolt 3
0:58:28made these ports very limited in number
0:58:31and probably fairly expensive to implement.
0:58:33But that was an unforced error.
0:58:35They didn't need to do that.
0:58:36I understand why they did,
0:58:38but I think that was the wrong move,
0:58:39and I hope they fix it.
0:58:41- Okay, a couple of things.
0:58:42First of all, you just said unforced error,
0:58:44and to my ears, it was the correct usage of the term,
0:58:47and I'm really uncomfortable with my reality right now.
0:58:50- Wait, so is that a sports term?
0:58:52'Cause I learned it from John.
0:58:53- It is a sports term.
0:58:55- Okay, to me it's a Syracuse term.
0:58:57- Wow, well, now my reality is back to being reality,
0:59:00so I appreciate that.
0:59:02Let's go on a adventure together,
0:59:06a little mental exercise together.
0:59:07It is 2016, or whatever year it was,
0:59:10that the USB-C MacBook Pros came out.
0:59:12Doesn't matter when it was,
0:59:13But whenever they debuted, it's that year, that moment.
0:59:17And within a few weeks of each other, the new MacBook Pros come out.
0:59:21Let's pick on the 15 specifically.
0:59:22There's a new MacBook Pro, it's 15 inches, it has four USB-C and Thunderbolt ports.
0:59:27Simultaneously, Lenovo or Dell or somebody else comes out with effectively the same thing,
0:59:33as they are off to do.
0:59:35And it has the same four physical USB-C ports, but only two of them are Thunderbolt.
0:59:42Do you know what the three of us would be doing at that moment?
0:59:45We would be saying, "Oh, haha, these idiot PC vendors.
0:59:47Now that you have to worry about whether or not you're plugging in to the right port,
0:59:51what a ridiculous mess that is."
0:59:53We didn't say that on the MacBook where, as Margaret has pointed out, it's a situation
0:59:57now where you have to know one side is special and the other.
0:59:59That's been a thing on Apple Apples for a long time, that certain ports on one side
1:00:02are better than the ports on the other side.
1:00:04That's been true for many laptops in Apple's history.
1:00:05And yeah, it's always kind of annoying, but we understand why it is the way it is, and
1:00:09we accept it.
1:00:10it's a source of ridicule.
1:00:12All right.
1:00:13I just feel like all I can imagine is all of us going, "Ha ha, those idiot PC people."
1:00:17I mean, we have talked about that as an inherent problem with using the same connector for
1:00:21all these things.
1:00:22I still think that the advantages of using the same connector for all of them outweigh
1:00:24the disadvantages, but as Marco just said, your laptop has a port, has a hole that's
1:00:29exactly the same shape as the ones in Marco's, and yet it is not capable of the things that
1:00:33Marco's old ones were capable of, right?
1:00:37It's both the same cables fit into both of them, but if you plug in a thing that expects
1:00:40Thunderbolt into yours, it won't work.
1:00:42And there's no indication for that, physically speaking.
1:00:44I don't even know if there's a little lightning bolt thingy next to them anymore.
1:00:47No.
1:00:48So, I mean, that's just the nature of the piece.
1:00:50Well, it wouldn't be next to yours.
1:00:51No, if at some point, yeah, maybe you shouldn't ask me after all.
1:00:54So, you know, I think the implicit assumption, I'm also thinking of my own feelings about
1:01:00underlying discussion, is that I still believe, I'm still hoping, I guess, that when Apple
1:01:06does make a big revision to their laptop line, that one or more of the new laptops they introduce
1:01:13will have more ports than the thing that it's replacing.
1:01:16And that's why I keep getting to what do you think they'll add or whatever.
1:01:19If I'm wrong about that, and if they introduce a whole new laptop line that's like the next
1:01:24generation after this current crop of 2016, 2017, like they've had time to process the
1:01:29feedback from the market and so on and so forth, and none of them have any more ports,
1:01:34I will be extremely disappointed.
1:01:36Like I realized to myself that I've just been assuming.
1:01:38Basically since the Apple round table about the Mac,
1:01:41when they talked about the Mac Pro,
1:01:42from that point on, I read into what they said,
1:01:46within my hopes and dreams of saying,
1:01:48"Yeah, I know you're talking about the Mac Pro
1:01:50and the iMac Pro, like I know that's what this is really
1:01:52about and about a re-editation of the Mac,
1:01:54but the few sentences they said about the laptops,
1:01:56I latched onto really hard and said,
1:01:58that means eventually, after two year cycle,
1:02:01whatever, it takes a long time, like not immediately,
1:02:03but eventually when they do the next big laptop revision, one or more of them will have more
1:02:08ports.
1:02:09And I don't know what I'm going to do if that turns out not to be the case.
1:02:13My faith in — I'm already a laptop hater, I guess — but my faith in Apple's laptops
1:02:16will be fundamentally shaken.
1:02:18So far, it's still just like, they made a wrong turn, and things were already in the
1:02:22pipeline, and they couldn't really do much about the revision for 2017.
1:02:26All they did was add the rubber gaskets and stuff, and it's like, hopefully they know
1:02:29what's wrong.
1:02:30time they do the big revision, that'll be the time to make more different fundamental
1:02:34decisions. But if the next ones come along and they're exactly the same set of just USB-C
1:02:38only, MacBook One is still the MacBook One, the other ones still just have two ports and
1:02:44there's no changes and no MagSafe and no SD card, no HDMI, nobody gets anything, not even
1:02:49an additional USB-C port, nothing, I'm going to be super disappointed. I'll probably console
1:02:56myself by hugging my new Mac Pro, but I don't know about you. Have you internalized that
1:03:05as a thing you expect and so now you're set up to be disappointed by not being there?
1:03:08Or are you still pessimistic and you'll be pleasantly surprised if they do anything?
1:03:12I will be stunned if there's any sort of, not really mea culpa, but if they add any
1:03:19sort of ports to any of these laptops, I will be flabbergasted. I'm not saying it's unreasonable
1:03:26but I do think it is a, what did you say, like egg on the face sort of admission that
1:03:31oh maybe we didn't get this exactly right.
1:03:32Well if they add a USB-C or a Thunderbolt 3 I feel like it's not an admission of anything,
1:03:36it's just they added a more port.
1:03:37Even that will be something, it will say look we realize USB-C is great but when you only
1:03:41get two of them, the ones taken with power, it really limits things so now you got one
1:03:44more so you got three.
1:03:45Yeah, I mean, and let's be realistic here also, like if you look at the side of one
1:03:49of these things and you look at like the height of ports, I think it's very unlikely that
1:03:54that we will see the return of USB-A or even MagSafe,
1:03:58because I don't think they fit.
1:03:59I think they're too tall.
1:04:00I don't think they could reasonably fit those.
1:04:02- Oh, it would have to be a new MagSafe, yeah.
1:04:04It would have to be MagSafe 3.
1:04:06- Yeah, right, because I can't see them doing that.
1:04:09And honestly, I'm totally okay with USB-C charging.
1:04:13I wish the charger was nicer.
1:04:15I wish it had things like the charging light
1:04:17and some kind of version of MagSafe would be nice.
1:04:22But other than that, I actually like USB-C charging
1:04:25'cause you can get third-party chargers
1:04:26that have like the wonderful Anker one
1:04:28that has the built-in USB charging also.
1:04:31It makes the charging situation much more flexible
1:04:34and then you can travel a little bit lighter
1:04:36and stuff like that.
1:04:37So I like that.
1:04:38But if you look at what can actually fit
1:04:42in this new super thin case design, not a lot can.
1:04:46USB-C, you could fit more of them.
1:04:50And maybe, you know what, Apple,
1:04:51maybe you could put them a little further apart
1:04:53because they're really close to each other
1:04:55and it makes it a little bit annoying to use.
1:04:58Also, the headphone jack should move back to the left side
1:05:00where it belongs because there's a reason why headphones
1:05:05were always on the left side of laptops before.
1:05:08It's because when you have a headphone cable
1:05:10that only has a wire on one side,
1:05:13historically that has been conventionally
1:05:15on the left ear cup.
1:05:16So your headphone cable goes down the left ear cup,
1:05:18your left arm into the left side port of the laptop.
1:05:21When it's on the right side, you have to cross your
1:05:22headphone cable over your laptop, which sucks.
1:05:25So, that's wrong.
1:05:25Anyway.
1:05:26- You can wrap it around the back.
1:05:27Oh, by the way, speaking of ports on different sides,
1:05:29that's another thing I appreciate about USB power,
1:05:32that you can connect the power to either side,
1:05:33so depending on where you are on the couch or wherever,
1:05:36if you're in some weird place that you can do it.
1:05:38That's why I think they should always keep that,
1:05:40and I really don't ever expect them to make MagSafe 3,
1:05:42but I've been musing on it lately.
1:05:45- Yeah.
1:05:46So I think if we look at like what kind of ports
1:05:49we might realistically actually get,
1:05:52I wouldn't expect USB-A, I wouldn't expect MagSafe.
1:05:56SD cards are actually plausible.
1:05:57That I think could fit.
1:05:59I'm not sure if they want to,
1:06:01but again I think that would go a long way
1:06:03towards addressing a lot of people's complaints.
1:06:06HDMI almost certainly won't fit.
1:06:08They could do mini HDMI, but they won't.
1:06:10They're gonna rely on Thunderbolt and USB-C for that.
1:06:14But ultimately, I think the most realistic option
1:06:18is to either get no port changes at all,
1:06:22which, like Jon, I would be very disappointed by,
1:06:24or to get more USB-C ports,
1:06:27which I would be very happy with.
1:06:29So we'll see.
1:06:31- Yeah, more USB-C ports is the most likely.
1:06:35I'm still rooting for SD, I think,
1:06:36when we talked about this originally.
1:06:37I said just add an SD card and it'll be fine,
1:06:39but the more I think about the port being taken up by power
1:06:41and experiencing myself,
1:06:42the more i think more more USB-C would be a good idea and by the way for a MagSafe 3 design again
1:06:47not that they're doing this but if you give up on the notion that the magnet is on the side of the
1:06:51computer you can do lots of interesting things imagine if MagSafe looked like a little shovel
1:06:55and and it was large surface area magnet sort of on the bottom like in an L shape like it clipped
1:07:00onto the corner and tucked underneath the little curve like there are things you could do to add
1:07:04much more magnet surface area while keeping it very thin like we don't have to think inside the
1:07:08the box defined by MagSafe as it previously existed. Magnetically detachable charging
1:07:14cables for trip-proofness is, I still think, a good idea and an idea that could manifest
1:07:20in a way that will work with the thinnest possible laptops still.
1:07:23So, in the chat room, Espressly asked an interesting question. They said, "Would you prefer a second
1:07:29USB-C on the adorable or a headphone jack?" And I presume the genesis of this is that
1:07:35On the opposite side of the laptop, on the right hand side, and Marco you're right to
1:07:38say that that is bananas, but on the right hand side of the laptop of the adorable, there
1:07:42is a headphone jack.
1:07:44And I would absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt, trade in that headphone jack for
1:07:48another USB-C port without question.
1:07:50Because you've got AirPods and that's fine.
1:07:53Yeah, I mean, and all sorts of other Bluetooth headphones.
1:07:56And yeah, there are occasions that I have plugged in headphones to this laptop, but
1:08:01they are extremely rare.
1:08:03And I would get much more, maybe not daily,
1:08:06but much more frequent use out of a second USB-C port
1:08:09than I would the headphone jack that's there today.
1:08:12- There's no reason to make that trade though.
1:08:14We already did 20 shows about complaining about it.
1:08:16There's no room for another USB-C port.
1:08:18There is, there's room for another USB-C port
1:08:20and a headphone, it will be fine.
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1:09:45(upbeat music)
1:09:48- WWDC is announced.
1:09:51It is in San Jose again.
1:09:53It is the fourth through the eighth of June,
1:09:56is phenomenally great because that's what the three of us guessed it would be. And that's
1:10:01what we booked hotel tickets for a long time ago. So that's great news. It is going to
1:10:06be apparently about marzipan or whatever it's being called today if you believe what people
1:10:12are looking at on the invitation, which I think is a exercise in futility, because the
1:10:17invitation is anything but also of interest on that Monday, which is the fourth, all three
1:10:24of your hosts will be there to do another episode in addition of ATP Live, which is
1:10:28part of a, what are they calling it, like a podcast fair or something like that?
1:10:32Festival. Festival, that's what I was looking for, thank
1:10:34you. Which means two live podcasts at Alt-Conf.
1:10:37Whee! So yeah, so we're going to be doing a kind
1:10:41of a joint thing between us, Alt-Conf, like Marco said, and Relay. They're going to be
1:10:48doing an episode of Connected in addition to some other things that I genuinely don't
1:10:54what's happening, but I know enough to know that it's going to be an extravaganza. So,
1:10:57if you are interested in coming to see ATP Live in San Jose on Monday, June 4th,
1:11:03you can get tickets at AltConf's website, and we will put a link in the show notes.
1:11:09They are $5 apiece if they are still available. I honestly haven't even looked. That money goes
1:11:13to AltConf, which is good because AltConf is free, so we don't see any of that money,
1:11:18but I don't think that's a bad thing at all. And additionally, you can get tickets to the
1:11:21the relay thing as well, or to Alt-Conf. And it's worth noting that even if WWDC, if the
1:11:28lottery doesn't work out well for you, in addition to Alt-Conf, there's also layers
1:11:32that will be going on the same time, run by a friend of the show, Jessie Char, and a couple
1:11:37of other lovely women. Actually, I think it's just Elaine and she. But anyway, they are
1:11:41awesome. They are super, super awesome. And the conference is super, super awesome. And
1:11:46the snacks at the conference are super, super awesome. So no matter how you slice it, layers
1:11:50is great, AllConf is great, WWDC is great, plenty of options if you can find yourself
1:11:55in San Jose that week. Is that it? Wow, that was fast.
1:12:00You covered it pretty well. Go team!
1:12:01You summarized in chief. Yeah, chief summarizer in chief. Chief actually
1:12:04doing my job for once. We can talk about the WWDC graphics, which
1:12:07you alluded to earlier. I think some of the commentary about this, or commentary, tweets,
1:12:13whatever, about this have kind of combined two things that are not really related. One
1:12:19One is the artwork Apple puts on the email invitations to select press when they are
1:12:25going to have an event come hear us talk about whatever, you know, like iPhone announcement
1:12:30event or, you know, Mac update, press events, right?
1:12:33And traditionally they make a little graphic and usually sometimes a little phrase underneath
1:12:36it, right?
1:12:38And then there is what we're actually talking about here, which is every year when they
1:12:41do WWDC, there's some kind of graphical motif or theme.
1:12:45It's used in the banners that hang in the exhibition halls and the rooms where they
1:12:50have things.
1:12:51It's used in all the websites and the materials and the emails.
1:12:54And it started off pretty generic many, many years ago, but it has evolved so that now
1:12:59each WWC has kind of like a branding theme or flavor.
1:13:05So for the press invitations, sometimes those have been intentionally pointing to something
1:13:12they're going to say. Like the one with the little rotating apple with the like back to
1:13:17the Mac thing behind it where they were going to talk more about the Mac and guess what?
1:13:20They talked more about the Mac. Some of them are only explicable in hindsight where you
1:13:25can tell some of the graphic treatments on the invitation were the same ones they would
1:13:28use when they announced a particular product, whether it's the iPhone or whatever. But sometimes
1:13:33it's just a fun graphical theme that has to do with "Hey, we have an app store and you
1:13:37make apps for it and apps are these little rounded rectangle things so we use lots of
1:13:40rounded rectangles in our stuff. But I would say that there is a fairly solid track record
1:13:47of some of the time the press invitations do in fact intentionally indicate something
1:13:52that they're going to talk about in a vague way. WWDC art on the other hand has a much
1:13:57worse track record of communicating anything about what's going to be represented other
1:14:01than the fact that it's a developer conference where they tell you about developing for Apple
1:14:04platforms. As far as I can recall, there has never been a WWDC website that hinted strongly
1:14:11at the specific nature of a specific thing they're going to announce, probably mostly because at the
1:14:16time this artwork is commissioned, they're not even entirely sure what's going to be presented
1:14:19at WWDC and things that are going into and out of the keynote and into and out of the sessions
1:14:24for a long time. So I feel like this, trying to read the tea leaves in this artwork is probably
1:14:33about as useful as trying to read the tea leaves in last year's artwork, which is all
1:14:37those top views of people.
1:14:39Yeah, the little people.
1:14:41Which was like, it's a particular artist who does that style of stuff.
1:14:44And that aesthetic theme was all over WWDC last year, but it had nothing to do with anything
1:14:49that was presented.
1:14:50It was just a cool, fun marketing style that talked about, you know, people, developers
1:14:55are people, and they're doing developing things, and it's fun and interesting or whatever.
1:15:00one looks super cool and it's got these cool 3D representations of like, you know,
1:15:04UI elements from iOS and the Mac. It's because, and it's got curly braces and other weird shapes,
1:15:11it communicates like, "Hey, these are things you use when you're developing for our platforms,
1:15:16and this is a conference about developing for our platforms." It's really hard to read anything
1:15:20into it, but people are so, they so want to see something in it, they're saying, "See how these
1:15:26are all 3D, it's showing that they're moving away from flat design because nothing is flat in this.
1:15:30Get it, man? They're coming, you know? And like, it's really reaching. And I have to admit, when I
1:15:37saw this, my thought was nostalgia, because one of—I tweeted this—one of the elements in this
1:15:42very cool-looking—like there's an animation that goes along with it—very cool-looking 3D
1:15:45rendered thing showing a bunch of controls. One of the elements in the lower left corner are three
1:15:51translucent spheres with symbols in them, an X, a minus,
1:15:56and then two little arrow-y things,
1:15:57like a box with a slash through it.
1:16:00And I tweeted about it with one word tweet
1:16:04that said memories, dot, dot, dot.
1:16:06A lot of people didn't know, they responded
1:16:09and thought I was referring to things in like iOS 10
1:16:12or something, or pre-iOS 7 or whatever.
1:16:15What I was actually referring to was
1:16:17the window control widgets,
1:16:19what we used to call the stoplight widgets, red for window close, yellow for minimizing,
1:16:23green for what used to be zoom and is now full screen or whatever the hell it does now.
1:16:29They used to be rendered as if they were glossy spheres, and when you brought your mouse near
1:16:35them or hovered over one of them, you'd see these symbols appear in the spheres.
1:16:39And they were glossy spheres just like these spheres, although this is just viewing them
1:16:42from a different angle.
1:16:43Later in the life of the Mac operating system, they became flatter and eventually they just
1:16:48became like what they are now, which is like, you know, flat colors of red, yellow, and
1:16:52green. They don't even look like they're spheres at all, right? Even though they still have
1:16:56the symbols in them. But floating in this thing are not the flat window widgets of today's
1:17:00High Sierra. Floating in this thing are the window widgets of, you know, Cheetah, Puma,
1:17:04and Panther. Mac OS X, I forgot, I missed Jaguar, sorry. Mac OS X, .01, 2, and 3, I
1:17:13think is how long these things lasted before they start getting really flat. And that,
1:17:16thought was a nice nostalgic nod or an indication that the Mac is considered legacy. But it's
1:17:22a nice nod towards the past because most of the other controls that you see here are clearly
1:17:28elements from iOS or elements from applications that are popularized by iOS, like the little
1:17:32dot dot dot when someone's typing in messages, right? I think it's the same graphic they
1:17:35use in messages on the Mac, but I associate it with iOS just because that's where text
1:17:41messaging first came to the Apple platform. So my take is that you should not read into
1:17:48these types of graphics. I think this is an awesome graphic. I love the aesthetic theme,
1:17:51and I'm just enjoying it as cool branding for WWDC.
1:17:55I agree with everything you just said. So we will all be there, and I'm excited for
1:18:01it. It's one of my favorite times of year, and it's really, really fun. I don't really
1:18:07care at all about texture.
1:18:09So I don't know which one of you added this to the show notes, but do you want to take
1:18:13it away?
1:18:14Apparently magazines are a really hot business right now.
1:18:16It's really a growth industry Apple's getting into here.
1:18:18Yeah, you really messed that one up, Marco.
1:18:20We should explain what this thing is.
1:18:23I hadn't heard of it before today, surprise.
1:18:27Because it's really popular.
1:18:28But anyway, Apple, as an Apple press release and/or PR person would say, Apple acquires
1:18:33small companies all the time.
1:18:35Yeah, it actually is really a high number every time they say like did you know the last year Apple acquired 35 companies or some
1:18:40Some huge I'm really really they you know, it's mostly small like Apple doesn't want to buy them when they're a 10 bazillion dollar company
1:18:47They want to get them before that sometimes they buy companies just for the people sometimes for the technologies or patents
1:18:52Rarely do they buy them for complete working businesses, but that does happen to like beats
1:18:57They bought beats and then continue to sell beats headphones as beats headphones, right?
1:19:01I guess maybe the one of the most recent full-fledged businesses they purchase so texture seems like one of the small ones
1:19:06It's not clear to me whether they bought it for the business or the people or the tech or anything like that
1:19:09but it what it is described as is
1:19:11Netflix for magazines where you play a flat fee and get access to a bunch of magazines in the same way you pay a flat fee
1:19:17Every month for Netflix and you get access to a bunch of movies
1:19:19Why does Apple need to buy this
1:19:22I'm not sure why they might want to buy it but
1:19:27Apple has in the past shown that they're interested in
1:19:31Being some kind of a platform aid to periodicals. We all remember newsstand Marco. I'm sure most fondly
1:19:39That was an attempt to do something like this newsstand did not work out so well newsstand is now gone
1:19:45But it signals Apple's interest in this
1:19:48Texture strikes me as all right the approach with newsstand of making this weird app
1:19:54Slash folder where a bunch of things go and putting weird limitations on them or giving them
1:19:57You know of recurring structures like the whole newsstand thing didn't work out having individual applications for individual things
1:20:03But having them be newsstand savvy that that model didn't work for us
1:20:06Let's try this model and this model
1:20:08Seems a little bit more like Apple news or Apple itself could potentially make an application and within that application
1:20:14you see a bunch of magazines just like within Apple news you see a bunch of news and
1:20:19And other content providers can participate in Apple News not by launching their own application
1:20:24that is Apple News-powered, but rather by getting their news into the one and only Apple
1:20:28News application.
1:20:30Texture is an established business that works in a certain way, so I'm not sure if Apple's
1:20:34going to rebrand it or just put it out the way it is or just scrap texture entirely and
1:20:38take those people and tell them to make Newsstand version two.
1:20:41This time it'll be better.
1:20:44But as Marco or maybe Casey pointed out, it's great that they're kind of into that, but
1:20:49I'm not sure magazines on computers or otherwise are really where it's at in terms of a growth
1:20:56industry.
1:20:57But I would give Apple full credit for recognizing that Newsstand didn't work out.
1:21:03Sunsetting in a fairly graceful way, as I think Marco said, the best time to cancel
1:21:08something is when no one notices that you canceled it, and many people don't realize
1:21:11Newsstand is gone now.
1:21:12Because if you never really used it, you're like, "Is Newsstand gone?"
1:21:15Or if you remember what Newsstand was, "Yeah, it's gone."
1:21:18And no one really kicked up a fuss about it.
1:21:20So that was good.
1:21:21And I think it's worth taking another run at.
1:21:23I know I read magazines, and I do have individual apps, you know, I have like the Edge magazine
1:21:27application.
1:21:28Like, I read magazines on my iPads.
1:21:31I'm not totally offended by that idea.
1:21:33I read ebooks on my iPad too.
1:21:35And so if Apple wants to make a really nice service application thingy for reading magazines,
1:21:41Sure, give it a shot. Why shouldn't they be allowed to give that a try?
1:21:44Yeah, no argument here. It's just this was not on my radar before and as soon as we cease talking about it
1:21:50It will not be on my radar again.
1:21:52Do either one of you read magazines at all on any iOS device? No. I don't read magazines at all on anything ever.
1:21:58Hmm
1:22:00Yeah, no
1:22:00I mean I still read Car and Driver on paper and I read Edge on paper and also in iOS because I think their iOS app
1:22:06I mean, it's not great, but it's not the bad old days of like the original Zinnio for all
1:22:10I know this is the new Zinnia behind these, I have no idea what technology powers it is.
1:22:13But it's not just a bunch of PDFs that they throw onto your screen.
1:22:17Although with today's retina they could probably do that and it would probably be okay, especially
1:22:20on a 12.9 inch because it's practically magazine size and with a retina screen it would look
1:22:24great.
1:22:25I'm mostly doing it for Edge and Car and Driver because I like the content, but the presentation
1:22:29on iOS isn't bad.
1:22:31And it's nice not to have to carry around, you know, if you're going on vacation and
1:22:34you want to read through your last three issues of Edge magazine, to have them all on your
1:22:38iPad rather than three paper things.
1:22:40It's convenient.
1:22:41So I will probably download this and try it and see how good the app is and if there are
1:22:47any magazines that I care about in there.
1:22:48I doubt I'll subscribe to it though.
1:22:51Cool.
1:22:52I have nothing to say about this at all.
1:22:54I know.
1:22:55I just don't care.
1:22:56And maybe I should care, but I just don't care.
1:22:58Apple buys leading manufacturer of fax machines.
1:23:00Fax machines, yeah.
1:23:02I mean, here's the thing with magazines.
1:23:04Like we're making fun of them because magazines is the old world or whatever, but websites,
1:23:08websites are not that different from magazines and once you have a magazine that publishes
1:23:11through an application it's like, is this just like a closed version of the web and
1:23:15a closed version of a web browser? Maybe, but, you know, websites and magazines still
1:23:22seem slightly different, like magazines have websites, but, I don't know, maybe I'm just
1:23:27nostalgic for the old days of magazines and there's lots of legacy businesses that are
1:23:32are tied to the magazine format that I'm glad to see allowed to live another decade or two
1:23:38through an effort like this.
1:23:40All right, so time for Ask ATP.
1:23:42Matt Wallin writes, "My Mac Pro does not have a Wi-Fi card."
1:23:45Wait, this is a Mac Pro question.
1:23:47I don't care.
1:23:48Bill Ballinor writes—I'm just kidding, I'm just kidding—"My Mac Pro does not have a
1:23:52Wi-Fi card.
1:23:53My wife and son both have accounts on the Mac Pro, and I was thinking of using Migration
1:23:55Assistant to copy stuff from the old machine to the new.
1:23:58Can I connect them via Ethernet for this purpose?
1:24:00or will it matter that the new machine will be running on High Sierra and the old machine
1:24:03is El Capitan. I've looked for specific documentation on this online and haven't found a satisfyingly
1:24:08definitive answer." Now, I don't think I have ever used Migration Assistant, ever. I'm not
1:24:14saying it's bad, I'm not saying that I'm doing things the right way, it's just I like to
1:24:18kind of start fresh each time. I know that this is also a little bit different because
1:24:22you're talking about other people and they may not want to start fresh even though you
1:24:25do, but I don't really have any good answers with regard to Migration Assistant. Have you
1:24:31guys used that? I thought both of you have.
1:24:33I definitely have. I'm a big proponent of Migration Assistant. I think there are a couple
1:24:38parts to this question. Starting at the very end, I've looked for specific documentation
1:24:42and haven't found anything. I almost guarantee that there is satisfying definitive documentation
1:24:47related to this on Apple's website, but yes, sometimes it can be hard to find. The beginning
1:24:50of the question, going back to the beginning, I can connect via all these different things.
1:24:53I don't have Wi-Fi, does it matter?
1:24:57I can tell you that you do not want to use Migration Assistant over Wi-Fi if you can
1:25:03at all help it.
1:25:04So the fact that your Mac Pro doesn't have a Wi-Fi card, don't worry about it.
1:25:07I would never recommend doing it.
1:25:09It was worse when Wi-Fi was slower.
1:25:11It's better now that Wi-Fi is faster, but I have not had good luck with using Migration
1:25:15Assistant over Wi-Fi.
1:25:17The good news is that most reasonably modern Macs can do Migration Assistant through almost
1:25:23any of their ports. Like I don't know if they can do it over the headphone jack yet, but
1:25:26who knows.
1:25:27Like the old iPod shuffle sinking over the headphones jack?
1:25:31Yeah. I used to do it through FireWire. You can do it through Ethernet. You can do it
1:25:36through Thunderbolt. There's all sorts of ways that migration assistance will work.
1:25:41The bad news is figuring out how to get it to work, especially with the more obscure
1:25:46ports, can be tricky. So what I would recommend is going back to Apple's website and digging
1:25:51through this stuff and finding the documentation for your specific computer, and it will usually
1:25:56tell you, and by the way, from your computer, you can only migrate to this set of computers
1:26:01through these interfaces.
1:26:02There is sort of a matrix of what connectedness can I use and how is it known as the computer,
1:26:06and you can, unfortunately, find yourself in a situation where you're trying to migrate
1:26:09from a really old computer to a really new one, when there's no great way to do it, except
1:26:14for maybe Ethernet, but then you need an Ethernet adapter or whatever.
1:26:17But I have never, as someone who keeps computers for a long time, I've never kept on long enough
1:26:21that I was unable to run Migration Assistant.
1:26:24So I would suggest using the fastest connection you can.
1:26:27Ethernet is probably sufficient and it's probably the baseline, so try to do that if you possibly
1:26:32can.
1:26:33Find the docs for it and just give it a try.
1:26:36I think you will be mostly pleased with the results.
1:26:39I always have been.
1:26:40I find that Migration Assistant really does migrate my stuff.
1:26:44And yes, it does take a long time, but the amount of time it takes when I do the math
1:26:47works out to be roughly amount of data it has to transfer, you know, divided by the
1:26:53transfer rate or whatever.
1:26:54I have had almost similar luck as that. The only difference I would suggest are when you
1:27:01connect the old Mac via target disk mode, it tends to be significantly faster. My greatest
1:27:07has a pretty big problem that I think it's had basically forever in that it is terrible
1:27:13at estimating how much time you have left.
1:27:16And it will frequently get into a state
1:27:18where it appears as though it's making no progress at all.
1:27:21And it could stay there for hours or even days.
1:27:25And that's very frustrating.
1:27:26It's very hard to tell often what it's doing,
1:27:29whether it is still going to go,
1:27:30how long it's still going to go for.
1:27:32- That's why I said do the math.
1:27:33If you know you have a one terabyte hard drive
1:27:36that's mostly full and you know your connection
1:27:38is one gigabit, do the division,
1:27:40figure out how long you think it's gonna take
1:27:41You can use that as your outside, you know,
1:27:43like to get an idea of how long you think it's gonna take.
1:27:46If it takes 10 times that thing,
1:27:47something's probably gone wrong.
1:27:49But don't believe the progress bar,
1:27:51'cause it doesn't know.
1:27:52- Well anyway, I have had significantly better luck
1:27:57with doing it via target disk mode on the sending machine,
1:28:01rather than having both machines
1:28:03run the Mega
1:28:03the Migrator Assistant app.
1:28:05This would probably also, if there's any problems
1:28:07with the old one being El Capitan,
1:28:11target disk mode would probably avoid those problems
1:28:12a little bit more likely or more easily
1:28:15than running the Migrator Assistant app on both sides.
1:28:18But also, yeah, I found the disk method to be way faster
1:28:23and way more reliable and I have never had it reach
1:28:26one of those states where it seemed like
1:28:28it's gonna just take forever.
1:28:29Whereas over WiFi and even Gigabit Ethernet,
1:28:32I've had that happen.
1:28:34So by doing target disk mode, you have most of the options
1:28:38that Jon suggested on the old Mac Pro.
1:28:41You probably, let's see, Mac Pros that had Wi-Fi
1:28:44are optional, would be 2006 into 2008.
1:28:47I believe it was standard after that, so it's pretty old.
1:28:50It will definitely predate all Thunderbolt,
1:28:52'cause Thunderbolt came after the Mac Pro.
1:28:54So your best port is probably FireWire 800,
1:28:58assuming you have, well you definitely have that,
1:29:00assuming it still works, then I would suggest,
1:29:03you know, if you have any problems trying to do this
1:29:05over ethernet, I would suggest,
1:29:07assuming the new machine has Thunderbolt,
1:29:10go to the Apple Store, get a Thunderbolt to,
1:29:14well, let's see, you're gonna need two dongles.
1:29:16- No, FireWire 800, that is what I've got
1:29:17on the iMac right now, I was gonna suggest.
1:29:19If you, like, Target is Smoking--
1:29:20- But does it go FireWire 800 to USB 3 Thunderbolt,
1:29:23or does it have to, you have to adapt two to three,
1:29:25and then two to 800?
1:29:28- I only have one adapter in the back of my 5K iMac.
1:29:31It's like Firewire 800 into this adapter
1:29:35and this adapter into the back of the iMac,
1:29:36but I confess I do not recall what exactly
1:29:38it's going into the back of the iMac.
1:29:40- So assuming that you're,
1:29:42he doesn't actually say what he's going to, right?
1:29:45- No, I believe that's correct.
1:29:47- Okay, so assuming that it's a current generation machine
1:29:51that only has Thunderbolt 3 ports,
1:29:53you might need two dongles to go once from 800
1:29:57to Thunderbolt 2, and then once again,
1:29:59from Thunderbolt 2 to Thunderbolt 3.
1:30:01So that might be like $80 worth of dongles,
1:30:05'cause the Thunderbolt one's like 50 bucks.
1:30:07- Well, then we have to start considering ethernet,
1:30:08'cause eventually they do both have ethernet ports,
1:30:10ethernet is fast.
1:30:11And practically speaking,
1:30:12the reason I find myself using ethernet
1:30:14is because I'm doing two desktops
1:30:15and they're far away from each other,
1:30:16and it's kind of a pain to like disconnect the desktop
1:30:18and lug it over and put it close enough
1:30:20so your little firewire or Thunderbolt or USB-C cable
1:30:24can connect to the right ports.
1:30:26It's just, then you're like, look, Ethernet is easier.
1:30:29Even if your home doesn't wire for Ethernet,
1:30:30to just get 100 feet of Ethernet cable
1:30:32and plug it in and snake it over
1:30:34and leave it there for a day for you to do the transfers,
1:30:36that'll of course encourage you to wire your house
1:30:38for Ethernet like a civilized person.
1:30:40- Yeah, well, I mean, if they have a Mac Pro
1:30:43that doesn't have WiFi, they probably have this covered.
1:30:46- Yeah.
1:30:46- Anyway, so yeah, I agree.
1:30:48Try Ethernet first and only go buy the $80 worth
1:30:52of dongles and cables if for some reason
1:30:54Ethernet always fails.
1:30:55- And backup before you do anything.
1:30:58Backup, make a bunch of backups, take the backups,
1:31:00disconnect them from all your computers,
1:31:01put it someplace else, and then have fun screwing
1:31:04with your computers.
1:31:05Worst case scenario, you screw everything up,
1:31:07you erase everything you restore from backup,
1:31:08and then you're back to your initial stage again.
1:31:10- Also, wait, if you can backup to a USB 3.0 hard drive,
1:31:14your old Mac Pro doesn't have USB 3.0.
1:31:17- Migration.
1:31:18- But yeah, you could just then plug that
1:31:19into the new computer and just do it that way.
1:31:21(laughing)
1:31:22- Oh, my word.
1:31:24All right, Bill Ballinore writes,
1:31:26"Is it okay for developers to force polite interactions
1:31:29"on their users such as labeling the OK button in a prompt,
1:31:32"'Yes, please,' or the dismiss button
1:31:34"in a confirmation dialogue, 'Thanks.'
1:31:36"These things make me cranky."
1:31:38You're wrong, this is absolutely acceptable and I like it.
1:31:41- Oh, God, no, what's your, okay, so, okay, there's,
1:31:45if done in a non-intrusive, non-suggestive,
1:31:51not putting words in my mouth kind of way,
1:31:53It can be fine.
1:31:56Unfortunately, that's not what happens in practice.
1:31:57In practice, you have things like,
1:32:00"No, I don't want to subscribe to the newsletter
1:32:02"and get all these special deals because I'm cheap."
1:32:04Or something like that.
1:32:06They make you, so often, the words they use
1:32:10are passive-aggressively condemning yourself
1:32:13for making a choice that does not benefit
1:32:16the developer's business interests.
1:32:18And it's really obnoxious.
1:32:20Oftentimes, other than that,
1:32:21It just, you know, it tries to sound human and hip and cool,
1:32:26but it's from like a big corporation
1:32:27and we know that's fake.
1:32:29And it comes off as just insincere fakery
1:32:32trying to appeal to be more human
1:32:34from a company that is anything but.
1:32:36So it's very hard and very rare
1:32:40to get this kind of thing right in a way
1:32:42that sounds both sincere and non-offensive.
1:32:46- I think you're reading too much into this,
1:32:48or maybe I'm not reading enough into it.
1:32:50To me, like, having a dismiss button that says "Thanks!"
1:32:54I don't have a problem with that.
1:32:55Having a dismiss button that says "No, I'm too cheap," or even if it's passive-aggressively
1:33:00saying "No, I'm too cheap," and not using those literal words, that, yes, I agree with
1:33:04you, that's total garbage.
1:33:05But something as simple as "Yes, please," or "Thanks," or "No, thank you," like, I don't
1:33:09have a problem with that at all.
1:33:11I think you would have a problem with the "Thanks," because "Thanks" is putting words
1:33:14in your mouth.
1:33:15Like, you just want the box to go away.
1:33:16So there's two aspects of the problem.
1:33:17One is the giving your personality and putting words into the mouth of the user, because
1:33:22what if they're annoyed at your application right now and are forced to hit a button that
1:33:25says "thanks" and they don't want to thank your application at all because they're frustrated
1:33:28with your application?
1:33:29The "thanks" button makes them hate your application even more because you're forcing them to pretend
1:33:32they're saying "thanks," right?
1:33:33But the second reason, independent of all this stuff, is people are accustomed to dialog
1:33:38boxes alerting a certain way.
1:33:39Yes, no, okay, cancel.
1:33:40Like there are interface standards that they're accustomed to, and if your application deviates
1:33:44from those standards in any way, there should be a reason for it.
1:33:48Maybe you care at weather and you have a personality type thing and that's part of the selling
1:33:52point of your application.
1:33:53Fine.
1:33:54But if your application is selling point, it's not like there's a cost to defying expectations.
1:33:59It causes people to pause and have to look at it and think about what they hit and like
1:34:03read.
1:34:04It causes them to have to read, whereas no one reads yes, no, or okay, cancel.
1:34:06If they see them a million times, they just, you know, it becomes like a visual macro.
1:34:10You're just like, oh, I recognize that.
1:34:11I don't know which thing I want to hit.
1:34:13or even just a single button dismiss thing in iOS,
1:34:16where the button is always labeled as okay,
1:34:18and now suddenly that button has different text on it,
1:34:21you're forced to read it, you find out it says thanks,
1:34:23you don't feel like thanking anybody,
1:34:24and now you're annoyed.
1:34:26So I would, I would in general say there is no 100% safe way
1:34:31to inject personality into labels like that.
1:34:34There are a lot of downsides,
1:34:36and the only potential upsides are
1:34:37if your application's value proposition
1:34:41is based on its personality and whimsy,
1:34:43which can be done, but is much trickier than you think.
1:34:48- It also, be very careful when you're writing dialogue text,
1:34:51if you're a developer or if you're Apple,
1:34:54that attributes malice or actions to the user,
1:34:57or it attributes an intent or actions to the user
1:35:01that may or may not be the case.
1:35:04One of the most infuriating pieces of text
1:35:06in all of Mac OS is the dialogue that comes up
1:35:09after it has a kernel panic and shuts down and reboots
1:35:12that says, "You shut down your computer
1:35:15"because of a problem."
1:35:17And a lot of times, no, you shut down my computer
1:35:21because of your problem.
1:35:23- It doesn't say that, does it?
1:35:24- It totally says that.
1:35:25- It says your computer shut down due to a problem.
1:35:27- It says you shut down your computer.
1:35:29- I gotta Google for this now.
1:35:31- I agree with John, that is not how I remember this.
1:35:34- Are you sure?
1:35:35- I am not sure, but.
1:35:36I would check, 'cause I don't see it often,
1:35:39but every time I see it, I'm like, oh, I'm on fire.
1:35:42You shut down my computer.
1:35:44I didn't shut down my computer.
1:35:46- So here's what the kernel panic, you know the overlay?
1:35:49The overlay that comes on in five languages
1:35:50when you go to kernel panic?
1:35:51- Yeah, it's not that.
1:35:52It's the dialogue that shows up on the first boot after.
1:35:55- Right, okay, but so anyway, the overlay says,
1:35:57your computer restarted because of a problem.
1:35:59So that may be what I'm remembering for that wording.
1:36:01All right, now the after your computer restarts,
1:36:04Marco was right, I'm looking at this thing
1:36:06Apple's website. It says, "You shut down your computer because of a problem."
1:36:09Wow, really?
1:36:10I'm telling you, it sets me on fire if I ever see it.
1:36:13It's right on Apple's website. We will put it in the show notes. I'm assuming this is
1:36:16the current dialogue, but it's an Apple support document.
1:36:19It looks like it might be an old theme, but yeah, that's definitely the current wording.
1:36:22Yeah, maybe I was reading it as "your" because the kernel panic one does say "your," but
1:36:28the dialogue after it says "you shut down." It doesn't even make sense. How would you
1:36:32shut down the computer spontaneously because of a problem?
1:36:36Is it just like all of a sudden you saw a problem
1:36:38and you reach for the plug in the wall and yanked it out?
1:36:41How is that even a thing that you could do?
1:36:43Because if you found a problem and you selected shut down,
1:36:45you would never see this dialog box.
1:36:48- It's kind of like putting words in my mouth,
1:36:49but in this case it's like putting actions in my mouth.
1:36:51It's like, "No, I didn't do this.
1:36:54"You did this."
1:36:55So when you see an app that's forcing you to say,
1:37:01thanks or no, I don't wanna see your great deals,
1:37:05I don't like great deals.
1:37:06Like, that is, it seems like it might be cute
1:37:11or helpful or something and trust me, it's not at all.
1:37:15Like, you have to be so careful with that stuff.
1:37:18- And there is an additional dialogue by the way
1:37:21that says your computer was restarted because of a problem
1:37:24and that one says the, you know, ignore more info
1:37:29and move to trash for like an application that crashed.
1:37:33Like we see that one when an app crashes.
1:37:34So there is one that is more, you know, less blamey.
1:37:39But the fact that there exists any dialogue
1:37:41that says you shut down your computer because of a problem,
1:37:43it's the dialogue that's asking whether you want it
1:37:46to restore all the applications that were open.
1:37:48So your choices are please reopen everything
1:37:49like it was before, or hit cancel to not reopen stuff,
1:37:52which by the way-
1:37:53- I'm sorry, what reopen everything?
1:37:54Please reopen everything?
1:37:55- Yeah, I'm not a dialogue box.
1:37:57I don't have to put that.
1:37:58The button does not say "please open."
1:38:00The button says "open" and the cancel button says "no thanks, cancel."
1:38:03Oh, I'm sorry, it doesn't say "no thanks, cancel."
1:38:05It says "cancel" because that's what cancel buttons say on them.
1:38:08I'm not a button-on person.
1:38:11That's what it's asking you.
1:38:12And so, again, if it's asking you that, it means the entire thing abruptly stopped functioning.
1:38:19And it realizes that it abruptly stopped functioning because it didn't do all the nice shutdown
1:38:22cleanup stuff.
1:38:23So the next time it starts up, it says, "I don't see the nice shutdown cleanup stuff,"
1:38:25which means things ended abruptly last time.
1:38:28And I honestly don't think there's any user action
1:38:31that you could take other than if it knew somehow
1:38:34because of cameras that you had yanked the cord out
1:38:37or flicked the hardware power switch yourself.
1:38:39- Even if it sees you do it, it still shouldn't say that.
1:38:42It's just setting you on fire unnecessarily.
1:38:46- And how would it know it was because of a problem?
1:38:48Maybe you shut down your computer
1:38:50because you couldn't figure out any other way.
1:38:52You're an inexperienced computer user
1:38:55and the only way you know how to turn it off
1:38:57is to hold down the power button for five seconds.
1:38:59- Maybe you shut down your computer as a statement.
1:39:02- Because of a problem.
1:39:03It wasn't a problem with your computer,
1:39:04it was just like a problem in the world.
1:39:06(laughs)
1:39:08- I think you might be reading too much into this.
1:39:10I think the way I've always read this
1:39:12and why I haven't been perturbed by it
1:39:15is because the computer,
1:39:17well, I guess it can turn itself off,
1:39:18but in this scenario of a kernel panic,
1:39:20it doesn't turn itself off.
1:39:21It is you that is physically turning the computer off
1:39:23and restarting it.
1:39:24- Not always.
1:39:25- No, not in the case of--
1:39:26- In fact, by default, it reboots itself, doesn't it?
1:39:28- Does it reboot?
1:39:29I didn't think it did.
1:39:30- I think it does now.
1:39:31I think that's been the case for the last few years.
1:39:33- Oh no, you're right.
1:39:34Press a key or wait a few seconds to continue starting out.
1:39:36No, I guess you're right.
1:39:37I guess you're right.
1:39:38All I know is you guys are clearly from the Northeast
1:39:41or have lived there too long
1:39:42because you're impolite assholes.
1:39:44Moving on, Chad's a poor sneak.
1:39:46- No, no, before you move on,
1:39:47like again, I want to iterate.
1:39:48It's not about politeness.
1:39:50It's about the fact that there are conventions
1:39:51for the user interface.
1:39:52Anything that deviates to the convention,
1:39:53like, "Don't make me think." Whatever. "Don't make me think." Anything that deviates from
1:39:57the convention requires thinking and processing time, and it's cognitive load for no benefit
1:40:03unless there is actual benefit of the personality of the application. Otherwise, every time
1:40:07we look at a dialogue, we'd have to parse each person's politeness and phrasing and
1:40:13preambles and stuff, and we just want "Okay, cancel," or we just have standard buttons
1:40:17that say standard things that fit in a standard amount of space, and we don't want to have
1:40:20to read them.
1:40:21actually do completely agree with you on that. Chad Toporski writes, "When it comes to video
1:40:25games, how much of a completionist do each of you consider yourselves to be? How much
1:40:28does it depend on the type of game, scope of the game, and your level of interest in
1:40:31it?" I will start by saying I am not at all a completionist, and obviously I am—I think
1:40:37Marco and I fight over who is the least video game-y person of the three of us, but I do
1:40:44play video games from time to time. As I think we mentioned last week or the week before,
1:40:47up and getting back into Breath of the Wild. But whenever it is I beat Ganon at the end
1:40:52of Breath of the Wild, if I don't have all 120 whatever it is, shrines, if I don't have
1:40:56all 80 gazillion kurok or kurok or whatever they're called seeds, I am not going to care.
1:41:01I will be putting that game down and probably never playing it again. And that's just me.
1:41:06Marco, since you are also useless like me, how do you treat this?
1:41:09- Kind of in between you and a normal person.
1:41:13(laughing)
1:41:14I will try to be fairly complete as I'm playing,
1:41:18but then I will usually reach a point
1:41:19at which my interest just falls.
1:41:22For a game that can be quote beaten,
1:41:25or that has like a main storyline that can be completed,
1:41:27I do really wanna complete that main storyline.
1:41:29But like you, once I, and on my way there,
1:41:34I might be collecting as much as I possibly can.
1:41:37like when playing Mario Odyssey,
1:41:40I really tried to get as many of the moons as possible
1:41:45as I'm going through each world.
1:41:46I don't just fly away as soon as I can.
1:41:49But then after you complete the main storyline,
1:41:51you can go back and get a whole bunch more.
1:41:53And I started doing that
1:41:54and I just haven't really continued yet.
1:41:55And I intend to go back and play it.
1:41:59I don't know when I will exactly,
1:42:01'cause now I'm playing other games now,
1:42:02so I don't know when I actually will.
1:42:05but I do intend to still go back and do that.
1:42:08I don't stop because I decide,
1:42:10"Oh, I'm done with this game forever."
1:42:13It just kinda happens.
1:42:15Like Stardew Valley, I played Stardew Valley
1:42:17very heavily for a long time,
1:42:20and I intend to go back to it,
1:42:22but the last time I played it was probably three months ago,
1:42:25and I just haven't gone back to it yet.
1:42:27But I do intend to, I haven't had a kid yet,
1:42:29I wanna see how that works, so, you know,
1:42:32there's more I wanna do in that game,
1:42:33But once I reach a certain point where I feel like I've done mostly everything there is
1:42:38to do, I find it hard to motivate myself to go back and get the last 10%.
1:42:43Well, you did have an actual kid.
1:42:46What do you mean as a pixelated kid?
1:42:48Yes.
1:42:49All right.
1:42:50Just to make that clear.
1:42:51You feel like, "I haven't had a kid yet."
1:42:53In Stardew Valley, the game I was talking about during that sentence.
1:42:56It just seems context-free.
1:42:58Where's Adam?
1:42:59He's upstairs asleep.
1:43:01So this question doesn't really define what completionist means, but I'm kind of with
1:43:07Marco and there's two strains.
1:43:09I like Marco if I'm playing a narrative game that is trying to tell me a story, and if
1:43:14I like the game well enough, like I'm having fun playing it, I do want to see how that
1:43:21story turns out.
1:43:24But the modern practice of video games, of basically providing a tremendous amount of
1:43:31things to do outside the main story means that for me to actually 100% clear a game
1:43:37by getting all the things that you can get and doing all the things that you can do has
1:43:41actually become a lot harder over the years, both in terms of time investment and skill.
1:43:45It used to be that if you finish a story, then there'd be a couple of ancillary things
1:43:48to do, but Mario Odyssey is like, the story is like one eighth of the game.
1:43:52And then like, if you really wanted to complete it in terms of hours spent and effort required,
1:43:56the real game begins after you finish the story mode.
1:43:59So I did finish the story mode of Mario Odyssey, and I did enjoy it.
1:44:02And I do like the fact that there is a lot more after that and that you can do it kind
1:44:05of in any order that you want, but I don't think I will 100% clear Mario Odyssey ever.
1:44:11Contrast that with Mario Sunshine, which was not as good a Mario game by any stretch of
1:44:14the imagination as Odyssey, and yet I 100% cleared Sunshine.
1:44:18Because the amount of stuff that you had to do beyond the main story in Sunshine seemed
1:44:22so much more tractable to me.
1:44:25because the things they had you doing were like one annoying collection quest and a bunch
1:44:29of levels that were hard but of the variety that they'd already had that I really enjoyed.
1:44:34And so it seemed like a thing that I could do and lo and behold I did do it.
1:44:39Similarly with Zelda games, I will always finish a story in any Zelda game, I love Zelda
1:44:44games.
1:44:45I 100% cleared a couple of Zeldas but not all of them because especially as time goes
1:44:50on when they start adding even more and more collectibles I'm never going to get all the
1:44:53the Korok seeds in Breath of the Wild. I won't. It's never going to happen, right? But I probably
1:44:58will do eventually all the shrines. And that's a game that I love. If it's not a game that
1:45:03I love, I'll do the story and I feel like I'm done with it. What if the game has no
1:45:07story? If the game has no story, I'll just play it when it's fun and when it stops being
1:45:10fun I'll stop playing it. I feel like I will actually continue to play a game after it
1:45:14stops being fun if I'm really close to the end of a narrative story just because I want
1:45:17to see how it ends. That's kind of true with movies and books too. Sometimes you're like,
1:45:20Well I'm invested and I know there's only three chapters left and even those books kind
1:45:25of annoy me I still want to see how it ends and so you'll power your way through.
1:45:29That's kind of my take on completionism in video games.
1:45:31Thanks to our sponsors this week Aftershocks, Backblaze, and Jamf Now and we'll talk to
1:45:36you next week.
1:45:37Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin, cause it was accidental, oh it was
1:45:48John didn't do any research, Margo and Casey wouldn't let him
1:45:55Cause it was accidental, it was accidental
1:46:01And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm
1:46:06And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them
1:46:11C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S, so that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M,
1:46:19N-T-Marco-Armin, S-I-R-A-C, U-S-A-C-R-A-Cusa.
1:46:27It's accidental.
1:46:28It's accidental.
1:46:29They didn't mean to.
1:46:32Accidental.
1:46:33Accidental.
1:46:34Tech podcast, so long.
1:46:39- Casey, you're back at work now.
1:46:42- Yeah, tell us about that.
1:46:43So you're full-time back now, right?
1:46:45- No. - Like totally back to normal?
1:46:46- No, no, no, no, no, no.
1:46:48I'm spending the month of March easing my way in,
1:46:52so as we record this last week,
1:46:54I did a sum total of one day of work,
1:46:57and I did two half days, which basically means
1:47:00I went in when Declan was at preschool.
1:47:02And then this week, I did a full day Tuesday,
1:47:07but only half of it at work.
1:47:08I did the rest from home, so you can guess where this is going.
1:47:11I went to work when Declan was at preschool, then I came home and was here working on my
1:47:16iMac for the remainder of the day.
1:47:18And then tomorrow, I am doing sort of kind of the same.
1:47:23We have an appointment to get Michaela's passport for some events that are happening
1:47:27in a couple of months that I believe I will be seeing both of you at.
1:47:31So we need to get that squared away.
1:47:33But this week I'm doing two days, next week I'm doing three whole days, and I think
1:47:37I think the week after that I'm actually ramped up to full time.
1:47:39Now I might be doing some of that from home here and there, which is not what I usually
1:47:43did.
1:47:44I usually pretty much only worked in the office, but it's a week after next that I will be
1:47:49a real adult worker again.
1:47:53And it's going fine.
1:47:54It's a pretty understanding job letting you ease back into it.
1:47:56I've never even heard of a company doing that.
1:47:58Just a second time.
1:47:59Now, like, the last time I took less time easing my way into it, and I also didn't take
1:48:03and unpaid leave, but they were fairly cool about it,
1:48:07both the last job and this job, so that's good.
1:48:10- That's pretty cool, yeah.
1:48:12I don't think I've ever had a job that would give me that.
1:48:16At most of my jobs, I had trouble at taking vacation days,
1:48:19let alone doing anything like this.
1:48:21- Yeah, and to be fair, I didn't as much ask as said
1:48:24this is what I was planning to do,
1:48:26and waited for somebody to say no, and nobody said no.
1:48:29And that's been nice.
1:48:31I mean, the place I work, it's pretty, I was going to say chill, but I sound like a tool.
1:48:36I don't know, it's very relaxed.
1:48:39And I think in part because it's not consulting like most of the last few jobs I've had, there's
1:48:46a lot less urgency and it's kind of okay if I'm gone.
1:48:50That being said, I'm easing back in terms of hours worked.
1:48:54I am not easing back in terms of stress level and need for me to be paying attention to
1:48:59things again. The staff that I work with is excellent, but—or at least on the iOS side—but
1:49:07is very young. And that's not a bad thing at all, but that means that they've kind
1:49:12of been queuing up a whole bunch of questions to ask and, "How do I do this? What should
1:49:17we do here? What are we going to do about this other thing?" And so I have been in
1:49:23high demand in the little bit of time I've been working, which is a good problem.
1:49:26- Are they elementary school students?
1:49:28What the hell does very young mean when you're saying--
1:49:29- No, one is, she started as an intern
1:49:33and is still in school and is part-time, so she is--
1:49:36- What major version of Pearl were they born during?
1:49:39- One of them--
1:49:42- So are you at the stage now
1:49:43where anyone in their 20s counts as very young?
1:49:46- I'm getting there.
1:49:47I mean, my birthday's Saturday, for goodness sakes.
1:49:48I'm turning 36.
1:49:49I'm getting old, John, getting old.
1:49:51- Hey, I'll be that old in a couple more months.
1:49:53- Yeah, I know.
1:49:54- So the 29 year olds at work are very young.
1:49:56- No, no, no, the intern just turned 21
1:49:59at the end of last year.
1:50:01So she was born in '96, I guess, which is bananas.
1:50:05- Oh my God, she's younger than Weezer.
1:50:07- There you go.
1:50:08So yeah, so the intern who is now part-time was born in '96
1:50:14and we just hired a guy who I don't know how old he is,
1:50:18but I would guess 25 or less.
1:50:21So, and that's the whole staff is me and these two,
1:50:25well, the whole iOS staff that is.
1:50:27So it's me and these other two.
1:50:29And they're great, they really are great.
1:50:32And I'm really, really lucky to have them as my coworkers,
1:50:35but they're young and that's not a bad thing.
1:50:37It's just, there are things that you only get
1:50:41from being in the trenches in any sort of code base,
1:50:45be it iOS or otherwise for a long time.
1:50:47And so I am the old man in every measurable way.
1:50:51And that's just my life I need to adjust to.
1:50:54- So here's a question.
1:50:55Do you have anybody yet who is either so young
1:50:58or just so new to iOS programming
1:51:01that they have no Objective-C experience,
1:51:05that they only have Swift experience?
1:51:07- I'm trying to think if the part-time person did.
1:51:11I think she had done some Objective-C in the past,
1:51:14if I'm not mistaken, but it was a toss-up.
1:51:16- 'Cause I almost wonder,
1:51:17that might make things easier, right?
1:51:19Like if you have, if you try to maintain
1:51:21an all Swift code base, or a mostly Swift code base,
1:51:24and you have somebody who doesn't have any
1:51:26mental baggage of Objective-C,
1:51:28that actually might be a good thing, right?
1:51:31- I don't know.
1:51:32I totally understand where you're coming from,
1:51:34and I'm not at all saying you're wrong.
1:51:36I really don't know, because it's one of those things like,
1:51:40do you really need to understand what a pointer is
1:51:43to be able to write code today?
1:51:45And I know you're both probably gonna jump all over me,
1:51:47But like, if you think about it on a surface level, in a lot of cases you don't really
1:51:52need to know what a pointer is.
1:51:53Now I strongly believe that you do, so I'm like, I'm presenting an argument I don't actually
1:51:59believe in.
1:52:00But you could make an argument that, you know, you don't totally need a pointer to understand
1:52:04what the concept of a pointer is in order to be able to write Swift.
1:52:08Yeah, I would totally argue that, actually.
1:52:11And I still think it's important to understand what a pointer is, it's important to understand
1:52:15these sorts of things. And I think to some degree you get a lot more of that from Objective-C,
1:52:20and not only because you have stupid asterisks everywhere, but what I'm meandering toward
1:52:26is I think having an understanding of what makes Objective-C Objective-C helps you understand
1:52:32what makes Cocoa and Cocoa Touch Cocoa into Cocoa Touch. Does that make any sense at all?
1:52:37Yeah, I can see that. Although I would also suggest that like, like, I mean, in my time
1:52:43working around other programmers.
1:52:45I was fortunate enough that to usually work around
1:52:48really smart people, but not 100% of the time.
1:52:52And I was always sometimes really surprised
1:52:55how little somebody could know about programming
1:53:00and be working full-time as a programmer.
1:53:02- Oh yeah.
1:53:02- And I'm not saying this till I say like,
1:53:04"Oh, they're so dumb."
1:53:05Like, that just, there are a lot of programming jobs
1:53:10out there that are pretty forgiving
1:53:12of having a very shallow understanding of it,
1:53:15or pretty forgiving of bad coding or mistakes
1:53:18or leaking memory or things like that.
1:53:19And iOS is a huge example of that.
1:53:21Like, when the App Store was this huge explosion
1:53:24gold rush thing back 10 years ago,
1:53:28and in the intervening years since,
1:53:30like a lot of people learned Objective-C just enough
1:53:34to get an app out there and just like
1:53:37kinda stumbling through and, I mean,
1:53:39heck, that was basically me when I first started too.
1:53:41I mean, I had a C background, so I knew that kind of stuff,
1:53:44but there's a lot of people who start knowing a lot less
1:53:48and can get an app in the store,
1:53:49because if they leak memory all over the place,
1:53:52it doesn't matter at the scale they are,
1:53:54or if their app gets kicked out of the background
1:53:56'cause it crashes in the background,
1:53:57you don't even notice.
1:53:58You launch it again, and there it is.
1:54:01- Especially that thing.
1:54:01- Yeah, it's actually a fairly forgiving environment,
1:54:06and the tools now protect you so much
1:54:09doing things that are too horrible, that you can actually get by pretty far without having
1:54:15knowledge of things like pointers and memory and stuff like that.
1:54:18- Yeah, so, and it's also, you know, to some degree, like, what level are you hiring, right?
1:54:23Like when we hired our newest developer, you know, we were hiring somebody, we were intending
1:54:29to hire someone that was a bit junior, and so I don't recall how this went during his
1:54:35interview, I did interview him, but like, I'm sure asked him, you know, what's a retain
1:54:39cycle, how do you create it, how would you accidentally create it, how would you find
1:54:43it, how would you fix it? And if I'm hiring a junior developer, they can get that wrong
1:54:48and I potentially would be okay with it. I would hope that they would at least somewhat
1:54:52understand what I'm talking about, but they can have a wrong answer and as long as they
1:54:57have a vague understanding and I feel like they're coachable, which is a very corporate
1:55:01thing to say, then –
1:55:02Well –
1:55:03Yeah, exactly.
1:55:04We can have a coaching opportunity in the parking lot after we stand up.
1:55:07- Right, so you have worked with me.
1:55:10(laughing)
1:55:11But you see what I'm driving at?
1:55:14I don't think that being,
1:55:18I'm agreeing with you in a roundabout way,
1:55:19I don't think being super experienced
1:55:20and having a deep, deep, deep knowledge
1:55:22of the history of Objective-C
1:55:24and why is message passing different than calling a method?
1:55:28I don't think you need all of that,
1:55:31but I do think it is-- - No one needs that.
1:55:33- Fair enough.
1:55:34But I do think it is assistive in understanding,
1:55:36like I said earlier, what makes Cocoa the way it is. It's in large ways because of what
1:55:43made Objective-C what it is. And I don't think it's necessary. What is the thing? It's necessary
1:55:52but not sufficient, but I screwed that up, didn't I? Sufficient but not necessary. You
1:55:54get what I'm driving at.
1:55:55- That's it, sufficient but not necessary. That's what John always says.
1:55:58- Yeah, totally. But anyway, so the point is that it's useful to have but not required.
1:56:06Jon, you've been very quiet. Any thoughts about this?
1:56:08Jon Moffitt I think this is a specific instance of the
1:56:11more general question of whether—not whether you should have—but what the value is of
1:56:19having a background in the fundamentals when it comes to the everyday craft of doing a
1:56:25thing. Like, so can I do a particular task without knowing the history, cultural baggage,
1:56:35all the other lower levels of abstraction that I'm building upon? The answer is yes, you can. You can
1:56:40be a craftsman at a higher level of abstraction without knowledge of detailed knowledge of history
1:56:45and culture and all the lower layers. But there is most certainly value in knowing all that stuff. I
1:56:52mean you could take it just auto mechanic, right? There's lots of things that you can be trained to
1:56:56do to a car without knowing the details of the levels of abstraction that you're not dealing with,
1:57:01without knowing the history of internal combustion engines, particularly the history of the features
1:57:07of the internal combustion engines of a particular make-up car, you don't need that background to be
1:57:11really good at doing the brakes, changing the oil, even disassembling and reassembling a particular
1:57:17model of engine. If you know how to do that at that level, you're fine. But getting back to
1:57:24computer programming, the question is, do I need a computer science background and a knowledge of
1:57:28algorithms, data structures, electrical engineering, circuit design, basics of electronics.
1:57:34Like, do you need to have all that to write an iOS app? Hell no, you do not. But having that
1:57:40background is valuable and makes you better at the job of writing an iOS application,
1:57:45particularly when, as inevitably happens, things go wrong and you have to figure out why they're
1:57:51going wrong. That's when whatever level of abstraction you're working at starts to fall
1:57:56apart and you find yourself looking at memory addresses in a debugger, assuming you even
1:58:00know enough to navigate a debugger. And if you don't know what a pointer is, it just
1:58:04feels gibberish and you feel lost, right? But if you understand all those lower levels,
1:58:11you can drop down a level and drop down a level further. And if you're really good to
1:58:14know the whole stack and you're a Mike Ash type person, you can look at machine code
1:58:18and figure out what in the hell is going on, right? And even if you're not though, even
1:58:22if you're not like someone who really can navigate the whole stack, just knowing how
1:58:26in general computers work from top to bottom lets you understand at least what parts you
1:58:31don't know and where you might go to look up something and understand, I know what I'm
1:58:35looking at here. I just don't know specifically what it says, but I understand where it came
1:58:39from and I understand if there's a part of it that I need to figure out, I know where
1:58:44to look for it or, you know, and all the way down to like, hopefully none of us get down
1:58:47to the hardware level where you got to figure out what's wrong with the hardware level,
1:58:50But I still feel like even that, which probably won't come up in debugging a program, is useful
1:58:55to know because it explains many of the features higher up.
1:58:58Just as you were saying, knowing about Objective-C explains a lot of the weird features of Swift.
1:59:03Like if you don't know about Objective-C, it may seem weird that Swift has these things
1:59:06and what the hell does @objc mean and why is that even there?
1:59:10And what do you mean by an object being backed by the Objective-C runtime versus one that
1:59:15isn't?
1:59:16And like what is that, you know, you can get by without it, but there is most certainly
1:59:20value for it. And I think the question when people ask about this, whether it's should
1:59:23I have to know pointers or do I have to have a computer science background, is they want
1:59:27to know if it's like a gating factor. And I don't think it is. I think you can actually
1:59:30be a successful, good programmer. But I think all that background that you're like, do I
1:59:34have to know this? There is value for it. It's just a question of how much value does
1:59:39it have for the thing that you are doing. If you are working at Apple on frameworks,
1:59:44it's probably more important that you have that kind of background. If you're working
1:59:47at Apple on the compiler team, yet more important.
1:59:50If you are designing a hardware and software system
1:59:52from top to bottom, really, really important.
1:59:54So you just kind of have to decide
1:59:56how much of the background knowledge do I need
2:00:02to do my job well, and what is the cost
2:00:06of me acquiring an Apple in terms of time and money?
2:00:10- I think you said something smart a minute ago
2:00:12with regard to it becomes important when things fall apart.
2:00:17You know, in general, in my experience, like, I'm a relatively novice iOS developer.
2:00:22I mean, I've been doing it casually for a fairly long time, but I've only been doing
2:00:25it professionally for two years now.
2:00:27And it's when things fall apart that I start really getting stressed and I have to start
2:00:34kind of reaching way outside my comfort zone trying to figure out what is broken and why.
2:00:41And so I think in some ways, if I was a more experienced developer, I would get through
2:00:46these problems a lot quicker, or more experience, I'd ask the developer, I would get through
2:00:49some of these problems more quickly. But it's my experience in general as a developer, and
2:00:54in general it's my experience of understanding most of the stack. And that's what keeps me
2:01:01kind of level-headed, and that's what gives me the patience and tenacity to figure out
2:01:05a lot of these problems. And I wish I had a specific example offhand, and I don't, which
2:01:08is good, I guess, because that means things haven't violently died recently. But I do
2:01:14think it's valuable that I have not only a CS background, but a computer engineering
2:01:20background, which to me is a combination of CS and electrical engineering. And I'm sure
2:01:23a lot of people will take offense at that. I don't care. That's just the way I look at
2:01:26it. And that means, you know, where CS, from my experience, and I'm not trying to say this
2:01:34is fact, this is just the way I look at it, CS tends to stop with code usually or maybe
2:01:41maybe memory, whereas computer engineering goes all the way down to logic gates. And
2:01:45that isn't helpful in a day-to-day time, but it is helpful, just like Jon said a minute
2:01:50ago, it's helpful to understand what, at least vaguely, what are all these abstractions and
2:01:55how do they relate to each other?
2:01:56It demystifies it. I don't know the details of how anything works, but I know how a CPU
2:02:01works, and I have built a CPU from the logic level up, and I have built a logic gate with
2:02:06the solid-state electrical components and that whole thing. It doesn't mean suddenly
2:02:10you know how your computer works, but there's no more magic.
2:02:13Like you know from top to bottom,
2:02:15the magic starts basically at the quantum level
2:02:17where my physics courses ran out.
2:02:18Like that's where the magic starts, and that's pretty low.
2:02:20That's pretty low down.
2:02:21Everything else is like, I'm not scared of it.
2:02:23It doesn't seem magical.
2:02:24The other thing I forgot to mention
2:02:25about having a background in the fundamentals
2:02:27is it also gates how high you can go.
2:02:32So if you want to make an iOS application,
2:02:36chances are good that you won't need
2:02:39any sort of in-depth knowledge about data structures and fundamental computer science-y
2:02:45algorithms or even things like neural networks and stuff like that, because the frameworks
2:02:50do a lot for you and probably your application is not as complicated as you think it is.
2:02:54Probably it's just a fairly basic application, right?
2:02:56But if you are building a more complicated application, games are a great example because
2:03:01they employ a lot of things where the first approach that occurs to you is terrible and
2:03:06won't work well.
2:03:07That's the time where you're like, if I had a background in computer science, I might
2:03:11know some algorithms that would do this in a more efficient way.
2:03:16If you don't have a background in that, very often you'll find yourself deriving from first
2:03:23principles a sort of half-assed version of a well-known algorithm.
2:03:30You can figure it out yourself, but you're wasting your own time.
2:03:32If you had just had a background in data structures and algorithms, you would have immediately
2:03:36narrowed down to a couple of choices and maybe recalled off the top of your head the big
2:03:40O notation for all these different things and known which one works best and then just,
2:03:46you know, you know, implemented that yourself. Most of the time, again, most of the time
2:03:49you don't have to do this. Most of the time libraries implement these things for you.
2:03:52If you have some sort of associative array or dictionary or hash structure or NS array
2:03:56under the covers, it's doing all sorts of smart things with all sorts of smaller algorithms,
2:04:00switching from hash buckets to a linear search when the size dictates that it's smart. Like,
2:04:04You don't even have to know about that.
2:04:05The magic happens behind the scenes for you.
2:04:06But if you are building a structure like that yourself
2:04:08to manage your own data, again, maybe in games
2:04:10where efficiency is paramount,
2:04:12it really, really helps to have that background knowledge.
2:04:15So not just figuring out the lower layers above you,
2:04:19but being able to do for yourself
2:04:21the things that for most developers are done for them
2:04:24by the frameworks and the OS and everything
2:04:26does give you the ability to do more complicated things.
2:04:30And if you don't have that background, you can still do it,
2:04:33but you will essentially be figuring out things
2:04:36that people figured out tens or hundreds of years ago
2:04:38as you derive from first principles,
2:04:39basic old mathematical concepts and data structures,
2:04:42which works fine, but it takes more time.
2:04:45- There is a truly phenomenal series of YouTube videos
2:04:50that PBS made in association with,
2:04:52I think, a few other groups.
2:04:53It's called Crash Course Computer Science,
2:04:55and Mike and I talked about this a little bit on analog,
2:04:58and we were trying to do like a, you know,
2:05:01we'll watch one each week,
2:05:02it turns out that it's not very entertaining as a podcast, but I cannot recommend enough
2:05:08watching this series. There's 40 videos of which each of them is like 10 to 15 minutes,
2:05:14and it brings you from the abacus all the way to modern computing. And I've only watched
2:05:19the first maybe quarter of them, but it is step by step going from an abacus all the
2:05:26way up to cloud computing and machine learning and stuff like that. And what you learn by
2:05:30watching these, even if you don't totally understand the the ins and outs of what
2:05:35they're talking about, the thing that I think is most important that you can
2:05:39glean from these videos is that everything is just one abstraction on top
2:05:44of another, and it's abstractions all the way down. And it is impressive and
2:05:49fascinating to see this broken out in 40 different chunks, little bite-sized
2:05:55pieces, and you see, like, especially once you get into like how memory actually
2:05:59works and how these logic gates are held together, or put together, I should say, in order to
2:06:04make memory. Even I sort of kind of have my eyes glaze over a little bit. But the point
2:06:12that you get from this isn't necessarily that, oh, you need 13 NAND gates or whatever in
2:06:16order to store 8 bytes of data, and I'm obviously making this all up, but the point is just
2:06:21that, oh, you take a bunch of transistors, hook them up, that makes gates. You take a
2:06:26bunch of gates, hook them up, that makes memory. You take a bunch of memory, hook it up, that
2:06:29makes a whole, you know, wad or block of memory, and it's just you build upon what happened
2:06:35before you. So if you happen to have roughly 400 to 500 minutes to spare, I cannot recommend
2:06:41Crash Course Computer Science enough, and we'll put a link in the show notes.
2:06:45I'm behind in analog, so you and Mike just bailed on that?
2:06:48Yeah, we did.
2:06:49I knew that already.
2:06:50That's disappointing. I was excited for that series.
2:06:52I was too. I couldn't get him to get into it. I tried. And I don't blame him. Like,
2:06:56problem. I think he enjoyed it to some degree, but there isn't a lot for us to say about it,
2:07:01because there's little interpretation involved, right? And that's the bummer behind it. But I
2:07:07really, I hope that he won't, but I hope that he watches it.
2:07:10He's just not that into computers.
2:07:12Well, he uses a fake computer all the time. What do you expect?
2:07:16Yeah, can you make him a video series called How iPads Work? And maybe that would work better.
2:07:20Yeah, just open it up and it's just a bunch of unicorns and elves dancing around.
2:07:24(laughing)
2:07:26- Well, just two at a time, one maybe hovering over.
2:07:29(beeping)