ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► I kind of feel like I should have just left Tiff here and left the show because we got

00:00:03 ◼   ► so much awesome feedback about not only how great she was, but how much better she was

00:00:08 ◼   ► than me.

00:00:11 ◼   ► But unfortunately, you guys are stuck with me this week.

00:00:13 ◼   ► All right, let's start with some follow up.

00:00:16 ◼   ► And Bradley Davis writes in, "With regard to hard to hit up/down arrow keys on the new

00:00:20 ◼   ► MacBook Pros, the bottom key row of the new MacBooks is shorter than the previous generation.

00:00:25 ◼   ► The bottom row used to be taller than all the other rows.

00:00:27 ◼   ► Now it's the same height.

00:00:28 ◼   ► huge loss in my opinion, especially as a programmer who uses modifier keys more than your average

00:00:32 ◼   ► person.

00:00:33 ◼   ► I didn't even believe this, so I measured it at work and he is totally right.

00:00:37 ◼   ► Did you guys both realize that in the right up until the 2016/2017s on the MacBook Pros,

00:00:43 ◼   ► like the space bar in that whole row was taller than all the other rows of keys?

00:00:47 ◼   ► Nope.

00:00:48 ◼   ► I'm taking my hand.

00:00:49 ◼   ► Now I'm curious, hold on.

00:00:51 ◼   ► I thought it's plausible, but it can't be that much bigger, so I measured it.

00:00:55 ◼   ► It's appreciably bigger.

00:00:56 ◼   ► You can, you know, I didn't have, I was using the side of a credit card or whatever, but

00:00:59 ◼   ► you can, you know, get a ruler and see how much bigger it's, it's at least like 5% bigger.

00:01:02 ◼   ► Hold on, I don't know if I believe this at all.

00:01:05 ◼   ► Let me get out my behemoth of a work laptop.

00:01:06 ◼   ► So while you guys get out things to measure, the reason this is relevant is not so much

00:01:10 ◼   ► that it's hard.

00:01:11 ◼   ► We're actually both doing this right.

00:01:12 ◼   ► Wait, wait, wait, what are we getting out to measure?

00:01:13 ◼   ► I'm getting out a digital caliper.

00:01:14 ◼   ► What are you getting out to measure?

00:01:15 ◼   ► Uh, never mind.

00:01:16 ◼   ► Uh, wow, this does look a little bit taller.

00:01:18 ◼   ► Oh, it is.

00:01:19 ◼   ► Um, so, as I was saying, the reason it makes a difference is not because it's easier to

00:01:24 ◼   ► hit the space bar or the command key or anything, but because the arrow keys...

00:01:27 ◼   ► Oh yeah, it's a huge difference.

00:01:29 ◼   ► The up and down arrow keys are jammed into a single key space, and I was complaining

00:01:32 ◼   ► that I felt it was a little bit harder to hit the up and down arrow keys and the new

00:01:36 ◼   ► MacBook grows, even though it's like the same layout.

00:01:38 ◼   ► It is the same layout, but with the taller keys, each half, the top half and the bottom

00:01:42 ◼   ► half are bigger, so it makes a difference, particularly for the arrow keys.

00:01:46 ◼   ► Yeah, so the height of the command key in my 2015 is 17.8 mm, and then the height of

00:01:51 ◼   ► keys and the row above it are only 15.2.

00:01:55 ◼   ► That's surprising.

00:01:56 ◼   ► By the way, only tangentially related, if you ever have a longing for the 17-inch MacBook

00:02:02 ◼   ► Pro, which I always thought was just hilariously stupid, but I know that there are people that

00:02:06 ◼   ► love it, I do not need to hear from you, I'm just saying it's not for me.

00:02:10 ◼   ► Anyway, if you ever want to make your 15-inch feel like a 17-inch from the days of the past,

00:02:16 ◼   ► a couple of months using exclusively either a 27-inch iMac or a more importantly a 12-inch

00:02:23 ◼   ► MacBook Adorable and then bust out your work 15-inch MacBook Pro for the first time in

00:02:27 ◼   ► two months.

00:02:28 ◼   ► Holy monkey, that thing is enormous.

00:02:31 ◼   ► It is just gigantic compared to the little MacBook Adorable that I'm used to.

00:02:36 ◼   ► Well, I'll tell you what, I mean like even during my great laptop shuffle of 2016 and

00:02:42 ◼   ► when I, for a while there, owned the 13-inch MacBook Escape.

00:02:47 ◼   ► That, to me, is such a great size,

00:02:51 ◼   ► and I do intend to go back to that,

00:02:52 ◼   ► probably in the next generation, whenever it comes out.

00:02:55 ◼   ► But when I was using that,

00:02:57 ◼   ► even after years of using 15 inches a lot of the time,

00:03:01 ◼   ► I would occasionally see a 15-inch out in the world,

00:03:03 ◼   ► and it would look crazy to me.

00:03:05 ◼   ► Even the brand new, like the current generation ones

00:03:08 ◼   ► that are a little more compact than the old ones,

00:03:11 ◼   ► once you're used to whatever size you're used to,

00:03:14 ◼   ► anything above it looks like a monster by comparison.

00:03:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's striking the difference.

00:03:22 ◼   ► But that's okay.

00:03:23 ◼   ► But today I did a half day at work

00:03:25 ◼   ► for the first time since January.

00:03:27 ◼   ► - Aww. - I know.

00:03:28 ◼   ► - Half congratulations. - Yeah.

00:03:30 ◼   ► - Oh, speaking of work and giant laptops,

00:03:32 ◼   ► I had my 15-inch 2017 MacBook Pro at about 85% charge

00:03:41 ◼   ► and I did a one hour meeting where I projected during the meeting, drained my whole battery,

00:03:46 ◼   ► the machine shut down.

00:03:47 ◼   ► Really?

00:03:48 ◼   ► Oh wow.

00:03:49 ◼   ► I watched it go down the whole meeting.

00:03:51 ◼   ► It's WebEx, the magic of WebEx.

00:03:53 ◼   ► Yeah, that'll do it.

00:03:54 ◼   ► Just like a single one hour meeting from 85% to basically you can no longer run your computer

00:03:59 ◼   ► sorry off.

00:04:00 ◼   ► Yeah, because that's, you say WebEx is, I don't, I've never used WebEx, but I assume

00:04:04 ◼   ► it's pretty inefficient on the CPU, right?

00:04:06 ◼   ► We need to have a special episode where we just make Marco use all corporate enterprise

00:04:10 ◼   ► - I'm not a software.

00:04:11 ◼   ► - And then, and I would imagine too,

00:04:13 ◼   ► that you were plugged in, you said,

00:04:16 ◼   ► to your projecting via cable.

00:04:18 ◼   ► So that means the discrete GPU was forced on the whole time.

00:04:22 ◼   ► And so it was basically as if you were playing a game.

00:04:24 ◼   ► And like playing a game, so your GPU is on,

00:04:27 ◼   ► your CPU is probably being maxed out

00:04:28 ◼   ► because it sounds like the software is terrible.

00:04:30 ◼   ► So yeah, that's gonna be about one hour battery life.

00:04:34 ◼   ► - It was bad.

00:04:35 ◼   ► - You know, I think the most popular advertisements

00:04:38 ◼   ► that we've ever run on this show

00:04:39 ◼   ► were the ones that Cards Against Humanity did, where we were-- John was forced to try a new, usually garbage toaster each week.

00:04:45 ◼   ► I think it is possible, if the Cards Against Humanity folks are listening,

00:04:51 ◼   ► that making Marco use some piece of enterprise-grade software once per ad,

00:04:58 ◼   ► that might be an even more popular, even better segment, because it would be magical.

00:05:05 ◼   ► You would probably quit the show just from being near enterprisey sort of things that

00:05:11 ◼   ► Jon and I have to deal with every day.

00:05:13 ◼   ► Yeah, I would make a switch to Patreon.

00:05:16 ◼   ► The trick is, though, that you have to be forced to use them, like that they're mandated

00:05:20 ◼   ► by the company, or because you have to teleconference, so you need to use the only approved teleconference

00:05:25 ◼   ► software that you know everybody has, right?

00:05:26 ◼   ► That's the part of it.

00:05:27 ◼   ► It's not just using the software, it's that you have to.

00:05:30 ◼   ► The toasters kind of work because maybe I'll be making toast anyway, but there's no way

00:05:33 ◼   ► Mark was going to even be doing the things that these programs, you know, are made to

00:05:38 ◼   ► do, let alone being forced to do them.

00:05:41 ◼   ► Bartimy Kendall writes in, "If you think the MacBook's arrow key setup is bad, check

00:05:44 ◼   ► Dell's recipe for annoyance."

00:05:46 ◼   ► And there's a link included.

00:05:48 ◼   ► So imagine the same arrow key setup that we have in brand new MacBook Pros, but just for

00:05:55 ◼   ► funsies, let's put page up and page down in the dead space between—so I guess, I'm

00:06:00 ◼   ► I'm sorry, I guess it's not like the new MacBook Pros,

00:06:02 ◼   ► like the previous MacBook Pros.

00:06:03 ◼   ► And we'll put a page up and page down in the dead space

00:06:06 ◼   ► to the left and right of the up arrow key.

00:06:08 ◼   ► So if you're looking at it, it's page up

00:06:10 ◼   ► and then below that is left, up and down,

00:06:13 ◼   ► page down and below that is right.

00:06:15 ◼   ► It looks terrible.

00:06:17 ◼   ► I'm sure if you get used to it, it's convenient,

00:06:19 ◼   ► but oh man, it does not look good at a glance.

00:06:21 ◼   ► - It's not convenient because like,

00:06:22 ◼   ► if you accidentally hit, like see,

00:06:24 ◼   ► it's above the arrow keys, right?

00:06:25 ◼   ► So if you accidentally hit the wrong key

00:06:27 ◼   ► trying to go for left, you don't go more left.

00:06:30 ◼   ► you go page up, which is totally unrelated to left, but that's the key that's near

00:06:36 ◼   ► there.

00:06:37 ◼   ► So I would never want to like fumble to hit that.

00:06:38 ◼   ► And what if you didn't notice you fumbled it and then you like didn't think you actually

00:06:41 ◼   ► hit it so you hit left arrow?

00:06:43 ◼   ► You've gone left one character or whatever, but you don't realize you're a page up

00:06:46 ◼   ► from where you were and it's just, it's really terrible.

00:06:49 ◼   ► And they also overloaded brightness in the up and down arrow keys, but I'm assuming

00:06:51 ◼   ► that's a modifier thing, but.

00:06:52 ◼   ► >> It'd be kind of funny if it wasn't.

00:06:54 ◼   ► Like every time you want to move the cursor up, you get a little bit brighter.

00:06:57 ◼   ► >> The screen gets brighter.

00:06:59 ◼   ► - You can keep moving down the document,

00:07:00 ◼   ► but eventually you can't see it anymore.

00:07:02 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:07:03 ◼   ► - No, this like, I feel like, and part of the reason,

00:07:07 ◼   ► and I swear I'm not gonna make this all about

00:07:09 ◼   ► Apple's dumb laptop keyboards,

00:07:10 ◼   ► but part of the reason why Apple's keyboard design offenses

00:07:14 ◼   ► bother me so much is because we have it so good in Appleland

00:07:17 ◼   ► that usually their keyboards don't have horrendous flaws.

00:07:20 ◼   ► And if you look over in the PC land,

00:07:22 ◼   ► I mean, you can get a ton of really nice

00:07:25 ◼   ► PC desktop keyboards.

00:07:28 ◼   ► But once you get into laptops,

00:07:30 ◼   ► especially mass market laptops, especially small laptops,

00:07:33 ◼   ► you know, like you can get like the big gamer ones

00:07:35 ◼   ► that have the built in mechanical key switches,

00:07:36 ◼   ► but like once you get down to like mass market,

00:07:39 ◼   ► small laptops, PC designs are all over the place

00:07:43 ◼   ► and have horrendous bad design choices

00:07:46 ◼   ► about as often as the worst of Apple.

00:07:49 ◼   ► You know, we just, we normally are not seeing this

00:07:52 ◼   ► from Apple land because we don't buy these things.

00:07:55 ◼   ► And so we're kind of spoiled that like

00:07:57 ◼   ► When Apple does have a generation where they release

00:07:59 ◼   ► a really terrible keyboard, our heads explode

00:08:02 ◼   ► because we can't take it.

00:08:04 ◼   ► Whereas on the PC side, this is a commonplace occurrence.

00:08:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's sad times.

00:08:10 ◼   ► Now I have a question.

00:08:11 ◼   ► Are there, and Marco, you wouldn't know this,

00:08:13 ◼   ► but maybe Jon would, are there rabid Dell fanboys

00:08:17 ◼   ► in the way there were five, 10 years ago?

00:08:19 ◼   ► 'Cause you know how there were the Apple fanboys,

00:08:22 ◼   ► well, us, and then there were all the people

00:08:24 ◼   ► PC side they were all like devout Dell people and I feel like I haven't run into any of

00:08:30 ◼   ► them in years. Do they still exist?

00:08:33 ◼   ► I've never met someone who's super into Dell. We all know that there are people who love

00:08:37 ◼   ► Thinkpads, I mean in case you're one of them.

00:08:39 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

00:08:40 ◼   ► And let me think, I mean obviously there's enthusiasm for the specialty brands like Alienware

00:08:45 ◼   ► or Asus or even for you know gaming focused stuff but Dell or HP? I mean the closest I

00:08:52 ◼   ► I can get to that is I think there was a lot of brand loyalty behind Gateway 2000.

00:08:55 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah. Back when they had the cow boxes and before

00:08:58 ◼   ► it was 2000. That was my first computer.

00:09:00 ◼   ► Same. But that was more of like a mainstream thing

00:09:03 ◼   ► and not like a computer enthusiast thing, but if there are Dell enthusiasts, I have

00:09:06 ◼   ► not run across their path. Well, like my brother-in-law, for example,

00:09:09 ◼   ► was a huge Dell enthusiast, as much as one can be, up until a few years ago. And then

00:09:14 ◼   ► he started buying Surfaces, Surfis, Surfis things, I don't know, whatever. And he's

00:09:20 ◼   ► really enthusiastic about those ever since. And maybe that's what they did, is all the Dell people

00:09:24 ◼   ► went and bought Surfaces. But I don't know, it just occurred to me that I haven't seen anyone

00:09:27 ◼   ► that's like really amped for Dell in a long time. Anyway, and our final bit of follow-up, just a

00:09:33 ◼   ► small anecdote from the kitchen in the LIS household earlier tonight. We were, Erin was

00:09:39 ◼   ► making dinner and I was doing something with Declan and, oh, I was walking around carrying Michaela

00:09:47 ◼   ► in a little carrier on my chest,

00:09:49 ◼   ► and multitasking and playing Breath of the Wild

00:09:52 ◼   ► at the same time because I've started to pick that up again.

00:09:54 ◼   ► And then Declan caught wind of what I was doing,

00:09:57 ◼   ► and he was like, "Oh, I wanna watch."

00:09:58 ◼   ► And we don't really like giving Declan

00:10:00 ◼   ► a whole ton of screen time if we can avoid it,

00:10:02 ◼   ► so what I decided to do was set a timer for myself

00:10:06 ◼   ► and remind me not to play Zelda

00:10:09 ◼   ► for more than like five or 10 minutes

00:10:10 ◼   ► while Declan was watching,

00:10:11 ◼   ► and then I was just gonna put it away.

00:10:12 ◼   ► - This is a hell of a multitask.

00:10:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, you know, I do what I can.

00:10:15 ◼   ► So, uh, so I asked the lady in a tube to remind me to stop playing Zelda in five minutes or something like that.

00:10:23 ◼   ► And I think the key is that I phrased it with "remind," which I'm not sure why I did that, but that's what I did.

00:10:28 ◼   ► And she got really, really confused and apparently there's like a whole different reminders versus timers setup.

00:10:36 ◼   ► Which makes sense, but I'd never, you know, experience this in my week in a day with, you know, a lady in a tube in the house.

00:10:42 ◼   ► So anyway, so I'm like going back and forth with with the Echo trying to get it to just set what amounts to like a five-minute

00:10:49 ◼   ► timer and I'm you know, this was my fault. I phrased it poorly no big deal, but

00:10:53 ◼   ► What was funny was from the kitchen

00:10:56 ◼   ► I hear Erin say something along the lines of oh, come on Siri get your act together knowing full

00:11:02 ◼   ► Well, I was talking to the Echo. So here it was that she was using like she was she was calling the Echo Siri

00:11:10 ◼   ► As a not derogatory that's not the word I'm looking for but like as a like a put-down, you know, like she was saying oh

00:11:16 ◼   ► this is reminding me of how terrible Siri is in so many words and

00:11:20 ◼   ► I thought that was kind of interesting because Erin is the most normal person in the list household by a far margin. It's oh

00:11:28 ◼   ► It was interesting to me to see her kind of associate and equate

00:11:32 ◼   ► crummy voice

00:11:35 ◼   ► Experience with Siri because you know early on I thought that I was reflecting on this briefly on Twitter earlier

00:11:42 ◼   ► Early on I actually thought Siri was extremely impressive like the first year or two

00:11:46 ◼   ► I thought Siri was really good

00:11:48 ◼   ► and then it seemed like everyone else started to either create their own voice assistants or

00:11:54 ◼   ► make their own voice assistants really a whole lot better and

00:11:57 ◼   ► Ever since the first year or two when Siri's brand-new

00:12:01 ◼   ► I've really been unimpressed as we've talked about on the show more than once and as we've used the

00:12:06 ◼   ► Echo for more and more things I've been more and more impressed by it

00:12:09 ◼   ► So a silly example of that we were listening to vinyl we were listening to the album thriller

00:12:13 ◼   ► The terrible song the girl is mine came on which is a collaboration between McCartney and Jackson

00:12:20 ◼   ► And I asked I asked the lady in a tube something along the lines of how much older is

00:12:25 ◼   ► Michael J

00:12:26 ◼   ► or I'm sorry, is Paul McCartney the Michael Jackson?

00:12:29 ◼   ► And she knew exactly what I was talking about

00:12:30 ◼   ► and gave me the answer, and I think it was like 16 years.

00:12:32 ◼   ► And I think I had even asked, if I recall correctly,

00:12:35 ◼   ► I'd asked, if Michael Jackson were alive today,

00:12:37 ◼   ► how old would he be?

00:12:39 ◼   ► And I thought that was stretching a bit.

00:12:41 ◼   ► Like I was not gonna be surprised if the lady in the tube

00:12:44 ◼   ► would not know what the crap I was asking.

00:12:46 ◼   ► And sure enough, she gave me an answer.

00:12:48 ◼   ► Couldn't tell you what it was offhand,

00:12:49 ◼   ► but she gave me an answer.

00:12:50 ◼   ► And that, like if I haven't tried it,

00:12:52 ◼   ► but if I asked Siri, how old would Michael Jackson be today?

00:12:55 ◼   ► I would be very surprised if Siri had any darn idea

00:12:59 ◼   ► what I was talking about.

00:13:00 ◼   ► And the fact that I don't even think it's worth trying

00:13:02 ◼   ► is itself an indication of my lack of confidence in Siri.

00:13:06 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, next time you ask one of those questions

00:13:09 ◼   ► and you're impressed or not impressed by how the Echo does,

00:13:12 ◼   ► take out your phone and ask Siri the same thing.

00:13:14 ◼   ► It is kind of useful as commentators and enthusiasts

00:13:17 ◼   ► in this field to do that and compare, like,

00:13:20 ◼   ► how are these things doing with the things

00:13:21 ◼   ► that I think I should ask them?

00:13:24 ◼   ► because I've found whenever I do that,

00:13:26 ◼   ► I do find the Echo devices to have better answers,

00:13:30 ◼   ► faster, more of the time.

00:13:32 ◼   ► But they don't always get them,

00:13:35 ◼   ► and Siri doesn't always not get them.

00:13:36 ◼   ► Siri's average is worse for me.

00:13:40 ◼   ► But the Alexa devices are actually not perfect either,

00:13:45 ◼   ► they just have better averages.

00:13:47 ◼   ► I do think though, going back to the beginning

00:13:51 ◼   ► of the story though, I wish that these devices handled

00:13:56 ◼   ► the basic PDA functions, the things that all computing

00:14:02 ◼   ► hardware and stuff have tried to do since the beginning

00:14:06 ◼   ► of time that almost everyone needs.

00:14:09 ◼   ► Reminders, alarms, timers, calendar.

00:14:14 ◼   ► These are very basic things that everything should be able

00:14:19 ◼   ► to do these days, and the fact that,

00:14:22 ◼   ► and the Echo devices, I think, do a pretty good job

00:14:24 ◼   ► on the timer front, I think their timer support

00:14:26 ◼   ► is excellent, their alarms are basically just like timers,

00:14:29 ◼   ► they're excellent as well.

00:14:30 ◼   ► iPhones and stuff, as we talked about

00:14:35 ◼   ► with the HomePod launch, and not having multiple timers

00:14:37 ◼   ► or name timers or things like that,

00:14:38 ◼   ► that's still so far behind, and it just seems like

00:14:41 ◼   ► that stuff is not that hard from a programming perspective,

00:14:44 ◼   ► like that isn't that hard, it just seems,

00:14:48 ◼   ► It seems baffling to me that anything,

00:14:51 ◼   ► any of these voice assistant services or devices

00:14:54 ◼   ► launch these days without totally nailing

00:14:58 ◼   ► reminders, timers, alarms, and what was the other one?

00:15:01 ◼   ► Calendar.

00:15:02 ◼   ► Like, those should be easy.

00:15:03 ◼   ► And at least, like, Calendar I can kind of understand

00:15:07 ◼   ► if any of them don't because you have to connect

00:15:09 ◼   ► two different services and maybe they don't support

00:15:12 ◼   ► the one you use or you haven't set it up or whatever.

00:15:14 ◼   ► But like, reminders should be local on device

00:15:16 ◼   ► if they don't have any kind of syncing setup.

00:15:19 ◼   ► That's easy.

00:15:19 ◼   ► Remind me at this time to do this.

00:15:21 ◼   ► They should just treat that as a timer.

00:15:23 ◼   ► And so the fact that anything that is that simple to do

00:15:28 ◼   ► doesn't work properly on any of these things,

00:15:30 ◼   ► it should be kind of embarrassing.

00:15:32 ◼   ► - I think we discussed in the past on this topic,

00:15:35 ◼   ► I'm still waiting for,

00:15:36 ◼   ► forget about how far beyond Siri may be

00:15:39 ◼   ► and so on and so forth,

00:15:40 ◼   ► I'm still waiting for the next logical step in this.

00:15:44 ◼   ► Well, actually I guess it's two.

00:15:44 ◼   ► One is the advancement of the vocabulary surrounding

00:15:47 ◼   ► things Marco just said.

00:15:50 ◼   ► Echo and Google Home are pretty good.

00:15:52 ◼   ► And as Casey found, he just phrases the way you think,

00:15:54 ◼   ► and it'll mostly figure it out.

00:15:56 ◼   ► But the next logical step is some--

00:15:59 ◼   ► and I think that maybe the reason this is so difficult

00:16:01 ◼   ► is it'll require more hardware locally--

00:16:03 ◼   ► is some context awareness to allow

00:16:06 ◼   ► the beginnings of a conversation about things.

00:16:08 ◼   ► Because although these devices are flexible about how

00:16:13 ◼   ► request the things, you can phrase it a different way, so on and so forth, that ends up being

00:16:17 ◼   ► single command, single response. There is no semblance of a conversation, for the most part,

00:16:23 ◼   ► except for very rudimentary things where they're asked for confirmation or something.

00:16:26 ◼   ► Or sometimes Siri will ask for basic clarification. But I would rather be able to speak in an even

00:16:33 ◼   ► more offhand manner, clarifying with a series of grunts as necessary, right? Like you interact with

00:16:39 ◼   ► people like that there is like there is context like that the thing doesn't entirely forget about

00:16:44 ◼   ► the interaction you had three seconds ago when you make some other request that it can figure

00:16:48 ◼   ► out what you mean oh yeah and i forgot also blah blah blah that it hasn't forgotten the previous

00:16:54 ◼   ► context just basic conversation thing i'm not saying is you know it's going to have deep

00:16:58 ◼   ► conversation with me i'm not even saying it has to be like eliza right but uh i feel like that's

00:17:03 ◼   ► the next logical step and at this rate if apple still can't even do multiple timers by the time

00:17:09 ◼   ► the competitors get to the beginnings of a conversation phase, we'll be lucky if Apple is

00:17:14 ◼   ► being able to do the basics of all the things Marco listed in a flexible way.

00:17:20 ◼   ► [

00:17:20 ◼   ► Real-time follow-up, I did ask Siri, you know, how old would Michael Jackson be today, and

00:17:25 ◼   ► I got a web search. So, no surprise there.

00:17:29 ◼   ► The trick for it, by the way, the trick for doing comparisons, you've got to make sure

00:17:33 ◼   ► you word them exactly the same way, to be fair, because I think that's the whole thing.

00:17:37 ◼   ► I try to, when I speak to the various cylinders, I try to just not think about syntax and just

00:17:42 ◼   ► say whatever occurs to me, because that's the test. Like, phrase it however I want to

00:17:45 ◼   ► phrase it, but then you have to remember how you phrased it, which is convenient because

00:17:48 ◼   ► it's recording your voice and you'll play it back, Casey.

00:17:51 ◼   ► So I hear.

00:17:52 ◼   ► Remember how you phrased it and then do it word for word to Siri, just to be fair, because

00:17:58 ◼   ► you may say it a different way to Siri because now you're thinking about it and everything,

00:18:01 ◼   ► and if Siri gets wrong on one phrasing, it's very sensitive to the exact position of, you

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00:19:53 ◼   ► - So apparently, there's going to be an onboarding screen

00:19:58 ◼   ► for every single damn app on future versions of iOS.

00:20:02 ◼   ► We've seen a little of this trickle out

00:20:05 ◼   ► over the last few months and, how do you pronounce this?

00:20:09 ◼   ► Is it Guilherme Rambo?

00:20:11 ◼   ► I don't know. - Sounds good to me.

00:20:12 ◼   ► - Mr. Rambo, Mr. Rambo, who is underscore inside on Twitter.

00:20:16 ◼   ► He first jumped into my radar screen

00:20:20 ◼   ► by being one of the people that was tag teaming

00:20:22 ◼   ► with Steve Trout and Smith during the HomePod firmware,

00:20:27 ◼   ► I don't know, picking about or, you know,

00:20:30 ◼   ► the hyenas went and picked at the HomePod firmware.

00:20:33 ◼   ► But anyways, he had tweeted earlier,

00:20:36 ◼   ► Apple is busy adding onboarding screens

00:20:38 ◼   ► to every single iOS feature.

00:20:39 ◼   ► And here's a screenshot of welcome to videos,

00:20:41 ◼   ► browse your library, watch anytime, anywhere,

00:20:43 ◼   ► enjoy extras, et cetera.

00:20:45 ◼   ► And Mr. Rambo, if you please,

00:20:47 ◼   ► has been going through other iOS features

00:20:49 ◼   ► and finding similar things.

00:20:51 ◼   ► I don't get this.

00:20:54 ◼   ► I don't think it's necessarily bad,

00:20:56 ◼   ► even though in anytime I get asked

00:20:59 ◼   ► to make an onboarding screen,

00:21:00 ◼   ► I always fight tooth and nail to avoid it.

00:21:03 ◼   ► But, I mean, for novice users and new users,

00:21:06 ◼   ► I don't think that's necessarily bad,

00:21:08 ◼   ► but what do you guys think about this?

00:21:09 ◼   ► And let's start with Marco.

00:21:11 ◼   ► - As a user, when I just install an iOS update

00:21:16 ◼   ► and I get these screens in every app I try to use,

00:21:19 ◼   ► I'm annoyed by them.

00:21:20 ◼   ► I don't like them as a user.

00:21:22 ◼   ► From Apple's point of view though,

00:21:25 ◼   ► from the developer point of view,

00:21:26 ◼   ► I see that side as well because I'm a developer

00:21:29 ◼   ► And I've never had one of these screens in any of my apps,

00:21:32 ◼   ► but I kinda need them sometimes.

00:21:35 ◼   ► Because when you're updating your software,

00:21:39 ◼   ► it's really hard to communicate to people

00:21:44 ◼   ► when things have changed in a way

00:21:46 ◼   ► that is helpful and not annoying.

00:21:48 ◼   ► And they will actually see or read or remember.

00:21:54 ◼   ► This is a very hard problem.

00:21:55 ◼   ► And so there have been lots of times

00:21:58 ◼   ► where I will make a change,

00:22:01 ◼   ► and I'll mention it on the Twitter account,

00:22:04 ◼   ► or I'll write a blog post about it or something.

00:22:06 ◼   ► But the fact is, some tiny percentage of my audience

00:22:09 ◼   ► actually looks at those things.

00:22:10 ◼   ► Most of the users of the app don't know

00:22:13 ◼   ► when I've changed anything.

00:22:14 ◼   ► I can put things in the App Store update notes, which I do,

00:22:18 ◼   ► but no one sees those either, for the most part,

00:22:20 ◼   ► because everyone auto-updates,

00:22:21 ◼   ► and no one ever looks at the notes.

00:22:23 ◼   ► So it's really hard to communicate feature changes

00:22:27 ◼   ► and improvements and UI changes

00:22:30 ◼   ► that aren't immediately obvious.

00:22:32 ◼   ► It's very hard to communicate that

00:22:33 ◼   ► to an existing user base.

00:22:35 ◼   ► New users, it isn't a problem as much,

00:22:36 ◼   ► because new users, A, they don't care

00:22:39 ◼   ► how things were before they got there,

00:22:40 ◼   ► so you don't have to tell them what things have changed,

00:22:42 ◼   ► and B, new users tend to be more exploratory.

00:22:45 ◼   ► They'll poke through settings screens

00:22:47 ◼   ► and have to see what the app can do.

00:22:48 ◼   ► So if you just added some settings

00:22:50 ◼   ► or added some new features, they'll find them

00:22:52 ◼   ► as they poke around the whole rest of the app.

00:22:54 ◼   ► But how you communicate this to existing users

00:22:56 ◼   ► is always a challenge.

00:22:57 ◼   ► So Apple faces the same problems

00:23:00 ◼   ► that any other developer does,

00:23:02 ◼   ► which is some small percentage of users of Apple devices

00:23:06 ◼   ► pay attention when they announce a new feature

00:23:08 ◼   ► in a keynote or on Apple.com or whatever else.

00:23:12 ◼   ► But most of their customers don't see that.

00:23:14 ◼   ► And even the ones that do don't all remember it

00:23:17 ◼   ► by the time they're actually using these things.

00:23:19 ◼   ► So Apple has the same problem

00:23:20 ◼   ► that every other app developer has,

00:23:21 ◼   ► which is how do they communicate changes to their app?

00:23:26 ◼   ► Or even do they communicate changes to their app,

00:23:29 ◼   ► which is a valid question to ask.

00:23:31 ◼   ► Or do they just kind of let the app stand on its own

00:23:33 ◼   ► and let people figure it out?

00:23:35 ◼   ► So this is Apple, I think, trying a new way of doing this.

00:23:40 ◼   ► So far, they've really not communicated changes

00:23:43 ◼   ► to the apps in the apps themselves.

00:23:45 ◼   ► They've usually just made the changes,

00:23:47 ◼   ► mentioned it in press events and stuff, and that's it.

00:23:50 ◼   ► And people just kind of find them

00:23:51 ◼   ► when they update.

00:23:52 ◼   ► This is a different approach.

00:23:54 ◼   ► This is them saying, you know what,

00:23:56 ◼   ► let's put up these little helpful sheets

00:23:58 ◼   ► the first time you launch some of these apps saying,

00:23:59 ◼   ► hey, here's what's new in this app, in this version of iOS.

00:24:02 ◼   ► Again, I don't love these as a user,

00:24:06 ◼   ► but I see why they do it.

00:24:10 ◼   ► It solves a problem, and it's not a great problem,

00:24:13 ◼   ► but it's a real problem nonetheless,

00:24:15 ◼   ► and it solves it in not a great way,

00:24:18 ◼   ► but it might be like the least crappy way

00:24:20 ◼   ► we've thought of so far.

00:24:22 ◼   ► So I don't object very strongly.

00:24:25 ◼   ► I see what they're trying to do.

00:24:28 ◼   ► It's annoying when I go to do something

00:24:29 ◼   ► and I have to go dismiss a screen

00:24:31 ◼   ► instead of doing the thing I actually went to the app to do,

00:24:33 ◼   ► but that's a one-time annoyance.

00:24:35 ◼   ► And so if overall it helps people find stuff,

00:24:38 ◼   ► I guess I'm okay with that.

00:24:43 ◼   ► - I feel like this is part of,

00:24:45 ◼   ► I mean, the screenshots here are from a phone, right?

00:24:47 ◼   ► But I mean, they might do some other things on the iPad,

00:24:49 ◼   ► know but part of the problem they're solving here is caused by the fact that the screens are just so

00:24:58 ◼   ► darn small compared to a computer screen like in the personal computer world we've always had i

00:25:04 ◼   ► mean there's a long history in the personal computer world of splash screens remember

00:25:08 ◼   ► those where they would just put up a big box that puts the name of the application and maybe some

00:25:12 ◼   ► credits and like some loading stuff for you to watch while your application takes a year and

00:25:16 ◼   ► day to launch, right?

00:25:19 ◼   ► That transition on the desktop to, well the general move away from loading screens, if

00:25:24 ◼   ► you see a loading screen you know you're either using like Microsoft or an Adobe product or

00:25:27 ◼   ► you're like back in time somewhere.

00:25:29 ◼   ► Most desktop applications on the Mac anyway have moved far far away from any kind of splash

00:25:33 ◼   ► screen, right?

00:25:34 ◼   ► But there is a trend that started you know maybe a decade ago probably led by Office

00:25:38 ◼   ► or similar things to give you that screen, I don't know what you call it, there's probably

00:25:42 ◼   ► a name for it, where it shows a bunch of templates or like the first run experience like tutorial

00:25:48 ◼   ► click through next next next thing to show you screenshots of the app. It's called Ubi,

00:25:53 ◼   ► the out of box experience. Oh my god. It's not kind of out of a box. Yeah. But yeah,

00:25:59 ◼   ► so that kind of thing. And sometimes that doesn't even go away. Sometimes like in Office,

00:26:02 ◼   ► it's the preference you have to say every time I launch, you know, Excel, don't show me the thing

00:26:06 ◼   ► with a bunch of Excel templates. Right? Just don't show me that. Just open it and like,

00:26:11 ◼   ► you know, I can handle it myself. But in all cases, in a desktop application on the Mac,

00:26:16 ◼   ► especially on most desktop platforms, there's a place that you can go to learn more about what

00:26:25 ◼   ► this application can do. Whether it's the help menu or like Apple guide in the old days, like

00:26:29 ◼   ► there's some standard way to say, "What can I do in this application? I know I see a bunch of menus

00:26:35 ◼   ► up there, but you know, help me out." And help varies from application to application. Sometimes

00:26:39 ◼   ► Sometimes it's just a limited thing that you can search, but some applications have really

00:26:43 ◼   ► comprehensive help, or even if they just chuck you to a website.

00:26:45 ◼   ► I think the main thing that these screens are answering for new users, who again, they

00:26:51 ◼   ► don't have to be told about changes or anything, is what can I do in this application?

00:26:56 ◼   ► So if you look at the welcome to videos thing in this tweet here, it's not really telling

00:27:01 ◼   ► you what changed in the last version.

00:27:02 ◼   ► It's like, what does the video app do?

00:27:04 ◼   ► Because if you just launch it, forget the screen, what is the first screen that you

00:27:07 ◼   ► you see when you watch videos,

00:27:08 ◼   ► especially if you actually have no videos,

00:27:09 ◼   ► that's always the problem on iOS,

00:27:11 ◼   ► like what do you show when there's no stuff?

00:27:13 ◼   ► It's not really clear what you would use

00:27:15 ◼   ► this application for, so this is what you do for it.

00:27:18 ◼   ► Browse your library, find purchases and rentals,

00:27:20 ◼   ► watch anytime, anywhere, play videos over wifi or cellular,

00:27:23 ◼   ► download to watch offline and enjoy extras, right?

00:27:25 ◼   ► Even if I had to describe what you do in the videos app,

00:27:30 ◼   ► I wouldn't have put that enjoy extras thing,

00:27:32 ◼   ► but that's an important piece of information

00:27:34 ◼   ► people might not know.

00:27:34 ◼   ► "Oh, there might be special features associated with something I purchased and I can watch

00:27:40 ◼   ► them here too."

00:27:42 ◼   ► And then, so it's important to just convey that basic information, but unfortunately,

00:27:46 ◼   ► unlike the desktop, say you're like most people, and like Marco said, this is generally an

00:27:52 ◼   ► annoyance and if you're looking at Apple's old human interface guidelines, they'd be

00:27:56 ◼   ► like, "Don't stop your user from doing what they set out to do by interrupting them with

00:28:01 ◼   ► a thing that, you know, just before you do what you want to do, I want to tell you something

00:28:04 ◼   ► the videos app. It's like no no yeah yeah I'm not whatever you're trying to tell me I don't care

00:28:08 ◼   ► just let me get to the thing I want to do and you reflexively hit the continue button before you

00:28:12 ◼   ► even register any words on the page right which I expect that to happen a lot but unlike in a desktop

00:28:18 ◼   ► app you know how do you get the screen back if later you're wondering okay is this a thing I can

00:28:24 ◼   ► do in the videos app or what is this video app even for you can't go to the help menu and say

00:28:29 ◼   ► show me that first run experience thing again like I don't even know if there is a way to get this

00:28:33 ◼   ► back once you've dismissed it other than waiting for the next OS update or

00:28:36 ◼   ► something or resetting your thing and it's because there's just no

00:28:40 ◼   ► standardized place in iOS applications probably because the screen is so small

00:28:44 ◼   ► to say where do I go to get help about this application or will there ever even

00:28:47 ◼   ► be help within this application is it always something I have to do elsewhere

00:28:52 ◼   ► and then but but not a thing that happens in the app and the final bit

00:28:57 ◼   ► that I think Apple is leaning on here is the wish you were here people down at

00:29:01 ◼   ► the bottom of this. Apple's new little logo for privacy that shows two people

00:29:06 ◼   ► shaking hands with each other. Part of that is marketing and that Apple wants

00:29:11 ◼   ► to emphasize it's one of its competitive advantages which is for every application

00:29:16 ◼   ► that you launch that's an Apple application we care about your privacy

00:29:19 ◼   ► and we'll tell you exactly how we're not using your information in a creepy way.

00:29:22 ◼   ► And implicitly how everyone else is who doesn't have the similar disclosure is

00:29:27 ◼   ► using your information in a creepy way so you should use Apple stuff. That

00:29:30 ◼   ► little logo I think Apple is trying to associate with the good information that

00:29:35 ◼   ► you will find linked from it is like when you see that logo that's Apple

00:29:38 ◼   ► reminding you that they're the privacy company that doesn't do creepy things

00:29:40 ◼   ► and tap here on the small text to find out exactly how non creepy we are and

00:29:44 ◼   ► the only way you get that in people's faces is if you put that in people's

00:29:48 ◼   ► faces otherwise you know in the past Apple has not been doing creepy things

00:29:53 ◼   ► with your data but there is no way as a user of these applications that you know

00:29:58 ◼   ► that because you launch them and they just show whatever their initial screen is and

00:30:00 ◼   ► there's no indication in the application of exactly how creepy an app it is or isn't.

00:30:05 ◼   ► And so Apple is relying on the fact that you trust them enough to believe them when they

00:30:08 ◼   ► tell you that, "By the way, we're not doing creepy stuff," and they want to remind you

00:30:12 ◼   ► of that.

00:30:13 ◼   ► So I have similar mixed feelings to Marco about this screen in that I understand the

00:30:16 ◼   ► reasoning behind it, but I think it is difficult for it to fulfill its purpose because it's

00:30:24 ◼   ► probably so easy to dismiss quickly because there's no way to get it back after you've

00:30:28 ◼   ► done that.

00:30:30 ◼   ► And because it interrupts the user from doing what they wanted to do.

00:30:33 ◼   ► And yet I think most new users, especially, would benefit from not reflexively dismissing

00:30:40 ◼   ► the screen and from actually reading the three little bullet points so they know why you

00:30:44 ◼   ► would ever want to launch the videos app or whatever.

00:30:48 ◼   ► Now it can be taken to extremes here.

00:30:49 ◼   ► We have this follow-up tweet from Mike Sargent that shows what's new in Clock, where the

00:30:56 ◼   ► only item is this splash screen, literally just this splash screen, what do you want

00:30:59 ◼   ► from us?

00:31:00 ◼   ► But it's still got the privacy thing at the bottom.

00:31:01 ◼   ► Was that real?

00:31:02 ◼   ► I assume that was a Photoshop.

00:31:03 ◼   ► Yeah, it's fake, but it's funny.

00:31:06 ◼   ► But where does this end?

00:31:09 ◼   ► Similar to the trend of desktop applications all opening up with a template library, create

00:31:13 ◼   ► a new document, pick from one of these 17 templates.

00:31:16 ◼   ► Just get out of my face, right?

00:31:18 ◼   ► This type of thing can be annoying and if Apple does it, it may encourage other people

00:31:23 ◼   ► to do it.

00:31:24 ◼   ► And if every new iOS application you launched put one of these screens up, it really amplifies

00:31:31 ◼   ► the "you are stopping me from doing what I'm trying to do" factor.

00:31:36 ◼   ► And it makes people even more quick on the draw to reflexively dismiss these things.

00:31:42 ◼   ► And it further emphasizes the fact that if you do reflexively dismiss it, there's probably

00:31:45 ◼   ► no standard way to get it back.

00:31:48 ◼   ► So I think this is a difficult problem that Apple is solving in a not so great way, but

00:31:52 ◼   ► I do understand why they're doing it.

00:31:54 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, like, it's really hard, you know, as I said, like, it's really hard to

00:31:59 ◼   ► figure out how to communicate changes like this in your app.

00:32:01 ◼   ► But I think, like, you know, I think, you know, what I mentioned initially and what

00:32:05 ◼   ► you just kind of confirmed and clarified for me is like, I think the biggest reason why

00:32:08 ◼   ► I don't like these things is that it is almost never a good time.

00:32:13 ◼   ► When I see them, it's like, "No, I didn't come here to read what's new.

00:32:16 ◼   ► I came here to write something down really fast

00:32:18 ◼   ► or do something.

00:32:19 ◼   ► I came here doing a task that I don't have time right now

00:32:25 ◼   ► to explore all the new features that you did for me

00:32:29 ◼   ► and get through your marketing language.

00:32:31 ◼   ► The problem is what percentage of the time

00:32:34 ◼   ► when people are foreseeing this

00:32:35 ◼   ► is it gonna be that kind of context

00:32:36 ◼   ► where they're just gonna breeze right by it?

00:32:39 ◼   ► Even if people have time,

00:32:41 ◼   ► we are so conditioned to dismiss those screens

00:32:43 ◼   ► that we're not gonna remember things that are on it.

00:32:45 ◼   ► One of the most sad realities of interface design,

00:32:50 ◼   ► but this has been true forever and will always be true,

00:32:52 ◼   ► is that nobody reads anything.

00:32:54 ◼   ► Anything you're explaining by just a couple

00:32:56 ◼   ► of bullet points of text, nobody will read it.

00:32:59 ◼   ► The very small handful that do won't remember it.

00:33:02 ◼   ► And so explaining things with text

00:33:06 ◼   ► is just not very effective.

00:33:08 ◼   ► You should never rely on that.

00:33:10 ◼   ► Ultimately, the best way to solve the problem

00:33:14 ◼   ► of how do you communicate changes in your app

00:33:17 ◼   ► is with the design of the app itself.

00:33:20 ◼   ► This isn't always possible, this isn't always practical,

00:33:22 ◼   ► but ideally the changes should either be

00:33:26 ◼   ► not worth mentioning because the user doesn't care

00:33:28 ◼   ► if it's like, oh, under the hood changes.

00:33:30 ◼   ► Like, well, the user doesn't care, great.

00:33:31 ◼   ► Do the under the hood changes, makes you happy,

00:33:33 ◼   ► makes your users happy that things are faster

00:33:35 ◼   ► or don't crash or whatever else, great.

00:33:37 ◼   ► Don't need to mention that.

00:33:39 ◼   ► Or it's like new features, in which case

00:33:41 ◼   ► those will make themselves apparent in the interface

00:33:42 ◼   ► as the user is using them.

00:33:43 ◼   ► It's hard these days, not only is it hard on touch screens

00:33:47 ◼   ► because as you mentioned, they're so small,

00:33:49 ◼   ► that makes it hard for a lot of features to be visible

00:33:52 ◼   ► because you don't have space on the screen

00:33:55 ◼   ► to have a toolbar button for everything the app can do.

00:33:59 ◼   ► But also, modern design trends are such that

00:34:04 ◼   ► you try to hide as much as possible in the main interface.

00:34:08 ◼   ► You try to make the main interface as empty as possible.

00:34:13 ◼   ► Everything looks super sparse and open.

00:34:16 ◼   ► - The way Apple would phrase that is maximize your content.

00:34:19 ◼   ► They wouldn't say you are hiding things.

00:34:21 ◼   ► They would say you are allowing the content.

00:34:23 ◼   ► They've said that so many, so many of you have said that,

00:34:25 ◼   ► sessions, the content, maximizing the content,

00:34:27 ◼   ► not minimizing UI, but in effect,

00:34:30 ◼   ► you are hiding everything else

00:34:31 ◼   ► if you're putting the content in front.

00:34:34 ◼   ► And that I think gets to what you were saying with the,

00:34:36 ◼   ► you know, this is not a good time application

00:34:38 ◼   ► to be telling me about your features, right?

00:34:40 ◼   ► That's the beauty of the help menu.

00:34:42 ◼   ► when the user seeks out an item in the help menu,

00:34:45 ◼   ► that is their task at that point.

00:34:47 ◼   ► They're trying to learn more about the application.

00:34:49 ◼   ► That is exactly the time you should tell them more.

00:34:51 ◼   ► But there is no standardized interface element in iOS

00:34:55 ◼   ► for almost anything.

00:34:56 ◼   ► Like it's part of the beauty of iOS

00:34:57 ◼   ► that each application gets the entire screen

00:34:59 ◼   ► back from the single testing model

00:35:01 ◼   ► and maximizing the content.

00:35:02 ◼   ► All those are good trends,

00:35:03 ◼   ► but the lack of really any standardized interface element

00:35:07 ◼   ► aside from the status bar,

00:35:08 ◼   ► which at least we know you can use to scroll to the top

00:35:10 ◼   ► most of the time, really does hurt discoverability.

00:35:14 ◼   ► If there was some kind of standard help widget

00:35:17 ◼   ► that was the same across all apps,

00:35:20 ◼   ► that would be the perfect place to stash this

00:35:21 ◼   ► because when people tapped it,

00:35:22 ◼   ► they would be seeking out information

00:35:24 ◼   ► about your application at that moment.

00:35:26 ◼   ► But in the absence of that,

00:35:27 ◼   ► even if you have a great help widget in your app,

00:35:30 ◼   ► no one knows what it means or where it is or what it does

00:35:32 ◼   ► because it's not standardized, right?

00:35:34 ◼   ► And so we're forced to throw this in people's faces.

00:35:37 ◼   ► Otherwise they will literally never see it.

00:35:39 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, and part of that, a lot of people

00:35:43 ◼   ► who haven't been around this stuff that long,

00:35:48 ◼   ► kids these days or whatever, a lot of assumptions

00:35:51 ◼   ► are made about current design trends

00:35:54 ◼   ► that people project as universal design rules

00:35:58 ◼   ► that have always and will always be the best.

00:36:01 ◼   ► And the fact is right now, we are in,

00:36:06 ◼   ► I'd say probably the three quarters point

00:36:08 ◼   ► of a trend of ultra-minimalism everywhere.

00:36:11 ◼   ► And the fact is, that's just a style

00:36:14 ◼   ► that's been in style for a little while.

00:36:16 ◼   ► We have a little more of it to go, probably.

00:36:19 ◼   ► That isn't necessarily the only or best way to design apps.

00:36:24 ◼   ► A lot of the minimalism of iOS apps and interfaces

00:36:27 ◼   ► and getting out of the way for the content

00:36:29 ◼   ► was born of limitations of the original iPhone hardware

00:36:33 ◼   ► being a really small screen.

00:36:35 ◼   ► But as phones have gotten significantly bigger,

00:36:38 ◼   ► as also we've added things like iPads,

00:36:41 ◼   ► and possibly Mac through bridge layers this fall, we hope,

00:36:46 ◼   ► as we've added larger screens

00:36:48 ◼   ► and more capability and everything,

00:36:50 ◼   ► the ultra minimalist thing doesn't necessarily work,

00:36:53 ◼   ► or doesn't carry over as well.

00:36:55 ◼   ► Also, the software, like iOS started from zero,

00:36:58 ◼   ► with software, it started with like,

00:37:00 ◼   ► every software is gonna be 1.0 here,

00:37:02 ◼   ► And so there weren't a lot of features in most apps

00:37:06 ◼   ► for a long time, and there still aren't on iOS apps,

00:37:08 ◼   ► but many apps now are pushing those boundaries

00:37:11 ◼   ► and have developed over the last decade

00:37:13 ◼   ► into very feature-rich, very capable apps.

00:37:17 ◼   ► And the conventions of ultra-minimalist,

00:37:22 ◼   ► you know, hide-everything design,

00:37:25 ◼   ► while they still look very nice,

00:37:27 ◼   ► they suffer greatly from discoverability

00:37:30 ◼   ► and affordances of showing people what is possible

00:37:34 ◼   ► or how to use things.

00:37:36 ◼   ► And this is, again, this is just a design trend

00:37:40 ◼   ► of hide everything that won't last forever.

00:37:45 ◼   ► And honestly, I think it's almost over

00:37:47 ◼   ► because I think its many usability flaws

00:37:51 ◼   ► are really piling up and it's resulting in

00:37:54 ◼   ► people having to do bad hacks like those splash screens.

00:38:00 ◼   ► Those are terrible hacks.

00:38:01 ◼   ► You know, like I frequently tell the story

00:38:03 ◼   ► about like when I first made the magazine app,

00:38:05 ◼   ► I thought it would be a good design principle

00:38:07 ◼   ► to not need a setting screen.

00:38:08 ◼   ► And so I didn't have one in 1.0.

00:38:10 ◼   ► And I tried to get it, I was just,

00:38:12 ◼   ► okay, there's no settings anywhere,

00:38:14 ◼   ► or there's no setting screen, rather, anywhere.

00:38:16 ◼   ► Let me just design the app to not need a setting screen.

00:38:18 ◼   ► Wouldn't that be great?

00:38:19 ◼   ► Wouldn't that be clean and modern and everything?

00:38:22 ◼   ► And the fact is, to not have a setting screen,

00:38:25 ◼   ► I had to jump through hoops.

00:38:27 ◼   ► and the hoops I jumped through were worse

00:38:31 ◼   ► than just having a setting screen.

00:38:33 ◼   ► And this is a very important lesson that I learned

00:38:37 ◼   ► at that time and a metaphor that I think

00:38:40 ◼   ► is widely applicable.

00:38:42 ◼   ► By the way, I still haven't learned this lesson every time.

00:38:43 ◼   ► I mean, I have a significant design problem

00:38:47 ◼   ► in Overcast right now that I need to revert

00:38:49 ◼   ► on the Now Playing screen.

00:38:51 ◼   ► Just guess how many emails I get per day

00:38:53 ◼   ► from people asking how to change the speed.

00:38:56 ◼   ► I have a significant problem that I need to redesign there.

00:39:01 ◼   ► But in our efforts to make things clean and simple

00:39:04 ◼   ► and minimal, usability suffers big time.

00:39:09 ◼   ► And I think we're finally starting to realize that,

00:39:13 ◼   ► but it's still an open question of how we are going

00:39:16 ◼   ► to solve that going forward.

00:39:19 ◼   ► - I think it's not just a design problem.

00:39:21 ◼   ► There's the obvious design thing,

00:39:22 ◼   ► and again, Apple's been emphasizing that,

00:39:24 ◼   ► make your content, give it focus, make it the primary thing.

00:39:28 ◼   ► You know, it's the thing that people care about.

00:39:29 ◼   ► Most people playing with all the features,

00:39:30 ◼   ► yeah, yeah, they're mostly good.

00:39:31 ◼   ► But especially on larger iOS devices,

00:39:35 ◼   ► which may include phones, now that they're getting bigger

00:39:37 ◼   ► or they still sell the SE, but especially on iPads,

00:39:40 ◼   ► potentially even larger things,

00:39:41 ◼   ► part of it is up to the OS

00:39:45 ◼   ► to provide standardized elements for things.

00:39:49 ◼   ► And the set of standardized elements you need

00:39:51 ◼   ► for a 3.5 inch phone screen is not the same for the set of standardized elements that

00:39:56 ◼   ► you need to make a really great application on a 12.9 inch iPad.

00:40:00 ◼   ► And getting back to the help menu, not that I'm saying that they should add a menu bar,

00:40:03 ◼   ► but if you leave it up to, even if this trend, the design trend ends and everybody stops

00:40:10 ◼   ► making everything minimal and they start adding just toolbars and palettes everywhere, if

00:40:15 ◼   ► there is no standardization for that, the toolbars and palettes in every application

00:40:20 ◼   ► will be wildly different and users still won't know where to go for common functions, like

00:40:24 ◼   ► finding the help or any kind of guide or any trend towards that or whatever it may be.

00:40:29 ◼   ► I think one of the poster children for this was, I forget what version it was, but a couple

00:40:34 ◼   ► of releases ago, Apple's Photos application that would launch and it would show like a

00:40:40 ◼   ► highlighter markup with things circled in yellow pen all over the screen with one of

00:40:44 ◼   ► those overlays. Do you remember that?

00:40:45 ◼   ► Oh, those were the worst. Was it Photos? I know iMovie did that, but it's...

00:40:48 ◼   ► It might have been iMovie, some Apple application, lots of applications do this, right?

00:40:52 ◼   ► Because here's the problem.

00:40:53 ◼   ► Yeah, don't do this.

00:40:54 ◼   ► Yeah, they're not going super minimal, because a lot of those applications, particularly

00:40:58 ◼   ► the Apple one that I'm thinking of that I can't remember, the chat room will tell me

00:41:01 ◼   ► in a second, they have tons of controls on the screen.

00:41:04 ◼   ► There are a lot of buttons.

00:41:05 ◼   ► Maybe the minimalism is like, "Oh, why aren't the buttons labeled?

00:41:07 ◼   ► They're all icons, which is why they're so damn inscrutable."

00:41:10 ◼   ► But they were everywhere.

00:41:11 ◼   ► There was like 50 of them on the screen.

00:41:13 ◼   ► And then they would circle them all with pen and say, "Use this for this, use this for

00:41:16 ◼   ► this, use this for this, use this for this, use this."

00:41:18 ◼   ► like no one's ever going to remember that, no one's ever going to read that, no one's

00:41:22 ◼   ► ever going to be able to figure out how to bring it back, and the reason you need it

00:41:25 ◼   ► is because without that overlay, nobody knows what any of those icons do because there is

00:41:28 ◼   ► no standardization for, you know, toolbars for common functionality.

00:41:32 ◼   ► And somewhat like the Mac had the luxury of not having the sort of Cambrian explosion

00:41:38 ◼   ► of applications that iOS did, because a lot of the conventions, let's say in graphics

00:41:43 ◼   ► applications on the Mac. It was seeded by a Mac Paint and evolved slowly through Super Paint and

00:41:50 ◼   ► the Adobe applications to establish over the course of several important formative years

00:41:55 ◼   ► the standard language for tools and design applications. If you see a little Mickey Mouse

00:42:01 ◼   ► glove, everyone knows that's like the grabber thing. If you see a paint bucket with paint pouring

00:42:06 ◼   ► out of it. Everyone knows what that does. Like, I'm so glad that, you know, that those widgets

00:42:12 ◼   ► have, you know, whoever owned the copyright on the first ones, those didn't aggressively pursue it

00:42:15 ◼   ► and say, "You can't use a paint bucket in your application," because it wasn't Adobe who did

00:42:19 ◼   ► it first. It was Apple. And, you know, so anyway, there is a design language within graphics

00:42:24 ◼   ► applications that even if you use a new graphics app, you know where to find things. But that's

00:42:29 ◼   ► application level. Beyond that, the help menu is a thing that Apple defines as the OS vendor.

00:42:34 ◼   ► to say there is a menu bar, the menus are in this order, the help system in this era of the Mac

00:42:40 ◼   ► is this shape and in this position, and here's what you can expect to find on it. Or the menu

00:42:45 ◼   ► bar itself, the fact that a menu bar exists. Applications didn't decide that, the OS decided

00:42:49 ◼   ► that. Again, not saying that iOS needs a menu bar, but that the combination of the OS and the

00:42:56 ◼   ► applications develop an interface language that means when you go from one really complicated

00:43:04 ◼   ► application to another really complicated application, you have a hope in hell of knowing

00:43:10 ◼   ► how the second application works because hopefully it works in some way similar to the first

00:43:14 ◼   ► one.

00:43:15 ◼   ► And the model of iOS where the application owns the entire screen makes it very difficult

00:43:20 ◼   ► to have any kind of consistency.

00:43:22 ◼   ► Yeah, maybe the buttons look the same and yeah, maybe the little pop-up dialogue things

00:43:25 ◼   ► look the same and stuff, but the application itself is almost like games where they can

00:43:29 ◼   ► design their own interface entirely.

00:43:30 ◼   ► And that leads us down the path of Apple being forced to put a hilarious,

00:43:34 ◼   ► you know, football style, Telestrator markup illustration covering its interface

00:43:40 ◼   ► that no one's ever going to remember.

00:43:42 ◼   ► And then having a thing go away and having you look at a bunch of hieroglyphics and go,

00:43:45 ◼   ► so I guess I'll just tap things randomly and see is this the crop tool?

00:43:49 ◼   ► Is this the crop tool?

00:43:50 ◼   ► Is this, I mean, any crop tool, they could just steal the icon from the desktop applications,

00:43:55 ◼   ► but even that varies a lot.

00:43:56 ◼   ► So I think iOS has a long way to go,

00:44:01 ◼   ► even once we get over the design trend of minimalism,

00:44:03 ◼   ► to realize the dream of the Mac,

00:44:07 ◼   ► that the interface consistency allows you

00:44:09 ◼   ► to understand how a new application would work

00:44:11 ◼   ► by reusing knowledge about a previous application.

00:44:14 ◼   ► - I mean, I'm not even sure

00:44:17 ◼   ► that we're ever gonna have that again,

00:44:18 ◼   ► because the companies and platforms these days

00:44:22 ◼   ► are just so much bigger than they used to be.

00:44:24 ◼   ► Like, you know, Apple is a huge company now,

00:44:27 ◼   ► way bigger than even, you know, five, 10 years ago

00:44:32 ◼   ► when they were doing a lot of these

00:44:33 ◼   ► like initial iPhone designs and everything.

00:44:35 ◼   ► They're way bigger now, there are way more apps,

00:44:37 ◼   ► there's way more departments and divisions and services

00:44:41 ◼   ► and apps and platforms and everything else.

00:44:43 ◼   ► Like, you know, the Apple Watch looks nothing

00:44:46 ◼   ► like the rest of iOS.

00:44:48 ◼   ► Apple TV is a whole different ball game as well.

00:44:51 ◼   ► Even on iOS, there's tons of different design languages.

00:44:55 ◼   ► Like, you have Apple Music, you have Maps,

00:44:58 ◼   ► you have some of the older stuff that wasn't really,

00:45:00 ◼   ► that's still kind of very iOS 70.

00:45:02 ◼   ► Like, there's all these different designs

00:45:05 ◼   ► being followed now.

00:45:07 ◼   ► I'm not sure that modern Apple,

00:45:10 ◼   ► that it's realistic to expect design coherency from them.

00:45:15 ◼   ► They're just too big, there's too many things.

00:45:17 ◼   ► And I think if there was any chance

00:45:19 ◼   ► of design coherency, it would happen now

00:45:24 ◼   ► when design at Apple runs Apple.

00:45:27 ◼   ► Like, there is no more powerful department in Apple

00:45:30 ◼   ► right now than the design department.

00:45:32 ◼   ► And they're a company that heavily prioritizes design,

00:45:36 ◼   ► it like heavily funds it with allocations of time

00:45:40 ◼   ► and resources and everything else.

00:45:41 ◼   ► Like, if anybody could have a coherent design right now,

00:45:44 ◼   ► it's Apple, and they don't.

00:45:46 ◼   ► I think the problem set is just too big now.

00:45:48 ◼   ► I don't think we're ever gonna see that kind of coherence

00:45:50 ◼   ► like what we used to have again.

00:45:52 ◼   ► Instead, it's gonna be mostly left up to,

00:45:56 ◼   ► I think, third parties to slowly evolve standards

00:46:01 ◼   ► over time that just kind of become de facto standards.

00:46:06 ◼   ► And that's a much messier and slower process,

00:46:10 ◼   ► but I think that's kind of what's gonna happen in reality.

00:46:13 ◼   ► - I feel like the design department lately

00:46:15 ◼   ► has not added any of new sort of standardized controls

00:46:19 ◼   ► or standard interface elements.

00:46:21 ◼   ► They've mostly just been dressing up

00:46:22 ◼   ► the ones that are there.

00:46:24 ◼   ► It's not as if iOS doesn't have these elements.

00:46:27 ◼   ► It doesn't have the same ones, doesn't have a menu bar,

00:46:29 ◼   ► but just to give an example,

00:46:31 ◼   ► Marco will tell me what the class name is.

00:46:32 ◼   ► So it is a UI navigation controller,

00:46:34 ◼   ► the thing, the right left thing

00:46:36 ◼   ► with the back and done button.

00:46:38 ◼   ► That's been around since iOS, since iPhone OS 1.0,

00:46:42 ◼   ► iPhone OS firmware 1.0.

00:46:43 ◼   ► Like the fact that you have at the top of the screen,

00:46:47 ◼   ► left to right sliding transition interface,

00:46:50 ◼   ► they used to have the little arrow shape on it or whatever.

00:46:52 ◼   ► That was a standard interface element

00:46:54 ◼   ► that it was the same way

00:46:56 ◼   ► any standard interface element works.

00:46:58 ◼   ► Hey, you don't have to write this GUI widget.

00:47:00 ◼   ► We've actually written it for you

00:47:02 ◼   ► and it provides some important functionality.

00:47:04 ◼   ► So now you don't have to worry

00:47:04 ◼   ► about that part of your application.

00:47:05 ◼   ► If you decide you want your application

00:47:07 ◼   ► to be like master detail view

00:47:08 ◼   ► and you go into the right and out to the left

00:47:11 ◼   ► and you wanna have cancel and done buttons,

00:47:13 ◼   ► Like, we've provided that control for you, so don't bother writing it.

00:47:16 ◼   ► And by providing it for you, we standardized the interface.

00:47:18 ◼   ► So think of all the applications from the day one of the iPhone that work that way,

00:47:22 ◼   ► where the top part of the screen was for you to go back and forth, and it was done in cancel

00:47:25 ◼   ► buttons and arrows and stuff like that.

00:47:28 ◼   ► That's a standard element.

00:47:29 ◼   ► That interface element is still with us, despite the fact that the top of our phone is like

00:47:32 ◼   ► a mile and a half away now.

00:47:35 ◼   ► And in the iOS 7 days, they've jammed other crap up there, like the little arrow thing,

00:47:38 ◼   ► which has always looked super weird from an aesthetic point of view, that little tiny,

00:47:42 ◼   ► you know, go back to Safari, which is super convenient,

00:47:44 ◼   ► functionality-wise, but it shows they didn't

00:47:46 ◼   ► re-think anything, but still, that one interface element

00:47:50 ◼   ► does provide an important degree of consistency

00:47:52 ◼   ► across all applications, not just Apple's,

00:47:55 ◼   ► because it generally does look the same,

00:47:56 ◼   ► and it generally does kind of work the same,

00:47:57 ◼   ► and people know to look up there for stuff.

00:48:01 ◼   ► But again, if there had really been design innovation,

00:48:04 ◼   ► design being how it works and not just how it looks,

00:48:07 ◼   ► at some point you have to rethink the fact

00:48:08 ◼   ► that the top of the phone is really far away,

00:48:10 ◼   ► And at some point you have to think about,

00:48:13 ◼   ► are there other standard interface elements

00:48:15 ◼   ► that are appropriate in the age of 12.9 inch iPads

00:48:18 ◼   ► that we should introduce?

00:48:19 ◼   ► Standard movable palettes or tab interfaces

00:48:22 ◼   ► like in Safari on the iPad or anything like that.

00:48:24 ◼   ► Just any kind of standard interface element

00:48:27 ◼   ► that other applications can use

00:48:29 ◼   ► that is appropriate for the modern iOS usage.

00:48:31 ◼   ► The more of those they can produce,

00:48:33 ◼   ► including perhaps standard icons or widgets

00:48:35 ◼   ► for things like help or, you know,

00:48:38 ◼   ► a quick way to get to settings for an application

00:48:40 ◼   ► within an application if they don't want to give up on the whole idea of settings being a separate

00:48:43 ◼   ► app which I think is also a dinosaur of a bygone error of much less ram usage and also the whole

00:48:49 ◼   ► you know we don't want anything in our application so hide all the complexity into another application

00:48:53 ◼   ► that never worked by the way yeah a lot of stuff needs to be rethought about the design of iOS and

00:48:59 ◼   ► almost none of it has to do with what applications look like I feel like we need we need more we need

00:49:05 ◼   ► more help from the OS and the foundational classes to get to the next level of functionality

00:49:13 ◼   ► on iOS applications.

00:49:14 ◼   ► I think that's mostly true.

00:49:15 ◼   ► I think to go back a step though, part of the reason that I think we haven't standardized

00:49:20 ◼   ► on any one design or any one set of iconography is because it didn't take long in my recollection,

00:49:29 ◼   ► starting with iPhone OS 2.

00:49:31 ◼   ► It wasn't too long after that that it became kind of blasé to—or maybe that's not the

00:49:38 ◼   ► word I'm looking for—but kind of gross to use Vanilla UI Kit for most of your app.

00:49:44 ◼   ► And I think that there's plenty of Vanilla UI Kit controls in any app.

00:49:49 ◼   ► But I mean, looking at Overcast as a great example, there's plenty of Vanilla UI Kit

00:49:52 ◼   ► there, but so much of it is hidden in so many different custom controls.

00:49:57 ◼   ► I mean, look at the card interface, Marco, that you were rolling for a long time.

00:50:01 ◼   ► Like that was completely and utterly custom.

00:50:03 ◼   ► And from what you've said on the show and from what I've heard elsewhere, you know,

00:50:06 ◼   ► you bent over backwards to do it.

00:50:08 ◼   ► And we can have a different discussion another time as to whether or not that was

00:50:10 ◼   ► wise.

00:50:11 ◼   ► But the fact of the matter that I'm driving toward is that for better or worse,

00:50:15 ◼   ► one way or another, in order to stand out on this ever more crowded app store,

00:50:19 ◼   ► you need to have a more and more custom UI,

00:50:23 ◼   ► or at least in most cases, that's the case.

00:50:26 ◼   ► I'm sure you could well actually meet a death on this one.

00:50:29 ◼   ► But it seems to me that your average consumer, be it design-minded or otherwise,

00:50:33 ◼   ► tends to like things that are very opinionated and somewhat different.

00:50:37 ◼   ► I mean, look at Tweetbot as a great example of that.

00:50:39 ◼   ► I wouldn't say that I see a whole lot of vanilla UI kit in Tweetbot,

00:50:43 ◼   ► but I would say that it looks like it belongs on the platform,

00:50:47 ◼   ► and it looks like it has its own personality.

00:50:49 ◼   ► And I would say the same of Overcast, actually.

00:50:51 ◼   ► And so I think because everyone was branching out in their own direction,

00:50:54 ◼   ► everyone was creating their own personal or perhaps company-wide conventions and things,

00:51:01 ◼   ► I think that may be why we've splintered in so many different directions.

00:51:05 ◼   ► That kind of bums me out, partially because I'm really bad at customizing UIKit to do

00:51:09 ◼   ► weird things like Marco does, but it's understandable nevertheless, because in this ever more crowded

00:51:15 ◼   ► space you need to do something to stand out.

00:51:17 ◼   ► You do need to be differentiated, but that's separate from do you need to do super custom

00:51:23 ◼   ► controls.

00:51:24 ◼   ► I think that's part of the skill of making an application in any platform is use standard

00:51:29 ◼   ► controls but add some kind of branding and flair to them.

00:51:33 ◼   ► And I think every application also needs at least one or two unique interface elements.

00:51:38 ◼   ► Because historically, advances in the sort of "standard UI" have very often come from

00:51:43 ◼   ► third parties.

00:51:44 ◼   ► Like the first, you know, just pulled a refresh, for crying out loud on iOS, but I was going

00:51:48 ◼   ► to do a bunch of old Mac examples.

00:51:50 ◼   ► Granted, MacPaint seeded a lot of the DNA of graphic applications across all GUI platforms,

00:51:57 ◼   ► but subsequent applications like Illustrator and SuperPaint and Photoshop especially had

00:52:05 ◼   ► their own innovations in UI that informed the whole rest of the genre.

00:52:14 ◼   ► And in the best case, new interface elements, whether they be tabs or whatever, should eventually

00:52:20 ◼   ► be co-opted by the OS and become standard controls.

00:52:25 ◼   ► I'm not saying Apple has to do it all, but I think you can get away with having an application

00:52:30 ◼   ► that is 100% standard controls with a little bit of flair plus one or two things that totally

00:52:37 ◼   ► don't look like standard controls even if they are under the covers.

00:52:40 ◼   ► You want your app to have personality, right?

00:52:43 ◼   ► Like Tweetbot has a personality, and you want it to have some kind of differentiating thing

00:52:48 ◼   ► like oh this is this feature that only this application has or this UI element is fun

00:52:52 ◼   ► to use flicking the thing away or whatever.

00:52:54 ◼   ► And if that's really a great idea a couple years down the line Apple should adapt the

00:53:00 ◼   ► iOS interface and say oh here's a way you can pop up sort of a thing on the screen and

00:53:03 ◼   ► people can flick it away in a like physics based you know fun kind of way.

00:53:07 ◼   ► Because so many applications do that, that should be a standard type thing and that should

00:53:12 ◼   ► be the feedback cycle.

00:53:13 ◼   ► I don't think you need to go, even on iOS, I don't think you need to go whole hog and

00:53:17 ◼   ► and say, everything I do is custom, it's basically a game.

00:53:21 ◼   ► Like every one of my controls is awesome because that's,

00:53:24 ◼   ► I'm not gonna say that's too much differentiation

00:53:27 ◼   ► because maybe like people still do like that,

00:53:29 ◼   ► but you're in for a world of hurt

00:53:30 ◼   ► and I think it's not necessary.

00:53:32 ◼   ► You do want people to notice you,

00:53:35 ◼   ► but you don't need to like reinvent everything,

00:53:39 ◼   ► especially with the flexibility Apple gives you

00:53:41 ◼   ► in most modern UI kit controls.

00:53:43 ◼   ► You can really customize them to look almost nothing

00:53:45 ◼   ► like what you would think they look like.

00:53:47 ◼   ► generic things like the collection views and stuff,

00:53:49 ◼   ► where you have a lot of control over exactly

00:53:51 ◼   ► what is drawn on the screen.

00:53:52 ◼   ► Like you can make a collection view into something

00:53:54 ◼   ► that no longer resembles a collection view at all

00:53:56 ◼   ► with some cleverness, right?

00:53:58 ◼   ► So I think app developers have the freedom

00:54:03 ◼   ► to be differentiated by staying on standard controls,

00:54:06 ◼   ► but I still think it's on Apple to see what's out there,

00:54:10 ◼   ► see what's popular, see what's worked,

00:54:11 ◼   ► and come up with some of their own innovations

00:54:13 ◼   ► to give a better palette of tools

00:54:17 ◼   ► in the interface builder sense,

00:54:18 ◼   ► even if nobody uses that in iOS.

00:54:21 ◼   ► - Well, I wouldn't say that, I wouldn't say that.

00:54:23 ◼   ► - Well, I don't know what's popular these days with the kids

00:54:25 ◼   ► but to be able to say,

00:54:27 ◼   ► I'm gonna make the next great iPad graphics application

00:54:31 ◼   ► of which there are many.

00:54:32 ◼   ► But I don't want to have to invent everything

00:54:38 ◼   ► from whole cloth.

00:54:39 ◼   ► I want Apple to help me here by saying,

00:54:42 ◼   ► "Oh, are you going to have floating pallets in your graphics application?"

00:54:45 ◼   ► Well, we have a standard control for that because everyone seems to be making their

00:54:47 ◼   ► own, all the way down to all the little experiments, speaking of Steve Trout and Smith earlier,

00:54:52 ◼   ► of like floating quote-unquote "windows" or whatever.

00:54:54 ◼   ► Stuff like that, if it comes from a third-party application first and it's popular, fine,

00:54:59 ◼   ► but that's exactly the type of stuff that Apple should be looking into, trying to figure

00:55:02 ◼   ► out a more sophisticated bucket of parts for people to build their fancy iOS applications

00:55:09 ◼   ► out of.

00:55:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I think it's also worth pointing out,

00:55:12 ◼   ► like the timing of talking about this now,

00:55:14 ◼   ► I think is interesting because the iPhone X, I think,

00:55:18 ◼   ► really changes a lot of how things in iOS should be designed.

00:55:23 ◼   ► Again, this isn't news, so I'll be quick,

00:55:26 ◼   ► but we have now culminated this trend

00:55:31 ◼   ► that we've been going on for a little while now

00:55:33 ◼   ► with the Plus phones, where now a lot of iOS interfaces

00:55:39 ◼   ► have critical functions and buttons and things

00:55:42 ◼   ► on the top area of the screen,

00:55:44 ◼   ► which is now very hard to reach for a lot of people

00:55:47 ◼   ► a lot of the time on a lot of devices.

00:55:50 ◼   ► And so this is like a fundamental thing

00:55:53 ◼   ► that so much of iOS design has been based

00:55:58 ◼   ► on putting important controls in those top corners.

00:56:01 ◼   ► And now that should be rethought.

00:56:04 ◼   ► I'm sure Apple is feeling this too.

00:56:06 ◼   ► I'm sure they are thinking about this

00:56:08 ◼   ► and are hopefully working on this.

00:56:10 ◼   ► But this is also a time where they have a lot

00:56:14 ◼   ► of software quality problems that they have to like slow down

00:56:17 ◼   ► on the like move forward aggressively side of things

00:56:21 ◼   ► to let the quality catch up really.

00:56:24 ◼   ► We've heard rumblings here and there

00:56:27 ◼   ► that maybe there was some kind of iOS 12 redesign plan,

00:56:31 ◼   ► but that maybe that's been pushed to next year

00:56:34 ◼   ► and next version of iOS because of the quality push,

00:56:38 ◼   ► that seems reasonable to me.

00:56:40 ◼   ► So assuming that either it's coming this year or next year,

00:56:44 ◼   ► I do expect Apple is probably working on a big iOS redesign

00:56:49 ◼   ► to better accommodate the iPhone X.

00:56:52 ◼   ► Not to mention the fact that they just need to update

00:56:55 ◼   ► the look and feel of it to just be fresh and new

00:56:59 ◼   ► and no longer iOS 7 stale.

00:57:02 ◼   ► But I do expect that to happen soon, I hope it does.

00:57:05 ◼   ► And even if it's next year, for quality reasons,

00:57:09 ◼   ► that's fine with me, I really would love to see

00:57:12 ◼   ► what Apple has in mind for a coherent direction

00:57:16 ◼   ► to bring iOS in now.

00:57:18 ◼   ► I hope we get that.

00:57:20 ◼   ► I don't think it's a sure thing that we will ever get that

00:57:22 ◼   ► 'cause of what I said earlier, but I hope we get that,

00:57:25 ◼   ► whether it's this year or next, and I really look forward

00:57:28 ◼   ► to seeing what they think the direction is.

00:57:30 ◼   ► - And I hope it's not just for the iPhone X,

00:57:32 ◼   ► because I think as much as the iPhone X needs it,

00:57:35 ◼   ► because things really are farther away from your thumb

00:57:36 ◼   ► than they ever have been.

00:57:37 ◼   ► It's not like the plus phones

00:57:38 ◼   ► haven't been around for a while,

00:57:39 ◼   ► but I feel like the iPad needs it more

00:57:41 ◼   ► because I do see a lot of people,

00:57:43 ◼   ► I mean, a lot of it's graphics applications

00:57:45 ◼   ► used with the Pencil,

00:57:45 ◼   ► but I see a lot of increasingly sophisticated applications

00:57:48 ◼   ► on the iPad and they all still look like games to me

00:57:50 ◼   ► in terms of the interface.

00:57:51 ◼   ► I see very little consistency among them.

00:57:54 ◼   ► Everybody having to roll their own controls for everything,

00:57:56 ◼   ► which increases the barrier to entry

00:57:58 ◼   ► for good graphics applications.

00:58:00 ◼   ► Like, I just think of something like Acorn, which I'm sure has some custom interface elements,

00:58:04 ◼   ► but in general, it's using AppKit to its fullest effect, taking advantage of all the controls

00:58:08 ◼   ► Apple gives.

00:58:09 ◼   ► To design an interface doesn't look like other graphics application interfaces, but it looks

00:58:13 ◼   ► Mac-like, you know how it's going to work, and the fact that, I mean, both on the front

00:58:18 ◼   ► end and on the back end, that Acorn is able to leverage the frameworks that Apple provides

00:58:23 ◼   ► for UI and for image processing itself allows a one-person software shop to make a graphics

00:58:28 ◼   ► application that is basically like a mini Photoshop.

00:58:32 ◼   ► That's the platform advantage that Apple should be selling.

00:58:35 ◼   ► Come develop on our platform, look what a single person can do, it's unbelievable.

00:58:40 ◼   ► On the iPad, I feel like, maybe it's only three people teams, but I feel like it just

00:58:44 ◼   ► looks like a hell of a lot of work to make a top tier iPad graphics application, and

00:58:50 ◼   ► that when you're done, you have, unless you exactly ape your competitor's interface, you

00:58:55 ◼   ► have little chance of being familiar to the users of your competitors' products.

00:58:58 ◼   ► So your pitch is now, "Use my application, which has fewer features, and by the way,

00:59:02 ◼   ► the interface looks nothing like your interface, and it works totally differently, so come

00:59:05 ◼   ► learn it from scratch."

00:59:06 ◼   ► It's a tough sell.

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01:00:56 ◼   ► [Music]

01:00:59 ◼   ► There's been some interesting news coming out of Apple Park, you know, previously known

01:01:04 ◼   ► as Apple Campus 2. It seems that it's a hazardous place to work, and it seems that

01:01:10 ◼   ► people are running into glass walls. I don't even know where the genesis of this story

01:01:16 ◼   ► was, but apparently somebody has amassed,

01:01:19 ◼   ► I've seen a link at some point,

01:01:21 ◼   ► somebody has amassed 911 calls that relate

01:01:24 ◼   ► to people walking into the glass walls at Apple Park

01:01:26 ◼   ► or something like that.

01:01:27 ◼   ► What's going on here?

01:01:30 ◼   ► - I mean, this is a problem that almost every office building

01:01:34 ◼   ► that does a glass design or a glass redesign

01:01:38 ◼   ► has at some point.

01:01:39 ◼   ► I mean, God, like when I, I remember when I interviewed,

01:01:44 ◼   ► As I was job seeking for the job that eventually ended up being Tumblr back in 2006, I had

01:01:51 ◼   ► an interview with Bloomberg here in New York and they had all glass everywhere and it was

01:01:56 ◼   ► very, very hard for me to navigate that office.

01:01:59 ◼   ► I couldn't find, like, look around the rooms and find like, "Where's the door out of the

01:02:03 ◼   ► room I am in?"

01:02:04 ◼   ► Like, you had to really look hard to see which of these walls is a door, actually.

01:02:09 ◼   ► It was very, very strange.

01:02:10 ◼   ► - That was part of the interview process.

01:02:11 ◼   ► That was part of the test.

01:02:12 ◼   ► - Oh God, I failed so many tests in that interview.

01:02:15 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:02:15 ◼   ► I failed every test, including trying to escape the room.

01:02:18 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:02:19 ◼   ► But anyway, and I remember it was a fairly moderate,

01:02:24 ◼   ► like the building was fairly young at that point,

01:02:26 ◼   ► and I remember a few of the employees telling me

01:02:28 ◼   ► that they had to install rows of logo stickers

01:02:33 ◼   ► at eye level on all the glass

01:02:35 ◼   ► because people kept running into it.

01:02:37 ◼   ► Now, as this story has played out today with Apple Park,

01:02:41 ◼   ► We've heard, there's been so many Twitter responses

01:02:44 ◼   ► and people in the chat talking about it,

01:02:45 ◼   ► about how this happens in every office building

01:02:48 ◼   ► that goes with all glass for all the walls inside.

01:02:52 ◼   ► People always run into them all the time,

01:02:54 ◼   ► and they always have to end up installing

01:02:55 ◼   ► some kind of sticker or something

01:02:57 ◼   ► to make the glass not transparent

01:02:59 ◼   ► in a really obvious eye-level place.

01:03:01 ◼   ► So the fact that people are running into glass

01:03:05 ◼   ► with apparently no decoration or insufficient decoration

01:03:08 ◼   ► on it is not surprising at all.

01:03:11 ◼   ► That is, I think that's a well-proven thing

01:03:13 ◼   ► that that happens.

01:03:14 ◼   ► So that isn't surprising at all.

01:03:17 ◼   ► The only surprising part of this to me

01:03:19 ◼   ► and the kind of sad part is like,

01:03:20 ◼   ► did they not know this would happen?

01:03:24 ◼   ► This is not a new thing that happens in glass buildings.

01:03:26 ◼   ► Like surely someone had to have told Johnny Ives

01:03:29 ◼   ► somewhere along the design of this,

01:03:31 ◼   ► like someone had to have mentioned this.

01:03:34 ◼   ► So how did this come, how does this,

01:03:37 ◼   ► How does the building get designed with this ignored?

01:03:39 ◼   ► That's what I wanna know.

01:03:40 ◼   ► Like again, it's almost like the HomePod Ring thing.

01:03:42 ◼   ► It's like, did they not know?

01:03:44 ◼   ► Like I don't know.

01:03:45 ◼   ► It's concerning either way.

01:03:47 ◼   ► Like they should've known, and this is again,

01:03:49 ◼   ► this is a small thing.

01:03:51 ◼   ► This is not, I mean, the only reason we're talking about this

01:03:53 ◼   ► is 'cause we spent too long on the last topic

01:03:55 ◼   ► and it's too late to start a new big topic right now.

01:03:57 ◼   ► So this is not a huge topic.

01:04:00 ◼   ► This is not a huge deal.

01:04:02 ◼   ► Just like the HomePod Ring, not a huge deal.

01:04:04 ◼   ► But just kind of an embarrassing story

01:04:06 ◼   ► that the interesting and worrisome part about it

01:04:11 ◼   ► is not the actual thing that is happening,

01:04:14 ◼   ► but that it seems to indicate

01:04:15 ◼   ► a pretty substantial failure in process along the way.

01:04:19 ◼   ► Why didn't they foresee this?

01:04:22 ◼   ► This is not a new problem.

01:04:23 ◼   ► Everyone who's ever designed or worked

01:04:26 ◼   ► in glass office buildings probably knows about this problem,

01:04:29 ◼   ► so why didn't they accommodate for it here?

01:04:32 ◼   ► - But it looks so nice.

01:04:34 ◼   ► That's that's really part of it like so

01:04:36 ◼   ► every

01:04:39 ◼   ► Every building has bugs. It's not like a software thing, but

01:04:42 ◼   ► Every building especially new buildings large complexes. They have bugs

01:04:45 ◼   ► whether it's like a particular

01:04:48 ◼   ► way that it was constructed that wears out sooner than you thought or

01:04:52 ◼   ► people walk in a path that you didn't expect and so you got to move some things around or

01:04:56 ◼   ► Sight lines that you didn't expect to be a problem when the Sun is at a particular angle and reflects off this particular thing goes

01:05:02 ◼   ► into this person's eyes or whatever, like buildings have bugs.

01:05:05 ◼   ► And so you weren't, you expect there's going to be stuff like that in every building.

01:05:08 ◼   ► But as you said Marco, like for the glass stuff, it's not an unforeseen thing and it's

01:05:13 ◼   ► not an emergent property of a complex system.

01:05:16 ◼   ► It's they very deliberately picked materials and they didn't just use them a little bit.

01:05:20 ◼   ► Like this is a glass heavy building, tremendously glass heavy.

01:05:24 ◼   ► Like it sounds like the Bloomberg thing was.

01:05:25 ◼   ► It's not like you're just using it as an interface element along with everything else.

01:05:30 ◼   ► It's very heavily used.

01:05:31 ◼   ► Like the largest pieces of glass in the world are here.

01:05:35 ◼   ► And it does look really good.

01:05:37 ◼   ► And like I was tempted to say this is another example of like, you know, form over function

01:05:42 ◼   ► where if I think when we talked about this building before I said I didn't have confidence

01:05:45 ◼   ► that that Johnny Ive really understood what it took to make a functional building, although

01:05:51 ◼   ► I knew he would make a beautiful one and this might call into that category.

01:05:54 ◼   ► But I think there is actually a functional aspect to all this glass, which is part of

01:05:57 ◼   ► the part of the utility of the building is not just you know can you find all the places you

01:06:03 ◼   ► want to go very well is there room for everything is the air circulate well all those sort of like

01:06:07 ◼   ► what makes good use of your day-s

01:06:10 ◼   ► on a building but aesthetics actually are part of like any product but perhaps even more so for a

01:06:14 ◼   ► building allowing natural light in being inspired by the views feeling like you're you know inside

01:06:19 ◼   ► indoors outdoors with like a complete glass thing from floor to ceiling gives a different feeling

01:06:23 ◼   ► than it would if it was just a window in a wall, right?

01:06:26 ◼   ► So there is, I think, a functional aspect

01:06:28 ◼   ► to all of this glass, and unfortunately,

01:06:30 ◼   ► a lot of the solutions that fix this problem,

01:06:33 ◼   ► like the stickers at eye level or whatever,

01:06:36 ◼   ► fly in the face of all the advantages that you're getting.

01:06:39 ◼   ► You don't feel like you're outdoors, indoors type of thing

01:06:42 ◼   ► when your beautiful wall of glass

01:06:44 ◼   ► is marred by a bunch of Apple stickers.

01:06:45 ◼   ► Johnny, I would have a heart attack

01:06:47 ◼   ► if you just put a bunch of Apple stickers

01:06:48 ◼   ► all over these things.

01:06:50 ◼   ► Well, that's what they're doing in some cases,

01:06:51 ◼   ► like putting, you know, tape or anything else.

01:06:52 ◼   ► else, it's just gaudy, it breaks up the appearance that you want, it kills the illusion of transparency

01:07:00 ◼   ► of the glass, it makes everything uglier and worse.

01:07:04 ◼   ► I was thinking they do it like they do in the diving pool in the Olympics where they

01:07:08 ◼   ► have a constant spray of water agitating the surface so you can see where the surface of

01:07:11 ◼   ► the water is for the diver as they come down.

01:07:13 ◼   ► They just have constant sprays of water onto the walls and do some of those glass waterfall

01:07:19 ◼   ► effects.

01:07:20 ◼   ► But that would ruin the aesthetic as well.

01:07:22 ◼   ► So I don't know what the solution to this is because I kind of understand that the glass

01:07:29 ◼   ► stuff is not just an aesthetic so the building looks pretty.

01:07:33 ◼   ► I really do believe it probably enhances the experience of being in the building in an

01:07:37 ◼   ► important way, right?

01:07:38 ◼   ► For the people in the building, not the people outside looking at it.

01:07:42 ◼   ► But I mean, maybe there was a little bit of wishful thinking in terms of, all right, so

01:07:49 ◼   ► we know this is a problem.

01:07:50 ◼   ► We know people run into glass a lot, but after a breaking in period, eventually people will

01:07:57 ◼   ► develop flinch reflexes or something.

01:08:00 ◼   ► People will adjust their daily paths to not do this.

01:08:03 ◼   ► It will become more aware.

01:08:04 ◼   ► Or this door that people keep running into will make sure we keep it open 24 hours a

01:08:07 ◼   ► day to make sure it's not a factor anymore.

01:08:09 ◼   ► I think they might have been optimistic about how much people will eventually adjust to

01:08:13 ◼   ► it.

01:08:14 ◼   ► And we'll see.

01:08:15 ◼   ► Maybe the--

01:08:16 ◼   ► Oh, no.

01:08:17 ◼   ► You know what they should do?

01:08:18 ◼   ► just slide up a little splash screen that tells people,

01:08:21 ◼   ► "Hey, just so you know, there's glass everywhere, watch out."

01:08:24 ◼   ► - Walk with your hands straight out in front of you.

01:08:26 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:08:27 ◼   ► Yeah, and for all we know, maybe they will get used to it.

01:08:31 ◼   ► This is the growing pains of this building,

01:08:32 ◼   ► it's early days, maybe people will eventually get used to it.

01:08:36 ◼   ► But if they don't, the solution, I think,

01:08:39 ◼   ► if you wanna keep the glasses,

01:08:41 ◼   ► I think what you have to do is

01:08:44 ◼   ► change the non-glass parts of the building

01:08:47 ◼   ► to essentially herd people to the openings, right?

01:08:52 ◼   ► So you want the building to guide you.

01:08:56 ◼   ► Like it should be less work to just go

01:08:58 ◼   ► where the building wants you to go

01:08:59 ◼   ► and you should find yourself coming to the place

01:09:03 ◼   ► where the door is.

01:09:03 ◼   ► And the door hopefully will have a handle in it

01:09:05 ◼   ► so you see that yes, this is the place

01:09:07 ◼   ► where the door is, right?

01:09:08 ◼   ► You want like, the idea of just having a giant expansive

01:09:11 ◼   ► glass that sometimes is open and sometimes is closed,

01:09:13 ◼   ► that's like three football fields wide,

01:09:15 ◼   ► like the cafeteria doors strikes me as a bad idea because there's no hurting of anybody

01:09:19 ◼   ► and when the door is closed it looks just like it's open.

01:09:23 ◼   ► So I think if you want to keep the glass you have to make the building accommodate the

01:09:28 ◼   ► glass.

01:09:29 ◼   ► And maybe that's exactly what they've been trying to do everywhere and they just missed

01:09:31 ◼   ► a couple spots and in that case they just need to rearrange the furniture and put a

01:09:34 ◼   ► different pattern on the floor and do all those other tricks that sort of subtly guide

01:09:38 ◼   ► you to where the building wants you to go and flow with the traffic, especially with

01:09:43 ◼   ► large groups of people.

01:09:44 ◼   ► It's easy for one or two people in a house to guide people around, but in a giant campus,

01:09:48 ◼   ► you have to have large apertures to accommodate hundreds or thousands of people going to and

01:09:53 ◼   ► from lunch or whatever.

01:09:54 ◼   ► And that's the challenge they face.

01:09:58 ◼   ► I really, really hope the eventual solution is not to put a bunch of Bloomberg stickers

01:10:01 ◼   ► at eye level, especially since it would be weird to have Bloomberg stickers on Apple's

01:10:04 ◼   ► campus because that is just design failure on all levels.

01:10:09 ◼   ► aesthetically gross and it just it ruins all the benefits that you're supposedly

01:10:14 ◼   ► getting from the glass. So here's how you do this. Hold the glass at exactly a 78

01:10:20 ◼   ► degree angle. Get a can of compressed air. Turn the can upside down. It's like the

01:10:26 ◼   ► constant spray of water, just a constant spray of compressed air going on

01:10:29 ◼   ► the glass that fogs it up and lets you see it all the time. Or they could do

01:10:33 ◼   ► what they do on the ski jumps where they put pine bows and everything. They just

01:10:36 ◼   ► you ever see them where they go they do the back flips off the ski jump at the

01:10:38 ◼   ► Olympics so they don't want the slope that they land on to be completely white because

01:10:41 ◼   ► then again they can't do depth perception to see where it is when they're flipping

01:10:44 ◼   ► through the air so they put like dirt and other dark colored junk all over it. At least

01:10:49 ◼   ► that would be natural, just a bunch of pine needles stuck to the windows.

01:10:53 ◼   ► What if they use like fiber optic style light guide lighting in the glass panes so that

01:10:58 ◼   ► all the panes of glass, like each department can pick a different neon color that all the

01:11:03 ◼   ► glass will be lit with?

01:11:04 ◼   ► Oh, I got it. This is a perfectly, not that we're going to transition to accidental

01:11:08 ◼   ► neutral quite at this point, but they need driver aids, right? So if you are approaching

01:11:14 ◼   ► a glass wall at a speed that they feel a collision is imminent, the glass wall should change

01:11:18 ◼   ► to like one of those transparent LCD screens and say, "Warning, stop! Wall is in front

01:11:23 ◼   ► of you!"

01:11:24 ◼   ► Oh, goodness. So there's some transcripts on the San Francisco Chronicle website. "Dispatcher,

01:11:29 ◼   ► tell me exactly what happened." "Patient. I walked into a glass door on the first floor

01:11:33 ◼   ► of Apple Park when I was trying to go outside, which was very silly.

01:11:37 ◼   ► "Dispatcher, you keep breaking up. You walk through a glass door?"

01:11:40 ◼   ► "Patient, I didn't walk through a glass door. I walked into a glass door."

01:11:45 ◼   ► The door won. Speaking of those big glass doors, like the,

01:11:49 ◼   ► I guess the cafeteria doors, wherever, like the eating place, I'm sure they don't call

01:11:54 ◼   ► it a cafeteria because that's not fancy enough, but like has like what, four story or three

01:11:57 ◼   ► story high glass doors that weigh some astronomical amount, right? And they slide open like

01:12:03 ◼   ► like barn doors, and they're just huge expanses of glass.

01:12:07 ◼   ► And I was thinking about this about a month ago,

01:12:10 ◼   ► looking at the pictures of the final building

01:12:12 ◼   ► being constructed.

01:12:13 ◼   ► Now I'm sure this building,

01:12:15 ◼   ► having been constructed in California,

01:12:16 ◼   ► has all sorts of like earthquake readiness stuff

01:12:19 ◼   ► built into it, because surely the codes require that,

01:12:21 ◼   ► and surely Apple would do that, right?

01:12:23 ◼   ► - Have they considered the possibility

01:12:24 ◼   ► that these doors cause earthquakes when they open?

01:12:26 ◼   ► - They're very smooth.

01:12:28 ◼   ► It's a very well lubricated mechanism.

01:12:30 ◼   ► It's almost noiseless, it's beautiful.

01:12:32 ◼   ► Um, but, and I know glass bends, right?

01:12:36 ◼   ► But these are very large, very heavy pieces of glass.

01:12:39 ◼   ► And probably the last place I would want to be during earthquake is near one of

01:12:44 ◼   ► these giant sheets of class because I don't want a chunk of glass falling from

01:12:49 ◼   ► four stories up onto my head.

01:12:51 ◼   ► And we're in a house, but it's like safety grass and breaks into small pieces of

01:12:54 ◼   ► our, just from the sheer weight, like forget about sharpness, pretended this

01:12:57 ◼   ► completely dull because it's safety glass and breaks into small pieces.

01:13:00 ◼   ► It's like a clear rock landing on your head from four stories up, which I think is a, you know,

01:13:06 ◼   ► maybe also a problem in skyscrapers when you're on the outside of them, like the glass shatters

01:13:10 ◼   ► or whatever and it falls down onto the street and kills people, but it just, I would love to know

01:13:15 ◼   ► exactly what the earthquake mitigation techniques were to make it safe to have four stories of,

01:13:22 ◼   ► of like inch and a half thick glass, like 17 tons of it just sitting where people could be right

01:13:28 ◼   ► next to it. People could literally be touching it or in the process of walking into it. At

01:13:32 ◼   ► the time it starts to wobble and parts of it crack off and fall down into the ground.

01:13:36 ◼   ► So it seems a little bit scary to me.

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01:15:27 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

01:15:30 ◼   ► - So let's do some Ask ATP.

01:15:32 ◼   ► Vamsee writes, they would apparently like to know

01:15:35 ◼   ► all sorts of rules, protocol, and strategies

01:15:39 ◼   ► with regard to windowing in our cars.

01:15:42 ◼   ► So first, how do you use the windows in your car?

01:15:44 ◼   ► Always closed, always open?

01:15:46 ◼   ► I will start and we'll do a round.

01:15:48 ◼   ► Robin, I tend to leave the windows

01:15:51 ◼   ► the doors closed almost always unless it is a particularly nice day in which case they

01:15:56 ◼   ► will usually be opened all the way. It is very rare that I have anything but a binary

01:16:01 ◼   ► treatment of my windows. One example of when they are cracked, however, which is very rare,

01:16:06 ◼   ► is if I have any sort of food in the car, in which case I will try to ventilate the

01:16:11 ◼   ► outside air by cracking the windows. And we will get to sunroofs in a moment. So, John,

01:16:18 ◼   ► How do you use the windows in your car?

01:16:20 ◼   ► Does your car have a sunroof?

01:16:21 ◼   ► I don't recall.

01:16:22 ◼   ► No, can't because I've had to remember.

01:16:24 ◼   ► I knew you preferred not.

01:16:25 ◼   ► I couldn't remember if it did or not.

01:16:28 ◼   ► Nope.

01:16:29 ◼   ► Okay, so with your windows.

01:16:30 ◼   ► With windows, I'm almost always an always closed person, mostly for two reasons.

01:16:37 ◼   ► One, yes, the hair mussing because it is a real thing.

01:16:39 ◼   ► Like if I have my windows open and I show up at work, my hair will be crazy.

01:16:45 ◼   ► And two, most of the cars that I've owned

01:16:49 ◼   ► have required a complex series of baffles

01:16:51 ◼   ► to not have weird thrumming noises.

01:16:53 ◼   ► You've got to have alternate windows open,

01:16:55 ◼   ► one on one side, one on the other,

01:16:56 ◼   ► the front and back, stuff like that.

01:16:58 ◼   ► It doesn't make for a pleasing auditory environment,

01:17:01 ◼   ► even if I don't care about my hair.

01:17:02 ◼   ► So I am an all closed person most of the time.

01:17:05 ◼   ► - All right, Marco.

01:17:07 ◼   ► - Most of the time they're closed,

01:17:10 ◼   ► because most of the time the temperature outside

01:17:12 ◼   ► is not pleasant in one direction or the other.

01:17:14 ◼   ► but when the temperature outside is pleasant,

01:17:17 ◼   ► and if I'm at low speeds, like around town,

01:17:20 ◼   ► like not on the highway, I'll open a window here and there.

01:17:23 ◼   ► Sometimes I will just crack the window

01:17:25 ◼   ► to feel the cool air cleanse my every pore

01:17:27 ◼   ► as I pour my poor heart out.

01:17:29 ◼   ► But usually I will just open one

01:17:31 ◼   ► either all the way or not at all.

01:17:33 ◼   ► - I don't know that song.

01:17:34 ◼   ► - I know. - Did you get that reference,

01:17:35 ◼   ► Casey? - No, I did not.

01:17:36 ◼   ► I could tell it was a reference.

01:17:37 ◼   ► I had no idea what it was.

01:17:38 ◼   ► Was it fish? - Is it fish?

01:17:39 ◼   ► Can't be fish, there's too many words.

01:17:41 ◼   ► - No.

01:17:41 ◼   ► - All right, and the follow-up, of course,

01:17:43 ◼   ► how to use the sunroof and then Vamsee adds, "This I really don't get, just got a car with

01:17:47 ◼   ► one. Australian summer is boiling, so I haven't had a chance to open it." Again, I will start

01:17:53 ◼   ► and we will do another round robin. I love my sunroof. I will open it in truly absurd

01:17:59 ◼   ► tem--well, maybe not absurd, but in temperatures where I probably shouldn't have a sunroof

01:18:02 ◼   ► open. So as soon as it hits about 50 degrees Fahrenheit, and I don't care what that is

01:18:06 ◼   ► in Celsius because Celsius is stupid for ambient air temperature, don't at me. Whatever 50

01:18:11 ◼   ► and stupid units, I will start opening my sunroof from time to time and it will be open

01:18:18 ◼   ► pretty much until it hits about 80 degrees and that's about when I decide that air conditioning

01:18:22 ◼   ► is absolutely required and there's no other way about it.

01:18:26 ◼   ► Marco, let's start with you this time.

01:18:28 ◼   ► I use the sunroof during the winter a lot, during spring and fall sometimes and during

01:18:34 ◼   ► summer not at all because as I believe I previously mentioned, I don't have that much hair and

01:18:38 ◼   ► I get a head burn really easily if it gets a lot of sun.

01:18:41 ◼   ► I keep a hat in my car mainly for the purpose of being able to use my sunroof, but in the

01:18:46 ◼   ► summertime sometimes I just don't want to have the liability of the hat blowing off,

01:18:52 ◼   ► and so I get a lot of sunroof use in the cooler temperatures when sunburn is less likely or

01:18:59 ◼   ► less of a concern.

01:19:02 ◼   ► One of my favorite things to do with the sunroof is to open it during the winter, because you

01:19:08 ◼   ► You can have the heat on in the car, but have the sunroof partially or totally open.

01:19:14 ◼   ► So much for saving the environment, am I right?

01:19:16 ◼   ► Well, compared to what your car is burning, compared to what my car is burning, I think

01:19:20 ◼   ► so.

01:19:21 ◼   ► I'm turning on the heat and then opening the sunroof.

01:19:23 ◼   ► Well, and so, and you can also do things like, you know, just use like the heated seat, but

01:19:27 ◼   ► not use the air heating, so then you are kept warm, but you have fresh air.

01:19:32 ◼   ► So there's lots of options of combining the sunroof with heat or, you know, the lack of

01:19:37 ◼   ► of heat in the car, but it's a very pleasant thing

01:19:40 ◼   ► to have fresh air coming in,

01:19:43 ◼   ► but to not be freezing your butt off in the winter.

01:19:46 ◼   ► That to me is the best reason to have a sunroof,

01:19:49 ◼   ► is the use of it in the wintertime.

01:19:51 ◼   ► - I will say that a good solid floor heat

01:19:54 ◼   ► with a ventilated roof is a nice thing.

01:19:57 ◼   ► I don't usually do that, it's not something I enjoy often,

01:20:01 ◼   ► but having the heat coming up from the floor,

01:20:04 ◼   ► rising up and then escaping out the sunroof

01:20:06 ◼   ► is actually quite pleasant.

01:20:08 ◼   ► John, if you had a sunroof, hypothetically,

01:20:11 ◼   ► do you ever fancy a time that you would use it?

01:20:14 ◼   ► - I think we, do we have one of my old Civics?

01:20:16 ◼   ► I, my parents' cars have had them,

01:20:17 ◼   ► so I've had them enough to know whether I use them or not,

01:20:20 ◼   ► and basically I treat it like a window.

01:20:21 ◼   ► In general, no, I don't want it open.

01:20:23 ◼   ► For the same reasons, hair muscling and thrumming noises.

01:20:26 ◼   ► I don't, and now that my hair is thinning on top,

01:20:28 ◼   ► I'd probably have the same problems with headburn.

01:20:32 ◼   ► So I think I would probably not use it even if I had it.

01:20:35 ◼   ► - Headburn is not fun.

01:20:37 ◼   ► - As someone who is far and away the fussiest

01:20:39 ◼   ► about his hair, I can tell you that I can rock the sunroof

01:20:43 ◼   ► reasonably frequently without worrying about my hair

01:20:47 ◼   ► getting too messed up, whereas that is not typically true

01:20:50 ◼   ► with the side windows if I open them more than just a crack.

01:20:53 ◼   ► - You got more product in your hair than I do, though.

01:20:55 ◼   ► - Oh, it's pretty much welded at this point.

01:20:57 ◼   ► There's so much junk in there.

01:20:58 ◼   ► - You know, if anybody out there feels bad for me

01:21:02 ◼   ► that I don't have good hair, just know that I don't have

01:21:05 ◼   ► worry about any of that BS. My hair cannot be messed up. It's glorious. I can leave all

01:21:13 ◼   ► the windows down and this 100-rear open and drive on the highway and get just tons of

01:21:19 ◼   ► wind to the point where like if I have like a loose tissue in the back of my car, it might

01:21:24 ◼   ► blow out the windows. I have to like make sure I like everything is like anchored down

01:21:29 ◼   ► in the vehicle. But I can drive in pure wind like that, which is awesome in the summertime

01:21:34 ◼   ► I'm gonna be driving next to the beach, by the way.

01:21:36 ◼   ► And it's wonderful.

01:21:38 ◼   ► And I get to where I'm going, and my hair isn't messed up,

01:21:40 ◼   ► because it can't be.

01:21:42 ◼   ► It's amazing.

01:21:42 ◼   ► I get out of the shower, and it's dry.

01:21:44 ◼   ► It's done.

01:21:46 ◼   ► I just walk out of the bathroom.

01:21:48 ◼   ► It's wonderful.

01:21:49 ◼   ► So yeah, don't feel bad for me,

01:21:51 ◼   ► as these two are talking about comparing

01:21:53 ◼   ► the amount of product in their hair,

01:21:55 ◼   ► and how they can't enjoy wind movement,

01:21:58 ◼   ► because it might mess up their hair.

01:22:00 ◼   ► - That's only for going to work.

01:22:01 ◼   ► I'm glad you brought up the beach.

01:22:02 ◼   ► Beach is the one time where I do open windows,

01:22:04 ◼   ► I probably would open the sunroof just to smell the beach air and because no one should ever care what the hair looks like when

01:22:09 ◼   ► They're going to or from the beach and I don't fair enough and finally when do you turn your recirculation on or recirculating?

01:22:15 ◼   ► the the air conditioning I

01:22:18 ◼   ► don't typically mess with this unless there is an odor or

01:22:21 ◼   ► I'm in a hurry to get the the car either colder or warmer

01:22:26 ◼   ► My car does have an automatic recirculation feature

01:22:30 ◼   ► I have no idea if that's like a complete placebo or if it actually does, you know flip recirculation on and off

01:22:36 ◼   ► And so typically I just leave that on but in in prior cars

01:22:40 ◼   ► I would only ever really turn recirculation on if I was in a real big hurry to reach the temperature I wanted

01:22:46 ◼   ► John I think it's your turn now. I am a manual

01:22:49 ◼   ► Control even though now my car has automatic climate control. I am a manual controller a

01:22:54 ◼   ► micromanager of climate control and recirculation is no different. I preemptively turn it on

01:22:59 ◼   ► when I know I'm going to be coming to a stop behind a smoker because smokers are disgusting

01:23:03 ◼   ► and flick their stupid ashes out their window, which they leave cracked open so the entire

01:23:06 ◼   ► world can enjoy their stupid smoke. And then they flick the cigarette that they're half

01:23:10 ◼   ► done without the window too. I put recirc on again preemptively when I'm, you know,

01:23:16 ◼   ► going to be stopped behind a big truck that's spewing its stinky exhaust. Basically any

01:23:19 ◼   ► Now I know there's going to be an odor from the outside I turn on and the final time that

01:23:24 ◼   ► I do it is in the summer when I want to get the car cooler faster, but only after I allow

01:23:29 ◼   ► enough fresh air in so that the inside and outside temperatures are equalized.

01:23:33 ◼   ► And in the winter when my car's poor heating system can't keep up, literally can't make

01:23:41 ◼   ► the car warm enough because it is so freaking cold that the air coming out of the vents

01:23:46 ◼   ► gets appreciably warmer when I put a recirc on. Like in the really cold spell that we

01:23:51 ◼   ► have where it's like below zero for several days in a row, the car will eventually warm

01:23:56 ◼   ► up and be comfortable enough, but if you're on a shortest drive where you don't have time

01:24:00 ◼   ► to do that, you just got to put on recirc just to get it, just for me to not to be freezing

01:24:04 ◼   ► my bottle. I don't have heated seats. I think that would really help me get around with

01:24:07 ◼   ► it, but that's when I do it.

01:24:09 ◼   ► Wow.

01:24:10 ◼   ► Marco?

01:24:11 ◼   ► - I used to manually manage recirculation.

01:24:16 ◼   ► I don't anymore because modern nice cars

01:24:21 ◼   ► not only do it for you and their defaults

01:24:23 ◼   ► of when to use it versus when not to seem pretty good.

01:24:27 ◼   ► But also, the smoker issue, I too,

01:24:30 ◼   ► one way to really make me very angry

01:24:34 ◼   ► is to make me smell cigarette smoke for some reason.

01:24:36 ◼   ► And the good thing is about,

01:24:38 ◼   ► and I don't know if it's a Tesla

01:24:40 ◼   ► and a BMW thing or whatever,

01:24:41 ◼   ► but usually the intake air filters seem to be so good

01:24:46 ◼   ► on some of these cars now that I don't usually smell

01:24:49 ◼   ► outside smells if my windows are up and my sunroof's closed.

01:24:53 ◼   ► Now occasionally I will still smell cigarette

01:24:55 ◼   ► because my window's cracked or something,

01:24:57 ◼   ► but that's coming in through the window,

01:24:58 ◼   ► not the ventilation system.

01:24:59 ◼   ► So I almost never have any reason to manually adjust

01:25:04 ◼   ► whether recirculation is on or off.

01:25:06 ◼   ► I just let the system handle it and it's fine.

01:25:09 ◼   ► Peter Gosling writes in, "There seems to be a lot of disappointment with the Slack Mac

01:25:12 ◼   ► client, justifiably so.

01:25:14 ◼   ► Why not stick with IRC like the live show?

01:25:16 ◼   ► The native Mac IRC clients are a joy to use and aren't half-baked like Slack is."

01:25:20 ◼   ► So a little bit of background.

01:25:22 ◼   ► Slack is written using Electron, which does not by necessity mean that it's a pile of

01:25:27 ◼   ► garbage, but it turns out it is in fact a pile of garbage.

01:25:31 ◼   ► But a little known fact about Slack, which I probably will not remember to put in the

01:25:34 ◼   ► show notes and say you can actually access Slack chat rooms, teams, whatever the terminology

01:25:41 ◼   ► is, via IRC. There's an IRC front end to Slack. So you could use any IRC client and connect

01:25:46 ◼   ► to Slack. And that's what Peter's talking about.

01:25:50 ◼   ► Where this falls down is a couple of things. One, Peter said the native Mac IRC clients

01:25:54 ◼   ► are a joy to use and I must not be using the ones that he's using. I use Colloquy, which

01:25:59 ◼   ► which is okay, whatever Peter's using

01:26:02 ◼   ► must be much better than that.

01:26:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, I gotta agree with you on that, by the way.

01:26:06 ◼   ► Like, I use colloquy, I've also used textual,

01:26:10 ◼   ► and there's one more I've used,

01:26:12 ◼   ► one's before I forget what it is,

01:26:12 ◼   ► and I can only describe any of them as okay.

01:26:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, but anyway, so you can use IRC to get to Slack,

01:26:19 ◼   ► and the reason that I don't do this,

01:26:22 ◼   ► well, there's a couple reasons,

01:26:24 ◼   ► but mostly the reason, the biggest reason I don't do this

01:26:26 ◼   ► is because one of the better things about Slack,

01:26:29 ◼   ► One of the reasons why I do understand if I don't love the fact that they use Electron

01:26:33 ◼   ► is that so much of the things you put into a Slack chat will auto-expand.

01:26:40 ◼   ► So think about what's going on with iMessage.

01:26:41 ◼   ► When you put a tweet in or a link to a website, it will try to grab a hero image, or if there's

01:26:48 ◼   ► a tweet with an image, it'll grab the image, and it will put it right in line in that iMessage

01:26:52 ◼   ► conversation.

01:26:53 ◼   ► Well, Slack does the same thing, but it does it for all sorts of different data, and it's

01:26:56 ◼   ► really, really nice.

01:26:57 ◼   ► that genuinely. And that I think I would really miss if I didn't have that. And so like another

01:27:04 ◼   ► example of that is, say if somebody pastes in an animated GIF or a URL to an animated GIF,

01:27:09 ◼   ► I would want to see that in line. Like part of what makes Slack fun is that kind of shucking

01:27:14 ◼   ► and jiving back and forth with GIFs and things like that. And I think I would miss out on that

01:27:18 ◼   ► if it was just in a traditional IRC client. But it is a fair point and maybe I should try it just

01:27:25 ◼   ► to see but I don't know that's that's my two cents do you guys have anything to

01:27:28 ◼   ► add about that so I think in this contest between various applications let

01:27:36 ◼   ► you type words to other people even if there are various friends to slack in

01:27:39 ◼   ► the case of the IRC gateway to slack or whatever I think the slack application

01:27:44 ◼   ► on the Mac one fair and square based on its features and ease of use that's what

01:27:49 ◼   ► it comes down to like yes IRC is existed forever and yes lots of IRC clients are

01:27:53 ◼   ► but Slack offered a combination of functionality and application that gives

01:28:00 ◼   ► you a front end for that functionality that is simply more attractive to most

01:28:04 ◼   ► people than all of the alternatives. Like it's not like Slack won accidentally or

01:28:08 ◼   ► because it was bundled as part of some monopolistic thing and you couldn't help

01:28:11 ◼   ► but have Slack forced down our throats. Slack has lots of warts but it has the

01:28:16 ◼   ► right balance of stuff. It is a fun, interesting, easy to use application that

01:28:22 ◼   ► provides, I think, more fun and more features focused on exactly what it does

01:28:27 ◼   ► than an IRC client and enough speed and functionality that we all, you know, grit

01:28:33 ◼   ► our teeth and deal with the electron weirdness and everything like this

01:28:37 ◼   ► because on balance it is better than all those things otherwise we would still

01:28:40 ◼   ► all be using those things. I was in tons of IRC channels before Slack came along

01:28:44 ◼   ► and most of them have been replaced by Slack because that's what more people

01:28:48 ◼   ► want to use. I can understand being in a situation where it's like, "Yeah, but I liked

01:28:50 ◼   ► like IRC better.

01:28:52 ◼   ► Sure, but I think most people did not like IRC better,

01:28:55 ◼   ► or didn't like IRC at all,

01:28:56 ◼   ► which is why Slack is as successful as it is.

01:28:59 ◼   ► So I think the reason we don't use it

01:29:02 ◼   ► is because Slack is better, in general.

01:29:05 ◼   ► - Juan Pablo Rodriguez writes in,

01:29:07 ◼   ► "John, I saw your tweet about the halting problem.

01:29:09 ◼   ► "I would like to hear how you would explain it.

01:29:11 ◼   ► "So the context, this was just a couple of days ago,

01:29:15 ◼   ► "and John, jump in and cut me off whenever you're ready.

01:29:17 ◼   ► "Why is this program taking so long to run?"

01:29:20 ◼   ► "Big milestone today, my son's first infinite loop."

01:29:24 ◼   ► Then he asked why the programming courseware website he's using can't just tell him there's

01:29:26 ◼   ► an infinite loop instead of trying to run the program as written.

01:29:29 ◼   ► I introduced him to the halting problem, but he wasn't impressed.

01:29:32 ◼   ► So do you want to fill in any other context or just jump into the "what is the halting

01:29:36 ◼   ► problem?"

01:29:37 ◼   ► So the context here is that I tried to show my kids, both of my kids, programming at various

01:29:44 ◼   ► early ages, "If you're interested, this is the thing I can show you how to do."

01:29:47 ◼   ► But of course, me being their father, they don't want to have anything to do with anything

01:29:50 ◼   ► that I know how to do, so fine, whatever.

01:29:51 ◼   ► So I just laid off, like they're into whatever they're into.

01:29:55 ◼   ► But my son is in eighth grade now,

01:29:57 ◼   ► and he's looking to take,

01:29:58 ◼   ► he wants to take a computer science course in ninth grade,

01:30:00 ◼   ► which is awesome that it's even offered.

01:30:02 ◼   ► I didn't have any computer science courses in my high school.

01:30:04 ◼   ► Yes, they had computers, but they were Apple IIs.

01:30:06 ◼   ► But anyway, he's interested in taking that,

01:30:09 ◼   ► maybe just because his friends are interested in it.

01:30:10 ◼   ► I can't tell if he's really interested in it,

01:30:12 ◼   ► but he's trying to get it into an advanced level

01:30:16 ◼   ► computer science course,

01:30:17 ◼   ► and he wants to have some experience.

01:30:19 ◼   ► So he's going through this online course or a thing with his friends, right? This is all this is all him, right?

01:30:22 ◼   ► But I'm offering to help him with it

01:30:25 ◼   ► so that's why

01:30:26 ◼   ► He's doing any kind of programming stuff at all and it's pretty late in the game in the grand scheme of things

01:30:30 ◼   ► He's got like five year olds who are writing iOS apps and going up on stage at Apple things and stuff like that

01:30:34 ◼   ► And he's you know, he's not a precocious programmer, but he's getting into it. And so

01:30:39 ◼   ► I'm trying to help them, you know as laid-back way as possible because you don't help too much

01:30:44 ◼   ► You know because like becomes uncool if dad's into it, whatever

01:30:48 ◼   ► And he did write an infinite loop and he did ask me like the courseware is like running his program for it and like

01:30:53 ◼   ► It just shows like a spinner on the web page and he's like, why is it taking so long?

01:30:55 ◼   ► He did write an infinite loop

01:30:57 ◼   ► Which I feel like it really is a milestone like the first time you do that and then don't understand what the hell's going on

01:31:01 ◼   ► in your program

01:31:02 ◼   ► Specifically he was he was iterating over an array and in inside the loop

01:31:07 ◼   ► He was adding an item to the end of the array

01:31:09 ◼   ► Which is a pretty fun way to do your first infinite loop as opposed to just like forgetting check for termination condition

01:31:14 ◼   ► He was iterating over listed. He kept growing at the same pace. He was iterating over it

01:31:17 ◼   ► So that was fun.

01:31:18 ◼   ► Apologies to the courseware website

01:31:20 ◼   ► for the infinite loop bomb my son invoked on you

01:31:24 ◼   ► as he opened up tab after tab

01:31:25 ◼   ► and tried to run the same program over and over again

01:31:27 ◼   ► and I didn't understand why it wasn't.

01:31:29 ◼   ► He didn't do a fork bomb,

01:31:30 ◼   ► but he's not up at that process level yet.

01:31:31 ◼   ► So I did try to say,

01:31:33 ◼   ► actually there's a general problem about this,

01:31:35 ◼   ► the halting problem.

01:31:36 ◼   ► And to finally get to answer this specific question,

01:31:38 ◼   ► how would you go about explaining it?

01:31:40 ◼   ► Part of the knowledge and wisdom

01:31:43 ◼   ► I'm trying to impart on him as part of this

01:31:45 ◼   ► not the specifics of whatever he's doing about programming, which I feel like will come on

01:31:49 ◼   ► his own, but how do programmers do this? How do you figure stuff out? And early on I wanted

01:31:58 ◼   ► to show him, if you have a question about how something works, the magic of the internet,

01:32:02 ◼   ► after me saying "Uphill both ways, how I had to do it in my day," so on and so forth, you

01:32:07 ◼   ► can just type your question into Google and there will be a Stack Overflow answer, like

01:32:10 ◼   ► you know, how to concatenate strings, you know, in Python or whatever, like, the answer

01:32:15 ◼   ► is right there.

01:32:16 ◼   ► You don't have to ask me, you don't have to wonder, just type it into Google search box.

01:32:19 ◼   ► So for the halting problem, rather than me trying to explain this is what the halting

01:32:24 ◼   ► problem is based on like my memory of it from school, you know, or just like, even just

01:32:28 ◼   ► in broad strokes, just go to the Wikipedia page for the halting problem.

01:32:32 ◼   ► And there's like a paragraph at the top that does a pretty good job of explaining more

01:32:36 ◼   ► or less what the halting problem is and links to examples and so on and so forth.

01:32:38 ◼   ► The idea is that you shouldn't ask your dad

01:32:41 ◼   ► or ask someone next to you to explain

01:32:43 ◼   ► what the halting problem is.

01:32:44 ◼   ► You are empowered because you have the whole internet

01:32:46 ◼   ► at your fingertips to find out the answer

01:32:48 ◼   ► to this question quickly and in a much more authoritative way

01:32:51 ◼   ► than me trying to recite it from memory.

01:32:54 ◼   ► Because if I was gonna recite it from memory,

01:32:55 ◼   ► if I was gonna talk about the halting problem on this show,

01:32:58 ◼   ► I almost did it when I saw this question,

01:32:59 ◼   ► I was like, oh, I should go to the Wikipedia page

01:33:01 ◼   ► and paste the first part.

01:33:02 ◼   ► But no, like the lesson is,

01:33:04 ◼   ► this is one of those things

01:33:05 ◼   ► that you don't have to memorize.

01:33:07 ◼   ► And even if you know it backwards and forwards,

01:33:09 ◼   ► it's difficult sometimes to explain something

01:33:11 ◼   ► that you know if you haven't like taught a course

01:33:12 ◼   ► in it five or six times.

01:33:13 ◼   ► So use the internet, use the tools that are available to you

01:33:17 ◼   ► don't rely on other people to explain things.

01:33:20 ◼   ► I haven't yet explained to him about Wikipedia

01:33:21 ◼   ► being a tertiary source and all that crap, but well.

01:33:24 ◼   ► - Oh, here we go.

01:33:24 ◼   ► - One step at a time.

01:33:26 ◼   ► There's only so much dad that kids can take in one dose.

01:33:28 ◼   ► - All right, thanks to our sponsors this week,

01:33:31 ◼   ► Betterment, Linode and HelloFresh,

01:33:33 ◼   ► and we will see you next week.

01:33:35 ◼   ► Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin

01:33:42 ◼   ► 'Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental

01:33:47 ◼   ► John didn't do any research, Margo and Casey wouldn't let him

01:33:52 ◼   ► 'Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental

01:33:58 ◼   ► And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm

01:34:03 ◼   ► And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them @C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S

01:34:12 ◼   ► So that's Casey List M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

01:34:16 ◼   ► N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-N S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-C-U-S-A

01:34:24 ◼   ► It's accidental (It's accidental)

01:34:27 ◼   ► They didn't mean to, accidental (It's accidental)

01:34:32 ◼   ► ♫ Tech by cast so long

01:34:35 ◼   ► - Alright, so last week we,

01:34:41 ◼   ► what was the genesis of the question?

01:34:43 ◼   ► I should have left in the show notes,

01:34:44 ◼   ► but we were talking about like cars and things,

01:34:47 ◼   ► and Roland00 in the chat suggested something

01:34:51 ◼   ► that hopefully you guys have at least put two minutes

01:34:53 ◼   ► of thought into, which I know Marco hasn't

01:34:56 ◼   ► and John maybe has.

01:34:57 ◼   ► - Oh no, I put exactly two minutes of thought into it.

01:34:59 ◼   ► - Alright, well that works for me.

01:35:01 ◼   ► What car would you pick for your other hosts?

01:35:04 ◼   ► Now, I didn't ask Roland 00, nor did I clarify.

01:35:09 ◼   ► What do you mean by that?

01:35:11 ◼   ► Is it the car you think they would enjoy the most?

01:35:14 ◼   ► Is it the car you would most like to see them in?

01:35:17 ◼   ► Is it the car that you would get to just troll them?

01:35:20 ◼   ► And I didn't want to give you guys any sort of direction

01:35:24 ◼   ► about any of this.

01:35:26 ◼   ► So I have answered the question in my own way,

01:35:31 ◼   ► but I don't have to go first this time

01:35:33 ◼   ► since I was very aggressively first during Ask ATP.

01:35:37 ◼   ► So which one of you would like to volunteer

01:35:38 ◼   ► to tell each of us what cars we should be driving?

01:35:43 ◼   ► - I'll do it if you want.

01:35:45 ◼   ► - All right, Marco, feel free.

01:35:46 ◼   ► - All right, this is fairly easy for Casey.

01:35:50 ◼   ► You would have the new M3, period.

01:35:52 ◼   ► - Well, so what's your criteria is what car

01:35:54 ◼   ► would I most like to drive, I guess?

01:35:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, my criteria basically, I mean,

01:35:59 ◼   ► if we're assuming that like, you know,

01:36:00 ◼   ► I don't have to worry about how much these cars cost,

01:36:02 ◼   ► that they're just being paid for somehow,

01:36:05 ◼   ► and that I just get to decide which car you have,

01:36:08 ◼   ► then my rationale here is,

01:36:10 ◼   ► which car would you be most happy with?

01:36:14 ◼   ► What is the car that you should have?

01:36:16 ◼   ► And so, I think it's the M3, done.

01:36:19 ◼   ► And John, a little bit harder.

01:36:24 ◼   ► I was kind of thinking maybe the M5,

01:36:27 ◼   ► Or if he doesn't want to go necessarily that large,

01:36:30 ◼   ► 'cause I know your parking situation's

01:36:32 ◼   ► a little bit tight over there,

01:36:34 ◼   ► so I figured maybe you might also

01:36:37 ◼   ► go with something in the three series range,

01:36:41 ◼   ► maybe your dad's old three series that you liked,

01:36:43 ◼   ► but a faster one.

01:36:44 ◼   ► So maybe the 335 of that generation,

01:36:47 ◼   ► maybe something like that.

01:36:49 ◼   ► But probably just, I think John,

01:36:51 ◼   ► I think my answer's actually gonna be just the new M5.

01:36:54 ◼   ► So new M3 for Casey, new M5 for John.

01:36:56 ◼   ► - Why, I understand your reasoning for Casey,

01:36:59 ◼   ► what's your reasoning for me?

01:37:00 ◼   ► Like why are you even picking from BMWs for me?

01:37:02 ◼   ► - Well I know you wouldn't actually enjoy owning a Ferrari.

01:37:05 ◼   ► I know that you like Mercedes,

01:37:08 ◼   ► but I'm too young to know how to select one.

01:37:11 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:37:12 ◼   ► And so I went with the brand that I know how to use

01:37:16 ◼   ► and how to pick from that gives you what you want,

01:37:19 ◼   ► which is similar to what I want,

01:37:20 ◼   ► which is a nice big fast sedan.

01:37:22 ◼   ► Like you like those and I know you're not gonna get,

01:37:26 ◼   ► See, here's the problem though.

01:37:27 ◼   ► I know you like stick a lot,

01:37:29 ◼   ► and you can't have that in stick.

01:37:31 ◼   ► So maybe I try to find you an F10 generation in a stick,

01:37:35 ◼   ► which they probably made like three of those total,

01:37:39 ◼   ► but maybe that's the right answer.

01:37:41 ◼   ► - But people didn't like those stick shifts.

01:37:43 ◼   ► Like they said that the manual

01:37:44 ◼   ► was not very good in that car.

01:37:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, see, picking for you is very challenging.

01:37:50 ◼   ► Picking for case is easy,

01:37:51 ◼   ► 'cause I know what he wants, so it's easy.

01:37:53 ◼   ► Picking for you is harder.

01:37:55 ◼   ► But I don't think Mercedes makes any sticks either

01:37:57 ◼   ► that you would want, but I don't know.

01:37:59 ◼   ► - No, no, they don't.

01:38:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't know.

01:38:01 ◼   ► But I think, so I'm gonna stand by my answer

01:38:03 ◼   ► of the new M5, but with some reservations.

01:38:06 ◼   ► - I was proud of Casey for recognizing

01:38:09 ◼   ► what a terrible question this is,

01:38:10 ◼   ► but then I was un-proud of him by saying,

01:38:13 ◼   ► "But I don't care, and I'm not gonna clarify,

01:38:15 ◼   ► "so let's just all interpret the question

01:38:17 ◼   ► "to however the heck we want."

01:38:17 ◼   ► This question is terrible,

01:38:19 ◼   ► 'cause it just has no parameters whatsoever.

01:38:21 ◼   ► - Oh, just have a little fun, John, come on.

01:38:24 ◼   ► It's not useful. Anyway, so if I had to pick...

01:38:28 ◼   ► First I'd have to pick how to interpret this question.

01:38:31 ◼   ► So how did you interpret the question?

01:38:34 ◼   ► I'm mostly interpreting it as a car, I think, that you would enjoy that you wouldn't buy for yourself.

01:38:42 ◼   ► So like the giftsgiving type of thing.

01:38:43 ◼   ► Sure, okay. I like that interpretation.

01:38:46 ◼   ► For Casey, I think I would go with Cayman/Boxster, whichever one comes with a sunroof and/or convertible.

01:38:54 ◼   ► 718 whatever the hell it's called now or I would actually

01:38:57 ◼   ► Maybe go with it with the previous generation naturally naturally aspirated because I think you would really enjoy a stick shift caiman

01:39:03 ◼   ► Because you get that open-air driving experience

01:39:05 ◼   ► I think it would be a

01:39:07 ◼   ► More fun dynamic driving experience than all of your like regular car cars and it's just an all-around great car like not super

01:39:13 ◼   ► Too super fast not too super loud

01:39:16 ◼   ► Not as small and wimpy as a Miata, which I think you would also enjoy by the way. I bet I would

01:39:23 ◼   ► It's like the big boy Miata.

01:39:25 ◼   ► So I would go with a Cayman.

01:39:28 ◼   ► I like that choice.

01:39:29 ◼   ► I drove—I probably told the story maybe on neutral—I drove a Boxster S early on

01:39:35 ◼   ► in the lifetime of the Boxster.

01:39:37 ◼   ► This was circa 2005, maybe 2006, and I think the Boxster had only been out for a couple

01:39:44 ◼   ► of years at that point.

01:39:45 ◼   ► I might have these dates wrong, but you get the idea.

01:39:48 ◼   ► And I got in that car expecting to hate it.

01:39:51 ◼   ► It's a you know, poor man's 911. It's just garbage. This is gonna be crap and I

01:39:57 ◼   ► Loved it. I couldn't believe how much I loved it and that was you know, ten plus years ago

01:40:03 ◼   ► So I can only imagine a Cayman or you know, whatever the new boxers

01:40:06 ◼   ► Came it like the yeah became an S the the naturally aspirated one right before they change to 718

01:40:11 ◼   ► It's just an amazing all-around balanced fun

01:40:13 ◼   ► Not too ridiculous car and you wouldn't buy it for yourself because you're like, oh I gotta have a car that I can put car seat

01:40:19 ◼   ► and all that other stuff.

01:40:20 ◼   ► But I feel like with the giant shoebox thing

01:40:22 ◼   ► that you've got going on for the whole family,

01:40:24 ◼   ► that you should have a Boxster for yourself.

01:40:27 ◼   ► And it would be a nice compromise of a small-ish,

01:40:31 ◼   ► fun, interesting, fast enough to be cool,

01:40:34 ◼   ► open air kind of car.

01:40:35 ◼   ► - Nice.

01:40:36 ◼   ► And for Marco?

01:40:37 ◼   ► - For Marco, a little bit torn on this.

01:40:39 ◼   ► My go-to would say, and especially if I'm not allowed

01:40:42 ◼   ► to pick from future models,

01:40:44 ◼   ► 'cause a lot of people are coming out with cars

01:40:45 ◼   ► that I think he would enjoy more than most of my picks,

01:40:47 ◼   ► because like everyone else,

01:40:48 ◼   ► all the other Tesla competitors are coming,

01:40:50 ◼   ► but they're not here yet, so I can't pick them.

01:40:51 ◼   ► - Agreed.

01:40:52 ◼   ► - So I would go,

01:40:54 ◼   ► I would probably shop in the Mercedes range

01:40:56 ◼   ► 'cause I truly continue to think that Marco

01:40:59 ◼   ► would actually really enjoy a Mercedes

01:41:00 ◼   ► perhaps more than he enjoyed his M5.

01:41:02 ◼   ► And so I probably go kind of like what I decided

01:41:07 ◼   ► to pick up myself in that preview show,

01:41:08 ◼   ► like an AMG E-Class,

01:41:10 ◼   ► if I could find the right balance of options

01:41:12 ◼   ► and features to satisfy.