ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► We're not going to get through all this follow-up. So just a certain point, someone just pull the ripcord and we'll get the hell out of this show.

00:00:06 ◼   ► Now we have crossed a

00:00:11 ◼   ► Wonderful threshold that is totally worth pointing out and calling out on this show.

00:00:15 ◼   ► We have? On my desk is an iPad that is faster in every measure I could possibly think of than John's Mac Pro.

00:00:26 ◼   ► you are so mean oh you're so mean if it beat the single core a couple

00:00:31 ◼   ► generations ago and it has finally crossed the multi core. So now and and

00:00:38 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure the gpu is probably way ahead. I'm also pretty sure that the

00:00:42 ◼   ► screen on it is higher resolution than the screen connected to john's mac pro.

00:00:45 ◼   ► So if we have finally crossed the point where not even the best ipad, but just

00:00:52 ◼   ► Like the middle of the road iPad is faster

00:00:55 ◼   ► in every respect I can possibly think to measure

00:00:57 ◼   ► than John's Mac Pro.

00:00:58 ◼   ► - That's the best iPad, isn't it?

00:01:00 ◼   ► What's the, is the 12.9 faster?

00:01:01 ◼   ► Does it have higher clock or something?

00:01:03 ◼   ► - Actually, I think it's the same in all respects,

00:01:04 ◼   ► just the higher screen resolution.

00:01:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, well my fans are faster, so beat that.

00:01:08 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:01:10 ◼   ► I've got so many more of them.

00:01:11 ◼   ► - It's a divide by zero, that's not fair.

00:01:13 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:01:15 ◼   ► - Well, just put an event in your calendar

00:01:17 ◼   ► and we'll revisit that iPad in 10 years.

00:01:21 ◼   ► We'll see how it's doing.

00:01:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's what you're clinging to?

00:01:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's the shattered glass on its surface

00:01:27 ◼   ► long after it's been dropped down.

00:01:29 ◼   ► - At least my hardware still works 10 years on,

00:01:32 ◼   ► barely, but it works.

00:01:33 ◼   ► - That's all I've got to hang onto now,

00:01:35 ◼   ► and I want this Mac to feel safe and loved

00:01:38 ◼   ► and to just carry me through until I can replace it.

00:01:41 ◼   ► - Oh, now that the iPad, like medium-sized,

00:01:43 ◼   ► has USB 3.0 over its lightning port,

00:01:45 ◼   ► I also have faster ports than your Mac Pro.

00:01:47 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:01:50 ◼   ► Oh, that's magnificent.

00:01:51 ◼   ► All right, let's get this show on the road.

00:01:53 ◼   ► This is going to be an all-follow-up episode, and it's just the way it's going to have

00:01:56 ◼   ► to be.

00:01:57 ◼   ► Well, an all-follow-up episode, we will do an aftershow that has some quasi-follow-up,

00:02:01 ◼   ► but we should dig right in.

00:02:03 ◼   ► Jon, here we go.

00:02:05 ◼   ► Tell us about APFS.

00:02:08 ◼   ► So the APFS session was on Friday at WWDC.

00:02:12 ◼   ► They saved it till the very end, so obviously we couldn't talk about it when we had our

00:02:16 ◼   ► live WWDC episode, because the session hadn't been run yet.

00:02:19 ◼   ► And there was some new information in this session.

00:02:22 ◼   ► In particular, all the issues about file name encoding

00:02:25 ◼   ► that we've been talking about on the show.

00:02:26 ◼   ► We're still talking about this.

00:02:28 ◼   ► Of course we are.

00:02:29 ◼   ► So this was the one and only bug I filed against APFS

00:02:32 ◼   ► like last year back when it was introduced.

00:02:34 ◼   ► Was it last year?

00:02:35 ◼   ► I think it was last year.

00:02:36 ◼   ► Whatever it was.

00:02:37 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:02:37 ◼   ► I filed the bug.

00:02:38 ◼   ► We talked about it on the show.

00:02:39 ◼   ► What are they going to do about encoding?

00:02:41 ◼   ► And we've been talking about it off and on for a long time.

00:02:44 ◼   ► So I think it is the biggest, aside from a data integrity,

00:02:48 ◼   ► which basically was a no-go on that,

00:02:50 ◼   ► you know, as we found out last year.

00:02:51 ◼   ► So set that aside, there's a feature it doesn't have.

00:02:54 ◼   ► The encoding issue seemed like a big deal

00:02:57 ◼   ► and it turns out it is a big deal.

00:02:59 ◼   ► So some caveats here, the session about it was kind of vague

00:03:04 ◼   ► and I tried to talk to the Apple folks afterwards

00:03:07 ◼   ► and I did get to talk to a few of them,

00:03:08 ◼   ► including one of the guys who implemented the stuff

00:03:10 ◼   ► I'm going to talk about now,

00:03:12 ◼   ► but I didn't have that much time to talk to them

00:03:13 ◼   ► because they went down to the labs

00:03:15 ◼   ► and labs this year had like a big line and everything

00:03:17 ◼   ► and it seemed like super official

00:03:18 ◼   ► and I didn't wanna get in that line

00:03:20 ◼   ► and like hog the file system engineers

00:03:22 ◼   ► from people who are developing apps.

00:03:23 ◼   ► So I only got a brief time to talk to them

00:03:26 ◼   ► sort of in the hallways in transit.

00:03:28 ◼   ► So forgive me if I got some of this wrong,

00:03:30 ◼   ► if anyone wants to write in and clarify,

00:03:31 ◼   ► they can let me know.

00:03:32 ◼   ► But here's what I've got.

00:03:34 ◼   ► So in High Sierra,

00:03:37 ◼   ► there's something that they're calling native normalization

00:03:40 ◼   ► and that's gonna be in APFS.

00:03:42 ◼   ► I remember APFS came to iOS in what,

00:03:45 ◼   ► 10.3 point something or other a couple weeks or a month ago,

00:03:48 ◼   ► and we talked about it on the show.

00:03:50 ◼   ► And the question we had was,

00:03:52 ◼   ► what is it gonna be like when APS comes to the Mac?

00:03:54 ◼   ► Is it gonna be the same deal, so on and so forth?

00:03:56 ◼   ► Well, one thing right off the bat is different.

00:03:58 ◼   ► APS on High Sierra has native normalization.

00:04:01 ◼   ► What that means is file names are stored

00:04:04 ◼   ► as provided by the program in the file system.

00:04:07 ◼   ► So whatever garbage you give it,

00:04:09 ◼   ► it says I'm writing that as the file name, there you go.

00:04:13 ◼   ► but directory lookups are done through hashes

00:04:18 ◼   ► of normalized versions of the file name.

00:04:20 ◼   ► So if you put in some file name that's, you know,

00:04:22 ◼   ► I don't know, just any valid sequence of, you know,

00:04:25 ◼   ► Unicode whatevers, and you do a lookup on it

00:04:29 ◼   ► with a different but equivalent sequence,

00:04:31 ◼   ► and it's the whole thing with like cafe

00:04:32 ◼   ► with an E with an exclamation, with an accent on it,

00:04:35 ◼   ► you can do that E with an accent as a single character

00:04:38 ◼   ► or as two combining characters, right?

00:04:40 ◼   ► As far as you're concerned, that's the same file name.

00:04:42 ◼   ► So what native normalization will do is,

00:04:44 ◼   ► when it stores the hashes for that directory,

00:04:47 ◼   ► it will not hash the file name that you gave it,

00:04:49 ◼   ► the file name that's actually in the file system.

00:04:51 ◼   ► Instead, it will normalize that file name

00:04:53 ◼   ► and store that hash.

00:04:54 ◼   ► And then when you try to look it up,

00:04:55 ◼   ► it'll take whatever you gave it, normalize that,

00:04:58 ◼   ► hash it, and compare it to the other hash.

00:04:59 ◼   ► So it's kind of weird that you've got, in the file system,

00:05:01 ◼   ► a file name, and each file name has a corresponding hash

00:05:05 ◼   ► that is not a hash of that file name,

00:05:07 ◼   ► it's a hash of the normalized version of that file name,

00:05:09 ◼   ► and they're using NFD normalization,

00:05:11 ◼   ► put a link in the show notes to look at the different normalization forms in Unicode.

00:05:15 ◼   ► The one they're using, according to one of the engineers I talked to, is NFD.

00:05:19 ◼   ► And this is what they call native normalization.

00:05:21 ◼   ► So that will make it so that on the Mac, when a program tries to look up a file name, no

00:05:27 ◼   ► matter how sloppy the program is with the encoding, it will find it, because it's going

00:05:30 ◼   ► to be looking it up by a hash of the normalized version of that, not by what you gave it.

00:05:35 ◼   ► So it's not going to take what you gave it and compare it to the actual file name, because

00:05:38 ◼   ► then it might not get it.

00:05:41 ◼   ► And here's the other interesting part about this.

00:05:43 ◼   ► So iOS still has, still doesn't do this yet.

00:05:46 ◼   ► What they're gonna add something they call

00:05:48 ◼   ► runtime normalization in iOS 10.3.3 and iOS 11,

00:05:52 ◼   ► which will not change what's in the file system,

00:05:55 ◼   ► but will do something that is vague

00:05:57 ◼   ► and I don't understand at the file system level

00:06:01 ◼   ► to make it so you can find your files.

00:06:03 ◼   ► And here's the kicker of this.

00:06:05 ◼   ► This is right from the APFS presentation slide.

00:06:09 ◼   ► "future update will convert all devices to the new native normalization."

00:06:13 ◼   ► So what that means is, some point in the future, they're going to update all iOS devices' file systems again.

00:06:20 ◼   ► And they're not going to convert them from one file system to another, they're going to basically add all the hashes of the normalized forms of all the file names.

00:06:27 ◼   ► I don't know if that is more dangerous or less dangerous than the other thing. It seems to me that it could be more dangerous, but I'm assuming they're doing it in an additive way.

00:06:33 ◼   ► But this is what I was getting at when I was hemming and hawing over this encoding stuff.

00:06:37 ◼   ► It's going to cause them to have to change the file system on every single iOS device at some point in the future.

00:06:42 ◼   ► Like, they didn't get it over with. There's another one looming.

00:06:45 ◼   ► Whereas the Mac is going to do this one-time conversion, and it will have the system from the get-go.

00:06:48 ◼   ► And it seems to me that Apple's file system engineers were surprised at how many iOS programs take strings directly from the UI

00:07:01 ◼   ► and feed them to file system APIs

00:07:03 ◼   ► without doing like FS representation

00:07:05 ◼   ► or any other sort of APIs that turn the string

00:07:07 ◼   ► into the form that the file system understands.

00:07:10 ◼   ► It just says, oh, someone types something in a field.

00:07:12 ◼   ► However, that field in my application got that string.

00:07:15 ◼   ► However, it was typed, however it was, you know,

00:07:17 ◼   ► whatever, however it was normalized or not normalized

00:07:20 ◼   ► or decomposed or whatever,

00:07:22 ◼   ► I'm just gonna pass it straight through to the file system.

00:07:24 ◼   ► And that in turn ends up having people

00:07:26 ◼   ► not be able to open up their files,

00:07:27 ◼   ► usually in non ASCII languages, obviously,

00:07:29 ◼   ► as ASCII is very simple, and maps one to one to UTF-8 and all that. So, surprise, your

00:07:36 ◼   ► iOS devices are going to all get updated again.

00:07:39 ◼   ► Yay. There's actually something really fascinating about that, and I think I'm jumping ahead

00:07:45 ◼   ► in the show notes, and I apologize to Mr. John Saracusa. During the talk show, I think

00:07:52 ◼   ► it was Federici had mentioned that whatever version of iOS—it doesn't really matter

00:07:56 ◼   ► what version it was that really flipped the switch on APFS and that migrated everyone

00:08:01 ◼   ► to APFS.

00:08:04 ◼   ► Apparently for like two or three versions prior, during the upgrade, they would do—and

00:08:09 ◼   ► jump in, Jon, when you're ready—they would do kind of like a trial run of the APFS migration,

00:08:17 ◼   ► try to figure out, did this work, what went right, what went wrong, phone home the results,

00:08:24 ◼   ► and then revert it all back to HFS+.

00:08:26 ◼   ► Is that a fair summary?

00:08:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, and that's the only way,

00:08:29 ◼   ► I think people were surprised by this,

00:08:30 ◼   ► but if you've ever done a sort of a production rollout

00:08:32 ◼   ► on a large scale,

00:08:33 ◼   ► it's the only way you can ever do something like this.

00:08:35 ◼   ► The first time you run it for real on everyone's devices

00:08:39 ◼   ► can't be the first time it runs, right?

00:08:42 ◼   ► You have to have run it several times before.

00:08:44 ◼   ► Doing it unbeknownst to them

00:08:46 ◼   ► is certainly a novel way to do it.

00:08:47 ◼   ► One possible way to do it is to roll it out

00:08:49 ◼   ► to a small subset of your users

00:08:50 ◼   ► and use them as the guinea pigs.

00:08:52 ◼   ► I'm not sure how big, like were everybody the guinea pigs?

00:08:55 ◼   ► But either way, programmers know.

00:08:58 ◼   ► You never find out how your thing actually works

00:09:00 ◼   ► until you run it for real.

00:09:02 ◼   ► And server-side programmers know production is never

00:09:05 ◼   ► exactly like staging, is never exactly like dev

00:09:07 ◼   ► and so on and so forth.

00:09:08 ◼   ► You think it is, you try to make them

00:09:09 ◼   ► as much the same as you possibly can,

00:09:11 ◼   ► but inevitably you roll something out to production

00:09:13 ◼   ► and surprise, it behaves a little bit differently

00:09:16 ◼   ► in strange ways that you never could have predicted

00:09:17 ◼   ► and when you have millions and millions of users

00:09:20 ◼   ► that is sure to be the case.

00:09:20 ◼   ► So yeah, since the conversion is non-destructive

00:09:23 ◼   ► until the very last step, as described in past episodes

00:09:26 ◼   ► of the show, they did the conversion,

00:09:28 ◼   ► just didn't do the last step,

00:09:29 ◼   ► and then ran a full integrity check to say,

00:09:31 ◼   ► "If I was to do this last step,

00:09:33 ◼   ► "would this thing be hosed or would it be okay?"

00:09:35 ◼   ► And then obviously report the results back to themselves

00:09:37 ◼   ► and they can see how it goes.

00:09:38 ◼   ► And they could have kept doing that process

00:09:40 ◼   ► until, you know, like, it could be that, you know,

00:09:43 ◼   ► iOS 11 would have been the conversion form,

00:09:44 ◼   ► but I guess they did it enough times

00:09:46 ◼   ► and got enough results to say,

00:09:48 ◼   ► "It's safe to do it in 10.3,"

00:09:49 ◼   ► whatever that the, you know, conversion was.

00:09:51 ◼   ► So that's just good engineering there.

00:09:54 ◼   ► And like I said before, it's the design of APFS, the type of file system that allows

00:09:59 ◼   ► them to do both the trial runs and the conversion in a fairly safe way.

00:10:04 ◼   ► I just, I mean, again, like you said, it does make sense, but I just found that fascinating

00:10:08 ◼   ► that that was the path they chose.

00:10:12 ◼   ► And just very clever stuff.

00:10:13 ◼   ► It's super cool.

00:10:14 ◼   ► Yeah, that was really cool.

00:10:16 ◼   ► There were a couple of other interesting tidbits we got from the talk show, which I'm sure

00:10:19 ◼   ► discussed later.

00:10:21 ◼   ► with the APFS train, tell me about the compression versus HFS+.

00:10:25 ◼   ► Yeah, this was a question I had a couple shows back.

00:10:30 ◼   ► Hey, HFS+ has compression, and a lot of OS files are compressed, and other files can

00:10:35 ◼   ► be compressed both by user programs and by the OS and stuff like that.

00:10:38 ◼   ► That's totally transparent to you when you read the file off of a file system HFS+.

00:10:43 ◼   ► If it's compressed, it just decompresses it on the fly.

00:10:45 ◼   ► You'd never see it.

00:10:46 ◼   ► It never looks any different.

00:10:47 ◼   ► They added that feature many years ago, right?

00:10:50 ◼   ► My question was, how do you non-destructively convert

00:10:54 ◼   ► an HFS+ volume to APFS while not moving any of the data?

00:10:59 ◼   ► Because if you have a compressed file

00:11:02 ◼   ► and you leave it compressed and you convert to APFS

00:11:05 ◼   ► and APFS doesn't understand that compression,

00:11:07 ◼   ► when you read that file, it will be garbage

00:11:09 ◼   ► because APFS won't know how to decompress it.

00:11:11 ◼   ► So it'll just read the compressed bytes,

00:11:13 ◼   ► which is not what you're going to expect.

00:11:15 ◼   ► And in the grand tradition of Gruber forgetting to ask

00:11:19 ◼   ► and Craig questions, I forgot to ask anybody,

00:11:22 ◼   ► WWDC, how the heck they're doing this.

00:11:23 ◼   ► So if anybody knows, tell me,

00:11:26 ◼   ► and it'll be followed up in a future show.

00:11:27 ◼   ► I just totally forgot to ask,

00:11:29 ◼   ► I should have written it on my palm or something.

00:11:32 ◼   ► Say, hey, by the way, when I've got your,

00:11:33 ◼   ► how the heck do you handle compression?

00:11:34 ◼   ► Again, the easiest solution is obviously

00:11:36 ◼   ► that APFS just understands that compression handles it.

00:11:39 ◼   ► That could be the case, it's a simple solution,

00:11:41 ◼   ► but I have no idea.

00:11:43 ◼   ► - Interesting.

00:11:44 ◼   ► All right, so next time, next WWDC, you'll have to remember.

00:11:48 ◼   ► - iOS 11 dots versus bars for signal strength.

00:11:52 ◼   ► So I am only vaguely familiar with what's going on here,

00:11:54 ◼   ► but apparently in some contexts,

00:11:57 ◼   ► either screenshots or perhaps the OS itself

00:11:59 ◼   ► is showing circles for signal strength

00:12:02 ◼   ► for your cellular carrier,

00:12:03 ◼   ► but in other contexts it's vertical bars, is that right?

00:12:07 ◼   ► - I don't know about that.

00:12:08 ◼   ► - Who is running iOS 11?

00:12:10 ◼   ► - I have it on my iPad that's faster than John's Mac Pro,

00:12:12 ◼   ► and I can tell you that it is definitely using bars

00:12:15 ◼   ► all the time.

00:12:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think people were confused by that

00:12:18 ◼   ► because in the keynote, they showed like,

00:12:21 ◼   ► the notification center slides were near

00:12:23 ◼   ► when you first saw the bars and they're like,

00:12:25 ◼   ► and we all know the notification center,

00:12:26 ◼   ► here's the things you can do in notification center.

00:12:28 ◼   ► Those were all iOS 10 screenshots.

00:12:30 ◼   ► That's why it was showing like existing stuff

00:12:32 ◼   ► you can do notification center.

00:12:33 ◼   ► It was like a lineup of big things

00:12:34 ◼   ► and they all had dots in them.

00:12:35 ◼   ► And the next slide was like,

00:12:37 ◼   ► here's what you can do in iOS 11 and those had bars.

00:12:39 ◼   ► Someone told me they thought there was a screenshot

00:12:42 ◼   ► in the keynote that was supposed to be iOS 11

00:12:44 ◼   ► that also had dots, but I don't recall seeing it.

00:12:46 ◼   ► Either way, Marco's got the actual beta and they're bars.

00:12:49 ◼   ► - Again, whatever you see in betas and stuff

00:12:52 ◼   ► is never actually final.

00:12:53 ◼   ► But I can tell you that in beta one on my iPad,

00:12:56 ◼   ► it is bars, all bars all the time.

00:12:58 ◼   ► And this is a welcome change because dots always sucked.

00:13:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, I've grown to like dots.

00:13:02 ◼   ► But the most important thing about bars versus dots,

00:13:06 ◼   ► as far as everyone's conspiracy theories go on this,

00:13:08 ◼   ► is that bars take up less width in the top bar.

00:13:12 ◼   ► And why would that be important?

00:13:13 ◼   ► Why do you need them to be smaller?

00:13:16 ◼   ► all of the weird rumors about the iPhone 8

00:13:19 ◼   ► or whatever they're gonna call it,

00:13:20 ◼   ► having something in the middle of the top of your screen

00:13:24 ◼   ► that doesn't leave enough room for the five dots

00:13:26 ◼   ► to lay themselves out.

00:13:28 ◼   ► That something could be part of the case of the phone,

00:13:31 ◼   ► like the cameras and stuff,

00:13:33 ◼   ► and it could be like a little monobrow type thing

00:13:35 ◼   ► where the top of the phone is not straight across,

00:13:38 ◼   ► but actually there's this little dip in the middle.

00:13:39 ◼   ► It could be that the cameras are behind the screen

00:13:43 ◼   ► at that point.

00:13:44 ◼   ► I don't quite understand why you'd have to get rid

00:13:45 ◼   ► the bars. So that anyway, there are a lot of theories about why it has to be thinner.

00:13:48 ◼   ► The thing that bothers me about the bars is, and one of the reasons that, well, I don't

00:13:52 ◼   ► know if the reason Apple got rid of them, but it was one of the things that people don't

00:13:55 ◼   ► like about bars and it was discussed when they did get rid of them, was that visually

00:14:00 ◼   ► speaking, like the visual weight of one, two, three, four, five bars is not even. So if

00:14:07 ◼   ► you have two bars, it doesn't look like half the lit up pixels of four bars because it's

00:14:15 ◼   ► It's like a stair step thing and it just looks like your signal is weaker than it is than

00:14:20 ◼   ► you do with dots.

00:14:21 ◼   ► If you have five evenly sized dots, then two dots is almost exactly half the lit up pixels

00:14:29 ◼   ► as four dots.

00:14:31 ◼   ► And so it seems more fair and you don't like to see your phone with these tiny little one

00:14:35 ◼   ► or two bars.

00:14:36 ◼   ► Even though two bars could be perfectly good, you feel a little bit better when you see

00:14:40 ◼   ► two out of five dots, or at least that's my impression anyway.

00:14:42 ◼   ► - Remember when they fixed antenna gate

00:14:44 ◼   ► by making the bars taller?

00:14:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, or didn't they just change the scale,

00:14:47 ◼   ► because what is three bars really?

00:14:49 ◼   ► Yeah, they did some futzing.

00:14:52 ◼   ► - Well, they actually did both.

00:14:54 ◼   ► I think they changed some of the decibel cutoff points

00:14:58 ◼   ► of what the bars represented,

00:14:59 ◼   ► and also they made the shorter,

00:15:03 ◼   ► the leftmost bars a little bit taller.

00:15:05 ◼   ► So that's why it's kind of like a,

00:15:07 ◼   ► almost like a curved ramp up from the left

00:15:10 ◼   ► instead of a straight ramp up.

00:15:11 ◼   ► - I like all the bars the same height,

00:15:13 ◼   ► so it's like a block or something.

00:15:14 ◼   ► - Well, that's what dots are.

00:15:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, but they're all spread out.

00:15:17 ◼   ► - No, but these whole things about trying to make room

00:15:19 ◼   ► for a cutout in the 2017 new iPhone,

00:15:22 ◼   ► I'm not sure I buy that.

00:15:27 ◼   ► Like, the whole idea of having these protruding camera

00:15:31 ◼   ► and speaker things and then having a screen

00:15:33 ◼   ► that goes above, to the left, and the right of it,

00:15:35 ◼   ► I still don't get that at all.

00:15:38 ◼   ► because I think we've learned by now

00:15:42 ◼   ► that the rumor cycle with this kind of stuff

00:15:44 ◼   ► gets about a third of what they predict correct.

00:15:46 ◼   ► Like it's not a great ratio.

00:15:48 ◼   ► And I think this is just one of those things like,

00:15:50 ◼   ► this sounds like something an Android maker would do,

00:15:53 ◼   ► not something Apple would do.

00:15:54 ◼   ► Because if you think about how that screen space

00:15:56 ◼   ► would actually be used, first of all,

00:15:59 ◼   ► there's a lot of stuff that goes in the status bar.

00:16:01 ◼   ► Still, even in iOS 11, there's lots of stuff

00:16:03 ◼   ► that goes in the status bar.

00:16:05 ◼   ► One of the big things is where would the clock go?

00:16:07 ◼   ► the clock is right right there in the middle and there's not

00:16:10 ◼   ► really room on the sides to put it there. If you unless you

00:16:12 ◼   ► get rid of something else that everyone likes or that you

00:16:14 ◼   ► need so it's just like I just don't I don't see how the

00:16:19 ◼   ► status bar morphs to have a big cut out in the middle of it

00:16:21 ◼   ► and still be good in any way and then I also don't see why

00:16:26 ◼   ► you would have the screen extend with this giant

00:16:28 ◼   ► rectangle sticking into the middle of it because what are

00:16:31 ◼   ► you going to do with that space like you're going to show

00:16:34 ◼   ► parts of a photo that extend into that into that space.

00:16:36 ◼   ► then you see the big black cutout.

00:16:38 ◼   ► I don't see any way in which that looks good

00:16:42 ◼   ► and actually works in practice.

00:16:44 ◼   ► - They just have eyebrows rendered there,

00:16:45 ◼   ► like rendered hair.

00:16:46 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:16:48 ◼   ► Little bushy eyebrows.

00:16:49 ◼   ► So the non-conspiracy theory,

00:16:52 ◼   ► other than someone that Apple just doesn't like dots,

00:16:54 ◼   ► which is perfectly valid,

00:16:56 ◼   ► is that having more room in the status bar

00:17:00 ◼   ► is always a good thing, right?

00:17:01 ◼   ► I mean, that gives you more options.

00:17:02 ◼   ► Sometimes the status bar looks kind of crowded up there,

00:17:04 ◼   ► and if you're taking up less room with dots,

00:17:05 ◼   ► and you get a little more breathing room

00:17:06 ◼   ► and it looks nicer, if they wanted to say,

00:17:09 ◼   ► take that weird back arrow thingy

00:17:11 ◼   ► that is always squished up in the,

00:17:13 ◼   ► is that even in the status bar?

00:17:14 ◼   ► I don't even know.

00:17:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, it does. - Yeah, like,

00:17:17 ◼   ► lay that out differently now that they have extra room,

00:17:19 ◼   ► who knows, anyway, it could just be they didn't like that,

00:17:21 ◼   ► so we'll find out in a couple months.

00:17:24 ◼   ► - Indeed, all right, another thing that has happened

00:17:27 ◼   ► in iOS 11, apparently the third-party service integration

00:17:32 ◼   ► that came in a couple of versions ago,

00:17:33 ◼   ► I don't remember exactly when,

00:17:34 ◼   ► So this is integration at the system level with Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Vimeo.

00:17:39 ◼   ► You could enter your passwords for any of those services at the system level, and then

00:17:46 ◼   ► when an app wants to leverage those services, it can kind of ask the system for the accounts,

00:17:51 ◼   ► blah, blah, blah.

00:17:52 ◼   ► Those have all been removed.

00:17:54 ◼   ► And according to the iOS 11 beta release notes, "Social accounts have been removed from settings

00:18:00 ◼   ► in iOS 11.

00:18:01 ◼   ► authority apps no longer have access to those signed in accounts. What's that about?

00:18:06 ◼   ► That's about adding one more thing to my to-do list this summer, because I used the Twitter

00:18:09 ◼   ► one, and now I have to stop using it and write my own stupid Twitter login, and I'm not happy

00:18:13 ◼   ► about that.

00:18:14 ◼   ► Sorry.

00:18:15 ◼   ► So Darren Cohen says that Facebook and Twitter are getting rid of the APIs that do that stuff,

00:18:20 ◼   ► and that's why Microsoft also had to pull that support out of Windows. I'm not sure

00:18:23 ◼   ► if that's the case, but you know, so fine. Facebook and Twitter got rid of them. What

00:18:27 ◼   ► about Flickr and Vimeo.

00:18:29 ◼   ► Like, no one is even developing.

00:18:30 ◼   ► Well, I was going to say no one's developing.

00:18:32 ◼   ► Someone might be developing Vimeo.

00:18:33 ◼   ► Anyway, it seems more like a policy decision.

00:18:39 ◼   ► This is interesting about the beta release notes, by the way.

00:18:41 ◼   ► I read them a couple times.

00:18:43 ◼   ► Like, they have a known issue section,

00:18:46 ◼   ► but sometimes they just talk about changes.

00:18:49 ◼   ► And sometimes they phrase it so you realize, oh, in this build,

00:18:53 ◼   ► such and such a feature is like this.

00:18:55 ◼   ► But we don't mean it to be that way.

00:18:56 ◼   ► It's just the way it is in this build.

00:18:58 ◼   ► Sometimes things like that are under a known issues header.

00:19:01 ◼   ► Sometimes they're just in the changes section.

00:19:03 ◼   ► And the reason I quoted this is because I

00:19:05 ◼   ► think this sentence expresses pretty clearly that this is not

00:19:09 ◼   ► just something that's missing in beta 1,

00:19:11 ◼   ► but that Marker really does have to do work,

00:19:13 ◼   ► and they're just not leaving them in there.

00:19:15 ◼   ► No, they're officially deprecated in the API.

00:19:16 ◼   ► They're gone.

00:19:17 ◼   ► Like, it's not-- yeah.

00:19:19 ◼   ► It's not like a temporary beta 1 thing.

00:19:21 ◼   ► This is actually-- they're gone.

00:19:23 ◼   ► So it does simplify things, because any time

00:19:25 ◼   ► Apple has one of these things where it's like certain blessed third parties are given deeper

00:19:31 ◼   ► hooks into the operating system than other ones. It's kind of convenient, but then Apple

00:19:35 ◼   ► has to eternally maintain an awareness of the social service zeitgeist. We're like,

00:19:43 ◼   ► what's popular now? Because they can't just keep the same set of things and support them

00:19:46 ◼   ► forever because three or four years later, then there's something new and some old one

00:19:49 ◼   ► needs to go away. But if you take the old one and go away, then people like Marco are

00:19:53 ◼   ► sad because they use it in their app and the most Apple-like solution is you know what you don't get

00:19:58 ◼   ► any just deal with it yourself like because then you don't have to worry we don't have to keep up

00:20:02 ◼   ► with this anymore if they change their APIs they won't break our stuff we don't have to do deals

00:20:06 ◼   ► with them every developer can handle it for themselves obviously the best solution would

00:20:12 ◼   ► be some way for some sort of extension mechanism for the third-party services themselves who are

00:20:18 ◼   ► highly motivated to have this type of integration to write such an integration for iOS but that's

00:20:22 ◼   ► that's kind of along the lines of third party keyboards

00:20:25 ◼   ► in that something doesn't seem like Apple would do,

00:20:29 ◼   ► but they could do it someday.

00:20:30 ◼   ► - Well, and also like the existing share extension framework

00:20:34 ◼   ► really does most of what you need for that

00:20:35 ◼   ► and puts the power of creating those things

00:20:38 ◼   ► and maintaining them and designing them

00:20:40 ◼   ► into the hands of the app makers

00:20:41 ◼   ► who run those services and have their apps.

00:20:43 ◼   ► So it like, you know, rather than having Apple design

00:20:47 ◼   ► the share to Twitter sheet, for instance,

00:20:49 ◼   ► that is built into the system

00:20:51 ◼   ► and have the system maintain a separate Twitter login account

00:20:55 ◼   ► that is separately set and separately managed,

00:20:57 ◼   ► now that's all on Twitter or whatever happens.

00:21:00 ◼   ► So now Twitter can just, with their app,

00:21:02 ◼   ► have your own login in their app,

00:21:03 ◼   ► which they already have to have,

00:21:04 ◼   ► and then Twitter can design their own share extension

00:21:06 ◼   ► and have it do whatever they want it to do

00:21:08 ◼   ► and look however they want it to look.

00:21:09 ◼   ► And so it, and then, you know, it isn't now just Twitter,

00:21:12 ◼   ► but now when something new comes along,

00:21:15 ◼   ► like if Manson wants to have a share extension

00:21:17 ◼   ► from micro.blog, that will now get equal billing

00:21:20 ◼   ► as a share extension as things like Twitter.

00:21:23 ◼   ► And that's great.

00:21:24 ◼   ► And again, it's like, like we were saying,

00:21:25 ◼   ► the system of having Apple maintain this fairly short list

00:21:29 ◼   ► of services that matter that will have

00:21:32 ◼   ► first-class integration, that's not scalable.

00:21:35 ◼   ► And I think we've seen over time,

00:21:36 ◼   ► like so many new networks have come up since then.

00:21:39 ◼   ► Like there was never a share to Snapchat.

00:21:41 ◼   ► That's crazy.

00:21:42 ◼   ► Snapchat is bigger than some of the things

00:21:44 ◼   ► that are in that list.

00:21:45 ◼   ► But they just didn't get to it.

00:21:48 ◼   ► The share to Twitter that Apple made

00:21:50 ◼   ► that was there for the last few iOS versions,

00:21:53 ◼   ► the share to Twitter in iOS 10 broke on me all the time.

00:21:58 ◼   ► I would post a tweet with it and it would just never post.

00:22:01 ◼   ► And presumably it was hitting some weird API limit

00:22:05 ◼   ► or it wasn't counting characters correctly or something

00:22:07 ◼   ► and there was no interface to report an error to me

00:22:10 ◼   ► or to report that it failed or to retry.

00:22:13 ◼   ► And it's like the system Apple had before

00:22:16 ◼   ► did not scale, and so it's nice to have,

00:22:19 ◼   ► now that we have a new system of share extensions

00:22:23 ◼   ► that we've actually had for, what,

00:22:24 ◼   ► like three iOS words in now?

00:22:26 ◼   ► Now Apple can step back and say,

00:22:28 ◼   ► "All right, you know what?

00:22:29 ◼   ► "We tried doing this ourselves, it was okay,

00:22:31 ◼   ► "but now this is up to you guys,

00:22:33 ◼   ► "and we're gonna step back from it."

00:22:34 ◼   ► And you can always kinda tell, like,

00:22:37 ◼   ► the data sharing relationship between Apple

00:22:41 ◼   ► and Twitter and Facebook, you can always tell

00:22:43 ◼   ► it was a little bit tense.

00:22:44 ◼   ► And they're really very much at odds

00:22:47 ◼   ► with their business models and what they wanna do

00:22:50 ◼   ► with the user and who owns the user

00:22:52 ◼   ► and who owns the user's data

00:22:53 ◼   ► and what kind of integration they want and everything else.

00:22:55 ◼   ► And so to have Apple just fully step back from that

00:22:58 ◼   ► and to just tell everyone else,

00:23:00 ◼   ► like look, you're now cut off from any kind of privilege,

00:23:03 ◼   ► you can do these things, but so can everyone else,

00:23:05 ◼   ► and everything that's part of the system

00:23:07 ◼   ► is off limits to you.

00:23:08 ◼   ► That I think is better for everybody, really.

00:23:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, it reminds me of when Apple first added

00:23:14 ◼   ► Facebook integration to what was then OS X,

00:23:17 ◼   ► one of my overviews.

00:23:18 ◼   ► I remember hearing about how they sort of bent over

00:23:21 ◼   ► backwards to try to integrate Facebook

00:23:24 ◼   ► with Apple's contact databases without giving Facebook

00:23:27 ◼   ► all of your contact info, but having them sync.

00:23:30 ◼   ► And it was, tense is definitely the right word for it.

00:23:33 ◼   ► The only bit about not having these things

00:23:37 ◼   ► as part of the system is,

00:23:38 ◼   ► I guess this is probably good for the services,

00:23:39 ◼   ► but maybe some users won't like it.

00:23:41 ◼   ► You have to have the app for these things installed now.

00:23:43 ◼   ► Even if you're like, oh, I'm never going to use Flickr

00:23:46 ◼   ► on my phone, I just wanna be able to post to it

00:23:48 ◼   ► from my phone.

00:23:49 ◼   ► Well, you gotta have the Flickr app installed

00:23:50 ◼   ► because the extensions come from the app,

00:23:51 ◼   ► so whatever, just put it in a folder somewhere

00:23:53 ◼   ► and you won't notice it.

00:23:55 ◼   ► - We are sponsored this week by MailRoute.

00:23:58 ◼   ► Stop spam today with a free 30-day trial

00:24:01 ◼   ► at mailroute.net/atp.

00:24:04 ◼   ► You know who should handle your email security and delivery?

00:24:07 ◼   ► People who do only that, and that is MailRoute.

00:24:10 ◼   ► Now, this applies to big companies or individuals,

00:24:14 ◼   ► pretty much anybody who hosts an email account

00:24:17 ◼   ► on their own domain.

00:24:18 ◼   ► So whether you use Google Apps for Business

00:24:20 ◼   ► or whatever they call that this year,

00:24:22 ◼   ► or whether you're using your own IMAP host,

00:24:24 ◼   ► something like Fastmail,

00:24:25 ◼   ► or whether you run your own servers,

00:24:27 ◼   ► whether it's for yourself or for your business,

00:24:28 ◼   ► if you're on your own mail servers,

00:24:30 ◼   ► you direct the internet to send their mail to MailRoute

00:24:32 ◼   ► through MX Records in your DNS for your domain.

00:24:35 ◼   ► And then MailRoute delivers to your servers

00:24:38 ◼   ► only the clean mail.

00:24:39 ◼   ► They do all the spam filtering, virus filtering,

00:24:42 ◼   ► all that for you, so you get only clean mail.

00:24:45 ◼   ► And in my opinion, I've been using it now

00:24:46 ◼   ► for over a year at least, and it is, bar none,

00:24:50 ◼   ► the best spam filter I have ever seen.

00:24:53 ◼   ► And it's full of great features,

00:24:54 ◼   ► so whether you're a business or an individual,

00:24:56 ◼   ► this is made for enterprise, so they have all sorts

00:25:00 ◼   ► of wonderful enterprise-y features

00:25:01 ◼   ► that I personally don't understand.

00:25:03 ◼   ► They have a whole API to manage it,

00:25:04 ◼   ► including all sorts of crazy admin tools.

00:25:08 ◼   ► There's a nice interface if you wanna use that

00:25:09 ◼   ► instead of the API.

00:25:11 ◼   ► It's all designed to make your life better

00:25:13 ◼   ► as either an end user of email

00:25:14 ◼   ► or as an email administrator for a business.

00:25:17 ◼   ► And it is so, so good.

00:25:19 ◼   ► I cannot tell you enough how good MailRite is.

00:25:22 ◼   ► I hardly ever get spam anymore.

00:25:24 ◼   ► It's glorious.

00:25:25 ◼   ► It's really weird when I do get it.

00:25:27 ◼   ► That's how rarely I get it

00:25:28 ◼   ► because it's noteworthy when I do get it.

00:25:31 ◼   ► It is so, so great.

00:25:32 ◼   ► I cannot recommend MailRite enough.

00:25:35 ◼   ► And so again, whether you're an individual like me

00:25:36 ◼   ► putting it in front of an IMAP host

00:25:38 ◼   ► or whether you're running a bunch of servers for a business,

00:25:40 ◼   ► you need MailRoute to filter out all the spam and viruses

00:25:44 ◼   ► before they get to your servers.

00:25:46 ◼   ► You can save server load, you're more secure that way,

00:25:48 ◼   ► and it's way better at filtering out spam

00:25:51 ◼   ► than anything else I've ever seen.

00:25:52 ◼   ► Yes, Gmail people, even Gmail.

00:25:54 ◼   ► It is so, so good at filtering out spam.

00:25:55 ◼   ► Check out MailRoute today, and if you use our link,

00:25:58 ◼   ► mailroute.net/atp, you get a free trial, 30 days,

00:26:03 ◼   ► and you get 10% off for the lifetime of your account.

00:26:07 ◼   ► So every time they bill you, you get 10% off.

00:26:09 ◼   ► That's pretty great.

00:26:10 ◼   ► Check it out today, mailroute.net/atp.

00:26:13 ◼   ► Thank you very much to MailRoute for sponsoring our show.

00:26:16 ◼   ► - Moving on.

00:26:21 ◼   ► In iOS 11, according to Fraser Spears,

00:26:23 ◼   ► on the home screen,

00:26:25 ◼   ► there are like four different things you can do.

00:26:28 ◼   ► So a short tap means open whatever app icon

00:26:33 ◼   ► you just tapped on.

00:26:34 ◼   ► A medium tap apparently opens a popover menu.

00:26:38 ◼   ► A medium hold, what is a medium tap then?

00:26:41 ◼   ► Anyway.

00:26:42 ◼   ► - I'll tell you one thing, it took me a very long time

00:26:45 ◼   ► to figure out how to move multiple apps at once

00:26:48 ◼   ► on Springboard.

00:26:49 ◼   ► What like, you can move an app around

00:26:51 ◼   ► just with a regular drag and drop,

00:26:53 ◼   ► but you can't do multiple apps with that.

00:26:55 ◼   ► To do multiple apps, you have to put it into wiggle X mode.

00:26:58 ◼   ► - Weird.

00:26:59 ◼   ► - Like the old way where you long press on it,

00:27:00 ◼   ► and eventually it goes into wiggle X mode.

00:27:02 ◼   ► Then you can do the multi-tap thing.

00:27:03 ◼   ► Like, it took me, when I set up this app,

00:27:05 ◼   ► it took me so long to figure out some of this stuff.

00:27:07 ◼   ► Like, it's, there are now like more modes than ever before.

00:27:12 ◼   ► And it's very powerful, but there's so many modes

00:27:16 ◼   ► and gestures and alternate taps and everything,

00:27:18 ◼   ► it's gonna be a while before even power users

00:27:21 ◼   ► figure out what all this stuff is.

00:27:24 ◼   ► - So to come back to Frasier Spears, who's a power user.

00:27:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, sorry.

00:27:26 ◼   ► - Short tap is open in the app.

00:27:28 ◼   ► The medium tap is the popover menu.

00:27:30 ◼   ► Medium hold is begin a drag.

00:27:32 ◼   ► long hold is enter rearrange mode. All of those different things based on you putting your meaty

00:27:39 ◼   ► finger against the screen on top of an icon. For various amounts of time, with various amounts of

00:27:44 ◼   ► movement, I think Force Touch is separate because Force Touch brings up the whatever the Force Touch

00:27:49 ◼   ► menu that the application implements. This reminds me, of course, of the home button,

00:27:53 ◼   ► which started out as the button you press to go back to Springboard and ended up having

00:27:57 ◼   ► a Morse code set of things that you can tap on it to do all sorts of weird stuff. I mean,

00:28:02 ◼   ► I mean, the point where they were,

00:28:03 ◼   ► we talked about this before, the accessibility thing

00:28:05 ◼   ► where it slides down the screen, whatever that's called.

00:28:08 ◼   ► That was like, two taps,

00:28:11 ◼   ► but don't actually press the button.

00:28:13 ◼   ► That was weird. - That's the level

00:28:14 ◼   ► they were getting at where they'd use up the one,

00:28:16 ◼   ► two, tap and hold, do this, do that.

00:28:18 ◼   ► It's like, okay, now this is a tap,

00:28:20 ◼   ► but don't press the button.

00:28:21 ◼   ► And I know it's weird because the button doesn't move anymore

00:28:24 ◼   ► but don't press it enough that it would move

00:28:26 ◼   ► if it did move.

00:28:27 ◼   ► It's very strange.

00:28:29 ◼   ► - Continuing with iOS 11,

00:28:31 ◼   ► new feature of iOS 11 which was mentioned I thought somewhere maybe

00:28:35 ◼   ► during the keynote but I might be wrong about that but I saw this somewhere last

00:28:39 ◼   ► week you can now share your Wi-Fi passwords so this there's an article in

00:28:44 ◼   ► 95 Mac will put in the show notes if a friend comes over with an iPhone running

00:28:47 ◼   ► iOS 11 you can automatically log them into your Wi-Fi in one tap and this

00:28:51 ◼   ► looks very similar to kind of the the air pods charge status when you flick

00:28:57 ◼   ► open the AirPod case. I don't obviously think that that's how it's activated, but

00:29:01 ◼   ► they have a screenshot in here on the 95 Mac article, and what a cool idea. I dig

00:29:06 ◼   ► it. So my question is, do they get to see your password? Like, is this just a

00:29:10 ◼   ► convenience feature of not having to read something off to somebody and they

00:29:14 ◼   ► type it in and get capital letters wrong? Or is this a security feature where you

00:29:18 ◼   ► can let someone log on to your thing but they can't see your password? I'm

00:29:21 ◼   ► inclined to think it's just a convenience feature because once the

00:29:23 ◼   ► the password is on their phone,

00:29:26 ◼   ► surely they can get it off if they wanted it.

00:29:27 ◼   ► - Yeah, presumably, I mean, because they have to know,

00:29:30 ◼   ► like, they have to have the password

00:29:32 ◼   ► in their device of possession for it to be on the WiFi,

00:29:35 ◼   ► so I'm guessing, like, it probably isn't shown to them,

00:29:37 ◼   ► it's probably just put in Keychain,

00:29:39 ◼   ► but there are ways to access things in Keychain,

00:29:41 ◼   ► like if it's synced with iCloud Keychain,

00:29:44 ◼   ► and it syncs to a Mac, then you can go to Keychain access

00:29:47 ◼   ► and you can get the password right there.

00:29:48 ◼   ► - You should put it in a secure enclave,

00:29:50 ◼   ► and possibly get off the device.

00:29:51 ◼   ► - Right, right.

00:29:53 ◼   ► So yeah, I'm guessing that they end up having a way

00:29:55 ◼   ► to get to the password if they want to,

00:29:57 ◼   ► and this is more for quick convenience

00:30:00 ◼   ► and casual security than it is about real security.

00:30:04 ◼   ► 'Cause real security is if you're letting them

00:30:05 ◼   ► on your network, then they're on your network.

00:30:07 ◼   ► - That's it.

00:30:08 ◼   ► Everyone's wifi passwords are like their kids' names anyway,

00:30:11 ◼   ► so come on.

00:30:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, and no one ever changes their wifi passwords

00:30:13 ◼   ► because now they have like 16 different things on it.

00:30:15 ◼   ► - People have years in their wifi passwords

00:30:17 ◼   ► and it's like 1999.

00:30:19 ◼   ► - Oh yeah.

00:30:20 ◼   ► Mine's 2008, if I'm not mistaken.

00:30:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, Wi-Fi really needs like a token system,

00:30:25 ◼   ► like OAuth where you can just like issue devices tokens

00:30:28 ◼   ► and then like you can change the password for new devices.

00:30:31 ◼   ► It really needs that.

00:30:32 ◼   ► - So before everyone writes in,

00:30:34 ◼   ► I know there are flavors of Wi-Fi security

00:30:37 ◼   ► that allow that sort of thing,

00:30:38 ◼   ► but it is generally speaking,

00:30:41 ◼   ► it is not the sort of thing

00:30:42 ◼   ► you will ever find at somebody's house.

00:30:43 ◼   ► - Is that like all the enterprise things?

00:30:44 ◼   ► - I know that it is possible, yeah, yeah.

00:30:46 ◼   ► And I've seen installations in the home

00:30:48 ◼   ► will do this sort of thing. I understand that's a thing, it doesn't really matter the details.

00:30:53 ◼   ► Like a friend of mine had some setup with like a Raspberry Pi or some such where you

00:30:57 ◼   ► would push a little button on some device and it would actually like print out a temporary

00:31:00 ◼   ► Wi-Fi password for you just because this is the sort of thing you did for a living. So

00:31:03 ◼   ► you had like crazy enterprise hardware in his house and it was actually very cool. But

00:31:07 ◼   ► yeah, for any normal person, you're absolutely right Marco. Like this would be kind of cool

00:31:13 ◼   ► if it was usable. And I consider myself a normal person in this context because I'm

00:31:17 ◼   ► not like a super network administrator. So yeah, so for me to like issue a temporary

00:31:21 ◼   ► password would be pretty neat, but that's not the sort of thing you find in normal like

00:31:25 ◼   ► WPA2 or whatever it is, households. All right, moving on. A friend of the show,

00:31:30 ◼   ► Steve Trouton Smith, he pointed out that drag-and-drop upload of files to mobile

00:31:35 ◼   ► Safari works now. And I actually saw, I don't think I'm gonna have it handy and

00:31:39 ◼   ► I'm not gonna be able to dig it up, but I think it was Serenity Caldwell had a tweet

00:31:42 ◼   ► about this. You can take several files from, say, like the Files app, for example, and

00:31:50 ◼   ► you can drag them into Mobile Safari, much like you would do in regular desktop Safari,

00:31:55 ◼   ► and it will actually upload all of those files, which is super cool.

00:31:59 ◼   ► It's another thing Marco's iPad can do that my Mac can also do, finally. File uploads,

00:32:06 ◼   ► the final frontier for iOS, web file uploads, the final frontier.

00:32:10 ◼   ► Oh, my word.

00:32:12 ◼   ► The reason I put this in here is because,

00:32:13 ◼   ► not because, like, you know, drag and drop works everywhere,

00:32:15 ◼   ► but because until I read this,

00:32:16 ◼   ► it wouldn't have even occurred to me to try that on iOS,

00:32:19 ◼   ► because I had been so conditioned from so many years,

00:32:21 ◼   ► like, oh, if you're gonna do like a file upload,

00:32:24 ◼   ► you gotta go to a Mac for that, right?

00:32:26 ◼   ► And even though we all know drag and drop is there,

00:32:28 ◼   ► I wouldn't, like, you have to change your mindset now

00:32:30 ◼   ► with these drag and drop features to think to try something

00:32:33 ◼   ► instead of just like walling it off in your mind as like,

00:32:36 ◼   ► oh, you can only do that in the desktop.

00:32:37 ◼   ► Not true anymore with iOS 11.

00:32:39 ◼   ► - This is, I think, gonna be like one of the,

00:32:41 ◼   ► I mean, this is always the case with new platforms,

00:32:43 ◼   ► but this is one of the reasons why I think young people

00:32:45 ◼   ► have a way better chance of working on these platforms

00:32:47 ◼   ► than we do, because it is so easy,

00:32:50 ◼   ► as someone who's been around since the early days of iOS,

00:32:53 ◼   ► like us, it's so easy to forget all the new things

00:32:56 ◼   ► that you can do that you used to not be able to do.

00:32:59 ◼   ► And we just don't even think to try those things,

00:33:01 ◼   ► 'cause we quote, "know," subconsciously,

00:33:04 ◼   ► we just know that that's not a thing you can do here.

00:33:07 ◼   ► And you need somebody younger than you,

00:33:09 ◼   ► like Fatik Shih, to come around and be like,

00:33:10 ◼   ► "No, look, you can do all this crap, you guys are dumb."

00:33:12 ◼   ► And he's not that mean, of course, he's super nice.

00:33:15 ◼   ► - He's young at heart.

00:33:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, well.

00:33:17 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:33:18 ◼   ► Yeah, you need somebody who's more fresh to the platform

00:33:23 ◼   ► or more willing to experiment or more open-minded

00:33:25 ◼   ► than us old farts to actually push the boundaries

00:33:30 ◼   ► of using the thing and actually use all these new features

00:33:32 ◼   ► that we might see in a keynote for five seconds

00:33:36 ◼   ► and immediately forget about.

00:33:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, the flip side of that, by the way,

00:33:39 ◼   ► whenever the youngsters see me and old fart use my Mac, they never know. All the things

00:33:44 ◼   ► that I'm dragging around and like the fact that you know proxy icons and title bars like

00:33:49 ◼   ► totally undiscoverable stuff if you haven't been using the Mac forever or like which applications

00:33:54 ◼   ► you have to hold long and then start to drag or start drag immediately versus holding to

00:33:58 ◼   ► drag large pieces of text to copy it inside terminal without blowing away your buffer or

00:34:04 ◼   ► before you even get into multiple clipboards and all that other stuff.

00:34:08 ◼   ► There's lots of things that old platforms can do that young people don't learn as well

00:34:12 ◼   ► because they didn't go through all the, you know, they didn't start out with the simple

00:34:15 ◼   ► system and see new features get added.

00:34:17 ◼   ► They just used the system.

00:34:18 ◼   ► They used enough of the system to get their job done and didn't have this history of learning

00:34:22 ◼   ► all these other obscure features.

00:34:23 ◼   ► So there's secrets lying in Mac OS as well, especially if you're an old Next user.

00:34:28 ◼   ► There's stuff from Next still lurking in there and there's stuff from the old Mac still working

00:34:32 ◼   ► in there.

00:34:33 ◼   ► So we have something to teach the youth right before we die.

00:34:35 ◼   ► - Wow. - On our slow Mac Pros.

00:34:38 ◼   ► - Man, you are really chillin' this home, man.

00:34:41 ◼   ► Savage.

00:34:41 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, to be fair to Jon's very slow old Mac Pro,

00:34:45 ◼   ► it is really, like this is kind of an argument

00:34:47 ◼   ► for the Mac Pro that, first of all,

00:34:50 ◼   ► that he's still using it almost 10 years later

00:34:52 ◼   ► and it's mostly fine.

00:34:53 ◼   ► Second of all, it's an argument for upgradeability

00:34:55 ◼   ► 'cause upgrades like an SSD and a new GPU

00:34:58 ◼   ► have made this possible.

00:34:59 ◼   ► And third of all, it really shows quite the difference

00:35:03 ◼   ► when you buy a Mac Pro.

00:35:04 ◼   ► Like, the iOS hardware surpassed five-year-old Macs,

00:35:08 ◼   ► you know, long ago.

00:35:11 ◼   ► But it took until now for it to surpass

00:35:14 ◼   ► this 10-year-old Mac in multi-core performance.

00:35:17 ◼   ► 'Cause when you have eight cores,

00:35:19 ◼   ► it takes a long time for things to catch up to that.

00:35:22 ◼   ► And like, one of the reasons why I love the Mac Pro so much

00:35:25 ◼   ► is you get so much headroom.

00:35:28 ◼   ► Like, you literally, you know,

00:35:30 ◼   ► your single-core performance is always limited

00:35:31 ◼   ► by whatever the technology of the era is

00:35:35 ◼   ► for single-core design.

00:35:36 ◼   ► But they crammed so many cores in there

00:35:39 ◼   ► that for parallel workloads,

00:35:41 ◼   ► which is what a lot of pros do,

00:35:43 ◼   ► you can basically buy yourself, 10 years from now,

00:35:47 ◼   ► levels of performance today.

00:35:50 ◼   ► And so the Mac Pro, it's useful to a lot of types of people

00:35:53 ◼   ► for way longer than any other computer is.

00:35:57 ◼   ► So that just shows why having these high-core,

00:36:01 ◼   ► core count workstations is still valuable

00:36:04 ◼   ► because you're literally buying yourself

00:36:06 ◼   ► like a place 10 years from now in performance.

00:36:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, just wait for the iMac Pro with its 18 cores.

00:36:11 ◼   ► That'll give you another good head start on the phones.

00:36:14 ◼   ► - Okay, so we made a reference to it earlier,

00:36:18 ◼   ► but there were a couple of things that were,

00:36:20 ◼   ► I mean, the whole show was interesting,

00:36:21 ◼   ► but a couple of interesting tidbits

00:36:22 ◼   ► that came out of the talk show live from last week.

00:36:25 ◼   ► So this was, as per tradition, it was John Gruber,

00:36:28 ◼   ► and then as of the last couple of years,

00:36:31 ◼   ► It's been Phil Schiller and Craig Federighi.

00:36:33 ◼   ► And, as usual, it was a great show.

00:36:36 ◼   ► I like that Jon doesn't just throw up the softball questions.

00:36:41 ◼   ► And I can't think off the top of my head of what the hardballs were,

00:36:44 ◼   ► but he always asks at least a few hardballs, which I like.

00:36:46 ◼   ► And at one point at the end, Schiller actually said to him,

00:36:49 ◼   ► in so many words, "Hey man, you always say a couple weeks later,

00:36:53 ◼   ► 'Man, I wish I asked Schiller this.' So what do you got?"

00:36:56 ◼   ► And I think it took Gruber by surprise, which was kind of funny.

00:37:00 ◼   ► funny, and I forget exactly what he came up with, but in summary, it was a really great

00:37:05 ◼   ► show. If you haven't listened to it and/or watched it because there's a video available,

00:37:09 ◼   ► you really, really should. And Jon and I had the pleasure of being seated front row and

00:37:13 ◼   ► watching it. Marco had the pleasure of sitting in a 90-degree sound booth and watching/listening

00:37:19 ◼   ► to it. But there were some interesting things that came from it. One of them was the trial

00:37:24 ◼   ► APFS migrations we mentioned earlier. But the other thing that all of us, I think, picked

00:37:28 ◼   ► up on and were also amazed by was the photo data that is synced in between devices, which

00:37:34 ◼   ► was mentioned in the keynote, or maybe not the keynote but the State of the Union if

00:37:38 ◼   ► not, that isn't what we thought it was. So the way I understood what was said in whatever

00:37:47 ◼   ► keynote or State of the Union was that, hey, all of the metadata that we generate during

00:37:52 ◼   ► the photo crawl process on any of our devices.

00:37:56 ◼   ► All of that is getting synced via iCloud to all your other devices.

00:37:59 ◼   ► And we were all very, very, very excited about this.

00:38:03 ◼   ► Turns out that that is not the case.

00:38:06 ◼   ► And what's actually happening is only the stuff that Apple has complete certainty in

00:38:11 ◼   ► – and I'm slightly paraphrasing Craig here – only the stuff that Apple has complete

00:38:16 ◼   ► certainty in is what's synced, which in turn means only the stuff that a user has

00:38:21 ◼   ► actively said yes or no to.

00:38:23 ◼   ► So in the case of photos, what that means is if there is a

00:38:25 ◼   ► photo that has the three of us in it, and I as a user say

00:38:29 ◼   ► that one is Marco and that one is John, that photo and the

00:38:32 ◼   ► information about it that I've provided will be synced via

00:38:34 ◼   ► iCloud to the other devices.

00:38:36 ◼   ► But anything else, any of the generated metadata and all

00:38:39 ◼   ► that, that isn't synced at all, which probably isn't a

00:38:44 ◼   ► bad thing, but I wouldn't necessarily say it's a good

00:38:47 ◼   ► thing either.

00:38:47 ◼   ► And I presume that this is because of privacy concerns.

00:38:50 ◼   ► but it was, I feel like it was a little bit of a bait and switch, or maybe I just misunderstood

00:38:54 ◼   ► what was said in the keynote, but it felt like a bait and switch compared to earlier

00:38:58 ◼   ► that week when we had heard, "Oh yeah, we're syncing things between devices, it's great."

00:39:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, I understand why they're doing it this way, but I think it's the wrong choice.

00:39:08 ◼   ► So like, basically, there were a few problems with the way it was before. Problem number

00:39:15 ◼   ► Number one was that if you actually took the time

00:39:18 ◼   ► to enter things like faces data,

00:39:21 ◼   ► that wasn't synced between multiple devices.

00:39:22 ◼   ► So it kind of, it was very frustrating.

00:39:24 ◼   ► It's like a form of data loss.

00:39:26 ◼   ► Like you input that on one device,

00:39:27 ◼   ► but then you go to some other device

00:39:29 ◼   ► and it's not there or it's different.

00:39:31 ◼   ► So that's no good.

00:39:31 ◼   ► So that's the part they're syncing.

00:39:33 ◼   ► Problem number two is that every time you do an OS restore

00:39:37 ◼   ► or get a new phone or replace a phone from service

00:39:40 ◼   ► or a new Mac or any new devices with photos on them,

00:39:44 ◼   ► your device would basically run really hot

00:39:47 ◼   ► and have terrible battery life if it misbehaved

00:39:51 ◼   ► and CPUs would be maxed out for hours or days

00:39:55 ◼   ► after you got it as photo analysis D

00:39:58 ◼   ► went through your entire photo library

00:40:00 ◼   ► and tried to recognize objects in the photos

00:40:03 ◼   ► so you could search for them.

00:40:04 ◼   ► That one they didn't fix.

00:40:06 ◼   ► That one is still being done

00:40:08 ◼   ► on all the different devices individually.

00:40:11 ◼   ► And it sounds like the reason why

00:40:13 ◼   ► is because that's something that they're kind of guessing

00:40:17 ◼   ► on each device.

00:40:18 ◼   ► They're like, they're using machine learning

00:40:20 ◼   ► to try to figure these things out, and that's fine,

00:40:25 ◼   ► but it seems like the reason why they don't want

00:40:29 ◼   ► to sync that is so that a newer device

00:40:33 ◼   ► that maybe has a newer OS that can be smarter

00:40:36 ◼   ► about what it recognizes, you can get smarter results

00:40:39 ◼   ► on that, and that way you don't have bad results

00:40:42 ◼   ► synced forever from old photos.

00:40:45 ◼   ► But that creates the experience,

00:40:47 ◼   ► not only of having your devices be really hot

00:40:49 ◼   ► for the first couple days you have them,

00:40:50 ◼   ► and your CPU cores have been maxed out for a long time,

00:40:53 ◼   ► but that also makes it so that you get

00:40:56 ◼   ► different search results on different devices

00:40:58 ◼   ► for like the same query.

00:41:00 ◼   ► And that's not really great either.

00:41:03 ◼   ► So I'm not really sure what led them to make this decision.

00:41:07 ◼   ► There's probably more information here that we don't have.

00:41:09 ◼   ► I'm sure there were good reasons,

00:41:11 ◼   ► But from where I sit, from the subset

00:41:15 ◼   ► of the real information that I have,

00:41:18 ◼   ► I still think that's the wrong choice.

00:41:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's not just object recognition, too.

00:41:23 ◼   ► The faces thing is the thing that bothers me the most

00:41:25 ◼   ► because I think most people don't spend

00:41:29 ◼   ► that much time confirming faces

00:41:31 ◼   ► because it's annoying to do.

00:41:32 ◼   ► You confirm some or whatever.

00:41:33 ◼   ► The way the system is supposed to work,

00:41:35 ◼   ► especially on a single device scenario,

00:41:38 ◼   ► is you confirm a bunch of pages and say yes, no, no, yes,

00:41:41 ◼   ► maybe make some corrections,

00:41:42 ◼   ► and based on your confirmations,

00:41:45 ◼   ► the system then guesses all the other pictures

00:41:49 ◼   ► that have this person's face in them.

00:41:51 ◼   ► And that type of feature,

00:41:53 ◼   ► I've always wanted this face recognition feature

00:41:54 ◼   ► to replace my manual tagging system,

00:41:57 ◼   ► where if I wanna find all pictures of my wife,

00:42:00 ◼   ► I don't wanna have to manually tag

00:42:02 ◼   ► every single picture that she's in.

00:42:04 ◼   ► I just wanna tell the system,

00:42:06 ◼   ► this is her, this is her, this is her, this is her.

00:42:07 ◼   ► I'll do that 100 times.

00:42:08 ◼   ► Like, I am sure I've spent way more time

00:42:10 ◼   ► and that photo confirmation thing than most people have.

00:42:13 ◼   ► And then based on that data set, find all the other ones.

00:42:18 ◼   ► And my interface to this is I want somewhere in the sidebar

00:42:21 ◼   ► like a smart folder or whatever to say,

00:42:24 ◼   ► pictures of my wife.

00:42:27 ◼   ► And as far as I'm concerned,

00:42:29 ◼   ► the set of pictures of my wife is not a thing

00:42:31 ◼   ► like finding like telephone or plastic

00:42:34 ◼   ► or like garbage can in a picture that new versions

00:42:38 ◼   ► and different machine learning AI algorithms

00:42:41 ◼   ► can do better in future things,

00:42:44 ◼   ► it should be the same.

00:42:46 ◼   ► I want it to be the same as if I had manually tagged it.

00:42:49 ◼   ► And I want the same experience on every device.

00:42:53 ◼   ► And if it is better in some future device,

00:42:55 ◼   ► because it's like, well, we are technically guessing

00:42:57 ◼   ► and this one is able to guess better.

00:42:58 ◼   ► If it is better on another device,

00:43:00 ◼   ► they just need to version that stuff.

00:43:02 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:43:03 ◼   ► - So that as soon as they get the better version,

00:43:05 ◼   ► sync the better version everywhere.

00:43:06 ◼   ► Bottom line, if I have that smart folder,

00:43:08 ◼   ► whatever this is, pictures of my wife,

00:43:10 ◼   ► I don't want to see wildly different counts on them

00:43:12 ◼   ► and they will be pretty different

00:43:13 ◼   ► because depending on how much time you've spent

00:43:16 ◼   ► adding the people's faces

00:43:17 ◼   ► or how many other people you have look similar or whatever,

00:43:20 ◼   ► I don't want it to re-guess at different times

00:43:22 ◼   ► and see like, oh, why do I have a different number

00:43:24 ◼   ► of pictures of my wife and these two devices?

00:43:25 ◼   ► You don't, it's just that one has a different notion

00:43:28 ◼   ► of how many pictures of your wife there are

00:43:29 ◼   ► because even though they're both working

00:43:31 ◼   ► from the same small data set of manually selected pictures,

00:43:33 ◼   ► there's too much variability, blah, blah, blah.

00:43:35 ◼   ► I don't know, it's better than it was,

00:43:37 ◼   ► but I still think there's room to grow.

00:43:39 ◼   ► - It's always funny to me that Craig seems

00:43:43 ◼   ► not like obviously uncomfortable,

00:43:47 ◼   ► but not totally in love with being on stage.

00:43:50 ◼   ► And I think we talked about this last year too.

00:43:52 ◼   ► Until a technical thing comes up

00:43:56 ◼   ► and suddenly everything changes

00:43:59 ◼   ► and he's like super confident, awesome engineer guy.

00:44:02 ◼   ► To the point that like his depth of knowledge

00:44:05 ◼   ► things that are reasonably, I don't know if esoteric is the right word, but like he'll

00:44:11 ◼   ► happily go deep on damn near anything, on the drop of a hat.

00:44:18 ◼   ► And I don't know how the man can keep that much stuff in his head.

00:44:22 ◼   ► It's just stunning to me, because especially my stereotypical view of managers is that

00:44:27 ◼   ► they're so far outside of the weeds.

00:44:30 ◼   ► They're sitting on their fancy thrones looking down at their kingdom of minions and saying,

00:44:34 ◼   ► minions take care of things not having any idea what the weeds are and what's

00:44:38 ◼   ► in the weeds etc but but he can go all the way down like on anything it's just

00:44:43 ◼   ► stunning and I man I love listening to him talk that guys I'm Phil is great as

00:44:47 ◼   ► well don't get me wrong but but man Craig is a a nerds nerd I dig it agreed

00:44:52 ◼   ► I didn't listen to the recording you know because I saw it live but in the

00:44:57 ◼   ► live thing there was one heckler who shouted out to her one point oh when is

00:45:02 ◼   ► Is Siri going to get better?

00:45:03 ◼   ► I don't know if they cut that out of the final recording, but that did happen.

00:45:06 ◼   ► No, it's there.

00:45:07 ◼   ► But they didn't address it, because it was like, they were basically like, John was in

00:45:11 ◼   ► the middle of asking a question, so they just kept moving, because it was not at a point

00:45:17 ◼   ► where it even makes sense to address it.

00:45:19 ◼   ► Yeah, so there's two ways you can go on this.

00:45:21 ◼   ► One is that, from a hosting perspective, it's a good idea not to encourage hecklers by addressing

00:45:27 ◼   ► them, right?

00:45:28 ◼   ► So John ignoring the heckler is the way of saying,

00:45:30 ◼   ► "Don't heckle at my show.

00:45:32 ◼   ► "It's my show, I'm gonna pretend you don't exist."

00:45:34 ◼   ► On the other hand, when is Siri gonna get better?

00:45:37 ◼   ► So, like, that is a line of questioning

00:45:40 ◼   ► that could have been brought up

00:45:43 ◼   ► in the context of HomePod or whatever.

00:45:45 ◼   ► And I think--

00:45:46 ◼   ► - Well, but again, when you have limited time on stage

00:45:51 ◼   ► with Apple executives to ask questions,

00:45:54 ◼   ► you have to have some degree of just predicting,

00:45:57 ◼   ► like, you know, what's a good question here? Like, what's

00:45:58 ◼   ► actually a good use of time and a question where they're just

00:46:01 ◼   ► going to give like a pretty canned PR like answer is not a

00:46:06 ◼   ► good use of time because like what do you like? What are they

00:46:09 ◼   ► going to say on stage? What like do you do you honestly

00:46:12 ◼   ► think like Phil Schiller is going to be on stage and be

00:46:14 ◼   ► like, yeah, you know what? You're right. Siri isn't very

00:46:16 ◼   ► good. We're working on it like no, like of course not like

00:46:19 ◼   ► it's going to be an answer of, you know, even if you ask that

00:46:22 ◼   ► question directly to them, it's going to be a a a real

00:46:26 ◼   ► relatively information-less answer of like,

00:46:29 ◼   ► well, here's all the ways that it's already world-leading

00:46:32 ◼   ► and it's always getting better.

00:46:33 ◼   ► It's a PR question that's gonna get a PR answer.

00:46:37 ◼   ► It's like all the stupid analyst questions

00:46:39 ◼   ► on the earnings calls, when are you gonna make a TV?

00:46:42 ◼   ► It's like that kind of stuff.

00:46:43 ◼   ► It's not a useful question because you know

00:46:47 ◼   ► they're not really gonna give you an answer that you want,

00:46:49 ◼   ► so you might as well not even waste time on it

00:46:52 ◼   ► and ask a better question.

00:46:53 ◼   ► - So I think you can ask this question in a way

00:46:55 ◼   ► it will get a non PR vague answer

00:46:59 ◼   ► because Apple itself opened the door

00:47:01 ◼   ► to this line of questioning with their HomePod announcement.

00:47:04 ◼   ► I said this in the last show too,

00:47:05 ◼   ► but to reiterate and further emphasize,

00:47:08 ◼   ► Apple's pitch for HomePod was,

00:47:11 ◼   ► look at these two competitors, Sonos and the Amazon Echo.

00:47:15 ◼   ► Sonos sounds good, but is dumb.

00:47:17 ◼   ► Amazon Echo sounds like crap, but is smart.

00:47:20 ◼   ► HomePod sounds great and is smart.

00:47:23 ◼   ► typical great Apple sales pitch for the thing, right?

00:47:26 ◼   ► So here's Apple opening the door,

00:47:29 ◼   ► but the only thing Apple demonstrated,

00:47:31 ◼   ► or in any way described,

00:47:33 ◼   ► both in the live room where the press could hear it

00:47:36 ◼   ► and in the slides where they talked about it,

00:47:38 ◼   ► well, we know how HomePod sounds good

00:47:40 ◼   ► because a whole bunch of people heard it

00:47:41 ◼   ► and they said, "Hey, this thing sounds good.

00:47:43 ◼   ► "It sounds as good or better than the Sonos,"

00:47:45 ◼   ► which was the thing Apple held up as sounding good.

00:47:47 ◼   ► But the pitch of HomePod is,

00:47:50 ◼   ► unlike those two other devices,

00:47:51 ◼   ► This one sounds good and is smart, right?

00:47:55 ◼   ► Apple itself is saying, we're making a device

00:47:57 ◼   ► that combines the best of these two things.

00:47:59 ◼   ► So the is smart part is your entree to say, okay, Apple,

00:48:03 ◼   ► you have presented us with HomePod telling us

00:48:05 ◼   ► it is going to be as smart as Echo

00:48:07 ◼   ► and sound as good as Sonos.

00:48:09 ◼   ► Do you think Siri is currently as smart as Echo

00:48:13 ◼   ► or will it be getting better for HomePod?

00:48:15 ◼   ► Because it's not a gotcha question.

00:48:17 ◼   ► Like the product isn't done yet.

00:48:19 ◼   ► Like they did list a bunch of stuff

00:48:21 ◼   ► that it's gonna do on the slide.

00:48:22 ◼   ► Here's all the things that HomePod's gonna do

00:48:24 ◼   ► that are smart, right?

00:48:25 ◼   ► So they put them up there,

00:48:26 ◼   ► but I think it's open question at this point.

00:48:27 ◼   ► Okay, like it gives them an opportunity

00:48:30 ◼   ► to brag about the product they just announced.

00:48:31 ◼   ► They should say, the good answer is,

00:48:34 ◼   ► this is gonna, you know, HomePod is gonna be great.

00:48:36 ◼   ► It's gonna be just as smart as Amazon Echo.

00:48:37 ◼   ► It's gonna do all these things, so on and so forth.

00:48:39 ◼   ► That's the answer to when is Siri gonna get better?

00:48:41 ◼   ► Is it gonna say, okay, when HomePod comes out,

00:48:44 ◼   ► Siri will be much better than it is now,

00:48:46 ◼   ► and they can explain all the reasons why,

00:48:47 ◼   ► or the progress they've made on Siri.

00:48:49 ◼   ► I feel like it's an opening for Apple to brag about the product they just announced.

00:48:53 ◼   ► But in the stuff that they put out in the keynote and in every part of WWDC, the only

00:48:59 ◼   ► thing they demonstrated or pressed on at all was that it sounds good.

00:49:03 ◼   ► And the smartest, they're like, "It'll be smart.

00:49:05 ◼   ► Just trust us.

00:49:06 ◼   ► We'll see."

00:49:07 ◼   ► Which is fine, but now that's what I'm waiting for.

00:49:08 ◼   ► It kind of works out.

00:49:09 ◼   ► If this thing is just a Sonos, if it's just a Sonos with existing Siri built in, I mean,

00:49:13 ◼   ► I guess it's still smarter than Sonos, but is it as smart as Echo?

00:49:17 ◼   ► We'll see.

00:49:18 ◼   ► This is the competitive question for the HomePod.

00:49:21 ◼   ► Apple's pitch is clear,

00:49:22 ◼   ► we have to just see if they can deliver.

00:49:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's the thing, they showed us the HomePod

00:49:27 ◼   ► and they showed us why we should care about it

00:49:30 ◼   ► and why it's cool, but they didn't convince us.

00:49:34 ◼   ► All they said was basically,

00:49:39 ◼   ► "It sounds great, trust us."

00:49:41 ◼   ► And that's cool.

00:49:42 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, the press heard it

00:49:43 ◼   ► and they said it does sound good.

00:49:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, and that's great.

00:49:45 ◼   ► But again, what you're saying is,

00:49:48 ◼   ► that doesn't actually put it above where Sonos is now.

00:49:51 ◼   ► All we have is a vague promise that it has Siri

00:49:54 ◼   ► and it is smart, but they didn't actually show that.

00:49:58 ◼   ► And I think it's mostly because it's pretty clear

00:50:03 ◼   ► that it's pretty far from being done.

00:50:05 ◼   ► - It's not done yet, so it's not like they're hiding it.

00:50:08 ◼   ► If they could have demoed it, they would have.

00:50:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, I would honestly, the fact that it appears

00:50:13 ◼   ► to be in such an early state now,

00:50:15 ◼   ► if they couldn't even demo a single Siri command,

00:50:19 ◼   ► but they say it's gonna be shipping in December,

00:50:21 ◼   ► that actually sounds really aggressive to me.

00:50:23 ◼   ► I would be impressed if they hit that,

00:50:25 ◼   ► because it sure looks like it's a year away.

00:50:28 ◼   ► - Well, otherwise December launches.

00:50:29 ◼   ► Just in time for the holiday, oh, nevermind, March.

00:50:33 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:50:34 ◼   ► - We're sponsored this week by Betterment,

00:50:36 ◼   ► investing made better.

00:50:37 ◼   ► Go to betterment.com/ATP to learn more.

00:50:41 ◼   ► Betterment is a smarter way to invest your money,

00:50:43 ◼   ► providing investing advice through smart technology,

00:50:46 ◼   ► automated investing, and human advisors.

00:50:49 ◼   ► Betterment has changed the industry.

00:50:51 ◼   ► They use the same strategies that financial advisors use

00:50:54 ◼   ► with clients who have millions of dollars,

00:50:56 ◼   ► but they make those strategies available to everyone.

00:50:59 ◼   ► This includes smart rebalancing, global diversification,

00:51:02 ◼   ► tax evasion strategies, and tax harvesting,

00:51:04 ◼   ► and so much more.

00:51:05 ◼   ► And you don't actually have to know

00:51:07 ◼   ► what most of that stuff means,

00:51:08 ◼   ► 'cause they make everything really, really easy.

00:51:10 ◼   ► They've actually won awards

00:51:11 ◼   ► for their wonderful customer experience,

00:51:13 ◼   ► You can actually see how easy it is on the demo account

00:51:16 ◼   ► on their website if you are curious.

00:51:18 ◼   ► Betterment's mission is to help you manage

00:51:20 ◼   ► and grow your investments to build your financial future

00:51:23 ◼   ► and all with very low fees along the way.

00:51:26 ◼   ► So you lose less of your money long term to fees.

00:51:29 ◼   ► 'Cause if you do the math, typical investment fees

00:51:31 ◼   ► and costs can really add up over time.

00:51:34 ◼   ► And Betterment's fees are a fraction of the cost

00:51:36 ◼   ► of other financial services.

00:51:38 ◼   ► For a limited time, you can also sign up for Betterment

00:51:41 ◼   ► to qualify for a free Canary home security system

00:51:43 ◼   ► help secure your home. Terms and conditions do apply to that. And investing involves risk.

00:51:49 ◼   ► To learn more, visit Betterment.com/ATP. That's Betterment.com/ATP. Betterment. Investing

00:51:57 ◼   ► made better.

00:51:58 ◼   ► [Music]

00:51:59 ◼   ► All right. WWDC Keynotes and TVOS. One of you picked up on, and it was not me, a quote.

00:52:09 ◼   ► you'll be hearing a lot more about tvOS later this year, and apparently it's just shy nine

00:52:15 ◼   ► minutes through the keynote. Interesting.

00:52:18 ◼   ► Well first of all, it isn't hard to hear less about tvOS.

00:52:20 ◼   ► It's a lot more, though. We heard something about tvOS. They're like, "Look, dark mode

00:52:26 ◼   ► can turn on automatically at night. That's something, so it's non-zero." And we're going

00:52:30 ◼   ► to be hearing a lot more about it later.

00:52:32 ◼   ► I mean, I guess that means there's going to be new, like, hardware and stuff. Like, I'm

00:52:36 ◼   ► I'm sure there's, you know, it would be nice to see 4K,

00:52:39 ◼   ► it would be nice to see a redesigned remote.

00:52:41 ◼   ► They're probably gonna talk about--

00:52:42 ◼   ► - Oh, a redesigned remote, oh yeah.

00:52:44 ◼   ► - You want them to keep the current one?

00:52:46 ◼   ► - No, I'm just like, I wasn't even daring to think that.

00:52:49 ◼   ► I was just picturing the puck, I'm like,

00:52:50 ◼   ► oh, it'll finally be a puck that supports 4K and HEVC

00:52:53 ◼   ► and there'll be 4K content on the iTunes store.

00:52:55 ◼   ► I didn't dare to even dream that they would fix

00:52:57 ◼   ► that damn remote, but I suppose they could.

00:52:59 ◼   ► - I suspect the Apple TV remote is going to be looked upon

00:53:03 ◼   ► in retrospect the same way the hockey puck mouse is

00:53:06 ◼   ► like the worst design offense of the decade by Apple.

00:53:09 ◼   ► - I really don't think it's that bad.

00:53:11 ◼   ► I will not say it's flawless by any stretch,

00:53:13 ◼   ► but it doesn't bother me near as much as it bothers

00:53:16 ◼   ► pretty much everyone else in the world.

00:53:18 ◼   ► So I will--

00:53:19 ◼   ► - It never did the dented version.

00:53:20 ◼   ► The puck, they tried to like fix it.

00:53:23 ◼   ► They're like, oh, the puck, the puck is a problem.

00:53:24 ◼   ► So they put a little dent in like the button

00:53:27 ◼   ► so you could feel for which side was the top.

00:53:29 ◼   ► They should do that with the Apple TV remote.

00:53:31 ◼   ► Just put a dent in,

00:53:32 ◼   ► I guess you can't do it on the trackpad side.

00:53:33 ◼   ► Put a dent in the bottom side or something

00:53:35 ◼   ► you can feel for, oh god.

00:53:37 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:53:38 ◼   ► - I mean, yeah, it's not great.

00:53:39 ◼   ► I'm not trying to say that it's great and flawless

00:53:41 ◼   ► or anything like that, but I just,

00:53:43 ◼   ► I really don't think it's that bad.

00:53:45 ◼   ► It works okay for me.

00:53:46 ◼   ► - Okay, it is that bad.

00:53:47 ◼   ► - The Puck mouse looked better than the Apple TV remote.

00:53:50 ◼   ► - Your computer was like turning itself off randomly

00:53:52 ◼   ► and you're like, this is fine.

00:53:54 ◼   ► Like, I don't, I think you might need to raise

00:53:57 ◼   ► your expectations a bit of what technology should be,

00:53:59 ◼   ► especially from Apple, you know?

00:54:01 ◼   ► Like, I don't know, I, this--

00:54:02 ◼   ► - I just want everyone to be happy.

00:54:04 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:54:05 ◼   ► - Oh, the thing, I still use the Apple TV every day.

00:54:08 ◼   ► It is our primary TV device.

00:54:10 ◼   ► Like, the only things we ever use our TV for

00:54:12 ◼   ► are the Apple TV and the Switch.

00:54:15 ◼   ► And so it's, I use it all the time,

00:54:17 ◼   ► which is why I'm so critical of it.

00:54:18 ◼   ► Like, one thing I would love to see in tvOS,

00:54:21 ◼   ► and this is the thing, like, they say like,

00:54:22 ◼   ► you know, you'll be hearing more about tvOS later this year.

00:54:25 ◼   ► Actually, all I want is hardware stuff,

00:54:27 ◼   ► like hardware changes.

00:54:29 ◼   ► I basically want a new remote.

00:54:31 ◼   ► 4K would be nice, I don't have a 4K TV yet,

00:54:34 ◼   ► but it's probably gonna happen within the next couple years,

00:54:35 ◼   ► so that would be nice.

00:54:37 ◼   ► And tvOS, and maybe it's the hardware,

00:54:41 ◼   ► maybe it's the software, I don't know.

00:54:43 ◼   ► It's just really slow.

00:54:45 ◼   ► I don't know why.

00:54:47 ◼   ► This is current hardware that isn't that old.

00:54:50 ◼   ► It's so slow.

00:54:52 ◼   ► - I think the remote makes it feel slow.

00:54:54 ◼   ► Because it's clumsy feeling.

00:54:56 ◼   ► So by the way, we always complain about the remote,

00:54:58 ◼   ► and I just wanna reemphasize this again.

00:54:59 ◼   ► Apple TV has the ability to learn remotes,

00:55:02 ◼   ► if you are a lifetime TiVo customer like me and you have extra TiVo remotes hanging around,

00:55:06 ◼   ► you can use an old TiVo remote with the Apple TV and it makes it way better.

00:55:10 ◼   ► But it doesn't have a touchpad obviously, but it has a five-way pad, and I think clumsily

00:55:15 ◼   ► swiping on that touchpad to move the focus feels slower than tap-tapping on a digital

00:55:22 ◼   ► right, left, up, down, center D-pad.

00:55:24 ◼   ► So I attribute some of the slowest in that.

00:55:27 ◼   ► There's more with like, "Hey, I hit the little home button.

00:55:30 ◼   ► how long does it take for me to get out of this app

00:55:32 ◼   ► and go back to the whatever screen?

00:55:34 ◼   ► That also feels slow,

00:55:35 ◼   ► but I attribute a lot of it to the remote.

00:55:37 ◼   ► - Well, and some of it's clearly software.

00:55:38 ◼   ► Some of it is like, you wake up the remote

00:55:41 ◼   ► when you're first sitting down,

00:55:43 ◼   ► and a few seconds later, eventually,

00:55:47 ◼   ► you see the home screen.

00:55:48 ◼   ► Okay, swipe over to the thing you want.

00:55:50 ◼   ► Oh, nothing happened.

00:55:51 ◼   ► Swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe.

00:55:54 ◼   ► Wait, wait, what's going on?

00:55:55 ◼   ► Button, button, button, swipe, swipe, swipe, come on.

00:55:56 ◼   ► Push everything, what's going on?

00:55:58 ◼   ► Wait, wait, wait.

00:55:59 ◼   ► And then boom, everything happens all at once.

00:56:02 ◼   ► It's queued up all that time.

00:56:03 ◼   ► It's like, come on, what year is this?

00:56:06 ◼   ► This device doesn't do that much.

00:56:09 ◼   ► What is it doing?

00:56:11 ◼   ► Is it conserving power all that time that I'm not using it?

00:56:14 ◼   ► Why, it's plugged into the wall.

00:56:16 ◼   ► Like, what is it doing?

00:56:17 ◼   ► I have no idea what it's doing.

00:56:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, the sleep thing is brutal.

00:56:22 ◼   ► I mean, there's no fans in there,

00:56:24 ◼   ► just leaving it on all the time.

00:56:25 ◼   ► I'll take the energy cost if it means

00:56:26 ◼   ► that I don't have to wait for the interminable

00:56:29 ◼   ► seven seconds that it takes to be ready

00:56:31 ◼   ► to respond to my commands.

00:56:32 ◼   ► But obviously that-- - That's the thing.

00:56:33 ◼   ► Why, in 2017, for the most expensive TV-connected box,

00:56:38 ◼   ► why am I ever waiting on the box for anything?

00:56:43 ◼   ► Like, why, when I push the menu button to wake it up,

00:56:47 ◼   ► why does it take more than one second to become ready,

00:56:50 ◼   ► and most of that one second should be waiting

00:56:52 ◼   ► for my TV to recognize the input?

00:56:53 ◼   ► Like, there is no reason it should take any time at all.

00:56:57 ◼   ► It's not doing that much.

00:56:59 ◼   ► I don't have that many apps on it.

00:57:01 ◼   ► I'm using the same like two over and over again,

00:57:02 ◼   ► like Netflix and Plex, that's it.

00:57:05 ◼   ► Like, what is it doing?

00:57:07 ◼   ► - So the other hardware thing that I'm looking forward to

00:57:10 ◼   ► is, as alluded to in the promotion stuff,

00:57:13 ◼   ► hey, output at 24 or 48 or whatever, you know,

00:57:18 ◼   ► different frame rates so that movies can look correct

00:57:21 ◼   ► so it doesn't have to down sample everything or whatever,

00:57:25 ◼   ► do a 3D2 pull down to output everything at 60 hertz.

00:57:28 ◼   ► And that will be great.

00:57:31 ◼   ► I don't know if that's in the cards.

00:57:33 ◼   ► I would assume it is.

00:57:34 ◼   ► But a lot of the things that could potentially--

00:57:36 ◼   ► that we talked about, like why doesn't Apple already do this?

00:57:38 ◼   ► Oh, changing the output frame rate

00:57:41 ◼   ► is annoying because of HDMI.

00:57:44 ◼   ► And it's not an Apple-like experience,

00:57:45 ◼   ► although what Marco just described

00:57:47 ◼   ► isn't exactly an Apple-like experience either.

00:57:50 ◼   ► One possible way to sort of deal with this is the same way LCD TVs dealt with this in

00:57:56 ◼   ► the past and probably still do is to just pick a really high frame rate that's a multiple

00:58:01 ◼   ► of 24.

00:58:02 ◼   ► It doesn't, you know, you still, ideally you should be able to support any reasonable frame

00:58:06 ◼   ► rate, but if you could just get 24, 60, and 30 or something, that would go a long way.

00:58:14 ◼   ► So I am looking forward to that.

00:58:15 ◼   ► But there's a lot of things that I would like to watch.

00:58:17 ◼   ► Like I had bought a Blu-ray drive a while back because it was cheap to rip Blu-rays

00:58:24 ◼   ► so I was like, "Oh, well, I have all this storage space.

00:58:26 ◼   ► Why don't I losslessly rip them and have a way to watch any movie at Blu-ray quality

00:58:33 ◼   ► through Plex on my TV?"

00:58:35 ◼   ► The problem is I have no device connected to my television that can read a ripped Blu-ray

00:58:41 ◼   ► and play it on my television at the correct 24 frames per second cadence for movies and

00:58:46 ◼   ► So I still have to put the blue area in the drive in my PlayStation 3 by the way

00:58:50 ◼   ► Which does output correct 24 frames per second cadence to my television which does display correctly

00:58:55 ◼   ► And I can watch my movies the way I want to with plastic discs

00:58:58 ◼   ► But I'm just waiting for I maybe I have to wait for a new TV

00:59:02 ◼   ► But it could be that Apple says now we're never gonna support 24 frames per second on your old plastic TV

00:59:06 ◼   ► Get a new 4k TV with

00:59:08 ◼   ► 240 or 120 Hertz refresh and hook it up to a new Apple TV

00:59:12 ◼   ► And that's how we'll deal with it, and I suppose I'll do that like Marco eventually

00:59:16 ◼   ► Fair enough. But yeah, we'll see what the announcements that are forthcoming include.

00:59:22 ◼   ► But apparently, whenever the next Grand Tour season starts, if any of us choose to watch it,

00:59:28 ◼   ► which is debatable… I can tell you one thing, I'm not. So, it's up to you guys if you want to watch

00:59:34 ◼   ► it. I certainly will, but we'll see what happens. But anyway, apparently that'll be on the Apple TV.

00:59:38 ◼   ► I have to reserve all my TV watching time now for Planet of the Apps. Oh, God. I didn't see the

00:59:44 ◼   ► the first one 'cause I'm not an Apple Music subscriber,

00:59:46 ◼   ► but did you guys?

00:59:47 ◼   ► - I haven't watched it.

00:59:48 ◼   ► It's on my to-do list.

00:59:49 ◼   ► I did not do my homework.

00:59:50 ◼   ► I did not watch Planet of the App.

00:59:52 ◼   ► - Really?

00:59:53 ◼   ► - But I do plan to watch it.

00:59:54 ◼   ► I think I should see it just to know what it is

00:59:59 ◼   ► and to know whether I like it or not.

01:00:01 ◼   ► I'm gonna have a somewhat interesting perspective maybe

01:00:04 ◼   ► because I've never seen Shark Tank

01:00:06 ◼   ► or any of the shows like Shark Tank.

01:00:08 ◼   ► So it might be slightly interesting for me to see it,

01:00:11 ◼   ► But based on the reviews from our friends so far,

01:00:14 ◼   ► I don't have high hopes, but I do wanna give it a chance.

01:00:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm gonna need a reason to watch the show.

01:00:21 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:00:22 ◼   ► Right now I don't have a reason,

01:00:24 ◼   ► and everyone who has seen it tells me it's bad,

01:00:26 ◼   ► so until I get a reason, I will just let everyone else

01:00:29 ◼   ► take that bullet for me.

01:00:31 ◼   ► - Fair enough.

01:00:32 ◼   ► All right, iCloud storage prices.

01:00:35 ◼   ► Apple dropped the two terabyte iCloud storage price to $999.

01:00:39 ◼   ► It eliminated the one terabyte option,

01:00:40 ◼   ► so the one terabyte now is two terabytes.

01:00:44 ◼   ► It turns out Jason Snell had that upgrade happen to him.

01:00:47 ◼   ► One of you, it sounds like,

01:00:48 ◼   ► had that upgrade happen as well.

01:00:49 ◼   ► - Yep, came back from WNBC,

01:00:51 ◼   ► pulled up my preference pane on Mac,

01:00:53 ◼   ► hey, guess what, I got two terabytes now.

01:00:55 ◼   ► - Me too. - Merry Christmas.

01:00:56 ◼   ► - And it actually, and you can now share it within families.

01:00:59 ◼   ► So I haven't actually tried this yet,

01:01:01 ◼   ► but Tiff and I have each been paying

01:01:03 ◼   ► for the terabyte plan separately,

01:01:05 ◼   ► and we do have a family account,

01:01:06 ◼   ► so I wanna try to see,

01:01:08 ◼   ► they might have just saved us 10 bucks a month.

01:01:10 ◼   ► - Do you know where you do that?

01:01:11 ◼   ► We mentioned it, I actually mentioned the iCloud

01:01:14 ◼   ► storage sharing on the last show,

01:01:16 ◼   ► but between then and now, I never actually went onto my Mac

01:01:19 ◼   ► and clicked around to try to figure out where you do that.

01:01:21 ◼   ► Do you happen to know?

01:01:22 ◼   ► Is it a family, like managed family in the iCloud preference?

01:01:25 ◼   ► - Sam the Geek in the chat is saying it requires iOS 11,

01:01:28 ◼   ► which probably also means it requires High Sierra.

01:01:31 ◼   ► And so I'm gonna-- - High Sierra.

01:01:33 ◼   ► - So this might be a thing that has to wait till the fall.

01:01:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, oh well.

01:01:38 ◼   ► - Can we also, by the way, this is not in the show notes,

01:01:40 ◼   ► can we reconfirm that High Sierra is a terrible damn name?

01:01:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm still not used to it.

01:01:44 ◼   ► - No, it's awesome.

01:01:46 ◼   ► - Majority rules, it sucks.

01:01:47 ◼   ► Moving on, Andrew Pauls writes regarding the Apple eGPU,

01:01:52 ◼   ► in the slide in the presentation, in the keynote,

01:01:56 ◼   ► according to Andrew, the pictured box

01:01:59 ◼   ► is actually a Sonnet eGFX box.

01:02:02 ◼   ► And we will put a link in the show notes

01:02:04 ◼   ► to the box that we're talking about.

01:02:08 ◼   ► Can you buy this?

01:02:09 ◼   ► So it says sign up for Sonnet online store ship date.

01:02:13 ◼   ► So apparently it is not available yet.

01:02:16 ◼   ► - I mean, you've been able to buy other similar boxes

01:02:18 ◼   ► for a while now.

01:02:19 ◼   ► So it's not like this is a massive thing.

01:02:22 ◼   ► That's all of a sudden brand new.

01:02:24 ◼   ► Maybe different, maybe support for it in the OS

01:02:26 ◼   ► is newer than that, but the actual boxes are nothing new.

01:02:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, people have been hacking this stuff together

01:02:32 ◼   ► ever since Thunderbolt appeared, even Thunderbolt 2.

01:02:34 ◼   ► And by the way, someone wrote in saying that

01:02:37 ◼   ► if you're wondering if Thunderbolt 2

01:02:39 ◼   ► was going to be officially supported by Apple for external GPUs, the answer appears to be

01:02:42 ◼   ► no, Thunderbolt 3 only. So, oh well. And by the way, on that topic, talking about more

01:02:48 ◼   ► things that happened later in the week at WWDC, Apple itself in one of the sessions,

01:02:52 ◼   ► I think it was the AR or the VR thing or something, put up a diagram that, like, with a graph

01:02:58 ◼   ► that in no uncertain terms explained exactly how slow Thunderbolt 3 is compared to, like,

01:03:03 ◼   ► internal cards to say, "All right, so," because it was for programmers, like, you would think,

01:03:08 ◼   ► "Oh, okay, internal GPU, external GPU,

01:03:10 ◼   ► "it doesn't make that much of a difference.

01:03:11 ◼   ► "It's like, it's all good.

01:03:12 ◼   ► "Thunderbolt 3 is really fast."

01:03:14 ◼   ► But it's not.

01:03:15 ◼   ► It's like a quarter of the speed of an internal card.

01:03:17 ◼   ► And maybe your application doesn't need that,

01:03:19 ◼   ► but if you're not careful and you don't realize

01:03:21 ◼   ► that your application is shipping stuff

01:03:23 ◼   ► to and from the card a lot,

01:03:24 ◼   ► you're thinking way slower on external GPU.

01:03:26 ◼   ► And this session was trying to emphasize,

01:03:27 ◼   ► like, this is something you may not have needed

01:03:29 ◼   ► to think about before,

01:03:30 ◼   ► but suddenly now that you're sipping through a smaller straw,

01:03:33 ◼   ► think, you know, you may need to think about it.

01:03:35 ◼   ► Here's how you can, you know, check your application

01:03:37 ◼   ► to see if it's doing this thing.

01:03:38 ◼   ► Apple is not a unified coordinated beast,

01:03:43 ◼   ► so it's very possible that that could have happened

01:03:46 ◼   ► and also that the future Mac Pro comes

01:03:48 ◼   ► with an external GPU or something,

01:03:49 ◼   ► but it seems to me that it would be a much better story,

01:03:52 ◼   ► much better coherent story,

01:03:54 ◼   ► even if it's like a retrospective story

01:03:58 ◼   ► or in hindsight to say.

01:03:59 ◼   ► And that's why the Mac Pro has multiple internal GPUs

01:04:02 ◼   ► because we don't have to worry about

01:04:04 ◼   ► limited Thunderbolt 3 bandwidth.

01:04:05 ◼   ► You've got the full 16 PCI Express lanes

01:04:08 ◼   ► and your apps will just be super fast all the time

01:04:11 ◼   ► and there's your Mac Pro.

01:04:12 ◼   ► I hope that's the case.

01:04:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean that's gotta be the case

01:04:15 ◼   ► 'cause like if that wasn't the case,

01:04:17 ◼   ► the iMac Pro would beat the Mac Pro in GPU throughput.

01:04:20 ◼   ► - Oh, there's no external stuff on the iMac Pro.

01:04:22 ◼   ► It's all in one.

01:04:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, so no, I'm pretty, you know,

01:04:25 ◼   ► the eGPU support is clearly meant for laptops.

01:04:29 ◼   ► Like that's really what this is for.

01:04:30 ◼   ► It's for pro customers who have pro GPU needs

01:04:34 ◼   ► who are using a MacBook Pro, and they want something

01:04:37 ◼   ► they can dock with that has a big GPU for certain things.

01:04:40 ◼   ► But if you're gonna be really pushing it,

01:04:42 ◼   ► the answer is still going to be get a desktop,

01:04:45 ◼   ► and probably get a Mac Pro, or at least an iMac Pro.

01:04:49 ◼   ► - Indeed.

01:04:50 ◼   ► All right, Matthias Bessman writes in

01:04:54 ◼   ► with some nitpicky follow-up, and to his credit,

01:04:57 ◼   ► he actually labeled it himself as nitpicky follow-up.

01:05:01 ◼   ► Apple did actually have a previous Bluetooth keyboard.

01:05:04 ◼   ► How is this not Stephen Hackett that wrote this in? Apple did actually have a Bluetooth

01:05:09 ◼   ► keyboard with a numpad previously. The Apple Wireless keyboard, which is A-1-0-1-6, and

01:05:14 ◼   ► this was in 2003, we will put a Google image search in the show notes for your viewing

01:05:20 ◼   ► pleasure. Apparently it was a thing in the past. And this is in reference to--

01:05:24 ◼   ► >> Do you remember that keyboard? I remember the--I remember seeing--I never bought a Mac

01:05:29 ◼   ► that came with this, but when I was Mac curious for the few years before I bought my first

01:05:33 ◼   ► This was the one that was in the stores that I would that I would play with and then and try it's the one with the

01:05:38 ◼   ► With the white keys and the clear plastic case around them

01:05:42 ◼   ► So I've got one of these of course one sub right this keyboard is most notable for

01:05:49 ◼   ► Being perhaps the most disgusting keyboard Apple has ever made because like the entire top of it is open

01:05:55 ◼   ► It's kind of like a bathtub like a clear plastic bathtub

01:05:58 ◼   ► and the keys are in it and it as like food and gross stuff falls between the keys and the keyboard

01:06:04 ◼   ► you can see it's like a glass bottom boat for the scum of your keyboard you can see all the

01:06:09 ◼   ► crap it is the worst like nothing makes you feel more disgusting than having one of these keyboards

01:06:14 ◼   ► then just like tilting it up and looking at the sides and the bottom like the worst it's amazing

01:06:20 ◼   ► sounds wonderful ever since then they've been opaque for a reason and way thinner like this

01:06:25 ◼   ► giant like look at this thing you believe talk about key travel like the

01:06:28 ◼   ► keys alone are like three times the thickness of the Apple aluminum

01:06:31 ◼   ► keyboards I would still prefer that oh here we go

01:06:34 ◼   ► the keys the keys on this car keyboard were not great by the way like this like

01:06:38 ◼   ► I was using my there's a reason I use my Apple extended to up until RSI stopped

01:06:42 ◼   ► me from doing it this was not a good keyboard in any sense of the word

01:06:46 ◼   ► can we just not get Marco started on keyboards which actually uh

01:06:49 ◼   ► tangential uh real-time follow-up uh my MacBook adorable should arrive tomorrow

01:06:54 ◼   ► Oh, you don't have it yet? Oh, man, I wanted to ask you about it.

01:06:56 ◼   ► No. Yeah, no, not until tomorrow, unfortunately. But, uh, and knowing UPS, it'll be the end of the darn day, which is frustrating.

01:07:02 ◼   ► Of course it will. It'll be like seven o'clock.

01:07:04 ◼   ► Ah, first world problems. Yep, first world problems, if there are any.

01:07:06 ◼   ► Um, okay, moving on. Uh, there was some anonymous feedback about the HomePod "screen," and we're putting that in quotes.

01:07:13 ◼   ► And so to set a little bit of context, there's been a little bit of debate over whether or

01:07:22 ◼   ► not the HomePod has a screen on the top.

01:07:26 ◼   ► And I think that some people had said, like there were some leaks beforehand, that it

01:07:31 ◼   ► either absolutely would or absolutely would not have a screen.

01:07:34 ◼   ► And whatever the leak was doesn't really matter.

01:07:37 ◼   ► And then when it was announced last week, there was a lot of debate over whether or

01:07:42 ◼   ► or not what they showed is or is not a screen.

01:07:45 ◼   ► Because all they really showed was this like Siri waveform

01:07:48 ◼   ► on the top of the device.

01:07:50 ◼   ► This is parallel with like the surface it's resting on,

01:07:53 ◼   ► parallel with the floor.

01:07:55 ◼   ► It's the Siri looking waveform on the top.

01:07:57 ◼   ► Is that really a screen?

01:07:59 ◼   ► Like you could hypothetically present that

01:08:02 ◼   ► just by having some LEDs,

01:08:04 ◼   ► like a handful of larger LED lights

01:08:05 ◼   ► behind some sort of like translucent top.

01:08:09 ◼   ► Can you really interact with that?

01:08:10 ◼   ► Can you show anything on that screen,

01:08:12 ◼   ► or can you only show the waveform and nothing else?

01:08:15 ◼   ► - And also complicating matters,

01:08:16 ◼   ► some people have said that it can also show

01:08:19 ◼   ► a plus and minus for volume control that are touch sensitive.

01:08:23 ◼   ► So there's some speculation about

01:08:25 ◼   ► is it actually a touch screen?

01:08:26 ◼   ► - Right, and so there was some debate about this.

01:08:29 ◼   ► Gruber, I don't remember what side he came down on,

01:08:32 ◼   ► it doesn't really matter, but he said it's one thing.

01:08:34 ◼   ► There's many people who disagreed.

01:08:36 ◼   ► So an anonymous person wrote in and told us the following.

01:08:39 ◼   ► The Siri waveform on the top of the device is an LED array covered by a circular feathered

01:08:43 ◼   ► mask to prevent bleed and a diffuser or two.

01:08:48 ◼   ► Each LED is rather large, about half a centimeter in diameter, arranged in a somewhat circular

01:08:52 ◼   ► pattern.

01:08:53 ◼   ► The purpose is only to display the Siri waveform, but it does change behavior and color based

01:08:58 ◼   ► on the state of Siri and the device.

01:09:01 ◼   ► There are also plus and minus buttons, like Marco was commenting on, for volume control,

01:09:04 ◼   ► which appear during music playback or when hovering your hand over the device.

01:09:08 ◼   ► These work similarly to the waveform in that they are white LEDs covered by a mask and

01:09:12 ◼   ► diffuser.

01:09:13 ◼   ► The entire top panel is covered in glass.

01:09:15 ◼   ► This individual would consider the controls more like capacitive buttons rather than a

01:09:19 ◼   ► full-on display.

01:09:20 ◼   ► However, the entire top panel is capacitive, so gestures could hypothetically be performed

01:09:25 ◼   ► for additional controls, like a tap, double tap, swipe, etc.

01:09:29 ◼   ► And this seems to be true as of what we saw at DubDub.

01:09:33 ◼   ► I don't know where I come down on this.

01:09:37 ◼   ► I don't think it's a screen in the sense that most people mean and that it can show really

01:09:41 ◼   ► anything.

01:09:42 ◼   ► >>Steve - No, I mean, if that's a screen, then the Amazon Echo has a screen. Because

01:09:46 ◼   ► the Echo also has a whole bunch of LEDs on top that show different states.

01:09:49 ◼   ► >>Mark - Right. So, it's like a semantic, I think it comes down to a semantic argument

01:09:56 ◼   ► about what is or is not a screen. And I don't think it really matters, but this was certainly

01:10:00 ◼   ► some interesting feedback about how supposedly this is all wired together under the hood.

01:10:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, that's not a screen,

01:10:07 ◼   ► that's indicator lights.

01:10:09 ◼   ► It's indicating state with lights.

01:10:11 ◼   ► That is very much not a screen.

01:10:13 ◼   ► That might still be very useful.

01:10:15 ◼   ► I mean, the LEDs on the Amazon Echo cylinders

01:10:17 ◼   ► are very useful.

01:10:19 ◼   ► They're quite nice.

01:10:20 ◼   ► They do indicate the state of the device

01:10:21 ◼   ► and they provide useful feedback.

01:10:24 ◼   ► So it's not to say that this is bad.

01:10:27 ◼   ► However, I would never in a million years

01:10:28 ◼   ► say this has a screen.

01:10:29 ◼   ► And I think in this day and age,

01:10:32 ◼   ► I think what we're seeing from this market

01:10:34 ◼   ► is maybe there's something to having a screen.

01:10:38 ◼   ► There are certainly cases where at least having

01:10:40 ◼   ► some kind of screen output would be nice,

01:10:43 ◼   ► such as watching a timer count down.

01:10:45 ◼   ► So it depends.

01:10:47 ◼   ► I think if, this is very early hardware probably.

01:10:51 ◼   ► You know, this is probably why you couldn't even,

01:10:53 ◼   ► you know, demo Siri and stuff on it.

01:10:55 ◼   ► So this could change.

01:10:56 ◼   ► That could be a placeholder.

01:10:58 ◼   ► Maybe the software UI for the final screen

01:11:03 ◼   ► that will be there wasn't ready yet.

01:11:05 ◼   ► And so they just put this thing in there

01:11:07 ◼   ► as a temporary thing to show the demo units

01:11:09 ◼   ► during this listening test and stuff.

01:11:11 ◼   ► We don't actually know yet.

01:11:13 ◼   ► It does seem like a lot of stuff to put in there

01:11:16 ◼   ► and have a big touch panel to then not have

01:11:19 ◼   ► at least a small OLED screen below.

01:11:22 ◼   ► Like I'm thinking basically have it be like,

01:11:24 ◼   ► roughly the capabilities of an Apple Watch face.

01:11:28 ◼   ► Like not having a ton of smarts and lots of apps

01:11:30 ◼   ► but just like some display of some things,

01:11:33 ◼   ► clock, weather, timers, basic stuff like that,

01:11:37 ◼   ► so that when you ask for things, it can be more useful.

01:11:39 ◼   ► That would be nice.

01:11:40 ◼   ► However, if the focus of this is going to remain

01:11:44 ◼   ► pretty much mostly for music,

01:11:46 ◼   ► and then just a little bit for smart home stuff,

01:11:49 ◼   ► basically the way it was presented to us,

01:11:51 ◼   ► then it doesn't maybe need a screen.

01:11:54 ◼   ► Like if the idea of this is to have it

01:11:55 ◼   ► in a big white Ikea room with nothing in it,

01:11:58 ◼   ► and you're looking at it from 10 feet away

01:12:00 ◼   ► when you ask it to play something by Drake or whoever,

01:12:04 ◼   ► I don't know anything about music,

01:12:08 ◼   ► at least modern music, then it wouldn't need a screen,

01:12:12 ◼   ► especially one on top, 'cause you won't be able to see it

01:12:14 ◼   ► from 10 Beat Away.

01:12:16 ◼   ► But if it is going to compete also

01:12:19 ◼   ► in the smart assistant area, which I think it should,

01:12:23 ◼   ► and I would like it to,

01:12:25 ◼   ► then I don't think for a $350 product,

01:12:28 ◼   ► I don't think that's good enough.

01:12:30 ◼   ► I think it should have a small screen

01:12:31 ◼   ► that can actually do things like display timers.

01:12:33 ◼   ► And so I hope this is just a placeholder hardware thing

01:12:37 ◼   ► until they get the final hardware done.

01:12:40 ◼   ► Or it's also possible that this tip is complete garbage

01:12:42 ◼   ► and total BS and maybe that was actually a bitmap screen.

01:12:45 ◼   ► But from the way people were describing it,

01:12:47 ◼   ► who saw it, who had hands on,

01:12:49 ◼   ► or actually nobody had hands on,

01:12:51 ◼   ► but people were like in the room with it.

01:12:53 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:12:55 ◼   ► And from what we saw,

01:12:56 ◼   ► this does sound like a pretty plausible explanation

01:12:59 ◼   ► what that was and why there's now this kind of disagreement

01:13:02 ◼   ► on whether or not it has a screen

01:13:04 ◼   ► because it kind of looks like one,

01:13:06 ◼   ► but this explains it pretty well.

01:13:08 ◼   ► - So does the Echo have a touchpad on top of it?

01:13:10 ◼   ► - No, it has, the whole top of the Echo is a turnable knob

01:13:14 ◼   ► so you can turn it for volume, which is very nice.

01:13:16 ◼   ► - Like physically turnable?

01:13:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it has two physical buttons on top,

01:13:20 ◼   ► a mute and like an action button,

01:13:22 ◼   ► so like if a timer's beeping, you can hit the action button

01:13:24 ◼   ► and it stops it rather than having to say,

01:13:26 ◼   ► "I'll let it (beep) stop."

01:13:27 ◼   ► - So on the Google Home, it seems like they're doing

01:13:29 ◼   ► very similar thing to the Apple thing where it is a bunch of colored LEDs like light-changing

01:13:34 ◼   ► LEDs underneath the diffuser type thing.

01:13:38 ◼   ► And for volume control in the Google Home, you trace out a circle along the line of the

01:13:42 ◼   ► circle of LC.

01:13:43 ◼   ► Basically, it's a touchpad, like a very crude trackpad type thing.

01:13:48 ◼   ► Apple having a whole glass top and, according to this thing, it's to be believed, supporting

01:13:54 ◼   ► not just arbitrary gestures like you would on a trackpad on the glass top of it, but

01:13:59 ◼   ► also apparently like hovering, so it must have proximity detection, like when your hand

01:14:03 ◼   ► gets close to it, the plus and the minuses light up.

01:14:05 ◼   ► Yeah, that definitely makes me think that this is not a temporary piece of hardware,

01:14:10 ◼   ► but like that they, but this is, this is a design that they have done.

01:14:14 ◼   ► Whether this is an earlier design and they have already changed their mind, but they

01:14:17 ◼   ► don't have it manufactured and they're going to put a screen, I'm not sure.

01:14:20 ◼   ► But the second thing is what Margaret has pointed out.

01:14:23 ◼   ► They can't put a screen on this to any great effect unless they totally redesign it, because

01:14:26 ◼   ► a screen that faces the ceiling is better than nothing, but it's pretty crap compared

01:14:31 ◼   ► to the Amazon show thing.

01:14:34 ◼   ► You can't glance at this from across the kitchen to see what your timer is, because you probably

01:14:39 ◼   ► won't even be able to see the top of it to see the timer.

01:14:41 ◼   ► Timer needs to be facing you, preferably multiple timers.

01:14:44 ◼   ► You can't see it at an angle, depending on where you nestle this thing in the corner.

01:14:49 ◼   ► So they need an entirely different device if they're going to go screen, all of which

01:14:52 ◼   ► which makes me think this thing on the top will be a thing that you can gesture and wiggle

01:14:57 ◼   ► your fingers on and have some status information on, but not a thing that Apple expects you

01:15:01 ◼   ► to look at because it's just in the wrong place.

01:15:04 ◼   ► We are sponsored this week by Indochino. Go to Indochino.com and use code ATP to get any

01:15:09 ◼   ► premium suit for just $3.79. Indochino makes made-to-measure suits. You actually take your

01:15:17 ◼   ► measurements and there's these great videos to show you how to do this on their site and

01:15:20 ◼   ► and everything, it's very, very easy to do.

01:15:22 ◼   ► And they custom make a suit.

01:15:24 ◼   ► So you can get a generic off the rack suit.

01:15:27 ◼   ► And it'll probably fit okay.

01:15:29 ◼   ► You know, if you've ever rented a tux for a wedding,

01:15:31 ◼   ► or you've seen this, probably most suits

01:15:34 ◼   ► that most people have are not really tailored,

01:15:36 ◼   ► they're just off the rack.

01:15:38 ◼   ► And they fit you okay at best.

01:15:39 ◼   ► But there's always some part that's a little too baggy,

01:15:42 ◼   ► or a little too tight, or doesn't flatter you well.

01:15:45 ◼   ► So one option you have is you can get them custom tailored.

01:15:47 ◼   ► And that's good, that's better than nothing.

01:15:50 ◼   ► but there's only so much that custom tailoring can do

01:15:53 ◼   ► to a suit that wasn't really made for you.

01:15:55 ◼   ► Indochino has completely made to order suits.

01:15:58 ◼   ► So this is made for you from the start.

01:16:01 ◼   ► So it fits you better, it looks better,

01:16:04 ◼   ► and you feel better in it than anything else ever could.

01:16:07 ◼   ► And everybody looks better when their clothes

01:16:10 ◼   ► are more fit to them.

01:16:12 ◼   ► And Indochino makes this easy at an incredible price

01:16:15 ◼   ► that's available to you.

01:16:16 ◼   ► So you choose all your different fabrics,

01:16:19 ◼   ► Options love health styles linings. There's so many great things you can choose with Indochino

01:16:23 ◼   ► They have suited up hundreds of thousands of people and they are now the largest made-to-measure menswear brand in the world

01:16:30 ◼   ► So you pick what you want you give them your measurements you place your order and it arrives in just a few weeks

01:16:36 ◼   ► This week you can get any premium Indochino suit for just $3.79 at Indochino.com

01:16:42 ◼   ► When using code ATP at checkout

01:16:44 ◼   ► This is 50% off the regular price for suits of this class.

01:16:48 ◼   ► And this is for a made-to-measure premium suit.

01:16:51 ◼   ► You cannot beat that price anywhere.

01:16:53 ◼   ► And shipping is free.

01:16:54 ◼   ► So once again, check out Indochino.com.

01:16:56 ◼   ► Use promo code ATP to get any premium suit

01:17:00 ◼   ► for just $3.79 with free shipping.

01:17:02 ◼   ► This is an incredible deal for a suit

01:17:04 ◼   ► that will fit you better than anything

01:17:05 ◼   ► off the rack ever could.

01:17:06 ◼   ► Thank you so much to Indochino for sponsoring our show.

01:17:09 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

01:17:13 ◼   ► All right, so moving on to iPad, we have a bunch of things to talk about about the iPad,

01:17:17 ◼   ► and some of it we'll cover this week, and I think some of it we'll cover next week,

01:17:20 ◼   ► because we have some food stories to tell.

01:17:22 ◼   ► But a friend of the show, Serenity Caldwell, has written a lot about the iPad, has used

01:17:28 ◼   ► the new iPad quite a bit, and has tweeted about the iPad a fair bit.

01:17:34 ◼   ► So I'm just going to kind of shotgun approach some of the things she's talked about.

01:17:38 ◼   ► One of the things she was speaking of—now, Serenity, if you don't know her, is a very

01:17:41 ◼   ► talented illustrator. I don't know if she's like professionally trained or not,

01:17:45 ◼   ► but to my eyes she's really, really good at it. And so she has some very strong

01:17:49 ◼   ► and good opinions about the pencil in a way that I would never be able to

01:17:54 ◼   ► because I don't know how to draw anything but stick figures. So, Serenity

01:17:57 ◼   ► was saying that the pencil has always been 240 Hertz on both old and new iPad

01:18:04 ◼   ► Pros. Yeah, that's true. It samples at 240 Hertz. Right, but the difference is is that the

01:18:11 ◼   ► the touch input on, and correct me if I get this wrong,

01:18:16 ◼   ► the touch input on the old Pros was much slower

01:18:20 ◼   ► than 120 hertz, is that right?

01:18:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, the touch was sampled at, I believe, only 60,

01:18:25 ◼   ► 'cause touch, I believe, was sampled

01:18:26 ◼   ► with the rest of the display.

01:18:28 ◼   ► Only the pencil was sampled at the super high rate, I think.

01:18:31 ◼   ► I know at least the pencil was,

01:18:33 ◼   ► but I think only the pencil was.

01:18:35 ◼   ► And then also the frame rate of the display,

01:18:37 ◼   ► of the entire UI, was 60 frames per second.

01:18:40 ◼   ► I think she's saying that touch was 120.

01:18:42 ◼   ► Okay, so no matter, it says in her tweet, you know, so it's the difference between input

01:18:46 ◼   ► and output.

01:18:47 ◼   ► Touch input was 120, pencil 240, but output was only 60.

01:18:49 ◼   ► So there you go.

01:18:51 ◼   ► The point we're driving at is the particular numbers don't actually matter that much.

01:18:54 ◼   ► It's just, the point is just that it's all better now.

01:18:57 ◼   ► So, so Serenity continues, you know, "That was great info for predicting lines in touch,

01:19:01 ◼   ► but it couldn't render the input at the rate it was being given.

01:19:05 ◼   ► With these new pros, the screen can now output at 120 hertz.

01:19:09 ◼   ► So it touches at par, pencil input is closer to par, less prediction and more accuracy.

01:19:15 ◼   ► And so there's a series of tweets that we'll put in the show notes talking about all of

01:19:20 ◼   ► this.

01:19:21 ◼   ► And one of them, if I open these up, I believe has a video.

01:19:25 ◼   ► Do we have that here?

01:19:26 ◼   ► The video of her showing the difference between the two different devices, the old iPad Pro

01:19:34 ◼   ► and the new one.

01:19:35 ◼   ► If we don't have that in the show notes, then I'll try to dig it up.

01:19:37 ◼   ► But it's just, in summary, it's damned impressive.

01:19:41 ◼   ► It really, really is.

01:19:42 ◼   ► It's super duper impressive.

01:19:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, this is the kind of thing that I,

01:19:46 ◼   ► I wish I used the pencil more.

01:19:48 ◼   ► I wish I had that kind of sensibility and habit.

01:19:51 ◼   ► I don't, but I wish I did,

01:19:53 ◼   ► because seeing Serenity do stuff with it

01:19:55 ◼   ► in person that everybody see, like, wow.

01:19:57 ◼   ► It's like, I mean, first of all, like, yeah,

01:19:59 ◼   ► she's really good.

01:20:00 ◼   ► And that's, you know, typically it's like, you know,

01:20:02 ◼   ► the talent of the person is way more important

01:20:04 ◼   ► than the tools in most of these things.

01:20:06 ◼   ► but just as a nerd looking at the tools,

01:20:08 ◼   ► wow, they're impressive.

01:20:11 ◼   ► I could not believe the latency

01:20:14 ◼   ► and just the smoothness of it.

01:20:17 ◼   ► It is incredible.

01:20:20 ◼   ► And if you are a heavy pencil user,

01:20:23 ◼   ► I highly suggest you consider upgrading your iPad

01:20:28 ◼   ► because it is remarkably different.

01:20:31 ◼   ► Like I was able to see it side by side

01:20:33 ◼   ► And it really is a big difference.

01:20:37 ◼   ► Don't tell my wife, because then I'll have to buy another iPad.

01:20:39 ◼   ► So the sample rate thing, it may seem weird to people

01:20:43 ◼   ► that both the previous and the new iPads

01:20:46 ◼   ► are sampling at a faster rate than the screen could display.

01:20:50 ◼   ► Because it's true of both of them, because the pencil's at 240,

01:20:52 ◼   ► and now the screen is only at 120.

01:20:54 ◼   ► And back then, the pencil was 240, and the screen was only 60.

01:20:57 ◼   ► What good is it to sample if your output is only

01:21:00 ◼   ► a fraction of that frame rate?

01:21:02 ◼   ► And as Serenity points out, it's about knowing

01:21:04 ◼   ► where the implement, whether it be your finger or the pencil,

01:21:08 ◼   ► is so you can make predictions about the line.

01:21:10 ◼   ► It's kind of like client-side prediction in first-person

01:21:12 ◼   ► shooters in that you want it to feel like there is less latency

01:21:16 ◼   ► than there is.

01:21:17 ◼   ► And so as the pencil is gliding along,

01:21:20 ◼   ► even though you don't get to display this frame,

01:21:22 ◼   ► and you don't get to display this frame,

01:21:23 ◼   ► but you're sampling it fast enough that you know,

01:21:25 ◼   ► OK, now I know where it is, and then time to render this frame.

01:21:29 ◼   ► And so it reduces the perceived latency.

01:21:31 ◼   ► And Serenity's numbers were 20 milliseconds versus 50.

01:21:35 ◼   ► So the old pencil was 50 milliseconds.

01:21:37 ◼   ► The new one is 20.

01:21:39 ◼   ► And the pencil is being sampled at exactly the same rate,

01:21:41 ◼   ► 240 hertz on both the old and the new.

01:21:43 ◼   ► The difference is all about the display

01:21:45 ◼   ► can now refresh more frequently.

01:21:47 ◼   ► And once again, referring to that, what was it,

01:21:50 ◼   ► the Microsoft video with their little test demo device

01:21:52 ◼   ► where they can scale the latency from like 100 to 10 to one.

01:21:57 ◼   ► So this halved the latency less than, you know,

01:21:59 ◼   ► So it was cut in half even more, more than half.

01:22:03 ◼   ► How close are we to an actual pencil,

01:22:08 ◼   ► which is zero milliseconds latency?

01:22:10 ◼   ► In the demo video, we'll put a link in the show notes,

01:22:15 ◼   ► 10 milliseconds still feels better than,

01:22:20 ◼   ► then obviously better than 100 and probably better than 20.

01:22:23 ◼   ► One millisecond looks a lot better than 10.

01:22:26 ◼   ► So if you wanna say like,

01:22:27 ◼   ► how close are we for this being just like real pencil?

01:22:30 ◼   ► We're getting close, but we're still

01:22:33 ◼   ► an order of magnitude off.

01:22:34 ◼   ► We're still 20 versus one.

01:22:36 ◼   ► So hold on tight for, I guess, five years from now,

01:22:41 ◼   ► we can get it down from 20 milliseconds to five

01:22:43 ◼   ► or something, and we'll start to be in the ballpark,

01:22:45 ◼   ► and then things start to get really interesting.

01:22:47 ◼   ► - Also, one more reason why you want to sample the pencil

01:22:51 ◼   ► at a faster rate than the display possibly

01:22:54 ◼   ► is that if you're making, if you're drawing very,

01:22:58 ◼   ► very like big lines quickly, so like you're moving,

01:23:01 ◼   ► there's a lot of motion happening,

01:23:03 ◼   ► if you're only sampling it at 60 hertz,

01:23:05 ◼   ► you might, or even 120 hertz, like,

01:23:08 ◼   ► if you're drawing really fast, big squiggly lines,

01:23:12 ◼   ► the number of points that you're capturing

01:23:15 ◼   ► might be further apart than the pixels,

01:23:18 ◼   ► and so you have to then, if you're drawing a line,

01:23:20 ◼   ► like from the software side, you just have to interpolate,

01:23:23 ◼   ► you have to say, "All right, well, it went from this dot

01:23:25 ◼   ► "to this dot, and we'll assume it's gonna be a smooth curve

01:23:27 ◼   ► "between those two dots."

01:23:29 ◼   ► And the higher sampling rate is,

01:23:31 ◼   ► the less interpolation you have to do,

01:23:34 ◼   ► and the more you're actually capturing

01:23:36 ◼   ► what the movement was that the artist was doing

01:23:39 ◼   ► if they're making a really big, fast stroke.

01:23:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it takes time to render frames, too.

01:23:43 ◼   ► So you always have to pick, like,

01:23:44 ◼   ► "Okay, tell me where all the inputs are,

01:23:46 ◼   ► "'cause I'm gonna start doing the work to draw the screen."

01:23:49 ◼   ► And then it says, "Okay, I got all your inputs."

01:23:51 ◼   ► And that input, if it was exactly the same frame rate

01:23:54 ◼   ► as the screen, you might fall on a boundary where like,

01:23:56 ◼   ► oh, I would have liked to wait three more milliseconds

01:23:59 ◼   ► and get the next input.

01:24:00 ◼   ► And that would be a better prediction,

01:24:03 ◼   ► but it turns out they weren't lined up in the,

01:24:06 ◼   ► video games have a lot of problems with this,

01:24:07 ◼   ► like in terms of the game engine,

01:24:09 ◼   ► trying to get its work done at just the right time

01:24:12 ◼   ► to give the rest of the system time

01:24:13 ◼   ► to render out that frame.

01:24:14 ◼   ► You don't want big gaps.

01:24:15 ◼   ► And this is also in the AR/VR things

01:24:18 ◼   ► where they put up a big, like,

01:24:19 ◼   ► sort of like a Gantt chart in Microsoft project

01:24:22 ◼   ► of like all the different things

01:24:23 ◼   ► that are happening in the system.

01:24:24 ◼   ► And you don't wanna have big gaps there.

01:24:25 ◼   ► You want everything to finish just in time

01:24:27 ◼   ► to get the optimal frame rate output

01:24:29 ◼   ► for the optimal experience.

01:24:30 ◼   ► And same thing with those,

01:24:32 ◼   ► was it the Nvidia, I think, G-Sync thing

01:24:34 ◼   ► where they try to synchronize the refresh of the monitor

01:24:37 ◼   ► with the game engine, again, to reduce those gaps.

01:24:39 ◼   ► So you get a smoother tear-free drawing

01:24:43 ◼   ► at variable frame rates,

01:24:44 ◼   ► instead of having like a 60 hertz vertical

01:24:46 ◼   ► blanking interval, holdover from the CRT days, doing away with that and trying to get the

01:24:50 ◼   ► engine and the screen all on the same page. Having more samples also makes it more likely

01:24:56 ◼   ► that you will be able to get a recent input close to the optimal window for handing off

01:25:02 ◼   ► to the system to render and display.

01:25:05 ◼   ► Yeah, and speaking of those sorts of things, Joel LeBlanc writes in and saying, "People

01:25:10 ◼   ► People are preferring 120Hz displays and blind tests, and this appears to be gamer-related.

01:25:17 ◼   ► In fact, the actual title, vast majority of gamers prefer 120Hz monitors.

01:25:22 ◼   ► But people like them.

01:25:23 ◼   ► Although, did you use it somewhere?

01:25:25 ◼   ► I feel like I heard some people saying that it kind of made them a little queasy, which

01:25:29 ◼   ► is interesting.

01:25:30 ◼   ► I, hypothetically, may have seen one of these iPads very briefly, and I liked it, but I

01:25:35 ◼   ► haven't used it for a long time.

01:25:36 ◼   ► Marco, you received yours today?

01:25:38 ◼   ► Yesterday?

01:25:39 ◼   ► >> Yes, yesterday.

01:25:40 ◼   ► okay and what do you think it is ridiculously good. It is so

01:25:46 ◼   ► good, not only is it faster than john's mac pro, but it is

01:25:50 ◼   ► it is just so good in so many ways, so you know i'm not a

01:25:58 ◼   ► heavy ipad user. I use my ipad lightly, but frequently like I

01:26:03 ◼   ► sold my old one on twitter about twenty four hours before

01:26:06 ◼   ► my new one was going to arrive. So I went like twenty four

01:26:09 ◼   ► without having an iPad, and I actually really missed it.

01:26:12 ◼   ► And I never thought, like two years ago,

01:26:13 ◼   ► I never would have guessed that I would be in that state.

01:26:17 ◼   ► What really changed the iPad for me,

01:26:18 ◼   ► what, you know, and for everyone this is a different thing,

01:26:22 ◼   ► but what really made me get the iPad finally after years

01:26:27 ◼   ► was the combination of having really great speakers

01:26:30 ◼   ► and the smart keyboard, and basically leaving

01:26:33 ◼   ► the smart keyboard permanently attached,

01:26:35 ◼   ► combined with really great speakers,

01:26:36 ◼   ► so that it basically became my kitchen computer

01:26:40 ◼   ► because it plays podcasts.

01:26:41 ◼   ► I can look stuff up.

01:26:42 ◼   ► If I'm cooking off of a recipe online,

01:26:44 ◼   ► I can hold the recipe there.

01:26:46 ◼   ► I can browse the web while I'm waiting for coffee to roast.

01:26:49 ◼   ► And like having it always in the keyboard

01:26:52 ◼   ► made that difference for me,

01:26:54 ◼   ► and having the great speakers made it,

01:26:55 ◼   ► by far, the best podcast player

01:26:58 ◼   ► that you can have in a kitchen,

01:27:00 ◼   ► because, you know, Overcast,

01:27:02 ◼   ► you know, the experience of using Overcast

01:27:04 ◼   ► something like Sonos or Alexa is not great and and using the app is always

01:27:09 ◼   ► going to be better than that by a mile and the speakers are really good and the

01:27:12 ◼   ► keyword puts it up in a nice position for like standing up at counter use so

01:27:17 ◼   ► it's just great I I very much enjoy the iPad for that and then like you know if

01:27:22 ◼   ► we're like watching some you know low mental effort TV at night I will bring

01:27:27 ◼   ► the iPad over to the couch and it'll be my couch computer like what everyone

01:27:30 ◼   ► else in the world has done for years.

01:27:32 ◼   ► So this is basically me discovering what everyone else

01:27:35 ◼   ► discovered with the iPad a long time ago.

01:27:37 ◼   ► So anyway, I now like the iPad.

01:27:39 ◼   ► Even though I'm not using it to get much work done,

01:27:41 ◼   ► I do enjoy it as a basic entertainment device

01:27:45 ◼   ► and a light work device.

01:27:49 ◼   ► Anyway, so the new hardware is ridiculously awesome.

01:27:53 ◼   ► - Would you say it's blow away?

01:27:56 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:27:59 ◼   ► In general, you're not waiting for anything.

01:28:02 ◼   ► And I'm using the iOS 11 beta.

01:28:04 ◼   ► First thing I did was install the beta,

01:28:06 ◼   ► because I was using it on my other one

01:28:07 ◼   ► because this is clearly something that I want to be in.

01:28:11 ◼   ► I want to get used to it, I want to learn it.

01:28:14 ◼   ► And the iOS 11 beta is buggy and slow

01:28:17 ◼   ► and slaughters the battery.

01:28:18 ◼   ► Nobody should be using the iOS 11 beta.

01:28:21 ◼   ► I am using it, but nobody should.

01:28:25 ◼   ► It is a terrible idea to put this beta on any device

01:28:28 ◼   ► that you rely on or care about at all.

01:28:30 ◼   ► It also apparently has been breaking some people's devices.

01:28:32 ◼   ► So again, I really don't recommend

01:28:34 ◼   ► that anybody install the beta, but I did,

01:28:37 ◼   ► and so I can't really judge things like battery life.

01:28:41 ◼   ► And even performance, like the beta is really slow,

01:28:44 ◼   ► and it was really slow on my old iPad,

01:28:45 ◼   ► but on the new one, it's like substantially noticeably faster

01:28:49 ◼   ► because the hardware is so much better.

01:28:51 ◼   ► If you do anything heavy on the iPad,

01:28:54 ◼   ► any, if you were just a heavy iPad user,

01:28:57 ◼   ► I strongly suggest you check it out.

01:28:59 ◼   ► And this is, I should clarify also, this is the 10.5.

01:29:02 ◼   ► I did not get the 12.9 because,

01:29:04 ◼   ► for my aforementioned use of basically like

01:29:06 ◼   ► casual plus light work,

01:29:08 ◼   ► I think even the 12.9 fans would agree

01:29:11 ◼   ► that the 10.5 is the size to get for that.

01:29:14 ◼   ► The 12.9 is the size to get if you are a heavy

01:29:16 ◼   ► iPad productivity user and you want two full screen apps

01:29:19 ◼   ► side by side on a regular basis,

01:29:21 ◼   ► and you don't really need to carry it around a whole lot,

01:29:25 ◼   ► then the 12.9 is for you.

01:29:26 ◼   ► but that's not gonna be most people.

01:29:28 ◼   ► Most people, the 10.5 is the size to get.

01:29:30 ◼   ► And this is all, everything I've just said

01:29:32 ◼   ► is not even mentioning the 120 hertz display.

01:29:36 ◼   ► But let me tell you, when you see the 120 hertz display,

01:29:40 ◼   ► it ruins everything else for you forever.

01:29:45 ◼   ► It is as big to a lot of people, I think,

01:29:48 ◼   ► or will be as big to a lot of people