ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► Out of curiosity, and you can choose not to answer this, what did we conclude with regard

00:00:03 ◼   ► to headgear for the live show?

00:00:05 ◼   ► Did we ever reach a conclusion?

00:00:06 ◼   ► You have to wear your retainer, Casey.

00:00:08 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm definitely wearing headphones.

00:00:10 ◼   ► I don't care how nerdy I look.

00:00:12 ◼   ► You guys are welcome to make that choice for yourselves.

00:00:15 ◼   ► You should have headphones available for us.

00:00:18 ◼   ► Put them on the table in front of us.

00:00:19 ◼   ► We can choose to put them on or not.

00:00:20 ◼   ► It really, for me, it depends on whether it's weird for me not to be able to hear myself

00:00:24 ◼   ► or whether just the in-room speakers will be enough and hear in the audience.

00:00:28 ◼   ► So I'll just I'm gonna make the call at the moment to see what it's like. I'm gonna try it without first

00:00:32 ◼   ► And if it's weird, I'll put them on

00:00:34 ◼   ► Okay

00:00:34 ◼   ► So what I'm hearing is I will bring a pair of scissors and hundreds of dollars to refund Marco for the headphone

00:00:41 ◼   ► The headphones that I break if John tries to put them on no, I thought myself not gonna put them on you

00:00:46 ◼   ► I know but it but if you put them on and Marco has them on what am I gonna be the lone cool kid?

00:00:51 ◼   ► No, you can totally you're your own person you I'm not the boss of you. You do what you want with your own head

00:00:57 ◼   ► Ian McDowell writes in, this is, he is not an Apple genius, but apparently heard from an Apple genius, if I understand this correctly,

00:01:05 ◼   ► that the key caps on the new scissor key keyboards are not removable,

00:01:11 ◼   ► dirt commonly gets under the keys, and they now have special tools in the stores to help fix them.

00:01:16 ◼   ► I would love to know what the special tools are. Is it like tiny nano machines that they send in through those little cracks between the keys,

00:01:23 ◼   ► and then they grab little pieces of dirt and come out?

00:01:26 ◼   ► - Actually, it's a magical school bus

00:01:29 ◼   ► that they drive through and use to clean things up.

00:01:32 ◼   ► Speaking of the keyboard and cleaning it,

00:01:35 ◼   ► there is actually, did Stephen Hackett send this to us?

00:01:39 ◼   ► Somebody sent this to us.

00:01:41 ◼   ► There is actually a Knowledge Base article,

00:01:42 ◼   ► so I'll just assume it was Stephen,

00:01:44 ◼   ► that's entitled Clean the Keyboard of Your MacBook

00:01:46 ◼   ► Retina 12-inch 2015 and Later.

00:01:49 ◼   ► And it describes holding your MacBook

00:01:52 ◼   ► at exactly a 75-degree angle.

00:01:54 ◼   ► - Exactly, this is very important.

00:01:55 ◼   ► hold it at 80 this does not work. Forget 90, forget it, what are you even doing? 75.

00:02:00 ◼   ► Obviously I'm joking, but it really does show a 75 degree angle and with a little

00:02:05 ◼   ► diagram of what that looks like. I mean it's kind of... I don't know if that's really 75.

00:02:09 ◼   ► Someone get out your protractor. But anyway, they're very insistent about the

00:02:12 ◼   ► degree. Yeah, and so then you use compressed air to spray the keyboard or

00:02:15 ◼   ► just the effective keys in a left-to-right motion. Very important. Then

00:02:20 ◼   ► rotate your MacBook to its right side and spray the keyboard again from left

00:02:24 ◼   ► to right and they have a little diagram.

00:02:25 ◼   ► - You rotate it to your left side, this will not work.

00:02:27 ◼   ► Warranty voided.

00:02:29 ◼   ► - Right, exactly.

00:02:30 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:02:31 ◼   ► So anyway, so yeah, they have this whole process

00:02:33 ◼   ► that apparently amounts to blow crap out

00:02:35 ◼   ► from under the key caps.

00:02:37 ◼   ► And that is an actual knowledge base article.

00:02:39 ◼   ► - So in the time since our last show,

00:02:42 ◼   ► I have my whole rant about the heat and the keys, right?

00:02:46 ◼   ► That was last--

00:02:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, the expanding, like when it gets warmer weather,

00:02:49 ◼   ► you thought maybe the keys are expanding

00:02:51 ◼   ► and filling the openings more and getting stuck.

00:02:53 ◼   ► - So I've actually, so I went on a little Twitter rant

00:02:56 ◼   ► about this almost a week ago, and I heard from a lot

00:03:01 ◼   ► of people who have computers with the new keyboards,

00:03:05 ◼   ► and it actually seems like this might not be as much

00:03:07 ◼   ► of an issue on the MacBook One's keyboard,

00:03:10 ◼   ► the first generation of this on the 12 inch,

00:03:12 ◼   ► but it seems like this is a major issue for a lot of people,

00:03:16 ◼   ► and you know, and when I say a lot of people,

00:03:18 ◼   ► I'm saying like I've heard from a lot of people on Twitter.

00:03:20 ◼   ► That doesn't mean that like a large percentage

00:03:23 ◼   ► of customers have this problem, only Apple knows that.

00:03:26 ◼   ► But it certainly seems like this is a noteworthy problem

00:03:29 ◼   ► that keys get stuck or feel different or get stuck down

00:03:34 ◼   ► or repeat or somehow don't work properly.

00:03:39 ◼   ► On a pretty regular basis with a lot of these keyboards,

00:03:41 ◼   ► a lot of people have to get them replaced.

00:03:43 ◼   ► And also, it seems to be related to heat.

00:03:47 ◼   ► That when they are warm, either when the computer

00:03:50 ◼   ► is working really hard, so it's getting warm,

00:03:52 ◼   ► or if you're just in a hot environment,

00:03:55 ◼   ► like I was when I was having this problem,

00:03:56 ◼   ► I was outside on a hot day.

00:03:58 ◼   ► And the keys tend to stick a lot more then.

00:04:01 ◼   ► And so I don't know enough about the way these are built

00:04:04 ◼   ► to know why that is.

00:04:06 ◼   ► Some of the Twitter people were speculating

00:04:07 ◼   ► that maybe the tolerances are so tight

00:04:09 ◼   ► that maybe a little bit of thermal expansion

00:04:11 ◼   ► is enough to make it not work properly, I don't know.

00:04:14 ◼   ► But it does seem like that's kind of a problem,

00:04:17 ◼   ► if that's true.

00:04:18 ◼   ► That seems like a big problem.

00:04:19 ◼   ► So I don't really know what the answer here is.

00:04:24 ◼   ► I hope that Apple is doing so many replacements

00:04:28 ◼   ► of these keyboards under warranty

00:04:29 ◼   ► that it motivates them to change things if they can.

00:04:32 ◼   ► The only question is can they?

00:04:35 ◼   ► Or are they gonna have to wait until the next major revision

00:04:37 ◼   ► of the keyboard in new laptops entirely?

00:04:41 ◼   ► And everyone who owns this generation

00:04:43 ◼   ► might just be out of luck and just might have to

00:04:45 ◼   ► get frequent keyboard replacements.

00:04:47 ◼   ► And I hope that's not the answer

00:04:48 ◼   ► because that's not a good answer.

00:04:50 ◼   ► And as an owner of one of these,

00:04:51 ◼   ► I'm really not happy with this.

00:04:54 ◼   ► The idea that I'm gonna have to bring it to Apple

00:04:59 ◼   ► at least once and go without it for like a week

00:05:02 ◼   ► at least once to get this keyboard fixed

00:05:04 ◼   ► if I want it to work reliably,

00:05:06 ◼   ► that is not very appealing to me

00:05:08 ◼   ► 'cause I buy a laptop because I need a laptop.

00:05:11 ◼   ► And going without it for a week

00:05:12 ◼   ► is usually not very convenient.

00:05:14 ◼   ► Not to mention having to get an appointment with Apple

00:05:17 ◼   ► or call them and wait on the phone

00:05:18 ◼   ► and do mail order or whatever else,

00:05:21 ◼   ► like none of these are good options.

00:05:22 ◼   ► None of these are great solutions

00:05:24 ◼   ► to what should be a pretty basic thing,

00:05:26 ◼   ► which is I expect the keyboard

00:05:27 ◼   ► and my laptops to work reliably.

00:05:30 ◼   ► And this is all like feeling aside,

00:05:32 ◼   ► like we've talked at length about how much we like

00:05:36 ◼   ► or dislike, mostly dislike, the new shallow keyboards,

00:05:41 ◼   ► and I've heard from people who defend them,

00:05:44 ◼   ► who like the feel, and that's fine.

00:05:45 ◼   ► It's a personal preference.

00:05:47 ◼   ► the feel of the keyboard doesn't bother me

00:05:48 ◼   ► as much as it used to, now that I've used it for a while.

00:05:51 ◼   ► But what does bother me is reliability being bad.

00:05:54 ◼   ► And I think regardless of what you think

00:05:57 ◼   ► of the feel of the keyboard,

00:05:59 ◼   ► I think we can probably all agree

00:06:01 ◼   ► that an unreliable keyboard in a laptop,

00:06:04 ◼   ► especially such a young laptop, is really worrying.

00:06:09 ◼   ► If it was just me, then that's fine.

00:06:12 ◼   ► And you can disregard it, I would disregard it,

00:06:14 ◼   ► as well, I got a bad keyboard, you know,

00:06:15 ◼   ► to get it fixed.

00:06:17 ◼   ► But from what I keep hearing from people

00:06:19 ◼   ► over and over and over again when I bring this up,

00:06:22 ◼   ► a lot of people have had to get multiple replacements

00:06:25 ◼   ► and the replacements have the same problem.

00:06:28 ◼   ► And so it just seems like it's a design flaw.

00:06:30 ◼   ► And that's a pretty big design flaw.

00:06:31 ◼   ► I hope that this is smaller than it seems.

00:06:36 ◼   ► I hope that I can just get it replaced once

00:06:39 ◼   ► and then have a reliable laptop keyboard

00:06:41 ◼   ► for the next one to four years that I use this laptop,

00:06:44 ◼   ► whatever it ends up being.

00:06:47 ◼   ► I hope that's it, but so far what I have heard

00:06:50 ◼   ► is discouraging in that area.

00:06:51 ◼   ► It sounds like this might just be a problem

00:06:53 ◼   ► with this entire generation of keyboards

00:06:55 ◼   ► that's in the 2016 MacBook Pro.

00:06:58 ◼   ► - I think this is solvable if Apple figures out

00:07:01 ◼   ► what the problem is.

00:07:02 ◼   ► Like they diagnose this and they figure it out

00:07:05 ◼   ► and say aha, if we change the design in this way,

00:07:08 ◼   ► change a different material, make little bits of the key

00:07:12 ◼   ► differently shaped or larger or smaller or whatever it takes to make the keycaps themselves

00:07:16 ◼   ► slightly smaller.

00:07:17 ◼   ► This all seems like something that could be solved by, kind of like they did with the

00:07:20 ◼   ► screen image retention, where it's like, "Oh, we sold you a bunch of Retina MacBook Pros,

00:07:26 ◼   ► and if you got the LG screen or the Samsung screen" — I can't even remember which one

00:07:29 ◼   ► was the bad one — "you might have image retention problems."

00:07:31 ◼   ► They don't fix it by giving you another one of the same screen than in image retention

00:07:35 ◼   ► problems.

00:07:36 ◼   ► They give you a different, better screen that still fulfills the same purpose, has the same

00:07:40 ◼   ► resolution and the same characteristics, but doesn't have burning, but it's like a different

00:07:43 ◼   ► part.

00:07:44 ◼   ► Either a new part from the same maker or a part from a different manufacturer.

00:07:46 ◼   ► So if they figure this out with a keyboard, they will make a new keyboard that fits these

00:07:50 ◼   ► things and when you come in for a repair, they'll replace it with the new version.

00:07:54 ◼   ► It's just a question of how long it takes them to figure out what the heck the problem

00:07:58 ◼   ► is, assuming it even is a problem according to their numbers.

00:08:01 ◼   ► Well first of all, to save you a bunch of email, Image Retention 15" 2012 Retina Mapbook

00:08:07 ◼   ► Pro screens, they didn't guarantee that you got a better one.

00:08:10 ◼   ► Like, the LG was the problem, the Samsung was the good one.

00:08:12 ◼   ► When you got it replaced, you could get either one.

00:08:15 ◼   ► It was just kind of dumb luck which one you got.

00:08:16 ◼   ► And you just hope that you got the Samsung panel.

00:08:18 ◼   ► - Well, but they could do that.

00:08:20 ◼   ► Like, if they know one's good and one's bad,

00:08:22 ◼   ► assuming that's even true.

00:08:23 ◼   ► Like, that's our conventional wisdom of like,

00:08:25 ◼   ► oh, if you got this one, you're okay,

00:08:26 ◼   ► and if you got this one, you're not.

00:08:28 ◼   ► But assuming they know one is better,

00:08:30 ◼   ► they have the option, what I'm saying is,

00:08:31 ◼   ► they have the option of getting one.

00:08:32 ◼   ► They don't have to redesign the thing,

00:08:33 ◼   ► you don't have to wait for the next model.

00:08:35 ◼   ► If Apple knows, replace this part with this other part that is different and it will fix

00:08:39 ◼   ► the problem, they have the ability to do that.

00:08:42 ◼   ► You're not out of luck, is what I'm saying with this thing.

00:08:44 ◼   ► You don't have to wait until you buy the next computer.

00:08:46 ◼   ► You don't have to return this one and get a different one.

00:08:48 ◼   ► You just need Apple to A, make an improved thing and B, actually give it to you when

00:08:52 ◼   ► they replace it.

00:08:55 ◼   ► When it comes to moving along with Apple, moving along with the newest technologies

00:08:59 ◼   ► and getting the newest stuff and keeping up with Apple, you have to swallow some things.

00:09:04 ◼   ► You have to, okay, yeah, I guess I'll get rid

00:09:06 ◼   ► of my headphone jack.

00:09:08 ◼   ► I guess I can get rid of all my ports

00:09:10 ◼   ► and my SD card reader and everything else.

00:09:12 ◼   ► And a lot of these things are easier or harder to swallow.

00:09:15 ◼   ► Having a keyboard not be reliable is a massive problem.

00:09:22 ◼   ► I don't care what you think of this keyboard.

00:09:24 ◼   ► Having it not be reliable for almost everyone who buys one,

00:09:29 ◼   ► that is unacceptable.

00:09:30 ◼   ► That is not a trade-off,

00:09:32 ◼   ► that is not moving towards the future,

00:09:33 ◼   ► that is not, like, there's no excuse for that.

00:09:36 ◼   ► That is a design flaw, and that needs to be fixed.

00:09:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, I really wanna tell you that you,

00:09:43 ◼   ► or especially early on, that you were being a big baby

00:09:45 ◼   ► about the keyboard and how you didn't like it,

00:09:47 ◼   ► blah, blah, blah, but you know,

00:09:48 ◼   ► you're allowed your opinion, that's fine.

00:09:50 ◼   ► However, I could not agree with you more,

00:09:52 ◼   ► that if these reliability problems are as widespread

00:09:55 ◼   ► as they anecdotally seem to be,

00:09:58 ◼   ► then this is definitely a step backwards

00:10:00 ◼   ► and needs to be addressed.

00:10:02 ◼   ► All right, moving on.

00:10:03 ◼   ► If you do have a problem with your keycaps,

00:10:06 ◼   ► there are some people that apparently do remove them

00:10:10 ◼   ► without breaking them according to a somewhat shady

00:10:14 ◼   ► YouTube video. - Asterisk, asterisk

00:10:16 ◼   ► at the end of that. - Yeah, exactly.

00:10:17 ◼   ► - Without breaking them, because, well,

00:10:18 ◼   ► we'll continue to the next volume, but anyway,

00:10:20 ◼   ► this is a video of someone showing how he can pry his

00:10:22 ◼   ► keycap off with a guitar pick, and kinda how they work

00:10:25 ◼   ► under the covers, so you can kind of visualize

00:10:27 ◼   ► what it is that you're doing when you pry this thing up.

00:10:31 ◼   ► So, some people are doing it.

00:10:33 ◼   ► It's a thing, but I certainly wouldn't recommend it.

00:10:35 ◼   ► That was sent in by Kuba B.

00:10:38 ◼   ► Additionally, Michael M. writes in regarding the fragility

00:10:43 ◼   ► of the new keyboard types and how they differ

00:10:45 ◼   ► from the days of old.

00:10:47 ◼   ► Here are some photos of the damaged key caps so far

00:10:49 ◼   ► that I've replaced, and we'll put a link in the show notes.

00:10:52 ◼   ► There are four pictures here of what appears to be

00:10:55 ◼   ► four different or three different key caps

00:10:57 ◼   ► and a scissor switch that have been an issue.

00:11:00 ◼   ► Note the clips at the top.

00:11:01 ◼   ► Each top corner should have two fingers to clip around a pin on the butterfly and the hooks at the bottom.

00:11:06 ◼   ► To remove these keys must be pried up at the top and then removed by moving the cap toward the top of the keyboard.

00:11:11 ◼   ► Anything else would break the fragile clips, as will any misalignment on reassembly.

00:11:15 ◼   ► I only broke the pins off two butterflies while I damaged at least seven keycaps.

00:11:18 ◼   ► I have the first generation MacBook One, I've had it since shortly after release.

00:11:22 ◼   ► My F and key worked properly, but didn't return to its full height correctly from new.

00:11:25 ◼   ► I ignored the issue. Turns out that keycap had been broken for years.

00:11:28 ◼   ► the bigger and more concerning issue,

00:11:30 ◼   ► which is why I've not yet made a second or third round

00:11:33 ◼   ► of keycap and butterfly replacement part purchases,

00:11:35 ◼   ► is that a couple of keys I'm having difficulty with

00:11:37 ◼   ► do not have any apparent physical damage

00:11:39 ◼   ► to the keycap or the butterfly,

00:11:41 ◼   ► and they do not have any bits stuck under them

00:11:43 ◼   ► that can be seen upon very close inspection.

00:11:45 ◼   ► So I still dearly regret taking these keycaps off.

00:11:48 ◼   ► This isn't a keyboard to be worked on by an expert,

00:11:50 ◼   ► it's a keyboard to be worked on by a trained expert

00:11:53 ◼   ► with a spare parts stash.

00:11:56 ◼   ► That's the lesson of all portable devices.

00:11:59 ◼   ► Like everything that, you know,

00:12:01 ◼   ► Apple increasingly the things that are assembled with glue

00:12:04 ◼   ► or the sort of the one way assembly where it goes together,

00:12:08 ◼   ► but it does not come apart and go back together

00:12:10 ◼   ► the same way it was.

00:12:11 ◼   ► Maybe you can take it apart

00:12:13 ◼   ► and maybe you can put it back together,

00:12:14 ◼   ► but it will never be the same.

00:12:16 ◼   ► And so the idea of like, oh, I'm a do it yourself

00:12:18 ◼   ► or I can pry these key caps off.

00:12:20 ◼   ► I can see how they work.

00:12:21 ◼   ► You look at these pictures and look at the size,

00:12:23 ◼   ► the sort of the feature size in, you know,

00:12:26 ◼   ► silicon chip parlance,

00:12:27 ◼   ► how small the little clippy things are

00:12:30 ◼   ► on the bottom of this.

00:12:30 ◼   ► And the tiny little pins on the butterfly switch

00:12:33 ◼   ► that they grip, very, very small, very delicate, right?

00:12:38 ◼   ► And so if you are thinking about prying these things off,

00:12:42 ◼   ► the possibility that you're going to break off or bend

00:12:44 ◼   ► or otherwise screw up one of those clips

00:12:46 ◼   ► or one of those pins seems very high,

00:12:49 ◼   ► which is probably why Apple doesn't like repair

00:12:50 ◼   ► these keyboards, they give you a whole new one.

00:12:52 ◼   ► Wasn't that on the last show someone said

00:12:53 ◼   ► It's not as if they're gonna fix one key for you,

00:12:55 ◼   ► they're gonna replace the whole keyboard.

00:12:56 ◼   ► - As far as I know, that's true.

00:12:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, this doesn't seem like a repairable thing.

00:13:01 ◼   ► Now, in Apple's knowledge base article,

00:13:04 ◼   ► they tell you how to blow compressed air on it

00:13:07 ◼   ► to maybe get the grit out,

00:13:08 ◼   ► 'cause it's not gonna shake out on its own

00:13:10 ◼   ► because all the gaps are so small,

00:13:11 ◼   ► and that might solve your little grit type problem.

00:13:14 ◼   ► But the other interesting thing about Michael's story here

00:13:17 ◼   ► is that he had a key

00:13:19 ◼   ► that had one of the little clippy things underneath it

00:13:21 ◼   ► broken from the, I'm not sure how he knows this

00:13:23 ◼   ► 'cause maybe he broke it when he took it off or whatever,

00:13:25 ◼   ► but that it hadn't been working

00:13:28 ◼   ► and he had just been ignoring it

00:13:30 ◼   ► and it had been broken for a really long time.

00:13:32 ◼   ► If these little clippy things are broken

00:13:35 ◼   ► under one of your key caps, you can't know that.

00:13:37 ◼   ► It's not like you have x-ray vision.

00:13:38 ◼   ► Maybe that could explain why it's not working

00:13:40 ◼   ► 'cause the little clippy things help the key rise and fall

00:13:43 ◼   ► in sequence with the butterfly switch

00:13:44 ◼   ► and stay stable and everything.

00:13:46 ◼   ► And if it's not connected to one of the little clippy things

00:13:47 ◼   ► It's kind of like independent suspension when you want a really live rear axle and strong

00:13:55 ◼   ► anti-roll bars.

00:13:56 ◼   ► This is a car analogy.

00:13:59 ◼   ► I think this one actually works, but it only works for people who know what those things

00:14:02 ◼   ► are.

00:14:04 ◼   ► So I can imagine if you have a bad clip and one corner of your key is not being pushed

00:14:08 ◼   ► upwards and pulled downward with the whole rest of your key no matter where you hit it,

00:14:13 ◼   ► it is basically like an anti-roll bar under the cover.

00:14:16 ◼   ► one corner of the key goes up or down, you want the whole rest of the key to go with

00:14:19 ◼   ► it, that can make the key tilt in a way that it doesn't expect and get stuck and do all

00:14:24 ◼   ► sorts of other things.

00:14:26 ◼   ► Just looking at the pictures of these keyboards make me start freaking out a little bit about

00:14:31 ◼   ► how delicate these little bits are and how easy it is for something to go wrong.

00:14:36 ◼   ► If you open up a scissor key keyboard like the one I use every day, it's also extremely

00:14:41 ◼   ► delicate and tiny inside there.

00:14:42 ◼   ► I don't know if the features of the keycaps and mechanisms are actually all that different.

00:14:46 ◼   ► It could just be a matter of butterfly versus scissor and travel distance and maybe the

00:14:51 ◼   ► switching mechanism underneath it.

00:14:52 ◼   ► But I do not like keyboards.

00:14:56 ◼   ► I don't like thinking about these keyboards.

00:14:59 ◼   ► It almost makes me long for a non-moving iPhone 7 home button style keyboard where nothing

00:15:04 ◼   ► actually moves.

00:15:05 ◼   ► No, don't say that.

00:15:06 ◼   ► They'll do it.

00:15:07 ◼   ► No, I don't like thinking about keyboards either.

00:15:10 ◼   ► That's why this annoys me so much because I've had every other laptop I've ever had

00:15:14 ◼   ► from Apple, I have never had to think about the keyboard.

00:15:18 ◼   ► It just worked and it was fine.

00:15:20 ◼   ► That's why this bothers me so much.

00:15:22 ◼   ► I feel like we're moving backwards in technology if the basics become unreliable.

00:15:28 ◼   ► Hector Ramos wrote in to tell us that he worked at a big company's tech conference at the

00:15:32 ◼   ► Montgomery Convention Center last month, which I don't even know, but I'm assuming that's

00:15:36 ◼   ► the one that we're going to be in for WWDC.

00:15:40 ◼   ► "When heading Ben to WWDC," says Hector, "I think it's fair to say that the box lunches in the San Jose Montgomery were worse."

00:15:46 ◼   ► Sad trombone.

00:15:47 ◼   ► "So don't get your hopes up. The box lunches were all cold sandwiches with either soggy bread or hard and impossible to eat bread, along with mystery dessert.

00:15:55 ◼   ► They also had salad-only options that were passable. However, the real news here, which is terrible, there was no Odwalla. Sorry, Casey."

00:16:07 ◼   ► I'm so sorry, man. Are you gonna be okay?

00:16:09 ◼   ► Well, I'm hopeful that it's just that this particular event may not have sprung for the

00:16:17 ◼   ► Odwala option, but I'm nervous. And also, a real-time follow-up from friend of the show,

00:16:22 ◼   ► Jason Snell, it's McEnery, not McEmery. So that's M-C-E-N-E-R-Y before I get all the

00:16:29 ◼   ► San Jose residents writing me.

00:16:31 ◼   ► If you're William Hector, he wrote it with M's.

00:16:32 ◼   ► Yep, so in any case, yeah, so no Odwalla for this particular tech conference, and reading

00:16:40 ◼   ► between the lines, it was not the sort of tech conference where they needed to worry

00:16:44 ◼   ► about money.

00:16:45 ◼   ► This was a spared no expense kind of experience.

00:16:48 ◼   ► So I'm nervous, but hopefully, hopefully Apple will spring for the Odwalla just for me.

00:16:54 ◼   ► I know that there's discussion somewhere in Cupertino.

00:16:59 ◼   ► You know, Casey made it this year.

00:17:00 ◼   ► He won the lottery this year, and we don't want to hear him whining and moaning for a

00:17:03 ◼   ► year if there's no Odd Wallace.

00:17:04 ◼   ► We might as well just pony it up.

00:17:06 ◼   ► My favorite thing about this is that we have become the podcast of conference box lunches.

00:17:13 ◼   ► So true.

00:17:14 ◼   ► So anyway, we'll see what happens.

00:17:15 ◼   ► But that is sad times, tentatively.

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00:19:06 ◼   ► News broke earlier today as we record this. Denise Young-Smith, who used to be the vice

00:19:10 ◼   ► president of World Wide HR, has now been named the vice president of inclusion and diversity.

00:19:17 ◼   ► Which is cool. I think that's pretty awesome. We don't really know much about it yet, so

00:19:22 ◼   ► you know, obviously we don't want to celebrate it too much quite yet, but this is absolutely

00:19:25 ◼   ► stop in the right direction, and she's not a white dude, because that seems to be the

00:19:29 ◼   ► classical thing to do, which is to put a white dude in charge of diversity and inclusion.

00:19:34 ◼   ► And so at least Apple wasn't so tone deaf that they made that faux pas.

00:19:39 ◼   ► So this, in theory, seems like a great thing.

00:19:42 ◼   ► This is a newly created position.

00:19:44 ◼   ► This position didn't exist as a new vice president level position that they've created.

00:19:48 ◼   ► I don't know how this is going to work out, because so much corporate stuff is opaque.

00:19:54 ◼   ► When I see stuff like this in companies other than Apple,

00:19:56 ◼   ► I think Apple is an exception in many, many ways,

00:20:00 ◼   ► but when a big company makes a new role

00:20:05 ◼   ► for a vice president or someone who's going to address

00:20:09 ◼   ► some problem that they think they have,

00:20:10 ◼   ► I always fear that that person is being set up for failure

00:20:14 ◼   ► because how is it that they're going to pursue their agenda

00:20:19 ◼   ► in a company that didn't even have this position previously

00:20:24 ◼   ► and to pursue the agenda requires, you know, massive company shifting policy changes.

00:20:31 ◼   ► So that's my usual fear with these type of things, that, you know, what can they even do?

00:20:36 ◼   ► Is it just symbolic? Will the rest of the company listen to them? And, you know,

00:20:40 ◼   ► will they be empowered to make change? The thing that encourages me about this,

00:20:43 ◼   ► for Apple specifically, is that it seems like Apple has done this to pretty good effect in

00:20:49 ◼   ► the past. One example is, who's it, Lisa Jackson, who was on the talk show,

00:20:52 ◼   ► the, uh, it does like environment or whatever. I'm assuming that position was newly created at

00:20:57 ◼   ► some point in the past too. Like, you know, Apple, Apple 20 years ago, probably didn't have a,

00:21:01 ◼   ► you know, environment czar or whatever her title is. Um, and she's got results. Like she does

00:21:09 ◼   ► things that change the way Apple makes its products. Right. And so she wasn't just put

00:21:14 ◼   ► in the split and say, Oh yeah, no, we have someone worrying about the environment. That's a whole

00:21:17 ◼   ► vice-president role. And then they just continue to do what they did and, you know, put out press

00:21:21 ◼   ► press releases or like, you know, it becomes like a PR type position.

00:21:25 ◼   ► From the interview, which you should definitely listen to, like, Apple is changing what it

00:21:30 ◼   ► does across its entire business because of initiatives spearheaded by this person and

00:21:34 ◼   ► what in any other company would be like a symbolic position.

00:21:37 ◼   ► So let's hope that this newly created position is, you know, just successful.

00:21:41 ◼   ► That's a good sign.

00:21:43 ◼   ► And, you know, Apple's been reasonably good about publicly sharing their diversity report

00:21:49 ◼   ► I think at the end of the year? I forget exactly when it is. But at some point during the year, they share it.

00:21:54 ◼   ► And so, in theory, we can judge them on what their results are after this move over the coming years.

00:22:02 ◼   ► Obviously, they massage that report to be as complementary as they possibly can while still being truthful,

00:22:07 ◼   ► hopefully anyway. But certainly, this is a good sign, and I'm hopeful, and I think we should celebrate it.

00:22:15 ◼   ► All right, Jon, tell us about Thunderbolt 3 and what's going on with Intel.

00:22:19 ◼   ► Every time we talk about Apple not using Intel chips,

00:22:24 ◼   ► someone will write us--

00:22:26 ◼   ► many someones will write us and say, oh,

00:22:27 ◼   ► but that's not going to happen because if you don't use

00:22:30 ◼   ► Intel chips, you can't have Thunderbolt.

00:22:31 ◼   ► And Apple needs to have Thunderbolt because of reasons.

00:22:35 ◼   ► Therefore, don't worry about it.

00:22:37 ◼   ► And I think the last time we discussed this,

00:22:38 ◼   ► what I tried to emphasize was--

00:22:40 ◼   ► I think it was when we were talking about like Ryzen,

00:22:41 ◼   ► AMD's Ryzen, and making reasonably competitive chips

00:22:44 ◼   ► in certain market segments again.

00:22:46 ◼   ► And they're sort of their comeback bid.

00:22:49 ◼   ► that if Apple decided to go to AMD for whatever reason,

00:22:54 ◼   ► you know, AMD, Apple, Intel are all companies,

00:22:56 ◼   ► things can be worked out.

00:22:58 ◼   ► Money can change hands, deals can be made.

00:23:00 ◼   ► I feel like it's a type of thing

00:23:04 ◼   ► that all three parties would be able to work out

00:23:06 ◼   ► that none of them would be so adamant

00:23:08 ◼   ► that they would say there is literally no amount of money

00:23:10 ◼   ► that you can give us Apple that would allow,

00:23:13 ◼   ► that would let us, you know,

00:23:14 ◼   ► that would make us license Thunderbolt 3 to AMD.

00:23:17 ◼   ► Like there's no kind of grudge like that going on there.

00:23:19 ◼   ► So I'm like, set that aside.

00:23:21 ◼   ► Yes, it's an issue.

00:23:22 ◼   ► It would have to be worked out by the people involved.

00:23:24 ◼   ► But if Apple thought it was to their advantage

00:23:25 ◼   ► to start going to AMD for certain chips or certain things,

00:23:28 ◼   ► like it has the advantage

00:23:29 ◼   ► that it wouldn't be an architectural change.

00:23:31 ◼   ► And having two vendors is a thing that Apple loves to do

00:23:34 ◼   ► for every part and all of its things.

00:23:35 ◼   ► And at a certain point, it's kind of against Apple's

00:23:39 ◼   ► instincts and general policy to have a single vendor

00:23:41 ◼   ► for like an extremely important component,

00:23:44 ◼   ► you know, a single non-Apple vendor, I suppose.

00:23:46 ◼   ► Like they always want to have multiple people,

00:23:47 ◼   ► multiple people fabbing their chips,

00:23:49 ◼   ► buying their chips from multiple vendors

00:23:51 ◼   ► if they can help it, putting them against each other,

00:23:53 ◼   ► like, you know, just typical business.

00:23:55 ◼   ► So today's announcement from,

00:23:57 ◼   ► I think it's today from Intel,

00:23:59 ◼   ► adds an interesting twist to this.

00:24:02 ◼   ► First is that Intel is adding Thunderbolt to their CPUs,

00:24:06 ◼   ► so you don't have to buy a separate chipset,

00:24:08 ◼   ► which apparently has been a barrier to, you know,

00:24:12 ◼   ► PC manufacturers, you know,

00:24:13 ◼   ► aren't willing to spend the money to, you know,

00:24:15 ◼   ► license or buy the Alpine Ridge or whatever the latest

00:24:19 ◼   ► chipset is for Thunderbolt support.

00:24:20 ◼   ► It's like, "Nah, we'll just take the CPUs.

00:24:22 ◼   ► They have support for like USB, blah, blah, blah,

00:24:24 ◼   ► and PCI express like on the chips.

00:24:26 ◼   ► I don't care about Thunderbolt.

00:24:27 ◼   ► I'm not buying another chip.

00:24:28 ◼   ► It's pointless, right?"

00:24:30 ◼   ► So now they're putting it on the CPUs

00:24:31 ◼   ► with so many other things

00:24:32 ◼   ► and that will make it cheaper for people to use.

00:24:34 ◼   ► And you basically can't not get it

00:24:36 ◼   ► if you buy a part that has it built in.

00:24:38 ◼   ► I mean, maybe they'll still sell parts

00:24:39 ◼   ► that don't have it built in.

00:24:40 ◼   ► And I assume it's better for packaging,

00:24:43 ◼   ► probably also better for power.

00:24:45 ◼   ► And it's a move that will make Apple computers better

00:24:47 ◼   ► because Apple likes to put Thunderbolt 3

00:24:48 ◼   ► on its high-end computers.

00:24:51 ◼   ► And if Apple can get that built into the CPU,

00:24:54 ◼   ► they'd love it because they'd love to make everything small

00:24:56 ◼   ► and lower power.

00:24:58 ◼   ► And if it's cheaper on top of that, all the better, right?

00:25:02 ◼   ► And the second part of this story is,

00:25:05 ◼   ► Intel is going to license Thunderbolt 3 for free

00:25:08 ◼   ► to anybody who wants it.

00:25:10 ◼   ► And that would obviously include AMD.

00:25:13 ◼   ► So that barrier to Apple using AMD CPUs,

00:25:17 ◼   ► assuming it ever was a barrier,

00:25:18 ◼   ► because I'm not entirely convinced

00:25:20 ◼   ► that Apple is so wedded to Thunderbolt 3

00:25:21 ◼   ► that they wouldn't consider a CPU,

00:25:23 ◼   ► consider building a Mac without it, 'cause they do.

00:25:26 ◼   ► That barrier is gone.

00:25:29 ◼   ► Thunderbolt 3, and from Intel's perspective,

00:25:31 ◼   ► it's not like they're doing this

00:25:32 ◼   ► to let Apple take AMD CPUs.

00:25:33 ◼   ► They're doing this because they want Thunderbolt

00:25:35 ◼   ► to spread more widely, and a barrier to adoption

00:25:37 ◼   ► is you gotta buy this extra chipset,

00:25:40 ◼   ► and you can only get it from us,

00:25:41 ◼   ► and you can't make your own thing.

00:25:43 ◼   ► So Intel's like, no, no,

00:25:44 ◼   ► we wanna see Thunderbolt 3 everywhere.

00:25:45 ◼   ► It's really important for us to the standard to spread.

00:25:47 ◼   ► Guess what?

00:25:48 ◼   ► It's free for everybody.

00:25:49 ◼   ► And it's cheaper when you buy Intel CPUs.

00:25:51 ◼   ► And I'm hoping that all the other manufacturers of PCs

00:25:55 ◼   ► and parts and so on and so forth

00:25:57 ◼   ► will take the ball and run with it.

00:25:58 ◼   ► I'm hoping the reason they were staying away from Thunderbolt

00:26:01 ◼   ► was that it was too expensive.

00:26:03 ◼   ► I'm assuming Intel and, you know, Intel and Apple

00:26:07 ◼   ► or, you know, the people who created this standard

00:26:09 ◼   ► still have the most influence of it.

00:26:11 ◼   ► So maybe people were staying away

00:26:12 ◼   ► because they feel like it's not like an industry standard,

00:26:14 ◼   ► it's more like an Intel or Intel Apple standard.

00:26:17 ◼   ► But either way, I'm happy to see moves

00:26:19 ◼   ► that have a chance of keeping Thunderbolt

00:26:23 ◼   ► from FireWire's fate.

00:26:24 ◼   ► FireWire just never got the wide adoption

00:26:27 ◼   ► that would have helped it to stick around longer

00:26:30 ◼   ► and be a viable technology.

00:26:32 ◼   ► It was only used by Apple and video and a few other things,

00:26:36 ◼   ► and USB, meanwhile, went literally everywhere.

00:26:39 ◼   ► So this seems like yet more of the USB-ification

00:26:43 ◼   ► of Thunderbolt.

00:26:44 ◼   ► They already stole their connector and their port,

00:26:47 ◼   ► confusing the world with a port that is 17 different things

00:26:49 ◼   ► in one, but I think that's really cool tech-wise.

00:26:52 ◼   ► And now it's free for everybody, so go forth and Thunderbolt.

00:26:55 ◼   ► - Do you think that Thunderbolt has already been firewired?

00:27:00 ◼   ► 'Cause I see a lot of the same signs of it.

00:27:02 ◼   ► Like, you know, Thunderbolt, and the earlier versions of it

00:27:06 ◼   ► I think had a more severe problem of this,

00:27:09 ◼   ► where just very few peripherals were ever really made

00:27:12 ◼   ► for Thunderbolt.

00:27:13 ◼   ► And what was made for Thunderbolt

00:27:15 ◼   ► was always much more expensive than the USB 2 or 3

00:27:20 ◼   ► version of the same thing.

00:27:22 ◼   ► And for things like hard drive enclosures or SSD enclosures,

00:27:26 ◼   ► there's almost no reason for anybody

00:27:27 ◼   ► to go with Thunderbolt when USB 3 is an option,

00:27:30 ◼   ► unless you have really, really high end parts

00:27:32 ◼   ► and you need maximum bandwidth and you

00:27:35 ◼   ► don't care about the price.

00:27:36 ◼   ► For most people, one of those things is not true.

00:27:40 ◼   ► So I don't think Thunderbolt really has taken off very far.

00:27:44 ◼   ► I would say Thunderbolt is exactly where FireWire was,

00:27:48 ◼   ► both 400 and 800 of like, it is this standard in quotes,

00:27:53 ◼   ► but in practice, it is only used by some Apple stuff

00:27:59 ◼   ► and some high-end peripherals and storage enclosures.

00:28:02 ◼   ► But almost everything that most people use

00:28:05 ◼   ► uses USB 2 or 3.

00:28:07 ◼   ► Apple did a really smart, or Apple Intel, did a really smart thing here

00:28:10 ◼   ► because when they changed the connector. Because you're right that

00:28:13 ◼   ► there are many people who don't need Thunderbolt, they just need USB.

00:28:17 ◼   ► It's the same little hole in the side of your computer,

00:28:21 ◼   ► right? And so if Thunderbolt gets confined to be

00:28:25 ◼   ► "Oh, it's just this weird thing that Apple does," like

00:28:28 ◼   ► Intel may not be happy with that because maybe Intel wants it to be used more broadly for

00:28:31 ◼   ► whatever strategic reasons, but

00:28:32 ◼   ► It's not like Apple has to change anything about its strategy.

00:28:36 ◼   ► As long as Thunderbolt continues to be made, or like basically the little plugs

00:28:42 ◼   ► on the side of the computer already have a situation where you can get, don't some

00:28:45 ◼   ► of the, doesn't the low end like MacBook not have a Thunderbolt 3 port,

00:28:48 ◼   ► but instead just has the USB C and power thing?

00:28:50 ◼   ► Am I wrong about that?

00:28:51 ◼   ► That's correct.

00:28:52 ◼   ► The 12 inch MacBook does not have you, it does not have Thunderbolt.

00:28:55 ◼   ► It only has USB 3 over that port.

00:28:57 ◼   ► But it's the same old little connector.

00:28:59 ◼   ► And similarly, the Thunderbolt ports can just run USB off of them.

00:29:02 ◼   ► The main place, sadly, or maybe not sadly,

00:29:07 ◼   ► depends on how you look at it,

00:29:08 ◼   ► the main functionality that Thunderbolt 3

00:29:10 ◼   ► brings to Apple's products is they can put a small set

00:29:15 ◼   ► of very small, uniform ports

00:29:18 ◼   ► on the side of their portable computers,

00:29:20 ◼   ► and people can connect stuff to them,

00:29:22 ◼   ► they give them all the other ports,

00:29:24 ◼   ► all the other things you can imagine,

00:29:25 ◼   ► all those different breakout boxes.

00:29:27 ◼   ► That's the magic of Thunderbolt, right?

00:29:29 ◼   ► Do you need Thunderbolt 3 for that or whatever?

00:29:30 ◼   ► And I guess I suppose, you know,

00:29:31 ◼   ► high-end monitor support depending on how they want to implement that, whether they

00:29:34 ◼   ► want to do it with multiple DisplayPort streams or tunneling things over Thunderbolt and external

00:29:38 ◼   ► GPUs and all the other fancy stuff you can get.

00:29:41 ◼   ► But if you don't take advantage of that fancy stuff, it still just looks like you're plugging

00:29:45 ◼   ► a little USB Type-C connector into the side of your computer.

00:29:48 ◼   ► And if you do take advantage of it, you buy the fancy Apple computer and the same little

00:29:51 ◼   ► port, you can plug in all that other stuff, but also you can plug in these other things

00:29:54 ◼   ► to get these cool breakout boxes.

00:29:56 ◼   ► I think Apple would be perfectly fine with that.

00:29:58 ◼   ► They're not faced with a firewall-like situation where they have to say, "Oh, all those peripherals

00:30:01 ◼   ► you bought are useless, as long as Thunderbolt continues to be an ongoing concern in some

00:30:06 ◼   ► fashion, Apple can continue to ship all of its peripherals, all of its Mac stuff, all

00:30:10 ◼   ► of its dongles and adapters with that one little hole on them.

00:30:14 ◼   ► So I think they're better off, but the reason I brought it far is exactly the reason you

00:30:18 ◼   ► said, that it seems like Thunderbolt is being confined because USB 3 is so fast and so good

00:30:24 ◼   ► and so cheap and so ubiquitous.

00:30:27 ◼   ► But in some respects, the other angle on this,

00:30:30 ◼   ► USB type C is kind of,

00:30:32 ◼   ► I'm gonna say it's the same as FireWire,

00:30:34 ◼   ► but I get a little bit of a whiff of that FireWire on it

00:30:36 ◼   ► in the general reluctance of the rest of the industry

00:30:39 ◼   ► to follow Apple along with this,

00:30:40 ◼   ► even like Microsoft not putting USB-C

00:30:42 ◼   ► on all of its new service stuff,

00:30:44 ◼   ► and then making excuses about like,

00:30:45 ◼   ► well, when we think the world is ready for USB-C,

00:30:47 ◼   ► we'll change it, but in the meantime,

00:30:48 ◼   ► you can get a dongle that lets you connect USB-C stuff,

00:30:51 ◼   ► which is a pretty good snark there.

00:30:57 ◼   ► It seems to me, when I look around and see laptops,

00:31:02 ◼   ► the only ones I ever see with USB-C ports are Apple ones.

00:31:04 ◼   ► So maybe they're just ahead of everyone else

00:31:06 ◼   ► and people will convert over,

00:31:07 ◼   ► but that stupid USB type A connector

00:31:10 ◼   ► may be very difficult to dislodge.

00:31:12 ◼   ► And it could be that like FireWire,

00:31:15 ◼   ► the only hardware you ever see with these weird USB-C things

00:31:18 ◼   ► are probably cell phones,

00:31:19 ◼   ► 'cause size is gonna make those people turn over

00:31:21 ◼   ► and mini USB sucks, and then Macs.

00:31:24 ◼   ► but every other portable PC or tablet or Surface thing

00:31:28 ◼   ► or whatever will have just a bunch of USB type A connectors

00:31:30 ◼   ► on the side of it, I don't know.

00:31:32 ◼   ► - I'll tell you one thing,

00:31:33 ◼   ► now that I'm in the USB-C ecosystem with my new laptop

00:31:36 ◼   ► and I've been looking at USB-C peripherals

00:31:39 ◼   ► and looking for adapters and dongles

00:31:42 ◼   ► and various peripherals that use it, there are not many.

00:31:46 ◼   ► I thought that with the 12-inch MacBook

00:31:49 ◼   ► being now two years old, I figured there's gotta be

00:31:53 ◼   ► tons of them now. And there are a small number of things that can plug into that port natively,

00:31:59 ◼   ► but it seems like almost all of them are like cheap crap from no-name brands on Amazon for

00:32:05 ◼   ► 40 bucks that is all unreliable and badly built and all probably using the same chipset

00:32:11 ◼   ► inside and it seems like it's a very, still a very immature market and I hope that, I

00:32:16 ◼   ► hope it matures soon, now that all the MacBook Pros use only these ports. That should be

00:32:21 ◼   ► enough of motivation for peripheral makers, but we'll see. It's not where I thought

00:32:26 ◼   ► it would be by now.

00:32:27 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know what the resistance is to USB-C, because, man, it's just USB still.

00:32:31 ◼   ► I mean, it's a different spec, and the cables are different, and maybe they're more expensive,

00:32:35 ◼   ► and the connectors are more expensive than they used to be. But it seems like I fully

00:32:39 ◼   ► expect just a complete turnover eventually to USB-C, because it's not a FireWire situation

00:32:44 ◼   ► in that, oh, it's so much more expensive, and you have to put these way more expensive

00:32:46 ◼   ► chips into things, and the chips have to be on both ends, or Thunderbolt with the weird

00:32:51 ◼   ► chips in the wires for the high-speed connection and all sorts of stuff like that.

00:32:54 ◼   ► Like that's not, it's just a different physical connector for USB plus a different, you know,

00:32:59 ◼   ► chip set.

00:33:00 ◼   ► And USB 3, I think, is rolling out pretty well.

00:33:02 ◼   ► 3.1 maybe?

00:33:03 ◼   ► I don't know what the, I don't know what the holdup is.

00:33:06 ◼   ► People in the chat room are saying that Windows, there are Windows laptops that have USB-C,

00:33:08 ◼   ► of course.

00:33:09 ◼   ► There's Windows laptops that have everything on it.

00:33:10 ◼   ► It's just that I don't, I don't see the, it's not like, remember when USB 2 came along?

00:33:17 ◼   ► USB 1.1 did not last long in the face of USB 2.

00:33:20 ◼   ► USB 2 just rolled out across the whole industry and you would have USB 2 ports everywhere

00:33:25 ◼   ► except for your keyboard and mouse which would be 1.1 for a while.

00:33:29 ◼   ► But USB-C has not rolled out like that.

00:33:31 ◼   ► Well, for a long time almost every PC you would buy would have like two blue ports and

00:33:38 ◼   ► then six black ports.

00:33:39 ◼   ► Yeah, but the point is it had the blue ones.

00:33:43 ◼   ► Keep the old ones around the same reason they kept parallel port and the PS/2 port around

00:33:46 ◼   ► because they're PC makers, they'll always do that.

00:33:48 ◼   ► But you had the new ones.

00:33:50 ◼   ► To buy a PC without USB 2 anywhere on it in the USB 2 age was unheard of.

00:33:54 ◼   ► But like I said, Microsoft, with these very expensive high-end fancy Surface tablet laptop

00:34:00 ◼   ► convertible whatever thingies, seems proudly to be shipping them without any USB C ports

00:34:05 ◼   ► and defending their decision by saying, "Oh, you can get an adapter.

00:34:08 ◼   ► It's USB 3.1.

00:34:09 ◼   ► It's totally the same thing.

00:34:10 ◼   ► We just don't like that connector," which is weird.

00:34:15 ◼   ► now had my first—well, what I consider to be my first USB-C device, which is the Switch.

00:34:21 ◼   ► Yes, I have an Apple TV, and yes, it's USB-C, but that doesn't really count. The idea of

00:34:27 ◼   ► a theoretical future where I have a MacBook that has been updated, which in and of itself

00:34:36 ◼   ► is a very theoretical future. I have a MacBook that's been updated that is powered by USB-C.

00:34:41 ◼   ► I have a switch that is powered by USB-C.

00:34:44 ◼   ► The thought of a phone being powered by USB-C

00:34:48 ◼   ► for convenience alone sounds pretty awesome.

00:34:51 ◼   ► - Doesn't it? - Now, I don't really love

00:34:54 ◼   ► the USB-C connector as much as I like the Lightning

00:34:57 ◼   ► connector, no small part because the Lightning connector

00:34:59 ◼   ► is smaller and also because I have 11 D billion

00:35:02 ◼   ► Lightning cables strewn throughout my entire life.

00:35:04 ◼   ► But having one port, one connector that can really

00:35:09 ◼   ► be all things to all people is pretty neat and does sound appealing. So as much as I

00:35:17 ◼   ► don't actually begrudge the Lightning connector because I think it's really, really good,

00:35:23 ◼   ► especially in ways that the dock connector wasn't, I still think a USB-C future might

00:35:28 ◼   ► be pretty cool. Hell, it would make the phones get thicker too, right? So that's a win as

00:35:33 ◼   ► well. Bigger battery.

00:35:34 ◼   ► Yeah, that means more battery.

00:35:35 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:35:36 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:35:36 ◼   ► I don't know, we'll see.

00:35:39 ◼   ► But I mean, it certainly does sound appealing.

00:35:41 ◼   ► In that sense, I am a little bit envious

00:35:43 ◼   ► of the Android folks with their USB-C lives.

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00:37:44 ◼   ► - All right, so Apple has maybe started working on,

00:37:52 ◼   ► I mean, presumably started working on

00:37:54 ◼   ► a Siri thing with a screen.

00:37:56 ◼   ► And obviously this is all rumors.

00:37:59 ◼   ► There's been a lot of rumors that this might happen

00:38:02 ◼   ► in a couple of weeks at WWDC.

00:38:04 ◼   ► There's TechCrunch article, "Get Ready for a New iPad

00:38:06 ◼   ► "and a Mysterious Siri Speaker at WWDC."

00:38:11 ◼   ► As we've talked about numerous times, I currently, anyway,

00:38:14 ◼   ► don't really care about ladies in a tube,

00:38:16 ◼   ► so Marco or Jon, do you wanna kinda take this one over?

00:38:20 ◼   ► - I mean, our timing on this is terrible, because--

00:38:23 ◼   ► - Oh, this is an old story

00:38:24 ◼   ► and there's no rumors about it now?

00:38:26 ◼   ► - Well, no, just because it's rumored

00:38:27 ◼   ► to be announced in two weeks.

00:38:29 ◼   ► So it's probably not a great time

00:38:32 ◼   ► to speculate too much on it.

00:38:34 ◼   ► I would simply say that if you're in the market

00:38:39 ◼   ► for one of these home speakers,

00:38:41 ◼   ► like the Amazon Echo or Google Home or whatever else,

00:38:45 ◼   ► I would say it's probably worth waiting

00:38:47 ◼   ► for this announcement just to see what it is,

00:38:48 ◼   ► see what you're dealing with.

00:38:51 ◼   ► But I also am concerned because this is the kind of product

00:38:56 ◼   ► that Apple historically has not done well,

00:39:00 ◼   ► something that has to be cheap and integrates well

00:39:03 ◼   ► with everything else people have and based on

00:39:06 ◼   ► a really reliable, really advanced voice assistant.

00:39:09 ◼   ► Maybe they've become a different company.

00:39:12 ◼   ► Maybe they have really ramped up the API.

00:39:14 ◼   ► I mean, I do expect W3C to have a lot of

00:39:17 ◼   ► Siri kit advancements, the Siri API for third party apps.

00:39:21 ◼   ► I would love to have some kind of like

00:39:24 ◼   ► audio library functionality so that Overcast

00:39:26 ◼   ► could actually use the Siri API,

00:39:27 ◼   ► 'cause right now there's nothing for it to use,

00:39:29 ◼   ► but that would be nice if there was some way to say,

00:39:32 ◼   ► hey thing, play this podcast in Overcast

00:39:35 ◼   ► or something like that.

00:39:36 ◼   ► That would be awesome.

00:39:36 ◼   ► - You can't do that now?

00:39:38 ◼   ► You can't say, hey, play episode number 17

00:39:41 ◼   ► of my favorite podcast?

00:39:42 ◼   ► - Nope, can't do it.

00:39:43 ◼   ► - Oh, that's right, 'cause I forget,

00:39:45 ◼   ► we talked about this after last WDC,

00:39:46 ◼   ► but it was like a really limited domain

00:39:48 ◼   ► of things you can do.

00:39:49 ◼   ► It's not so much the playing of the audio,

00:39:51 ◼   ► it's the idea that this is a voice command

00:39:53 ◼   ► that you can issue that causes something to happen,

00:39:55 ◼   ► that they had abstracted it away from the level of the app to just be like, this is

00:40:00 ◼   ► a desire for a thing to happen that is not app specific that your app can deal with.

00:40:04 ◼   ► It's all coming back to me now.

00:40:06 ◼   ► It'll come back to me more at WWC sessions, but that's a killer feature that you just

00:40:09 ◼   ► described right there.

00:40:11 ◼   ► Just like it is a killer feature of many of these TV-attached pucks where you can say,

00:40:14 ◼   ► you know, play episode five, season two of Seinfeld, and it does that.

00:40:20 ◼   ► And even if you don't have the world's worst television remote, aka the Apple remote, it's

00:40:24 ◼   ► It's a pain to use any remote to do that.

00:40:27 ◼   ► The sentence I just said,

00:40:28 ◼   ► you will be watching that episode so much faster

00:40:31 ◼   ► than if you have to navigate, find Seinfeld.

00:40:33 ◼   ► So in my recent shows, oh, seasons, season two,

00:40:37 ◼   ► scroll, scroll, scroll, episode five.

00:40:39 ◼   ► It's so much better.

00:40:41 ◼   ► So being able to do that,

00:40:42 ◼   ► especially on Overcast feature suggestions,

00:40:45 ◼   ► especially if it doesn't expect you

00:40:48 ◼   ► to all have that already downloaded.

00:40:49 ◼   ► Like if Overcast understood,

00:40:50 ◼   ► you don't even have to be subscribed to the podcast.

00:40:53 ◼   ► I will go to Overcast's directory,

00:40:54 ◼   ► find the podcast that I think is the best match for that,

00:40:57 ◼   ► download the episode number that you asked for

00:40:58 ◼   ► and start playing it, like all in one thing.

00:41:00 ◼   ► Again, doing that by hand.

00:41:01 ◼   ► You could do it by hand in Overcast right now,

00:41:03 ◼   ► but being able to say that sentence into your phone

00:41:05 ◼   ► and have it do that, that would be like magic.

00:41:08 ◼   ► - Right, and that is, I assume,

00:41:10 ◼   ► if and when they do any kind of music or audio

00:41:15 ◼   ► type integration with Siri, with SiriKit, I mean,

00:41:18 ◼   ► I assume that's the kind of thing that they will do

00:41:20 ◼   ► because most other services that would use this,

00:41:22 ◼   ► think of like a music streaming service.

00:41:25 ◼   ► They're not gonna have the entire index of all songs

00:41:28 ◼   ► that are available on the service stored locally in the app.

00:41:31 ◼   ► They're gonna have to make a network request.

00:41:32 ◼   ► They're gonna have to have some way for Apple

00:41:35 ◼   ► to index their libraries.

00:41:37 ◼   ► That way, like the Siri logic, probably server side,

00:41:42 ◼   ► could then figure out what you're actually asking about

00:41:45 ◼   ► and send like an ID to the app.

00:41:47 ◼   ► And I think this is probably why they didn't have it

00:41:49 ◼   ► last year because all the existing intents, they call them,

00:41:54 ◼   ► for SiriKit, like all the different ways

00:41:55 ◼   ► you can do SiriKit, you know, it's stuff like

00:41:57 ◼   ► booking a ride or sending a payment or things like that,

00:42:00 ◼   ► and those are things that have like a limited

00:42:03 ◼   ► command dictionary that you could pretty much

00:42:04 ◼   ► deal with locally without having to custom index content

00:42:08 ◼   ► from Uber or whatever else, or Lyft, you know,

00:42:10 ◼   ► and or, you know, any of the other things they can do.

00:42:14 ◼   ► Whereas if you say like integrate with Overcast

00:42:16 ◼   ► or Spotify or things like that,

00:42:19 ◼   ► Siri has to have some way to index these services

00:42:22 ◼   ► just to see what are the possible things

00:42:24 ◼   ► people can be asking for.

00:42:26 ◼   ► And then have some way to interpret

00:42:30 ◼   ► what people are asking to be those things,

00:42:33 ◼   ► and then tell the app, this person just asked for

00:42:35 ◼   ► the artist with this ID and the track with this ID,

00:42:38 ◼   ► or whatever else.

00:42:40 ◼   ► And that's a lot more to build.

00:42:41 ◼   ► So that's why I assume that it wasn't there last year.

00:42:44 ◼   ► And I don't even know if it's gonna be there

00:42:45 ◼   ► this year or ever, but if they give

00:42:48 ◼   ► the option for Siri to integrate with audio services,

00:42:52 ◼   ► to do it right is gonna involve all that stuff,

00:42:53 ◼   ► and that's a lot of work, and that's a lot of stuff

00:42:55 ◼   ► for us to implement on our side as well,

00:42:57 ◼   ► but it could be awesome.

00:42:58 ◼   ► - The one advantage I feel like they have on this,

00:43:01 ◼   ► is the, you know, this happens every time

00:43:03 ◼   ► we talk about the thing, is if you're in the audience,

00:43:06 ◼   ► and they're announcing whatever their Siri thing is

00:43:08 ◼   ► that you talk to, right, and you don't already have

00:43:13 ◼   ► one of the existing things that you talk to,

00:43:16 ◼   ► almost anything they demo will look amazing if you've never seen it done before. So assume,

00:43:22 ◼   ► speaking of the audio thing, assume they say, even if it's just integrated with Apple Music,

00:43:25 ◼   ► it's not third party, you can't do it, but Apple Music has it. And they go up there and

00:43:29 ◼   ► demo something, and they rattle off some sentence that's like, "What's that song that goes

00:43:34 ◼   ► blah, blah, blah?" And maybe they hum a tune or do the lyrics or some kind of vague, touchy-feely

00:43:41 ◼   ► thing that you might ask a person.

00:43:42 ◼   ► They definitely want to do that.

00:43:44 ◼   ► And it finds it because like, you know, all the, you know,

00:43:46 ◼   ► Amazon and Google both have the say an arbitrary lyric

00:43:50 ◼   ► from a song and it will find it.

00:43:52 ◼   ► I don't know if either one of them has a do, you know,

00:43:56 ◼   ► hum the tune and it will find it.

00:43:57 ◼   ► I mean, I guess people aren't in tune enough to do that.

00:43:59 ◼   ► - The Echo has lyric search at least.

00:44:01 ◼   ► I don't know if it has like, like melody search.

00:44:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

00:44:04 ◼   ► Like Google Home has it too.

00:44:05 ◼   ► If you say, we say literally any lyric from a song,

00:44:08 ◼   ► if you get it close to right,

00:44:09 ◼   ► it will find that song and play it.

00:44:11 ◼   ► And it works amazingly well, right?

00:44:12 ◼   ► So it's almost as if Apple doesn't demo that.

00:44:15 ◼   ► They're just showing that they're behind two people who know.

00:44:17 ◼   ► But if you don't have an Echo and don't have a Google Home,

00:44:19 ◼   ► that demo is incredibly powerful.

00:44:21 ◼   ► And because it's Apple,

00:44:23 ◼   ► this is one of those places where it's true.

00:44:24 ◼   ► They're like, oh, Apple just announced something

00:44:26 ◼   ► that everyone else has had for years

00:44:27 ◼   ► and they just get press 'cause they're Apple.

00:44:28 ◼   ► That effect exists, right?

00:44:30 ◼   ► Because they're good showmans

00:44:32 ◼   ► and the showmanship that they have

00:44:34 ◼   ► and the way they're able to give a compelling demo

00:44:39 ◼   ► in ways that like the Amazon Echo commercial

00:44:42 ◼   ► or the Google Home things are not able to.

00:44:44 ◼   ► And because there's so many eyes on Apple

00:44:46 ◼   ► and yada, yada, yada, it is an opportunity for them

00:44:49 ◼   ► to really sell features that other people have had for years

00:44:53 ◼   ► that Apple is probably gonna do worse

00:44:55 ◼   ► and come out looking like, wow,

00:44:56 ◼   ► Apple is amazing and innovative.

00:44:58 ◼   ► And the only stories that will be, hey,

00:45:00 ◼   ► Apple's playing catch up are gonna be

00:45:01 ◼   ► in the nerdy tech press that we read.

00:45:04 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, I think Apple is going to own privacy,

00:45:08 ◼   ► looks, probably the UI on the screen,

00:45:11 ◼   ► And then maybe sound quality,

00:45:14 ◼   ► 'cause the Echo's sound quality is not that great.

00:45:16 ◼   ► I don't know about the Google Home, but who cares.

00:45:18 ◼   ► And, sorry Sean.

00:45:19 ◼   ► - It's not great.

00:45:21 ◼   ► I mean, you've seen it.

00:45:22 ◼   ► It's not very big.

00:45:23 ◼   ► It's one little dinky speaker-y thing in there.

00:45:24 ◼   ► - Right, right.

00:45:25 ◼   ► So Apple's probably gonna own those things,

00:45:28 ◼   ► but the usefulness of these products is based so heavily

00:45:33 ◼   ► on the incredible speed and reliability

00:45:38 ◼   ► of the voice service.

00:45:40 ◼   ► that's where I have concerns about Apple.

00:45:42 ◼   ► Because Siri, for all of its smarts,

00:45:44 ◼   ► for all of its wonderful international support,

00:45:47 ◼   ► for all of the different, you know,

00:45:48 ◼   ► the more advanced API that it has compared to the Echo,

00:45:53 ◼   ► 'cause what I was saying earlier about Siri having to parse

00:45:55 ◼   ► the way that people say things and kinda just

00:45:57 ◼   ► pass off to the application, like,

00:45:58 ◼   ► "All right, the user requested this artist ID,

00:46:00 ◼   ► "this track ID," the way that the Echo does it is

00:46:04 ◼   ► it has a very limited vocabulary of what you can specify,

00:46:07 ◼   ► and then it just can tell you the exact words somebody said,

00:46:10 ◼   ► but then it's up to the application to figure out

00:46:12 ◼   ► how do I parse that, which is easier to implement,

00:46:16 ◼   ► it enables a lot more things from day one

00:46:19 ◼   ► to be possible in that API,

00:46:20 ◼   ► 'cause you don't have to wait around for them

00:46:22 ◼   ► to design your specific use case,

00:46:25 ◼   ► but it's way harder to actually use

00:46:28 ◼   ► for anything non-trivial.

00:46:30 ◼   ► Where Apple's gonna come in from is,

00:46:32 ◼   ► they're gonna come in with SiriKit support only,

00:46:34 ◼   ► I would imagine.

00:46:35 ◼   ► it's gonna be really great for these like 12 app types

00:46:39 ◼   ► to integrate with this, but nobody else can.

00:46:41 ◼   ► Or nobody else can do anything useful with this.

00:46:44 ◼   ► So that's gonna be problem number one.

00:46:45 ◼   ► And problem number two is just like,

00:46:47 ◼   ► again, the reliability of Siri

00:46:48 ◼   ► and the advancement of Siri,

00:46:51 ◼   ► I don't think they have kept up.

00:46:53 ◼   ► And this is always an argument,

00:46:55 ◼   ► everyone always thinks like, oh well,

00:46:57 ◼   ► I asked the Amazon device about this thing

00:46:59 ◼   ► and it gave me this kind of weird answer

00:47:01 ◼   ► and then I asked Siri and it gave me a better answer.

00:47:03 ◼   ► or the Google and Amazon devices don't support my language

00:47:06 ◼   ► or my country and Siri does.

00:47:09 ◼   ► And that's all valid, everyone can have their own opinions,

00:47:10 ◼   ► but I think overall, it's fairly clear that Siri has been,

00:47:14 ◼   ► for most people, less reliable and less smart

00:47:18 ◼   ► on the whole than the other services.

00:47:21 ◼   ► And this is the kind of device where,

00:47:24 ◼   ► like you know, on your phone it's kind of a secondary thing,

00:47:26 ◼   ► you know, some people use it heavily,

00:47:27 ◼   ► but for the most part, like everywhere else

00:47:29 ◼   ► the Siri exists is kind of a secondary input type.

00:47:31 ◼   ► With this kind of device, it is the primary input method.

00:47:35 ◼   ► And it has to be fast, and it has to be reliable,

00:47:38 ◼   ► and it has to get it right almost every single time.

00:47:41 ◼   ► And that's what makes the Amazon products,

00:47:44 ◼   ► which I have the most experience with,

00:47:45 ◼   ► that's what makes them so compelling

00:47:47 ◼   ► when you're used to the Apple ecosystem,

00:47:49 ◼   ► when you're used to Siri, when you first see an Echo,

00:47:52 ◼   ► you're like, "Oh my God, that was fast."

00:47:53 ◼   ► And then as you start using it more and more,

00:47:55 ◼   ► you're like, "This works every time."

00:47:59 ◼   ► And that has just never been

00:48:00 ◼   ► a lot of people's experience with Siri.

00:48:02 ◼   ► So for this product to succeed,

00:48:05 ◼   ► I think Siri has to be way better than it is now.

00:48:09 ◼   ► And maybe it is, maybe they're about to unveil

00:48:11 ◼   ► a brand new version of Siri to everybody to see

00:48:13 ◼   ► that is way better and way more reliable.

00:48:15 ◼   ► I just don't think it's very likely

00:48:16 ◼   ► based on their past performance.

00:48:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, those are all things they can hide in the demo,

00:48:20 ◼   ► though, from the PR perspective.

00:48:21 ◼   ► Of course it's gonna work amazingly in the demo

00:48:23 ◼   ► because they rehearse and it's all set up to work perfectly.

00:48:26 ◼   ► We won't know whether they've actually done a good job

00:48:28 ◼   ► with it until we get things in our hands,

00:48:30 ◼   ► So it's why they could get, I think, a bunch of positive reactions from the audience that's

00:48:34 ◼   ► there, because most people don't, you know, won't have any experience with the existing

00:48:38 ◼   ► devices like this, so everything they see is new and amazing.

00:48:40 ◼   ► And the performance will be awesome on the stage, because they're good at making a demo

00:48:43 ◼   ► and everything like that.

00:48:44 ◼   ► And they've got good press out of it from everybody except the tech press who knows

00:48:47 ◼   ► they're playing catch-up.

00:48:48 ◼   ► And this is assuming they don't even have some big wow feature.

00:48:50 ◼   ► I bet they probably will have at least one headlining feature that Echo and Home don't

00:48:56 ◼   ► have.

00:48:57 ◼   ► Whatever it may be, something that plays to Apple's strength.

00:48:59 ◼   ► - It'll be privacy.

00:49:00 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:49:01 ◼   ► - Well, there's the privacy angle too,

00:49:03 ◼   ► but also especially if there's a one with the screen,

00:49:05 ◼   ► I bet they can put better stuff,

00:49:07 ◼   ► more impressive things on that screen

00:49:09 ◼   ► than Amazon can on their Amazon show

00:49:11 ◼   ► or whatever their terrible name is for their thing.

00:49:13 ◼   ► - Like, and I pre-order the Amazon thing,

00:49:15 ◼   ► but Amazon is so bad at user interface design,

00:49:18 ◼   ► I expect that to be clunky.

00:49:20 ◼   ► - And it'll be underpowered so they can't do like,

00:49:22 ◼   ► whatever crazy GPU is gonna be in the Apple one

00:49:24 ◼   ► to have cool effects and you know,

00:49:26 ◼   ► like just the same kind of functionality,

00:49:27 ◼   ► but even if it's just nice screensavers of your family

00:49:31 ◼   ► that it pulls from your photo library,

00:49:32 ◼   ► this is another angle by the way of like,

00:49:34 ◼   ► A, it's why Casey will get one of these

00:49:36 ◼   ► no matter what everybody says now,

00:49:38 ◼   ► and B, it's why I'm much interested in it.

00:49:40 ◼   ► It's 'cause the Google Home one I got

00:49:42 ◼   ► because I have lots of my life,

00:49:44 ◼   ► I use the Google ecosystem,

00:49:46 ◼   ► it's got my email, my calendar, and one copy of my photos,

00:49:49 ◼   ► but the real copy of my photos are in Apple's photo library

00:49:52 ◼   ► and Google Photos is just my sort of redundant backup

00:49:54 ◼   ► that I use for search and other things like that.

00:49:56 ◼   ► I'm interested in this one because the other half of my life

00:50:00 ◼   ► is not in the Amazon ecosystem,

00:50:02 ◼   ► it's in the Apple ecosystem.

00:50:03 ◼   ► So I would like one of these in my house

00:50:04 ◼   ► so that I'll have something that I can talk to

00:50:06 ◼   ► that has access to the other half of my stuff

00:50:09 ◼   ► and hopefully can do something interesting with it.

00:50:12 ◼   ► - The other problem it's gonna have

00:50:13 ◼   ► is that the support for home automation devices

00:50:17 ◼   ► is gonna be limited to HomeKit.

00:50:19 ◼   ► And the Echo and the other things,

00:50:23 ◼   ► Echo supports way more than just HomeKit.

00:50:25 ◼   ► And HomeKit is still like, every new smart home device

00:50:30 ◼   ► is still not shipping with HomeKit today.

00:50:32 ◼   ► Many of them are, but there's still a lot out there,

00:50:35 ◼   ► and especially most of the cheap ones

00:50:37 ◼   ► that most people are probably actually buying.

00:50:40 ◼   ► A lot of them are not HomeKit compatible.

00:50:42 ◼   ► - They could play that up with the privacy angle, right?

00:50:44 ◼   ► Like I think you're right about that,

00:50:46 ◼   ► but the way they can spin that

00:50:48 ◼   ► is as part of their pitch to you about privacy.

00:50:51 ◼   ► Like I think that's one of the strengths HomeKit has

00:50:53 ◼   ► and the stringent requirements.

00:50:54 ◼   ► The more stringent security requirements for devices that comply with it, they won't

00:50:59 ◼   ► come right out and say, "Yeah, there's not as much HomeKit stuff out there, and

00:51:03 ◼   ► the best stuff is not HomeKit compatible, but the stuff you do buy that is actually

00:51:07 ◼   ► HomeKit certified will have a slightly less chance of letting people own your entire house."

00:51:11 ◼   ► That's true, yeah.

00:51:13 ◼   ► So again, it's going to be the kind of thing where the main selling points to this

00:51:17 ◼   ► are going to be things that most people aren't really going to think to ask about or care

00:51:24 ◼   ► about and the main downsides of it are probably going to be cost and support of devices out

00:51:31 ◼   ► there and the reliability and intelligence of its voice assistant. Those are pretty big

00:51:36 ◼   ► things. That's why I'm worried about this product. I don't think that it's going

00:51:41 ◼   ► to go very far in the market unless there's, I mean, we haven't seen it or know anything

00:51:47 ◼   ► about it yet. We don't even know technically that it's real. So this could all change

00:51:51 ◼   ► when we see it, but I am very skeptical of this product

00:51:54 ◼   ► just because it seems like it requires strength

00:51:57 ◼   ► that Apple doesn't have.

00:51:58 ◼   ► - You know what would be a good test for this?

00:52:01 ◼   ► Because this device is in many ways like Apple TV,

00:52:04 ◼   ► like it's a, especially the one with no screen,

00:52:08 ◼   ► a kind of a faceless device that's cheap, small,

00:52:11 ◼   ► it's not a Mac, it's not an iOS device, strictly speaking,

00:52:14 ◼   ► even though it's running iOS under the covers.

00:52:16 ◼   ► And Apple TV is like, well, look how badly

00:52:20 ◼   ► they've done with that device. They've made so many revisions of it. It used to be this

00:52:23 ◼   ► giant Mac running, you know, Tiger that did some weird stuff with iTunes and it morphed

00:52:28 ◼   ► into this puck which was better but then it didn't get much better. This Siri in a puck,

00:52:34 ◼   ► in a tube, in a whatever thing is a great test to say, "Is the Apple TV not great because

00:52:40 ◼   ► Apple's not good at making this kind of device or is the Apple TV not great because they

00:52:44 ◼   ► were never able to do the content deals or is it some combination?" Because it could

00:52:48 ◼   ► be that the Apple TV, the biggest thing hobbling it is all their grand visions for how this is going

00:52:53 ◼   ► to change the way you watch TV have been thwarted by the fact that they can't get their deals done.

00:52:57 ◼   ► They cannot produce a compelling offering that lets people actually do all the things they want

00:53:01 ◼   ► to do. And the poor kind of orphaned ghost town TV app on the Apple TV is, you know, there's no

00:53:10 ◼   ► better example of the Apple's failure to bring it all together on the TV front. Most people don't

00:53:15 ◼   ► don't have complaints about the hardware again,

00:53:17 ◼   ► other than the terrible remote,

00:53:18 ◼   ► which hopefully will not be an issue on this tube thing.

00:53:21 ◼   ► So it could be that Apple is really good

00:53:22 ◼   ► at making embedded devices that efficiently listen

00:53:25 ◼   ► to audio and play music and make it,

00:53:28 ◼   ► maybe they're really good at that.

00:53:29 ◼   ► And in this case, they don't need any content deals

00:53:31 ◼   ► 'cause it's just a speaker and a microphones in a tube.

00:53:35 ◼   ► But on the other hand, if they roll this out

00:53:36 ◼   ► and it looks to us two years later,

00:53:38 ◼   ► like, oh, it's one of those things that Apple makes

00:53:41 ◼   ► like the Apple TV that is kind of mediocre,

00:53:43 ◼   ► more expensive than the competition and not as good.

00:53:45 ◼   ► And then we just sit there and wait year after year

00:53:47 ◼   ► for it to be updated in some way

00:53:49 ◼   ► while Apple refuses to acknowledge its shortcomings.

00:53:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, I take small issue with what you said.

00:53:53 ◼   ► I really love my Apple TV.

00:53:55 ◼   ► Now, to be fair, I use it for a very particular set of tasks

00:54:00 ◼   ► and it is very well suited to basically

00:54:03 ◼   ► what it boils down to is playing Plex or playing Netflix.

00:54:06 ◼   ► And that's basically all it ever does.

00:54:08 ◼   ► But for those things, it's actually quite good.

00:54:10 ◼   ► And I'm not saying the remote is perfect by any stretch,

00:54:13 ◼   ► but it's fine.

00:54:15 ◼   ► It's not great, but it's fine.

00:54:17 ◼   ► It works.

00:54:18 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:54:19 ◼   ► I wish it wasn't so symmetrical, but.

00:54:21 ◼   ► - But compare it to the competition,

00:54:23 ◼   ► the other pucks that have 4K support

00:54:25 ◼   ► that cost less money, that play Netflix just as well

00:54:27 ◼   ► that the remotes are better on.

00:54:29 ◼   ► Like that's why people say Apple TV is not bad.

00:54:31 ◼   ► The remote is bad, but Apple TV itself is not bad.

00:54:33 ◼   ► I use it all the time too, right?

00:54:34 ◼   ► But if you are in the market for a puck

00:54:37 ◼   ► and you don't have a bunch of movies

00:54:38 ◼   ► that you bought on iTunes,

00:54:40 ◼   ► Apple's puck costs more, does less,

00:54:42 ◼   ► and is worse in pretty much every way

00:54:45 ◼   ► than the competition, and that's why people say

00:54:47 ◼   ► it's not the best puck offering.

00:54:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's fair.

00:54:52 ◼   ► I don't know, we'll see.

00:54:53 ◼   ► I mean, we're only a couple weeks away,

00:54:54 ◼   ► so we'll see what happens.

00:54:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, oh, and on the other puck front is like,

00:54:57 ◼   ► when the various versions were introduced,

00:54:59 ◼   ► sometimes they were pretty darn good, right?

00:55:01 ◼   ► But Apple just is not interested

00:55:04 ◼   ► in keeping up with the Joneses.

00:55:05 ◼   ► So everyone else gets 4K support,

00:55:07 ◼   ► or does 24 frames per second output for the film nerds,

00:55:10 ◼   ► or whatever, and Apple's like,

00:55:11 ◼   ► "Eh, the one we got is fine.

00:55:12 ◼   ► "We'll let it stay there for a few other few years."

00:55:15 ◼   ► Don't worry about it.

00:55:16 ◼   ► Maybe we'll update it, maybe we won't.

00:55:18 ◼   ► Who needs 4K, is that a thing?

00:55:20 ◼   ► - That can't be a thing.

00:55:21 ◼   ► No way that's a thing.

00:55:22 ◼   ► That's not a thing.

00:55:23 ◼   ► - We are sponsored this week by Fracture,

00:55:27 ◼   ► a wonderful photo decor company.

00:55:29 ◼   ► Go to fractureme.com/podcast

00:55:32 ◼   ► and enter ATP in the one question survey

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00:55:39 ◼   ► And look, these days we know you put your photos

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00:55:47 ◼   ► they're in a timeline for, what, a day at best?

00:55:50 ◼   ► And then they're just gone.

00:55:51 ◼   ► So many of these photos just kinda get lost forever

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00:56:14 ◼   ► and the frames are expensive or cheap looking,

00:56:17 ◼   ► you gotta pick one or the other usually.

00:56:19 ◼   ► And they're kind of a pain.

00:56:21 ◼   ► With fracture, the prints are glass.

00:56:24 ◼   ► It's a pane of glass that is a photo print

00:56:27 ◼   ► that goes edge to edge.

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00:56:32 ◼   ► It is a sleek, frameless design.

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00:57:22 ◼   ► Make sure you listen to ATP as the source there.

00:57:24 ◼   ► Thank you very much to Fracture for sponsoring our show.

00:57:27 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:57:30 ◼   ► - We're gonna take a really weird turn now.

00:57:33 ◼   ► We're gonna talk about Google I/O,

00:57:35 ◼   ► 'cause that's a thing,

00:57:36 ◼   ► and it was somewhat interesting, believe it or not.

00:57:38 ◼   ► - It's so timely, right?

00:57:39 ◼   ► - And it's so timely, given that it happened

00:57:41 ◼   ► like two weeks ago.

00:57:42 ◼   ► Indeed.

00:57:44 ◼   ► So Google I/O happened May 17th through 19th,

00:57:47 ◼   ► we're recording this on the 24th,

00:57:49 ◼   ► and the only bit of I/O that I watched was the keynote,

00:57:54 ◼   ► but I did watch the keynote, and it was very, well,

00:57:56 ◼   ► given it was not an Apple keynote, it was very good.

00:57:59 ◼   ► And if there's anything that we can all agree

00:58:02 ◼   ► that Apple is very good at,

00:58:03 ◼   ► it's doing a keynote presentation.

00:58:05 ◼   ► And so I watched the keynote, and by and large, I didn't

00:58:10 ◼   ► think that there was that much to discuss, for us to

00:58:14 ◼   ► discuss.

00:58:15 ◼   ► There were a couple things, though.

00:58:16 ◼   ► One was the updates to Google Photos, which I am a devout

00:58:20 ◼   ► fan of. Yes, I understand that I'm giving Google my data.

00:58:23 ◼   ► Yes, I understand that that can be creepy.

00:58:26 ◼   ► Yes, I understand that there are penalties for doing so.

00:58:29 ◼   ► Yes, I understand I am paying them, and yet they're still

00:58:32 ◼   ► scanning all my data, despite the fact that I'm paying them.

00:58:34 ◼   ► However, I made the choice that to me the benefits are worth it in the case of Google Photos.

00:58:40 ◼   ► And so that's just my choice. It may not be right for you, but it's right for me.

00:58:44 ◼   ► So what they've done is they've done a lot with sharing with Google Photos. So it's much easier to share

00:58:52 ◼   ► kind of your photos with your spouse or with those that are at like an event like a party or something like that.

00:58:59 ◼   ► And that looks really cool. It's trying to be more proactive about, you know,

00:59:03 ◼   ► "Hey, it looks like Marco and John are in all these pictures.

00:59:05 ◼   ► Do you want to share this with them?"

00:59:07 ◼   ► Make an album and automatically share it with them.

00:59:10 ◼   ► And that sort of stuff is really cool and I'm looking forward to it, although I think

00:59:14 ◼   ► it'll be more useful if I knew more people that were devout Google Photos users like

00:59:19 ◼   ► myself.

00:59:20 ◼   ► But we'll see.

00:59:21 ◼   ► But I thought the Photos improvements looked neat.

00:59:24 ◼   ► So I tried to merge this in the notes with an old question that we had many, many months

00:59:29 ◼   ► ago from Mark Wadham who was asking about family iCloud photo libraries.

00:59:34 ◼   ► This is a general question I think it was like we talked about a long time but what

00:59:38 ◼   ► the heck do we mean and it's suddenly more relevant because like Casey said this was

00:59:41 ◼   ► a headlining feature of their Google I/O presentation of the Google Photos portion of it like hey

00:59:46 ◼   ► look at this neat way to do a thing that they think is common like you know you and your

00:59:52 ◼   ► partner and your spouse whatever just want to share all of your pictures with each other

00:59:57 ◼   ► not like on a case-by-case basis like Casey was talking about,

01:00:00 ◼   ► which is another feature of like, oh,

01:00:01 ◼   ► let's suggest sharing these or whatever,

01:00:02 ◼   ► we just say, look, everything that I take,

01:00:04 ◼   ► also show it to this person.

01:00:06 ◼   ► And the way they implemented it is they get to see that stuff,

01:00:09 ◼   ► and then they can look at them and save them

01:00:11 ◼   ► into their own library if they like them.

01:00:13 ◼   ► Right?

01:00:13 ◼   ► Oh, I like that one.

01:00:14 ◼   ► I want to keep that one.

01:00:15 ◼   ► I want to keep that one.

01:00:16 ◼   ► So it's not-- it's more like automatic by default offering

01:00:20 ◼   ► of your photos to someone else, but it's still

01:00:23 ◼   ► two separate libraries.

01:00:24 ◼   ► And the broader question about from way back in the hypercritical and no iLife is an island

01:00:30 ◼   ► is the very difficult problem that Apple has not yet tackled, but that they're slowly building

01:00:35 ◼   ► up the infrastructure to tackle, I feel like, and I hope they address it soon, is the way

01:00:41 ◼   ► my family at least uses photos and the way I think a lot of families would use photos

01:00:46 ◼   ► if given the option, which is if you have two parents and children, both parents take

01:00:53 ◼   ► pictures of their children, depending on maybe at the same time at the same event, or if

01:00:57 ◼   ► one parent is with one child, one parent is with another, they take pictures on their

01:01:00 ◼   ► phone, they take pictures with their cameras, however they take them.

01:01:03 ◼   ► Each parent is an adult and has their own Apple ID, or whatever, Google account, or

01:01:08 ◼   ► whether they have their own accounts, which means in the Apple and Google worlds, they

01:01:12 ◼   ► have their own photo libraries, and you know, it's kind of this siloed arrangement.

01:01:16 ◼   ► And yet, in a family situation, usually you want all the pictures, at least all the pictures

01:01:23 ◼   ► of the kids, probably all the pictures, period, to be together in one big library and not

01:01:27 ◼   ► have to deal with, you know, two different people's libraries and sharing between them.

01:01:32 ◼   ► It's inefficient.

01:01:33 ◼   ► It's hard to keep track of like the one master library of family photos.

01:01:37 ◼   ► Very often the solution is, oh, just designate one parent to be the official holder of their

01:01:42 ◼   ► Apple ID has the library, right?

01:01:45 ◼   ► That's what we do at our house.

01:01:46 ◼   ► My wife's Apple ID, she is the owner of the photos library.

01:01:49 ◼   ► So on her iOS devices, she has access to all of our pictures.

01:01:54 ◼   ► On my iOS devices and on my Mac, I have access to only the pictures I've taken with my iPhone

01:02:00 ◼   ► because all the other pictures go into the big library and periodically I have to manually

01:02:06 ◼   ► export unmodified original, you know, to make sure I get all the stuff.

01:02:10 ◼   ► You know, I can't bother editing them on my phone or anything.

01:02:12 ◼   ► I have to just let them stream into my Mac, export all the unmodified originals and import

01:02:17 ◼   ► them into the "real" photo library that is hers.

01:02:22 ◼   ► This used to be mine, and now it's hers, and we've gone back and forth with it, but this

01:02:25 ◼   ► is not what I want, and this is not what any family wants.

01:02:28 ◼   ► And I think a lot of families do get by by having the designated person who owns the

01:02:31 ◼   ► photo library, but it's terrible because we take so many pictures on our phones.

01:02:35 ◼   ► I don't want to be signed into my wife's Apple ID on my phone, right?

01:02:39 ◼   ► It's bad enough that we all have to do that from the old days of buying things through

01:02:43 ◼   ► the app store, and Apple does let you be signed into the app store as your spouse, but signed

01:02:47 ◼   ► everything else is you, like they let you do that for sharing of apps.

01:02:50 ◼   ► That's what we do. You know, Aaron is me for the App Store, but she is her in every other way.

01:02:57 ◼   ► Yeah, and Apple added the capability to do that because it is a common arrangement, but it's not great.

01:03:01 ◼   ► So Apple eventually added, a couple years ago now, the concept of a family, where you can make a family

01:03:08 ◼   ► in Apple's interface and say, "Here are the people who are members of the family, here are the adults, here are the children."

01:03:12 ◼   ► and family sharing allows you to share applications that allow this.

01:03:17 ◼   ► I think the default is to allow, but Marco wouldn't know.

01:03:19 ◼   ► I think you could configure your app to say it's not shareable,

01:03:22 ◼   ► like I don't want you to be able to share this,

01:03:23 ◼   ► but in my experience, pretty much all apps are like this.

01:03:26 ◼   ► If I buy an app, my children's iOS devices have access to that app

01:03:32 ◼   ► just because I bought it.

01:03:33 ◼   ► It's a little bit weirder with in-app purchases,

01:03:35 ◼   ► and since so many things are free with in-app purchases now,

01:03:38 ◼   ► it's still a little bit weird, but it is, you know,

01:03:40 ◼   ► The key thing is Apple allows the concept of a family to exist and membership and that family to exist.

01:03:47 ◼   ► And that membership brings certain sharing privileges that only exist within the family,

01:03:51 ◼   ► including from things of like my kids try to buy stuff on their iOS device and it sends me a notification

01:03:55 ◼   ► that I have to approve or deny. They're leveraging that functionality to do that.

01:03:58 ◼   ► So they're creeping up on it. Before it just used to be a bunch of Apple IDs that you'd be shared in weird ways.

01:04:04 ◼   ► Now you can construct a family unit and specify everything about it.

01:04:09 ◼   ► You can give kids Apple IDs, which you didn't used to be able to do, and now you can.

01:04:12 ◼   ► They just need to take the next step, which is stop siloing libraries of photos.

01:04:18 ◼   ► And it's a really difficult problem because you might think, well,

01:04:21 ◼   ► I don't want all the photos from two people to be shared forever into one giant library.

01:04:25 ◼   ► Like how would that even work in terms of billing and how do I keep some photos private

01:04:30 ◼   ► if I'm taking a million pictures with my phone of like, you know, a bunch of, you know,

01:04:35 ◼   ► things in the hardware store for some repair I'm doing

01:04:37 ◼   ► and my wife doesn't want them appearing on her phone because,

01:04:39 ◼   ► you know, that's just relevant to me.

01:04:41 ◼   ► Like, it is a hard problem.

01:04:42 ◼   ► Don't get me wrong.

01:04:43 ◼   ► It is not like they should just snap their fingers

01:04:45 ◼   ► and do this.

01:04:46 ◼   ► They just need to make incremental progress towards it,

01:04:48 ◼   ► and eventually they need to get there.

01:04:50 ◼   ► And even Google, with their thing of like, oh,

01:04:53 ◼   ► you can just see all my pictures and pick the ones

01:04:54 ◼   ► that you want, that is still incremental progress.

01:04:56 ◼   ► Because it is still two entirely different libraries.

01:04:58 ◼   ► It's just easing the friction of how you get from one thing

01:05:02 ◼   ► to the other.

01:05:02 ◼   ► But I wouldn't like that solution

01:05:03 ◼   ► either because I'd constantly be thinking, oh,

01:05:05 ◼   ► did you pull in all the photos yesterday or did you forget some or where did you leave

01:05:10 ◼   ► off? I just want them all to be in one big pool. I just want them to be our photos, like

01:05:14 ◼   ► the way it is now. And so I really hope Apple is slowly but surely working towards this.

01:05:19 ◼   ► And I hope Google is too, because I think that is a better way for families to manage

01:05:24 ◼   ► their photos than any of the current systems.

01:05:27 ◼   ► I agree with you.

01:05:29 ◼   ► Who has the photo libraries in your houses?

01:05:32 ◼   ► - I do.

01:05:34 ◼   ► - We have two different ones with lots of duplication

01:05:37 ◼   ► and lots of wasted effort and lots of wasted iCloud space

01:05:42 ◼   ► and hard drive space and we are our own people

01:05:45 ◼   ► and we have our own ways of doing things.

01:05:48 ◼   ► We have some of our own pictures,

01:05:50 ◼   ► we have a bunch of family pictures.

01:05:52 ◼   ► It would be nice to have both,

01:05:53 ◼   ► but usually what actually happens is

01:05:56 ◼   ► whenever one of us wants a picture that the other one took,

01:05:58 ◼   ► we ask across the office,

01:06:00 ◼   ► "Hey, can you send me that picture of whatever, whatever?"

01:06:02 ◼   ► and then we either airdrop it to each other

01:06:04 ◼   ► or we go browse our hard drives on our network share

01:06:07 ◼   ► and do it that way.

01:06:08 ◼   ► - Do you get freaked out about whether you're actually

01:06:10 ◼   ► getting original quality when you share them with each other

01:06:12 ◼   ► 'cause almost all the sharing interfaces

01:06:14 ◼   ► do not give you original quality.

01:06:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, we don't do any of the sharing with like,

01:06:18 ◼   ► you know, inside the Photos app,

01:06:20 ◼   ► like the shared albums, like that will do with like

01:06:22 ◼   ► sharing photos with friends or, you know,

01:06:24 ◼   ► for an event, but those are not full quality.

01:06:26 ◼   ► As Jason Snell pointed out,

01:06:27 ◼   ► I think I upgraded this past week,

01:06:29 ◼   ► those are only like three megapixels or something,

01:06:30 ◼   ► they're very, very small.

01:06:32 ◼   ► When I'm doing the transfer between Tiff and I,

01:06:34 ◼   ► we either do AirDrop or direct file transfer

01:06:38 ◼   ► over the network.

01:06:39 ◼   ► - AirDrop from the photos thing on iOS?

01:06:42 ◼   ► - Sometimes.

01:06:43 ◼   ► - Is that full quality?

01:06:45 ◼   ► Like do you get the RAW, if she shot it in RAW,

01:06:47 ◼   ► do you get a RAW coming over the wire or do you get a JPEG?

01:06:50 ◼   ► - For transfers of RAWs, that's when we'll usually involve

01:06:53 ◼   ► just the network shares where I will just open up

01:06:55 ◼   ► her hard drive on my computer over the network

01:06:58 ◼   ► and pull the file over ethernet,

01:06:59 ◼   ► because ethernet's awesome.

01:07:01 ◼   ► AirDrop is usually when the photo has originated

01:07:04 ◼   ► on an iPhone, when it was taken by an iPhone,

01:07:06 ◼   ► then we will air drop it.

01:07:07 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure that is the original file then,

01:07:10 ◼   ► in that case.

01:07:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, the other terrible thing about separate libraries

01:07:14 ◼   ► and sharing photos is it either discourages you,

01:07:18 ◼   ► the individual people, from doing edits,

01:07:19 ◼   ► or it makes you feel bad about it.

01:07:20 ◼   ► Because say you both have your own photos

01:07:22 ◼   ► and your own things, and you've done your own edits

01:07:24 ◼   ► and cropped things and made them look nice.

01:07:27 ◼   ► You would like it, and what I would want to happen is,

01:07:30 ◼   ► look, say you are both using photos,

01:07:32 ◼   ► I don't know if you are,

01:07:33 ◼   ► but if you are both using Apple's Photos app,

01:07:35 ◼   ► why can't I get all of that?

01:07:37 ◼   ► Give me the unmodified original,

01:07:39 ◼   ► give me your modifications,

01:07:40 ◼   ► it keeps them all losslessly,

01:07:42 ◼   ► it has all that information.

01:07:44 ◼   ► Your only choices instead are what I do,

01:07:46 ◼   ► which is export unmodified original,

01:07:48 ◼   ► which I really hope does what it says,

01:07:49 ◼   ► 'cause I'm trusting it.

01:07:50 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:07:51 ◼   ► But you are losing all of the edits at that point,

01:07:54 ◼   ► 'cause you're saying, forget about the edits,

01:07:55 ◼   ► and it's like, oh, why did I even bother doing,

01:07:57 ◼   ► It happens when we go on vacation a lot,

01:07:58 ◼   ► 'cause a lot of times I go on vacation

01:08:00 ◼   ► and I'll be putting the photos into my photos library

01:08:02 ◼   ► and my Apple ID and picking favorites and doing edits.

01:08:06 ◼   ► And then I have to do this laborious manual sync process.

01:08:08 ◼   ► It reminds me of the old days when I would get a new Mac

01:08:10 ◼   ► and manually do what Migration Assistant does today,

01:08:13 ◼   ► which was fun the first five or 600 times,

01:08:16 ◼   ► so eventually it gets old.

01:08:18 ◼   ► I will do all this picking and editing and cropping

01:08:21 ◼   ► and all this other stuff.

01:08:22 ◼   ► And then when I come back to the home computer,

01:08:24 ◼   ► I have to make a bunch of smart albums

01:08:26 ◼   ► to pull all the favorites and export on modified originals

01:08:30 ◼   ► for those and then redo my edits to make them look

01:08:33 ◼   ► like I did over there, cribbing off of them

01:08:35 ◼   ► to see how I decided to crop it and stuff.

01:08:37 ◼   ► It is not good at all.

01:08:40 ◼   ► And the other choice is to just be like,

01:08:41 ◼   ► okay, well I'm gonna import them into my library

01:08:45 ◼   ► because I have the device with me

01:08:46 ◼   ► and then when I get home to the real library,

01:08:49 ◼   ► I'll just dump them 'cause I haven't done

01:08:51 ◼   ► any modifications to them.

01:08:53 ◼   ► Or I'll be logged in as my wife the whole vacation

01:08:55 ◼   ► and use her account on this thing.

01:08:57 ◼   ► It's just a bunch of bad options.

01:08:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, we solved that problem again by duplication.

01:09:03 ◼   ► There's lots of duplication.

01:09:04 ◼   ► The only thing that helps here is that Tiff and I

01:09:07 ◼   ► both have very different editing styles.

01:09:09 ◼   ► She's way better at it, but I will often take my own pass

01:09:13 ◼   ► at things before her or if I don't think she's gonna care

01:09:16 ◼   ► about that photo or if it's something I took.

01:09:19 ◼   ► And so usually anything edited in my library

01:09:22 ◼   ► was edited by me and she takes her version

01:09:25 ◼   ► and it makes a way better version later.

01:09:26 ◼   ► But that's, again, we solved this problem

01:09:30 ◼   ► just by duplication, more and more duplication.

01:09:32 ◼   ► And it's a terrible solution,

01:09:34 ◼   ► but it does avoid a lot of the problems

01:09:37 ◼   ► that any kind of shared library would add.

01:09:39 ◼   ► It's just really inefficient.

01:09:41 ◼   ► - Another feature request I have for photos

01:09:42 ◼   ► and a thing that I do a lot is that I don't have two people

01:09:45 ◼   ► with conflicting editing styles,

01:09:46 ◼   ► I have just me who has different ideas

01:09:48 ◼   ► about how to edit things.

01:09:49 ◼   ► And a very frequent operation for me

01:09:50 ◼   ► is to duplicate a photo so I can do a different edit on it,

01:09:52 ◼   ► because you can't have more than one edit per photo.

01:09:55 ◼   ► So with a shared library, family photo library,

01:09:59 ◼   ► one of the features they should have

01:10:00 ◼   ► is the ability to do multiple edits of a single photo.

01:10:02 ◼   ► So then you could have the TIFF edit and the Marko edit

01:10:05 ◼   ► with one unmodified original beneath them

01:10:08 ◼   ► and have an interface to that.

01:10:10 ◼   ► That would be great.

01:10:10 ◼   ► Instead of me duplicating the thing

01:10:13 ◼   ► and getting image one, two, three, four,

01:10:15 ◼   ► copy.jpg and then doing modifications there.

01:10:18 ◼   ► Again, it's a thing I think people do,

01:10:21 ◼   ► multiple possible edits,

01:10:22 ◼   ► even if it's just two different crops.

01:10:24 ◼   ► one crop that you're gonna use for sharing with the family

01:10:26 ◼   ► 'cause you know they're gonna be looking at it on a phone,

01:10:28 ◼   ► and then a different crop and edit

01:10:30 ◼   ► for the one that you're gonna print on a fracture

01:10:32 ◼   ► or something and then throw up on the wall

01:10:34 ◼   ► because it'll be much bigger.

01:10:35 ◼   ► Lots of low-hanging fruit in the photo world

01:10:40 ◼   ► for features like this, but then the family sharing

01:10:42 ◼   ► is not low-hanging fruit.

01:10:43 ◼   ► It is a really difficult problem,

01:10:44 ◼   ► and I do see Apple making progress towards it.

01:10:46 ◼   ► I just can't wait for them to just finally do it.

01:10:51 ◼   ► I think in general, like kind of broadening this a little bit, one of my biggest wishlist

01:10:55 ◼   ► items for the Mac specifically, and I know this is probably involved iOS also just because

01:11:02 ◼   ► of the way this big sync setup works, but I just want the Photos app to just get more,

01:11:08 ◼   ► just get better and get more added to it. You know, like first on the realm of get better,

01:11:13 ◼   ► I really hope they finally sync the recognition data between images so that each new device

01:11:21 ◼   ► doesn't have to run its CPU hot for three days just to figure it all out itself.

01:11:25 ◼   ► Do you still use that feature?

01:11:27 ◼   ► I've kind of given up on it already.

01:11:28 ◼   ► I don't think you can turn it off.

01:11:30 ◼   ► I know, but in terms of, I'm thinking mostly of the faces.

01:11:33 ◼   ► I know you're talking about like, find me a picture of a boat, right, that whole thing,

01:11:37 ◼   ► which I think works OK.

01:11:38 ◼   ► Yeah, it works OK.

01:11:39 ◼   ► The Google Photos one is better.

01:11:40 ◼   ► But the face one is the one that I have the most hope for and that makes me the most disappointed.

01:11:44 ◼   ► I continue to manually keyword label the faces that I care about, which is incredibly tedious

01:11:50 ◼   ► And the Photos app fights you every step of the way.

01:11:53 ◼   ► Like when they remove the keywords from underneath, you can't display them anymore.

01:11:56 ◼   ► It's so hard to figure out which ones have keywords on them or not.

01:12:00 ◼   ► And I was like, "Well, why do you need to do that?

01:12:01 ◼   ► Just let the face recognition figure it out."

01:12:03 ◼   ► And I tried to train it, and I tried to convince it.

01:12:06 ◼   ► And it's close, but it's still just, you know, guess what?

01:12:10 ◼   ► People who are genetically related to each other tend to look similar.

01:12:16 ◼   ► And it's a hard problem.

01:12:17 ◼   ► I don't blame them.

01:12:18 ◼   ► Google doesn't get it perfectly either,

01:12:20 ◼   ► but I just wish I could just say,

01:12:22 ◼   ► I don't have to worry about that.

01:12:23 ◼   ► If I wanna find pictures of my son,

01:12:25 ◼   ► I can just type in his name

01:12:26 ◼   ► and it will find all the pictures of my son.

01:12:27 ◼   ► Reality in photos, it will find 15% of the photos of my son.

01:12:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, so photos, there is so much area

01:12:35 ◼   ► for improvement with photos.

01:12:37 ◼   ► Not only in the intelligence of what you were just talking

01:12:39 ◼   ► about, like the intelligence of the recognition

01:12:41 ◼   ► and the faces and everything, and the syncing of that data,

01:12:43 ◼   ► which is always my complaint, that like,

01:12:44 ◼   ► why does each device have to do this over and over again

01:12:46 ◼   ► and burn through its battery for the first few

01:12:48 ◼   ► days or weeks that you own it.

01:12:50 ◼   ► And then just the entire Photos app,

01:12:53 ◼   ► on iOS it's fine, I wouldn't say it's great, but it's fine.

01:12:57 ◼   ► The Mac Photos app really needs a lot of help.

01:13:01 ◼   ► It is seemingly designed by people who don't use Photos apps

01:13:06 ◼   ► and who have never used it to edit more than one photo

01:13:10 ◼   ► or to browse a library that had more than 10 photos.

01:13:13 ◼   ► It really does seem like it was rushed out once

01:13:18 ◼   ► three years ago whenever it came out,

01:13:20 ◼   ► and then not touched since in any meaningful way.

01:13:22 ◼   ► And I really hope that changes

01:13:24 ◼   ► because there's so much promise.

01:13:26 ◼   ► Because the syncing system they've built

01:13:27 ◼   ► for iCloud Photo Library has been rock solid for me

01:13:31 ◼   ► and for everyone else I've talked to who uses it.

01:13:33 ◼   ► It has been rock solid.

01:13:35 ◼   ► It's a great sync system.

01:13:37 ◼   ► It's integrated into everything.

01:13:39 ◼   ► It gets everything off your phone automatically.

01:13:41 ◼   ► The sharing is decent.

01:13:42 ◼   ► You know, it's not amazing, but it's decent, good enough.

01:13:45 ◼   ► I just wish the app on the Mac was better.

01:13:47 ◼   ► it is still not as good or not as responsive

01:13:51 ◼   ► or not as easy to work through more than four photos

01:13:55 ◼   ► as even iPhoto, let alone Aperture or Lightroom.

01:13:59 ◼   ► Like, there's so much room for improvement

01:14:01 ◼   ► and just the basics of navigating it,

01:14:04 ◼   ► picking through photos, rating photos,

01:14:06 ◼   ► deleting the ones you don't wanna keep,

01:14:08 ◼   ► editing the ones with performing minor edits.

01:14:10 ◼   ► It seems like it's designed right now for maximum friction

01:14:14 ◼   ► and to be as error-prone as possible.

01:14:16 ◼   ► and I just really, really wish,

01:14:19 ◼   ► and I know this is a long shot,

01:14:20 ◼   ► I wish they would like, I don't know,

01:14:22 ◼   ► put a different team on it,

01:14:23 ◼   ► put a different designer on it, something.

01:14:25 ◼   ► Get some new blood in there

01:14:26 ◼   ► to make the Photos app on the Mac great.

01:14:30 ◼   ► Or even just good.

01:14:32 ◼   ► I'm not asking for a lot here,

01:14:34 ◼   ► but like make it usable for people to actually go through

01:14:38 ◼   ► and sort through the thousands of pictures

01:14:42 ◼   ► that we can now take with these amazing devices

01:14:44 ◼   ► in our pockets all the time.

01:14:45 ◼   ► make that better, make it easier.

01:14:47 ◼   ► Don't show me 60 different animations

01:14:50 ◼   ► to go all these different levels deep

01:14:51 ◼   ► in this weird hierarchy, just do it.

01:14:54 ◼   ► Just respond to my keystrokes quickly.

01:14:56 ◼   ► When you're deleting photos out of a big list,

01:14:58 ◼   ► move it to the next one instead of,

01:15:01 ◼   ► just do what every other photo app has ever done before.

01:15:04 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:15:05 ◼   ► And this one doesn't do it.

01:15:07 ◼   ► So I really, really hope they got better.

01:15:09 ◼   ► - Imagine if they added features too.

01:15:11 ◼   ► Imagine that, like they actually added features.

01:15:14 ◼   ► next year there would be more features in it? Imagine.

01:15:17 ◼   ► That would be great. I'm not even, see, I'm not asking for much.

01:15:20 ◼   ► I'm kind of asking for features at this point. I feel like it's been long enough. But what

01:15:24 ◼   ► you said about the, I think I listed photos, Apple's Photos is one of my favorite applications

01:15:29 ◼   ► one year and we did like a favorites list. And it's for the reason you just said, it's

01:15:32 ◼   ► for the syncing. And I know people have horror stories about like, all my images were black

01:15:36 ◼   ► thumbnails and I lost all my data and blah, blah, blah. But like you, Marco, for me, it

01:15:40 ◼   ► It has been solid and I just have my fingers crossed that I'm not just lucky, right?

01:15:44 ◼   ► And that it really is, I think it really is reasonably reliable.

01:15:49 ◼   ► And so that's why I love it because it solved that problem for me, or not for me, for my

01:15:53 ◼   ► wife because it's on her phone.

01:15:54 ◼   ► But anyway, it solved the problem for one of us.

01:15:56 ◼   ► By the way, that's one of the things I use Google Photos for because we have this thing

01:15:59 ◼   ► where her Apple ID is the family photo library and it's on her phone and her iPad, but then

01:16:05 ◼   ► Then I have Google Photos running on her account, on her Mac, uploading to my Google account.

01:16:11 ◼   ► So if I want to pull one of our family photos, I launch Google Photos on my phone, because

01:16:14 ◼   ► it's the only way on my phone that I can get to our family's photos.

01:16:18 ◼   ► And so yes, I pay for one terabyte of storage in Google, and also the maximum amount you

01:16:23 ◼   ► can buy in Apple, so it is not particularly monetarily efficient.

01:16:26 ◼   ► This is the system I have.

01:16:27 ◼   ► But I've just now remembered that we're talking about Google I/O.

01:16:30 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:16:31 ◼   ► Yep.

01:16:32 ◼   ► This is a song about Alice.

01:16:33 ◼   ► Well, I mean, the photos was the thing they talk about.

01:16:36 ◼   ► And like credit where credit is due to Google,

01:16:38 ◼   ► they are very smart for giving me that ability.

01:16:40 ◼   ► The fact that I can run a client a thing, a terrible thing,

01:16:43 ◼   ► on my Mac that somehow sucks all of the photos out of my Apple photos library

01:16:49 ◼   ► and uploads them to Google, by the way,

01:16:51 ◼   ► I'm going to give a two-second rant on this little thing.

01:16:53 ◼   ► It's like it's a little menu bar icon and it does what I want it to do,

01:16:56 ◼   ► which is like, I'll find, I don't know how I'll do it,

01:16:59 ◼   ► but I'll dig through your Apple crap and I will find your photos,

01:17:02 ◼   ► probably in a way that Apple doesn't want us to do, but they do it and it works,

01:17:05 ◼   ► and I will push them up to the Google account of your choosing.

01:17:08 ◼   ► And so, from my wife's account, I can push up to mine.

01:17:12 ◼   ► But this little menu bar thing has this feature in terrible scare quotes,

01:17:17 ◼   ► where it will say, it will tell you how many uploads failed,

01:17:22 ◼   ► and sometimes it will give you a notification, say,

01:17:25 ◼   ► "I tried to upload these pictures to Google Photos and they failed.

01:17:28 ◼   ► Click here to learn more."

01:17:29 ◼   ► and you click and it gives you this terrible little tiny dialogue that lists these very long

01:17:34 ◼   ► file paths that you can't see the right hand side of unless you scroll. Right? And it says,

01:17:38 ◼   ► "These are all the ones that failed." And there's a button on it or other, you know, other, it's a

01:17:43 ◼   ► button or menu item, whatever, that lets you through this thing say, "Please retry them."

01:17:46 ◼   ► And it's like, "Don't wait for me to tell you. Just keep trying, little Google thing." And maybe,

01:17:53 ◼   ► here's the thing, maybe it does automatically retry. Maybe it's going to retry no matter what

01:17:57 ◼   ► anyway but the fact that the UI has a way for you to see what failed and click

01:18:01 ◼   ► the retry button compels me to every time I'm on her computer do that and

01:18:06 ◼   ► because their file names are all obscure I can't tell is it trying to re-upload

01:18:09 ◼   ► these seven raws over and over again can it just not upload raws at all and every

01:18:12 ◼   ► time it fails to upload them it tells me about it or is it if I never touched it

01:18:16 ◼   ► would it merely retry constantly and eventually succeed no way to tell one of

01:18:21 ◼   ► the worst like sort of like nerd baiting interfaces because once you give me an

01:18:25 ◼   ► an interface to see the things that failed

01:18:27 ◼   ► and you give me a button to tell it to retry,

01:18:29 ◼   ► it's cruel, it is a cruel interface

01:18:31 ◼   ► and if someone at Google is listening to this,

01:18:34 ◼   ► A, either make your thing, never tell me about this

01:18:36 ◼   ► and just upload them all, or B, make it so that

01:18:40 ◼   ► I have some explanation for the failures

01:18:42 ◼   ► and like, or some kind of progress indication

01:18:44 ◼   ► or something that will, like if you're gonna give me

01:18:46 ◼   ► information, give me actionable information.

01:18:48 ◼   ► But otherwise, I would prefer it if you just

01:18:50 ◼   ► did your best and kept trying without any input from me

01:18:54 ◼   ► and it drives me nuts.

01:18:56 ◼   ► I've lost my train of thought

01:18:56 ◼   ► and I wasn't too busy being angry about that thing.

01:18:58 ◼   ► - Google IO.

01:18:59 ◼   ► - No, I know exactly what you're thinking of

01:19:02 ◼   ► and it's so bad, you're absolutely right.

01:19:04 ◼   ► - Do you use that thing as well, Casey?

01:19:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, the uploader that's on the map.

01:19:07 ◼   ► - And do you get suckered into going into the failed dialogue?

01:19:10 ◼   ► Failed uploads dialogue?

01:19:11 ◼   ► - Oh yes I do.

01:19:12 ◼   ► And it seems like there's about 10 files, mostly raw.

01:19:16 ◼   ► Now I have a ton of raw files, don't get me wrong,

01:19:18 ◼   ► so it uploads raw as a general point of fact,

01:19:21 ◼   ► But there are like 10 files that it just seems to forever be confused about.

01:19:26 ◼   ► And you can sort of figure out what they are, but yes, the everything you described, an

01:19:30 ◼   ► emphatic thumbs up to, well, really thumbs down to the uploader, but thumbs up to what

01:19:33 ◼   ► you were saying, because I completely agree.

01:19:35 ◼   ► Have you gotten to the point where you wrote down the file paths so that the next time

01:19:39 ◼   ► a dialogue comes up, you compare or screenshot it or otherwise try to record it?

01:19:44 ◼   ► I'm coming close to that because, you know, you can't remember what they're all like nonsense

01:19:47 ◼   ► names or whatever.

01:19:49 ◼   ► Like, is it the same three files that it's been telling me about every day for the past,

01:19:53 ◼   ► you know, year and a half?

01:19:54 ◼   ► And I don't know.

01:19:55 ◼   ► It's different amounts, I can tell you that.

01:19:57 ◼   ► Sometimes it's five, sometimes it's 100, sometimes it's 35, sometimes it's 50, like it tells

01:20:00 ◼   ► you the counts on them.

01:20:02 ◼   ► Anyway, this is a very long trip around for me to emphatically agreeing with Marco's other

01:20:06 ◼   ► complaint that using Apple's photos feels like walking through like waist-deep molasses,

01:20:10 ◼   ► right?

01:20:11 ◼   ► And this is an esoteric thing that I think only, that I'm particularly sensitive to,

01:20:17 ◼   ► And I think not everybody has the same hang-ups that I do about responsiveness, right?

01:20:20 ◼   ► But I have big, deep, deep hang-ups about responsiveness.

01:20:25 ◼   ► And everything I do in photos, because in photos you do a lot of repetitive operations.

01:20:29 ◼   ► Go to the next thing, crop, move, resize, adjust, star, favorite keyword, go to the

01:20:35 ◼   ► next thing, delete, go to the next thing.

01:20:38 ◼   ► Like that cycle, that thing I do when I do photos, when I go through my photos, every

01:20:44 ◼   ► Every single operation takes just a little bit longer than I think is reasonable.

01:20:49 ◼   ► Everything has this lag, has this, "Okay, eventually I'll do that.

01:20:53 ◼   ► Oh, did you want to crop?

01:20:55 ◼   ► Oh, you want to exit full screen?

01:20:57 ◼   ► Oh, you want to enter full screen.

01:20:59 ◼   ► Oh, you want to edit this photo?

01:21:01 ◼   ► Wait a second.

01:21:02 ◼   ► Wait, wait.

01:21:03 ◼   ► Okay, now I'm drawing the edit thing.

01:21:04 ◼   ► I want this to be so fast that before the key comes up off the keyboard, have it activated

01:21:10 ◼   ► on key down for cry.

01:21:12 ◼   ► I want it to be so incredibly fast because, I mean, at the time we bought this 5K iMac,

01:21:17 ◼   ► it was the fastest iMac you could buy.

01:21:20 ◼   ► And the fastest Mac you could buy, period, in single-threaded performance.

01:21:23 ◼   ► I don't know what the holdup is.

01:21:25 ◼   ► I do have a massive library.

01:21:27 ◼   ► I admit that my library is not small.

01:21:30 ◼   ► Maybe if I literally did have 100 photos, it would be fine.

01:21:32 ◼   ► I have, I think I'm up to 80,000, 90,000, I forget, I don't know if I've broken 100K

01:21:36 ◼   ► yet.

01:21:37 ◼   ► I have a lot of photos.

01:21:38 ◼   ► I understand it's a difficult problem case,

01:21:40 ◼   ► but this is what I want out of it.

01:21:44 ◼   ► And my perception of it is that it is slower now

01:21:47 ◼   ► than it was with iPhoto.

01:21:48 ◼   ► Now that's not fair because when I was using iPhoto,

01:21:51 ◼   ► especially older versions of iPhotos,

01:21:52 ◼   ► I had way fewer photos, right?

01:21:54 ◼   ► But on the other hand, I also had a slower Mac

01:21:56 ◼   ► and there was no SSD.

01:21:58 ◼   ► And like, I don't know, either way,

01:21:59 ◼   ► that's what I personally want out of this program.

01:22:01 ◼   ► And aside from the features,

01:22:03 ◼   ► I want it to just be so, so much faster.

01:22:07 ◼   ► make every single operation that I do,

01:22:10 ◼   ► like have as little lag as possible.

01:22:13 ◼   ► No transition, no redrawing things.

01:22:18 ◼   ► And again, it's not just a transition.

01:22:20 ◼   ► Very, very often I will hit a key combo

01:22:23 ◼   ► to like zoom to full screen

01:22:25 ◼   ► and either it will ignore the fact that I hit space bar,

01:22:28 ◼   ► it'll be like, that never happened.

01:22:30 ◼   ► I'm never gonna do that.

01:22:31 ◼   ► Or it will start at the animation to go into editing mode

01:22:35 ◼   ► and I double click the thing or click into edit mode,

01:22:37 ◼   ► it will start it perceptibly after I am completely done

01:22:41 ◼   ► with the input.

01:22:42 ◼   ► I have clicked or double clicked or done whatever.

01:22:45 ◼   ► Nothing happens on the screen for fractions of a second

01:22:48 ◼   ► that seem like an eternity, and then the animation begins

01:22:51 ◼   ► and I just wanna strangle somebody.

01:22:53 ◼   ► - All right, let's bring this back around.

01:22:54 ◼   ► Remember we were talking about Google I/O

01:22:56 ◼   ► like three hours ago?

01:22:57 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:22:59 ◼   ► - Related to that, and getting back to Google Photos,

01:23:01 ◼   ► getting back to Google Photos,

01:23:02 ◼   ► there was a comment I saw from somebody,

01:23:04 ◼   ► maybe it was Gruber, maybe it was just retweeting somebody.

01:23:06 ◼   ► Somebody's saying that using Google Photos

01:23:08 ◼   ► in your web browser is more responsive

01:23:11 ◼   ► than using the native Apple Photos app.

01:23:13 ◼   ► I wouldn't quite go that far because I don't do

01:23:18 ◼   ► the sort of going through photos, picking and editing

01:23:20 ◼   ► and tagging and stuff in Google Photos,

01:23:22 ◼   ► but I do use Google Photos in the web interface frequently,

01:23:25 ◼   ► basically to find a picture that I'm looking for.

01:23:27 ◼   ► I go into it, I use a search, which I think is pretty neat.

01:23:30 ◼   ► I try to use its facial recognition,

01:23:31 ◼   ► which is not really that much better than Apple's,

01:23:33 ◼   ► but it's what I've got or whatever.

01:23:35 ◼   ► And my perception of scrolling through,

01:23:38 ◼   ► especially like scrolling through photos by date

01:23:39 ◼   ► or filtering or searching,

01:23:40 ◼   ► those operations do actually feel faster

01:23:43 ◼   ► in Google Photos in Chrome than using the native app.

01:23:47 ◼   ► But for the picking and zooming and everything,

01:23:49 ◼   ► I imagine you'd end up with like download speed

01:23:51 ◼   ► being an issue because you gotta,

01:23:52 ◼   ► if I wanna see the full res photo to edit

01:23:54 ◼   ► and I wanna go to the next full res photo,

01:23:56 ◼   ► that's gonna happen way faster on my 5K iMac

01:23:58 ◼   ► with everything coming off the SSD

01:23:59 ◼   ► than it is gonna be pulling that stuff over the network.

01:24:01 ◼   ► So I'm not gonna go as far as whoever that person was

01:24:04 ◼   ► who said that the web version felt better than the native,

01:24:06 ◼   ► but the fact that there are any operations

01:24:08 ◼   ► in which it's a contest shows that Apple Photos

01:24:10 ◼   ► is a long way to go.

01:24:11 ◼   ► And kudos to Google for making essentially a webpage

01:24:14 ◼   ► that you can go to that I can scroll through

01:24:16 ◼   ► literally 90,000 photos and find what I want.

01:24:18 ◼   ► It's pretty amazing.

01:24:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, because this isn't like a web versus native

01:24:21 ◼   ► argument, this is just the Photos app on the Mac

01:24:24 ◼   ► is just not very good at all.

01:24:26 ◼   ► Like it really is quite poor.

01:24:28 ◼   ► And especially when you get into any kind of operation

01:24:31 ◼   ► where you're trying to go through a batch of photos

01:24:33 ◼   ► and pick through and delete and maybe star

01:24:37 ◼   ► or do minor edits on even.

01:24:39 ◼   ► It's again, it's just like it fights you at every turn.

01:24:41 ◼   ► Like it seems like it wants to show you its animations

01:24:43 ◼   ► more than it wants you to get your work done.

01:24:46 ◼   ► You're just, you're always waiting for it to do its thing,

01:24:49 ◼   ► to transition itself, to animate something.

01:24:52 ◼   ► It's also, I don't know, what do you guys think

01:24:54 ◼   ► of the incredibly deep like modal hierarchy

01:24:59 ◼   ► that it has in the various editing controls.

01:25:01 ◼   ► Like, you know, typically, like in a lot of image editors,

01:25:06 ◼   ► you have like a browsing mode,

01:25:08 ◼   ► and then you enter editing mode.

01:25:10 ◼   ► And in editing mode, pretty much all the controls

01:25:12 ◼   ► are visible, or at least very,

01:25:14 ◼   ► or at least can be collapsed out really quickly

01:25:16 ◼   ► with like a triangle dropdown thing.

01:25:18 ◼   ► But with photos, both on iOS and on the Mac,

01:25:21 ◼   ► it has these like, this like second tier,

01:25:24 ◼   ► so everything is like two or three levels in

01:25:26 ◼   ► where like, you go into editing mode,

01:25:28 ◼   ► You don't just have a crop control.

01:25:29 ◼   ► You have the controls box, and you open up the controls box,

01:25:34 ◼   ► and then you can crop from in there.

01:25:37 ◼   ► And everything is two or three levels deep.

01:25:40 ◼   ► And I find that quite cumbersome in real use.

01:25:44 ◼   ► And I know it's kind of a challenge on mobile

01:25:46 ◼   ► 'cause there's not a lot of space for controls,

01:25:48 ◼   ► but on the Mac that's not true,

01:25:50 ◼   ► but it seems like on the Mac they have copied over

01:25:52 ◼   ► the iPhone style anyway unnecessarily,

01:25:55 ◼   ► I guess for consistency or because they didn't have

01:25:57 ◼   ► any better ideas, I don't know.

01:25:59 ◼   ► But there are a lot of powerful controls

01:26:02 ◼   ► that Photos on the Mac has, but they're buried

01:26:05 ◼   ► under so many different levels and modes

01:26:06 ◼   ► and you have to toggle them on every single time

01:26:08 ◼   ► and all these different things that I find it

01:26:10 ◼   ► just incredibly cumbersome.

01:26:12 ◼   ► Is it just me?

01:26:13 ◼   ► - No, that was, I remember the last time I complained

01:26:16 ◼   ► about it was about the crop aspect original,

01:26:18 ◼   ► crop aspect original, crop aspect original.

01:26:20 ◼   ► Because it wouldn't remember, and also as you point out,

01:26:22 ◼   ► because why do I have to go three levels deep

01:26:24 ◼   ► to get to this anyway?

01:26:25 ◼   ► Like, on my 5K iMac screen, it's comical

01:26:28 ◼   ► that I have to click the thing to go to the screen

01:26:31 ◼   ► where I can get my crop options,

01:26:32 ◼   ► then click the thing that brings up the crop options,

01:26:34 ◼   ► then click, like, there is so much room

01:26:36 ◼   ► on the side of that screen.

01:26:37 ◼   ► You could put literally every edit control.

01:26:39 ◼   ► I mean, it is a big screen, there's a lot of resolution.

01:26:43 ◼   ► There's not that many controls here.

01:26:46 ◼   ► Like, you know, that's why applications, you know,

01:26:49 ◼   ► from Adobe and some of it have

01:26:51 ◼   ► a bunch of configurable palettes.

01:26:52 ◼   ► Now, I'm not saying photos needs configurable palettes.

01:26:55 ◼   ► That is a pro feature that regular people,

01:26:57 ◼   ► you don't want to throw a bunch of pallets in their face.

01:26:58 ◼   ► It's too much.

01:26:59 ◼   ► But the old version, iPhoto before photos,

01:27:03 ◼   ► had a more Mac-like interface where they said,

01:27:05 ◼   ► well, we got all this screen real estate.

01:27:07 ◼   ► Let's put as many of the commonly used editing functions

01:27:10 ◼   ► on the screen at the same time.

01:27:12 ◼   ► It's visible interface in the same way

01:27:14 ◼   ► that Apple used to be all into the toolbars and stuff.

01:27:16 ◼   ► Don't hide everything away.

01:27:18 ◼   ► If you can make the controls visible to somebody,

01:27:22 ◼   ► it's easier than going hunting for them.

01:27:24 ◼   ► And the multi-layer certainly is elegant and clean,

01:27:26 ◼   ► but it has insults to injury on the timing thing,

01:27:28 ◼   ► because even setting aside the mysterious lag

01:27:30 ◼   ► before anything happens,

01:27:31 ◼   ► all those transitions have some kind of animation,

01:27:34 ◼   ► and they add up, and it doesn't remember your preferences.

01:27:36 ◼   ► And if you do the same thing over and over again,

01:27:38 ◼   ► you just feel like you're,

01:27:39 ◼   ► it's like you're eating dinner,

01:27:40 ◼   ► but every time you wanted to take a bite of your dinner,

01:27:42 ◼   ► you had to go to the kitchen,

01:27:43 ◼   ► take a fork out of the silverware drawer,

01:27:45 ◼   ► close the silverware drawer, come back down,

01:27:46 ◼   ► take a bite of your dinner,

01:27:49 ◼   ► and then throw that fork away into the garbage.

01:27:51 ◼   ► The next time you wanted to take a bite,

01:27:52 ◼   ► you gotta get it from your seat, go to the chicken,

01:27:53 ◼   ► Go to the kitchen, go to the silverware door,

01:27:55 ◼   ► take out your fork, close the door,

01:27:56 ◼   ► come back, sit down, take a bite with it,

01:27:57 ◼   ► throw the fork away.

01:27:58 ◼   ► That's what using photos feels like.

01:27:59 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:28:01 ◼   ► - My word.

01:28:02 ◼   ► - I could not have put it better.

01:28:03 ◼   ► That's perfect, that's exactly how it feels.

01:28:06 ◼   ► - So Kotlin's a thing.

01:28:08 ◼   ► Remember, we're talking about IO, kids.

01:28:11 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:28:13 ◼   ► So Google announced first party support

01:28:17 ◼   ► or official blessing, if nothing else, for Kotlin.

01:28:19 ◼   ► Now Kotlin is a language by JetBrains.

01:28:23 ◼   ► JetBrains is a third-party entity.

01:28:26 ◼   ► If you're a .NET developer or were once a .NET developer,

01:28:29 ◼   ► like myself, ReSharper is a JetBrains thing,

01:28:33 ◼   ► if I'm not mistaken.

01:28:34 ◼   ► - You're a recovering .NET developer.

01:28:35 ◼   ► - A recovering .NET developer.

01:28:37 ◼   ► And so JetBrains knows development tools pretty darn well.

01:28:42 ◼   ► And they decided to come up with Kotlin,

01:28:44 ◼   ► which my vague understanding is runs on the JVM.

01:28:48 ◼   ► It is compatible with the Android libraries.

01:28:53 ◼   ► What is it? Android Studio, I believe it is?

01:28:56 ◼   ► Shoot, I probably have that wrong, I apologize.

01:28:57 ◼   ► But anyway, the thing, the IDE that is the official