0:00:00What? What's happening? Why? Like, I don't…
0:00:08We have actually gotten a considerable amount of feedback about this.
0:00:12But I guess, John, that you felt that Matthew's feedback was perhaps the best summary.
0:00:18So would you like to tell us about this?
0:00:19Yeah, anytime we ask any question, the Apple geniuses or the ex-Apple geniuses all come
0:00:24out.
0:00:25And this was about serial numbers and motherboards and the serial number being etched into metal
0:00:29on various Apple computers and what if you get parts replaced that the serial number
0:00:33is attached to.
0:00:35The only thing that the geniuses couldn't tell us is facts from my past that I can't
0:00:41remember because I'm old.
0:00:42I have this vague memory of getting some part swapped in the distant past that none of these
0:00:48guys know about because they probably weren't Apple geniuses then because Apple stores didn't
0:00:52exist then.
0:00:53Or maybe, I don't know, anyway.
0:00:55The idea was that I got a computer back and they were like, "Oh, just so you know, your
0:00:58serial number will be different now because we replaced the parts that determined that."
0:01:02In this modern day and age in some as of now and some indeterminate time in the past that I can't remember back to
0:01:09All of the motherboards Apple cells are apparently able to be flashed with a serial number
0:01:14So when they give you one they just you know, they put they put your old serial number into it
0:01:18So your serial number of your computer doesn't change even if they replace the part that contains a serial number
0:01:22I put Matthew Cox's thing in here because he had the interesting bit that
0:01:26Each part is factory repair to reuse three times before being scrapped
0:01:30So you're supposed to only flash three different serial numbers into there
0:01:33Although in theory this you could bypass that if you wanted to
0:01:38And what else did he have in here?
0:01:41About the stickers the idea is you're not supposed to be able to see the stickers
0:01:44Sometimes there'll be a part that's replaced that has an etching on it and those cases the technician is supposed to use permanent marker
0:01:50To note the serial number. Obviously, this is not in a visible location
0:01:52You wouldn't see it
0:01:54But some people send us screenshots of the permanent marker thing like that
0:01:57They need to write the actual serial number on the part if it's not etched into it
0:02:02And so on the inside and someplace that you won't see they just in their little scrawl handwriting right right in this serial number and
0:02:08Boy, I wouldn't want to know that's on my computer. So if it is don't tell me
0:02:12How many of those do you think are in your monitor your cinema display? I hope none because I well who knows
0:02:20I don't want to think about it
0:02:21Anyway, the external case on my monitor is the same I can tell but it's got all the scratches
0:02:24They put into it every time it gets repaired
0:02:26It's not their fault.
0:02:31They always ask in that survey, "How is the external appearance of your thing?"
0:02:34It's like, it's fine.
0:02:35A regular person won't notice it, but it's literally impossible to handle things like
0:02:40this that are just like this perfect anodized aluminum finish, heavy things and moving them
0:02:46around.
0:02:47It's impossible to not get scratches on it, so they do every time it goes in and out.
0:02:52Small ones that mostly you can't see, but anyway.
0:02:55And the final bit that I thought was interesting is that Apple are starting to put serial numbers
0:03:01on other internal components.
0:03:05And he says this ensures that no three-way swaps are carried out for warranty scams and
0:03:09also that each part is reused three times.
0:03:10These parts usually have tiny QR codes on them, about half the size of a small fingernail,
0:03:15which require expensive barcode scanners to scan and which are declared during the repair
0:03:19process for tracking purposes.
0:03:20So not just like big things like your motherboard or whatever, but even the little tiny parts,
0:03:24to little, little tiny serial numbers and little, little tiny QR codes to keep track
0:03:28of them all and to make sure that they're right.
0:03:30And they say that the technicians like it because it's much easier to see it with the
0:03:34fancy barcode scanners to scan the tiny little QR codes than trying to read tiny little alphanumeric
0:03:38codes through a magnifying glass and copying them down because, you know, the zeros look
0:03:43like eights, you know, look like Bs and all these other problems on these tiny things.
0:03:47So I thought this was interesting that the serial number proliferation and using all
0:03:52that with modern techniques to track it to make sure that the parts are used three times
0:03:57and then trashed and stuff like that.
0:03:58So never fear, your serial number will not change.
0:04:02Although part of the process a lot of people wrote in about was the technicians are really
0:04:06supposed to give you your serial number because if you get it and they don't give it to you
0:04:10with your old serial number into it or with no serial number into it, lots of stuff won't
0:04:14work.
0:04:15Like iMessage will be all cranky if you don't have a serial number or any sort of thing
0:04:17that's derived from the serial number involving authentication.
0:04:20Like your hard drive and all your data will all be the same, but the OS and the computer
0:04:24will be very angry if either they forgot to put a serial number on it, flash it into the
0:04:29motherboard that they replaced, or they put a different one into it.
0:04:31So I forget someone was telling us the techniques they used to make people remember it.
0:04:37But anyway, if everyone's doing their job right, you shouldn't have to worry about this
0:04:40issue at all.
0:04:41You'll just have to think maybe a little bit about someone's handwriting and permanent
0:04:44marker on the inside of your computer.
0:04:46(laughing)
0:04:48Oh goodness, I just wanna see your face
0:04:50if you open up your computer one day
0:04:51and see somebody's chicken scratch in there in Sharpie.
0:04:54Oh God.
0:04:55- I only accept the etched-in signatures
0:04:58of the original Macintosh team,
0:04:59which I do have on the inside
0:05:01of a couple of my computers in the attic.
0:05:03- Oh my goodness.
0:05:04All right, so tell us about
0:05:05long-distance wireless charging, Jon.
0:05:07- That was at the end of the last episode, I think,
0:05:09talking about, you asked about, Casey,
0:05:12like inductive charging, like what if there's no
0:05:14lightning port, what if you just had to put your phone
0:05:15like a pad or a mat or some other thing that this way the watch charges where you don't
0:05:19plug something into it but you just rest it on something and Marco was talking about how
0:05:24that's maybe not such a great idea because you gotta have all these pads and even the
0:05:28watch is annoying with its little pad that comes at it and you know and then I threw
0:05:32out like the idea of well what would be something that everyone could agree would be great is
0:05:36if you didn't have to put it on a pad or plug it into anything you just plug something into
0:05:41the wall in the room and then all the devices in the room get charged.
0:05:45Somehow it gets power wirelessly from that location specifically targeted to each device.
0:05:50And your liver.
0:05:51Yeah, and I just threw that out there as a thing, but apparently lots of companies are
0:05:56working on this tech.
0:05:57We'll throw some links in the show notes.
0:05:58This is an Ars Technica article that links to a Bloomberg article that talks about companies
0:06:02doing stuff like this.
0:06:03Of course, there are competing standards and, you know, they're saying the current ones
0:06:06are much slower than plugging in a wire, as you might imagine.
0:06:10And the other link we'll put in the show, it's just to Artemis, that company with the
0:06:13P cell technology that we talked about a while ago.
0:06:15>> Oh yeah, is anything going on with them?
0:06:17>> The whole thing with them was like, besides the thing that they were promoting, they had
0:06:21that little teaser at the end of their intro, like, oh, and there are other applications
0:06:24that we're thinking about for this technology that we're not ready to discuss.
0:06:27And everybody who wrote about that story was like, we think probably what they're talking
0:06:31about is power delivery, because their cool technology was like that they could use computers
0:06:38essentially to calculate the correct interference pattern to exactly target the devices that
0:06:43are in range.
0:06:44So they would sort of manipulate all the big overlapping bouncing waveforms with like sort
0:06:49of a feedback loop until it would hone in on wherever your phone is.
0:06:54And it would track it.
0:06:55Like you could be, you know, they had a thing like you can go in a car once you go over
0:06:5870 miles an hour, it's not fast enough to keep up with where you are or anything like
0:07:01that.
0:07:02But for people just walking around holding their phones, it would use interference as
0:07:05an advantage instead of a disadvantage, using the power of computers to figure out this
0:07:10complicated math to exactly target you.
0:07:11So what they're basically doing is taking electromagnetic radiation and concentrating
0:07:16it in a fairly small area.
0:07:18It's just Wi-Fi or cell signals.
0:07:20It's not radiation that's going to do anything harmful.
0:07:23But once you have that ability to basically say, "I can take electromagnetic radiation
0:07:27and target it in a very small area that you can move wherever the hell you want, and we'll
0:07:30keep up with wherever it is. Then if you crank up the power, you know, like, you know, it's
0:07:36some form of delivering energy through the air to charge a battery. You can't really
0:07:41crank it up ambiently because like then, you know, if you put all your devices in a microwave
0:07:46and that bombards it with lots of high energy electromagnetic radiation, but it does it
0:07:52uniformly. It doesn't like everything in the microwave is hitting that. You can't make
0:07:56an entire room a microwave oven. Not that you're saying I'm using microwave radiation,
0:08:00But anyway, you really need to target it because if you target it, then you can crank up the
0:08:03power and everybody else in the room doesn't get a huge amount of power thrown into them,
0:08:10just the spot where you're targeting it does.
0:08:11You still have to stay within reasonable safe limits, which is why I keep talking about
0:08:15cooking your internal organs and if they're off on where they aim it or whatever.
0:08:18But the ability to target a small area is what gives you the ability to turn the power
0:08:24dial up even at all, both practically speaking because you're concentrating in a smaller
0:08:30area and also because if you start to get into the realm depending on what wavelength
0:08:34and signals you're using, you start getting into the realm where they could actually affect
0:08:39the human body, at the very least you're not just doing it to every single person standing
0:08:44in the room, you're just doing it maybe to the hand that's holding the phone or whatever.
0:08:48So I imagine that the companies that are working on this tech are working on it at such low
0:08:53power that it does not pose a harm to humans and it's probably not as fancy as the P cell
0:08:58where it exactly targets with this constructive interference thing.
0:09:02It is probably much simpler and lower power than that.
0:09:06But for a situation, the reason I was thinking about this, even not just like, "Oh, you show
0:09:10up in the hotel room and you just plug this wall art in and all your devices charge."
0:09:14Even for at home, because plugging in your phone before you go to sleep, it's got eight
0:09:19hours to charge.
0:09:20It doesn't take eight hours to charge your phone.
0:09:21It takes way less than that.
0:09:22So if I could just not have to worry about plugging in my phone, whenever my phone was
0:09:26just on my nightstand, anywhere on my nightstand, not on a special pad or like even just anywhere
0:09:31in my bedroom.
0:09:32If I knew that if I put my phone anywhere in my bedroom and go to sleep, when I wake
0:09:35up in the morning it will be fully charged and I have to do nothing, I would buy that
0:09:38thing.
0:09:39Like, because you don't care how slow it charges, you're going to be asleep for many hours and
0:09:42it will, you know, it maybe wouldn't work for an iPad because sometimes it takes forever
0:09:46to charge.
0:09:47But even just the very simple, very low power version of this that didn't require me to
0:09:51remember to plug my phone in, I'd buy that in a second.
0:09:53So I hope these people working on this get it done sooner rather than later.
0:09:58Just watch where you put your hand on your liver at night.
0:09:59It's going to be so low power though, but it's barely trickling.
0:10:02And maybe it'll keep me warm in these cold New England winters when it's 60 degrees
0:10:07here today or whatever.
0:10:09So tell us about the shared iPad development guidelines, which I didn't even know was
0:10:13a thing until I saw this in the show notes.
0:10:15We talked about it last time.
0:10:16It was like the education, iPads, the multi-user account thing.
0:10:20Sure.
0:10:21I just didn't see the developer guidelines until tonight.
0:10:23Yeah, this is just a public URL, so if you want to go to it, you can see the guidelines
0:10:27for like, say you're going to write an application that's going to be on one of these shared
0:10:30iPads in a classroom where you've got 20 different students that could all "login" to your iPad
0:10:34at any time.
0:10:36And it's all the same things that we thought, just following up on this to put the URL in
0:10:40there.
0:10:41Like the guidelines are like, make sure you put all the data in the cloud.
0:10:43This is for app developers.
0:10:44If you're writing an app that you want to be well behaved, put all your data in the
0:10:47cloud, pull the data down when you need it.
0:10:50Every time someone does something to change the data, shove it back up into the cloud.
0:10:55All the little things that you're used to keeping locally, like first launch or progress
0:11:00flags like how they launched this app before, what screen were they on or whatever.
0:11:04That stuff that you used to keep like in a little plist locally, don't.
0:11:07You got to put that in the cloud too otherwise every time someone logs in it'll be like their
0:11:10first launching it over and over again.
0:11:13And use all the APIs that Apple's added over the past few years about marking your storage
0:11:17just purgeable by the OS so it can come through and say,
0:11:20oh, I'm allowed to delete that because the app has told me
0:11:23that it is available elsewhere.
0:11:25So if I delete it, it's fine.
0:11:26Because again, if you have 20 students,
0:11:28they can't all fit their data on there
0:11:29as multiple students log in and new data gets pulled down
0:11:32from the cloud, it's going to inevitably evict data
0:11:34from the person who used it five logins ago.
0:11:37And they talk about using the various APIs
0:11:41for syncing stuff.
0:11:43But, so these guidelines, this is,
0:11:46You know it's for it's for shared iPad which is their education thing, but these same guidelines are very similar to the guidelines
0:11:52They've given to people on
0:11:54iOS and even OS 10 again with the the marking your data as purgeable and doing everything with the cloud and
0:12:00So that less state is kept on the local machine
0:12:03Well, it's even closer to the Apple TV where the Apple TV from the start
0:12:06They even they specifically say you have no persistent storage only iCloud
0:12:10Yep, and then you can your app can't even be that big so half your app has to be pulled down on demand as well
0:12:16So these are these are like guidelines many people pointed out like this is like slowly inch by inch
0:12:21Creeping up onto the Chromebook model, which is you know, of course, there's nothing on this computer
0:12:25This computer is nothing. This computer is basically a local cache of some stuff that lives elsewhere
0:12:29Nothing is ever canonically on this computer
0:12:32Which is a great idea and Google just skipped everything and went right to there and your whole OS is a web browser and so
0:12:37and so forth, Apple is slowly moving up to it. Very slowly, but every little bit helps.
0:12:44sponsor this week is Audible.com. Audible.com has more than 180,000 audiobooks and spoken
0:12:51word audio products. You can get a free trial today for 30 days at audible.com/ATP. If you
0:12:58want to listen to it, Audible has it. You can listen to audiobooks from virtually every
0:13:01genre anytime, anywhere. You can play Audible's audiobooks on phones, tablets, computers,
0:13:07most Kindles, including the E Ink ones, even iPods if you still have an iPod. They are
0:13:11great for flights, long road trips, or even your daily commute. You might think you don't
0:13:15have time to read books, but you'd be surprised how many audiobooks you can get through if
0:13:19you just listen to like an hour a day. Maybe just to and from work. You can get through
0:13:24a lot of books in a year if you do that. Audiobooks really bring books to life. Many of them are
0:13:28read by the authors themselves, which really adds an extra dimension to the text. And you
0:13:33can take risks and try new authors and genres without regret because Audible offers their
0:13:36great listen guarantee. If you start an audiobook and don't like it, you can exchange it for
0:13:41another one for free.
0:13:43So see all this and listen for yourself.
0:13:45When you begin your free 30-day trial, you get your first audiobook for free, and there's
0:13:49no stress or obligation you can cancel your membership at any time.
0:13:53So with more than 180,000 audiobooks and spoken word audio products, you will find what you're
0:13:58looking for.
0:13:59Get a free 30-day trial by signing up at audible.com/atp.
0:14:04That's audible.com/atp.
0:14:05Thanks a lot to Audible for sponsoring our show.
0:14:09So earlier today, Walt Mossberg discovered the functional high ground.
0:14:13So this year, I don't have to say anything this year.
0:14:16Everyone's doing it for me.
0:14:17Yeah, I know.
0:14:18You just planted the seed.
0:14:19You incepted the tech press.
0:14:20That's not the past tense of inception.
0:14:22Anyway, so the point is—
0:14:23That sounds gross.
0:14:24I'm sorry, tech press.
0:14:26Whoops.
0:14:27So anyway, so Walt wrote on The Verge an article about how he really feels like Apple software
0:14:34quality has gone downhill lately, and so there are a couple of quotes I wanted to pull out
0:14:37and read really quickly.
0:14:39And this is Walt Mossberg again.
0:14:41In the last couple of years, however,
0:14:42I've noticed a gradual degradation
0:14:44in the quality and reliability of Apple's core apps
0:14:46on both the mobile iOS operating system
0:14:48and its Mac OS X platform.
0:14:50- He doesn't know what the name of the Mac operating system
0:14:52is, that's fine, Walt, we know.
0:14:54- It's almost as if the tech giant
0:14:56has taken its eye off the ball
0:14:57when it comes to these core software products
0:14:59while pursues big new dreams like smartwatches and cars.
0:15:02Fast forward a little bit.
0:15:03But the exceptions are increasing,
0:15:05and I hold Apple to its own higher,
0:15:07often-proclaimed standard based on all these "it just works" claims of the oft-repeated
0:15:13contention by Mr. Jobs and his successor Tim Cook that Apple is in business to make "great
0:15:19products." Apple's advantage is that it designs and builds software together. So if the software
0:15:24is an excellent, it does the superlative hardware a disservice.
0:15:29It was a pretty stern lashing that I thought that Walt gave, and he seems to, from what
0:15:37I've read of Walt Moseberg, he seems to generally like Apple stuff quite a bit. And he said
0:15:43in this article, "I still think the iPhone is the best smartphone, I still love their
0:15:46hardware, but man, this software is getting a little crummy these days." And it's fascinating
0:15:53to me to see someone at The Verge, which clearly has a readership that surpasses Marco.org,
0:16:02someone there saying, "You know what guys, things are looking a little rough these days."
0:16:08And I don't know if you guys have anything you'd like to add about this, but I mean at
0:16:11what point, and I feel like I've asked this question to you guys a thousand times, at
0:16:14what point does Apple recognize this and start to fix it?
0:16:18Yeah, this article, like so many articles that Walt Mossberg and those people are used
0:16:23to writing, like it's necessarily has to be like, it's almost as if he's writing for newspaper
0:16:28recall him inches, that he can't—he's not going to go on for just pages and pages,
0:16:32as some people are known to do. He's going to get in and out quickly, but it also means
0:16:38that he can't really support his contention particularly well. Like, it's just kind
0:16:43of like, look, if you already agree with me, then you will enjoy my complaining session,
0:16:46and I'll cite a few small examples, but there's no, like, systematic support for
0:16:51the thesis, no attempt to explain why. It's just like, you know what, sometimes things
0:16:55don't work for me and I'm cranky about it" and immediately jump to "I think this is part
0:16:59of an overall trend" but by being just one more pebble in this little mountain or whatever,
0:17:05it doesn't really matter what he says in this article. All that matters is that there's
0:17:08an article on this topic, yet another article on this topic. Gruber wrote about it too,
0:17:14a lot of people have been reacting to it because he's Walt Marsburg.
0:17:17Dow Rimple too? Yeah, because he's Walt Marsburg and because The Verge is a big site or whatever.
0:17:23In the media sometimes there are these fads where people get on a kick of like, you know,
0:17:27complaining about a particular thing or harping on a particular topic.
0:17:30So there's that to look for it as well and that like once a sort of a narrative gets
0:17:35out there, every publication wants to have a piece either about that topic, supporting
0:17:39it or, you know, surrounding it.
0:17:41That comes and goes.
0:17:42We know how that works.
0:17:43But as Gruber points out at this point, you know, Marco wrote this thing a long time ago
0:17:46and he, like was it like last year or something?
0:17:48Yeah, 13 months ago.
0:17:49And he wasn't the first one to complain about Apple software quality and he won't be the
0:17:53last but the fact is that like we've had these flare-ups but it's not as if it just goes away
0:17:58and people go oh year later no one will even be talking about Apple software quality like
0:18:01I would feel like it's multiple years at this point and that you could say that you know part
0:18:06of the media narrative and the sort of feeding on itself that they're getting more strident and
0:18:10urgent but I even ignoring that just saying like they're not going away that this this story seems
0:18:14to now be evergreen that you could write the story you know every few months you could write the same
0:18:19story and as Gruber points out he sees a lot of people reading the Walt Mossberg thing
0:18:24and agreeing and doesn't see a lot of people disagreeing.
0:18:28And in some respects like you can say that makes sense too because of course everyone's
0:18:31got complaints about their computers.
0:18:32It's like you know complaining about work or traffic like everyone's like oh yeah no
0:18:36those are all bad things right.
0:18:38That may be true but especially for something like Apple if it was a if it was a non-story
0:18:45you would have all the people who fill the traditional role of calling BS on people's
0:18:49complaining about stuff that Apple does. Like Apple is, you know, like anytime someone slams
0:18:54Apple for a reason that seems ridiculous or unfair or holding Apple to different standards
0:18:59than other companies or whatever, there's plenty of press to fight back against that.
0:19:04But I just don't see it for these type of stories where people are like, "You know what?
0:19:08That's not fair." Apple stuff is actually really, because everybody is like, Apple's
0:19:12not living up to its own thing. Mossberg said that, Gruber said that, a lot of people said
0:19:17like it's Apple's own standards that we're holding them to.
0:19:20It's not as if we're demanding that they be different
0:19:22than other companies because just for the hell of it,
0:19:25their whole value proposition is we are better
0:19:28than the other guys.
0:19:29We make the hardware and software together.
0:19:30We make the best products in the world.
0:19:32And so the fact that this can still be a story,
0:19:34like I think that's the story,
0:19:37not the individual articles or the details of them
0:19:41or what people are cranky about
0:19:42or what anecdote each person puts in their thing.
0:19:44But the fact that you can just keep writing these stories
0:19:47And I feel like you couldn't have written them, for example, maybe like in a time, think
0:19:52of a time when Apple where people would have said, "No, that's not true.
0:19:56I have a Windows 95 computer.
0:19:59It's been nothing but problems.
0:20:00But I got this new Mac with iLife and I'm able to do all these amazing things and it
0:20:07is just so much better and nicer and so much more understandable and I couldn't make heads
0:20:10or tails on my other computer."
0:20:11So if you're saying that Apple doesn't know how to write software, you're crazy because
0:20:14I think their software is great.
0:20:15Yeah, all software has problems.
0:20:17there are bugs, you know, that's what you would have gotten if you had done this during
0:20:21one of the more, you know, one of the times in history when Apple software was more unimpeachably
0:20:27good. But I think over the past, I don't know, I'm gonna say five years or so, not that it's
0:20:32like they're going downhill or it's like they're sliding off into oblivion, but there's been
0:20:36enough of an annoyance for enough people that you can write these stories and people go,
0:20:40"Yeah, that seems about right." Like maybe your individual problems aren't a big deal,
0:20:44haven't had your individual problem, maybe you're overblowing it for the sake of getting
0:20:48views and being dramatic or whatever. But the general theme that Apple software quality doesn't
0:20:56seem to live up to the standards it sets for itself, I think people broadly agree with that.
0:20:59And as Casey points out, maybe Apple doesn't broadly agree with that. But at this point,
0:21:07the bit that Gruber had at the end, the fact that we're still talking about it a year later
0:21:12and that the consensus reaction is one of agreement suggests that Apple probably does
0:21:15have a software problem and they definitely have a perception problem.
0:21:18Like whether their problem is real or not, I think even Apple has to admit, even Apple,
0:21:22if you disagree as a company that all these articles are overblown and you have your own
0:21:25metrics that show your software quality is better than ever and blah blah blah, you definitely
0:21:29have a perception problem.
0:21:30Because I feel like all of us out here are just reading these articles and going, "Yeah,
0:21:34yeah, that's pretty much the case.
0:21:35It's kind of a shame."
0:21:36- Yeah, I mean, when I first read
0:21:39Walt Mossberg's article today,
0:21:41I was honestly a little bit disappointed in,
0:21:44that it wasn't better backed up,
0:21:46because I think the examples he chose were not,
0:21:50for the most part, they were not like widespread,
0:21:52it seemed like they were all kind of like
0:21:54weird things that happened just to him.
0:21:57However, when I thought about it more,
0:21:58and I started seeing everyone else's articles,
0:22:00the reality is like, everybody has their own set
0:22:04of weird Apple bugs and stuff that happened to them.
0:22:07- And don't forget,
0:22:08Walt Mossberg has this special concierge treatment
0:22:10where if he has any weird problem,
0:22:12weird things that happened to him,
0:22:14Apple people parachute out of the sky
0:22:15and help him debug his problems.
0:22:17That does not happen for regular,
0:22:18you go to the Apple store and buy a device
0:22:20and you have something that you can't figure out,
0:22:22no one from Apple calls you
0:22:23and has the guy who wrote the software
0:22:24walk you through debugging procedures, right?
0:22:26Only Walt Mossberg gets that,
0:22:27which totally skews his perception
0:22:29and he has written in the past about,
0:22:31"Hey, I had some problems with this device
0:22:33but Apple helped me out and blah, blah, blah." I'm like, "It's great that you're telling
0:22:36us this, but geez, don't you realize that's not going to happen for anybody else? They're
0:22:39just going to be stranded." So anyway, that's why I tried to underplay this particular article
0:22:48with just old man yells at Cloud, like, "My software doesn't work sometimes and it's
0:22:53annoying." But like I said, it's just one more little pebble, one more little pebble
0:22:57in a giant pile that everyone just chucks their own little pet problems onto.
0:23:00- Yeah, and the reality is, some of this,
0:23:04you can look back at any part of Apple's history,
0:23:06and you can say, well, there were always problems.
0:23:08Like, some people think, oh, everything was better
0:23:10in Snow Leopard, but no, it wasn't.
0:23:12Like, there were always problems with every release,
0:23:14and there's always been bugs and shortcomings
0:23:15with all their stuff.
0:23:17Any time you can point back in history,
0:23:19it was never perfect.
0:23:20But I do think my thesis from last year
0:23:23that blew up so badly, that like,
0:23:26yeah, it's never been perfect,
0:23:27but the list of asterisks just keeps getting longer
0:23:30and longer and longer, I think that has only continued.
0:23:33Now, I'm not personally having as many problems now
0:23:37as I did a year ago, because the whole Discovery D fiasco
0:23:41caused a lot of problems for me.
0:23:42But even the same thing happened back then.
0:23:45A lot of people said, "Well, I don't have that problem,
0:23:47"but I have all these other problems."
0:23:48And so everyone has different problems,
0:23:51and I think the reason why everyone has enough problems
0:23:55to be agreeing with these things.
0:23:58The reason why I think this is not just a perception
0:24:01of an overall quality decline,
0:24:03this is a real overall quality decline,
0:24:05is just that the world we live in now
0:24:07has so many devices, so many services,
0:24:10everything is constantly changing, everything's in flux,
0:24:14that it is harder now than it's ever been
0:24:18to maintain high quality.
0:24:20And Apple's simply not doing it.
0:24:21Like, they aren't maintaining high quality.
0:24:24and it seems pretty clear that they can't.
0:24:26It isn't that they're evil or stupid,
0:24:30it just seems like they can't maintain high quality.
0:24:33Actions speak louder than words.
0:24:35I love the quote they gave Walt Mossberg.
0:24:37In response to my inquiries about this, Apple said, quote,
0:24:41"We have dedicated software teams
0:24:42across multiple platforms.
0:24:44The effort is as strong there as it has ever been."
0:24:47- That's probably true, but you get an E for effort.
0:24:49That doesn't really help you.
0:24:50- Yeah, see this, this is a pet peeve of mine.
0:24:53It drives me nuts whenever I hear somebody like Tim Cook
0:24:56excuse something by saying,
0:24:58"The team's working really hard on that."
0:25:00'Cause you know what?
0:25:01I don't care how hard the team is working.
0:25:02That is your problem, that is the team's problem,
0:25:04that is not my problem.
0:25:05That is how you talk to yourself and your team internally.
0:25:08That is not how you talk to the public,
0:25:10because the public doesn't give a crap
0:25:11how hard the team is working.
0:25:12The public cares about results.
0:25:14- Sometimes they care that, like,
0:25:15it seems like you as an Apple don't care about this,
0:25:17and sometimes part of the damage control is saying,
0:25:19"No, no, we really do care."
0:25:20Like, as if he can speak for the whole company,
0:25:21But I believe they really do care.
0:25:23This, Gruber cited his interview with Phil Schiller where he talked about these issues,
0:25:28again, a whole year ago.
0:25:29So this is not like, you know, this keeps coming around and around.
0:25:31And I think a lot of things in that interview, like, all we have, this is the only insight
0:25:36I have into what the hell is actually going on at Apple.
0:25:38But the image I have in my head of what's going on is explained by the venues that I
0:25:42think they're doing badly in.
0:25:44One, which I talked about at length, is the whole cloud services thing, which they've
0:25:47always been weak at, and that more and more things are cloud service based.
0:25:50And so if they're bad at cloud services,
0:25:51the badness spreads more.
0:25:52So let's set that aside for a second.
0:25:54The other thing that the thread that both Gruber
0:25:57and Walt Mossberg are talking about in this round,
0:25:59and not so much what you were talking about last year,
0:26:00is not really like the OS or like something wrong
0:26:05with the software in the sense that it bugs
0:26:12and stuff like that, just like application design.
0:26:14Like your application,
0:26:16they don't seem to be as good as they used to be.
0:26:19They're not as simple, they're not as understandable,
0:26:21they do weird things.
0:26:22Gruber's thing was that like photos told him
0:26:24that five photos couldn't be uploaded,
0:26:25but he couldn't figure out how to tell which five photos.
0:26:29Like application design decisions.
0:26:31And the reason I think,
0:26:32this gets back to Phil Schiller in our interview,
0:26:33the reason I think Apple probably is less inclined
0:26:36to agree with this is that the metrics they've chosen,
0:26:39seems to me, the metrics they've chosen
0:26:41to put on their software efforts is,
0:26:44one, they don't have a lot of good metrics
0:26:45on how well things interact with the cloud,
0:26:47because obviously it works in test
0:26:48then it works when we connect to our test server and it works when blah blah blah but
0:26:51then if it doesn't work for people out in the field, oh well, internet demons, we don't
0:26:55know what's going on, right? But it seems to me that Apple has really concentrated,
0:27:01and I hear this from Apple engineers, on like if there's a crash or if something that crashes
0:27:04the application that needs to get fixed. And I think Apple software over the past few years
0:27:09has crashed way less than it has in the past. I can't even remember the last time I had
0:27:12like an Apple application on the other iOS on the Mac,
0:27:16like a crash at all, let alone a repeatable crash.
0:27:19Like every time I do this, the whole app crashes.
0:27:21Like I really think they have really reduced crashes.
0:27:24Would you think that's great?
0:27:24Isn't that great that they reduced crashes, right?
0:27:28But maybe concentrating on that has taken their eye off
0:27:30of the other balls, which is one, application design,
0:27:33which I want to talk about a little bit more later.
0:27:35I have this item in the show and it's about photos, right?
0:27:37About like how you make the application
0:27:39and two, cloud services, which doesn't show up as a crash,
0:27:42just shows up as data that doesn't sync, and as cloud infects every single application
0:27:45we have, that becomes maddening.
0:27:47So Margo, you were talking about the functional high ground with stuff like, you know, the
0:27:51naming service, just plain doesn't work.
0:27:53And that's not really a crasher either, even if the demon was crashing behind the scenes,
0:27:56you wouldn't see it, but it's just stuff doesn't work.
0:27:58But I really feel like Apple's OS and their applications have way fewer crashes than they
0:28:04did back in, like, I keep going back to the Leopard days and stuff like that, where things
0:28:07would crash all the time.
0:28:08and it's like, oh, you know,
0:28:09or even the classic Mac OS days going back farther.
0:28:11Like, that they've made such progress there
0:28:13that they must feel really good about themselves internally
0:28:15or their metrics must be all looking up,
0:28:17but they don't realize that their crap discipline
0:28:18doesn't work to perform the desired function,
0:28:20either because the app is designed wrong,
0:28:22or because it's trying to connect to some cloud service
0:28:24and doing the wrong thing,
0:28:25and people just have no recourse
0:28:26other than to stare at their screen
0:28:27and hope their note will appear.
0:28:29- It is, it was very clear to me last year,
0:28:31I kept hearing from people here and there, secondhand,
0:28:35I kept hearing that internally Apple was caught by surprise
0:28:40that that article was getting traction
0:28:42because they thought everything was fine.
0:28:45Because by their metrics,
0:28:47everything was better than it's ever been.
0:28:49And that's great if your metrics cover everything,
0:28:53but nobody's metrics cover everything, that's impossible.
0:28:56And so in reality, you've optimized for the metrics.
0:28:59And I see Apple doing this a lot recently.
0:29:03I don't know if that's a Tim thing
0:29:04if that started before Tim was in charge,
0:29:07but it seems like Apple's really heavily
0:29:09into data-driven decision-making now.
0:29:12And I think there's so many flaws with that,
0:29:15and number one starts with what is the data
0:29:17you're basing the decisions on,
0:29:18and is that telling the whole story?
0:29:20Is it accurate, is it being gamed?
0:29:23Things like that, as these problems are very challenging
0:29:25in any kind of organization that tries to measure anything.
0:29:28And I think we're just seeing the ways that falls down.
0:29:32And one of the ways that falls down is
0:29:34if they're measuring quality by number of crashes,
0:29:37well there's a lot of bugs that don't cause crashes.
0:29:41And it doesn't seem like we're reducing those,
0:29:43and in fact we seem to be increasing them.
0:29:46And as you mentioned with services,
0:29:48so many of the bugs that I see now,
0:29:52now that Discovery is fixed as far as I know,
0:29:55most of the bugs I see now are interactions
0:29:58with Apple's services in some way.
0:30:02Whether it's the Apple TV trying to play media
0:30:04from iTunes and failing for God knows why,
0:30:06or showing a bunch of weird password dialogues
0:30:09on the phone for store purchases or anything,
0:30:11like you know, weird stuff like that,
0:30:12it seems like it's the interaction with the services
0:30:15that is falling down so badly.
0:30:17And we will definitely talk about design flaws,
0:30:20because that's a separate category,
0:30:22but the actual failures and bugs so often
0:30:25are service related that people are actually hitting here,
0:30:27that I don't think Apple is measuring the right things.
0:30:32If they don't think there's a problem,
0:30:34then their metrics are a problem.
0:30:37- And like the seat of the pants thing,
0:30:38like the way that we would imagine in the fantasy scenarios,
0:30:41like how does Apple have such great quality?
0:30:43Well, it's because Steve Jobs uses the products
0:30:46and if anything goes wrong for him,
0:30:47he comes back and yells at people and they fix it, right?
0:30:49That's the silly fairytale of how quality was maintained
0:30:52back in the Steve Jobs days.
0:30:53But the reason that fairytale works for us
0:30:55is because we can picture in our mind,
0:30:57like this thing everyone asks ourselves,
0:30:59like don't these guys at Apple actually use their products?
0:31:02But again, I'll go back to contact syncing, which is, you would think the simplest possible
0:31:07thing, very small, very bounded data set, not complicated data, it's basically all text,
0:31:13right?
0:31:14And you just want to have the same contact, you want to enter contact on your phone and
0:31:17have it show up on your Mac, you want to enter contact on your Mac and have it show up on
0:31:20your phone, you just want them to be in sync with each other.
0:31:22Like maybe you have an iPad in it, but it just seems like it should be a problem that
0:31:26is so incredibly boring and licked that it just works every time.
0:31:29yet, pretty much once every 1.5 years, my wife comes to me and says, "I entered some
0:31:34contact here and it's not showing up there." And then I have to do a bunch of rain dances
0:31:38to make that work. And I'm like, "Seriously? I'm doing this again? This is happening again?"
0:31:42It's contact syncing. And you think, "Doesn't Tim Cook have contacts in his phone? Doesn't
0:31:48he, like, when he's on his phone, enter someone's contact information and then come back and
0:31:53and go on his iPad at work and be pissed that that contact information isn't there?
0:31:59That's not a crasher, but that should show up as, "Hey, contacts doesn't work for the
0:32:04job that it's supposed to do."
0:32:06And then, of course, he has no recourse because you just sit there and you stare at it like,
0:32:09"Maybe the contact will show up eventually?
0:32:12Should I try signing out of iCloud and deleting all my local data off the device?
0:32:16What should I just..."
0:32:18First you got to do all the stuff of backing up all your contacts.
0:32:21I've done this so many times I know all the steps, but there's no way in hell a regular
0:32:24person's going to do all these things, and you just sit there and you stare at it.
0:32:29Stuff like that with services, how do you put a metric on that?
0:32:31The only metric is Steve Jobs tried to enter a contact and got mad and came and yelled
0:32:35at people.
0:32:36I don't know how you, like, a cloud services company needs to measure that, and they need
0:32:40to get good at measuring that, but Apple doesn't seem to.
0:32:44When problems like that happen for a problem domain that I think should have been solved
0:32:50like decades ago, it just makes me lose faith in everything.
0:32:53I was like, "I can't get contacts right."
0:32:56Like, forget about the complicated stuff.
0:32:57That just, they should just spend the next five years
0:33:01saying contacts will always work, right?
0:33:03And I'm not even talking about like little things,
0:33:05complicated scenarios, simultaneous use.
0:33:07I'm just saying like, you enter it on your phone,
0:33:09you come back five hours later,
0:33:11you look on your Mac and it's not there
0:33:12and you don't know why and you wait two days
0:33:14and it still doesn't show up
0:33:15and you're just scratching your head
0:33:17and that makes me want to just scream.
0:33:19You know, it's funny because my contacts sync, to my knowledge, has always worked perfectly.
0:33:25I never run into the iMessage problems that so many people run into.
0:33:29However, earlier today I was trying to AirPlay something to our brand new Apple TV, and I
0:33:37cannot think of a device in the house that isn't on the latest and greatest version of
0:33:42iOS or OS X.
0:33:45and I go to AirPlay to my Apple TV,
0:33:47and I see family room, space paren for paren.
0:33:51(laughing)
0:33:52- Oh no, it's back.
0:33:53- Oh no, the house has been infected.
0:33:56Clearly the only option is to burn it down and start anew.
0:33:59- Well, did the AirPlay work though?
0:34:01That is the real question.
0:34:02- It did, it did.
0:34:02- Well, then consider yourself lucky.
0:34:04- Yeah, exactly.
0:34:05I don't know, it's,
0:34:07I feel like what you guys have said
0:34:11is my experience as well.
0:34:12Like, it used to be that I would have almost no glitches or random errors or issues.
0:34:18I mean, it would happen from time to time, but very rarely.
0:34:22And I feel like, and I don't have a list in front of me or anything like that, and maybe
0:34:25I'm just allowing myself to be influenced by what, you know, the press is saying, but
0:34:30I really do feel like I'm seeing a lot more small issues these days.
0:34:36And sometimes big issues, like the iMac, the first iMac.
0:34:39I've just seen these issues from time to time that I never used to see before.
0:34:43And, you know, Aaron and my parents are coming to me and saying, "Oh, this isn't
0:34:48working right. What can I do?" And my answer has been a very sad shrug a lot
0:34:54more often lately than it ever was in the past.
0:34:56Because what can you do?
0:34:59Like, that's the thing with these sync issues.
0:35:01And to bring up another one I heard recently on a podcast, I think it was the
0:35:04talk show, I don't remember, that someone was talking about like, "Oh, I just used
0:35:06the Apple bundled notes app, which has improved tremendously in capability.
0:35:09You know, like you can do all the drawings in the notes app and you can do like rich
0:35:12text and pictures and all this stuff.
0:35:14And it doesn't use IMAP as a storage backend.
0:35:16It's like a modern full fledged notes application.
0:35:18So I'm using it so much more.
0:35:19I practically, I practically use it as they were saying, I practically use it as a, like
0:35:23as a replacement for like paste bot or like those copy and paste things where you will
0:35:26essentially copy something on your phone.
0:35:28You want to be able to see, to paste it on your Mac.
0:35:30So they'll just enter it in notes and then, you know, put down their phone half a second
0:35:35later, launch Notes on their Mac, and the note they just put on their phone is on their
0:35:37Mac, and they're all amazed at how fast it syncs. And that's a success story. That's
0:35:41the way it should be for all these things, because hey, it's not a lot of data. I just
0:35:44pasted like a URL, for instance, in Notes on my phone, and then I'm going to open Notes
0:35:48on my Mac, and that URL will be sitting there. Well, I also have a Notes document in the
0:35:51Apple official Notes application, which I do use, that is just a bunch of URLs that
0:35:55I frequently tweet at people, because they'll ask like, "Hey, where is Casey's blog post
0:35:58on all the toasters you reviewed?" or something, and I don't want to have to find the URL again,
0:36:01So I go to the Notes thing, and I added that URL note.
0:36:05I don't remember.
0:36:06A couple weeks ago I added it.
0:36:07And then several days later I went to my Mac and someone asked a question about something
0:36:11and I was going to tweet a reply with the URL and I opened Notes on my Mac and the URL's
0:36:15note wasn't there.
0:36:16And so I picked up my phone on my desk where I had added the note several days earlier
0:36:20and I looked at it on my phone.
0:36:21There's a URL note there.
0:36:22I'm like, "Did I add it to the local only one because they know there's the cloud in
0:36:25the local ones?"
0:36:26Nope, it's in the cloud one.
0:36:27And I put the phone down and then I look back at the Notes application on the Mac and then
0:36:31And I went to the iCloud system preferences and said, "Yeah, Notes is checked, you know,
0:36:34and it's syncing or whatever."
0:36:36And then I quit Notes and I forgot about it.
0:36:38The next day I came back again, launched Notes to get a URL.
0:36:41The URL note wasn't there.
0:36:43There's no, like, refresh button to click.
0:36:45There's nothing to be done except for I could have signed out to iCloud or unchecked and
0:36:49recheck the Notes thing or whatever, but I'm like, "What does a regular person do in this
0:36:53scenario?"
0:36:54And I thought about something like Dropbox where when I launch Dropbox on my Mac, a bunch
0:37:00a bunch of little spinners run, a bunch of little badges appear on icons, and at a certain
0:37:04point it's synced. Like, I know when I launch it, it syncs everything in my Dropbox. When
0:37:07the little badge is gone from the Dropbox icon on Ionya bar, I have some faith based
0:37:12on years of experience that Dropbox is satisfied that it has successfully synced everything
0:37:16to my computer. Were I to quit Dropbox and relaunch it, I know that on launch it would
0:37:20say "I better make sure everything in the Dropbox is up to date, and then we'll show
0:37:23a little spinner, and then it will go away." And yet with Notes on my Mac, when I launch
0:37:27it if the note I expect to be there isn't there like Casey said I don't know
0:37:31I shrugged my shoulders you know and like and so I just quit it I quit notes
0:37:35and then I came back a couple days later and I launched it and my year-old note
0:37:38was there like that's that's not that's not a success it wasn't it there's no
0:37:42crashes apples metrics muscle grade on that right but what what's happening why
0:37:48like I don't like and especially for something you hear other people you
0:37:54You know, saying great things about, like when it works you're just like, this is awesome
0:37:58because you're excited the same way that people, I want it to be boring like Dropbox where
0:38:02maybe it's not the most efficient and fanciest thing in the world, but over years of use,
0:38:06you know, and Dropbox has its weird corners where it saves your conflicted copy with this
0:38:09weird parenthetical name and it can get confused in complicated scenarios.
0:38:13All I want is the easy scenarios to be so boring that I never think about them.
0:38:17I don't launch Dropbox with trepidation wondering if the data that I expect to be there will
0:38:21be there.
0:38:22when I run out of my quota or whatever, it puts a little red badge icon and all I have
0:38:27to do is free up a little bit of space and it notices that I freed up space and it resyncs
0:38:32things. It should just be boring, right? It shouldn't be this mysterious roll of the dice
0:38:38and then when it does work you have no idea why it started working because literally I
0:38:41didn't even try to debug this. I didn't try to change it. So I think I went like a week,
0:38:44a week and a half with that one note that I added on my phone not appearing on my Mac
0:38:48And eventually it appeared.
0:38:50And I have no idea why.
0:38:51And so that's why, like Casey, one of my relatives
0:38:54asked me questions.
0:38:54I'm like, I don't know, take it to the Apple genius.
0:38:57I don't want to do the rain dance for them.
0:38:58There's no obvious solution.
0:38:59They're not doing anything wrong as users.
0:39:01It's just a constant source of frustration
0:39:04for things that should be boring at this point.
0:39:06And I give Apple a total pass at the edge of the envelope,
0:39:09where they're pushing the envelope,
0:39:10doing complicated things.
0:39:11I give them a pass on things like Siri.
0:39:12That's really hard to do.
0:39:14Natural language.
0:39:16Just make easy things easy, make hard things possible
0:39:19to throw out more pearl catchphrases, right?
0:39:22Easy things are not easy a lot of the time,
0:39:26even when hard things are possible,
0:39:27there seems to be no connection between them.
0:39:29- Yeah, my favorite persistent bug
0:39:32that was around for a long time and then resolved itself
0:39:35and has now come back rearing its ugly head,
0:39:38crippling my ability to respond quickly and easily
0:39:40with emoji is the keyboard texture placement
0:39:44that's built into the system
0:39:45all synced via iCloud as far as I'm aware. So this is in, if you're on the Mac, System Preferences,
0:39:50Keyboard, and then the Text tab. I use these to quickly type emoji that I use constantly.
0:39:56And when I got the new iMac, none of them synced. There's still, as far as I can tell,
0:40:01syncing between my iOS devices. They used to sync between my iOS devices and my Mac,
0:40:06but now they're not syncing with my Mac and I have no course of action to diagnose. I have no way to
0:40:12to figure it out. There's nothing I can do to fix this. Just hope.
0:40:16Yeah, all you've got are the rain dances, because you know what the rain dances are.
0:40:19You know, sign out of iCloud, disable that syncing, delete and recreate your account.
0:40:23Like all these things, you're trying to basically kick the thing into gear to say, "Go do that
0:40:28thing that you think you need to do where you synchronize data," because you have a
0:40:32sneaking suspicion that it thinks it's synchronized. But you know it's not, because you can't see
0:40:36your emoji shortcuts, but it thinks it's done. It thinks there's nothing to do.
0:40:40Yep, that's exactly right.
0:40:41- Well, and also, the rain dances that,
0:40:45like John, you said, you just send people to the genius.
0:40:48The geniuses can't do anything really.
0:40:50- No, but I want them to walk through,
0:40:52yeah, I want them to walk through the steps.
0:40:53I don't wanna be the one walking through that.
0:40:54- Right, and those steps are horrible.
0:40:56Like, if anything involves either restoring your phone,
0:41:00or even like, signing in and out of iCloud,
0:41:03with modern computers and modern devices,
0:41:07if you've bought into Apple's ecosystem,
0:41:09if you use photos, if you use music.
0:41:12Signing out of iCloud is an incredibly destructive action.
0:41:16You should never, ever, ever have to do that
0:41:19unless you're like selling a computer.
0:41:21(laughing)
0:41:21Then sign out of iCloud and format the whole thing.
0:41:23Signing out of an iCloud on a modern Mac,
0:41:26if you have stuff in photos and music and everything,
0:41:28and if you're using all the sync and everything,
0:41:30that is risky, it is complicated, it is time consuming.
0:41:34It can possibly waste a ton of bandwidth.
0:41:36You might lose data if you don't do it right.
0:41:38- And it won't necessarily work.
0:41:40- Yes, and although the sad part is unfortunately
0:41:42how often it does actually solve the problem, but--
0:41:44- Although when it does solve it, I always feel like,
0:41:46so I'll see you guys here in a month
0:41:49when it doesn't work again?
0:41:50'Cause it's not like you've actually solved the problem,
0:41:52you've just restarted the counter
0:41:54on when things will go awry, it seems like.
0:41:56- And so to me, if anybody at Apple is considering
0:42:00it a success when you can solve a problem
0:42:01by signing out and signing back in,
0:42:03like no, that is not a success.
0:42:04That is like, you saved your butt on that particular
0:42:08instance of that bug by putting people through a really,
0:42:11really invasive process, but that should not be
0:42:15standard operating procedure.
0:42:17You should not have people not only having to do this,
0:42:21having to sign into iCloud and delete all the crap
0:42:24and then re-sign back in and re-download all the crap,
0:42:27or have to restore your phone,
0:42:29which is even worse than all that.
0:42:31You shouldn't have people doing this on a routine basis
0:42:35to solve seemingly random and somewhat frequent problems
0:42:38Because A, that's really destructive now,
0:42:41and B, once people get into that habit,
0:42:43it's like quitting all the apps in the app switcher,
0:42:45once people get into that habit,
0:42:47years from now, people are going to still be doing this,
0:42:50thinking it's going to solve all their problems,
0:42:52like that's gonna be like what annoying power users
0:42:55tell their relatives, oh, you just gotta restore your phone,
0:42:57oh, you just gotta sign out of iCloud and sign back in.
0:43:00That causes damage for years to come
0:43:01in people's superstitions way beyond the time
0:43:05when you've stopped needing these horrible solutions.
0:43:08So it really is a long-term damage being done here in so many ways, with the quality issues
0:43:14and with the remedies and everything.
0:43:17I just get the feeling, and I hope I'm wrong, I hope this is just Apple putting on a good
0:43:20face because they don't really share a lot, but I just get the feeling that Apple is either
0:43:26oblivious or in denial to these problems and also that they're defensive.
0:43:32What I hear from Apple people, they're usually very defensive about how well they're doing
0:43:36and they think they're doing a lot better than I think they're doing. Maybe I'm just
0:43:40the least lucky person in the world, but it sounds like everybody has these stories about
0:43:44random stuff that just doesn't work right for them or has failed for them or has done
0:43:49bad things. Like, this is a big problem and I won't hedge my bets and say, "Well, either
0:43:58it's real or there's a perception problem." No, no, it's a real problem. This is obviously
0:44:04This is way too big and widespread
0:44:05to be just a perception problem.
0:44:08You know, I heard earlier, I read a blog post,
0:44:10I forget, I'm sorry, I forget where it was,
0:44:11but somebody was saying like, you know,
0:44:13modern Microsoft stuff is no better for them.
0:44:15It's a huge mess for them too.
0:44:16Like, you can look at other makers,
0:44:18you can look at Microsoft, you can look at Google,
0:44:20you know, you can say, oh, well everybody has problems.
0:44:23That is also not a defense.
0:44:25Like, yeah, everybody has problems.
0:44:26You know what, everybody else makes crappy PCs.
0:44:29It doesn't mean the Mac can be crappy.
0:44:31You know, like that's not how Apple works,
0:44:32That's not why any of us use Apple stuff.
0:44:35So you know, that's not good enough.
0:44:37- And there are examples of things that are better.
0:44:39Like it's not like you're saying, oh, nobody is better.
0:44:41That's not true, I just named one, Dropbox.
0:44:43Dropbox is better at syncing files.
0:44:44- Right, right, you know, so like,
0:44:46it seems like Apple, from what they project
0:44:50to the outside world, again, whether this reflects
0:44:53their internal thinking or not, I don't know.
0:44:54But what they project to the outside world is,
0:44:57everything's fine, we're working really hard on it,
0:45:00and everything's fine.
0:45:01Like that is what we hear from Apple.
0:45:04And the reality is that everything's not fine.
0:45:07And I really, really hope that they see that.
0:45:10Because all I hear from them usually is defensiveness.
0:45:14Our second sponsor this week is Casper.
0:45:16Casper is an online retailer of premium mattresses
0:45:19for a fraction of the price.
0:45:20The mattress industry has forced customers
0:45:22into paying notoriously high markups
0:45:24for really weird products.
0:45:26Casper is revolutionizing the mattress industry
0:45:28by cutting the cost of dealing with
0:45:29the resellers and showrooms,
0:45:30and passing that savings directly on to you, the consumer.
0:45:33Casper's mattresses are one of a kind.
0:45:35It's a new hybrid mattress that combines
0:45:38premium latex foam with memory foam
0:45:41for just the right sink, just the right bounce.
0:45:44These technologies come together
0:45:45for better nights and brighter days.
0:45:47Now mattresses, you might think buying a mattress online
0:45:50is crazy and it honestly does sound kind of crazy,
0:45:53but they know that too and they have you covered.
0:45:55So here's how this works.
0:45:57You buy a Casper mattress, they deliver it to you in a box.
0:45:59It's like the size of a filing cabinet.
0:46:00It's not like a mattress-sized box.
0:46:02It's kinda compressed in there.
0:46:04You take it out, it expands into the room,
0:46:07and then you have a giant mattress.
0:46:08So shipping, not a problem.
0:46:10You try it out, you can try it out for 100 nights.
0:46:13You can sleep on it risk-free for 100 nights.
0:46:15So you don't have to just line it in a showroom
0:46:17for five seconds and decide,
0:46:19well, do I wanna lie on this for the next 15 years?
0:46:21No, you can just take it out and sleep on it
0:46:24for up to 100 nights.
0:46:26And if you like it, great, you're done.
0:46:28If you don't like it, if it's not for you,
0:46:30you just call them up and you tell them,
0:46:31sorry, sorry, it didn't work out for me,
0:46:33it's not right for me,
0:46:34and they arrange for a free, painless return.
0:46:37It is totally risk-free.
0:46:39And we've heard from people on both sides.
0:46:40We've heard from so many people
0:46:42who have their cat's-purs and who love them.
0:46:43And we've actually heard from a few who said,
0:46:45you know what, it didn't work out for me,
0:46:47it wasn't what I wanted, and I called and I returned it.
0:46:50And those people had such great experiences
0:46:52even returning it that they thought to email us
0:46:55and say, you know what, they're really great
0:46:57even if you return it.
0:46:58So really there's no pressure here, there's no risk here.
0:47:01Try it for 100 nights in your home
0:47:02and the pricing on this is great.
0:47:05Mattresses usually, for a good mattress,
0:47:07you're usually paying about 1500 bucks or more.
0:47:09Cash for mattress start at just $500 for a twin
0:47:12all the way up to 850 for queen, 950 for king.
0:47:15So this is like half the price that you're gonna pay
0:47:17for a similar quality mattress from anybody else.
0:47:19These are really great prices,
0:47:20under $1000 for a high quality mattress is fantastic.
0:47:24So check it out today, these are again,
0:47:26amazing latex foam and memory foam combo mattresses
0:47:30for just the right sink, just the right bounce.
0:47:32These are obsessively engineered
0:47:33and they're made right here in the USA,
0:47:36right here in America.
0:47:37So check it out today.
0:47:38Go to casper.com/atp and use code ATP
0:47:43to get $50 towards any mattress purchase.
0:47:47Terms and conditions do apply for that.
0:47:49Once again, casper.com/atp and use code ATP.
0:47:54Thanks a lot to Casper for sponsoring our show.
0:47:56I'm gonna throw in a couple other Casper tidbits.
0:47:58I think probably this is gonna be in a future ad read
0:48:01because they sent you guys two, I'm assuming.
0:48:04- Yeah, the sheets and the pillow, right?
0:48:05- Yeah, the sheets and the pillow,
0:48:06and I'm assuming there's gonna be some ad read
0:48:08in the future where it's gonna be like,
0:48:09oh, let me tell you about the Casper who's in the pillow.
0:48:11But I've already got the pillow,
0:48:12and I've been sleeping with it,
0:48:13and I gotta tell you, I'm very impressed by this pillow.
0:48:16I read all the little piece of paper
0:48:18that comes with the pillow about how they design it,
0:48:20like yeah, yeah, whatever,
0:48:21'cause I'm super picky about pillows.
0:48:23And I was in the market for everyone.
0:48:24- You?
0:48:25Yeah, yeah. I was very impressed by this pillow. Like, the stuff they put in that little card,
0:48:30like, "Oh, he specially designed it to be supportive and you can sleep in any position,"
0:48:34and if you're just like, "Yeah, blah blah blah, it's a pillow, right?" I gotta tell
0:48:37you, this is a hell of a pillow. We'll probably talk about it in some future ad read. But
0:48:41I'm thinking of ordering a second one just so when this one wears out, if Casper, like,
0:48:45doesn't make this pillow anymore, I'll have a backup.
0:48:48You gotta have a backup pillow.
0:48:50You have to. I've done this, I've made the mistake before with my stupid slippers that
0:48:52I'm wearing now. I didn't buy two pair and these wore out and now I can't get them again.
0:48:56You know, two is one and one is none.
0:48:58Exactly. So, yeah, maybe I should buy three. I don't know.
0:49:01I have a closet with two pairs of shoes in it that are replacements for the pair of shoes
0:49:04I wear every day because in case Doc Martin stopped making them.
0:49:08You know, you joke, but the Skechers shoes that Matt Alexander loves to make fun of me
0:49:13for, they are not making them anymore probably because Matt called in a favor so I wouldn't
0:49:17wear them anymore and I had one backup pair but now I'm out of backup pairs and I don't
0:49:21I'm gonna do. It's terrible. Clothing's the worst. It is. You guys alluded to app
0:49:26design and you had some thoughts about that. Let me prime the pump a
0:49:31little bit and ask what the crap is the point in photos because I'm not... I added
0:49:38all of my pictures to photos which I hadn't used in at least a couple of
0:49:44years if not more than that. And outside of much easier access to shared photo
0:49:49streams, which actually I should point out very quickly work flawlessly for me and I
0:49:53have zero complaints about them.
0:49:57What is photos really doing for me?
0:49:59There doesn't appear to be a way to look at pictures by location.
0:50:05There's the faces thing, which I never really trust.
0:50:07I've got photo stream access.
0:50:10Okay.
0:50:11Yay.
0:50:12But, and I can see all my selfies that I take all the time, I guess.
0:50:16So what is the point in photos?
0:50:18What is it doing for you that makes it worthwhile?
0:50:23And then you can perhaps spring from that
0:50:25to why is photos a piece of crap?
0:50:27- I think photos is a great starting point
0:50:29because I can answer your questions
0:50:30at the same time talking about the app design issues
0:50:34because they're both related to photos.
0:50:36I guess I'll talk about this,
0:50:37but my specific photo complaints in a future thing,
0:50:39but just addressing your concerns,
0:50:40like what am I supposed to be using photos for?
0:50:43This is an app design philosophy
0:50:45that really is kind of separate
0:50:46from the like, do things work, is my data sinking,
0:50:50you know, measuring crash or metrics
0:50:53instead of something else.
0:50:54But it's kind of related in that a lot of the time
0:50:56people are complaining about Apple software quality.
0:50:58Sometimes they're complaining about things don't work.
0:51:00Sometimes they're complaining about cloud stuff,
0:51:01but sometimes they're complaining
0:51:02like even when everything's working exactly
0:51:04as it's supposed to be, as it appears to be for you
0:51:05in photos, people still don't feel the applications
0:51:09are as useful or as interesting or as fun
0:51:13or like they're not giving them enough value.
0:51:16And I trace a lot of that back to the design philosophy that started many years ago on
0:51:20the Mac specifically.
0:51:21I mean, I guess you could talk about it on iOS a little bit, but on the Mac I really
0:51:24feel it, where someone somewhere—I'm not going to say it was Johnny Ive, but it is
0:51:29in keeping with his hardware ethos, but who knows—decided that complexity is the enemy
0:51:36in software design.
0:51:37And that's basically true.
0:51:38Like, a lot of Apple's great software designs have been like, you know, "Let's simplify
0:51:42this application.
0:51:43Let's, you know, Steve Jobs, hopefully think—can I just say that?"
0:51:45I just have one window that like I just drag a thing onto it makes me a DVD like I just want one window
0:51:50I don't want a million buttons. I don't want a million pallets and toolbars and all those stuff
0:51:55And you remember like those old pictures of like Microsoft Word
0:51:58What version was it on the PC was it?
0:52:01office 95 the one where like you can if you put every
0:52:04Toolbar and word out on a six or a day before any screen you had like one line of text left
0:52:10where you could type stuff in.
0:52:12Like that was, you know,
0:52:13and Apple's reacting against that to simplify, right?
0:52:16But it really kicked into high gear,
0:52:19I think maybe around Lion or something
0:52:22where they took applications,
0:52:23but even back when it was just iPhoto,
0:52:24they took iPhoto, which had been, you know,
0:52:26they'd been iterating on it.
0:52:27They'd been making new versions of iPhoto.
0:52:29They've been adding features and doing all sorts of stuff.
0:52:32And then someone said, you know what?
0:52:33We've got too much crap in iPhoto.
0:52:34There's too many toolbar buttons.
0:52:36There's too many like, you know, options,
0:52:38the whole customized toolbar thing.
0:52:40And then we have buttons in the bottom, and then we have a sidebar, and then there's regions
0:52:42in the sidebar, and groups and subgroups, and then we have a floating panel for keywords,
0:52:47and it's just too much stuff.
0:52:48We need to clear all this crap out of iPhoto.
0:52:50Again, this is before photos.
0:52:51And so they went through, and they said this big top bar in photos, get rid of pretty much
0:52:56all those buttons.
0:52:57The bottom bar, get rid of the bottom bar entirely.
0:52:59The sidebar, what can we remove from there?
0:53:00Floating palettes, how many of those can we get rid of?
0:53:03What things do we not need in the menu commands?
0:53:05Options for showing the keywords underneath photos?
0:53:06Nobody uses that except for Syracuse, so get rid of that feature and never bring it back.
0:53:09Um, just removing, removing and simplifying.
0:53:12And that instinct of simplifying, I think is admirable and the correct one.
0:53:17But you know, as whatever that I forget it was that designer whose name I can't
0:53:21remember is like everything should be as simple as possible, but no simpler.
0:53:25They, I think they've crossed that line and what it has led to like, you know,
0:53:28going through iPhoto and then going to photos, photos is even more like remove
0:53:32everything, don't have any buttons or widgets or things like have to have just
0:53:38like the minimum number of things you can possibly see on the screen as if
0:53:41visual clutter is the number one enemy. Visual clutter is an enemy and
0:53:45conceptual clutter and complexity those are enemies but at a certain point you
0:53:49have someone like Casey who's like "I launched photos and it looks like an
0:53:52unadorned window with a bunch of my photos in it" and I'm like "what does this
0:53:55do for me? What can I do?" Like the silly field they used to have that had like
0:54:02the star ratings in iPhoto you would look at that and if you're familiar
0:54:05with iTunes, you're like, "Oh, what does this do? It's got these little empty white stars,"
0:54:09and as you click on them, you can click on one, two, or three, and you would see the contents of
0:54:12the window get filtered, like, "Oh, when I click this thing up, it's like a dedicated field for
0:54:15quickly filtering by star rating," right? That's maybe like a UI too far, but at least you could
0:54:20very quickly say, "Oh, that's a way I can do things," and then you would lead from there to
0:54:24the little menu that would pop up from the bottom bar that would let you do more sophisticated
0:54:28filtering on the view, so you could view by location and stuff like that. All of these
0:54:32things that used to have toolbar buttons that have either been removed entirely from the
0:54:36application or hidden away under some other little button or menu item.
0:54:42It's like, what do you think we want to do with the application?
0:54:44Do we just want to go there and see our pictures and scroll through them?
0:54:47Then maybe Photos is a good application.
0:54:48But if the application is capable of doing anything else, say I want to organize my photos,
0:54:52I want to sort through them into piles and make little albums.
0:54:57Maybe I'm going to make a calendar at Snapfish and I want to find all the good photos of
0:55:00the kids for the past year group by season and I want to edit my photos. Are all the
0:55:06editing tools hidden behind a sidebar in a mode that are not visible or whatever? And
0:55:11it's all the more going when I do it on a gigantic 5K iMac, huge 27-inch screen with
0:55:15these massive toolbars going along the top and bottom and these sidebars and there's
0:55:20nothing in them. There's no buttons. Everything is buried. Everything is buried under seven
0:55:24clicks that I have to get to. It's like, "What are you saving the space for?" That empty
0:55:28space in the toolbar is making Casey not understand what the hell this app is even good for, and
0:55:32making me, that I know what the app is good for, have to click seven times to get to the
0:55:36features I wanted.
0:55:37It should be as simple as possible, but no simpler.
0:55:40People want to feel like the application is there to help them do things, not wipe the
0:55:44entire slate clean and like, "Oh, everything should be like," whatever, "deferring to your
0:55:49content.
0:55:50Your content should be the star."
0:55:51But people want to do stuff with their content.
0:55:52Let them have buttons easily accessible to do the most common operations.
0:55:56And yeah, maybe the old way of like, oh, we'll give you a customizable toolbar with a million
0:55:59toolbar buttons and you can decide what you need used most often.
0:56:02And you've got to design your own application basically by direct, like maybe that's the
0:56:05wrong answer too, but they've gone way too far on the Mac specifically made applications
0:56:09that just make a mockery of the massive screen that I have.
0:56:12And it makes people feel like, makes people feel like the applications are less useful.
0:56:17And I feel like they are less useful either because people won't discover the things they
0:56:20can do because they're too hidden.
0:56:22Or they'll know the things they can do and get frustrated like I am having to click through
0:56:2717 different buttons every time they do an operation they do all the time.
0:56:29I want to crop, I want to straighten, I want to adjust some white levels, and I don't want
0:56:34to click a million times.
0:56:35I do that over and over and over again.
0:56:37Every time I do it, I have to reveal these layers of UI that are hidden underneath the
0:56:42magic cloth of don't clutter my UI.
0:56:44That's not clutter.
0:56:45That's what I want to use the application for.
0:56:47So I need to strike that balance, and they're not currently doing it.
0:56:51why I think a lot of people use Apple's applications and just feel like something is missing. Like
0:56:55the excitement of using the original iLife Suite of like, "Wow, look at all these things
0:56:59I can do!" And yeah, it's pretty complicated, I've never done it before, but there's like
0:57:04three or four or five buttons and once I learn what they do, it's like you do this, you do
0:57:07this, and then you do this, and you drag that over there and you get a thing, and you get
0:57:10a movie, and you can play music, and you can burn a CD. Like, the old versions of these
0:57:14applications had way more visual clutter on them, but people could use them to figure
0:57:19out what is this app good for and then how do I use it to do that thing, right?
0:57:23And at some point, the solution to everything was don't show people butts anymore, don't
0:57:29show people panes, don't show people windows, hide everything under as few things as possible,
0:57:33and that's the solution.
0:57:34And I feel like that is sort of part of the dissatisfaction.
0:57:38Like, getting back to Gruber's complaint was like, he was in photos and the little tiny
0:57:41text was like the only friggin' thing in the entire gigantic bottom bar of my 27-inch monitor.
0:57:46It was like a little text message that tells you like you have X number of items in your library
0:57:50accounting for Y number of megabytes and he had a little message that said like
0:57:54failed to upload five items and his his reasonable question was
0:57:58What five items but what you know, so so what did he do in that? There's nothing there
0:58:03He clicked on the text the completely featureless text like like iOS 7 and on has taught him
0:58:08There's a slim chance that if you click on that text like just plain text not even like embossed really just like plain text
0:58:14Maybe if I clicked on the text, it would tell me, "Nope, five items failed to upload."
0:58:19And it's just sitting there staring at you, taunting you, like, "Five items failed to
0:58:22upload."
0:58:23And you're looking around, and you're looking around the bar, and I guess you just start
0:58:25going to the menu bar and go, "Tell me what items failed to upload?
0:58:29Show a log window?"
0:58:30Like, no, no chance there's going to be a log window.
0:58:33Are you crazy?
0:58:34There's just nothing that can tell him how he's supposed to fix his problem.
0:58:39Eventually he Googles for it, which is a bad sign, because if someone's using your application
0:58:42and it's telling you something and the recourse eventually go to Google and he found like
0:58:45a support discussion.
0:58:46They said, "Oh, if you make a smart folder and you make the smart folder filter on items
0:58:50that have failed to upload, no user's going to figure that out.
0:58:52And then it will show you the things that failed to upload and you'll have to divine
0:58:55the reasons they failed to upload on your own," which he eventually did and solved his
0:58:59problem.
0:59:00But like all in the name of minimalism, it's like, "I don't want anything on that bottom
0:59:04bar except for text."
0:59:05Should the text be clickable?
0:59:07No.
0:59:08It is.
0:59:09Could there be...
0:59:10If something goes wrong, what should we do?
0:59:11No dialogues.
0:59:12have a status bar, don't have an activity window, don't put all those confusing things,
0:59:15and most of those things are right, but their solutions are wrong. It's making an application
0:59:20that is less useful, more frustrating to use, but I guess it doesn't crash, right?
0:59:26- Yeah. I mean, I use the Photos app. You know, Casey, honestly, I like it a lot. However,
0:59:33the reason I like it a lot is because I don't do any editing in it, because doing any of
0:59:38the editing drives me nuts, just like what John was saying.
0:59:41So what are you doing with it? Because I'm not—maybe I'm just having a dumb moment,
0:59:46but I don't see anything that this does for me other than maybe making a gazillion albums
0:59:52and doing a whole lot of manual management that I have zero interest in.
0:59:57What it does for me—and who knows what it does for everyone else—what it does for
1:00:00me is a few things. First of all, it is one unified place where I can have all of my photos
1:00:06synced to be visible, not only from my main computer,
1:00:10where I'm working on them and storing the full res versions,
1:00:12but also to be synced onto my phone, my iPad,
1:00:16if I ever take it out of the drawer,
1:00:17and my laptop when I take it on vacation.
1:00:19And so I have access to all my photos everywhere.
1:00:22And I know there are other solutions
1:00:23that can do this as well.
1:00:24However, I like this one 'cause it's built into everything
1:00:26and syncs really fast most of the time.
1:00:29So that, just having all your photos available everywhere,
1:00:34at least for basic viewing, I love that.
1:00:36That's number one.
1:00:38Number two is it's another backup.
1:00:39You know, it's kind of a safety
1:00:40because I do the iCloud photo library thing, of course.
1:00:42So it's kind of another backup for just my photos
1:00:45that in case everything else goes wrong,
1:00:47maybe someday I'll need that.
1:00:49We also do the sharing thing.
1:00:50Like between our family and friends,
1:00:53we do often do shared photo albums.
1:00:56Like if we go on a trip or something,
1:00:59or we have friends over, or we visit some relatives,
1:01:02we'll make a shared photo album for that,
1:01:03and we'll send everyone the link afterwards.
1:01:05And so for all these things, it does work fairly well.
1:01:10The share photo album thing, the UI for how you invite
1:01:13people on the Mac is horrible, but it does overall,
1:01:17the functionality does work.
1:01:18- Don't you love that little pop down thing
1:01:20from the toolbar, this tiny constrained window
1:01:22that you can't resize that it is deadly.
1:01:24Like there are so many clicks you can do.
1:01:26You can do clicks in that window that the entire
1:01:27contents disappear and since there's no like save button,
1:01:30you're like did it just auto save my deletion
1:01:31of every person from this shared photo?
1:01:33I've done that like three times accidentally to my entire family and said I have to invite
1:01:36you all again.
1:01:38Click on the thing in the email.
1:01:39If you use Gmail, you can't click on your iOS device, forward it to your mail address
1:01:43that's in Apple Mail.
1:01:45Like all these Byzantine instructions.
1:01:47And that UI, that frustrates me so much.
1:01:48That little tiny UI.
1:01:50Like you've got this huge screen.
1:01:52And I'm only inviting like 15 people in my family to this thing.
1:01:55You've got this huge screen and yet I'm forced to edit it in a buggy view, like a capsule
1:02:01view.
1:02:02shows everything in little capsules or whatever,
1:02:03a buggy capsule view that periodically erases everything
1:02:06with no sort of save functionality.
1:02:08You just need to hide the thing
1:02:10and assume that it is auto-saved or something.
1:02:12The worst, it's the worst.
1:02:14- So there's a lot of UI problems in photos.
1:02:17And I agree, Jon, I agree that overall,
1:02:22it does seem like Apple, in a similar way
1:02:26that if you wanted to make a criticism
1:02:27of their hardware designs, my criticism
1:02:30for their hardware designs recently
1:02:31has basically been like, basically everything
1:02:34is just getting like, make it as thin as possible
1:02:36and it seems like they don't have a lot of other ideas.
1:02:38And that isn't always true,
1:02:40but that is kind of the overall like,
1:02:42if you had to pick one dysfunction that they have,
1:02:44that seems to be the most common one.
1:02:46In that same way, in the software design,
1:02:49the main way the software design fails,
1:02:52or fails most often, is that they oversimplify something
1:02:56to the point where they are favoring the way it looks.
1:03:01And so it can make great screenshots,
1:03:03or it can make great ads, or great presentations,
1:03:05or something, but when you actually have to use it,
1:03:09the way it looks is getting in the way.
1:03:11The way it looks is making them make decisions
1:03:14that make it harder to use, or more confusing.
1:03:17- There's actually a metric-based support for that too,
1:03:19because a lot of what they're doing is removing features.
1:03:21Like they're not just hiding them,
1:03:22but they're flat out removing them.
1:03:23For example, your options of how to sort the main view
1:03:26in photos are drastically reduced from iPhoto, right?
1:03:30Fewer features means fewer possibilities for testing,
1:03:34means fewer bugs, right?
1:03:35So there is actually a metric-based motivation for this.
1:03:38Do we need to have all those features?
1:03:39How many people do show keywords under their photos?
1:03:41What if they have too many keywords and it busts our layout?
1:03:43When we use this new iOS collection,
1:03:46iOS ported collection view,
1:03:47you can't have an unlimited number.
1:03:49I'm just harping on my pet features.
1:03:51But the fewer features you have,
1:03:53the less stuff that can go wrong in your application,
1:03:55the fewer crashes you have,
1:03:56the fewer scenarios you have to test.
1:03:58This is a metric that is appealing
1:04:00internally the Apple, if your goal is,
1:04:02let's write more bug-free software,
1:04:03make your software simpler, it benefits the user
1:04:06at a certain point because most people don't care about that
1:04:08and you should simplify it and if they want a more powerful
1:04:10one they should get the pro feature or whatever,
1:04:11and it also benefits Apple in that they are,
1:04:14they're making more reliable software by removing features,
1:04:16but they just go too damn far and they get to the point
1:04:19where Casey's like, so this is just a generic window frame
1:04:22with my photos in them, what the hell is that?
1:04:24What do I get?
1:04:25What is this?
1:04:26And the Photos app is, everything is so buried,
1:04:30and this is what I refer to, I've referred to it before
1:04:33as the junk drawer philosophy of design,
1:04:35where you still have complex products,
1:04:40you still have complex functionality.
1:04:42Having one app that stores every photo you've ever taken
1:04:46on any of your devices and cameras,
1:04:49and that can do all these edits and all this sharing
1:04:51and all this management.
1:04:52- I think you can still order books from it, right?
1:04:54- Maybe, like all the features that are still part of this,
1:04:59that they haven't killed, that is a complex set of features.
1:05:03And so there is going to be some minimum level
1:05:06of just required complexity in any app
1:05:09that encompasses all of those features.
1:05:11And it seems like what Apple considers great design is,
1:05:16as you said, basically just like delete everything.
1:05:18Like great design is to have an app with no buttons anywhere
1:05:22until you enter modes.
1:05:23That is bad design, that is great visual design
1:05:28for marketing screenshots.
1:05:29It is horrible design for actual use.
1:05:33And Apple has, this was not like a post-Steve Jobs thing
1:05:36or a Johnny Ive in power thing.
1:05:39This started earlier, this started way before that.
1:05:41This started with Steve and earlier.
1:05:43Apple has for a long time now been a little bit out of whack
1:05:48in prioritizing visual appeal
1:05:51a little bit too much over usability.
1:05:53And you can see this going all the way back,
1:05:54like when they get rid of the visible scroll bars
1:05:56in Windows and stuff like that.
1:05:57Like there's so many examples of this in OS X and in iOS.
1:06:01And of course, iOS 7 I think went really far
1:06:04in that direction, and probably a little bit
1:06:05too far in that direction.
1:06:07But the way to manage complexity in the interface
1:06:11is not to just hide it all behind drawers and modes.
1:06:14Like there are better ways to design apps.
1:06:18And sometimes it will make for a screenshot
1:06:21that has a few objects in it that aren't your content.
1:06:25That's fine.
1:06:26That's software.
1:06:27This is, like, that's what this is useful for.
1:06:30If that makes it useful, like, right now I have a photos app
1:06:34where editing it looks so pretty that I never do it
1:06:37because you have to enter, like, three different modes
1:06:39to get through the controls that I wanna use every time.
1:06:42Like, even rotating a photo.
1:06:45Oh, I took this with my phone held in a weird way
1:06:47and I wanna rotate it 90 degrees.
1:06:48It's like four clicks.
1:06:50- Tap the crop icon, right?
1:06:51'cause you wanna rotate that sounds like crop, right?
1:06:53And then on the crop thing there's a rotate thing
1:06:55and just keep tapping until it's rotated the right direction
1:06:58and enjoy the animations between each one
1:07:01of those mode switches.
1:07:02- Oh yeah, it just seems like all of their design now
1:07:07is way too heavily focused on visual and marketing appeal.
1:07:12It seems like not only have they not cared
1:07:17about making it harder to use in favor of that,
1:07:20but it seems like they don't even know how anymore
1:07:22to make it easy to use.
1:07:24It seems like whatever talent that existed at Apple
1:07:27that was able to make things easy to use
1:07:29is no longer in power or is no longer there or something.
1:07:34It just seems like that group is gone.
1:07:37And that is fundamentally what frustrates me so much
1:07:40because they have the ability to make such great stuff.
1:07:43They have so many smart people who work there.
1:07:45They've done it before.
1:07:46They used to be so much better at prioritizing usability.
1:07:51And again, it was never perfect.
1:07:52There were always examples of them prioritizing
1:07:53looks over usability, but I think they're worse,
1:07:57in that way, I think they're worse now than ever,
1:07:59in a way that looks are taking too much precedent
1:08:02over usability.
1:08:03And I do think that lies right at Johnny Ive's feet.
1:08:06'Cause I think that the rate at which that has accelerated
1:08:10coincides exactly with Johnny Ive being made
1:08:12head of all software design.
1:08:14- Not exactly, but did he,
1:08:16I really think 10.7 is where it started to happen on the Mac, because that's where I
1:08:19really saw it.
1:08:20Like, where applications that they've been year over year and always tend to come bundled
1:08:23like Contacts and Address Book or whatever, they just got features just ripped out of
1:08:28them.
1:08:29And I think that was before Johnny Ive came over.
1:08:30And again, the simplicity motive, like, it's positive.
1:08:34In general, that's usually the right move.
1:08:36A lot of the guidelines that Apple talks about in their UI guidelines are telling you to
1:08:39simplify only, but you just have to know you can go too far.
1:08:44It is really possible to go too far, both with removing features, which again is very
1:08:48attractive to everybody involved, and with hiding features.
1:08:51And it's just, it's like, I was just at a brief glimpse when you were talking, Marco,
1:08:54about the possible Apple car UI, which I'm sure will be much smarter about the car UI
1:08:59than this, but like, the equivalent of my iPhone of frustration is if the Apple car
1:09:03came out and every time you wanted to indicate a turn, you would press on a touchpad to the
1:09:07turn indication function, and then you'd press on the touchpad which direction you want the
1:09:11indicator to go.
1:09:12And then it would reset to the main menu each time.
1:09:15And you're like, you know what, Apple?
1:09:17One of the controls that you use a lot when you're driving a car
1:09:20is a turn signal.
1:09:20It should not be two button presses away on the touch
1:09:22screen that you have to glance at.
1:09:24And so to get use of what you use photos for,
1:09:26what I use it for, Casey, is basically what Marco said.
1:09:29I do iCloud backup, and my photos are everywhere,
1:09:31and so on and so forth.
1:09:32This is actually my wife's photo library,
1:09:33because she's got the big library.
1:09:34And they don't understand how families work.
1:09:36Separate issue.
1:09:38But also, I do all of my editing there.
1:09:41I don't really fancy editing, but pretty much all the time
1:09:43I am cropping, rotating, adjusting the lighting
1:09:46before I throw it into a shared library.
1:09:49And I also go through and I do my favorite.
1:09:50So basically like the photos go in there.
1:09:53I have to like manually import the ones from my phone.
1:09:56Anyway, and then I go through them all
1:09:58and I favorite the ones I think are good.
1:10:00And at that point I might also adjust them.
1:10:03And then if I'm doing something with them,
1:10:04like, oh, I want to throw these into a shared stream
1:10:06or we want to make a calendar,
1:10:07I want to, you know, do something with the photos.
1:10:11I do the editing there.
1:10:12And every time, I always want to crop.
1:10:15I probably want to rotate.
1:10:17It isn't really bad at holding cameras perpendicular
1:10:19to the, you know, parallel to the horizon or whatever.
1:10:24I'm really crappy at that.
1:10:25Anyway, I always want to do those things.
1:10:27All of them are like nine clicks away.
1:10:28And it's like, what is one click away in this application?
1:10:31Nothing is.
1:10:32Can I quickly filter the images based on writing?
1:10:33Nope, that's not one click away.
1:10:34Can I do like a quick smart,
1:10:36Like nothing is one click away.
1:10:37Everything is like two, three clicks away and cropping, cropping is the worst.
1:10:41I just want to kill the person who made this feature.
1:10:43Edit, edit, crop, aspect original, edit, crop, aspect, original,
1:10:47edit, crop, aspect, original, edit, crop aspect, original.
1:10:50How many, can you just remember that I always want original as the default,
1:10:53even if you're gonna make me click 700 times to get to the fact that it doesn't
1:10:57even remember the aspect that I want.
1:10:58And then you get to drag and they changed the way dragging works in
1:11:00photos and it's a little bit weird, but.
1:11:02Oh, it's like, what, what do you think?
1:11:05And I asked the same question.
1:11:06What do you think people use this app for? There are features there. Why is every single one of them very? Surely there's one
1:11:11It's like the controller where all the buttons are the same size. Surely there is one or two features that you think are the most
1:11:16commonly used. Make them super obvious. In Overcast there's a big honking freaking play button because most people play audio
1:11:22Marco had put the play button under three menus that you had to go through and straight across now
1:11:27How to play this podcast. Go to options, go to playback and hit the play button. No, it's like a gigantic play button in the middle
1:11:34the screen you can't miss it it's so frustrating so let's assume for a second
1:11:40because I spend almost no time editing and no time categorizing my photos which
1:11:47is true so let's assume for a second I want to go to a photo from when Marco
1:11:51and Tiff and Aaron and I were in Germany how the hell do I do that I guess I
1:11:55search like but if I know the date I just have to fart around with the
1:11:59scroll bar until I know the until I land on the right date like it's just it's
1:12:03It's insane to me that there's no, like, jump to date or anything like that.
1:12:07In the iPhoto world, I would go to the lower left, and right next to that little rating
1:12:11thing, there would be a little pop-up that you click, and it would pop up a calendar
1:12:14widget and you could just click on a date.
1:12:16And it would immediately filter the main pane view to that date.
1:12:20Like, because, like you said, that's a common thing.
1:12:23How do I quickly go to a date?
1:12:25There should be a "always visible" button that you can click that pops up a calendar
1:12:28thing that lets you pick a date from it.
1:12:30Like if that's a common task, and I think it is a common task, and you've got literally
1:12:34two feet of gray to put buttons in, put something there.
1:12:39Like it wasn't even that much.
1:12:40This was like a centimeter worth of space.
1:12:42It was like a little field that you can click in for the rating and like a little like a
1:12:45gear menu or a pop-up thing.
1:12:47Like it was even a little bit too hidden back then.
1:12:50But it's like what are you saving all the space for?
1:12:52Like what do you get in the end of the person with the most unused gray pixels wins?
1:12:55Well, this is what I'm saying.
1:12:57Like this is bad design.
1:13:00It's not just that this looks prettier
1:13:04or this is clunkier to use.
1:13:06Design is not about how it looks.
1:13:10It's about how it works.
1:13:12There's a reason why Steve Jobs said that
1:13:14and everyone always quotes him on it.
1:13:16Modern day Apple I think has forgotten that
1:13:18or has deprioritized that too much.
1:13:21Now it is all about how it looks
1:13:23and we hope it kind of works well.
1:13:24And there is no better example of this in my opinion
1:13:28than a lot of the UI on the Apple TV.
1:13:31And we have to also include Apple Music
1:13:33in a lot of this as well.
1:13:34- Now hold on, before we go there, which we should--
1:13:36- We should do a sponsor break first,
1:13:37'cause that's gonna be long too.
1:13:38- Not only should we do that,
1:13:40but I would also like to compliment photos,
1:13:42because as Jon was talking, and I was lamenting,
1:13:45how do I go to our trip, I did a search for Nürburgring.
1:13:49I did not type the umlaut on the first U,
1:13:53and sure enough, it came up.
1:13:55So kudos to Photos.
1:13:57I still would prefer to have an easy way,
1:14:00even if it's just a keystroke,
1:14:02to jump to a specific date,
1:14:04but I was able to type out Nürburgring,
1:14:07and because all of these were taken with an iPhone
1:14:09and they're all geotagged and blah, blah, blah,
1:14:11it did find, if not all of the pictures,
1:14:14then darn near all the pictures almost immediately.
1:14:17So, points for photos on that one.
1:14:19- Well, that's why they can convince themself
1:14:21that it's okay to remove all this.
1:14:22So they say, "Well, regular people
1:14:23"don't wanna deal with all these buttons.
1:14:25"It would be better if there was just a search field
1:14:26that everyone can use that would just do the right thing.
1:14:28But we know that Apple still lags behind Google in general in the, "Hey, here's a box where
1:14:32you can write random text and we'll figure out what you mean."
1:14:34Google does that amazingly well.
1:14:36Apple does it less well but is getting better at it.
1:14:38But the bottom line is sometimes, like if you're doing that quickly, that's fine.
1:14:42But say you were going to pick three pictures to make fractures of from the Nurburgring
1:14:47thing, you want to make sure that you are seeing all the pictures you have from the
1:14:50Nurburgring.
1:14:51So merely the search wouldn't be good because you're like, "Oh, maybe some of them came
1:14:54from someone else's camera and they weren't geotagged."
1:14:56You'd want to, you know date-wise when you were there, so you would inevitably eventually
1:15:00say, "You know what?
1:15:01I just really want to see all the photos from date X to date Y."
1:15:04And so you'd be forced to figure out how to do that in the UI.
1:15:07And like, it's great that the search box is there for quick things like that, but the
1:15:11next level down of like, "I just want to do a specific date search," the job of good
1:15:15software is to make that task simple enough that people can figure it out.
1:15:21Like that they can figure out without making like a smart album and using some UI to set
1:15:25Boolean expressions and stuff. There should be a simple friendly UI that regular people can figure
1:15:30out, like an obvious way they would say that they would just learn through the language of using the
1:15:34application. If I want to see things by date range, here's this calendar widget. It pops up,
1:15:38I can pick a start date and an end date and it filters the window. And that's very modal and it
1:15:42means I can't do anything else in the main view or whatever, but it's simple enough that people can
1:15:46use it. But, and it's the thing you're asking to do is just one step more complicated than let me
1:15:51just type random search and hope the application figures out what I want to do. But still, I think
1:15:55is within the realm of functionality that an application like Photo should do. It's
1:15:58not, you know, Aperture or Lightroom or it's not like a pro-level application, but regular
1:16:04consumers have to do these kind of tasks too. And the job of the application is to make
1:16:09them able to do them, not to say regular consumers will never figure out how to click on a calendar
1:16:14widget. Just have to let them figure out that they can type in a text box.
1:16:19Our final sponsor this week is Fracture.
1:16:21Go to fractureme.com and use code ATP10 for 10% off.
1:16:26Fracture prints photos in vivid color directly onto glass.
1:16:30Colors on these pop like you won't believe.
1:16:33It comes on a solid backing that's ready to mount
1:16:35right out of the box.
1:16:36All you gotta do is stick it to the included screw
1:16:38in the wall and hang it up, done.
1:16:41It's all really affordable too,
1:16:42with prices starting at just $15 for their small square size
1:16:45and being very reasonable past that.
1:16:47These fracture prints, we have them all over our house.
1:16:50We've sent them as gifts to people.
1:16:51They're great, they get compliments, they look modern.
1:16:54You don't have to frame them, they are their own thing.
1:16:56It is, we like fracture a lot, we have a lot of them
1:16:59and we're gonna keep getting more.
1:17:00They make fantastic gifts for family, friends,
1:17:04and loved ones.
1:17:05They're the perfect way to celebrate a shared memory
1:17:07with something that's also unique and modern.
1:17:10And hey, you know what, Valentine's Day
1:17:12is right around the corner.
1:17:13Why not give a gift that says something
1:17:14flowers and chocolate can't?
1:17:16Each fracture is hand assembled and checked for quality by their small team in Gainesville,
1:17:19Florida.
1:17:20And if you need any other reasons to buy one besides them being our sponsors, you can get
1:17:2410% off with that coupon code ATP10 at FractureMe.com.
1:17:29Check it out today.
1:17:30Really, you should get your photos printed.
1:17:32Get them out of Instagram, get them out of Facebook, get them onto something that actually
1:17:35lasts more than a week, not just in your feed that will get buried next week.
1:17:39These make great gifts, they're great for you, they're great for around the house.
1:17:43Preserve some of those memories.
1:17:45Get your photos printed.
1:17:46And if you're gonna get them printed,
1:17:47Fracture's a great way to do it.
1:17:49Once again, check it out at fractureme.com.
1:17:52Use code ATP10 for 10% off.
1:17:54Thanks a lot to Fracture for sponsoring us once again.
1:17:58- So Apple Music and the Apple TV.
1:18:00- Oh boy.
1:18:01You know, the Apple TV makes me so sad, it really does.
1:18:03I mean, to me, the Apple TV is kind of,
1:18:08it kind of exemplifies all the problems
1:18:11I've been talking about tonight.
1:18:13Really? Because I like most things with the new Apple TV.
1:18:17The remote, I would say, is in keeping with what we've been talking about tonight.
1:18:21But I have to admit that the fact that it has the Plex app on it and that I've been using it more,
1:18:25and that most of the other apps that I do play video when I hit the button,
1:18:28is really giving me a more positive attitude towards the Apple TV lately.
1:18:31Yeah, I agree that the remote is a little rough, and I still think--
1:18:34A little rough. The remote is a mess.
1:18:36Yeah. And I still think that the up, down, left, right buttons work better for me
1:18:41than the silly mini touch pad.
1:18:43But all in all, I really do like my Apple TV.
1:18:46So Marco laid on us, what's wrong with the Apple TV?
1:18:48- So we should just briefly go over the remote,
1:18:51just for the sake of completeness.
1:18:53Obviously we've talked about it before,
1:18:55but I think this remote is like the hockey puck mouse.
1:18:59It is something that was designed only for visual appeal,
1:19:03and such at the expense of usability
1:19:07and just basic ergonomics.
1:19:10The remote is just a design disaster, that's what it is.
1:19:15I am not gonna say it's nicely designed
1:19:20because it looks nice, because it is not nicely designed.
1:19:24I will say it looks kind of nice,
1:19:26but that does not mean it's well designed.
1:19:28And the fact that that came out of a design division
1:19:30at Apple, they should look at that and feel sorry
1:19:33they put that out there and make a better one
1:19:35for the next generation, because that is not good design.
1:19:39If so many people have trouble with this,
1:19:42it isn't just me, it isn't just you guys,
1:19:45I don't know a single person who has an Apple TV
1:19:47who has not had some kind of problem
1:19:50with that remote design,
1:19:51whether it's picking it up upside down
1:19:53and accidentally inputting things into the touch pad,
1:19:55not knowing which way is up in the dark,
1:19:57not knowing which button is which,
1:19:58which button is where, what the buttons actually do,
1:20:00which one is kind of the home button.
1:20:01Like, that is a massive design failure.
1:20:05And that is the primary input method for this device.
1:20:08So that's not a small deal. This is a big deal.
1:20:11- You know, let's assume for a second
1:20:13that the touchpad was okay, which it isn't,
1:20:15but let's go with it.
1:20:16What on God's green earth made them use menu for back,
1:20:21because that's basically what it does, is go back,
1:20:25and the TV for home?
1:20:28Why not use the little rounded rect
1:20:30that's been on all these iOS devices
1:20:32up until Touch ID became a thing?
1:20:34Why not use the rounded rect for the TV button?
1:20:37Well, Rana Wreck doesn't make sense because the icons aren't little rounded things like
1:20:41they are on the phone.
1:20:42You know, like that's the mnemonic for that.
1:20:44And menu, I give them a pass on menu because on every TV connected remote, like menu basically
1:20:49means back.
1:20:50Like, I think they're going in line with the terminology for menu.
1:20:53They're going in line with the terminology precedent set by every other AV remote for
1:20:58the past 20 decades or whatever.
1:21:00It is kind of bad though that most of the time when you hit menu, what you see is not
1:21:03a menu.
1:21:04But that's true on every TV remote.
1:21:07Menu always means back.
1:21:09Yeah, but since when does Apple pay attention
1:21:11to the consumer electronics industry's standards for design?
1:21:13I feel like that's what they're doing.
1:21:15The TV one, the home one, is--
1:21:17I mean, really, it should have just been a house,
1:21:18but Apple doesn't like to do that, right?
1:21:19Because at least that would make some sense.
1:21:21But that would be, again, falling in line
1:21:22with the television thing.
1:21:24The problem is, what they made looks like a television set
1:21:27and not an application.
1:21:29So if anything, you would imagine
1:21:30that would be the power button.
1:21:32- Yeah, I mean, really the problem with the home button
1:21:35is the placement, you know, like,
1:21:36I know Rene Ritchie did this little mock-up,
1:21:38we'll finally link again, but like,
1:21:40if you put the home button centered below the other buttons,
1:21:43like in a place where a home button on iOS device is,
1:21:45it makes a lot more sense.
1:21:47All the different shortcuts, like, you know,
1:21:48you can double tap it and go to a multitasking feature
1:21:50and kill unresponsive apps.
1:21:52Most people will never know that, they will never find that.
1:21:54If it was where a home button is on iOS,
1:21:57they might get that, the chances would be higher.
1:21:59It's still not great.
1:22:00- But it's not a touchscreen.
1:22:01Like they just need to start over with remote.
1:22:03Like again, they have to realize that it's like a device
1:22:06that sits on couches, that's wedged between couch cushions
1:22:08that's held by entire hands that, you know,
1:22:12I mean, I didn't want to harp on the TiVo remote,
1:22:13but like they just need to start over with that.
1:22:15But the worst thing about it,
1:22:16you mentioned the hockey puck mouse.
1:22:17I think it's worse than the hockey puck mouse
1:22:19because using the hockey puck mouse could be frustrating
1:22:22when like you'd push the mouse up
1:22:24and the cursor would go up on an angle
1:22:26and you'd realize you don't have it aligned
1:22:27and you do some little finger feel to feel
1:22:28where the cord is or feel the little dent
1:22:31they put in later versions or whatever.
1:22:33But I never felt sort of like timid
1:22:36using the hockey puck mouse.
1:22:37I never felt like I need to approach it gingerly
1:22:39that something will go wrong.
1:22:41And yet this stupid remote, I have to place it gingerly
1:22:44to make sure it's not on a surface
1:22:46where it will slide down into a crack
1:22:47'cause it's so frigging small and skinny, right?
1:22:49I need to, when I pick it up,
1:22:50I need to pick it up carefully,
1:22:52both because I wanna make sure I got the orientation right,
1:22:55which I have done a million times the wrong way.
1:22:57I have not succumbed to putting a Roar brand on it,
1:22:59but I'm getting really close.
1:23:00Because I have to be careful not to touch the touch sensitive top half of the thing because something you know
1:23:06Because that it will take my touch input and do something with it even it's always on it's always hot
1:23:12Even if the thing it does is non-destructive merely by bringing up like the progress bar at the bottom
1:23:17I don't want to accidentally bring the progress bar up if I'm just moving the thing out of the way to make room for like
1:23:23A snack or something
1:23:24I don't want to suddenly put a giant bar in the middle of the show that a bunch of people are watching
1:23:27Even if it goes away on its own like I don't have to do anything. It's non-destructive, but it's annoying
1:23:32And so I feel like I'm playing a game of operation which is an old board game kids go find the old ad
1:23:37Every time I use this thing
1:23:40I don't feel that way when I touch any of my other remotes
1:23:43And you know my favorite one Tebow remote like everything's fine about it
1:23:47In fact the only thing that you were like a dame for is that?
1:23:49When it became when I got a TV or Bluetooth support now
1:23:52I can't blindly mash it with as long as I know it's not plenty of TV because now
1:23:57If you mash a Bluetooth remote, it doesn't matter if it's pointing the TV, which is a great feature and I love it
1:24:02But it does make me have to be slightly more careful not to just pick it up like a barbarian and just squish the whole
1:24:07Thing but I feel I feel like I am on you know, I'm walking on
1:24:12I don't know what the expression eggshells. There you go. That's it. That's what I'm walking on eggshells
1:24:18When I'm trying to use that stupid little remote, right because like it's always
1:24:23waiting for you to accidentally touch this area that is not a button that actually does
1:24:27things and like that is unlike every other remote that has ever existed and there's
1:24:31a reason for that. So anyway, you know, I don't want to beat up too much on the remote
1:24:35because I think that we could take a whole episode on that and most people have probably
1:24:39agreed that yeah, it's not good. But just the entire Apple TV interface, there are parts
1:24:44of it that work fine but the main content browsing interfaces, you know, which is kind
1:24:48of a big thing that you do a lot on this thing. Like we buy Top Chef. We have bought every
1:24:53season of Top Chef from iTunes since season five. We're currently on season, I believe,
1:24:5813. When a new episode comes out every week, we go to the top and we click on the Top Chef
1:25:05because it's new and it loads after a very long wait time. The Top Chef section of the
1:25:10iTunes store, in the bottom half of the screen, there is a horizontally scrolling line of
1:25:18episodes. This includes every episode from every season we've bought. So from season
1:25:255 through season 13, every single episode is in that list. Somewhere along the way,
1:25:32Apple forgot that we had watched seasons 5 through like 10. So those are all marked as
1:25:38unwatched for some reason. So every time we open this up, it opens up to the first unwatched
1:25:47episode in the list, which is the very first episode in the list of season 5. Delightful.
1:25:53We're in season 13. Now there is no entry here that says, you know, switch to a different
1:25:57season or anything. No. The way you have to switch is by scrolling to the right through,
1:26:03I don't know, 70 episodes or something? Scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, paging through this
1:26:08giant long horizontally scrolling list of episodes, which are squares, you know, this
1:26:15massive line of episodes from season five all the way,
1:26:19scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll,
1:26:21scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll,
1:26:22all the way till you get to the end of season 13
1:26:24where we actually are, and then hit play on that.
1:26:27I don't know if there's any way for me to mark
1:26:29six seasons of a show as play without actually
1:26:31opening up every single one of them,
1:26:32seeking to the end, letting it stop.
1:26:33Like, who knows, it doesn't matter.
1:26:36And of course, we hope the episode's actually there
1:26:38when we look, even though iTunes says it was there,
1:26:41and if you click more on iTunes, it'll be there,
1:26:43that problem is just on the old Apple TV too.
1:26:45- Just mark them all as viewed in the web interface
1:26:47or in the Mac version of this app?
1:26:48- Oh yeah, sure, yeah, that's a good idea.
1:26:50So, yeah, like-- - Those exist, right?
1:26:52- Oh yeah, of course.
1:26:53I'm sure desktop iTunes will work perfectly.
1:26:56So, you know, it's, every part of this interaction
1:27:00is a failure in some way.
1:27:01So A, why were those marked as unplayed?
1:27:04We watched them all, we bought them all years ago,
1:27:06so A, something went wrong on the service end at some point.
1:27:10Of course, it's Apple's services, it's iTunes,
1:27:12it's the iTunes store, of course something went wrong.
1:27:14So that's problem number one.
1:27:16Problem number two, why is this every single season
1:27:20in one giant list?
1:27:21Was this designed in a way where they ever tested it,
1:27:26loading a show that had more than one season?
1:27:28I honestly am asking this question.
1:27:30Did any of the designers at any point test this interface
1:27:34with a show that had seven seasons, 10 seasons?
1:27:37There are many shows like this.
1:27:40- Even if it had one season,
1:27:41- That's too much to scroll horizontally.
1:27:42- Yes.
1:27:43- The idea that horizontal scroll,
1:27:44no one wants to scroll horizontally.
1:27:46We learned anything.
1:27:47- Yes, horizontal scrolling is always wrong.
1:27:48Like the old Apple TV put this
1:27:50in hierarchical vertically scrolling lists.
1:27:52So every season had its own entry, perfect, right?
1:27:55Because usually like changing seasons
1:27:58is kind of a big navigational step.
1:27:59You don't like accidentally cross over
1:28:01between seasons very often.
1:28:03Like you do that intentionally.
1:28:04So like that can be its own stage in the tree.
1:28:08You know, so A, there's the failure of like
1:28:10why were these episodes all marked as unplayed?
1:28:12B, why are they all on the same list?
1:28:14C, when I play one in season 13,
1:28:18and then we come back a week later
1:28:20when there's a new episode in season 13,
1:28:23right after the one that we just played,
1:28:25why does it start again at season five?
1:28:28Every part of this is a failure.
1:28:29And the reason why this is designed this way
1:28:32is either A, incompetence, that they didn't even test
1:28:36whether this would work with a show
1:28:37that had more than one season,
1:28:39or B, that it was more important for them
1:28:42to have this big, glamorous, pretty looking screen
1:28:46that has this big promo art in the background
1:28:49and it doesn't have the clutter or the ugliness
1:28:51of actual text that describes what you're looking at
1:28:53or a vertical list that's easy to navigate.
1:28:56So either way, this is a massive failure.
1:28:59And this, I'm just picking on one screen here,
1:29:01but it's a pretty common screen you see on the Apple TV.
1:29:04And this just, to me, represents so much
1:29:08of the pattern of design failure that we keep seeing out of Apple recently. And Apple Music
1:29:13is very similar. And I haven't, I honestly have not spent a ton of time with Apple Music
1:29:17because it is so bad. And for me, it not only is badly designed, for me it actually doesn't
1:29:22work. Like, whatever their local CDN node is that serves me, very often a song will
1:29:29just end before, like it'll end prematurely and just go to the next song. And I assume
1:29:34some kind of streaming failure, but I don't know why. It sucks. That's infuriating,
1:29:41honestly, because I would like to use Apple Music, and I'm still paying for it because
1:29:44I keep forgetting to go cancel it, and I keep thinking, "Oh, maybe it'll work better."
1:29:47I would love to discover new music, but Apple Music just sucks so bad I can't do it. It
1:29:51literally just doesn't work well for me. But also, just the design of that and the
1:29:56design of the new iOS music app that followed from that, it is so much in the same design
1:30:02failure pattern of we're gonna make it look like a magazine, like we're gonna make it
1:30:07look like this fancy rich content experience, but in fact it's really hard to both use and
1:30:14to figure out what the heck is going on, where you are, what's going to happen when the song
1:30:18ends. It is so hard to figure out anything. This is not good design. This is not how you
1:30:26you design software. And it is not only bad ideologically, it's bad in actual use. It's
1:30:34one thing if you say, "Well, you know, you should really always have whitespace around
1:30:38X for good practices." This goes beyond good practices. It is actually dysfunctional.
1:30:43You know, if they had only looked at Plex, which gets this whole season thing right,
1:30:48I know you're tired of hearing--
1:30:49No, Plex doesn't quite get it right either.
1:30:51Oh, please.
1:30:52So Plex is trying to present me with like the next episode in the series that I want to watch
1:30:57But I never trusted it to pick the right one so to make sure I have to go it
1:31:01I have to go early back out and then I have to pick all instead of just the browser to pick all so I can
1:31:05See the thing and then I click into it
1:31:07And then I see the seasons listed then I have to click into the season and then I see the episodes in a horizontally scrolling
1:31:11List and then I scroll over to the episode that I want
1:31:14When you're looking at an episode on the Apple TV you're looking at an episode and there's like three or four buttons on there on
1:31:20on that screen. One of them is "Go to Season."
1:31:23I'm saying, like, starting from the top. I launch the Plex app, it brings me to the
1:31:26thing that says "Discover," which I never want to see, and then "All." And I have
1:31:29to go to it, because if I do go to "Discover," like, in the upper left it has a thing, but
1:31:32it shows, like, the icon of the show that I want to watch. But if I click it, I'm not
1:31:36sure it's going to resume me at the right time. Maybe I should just trust it. Like,
1:31:39I feel like Netflix does a better job where it very quickly presents me with a thing that
1:31:43says, "You watch this, you watch this, you watch this, you're in the middle of this,
1:31:46or the next one is this," where with Plex that stuff's buried in Plex. Still does
1:31:49horizontal scrolling for the episodes within a season at least it's a hierarchy there.
1:31:53But anyway, like yeah, everything about Apple TV being designed like a magazine and not
1:31:59like a thing that people use and that horrible remote, that's all bad.
1:32:04But the final note, I guess to cap this thing off, is sort of the meta discussion we've
1:32:09had many times about negativity towards Apple and you know, complaining about things and
1:32:15stuff like that and the fact that the show isn't called Hypercritical even though it's
1:32:17It's got one of the people from that show on it.
1:32:21Two aspects of this.
1:32:22One is, although we're complaining about a lot of things here, at the end of last year
1:32:28I listed photos as one of my favorite things that Apple had done that year.
1:32:31And that's still true, because the main functionality that photos provides, having my photos everywhere
1:32:35and having them backed up to the cloud and stuff like that, I've wanted that for so long,
1:32:38and it actually does that job so far for me.
1:32:40If it doesn't do it, I have no recourse, because I don't know how to make it do what it's supposed
1:32:43to do, but so far it's been good for me, so I still give that a thumbs up.
1:32:47And like I said about the Apple TV, which has all sorts of problems, in the end, if
1:32:51video plays when I press a button, that is a big step up from the previous one, which
1:32:55would just show me spinners and strange error messages and numbers inside parentheses and
1:33:01make me sign into my iTunes account and stuff.
1:33:03So progress, good progress there.
1:33:05But the broader thing I think on the negativity is I don't think anyone who is listening to
1:33:11and is, you know, complaining, can say, you know, listen to the complaining and not liking
1:33:16it, can say that this is just us at this point. Like, I feel like this is a broader thing.
1:33:21Now, you can still believe that it's a broader narrative about a drop in quality that is
1:33:25not founded, that it is somehow, like, feeding on itself and that it is a manufactured thing
1:33:30of the media and of people all talking to each other, and like, that, again, that is
1:33:34an aspect of the media, and we are a small part of that. But so much time has passed,
1:33:40so many people with so much experience, so much diverse backgrounds.
1:33:44All the people saying this aren't all jilted lovers who idealized some point in the past
1:33:48where Apple was great.
1:33:49Some of these people are people who recently switched to the Mac.
1:33:52Some people have been Mac users forever.
1:33:53Some people are not Mac users at all.
1:33:55They're just looking in from the outside.
1:33:57It's so diverse and there's so many different opinions about this and all of them are kind
1:34:00of concentrating on it.
1:34:01It's not the end of the world.
1:34:02The company's not doomed.
1:34:03We still like it better than everybody else for the most part.
1:34:07It's a trend.
1:34:08It's a thing.
1:34:09want to just, you know, like Marco wasn't willing to backpedal this far, but if you're
1:34:13going to say, maybe it's just a perception, right? But whatever it is, there's something
1:34:17there. And we are not manufacturing that thing. And we are not, like, I feel like we're not
1:34:23blowing it out of proportion. I feel like we all have a proportional idea of like, in
1:34:27the grand scheme of things, we're all still using these products. We all still like them.
1:34:30They all are better than their predecessors in important ways. But we're seeing things
1:34:34fall down in ways that we had historically expected Apple to do better at. And we can
1:34:38see obvious problems that Apple seems like they don't, and that it persists and it goes
1:34:41on and on, and you know, like we talked about, not having crashers is great. Like, I really
1:34:45do feel that over many years that their software has gotten more reliable. It's not like you
1:34:49can only have one or the other. It's not like we're saying, "Bring back the crashers and
1:34:52put a million toolbar buttons in our applications and stuff," right? It's like, we're looking,
1:34:57you know, we want them to keep that good stuff, but bring back some of the old skills that
1:35:03they had, like Margo said. Whoever was designing those other applications that are not there
1:35:06and they're not in charge, they need to be because, you know, like, it's a regression.
1:35:13It's a small regression, but it's a trend, and it's happening, and I think we are not
1:35:17the source of that trend, and I think none of us are saying anything is dire as the emails
1:35:24we get from people who just can't hear, can't bear to hear us say anything bad about Apple.
1:35:28Like, I don't, the sky is not falling. We don't hate Apple. Apple's not a bad company.
1:35:34is not doomed, but I feel like this is a thing.
1:35:39I feel like this is a thing, and this is not a thing that we have manufactured.
1:35:43Marco didn't make this happen by writing a blog post last year.
1:35:45It didn't start with him, it's not going to end with him, and it is ongoing from people
1:35:49who have no idea who any of us are.
1:35:51Yeah, I completely agree.
1:35:53And, you know, looking at the devices that I've bought over the last year or so, I love
1:36:00the crap out of my iPad Mini 4.
1:36:02I mean, I can't, off the top of my head, think of any complaints I have about it.
1:36:06This 27-inch iMac that I had no business buying because I don't do desktop computers, that's
1:36:12not my thing.
1:36:13I freaking love this computer after I got my second one because the first one didn't
1:36:18work.
1:36:19But that's neither here nor there.
1:36:20But I really like my 6S.
1:36:23I can't think of any particular complaints I have about that.
1:36:25I would like things to be a little different in a couple of departments, but I don't have
1:36:29any actual complaints.
1:36:31And I actually really like my new Apple TV.
1:36:33I was wishy-washy on getting it, and it ended up being a holiday gift, but now that it's
1:36:39here, I use that thing constantly.
1:36:42And it was getting to the point that I almost never used our old Apple TV.
1:36:46Yeah, I'm using my Apple TV way more than I use the old one as well.
1:36:49Like, that's the real proof.
1:36:50Like, as annoying as that remote is, the old Apple TV was getting almost no use, and now
1:36:53this one gets a ton more.
1:36:55The reason why the Apple TV's problems drive me crazy is that we use the Apple TV every
1:37:00day. Like this is, like, and I could go on a much longer rant about how much worse I
1:37:05think the both the Amazon Fire TV and the Roku whatever whatever that I got, you know,
1:37:10a year ago or whatever, both of those are now sitting collecting dust because I hated
1:37:14them both even more. But, you know, the fact is like, as you said, like this drives us
1:37:19nuts because like we do use this stuff. And in some cases we don't want the alternatives
1:37:24because they're worse for us in some way or they're, you know, they don't solve
1:37:27or whatever, but the reason why this stuff matters,
1:37:31what am I gonna do?
1:37:32If Mac OS takes another dive towards bad reliability
1:37:37and stuff, what am I gonna do, switch to Windows?
1:37:41That's worse, that's way worse.
1:37:43So the reason why we care so much about this
1:37:46and we harp about this is because we don't wanna
1:37:50go to the alternatives, or the alternatives
1:37:52are actually worse, and so this is all we have.
1:37:55Like if Apple starts getting mediocre and crappy,
1:37:59well almost everyone else in the industry
1:38:01is mediocre and crappy.
1:38:02So it's not like we are holding onto dear life
1:38:06because we want Apple specifically to be great.
1:38:09It's that we want somebody to be great
1:38:11and the rest of the industry keeps showing
1:38:13over and over again for decades
1:38:15that they can mostly just manage mediocre.
1:38:17Like that's about as good as they can do most of the time.
1:38:19- And the places where things are better,
1:38:21like just to go back to the example
1:38:22you mentioned Dropbox before,
1:38:23I haven't used Apple, anything produced by Apple for email in ages because Gmail just
1:38:28just always works for me.
1:38:29Like it's the type of things just use it year after year after year after year on different
1:38:33computers and different browsers, different versions of Gmail.
1:38:35They've changed their UI, blah, blah, blah.
1:38:37It just does my email.
1:38:39It just does it.
1:38:40It never doesn't work.
1:38:41It just works like Gmail.
1:38:44I just never look back and Dropbox, like I'm still using that and like Dropbox has problems.
1:38:49We're going to email people like, oh, Dropbox deleted all my stuff and didn't save my old
1:38:52like everything has problems, but over the many, many, many years that we've used these products,
1:38:57that's why Apple's been cut out of those. I've chosen the better competitor's product.
1:39:01It can be done. Gmail for email, Dropbox for doing my file syncing. Both of those things could be
1:39:07better in certain ways, but they have to get the basics right. And so I don't think we're blindly
1:39:13tied to Apple, but by the same token, I think Marco is choosing to use the Apple TV over those
1:39:18other boxes because he tried all those other boxes. And just because Apple is the best one
1:39:21doesn't mean they're not making what we view as like silly mistakes. It should have been
1:39:26clear to them from all the time that they've been holding this thing waiting for streaming
1:39:30deals or whatever that there were problems with this product that should have been obvious
1:39:34to them and they shipped it anyway, designed problems with it, if not in this case reliability
1:39:38problems or whatever.
1:39:39All right, thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, Audible.com, Casper, and Fracture.
1:39:45And we will see you next week.
1:39:46week.
1:39:53Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey
1:40:03wouldn't let him Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental
1:40:10And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm And if you're into Twitter, you can follow
1:40:19Follow them @CASEYLISS
1:40:24So that's Kasey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M
1:40:29Auntie Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C
1:40:34U-S-A-C-R-A-C-U-S-A
1:40:36It's accidental (it's accidental)
1:40:40They didn't mean to accidental (accidental)
1:40:45♪ The tech podcast so long ♪
1:40:48- We didn't really talk about the hardware side of it.
1:40:51That's a big angle on Gruber's thing was like,
1:40:53oh, everyone agrees their hardware is doing better.
1:40:55I know Marco's been upset about their hardware
1:40:58a little bit more than I've heard other people, but--
1:41:00- Well, but honestly, the hardware is really good.
1:41:02I harp on two main problems.
1:41:06Number one, that I wish battery life was longer,
1:41:10and number two, that even though we seem to have
1:41:13more entries in the product line than ever,
1:41:16I think we actually have less choice.
1:41:19We have more options that have, among them,
1:41:22less diversity, if that makes sense.
1:41:26Like, every laptop Apple sells is a thin and light.
1:41:30Like, they don't have any big honking laptops
1:41:33that have like, three day battery life.
1:41:34That just doesn't exist.
1:41:35Every phone they sell is a thin and light.
1:41:38You know, like, every laptop they sell now,
1:41:41except for the 101 doesn't have user replaceable disk
1:41:45or memory in most of them either.
1:41:47There's stuff like that.
1:41:48No computer they sell, no desktop they sell anymore
1:41:52has internal disk bays that are actually accessible.
1:41:55- I think you may be living a little bit in the past
1:41:57with a lot of those requests,
1:41:59but I understand where you're coming from.
1:42:01- Some of those, yes, but if you look at the roles
1:42:04that were served by the old Mac Pro,
1:42:05yes, I got the Mac Pro in this episode.
1:42:06If you look at the roles that were served by that,
1:42:10That could handle a lot of edge cases.
1:42:13If you really want a Mac that has X, Y, or Z
1:42:17hardware capability, the Mac Pro is oftentimes
1:42:19the answer to that.
1:42:20And the new Mac Pro they replaced it with
1:42:22knocks out the vast majority of those.
1:42:25It just removes them from possibility.
1:42:28Similar with laptops, if you wanted a laptop
1:42:31with four terabytes of storage, you could do that before,
1:42:33and now you can't.
1:42:34There's a pretty big list of things that used to be
1:42:37possible or configurable with Mac hardware
1:42:40that is no longer possible in the current lineup.
1:42:43Or like is only possible in the 101,
1:42:46the non-retina, the 13X or whatever.
1:42:48There's a pretty long list of those things.
1:42:50And the list of things we used to be able to do or get
1:42:53or configure that we can't do now,
1:42:55seems to be getting longer over time.
1:42:57And not all those things are just outdated old technology.
1:43:00Some of those things are actually,
1:43:01wow, it would still be nice if I could do that,
1:43:03or I need to do that and now I can't.
1:43:04So that's my main criticism of Apple hardware
1:43:07is that we are actually getting less real choice than ever.
1:43:11- I think it's kind of a luxury to be able to complain
1:43:13about things at that level though,
1:43:14because what we're not saying is that in general,
1:43:17especially with the mobile hardware, year after year,
1:43:19the hardware gets better in measurable ways
1:43:22that are meaningful to people.
1:43:23The CPUs get faster and you feel that speed.
1:43:26The cameras get better and you see the results of that.
1:43:29They add features, they change the size of those,
1:43:33make a bigger screen, add features like the stylus,
1:43:35like that the products are just, you know,
1:43:37the hardware is progressing.
1:43:38And then we can have quibbles about the directions.
1:43:40Like it's basically what you're coming to is like,
1:43:42how do you design your product line?
1:43:43What products do you choose to feel?
1:43:44What direction do you want the overall product line to go in?
1:43:46But in general, the individual products,
1:43:48like I think about my iPhone 6, I love this phone.
1:43:51It's great.
1:43:52I'm jealous of the 6S because it's a little bit faster
1:43:54and has better cameras off, you know what I mean?
1:43:55Like the hardware is still doing what we expect it to do.
1:44:01It's not as the equivalent in the hardware realm in the software room would be as if
1:44:05when the 6s comes out after the 6, like that whole bunch of things that used to be able
1:44:11to do on the 6 are buried under a bunch of different screens and they remove, they have
1:44:15done it with removing the mute switch, but they remove like all the buttons from the
1:44:18entire thing and it's harder to get to the camera.
1:44:21And like say there was like a cover that you had to slide down from the camera every time
1:44:23you wanted to take a picture because they wanted the outside surface to be like, why
1:44:26did you put a cover over the camera?
1:44:28You know, like that's the type of crap we're talking about in the software world.
1:44:30So I feel like in the hardware where we have luxury
1:44:32of saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, Apple's doing the basic stuff
1:44:34like general design, reliability, the things look nice.
1:44:39They feel nice that they seem to be more cognizant
1:44:44of the aspects of it having to do with being held
1:44:46in the hand, even if the things are slippery,
1:44:47they try to make it less slippery in the next generation.
1:44:49Their cases are kind of grippy.
1:44:51They take a shake that might've been slippery
1:44:52and they put a case on it and it improves it
1:44:54and they learn from that.
1:44:55CPU is getting faster.
1:44:57It's like being back in the 90s on the desktop
1:44:59'cause they're still going through that whole chain
1:45:00of things, they add more memory eventually,
1:45:03maybe they'll go past 16 gigs.
1:45:05In general, we just take for granted all the standard,
1:45:08Apple is doing good hardware stuff.
1:45:10And that I think is why when people talk about it,
1:45:12they're like, Apple hardware is doing great
1:45:14and the software, there's more of a problem like that.
1:45:16I think that is also a general perception
1:45:18that is not just us, that if you had to rate Apple,
1:45:21when Jason Snell did that big survey,
1:45:22and again, maybe he's all echo chamber
1:45:24and he's just serving a bunch of tech reporters,
1:45:26but like, you know, tech report, you can't, you know,
1:45:28it's not as if you can discount the opinion
1:45:30of all tech reporters, so they're too inside.
1:45:31Or like, so should we just ask people
1:45:33who don't know about the tech industry, I guess?
1:45:35Anyway, we did that big survey,
1:45:37and you look at the little bar charts
1:45:38of how is Apple doing with like, you know,
1:45:39grades from like A to F or whatever.
1:45:42Hardware, they got a way higher grade
1:45:44than they got software.
1:45:44Like just broadly speaking, whatever you think about,
1:45:47they're just doing better with the hardware than software.
1:45:49And that the quibbles you get to have about hardware
1:45:51are so much more specific and minor
1:45:56than the basic stuff we're talking about on the software.
1:45:59Going to a television show
1:46:02and wanting to watch the next episode,
1:46:04a television show that you've purchased
1:46:05in the Apple ecosystem, or it's like a common task,
1:46:08and making that task frustrating
1:46:10is just falling down on the basics.
1:46:13So again, the overall trends, I think,
1:46:16it's like it's not us being negative nellies.
1:46:19There is an actual thing out there about that,
1:46:21whether it's a real thing or not, it is out there.
1:46:24And I think everyone can agree,
1:46:26even no matter how much you love Apple,
1:46:27if you had to say,
1:46:28"Is it they're doing better on hardware or software lately?"
1:46:31Probably have complaints about both,
1:46:32but you have to say they're doing better on hardware
1:46:34because the software,
1:46:35the unforced errors they're making on software
1:46:37are just so inexplicable and such a regression.
1:46:40Whereas at the very least,
1:46:41even if they make a slight mistake on hardware
1:46:42and making like the 6 slippery,
1:46:44when they make the 6s,
1:46:45they try to make it less slippery, right?
1:46:48We give them the pass,
1:46:49and like you're making progress,
1:46:50they'll be, you know, you fold it,
1:46:51but like they're making it better.
1:46:52And is the 6S faster?
1:46:53Yes, it is.
1:46:54And does it have a better camera?
1:46:55Yes, it does.
1:46:56And does it have, you know,
1:46:57cool 3D touch and the haptic engine and all this?
1:47:00It's like, it's cooler, it's better.
1:47:02I wish I had one instead of my 6.
1:47:04But I don't wish I had the version of iPhoto
1:47:07that removed all the toolbar buttons.
1:47:08I wish I had the previous one,
1:47:10because I liked those buttons.
1:47:11And I don't wish I, you know,
1:47:12photos is great because it brings these great features
1:47:14with the cloud syncing,
1:47:15but all the other stuff I do with it
1:47:17was better in old versions of iPhotos.
1:47:19At least you weren't an Aperture user.
1:47:22(beep)