ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► Anyway, I don't know how you're gonna edit the beginning of this show. Good luck.

00:00:03 ◼   ► I'm just gonna delete everything before right now.

00:00:05 ◼   ► Oh, come on.

00:00:07 ◼   ► What am I gonna pull out of that?

00:00:09 ◼   ► The cooly cozy cozy discussion was wonderful.

00:00:11 ◼   ► I don't wanna have a whole show about butts and beer warmers.

00:00:14 ◼   ► Or Ohio.

00:00:16 ◼   ► Sorry, sorry Ohio. It just doesn't make the cut.

00:00:18 ◼   ► Just let it be known. Marco's the party pooper.

00:00:20 ◼   ► [

00:00:20 ◼   ► So, John, would you like to tell us about Apple TV catching up on gaming consoles in

00:00:26 ◼   ► power?

00:00:27 ◼   ► Sure.

00:00:28 ◼   ► We don't have much follow-up on Apple TV.

00:00:29 ◼   ► It's finally tailing off now.

00:00:31 ◼   ► But one conversation I saw floating around these past few weeks, I forget what prompted

00:00:36 ◼   ► it, otherwise I would have put the link in here.

00:00:38 ◼   ► But maybe it was just people talking about gaming and Apple TV in general, and some people

00:00:43 ◼   ► were like, "You know, the Apple TV with an A8, it's catching up to some gaming consoles

00:00:47 ◼   ► in power."

00:00:49 ◼   ► And like it's more powerful than a PS3 and maybe it's not as powerful as PS4 now, but

00:00:54 ◼   ► the PS4 isn't going to change anytime soon, like the PS5 is not imminent.

00:00:58 ◼   ► So if Apple keeps revising the Apple TV, at some point the Apple TV could be more powerful

00:01:03 ◼   ► than all current generation gaming consoles.

00:01:07 ◼   ► And I think that's crazy talk.

00:01:10 ◼   ► It starts with a kernel of truth, yes, the Apple TV with the A8 is way faster than the

00:01:14 ◼   ► old one.

00:01:16 ◼   ► And I'd even go, I haven't looked into this deeply, but just from looking at the games,

00:01:19 ◼   ► You could say, "Yeah, sure, PS3 power, maybe a little bit more, probably."

00:01:24 ◼   ► That's a safe bet, because the PS3 is a really old console.

00:01:27 ◼   ► And again, I agree that it's not PS4 power or Xbox One power, but then they extrapolate

00:01:32 ◼   ► and say, "But, you know, this is the A8, what if next year it's the A9, then the A10?"

00:01:37 ◼   ► And even if it's just a year or two behind the top-end phone, the idea is that iOS devices

00:01:43 ◼   ► keep getting faster, and game consoles have, you know, a five to seven year lifespan, sometimes

00:01:49 ◼   ► even longer. So if there is no PS5 on the horizon, perhaps just before the PS5 arrives,

00:01:55 ◼   ► the Apple TV will be a more powerful gaming system. And the reason I think that's bunk

00:01:59 ◼   ► is not necessarily because Apple couldn't make hardware that is faster than the PS4,

00:02:04 ◼   ► because they inevitably will, although not perhaps in the time frame before the PS5 comes,

00:02:08 ◼   ► but just because the Apple TV isn't the iPhone. It doesn't get revised every year, and even

00:02:14 ◼   ► Even the iPhone, even the highest end iOS device they make, the gigantic iPad Pro that

00:02:19 ◼   ► we will talk about later, has only 4GB of RAM and the PS4 has 8GB of RAM.

00:02:24 ◼   ► And you would think, well, RAM doesn't matter, the CPU and the GPU will be just as fast.

00:02:28 ◼   ► But when it comes to making games, things like RAM and things like hard disk space and

00:02:33 ◼   ► stuff like that makes a difference.

00:02:37 ◼   ► The PS4, I think, has a 500GB hard drive now and 8GB of RAM.

00:02:40 ◼   ► When do you think it's going to be that the Apple TV has 8GB of RAM?

00:02:43 ◼   ► it will, right? But will it have 8 gigs of RAM before the PS5 is out? I find that hard

00:02:47 ◼   ► to believe given how frequently Apple updates the Apple TV and even just given, I don't

00:02:53 ◼   ► even think the iPhone will have 8 gigs of RAM by the time the PS5 comes out at the current

00:02:57 ◼   ► rate of RAM boost. And that stuff makes a difference for games with like large open

00:03:03 ◼   ► world games with high resolution textures and all that other stuff. So anyone thinking

00:03:07 ◼   ► that the Apple TV will eventually be more powerful than the PS4, it will, but by that

00:03:12 ◼   ► time the PS6 will probably be out.

00:03:13 ◼   ► Michael Lewis, Ph.D. There's also a pretty big difference in thermals between these kinds

00:03:17 ◼   ► of systems. As we see from modern CPU and GPU limitations and designs and progress and

00:03:23 ◼   ► everything, we're mainly limited by how much heat we will allow the chips to output, or

00:03:28 ◼   ► how much heat we can deal with them outputting, and that pretty much puts a limit on performance

00:03:32 ◼   ► that we can get out of them at any given moment or in any given year, like in whatever we

00:03:36 ◼   ► can do that year. That is generally what we're fighting against. And for things that are

00:03:40 ◼   ► AC connected. You know, you don't really need to worry too much about current draw, which

00:03:45 ◼   ► is related, but you can max out the current draw as much as you want when you're plugged

00:03:48 ◼   ► into a wall outlet, but you still, in a little tiny box that's $100 next to your TV, or $150

00:03:54 ◼   ► next to your TV, with no fan in this little tiny enclosure that's not even made of metal,

00:03:59 ◼   ► it's going to be pretty hard to get mega heat output out of that.

00:04:02 ◼   ► Meanwhile, you look at a game console and they had these big, hot chips with these big,

00:04:06 ◼   ► loud annoying fans, especially in their first generation before they do any kind of process

00:04:11 ◼   ► shrink. So when the PS5 comes out, they're going to be able to put in some giant big

00:04:17 ◼   ► hot chip with a big loud fan on it and the Apple TV will still need to be this cheap

00:04:22 ◼   ► fanless box running year or two old iPhone guts.

00:04:25 ◼   ► Yeah, and they're offset from each other because like could you imagine when the PS3 first

00:04:29 ◼   ► came out if you said someday there'll be a little black puck with no fans in it that's

00:04:32 ◼   ► more powerful than the PS3. You're like, "Get out of here!" But here we are. But look at

00:04:36 ◼   ► the time span gap, it's huge gap between the PS3 and now.

00:04:39 ◼   ► So like, the fanless thing is always going to lag behind

00:04:44 ◼   ► the thing with fans by at least a generation

00:04:49 ◼   ► and not like processing power as much as just capacity

00:04:52 ◼   ► for large, you know, games.

00:04:55 ◼   ► Like having all that RAM is important

00:04:57 ◼   ► for putting the big console games on there

00:04:59 ◼   ► for the big textures and all that other stuff.

00:05:01 ◼   ► And if you don't have that RAM, if you have to wait,

00:05:03 ◼   ► like the PS3 didn't have a lot of RAM,

00:05:05 ◼   ► so you had to wedge a lot of crap in there.

00:05:06 ◼   ► That's part of the reason that the Apple TV can match it these days is because the PS3

00:05:10 ◼   ► was very strange architecture and relatively RAM starved, but the PS4 is not RAM starved.

00:05:16 ◼   ► It's got tons of RAM and it's got tons of hard drive space, which is not as fast as

00:05:20 ◼   ► an SSD, but when you're preloading levels and stuff it's fast enough to stream levels

00:05:25 ◼   ► to host.

00:05:26 ◼   ► Anyway, I'm definitely not looking for the Apple TV to catch up and pass the PS4, unless

00:05:32 ◼   ► I guess there is no PS5 and then you just wait around until we can get a PS4 and a little puck thing

00:05:37 ◼   ► But I really think at this point that probably will be a PS5 because the PS4 is doing pretty well for Sony all things considered

00:05:43 ◼   ► All right any other follow-up

00:05:45 ◼   ► On an infinite timescale the rate we're going we are gonna not have follow-up at all

00:05:51 ◼   ► I don't even know what to make of this what a shame that would be

00:05:54 ◼   ► You could technically put a lot of the iPad Pro stuff in there

00:05:57 ◼   ► But it's not really because we're just gonna talk more about the iPad Pro later

00:06:00 ◼   ► Fair enough. Any follow-out you'd like to do, John?

00:06:03 ◼   ► I don't know what that is.

00:06:04 ◼   ► Fair enough. All right. What's awesome these days before we dig in?

00:06:09 ◼   ► Our first sponsor this week is Squarespace.

00:06:11 ◼   ► Start building your website today at squarespace.com.

00:06:14 ◼   ► Enter offer code ATP at checkout to get 10% off.

00:06:17 ◼   ► Squarespace. Build it beautiful.

00:06:19 ◼   ► Now, Squarespace offers you easy, what you see is what you get website editing.

00:06:24 ◼   ► And you can make all sorts of stuff. It is amazingly capable.

00:06:27 ◼   ► There's tons of built-in widgets and themes and templates and page types and all this

00:06:32 ◼   ► amazing built-in functionality, all included in every plan that starts at just $8 a month.

00:06:38 ◼   ► Let's face it, many of us can make websites on our own if we need to, but most of us probably

00:06:42 ◼   ► shouldn't most of the time.

00:06:45 ◼   ► And Squarespace is great for all those times when you probably shouldn't be writing your

00:06:50 ◼   ► own CMS to make a website for your kid's school or for your podcast.

00:06:55 ◼   ► You need to make a website for yourself or somebody else.

00:06:58 ◼   ► And you don't want to be the one supporting it.

00:07:00 ◼   ► You don't want to be the one dealing with feature requests from the client or from yourself

00:07:04 ◼   ► or maintenance or dealing with downtime, security updates, all that stuff.

00:07:08 ◼   ► They take care of all of that for you.

00:07:11 ◼   ► All this starts at just $8 a month with a free trial.

00:07:15 ◼   ► So you don't have to believe me if you don't want to.

00:07:17 ◼   ► I mean, look, I'm wrong about a lot of stuff, but I'm pretty sure I'm right about this.

00:07:20 ◼   ► But just in case I'm not, go check it out for yourself.

00:07:23 ◼   ► Go to Squarespace.com.

00:07:24 ◼   ► Start a trial site.

00:07:25 ◼   ► You can start it with no credit card required.

00:07:27 ◼   ► You don't have to worry about canceling

00:07:29 ◼   ► before they bill you or anything.

00:07:30 ◼   ► They can't bill you until you tell them to.

00:07:32 ◼   ► So go try it out.

00:07:33 ◼   ► Just start building a site.

00:07:35 ◼   ► See how it goes for you.

00:07:36 ◼   ► Next time you need to make a website

00:07:38 ◼   ► or if you just wanna play around now,

00:07:39 ◼   ► just try doing it there first.

00:07:41 ◼   ► Give it an hour or two and see how much you can get done.

00:07:43 ◼   ► I bet you can get most or all of what you need to get done

00:07:47 ◼   ► finished in an hour or two and then you're done.

00:07:49 ◼   ► And then you can go do anything else with your time.

00:07:51 ◼   ► Check it out today, squarespace.com.

00:07:54 ◼   ► Please use offer code ATP to get 10% off your first purchase when you sign up.

00:07:58 ◼   ► Squarespace, build it beautiful.

00:08:00 ◼   ► So the Mac App Store had some issues in the last week.

00:08:05 ◼   ► It was a pretty big disaster, and I didn't really know what was going on.

00:08:10 ◼   ► I've been really busy, and so I have been following Twitter as religiously as I usually

00:08:14 ◼   ► do.

00:08:15 ◼   ► And I saw that there were some issues, and I didn't think a lot of it because everything

00:08:18 ◼   ► seemed to be working on my computer.

00:08:21 ◼   ► And then all of a sudden I went to run 1Password and I was told I couldn't.

00:08:25 ◼   ► And suddenly this thing I wasn't paying attention to became a lot more real.

00:08:31 ◼   ► So Jon, why don't you tell us what happened?

00:08:33 ◼   ► Well, so the stuff they run from the Mac App Store is DRM encumbered, let's say, to some

00:08:42 ◼   ► degree.

00:08:43 ◼   ► They're receipts that the Mac App Store puts in the application.

00:08:48 ◼   ► Apple's advice for figuring out on the launch of your application whether your app is valid

00:08:52 ◼   ► is to check those receipts.

00:08:53 ◼   ► They have some code that they, you know, some code samples showing you how to do that, but

00:08:57 ◼   ► you can really do it any way you want.

00:08:59 ◼   ► Some developers use OpenSSL library that they bundle into their application.

00:09:05 ◼   ► OpenSSL is an open source thing to check their certificates.

00:09:08 ◼   ► And there are a couple problems related to this.

00:09:10 ◼   ► As with most disasters, not just one thing goes wrong multiples.

00:09:13 ◼   ► One of the things that went wrong is that Apple updated their certificate for this receipt

00:09:19 ◼   ► to use a better encryption, a stronger encryption they had been using previously.

00:09:23 ◼   ► And it just so happens that the OpenSSL library that a lot of applications use to validate

00:09:28 ◼   ► their receipts can't handle this new encryption level.

00:09:33 ◼   ► So that's one class of things that went wrong.

00:09:35 ◼   ► The second class of things that went wrong is the Mac App Store certificate expired and

00:09:39 ◼   ► Apple replaced it with a new one.

00:09:41 ◼   ► That's why they had the occasion, I think, to replace this with the new one that had

00:09:44 ◼   ► the stronger encryption.

00:09:45 ◼   ► And there's a bug in the Mac App Store where even if a new certificate is issued, after

00:09:50 ◼   ► the old one has expired, there's some caching issue, I guess it's locally on the Macs, that

00:09:54 ◼   ► makes it not take the new certificate even though the old one had expired.

00:10:02 ◼   ► And so what people were getting was they would try to launch an application, and not just

00:10:07 ◼   ► one application, but in some cases if they have the caching problem, pretty much every

00:10:10 ◼   ► application they'd got from the Mac App Store, you would end up getting these dialog boxes

00:10:16 ◼   ► that say, "This application is damaged, please throw it in the trash."

00:10:19 ◼   ► Basically, the system telling you that it couldn't validate the authenticity of this

00:10:22 ◼   ► application.

00:10:23 ◼   ► This is kind of the system working as designed, and if some malware infected all your applications

00:10:27 ◼   ► and turned them into trojan horses and stuff, you would want to know, "Hey, don't run this

00:10:33 ◼   ► application, it's messed up."

00:10:34 ◼   ► But the same dialog appears if the validation machinery says, in this case, the certificate

00:10:39 ◼   ► had expired and even though Apple had issued a new one, even though your application might

00:10:42 ◼   ► have been able to use that new one to validate that everything was going on, the local operating

00:10:46 ◼   ► system was telling it, "No, you're trying to use a certificate that expired like three

00:10:51 ◼   ► days ago, so you're out of luck."

00:10:53 ◼   ► So Apple fixed this by downgrading their encryption to the old version that fixed all the applications

00:10:59 ◼   ► that had the old version of SSL.

00:11:01 ◼   ► And I don't know what they did to fix these expiring certificates other than to tell people

00:11:05 ◼   ► to reboot and stuff.

00:11:06 ◼   ► I'm not entirely sure what they did.

00:11:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, they said they're preparing a software update

00:11:10 ◼   ► for OS X to prevent the caching issue in the future, but--

00:11:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's not gonna help people

00:11:15 ◼   ► who had this problem last week.

00:11:16 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean this, this was a disaster on so many levels.

00:11:19 ◼   ► It's kind of an embarrassment.

00:11:21 ◼   ► I mean, so the official statement they gave,

00:11:24 ◼   ► which came pretty late, honestly.

00:11:27 ◼   ► - Six days later, they made an official statement,

00:11:29 ◼   ► and it wasn't even, was it a public statement?

00:11:30 ◼   ► I think they emailed developers this thing, right?

00:11:32 ◼   ► - Well, they emailed something to developers,

00:11:34 ◼   ► and they also gave a PR statement to sites like iMore,

00:11:38 ◼   ► which we'll link to in the show notes.

00:11:39 ◼   ► Apple does a lot of things this way.

00:11:41 ◼   ► They don't put bad news or reactions

00:11:44 ◼   ► to things on their own site.

00:11:45 ◼   ► They'll send the same PR statement to

00:11:49 ◼   ► known friendly Apple sites and have them all basically

00:11:51 ◼   ► report it and apologize on Apple's behalf for them

00:11:54 ◼   ► so that Apple doesn't have to soil their site

00:11:56 ◼   ► with any kind of negative PR.

00:11:58 ◼   ► So the statement they gave was,

00:12:00 ◼   ► I think it was a lot of BS and some truth.

00:12:05 ◼   ► This was a planned event and most users

00:12:07 ◼   ► experienced no issues. However, some users experienced some issues during this change.

00:12:15 ◼   ► Now, because of the nature of this problem, I think most users, that is complete BS, the

00:12:24 ◼   ► idea that most users experienced no issues and only some people had only some problems.

00:12:30 ◼   ► No.

00:12:31 ◼   ► So, how, is there any way that Apple could know the actual answer to that? Because Apple's

00:12:35 ◼   ► not tracking, I'm assuming, how often we launch applications and stuff. So I don't think anyone

00:12:39 ◼   ► really knows the scope of this problem.

00:12:43 ◼   ► You know, I don't know, honestly. But, so the fact is, you know, this PR statement is

00:12:48 ◼   ► trying to minimize the issue.

00:12:50 ◼   ► Well, but see, but if you don't know, and Apple doesn't know, everyone is just guessing

00:12:54 ◼   ► based on stories they've heard, right?

00:12:55 ◼   ► I guess that's true. I mean, I suppose they could know, like, how many people hit the

00:12:59 ◼   ► certificate server, right? I mean...

00:13:01 ◼   ► I mean, they can estimate, I'm assuming they can estimate it from like support load, because

00:13:05 ◼   ► you can do some math and say if we get X number of support calls for this issue, that means

00:13:08 ◼   ► why people really have this issue.

00:13:11 ◼   ► You know, just based on historically speaking, how many people will go to the phones or go

00:13:14 ◼   ► to email about a particular issue.

00:13:16 ◼   ► You can kind of back of the envelope figure out based on previous problems that you did

00:13:20 ◼   ► have better metrics on.

00:13:21 ◼   ► Right, who knows?

00:13:22 ◼   ► I mean, what we're using is like, do you know somebody who had this problem with their computer?

00:13:27 ◼   ► I mean, you know, I didn't, I actually didn't encounter this problem on many of my computers,

00:13:31 ◼   ► but then again, I tend to avoid buying applications in the Mac App Store.

00:13:35 ◼   ► But I do have some.

00:13:36 ◼   ► For example, Slack I brought on the Mac App Store, and I use it every day, and I had no

00:13:39 ◼   ► problem with it.

00:13:40 ◼   ► Is it because I'm always running it?

00:13:41 ◼   ► And if you're, like, if you're running it and the certificate expires, I think there's

00:13:44 ◼   ► no problem.

00:13:45 ◼   ► It's only if you quit it and launch it.

00:13:46 ◼   ► But I'm pretty sure I did quit it and launch it during that window and haven't restarted.

00:13:49 ◼   ► So anyway, I had zero problems.

00:13:51 ◼   ► Casey had a problem.

00:13:52 ◼   ► Some people had tons of problems.

00:13:53 ◼   ► I had many problems.

00:13:55 ◼   ► stories where they show the dialogue box is like 500 dialogue boxes popping up on the screen saying

00:13:59 ◼   ► they can't watch things. Anyway, the bottom line is that this was a problem that could have

00:14:04 ◼   ► potentially affected every single user who has ever purchased anything from the Mac App Store.

00:14:08 ◼   ► And it probably affected a lot of them because who, you know, maybe I just got lucky, but like

00:14:15 ◼   ► conceptually speaking, this is, you don't need a weird set of circumstances to trigger this problem,

00:14:21 ◼   ► I don't think you just need to have purchased things from the Mac App Store

00:14:23 ◼   ► To and to have your system cache the old certificate and then to launch them after the new one has been issued

00:14:30 ◼   ► Tips during the checkpoint. I got something pretty relevant here

00:14:33 ◼   ► Slack probably does not do receipt validation on launch because it's a free app. They probably don't care

00:14:39 ◼   ► So the only apps that were doing receipt validation

00:14:41 ◼   ► Would would have had this problem. Yeah, I'm trying to think of the Mac App Store apps

00:14:46 ◼   ► I have I guess I have Apple's apps like, you know, the the you know pages and all that stuff

00:14:51 ◼   ► stuff from the iWorkSuite and I tend not to buy in the Mac App Store and that's the second

00:14:56 ◼   ► factor in this which is things like this, especially for people who have no idea why

00:15:00 ◼   ► the heck this happened, make them feel worse about the Mac App Store.

00:15:05 ◼   ► And people who have any clue about the details of the Mac App Store, this will actually make

00:15:09 ◼   ► them avoid it more than they did in the past.

00:15:11 ◼   ► Like I'm avoiding it for a variety of reasons, mostly because the applications I use, even

00:15:18 ◼   ► Even when they were in the Mac App Store, like BB Edit, I never bought the Mac App Store

00:15:21 ◼   ► version because it was crippled by sandboxing because of Apple's rule.

00:15:23 ◼   ► So if I have a choice between buying the crippled sandbox version and the non-crippled version,

00:15:27 ◼   ► and I know the non-crippled version gives more money to the developer, I'll buy the

00:15:30 ◼   ► non-crippled version every time.

00:15:32 ◼   ► So that's what I've always done, if there's any choice.

00:15:34 ◼   ► The ones I buy in the Mac App Store, it's always been like, "That's convenient, you

00:15:37 ◼   ► know, I don't care that much about it, it's not a big deal," or, "It's free, like Slack

00:15:41 ◼   ► or whatever."

00:15:42 ◼   ► You know, it's more convenient than going to direct download it.

00:15:44 ◼   ► Like, I would like to have the experience where I could just go to one place and see

00:15:47 ◼   ► all my apps and auto-update them and all that stuff.

00:15:49 ◼   ► I like those features at the Mac App Store, but for apps that really count, I'm definitely

00:15:53 ◼   ► buying them outside.

00:15:54 ◼   ► But for people who are more towards the Mac App Store, where they're like, "You know what,

00:15:58 ◼   ► the convenience is more important to me than giving more money to the developer, and the

00:16:02 ◼   ► applications I use don't suffer from any sandboxing issues, and I really love auto-update and

00:16:06 ◼   ► all this other stuff."

00:16:08 ◼   ► Never mind that most Mac apps before the Mac App Store were already using Sparkle or something

00:16:11 ◼   ► like that, anyway.

00:16:12 ◼   ► Anyway, for people who know about these details,

00:16:15 ◼   ► this is going to make them think twice

00:16:17 ◼   ► because they're like,

00:16:17 ◼   ► "Before the trade-off was worth it to me.

00:16:19 ◼   ► I will buy from the Mac App Store

00:16:20 ◼   ► because the convenience is worth it to me

00:16:22 ◼   ► for the potential downsides."

00:16:23 ◼   ► But now they're weighing that convenience

00:16:26 ◼   ► versus like, you know,

00:16:28 ◼   ► this day when all your apps won't launch

00:16:31 ◼   ► and you've got to figure out what the heck the problem is.

00:16:32 ◼   ► And so this is not good,

00:16:35 ◼   ► both short-term and long-term for the Mac App Store,

00:16:37 ◼   ► which was already not a particularly beloved institution

00:16:40 ◼   ► as far as developers and tech savvy users are concerned.

00:16:44 ◼   ► - That's the problem.

00:16:44 ◼   ► I mean, there are so many reasons already

00:16:48 ◼   ► why you might want to be hesitant

00:16:49 ◼   ► about buying from the Mac App Store

00:16:51 ◼   ► and why developers might want to be hesitant

00:16:53 ◼   ► to be in the Mac App Store.

00:16:55 ◼   ► And to just add one more thing to the pile,

00:16:57 ◼   ► it's just a really bad time for that.

00:16:59 ◼   ► And it just seems like, you know,

00:17:03 ◼   ► there was a good post by, is it Michael Tsai?

00:17:07 ◼   ► MJ Tsai?

00:17:08 ◼   ► - I believe that's right.

00:17:10 ◼   ► He made a good post, we'll link to it in the show notes,

00:17:13 ◼   ► called "Nobody Minding the Store" or something like that.

00:17:16 ◼   ► Do I have that right?

00:17:17 ◼   ► Basically collecting all these quotes and everything

00:17:20 ◼   ► and pointing out, just like,

00:17:21 ◼   ► the Mac App Store is just so neglected,

00:17:25 ◼   ► and it has been since its introduction.

00:17:28 ◼   ► The iOS App Store has its own set of problems,

00:17:31 ◼   ► but the Mac App Store is so much worse in almost every way.

00:17:36 ◼   ► The fact that it has a bug, a certificate validation bug,

00:17:40 ◼   ► I mean, that's like one of many problems with it.

00:17:42 ◼   ► That's only the most recent problem with it.

00:17:45 ◼   ► The application itself,

00:17:46 ◼   ► the Mac App Store application is a disaster.

00:17:49 ◼   ► The sandboxing issues have pushed out tons of good apps.

00:17:53 ◼   ► Mac App Store developers, I really feel sorry for them.

00:17:56 ◼   ► And if I were launching a Mac app,

00:17:58 ◼   ► I'm not sure I would put it there.

00:18:00 ◼   ► Like, if you would have asked me a year ago

00:18:01 ◼   ► if I was launching a Mac app to put it in the App Store,

00:18:03 ◼   ► I'd say, yeah, probably.

00:18:04 ◼   ► You know, I don't wanna deal with myself distributing it.

00:18:06 ◼   ► So yeah, I'll put it in the App Store.

00:18:08 ◼   ► But today, I don't think I would.

00:18:10 ◼   ► It just seems like it's not worth

00:18:12 ◼   ► all of the downsides and costs.

00:18:15 ◼   ► - Well, it really depends.

00:18:17 ◼   ► If I was developing a Mac app,

00:18:18 ◼   ► I would say it really depends on what kind of app it is.

00:18:22 ◼   ► Because if it's a small app or if it's a free app

00:18:25 ◼   ► or if it's an app that you think will never be impacted

00:18:27 ◼   ► by sandboxing and you just don't wanna deal with

00:18:30 ◼   ► incorporating Sparkle and putting up your own

00:18:32 ◼   ► endpoint for that and making sure it's up for the updates

00:18:35 ◼   ► and doing payment processing yourself

00:18:37 ◼   ► all that other stuff that you would have to do if you did the direct sales route because

00:18:40 ◼   ► say you don't have an existing channel for direct sales to software because you're not

00:18:44 ◼   ► an established software company or whatever, it is definitely convenient to use the Mac

00:18:48 ◼   ► App Store. But if your app, you know, if I was doing an app that wasn't true for even

00:18:52 ◼   ► one of those things, like could my app potentially be impacted by sandboxing, don't go to the

00:18:57 ◼   ► Mac App Store. Do I already have a way to accept money from people? I don't need the

00:19:00 ◼   ► Mac App Store for that. Do I already know how to incorporate self-auto update and have

00:19:04 ◼   ► a robust framework for doing that and already have a website that I have to keep up and

00:19:07 ◼   ► so I can put an endpoint on it for updates, then yeah, just, you know, there's no point

00:19:12 ◼   ► if you feel like those things don't apply.

00:19:15 ◼   ► That's you know, I'm not actually a Mac developer, so I don't know.

00:19:18 ◼   ► But part of, yeah, part of this whole recent round of Mac App Store stuff and the Tech

00:19:23 ◼   ► Nerd circles was developers sort of reiterating, "See guys, this is why I'm not in the Mac

00:19:29 ◼   ► App Store and users like the MJ side thing writing up all the list of you know

00:19:35 ◼   ► all the great Mac apps that are not in the Mac App Store like the Mac App Store

00:19:38 ◼   ► even though many people think of it as the only and best and and single place

00:19:43 ◼   ► to get Mac software a lot of the Mac software that the Mac users really love

00:19:48 ◼   ► a lot of the best Mac software is just not on the Mac App Store and obviously

00:19:52 ◼   ► that's not true in iOS because it's pretty much all the software on iOS is

00:19:56 ◼   ► on the App Store.

00:19:57 ◼   ► So yeah, Apple's always been in an uncomfortable position

00:19:59 ◼   ► with the Mac App Store because there is an alternative.

00:20:01 ◼   ► And we all want there to be an alternative,

00:20:03 ◼   ► but that means the Mac App Store actually has to compete.

00:20:05 ◼   ► Kind of in the same way that the iTunes Music Store

00:20:07 ◼   ► had to compete against piracy,

00:20:09 ◼   ► the Mac App Store has to compete against direct sales

00:20:12 ◼   ► and applications that can be more powerful

00:20:14 ◼   ► and do more powerful things.

00:20:16 ◼   ► And it's currently losing that competition.

00:20:18 ◼   ► - And even as a user, everything about the Mac App Store,

00:20:22 ◼   ► from a user perspective, has gotten worse over time.

00:20:26 ◼   ► You know, first when they started adding sandboxing,

00:20:28 ◼   ► you know, that not only pushed out a lot of apps

00:20:29 ◼   ► that made us, oh, well now we have to like,

00:20:31 ◼   ► you know, exchange our license and go download

00:20:33 ◼   ► the direct version and everything.

00:20:34 ◼   ► So that was a pain for people who bought in early

00:20:38 ◼   ► to the app store.

00:20:39 ◼   ► And then when sandboxing came in, now, like,

00:20:43 ◼   ► I hate sandboxed apps, 'cause they're a pain

00:20:45 ◼   ► from the user side to use.

00:20:48 ◼   ► Like I have a couple apps, like one of them

00:20:49 ◼   ► is called Space Gremlin.

00:20:51 ◼   ► It helps you like find where all your disk space is.

00:20:53 ◼   ► and it has to read your whole hard drive.

00:20:58 ◼   ► And the convoluted hoops that apps like this have to do,

00:21:01 ◼   ► it's like, okay, click this button, choose the root folder,

00:21:04 ◼   ► and then every time you gotta redo it,

00:21:06 ◼   ► and oh, now it can't look at files, it's just,

00:21:09 ◼   ► it's such a pain.

00:21:10 ◼   ► And from a user perspective, just like sandboxing is,

00:21:13 ◼   ► like I don't, I understand the security benefits of it,

00:21:16 ◼   ► but if it's a very rarely used opt-in system,

00:21:21 ◼   ► those are pretty limited.

00:21:23 ◼   ► And I don't think it's worth it from the user perspective.

00:21:26 ◼   ► I really don't.

00:21:28 ◼   ► The way it's implemented now,

00:21:29 ◼   ► in its incredibly half-baked

00:21:32 ◼   ► and seemingly completely neglected way,

00:21:34 ◼   ► I don't want it as a user.

00:21:36 ◼   ► It's just one more thing.

00:21:37 ◼   ► And then you add something like this receipt validation bug

00:21:41 ◼   ► that made all my apps just break all of a sudden.

00:21:44 ◼   ► That's a big problem.

00:21:47 ◼   ► What reason do I have as a user

00:21:50 ◼   ► to buy more apps from the Mac App Store

00:21:52 ◼   ► after all the problems and things getting worse.

00:21:56 ◼   ► I don't see a good reason anymore.

00:21:57 ◼   ► - Well, you've still got the convenience reason,

00:21:59 ◼   ► like the one place you can go for the updates

00:22:02 ◼   ► and it's easy to buy things there.

00:22:04 ◼   ► I wish, the Mac App Store should also make it easier

00:22:06 ◼   ► to uninstall, but they don't really.

00:22:08 ◼   ► But beyond that, like all the pros are still there,

00:22:11 ◼   ► but the cons just keep stacking up

00:22:12 ◼   ► and the cons don't go away.

00:22:13 ◼   ► And the sandboxing thing, really, like,

00:22:15 ◼   ► the main problem with that, aside from all the bugs

00:22:17 ◼   ► and all the other things that the poor Mac developers

00:22:19 ◼   ► have to complain about how, you know,

00:22:21 ◼   ► iOS gets better tools for crash reports and debugging and betas and test flight and all

00:22:27 ◼   ► that other stuff.

00:22:28 ◼   ► Anyway, aside from all that, Mac App Store sandboxing, like iOS has sandboxing and everyone

00:22:34 ◼   ► gets along with it because the entire system, the entire operating system, the entire way

00:22:38 ◼   ► of using the phone has from the beginning been built around the idea of sandboxing,

00:22:43 ◼   ► which is, you know, problems for data sharing and silly like URL schemes to get around all

00:22:48 ◼   ► these things.

00:22:49 ◼   ► So that has its own problems, but it fits with the system.

00:22:50 ◼   ► the Mac, sandboxing flies in the face of the entire history of the platform. And if you

00:22:56 ◼   ► put sandboxing in that environment, it doesn't fit. Like, if your app happens to fit into

00:23:01 ◼   ► a little nice sandbox thing, you're fine. But there's whole classes of applications,

00:23:04 ◼   ► good useful applications, that don't fit within sandboxing. And it's almost like Apple saying,

00:23:11 ◼   ► we really wish, really wish that you didn't have to have apps like this on your Mac. We

00:23:15 ◼   ► really, really wish the Mac was like iOS. And so they say, maybe if we make all the

00:23:19 ◼   ► the Mac apps be sandboxed, then the Mac will be just like the iPhone, but it's not.

00:23:23 ◼   ► And so, like the app that Marco just mentioned, you know, showing where all your disk space

00:23:28 ◼   ► is.

00:23:30 ◼   ► Could they have, like, in system preferences, a disk space usage thing that did the same

00:23:34 ◼   ► thing that was part of the operating system, like settings is on iOS?

00:23:38 ◼   ► They could, but they don't.

00:23:40 ◼   ► And Mac users do have to manage that storage, and on a Mac, because of the way it is, it's

00:23:44 ◼   ► difficult to tell where all that space is going, because you have a lot of files and

00:23:47 ◼   ► and a lot of folders and all that other stuff that,

00:23:49 ◼   ► again, is not user visible in iOS.

00:23:51 ◼   ► So there is a place for applications

00:23:52 ◼   ► that do this type of thing.

00:23:53 ◼   ► Same thing for like disk duplicating things

00:23:55 ◼   ► like SuperDuper and stuff.

00:23:57 ◼   ► That's a thing you don't have to do with phones

00:24:00 ◼   ► because they've always had like,

00:24:01 ◼   ► well, they have the cloud backup now,

00:24:03 ◼   ► or you back them up to iTunes,

00:24:04 ◼   ► which just pushes the problem onto your Mac

00:24:06 ◼   ► or whatever you're gonna do.

00:24:08 ◼   ► For the Mac, we need a way to back it up

00:24:09 ◼   ► and doing disk clones is a useful thing to do.

00:24:12 ◼   ► And the disk cloning software

00:24:14 ◼   ► needs to read the entire disk, of course.

00:24:16 ◼   ► and sandboxing makes it a pain.

00:24:18 ◼   ► It can be done, but it's a big, super pain.

00:24:21 ◼   ► So you can't make the Mac as safe as iOS

00:24:27 ◼   ► by merely just saying applications have to be sandboxed.

00:24:29 ◼   ► All you can do is say some applications will be sandboxed

00:24:32 ◼   ► and it's good for them.

00:24:33 ◼   ► Like it is a benefit to the user to have applications

00:24:36 ◼   ► that can't get outside of their little pen

00:24:38 ◼   ► and that if they somehow get exploited or broken

00:24:41 ◼   ► or there's a bug in them or whatever,

00:24:42 ◼   ► they can do less damage.

00:24:44 ◼   ► But that other class of applications

00:24:45 ◼   ► is never going to go away so long as the Mac still is

00:24:48 ◼   ► like it is, so long as the Mac is still

00:24:50 ◼   ► an old style PC operating system.

00:24:54 ◼   ► So I don't see what they can do about the tension

00:24:56 ◼   ► other than to make a tiered system and say,

00:25:00 ◼   ► "Sandbox if you can, we'll give you a special label

00:25:03 ◼   ► in the App Store for your sandbox and a label if you're not."

00:25:05 ◼   ► Instead, they're just stubbornly saying,

00:25:06 ◼   ► "Everything has to be sandboxed

00:25:08 ◼   ► and if you can't work in the sandbox,

00:25:09 ◼   ► we don't want your kind of application on our platform."

00:25:11 ◼   ► And at least the tech savvy users are saying,

00:25:14 ◼   ► You may not want that kind of application on the platform, but I want that application because it does useful things for me.

00:25:19 ◼   ► And so either you make it no longer useful, like you will never need to clone a disk again because all your data is magically backed up using quantum entanglement or something, right?

00:25:28 ◼   ► Or you make it like iOS and, you know, with no local backup option, everything is a cloud backup.

00:25:34 ◼   ► Or you got to give me some way to do all these things that I need to do.

00:25:37 ◼   ► or even just something as simple as BBEdit,

00:25:39 ◼   ► where the text editor wants to be able

00:25:41 ◼   ► to have like a file browser

00:25:43 ◼   ► without throwing a stupid open save dialog box in your face

00:25:45 ◼   ► to the PowerBox thing to let you convince the system

00:25:48 ◼   ► that you're allowed to access these files.

00:25:50 ◼   ► Like a programmer style text editor

00:25:53 ◼   ► where you browse the whole file system

00:25:54 ◼   ► is a useful thing to have

00:25:56 ◼   ► because the Mac is a system that lets you have files

00:25:58 ◼   ► and folders and expose the whole file system.

00:26:00 ◼   ► And BBEdit is not useful if you confine it

00:26:02 ◼   ► to like a sandbox-like environment.

00:26:04 ◼   ► All you're doing is pushing that annoyance

00:26:05 ◼   ► to the user who has to do silly things in the UI to convince the system that yes, please

00:26:11 ◼   ► let B be edited out of these text files no matter where they are.

00:26:13 ◼   ► You know, Jon, a minute ago you said, "Wouldn't it be nice if Apple had included something

00:26:19 ◼   ► like Space Gremlin or my preferred app, DaisyDisk?"

00:26:23 ◼   ► Have you not seen about this Mac and then the storage tab, which is super useful and

00:26:28 ◼   ► is telling me that of the three quarters of a terabyte I have full, about half of it is

00:26:33 ◼   ► other?

00:26:34 ◼   ► The usage in iOS is not very granular, but it's granular on the level that iOS works,

00:26:39 ◼   ► because it tells you per apps, because you don't have direct access to managing the storage.

00:26:43 ◼   ► It's like all you can do about it is delete an app and all its data goes with it.

00:26:47 ◼   ► Maybe some apps you can go into the app and delete videos or whatever.

00:26:51 ◼   ► But the granularity of the information provided by the settings thing in iOS matches the granularity

00:26:57 ◼   ► of the way you use iOS, more or less.

00:27:00 ◼   ► The granularity of the Mac for good or for ill is files and folders.

00:27:05 ◼   ► Letting it tell you how much is music, how much is video, and how much is a giant yellow

00:27:09 ◼   ► bar for all of other, which I always wonder how it comes up with that.

00:27:12 ◼   ► A is not even as useful as iOS, and B, it's not the way the Mac works.

00:27:16 ◼   ► I need to know, like, I use it all the time, especially back before I upgraded my wife's

00:27:21 ◼   ► computer, she had a 256 gig SSD, and I would need to hunt down some episode of My Little

00:27:28 ◼   ► pony that I didn't know had auto-downloaded by iTunes to dig it out of the iTunes folder

00:27:32 ◼   ► and delete the damn thing.

00:27:34 ◼   ► And you can do that sometimes from within iTunes.

00:27:36 ◼   ► But even just the sad discovery that many people make that the virtual memory sleep

00:27:41 ◼   ► image can push you over your disk space limit, right?

00:27:46 ◼   ► Because when you get a machine with a lot of RAM and a small SSD, you start really asking

00:27:50 ◼   ► hard questions like, "Do I really need the Hibernate functionality or can I just disable

00:27:55 ◼   ► and just use old-style sleep and just really hope

00:27:57 ◼   ► that it doesn't run out of battery while it's asleep.

00:28:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's really ugly.

00:28:01 ◼   ► And I don't know, when I saw that one password,

00:28:04 ◼   ► which just so happened to be the first thing

00:28:06 ◼   ► that reared its ugly head,

00:28:09 ◼   ► when I saw that that was broken, or well, not broken,

00:28:12 ◼   ► but I saw that it had been broken by the Mac App Store,

00:28:14 ◼   ► I realized what was happening very quickly,

00:28:16 ◼   ► but that was only because I had seen

00:28:18 ◼   ► some passing references to it on Twitter

00:28:20 ◼   ► or RSS or what have you.

00:28:22 ◼   ► If I remember right, the dialogue though

00:28:24 ◼   ► said something like, "Oh, this is all broke.

00:28:26 ◼   ► "Go redownload it," and so on.

00:28:28 ◼   ► - It doesn't even say, it says,

00:28:30 ◼   ► "This application is damaged

00:28:31 ◼   ► "and you should move it to the trash."

00:28:33 ◼   ► - Right, right, exactly.

00:28:34 ◼   ► - And so the solution is,

00:28:37 ◼   ► redownload this from the Mac App Store.

00:28:39 ◼   ► The process of doing that is so,

00:28:42 ◼   ► they couldn't have made it more obtuse

00:28:44 ◼   ► and manual if they tried.

00:28:46 ◼   ► - Well, yeah, and that's the thing,

00:28:48 ◼   ► is that I kind of know what I'm doing

00:28:50 ◼   ► when it comes to using a computer.

00:28:51 ◼   ► I can't imagine someone who doesn't follow this stuff.

00:28:55 ◼   ► I mean, it's not that hard to go to the applications folder and drag it to the trash and then go

00:29:00 ◼   ► back to the Mac App Store.

00:29:01 ◼   ► But that dialogue, to your point, Marco, didn't really make it clear what the correct order

00:29:07 ◼   ► of operations or correct task list was to fix this issue.

00:29:11 ◼   ► And it's just, it was like one of you said, it was just disaster from top to bottom.

00:29:16 ◼   ► It was a disaster all the way down.

00:29:19 ◼   ► It's a little frustrating that the most Apple did was say yeah, well, you know screwed up, but it will fix it

00:29:25 ◼   ► Don't worry. Yeah, the thing is they have all the info that dialog box

00:29:28 ◼   ► They have all the information on the system to fix that in one button press if

00:29:32 ◼   ► The system thinks that the application and damage and it should be thrown in the trash

00:29:36 ◼   ► There could be one button that says would you like me to redownload this because I know exactly what damn

00:29:40 ◼   ► Application is and I know that you purchased it and I can put it in the trash and I can redownload it for you

00:29:44 ◼   ► Because I know everything about like there's the gimme is like that the same thing with uninstall

00:29:48 ◼   ► Like if the uninstall process really is drag it to the trash

00:29:50 ◼   ► Why is there not a big honkin uninstall button in the the Mac App Store app?

00:29:55 ◼   ► So anyway, a lot of his neglect of just like things they could do and they don't do speaking of neglect

00:30:01 ◼   ► Our tips are in the chat room

00:30:03 ◼   ► Insists loudly and has been since this time has happened that this bug about the certificate caching has already been reported

00:30:10 ◼   ► There's already a radar for it and it's been around since OS 10 10.6

00:30:14 ◼   ► That's uncomfortable and has not been fixed again. It's tips for information so take with a grain of salt whether it's true or not

00:30:20 ◼   ► but it's it's the

00:30:22 ◼   ► You know it feels bad when your platform is not getting attention and at various times Apple has

00:30:28 ◼   ► Ignored the Mac and then so said that like you know we really care about the Mac

00:30:34 ◼   ► We're paying a lot of attention to it and done lots of important significant things to the Mac

00:30:37 ◼   ► But there's still areas particularly around the Mac App Store, especially as it compares to the regular App Store that just feels

00:30:43 ◼   ► feels neglected.

00:30:44 ◼   ► Well, and you know, how many people do you think are actually tasked with working on

00:30:50 ◼   ► this kind of thing at Apple right now? Like, you know, Apple's teams are always a lot

00:30:54 ◼   ► smaller than you think they are, and Apple also has this very frequent habit that, from

00:31:01 ◼   ► what I hear, is worse than ever, where engineers get pulled off of things all the time to go

00:31:07 ◼   ► work on some new project that needs more engineering resources, that is, you know, like a newer

00:31:12 ◼   ► thing or more important to the current direction of the company or current business goals.

00:31:17 ◼   ► So people get moved around all the time and there's usually either nobody left working

00:31:22 ◼   ► on boring stuff like the Mac App Store or a surprisingly small staff. It might be a

00:31:27 ◼   ► handful of people doing some of this stuff. Some things have one person working on them.

00:31:32 ◼   ► So a bug like that, it's not that the Mac App Store staff is so big that they're working

00:31:41 ◼   ► other stuff, it's more likely that almost no one's working on this. And Apple keeps

00:31:47 ◼   ► having problems like this where the boring old stuff gets these kind of like, either

00:31:52 ◼   ► gets ignored forever and bugs like this sit around for years, or it gets like these drive

00:31:58 ◼   ► by updates. It's like somebody comes in, rewrites the whole thing, like Discovery D

00:32:03 ◼   ► is a perfect example of this. From what we hear, the LCAP USB stack might be something

00:32:08 ◼   ► like this. Certainly we're hearing that the Elcab Disk Utility is probably something

00:32:13 ◼   ► like this, where you get kind of this drive-by update where somebody is finally allowed to

00:32:19 ◼   ► work on it and told to revamp it or clean it up or rewrite it or something. And you

00:32:24 ◼   ► get like one pass at it, and what comes out is like 75% functional, and then that person

00:32:31 ◼   ► is gone and sent to go work on something else. And this is not the recipe for quality at

00:32:37 ◼   ► at all. Like, it's the complete opposite of what you should be doing, and it is not even

00:32:41 ◼   ► an efficient way to run an engineering organization.

00:32:44 ◼   ► They should get some of the 100 developers at Instagram who don't have time to make an

00:32:47 ◼   ► iPad app. Before Twitter cut its staff, which is sad for all the people who lost their jobs,

00:32:54 ◼   ► but they had, and still do have, a very large number of people. I mean, to some degree,

00:32:59 ◼   ► I can kind of explain it with Twitter and Instagram, to say, look, they've got a server-side

00:33:02 ◼   ► component, so when everyone throws out big developer numbers for these companies, they

00:33:05 ◼   ► They envision all of these people working on the iOS app when surely perhaps the majority

00:33:09 ◼   ► of them are working on backend stuff.

00:33:11 ◼   ► But the number of developers in these large VC-funded companies, they hire lots of really

00:33:17 ◼   ► smart people to work on one or two flagship mobile applications.

00:33:24 ◼   ► And then you compare them to the one or two person independent shops writing competing

00:33:30 ◼   ► third party applications.

00:33:31 ◼   ► applications and you're like how is Twitter have like literally 100 iOS developers making

00:33:40 ◼   ► their iOS Twitter client and Twitterific has two people and you look at the two applications

00:33:48 ◼   ► and you think they're peers like they seem about the same right one of them is made by the company

00:33:53 ◼   ► that makes the thing and the other one is made by two guys and so like you know this is the

00:33:57 ◼   ► mythical man month at a certain point adding more people doesn't help and then you know this

00:34:01 ◼   ► you know, committee syndrome and people are, you know, you can't actually make any change,

00:34:04 ◼   ► which is why Twitter, to its credit, has been saying that they're trying to, you know,

00:34:08 ◼   ► become more efficient or whatever. But Apple seems to have the opposite problem where,

00:34:13 ◼   ► like Marco said, every story we hear is, you know, there's actually one guy who's responsible

00:34:17 ◼   ► for these three applications and within a given release, he does two minor updates to each one,

00:34:21 ◼   ► fixes some bugs, and that's about it. You know, crashes first and everything else if there's time.

00:34:25 ◼   ► And there's got to be something in the middle there where you have a reasonable number of

00:34:31 ◼   ► of people empowered to make good decisions,

00:34:35 ◼   ► to not just make a product,

00:34:37 ◼   ► but to continue to make it better year after year

00:34:40 ◼   ► after year, like the hardware team surely have.

00:34:42 ◼   ► I mean, it's not like they took the iPhone 4S

00:34:45 ◼   ► and just said every year,

00:34:46 ◼   ► we'll just make minor tweaks to it.

00:34:47 ◼   ► 'Cause we don't have time to do anything

00:34:48 ◼   ► except for to fix the broken home button, right?

00:34:50 ◼   ► No, they make a whole new phone and they go,

00:34:53 ◼   ► the hardware gets better and better and better.

00:34:55 ◼   ► The software, depending on what it is,

00:34:58 ◼   ► can spend years without really moving.

00:35:00 ◼   ► So yeah, the Mac does have a lot of applications and some of them don't really change much

00:35:05 ◼   ► year after year, even when we feel like they should.

00:35:09 ◼   ► Maybe it's okay that the terminal application doesn't change too radically from year to

00:35:13 ◼   ► year, but the Mac App Store that everyone agrees has all these problems should really

00:35:18 ◼   ► be getting more attention.

00:35:21 ◼   ► Our next sponsor this week is MailRoute.

00:35:23 ◼   ► MailRoute really brings you the best spam filtering I've ever seen to your email or

00:35:28 ◼   ► your email server.

00:35:29 ◼   ► So mailroute.net/ATV, this is how this works.

00:35:31 ◼   ► Mailroute is a service that you put between your email server or your email service, like

00:35:36 ◼   ► Fastmail or whatever, you put them between that and the internet.

00:35:39 ◼   ► So you redirect your MX records to them, they deliver clean, spam-filtered email directly

00:35:44 ◼   ► to your email host.

00:35:46 ◼   ► I've used this myself now for about a year, I think, and it is amazing.

00:35:50 ◼   ► I've never seen spam filtering this good.

00:35:53 ◼   ► I use this, I recommend this personally.

00:35:55 ◼   ► They can't pay me to say that.

00:35:56 ◼   ► They can pay me to read their script, but they cannot pay me to say that I use it and

00:35:59 ◼   ► that I recommend it.

00:36:00 ◼   ► I use this, I recommend it.

00:36:02 ◼   ► I was skeptical at first.

00:36:03 ◼   ► I'll tell you, I was very skeptical of putting some other service in front of my email, because

00:36:09 ◼   ► email is very important for a lot of things, and I recognize that.

00:36:12 ◼   ► And so I was skeptical for a while.

00:36:15 ◼   ► And then once I tried it, it blew me away how good it was.

00:36:18 ◼   ► It removed any doubt.

00:36:19 ◼   ► I've never had any problems with them, and the performance of their spam filtering is

00:36:24 ◼   ► really something else.

00:36:25 ◼   ► I've never seen anything like it.

00:36:27 ◼   ► I have tried so many other options.

00:36:29 ◼   ► Server-side rules, you know, most email hosts,

00:36:31 ◼   ► including Fazmail, have lots of spam filtering options

00:36:34 ◼   ► on server-side that you can do,

00:36:36 ◼   ► and many of them can get quite sophisticated, honestly,

00:36:38 ◼   ► but even they were never as good

00:36:40 ◼   ► as what I get from MailRoute today.

00:36:42 ◼   ► And with MailRoute, I have to put

00:36:43 ◼   ► almost no effort into it whatsoever.

00:36:45 ◼   ► I cannot recommend this highly enough.

00:36:46 ◼   ► So if you care about such things, they have, let's see,

00:36:50 ◼   ► they have LDAP, Active Directory, TLS support,

00:36:53 ◼   ► mail bagging, outbound relay, anything,

00:36:55 ◼   ► if you run a mail server, anything that you probably need

00:36:58 ◼   ► for your business or for yourself,

00:37:00 ◼   ► it can be dramatically useful to people

00:37:01 ◼   ► who run their own servers, 'cause you can really cut back

00:37:04 ◼   ► on the resources on your servers,

00:37:06 ◼   ► and probably even the number of servers you have

00:37:08 ◼   ► if you run a big company's email stuff.

00:37:10 ◼   ► So check it out, MailRoute is quite incredible,

00:37:14 ◼   ► I cannot recommend it highly enough.

00:37:16 ◼   ► Go to mailroute.net/atp for a free trial,

00:37:19 ◼   ► and using this link, 10% off for the lifetime

00:37:23 ◼   ► of your entire account.

00:37:24 ◼   ► So this is not just 10% off once, 10% off forever.

00:37:27 ◼   ► Every time you pay them, it's 10% off.

00:37:29 ◼   ► Check it out, mailroute.net/atp.

00:37:32 ◼   ► Thanks a lot.

00:37:33 ◼   ► - Okay, so the long national nightmare is over.

00:37:38 ◼   ► You have acquired an Apple Pencil.

00:37:41 ◼   ► - I have, yes.

00:37:43 ◼   ► We have the iPad Pro,

00:37:45 ◼   ► and we have the front smart cover only,

00:37:48 ◼   ► 'cause I couldn't bring myself to spend $140

00:37:52 ◼   ► to cover the back as well.

00:37:53 ◼   ► But I could bring myself to spend $100 buying a pencil.

00:38:00 ◼   ► So we now have iPad Pro and the Apple Pencil.

00:38:06 ◼   ► And I love using the Apple Pencil,

00:38:09 ◼   ► however, I am not much of an artist.

00:38:13 ◼   ► I wish I had more reasons to use it.

00:38:16 ◼   ► Fortunately, my wife is an artist and does use it,

00:38:19 ◼   ► and she's had a lot of experience with it,

00:38:21 ◼   ► so please welcome on the show,

00:38:24 ◼   ► our return guest, Tiffany Arment.

00:38:27 ◼   ► - I'm not an artist.

00:38:28 ◼   ► - Yes you are.

00:38:29 ◼   ► - I'm a dabbler.

00:38:30 ◼   ► - She's the artist formerly known as Tiff.

00:38:32 ◼   ► - Exactly.

00:38:33 ◼   ► - I assure you, you're a much better artist than I,

00:38:36 ◼   ► and I know Jon has dabbled in the past as well,

00:38:38 ◼   ► so I won't speak for him on that one,

00:38:39 ◼   ► but certainly better than me,

00:38:41 ◼   ► and I think it's safe to say better than Marco.

00:38:43 ◼   ► So you're as near as we got for now,

00:38:45 ◼   ► I don't know Marco's drawings are pretty amazing like his stick figures are

00:38:49 ◼   ► Totally killer xkcd caliber. Yeah, I was gonna say given Randall Monroe a run for his money

00:38:55 ◼   ► Not that good. You made that awesome little decaf sign with that sad coffee mug. That was super funny

00:39:01 ◼   ► I could occasionally make one decent drawing. I

00:39:04 ◼   ► Love his drawings

00:39:06 ◼   ► I think we have to get rid of the idea that you have to you have to pass some skill threshold to have a reason

00:39:11 ◼   ► to use any sort of artistic implement.

00:39:15 ◼   ► I agree.

00:39:16 ◼   ► No matter what it is that you're doing, there's not, like, nothing bad will happen to you

00:39:20 ◼   ► if you quote unquote can't draw and you start doodling with a stylist.

00:39:25 ◼   ► Like we all doodle, like in the margins there are notebooks and everything.

00:39:29 ◼   ► Just if it's fun to do and you find it relaxing and meditative, like I'm sure someone that

00:39:33 ◼   ► they haven't already will make the adult coloring book application for the iPad Pro and Tiff

00:39:36 ◼   ► will get it and she will love it.

00:39:37 ◼   ► And like, there's no, there's no like, you don't have to,

00:39:41 ◼   ► I know Marco's looking for like something useful.

00:39:42 ◼   ► He wants to feel like he's doing something useful

00:39:44 ◼   ► or productive, but if it's just relaxing and fun to do,

00:39:46 ◼   ► you can try it.

00:39:47 ◼   ► And if you actually have any interest,

00:39:48 ◼   ► you can get better at it by practicing

00:39:51 ◼   ► and learning about it.

00:39:52 ◼   ► Like it's just like any other skill.

00:39:53 ◼   ► - Exactly, for the longest time,

00:39:54 ◼   ► I didn't even start doing anything

00:39:56 ◼   ► 'cause I was afraid to be bad.

00:39:57 ◼   ► And everyone's bad at first.

00:39:59 ◼   ► So it was kind of a stupid fear,

00:40:00 ◼   ► but that's what kept me from even trying

00:40:02 ◼   ► to draw anything ever.

00:40:04 ◼   ► And so recently I decided, you know what?

00:40:06 ◼   ► I'm like 32 years old, I'm tired of being afraid

00:40:09 ◼   ► of being bad at something that I don't even know how to do.

00:40:12 ◼   ► So, anyway.

00:40:13 ◼   ► - For more on this, by the way,

00:40:14 ◼   ► listen to this week's Back to Work,

00:40:15 ◼   ► which is basically entirely on that topic.

00:40:17 ◼   ► - Is it really? - Yeah.

00:40:19 ◼   ► - All right, all right, so we're talking about some pencils

00:40:22 ◼   ► that I've already broken.

00:40:23 ◼   ► - I was about to say, you took the words

00:40:25 ◼   ► right out of my mouth.

00:40:26 ◼   ► So how long did the pencil last

00:40:27 ◼   ► from the time you had opened the cover of the box

00:40:31 ◼   ► to its actually initial breakage?

00:40:33 ◼   ► - Probably about five seconds, literally.

00:40:35 ◼   ► Like I opened the box and I was looking at the little card

00:40:38 ◼   ► 'cause it comes with this card that also has inserts in it,

00:40:41 ◼   ► which is on top of the pencil.

00:40:43 ◼   ► So I opened that up and first I was pulling out

00:40:45 ◼   ► what the card was, the box flipped over,

00:40:48 ◼   ► the pencil fell out of the box, it fell onto our floor

00:40:51 ◼   ► and the cap popped off, this little silver ring

00:40:54 ◼   ► popped off of the cap and there were pieces everywhere.

00:40:57 ◼   ► - So but it turned out that it was functional,

00:41:01 ◼   ► it's just the body of it was broken, is that fair to say?

00:41:04 ◼   ► Well the little tiny cap has this little tiny silver ring that goes inside of it and it

00:41:09 ◼   ► seems to be held on by nothing but like a dot of glue so it just probably fell the worst

00:41:15 ◼   ► way possible because it's not very tight in the case and in the box when it comes so it

00:41:20 ◼   ► just kind of flipped out and then that little tiny ring popped off and Marco has since super

00:41:24 ◼   ► glued it back on and but I don't know it still feels funny to me.

00:41:29 ◼   ► I mean, the whole pencil, even with the ring in place,

00:41:33 ◼   ► the cap does not really fit tightly.

00:41:35 ◼   ► Like, I mean, in so many ways, this pencil was like,

00:41:38 ◼   ► not designed for practicality, which is a shame

00:41:41 ◼   ► because it feels really good like in use.

00:41:43 ◼   ► It works incredibly well, which we'll get to,

00:41:45 ◼   ► but you know, like, I expressed concern earlier,

00:41:49 ◼   ► even when they first announced it,

00:41:51 ◼   ► that like, there's nowhere to put it, for one thing.

00:41:53 ◼   ► There's no way to attach it to or put it into

00:41:57 ◼   ► any kind of cover for the iPad that exists so far.

00:42:00 ◼   ► - Which is so frustrating because where else

00:42:02 ◼   ► are you gonna use this pencil?

00:42:04 ◼   ► Nowhere, nowhere else is this pencil gonna be used anywhere

00:42:07 ◼   ► besides with this iPad Pro, so why not attach it,

00:42:11 ◼   ► you crazy people.

00:42:13 ◼   ► - Right, and the cap, so if you wanna charge this thing,

00:42:17 ◼   ► we also expressed concern when they first showed this off

00:42:19 ◼   ► two months ago, whenever, we also expressed concern

00:42:21 ◼   ► that when you put it in the end of the,

00:42:24 ◼   ► and you put it in the lightning port,

00:42:25 ◼   ► that is just asking to be broken off.

00:42:28 ◼   ► Like that is so precarious and looks weird, first of all,

00:42:31 ◼   ► but just so ridiculous.

00:42:32 ◼   ► And it seems like possibly last minute

00:42:36 ◼   ► they added this double female lightning adapter

00:42:40 ◼   ► that's in the box so you can use it

00:42:42 ◼   ► to reverse the orientation or to reverse the gender

00:42:45 ◼   ► of the lightning plug on it so that you can charge it

00:42:47 ◼   ► from a lightning cable, which is way more sane.

00:42:51 ◼   ► And I understand why they did it the way they did,

00:42:53 ◼   ► where you can charge it from a backpack,

00:42:54 ◼   ► because that way, if you only have the iPad and the pencil

00:42:57 ◼   ► with you and you need a quick charge,

00:42:59 ◼   ► you can get one quickly just from the iPad.

00:43:01 ◼   ► It's nice to have that ability, I guess,

00:43:03 ◼   ► but that also shouldn't be the primary way to charge it.

00:43:06 ◼   ► And so I guess maybe they recognize that last second

00:43:08 ◼   ► and it isn't.

00:43:09 ◼   ► So then the problem is, when you're charging it,

00:43:12 ◼   ► if you plug it in overnight sometime,

00:43:14 ◼   ► if you're charging it, where do you put the cap?

00:43:16 ◼   ► You can magnetically attach the cap to one of the smart--

00:43:19 ◼   ► the smart covers have magnets in them.

00:43:21 ◼   ► You can stick the little cap onto the--

00:43:24 ◼   ► - It's kind of wobbly.

00:43:26 ◼   ► - It really is designed to be in Johnny Ive's white world.

00:43:30 ◼   ► And it doesn't seem like--

00:43:33 ◼   ► - If it rolls around in the white world, he won't find it.

00:43:36 ◼   ► - So yeah, you don't have to worry about rolling off

00:43:38 ◼   ► the desk 'cause it is weighted, so it won't roll off

00:43:40 ◼   ► the desk, but it seems like it just made every opportunity

00:43:44 ◼   ► to break or get lost.

00:43:46 ◼   ► Even when it's in the iPad to charge,

00:43:49 ◼   ► it's lightning connector is extra long

00:43:53 ◼   ► and it fits fairly loosely.

00:43:55 ◼   ► Like it's just everything about it is like loose

00:43:57 ◼   ► and just waiting to either break or get lost.

00:44:00 ◼   ► - Well, the cap already almost went into the vacuum

00:44:02 ◼   ► and the air conditioner bent in our house

00:44:05 ◼   ► about two hours after I broke it.

00:44:07 ◼   ► So I mean, I'm doing really great right now with this pencil.

00:44:12 ◼   ► - So what I'm hearing is since they're so plentiful,

00:44:14 ◼   ► you should just jump on down to the local Apple store

00:44:18 ◼   ► and get a couple of backups because nobody's looking for them.

00:44:21 ◼   ► - Buy a dozen and keep them in a big jar

00:44:23 ◼   ► so you lose one pencil, whatever, just get another one.

00:44:25 ◼   ► - They should come in a box like crayons.

00:44:26 ◼   ► - I mean they're cheap, they're plentiful, no problems.

00:44:29 ◼   ► - No, they're gonna sell so many of these things

00:44:31 ◼   ► because people, if you actually use it regularly,

00:44:35 ◼   ► I would guess you have to buy a new one

00:44:37 ◼   ► probably once a year or so.

00:44:38 ◼   ► So at least, maybe even more depending on how careless

00:44:41 ◼   ► you are with your things or if you lose things a lot.

00:44:43 ◼   ► 'Cause it really is like, you couldn't have designed it

00:44:46 ◼   ► to be less practical for forgetfulness or clumsiness,

00:44:51 ◼   ► if that makes sense.

00:44:53 ◼   ► - First of all, I'm not that clumsy or I never lose things.

00:44:56 ◼   ► I know where everything is in the house,

00:44:57 ◼   ► down to the little tiniest piece of anything.

00:44:59 ◼   ► I know where it is and losing,

00:45:02 ◼   ► I can't believe how comedy of errors happened yesterday

00:45:06 ◼   ► when we got ahold of this pencil.

00:45:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, so we actually, so I had pre-ordered,

00:45:11 ◼   ► or I ordered one online that has a ship date

00:45:14 ◼   ► of mid-December and I wanted it sooner,

00:45:16 ◼   ► so I kept going into the stores until they had it

00:45:19 ◼   ► and then I was able to get it there.

00:45:21 ◼   ► But I'm not gonna cancel that pre-order

00:45:23 ◼   ► for the one I ordered,

00:45:25 ◼   ► because I think we need a spare.

00:45:26 ◼   ► And it's gonna be good to just have it in the house.

00:45:29 ◼   ► - Plus you can find out if you can draw on the screen

00:45:31 ◼   ► with two pencils at once.

00:45:32 ◼   ► - That's true. (laughs)

00:45:34 ◼   ► - Wow.

00:45:36 ◼   ► All right, so now that you have a slightly damaged

00:45:40 ◼   ► but otherwise functional pencil,

00:45:43 ◼   ► what is it like to use,

00:45:45 ◼   ► and if you wouldn't mind, can you set the stage as to,

00:45:48 ◼   ► can you self-describe what you would normally do

00:45:51 ◼   ► that's artistic with a pen or pencil?

00:45:53 ◼   ► Are you drawing your own Rembrandts,

00:45:56 ◼   ► or are you just drawing stick figures?

00:45:58 ◼   ► I presume it's somewhere in between.

00:46:00 ◼   ► - Well, I'm not very good at sketching,

00:46:01 ◼   ► which I think the pencil, I feel like it really excels at.

00:46:05 ◼   ► I actually developed a new signature,

00:46:07 ◼   ► if anyone has seen it on Twitter recently,

00:46:09 ◼   ► which is what I decided to do first with my pencil,

00:46:11 ◼   ► is the most important thing,

00:46:12 ◼   ► develop your signature for your iPad art.

00:46:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, I've been writing checks from you all day.

00:46:17 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:46:18 ◼   ► - It's like naming your band in high school

00:46:20 ◼   ► before you've actually practiced once

00:46:22 ◼   ► or gotten together and played anything.

00:46:23 ◼   ► - I'm totally naming my art band.

00:46:24 ◼   ► So I got my art band name,

00:46:27 ◼   ► so that was actually really fun to do on the pencil.

00:46:29 ◼   ► And from what, I've tested three programs now,

00:46:31 ◼   ► and what I've found is it's really dependent on the program

00:46:35 ◼   ► and your level of skill with using these type of programs

00:46:37 ◼   ► on how great the pencil feels.

00:46:41 ◼   ► I do a lot of watercolor in real life, not digitally,

00:46:44 ◼   ► and so trying to replicate that in a lot of programs

00:46:49 ◼   ► is a little bit iffy, obviously, because you have,

00:46:51 ◼   ► you know, you're dealing with like ink flowing

00:46:53 ◼   ► and pigment and water and dilution and transparency.

00:46:58 ◼   ► So that's a little tricky,

00:47:01 ◼   ► but the pencil actually makes it really fun

00:47:04 ◼   ► to play with on the iPad.

00:47:07 ◼   ► And with some medium,

00:47:09 ◼   ► like trying to replicate a medium that's more solid,

00:47:14 ◼   ► the pencil really, really excels

00:47:16 ◼   ► and it feels extremely fluid.

00:47:17 ◼   ► It doesn't detect your hand at all,

00:47:19 ◼   ► which is really amazing.

00:47:21 ◼   ► - Well, when you say it doesn't detect your hand,

00:47:24 ◼   ► you mean if your hand is on there, it's not also drawing,

00:47:27 ◼   ► it's smart enough to throw away the hand portion.

00:47:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, it will detect a fingertip

00:47:33 ◼   ► if you accidentally move a fingertip around,

00:47:36 ◼   ► but with most of these programs,

00:47:38 ◼   ► there's a race in back,

00:47:39 ◼   ► so it's not like you're ruining anything.

00:47:41 ◼   ► But the palm detection is really,

00:47:44 ◼   ► you can rest your hand on the iPad Pro

00:47:47 ◼   ► and draw and it doesn't detect it.

00:47:50 ◼   ► It doesn't smear anything, it doesn't digitally smear,

00:47:53 ◼   ► I don't know, schmear.

00:47:55 ◼   ► So like--

00:47:56 ◼   ► - It's something else.

00:47:57 ◼   ► - I don't know, I'm from Long Island.

00:47:59 ◼   ► So--

00:48:00 ◼   ► - You should know this.

00:48:01 ◼   ► - I do know what it means.

00:48:02 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:48:04 ◼   ► So yeah, so I think it's really, really enjoyable

00:48:08 ◼   ► and so far I've done a number of sketches with it

00:48:11 ◼   ► and I keep wanting to do more.

00:48:13 ◼   ► I almost fell asleep with it last night,

00:48:15 ◼   ► like cradled next to me, which is pretty intimate,

00:48:18 ◼   ► but yeah, I'm really enjoying it.

00:48:21 ◼   ► - So of the apps that you've used with it,

00:48:23 ◼   ► what would you say is your favorite?

00:48:26 ◼   ► And corollary to that, is that the best app for the pencil,

00:48:31 ◼   ► or do you just like the experience with that app the most?

00:48:35 ◼   ► - Well, Marco put two new ones on today,

00:48:38 ◼   ► and before that I was using Adobe Sketch,

00:48:40 ◼   ► is that what I was using?

00:48:41 ◼   ► And then today you put on, what did you put on?

00:48:44 ◼   ► I put on Procreate and, oh jeez,

00:48:47 ◼   ► there's this Japanese name that I forgot

00:48:49 ◼   ► of another very popular sketch.

00:48:50 ◼   ► - Is that the Nico sketch one?

00:48:52 ◼   ► - No, we'll put it in the show notes.

00:48:54 ◼   ► - Anyway, so I was just recently just drawing with those

00:48:58 ◼   ► just before the show and they have more of a learning curve

00:49:02 ◼   ► I think because they're really involved for artists

00:49:05 ◼   ► that know what they're doing.

00:49:06 ◼   ► The Adobe sketch one was pretty,

00:49:10 ◼   ► It was easy to master right away being a newbie,

00:49:14 ◼   ► using the pencil, newbie to art.

00:49:16 ◼   ► You felt like you were accomplishing a real work,

00:49:21 ◼   ► not just a little sketch that you're just gonna delete

00:49:23 ◼   ► and it doesn't matter.

00:49:24 ◼   ► You really felt like you could do it.

00:49:26 ◼   ► The other ones, they have so many changes and buttons

00:49:30 ◼   ► and flows and this and that,

00:49:31 ◼   ► and the interface is a little bit trickier to navigate

00:49:35 ◼   ► if you don't know what you're doing.

00:49:36 ◼   ► But I feel like that those other programs

00:49:39 ◼   ► the programs that you would move on to after you kind of mastered how to manipulate the

00:49:45 ◼   ► pencil with the different art mediums that are available in a lot of these programs.

00:49:50 ◼   ► And the name I was forgetting before was a Taiya Sui Sketches.

00:49:54 ◼   ► I actually went to the Apple Store this past weekend and spent maybe a minute and a half,

00:50:00 ◼   ► two minutes using the pencil. I did ask one of the employees if they had any in stock

00:50:06 ◼   ► and they basically laughed at my face.

00:50:09 ◼   ► I mean, they were much nicer about it than that,

00:50:10 ◼   ► but that was the message, was, yeah, no.

00:50:13 ◼   ► But I did play with it briefly.

00:50:15 ◼   ► I only used the Notes app.

00:50:17 ◼   ► And, I mean, again, I'm no artist,

00:50:19 ◼   ► but I thought it was cool.

00:50:20 ◼   ► I thought the tilting the pencil on its side

00:50:22 ◼   ► to like shade was kinda neat.

00:50:24 ◼   ► But I don't know why,

00:50:26 ◼   ► but the thing that just blew my freakin' mind

00:50:28 ◼   ► was when I got the Notes app out

00:50:31 ◼   ► and I put on the on-screen ruler.

00:50:34 ◼   ► Have you played with this, Tiff?

00:50:35 ◼   ► No, I haven't.

00:50:36 ◼   ► So, in the Notes app, you can bring up an on-screen ruler, and it behaves like you have

00:50:42 ◼   ► a ruler on the page.

00:50:43 ◼   ► It's not perfect because there's no physical barrier to keep you from, you know, flinging

00:50:48 ◼   ► the pencil across your iPad, but it does a really darn good mimic of what a ruler is

00:50:55 ◼   ► like.

00:50:56 ◼   ► It's so stupid, and I don't know why I found that so impressive, but I just thought it

00:51:00 ◼   ► was really, really, really cool.

00:51:02 ◼   ► So you mean like it keeps the line straight?

00:51:04 ◼   ► Correct.

00:51:05 ◼   ► can draw up against the ruler and have a perfectly straight line. And you can spin the ruler around,

00:51:09 ◼   ► and as you spin it, I believe it shows what angle it's at. And it was just very, very neat. Again,

00:51:15 ◼   ► I don't know why I personally would ever need to do that, but I just thought it was so well

00:51:20 ◼   ► implemented and so well done. I also went to the store recently and got to play with the pencil.

00:51:24 ◼   ► I was, the first thing I was struck by was in the Apple store, the pencil is not attached with

00:51:29 ◼   ► anything. Like it's not attached with the little bankers, you know, little metal beaded chain thing.

00:51:34 ◼   ► it is just loose in a little cradle thingy, so I have to imagine those things are walking

00:51:38 ◼   ► out the door like crazy at Apple, especially when they were rare.

00:51:42 ◼   ► But anyway, I did get to try it, although the first thing that confused me was I couldn't

00:51:46 ◼   ► figure out why it wasn't working because it was paired with the one, like they have the

00:51:49 ◼   ► pencil in the middle of two iPad Pros and it was paired with the other one, so I just

00:51:51 ◼   ► plugged it into my thing and repaired it, which is nice, that feature, that repairing

00:51:55 ◼   ► feature is cool and comes in handy, I didn't have to go to the stupid Bluetooth thing to

00:51:59 ◼   ► pair it.

00:52:01 ◼   ► it. I've experienced all the same things we talked about in past shows. It varies widely by app. Some

00:52:06 ◼   ► of them are slow, some of them are fast. The Notes app was the fastest one that I tried because they

00:52:10 ◼   ► had a bunch of different apps installed on it. It was fun, it was interesting. The Notes app,

00:52:15 ◼   ► the pencil tool that's supposed to look like a pencil, they keep showing like, "Oh, you can

00:52:18 ◼   ► tilt to do shading and stuff like that." That is the one part of the Notes app that felt the least

00:52:22 ◼   ► like real media to me. And my bias is that I have habits in my hands and my mind and

00:52:33 ◼   ► my body from using real pencils and stuff for many many years when I was a kid. And

00:52:38 ◼   ► every time I use anything that involves drawing on a tablet or on a screen or whatever, it's

00:52:44 ◼   ► almost as if it was farther away from the real thing I would feel more comfortable because

00:52:48 ◼   ► that I wouldn't be trying to use the motions and gestures that I'm used to from the real

00:52:54 ◼   ► physical world of art media.

00:52:56 ◼   ► But the pencil is close enough to real media that I expect it to work more like a pencil,

00:53:01 ◼   ► and the tilt shading thing just does not work anything like an actual pencil.

00:53:06 ◼   ► And so I was continually frustrated by the fact that I had to stop myself from doing

00:53:10 ◼   ► what I would do with an actual pencil and start doing what this pencil demands.

00:53:13 ◼   ► In particular, I found that a lot of the lines that I draw,

00:53:17 ◼   ► I draw with the pencil tilted at such an angle

00:53:20 ◼   ► that the accelerometers in the pencil

00:53:21 ◼   ► think I want to do shading,

00:53:22 ◼   ► but in reality with a real physical pencil on paper,

00:53:25 ◼   ► I'm still just using the tip.

00:53:26 ◼   ► And I found that very frustrating

00:53:28 ◼   ► and it made me have to change how I was doing everything

00:53:30 ◼   ► to be more directly into the screen

00:53:33 ◼   ► to make sure it does a thin line.

00:53:35 ◼   ► If I could disable the shading thing

00:53:38 ◼   ► or change like the ratio of like,

00:53:39 ◼   ► don't even start shading thing until I'm super tilted over.

00:53:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, that really bothered me a lot,

00:53:45 ◼   ► but that's just, I think that is more of a barrier

00:53:47 ◼   ► of like people who are good at using computers to draw.

00:53:51 ◼   ► It is actually, I think, a different enough skill

00:53:53 ◼   ► from people who are good at using pencils or pen or paints

00:53:56 ◼   ► or any other media.

00:53:57 ◼   ► The media really, the thing that you're using,

00:53:59 ◼   ► the medium really does change how you use things.

00:54:02 ◼   ► So if I got one of these and I was actually using it to draw

00:54:05 ◼   ► I think I would have to, I would have a learning curve

00:54:08 ◼   ► to learn how to use this tool to draw

00:54:09 ◼   ► in the same way that you learn how to use it

00:54:11 ◼   ► like oil pastels versus oil paints versus acrylics or anything like that.

00:54:15 ◼   ► But bottom line is I feel like this could be used to very easily be used by someone

00:54:22 ◼   ► to do their work as an artist because it is so close to in terms of responsiveness a real

00:54:30 ◼   ► pencil.

00:54:31 ◼   ► It's so much closer than all the things I've used in the past.

00:54:33 ◼   ► And from what I've heard from actual artists, even the people who are using the top of the

00:54:36 ◼   ► line current generation tablet type things, that it's pretty good.

00:54:40 ◼   ► It's either better than or at the very least at least as good as the existing tablet technology.

00:54:44 ◼   ► So good job for Apple on its first try.

00:54:46 ◼   ► All right, its first try not counting the Newton once again.

00:54:49 ◼   ► Poor Newton on my desk here feels bad when I say this.

00:54:52 ◼   ► First try not counting the Newton of doing really good pen input for artists.

00:54:57 ◼   ► And also the pencil feels really nice.

00:55:00 ◼   ► It doesn't cramp your hand while you're using it, which is great.

00:55:03 ◼   ► It is very comfortable.

00:55:05 ◼   ► And before when I was using the iPad Pro,

00:55:08 ◼   ► I felt the weight of the iPad Pro all the time

00:55:11 ◼   ► without the pencil.

00:55:13 ◼   ► So I was sitting with it, we were watching movies,

00:55:16 ◼   ► I tried to read with it.

00:55:18 ◼   ► Some people think that that's awesome.

00:55:20 ◼   ► The reading experience is really great.

00:55:21 ◼   ► I found it awful on the iPad Pro, it is way too big.

00:55:26 ◼   ► But when I was sketching with the pencil,

00:55:29 ◼   ► the weight just kind of disappeared

00:55:31 ◼   ► and I kind of didn't notice it and it felt so natural

00:55:34 ◼   ► and great to have this really big screen.

00:55:36 ◼   ► So my experience with the iPad Pro itself

00:55:39 ◼   ► without the pencil was a disaster

00:55:42 ◼   ► and I kinda wasn't sure I even wanted it to keep it.

00:55:46 ◼   ► And I played with it for a few hours

00:55:48 ◼   ► and then I kinda left it on the table.

00:55:50 ◼   ► I wasn't interested in using it any further than that

00:55:53 ◼   ► because it felt just too heavy, too big,

00:55:55 ◼   ► too much stuff going on

00:55:57 ◼   ► or too little stuff with the home screen icons.

00:55:59 ◼   ► But as soon as I got the pencil,

00:56:02 ◼   ► It has been in my lap every free moment

00:56:05 ◼   ► that I could possibly find.

00:56:06 ◼   ► - Do you not subscribe to any magazines?

00:56:08 ◼   ► Like digital or otherwise, like big magazines

00:56:11 ◼   ► that like, you know, I don't know.

00:56:12 ◼   ► - I was subscribed to Martha Stewart's magazine actually,

00:56:15 ◼   ► but she filled it all up with ads like her real magazine

00:56:18 ◼   ► and now it's horrible to read and the ads move

00:56:20 ◼   ► on the digital ones so that was worthless so I ditched that

00:56:23 ◼   ► so now I don't subscribe to any magazines.

00:56:25 ◼   ► - I try to read some digital magazines.

00:56:28 ◼   ► My iPad is really slow so I tend to prefer the paper ones.

00:56:31 ◼   ► My wife reads some magazines on her iPad.

00:56:34 ◼   ► She used to, I think she used to read them on her mini too,

00:56:36 ◼   ► but now she's got a full-size one.

00:56:37 ◼   ► And I can imagine the best application aside,

00:56:41 ◼   ► like comic books and stuff like that,

00:56:42 ◼   ► for a big, gigantic iPad would be magazines

00:56:46 ◼   ► with big illustrations or photos,

00:56:49 ◼   ► like a photography magazine, a nature magazine,

00:56:51 ◼   ► a fashion magazine, or even a car magazine.

00:56:54 ◼   ► - Yeah, I could see those being amazing.

00:56:56 ◼   ► But I mean, when I read romance novels,

00:56:58 ◼   ► I really don't want that very large and visible

00:57:01 ◼   ► to everyone in the world.

00:57:02 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:57:02 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:57:03 ◼   ► I mean, the way you can think about it

00:57:04 ◼   ► for the iPad Pro for reading is,

00:57:08 ◼   ► if you could imagine yourself comfortably reading

00:57:11 ◼   ► a paper book of that size,

00:57:14 ◼   ► then the iPad Pro is great for it.

00:57:15 ◼   ► So the magazines, paper magazines are as big as iPad Pro,

00:57:18 ◼   ► especially the very large ones like Edge Magazine

00:57:20 ◼   ► before they shrunk it and made it crappy.

00:57:22 ◼   ► But anyway, or I don't know how big Vogue is these days,

00:57:24 ◼   ► but there are magazines that are very large

00:57:26 ◼   ► and you can say, "Sure, I can do that."

00:57:27 ◼   ► But novels are paper book size,

00:57:30 ◼   ► Paperback size usually even hardcovers are not as big as the iPad Pro in most cases, right?

00:57:35 ◼   ► The most of the paperbacks I have on my shelf even the biggest ones I have up here are more or less

00:57:40 ◼   ► iPad Air 2 size not iPad Pro size

00:57:43 ◼   ► So it is a little oversized that but as I said last week

00:57:46 ◼   ► The whole idea is maybe not for reading novels or anything

00:57:49 ◼   ► You can have other stuff on the screen at the same time

00:57:52 ◼   ► so you can bounce back and forth between Twitter and flipping through the latest issue of

00:57:56 ◼   ► you know, car and driver or whatever.

00:57:59 ◼   ► - And that's kind of like a general theme

00:58:01 ◼   ► that we've found so far with the iPad Pro is like,

00:58:04 ◼   ► it's really good for certain things,

00:58:07 ◼   ► but that is, it doesn't overlap completely

00:58:09 ◼   ► with what the smaller iPads are really good at.

00:58:11 ◼   ► Like, you would think that what the iPad Pro

00:58:15 ◼   ► would be great at would be like a strict superset,

00:58:19 ◼   ► where it would include everything

00:58:20 ◼   ► that the small ones are good at,

00:58:21 ◼   ► plus also some new stuff.

00:58:23 ◼   ► And I don't think that's actually the case,

00:58:24 ◼   ► and that's okay.

00:58:26 ◼   ► You know, in the same way that a 17 inch MacBook Pro,

00:58:30 ◼   ► may it rest in peace, is not great at everything

00:58:33 ◼   ► you want a laptop to be for.

00:58:36 ◼   ► You know, like if you wanted to be using it on a plane,

00:58:38 ◼   ► or if you want to be carrying it around all the time,

00:58:39 ◼   ► a 17 inch MacBook Pro is not that great for that.

00:58:42 ◼   ► That doesn't mean that the entire MacBook Pro line

00:58:45 ◼   ► has to be small, thin, and light.

00:58:48 ◼   ► You know, so I think now we're reaching that point

00:58:50 ◼   ► with the iPad lineup that it has substantial differentiation

00:58:54 ◼   ► between the models now, and that's okay.

00:58:57 ◼   ► You can't just be sure that if you like one of the iPads,

00:59:00 ◼   ► you can't be sure that the next one up

00:59:03 ◼   ► will be better in every way for you.

00:59:05 ◼   ► - So Tiff, if you were to go to your parents' house

00:59:11 ◼   ► for a few days, would you bring it with you?

00:59:15 ◼   ► - That's a really good question.

00:59:16 ◼   ► Probably not, because I don't have time to sit

00:59:21 ◼   ► and sketch or draw or paint anything.

00:59:25 ◼   ► So I never brought my painting supplies there,

00:59:28 ◼   ► even though I have travel ones.

00:59:30 ◼   ► So probably not, but I would bring my regular size iPad

00:59:35 ◼   ► because sometimes I do like to read when I'm there,

00:59:38 ◼   ► like during naps or evening or I don't know.

00:59:41 ◼   ► But so, so no, I probably wouldn't

00:59:44 ◼   ► because it's really big too.

00:59:47 ◼   ► And the internet connection is not so great.

00:59:49 ◼   ► - Oh, that's a different issue.

00:59:50 ◼   ► - I'm assuming since you wouldn't bring it to mom and dads

00:59:52 ◼   ► that you probably wouldn't bring it on like a trip

00:59:55 ◼   ► or something like that.

00:59:56 ◼   ► Like let's say, you know, Tesla does European delivery

00:59:59 ◼   ► which I understand makes no sense.

01:00:01 ◼   ► And you guys, or maybe all of us go again.

01:00:05 ◼   ► Would you bring this on that sort of a trip?

01:00:08 ◼   ► - No, I wouldn't.

01:00:09 ◼   ► I wouldn't because I'm not a digital artist.

01:00:11 ◼   ► I'm just now learning and getting interested

01:00:14 ◼   ► in trying to do it because it is just like John was saying,

01:00:17 ◼   ► It's very different holding a stylus to a screen

01:00:21 ◼   ► and trying to get it to mimic paint moving

01:00:24 ◼   ► or a brush with bristles that are dynamic

01:00:27 ◼   ► and move and swirl.

01:00:29 ◼   ► Translating that, if that's what you wanna do

01:00:32 ◼   ► is you wanna paint something, satisfying that

01:00:34 ◼   ► doesn't happen on the iPad.

01:00:36 ◼   ► But if you want to do something,

01:00:38 ◼   ► create a digital piece of art,

01:00:40 ◼   ► which I find is just like another medium.

01:00:43 ◼   ► You have paint, you have pencil, you have digital art.

01:00:46 ◼   ► It's just another way to do it.

01:00:47 ◼   ► And it's another set of skills

01:00:49 ◼   ► that you need to learn and develop.

01:00:51 ◼   ► So if I got into that, then yeah,

01:00:54 ◼   ► I would see myself carrying this with me

01:00:56 ◼   ► to accomplish that task if I wanted to create

01:01:00 ◼   ► a digital journal of a trip I was going on.

01:01:02 ◼   ► But as of right now, no, because I'm just not enough,

01:01:06 ◼   ► I'm not skilled enough, but I can definitely see a place

01:01:09 ◼   ► for it for other people.

01:01:11 ◼   ► But for me, it's just too big.

01:01:14 ◼   ► - Yeah, speaking of digital journals,

01:01:15 ◼   ► Like that is a thing that Apple should aspire to make the iPad Pro into a good tool for,

01:01:21 ◼   ► like in terms of people, some people do this and some people don't like to, like while

01:01:25 ◼   ► you're on the trip, say you're going on a trip to Europe, while you're there, like at

01:01:28 ◼   ► the end of each day that you take the photos off your camera, put them right into your

01:01:33 ◼   ► iPad Pro with the USB port that we'll talk about in a little bit maybe, use the various

01:01:38 ◼   ► applications available on the iPad Pro to compose either a cool looking web page or

01:01:43 ◼   ► or a slideshow or a movie or something that you can share with everybody else and at the

01:01:46 ◼   ► end of each day you would send out to your family or whoever is interested, here's how

01:01:50 ◼   ► our second day in Italy was, right? Or even just to be working on it so that by the time

01:01:55 ◼   ► you come home from the trip you have everything sort of assembled together into whatever form

01:01:59 ◼   ► that you decide you want to share your trip with, whether it's a series of pictures or

01:02:02 ◼   ► a slideshow or a movie or a webpage with a bunch of pictures and blog posts, all the

01:02:07 ◼   ► type of things that we all know that we can do with computers and websites. I think the

01:02:13 ◼   ► The existing image of the iPad in most people's mind, and in the reality for most people other

01:02:18 ◼   ► than maybe Vitici, is that the best way to synthesize all those different things, photos,

01:02:25 ◼   ► video, text, web stuff, you know, emailing people, compiling all that information, the

01:02:32 ◼   ► best way to do that is still on a Mac.

01:02:34 ◼   ► And I see no reason that the iPad Pro can't be as good or better at almost all those things,

01:02:39 ◼   ► especially with the stylus input if you wanted to annotate pictures, like can you imagine

01:02:43 ◼   ► arranging pictures and a lot like an application that lets you sort of build a vacation album where you could hand write underneath the

01:02:48 ◼   ► things little captions

01:02:49 ◼   ► wouldn't that be a lot more personal if you assuming you have legible handwriting then typing in captions for things and you know being

01:02:55 ◼   ► Able to touch things and drag things around as if they were actually photos in a real scrapbook and stuff

01:02:59 ◼   ► The iPad Pro would be perfect for that. But that is that's only promise at this point

01:03:04 ◼   ► I'm sure there are applications that do this but like bringing it all together touch stylus

01:03:09 ◼   ► photography

01:03:11 ◼   ► importing multiple applications, working on a single thing

01:03:13 ◼   ► and then sharing it out to everybody.

01:03:15 ◼   ► I don't think we're there yet,

01:03:17 ◼   ► but I totally think we could be in the iPad Pro

01:03:19 ◼   ► would be the perfect device for that.

01:03:21 ◼   ► - Yeah, there's no doubt that the iPad Pro

01:03:23 ◼   ► will make that experience way better

01:03:25 ◼   ► for anyone who really likes doing that

01:03:28 ◼   ► and is already kind of doing that on a laptop.

01:03:31 ◼   ► So I feel like the people who are committed

01:03:34 ◼   ► to doing that kind of thing,

01:03:36 ◼   ► that work on the go, vacation journaling,

01:03:40 ◼   ► or scrapbooking and sending it out to family.

01:03:43 ◼   ► It's gonna open up to a lot more people with the iPad

01:03:47 ◼   ► because it becomes way more accessible.

01:03:49 ◼   ► But it's again, it's another,

01:03:50 ◼   ► it's a thing you have to be into doing.

01:03:53 ◼   ► I feel like, for me in the end of,

01:03:56 ◼   ► in the evenings and stuff when I'm on vacation

01:03:57 ◼   ► and I'm doing stuff,

01:03:59 ◼   ► I kind of just wanna like read Twitter,

01:04:01 ◼   ► put my one photo on Instagram and move on.

01:04:03 ◼   ► You know, like committing to all of that work

01:04:06 ◼   ► while on vacation, I think takes a certain type of person

01:04:10 ◼   ► and that's the person that's gonna really grab hold

01:04:12 ◼   ► of this kind of device and run with it.

01:04:15 ◼   ► - Well, the best kind of technology

01:04:17 ◼   ► actually changes habits a little bit.

01:04:20 ◼   ► So a lot of us were not the type of people

01:04:22 ◼   ► who made family movies of anything,

01:04:25 ◼   ► but when iMovie came out and it made it simple and fun

01:04:29 ◼   ► to make a quick little movie, even if in turn--

01:04:31 ◼   ► - Don't tell me about iMovie.

01:04:33 ◼   ► It is not simple and it is not fun.

01:04:35 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:04:36 ◼   ► - Every Christmas is like iMovie stress hell

01:04:40 ◼   ► in this household.

01:04:40 ◼   ► - I make a Christmas movie every year

01:04:42 ◼   ► with a stop motion video of us unwrapping gifts and stuff,

01:04:45 ◼   ► and it is hell every time.

01:04:47 ◼   ► And I'm also very upset that there aren't any new themes

01:04:50 ◼   ► ever, ever, ever, ever.

01:04:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:04:52 ◼   ► My point is that those applications,

01:04:54 ◼   ► the iLife applications,

01:04:56 ◼   ► made people who would never even consider doing that

01:04:59 ◼   ► try it at least once.

01:05:00 ◼   ► A whole bunch of people tried it

01:05:02 ◼   ► and were more or less successful at some percentage ratio,

01:05:05 ◼   ► 50% or whatever people who did not suddenly become people who make videos for every occasion in their life

01:05:10 ◼   ► But they did it maybe once maybe twice right because the application suddenly made it possible

01:05:16 ◼   ► It wasn't like well, I can't make a video of my family

01:05:19 ◼   ► All I can do is shoot the video and record to my little you know

01:05:23 ◼   ► VHS or mini TV or whatever and then we can all watch it from start to end and it's interminable

01:05:27 ◼   ► But I'm never gonna edit this video because I'm not a video editor and the early days of the I life suite

01:05:32 ◼   ► Made it so that regular people who were never considered themselves video editors

01:05:36 ◼   ► Suddenly had a tool in their house that they could use

01:05:38 ◼   ► To edit a little video and they tried it and found it's really difficult and you make crappy videos

01:05:43 ◼   ► But they did it once or twice and I feel like the iPad Pro

01:05:45 ◼   ► with stylus input and everything could take people who were never in a million years go through all the work to do it on a

01:05:51 ◼   ► Laptop and know how to synthesize all that stuff and make it and if there's one or two good applications in the iPad Pro with stylus

01:05:57 ◼   ► Support maybe someone who isn't one of those people who makes albums at the end of every vacation day

01:06:01 ◼   ► brings their iPad Pro with them and tries it once and sends out a nice thing like that's all I'm talking about

01:06:06 ◼   ► it's like it's it's small stakes, but

01:06:08 ◼   ► technology can sort of like lower the barrier to entry to the point where

01:06:12 ◼   ► People who are never going to be serious about it still will like dabble for a second or two and find out yeah

01:06:19 ◼   ► This still isn't for me. But hey, I made this cool thing out of it

01:06:21 ◼   ► I mean that's the way exactly I feel now about the digital art before I never even considered ever ever ever trying to do anything

01:06:29 ◼   ► digital and because this thing kind of appeared and Marco buys everything so things appear.

01:06:36 ◼   ► So it all of a sudden piqued my interest into trying this medium that I never

01:06:42 ◼   ► would have tried before because I'm not going to go out and purchase a tablet and purchase,

01:06:47 ◼   ► you know, this and even though I do have a tablet, we have one of those because we have everything.

01:06:51 ◼   ► But we've had a Wacom tablet sitting in the closet for about five years. Well,

01:06:54 ◼   ► Well, I tried it for photo editing and it was awful, for me.

01:06:57 ◼   ► And I'm not gonna go out and get a program and learn it.

01:07:01 ◼   ► But with this, it just feels so accessible and attainable

01:07:06 ◼   ► to learn how to do at least a base level

01:07:09 ◼   ► of this kind of thing.

01:07:11 ◼   ► - So iPad Pro Ultimate at home iPad?

01:07:15 ◼   ► - Yes, at home iPad.

01:07:17 ◼   ► - I mean, I would even say also,

01:07:19 ◼   ► I think I said a little bit of this last week too,

01:07:21 ◼   ► but my further time playing with it just reinforces this.

01:07:25 ◼   ► I think it's the kind of thing where

01:07:26 ◼   ► if you were already using an iPad

01:07:29 ◼   ► for productivity kind of work,

01:07:32 ◼   ► then this will probably be even better for you.

01:07:36 ◼   ► You know, if you were already doing like email

01:07:38 ◼   ► and documents and spreadsheets and stuff like that,

01:07:41 ◼   ► you know, on an iPad before,

01:07:43 ◼   ► then this will probably be an improvement.

01:07:46 ◼   ► But it is kind of like a laptop in that way.

01:07:49 ◼   ► Like, you know, if it has replaced your laptop,

01:07:53 ◼   ► or if it has almost replaced your laptop already

01:07:57 ◼   ► before you had an iPad Pro, then yeah,

01:08:00 ◼   ► this is probably the device for you.

01:08:01 ◼   ► Or if you have some of these nice creative uses,

01:08:05 ◼   ► if you plan to use the pencil,

01:08:07 ◼   ► if you could make use of such a thing,

01:08:09 ◼   ► this is also gonna be amazing for you.

01:08:11 ◼   ► If you are currently using an iPad with a keyboard,

01:08:14 ◼   ► and you want a better, larger keyboard,

01:08:17 ◼   ► this will probably be amazing for you as well,

01:08:19 ◼   ► we don't have the keyboard so we can't really say how good they are. Many people

01:08:22 ◼   ► have covered that already. But if you're using your iPad primarily for content consumption,

01:08:29 ◼   ► or if you're like me and you can't quite figure out when to use your iPad for the most

01:08:34 ◼   ► part, then it's more of a mixed bag. It's not a guarantee that this will be better for

01:08:39 ◼   ► you and it isn't a guarantee that you would be happy with it if you got it. So that is

01:08:44 ◼   ► still up in the air, but I will say that for the things that it is good at, like that pen

01:08:49 ◼   ► input it is it is so good that like for me as as a longtime iPad skeptic and

01:08:55 ◼   ► just kind of not having much much use for my iPads I want a reason to use it I

01:09:00 ◼   ► actually am motivated to try to use it and to try to get into it because using

01:09:05 ◼   ► the pencil is just so damn fun I want to ask that to Casey because if you're what

01:09:10 ◼   ► if you're the guy here who says he does not do art stuff right am I correct

01:09:15 ◼   ► you said John does a little bit I know Marco does a little bit he's a liar and

01:09:19 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:09:21 ◼   ► And I do, but for you, does this intrigue you

01:09:24 ◼   ► to start possibly playing around and seeing

01:09:28 ◼   ► if you want to learn how to draw

01:09:30 ◼   ► and to start that learning on the iPad?

01:09:33 ◼   ► - I don't think so.

01:09:35 ◼   ► I mean, to be fair, I've only played with the pencil,

01:09:37 ◼   ► like I said, for like a minute or two.

01:09:38 ◼   ► It was not very much at all.

01:09:40 ◼   ► And I thought it was neat,

01:09:42 ◼   ► but it struck me as the sort of thing

01:09:44 ◼   ► that I would think this is really neat for a week or two

01:09:46 ◼   ► and that I'd probably never look at it again.

01:09:48 ◼   ► Now who knows, maybe in that week or two,

01:09:50 ◼   ► I would get bit by the art bug, if you will,

01:09:52 ◼   ► and then I would never put it down.

01:09:54 ◼   ► But my guess is I would think, ooh, shiny, ooh, neat,

01:09:59 ◼   ► for a week, maybe two, and then I would just never look back.

01:10:04 ◼   ► I wish I could do it.

01:10:07 ◼   ► - Someone in the chat asked about TIFF,

01:10:09 ◼   ► how about photography work?

01:10:10 ◼   ► And I think this is worth touching on briefly.

01:10:12 ◼   ► Would you use it for photography?

01:10:14 ◼   ► If so, why?

01:10:15 ◼   ► If not, why not?

01:10:17 ◼   ► I guess right now not because the way I edit my photos,

01:10:21 ◼   ► it's very, very heavy in Photoshop.

01:10:24 ◼   ► And I feel like just the power and the hardware

01:10:29 ◼   ► that's needed to run the Photoshop that I like to run

01:10:36 ◼   ► when I edit my photos is just not there on the iPad.

01:10:41 ◼   ► I could see it if they ended up translating that

01:10:46 ◼   ► onto the iPad with the touch interface,

01:10:48 ◼   ► it might be interesting to do,

01:10:50 ◼   ► but I don't know, the precision of some

01:10:52 ◼   ► of the Photoshop actions that I do

01:10:54 ◼   ► really probably would not translate that great.

01:10:58 ◼   ► And for me, I have to edit photos

01:11:01 ◼   ► if anyone else is out there who is a photographer

01:11:04 ◼   ► or edits photos, you know that if you use

01:11:08 ◼   ► a different screen for editing your photos,

01:11:10 ◼   ► not a screen that you have calibrated

01:11:12 ◼   ► with a printer that you use

01:11:13 ◼   ► or that you're used to working with,

01:11:15 ◼   ► you can move photos from one device to another

01:11:18 ◼   ► and the colors will be all wrong that you have worked on.

01:11:22 ◼   ► So you could sit and you could work on a picture

01:11:24 ◼   ► for 20 minutes if you're dibble dabbling

01:11:29 ◼   ► at all over the place and putting filters on

01:11:31 ◼   ► and taking them off like I do,

01:11:32 ◼   ► like an insane person because I'm crazy.

01:11:35 ◼   ► But if you do that, you would have it on one device

01:11:38 ◼   ► and you put it on another and then all of a sudden

01:11:39 ◼   ► it's not what you wanted it to be.

01:11:42 ◼   ► Which that frustration exists when I give photos to clients

01:11:45 ◼   ► and they don't have the right color,

01:11:46 ◼   ► but I've found a way to fix that anyway.

01:11:49 ◼   ► But it just, it's not, right now,

01:11:52 ◼   ► right now it's not accessible on the level

01:11:55 ◼   ► that I'm playing with here.

01:11:57 ◼   ► And I think that a lot of other people feel that too.

01:11:59 ◼   ► But if you're just doing, you know,

01:12:00 ◼   ► you're moving some sliders around,

01:12:01 ◼   ► which the majority of our family photos,

01:12:04 ◼   ► that's all that it needs, then it is pretty accessible,

01:12:07 ◼   ► but I don't like having my photos in two places.

01:12:10 ◼   ► - Maybe actually I have something in the show notes

01:12:11 ◼   ► about that, there was this thing in Macworld

01:12:13 ◼   ► about the display quality, the color accuracy of the iPad Pro versus the Surface Pro 4 and

01:12:20 ◼   ► other things. And iPad Pro didn't come out that well in this test. There's no bad screens

01:12:25 ◼   ► here, these are all good screens, but the Surface Pro 4 edged it out. And I forget what

01:12:30 ◼   ► the company is that does this, that tests all the displays.

01:12:33 ◼   ► DisplayMate, I believe?

01:12:34 ◼   ► Yeah. And historically, Apple has been weird with the displays because it's, you know,

01:12:40 ◼   ► they always say all their displays, "This is the most beautiful display you've ever

01:12:42 ◼   ► put in a blah blah blah like they always say they're great they don't tend to

01:12:45 ◼   ► differentiate but whenever anyone does any actual testing with the color meter

01:12:48 ◼   ► some models of device have super accurate displays and some have not so

01:12:53 ◼   ► accurate ones and it doesn't follow any particular lines like I think they were

01:12:56 ◼   ► saying like the best screen Apple had ever put on was like on one of the minis

01:13:00 ◼   ► or something yeah that the most recent iPad mini the mini 4 yeah so they're all

01:13:05 ◼   ► pretty good but you know but there there's enough variance that what Tiff

01:13:09 ◼   ► is saying is surely, it's not just like that, you know, even screens that are all equally

01:13:14 ◼   ► good, they can be different from each other if they're not calibrated, but then in some

01:13:17 ◼   ► cases it's just like this screen can't display the same range of colors that that screen

01:13:21 ◼   ► can, so no amount of calibration is ever going to make them look the same same.

01:13:24 ◼   ► It's also interesting that they have the nice DCI P3 10-bit screens on the new iMacs,

01:13:33 ◼   ► but that didn't make it into the iPad Pro. I wonder, and as far as I know, I don't

01:13:38 ◼   ► IOS even supports 10-bit colors.

01:13:40 ◼   ► That's probably one of the reasons why.

01:13:42 ◼   ► But it'd be interesting to see if and when

01:13:44 ◼   ► that gets added to IOS,

01:13:45 ◼   ► 'cause that could really help as well.

01:13:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's not the iMac Pro, but it's got the good screen.

01:13:50 ◼   ► But the iPad Pro, not so much.

01:13:51 ◼   ► I mean, obviously there's different constraints

01:13:53 ◼   ► for a handheld device.

01:13:54 ◼   ► Like, who knows what the requirements are.

01:13:56 ◼   ► That extra little bit of color accuracy

01:13:58 ◼   ► and the 10-bit range and everything,

01:13:59 ◼   ► maybe that's just not feasible at all

01:14:01 ◼   ► in a handheld battery-powered device yet.

01:14:04 ◼   ► - The extra gamut would be nice, though.

01:14:05 ◼   ► But anyway.

01:14:06 ◼   ► All right, any other questions for Tiff on iPad Pro?

01:14:09 ◼   ► - Just in general, sounds like thumbs up.

01:14:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, I really like it,

01:14:13 ◼   ► and I think that I'm going to develop liking it even more

01:14:16 ◼   ► because as I get better at the, you know,

01:14:19 ◼   ► doing the digital art thing,

01:14:20 ◼   ► that I think it's gonna become more and more useful

01:14:24 ◼   ► as another tool of hobby, I think.

01:14:29 ◼   ► You know, it's not my profession at all,

01:14:31 ◼   ► so it's very much a hobby tool,

01:14:34 ◼   ► but it's a pretty darn fun one.

01:14:37 ◼   ► - Awesome, well thanks for coming on and sharing with us.

01:14:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, thanks for having me guys.

01:14:41 ◼   ► - Our final sponsor this week is Automattic.

01:14:44 ◼   ► Automattic is a connected car adapter

01:14:46 ◼   ► that plugs into your car's diagnostic port

01:14:48 ◼   ► and this integrates with over 20 different apps

01:14:51 ◼   ► plus their own app to give you tons of functionality

01:14:54 ◼   ► and a better driving experience.

01:14:55 ◼   ► Go to automattic.com/atp to see for yourself

01:14:59 ◼   ► and get 20% off.

01:15:00 ◼   ► Now, you can check your check engine light.

01:15:02 ◼   ► If you have any kind of engine error code,

01:15:04 ◼   ► Automatic will explain to you in plain English

01:15:07 ◼   ► what is going on.

01:15:08 ◼   ► And certain error codes you can just fix something

01:15:10 ◼   ► and then Automatic can actually clear the warning

01:15:12 ◼   ► after you've fixed it.

01:15:13 ◼   ► It can also give you a log of trips you take.

01:15:15 ◼   ► So you can track things for business

01:15:18 ◼   ► if you need to log your mileage for business.

01:15:20 ◼   ► Or if you're just curious about your gas mileage,

01:15:22 ◼   ► your fuel efficiency, it can help you track all of that.

01:15:25 ◼   ► It also tracks your parking location.

01:15:27 ◼   ► So you never lose your car.

01:15:29 ◼   ► And if you need help in an emergency,

01:15:31 ◼   ► If you have an accident, can automatically call the emergency services for you in an

01:15:37 ◼   ► accident.

01:15:38 ◼   ► That's really, really great benefits here.

01:15:40 ◼   ► Now, they also recently launched apps and a whole SDK.

01:15:44 ◼   ► So if you go to automatic.com/apps, you can browse.

01:15:47 ◼   ► They have over 20 apps so far and they're adding more all the time.

01:15:50 ◼   ► You can use your car's data in all kinds of new ways.

01:15:53 ◼   ► One of the biggest ones is they have paired with If This Then That, IFTTT, however that's

01:15:57 ◼   ► pronounced.

01:15:58 ◼   ► You can build recipes in If This Then That based on your driving behavior and driving

01:16:04 ◼   ► events and so you can do things like, oh, when I'm close to home in the car, use my

01:16:10 ◼   ► Nest thermostat to automatically turn the air conditioning on so when I get home it's

01:16:14 ◼   ► nice and cool.

01:16:15 ◼   ► Things like that.

01:16:16 ◼   ► You can really do amazing things with some of these apps.

01:16:17 ◼   ► They also have things like FreshBooks integration, Pebble SmartWatch integration, all sorts of

01:16:22 ◼   ► stuff.

01:16:23 ◼   ► You can even send YOs in the Yo app, which is a real thing.

01:16:27 ◼   ► So they've launched this developer platform and you can go check it out today if you're

01:16:31 ◼   ► a developer.

01:16:32 ◼   ► If you're not a developer, still go check out the apps.

01:16:34 ◼   ► Automatic can do lots of great things.

01:16:36 ◼   ► Now you can get Automatic, normally it's $100.

01:16:38 ◼   ► It's a great deal of $100.

01:16:40 ◼   ► But using our code, automatic.com/ATP, you will get 20% off, so it's only $80.

01:16:47 ◼   ► And that is a one-time charge.

01:16:48 ◼   ► There is no monthly fee to use the service, nothing like that.

01:16:52 ◼   ► It is one time, no subscription, no recurring payments.

01:16:55 ◼   ► time of just 80 bucks with that link, automatic.com/ATP, you will get free shipping and 45-day return

01:17:02 ◼   ► policy totally risk-free. Check it out today, automatic.com/ATP. Thanks a lot to Automatic

01:17:08 ◼   ► for sponsoring our show once again.

01:17:09 ◼   ► All right, so there's more about the iPad Pro, I believe, or no?

01:17:13 ◼   ► Well, we can talk about the USB thing, but that can stay until next week if we get more

01:17:17 ◼   ► info about it. The bottom line is that the iPad Pro is definitely the device where you

01:17:20 ◼   ► want to have a speedy way to shove stuff into it and Apple has said that there's

01:17:25 ◼   ► that you're gonna be able to do that with USB 3 speeds.

01:17:28 ◼   ► Is there really a lot of motion behind tethered over the cable transfer of

01:17:35 ◼   ► files to iOS devices these days?

01:17:37 ◼   ► I imagine it's all cameras, right? Like if you could

01:17:41 ◼   ► connect your camera directly up to your, well I guess you could do it wirelessly

01:17:44 ◼   ► if you wanted, but if you connect your camera or some other card reader or

01:17:48 ◼   ► thing directly to your iPad, then you could go on the road with just the iPad and the

01:17:52 ◼   ► camera and do some useful photography work.

01:17:55 ◼   ► That's true. That actually, and you know, I might use it for that. I mean, there are

01:17:58 ◼   ► some trips where I bring my laptop now, like if I'm going to a conference, I bring my

01:18:03 ◼   ► laptop but I really don't usually need it for any kind of laptop-y function that I can't

01:18:09 ◼   ► serve just as well by my phone or an iPad. So, you know, I can see the value in having

01:18:15 ◼   ► They've had, ever since the first iPad, they've sold the camera connection kit, which has

01:18:21 ◼   ► either been able to be an SD card reader or a USB port, which you can use to plug in all

01:18:25 ◼   ► sorts of crazy stuff you don't even think about.

01:18:27 ◼   ► But a surprising amount of driverless USB peripherals work on iPads with the camera

01:18:33 ◼   ► connection kit.

01:18:34 ◼   ► And some even work on iPhones.

01:18:35 ◼   ► But anyway, so I could see that being possible, but because the camera connection kit is a

01:18:42 ◼   ► fairly rarely sold accessory as far as I know.

01:18:46 ◼   ► They've never seemed to put a whole lot of effort

01:18:48 ◼   ► into the process and the capabilities

01:18:51 ◼   ► of importing photos off a camera card

01:18:53 ◼   ► into the Photos app on iPads.

01:18:56 ◼   ► So I don't know how well it would work in practice.

01:18:58 ◼   ► I have one, so I guess I could try it.

01:19:00 ◼   ► I think I'll report back next week on how it works.

01:19:02 ◼   ► I also wouldn't expect it to do very well

01:19:04 ◼   ► on my 42 megapixel raw files, but we'll see about that.

01:19:08 ◼   ► - Oh, that's why USB 3 speeds, 'cause that's the big thing.

01:19:11 ◼   ► lightning port was previously not at those speeds and it's kind of a pain if you have

01:19:15 ◼   ► gigantic files and now with the iPad Pro this port is capable, I don't know if the adapters

01:19:21 ◼   ► are out yet or if they're not out yet, but anyway, will be capable of USB 3.0 speeds

01:19:26 ◼   ► and so that will really help.

01:19:27 ◼   ► I mean generally when it comes to like processing raw photos on something like an iPad the...

01:19:32 ◼   ► You think the card is the limit?

01:19:33 ◼   ► No, I think the processing power of the device is the limit because when you're processing

01:19:37 ◼   ► raw files you have to do the reading and the JPEG conversion on device. It isn't already

01:19:43 ◼   ► done for you. And the cameras all have these really specialized image processors to do

01:19:48 ◼   ► it in like a highly parallel optimized way. The computers are doing it generally on the

01:19:55 ◼   ► CPU entirely or maybe with some light GPU help and it's a pretty slow process to do

01:20:01 ◼   ► large raw imports. So I'm guessing that would be much more useful for JPEG shooters or even

01:20:07 ◼   ► the RAW plus JPEG weirdos like I was briefly.

01:20:09 ◼   ► But for people shooting RAW who want to do

01:20:13 ◼   ► a couple of quick imports to show somebody

01:20:16 ◼   ► or preview or post it to a social network,

01:20:18 ◼   ► it probably won't be useful for that,

01:20:20 ◼   ► but I'd love to try and be proven wrong.

01:20:23 ◼   ► So maybe I'll try it, I'll let you know.

01:20:24 ◼   ► - Well, I mean, there's two things.

01:20:26 ◼   ► There's the file transfer,

01:20:28 ◼   ► and then there's the RAW conversion,

01:20:29 ◼   ► even just for display purposes.

01:20:31 ◼   ► So if you can make the part where it just copies

01:20:33 ◼   ► the RAW data directly off of the card

01:20:34 ◼   ► onto the iPad faster than it gives you more time to spend with your slower CPU doing the

01:20:38 ◼   ► raw conversion for display.

01:20:40 ◼   ► Anyway, even if it's not just for photography, the idea that lighting...

01:20:44 ◼   ► This was an open question.

01:20:45 ◼   ► This is why I have this link in there.

01:20:46 ◼   ► Back when the lighting port was made, it's like, "Lightning, how fast will it go?

01:20:50 ◼   ► Why did they not use USB?

01:20:51 ◼   ► Why did they not change it to USB-C?

01:20:53 ◼   ► Is it even possible to do USB 3 speeds over lightning?

01:20:57 ◼   ► Oh no, you can't because it doesn't have enough pins because the USB 3 connector has more

01:21:00 ◼   ► pins than the contacts that are on the lightning connector and this link in the show notes

01:21:04 ◼   ► was from someone who did a lot of investigation into the lightning port back when it was introduced.

01:21:10 ◼   ► It was this Rainer Brockerhoff blog and he has come back to talk about the lack of pins

01:21:15 ◼   ► and the decision he came down to is that you don't need all the pins of a real USB thing

01:21:22 ◼   ► because they have dedicated pins for the USB 2 speeds and lightning doesn't have to do

01:21:26 ◼   ► that because it can multiplex and it can say look I'm not doing USB 2 speeds, use those

01:21:29 ◼   ► two pins for something else.

01:21:31 ◼   ► But we'll see.

01:21:33 ◼   ► I think people who are doing teardowns on the iPad Pro said they found what looked like

01:21:37 ◼   ► two new connectors inside there, so maybe the adapters will have extra contacts?

01:21:40 ◼   ► I don't know how it'll work.

01:21:41 ◼   ► We'll have to wait until these adapters are introduced, and if they're already out, I

01:21:44 ◼   ► just haven't seen them yet.

01:21:45 ◼   ► So there's some follow-up for next week.

01:21:47 ◼   ► All right.

01:21:48 ◼   ► Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, Squarespace, MailRoute, and Automattic, and

01:21:53 ◼   ► we'll see you next week.

01:21:57 ◼   ► Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin

01:22:02 ◼   ► 'Cause it was accidental (accidental)

01:22:05 ◼   ► Oh, it was accidental (accidental)

01:22:08 ◼   ► John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him

01:22:12 ◼   ► 'Cause it was accidental (accidental)

01:22:15 ◼   ► Oh, it was accidental (accidental)

01:22:18 ◼   ► And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm

01:22:23 ◼   ► And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them @C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S

01:22:32 ◼   ► So that's Kasey Liszt, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

01:22:36 ◼   ► Anti-Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-C-U-S-A

01:22:44 ◼   ► It's accidental (accidental)

01:22:47 ◼   ► They didn't mean to (accidental)

01:22:52 ◼   ► ♪ Tech, I've cast so long ♪

01:22:56 ◼   ► - I do very much want to talk Disney,

01:22:59 ◼   ► but I think we're better off tonight talking about the iMac.

01:23:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, that's totally a different after show.

01:23:04 ◼   ► All right. (laughing)

01:23:06 ◼   ► So iMac, this is not my computer to be clear.

01:23:08 ◼   ► This is not replacing my Mac Pro.

01:23:10 ◼   ► My good old 2008 Mac Pro is still here.

01:23:12 ◼   ► I'm speaking into it right now.

01:23:13 ◼   ► This is a replacement for my wife's 2011-ish MacBook Air,

01:23:18 ◼   ► which was getting long in the tooth

01:23:20 ◼   ► and our photos couldn't fit on anymore.

01:23:22 ◼   ► So we had an external SSD, but it was only FireEye 800.

01:23:25 ◼   ► And that was part of the reason I thought photos

01:23:26 ◼   ► might've been slow.

01:23:27 ◼   ► And anyway, got a big fancy new iMac

01:23:30 ◼   ► after hearing Marco report good things about his

01:23:33 ◼   ► 27 inch retina iMac.

01:23:35 ◼   ► And this is the newer fancier model

01:23:36 ◼   ► with the even nicer screen.

01:23:38 ◼   ► And she had always said that she just wanted

01:23:41 ◼   ► an iMac at home anyway.

01:23:42 ◼   ► Even as she continually took the MacBook Air

01:23:46 ◼   ► out of the room when I podcasted

01:23:47 ◼   ► so she could still use her computer without being here.

01:23:49 ◼   ► But anyway, she can still do that

01:23:50 ◼   ► 'cause we still have the MacBook Air.

01:23:51 ◼   ► Grace just moved over to the other desk, but she's using the iMac and liking it.

01:23:55 ◼   ► Few things for me to report.

01:23:57 ◼   ► I never really spent any time with Marcos.

01:23:59 ◼   ► I saw it, and the ones in the store that I've seen them, but I haven't really spent a lot

01:24:02 ◼   ► of time with them.

01:24:04 ◼   ► For mine, I decided to not max out the RAM.

01:24:07 ◼   ► I didn't do too much research into this, but I just saw in the store configurator it said

01:24:12 ◼   ► 16 gigs for like two DIMMs and 32 gigs for four, so I picked 16, figuring, can't I just

01:24:18 ◼   ► buy two more DIMMs and up it to 32 later?

01:24:21 ◼   ► If that's not true, don't tell me until four years from now when I find out.

01:24:24 ◼   ► I just don't want to know.

01:24:26 ◼   ► But I assume it's true.

01:24:27 ◼   ► But anyway, 16 gigs should probably be fine.

01:24:30 ◼   ► I got the biggest, fastest GPU because whatever.

01:24:33 ◼   ► I was convinced by that YouTube video, fingers crossed, that this will actually not be a

01:24:37 ◼   ► silly thing to do.

01:24:38 ◼   ► My kids can now play.

01:24:39 ◼   ► My kids have finally now seen Minecraft at non-disgusting frame rates.

01:24:44 ◼   ► And I think I'm more impressed than they are, but I think at the same time they're never

01:24:47 ◼   ► going to choose to play it on the MacBook Air ever again.

01:24:49 ◼   ► I don't blame them.

01:24:52 ◼   ► And I got the big terabyte SSD because I really want to fit everything on this thing instead

01:24:57 ◼   ► of on my external drive, which I still have, but it's an enclosure that takes Firewire

01:25:01 ◼   ► 800.

01:25:02 ◼   ► So I also had to, by the way, buy a lightning to a lightning Thunderbolt to Firewire 800

01:25:06 ◼   ► adapter so I could connect my chain of Firewire 800 drives and enclosures and everything,

01:25:12 ◼   ► which is fine.

01:25:13 ◼   ► I also have a USB 3 hard drive that I can finally connect to an actual USB 3 port.

01:25:17 ◼   ► And that was one of the first things I noticed about this was I have a bus powered 1 terabyte,

01:25:24 ◼   ► like 2.5 inch USB 3 drive.

01:25:27 ◼   ► I've had it for a while and I decided I'm going to use this.

01:25:30 ◼   ► I'll use this as the clone drive for this, you know, one of my super duper clones.

01:25:35 ◼   ► And I kept finding that when the Mac would go to sleep and wake back up, it would say,

01:25:40 ◼   ► you know, "This disk was not ejected properly, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah."

01:25:43 ◼   ► Like it was unmounting itself somewhere along the line and that usually means that it's

01:25:49 ◼   ► being underpowered by the bus and it's just not able to maintain the connection but then

01:25:54 ◼   ► it comes back.

01:25:55 ◼   ► I don't understand that because it's not connected to a hub.

01:25:58 ◼   ► It's directly connected to the computer and I haven't ever had that problem on any other

01:26:01 ◼   ► computers I've connected this to but then again I haven't had it connected to other

01:26:04 ◼   ► computers for really long periods of time.

01:26:06 ◼   ► So I don't know if I have a broken drive, if the ports in the back of the iMac can't

01:26:11 ◼   ► supply enough power for this thing. Whatever it is, that kind of annoyed me, but I'm willing

01:26:16 ◼   ► to chalk that up to the flakiness of external peripherals, and right now I only connect

01:26:20 ◼   ► it when I want to do a clone, which is a reasonable solution, I suppose. Although I have a whole

01:26:24 ◼   ► other drive at the end of the firewall, a hundred chain to do a clone to.

01:26:28 ◼   ► If you want, I have an enclosure that I bought like three of them now. It's something like

01:26:32 ◼   ► twelve dollars. It's a USB 3, single disk, 2.5 inch enclosure, and it's... I had... one

01:26:39 ◼   ► One of them would do that exact same thing when it was on a really flaky USB hub that

01:26:43 ◼   ► I used to have.

01:26:44 ◼   ► But so far, this enclosure, two of them that I bought have been perfect, and for $12 it's

01:26:50 ◼   ► been just as good as the expensive ones I've gotten from OWC and stuff in the past.

01:26:56 ◼   ► That's why I had Direct Connected.

01:26:57 ◼   ► I never considered connecting to a hub, because I knew that wouldn't work, but even Direct

01:27:00 ◼   ► Connect to the iMac was flaky, so I don't know.

01:27:03 ◼   ► Anyway, that's a peripheral issue.

01:27:05 ◼   ► The main thing I noticed about this iMac off the bat is that the fan in all states is slightly

01:27:12 ◼   ► noisier than I thought it would be.

01:27:14 ◼   ► Of course.

01:27:15 ◼   ► Really?

01:27:16 ◼   ► Even in the most idle, like nothing is happening on the computer, I download the utilities,

01:27:20 ◼   ► it shows me the fan RPM, like the lowest possible RPM, I can still hear it more than I could

01:27:26 ◼   ► hear the fan on the MacBook Air.

01:27:29 ◼   ► For two reasons.

01:27:30 ◼   ► One, the MacBook Air was like back a little bit farther, like it was kind of behind the

01:27:33 ◼   ► monitor and to the left.

01:27:35 ◼   ► And two, when the MacBook Air fan is like doing nothing, it is really quiet.

01:27:40 ◼   ► Now the flip side of that is that you do anything to the MacBook Air, the fan goes up to super,

01:27:44 ◼   ► you know, as fast as it can possibly go and sounds like a terrible angry hairdryer, right?

01:27:48 ◼   ► So on the iMac, you can do way more before the fan starts spinning up.

01:27:52 ◼   ► So overall, it's probably a benefit, but every time I sit in front of the computer, I keep

01:27:56 ◼   ► thinking, "Did I leave one of the hard drives on?"

01:27:58 ◼   ► Because I have so many friggin' hard drives connected to this thing for all my different

01:28:01 ◼   ► backups, and I don't leave them on all the time.

01:28:02 ◼   ► I actually unmount them and turn them off and you know how like a hard drive that's on and spinning makes some noise a mechanical

01:28:08 ◼   ► Hard drive I keep thinking that why I left one of the drives on but no it's just a stupid fan of this thing anyway

01:28:13 ◼   ► It's not my computer. It's fine. It's probably still quieter than my 2008 Mac Pro

01:28:17 ◼   ► Although maybe not because my Mac Pro is on the ground that I don't really hear it

01:28:20 ◼   ► But anyway that that is my one mild disappointment everything else about it is great screen looks great

01:28:26 ◼   ► I don't even mind the weird thin edge

01:28:28 ◼   ► I think it looks actually kind of cool because I do see it from the edge sometimes

01:28:32 ◼   ► For a while I kept thinking that the hinge was loose because it kept being tilted down, but that's just my wife

01:28:37 ◼   ► She keeps tilting it down, then I use the computer and I tilt it up, and then she tilts it down.

01:28:41 ◼   ► So we're kind of fighting over what the correct position is for the screen, but we're obviously different heights there.

01:28:46 ◼   ► Photos is faster. It is much faster than it was when I was on my FireEye 800 drive.

01:28:52 ◼   ► It is still slow, and it's still weird and buggy. When I brought the library over,

01:28:58 ◼   ► You know I had to copy it off my external drive that took forever and photos was really weird about like I copied every single

01:29:05 ◼   ► file over and photos was like I have

01:29:07 ◼   ► 65,000 files to import I'm like no you don't they're all there and so I had to wait for like three days for it to convince

01:29:14 ◼   ► Itself that it had all the files. Oh, and then at some point. It was like you don't have enough disk space

01:29:17 ◼   ► I'm like hell. I don't have enough disk space. I hope you know I have plenty of this space

01:29:22 ◼   ► I'm not even like a quarter filled on this terabyte drive

01:29:25 ◼   ► So photos is weird and does weird things and scares me sometimes but in the end

01:29:30 ◼   ► I just let it stew for a long time. It was fine. I still haven't removed my most recent

01:29:35 ◼   ► Backup of my old photos library. So if this thing is lying to me

01:29:39 ◼   ► I still have everything as of like, you know when I got the new iMac but

01:29:42 ◼   ► That was a little bit freaky

01:29:45 ◼   ► And boy copying the photo library in the finder that took so long and was so terrifying

01:29:53 ◼   ► There are so many files involved with that and the finder gives you a little bit of information first of all the finer spends

01:29:58 ◼   ► Like a long time like maybe it was an hour. Maybe it was more than our preparing to copy

01:30:03 ◼   ► Not going to copy it's preparing to copy

01:30:06 ◼   ► It's got to count all the files and I don't know what it's doing and maybe it's pre-flighting to make sure the space is available

01:30:10 ◼   ► It's like I should have just used the CP command just start copying things

01:30:15 ◼   ► What are you like she's our sink for crying out loud, you know?

01:30:17 ◼   ► Because Apple has flags and all these things they can make it copy all the metadata

01:30:20 ◼   ► I'm like no, I have no idea what Apple's doing with the photo library. Let me use the finder to do it

01:30:24 ◼   ► It eventually did work. Remember I'm copying from SSD to SSD here. So it's you know, it's fine

01:30:28 ◼   ► It's far our 800 to internal SSD

01:30:30 ◼   ► It's not as if I'm waiting for a spinning disk to send the heads all over the place seeking all over

01:30:34 ◼   ► Anyway, that was terrifying and it eventually did work

01:30:36 ◼   ► So, yeah so far so good. Oh, no the final thing I didn't put this in here I spent like three days

01:30:44 ◼   ► Fighting with this damn computer. I felt like I was going back in time to OS X

01:30:49 ◼   ► Time machine and spotlight were just not happy time machine seemed happy in the beginning and because it's like oh

01:30:55 ◼   ► You know I named my computer the same as it was before I did migration assistant

01:30:59 ◼   ► It's like I told to use this disk for time machine

01:31:01 ◼   ► It's like do you want me to inherit the backups from the previous thing and I did because like basically that was you know

01:31:06 ◼   ► I had to copy the whole hard drive over there. Yes, please inherit the backup

01:31:09 ◼   ► So I don't lose all my previous versions and so it starts backing up to this thing

01:31:12 ◼   ► and I told you to do that and I noticed that like

01:31:17 ◼   ► Spotlight and Time Machine were just not ever finishing what they're supposed to be doing. Spotlight was always, you know,

01:31:23 ◼   ► seemingly indexing and the console was filling up with tons of like MD worker errors and stuff like that and Time Machine

01:31:29 ◼   ► would never actually complete a backup ever ever ever after several days of this I spent a long time staring at the console and

01:31:35 ◼   ► Googling for things and finding all these weird obscure errors and people were like, oh just nuke your spotlight

01:31:40 ◼   ► store and you know

01:31:41 ◼   ► I did all the things you can imagine doing with MD util like totally

01:31:44 ◼   ► Removing the thing, disabling spotlight, trying to let spotlight go first, trying to let time machine go first.

01:31:49 ◼   ► I don't know what their problem was, but they were totally wedged and neither one of them.

01:31:54 ◼   ► Spotlight indexing were not complete and time machine were not complete.

01:31:56 ◼   ► And that was very frustrating because I really can't basically sign off on the computer as ready for use until time machine is running.

01:32:02 ◼   ► I don't really care that much about spotlight. So I spent many days fighting with that and googling and eventually got the thing to go through.

01:32:09 ◼   ► What the hell was I don't even remember what the problem was.

01:32:12 ◼   ► It's one of those things where it's not like there was no aha moment

01:32:14 ◼   ► I you know if you like Google for all these error messages you find a million hits on Apple's discussion boards of people with the

01:32:20 ◼   ► Same problem sometimes they're benign sometimes people say oh this totally fixed it for me. Nothing

01:32:25 ◼   ► I found help me fix it eventually

01:32:27 ◼   ► I just had to go to the old school

01:32:28 ◼   ► kind of debugging where I'm using like LS OF and stuff to figure out who the hell has these files open and

01:32:33 ◼   ► Are they files that I can either delete or recopy?

01:32:38 ◼   ► one of the solutions involved me deleting my old user account that I had in that machine because

01:32:43 ◼   ► Spotlight isn't just indexing the files as a logged in user

01:32:46 ◼   ► It's indexing the files owned by all the different users at the same time and some of the console errors you're seeing are not actually

01:32:51 ◼   ► From the account you're logged into and like one of the solutions like oh make sure you log into every account update the iCloud

01:32:56 ◼   ► Stuff and I did that it didn't help like boy

01:32:58 ◼   ► It was one of those debugging problems where every solution you find you get excited

01:33:01 ◼   ► This is gonna be the thing to fix it and it doesn't but I did them all but anyway

01:33:04 ◼   ► I deleted my account from there, which took with it a lot of files that apparently of

01:33:09 ◼   ► the various spotlight metadata deeming import things like MDWorker and MDS were choking

01:33:14 ◼   ► on badly and that let it progress and eventually Spotlight indexed and when Spotlight indexed

01:33:19 ◼   ► Time Machine worked.

01:33:21 ◼   ► And it just made me think that there's no way in hell that anybody could have successfully

01:33:25 ◼   ► fixed this if they weren't the type of person who's willing to spend literally three days

01:33:31 ◼   ► just googling and cursing and googling and cursing.

01:33:36 ◼   ► And part of it is probably because like, you know, this is, I've used migration assistant

01:33:40 ◼   ► and it's like an old account that maybe like had a bunch of weird crufty things in it from

01:33:45 ◼   ► a long time ago.

01:33:46 ◼   ► But you know, people are gonna say, yeah, see, you should have just done a clean install.

01:33:50 ◼   ► This is the first time migration assistant has steered me wrong.

01:33:54 ◼   ► And really I just blame either spotlight or time machine or both for just not being more

01:33:57 ◼   ► robust.

01:33:58 ◼   ► Fine.

01:33:59 ◼   ► that you can't import, that are causing MD Worker to crash,

01:34:03 ◼   ► just move on, just power through it.

01:34:06 ◼   ► Then don't index those.

01:34:07 ◼   ► But if, and I don't even understand why Spotlight

01:34:11 ◼   ► and Time Machines seem to wedge each other in this way,

01:34:13 ◼   ► because Time Machines should work without Spotlight

01:34:15 ◼   ► and vice versa, but apparently they did.

01:34:17 ◼   ► So that was a bad sort of first couple of days experience,

01:34:20 ◼   ► but eventually we did get into a steady state

01:34:22 ◼   ► and now I have my UMTeen backups.

01:34:24 ◼   ► So I had to finally expand my backups on my Synology,

01:34:26 ◼   ► which by the way was nice and easy

01:34:28 ◼   ► because I just got to add, you know, they don't have,

01:34:31 ◼   ► it's not like Drobo where you can just add another drive

01:34:32 ◼   ► to the thing, but I just converted from RAID one to RAID five

01:34:36 ◼   ► and so from two disks to three and so got more space

01:34:38 ◼   ► and that all worked out.

01:34:40 ◼   ► - So for the fan noise thing,

01:34:42 ◼   ► going back to that for a second,

01:34:43 ◼   ► 'cause I, my iMac is almost inaudible

01:34:47 ◼   ► and Tiff's the same, you know,

01:34:48 ◼   ► so almost inaudible when it's not doing that much

01:34:51 ◼   ► and really under any load except a sustained heavy load,

01:34:55 ◼   ► like if I, you know, open up Handbrake

01:34:58 ◼   ► or if Tiff has a game running, then you will hear the fans.

01:35:01 ◼   ► But at every other time, I don't hear the fans at all.

01:35:03 ◼   ► So I'm curious, now of course,

01:35:05 ◼   ► if you had something like iStat menus installed.

01:35:09 ◼   ► - I did, I installed the thing to see the RPM.

01:35:11 ◼   ► It was like at 1200 RPM, I can hear it.

01:35:13 ◼   ► - Okay, that's 'cause I was gonna say,

01:35:14 ◼   ► mine is idling at 1200.

01:35:16 ◼   ► - It's not loud, it's not a loud fan,

01:35:18 ◼   ► it's just not inaudible, you know what I mean?

01:35:20 ◼   ► - I'm surprised though, in a room that includes a Mac Pro,

01:35:24 ◼   ► 'cause one thing we noticed,

01:35:24 ◼   ► Tiff and I went from two Mac Pros to two iMacs,

01:35:28 ◼   ► and when you would turn off the Mac Pro,

01:35:33 ◼   ► leaving the iMac behind, it was clear as day,

01:35:37 ◼   ► like when we had one and one for like a day or two,

01:35:39 ◼   ► the difference was clear as day,

01:35:41 ◼   ► like that the Mac Pro was so,

01:35:44 ◼   ► which we always thought was quiet, relatively speaking,

01:35:47 ◼   ► but it so easily would mask the noise of the iMac.

01:35:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, well my Mac Pro is asleep most of the time.

01:35:53 ◼   ► It does, the closest thing to the iMac is the PS4,

01:35:58 ◼   ► but that's also asleep unless someone's playing it.

01:36:00 ◼   ► But really I can only hear the iMac

01:36:02 ◼   ► when I'm sitting in front of it,

01:36:03 ◼   ► but that's when it annoys me.

01:36:04 ◼   ► Like, what does that sound?

01:36:05 ◼   ► Oh, it's the stupid iMac.

01:36:06 ◼   ► Again, not loud at all, but I just feel like it should,

01:36:09 ◼   ► like the MacBook Air was literally inaudible

01:36:11 ◼   ► when the computer was idle.

01:36:13 ◼   ► And if you could hear it at all,

01:36:14 ◼   ► then it was like Crashplant was grinding

01:36:16 ◼   ► into the background or doing something like that.

01:36:18 ◼   ► And this is close to inaudible, but not.

01:36:21 ◼   ► And so it's not that big of a deal,

01:36:23 ◼   ► but it would be nice if it just,

01:36:25 ◼   ► like they just need to put an even bigger,

01:36:27 ◼   ► lower RPM fan in there.

01:36:28 ◼   ► It's not like you don't have room.

01:36:29 ◼   ► Plenty of space to spread out.

01:36:31 ◼   ► Big, lazy fan blades turning it like 100 RPM, go for it.

01:36:36 ◼   ► - Nope, you can't have it

01:36:37 ◼   ► 'cause you just said that you like the thin edge

01:36:39 ◼   ► 'cause you see it from the side sometimes.

01:36:40 ◼   ► That's why we can't have nice things, John.

01:36:42 ◼   ► That's why we can't have big, quiet fans.

01:36:43 ◼   ► - Even with the thin edge,

01:36:44 ◼   ► there's enough room for like a Frisbee in there.

01:36:46 ◼   ► It's not like, it doesn't get thin.

01:36:48 ◼   ► This is a big, hunky screen.

01:36:50 ◼   ► Oh yeah, and speaking of that,

01:36:51 ◼   ► So like, her computer was always the one that we had not sleeping, because it was plugged

01:36:56 ◼   ► into AC all the time and I always wanted to have one computer that's awake all the time.

01:36:59 ◼   ► The Synology took over a lot of that role, but her computer was always awake.

01:37:03 ◼   ► And with the iMac, it was weird to see in OS X, I don't know if this is a new development

01:37:07 ◼   ► because I haven't had iMacs for a while, but like with a built-in screen computer, there's

01:37:11 ◼   ► not separate settings for display sleep and computer sleep.

01:37:13 ◼   ► There's one setting that says, "Do you want me to prevent the computer from going to sleep

01:37:18 ◼   ► when the display sleeps?"

01:37:19 ◼   ► And there's one slider that says when should the display go to sleep.

01:37:21 ◼   ► I would like to say display go to sleep 10 minutes, computer go to sleep one hour like

01:37:25 ◼   ► you used to back in the olden days and how I can on my Mac or my Mac Pro rather.

01:37:30 ◼   ► But you can't all you get is the checkbox.

01:37:32 ◼   ► And I need to just look into the plist settings and just change this to the way I want it.

01:37:36 ◼   ► You can also, you can set a hot corner to do immediate display sleep.

01:37:40 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah.

01:37:41 ◼   ► And then you just have to dial to, I know, it's just like I'm used to the sliders the

01:37:45 ◼   ► way they used to be.

01:37:46 ◼   ► I've also noticed some spooky behavior where occasionally,

01:37:48 ◼   ► you leave the computer, no one's touching it,

01:37:50 ◼   ► no one's doing anything, and the display will go off.

01:37:53 ◼   ► And whether it's sleeping or not,

01:37:54 ◼   ► you'll come back a little bit later

01:37:55 ◼   ► and the display will be on.

01:37:56 ◼   ► And I've been sitting in the room when it's happened.

01:37:57 ◼   ► I've been playing Destiny.

01:37:58 ◼   ► I look over and the screen turns on.

01:38:00 ◼   ► I'm like, "Why are you turning on?"

01:38:01 ◼   ► And wake for network access is off.

01:38:03 ◼   ► No weird USB hubs are attached.

01:38:05 ◼   ► The console doesn't say anything about what the thing is.

01:38:07 ◼   ► It's like, "Did you wake up or did the screen?"

01:38:09 ◼   ► And sometimes the screen just won't go,

01:38:11 ◼   ► the interval will go by.

01:38:12 ◼   ► 15 minutes will go by and the screen won't go off.

01:38:14 ◼   ► So I've got my eye on it on sleep issues.

01:38:16 ◼   ► Like I don't care 'cause it's basically on

01:38:18 ◼   ► all the time anyway, but I don't know

01:38:20 ◼   ► what's going on over there.

01:38:22 ◼   ► - Whatever it's worth, I know the issue you're talking about.

01:38:24 ◼   ► I've seen that in the past on other computers,

01:38:27 ◼   ► but I have never seen that on either of our iMacs.

01:38:30 ◼   ► So I don't think it's an issue with the iMac.

01:38:34 ◼   ► I think it's an issue with probably some,

01:38:36 ◼   ► maybe it's that weird USB device.

01:38:39 ◼   ► Maybe it's a flaky enclosure.

01:38:41 ◼   ► - That thing is unplugged now,

01:38:43 ◼   ► So that's not a factor anymore.

01:38:46 ◼   ► Maybe it's the firewires?

01:38:47 ◼   ► No, the firewires stuff's powered off.

01:38:49 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:38:49 ◼   ► Anyway, I've got to figure out how to make this thing happen.

01:38:51 ◼   ► I haven't seen it happen too much.

01:38:52 ◼   ► It just happened once or twice.

01:38:53 ◼   ► And I think one morning my wife came down and said,

01:38:55 ◼   ► why was the computer screen on?

01:38:56 ◼   ► So maybe it was on all night.

01:38:58 ◼   ► Anyway, it's behaving now.

01:39:00 ◼   ► It's full of windows.

01:39:01 ◼   ► We'll see if it just-- yeah, it's her computer.

01:39:03 ◼   ► It can't sleep.

01:39:04 ◼   ► It's like when you eat a bunch of chili

01:39:05 ◼   ► and go to bed when you're like 35.

01:39:07 ◼   ► Like your computer has so many windows,

01:39:10 ◼   ► it just can't go to sleep.

01:39:12 ◼   ► My computer, it's her computer.

01:39:14 ◼   ► It doesn't have that many things on it.

01:39:16 ◼   ► - So only 50?

01:39:17 ◼   ► - Yeah, she uses some windows.

01:39:19 ◼   ► Well, there's one other thing with the iMac

01:39:21 ◼   ► that I can't remember.

01:39:23 ◼   ► Oh, this is when it came time to order this.

01:39:26 ◼   ► And I was going through the order configuration thing.

01:39:28 ◼   ► I asked my wife if she wanted, which mouse she wanted,

01:39:32 ◼   ► or if she wanted to try the Magic Trackpad.

01:39:34 ◼   ► And to my surprise, she said she wanted to try

01:39:36 ◼   ► the Magic Trackpad because she already had a mouse

01:39:37 ◼   ► that she liked.

01:39:38 ◼   ► And we got the extended keyboard, which is still in the box

01:39:41 ◼   ► because she likes that keyboard

01:39:42 ◼   ► She's just using her old one so we have an extra now, but anyway she picked the magic trackpad and

01:39:46 ◼   ► Not for me still like as magic as it may be I still use the mouse. I'm just not gonna be a trackpad person

01:39:53 ◼   ► So far it remains to be seen if she will make the transition

01:39:58 ◼   ► She's been trying it and messing around with it, but I think if I look over there now

01:40:03 ◼   ► I think the mouse is still next to the keyboard

01:40:05 ◼   ► So I think she like pulls the the magic trackpad down and uses it

01:40:08 ◼   ► And I don't know I could tell when she uses it cuz I do that talk talk talk of the of the

01:40:13 ◼   ► Matter-of-track probably sounds different than the mouse, but anyway. There's one in the house now and

01:40:18 ◼   ► She was a curious enough to try it, but I don't know if it'll stick

01:40:21 ◼   ► [BEEP]