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135: Uncomfortable in My Pants

 

00:00:00   Yeah, and I'm listening to top four and it's driving me insane because Margo is the worst

00:00:03   Podcast host of a show with top four ever. Oh my god

00:00:07   I thought the same thing and I'm too nice a guy to say it

00:00:10   I don't understand how Tiff has the patience of a saint like it would just pick four things like make him write it down on

00:00:15   A piece of paper everything is number five what everything can't be number five and then within the top four

00:00:21   It's like this is my number one and then all these are tied for number two. That's not how top four works

00:00:27   The show is though and I like the fact at the end of the episode you admitted it and like explain like I realized it

00:00:32   But I'm I'm not able to even follow the simple formula and Tiff is like she's fine with it

00:00:36   Yep, how she can live with you. Well, she you know, she tolerates me. Yeah, she does

00:00:41   I was like she's not even frustrated by it. Like the show is called top four

00:00:44   I'm still bitter that you didn't bring up transport tycoon. I'm so angry at you for that

00:00:51   No, that's not what he picked. It's not your top four. It's their top four. Yeah, but I know it's his top four

00:00:55   Apparently it's not it's probably that one was probably at number 15 with every other game in existence

00:00:59   But I couldn't agree with you more John

00:01:02   Marco you've got to get a grip on the top four

00:01:04   It's so easy to do you just see if I did not write number one two three and four and you write words next each

00:01:09   one of them

00:01:11   So easy to do TIFF does it TIFF does it see how watch her do it if you need like help

00:01:17   She does such a good job. She has a list of all the ones she considered. She's got her top four

00:01:22   She has reasons that you're just like, "I don't know, TV shows? I like some of them."

00:01:26   Well, I like this one a lot. And then there's these 34 other ones that are somewhere down below.

00:01:33   It's difficult to talk you into changing your mind halfway through the show.

00:01:37   And she's like, "You're just saying that because I liked it."

00:01:41   You're like, "No, no, no, I've changed my mind at this moment."

00:01:44   Boy, good thing she's on that show. She's really carrying you.

00:01:46   I agree.

00:01:49   Oh my god, that's so true.

00:01:51   true. Oh, Jon, I love you.

00:01:53   I enjoyed it. What is the next episode going to be about?

00:01:57   All right, let's start with, we've learned that not only does this universe have many,

00:02:03   many, many, many, many tap-to-click wizards, but as I believe Jon has phrased in the show

00:02:09   notes, we have also found that there are quite a few CEC unicorns.

00:02:14   Yeah, it's kind of an oxymoron because the whole thing of unicorn is like the one rare,

00:02:18   you know, the last unicorn, but if there's a lot of them, they're obviously not unicorns.

00:02:21   But anyway, yeah, lots of CEC unicorns. The last show, I expressed my general disdain

00:02:26   for CEC and my frustration with it almost working. Like that's the thing about it. Like

00:02:32   it almost works. It works some of the time. You can kind of get it to work. You're going

00:02:35   to think you have everything set up and it's working perfectly. And then things will go

00:02:39   wrong in a way that you can't debug and you maybe you'll never be able to get them to

00:02:43   work again. That's been my experience with CEC across many different manufacturers in

00:02:46   many years. so i asked, "anyone use cec and have good things to say about it?" and i did get a bunch

00:02:52   of people tweeting that they have, you know, i have a mixed component setup with components

00:02:56   from different companies and it works for me, i have a complete panasonic setup and it works for

00:03:01   me, so probably maybe fewer than the tap to click wizards, but a surprising number of people are

00:03:07   using cec and are happy with it. a lot of them admittedly have fairly simple needs, like they're

00:03:12   They're like, I turn this thing on and it switches my input

00:03:14   and turns the other thing on.

00:03:16   I think as the number of devices you connect increases

00:03:19   and as you have greater expectations,

00:03:21   like not only does it have to just auto switch inputs

00:03:24   and turn on the television and stuff,

00:03:26   but do a bunch of other things

00:03:27   in terms of changing surround settings

00:03:29   or whatever other things it can do,

00:03:31   then maybe it goes more awry.

00:03:33   And maybe it's gotten better since I bought my TV

00:03:35   and receiver a couple of years ago, so who knows?

00:03:37   But anyway, if you want to be optimistic about CEC,

00:03:41   There are people out there who are using it successfully and happily and it's working for them

00:03:44   and

00:03:46   Robert Engdahl wrote in to explain why CEC might be so terrible

00:03:50   He is an ASIC designer. What does that stand for guys? That is oh, I don't remember offhand. Is it the shoe?

00:03:56   Nicely done. Yeah, I can't believe I don't know this acronym off the top of my head Australian Securities and Investments Commission. Yeah

00:04:04   Application specific integrated circuit. Yeah, how can I not pull that out? I'm getting old guys. All right. Anyway,

00:04:10   It's an ASIC engineer with HDMI experience.

00:04:15   And he says the CEC protocol is crappy because only a limited set of commands are defined

00:04:22   in the protocol, and the rest is entirely up to the manufacturer of the device.

00:04:26   So there's a small set of commands that are defined, and then device makers can make up

00:04:30   anything they want.

00:04:31   And so I assume, like, Panasonic will make up a bunch of stuff that works with its own

00:04:35   stuff, and Sony will make up stuff that works with its own stuff.

00:04:37   top of that the spec for CEC says even the defined commands you don't have to implement them they're

00:04:43   not mandatory so even though there are a small number of defined commands and you can extend

00:04:47   them you don't even have to implement the defined commands you could for example implement your own

00:04:51   volume up down or input switching thing that works with your receiver not implement the the standard

00:04:55   one. HDMI 2.0 apparently fixes this but HDMI 2.0 isn't out yet on a lot of hardware so CEC could

00:05:04   could get better in HDMI 2.0 because they kind of learned

00:05:06   from the past that if you let the manufacturers do whatever

00:05:08   they want with your protocol, they'll

00:05:10   do things that are not conducive to mixing components,

00:05:14   and maybe not even conducive to mixing with their own components

00:05:16   from distantly separated by time,

00:05:19   and not having the defined commands be mandatory.

00:05:23   Like, I don't even know what kind of standard is that.

00:05:25   If you don't have to implement the defined commands,

00:05:26   then you can make up your own commands,

00:05:27   it's basically the Wild West.

00:05:29   So that is the explanation for why

00:05:32   people who have bad experiences with CDC have bad experiences.

00:05:35   All right. Moving on, we had yet another excellent post from dear friend of the show, _DavidSmith.

00:05:44   My favorite David Smith blog posts are when he goes spelunking into data that he has gathered

00:05:49   or can discover and figure out little tidbits or perhaps confirm little tidbits that people

00:05:57   theorize or maybe don't even realize is true.

00:06:00   And so the blog post that is in question, which relates to

00:06:03   what we had lamented last episode, is entitled "16

00:06:08   Gigabytes is a Bad User Experience." And in this post,

00:06:12   Underscore goes through his homegrown analytics that he

00:06:17   has in his very popular app, Audiobooks, that's not a super

00:06:22   duper nerdy app and so it's got a really good kind of install base of regular people and

00:06:30   he has these graphs of reported free space for 16 gig phones and if you look at these

00:06:38   graphs it's abundantly obvious that almost all these phones have almost no available

00:06:43   free space and that just doesn't seem good.

00:06:47   So was it John that pulled out a couple of these choice quotes?

00:06:49   Would you like to go over them?

00:06:50   So the first thing is like I said, this is these are just the customers of one application

00:06:55   But it's not a super nerdy application

00:06:57   But anyway, the this is the the premises discussion is this is just among people who bought this one app from this one developer

00:07:03   We're hoping it's representative. This is the best data we have

00:07:05   It seems like it could be representative if anything. It might skew more nerdy. I don't know. Anyway, this is among

00:07:12   iPhone 6 and 6 plus customers only

00:07:15   43% of iPhone 6 and 6 plus customers have 16 gig models

00:07:19   That's what I was getting at in the last show when I was saying it used to be that the most popular

00:07:23   Model of whatever Apple product was always the most expensive fanciest one and that started to change

00:07:28   I don't know at this point like a decade ago

00:07:30   But anyway, it changed and now since Apple is a mass-market company and sells tons and tons of things

00:07:35   Obviously, it's going to skew more towards how you'd expect but even I was surprised to see that 43% of iPhone 6 6 plus customers

00:07:41   got the 16 gig model because

00:07:44   That's the newest fanciest iPhone. It's not like we're saying that the people buying last year's the year before phone

00:07:50   They're cheaping out

00:07:50   These are the people who want the new iPhone and just want it like I said the last show

00:07:54   Want to find the cheapest possible way they can get it so 16 gig model now among the people with a 16 gig iPhone 6 and 6

00:08:01   pluses

00:08:02   37% of them have less than a gig of space available and less than a gig of space available

00:08:06   Just is basically full like less than a gig is

00:08:08   Almost anything can happen and it could push you over the edge

00:08:12   You are you know that's the point where OS 10 would start popping up dialogues in your face and saying

00:08:16   Your disk looks like it's almost full you you know do something about that

00:08:19   and

00:08:22   The other theory is like okay well fine, but I bet everybody fills up their phones well

00:08:26   Among people who have 64 gig phones only 1% of them have filled them to that amount so it's not as if space

00:08:33   It doesn't matter. It's not like lanes on a highway where all you just make the phone bigger

00:08:36   Oh people are just gonna fill it there is a certain amount of stuff that people have or expected to encounter during the useful lifetime

00:08:42   of the phone and according to these stats if you have a 64 gig phone only 1% of the

00:08:46   people have basically filled it and among 16 gig phones almost 40% have filled it.

00:08:51   And then finally taking these customers the ones who have the 6 and 6 plus who have filled

00:08:57   it up you know multiplying the percentages together who have filled it up this is 17%

00:09:03   of the customers of this audiobooks application are basically walking around all day as underscore

00:09:08   puts it with a, I'm not going to be able to pronounce this, Damoclean sword dangling over

00:09:11   their head. Did I get that right? You know, the big sword that swings back and forth,

00:09:15   a ground poe.

00:09:16   Is it Damoclean? I don't know. I'm going out on a limb here.

00:09:19   Sword of Damocles. Anyway.

00:09:20   I don't even know what that was.

00:09:22   Yeah, you can look it up, Marco. Get some culture. Yeah, so 17% of the customers. Now,

00:09:29   is this representative of all iPhone users in the entire world? We don't know. This is

00:09:33   It's one developers customers for one kind of general interest app only the iPhone 6 6 plus things

00:09:39   but these numbers do not look promising like I

00:09:42   Again, I would think that

00:09:44   Underscore's customers who skew even more nerdy because he moves in nerdy circles. He is nerdy some of the apps

00:09:49   He sells are nerdy

00:09:50   But other ones are like pedometer plus plus and the weather app and stuff and the audiobooks app are just general

00:09:55   You know general interest applications

00:09:57   Again Apple we've said this before Apple has the real numbers

00:10:01   We don't have the real numbers, so that impairs our ability to definitively shame them for selling 16 gig models.

00:10:07   But,

00:10:09   the little data that we have, you know, we're not Apple and they're not sharing this information. The data that we can glean,

00:10:13   here's some more support for the theory that a 16 gig phone is not a good experience for users.

00:10:17   Yeah, it's, it seems completely obvious to me that this is a terrible, terrible, terrible decision.

00:10:24   And just like you said, Jon, you know, we don't have all the data that Apple has, but

00:10:28   Gosh, I would love to see what metric they're using to justify this and and if it's not something related to profit or

00:10:37   Margins or something along those lines one of those business II terms that I'm not very good with then money. Yeah money

00:10:44   Money, I want to know what what this metric is if it isn't just money because it seems so obvious to me

00:10:51   This is just a terrible terrible terrible decision. I mean, it's look I

00:10:56   I'm totally in agreement with you Casey.

00:10:58   I mean, it's, you can look at all the different

00:11:01   possible explanations of why they might reasonably

00:11:03   have done this, but none of them are particularly strong,

00:11:06   especially for a very high profit product like the iPhone,

00:11:10   even at the 16 gig capacity.

00:11:13   So the reality is, Apple very well could ship that device

00:11:17   with 32 or even 64 at that price point

00:11:20   and barely affect the margins of that product at all.

00:11:24   But I think the reason they do it, as we said before,

00:11:26   is not because they can't afford to put 16 gigs

00:11:29   in a $650 phone, right, is that what it is?

00:11:33   - Something like that, yeah.

00:11:34   - Right, it's not because of that.

00:11:36   It's because if they did that, it would hurt sales

00:11:38   of the one that's $100 more, and so it would drive

00:11:41   their average sale price down in all likelihoods.

00:11:44   So that is why it's not done, it's simple as that.

00:11:47   Any other explanation is really just grasping at straws,

00:11:51   trying to make an excuse, that is the real reason.

00:11:54   I completely agree. I could go on forever about this, but I feel like we've kind of

00:11:58   beaten this horse, I should say.

00:12:02   Moving on, let's talk about the iPhone 6s battery. I guess we had talked about it getting

00:12:08   a little bit smaller last episode, is that right? One way or another, it got smaller,

00:12:12   and the numbers say that the iPhone 6 had a 1,810 milliamp-hour battery. The iPhone

00:12:19   6S has 1,715, so almost exactly

00:12:22   100 milliamp hour difference.

00:12:24   And that is about a 5% loss

00:12:28   in terms of the new iPhone's 6S battery.

00:12:32   Or I guess that's just the 6S, I'm sorry, not the 6S Plus,

00:12:36   which is a little bit of a loss,

00:12:37   but presumably the different chips on the device,

00:12:42   and they did a shrink, didn't they, on this one?

00:12:44   - Yeah, they did.

00:12:45   Remember in the keynote, they wanted to say

00:12:47   they did a shrink, but they did it in like

00:12:48   regular person speak instead of jargon.

00:12:51   And so it confused all the nerds.

00:12:53   Like, wait, are they trying to say shrink?

00:12:55   Yeah, I'm pretty sure they did a shrink.

00:12:57   The other thing they do very often is reduce the number of chips, get chips that combine

00:13:02   functionality that previously took two separate chips.

00:13:04   I'm assuming that they can absorb this 5% loss combined with the shrink and the efficiencies

00:13:09   of just a second crack at the same size form factor.

00:13:12   So it probably should be fine.

00:13:13   But again, I just wanted to put some hard numbers on like the last show where like,

00:13:16   "Oh, it looks like that vibration and taptic engine thing takes up a lot of room."

00:13:19   Well, quantify it, and quantifying it, it looks like it's about 5%.

00:13:22   And by the way, these numbers are pulled from Apple's videos, where they like pan over the

00:13:28   innards and show the battery, and on the battery is stamped the power rating.

00:13:34   And of course the iPhone 6 everybody knows from teardowns and stuff.

00:13:37   So...

00:13:38   Although, this also leaked beforehand.

00:13:40   This information leaked weeks before, actually.

00:13:44   And I believe the leak was right on.

00:13:45   - Yeah, they usually are, but I just want to give people

00:13:49   the source because if it turns out that the video was wrong

00:13:52   because someone photoshopped that number on there

00:13:54   and leaks were wrong and the real battery is different,

00:13:56   you know, anyway.

00:13:58   - I mean, one thing to consider, first of all,

00:14:01   this, the 5% loss of raw capacity and saying

00:14:05   it's the same battery life, that could also,

00:14:08   even if you ignore any kind of component changes,

00:14:11   they made iOS 9 more battery efficient.

00:14:13   And so they can say, oh, it gets X hours

00:14:17   just because it's a new OS.

00:14:19   They do the same thing on the Macs or the laptops.

00:14:21   They also, I don't know if they're including

00:14:24   in their battery runtime estimates,

00:14:26   if they are including the low power mode

00:14:28   being turned on at 10% or whatever it is,

00:14:30   20 or 10 that it turns on.

00:14:32   - Does that, is that automatically turned on?

00:14:34   - It prompts you to turn it on.

00:14:35   But I'm guessing if you wanna fudge a number a little bit

00:14:39   and really optimize your number,

00:14:41   they would probably do that,

00:14:42   and they could argue that that's fair

00:14:43   because most people would do that anyway.

00:14:45   So it could be including those things

00:14:49   where it wasn't before.

00:14:51   So keep that in mind when you read the official estimates.

00:14:54   We'll see what happens in practice.

00:14:56   I am still very skeptical.

00:14:57   I, oh man, I just went to XOXO

00:15:01   and I took the 6 Plus with me.

00:15:04   And I've been using the 6 all year

00:15:06   except for when I took another trip

00:15:08   or another series of trips.

00:15:09   But I went back to the 6 Plus for this trip

00:15:11   battery life primarily and wow it is glorious and then going back to the 6 after a week

00:15:17   of the 6 plus again oh my god it's so it's so bad I wish they would meaningfully improve

00:15:24   the battery life but it's very clear that they think this is good enough and I don't

00:15:30   and so we just disagree on that I will say one thing though that you know in on this

00:15:36   this battery topic, we've talked in the past about how the reason the phone might be this

00:15:42   skinny and light and have a mediocre battery life is, John, I believe what you term the

00:15:46   naked robotic core theory, which is that the ideal phone is this really tiny thing that

00:15:52   is so small that you can put it in a case if you want some other ability, whether it's

00:15:57   more durability, more battery life, whatever cases can offer. You can put it in a case

00:16:04   to fix the shortcomings of being small.

00:16:06   And then if you want a really small phone,

00:16:07   you can just carry the naked phone.

00:16:09   And so I looked after this trip over the last few days.

00:16:14   I've been trying to research iPhone battery cases.

00:16:17   And I had one in the past and it was so big and clunky,

00:16:20   I never really used it.

00:16:22   And it doesn't fit my current phone now,

00:16:24   but I look to see what's out there today

00:16:26   and they're just so, so terrible.

00:16:29   And I feel like one of the biggest arguments

00:16:31   against the naked robotic core theory

00:16:33   is just how bad all the other cases are.

00:16:37   Like if you want to give this phone 50% more battery life,

00:16:41   you have to add so much bulk and so much size,

00:16:45   way more than if they would have just built it in

00:16:47   to begin with.

00:16:48   Plus, it's this big like, you know, plastic thing

00:16:50   with some stupid logo on the back that's so ugly and tacky

00:16:53   that no one's heard of from some case company who cares.

00:16:56   Right, you have to care in this stupid logo.

00:16:58   And then you have this,

00:17:00   then you have like this giant plug on the bottom,

00:17:03   the phone has to be extended by like a half inch just to have room for this plug. It's

00:17:10   the bulkiest, most terrible decision ever. And so this is, I think, like a huge strike

00:17:15   against the naked robotic core theory is that by doing that, by going that direction, and

00:17:23   by, let's say you want more battery, okay, buy a battery case. That argument falls apart

00:17:28   when all the battery cases are varying degrees of terrible.

00:17:30   So I generally agree with you.

00:17:34   I do have a Lenmar battery case, which I'll put the link

00:17:38   in the show notes for what I have.

00:17:41   And I use it only when I know that I'm going to need some

00:17:46   extra juice, which is almost never.

00:17:48   The only time I typically use it is at WWDC and when I go to

00:17:52   football games when my phone is just desperately melting

00:17:56   its own battery trying to search for service.

00:18:00   And it is exactly as you describe.

00:18:02   It is enormous, it is bulky, it was not cheap.

00:18:07   I don't remember how much it was.

00:18:08   It was cheaper than the Mophie was at the time.

00:18:11   And I chose it for more than just frugality.

00:18:15   I forget why else I chose it.

00:18:16   Maybe the battery was a little bit bigger.

00:18:18   It adds a crapload of bulk to a phone that I still think is a little bit big for my taste.

00:18:25   But that being said, just today I got an email from Mophie where they have announced a new

00:18:30   new juice pack, which is their line of batteries, called the Juice Pack Reserve.

00:18:35   And we'll put that link in the show notes, and I've just put it in the chat room.

00:18:38   This one is a very, very, very slimline battery that does not look to add very much bulk at

00:18:44   all.

00:18:45   In fact, in the email, which I don't have in front of me, they had in, they had, oh,

00:18:49   here it is, now on the same page.

00:18:51   They show that without the Juice Pack, it's 6.86 millimeters, and with this Juice Pack

00:18:59   reserve, it is 14.79 millimeters, whereas with the average, as they say it, or typical

00:19:05   as they say a protective case, it would be 15 millimeters. So in other words, it is no

00:19:09   thicker than a normal case you would put on your phone by whatever they define normal.

00:19:15   This actually looks extremely appealing to me, and I would absolutely buy one if it wasn't

00:19:18   for the fact that I already have a case. So this might be the exception that proves the

00:19:22   rule. Generally speaking, though, I think you hit the nail on the head, they are all

00:19:25   terrible and huge and bulky and annoying.

00:19:27   They're just terrible and huge to people like us though. Like you I mean think forget battery cases just think cases

00:19:33   We all see people with cases on their phones that we consider hideous and huge and ridiculous

00:19:38   I've seen people with non battery cases that are bigger than any battery case that I've seen that are

00:19:43   Colored like the rainbow that that might as well have like fins and wedges poking out of them and people love them

00:19:48   So there's no accounting for taste, right? So that set that aside

00:19:51   the other thing I would say is that uh, as

00:19:53   Every time this comes up I say it

00:19:56   There's a place in Apple's line for a phone that is thicker and has more battery life. That is not the 6 plus

00:20:01   They don't currently make that but if they keep diversifying maybe eventually they will and that would satisfy Marco's need for a Johnny I've

00:20:08   designed hopefully non teflon coated

00:20:10   Nice looking phone where he doesn't have to deal with someone else's thing slapping on to he doesn't have to deal with it extending the port

00:20:17   He's not a deal with a different logo and all the things that he finds distasteful about it

00:20:20   But I would say that people like him and people like me are in the vast

00:20:25   Minority based on what I see out in the world of how much people love their super ugly like a wallet credit card

00:20:30   You know card jack combined whatever like bottle opener iPhone cases that people have on it like

00:20:37   Seriously, I of all the problems that that's I would think that people consider that a feature like this

00:20:44   That is the one thing of the naked robotic core allows is allows people to exercise their different tastes

00:20:50   let's say. You can exercise your taste with a sticker. Please don't encourage stickers.

00:20:55   Besides, they'll probably like melt to the thing because it gets so warm as you noted

00:20:58   when you used it without a case, right? Yes. Yeah, I think I've turned into a case person

00:21:03   with the 6 simply because, and I can choose the Apple leather case because it's really

00:21:08   slim and feels very good. I always like the feel of leather. Ooh, title. Even that, like

00:21:14   I, because the 6 is just such a bad phone to hold.

00:21:18   And I've heard rumblings that the new phone

00:21:23   is significantly grippier, but I have my doubts

00:21:26   that just because of the shape, like it's the same shape.

00:21:29   And the 6 is a problem for two main reasons.

00:21:33   One is the shape, one is the slickness of the metal.

00:21:36   And so even if they've made the slickness

00:21:38   of the metal better, the shape is such that

00:21:41   it's still probably gonna be very hard to hold.

00:21:43   You tell me you didn't get to hold one at XOXO?

00:21:45   You don't have to say who let you hold it.

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00:24:14   - So before we get off this topic,

00:24:17   one thing I meant to bring up earlier

00:24:18   was the idea of an Apple branded battery case.

00:24:22   Apple has been making,

00:24:24   seems like more and more accessories lately.

00:24:27   But yeah, there's third party everything,

00:24:29   but there's also a first party, a lot of stuff.

00:24:32   They brought the dock back recently.

00:24:33   The new one I think even has a headphone port

00:24:35   the back of it and you can get it in pink I mean so excuse me rose gold it's

00:24:40   so pink just own it just say it it's pink yeah I haven't seen them person yet

00:24:44   I assume it's it's pink in the same way that the gold one is gold and the answer

00:24:48   is like barely but anyway no no no no it's it's really pink yeah so I haven't

00:24:52   seen the phone but I did go to the Apple Store Sunday oh I should do this quick

00:24:57   well I'll get to that in a second anyway I went to the up store Sunday saw the

00:25:00   watch the rose gold watch it was pink it was not rose gold it was pink it's very

00:25:05   much pink. I mean, it does look like it's roughly the same saturation as the gold, but

00:25:12   it is unquestionably, unashamedly pink. And I don't know why they don't just call it pink.

00:25:19   You would never look at this color and say, "That's rose gold." No, it's pink, and pink

00:25:22   is great. I don't know why you wouldn't just own that.

00:25:25   Yeah, I think it looks good. I really honestly do, so I agree with you. Anyway, I'm sorry,

00:25:29   we totally hijacked your thought here, Jon.

00:25:31   Yeah, I don't remember where I was in my thought.

00:25:33   I think what I was getting at was, oh yeah, Apple making battery cases.

00:25:36   Apple makes a bunch of stuff.

00:25:37   They make leather cases.

00:25:38   They don't just make even one case anymore.

00:25:40   They make a leather case.

00:25:41   They have the silicone case.

00:25:43   They have those weird things with the holes in them on the back of the old iPod touches.

00:25:47   They have the docks.

00:25:50   Why wouldn't they make a battery case eventually?

00:25:52   And if they did, the idea would be like, well, if Apple made one, Marco would like it.

00:25:56   But based on the accessories that they've made lately, I don't think that's guaranteed.

00:26:01   Maybe they would have a higher chance of making a battery case that Marco would not find objectionable

00:26:06   But I mean just look at those docks where your entire phone is sitting on the lightning port. That's not great

00:26:12   It's kind of wobbly and you know, it makes me a little nervous and the leather case is good

00:26:17   Most of their cases are okay. I always like the bumper remember the the bumper they made

00:26:22   I thought yes, it was a really nice case because it had like the shiny edges

00:26:25   But then it had rubber on the parts that you gripped and had metal buttons in them

00:26:28   anyway

00:26:30   If that ever happens, maybe it will help Marco with his battery woes.

00:26:35   Yeah, I like the bumper as well.

00:26:37   But I will say that for the 5S and the 6, I have been rocking the Apple leather case.

00:26:42   I have gotten it in black because that's the way it should be done.

00:26:46   And beyond that, it's probably the only one that doesn't eventually turn black anyway

00:26:50   because it's already black.

00:26:52   I quite like this Apple leather case.

00:26:55   If I was brave enough, I would roll without a case at all, but I'm not that brave.

00:27:00   And although I have yet to break an iPhone, it is only a matter of time, and now I've

00:27:04   probably jinxed what I've purchased, which we'll talk about in a minute.

00:27:08   So I will hopefully stick with this Apple leather case going forward.

00:27:12   Before we talk about our purchases from this past weekend, I wanted to do a very brief,

00:27:16   very quick follow-up with regard to my crescent moon on my iPhone 6.

00:27:22   Again, if you haven't been keeping up and following along, that is, there was a crescent

00:27:28   Moon kind of thing in the front-facing camera.

00:27:31   I believe they call that the FaceTime camera on my iPhone 6.

00:27:34   I realized that we were running out of warranty time for those of us who purchased on launch

00:27:39   day like I did.

00:27:40   And so I took my iPhone into the local Apple store this past Sunday.

00:27:47   I mentioned the Crescent Moon.

00:27:48   The Genius didn't even blink twice.

00:27:50   He said, "Okay, we will get you a new screen.

00:27:53   It'll take about 45 minutes."

00:27:55   He took my phone from me.

00:27:57   Interestingly, he forced me to turn off, like not in a jerky way, I should say he asked me to turn off Find My iPhone, which

00:28:04   I guess isn't a bad thing, but it struck me as a little bit odd. Like if all they're doing is replacing the screen,

00:28:11   why does that really matter? Maybe in case they screw something up and then need to replace the phone? I don't know.

00:28:17   We had people write in about that too. One person was super angry about having to, you know,

00:28:21   being told to like enter his passwords and unlock everything and not encrypt it and turn off like whatever.

00:28:26   I'm always nervous about what is actually going on.

00:28:30   It's like when the Grinch takes your Christmas tree back

00:28:32   to repair it, right?

00:28:34   I'm giving you my phone and then a little while later

00:28:37   you're going to emerge with another thing

00:28:39   that you say is my phone.

00:28:40   Are any part of those phones related?

00:28:43   Am I just getting a new refurbished phone?

00:28:44   Did you really replace the screen?

00:28:46   Does this thing come apart and go back together

00:28:50   in a way that is, you know,

00:28:52   is it meant to come apart and go back together?

00:28:54   Is it possible to even do that?

00:28:55   Is it a one way assembly?

00:28:56   I'm always nervous about things like this.

00:28:58   That's why I always just really hope I win the lottery

00:29:02   and get something that doesn't have any problems.

00:29:04   So it's like my old laptop.

00:29:05   Like once I opened up my old laptop

00:29:07   to replace the hard drive,

00:29:08   and it's never been the same again.

00:29:10   (laughing)

00:29:11   I'm not good at doing that.

00:29:12   Presumably they're better at the Apple store

00:29:14   where they do it over and over and over again,

00:29:15   but I'm always nervous about that.

00:29:17   And the smaller the thing gets, the more, yeah, I don't know.

00:29:20   They've gotta be better than I am, but still.

00:29:22   - As far as I can tell, I did get the same phone back.

00:29:24   I mean, I didn't need to restore from backup all the--

00:29:28   - No, no, but that's, but if they have you turn off

00:29:29   all that stuff, that's the whole thing.

00:29:30   You don't, you know, like what you should have done

00:29:32   is put like a tiny microscopic, you know,

00:29:35   etching of your initials in some part of the case

00:29:36   that they say they're not replacing

00:29:37   and see it's still there when you get it back.

00:29:39   - Put a hair across the headphone port

00:29:41   and if it's nice, you'll know.

00:29:43   - I mean, it's hard to tell because this thing

00:29:45   has lived in a case pretty much since day one,

00:29:47   but it does look good, I'm not gonna lie.

00:29:50   I mean, I didn't inspect it for scuffs

00:29:53   apparently the genius had noted that it had. I do know that where there was a little scratch in the

00:29:58   screen there isn't a scratch anymore, but that makes sense because they replaced the screen.

00:30:02   But I had a couple of beta apps on my phone and those still worked. All the stuff that was once

00:30:07   on my phone is still on my phone. I mean, maybe Apple can do like a bit-for-bit restore of what's

00:30:14   on the phone, but everything that I can see that indicates that all I got was a screen is what

00:30:21   what happened. It appears to me that all I got was a screen.

00:30:23   No, that's very likely, because that is the way most of them are fixed. Most of them are

00:30:27   not swapped out. And that's how mine was fixed earlier this year for the same reason, before

00:30:31   you apparently caused like this global shortage of Genius Time by mentioning this on our show.

00:30:37   Yeah, I did get, or we did get some reports in that some people went to the Genius Bar

00:30:44   and were specifically asked, "Oh, do you listen to the Accidental Tech podcast?" because we've

00:30:49   gotten a lot of you in here lately, which genuinely hand on heart made me extraordinarily

00:30:55   proud. I was very happy to hear that. But yeah, so I did get a replace screen. My understanding

00:30:59   is some people did get replaced phones. In fact, one person wrote in and said, "Well,

00:31:04   I went in right around closing time and they didn't want to deal with it, so they just

00:31:08   gave me a new phone," which I thought was pretty awesome.

00:31:10   That's a good strategy. Which is a pretty solid strategy. I wish I

00:31:13   had thought of that. Well, it didn't work for me. Like, I went

00:31:15   in in the evening when I went to get Mind Fixed earlier this year and they just told

00:31:17   me come back tomorrow. Oh wow. They kept it overnight and they said come back tomorrow.

00:31:23   So I said alright. And that's you know when I go in there I try to avoid having service

00:31:28   done on my current active phone and if I really do have to have it done I will just switch

00:31:33   to an old phone and wipe it because like I excited because you know the whole idea of

00:31:37   like oh unlike because they told me to you take off your passcode like does it they basically

00:31:42   you disable all of your security on your device. And I say no. I'm not doing that. That is

00:31:49   not an option. So I just wipe my devices whenever I have to get them serviced and it's inconvenient

00:31:55   but it's terrible that they make people do that and whatever the reason is they should

00:32:00   find a better way to do it that doesn't require that. They'll say oh well certain tools won't

00:32:04   run. Well then your Apple, make tools that run. You can do that. There's no reason to

00:32:11   get people to disable all their security while doing a hardware repair? That is complete

00:32:16   BS.

00:32:17   Well, I think there might be some legit reasons because the whole idea is that there's no

00:32:22   secret backdoor key to get at your data that Apple has, right? And you say, "Why don't

00:32:27   you just make something worth it?" You're essentially asking them to put a backdoor.

00:32:30   So at some point, there has to be some...

00:32:31   Well, no. I'm saying for a hardware repair, like if it's a screen replacement, why do

00:32:35   they need access to the software on the phone for a screen replacement?

00:32:38   They probably do want to do a full backup of your thing in case the guy slips with a

00:32:43   screwdriver or something and, you know, cracks a chip in the thing and they have to give

00:32:47   you a new phone and then you say, "But where's all my data?"

00:32:49   I don't know.

00:32:50   I don't know if that's true though because he specifically, the genius that I was speaking

00:32:54   to, specifically went into the settings on my phone, went to the iCloud backup, or I

00:33:02   believe it was iCloud backup screen, and said, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, you know, you haven't backed

00:33:05   this up to iCloud in a while? Have you backed this up to your computer?" And I said, "Yes,"

00:33:10   last night. And at that point, he was completely satisfied. But I think there would have been

00:33:17   a little bit of a kerfuffle if I had said, "No, I haven't backed this up in ages. Why

00:33:22   do you ask?" He also didn't, if memory serves, he did not expressly ask me to remove my passcode,

00:33:29   but he was, well, the funny thing about it was he wasn't clear about why he wanted my

00:33:34   my Apple ID password and he handed me the phone to type it in.

00:33:37   It's not that he needed it himself, but as I was typing it in, I looked at what he was

00:33:42   doing and he was disabling Find My iPhone.

00:33:44   So basically he just wanted to make sure that I had a backup.

00:33:48   He wanted to make sure Find My iPhone was not on and then at that point he was satisfied.

00:33:52   Anyway, the tipster is frustrated that we're not listening to him.

00:33:56   That is impossible.

00:33:57   What he says is, was it impossible to ring out, he says, a repair.

00:34:04   if you don't have to find my iPhone on to do the tool use.

00:34:06   But I think what it all comes down to is that

00:34:08   they want to be able to use your phone,

00:34:10   even if they're not making a backup,

00:34:11   which makes sense because Apple doesn't usually care

00:34:13   about your data.

00:34:14   They want to, like when they're doing this screen repair,

00:34:17   I assume that when the screen repair is over,

00:34:19   they want to make sure everything works.

00:34:20   They want to be able to tap things on the screen.

00:34:23   And if your screen is locked and is gonna like erase itself

00:34:27   after 10, you know, like they have to be able to get

00:34:30   at your stuff somehow.

00:34:31   Otherwise like, can't they just do an iPhone,

00:34:33   hardware repair blind and just repair it and give it back to me and then

00:34:37   when I turn it on I'm sure that it will work and I'm sure that you know, I

00:34:40   like like I said

00:34:42   I don't I don't think it's possible for them to not ask you to undo some amount of security

00:34:47   To do repair any kind of repair even just a hardware repair just so they can verify that the hardware repair was successful

00:34:53   so

00:34:55   It makes some sense. Maybe the geniuses aren't telling people because it's very difficult to explain why they might need to do this

00:35:01   Whenever I've brought a Mac in for repair. I've always just wiped the entire thing

00:35:06   I put it on a single account username Apple password Apple on an entirely erased hard drive

00:35:11   I take out all my third-party RAM like I've you know back in the day if I brought something to the Apple Store

00:35:17   It's just so much easier to do that then you don't have to deal with anything

00:35:20   Like it's like sometimes I would put in a new hard drive like, you know

00:35:23   Most of my Mac was still at home because of the part I was repairing was not that

00:35:28   especially in the days where they were cranky about third-party RAM. Like, "Here you go!

00:35:31   Here's a box stock computer with no data on it and a single account called Apple Apple. Have at it."

00:35:35   And Marcos basically doing that with his phones. And it is annoying,

00:35:39   but it makes your repair experience smoother in exchange for you spending some time at home to

00:35:45   do stuff. Just make sure you do an actual encrypted local backup that will save all your passwords,

00:35:49   and then you see you don't have to wait for your apps to restore over the course of several hours

00:35:53   from the app store. Yep, I couldn't agree more. And one other quick piece of real-time follow-up

00:35:58   from me to me. It occurred to me that one of the reasons I knew that I did not get a

00:36:03   different phone was because my Touch ID was still working exactly as it was when I got

00:36:08   my phone back. And if the secure element is really secure, then that means I must have

00:36:13   gotten the same phone back just with a new screen.

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00:39:11   So we should recap what we bought this past weekend.

00:39:14   I for one am in for two phones.

00:39:16   I bought or preordered Aaron a rose gold 64 gig iPhone 6s and I preordered myself a space

00:39:27   gray 64 gig iPhone 6s.

00:39:30   I am not part of the plus club because I actually know what I'm talking about.

00:39:34   Marco, did you eventually…

00:39:37   Did you eventually give in and join the Plus Club?

00:39:39   You know, one of the reasons I brought the 6 Plus to XOXO was that the pre-orders were

00:39:45   going to open up about in the middle of my trip, and so I figured I'd give it, because

00:39:48   I was on the fence, I'd give it one more time to see, like, you know, because I really

00:39:52   was undecided, because I really, as I said, I really have not been happy with the 6 battery

00:39:57   life, and I really do appreciate the larger screen during many of the things I do of the

00:40:02   6 Plus.

00:40:03   So I was really on the fence.

00:40:05   So I moved all my stuff over the night before I left.

00:40:10   Moved all my stuff over and started using the phone

00:40:14   and literally within 20 minutes I was like,

00:40:18   "Nope, I'm not buying this one."

00:40:20   - Atta boy, atta boy.

00:40:22   So Mike was wrong?

00:40:24   - For me, yeah.

00:40:25   So there's a number of, the six plus, as I said,

00:40:27   there are a lot of benefits to it

00:40:29   and if you can use it and hold it comfortably,

00:40:33   then more power to you.

00:40:34   It is a great device for a lot of people.

00:40:36   What didn't do it for me is two things.

00:40:41   Number one, and it's not how big it feels in the hand.

00:40:43   I got used to that last time, it's fine.

00:40:45   What it is for me is the size in the pocket,

00:40:50   which is a big deal, and like,

00:40:52   I'm not a phone on the table kind of person.

00:40:56   I keep my phone in my pocket if I'm sitting down somewhere.

00:40:59   So if I need to use my phone or check my phone for something,

00:41:02   I'm taking it in and out of my pocket a lot, right?

00:41:05   So a phone that large, it's like taking a dinner tray

00:41:10   out of your pocket.

00:41:10   It is so big, it's very clumsy to insert or remove.

00:41:15   And secondly, another thing that's weird about the 6 Plus

00:41:19   is that a lot of apps that don't normally rotate on the 6

00:41:25   do rotate on the 6 Plus, and when they do rotate,

00:41:29   they go into this like weird, like miniature iPad,

00:41:33   not iPad mini, I guess, this nano iPad mode,

00:41:36   where they will use a split view the way iPads do,

00:41:38   and this is part of the whole universal thing,

00:41:40   I know how it works in the SDK side.

00:41:42   They, it considers it like a mini iPad,

00:41:45   and so you'll have like this cramped, weird,

00:41:48   tiny iPad-like split interface in a lot of apps

00:41:51   when you rotate them, and I found that it rotates

00:41:54   more easily. I don't know, maybe it's just happier to do it, maybe I just wasn't used

00:41:56   to it, but whenever I use the 6 Plus, it's constantly rotating when I didn't want it

00:42:01   to. And I try rotation lock, but it's like, you know, then you go to look at the photo

00:42:06   or watch a video and you turn it to the side and you gotta undo it, it's a pain. And I

00:42:10   found that even, even, you know, I'm used to the iPhone 6, and I don't have these problems

00:42:16   on the 6, and I haven't had these problems on any previous iPhone, including ones I wasn't

00:42:20   used to, like when I first got the 6, and it was, I'm going up a size, so I'm not used

00:42:24   to holding it. I didn't have these problems with that, so I know it isn't just that I'm

00:42:27   not used to the 6 Plus, it's just that the 6 Plus, like springboard rotates, lots of

00:42:31   things rotate, and I do it in a weird way, and so I just found it cumbersome in those

00:42:38   two big ways. And so those are important enough, especially the pocket size, those are important

00:42:45   enough that I couldn't do it. Now, in the future, you know, Apple likes to make things

00:42:49   thinner and smaller. So if they can like shave off more of the margins, I don't know. I mean,

00:42:55   it is heavy, but it doesn't really matter. If they can, if they somehow, like if we ever

00:42:59   get like the borderless iPhone that like that loses the chin on the top and bottom, you

00:43:03   know, somehow God knows how, but if they somehow do that, then I would consider it again. But

00:43:09   as of now, it's, it's just too big for me.

00:43:12   Just gonna wait for a flexible one. That's the thing that annoys me most about even the six I find. That you gotta unfold your phone?

00:43:18   Just so it curves like the six I find uncomfortable in my pants pockets because it is so like it stays

00:43:26   Flat it doesn't conform to the shape of my leg or anything it kind of stretches the pants out a little bit

00:43:30   So yeah flexible ones. It's probably in our lifetime

00:43:34   Hopefully we'll say dad John did your family buy anything?

00:43:38   Nope didn't buy anything. I didn't even know what people were all talking about staying up late at night in the beginning

00:43:44   When people first started tweeting about it. No, I'm not like and here's the reason not not just because I'm not getting

00:43:49   I mean, I was probably gonna get a success, but we're not in a hurry

00:43:53   She's actually I think she's got a couple more months before she can actually get it

00:43:56   I'm gonna go to the Apple store and look at it

00:43:58   but the final reason and the same reason I always sort of hold off on these things with a few rare exceptions is

00:44:05   You get the first one you get crescent moons like anything any weird

00:44:08   Manufacturing defect a weak tapped a tapped egg engine in your watch or whatever like you don't want the first cars off the assembly line

00:44:14   Right you want to everyone else to find all those problems

00:44:16   I have a six, but I didn't buy it on launch day

00:44:19   I bought it not too far after launch

00:44:21   But after everyone had gotten the first round of phones maybe the second round of phones and so

00:44:25   Mine was manufactured on a line where hopefully they had worked out more of the kinks and lo and behold I have no crescent

00:44:30   Moon and so far no other problems with my phone, so that is my strategy

00:44:34   but I'm not even getting a 6.

00:44:36   My wife is going to get a 6+, but not imminently.

00:44:39   - Well, 6S or 6+.

00:44:40   - Oh, sorry, 6S, yeah.

00:44:42   All these stupid names, they're killing me.

00:44:44   - I just wanna make sure we all agree that Mike was wrong.

00:44:46   - I'm not participating in this.

00:44:48   (laughing)

00:44:50   - That's 'cause you're a better man than I.

00:44:51   John, are you a secret 6+ user?

00:44:53   Is that why you just bring your flip phone to conferences?

00:44:55   - I am not a secret 6+ user.

00:44:58   - Oh, goodness.

00:45:00   One thing I should note is that

00:45:02   I had been kicking around the idea

00:45:03   of getting the new iPad Mini.

00:45:06   What is that called, iPad Mini 4, is that right?

00:45:08   - Yeah, the weird, oh, by the way, a quick follow-up.

00:45:10   I was wrong about the CPU in that.

00:45:13   I had said last episode that there is now no difference

00:45:16   between the iPad Air 2 and the Mini 4,

00:45:19   except for screen size.

00:45:21   That is wrong.

00:45:22   The Mini 4 has an up-clocked A8 processor,

00:45:26   so it is slightly faster than an iPhone 6 in benchmarks.

00:45:30   And that's a dual-core processor.

00:45:33   The Air 2 has the A8X, which is a triple core processor.

00:45:38   And so at various benchmarks and stuff

00:45:42   that we've seen so far, the iPad Mini 4

00:45:47   is faster than the Mini 3.

00:45:48   It is a nice chip, but it is very close

00:45:51   to the performance of an iPhone 6,

00:45:53   and not very close to the much higher performance

00:45:55   of the Air 2.

00:45:57   - That's correct.

00:45:58   And so I thought about replacing my beloved

00:46:02   OG Retina Pad Mini with a new iPad Mini 4.

00:46:07   And I haven't pulled the trigger yet.

00:46:10   And part of that is because I just spent $1,700

00:46:15   or whatever it was on two completely contract-free iPhones.

00:46:18   And I did that because I just,

00:46:20   that's the way I wanted to do it.

00:46:21   I'm not saying it was the best approach.

00:46:23   I'm not saying it was the most frugal.

00:46:26   It's just what I wanted to do.

00:46:27   Please don't email me.

00:46:28   So I've dropped all this money

00:46:30   and I probably shouldn't be spending any more, but the other reason I haven't done it is

00:46:35   I'm kind of bummed, not surprised, bummed that 3D Touch hasn't made it to the iPads yet and

00:46:42   I want to wait if I can. Now the last time I said this was about the watch and we saw how well that worked out,

00:46:48   but I want to wait if I can and see what 3D Touch is all about and see if I really like it and see if it's

00:46:54   see if it's like earth-shattering and it's just completely life-changing and if it is

00:47:00   then maybe I'll just hold out for hopefully next year when iPads get 3D

00:47:07   touch, although we'll see what ends up happening knowing me. I'll probably buy

00:47:11   it for myself as like a Christmas present or something like that. But for

00:47:15   now, for the next at least few weeks, I am holding off. Alright, any other thoughts

00:47:20   about Saturday morning purchases? Alright. Oh, the other thing I actually wanted to

00:47:25   ask you guys, did you hear anything about really really bad inventory issues like

00:47:29   there were last year with the iPhone 6 because I did not. It seemed like the inventory was

00:47:35   considerably better for this year than last and I don't know if that's because most people are not

00:47:39   on the S cycle. I don't know if it's because they were fine, you know, last year we finally got the

00:47:44   bigger phones that so many people have been clamoring for. But I did not hear any big

00:47:51   grumbling about, "Oh, I really wanted the blah but it was sold out by the time I got through."

00:47:58   Did you guys hear anything?

00:47:59   Sales numbers are bigger this year than last year, so it's not like, you know, what they're

00:48:02   saying so far, rumors, whatever, is that they're selling even more than they sold last year.

00:48:07   I think it's just that they had more lead time to build up inventory and wanted to have

00:48:12   more lead time because this is an S year and they're not making an entirely new phone in

00:48:15   an entirely new shape.

00:48:17   And, you know, so that's if they're going to have a year where they have more inventory,

00:48:22   it's going to be an S year, I would imagine, because they're kind of used to making phones

00:48:25   like this and they know what they're doing and the scheduling just worked out.

00:48:28   Yeah, I heard the same thing, although some people were saying that if you went to a particular

00:48:32   carrier's website, a lot of those had really crappy dates for like when you were going

00:48:35   to get your phone.

00:48:36   And that's just like, however, Apple is distributing the inventory they do make and, you know,

00:48:41   presumably they're keeping most of it for themselves.

00:48:44   So yeah, but that was, speaking of staying up late and ordering a phone, I did see tweets

00:48:49   from a bunch of people who were like, "I didn't stay up late.

00:48:51   I just woke up at my normal time in the morning and I got online and I ordered my phone."

00:48:54   and it was still in stock and it's gonna come right away

00:48:57   and you know, voila.

00:48:59   - Yeah, I mean, the morning after the launch,

00:49:03   later that morning, nine hours later or whatever,

00:49:05   I looked at all the configurations, I was curious

00:49:08   and the only one that was showing any delay

00:49:10   and it was only a small delay was the six plus

00:49:13   in some of the colors, including the new pink one.

00:49:16   The regular six, even the pink one was fine.

00:49:19   And actually, so I just looked right now,

00:49:21   if you go to Apple's site right now

00:49:23   and configure the common boring geek phone,

00:49:26   which is the 64 gig black 6S,

00:49:29   that is still saying deliver is 925,

00:49:32   which is the first day any of them are delivering.

00:49:34   So this is still delivering on day one.

00:49:35   Yeah, if you go right now--

00:49:36   - Wait, so I didn't have to wake up

00:49:37   at three in the damn morning?

00:49:39   - Nope.

00:49:39   (laughing)

00:49:40   - You didn't see all those tweets about it?

00:49:41   Oh, it's part of the fun, part of the fun of Wigam.

00:49:43   Although, as the tipster is saying in the chat room,

00:49:46   don't try to do that next year.

00:49:47   I don't know, you never know.

00:49:48   It all depends on how many could they make

00:49:50   before they went on sale,

00:49:51   That's a factor of scheduling and the timing of the,

00:49:55   whatever event they're gonna have

00:49:57   and everything else they have to announce,

00:49:58   and any glitches in manufacturing and blah, blah, blah.

00:50:02   Anyway, so this was a good year

00:50:04   for everyone to get their phones.

00:50:06   I just hope you don't all have whatever the new iteration,

00:50:09   whatever the new incarnation of the crescent moon is,

00:50:12   broken home button, weak tap to click, whatever.

00:50:14   - Yeah, we'll say the taptic engine

00:50:16   that may or may not work, et cetera, et cetera.

00:50:19   Alright, so speaking of new purchases, Marco, did you purchase anything recently that was

00:50:24   very, very, very cheap?

00:50:26   Uh, did I?

00:50:27   For one dollar?

00:50:28   Oh yeah, the Apple TV?

00:50:30   Yeah, yeah.

00:50:31   Damn it, man, pay attention.

00:50:32   Yeah, yeah, the developer lottery Apple TV.

00:50:35   Yes, I registered for that.

00:50:37   I won, I guess.

00:50:40   I don't think I'm allowed to say anything about it.

00:50:42   I agreed to something.

00:50:43   I just...

00:50:44   Yeah, I don't know.

00:50:46   I agreed to not write about and talk about

00:50:49   like the actual device and what it's like,

00:50:52   but I don't remember if that agreement included

00:50:55   that I'm allowed to mention whether I have one or not.

00:50:58   But I mean, heck, as of right now, I don't have one.

00:51:01   So there we go.

00:51:02   - Yeah, I'm disappointed in my Twitter timeline,

00:51:05   which I read exhaustively,

00:51:06   that I didn't know that this lottery was even a thing

00:51:09   until people were finding out whether they had won,

00:51:11   or not that I wouldn't have entered

00:51:12   'cause I'm not developing an Apple TV app.

00:51:14   But how did I not even know about this?

00:51:15   Was this just not a big deal?

00:51:17   - The lottery?

00:51:18   - Yeah, I heard about it.

00:51:19   - I heard about it when people were saying,

00:51:22   "Oh, I got one, I didn't get one."

00:51:23   I'm like, "What are they talking about?"

00:51:24   And I went to the website and looked at it.

00:51:26   - It was a reference.

00:51:27   - Yeah, no, anyway.

00:51:28   (laughing)

00:51:29   I think on my Twitter timeline,

00:51:30   people were talking about it obliquely

00:51:32   without anyone actually ever saying it

00:51:34   or linking to a story or writing a blog post about it

00:51:36   or doing anything like that.

00:51:38   So anyway, a bunch of people, who was it that had the...

00:51:41   I saw some number thrown out there

00:51:44   for how many they gave away.

00:51:45   Anyway, they gave away a bunch of Apple TVs.

00:51:47   I saw some people speculating that

00:51:49   these were originally going to be WWDC style,

00:51:52   look under your seat, free gifts for every attendees in WWDC.

00:51:55   But then of course, Apple TV wasn't launched to WWDC.

00:51:58   That would have been cool.

00:52:00   I would have been excited to get one.

00:52:01   I'm buying one anyway, so whatever.

00:52:03   It doesn't make a difference.

00:52:05   The tipster says the WWDC thing is true.

00:52:07   I think I saw someone posting pictures of the packaging

00:52:11   and it was all fancy packaging with like inspirational words

00:52:14   all of which fits with the rumor of these were meant to be gifts for developers at WAAC,

00:52:19   which is kind of out of character for Apple because I can't, since the Apology Mouse,

00:52:23   I haven't, don't think they've given away any significant hardware at any of their events.

00:52:27   That's totally a Google thing to do. And lots of other conferences, like I think when you

00:52:30   went to build one year, they gave everyone Xbox ones and they give them like surfaces

00:52:34   and you know, Android phones and all sorts of stuff like that. Everyone loves free hardware,

00:52:39   Apple. So get with the program. Maybe next year.

00:52:44   It's the kind of thing like giving a bunch of developers, I mean the rumor that we heard

00:52:49   is that there were tens of thousands of these given out. Given a bunch of developers early

00:52:54   access to hardware that they're very excited to develop for that has a really apparently,

00:52:58   I haven't looked at it yet, but everyone's saying it's a very easy SDK because it is

00:53:02   really very close to iOS. I mean it is iOS basically, you know, and just like with certain

00:53:06   frameworks not available and certain new frameworks, but they're very close to iOS. So giving a

00:53:13   whole bunch of developers who are excited about this early access and making them feel

00:53:16   special and letting them make their apps on a real device, that, you know, before it's

00:53:21   available to the public, that is really valuable to get the app story started. And, you know,

00:53:25   maybe they learned from the watch, you know, with the watch, the app story with the watch

00:53:29   early on and honestly still is pretty weak. And a lot of that was because of just limitations

00:53:35   of watchOS 1 and limitations of WatchKit, but a lot of that was also because the developers

00:53:40   for the most part didn't have early access. A few did, but most didn't have early access

00:53:44   to the hardware. So this I think is pretty cool. I think it's a smart move. It's the

00:53:51   kind of move that you're right, we wouldn't have expected this from the Apple of even

00:53:56   two or three years ago, but now it seems like Apple is making more of these Apple would

00:54:03   never do that kind of very pragmatic moves. And that's a good thing. I think everybody

00:54:08   wins here. I don't think there's any downside. They've already announced it. No one's going

00:54:11   to blow any secrets. They've already shown it off like crazy, so they don't have to worry

00:54:14   about that. I think this is great.

00:54:17   It's also the cheapest platform they sell. If they're going to give you a device, if

00:54:21   you have to pick one to give, even the watch is more expensive. This is what, $150 for

00:54:25   the small one?

00:54:26   Yep.

00:54:27   And there's no watch at $150, and the free phones don't count because of plans and subsidies

00:54:31   or whatever. So yeah, if you're gonna give something away, start with this one. And you

00:54:35   know, people, here's the thing about like, I think people were excited to make watch

00:54:41   apps and it seemed like for the TV, people were excited for other people to make TV apps.

00:54:47   Like I think there's, you know, I would like there to be apps for the TV, but it wasn't,

00:54:52   there's not a straight line from people who develop either watch Mac or iOS apps to say,

00:55:00   you could do it on a TV.

00:55:01   It's like, well, it's not a touch screen, it's not a mouse, it's not a keyboard.

00:55:04   If I don't have video content to show, I'm not quite sure what I'll make.

00:55:07   But if you give them free hardware, they're like, you know what, let me try thinking of

00:55:10   something.

00:55:11   Maybe I can come up with something, maybe I have some kind of idea.

00:55:13   So I think this is just the kind of platform where the developers might need a little boost

00:55:18   to get moving and get motivated about if you get free hardware, you're like, maybe I do

00:55:24   have a couple ideas.

00:55:25   Let me try this, let me try that.

00:55:27   You might surprise yourself, whereas if you don't have the free hardware, you'll probably

00:55:31   just convince yourself that none of your existing applications or skills or ideas for apps are

00:55:35   applicable to a big screen that you sit far away from and can't touch.

00:55:40   That's pretty wild.

00:55:41   I don't know.

00:55:42   Speaking of Apple TV, we should note that last episode I had said, "Eh, I don't know.

00:55:47   Maybe I'll get it.

00:55:48   Maybe I won't."

00:55:50   And I had said that my beloved Plex, if that was available on the Apple TV, I would probably

00:55:58   insta-buy it.

00:55:59   And in the time between last episode and this episode, IT World got in contact with the

00:56:05   Plex, I think, CEO and has stated that, yes, they are developing a Plex client for the

00:56:11   Apple TV.

00:56:12   So that means I'll probably be buying one.

00:56:15   Why don't you tell us about clicks versus taps, Jon?

00:56:18   Yeah, you skipped that one. You noticed that, huh?

00:56:20   Mm-hmm.

00:56:22   So, yeah, last week I looked at the, like, Apple's developer documentation that had these animations showing the new Apple TV remote and showing, like, a dot on it showing this is a click and this is a tap, and they both looked the same to me, and I didn't understand how you could tell a difference or what was going on there.

00:56:37   So someone asked on Apple's--oh, okay, is Apple's developers from NDA? I can't even say, can I?

00:56:44   Only if it's, like, the red section, right?

00:56:46   No, I pretty sure you can because I'm pretty sure I just hit it with yeah, I'm not logged in so you're good to go

00:56:52   So I want to know the difference between it's happening click was

00:56:55   In Apple's developer forums and URL that will put in the show note

00:56:59   Someone asked the very same question and someone with a little Apple logo underneath their name

00:57:03   said that

00:57:06   A click is when a user physically clicks down on the trackpad causing a select event

00:57:10   And then I guess a tap is just happening. So what it sounds to me like is that

00:57:14   The touchpad at the end of the remote moves in some way like physically moves

00:57:19   And makes a click as opposed to just tapping on the touch surface and again none of us have this device yet

00:57:25   And when Marco gets it he probably can't talk about it

00:57:28   No, so we'll all find out I will find out when mine ships. I'm ordering that day one basically

00:57:32   I'm gonna accept whatever the equivalent of the crescent moon is for the Apple TV hardware because it's cheap and whatever I don't care

00:57:39   But it seems like it's actually a physical button and I still don't quite understand how that will work based on the pictures of the remote

00:57:44   So what part of it moves?

00:57:46   How does it move down?

00:57:46   How far does it move?

00:57:47   Is there a hinge?

00:57:48   Does it just bend?

00:57:49   I don't know.

00:57:50   All these questions will be answered

00:57:51   when we get it into our little hands,

00:57:52   but it was interesting to see an actual response

00:57:55   from an Apple person about this.

00:57:56   - Excellent.

00:57:59   All right, let's see.

00:58:00   What else do we have to talk about?

00:58:01   We already talked about Plex.

00:58:04   Do you want to tell us about 24p on the Apple TV?

00:58:07   - This is, I think, from the exact same Apple person

00:58:09   in the Apple forums.

00:58:10   Someone asked a question, said,

00:58:12   will the new Apple TV actually output 24p video?

00:58:15   And so 24p is a lot of movies, old movies and new movies

00:58:20   are shot at 24 frames per second.

00:58:22   24p is a video mode where it sends 24p

00:58:26   is for progressively scanned frames of video,

00:58:30   just one frame, another frame, another frame, another frame,

00:58:32   24 of those every second.

00:58:34   That's how the movie was shot.

00:58:36   What you want to happen is if you are viewing a movie

00:58:39   at home you want 24 frames of video every second to be displayed in your television

00:58:46   in one frame, then the next frame, then the next frame, at exactly 24.

00:58:50   If you don't do that, it's not going to look quite right.

00:58:53   The most common situation is where your television, or the device that's outputting something,

00:58:58   for example your computer, is going at 60 hertz.

00:59:01   So it's got 60 frames per second.

00:59:02   The computer you're looking at right now, and I think all iOS devices except for maybe

00:59:05   the new the new iPad Pro which has the variable refresh rate but anyway 60

00:59:10   Hertz is common for computers unfortunately 24 does not go into 60

00:59:13   evenly so if you're going to display video content that originally has 24

00:59:18   different frames every second but you have to show 60 frames every second you

00:59:22   have to divide them up unevenly and when the camera pans quickly it can kind of

00:59:27   look weird they call it judder where you it can kind of look kind of herky-jerky

00:59:30   because you have to figure out how to you know you're gonna show the first

00:59:34   How many times are you gonna show the first frame and how many times you can show the second frame?

00:59:37   You're gonna end up showing some frames longer than other frames and when you have a smooth camera move

00:59:41   You can kind of see it as a jerkiness in the motion

00:59:43   So what you want is 24 frames all the way through this is the hope this video files are asking

00:59:47   So in practice in my setup

00:59:49   Anyway, the only way I can see video like that is if I buy a blu-ray my blu-ray player and my television all do 24 frames

00:59:55   So the blu-ray puts out 24 frames the television shows 24 frames again. I don't have an LCD. I have a plasma

01:00:01   It's all straight through, no image processing.

01:00:04   It looks correct, it looks right.

01:00:05   Don't have to worry about anything.

01:00:07   Apple TV, according to this answer from this Apple person,

01:00:12   does not do that.

01:00:13   It says, "No, the device output frame rate is fixed

01:00:14   "and content is automatically converted during playback

01:00:17   "to match the selected device output frame rate.

01:00:19   "Apps do not have the ability

01:00:20   "to affect the device output frame rate."

01:00:23   And it says, "If you have a scenario

01:00:24   "where you believe this would be required,

01:00:25   "please file a bug, blah, blah, blah."

01:00:27   This is focused on application development,

01:00:30   saying, "Oh, I'm making a video app and I want to show video.

01:00:33   Can I control the frame?" or whatever the answer is.

01:00:35   No.

01:00:35   Still unclear to me whether if you buy a movie on iTunes

01:00:40   and the movie is 24 frames a second,

01:00:43   does the Apple TV, is it also unable to send that natively

01:00:47   over HDMI to a device that is able to display 24p?

01:00:51   Some theories I've seen thrown around

01:00:55   amongst people who are disappointed in this decision

01:00:58   is that Apple doesn't want to incur the switching overhead

01:01:01   of like switching modes and HDMI apparently can be wonky

01:01:04   and take some time and blank your screen and stuff

01:01:06   and you don't wanna do that.

01:01:07   It's like a bad user experience

01:01:09   like everything else involving HDMI.

01:01:11   So they're just gonna lock it at like a computer,

01:01:14   like a tiny little computer,

01:01:15   like a tiny little Mac mini,

01:01:16   lock it at 60 frames and just up convert all video

01:01:19   on the device presumably with nice scaling

01:01:22   and trying to deal with all of these different problems

01:01:25   to hide judder and image processing.

01:01:26   Anyway, video files hate all of that.

01:01:28   So if you are a video file, like me, I guess,

01:01:33   you will probably want to continue buying the movies

01:01:37   that you really care about in a format

01:01:38   other than videos that appear on Apple TV.

01:01:41   - But if you are a video file, there's hope for you

01:01:46   because there's a good chance

01:01:48   that something will come to the Apple TV.

01:01:50   What would that be, Jon?

01:01:52   - Did we talk about it on this show a long time ago

01:01:54   about calibrating your television?

01:01:55   - A long time ago.

01:01:56   Yeah, I'm heavily in favor of calibrating your television.

01:01:59   It's not a super complicated-- it can be super complicated,

01:02:02   but even just very basic calibration

01:02:04   can be done pretty easily.

01:02:05   But the question is, how?

01:02:06   How do I calibrate?

01:02:07   I don't know.

01:02:08   I just look at my television.

01:02:09   I can't tell what looks right.

01:02:11   Well, they sell iOS applications that

01:02:13   can help you calibrate your television.

01:02:15   There's also Blu-ray discs that help you calibrate them.

01:02:17   It used to be that every THX DVD came with the calibration

01:02:20   thing.

01:02:20   Maybe a TiVo comes with the calibration thing

01:02:22   built into the thing.

01:02:23   Lots of different ways to do this, but iOS apps are ideal,

01:02:26   because hey, it's an app and you can write a fancy app

01:02:29   and whoever owns, I guess it's Disney now,

01:02:33   whoever owns THX can make an app for it and stuff.

01:02:35   And lo and behold, there is a THX app for iOS

01:02:37   and you can use it, but you had to AirPlay to do it.

01:02:39   And I always worried about that

01:02:40   because what you're really calibrating

01:02:42   is how AirPlay video looks.

01:02:44   Like, well, maybe I calibrate my TV,

01:02:45   but then when I play things off my Blu-ray player

01:02:47   through a different input,

01:02:48   is that calibration still valid?

01:02:50   But with an Apple TV, the Apple TV,

01:02:54   if that's where you're watching your video,

01:02:55   The apps can be right on the Apple TV.

01:02:57   You're not air playing this weird

01:02:59   MPEG-4 compressed stream or whatever.

01:03:01   It can be right on the Apple TV.

01:03:03   So I'm excited about the prospect of native Apple TV.

01:03:07   I'm not the only person who's excited about calibration apps

01:03:11   for the Apple TV, but it's perfect.

01:03:12   Like it is perfect for the Apple TV because it's not,

01:03:16   it doesn't help you with your Blu-ray player,

01:03:17   but it does make you sure that what you're calibrating

01:03:19   is the exact thing that you're gonna watch movies on,

01:03:22   which is, if you have a bunch of iTunes movies

01:03:24   on your Apple TV.

01:03:26   Of course, the people who would be most into calibration

01:03:29   are also now crushed that it doesn't do 24p.

01:03:31   So I'm not sure if it's really the HDMI switching issue,

01:03:34   I'm not sure Apple ever fixed that

01:03:36   because I've seen that, you know,

01:03:38   when your TV screen goes blank or goes gray

01:03:41   or does this little glitchy fuzz, it's terrible.

01:03:43   I would never want the Apple TV to do that.

01:03:45   So I'm actually kind of in favor

01:03:47   of this cheap little $150 box, never doing that

01:03:49   and just, you know, putting out everything

01:03:51   at 60 frames per second and let the audio files

01:03:53   buy their blue-gray players and we'll get along fine.

01:03:57   Fair enough.

01:03:59   What iOS games support MFI controllers, John?

01:04:02   I don't know, but we've got a list and we'll put it in the show notes.

01:04:05   I think someone was saying that the list was only like 16 games, so that seems way small

01:04:09   to me.

01:04:10   But I'm sure there's a huge number of games that support it because it's been around since

01:04:13   iOS 7.

01:04:15   This was offered up as the potential base for games that could go to the Apple TV, but

01:04:21   not really true because these games probably also have like a touch control and they're

01:04:27   not going to have a touch equivalent.

01:04:29   That gets to our next follow-up item which is if you have a game that works with a controller

01:04:34   and also works with touch controls, can you just bring that right over to Apple TV?

01:04:39   Well the controller part you can bring right over because I don't think they've changed

01:04:41   anything involving the controllers there, but the touch part obviously you can't bring

01:04:45   over and you say well that's fine I will just bring over the game and say it requires a

01:04:49   controller to play.

01:04:50   And last week, I think I went to their website and looked this up, and I think in the show

01:04:54   it was like, "Oh, you know, Apple says that you can have games that require controllers."

01:04:58   So a bunch of people sent us links, and the great thing is, a bunch of people tweeted

01:05:01   to us and sent us email with exactly the same URL.

01:05:05   Some people saying, "Apple says that you can make Apple TV apps that require a controller."

01:05:10   And other people saying, "Apple says that you cannot make..."

01:05:13   And both point to the same exact URL.

01:05:15   Luckily, someone on Twitter actually screenshotted it, right?

01:05:18   Here's a screenshot, and again, you can fake screenshots,

01:05:20   but I'm pretty sure I read this on Apple's site.

01:05:22   At one point, this URL that we will put in the show notes,

01:05:26   pointed to a document that said, had a heading that said,

01:05:29   "You can require an extended game controller.

01:05:31   Unlike iOS apps, Apple TV apps can require the user

01:05:33   to own a full game controller

01:05:35   that supports the extended gamepad profile."

01:05:37   But requiring a full game controller is highly discouraged

01:05:40   when you restrict blah, blah, blah, right?

01:05:41   But bottom line is, you can require an extended controller.

01:05:44   But the current version of that page

01:05:46   says exactly the opposite.

01:05:48   your game must support the Apple TV remote.

01:05:50   Your game may not require the use of a controller.

01:05:52   So going by like the last one wins rule,

01:05:56   although I should probably click on this link now

01:05:57   to see what it actually says,

01:05:59   I'm pretty sure that despite the waffling

01:06:02   in the first day or two after the Apple TV was announced,

01:06:04   right now it says your game may not require

01:06:07   the use of a controller.

01:06:08   And that spawned a whole bunch of stories on tech websites

01:06:10   about everyone going crazy about how

01:06:12   Apple doesn't understand gaming

01:06:13   and if you can't require a controller,

01:06:15   you're not gonna be able to play

01:06:16   insert my favorite genre of game here,

01:06:18   and all of that is true.

01:06:20   I think this rule is in keeping

01:06:23   with how Apple has positioned all of its devices

01:06:26   with respect to gaming.

01:06:27   It seems kind of dumb to me,

01:06:30   but on the other hand, like does it,

01:06:32   what, was it the case that the next call of duty

01:06:35   was gonna come for Apple TV?

01:06:37   If only Apple changes one rule.

01:06:39   Nope, it was never coming.

01:06:40   It was not, this is not the thing that's keeping it.

01:06:43   It's kind of silly if Apple,

01:06:45   It showed what it does feel said this shows Apple doesn't understand games or isn't serious about games

01:06:50   What it shows is how Apple views games for its platforms. It wants games to be on its platforms

01:06:55   It wants a certain kind of games the kind of games it wants

01:06:57   It wants you to be able to play without having to buy a controller. That's the product Apple is making

01:07:02   I don't think I I don't think it shows a

01:07:04   lack of understanding because I don't think anyone in Apple is under any illusions that they are going to

01:07:11   You know have the same type of games that consoles have and appeal to the same people who buy console games and love them

01:07:17   I think they're making a decision not to do that

01:07:20   And so this is in keeping with that but it drives people who love console games crazy because they feel like oh you're so close

01:07:25   If only you got serious about games and get serious by get serious

01:07:28   They mean made games that appeal to the millions of people who buy a PlayStation 4 and Xbox one and even the Wii U to some

01:07:34   Extent that's not what Apple's doing

01:07:36   Apple is not serious about game, but one of one of the ideas I have in my ideas file for

01:07:42   Hypercritical.co that I never update. I think it's one of the first ideas I put in there

01:07:48   I think I mentioned it before it's like Apple and games. He's just not that into you like Apple

01:07:53   Apple is doesn't feel the same way about games

01:07:56   That those of us who have game consoles and have played Mac and PC games feel about games like there

01:08:02   They have a different attitude towards games and their attitude is more common in

01:08:06   The world of people who are going to buy their products than our attitude is and that is disappointing to a lot of people

01:08:13   But that is just the case. So this rule assuming it hasn't swapped back by now is in keeping with that

01:08:18   I think it will cut down on the sophistication and interest of the type of games they're gonna get it might also cut down on

01:08:25   Shovelware and maybe that's why they're doing it. It's really interesting to see this phenomenon of Apple having public

01:08:31   documents that are not even behind a developer account password that one day say one thing and the next day say the entire opposite about

01:08:37   a fairly significant feature having to do with gaming on their newly launched product. It's a little out of character for them to

01:08:43   go back and forth like that.

01:08:46   Is it? Well, publicly, like, I mean, what can you think of? You're gonna get carbon 64,

01:08:52   a resolution independence. I'm thinking more like the various app review

01:08:58   controversies that usually crop up after a new ability is added to the SDK. So, you know,

01:09:05   they might decide, you know, like similar to how with iOS 8, there was this big kerfuffle

01:09:11   about what notification center widgets could and couldn't do or include, and then what

01:09:16   keyboards could and couldn't include. Could you include a button in the notification center

01:09:20   and all this crazy stuff?

01:09:21   Well, that's like rules lawyering, though, because someone will get rejected and they'll

01:09:25   say, "Well, according to the rules, it doesn't seem like it should've been rejected." Then

01:09:27   they amend the rules to make their decision right,

01:09:29   but then people complain and they reverse it.

01:09:30   Or like Launch Center Pro,

01:09:31   where like you couldn't launch an app

01:09:32   from the notification screen.

01:09:33   They changed that, but like two years later,

01:09:35   this was just like a black and white

01:09:37   before anyone had even started development.

01:09:39   Day one, one thing.

01:09:41   And it wasn't even like it was in response to outcry.

01:09:43   It's almost like they just forgot

01:09:44   to update the public facing docs, you know?

01:09:46   'Cause no one even had probably,

01:09:49   it was literally day one and day two.

01:09:51   So that seems strange to me,

01:09:52   that they would just not have their acts together,

01:09:54   because I don't think anything happened

01:09:56   between day one and day two that made them reverse this policy. There was no outcry from

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01:13:12   All right, John, tell me about the Apple TV and WebKit.

01:13:16   Before I get to that, I just want to point out that Neil Cronin in the chat room reminds

01:13:20   me that the PS3 does actual 24p output.

01:13:24   By the way, the PS3 is my Blu-ray player, when I was thinking that's where I watch movies.

01:13:27   It's on the PS3.

01:13:28   It's a pretty good Blu-ray player, albeit kind of noisy.

01:13:31   But anyway, it is possible.

01:13:32   It's not like it's impossible for a computer-like device to do this, but I'm pretty sure the

01:13:36   PS3, when you launch Blu-ray, blanks the screen and switches HDMI modes and does all that

01:13:40   stuff that I said the Apple TV probably shouldn't.

01:13:42   So what may be appropriate for a Blu-ray player, even if that Blu-ray player is essentially

01:13:47   a minicomputer like the PS3, is maybe not appropriate for a $150 fanless black puck.

01:13:53   I'm not saying Apple shouldn't support it.

01:13:56   If they can figure out a way to do it, that's fine.

01:13:58   I'm just saying I kind of understand why it might not support it.

01:14:01   Same thing with 4K, by the way.

01:14:02   We didn't discuss this, but maybe we briefly mentioned it last time.

01:14:05   The new Apple TV is not 4K.

01:14:08   Everyone who asks me, you know, they keep asking me if they should get a television

01:14:11   or what.

01:14:12   They want to know what television to get and I tell them to get no television because now

01:14:14   is not a good time to buy a TV.

01:14:17   Because we're after the plasma times where four OLEDs have come into their own.

01:14:23   Most of the OLEDs I keep seeing are curved too.

01:14:24   I really hope that goes away.

01:14:26   I really hope that goes away like 3D kind of went away because I do not want a curved

01:14:29   TV.

01:14:30   Anyway, it's a bad time to buy because 4K is on the horizon.

01:14:36   You can buy a 4K TV now, but it would be kind of like buying one of the very early Plasmas.

01:14:41   Unless you get really lucky and got one of the top-end Kuro Elites things, probably not

01:14:47   the best time to buy a 4K television.

01:14:50   Apple doesn't support it, but a lot of people are saying, "Why doesn't the new Apple TV

01:14:53   support 4K?

01:14:54   It's got enough grunt to support it in theory."

01:14:57   I don't know if the HDMI spec that it conforms to supports 4K to the degree that it's needed,

01:15:03   but I kind of agree that it seems like what, it's an A8 in there right?

01:15:08   Maybe handle 4K, maybe, I don't know.

01:15:11   Anyway, bottom line it doesn't, that's not how this product is defined.

01:15:14   I wouldn't count on this product being updated in any way to support 4K in the future even

01:15:18   if the hardware is technically capable of it because that's just not kind of the thing

01:15:22   that Apple does.

01:15:23   I mean they made you buy a whole new product when they went from 720p to 1080p if that

01:15:26   tells you anything.

01:15:27   So don't buy an Apple TV if you're expecting it to magically have 4K support.

01:15:32   Resign yourself to spending under 150 bucks in a couple years when 4k finally matures

01:15:36   Alright, so tell us about webkit. This is a big kerfuffle started. I think it was started by Daniel Pascoe

01:15:44   He's from black pixel, right? Mm-hmm

01:15:46   Yeah

01:15:47   He wrote a thing called a world without Apple TV a world without web views

01:15:51   Limiting or maybe just reporting the fact that you are not allowed to bring up a web view in your Apple TV application

01:15:57   And everyone is upset about that

01:16:00   It's I don't think it's gonna be that big of a deal

01:16:04   I mean one question is like which I think we don't really know the answer yet is

01:16:09   How many of the apps that we have on our phone are going to be necessary to have in our TVs?

01:16:14   How many are we actually going to want to have in our TVs?

01:16:17   I think it's gonna be a smaller and slightly different group

01:16:20   So a lot of the apps in your phone are just like for things that could have been websites

01:16:25   You know like your bank app and like some of the stuff like it just could have been a website

01:16:28   right? And so obviously web views are used very heavily in a lot of those things. And

01:16:32   so, you know, it's fine if a lot of those can't work. Now, that being said, there are

01:16:39   a lot of apps that use web views in smaller ways. Like I use web views in Overcast for

01:16:46   the rendering of the show notes. On the playback screen, the scroll view on the playback screen

01:16:50   that includes the artwork and the show notes below it, that is a web view. It is a giant

01:16:54   web view because that way I can render HTML in the notes and it works just fine and it's

01:17:00   great. So like you know stuff like that, that makes sense. Things like reading apps, you

01:17:05   know Instapaper, Instapaper is a big web view as well. I don't think people are going to

01:17:10   be reading on their TVs very often, who knows? I mean sure somebody might want to try but

01:17:14   that's not going to be a very common request I don't think so again that's fine too. I

01:17:19   I think it's gonna be annoying for some people,

01:17:22   but not nearly as big of a problem

01:17:25   as what most people expect.

01:17:26   Now the other thing is,

01:17:28   what about just web browsing on the TV?

01:17:31   Obviously, like you know,

01:17:31   not just using a web view in an app,

01:17:33   but actually just browsing two arbitrary pages.

01:17:36   Obviously, if you think about something like

01:17:38   a Twitter client on the Apple TV or a news reader,

01:17:41   then those are gonna be challenging to make compelling

01:17:44   because again, what are they gonna do?

01:17:47   tap like Twitter's full of links. So if you if you are browsing a Twitter client on the

01:17:52   TV and you can't tap any links, it's going to be kind of annoying. But again, it's like

01:17:57   are people really going to be browsing arbitrary web pages on TVs? Because one thing that people

01:18:02   don't often talk about, but becomes obvious if you've ever tried to do this, like plugging

01:18:06   a computer into your TV or anything, that TVs actually look terrible when you try to

01:18:11   view like text and web page and stuff like TVs are much lower resolution than you think,

01:18:18   weird contrast and color issues and limitations. They really are not good screens to be reading

01:18:25   text on. So I don't think this is that big of a problem really.

01:18:29   Well, the screen quality, if you have a good TV and you're the right distance from it,

01:18:33   it's not that bad. It's not as bad as it used to be in the old CRT standard Deaf days. And

01:18:37   If you have a 4K TV, even though Apple TV doesn't support it,

01:18:40   then I think those problems would be gone.

01:18:44   It's kind of disappointing to me that they don't support it,

01:18:46   mostly because every smartish thing that is not a computer

01:18:51   that is connected to a television in the past several years

01:18:55   has a web browser built in.

01:18:56   I think my PlayStation 4 does, my Wii U does,

01:18:59   I think my Wii does, like everything,

01:19:02   I don't know if my TiVo does,

01:19:03   but like everything feels compelled to have a browser

01:19:07   if it hooks up to a TV and has an internet connection

01:19:09   because hey, why not?

01:19:10   Why, I mean, the 3DS has a web browser for crying out loud

01:19:13   and every single one of those browsers

01:19:16   is the worst browser ever.

01:19:17   Like they're terrible to use.

01:19:19   You launch it once and you realize like maybe it uses

01:19:21   like an old version of the opera engine

01:19:23   and can't render anything.

01:19:24   It's really slow and they have these weird controls

01:19:27   about scrolling the page and moving the cursor

01:19:29   and oh, it's just terrible.

01:19:31   And so you just never launch it again, you know,

01:19:33   And the only reason I'm disappointed,

01:19:35   the main reason I'm disappointed is that

01:19:37   if an iOS powered device with an A8 in it,

01:19:41   powered by WebKit, was hooked up to my television

01:19:43   and they put a WebView on it,

01:19:45   and I had like a touch control

01:19:46   on the remote to scroll around,

01:19:47   it would actually be like nice and responsive and fast

01:19:51   and look good and render correctly.

01:19:53   And that would be a miracle

01:19:55   because I've never seen that on my television.

01:19:57   That said, I really have no urge

01:19:59   to browse my pages on my television.

01:20:01   And I think that's kind of,

01:20:02   I'm not gonna say it's a red herring

01:20:05   because we'll get to like what the motivation

01:20:07   to this might be.

01:20:07   But Marco, when you're talking about like the show notes,

01:20:11   that's coming from the web.

01:20:12   And of course, Instapaper content is coming from the web.

01:20:15   But I think there are a lot of,

01:20:17   perhaps a surprising number of iOS applications

01:20:21   that use a web view to render content

01:20:25   that does not come from the web.

01:20:26   Maybe it's just in the application bundle.

01:20:29   Maybe it's like if they want to just build a string on the fly.

01:20:31   Maybe it's someone who is like a web developer

01:20:33   and is more accustomed to doing that.

01:20:34   Maybe it is served from their own private web server

01:20:36   and parts of the UI or web views.

01:20:38   Like you're not giving them arbitrary web browsing.

01:20:40   You're not even perhaps giving them links.

01:20:42   You're just using it as a more flexible,

01:20:45   or maybe just the way that people are more comfortable

01:20:47   with way to lay out text and images in your UI,

01:20:50   which is probably not the appropriate thing to do,

01:20:53   but because WebKit is so fast

01:20:54   and because it's fairly efficient

01:20:56   and if you have simple needs,

01:20:57   It is a pretty easy way to do, you know,

01:21:01   to sneak a little bit of web development into your iOS app.

01:21:03   And the fact that that's not possible,

01:21:05   I think is something that Apple may have to end up

01:21:08   backsliding on because as long as I took,

01:21:12   why is this, why is this happening?

01:21:14   Is it happening because they couldn't get WebKit ready

01:21:16   in time for AppTV?

01:21:17   That seems unlikely because all the TVML stuff

01:21:19   surely uses WebKit or at least JavaScript core

01:21:22   or something like that in there.

01:21:23   And it's just an A8 and it's just an iOS variant.

01:21:26   getting WebKit to work is not rocket science, it could work.

01:21:29   Is it because they don't want anyone

01:21:31   to ever make a web browser app for the Apple TV?

01:21:35   Couldn't they do that with App Review?

01:21:36   Like slap you down if you're trying to make something

01:21:38   like a web browser?

01:21:40   Or the final reason, the most popular one seems to be

01:21:42   they don't want you using web technologies to make a UI,

01:21:44   they want you to make a native application.

01:21:47   That may be the case,

01:21:48   maybe that's getting back to what I talked about

01:21:50   in the last show about the AMC and the USA apps,

01:21:52   one of which was terrible

01:21:53   and one of which was only merely so-so.

01:21:56   and I can't remember which was which,

01:21:58   but a lot of those seem like big giant web views

01:22:00   with HTML5 video players.

01:22:02   Is that why they're cruddy,

01:22:03   or is it cruddy because the servers wouldn't respond,

01:22:05   or is it cruddy because they have buggy JavaScript detecting

01:22:07   whether they're seeing a commercial or not?

01:22:08   I don't know where the blame lies,

01:22:09   but it's conceivable that that app was cruddy

01:22:12   because it was done with web UI.

01:22:14   It was like a repackaging of their website

01:22:16   inside an iOS container,

01:22:17   and it was, you know, their website was crappy,

01:22:19   and so was their iOS app.

01:22:20   As usual, Apple is silent in this area.

01:22:24   I haven't heard anything, whispers from anybody about is this something they're going to amend?

01:22:29   Is it just we weren't quite ready in time?

01:22:30   Or is it an intentional thing where they're trying to send a message with a lack of WebKit

01:22:35   support to tell you you're not allowed to use web technologies anywhere on Apple TV?

01:22:40   I would love to know what the answer is, but right now I don't.

01:22:44   Tell us about your early musings on the iPad Pro.

01:22:47   Well, actually, before we do that, any other thoughts on the Apple TV?

01:22:50   Honestly, I'm kind of looking forward to it.

01:22:53   I mean, I—so one of the topics—I don't know how much I want to get into this now

01:22:56   because I haven't really thought too much about it yet, but one of the topics that we

01:23:00   kept hearing about—that I kept hearing about is how could—how could we in general and

01:23:07   usually me specifically, how can I be so pessimistic about all the stuff Apple announced? And first

01:23:14   of all, I don't think I was. I don't think—I don't think I was unreasonably pessimistic.

01:23:17   And I do think there's a lot of warranted pessimism or skepticism that I expressed about

01:23:24   the various stuff.

01:23:25   However, there are two things that I am more excited about this week than I was last week.

01:23:31   Number one is 3D touch because after watching more of the videos and after maybe seeing

01:23:36   some people using it, it does look, I have not used it, I have not felt it or touched

01:23:42   it myself. However, it does look like it's going to be really, really nice as a shortcut

01:23:49   mechanism to do a lot of quick things. I don't, you know, my concerns about its discoverability

01:23:55   and everything remain. However, I do think for power users like us, I think it will be

01:24:02   really nice to have. So we'll see, you know, we'll see how much it matters for regular

01:24:06   people. I think it's going to matter about as much as things like multitasking gestures

01:24:10   for regular people, but we'll see. And the other thing I am more excited about than last

01:24:14   week is the Apple TV. I do, however, you know, I said last week my main concern with the

01:24:20   Apple TV is not whether I would like it, it's whether people will buy it because it's a

01:24:25   $150 box entering a market of very, very cheap things that people think are good enough and

01:24:31   they're still going to keep selling the old Apple TV, so it's going to have to compete

01:24:34   with that, which is half the price. And I think it's going to be a tough sell for a

01:24:39   a while until the app story develops if it does. That being said, I'm looking forward

01:24:44   to it because first of all, it'll allow me to consolidate our universal remote situation

01:24:49   here, which will be nice. But also I'm looking forward to it because I like apps and I think

01:24:56   it'll be kind of interesting and kind of fun to play around with. So I am looking forward

01:25:00   to both of those things. Whether through the whole rest of the world is, we'll see what

01:25:06   happens there. But I'm looking forward to them.

01:25:08   Yeah, I didn't think like the Apple TV was the one thing I said

01:25:11   I'm definitely buying and I was enthusiastic about it as well. I was I know of course

01:25:15   I'm also enthusiastic about the iPad Pro, so I don't think you know

01:25:18   it's maybe it's the

01:25:21   the hypercritical influence but

01:25:23   Thus far most of us mostly on the show

01:25:27   We've found it more interesting to talk about the potential problems of products and think about what could go wrong

01:25:32   Then to just spend the entire time gushing about the things that we like

01:25:35   But there were things that we like and you know if we end the show and a bunch of us say that we're definitely getting

01:25:39   an Apple TV that's probably you know like okay

01:25:42   But anyway who cares if we're getting one like we talked about the products the good the bad and the ugly

01:25:46   I do agree that Marco lately has been in a downswing in terms of being

01:25:51   Cranky about things that Apple has is falling down about but it's not like he's just inarticulately

01:25:57   He's written thousands of words about it like it's not it's not a vague notion that he just kind of has and just you know

01:26:03   has got an axe to grind. He's got specific concerns that he's expressed in various ways.

01:26:07   And so I think that's just his opinion, man.

01:26:11   Well, and I think also there's a lot that I've been positive about. Now, the idea that

01:26:15   I have to be equally positive and negative is, of course, totally wrong.

01:26:18   It's fair and balanced, Margo.

01:26:20   Yeah, right. Let's get that out of the way. That is total BS. However, there's a lot of

01:26:26   Apple stuff and Apple products that have launched in the last couple of years that I really

01:26:32   enjoy that I use constantly. I've been very vocal about how much I really enjoy the Apple

01:26:37   Watch. Even though I think the app situation is terrible, which it is, I think the rest

01:26:42   of the product is great. And I keep saying that. Nobody hears it, but I keep saying it.

01:26:46   I also really enjoy the rediscovery of MDNS Responder and the eviction of DiscoveryD from

01:26:54   our operating system because as I've written about and said on this podcast, the reliability

01:27:00   of the things I do with my home network on an OS X has skyrocketed. The reliability of

01:27:07   my Apple TV and the things I do on there and AirPlay and things like that, those have all

01:27:12   skyrocketed after MDNS Responder came back.

01:27:15   Discovery D is the new Coke because like, no, but maybe you came into the Mac too late,

01:27:20   but there was no love for MDNS Responder in the many years when it was introduced. It

01:27:25   was always a source of problems. You always had to kill it. People had problems with it,

01:27:29   The only reason it gets any love is because they brought out New Coke and nobody liked

01:27:32   New Coke and they brought back NDNS.

01:27:34   Oh, it's NDNS Responder Classic.

01:27:36   Everybody loves it.

01:27:37   Right.

01:27:38   Anyway, so yeah, that like, my world has been changed at home.

01:27:43   Like the last year with Yosemite was really rough until that change was made a few months

01:27:47   ago.

01:27:48   And as I wrote about on my site when it happened, that has made a massive difference for me

01:27:52   in the reliability of this stuff.

01:27:54   However, there's still tons of things that need work.

01:27:58   For instance, I launched an app today, which we might get to, and it was delayed by an

01:28:04   App Store bug for five and a half hours after it was approved for sale because the CDN just

01:28:10   didn't work.

01:28:11   And that's happened to a lot of developers today during the release of iOS 9.

01:28:14   It happened to tons of people.

01:28:18   There's still issues with the services.

01:28:20   There are still issues with some of the applications.

01:28:22   There are still issues with some of the hardware.

01:28:25   There's still delays of things like Skylake, which granted is not Apple's fault, but it

01:28:29   still affects Apple's products.

01:28:31   There's been significant stagnation in the laptop lineup recently because we're so late

01:28:36   with the CPU.

01:28:37   So, you know, there's stuff that is not perfect and there is stuff like the iPhone 6 battery

01:28:43   that I think is not the decision I would have made and not the decision that fits me.

01:28:48   When I say things like that the product line is getting, is gaining more narrowly focused

01:28:54   products and that the question of who is this for, the answer to that keeps getting narrower

01:28:59   for a lot of these newer products. I don't think that's unfair or necessarily negative,

01:29:05   but that is certainly an observation of the product line. But again, it's like I still

01:29:08   use the iMac, which is this general purpose large desktop and the 15 inch MacBook Pro,

01:29:13   which is the most general purpose laptop I think they have. Like for, you know, get a

01:29:17   laptop that will serve anything you need to serve. That's the one. Okay. You know, I'm

01:29:21   I'm talking to you on this through a Mac,

01:29:23   through livestreaming through another Mac

01:29:26   with a room full of Apple gear.

01:29:27   I mean, it's like, you know,

01:29:28   I still like a lot of Apple stuff.

01:29:30   However, I don't think it's unfair or unwarranted

01:29:35   to point out the areas in which

01:29:38   they're kind of missing the mark for me or for everybody.

01:29:40   And as they keep serving more and more and more areas,

01:29:44   'cause what they have today with the product line

01:29:47   is way more broad in just like sheer number

01:29:51   products and services and apps that they have right now is so much more broad than it used

01:29:55   to be. And the fact is, they're not doing all of them well. Apple has never been able

01:30:02   to juggle too many things at once particularly well, and the number of things they can juggle

01:30:06   at once well over time has gone up, but so has the number of things they try to juggle

01:30:11   all at once. And so there's still always areas that can use improvement. And we on the outside

01:30:18   that can use improvement. And we on the outside, people like us who don't work for them, and

01:30:24   they're like, because people who work for them can't really say anything, because they

01:30:28   can get in trouble. But people like us on the outside who don't work for them and can

01:30:33   say whatever we want, can effect positive change within Apple and within its products

01:30:40   by ranting about them when it's warranted, by giving them real constructive valid criticism

01:30:47   when it's warranted, that actually affects positive change. Every time I complain about

01:30:52   something about Apple, that is like a fair complaint, I hear from people on the inside

01:30:57   of the company, either right then or near that, or either right then or soon after,

01:31:03   I hear from people that whatever I said or wrote was circulated in some group and that

01:31:09   like helped that team argue for their point or make a change or whatever. And I hear this

01:31:14   from everyone I know who writes about Apple or who talked about Apple, the people inside

01:31:18   listen. Our complaints are ammunition for internal fights and that complaining works

01:31:24   in a way that filing bug after bug might not for me. Complaining works. And again, you

01:31:31   know, there's no reason to stop complaining just out of, you know, trying to be nice if

01:31:36   things really are broken or could use improvement.

01:31:38   David Schanzer Yeah, the thing that struck me about the feedback

01:31:42   we got and we did get several people writing in saying, "Oh my god, you're a bunch of curmudgeons."

01:31:45   You know, maybe there's some truth to that, but I don't know.

01:31:48   I don't think it does anyone any good for us to just be parrots that are saying,

01:31:53   "Oh, this is the best. Apple's the best. Apple is flawless. Nothing Apple does is wrong."

01:31:56   And that would not be a particularly enjoyable show for us to make or for most people to listen to. So I

01:32:03   feel like I speak for all of us and saying genuinely, I mean if we came across

01:32:08   grumpy last episode that that wasn't our intention, but

01:32:11   You know, we're gonna call it like we see it and if we see things as being broken then damn it

01:32:17   We're gonna say that it's broken and that's just how we feel and you know, if it doesn't work for

01:32:22   if it doesn't work for you, then I'm sorry, but

01:32:26   You know TJ Loma is saying in the chat. It was a three-hour negative a thon. Maybe we listen maybe

01:32:32   What I said did not feel it was like a three-hour complaining festival

01:32:38   I didn't get a chance to listen back to the episode, but man, it certainly didn't

01:32:43   feel that way when I was recording it, and I'm pretty sure that you guys didn't think

01:32:48   it went that way either.

01:32:49   And if it came across that way, then, you know, we're sorry, but this is how we feel.

01:32:52   And, you know, if you're looking for someone to just parrot about how amazing Apple is,

01:32:56   you're going to have to look elsewhere.

01:32:58   The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that criticism, for lack of a better word, is good.

01:33:03   Criticism is right.

01:33:04   Criticism works.

01:33:06   Criticism clarifies.

01:33:07   through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.

01:33:10   Is this a reference?

01:33:11   Yes, it is.

01:33:12   I can tell that was your quote voice, but I couldn't figure out where it was from.

01:33:16   That was my quote voice, and I was, there's a double quote voice, because I was quoting

01:33:20   a thing in which I was quoting a thing.

01:33:22   Oh, God.

01:33:23   We'll put it in the show notes.

01:33:25   Speaking of quoting yourself, why don't you tell us about what you said about the iPad

01:33:29   Pro?

01:33:30   Yeah, speaking of quoting myself, I was just curious about this because we talked about

01:33:34   the iPad Pro last week and I wanted an iPad Pro for a long time and I was like, "How long?

01:33:40   When did I first start talking about the iPad Pro?"

01:33:43   I thought it was on a podcast and so I deployed the _DavidSmith who has magical abilities

01:33:50   to find out when people said things in the past, which we should all be frightened of

01:33:53   because I don't understand where he gets these powers.

01:33:56   But if you've lost your car keys, contact _DavidSmith.

01:33:59   He will tell you where they are.

01:34:00   It's a very convenient service.

01:34:02   long as you've spoken about it on a podcast. Right. Well, we don't know. We don't know.

01:34:06   That's not just, you know, you're speculating by the limits of his power. Anyway, I searched

01:34:11   my own podcast for like a good 90 seconds before I went to the Slack channel and asked

01:34:18   to look it up for me. I feel kind of bad. Anyway, but I did search for it and I couldn't

01:34:21   find it. He found it immediately. It was a Hypercritical episode 58 in March of 2012,

01:34:27   31 minutes in, you'll hear my first public musings about, "You know what Apple should

01:34:33   do?

01:34:34   They should make a bigger iPad and call it the iPad Pro," and blah, blah, blah.

01:34:36   So if you're interested in that or just want to hear a really old hypercritical where I

01:34:40   sound really weird and talk about things in the past, I will put that link in the show.

01:34:45   It's too.

01:34:46   Okay.

01:34:47   Speaking of the iPad Pro, Dr. Wave, Michael B. Johnson from Pixar, tweeted at some point

01:34:52   or another – or I believe it was a tweet.

01:34:54   He said, my understanding is that the iPad Pro recognizes

01:34:57   the stylus data from the Apple Pencil flowing in at 240 Hertz,

01:35:03   fingers at 120 Hertz.

01:35:06   And the Air 2, in general, will do 120 Hertz.

01:35:10   And all other iPads and iOS devices do 60 Hertz.

01:35:14   My understanding is that his understanding is accurate,

01:35:17   that the iPad Pro is 240 for the Apple Pencil, 120 for

01:35:21   everything else.

01:35:22   And the Air 2 is 120, everything else is 60.

01:35:25   - Yeah, and that, combined with the variable refresh rate,

01:35:28   is really interesting, you know,

01:35:30   the technical length that Apple either has to go

01:35:32   or is willing to go or both to do a good job with like,

01:35:35   you know, why don't you just add a stylus to the iPad?

01:35:37   Well, it's not that simple, you know,

01:35:39   you have to do like,

01:35:40   figure out how you can do pressure sensitivity.

01:35:42   And also, you know, 60 hertz, again,

01:35:45   very common for computery things,

01:35:47   any kind of computery thing,

01:35:48   whether it's hooked up to a TV or hooked up to a monitor,

01:35:50   it's been a standard for many years

01:35:51   ever since CRTs went away, it's just 60 Hertz, but that's not good enough for

01:35:58   it to feel nice when you're drawing on it. I'm not sure why the Air 2 is 120,

01:36:02   maybe they just cranked it up because they could, or I don't know what the

01:36:07   technique behind that is, but 240 for the thing that supports the pencil makes

01:36:12   perfect sense. And again, during the videos that they showed people

01:36:17   drawing on the thing, I could see the lag. Like the lag, once you know what to look

01:36:21   for.

01:36:22   Yeah, I could too.

01:36:23   The lag is there.

01:36:24   But if you've ever used a Wacom or Wacom tablet, depending on how you pronounce it, or Cintiq,

01:36:30   which is their thing where you draw on a screen that they provide to you, there's plenty of

01:36:34   lag there too.

01:36:35   We'll link for the umpteenth time that video from the Microsoft Research thing that shows

01:36:40   they have an experimental display that shows different amounts of lag where they can just

01:36:43   turn the dial and crank it up and down.

01:36:45   And boy, the difference between current technology and the best thing that we can do right now

01:36:52   with unlimited money is dramatic.

01:36:55   And as soon as you see the good one, you're like, "Oh, well, I want that."

01:36:58   You know, it's like, "Well, tough luck.

01:37:00   You can't have that."

01:37:01   But, you know, we'll get there eventually.

01:37:03   And the only way we'll get there is by every new iteration of these type of things that

01:37:06   you can scroll on with a pen, make it better, make it faster.

01:37:09   So what I'm interested in, and I haven't seen, I think I have a link in that we can put in

01:37:13   the show notes from somebody who wrote a blog post comparing the apple pencil to the top

01:37:18   of the line tablet that artists use now and had nice things to say about the apple tablet

01:37:24   but I guess we have to wait until these things are in people's hands and see like hands-on

01:37:28   tests or whatever but I do know that every every tablet I've ever seen anyone use to

01:37:33   draw with or have drawn with myself has had lag that I can see.

01:37:37   Apple's thing also has lag that I can see.

01:37:40   I can't eyeball it, I can't say which is worse

01:37:42   or which is better.

01:37:43   One point that was made, is this in the show notes somewhere?

01:37:46   I thought we had a link to it, anyway.

01:37:47   One point that was made in this article

01:37:49   about comparing the Cintiq to the iPad Pro

01:37:54   was that the Cintiq, it makes it seem like

01:37:58   where the image is and where your stylus touches the screen

01:38:02   are distant from each other, like there's an air gap

01:38:05   or like a, you know, sort of like a large gap

01:38:08   so that depending on what angle you're holding it,

01:38:09   Parallax makes it seem like the ink or whatever is not coming out of the tip of your pen

01:38:13   It's coming out of some point removed from the tip of your pen

01:38:16   and in the iPad

01:38:19   That seems less because that the whole thing is thinner and the glass is thinner and is laminated to the glass and all the other stuff

01:38:25   and that makes sense to me tech wise because

01:38:28   Apple is surely better able to manufacture the fanciest

01:38:32   Sort of screen with the smallest gap and no air gap and great lamination and everything

01:38:38   Whereas a company that makes tablets for artists necessarily has much smaller volumes and not as not doesn't have billions of dollars in the bank

01:38:46   And all the other stuff so there is the potential for the iPad Pro to be a really good tool for artists

01:38:51   That is potentially as good as are better than all existing dedicated tools

01:38:56   But I think we just have to wait and see for the people who actually buy this and use it to do real work and they'll

01:39:01   report back

01:39:02   Yeah, I mean this is another by the way another one of those things

01:39:05   I was very positive about was the iPad Pro for pen input, the pencil itself, and the

01:39:11   general notion of writing things on a screen with a pen. I like all those things. They

01:39:17   just aren't things that I need to do. But I'm very positive on all of those things for

01:39:23   people who use pens or who like to write or who like to take notes or who like to draw.

01:39:28   That all sounds awesome for those people. However, I'm a computer geek. In the old school

01:39:34   sense of computer geekdom where I mostly just need a keyboard and a mouse and a big screen

01:39:38   and a big powerful computer. So it's not really for me. However, you know, good on them for

01:39:43   the people who actually want to use it.

01:39:45   You know, if this ever does, it'll go all the way down to an iPhone 6 size device, you

01:39:49   would get a little stylist and scratch things out on it. If only because someone would bring

01:39:54   out Draw Something again and people would forget that it previously existed and be like,

01:39:57   "Wow, try this great new game. You draw pictures to each other. It's really fun."

01:39:59   Sure, yeah, I mean look if this was available even for you know even when as soon as it comes to an iPad

01:40:07   Size that I want to own I'll probably buy one

01:40:11   I'll probably buy whatever you know if like if next year's iPad air supports the pencil

01:40:16   Then I'll probably get one of those I just or you know if there's some really compelling reason for me to get the iPad Pro

01:40:23   I will get it like I talked before like I'd love to make a podcast editor

01:40:28   And, you know, if I'm going to do that, making it on the iPad Pro is certainly worth investigating.

01:40:33   However, I'm not doing that right now. I'm doing other things and I don't plan to do

01:40:38   that anytime soon. You know, by the time I get to that, it'll probably be next year.

01:40:41   I'll get the second one. I also am worried with the current one that, you know, I think

01:40:47   I mentioned this in last week's show, that forced touch on the iPhone is going to be

01:40:52   so interesting and so compelling as a shortcut mechanism that it's going to be weird getting

01:40:57   used to that on the phone and then not having it yet on the iPads. So I would rather wait

01:41:01   if I'm going to spend over a thousand dollars on a brand new really high end iPad that I

01:41:07   don't really need right now, I would rather wait until next year to see if maybe it gets

01:41:12   forced touch. But we'll see.

01:41:14   I think you mean 3D touch, but I'm with you.

01:41:16   Sorry, yeah, you're right. Even Federighi screwed it up, come on.

01:41:19   Yeah, so true. Alright, do you think anyone's going to make any money on apps on the iPad

01:41:25   Pro because the friend of the show that we just mentioned, underscore David Smith, tweeted

01:41:29   a link to a company, I don't recall their name, but the people who make Sketch, which

01:41:36   apparently is a very popular app.

01:41:38   They are basically saying, "No freaking way we're going to touch the iPad Pro because

01:41:42   we can't make any money on it."

01:41:43   Yeah, that post kind of struck me the wrong way because we all know there are problems

01:41:48   with the App Store and there are problems with the companies that have difficulty finding

01:41:52   way to make money and the price pressure like we've talked about these things a million times

01:41:55   but i think one of the least convincing um it's at least convincing because this app is sketch

01:42:01   and not photoshop i guess but one of the least convincing things you can do is say this entirely

01:42:05   new thing like an apple tablet with with a pencil which has not existed before we are writing off

01:42:11   because we assume it will be exactly like all of the other markets and they're probably right like

01:42:15   i'm not saying they're wrong or anything like that it's just there are many reasons why it

01:42:20   make sense for them not to make the app. Maybe they have Mac developers, not iOS developers.

01:42:26   You can sell Mac apps for more, like all the things we've talked about or whatever, but

01:42:29   the idea that it is inconceivable and they're just entirely sure, I guess what they're saying

01:42:34   is that we can't risk it. We think that there's not a sustainable market for iPad per application,

01:42:40   and we think that because we've judged there not to be a sustainable market for these applications

01:42:44   on the previous iPads and on the phones and blah blah blah, so on and so forth. But it

01:42:48   Reid's kind of like, you know,

01:42:51   "We understand it's a chicken egg situation, you go first."

01:42:54   And you go first with the hardware and we say,

01:42:55   "Yeah, no, I don't think so."

01:42:57   Like someone is gonna go first.

01:42:59   Someone's gonna try to make a go of it here.

01:43:01   Maybe they're the suckers

01:43:02   and they're gonna all go out of business

01:43:03   and not find out that they can't make money on the platform.

01:43:05   But it's not particularly convincing to me

01:43:07   for one company to say,

01:43:09   "Because there are a bunch of good reasons

01:43:12   for us not to make an app for the iPad Pro,

01:43:15   it is a condemnation of the entire concept

01:43:17   of there being a supportable pro application space.

01:43:19   I think the iPad Pro has the best chance,

01:43:22   maybe Apple TV tied with that,

01:43:24   the best chance to break through the thing

01:43:27   that has caused the iOS pricing and business model

01:43:31   to get pulled down so much.

01:43:33   Because you can sell, well, there's two things here.

01:43:35   One, you can sell more expensive things to professionals.

01:43:39   Right, that's what you're always looking for.

01:43:40   It's why if someone needs a Mac app to do their job

01:43:42   and they make a lot of money at their job,

01:43:44   they will give you $100 for this app

01:43:46   that they use at their job.

01:43:47   they will just do it.

01:43:48   Even just for musicians, people sell music applications.

01:43:50   Even if these people don't make money doing music,

01:43:52   they love music, they'll give you 50 bucks for a thing

01:43:55   that lets them do something with their band.

01:43:57   And you know, like that will definitely happen.

01:44:00   Much less so than trying to sell somebody

01:44:02   like a little game or you know,

01:44:04   something more trivial or general interest, right?

01:44:07   So pro apps are good.

01:44:08   And the second thing, this is a theory I've had for a while.

01:44:12   I think it's still kind of true.

01:44:15   the bigger the screen, the more money you can charge

01:44:17   because bigger equals more money.

01:44:20   I know that makes no sense logically,

01:44:22   but in my experience, I've seen,

01:44:24   it seems to me that people can be more convinced to,

01:44:29   maybe it's just a coincidence,

01:44:30   maybe it's not actually causation,

01:44:32   it's just like, it just so happens

01:44:34   that computers have bigger screens

01:44:35   and people use computers for their jobs and blah, blah, blah.

01:44:37   But like what I was getting at was I'm thinking,

01:44:39   can you sell an Apple TV app for more money

01:44:42   because it's bigger?

01:44:44   Setting aside things like video content,

01:44:47   where that's just, you know, you're not,

01:44:48   it's not that the screen is big,

01:44:50   it's that you're buying video.

01:44:50   Like I'm buying access to HBO,

01:44:52   I'm buying access to the Major League Baseball or whatever.

01:44:55   Setting that aside, can you charge more money

01:44:57   because the screen is bigger?

01:44:59   Or is it because apps that run on a bigger screen

01:45:01   can have more features

01:45:02   and people are gonna pay for those features?

01:45:04   I don't know what the connection is.

01:45:05   But anyway, I am not ready to entirely write off

01:45:09   both the iPad Pro and the Apple TV

01:45:11   as platforms where it is just as difficult

01:45:15   to sell an application for more than a couple bucks

01:45:18   as it is on iOS.

01:45:20   - Well, the big thing is going to be volume.

01:45:24   It's will the iPad Pro sell in enough volume

01:45:28   that it'll be worth developing high quality apps for it?

01:45:32   Because if it doesn't achieve really high volumes,

01:45:36   and high volumes for an iPad are still very low volumes

01:45:40   for an iPhone, but let's just say like,

01:45:43   if it doesn't sell a lot, if a lot of these things

01:45:46   don't sell by iPad standards, it's gonna be very hard

01:45:49   for most companies to justify developing for it,

01:45:51   just on that basis alone, before you even get to price.

01:45:54   - Don't you think volume works against it though?

01:45:56   Because the high volumes is part of the reason

01:45:57   why there's such downward price pressure,

01:45:59   because if you sell to almost everybody,

01:46:01   most people don't wanna pay for software, period.

01:46:03   But if you're selling a pro app, you don't need,

01:46:05   there are very few pros.

01:46:08   How many people who are going to buy a $50 music app are there out there?

01:46:13   For drawing applications in iPad Pro, it's still chicken and egg.

01:46:16   Someone has to make the software.

01:46:17   Someone has to go first.

01:46:18   Apple has made the hardware and they hope someone makes the software.

01:46:20   But how many professional artists are there in the world?

01:46:24   How many people who use a Stiles to do their daily work drawing and designing things are

01:46:29   there in the world?

01:46:30   Not a lot.

01:46:31   I think volume...

01:46:34   You can't sell 10,000 of them.

01:46:36   I think you probably even need more than Microsoft Surface numbers, but you don't need iPhone size numbers

01:46:41   So I don't know what the the middle is there

01:46:43   Like if it just sells in merely normal iPad volumes, is that too few?

01:46:47   But if it sells in merely normal iPad volumes, couldn't they sell?

01:46:51   You know one to every designer the entire world and still have tons left over

01:46:55   it's it's a

01:46:58   It's conceivable. I think that it could sell

01:47:00   I mean just look at the Mac the Mac sells in vanishingly small volumes compared to the iPhone

01:47:04   and yet it is a sustainable platform for some companies to sell programs that people use

01:47:10   to do their jobs on their Macs and they pay astronomical amounts of money for them by

01:47:16   the standards of iOS applications. Like 20 whole dollars for an application. It's unheard

01:47:21   of.

01:47:22   Well, that's true. However, Macs also have the advantage of an installed base already

01:47:27   where they don't sell as many units as before.

01:47:31   However, if you wanted to,

01:47:33   suppose Apple made a new Mac

01:47:35   with some interesting new screen shape or something,

01:47:41   and you made an app that worked well on that,

01:47:44   well there's also the millions and millions of other Macs

01:47:47   that already exist in the world

01:47:48   that can probably also run that app.

01:47:50   So the sales volumes itself are a little bit

01:47:52   of a bad example here.

01:47:56   Also, I would argue that there's a lot more people who, quote, "get their work done on

01:48:03   a Mac than an iPad in these kind of like content creation or professional kinds of fields."

01:48:08   I don't know that offhand, however, that sounds very likely, if I can take a guess.

01:48:13   Now, you know, on the iPad Pro, to make a really good iPad Pro app, you need to really

01:48:19   use that expansive screen space very well, and also it would be nice if it worked well

01:48:24   with the pencil.

01:48:25   I think that's going to be a huge differentiator because, again, I like the pencil idea.

01:48:30   I think that sounds very good and very compelling and very interesting.

01:48:33   However, again, there's going to be very few of these things in the market for a while.

01:48:37   So it's going to be hard just numbers-wise.

01:48:39   Now, assume they have healthy install base.

01:48:43   Assume it actually becomes reasonably possible to sell a decent number of $30 or whatever

01:48:49   apps on this thing.

01:48:52   Then the question is, can you actually build and sustain a business with the app stores

01:48:58   pricing and trial and upgrade situation?

01:49:01   And that is another question.

01:49:04   We've had iPads for five years now, five and a half years now, and I know a lot of companies

01:49:12   have struggled to bring that kind of business to the iPad.

01:49:15   It's hard enough on the iPhone where you have tons of volume to make up for it.

01:49:18   It's even harder on the iPad.

01:49:20   So how, what do you think, like I don't think the iPad Pro

01:49:24   alone can solve that problem.

01:49:29   It can solve the first problem of,

01:49:30   "Hey, let's get a bunch of people buying these things,

01:49:32   "you know, 'cause they're really good."

01:49:33   But how do you solve the second problem there,

01:49:36   you know, if you're Apple?

01:49:37   Like how do you solve the App Store pricing problem?

01:49:39   Or do you not think that's enough of a problem to matter?

01:49:43   - Yeah, I don't know what the right answer is.

01:49:46   I do know that a friend of the show, Ben Thompson,

01:49:48   a really good piece about the Apple platforms becoming platforms rather than products. And

01:49:55   I didn't get a chance to read it thoroughly, so now I'm assigning myself some homework

01:50:00   to do so, but we'll put a link in the chat for both myself and for the listeners. I think

01:50:05   that, from what I did get to read of it, he made some really, really great points, and

01:50:12   that Apple seems to think that they can solve these problems by just creating new products,

01:50:16   And that's not the case, just like you said, Marco.

01:50:18   Creating a new product doesn't just fix all of these problems.

01:50:21   Yeah, the reason the iPad Pro is interesting is because it's finally a new product with

01:50:26   different features that changes a little bit of the equation.

01:50:29   If you're going to sell a $100 app for designers for the iPad without a stylus, good luck.

01:50:35   Am I supposed to just swipe this with my finger or a big smushy ball of rubber or a hot dog

01:50:40   or something?

01:50:41   It's a non-starter.

01:50:43   So suddenly things are more possible.

01:50:46   post from the sketch designers or sketch developers is so definitive it's like

01:50:50   "Apps on iOS sell for unsustainably low prices due to the lack of

01:50:55   trials." Like they're just flat-out conclusion. They sell for

01:50:59   unsustainable... the prices are unsustainably low and the reason is no

01:51:02   trials. And we all agree that like you know based on the model that we know

01:51:06   worked on the Mac, upgrade pricing, trials for very expensive applications, you can

01:51:11   figure out if you like them, so on and so forth, that is a system that has already

01:51:15   existed on the Mac that did work. Apple's contention, implicit contention with iOS

01:51:20   has been we can get rid of all the bad sides of that system while, you know, and

01:51:29   make up for it by just being better in so many other ways. Make up for it in volume,

01:51:33   make up for it in an easier to develop platform, make up for better user

01:51:37   experience so more people buy your apps, you know, make up for it because

01:51:40   people can just tap their finger on a piece of glass and buy your app really

01:51:42   easily and will take care of the payments like and it's enough to be you

01:51:48   know probably the most successful application platform ever created

01:51:51   because it's so easy to buy applications far more people put apps on their

01:51:55   phones than ever put apps on their computers you know volume wise like it's

01:51:59   just so easy to get an app like we talked about this before there's lots of

01:52:03   upside but once you get into the realm of professional applications applications

01:52:07   that cost a lot of money to develop applications that are always going to

01:52:10   sell in smaller volumes, they're not angry birds,

01:52:13   that you know there's only 700,000 people

01:52:16   in the entire United States who even need this application

01:52:18   and I need to sell to 5% of them.

01:52:21   And that's my entire user base,

01:52:22   I'm gonna charge each one of them $1,000

01:52:25   and I can't charge each one of them $1,000

01:52:27   every single year.

01:52:28   I have to charge them $1,000 once

01:52:29   and then $200 every year or two when I make major updates

01:52:33   and if I can't do that, it doesn't work for me.

01:52:35   And pick whatever numbers you want for the applications.

01:52:38   Like I'm thinking back to the good old days

01:52:40   of the I am rich application.

01:52:42   In some ways, I have a kind of nostalgia for the idea

01:52:46   that that's how high the pricing would go.

01:52:49   I know there are some high priced applications in iOS

01:52:52   for very, very narrowly defined fields,

01:52:54   but it's just this big gulf like in the middle

01:52:57   between free or almost free things

01:53:01   and things that are just really expensive

01:53:04   and are being sold to companies.

01:53:06   It used to be on the Mac there was, and still kind of is,

01:53:09   a healthy place for applications that cost tens or hundreds of dollars,

01:53:14   that let people do their jobs better

01:53:19   and let the developers support that application in an ongoing basis,

01:53:23   year after year after year, just working on that application,

01:53:26   making it better, porting it to new platforms,

01:53:28   knowing that their user base doesn't need to grow by leaps and bounds

01:53:31   so they will just continue to pay them a little bit of money each year

01:53:34   for the new version of the whatever because it helps them get their job done.

01:53:37   So I sympathize with the sketch people,

01:53:40   but I really hope someone, some poor sucker, I guess,

01:53:45   runs the experiment and says, can I

01:53:49   make a business selling professional-level applications

01:53:52   for double-digit or triple-digit prices on the iPad Pro?

01:53:56   Not just like get an Apple Design Award next year's WWDC,

01:54:00   but five years from now, still be selling the latest version

01:54:03   of that application and have an actual company that runs with

01:54:06   maybe more than one or two people selling an application

01:54:09   that people really use.

01:54:10   That's what I think Apple should be bragging about.

01:54:12   They always go up there and they brag about it.

01:54:13   Look at all these applications we have

01:54:15   and look at this one, it's beautiful.

01:54:17   And you all love this app or whatever,

01:54:19   but where are there success stories like Adobe Photoshop

01:54:24   or BB Edit for crying out loud or any application

01:54:26   that's like this isn't just a flash in the pan,

01:54:29   popular application for a company that got bought

01:54:31   by Facebook or Google or went out of business

01:54:33   or got venture funding or whatever,

01:54:34   but it is actually a sustainable business.

01:54:36   And on the Mac, they have things like OmniGroup

01:54:38   at the very least.

01:54:40   And on iOS, they have like, well,

01:54:42   companies that can subsidize things like Microsoft

01:54:45   and Apple itself, and to some degree, Adobe.

01:54:47   And then a bunch of other one and two person shops

01:54:49   who get really rich selling a game

01:54:51   that sells to millions of people, which is great.

01:54:52   Those games are great and everything, more power to them.

01:54:56   But there's a dead spot in the middle

01:54:57   for applications that could sell to a lot of people,

01:55:01   but are forced to sell for $2 because of the real

01:55:06   or imagined pressure to price that low

01:55:08   and the platformers were off for it

01:55:12   and I think users are worse off for it.

01:55:14   That's setting aside developers

01:55:16   'cause developers can always do something else

01:55:18   like I make a different application,

01:55:19   developers are employable, they'll be fine, right?

01:55:22   It's just most disappointing for Apple and for users

01:55:24   because users want better applications

01:55:26   and I think so does Apple.

01:55:27   I think they would be able to brag more convincingly

01:55:29   about the things that happen on their platform if it wasn't a new one every year.

01:55:34   All right. So we have, at least by the way the clock reads on the Skype call, we have

01:55:40   had two hours of follow-up. So I think we are pretty much tapped out.

01:55:43   Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, Squarespace, Lynda.com, and Automattic. And

01:55:49   we will see you next week.

01:55:51   [Music]

01:55:52   Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin

01:55:58   'Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental

01:56:04   John didn't do any research, Margo and Casey wouldn't let him

01:56:09   'Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental

01:56:14   And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm

01:56:19   And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them @C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S

01:56:29   So that's Kasey Liszt, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

01:56:33   Auntie Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A, Syracuse

01:56:40   It's accidental (It's accidental)

01:56:43   They didn't mean to, accidental (It's accidental)

01:56:49   Tech broadcast so long

01:56:54   So Marco, did anything happen today?

01:56:56   Barely. It almost happened tomorrow.

01:57:00   Fair enough. So you have a new thing?

01:57:03   Yeah, I launched a new app. It's called Peace. It's an iOS 9 content blocker.

01:57:09   And the big deal about it is, so it's an add and tracker blocker, but the big deal about it is that

01:57:14   I actually licensed the database from Ghostery. So this is powered by Ghostery, which is pretty

01:57:20   cool I think. I think it's the best database out there. Honestly, I tried a lot of them

01:57:25   and really a lot over the summer. And I found them to be the best. So I went to them. I

01:57:33   asked if they'd be interested in licensing it for a simple revenue share deal and they

01:57:38   actually said yes, which is amazing. And yeah, so we worked it out and they're fun to work

01:57:46   with and easy, which is, you know, they're a big company, so that was kind of a surprise

01:57:49   for me. And yeah, great. All good stuff.

01:57:53   If you couldn't have licensed the database, would you have made the app anyway?

01:57:57   I had other databases, you know, in various stages of testing throughout the summer. And

01:58:03   I had a really hard time finding one that was really truly good, and not just some like

01:58:08   like total mammoth thing, like massive number of rules, massive database size and complexity

01:58:15   and everything because the bigger you make the rule set, the worse it impacts performance.

01:58:22   And it is a pretty fast system and you can do quite a lot of rules and have it not slow

01:58:27   down too bad but you do change things like how, when you make a change to the rules,

01:58:35   have to send the system all of your rules again. So if you like add a white listed site,

01:58:39   you have to send all of your rules back to the system again. And that actually takes,

01:58:43   with my rule set on an iPhone 6 with just the Go Street database, that takes like two

01:58:47   and a half seconds to do. The way you can tell how long it takes is if you use the open

01:58:53   unrestricted extension, the way that works is it literally just sends an empty rule set,

01:59:01   a Safari View Controller, and then when the Safari View Controller closes, it re-enables

01:59:06   the regular rule set. And so you can tell when the Safari View Controller closes, it

01:59:10   says "restoring piece..." for a few seconds, and then that screen goes away. That is how

01:59:15   long it takes to reload the content blocker rules. That is what that is waiting for. And

01:59:19   so if you test, if you do a larger database, most of the big hosts files, the easy list,

01:59:25   all these, all the different sources of either ad block format or host format block lists.

01:59:32   If you do those, you tend to get like 10,000 entries for a good one and mine is 2,000.

01:59:39   So it literally, it loads for the most part pretty much five times more quickly and then

01:59:44   there is some, you know, some per page cost as well and even though the cost might be

01:59:47   small it is still a per page cost to evaluate all those rules. You know, it tries to do

01:59:51   do smart things like building trees and building fast parsers and everything, but it's still

01:59:56   the fewer rules, the faster it is. So I also found with the other rule sets, I had more

02:00:02   compatibility problems. So certain sites, there's a tracker, I think it's called Adobe

02:00:08   Omniture. I don't know much about this stuff, about the specifics of these things.

02:00:11   But...

02:00:12   Big in the enterprise.

02:00:13   Exactly. It's also used on Apple's site. And if you don't, if you allow, rather, if you

02:00:18   block Adobe Omniture on Apple developer site, the site doesn't work. Like you can't do provisioning

02:00:26   profiles, stuff like that. It just doesn't work because certain sites will actually use

02:00:32   various events triggered by these analytics packages to trigger page functionality. So

02:00:36   if you disable some of these things, pages actually stop working right. And Ghostery,

02:00:42   does compatibility work? They're a big enough company. They have the resources to both hear

02:00:47   about these things and to make exceptions. So their database was pretty sophisticated

02:00:51   and like, you know, these rules should be exempted on these domains, otherwise things

02:00:55   break, you know, stuff like that. So their data was just, it was better for me. It was

02:01:02   just better. I did try, one of my crazy ideas, which I ran for about two weeks, was to just

02:01:09   block all third-party JavaScript. Just all of it. And I found I had to already make a

02:01:16   a few little exceptions, even just to make that work.

02:01:18   Like one of the biggest ones was Squarespace sites.

02:01:21   They would just break.

02:01:22   Like simple things like links and images and you know,

02:01:25   Squarespace hosts all of its scripts

02:01:27   on like a static Squarespace CDN domain,

02:01:29   which is considered third party

02:01:30   if you look at like our page template,

02:01:31   'cause we have our own domain.

02:01:32   So any Squarespace site hosted on some domain name

02:01:35   would break without these certain exemptions made.

02:01:37   - And Google has like jQuery hosting

02:01:39   and tons of people use that.

02:01:40   So yeah, you can't blog all third party

02:01:42   'cause it's just lots of stuff won't work.

02:01:44   - Exactly.

02:01:45   I found like, like I was, like so many sites

02:01:47   that you wouldn't think, like, like I,

02:01:49   like I, it was when I was trying,

02:01:50   when I was trying to order my camera,

02:01:51   and B&H, their site broke.

02:01:53   Like the whole B&H site, you just can't view

02:01:55   any product page on iOS with that enabled.

02:01:58   So, so like it, there was just,

02:02:00   there were so many things that broke

02:02:02   with simpler rules like that,

02:02:04   and then the bigger rule sets were primarily focused on like

02:02:09   hiding ads on PCs, and without regard to breakages really.

02:02:15   So they had a lot of those issues with breakages.

02:02:17   They also just had these giant rule sets

02:02:20   that were full of like, you know,

02:02:21   5,000 entries for Russian porn sites.

02:02:24   And it's like, do I really need that?

02:02:25   Do I really need to waste thousands of entries

02:02:27   on things like that?

02:02:28   - You need to block those ads for the X10 camera.

02:02:31   (laughing)

02:02:32   - Wow.

02:02:32   I'm sure you saw that on a totally legitimate news site.

02:02:36   So, so yeah, I mean,

02:02:38   I tried lots of other databases and rule sets.

02:02:40   I inquired about licensing,

02:02:43   Because a lot of these things, like for instance, I saw a couple of the browser blockers. If

02:02:49   you're free and open source, you could include a lot more host names and block list sources

02:02:55   than if you are a commercial product. If you are a commercial app on iOS, there's a lot

02:03:00   of these lists that you are not allowed to use by their license agreement. I did go to

02:03:04   some of them and approach them for licensing. Most of them didn't respond. Some of them

02:03:09   and said no, some of them said yes for X dollars a year,

02:03:13   but I never found any that were both usable

02:03:15   and were actually good enough, if that makes sense,

02:03:19   except Ghostery, and that's why I went to them.

02:03:22   I did not think they would say yes.

02:03:23   I figured, they're a big company, they have these plugins,

02:03:26   they're gonna wanna do their own thing.

02:03:28   Turns out they don't wanna do their own thing on iOS

02:03:29   because the content blockers are so limited,

02:03:31   they can't do their core business function.

02:03:33   So they didn't really have anything ready for iOS 9,

02:03:36   And I was.

02:03:37   And I had an app that needed a database,

02:03:39   and they had a database that needed an app.

02:03:41   So there you go.

02:03:42   - That's pretty awesome.

02:03:44   - Yeah, it really worked out very well.

02:03:47   - To channel some friends of ours,

02:03:49   I've been testing it for a couple of weeks now,

02:03:51   and it is pretty darn good.

02:03:52   And it's funny because I had,

02:03:56   I'd been noticing that, especially at home,

02:04:01   when I'm doing more browsing for me

02:04:03   rather than looking up things for work,

02:04:06   I felt like my internet had been getting slower lately,

02:04:09   and I couldn't put my finger on what it was or why it was.

02:04:13   And between installing Ghostery on my Mac

02:04:15   and installing Peace on my iOS devices,

02:04:18   suddenly things seemed snappier again.

02:04:21   And it very well could be that this is all in my head,

02:04:25   but I feel like having these content blockers

02:04:30   has really made things feel snappy,

02:04:32   like they did just a year or two ago.

02:04:34   And so whatever content blocker you choose to run,

02:04:38   whether it's a piece or something else,

02:04:40   I strongly encourage you to run one

02:04:42   because it really does make your browsing experience

02:04:46   that much better,

02:04:47   especially if you're on a limited data plan.

02:04:49   You don't wanna have to pull down

02:04:51   all that superfluous information

02:04:52   that really doesn't help you read what you're trying to read.

02:04:55   So do what you gotta do.

02:04:57   - We have more on this topic.

02:04:58   I think we'll save for the next show

02:04:59   'cause I do wanna talk more about things.

02:05:01   Marco had a post today about a piece,

02:05:04   but also kind of about the larger issue of ad blocking

02:05:07   and tracking blocking and all that stuff.

02:05:10   And of course he had posted previously about that as well.

02:05:12   So you should read those so you're ready

02:05:13   as your homework listener for next week

02:05:15   when we will probably talk more

02:05:17   about ad blocking and all that stuff.

02:05:20   But in the meantime, I'm mostly upset

02:05:22   that finally my iPad 3 has been left behind

02:05:25   because none of the content blockers

02:05:27   I've tried to work on it.

02:05:28   - They can't.

02:05:29   - They can't because of the, what is the requirement?

02:05:31   A7?

02:05:32   - 64 bit.

02:05:33   - 64 bit, and is it just for content blockers, 64 bit?

02:05:36   Or does every submission have to be 64 bit now?

02:05:38   - It's content, the content blocker backend is 64 bit only.

02:05:42   - Oh, okay, so that's the, all right.

02:05:44   - Yeah.

02:05:45   - What is the 64 bit?

02:05:46   They're finally accepting 64 bit only apps, right?

02:05:49   But you can't, you don't have to submit them.

02:05:50   - That's right.

02:05:51   - Like just, oh, broadly speaking.

02:05:52   - Yep, that's right.

02:05:53   - Okay, anyway, content blockers are all 64 bit.

02:05:56   If you have an iPad 3 like me, you're sad.

02:05:58   which is kind of a bummer.

02:05:59   So now I really do need to get a new iPad.

02:06:02   My iPad 3 is really showing its age now.

02:06:06   Like when I, I still do manual updates

02:06:08   because I'm a nerd and I want to see what's updated

02:06:10   and stuff.

02:06:11   So when I go to the App Store updates tab

02:06:14   and it's like five things need to be updated

02:06:15   and I hit update all, and then I hit the home button

02:06:17   and try to go to another app,

02:06:18   I don't know why I even bother

02:06:20   because the iPad is going to be paralyzed

02:06:22   while it's doing all those updates in the background.

02:06:24   Even though I'm just trying to browse a webpage,

02:06:26   just everything is slow and creaky so yeah.

02:06:29   I need a new iPad but I just installed Peacever and we'll talk more about content blockers

02:06:36   next week but I am in favor of them.

02:06:38   Short version.

02:06:39   [BEEP]