ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► So, I should start the show by pointing out that it is 14 degrees outside here in the

00:00:06 ◼   ► place that does not have winter.

00:00:07 ◼   ► Are you still stuck on this, Casey?

00:00:11 ◼   ► Right here, my thermometer is reading 13.8, so we are clearly colder than you.

00:00:16 ◼   ► We have winter, you don't.

00:00:17 ◼   ► I'm 12 here.

00:00:18 ◼   ► Yeah, those two cents, those 2.2 degrees, man, they're killer.

00:00:23 ◼   ► All right, now that I got that out of the way, do you want to do some follow-up?

00:00:28 ◼   ► That's what we do.

00:00:29 ◼   ► Let's talk about SSL.

00:00:32 ◼   ► So we have a couple of more pieces of interesting news/feedback with regard to whether or not

00:00:38 ◼   ► you really need SSL for just plain old websites that don't really do anything interactive.

00:00:45 ◼   ► David Walken wrote in and said, "Regarding SSL Everywhere, mostly just in FYI, I'm the

00:00:48 ◼   ► sysadmin for a decently sized charter school in California, and I can tell you from experience

00:00:53 ◼   ► that HTTPS wreaks havoc with the content filters that we are required to have in place.

00:00:58 ◼   ► I love the idea of cheaper free SSL certs and more security in general, but it's also

00:01:03 ◼   ► going to make my life miserable trying to keep students from viewing content that they

00:01:07 ◼   ► shouldn't.

00:01:08 ◼   ► And that's kind of unfortunate that schools have to filter everything, but I totally understand

00:01:14 ◼   ► it, and that's actually an interesting point that I hadn't considered before.

00:01:17 ◼   ► Now, they're just going to do the same thing that we discussed last week, force everyone

00:01:21 ◼   ► to have a certificate, do a man-in-the-middle attack on everybody on the school's internet,

00:01:25 ◼   ► You know that happens in corporate settings it happens in schools all the time and as we learned from many other people who sent

00:01:30 ◼   ► This feedback and didn't attach a name to it in the notes because so many people sent it

00:01:33 ◼   ► They were showing examples of go-go's in-flight internet

00:01:36 ◼   ► Issuing its own certificates so that it can man in the middle you because once your browser touches trust its certificate it acts as an

00:01:43 ◼   ► SSL proxy de grips everything sees every all the traffic that goes through and who knows what else it does

00:01:47 ◼   ► So this is definitely a thing it happens in all sorts of

00:01:52 ◼   ► Places it happens on plain Wi-Fi happens in academic settings. It happens in corporate settings

00:01:57 ◼   ► Yeah, so the wonders of SSL. It's not it's not the fault of SSL, but it's like

00:02:03 ◼   ► People want to see your data

00:02:05 ◼   ► And if you try to use SSL to stop them from seeing your data if you wander into an environment where they say no

00:02:10 ◼   ► Really? We need to see your data. They'll see your data. Yep

00:02:13 ◼   ► Well, and I think this is one of those cases where like, you know

00:02:16 ◼   ► You can't have it both ways if you want to have

00:02:19 ◼   ► complete control over what gets viewed over your network and you want to spy on people or filter it,

00:02:23 ◼   ► you need control over those devices so that you can do things like install your own certificates,

00:02:28 ◼   ► you know, via IT policy and, you know, group installation methods and stuff like that, where, you know, you can't have a coffee shop and

00:02:36 ◼   ► be, and say, "All right, you can take your laptop in here, whatever you want, browse on it, whatever you want,"

00:02:40 ◼   ► and then be spying on that without their knowledge, you know, that's, that's no good. So I think this is actually a perfectly fine balance.

00:02:45 ◼   ► I don't think we're gonna like cause trouble for schools everywhere to a degree that it's worth not doing it

00:02:50 ◼   ► Yeah

00:02:51 ◼   ► I mean and like the go-go thing is doing schools could do something similar as you

00:02:54 ◼   ► Basically you try to foist the certificate on the people who are on your network and say look if you want to be on

00:03:00 ◼   ► Our network the price is you have to use a certificate and trust it so we can see all your content

00:03:04 ◼   ► I'm not quite sure what the state of filtering in an academic setting is these days

00:03:08 ◼   ► I understand why it would be a thing that people want to do but it just seems to me that it's

00:03:14 ◼   ► basically impossible to stop.

00:03:17 ◼   ► What they're trying to stop is students

00:03:19 ◼   ► from seeing things inappropriate,

00:03:20 ◼   ► and what students are trying to do

00:03:21 ◼   ► is see inappropriate things.

00:03:22 ◼   ► And the students are 100% going to win.

00:03:26 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:03:26 ◼   ► - Like, you cannot stop them, right?

00:03:27 ◼   ► But I understand that it's like,

00:03:29 ◼   ► well, just because we can't stop them

00:03:30 ◼   ► doesn't mean we shouldn't try,

00:03:32 ◼   ► because not trying, I don't know.

00:03:33 ◼   ► I don't know what the correct solution there is,

00:03:35 ◼   ► but technically speaking, it's one of those situations

00:03:37 ◼   ► where you're not gonna win.

00:03:40 ◼   ► - Well, plus, I mean, not to get too creepy about it,

00:03:42 ◼   ► But I think by the time a lot of kids are old enough

00:03:45 ◼   ► to start seeking out bad things on the internet,

00:03:48 ◼   ► there's a pretty good chance these days

00:03:50 ◼   ► they probably have their own smartphone with a data plan.

00:03:53 ◼   ► - Yep, and Verizon, all it's doing is tracking,

00:03:55 ◼   ► putting an ad tracker on all their HTTP requests, right?

00:03:58 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:03:59 ◼   ► - It's funny you guys bring up schools again,

00:04:01 ◼   ► because when Erin first started teaching,

00:04:05 ◼   ► she wanted to be able to do something simple,

00:04:07 ◼   ► like look at Gmail when she was at work.

00:04:09 ◼   ► And at the time, it was filtered.

00:04:11 ◼   ► And I think when she had left at the end of this past school year,

00:04:15 ◼   ► teachers were afforded more privileges than the students were.

00:04:20 ◼   ► But when she first started, that wasn't the case.

00:04:22 ◼   ► And so I vividly remember getting into a, like, several month-long game of chicken

00:04:28 ◼   ► where I set up, I think it was like a SOX proxy on a little Linux server I had at the house.

00:04:33 ◼   ► And she was using that for a while, and then that got blocked.

00:04:36 ◼   ► And so then I moved the SOX proxy, or whatever it was, that doesn't really matter,

00:04:39 ◼   ► I moved the proxy onto like a standard port number, like 25 or something like that.

00:04:45 ◼   ► It might've been the exchange port number, whatever that was.

00:04:47 ◼   ► But then that eventually got blocked.

00:04:49 ◼   ► And that was around the time that they started giving the teachers more privileges.

00:04:53 ◼   ► But there were a few other steps that I don't remember in this process, but we were definitely

00:04:57 ◼   ► playing this like cat and mouse game, me and well, maybe it wasn't just me because I think

00:05:00 ◼   ► her students were doing it too, to John's point.

00:05:03 ◼   ► But we were playing this cat and mouse game for several months trying to get Aaron access

00:05:07 ◼   ► and not just regular things like Gmail,

00:05:10 ◼   ► these weren't nefarious things,

00:05:12 ◼   ► but eventually it ended up that the IT overlords won

00:05:16 ◼   ► and they just allowed the teachers

00:05:18 ◼   ► to have a little bit more access.

00:05:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, anyone who's ever worked

00:05:22 ◼   ► with one of these content filters

00:05:24 ◼   ► and tried to get any work done

00:05:27 ◼   ► has usually run into problems like this,

00:05:28 ◼   ► where like, ostensibly it's a good idea

00:05:31 ◼   ► to help keep you working and keep you on track

00:05:33 ◼   ► and there are situations where that works

00:05:35 ◼   ► and where that has been successful,

00:05:36 ◼   ► but there's also a lot of situations where

00:05:39 ◼   ► the filter is actually keeping people from

00:05:42 ◼   ► not only doing harmless things,

00:05:43 ◼   ► like checking their Gmail every once in a while at work,

00:05:46 ◼   ► but also actually keeping them

00:05:47 ◼   ► from doing their jobs properly.

00:05:48 ◼   ► Like if you have to be researching things on the internet

00:05:50 ◼   ► as part of your job,

00:05:51 ◼   ► or you're looking up something for a paper,

00:05:53 ◼   ► and so many sites are blocked.

00:05:55 ◼   ► There's so many situations where these content filters

00:05:59 ◼   ► are actively harmful to what's trying to get done

00:06:01 ◼   ► in the office that they're trying to protect.

00:06:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's absolutely true.

00:06:05 ◼   ► But in Erin's case, there were a lot of YouTube videos that she would use during classes about

00:06:12 ◼   ► all sorts of various and different things.

00:06:13 ◼   ► Erin was a high school biology teacher, and she couldn't even do that for the longest

00:06:18 ◼   ► time because YouTube was carte blanche filtered entirely.

00:06:22 ◼   ► And again, over time, the teachers got more access and then she could do this again.

00:06:26 ◼   ► But your point is absolutely right, Marco, that it's not always about nefarious things.

00:06:31 ◼   ► It's not always about slacking off.

00:06:33 ◼   ► Sometimes it's really justifiable use.

00:06:35 ◼   ► But when the thing that's preventing you access is completely algorithmic and not like curated

00:06:41 ◼   ► or whatever, that's what's going to happen.

00:06:43 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, YouTube is a massive resource for teachers.

00:06:47 ◼   ► That cannot be overstated.

00:06:49 ◼   ► YouTube is an incredible resource for teachers.

00:06:51 ◼   ► And moving on to other follow up, I should sort of kind of apologize to you, Marco, in

00:06:59 ◼   ► that I led you astray last episode with regard to your question about, well, could I just

00:07:04 ◼   ► do my feed polar, which we'll hopefully talk about a little bit later.

00:07:08 ◼   ► Uh, could I just do that and C sharp?

00:07:09 ◼   ► And I said, well, you're going to have to run all of IAS and all of

00:07:12 ◼   ► ASP.net and blah, blah, blah.

00:07:13 ◼   ► And it's really not worth it.

00:07:14 ◼   ► And, uh, Frank Krueger pointed out to me that I think it's called

00:07:17 ◼   ► ASP.net V next or something like that.

00:07:21 ◼   ► That's probably wrong too.

00:07:22 ◼   ► Don't email me, but anyway, the upcoming or currently out, I guess,

00:07:25 ◼   ► version of ASP.net, they actually have, I guess it's binaries for

00:07:30 ◼   ► all sorts of different platforms.

00:07:31 ◼   ► And so you wouldn't necessarily need to run the full stack on, you know, some VPS somewhere.

00:07:38 ◼   ► And the other thing I didn't consider is you probably wouldn't need IIS anyway.

00:07:41 ◼   ► You could just write a console app that in turn reaches out to the internet.

00:07:45 ◼   ► But if you're calling it locally or, you know, via some, some endpoint locally, you may not even need IIS at all.

00:07:54 ◼   ► And I know this is kind of irrelevant, but for the three ASP.NET developers that are listening, my apologies to you for leading Marco

00:08:01 ◼   ► and Marco, should you ever decide to give up on your beloved Go feed crawler,

00:08:07 ◼   ► sinker, whatever guy, let me know and I'll set you up with some C# stuff.

00:08:11 ◼   ► No, see now you missed your chance. This was your one window for this decade.

00:08:14 ◼   ► I know. That was it.

00:08:15 ◼   ► For me to learn a new language once a decade and this is your one window that you could have gotten

00:08:19 ◼   ► me to try a Microsoft language on. Nope, not gonna do it.

00:08:22 ◼   ► I know. It's all over. I quit.

00:08:24 ◼   ► It's all your fault.

00:08:24 ◼   ► I don't think that it was the right answer for you for this particular problem, but I stand by

00:08:30 ◼   ► that if you ever for whatever reason had a chance to really learn C#, I really do

00:08:36 ◼   ► think you'd like it a lot, but at this point I honestly don't know why you

00:08:39 ◼   ► would try it. Like leave aside my own allegiances, I don't think it makes sense

00:08:43 ◼   ► for you at all. But anyway, you could have if I hadn't failed you miserably. And

00:08:48 ◼   ► that kind of segues into why don't you tell us a quick update on your feed

00:08:53 ◼   ► poller. You had tweeted a day or two ago now that you deployed the GoFeed poller

00:08:58 ◼   ► this morning, whatever that day was.

00:09:00 ◼   ► A few hours later, I was able to confidently reduce

00:09:02 ◼   ► the number of overcast VPSs from 13 to five.

00:09:07 ◼   ► That's incredible.

00:09:08 ◼   ► - Yep, that's right.

00:09:09 ◼   ► And I think I can even get it down to four,

00:09:10 ◼   ► but it'd be cutting it a little bit close,

00:09:12 ◼   ► so I'm probably not gonna do it.

00:09:14 ◼   ► But yeah, so last week, I believe my status last week

00:09:18 ◼   ► was I had written like 10 lines of Go code,

00:09:20 ◼   ► so I really didn't have anything going, right?

00:09:22 ◼   ► Is that true?

00:09:22 ◼   ► - That's about right, if my memory's correct.

00:09:25 ◼   ► - So I've been trying it for about a week,

00:09:28 ◼   ► and I really like it.

00:09:28 ◼   ► There's not much more to say.

00:09:30 ◼   ► I'm using it right now.

00:09:31 ◼   ► It is currently running on Overcast.

00:09:33 ◼   ► It has replaced the PHP feed crawler.

00:09:36 ◼   ► So it hasn't replaced all the PHP feed processing.

00:09:39 ◼   ► It has only done like the front end stuff

00:09:42 ◼   ► of now PHP is no longer making network requests.

00:09:46 ◼   ► So it's no longer waiting around for network requests

00:09:49 ◼   ► with all these processes, nothing to do,

00:09:51 ◼   ► waiting around for curl.

00:09:52 ◼   ► So that is all now on Go.

00:09:55 ◼   ► Go is now fetching the pages every X seconds or whatever,

00:09:59 ◼   ► and depending on certain conditions,

00:10:01 ◼   ► depends on subscriber count, latest error,

00:10:03 ◼   ► or everything, anyway, fetches all the feeds,

00:10:06 ◼   ► and then when it finds a changed feed,

00:10:09 ◼   ► it stuffs that feed into Redis,

00:10:10 ◼   ► and a bunch of PHP worker processes crawl that.

00:10:14 ◼   ► So before I said it was 240 PHP processes

00:10:19 ◼   ► that were doing all the crawling,

00:10:20 ◼   ► Now it is one Go process and eight PHP processes.

00:10:25 ◼   ► And I probably don't even need those eight,

00:10:26 ◼   ► but we'll see what happens there.

00:10:28 ◼   ► I bet I can get away with four,

00:10:29 ◼   ► but I'd probably just leave it at eight

00:10:31 ◼   ► just to have some headroom if there's a burst of updates.

00:10:34 ◼   ► And that's roughly it.

00:10:35 ◼   ► So far, I like the language a lot.

00:10:38 ◼   ► Now, neither of you two have done anything with it, right?

00:10:41 ◼   ► - I have not, nope.

00:10:42 ◼   ► - So it does, I mean, obviously,

00:10:46 ◼   ► I am not one to learn new languages frequently.

00:10:50 ◼   ► Looking at the landscape today, the reason I chose Go

00:10:53 ◼   ► after kind of running from Node, and by the way,

00:10:56 ◼   ► we heard from a lot of people about Node,

00:10:58 ◼   ► trying to fix my memory leak.

00:11:00 ◼   ► And there's a bunch of nuance to how you call setTimeout

00:11:05 ◼   ► and what variables are in scope and whether you use

00:11:08 ◼   ► a closure around it or a named function or what,

00:11:10 ◼   ► you know, whether you were trying to do a variable,

00:11:12 ◼   ► there's all these little nuances.

00:11:14 ◼   ► I have no doubt that the right person could look

00:11:18 ◼   ► this code and fix it for me, but as I said last week, you know, Node is, it just doesn't

00:11:24 ◼   ► fit me as well as something I really want to invest a lot of time into. It is not a

00:11:30 ◼   ► good enough fit for me in other ways besides this way, so I lost interest in trying to

00:11:35 ◼   ► fix this problem. Thank you, Node people. I appreciate the week of your support, but

00:11:40 ◼   ► please stop emailing me corrections about it because I've already stopped using the

00:11:45 ◼   ► I'm sure it's fine for you or Merlin, but that's it.

00:11:49 ◼   ► Looking at everything else that's available,

00:11:51 ◼   ► I consider other things like, you know, Java, Python.

00:11:54 ◼   ► I was going to do ASP.NET until Casey talked me out

00:11:57 ◼   ► of it last week.

00:11:58 ◼   ► - Is that really true?

00:11:59 ◼   ► - No. (laughs)

00:12:00 ◼   ► No, it was never under consideration.

00:12:02 ◼   ► It might become in the future, you know, Microsoft,

00:12:05 ◼   ► they're clearly investing very heavily in dev tools

00:12:08 ◼   ► and trying to reach out to developers

00:12:10 ◼   ► who are not right now on Microsoft platforms.

00:12:12 ◼   ► and I'm curious to see what they do in those areas.

00:12:15 ◼   ► Because one thing that almost all of these languages lack

00:12:18 ◼   ► is a really nice IDE for Mac, or for anything really.

00:12:23 ◼   ► I'm not entirely sure Eclipse qualifies for that statement.

00:12:27 ◼   ► - No. - I've never used it,

00:12:29 ◼   ► but from what I've seen of other people using it,

00:12:30 ◼   ► it has never appeared as though I want to use it.

00:12:34 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:12:35 ◼   ► You said no, Casey, is that roughly accurate?

00:12:37 ◼   ► - I haven't used it in years,

00:12:38 ◼   ► so I'm admittedly talking a little bit out of turn,

00:12:42 ◼   ► but any exposure I've had to it,

00:12:44 ◼   ► and any exposure I've had to it

00:12:45 ◼   ► by way of other people talking about it,

00:12:48 ◼   ► I cannot remember a time anyone said

00:12:49 ◼   ► anything positive about Eclipse.

00:12:51 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:12:52 ◼   ► - Right.

00:12:53 ◼   ► So anyway, I would like to have a nice IDE.

00:12:56 ◼   ► I have one for Xcode for my native applications.

00:13:00 ◼   ► I've never had one for web apps.

00:13:02 ◼   ► Every web app I've ever written

00:13:03 ◼   ► has been written in a text editor,

00:13:04 ◼   ► either VI at first or TextMate later.

00:13:07 ◼   ► So I've never had a nice IDE with code completion

00:13:10 ◼   ► and inline error descriptions and everything.

00:13:13 ◼   ► Never had that.

00:13:14 ◼   ► I would love that, never had that.

00:13:15 ◼   ► I never had the luxury of a real debugger

00:13:18 ◼   ► while writing web apps.

00:13:19 ◼   ► That would also be nice, never had it.

00:13:21 ◼   ► And with all these new languages

00:13:23 ◼   ► that I've been playing with or that I've been investigating,

00:13:25 ◼   ► almost none of them offer that in a reasonable way.

00:13:28 ◼   ► So all that being said,

00:13:30 ◼   ► I might consider Microsoft stuff in the future

00:13:33 ◼   ► depending on the direction they go with their tools.

00:13:36 ◼   ► But right now it is not under consideration.

00:13:39 ◼   ► I looked at Rust and I looked at Go and I read up,

00:13:42 ◼   ► I didn't actually try writing any code in Rust,

00:13:44 ◼   ► so that's a giant disclaimer at the beginning.

00:13:48 ◼   ► I looked at both of those,

00:13:49 ◼   ► those seem like the two that everyone said

00:13:51 ◼   ► or with the third option of Python,

00:13:53 ◼   ► where everyone says either do this in Python

00:13:55 ◼   ► 'cause it's good at this or do it in Rust or Go.

00:13:57 ◼   ► There's a lot of debate between Rust people and Go people

00:14:01 ◼   ► about which one is better

00:14:02 ◼   ► and a few people have tried both

00:14:05 ◼   ► and have given more useful opinions.

00:14:07 ◼   ► Not a lot have written about it,

00:14:08 ◼   ► I haven't found a whole lot of posts about this.

00:14:11 ◼   ► I think Rust in the long term will probably be more common.

00:14:16 ◼   ► It certainly, it has a long way to go.

00:14:18 ◼   ► It's still very much a beta and it shows

00:14:20 ◼   ► in a lot of the documentation and the tools and everything.

00:14:22 ◼   ► It's not, it will clearly be a lot better in the future.

00:14:27 ◼   ► But Rust also seems very much, very close to Swift

00:14:31 ◼   ► and C++ style of language preferences,

00:14:35 ◼   ► which really is not my style.

00:14:37 ◼   ► It might become my style later on,

00:14:38 ◼   ► but it currently isn't.

00:14:40 ◼   ► Just the whole, like Rust, it just seemed like it added

00:14:43 ◼   ► quite a lot of complexity that I,

00:14:45 ◼   ► that conflicted with what I actually wanted.

00:14:47 ◼   ► There are a lot of things about it that I like.

00:14:49 ◼   ► I like the idea of the mutability being part

00:14:51 ◼   ► of the language, that's a big one.

00:14:53 ◼   ► I really, I would love that.

00:14:55 ◼   ► I like some of the type tricks you can do,

00:14:58 ◼   ► most of them I wouldn't need.

00:15:00 ◼   ► Go is a lot more basic.

00:15:03 ◼   ► It's a lot smaller of a language.

00:15:07 ◼   ► And not to say it's not advanced,

00:15:09 ◼   ► but the things the language will do for you

00:15:12 ◼   ► are much more limited.

00:15:13 ◼   ► Most of the time I fall on the side of the way they did it,

00:15:16 ◼   ► which is one of the reasons I chose to move forward

00:15:18 ◼   ► with that language.

00:15:19 ◼   ► Anyway, so far it is really nice.

00:15:22 ◼   ► There are parts about it that are weird.

00:15:25 ◼   ► It is not like a clear, oh my god,

00:15:27 ◼   ► this is perfect forever language.

00:15:29 ◼   ► I can already tell I'm probably not gonna want

00:15:32 ◼   ► to be writing the whole web app in this.

00:15:35 ◼   ► If I was writing a new web app from scratch,

00:15:37 ◼   ► I would consider it, but it is,

00:15:40 ◼   ► I don't think there's any reason for me to rewrite

00:15:42 ◼   ► the whole Overcast web app and go, you know,

00:15:43 ◼   ► just, I think it's a way for me to get rid of these hotspots

00:15:47 ◼   ► and that's about it.

00:15:48 ◼   ► But there's a lot to like there.

00:15:50 ◼   ► I really like it, I'm glad I'm trying it,

00:15:52 ◼   ► and I'm gonna keep going with it where it makes sense to.

00:15:56 ◼   ► - So did you use Go routines and channels and everything

00:15:59 ◼   ► for your, what do you call it,

00:16:02 ◼   ► sort of event loop replacement type thing?

00:16:04 ◼   ► Yeah, it's entirely Go routines and channels.

00:16:06 ◼   ► - That's good.

00:16:07 ◼   ► When I was talking about what the kind of event libraries

00:16:09 ◼   ► were in Go, I knew they had some weird concurrency thing,

00:16:11 ◼   ► but I couldn't remember what it was off the top of my head.

00:16:13 ◼   ► But that's, I mean, for a small language,

00:16:16 ◼   ► it's kind of odd that, not odd, but like,

00:16:19 ◼   ► this expresses the philosophy of Go.

00:16:20 ◼   ► If the language is small, it's kind of like C done better,

00:16:23 ◼   ► but they determined that the concurrency stuff

00:16:26 ◼   ► was important enough to actually add to a language

00:16:29 ◼   ► that is otherwise being kept very small,

00:16:31 ◼   ► and that says a lot about sort of the intended use

00:16:34 ◼   ► of the language and why I think it's probably a good fit for Google doing server-side stuff

00:16:37 ◼   ► and for you doing the poll.

00:16:39 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly. I mean, I love the concurrency stuff. I tweeted earlier, this is genius,

00:16:44 ◼   ► somebody pointed out, actually a number of people pointed out on Twitter earlier that

00:16:48 ◼   ► this is not at all new. It's called, is it CSP? Concurrent Sequential Processes, I think?

00:16:54 ◼   ► Something like that. It's a concurrency model that Go uses, communicating sequential processes.

00:16:58 ◼   ► That's it. Thank you, Mitchi in the chat. So anyway, I like this model a lot. It is

00:17:03 ◼   ► not perfect. It seems more complicated up front. Once you get into it, you realize,

00:17:08 ◼   ► "Oh, this is actually really nice." There's a lot of concurrency baggage you usually have

00:17:13 ◼   ► to worry about, like locking and threading, that you just don't need to really worry about

00:17:18 ◼   ► if you do it the way you're supposed to do it. And it's really, it's easy to do things

00:17:22 ◼   ► like earlier I added, you know, I, for, ever since the very beginning, I had a limit on

00:17:29 ◼   ► how many crawls can be running in parallel at any one time.

00:17:33 ◼   ► And that's very easy to do with channels.

00:17:35 ◼   ► Just, you know, earlier tonight I added a second limit

00:17:38 ◼   ► to how many per host you can be running at once.

00:17:41 ◼   ► So I don't have, because earlier I crawled all the feeds

00:17:44 ◼   ► to a couple of big hosts and got blocked immediately

00:17:48 ◼   ► from having like 2,000 connections open

00:17:50 ◼   ► to one host at a time.

00:17:52 ◼   ► So that went out the window.

00:17:54 ◼   ► But that was really easy to add too.

00:17:57 ◼   ► Like just it's this quick little, you know,

00:17:59 ◼   ► make a channel for every host and oh,

00:18:01 ◼   ► here's an array of channels and when you start it,

00:18:03 ◼   ► push one onto it and when you end it,

00:18:05 ◼   ► pop one off of it and here's the buffer length

00:18:06 ◼   ► and that's it, like it's really,

00:18:08 ◼   ► for doing stuff like that,

00:18:09 ◼   ► this concurrency model is really nice.

00:18:12 ◼   ► And what I like about it is that it is very new.

00:18:16 ◼   ► It is unlike any concurrency models

00:18:18 ◼   ► I've worked with in the past.

00:18:20 ◼   ► And so it is intellectually stimulating,

00:18:22 ◼   ► it is educational and for this task, it's really good.

00:18:26 ◼   ► - Hmm, so you seem pleased.

00:18:28 ◼   ► - Overall, yeah.

00:18:29 ◼   ► I mean, as I said, it does have weirdnesses to it.

00:18:32 ◼   ► Like, there are certain things about it

00:18:34 ◼   ► that I'm just like, really?

00:18:35 ◼   ► That's what I have to do?

00:18:36 ◼   ► Or you don't support that?

00:18:39 ◼   ► But, you know, part of this is just me

00:18:41 ◼   ► getting the use of the language.

00:18:42 ◼   ► Ask me again in six months how I feel about this language.

00:18:46 ◼   ► - Fair enough.

00:18:47 ◼   ► All right, anything else on this,

00:18:48 ◼   ► or would you like to tell me about something cool?

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00:21:23 ◼   ► - So Marco, did anything happen this week?

00:21:26 ◼   ► - Nope.

00:21:28 ◼   ► - Are we really not talking about it?

00:21:29 ◼   ► 'Cause we don't have to.

00:21:30 ◼   ► - We can talk about it if you want.

00:21:31 ◼   ► I mean, I don't have that much more to say on it.

00:21:33 ◼   ► So I wrote this blog post

00:21:34 ◼   ► called Apple Has Lost the Functional High Ground,

00:21:39 ◼   ► a title I'm regretting because...

00:21:41 ◼   ► (laughs)

00:21:43 ◼   ► Of all the complaints people had about the piece,

00:21:47 ◼   ► I think the title was probably the least valid complaint about it, because I don't think

00:21:51 ◼   ► the title was that far off the truth.

00:21:53 ◼   ► Can you explain the title to me? Because that was the part that I was most confused about

00:21:56 ◼   ► in your post.

00:21:57 ◼   ► So the title was, you know, "Apple Has Lost the Functional High Ground." So this is a

00:22:00 ◼   ► play on the concept of the moral high ground. I don't have to explain that, do I?

00:22:05 ◼   ► No, you don't. But explain the functional high ground.

00:22:08 ◼   ► So Apple stuff, you know, it used to be that Apple stuff generally, by a pretty long shot,

00:22:17 ◼   ► worked better than PC/Android/other alternatives.

00:22:23 ◼   ► People threw around the phrase "it just works."

00:22:25 ◼   ► As I said in the article, that was never 100% true, but it was generally true.

00:22:32 ◼   ► It was the general advantage that Apple stuff had over their competitors is that it just

00:22:37 ◼   ► worked better the vast majority of the time.

00:22:39 ◼   ► Certain things were more reliable, simpler, more robust, etc.

00:22:45 ◼   ► So this gave Apple what I consider the functional high ground in the past of Apple stuff just

00:22:50 ◼   ► worked better.

00:22:54 ◼   ► And it worked so well that I think you could not necessarily hold it over PC people, but

00:22:59 ◼   ► you knew when you were using an Apple product like, "Yeah, I got a good one here.

00:23:03 ◼   ► I got the thing that works best in this industry."

00:23:06 ◼   ► I think their quality problems over the last few years

00:23:10 ◼   ► when taken together have ruined this image to a degree.

00:23:15 ◼   ► And so I don't necessarily mean

00:23:18 ◼   ► that someone else has become better.

00:23:21 ◼   ► And that's an argument Gruber had,

00:23:23 ◼   ► that's an argument a few other people have brought up.

00:23:25 ◼   ► I think you can lose,

00:23:27 ◼   ► like if you think about the moral high ground,

00:23:28 ◼   ► I think you can lose the moral high ground

00:23:30 ◼   ► even if no one else takes it from you.

00:23:33 ◼   ► Like losing the moral high ground is like,

00:23:35 ◼   ► You used to be really good morally,

00:23:38 ◼   ► have a really good image,

00:23:38 ◼   ► or have a really good reputation,

00:23:39 ◼   ► and you don't anymore.

00:23:41 ◼   ► And so when I said losing the functional high ground,

00:23:43 ◼   ► what I meant was in that sense of like,

00:23:46 ◼   ► they used to have a good reputation for this,

00:23:48 ◼   ► and now they don't.

00:23:50 ◼   ► So I think in that way,

00:23:51 ◼   ► I think the title was actually pretty fair.

00:23:54 ◼   ► What do you think?

00:23:55 ◼   ► - I wouldn't have used the word functional,

00:23:56 ◼   ► because I think that was what was throwing me.

00:23:58 ◼   ► Now hearing your explanation,

00:23:59 ◼   ► I think my conception of it kept focusing more

00:24:01 ◼   ► on the definition of functional.

00:24:02 ◼   ► Maybe I would go with like,

00:24:04 ◼   ► Reliability is not really what we're going for.

00:24:07 ◼   ► But anyway, I probably wouldn't have made

00:24:09 ◼   ► a high-ground analogy in title,

00:24:10 ◼   ► but now that you've explained that,

00:24:11 ◼   ► I understand what you were getting at.

00:24:12 ◼   ► So you can go on to the,

00:24:14 ◼   ► explaining the body of your thing,

00:24:16 ◼   ► because I cut you off with the title part.

00:24:19 ◼   ► - Well, but no, that was important,

00:24:20 ◼   ► because a lot of people argued about the title.

00:24:23 ◼   ► And I do think the title was not really the bad part.

00:24:28 ◼   ► The part that I regret was the overall,

00:24:33 ◼   ► maybe sensational, maybe alarmist,

00:24:35 ◼   ► I don't know exactly how to say it.

00:24:36 ◼   ► So the post was basically saying,

00:24:39 ◼   ► Apple stuff doesn't work very well anymore.

00:24:41 ◼   ► I think the problem is,

00:24:43 ◼   ► I said their hardware quality is fantastic recently,

00:24:46 ◼   ► but their software quality is really not.

00:24:49 ◼   ► And originally I said it's taken a nose dive.

00:24:53 ◼   ► That was, that's the word I regret the most,

00:24:55 ◼   ► because that suggests the wrong acceleration rate

00:25:00 ◼   ► or trajectory of the decline.

00:25:03 ◼   ► Like, I think Apple software is on a steady decline

00:25:08 ◼   ► and it's been going that way for a while.

00:25:10 ◼   ► A nose dive is like a sudden drop precariously,

00:25:14 ◼   ► or precipitously, whatever the right word is,

00:25:16 ◼   ► a sudden rapidly accelerating drop.

00:25:18 ◼   ► I don't think that is what's happening.

00:25:20 ◼   ► I think it's been a slow decline

00:25:22 ◼   ► and there's no signs of it turning around really.

00:25:25 ◼   ► Definitely just like a slow decline

00:25:26 ◼   ► of their software quality.

00:25:27 ◼   ► And part of it is services quality worked in with that

00:25:31 ◼   ► but a lot of it really is just the software itself,

00:25:34 ◼   ► like the local software running on the machines,

00:25:36 ◼   ► which is really unfortunate.

00:25:38 ◼   ► And so, a few of the words, like I said,

00:25:42 ◼   ► riddled with bugs, I don't think it's riddled with bugs,

00:25:46 ◼   ► it has bugs, there are certain words

00:25:48 ◼   ► that were more severe than they need to be.

00:25:51 ◼   ► But overall, I stand by the message that I was saying,

00:25:55 ◼   ► which is this stuff is not working as well as it used to.

00:25:59 ◼   ► Now we need to be very cautious when we install updates.

00:26:02 ◼   ► And the fact is it used to be better,

00:26:04 ◼   ► and that worries me.

00:26:06 ◼   ► My theory is that marketing priorities,

00:26:09 ◼   ► and again, it's important to point out

00:26:11 ◼   ► the fine distinction here,

00:26:13 ◼   ► not the marketing department, as some sites quoted it as,

00:26:16 ◼   ► which I never said.

00:26:18 ◼   ► Marketing priorities at Apple seem to be dictating

00:26:22 ◼   ► that the software must keep pace

00:26:25 ◼   ► with the annual hardware releases,

00:26:28 ◼   ► or that there must be an annual software release.

00:26:30 ◼   ► That has marketing value.

00:26:32 ◼   ► That helps the products with cross marketing

00:26:34 ◼   ► between the Macs and the iPhones and new iPhones come out.

00:26:37 ◼   ► There's also all these new software capabilities

00:26:40 ◼   ► that go along with brand new iOSX.

00:26:42 ◼   ► And that was X meaning like integer,

00:26:45 ◼   ► not mispronouncing 10 with OS10.

00:26:49 ◼   ► Anyway, my opinion is that Apple quality

00:26:54 ◼   ► has gone downhill in the last few years

00:26:57 ◼   ► and they shouldn't be keeping up with this

00:27:02 ◼   ► artificial annual release schedule for major OSes

00:27:05 ◼   ► because that is just not,

00:27:07 ◼   ► it's not producing good quality software.

00:27:09 ◼   ► You know, it used to be,

00:27:10 ◼   ► like the 10.x.0 releases,

00:27:15 ◼   ► all the way up to like 10.x.3 or four,

00:27:19 ◼   ► were sometimes unstable or at least had some bugs.

00:27:22 ◼   ► Usually by the time you got to like 10.x.4 or five,

00:27:25 ◼   ► it was pretty rock solid.

00:27:27 ◼   ► you could pretty much depend on it.

00:27:28 ◼   ► And then with some of the previous releases,

00:27:31 ◼   ► they would get all the way up to like 10.x.7.8 or 9

00:27:34 ◼   ► because they were just around for longer.

00:27:37 ◼   ► And so by the time,

00:27:39 ◼   ► so there would be a couple of months of instability

00:27:41 ◼   ► at the beginning of a new OS release.

00:27:42 ◼   ► But then a few months in, you were fine

00:27:45 ◼   ► and it was rock stable for the next 18 months

00:27:48 ◼   ► before there was really a new one.

00:27:50 ◼   ► And now it seems like we're always using a 1.0 or a 1.1.

00:27:57 ◼   ► every release that we're using from Apple

00:27:58 ◼   ► because the major updates are moving so quickly

00:28:01 ◼   ► and get so many changes in each one.

00:28:04 ◼   ► It's not like we're always using a beta, but it's close.

00:28:09 ◼   ► It's like we're always using a .0 or a .1.

00:28:12 ◼   ► And you feel that in a lot of ways.

00:28:15 ◼   ► And one of the errors I made was I didn't actually list

00:28:17 ◼   ► any of those ways in this post,

00:28:19 ◼   ► but it's almost like there's too many to list.

00:28:21 ◼   ► Glenn Fleischmann wrote a really good article today.

00:28:23 ◼   ► He actually solicited people from Twitter

00:28:25 ◼   ► to tell him, make me a list, tell me all the things

00:28:29 ◼   ► that are common problems for everybody.

00:28:31 ◼   ► And he posted a good thing, I'll put it in the show notes.

00:28:33 ◼   ► And it's hard, there isn't like one thing,

00:28:36 ◼   ► you know, if somebody asked me like,

00:28:38 ◼   ► oh, what one thing do we need to be working on,

00:28:40 ◼   ► or what one thing needs to be improved here,

00:28:44 ◼   ► there is no one thing.

00:28:45 ◼   ► There are a million tiny things and a few big things

00:28:49 ◼   ► that just don't work very well or have bugs sometimes.

00:28:53 ◼   ► And I don't, you can't tell, it's hard to tell

00:28:57 ◼   ► if Apple thinks this is a problem

00:29:00 ◼   ► or if they think the course they're on is okay.

00:29:04 ◼   ► - Well, I remember when I talked,

00:29:05 ◼   ► well, first of all, I'm gonna say

00:29:07 ◼   ► this has been an interesting demonstration

00:29:09 ◼   ► between podcasting and blogging

00:29:11 ◼   ► because we have all, the three of us,

00:29:13 ◼   ► talked about all these things for like,

00:29:15 ◼   ► what is it, over a year now.

00:29:17 ◼   ► Like it's, you know, it's not as if

00:29:18 ◼   ► this was a sudden realization that Marco woke up one day

00:29:21 ◼   ► and said, "My God, I mean,"

00:29:22 ◼   ► But when Marco says it on a podcast,

00:29:24 ◼   ► or we say it on a podcast, nobody hears it.

00:29:26 ◼   ► But when it gets written down,

00:29:27 ◼   ► part of it is just luck of the draw

00:29:28 ◼   ► of having to catch on and go viral or whatever.

00:29:31 ◼   ► But it is interesting to me that

00:29:33 ◼   ► if someone is a regular listener to the show

00:29:35 ◼   ► and reads that blog post, they'll be like,

00:29:37 ◼   ► "Yeah, I've heard Marco say that a million times."

00:29:39 ◼   ► And so it's not like a revelation,

00:29:41 ◼   ► but then suddenly, you know, anyway.

00:29:42 ◼   ► - That's the thing, I wasn't saying anything

00:29:44 ◼   ► that I thought was particularly noteworthy or original.

00:29:47 ◼   ► - It was almost like the kind of thing,

00:29:49 ◼   ► this goes two ways, both of us do this,

00:29:51 ◼   ► well, back when I used to blog.

00:29:52 ◼   ► and Casey, like two ways where sometimes

00:29:53 ◼   ► you'll write something up on your site

00:29:56 ◼   ► and then you'll talk about it on the podcast

00:29:58 ◼   ► and sometimes we'll talk about something on the podcast

00:30:00 ◼   ► and then after the podcast,

00:30:01 ◼   ► you'll sort of write up essentially a more coherent summary

00:30:04 ◼   ► of what was discussed.

00:30:05 ◼   ► And this definitely felt like, you know,

00:30:08 ◼   ► after talking about this for weeks or months or whatever,

00:30:10 ◼   ► you felt like it was time for a blog post about it

00:30:12 ◼   ► and you more or less summarized all the things

00:30:14 ◼   ► that you'd said on past podcasts or whatever.

00:30:16 ◼   ► And it just felt like that thing you do where like,

00:30:18 ◼   ► sometimes it comes first in the podcast,

00:30:20 ◼   ► some kind of first in the blog.

00:30:21 ◼   ► talk about the meta stuff later but I just thought that was interesting.

00:30:24 ◼   ► And speaking of podcasts, one of the things that a couple people who read that reminded

00:30:28 ◼   ► me that existed because I'm old and I forget now was Hypercritical Episode 55, Region of

00:30:33 ◼   ► Pain, which was back around the mountain lion, talking about a mountain lion and maybe the

00:30:37 ◼   ► announcement or talking about my review.

00:30:41 ◼   ► That title comes from the idea that Marco just articulated which is with yearly releases,

00:30:47 ◼   ► my worry in that show was is the OS going to have enough time to mature because the point

00:30:53 ◼   ► O's are always crap right and then the point one point two is like it takes a while to settle down

00:30:57 ◼   ► right and if you're gonna happen if they're gonna happen every year it does do yearly releases give

00:31:03 ◼   ► the OS enough time to settle down or are we always going to be in what i call the region of pain

00:31:08 ◼   ► because it's always crap when the point O comes out like no matter how long they hold it like you

00:31:11 ◼   ► You just you know it's and there's always some instability sometimes long sometimes short

00:31:16 ◼   ► That was in 2012

00:31:19 ◼   ► The beginning of 2012 at this point

00:31:22 ◼   ► I would say that we know for os 10 that the OS does get out of the region of pain because we do reach the

00:31:28 ◼   ► Point four or point five but what Marcos thing was talking about is all right?

00:31:34 ◼   ► We exit the region of pain how long do we get in the nice part before it starts over?

00:31:39 ◼   ► It's not like they run into each other. It's not like it's just bug ridden it because

00:31:42 ◼   ► Mavericks was not just like a total disaster right before Yosemite came out at least for most people

00:31:48 ◼   ► I mean there are exceptions people gonna write us and say no this feature X never worked on Mavericks or my GPU always kernel-packed

00:31:53 ◼   ► On Mavericks or whatever like that is true, and that has always happened, and that's unfortunate, but

00:31:57 ◼   ► For most people like Mavericks had settled down

00:32:01 ◼   ► But how long did you get with the settled down Mavericks was it was it the majority of the year?

00:32:06 ◼   ► Definitely not right was it less than half a year was it one month of the two month right and

00:32:11 ◼   ► That I think when I'm looking at this again

00:32:15 ◼   ► We've talked about all these things before the the change fatigue not just the bug fatigue the bug fatigue is one thing

00:32:20 ◼   ► But also the change fatigue as in even if everything works perfectly

00:32:24 ◼   ► I don't know if I'm ready for everything to change how it works again like not everything

00:32:28 ◼   ► but you know people don't want the time change like

00:32:30 ◼   ► the change fatigue combined with the

00:32:33 ◼   ► very short periods of

00:32:35 ◼   ► of stability and calm

00:32:37 ◼   ► That I think more than like the quality of the software or any kind of metric you could put on it

00:32:43 ◼   ► Like number of bugs in the point releases or number of bugs in the final releases or severity of bugs or anything like that

00:32:48 ◼   ► I think that more than anything

00:32:51 ◼   ► Characterizes the dissatisfaction I've heard from a lot of people about

00:32:56 ◼   ► Apple is that

00:32:58 ◼   ► Especially on the Mac. I don't want to talk about iOS separately, but the Mac is

00:33:02 ◼   ► different because on the Mac I think the the third thing that comes into the into this equation of

00:33:08 ◼   ► Change for T. Not a long time and at a period of stability also the final question is who are you chasing?

00:33:14 ◼   ► Who are you chasing with yearly OS 10 updates like why?

00:33:18 ◼   ► With iOS you feel like all right Android Samsung you got people breathing down your neck. It's an exploding market. It's super competitive

00:33:25 ◼   ► You got to do what you got to do and that's that's the marketing priorities that Margaret was talking about it for the Mac though

00:33:31 ◼   ► So it's like yearly releases, if you can pull it off, fine.

00:33:36 ◼   ► And I think they proved they can pull off.

00:33:37 ◼   ► We can make yearly releases.

00:33:38 ◼   ► Each ones have interesting features.

00:33:40 ◼   ► They eventually settled down to stability.

00:33:41 ◼   ► Like they can do it, but the cost is like,

00:33:45 ◼   ► at least half the year you're dealing with like a baby OS

00:33:49 ◼   ► that has a bunch of bugs.

00:33:50 ◼   ► Then you get a period of stability.

00:33:51 ◼   ► And as soon as everything's okay, here comes the new one.

00:33:53 ◼   ► And like, they can do it.

00:33:55 ◼   ► They can get them out on time.

00:33:56 ◼   ► They're not more or less,

00:33:57 ◼   ► they're not like iOS tied to hardware.

00:33:59 ◼   ► Like they just basically go,

00:34:00 ◼   ► Yosemite's not ready, we're gonna ship that later.

00:34:02 ◼   ► Like it's not like there's a yearly update of Macs

00:34:03 ◼   ► that they're trying to sync with,

00:34:05 ◼   ► so it's not exactly tied to that.

00:34:07 ◼   ► It's just that, it's almost like a corporate stunt.

00:34:11 ◼   ► Not like a stunt to like shut up, but like saying,

00:34:16 ◼   ► our organization is so well oiled,

00:34:18 ◼   ► we can revise and release yearly updates

00:34:20 ◼   ► to a massive consumer operating system.

00:34:23 ◼   ► Yes, you can, and you can get it done,

00:34:26 ◼   ► and during the course of its life,

00:34:28 ◼   ► it will settle down to stability.

00:34:30 ◼   ► but it still may be too much.

00:34:31 ◼   ► Like it still may be like, why,

00:34:33 ◼   ► why do you think we need a new one of these

00:34:34 ◼   ► every single year?

00:34:36 ◼   ► We would prefer to have an entire year of boringness

00:34:38 ◼   ► instead of four months of boringness.

00:34:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, I agree.

00:34:42 ◼   ► And I wrote a small kind of response post to Marco's post,

00:34:45 ◼   ► which is mostly irrelevant,

00:34:48 ◼   ► except that a few people emailed me and one of them said,

00:34:51 ◼   ► and I don't have the email in front of me,

00:34:52 ◼   ► something along the lines of,

00:34:54 ◼   ► well, is it really the yearly thing that's the problem?

00:34:56 ◼   ► Or is it that there's so much stuff in each release,

00:34:59 ◼   ► new stuff in each release.

00:35:00 ◼   ► And I think that's a fair point that you could argue

00:35:03 ◼   ► that you could just put less in each of these releases,

00:35:08 ◼   ► but potentially keep this super aggressive yearly cycle.

00:35:12 ◼   ► But I don't know, it just seems to me

00:35:14 ◼   ► that that's not really the choice that Apple would make,

00:35:18 ◼   ► is just have like one marquee feature

00:35:20 ◼   ► and then the rest of a new OS be otherwise unremarkable.

00:35:24 ◼   ► The other thing I'd like to point out

00:35:26 ◼   ► is a friend of the show, Ben Thompson, in the chat says,

00:35:29 ◼   ► The problem is that Apple needs to iterate faster on the cloud stuff and slower on the software,

00:35:33 ◼   ► but by keeping them all linked together, they're making both worse. Cloud is still too slow,

00:35:37 ◼   ► software is now too fast. And I think that's a really astute point that we really could use a lot

00:35:42 ◼   ► of help on the services side, although again, we definitely need some help on the desktop side as

00:35:47 ◼   ► well. And just keeping the desktop and the mobile operating systems inextricably linked like Apple

00:35:57 ◼   ► is it just seems it seems like it's kind of tough to keep everything moving effectively

00:36:04 ◼   ► that way. Now what I'd be curious to hear your guys's take on is a lot of people said well

00:36:09 ◼   ► yeah okay let's assume that Apple says well the hell with yearly releases what happens for things

00:36:15 ◼   ► like continuity that really are integrating both the desktop and and iOS wouldn't you want them

00:36:24 ◼   ► them to happen simultaneously?

00:36:25 ◼   ► Now the comedy of this question is that I believe

00:36:28 ◼   ► pieces of continuity did not happen simultaneously

00:36:30 ◼   ► and there were point releases to Yosemite to enable it,

00:36:33 ◼   ► but I don't like, doesn't it kinda make sense

00:36:35 ◼   ► to have everything packaged together

00:36:37 ◼   ► at the same moment in time?

00:36:39 ◼   ► - Well for certain things, yes.

00:36:41 ◼   ► But A, I don't think those things

00:36:44 ◼   ► should really come up every year.

00:36:46 ◼   ► Big things that require these massive coordination

00:36:48 ◼   ► between all the OSs I don't think should

00:36:51 ◼   ► or will come up every year.

00:36:52 ◼   ► And B, you have to ask at what cost.

00:36:56 ◼   ► So, you know, would you drive a car

00:36:59 ◼   ► that had really great features added to it every day

00:37:02 ◼   ► but would occasionally explode?

00:37:04 ◼   ► Like, there's certain things that just are not worth it,

00:37:07 ◼   ► you know, and what I think has really shaken

00:37:10 ◼   ► a lot of my faith in Apple's software quality recently

00:37:14 ◼   ► is not like, oh, this button looks weird every so often.

00:37:18 ◼   ► It's like basic stuff that I take for granted

00:37:22 ◼   ► as like this always works, doesn't work anymore,

00:37:26 ◼   ► or works erratically.

00:37:27 ◼   ► Like one of my biggest complaints with Yosemite

00:37:30 ◼   ► is with networking issues,

00:37:32 ◼   ► usually with network discovery of resources

00:37:34 ◼   ► or connectivity to network resources,

00:37:36 ◼   ► to local network resources.

00:37:38 ◼   ► There's something about the way they revert discovery data

00:37:40 ◼   ► to enable continuity/air drop, whatever it is,

00:37:45 ◼   ► it has made it extremely unreliable

00:37:47 ◼   ► for things like network shares, network printers,

00:37:49 ◼   ► stuff like that.

00:37:51 ◼   ► We would have made fun of Windows people so badly

00:37:54 ◼   ► if their network shares had disappeared every so often

00:37:57 ◼   ► or they had 16 copies of the same computer on the network.

00:38:00 ◼   ► And these are issues that we have on Yosemite every day

00:38:05 ◼   ► that are widespread issues.

00:38:06 ◼   ► Lots of people have these issues.

00:38:08 ◼   ► And it's like this is the basics.

00:38:10 ◼   ► The basics are messed up now.

00:38:12 ◼   ► The OS isn't crashing for most people.

00:38:15 ◼   ► We're not getting kernel panics, fortunately.

00:38:18 ◼   ► But we are having a lot of weird little behaviors like that,

00:38:22 ◼   ► that just things that seem basic,

00:38:26 ◼   ► similar to when iOS broke Touch ID and phone calls.

00:38:30 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:38:32 ◼   ► Seems basic, right?

00:38:33 ◼   ► And whatever the cause of that was,

00:38:34 ◼   ► whether it was a delivery issue,

00:38:36 ◼   ► I don't care what the cause was.

00:38:37 ◼   ► The fact is you can't trust the basics anymore.

00:38:41 ◼   ► That, I think, is scary.

00:38:44 ◼   ► That's what I'm talking about

00:38:47 ◼   ► when I'm talking about Apple losing reputation from this,

00:38:50 ◼   ► is like, you know, nobody cares if things, you know,

00:38:55 ◼   ► don't quite look right, or if some brand new feature

00:38:58 ◼   ► doesn't quite work immediately.

00:39:00 ◼   ► Like, HealthKit launched.

00:39:02 ◼   ► It apparently, I don't know much about it,

00:39:04 ◼   ► I haven't tried to use it, but apparently,

00:39:06 ◼   ► the condition of HealthKit at launch

00:39:08 ◼   ► was a complete disaster.

00:39:10 ◼   ► I don't know if it's fixed since then,

00:39:11 ◼   ► but it was like, it basically launched

00:39:13 ◼   ► like not working at all.

00:39:16 ◼   ► Yeah, didn't Apple, I remember they had to

00:39:17 ◼   ► reject all the apps for it and delay them anyway.

00:39:20 ◼   ► Big disaster with HealthKit.

00:39:22 ◼   ► That's less, that's embarrassing, certainly.

00:39:25 ◼   ► But that's less important than if you break

00:39:28 ◼   ► a fundamental thing.

00:39:29 ◼   ► It's like if a new thing you promised isn't quite here yet,

00:39:31 ◼   ► like the Mac Photos app isn't here yet that they promised.

00:39:36 ◼   ► That's not that big of a deal.

00:39:37 ◼   ► Like the stuff we've been using before

00:39:39 ◼   ► will continue to work for a while.

00:39:41 ◼   ► We're not losing functionality by that being late.

00:39:45 ◼   ► but if they shipped the photos thing and it was horrible

00:39:49 ◼   ► and all of a sudden, and it took over the way iCloud Drive

00:39:52 ◼   ► migrates all your stuff over and you can't go back,

00:39:54 ◼   ► and all of a sudden, every so often,

00:39:56 ◼   ► you just lose your random photo, like HFS Plus, ding.

00:39:59 ◼   ► You can't mess with the basics.

00:40:02 ◼   ► And the problem is that even the basics now

00:40:06 ◼   ► get messed with on a high enough frequency

00:40:09 ◼   ► from these constant, relentless, big updates

00:40:13 ◼   ► that the fundamentals are shaky now,

00:40:16 ◼   ► and that's really, that's unsettling.

00:40:18 ◼   ► - See, in actually assessing, I didn't talk about this

00:40:20 ◼   ► when I was discussing earlier, I said that a lot of people

00:40:22 ◼   ► feel that the quality has declined,

00:40:24 ◼   ► but when I take my personal assessment

00:40:26 ◼   ► of where the quality has declined,

00:40:27 ◼   ► I think it comes just from having a longer view

00:40:31 ◼   ► and having lived through lots of different cycles

00:40:33 ◼   ► and having lived through times when it was way, way worse,

00:40:36 ◼   ► like before OS X, which you guys might not remember.

00:40:40 ◼   ► I don't really think that things are worse now

00:40:44 ◼   ► than they have ever been,

00:40:45 ◼   ► or that there's actually been a decline.

00:40:46 ◼   ► That's not to say that I disagree

00:40:48 ◼   ► with the sentiment of your post,

00:40:49 ◼   ► because I think it is a good sentiment.

00:40:51 ◼   ► I endorse the sentiment except for,

00:40:54 ◼   ► like it doesn't hinge on this being a new low.

00:40:57 ◼   ► It merely hinges on the idea that you think

00:40:59 ◼   ► that the current situation is not acceptable,

00:41:01 ◼   ► which I agree with.

00:41:02 ◼   ► And it's not acceptable because the Apple today

00:41:04 ◼   ► is not the Apple that it was before.

00:41:05 ◼   ► The context is different.

00:41:06 ◼   ► They have more platforms, they have different platforms,

00:41:08 ◼   ► they have platforms that are more widespread.

00:41:10 ◼   ► we use computers more often, so on and so forth.

00:41:11 ◼   ► So I don't think there has been a decline in quality

00:41:16 ◼   ► or any of the things you said about basic features

00:41:19 ◼   ► not working or anything like that.

00:41:20 ◼   ► But I think it should change because the context

00:41:24 ◼   ► in which Apple is running its business

00:41:25 ◼   ► and deploying its products is very different today.

00:41:28 ◼   ► And the one place where I would say things

00:41:31 ◼   ► are slowly getting worse, and overall I don't think they are

00:41:34 ◼   ► but I think Apple's been doing better in lots of areas.

00:41:36 ◼   ► But the one area where they're definitely doing worse

00:41:38 ◼   ► is as Apple, again, this will be a repeat of anyone

00:41:41 ◼   ► who's listened to the show for any length of time,

00:41:42 ◼   ► has heard this a million times, here we go again.

00:41:44 ◼   ► As Apple's products integrate more and more

00:41:48 ◼   ► network functionality, as that becomes a larger percentage

00:41:51 ◼   ► of what you do with your phone, with your,

00:41:54 ◼   ► basically as iCloud becomes more integrated,

00:41:56 ◼   ► as more of network services stuff becomes part

00:42:00 ◼   ► of Apple's products, Apple has not been getting better

00:42:04 ◼   ► at that stuff fast enough, and it's becoming

00:42:05 ◼   ► a larger percentage of their product,

00:42:07 ◼   ► Therefore it's dragging down the average.

00:42:08 ◼   ► Because whatever product or technology you have,

00:42:11 ◼   ► does it involve cloud crap?

00:42:12 ◼   ► Oh, well now you know.

00:42:13 ◼   ► It's like the kid in class is bringing down the average

00:42:16 ◼   ► with bad test grades, right?

00:42:18 ◼   ► And every single one of their products

00:42:21 ◼   ► now has either a small cloud component

00:42:23 ◼   ► or a big cloud component,

00:42:24 ◼   ► or like if the whole friggin' thing is a cloud component.

00:42:26 ◼   ► So if that cloud part doesn't work,

00:42:28 ◼   ► it doesn't matter how good the people write the code

00:42:29 ◼   ► on the client side, if the server side is falling over.

00:42:32 ◼   ► And this is the type of thing that can get you,

00:42:34 ◼   ► oh my God, the basics aren't even working.

00:42:36 ◼   ► So for example, earlier this week,

00:42:38 ◼   ► my wife said my contacts aren't syncing anymore.

00:42:40 ◼   ► I added a contact on my new iPad Air.

00:42:42 ◼   ► I added it like a week ago.

00:42:43 ◼   ► It's still not on my Mac or on my iPhone.

00:42:45 ◼   ► And everything was set up correctly,

00:42:48 ◼   ► all in the same iCloud account, nothing has changed.

00:42:50 ◼   ► Everything is all synced up, everyone's all logged in.

00:42:52 ◼   ► There's no errors or anything.

00:42:53 ◼   ► And I'm sitting there looking at it.

00:42:54 ◼   ► Here on the iPad, changed to a street address.

00:42:57 ◼   ► Here it is on the iPhone and the Mac.

00:42:59 ◼   ► It's not changed.

00:43:00 ◼   ► And you just stare at it and you're like,

00:43:01 ◼   ► why is this a problem?

00:43:02 ◼   ► Is it because someone wrote buggy client software?

00:43:04 ◼   ► Almost certainly not, right?

00:43:07 ◼   ► But then you perceive this as,

00:43:09 ◼   ► oh my God, the basics aren't working anymore.

00:43:11 ◼   ► Because cloud functionality is now a basic.

00:43:13 ◼   ► It's something like you just expect.

00:43:15 ◼   ► I like my contacts are all synchronized across everything.

00:43:17 ◼   ► That's the bar now.

00:43:18 ◼   ► And Apple's really bad at that part of doing its products.

00:43:22 ◼   ► And it's really bad at making a situation

00:43:24 ◼   ► where you can debug.

00:43:25 ◼   ► Like what do I even do in that situation?

00:43:26 ◼   ► I do the little dance that everybody does.

00:43:28 ◼   ► You just like sign out of iCloud, turn contacts off,

00:43:31 ◼   ► turn contacts back on, add a new contact,

00:43:34 ◼   ► just to see if it's syncing, you know,

00:43:35 ◼   ► like delete all iCloud data from account,

00:43:38 ◼   ► sign completely out of iCloud

00:43:40 ◼   ► and it deletes a million photos

00:43:41 ◼   ► from my shared photo streams on my Mac.

00:43:43 ◼   ► Turn it back on and watch it grind for three hours,

00:43:45 ◼   ► loading those photos back in, you know,

00:43:47 ◼   ► do all this, eventually it starts syncing again.

00:43:49 ◼   ► Then you can, you know, like,

00:43:50 ◼   ► it's just this dance that you do and that infuriates people.

00:43:53 ◼   ► So that part of Apple's products, I think,

00:43:55 ◼   ► is getting better only because the percentage

00:43:58 ◼   ► of cloudy stuff in software has been going up

00:44:00 ◼   ► and Apple has, Apple's ability to do cloudy stuff well

00:44:02 ◼   ► has not been going up.

00:44:03 ◼   ► No question their services still need work.

00:44:07 ◼   ► They've always been mediocre at most of the service stuff

00:44:10 ◼   ► and they still need work,

00:44:11 ◼   ► but most of the problems that I'm complaining about

00:44:14 ◼   ► and that I've been seeing over the last couple years

00:44:16 ◼   ► actually aren't because of the services.

00:44:18 ◼   ► Even the local client-side software

00:44:21 ◼   ► is problematic in the last few years.

00:44:22 ◼   ► - But I think that's basically better than it has been

00:44:25 ◼   ► in recent years rather than worse.

00:44:27 ◼   ► So all the things you've complained about,

00:44:28 ◼   ► I think back to the disasters

00:44:30 ◼   ► that were the early versions of Tiger and Leopard

00:44:32 ◼   ► and I'm like, you don't know from not working networking,

00:44:34 ◼   ► you don't know from beach balls in the finder,

00:44:36 ◼   ► let me tell you, it was dire.

00:44:38 ◼   ► And like, and just forget about classic Mac OS,

00:44:40 ◼   ► like that was a total mess in the later years of its life.

00:44:43 ◼   ► So, and a lot of the times there,

00:44:46 ◼   ► if you could fault them for one of the things

00:44:47 ◼   ► they've done in recent releases,

00:44:49 ◼   ► one place I would say you could fault them for example,

00:44:51 ◼   ► and I just saw, I think Craig Hockenberry

00:44:52 ◼   ► complaining about this today is,

00:44:54 ◼   ► where they do a feature that seems like,

00:44:58 ◼   ► it's not like a marketing feature,

00:44:59 ◼   ► but it's a feature they can put on a box

00:45:00 ◼   ► that is a perfectly good feature to do,

00:45:03 ◼   ► but that almost nobody is willing to accept

00:45:07 ◼   ► the refactoring needed to implement this feature.

00:45:10 ◼   ► So one of the examples was like tags,

00:45:12 ◼   ► which I detailed in whatever, what did that come out in?

00:45:14 ◼   ► Like a mountain lion or something,

00:45:16 ◼   ► talking about the implementation of tags

00:45:17 ◼   ► and how is this crazy hack based on the labels thing

00:45:19 ◼   ► and all that stuff.

00:45:20 ◼   ► It's like, all right, fine.

00:45:21 ◼   ► If you're not gonna use tags, so what?

00:45:22 ◼   ► It doesn't look like it's a big deal.

00:45:23 ◼   ► It doesn't seem like it would impact anything.

00:45:25 ◼   ► It's like you're just piggybacking

00:45:27 ◼   ► on existing crazy HFS+ metadata

00:45:29 ◼   ► and there's all these weird bugs about it,

00:45:31 ◼   ► but if I don't use tags, it doesn't affect me, right?

00:45:33 ◼   ► Well, apparently there's something having to do

00:45:34 ◼   ► with network shares where it makes a tag query request

00:45:37 ◼   ► or something and if that hangs,

00:45:39 ◼   ► like it hangs the whole thing

00:45:40 ◼   ► and you get a beach ball in the finder.

00:45:41 ◼   ► Now all of a sudden people who don't know

00:45:43 ◼   ► and don't care about tags

00:45:44 ◼   ► are getting a worse experience in the finder

00:45:46 ◼   ► for a feature they didn't even care about.

00:45:49 ◼   ► That type of thing is like, that's an engineering thing

00:45:51 ◼   ► where you have to decide it's okay to have new features,

00:45:54 ◼   ► but we really have to balance,

00:45:57 ◼   ► like does this new feature require like,

00:45:59 ◼   ► Oh, and by the way, now just every time

00:46:00 ◼   ► we bring up network share, we have to do this other thing,

00:46:02 ◼   ► and if it blocks, like it's a problem.

00:46:04 ◼   ► I don't know how, that's the type of thing

00:46:09 ◼   ► where when you're planning the features for ONS,

00:46:11 ◼   ► you really have to talk about it and say,

00:46:13 ◼   ► this is a great feature, we've wanted this for a long time,

00:46:16 ◼   ► I think it'll be interesting, it's a good bullet point

00:46:19 ◼   ► to add to the non-existent box, we'll do slides about it

00:46:22 ◼   ► and have a nice demo and stuff.

00:46:25 ◼   ► Oh, and by the way, does this potentially compromise

00:46:28 ◼   ► any basic functionality that everybody needs?

00:46:30 ◼   ► And if the answer to that is yes,

00:46:31 ◼   ► and really think real long and hard

00:46:33 ◼   ► about the trade-offs there.

00:46:35 ◼   ► That is the closest I think I can get to saying

00:46:38 ◼   ► like a sort of potentially marketing driven decision

00:46:42 ◼   ► that has led to sort of unacceptable instability

00:46:45 ◼   ► and basic functionality.

00:46:46 ◼   ► And a lot of the historic things have meant like

00:46:48 ◼   ► we want to add some minor feature,

00:46:49 ◼   ► but it means totally refactoring this subsystem.

00:46:52 ◼   ► And sometimes that's like, oh, that's bad

00:46:54 ◼   ► because it's gonna cause bugs.

00:46:55 ◼   ► But an example of the good is like,

00:46:57 ◼   ► I think in Yosemite they totally redid icon services,

00:47:01 ◼   ► and it desperately needed to be redone,

00:47:03 ◼   ► because for years there had been these icon services bugs

00:47:06 ◼   ► that caused all my icons to be pixelated,

00:47:08 ◼   ► and there was no way out of it,

00:47:09 ◼   ► and you just had to try to keep purging caches

00:47:10 ◼   ► and restarting, and eventually it would go away,

00:47:12 ◼   ► or maybe not.

00:47:13 ◼   ► That's the type of thing where it's like,

00:47:15 ◼   ► is it really important to fix that bug?

00:47:17 ◼   ► Eh, it's cosmetic, it's not a big deal,

00:47:18 ◼   ► but to fix it we had to rewrite

00:47:19 ◼   ► the entire icon services thing.

00:47:21 ◼   ► Well, eventually you gotta get around to it,

00:47:23 ◼   ► and I'm glad they did get around to it.

00:47:24 ◼   ► So I don't want them to be afraid to do that,

00:47:26 ◼   ► and to like treat it as like,

00:47:27 ◼   ► oh, we can't change anything, we can't add anything,

00:47:28 ◼   ► 'cause that were, you know, DiscoveryD.

00:47:30 ◼   ► That would mean totally changing DiscoveryD

00:47:32 ◼   ► to do continuity.

00:47:33 ◼   ► I don't think that in and of itself is a bad thing,

00:47:35 ◼   ► but again, if that means

00:47:37 ◼   ► for people who don't even use continuity,

00:47:39 ◼   ► because DiscoveryD does these other jobs as well,

00:47:41 ◼   ► it could compromise them, you gotta be really careful

00:47:42 ◼   ► about how you make those changes.

00:47:44 ◼   ► - Yeah, you know, I'd like to go back a step though,

00:47:46 ◼   ► and you were saying, well, it was much worse early on,

00:47:49 ◼   ► you know, and gosh, classic macOS was ridiculous

00:47:53 ◼   ► with stability, but the problem I have

00:47:55 ◼   ► what you're saying, even though it's surely correct, is that there's so many new Mac users,

00:48:00 ◼   ► and I'll even count myself in that category. I mean, I came to the Mac in 2006, 2008, something

00:48:05 ◼   ► like that, I don't even remember. But for me, even in my short, almost infinitesimally small

00:48:12 ◼   ► tenure as a Mac user, as compared to you, Jon, I can tell you that just my feeling of the quality

00:48:19 ◼   ► of OS X releases is exactly what we're, well, really,

00:48:22 ◼   ► all of us are saying is that with each new release,

00:48:27 ◼   ► I feel like it's getting kind of, not crummier,

00:48:30 ◼   ► but more fragile.

00:48:32 ◼   ► - Don't you think you guys,

00:48:33 ◼   ► you two are just traveling the curve of your Apple usage?

00:48:38 ◼   ► - What do you mean?

00:48:39 ◼   ► - Like sort of like, you know, curiosity, excitement,

00:48:43 ◼   ► marriage, honeymoon period, and then settling,

00:48:45 ◼   ► you know what I mean?

00:48:46 ◼   ► Like that's what I was talking about a cycle,

00:48:48 ◼   ► But if you've been around for a long time, you've gone through that cycle like seven times already and I think collectively

00:48:53 ◼   ► Because like the Mac used to be like this exclusive thing that not a lot of people had and we all loved it

00:48:59 ◼   ► It was great

00:48:59 ◼   ► And then that was the honeymoon period and then things started to get a grim and then it's like well

00:49:03 ◼   ► Maybe system 7 brings us a new life and then Windows 95 came and it was like that was our hitting bottom

00:49:08 ◼   ► You know, it's like we've gone through these cycles couple times. It was small but like the huge influx of Apple customers now

00:49:13 ◼   ► There's a whole it's kind of like the baby boom

00:49:15 ◼   ► There's a whole generation of Apple users most of whom came on board either because of the iPhone or the iPod

00:49:19 ◼   ► Who who are getting into the Apple stuff and who have gone through their?

00:49:24 ◼   ► excitement and their courtship and their marriage and their honeymoon period and are now kind of settling into bickering old middle-age and

00:49:30 ◼   ► It's not that this is it's not that this is a cycle of Apple's products and services

00:49:36 ◼   ► But it's a cycle of a specific cohort of their customers because of the huge growth they've had in recent years and that cohort is

00:49:44 ◼   ► Coming into there, you know, I'm no longer impressed more than I'm dissatisfied like that

00:49:49 ◼   ► I've take everything that works

00:49:50 ◼   ► I've taken for granted and anytime something that you didn't work starts did work starts to not work and I'd perceive that as a decline

00:49:55 ◼   ► Quality and I'm angry and so again, I don't think like this perception is wrong and they should be talked out of it

00:50:00 ◼   ► I think in the context of this massive customer base they have now Apple has to do better

00:50:04 ◼   ► They absolutely have to they have to realize that these you know, you can't rely on the honeymoon period you have to actually satisfy

00:50:09 ◼   ► the customers that you have

00:50:11 ◼   ► Congratulations, you got all these customers you sold a lot of iPhones now you're selling more Macs and iPads and stuff like that

00:50:16 ◼   ► This is their responsibility to fix it

00:50:18 ◼   ► So I'm not I'm not saying this as a defense of the company and saying they need only change

00:50:22 ◼   ► They absolutely do need to change it. But from my view

00:50:24 ◼   ► You know with the long view

00:50:26 ◼   ► I think these the quality things go in cycles and there are aspects that need to be addressed the cloud stuff

00:50:31 ◼   ► thinking hard about the release cycle and stuff like that, but

00:50:34 ◼   ► I'm not convinced that empirically and anything that you could actually measure you could say that the quality really is worse

00:50:40 ◼   ► not I maybe that's just an academic point like that's why I haven't bothered

00:50:43 ◼   ► blogging about this but it's not like a point I want to argue because it doesn't

00:50:46 ◼   ► in the end it doesn't matter if it's worth all it matters is what the

00:50:49 ◼   ► perception is of the customers that you have now and if they're all in the

00:50:52 ◼   ► bickering middle-aged period you got to deal with that you got to make your

00:50:55 ◼   ► products better and in the end I think they should be better like why shouldn't

00:50:58 ◼   ► they yeah but the problem is that you're you're saying that we're all in the

00:51:01 ◼   ► bickering middle-aged period and maybe Marco and I are because I mean he beat

00:51:04 ◼   ► me to the Mac by three or four years I think but but even new customers and I

00:51:09 ◼   ► I can't think of a great example, but I anecdotally, I know I have friends and family members that

00:51:14 ◼   ► have come to the Mac much more recently than I, only in the last couple of years.

00:51:19 ◼   ► And there are even some that haven't gotten Macs, but we're thinking about it that are

00:51:23 ◼   ► all, "I don't know about this anymore because I've heard some bad things and I've heard

00:51:28 ◼   ► that things aren't going so well."

00:51:30 ◼   ► Well, but see that that's like when the baby booms, like whatever the baby booms are into

00:51:34 ◼   ► or want or what they feel like influences the larger society because they are the largest

00:51:37 ◼   ► group of people, like they influence the others. So this huge group of existing Apple customers

00:51:42 ◼   ► who is now becoming dissatisfied influence all the people who might be interested because

00:51:46 ◼   ► all they hear from all the people who they know who are in this, you know, you're likely

00:51:49 ◼   ► to know a baby boomer because there's a lot of them and you're likely to know one of these

00:51:52 ◼   ► Mac users or Apple users who's kind of on the downswing in dissatisfaction. And what

00:51:57 ◼   ► you're going to hear from them is like, oh, things are worse now. It's crappy. I don't

00:52:00 ◼   ► like it. You know what I mean? Like it's a network effect type of thing. Like I said,

00:52:04 ◼   ► These things go in cycles and the cycles are not completely in lockstep but it's like waves

00:52:09 ◼   ► of people and they influence other people in articles like this and you know the cycle

00:52:13 ◼   ► of the media and stuff like that.

00:52:15 ◼   ► Again I don't think that that particularly matters because the bottom line is they do

00:52:18 ◼   ► have quality problems they do need to address they do need to do better because if you have

00:52:22 ◼   ► this many customers you can't rely on them all to be like oh gee whiz Apple stuff is

00:52:27 ◼   ► so shiny and I love it so much because that is not sustainable.

00:52:30 ◼   ► Sustainable is you have to do the hard stuff and be reliable and be consistent and figure

00:52:34 ◼   ► out how to give new features without compromising stability, figure out what your release schedule

00:52:38 ◼   ► is and figure out how to do this cloud stuff more reliably.

00:52:42 ◼   ► Well so alright, first of all let me go back a minute. I've been using the Apple ecosystem,

00:52:48 ◼   ► starting out with Macs first and then eventually iOS things, for actually slightly longer than

00:52:54 ◼   ► I ever used PCs. So we're slightly past my 20 year mark of using computers and it's basically

00:53:01 ◼   ► literally 10 years in, I switched.

00:53:04 ◼   ► So I'm about six months past my 20 year mark.

00:53:07 ◼   ► So I've been using Windows,

00:53:09 ◼   ► I use Windows stuff full time for 10 years

00:53:12 ◼   ► and then I'm using Apple stuff full time

00:53:13 ◼   ► for 10 and a half years now.

00:53:15 ◼   ► And so I think I'm past the point where,

00:53:19 ◼   ► I mean, I guess I can always get older,

00:53:22 ◼   ► but I think I'm past the point where this could just be like

00:53:27 ◼   ► me having a bad memory of things.

00:53:29 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:53:29 ◼   ► But I think one of the things that exacerbates this feeling

00:53:34 ◼   ► of things getting worse is that there's so much more

00:53:38 ◼   ► that these devices do.

00:53:39 ◼   ► First of all, there's more devices.

00:53:40 ◼   ► That's a big one.

00:53:42 ◼   ► So let's say 99.5% of the time,

00:53:47 ◼   ► things work the way they should.

00:53:49 ◼   ► And 0.5% have some kind of bug or failure or crash

00:53:53 ◼   ► or something goes wrong 0.5% of the time.

00:53:57 ◼   ► Every device usage that you have,

00:53:59 ◼   ► Like every time you take your phone out of your pocket to use it, you're doing that like

00:54:01 ◼   ► a hundred times a day, right?

00:54:03 ◼   ► People measure it, it's a lot.

00:54:04 ◼   ► That was the point I was making about the products that Apple sells and the customers

00:54:07 ◼   ► that they have and the fact that we use the computers more.

00:54:10 ◼   ► Like it is numerically more, but like percentage-wise, like they're not producing more bugs per line

00:54:17 ◼   ► of code or, you know, whatever.

00:54:18 ◼   ► It's just that there's more code, people use it more often.

00:54:22 ◼   ► And I should also emphasize, I haven't seen this chat room yet, but I realize I'm thinking

00:54:25 ◼   ► in the back of my head.

00:54:26 ◼   ► almost entirely about the Mac here,

00:54:28 ◼   ► because we were talking about Yosemite and OS X

00:54:30 ◼   ► and the release schedule.

00:54:31 ◼   ► iOS, I will absolutely stipulate that iOS 7 and 8

00:54:34 ◼   ► were worse quality wise than the preceding ones, absolutely.

00:54:39 ◼   ► I don't think anyone's arguing that,

00:54:40 ◼   ► that's the reason I'm having a debate about the Mac.

00:54:42 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I can tell you too,

00:54:44 ◼   ► working with a lot of these new APIs

00:54:46 ◼   ► that are added in 7 and 8,

00:54:48 ◼   ► there's a lot of bugs that are just API bugs.

00:54:50 ◼   ► They're just bugs in the shipping version

00:54:53 ◼   ► that your app has to work around

00:54:55 ◼   ► in a lot of the new features that get added,

00:54:57 ◼   ► and a lot of the old features that get re-broken

00:54:59 ◼   ► after they've been fixed.

00:55:00 ◼   ► - And OS bugs, like how many times,

00:55:02 ◼   ► like it just takes out the whole OS,

00:55:04 ◼   ► like that was not an iOS experience in the past.

00:55:08 ◼   ► Now, to give iOS some credit, like the changes in 8

00:55:11 ◼   ► are perhaps the most significant changes to iOS

00:55:13 ◼   ► in a long time, but for iOS you have a much stronger

00:55:16 ◼   ► argument that numerically I can show you

00:55:18 ◼   ► that the quality of iOS 7 and 8 has been a decline.

00:55:21 ◼   ► And I can show you that, and I can strongly argue

00:55:25 ◼   ► that the absolutely lockstep hardware

00:55:28 ◼   ► and software release schedule of iOS

00:55:30 ◼   ► puts the software team in a very difficult position

00:55:34 ◼   ► in terms of quality.

00:55:35 ◼   ► If you're gonna try to do yearly releases

00:55:37 ◼   ► and it has to come out with the phones,

00:55:38 ◼   ► you know what has to come out with the phones?

00:55:39 ◼   ► Let me show you a pie chart of iOS device profits

00:55:43 ◼   ► and Apple's revenue.

00:55:44 ◼   ► That's the entire freaking company now.

00:55:47 ◼   ► The Mac gets the luxury of not being

00:55:49 ◼   ► quite as locked into that,

00:55:50 ◼   ► although iOS and the Mac are sort of moving ahead together now, but the Mac gets to be

00:55:54 ◼   ► like, "You go ahead iPhone 6, yeah, I'll be there in a minute."

00:55:57 ◼   ► Like, "No, we don't have to release, it's fine, we'll just release the Macs with the

00:56:00 ◼   ► old version of the OS, it boots."

00:56:02 ◼   ► Or, "We'll just hold the Macs back."

00:56:03 ◼   ► Nobody cares, man, nobody cares about the iMac.

00:56:05 ◼   ► It'll come out when it's ready.

00:56:07 ◼   ► And so that's why I'm mostly focusing on the Mac.

00:56:09 ◼   ► iOS I would definitely stipulate.

00:56:11 ◼   ► I mean, copy and paste still doesn't work for me sometimes on iOS 8.

00:56:15 ◼   ► And I know someone's going to tell me that doesn't work for them on Yosemite as well,

00:56:17 ◼   ► - There actually is a long-standing

00:56:19 ◼   ► pace board bug that I hit every so often

00:56:21 ◼   ► that's been in Mac OS X since I started using Mac OS X.

00:56:25 ◼   ► - So like on iOS though,

00:56:27 ◼   ► we've all used every version of iOS.

00:56:28 ◼   ► We've all been there from the beginning.

00:56:30 ◼   ► And we can say, you know, there were bumps in the road,

00:56:33 ◼   ► but 708 is a definitely downward bump.

00:56:36 ◼   ► And that's our recent history for the past two years.

00:56:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, and again, it seems like,

00:56:41 ◼   ► see and this is what I was saying earlier,

00:56:43 ◼   ► because everything is so much more complicated now

00:56:46 ◼   ► There's so much more of it.

00:56:49 ◼   ► Those little .5% of things going wrong, they don't add, they multiply.

00:56:54 ◼   ► The chances of you running into something going wrong any given day is multiplied by

00:57:00 ◼   ► all those factors.

00:57:01 ◼   ► Yeah, and the cloud stuff, the cloud is a multiplying factor too.

00:57:04 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:57:05 ◼   ► It's behind everything and it's between them and getting all the continuity and the

00:57:09 ◼   ► airdrop stuff to work.

00:57:11 ◼   ► Throw in a watch.

00:57:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, and the problem I see, like right now today,

00:57:15 ◼   ► I can get my work done, it's usually not a problem.

00:57:18 ◼   ► But the rate of failures does seem to be going up.

00:57:21 ◼   ► And the biggest problem I see is not, you know,

00:57:24 ◼   ► everybody has a bad release every so often.

00:57:25 ◼   ► Even big companies like Apple.

00:57:27 ◼   ► They're not gonna get everything perfect every time.

00:57:28 ◼   ► That's fine.

00:57:29 ◼   ► But is there a sign of things getting better?

00:57:33 ◼   ► And that's where I'm really scared, 'cause I don't see it.

00:57:36 ◼   ► - Well, it's more than that, right?

00:57:38 ◼   ► It's not only there's no sign of things getting better,

00:57:40 ◼   ► but the engineering talent is getting spread even more thin in that, in that, you know,

00:57:46 ◼   ► now we have a watch coming and that's a whole nother platform with a whole nother series of

00:57:50 ◼   ► API's that, that somebody is going to have to write. And even if it turns out that they've

00:57:57 ◼   ► hired a bunch of engineers, well, are they as good as the engineers that exist? Are they worse?

00:58:03 ◼   ► It may even be better, but they certainly won't be

00:58:06 ◼   ► as entrenched in the Apple way.

00:58:09 ◼   ► So yeah, I think you're right, Marco,

00:58:11 ◼   ► that we haven't seen any indication it'll get better,

00:58:13 ◼   ► and we have plenty of ways that it could get worse.

00:58:15 ◼   ► And I'd like to hear what you two have to say about that,

00:58:17 ◼   ► but we should really talk about something cool.

00:58:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, and just to close up my part of this, I think,

00:58:23 ◼   ► you know, I posted the follow-up post saying

00:58:25 ◼   ► how much I regret publishing that post.

00:58:27 ◼   ► I regret having published the post,

00:58:29 ◼   ► not because it was complaining about Apple,

00:58:32 ◼   ► but because I just didn't do a very good job writing it.

00:58:34 ◼   ► I don't regret complaining about Apple.

00:58:37 ◼   ► I think these complaints were valid and needed to be made,

00:58:40 ◼   ► and one of the reasons why the post spread

00:58:42 ◼   ► so incredibly quickly and far and wide

00:58:45 ◼   ► is because there's so much agreement out there.

00:58:47 ◼   ► And once it got to the major media,

00:58:50 ◼   ► that was all sensationalism for the most part,

00:58:52 ◼   ► but when it spread around the geek community first,

00:58:55 ◼   ► which it did first, that was because people feel this.

00:58:59 ◼   ► This is a thing.

00:59:00 ◼   ► So I only regret not having done a very good job writing it

00:59:05 ◼   ► and some poor word choices here and there.

00:59:08 ◼   ► I don't at all regret making the complaint.

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01:01:54 ◼   ► once again.

01:01:56 ◼   ► I wish something better that I wrote would have gotten that popular.

01:01:59 ◼   ► That's the regret, it's like something I wrote got popular that isn't very good.

01:02:03 ◼   ► If you want to go meta, I wish I could remember this, but this is the problem with our show

01:02:07 ◼   ► notes system, because I don't think Google Docs keeps history forever.

01:02:11 ◼   ► We delete stuff when we're done with it rather than making a new document or something like

01:02:14 ◼   ► that.

01:02:15 ◼   ► But anyway, there was an item in the show notes where you wrote a post many weeks ago,

01:02:18 ◼   ► and I put it into the show notes because I wanted to talk about it, and you put a note

01:02:22 ◼   ► by it that you said "I don't think this is interesting, I don't want to talk about it,"

01:02:24 ◼   ► and eventually you deleted it from the notes.

01:02:26 ◼   ► I don't remember what it was, but do you remember what I'm talking about, Marco?

01:02:29 ◼   ► That describes many things.

01:02:32 ◼   ► So anyway, but it was about one of it was about one of your posts on Marco.org.

01:02:35 ◼   ► And the reason I put it in the notes was not to talk about the content of the post,

01:02:39 ◼   ► but to talk about like this post is why people get angry at you, Marco,

01:02:43 ◼   ► because it was a great example.

01:02:45 ◼   ► It was a great example of you posting something that me reading it.

01:02:48 ◼   ► I knew exactly what you meant.

01:02:49 ◼   ► And it's stuff again, stuff that you would say a million times in the podcast.

01:02:52 ◼   ► And it's just like this is not shocking or revolutionary

01:02:55 ◼   ► if anybody listens to the show or knows you are both.

01:02:57 ◼   ► And yet, if I came to that post, like, you know,

01:03:01 ◼   ► just blank without knowing any, without having any context,

01:03:05 ◼   ► I would have read it and gotten angry.

01:03:06 ◼   ► And then it's all about just like word choice and tone

01:03:10 ◼   ► and stuff like that.

01:03:11 ◼   ► And you talked about those in your thing.

01:03:12 ◼   ► It's like you regret using a particular word

01:03:13 ◼   ► or using a particular phrase,

01:03:14 ◼   ► and you don't feel like you wanna write everything

01:03:16 ◼   ► where you're writing and you're constantly thinking

01:03:19 ◼   ► what people are gonna say,

01:03:20 ◼   ► and they're like, you're writing defensively

01:03:22 ◼   ► and you're second guessing yourself

01:03:23 ◼   ► and all that other stuff.

01:03:24 ◼   ► That's what I wanted to talk about back when we did that boss

01:03:26 ◼   ► And maybe if we did that maybe you would just ignore me to write in this post anyway

01:03:29 ◼   ► or maybe you would thought about it when you're writing this thing and

01:03:32 ◼   ► Because that's like I don't the negative part is the part

01:03:35 ◼   ► I think you've articulated a while and a lot of people have talked about it's like

01:03:37 ◼   ► You don't want that feeling where you you're either afraid to write something or when you're writing it. You're like

01:03:44 ◼   ► defending you're defending things like

01:03:47 ◼   ► You're you're defending yourself from imagined attackers as you're writing right?

01:03:52 ◼   ► Because that doesn't feel like good and you should be like Jimmy just say what I'm gonna say, right?

01:03:56 ◼   ► But I think the the flip side of that and something that you get if you if you care deeply about these things

01:04:02 ◼   ► What you clearly do, you know, like if you care at all about what you write and you know

01:04:07 ◼   ► Bettering yourself and becoming a better writer and you know that stuff is not some people don't some people just write some session

01:04:13 ◼   ► Sensational BS and you feel like they sleep like a baby and they don't care that they just like riled a bunch of people

01:04:18 ◼   ► I can tell you quite a few of them right now. You were not like that at all

01:04:21 ◼   ► Right and you'd learn my and so for all like for all the years writing OS tender use and everything

01:04:25 ◼   ► Especially in the beginning when people thought I was a lousy PC user didn't know anything about max

01:04:30 ◼   ► Maybe I just try to Mac once I wouldn't hate them so much

01:04:32 ◼   ► like

01:04:35 ◼   ► it trains you like the the lesser light side of that defensiveness is you get very good at

01:04:41 ◼   ► Reading a sentence as it exists not as you want it to be and making sure that your specific word choices are

01:04:49 ◼   ► that you can defend them if challenged because you picked exactly the right word for what you meant and

01:04:54 ◼   ► The second level that oh, can I pick a word that will help me?

01:04:57 ◼   ► It'll help me to not be misunderstood sometimes that's harder to do and sometimes like you know what I use the correct word if they

01:05:03 ◼   ► Can't figure it out

01:05:03 ◼   ► I'll explain it to them after this but I always like what I always wanted to do with my old OS 10 reviews and my current

01:05:09 ◼   ► ones for that matter is if someone hasn't complained about something and

01:05:11 ◼   ► I want to be able to answer them by merely copying and pasting the sentence from the thing I wrote to say

01:05:18 ◼   ► Read the sentence again because it contains the words in the correct order to express the answer to your question and yet you seem to

01:05:23 ◼   ► Have glossed over it right like where where they read what they wanted to hear and you get into trouble when you pick a word

01:05:29 ◼   ► That expresses your feeling at the time

01:05:31 ◼   ► But if you were to read the sentence you like you know what I would actually like the nose

01:05:34 ◼   ► I think you would choose a different word, but when you wrote it like oh, that's that's the word for how I'm feeling now

01:05:39 ◼   ► but if you if you take you would never take that sentence back and paste it to somebody and say

01:05:44 ◼   ► As a defense in fact you would look at it and say oh actually that's not there

01:05:47 ◼   ► It's not precisely what I meant and that sort of

01:05:49 ◼   ► Some people call like lawyerly like word choice or whatever like it sounds boring and it sounds crappy

01:05:54 ◼   ► But it's actually something I kind of savor in

01:05:56 ◼   ► Writing my things and that I want every sentence that I write to be at least defensible to me like I should be able to

01:06:02 ◼   ► Explain myself it should express whatever I think and if it doesn't express exactly what I think I

01:06:06 ◼   ► Should pick a word that gets close to expressing what I think and that practice some people again some people find that practice kind of

01:06:13 ◼   ► It's like you know what screwless people writing what I want which I think is perfectly fine

01:06:16 ◼   ► But for me I get all paranoid about it when I can't

01:06:18 ◼   ► When I when people can use my own words against me I have chosen the wrong words because they're not really like that's not what

01:06:25 ◼   ► I meant I never want to say oh no no that's not what I meant

01:06:27 ◼   ► I want to say no that's exactly what I meant and maybe I can diagram the sentence for you to explain

01:06:31 ◼   ► How it's exactly what I meant is not what you're saying because this you're never gonna get around that people are always gonna read what?

01:06:37 ◼   ► You actually wrote and say I think what you're saying here is that Apple is doomed like that

01:06:40 ◼   ► to write that Apple was doomed?

01:06:42 ◼   ► No, but it seems like you're, it seems like, really?

01:06:44 ◼   ► You know, like we can have that debate,

01:06:46 ◼   ► but I don't want people to put the word,

01:06:47 ◼   ► say, you're saying here that Apple's quality

01:06:49 ◼   ► is taking a nosedive.

01:06:50 ◼   ► I never said, oh, Jim, I did say nosedive.

01:06:52 ◼   ► That's not really what I meant, right?

01:06:54 ◼   ► - Right, that's the frustration.

01:06:55 ◼   ► That's what hurts, is that I feel embarrassed and guilty

01:06:59 ◼   ► that I made a bad word choice.

01:07:01 ◼   ► Not like, I can be angry if somebody misquotes me

01:07:04 ◼   ► or, you know, takes something out of context or whatever.

01:07:07 ◼   ► - Yeah, but there's only so much you can do about that.

01:07:08 ◼   ► - Right. - Like, you don't,

01:07:09 ◼   ► want them to be able to actually quote you in context and you feel bad about it.

01:07:13 ◼   ► Exactly. That's the problem is like when I know I was wrong and I did something bad or

01:07:19 ◼   ► stupid.

01:07:20 ◼   ► And then your thing gets magnified. You write a million things like everybody does, especially

01:07:23 ◼   ► if you are a frequent blogger, you write a million things where you don't pick the

01:07:25 ◼   ► precise. I had the luxury of picking the precise word over like one thing a year and just poured

01:07:29 ◼   ► over it like an insane person, right? But if you're blogging every day, like you, you

01:07:32 ◼   ► know, but and then you get caught by surprises like most of my stuff gets read by X number

01:07:36 ◼   ► People just got read by X times a hundred thousand and that's kind of like an unfair lens to focus on again

01:07:41 ◼   ► What you probably thought was like there's another one of those posts where I summarize what I've been saying in ATP for the past two

01:07:45 ◼   ► Months you bang it out. You're done. You go to sleep like no big deal, right?

01:07:48 ◼   ► And you wake up and it's like oh why why this one and not when I talked about like

01:07:53 ◼   ► closed headphones

01:07:56 ◼   ► And I think I think the answer to why this one though like people picked up on this is like it if it wasn't you

01:08:02 ◼   ► It would have been someone else because this has been in the air like this is this is an actual thing

01:08:06 ◼   ► You know you can argue about justification or whatever. I'm saying like the current crop of Apple customers are in a cycle now where

01:08:12 ◼   ► We are not satisfied with the quality of the products

01:08:16 ◼   ► We're getting and you know we expect more than we're getting our expectations may be up our usage

01:08:22 ◼   ► You may be up the quality may be down some combination

01:08:24 ◼   ► But we're not happy and so it's been bouncing around with app review

01:08:27 ◼   ► with software colleagues and bouncing around circles for just I think at this point for you know over a year and

01:08:33 ◼   ► This just happened to catch because it was the right person at the right time

01:08:36 ◼   ► Expressing the things that you know, he's saying what we're all thinking right and or you know, they're misquote of him is what I'm thinking

01:08:43 ◼   ► Well, the funny thing is I was digging through the show notes

01:08:47 ◼   ► Well, you guys were talking trying to find that link and I'm not sure that this is the one you were looking for John

01:08:52 ◼   ► But I did stumble upon the products Apple doesn't have time to improve dated December 29 2013 very last paragraph

01:09:00 ◼   ► this is on Marco's website. "While most of the press demands new hardware categories,

01:09:03 ◼   ► I'd be perfectly happy if Apple never made a TV or a watch or a unicorn and instead devoted

01:09:08 ◼   ► the next five years to polishing the software and services for their existing product lines.

01:09:12 ◼   ► December 29, 2013." Now that wasn't the one I was thinking of

01:09:16 ◼   ► in terms of the one I was going to complain about how Marco wrote it and not what he wrote.

01:09:20 ◼   ► It was like it was it was like not a I don't even know if it was tech related. It was just

01:09:25 ◼   ► something random.

01:09:26 ◼   ► - Right, my point is just that over a year ago,

01:09:30 ◼   ► we were all complaining about software quality.

01:09:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, we're always complaining.

01:09:33 ◼   ► I mean, that's all I do.

01:09:34 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:09:35 ◼   ► I've always complained about software quality.

01:09:36 ◼   ► I haven't complained about software quality since 1999.

01:09:38 ◼   ► We all complain.

01:09:39 ◼   ► It's just like, when does it reach your critical mass?

01:09:41 ◼   ► When does it gain traction in the larger thing?

01:09:43 ◼   ► When does it become,

01:09:44 ◼   ► and it's almost kind of sad that it becomes a story

01:09:46 ◼   ► because then it itself begins a cycle

01:09:49 ◼   ► that we know will eventually end

01:09:50 ◼   ► where this becomes a thing and then we talk about it

01:09:52 ◼   ► and then it bounces around and then we forget.

01:09:54 ◼   ► And it's kind of a shame that that,

01:09:56 ◼   ► because that's a cycle too, right?

01:09:57 ◼   ► The media cycle about this thing.

01:09:59 ◼   ► And the media cycle will terminate long before

01:10:01 ◼   ► there's any satisfactory resolution to the actual problem.

01:10:05 ◼   ► Because the media cycle has a life of its own

01:10:07 ◼   ► that is not concerned with the substance

01:10:09 ◼   ► of the thing that it's reporting on.

01:10:10 ◼   ► Like once the story goes away, it's like,

01:10:12 ◼   ► oh, I remember that story a couple years ago

01:10:15 ◼   ► that I bought some software,

01:10:16 ◼   ► but I guess that's fixed now

01:10:16 ◼   ► because I don't hear of it anymore.

01:10:17 ◼   ► No, probably not.

01:10:18 ◼   ► Like it's, you know, the reality continues to lurch along.

01:10:22 ◼   ► Right?

01:10:23 ◼   ► You know just like app review like app review comes and goes in cycles in between then is it solved. Nope

01:10:28 ◼   ► No, not at all like it and and I think that's that's the problem

01:10:32 ◼   ► Like that's all we talked about in the show is like systemic problems with Apple's products and how they might solve them

01:10:38 ◼   ► And you're the option Marco put out there like it's the fancy we have like oh just keep polishing your products for a few years

01:10:44 ◼   ► um

01:10:45 ◼   ► That is more viable on the Mac because like I said, who are they chasing at this point?

01:10:48 ◼   ► Like it's not an active battleground. It's more of you know borders have been drawn and

01:10:53 ◼   ► Os 10 is kind of gently encroaching on windows, but it's not like a burgeoning market but

01:10:58 ◼   ► On the phone they really do have to be racing forward

01:11:02 ◼   ► they also need to get their quality under control and they need to

01:11:05 ◼   ► Balance those two things. I think the good thing going for them is that as a lot of people said it's like

01:11:09 ◼   ► I think I saw someone say ios with ios a ios is basically feature complete now, right?

01:11:14 ◼   ► You know the you know the end of history illusion, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah, that's all there but but in some respects

01:11:18 ◼   ► it's like iOS 8 brought a lot of long-standing things

01:11:22 ◼   ► that we wanted for a long time.

01:11:23 ◼   ► And you do have now a window of time

01:11:25 ◼   ► where you can polish those

01:11:26 ◼   ► because it's not like there's some major feature

01:11:29 ◼   ► that we're all like, oh my God,

01:11:30 ◼   ► iOS totally needs like background processing

01:11:33 ◼   ► or multitasking or better inter-app communication

01:11:36 ◼   ► or better way to share files.

01:11:37 ◼   ► Like at this point, it's basically an app store problem

01:11:39 ◼   ► with the whole iCloud thing.

01:11:40 ◼   ► Like the basics are there if only they worked now.

01:11:43 ◼   ► I mean, that was kind of like so many features in Leopard

01:11:46 ◼   ► were like all these things you add in Leopard sound great.

01:11:48 ◼   ► I'll be really excited when they work.

01:11:50 ◼   ► And then we got like two years until Snow Leopard came out

01:11:53 ◼   ► and it's like, oh, now all that stuff kind of works

01:11:55 ◼   ► and that's kind of good.

01:11:56 ◼   ► But yeah, nothing's ever feature complete,

01:11:58 ◼   ► but they do go in cycles and I'm hoping that iOS 9

01:12:02 ◼   ► and the OS 10 that comes out after it will be a cycle

01:12:05 ◼   ► where they don't feel the needs,

01:12:07 ◼   ► that neither OS is desperately missing some feature

01:12:10 ◼   ► and they can do a polishing release.

01:12:12 ◼   ► - I don't necessarily agree with the assumption

01:12:16 ◼   ► they need to be racing ahead with software and iOS.

01:12:19 ◼   ► Because, I mean look, they just took a big chunk

01:12:21 ◼   ► out of Android sales, not because iOS 8 supports extensions,

01:12:26 ◼   ► but because they made bigger screen phones.

01:12:28 ◼   ► - Well, the hardware side, they need to be

01:12:30 ◼   ► racing forward there too, but wouldn't you agree

01:12:31 ◼   ► the features they added in iOS 8,

01:12:33 ◼   ► many of them are sort of long overdue?

01:12:35 ◼   ► - I would agree that they were overdue,

01:12:37 ◼   ► but I don't think that is gonna give them

01:12:39 ◼   ► massive market share over Android.

01:12:41 ◼   ► Or rather, I don't think that's going to

01:12:44 ◼   ► cause a lot of Android people to switch.

01:12:46 ◼   ► Like, it'll cause some.

01:12:48 ◼   ► - That's where the bar is now, though.

01:12:49 ◼   ► Like, they were behind, and they needed to catch up, right?

01:12:52 ◼   ► And so, it's not like you suddenly get more users.

01:12:56 ◼   ► This is just the ante to get in the game.

01:12:59 ◼   ► And, you know, the ante keeps being raised.

01:13:01 ◼   ► This is terrible, I don't know anything about gambling.

01:13:02 ◼   ► Sorry, anyway, that analogy.

01:13:04 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:13:05 ◼   ► I like the bar better.

01:13:06 ◼   ► - We're so surprised.

01:13:06 ◼   ► - The bar is something I can, yeah.

01:13:08 ◼   ► The bar is being raised, and they have to keep up.

01:13:10 ◼   ► and Android had raised the bar in so many areas

01:13:14 ◼   ► that iOS was unwilling or unable to chase.

01:13:17 ◼   ► And there were several releases where it was essentially,

01:13:19 ◼   ► let's catch up to where Android already is,

01:13:22 ◼   ► simply because that is the standard these days.

01:13:26 ◼   ► And if you don't have these features,

01:13:27 ◼   ► people are gonna ding you for it.

01:13:28 ◼   ► Having them doesn't mean people switch,

01:13:30 ◼   ► it just means you get to be in the conversation

01:13:31 ◼   ► and nobody gets to throw in your face

01:13:33 ◼   ► no third party keyboards, right?

01:13:34 ◼   ► - Yeah, but in the grand scheme of things,

01:13:36 ◼   ► I really don't think a lot of those things

01:13:38 ◼   ► were mattering in the marketplace

01:13:40 ◼   ► as much as geeks like to think they were?

01:13:43 ◼   ► - No, I don't know.

01:13:43 ◼   ► I mean, it's difficult to say,

01:13:45 ◼   ► but what I was saying before is because the iOS,

01:13:48 ◼   ► and basically because the iPhone

01:13:49 ◼   ► is such a huge part of Apple's business,

01:13:51 ◼   ► and it's the majority of their business,

01:13:53 ◼   ► I think, at this point, and it's super important,

01:13:55 ◼   ► and it's the market that's growing the most,

01:13:57 ◼   ► that's the one that has the most kind of,

01:13:59 ◼   ► and it has an active competitor,

01:14:00 ◼   ► like not a sleeping one and not a fossilized one,

01:14:03 ◼   ► but several active competitors that are weird

01:14:06 ◼   ► 'cause one guy's got, Google's got the OS in the platform,

01:14:08 ◼   ► Samsung's making the money and you don't know who's gonna come out of China with some crazy phones that are based on their own Android variant

01:14:14 ◼   ► like

01:14:16 ◼   ► it's it's kind of a

01:14:18 ◼   ► malevolent twisting enemy that you that you're not quite sure how to defeat and you're just trying to do like we just need to

01:14:22 ◼   ► Do our best and race forward as fast as we can like understand the sentiment

01:14:26 ◼   ► They could have they may have gone too fast in some respects

01:14:28 ◼   ► They may have gone too slow holding back on all the features that are in iOS 8 and then putting them all out in one

01:14:32 ◼   ► Big bang release right, but I understand that they felt like the you know, that the wolf was chasing them

01:14:37 ◼   ► this is like an analogy show.

01:14:38 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:14:40 ◼   ► Metaphor showed me, the wolf was chasing them

01:14:42 ◼   ► and they felt like they had to race.

01:14:43 ◼   ► Whereas in OS X, it's like, where you going?

01:14:46 ◼   ► Desktop Linux is not coming in 2015.

01:14:48 ◼   ► Like Windows is kind of, it's resting at the very least

01:14:53 ◼   ► and they already won that market and it's not growing

01:14:55 ◼   ► and just like slow and steady wins the race.

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01:16:18 ◼   ► And it also does a couple cool things, there's a parking locator because it knows where you

01:16:22 ◼   ► parked, because your phone was in your car when you parked.

01:16:25 ◼   ► Automatic now also works with the Nest learning thermostat, if you have a Nest thermostat,

01:16:29 ◼   ► can signal to your thermostat when you leave work to automatically warm your house up or

01:16:34 ◼   ► cool your house down so that when you get home it is the right temperature.

01:16:38 ◼   ► That's a pretty cool feature.

01:16:40 ◼   ► And there's this awesome thing that could really help you out in a serious situation.

01:16:45 ◼   ► It can automatically signal for help in a crash because the car can sense when it's

01:16:49 ◼   ► been in an accident and the automatic peripheral has a Bluetooth connection to your phone.

01:16:55 ◼   ► And so it can dial your phone through the app and signal to the app which can signal

01:16:59 ◼   ► to emergency services that you've crashed in an emergency.

01:17:02 ◼   ► And so if you're too slow or unable to call for help,

01:17:07 ◼   ► it will do it for you.

01:17:08 ◼   ► And that's really serious.

01:17:09 ◼   ► That could really be helpful.

01:17:11 ◼   ► So this is good stuff.

01:17:13 ◼   ► iPhone and Android are both supported.

01:17:16 ◼   ► Now, automatic, there's no subscription fees.

01:17:18 ◼   ► There's no monthly fee.

01:17:19 ◼   ► There's no service fee.

01:17:20 ◼   ► You just buy the automatic device upfront.

01:17:23 ◼   ► It plugs into your car and that's it.

01:17:25 ◼   ► Normally, it's 100 bucks,

01:17:27 ◼   ► which is already a fantastic deal.

01:17:28 ◼   ► But using our coupon code, or just by going to

01:17:32 ◼   ► automatic.com/ATP, you get 20% off,

01:17:36 ◼   ► bringing it down just to 80 bucks.

01:17:38 ◼   ► Again, no monthly fees, you just pay the 80 bucks up front

01:17:41 ◼   ► and it'll just work, there's no monthly fees.

01:17:44 ◼   ► 45 day return policy, free shipping both ways,

01:17:47 ◼   ► ships in two business days, all this is great stuff.

01:17:50 ◼   ► So try it out, 80 bucks, 45 day return policy,

01:17:53 ◼   ► free shipping, you can't go wrong.

01:17:55 ◼   ► So go to automatic.com/ATP.

01:17:58 ◼   ► Thanks a lot.

01:17:59 ◼   ► - All right.

01:18:01 ◼   ► Do we wanna talk about family sharing

01:18:02 ◼   ► or is that gonna take another two hours?

01:18:04 ◼   ► - No, we don't wanna talk about family sharing.

01:18:07 ◼   ► Our choices I think now are to talk about

01:18:09 ◼   ► the MacBook Air rumors or to listen to me drone on

01:18:12 ◼   ► more about Marco's thing 'cause I think

01:18:14 ◼   ► I can go on much longer about it.

01:18:15 ◼   ► - Let's talk about the MacBook Air rumors,

01:18:19 ◼   ► but I'm not saying that I don't wanna hear

01:18:20 ◼   ► your other thoughts on Marco's post at some point.

01:18:23 ◼   ► - Maybe the after show.

01:18:24 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's fine.

01:18:25 ◼   ► All right, so where did this start from?

01:18:28 ◼   ► 9to5Mac, is that right?

01:18:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, Mark Gurman got, if it's true,

01:18:32 ◼   ► a pretty good scoop about this,

01:18:35 ◼   ► the alleged 12-inch Retina MacBook Air.

01:18:39 ◼   ► And there have been rumors about a 12-inch iPad Pro

01:18:43 ◼   ► and a 12-inch Retina MacBook Air,

01:18:44 ◼   ► and so far there were people seem to think

01:18:46 ◼   ► those are two separate devices.

01:18:48 ◼   ► - These are not two separate devices.

01:18:50 ◼   ► - I know, right, yeah, exactly.

01:18:51 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:18:52 ◼   ► So, you know, I guess I'll believe them for now.

01:18:56 ◼   ► I tweeted earlier on Twitter that I suspect

01:19:00 ◼   ► that there's a good chance this is actually

01:19:02 ◼   ► just one device that, and immediately people are saying,

01:19:06 ◼   ► well then it will be like the Surface, it will suck.

01:19:09 ◼   ► That's not what I was saying.

01:19:11 ◼   ► I gotta excuse my words carefully.

01:19:13 ◼   ► - Speaking of the Surface, my son's, I guess, school thing,

01:19:18 ◼   ► he did something at school where they went

01:19:20 ◼   ► to a Microsoft store, and I know this because he came home

01:19:22 ◼   ► to me and said, "Why do we have a separate iPad and a laptop? The Surface is like both

01:19:27 ◼   ► in one." I was like, "No, they got to you!" I listened to his argument for the Surface.

01:19:33 ◼   ► He's lost. Started over.

01:19:34 ◼   ► No, he doesn't know anything about computers anyway. It's fine.

01:19:40 ◼   ► So anyway, so yeah, my theory was that there were rumors about one device that was either

01:19:46 ◼   ► a MacBook or an iPad. But anyway, regardless, all the room people are insisting it's actually

01:19:52 ◼   ► two different devices and they know more than I do obviously.

01:19:53 ◼   ► I haven't heard anything except from them.

01:19:56 ◼   ► So anyway, supposedly it's two devices, fine.

01:20:00 ◼   ► And this one in particular was the 12 inch

01:20:03 ◼   ► retina MacBook Air and it makes a number

01:20:06 ◼   ► of pretty substantial, again, if this is correct,

01:20:09 ◼   ► which that's a big if.

01:20:10 ◼   ► - I don't think we need, the reason I put this in notes

01:20:12 ◼   ► is I don't think we need to care whether it's true or not.

01:20:15 ◼   ► I think we can just discuss the rumor as in like,

01:20:18 ◼   ► is this something that Apple would make

01:20:20 ◼   ► and if they did make it, would you like it, why and why not?

01:20:23 ◼   ► - Fair enough.

01:20:24 ◼   ► I might like it.

01:20:25 ◼   ► So my portable needs have always been best served

01:20:29 ◼   ► by a 15 inch.

01:20:31 ◼   ► However, in recent times, I have come to realize

01:20:36 ◼   ► that I always think I will get a lot more work done

01:20:40 ◼   ► when I'm traveling with my laptop than I actually do.

01:20:43 ◼   ► I always think, oh, I'll bring my laptop

01:20:46 ◼   ► and then I can finally have this feature to the app,

01:20:48 ◼   ► even though I'll be offline most of the time

01:20:51 ◼   ► or have limited connectivity or I'll be upstate

01:20:54 ◼   ► with a DSL connection that's like from 19 to 75.

01:20:58 ◼   ► So I always think I'll get a lot of work done.

01:20:59 ◼   ► In practice, I usually just do basic web and email stuff

01:21:03 ◼   ► because I am waiting to get back to my big, fast computer

01:21:07 ◼   ► with my big, fast internet connection at home.

01:21:09 ◼   ► So I might try it simply because

01:21:14 ◼   ► I am due for a new laptop this year.

01:21:17 ◼   ► And actually, and the one, so I currently have

01:21:20 ◼   ► a first gen retina 15, so it is almost three years,

01:21:24 ◼   ► like two and a half years old now,

01:21:25 ◼   ► so this coming summer it'll be three years old.

01:21:27 ◼   ► That, it's like, I have no reason really to replace it,

01:21:30 ◼   ► except that it does have screen image retention issues

01:21:34 ◼   ► pretty badly now, and my father-in-law

01:21:37 ◼   ► needs a new computer, and so, and because it has

01:21:40 ◼   ► pretty bad image retention, I don't really feel comfortable

01:21:42 ◼   ► selling it to somebody, so I figure I'd just give it to him.

01:21:45 ◼   ► He really needs a computer basically now.

01:21:47 ◼   ► So I figure as soon as something new with Broadwell

01:21:48 ◼   ► comes out that I want, I will buy it and do the swap.

01:21:52 ◼   ► There have been many occasions where I've been

01:21:55 ◼   ► in some kind of travel situation, usually flying,

01:21:58 ◼   ► where a 15-inch is way too big to take out and use.

01:22:01 ◼   ► And so I think I would use something this small.

01:22:05 ◼   ► People who fly a lot always talk about the 11-inch Air.

01:22:07 ◼   ► And I've never liked the 11-inch because the screen

01:22:11 ◼   ► is just so damn small on it.

01:22:14 ◼   ► Isn't it 1366 across, something like that?

01:22:18 ◼   ► - Not only is it low-res, but it's also physically small.

01:22:20 ◼   ► There's wasted, the borders on it seem way too wide.

01:22:24 ◼   ► The thing is already small, and you couldn't stretch

01:22:26 ◼   ► the screen to the edges, apparently not.

01:22:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

01:22:29 ◼   ► So anyway, this rumor thing looks really nice

01:22:31 ◼   ► in that it appears to have a dramatically reduced

01:22:36 ◼   ► screen bezel width, which is nice.

01:22:38 ◼   ► Or as you would say, bezel.

01:22:39 ◼   ► I will never forget that.

01:22:41 ◼   ► (chimes)

01:22:42 ◼   ► - They have distinctive looks.

01:22:42 ◼   ► They have plastic bezels in the front of them.

01:22:45 ◼   ► (

01:22:50 ◼   ► that the keyboard keys are actually narrower.

01:22:54 ◼   ► And I'm a little worried about that,

01:22:56 ◼   ► because they haven't changed the size

01:22:57 ◼   ► of the keyboard keys in a very long time.

01:22:59 ◼   ► - Well, hold on, was it that the keys were narrower

01:23:01 ◼   ► or the borders between the keys were narrower?

01:23:04 ◼   ► - Well, it doesn't matter.

01:23:05 ◼   ► - It does though, because in the picture,

01:23:07 ◼   ► in the diagram again,

01:23:08 ◼   ► this is all could just be fantasy stuff.

01:23:09 ◼   ► In the diagram, the plastic key caps are the same size,

01:23:12 ◼   ► they're merely placed closer together.

01:23:13 ◼   ► And that is different from making the keys bigger

01:23:16 ◼   ► so the gaps between them are small,

01:23:17 ◼   ► but having the center points in the same place.

01:23:19 ◼   ► This seemed to be implying that the center points

01:23:20 ◼   ► were in different places,

01:23:22 ◼   ► so that the keys were actually closer together.

01:23:23 ◼   ► I imagine if the spacing is as shown,

01:23:27 ◼   ► if you are a crappy typist like me, you'd probably be okay.

01:23:31 ◼   ► But it is a compromise that it's like,

01:23:35 ◼   ► if you made the thing an extra centimeter wider,

01:23:37 ◼   ► would that have been a deal breaker

01:23:38 ◼   ► to have a standard keyboard?

01:23:39 ◼   ► Like it's an interesting design trade off if true.

01:23:42 ◼   ► If the product was as conceptualized,

01:23:43 ◼   ► then we're gonna get to more of the supposed,

01:23:45 ◼   ► you know, if this product was real,

01:23:47 ◼   ► what about this design trade off?

01:23:48 ◼   ► But the keyboard one, it's one of the minor ones,

01:23:50 ◼   ► but it's like, it's a line in the sand

01:23:53 ◼   ► where it's like previously it was like,

01:23:54 ◼   ► nope, full-size keys everywhere, spacing it.

01:23:56 ◼   ► For all we know, like I haven't actually measured

01:23:58 ◼   ► center to center, but I'm assuming that the keyboard spacing

01:24:00 ◼   ► has not changed in the modern era of Apple hardware.

01:24:03 ◼   ► And this would be a change.

01:24:05 ◼   ► But I don't think I would notice it.

01:24:06 ◼   ► And I don't know, you guys both touch typists?

01:24:09 ◼   ► - Yep. - Eh, mixed.

01:24:11 ◼   ► Like, unlike, you know, a little bit sloppy with it.

01:24:14 ◼   ► Oh God, don't title that.

01:24:15 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:24:16 ◼   ► If you were to use this keyboard, Casey, would you feel,

01:24:19 ◼   ► Would you say, oh, like, it was obviously if you use one of those Logitech keyboard

01:24:22 ◼   ► covers for an iPad, you're like, oh, this is like a Fisher Price keyboard.

01:24:24 ◼   ► It's crazy.

01:24:25 ◼   ► I can't type on it.

01:24:26 ◼   ► Right.

01:24:27 ◼   ► And that's an extreme.

01:24:28 ◼   ► With this spacing difference, do you think you would feel it?

01:24:31 ◼   ► I don't think so.

01:24:32 ◼   ► I will say that the rare occasions that I used Macs many, many years ago and the little

01:24:38 ◼   ► nubbins were on the D and what, which was the other key D and K keys back before they

01:24:45 ◼   ► moved them to the PC position of F and J, that threw me off constantly and I could barely

01:24:53 ◼   ► type on a Mac back then.

01:24:54 ◼   ► But that was a, I would argue, a much bigger difference.

01:24:57 ◼   ► I think if I just have to get used to the keys being slightly together, or slightly

01:25:02 ◼   ► close together, I don't think that would make a very big difference at all.

01:25:05 ◼   ► Unless you have really big sausage fingers.

01:25:07 ◼   ► I think, I find with laptops, it's more of a thing getting used to the keys that they

01:25:11 ◼   ► move, like the fact that control is not in the corner.

01:25:13 ◼   ► when they move escape out of the corner and that would probably screw me up and maybe

01:25:17 ◼   ► screw up people who are like Emacs users or people who might hit the escape key more than

01:25:20 ◼   ► you might expect.

01:25:22 ◼   ► One exciting thing about this mockup of a keyboard here is that the left and right arrow

01:25:28 ◼   ► keys are full size, which is like one baby step towards the sanity of full size arrow

01:25:32 ◼   ► keys.

01:25:33 ◼   ► But now I won't break the border of the keyboard yet, but this is a baby step isn't it?

01:25:37 ◼   ► In fact, actually this may not be a baby step, this may be regression because it might have

01:25:41 ◼   ► been driving him crazy to have half-height left and right keys because they broke the

01:25:43 ◼   ► symmetry of every key cap being the same size except for the, you know, modifier keys and

01:25:47 ◼   ► stuff. So I don't know, but anyway, I endorsed that rumored change as well.

01:25:53 ◼   ► So the big rumored change, which has all of us talking about this in particular, is allegedly

01:26:01 ◼   ► all of the ports are gone except a headphone jack and a USB 3 Type-C, the new reversible

01:26:08 ◼   ► USB connector, including the power connector.

01:26:11 ◼   ► So if this is true, the power and all device connections

01:26:16 ◼   ► except headphones will have to run through

01:26:18 ◼   ► a single USB type C connector.

01:26:22 ◼   ► - All right, so I think the first thing we can say

01:26:24 ◼   ► about this is, is this technically possible to do?

01:26:26 ◼   ► - Right, and from people who have been following

01:26:29 ◼   ► the spec more closely than us, apparently the answer is yes.

01:26:32 ◼   ► The USB type C connector has a lot of capability.

01:26:38 ◼   ► and I don't know the fine details of it,

01:26:40 ◼   ► but people are saying that it was designed

01:26:43 ◼   ► to carry up to 100 watts of power into the computer,

01:26:47 ◼   ► if necessary, as well as be able to kind of

01:26:52 ◼   ► multiplex other port types over that physical plug.

01:26:56 ◼   ► - And it can do displays as well.

01:26:58 ◼   ► - Yes, exactly.

01:26:59 ◼   ► So it does seem like it is possible.

01:27:01 ◼   ► - Yeah, so that I think, I don't know if it was emphasized

01:27:04 ◼   ► enough historically, I mean they mention it here,

01:27:06 ◼   ► but like the reason we can have this discussion is because

01:27:10 ◼   ► plus or minus, minor things about like,

01:27:13 ◼   ► well, it won't charge as fast

01:27:14 ◼   ► or will you be limited in monitors

01:27:16 ◼   ► or will it compromise the speed of the bus?

01:27:18 ◼   ► Technically from the specs, it seems like,

01:27:20 ◼   ► yes, this is a thing you could do.

01:27:22 ◼   ► You can pick a laptop with a headphone port

01:27:25 ◼   ► and a single USB type C port.

01:27:27 ◼   ► - All right, it still might be a bad idea,

01:27:29 ◼   ► but it does seem like it's possible technically.

01:27:31 ◼   ► - Now, if Apple did this and made this device,

01:27:33 ◼   ► regardless of whether we think they're going to or not,

01:27:35 ◼   ► - Would you want to buy one?

01:27:36 ◼   ► Would it change your opinion of like,

01:27:38 ◼   ► of you were saying you might want to get this

01:27:41 ◼   ► 'cause it's nice to get a laptop replacement,

01:27:43 ◼   ► you like having a laptop, it'd be cool to be a small one.

01:27:44 ◼   ► Would this change your decision about getting one?

01:27:47 ◼   ► - Probably not, simply because it wouldn't affect

01:27:51 ◼   ► the way I use it, but I also recognize

01:27:54 ◼   ► like the way I use my laptop as a secondary

01:27:58 ◼   ► and pretty occasional computer really,

01:28:00 ◼   ► that's not how most people use their laptops.

01:28:03 ◼   ► Most people use their laptops as their only computer

01:28:05 ◼   ► and are using it frequently, and most of the time,

01:28:08 ◼   ► it's on a desk plugged in to other stuff.

01:28:11 ◼   ► So for that kind of use, again, we'll have to see.

01:28:13 ◼   ► This is all, we could be totally wrong.

01:28:16 ◼   ► This port could be totally awesome,

01:28:17 ◼   ► and we might be able to shove everything through it

01:28:20 ◼   ► and have a little base station or adapter or whatever.

01:28:22 ◼   ► - I'm not willing to say that it would be totally awesome,

01:28:25 ◼   ► because the big one is they're saying MagSafe is gone too.

01:28:28 ◼   ► And MagSafe isn't just like,

01:28:30 ◼   ► oh, it's just coming up with another port.

01:28:31 ◼   ► USB can technically carry the power, why wouldn't you do it?

01:28:34 ◼   ► Well, the same reason MagSafe exists in the first place,

01:28:36 ◼   ► 'cause you don't want a plug that goes inside your computer

01:28:38 ◼   ► to be the power cord that people trip over.

01:28:40 ◼   ► That's why MagSafe was invented.

01:28:42 ◼   ► We did that before.

01:28:43 ◼   ► We had laptops where there was a connector

01:28:44 ◼   ► that went into there, and we all broke them off

01:28:47 ◼   ► at a certain point.

01:28:48 ◼   ► Not to say MagSafe was perfect,

01:28:50 ◼   ► and MagSafe 2 has been arguably a regression,

01:28:53 ◼   ► and maybe this thing is so thin

01:28:54 ◼   ► that they can't figure out how to get a MagSafe.

01:28:56 ◼   ► Maybe they should switch the iWatch type little

01:28:59 ◼   ► magnetic inductance suction cup-y looking thing over.

01:29:01 ◼   ► I don't know what they have to do,

01:29:03 ◼   ► but I don't wanna go back to a world

01:29:05 ◼   ► where people can't trip over the power cord to a laptop.

01:29:07 ◼   ► And so if this thing came out,

01:29:09 ◼   ► it's not just that it has one port,

01:29:10 ◼   ► but if it didn't even have a power port,

01:29:12 ◼   ► this would make me strongly consider it,

01:29:14 ◼   ► not only not buying it for myself,

01:29:15 ◼   ► 'cause I don't really like laptops,

01:29:16 ◼   ► but not even recommending it to other people,

01:29:18 ◼   ► because I think MagSafe is one of the best features

01:29:20 ◼   ► they've ever added to their laptop line.

01:29:21 ◼   ► And if they take it away

01:29:22 ◼   ► in favor of this little USB Type-C connector,

01:29:25 ◼   ► I would take a wait and see approach.

01:29:26 ◼   ► And I would say, basically I have to see,

01:29:28 ◼   ► is the connector so tiny?

01:29:30 ◼   ► Like if it's practically the size of a lightning connector,

01:29:31 ◼   ► You know, is it so tiny that it basically acts like magsafe

01:29:34 ◼   ► and that you can trip over it a million times

01:29:36 ◼   ► and it won't break off and it won't yank your computer down

01:29:38 ◼   ► just because it's so small.

01:29:40 ◼   ► Like it's not like a big full-size USB connector

01:29:42 ◼   ► or is it really the issue that I think it's going to be

01:29:45 ◼   ► and that, you know, it's not as good as magsafe

01:29:49 ◼   ► and we're back to the old days.

01:29:50 ◼   ► - Well, what about the Xbox style

01:29:53 ◼   ► midway through the cable breakaway thing?

01:29:56 ◼   ► - Don't do anything Xbox style.

01:29:57 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:29:58 ◼   ► - I should have expected that.

01:30:00 ◼   ► - Come on.

01:30:01 ◼   ► That's like, you know, any big giant thing in the middle of your cable.

01:30:04 ◼   ► Ugh, no.

01:30:05 ◼   ► Well, what if it wasn't so big and giant, but it still served the same purpose?

01:30:08 ◼   ► Then you gotta use the special cable all the time.

01:30:10 ◼   ► I mean, so let's get to the other compromises of having a single port.

01:30:13 ◼   ► Ignore the magsafe thing entirely. Pretend that the power thing is not an issue.

01:30:16 ◼   ► Why would you have just one of them,

01:30:18 ◼   ► unless you're making some sort of philosophical statement?

01:30:20 ◼   ► Like, is there a technical reason why we think we'd have just one?

01:30:23 ◼   ► Some people have argued power because the second port would require power,

01:30:25 ◼   ► and I can maybe kind of buy that, but I don't know enough about the specs of the,

01:30:29 ◼   ► what is it, the Core M line of processors?

01:30:31 ◼   ► - Right, right.

01:30:32 ◼   ► - I don't know if there's something about adding

01:30:35 ◼   ► another port that is a significant power drain.

01:30:38 ◼   ► It seems like in this mock-up,

01:30:39 ◼   ► there's space on the side of it

01:30:41 ◼   ► where you could put another port.

01:30:42 ◼   ► - Well, it is teardrop-shaped still, though.