ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► I'm drinking a little hot chocolate right now, and now I've gone from freezing cold

00:00:03 ◼   ► to overheating.

00:00:05 ◼   ► What is your hot chocolate of choice?

00:00:07 ◼   ► I will answer that question.

00:00:08 ◼   ► You don't want me to answer that question.

00:00:11 ◼   ► If I had to choose just one—this is me dodging, by the way—it would be the Mud House in

00:00:16 ◼   ► Charlottesville, which is a little coffee house in Charlottesville, Virginia.

00:00:19 ◼   ► Do they have winter there?

00:00:21 ◼   ► Okay, I'm all right.

00:00:24 ◼   ► I had to really bottle that one up for a second.

00:00:26 ◼   ► Please take note of who is doing this to you.

00:00:28 ◼   ► Not me.

00:00:29 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:00:31 ◼   ► But this particular hot chocolate,

00:00:33 ◼   ► which I do find to be quite delicious,

00:00:34 ◼   ► is a Keurig K-Cup and, shoot, for the life of me,

00:00:38 ◼   ► I don't remember who makes this hot chocolate.

00:00:40 ◼   ► - Oh boy.

00:00:41 ◼   ► Well, I mean, on one hand,

00:00:42 ◼   ► when you said I was not gonna like the answer,

00:00:45 ◼   ► I never thought it would be that bad.

00:00:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, I wouldn't have predicted that either.

00:00:49 ◼   ► - Well, did you think it was

00:00:49 ◼   ► like the Swiss Miss Instant stuff?

00:00:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, which is probably better.

00:00:53 ◼   ► - That used to be my hot chocolate of choice.

00:00:55 ◼   ► - If you think about like what hot chocolate requires,

00:00:57 ◼   ► really, I mean, yeah, you can do it the good way

00:00:59 ◼   ► with milk in a pot and you slowly heat up

00:01:00 ◼   ► and dump it a bunch of powder.

00:01:01 ◼   ► - Oh, so much work.

00:01:02 ◼   ► - It really isn't that much work, just cleaning the pot.

00:01:04 ◼   ► But if you think about what most hot chocolate really is,

00:01:07 ◼   ► just like the packet where you add water and heat

00:01:10 ◼   ► and you mix it and that's it,

00:01:12 ◼   ► a Keurig machine probably does just as good of a job

00:01:15 ◼   ► at that as dumping a packet into a mug and stirring it.

00:01:17 ◼   ► Like it's not, it probably is not that much worse.

00:01:19 ◼   ► It might even be slightly better in some ways, so yeah.

00:01:22 ◼   ► That I think is an official Marco approved usage

00:01:27 ◼   ► of a Keurig machine.

00:01:28 ◼   ► is if you're not going to ever actually make coffee in it,

00:01:30 ◼   ► which I'm kind of curious

00:01:31 ◼   ► why you even own one of these machines

00:01:33 ◼   ► 'cause you hate coffee, is it for Aaron?

00:01:34 ◼   ► - No, actually the funny thing about it is

00:01:37 ◼   ► this machine was given to me by Aaron

00:01:39 ◼   ► as a Christmas gift like two years ago

00:01:41 ◼   ► because I freaking love the hot chocolates

00:01:42 ◼   ► that come out of it in the winter time.

00:01:44 ◼   ► Now inevitably what ended up happening

00:01:45 ◼   ► is Aaron uses it constantly.

00:01:47 ◼   ► So it was like a bowling ball gift, you know what I mean?

00:01:50 ◼   ► Like the stereotypical bowling ball gift.

00:01:53 ◼   ► - Was the bowling ball say Aaron on it?

00:01:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, right, but no, I asked for it.

00:01:57 ◼   ► I was like, no, I really honestly want a Keurig.

00:01:59 ◼   ► And then she got it for me.

00:02:01 ◼   ► And inevitably I use it like three months out of the year.

00:02:03 ◼   ► You know, the only time that it's winter down in Virginia.

00:02:06 ◼   ► (phone ringing)

00:02:07 ◼   ► And she uses it the entire year.

00:02:09 ◼   ► - All right.

00:02:10 ◼   ► - You want to do some follow up?

00:02:12 ◼   ► - Let's do it.

00:02:13 ◼   ► - We got a really good email

00:02:14 ◼   ► from an anonymous former Apple employee.

00:02:18 ◼   ► And John, do you want to talk about this for us?

00:02:20 ◼   ► - Sure. This was about iWork,

00:02:22 ◼   ► which we've been kind of halfheartedly complaining about

00:02:26 ◼   ► for the past two shows,

00:02:28 ◼   ► speculating about Apple's commitment to the Office Suite

00:02:32 ◼   ► and what effect its mediocrity might or might not have

00:02:35 ◼   ► on the platform.

00:02:37 ◼   ► And here is a supposed report from an anonymous employee

00:02:41 ◼   ► from what's going on with iWork.

00:02:42 ◼   ► And he or she says, "iWork for the iPad basically needed

00:02:47 ◼   ► to be a rewrite for various reasons.

00:02:49 ◼   ► For compatibility on the Mac, though,

00:02:51 ◼   ► this basically meant we needed to port iWork

00:02:53 ◼   ► for the iPad to the Mac,

00:02:54 ◼   ► which meant we're re-implementing

00:02:55 ◼   ► a 10-year-old Office Suite.

00:02:57 ◼   ► So that's what we were talking about before,

00:02:59 ◼   ► Marco mentioned as well, the strategy tax,

00:03:01 ◼   ► of the idea that iWork has to be on the iPad and on the web,

00:03:04 ◼   ► and that's the strategy, and the tax is,

00:03:07 ◼   ► we have a personally good Mac version,

00:03:09 ◼   ► but tough luck, we have to basically take the iOS one

00:03:11 ◼   ► and port it to the Mac, even if it means losing features,

00:03:13 ◼   ► even if it means spending a lot of time on it,

00:03:16 ◼   ► and so here's anonymous confirmation of that.

00:03:20 ◼   ► And then the other, I guess this could be considered

00:03:22 ◼   ► attacks as well, the strategy is-- well,

00:03:25 ◼   ► it's not really a strategy attack,

00:03:26 ◼   ► but it is a cost of being a first party piece of software.

00:03:30 ◼   ► When Apple comes out with new features in its OS,

00:03:33 ◼   ► whether it's like autosave from Lion or Spotlight in Tiger

00:03:37 ◼   ► or Quick Look in Leopard or Continuity in Yosemite-- god,

00:03:41 ◼   ► I can't keep these names straight--

00:03:43 ◼   ► it's the responsibility of Apple's first party apps

00:03:47 ◼   ► to implement those features.

00:03:48 ◼   ► So in the same way, third party developers

00:03:51 ◼   ► feel harried by this stuff as well.

00:03:52 ◼   ► oh, there's a new version of the OS.

00:03:53 ◼   ► I've got to support all this extra stuff.

00:03:55 ◼   ► But Apple is even more pressure internally

00:03:57 ◼   ► to say iWork needs to implement all these great new features.

00:04:00 ◼   ► So when they would rather be working on features

00:04:03 ◼   ► that are important to the applications, like, well,

00:04:06 ◼   ► if we're going to do autosave, we have to have it on our apps

00:04:09 ◼   ► because it looks bad if we say, hey, developers, everyone,

00:04:10 ◼   ► you should do autosave.

00:04:11 ◼   ► But oh, by the way, iWork won't do autosave.

00:04:13 ◼   ► Or you should implement Quick Look,

00:04:15 ◼   ► but our applications don't implement Quick Look.

00:04:17 ◼   ► So this person concludes, yes, I can definitely

00:04:19 ◼   ► feel from the outside that iWork is understaffed and not

00:04:22 ◼   ► priority but the iWork team is actually pretty large for a team at Apple.

00:04:25 ◼   ► In some ways it's the fact that it is a priority and the consequent strategy taxes that push

00:04:30 ◼   ► the team this way and that, the results in less obvious future progress for iWork year-to-year.

00:04:35 ◼   ► So there you go, one report purportedly from the inside about what the deal is with iWork.

00:04:40 ◼   ► Excellent.

00:04:41 ◼   ► Yeah, it makes sense.

00:04:43 ◼   ► It's still a bummer and it's hard.

00:04:45 ◼   ► You know, if I wasn't a developer, I think I'd find that very hard to swallow but I mean,

00:04:50 ◼   ► I get it.

00:04:51 ◼   ► stinks. Yeah, I mean it's more or less what we thought like that you could see from the outside the whole

00:04:56 ◼   ► unification and how that's gonna be a cost, right?

00:04:59 ◼   ► And the the pressure to implement the new technologies, like I said, people, third-party developers feel that from the outside as well.

00:05:05 ◼   ► We just like to think that, and this is kind of a silly thing to think, but it's difficult to avoid, that

00:05:12 ◼   ► Apple's got so much money. Surely they can

00:05:15 ◼   ► get enough resources to do a good enough job on this Office Suite, right?

00:05:21 ◼   ► And money doesn't turn into developers and that's to get back to the sort of you know

00:05:25 ◼   ► the second level meta problem of how does Apple hire and retain good employees and

00:05:29 ◼   ► do good employees want to stay at a company where what they do is dictated so heavily and

00:05:35 ◼   ► constrain so heavily would they rather work at someplace like Google where you're allowed to try 20 different things and

00:05:41 ◼   ► It's it's a difficult problem that but we think oh, you know, you're the mighty Apple

00:05:45 ◼   ► You should be able to do this

00:05:47 ◼   ► You have all this time and all these resources all this fame and all this prestige and back in the day all these

00:05:52 ◼   ► potentially valuable stock options to give and yet somehow you can't manage to

00:05:56 ◼   ► Release a release and maintain a decent insert your favorite application that you think Apple is neglecting here, so

00:06:03 ◼   ► But yet, it's a lot more difficult than than it seems from the outside not excusing it

00:06:10 ◼   ► It's just like you said it's kind of a bummer all around yeah

00:06:13 ◼   ► Alright, so we also I don't know if it was we or me but somebody got a handful of tweets from

00:06:19 ◼   ► Jonathan Sullinger who is Sion West on Twitter regarding Microsoft and dotnet

00:06:24 ◼   ► I've not had the time to look into any of this since we spoke about it last week about the open sourcing of more bits

00:06:30 ◼   ► of dotnet but Jonathan said

00:06:32 ◼   ► You can take ASP.NET source and dump it on OS 10

00:06:36 ◼   ► It includes that the new dotnet stuff includes an IAS platform agnostic version of the server runtime

00:06:43 ◼   ► You literally run IIS on OS 10 or Linux Oh Roslyn compile. Yeah

00:06:48 ◼   ► Well, it's weird, but the new Roslyn compiler compiles the source at runtime

00:06:53 ◼   ► So if you deploy source to the server and I is compiles and loads it for you

00:06:57 ◼   ► And again, this is why a common language runtime or what's the Swift equivalent?

00:07:02 ◼   ► Cil is that right something like that? No, there is no

00:07:06 ◼   ► Time equivalent Swift. Well, I thought they'd compiled down to some alright, whatever

00:07:10 ◼   ► Well now that are you can compile it anything to LLVM bytecode, but that's not really buying you anything. Yeah. Well fine

00:07:16 ◼   ► Well here was I thought I was smart and I was wrong

00:07:18 ◼   ► Anyway, the new Roslyn compiler already talked about that deploying ASP dotnet source includes cross-platform dotnet runtime and IAS

00:07:26 ◼   ► Runtime so you can run it on Linux from thumbsticks

00:07:29 ◼   ► So you could actually run internet information server if you so desired which is what I is which is kind of the the

00:07:36 ◼   ► Microsoft equivalent of Apache if you'll permit me to make a terrible analogy

00:07:40 ◼   ► You could actually run that on os 10 which is either new easy milk a see please email me

00:07:45 ◼   ► I guess I don't know why you would want to necessarily but you could do it

00:07:49 ◼   ► Would be in the chat room says Microsoft has released Docker images for ASP dotnet

00:07:53 ◼   ► I guess this makes sense because I think we should have you know Jeff

00:07:56 ◼   ► if I would on or something, ask him how they deploy Stack

00:07:59 ◼   ► Overflow and Discourse.

00:08:00 ◼   ► Stack Overflow might actually be on Windows servers.

00:08:02 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:08:03 ◼   ► Anyway, they do ASP.NET, and I think

00:08:05 ◼   ► he's using it for Discourse as well.

00:08:06 ◼   ► And it makes sense.

00:08:07 ◼   ► They have Linux servers.

00:08:08 ◼   ► And the most interesting thing about this

00:08:10 ◼   ► is something that's, I'm sure, not new, but it's new to me.

00:08:12 ◼   ► The idea that you deploy the source to the server,

00:08:16 ◼   ► as if it's like a scripting language, and IAS

00:08:18 ◼   ► doesn't just-- IAS will compile it for you.

00:08:21 ◼   ► That seems nice to me.

00:08:23 ◼   ► I don't know why.

00:08:24 ◼   ► But I don't like the idea of building a binary

00:08:27 ◼   ► and then pushing a binary up.

00:08:28 ◼   ► It doesn't feel webby.

00:08:29 ◼   ► For someone who's spent so many years writing stuff

00:08:32 ◼   ► and then it just runs, like the JavaScript just

00:08:35 ◼   ► runs in the browser or whatever, PHP or Perl or Python

00:08:39 ◼   ► or whatever, runs on the server and there's

00:08:43 ◼   ► no compilation step.

00:08:44 ◼   ► And so it's neat that they're doing the same thing.

00:08:46 ◼   ► Which, I mean, it's not an amazing technical feat,

00:08:48 ◼   ► but I just think it feels webby to me.

00:08:50 ◼   ► Well, even in Windows, there are a lot of things

00:08:55 ◼   ► that get compiled at runtime,

00:08:57 ◼   ► the first time they're necessary.

00:08:59 ◼   ► And in fact, a project I did a few years ago,

00:09:02 ◼   ► we were using what is now Microsoft Dynamics,

00:09:05 ◼   ► but at the time was called CRM.

00:09:07 ◼   ► And what it ended up happening was

00:09:10 ◼   ► we were leveraging the CRM API,

00:09:13 ◼   ► which is a bunch of soap, of course,

00:09:15 ◼   ► because it's Microsoft.

00:09:16 ◼   ► And the way CRM works is

00:09:20 ◼   ► you can kind of build up entities on the, well, not on the fly, but you direct CRM to

00:09:24 ◼   ► build up these entities.

00:09:25 ◼   ► So, you know, a customer includes whatever unique fields you want it to include, and

00:09:29 ◼   ► you basically build a relational database in the UI.

00:09:32 ◼   ► Well, what ends up happening is they have strongly typed like classes and everything

00:09:37 ◼   ► for all of these different entities that you've built.

00:09:40 ◼   ► So in turn, what ended up happening was the wisdom for the particular CRM environment

00:09:46 ◼   ► we were trying to hit was something like 40,000 lines of XML.

00:09:51 ◼   ► It was enormous.

00:09:52 ◼   ► And what we were running into was every time we started IAS on a dev box, on the real box,

00:09:58 ◼   ► it didn't matter.

00:09:59 ◼   ► One way or another, every time we started IAS, it would pause for literally a minute.

00:10:04 ◼   ► And for the life of us, we couldn't figure out what was going on.

00:10:07 ◼   ► Well, fast forward a few days of playing with it, and it turns out what we were doing was

00:10:12 ◼   ► Since we were using proxy objects that were strongly

00:10:17 ◼   ► typed versions of classes that represented the WSDL,

00:10:21 ◼   ► those were all getting compiled at runtime as IIS started.

00:10:24 ◼   ► And so that took a really darn long time,

00:10:28 ◼   ► since it was a 40,000 line WSDL, or whatever the case may be.

00:10:31 ◼   ► And so what we ended up having to do was explicitly

00:10:34 ◼   ► precompile all of those proxy classes

00:10:38 ◼   ► and include that DLL in our deployment

00:10:41 ◼   ► in order to prevent that heinous runtime.

00:10:43 ◼   ► And I bring all this up, or load time,

00:10:45 ◼   ► and I bring all this up because my point is

00:10:47 ◼   ► IES was doing that compilation,

00:10:48 ◼   ► or perhaps the .NET framework was doing that compilation

00:10:51 ◼   ► based on a request on IES.

00:10:53 ◼   ► - Correction from the chatroom,

00:10:54 ◼   ► Discourse is Ruby, not ASP.NET.

00:10:56 ◼   ► Stack Overflow is ASP.NET.

00:10:58 ◼   ► - Well, the chatroom is saying Discourse is Ruby

00:11:01 ◼   ► in all capitals.

00:11:01 ◼   ► I'm not sure, is that something else?

00:11:03 ◼   ► Like R-U-B-Y?

00:11:04 ◼   ► Is that like an initialism for something?

00:11:05 ◼   ► - Other people capitalized it correctly.

00:11:08 ◼   ► - Anyway, Igloo is an intranet you will actually like,

00:11:11 ◼   ► and they are sponsoring our show this week,

00:11:12 ◼   ► which is why I'm telling you this.

00:11:14 ◼   ► Igloo is built with easy to use apps

00:11:16 ◼   ► like shared calendars, Twitter like micro blogs,

00:11:18 ◼   ► file sharing, task management, and more.

00:11:20 ◼   ► They are everything you need to work better together

00:11:22 ◼   ► in one very configurable cloud platform.

00:11:25 ◼   ► Go to igloosoftware.com/atp to sign up.

00:11:29 ◼   ► It is free for up to 10 people.

00:11:30 ◼   ► This is really, really, really good.

00:11:31 ◼   ► If you have a company of 10 people or fewer,

00:11:34 ◼   ► it is just free to use forever.

00:11:36 ◼   ► You can just use this internet product for free.

00:11:38 ◼   ► And then after that, it's very reasonably priced

00:11:40 ◼   ► if you're a larger company.

00:11:41 ◼   ► It was responsive design.

00:11:43 ◼   ► Your internet works like a champ on every device,

00:11:45 ◼   ► iOS, Android, even Blackberry.

00:11:48 ◼   ► And it will even work on iPhone 6 Plus,

00:11:50 ◼   ► iPhone 6, iPhone 5, all the different iPhones.

00:11:53 ◼   ► I'm guessing once they can make something

00:11:55 ◼   ► for the Apple Watch, I bet they will.

00:11:56 ◼   ► They're really good about responsive design,

00:11:58 ◼   ► making it work on every screen.

00:11:59 ◼   ► And what's really cool about this,

00:12:01 ◼   ► they have all sorts of HTML5 powered features

00:12:03 ◼   ► for things like document previews, annotations,

00:12:06 ◼   ► things like that where there's no Flash plugin required

00:12:08 ◼   ► for any of that stuff.

00:12:09 ◼   ► You can actually annotate a document with your coworkers

00:12:13 ◼   ► right on your phone.

00:12:14 ◼   ► And even if your phone has no native device

00:12:16 ◼   ► for this kind of thing, you can just do it right there.

00:12:18 ◼   ► All your design is carried over between all the devices.

00:12:20 ◼   ► If you customize the logo, if you customize colors,

00:12:22 ◼   ► all that stuff, all your custom design that you wanna do,

00:12:25 ◼   ► that carries across every device as well.

00:12:28 ◼   ► And Gartner even likes them.

00:12:29 ◼   ► So Gartner is a company that enterprises pay money to

00:12:32 ◼   ► to tell them where to pay money.

00:12:34 ◼   ► Igloo appears for the sixth consecutive year

00:12:37 ◼   ► in this magic quadrant, alongside tech giants

00:12:39 ◼   ► like Microsoft, IBM, Google, VMware, Salesforce.com, and SAP.

00:12:43 ◼   ► In a report that values the viability of the vendor,

00:12:46 ◼   ► Igloo is praised for their responsiveness

00:12:48 ◼   ► and customer experience.

00:12:50 ◼   ► This is what Gartner wrote about them.

00:12:51 ◼   ► Feedback from Igloo's reference customers

00:12:53 ◼   ► was consistently positive.

00:12:55 ◼   ► They praised the product's quick deployment,

00:12:56 ◼   ► configuration, and customization flexibility

00:12:58 ◼   ► with self-service options for non-technical users,

00:13:01 ◼   ► control over branding,

00:13:03 ◼   ► and information organization and ease of use.

00:13:05 ◼   ► They also praised the responsiveness of Igloo

00:13:06 ◼   ► as an organization.

00:13:08 ◼   ► So if your company, chances are,

00:13:10 ◼   ► if you work for a company of more than 10 people,

00:13:12 ◼   ► you almost certainly know what Gartner is,

00:13:15 ◼   ► and you probably need to tell your boss,

00:13:17 ◼   ► here, Gartner approved this, therefore we can use it.

00:13:20 ◼   ► - That's basically how it works, yeah.

00:13:21 ◼   ► - Like John, I mean, you work in the enterprise.

00:13:23 ◼   ► Would your company use an internet platform

00:13:26 ◼   ► that was not recommended by Gartner?

00:13:28 ◼   ► - I don't know what calculus goes into our choice

00:13:30 ◼   ► of internet platform, but whatever it is,

00:13:32 ◼   ► I don't like the result.

00:13:33 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:13:34 ◼   ► - Okay, well, if your company is like John's

00:13:37 ◼   ► and you don't like the result, which is pretty likely,

00:13:39 ◼   ► get them on Igloo, show them the Gartner Report

00:13:41 ◼   ► or have them look it up, give Igloo a try.

00:13:44 ◼   ► Free to use for up to 10 people,

00:13:46 ◼   ► very reasonably priced after that.

00:13:47 ◼   ► Sign up at igloosoftware.com/atp.

00:13:51 ◼   ► Thanks a lot to Igloo.

00:13:53 ◼   ► - So John, you wanna tell me about some of the stuff

00:13:55 ◼   ► that the Germans have been doing with bendy iPhones?

00:13:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, we gotta go entirely based on the feedback here.

00:14:01 ◼   ► This is from Julian pointing us to a website

00:14:03 ◼   ► that's written in German.

00:14:04 ◼   ► I didn't even bother doing the Google Translate thing or whatever because Julian was nice enough to summarize it for us, but this is

00:14:09 ◼   ► more on bending iPhones and gets into something that I mentioned on a

00:14:15 ◼   ► Couple of our past episodes about we don't know what the environment of the pocket is like on an iPhone

00:14:20 ◼   ► What kind of forces can be applied in the pocket and apparently this website?

00:14:25 ◼   ► Which is sort of the German equivalent of Consumer Reports according to Julian

00:14:30 ◼   ► Tried to figure this out by putting pants on people and having them sit down on different surfaces and so on and so forth

00:14:37 ◼   ► So here are the bullet point conclusions

00:14:39 ◼   ► He says it seems impossible to bend a phone when located in your front pocket

00:14:44 ◼   ► I think I think I could get it done

00:14:47 ◼   ► I feel like it's just a question of how tight the pants are whatever but you don't know my pants

00:14:50 ◼   ► Said it seems impossible

00:14:53 ◼   ► Sitting down on your phone in the back pocket results in defamation if you sit on a hard edge

00:14:58 ◼   ► The testing person reported that deformation was painful so no unconscious bending possible again. I contest this because

00:15:05 ◼   ► if I think it's possible to be wearing something very large and very tight on

00:15:12 ◼   ► A person who is not in good touch with their body or parts of their body have become numb

00:15:17 ◼   ► And and said and not notice, but anyway

00:15:22 ◼   ► And the iPhones and the Sony Xperia Z2,

00:15:26 ◼   ► which I assume is a phone,

00:15:27 ◼   ► were the only phones that bent in the wearing test.

00:15:31 ◼   ► So there are some results.

00:15:32 ◼   ► If you can read German,

00:15:33 ◼   ► you can figure out whether this summary is accurate or not.

00:15:36 ◼   ► But I'm glad people are continuing to delve

00:15:40 ◼   ► into the research here and say,

00:15:41 ◼   ► what is it like in a pocket for a phone?

00:15:44 ◼   ► - Any other followup?

00:15:45 ◼   ► - I don't know if it's followup or not,

00:15:46 ◼   ► but forever ago we were talking

00:15:48 ◼   ► about the new USB Type-C connector,

00:15:50 ◼   ► basically the USB clone of the Lightning connector,

00:15:53 ◼   ► where it's reversible and smaller.

00:15:55 ◼   ► And today the news came out about the Nokia N1 tablet,

00:15:59 ◼   ► which is basically Nokia's clone of the iPad mini.

00:16:03 ◼   ► And it includes a clone of the Lightning port

00:16:07 ◼   ► in the form of the new USB Type-C connector.

00:16:08 ◼   ► And I think this is the first one we've seen.

00:16:10 ◼   ► Is that true?

00:16:11 ◼   ► - I've never seen it.

00:16:12 ◼   ► I'm sure there was one that shipped on some PC somewhere

00:16:16 ◼   ► before that, but this is the highest profile one

00:16:18 ◼   ► I've seen anyway.

00:16:20 ◼   ► So here, you know, you can see on this Verge article,

00:16:22 ◼   ► they showed this, you know, this whole thing,

00:16:24 ◼   ► and it looks pretty much like,

00:16:27 ◼   ► it looks exactly like a lightning connector in the picture.

00:16:30 ◼   ► We don't have a good picture of like the,

00:16:32 ◼   ► of all the angles of the plug on it, I think.

00:16:34 ◼   ► Do we, do you know of any other ones besides these?

00:16:36 ◼   ► - We had them when we talked about it before,

00:16:38 ◼   ► but not in this particular shot.

00:16:39 ◼   ► I don't think it's fair to call the USB Type-C connector

00:16:43 ◼   ► the clone of lightning connector.

00:16:44 ◼   ► I wish it was a clone of lightning connector.

00:16:45 ◼   ► Instead, it's a small, rounded USB connector

00:16:49 ◼   ► with little pins on the inside instead of the outside.

00:16:52 ◼   ► - Oh, right. - Which is fine, whatever.

00:16:53 ◼   ► But this tablet is totally fair to call this

00:16:56 ◼   ► a clone of the iPad Mini because it's a type of clone where

00:17:00 ◼   ► when you see the places where they deviate,

00:17:03 ◼   ► you think to yourself, that deviation is intentional

00:17:06 ◼   ► so they can sleep at night.

00:17:08 ◼   ► Like, just different, when they did the holes

00:17:11 ◼   ► for the speakers in the bottom,

00:17:13 ◼   ► instead of having them be rectangular regions,

00:17:15 ◼   ► they put a little, you know, extra little curves

00:17:17 ◼   ► look kind of like rounded edge regions though.

00:17:19 ◼   ► And as John Gruber's son pointed out, a different number of rows, instead of having

00:17:23 ◼   ► two rows of dots, there's three rows of dots.

00:17:26 ◼   ► And it's like, you know when they're doing that, it's like, look, you know what you're

00:17:29 ◼   ► doing.

00:17:30 ◼   ► You're cloning the iPad mini.

00:17:31 ◼   ► And then you're like, well, we have to do something to be different.

00:17:35 ◼   ► And so they differ in the smallest, tiniest little details so they can feel like they're

00:17:40 ◼   ► not copying it.

00:17:41 ◼   ► This is an extremely shameless hardware design.

00:17:44 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:17:45 ◼   ► Like looking at this, do you think honestly,

00:17:48 ◼   ► like you said they do this so they can sleep at night.

00:17:51 ◼   ► I just think that they have just decided

00:17:53 ◼   ► that they are morally bankrupt.

00:17:55 ◼   ► Like they just don't even care.

00:17:56 ◼   ► And they can say, you know what,

00:17:57 ◼   ► if we're gonna partially clone it,

00:17:58 ◼   ► let's just go all the way.

00:17:59 ◼   ► - But they didn't though.

00:18:00 ◼   ► Like the holes for the speakers are like,

00:18:03 ◼   ► we're giving our own twist, right?

00:18:05 ◼   ► - That's such a little thing.

00:18:07 ◼   ► Like everything else is so close.

00:18:09 ◼   ► - It's basically like if you copy

00:18:11 ◼   ► and paste someone else's source code,

00:18:12 ◼   ► but you change the names of the variables.

00:18:13 ◼   ► This is basically the hardware equivalent of that.

00:18:16 ◼   ► - This is like you changed the name of one global variable

00:18:18 ◼   ► in one file and that was it.

00:18:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, and here's the argument against cloning.

00:18:22 ◼   ► Just take the other side of it,

00:18:23 ◼   ► 'cause people are gonna look at this

00:18:25 ◼   ► and there is a kernel of truth underlying the BS

00:18:28 ◼   ► that I'm about to spew here.

00:18:29 ◼   ► And it's that when you have a tablet,

00:18:32 ◼   ► it's just basically like a rectangular screen.

00:18:35 ◼   ► There's only so many ways you can slice that.

00:18:37 ◼   ► There's no sense putting a bunch of lumps there

00:18:39 ◼   ► that don't need to be there.

00:18:41 ◼   ► Rounded edges, like you're not gonna make

00:18:43 ◼   ► the edges point to say, oh, well, your edges are rounded,

00:18:45 ◼   ► ours are pointy.

00:18:46 ◼   ► Pointy edges are dumb.

00:18:47 ◼   ► There is very little room for interpretation

00:18:49 ◼   ► in a utilitarian device like this.

00:18:52 ◼   ► That's the argument for, well, it's not really a clone.

00:18:55 ◼   ► It's got to be a screen, like this, or whatever.

00:18:57 ◼   ► But that is mostly BS, because never mind

00:19:01 ◼   ► that this thing copies not just the overall shape

00:19:03 ◼   ► of the details, but also it's only obvious

00:19:06 ◼   ► because it's been done.

00:19:07 ◼   ► It could have just as well been obvious,

00:19:10 ◼   ► say, if the surface came out, that every tablet has a kickstand.

00:19:12 ◼   ► Right?

00:19:13 ◼   ► And it would say, well, you know, of course,

00:19:15 ◼   ► it's gonna look like the surface.

00:19:16 ◼   ► Everyone knows tablets have kickstands.

00:19:18 ◼   ► Like if the iPad didn't exist and the surface

00:19:20 ◼   ► was a standard barefoot tablet,

00:19:21 ◼   ► it could have been very different.

00:19:22 ◼   ► It's only like, this is what tablets look like

00:19:24 ◼   ► because the iPad established the form.

00:19:27 ◼   ► And so I get people pass for aping the form,

00:19:30 ◼   ► like, yeah, it's a big rectangular screen with rounded edges.

00:19:33 ◼   ► I say, that's fine.

00:19:34 ◼   ► But even that, you have to admit like,

00:19:35 ◼   ► that comes from the existence of the iPad.

00:19:38 ◼   ► But this doesn't just copy the form

00:19:40 ◼   ► as so many other tablets have before.

00:19:42 ◼   ► it copies down to the minutest little details,

00:19:45 ◼   ► except for the parts where it consciously deviates

00:19:47 ◼   ► in the minute details to try to say,

00:19:48 ◼   ► see, we're not really copying.

00:19:49 ◼   ► So it is just, I almost have more respect

00:19:53 ◼   ► for like the iPhone clones from China

00:19:56 ◼   ► that try to clone it exactly right down

00:19:57 ◼   ► to trying to say the word iPhone on the back,

00:19:59 ◼   ► whether you use an F instead of a P or something.

00:20:01 ◼   ► At least they know what they're doing.

00:20:02 ◼   ► They say, we're going to copy the iPhone exactly,

00:20:05 ◼   ► appearance wise, unless you look really close.

00:20:09 ◼   ► And that I think is almost a more noble endeavor

00:20:12 ◼   ► than what Nokia is doing here.

00:20:14 ◼   ► Because Nokia is like, no, this is a legitimate product.

00:20:16 ◼   ► This is not like a clone.

00:20:17 ◼   ► We're not gonna get sued by Apple.

00:20:18 ◼   ► I just, ugh, it's ridiculous.

00:20:21 ◼   ► - Well, but this is Foxconn apparently.

00:20:22 ◼   ► If you look at this Verge article, now I'm quoting,

00:20:24 ◼   ► "Nokia is partnering with Foxconn to build the N1,

00:20:27 ◼   ► "licensing the industrial design, Nokia brand,

00:20:29 ◼   ► "and Z launcher software to the device maker."

00:20:32 ◼   ► Well, I guess the industrial design

00:20:33 ◼   ► means it was Nokia's design.

00:20:34 ◼   ► - Well, yeah, I mean, everyone's licensing things

00:20:35 ◼   ► to people like Foxconn to have them built.

00:20:37 ◼   ► - Well, but does that require licensing just to build it?

00:20:40 ◼   ► Like is Apple licensing the design to Foxconn

00:20:43 ◼   ► to build an iPad?

00:20:44 ◼   ► - I don't know the details of how that works.

00:20:46 ◼   ► I mean, like there were stories like

00:20:47 ◼   ► with the first BlackBerry,

00:20:49 ◼   ► and maybe the only BlackBerry playbook,

00:20:50 ◼   ► where like they were like, I think it was Foxconn,

00:20:53 ◼   ► one of the big manufacturers had this basically

00:20:56 ◼   ► stock tablet design and BlackBerry, you know,

00:21:00 ◼   ► just said, all right, make that, stick our name

00:21:02 ◼   ► in the front, stick our software in it,

00:21:03 ◼   ► and that's the playbook.

00:21:04 ◼   ► And then remember the first Kindle Fire

00:21:06 ◼   ► was almost the exact same thing.

00:21:07 ◼   ► It was like the same design by the same people

00:21:09 ◼   ► with like slightly different,

00:21:10 ◼   ► you know, they're basically just white labeling it.

00:21:13 ◼   ► It's like slightly different things on the front

00:21:14 ◼   ► and that was the Kindle Fire.

00:21:16 ◼   ► - I'm pretty sure Apple does not do that.

00:21:18 ◼   ► - No, Apple definitely does not do that.

00:21:20 ◼   ► They have occasionally done it with Intel

00:21:22 ◼   ► where from what I've heard,

00:21:24 ◼   ► feel free to write it and correct me.

00:21:25 ◼   ► From what I've heard, oftentimes Intel will do

00:21:28 ◼   ► a lot of the design work of Apple's motherboards.

00:21:33 ◼   ► What are they called?

00:21:34 ◼   ► Logic boards in Apple land.

00:21:35 ◼   ► And occasionally I forget, slip into my native tongue.

00:21:39 ◼   ► But yeah, but I don't think it extends really much past that

00:21:43 ◼   ► and even that it probably is not that frequent.

00:21:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, Apple has helped designs like this a little bit

00:21:48 ◼   ► though in that Apple's push for whatever those machines

00:21:52 ◼   ► that like, you know, the computer control milling machines

00:21:56 ◼   ► that take a block of aluminum, carve it into a case

00:21:58 ◼   ► or whatever, like Apple starting with a MacBook Air,

00:22:02 ◼   ► Apple has put a lot of money into buying more and more

00:22:05 ◼   ► of those machines or financing the purchase of those machines

00:22:09 ◼   ► for factories that build its stuff.

00:22:11 ◼   ► And now there are a bunch of factories with the ability

00:22:13 ◼   ► to, you know, the companies that make those machines

00:22:15 ◼   ► made money because they sold more of them

00:22:17 ◼   ► and they can make more of them, make them better.

00:22:18 ◼   ► So essentially the manufacturing technology

00:22:21 ◼   ► to make something like the products Apple has made

00:22:24 ◼   ► is now more available than it would have been

00:22:25 ◼   ► if Apple hadn't pushed for this type of design.

00:22:27 ◼   ► So there is sort of a global effect on the supply chain

00:22:30 ◼   ► of Apple selling a lot of devices like this

00:22:32 ◼   ► and putting a lot of money into the tooling

00:22:34 ◼   ► to make devices like this,

00:22:35 ◼   ► which means now this manufacturing capacity

00:22:37 ◼   ► and this manufacturing know-how

00:22:39 ◼   ► and the companies with experience doing this

00:22:41 ◼   ► is available to companies other than Apple,

00:22:43 ◼   ► partially because Apple did this.

00:22:45 ◼   ► In the same way Apple benefits

00:22:46 ◼   ► from all the semiconductor technology

00:22:49 ◼   ► that it takes advantage of and memory and stuff like that,

00:22:51 ◼   ► because other people are buying a lot of things.

00:22:53 ◼   ► It's all part of an ecosystem.

00:22:54 ◼   ► So it's not too strange to see successful materials

00:22:58 ◼   ► and manufacturing processes

00:22:59 ◼   ► that Apple may have pioneered now being popular everywhere

00:23:03 ◼   ► because hey, it's a good idea,

00:23:04 ◼   ► more people should be doing it.

00:23:05 ◼   ► But I just feel like at the very least,

00:23:08 ◼   ► I don't mind you making a rounded rectangle screen thing

00:23:11 ◼   ► 'cause that's what a tablet is more or less.

00:23:13 ◼   ► You know, I'll give you that it can be very iPad-like,

00:23:16 ◼   ► but there's something with the DLs.

00:23:19 ◼   ► I kind of like the, what was it?

00:23:20 ◼   ► The Nexus 6 tablet,

00:23:22 ◼   ► whichever one had like a rubbery back on it

00:23:24 ◼   ► and stuff like that.

00:23:25 ◼   ► That I think was better than an iPad.

00:23:27 ◼   ► I wish my iPad had a rubbery back like that

00:23:28 ◼   ► because I think it's great, you know,

00:23:30 ◼   ► it makes it grippy and more comfortable

00:23:31 ◼   ► and everything like that.

00:23:32 ◼   ► That's a way to differentiate yourself from Apple.

00:23:35 ◼   ► Do something different and better.

00:23:37 ◼   ► Don't try to do exactly the same thing.

00:23:39 ◼   ► - Right, do something Apple probably won't ever do.

00:23:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, even though they probably should.

00:23:43 ◼   ► - Because, yeah, there's a market for some of those things.

00:23:45 ◼   ► I said things like the rubberized back,

00:23:48 ◼   ► things like have a version of the tablet

00:23:52 ◼   ► that's half an inch thick and has amazing

00:23:54 ◼   ► week-long battery life.

00:23:55 ◼   ► Like things that Apple would probably never do,

00:23:59 ◼   ► many of those things can be markets

00:24:00 ◼   ► and it's perfectly respectful to address those.

00:24:02 ◼   ► Like I feel like if you're gonna knock it off,

00:24:04 ◼   ► knock it off all the way.

00:24:05 ◼   ► Like don't knock off 95% of it.

00:24:08 ◼   ► Really knock it off or go your own way

00:24:11 ◼   ► and make something that would not be mistaken

00:24:14 ◼   ► by many, many casual observers to be this other thing.

00:24:19 ◼   ► - Yeah, so I have two thoughts on this.

00:24:21 ◼   ► But first, some real time follow up from the chat room.

00:24:23 ◼   ► It's apparently the Nexus 7 that you were thinking of,

00:24:26 ◼   ► or so I'm told.

00:24:27 ◼   ► Either way, first question I have is,

00:24:29 ◼   ► looking at this Verge article, the hero image at the top,

00:24:31 ◼   ► is that Monument Valley on there?

00:24:33 ◼   ► - Yep, it's available for Android.

00:24:35 ◼   ► - Oh, it is? - Yep.

00:24:36 ◼   ► - Maybe that's like a 95% clone of Monument Valley.

00:24:38 ◼   ► - No, it's the real thing.

00:24:39 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure it's available.

00:24:40 ◼   ► That's definitely the real thing.

00:24:42 ◼   ► - Okay, I did not realize it was available for Android.

00:24:44 ◼   ► And then finally, if you look all the way at the bottom,

00:24:47 ◼   ► you can see a closeup of both ends

00:24:49 ◼   ► of the reversible USB port.

00:24:50 ◼   ► Obviously the one end looks just like any other USB port.

00:24:53 ◼   ► But the one that looks like the lightning connector,

00:24:56 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure we knew this,

00:24:57 ◼   ► but what with the pins being on the inside, I guess,

00:25:00 ◼   ► that just looks weird.

00:25:01 ◼   ► Not bad, just it looks so funny

00:25:03 ◼   ► because I think to myself,

00:25:05 ◼   ► oh, that's not a lightning connector.

00:25:07 ◼   ► - It's the USB version of this tablet.

00:25:09 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:25:11 ◼   ► On a quick glance,

00:25:12 ◼   ► you would definitely think it's a lightning connector

00:25:14 ◼   ► and then, oh no, it's actually not.

00:25:16 ◼   ► - I think it's bigger than the lightning connector.

00:25:18 ◼   ► like it's wider and thicker.

00:25:20 ◼   ► - Probably, but it's so hard to tell here.

00:25:23 ◼   ► - Yes, but it is very similar.

00:25:24 ◼   ► And there, that's a place that I wish the USB spec

00:25:27 ◼   ► had more closely copy of lighting connector,

00:25:29 ◼   ► despite the fact that we went through this

00:25:31 ◼   ► before everyone telling me that Apple's lighting cables

00:25:33 ◼   ► are garbage and shred and, you know,

00:25:36 ◼   ► I'm still going through never having destroyed

00:25:40 ◼   ► any first party Apple USB to anything connector.

00:25:44 ◼   ► So obviously I baby my hardware to a degree

00:25:46 ◼   ► that is outside the norm.

00:25:48 ◼   ► - And no one is surprised by that.

00:25:52 ◼   ► - You know what's actually a little bit funny?

00:25:53 ◼   ► And I don't know if this is

00:25:55 ◼   ► how these things are supposed to work,

00:25:57 ◼   ► but if I had to buy an Android tablet

00:25:59 ◼   ► like for testing something, I would probably buy this one.

00:26:03 ◼   ► - Because it's least different.

00:26:05 ◼   ► - It looks like it's most likely

00:26:07 ◼   ► to have the hardware not be horrible.

00:26:08 ◼   ► Like every time I bought an Android test device,

00:26:12 ◼   ► it's gone very poorly.

00:26:16 ◼   ► I always get like, I got a Kindle Fire,

00:26:18 ◼   ► I got one of the first Nexus 7s,

00:26:20 ◼   ► and it's, woo, and a Barnes and Noble Nook tablet,

00:26:25 ◼   ► which was a big mistake.

00:26:26 ◼   ► They've all been these awful devices, like just hideous,

00:26:28 ◼   ► like just terrible to use, awful like, you know,

00:26:31 ◼   ► battery issues and plastic, everything about them

00:26:35 ◼   ► was horrible.

00:26:36 ◼   ► I feel like if I'm gonna buy an Android tablet,

00:26:39 ◼   ► maybe like just get the one that's a complete rip off,

00:26:43 ◼   ► and it might be somewhat usable to what I'm,

00:26:46 ◼   ► compared to what I'm used to.

00:26:47 ◼   ► Not in software, obviously.

00:26:49 ◼   ► - Well, Nokia makes nice hardware,

00:26:50 ◼   ► so there's a chance that it would actually,

00:26:53 ◼   ► it would be high quality,

00:26:54 ◼   ► but the Chinese knockoff clone things

00:26:57 ◼   ► are always like they look the same from a distance,

00:26:59 ◼   ► but as soon as you press one button,

00:27:01 ◼   ► you're like, "Oh, this is not an iPhone."

00:27:02 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:27:03 ◼   ► And see, what worries me is that this has,

00:27:05 ◼   ► they're talking about their Z launcher thing, something.

00:27:08 ◼   ► So this looks like this is gonna be crapped up

00:27:10 ◼   ► with their software, so it's probably still a good idea

00:27:13 ◼   ► just buy a Google tablet for Android testing.

00:27:15 ◼   ► Which is unfortunate because I'm not crazy

00:27:17 ◼   ► about their hardware and people in the chat

00:27:20 ◼   ► are like saying, oh, the first Nexus 7 was bad?

00:27:23 ◼   ► Yeah, why don't you ask any owners of the first Nexus 7

00:27:25 ◼   ► how it's doing these days and how it was doing

00:27:27 ◼   ► even a year after they bought it?

00:27:29 ◼   ► Anyway, in better news, things that are not cheap knockoffs

00:27:32 ◼   ► but are actually the best in their class,

00:27:33 ◼   ► we are also sponsored this week by our friends at Hover,

00:27:37 ◼   ► or the cheap knockoff version, hover.

00:27:40 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:27:41 ◼   ► - Hover is the best way to buy a Manx domain names.

00:27:43 ◼   ► Go to hover.com and use offer code

00:27:47 ◼   ► CaseyNeedsADrink this week.

00:27:49 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:27:51 ◼   ► To save 10% on your first order.

00:27:53 ◼   ► Hover is really a fantastic domain registrar.

00:27:56 ◼   ► Let's say you have a name for something,

00:27:58 ◼   ► you wanna go register it.

00:27:59 ◼   ► Hover is the place to do that.

00:28:01 ◼   ► They're well designed, they're respectful,

00:28:03 ◼   ► they are not scammy.

00:28:04 ◼   ► You get a great value.

00:28:06 ◼   ► So many things are included at no additional charge.

00:28:08 ◼   ► Their add-on services that are paid

00:28:10 ◼   ► are very reasonably priced and very good.

00:28:12 ◼   ► Things like their email hosting

00:28:15 ◼   ► and they have Google Apps for you,

00:28:17 ◼   ► domain hosting, stuff like that.

00:28:19 ◼   ► Hover gives you easy to use powerful tools

00:28:21 ◼   ► to manage the names after you've bought them.

00:28:24 ◼   ► So they have this awesome GUI interface.

00:28:26 ◼   ► It's very, did I hear Mike saying it's very Web 2.0?

00:28:29 ◼   ► - It very well could be.

00:28:29 ◼   ► - Beautiful designs here, very respectful of you, the user.

00:28:33 ◼   ► There's not like a billion different check boxes everywhere

00:28:35 ◼   ► with trying to like trick you into getting add-on services

00:28:38 ◼   ► or anything else.

00:28:39 ◼   ► It's really just, it's nice, it works,

00:28:41 ◼   ► it's highly functional and yet also still looks good.

00:28:43 ◼   ► If you have any trouble,

00:28:44 ◼   ► they have amazing customer support.

00:28:46 ◼   ► They have the usual phone,

00:28:48 ◼   ► or the usual email options and everything.

00:28:51 ◼   ► They also have phone support.

00:28:53 ◼   ► You can call them up during business hours

00:28:54 ◼   ► and a human being answers the phone who can talk to you.

00:28:57 ◼   ► There's a no hold, no wait,

00:28:59 ◼   ► no transfer phone support policy.

00:29:01 ◼   ► It's really, it's incredible.

00:29:04 ◼   ► If you need phone support,

00:29:05 ◼   ► even if you just kinda wanna talk

00:29:06 ◼   ► to somebody nice from Canada,

00:29:08 ◼   ► If you need phone support, call them up, they are fantastic.

00:29:11 ◼   ► They also have value transfer service,

00:29:13 ◼   ► where if you wanna transfer names into Hover,

00:29:15 ◼   ► no matter how many, if you're transferring one name,

00:29:17 ◼   ► if you're transferring 100 names,

00:29:18 ◼   ► if you're transferring names to Hover,

00:29:20 ◼   ► they will, if you want them to,

00:29:22 ◼   ► they will log into your old registrar

00:29:24 ◼   ► and do the transfers for you.

00:29:26 ◼   ► So they will move everything over properly,

00:29:28 ◼   ► DNS settings, email settings, stuff like that,

00:29:30 ◼   ► that's kinda tricky to get right and very error prone.

00:29:32 ◼   ► They'll do all that for you if you want them to.

00:29:34 ◼   ► If you wanna do it yourself, you can, no big deal.

00:29:37 ◼   ► There's no pressure, but if you're willing to give them

00:29:39 ◼   ► your login to your old site, they'll do it all for you,

00:29:41 ◼   ► and it's really, really great to not have to worry about,

00:29:43 ◼   ► oh, did I forget a DNS setting somewhere,

00:29:46 ◼   ► or if, you know, 'cause if you mess that up,

00:29:47 ◼   ► you're down for hours.

00:29:49 ◼   ► They're really, really great at this.

00:29:50 ◼   ► They have all the new crazy top-level domains.

00:29:53 ◼   ► If you wanna get like a .coffee or a .plumbing,

00:29:55 ◼   ► or I saw today there's .world is now available,

00:29:58 ◼   ► so you can make anything you want .world.

00:30:01 ◼   ► All these wonderful new domain names

00:30:02 ◼   ► to make wonderful new joke sites,

00:30:04 ◼   ► and maybe an occasional actual real site.

00:30:07 ◼   ► Go to hover.com, use promo code, CaseyNeedsADrink.

00:30:10 ◼   ► All one word, we will put that in the show notes

00:30:13 ◼   ► in case you forget.

00:30:14 ◼   ► Thanks a lot to hover.com for sponsoring our show.

00:30:17 ◼   ► - I wanna get Mac.world and Disney.world now.

00:30:20 ◼   ► - Oh, that's smart thinking.

00:30:21 ◼   ► - Those are probably taken and would probably be

00:30:24 ◼   ► under squatting trademark problems.

00:30:26 ◼   ► - Doesn't Disney, Disney.world sounds like something

00:30:29 ◼   ► that would be said on a sitcom in like 1994

00:30:31 ◼   ► when someone's trying to write a line about the internet.

00:30:34 ◼   ► Let's go to Disney.world.

00:30:36 ◼   ► - And now it's gonna be our real domain name.

00:30:37 ◼   ► It's gonna actually redirect to Disney.

00:30:39 ◼   ► - That's the problem with all these new TLDs.

00:30:40 ◼   ► They all sound like terrible jokes.

00:30:43 ◼   ► - We just need to be able to include backslashes

00:30:45 ◼   ► in our URLs and we will finally arrive at the,

00:30:47 ◼   ► I mean, OS X was essentially the movie OS.

00:30:50 ◼   ► Like OS is the do ridiculous animations that, you know,

00:30:52 ◼   ► they'd show in movies.

00:30:53 ◼   ► Like no real computer works like that.

00:30:54 ◼   ► And then Apple made a computer that actually works like that.

00:30:57 ◼   ► It's like, well, there's your movie.

00:30:58 ◼   ► Although it doesn't beep every time letters

00:30:59 ◼   ► appear on the screen.

00:31:00 ◼   ► And now we've got movie domain names.

00:31:04 ◼   ► Disney.world\, yeah, okay.

00:31:07 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:31:09 ◼   ► - It drives me nuts anytime I watch any television show

00:31:11 ◼   ► or movie where everything that the computer does

00:31:14 ◼   ► creates a noise or some sort of sound effect.

00:31:16 ◼   ► (mimicking sound effects)

00:31:18 ◼   ► - A window appears on the screen and it makes a noise.

00:31:20 ◼   ► No one has had the guts to do that yet

00:31:22 ◼   ► 'cause people would smash their computers to bits

00:31:24 ◼   ► in about, you know, in an office space style,

00:31:26 ◼   ► you know, printer destruction sequence

00:31:28 ◼   ► in the first day of every window that appeared

00:31:31 ◼   ► made a noise.

00:31:32 ◼   ► - Well, there have been occasional system plugins

00:31:34 ◼   ► and stuff to do that as jokes based on movies,

00:31:37 ◼   ► but I would imagine it's the kind of thing,

00:31:39 ◼   ► kind of like if somebody in front of you in line

00:31:40 ◼   ► at the grocery store is trying to use currency,

00:31:43 ◼   ► I'm guessing if you tried to actually use one of those

00:31:45 ◼   ► things in an office, you would get your butt handed

00:31:48 ◼   ► to you pretty quickly.

00:31:50 ◼   ► - In an office, yeah, you're noisy by the people.

00:31:52 ◼   ► Even if you're just alone in your house, though,

00:31:54 ◼   ► it would drive you insane.

00:31:55 ◼   ► I mean, there's a whole, I think there's an Every Frame

00:31:57 ◼   ► a Painting talking about showing texts and stuff,

00:32:00 ◼   ► which is much more tasteful, but yeah, they do it in movies

00:32:03 ◼   ► so that you know to look at something, but it's just,

00:32:07 ◼   ► at this point, everyone is so familiar with computers

00:32:09 ◼   ► and phones of all kinds that,

00:32:11 ◼   ► again, I don't think you can get away with that anymore.

00:32:13 ◼   ► I think you have to come up with another way

00:32:15 ◼   ► to draw the viewer's attention,

00:32:17 ◼   ► because everybody knows what those look like.

00:32:18 ◼   ► It's not like, well, most people don't know

00:32:19 ◼   ► what computers work like anyway,

00:32:20 ◼   ► so we can do whatever we want.

00:32:21 ◼   ► No, you can't, everybody knows now.

00:32:23 ◼   ► Even little kids know.

00:32:24 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:32:26 ◼   ► - I'm just disappointed we don't have the,

00:32:28 ◼   ► what was it, like a spatial finder or whatever

00:32:30 ◼   ► from Jurassic Park.

00:32:32 ◼   ► - Oh God, don't get John started.

00:32:33 ◼   ► - That's not a Spatial Finder, come on.

00:32:35 ◼   ► - There goes the show.

00:32:36 ◼   ► - That was a real thing on SDI,

00:32:38 ◼   ► we had that when I was at BU,

00:32:42 ◼   ► the little flying through 3D interface thing.

00:32:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:32:45 ◼   ► - We had those in the SDI lab,

00:32:47 ◼   ► that is actual software that somebody made.

00:32:49 ◼   ► It was useless and stupid, but it was real.

00:32:52 ◼   ► - I want it.

00:32:53 ◼   ► It's a Unix system, I know this.

00:32:54 ◼   ► - Wow.

00:32:56 ◼   ► - See, I had that reference.

00:32:58 ◼   ► - That's good.

00:32:58 ◼   ► - Do I get any points for that?

00:33:00 ◼   ► Sure. Now that's just, you maintain a passing grade in that category.

00:33:05 ◼   ► It's not, you're avoiding failing. You're not, you're not achieving victory.

00:33:09 ◼   ► Hi, Priyesh from John Syracuse.

00:33:12 ◼   ► Yeah, thanks. I feel great now. All right, so let's talk about,

00:33:17 ◼   ► apparently something big happened today. Big week.

00:33:20 ◼   ► You want to talk about watch kit?

00:33:21 ◼   ► I actually did my homework. I watched the video.

00:33:23 ◼   ► I am stupefied that you have actually done your homework. And John,

00:33:27 ◼   ► did you also do your homework?

00:33:28 ◼   ► - I read a lot of stuff and read a lot of tweets

00:33:30 ◼   ► and I watched half of the video.

00:33:32 ◼   ► It is now paused halfway through.

00:33:34 ◼   ► - So you get a C.

00:33:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, that you are maintaining a passing grade.

00:33:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'll watch the rest of it later.

00:33:40 ◼   ► You know, it was, it's like a half an hour long.

00:33:43 ◼   ► So, and it does go kind of slowly.

00:33:46 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's given at like the WWDC video pace.

00:33:49 ◼   ► And the problem is like, WWDC videos,

00:33:51 ◼   ► you can open them up in QuickTime,

00:33:53 ◼   ► you can speed them up, play them at like 1.4X.

00:33:56 ◼   ► This video though was only a HTTP live streaming thing

00:34:00 ◼   ► and I had a half hour to watch it

00:34:02 ◼   ► and I knew it would have taken me about 15 minutes of that

00:34:05 ◼   ► to figure out how to get FFmpeg

00:34:07 ◼   ► to download all the little segments

00:34:09 ◼   ► and join them all together into a file that I could speed up

00:34:11 ◼   ► and I would therefore lose the gains

00:34:12 ◼   ► that I would have gotten from speeding it up.

00:34:14 ◼   ► But yeah, this is something that could use

00:34:16 ◼   ► a little bit of a speed boost.

00:34:18 ◼   ► But otherwise, I thought it was really interesting.

00:34:21 ◼   ► So did we ever talk about Underscore's article

00:34:24 ◼   ► like two weeks ago when he was basically predicting

00:34:26 ◼   ► what WatchKit would allow us to do

00:34:28 ◼   ► based on what Apple had said.

00:34:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about.

00:34:31 ◼   ► I don't know if we ever spoke of it,

00:34:33 ◼   ► but he was more right than wrong, but not 100% right,

00:34:37 ◼   ► which is surprising 'cause I thought he had nailed it

00:34:39 ◼   ► when I read that article.

00:34:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, definitely.

00:34:42 ◼   ► So our friend, Undercrow David Smith,

00:34:44 ◼   ► wrote this article, we'll link to it.

00:34:45 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure we actually didn't get to it.

00:34:47 ◼   ► I think you're right.

00:34:48 ◼   ► But anyway, we're gonna have full native watch apps

00:34:52 ◼   ► allegedly later next year, is what Apple said originally.

00:34:56 ◼   ► And this was not announced today,

00:34:57 ◼   ► this was announced when the watch was announced.

00:35:00 ◼   ► So the most likely outcome is that at WWDC next year,

00:35:05 ◼   ► they will unveil the native SDK.

00:35:08 ◼   ► Between now and then, you don't get native apps,

00:35:11 ◼   ► you get limited access to the watch

00:35:15 ◼   ► and everything seems to run basically controlled

00:35:18 ◼   ► through an extension on your phone.

00:35:21 ◼   ► So your iOS app has a watch kit extension that,

00:35:25 ◼   ► I don't think any of this is ND8, right?

00:35:27 ◼   ► Isn't it like it's all public?

00:35:28 ◼   ► - No, that main public page,

00:35:30 ◼   ► the thing that I have quoted and bolded in the show notes

00:35:32 ◼   ► was right off of Apple's site,

00:35:33 ◼   ► you don't need to be logged in to get it.

00:35:35 ◼   ► - Right, exactly.

00:35:37 ◼   ► So your app is basically running as an extension

00:35:39 ◼   ► that launches on your phone

00:35:40 ◼   ► when the user taps the thing on the watch to launch you.

00:35:43 ◼   ► Also, if your app sends push notifications,

00:35:46 ◼   ► they'll show up on the watch, but we knew that already.

00:35:49 ◼   ► So the phone, this is all from video,

00:35:51 ◼   ► It's interesting, I think you should watch it

00:35:52 ◼   ► if you're at all interested in this stuff.

00:35:54 ◼   ► What we have now is more than I thought we would have,

00:36:00 ◼   ► but definitely less than a full native SDK.

00:36:02 ◼   ► So I thought we would only have what they are calling

00:36:06 ◼   ► glances and actionable notifications.

00:36:10 ◼   ► And actionable notifications are exactly what we see

00:36:12 ◼   ► in iOS 8 where notifications can have

00:36:14 ◼   ► a couple of buttons on 'em, so you could like,

00:36:16 ◼   ► get a notification for a podcast and tap a play button,

00:36:19 ◼   ► which yes, I know Overcast does not support yet,

00:36:21 ◼   ► I'm waiting for streaming to do that anyway.

00:36:24 ◼   ► So I figured you can show those on the watch as well

00:36:26 ◼   ► and have there be a couple of buttons

00:36:27 ◼   ► and that might be all you get.

00:36:28 ◼   ► And then a glance, I figured it'd be like a read only view

00:36:31 ◼   ► of some information from your app

00:36:33 ◼   ► and tapping it would do basically nothing.

00:36:36 ◼   ► And we have those kind of things.

00:36:39 ◼   ► I thought that was gonna be all we were gonna get

00:36:41 ◼   ► until next summer.

00:36:42 ◼   ► Turns out that we get a little bit more

00:36:46 ◼   ► And it's pretty interesting, it's pretty limited,

00:36:49 ◼   ► but it's all more than I thought we'd get.

00:36:52 ◼   ► So what we have in WatchKit so far,

00:36:56 ◼   ► with like the, not quite the native apps,

00:36:59 ◼   ► but like the apps that will run on the watch

00:37:00 ◼   ► that interact with your phone.

00:37:02 ◼   ► The phone is basically running

00:37:04 ◼   ► a very, very limited storyboard runner.

00:37:07 ◼   ► You define in your iOS app bundle,

00:37:11 ◼   ► you define this extension,

00:37:12 ◼   ► and you give it like a static storyboard.

00:37:14 ◼   ► All the graphics and everything

00:37:15 ◼   ► have to be included in that.

00:37:17 ◼   ► Some things can be dynamically generated,

00:37:19 ◼   ► like table rows obviously can be dynamically generated,

00:37:21 ◼   ► but most things are static.

00:37:24 ◼   ► Like you define them at compile time

00:37:26 ◼   ► and the watch OS basically plays through this

00:37:30 ◼   ► and any interaction that's taken,

00:37:32 ◼   ► it communicates back to your iPhone,

00:37:34 ◼   ► to the extension running on your iPhone

00:37:37 ◼   ► to have that do any kind of actual computation.

00:37:39 ◼   ► It's pretty limited and it looks pretty,

00:37:41 ◼   ► I haven't had time to actually write any code with it yet,

00:37:43 ◼   ► but it looks pretty limited in things like any kind of dynamic abilities,

00:37:48 ◼   ► besides table cells and stuff.

00:37:50 ◼   ► What's also very interesting is the layout system.

00:37:53 ◼   ► You can't specify an X and a Y coordinate

00:37:57 ◼   ► for an element that you're putting on screen.

00:37:59 ◼   ► You basically specify, "Here are the elements I want to be on screen,"

00:38:02 ◼   ► and by default, they just flow downwards, they're just stacked,

00:38:06 ◼   ► and it becomes like a scrolling downward view.

00:38:09 ◼   ► And then you can group things into these groups,

00:38:12 ◼   ► and groups can be arranged, they're like sub layouts.

00:38:17 ◼   ► So you can have a group that itself is arranged

00:38:20 ◼   ► with its own little stack or you can have it arranged

00:38:23 ◼   ► horizontally in a stack instead of vertically.

00:38:25 ◼   ► - Finally, all those table-based layout skills

00:38:27 ◼   ► that you've been left withering from the 90s,

00:38:29 ◼   ► they'll be relevant again.

00:38:31 ◼   ► - It's been a long time since I've seen any of this,

00:38:34 ◼   ► but isn't this a lot like Swing?

00:38:35 ◼   ► Remember the original Java UI toolkit?

00:38:38 ◼   ► - Well, there's a lot of you.

00:38:39 ◼   ► I think the first one I've ever seen did this

00:38:41 ◼   ► and we can find a show notes link for it,

00:38:43 ◼   ► see if anyone in the chat remembers is,

00:38:45 ◼   ► GEOS I think, G-E-O-S,

00:38:47 ◼   ► was a GUI with a similar layout paradigm.

00:38:49 ◼   ► It's like, right, I think Swing did it as well.

00:38:51 ◼   ► I forget what it's called.

00:38:52 ◼   ► It's not the packing problem,

00:38:54 ◼   ► but it's a similar type of thing where you,

00:38:58 ◼   ► you just take a bunch of boxes

00:38:59 ◼   ► and fill in the empty space with it.

00:39:00 ◼   ► I think GEOS had a little bit of gravity associated

00:39:03 ◼   ► with it as well.

00:39:04 ◼   ► But yeah, this is not a new way to lay out GUIs,

00:39:07 ◼   ► but it's not a great way to lay out GUIs either

00:39:10 ◼   ► for sophisticated things,

00:39:11 ◼   ► but for a very, very tiny screen,

00:39:13 ◼   ► when I was looking through all the SDK documentation,

00:39:15 ◼   ► it's like they are removing as many options as possible,

00:39:18 ◼   ► rather than making you lay out your UI

00:39:20 ◼   ► the same way you would on a phone or on a Mac,

00:39:23 ◼   ► but just in a small screen, they're saying,

00:39:24 ◼   ► just take away your ability to specify any of this stuff.

00:39:27 ◼   ► And how simple can we make it?

00:39:29 ◼   ► And this is pretty darn simple.

00:39:31 ◼   ► Bunch of boxes, they plunk in,

00:39:34 ◼   ► you get to control those,

00:39:36 ◼   ► you got settings for like foreground color,

00:39:38 ◼   ► background color, margins and spacing.

00:39:40 ◼   ► Again, it's like table-based layout, you know?

00:39:43 ◼   ► Cell padding, cell spacing.

00:39:45 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's a very rudimentary level of control.

00:39:50 ◼   ► And it seems as though multitasking,

00:39:53 ◼   ► it seems like is non-existent for these types of apps.

00:39:56 ◼   ► I'm sure in the future we'll have better multitasking

00:39:58 ◼   ► and I'm sure the watch system apps can probably multitask

00:40:01 ◼   ► to do things like continue playing audio

00:40:03 ◼   ► while you're looking at something.

00:40:04 ◼   ► But from the description, it sounds like

00:40:07 ◼   ► What's most likely to happen here is

00:40:09 ◼   ► when the user interacts with your app,

00:40:12 ◼   ► so when the user launches your app

00:40:14 ◼   ► or responds to your notification,

00:40:15 ◼   ► the extension on your phone launches,

00:40:17 ◼   ► it controls the watch session,

00:40:18 ◼   ► and then as soon as, they said in the video

00:40:20 ◼   ► that when the user stops interacting

00:40:22 ◼   ► with your WatchKit app, then your app is terminated.

00:40:26 ◼   ► So there's basically no multitasking

00:40:28 ◼   ► is what it sounds like.

00:40:29 ◼   ► And all the, so it's very similar in some ways

00:40:33 ◼   ► to the very first iPhone SDK, the iPhone OS 2.0,

00:40:37 ◼   ► the very first SDK for the App Store,

00:40:40 ◼   ► has a lot of similar kinds of restrictions.

00:40:42 ◼   ► In some ways, it's even more restricted than that.

00:40:44 ◼   ► Obviously, they can do a lot of things

00:40:46 ◼   ► that you couldn't do back then.

00:40:48 ◼   ► But I'd say it's a similar level of

00:40:51 ◼   ► permissibility and complexity,

00:40:52 ◼   ► where you're building pretty simple things,

00:40:55 ◼   ► you have pretty basic control over them,

00:40:59 ◼   ► there's a lot of guardrails set up,

00:41:01 ◼   ► there's a lot of restrictions set up,

00:41:03 ◼   ► there's a lot of limitations.

00:41:05 ◼   ► and we're not gonna see angry birds for the watch

00:41:09 ◼   ► in this kind of system.

00:41:10 ◼   ► And that's actually a big thing.

00:41:12 ◼   ► I think games are gonna be pretty much impossible.

00:41:14 ◼   ► I also think we can look at some of the recent

00:41:18 ◼   ► notification center app rejection drama on iPhone.

00:41:22 ◼   ► And looking at both that and some of the hints

00:41:25 ◼   ► they're dropping in the Watch Kit documentation and video,

00:41:28 ◼   ► it seems as though they're going to be more strict

00:41:33 ◼   ► about what you can and can't do in a Watch app.

00:41:35 ◼   ► Like on iPhone, where the frameworks limit you,

00:41:38 ◼   ► you know, if you can do something

00:41:41 ◼   ► without calling a private API,

00:41:43 ◼   ► so if you can do something really crazy,

00:41:45 ◼   ► like if, let's say there was no OpenGL on the iPhone,

00:41:49 ◼   ► if you can just make a buttload of CA layers

00:41:52 ◼   ► and do everything you need with that,

00:41:54 ◼   ► Apple wouldn't reject you for that.

00:41:57 ◼   ► You know, like, whereas on the watch,

00:41:59 ◼   ► and it seems like kind of the new Apple App Store stuff

00:42:02 ◼   ► with some of these new areas that we're allowed to put apps,

00:42:04 ◼   ► it seems like they're gonna be a little more restricted

00:42:07 ◼   ► in things that you can't do,

00:42:10 ◼   ► you actually are not meant to do,

00:42:12 ◼   ► and we won't let you do them.

00:42:14 ◼   ► And so it would not surprise me to see,

00:42:16 ◼   ► like back when the App Store first launched on iPhone,

00:42:18 ◼   ► before it was open, when we had the SDK

00:42:23 ◼   ► and we knew the rules, or at least we thought

00:42:25 ◼   ► we knew the rules, that changed quickly,

00:42:28 ◼   ► but during those few months where we could build apps

00:42:30 ◼   ► but we couldn't launch them yet,

00:42:32 ◼   ► one of the rules in the App Store guidelines originally

00:42:34 ◼   ► was like we're gonna look at your apps

00:42:36 ◼   ► and if they aren't high quality, we might reject them.

00:42:39 ◼   ► And I thought, as well as a bunch of other developers,

00:42:42 ◼   ► I thought that they would actually be pretty strict,

00:42:45 ◼   ► like your app would have to be Apple levels of quality

00:42:48 ◼   ► to be approved in the App Store.

00:42:50 ◼   ► And of course, that ended up not being the case at all.

00:42:52 ◼   ► There's tons of garbage apps in the App Store

00:42:54 ◼   ► because that's kind of an unenforceable standard to keep up.

00:42:58 ◼   ► It kinda seems like they might be trying to do that

00:43:00 ◼   ► with the watch, like with the things they've said,

00:43:04 ◼   ► with some of the implications they've made

00:43:05 ◼   ► and some of the notification center restrictions

00:43:07 ◼   ► we've seen so far, it wouldn't surprise me

00:43:10 ◼   ► if they are a lot more strict about what you can do

00:43:14 ◼   ► in a watch app and how good it has to be to be approved.

00:43:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'm curious to see how that goes,

00:43:21 ◼   ► but no matter what, I am really surprised by the fact

00:43:26 ◼   ► that this kind of paired or split apps

00:43:33 ◼   ► where the phone is doing pretty much all the heavy lifting.

00:43:36 ◼   ► I'm surprised that we're seeing that now.

00:43:39 ◼   ► And it's really exciting because that means

00:43:43 ◼   ► whenever the Apple Watch does come out next year,

00:43:45 ◼   ► there should be hopefully a fairly robust ecosystem of apps

00:43:50 ◼   ► available shortly after launch.

00:43:53 ◼   ► And that's really awesome.

00:43:54 ◼   ► And the only thing that you won't be able to do

00:43:56 ◼   ► is run an app where your iPhone isn't nearby.

00:44:00 ◼   ► So the most obvious example of that I can think of

00:44:03 ◼   ► is like a RunKeeper or RunMonster or something like that,

00:44:06 ◼   ► where you want to leave your iPhone at home,

00:44:10 ◼   ► but go for a jog or something along those lines.

00:44:13 ◼   ► - Or maybe your third-party podcast app.

00:44:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, and so something like that won't be permissible yet

00:44:17 ◼   ► or possible yet to your point, Marco,

00:44:20 ◼   ► but pretty much everything else that they've announced

00:44:24 ◼   ► will be available is available.

00:44:26 ◼   ► And that's really exciting,

00:44:28 ◼   ► and I'm really looking forward to it.

00:44:29 ◼   ► So when you think about this implementation here

00:44:31 ◼   ► with all these restrictions we just described,

00:44:34 ◼   ► I can't help but think the entire watch

00:44:36 ◼   ► is acting kind of like, choose your analogy,

00:44:38 ◼   ► either kind of like the push notification service on iOS

00:44:42 ◼   ► or kind of like what I had heard,

00:44:44 ◼   ► I'd never actually confirmed that the old

00:44:46 ◼   ► or possibly the current Apple TV is,

00:44:48 ◼   ► where it's just one process that does

00:44:49 ◼   ► that sort of loads loadable bundles

00:44:51 ◼   ► and that the resources are so constrained,

00:44:54 ◼   ► what they want to have is a single process

00:44:57 ◼   ► running all the time in memory with its working set

00:45:00 ◼   ► with what they can control the CPU use of.

00:45:02 ◼   ► And all it does is sort of receive and load

00:45:07 ◼   ► static packages of simple descriptions of UIs,

00:45:11 ◼   ► basically storyboards or whatever, static assets.

00:45:14 ◼   ► And that's all it does.

00:45:15 ◼   ► And display them and relay information over Bluetooth

00:45:18 ◼   ► to say, the person clicked this button.

00:45:21 ◼   ► You want me to transfer this bundle thing.

00:45:22 ◼   ► You want me to display this thing?

00:45:23 ◼   ► OK, I'll display this thing.

00:45:24 ◼   ► I'll wire this stuff up.

00:45:25 ◼   ► When someone presses, I'll tell you

00:45:26 ◼   ► which button they press and like, and that's it.

00:45:28 ◼   ► And that makes me think like,

00:45:31 ◼   ► why would they launch different processes for that?

00:45:33 ◼   ► Why wouldn't it just be one small process

00:45:37 ◼   ► that's always in memory that is responsible

00:45:39 ◼   ► for doing all these types of things,

00:45:41 ◼   ► glances, actionable notifications,

00:45:43 ◼   ► and these, you know, watch kit,

00:45:45 ◼   ► whatever they're gonna be called,

00:45:46 ◼   ► not quite native app type things.

00:45:48 ◼   ► Maybe that's three separate applications instead of one,

00:45:51 ◼   ► but the whole idea is constrain your resources

00:45:54 ◼   ► in the same way there's only one push notification service

00:45:56 ◼   ► on iOS, like that process will be running.

00:45:59 ◼   ► It will be in memory and it will do work on behalf

00:46:01 ◼   ► of the applications that need to work done

00:46:03 ◼   ► rather than every single application.

00:46:04 ◼   ► This was back before background.

00:46:05 ◼   ► Rather than every single application running

00:46:07 ◼   ► in the background, there'll be one process that runs

00:46:09 ◼   ► in the background and it would tell you,

00:46:10 ◼   ► tell your application when, you know,

00:46:12 ◼   ► basically resource constraints.

00:46:14 ◼   ► And what it's making me think is,

00:46:16 ◼   ► what are the resource constraints of this phone?

00:46:19 ◼   ► Is it memory?

00:46:20 ◼   ► Is it CPU?

00:46:21 ◼   ► Is it battery?

00:46:21 ◼   ► I mean, it's all those things to a degree more than iOS,

00:46:23 ◼   ► but what is the key one that would make

00:46:26 ◼   ► that type of implementation,

00:46:28 ◼   ► assuming it is what they're doing, possible?

00:46:30 ◼   ► And whatever it is, I have to think like,

00:46:33 ◼   ► how are they gonna do native apps on this same hardware?

00:46:37 ◼   ► I mean, that's, I guess that's the real question.

00:46:40 ◼   ► Like, why don't we have native apps now?

00:46:41 ◼   ► And I guess one answer is like,

00:46:42 ◼   ► they're just not ready with the software stack

00:46:44 ◼   ► in the same way they weren't ready,

00:46:45 ◼   ► well, they didn't plan on an iPhone 1.0.

00:46:47 ◼   ► But anyway, the SDK is not ready for the native apps, right?

00:46:52 ◼   ► But as the other part of it that like native apps,

00:46:55 ◼   ► they have to figure out how to let you run native apps

00:46:59 ◼   ► without letting people do something

00:47:00 ◼   ► that will destroy the watch's battery in 15 minutes.

00:47:03 ◼   ► Like, I don't know how this is all gonna work out,

00:47:05 ◼   ► but this seems so incredibly constrained

00:47:07 ◼   ► and makes me think the implementation

00:47:10 ◼   ► is being so careful with everything,

00:47:14 ◼   ► with memory, with CPU, with battery,

00:47:16 ◼   ► that I'm having trouble envisioning

00:47:20 ◼   ► what the native app interface is gonna look like

00:47:23 ◼   ► if this is so constrained.

00:47:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, part of it, I think you're right

00:47:28 ◼   ► that the tools are most likely the biggest cause

00:47:31 ◼   ► for why we don't have it up front.

00:47:33 ◼   ► But there's also side effects to that.

00:47:37 ◼   ► I think that's the cause,

00:47:39 ◼   ► but there's a couple other fortunate side effects

00:47:40 ◼   ► to that being the case that Apple will benefit from.

00:47:44 ◼   ► One of the biggest is people are going to be forming

00:47:47 ◼   ► their opinions and their evaluations

00:47:49 ◼   ► of the watch's battery life before there are these full native apps. So, you know,

00:47:55 ◼   ► it, you know, because people, you can't tell people like, "Oh, well, you shouldn't

00:47:59 ◼   ► run these things or you shouldn't overuse these types of things because that will negatively

00:48:04 ◼   ► affect battery life." No, people will do whatever they want to do and then they'll

00:48:07 ◼   ► yell at Apple if the battery is not as good as they want it to be. So by restricting what

00:48:11 ◼   ► they can do for the first X months of the thing being out, that is, it's forcing people

00:48:18 ◼   ► to do things the way Apple wants them to be done and to keep things kind of reasonable

00:48:24 ◼   ► during the time when everyone's figuring out what kind of battery life does this thing

00:48:27 ◼   ► get, what is this thing used for.

00:48:29 ◼   ► And secondarily, having that kind of training wheels period where you can't do everything

00:48:33 ◼   ► you want also gives – it kind of forces people to think about like, "Do I really

00:48:41 ◼   ► want these things on a watch?

00:48:42 ◼   ► Like do I really need a native app for whatever function I want?"

00:48:44 ◼   ► Like, I mean, for Overcast, I'm probably gonna have

00:48:47 ◼   ► to make a native app to be able to play

00:48:49 ◼   ► when the phone's not around, like in the jogging scenario.

00:48:52 ◼   ► But for a lot of apps, a watch kit iPhone hybrid app

00:48:56 ◼   ► might be all they need.

00:48:58 ◼   ► And so maybe this is also having the fortunate side benefit

00:49:02 ◼   ► of Apple kind of forcing developers,

00:49:05 ◼   ► if you want to get in early, if you wanna be aggressive

00:49:07 ◼   ► and get into watch kit now,

00:49:09 ◼   ► or get into watch development now,

00:49:11 ◼   ► you have to do it the simple way first.

00:49:13 ◼   ► And then later on when we unveil this,

00:49:16 ◼   ► then you'll be faced with the question of,

00:49:18 ◼   ► do I throw that all away and rewrite it

00:49:22 ◼   ► with this new system or not?

00:49:23 ◼   ► And many developers are gonna choose no.

00:49:26 ◼   ► And that benefits Apple and it benefits the watch

00:49:28 ◼   ► and it benefits users as long as they don't need

00:49:30 ◼   ► all those extra functions they would have been getting

00:49:33 ◼   ► because then there's less for the watch to do.

00:49:35 ◼   ► It gets better battery life, you know, like all these things.

00:49:38 ◼   ► So I think like Apple needs this time

00:49:43 ◼   ► to both let people love the watch for its battery life,

00:49:48 ◼   ► hopefully, and also to force both customers and developers

00:49:53 ◼   ► to not just jump to, oh, I need to port my game

00:49:56 ◼   ► to the watch, or oh, I need to port everything I ever do

00:49:58 ◼   ► to the watch, like to force us to kind of give the watch

00:50:02 ◼   ► a clean start.

00:50:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think you're right.

00:50:06 ◼   ► And it's just a really interesting engineering decision

00:50:10 ◼   ► on both the software and the hardware sides

00:50:12 ◼   ► to limit everything, and this is what John was driving at,

00:50:15 ◼   ► to limit everything so severely

00:50:17 ◼   ► in order to presumably preserve battery life.

00:50:20 ◼   ► But before we talk any more about WatchKit,

00:50:22 ◼   ► why don't you tell me about something else

00:50:23 ◼   ► that's really cool.

00:50:25 ◼   ► - Our final sponsor this week is lynda.com, L-Y-N-D-A.com.

00:50:29 ◼   ► An easy and affordable way to help you learn

00:50:31 ◼   ► with high quality, easy to follow video tutorials.

00:50:35 ◼   ► You can instantly stream thousands of courses

00:50:36 ◼   ► created by experts on software, web development,

00:50:38 ◼   ► graphic design, and more.

00:50:40 ◼   ► Go to lynda.com/atp to see for yourself.

00:50:45 ◼   ► lynda.com has fresh new courses added daily.

00:50:49 ◼   ► They offer courses for all experience levels,

00:50:51 ◼   ► whether you're beginner or advanced.

00:50:53 ◼   ► Every course is produced at the highest quality.

00:50:55 ◼   ► This is not like the homemade videos you see on YouTube.

00:50:58 ◼   ► Courses are broken up into bite-sized pieces

00:50:59 ◼   ► so you can learn at your own pace

00:51:01 ◼   ► and learn from start to finish,

00:51:02 ◼   ► or just find a quick answer.

00:51:04 ◼   ► You get tools like searchable transcripts, playlists,

00:51:06 ◼   ► and you can even get certificates of course completion

00:51:08 ◼   ► that you can put in your LinkedIn profile.

00:51:10 ◼   ► You can even learn while you're on the go.

00:51:11 ◼   ► They have lynda.com apps for iPhone, iPad, and Android.

00:51:15 ◼   ► If you have a premium subscription,

00:51:16 ◼   ► you can even download things for offline watching.

00:51:19 ◼   ► My favorite thing about lynda.com

00:51:20 ◼   ► is that you can watch whenever you want.

00:51:22 ◼   ► There's no pressure, there's no commitment,

00:51:23 ◼   ► because you don't pay per video.

00:51:25 ◼   ► You pay one low monthly price, just 25 bucks a month,

00:51:28 ◼   ► and that gives you unlimited access

00:51:30 ◼   ► to all of their video tutorials.

00:51:32 ◼   ► Right now, there's over 100,000 of them,

00:51:35 ◼   ► and they're always adding more.

00:51:36 ◼   ► So this kind of setup is great for people like me.

00:51:38 ◼   ► you know, I'll dive into something, but like, you know,

00:51:40 ◼   ► I have some months where I don't need a whole lot,

00:51:42 ◼   ► I have some months where I watch a lot,

00:51:44 ◼   ► and you don't have to worry, like, do I, you know,

00:51:46 ◼   ► do I need to make a purchasing decision

00:51:47 ◼   ► on each new video I try?

00:51:48 ◼   ► Like, do I really wanna pay for this course on Logic?

00:51:51 ◼   ► No, just watch it.

00:51:52 ◼   ► It's great, it's fantastic.

00:51:54 ◼   ► They have all sorts of courses you might love,

00:51:56 ◼   ► from app and web development in many languages

00:51:58 ◼   ► to productivity apps, creative pro apps,

00:52:00 ◼   ► like the Adobe's Creative Suite, Logic, Final Cut,

00:52:02 ◼   ► things like that, even professional skills development,

00:52:05 ◼   ► like management and negotiation skills.

00:52:08 ◼   ► Most of us use software for our jobs today.

00:52:10 ◼   ► For any software you rely on,

00:52:11 ◼   ► lynda.com can help you with the ins and outs,

00:52:13 ◼   ► teach you tips and tricks to be more productive,

00:52:15 ◼   ► and keep you current with updates and new features.

00:52:17 ◼   ► In fact, lynda.com is so useful

00:52:20 ◼   ► that 30% of colleges and universities,

00:52:22 ◼   ► including most of the Ivy League,

00:52:23 ◼   ► offer lynda.com subscriptions to their students

00:52:25 ◼   ► and faculty members,

00:52:26 ◼   ► just as part of tuition and going there.

00:52:28 ◼   ► Anyway, go to lynda.com, L-Y-N-D-A dot com slash ATP.

00:52:33 ◼   ► You can get a seven-day free trial

00:52:35 ◼   ► to watch as much as you can in seven days.

00:52:39 ◼   ► Remember those old AOL disks that would be like

00:52:41 ◼   ► a thousand free hours for a week?

00:52:43 ◼   ► And you'd be like, how many hours are there in a week?

00:52:46 ◼   ► You can figure out exactly how many hours

00:52:47 ◼   ► there are in seven days, and you can use all of them

00:52:49 ◼   ► to watch lynda.com videos.

00:52:51 ◼   ► Go to lynda.com, L-Y-N-D-A dot com slash ATP

00:52:55 ◼   ► for your free trial, seven day free trial once again,

00:52:57 ◼   ► access to everything they have.

00:52:59 ◼   ► Thanks a lot to lynda.com for sponsoring our show once again.

00:53:03 ◼   ► All right.

00:53:04 ◼   ► John, any other thoughts on WatchKit?

00:53:06 ◼   ► Yeah, on the resource constraints and everything,

00:53:10 ◼   ► the advantage that the iPhone had,

00:53:13 ◼   ► and maybe the Watch will have too,

00:53:14 ◼   ► was that there was no SDA in the beginning

00:53:16 ◼   ► because you were going to write web apps or whatever,

00:53:18 ◼   ► and then they sort of hastily slapped one together for 2.0,

00:53:21 ◼   ► and it was very immature and didn't do a lot,

00:53:25 ◼   ► and your apps were extremely constrained.

00:53:27 ◼   ► And then slowly over time, we got push notifications,

00:53:30 ◼   ► then we got real backgrounding,

00:53:31 ◼   ► we got multitasking, then we got real backgrounding.

00:53:34 ◼   ► All the things that were slowly added to iOS

00:53:37 ◼   ► came along with advancements in hardware.

00:53:40 ◼   ► Lower power chips, more CPU power, more RAM.

00:53:44 ◼   ► The batteries probably stayed about the same size,

00:53:47 ◼   ► but basically the hardware became more power efficient,

00:53:51 ◼   ► did more with that power, and we definitely got more RAM.

00:53:55 ◼   ► So if the watch is gonna start off

00:53:56 ◼   ► really constrained like this,

00:53:59 ◼   ► and we're gonna have native apps, presumably,

00:54:03 ◼   ► within the first year of the thing,

00:54:05 ◼   ► those native apps you would imagine would be,

00:54:08 ◼   ► have to be like at least as constrained,

00:54:10 ◼   ► probably more constrained than the very first,

00:54:12 ◼   ► what was it, iOS 2.0 was the first SDK?

00:54:15 ◼   ► - Yep.

00:54:16 ◼   ► - Than the very first iOS apps.

00:54:18 ◼   ► So that means no background processing.

00:54:20 ◼   ► Like they already have push notifications,

00:54:22 ◼   ► so they're already up ahead of what iOS apps were

00:54:26 ◼   ► at that time.

00:54:28 ◼   ► It could be even more constrained,

00:54:30 ◼   ► like these two tweets,

00:54:31 ◼   ► or one from Craig Hockenberry saying

00:54:33 ◼   ► that you can't even subclass the WatchKit classes,

00:54:37 ◼   ► WK interface things,

00:54:39 ◼   ► you can't even subclass them with the current paradigm.

00:54:42 ◼   ► And then Pete Burtis replied on Twitter,

00:54:44 ◼   ► it's not like that would help

00:54:46 ◼   ► 'cause there's no draw rect for you to override.

00:54:48 ◼   ► They aren't views.

00:54:49 ◼   ► It's just like really constrained way to draw applications.

00:54:52 ◼   ► It's not like, oh, hey,

00:54:54 ◼   ► you can just start drawing whatever you want,

00:54:56 ◼   ► our custom controls do, you know, I have to imagine this is going to be super constrained

00:55:01 ◼   ► and those constraints will only be lifted if and when the watch hardware becomes more

00:55:06 ◼   ► capable because it's not like Apple suddenly discovered how to do multitasking in iOS 4.0

00:55:11 ◼   ► or whatever.

00:55:12 ◼   ► It was like, this is what we can do with the hardware available.

00:55:14 ◼   ► And so everything for the original iPhone, including complete lack of third party apps,

00:55:19 ◼   ► was made so, like Marco said, so you could show like, look how awesome this phone is.

00:55:24 ◼   ► Isn't it amazing?

00:55:25 ◼   ► it was fake, like you can't make a UI that faster.

00:55:27 ◼   ► Well, you can do it if you just have,

00:55:29 ◼   ► if you control everything and put incredible constraints

00:55:32 ◼   ► in everything and have one process running at a time

00:55:34 ◼   ► and have the entire phone dedicated to trying to give you

00:55:36 ◼   ► that smooth animation, right?

00:55:38 ◼   ► And so the watch is going to follow that same path,

00:55:41 ◼   ► not because Apple doesn't know how to do those things,

00:55:43 ◼   ► but because the hardware just isn't ready for it yet,

00:55:45 ◼   ► even more so than the first iPhone.

00:55:47 ◼   ► So I'm really looking forward to seeing how they can get,

00:55:52 ◼   ► how they can hardware themselves out of this situation

00:55:55 ◼   ► to eventually get to the point where the watch hardware

00:55:58 ◼   ► can start to get some of those things

00:56:00 ◼   ► that iOS 3.0 and 4.0 and 5.0 had.

00:56:04 ◼   ► And I think that's gonna be a long road

00:56:05 ◼   ► because as we said when we were talking

00:56:07 ◼   ► about power constraints many, many shows ago,

00:56:10 ◼   ► battery technology, the capacity of batteries

00:56:14 ◼   ► for a given massive battery,

00:56:16 ◼   ► how much energy can you get out of it,

00:56:17 ◼   ► is getting better slowly.

00:56:19 ◼   ► But that, I think what would be,

00:56:21 ◼   ► had a graph that showed it was like 15% year over year,

00:56:23 ◼   ► if you're lucky or something like that.

00:56:26 ◼   ► That's not the way you're gonna get any big wins.

00:56:27 ◼   ► The way you get big wins is by making everything

00:56:29 ◼   ► on the electronics device use less power.

00:56:32 ◼   ► So the CPU uses less power, the screen uses less power.

00:56:36 ◼   ► The radios use less power.

00:56:37 ◼   ► That is the only way forward because you can't rely on like,

00:56:40 ◼   ► well, next year we'll have double the battery capacity.

00:56:42 ◼   ► No, you won't unless you're gonna make the watch

00:56:43 ◼   ► twice as thick or much thicker anyway.

00:56:46 ◼   ► And that finally, this all gets back to the idea

00:56:48 ◼   ► that if you buy the very first Apple Watch,

00:56:52 ◼   ► will your Apple Watch ever have multitasking?

00:56:55 ◼   ► Probably not, the first iPhones didn't, right?

00:56:56 ◼   ► You couldn't run iOS 4.0 or whatever it was.

00:56:59 ◼   ► Will it have background processing?

00:57:00 ◼   ► Not the original iPhone, could not do background processing

00:57:02 ◼   ► because by the time the OS could do that,

00:57:03 ◼   ► it couldn't run on the original iPhone.

00:57:06 ◼   ► And if you're going to buy a piece of hardware

00:57:07 ◼   ► and it's gonna be obsolete

00:57:09 ◼   ► 'cause it can't have these features

00:57:10 ◼   ► that we think are gonna be added over the years,

00:57:12 ◼   ► how do you deal with your 10K gold version of the watch?

00:57:15 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:57:16 ◼   ► - Right. - So there we are.

00:57:17 ◼   ► We've come full circle on the Apple Watch again.

00:57:20 ◼   ► I mean, I'm honestly, seeing what we get today in WatchKit,

00:57:24 ◼   ► and as I mentioned earlier, this is actually more

00:57:26 ◼   ► than I expected that we would be able to do,

00:57:29 ◼   ► compared to what we saw earlier.

00:57:33 ◼   ► As we see this, and then also knowing that next fall,

00:57:37 ◼   ► there's gonna be this supposed new SDK with,

00:57:40 ◼   ► or next summer and fall with native apps,

00:57:43 ◼   ► I think you're right.

00:57:44 ◼   ► Unless they're gonna make a new watch next fall,

00:57:47 ◼   ► which would be really terrible,

00:57:49 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:57:50 ◼   ► Like unless there's gonna be like

00:57:51 ◼   ► a six month product cycle there.

00:57:53 ◼   ► I'm kind of surprised, that's why I think

00:57:56 ◼   ► it almost certainly is because of just tools limitations.

00:57:59 ◼   ► That it doesn't make sense that if this is all we can do

00:58:02 ◼   ► for iWatch, or jeez, for Apple Watch 1.0 hardware,

00:58:07 ◼   ► why next fall can we suddenly do more?

00:58:10 ◼   ► Like that doesn't make a lot of sense.

00:58:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, well that's, you know, next fall is when

00:58:15 ◼   ► you're gonna be able to do sort of the,

00:58:17 ◼   ► If you could pretend that third party applications

00:58:20 ◼   ► were available on iOS 1.0 or iPhone OS,

00:58:23 ◼   ► how constrained would they have been?

00:58:26 ◼   ► That's what you're gonna get to do, even more so maybe.

00:58:29 ◼   ► - All right.

00:58:30 ◼   ► - Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week,

00:58:32 ◼   ► Igloo, Hover, and lynda.com,

00:58:35 ◼   ► and we will see you next week.

00:58:37 ◼   ► (upbeat music)

00:58:39 ◼   ► ♪ Now the show is over ♪

00:58:41 ◼   ► ♪ They didn't even mean to begin ♪

00:58:44 ◼   ► ♪ 'Cause it was accidental ♪

00:58:46 ◼   ► ♪ Accidental ♪

00:58:47 ◼   ► Oh it was accidental John didn't do any research

00:58:52 ◼   ► Marco and Casey wouldn't let him Cause it was accidental

00:58:56 ◼   ► Oh it was accidental And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm

00:59:05 ◼   ► And if you're into Twitter You can follow them @C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S

00:59:14 ◼   ► So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-N-T-Marco-Armin S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-C-Uza

00:59:26 ◼   ► It's accidental (It's accidental)

00:59:29 ◼   ► They didn't mean to (It's accidental)

00:59:32 ◼   ► Accidental (Accidental)

00:59:34 ◼   ► Tech podcast so long

00:59:39 ◼   ► So John, what's going on with your iPhone?

00:59:42 ◼   ► because you've received an iPhone, but is it activated?

00:59:46 ◼   ► What's happening?

00:59:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, I forgot when I ordered it.

00:59:49 ◼   ► Like I ordered it at the beginning of the month, I think.

00:59:51 ◼   ► I mentioned on the show when I had ordered it,

00:59:53 ◼   ► and then it was like expected to ship in seven to 10 days,

00:59:57 ◼   ► and it did, and it finally arrived,

00:59:59 ◼   ► and it arrived on Monday,

01:00:01 ◼   ► and I stayed over in work to sign for it.

01:00:05 ◼   ► And I was all excited, took it out of the box,

01:00:08 ◼   ► and you see that little screen that says hello

01:00:10 ◼   ► several languages and you swipe to the right and then it makes you pick a language and

01:00:15 ◼   ► then it makes you pick the country that you're in.

01:00:18 ◼   ► And then what does it do after that?

01:00:19 ◼   ► Then I think it wants you to connect to either a Wi-Fi network or a cellular network and

01:00:23 ◼   ► I connected it to my Wi-Fi and put in my Wi-Fi password.

01:00:27 ◼   ► And then it says activating your phone and then it says your phone could not be activated

01:00:32 ◼   ► because the activation servers are temporarily unavailable.

01:00:34 ◼   ► This problem persists call, you know, contact to apple.com/support blah blah blah blah.

01:00:39 ◼   ► And I'm like, all right, well, maybe the server had Hiccup there.

01:00:44 ◼   ► I'll try it again.

01:00:45 ◼   ► And I went, you know, there's a try again button at the bottom.

01:00:49 ◼   ► That didn't work.

01:00:50 ◼   ► And I said, well, maybe something weird with my Wi-Fi network.

01:00:51 ◼   ► Let me try it over cellular.

01:00:52 ◼   ► So I turned off the Wi-Fi.

01:00:53 ◼   ► I didn't forget this network.

01:00:55 ◼   ► Tried over cellular, same message.

01:00:57 ◼   ► Activation servers are temporarily unavailable.

01:00:58 ◼   ► I figured what the exact wording of the message was.

01:01:01 ◼   ► Something like that.

01:01:02 ◼   ► Basically, the error messages, you know, have no real bearing on what's actually going on.

01:01:05 ◼   ► But that was the error message I got.

01:01:08 ◼   ► And so I put it aside and continued working for the rest of that day and then tried it

01:01:13 ◼   ► again later and it was still going.

01:01:14 ◼   ► I'm like, "Alright, well it said try again in a few minutes and if the problem persists,"

01:01:17 ◼   ► I'm like, "Well, now the problem is persisting."

01:01:20 ◼   ► So I contacted Verizon to try to figure out what the problem was because it was an activation

01:01:25 ◼   ► problem.

01:01:26 ◼   ► I said, "Hey, I've got this new iPhone, just came out of the box.

01:01:27 ◼   ► I can't activate it."

01:01:29 ◼   ► And there's a little, on the first screen that says "Hello," or in several languages,

01:01:32 ◼   ► there's a little "I" in a circle in the lower right corner.

01:01:35 ◼   ► If you tap that, it gives you all your information

01:01:36 ◼   ► about the phone, like the SIM ID and the IME ID

01:01:39 ◼   ► and all those different numbers.

01:01:40 ◼   ► So I'm like, all right, I have enough information

01:01:42 ◼   ► I can call Verizon here.

01:01:43 ◼   ► So I spent a while talking to Verizon,

01:01:45 ◼   ► eventually got disconnected, called back again,

01:01:48 ◼   ► got disconnected again, like just Verizon's phone support,

01:01:52 ◼   ► their phone system is not great.

01:01:55 ◼   ► The people who work there seem nice enough.

01:01:59 ◼   ► They more or less knew what they were doing

01:02:01 ◼   ► or could transfer me to someone who did.

01:02:02 ◼   ► but this is not good for a phone company.

01:02:06 ◼   ► The audio quality of the phone interface

01:02:08 ◼   ► as you're going through the menus and everything

01:02:09 ◼   ► is just terrible.

01:02:10 ◼   ► It just sounds all staticky and gross.

01:02:13 ◼   ► You get disconnected a lot.

01:02:15 ◼   ► I get disconnected mid-sentence with people.

01:02:16 ◼   ► They're not disconnecting me.

01:02:17 ◼   ► They're in the middle of talking

01:02:18 ◼   ► and then click, click, boom.

01:02:20 ◼   ► And the worst part is, in whatever call center they're in,

01:02:23 ◼   ► you can hear all the conversations going on around them.

01:02:26 ◼   ► I can listen to them.

01:02:28 ◼   ► It's just the basic requirement of a call center.

01:02:29 ◼   ► I shouldn't be able to hear other people's conversations.

01:02:31 ◼   ► like a privacy concern more than anything else. It just sounded like they were calling

01:02:34 ◼   ► from Grand Central Station. It was just so... Grand Central Station is a post office. You're

01:02:38 ◼   ► thinking of Grand Central Terminal. I was waiting for it. Thank you, Marco. Oh, yeah,

01:02:42 ◼   ► yeah, yeah. Frankenstein's monster, right? I know all about it. They're like, "I feel

01:02:48 ◼   ► for these people's work environment." But anyway, they looked everything up, and they're

01:02:52 ◼   ► like, "Okay, well, they went through this thing, and like, 'Well, make sure this number

01:02:55 ◼   ► is activated,' figured out what my phone number is, because I couldn't, since I have a track

01:02:59 ◼   ► phone when you buy the iPhone online you can't port your number during the

01:03:03 ◼   ► online you can only bring it for if it's another Verizon number or something you

01:03:06 ◼   ► can't like basically if you have a track phone and you want to order an Apple

01:03:09 ◼   ► phone online you have to let them give you a new number which is fine whatever

01:03:11 ◼   ► I just wanted to get activated on the new number so Verizon activated my

01:03:14 ◼   ► number told me what it was this is my wife's a Verizon account so I had to go

01:03:18 ◼   ► through this whole rigmarole every time I call explaining that I'm not the

01:03:22 ◼   ► account owner we eventually worked that out so I'm allowed to do this now but

01:03:24 ◼   ► they did a lot of calling her to ask for permission for me to do things anyway

01:03:28 ◼   ► Anyway, it was silly.

01:03:30 ◼   ► And they said like everything is active.

01:03:31 ◼   ► After going through like five or six people

01:03:33 ◼   ► and several calls and several transfers,

01:03:34 ◼   ► I kept working my way up to people

01:03:36 ◼   ► with quieter and quieter offices.

01:03:38 ◼   ► Until I eventually was talking to somebody

01:03:40 ◼   ► unlike my third call in my seventh transfer

01:03:44 ◼   ► who I could not hear anything in the background.

01:03:45 ◼   ► So this person actually had a nice office

01:03:47 ◼   ► and they're like, "Look, everything on our end is active.

01:03:49 ◼   ► Your phone number is activated."

01:03:51 ◼   ► We tried every possible remedy up to and including

01:03:55 ◼   ► taking the SIM out and putting it back in,

01:03:56 ◼   ► which led me to tweet, which I now regret.

01:03:59 ◼   ► Hey, these things don't come with SIM removal tools anymore.

01:04:01 ◼   ► And then for the next month,

01:04:03 ◼   ► I'll be getting tweets from people telling me

01:04:04 ◼   ► whether they did or didn't get a SIM removal tool.

01:04:06 ◼   ► Bottom line is everybody thinks

01:04:08 ◼   ► whatever their experience with phones are,

01:04:10 ◼   ► with iPhones is the same for everybody.

01:04:12 ◼   ► So some people are like, I always get a SIM removal tool.

01:04:15 ◼   ► And other people are like, I have never gotten one.

01:04:17 ◼   ► And other people will tell me

01:04:19 ◼   ► what the Apple store told them about it.

01:04:21 ◼   ► I have no idea.

01:04:22 ◼   ► If there's a SIM removal tool in my case,

01:04:24 ◼   ► I have not yet found it.

01:04:25 ◼   ► Yes, I've looked in the paper packet.

01:04:27 ◼   ► No, it's not connected to the cardboard thing

01:04:29 ◼   ► with a little semicircle thing that folds out,

01:04:31 ◼   ► like many people send me screenshots of.

01:04:34 ◼   ► I'm willing to believe that it's still in there somewhere

01:04:36 ◼   ► and I haven't found it, but anyway, it's not obvious.

01:04:38 ◼   ► It doesn't matter, I used a paperclip.

01:04:39 ◼   ► But anyway, taking the SIM in and out.

01:04:41 ◼   ► - Why don't you delete the tweet?

01:04:42 ◼   ► - I mean, like it was more,

01:04:43 ◼   ► I wasn't really asking a question,

01:04:44 ◼   ► it was just like amusing,

01:04:45 ◼   ► like do these things not come with,

01:04:46 ◼   ► or no, I think I said what the,

01:04:48 ◼   ► and eventually, later in the story,

01:04:50 ◼   ► I said I got on the phone with Apple support

01:04:51 ◼   ► and they told me, I asked about the SIM removal tool

01:04:53 ◼   ► and the person didn't really know,

01:04:54 ◼   ► They're like, "I think it only comes with unlocked phones."

01:04:56 ◼   ► And then people are like, "No, I've bought unlocked phones and never had one."

01:04:59 ◼   ► Or, "I've bought locked phones and I always have one."

01:05:01 ◼   ► Like every possible combination of answer I've gotten from Twitter people.

01:05:04 ◼   ► Yeah, I've bought unlocked phones before, I've bought locked phones before, I've

01:05:09 ◼   ► never gotten a SIM removal tool in any of them.

01:05:10 ◼   ► Yeah, people are like, "Oh, you only get a SIM removal tool if your phone doesn't

01:05:14 ◼   ► come with the SIM?"

01:05:15 ◼   ► Basically, like if there's no SIM inside the phone when you buy it, then you get a

01:05:17 ◼   ► tool, you know.

01:05:18 ◼   ► I guess use a paperclip.

01:05:20 ◼   ► For the longest time, I thought SIM removal tool was a joke.

01:05:22 ◼   ► Yeah, no.

01:05:23 ◼   ► They use liquid metal to make it. Remember the liquid metal thing?

01:05:26 ◼   ► Oh yeah, that's right. Everyone was wondering like what they're gonna use that for and that's kind of it's so far

01:05:30 ◼   ► That's the only thing that we know they've used it for right or we think I don't know if it's ever confirmed that they use

01:05:34 ◼   ► It for it, but it looked kind of liquidy and metal II I have no idea anyway

01:05:37 ◼   ► Yeah, so they bought a whole company just to replace paper clips as much as they possibly as the best paperclip replacement

01:05:44 ◼   ► You could possibly make it's it's it's seamless. It's really true the material now really quickly for the record

01:05:49 ◼   ► I have received definitely one sim removal tool and it was

01:05:52 ◼   ► was encircling the little half circle tab.

01:05:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, I know.

01:05:57 ◼   ► - Which is, yeah, that's what you were describing earlier.

01:05:58 ◼   ► So that was my experience, but we've had, I don't know,

01:06:01 ◼   ► something like six or seven iPhones

01:06:03 ◼   ► between the two of us over the last few years.

01:06:04 ◼   ► I think I've only gotten maybe one of them.

01:06:06 ◼   ► And that never really occurred to me

01:06:08 ◼   ► until you were talking about it earlier today.

01:06:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, the weird thing is a lot of,

01:06:12 ◼   ► all the people telling me that like,

01:06:13 ◼   ► that they didn't have the little semicircular thing,

01:06:15 ◼   ► but that it was kind of buried in with like

01:06:17 ◼   ► the quote unquote manual,

01:06:18 ◼   ► the little paper packets they give you, you know,

01:06:20 ◼   ► and like that it slides down in there

01:06:22 ◼   ► and it's easy to get lost and I can see that happening.

01:06:24 ◼   ► I don't see it in mine yet,

01:06:25 ◼   ► but I haven't torn the thing apart

01:06:26 ◼   ► 'cause I don't really care.

01:06:27 ◼   ► Anyway, we did all Verizon during the various calls,

01:06:31 ◼   ► all the Verizon people have to go through

01:06:33 ◼   ► all the brand menus, most of which I tried already anyway,

01:06:35 ◼   ► but I was willing to humor them

01:06:36 ◼   ► because they weren't doing things on their end

01:06:37 ◼   ► or at least said they were in response to these things.

01:06:39 ◼   ► Turning the phone all the way off

01:06:41 ◼   ► and having them do server things,

01:06:42 ◼   ► turn it back on, trying it on cellular or not,

01:06:45 ◼   ► doing a restore from iTunes

01:06:47 ◼   ► where you put it into recovery mode and reinstalling.

01:06:49 ◼   ► And by the way, this is at the same time

01:06:50 ◼   ► of the iOS 8.1.1 release came out.

01:06:53 ◼   ► So people were like, "Oh, that's what the problem is.

01:06:54 ◼   ► Apple servers are down because of the release."

01:06:57 ◼   ► But Apple servers, this is all before I even called

01:06:59 ◼   ► to check their service status page.

01:07:00 ◼   ► Like I had exhausted my possibilities

01:07:02 ◼   ► before calling Verizon, believe me.

01:07:04 ◼   ► And Verizon had me redo a lot of the things

01:07:05 ◼   ► that I had already done, but I'm like, well, whatever.

01:07:07 ◼   ► It was nice because I had already downloaded

01:07:09 ◼   ► all the software updates, so I didn't have to wait

01:07:10 ◼   ► for the 1.9 gig download of iOS 8.1.1 or whatever it was.

01:07:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, before you leave the Verizon topic,

01:07:18 ◼   ► 'cause I assumed they did not fix your problem

01:07:20 ◼   ► because they never fix any problems.

01:07:21 ◼   ► Because every time I, so when I was a Verizon wireless

01:07:24 ◼   ► customer for a few years before the iPhone came out,

01:07:27 ◼   ► every time I called Verizon to do anything to my account,

01:07:30 ◼   ► they messed it up.

01:07:31 ◼   ► Like whether it was adding a data plan, removing services,

01:07:34 ◼   ► like changing things, asking a question,

01:07:36 ◼   ► every single time they touched the account,

01:07:38 ◼   ► they messed it up in some horrible way

01:07:40 ◼   ► that would cause me to get like triple billed,

01:07:42 ◼   ► or they would like remove the plan

01:07:44 ◼   ► for the first half of the month that was there,

01:07:46 ◼   ► so then I'd be billed like the per minute rate,

01:07:48 ◼   ► and all this crazy stuff they would do,

01:07:50 ◼   ► everything they did would screw something up.

01:07:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, I was kind of afraid to ask them about that

01:07:54 ◼   ► because when I did the,

01:07:56 ◼   ► I ordered this from the Apple online store,

01:07:58 ◼   ► which I had to explain to several Verizon people

01:08:00 ◼   ► and they're very confused about this.

01:08:02 ◼   ► I wanted to say store.apple.com, that's where I went

01:08:05 ◼   ► because they thought I was in an Apple retail store.

01:08:06 ◼   ► Like, "Oh, they should have activated that for you

01:08:08 ◼   ► before you left the store."

01:08:09 ◼   ► I'm like, "No, store.apple.com."

01:08:11 ◼   ► Anyway, when you do that, it asks you,

01:08:13 ◼   ► are you adding an existing line?

01:08:15 ◼   ► And it wants you to put in the previous number.

01:08:16 ◼   ► I answer my wife's iPhone line and all of her information and it asks you for crazy information about your Verizon account your username

01:08:23 ◼   ► Your billing password which is different than your regular password

01:08:27 ◼   ► Last four digits of your social security number

01:08:31 ◼   ► The the Verizon phone thing has you this is like I think I've told the story before the first time I was on a

01:08:37 ◼   ► telephone answering tree type thing and I got to a menu that wanted me to say what I wanted to happen and I froze because I

01:08:44 ◼   ► was like

01:08:45 ◼   ► What do you mean say could they possibly have a system that it you know with a limited vocabulary could they do speech right?

01:08:51 ◼   ► So my brain is just trying to think of like this is like whatever

01:08:53 ◼   ► 1987 or whenever they first came out like trying to think is this technically possible or someone playing a joke on me

01:08:58 ◼   ► So anyway this one. I think this is the first time this has happened to me

01:09:03 ◼   ► They wanted they said please enter the password for your Verizon wireless account, and I'm like I'm calling you on a phone

01:09:11 ◼   ► It's got a number pad. Do you want me to enter?

01:09:15 ◼   ► my path, but that would reduce the possibilities by like a factor of

01:09:19 ◼   ► like I'm trying to do the math in my head of like

01:09:22 ◼   ► how many passwords are now hashed to the same bucket because like they you know that the seven key is three different letters on it or

01:09:29 ◼   ► And here's the best thing about that

01:09:31 ◼   ► I got I got to be an old pro at this because I called them a million times

01:09:34 ◼   ► every time it said that like I sort of figured out their menu system to like

01:09:38 ◼   ► Hold down the zero key then speak a certain phrase to get to the voice thing and then get eventually will ask you to enter

01:09:43 ◼   ► to your Verizon password, which you type out

01:09:47 ◼   ► on the number pad, like just pick whichever number

01:09:49 ◼   ► has the letter you want, the capitals, lowercase,

01:09:51 ◼   ► don't matter, and you know, if it's anywhere

01:09:53 ◼   ► in these group of letters, doesn't matter.

01:09:55 ◼   ► Every time I did it, the first time,

01:09:56 ◼   ► it told me the password didn't match.

01:09:58 ◼   ► I was willing to believe the first two or three times

01:10:00 ◼   ► that I had mistyped it the first time,

01:10:01 ◼   ► but it always worked on the second try.

01:10:03 ◼   ► It's like the seventh time I was doing it,

01:10:04 ◼   ► I'm like, you know what, this never works on the first try.

01:10:06 ◼   ► Maybe the first letter is missed because I'm not,

01:10:09 ◼   ► I don't know what the problem is.

01:10:10 ◼   ► Anyway, their system is very weird.

01:10:12 ◼   ► So I did all that stuff and they basically did everything

01:10:15 ◼   ► they could do on their end.

01:10:16 ◼   ► Like I exhausted, I tweeted this,

01:10:17 ◼   ► I exhausted all support possibilities with Verizon.

01:10:20 ◼   ► Not because they were not doing what they could,

01:10:21 ◼   ► but basically they did everything they could.

01:10:23 ◼   ► They said this number is active, it's active in our system,

01:10:25 ◼   ► here's what it is, here's all this, you know,

01:10:27 ◼   ► like your account isn't good standing,

01:10:29 ◼   ► it's connected to the right account.

01:10:30 ◼   ► It's like just everything as far as they're concerned

01:10:33 ◼   ► is working.

01:10:34 ◼   ► And I was totally willing to believe that

01:10:35 ◼   ► because it seems to me like this software I'm going through,

01:10:38 ◼   ► these white screens at the beginning of iPhone setup,

01:10:42 ◼   ► connect to Apple servers to do something.

01:10:44 ◼   ► Apple servers then probably connect to Verizon servers,

01:10:46 ◼   ► but the bottom line is I totally imagine

01:10:48 ◼   ► that I was using Apple software on an Apple device

01:10:50 ◼   ► that's connecting to an Apple server,

01:10:52 ◼   ► and it's giving me a response that says something,

01:10:55 ◼   ► and I'm getting the, you know, server's unavailable,

01:10:58 ◼   ► even though on Apple status page

01:10:59 ◼   ► it says the server is available.

01:11:00 ◼   ► So that was the end of Verizon.

01:11:02 ◼   ► And the Verizon helpfully connected me,

01:11:05 ◼   ► transferred me directly from Verizon

01:11:06 ◼   ► to an Apple support person,

01:11:08 ◼   ► to a knowledgeable Apple support person,

01:11:09 ◼   ► not just like, you know,

01:11:10 ◼   ► So they have like a direct line in on like the good,

01:11:13 ◼   ► not the, you know what I mean?

01:11:14 ◼   ► Like the higher tier support people.

01:11:16 ◼   ► So I didn't have to go through the lower tier

01:11:18 ◼   ► of Apple support,

01:11:19 ◼   ► but connected to the higher tier support person.

01:11:21 ◼   ► And the Apple support person was excellent.

01:11:23 ◼   ► It was clear they were a, you know,

01:11:25 ◼   ► again, no voices in the background, very helpful,

01:11:28 ◼   ► very professional.

01:11:29 ◼   ► So it was the top tier Verizon person I got to.

01:11:31 ◼   ► So it was a nice, they were nice.

01:11:32 ◼   ► They transferred me over.

01:11:33 ◼   ► I explained the situation.

01:11:35 ◼   ► They looked at everything on there and he,

01:11:38 ◼   ► The Apple guy started by explaining to me

01:11:40 ◼   ► how the system works on their own,

01:11:42 ◼   ► which I've since forgotten,

01:11:43 ◼   ► but it's something like what I was saying before.

01:11:44 ◼   ► Like the iPhone connects to an Apple server,

01:11:47 ◼   ► the Apple server tries to authenticate

01:11:49 ◼   ► with the Verizon server and wants to get a response back

01:11:51 ◼   ► so it can proceed or whatever.

01:11:53 ◼   ► It seemed to me that basically,

01:11:54 ◼   ► if I could have a DNS poison the iPhone

01:11:57 ◼   ► and spoof the Verizon server

01:11:58 ◼   ► and figured out what the correct response is,

01:12:00 ◼   ► I could have gotten past these white screens

01:12:01 ◼   ► and like that everything was fine.

01:12:03 ◼   ► Like as far as Verizon is concerned,

01:12:04 ◼   ► all I needed to do was get past this software.

01:12:06 ◼   ► You know, there's probably more to it than that.

01:12:07 ◼   ► But anyway, they said they couldn't figure out

01:12:10 ◼   ► what the problem was, but they would open a ticket for it

01:12:12 ◼   ► and get back to me the next day.

01:12:14 ◼   ► So that was the end of that support thing.

01:12:15 ◼   ► It was like several hours,

01:12:17 ◼   ► most of it spent on hold or waiting for things.

01:12:19 ◼   ► So it wasn't really that bad.

01:12:21 ◼   ► The next day came and the Apple people gave me

01:12:24 ◼   ► their direct number and told the guy told me

01:12:25 ◼   ► he was gonna be off today, but you know,

01:12:27 ◼   ► said you can call this number to get,

01:12:29 ◼   ► anyway, someone else called me back.

01:12:31 ◼   ► And they said they figured out what the problem was.

01:12:34 ◼   ► And it was some problem with, I forget what it is,

01:12:36 ◼   ► not provisioning profile, it's just in my head

01:12:38 ◼   ► from all the Apple developers I see complaining

01:12:40 ◼   ► on Twitter all the time, but like,

01:12:42 ◼   ► something having to do with the profile for the phone

01:12:44 ◼   ► was screwed up in there, and anyway,

01:12:45 ◼   ► the bottom line, it was something that Apple could fix.

01:12:47 ◼   ► And Apple said they did fix it,

01:12:49 ◼   ► and so I tried to activate my phone again,

01:12:50 ◼   ► and I got farther, and it said,

01:12:52 ◼   ► your phone number is blah, blah, blah, is that correct?

01:12:54 ◼   ► I'm like, yep, that's what Verizon told me,

01:12:55 ◼   ► that's supposed to be my phone number,

01:12:56 ◼   ► and I hit the next button, I still got the error,

01:12:59 ◼   ► so I had to call Apple back again,

01:13:01 ◼   ► and they said, you need to do something special,

01:13:02 ◼   ► which I don't wanna describe,

01:13:03 ◼   ► because it's probably some terrible security flaw

01:13:06 ◼   ► that they don't want revealed.

01:13:08 ◼   ► But anyway, there was something special I had to do

01:13:10 ◼   ► on the phone to get past that process.

01:13:12 ◼   ► I did it, I got past that process, my phone was up

01:13:15 ◼   ► and I'm happy.

01:13:16 ◼   ► So it was maybe 30 hours, 36 hours after I got the phone

01:13:21 ◼   ► plus like maybe three or four hours on hold

01:13:24 ◼   ► with various people that I actually did activate my phone.

01:13:27 ◼   ► The next step of course is to get my old number ported

01:13:30 ◼   ► and I began that process with Verizon.

01:13:33 ◼   ► And when my wife got her number ported,

01:13:35 ◼   ► Took a couple days for it to activate.

01:13:36 ◼   ► But at least I have a working iPhone right now

01:13:38 ◼   ► with a phone number that will soon go away

01:13:40 ◼   ► as soon as my old number gets ported to it.

01:13:43 ◼   ► - All right, so has your life been changed thus far?

01:13:48 ◼   ► - No, although I had the fun ceremony today

01:13:50 ◼   ► where like when I got the phone out of the package,

01:13:52 ◼   ► I didn't put the leather case on it,

01:13:53 ◼   ► the case that I've had for a week or whatever.

01:13:56 ◼   ► I wanted to get the phone set up first

01:13:57 ◼   ► before I put the case on it.

01:13:58 ◼   ► And I'm like, this was a good plan

01:14:00 ◼   ► because if I have to return this phone

01:14:02 ◼   ► because there's something hardware-wise wrong with it,

01:14:04 ◼   ► which by the way, I didn't think there was.

01:14:05 ◼   ► Lots of people were tweeting at me,

01:14:06 ◼   ► "Why don't you go to the Apple store?

01:14:07 ◼   ► Don't you have an Apple retail store?"

01:14:08 ◼   ► But my nerd Spidey sense was telling me

01:14:13 ◼   ► there is nothing wrong with this phone hardware wise.

01:14:14 ◼   ► Like I could look at it, everything worked.

01:14:16 ◼   ► It seemed to, all the radios seemed to work correctly.

01:14:18 ◼   ► The SIM looked fine.

01:14:19 ◼   ► Like it did not seem like that I needed my phone

01:14:21 ◼   ► to be swapped.

01:14:22 ◼   ► Although many people tweeted to me

01:14:23 ◼   ► that when they had similar problems,

01:14:24 ◼   ► they had to get their phone swapped to get it activated.

01:14:26 ◼   ► I felt like this was all happening on the server side

01:14:28 ◼   ► and it actually was all happening on the server side.

01:14:31 ◼   ► But anyway, I was putting off putting the case on

01:14:33 ◼   ► until it was working.

01:14:34 ◼   ► I finally got the thing working and got to springboard

01:14:38 ◼   ► or whatever, then finally I could put the case on it.

01:14:40 ◼   ► Now it has become my iPhone case and all.

01:14:42 ◼   ► And leather case is pretty nice so far.

01:14:45 ◼   ► It's not changed my life otherwise.

01:14:47 ◼   ► - You've said more about the case

01:14:48 ◼   ► than you have about the phone.

01:14:49 ◼   ► - Yes, seriously.

01:14:50 ◼   ► Well, I had an iPhone 6 before.

01:14:52 ◼   ► I know we talked at length about all the sizing things.

01:14:55 ◼   ► I haven't decided, I think leather case does make it nice.

01:14:58 ◼   ► Like I said, I've always had a case

01:15:00 ◼   ► on my handheld iOS devices.

01:15:03 ◼   ► So this is not anything new for me.

01:15:04 ◼   ► In fact, it was new for me to use it

01:15:06 ◼   ► without a case for a week,

01:15:07 ◼   ► but I think it definitely improves with the case.

01:15:10 ◼   ► - Well, but this is the first time

01:15:12 ◼   ► that you're really getting to move into a phone, right?

01:15:14 ◼   ► - Well, I just started that.

01:15:16 ◼   ► So I did that, when I was on the phone,

01:15:19 ◼   ► I did a setup with this new iPhone,

01:15:20 ◼   ► and I finally did a restore from iTunes to,

01:15:22 ◼   ► by the way, iTunes, I hate it so much.

01:15:24 ◼   ► I did a backup of my iPod Touch

01:15:26 ◼   ► right before I knew I was gonna do this.

01:15:28 ◼   ► And then, okay, now I'm gonna plug in the iPhone,

01:15:30 ◼   ► and I'm gonna restore from backup,

01:15:31 ◼   ► And it says, "What do you want to restore from?"

01:15:33 ◼   ► And I see like seven backups.

01:15:35 ◼   ► Some of them are like iPhone 4G

01:15:37 ◼   ► that I know are like old, right?

01:15:39 ◼   ► I don't want those.

01:15:40 ◼   ► About 50% of them have dates after them.

01:15:43 ◼   ► And then there's three called John's iPod Touch

01:15:46 ◼   ► that don't have dates next to it.

01:15:47 ◼   ► - Nice.

01:15:48 ◼   ► - I'm like, "Why do some have dates

01:15:50 ◼   ► and some don't have dates?

01:15:51 ◼   ► That makes no sense."

01:15:52 ◼   ► But of course, me being a clever longtime computer user

01:15:55 ◼   ► immediately knew the solution to this problem.

01:15:57 ◼   ► Can any of you guess?

01:15:58 ◼   ► - To look at the files and see their modification dates?

01:16:01 ◼   ► - No, 'cause the files are in,

01:16:02 ◼   ► don't you know what mobile backups directory looks like?

01:16:03 ◼   ► There are these big giant hash things.

01:16:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, no, I'm honestly kind of surprised

01:16:06 ◼   ► 'cause you just moved into an SSD also.

01:16:08 ◼   ► How are you still keeping all these backups?

01:16:10 ◼   ► You should only have like the one device you use.

01:16:13 ◼   ► - I have a terabyte SSD.

01:16:15 ◼   ► I did amazing house cleaning.

01:16:16 ◼   ► Like I moved tons of stuff.

01:16:17 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:16:18 ◼   ► I moved like all my video and movies to the Synology,

01:16:21 ◼   ► you know, and like I have plenty of room with.

01:16:23 ◼   ► But no, like the mobile backups directory is all

01:16:26 ◼   ► like the directories are named big long hexadecimal.

01:16:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, they're all like G IDs.

01:16:30 ◼   ► - Right, no, no, the solution is,

01:16:31 ◼   ► so all I need to do is plug in my iPod Touch,

01:16:35 ◼   ► change the name of my iPod Touch

01:16:36 ◼   ► to something that doesn't exist in the list,

01:16:39 ◼   ► do another backup, then just look for that crazy name

01:16:40 ◼   ► I just put in.

01:16:42 ◼   ► - Oh, that is not how I would have done it, but cool.

01:16:44 ◼   ► - But that's exactly how,

01:16:46 ◼   ► to work in software long enough,

01:16:49 ◼   ► you learn this is the immediate solution to the problem.

01:16:52 ◼   ► I don't care what the actual problem is.

01:16:53 ◼   ► I don't care why some don't have dates, just make work now.

01:16:56 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:16:56 ◼   ► And so I change it to like, you know,

01:16:59 ◼   ► iPod touch, this is the one, and then did a backup,

01:17:02 ◼   ► and then plugged in my iPhone and said,

01:17:04 ◼   ► where do you wanna restore from?

01:17:05 ◼   ► I wanna restore from iPod touch, this is the one,

01:17:06 ◼   ► which by the way, still did not have a date,

01:17:08 ◼   ► but that was the right one.

01:17:09 ◼   ► And then what I learned is for the second handheld

01:17:12 ◼   ► iOS device in a row, I'm screwed on my icons

01:17:16 ◼   ► because I went from the 3.5-inch iPod touch to the four inch

01:17:21 ◼   ► and I had an extra row of icons,

01:17:24 ◼   ► and now I just went from the four inch to the six,

01:17:26 ◼   ► and now I need an extra row of icons again.

01:17:27 ◼   ► So I spent a while tonight rearranging my icons

01:17:31 ◼   ► to try to figure out how I'm gonna fill these out.

01:17:32 ◼   ► And I'm basically rearranging everything

01:17:34 ◼   ► into being within the new thumb sweep.

01:17:36 ◼   ► So like the top row is dead to me now.

01:17:38 ◼   ► I gotta take all the things that I used to have up there

01:17:39 ◼   ► 'cause they were important, like Safari was upper left.

01:17:41 ◼   ► Safari's not upper left anymore, so.

01:17:43 ◼   ► - Wait, so this is even more, I think,

01:17:46 ◼   ► revealing than that you leave the camera shutter sound on.

01:17:50 ◼   ► You're saying you don't leave any empty rows

01:17:51 ◼   ► and that you actually hate empty rows so much

01:17:53 ◼   ► that you fill them when they occur?

01:17:55 ◼   ► - Why would I leave empty rows?

01:17:57 ◼   ► My iOS background has always been complete black.

01:18:00 ◼   ► There is nothing behind my icons, it's complete black.

01:18:03 ◼   ► But my lock screen is a picture of my dog.

01:18:05 ◼   ► - Is it your extended dog?

01:18:07 ◼   ► - It is, it is my extended dog.

01:18:08 ◼   ► I had to use my extended dogs, I forget who it was,

01:18:11 ◼   ► but someone with Photoshop skills extended the background

01:18:13 ◼   ► on a dog picture I had and finally I got to use it.

01:18:16 ◼   ► So that's my lock screen, but my home screen is all black.

01:18:19 ◼   ► Why would I leave an empty row?

01:18:20 ◼   ► What would I be, especially an empty row at the bottom,

01:18:22 ◼   ► that's prime thumb reaching area.

01:18:24 ◼   ► - Wow.

01:18:25 ◼   ► Well, the argument in the past has been both it looks nice and also can give you some forgiving

01:18:31 ◼   ► dead swipe zone if you want to flip between pages more easily.

01:18:35 ◼   ► You don't need a swipe zone.

01:18:36 ◼   ► You grab anywhere and swipe, it will...

01:18:38 ◼   ► I've never accidentally launched an app while swiping home screens.

01:18:42 ◼   ► Never, not once.

01:18:43 ◼   ► No, you don't need a swipe zone, but it helps.

01:18:45 ◼   ► It's nice.

01:18:46 ◼   ► It may make you feel better, but have you ever accidentally launched an app by trying

01:18:50 ◼   ► to film a swipe?

01:18:52 ◼   ► Probably not, but I always leave it in empty rows.

01:18:54 ◼   ► The empty row is the only purpose for an empty row.

01:18:57 ◼   ► What we discussed in the past show is if you have a picture of your kids or something you

01:19:00 ◼   ► want to see or a beautiful background or a sunset or whatever, you want to see more of

01:19:04 ◼   ► the picture.

01:19:05 ◼   ► That is the only, I think, legitimate reason for the empty row.

01:19:08 ◼   ► Swipe area does not strike me as a legitimate reason.

01:19:11 ◼   ► I keep an empty row at the bottom as well, and I believe it was because Marco had said

01:19:15 ◼   ► something and I was like, "You know, let me try that."

01:19:17 ◼   ► And especially with the new phone, I really think pretty much anything I use on a regular

01:19:23 ◼   ► basis is indeed on the first screen with the empty row.

01:19:28 ◼   ► But the empty row has to be on the bottom, doesn't it?

01:19:30 ◼   ► You can't get an empty row on the top, right?

01:19:32 ◼   ► No, which would be...

01:19:33 ◼   ► Well, you can if you use underscores.