ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► global branding strategies.

00:00:02 ◼   ► (electronic beeping)

00:00:04 ◼   ► - Did you just whip together a show bot in 20 minutes?

00:00:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, the only thing is I can't get Ajax to work.

00:00:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, I saw that you used forms for the buttons.

00:00:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, if I had like 10 more minutes,

00:00:14 ◼   ► I could get Ajax working, but I don't, so here we are.

00:00:17 ◼   ► - Did you find IRC code somewhere,

00:00:18 ◼   ► or did you actually write that too?

00:00:20 ◼   ► - Oh, there's no bot, there's no bot,

00:00:21 ◼   ► it's literally just a form.

00:00:22 ◼   ► I have no idea how to make an IRC bot.

00:00:25 ◼   ► And that was probably not going to fit

00:00:26 ◼   ► in my 20 minute budget to build this thing.

00:00:29 ◼   ► I was really starting to doubt my own self-worth when you said, "Oh my, I had to whip this

00:00:35 ◼   ► together in 20 minutes."

00:00:36 ◼   ► I'm thinking, "How the hell did he get an IRC bot in 20 minutes?"

00:00:39 ◼   ► Node is like the king or queen or what have you of having packages to do everything under

00:00:46 ◼   ► the sun.

00:00:47 ◼   ► And I doubt I could whip together an IRC bot in Node in 20 minutes.

00:00:50 ◼   ► Yeah, you could.

00:00:51 ◼   ► I could just download the IRC bot library and you just instantiate it, give it a channel

00:00:56 ◼   ► and a nickname and then tell it what to look for.

00:01:00 ◼   ► Like, the library does everything for you, you know what I mean? It's just a question of finding that library.

00:01:04 ◼   ► Yeah, and try to find it for PHP.

00:01:08 ◼   ► You know, the Showbot code is open sourced, I think. You could have just, why don't you use that?

00:01:12 ◼   ► I was racing people in the chat, seeing who could finish first. Me rewriting it

00:01:16 ◼   ► or them trying to get this installed because it's a Ruby thing and it's full of dependencies

00:01:20 ◼   ► and all this other crap. I don't know how to host Ruby, so I figured I could rewrite it faster

00:01:24 ◼   ► my hosted framework than the time it would take to figure out Ruby.

00:01:29 ◼   ► I want to make fun of you so badly, but I don't know crap about Ruby.

00:01:31 ◼   ► Right. I mean, could you have set it up in 20 minutes on a server?

00:01:35 ◼   ► Probably not. Oh, goodness. All right. Well, apologies in advance if I'm cranky tonight.

00:01:42 ◼   ► I'm a little stressed out. A lot of things going on in the LIS household, trying to keep

00:01:46 ◼   ► it all under control. Not really succeeding. So to make me feel better, let's start by

00:01:51 ◼   ► I make in front of PHP. John? What? You would know if you looked at the notes.

00:01:58 ◼   ► Anyway, I was a little busy. Yeah, and just a disclaimer up front, this is not my normal

00:02:04 ◼   ► voice, this is my I'm sick voice. I've done many podcasts with my I'm sick voice, including

00:02:08 ◼   ► I think like at least four of the six hours of Star Wars podcasts in the encounter role

00:02:15 ◼   ► I did with this voice. But anyway, we'll get through this. Which is kind of a shame because

00:02:19 ◼   ► next week we're not recording an episode and presumably I'll be better by then.

00:02:22 ◼   ► Oh yeah and speaking of we're recording on what is today Thursday the 22nd so

00:02:27 ◼   ► just like we talked about last episode if we say something extraordinarily

00:02:31 ◼   ► stupid it's because of time shift issues not because we're actually

00:02:36 ◼   ► unintelligent. Alright so quick follow-up a bunch of corrections follow-up. First

00:02:41 ◼   ► one is that I didn't notice this when we were recording the podcast but when I

00:02:44 ◼   ► listened back to it I noticed that Marco made some bold claims about PHP being

00:02:49 ◼   ► faster than JavaScript, much people wrote in to tell us that this is not the case.

00:02:52 ◼   ► If I had been paying better attention, I would have tried to call him on it, but

00:02:55 ◼   ► apparently I wasn't. I was kind of surprised that you didn't at the time. I

00:02:59 ◼   ► didn't even remember hearing it. As soon as I said it, I realized, yeah, this is

00:03:02 ◼   ► probably wrong. Yeah, so Jinji sent us a bunch of links to benchmarks. We'll put

00:03:07 ◼   ► this one in the show notes showing how incredibly slow PHP is compared to

00:03:10 ◼   ► JavaScript. Then again, it has nothing to do specifically with the language. This is what we

00:03:14 ◼   ► were talking about on that show. JavaScript has had so much engineering

00:03:17 ◼   ► resources put towards making it fast. PHP less so. Yeah, the core PHP runtime seems

00:03:24 ◼   ► like it's been held together by sticks and duct tape for its entire lifetime.

00:03:28 ◼   ► And that's why Facebook was able to come in and make such a massive upgrade

00:03:34 ◼   ► with HHVM performance. My point was not that PHP is a fascist language, I didn't

00:03:39 ◼   ► mean to say that, that that was kind of me stumbling around my words trying to

00:03:43 ◼   ► say my actual point, my intended point, which was that PHP,

00:03:48 ◼   ► like no one's ever really complained that PHP is slow.

00:03:52 ◼   ► It's not like, the PHP being slow has never really

00:03:55 ◼   ► been a problem for most people,

00:03:56 ◼   ► unless you're operating at Facebook scale.

00:03:58 ◼   ► It's fast enough and it's not,

00:04:00 ◼   ► like performance has never really been PHP's problem.

00:04:03 ◼   ► - Yeah, the thing with all these quote unquote

00:04:06 ◼   ► language performance benchmarks is they always end up

00:04:08 ◼   ► doing stuff like, they end up doing like integer

00:04:11 ◼   ► and floating point math, right?

00:04:13 ◼   ► and arrays of integers and floats and calculating fractals and playing the game of life and doing things that GNOME will ever ask one of these dynamic languages to do.

00:04:24 ◼   ► Because if you try to do anything math related or anything with densely packed structures, of course the language that uses native ints and can use the add operation on your CPU is going to destroy the thing where every single variable is this crazy-ass struct with a million different things in it.

00:04:39 ◼   ► you know, best case scenario is a big struct, worst case is something even worse.

00:04:43 ◼   ► Of course you're gonna get slaughtered by someone doing, you know, native operations

00:04:47 ◼   ► versus that, but these languages are used mostly to manipulate strings, and if you

00:04:51 ◼   ► do string manipulation stuff, like who can run regular expressions with, you

00:04:55 ◼   ► know, Unicode handling against huge strings and intelligently replace

00:05:00 ◼   ► things, and some of these dynamic languages, even the slow ones that don't

00:05:04 ◼   ► have a lot of attention paid to them, start looking a lot better. So I don't

00:05:08 ◼   ► pay too much attention to these benchmarks because every dynamic language gets slaughtered

00:05:11 ◼   ► when, you know, calculating fractals and who cares because that's not what they're being

00:05:15 ◼   ► asked to do. Right, like what matters most when you're

00:05:17 ◼   ► using one of these languages, what matters most is like how much can it handle on servers

00:05:23 ◼   ► in real life applications? Like how much, how many concurrent connections, how many

00:05:26 ◼   ► users, you know, how much can you fit, you know, per server, per CPU unit of performance

00:05:32 ◼   ► or, you know, per dyno if you're on some virtualized thing, you know, how much can it handle?

00:05:38 ◼   ► And that's related to lots of things besides low-level math performance.

00:05:42 ◼   ► And it's in those areas that almost all modern languages

00:05:46 ◼   ► and frameworks do pretty well at that, and you know, platforms and web servers

00:05:50 ◼   ► and everything like that. Modern standards are pretty high for that, and

00:05:54 ◼   ► you know, you can go Apache versus Nginx versus built-in

00:05:58 ◼   ► servers and stuff like that, and you can get into a lot of nitty-gritty there, but

00:06:02 ◼   ► the fact is, they're all pretty fast these days because they're all pretty well designed.

00:06:06 ◼   ► and pretty much any language you use on a reasonably hosted stack can handle a lot.

00:06:11 ◼   ► That's why Node is such an interesting hack, because it's like, well there's this language that we're all forced to use

00:06:16 ◼   ► that tons of people have worked really hard to make fast, why don't we just use that on the server?

00:06:21 ◼   ► Because then we can, you know, it's the V8 JavaScript engine that Google wrote that's super fast,

00:06:26 ◼   ► we'll just do that on the server, it sounds crazy, but it's like hey, someone already did the work, so here's a vaguely dynamic language

00:06:31 ◼   ► that someone has already made fast for us, and then we can concentrate and do

00:06:35 ◼   ► interesting things on top of that. Let me interrupt you real quick. What you were

00:06:38 ◼   ► saying about

00:06:39 ◼   ► performance on dinos and whatnot reminds me that

00:06:43 ◼   ► I had somebody from Heroku reach out to me and say

00:06:47 ◼   ► "Hey, we heard you talking about

00:06:49 ◼   ► how I had thought that I'd hit some internal dashboard because of the

00:06:53 ◼   ► traffic I got via Marco about the post about Aaron being pregnant."

00:06:57 ◼   ► Well, firstly I think I misread the URL and I do not think that that was an

00:07:00 ◼   ► internal app and people from Morocco have since confirmed that anyway.

00:07:04 ◼   ► But secondly, somebody from Morocco wrote me and I don't have his name handy and I

00:07:08 ◼   ► apologize but wrote me and said in so many words, "Your dyno was well under control

00:07:13 ◼   ► and not really getting taxed that badly at all."

00:07:16 ◼   ► And that was when Google Analytics was reporting roughly 500 concurrent users in the real time

00:07:22 ◼   ► tab and I think I got somewhere around 10 or 15,000 hits over the course of that day

00:07:27 ◼   ► that I posted that.

00:07:28 ◼   ► So to your point, in the right situation,

00:07:32 ◼   ► it's really not that bad.

00:07:34 ◼   ► Node is not that bad on the server side.

00:07:35 ◼   ► So I'm sorry, speaking of Node.

00:07:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, we were talking about JavaScript modularization

00:07:41 ◼   ► and the different systems for use,

00:07:43 ◼   ► and I said that I thought Node.js use AMD.

00:07:45 ◼   ► It doesn't, it uses CommonJS,

00:07:47 ◼   ► which is another one of those standards.

00:07:49 ◼   ► And there's also, someone pointed out to me,

00:07:51 ◼   ► the ECMAScript 6 modules thing.

00:07:56 ◼   ► ECMA, ECMA is the, I don't know what it stands for,

00:07:58 ◼   ► but it's the standard for JavaScript,

00:08:00 ◼   ► and they've been marching on making new standards

00:08:03 ◼   ► for the language well ahead of what browsers

00:08:05 ◼   ► are implementing, but if you look at the later ones,

00:08:07 ◼   ► there's a lot of interesting things in there,

00:08:08 ◼   ► including a formal language-supported way to do modules.

00:08:13 ◼   ► With, I have another link here in the notes

00:08:16 ◼   ► to this ES6 module transpiler that will write your,

00:08:21 ◼   ► lets you write your JavaScript using the ES6 module syntax

00:08:25 ◼   ► and then compile it into either AMD or common JS modules.

00:08:28 ◼   ► And all these things are trying to accomplish the same task.

00:08:30 ◼   ► Sort of keep things out of each other's name space

00:08:34 ◼   ► and provide a formal interface for defining what a module is,

00:08:37 ◼   ► what it's named, what it exports,

00:08:38 ◼   ► and all that other stuff.

00:08:40 ◼   ► So yeah, it's a great thing about standards

00:08:42 ◼   ► someone needed to choose from.

00:08:43 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:08:45 ◼   ► - All right, so additionally, you had mentioned,

00:08:48 ◼   ► I don't remember if it was the regular show

00:08:50 ◼   ► or the quote unquote after show,

00:08:52 ◼   ► but we had talked about iPhone earbuds,

00:08:55 ◼   ► and you were devout in your,

00:08:57 ◼   ► or fairly devout in your belief

00:08:59 ◼   ► that the iPhones do not come with earbuds.

00:09:01 ◼   ► Marco and I explained that you were wrong,

00:09:03 ◼   ► and then you had intended to go on a treasure hunt

00:09:05 ◼   ► for some of Tina's earbuds.

00:09:07 ◼   ► What was the result of that?

00:09:09 ◼   ► - I did find them.

00:09:11 ◼   ► I asked her where the box was, and she didn't tell me,

00:09:14 ◼   ► and maybe she didn't wanna tell me.

00:09:15 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:09:17 ◼   ► On my own, I found the box, and in the box,

00:09:21 ◼   ► lo and behold, completely, you know,

00:09:22 ◼   ► still in the little plastic shrink-wrappy whatever stuff,

00:09:27 ◼   ► were the earphones with the clicker.

00:09:29 ◼   ► I found the iPhone 5s box.

00:09:31 ◼   ► I bet the ones in the 4s box are still there as well,

00:09:34 ◼   ► because again, I have never seen one in this house,

00:09:35 ◼   ► so I think we've just never unpacked them.

00:09:37 ◼   ► So I unpacked the 5s clicker,

00:09:39 ◼   ► and I was wearing it tonight

00:09:40 ◼   ► when I was doing dishes and stuff.

00:09:42 ◼   ► I don't know if it's gonna solve my problem,

00:09:44 ◼   ► because it already has two issues I see

00:09:46 ◼   ► with the little clicker thing.

00:09:49 ◼   ► Well, that's three.

00:09:50 ◼   ► One issue, which is not really the fault

00:09:52 ◼   ► of the headphones I think is that I get a little bit of static.

00:09:58 ◼   ► Like when I twist, if I just twist the little connector, I get a little bit of crinkly static

00:10:02 ◼   ► and maybe I have some dirt or something inside my iPod Touch's headphone connector that only

00:10:06 ◼   ► shows up with the little plug as little extra segments for the clicker, the contacts.

00:10:12 ◼   ► That contact might be a little bit screwed up, so that's kind of annoying.

00:10:15 ◼   ► It shouldn't be audible because I believe it just uses the microphone contact for that.

00:10:19 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know what it is about these,

00:10:21 ◼   ► but if I put on my regular headphones,

00:10:22 ◼   ► I don't hear any clicking.

00:10:23 ◼   ► And this is just in my pocket.

00:10:25 ◼   ► I wasn't intentionally doing it.

00:10:26 ◼   ► I took it out and I said, what the hell is that?

00:10:27 ◼   ► And if I just twist it, I can hear a crinkle, crinkle.

00:10:29 ◼   ► So who knows?

00:10:30 ◼   ► It's probably just dirt or something inside my connector.

00:10:33 ◼   ► What can you do?

00:10:33 ◼   ► Could also be that earbuds are pieces of crap.

00:10:36 ◼   ► Oh, would you stop it with that?

00:10:38 ◼   ► Earbuds are not bad-- or not good, rather.

00:10:40 ◼   ► Just listening to podcasts, who cares?

00:10:44 ◼   ► The second thing is--

00:10:45 ◼   ► and I understand why this did this,

00:10:46 ◼   ► because there's a microphone in it--

00:10:47 ◼   ► I really wish that the clicker was lower down on the thing because I don't want to reach

00:10:50 ◼   ► up that high to click the clicker.

00:10:53 ◼   ► I'd rather click lower down.

00:10:54 ◼   ► But obviously if they're going to make it a mic, they have to make it up higher.

00:10:56 ◼   ► So I kind of understand why they did that.

00:10:58 ◼   ► And the third thing is also related to where it is.

00:11:00 ◼   ► It means that one of the earphones has different weighting and different sort of, you know,

00:11:04 ◼   ► when I turn my head around and everything, one of the things is going to fly out and

00:11:07 ◼   ► pull out more because it has an extra weight on it there.

00:11:10 ◼   ► And it makes my right ear, the earbud in my right ear, start to work its way loose faster

00:11:15 ◼   ► and more aggressively than the one in my left ear does,

00:11:17 ◼   ► and I find that a little annoying.

00:11:19 ◼   ► - Wow.

00:11:20 ◼   ► - It is of no surprise to me

00:11:21 ◼   ► that you have immediate complaints.

00:11:23 ◼   ► Also, I should note that if I'm correct,

00:11:25 ◼   ► using ear pods, is that right?

00:11:27 ◼   ► Is that what they call the new earbuds?

00:11:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, yeah, the weird ones

00:11:30 ◼   ► that don't have a rubber gasket around them,

00:11:33 ◼   ► and they kind of go into your ear.

00:11:35 ◼   ► - Right, whereas the 4S, I believe,

00:11:37 ◼   ► came with the old earbuds,

00:11:38 ◼   ► which didn't have a formal name to my recollection.

00:11:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, I like the ear pods.

00:11:43 ◼   ► They fit my ears reasonably well,

00:11:45 ◼   ► I like the idea that there's not anything that's going to wear off on them.

00:11:48 ◼   ► Well, that's not true at all. It just might take a little bit longer.

00:11:51 ◼   ► Well, what's going to come off, though? There's no, like, it's just a solid piece of plastic, well, two solid pieces of plastic stuck.

00:11:56 ◼   ► I suppose the two pieces of plastic could come apart, but that seems much less likely than that stupid rubber thing coming off.

00:12:02 ◼   ► The way most headphones die is internal fraying of the cable where it meets the headphone.

00:12:08 ◼   ► That's, or occasionally where it meets the jack end, but usually it's the headphone end.

00:12:14 ◼   ► Almost always, because that's just, you know, it's one of those strain boot points, and

00:12:17 ◼   ► the strain boots never really do that much, and that's it.

00:12:20 ◼   ► I've never had a pair of EarPods, and I didn't have the original iPod, I believe the first

00:12:26 ◼   ► one I got was the terrible one with the four touch buttons on it, I guess that was the

00:12:30 ◼   ► third generation or something?

00:12:32 ◼   ► Anyway, I've never had a pair of Apple Earbuds go bad.

00:12:35 ◼   ► Like they all still work.

00:12:37 ◼   ► So I think I'm really gentle on them.

00:12:40 ◼   ► And speaking of being gentle on them, one of the things people were suggesting was to

00:12:43 ◼   ► solve the problem of like, you know, when someone walks up to you, you've got to fish

00:12:46 ◼   ► the iPod out of your pocket and turn it off if you don't have the clicker or whatever.

00:12:49 ◼   ► I said, "Oh, just yank the headphone jack out because that'll stop playback."

00:12:52 ◼   ► Yeah, it will, but you'll destroy your headphones doing that.

00:12:55 ◼   ► You'll probably destroy the jack too, but you'll definitely destroy the headphones.

00:12:58 ◼   ► It's not designed to be yanked out repeatedly.

00:12:59 ◼   ► So that is not a viable option for me.

00:13:02 ◼   ► One thing I actually looked into as a potential feature for Overcast is to allow you to just

00:13:09 ◼   ► tap the phone really hard with your finger while it's in your pocket and allow that to

00:13:13 ◼   ► mimic the clicker controls.

00:13:14 ◼   ► I thought of that and I was going to suggest that to you, but then I thought about it a

00:13:18 ◼   ► little longer and I said, "This is a terrible idea."

00:13:19 ◼   ► Well, yeah, that's pretty much what happened.

00:13:21 ◼   ► I mean, I tried reading some of the accelerometer data to see if I could reliably detect that

00:13:25 ◼   ► versus any other kind of motion and it was just really hard.

00:13:29 ◼   ► I don't think it would ever be good enough,

00:13:31 ◼   ► like reliable enough to detect that

00:13:34 ◼   ► without having a bunch of false positives.

00:13:35 ◼   ► - And you don't wanna encourage people

00:13:37 ◼   ► to be whacking their iOS devices,

00:13:39 ◼   ► even if it's just a fingertip,

00:13:41 ◼   ► because once you open that door,

00:13:43 ◼   ► you know how, human nature, you'll tap,

00:13:46 ◼   ► you'll tap harder, and you'll tap it again.

00:13:48 ◼   ► And it's like, I gotta make a Raymond Williams reference,

00:13:51 ◼   ► but you've never even heard of that movie.

00:13:54 ◼   ► - Nope, nope. - That's all right.

00:13:56 ◼   ► Finger go right through the iPhone, boom.

00:13:58 ◼   ► What?

00:13:59 ◼   ► - Okay.

00:14:02 ◼   ► - I'll get a show notes link for it, go ahead.

00:14:04 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:14:05 ◼   ► - We are sponsored this week, once again,

00:14:07 ◼   ► by our friends at Dash.

00:14:09 ◼   ► Go to thedash.com, T-H-E dash.com, not an actual dash.

00:14:13 ◼   ► This is like that McSweeney's hard to pronounce

00:14:16 ◼   ► email addresses, T-H-E-D-A-S-H.com.

00:14:19 ◼   ► So it's not like a hyphen or anything.

00:14:21 ◼   ► Anyway, go to thedash.com/ATP.

00:14:26 ◼   ► And this is really cool.

00:14:27 ◼   ► They basically allow you to build your own custom dashboard.

00:14:31 ◼   ► And it can be public or private. And you can fill it up with all sorts of widgets.

00:14:35 ◼   ► And you can customize it, you can make your own widgets, you can do

00:14:39 ◼   ► widgets for things like your site traffic, or recent tweets,

00:14:43 ◼   ► or your recent GitHub commits if you're a developer. All sorts of

00:14:47 ◼   ► things, social activity, traffic activity, all sorts of things.

00:14:51 ◼   ► If you can picture a graph or a status widget for it, they probably

00:14:55 ◼   ► have it or can or will add it. It's really great. So they have a bunch of pre-built widgets

00:15:00 ◼   ► for you to use. They're adding more all the time. Vanity searches, all sorts of stuff

00:15:05 ◼   ► you can put up there. You know, a lot of it, like we compared it last week to Panix Excellent

00:15:10 ◼   ► Status Board app for iPad. It's kind of like that for the web and, in my opinion, pretty

00:15:16 ◼   ► well expanded from that. They do a lot more. A lot more comes with it. Really great. Dashboards

00:15:22 ◼   ► from Dash look great on a TV if you want. You can connect it via Apple TV or via a Chromecast.

00:15:28 ◼   ► The pricing model is really quite simple. It's a lot like GitHub, so you can always

00:15:32 ◼   ► create unlimited public dashboards for free. And if you sign up, you can create one private

00:15:36 ◼   ► dashboard for free, and then if you want, you can just pay $10 a month to have unlimited

00:15:41 ◼   ► private dashboards. So you can have internal stuff kept private for your company or whatever.

00:15:45 ◼   ► But if you want to go there, play with it, create a public dashboard, go right ahead,

00:15:48 ◼   ► free. You can even get one private dashboard for free. Really great thing, go to thedash.com/ATP.

00:15:55 ◼   ► Run by great people. I met one of them last year, a really nice guy, and a big fan of

00:16:02 ◼   ► us. So if you go to thedash.com/ATP, you can even see the dashboards that he made for me,

00:16:08 ◼   ► John, and Casey, and they're actually pretty funny. So definitely check that out. Really

00:16:13 ◼   ► cool. Thanks a lot to Dash once again, thedash.com/ATP for sponsoring our show.

00:16:18 ◼   ► Couple people are asking on Twitter about different widgets because you

00:16:21 ◼   ► mentioned, you know, widgets to interface different services and stuff and if you

00:16:25 ◼   ► go to support.thedash.com you can vote on basically the next widgets that

00:16:30 ◼   ► they'll introduce. So this is ideas from the community for widgets they want

00:16:33 ◼   ► and you can vote up the ones that you want to see. So it's obviously an

00:16:37 ◼   ► expandable platform and they're adding widgets as they're demanded. So tell

00:16:41 ◼   ► - Tell us about your Accord.

00:16:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, so last week I said that I couldn't figure out

00:16:47 ◼   ► how to get, or I thought it didn't see my iPod touch at all,

00:16:49 ◼   ► but many people who have an Accord of the same vintage

00:16:51 ◼   ► and iPod touches of the same vintage said,

00:16:53 ◼   ► "No, it'll find it."

00:16:54 ◼   ► And so I took another run at it, and sure enough,

00:16:57 ◼   ► it's just because the interface is terrible.

00:16:59 ◼   ► Like it's got this thing that says connect new device,

00:17:00 ◼   ► and then it says search for devices, and it says searching,

00:17:03 ◼   ► and then this voice comes over and tells you,

00:17:05 ◼   ► "If your device isn't compatible, go to blah, blah, blah."

00:17:07 ◼   ► And it's searching, searching, searching, searching,

00:17:08 ◼   ► and then it says no devices found.

00:17:10 ◼   ► And I thought that was it looking for devices,

00:17:12 ◼   ► but apparently there's a whole other feature

00:17:14 ◼   ► where you have to say like,

00:17:16 ◼   ► I don't know the difference between searching for a device

00:17:18 ◼   ► and adding a new device is, but they're different functions.

00:17:20 ◼   ► And I don't even remember how I found that.

00:17:22 ◼   ► Eventually I found my way to a different menu,

00:17:24 ◼   ► which is not searching for device,

00:17:26 ◼   ► but adding a new device,

00:17:27 ◼   ► which is somehow a different thing.

00:17:28 ◼   ► And it did find my iPod touch.

00:17:29 ◼   ► So the next time I commute to work,

00:17:32 ◼   ► I will do so in Bluetooth glory.

00:17:35 ◼   ► - You're gonna see, you're gonna become a convert.

00:17:37 ◼   ► It's really, really convenient.

00:17:39 ◼   ► Like this is what I was saying last episode.

00:17:41 ◼   ► I think I was, I think this was edited out,

00:17:42 ◼   ► but being able to get in the car

00:17:44 ◼   ► and just have it start playing

00:17:46 ◼   ► is just so much better and more convenient

00:17:49 ◼   ► than having to plug in for any reason.

00:17:50 ◼   ► Like it's worth not having your phone charge

00:17:54 ◼   ► during your car ride just for that convenience.

00:17:56 ◼   ► And you know, anything that cars do

00:17:59 ◼   ► that requires me to plug in,

00:18:01 ◼   ► I'm gonna have a really hard time

00:18:02 ◼   ► convincing myself that's worth doing now

00:18:04 ◼   ► because it's just so nice to just get in,

00:18:06 ◼   ► it starts playing.

00:18:08 ◼   ► When you turn the car off, it pauses.

00:18:09 ◼   ► Done.

00:18:10 ◼   ► - I still gotta plug in my headphones

00:18:11 ◼   ► for the walk from the parking garage to the office.

00:18:15 ◼   ► So there's still a little bit,

00:18:17 ◼   ► I had to do that anyway with the iPod Shuffle,

00:18:18 ◼   ► but yeah, now I've got the clicker for that too, so.

00:18:20 ◼   ► - Is that long enough to justify rocking headphones?

00:18:23 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, definitely.

00:18:24 ◼   ► You gotta go down six flights of stairs,

00:18:26 ◼   ► up three flights of stairs, I mean,

00:18:28 ◼   ► it's then walk from the garage to the building.

00:18:31 ◼   ► We don't all live in rural Virginia

00:18:33 ◼   ► where your parking spot is right in front

00:18:35 ◼   ► of your ground level office building.

00:18:37 ◼   ► I'm going to choose not to engage.

00:18:40 ◼   ► So we should probably talk about WWDC predictions because by the time this episode comes out,

00:18:46 ◼   ► it will be mere days before the big event.

00:18:50 ◼   ► And I wanted to start with hardware and this is a little bit of a tangent, but there's

00:18:59 ◼   ► been a lot of talk about larger iPhones and it certainly does not stand to history or

00:19:06 ◼   ► or recent history that we'll see any new iPhones during WWDC.

00:19:10 ◼   ► But that being said, let's suppose, even if it doesn't happen during WWDC, let's

00:19:16 ◼   ► suppose that there are, what are the two sizes, 4.7 and 5.5?

00:19:22 ◼   ► 5.5, which is pretty big.

00:19:25 ◼   ► Yeah, so I wanted to ask Marco specifically, because you seemed most enthusiastic about

00:19:30 ◼   ► these bigger sizes, let's assume, just for the sake of conversation, that both 4.7 and

00:19:35 ◼   ► are real and they exist.

00:19:37 ◼   ► So much anxiety.

00:19:39 ◼   ► Right, but let's also assume

00:19:41 ◼   ► that the

00:19:43 ◼   ► effective resolution is no

00:19:45 ◼   ► different. So,

00:19:47 ◼   ► I don't recall exactly what resolution the

00:19:49 ◼   ► iPhones are today, but

00:19:51 ◼   ► whatever the size is that they

00:19:53 ◼   ► blow it up to, they just,

00:19:55 ◼   ► they blow it up. There's no more

00:19:57 ◼   ► effective real estate.

00:19:59 ◼   ► Would you still want one? Or are you

00:20:01 ◼   ► really excited for them strictly

00:20:03 ◼   ► based on the thought that you could shove more things onto the screen.

00:20:06 ◼   ► Now, you know, there was a rumor a couple of weeks back

00:20:09 ◼   ► that iOS 8, I think this was on 9to5Mac, that iOS 8

00:20:12 ◼   ► was going to include some kind of new resolution

00:20:15 ◼   ► scaling feature. Possibly based on the way

00:20:18 ◼   ► Mac OS 10 does it on the Retina MacBook Pros.

00:20:21 ◼   ► If that actually happens, if there is some kind of

00:20:24 ◼   ► feature where you can actually simulate higher

00:20:27 ◼   ► resolutions or somehow adjust the size of things on screen

00:20:30 ◼   ► on screen to make everything small. I mean there's universal text sizing but

00:20:34 ◼   ► that isn't that well supported yet. But if this feature

00:20:38 ◼   ► exists and you can actually dynamically scale things then I would probably

00:20:42 ◼   ► be tempted to go with the big one. Or if the big one actually does have

00:20:46 ◼   ► a higher resolution I'd be pretty tempted to go for it.

00:20:50 ◼   ► I'm not sure I would keep it. Like the year after I might go back to the

00:20:54 ◼   ► "small" 4.7" size. I don't know. I'm

00:20:58 ◼   ► I'm curious to try it, I've never had a large screen phone

00:21:01 ◼   ► and I know a lot of people say they're too big,

00:21:03 ◼   ► but a lot of people love them.

00:21:05 ◼   ► And, you know, for how I use it,

00:21:09 ◼   ► especially since I don't really use an iPad very often,

00:21:13 ◼   ► I use my phone for everything when I'm not at my computer.

00:21:18 ◼   ► So I'd be really curious to try the big phone.

00:21:21 ◼   ► That being said, if it's only a pure scale up

00:21:27 ◼   ► and the resolution and there's not more pixels

00:21:30 ◼   ► and it doesn't put in more capability

00:21:33 ◼   ► to see more on screen with the same resolution,

00:21:35 ◼   ► I'd have a really hard time justifying the bigger one

00:21:38 ◼   ► because it's like, well, what am I really getting for that?

00:21:40 ◼   ► And you are getting something like,

00:21:42 ◼   ► you could theoretically set the universal text size smaller

00:21:44 ◼   ► and fit more on screen with text,

00:21:48 ◼   ► but it wouldn't quite have the same effect.

00:21:51 ◼   ► - Having also never had a larger phone,

00:21:56 ◼   ► I don't see myself carrying a larger phone in my pocket, anything over 5 inches for sure.

00:22:03 ◼   ► I'm not overly enthusiastic about a 4.7 inch phone.

00:22:07 ◼   ► But as with all things that I claim I either don't understand or don't like, like Macs

00:22:12 ◼   ► and iPhones and BMWs and many other things I'm not thinking of, I'm sure I will probably

00:22:16 ◼   ► come around on this.

00:22:18 ◼   ► But I don't know, I don't have an overabundance of pocket space as it is and I don't even

00:22:22 ◼   ► fancy skinny jeans or anything like that.

00:22:24 ◼   ► So I just can't imagine having like a five inch plus phone

00:22:29 ◼   ► sitting in my pocket all the time.

00:22:31 ◼   ► That does not sound enjoyable to me.

00:22:33 ◼   ► I think a lot of people, a lot of Apple enthusiasts

00:22:37 ◼   ► would end up getting it just like Margo said,

00:22:39 ◼   ► just to see what it's like.

00:22:40 ◼   ► Because presumably these people have only ever had iPhones.

00:22:43 ◼   ► Like they've only been buying iPhones.

00:22:46 ◼   ► Haven't tried any other kind of phone.

00:22:48 ◼   ► You're going to try it just--

00:22:48 ◼   ► I mean, I guess you won't be able to tell

00:22:50 ◼   ► from holding in the story.

00:22:51 ◼   ► But like, well, I don't know.

00:22:52 ◼   ► You'll want to just buy it, own it.

00:22:54 ◼   ► you know you're going to get a new phone next year

00:22:56 ◼   ► or the year after anyway, give it a try.

00:22:58 ◼   ► And then you'll find out probably

00:22:59 ◼   ► within the first couple of weeks or couple of months

00:23:01 ◼   ► if this is for you or not.

00:23:02 ◼   ► But since it's a novelty in the Apple iOS device space,

00:23:06 ◼   ► I think a lot of people are going to buy it

00:23:08 ◼   ► just to see what it's like.

00:23:09 ◼   ► So Apple kind of gets an out in that regard.

00:23:12 ◼   ► And regular people who aren't listening to this podcast

00:23:14 ◼   ► and aren't Apple enthusiasts, they're

00:23:15 ◼   ► already buying big phones.

00:23:16 ◼   ► So it's not a big deal to them.

00:23:18 ◼   ► It's only a big deal to people like us.

00:23:20 ◼   ► Also, the screen might not be the only difference.

00:23:23 ◼   ► obviously a larger phone can fit a larger battery,

00:23:25 ◼   ► and some of that battery power is going to be spent

00:23:28 ◼   ► lighting that larger screen, but probably not all of it.

00:23:31 ◼   ► Assuming they have the same logic board, motherboard inside,

00:23:37 ◼   ► and it's just that same board plus larger battery

00:23:40 ◼   ► on the bigger phone versus smaller battery

00:23:42 ◼   ► on the smaller phone, you'd probably get better battery life

00:23:44 ◼   ► on the bigger one, and it might not be by a whole lot,

00:23:47 ◼   ► but I bet it would be noticeable.

00:23:49 ◼   ► Secondly, if they do different thicknesses,

00:23:53 ◼   ► and I talked about this on the talk show,

00:23:55 ◼   ► which we'll get back to in a minute.

00:23:57 ◼   ► I talked about this on the talk show a while back

00:23:59 ◼   ► with talking about a big phone,

00:24:00 ◼   ► but if they do different thicknesses,

00:24:03 ◼   ► they might have different camera sensors.

00:24:06 ◼   ► And camera sensors on phones,

00:24:08 ◼   ► thickness tends to be the limiting factor

00:24:10 ◼   ► in how good they can be.

00:24:12 ◼   ► And that's why you see Android phones

00:24:13 ◼   ► having these big blobby things

00:24:14 ◼   ► where the camera is in the back

00:24:15 ◼   ► so they can make that thicker

00:24:16 ◼   ► and put a nice sensor in there and nice optics.

00:24:19 ◼   ► 'cause optics, you just get to physical limits

00:24:22 ◼   ► where you just need depth to make larger sensors,

00:24:25 ◼   ► larger optics, things like that

00:24:26 ◼   ► to make better image quality.

00:24:27 ◼   ► And the rumors are that there's gonna be this iPhone Air,

00:24:32 ◼   ► it's the biggest one and it's super thin.

00:24:35 ◼   ► If the big one is thinner

00:24:38 ◼   ► and has a worse camera as a result,

00:24:42 ◼   ► then that's gonna be a pretty big downside for me

00:24:45 ◼   ► and I would almost certainly not get it.

00:24:46 ◼   ► I would say if the cameras are different at all between the two

00:24:50 ◼   ► sizes--

00:24:51 ◼   ► and obviously this is assuming a lot.

00:24:53 ◼   ► This is a disclaimer upfront.

00:24:54 ◼   ► This is assuming that there even are two iPhones.

00:24:56 ◼   ► And by the way, we probably won't hear about them next week.

00:24:58 ◼   ► We'll probably hear about them in the fall.

00:25:00 ◼   ► But assuming that there are two phones,

00:25:04 ◼   ► if there's any difference in the camera at all between them,

00:25:06 ◼   ► I will almost certainly pick the one with the better camera,

00:25:09 ◼   ► no matter what size it is.

00:25:10 ◼   ► You pre-derailed this, Casey.

00:25:12 ◼   ► You put in stuff about a phone, which

00:25:13 ◼   ► we all think is going to be released in September

00:25:15 ◼   ► in the section about WWDC predictions.

00:25:17 ◼   ► - Well, yes, I'm sorry.

00:25:19 ◼   ► I really wanted to ask Marco about this

00:25:20 ◼   ► because sitting here now, like I said,

00:25:22 ◼   ► I have no enthusiasm about a bigger phone,

00:25:24 ◼   ► although clearly the rest of the planet

00:25:26 ◼   ► quite literally does, so I don't know,

00:25:28 ◼   ► I just wanted to ask real fast.

00:25:30 ◼   ► - Before we move on and before we forget,

00:25:33 ◼   ► speaking of the talk show, so Gruber announced

00:25:36 ◼   ► on the talk show today that he's doing a live show

00:25:40 ◼   ► at WWDC on, what is it, Tuesday?

00:25:44 ◼   ► And we will be the guests on that live show.

00:25:46 ◼   ► So if you, you know, we decided not to do our own live show

00:25:50 ◼   ► 'cause it's just a lot of work and you know,

00:25:52 ◼   ► he's doing one and we're like, oh, we'll just invade his.

00:25:54 ◼   ► So if you wanna hear us invade the talk show

00:25:57 ◼   ► live at WBC next week,

00:25:59 ◼   ► tickets are not available right now as we record,

00:26:02 ◼   ► but by the time we post this, they will be.

00:26:04 ◼   ► So we'll put a link in the show notes.

00:26:06 ◼   ► So let me, so key, you know,

00:26:08 ◼   ► look at the show notes basically and see.

00:26:09 ◼   ► Tickets are probably gonna go pretty quickly.

00:26:11 ◼   ► So go quickly if you want to come.

00:26:14 ◼   ► And hopefully we will see you there.

00:26:16 ◼   ► And where would people find those show notes?

00:26:18 ◼   ► Listen to this song, I don't know.

00:26:19 ◼   ► [LAUGHTER]

00:26:21 ◼   ► Yeah, see, the song has to fit every episode.

00:26:24 ◼   ► It says you can find the show notes at ATP.fm,

00:26:26 ◼   ► but in the back to work tradition,

00:26:28 ◼   ► you have to give the full URL.

00:26:29 ◼   ► And now that you've made the nice, short URLs,

00:26:31 ◼   ► you can do that, can't you?

00:26:32 ◼   ► Well, they're not that short.

00:26:33 ◼   ► It's ATP.fm/episodes/67, right?

00:26:38 ◼   ► Is this number 67?

00:26:39 ◼   ► Dan?

00:26:40 ◼   ► Dan?

00:26:40 ◼   ► Yes, it is.

00:26:41 ◼   ► - Okay. - And also, you are lying.

00:26:43 ◼   ► ATP.fm/67 should work.

00:26:47 ◼   ► - That does work, oh my God.

00:26:49 ◼   ► - So yeah, so ATP.fm/67.

00:26:52 ◼   ► - Once again, WWDC Tuesday evening.

00:26:55 ◼   ► I don't know what time, either six or seven.

00:26:57 ◼   ► - Six to nine at Mezzanine, which is a really nice venue.

00:27:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's gonna be a good show, so check it out.

00:27:02 ◼   ► - And yes, we will all be there, I will be there in person.

00:27:05 ◼   ► I am flying out to do a live podcast, you're welcome.

00:27:08 ◼   ► - We actually convinced him to do this.

00:27:10 ◼   ► 'cause I do not wanna do a live podcast, and yet I am.

00:27:13 ◼   ► So if you wanted to see me--

00:27:15 ◼   ► - He doesn't wanna do a live podcast,

00:27:16 ◼   ► he doesn't wanna fly.

00:27:17 ◼   ► - No, I don't wanna do this at all.

00:27:19 ◼   ► But, you know, I'll survive.

00:27:20 ◼   ► So anyway, all three of us will be there in the flesh.

00:27:24 ◼   ► - So, okay, WWDC stuff.

00:27:26 ◼   ► Let's start with the rest of the hardware,

00:27:28 ◼   ► the stuff that they actually may announce at WWDC.

00:27:32 ◼   ► Do we see a retina MacBook Air happening?

00:27:35 ◼   ► - When they lowered the price on the current ones,

00:27:37 ◼   ► you know, when they revised them and took off $100,

00:27:40 ◼   ► At first I thought that was a clear sign

00:27:41 ◼   ► that they were making room for the one and only

00:27:44 ◼   ► 12 inch Retina Air model, but then I thought maybe

00:27:48 ◼   ► it's just their preemptive move because they don't have

00:27:50 ◼   ► that ready and they just wanna make these more attractive

00:27:52 ◼   ► until they do have it ready and now I can't decide.

00:27:55 ◼   ► - Well I think you're right because Intel's having

00:27:57 ◼   ► some issues getting the next CPU, I believe it's Broadwell.

00:28:01 ◼   ► Intel's having some issues with that getting that on time

00:28:03 ◼   ► and so it's basically been pretty widely rumored,

00:28:07 ◼   ► speculated and maybe even said by Intel that they're basically not going to have new

00:28:12 ◼   ► CPU models out until like December at the earliest. And there's different like

00:28:17 ◼   ► there's different times the different releases so you know the MacBook Air

00:28:20 ◼   ► super low power CPU might come out at a different time than like the ones the

00:28:23 ◼   ► iMac uses and stuff like that but basically it's looking unlikely that

00:28:29 ◼   ► Apple was going to have a compelling reason to update the current line of

00:28:34 ◼   ► of anything anytime soon.

00:28:35 ◼   ► That doesn't mean they can't launch a new one.

00:28:37 ◼   ► Like if they wanted to do a retina MacBook Air,

00:28:40 ◼   ► or any new size of a laptop,

00:28:43 ◼   ► they could just ship it with the existing CPU family.

00:28:45 ◼   ► It wouldn't be that big of a deal.

00:28:47 ◼   ► - I don't know about that,

00:28:48 ◼   ► 'cause I always assumed that retina

00:28:50 ◼   ► would be rating for Broadwell,

00:28:51 ◼   ► just for power concerns,

00:28:53 ◼   ► 'cause the extra power needed by the screen.

00:28:55 ◼   ► - Is Broadwell a dice rink, or a process rink?

00:28:58 ◼   ► I think it is, but I'm not sure.

00:29:00 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, it is.

00:29:01 ◼   ► This is 14 nanometers, isn't it?

00:29:02 ◼   ► - So that does matter.

00:29:03 ◼   ► Yeah, but so like I would imagine that Apple's roadmap was based on the assumption that they

00:29:08 ◼   ► would have Broadwell in time for a mid-year, you know, retina MacBook Air. With the price drop and

00:29:15 ◼   ► the revisions before WWDC, like I said, that could go both ways. It could be like, well,

00:29:19 ◼   ► you would want to keep those in the lineup because they're still good computers, but like they revise

00:29:26 ◼   ► them. Did you see the Macworld speed tests on them? They're actually slower than the models they

00:29:30 ◼   ► they replace in a couple of measures.

00:29:32 ◼   ► - Well, was that just because of the SSD?

00:29:34 ◼   ► There was a thing that came out that first said,

00:29:36 ◼   ► oh my god, the SSDs are actually slower.

00:29:38 ◼   ► And then a couple days later it came out that,

00:29:40 ◼   ► oh well actually, there's always been variance

00:29:42 ◼   ► in which SSD manufacturer you get

00:29:44 ◼   ► when you buy your MacBook Air.

00:29:45 ◼   ► There's always been variances in them,

00:29:47 ◼   ► and the current variances are nothing new.

00:29:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, that could be true, but you would think

00:29:51 ◼   ► that MacWorld would get the models with the fast ones,

00:29:53 ◼   ► but I don't know.

00:29:54 ◼   ► But anyway, the point is, the revisions

00:29:56 ◼   ► of the existing models are not like,

00:29:58 ◼   ► oh these are so much faster than last year's.

00:30:00 ◼   ► It's a price drop and performance is the same, maybe a little bit better, maybe a little

00:30:06 ◼   ► bit worse depending on what your previous one and what your current one is.

00:30:10 ◼   ► Screens, not a big change there or anything.

00:30:12 ◼   ► So it's like that they're being pushed down market and kept on life support to make room

00:30:18 ◼   ► for something.

00:30:19 ◼   ► And I can't decide whether doing that before WWDC means they're making room for an announcement

00:30:25 ◼   ► or doing it before WWDC means this is not,

00:30:27 ◼   ► and we don't have anything nice to say,

00:30:30 ◼   ► so we won't say anything at all at WWDC

00:30:31 ◼   ► and you'll just all wait Mac Pro style

00:30:33 ◼   ► for us to come out with the real replacement machines.

00:30:37 ◼   ► - I'm guessing it's the latter,

00:30:39 ◼   ► just because we know that Intel's having these issues

00:30:41 ◼   ► with the new generation of CPUs,

00:30:44 ◼   ► so we know that this current generation of MacBook Airs

00:30:46 ◼   ► has to last longer than expected.

00:30:49 ◼   ► - I would still be excited for Apple to announce the machine,

00:30:53 ◼   ► show it and say it's not shipping until like October,

00:30:56 ◼   ► and then in October have it slip to December.

00:30:58 ◼   ► Like basically I wanna see what the new machine looks like

00:31:01 ◼   ► even if I can't have it until the end of the year.

00:31:03 ◼   ► - So basically exactly what they did

00:31:05 ◼   ► with the Mac Pro last year.

00:31:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, exactly.

00:31:07 ◼   ► It was, you know, it's like,

00:31:09 ◼   ► not that people are dying for new Airs,

00:31:11 ◼   ► but by pushing the existing ones down,

00:31:14 ◼   ► it's like now the Air feels like kind of a loser machine.

00:31:16 ◼   ► It's like we know there's a replacement coming

00:31:18 ◼   ► and it's not here yet.

00:31:19 ◼   ► So they haven't been waiting years like the Mac Pro people,

00:31:22 ◼   ► but still, I mean, we'll get to any other hardware

00:31:27 ◼   ► we think might be announced, but we all agree

00:31:29 ◼   ► probably no phones, 'cause they're in September these days.

00:31:33 ◼   ► The iPads have just been updated.

00:31:36 ◼   ► If they're not going to show a red in the air,

00:31:38 ◼   ► do they have any hardware to announce at WWDC?

00:31:41 ◼   ► - Well, there's always room for a new category.

00:31:43 ◼   ► - I was just thinking that,

00:31:45 ◼   ► and just put it in the show notes to talk about.

00:31:48 ◼   ► We may do the wearables thing.

00:31:50 ◼   ► I want so badly to have a clever idea

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00:33:14 ◼   ► So what about Apple TV at WWDC, either software or hardware?

00:33:18 ◼   ► The hardware is kind of like the iPod Touch hardware

00:33:23 ◼   ► at this point.

00:33:24 ◼   ► It's like Apple doesn't really--

00:33:26 ◼   ► Apple updates it, but is in no real hurry.

00:33:29 ◼   ► They're a single core A5 in the Apple TV, the current Apple TV,

00:33:32 ◼   ► right?

00:33:33 ◼   ► Yeah, the shrunk version.

00:33:35 ◼   ► At a certain point, it becomes like USB 1.0,

00:33:37 ◼   ► where it's more expensive to put on a computer than 2.0,

00:33:39 ◼   ► because everybody's making 2.0 chips.

00:33:41 ◼   ► I mean, it's different because only Apple's making the A5.

00:33:43 ◼   ► but still, at this point you feel like Apple

00:33:46 ◼   ► must have worked through their inventory

00:33:48 ◼   ► of A5s for the bump core.

00:33:50 ◼   ► - No, these are now custom chips.

00:33:52 ◼   ► Remember, and I think it was when Antec did the teardown

00:33:54 ◼   ► where like, as of like a year and a half ago,

00:33:56 ◼   ► they're actually making custom chips

00:33:58 ◼   ► that right now are only in the Apple TV.

00:34:00 ◼   ► They only have one core to begin with.

00:34:02 ◼   ► - Apple TV, it's not slow per se,

00:34:05 ◼   ► but it's certainly not a speed demon.

00:34:07 ◼   ► And the interface is clunky,

00:34:10 ◼   ► and no one's really talking about

00:34:11 ◼   ► Apple Television set anymore. We're just assuming they're gonna update the Puck,

00:34:15 ◼   ► but we all think the Puck software and experience needs to be updated, and I

00:34:19 ◼   ► think part of that updated experience, if they ever bring it, would have to be a

00:34:23 ◼   ► faster CPU and maybe some more memory to support what we hope is a better UI than

00:34:27 ◼   ► just a massive grid of rounded rectangles that you navigate between

00:34:31 ◼   ► and that appear randomly on your thing. So there are an awful lot of sessions on

00:34:35 ◼   ► on the WWDC schedule that are to be announced.

00:34:39 ◼   ► And those all can't be like, oh, here's the new Xcode.

00:34:43 ◼   ► Or we're like, there's gotta be something.

00:34:45 ◼   ► I should've done the count.

00:34:46 ◼   ► Did anyone do the count of how many are to be announced

00:34:49 ◼   ► this year versus last year?

00:34:51 ◼   ► - Well, I remember last year there were a lot

00:34:53 ◼   ► that were to be announced that weren't about any kind

00:34:55 ◼   ► of special secret thing.

00:34:57 ◼   ► Basically what they tend to do is anything that includes

00:35:03 ◼   ► in its name or description, the name of any unreleased thing

00:35:08 ◼   ► or unannounced thing does not get put in the app

00:35:10 ◼   ► until keynote day, until after the keynote.

00:35:13 ◼   ► And so it's like, it might even be like the title,

00:35:17 ◼   ► like a session might be one of those to be announced titles

00:35:21 ◼   ► now and it might just be like, what's new in networking

00:35:24 ◼   ► and iOS 8, you know?

00:35:25 ◼   ► And that's just because iOS 8 hasn't been announced yet

00:35:28 ◼   ► so they mark it as secret.

00:35:30 ◼   ► So you can't really tell by that.

00:35:32 ◼   ► I suppose, but I was trying to look at the categories,

00:35:35 ◼   ► because the secret ones do have categories applied to them.

00:35:38 ◼   ► So you can see one's dev tools.

00:35:40 ◼   ► You look at the day and the time and the fact that it's dev

00:35:42 ◼   ► tools, you're like, oh, that's the Xcode 6 session.

00:35:45 ◼   ► And there's a couple ones like media in a prominent slot.

00:35:49 ◼   ► What would they have to do about media?

00:35:50 ◼   ► Is it some new AV Foundation stuff?

00:35:52 ◼   ► And--

00:35:53 ◼   ► Oh, god, I hope not.

00:35:56 ◼   ► I'm trying to figure out that if they did a big Apple TV

00:35:59 ◼   ► revision, say, allowing apps of some kind

00:36:01 ◼   ► making an SDK for it or something like that, are there enough slots in prominent positions

00:36:07 ◼   ► to do that?

00:36:08 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:36:09 ◼   ► I mean, the Apple TV, I didn't put the iPod Touch down here too, but God knows when they're

00:36:12 ◼   ► going to update that.

00:36:13 ◼   ► But I would like to see a revision of the Apple TV, even if they just do a hardware

00:36:18 ◼   ► bump and like a reasonable software revision.

00:36:22 ◼   ► Like, I guess I could, we've given up for the Apple TV set, you've given up them fixing

00:36:27 ◼   ► because you know all the rumors are that any TV stuff they have is not this year

00:36:30 ◼   ► probably. I don't know. Again I'm trying to think of like so what hardware do we

00:36:36 ◼   ► get? No hardware in the WODC announcement? Which do you think will be

00:36:41 ◼   ► updated first? The iPod Classic, the iPod Touch, or the Mac Mini? I'm gonna go with

00:36:49 ◼   ► Mac Mini there I think. I think it'll be the iPod Touch. That's a tough race

00:36:54 ◼   ► though. They're both pretty in the glass. It's not gonna be the iPod

00:36:56 ◼   ► Classic, I'll tell you that that I don't think they'll change that until they can't get the parts anymore

00:37:01 ◼   ► Discontinuing it would count as an update. Yeah

00:37:04 ◼   ► In that case, maybe I really am having a hard time thinking of her

00:37:08 ◼   ► I get someone put a retina MacBook Pros and those are they're not due for an update

00:37:12 ◼   ► But they could be but then what would you do to them besides?

00:37:14 ◼   ► Reducing the price and maybe offering more ram or bigger faster SSD is like if Rodwell's not ready. You're not gonna change the CPUs

00:37:22 ◼   ► - Exactly, that's the problem.

00:37:23 ◼   ► That's why I don't think we're gonna see any new Macs

00:37:25 ◼   ► unless they are a new form factor using the old CPUs

00:37:28 ◼   ► because there's nothing new to put in them.

00:37:30 ◼   ► Apple does not do major updates to products

00:37:34 ◼   ► without a new Intel chipset to put in them.

00:37:36 ◼   ► They just don't.

00:37:37 ◼   ► They'll do minor stuff that won't even bother

00:37:40 ◼   ► with an announcement or they'll do a whole new line

00:37:43 ◼   ► that doesn't need a new CPU

00:37:44 ◼   ► 'cause they can use something that was already available

00:37:45 ◼   ► in a new way, but they're not gonna release,

00:37:49 ◼   ► 'cause you're right, yeah, what would they do?

00:37:51 ◼   ► It's like, I know they're not gonna announce

00:37:53 ◼   ► a new Mac Pro already because there's no new Xeon yet.

00:37:57 ◼   ► And you can always tell when they're gonna announce

00:37:58 ◼   ► new Mac Pros, well, usually.

00:38:00 ◼   ► You were able to always tell before they went three years

00:38:03 ◼   ► without doing anything to it

00:38:04 ◼   ► by just looking at the Xeon roadmap.

00:38:06 ◼   ► Say, all right, well, when are there new Xeons coming out

00:38:08 ◼   ► that are the series that the Mac Pro uses?

00:38:10 ◼   ► And as soon as there's new Xeons,

00:38:12 ◼   ► within a month or two, there's new Mac Pros.

00:38:15 ◼   ► Same thing with the laptops.

00:38:15 ◼   ► You can see Intel's roadmap and Intel releases new CPUs

00:38:19 ◼   ► about every year and this year's are delayed.

00:38:22 ◼   ► And so therefore, I suspect it's a pretty safe bet

00:38:27 ◼   ► that all new Mac launches are going to be delayed

00:38:30 ◼   ► until the winter or the spring.

00:38:32 ◼   ► - So this is the perfect time for them

00:38:34 ◼   ► to rev the iPod Touch WABDs.

00:38:36 ◼   ► 'Cause it's so far behind that it's easy

00:38:40 ◼   ► that you put an A6 in it.

00:38:42 ◼   ► I'm not even asking you to ask for an A7 in it, who cares?

00:38:45 ◼   ► - Wait, it's still A5?

00:38:47 ◼   ► - Yeah, isn't it? - Oh my god.

00:38:48 ◼   ► I think it is.

00:38:49 ◼   ► I can't even keep track.

00:38:50 ◼   ► It's so old, I don't even remember how old it is.

00:38:52 ◼   ► No, it has the tall screen, right?

00:38:54 ◼   ► Like the iPhone 5, so it probably has an A6 in it.

00:38:56 ◼   ► Oh, I don't know.

00:38:57 ◼   ► Someone look it up.

00:38:59 ◼   ► It's super slow compared to the iPhone 5S, I'll tell you that.

00:39:01 ◼   ► Yeah, the chat room says A5 still.

00:39:03 ◼   ► Oh, that's terrible.

00:39:04 ◼   ► And not that I think they're going to do this,

00:39:06 ◼   ► but it's the one product that they have

00:39:08 ◼   ► that they could easily provide an update to if they cared,

00:39:10 ◼   ► but they don't, so whatever.

00:39:12 ◼   ► Well, and they hardly sell any of them.

00:39:14 ◼   ► Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

00:39:15 ◼   ► It's not going to happen.

00:39:16 ◼   ► you know, if they were desperate for some hardware, that would be a gimme.

00:39:19 ◼   ► You're keeping the entire line afloat. You're the only one buying one.

00:39:23 ◼   ► No, lots of children.

00:39:25 ◼   ► I just bought another one. Like, I couldn't believe I did this, because, like,

00:39:27 ◼   ► it's against my religion to buy an Apple device this old. Like, I bought one for my son because

00:39:34 ◼   ► he wanted one for his birthday. And so now he's got one. He's, like, it's the worst time to buy

00:39:39 ◼   ► this thing. But kids like them. My daughter's upset that she doesn't have one, so now she

00:39:43 ◼   ► wants one so I'm trying to resist buying a second one or a third one I don't know

00:39:47 ◼   ► how many we got a lot iPod touches in this house just just get the new iPhone

00:39:50 ◼   ► this fall and give her your current one done yeah we'll see about that we'll see

00:39:54 ◼   ► what the new iPhone looks like it's a big giant 5.5 inch thing I don't know

00:39:57 ◼   ► it's gonna look like an iPhone it's gonna look like an iPad mini if the

00:40:03 ◼   ► rumors are to be believed yeah and maybe the big one does you know maybe the

00:40:07 ◼   ► quote iPhone air that the big 5.5 inch one yeah we'll see I don't know all

00:40:13 ◼   ► - All right, so hardware, it seems like we don't know

00:40:15 ◼   ► what the heck is going on here with hardware.

00:40:17 ◼   ► None of us can think of anything that we think

00:40:18 ◼   ► is a slam dunk for hardware, WWDC.

00:40:21 ◼   ► - If they're gonna do another MacBook Air,

00:40:23 ◼   ► I bet they will do it here.

00:40:24 ◼   ► Like if they're gonna do a 12-inch something,

00:40:27 ◼   ► this would be a good time to do it,

00:40:28 ◼   ► because they have no other good existing product updates.

00:40:32 ◼   ► But really, I think the most obvious answer

00:40:36 ◼   ► is if they're going to announce any hardware at all,

00:40:37 ◼   ► which is not a given, but if they're going to announce

00:40:40 ◼   ► any hardware at all, it's probably gonna be

00:40:42 ◼   ► some new category, and not just Retina Mac,

00:40:44 ◼   ► but something like a watch sensor, earbud,

00:40:47 ◼   ► pinky ring, whatever, some kind of new thing.

00:40:51 ◼   ► Because this is a really good time to do that.

00:40:55 ◼   ► If they're announcing, and it could even just be

00:40:58 ◼   ► Apple TV 10.0 or whatever, where Apple TV

00:41:01 ◼   ► is now a full-fledged platform that you can write apps for

00:41:04 ◼   ► or something like that.

00:41:05 ◼   ► That could be the big thing this year.

00:41:07 ◼   ► And some of those sessions that we don't know anything about

00:41:09 ◼   ► that have to do with media could be Apple TV development.

00:41:12 ◼   ► - That's true.

00:41:14 ◼   ► - I haven't been following the rumors that closely,

00:41:16 ◼   ► but hasn't the consensus been that Apple wearable,

00:41:20 ◼   ► sensor support and stuff would come in iOS 6,

00:41:25 ◼   ► but Apple supporting hardware would only come

00:41:27 ◼   ► later in the year?

00:41:28 ◼   ► I haven't been keeping up.

00:41:29 ◼   ► - You mean eight, but yeah, I mean, I think it's tough.

00:41:32 ◼   ► I mean, it wouldn't be unprecedented for them

00:41:35 ◼   ► to have WWDC not mention anything,

00:41:38 ◼   ► and then announce new hardware in the fall

00:41:39 ◼   ► that has some new feature,

00:41:40 ◼   ► and then spring on developers with a .1 update

00:41:43 ◼   ► or the very last beta SDK or something like that.

00:41:46 ◼   ► They have done that before.

00:41:48 ◼   ► In fact, they did it with the M7,

00:41:50 ◼   ► the M7 chip and the iPhone 5S.

00:41:51 ◼   ► They did that whole thing.

00:41:53 ◼   ► But something that's actually a big deal,

00:41:57 ◼   ► like a whole new sensor type,

00:41:59 ◼   ► I mean, that would be tough.

00:42:01 ◼   ► And if they're going to show off Healthbook,

00:42:04 ◼   ► maybe they might pre-announce something involving that

00:42:07 ◼   ► 'cause it's kinda, you know, HealthBook,

00:42:10 ◼   ► as we know it right now, with the sensors

00:42:11 ◼   ► that we know about now,

00:42:13 ◼   ► it's pretty much just pedometer plus plus.

00:42:15 ◼   ► But if you, if they're gonna do new sensors,

00:42:19 ◼   ► then they become more valuable.

00:42:20 ◼   ► So I don't know.

00:42:21 ◼   ► I'm guessing that we see some new category

00:42:25 ◼   ► be announced at WWDC,

00:42:27 ◼   ► and I don't know what that category will be,

00:42:28 ◼   ► whether it's Apple TV major update that's now developable,

00:42:32 ◼   ► or whether it's, you know, a wristband watch thing,

00:42:34 ◼   ► who knows.

00:42:35 ◼   ► I bet it's going to be something like that.

00:42:37 ◼   ► So something that we have not been able to develop for or use before that we can now

00:42:42 ◼   ► develop for or use.

00:42:43 ◼   ► I suppose.

00:42:45 ◼   ► Do you think it's about time for the Apple TV to get a visual refresh?

00:42:49 ◼   ► The software, not the hardware.

00:42:50 ◼   ► Yeah, that's what I was talking about.

00:42:52 ◼   ► Stop being a stupid grid of rounded rectangles and start having a richer interface.

00:42:57 ◼   ► Oh, and I'm thinking it's so dark now and iOS 7 is so bright.

00:43:01 ◼   ► I almost wonder if just making it brighter and more iOS 7-like would be an improvement.

00:43:08 ◼   ► And additionally, isn't it running not a fork, but kind of a fork of iOS?

00:43:12 ◼   ► Isn't that right?

00:43:13 ◼   ► So…

00:43:14 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, it definitely does not… it looks dated, no question.

00:43:16 ◼   ► It looks dated.

00:43:17 ◼   ► I don't think the interface is scaling very well.

00:43:19 ◼   ► Like, as they keep adding more and more of these channels and the rounded oval keeps

00:43:25 ◼   ► getting… you know, the list of those keeps getting longer and longer and longer, it definitely

00:43:29 ◼   ► is not scaling well.

00:43:30 ◼   ► I mean, if you just look at Roku and Amazon's Fire TV thing, like, for where Apple TV, like

00:43:37 ◼   ► what its competition is currently doing, and Apple is still pretty far behind that.

00:43:41 ◼   ► Although as a Plasma TV owner, I hope Apple does not go the iOS 7 route and make it all

00:43:47 ◼   ► white, and anyone who owns a Plasma TV knows why.

00:43:49 ◼   ► Fair enough.

00:43:51 ◼   ► Wait, hold on, why?

00:43:53 ◼   ► Is it because it makes it hotter, or...?

00:43:56 ◼   ► Yeah, white screens use more power, more power draw causes the transformer buzz to be louder

00:44:01 ◼   ► and yes, all the lovely sacrifices that I make, including having fans in my television

00:44:06 ◼   ► to get superior picture quality.

00:44:08 ◼   ► One of them is if you make the screen all white, you get a more audible transformer

00:44:12 ◼   ► buzz.

00:44:13 ◼   ► So having a black background is preferable to me.

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00:46:37 ◼   ► - I'm going to choose to believe that they deliberately

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00:46:49 ◼   ► All right.

00:46:50 ◼   ► Anyway, anything else on wearables?

00:46:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, we've had it in the show notes for a while.

00:46:54 ◼   ► I mean, like to Craig Hockenberry's thing

00:46:56 ◼   ► about Apple wearables,

00:46:57 ◼   ► and I've been thinking about it as well,

00:47:00 ◼   ► and my thinking on wearables has changed over time,

00:47:03 ◼   ► over time of Apple doing nothing.

00:47:05 ◼   ► And the more I think about wearables,

00:47:09 ◼   ► I keep seeing, everyone keeps seeing in their head

00:47:14 ◼   ► like something that goes around your wrist

00:47:16 ◼   ► that has this amazing, futuristic-looking screen on it

00:47:19 ◼   ► that does something or that you interact with by swiping or, I don't know, like, it's just

00:47:23 ◼   ► like, you see these mockups and they look really cool, but it's like, well then how

00:47:27 ◼   ► would you use it?

00:47:29 ◼   ► And everything we're seeing from actual rumors from Apple are like the health book stuff,

00:47:34 ◼   ► and that's all about having an application on your phone that integrates information

00:47:39 ◼   ► from other sensors.

00:47:40 ◼   ► So when I think of Apple wearables now, I keep thinking of things that either don't

00:47:44 ◼   ► have screens or have things that are like barely screens.

00:47:48 ◼   ► I mean like the Fitbits have their various little displays with the LEDs and stuff

00:47:51 ◼   ► Because screens are a problem like you can't have a screen on all that

00:47:56 ◼   ► There's reason at least Fitbit and things like that don't have big LCD screens in them

00:48:00 ◼   ► You can't have a screen on all the time that the battery will run out

00:48:03 ◼   ► I mean you don't have your phone screen on all the time

00:48:06 ◼   ► You just take it out you look at the screen you put it away you turn the screen off

00:48:08 ◼   ► But the screen is not on all the time

00:48:10 ◼   ► But you can't really function as a watch because you got to you know

00:48:12 ◼   ► Think of all the smartwatches that make you do the little jiggle shake to turn on or tap it to turn on or you know

00:48:17 ◼   ► And I'm thinking like, what does Apple want out of this?

00:48:20 ◼   ► They want more sensors and more information integrated

00:48:24 ◼   ► into your phone.

00:48:25 ◼   ► Does that require a screen that's always on

00:48:27 ◼   ► or a screen at all?

00:48:29 ◼   ► Not that I'm saying that Apple Wearable won't have a screen,

00:48:32 ◼   ► but I think there is a place in our current conception

00:48:36 ◼   ► with the known information of what Apple is trying

00:48:39 ◼   ► to do with sensors and integration for a thing

00:48:43 ◼   ► that you attach to your person or clothing somewhere that

00:48:46 ◼   ► doesn't need to have a screen.

00:48:48 ◼   ► And it could be that they also have a device

00:48:49 ◼   ► that has a screen, but everything I'm seeing out of Apple

00:48:54 ◼   ► makes me think some little turd-y thing

00:48:57 ◼   ► that will look nice but doesn't need to have a screen.

00:48:59 ◼   ► Does that mean it's a ring like Hockenberry's thing?

00:49:01 ◼   ► No, I think that's still a fantasy.

00:49:03 ◼   ► I can't imagine them pulling that off,

00:49:05 ◼   ► although feel free to prove me wrong, Apple.

00:49:07 ◼   ► Does it mean it couldn't be around your wrist?

00:49:10 ◼   ► Maybe it could.

00:49:11 ◼   ► Maybe they're gonna use some breakthrough screen technology

00:49:14 ◼   ► that can be on all the time,

00:49:15 ◼   ► Maybe they're going to use color E ink or you know, there's all sorts of crazy things you can come up with and

00:49:19 ◼   ► certainly a lot of the rumors from years ago were like

00:49:22 ◼   ► Apple's investigating curved flexible screen technology for things that will go around your wrist and you can still touch them stuff like that, but

00:49:29 ◼   ► I just wanted to throw that out there that what the vibe I've been getting from the information available

00:49:35 ◼   ► is that there is a place in Apple's grand conception of

00:49:40 ◼   ► health monitoring and health book and stuff like that for something that that doesn't necessarily have to have something that we would recognize as screen

00:49:47 ◼   ► Yeah, I completely agree. I think if Apple does do some sort of wearable thing

00:49:51 ◼   ► I am pretty convinced it will not have a screen and

00:49:55 ◼   ► Additionally, I think it will have some sort of sensor almost certainly health related that the iPhone either

00:50:03 ◼   ► Can't or doesn't or perhaps won't have I don't know what that would be me

00:50:08 ◼   ► Pulse would be a great example if you could do it comfortably, but I can't imagine how that would work unless you could grab whatever latent electricity you have in your wrist or finger or whatever.

00:50:18 ◼   ► But I see it, personally I see whatever their wearable is as a mechanism to sell more phones because, hey, look at all this wonderful health or perhaps other kind of data you can get into the phone if you have the Apple iRing.

00:50:34 ◼   ► And I'm not sure it's going to be a ring, obviously, but just for the sake of conversation.

00:50:37 ◼   ► So I agree with you, John.

00:50:39 ◼   ► I'm pretty convinced it will not have a screen

00:50:41 ◼   ► and will be all about sensors.

00:50:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, and the sensor stuff,

00:50:45 ◼   ► I don't know a lot about medical sensors,

00:50:47 ◼   ► but talking about being able to track O2 levels,

00:50:50 ◼   ► don't those things use some kind of light,

00:50:52 ◼   ► they shine through your fingertips and stuff

00:50:54 ◼   ► and see how red things are?

00:50:55 ◼   ► I have no idea how these things work.

00:50:57 ◼   ► But when I think of stuff like that,

00:50:59 ◼   ► I think of, well, the iPhone 6 could have,

00:51:01 ◼   ► you know, the touch ID sensor

00:51:03 ◼   ► or some place that you put your hand,

00:51:04 ◼   ► but you're not gonna have something clipped

00:51:05 ◼   ► to your fingertip when you go through the day,

00:51:07 ◼   ► And you can't clip something to the end of your shirt

00:51:10 ◼   ► or your bra or something and have that measuring your O2

00:51:13 ◼   ► level.

00:51:13 ◼   ► So I don't even understand which parts of the body

00:51:16 ◼   ► you'd need to clip things to to get this information.

00:51:18 ◼   ► Or if it's going to be like a once or twice a day,

00:51:21 ◼   ► put your finger on this special spot on your iPhone 6 type

00:51:23 ◼   ► thing.

00:51:24 ◼   ► So Apple has been hiring these people for visualizations

00:51:28 ◼   ► of medical information.

00:51:29 ◼   ► Remember those hires back then?

00:51:32 ◼   ► There's so much smoke there, and I just

00:51:34 ◼   ► don't understand what form the fire is going to take.

00:51:37 ◼   ► - Maybe you're right, maybe it is the home button

00:51:39 ◼   ► because that's something that you,

00:51:40 ◼   ► like if you think about all the different places

00:51:42 ◼   ► you could have a wearable, you have like wristbands,

00:51:44 ◼   ► but that could be on the outside of a shirt.

00:51:46 ◼   ► Like if you have a long sleeve shirt,

00:51:47 ◼   ► the wristband could be on the outside of it.

00:51:48 ◼   ► And you know, maybe not always, but it might be,

00:51:50 ◼   ► you can't really count on that.

00:51:52 ◼   ► You know, rings, I think you're right,

00:51:53 ◼   ► I think we're probably not there technically yet

00:51:55 ◼   ► to be able to fit everything in something as small as a ring

00:51:58 ◼   ► and yeah, but the home button,

00:52:01 ◼   ► you're always pushing with your finger throughout the day

00:52:04 ◼   ► And so that actually makes a lot of sense.

00:52:07 ◼   ► The wrist thing, even stuff like pulse,

00:52:09 ◼   ► you would never want a wrist thing

00:52:10 ◼   ► that was tight enough on your wrist to measure your pulse.

00:52:12 ◼   ► Like, people don't like things dripping in that tightly.

00:52:14 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

00:52:15 ◼   ► It's not like you'd be in a blood pressure cuff all day.

00:52:18 ◼   ► But it's like, even just to pick up your pulse,

00:52:20 ◼   ► I feel like you'd have to have something that is slightly

00:52:23 ◼   ► uncomfortable.

00:52:23 ◼   ► And there's a reason that people don't walk around

00:52:25 ◼   ► with these sensors on them all day.

00:52:27 ◼   ► Like, we go into the doctor's office,

00:52:28 ◼   ► and they hook these things up to you,

00:52:30 ◼   ► and you want to get them off.

00:52:32 ◼   ► So I mean, I don't know, like, and the thing about wearables

00:52:36 ◼   ► is like, we're so much focused on health

00:52:38 ◼   ► 'cause that's the little nugget of information that we have,

00:52:40 ◼   ► like vague screenshot rumor site type things of HealthBook,

00:52:44 ◼   ► and it's like, well, what good,

00:52:45 ◼   ► what good, you brought this up,

00:52:46 ◼   ► what good is HealthBook?

00:52:47 ◼   ► How is that any different than Penometer++?

00:52:49 ◼   ► Unless you have some other information.

00:52:51 ◼   ► And if you, where's that information coming from?

00:52:53 ◼   ► And that's why we get into like the,

00:52:54 ◼   ► well, that's a third party opportunity,

00:52:56 ◼   ► Apple will basically make these APIs,

00:52:58 ◼   ► and Fitbit and whoever can make new devices

00:53:01 ◼   ► that will feed into this API,

00:53:02 ◼   ► And then where is Apple-ness?

00:53:06 ◼   ► Where is the new category?

00:53:07 ◼   ► That's the question we continue asking.

00:53:10 ◼   ► And I guess we'll keep asking.

00:53:12 ◼   ► If this year ends and there's nothing

00:53:14 ◼   ► that you can wear from Apple and they haven't done anything

00:53:16 ◼   ► to Apple TV, something is wrong.

00:53:20 ◼   ► Because Tim said, man, new category this year.

00:53:25 ◼   ► I think you're right also that going back

00:53:27 ◼   ► a step with the whole no screen thing, whatever this thing is,

00:53:31 ◼   ► I've said it before and I'll keep saying it every episode,

00:53:35 ◼   ► I would never bet against the smartphone,

00:53:37 ◼   ► at least not for a long time.

00:53:39 ◼   ► In the current era that we are in, the smartphone is king.

00:53:42 ◼   ► Smartphones are awesome and it is so unwise

00:53:45 ◼   ► to bet against them.

00:53:46 ◼   ► As a tangent to that, if you're thinking about having

00:53:49 ◼   ► something that you're also going to be carrying around,

00:53:52 ◼   ► it makes so much more sense for it to be

00:53:55 ◼   ► a smartphone accessory than its own standalone thing

00:53:59 ◼   ► of some sort.

00:54:01 ◼   ► and the smartphone has all the power,

00:54:03 ◼   ► it has all the connectivity,

00:54:04 ◼   ► it has way more battery power than you can fit

00:54:08 ◼   ► in a quote wearable, unless the wearable is a backpack.

00:54:12 ◼   ► And so it is unwise to try to cram a whole bunch

00:54:15 ◼   ► of power sucking stuff into a wearable, including a screen.

00:54:18 ◼   ► And yeah, you could do like E Ink,

00:54:20 ◼   ► so it only takes power to change the content of the screen.

00:54:23 ◼   ► You could do that, but E Ink looks like crap

00:54:25 ◼   ► and I can't see Apple doing that.

00:54:27 ◼   ► You can't touch that.

00:54:28 ◼   ► - You can't touch this.

00:54:29 ◼   ► Well no you could, but it just takes more power.

00:54:32 ◼   ► It wouldn't respond to your touch in real time.

00:54:34 ◼   ► Like that's the whole point of touch is that you feel like you're directly manipulating

00:54:37 ◼   ► something.

00:54:38 ◼   ► And all the mockups are like some big curved glass screen that looks like you're wearing

00:54:41 ◼   ► like the bracelet equivalent of Cinderella's glass slippers.

00:54:45 ◼   ► Right?

00:54:46 ◼   ► Let me just make something that's like solid glass, put it on my wrist so I can bang my

00:54:50 ◼   ► wrist on the table and have shards of glass dry.

00:54:52 ◼   ► Anyway, you know, that's what the thing is.

00:54:55 ◼   ► But what would you do with that?

00:54:57 ◼   ► Can you imagine trying to swipe a smooth glass--

00:55:00 ◼   ► half the time you'd end up rotating it around your wrist.

00:55:03 ◼   ► Where are you swiping anyway?

00:55:04 ◼   ► Are you swiping longitudinally or across it?

00:55:07 ◼   ► And how could you use an interface?

00:55:09 ◼   ► If you've tried to use any of the recent iPod Nanos, where

00:55:12 ◼   ► they have touch screens in a tiny little space,

00:55:14 ◼   ► there's not much that you can do reasonably

00:55:17 ◼   ► with a screen that size.

00:55:19 ◼   ► And if you look at smartwatches that exist today

00:55:21 ◼   ► from other people, in order to have

00:55:24 ◼   ► any kind of interactivity on a smartwatch,

00:55:26 ◼   ► It has to be pretty big and bulky, and that's not cool.

00:55:29 ◼   ► It's not sexy, it is not appealing, it is a wearable, certainly, but it's a wearable

00:55:35 ◼   ► that nobody wants to wear.

00:55:39 ◼   ► And these things that are catching on big time, things like fuel bands and Fitbits,

00:55:43 ◼   ► they're smaller, they're subtle.

00:55:45 ◼   ► You don't have to take them out constantly.

00:55:47 ◼   ► You can leave them tucked under your sleeve or clipped to your bra or in your pants pocket

00:55:51 ◼   ► or something.

00:55:52 ◼   ► and leave them hidden away, because wearing electronics

00:55:56 ◼   ► is just not cool.

00:55:58 ◼   ► What they start looking like is, I guess,

00:55:59 ◼   ► they start with Lance Armstrong, maybe breast cancer.

00:56:02 ◼   ► Like all those things that people

00:56:03 ◼   ► would wear as showing their support for some cause,

00:56:07 ◼   ► or those little color--

00:56:09 ◼   ► the fuel bands look so much like the whatever, Lance Armstrong

00:56:13 ◼   ► bracelet things, or the breast cancer awareness pink things.

00:56:18 ◼   ► And we've just sort of accepted that you'll

00:56:20 ◼   ► have a regular outfit, and then there'll

00:56:22 ◼   ► be this other thing that you wear that doesn't call attention to itself and that you don't

00:56:25 ◼   ► spend much time interacting with. And those were totally non-functional, they were just

00:56:28 ◼   ► pieces of rubber that had words stamped into them. They increased awareness, John. Yeah,

00:56:33 ◼   ► right. And now we have one that at least has stuff inside it that at the end of the day

00:56:37 ◼   ► I get to count my steps or whatever and you know, I just again, we should get someone

00:56:42 ◼   ► here with a medical sensing expert to say, they could probably tell us exactly, look

00:56:46 ◼   ► if you want, you know, pulse, this is the only place you can get it and this is how.

00:56:50 ◼   ► if you want blood oxygenation.

00:56:53 ◼   ► This is the only places you can get it and this is how,

00:56:54 ◼   ► because these answers are all out there,

00:56:56 ◼   ► we just don't happen to know them.

00:56:57 ◼   ► - Alright, so let's talk about OS X 10.10.

00:57:02 ◼   ► 10.

00:57:05 ◼   ► - La OSS, Ferrari La Ferrari.

00:57:08 ◼   ► - Yeah, I feel like Super Troopers with the Meow game.

00:57:10 ◼   ► Anyway, so I think we can round up our show with iOS 8,

00:57:15 ◼   ► but let's start with OS X, God, I'm already stumbling.

00:57:20 ◼   ► OS X, 10.10. What do we expect? To me, I expect some sort of visual refresh.

00:57:25 ◼   ► I don't think it'll be full bore iOS 7, but I think it'll be somewhere in that direction.

00:57:30 ◼   ► I expect it's going to have another name of a place I haven't heard of that's awkwardly pluralized.

00:57:35 ◼   ► I don't think it'll be awkwardly pluralized, but I do think that it will have--

00:57:40 ◼   ► Maybe it will end with like "ed" or "ing."

00:57:44 ◼   ► I'm going to go on record and say it will be a place that we recognize, even as--

00:57:45 ◼   ► Even as non Californians and in a place where we aren't on vacation all the time as much as I was rooting for the cat names

00:57:52 ◼   ► to end

00:57:52 ◼   ► Now that they have I realized that with their new theme

00:57:56 ◼   ► It's basically impossible to try to guess

00:57:58 ◼   ► You know what?

00:57:58 ◼   ► I mean like the certain number of big cats and they started to work their way through them

00:58:01 ◼   ► So it became a fun game to guess what the next one would be but there's a lot of cities in California

00:58:06 ◼   ► So forget about that a lot of places in California and yeah, there are the prominent ones we can all think of you know

00:58:11 ◼   ► Yosemite San Francisco whatever but like

00:58:14 ◼   ► Considering they started with Mavericks, it seems like they're going obscure.

00:58:17 ◼   ► I agree.

00:58:18 ◼   ► The other thing, this is very minor, but I really, really want, and I believe this is

00:58:23 ◼   ► a combination of iOS 8 and OS 10, I really want AirDrop between my iDevices and my computer.

00:58:32 ◼   ► Can we have that please?

00:58:33 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm still emailing pictures to myself because it's faster than everything else.

00:58:37 ◼   ► Yeah, it's so, so ridiculous.

00:58:39 ◼   ► I still email so much crap to myself.

00:58:41 ◼   ► It's really embarrassing.

00:58:42 ◼   ► Yeah, I'd really like that and I'd like a mail app that works properly.

00:58:46 ◼   ► Although I like Airmail quite a bit, but I'd like the standard out of the box mail app

00:58:50 ◼   ► to work again.

00:58:51 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm thinking about 10.10, besides the visual refresh, which I think is enough to,

00:58:56 ◼   ► you know, that will obviously be like the headliner feature of this release.

00:59:00 ◼   ► It's like, now we finally have time to revise how things look and we'll all either love

00:59:04 ◼   ► it or complain about it or depending on what they do.

00:59:08 ◼   ► But that's not, I mean that's a big change and it could affect applications in profound

00:59:12 ◼   ► ways.

00:59:13 ◼   ► But in terms of the underpinnings, that's not a big, like I don't think they're doing

00:59:17 ◼   ► anything to underpinnings to enable this new look or anything.

00:59:19 ◼   ► So then like what is this OS about?

00:59:21 ◼   ► Is it just a visual refresh?

00:59:23 ◼   ► What features, you know, what needs to be done to the Core OS and what could be done?

00:59:28 ◼   ► Will they continue to just, I mean I'm sure they'll make things better in little bits,

00:59:34 ◼   ► but like last year the big theme was power saving and they had lots of technology to

00:59:37 ◼   ► support that. This year the big theme will be visual refresh, but there's no

00:59:41 ◼   ► technology to support that really. I mean obviously new file system is evergreen

00:59:46 ◼   ► and they can bring that out anytime they want, but I have no expectations.

00:59:51 ◼   ► Everything else about the OS, like you can point to individual parts of the OS

00:59:55 ◼   ► that can be tightened up and made better, but Mavericks, with the exception of the

01:00:00 ◼   ► applications, because a lot of if you use the Apple Mail, you know, I feel sorry for

01:00:04 ◼   ► for you, but even before, I haven't been a fan of that app for a long time.

01:00:09 ◼   ► But that makes you think Mavericks was a terrible release, but in terms of the Core OS, very,

01:00:14 ◼   ► very few problems.

01:00:15 ◼   ► I upgraded Mavericks everywhere really early, and there just have not been a lot of weird

01:00:20 ◼   ► things.

01:00:21 ◼   ► Not even like weird application compatibility things.

01:00:22 ◼   ► And we're only on point three.

01:00:23 ◼   ► We went ten, one, two, and three since last year.

01:00:26 ◼   ► Yeah, I would say overall, with the exception of my clock always being fast, which I think

01:00:32 ◼   ► 10.9.3 might have fixed. It's really solid. I mean, I've always wondered, well not always,

01:00:40 ◼   ► I've wondered recently if it will ever be worth it for them to modernize AppKit and

01:00:47 ◼   ► maybe not replace it with UIKit but bring a lot of the UIKit lessons back into AppKit

01:00:53 ◼   ► because right now if you want to write a GUI app for iOS and Mac there's very little GUI

01:00:59 ◼   ► code you can share because AppKit just works very, very differently than UIKit. It has

01:01:05 ◼   ► a lot of legacy baggage and I don't know enough about it to really talk that much more about

01:01:10 ◼   ► it besides this very high level overview, but I've often wished like, you know, I know

01:01:15 ◼   ► how to develop for iOS pretty well, now I know UIKit really well, I don't know anything

01:01:20 ◼   ► about AppKit. I just know it's very different and there's a lot of things that don't work

01:01:22 ◼   ► the same way and aren't as nice or aren't as simple. And so it would be, I would love

01:01:27 ◼   ► it if they would bring a lot of UI kit, the parts that make sense

01:01:31 ◼   ► obviously certain things aren't going to make sense outside of the full screen touch environment

01:01:35 ◼   ► but bring over the parts that make sense with things like how

01:01:39 ◼   ► views are dealt with, all the layer backed stuff that you can

01:01:43 ◼   ► do all that in AppKit but often times it's not the default or it's

01:01:47 ◼   ► hard or it's different or it's somehow tricky. If they would bring

01:01:51 ◼   ► some of that development framework and when you're doing a major visual refresh that would be

01:01:55 ◼   ► a pretty good time to do it, I think.

01:01:58 ◼   ► That would go a long way.

01:01:59 ◼   ► Unfortunately, I think that's very unrealistic

01:02:02 ◼   ► because it just seems like they're stretched so thin

01:02:05 ◼   ► and the Mac is not that high of a priority

01:02:08 ◼   ► that would justify all those development resources

01:02:11 ◼   ► if they're also having to work on iOS 8, iPad version of it,

01:02:15 ◼   ► which is still terrible, plus whatever else

01:02:20 ◼   ► engineering resources are being devoted to

01:02:22 ◼   ► for things like new categories,

01:02:23 ◼   ► whether it's Apple TV or something.

01:02:25 ◼   ► You know, we know from hints and bits and pieces

01:02:29 ◼   ► here and there, we know that a lot of people at Apple

01:02:31 ◼   ► are working on something secret that is relatively new,

01:02:34 ◼   ► or relatively recent, but we still don't know what that is.

01:02:36 ◼   ► So there's something else draining

01:02:39 ◼   ► engineering resources at Apple.

01:02:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, I hate that phenomenon,

01:02:42 ◼   ► like that, as far as we can tell from the outside,

01:02:45 ◼   ► that this happens inside Apple,

01:02:47 ◼   ► that something big, new, and important comes,

01:02:49 ◼   ► and that team like, you know,

01:02:51 ◼   ► harvests the best engineers from other teams,

01:02:54 ◼   ► Leaving them with the lesser people or the people who didn't want to move.

01:02:59 ◼   ► And those people go off and disappear for a while and work on some new thing.

01:03:02 ◼   ► That's fun and makes for good articles after the fact.

01:03:05 ◼   ► But it's kind of like, what if I like the products

01:03:08 ◼   ► that those guys used to be working on?

01:03:10 ◼   ► Now they're just going to get fewer resources.

01:03:12 ◼   ► But I think you're right about the main thing preventing--

01:03:16 ◼   ► like the reason we don't have parity.

01:03:18 ◼   ► Microsoft's been leaning on this recently.

01:03:20 ◼   ► Like, hey, you can write a GUI app and you can write it in Windows 8

01:03:22 ◼   ► and you can run it on tablets and you can run it on phones.

01:03:24 ◼   ► and it's like the same app with minor changes or whatever.

01:03:27 ◼   ► And Apple doesn't have that.

01:03:28 ◼   ► And I think it's mostly just because the Mac's not

01:03:30 ◼   ► that big a platform compared to iOS.

01:03:32 ◼   ► That's always going to be the thing when you're

01:03:33 ◼   ► trying to prioritize resources.

01:03:35 ◼   ► Well, how many iPhones did we sell last year

01:03:36 ◼   ► and how many Macs?

01:03:38 ◼   ► And they are modernizing AppKit.

01:03:40 ◼   ► Didn't they make a new table system that doesn't use NSL

01:03:43 ◼   ► a couple of years back?

01:03:45 ◼   ► It's not the same as like, so here you go,

01:03:46 ◼   ► here's UIKit on the Mac.

01:03:47 ◼   ► But the worst warts get covered over,

01:03:50 ◼   ► but it's just the people who are left there working on AppKit

01:03:54 ◼   ► are doing that and they don't have resources. The iOS 8 team is obviously

01:03:58 ◼   ► much bigger. I mean you're right, as part of the visual refresh, the visual

01:04:02 ◼   ► refresh includes like, especially if it looks a lot like iOS 7 or the visual

01:04:07 ◼   ► refresh relies more on layer back controls, maybe it's a time to revise a

01:04:11 ◼   ► few more APIs here and there, but I don't know. I'm having trouble thinking of core

01:04:16 ◼   ► OS features unless you're thinking of something, I mean not that I think it

01:04:20 ◼   ► doesn't need them, I'm trying to think of features that Apple would put the

01:04:23 ◼   ► resources towards. Like the kernel and the Core OS, like they could do lots of

01:04:27 ◼   ► interesting things there, but what's their motivation for that, right? I guess

01:04:30 ◼   ► their motivation would be we want to do this because it will benefit, you know,

01:04:34 ◼   ► the Core OS stuff benefits iOS and OS X, so if they change the kernel, you know,

01:04:38 ◼   ► the Mac would just reap that benefit as a side effect of doing that.

01:04:43 ◼   ► Right, like kernel stuff and Core OS and shared frameworks, you know,

01:04:46 ◼   ► things like, you know, from things like Core Animation all the way down to newer stuff,

01:04:50 ◼   ► like Grand Central Dispatch and Auto Layout, all these major advances that come to both

01:04:55 ◼   ► platforms because they're lower level, that will continue. That'll be fine. But it's

01:05:02 ◼   ► the high-level UI stuff that is so radically different between the two platforms. And obviously,

01:05:09 ◼   ► as I said, to some degree it should be because they're two different interaction paradigms,

01:05:13 ◼   ► but there's a lot of stuff that could be shared that isn't, only because of legacy

01:05:17 ◼   ► concerns it seems. But I think you're right, I think it will never be worth it to Apple

01:05:23 ◼   ► to invest their engineering resources, which are very limited and strained, which I think

01:05:28 ◼   ► is a big problem, but to invest their limited and strained engineering resources into this

01:05:33 ◼   ► platform that is such a small part of their business these days. Which is, again, I think

01:05:38 ◼   ► it's a shame and I think that's wrong. I think that's bad prioritization, but that's probably

01:05:43 ◼   ► what they're going to do, 'cause we see that

01:05:46 ◼   ► as much as we want Apple to have more resources,

01:05:48 ◼   ► for whatever reason, they just keep not having them.

01:05:51 ◼   ► And they just seem to have a very small

01:05:55 ◼   ► pool of engineering ability that they selectively choose.

01:05:59 ◼   ► That's why some of the applications,

01:06:02 ◼   ► the people in the chat were talking about

01:06:03 ◼   ► how long it's been since Aperture's been updated.

01:06:05 ◼   ► And Aperture has its own,

01:06:06 ◼   ► it's Aperture has always been dysfunctional in this regard.

01:06:09 ◼   ► But it just seems like things that are not the new hotness at Apple just get ignored

01:06:16 ◼   ► for years with nothing being done to them for years because there's nobody working

01:06:21 ◼   ► on them.

01:06:22 ◼   ► Or there's one person responsible for maintaining it while the rest of the team was sent off

01:06:26 ◼   ► to do something newer and more exciting that's some new product or that's going to get

01:06:32 ◼   ► them in the news again.

01:06:33 ◼   ► And it's a shame because there's a lot of Apple stuff that really could use some

01:06:37 ◼   ► some attention and some love.

01:06:39 ◼   ► And what happened with iWork having gone so long

01:06:42 ◼   ► with no update and then what feels like a pretty rushed

01:06:45 ◼   ► update that happened last fall that messed everything up.

01:06:49 ◼   ► This happens all across Apple's entire product line,

01:06:53 ◼   ► both hardware and software, but especially in software.

01:06:56 ◼   ► And you can just tell there's so much stuff in software

01:06:59 ◼   ► where it just seems like no one's working on it.

01:07:01 ◼   ► And that's probably the case,

01:07:02 ◼   ► 'cause Apple's teams are kept pretty small.

01:07:05 ◼   ► Yeah, on the file system front, the only hope I have is the file system is the type of thing,

01:07:09 ◼   ► I mean, they could have been working on it for years without me hearing about it, I suppose,

01:07:13 ◼   ► but a file system is something I don't think you can develop between two major releases.

01:07:18 ◼   ► Like it's a multi-year project, you have to be super careful, you have to maintain all

01:07:21 ◼   ► your semantics, and presumably you're adding value so there'd be new features to deal with

01:07:25 ◼   ► as well.

01:07:26 ◼   ► And yes, Apple desperately needs a new file system, but they don't seem to be working

01:07:29 ◼   ► on one as far as I'm aware.

01:07:31 ◼   ► But they do have core storage, and as I pointed out in my past OS X reviews, a lot of the

01:07:35 ◼   ► things that core storage already does on Macs today are very similar to the things that

01:07:40 ◼   ► a file system would need to do.

01:07:42 ◼   ► And so it's possible that what they've done for core storage could slowly continue to

01:07:46 ◼   ► evolve its way towards a system whereby the disk appears to be HFS+, but most of the actual

01:07:52 ◼   ► management of blocks on disk and APIs and everything, it ends up being core storage

01:07:58 ◼   ► with a thin veneer of HFS+ over it.

01:08:02 ◼   ► Which is kind of, I mean, if you use core storage now,

01:08:05 ◼   ► that's not the lay, I don't know.

01:08:07 ◼   ► I don't know how they can manage the layering

01:08:09 ◼   ► between those things because, like I said,

01:08:12 ◼   ► core storage keeps track of where things are in disk

01:08:14 ◼   ► and manages blocks and does all these interesting things

01:08:16 ◼   ► and is actually one of the more interesting

01:08:19 ◼   ► modern file system type things that Apple has done

01:08:21 ◼   ► in recent years to enable things like the new file vault,

01:08:23 ◼   ► which is so much better than the old one.

01:08:26 ◼   ► But you know, this HFS Plus is still sitting there, still having crappy features, still

01:08:31 ◼   ► corrupting itself, still being its own cranky self.

01:08:40 ◼   ► And so, HFS Plus is on iOS devices too.

01:08:44 ◼   ► I'm always talking about this in the context of the Mac, but all your iPhones are running

01:08:47 ◼   ► HFS Plus as well.

01:08:48 ◼   ► I think they actually...

01:08:49 ◼   ► Just restore your phone and quit all your apps.

01:08:50 ◼   ► Do they run the case sensitive version of it?

01:08:52 ◼   ► I forget if they still did that or if they ever did that.

01:08:54 ◼   ► But anyway, a new file system or a lack of a file system or like a native core storage

01:08:59 ◼   ► against NAND or something, that would benefit iOS devices.

01:09:02 ◼   ► And so I think that's got to happen eventually because that's Apple's bread and butter, right?

01:09:07 ◼   ► It's not like, oh, this is just a Mac thing, it's never going to happen.

01:09:09 ◼   ► No, it's an entire Apple platform thing.

01:09:11 ◼   ► Everything uses HFS+.

01:09:13 ◼   ► And you know, there's performance to be had, there are features to be added, and there's

01:09:18 ◼   ► reliability to be improved.

01:09:20 ◼   ► Every axis along, you know, Apple can improve in this regard.

01:09:23 ◼   ► and none of them, I guess Apple doesn't think any of them are critical.

01:09:26 ◼   ► Well, it could be more reliable, but it's reliable enough.

01:09:28 ◼   ► Well, it could have better performance, but the performance is good enough.

01:09:31 ◼   ► You know, well, we could have more features, but the features we have are good enough.

01:09:34 ◼   ► They can keep saying that, but eventually it's going to not be true, and I hope they

01:09:37 ◼   ► don't, you know, this is not like a new language, an API thing where they have to start 20 years

01:09:43 ◼   ► ahead of time, but this is like a three-year project, easy.

01:09:46 ◼   ► I mean, we'll see what happens.

01:09:49 ◼   ► There's gonna have to be a time where the file system changes, and I'm a little scared

01:09:54 ◼   ► that if the file system does change that you'll just quit this podcast because you'll have

01:09:58 ◼   ► no reason to complain about it anymore.

01:09:59 ◼   ► That seems unlikely.

01:10:00 ◼   ► Yeah, I know, I know.

01:10:03 ◼   ► Anything else on the new Mavericks that won't be called Mavericks?

01:10:07 ◼   ► I'm really curious to just see what they do with it.

01:10:09 ◼   ► I mean, like, you know, besides visual refresh, OS X is—it's pretty mature at this point.

01:10:16 ◼   ► You know, the releases add less and less generally over time.

01:10:20 ◼   ► If only there was somebody we could ask to verify that.

01:10:22 ◼   ► But it seems like, obviously, it's a mature product.

01:10:26 ◼   ► The gains to be had are smaller and smaller in each release,

01:10:29 ◼   ► especially by speeding up to releases happening every year,

01:10:32 ◼   ► as opposed to before where it was like every 18 to 24 months.

01:10:36 ◼   ► Well, they still keep doing-- that's the thing, though,

01:10:39 ◼   ► with the yearly releases.

01:10:40 ◼   ► They still keep doing stuff to the internals

01:10:42 ◼   ► that I think I would never want to risk in a yearly release.

01:10:44 ◼   ► If you look at what they did with the power saving stuff and the new APIs, they're always

01:10:50 ◼   ► monkeying with, even if it's just screwing with Launch D again.

01:10:55 ◼   ► They're adding minor features and doing minor tweaks and minor improvements, but they're

01:10:58 ◼   ► to parts of the system that if you screw up in any way, nothing works.

01:11:05 ◼   ► Even though they're not big changes, every year they do that.

01:11:08 ◼   ► They did it in Snow Leopard too, like, "Oh, no new features," but they screw with everything

01:11:12 ◼   ► in there.

01:11:13 ◼   ► I think the CoreOS team does a great job with it.

01:11:15 ◼   ► They're like, you know what, lunch is there and it works,

01:11:17 ◼   ► but it could be better.

01:11:18 ◼   ► And let's add these features and tighten this up

01:11:20 ◼   ► and make it use less memory and do this.

01:11:21 ◼   ► And it's like, those features,

01:11:24 ◼   ► all the way down to the kernel,

01:11:25 ◼   ► if you mess up even the littlest bit of that,

01:11:27 ◼   ► it destroys the stability and reliability of the entire OS.

01:11:30 ◼   ► And Mavericks, I think they did a good job.

01:11:32 ◼   ► They didn't do that, they screwed up the applications.

01:11:34 ◼   ► Like mail and Gmail got all screwed up.

01:11:35 ◼   ► But that's like, I think end users

01:11:38 ◼   ► are more concerned about that.

01:11:40 ◼   ► Like they're like, oh, Mavericks sucks 'cause my mail broke.

01:11:42 ◼   ► and I understand that perspective,

01:11:43 ◼   ► but from my perspective, I think of the OS

01:11:45 ◼   ► as the core OS, and they continue to bravely make changes

01:11:50 ◼   ► to the core OS on a yearly schedule

01:11:53 ◼   ► in areas that are super risky

01:11:54 ◼   ► and manage to not screw it up.

01:11:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's true.

01:11:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, I was actually surprised

01:11:58 ◼   ► with all the Mavericks kernel changes,

01:12:01 ◼   ► changing kernel timings of things,

01:12:03 ◼   ► that sounds like a pretty risky thing to do,

01:12:06 ◼   ► but they did it, and it seemed like it was flawless.

01:12:08 ◼   ► I mean, it seemed like it caused no noticeable problems.

01:12:11 ◼   ► It was really quite solid.

01:12:13 ◼   ► - Or even your bad clock, like they screwed with NTPD,

01:12:16 ◼   ► like they screwed with how they do time or whatever.

01:12:18 ◼   ► Like that's the type of thing where like,

01:12:20 ◼   ► why did they change it?

01:12:20 ◼   ► Was it broken before?

01:12:21 ◼   ► Well, it's no, but someone said they could do it,

01:12:23 ◼   ► got a lot of it in terms of energy saving.

01:12:25 ◼   ► Well, you know, let's do it so we can, you know,

01:12:27 ◼   ► if we're doing things repeatedly,

01:12:28 ◼   ► we have, they had all these new instrumentation

01:12:30 ◼   ► to see who's waking up the CPU and stuff,

01:12:32 ◼   ► and like, oh, this stupid thing's waking up the CPU.

01:12:35 ◼   ► And like, so they change it.

01:12:36 ◼   ► And that's an example of where they screwed it up

01:12:38 ◼   ► and, you know, had bugs in it or whatever,

01:12:40 ◼   ► but everything's up for grads.

01:12:42 ◼   ► If you run PS and see all those bazillion processes,

01:12:45 ◼   ► those are all things that they continue to improve.

01:12:48 ◼   ► And one of the good ones is I haven't seen

01:12:50 ◼   ► the stupid blurry icon bug that has been haunting OS X

01:12:52 ◼   ► for years and years.

01:12:54 ◼   ► Did you guys get this one?

01:12:55 ◼   ► Where all of a sudden your doc icons

01:12:56 ◼   ► will look like they're half res

01:12:58 ◼   ► and be all pixelated and zoomed up?

01:13:00 ◼   ► - I've never seen that.

01:13:01 ◼   ► - I would occasionally get that with just one,

01:13:03 ◼   ► like one app would be half res

01:13:04 ◼   ► and the next time I'd launch it,

01:13:05 ◼   ► it would update it and be correct.

01:13:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, but it would spread like a virus,

01:13:08 ◼   ► you'd open a window and they'd all be, but some of them we messed up and some of them

01:13:11 ◼   ► be good. That bug was in the OS for so long and from people I talked to at App, they're

01:13:17 ◼   ► like, "Oh, Mavericks will actually fix that." And fingers crossed since upgrading to Mavericks,

01:13:20 ◼   ► I have not seen that bug yet. And so that makes me happy because someone, you know,

01:13:24 ◼   ► the icon services thing or, you know, it's like, it's like when they update the font

01:13:27 ◼   ► daemon or whatever, there's tons of processes there and they keep improving them. And I

01:13:31 ◼   ► like that. I just get a little bit nervous about it on a yearly schedule.

01:13:35 ◼   ► One thing that struck me as a little weird is we haven't heard very much chatter about

01:13:39 ◼   ► OS 10, 10.10.

01:13:41 ◼   ► There's been a lot of talk about Healthbook, about all the other things that may be coming

01:13:46 ◼   ► in iOS.

01:13:47 ◼   ► And I know that iOS is the darling of everyone's eye at the moment, but there's been very

01:13:52 ◼   ► little talk that I've heard about 10.10.

01:13:55 ◼   ► And that's a little scary if there's not much happening, but kind of awesome if they

01:14:01 ◼   ► really finally did double down on secrecy.

01:14:04 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:14:04 ◼   ► We'll see.

01:14:05 ◼   ► Well, all the things we listed would be big.

01:14:08 ◼   ► Visual refresh is going to be big.

01:14:09 ◼   ► That's what everyone's going to write about, right?

01:14:11 ◼   ► UI kit coming to the Mac would be big.

01:14:13 ◼   ► That would be a headliner feature.

01:14:14 ◼   ► Hey, all UI OS developers, now suddenly you

01:14:16 ◼   ► have an easy way to make a Mac app,

01:14:17 ◼   ► and we want to encourage you to do that because, you know,

01:14:19 ◼   ► the halo effect to get the Mac more popular, right?

01:14:22 ◼   ► New file system, core storage stuff would be big among nerds.

01:14:25 ◼   ► Like, there's plenty of areas that they could put on there

01:14:28 ◼   ► that they could put those bullet points on the website,

01:14:30 ◼   ► and everyone would be like, wow, Mac OS X Sausalito is great.

01:14:34 ◼   ► Is that in California? I don't even know.

01:14:36 ◼   ► I believe it is.

01:14:37 ◼   ► So to that end, before we start the IOS 8 talk, while you guys were going back and forth for a few minutes,

01:14:42 ◼   ► and Jon, you were making a couple of really brilliant points before I had the chance to make them,

01:14:46 ◼   ► and so I could have sounded brilliant, dammit, but I was looking at the schedule for WWDC,

01:14:53 ◼   ► and I was digging through it and looking at the amount or the categories that each of these sessions are a part of.

01:15:02 ◼   ► are part of because if you look at the schedule, even the ones that are TBA to be announced,

01:15:09 ◼   ► they still have the category listed.

01:15:11 ◼   ► So I looked and by quick count, as I'm still trying to pay attention to what you guys are

01:15:15 ◼   ► saying, there are 35 frameworks sessions, 17 media sessions, and 19 tool sessions.

01:15:23 ◼   ► Additionally, I thought, well, let me look at what's in Presidio, which if you don't

01:15:27 ◼   ► know is the biggest room within Moscone the way Apple sets it up.

01:15:33 ◼   ► And so really important things that are going to be really, really popular for everyone

01:15:37 ◼   ► to hear tend to be in Presidio, for example, the keynote.

01:15:41 ◼   ► So I recounted, and among the things that are not yet announced, so the things that

01:15:48 ◼   ► are still to be announced, there are six framework sessions in Presidio and eight media sessions

01:15:55 ◼   ► in Presidio.

01:15:57 ◼   ► And I didn't look at tools, crap.

01:16:00 ◼   ► But I think there are eight tool sessions in Presidio.

01:16:03 ◼   ► I did not look to see if any of them were to be announced.

01:16:06 ◼   ► But that's actually, it looks like at least half of them are to be announced.

01:16:10 ◼   ► Almost all of them.

01:16:11 ◼   ► All the tools ones.

01:16:12 ◼   ► That's a lot of tools and a lot of media and a lot of framework stuff all to be announced

01:16:18 ◼   ► in Presidio.

01:16:19 ◼   ► And it makes me wonder, is something big going on that we just don't realize more than

01:16:23 ◼   ► just a visual refresh?

01:16:24 ◼   ► What is the media category?

01:16:26 ◼   ► Look at the announced ones in the media category.

01:16:28 ◼   ► What the hell is the media category?

01:16:30 ◼   ► Probably too long to do live, but we

01:16:31 ◼   ► could look at last year's, where there's

01:16:33 ◼   ► nothing to be announced.

01:16:34 ◼   ► We know everything last year.

01:16:35 ◼   ► Because a lot of the sessions get repeated,

01:16:36 ◼   ► or at least something similar will get repeated.

01:16:38 ◼   ► Every year, there's going to be stuff

01:16:40 ◼   ► about UI, networking, accessibility,

01:16:43 ◼   ► working with media, working with Safari and web technologies.

01:16:46 ◼   ► Like, there's certain sessions that just

01:16:48 ◼   ► get repeated every year.

01:16:49 ◼   ► And so we can kind of look at that

01:16:51 ◼   ► to maybe eliminate some stuff.

01:16:52 ◼   ► But it certainly does sound like media

01:16:56 ◼   ► is being emphasized here.

01:16:58 ◼   ► - Oh, hold on, hold on.

01:16:59 ◼   ► I got that backwards, I'm sorry.

01:17:01 ◼   ► There are eight tool sessions

01:17:02 ◼   ► that are unannounced in Presidio.

01:17:04 ◼   ► I got my wires a little crossed.

01:17:06 ◼   ► So there are definitely some media ones as well,

01:17:08 ◼   ► but it was tools that I should have said instead of media.

01:17:11 ◼   ► I apologize.

01:17:12 ◼   ► So there are six new framework sessions in Presidio,

01:17:17 ◼   ► and I believe there are eight new media sessions in Presidio.

01:17:21 ◼   ► Something along those lines.

01:17:22 ◼   ► No matter how you, god darn it, I said media again,

01:17:25 ◼   ► tools, sessions, I'll get this right one day.

01:17:27 ◼   ► So, now that I've just completely confused everyone,

01:17:30 ◼   ► including myself, suffice it to say,

01:17:32 ◼   ► there's a lot of tools and a lot of frameworks

01:17:33 ◼   ► action going on, and to me, that's indicative

01:17:36 ◼   ► of something major and something big,

01:17:37 ◼   ► and something we're not thinking of.

01:17:38 ◼   ► - No, then it also could be like Marco said,

01:17:41 ◼   ► that every one of the descriptions says,

01:17:43 ◼   ► find out how to use the new blah

01:17:44 ◼   ► with iOS 8 and OS X Irvine.

01:17:48 ◼   ► - Right, I wouldn't read too much into,

01:17:51 ◼   ► into anything regarding the sessions at the conference

01:17:54 ◼   ► because it's so arbitrary, the categories are so large.

01:17:59 ◼   ► It isn't like the category is like OpenGL.

01:18:03 ◼   ► It isn't that specific.

01:18:04 ◼   ► It's media technologies or something.

01:18:06 ◼   ► You know, they're so broad and we're not dealing

01:18:10 ◼   ► with a massive data set here.

01:18:11 ◼   ► We're dealing with how many sessions are there?

01:18:13 ◼   ► Like 60 or something, like 100?

01:18:15 ◼   ► There aren't that many, it isn't that big of a set.

01:18:19 ◼   ► And there's not that much signal to the noise here.

01:18:22 ◼   ► Yeah, the only thing I can think of

01:18:23 ◼   ► is that when you do a visual refresh, like I did with iOS 7,

01:18:26 ◼   ► think of all the sessions that were

01:18:27 ◼   ► about how to make your app not look like ass in iOS 7.

01:18:32 ◼   ► Like it was how to get your views out

01:18:34 ◼   ► from under the status bar, Casey.

01:18:36 ◼   ► You can go to that session this week.

01:18:38 ◼   ► [LAUGHTER]

01:18:40 ◼   ► How to use the tint color and all that.

01:18:42 ◼   ► There was tons of sessions, because from the outside,

01:18:46 ◼   ► it's like, oh, everything looks different.

01:18:48 ◼   ► from a developer it's like, oh how am I gonna, you know,

01:18:50 ◼   ► if I have custom controls,

01:18:51 ◼   ► how are we gonna make them look nice?

01:18:52 ◼   ► Is there a new way to do these controls?

01:18:54 ◼   ► How do I deal with text size changing?

01:18:56 ◼   ► Like, any kind of visual refresh has tons of sessions

01:19:00 ◼   ► for the nitty gritty of like developers

01:19:01 ◼   ► to figure out how to make their apps look and work right.

01:19:04 ◼   ► So if OS X's getting a big visual refresh,

01:19:06 ◼   ► I would wager that, well I don't know these days actually,

01:19:09 ◼   ► I was gonna say that,

01:19:10 ◼   ► does OS X have more custom controls than iOS?

01:19:14 ◼   ► Maybe, I don't know, like.

01:19:17 ◼   ► It has a lot more controls total for the whole set,

01:19:19 ◼   ► like built-in controls.

01:19:20 ◼   ► - Like people with a drawing their own things,

01:19:22 ◼   ► where you know, I don't know, I mean some people

01:19:24 ◼   ► aren't even using native controls at all,

01:19:26 ◼   ► like they're drawing their own UI entirely themselves,

01:19:29 ◼   ► so that's not a big deal, but like,

01:19:30 ◼   ► I can imagine a lot of the bulk,

01:19:32 ◼   ► it was, you know, we basically know

01:19:34 ◼   ► that OS X visual refresh is coming.

01:19:36 ◼   ► A lot of the sessions are about how to make your app

01:19:39 ◼   ► look right in this new look.

01:19:41 ◼   ► - Right, and you know, and Apple's design principles

01:19:45 ◼   ► in this new look, 'cause it isn't just gonna be,

01:19:46 ◼   ► you know, here's a new skin.

01:19:48 ◼   ► It's, you know, like last year, it's like,

01:19:49 ◼   ► all right, well, here's a new look,

01:19:51 ◼   ► but we also want you to think about this, this, and this,

01:19:53 ◼   ► and you know, it's actually like a rethinking

01:19:55 ◼   ► and a redesign rather than just a reskin.

01:19:58 ◼   ► - Although there's still that baffling session

01:19:59 ◼   ► from last year, I always have it as an introduction,

01:20:01 ◼   ► and there's a whole session about how to make your icons,

01:20:03 ◼   ► and all the example icons were like super skeuomorphic,

01:20:05 ◼   ► like things look like they were made out of yarn

01:20:07 ◼   ► with grass growing on it.

01:20:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, it was weird.

01:20:09 ◼   ► They actually even said at the beginning, like,

01:20:11 ◼   ► keep making your icons the old way.

01:20:13 ◼   ► Don't use the new style that we're using,

01:20:15 ◼   ► which was really weird.

01:20:17 ◼   ► I remember, I was in there, and I remember thinking

01:20:19 ◼   ► that was a very strange thing to say.

01:20:20 ◼   ► - And that's the way I think of the icon factory.

01:20:22 ◼   ► Craig was putting up samples of the Xscope,

01:20:24 ◼   ► like experimentations and speculative experimentations

01:20:29 ◼   ► of how might the Xscope icon look like

01:20:31 ◼   ► in a flatter OS X world.

01:20:33 ◼   ► And they did two little samples of them.

01:20:35 ◼   ► They look really good, but what is the message

01:20:37 ◼   ► gonna be from Apple?

01:20:38 ◼   ► Is it gonna be, are all the OS X icons gonna be redesigned

01:20:42 ◼   ► to be iOS 7 style or whatever the new look?

01:20:44 ◼   ► But then they're going to tell us to make our icons the same?

01:20:46 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:20:47 ◼   ► Anyway, visual changes cause lots of churn and lots of things

01:20:51 ◼   ► that developers have to deal with.

01:20:53 ◼   ► So that covers at least a lot of the OS X side of things.

01:20:56 ◼   ► We should get to iOS 8, though, because iOS 8 will probably not

01:20:59 ◼   ► be a visual overhaul.

01:21:00 ◼   ► And yet, I'm sure there will be lots of sessions about iOS 8.

01:21:03 ◼   ► All right, so what's coming in iOS 8?

01:21:06 ◼   ► So I really want-- and I'm not going to get it--

01:21:08 ◼   ► but I really want some sort of inter-app communication.

01:21:11 ◼   ► Because as I think John said last episode,

01:21:14 ◼   ► if you fix inter-app communication,

01:21:17 ◼   ► then you don't need panes of apps running simultaneously

01:21:21 ◼   ► on the iPad.

01:21:22 ◼   ► So much gets fixed with better inter-app communication,

01:21:25 ◼   ► but I'm not hopeful that it's going to happen.

01:21:28 ◼   ► Well, aren't they going to do the remote view controller

01:21:30 ◼   ► stuff that's private?

01:21:32 ◼   ► One would think.

01:21:33 ◼   ► They have that.

01:21:34 ◼   ► We don't know if they're going to do anything with it.

01:21:36 ◼   ► Right, well, they make it public.

01:21:38 ◼   ► That's the usual MO.

01:21:39 ◼   ► It's like it's private for a while,

01:21:40 ◼   ► then they get the kinks worked out and they make it public, or do you still think it's going to stay private?

01:21:44 ◼   ► Well, I think it will stay an implementation detail

01:21:48 ◼   ► of the system they actually make public if they do something like this. Because you can't

01:21:52 ◼   ► what are you going to do? You can't launch your own process on iOS, like that way.

01:21:56 ◼   ► You can't do that. So, I would love to see them fix

01:22:00 ◼   ► not necessarily what a lot of people would consider interapp communication. I mean, interapp communication

01:22:04 ◼   ► is kind of a broad topic. There's a lot involved there.

01:22:08 ◼   ► address a nice chunk of it by doing something like the Windows 8 contracts or the Android Intents or whether I have that backwards, I don't know.

01:22:14 ◼   ► No, you had that right. Okay. Something like that, one of those systems where apps can register and say,

01:22:20 ◼   ► "I can provide photos to anything that offers a photo picker." Or somebody else can say, "I'm a search provider, I can search for things."

01:22:26 ◼   ► Or, "I accept photos." Or, "I accept URLs." And then be integrated into any kind of share sheet that comes up in other apps.

01:22:34 ◼   ► that comes up in other apps.

01:22:36 ◼   ► That's the kind of thing I want,

01:22:38 ◼   ► because that doesn't require--

01:22:40 ◼   ► there was something-- I think I was on Grouber's site--

01:22:43 ◼   ► something in the last couple days where somebody was saying,

01:22:45 ◼   ► the problem is if you add something like the side

01:22:50 ◼   ► by side thing that was rumored last week,

01:22:53 ◼   ► if you add something like that, you're also adding complexity.

01:22:56 ◼   ► And if you do something like the contraction intent systems,

01:23:00 ◼   ► you're adding a lot of power without adding

01:23:01 ◼   ► a whole lot of user complexity.

01:23:03 ◼   ► And there are certainly challenges to those systems,

01:23:05 ◼   ► things that you'll have to control

01:23:07 ◼   ► and possible problems that could come up.

01:23:10 ◼   ► There's a lot of weird things with fraud and confusion

01:23:13 ◼   ► that Apple would have to look for at App Review,

01:23:15 ◼   ► but they can do that.

01:23:16 ◼   ► They have all the tools in place to do that already.

01:23:18 ◼   ► Like, they're set up for that.

01:23:20 ◼   ► So I don't think that's necessarily gonna be a big problem.

01:23:22 ◼   ► I would just love to see them address that,

01:23:24 ◼   ► even if all they do is rip off

01:23:26 ◼   ► what Windows Phone or Android does,

01:23:28 ◼   ► or take bits and pieces from both.

01:23:31 ◼   ► That would be amazing.

01:23:32 ◼   ► that would be so much better than we have now

01:23:34 ◼   ► and that would enable so many third party app capabilities

01:23:39 ◼   ► that either weren't possible before

01:23:41 ◼   ► or were really clunky and rare before.

01:23:43 ◼   ► Like right now in Overcast, I have a thing

01:23:45 ◼   ► where if you tap a URL, what do you do with it?

01:23:48 ◼   ► And I have an open in Safari activity,

01:23:51 ◼   ► I have an open in Chrome activity

01:23:52 ◼   ► only because I wrote an open in Chrome activity.

01:23:54 ◼   ► It would be better if Chrome could just say,

01:23:58 ◼   ► I can accept URLs from anything that shares URLs

01:24:01 ◼   ► and then I bring up the sheet and I give it a URL

01:24:03 ◼   ► and it shows me a Chrome button.

01:24:05 ◼   ► They already have most of the pieces in place

01:24:07 ◼   ► to do that already.

01:24:08 ◼   ► That's been there since iOS 6

01:24:10 ◼   ► with the whole UI activity system.

01:24:11 ◼   ► It's almost all there already.

01:24:14 ◼   ► And the impression I got when poking around

01:24:18 ◼   ► back when iOS 6 was released two years ago,

01:24:20 ◼   ► the impression I got, hint hint from people,

01:24:23 ◼   ► is that that kind of system was discussed or in progress

01:24:28 ◼   ► and was canceled or was delayed.

01:24:30 ◼   ► And you can look at the UI activity system

01:24:34 ◼   ► and you can see, okay, this is obviously intended

01:24:36 ◼   ► for something like this, and the support for things

01:24:39 ◼   ► like remote view controllers.

01:24:41 ◼   ► The pieces are all there.

01:24:43 ◼   ► It's just a matter of doing a little bit more

01:24:45 ◼   ► to expose it as an API.

01:24:46 ◼   ► And certainly there's challenges.

01:24:49 ◼   ► There's a pretty big tools challenge

01:24:53 ◼   ► and code design structure challenge with,

01:24:56 ◼   ► "All right, well if I offer a remote view controller,

01:25:00 ◼   ► how do you present that to the user?

01:25:02 ◼   ► Do you launch my entire app in the background

01:25:03 ◼   ► and then have me bring up a certain view controller?

01:25:06 ◼   ► How does that work?

01:25:07 ◼   ► How does that work with memory and the API level

01:25:09 ◼   ► and backgrounding?"

01:25:10 ◼   ► There are certainly some things to consider,

01:25:12 ◼   ► but it seems like they've already done

01:25:13 ◼   ► most of the work for that.

01:25:15 ◼   ► And that, it is certainly a limited form

01:25:20 ◼   ► of interactive communication,

01:25:22 ◼   ► but it's a massive step forward from what we have now

01:25:25 ◼   ► And it would really be very beneficial.

01:25:27 ◼   ► Yeah, I've seen iOS 8 as kind of the mavericks of iOS

01:25:31 ◼   ► in that from a user's perspective,

01:25:34 ◼   ► it's going to seem like iOS 7.5.

01:25:37 ◼   ► It's not going to look all that different,

01:25:39 ◼   ► and a lot of the new features are going to be internal.

01:25:42 ◼   ► So while Mavericks is vaguely visually distinguishable

01:25:45 ◼   ► from Mountain Lion, from a user's perspective,

01:25:48 ◼   ► it wasn't that big a deal.

01:25:49 ◼   ► But there were a lot of changes under the hood.

01:25:51 ◼   ► And iOS 8, I would imagine, is going to be the same thing.

01:25:54 ◼   ► refinement of the look, features that probably aren't in the user space but

01:25:59 ◼   ► that will slowly appear as applications become you know iOS 8 savvy to use the

01:26:03 ◼   ► old term. And that what you're talking about having you know the activity

01:26:10 ◼   ► viewer type thing and having it list URLs and having some sort of system for

01:26:12 ◼   ► you to configure like oh I don't want you know I probably one of the reasons

01:26:17 ◼   ► that might have been canned is the whole idea of like on the Mac applications

01:26:20 ◼   ► that would say that they can handle you know star I handle any application so

01:26:24 ◼   ► the open with you'd always see this application for every single file like

01:26:27 ◼   ► sort of spamming the thing like what can open a URL and you see a list of 9,000

01:26:31 ◼   ► applications so you need some way to manage that as well and that's another

01:26:34 ◼   ► complication in the UI and that's the type of thing that could make you say

01:26:38 ◼   ► we're not quite ready to do that and the same thing with like sandboxing do we

01:26:41 ◼   ► just load your do we do we load like a loadable bundle or a framework but run

01:26:45 ◼   ► it in that sandbox of your application so that you have access to your document

01:26:49 ◼   ► container and everything but you're on the screen at the same time as somebody

01:26:53 ◼   ► And again, if they're doing side-by-side apps on the iPad anyway, they've already got to do probably two sandboxed applications that each have access to their own containers, both on screen at the same time.

01:27:04 ◼   ► Which is, you know, not a big deal. They're called Windows back in the old world.

01:27:08 ◼   ► So if they're doing that anyway, there's a place for that.

01:27:11 ◼   ► But yeah, it seems like a Maverick style release

01:27:14 ◼   ► where there's lots of new APIs for developers

01:27:16 ◼   ► to adopt a couple of new things on the settings screen,

01:27:20 ◼   ► some new applications, you know,

01:27:22 ◼   ► the health book stuff and everything like that.

01:27:25 ◼   ► But, you know, not, it's not gonna be like iOS 7,

01:27:29 ◼   ► that's for sure.

01:27:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I don't think it really needs to be.

01:27:33 ◼   ► I mean, iOS 7, iOS 7 was really a remarkable release

01:27:37 ◼   ► in that they crammed in not only a massive visual overhaul

01:27:40 ◼   ► and lots of rewriting of the built-in apps to accommodate that.

01:27:44 ◼   ► But a lot of cool frameworks, like major stuff, things like TextKit,

01:27:48 ◼   ► and all the background refresh stuff, and the URL session stuff,

01:27:52 ◼   ► major, major changes to frameworks. And they fit all that into one release.

01:27:56 ◼   ► I mean, what I would like to see from 8

01:28:00 ◼   ► is, besides the interactive communication stuff, which is a big deal,

01:28:04 ◼   ► just take all those frameworks they added last year and just do some tweaks here and there.

01:28:08 ◼   ► limitations and URL sessions that I'd like to see lifted,

01:28:11 ◼   ► but it's mostly minor stuff.

01:28:13 ◼   ► The frameworks are getting really good.

01:28:16 ◼   ► Even simple things, like I was complaining

01:28:18 ◼   ► two episodes ago, or last week, I was complaining

01:28:20 ◼   ► how the keychain API is ridiculous to use

01:28:23 ◼   ► 'cause it's still one of the old C-based APIs

01:28:25 ◼   ► and they haven't made a nice Objective-C wrapper around it.

01:28:30 ◼   ► I think it did more of that, like just wrap a bunch

01:28:32 ◼   ► of the stuff that's hard to use, like the contacts API

01:28:35 ◼   ► and the keychain, stuff like that,

01:28:37 ◼   ► like stuff that still uses old C APIs,

01:28:40 ◼   ► like just wrap some of that in new classes

01:28:42 ◼   ► so it's easier for people to use.

01:28:43 ◼   ► I would love just a release like that,

01:28:45 ◼   ► just doing a bunch of small tweaks and improvements

01:28:48 ◼   ► to the existing frameworks,

01:28:49 ◼   ► and then having one or two major new features

01:28:51 ◼   ► and capabilities like the interapp sharing things.

01:28:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, we'll see.

01:28:57 ◼   ► - And then there's like the idea of, you know,

01:28:59 ◼   ► any new category or whatever is probably gonna have

01:29:01 ◼   ► a bunch of new frameworks and stuff

01:29:02 ◼   ► that you're not gonna care about

01:29:04 ◼   ► if you don't have any interaction

01:29:06 ◼   ► with whatever the hell is new.

01:29:07 ◼   ► If you're not writing Apple TV apps,

01:29:09 ◼   ► then you don't care about whatever new things

01:29:10 ◼   ► they added there.

01:29:11 ◼   ► If you're not going to integrate with some Apple wearable,

01:29:13 ◼   ► then you don't care about those frameworks.

01:29:15 ◼   ► But those are always the extras that they add on top,

01:29:18 ◼   ► sort of like the hardware controller interface.

01:29:22 ◼   ► If you're not writing a game that

01:29:24 ◼   ► has to have support for hardware control,

01:29:26 ◼   ► you're never going to look at that new API.

01:29:27 ◼   ► But hey, it's new in iOS 7, right?

01:29:29 ◼   ► So there's always that bushel of things

01:29:31 ◼   ► that can be new in iOS 8.

01:29:32 ◼   ► And with Healthbook supposedly in there

01:29:35 ◼   ► that we all seem to believe is coming,

01:29:37 ◼   ► there's gotta be a bunch of new APIs to do with that,

01:29:39 ◼   ► but maybe you're just not gonna look at them,

01:29:40 ◼   ► because especially if an Apple wearable doesn't come out,

01:29:42 ◼   ► you're like, well, fine, this is gonna be so long

01:29:44 ◼   ► before a third-party wearable

01:29:45 ◼   ► takes advantage of this anyway,

01:29:47 ◼   ► and I'm not interested in it for my podcast app,

01:29:48 ◼   ► so I'll just ignore that.

01:29:50 ◼   ► - Do you think that there'll be

01:29:51 ◼   ► any sort of new Springboard functionality?

01:29:54 ◼   ► Like, everyone keeps calling for widgets

01:29:56 ◼   ► in either Notification Center or Springboard.

01:29:58 ◼   ► I'm extremely unconvinced that would ever happen,

01:30:01 ◼   ► but is there anything that you can think of

01:30:04 ◼   ► that would make Springboard better.

01:30:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, have the little icons, not slide.

01:30:09 ◼   ► Someone tweeted that and I thought it was

01:30:11 ◼   ► a reasonably good idea.

01:30:12 ◼   ► Have you been able to delete icons

01:30:13 ◼   ► without all the other ones rearranging themselves?

01:30:16 ◼   ► I mean, just trying to deal with rearranging icons

01:30:19 ◼   ► on the device is just torture.

01:30:21 ◼   ► Like it's a terrible game that we all do to ourselves.

01:30:24 ◼   ► People just don't rearrange them because it's so hard.

01:30:26 ◼   ► There's certain positions, like the lower,

01:30:27 ◼   ► I think like the lower right corner is torture.

01:30:29 ◼   ► Or one of the corners--

01:30:30 ◼   ► - It's really hard to get there 'cause it'll like

01:30:31 ◼   ► scroll over to the next pane or something.

01:30:33 ◼   ► Yeah, or like as you're going through pages, especially on my super slow A5, as I'm going,

01:30:39 ◼   ► like I'm holding it against the edge and the things are scrolling by, sometimes I guess

01:30:43 ◼   ► the animation takes too long and it will end up shoving icons off.

01:30:47 ◼   ► Like I'm not landing on this page, I'm saying go to the last page, I'm going to take this

01:30:50 ◼   ► icon from the first page into the last, and as part of that process I will bump icons

01:30:54 ◼   ► off all the intermediary pages, so by the time I get to the last page two new icons

01:30:57 ◼   ► are there, and I've shifted everything over.

01:30:59 ◼   ► It's just maddening.

01:31:01 ◼   ► And if when I moved one, the other ones wouldn't slide into its place, that would help me rearrange

01:31:07 ◼   ► things with a slight extra little bit of sanity.

01:31:10 ◼   ► They're never going to do that, but it drives me insane.

01:31:13 ◼   ► Yeah, there's not really a lot of springboard changes that I would really care that much

01:31:17 ◼   ► about with the exception of, for god's sake, fix Newstand or give apps a way to get out

01:31:21 ◼   ► of it or give users a way to take apps out of it.

01:31:23 ◼   ► Because it is so annoying for everybody now, for publishers and for users.

01:31:27 ◼   ► I read stuff that's in Newsstand and it's like on the iPad, I think it's this way on

01:31:33 ◼   ► the phone, I only do it on the pad, but you have the app, you exit the app, and you have

01:31:38 ◼   ► to separately then exit Newsstand with another tap on the home button. You have to wait for

01:31:41 ◼   ► the animations to complete.

01:31:42 ◼   ► It's staring at a folder.

01:31:43 ◼   ► Right. It's so bad. And it's like, just, I read these same apps, like one of them's

01:31:50 ◼   ► a New York Times app. I read that every night. Can't I just move it out of there, please?

01:31:54 ◼   ► Just let me put it on the home screen, please, so I can get rid of the stupid newsstand crap.

01:31:58 ◼   ► It's so, so bad.

01:32:00 ◼   ► I mean, hell, let them all appear in newsstand fine, but also let them be outside.

01:32:05 ◼   ► Like no one will ever go into newsstand.

01:32:06 ◼   ► Or just let me drag them in and out.

01:32:08 ◼   ► We need to group them all in one spot.

01:32:10 ◼   ► What case do you mention though about the widgets in Windows Pawns, live tiles or something

01:32:14 ◼   ► like that?

01:32:15 ◼   ► That is a complication that I see Apple not wanting to add, but it may be inevitable.

01:32:21 ◼   ► know the today view that they have that shows you all the collection of

01:32:24 ◼   ► information which is kind of configurable but not really. Yeah it's not

01:32:28 ◼   ► that good. And we just have a bunch of icons and there's no real widgets like

01:32:31 ◼   ► opening the door to that complexity is something they definitely don't want to

01:32:34 ◼   ► do but at a certain point when everybody else's phone has some way to sort

01:32:39 ◼   ► of customize what you see on either your home screen or on your lock screen in

01:32:44 ◼   ► ways that are beyond what Apple allows you to customize I think Apple's

01:32:49 ◼   ► is wise to not do that stuff as much as everyone else is,

01:32:54 ◼   ► but I think they're far enough behind now

01:32:56 ◼   ► that they could make another baby step in that direction

01:32:59 ◼   ► with iOS 8 and no one would freak out.

01:33:01 ◼   ► - If the remote view controllers are a thing

01:33:05 ◼   ► that are being used for inter-app communication,

01:33:09 ◼   ► could that also be used for a widget,

01:33:12 ◼   ► like in the home screen or in Notification Center?

01:33:15 ◼   ► - I mean, in theory, yes.

01:33:16 ◼   ► Like in theory, they could use the background refresh system

01:33:18 ◼   ► and their remote view controller system together

01:33:22 ◼   ► to just like, you know, have an app

01:33:23 ◼   ► periodically update something.

01:33:25 ◼   ► And you know, you'd be woken up every,

01:33:27 ◼   ► you know, it wouldn't be frequent,

01:33:28 ◼   ► you wouldn't be able to like run,

01:33:30 ◼   ► like you know, a news ticker constantly scrolling across

01:33:32 ◼   ► or you know, constantly changing things maybe,