0:00:00What show?
0:00:01Yeah, that thing that we accidentally made when we were talking about cars.
0:00:06We had a lot of really, really, really, really awesome feedback about the last episode.
0:00:12And I don't say that to self-congratulate.
0:00:14What I mean is a lot of listeners wrote in in various forms and tweets and emails and
0:00:19all sorts of things to say, not only that they like all of us and that they also enjoy
0:00:26of us and that they also enjoy the show. In particular, they enjoyed the end of the last
0:00:32show. And I don't know that us having group therapy sessions is really going to be entertaining
0:00:36on a regular basis, but I really appreciate and I think I speak for the two of you guys
0:00:41as well. I really appreciate everyone that wrote in and said, "Keep on keeping on."
0:00:45So that was very kind of every single one of you. And I tried to reply to pretty much
0:00:49everyone that I saw, but if I missed you, my apologies and thanks so much for having
0:00:54written in. That was really cool.
0:00:56Yeah, definitely. We got a lot of great feedback about that because I think a lot of people
0:01:01don't talk about this stuff in public on the internet because it doesn't fit into
0:01:06the topic of your site or your podcast. And this is true of lots of various human factors
0:01:11that just don't really get enough coverage. But the few times where you can get people
0:01:16to show you their more human side usually are pretty well received. And we didn't
0:01:23it to solicit or fish for compliments. We got a lot of compliments and I'm very thankful
0:01:29for that.
0:01:30But you know, I was going to say it worked well that way, but that wasn't the point.
0:01:32Right. That wasn't the intention. But we do appreciate everyone's feedback and it was
0:01:37very nice. So thank you.
0:01:38Yeah. A lot of people also said that even though it said this really isn't on topic
0:01:43for the podcast or whatever, like, "Oh, well, you know, but you should talk about it anyway,"
0:01:47because the same point a lot of them made was that in particular, the technology market
0:01:52has difficulties with a lot of the issues we discuss, both personalities and technology,
0:01:57taking and receiving criticism, and the whole angle on workplace problems and gender relations,
0:02:07and the whole nine yards. It's true that that is a problem in particular in the tech industry.
0:02:13I'm still entirely sure it's on topic for a tech podcast. So I know people are like, "Oh,
0:02:17then you should start a different podcast, talk about these things," or whatever. But
0:02:20I think it's good to do once in a while, and I think that there is an angle on it,
0:02:23like if something related to those topics happens in the industry, that's how we find
0:02:27ourselves talking about it.
0:02:28We started off talking about the Paneer arcade thing, it just kind of drifted from there.
0:02:31And I think that's fine, but I'm not sure it should be like a, you know, it really is
0:02:36going off the rails if you start making your podcast about that.
0:02:39That would be a perfectly good topic for another podcast, but we've all got enough podcasts
0:02:42here.
0:02:43Well, plus, you know, if it isn't immediately clear to everybody, the three of us could
0:02:46talk about anything.
0:02:47anything. We could go off the rails in any possible direction very easily, so it's
0:02:53important that we at least try to keep ourselves somewhat on at least one topic per—or at
0:02:57least one genre of show while we're actually recording that show.
0:03:01Something like that. All right. So, yes. So, thanks again to everyone that wrote in. That
0:03:04was very kind of you. And even if you didn't write in, thanks for indulging us while we
0:03:07talked it out. Now, Jon, you seem to have—I'm assuming this was you, Jon—a lot of feedback
0:03:13about PrimeSense.
0:03:15Last week we talked about Apple buying PrimeSense, which is a company that makes Kinect-like
0:03:20sensors, like the Xbox Kinect, and I still didn't even bother.
0:03:23Yeah, I didn't do any research.
0:03:24Didn't bother looking up whether, what their relationship to the original Kinect was, whether
0:03:31they were the company that made the sensor, whether they sold it to, I don't know.
0:03:35But anyway, they make a Kinect-like sensor and Apple bought them, and last week I said
0:03:39that the obvious idea would be that, oh, Apple bought them, and that means they're going
0:03:46to use something like the Microsoft Kinect on whatever their crazy TV thing is. And I
0:03:51said, what about if they use that same technology in an iOS device to do something less impressive?
0:03:58I said that not knowing that if you had just simply gone to the PrimeSense website, you
0:04:01would have seen on their listing of products that one of the products they offer is something
0:04:05that's sized meant to fit inside a tablet. So there you go. It's not a stretch. It's
0:04:10an existing product that is very small and could fit inside a tablet. And who knows what
0:04:15Apple bought them for. But it's clear that this company could offer a lot of things to
0:04:22both Apple's current product lines and product lines that we all speculate that Apple may
0:04:25or even put something like that in a watch or whatever.
0:04:29And then I have some more info on the issues
0:04:32of this kind of technology.
0:04:34In particular, if-- and this is a big if--
0:04:37if you just look at what prime sense sensors are like
0:04:40and what Kinect sensors are like and say,
0:04:42could Apple use that type of thing in a television
0:04:45or in an iOS device?
0:04:48The problem with the iOS device angle
0:04:50is that both of the approaches that prime sense
0:04:53and the existing Kinect sensors use
0:04:56don't work very well outdoors.
0:04:57And iOS devices have to be able to-- I mean, I don't know what percentage of time they
0:05:01spend indoors and outdoors, but enough time that if you have something that only works
0:05:05indoors it's probably not viable for any iOS devices that Apple sells.
0:05:10And the problem with doing it outdoors is they both use infrared, and infrared outdoors
0:05:13can get washed out if it's a sunny day because the sun is going to have way more IR than
0:05:17anything that's put out by one of these devices or sensors.
0:05:21And one way to get around it is to really crank up the IR on the device, but that burns
0:05:25and could blind people if you shined it in their face.
0:05:29So it's not a great solution there.
0:05:31And also the problem of what is the stereo distance
0:05:34between the sensors?
0:05:36You have to kind of pick, do you want it to be able
0:05:37to get depth information about things that are really close,
0:05:40like your finger on an iPad or something,
0:05:42or do you want it to be able to get stuff
0:05:43that's farther away and there's some
0:05:44difficult trade-offs there.
0:05:46So anything that uses this kind of technology
0:05:49is probably going to be focused on indoor application,
0:05:53but that's not to say that anything Apple is going to make
0:05:55this company is going to have anything to do with any technology that we've already
0:05:58seen. This is just looking at what they have done. Who knows what they're going to do.
0:06:02And it's perfectly feasible that Apple might have bought them based on some technology
0:06:05that they had in the works that nobody's seen yet. So, I don't know. It's a company you
0:06:11watch. It's like PA Semi because it's interesting and exciting from a hardware angle. And software
0:06:17is a little bit more mutable. We'll talk about that a little bit later, I think. But when
0:06:20When Apple buys a hardware company, you have to think that they bought them because they
0:06:25want to do something similar to what this company has done in hardware.
0:06:28They're not just buying it to get, "Oh, well, you know, you might buy a company to
0:06:31get a bunch of software developers, so we could put these guys to work at iOS."
0:06:35But if you buy people who make this kind of a sensor, you've got to think they're doing
0:06:38something with some kind of weird sensor, right?
0:06:40So I'm excited by the possibilities of putting any kind of weird Kinect-like sensor in anything
0:06:45that Apple makes.
0:06:46Yeah, it should be interesting, although certainly I can't conceive of what they're going
0:06:50to do with this, but that's just like you said, that's the beauty of it. Any other
0:06:53follow up, you or Marco? Or Marco, do you just want to tell us about something that's
0:06:57awesome?
0:06:58This episode is brought to you in part by our friends at Squarespace. Squarespace is
0:07:01the all-in-one platform that makes it fast and easy to create your own professional website
0:07:05or online portfolio. Did they used to say "in minutes" at the end of that slogan?
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0:07:15Anything longer than a minute is technically in minutes, right?
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0:07:26That's minutes
0:07:28Just exactly 1.0. That's that's a minute
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0:08:41Squarespace is everything you need to create an exceptional website and we thank them very
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0:08:46We use Squarespace and we like it.
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0:08:54Not everybody needs to write everything from scratch and coming from me, that's kind of
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0:09:07Thanks a lot to Squarespace for supporting our show. Don't forget use coupon code ATP 12
0:09:11I thought of a new Squarespace based business plan
0:09:14Find a business that you go to that you like or maybe or doesn't have to be as if you like when anything that some like
0:09:21Your barber or your landscape or whatever and you see that they have a website
0:09:26But it's terrible a new business idea is to fix people's terrible websites
0:09:32They pay you and then you take some of the money they paid you and hit the Squarespace
0:09:37It just gives them a Squarespace site which takes you like 10 seconds of clicking
0:09:40You're basically becoming like a Squarespace value-added reseller for people because I always wonder why these people have such terrible websites when like for
0:09:48Pocket change like I know how much these landscapers make they make they make plenty of money
0:09:51Or you know anybody if you have enough money for any website
0:09:56It's just these people's websites are terrible because they're not web designers
0:09:59they don't know what they're doing. The websites look like they were made in 1992, and they
0:10:02have little, you know, animated men under, you know, men working construction damage
0:10:08at the bottom of it, and a website hit counter. It's like, "Just get a Squarespace site. It's
0:10:11so easy, and it will look better, and everyone will be happier. And if you can facilitate
0:10:15that, then that's maybe a viable business."
0:10:18This is like, you know, back in the late 90s and early 2000s, there was this whole business—I
0:10:22guess there still is—this whole business of web hosting resellers. Like, things like
0:10:27C panel and stuff were developed not for one person running one server for themselves,
0:10:33but were developed for people who ran tons of sites on tons of different servers, or
0:10:36tons of sites on one server for clients, and charged them a big premium for that.
0:10:41And it seems like Squarespace has really kind of made that entire industry half obsolete.
0:10:47Yeah, because nobody wants to use a C panel for an interface.
0:10:50Oh, terrible.
0:10:51I mean, that is not anything that a regular-- that's what kept regular people away, and
0:10:54they would pay some teenager to make their website,
0:10:57and that teenager would go away, and they'd
0:10:58be stuck with this website.
0:10:59And they can never change.
0:11:00It's terrible, and it never gets any better.
0:11:02And yeah.
0:11:03All right.
0:11:04So speaking of acquisitions, Apple
0:11:07is still up in buying things.
0:11:10And they bought Topsy, which I had never heard of before.
0:11:15I'd heard the name before, but I didn't
0:11:16know what they did until I read the articles.
0:11:20First of all, how does a company--
0:11:23I mean, I guess I understand how a company like this exists.
0:11:25But what do they get for it?
0:11:26200 million?
0:11:26Something like that?
0:11:27I believe that's right.
0:11:28So this is a company that none of us have really heard of,
0:11:31or maybe we heard the name or whatever.
0:11:32This company apparently existed as a way
0:11:35to mine data from the Twitter stream.
0:11:37So they would absorb all the tweets,
0:11:39and they would sort of index them and allow, I guess,
0:11:42allow people to do searches to find out what's
0:11:44going on on Twitter and stuff.
0:11:46And I guess they resell this to people,
0:11:47like advertisers, who want to see what's trending.
0:11:51Or it's like B2B.
0:11:53It's not a consumer level business.
0:11:55Because these people, as far as I know,
0:11:57did not make a company worth $200 million
0:11:59to Apple by selling services to individual customers.
0:12:02Right?
0:12:03I believe that's right.
0:12:04I mean, from what very, very little I know about it,
0:12:07because I didn't do any research.
0:12:10But everything-- I think that's right.
0:12:11But the fact that they're so Twitter focused
0:12:13is mysterious.
0:12:14Because why would Apple buy a company so focused
0:12:19on a service they don't own.
0:12:21It's not like they bought a mapping company
0:12:23to help them with their maps.
0:12:24They don't have a Twitter equivalent.
0:12:26So what does a company that has expertise
0:12:28in mining the Twitter stream going to do for them?
0:12:30Do they have some other stream that they
0:12:32would like to point Topsy at and say,
0:12:33we would like you to extract information from this?
0:12:35Are they going to be collecting metrics from people wandering
0:12:38through the app store?
0:12:40I don't know.
0:12:41I mean, the price tag was a little high to be an aqua hire.
0:12:44But I think Facebook and Google buy all sorts of crazy crap
0:12:48just to get talent in the door.
0:12:51Really, they're just buying the staff.
0:12:53That's the acquire phenomenon.
0:12:54Apple has a big problem that they have a real need
0:13:00for really good staff.
0:13:03And we can see a lot of the areas
0:13:05in which they are clearly short staffed.
0:13:07We see a lot of the applications.
0:13:10I've said recently that I think their hardware
0:13:13is better than it's ever been right now,
0:13:16but their services have never been great
0:13:18are still not great. And even their software is really starting to go into disrepair in
0:13:23a lot of different areas. I think the OS level stuff is rock solid. I think whoever they
0:13:28have working on the OS level teams, they clearly have great people and enough of them, I think.
0:13:33But it seems like the applications teams are really strained. And that's why you go,
0:13:39like, you know, you have all these years of iWork 09 followed by this new release of iWork
0:13:47that is really obviously unfinished,
0:13:50that was rushed out the door for other reasons,
0:13:53probably, you know, lining it up with the marketing
0:13:55of the new iPads and et cetera.
0:13:57But clearly Apple needs more people.
0:14:01They need more engineers, they need more staff.
0:14:04And they also have a bit of a retention problem
0:14:07because from what I understand, this is purely anecdotal,
0:14:10but from what I understand, they lose a lot
0:14:12of really good people because there's this whole world
0:14:15of apps and startups happening around them,
0:14:17their own ecosystem that they've created,
0:14:19and their own employees can't participate in that
0:14:22while they're working for Apple.
0:14:24And so it's very tempting for their employees to be like,
0:14:26"You know, now that I've been working, you know,
0:14:28"supporting UIKit or apps or whatever for all these years,
0:14:32"maybe I wanna actually go make my app."
0:14:34And Apple has a pretty good policy about if you wanna leave
0:14:38and then come back within a certain amount of time,
0:14:39you can like retain all your seniority and stuff.
0:14:41So like, they have a problem getting people
0:14:44and retaining people.
0:14:46Even more than going and making an app, imagine if you wanted to do independent consulting
0:14:50and you have Apple on your resume.
0:14:53Oh yeah.
0:14:54You know, that pretty much is the only entry you need on your resume if you're going to
0:14:58do either iOS or OS X development and consulting.
0:15:04Well, you know, what makes you think that you're so special and you're good at this?
0:15:07I used to work for Apple.
0:15:09Where do I sign?
0:15:10You know what I mean?
0:15:11It really opens a lot of doors having that on your resume.
0:15:13Like, "Oh, I wrote iPhoto."
0:15:15know.
0:15:16[laughs]
0:15:17Exactly.
0:15:18Or this API that everyone's coding against, I wrote the API.
0:15:22So for Apple to buy a company like this, where it doesn't seem obvious to us what part
0:15:28of the company's product they might want, $200 million is a lot of money for an acquirer,
0:15:34but maybe they had some really good people.
0:15:36Most acquirers are in the $10 to $50 million range, but if they had a bunch of really good
0:15:42people, maybe that's worth it to them.
0:15:44And this is a large web service that was consuming the live Twitter feed, or the live Twitter
0:15:50fire hose, as they call it, which is kind of gross.
0:15:53But they were consuming that.
0:15:55That's a large-scale web service operation.
0:15:58Apple needs a lot of help in large-scale web service operations.
0:16:01Did you follow the second link I put underneath?
0:16:03Of course not.
0:16:04I didn't do any research.
0:16:05Yeah, so the second link is a—
0:16:07Oh, the Dalton one.
0:16:08Yeah, I did read that.
0:16:09Yeah.
0:16:10I don't know if this is true or not, but Dalton of app.net fame says that as far as he knows,
0:16:16Topsy is a "Pearl company," as he calls it, meaning that they implement their web servers
0:16:21in Perl.
0:16:23And for the most part, Apple does not know their Perl from their elbow.
0:16:28And so the expertise that the programmers in those companies might have in writing, you
0:16:33know, server-side applications in Perl, I can't imagine Apple thinking those particular
0:16:37technical skills are worth anything to them.
0:16:41Well, that doesn't matter.
0:16:42When you're dealing with the scale
0:16:44that Topsy was dealing with, or the scale
0:16:47that Apple is dealing with or needs to be dealing with,
0:16:51the actual language that you're writing your application in
0:16:54really does not matter one bit.
0:16:56It's really much more about how you write it,
0:16:59how you use the resources of things
0:17:01like the database, the network, the cache layer,
0:17:03stuff like that.
0:17:05it's such a bigger picture thing than just the language you use. It's like, it doesn't matter
0:17:10what text editor you use to write a shell script. It matters what it's doing. Similar, when you get
0:17:15to a scale like what they're doing, you can do it in any language, really. But when they do
0:17:20acquahires, I have to imagine, if they do acquahires of people who they know they want
0:17:23to put on the iOS team, they want the people who they hire, they could be app developers or
0:17:27whatever, but they want them to be Objective-C programmers because they're going to put you deep
0:17:30in the guts of Objective-C. Or if they're hiring someone for the CoreOS group, they want them to
0:17:34OC and BSD API specifically, because that's where they're going to be.
0:17:37They're not just like, "Well, you've worked on some operating system."
0:17:41I have to think that the technical skills are relevant when in particular doing AquaHires.
0:17:45It seems to me that Topsy has, from the outside it looks like, Topsy has abilities that Apple
0:17:52wishes it had. They consume the Twitter firehose and they get something out of it.
0:17:57I think Apple has a very specific thing in mind, some big giant stream of data that they want to
0:18:03feed into something and get useful information out of it.
0:18:06And it's high volume and they need a company that can take a high volume stream of data
0:18:09and do something with it.
0:18:11So that seems like the most likely thing.
0:18:14I just can't think of exactly which stream it is.
0:18:16I mean, there's many possible streams.
0:18:17They have all this activity of customers doing things, buying things in stores, rating applications,
0:18:22all that stuff.
0:18:23Hell, it could even be map data, someone to handle all of the feedback that we've all
0:18:28been putting into Apple Maps to say this thing is in the wrong place and we're frustrated
0:18:31that it doesn't result in action quickly.
0:18:33I don't know.
0:18:35This also, I think, may be hard to tell.
0:18:37With a sensor purpose, it'll be pretty obvious
0:18:42when we see something with some crazy sensor on it,
0:18:44we'll be like, oh, that was probably
0:18:46that crazy sensor company that you bought.
0:18:47But with Topsy, it may be hard for us to tell.
0:18:50Maybe no obvious moment where we say,
0:18:53oh, there must have been,
0:18:54that's why they hired Topsy to do this.
0:18:56It might not be obvious at all.
0:18:58In fact, it might be entirely for internally facing tools they do for their own metrics
0:19:03so they never show anybody.
0:19:04So this is mysterious.
0:19:06Also, going back a half step to the web service thing, Apple's web services are still, in
0:19:12the grand scheme of things, young.
0:19:14And a lot of them are compartmentalized or outsourced.
0:19:18So if Apple wanted to build up a big service presence in-house, there's still a lot of
0:19:24of room to start that, not quite from scratch, but close.
0:19:28To really get it on the ground floor and do that.
0:19:32They need to do that.
0:19:33Right.
0:19:34And so just because these people built a really big volume web
0:19:39service using Perl that consumes a Twitter stream
0:19:41to get certain things out, Apple really
0:19:44might be using this just to start another department
0:19:48or bring something that was outsourced in-house
0:19:51from some big thing they're already doing.
0:19:54with a fresh new start, a fresh new team,
0:19:56or not having an outsource for the first time.
0:20:00There's a lot of potential even for that.
0:20:02And we've been saying every third week
0:20:07that Apple sucks at web services and needs
0:20:09to really take it to the next level
0:20:12and take it a lot more seriously and make
0:20:13it a bigger priority in the company.
0:20:15Maybe something like this is the start of that.
0:20:17Maybe they get Aqua hire Microsoft
0:20:19to get the Azure team.
0:20:20Is that possible?
0:20:21Do we have to wait a couple more years?
0:20:23I think just a couple.
0:20:25I don't know how many.
0:20:26We'll see.
0:20:27Just hire Elop as the CEO, and then he'll make it really cheap for him.
0:20:31Yeah, exactly.
0:20:32So I wonder, though, if Topsy is about – what if it's about consuming Twitter data about
0:20:40Apple and not allowing competitors to use the same technology to look at –
0:20:45It's the ultimate vanity search.
0:20:47Apple needs to know what are they saying about us on Twitter.
0:20:49Topsy, tell us!
0:20:50That's actually exactly what I'm talking about.
0:20:53To be honest, my first thought, which I'm a little mad at you, John, because you stole
0:20:56it from me before I had a chance to say it, was for internal use about like maybe the
0:21:01App Store or something like that, which you said a moment ago.
0:21:03But what if it is about the ultimate vanity search to see what, you know, Tim Cook loves
0:21:07his customer sat, which that that abbreviation infuriates me.
0:21:11To be fair, I think he stopped saying that recently.
0:21:13Oh, well, whatever.
0:21:15The customer satisfaction numbers.
0:21:16I mean, Tim Cook loves his customer satisfaction numbers.
0:21:19But they're already getting those numbers.
0:21:20I have to think that there is nothing that Apple cares about what its customers think
0:21:25$200 million worth.
0:21:26Seriously, that's always been the edge of the company is we accept feedback from customers
0:21:32to get a feel for what's out, but in general, they think it's their job to show us what
0:21:39it is that we want rather than just asking what we want and trying to build that.
0:21:42That's always been the company's MO, and that's what we like about them.
0:21:45So I can't imagine an entirely, like,
0:21:49oh, we need to figure out what's out there about Apple
0:21:51or about Apple customers, $200 million worth?
0:21:54Like, because the Twitter firehose is way more volume
0:21:57than-- you just need to sample users, right?
0:21:59Whereas if you want to get--
0:22:00I don't think they're sampling the firehose.
0:22:02I think they're consuming it all and indexing it
0:22:04and all that stuff, which is very
0:22:05different than surveying customers
0:22:07and seeing how your satisfaction is.
0:22:08I have to think they have things in place
0:22:10for all of the sort of market research feedback
0:22:14about what's needing to get repair, what are people unsatisfied about, all that stuff.
0:22:18Like that has to already be in place. It doesn't seem like it's a problem area for Apple.
0:22:21Well, also, that's not incredibly unique to Topsy. Like there have been multiple companies
0:22:27that have, over the last five years, multiple people who have come up who take the Twitter
0:22:33fire hose and parse stuff out of it. I mean, it's not an easy thing to do, but it's
0:22:40certainly not unique to this one particular company that no one else will ever be able
0:22:43Twitter bought one of them, didn't they?
0:22:45Didn't they buy Summly or something?
0:22:46Not the other.
0:22:47There was some other--
0:22:47Summize is what you're talking about.
0:22:49That was a long time ago.
0:22:50And that is what became Twitter Search.
0:22:52Yeah, I know.
0:22:52But that was always funny, though,
0:22:54because Twitter was creating the data,
0:22:56and they had to buy an outside company
0:22:58to be able to search that.
0:22:59Remember when Twitter Search sucked?
0:23:01Twitter is actually a good success story
0:23:03for a company that didn't know how
0:23:04to make wide-scale web services and figured it out.
0:23:07Because Twitter, in the beginning, had an idea.
0:23:10They had Ruby on Rails.
0:23:11They had, I'm assuming, hipsters in San Francisco,
0:23:15or whatever it is they need.
0:23:17But then they ran into the giant avalanche of users.
0:23:21And then they had problems and problems and problems.
0:23:24And they figured-- I mean, that's
0:23:26kind of the natural arc of any startup.
0:23:27Like, you try to build something,
0:23:28you really hope somebody likes it.
0:23:30Then all of a sudden the users come, and you're excited.
0:23:32Then more users come, and you're a little bit scared.
0:23:34And then you basically have to figure it out.
0:23:36And they did, barely.
0:23:37I would say Twitter came the closest to a company that
0:23:40was crushed by its own success in terms of not being able to handle the traffic.
0:23:43If they had anything close to a viable competitor that had the mindshare they had, they could
0:23:51have just as easily gone down as a footnote of that company that we thought was going
0:23:56to be big but couldn't keep their stuff together and some other company stole their bacon.
0:24:00But it turns out they ended up getting enough mindshare soon enough that we all just tolerated
0:24:05their terrible problems.
0:24:06And now they've come out of it, and there are so much bigger hand-willing volumes that
0:24:09would have made the head spin back in the 2006, 2007 days.
0:24:15So if Twitter can do it, coming from essentially nothing to a world-class web service that
0:24:20does incredible volumes, surely Apple can, right?
0:24:23I mean, you say this every—it seems like they have.
0:24:26They've got all the money in the world.
0:24:28Why can't they get their stuff together?
0:24:30I don't know.
0:24:31Right.
0:24:32And it's really about priorities, I think, and culture.
0:24:34And they're such a big company that they need to make significant changes from the top to
0:24:41the bottom.
0:24:42They need somebody at the senior VP level whose only job it is to do stuff like this.
0:24:49And isn't that like half of somebody's job up there?
0:24:53Is it Eddy Cue?
0:24:54I thought so.
0:24:55Eddy Cue is in charge of services or something like that.
0:24:58Some umbrella term like that.
0:24:59He's basically in charge of the iTunes store and I think all of their web service-y type
0:25:04things. Do you think he needs to be replaced? It's hard, you can't play politics with that.
0:25:11Is it not his problem? Is it like, you know, is it that he's, does he have an impossible
0:25:15job? Isn't Q in charge of scoring licensing deals and things of that nature? Didn't he
0:25:21kind of become the de facto guy to do that? I think so. That's certainly what we've heard.
0:25:26Yeah, he's always been like, his iTunes store, he was part of the content deals and everything
0:25:30like that.
0:25:31But…
0:25:32Right.
0:25:33So maybe the problem is he has too much to do.
0:25:34That's exactly what I was driving at, is maybe he's so busy working on content deals,
0:25:38perhaps for the Apple TV or whatever.
0:25:42One way or another, perhaps he's too busy worrying about all of that, and he doesn't
0:25:45have enough time to worry about services, or not as much time as he'd like.
0:25:51And every company I've been in, there's one group in the company that sort of wears
0:25:54the pants.
0:25:55And a lot of times, but not always, it's the group that originally made the thing, that
0:26:01made the company successful, and made the company what it is today.
0:26:06And Apple, it seems like the group that has that power is...
0:26:12I don't know what the balance is between hardware and software, but it's basically the people
0:26:15who work directly on whatever the flagship product is.
0:26:18So you made the operating system for the Macintosh, you made the hardware for the Macintosh.
0:26:23That's the tail that wags the dog.
0:26:24There's tons of other people in the company, but they're more or less running the show.
0:26:28And that's fine when your company makes devices with hardware and software.
0:26:31Shouldn't the people be running the show who make all the great hardware and software that
0:26:33makes your company successful?
0:26:35But now you throw the services thing into the mix, and I have to think that they are
0:26:39sort of the, you know, redheaded stepchild of the company where we're writing software
0:26:45too, but your software is not iOS.
0:26:48Your software is not OS X.
0:26:49Your software is just something that runs on a server, and we only care about you when
0:26:52you screw up.
0:26:53There's no glory in your job.
0:26:54Just get it done.
0:26:55You're about as important to our company as the people who keep our mail servers running.
0:26:59And that culture that they're the B team and they're not as important to the company is
0:27:05really difficult to overcome.
0:27:06Even with leadership at the top saying, "We're rededicating to services.
0:27:09iCloud is a big deal."
0:27:11I don't know if they can get the best people, the most money, the priorities, the attention
0:27:18from everybody, because everyone is so focused on, "What's the next iPhone?
0:27:21What's the next version of iOS?
0:27:22iOS 7 and the iPhone 5s, right? Whole company's focused on that. Launch, launch, launch. And
0:27:27by the way, the service is better work, but we don't want to hear about it. Like, again,
0:27:31this is all from the outside. I don't know if this is true, but it's very difficult to
0:27:35change that internal culture that the iOS and the hardware and software guys who make
0:27:41the flagship product are that those are the glory jobs. And at Google, the glory jobs
0:27:46are the guys who run the search engine, right? Who run the web services, who index the entire
0:27:50web every 10 seconds or whatever the heck you're up to now.
0:27:52Well, I think I should serve the ads at least.
0:27:54That's the glory job at Google, yeah.
0:27:57Or the ad, you know, the thing that serves the ads, right, that makes the money for the
0:28:00company.
0:28:01Like, but it's not, the glory teams at Google are not the teams that make, I think it's
0:28:07not even teams that make Android or the Android devices this way.
0:28:10It's the web services.
0:28:11And I think the real heart, if you dig down, the real heart of Google are the people who
0:28:15run the infrastructure that run all their services.
0:28:18Those are the real sort of the little Yodas inside Google, the people with the most respect
0:28:24and clout and power, the ability to say no to your project and yester the project indirectly
0:28:29by...
0:28:30I mean, they make the services that make everything run.
0:28:32And that is a very different location than the heart of Apple's company, which is probably
0:28:38a couple of people in Johnny Ive's industrial design team and the people who really run
0:28:42the Core OS and who decide, I guess, probably the compiler team and maybe the frameworks
0:28:46team for UIKit.
0:28:48That's the tiny little heart of Apple, and it is so distant from the heart of Google.
0:28:52And I don't know if you can have two hearts or if you could spread the company out or...
0:28:56Sounds complicated.
0:28:57Yeah, it's timey-wimey.
0:29:00If you're one of the iOS or OS X engineers and you know enough about Apple to know that
0:29:06you are currently in the chosen one position, you're working on UIKit, you know you have
0:29:10your future paved ahead of you in a good way, well, you're not going to be volunteering
0:29:15for going to work on iCloud.
0:29:18So anyone who's already there that's proven themselves
0:29:21probably is gonna try to dodge the services bullet.
0:29:25Maybe that's what this Topsy thing is all about,
0:29:27and I'm reaching quite a bit here,
0:29:28but maybe the answer is you get a group
0:29:30that's really good at services,
0:29:32and again, Topsy is a dodgy example,
0:29:35but get a group that's really good at services,
0:29:37say Dropbox, you know, three or four years ago
0:29:39when it was even reasonable that they would be bought,
0:29:42and have them come in,
0:29:44They're not as bitter and jaded about not being on UI kit yet
0:29:47And maybe that's what it takes to get services to be at a position that it's not a piece of crap
0:29:53You missed the most important part about this top CX acquisition
0:29:57Which is that if they hire this company and do not immediately throw away all of their technology like that's not their plan
0:30:03Finally there is a job inside Apple that I might be qualified
0:30:11So, let me know when you send your application in. I'll be a reference for you, John.
0:30:15Yeah. I can only imagine interviewing there.
0:30:20But you would have to move. You wouldn't move away from the greater Boston area, would you?
0:30:25No, that I think is part of their hiring problem, actually, because so many companies are flexible about remote workers now,
0:30:31and Apple historically has not been the most flexible company about remote work.
0:30:35And I guess Yahoo's going the other direction as well, trying to lock things down there.
0:30:39But it's really difficult.
0:30:41We would like to hire you, but that
0:30:42would mean you would have to move to one of the most expensive
0:30:44places to live in the country.
0:30:45And maybe your family's not near here.
0:30:47And that sort of-- not artificially limits.
0:30:49It's kind of a natural limit.
0:30:50But it's difficult when you're the biggest or second biggest
0:30:53company in the world that your requirement is everyone
0:30:55who works for me has to live around here.
0:30:57You're going to miss out on tons and tons of good people.
0:31:00Yeah, and anecdotally, I've heard at least a couple
0:31:03of stories about people who have interviewed at Apple,
0:31:07perhaps even been offered a job at Apple, but have had to say, "Well, I really can't or won't
0:31:12move to California," at which point the conversation's over. And there are other places,
0:31:17like Google has offices at Google. I have an office in Boston. They have a big office in New
0:31:21York City. Amazon has offices, and not just in Seattle. They have on the East Coast as well.
0:31:26Apple, I think, does have some offices in Austin, and that one guy who makes all the money in
0:31:31Ireland. They have remote locations, but the heart is really the giant flying saucer thing
0:31:36that they're building in one infinite loop. So that is a possible way forward for Apple,
0:31:43and I think that they were looking at that, to have a substantial presence, like to not say that
0:31:48everything has to happen in California for our important products, of course.
0:31:51Maybe that's a way for the server-side group to get some freedom from that, is make the
0:31:55server-side groups based in Texas or on the East Coast somewhere, just so they can be independent.
0:32:03then maybe you can build up a group there that sort of has its own pride and reputation
0:32:07and isn't constantly overshadowed by iOS and Johnny Ive's hardware and all that stuff.
0:32:13This episode is also brought to you by our friends at Igloo Software. This is great.
0:32:19So if you go to igloosoftware.com/atp, you'll see those new landing page they made. And
0:32:24a couple episodes ago, we were talking about enterprise software and how awful it is and
0:32:30John's enterprise software assumptions and how John had such an ordeal with the Cisco
0:32:37VPN stuff on Mavericks. Igloo, because they actually listen to our cool stuff and actually
0:32:45our fans and support us for a very long time now, Igloo has made a page in response to
0:32:51John's myths about enterprise software. It's pretty great. Go to igloosoftware.com/atp
0:32:58to see.
0:32:59I have not seen this yet up until just this very moment,
0:33:02and this is utterly fantastic.
0:33:03Isn't it great?
0:33:05Usually on their landing pages, they'll sneak in an inside
0:33:08reference or two.
0:33:09You'll catch them subtly.
0:33:11This time they went all out.
0:33:12It's pretty great.
0:33:13So Igloo's latest cloud update, Tinsel, arrives this Friday,
0:33:17which is probably going to be the release
0:33:18date of this show.
0:33:19So let's say today.
0:33:21It's a free update for every customer.
0:33:23When you log into your Igloo, the new features
0:33:24are immediately available starting this Friday.
0:33:28With Tinsel, Igloo is making it easier than ever for you to get started. Some companies
0:33:32-- oh, we should point out before I do this, they didn't tell me to say this, but I probably
0:33:35should tell you what Igloo actually is before I go on about their latest update. Igloo is
0:33:40a hosted, enterprise-ready intranet software platform that doesn't actually suck. That's
0:33:46not their official tagline. That's my tagline for them. But it's basically an intranet that
0:33:49doesn't suck. So they have great design and they have things like Twitter-like things,
0:33:56micro blogs, wikis, all sorts of components that they can use for your company to use
0:34:01internally and they're all private and encrypted and secure and everything. So they aren't
0:34:07out there on the public internet, so that's very nice for companies, but it also is not
0:34:11horrible, ugly, clunky, feature-limited enterprise software from the 90s.
0:34:16With Tinsel, Igloo is making it easier than ever for you to get started. Some companies
0:34:20don't need a full intranet. Now you can start your Igloo with just one of their web apps.
0:34:25Like for example, if you just need file sharing or you just need micro blogs by themselves.
0:34:29The best part is, you can still add additional apps into your igloo, expanding it later as
0:34:34your needs grow.
0:34:35So if you start with file sharing to replace Dropbox for instance, you can add an internal
0:34:39blog and shared calendars later, all in one place.
0:34:43Tinsel also adds a health check dashboard for your intranet.
0:34:46It gives you detailed analytics into easy to read these charts about the people, content
0:34:50and social activity happening in your intranet.
0:34:53When your internet falls below igloo's benchmark data, suggestions appear in the health check
0:34:57dashboard to improve your performance.
0:34:59There's also great new features like content templates, color-coded channels, new widgets,
0:35:05and more.
0:35:06So start building your igloo today.
0:35:08It's free to use up to 10 people and very affordable after that.
0:35:11So go to igloosoftware.com/atp to see those great pigs they made for us and to sign up.
0:35:17Thanks a lot to igloo for sponsoring our show.
0:35:19This is a great landing page.
0:35:21I immediately scrolled to the bottom to see if they were going to do item number four,
0:35:25because it was my – I forget what they call it – enterprise software assumptions, I
0:35:30think.
0:35:31Yeah, yeah, basically.
0:35:33And the first three were easy.
0:35:34It's like, you know, when a new version of OS X comes out, assume your enterprise software
0:35:38won't work.
0:35:39So they're going to contradict that and say, well, Igloo will work, right?
0:35:40And so on and so forth.
0:35:41But the fourth one was actually, despite all the terribleness of enterprise software, sometimes
0:35:46it's your fault.
0:35:47And I'm like, well, how are they going to spin that one?
0:35:48So they say, despite all the terrible things that are terrible about enterprise software,
0:35:50it's at least partially your fault and then they add it in parentheses, but we'll help you fix it."
0:35:55So they turned it into a customer service angle. If you screw up, Igloo is there to help you out.
0:36:00So that's very clever. And the little paragraphs of text they wrote underneath each one of these
0:36:05things, it's very nice. And I totally agree with it because Igloo is the internet that I wish I
0:36:10could use, but don't. And I have to point out just a couple of quick items here. At the bottom of
0:36:16number one. And just for John, Flash is optional and there are zero apps required.
0:36:20Zero Java apps required. Sorry, yeah, sorry. And the "and just for
0:36:25John" part, I pulled directly off the page, which is pretty awesome. And then I also enjoy
0:36:30way towards the bottom, "Collaboration doesn't have to be craziness. Watch our sandwich videos
0:36:35and save yourself from SharePoint." Which is pretty awesome. And that's dear to my heart.
0:36:41Yeah, these guys really get it. So thanks a lot to Igloo.
0:36:45And speaking of, it's sometimes your problem, about a week ago, I, for the second time,
0:36:52you would think this would only happen to a geek like me once, but no.
0:36:56For the second time, I called Verizon Fios to report an outage, and the problem was that
0:37:03I had to reboot my own Apple Airport Extreme.
0:37:06Did they tell you to do the thing where just plug it and unplug it in case any dust settled
0:37:12on it in Merlin parlance?
0:37:14No, they didn't make up any kind, you know, merciful reasons to make me do that.
0:37:20They just, they're like, "Oh, have you tried rebooting it?"
0:37:22And of course, immediately I'm like, "Oh yeah, I think I've tried that.
0:37:26I must have tried that."
0:37:27And then I'm like, "You know what?
0:37:28Let me go try it just in case."
0:37:30And this actually happened like six months ago also.
0:37:33I was so embarrassed.
0:37:35Like, because I, our Fios has not been that reliable.
0:37:39Actually about two days ago, it had a real outage like all night and it was pretty rough.
0:37:43So I've called them, over the course of having it for the last three years, I've called them
0:37:47maybe five times about outages, and two of them have been, I just needed to reboot my
0:37:52own router that I use arrogantly, not using theirs.
0:37:56I'm really terrified to replace my Apple airport.
0:37:58I have an airport extreme, like when they were the flat pancake thing, and actually
0:38:02a much older model.
0:38:03And it's not good.
0:38:04It doesn't have good Wi-Fi range, but it is rock solid.
0:38:08I have had to plug in and unplug it.
0:38:11like I'll go away for vacation or something, but like maybe two times a year after that.
0:38:15And it just doesn't crash, it doesn't reboot, it just runs and runs and runs. And every
0:38:20other router that I read about, it's like, oh, I have to reboot it once a week, or it's
0:38:25flaky or sometimes it just stops sending data or whatever. And that's why I'm so and also
0:38:29I'm using it instead of using any files hardware, I go right from the ONT into my thing. And
0:38:33I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to get it to release the IP address. So when I plug
0:38:36in the new one, it won't be able to get like,
0:38:38Oh yeah, you have to call them to do that. There's all these tricks on the internet about
0:38:43like, "Oh, well if you hold down the buttons on the ONT and make it do a real full reset,
0:38:47and it never works." It's held for, I think, at least a few hours on the server end.
0:38:53I'm willing to wait a few hours. When I did the switchover, the guy who did my install
0:38:57was good, and I told him what I was planning on doing, and he of course has to hook up
0:39:00the Verizon, whatever, and he just basically said, "You should go to the admin interface
0:39:05to this router and you can issue a command to have it release the IP. So issue the command
0:39:09to have it to release the IP and then disconnect that router and then the next router you connect
0:39:12it will give the IP. And so I didn't have to wait an hour for it. But yeah, I'm so scared
0:39:16to get rid of this router even though it has such terrible range because A, because I hate
0:39:19the stupid giant TARDIS looking thing from Apple that it has the fan inside it, which
0:39:25I don't want, and B, any other choice that I have, I'm terrified that it's going to be
0:39:29flaky and reboot all the time.
0:39:31I'm just surprised that you got asked to do all those sorts of things because I don't
0:39:36remember if I talked about this on the show and cut me off if I did, but a week or two
0:39:39ago we had an outage and long story short it was because of a power spike in the box
0:39:45that's in the garage, which isn't the ONT.
0:39:47It's like the power station that powers the ONT ended up getting fried.
0:39:51But I called them at like nine o'clock at night and I called Verizon and I said, "Hey,
0:39:55you know, I have an outage and here's what I've discovered.
0:39:58Not only is the internet out, but the phone and the TV are out."
0:40:00And the only slightly weird thing they had me do was unplug this little power station,
0:40:06as I call it, I know that's not the right term, and plug in anything else into that
0:40:10outlet just to make sure the outlet was alive, which I thought was completely reasonable.
0:40:14And that was the only thing.
0:40:15Never asked about a router, never asked about anything else.
0:40:17That was the only thing they did.
0:40:18And then, sure enough, at 830 the next morning, somebody arrived to fix it and by no later
0:40:24than nine o'clock it was already fixed.
0:40:26and that was the second time I've had somebody to the house
0:40:30about my file service since 2008.
0:40:33- I will say also, I've had amazing luck with the people
0:40:38that you get when you call them for tech support.
0:40:40They're really consistently really good people,
0:40:43and they do, I think you got the effect of this,
0:40:46they do pick up pretty quickly whether you're a geek or not.
0:40:49You don't have to try to convince them,
0:40:51yes, I know what I'm talking about generally,
0:40:53although I haven't tried rebooting my router,
0:40:55But you don't usually have to go jump through hoops,
0:40:59yes, okay, I'm plugging it in now,
0:41:03you know, faking, you don't have to do that.
0:41:05You can just tell them, hey, my ONT is failing.
0:41:07And the fact that you know what it's called
0:41:10will probably get them to immediately say,
0:41:11okay, here, you do this, this, and this, and then that's it.
0:41:14They're really good.
0:41:15They're very geek-friendly.
0:41:16- Right, as soon as I said ONT,
0:41:18I think that flipped the switch into
0:41:19this person must at least know slightly
0:41:21what they're talking about.
0:41:22- This person at least read a forum once.
0:41:24Right, exactly. So this episode is sponsored by Verizon.
0:41:29Going back a minute, back to Apple and their potential woes with services and the respect
0:41:34within the company. How much of this do you think is a problem with the release and marketing
0:41:39schedule? So when most people do web services, Google included, everyone, you know, Facebook,
0:41:46Twitter, everything, they don't usually have big press events to announce feature
0:41:51updates. New products, maybe. But generally, a feature update or a medium-scale improvement
0:42:00won't really get a big event, and they won't hold it for a big event. Whereas Apple almost
0:42:07always does that. Their web services seem to almost be versioned and fixed in time as
0:42:12if they were OSes, or the OS updates that we get, where they will hold back certain
0:42:20features or fixes or tweaks until the next marketing event to lump it all in. And part
0:42:26of that is, I think, necessary because Apple has been battling this image that they're
0:42:33not innovating anymore. So they probably feel pressure to, like, pump up their events with
0:42:40as much crap as they can cram in there with all this cool stuff they've been doing.
0:42:44But I think that ultimately is really dysfunctional for web services and web apps, because that's
0:42:51not how the rest of the world works.
0:42:52That's not how the web works.
0:42:54And how much of their problem stuff in this area do you think is related to that kind
0:43:02of forced product marketing schedule that both the public and Apple kind of forces on
0:43:07itself?
0:43:08But the good and the bad part of it is that web services are not held in high enough esteem
0:43:12to be deemed worthy of holding back for the thing.
0:43:16Remember they're doing the iCloud beta website,
0:43:19iWork for iCloud or whatever the hell
0:43:21those terrible web services were.
0:43:23They put that out and they revised it and they improved it
0:43:26and it was up for beta and then they rolled it out
0:43:28to everybody and they'll do, because it's not a big deal,
0:43:31they don't think it's gonna be that flashy.
0:43:32And though they did demo it at the recent event,
0:43:35they had been making changes and improvements to it.
0:43:38I mean, just think of the whole history of that interface
0:43:40that they've had that's supposed to look like Apple Mail.
0:43:42they change that and improve that off cycle, like not during events, because it's like,
0:43:46well, they don't think it's high enough priority for an event because it's not going to be
0:43:52impressive or it's not their bread and butter.
0:43:54I know they do want to have a big bang and tie it in with the new versions of the iLife
0:43:58applications, but it's like they get to be in the presentation only because they're tied
0:44:02to one of the real products that Apple makes.
0:44:04And the rest of the time, they'll willingly update it and tweak it and do stuff to it.
0:44:09It seems like they're better for not being tied to that schedule, but inevitably for
0:44:15all of their products, they're going to have to—they do a pretty good job dealing with
0:44:18it.
0:44:19With the exception of hardware, they're going to have to get used to putting out products
0:44:23on a less monolithic kind of schedule and more kind of a dribs and drabs.
0:44:28And I think they are getting better about that.
0:44:30When they have to, for example, the mail update to work with the Gmail stuff, you've got to
0:44:33do what you've got to do.
0:44:34That didn't come in 10.9.1.
0:44:35The old Apple would have held that for 10.9.1, but in the new era of people trying to use
0:44:41it in web services and Gmail to get their work done, you can't hold that for 10.9.1.
0:44:4610.9.1's not ready to come out.
0:44:47It's coming, but they can't hold the mail fix, so it has to come out.
0:44:50And same thing if there was a Safari error or whatever.
0:44:53You just got to keep pushing these updates.
0:44:55And I think the change in Mavericks to having optionally automatic updates of all applications
0:44:59on the OS is all part of that.
0:45:02is different because you have to make millions of these hardware devices in the months leading
0:45:07up to your launch, and it's kind of hard to avoid a big run-up to a big bang and then
0:45:13sell a couple million on a weekend. You can't let that out by drips and drabs. So I think
0:45:18the hardware stuff will still be on that schedule, and as long as any hardware stuff is on that
0:45:21kind of schedule, which I think makes sense if you want to have a big sort of opening
0:45:24weekend in movie parlance, there's some software that's tied to that hardware too, and there's
0:45:29There's no avoiding tying something to it, but the web services, for good or for ill,
0:45:34seem less tied to the hardware and more likely to be updated off-cycle.
0:45:39This kind of reminds me, in a weird way, of companies that say they use agile processes
0:45:47but don't.
0:45:49And Marco, you will know nothing about this because you don't have a real job.
0:45:52You are correct.
0:45:53But John, you might actually know something about this.
0:45:56So I've worked at a couple of different places and for most of my career I've done consulting.
0:46:01And the place in which I work now actually does do legitimate honest to goodness agile
0:46:07development and there's not an overabundance of planning upfront.
0:46:12There's just enough to get by.
0:46:14And generally speaking, we manage all of our projects in terms of sprints.
0:46:20We use Pivotal Tracker.
0:46:22Everything gets assigned points.
0:46:23Points are used as currency.
0:46:25We cooperate with product owners about what to schedule, when to schedule it, etc.
0:46:30It actually works pretty well.
0:46:34When everyone is on the same page, when the product owner is invested, when the product
0:46:39owner understands what a point is and what it represents, it works really, really, really,
0:46:45really well.
0:46:47But if there's any weak link in that system, if for example the product owner, which is
0:46:53typically at the client, if the product owner doesn't have the time to invest or doesn't
0:46:58really care or doesn't want to learn to understand, then suddenly everything stops
0:47:04working well.
0:47:06And I kind of wonder, to bring this back to Apple, if even if the web services teams were
0:47:14behaving in such a way that they could do incremental releases regularly, I wonder if
0:47:21superiors just kind of find that prohibitive. And I guess, Marco, this is kind of what you
0:47:25were saying as well. But even if they themselves were prepped for really frequent releases,
0:47:31I don't know that even if the higher-ups in Apple wanted them to do those more frequent
0:47:37releases, because so much of the company is based on annual or semi-annual releases, I
0:47:44don't know that it will ever really work because it's kind of like trying to force Agile on
0:47:48on a situation where Agile just doesn't really fit.
0:47:51- It made me depressed about Agile methodologies
0:47:54and other methodologies that are used in jobs.
0:47:57We should put that on topic lists for future podcasts
0:47:59'cause that stuff makes me sad.
0:48:00- Wait, the fact that you don't use Agile?
0:48:04- No, all those kind of like, here's the way,
0:48:07here's a set of rules and if you apply these rules,
0:48:10it will make you be able to develop software.
0:48:12- Can I make a slight confession?
0:48:16- Sure.
0:48:17never used a methodology.
0:48:19You're using one.
0:48:20It just doesn't have a name.
0:48:23Yeah, exactly.
0:48:24It isn't that effective.
0:48:27I wouldn't recommend my methodology.
0:48:28Most importantly, you're not using one imposed on you by somebody else.
0:48:31That is, no matter what methodology you're using, if you got to pick it, well then, you
0:48:35know, it's very different than if a bunch of other people have decided this is the way
0:48:39we are going to develop software, and then you come into that environment and have the
0:48:43rules applied to you.
0:48:44That is a very different—whatever the rules are, that is very different.
0:48:47Now, Jon, does your company self-describe as adhering to any particular methodology?
0:48:54We use a lot of the words from agile methodology.
0:48:58But hold on. So you self-describe as agile. Now, I'm not asking what you are.
0:49:04No, no. I don't think so. I don't think the company would say we use—because every time,
0:49:08you know, in interviews and stuff, we use aspects of an agile system, and I would modify that to say
0:49:14we use vocabulary from, which is what it devolves to.
0:49:20But sure, again, I think that's--
0:49:23I'm going to put that on the topic list for another--
0:49:25for the day, because I think it's a big, long thing.
0:49:28We would never start a big, long topic an hour into a show.
0:49:30No, definitely not.
0:49:32So I will let you slide on this one,
0:49:36but we will add it to the show notes that don't exist.
0:49:38Type it in the notes file, yeah.
0:49:40Do you want to talk about this boring USB plug instead
0:49:43of interesting things like Agile?
0:49:45- Honestly, this thing is pretty funny.
0:49:47So the USB 3.0 mini plug is a disaster,
0:49:51as we've talked about before.
0:49:53I still, so I have that card reader,
0:49:55my one USB 3 device,
0:49:57I still insert the plug wrong every time.
0:50:01Like it's so weird to get that stupid mini 3 connector.
0:50:04Anyway, so the news is that the USB standards group
0:50:10or whatever, has agreed to make a new connector
0:50:14that they haven't actually shown yet,
0:50:15but it's gonna be a new connector
0:50:17that, like the Apple Lightning connector,
0:50:20will finally be reversible.
0:50:23And this will come out if all goes to plan,
0:50:26which of course rarely happens with committees.
0:50:28If all goes to plan, devices that use this
0:50:31will come out in about 2016.
0:50:33Did I get that right?
0:50:34- If you were looking at the notes file, you would know.
0:50:37(laughing)
0:50:38in the different tab.
0:50:39Give me a break.
0:50:40[laughs]
0:50:41I thought it was 2015.
0:50:42Yeah.
0:50:43The final specification is expected to be published by the middle of 2014.
0:50:46That's when the spec will be done, and then it presumably – but the thing is, with a
0:50:50lot of – with these specs, kind of like the 802.11 specs, there's a possibility
0:50:56that manufacturers will start building things to the not technically ratified or whatever
0:51:02approved spec like they always do.
0:51:03Like the draft N.
0:51:04Yeah.
0:51:05I mean, they can always upgrade the firmware, but a lot of times they don't even have
0:51:08do that. With controllers, with connectors, it might be a little bit more dangerous, but
0:51:12I don't know. But anyway, I would expect that the MO for the group that handles USB seems
0:51:17to be to make sure that whatever crap they come up with, you can make it as cheaply as
0:51:22possible. And that seems to be their one and only criteria for success because they sure
0:51:26as hell don't care about making a good connector. And so this would be a change in methodology,
0:51:31but their audience is still the same group of people saying, "How many pennies can we
0:51:35saved by making your piece of crap connector. Can I bend a piece of metal into a shoebox
0:51:38shape? Good. Ship it. Done. Piece of plastic in the middle of a bent piece of metal."
0:51:43Well, and to some extent, they should be concerned about that, because that's one of the things
0:51:47that has made USB so—to reuse part of its acronym—so universal. When USB first came
0:51:55out, you had USB versus the old stuff, serial, parallel. But then FireWire came out, I think,
0:52:01afterwards or right before and USB was always way cheaper to implement than FireWire.
0:52:09And part of this is the controller chips and how that's arranged, but USB was always the
0:52:14cheap way to go and so it caught on like crazy because it was just the cheapest.
0:52:19And same thing now, you know, FireWire 800 comes out, USB 2.0 comes out.
0:52:24Thunderbolt comes out, USB 3.0 comes out.
0:52:27In every one of these generations, USB has dominated
0:52:30and won and been way more universal and supported
0:52:34than the other thing because it's just cheap
0:52:36and it's simpler, it's cheaper for everyone,
0:52:38cheaper to implement, cheaper to host, et cetera.
0:52:40So that actually does matter here.
0:52:44And I don't know how much of the total cost
0:52:45of implementation is like the bits on the connector
0:52:48versus the controller chips and the logic inside,
0:52:51but I would imagine a reversible connector
0:52:54with enough pins to support these kind of rates
0:52:56and everything else they have to support in the physical cable, a reversible connector
0:53:01is definitely going to be more expensive and more complicated to implement.
0:53:04I'm not saying that cheapness is not something they should go for.
0:53:07They just got the balance way off.
0:53:08Because like it's, getting back to the last show, Pennywise, Poundfulish, "Oh, we can
0:53:12save tiny pennies by making our connector really crappy and cheap and easy to construct."
0:53:19The big one was, over Fireware and stuff like that, was that the smarts had to be in the
0:53:23computer.
0:53:24a complicated controller chip, whereas FireWire interfaces were smart enough to sort of talk
0:53:28amongst themselves without a controlling computer. That's where all the money went. But they
0:53:32were like, "Oh, what?" The mindset is just squeeze every penny you can out of these stupid
0:53:37connectors and ignore everything else. And just shift that a little bit to say, "Make
0:53:41them cheap. That's good." But it's like optimizing something. You have to profile it. Find out
0:53:46where most of the time is being spent. Optimize that part. So profiling USB is like, "Where's
0:53:50all the money being spent?" Well, it's stupid silicon chips in the controller. We can't
0:53:53afford a big expensive controller like the FireWire things. We wanted to make a cheap
0:53:56control that's easy to make, that can come from tons of manufacturers. That's good. Once
0:54:00you've done that, don't worry so much about the connector because what portion of the
0:54:04price is the connector? Maybe it's an increasing portion as the silicon price goes to zero
0:54:09as we keep shrinking things, I don't know. But it's just such an incredible mistake.
0:54:13I always talk about the USB connector guy saying, "How does he know whether he did a
0:54:16good job?" If any of us were making a connector, we would spend 10 minutes thinking about what
0:54:20what makes a good connector and surely we would come upon things like hard to put in,
0:54:23can't put in the wrong way, not externally symmetrical and internally asymmetrical.
0:54:28Those would come up if you just thought about it for a minute.
0:54:31It's such a, on the one hand you can say, well if I save one penny I end up saving five
0:54:34billion dollars over the life of a thing because of so many USB connectors, right?
0:54:37But on the other hand, if you annoy people for one second, you annoy people for five
0:54:42billion seconds of the life.
0:54:44It's just a different way of looking at it.
0:54:47So this gives me hope, and what I would like to see out of this, which I think would be
0:54:50hilarious, is if this new USB connector, of which there are no pictures or design drawings
0:54:55as far as I've been able to find, if this connector looks exactly like a Lightning connector
0:54:59but slightly different, like a little bit wider or has a bulge in it or something.
0:55:04Because think about it, what other kind of form factors can you get for a small connector
0:55:07that's not that giant, wide, floppy USB micro thing that's not even very micro?
0:55:12It has to be small.
0:55:13It's the whole point of the thing because devices are getting smaller.
0:55:15you want something small and reversible, it's very difficult to do something sturdy at that
0:55:19size, you know, because look at the existing, like the ones that go into your cameras, whatever
0:55:24the hell those connectors are, they're terrible.
0:55:26Yeah, the micro USB, yeah.
0:55:27Yeah, there's lots of different ones.
0:55:28There's one that looks kind of like, it's got a wide angled sort of triangular trapezoid
0:55:34thing on the bottom, then a rectangle, then there's the one that's just skinny and it
0:55:37looks almost like it's just exactly rectangular, but it's got like little, the corners chopped
0:55:40off of it.
0:55:41I believe you're talking about mini and micro USB respectively.
0:55:44I don't know what the names are.
0:55:45They're both very small.
0:55:46But those are their metal,
0:55:47they're bent metal things and inside the metal,
0:55:50it's like hollow and there's pins in there.
0:55:51Whereas the lightning is reversed.
0:55:53It's like a solid piece of,
0:55:54not really solid, but it's solid.
0:55:55And then the connectors are on,
0:55:56the contacts are on the outside of the solid thing.
0:55:59And I think that's the only way really to make a sturdy,
0:56:02very small reversible connector.
0:56:04Because you can't have anything go inside
0:56:06the tiny little thing.
0:56:07Like that's what makes the micro and mini so annoying
0:56:10that there is that hollow spot that stuff has to go into.
0:56:13And you could make that reversible, I suppose,
0:56:15But I really, really hope that they basically just copy lightning and say, "Reverse it.
0:56:19Condacts on outside, solid metal-ish thing."
0:56:23Because then you can make that solid metal thing pretty thin and still be sturdy and
0:56:26still be reversible.
0:56:27So we'll see.
0:56:29But the problem with lightning, you know, the reason why Apple—and by the way, there
0:56:33was a great post John Gruber wrote on Daring Fireball about this thing today—we'll
0:56:37link to it in the show notes—about how this is like—like, lightning is like what makes
0:56:41Apple, Apple, and it's everything that people love and hate about Apple. It's fantastic.
0:56:47But in order to do this, you have to give up substantial concessions to complexity and
0:56:57cost. To make something reversible, it is going to be more expensive. It is going to
0:57:01be much more complex. And you're going to have, like, the dollar cables from Monoprice
0:57:07might actually suck or might not work.
0:57:10There's gonna be problems.
0:57:11- You don't need as many contacts.
0:57:12So lightning is expensive because it's meant to do more
0:57:14than just be USB.
0:57:15Like if it was just USB,
0:57:17they would just be running USB over it.
0:57:18Lightning does not just run USB over it.
0:57:19Like lightning is Apple's expansion plan
0:57:21for their iOS devices.
0:57:22So that, you know, it's part of their,
0:57:25how can we evolve our hardware
0:57:27without having to change this connector again?
0:57:28It's very flexible, very complicated.
0:57:30They just basically need to run USB over a cable
0:57:33with a different connector.
0:57:34- Well, but I think, well physically,
0:57:35I'm pretty sure that the lightning cable has like just barely enough contacts to run USB 3 over it
0:57:42And and and pull that off
0:57:45But it's like this flexible arrangement where it can change what the pins do and they sense each other like it's way more
0:57:50It's like it's more expensive than it's way more expensive than uh than USB is going to be but I think like just physically speaking
0:57:57Like you know ignore what's going over the wires and what's talking amongst them
0:58:01Just look at the little metal thing that you plug into some other thing
0:58:05I think the USB group can come up with a connector that's more expensive than any, they're just
0:58:10in connectors, but is not outrageously so.
0:58:13And then down the line continue, you know, as the wires connect, they connect to a USB
0:58:173 hub and they have all the same, you know, cost constraints that they always have there.
0:58:21I hope they can pull it off.
0:58:22I love too how this is, this is one of those things like about half the articles about
0:58:27it, and a lot of the comments that some of the reporters are getting from the various
0:58:31USB spec people and from Intel and everything like that.
0:58:34It's so funny how they try to avoid talking about Apple or giving Apple any credit whatsoever
0:58:39in starting this thing.
0:58:41It's like they'll try, they'll be like, "Well, we're designing this for emerging product
0:58:46categories."
0:58:47I think they've already emerged a couple years ago, actually.
0:58:53And the worst thing about it is that USB was way out ahead in making connectors for very
0:58:57tiny devices.
0:58:58Like all these two terrible camera connectors that we were just talking about, those existed
0:59:02way before lightning.
0:59:03Like the USB group saw people want to connect their cameras or they're very small, I don't
0:59:07know if they had tablets or smartphones or whatever charger.
0:59:10Like they said they saw the need for small connectors way before Apple did.
0:59:14Apple took so long with that stupid giant, you know, 30 pin connector.
0:59:18They just, the USB group just made a series of terrible small connectors, right?
0:59:23And like they were, they had all the advantages of the old world PC.
0:59:27We can move fast.
0:59:28We can fill needs as soon as we see them.
0:59:31And they just did a bad job in every single one of them.
0:59:33And so now they've sort of been embarrassed into this press release by Apple taking forever
0:59:39to come up with anything, but when they came up with it, it's fantastic, at least for Apple's
0:59:42purposes, obviously it wouldn't be fantastic for their group, for the expensive Lightning
0:59:46interface that connects to it.
0:59:48And so that's why it's so hard to envision this new USB thing being anything other than
0:59:52looking a lot like the Lightning connector, unless it's terrible.
0:59:56Because if they just make something that's like micro USB, but a slightly different shape
1:00:00and reversible, I don't think that's a win.
1:00:02Like would you rather plug in, say you took micro USB and now it's reversible.
1:00:07Would you enjoy plugging that in?
1:00:08I sure as heck wouldn't.
1:00:09I hate plugging that thing into my camera.
1:00:11It's not a good experience.
1:00:13And so this is a test of whatever this is, the USB IF.
1:00:17I don't know what the IF stands for.
1:00:20But we'll see if they got their act together by what this connector looks like when it
1:00:24comes out.
1:00:25Yeah, I'm very curious, honestly.
1:00:28And I would love them to do this on both ends of the cable.
1:00:33And I don't know if they would ever do that.
1:00:34USB has never had a symmetrical cable like that.
1:00:38But I would love to see that, because certainly the computer end of the cables is just as
1:00:45frustrating to insert upside down and everything.
1:00:49It's just as bad.
1:00:50That's one of the things they say in the thing.
1:00:53Usability enhancements.
1:00:54will no longer need to be concerned with plug orientation/cable direction.
1:00:59Oh good!
1:00:59Make it easier to plug in.
1:01:01That would be fantastic.
1:01:02And this will affect all of our lives, because even though we have Apple devices, we have
1:01:05cameras and stuff too, and they will have whatever this connector is in a couple years,
1:01:09you have to assume, right?
1:01:10And the Apple laptops and Apple computers that have USB, which is all of them, you know,
1:01:15those ports can get smaller too.
1:01:17That may wait several more years. Remember how long it took Apple to get USB 3?
1:01:20That's true.
1:01:23Maybe in 17 years the Mac Pro will finally support these connectors.
1:01:27So we're going to connect our Retina displays to our Mac Pros with
1:01:30this new USB connector, because DisplayPort will never carry appropriate resolutions.
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1:04:44- It's under my desk right now.
1:04:47- Yeah, no, you know what I mean.
1:04:49You know what I mean.
1:04:50Where are your trashcan Mac Pros?
1:04:53'Cause isn't it supposed to be before the end of the year
1:04:54or did I make that up?
1:04:56- I don't know.
1:04:57- Well, they say December.
1:04:58Now, we have to consider, yes,
1:05:01when Apple says just a month for a product,
1:05:03it often comes like the last day of the month,
1:05:05but also Apple tends to be closed usually
1:05:08a large part of the company tends to be closed for the last two weeks of December.
1:05:13So I think if it's going to come in December, it's probably going to be within the next
1:05:16week.
1:05:17And my theory is that I think retina displays might not be totally ruled out for this launch.
1:05:25Keep up alive.
1:05:26You're like me with The Last Guardian.
1:05:28They could have them.
1:05:29It could happen.
1:05:30Hey, 10.10 might have a new file system.
1:05:33So I am not hoping about that.
1:05:37realistic. You're secretly hoping. You know, with your idea of like that you were going
1:05:41to wait and only buy one retina, that is having a new appeal to me now as I sit here and I
1:05:45think about it. Like if they came out with them today, would I be rushing to buy one?
1:05:48I'd probably rush to configure them to see the pricing.
1:05:50Oh, me too. But I don't know if I would rush to buy them.
1:05:53Maybe you and I will hold strong together and just say, nope, we're not buying trash
1:05:56cans until we can get a retina display with it. Because I am not buying a Dell. I don't
1:05:59even know how you sit in front of those Dell displays or whatever you got if you're set
1:06:03up there. I'm not buying a Dell display. Oh, I have moved on from my mediocre Dell
1:06:07displays. Now I have a mediocre HP display. Some ugly black thing, I know.
1:06:11It's really bad actually. It has transformer wine and it's uh...
1:06:16I think it's inverter wine actually. Whatever it is, it has a high pitched wine
1:06:21occasionally. It's not even regular, it's occasional and uh... it's really obnoxious.
1:06:26And the signaling interface to it is... either it's signaling interface or my Mac Pro is
1:06:34video card is buggy in some way so that
1:06:36mini display port no longer works
1:06:40reliably, the picture will just cut out after a
1:06:41while. I tried different cables, they're
1:06:43out. So now I'm using DVI, which is a
1:06:45giant thick cable running behind my
1:06:47computer and if I move my feet slightly
1:06:50the wrong way the screen flickers or
1:06:52turns off because something is like
1:06:53slightly on the edge of being connected
1:06:56somewhere within the cable or the two
1:06:58connectors so I'm just like I actually
1:07:00I've decided that I really kind of can't
1:07:03and shouldn't buy the new Mac Pro as long as I'm using this monitor because I'll
1:07:09have to involve another adapter in that chain because it'll have only mini display ports
1:07:13or thunderbolts. So I'll have to have the adapter to this flaky cable, to this flaky
1:07:19monitor and God knows if that'll even work or if that'll have problems. So that's
1:07:25yet another reason why I should wait until a retina display before buying this thing.
1:07:28I was not excited by the whatever those rumors were of like a Dell 24-inch retina-ish display
1:07:34because the, what would you call it, logical resolution?
1:07:38Like once you go in high DPI mode, the resolution was too low.
1:07:43Despite that it's also an ugly monitor and I, you know.
1:07:45Well hold on, the resolution was too low on the big one, but on the 23-inch or 24-inch
1:07:51one, it's exactly right.
1:07:53What was the logical resolution?
1:07:551920 by 1200.
1:07:57Or by 1080, sorry.
1:07:58- No, I gotta go bigger than that.
1:08:01I can't stand being stuck in that.
1:08:02I've been stuck in 1920 by 1200
1:08:04since I guess the 22 inch Apple Cinema Display.
1:08:07And I need bigger, my wife has a 27 inch
1:08:09and it's not that much bigger in terms of resolution,
1:08:11but it's bigger enough.
1:08:12I cannot be in 1920 by 1200 anymore.
1:08:15- Well, two things.
1:08:16One, so I've, for all of Tumblr, I used two 24 inch monitors.
1:08:21So I had two side by side monitors of that resolution.
1:08:25Now I have one big 30 inch and I like the 30 inch better,
1:08:30but not by a massive margin.
1:08:33It's not that different.
1:08:34The 24s give you, I believe, actually more real estate,
1:08:37but the 30 of course is a little more useful for you
1:08:39'cause you can have one giant window if you really want to.
1:08:41So I'd say it's kind of a toss up between the two.
1:08:44Having two 24s or having one 30 or 27
1:08:48is roughly the same amount of usefulness.
1:08:51- I'm monitor monogamous.
1:08:53Well, I do like having the one big one, because it makes the desk arrangement a lot easier.
1:08:58Like I can fit my speakers on my desk, and I, yes, anyway.
1:09:01Not on the on-screen, no, I use tons of windows, and the bigger area I have to spread those
1:09:07windows, it's like having a big gigantic desk where you spread all your papers out, that's
1:09:11how I treat my screen.
1:09:13And I have had multiple displays at various points.
1:09:15It's not that I dislike it so much, but I would much rather have one big screen than
1:09:18two, even though the total area of the two might be much greater.
1:09:21Oh, you're so wrong.
1:09:23so wrong. I totally prefer having two screens, absolutely without a shadow of a doubt.
1:09:28Yeah, but you're a more recent Windows user. Maybe that's it.
1:09:30No, I'm—
1:09:31What?
1:09:32Who had multiple displays first? I was running two displays back when your PC had CGA graphics
1:09:37and everything was teal and purple, so I don't want to hear about multi-monitors. I've
1:09:40been there and done that. It's just the way I work is better with one monitor.
1:09:45So the other thing to consider is on the Retina screens, they have those different scaling
1:09:50Now, on the 15 inch Retina MacBook Pro, I've used this thing a lot, I've gotten a lot of work on it,
1:09:55so now I'm pretty comfortable knowing that the native 2x resolution is, as measured in points,
1:10:02it's 1440x900, which is like a step below what you'd expect for a 15 inch laptop.
1:10:08But you can tell the display to run in 1680x1050x2, and it just scales it to fit the actual physical pixels.
1:10:16So that's that's how I use it most of the time
1:10:18And it works just fine like it doesn't look bad it. I would say it's perfectly fine
1:10:23So if they release a 27 inch monitor that only has the logical
1:10:291920 by 1080 times 2
1:10:32Which is what these rumors all point to?
1:10:34If they do that resolution at 27 inches I assume they would offer the same kind of scaling mode where you could simulate the
1:10:412560 by 1440 of the real 27 inch now
1:10:45And I would just do that and I'm it would look I'm sure at that at that size and that distance
1:10:50I'm sure you wouldn't even go to the difference
1:10:52Non-native res is impressive that it works as good as it does on the 15-inch, but I I don't want that on my desktop
1:10:58I'll know it's there even if I can't see it
1:11:01Well, unfortunately, if they're gonna go retina, I think it's almost certain. That's how they would do it
1:11:08I think they would really say 27 inch at
1:11:122840 by whatever like at double 25 or double 1920 by 1080 well
1:11:17I mean I keep coming back to the the resolution of those desktop images that are included in Mavericks
1:11:22They are on the nose exactly four times the number of pixels is on the existing
1:11:2727 inch display, and I can't I can't think that's a coincidence like why would you do it? I think you're right however
1:11:34The way them the way that the retina MacBook Pro scales it is it renders its own virtual resolution at 2x
1:11:42and then down samples that image to fit the physical pixels. So if the highest
1:11:48virtual resolution it offered was double 2560 by 1440, it would need a wallpaper
1:11:54that size to be native, and then it would scale it down to 3840 by whatever.
1:11:58Wow, the whole rest of the screen isn't like that. They just would just scale it up to fit
1:12:01the the TumbleRes and then they would scale it back down. It's the same thing
1:12:04what they do with any other drawing, it doesn't fill the screen entirely. I have
1:12:08to think that they're going for, I mean, maybe not. Maybe the first one will be that kind of
1:12:13scale thing, but I don't like that. Who wants to run non-native res? It's gross.
1:12:16>> I'm telling you, on my 15-inch Retina, I've run it all the time, and you can't even tell.
1:12:21>> I've seen it. It does look impressively good. It looks nice enough that I wouldn't
1:12:27mind running it like that on a laptop, which is like a compromised machine, but on a desktop
1:12:31where I've got this gigantic thing with this amazing GPU power, what's the point of it if
1:12:35I can't have, you know, that's the whole reason you're buying this thing with all this power,
1:12:39is I want to have actual real native retina desktop display.
1:12:42Maybe I can't afford that this year.
1:12:44Maybe they come out with it at $4,000.
1:12:45Fine, I'll wait.
1:12:46You know, maybe I'll have to buy one of those non-native res ones in between to get through,
1:12:51but out there, in my future, is 4x the 27-inch display native.
1:12:57So here's a question that will probably come up then.
1:13:00Suppose they launch the monitor I think they're going to launch, which is 3840 at 27 inches.
1:13:05So it's going to be, you know, you'd have to scale it up to get that kind of real estate.
1:13:10Do you buy it and just be upset about it and angry for a few years?
1:13:13Or do you hold back and still use 1X monitors with the new Mac Pro?
1:13:19Or do you not buy either?
1:13:20Do you not buy the new Mac Pro and you don't buy the new monitor until it has the resolution
1:13:23you want, which might never happen?
1:13:25Oh, it will happen.
1:13:26You know, of course it will happen eventually.
1:13:28It's just a question of how long.
1:13:29I would seriously consider trying to get like fire sale prices on the existing 27 inch and
1:13:35just running 1x for a few more years.
1:13:37Oh man.
1:13:38See, I would so much rather run scaled 2x than run real 1x.
1:13:45And it wouldn't be because of the non-native thing.
1:13:47It would just be because the logical resolution of the 1x 27 inch would be higher.
1:13:50You know what I mean?
1:13:51Like real estate, I'm trading the ability to have more space on my desk to spread my
1:13:55crap out for that crap looking super sharp.
1:13:59So I would have to say, 1920 by--
1:14:03logical resolution of like, if it's
1:14:061080 in the short dimension, I would
1:14:08want it to be at least 1,200.
1:14:09Because I'm not going to go down.
1:14:10I'm not going to go from 1920 by 1,200,
1:14:12which is what I'm looking at now, logical resolution,
1:14:14to a lower logical resolution.
1:14:16Like an animal?
1:14:19Well, that's part of the problem that I've-- well,
1:14:20part of the way of justified not getting a retina MacBook Pro
1:14:23is since I have the old school high res anti-glare MacBook
1:14:29Pro. What is this running at? Let me see. 1680 by 1050. Yep. 1680 by 1050. And what is
1:14:35your 15 run at if you're in like retinified? 1440 by 900. Right. That's terrible. That's
1:14:41atrocious. Well, alright. But you can just toggle it. Yes, yes, yes, yes. But he runs
1:14:46the non-native to get more stuff on the screen. I do. Let me run. I can tell you that there's
1:14:50this great utility, by the way, I don't want to plug this. It's called iFriendly. That's
1:14:53I spelled E-Y-E, i-friendly, it's this awesome like five buck thing in the Mac
1:14:57App Store that it lets you assign those resolution scaling things to hotkeys on
1:15:03retina MacBook Pros which is really really nice. So I have like if you smash
1:15:06all three modifiers and hit up or down arrow I have that toggle through the
1:15:10modes. It's really really cool. Yeah I don't know I'd be fine with the scale.
1:15:13Like if that's what I have to do to get retina in the next five years that's
1:15:17what I'll do. Wait but I don't understand and I'm really being serious I'm not
1:15:21I'm not trying to poke the bear here.
1:15:22If the whole point in the retina screen
1:15:25is getting everything to look as pretty as it does on iOS,
1:15:28where you've got double the density
1:15:31for the same effective space,
1:15:34doesn't scaling defeat the whole point of that?
1:15:37Yeah, you get a lot more real estate,
1:15:38but isn't that kind of defeating the whole point
1:15:40of the retina screen in the first place,
1:15:41or am I just totally missing something here?
1:15:43- It's like one and a half scale,
1:15:45where things get fuzzy around the edges
1:15:47'cause it's a non-native resolution,
1:15:48But the pixels are so small that non-native resolution, it doesn't look as blurry as--
1:15:53maybe these all make fun of people who run non-native on their 800 by 600 iBook, and
1:15:58they would change to non-native res to make everything bigger and it would look terrible.
1:16:01At that size, everything is so small that it just looks a little bit softer.
1:16:06And I find that I think retina is more important to me on an iPad or an iPhone, because I think
1:16:11I just hold it closer to my face, that I could see the pixels if they were there.
1:16:17a desktop, because I'm using it for work and stuff, I really want more space to move stuff
1:16:22around. And I also want it to be retinal. I want everything. If I have to trade one
1:16:26for the other, I really have to see what the logical res is and just stare at it for a
1:16:30while in a store and see, could I tolerate using this at a non-native res in the 1.5x
1:16:35mode? I don't know.
1:16:37So this is kind of like one of those computer philosophy things. It's like, you're still
1:16:40running hard drives on your desktop, right?
1:16:44At home, yeah.
1:16:45So there were a lot of people that refused to use SSDs
1:16:49and might still, because they were waiting until they could
1:16:52just buy like a two terabyte one for 300 bucks,
1:16:55something like that, which actually we're not that far off
1:16:56from, but for years it's like you had these people
1:16:59who were crazy like me who would buy a small SSD
1:17:03and then a big hard drive and jump through the hoops
1:17:05you need to make that be reasonably good,
1:17:07just because it was so good to even have an SSD at all
1:17:12that it was worth the kind of hack to get it earlier
1:17:15than when you can go all SSD.
1:17:17So now I wonder if that's gonna be like you with Retina,
1:17:20like you seem like the kind of person,
1:17:22like you will on principle, you will wait
1:17:25and not get this until you can have
1:17:28the exact resolution you want,
1:17:29whereas I will jump in sooner and I'm willing
1:17:32to tolerate a little bit of hackiness
1:17:34to get this massive, what I perceive as a massive upgrade
1:17:38that I really want very badly earlier.
1:17:41But I really want the extra real estate almost as badly as the Ret.
1:17:44Like that's the problem.
1:17:46The thing that will change my life the most will be having more room on my screen to put
1:17:51stuff and I was hoping not to have to go backwards and hoping, you know, to get Ret and I wouldn't
1:17:57have to sacrifice space.
1:17:59I would also get a small bump in space or whatever.
1:18:01So that's the other change that I'm looking for.
1:18:03And for the SSD hard drive thing, Fusion Drive nicely takes care of that.
1:18:05I don't think there's an equivalent though of Fusion Drive unless it's that 1.5x mode.
1:18:10Fusion Drive has almost none of the disadvantages of spinning disks and almost all the advantages
1:18:14of Retina, and I'm not sure that's true of the non-native Res Retina screen.
1:18:19I guess it also depends on how dense it is, because I think the 15-inch MacBook Air is
1:18:24going to end up being more dots per inch, native dots per inch, than the Retina desktop
1:18:29display.
1:18:30So it might look different than your laptop does in non-native.
1:18:33That's actually a good point.
1:18:34Yeah, yeah, I bet you're right about that.
1:18:35I hadn't considered that, but I'm also sitting much further away.
1:18:37But you are right that I think it will be significantly lower density.
1:18:42Because the Retina MacBook Pro is already 2880 by whatever, so it's already at 15
1:18:49inches.
1:18:50It's most of that resolution to 4K.
1:18:52It's like three-quarters of the horizontal resolution.
1:18:55So yeah, maybe.
1:18:56If we learned anything from the past couple of years, it's that waiting for Apple to
1:19:00rev its displays is like technology version of the crying game.
1:19:03Not in the way you think.
1:19:09So many of my past Mac purchases have been either based on "Surely they'll update
1:19:16the displays" or "I shouldn't buy a display now because this display is really old and
1:19:20surely they'll revise it soon."
1:19:21And you just wait.
1:19:22And you wait.
1:19:23And it's just sadness all around, waiting for them.
1:19:25I don't know why they take so long to revise their displays, but they do, and we should
1:19:28just expect it.
1:19:29Now who knows how long it will be before they pair a display worthy of their black trash
1:19:35cans.
1:19:36But there was that one exception where when they released the first 27-inch iMac, that
1:19:44was like a revolution in displays for that time where like at the time you could get
1:19:4830-inch displays for over $2,000 or you could get a 27-inch iMac with a better quality,
1:19:56dense panel of the same resolution with a free computer stuck to the back of it for
1:20:01like 1500. And it like, and they were the first ones to have those panels in any kind
1:20:05of quantity. And for a long time, the only way to get that panel was to buy an iMac.
1:20:09That's what I'm saying. They didn't put them like, Oh, where's the monitor that's just
1:20:12like that, but without the iMac attached? What do you mean doesn't exist? Right. But
1:20:16so like, I'm hoping they pull something like that with retina, you know, obviously, I'll
1:20:19attach it to the new Mac Pro. Just glue the garbage can to the back of the monitor. Well,
1:20:26it would almost certainly require Thunderbolt 2.
1:20:29And so you can pretty much only use the new
1:20:32Retina MacBook Pro and the new Mac Pro,
1:20:35which makes a lot of sense.
1:20:36I mean, obviously, we've talked about this before,
1:20:38at least I've talked about this endlessly every episode.
1:20:41We've talked a lot about how all the pieces are in place.
1:20:44It's very obvious that they're planning
1:20:46for a Thunderbolt 2 display that will be Retina,
1:20:48that will work only with the new MacBook Pro and Mac Pro.
1:20:52The only question is when that's gonna be available
1:20:54and whether it will be at long-term.
1:20:55For whatever reason, the original Mac,
1:20:59the Mac Pros were seemingly slated to come out earlier
1:21:02in the fall originally, and this feels like a delay to me,
1:21:06to come out in, quote, December.
1:21:08And I could be wrong, but it feels like
1:21:11they were supposed to come out at the November event
1:21:12and they didn't.
1:21:13And all the things they use, the CPUs from Intel
1:21:17are already shipping in volume to everybody else.
1:21:19The GPUs are not new, they're a little customized for Apple,
1:21:23but it's not a new part, so they're probably not
1:21:25having yield issues.
1:21:26So I have to wonder, what's the holdup here?
1:21:29What are they holding this back for?
1:21:30The US manufacturing plant getting that up online.
1:21:33It could be.
1:21:34But I would imagine that that happened a long time ago.
1:21:37Well, at this point, it's like, why even bother
1:21:39releasing it this year?
1:21:40Like, I'm sure they'll just release it when it's ready,
1:21:42because they don't care.
1:21:43But it's not as if the holiday season has anything
1:21:45to do with Mac Pro purchases, right?
1:21:47So it's like, what kind of company
1:21:49puts a new product up for sale in December?
1:21:51It's nothing to do with the holidays.
1:21:52They'll probably just put it out.
1:21:53If it's ready, they'll ship it, and so what?
1:21:55But it's like, you know, people going on vacation and stuff.
1:21:58If they wait until January, is the world going to end?
1:22:01No.
1:22:02If it's ready December 16th or whatever that rumor URL just flew through, then fine, they'll
1:22:04ship it then.
1:22:05But, you know, I'm not holding my breath for it.
1:22:08And like I said, even when it comes out, you're not going to buy right away.
1:22:11I'm going to go and fiddle with the configuration right away and then just see what I think.
1:22:14Well, if it comes out with a Retina display, I will buy it right away.
1:22:18That's the only thing that would make me buy it right away.
1:22:21No question.
1:22:22I would order it that day.
1:22:23The 8 core with probably 32 gigs of RAM, 1 terabyte SSD,
1:22:27and probably the mid-range video card.
1:22:30I did some research on the video cards.
1:22:32It looks like the mid-range one is substantially better
1:22:34than the low-end one, and the high-end one
1:22:36is not that much better than the mid-range one.
1:22:39So yeah, I tell you right now,
1:22:40that's a configuration I would get,
1:22:41sight unseen, 8 core, middle video card,
1:22:451 terabyte SSD, and 32 gigs of RAM.
1:22:48That's it.
1:22:49- That'll be $6,000, please.
1:22:50- Yeah, probably.
1:22:51You know, D. Sheehy in the chat asked a very important question.
1:22:54Marco, are you going to choose pickup from Amazon's German--
1:22:56or excuse me, Apple's German factory option
1:22:58when you buy your Mac Pro?
1:23:00Yeah.
1:23:02Do we know where the factory is?
1:23:03Is it somewhere weird?
1:23:05I thought it was outside Austin.
1:23:06No?
1:23:07I could go.
1:23:08Yeah, I could go to Austin.
1:23:08They have good barbecue there.
1:23:10They have very good barbecue there.
1:23:11Breakfast tacos.
1:23:12I mean, breakfast tacos are an awesome invention of the world.
1:23:15Like, you got to-- and ever since South by Southwest
1:23:18started sucking, I haven't gone there.
1:23:20there's I can visit Dan Benjamin I could eat barbecue let's do it you want to road trip it no
1:23:26definitely not doing that you don't you don't want to do this I know John definitely would like to
1:23:32road trip from Boston to Austin I think they stopped BMWs to the border of Texas oh at least
1:23:39democrats to affix the giant steer horns to the front and then you're allowed to continue
1:23:47Clearly you haven't spent a lot of time in Texas, John. There's more to Texas.
1:23:51Well, it's Austin. It's not really Texas.
1:23:52That's exactly right.
1:23:54Well, and keep in mind, like, the border of Texas is going to be substantially more rural than Austin.
1:24:00Oh, man. All right. So I think... Are we good? Is that a sign?
1:24:05We should probably cut it off there. Thanks a lot to our sponsors this week,
1:24:09Hover, Igloo, and Squarespace, and we will see you next week.
1:24:15Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin
1:24:20'Cause it was accidental (accidental)
1:24:23Oh, it was accidental (accidental)
1:24:26John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him
1:24:30'Cause it was accidental (accidental)
1:24:33Oh, it was accidental (accidental)
1:24:36And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm
1:24:41And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them
1:24:46@C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S
1:24:50So that's Kasey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M
1:24:54Auntie Marco Arment
1:24:57S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A Syracuse
1:25:02It's accidental
1:25:05They didn't mean to
1:25:08Accidental
1:25:10Tech by car so long
1:25:15John, what's up with your car? Do you want to talk about that, or do you want to save
1:25:19that for another time?
1:25:20It's always another time. Let's do it now.
1:25:22I've got lots of little items. You know, I'm still on the first tank of gas in that car.
1:25:26Seriously?
1:25:27The tank of gas came from the dealer.
1:25:28Wow.
1:25:29That shows both how little driving I do, and also, I guess, how fuel-efficient it is. Although,
1:25:32I'm not getting great mileage, because I'm, you know, stop-and-go traffic all the time
1:25:35to work. It's much better to go highway miles, but...
1:25:38Now, is that a five-speed or a six-speed?
1:25:40Six.
1:25:41But the Civic was five?
1:25:42Yeah, this is my first six-speed car.
1:25:44I was about to ask to see the BMW as my first six-speed car.
1:25:47I have not entered sixth gear yet, though.
1:25:49I was about to ask.
1:25:51I was just about to ask.
1:25:53I've been in fifth, but not sixth.
1:25:55Fair enough.
1:25:55So how do you like it?
1:25:56I'm still babying the car.
1:25:58Like, I don't even look in-- I haven't finished going
1:26:00through the owner's manual.
1:26:01But what do they tell you these days for engine breaking?
1:26:05Between 1,000 and 1,500, usually.
1:26:07Yeah, so it's going to be a long time before I can wind this
1:26:10thing out to see what it can do.
1:26:12Can that wind out?
1:26:14Oh, it winds out.
1:26:15Oh, that's terrible.
1:26:16And, you know, if you buy an M5, or lease an M5 and get it in Germany, apparently break-in
1:26:24just doesn't matter.
1:26:25Well, there is break-in, just that the limits are so ridiculous.
1:26:28It's a leased car.
1:26:29He's not keeping that engine long-term.
1:26:32Anyway, I digress.
1:26:34So tell me, what do you like and what do you not like about the Accord?
1:26:37I have a big list of things I don't like.
1:26:41You?
1:26:42Somehow I am not at all surprised by that.
1:26:47This is my third Honda Accord.
1:26:49It's my fifth Honda and I've only ever owned Hondas, although I've driven Mazdas and Volvos
1:26:53and other things that my parents have owned and stuff.
1:26:56Part of the problem is when you have multiple kids, you're always comparing it to the past
1:27:00ones.
1:27:01In my old Honda, this was like that and now it's different.
1:27:05A lot of the past models have the advantage of familiarity in my mind.
1:27:11I imagine a lot of my complaints about the new one will fade as I become more familiar
1:27:15with it.
1:27:16In fact, after only driving it for a few weeks or whatever had it now, I've seen that start
1:27:19to happen where the things that seem weird at first you just kind of start getting used
1:27:22to and you realize it wasn't that it was worse, it was just different than the car you're
1:27:26used to.
1:27:27Because a lot of the things about driving cars are like sense memory of where things
1:27:33are and how things feel inside the car and how the car moves and everything.
1:27:38And it feels weird and alien at first, but then eventually you start settling in, you
1:27:42start knowing where everything is.
1:27:43But some things are clearly regressions from past Hondas, and that's just such a shame.
1:27:49Such as?
1:27:50Well, so let's start with the key fob.
1:27:51Oh, is it massive, like all the modern ones?
1:27:54They are, they have been getting bigger, right?
1:27:56But in exchange, like, you know, the first Accord I got was the first car that had something
1:28:01on the key fob, where you could press the button to unlock the doors, and that's good.
1:28:04I like that feature, right?
1:28:06But it's big.
1:28:07Obviously you'd prefer it to be like the BMW magical little thing where there's no key part
1:28:11It's just the fob and you have little buttons, but that's not the kind of car
1:28:14This is that being said the BMW one is in my opinion way too big
1:28:18Oh yours is enormous compared to mine, and yes
1:28:20I'm talking about key fobs well the f30 the new 3-series is the same size as the as the one I have so you said
1:28:26For reference it's like they get bigger. They keep getting bigger. Yeah, I don't understand why they're so big
1:28:32It's like battery life or something. I have no idea so genuine question though John your
1:28:38Key situation in the Accord it is not a proximity key
1:28:41And you actually do have to insert a metal object into the steering column in order to start the car
1:28:46Yeah
1:28:46And that was one of the speaking of things that like seem weird at first be start to get used to
1:28:50This and I don't know why they change things like this
1:28:52But when you have a metal key that goes into a slot to start your car
1:28:56The angle that that slot is is something you may not think about until it changes
1:29:00So all the other Honda's that we have the angle is I don't know what angle it is
1:29:04but I just kind of know like when you grab the key in your hand you and you reach around the side of the
1:29:07Steering wheel to stick it in the slot
1:29:10You kind of know what angle you have to put it at and it's a more vertical angle and in this new Accord
1:29:15It's much closer to horizontal which is very weird to do, you know, like the twisting the key
1:29:19But that's not I complain about the fob
1:29:21I complain about the fob is the old one had had three buttons on it in a triangle type arrangement and
1:29:27The buttons were two different sizes two different textures one was concave one was convex one had a ring with little studs around it
1:29:33If you felt that thing in your pocket you could tell of those three buttons
1:29:37They were differentiated way in every way you could differentiate them except for they were all circles
1:29:41It was way easier to fish around there if you're this is unlocked. This is locked
1:29:44This is open the trunk right you could feel it the new fob is like a rectangle cut into thirds and
1:29:50The thing that divides it into thirds is at the same level as everything else
1:29:55So it just feels like one big smooth continuous rectangle.
1:29:58And you have to kind of feel your way along and go,
1:29:59okay, the middle one is unlock and the top one is lock
1:30:04and the bottom one, which is a little bit concave,
1:30:06is like open the trunk or whatever.
1:30:07And so it's so hard to feel around in your pocket
1:30:09to find the unlock button for that thing.
1:30:10You always have to end up taking it out
1:30:12or really concentrating on feeling where that little ridge is
1:30:15and that's a regression.
1:30:16I don't know why you would take a design
1:30:17where you had three distinct widely separated buttons
1:30:19in a triangle pattern that have different textures
1:30:21and make one button that's sliced into three parts bad.
1:30:25There's another one in the minor complaint department,
1:30:28these are all minor, I guess.
1:30:30This is not really entirely Honda's fault,
1:30:32but kind of their fault.
1:30:34So you know about NHTSA,
1:30:35National Highway Traffic Safety Administration?
1:30:37- I've heard of it.
1:30:38- Is that how you say it?
1:30:39- Yeah, well that's all, yeah.
1:30:41My first job was at Car Talk
1:30:42and we did the stuff with NHTSA data.
1:30:44I don't know if that's how you say it,
1:30:45that's how I say it, that's how everyone at Car Talk said it.
1:30:47- That's fair, that's authoritative.
1:30:48- Well, not the show, the website,
1:30:50so we could have all just been saying it wrong.
1:30:52But anyway, it's like GIF, GIF.
1:30:53Anyway, NHTSA has new requirements for headrests,
1:30:56not new, but like new since last time I bought a car
1:30:5811 years ago or whatever,
1:31:00that limits the distance between the back of your head
1:31:03and the headrest, like 'cause they found that
1:31:05there was less injury if that distance was smaller.
1:31:08And so the new rules are that to accommodate people
1:31:12sitting in the weird positions they sit in,
1:31:13the headrests have to be closer to your head.
1:31:15And sure enough, in this new accord,
1:31:17if you were looking at the seat back,
1:31:19The seat back was up like perpendicular to the ground which it never is because no one sits bolt upright in there
1:31:24See, but if you were to put it like that the headrest is tilted forward way forward
1:31:28To try to minimize distance between your head and the headrest so much so that if you actually had the the seat in a right
1:31:35Angle which again nobody ever does you could like this headrest would be shoving your head down
1:31:39And what people actually do is they tilt the seat way back and at that point then the headrest starts to become closer to vertical
1:31:45But it is a way different experience of the headrest. It looks like the headrest is like reaching back and
1:31:49Hitting your head, and you're like stop leave me alone
1:31:51You want the headrest to go back and it's if you google for like 2014 Honda Accord headrest complaints
1:31:58you'll find people complaining about this and
1:32:00It's partially Honda's fault for making a headrest. It's so far forward like that and it's not adjustable or whatever I guess but
1:32:06It's I think they're doing it to comply with regulations that the new regulations are that you have to have a smaller distance between your
1:32:13head and the headrest. This is one of the things I'm kind of getting used to once you
1:32:16realize that it's kind of there. It actually fits my head a little bit better than the
1:32:19old headrest when it's adjusted correctly. But it is closer than I think it needs to
1:32:24be because I would like to have my seat a little bit more upright than I actually do,
1:32:27but I have to tilt it back just to get a reasonable – so the headrest doesn't poke me in the
1:32:31back of the head constantly.
1:32:33I guess one more before we get off this topic because I have a very long list. We should
1:32:37come back to it each week and revisit things that – the stalks, you know, the stalks
1:32:42for the blinkers and the wipers and everything.
1:32:45I can't tell for sure without actually seeing an accord
1:32:48with flappy paddles, because they do have--
1:32:50I'm pretty sure they have accords with flappy paddles.
1:32:52I think they put the flappy paddles on the CVT version.
1:32:55It's some ungodly transmission that I don't even
1:32:57want to think about.
1:32:58How does that even make sense?
1:33:00There's not even gears.
1:33:01It doesn't.
1:33:02It doesn't make any sense.
1:33:04But they do it.
1:33:04Tons of car companies do this.
1:33:06They put CVTs in them because they're cheap and everything,
1:33:08and they also put flappy paddles on them just
1:33:09to make people have fun flapping and make them feel like they
1:33:11have expensive stuff.
1:33:13But my theory is that the stalks are way higher than they used to be.
1:33:19Like instead of being exactly horizontal, they're up on an angle like 45 degrees.
1:33:25And I think they're way higher and actually mounted higher on the steering column to make
1:33:29room for the flappy paddles that I don't have in my car.
1:33:32So when I go for the stalks with my fingers, reach around from behind the rim of the steering
1:33:37wheel to reach where the stalks are, they're way higher than I expect them to be because
1:33:39all my other Hondas they were lower down. It could be that they just Honda decided the
1:33:43stock should be higher up and they're just higher up in all their cars, but my theory
1:33:46is that the empty space below them where I have nothing is where the flappy paddles would
1:33:49go and they didn't want to make two versions of the steering column with stocks in different
1:33:52positions. So that's a little bit annoying.
1:33:54But overall, you still do like the car.
1:33:57I have like a list of 80 more complaints, but I think that's enough for today. But yeah,
1:34:01so far car's been treating me well. I've been trying to keep it in the garage to see how
1:34:05long I can go acorn dent free.
1:34:07Nice.
1:34:08So far, so far so good there. No scratches, no dings. It's getting a little bit dirty, but you know.
1:34:13So when I walk up to it in the parking lot, I'm still excited to see it with its big shiny wheels
1:34:18and its undented bodywork. Get into it and it's leather wrapped steering wheel, which is nice,
1:34:26even though it's not heated, and play with all my various AV connections. And I'm getting into
1:34:30a good rhythm with the iPods that I connect. I connect my Shuffle to it a lot to listen to
1:34:33podcasts on it and then I take the shuffle out of the car with me, you know, so I can
1:34:37listen on my way up the stairs out of the parking garage and everything.
1:34:40So that's working out pretty well.
1:34:42And one of my iPods has a permanent home in the car connected to the actual iPod connector
1:34:46with the integration with the steering wheel controls and everything.
1:34:49That's what I use to listen to music.
1:34:51So it's going pretty well.
1:34:53You're like the worst friend to have when thinking about beta testing a podcast app.
1:34:58I got to have the physical buttons.
1:35:00I cannot look at a screen to pause the podcast.
1:35:03And why do I have to pause the podcast?
1:35:05Because the kids are asking me a question.
1:35:07Because my wife is calling me.
1:35:08Because something, you know, I want to be able to just reach a button without looking
1:35:11and pause.
1:35:12And I can do that with steering wheel controls, and I can do that with an iPod Shuffle.
1:35:15Can't do it with an iOS iPod app.
1:35:18Well, you can with a clicker, if you have the headphone clicker.
1:35:21Yeah, but I'm wearing headphones.
1:35:22It's going over the speakers in the car.
1:35:23It's the whole point of the integration.
1:35:24I want to have sound in the car.
1:35:26So you use the wheel controls.
1:35:27What's wrong with that?
1:35:28controls can't pause.
1:35:29Can't you just tap the off button to pause?
1:35:32No, we went through this on Twitter, didn't we?
1:35:35Yeah.
1:35:36I mean, even just like queuing up the podcast, like I like the shuffle.
1:35:39Again, because I want to listen to it when I'm getting ready in the morning, when I'm
1:35:44getting out of my car, going out of the parking garage, going up the stairs to the building,
1:35:47and on the way back down.
1:35:48You wouldn't think that would make a difference, but that's, you know, five, ten minutes a
1:35:51day when I want to have the podcast with me.
1:35:54That's fair.
1:35:55During that time, I also don't want to be fumbling with something in my pocket or accidentally
1:35:59hitting it.
1:36:00It's going to be difficult to get me to use an iOS iPod or a podcast application.
1:36:05If Apple had just stopped making the shuffle, then that'll do it.
1:36:09What do the kids think?
1:36:10Do they even have an opinion?
1:36:11I don't think they care.
1:36:12Are they allowed in the car?
1:36:15They know about new car smell.
1:36:16They say, "What's that smell?
1:36:17This is their first new car smell."
1:36:18So they're excited about that.
1:36:20Oh, yeah, because they're both a lot younger than your previous car.
1:36:23Oh, wow.
1:36:25true. They were too young when we got the 2006 Accord they were alive but they were
1:36:30too young to care about that. I'm excited because now they're both old enough and big
1:36:34enough to only be in boosters and they don't have to be in like the big seats that destroy
1:36:38your car. Nice. And so hopefully the seats in this car will not be destroyed by you know
1:36:44the gigantic car seat strapping mechanisms that destroy cars. For whatever it's worth
1:36:48so far I've gotten away okay with that. Like for I don't know if it like I have like this
1:36:53one little pad, this little skinny pad that sits between the two, but for the most part,
1:36:59I have those things tight as hell, and I've been fine.
1:37:02Well, leather is probably more durable than cloth in terms of resisting the compression
1:37:06and everything, and also you're not supposed to have anything under the car seat. If you
1:37:08go to the local fire department, they'll yell at you about that.
1:37:11The cop who installed the first one didn't complain about the thing I had, because you
1:37:15could still get it so ridiculously tight that if you shake the top, it doesn't even budge.
1:37:20It's like it's that tight.
1:37:21You know, it's like it's so locked down that I don't think anybody could really
1:37:26complain about it.
1:37:27Is he still rear-facing?
1:37:28Yeah, we're to the point now where he doesn't need to be rear-facing, but the current wisdom
1:37:35is that—which makes sense—is that you should rear-face pretty much until they can't
1:37:40fit rear-facing anymore.
1:37:41Like until their knees are at their chin rear-facing, then you have to turn it around.
1:37:46You're not supposed to get it too long because their little legs can get caught between the
1:37:48seat and things, so there is a length limit for everything. But yeah, the real seat destruction
1:37:53doesn't happen until you go front-facing. You'll see when you get like a gigantic...
1:37:57Wait, when they can kick the back of the...?
1:37:59That's part of it. Yes, they get their stupid feet all over the back of your seats, but no,
1:38:02the ones that... The big seats that strap in end up just pressing down into the foam of your seat
1:38:11in like four points of wherever the seat hits, the car seat hits your seats. That really destroys it,
1:38:17it because you have to crank it down with the seat belt and it's not like the rear-facing
1:38:20has the advantage of kind of being pulled into the little wedge of your seat like you're
1:38:24taking the car seat and pulling that thing into the wedge of the seat whereas the front-facing
1:38:28one has got to kind of be pulled down into the seat you'll see when you get one there
1:38:33and plus they weigh more and they have more scratchy things and there's a much heavier
1:38:37kid sitting in them.
1:38:38Well the one I have now is both that you can reverse it but I mean there's no seat belt
1:38:42involved in them where now it's all latch.
1:38:43Yeah, well, what model do you have? I hate latch. What model do you have?
1:38:46Give me a second. I couldn't even tell you. Tiff would know. It's uh...
1:38:49Give me a second. Talk about something else with Casey for two minutes while I'm looking up on Amazon.
1:38:54Going through your order history? Yeah. Alright, I'll pull out another complaint. The pedals are too close in the new Accord.
1:39:00It's the Britax Marathon 70 G3.
1:39:03Uh, yeah, Marathon. Alright, I know that one.
1:39:05Yeah, it's it's pretty... the one we had before for the infant car seat we had was the Graco
1:39:11whatever, Snug Ride, whatever, whatever.
1:39:13It was a piece of crap.
1:39:15Every time I had to remove or mount that car seat,
1:39:19I wanted to burn down the world.
1:39:20It was just a total piece of crap, like the latch--
1:39:26horrible.
1:39:27The Britax Marathon has been fantastic so far.
1:39:30It's night and day difference in installation, qualities, views,
1:39:34massive difference.
1:39:35I don't know if we had a marathon.
1:39:37I think we might have had another similar one.
1:39:39But this is still like a little kid's seat.
1:39:41Once you get the-- the big kids' seats are just brutal.
1:39:44Like, if you can look at the little-- the part that contacts
1:39:47the bottom, that little sort of the foot of the thing,
1:39:50that is a much gentler foot than the big ones to start just--
1:39:56yeah.
1:39:57And the other thing is the food.
1:39:58Oh, god.
1:39:58The food that grinds into the thing that's underneath it
1:40:01as they throw their food out, and then it
1:40:03goes underneath there.
1:40:04And then the sticky candy gets in there,
1:40:06and then the seed is grinding it into the--
1:40:08It's just, it's disgusting.
1:40:10Kids are disgusting.
1:40:10They just throw your car.
1:40:12So no, I'm really excited about that I
1:40:13don't have to have those giant seats in there anymore.
1:40:18No more latch, no more belting the seat belt in,
1:40:22doing the little clicky ratcheting thing, no more of that.
1:40:25Just boosters.
1:40:26Just boosters, yeah.
1:40:28So you said you still have the first tank of gas,
1:40:30and presumably the range on one of those
1:40:33is somewhere around 400 miles on a tank?
1:40:36I think it's less than that.
1:40:36I think it's like 300 and something.
1:40:38It's small tanks.
1:40:39They put small tanks in them.
1:40:40So, at that rate, if you've had the car, what, three or four weeks now?
1:40:44Something like that, yeah.
1:40:46So if you call it a month, that says it's going to take you another three months to
1:40:50just get out of break-in.
1:40:51It's in the honeymoon period.
1:40:52Well, when we go on our summer trip to Long Island, this will be the car we take.
1:40:56So that may be its first long trip.
1:40:58Because Long Island never has any traffic or anything.
1:41:00You'll be fine.
1:41:01Well, we don't go the traffic-y way.
1:41:03You sound like somebody from DC.
1:41:05It's the same thing in DC.
1:41:06"Oh, DC traffic is terrible."
1:41:08"Oh no, it's not.
1:41:09It's not terrible at all."
1:41:11And so like the Hausman's, who I know Marco is friendly with, Stephanie had said, "Oh,
1:41:17the traffic is fine in DC as long as you know where you're going."
1:41:20"Oh no, just today," she tweets a picture of her on 95 or 495 or God knows what, "stopped
1:41:27because DC traffic is terrible."
1:41:29And I think Marco was going to say, "Long Island's the same way."
1:41:31Well, and like everyone always thinks they have like their own little secret way that
1:41:34they can go that won't have traffic. And then the problem is there's like, you know, millions
1:41:39of people who all have the same idea and everyone thinks they have – it's like the AT&T store
1:41:44on iPhone launch.
1:41:46My way is not secret, but it actually avoids traffic.
1:41:50Sure.
1:41:51You just don't go on roads, you go on a boat. If you go from New London to Orient Point,
1:41:58there's no traffic. Hey, I solved the problem. That's what we do when we go down there.
1:42:03We take New London Ferry to Orient Point.
1:42:05On that boat trip, there is no traffic.
1:42:08I guess there's boat traffic, but they don't get in your way.
1:42:10And then once you go from Orient down to where we stay, you're going in the North Fork.
1:42:18It's not against or with traffic, there's just nobody there.
1:42:20We don't get close to the city, so yeah, that's how you avoid traffic.
1:42:23Take boats.
1:42:24Going down to New London is usually not that bad.
1:42:26It could be a couple.
1:42:27I mean, it depends on what day we leave, but that'll be enough highway miles to get out.
1:42:32I used to drive around, and then, I mean, it's not terrible.
1:42:36There's always a little bit of traffic around the city, but you would actually end up getting
1:42:40-- depending on where you're driving, it's very possible that you could get there faster
1:42:43by driving around than you would by taking a ferry, because the ferry -- you've got to
1:42:46wait for the ferry to show up, and the ferry is actually kind of slow, but you're not driving
1:42:49during that time, so it's better.
1:42:51It turns out boats full of cars are slower than cars.
1:42:55They are, but it feels faster because you get a break, unless you're like me and can't
1:43:00stand boats, but it's a testament to how unwilling I am to drive around, or how unwilling my
1:43:07whole family is to drive around these days that I'm actually willing to get on a boat.
1:43:11Although I dread it every time.
1:43:13Are there any transport methods that you enjoy?
1:43:16When I'm driving my car, I'm more or less fine with that, but no one likes to be stuck
1:43:21in traffic, I guess.
1:43:24I'm okay with teleportation.
1:43:25Anyone wants to work on that?
1:43:27I would love to hear Jon go hypercritical on teleportation.
1:43:32I can only imagine what that would feel like.
1:43:34I read too many bad sci-fi stories about the dangers of teleportation that I imagined.
1:43:38It wouldn't go well.
1:43:40It doesn't seem worth the risk.
1:43:42I wouldn't go first. Let someone else go first, you know?