ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► you can use that uh that marker arm and plus 30 minutes skip button at this point if you uh if you

00:00:05 ◼   ► interested at all right but um by the way great idea huh wouldn't be great to have a plus 30

00:00:10 ◼   ► minutes skip button you get to john stu acusa's second bullet point singleton boston that's all

00:00:17 ◼   ► i have to say oh you are such a baby i would the chance to be going to that one are much higher

00:00:23 ◼   ► oh they're still mediocre at best let's be honest no i would say they're over 50 wow

00:00:29 ◼   ► If they did it like next door to your house, would it be like, you know, 60% chance of you going?

00:00:36 ◼   ► I mean, I guess it really depends on the timing of OS X releases, because this year,

00:00:40 ◼   ► even if it was in Boston, like I did, while you guys were there doing your thing in Singleton,

00:00:44 ◼   ► I was doing review stuff. So that review stuff would not have gotten done if I was there.

00:00:50 ◼   ► Since you brought it up, how's it going?

00:00:51 ◼   ► So they made the announcement of the October 22nd whatever iPad, whatever Apple special event

00:00:59 ◼   ► with no mention of a price or a date. At this point I am resigned to the fact that I'm not

00:01:06 ◼   ► going to know a price or a date until the public knows and when will the public know? Maybe they'll

00:01:11 ◼   ► know on the 22nd. Maybe the release matter is on the 22nd. So I just have to plan for that. So the

00:01:15 ◼   ► current plan is act as if Apple is going to announce on stage on the 22nd, "Oh and by

00:01:21 ◼   ► the way, Mavericks is available for download now at such and such a price."

00:01:25 ◼   ► And that means I have to have an ebook ready to purchase on the 22nd.

00:01:31 ◼   ► Which means I have to submit the ebook probably tomorrow, which means I had to get all the

00:01:36 ◼   ► information finalized in the review, make sure it's somewhat coherent even though it

00:01:41 ◼   ► does not contain information about pricing.

00:01:43 ◼   ► it can't because I don't know. And so that's what I did before the podcast was got that

00:01:49 ◼   ► ebook ready. I haven't actually submitted it yet because I'm waiting on one last pass

00:01:54 ◼   ► of copy editing and then tomorrow I'm going to submit it. Got it. I don't know if you

00:01:57 ◼   ► guys have ever used iTunes producer.

00:01:59 ◼   ► Nope.

00:02:00 ◼   ► Nope.

00:02:01 ◼   ► Just like Apple too. I mean I haven't used iTunes connect but there's iTunes connect.

00:02:06 ◼   ► Is that an app that you run on your Mac as well?

00:02:08 ◼   ► No thank God. Although it's you know actually I don't know if that would make it better

00:02:12 ◼   ► or worse. I mean, you could make a pretty terrible native app too.

00:02:16 ◼   ► I was going to say that this, like, in any other system, for example, like Amazon or

00:02:20 ◼   ► whatever, and their things have their own terrible problems, but you would expect this

00:02:23 ◼   ► to be a web app. Hey, there's a store somewhere on the internet where you can buy digital

00:02:27 ◼   ► media, and if you're a producer of digital media, you can upload things to that store

00:02:31 ◼   ► and put them for sale. And you totally expect that to be a web application, but instead

00:02:35 ◼   ► it's this native Mac application, not a particularly nice native Mac application, with tons and

00:02:40 ◼   ► tons of fields with insufficient room to type in them and not very nicely laid out and you

00:02:46 ◼   ► have to go be looking through the giant PDF documentation to figure out what all the fields

00:02:50 ◼   ► mean and just you have to do all this stuff locally and save it into this big giant package

00:02:56 ◼   ► file and then hit this thing that uploads the whole package to Apple.

00:02:59 ◼   ► Versus being like a web application where you piecemeal add the metadata, add the data

00:03:03 ◼   ► and slowly get the book ready like online where you can see what it's going to look

00:03:06 ◼   ► like before you finally submit it here.

00:03:08 ◼   ► do everything at once and then press a button and then it just like shoves the whole thing

00:03:11 ◼   ► up to Apple.

00:03:12 ◼   ► And then if you want to modify any information, I think you have to modify it locally again,

00:03:17 ◼   ► but only certain fields you can modify and then shove it back up.

00:03:19 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:03:20 ◼   ► This experience is not confidence inspiring and it is definitely a little bit scary that

00:03:25 ◼   ► you have to do all this stuff locally and then press one button and then like, you know,

00:03:29 ◼   ► the thing sails off into the sunset.

00:03:32 ◼   ► And then presumably it's rejected.

00:03:33 ◼   ► Like, I'm assuming that's the next phase.

00:03:35 ◼   ► Nice.

00:03:36 ◼   ► Well that isn't actually that different from the way Xcode apps are uploaded now.

00:03:41 ◼   ► Back three years ago or so, it was basically used to web form.

00:03:46 ◼   ► And there was a separate uploader app that you could use to upload for submissions, but

00:03:52 ◼   ► you didn't have to use it and you'd only ever use it, I think, if it was above a certain

00:03:55 ◼   ► size where the web form would time out or something like that.

00:03:58 ◼   ► Now though, I think you have to always use Xcode's built-in native uploader.

00:04:04 ◼   ► And it's actually kind of nice because you still do all the metadata entry on the web

00:04:09 ◼   ► interface, which is probably good because even though it's a pretty terrible web interface,

00:04:15 ◼   ► I can't imagine the native version would be substantially better because the reason

00:04:20 ◼   ► iTunes connects as a terrible web interface is not because web interfaces have to be terrible,

00:04:24 ◼   ► it's because Apple doesn't really care that much about it being good.

00:04:27 ◼   ► And so obviously they could have the same problem with native app.

00:04:31 ◼   ► But it is nice to have, like for an app,

00:04:34 ◼   ► they run a whole bunch of validation steps locally.

00:04:37 ◼   ► And then they run a whole bunch more on the server side

00:04:39 ◼   ► as soon as you submit.

00:04:41 ◼   ► And so it can have a nice little feedback mechanism there.

00:04:44 ◼   ► Also, it takes care of some of the code signing stuff way

00:04:47 ◼   ► better than it did before.

00:04:49 ◼   ► So it is nice having that blend of native and web

00:04:52 ◼   ► for this kind of thing.

00:04:53 ◼   ► I think it's more just a matter of how much Apple cares

00:04:56 ◼   ► about getting it right.

00:04:58 ◼   ► And with iTunes Connect, they've had a pretty bad record of that.

00:05:03 ◼   ► It's not that it's always terrible, but it's never great.

00:05:07 ◼   ► Yeah, a lot of my trepidation about this is because this is my first one.

00:05:10 ◼   ► So obviously after I do the first one, I'll sort of know what to expect.

00:05:14 ◼   ► Like I'm just pouring over the documentation to make sure, like for example, the on-sale

00:05:19 ◼   ► date of the book, I have to make sure that's editable after I submit.

00:05:22 ◼   ► And the documentation says it is, but like, not, I would like to say it in bold with arrows

00:05:28 ◼   ► pointing to the thing and saying "Yes, totally, you can submit a book with a for-sale date

00:05:33 ◼   ► in the future, and then if, for example, Mavericks is not released on the 22nd, I need to change

00:05:38 ◼   ► the sale date because I can't put the thing on sale until Mavericks comes out," and so

00:05:42 ◼   ► on and so forth.

00:05:43 ◼   ► So that seems to be the case, I think everything is all in line for that, although I may set

00:05:47 ◼   ► the date to the 23rd just in case, because if the date really is editable I can always

00:05:51 ◼   ► set it back to the 22nd, right? But if the date isn't editable, at least I have the 22nd

00:05:56 ◼   ► to run around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to get Apple to make sure the

00:05:59 ◼   ► book doesn't go for sale on the 23rd.

00:06:00 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, if it works on anything like the App Store, the way people try to do controlled

00:06:05 ◼   ► releases there, you can either do the hold for release and then you click a button and

00:06:09 ◼   ► it starts going. But the other thing you could do, which helps a little bit to avoid some

00:06:14 ◼   ► of the cache delays, is to release it with an availability date way in the future. And

00:06:20 ◼   ► And then when you write it to your release, set the availability date way in the past.

00:06:24 ◼   ► And then it updates and it gets submitted.

00:06:29 ◼   ► It becomes available faster than I think any other method, but I'm not entirely sure

00:06:34 ◼   ► on that.

00:06:35 ◼   ► So what system do they have for setting the price?

00:06:37 ◼   ► Do you have to set the price in all the various regions that the store is in?

00:06:40 ◼   ► No, you set the price tier, which basically is like the first digit of the price in the

00:06:46 ◼   ► U.S.

00:06:47 ◼   ► And then they have this big chart to show what that is in all the different other currencies.

00:06:50 ◼   ► But you pick tier one is 99 cents in the US and so on to everyone else.

00:06:56 ◼   ► So that's why all the prices are pretty much locked into that and are all the same.

00:07:00 ◼   ► Yeah, it's the same thing with the tiering in the iJUNGIS Producer, but it does it in

00:07:03 ◼   ► like a native Mac GUI with this sort of having all the fields.

00:07:07 ◼   ► I think they're all independently editable, but then you have to select them all and then

00:07:10 ◼   ► do a mass edit to edit all of them.

00:07:13 ◼   ► For example, I picked the wrong type for the book.

00:07:16 ◼   ► The choices were new release, digital only, and other.

00:07:20 ◼   ► And being the typical person that I am,

00:07:23 ◼   ► instead of stopping and going to the documentation

00:07:24 ◼   ► and seeing which one it was,

00:07:25 ◼   ► I was like, well, I'll just pick new release for now.

00:07:27 ◼   ► And then I looked up what it was later,

00:07:28 ◼   ► I said, oh, actually, I should have picked digital only.

00:07:31 ◼   ► So I went to change it to digital only,

00:07:33 ◼   ► and digital only was the only choice in the pop-up menu

00:07:35 ◼   ► when I selected all of the items.

00:07:36 ◼   ► So I had to select each individual territory

00:07:38 ◼   ► and change that pop-up menu 200 and something times.

00:07:40 ◼   ► So that was fun.

00:07:42 ◼   ► - Nice.

00:07:43 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's not the experience I want.

00:07:45 ◼   ► I feel better, in general, I feel better when I'm using a web form to edit information that's

00:07:53 ◼   ► on a server, kind of like the server is the source of truth and then I'm just editing

00:07:57 ◼   ► it versus having some local thing that I edit and then submit and then I can edit the local

00:08:03 ◼   ► thing again and resubmit and what happens is the diffs get applied or maybe just totally

00:08:07 ◼   ► replaces the content.

00:08:08 ◼   ► I feel more comfortable picking away at something, slowly making it better when it's all uploaded

00:08:14 ◼   ► piece at a time into a web interface and then finally adding a button, versus doing all of that

00:08:18 ◼   ► locally, which of course I can only do on a single machine unless I put the thing in my Dropbox, and

00:08:22 ◼   ► I don't know. We'll see how it goes. So have you gotten to the point that you are writing

00:08:28 ◼   ► four different versions of the pricing paragraph or paragraphs or section or whatever based on $10,

00:08:33 ◼   ► $20, $30, and free? Yeah, I wish it was only that section because the other parts of the review make

00:08:41 ◼   ► oblique reference to the price in various places. So yeah, I have a version of three different versions

00:08:47 ◼   ► and then plus all the other places in the review where I allude to those versions and I tried to

00:08:53 ◼   ► make the illusions vague enough that they could fit no matter what the price ends up being. But

00:08:58 ◼   ► it's all just very annoying. This is a new complication because in every past year

00:09:01 ◼   ► they've always announced the date and the price well in advance and this year they're not for some

00:09:08 ◼   ► reason. I think it's just to troll you, if I'm not mistaken. It is pretty annoying.

00:09:13 ◼   ► I would not have—if you would say, "How could you annoy me the most? This would not

00:09:16 ◼   ► have occurred to me." But it is pretty darn annoying. I have to imagine if

00:09:22 ◼   ► somebody really tries to annoy you, it can't be that hard to come up with a way.

00:09:26 ◼   ► Well, you know, last year was the Amazon stuff, and I'm sure—I fully predict this

00:09:31 ◼   ► year when we upload the book to Amazon, it will also inexplicably not be

00:09:34 ◼   ► downloadable onto the iPad because the odds of Amazon having fixed this problem seem slim

00:09:39 ◼   ► to me because last year when I went through it all, I heard from lots of other people

00:09:43 ◼   ► like, "Yeah, that totally happened to me. It's been happening for a long time."

00:09:46 ◼   ► It's not. I wasn't the first person this happened to, and I'm sure I won't be the

00:09:50 ◼   ► last. In fact, it may happen to me again. Why did it happen? What makes it happen? What

00:09:54 ◼   ► fixes it? Who knows?

00:09:56 ◼   ► Yeah, if Amazon's system for uploading e-books is anything at all like their system for Kindle

00:10:03 ◼   ► Kindle publications and publishing a magazine on the Kindle, I feel very sorry for you because

00:10:10 ◼   ► that was miserable.

00:10:12 ◼   ► Well, the good thing about the Amazon system is you submit and then a reasonable amount

00:10:17 ◼   ► of time later, it appears. I don't think a human ever looks at it. So it's somewhat predictable

00:10:24 ◼   ► in that respect, but because a human never looks at it, you probably have a difficult

00:10:30 ◼   ► time getting a human to fix something about it, which was the problem last year.

00:10:33 ◼   ► And the other thing is, I don't know how long that delay is going to be.

00:10:36 ◼   ► I think it's like 24 hours or something like that, but you can't pick a for sale date.

00:10:41 ◼   ► So you submit and then wait, wait, wait, and then it's for sale, which really doesn't go

00:10:46 ◼   ► well with not knowing the release date, because if someone gets on stage on the 22nd and says,

00:10:52 ◼   ► "Maverick's is out today," then I can submit to the Amazon store and then wait 24 hours

00:10:58 ◼   ► for the Amazon version to be available, which is not ideal.

00:11:01 ◼   ► Yeah, this is kind of a world of hurt for you, isn't it?

00:11:05 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know why it has to be so difficult, but really, nobody cares about the one guy

00:11:10 ◼   ► writing the review.

00:11:12 ◼   ► If it's good for customers and good for developers, you have the hierarchy of what's good for

00:11:16 ◼   ► Apple, then what's good for its users, and then maybe some other stuff, and then what's

00:11:21 ◼   ► good for developers, and then everything else in the universe, and then what's good for

00:11:24 ◼   ► the one guy writing a review about one of our products.

00:11:29 ◼   ► - Nice.

00:11:30 ◼   ► - Well, let's change yours for a second

00:11:32 ◼   ► to a company that does care about its customers

00:11:34 ◼   ► and John Syracuse.

00:11:36 ◼   ► It is Transporter by Connected Data.

00:11:39 ◼   ► So Transporter, here's the thing about Transporter.

00:11:42 ◼   ► It's a little hard to describe for a second,

00:11:45 ◼   ► so give me a second here.

00:11:46 ◼   ► If you like Dropbox, then you'll love Transporter.

00:11:51 ◼   ► So Transporter is basically a hard drive enclosure

00:11:55 ◼   ► with network connectivity and software

00:11:58 ◼   ► that goes on your Mac and your iOS and Android,

00:12:00 ◼   ► I think, Android?

00:12:01 ◼   ► I should check on that.

00:12:02 ◼   ► At least your iOS devices.

00:12:06 ◼   ► Would you guys check on that, please?

00:12:08 ◼   ► Software that goes on your Mac and various mobile devices.

00:12:12 ◼   ► And it behaves like Dropbox in the nice Finder integration

00:12:18 ◼   ► and being able to share a link with people

00:12:20 ◼   ► automatic syncing to other transporter devices, but you own this enclosure and you own the

00:12:27 ◼   ► hard drive within it and all the data is stored on that hard drive. It's not stored in their

00:12:33 ◼   ► servers somewhere. It's not stored somewhere the NSA can get a secret request and get it

00:12:39 ◼   ► in without you knowing. And all transportation of the data between transporters and over

00:12:44 ◼   ► the internet and everything is all encrypted, end-to-end encryption. Oh, and thanks, Casey.

00:12:50 ◼   ► Yes, apparently the apps are also available on Android.

00:12:53 ◼   ► You can tell how many Android devices

00:12:54 ◼   ► that we use in this podcast.

00:12:57 ◼   ► But so Transporter, they used to do this major 2.0 software

00:13:01 ◼   ► update about a month ago.

00:13:03 ◼   ► And they really made it much more nicely integrated

00:13:06 ◼   ► with the Finder.

00:13:07 ◼   ► And you can share a folder with other Transporter users.

00:13:10 ◼   ► You can share files with anybody.

00:13:13 ◼   ► You can just get a link to share.

00:13:15 ◼   ► It's really-- everything you can think

00:13:18 ◼   ► that's cool about Dropbox, the public links, the sharing, the collaboration,

00:13:22 ◼   ► you can do with Transporter, but with so many better features

00:13:26 ◼   ► and you can get way more space on the Transporter for

00:13:30 ◼   ► way less money. Dropbox charges, let's say you wanted like a terabyte

00:13:34 ◼   ► of data, a one terabyte Transporter costs about

00:13:38 ◼   ► 300 bucks, Dropbox charges about 500 dollars per year for that,

00:13:42 ◼   ► excuse me, Dropbox charges 500 dollars a year for half as much storage.

00:13:46 ◼   ► So if you want to store more than a few gigs on Dropbox,

00:13:50 ◼   ► you're probably going to have a substantial savings

00:13:52 ◼   ► if you want to move that to Transporter.

00:13:54 ◼   ► So you can buy as many of these things as you want.

00:13:57 ◼   ► You can buy one for your home.

00:13:58 ◼   ► You can buy one for your work and it'll automatically sync.

00:14:01 ◼   ► You can buy one for your work, one for your parents' house,

00:14:04 ◼   ► have it sync there to have an offsite backup,

00:14:06 ◼   ► multiple people on a team like our team, the three of us.

00:14:09 ◼   ► We all live in different places.

00:14:10 ◼   ► We can all collaborate by putting files on our Transporters

00:14:13 ◼   ► and they will all-- we can have a folder that's

00:14:16 ◼   ► like the ATP folder that syncs between all of our devices.

00:14:19 ◼   ► So we have all these capabilities.

00:14:22 ◼   ► Even if you just have one, you can still

00:14:24 ◼   ► have your own computer accessing it,

00:14:27 ◼   ► you accessing it from your mobile device

00:14:29 ◼   ► from anywhere you are as long as your home internet connection

00:14:31 ◼   ► works, and being able to email the share links and all

00:14:34 ◼   ► these other features.

00:14:35 ◼   ► So really, it is quite good.

00:14:38 ◼   ► They even have a thing where they can--

00:14:40 ◼   ► similar to the Dropbox app, where

00:14:42 ◼   ► you can launch it on your iPhone and there's

00:14:44 ◼   ► There's a feature where it can upload all your photos to the

00:14:48 ◼   ► Dropbox.

00:14:48 ◼   ► Well, Transporter has a similar feature.

00:14:50 ◼   ► But unlike the Dropbox one, they upload their photos in

00:14:53 ◼   ► full resolution because they have a lot more space to play

00:14:56 ◼   ► around with because you have these terabyte drives in

00:14:58 ◼   ► there.

00:14:58 ◼   ► So if you want to get your own Transporter, which I highly

00:15:03 ◼   ► suggest, they sell it--

00:15:05 ◼   ► it's an enclosure, so they sell it empty.

00:15:07 ◼   ► And you can supply your own 2 and 1/2 inch drive, any

00:15:10 ◼   ► capacity.

00:15:12 ◼   ► They sell empty for a special price right now because through November 11th they're

00:15:17 ◼   ► having a sale for us if you use coupon code ATP50.

00:15:22 ◼   ► Special sale $50 off from their store.

00:15:25 ◼   ► This is pretty good.

00:15:26 ◼   ► This is the biggest sale I've seen them do.

00:15:28 ◼   ► They've been sponsoring great podcasts for a while so that's saying a lot.

00:15:32 ◼   ► Anyway, they sell empty.

00:15:34 ◼   ► You supply your own hard drive for just $149 with this sale.

00:15:38 ◼   ► Regular price is $199.

00:15:39 ◼   ► This is $50 off.

00:15:41 ◼   ► Or you can get it one terabyte for just $249 on sale and two terabytes for just $349 on

00:15:47 ◼   ► sale.

00:15:48 ◼   ► And again, that sale is valid through November 11, 2013 using coupon code ATP50 at checkout

00:15:54 ◼   ► from filetransporter.com/ATP.

00:15:57 ◼   ► So once again, it's Transporter.

00:15:59 ◼   ► It's awesome.

00:16:00 ◼   ► You want it, go get it.

00:16:02 ◼   ► It is filetransporter.com/ATP, coupon code ATP50, all uppercase.

00:16:07 ◼   ► Thank you very much to Transporter for sponsoring the show.

00:16:10 ◼   ► I'm gonna ask in the chatroom why it's a 2.5 inch drive instead of a 3.5 because you know

00:16:15 ◼   ► you can get more space for less money in a 3.5.

00:16:17 ◼   ► I don't think people realize how small these things are.

00:16:20 ◼   ► It is not a big gigantic thing the size of a bowling pin, the kind of shape it is.

00:16:26 ◼   ► It is very small.

00:16:27 ◼   ► Not only is it small, it is silent, which I like.

00:16:31 ◼   ► So unlike Apple's, you know, what do you call it, the new wireless hub thing that's like

00:16:36 ◼   ► a giant shoebox turned on its end and has a fan in it. This does not, or if it does

00:16:41 ◼   ► have a fan I can't hear it, we're just saying something. And these things are tiny.

00:16:45 ◼   ► Like, you could, you know, I was talking about it on a past show, having a whole bunch of

00:16:48 ◼   ► these things like all over your house and all over your office, you could do that, because

00:16:52 ◼   ► they connect to power and Ethernet, and they are very small and they're silent. So that's

00:16:56 ◼   ► why they're 2.5.

00:16:58 ◼   ► They do glow, though, I will warn you. I wouldn't recommend putting it like right next to your

00:17:01 ◼   ► face in a bedroom.

00:17:02 ◼   ► But it's a pleasant glow.

00:17:03 ◼   ► It's not like one of those, like this has a light that changes color around the circle,

00:17:07 ◼   ► but it's not like one of those blue LEDs that like, you know what those are like on electronics

00:17:11 ◼   ► that shine right in your eye.

00:17:13 ◼   ► I'm so glad that era of electronics design is over.

00:17:16 ◼   ► Oh, it's not.

00:17:17 ◼   ► I just got a new dishwasher and it lights up the room in the dark with its blue LEDs

00:17:23 ◼   ► in the front of it.

00:17:24 ◼   ► Not that I care because, you know, it's running at night when nobody's in there, but it is

00:17:26 ◼   ► bright.

00:17:29 ◼   ► That's a feature.

00:17:30 ◼   ► It's when you go downstairs, you see where you're going.

00:17:31 ◼   ► I kind of have been using it.

00:17:32 ◼   ► It's like a night light now.

00:17:33 ◼   ► If the fishwasher's running, you can see, but it's an eerie blue glow.

00:17:37 ◼   ► Anyway, thanks for transporting our sponsor right in the channel.

00:17:42 ◼   ► Well done.

00:17:43 ◼   ► Okay, what else we got to talk about?

00:17:46 ◼   ► So there's a new Apple employee joining an executive who finally is a woman, which

00:17:54 ◼   ► is excellent.

00:17:55 ◼   ► Although, still has an unpronounceable name.

00:17:58 ◼   ► Yep, you'll notice I didn't try.

00:18:00 ◼   ► Yeah, no one looked that up. I figured at least one of you would have looked. I figured you would. It's Angela.

00:18:06 ◼   ► Very well done.

00:18:08 ◼   ► Arentz? That seems reasonable. Yeah, it sounds right to me. Here's the interesting thing about her.

00:18:14 ◼   ► They hired the CEO of another company to be the not CEO of their company.

00:18:20 ◼   ► I thought that too. Which does not happen that often in the corporate world where someone leaves a CEO position of like a

00:18:26 ◼   ► significant company, like your CEO of your five person company, right? A CEO of a big company

00:18:31 ◼   ► basically is taking a step down. She used to be the one in charge, now she's not. And granted,

00:18:38 ◼   ► they seem to be throwing lots of money at her, but that's a little bit of the magic of Apple or any high-profile

00:18:44 ◼   ► company where you can pull a CEO away from another company. That is very difficult to do. So it really must have been

00:18:49 ◼   ► a heck of a pitch and they must have really wanted her and, you know, she must have bought it. That, yeah,

00:18:56 ◼   ► she's going to go there and stop selling sugar water and change the world, right?

00:19:01 ◼   ► Except in this case, it's what? Plaid scarves?

00:19:03 ◼   ► Yeah. I didn't know what this store was. I had to Google Burberry because I had never

00:19:08 ◼   ► heard of it before. Well, I had heard the name, but if someone had told me that Burberry

00:19:12 ◼   ► sold electronics or housewares, I would have believed them because I had no idea what that

00:19:18 ◼   ► store was about. Did either of you know what the store sold?

00:19:21 ◼   ► I still don't. I honestly did.

00:19:24 ◼   ► I think it's closed, right?

00:19:25 ◼   ► What?

00:19:26 ◼   ► It's closed.

00:19:27 ◼   ► Oh, I thought you said closed as in not open anymore.

00:19:30 ◼   ► I was very confused.

00:19:31 ◼   ► No, it's all closed.

00:19:32 ◼   ► The CEO left.

00:19:33 ◼   ► They're just shutting down.

00:19:34 ◼   ► Yeah, seriously.

00:19:35 ◼   ► Sorry.

00:19:36 ◼   ► Giving up.

00:19:37 ◼   ► Yes.

00:19:38 ◼   ► No, my understanding, and I didn't think to look this up or ask about it, so I'm sure

00:19:39 ◼   ► I'll get a thousand emails.

00:19:41 ◼   ► Email Marco.

00:19:42 ◼   ► I thought it was a clothing store, sure, but it's kind of focused around a particular pattern,

00:19:47 ◼   ► and it's like a plaid-ish pattern.

00:19:50 ◼   ► And yeah, that's kind of their thing.

00:19:53 ◼   ► It's like their, what is the purse with the Louis Vuitton where you always see like the

00:19:58 ◼   ► L and the Vs.

00:20:00 ◼   ► That's like their only pattern or so it appears.

00:20:02 ◼   ► Well this is, they have that one plaid that's their only pattern.

00:20:05 ◼   ► We're going to get it so much trouble.

00:20:06 ◼   ► I know.

00:20:07 ◼   ► Email markup.

00:20:08 ◼   ► Unlike the L and the V, my understanding is that this pattern is actually, you know, is

00:20:12 ◼   ► an old thing.

00:20:13 ◼   ► The L and the V I believe is new and I think they did that because you can't copyright

00:20:17 ◼   ► a, like, you know, a fashion design but you can copyright a logo.

00:20:22 ◼   ► So that's why everyone puts a logo all over their stuff, because that's the one thing

00:20:24 ◼   ► you have some legal recourse to protect from.

00:20:27 ◼   ► By the way, the chat room is trying to correct our pronunciation of this song, saying it's

00:20:30 ◼   ► Burberry, not Burberry, or whatever.

00:20:33 ◼   ► But they're gonna have us saying Aluminium soon, so I don't know if we can take any pronunciation

00:20:38 ◼   ► advice from the people over there.

00:20:40 ◼   ► Well, no, Aluminium is patently wrong.

00:20:43 ◼   ► But a friend of mine, Eric Wielander, put in the chat a picture to the plaid I'm referring

00:20:47 ◼   ► to.

00:20:48 ◼   ► And so if we remember, we'll put that in the show notes.

00:20:50 ◼   ► I can make up the episode artwork for this week.

00:20:52 ◼   ► You should.

00:20:53 ◼   ► Actually, I'm not even kidding.

00:20:54 ◼   ► That would be really funny.

00:20:55 ◼   ► I might.

00:20:56 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:20:58 ◼   ► What's interesting is she's being brought into this job of retail chief, which is basically

00:21:03 ◼   ► like the job of doom at Apple.

00:21:06 ◼   ► How many people have had this job in the last decade?

00:21:09 ◼   ► Ron Johnson was the guy, right?

00:21:11 ◼   ► He's the one who made that job an important job because previously Apple didn't have a

00:21:15 ◼   ► retail store.

00:21:16 ◼   ► So he was the guy.

00:21:17 ◼   ► And then they brought in another guy from the UK, right?

00:21:19 ◼   ► guy who was the head of Dixon's or something, or I don't know if he was the head of it or

00:21:23 ◼   ► whatever, but I also didn't know what that store was, even if I'm remembering the name

00:21:27 ◼   ► correctly. And they brought him in, and that didn't work out, and he went away, and they

00:21:33 ◼   ► were looking for somebody else for a long time, and now they found someone else.

00:21:36 ◼   ► Well, that's a lot.

00:21:37 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, it's not good, but when they brought that guy in, everyone said, "Oh, boy,

00:21:41 ◼   ► we predict doom for this guy," and they were like, "Oh," because the stores he ran were

00:21:44 ◼   ► not Apple-type stores. They were kind of like more, you know, not as premium, high-end type

00:21:51 ◼   ► of stuff. Like, "Well, who knows? He must be a great guy, Apple. You know, Apple must

00:21:54 ◼   ► be good at hiring. They wouldn't just hire some random guy." And he did the things -- John

00:21:58 ◼   ► Broward was his name, thanks Chat Room -- and he did the things that people expected him

00:22:02 ◼   ► to do. You know, regular -- if you think of someone who runs a retail store, just the

00:22:06 ◼   ► average person who runs a retail store chain or whatever, the things they do are not Apple-like

00:22:12 ◼   ► things. It's just a bunch of workers. You try to pay the workers as little as possible.

00:22:19 ◼   ► You try to sell the customers gold USB cables like Marco had to do, right? And you try to

00:22:24 ◼   ► do all these terrible things because that's how you get ahead in retail.

00:22:28 ◼   ► To be fair, I'm not sure I sold a single one.

00:22:30 ◼   ► Well, the ones you refuse to sell. So that's what we think of when we think of retail.

00:22:35 ◼   ► But it's not what we think of when we think of Apple retail. So it's like, well, it must

00:22:38 ◼   ► be difficult for them to find someone who does retail because if you bring in the best

00:22:41 ◼   ► retail guy in the world, they're going to come into Apple's thing and say, "Oh no, you're

00:22:44 ◼   ► doing it all wrong here, Apple. You're paying your employees too much. You have too much

00:22:47 ◼   ► staff in the store." All sorts of things. I can show you how you can cut your costs

00:22:52 ◼   ► in half and it won't hurt your business at all. You'll see. And so he came in, did a

00:22:57 ◼   ► bunch of stuff that made the retail store employees angry and made the experience of

00:23:02 ◼   ► being in the Apple store worse, and then they canned him. So maybe this person has a better

00:23:06 ◼   ► chance of not doing all of those things that regular retail stores do.

00:23:14 ◼   ► You would think it'd be kind of like a dream job for somebody who is well-minded in the

00:23:20 ◼   ► sense that normally, retail is just a terrible business because everything's all about just

00:23:25 ◼   ► these very, very, usually very thin profit margins, very cutthroat business. You got

00:23:31 ◼   ► to have as many people as possible not working full-time so you don't have to pay their benefits.

00:23:36 ◼   ► and then you gotta shave off hours

00:23:37 ◼   ► so you have just enough people to run the store,

00:23:40 ◼   ► but no more than that so that you aren't wasting money

00:23:43 ◼   ► on labor and you have all these terrible high school

00:23:47 ◼   ► and college kids running everything

00:23:48 ◼   ► and they have no training and no time for training

00:23:51 ◼   ► and everyone steals everything.

00:23:53 ◼   ► It's just a terrible business.

00:23:54 ◼   ► Whereas in the Apple store,

00:23:56 ◼   ► because they have some profit margin to play with

00:23:59 ◼   ► and because they value things like customer experience

00:24:03 ◼   ► and service wait times and quality of the stores

00:24:06 ◼   ► and stuff like that, then it feels like somebody

00:24:10 ◼   ► who wanted to make a really good retail store

00:24:13 ◼   ► would see this as like a dream job

00:24:15 ◼   ► because they have the resources to actually do things well

00:24:19 ◼   ► and to do good quality things

00:24:22 ◼   ► and to do the regular things well.

00:24:24 ◼   ► Whereas in most other companies,

00:24:26 ◼   ► you don't have that kind of power

00:24:27 ◼   ► because they can't afford it.

00:24:28 ◼   ► - Yeah, but wouldn't you think that she would be handcuffed

00:24:33 ◼   ► by what Ron Johnson did while he was at Apple.

00:24:36 ◼   ► What I mean by that is the Apple stores seem to have a pretty good thing going right now

00:24:41 ◼   ► and a pretty good kind of feel to them.

00:24:44 ◼   ► Of course, there's always room for improvement, but why mess with what is working?

00:24:51 ◼   ► If she's brought in and has all these grand visions, which she very well may have, is

00:24:55 ◼   ► she going to be allowed to do them or is it wise to do them if Apple retail is doing pretty

00:25:00 ◼   ► well?

00:25:01 ◼   ► Here's the thing about Apple retail, the curse of success.

00:25:04 ◼   ► This is true of if anyone has ever been an employee

00:25:06 ◼   ► of a company that finds itself being very successful.

00:25:09 ◼   ► That is an extremely dangerous situation

00:25:12 ◼   ► because as I believe, who was it?

00:25:14 ◼   ► As Ed Catmull said in his talk

00:25:18 ◼   ► that I paroded heavily on Hypercritical,

00:25:20 ◼   ► but whose name I can't remember right now.

00:25:22 ◼   ► I think he was talking to some business people

00:25:24 ◼   ► at Stanford or something.

00:25:25 ◼   ► Success hides problems.

00:25:27 ◼   ► So Apple has been very successful in the past,

00:25:30 ◼   ► know, seven, ten years, which means that more and more people are going into Apple

00:25:35 ◼   ► retail stores and buying stuff. And you keep seeing the statistics about how the

00:25:38 ◼   ► number, the amount of money made per square foot of store space is so high in

00:25:42 ◼   ► Apple stores and Apple sells tons and tons of stuff. And you can do all sorts

00:25:47 ◼   ► of terrible wrong things during that period. As long as your sales keep going

00:25:50 ◼   ► up and up and up, everyone's like, "Hey, thumbs up, boy, you're a great retail chief.

00:25:53 ◼   ► Look at our sales numbers, they're doing great." And how much is that? Is that

00:25:56 ◼   ► because of you or in spite of you? Because when you're on that rocket ship,

00:26:00 ◼   ► but it's hard to tell, is this because of what I'm doing?

00:26:02 ◼   ► Is it because these stores are so awesome?

00:26:04 ◼   ► Or is it because Apple's products are so awesome?

00:26:06 ◼   ► Or is it just like the strange coincidence of events?

00:26:09 ◼   ► And if you look at the trend in Apple stores,

00:26:11 ◼   ► lots of things have gotten worse since the beginning.

00:26:13 ◼   ► I mean, in the beginning, they were paying people

00:26:15 ◼   ► obscene salaries to be geniuses.

00:26:16 ◼   ► So you'd get like, you know, people who are real experts

00:26:20 ◼   ► in the technology field, leaving their tech jobs

00:26:23 ◼   ► for similar salaries to be a genius at the Genius Bar.

00:26:27 ◼   ► You didn't see employees who were like

00:26:28 ◼   ► typical retail employees like Margo said,

00:26:30 ◼   ► you know the high school students or college students,

00:26:31 ◼   ► not that there's anything wrong with those people,

00:26:32 ◼   ► but you saw like real experienced people

00:26:35 ◼   ► making good salaries doing this.

00:26:37 ◼   ► And over time, the Apple Store has become

00:26:39 ◼   ► more like a regular retail store.

00:26:41 ◼   ► Now that I'm saying they're paying people

00:26:42 ◼   ► like you get paid at Walmart or Target,

00:26:44 ◼   ► but it is nothing compared to the original days

00:26:46 ◼   ► of Apple retail where they were just paying tons of money

00:26:50 ◼   ► to get really senior expert people in there.

00:26:53 ◼   ► And this transformation has happened little by little,

00:26:57 ◼   ► slowly, over many, many years, during that time,

00:27:01 ◼   ► Apple stores have been doing great, right?

00:27:03 ◼   ► Because they've been selling tons and tons of stuff.

00:27:04 ◼   ► So it's like, well, have they been slowly kind of to see

00:27:07 ◼   ► how much of the rug can we pull out

00:27:09 ◼   ► from under this retail thing without breaking it?

00:27:11 ◼   ► Like, is that the goal of the retail chief?

00:27:13 ◼   ► Is it the goal to kinda, sorta, see how much cost

00:27:17 ◼   ► you can pull out of the Apple retail stores

00:27:18 ◼   ► without impacting the user experience?

00:27:20 ◼   ► And then like the Broward guy just went too far?

00:27:22 ◼   ► Like, I don't know what the mandate is

00:27:25 ◼   ► the new retail chief. It doesn't seem like the mandate is, like, spare no expense, make

00:27:31 ◼   ► our stores the best experience. We don't care if all of our stores lose money because the

00:27:34 ◼   ► whole point of our stores is to be ambassadors for our products and we'll make up the money

00:27:38 ◼   ► elsewhere. Like, that doesn't seem to be the mandate. I don't think that was ever the mandate,

00:27:41 ◼   ► even the good old days of Apple retail. And I wonder, under Tim Cook, if the mandate isn't,

00:27:46 ◼   ► let's see how much cost you can pull out of these stores without breaking them. Don't

00:27:49 ◼   ► make the employees angry, don't make the experience worse, but see what you can do about, you

00:27:53 ◼   ► know, pull a little cost out. And I worry about that.

00:27:56 ◼   ► Yeah. Now, what do you make of the thought that Xi is well positioned to get Apple well

00:28:04 ◼   ► positioned in China? So I ask because from what very little I've had a chance to read

00:28:09 ◼   ► about all this, apparently Burberry, Burberry, whatever, I don't care what it's called, that

00:28:14 ◼   ► thing, is doing fairly well in China and expanding pretty significantly. Do you think that this

00:28:20 ◼   ► is yet another play on China, like everything Apple does is in the media these days?

00:28:25 ◼   ► That can't hurt, right?

00:28:27 ◼   ► Sure.

00:28:28 ◼   ► I mean, it's probably – if you are in charge of any big retail, worldwide retail chain,

00:28:33 ◼   ► chances are good that you have more locations in China than Apple does, simply because Apple

00:28:36 ◼   ► doesn't have that many stores when compared to Walmart or whatever, some other big – or

00:28:41 ◼   ► McDonald's, you know what I mean?

00:28:43 ◼   ► Like how many locations does Apple have in China?

00:28:45 ◼   ► Half a dozen or something?

00:28:46 ◼   ► It's not a lot for a country that big.

00:28:48 ◼   ► So a lot of people put up the big map saying,

00:28:51 ◼   ► look at Burberry has all these locations in China.

00:28:54 ◼   ► It's way more than Apple.

00:28:54 ◼   ► That's true.

00:28:56 ◼   ► But a lot of places have way more locations in China.

00:28:58 ◼   ► But yeah, it doesn't hurt.

00:29:02 ◼   ► Anybody coming to work for Apple for anything

00:29:05 ◼   ► probably has to-- dealing with China, the potentially largest

00:29:10 ◼   ► market in the future for all of Apple's stuff,

00:29:15 ◼   ► any triangle is good.

00:29:16 ◼   ► But I don't think that's why they hired her.

00:29:17 ◼   ► I think they're trying to hire a person,

00:29:19 ◼   ► and I guess they think this is the right person.

00:29:21 ◼   ► I'm just, I'm a little, you know,

00:29:24 ◼   ► gun-shy about Apple's hiring,

00:29:26 ◼   ► because it's not been that great

00:29:29 ◼   ► over the past several years,

00:29:29 ◼   ► and not just Tim Cook, but who's the guy,

00:29:32 ◼   ► Papermaster, the guy that Steve Jobs wanted, right?

00:29:34 ◼   ► That didn't work out well either, so.

00:29:36 ◼   ► It's kinda, I mean, maybe that's true of all hiring,

00:29:37 ◼   ► like, sometimes it just doesn't work out,

00:29:39 ◼   ► but when it's a high-profile position,

00:29:41 ◼   ► we get to see all of the wreckage,

00:29:44 ◼   ► whereas if it's just some other person

00:29:45 ◼   ► no one's ever heard of, they come and go,

00:29:47 ◼   ► nobody knows about it.

00:29:48 ◼   ► You've got to figure this is also a tough job to sell to somebody. Obviously, with a

00:29:56 ◼   ► handful of people having had it recently, if you're some CEO of a big company or some

00:30:03 ◼   ► really high-ranking person at a different retailer, you're very qualified. You're

00:30:09 ◼   ► very expensive. You can pick what you do at that point. Maybe this just isn't that appealing

00:30:15 ◼   ► to be absorbed into Apple and hope you do well, but if you don't do well, it will be

00:30:24 ◼   ► very, very public and it will probably end your career. That's not good.

00:30:28 ◼   ► But these people never think they're going to fail. From Papermaster to Broude, if you

00:30:34 ◼   ► were to ask them, they thought, "It's just one of those successful people never

00:30:38 ◼   ► think they're going to fail." And so they're like, "Oh, don't worry about that. I

00:30:42 ◼   ► the last guy, he kicked him out, boy, he wasn't he a loser, but not me. It's not going to happen

00:30:46 ◼   ► to me. So no one thinks it's going to happen to them. So I don't think that examination is in

00:30:49 ◼   ► there. And if you're a fan of Apple, which I bet a lot of people are, just a fan of their products

00:30:54 ◼   ► and admire the company, that goes a long way. That and a $56 million signing bonus or whatever the

00:31:00 ◼   ► heck she got, that goes a long way. But the money thing always confuses me in this sort of rarified

00:31:07 ◼   ► air of C-level executives, because I'm assuming she already doesn't have to worry about money

00:31:14 ◼   ► ever. She's multimillionaire, very rich, very powerful. Money is not a big thing. And yet,

00:31:20 ◼   ► you still have to end up paying. It's like that's just what the market will bear. If

00:31:23 ◼   ► you're a business person, you just say, "Well, look, this is what I'm worth, so you need

00:31:25 ◼   ► to pay me what I'm worth." But something, I don't know. We'll have to try this experiment.

00:31:31 ◼   ► Make me that rich and see if I demand that much money for the next job that I get. It

00:31:37 ◼   ► It seems like it would just be like,

00:31:39 ◼   ► I guess you have to do it,

00:31:40 ◼   ► so it doesn't seem like you're not getting what you're worth

00:31:44 ◼   ► because this is a supply and demand situation,

00:31:45 ◼   ► but really, how much is that $56 million?

00:31:48 ◼   ► It seems like so much to us, it seems so obscene,

00:31:50 ◼   ► but how much is it going to change her lifestyle?

00:31:52 ◼   ► Probably not at all, right?

00:31:54 ◼   ► - I would assume not.

00:31:57 ◼   ► And I agree, I guess once you make some salary,

00:32:00 ◼   ► even if that salary is stupidly large,

00:32:02 ◼   ► you're not often going to want to go backwards.

00:32:07 ◼   ► So I don't know if she's paid 11 gajillion dollars now,

00:32:11 ◼   ► she's probably gonna want 12 gajillion next.

00:32:14 ◼   ► - Well it's also part of like career branding

00:32:16 ◼   ► where you don't want, like if there's any chance

00:32:19 ◼   ► of anybody else learning your salary,

00:32:21 ◼   ► which for a CEO it's usually public,

00:32:24 ◼   ► for a high ranking executive or director at Apple,

00:32:26 ◼   ► that's usually public too.

00:32:27 ◼   ► So since your salary is either public

00:32:31 ◼   ► or at least somewhat easy to find out, you don't want it to look like you're on your

00:32:37 ◼   ► way out career-wise. You don't want it to look like you're on your way down. That

00:32:41 ◼   ► just looks bad on you. So you want to keep getting those upgrades.

00:32:44 ◼   ► Yeah, and most of this, I'm assuming, is in stock. And that does make sense, where

00:32:50 ◼   ► you give compensation to top-level executives in stock because that presumably motivates

00:32:54 ◼   ► them to, at the very least, make the stock price go up, which hopefully is in some way

00:32:58 ◼   ► related to their performance and their job. And so it's not options. I think they're giving

00:33:04 ◼   ► RSU's which have an immediate value as opposed to a potential value in the future. But yeah,

00:33:11 ◼   ► that's usually the way that these people get compensated. Tons and tons of stock.

00:33:14 ◼   ► Bringing in someone at this point where Apple's kind of like, it's not at its stock peak,

00:33:21 ◼   ► but it's kind of on its way down from its peak. It's not like it was five or 10 years ago where

00:33:26 ◼   ► where there was a huge potential upside because Apple's already the biggest company in the

00:33:30 ◼   ► world or close to it. So how much bigger could they possibly get? So yeah, you get RSU's

00:33:35 ◼   ► and then those are worth money now, that's real money now. Don't have to worry about

00:33:39 ◼   ► the stock price doubling. You're already filthy rich just from what we're giving you.

00:33:44 ◼   ► Yeah, I definitely wouldn't enjoy being in a position where my financial well-being

00:33:50 ◼   ► depended on Apple stock going up dramatically. I have a real-time follow-up from my wife

00:33:54 ◼   ► a few minutes ago, she says that she used Googling to try to prove me wrong, and she

00:33:59 ◼   ► found the Louis Vuitton logo, they've been using that on their thing since the 1800s.

00:34:03 ◼   ► So she thinks it's not because you can copyright a logo, but not a pattern.

00:34:08 ◼   ► It has to line up, right? Is that that one or is that the other one? The C's.

00:34:14 ◼   ► I don't know. I do not know. The amount that all the—our collective knowledge of fashion

00:34:19 ◼   ► is close to zero.

00:34:21 ◼   ► But I love that we're devoting half of the show to it.

00:34:24 ◼   ► Well, Apple needs to start hiring people from things that we know about.

00:34:27 ◼   ► They just start hiring people like us to manage their fashion lines.

00:34:30 ◼   ► Yeah, exactly.

00:34:31 ◼   ► Well, that's the other thing about this.

00:34:34 ◼   ► So they hired the guy from the French company whose name we're not going to pronounce,

00:34:37 ◼   ► a fashion type thing.

00:34:38 ◼   ► And they're hiring this person from a clothing company.

00:34:40 ◼   ► It's just the smoke surrounding wearable items from Apple is just everywhere.

00:34:47 ◼   ► No, I don't think that's it.

00:34:49 ◼   ► I think it's just that Apple is trying to hire somebody to manage their very high-end

00:34:54 ◼   ► retail stores, and it just so happens that most other very high-end retail stores are

00:34:58 ◼   ► in the fashion business.

00:34:59 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:35:01 ◼   ► Where there's smoke, there's fire, Marco.

00:35:05 ◼   ► Something that you can wear.

00:35:06 ◼   ► I mean, they already have.

00:35:07 ◼   ► We can't even pronounce this smoke.

00:35:08 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:35:09 ◼   ► It doesn't have to be pronounceable.

00:35:11 ◼   ► Something that you wear.

00:35:12 ◼   ► I mean, they already do make things that you wear.

00:35:14 ◼   ► They make iPods with little clips on them.

00:35:16 ◼   ► You wear them, sort of.

00:35:18 ◼   ► It's one short step from there to something that you slap around your wrist or...

00:35:23 ◼   ► Like a slap bracelet?

00:35:24 ◼   ► Oh, God.

00:35:25 ◼   ► Put through your belly button piercing or whatever they're going to do.

00:35:28 ◼   ► Whatever the kids these days do.

00:35:30 ◼   ► This is going nowhere good quickly.

00:35:31 ◼   ► All I have to say is I'm very much looking forward to WWDC shirts this year because they're

00:35:35 ◼   ► clearly going to be phenomenal given all these fashion people that are being hired.

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00:38:46 ◼   ► Now, in the past, and forevermore.

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00:38:51 ◼   ► Oh my goodness.

00:38:53 ◼   ► So before we eliminate all of our listeners, do you want to talk about Touch ID for a minute?

00:38:58 ◼   ► Yeah, I actually finally used it a lot this weekend, and I turned it off as soon as I

00:39:02 ◼   ► got in the car to go home.

00:39:04 ◼   ► Man, I do not see why everyone does not like it. I really like it a lot.

00:39:11 ◼   ► Well, I liked it when I was using it, but if I don't have to be using it, it's not that

00:39:16 ◼   ► transparent that I can just use it all the time. It's very close, but it's a little bit

00:39:21 ◼   ► too slow, and it misses a little bit too often. Like, I had—mine would refuse my finger

00:39:27 ◼   ► about maybe one every 20 or 30 tries. So it happens like—

00:39:32 ◼   ► That's enough to get you that grumpy?

00:39:35 ◼   ► Well it would happen maybe twice a day or something.

00:39:38 ◼   ► And that's just enough that it reminds me, "Oh, this kind of sometimes sucks."

00:39:47 ◼   ► So it was just a little bit...

00:39:50 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:39:52 ◼   ► It's very close to being good enough for my ridiculously picky standards, but not quite.

00:39:59 ◼   ► it's a little bit too slow and just slightly too unreliable. Again, it's close. But I would

00:40:06 ◼   ► say if my false positive rate stayed the same and it just got maybe half the time, if it

00:40:13 ◼   ► got fast enough that it could do it in half the time, I would turn it back on all the

00:40:18 ◼   ► time. So maybe the iPhone 6 or whatever will be faster at it. Who knows? But for now, I

00:40:24 ◼   ► think I'm just going to turn it on when I know I'm going to be out in public a lot like

00:40:27 ◼   ► conference, but for my day-to-day use where I'm around nobody except my family and my

00:40:32 ◼   ► dog, I don't think I'll leave it on.

00:40:36 ◼   ► That's the letter you should have read that guy scolding you about keeping your phone

00:40:38 ◼   ► unlocked because someone's going to steal it from you and get access to all your information.

00:40:43 ◼   ► I did read that.

00:40:44 ◼   ► First of all, he was under the impression that I live in New York City, which I don't.

00:40:49 ◼   ► So basically—I don't want to pull it up now—but the gist of his response, which

00:40:56 ◼   ► which was on point for the most part, I think,

00:40:58 ◼   ► and most of it I agree with.

00:40:59 ◼   ► The gist of it is that it's kind of like your ethical duty

00:41:04 ◼   ► as a responsible technology owner to lock your phone

00:41:07 ◼   ► because not only do you have your own data to protect,

00:41:11 ◼   ► but you also have everyone in your address book,

00:41:14 ◼   ► you have their data to protect as well.

00:41:16 ◼   ► And if somebody has possession of your phone,

00:41:19 ◼   ► they can do quite a lot.

00:41:20 ◼   ► If they can open up your email, if they can receive email,

00:41:23 ◼   ► then they can do things like receive password resets

00:41:26 ◼   ► pretty much any service. And then, you know, log in as you and other services. They can

00:41:31 ◼   ► take your whole address book. They can take everyone's names and phone numbers. Even,

00:41:34 ◼   ► like, you know, if you're friends with, like, any celebrities or internet celebrities, then,

00:41:38 ◼   ► you know, then their public information or their private information could be taken to,

00:41:42 ◼   ► and that could be inconvenient, at least for them. So...

00:41:44 ◼   ► Right. Even MC Hammer.

00:41:46 ◼   ► Exactly. Even MC Hammer. I don't even know if he still uses that phone number. But, anyway,

00:41:52 ◼   ► So I agree with him that that is a risk. However, I think most people probably

00:41:58 ◼   ► grossly overestimate how much I go in public and how many people are

00:42:06 ◼   ► there when I get there. I really pretty much stay in my small town and the

00:42:11 ◼   ► town next to us most of the time, and there's rarely any people around. I

00:42:15 ◼   ► rarely even have my phone out of my pocket, and it's not even a dense enough

00:42:19 ◼   ► area that would be pickpocketed. It could happen. I'm not saying it can't happen,

00:42:24 ◼   ► but I think the chances of it happening are so astronomically low that it's just not

00:42:29 ◼   ► worth it for me.

00:42:31 ◼   ► Yeah, that's always what I thought when I saw people use their iPhones with even just

00:42:36 ◼   ► the four-digit code. Because you know how often people check their phones. People are

00:42:40 ◼   ► just obsessive about it. They're constantly looking at their phones, and you'd see them

00:42:43 ◼   ► doing it, and you'd also see them entering their little number over and over and over

00:42:47 ◼   ► again, which seems so annoying to me. And not only so annoying, but like, if you wanted

00:42:52 ◼   ► to steal that person's phone, spend five minutes next to them, wait for them to check their

00:42:56 ◼   ► phone 900 times, watch them type in that same four digit code over and over and over and

00:43:00 ◼   ► over again and see where their fingers are. Like this is not rocket science. And then

00:43:04 ◼   ► take their phone. It's like an extra five minute investment, at least with touch ID,

00:43:08 ◼   ► you have to make more of an effort to fake it out.

00:43:13 ◼   ► My wife got her phone and I played with the touch ID.

00:43:17 ◼   ► I think I would probably enable it because I couldn't bring myself to do the four-digit

00:43:21 ◼   ► code thing because that was just too much of a burden.

00:43:26 ◼   ► Even when I'm out of the house, not that I have an iPhone, so it's not an issue, but

00:43:29 ◼   ► if I did have an iPhone, I don't think I would enable the four-digit one unless I was going

00:43:34 ◼   ► into an area where suddenly my risk of losing my phone was getting much higher.

00:43:37 ◼   ► But I think I would enable the fingerprint thing every time I went outside, although

00:43:42 ◼   ► That's not in control center, right?

00:43:43 ◼   ► I'd have to actually go into settings

00:43:44 ◼   ► and turn on the fingerprint thing.

00:43:46 ◼   ► So that might be a little bit of a hassle.

00:43:47 ◼   ► But I think I would give it more of a go

00:43:49 ◼   ► just because it passes my threshold

00:43:52 ◼   ► for like I'm going to endure this annoyance

00:43:55 ◼   ► for the slight added safety.

00:43:58 ◼   ► Because for some reason, I mean,

00:44:00 ◼   ► once you accept that there is this step in the process

00:44:02 ◼   ► of taking out your phone that is unlocking it,

00:44:05 ◼   ► if you can make that step pretty easy,

00:44:06 ◼   ► I'm willing to accept that as a step in the process.

00:44:09 ◼   ► If you're not willing to accept that

00:44:10 ◼   ► as a step in the process,

00:44:11 ◼   ► then it's just like, it better be zero time

00:44:14 ◼   ► or it's constantly annoying me.

00:44:16 ◼   ► And I think I could get with the program with Touch ID,

00:44:18 ◼   ► but I enabled it on my wife's phone.

00:44:20 ◼   ► I don't know if she's already enabled it,

00:44:22 ◼   ► disabled it, we'll see.

00:44:24 ◼   ► I'll see how long she lasts for.

00:44:25 ◼   ► She never used a lock on her previous phone.

00:44:27 ◼   ► She always had it completely unlocked.

00:44:29 ◼   ► - Now, to be clear, you have to use a passcode

00:44:31 ◼   ► of some variety when Touch ID is on,

00:44:33 ◼   ► because if you reboot, for example,

00:44:35 ◼   ► it won't let you do Touch ID to unlock.

00:44:37 ◼   ► You have to use the passcode.

00:44:39 ◼   ► And there were some other circumstances

00:44:40 ◼   ► I don't recall. Well, if you can't get in via Touch ID, you have to fall back on a passcode.

00:44:45 ◼   ► I don't think it has to be four digit. I think you can use a crazy alphanumeric one.

00:44:49 ◼   ► Right. I just had a password. You can either do the simple passcode, which is four digits,

00:44:53 ◼   ► or you can just have it put up a text box and enter whatever you want with the regular

00:44:56 ◼   ► keyboard.

00:44:57 ◼   ► Yeah. The regular keyboard is at least slightly more difficult to shoulder surf from somebody.

00:45:02 ◼   ► All right. Actually, I should point out, I have not tried this, but earlier on, Double

00:45:07 ◼   ► in the chat said, "Hey, the way I fixed all the issues with not registering my finger

00:45:14 ◼   ► is to have the same finger as two entries in the Touch ID registration."

00:45:21 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

00:45:22 ◼   ► So, say take your right thumb, you register your right thumb as two independent fingers

00:45:28 ◼   ► and that makes it a lot better and a lot less likely to mess it up, which I have not tried,

00:45:34 ◼   ► but it sounds reasonable to me.

00:45:36 ◼   ► That's interesting.

00:45:37 ◼   ► Yeah, I thought that was interesting.

00:45:38 ◼   ► I'm surprised it would even accept it.

00:45:40 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know.

00:45:42 ◼   ► Sure, it'll accept it.

00:45:44 ◼   ► It's just a question of when they tell you to put your thumb on it in all sorts of different

00:45:47 ◼   ► positions.

00:45:48 ◼   ► You just do a different set of positions the second time, and then you have just more data.

00:45:52 ◼   ► Yeah, my experience with it has been great.

00:45:55 ◼   ► Certainly it fails sometimes, but I guess the difference is I look at it the same way

00:45:59 ◼   ► John does, which is, you know what, there is another step in this process that at least

00:46:04 ◼   ► 80% of the time for me, I don't even notice it.

00:46:08 ◼   ► I don't even think about it.

00:46:09 ◼   ► And then the other small portion of the time, 20% of the time I do notice it, you know,

00:46:13 ◼   ► maybe I have to try again, but my data in principle is that much more secure and that's

00:46:17 ◼   ► a price I'm willing to pay.

00:46:19 ◼   ► Much more so than the price of having even a four digit simple lock code, which I never

00:46:25 ◼   ► liked.

00:46:26 ◼   ► And it frustrated me every time I turned it on, which was basically only when I was at

00:46:29 ◼   ► conferences.

00:46:30 ◼   ► I give two thumbs up, as terrible as that pun ends up being, I give two thumbs up to

00:46:35 ◼   ► Touch ID.

00:46:36 ◼   ► I think it's been really good.

00:46:37 ◼   ► One thing I wanted to ask you guys about though is do you think this is coming to both MacBook

00:46:43 ◼   ► Pros and the desktop Macs, I guess specifically perhaps the iMac, and I assume we all agree

00:46:51 ◼   ► that it's going to be on iPads as soon as possible.

00:46:55 ◼   ► I'm going to say no on the Macs because...

00:46:57 ◼   ► Even the portables?

00:46:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, because right now, I mean, first of all,

00:47:04 ◼   ► they sell so many fewer Macs, the motivation

00:47:07 ◼   ► to bring cutting-edge features to them is way lower.

00:47:08 ◼   ► I mean, look, we still don't even have

00:47:11 ◼   ► built-in cellular modems on the Macs.

00:47:13 ◼   ► And that's, like, even when they launched one

00:47:15 ◼   ► called the MacBook Air and they didn't build in an AirCard,

00:47:18 ◼   ► I mean, that's crazy.

00:47:19 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:47:20 ◼   ► You know, so we, like, obviously the Mac,

00:47:22 ◼   ► like, putting new hardware features on the Mac

00:47:24 ◼   ► is obviously a lower priority.

00:47:26 ◼   ► But also, I think it's just because the design of it

00:47:29 ◼   ► requires that secure enclave thing, and if you look at what this is, if you look at the

00:47:34 ◼   ► NN Tech article on the A7, you can kind of see what that means. And it's this pretty

00:47:40 ◼   ► deeply integrated architecture as part of the new ARM architecture, whatever it is.

00:47:47 ◼   ► And so I don't think they would do it in a way that wasn't just as secure as the phone,

00:47:53 ◼   ► and in regards to, not only just recognizing your fingerprint, but in regards to not letting

00:47:58 ◼   ► getting anything else, access fingerprint data.

00:48:03 ◼   ► No other software on the computer, not even the CPU,

00:48:05 ◼   ► stuff like that, doing the hashing and then even

00:48:09 ◼   ► locking the hashes down super tightly in this secure area.

00:48:11 ◼   ► So this is all enabled by special hardware features

00:48:15 ◼   ► of the new ARM architecture.

00:48:19 ◼   ► And as far as I know, I don't think there's anything

00:48:21 ◼   ► like that on Intel, but who knows?

00:48:24 ◼   ► Intel's always worked in little features like this

00:48:23 ◼   ► in their specs and that nobody ever uses them.

00:48:25 ◼   ► They might have them, but I don't think they do right now.

00:48:27 ◼   ► And so I don't think

00:48:29 ◼   ► I don't think it's going to come to the

00:48:31 ◼   ► portables anytime soon.

00:48:33 ◼   ► Even coming to the iPads,

00:48:35 ◼   ► obviously I think it's only going to come

00:48:37 ◼   ► to iOS devices that have

00:48:39 ◼   ► the A7 or better.

00:48:41 ◼   ► And right now, the

00:48:43 ◼   ► iPad Mini is on the A5.

00:48:45 ◼   ► So the question is, if they're

00:48:47 ◼   ► about to do a retina iPad Mini,

00:48:49 ◼   ► which I think is pretty

00:48:51 ◼   ► pretty likely so it's certainly possible but i think it's pretty pretty likely

00:48:54 ◼   ► this point

00:48:55 ◼   ► uh... if they're actually is that

00:48:57 ◼   ► you have to ask you what's the price point i think it'd be in cannot even

00:49:00 ◼   ► support you know

00:49:01 ◼   ► there but the the means already

00:49:04 ◼   ► so can that support

00:49:05 ◼   ► an a seven and a redness green in one year i'm guessing probably not

00:49:10 ◼   ► i'm guessing the retina

00:49:12 ◼   ► i've had many is probably gonna have

00:49:14 ◼   ► an a six x chip and not the a seven x

00:49:17 ◼   ► which is just yet but the program called that

00:49:19 ◼   ► and then I'm guessing the full-size iPad will have

00:49:22 ◼   ► A7X and Tuxedo because, first of all, also,

00:49:25 ◼   ► Apple needs some segmentation here.

00:49:27 ◼   ► Apple needs some reasons for people to buy the big one.

00:49:32 ◼   ► Because the big one, they make way more money on it,

00:49:34 ◼   ► and there's a lot more room there for upsells as well.

00:49:38 ◼   ► So I think we're gonna see that come to the iPad this fall

00:49:42 ◼   ► as big iPad only, and the mini won't have it this year.

00:49:47 ◼   ► That's just my guess.

00:49:48 ◼   ► - Well, yeah, I kind of agree that it's not likely

00:49:51 ◼   ► that we're gonna see this in Macs anytime soon.

00:49:54 ◼   ► But for the Secure Enclave stuff,

00:49:56 ◼   ► if Intel doesn't already have something like that,

00:49:59 ◼   ► they will soon, because Intel wants into

00:50:01 ◼   ► all the businesses that ARM is into.

00:50:03 ◼   ► And this is even ignoring the possibility of

00:50:06 ◼   ► a Mac based on an ARM system on a chip.

00:50:08 ◼   ► Like, these type of features,

00:50:10 ◼   ► not only can Apple get it if they want it

00:50:14 ◼   ► a couple years down the line,

00:50:15 ◼   ► but Intel is going to want to offer it,

00:50:17 ◼   ► because they're gonna want to offer

00:50:18 ◼   ► chips to people who do things like this. And because Apple has some fingerprint thing in

00:50:22 ◼   ► their thing, that seems to be reasonably successful. We haven't heard all crazy backlash or no late

00:50:27 ◼   ► night jokes about how fingerprints don't work. It's more or less how to launch the best that you

00:50:32 ◼   ► could have hoped for. And again, this is a forward looking technology and blah, blah, blah. This is

00:50:36 ◼   ► the cutting edge. But a couple of years down the line, when it's less cutting edge, if it turns out

00:50:41 ◼   ► to be something that people like, laptops have the same exact problem in that you should use a screen

00:50:46 ◼   ► lock whenever you're away from your laptop and stuff like that, but a lot of people don't

00:50:51 ◼   ► because it's annoying to keep typing in your password over and over and over again, even

00:50:54 ◼   ► though you have a real keyboard in front of you.

00:50:56 ◼   ► I do it at work.

00:50:57 ◼   ► My screen has a password lock on it and I'm sick of typing it all day every time I get

00:51:00 ◼   ► up and leave my computer and come back down to it.

00:51:03 ◼   ► If I could put my finger on some little spot, that's faster than typing in front of my password

00:51:07 ◼   ► and I would do it.

00:51:08 ◼   ► So if this convenience becomes addictive to customers, it's only a matter of time before

00:51:15 ◼   ► it shows up everywhere because there are so many instances where you have to enter credentials

00:51:19 ◼   ► on the Mac, purchasing stuff, authorizing event access if you're a nerd user or whatever. Hell,

00:51:28 ◼   ► I would use it for my SSH key passcode stuff if I could. The opportunities for integration

00:51:35 ◼   ► seem great. Now, the point about the 3G is a good one. That seems like a no-brainer. Everyone has

00:51:40 ◼   ► to come up with all sorts of crazy theories about why isn't Apple putting 3G in any of its Mac

00:51:45 ◼   ► products? Is it some sort of thing with the carriers or they don't want like I

00:51:48 ◼   ► don't understand why either but the simplest explanation is the most

00:51:51 ◼   ► compelling like Marco said it's just yeah they don't care that much you know

00:51:55 ◼   ► maybe they'll do it someday maybe they won't but that's another feature that

00:51:59 ◼   ► can you think of anybody who buys the MacBook Air and travels a lot who would

00:52:04 ◼   ► not opt for the 3G option or 4G option if it was like it is on the iPad where

00:52:08 ◼   ► you pay per month and the extra hardware is you know 100 extra bucks or whatever

00:52:14 ◼   ► People will buy that in a second.

00:52:15 ◼   ► That would be an amazing seller.

00:52:17 ◼   ► And it would make the machine more useful.

00:52:19 ◼   ► So that argument is against Touch ID,

00:52:21 ◼   ► because it's a feature-- no matter how convenient it is

00:52:24 ◼   ► and how much people want it, if Apple can't be bothered

00:52:26 ◼   ► because the volumes are too low or it doesn't seem that

00:52:28 ◼   ► important, who knows?

00:52:29 ◼   ► But if Touch ID continues to be even middle of the road

00:52:35 ◼   ► successful-- people don't love it,

00:52:37 ◼   ► but it's still more convenient than typing in something--

00:52:39 ◼   ► it's got to spread.

00:52:40 ◼   ► Because the technology required to do that

00:52:43 ◼   ► will become cheaper, will spread to more different vendors, will just be everywhere.

00:52:48 ◼   ► So we'll report back in five years and we'll see if Touch ID has spread outside the iOS

00:52:52 ◼   ► realm, but I would not be surprised.

00:52:54 ◼   ► I would say also the demand for, or rather the need for Touch ID on laptops is lower.

00:53:03 ◼   ► And they discussed this in the keynote when they unveiled it for the iPhone, that nobody

00:53:07 ◼   ► locks their phone because it's hard.

00:53:09 ◼   ► It has inconvenience, frequent inconvenience.

00:53:12 ◼   ► So nobody does it.

00:53:14 ◼   ► So on the laptop, even though I'm all picky

00:53:17 ◼   ► about making a convenient phone,

00:53:19 ◼   ► on my laptop I've always used full disk encryption,

00:53:23 ◼   ► using FileVault, I use full disk encryption,

00:53:25 ◼   ► and I have the passcode required on every wake up

00:53:28 ◼   ► and a pretty aggressive sleep timeout.

00:53:31 ◼   ► And the reason why is because I don't sleep

00:53:32 ◼   ► and wake my laptop that much.

00:53:34 ◼   ► Like it's not like a phone where you might sleep

00:53:36 ◼   ► and wake it 30 to 50 times in a day, at least.

00:53:39 ◼   ► I don't even, probably more than that.

00:53:40 ◼   ► That's because you don't work in a public office.

00:53:42 ◼   ► Like every time anyone walks away from their desk at work,

00:53:45 ◼   ► you lock your screen.

00:53:46 ◼   ► Not just because it's work policy,

00:53:47 ◼   ► but because if you don't, your coworkers will send emails

00:53:50 ◼   ► that say you forgot to lock your computer

00:53:51 ◼   ► and do other terrible things to your computer.

00:53:52 ◼   ► - Right, they'll go to your wallpaper.

00:53:54 ◼   ► But still, I mean, how often do you get up

00:53:56 ◼   ► from your desk at work?

00:53:57 ◼   ► Like how many times per day,

00:53:59 ◼   ► compared to how often you unlock a phone?

00:54:01 ◼   ► - I'm thinking about all the other things too.

00:54:02 ◼   ► Like how many times do we go to a web forum

00:54:04 ◼   ► when we want it to autofill?

00:54:05 ◼   ► I mean, I guess they kind of autofill automatically,

00:54:07 ◼   ► the extra bit of security of having a fingerprint thing to autofill stuff versus like, "Oh

00:54:12 ◼   ► God, if someone gets to my unlocked computer, they can log in as me at Gmail because I don't

00:54:17 ◼   ► use two-factor auth or something because my browser will just autofill it."

00:54:23 ◼   ► This is, again, a case where you're adding security where none existed before because

00:54:27 ◼   ► now if you get to someone's unlocked Mac and they save their passwords, you can just go

00:54:31 ◼   ► to the webpage, it will autofill, and you will just log right in as them and have access

00:54:35 ◼   ► to all their stuff.

00:54:36 ◼   ► So we all love Keychain and we love the convenience of like one password or whatever, remembering

00:54:40 ◼   ► our passwords, but having it be so easy for someone to get access to all your passwords

00:54:45 ◼   ► just because they have access to your unlocked Mac is not good for any kind of security sensitive

00:54:50 ◼   ► situation.

00:54:51 ◼   ► If it could be as simple as putting your fingers on something and hey, when you're using a

00:54:54 ◼   ► Mac, your fingers are already on the keyboard and there's lots of keys there, like it seems

00:54:58 ◼   ► like a natural fit.

00:54:59 ◼   ► But eventually, I mean, it's like 3G.

00:55:01 ◼   ► Like it's got to happen eventually.

00:55:04 ◼   ► "Some Mac laptop has to have cellular wireless in it."

00:55:08 ◼   ► Right?

00:55:09 ◼   ► Maybe not this year, maybe not next year, but eventually it has to.

00:55:12 ◼   ► Soon it becomes so cheap that kids toys have it in them.

00:55:16 ◼   ► It just has to happen.

00:55:17 ◼   ► So if this fingerprint stuff continues to be useful and nothing better replaces it,

00:55:24 ◼   ► it'll be in Macs eventually and we'll use it for all the things that we currently use

00:55:27 ◼   ► passwords for.

00:55:28 ◼   ► And we'll like it.

00:55:31 ◼   ► Somebody actually pointed out to me on Twitter a while back that perhaps if there is a touch

00:55:35 ◼   ► ID in the portables, perhaps it would be under the touchpad.

00:55:41 ◼   ► So the whole touchpad would be one big sensor, which I thought was interesting.

00:55:45 ◼   ► That sounds like, it sounds unrealistic though because the sensor in the phone is super high

00:55:50 ◼   ► resolution and to make one that large at the size of these giant touchpads that are on

00:55:56 ◼   ► the modern Mac laptops, that's probably cost prohibitive.

00:56:00 ◼   ► Putting it in a key cap is certainly the easier one with current tech, but it depends on how

00:56:04 ◼   ► many years out in the future you go, because things just get cheaper, cheaper and cheaper,

00:56:07 ◼   ► and eventually maybe putting it in the whole trackpad isn't as crazy as it is today, you

00:56:11 ◼   ► know?

00:56:12 ◼   ► Right.

00:56:13 ◼   ► Now, it occurred to me just a moment ago that this is our last show before the October 22nd

00:56:19 ◼   ► event, so I feel like it would be remiss of me not to ask you to any other thoughts on

00:56:24 ◼   ► what will be announced.

00:56:25 ◼   ► I'll start with myself.

00:56:27 ◼   ► I didn't think that there would be a Retina iPad Mini until the last week or so.

00:56:32 ◼   ► I'm starting to lean toward there being one.

00:56:35 ◼   ► And so I'll go on record and saying I think that there will be a Retina iPad Mini.

00:56:40 ◼   ► And I also was just thinking to myself, if there isn't a Retina iPad Mini, I kind of

00:56:45 ◼   ► wonder if we'll get iPad Mini in colors a la the iPhone 5C.

00:56:53 ◼   ► So you know, "Hey, we didn't give you the Retina you always wanted, but we've got

00:56:57 ◼   ► these sweet colors and so that would be kind of your the second the next best thing.

00:57:04 ◼   ► But in terms of everything else I mean I suspect and hope I really hope we see updates to the

00:57:10 ◼   ► laptops.

00:57:11 ◼   ► What is it Haswell that we're waiting on is that right?

00:57:15 ◼   ► I would hope that we'll see that I think we'll get in for more information about the Mac Pro

00:57:18 ◼   ► I obviously will get more information about Mavericks but I'm going for yes on the Retina

00:57:23 ◼   ► iPad mini.

00:57:24 ◼   ► Marco how about you?

00:57:26 ◼   ► I'm going to modify your prediction of the iPad mini slightly. First of all, I think

00:57:34 ◼   ► it's pretty clear that we've seen parts leaks, not to the level that we see before a phone

00:57:38 ◼   ► launch, but I think we've seen enough parts leaks that it looks pretty clear that they're

00:57:43 ◼   ► not doing plastic, that the case for the mini looks pretty much the same as the old one

00:57:48 ◼   ► but a little bit thicker, which pretty much suggests retina.

00:57:51 ◼   ► My guess is we see a retina mini, but they keep the old one around at a cheaper price,

00:57:56 ◼   ► and the retina price goes up because right now they have the iPad Mini at $329.

00:58:02 ◼   ► And right now that's the current price?

00:58:04 ◼   ► I believe that's right.

00:58:05 ◼   ► So that is cheap enough that they sold a butt ton of them this year, but everyone's still

00:58:12 ◼   ► undercutting the crap out of them.

00:58:14 ◼   ► And Apple's not going to try to match the Kindle Fire crap box price, but they can at

00:58:20 ◼   ► least try to reduce the gap, just like they did by releasing the Mini in the first place.

00:58:25 ◼   ► So I'm guessing the old Mini sticks around for another year,

00:58:29 ◼   ► the same way they used to do with phones,

00:58:31 ◼   ► and still kind of do.

00:58:32 ◼   ► So I'm guessing the old Mini sticks around

00:58:34 ◼   ► at a little bit less.

00:58:36 ◼   ► Maybe it becomes $300 instead of $330, you know?

00:58:40 ◼   ► Or maybe even like $279, something like that.

00:58:43 ◼   ► But not like a massive jump, not $200 bucks, but less.

00:58:48 ◼   ► And then the Retina comes in at a higher price.

00:58:52 ◼   ► Basically I'm agreeing with R. Jonesy in the chatroom.

00:58:55 ◼   ► I'm saying non-retina goes down to 300-ish, retina goes up to about 400-ish, because I

00:59:03 ◼   ► think they're going to need a little bit more margin to pull that off well.

00:59:06 ◼   ► Obviously you can look and you can see the newest big Kindle Fires and the newer Nexus

00:59:12 ◼   ► 7, is it?

00:59:13 ◼   ► Yeah, the Nexus 7.

00:59:14 ◼   ► You can look at some of these other cheap tablets that have very high res screens.

00:59:21 ◼   ► very high-risk screens, rather.

00:59:22 ◼   ► You can look at those, and they're able to cram in

00:59:26 ◼   ► those high-density screens into these cheap price points.

00:59:28 ◼   ► So obviously, it's possible to do that,

00:59:32 ◼   ► but Apple tends to build in better cases,

00:59:34 ◼   ► better screen types, better angles and color

00:59:37 ◼   ► and stuff like that, and then they usually have

00:59:39 ◼   ► a more powerful GPU, and so there's all these things.

00:59:43 ◼   ► So I'm guessing Apple can't comfortably do

00:59:48 ◼   ► good Retina Mini at $329 this year.

00:59:52 ◼   ► So they're instead going to split it and go lower for the non-Retina and higher for

00:59:56 ◼   ► the Retina.

00:59:57 ◼   ► I'm guessing the Retina will also have the A6X, as I said a few minutes ago, and not

01:00:01 ◼   ► the A7, primarily for cost concerns.

01:00:05 ◼   ► And then the iPad 5 is going to be a little bit smaller and really fast and probably have

01:00:09 ◼   ► the A7X, but who cares because it's too big.

01:00:12 ◼   ► All right, John?

01:00:14 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm kind of upset about the smaller frame around the iPad, whatever number it's

01:00:20 ◼   ► up to now, the big one.

01:00:21 ◼   ► Because I like the big one, I like the bigger screen, I don't like the mini.

01:00:24 ◼   ► And one of the things I don't like about the mini is the edges are so small, like they

01:00:27 ◼   ► want you to hold it not by the frame, but rather like around the back of it.

01:00:32 ◼   ► And so the shrinking, you know, if all the parts leaks are to be believed in, I do believe

01:00:35 ◼   ► them, they're shrinking the frame around the iPad 5.

01:00:39 ◼   ► Which is kind of a shame.

01:00:40 ◼   ► It's still big, I guess I'll have to try it out, but anyway, that's the iPad that I'll

01:00:43 ◼   ► want someday or something like that to replace my iPad 3. Although my iPad 3 does feel like

01:00:48 ◼   ► it weighs a ton, but it's still pretty solid for me. It stutters a little on iOS 7, I finally

01:00:53 ◼   ► did upgrade it. But yeah, I'm looking forward to the big iPad. The Mini has to be Retina

01:01:00 ◼   ► this year, it just has to be. And if it's not, they will get slammed in the press and

01:01:03 ◼   ► they will deserve it. Because fine, you've launched on Retina, you gotta do what you

01:01:07 ◼   ► gotta do, you gotta protect your margins, it wasn't that big a deal. Now everybody has

01:01:11 ◼   ► has a retina little tablet.

01:01:12 ◼   ► And like what Marco said is true,

01:01:13 ◼   ► maybe they're using cheaper displays or whatever,

01:01:15 ◼   ► but some of them are not that bad.

01:01:17 ◼   ► I've seen a lot of these 7-inch tablets.

01:01:19 ◼   ► They do not look like crap displays.

01:01:20 ◼   ► It's not like they're shipping with those crazy pen tile

01:01:22 ◼   ► things that don't even have real RGB pixels.

01:01:24 ◼   ► Some of these screens--

01:01:25 ◼   ► I think some of them are.

01:01:27 ◼   ► Some of them are, but the name brand good 7-inch Android

01:01:32 ◼   ► or Kindle tablets, they're like $200 bucks and they're retina.

01:01:36 ◼   ► And they're not bad products.

01:01:37 ◼   ► Yes, they have wimpier GPUs and maybe slower CPUs,

01:01:40 ◼   ► and they don't use the app, but absolutely positively,

01:01:43 ◼   ► Apple must ship a Retina Mini.

01:01:46 ◼   ► Whether they keep around the old one--

01:01:48 ◼   ► Apple is running this experiment with the iPad 2,

01:01:50 ◼   ► where they wanted to figure out, do people

01:01:54 ◼   ► keep buying the iPad 2 because it's cheap

01:01:56 ◼   ► or because it's big?

01:01:56 ◼   ► And so then they made a small one that was also cheap.

01:01:59 ◼   ► And so it's like, OK, now you have the choice.

01:02:01 ◼   ► You have the cheap big one and the cheap small one.

01:02:03 ◼   ► Now, presumably, Apple has enough data to know whether

01:02:07 ◼   ► or not they should include the, you know, keep around the non-retina mini. I just don't

01:02:13 ◼   ► know what the answer to that question is. They know because they can look at their sales

01:02:15 ◼   ► figures because now they've run the experiment, they're sort of controlling for the variables.

01:02:19 ◼   ► They have, you know, two non-retina devices, one big one small, both cheaper than everything

01:02:23 ◼   ► else, which one is selling more, what do people say about why they buy it or whatever. So

01:02:30 ◼   ► I would not be surprised if they didn't keep around the old one because I think the result

01:02:33 ◼   ► the experiment. My guess is that people want it at a cheaper price, not so much the bigger size,

01:02:38 ◼   ► but only Apple knows for sure, so we'll see. For the MacBook Pros,

01:02:42 ◼   ► I'm assuming they're going to be announced. I haven't paid enough attention to Intel's timelines.

01:02:48 ◼   ► Again, we talked about it in previous shows. The thing I'm really looking for is,

01:02:52 ◼   ► we're talking about the retina MacBook Pros, because obviously the other line has already

01:02:58 ◼   ► already been updated this year. Will it have a discrete GPU at all in any of the model

01:03:03 ◼   ► choices or will it be the Irish Pro graphics up and down the line? Because as we said before,

01:03:09 ◼   ► Apple could say no discrete GPU in any of the MacBook Pros and spin it with some marketing

01:03:15 ◼   ► mumbo jumbo and some graphs that show, "See, it's not really that bad. It's about the same

01:03:19 ◼   ► as it was before and look at this extra battery life you get," or whatever. Or will there

01:03:23 ◼   ► be a last gasp of the discrete GPU and on either some or all the models, it will still

01:03:27 ◼   ► have a screen GPU but you'll use it less and less except for maybe when you're

01:03:31 ◼   ► gaming because iris pro is just that good so that's what I'd be looking for

01:03:34 ◼   ► there the Mac Pro I would like a price on that but I'm not holding my breath I

01:03:39 ◼   ► have no idea what the time it looks like for the Mac Pro again I don't quite

01:03:43 ◼   ► understand at this point why they wouldn't announce pricing they have

01:03:47 ◼   ► been they've pre announced the product so far in advance anyway why not just

01:03:50 ◼   ► tell us how much it's gonna cost surely you know by now there's no part of it

01:03:53 ◼   ► that you're waiting for pricing on you have pricing for CPUs from Intel you

01:03:56 ◼   ► have all the other parts, all that good stuff.

01:03:59 ◼   ► Well, wait a minute.

01:04:00 ◼   ► Is Intel's CPU pricing public?

01:04:01 ◼   ► Well, I mean, the deals have to be signed by now.

01:04:04 ◼   ► Like, barring any unforeseen fabbing difficulties, Apple has to know what their supply costs

01:04:09 ◼   ► are for this machine and, you know, pick a price.

01:04:11 ◼   ► Well, yeah, but maybe they aren't allowed to reveal the pricing of a thing using this

01:04:16 ◼   ► new still kind of unreleased Intel chip yet.

01:04:18 ◼   ► Intel doesn't stop Apple from announcing prices of its products.

01:04:21 ◼   ► Apple does what it wants.

01:04:23 ◼   ► We also haven't seen, as far as I know, the CPUs used in the new Mac Pro, the Xeon

01:04:30 ◼   ► E5 V2, I don't think we've seen any of them in the wild anywhere else yet.

01:04:35 ◼   ► No one else is selling those CPUs yet.

01:04:37 ◼   ► So it's possible Apple's just waiting on Intel to deliver enough of them.

01:04:41 ◼   ► Yeah, I'm not talking about shipping.

01:04:43 ◼   ► I'm just saying, to have us a price and we'll be on sale later this year or whatever.

01:04:50 ◼   ► - And then the displays are linked with the Mac Pro.

01:04:54 ◼   ► - Please, please, please.

01:04:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, we all want them, but I get a feeling

01:04:58 ◼   ► that maybe not this year.

01:04:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, I'd give that maybe a 50% chance

01:05:03 ◼   ► of being this year.

01:05:04 ◼   ► - No matter how much we want,

01:05:05 ◼   ► that watching them doesn't make it so,

01:05:06 ◼   ► so that's a shame there.

01:05:07 ◼   ► Mavericks, I have, I mean, we all know

01:05:10 ◼   ► that Apple shipped out the GM.

01:05:11 ◼   ► They like to give developers some time

01:05:16 ◼   ► to get their applications ready for Mavericks

01:05:18 ◼   ► and put them up into the store and stuff like that.

01:05:20 ◼   ► How much time?

01:05:21 ◼   ► Not that much.

01:05:23 ◼   ► I mean, how long do they usually give developers?

01:05:25 ◼   ► What, iOS 7 went GM in like two weeks before?

01:05:28 ◼   ► Usually you have one week on iOS.

01:05:31 ◼   ► Yeah, so it's not outside the realm of possibility

01:05:33 ◼   ► that Mavericks, the price is announced, and they say, hey,

01:05:37 ◼   ► go to the store after we get off the stage,

01:05:39 ◼   ► and you can get it today.

01:05:41 ◼   ► I tend to think you're right about that.

01:05:43 ◼   ► Something that just occurred to me,

01:05:44 ◼   ► I don't think this is going to happen,

01:05:47 ◼   ► But is Apple currently selling any iPhone with the dock connector anymore?

01:05:53 ◼   ► Yes, the 4S is still for sale.

01:05:55 ◼   ► Ah, bummer.

01:05:56 ◼   ► All right.

01:05:57 ◼   ► Well, what I was going to say is what if they said, "You know what?

01:06:01 ◼   ► The only iPads we're selling are the current gen mini, the next gen mini, the one that's

01:06:08 ◼   ► going to be new in a week or less than a week.

01:06:11 ◼   ► The iPad 4 is now the cheap big iPad, the iPad 5 obviously is the new big iPad.

01:06:21 ◼   ► So if it wasn't for the 4S, which already ruins my argument, I was going to say, "Hey,

01:06:25 ◼   ► look, we're all off the dock connector.

01:06:27 ◼   ► The dock connector is gone."

01:06:28 ◼   ► And then what if they did the same thing with, "Hey, we're doing a new iMac with the either

01:06:32 ◼   ► 4K or Retina display."

01:06:34 ◼   ► Obviously with that comes the Thunderbolt display upgrade, which is now Retina.

01:06:38 ◼   ► "Oh, and by the way, there's a Retina MacBook Air, and we've already got Retina MacBook Pros."

01:06:42 ◼   ► Look, everything is Retina, and everything is on the Lightning connector, and everyone is happy.

01:06:45 ◼   ► I don't think that'll happen, but it would be a neat storyline for the event.

01:06:50 ◼   ► That's next year. By the end of next year is your only chance of getting...

01:06:54 ◼   ► Because getting a Retina into the Air is difficult from a battery perspective,

01:06:57 ◼   ► and the iMac is difficult from a cost perspective. Marco and I just want it for the Pro,

01:07:02 ◼   ► I mean, crying out loud, for the bazillion dollar top-end device, can you get a Retina?

01:07:06 ◼   ► because it can drive them. Apple said it can drive the displays. And if Apple doesn't offer

01:07:12 ◼   ► the displays, what are we going to do? Buy a retina display elsewhere?

01:07:15 ◼   ► What do you think of that rumor? Do you see that rumor about the

01:07:18 ◼   ► potential 12-inch retina MacBook Air? You see that came out?

01:07:23 ◼   ► I did not see that rumor. I did. I don't understand why that would be useful.

01:07:27 ◼   ► Well, I think it's interesting. So, John, basically, we'll have to find a link to it.

01:07:32 ◼   ► The rumor is that--it came out this week--the rumor is that they're working on a 12-inch

01:07:37 ◼   ► Retina Air that would potentially replace the existing Air lineup with just the one

01:07:43 ◼   ► model of the 12-inch.

01:07:44 ◼   ► And it would be substantially smaller and thinner than the current Retina lineup, which

01:07:50 ◼   ► is pretty impressive.

01:07:52 ◼   ► And apparently it's like even redefining portability even further than the original Air did.

01:07:59 ◼   ► Something like that.

01:08:00 ◼   ► So here's the link in the chat.

01:08:01 ◼   ► you to Dejonator.

01:08:06 ◼   ► It says mid-2014.

01:08:07 ◼   ► Oh yeah, I'm not saying right now, I'm just talking in general that this rumor exists.

01:08:12 ◼   ► I think, first of all, this is just an analyst predicting this.

01:08:16 ◼   ► Oh, did I tell you I'm an analyst now?

01:08:18 ◼   ► I changed myself on Twitter.

01:08:20 ◼   ► So obviously this is really more of speculation in all likelihood than an actual tip, and

01:08:30 ◼   ► And certainly it's pretty far from credible or likely,

01:08:33 ◼   ► given the sourcing.

01:08:34 ◼   ► But I think it's an interesting thing to consider.

01:08:39 ◼   ► And if they did it, I think it would be really cool.

01:08:42 ◼   ► - It makes sense from a segmentation perspective,

01:08:44 ◼   ► and I see this at work as people are getting newer laptops.

01:08:47 ◼   ► When I see someone with like a 13-inch Retina MacBook Pro,

01:08:50 ◼   ► that, if you had showed me that before the Air existed,

01:08:53 ◼   ► I would be like, oh, that must be the new MacBook Air.

01:08:55 ◼   ► Because like the Pros, now that the opticals are gone

01:08:58 ◼   ► and the spinning discs are gone,

01:08:59 ◼   ► Like they're getting thinner and smaller.

01:09:00 ◼   ► So you need some way to further differentiate the Air

01:09:04 ◼   ► because the 13-inch Pro is like creeping up

01:09:07 ◼   ► on Air territory.

01:09:08 ◼   ► Like if you had an original MacBook Air

01:09:11 ◼   ► and the current Retina 13-inch Pro,

01:09:13 ◼   ► 13-inch Pro is bigger, it's thicker,

01:09:15 ◼   ► but not that much bigger and not that much thicker.

01:09:17 ◼   ► Like yeah, it doesn't taper or anything,

01:09:19 ◼   ► but they're both pretty darn portable.

01:09:20 ◼   ► So if you want the Air to continue to have the reputation

01:09:23 ◼   ► of the super light thing, it makes perfect sense to say,

01:09:26 ◼   ► okay, we're seeding the 13-inch realm to the MacBook Pro

01:09:28 ◼   ► because it's not as thin as a 13-inch air would be,

01:09:32 ◼   ► but it's thin.

01:09:33 ◼   ► We really want to emphasize super-duper portability.

01:09:35 ◼   ► 11 inches is a little bit squinty,

01:09:37 ◼   ► so maybe 12.5 or something.

01:09:39 ◼   ► I don't want to give any credence to these remets either,

01:09:40 ◼   ► but consolidating the air line downrange

01:09:44 ◼   ► to further emphasize its super-duper portability

01:09:47 ◼   ► is a good idea if you continue to have the 13-inch retina,

01:09:50 ◼   ► because the 13-inch retina is getting thinner every year.

01:09:53 ◼   ► It's a pretty nice machine.

01:09:56 ◼   ► And also, this rumor, if it's completely true, which as I said is very unlikely, but if it's

01:10:01 ◼   ► completely true, that they would actually replace both 11 and 13 with this one super

01:10:08 ◼   ► slim 12.

01:10:09 ◼   ► That could be interesting, because right now, the 11 and 13 are very different sizes.

01:10:14 ◼   ► You wouldn't think so if you just look at a picture head on, but in practice, there's

01:10:19 ◼   ► a substantial gap between them.

01:10:22 ◼   ► And the 13 is very thin, but not that small.

01:10:27 ◼   ► And the 11 is really small, but you can't fit anything

01:10:30 ◼   ► on that screen.

01:10:32 ◼   ► It is impossible to fit or see anything on that screen.

01:10:35 ◼   ► And so to have something that's a little bit bigger

01:10:38 ◼   ► than the 11, but not as big as 13,

01:10:40 ◼   ► I think really could be better than both of them.

01:10:43 ◼   ► The other thing you can do is the traditional thing

01:10:45 ◼   ► of reducing the spacing around the elements.

01:10:48 ◼   ► There's a crash protection issue there as well,

01:10:50 ◼   ► But that's the easy way to shrink the 13 without actually shrinking the screen size.

01:10:56 ◼   ► They have a lot of options with the Airs, but in terms of retina, it's always been

01:10:59 ◼   ► badder.

01:11:00 ◼   ► The thicker case on the Mini rumors, the same thing happened with the iPad, the iPad 3 got

01:11:05 ◼   ► thicker too.

01:11:06 ◼   ► You just need more battery for that retina display.

01:11:08 ◼   ► And that's why they'd have to do this new design.

01:11:11 ◼   ► I think it says in here that it's shaped more like the Retinome Epic Pro where it's

01:11:16 ◼   ► not wedge-shaped anymore.

01:11:18 ◼   ► It's square, it's flat.

01:11:20 ◼   ► The problem with the 11-inch Air,

01:11:24 ◼   ► until the most recent ones with Haswell,

01:11:25 ◼   ► I think it's improved substantially,

01:11:27 ◼   ► but the 11-inch Air, in addition to having

01:11:29 ◼   ► a really tiny screen, also just has

01:11:31 ◼   ► a substantially smaller battery than the 13,

01:11:34 ◼   ► just because there's no room to put one.

01:11:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's crappy battery life, too.

01:11:38 ◼   ► - Exactly, and so if they made it not tapered,

01:11:42 ◼   ► if they just made the whole thing a uniform thickness,

01:11:44 ◼   ► that would give tons more space up front

01:11:47 ◼   ► the under the wrist rest to put a nice big thick battery pack.

01:11:50 ◼   ► Yeah, the taper is a conceit that you can afford maybe when you're making a design statement,

01:11:56 ◼   ► but as the years pass it's like, remind me again why it gets thinner on one end,

01:11:59 ◼   ► because it's not actually all that thick at the other end either, and we're sacrificing

01:12:04 ◼   ► a whole big wedge of lithium-ion battery space that we could have,

01:12:07 ◼   ► especially when it's sitting there on a desk in front of you, you don't really care that it's

01:12:12 ◼   ► thinner on the front than it is at the back. It looks cool when it's closed, but when you're

01:12:15 ◼   ► carrying it.

01:12:16 ◼   ► Like, yeah, it's a difficult tradeoff, especially with the 11-inch, which just feels like you

01:12:21 ◼   ► would think the 11-inch is going to have, "Whoa, this is such amazing battery life because

01:12:24 ◼   ► it's so small and light."

01:12:25 ◼   ► But no, it's got the same class of CPU as in the 13, and it eats up just as much battery.

01:12:31 ◼   ► I mean, smaller screen, but, you know.

01:12:34 ◼   ► Like a layperson might think that the 11-inch would have better battery life than the 13,

01:12:38 ◼   ► but it does not.

01:12:39 ◼   ► And it can't with the current technology they have in there.

01:12:41 ◼   ► So need more battery.

01:12:43 ◼   ► Send battery.

01:12:44 ◼   ► While we're on the subject, we never got a chance to talk about the rumors about the

01:12:49 ◼   ► A7 potentially being brought to the Mac. That's why it's going 64-bit and the potential for

01:12:56 ◼   ► ARM-based Mac laptops in the future. One of the reasons why I didn't think that really

01:13:03 ◼   ► held a lot of water is because the CPU design doesn't actually have that massive of an impact

01:13:11 ◼   ► on the overall battery life, that that would really,

01:13:14 ◼   ► you know, you're not gonna have like,

01:13:15 ◼   ► you're not gonna go to an ARM CPU

01:13:17 ◼   ► and have the laptop last a month.

01:13:19 ◼   ► Like it's not that, like you still have the screen,

01:13:22 ◼   ► the RAM, the disks, like everything else

01:13:24 ◼   ► that you have to power,

01:13:25 ◼   ► and the screen being a pretty big one.

01:13:27 ◼   ► And so, I don't, you know, now that we see

01:13:31 ◼   ► as Intel's upping their game, and you know,

01:13:33 ◼   ► with Haswell doing not only a big CPU power reduction,

01:13:37 ◼   ► but also like a lot of other components on the motherboard

01:13:40 ◼   ► being more smart about their power usage. I don't really think there's that much

01:13:44 ◼   ► of a need to make the CPU dramatically lower powered in a laptop to the point where it

01:13:50 ◼   ► would be worth an architecture switch that would be disruptive. And by the way, a switch

01:13:54 ◼   ► to a slower architecture, which would make emulation difficult to do well, unlike every

01:14:00 ◼   ► other architecture switch they've done. So I don't really see it happening, and

01:14:05 ◼   ► I don't really see what it would gain that would be totally worth it. I mean, if you

01:14:09 ◼   ► already have eight or 12 hours of battery life on a laptop using a fast CPU, how much

01:14:18 ◼   ► demand really would there be for that? Well, we did talk about this before, right,

01:14:22 ◼   ► Casey? I'm not crazy for misremembering this. I thought we did as well.

01:14:26 ◼   ► I talked about Bay Trail and how Intel is getting in on ARM's area of super low power CPUs and how

01:14:34 ◼   ► they're kind of meeting in the middle. It's just a question of, as they meet in the middle,

01:14:37 ◼   ► who ends up coming out the victor.

01:14:39 ◼   ► Two things on that.

01:14:41 ◼   ► First, the CPU isn't always using the most power in the system,

01:14:46 ◼   ► but it has the highest dynamic range of any component in the system,

01:14:49 ◼   ► because when you really burn, especially with big multi-core things,

01:14:51 ◼   ► when you're really burning up and using every ounce of the CPU,

01:14:54 ◼   ► it uses a tremendous amount of power, way more than the screen,

01:14:57 ◼   ► way more than an SSD, way more than the RAM.

01:15:00 ◼   ► And so that's why it's a problem.

01:15:03 ◼   ► Not that it's always going like that unless you're playing a game or something,

01:15:05 ◼   ► or something, but when it does, it has the potential to really suck down your battery.

01:15:08 ◼   ► I mean, what is it like that? I think the current has well in the air or whatever, its

01:15:12 ◼   ► max power dissipation is like 25 watts, and like, the battery is like 54 watt hours or

01:15:19 ◼   ► something. So you are not getting 12 hours of battery life out of your MacBook Air if

01:15:24 ◼   ► you are running that CPU at max power all the time. And the second thing is that you're

01:15:30 ◼   ► not looking for an ARM CPU so much as you're looking for an ARM system on a chip. And that's

01:15:35 ◼   ► That's why the Haswell MacBook Airs and everything have such great power.

01:15:38 ◼   ► It's not just because they're better power management in the CPU part, but because they

01:15:42 ◼   ► move more crap onto the CPU die or package.

01:15:46 ◼   ► So the GPU goes onto that, no more discrete GPU, and the, what is it, the PCH thing?

01:15:51 ◼   ► Moving more components into the chip, that's why you can have the A7 system on a chip.

01:15:55 ◼   ► It's not just the CPU, it's the entire system on a little chip.

01:15:58 ◼   ► And yeah, there's a big gap between where Haswell is and the A7 system on a chip, but

01:16:01 ◼   ► again, they're meeting in the middle.

01:16:03 ◼   ► So as time goes on, more and more components are going to get shoved into whatever the

01:16:10 ◼   ► chip is that is, you know, we call the CPU in the Mac, but really will eventually become

01:16:14 ◼   ► a system on a chip.

01:16:15 ◼   ► And the same thing with the phones and everything.

01:16:18 ◼   ► Chip consolidation will happen.

01:16:19 ◼   ► It's just a question of when it happens and where it happens first.

01:16:23 ◼   ► So if you were to stick an A7 to a Mac laptop, you'd get a big advantage because the max

01:16:28 ◼   ► power dissipation of the A7 is way lower than the max power dissipation of a Haswell, and

01:16:32 ◼   ► The chip is slower and everything too.

01:16:35 ◼   ► And so you say, well, 12 hours seems like it's plenty, right?

01:16:39 ◼   ► Well, if it was 24 hours, does that change the equation?

01:16:41 ◼   ► If it's 48 hours, does that change the equation?

01:16:43 ◼   ► At a certain point, it's a discontinuity

01:16:46 ◼   ► where it changes the nature of the way you work with things.

01:16:49 ◼   ► We're not even at that point with phones.

01:16:51 ◼   ► Everyone plugs in their phone at night

01:16:52 ◼   ► now because the odds of you going two days

01:16:54 ◼   ► without charging your phone-- you just feel like, well,

01:16:57 ◼   ► just in case, I'd better plug it in every single night.

01:16:59 ◼   ► Even if you barely use it, it's just a good idea.

01:17:01 ◼   ► We're not at the point where you just use your phone

01:17:03 ◼   ► and charge it every week or whatever,

01:17:05 ◼   ► or every two days or every three days.

01:17:06 ◼   ► Laptops are the same way.

01:17:08 ◼   ► If you use it all day on battery,

01:17:10 ◼   ► you're gonna have to plug it in at night.

01:17:13 ◼   ► If they can cross that next hurdle,

01:17:15 ◼   ► as the phones get better and as computers get better,

01:17:17 ◼   ► if they can cross that next hurdle,

01:17:18 ◼   ► it's worth it for them to do it.

01:17:19 ◼   ► But like Marco said, you have to weigh that

01:17:21 ◼   ► against the architecture change in a lot of stuff,

01:17:24 ◼   ► and Intel's not standing still.

01:17:25 ◼   ► So we should be watching both of these things,

01:17:28 ◼   ► watching how much better phone battery life gets,

01:17:30 ◼   ► how much more they can ring out of those little system on a chip things.

01:17:34 ◼   ► And then also watch Intel and how much better are they getting at making low-powered chips

01:17:38 ◼   ► because by the time an ARM-powered system on the chip is powerful enough to not be embarrassing

01:17:44 ◼   ► inside a Mac, I suspect Intel will also be at that same price in PowerPoint and it'll,

01:17:50 ◼   ► you know, be more of a fair fight between the two.

01:17:53 ◼   ► Well, not that fair because Intel will say, "Hey, everything you have is already compiled

01:17:56 ◼   ► for us."

01:17:57 ◼   ► And like I said in the show where we talked about Bay Trail, Intel's going to be saying

01:18:00 ◼   ► to Apple, don't put ARM CPUs in your Macs, put Intel CPUs in your iOS devices, then you'll

01:18:04 ◼   ► have one architecture across all your products and it will be great and we'll make tons of

01:18:07 ◼   ► money come with us. So that's Intel's end game plan. We'll see how it works out.

01:18:12 ◼   ► We'll also consider that of all the people that I know that use Macs, and almost every

01:18:18 ◼   ► single one that isn't an indie Mac developer that isn't Marco or equivalent, every single

01:18:23 ◼   ► one of them runs either Parallels or VMware on a regular basis to do either their jobs

01:18:28 ◼   ► or something they absolutely have to do in their personal lives.

01:18:32 ◼   ► And that's made a lot easier, and I think one of you alluded to this earlier, that job

01:18:36 ◼   ► is made a lot easier because everything is Intel.

01:18:38 ◼   ► The chip is Intel, Windows is Intel, OS X is Intel, everything is Intel.

01:18:43 ◼   ► And if the chip suddenly became ARM, then you'd be going back to the god-awful PowerPC

01:18:49 ◼   ► days when, wasn't there a time where you would put like a full PC motherboard, not physically

01:18:54 ◼   ► full, but like all the bits with PC motherboard, like an expansion slot in order to make a

01:18:58 ◼   ► virtualization possible. I don't want to have anything to do with that.

01:19:01 ◼   ► That did exist.

01:19:02 ◼   ► Right.

01:19:03 ◼   ► I don't think you have to worry about that in the days when even the Mac Pro has no internal

01:19:06 ◼   ► slots anymore. That's not coming back.

01:19:08 ◼   ► You have a Thunderbolt PC.

01:19:10 ◼   ► Right. But you know what I mean. You know what I'm driving at. It's just that if you

01:19:14 ◼   ► change the processor architecture, that could make getting a Mac a lot harder an argument

01:19:19 ◼   ► for a lot of people, myself included. I mean, I work on Microsoft stuff all day. And I basically

01:19:24 ◼   ► live in VMware Fusion most of my workday. So that would really shut the door on that,

01:19:29 ◼   ► or maybe not shut the door on it, but make it a lot uglier.

01:19:35 ◼   ► Both sides of that have big pluses and big minuses, and they're on a collision course.

01:19:40 ◼   ► Just sit back and watch. Yeah. All right, we good?

01:19:44 ◼   ► Let's wrap it up. Thanks a lot to our two sponsors this week, Squarespace and Transporter,

01:19:50 ◼   ► we will see you next week.

01:19:57 ◼   ► leaving me to begin.

01:19:59 ◼   ► 'Cause it was accidental.

01:20:01 ◼   ► (Accidental)

01:20:02 ◼   ► Oh, it was accidental.

01:20:03 ◼   ► (Accidental)

01:20:04 ◼   ► John didn't do any research.

01:20:06 ◼   ► Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.

01:20:09 ◼   ► 'Cause it was accidental.

01:20:11 ◼   ► (Accidental)

01:20:12 ◼   ► Oh, it was accidental.

01:20:13 ◼   ► (Accidental)

01:20:14 ◼   ► And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm.

01:20:20 ◼   ► And if you're into Twitter,

01:20:23 ◼   ► You can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S

01:20:29 ◼   ► So that's K-C-LIS-M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

01:20:33 ◼   ► Anti-Marco-Arment

01:20:36 ◼   ► S-I-R-A-C

01:20:38 ◼   ► USA-Syracusa

01:20:41 ◼   ► It's accidental

01:20:44 ◼   ► They didn't mean to

01:20:46 ◼   ► Accidental

01:20:49 ◼   ► Tech, by Catholic, so long

01:20:54 ◼   ► Alright, do you want to do titles? I really like, "Syracusa County Mall."

01:20:57 ◼   ► That is pretty good, actually. No, "Syracusa County" titles, come on. I will allow a veto, but I do also agree that that is really good.

01:21:05 ◼   ► That was my suggestion. You have to find a better one to override it.

01:21:10 ◼   ► Irish pro graphics.

01:21:13 ◼   ► When did you say that? "Iris." It's me mumbling the word "Iris" like it is in your eye, the colored part of your eye.

01:21:19 ◼   ► Accidental Fashion Podcast. I don't think that should be the winner, but that is kind of funny.

01:21:23 ◼   ► It is pretty good. No one has been trying to correct us on using false positive instead of false negative or whatever

01:21:29 ◼   ► I almost corrected you and then I was like, I'm crazy and I'm missing something. I

01:21:33 ◼   ► Kind of like sea level executives with the sea spelled wrong - what is it with you with the stupid?

01:21:38 ◼   ► I don't know. I'm on a D. Sheehy everyone I pick it's been his suggestion. He's on a roll today. We're gonna tell you he's I

01:21:44 ◼   ► Like his suggestions this week sea level executives look good. It makes me think of like the the sea lion

01:21:50 ◼   ► Slide from WOTC. It's the big sea lion executive.

01:21:54 ◼   ► Oh, God.

01:21:55 ◼   ► Yeah, I might just do shoulder surfing or the pulling the rug out one.

01:21:58 ◼   ► That's fine.

01:22:00 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:22:01 ◼   ► Or sea level executives.

01:22:02 ◼   ► I'm not doing that one.

01:22:04 ◼   ► What is wrong with you, John?

01:22:06 ◼   ► Because they're like, they're like at sea level. You get it? They're not up on a mountain.

01:22:10 ◼   ► They're not in Death Valley.

01:22:11 ◼   ► Sea level executives.

01:22:13 ◼   ► [CRICKETS]