0:00:00I want to be a good connector designer.
0:00:03Do we have anything to talk about tonight?
0:00:05I don't know, I guess. I mean, there were new iPhones and stuff, but it's really funny
0:00:09how unsurprising it was. Even the parts that we expected to be
0:00:14surprised by,
0:00:15we were wrong. Actually, so I guess therefore it was surprising in those ways.
0:00:21And I thought the camera stuff was mildly surprising. I hadn't heard anything about
0:00:24that. Now obviously it's to be expected that there will be better, newer,
0:00:28faster camera things
0:00:30But I didn't know the the magnitude of it all and I don't think anyone did and it seems pretty compelling
0:00:36That's because it wasn't like really camera hardware so much as it was
0:00:40applying even more software to write a camera problem because like I mean that there is a
0:00:46point of
0:00:49Diminishing returns with camera hardware and phones because you know optically speaking you only have so much room to work with there, right?
0:00:55But if the computing power keeps going up and up,
0:00:59hey, let's do something with that.
0:01:01That may be the better place to get benefit from it.
0:01:03And that seems like that's what they did.
0:01:05And that's why we wouldn't have heard about that
0:01:06or thought about that, because you can't leak.
0:01:08Well, I guess you could.
0:01:09But it's not on the supply chain.
0:01:11The software side is not in a supply chain
0:01:13all over the world.
0:01:14And there was a small hint in the WVDC slides
0:01:17for iOS 7's announcement.
0:01:20There was one of those million little bullet points
0:01:22that they put all over the place.
0:01:23One of them was 120 frames per second capture.
0:01:26And--
0:01:27Oh, really?
0:01:27I didn't recall that.
0:01:28Yeah, there was a little 120 FPS on one of those
0:01:31in the upper right, I think.
0:01:32And I don't think any hardware before the 5S
0:01:36could actually do that.
0:01:37So I think that was a slight give.
0:01:39But otherwise, I mean, I think that whole camera stuff
0:01:43is awesome.
0:01:44I cannot wait to use it.
0:01:45I mean, there was an app called-- is it SnappyCam?
0:01:48Do you know what I'm talking about?
0:01:49I know what you're talking about,
0:01:50but I've never used it.
0:01:51I'll put the link in the show notes.
0:01:53but I believe it's called SnappyCam.
0:01:56And it was a camera app that was written
0:01:59by some incredibly good programmers who basically wrote
0:02:02their own JPEG encoder and really tweaked the heck out
0:02:07of the CPU to get tons of performance
0:02:10so that they could capture, I believe,
0:02:13it was 30 frames a second on the iPhone 5.
0:02:16And it was either 30 or 60.
0:02:18They couldn't reach 120 because the hardware couldn't do it.
0:02:20But it was either 30 or 60.
0:02:21And so they could capture that.
0:02:23And then similar to what we saw in yesterday's iPhone
0:02:24announcement, you could scroll through and pick your favorite
0:02:27photo from that giant burst.
0:02:29And so that was pretty cool.
0:02:31So I'm actually really happy--
0:02:34they might not be-- but I'm really happy to see that now
0:02:37be a regular feature and to have it be better integrated
0:02:39in the camera roll, too.
0:02:40Because now you can do things like pick the two or three
0:02:43shots out of that that you like and delete all of the other
0:02:45ones, which SnappyCam can only do in very limited ways
0:02:49because it doesn't have full access to the camera roll
0:02:51because we don't have those APIs, et cetera.
0:02:53So yeah, I think it's,
0:02:55I'm really looking forward
0:02:57to playing with that camera. That to me,
0:02:59you know, the 5S is actually
0:03:01a pretty substantial
0:03:03speed upgrade, so
0:03:05it looks. I haven't used one
0:03:07yet, but it sure looks that way.
0:03:09But the two things I think
0:03:11that I'm most excited about are fingerprint
0:03:13unlocking, because as we discussed last episode, I believe
0:03:15I'm one of those people who never sets a passcode on my
0:03:17phone because I just don't want the constant
0:03:19day-to-day annoyance of that. And so now I will do the fingerprint lock and I'll just
0:03:25put a couple of my fingers, I'll put my wife's finger and that's it. Then I'm done.
0:03:30Maybe Adam's if he's lucky. Maybe he'll have to earn that. Maybe Hopps's nose. Otherwise
0:03:36I think that works. But we'll see. Maybe I'll try that with my new iPhone 5s whenever
0:03:40I get one.
0:03:41So what is your annoyance threshold for stopping using that feature? Like what would make you
0:03:46stop using it? What percentage of it is failing? Like, you try to do it and it doesn't work.
0:03:50Do you try again and you try again, and you're like, "50% success rate, 90%?" Like, when
0:03:55do you say, "All right, forget this"?
0:03:57I would say it would have to work probably at least 95% of the time within about a second.
0:04:03I don't read—I try to read as much as I could of the coverage, but what I wanted to
0:04:07see—I guess probably Apple controlled this. If they had direct access to the hands-on
0:04:11area afterwards, do 50 trials, do 100 trials, do as many trials as you can with success
0:04:18or failure, you know what I mean? And get some kind of number about percentage-wise,
0:04:22instead of just trying it and saying, "Oh, it seemed to work pretty well," and you try
0:04:24it two times, you know what I mean?
0:04:27Yeah, maybe. The ones we saw in the AnandTech video, and a few other people took videos,
0:04:32I think, but the one I watched was the AnandTech one, and it was really good. They put it through
0:04:37the whole process of registering the fingerprint, which looked like it worked really well, and
0:04:40And then they unlocked it a few times, and it worked very quickly in all instances.
0:04:44Yeah, well, the thing that they showed in the little movie or one of the ads or something,
0:04:48they showed the guy grabbing your phone like you do and kind of activating it.
0:04:51And one of the things he was using, like the side of the corner of his thumb, like we all
0:04:56do when you grab the phone and go for the home button with your thumb, right?
0:05:01And if that works that well, I found that impressive, because if that really works that
0:05:05well, that means that—or maybe did he have to train it on the corner of his thumb?
0:05:09You know what I mean?
0:05:10Because we don't always…
0:05:12If you're going to go and let me give you the full frontal of my thumb or finger to
0:05:16test the feature versus let me grab the thing out of my pocket, put my finger on it without
0:05:20looking and get a good read on it.
0:05:23I think that's where using it in real life is going to be different than trying to put
0:05:28your finger out in a demo area.
0:05:30But yeah, if it works like I saw it work in all the little demos all the time, especially
0:05:35in Apple's ad, that would be great.
0:05:37Yeah, I'm looking forward to trying that and having that.
0:05:40I mean, you know, as they said in the keynote,
0:05:43like, most people don't use a passcode,
0:05:45and that's kind of bad, and it would be better
0:05:47if security could be reasonably secure,
0:05:50yet also very easy so that people would actually do it.
0:05:53And so, yeah, I'm looking forward to it.
0:05:54I think that's gonna be cool.
0:05:55And I don't know, though.
0:05:58I feel like us talking this much about the iPhone 5S
0:06:02is almost like talking about this much about the Mac Pro.
0:06:05Like, I feel like we've now left the mainstream.
0:06:08Were we, were the three of us ever the mainstream?
0:06:11That's true.
0:06:12But here's the thing, though.
0:06:13Everything you see on the 5S will eventually be on the mainstream.
0:06:16So it's like, you know, it's a glimpse of the future of the rest of the iOS line.
0:06:21Even though it's only on this one product now, surely, unless it's a gigantic flop,
0:06:26it will move on down the line until it's everywhere and just becomes standard, just
0:06:29like, you know, a rear-facing camera.
0:06:31Hey, can we go back a step to the camera?
0:06:34Marco I'm curious to hear as a
0:06:36quasi professional photographer at one point in your life
0:06:38What do you think about the flash because I remember vividly years ago when?
0:06:43The four of us you me and Aaron and Tiff were somewhere and we were talking about how I wish I was a better photographer
0:06:49And you said well
0:06:50Let me give you a tip the number one best way to be a better photographer is to never use the flash ever ever ever
0:06:55and so I've
0:06:57Stuck by that as any time I couldn't it has made for much better pictures
0:07:00but I'm curious what your take is on the two flash setup.
0:07:05Well, it's... that rule still holds true.
0:07:09If you can avoid using the flash at all, you should.
0:07:13The flash introduces two huge problems to the entire scene.
0:07:18One of them is it messes up all the colors of everything,
0:07:21and the other one is the direction of the light
0:07:23makes everything look really weird and unappealing.
0:07:26Now, the flash, the dual color flash, which is a really cool idea, only solves one of
0:07:32those problems. It only solves the color problem. And that is a big problem, certainly. But
0:07:36I think the amount of light coming from straight on is a bigger problem that makes things look
0:07:43worse than just having the wrong color light shown on them. And so it's a very good idea
0:07:49for when you have to use the flash. And a lot of people just leave the flash on auto
0:07:53and use it whenever the phone thinks it should or needs to.
0:07:57And so it's going to help a lot of pictures out,
0:07:59but it's not going to make a flash picture look
0:08:04anywhere near as good as a non-flash picture.
0:08:06Now, a lot of times, if you're in such a dark place
0:08:09that-- if you're in a bar with your friends, there's no light.
0:08:13And you're going to have to use the flash.
0:08:15You just don't have a choice.
0:08:16If you want a picture at all, you'll have to use the flash,
0:08:18and that's it.
0:08:19And so if your choice is picture or no picture at all,
0:08:24maybe take the picture with the flash.
0:08:26- Maybe.
0:08:27(laughs)
0:08:28- But it's not, I certainly wouldn't rely on that
0:08:31and it's not going to,
0:08:33it's not gonna make me want to use the flash anymore
0:08:37than before, but when I have to use it,
0:08:40which is very rare, but when I have to use it,
0:08:42it'll be a little bit better.
0:08:45- Fair enough.
0:08:46- So what do you think of the little ridges
0:08:48the little Fresnel lenses on the flash. Oh, I didn't see that. What's that about?
0:08:53Yeah, I didn't see this either. I saw it on all the slides, and if you look
0:08:56on Apple's website, they zoom right in on it, so they must not be shying away from it,
0:08:59but it is totally at odds with every other physical design feature of this iPhone and
0:09:04all past iPhones. Go to Apple's iPhone 5s site and scroll down to the part that shows
0:09:10you the flash. Hold on. This is... I'm curious. I wonder
0:09:13if that's to spread the light more, which would help. But still, the direction is, "Oh,
0:09:19yeah, look at that."
0:09:20Someone says it's pronounced "fren-el," but I will have you know that I looked it
0:09:23up, and both pronunciations are valid according to Wikipedia, and as we know, Wikipedia never
0:09:29contains any errors.
0:09:30Nope. Now, is that—let's see, I'm looking at my iPhone 5. Yeah, the 5 flash does not
0:09:35look like that, at least from eye distance. I am not a macro lens, but I think—yeah,
0:09:41I think you're right. I think that is new.
0:09:44I think that will help because just having a little white LED probably doesn't have a
0:09:50great spread pattern for the light and now they're taking it more seriously. Like, what
0:09:54can we do in this limited amount of space? We can put a little lens on it. So that's
0:09:58pretty good.
0:09:59Yeah, I think that could be good. Again, it's one of those things that I don't think it's
0:10:06it's going to really meaningfully make you able to use the flash in a lot of cases where
0:10:12you couldn't before and have the pictures look good.
0:10:14I think this will just make the pictures look a little bit better when you have to use the
0:10:18flash.
0:10:19But this is a key feature because this gigantic, vast majority of people who use phones do
0:10:25not follow Marco's advice, don't know about Marco's advice, and will just always use
0:10:29whatever the thing does automatically.
0:10:30And don't care.
0:10:31And don't care.
0:10:32And don't care.
0:10:33They're taking a picture of their friends in dark rooms, and if this can make their
0:10:34pictures look better, that is, it's like the fingerprint thing.
0:10:37Like it's such a huge win for all the people who never used any security at all.
0:10:43Maybe if the team that does Chrome security was considering this feature, they'd say,
0:10:46"Well, fingerprint is not as good as the passcode, therefore we shouldn't include
0:10:49it because it gives a false sense of security."
0:10:52I think we should probably also go through the few handful of things that we know are
0:10:55going to be true about this fingerprint thing and why it doesn't matter.
0:10:58Like you will be able to spoof it.
0:11:02will get the little fingerprint signature things out of that chip somehow, and none of that matters.
0:11:07Because it's not, you know, and passcodes are also more secure. Not four-digit passcodes, obviously,
0:11:14but like, you know, a big long one or password will be more secure. But I think none of that
0:11:18matters because this is not an attempt to heighten the maximum possible security of the iPhone. This
0:11:23is an attempt to heighten the average security of iPhones in use. And I think if it works,
0:11:27it will definitely do that. Oh, yeah, definitely. Yeah, what I'm curious to see is,
0:11:32Is it possible to have the fingerprint scanning in addition to a passcode to have arguably
0:11:38two-factor security, which in big corporate jobs can make or break your ability to use
0:11:45services that you want to use?
0:11:47So for example, a lot of VPNs that you need to get on for a corporate environment, they
0:11:52might require like an RSID or in addition to a password or something along those lines.
0:11:59And I wonder if there will be a way that you can have the fingerprint in addition to some
0:12:05sort of passcode, thus you have two-factor security, and thus you can do all these things
0:12:09you want to do on your corporate network.
0:12:11Yeah, they didn't mention that, and I'm guessing the reason they didn't mention that is even,
0:12:15I mean, obviously it is possible, but even if you can enable that feature in the OS,
0:12:19like the pitch for the fingerprint thing is get all those people who aren't using a passcode
0:12:23to use something.
0:12:24The pitch is not, let's double up security.
0:12:26Because that would be the worst way to advertise a fingerprint thing would be to pitch it as
0:12:31a heightening of maximum possible security.
0:12:34Even though with the two-factor it maybe would help with that, I think it's so important
0:12:37to pitch this as a casual convenience for people who don't want to enter code.
0:12:43And I'm one of those people.
0:12:44I have never had a passcode in any of my iOS devices.
0:12:47In fact, when I connected one of my iOS devices in the past to my work's VPN, and the VPN
0:12:54or the Exchange server or something in the stack there required that I put a passcode
0:12:57on my thing, I immediately disconnected from it and said, "Well, never doing that again."
0:13:00Exactly. Exactly.
0:13:01I'm never going to enter a passcode. But I will try this fingerprint thing if it works,
0:13:05if I ever get a device that has a fingerprint scanner in it.
0:13:08Yeah, that's a good point. Do you think this is going to filter down into the iPod touch
0:13:12and the iPad? Yeah, like 10 years or something.
0:13:15No, no. The iPad will get it. I don't see why they would leave it out of the iPad. It's
0:13:19much bigger, the top-end iPad will surely have the A7. The only reason not to would
0:13:26be some crazy segmentation. It doesn't even make sense to me. I don't see why it wouldn't
0:13:31be on the top-end iPads. The iPod touch, of course, Apple doesn't care about that. This
0:13:35is an S year, and the S year is the iPad touch gets screwed. So we'll wait till next year.
0:13:42I am curious to see what happens with the iPad this fall, because it seems like most
0:13:49Most of the time, the iPhone is Apple's big thing for the year.
0:13:54And it's the event that most people watch.
0:13:56It's the one that breaks all the live streaming or live blogging things.
0:14:00It's the highest profile event they have of the year.
0:14:04But they started with it this year.
0:14:06And there's still a whole lot of products to announce that are very likely to be coming
0:14:09out in the next few months.
0:14:11I wonder if...
0:14:14How quickly are we all going to forget about how unsurprising this was once we see the
0:14:18other product unveilings?
0:14:19Yeah, I don't know. I'm not sure what to... I'm still processing like the whole event.
0:14:26I watched the video and I have some thoughts on that that we should get to at some point,
0:14:30but I'm a little disappointed, and this has been said a lot, that so much was known. I
0:14:35am very enthusiastic about the camera. I'm very enthusiastic that the thumbprint scanner
0:14:39seems to work as great as it does. Obviously, we'll all find out whenever we get them. I'm
0:14:45I'm super disappointed that there's not going to be preorders on the 5S because it is our
0:14:50year in the LIS household to get a new phone and I'm very excited.
0:14:54But I have an actual JOB job so I can't just blow off work on a Friday and wait in line
0:14:59for hours and hours, not that I'd probably want to anyway.
0:15:03So now I've got to just suffer the unbelievable tragedy of not having my 5S on launch day.
0:15:09Yeah, it's probably a good bet that the 5S will be supply constrained.
0:15:14Yeah, which means we won't have them for a long time. It might not be that long, but like you know
0:15:20They're gonna they're gonna sell out not because it's wildly popular though
0:15:23It may be but really because this is the first device ever to have the a7 in it and presumably that's the the gating factor
0:15:29Yeah, and Gruber wrote about this in his post about the event and I think I think that's spot-on which is that
0:15:35Splitting up the phone line like this and making making the old iPhone
0:15:41or at least the old iPhone core,
0:15:43making that the new mainstream model
0:15:46allows them to do things like,
0:15:48remember there were all the rumors
0:15:49they were having trouble with in-cell touch
0:15:50and getting good yields on that?
0:15:53Things like retina iPads and stuff like that,
0:15:56like all the big, bold, forward-looking supply decisions
0:16:01or component decisions that can severely limit yields,
0:16:04limit supply, and make that a big problem.
0:16:08They can now start doing that
0:16:09because the highest end device is no longer the mainstream device.
0:16:12That's true of iPads and iPhones now.
0:16:14And I think that's actually a good move.
0:16:17Presumably they're getting, they're making, I don't know if they're making more money,
0:16:22but like if the most popular phone turns out to be the 5C, they've been making that
0:16:28phone for a while now and their costs of manufacture must be down, even if they
0:16:33hadn't gone to plastic, which they also did.
0:16:35Of course, they also lowered the price as well.
0:16:36but I wonder if the smile on Tim Cook's face was an expression of the fact that we're
0:16:44going to sell a ton of 5Cs and they actually might have higher profit margins for us than
0:16:51the original 5 did, which would be an amazing thing where they sell the same phone a year
0:16:57later and they drive down the cost of manufacture so much that it actually gives you bigger
0:17:01profit margins than your previous top-end phone.
0:17:03Oh, yeah. And they need that. Wall Street's been picking on them a lot recently and a
0:17:08lot of it is just temporary and unfounded. But it's also pretty obvious that their
0:17:12margins are going down slowly over time because these markets are getting more competitive,
0:17:18especially price-wise, especially in tablets. And so their margins are just getting smaller
0:17:23and smaller. The iPad, they used to be able to sell these things for like $600 or $700
0:17:28to the mass market and now they're selling like,
0:17:31you know, the $300 iPad mini and, you know,
0:17:34who knows what's gonna happen there this fall.
0:17:36And so I think they need something like the 5C,
0:17:41which honestly, I think it's a brilliant move,
0:17:43it's a brilliant product and it's a brilliant launch
0:17:45to do this 'cause I bet you're right,
0:17:47I bet their margin is substantially better on it.
0:17:49They're also now selling first party cases again
0:17:53and you cannot discount how significant that is.
0:17:56You know, if they, you know, let's say they make
0:17:59two or three hundred bucks, I don't know what the profit
0:18:01margin is usually on a phone, on an iPhone,
0:18:02it's something like that I think.
0:18:04Yeah, let's say two hundred bucks.
0:18:06If they're also selling you a forty dollar case
0:18:10to like sixty or fifty percent of the people
0:18:12who buy the phone, which I think is probably fair,
0:18:15that's really good.
0:18:16I mean, they made a killing off the bumpers
0:18:17for the iPhone 4 and 4S, I think they're gonna make
0:18:20a killing on these cases too.
0:18:21And that's just so much money.
0:18:23They probably still make more money from the Made for iPhone certification program because
0:18:29they get a cut of every single other case manufacturer's profits.
0:18:33So the cumulative total of their license fees for the Made for iPhone product seal or whatever
0:18:38thing they have going there still is going to dwarf their own things.
0:18:41But they're probably like, "Hey, if we can make a product with 90% margins, even if it's
0:18:45only 90% of $40 or $70, let's do that because it can't hurt."
0:18:51The other thing on the 5C margins is if you think back to the earnings calls, before the
0:18:54iPad Mini came out, they said, "Our margins are going to be decreasing, blah, blah, blah."
0:19:00And then the Mini came out and it made sense.
0:19:02It's like, "Okay, that's why your margins are decreasing because you know you're going
0:19:04to sell a ton of these Minis and they cost less money and you don't make as much money
0:19:09in each one of those as you were making on the previous iPad, so there you go."
0:19:12But don't recall a similar warning about margins, or at least not one to such a degree, before
0:19:19the 5C announcement. And I think it's because they feel like they can maintain. They're
0:19:24probably going to go down a little bit, but it's not going to be as dramatic a drop as
0:19:28it was when they released the iPad mini.
0:19:31Yeah, I think you're right about that.
0:19:33I certainly did not put two and two together, but you make a very good point. And it certainly
0:19:36seems to me that the 5C is a play to continue to make a tremendous amount of money from
0:19:43people who maybe—if the 5C didn't exist, what would they be buying? Just a regular
0:19:49iPhone 5 and probably doing so begrudgingly because it's not new and shiny.
0:19:53So I have two thumbs up for the 5C in principle from a business perspective.
0:19:58I don't personally see why I would want one because it's older tech and there's a few
0:20:04things in the 5S that I still think we should talk about that are also very interesting.
0:20:10But from a business perspective, it seems like a killer deal.
0:20:14We were talking last show, I think, about how are you going to differentiate the two.
0:20:18We talked about a 5C Envy, like, boy, the 5C looks really cool,
0:20:22and it feels nice in your hand, and it comes in colors.
0:20:26What can they do to the boring old little black, gray, white,
0:20:30monolith iPhone 5-looking thing to make it
0:20:33an object of desire for anyone?
0:20:36Gold.
0:20:36For-- yeah, besides gold.
0:20:39Although that probably is a factor there.
0:20:41And we got the answer.
0:20:42And the answer was the fingerprint thing, which we knew.
0:20:44And Apple's second part is emphasizing, you know,
0:20:49plain old fashioned computing power.
0:20:52Like that was their pitch to people.
0:20:53It's got a fingerprint thing and it's twice as fast.
0:20:56And the combination of those two, they hope,
0:20:58is enough to securely grab all the people
0:21:00who gotta have the latest, greatest thing
0:21:02and to make us forget about the colorful,
0:21:05more comfortable, nicely curved 5C.
0:21:07- Yeah, Steven Hackett in the chat said,
0:21:10"I talked to several semi-nerds who said
0:21:12"they were thinking about, quote, upgrading
0:21:14to the 5C from the 5. That's the power of colors in marketing, and I think that's
0:21:18dead on.
0:21:19Oh, totally. I mean, you cannot underestimate the importance of things like color and appearance
0:21:23and newness for something like this. For most products, really, but especially for something
0:21:27like this where people are kind of… There's a fast upgrade cycle relative to most electronic
0:21:32products, and it's very much a personal item. It's always with you. People always
0:21:36try to personalize it with cases and stuff like that. And so to have something visibly
0:21:41very new and different, especially something that's so visually different from what came
0:21:47before it. I think that's really valuable, and a lot of people are going to want that,
0:21:51even who already have iPhone 5s.
0:21:53And I've been on the bandwagon for a long time of, like, Apple needs to make a new—to
0:22:00upgrade the phone line to be more than just one phone, to make a new varied thing. And
0:22:03it's like, why would they make it new? Why wouldn't they just keep selling the old
0:22:06one? They've got all the parts. They know how to make the old one just fine. And I've
0:22:09always said, "I think you can make a better phone if you start, not from scratch, but
0:22:15make a purpose-built phone that you know you're going to sell for less money."
0:22:20And people said, "What could they do?
0:22:21Why don't they just keep selling it for?"
0:22:23Well, Apple has shown what they can do.
0:22:24What can you do?
0:22:25You can stop using aluminum.
0:22:26You can use plastic.
0:22:27It's cheaper.
0:22:28You can make the battery a little bit bigger.
0:22:29You can put it in a nicer camera.
0:22:30You can give it colors to differentiate it.
0:22:33And we're right technology-wise that the slightly bigger batteries probably don't
0:22:38that much a difference and no one's going to notice that the front camera is a little
0:22:40bit better or anything, but everyone will notice the lower price, which the plastic
0:22:45helped derive, and everyone will notice the different shape and color.
0:22:49It's such a dramatically different product, sales, marketing, and performance-wise, like
0:22:54market performance-wise, than the 5, even though it is like 99.9% just a plain old iPhone
0:23:005.
0:23:01And this is what I was talking about, and the fact that of course they can sell it for
0:23:04for $100 less for the bottom end model.
0:23:07So I'm glad to see they went through with it.
0:23:09I still think there's more diversification possible,
0:23:11but one step at a time.
0:23:12This is a good step in the right direction.
0:23:14- Definitely.
0:23:15- Yeah, do you wanna tell us about something awesome
0:23:17that I'd like to get nerdy about the A7 for a few minutes?
0:23:20- Absolutely.
0:23:21Do you mean the Audi or the Apple CPU?
0:23:23- Either, but I was referring to the Apple CPU.
0:23:26- Okay, our first sponsor this week is a return sponsor.
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0:24:56So during the event, they talked a lot
0:25:00about the A7, which is Apple's new system on a chip.
0:25:04And they--
0:25:05I believe it's pronounced "sock."
0:25:07Like "noss."
0:25:08No, anyway.
0:25:10So they talked a lot about how it's 64-bit,
0:25:13and I'd like to explore that a little bit.
0:25:15And they also talked about how it's
0:25:17a different instruction set.
0:25:18And I believe during the keynote,
0:25:21They also talked about there being more registers, which is what's really interesting to me.
0:25:26Yeah, twice as many.
0:25:27Mm-hmm.
0:25:28So let me start with the 64-bit piece.
0:25:31So it's been a long time since I've taken computer hardware courses and things of that
0:25:37nature, but I'm trying to grasp why that's a big deal today.
0:25:43I think it – I'm guessing that it's important for multimedia applications such
0:25:49as moving data for images around and things of that nature.
0:25:53But if you take the very shallow view, if you're not addressing more than 4 gigs of
0:25:58memory, why does this matter?
0:26:01And I'm kind of looking to you, John, to fill us all in.
0:26:04The reaction to this, I was kind of disappointed in the nerd reaction to this, because as far
0:26:07as I can tell, and I did watch the video plus all the live blogs, Apple never said that
0:26:12the A7 is twice as fast as the A6 because it's 64-bit.
0:26:18And every single thing I saw from nerds was like, "64-bit doesn't make it faster.
0:26:2364-bit is not twice as fast."
0:26:24Of course it's not.
0:26:25They never said it was.
0:26:26Who's saying it was?
0:26:27Everyone just set up that straw man and just beat it to death over the course of the whole
0:26:31day.
0:26:32And I know regular people are confused and they think 64 is twice as big as 32 or whatever,
0:26:34but we're all nerds here.
0:26:36We know 64-bit doesn't make it twice as fast.
0:26:38If anyone was alive during the Nintendo 64 era, you learned that when you were eight
0:26:42years old or however old you were when N64 came out.
0:26:46So that was disappointing, because I don't think it was bashing on anything that Apple
0:26:51said.
0:26:52Apple said it was 64-bit.
0:26:53Apple said it was twice as fast, but I don't think they drew any sort of line, dotted or
0:26:57otherwise, between those two things.
0:26:59So that's issue one.
0:27:01And by the way, for people who don't know the tech details, the reason people were beating
0:27:05up on that straw man is because all other things being equal, 64-bit CPUs are slower
0:27:11than 32-bit, because all your pointers are 64-bit, and if all other things are equal,
0:27:14That means your instruction and data caches are the same size, and now they may be the
0:27:18same size, but now you've got to store 64-bit pointers instead of 32, so now you have more
0:27:21cache pressure, and it's not memory bandwidth for getting instructions to and from.
0:27:27Things get bigger in 64-bit, and unless you increase everything else, which of course
0:27:30regular 64-bit chips usually do, but again, all other things being exactly equal, 64-bit
0:27:35is actually slower than 32.
0:27:37When you make a real 64-bit chip, they know that you have more data to move around, and
0:27:42make the caches bigger, and they make the buses wider, and they tweak things and do
0:27:45all this stuff.
0:27:46So in the end, it can end up being a wash, but you're not getting twice as much performance
0:27:51out of it unless other things are different.
0:27:53And the reason there might be some misinformation floating around about this is that in real
0:27:57live CPU architectures, there have been cases where 64-bit gives you a boost that has nothing
0:28:02to do with 64-bit directly.
0:28:04So for example, x86, the 32-bit instruction set on Intel's chips, is ancient and crappy
0:28:11and disgusting. And when AMD created a 64-bit extension of that instruction set, it says,
0:28:16"Now it's our chance to get rid of some of the crappy stuff, and let's make instructions that
0:28:21are nicer." And so 64-bit Intel chips that use the x8664 instruction set from AMD got a 15%
0:28:30speed boost, not because they were 64-bit, but merely because the 64-bit instruction set could
0:28:34do less stupid ass backward things. And so you'd want to use the 64-bit instructions,
0:28:39is you got access to more registers, because the old x86, the IA-32 architecture, was like
0:28:44register starved by modern standards.
0:28:46And they made instructions that could execute faster on the way modern chips are designed
0:28:51and everything like that.
0:28:52So 64-bit Intel chips were faster than 32-bit ones, but not because they were 64-bit, merely
0:28:58because the 64-bit transition gave the designers a chance to sort of update their thinking.
0:29:04That could be the case in the ARM architecture as well.
0:29:06Maybe they get a couple percentage speed boosts of saying, OK, well, a lot of these ARM things
0:29:11were made back in the day when we were designing really tiny chips, and smartphones were just
0:29:16a glimmer in our eye.
0:29:17Now is our chance with this transition from the 32-bit to 64-bit to revisit some of those
0:29:22assumptions and maybe make an instruction set that's more tailored to modern hardware
0:29:27capabilities.
0:29:29And maybe we'll get a couple percent here and there speed boost from that.
0:29:32That's still not where you're getting your double performance from.
0:29:35And that, I think, is the place where people are still scratching their heads.
0:29:38It's like, "Okay, well, anyone in the know, like AnandTech or whatever, says, 'Okay,
0:29:44Apple says twice as fast.'"
0:29:46If we take them at their word, there has to be some explanation to that.
0:29:49Higher clock speed, a larger amount of instructions per clock, extracting more instruction parallelism
0:29:55with bigger windows, more rename registers.
0:30:01All the typical things that you do with any CPU, making the pipeline longer and cranking
0:30:04Like we don't know what they did because Apple didn't tell us all they said was all they did was show us a chart
0:30:09So once the CPU guys get their hands on this thing
0:30:11They will tell us is it actually twice as fast under what conditions and how did they do it?
0:30:15And the answer of how they did is not going to be they made a 64-bit
0:30:18Right and some of the things you said I think are absolutely true in this case
0:30:24Specifically by moving to a new version of the ARM architecture. So from based on a little bit of reading I did before the show
0:30:32accidental
0:30:34It seems as though they moved to ARMv8 and I found a blog post that has a couple great links
0:30:40Which I put in chat a moment ago and it talks about some of the changes that were made now
0:30:44I think the speed increase to me probably comes from more registers, but we can talk about that in a second
0:30:50But some of the things they did were they made all of the instructions exactly 32 bits
0:30:55And so instructions are always the exact same size
0:30:58They added a crud load of registers, like I said,
0:31:02and they did change the instruction set,
0:31:05just like you said, John, in order to simplify it
0:31:08and get rid of some of the cruft
0:31:10that they didn't want anymore.
0:31:11So if the A7 really is using ARMv8,
0:31:16then that could explain a lot of these differences.
0:31:20- And that's not gonna give you double performance though.
0:31:22Adding double the amount of registers
0:31:24is not gonna double your performance.
0:31:25And like none of those things you listed
0:31:27going to double. If you're going to get a doubling, it has to be more execution units,
0:31:32bigger execution window, higher clock speed, maybe longer pipeline to get that. You don't
0:31:38get double performance from those things. You get percentage increases. You have to
0:31:41do something fundamental, like how many instructions are dispatched per clock? How high is the
0:31:47clock speed? Those type of things. That's where you get your doubling from.
0:31:51Again, all we have to go on is Apple's claim of doubling. There may be specific benchmarks
0:31:56in which it really does double, but we need to get this into the hands of someone who's
0:32:00going to do real benchmarks and say, "Okay, what is the actual increase? Is it double
0:32:03in SIMD stuff because the SIMD instruction set in 32-bit was crappy and now it's way,
0:32:07way better?" That's easy to get a double win there if you just say, "Look, the new SIMD
0:32:11instruction set is way better than it was before. We have twice as many SIMD registers,
0:32:16and we can address them as 64 bits in addition to 128 bits, and so now we can easy doubling
0:32:21on this particular benchmark." But do you get doubling across the board? Probably not.
0:32:26So we'll see.
0:32:28No, I agree.
0:32:29And I think the thing that's interesting to me
0:32:32about the significantly increased, I guess,
0:32:35doubling of the amount of registers
0:32:37is that if you're not familiar, registers
0:32:39are little bits of memory that are basically
0:32:42on the CPU for all intents and purposes, oftentimes literally.
0:32:45And so if you need to store something somewhere,
0:32:47the quickest and easiest place to store that
0:32:49is in these registers.
0:32:50And then eventually you can move it off
0:32:51into other memory elsewhere.
0:32:53And so having a lot more of these registers
0:32:54things, like you said, a lot quicker.
0:32:56Now, how much is a lot?
0:32:57Maybe it's 1%, maybe it's 10%.
0:33:00I would tend to agree it's probably not 200%,
0:33:03but I'm curious to see what's going to be made of that.
0:33:07And I'm curious to see, just like you said,
0:33:09what is this really all about deep down inside?
0:33:12Did you find out if it's really double the number of code
0:33:16addressable registers, or if they're
0:33:18talking about rename registers?
0:33:20I thought it was double the number of registers.
0:33:23They went like TP4 in the chat, and this sounds right.
0:33:2714 to 31 with a hardwired stack pointer
0:33:30and one other special register that I'm forgetting.
0:33:34- Yeah, I looked at that thing and I said that,
0:33:36I don't know anything about the previous ARM instructions,
0:33:38and just looking at the slides, assume that you do,
0:33:40but it was like, oh, now the program counter
0:33:42isn't in a register, I guess it used to be.
0:33:43Oh, now the stack pointer isn't in a register.
0:33:45A, stack pointer, and B, yeah, okay, that's good.
0:33:48And a dedicated zero register, like, yeah.
0:33:51All sorts of things that give me a vague indirect picture of what the old ARM instruction set
0:33:56in 32-bit used to be like compared to the new one.
0:33:59I've heard reports from people on Twitter that the 64-bit instruction set for ARM looks
0:34:04a lot like MIPS, which was a very classical risk-type thing.
0:34:08Again, the old instruction's the same size, executing in predictable number of clock cycles
0:34:13and the whole nine yards.
0:34:15versus ARM, which looks kind of weird,
0:34:17but those power-sipping features where
0:34:21things could be small in variable size
0:34:23and stuff like that.
0:34:25Yeah, so we'll see what 8inTech says
0:34:27when they dissect it whenever they get their hands on it.
0:34:30And another easy way, by the way,
0:34:31before we leave this topic, to get speed boost,
0:34:33is to just add a bunch more L1 and L2 cache.
0:34:36That's a cheap way to-- well, it's not cheap.
0:34:39Well, you know what I mean, but to win benchmarks.
0:34:41If it couldn't fit in L1, it couldn't fit in L2 cache
0:34:44before, but now it can. Suddenly you get a double speed up. It's like, "Hey, we're
0:34:48twice as fast," provided you something that fits in cache.
0:34:51All right, so any other extraordinarily nerdy bits?
0:34:57I think it's worth looking at a lot of these things. The CPU is one thing. We saw last
0:35:00year when the A6 debuted and it used Apple's new Swift architecture. We saw the beginnings
0:35:07of it there. I think we're seeing Apple do more and more specialized things, maybe
0:35:13not necessarily primarily, but certainly
0:35:16secondarily for the purpose of making it harder to copy
0:35:20or match what they're doing.
0:35:22Like if you look at a lot of these things,
0:35:24iOS 7 is a total redesign.
0:35:27We talked about this back when it was announced and how
0:35:30a lot of that is going to be not impossible to copy,
0:35:33but harder for certain hardware, for certain designs,
0:35:36for certain setups.
0:35:39You look at things like the crazy camera stuff,
0:35:43The camera stuff you can copy, because that's just like an app, and Samsung can bundle their
0:35:46own camera app and do that. But to do something like the fingerprint unlock of not just the
0:35:54phone, but to use fingerprints to read or to authenticate you to the store to buy things,
0:36:02that's going to be one thing. You need a lot of integration down the line to make that
0:36:06happen. And I don't know if Android's going to be able to pull that off. Windows Phone
0:36:08could.
0:36:09The cloners can do the crappy clone of that. Here's the crappy clone of fingerprint unlock
0:36:12in the store.
0:36:13They make you enter your password, and then they store it off on the side somewhere, and
0:36:17then they recognize your fingerprint, and then they get the password out of the little
0:36:20file.
0:36:21Like, you can do a terrible copy of all these things.
0:36:22And you say, "Who would make a terrible copy of Apple's thing?
0:36:25Hmm."
0:36:26I don't think they're above, like, you know, I mean, doing it the right way, yes, is difficult
0:36:31to copy.
0:36:32I'm not sure that he's doing these things to be difficult to copy.
0:36:34And one instance when you were saying, like, with the OS, it reminds me that Apple—some
0:36:39Some of Apple's features in iOS 7 are actually difficult for iOS developers to copy.
0:36:43I'm thinking in particular of the little transparent things that fuzz out the background that slide
0:36:48up over.
0:36:49Those are actually very easy to copy.
0:36:50The interface, it depends on the context.
0:36:53I've seen a lot of people in the NDA forums discussing this very issue and saying, "We'd
0:36:59like to be able to have a way to do that kind of filtering that you do in iOS 7," and then
0:37:03Apple people saying, "There's not yet a public API for that," and then them fighting with
0:37:07with each other about why there's not yet a public API
0:37:09for all the things they want to do.
0:37:11Although you can rip the layer off a toolbar and done.
0:37:16Yeah, you can do some things, but they're like-- basically,
0:37:18you'll see an Apple app that will do something.
0:37:20You'd say, hey, I'd like to do that same thing in my app.
0:37:22And you'll find out that there's a public API that
0:37:24does something close to that, but not quite.
0:37:26And there's no public API to do exactly what they do.
0:37:28And then you complain.
0:37:30And it's not because Apple is obstinate.
0:37:32It's because, technically speaking,
0:37:34Apple was barely able to do what they're able to do,
0:37:38and they can't do it in a way that works
0:37:39in a general purpose API.
0:37:40They can only do it the crazy cheating way
0:37:42that they have to do it.
0:37:44It's true of anything that Apple does.
0:37:46A lot of times, Apple gets the APIs first.
0:37:48I think even core text and boring things like that.
0:37:51Apple gets them first.
0:37:52They're in Apple's apps first.
0:37:54You don't get them.
0:37:54They're private APIs.
0:37:55And in the Mac days, it's like, well, you could figure it out
0:37:58and use them anyway, but at your own risk.
0:38:00But in iOS, it's like, no, you don't get them at all
0:38:03until or unless Apple decides we can make a general purpose API from this that we're
0:38:07going to support forever. And if they never can, you never get the API. But in the meantime,
0:38:11only Apple apps get it, or the OS gets it.
0:38:13I want to do our second sponsor this week.
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0:40:25All right, so I realize there's another bit of nerdery we should probably talk about,
0:40:30which is the M7.
0:40:31Wait, did I miss the BMW announcement?
0:40:34Yeah, exactly. Somebody joked—I don't remember who it was now—that Apple's come
0:40:39out with the M7 and BMW's come out with the i8, so things are totally backwards now.
0:40:44So we should talk about this M7, which is, I'm going to call it, and I'll probably wrongly
0:40:49call it a co-processor, but it's kind of like a second chip that sits there and apparently
0:40:54deals with the accelerometer, and I believe the GPS and a bunch of other motion-related
0:41:00things.
0:41:01And the implication, but not statement to my knowledge, was that it will also log a
0:41:07lot of these events so that the A7 doesn't have to power on and handle them and deal
0:41:12with them.
0:41:13then it can potentially fish all these log entries off to some app like a Fitbit app
0:41:19or something like that.
0:41:21And it seems like a very interesting play in order to enable some really interesting
0:41:27more biometric data on the phone.
0:41:30And somebody, it might have been one of you guys, pointed out, "I wonder if this M7
0:41:34is going to end up in some other kind of device eventually, like maybe a watch or something
0:41:38like that."
0:41:39Do you guys have any thoughts on this?
0:41:40Yeah, that's the obvious move for the M7.
0:41:42And also, by the way, for the A7, the buzz about both of these things is other devices
0:41:48that they could appear in.
0:41:49M7, obviously, if Apple makes something wearable, you'll be seeing that chip again, or the marketing
0:41:56label for that chip anyway.
0:41:58And the A7, 64-bit ARM chip, everyone is always like, "Well, we're going to put an ARM in
0:42:03the MacBook Air and get 50 hours of battery life out of it," or some crazy thing.
0:42:07Well, the Airs are already up to a ridiculous amount of battery life with Intel chips in
0:42:11it.
0:42:12convinced that there's any need in particular to bring the arm to the air
0:42:17because I think Intel is coming from the other direction and they haven't yet
0:42:20met in the middle. The A7 isn't as fast as current MacBook Air CPUs and
0:42:24the current MacBook Air CPUs are nowhere as power efficient as the A7, but
0:42:29they're converging on a middle point and wherever they hit each other
0:42:32look at where that point is and decide is this a viable, you know, can we make a
0:42:37viable Mac with this amount of processing power? Because if you can't
0:42:40then you know there's no point in enduring the pain and fat binaries of trying to make an arm-based Mac
0:42:46but the M7 in
0:42:48some other device that's you know that you wear seems like a slam dunk
0:42:53You know we should also point out that it enables
0:42:57they say it enables things like knowing the difference between you driving and walking and
0:43:02I'm not really clear why we didn't already know that by way of the GPS or something power hungry like that
0:43:08And maybe it's just that it doesn't need something power hungry to figure this out.
0:43:11But that presumably will lead to some interesting use cases that I can't fathom.
0:43:17But I think the example I saw was that Apple said when you are getting directions somewhere,
0:43:24let's say you're driving into a metropolitan area and you park your car, but you're not
0:43:28quite where you need to be, then maps will automatically switch from driving directions
0:43:33to walking directions once it sees that you've slowed down to the point of walking.
0:43:37So things like that are pretty cool.
0:43:38If you're at a red light, that would kind of suck.
0:43:40Yeah, exactly.
0:43:42Well, I can tell whether you're in the car,
0:43:44maybe with the vibrations of the butt massaging.
0:43:48It doesn't vibrate.
0:43:49These are not features of the M7, obviously.
0:43:52These are APIs that Apple-- core motion APIs
0:43:55that Apple's going to expose.
0:43:56Like you say, Casey, all the chip is doing
0:43:58is being really low power and writing a bunch of information
0:44:01out to someplace that when this whole system comes back up,
0:44:04they can read and interpret it.
0:44:06The thing that's reading and interpreting them
0:44:07code that Apple writes that then provide APIs to figure this stuff out. The M7 itself is just,
0:44:12you know, not... The impressive thing is that it exists, not the implementation of it, because
0:44:17it's probably, you know, hey, this tiny chip has... I don't even know if it's a separate chip.
0:44:22Apple presents it as such, but for all we know, it could be on the same package somewhere.
0:44:25Sits there and does one job and does it well and doesn't have to involve the CPU,
0:44:30and its whole job is to be there and write stuff down so when the CPU wakes up, it can say, "Oh,
0:44:36I don't know what was happening because I was asleep, but that guy over there knows,
0:44:39let me get the list of everything that happened, and let me run a whole bunch of software that
0:44:41Apple wrote to grind over that data to figure out, okay, driving, doing this or whatever.
0:44:46And of course, if everything's turned on at the same time, then they're working in concert.
0:44:48But the key feature is you walk around with your phone in your pocket and you grab your
0:44:53phone, take it out, open your fitness tracker, and it immediately wakes up, reads all the
0:44:57historical data, and tells you how many steps you've taken.
0:45:00Well, and it's also maybe doing a lot of that in hardware or in very, very lightweight software.
0:45:05So far what we've had, even with the very first iPhone,
0:45:09we had the accelerometer,
0:45:10but the data you get from it is raw.
0:45:13It's just like the current motion acceleration
0:45:18being put on the phone in three axes, X, Y, Z, that's it.
0:45:21And then when they added the gyroscope,
0:45:23then you could get things like the current phone alignment
0:45:25or attitude, they call it, I think,
0:45:27which is the angle in space the phone currently is,
0:45:30and then the compass doesn't work.
0:45:32So have you ever had a compass that worked?
0:45:34I haven't.
0:45:35You have to move it into figure eight pattern.
0:45:37Yeah.
0:45:38I'm not sure if you know that.
0:45:39It never works.
0:45:41That's an elaborate troll by someone inside Apple to see if they can make people take
0:45:44their phones and wave them around.
0:45:45Oh, totally.
0:45:47So before, even, and Apple has improved the API.
0:45:49I believe iOS 5 was it, added core motion.
0:45:52It might have even been 6.
0:45:54But they improved the API to make this a little bit easier, but you still had to deal with
0:46:00data for the most part in software, you know, in the full user space code that you were
0:46:05writing. And so if they can move, if they moved some of that down, which it sounds like
0:46:09the M7, regardless of what its hardware implementation is, it's something that parses all that raw
0:46:17data for you in some kind of extremely low power state. And so rather than saying, here,
0:46:23you know, here's all of the data from 60 hertz for the last six hours, you know, here's like
0:46:29like this tremendous array of floats that you have to deal with and figure out yourself.
0:46:34They can, they can shrink that down with some kind of heuristics that are hopefully very
0:46:36lightweight to say like, all right, just, if you want to know how many steps the user
0:46:41took, just register for number of steps, tell us when to start and when to stop, and we'll
0:46:45give you what was there in the middle. And if, if that's really what it does, that's
0:46:50a massive, not only time saver for developers, but if they do it right, if they've implemented
0:46:56this in low-level hardware that's very low power, which it sounds like that was the idea,
0:47:01then this is a whole new class of possibilities that before would have just been not only
0:47:06way too power hungry, but you wouldn't be able to do them unless you were using GPS
0:47:10constantly because you wouldn't be able to run in the background that long.
0:47:14This kind of analysis to FS events in Mac OS X where you have something that's trying
0:47:18to keep track of everything that happens to the file system, but it's just too much data.
0:47:22So it massively compresses stuff, it coalesces similar events and periods of time, and it
0:47:26summarizes, and then it jams it all into a log.
0:47:29So yeah, this little thing has to be doing, if only for compression purposes, some interpretation
0:47:34of the data, because you can't store that recorded data for an hour's worth of walking
0:47:40and if it really wasn't 60 hertz, that's just too much data to be putting somewhere.
0:47:43So I have to imagine that it's doing some sort of coalescing and compressing and summarization
0:47:48and interpretation, or even just lowering the sample rate.
0:47:51Because seriously, your sample rate
0:47:53doesn't need to be 60 hertz to tell when people are walking.
0:47:57And then anything up the chain could further massage the data.
0:48:00But I think it's probably like a storage issue in terms
0:48:02of who decides to summarize data, who
0:48:05does the motion smoothing, who does the interpretation.
0:48:08And they must be doing something down there in the M7,
0:48:11because otherwise it would just be filling up
0:48:13this giant buffer full of stuff.
0:48:16It's funny you bring up coalescing.
0:48:18and I was going to say a minute ago that this is almost like the year of coalescing for
0:48:21Apple because we had the timer coalescing in OS X Mavericks and now we have this motion
0:48:27coalescing and I know Federico is going to be very happy about that.
0:48:31So in any case, anything else on either of the bits of hardware?
0:48:37The 5C case we were talking about last week.
0:48:41Oh yes, yes.
0:48:42About it, you know.
0:48:43The hot case.
0:48:44If they make this, no not that, well I mean first before we get to the thing with the
0:48:47holes in it. The plastic back of it, you know, it being curved and more comfortable, we also
0:48:51have from the pictures, but what we can't see in the pictures is what kind of material
0:48:55is that. And I mentioned last time that if they made it out of a material that's more
0:48:58grippy and less slippery than, you know, the glass back or the metal thing, then maybe
0:49:04you wouldn't even need a case on it. And, you know, again, because they're coming in
0:49:07different colors, who's going to buy a colorful phone and slap a case on it, completely covering
0:49:10the cover part, the color part rather. So Apple's answer was, we're going to make it
0:49:16out of a super hard, super glossy material, so forget about it being remotely squishy.
0:49:21And we're going to sell our own case, made of silicone, my old favorite case material,
0:49:25because it is squishy, and they're going to solve the problem of, "Okay, why am I going
0:49:29to put a case over my colored phone by just punching a whole bunch of holes in it?"
0:49:36Which when I first saw that holes, my first reaction was, "Yeah, I guess that's one solution
0:49:41to making the case color continue to matter, but I also wondered, like, are they doing
0:49:46that for heat reasons or something?
0:49:48Because it just seems like, I mean, it doesn't really make sense that they'd be doing it
0:49:51for heat reasons over only half of the phone or something, but who the hell?
0:49:54Otherwise they can't be doing it for heat reasons because there's going to be cases
0:49:57without holes in them, so it's got to be able to deal with that anyway.
0:50:00But it is definitely odd, and I love the fact in all of Apple's videos when they showed
0:50:04this case with the holes in it, no FCC information and no iPhone text was on the back of the
0:50:10phones.
0:50:11That's real convenient for your ads, but the real phones have that text there and it looks awkward.
0:50:15That's not true. One of the videos definitely had it because I backed it. I was watching,
0:50:19I want to say it might have been the keynote, I was watching it on my TV and I thought to myself,
0:50:24"Oh look, it doesn't have the H-O-N or whatever it is that shows through." And I actually backed it up,
0:50:29got off my butt, walked up to the TV because my eyes are terrible, and sure enough, it was there.
0:50:34And I'm pretty sure this was the keynote.
0:50:36They had some videos with it without with the text not there very clearly super zoomed in which is a total cheat and not something
0:50:44I would expect from Apple because they're supposed to design like they idealize things sure like if 3d renders or whatever the heck they're doing
0:50:51Or you know completely a massage to look real, but it shouldn't be like a racing stuff
0:50:55You you shouldn't erase the word iPhone because it actually is in the back of the phone
0:50:58You shouldn't erase the FCC things because they actually are there
0:51:01so that's a shame and that's strange and I
0:51:06Don't like I haven't felt any of these things in my hand, but I'm kind of disappointed that it's not squishy
0:51:10But on the other hand I found from you know from my TPU case which is very shiny and very very smooth
0:51:16It's not textured like you know like silicone would be it's not fuzzy or anything like that
0:51:20It's still supplies surprisingly grippy because you get a big contact patch
0:51:24It's kind of like slicks on a race car you actually do get a big contact patch as long as that contact patch is not
0:51:29wet
0:51:30Like slicks in the rain which are bad
0:51:32Then you actually do get some grippiness, but in terms of
0:51:35Resting on the the curved arm of a sofa with that shiny back thing. That's not so great
0:51:41So I'm kind of disappointing they didn't they didn't go with any kind of squishy back
0:51:44But I kind of understand it as well because if I thought about it for more than a couple minutes
0:51:48I said how can they make the back of the phone squishy? You would have to have a complete rigid sort of
0:51:53Inner skeletal structure over which they stretch the squishy stuff and instead they didn't do that
0:51:59they have the antenna, which is rigid, but it's only around the edge, and the whole back,
0:52:04its rigidity comes from the fact that they're using the super hard plastic.
0:52:07Yeah, and the case, to go back a step, the case, I cannot believe that Apple did that,
0:52:13and if this were any other manufacturer that had done that, the internet would have blown
0:52:19up ten times worse than it did about how stupid they are, they don't pay attention to detail,
0:52:24this is ridiculous, this is why Apple's so much better than everyone else, and yet here
0:52:28is Apple letting "Hun" show through? I just can't believe it.
0:52:32No, it's French. It's N-O-N. The top of the age has chopped off.
0:52:35It is the French people saying, "No, Apple, you can't do that."
0:52:41Realistically speaking, though, it's a judgment call of saying, "Apple knows that no one except
0:52:48for super nerds are not going to notice this, but all the super nerds rightfully flipped out about
0:52:53it and will continue to flip out about it." And I don't think the super nerds would buy that case
0:52:56because I even ignore for now the terrible cutting off of the words. I think it's just
0:53:01ugly anyway with the little circles over half of the surface.
0:53:03Yeah, I was going to say, do you think anybody—do you think even one person who is currently
0:53:08complaining about the Han/Nan, do you think even one of them was actually planning on
0:53:13buying one of these? Right. Like, if that wasn't there, like,
0:53:15"Well, I would buy that ugly case if it wasn't for how it cut off the letters." But I don't—
0:53:19You won't even be buying the 5C. Yeah. Well, I don't know. Like, the 5C,
0:53:23I've seen people who have held it to say it feels impressive, and if you like the color…
0:53:29A lot of people, especially people who customize their phone, you can make an interesting phone,
0:53:34like the yellow one.
0:53:35But the great thing about the 5C is they all have black faces, right?
0:53:39I think that's…
0:53:40I'm pretty sure they all have black faces, so it's an interesting combination of you
0:53:45can have a black and yellow phone if you're a Georgia Tech fan or something.
0:53:49I only know those colors because my wife went there.
0:53:50But whatever your school colors are.
0:53:52And the cases with the holes in them, though I find it ugly, the color combinations do
0:53:57give you a lot of options to sort of accessorize.
0:53:59And I think Apple is sort of giving the people what they want.
0:54:02They want, you know, sometimes they want cases with rhinestones on them, and they can still
0:54:06get that, you know, in the aftermarket.
0:54:08But Apple is giving many more options than just black and white, and I think it's going
0:54:12to be a net win for them, except for the lint collection thing, because I think even normal
0:54:16people will notice after a while the amount of lint that's going to collect in those little
0:54:20circles.
0:54:21I can confirm yes, they are indeed all black faceplates in the 5C, which is weird because they offer a white back color
0:54:27But I like that one. I like the white back plate with with the black front. I think that's a cool combination
0:54:32Mmm. I'm thinking this this is the first time that I've been tempted to get the white phone not the 5C, but the 5s
0:54:40With the cause of iOS 7 no no the other the real
0:54:44The white one's still there
0:54:47Yeah, the silver back white yeah, yeah
0:54:49Yeah, this has been the first time I've attempted to get that because...
0:54:52Wait, are we talking about gorillas?
0:54:54I'm just going to cut that out and pretend like you didn't see it.
0:54:56[laughter]
0:54:58You know, because iOS 7 is so white and light, and like I'm finding, as I'm designing my own app,
0:55:05and as I'm seeing what Apple has done with their apps, the default before was everything was just dark.
0:55:11Black, you know, textured, like it was like you were sitting like, you know, in a bar.
0:55:16everything's black and leather and everything like that. Well, weird bar. I'll stop there.
0:55:23But it's, you know, imagine, by the way, John, in this picture on the 5C site, the top of
0:55:31the N is clearly not fully cut off and it looks like Han. Anyway, you know, iOS 7, I
0:55:39think white is in style now. It's, before it was, you know, people would joke that it
0:55:45it was like, you know, for women or something else,
0:55:48probably horribly insensitive.
0:55:50But it's just the style now.
0:55:52Most of the iPods ever sold, or the original ones at least,
0:55:56those were all white.
0:55:58You know, I think there are eras where
0:56:01this is going to be in fashion, and this is one of them.
0:56:03And having everything be white, like, my whole app design
0:56:07is white-based, because iOS 7 is white-based,
0:56:10and it looks really good.
0:56:11Like, it's kind of refreshing.
0:56:12It makes it look newer.
0:56:13It makes it look nice and modern.
0:56:15and to put all that on a phone with a black face plate,
0:56:18I think kind of weakens it,
0:56:20or doesn't take advantage of the new style.
0:56:24- I think you'll have to see it in action to make that,
0:56:28I mean, you're seeing it in action, but I haven't yet,
0:56:30because I fully plan to put a black background,
0:56:32as I always have on all my iOS devices, on iOS 7.
0:56:35- You know, I did that.
0:56:35I did that for my first few,
0:56:37probably my first month using it.
0:56:39I had a solid black background,
0:56:40and I turned off the parallax and everything,
0:56:42just solid black background.
0:56:43I did that, but it was OK, and it worked for a while.
0:56:47But then when I was picking colors and an icon for my app,
0:56:52I decided, let me put the phone in a more stock configuration
0:56:55so I could see how most people are likely to see
0:56:58the app on the home screen.
0:57:00And so I switched over to-- there's
0:57:04a stone graphite-looking wallpaper.
0:57:06It's like a stone texture.
0:57:09There was that, and I was like, you know,
0:57:12I'll live with it light for a while.
0:57:13Now I like it light.
0:57:14Now I feel like going back to all black would be kind of retro in a bad way.
0:57:20Just like kind of going backwards in time, like going back and using a Sega Saturn.
0:57:25You know, I have never wanted a white iPhone.
0:57:27I do not understand the appeal, but if that's what makes you happy, then feel free.
0:57:32And I should add, the last time I said I just didn't understand the appeal of something,
0:57:37it was a BMW, and we all saw how that ended up.
0:57:40Don't forget Apple products before that.
0:57:42Apple products before that. So yeah, I'm sure I'm doomed to drive a 911 with my white iPhone
0:57:48sometime in the future. But regardless, I don't know, I never understood the white iPhone thing
0:57:53personally. John, if you had an iPhone, what would you have? I don't know. I've always liked how the
0:58:02white ones look as devices, especially being an old school Apple guy. I really love the people who
0:58:08found a tiny rainbow-colored Apple sticker and stuck it on the back of their white iPhone,
0:58:12because back in the days of the Snow White design language of the Mac SE30, my favorite
0:58:18old Mac, and the 2ci and all those things, where there was Apple Platinum with slats
0:58:22in it and everything, if you had envisioned a futuristic Apple phone, it would be platinum
0:58:29or white and have a rainbow-colored Apple logo on it.
0:58:31So I think those things look great, except for, as I mentioned in the past show, the
0:58:35fact that, okay, it's not a piece of art, it's actually a device with a screen that
0:58:38have to use and the white on that screen is never going to be, or not never, but
0:58:41certainly with current LCD technologies is not as white as actual real live
0:58:46white reflective surface that's next to it. So in any kind of bright light I think
0:58:52a white iOS device makes the screen look worse and that's why I always go for
0:58:56black faceplate. Like that's why I think the 5C is so great because they all
0:59:00have black faceplates even the one with the white background so you can get and
0:59:03really the 5C colors do not appeal to me except for maybe the yellow if I was
0:59:07really into something yellow like a sports team or something. But the white one is the
0:59:13only one that could be considered neutral, but it still has a black face, so thumbs up.
0:59:17So fashion-wise, although I do like most of the white devices and I do like the silver
0:59:22back on that thing, pragmatically I think I'd still prefer a black face to make the
0:59:27screen look better in more conditions.
0:59:28I will say too, I have a white iPad mini because after buying the iPhone 5 in its very dark
0:59:34black color last year, I learned after having it and getting it that the black isn't that
0:59:41good. It's too dark. I've said that before on this show. I'm not going to go into it
0:59:45again. But the iPhone 5's black was just too dark, and I don't think it looks good.
0:59:50And so when the iPad mini took the exact same design options, basically, I said, "No way
0:59:55I'm getting that again. I'll get the white." And I like it. It looks really nice. I got
0:59:59the little red crappy Apple cover with it, and it looks really good. It's a nice pairing.
1:00:03And I think certainly on future iPads I'll do that.
1:00:06The issue you raised, John,
1:00:07I have it out here with me right now.
1:00:09The issue you raise about the white of the faceplate
1:00:12not matching the color or the brightness
1:00:16of the white on the screen, that's a very real issue.
1:00:19Right now I'm sitting in a room painted red at night
1:00:22lit by a warm temperature LED bulb.
1:00:24So the light in the room is very yellowish.
1:00:26And the faceplate very clearly looks yellowish,
1:00:30like a warm tint.
1:00:31and the screen of course is relatively neutral and so the screen is a very
1:00:35like you know bright cool
1:00:37more you know closer to five thousand k
1:00:38kinda white
1:00:40so there is that imbalance right now but it doesn't look bad
1:00:43doesn't look great if you like look at it and pay attention to it most of the time you don't pay
1:00:46attention to it. I was thinking more in terms of brightness where as you get it
1:00:49like at night time sure it looks fine because then the white face becomes basically a black face
1:00:52because the source of light is the screen but out in bright sunlight yeah they all look crappy
1:00:56out in black sunlight but white ones, bright sunlight but white ones look crappier because it
1:00:59makes it look like
1:01:00boy, can't the screen-- the screen really can't keep up.
1:01:03Like, you don't realize how dim current LCDs are until you
1:01:05actually bring them out to direct sunlight, which
1:01:07is why people love reflective screens like the Kindle,
1:01:09right?
1:01:09Once you get out into sunlight, that backlight
1:01:11is just totally overpowered.
1:01:12And you thought, boy, this thing was so bright,
1:01:14it was blinding me when I was inside my house
1:01:16or laying in my bed or whatever at night.
1:01:18But once you go out into bright sunlight,
1:01:19it is totally overpowered.
1:01:21And that type of underpowered backlight
1:01:24in the face of bright light of any kind, indoors or outdoors,
1:01:28really benefits from being next to black.
1:01:31It needs all the help it can get,
1:01:32because colors look bright, you know,
1:01:33white will look brighter when it's next to a dark color.
1:01:35So it's an optical illusion, saying like,
1:01:37"I will make my screen look brighter to you
1:01:39"because it's next to a black thing."
1:01:41When you put it next to a white thing,
1:01:42it's the worst possible condition.
1:01:44It's highlighting all the weaknesses of the screen.
1:01:47- Yeah, I mean, I agree that it's a real issue,
1:01:49but I disagree how much it's actually noticeable
1:01:51in practice.
1:01:52- Well, you're not John Siracusa.
1:01:53- That's true. (laughs)
1:01:54- It also depends on when you use your thing most.
1:01:56If you use it mostly indoors or use it mostly in dim conditions, then it doesn't matter.
1:02:00It doesn't bother a lot of people.
1:02:02For me, it bothers me because I feel like it's just—it also distracts me visually.
1:02:07My eyes would be drawn more to the outer—I just want a black frame.
1:02:10It's like getting a TV.
1:02:11I want a black frame around my TV as well.
1:02:14You don't want a white or a shiny frame or anything that's going to draw your eye around
1:02:17the TV because the screen is supposed to be the star, not the other thing.
1:02:21The only way I would go with the white face is when we finally get the screen technology.
1:02:23There really is like they could they could match it so that the white is exactly the same some sort of combination of reflective emissive screen
1:02:30In some distant future that really does look the same then fine get the whole thing white
1:02:34All right anything else on hardware, I'd like to talk about the actual presentation the keynote briefly, but anything else on the hardware nope
1:02:43All right, so I I feel like Tim did not do a particularly good job
1:02:49He stumbled a lot and seemed really nervous, which is weird because usually he's extremely not nervous
1:02:56And he's very deliberate which is something. I wish I was a little better with
1:03:00He'll oftentimes lead leave long pauses if he's thinking something through or perhaps trying to remember the next line
1:03:06I don't know how scripted these things are and
1:03:08He's always very deliberate and I felt like this time he didn't feel that way he felt
1:03:15like it seemed as though he felt like he was out of his element and
1:03:19Conversely, Craig Federighi, who we've said for a while now has actually turned into one
1:03:22heck of a great presenter.
1:03:25As he did in the WWDC this year, he absolutely killed it again.
1:03:30And I was very confused by Tim's apparent confusion.
1:03:34I don't know.
1:03:35Did you guys notice that as well?
1:03:36Am I the only one?
1:03:37Well, I mean, he did call it a—did he call Keynote a spreadsheet or Pages a spreadsheet?
1:03:42Did he call something a spreadsheet?
1:03:43Yeah, yeah.
1:03:44Well, who cares?
1:03:45I mean, Schiller called FireWire ports Thunderbolt or vice versa.
1:03:47Yeah, I know.
1:03:48That's the—people misspeak. We of all people know better than anyone. The vibe I got from him
1:03:54was that he seemed giddy and happy, that he was excited that these products were going to be
1:04:00released. Did that affect his performance? Maybe he was—he didn't care. He was just happy. "Boy,
1:04:06I can't wait till these things get—" He seemed very smiley to me. He was really happy about these
1:04:11products, really happy that they're going to be out there. He wasn't the serious, deliberate Tim
1:04:17Cook that we'd seen before explaining like, you know, how only Apple could do this and
1:04:23what Apple's philosophy is or whatever, but I think that was okay.
1:04:26Like, you know, he's more of an emcee in these things anyway, and, you know, Schiller was
1:04:30Schiller and Federighi did his thing perfectly well.
1:04:34So I don't mind his stumbling and missteps or whatever because I think it was not—I
1:04:41didn't get the nervous vibe from him.
1:04:42I didn't get the "I'm really nervous because I'm worried about what we're going to announce."
1:04:47I got the I'm excited about these products and maybe I'll trip over myself in the excitement.
1:04:51And what'd you think Marco? Well, honestly, I skipped most of Tim's sections when I was watching the video.
1:04:57Well, just because Tim doesn't really say a lot that's like new or interesting, especially the beginning half.
1:05:03I skipped over that entire thing.
1:05:04I just went right to the right to the part of his introduction because I was watching the live blogs, you know,
1:05:07I knew roughly what he said and what he was talking about and that was all I really needed from this event.
1:05:11But, uh,
1:05:13so I can't really comment on that except that I
1:05:16I always, like, when you're watching the keynote videos on your computer, if you open it up in QuickTime,
1:05:22you can actually, you get like a 2x control, you get like a little speed control that you can adjust.
1:05:27And I always put Tim on like 2 or 3x because he just speaks so slowly, I have to get through it in a reasonable amount of time.
1:05:34So I really can't judge for sure in this case because I skipped most of what he said,
1:05:41and the parts I didn't skip I played very quickly because I was bored.
1:05:45Usually, I liked Tim a little bit more.
1:05:49I just think in this keynote, there
1:05:51wasn't a whole lot for him to say
1:05:53that was very interesting.
1:05:55Like, I don't think it's necessarily his fault.
1:05:57I just think there wasn't a whole lot for him to say--
1:06:00that there wasn't a whole lot for any of them to say, really.
1:06:03Here's some new iPhones.
1:06:04They're really good in some ways and really unsurprising
1:06:07and boring in others.
1:06:08And it's almost all exactly what you all expect.
1:06:11You've all already seen these things on rumor sites.
1:06:14here you go." There wasn't a whole lot of room in this event to really get that
1:06:20interesting by the presenters. They didn't drag it out. It was a pretty
1:06:25tidy presentation. It was pretty much right on the hour. I think it was fine. There was no
1:06:31showmanship required for this. They weren't revealing iOS 7 for the first time. There's
1:06:35a time and a place for that type of thing, and this was just more of let it go out the door.
1:06:41Steve Jobs would have been flipping out about how much was known about these things ahead
1:06:46of time, but it seems like the current crew was like, "Yeah, supply chain's going to
1:06:50leak.
1:06:51It's going to happen.
1:06:52What can we do?"
1:06:53I can't tell if people are still seething back there or if it was all Jobs' secrecy
1:06:58personality that, you know…
1:07:00Tim said, "Oh, we're doubling down on secrecy," and people make fun of that.
1:07:05It was like, "Well, good job," because we knew everything about these phones, basically.
1:07:08But I'm assuming what he meant was whatever new product category thing that they release,
1:07:14I'm assuming we won't have complete video of people playing with that ahead of time.
1:07:19And in fact, we don't even know what they're doing.
1:07:20Are they making a TV set or are they not?
1:07:22Are they making a watch?
1:07:23Are they making a nose ring?
1:07:24We don't know.
1:07:25That type of secrecy, so far, assuming any of those things have any reality behind them,
1:07:32so far Apple really has doubled down on secrecy because we have no idea what they're doing
1:07:35in TV that we haven't already seen. And we have no idea if they're making a watch.
1:07:38It's just a bunch of rumors. Now, as we get closer, we'll see if it really holds.
1:07:42But I'm not ready to say that his doubling down secrecy thing was a total failure because
1:07:47I think that Apple could still potentially have secrets that it's kept 100 percent.
1:07:53Nothing from those things. We just have speculation and rumors. We have no blurry pictures. We
1:07:58have no videos of people playing with cases or anything like that.
1:08:03And yeah, we don't even know what they're doing.
1:08:04You're right.
1:08:05It's like even when the iPad was about to come out, everyone had pretty good, you know,
1:08:10pretty good rumors saying Apple is doing a tablet specifically.
1:08:13Like it is a tablet, it will run iOS, and it will come out roughly around this time.
1:08:18And those are all that ended up being correct.
1:08:21You know, to have, if they are indeed very close to launching a new category, which we
1:08:27don't really know, but if they're really close to launching a new product category, yeah,
1:08:31you're right.
1:08:32keeping it secret. And there's also a massive number of important product details that we
1:08:39know are coming soon. Like, one of the biggest is whether the iPad mini will have a retina
1:08:43version this fall. That's a major product detail, and we don't know the answer to that
1:08:47yet. Everyone's all over the place with the predictions and the rumors and the BS analyst
1:08:51and all these things. So there's that, there's whether there's going to be retina displays,
1:08:55retina iMacs, what the heck's happening to the MacBook Pro line, when those are going
1:08:59to be updated and what they will have in them, like the Mac Pro release, when it's actually
1:09:03going to happen, what will cost.
1:09:04Well, the Mac Pro itself, they totally kept that one under wraps.
1:09:07Right.
1:09:08We didn't even know if they were going to discontinue the computer line.
1:09:11Nobody had spy shots of a black garbage can.
1:09:13Exactly.
1:09:14So that's why I feel like the phone is always an exception, and the iPad a little bit.
1:09:19It's an exception because they just have to make so many of these things.
1:09:23And for them to say, "You can buy this next week," they had to have been producing them
1:09:29for a while already, and they had to have been testing and producing parts for a while
1:09:33before that. And they're making these things in such ridiculous quantities. So many suppliers
1:09:40are involved. That's why the phones always leak, and a little bit of the iPads too. That's
1:09:44why they always leak in advance now, because they're just making so many of them. Too many
1:09:48people are involved and they can't control them all. The other products, the Macs in
1:09:52particular, just don't sell anywhere near those kind of volumes, and so it's easier
1:09:56for them to keep those things secret. And certainly a new product category probably
1:10:01falls under that same protection.
1:10:05Well depending on what it is, I suppose, if it's something that's as universally desired
1:10:09as an iPhone, then they're going to need to make a gazillion of those too. Although I
1:10:13guess it's a harder thing to bet on before you've even announced it to anyone.
1:10:17Right, and maybe the very first version won't be that successful. I mean the very first
1:10:20iPad was not a massive blockbuster hit. It sold more than anyone thought, but it didn't
1:10:25sell as much as the iPhone still doesn't.
1:10:27Yeah, the iPhone is the best example.
1:10:30The very first version of the iPhone was not selling that many.
1:10:34It was a slow ramp up.
1:10:35So whatever thing they come out with, this watch or television, they'll have time to
1:10:39ramp up manufacturing.
1:10:41As someone in the chat room said, the easy way to do it is what they did with the iPhone,
1:10:44which is secrecy behind the iPhone.
1:10:47No one had any idea what it was going to look like, but we all know they were making a phone.
1:10:51Just announce it six months before it ships, like they did with the Mac Pro, like they
1:10:54did with the iPhone.
1:10:55six months or whatever it was, because then you haven't started ramping manufacturing
1:10:59yet and there aren't a million of these things shipping around the world and you have a big
1:11:02lead dime.
1:11:03They did it with the iPhone because the FCC, clearing the FCC in the US would require pictures
1:11:10of the device and everything like that, so it was going to be spoiled anyway, so they
1:11:12had to pre-announce it, which is fine.
1:11:14And the Mac Pro, they pre-announced it because they'd already made it wait God knows how
1:11:17long and we were going to flip out.
1:11:19And so they were like, "All right, here you go.
1:11:21We're actually making one.
1:11:22You can't have it now, but don't worry.
1:11:24it's not dead, and they needed to do that messaging-wise.
1:11:27And for new category product, if there's some sort of FCC stuff, maybe they have to pre-announce
1:11:32that too, but I don't know if there is going to.
1:11:35I don't know what the requirements are for fitness trackery things that you wear or for
1:11:40television sets.
1:11:41I don't think either one of those things is probably going to have its own LTE, 3G, whatever
1:11:47connection, so they're probably okay.
1:11:50All right, you want to wrap it up?
1:11:53Yeah, that's fine, unless you wanted to do some late follow-up, which we can always
1:11:57say for the next show.
1:11:58Follow-up comes at the front of the show, Casey.
1:12:00Well, that's why it was late follow-up, John.
1:12:02Late.
1:12:03You can't just put a modifier in a word and change it.
1:12:06That works.
1:12:07Yes, we should end the show.
1:12:09All right.
1:12:11Thanks a lot to our two sponsors this week, MailRoute and Squarespace, and we'll see
1:12:14you next week.
1:12:16Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin
1:12:22'Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental
1:12:28John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him
1:12:33'Cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental
1:12:38And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm
1:12:43And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them @C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S
1:12:52So that's Kasey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M
1:12:57E-N-T, Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A, Syracuse
1:13:04It's accidental (it's accidental)
1:13:07They didn't mean to, accidental (accidental)
1:13:12Tech Podcast, so long
1:13:17We have the more important issue in the tail end here.
1:13:21Mark, do you see the two links I put in the Skype chat?
1:13:24Let's see.
1:13:25Are we talking about the Han versus Nan?
1:13:28Yes.
1:13:29See, there's enough of that H shaft, I guess.
1:13:33There's enough of that.
1:13:34I don't know.
1:13:35What's the typographical term?
1:13:38The yellow and green one shows more of the stem of the H than there is a stem on the
1:13:44N.
1:13:45one shows pretty much equal amounts of stem above the H and the N. And as we know, this
1:13:51case is not like a precision aligned. Like that amount of motion can clearly be, you
1:13:56know, from just shifting the case around a little bit. So I still say N-O-N because the
1:14:01amount of extra stem that you're going to get above the N is so minuscule and may actually
1:14:06be non-existent. So N-O-N is my take and the white one supports my theory. They're super
1:14:11super zoomed in, probably artificially rendered yellow and green one does show a tiny bit
1:14:17more stem on that H.
1:14:18Yeah, I don't know.
1:14:21I think...
1:14:22Take out Photoshop and draw a horizontal line across the N-O-N and the white one, you'll
1:14:25see.
1:14:26I would say the white one is a shadow.
1:14:27Like, it's shadow covering that part and then on the...
1:14:30We'll see.
1:14:31Well, now you have to buy one with that case.
1:14:34There's no way I'm buying that.
1:14:36It's silicone, so it stretches, so you can just move your thumb and say, "See?
1:14:39Now it's covering it."
1:14:40Now it's coming.
1:14:41[LAUGHTER]
1:14:42That's gracious.
1:14:43By the way, real-time follow-up, Marco, I think you're thinking of a sender, apparently.
1:14:47Yes.
1:14:48Okay.
1:14:49I know de-senders are the things that break the baseline, but yeah.
1:14:54All right.
1:14:55Anyway, Shaft is better.
1:14:56You want to talk about this USB 3.0 micro-connector?
1:14:59I actually have one of these things.
1:15:02Yeah, I have one too.
1:15:03It's on my bus-powered one-terabyte drive.
1:15:05Yeah, I have a card reader that uses—
1:15:07Yeah, why is this a thing right now?
1:15:09We've known about this.
1:15:10I guess people who don't either buy a lot of accessories or don't keep up with the umpteen
1:15:15different USB connectors think this is a new thing.
1:15:18The story was this will be coming to your Android phone, which may or may not be true
1:15:22and whatever, and maybe it's more embarrassing because it's such a relatively large connector
1:15:27for a phone.
1:15:29But it's got one thing over regular, you know, the regular whatever it is, type B, I think,
1:15:35the flat rectangular one, is that at least it's externally asymmetrical.
1:15:38At least we can give it that.
1:15:41But I mean, for mine, because it's on a card reader, I actually use it frequently.
1:15:46And it is really hard to insert or remove that cable.
1:15:48And I don't know if it's just mine, and maybe the socket on my card reader isn't
1:15:52that well made, but it's really kind of a b*tch to plug that in.
1:15:57And I always think I'm breaking it.
1:16:00It's that bad.
1:16:01Yeah, these are no Lightning connectors.
1:16:03Lightning connector is genius both because it can be plugged in either way and there's
1:16:06and also because it inverts the normal relationship of connectors, which is a bent piece of metal like into like a not a tube
1:16:13But like you know hollow cylinder and then change the shape of that so it's got this
1:16:17Flimsy metal wall surrounding this internal thing where the pins are where it lightning says no, we're going to make a solid metal
1:16:23Flange and put our contacts on top of it and anything with the flimsy metal wall
1:16:29Especially as you shrink it down it just becomes ridiculous because lots of micro USB connectors are externally asymmetrical
1:16:34But just barely like you have to squint at it to get the little trapezoid on your you know some of them are just
1:16:39microscopic like the one
1:16:41My new camera has whatever the super teeny tiny USB thing is and it's trapezoid shaped
1:16:46but you you can't barely feel it with your fingers and you have to really squint to see it and you have to make sure
1:16:52you put it in the right way, and then you're shoving a
1:16:54Little you know ring of metal into another ring of flimsy metal
1:16:59It's much more satisfying to stick the solid metal
1:17:02lightning connector to something. So Apple's connector is way better here.
1:17:05Yeah, I agree that the USB micro connector is, even the 2.0 one is awful. I mean, it's
1:17:13every time, because it's on almost every camera these days, and it's on every Kindle, it's
1:17:16on a lot of devices now. And yeah, I always have to look very carefully to see what direction
1:17:22it goes in, and I get it wrong half the time. It's almost, or even more, I would say it's
1:17:26almost as hard to plug in as a VGA cable.
1:17:31Like those, I always got VGA cables backwards.
1:17:34Even I would look, and then I would not quite see it right
1:17:37and still try to plug it in backwards.
1:17:39- Oh, VGA never bothered me, but DVI to this day,
1:17:41I always get backwards every single time.
1:17:43- Yeah, DVI, you gotta look for the cross.
1:17:45Or, well, if it's not an iCable,
1:17:46then you have like the dash, but even then,
1:17:49I still mess that up too.
1:17:50Although nothing, I mean, USB, regular USB-A cables,
1:17:54those mess me up, because they're ridiculous too.
1:17:56I've said on past shows, if it's your job to design a connector, there are very few axes on
1:18:03which you can excel. You would think, "I want to be a good connector designer." What do you even
1:18:08have to think about except these exact very issues? There's not an entire world of possibilities.
1:18:12There's reliability, there's fulfilling the spec, and there's, "I've got to plug it in and unplug
1:18:18it all the time." Don't make that a pain in the butt. That's what your job is. You're a
1:18:22connector designer. I don't know how these people sleep at night. Like, I sure did a
1:18:28good job designing that connector, didn't I? How? How are you measuring yourself? How
1:18:32are you deciding that you did a good job? I hope they suffer their entire lives just
1:18:36getting their connections wrong and fumbling with their cameras and not being able to...
1:18:40Like, then they must say, "Boy, I suck at my job."
1:18:43I'm sure that's what they're all going through. Keep in mind, Apple has two massive luxuries
1:18:48that most connector designers don't, which, well, I don't know how big this field is,
1:18:54but they have two huge luxuries. They don't have to worry that much about cost, and they
1:18:59can completely break backwards compatibility. And a third, I guess, is that they're kind
1:19:05of a dictatorship in that they don't have to work on some committee and please 16 different
1:19:11companies who are all trying to make the same connectors as you for the next 10 years and
1:19:16do all that stuff. They can just say, they can just decree, "This is what's best.
1:19:21We're going to do it. We don't care what you think, and we don't care what it costs you."
1:19:25And that's it. Yeah, cost has to be the biggest one, but I still think at this point,
1:19:30you should still throw in the criteria of, "Oh, and by the way, it should be impossible to put
1:19:36in the wrong way and very clear which way it's supposed to go." And your job is to make that,
1:19:42also make it cheap. Like, yes, make it reliable, make it a good connector to use, and also make it
1:19:47cheap. And I don't think that's outside the realm of possibility. Granted, maybe you can't make
1:19:50something as beautiful and precious as the Lightning connector, but surely we can do better
1:19:55than these crazy USB things. Like, you know, even if you just, like the cost thing is like,
1:20:01"Oh, we can't have it be reversible because that makes it so much more expensive for the devices,
1:20:07because now they have to handle it being both ways." I think we can overcome that. I think the
1:20:11The universe of ethernet cables being able to detect whether it's a crossover cable or
1:20:14not, like we crossed that hurdle.
1:20:16Now we don't have to deal with cross…
1:20:18Even the super cheap crappy PCs have that.
1:20:20So it's possible.
1:20:21It can be done.
1:20:22It just takes just a little tiny bit of effort.
1:20:26We can make USB connectors that are impossible to put in the wrong way without breaking the
1:20:31bank.
1:20:32Like they're being penny-wise pound foolish.
1:20:34Oh, how's the review?
1:20:36Any update?
1:20:37I was so excited today through Twitter.
1:20:39someone directed me to the dev forums, which gave me a solution to getting offline dictation
1:20:45working.
1:20:46You had to go there to get that working?
1:20:47I didn't have to, I was directed there by a helpful person on Twitter.
1:20:52You wouldn't think, "Okay, I've got DP7, but this feature doesn't work.
1:20:56Let me search the dev forums, see if there's a way I can make it work."
1:20:59And sure enough, there was.
1:21:03I'm assuming it was a bad updater or something, but it just involved making a symlink to a
1:21:06framework or something.
1:21:07Because it's an XPC thing, and the XPC thing
1:21:09couldn't find the thing that it was executing.
1:21:10So you just make a SimLink, and then it works suddenly.
1:21:13So I was happy to see that this is some sort of packaging
1:21:17and installer problem and not a technical problem.
1:21:22The code was there.
1:21:23The code actually does work.
1:21:24It's just that the operating system couldn't find it,
1:21:26because it wasn't in the right place.
1:21:28Fun.
1:21:29So does it work?
1:21:30It does.
1:21:31And I used it, and I wrote up that little section,
1:21:32which was like three paragraphs.
1:21:34But it's like--
1:21:35Nice.
1:21:36Yeah.
1:21:37So it's being edited?
1:21:38It's done being edited?
1:21:39They finished editing what they had,
1:21:41but of course they haven't edited my three paragraphs
1:21:43on dictation.
1:21:44And we're still running tests, battery tests.
1:21:47I would like to get tests on the GM and put those in the review
1:21:50and not say, OK, well, on DP7.
1:21:52Although I don't think things have
1:21:54been varying that much between these builds,
1:21:56so if we can't get the GM version,
1:21:59it won't be the end of the world to run tests against.
1:22:01I think the numbers that we get on whatever
1:22:03the second-to-last build are, we're
1:22:05probably going to be pretty accurate. But yeah, I would like a ship date and a GM. That's
1:22:10what I would like. And not have it be like iOS 7, where it's eight days from now.
1:22:14Well, it sounds like you're kind of ready for that, though. I mean, as much as you're
1:22:19probably going to be. No, I've got to send these things to the
1:22:22iBook store. I don't know what the turnaround time is.
1:22:24Oh, yeah. Because I have to assume I'm going to be rejected
1:22:27first. So there's a one turnaround time where you send it, and they reject it for some crazy
1:22:30reason. And if you're lucky, the second time, it'll be the first time I'm sending any books
1:22:34to the iBook store.
1:22:35So I assume that I will be rejected the first time.
1:22:39I should have looked at my notes during the thing,
1:22:41because I wrote stuff in them.
1:22:43I forgot to mention the storage shift.
1:22:45Oh, the lack of a storage shift?
1:22:47Yeah.
1:22:48Come on, man.
1:22:49But anyway, I just need-- storage shift.
1:22:51Seriously, how much does an additional 16 gigs of flash
1:22:54cost these days?
1:22:55Not $100.
1:22:57Well, that's their margins.
1:22:59I know.
1:22:59But even Apple shifts eventually.
1:23:02eventually they stop shipping, you know, standard Macs coming with two gigs of RAM and they change
1:23:07to four. Like that happens. It has to happen eventually. What is this going to be, 10 years
1:23:10from now? It's like, well, it comes in 1632 and 64. No. I like it. I think we have to put this
1:23:17rant in the show. No, I'll do a better one next week. I'll still be pissed about this. I don't
1:23:22I don't know why isn't anyone else pissed about this.