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ATP

17: Can't Innovate Anymore

 

00:00:00   This episode is sponsored in part by Backblaze, easy unlimited online backup for just $5 per month.

00:00:06   Go to backblaze.com/ATP to start your 15-day free trial.

00:00:11   [

00:00:11   Hey guys, sorry for the shaky audio for the first five minutes of this.

00:00:16   We were recording onto a dying hard drive, and then five minutes later we fixed it.

00:00:21   So hang in there and it gets better.

00:00:24   Special thanks to Mackerel for letting us record in their awesome podcast studio here

00:00:27   in sunny, windy San Francisco.

00:00:29   Yes.

00:00:30   I sound the same.

00:00:31   I don't think I sound any sexier.

00:00:34   Well, could you sound any sexier, Jon?

00:00:36   I mean, let's be honest.

00:00:37   I'm just gonna leave that one out there.

00:00:41   So stuff happened today.

00:00:45   The keynote had an incredible mood and energy to it.

00:00:50   It started out first with Tim and you could tell that his energy was up.

00:00:55   He was very positive.

00:00:56   He was almost aggressive towards competitors and was just very lively, very energetic in

00:01:02   general.

00:01:05   you could tell all the presenters kind of,

00:01:08   they went very quickly.

00:01:10   - Pace was very fast, it almost felt rushed at times.

00:01:13   - Even before Tim came out, didn't you think it was weird

00:01:15   that they started with that video?

00:01:16   Like I know they, I think they probably started

00:01:18   with videos before, but that video opening

00:01:20   made me think like, something, because it wasn't like

00:01:24   about a specific product or anything like that,

00:01:26   it was about the philosophy of the company

00:01:29   and little bouncing balls and like,

00:01:31   you assumed it was previewing kind of the aesthetic theme

00:01:34   of iOS 7, which it turned out kind of sort of was.

00:01:38   And then the guys came out and raced cars,

00:01:39   and you were like, what?

00:01:40   - Yeah, we have to talk about that.

00:01:42   It seemed like, you know, when the car racing guys came out,

00:01:45   I thought, okay, this is kind of early

00:01:47   to be bringing out a third-party demo,

00:01:49   but maybe this is something cool.

00:01:52   Maybe they bought this company,

00:01:54   or they were integrating its technology somehow

00:01:56   into iOS to provide some kind of cool AI stuff.

00:01:59   And then it just turned out to be this kind of weird demo.

00:02:02   - Yeah, it killed that energy that you were just talking about.

00:02:04   - They did.

00:02:04   - Into the thing, and it's kind of good

00:02:06   that that was the beginning,

00:02:07   but it was like, oh, this big intro movie,

00:02:09   and then these car guys, you're like, eh,

00:02:11   and then it started going again,

00:02:12   and then after a while, you're like,

00:02:13   you're thinking back, what was the deal with those guys

00:02:15   with the car, not that the cars weren't cool,

00:02:17   'cause it did look like, but tell me how that--

00:02:19   - Tell me it was working.

00:02:20   - Tell me how that fit into the rest of the presentation.

00:02:23   - Really, why was that there?

00:02:24   - It was not part of the theme,

00:02:25   'cause you were looking for maybe some AI,

00:02:26   nope, no AI theme, no nothing like that,

00:02:28   it was just, they were just there.

00:02:31   - Very, very strange.

00:02:32   but other than that i mean

00:02:33   i thought especially really i think the star today was craig feeder at feder e

00:02:37   i really think you know he

00:02:39   we know he everyone knew that he had that shaky presentation a few years ago

00:02:42   and he's gotten better

00:02:44   than and he is just rock solid now and he

00:02:47   he had the best energy he had great banter like when he went off script for

00:02:51   a few words are sent here and there

00:02:53   he was solid and that's awesome the secret to going off

00:02:57   no maybe those were all scripted he planned it out but when you do it well

00:03:00   well, we're not supposed to know which parts you're ad-libbing,

00:03:02   which parts you're--

00:03:02   I mean, you see the weaker presenters,

00:03:04   like the guy earlier in an NDA session.

00:03:06   I'll tell you about the joke he did in the NDA session,

00:03:09   like where he had a picture of his [AUDIO OUT]

00:03:10   said it's not my boss.

00:03:11   Like that one, he had to rehearse, right?

00:03:12   And you could tell--

00:03:13   Yeah, that was pretty clear.

00:03:13   You could tell he had rehearsed.

00:03:15   The secret is making us not be able to tell.

00:03:17   And yeah, with Craig's presentation,

00:03:19   when his hand was shaking on the mouse

00:03:21   and he was having trouble doing the gestures,

00:03:22   it was like two years ago or [AUDIO OUT]

00:03:24   Two years ago.

00:03:24   Even that presentation probably wasn't

00:03:26   that bad if you just watched him.

00:03:28   But the fact they gave you the close-up of his hand, you realize, "Oh God, this guy is

00:03:30   that nervous."

00:03:31   And for all we know, he was that nervous this time too, but we couldn't tell.

00:03:34   And so now it's like, you can't even think back.

00:03:36   Just shaking out of his mind.

00:03:37   Now it's hard to imagine that his hands...

00:03:39   Maybe they were shaking, but you could not tell.

00:03:40   He was just smooth sailing and just punching, punch, punch.

00:03:45   All the competitors just...

00:03:46   Well, not only all the competitors, but they were punching themselves.

00:03:49   ...in that there were so many...

00:03:52   Stop hitting yourself.

00:03:53   Yeah, right?

00:03:54   many attacks or like backhanded attacks on on skeuomorphic design and linen and

00:03:59   leather like what was the joke about the green felt yeah exactly we don't need

00:04:05   this ditching to hold hold it to the screen anymore like it's kind of like

00:04:09   when Microsoft would slam like the previous version of Windows is crap and

00:04:13   this new version Windows is great and usually you don't see Apple see apples

00:04:16   do the same jobs thing we're like we here's iOS 6 and iOS 6 is great and we

00:04:20   "We love iOS 6!" and then he tells you how great iOS 7 is, but here they were kind of

00:04:24   like, "Here's iOS 6," without saying so much, and it was **** and it had leather and it

00:04:30   had green felt and it was gross and like, and that's weird for Apple.

00:04:33   That is very weird.

00:04:34   Yeah, it seemed like they were listening to everything that we were complaining about

00:04:40   for all these years.

00:04:41   They were listening to **** with us.

00:04:44   And you know, in most ways.

00:04:45   At least the people on stage did.

00:04:47   Right, exactly, yeah, who knows what, you know.

00:04:50   I don't know if it was a good day to be Scott Forstall or not, but nobody knows that really.

00:04:54   But I think it was really a very surprisingly bold energy from the presenters and from what

00:05:01   they showed us.

00:05:02   You know, I think it's clear that, especially like with Tim, Tim was really on fire about

00:05:08   against Android.

00:05:10   And I think this was, you know, Tim obviously is the kind of guy, like he'll sit back and

00:05:15   wait until he has something really great to say and you know he's patient.

00:05:20   You can tell he's a f***ing f***ing man.

00:05:21   He will sit back and wait, let the press rake them through the coals for six months about

00:05:26   how they're not doing anything, and then come out and just have a keynote like this which

00:05:29   is just packed full of awesome stuff.

00:05:32   Cool.

00:05:33   Are we back?

00:05:35   We are back.

00:05:36   Alright.

00:05:37   What the hell are we just talking about?

00:05:38   Keep your eye on that.

00:05:39   Yeah.

00:05:40   What I was saying was that I found it very interesting that Tim Cook, you know, he's

00:05:45   a southern guy, which is not a bad thing at all.

00:05:47   He's very deliberate when he talks, he's very slow when he talks, and not in a bad way,

00:05:51   just he wants to make sure he says what he wants to say.

00:05:54   And so today, he and every other presenter that we saw seemed very rushed.

00:05:59   They were trying to get through things.

00:06:01   Not rushed, I'm nervous, just rushed.

00:06:02   We have a lot to cover.

00:06:04   And I took a few notes with this barbaric pen and paper that I have.

00:06:09   And that was the first thing I wrote down was that, "Oh man, Tim is in a hurry.

00:06:13   And if Tim is in a hurry, we must be in for one heck of a show."

00:06:16   And I feel like we got a heck of a show.

00:06:19   Part of it could have been timing.

00:06:20   Someone commented, I don't remember who it was, that they came in almost exactly at two

00:06:24   hours.

00:06:25   And the other part of it is I think that it's like a Hollywood action movie where they're

00:06:29   not trying to rush through the content so much as they don't want you to get bored ever.

00:06:33   Again, with the exception of the cars.

00:06:35   And so they were like, the second you-- you know, they didn't dwell on something for too

00:06:39   long.

00:06:40   And I think a lot of-- in a lot of Steve Jobs' presentations, he would be enamored with some

00:06:42   particular feature, whether it's like how Windows minimized the dock or like some feature

00:06:47   of an application.

00:06:48   And at a certain point, Steve is more fascinated with it than the rest of the audience is.

00:06:51   And we're like, OK, Steve, we get it.

00:06:53   We know it's cool.

00:06:54   Go on to the next thing.

00:06:55   And in this one, there was none of that.

00:06:56   They would show you a feature.

00:06:57   You'd be wowed by it.

00:06:58   They'd move on to the next one, like just get moving.

00:07:00   And contrast this to the one last year, where he had that interlude section where-- with

00:07:05   video with the blind person navigating where he was, the video itself was kind of slowly

00:07:09   paced and he came on before it and talked with a lot of pauses and a lot of tempting

00:07:12   of the hands and doing all that.

00:07:14   I don't remember if he did the Steve Jobs, it was very slow and deliberate where he wanted

00:07:17   to have like a break.

00:07:18   Now it's like we don't have time for breaks.

00:07:20   We got stuff to show.

00:07:21   We got competitors to punch in the face.

00:07:22   We got ourselves to punch in the face.

00:07:23   We need to just go, go, go.

00:07:26   Yeah, it was just nonstop with the exception of that weird car demo.

00:07:29   Like the rest of it was just rock solid.

00:07:31   There was never a point where I was bored.

00:07:33   There was never a point.

00:07:34   I mean, it was just great.

00:07:35   Well, maybe Apple retail was a little boring in the beginning, because we're like, "Come

00:07:38   on."

00:07:39   Oh, yeah, that doesn't count.

00:07:40   Everyone assumes that's boring.

00:07:41   The palate cleanser.

00:07:42   Yeah.

00:07:43   All right, before we continue, let's talk about our first sponsor, and then we'll get

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00:09:48   All right, back to the show.

00:09:51   I think, you know, there was the OS X thing which, John, before, I know we don't want

00:09:56   want to spend too much time on that, but what do you think of the name?

00:09:59   I don't think I like the name.

00:10:02   I thought the name was absolutely absurd.

00:10:04   I don't like that it's plural, and I understand that it's a place name, and it's talking about

00:10:07   the--I guess it's talking about the waves that are there, but it--you know, I don't--name,

00:10:11   whatever, the name is the name.

00:10:13   I didn't like a lot of the cat names, too.

00:10:16   I can think of lots of other interesting California place names, but I assume they're not going

00:10:21   to use any names that a non-California would recognize.

00:10:24   Like I don't expect OS X Sacramento, you know what I mean, or Los Angeles or San Francisco

00:10:29   or any other of the cities that an East Coaster could name.

00:10:31   It's going to be places that we -- I can't think of the names on it, but I do really

00:10:36   like the big wave logo.

00:10:37   I like the little skinny X, even though none of those aesthetics seem to be reflected in

00:10:42   the OS itself.

00:10:43   Yeah, it seems like they did dramatically change the iOS aesthetics, but the OS X aesthetics

00:10:48   look pretty much the same.

00:10:49   With the exception of the Maps app and the iBooks app, which have weird iOS 7-looking

00:10:54   icons and now they look out of place on the metal dock next to all the other stuff.

00:10:58   So yeah.

00:10:59   Now, are you going to continue to do reviews?

00:11:02   Because everyone -- as soon as this happened, anyone around us was asking, "Oh, are you

00:11:06   still going to do it because they're not big cats anymore?

00:11:08   Oh my goodness, is the world coming to an end?"

00:11:10   Is this going to be the last one, maybe?

00:11:11   What will the nerds do?

00:11:12   Or are you going to start -- are you going to do the next ten?

00:11:14   Yeah, I don't know.

00:11:15   I was looking for an end to the cats as a place to put a cap on it, but now that the

00:11:18   end has come, I start thinking that I like having done all the big cats.

00:11:23   So now I feel like I can stop on 8-Port and say, "Well, I did all the big cat releases."

00:11:27   And there is a little bit something about 10.10, even though this is technically the

00:11:30   10th release because we started from zero.

00:11:33   When 10.10 comes, I don't know.

00:11:35   Like I'll stop -- I have to stop eventually, right?

00:11:39   I don't know when that's going to be, but it's not going to be now.

00:11:41   I'm going to review this one.

00:11:42   Because like the release date is what I wanted.

00:11:44   They said the fall.

00:11:45   I feel like I will have time to do it.

00:11:46   This does not look like it's a big release.

00:11:48   I think the review will be shorter.

00:11:50   This does look kind of like a snow leopard release, because aside from them enhancing

00:11:53   a couple of applications in interesting ways and enhancing notifications and little things

00:11:57   like that.

00:11:58   A lot of the stuff they talked about was internal stuff.

00:12:01   And that's good, I give that a thumbs up.

00:12:03   But it also means I don't think there's, you know, how many screenshots do you have of

00:12:05   memory compression?

00:12:06   Probably not a lot, right?

00:12:07   Yes, but how much time will John Siracusa spend writing up all these little internal

00:12:11   foibles and bits and so on?

00:12:13   It depends on how much information I can get about them, because, like, there's not going

00:12:17   to be a session on their implementation of memory compression, right?

00:12:20   And so, like, how do I extract information, you know, super technical details about it,

00:12:26   other than just simply explaining it to people who don't know what it is in a reasonable

00:12:29   way?

00:12:30   That expands out somewhat, but I don't know how much detail I can get into, because anything

00:12:34   that's not a developer feature, they're not going to spend time at WWDC explaining.

00:12:37   The developer features I think they're going to explain are, like, how to make your app

00:12:40   more memory efficient, more battery efficient, and the app nap things, like things that interact

00:12:46   with your application.

00:12:47   probably spend a long time explaining how those things work, and I'll be able to expand

00:12:52   on those. But some of the stuff that was in the keynote, all I'm going to hear about it

00:12:57   is what was in the keynote and what's in those PDFs. Like, they published a PDF of just technical

00:13:01   details but not really. And that's the last I'll hear of those things. And then just the

00:13:04   proof will be in the pudding. I'll use the thing and say, "Does it work like they say?

00:13:07   Is it better?" Whatever.

00:13:09   And you know, at the last minute, they're going to apply a new theme and make a change

00:13:11   to your screenshots.

00:13:15   That would be terrible.

00:13:17   So I should say that the three of us sat together in the keynote and I feel like there was a

00:13:22   moment in which it was clear that they were about to announce the release date and I could

00:13:28   feel all of the stress and anxiety and tension in the air from my friend John to my left

00:13:34   because you were a little nervous, I'd say.

00:13:36   Yeah, it was like that last year and the year before too.

00:13:39   But the difference was coming in, I think both years coming in, I had thousands of words

00:13:43   written already coming into WWDC because they had done like the super secret preview and

00:13:47   they had released development.

00:13:48   But this was like total radio silence.

00:13:50   So that was kind of helpful in one respect because like, look, they can't release it.

00:13:52   We haven't even seen it.

00:13:53   What are they going to do?

00:13:54   People have to have their apps work.

00:13:55   But on the other hand, it could have been this was a really slim release and they figured

00:13:58   everyone's apps will still be compatible and it would be, you know, coming out in July

00:14:02   4th and then that would be screwed.

00:14:05   But no, as I said, fall, I like fall.

00:14:07   I encourage them to take as much time as they need.

00:14:10   All right, so do we want to cover the new hardware?

00:14:13   Yeah, let's do keynote order.

00:14:15   So next, I mean, MacBook Airs, I don't think there's that much to say.

00:14:18   I think what we really want to talk about is the new R2-D2 Mac Pro trash can.

00:14:25   So gentlemen, thumbs up, thumbs down, thumbs in the middle, what do we think?

00:14:30   Well, I said on the last show that even if they don't make a machine that suits my needs,

00:14:38   If they feel like they're fulfilling the spirit of the macro by doing something that has just

00:14:41   massive performance, even if it has to be some crazy-ass thing, you know, like I said,

00:14:45   with PCI Express SSDs and some crazy arrangement, they decided they could make something cooler

00:14:52   or better by not having stuff inside it, fine.

00:14:54   Then at least it will be daring and interesting.

00:14:57   I think this fulfills that criteria.

00:14:59   It is daring, it is interesting, they did crazy stuff with it, and they did crazy stuff

00:15:03   because they felt it was better.

00:15:04   And it seems like this machine is also focused on being much more powerful and capable than

00:15:10   an iMac in some respects.

00:15:12   In other respects, people point out that, look, it may be that you could spec out an

00:15:14   iMac with more internal storage in this thing.

00:15:16   And that's kind of depressing.

00:15:17   Oh, that's almost definite.

00:15:18   But you will not be able to spec out an iMac with more GPU strength in this thing, because

00:15:23   it's got those two gigantic, you know, whatever professional 3D GPUs in it.

00:15:28   And that's...

00:15:29   They made this machine for people who know what those GPUs are and who actually need

00:15:33   them to do their work.

00:15:34   Which again, does not help me and does not fulfill my criteria for the Mac Pro, but it

00:15:38   is totally a daring new interesting, bold design that they seem really committed to

00:15:42   and excited about, and had that cool video with the big booming base and the Darth Vader

00:15:47   look of the entire thing.

00:15:49   I give that all thumbs up, but I am sad that it didn't make a machine that suits my needs.

00:15:54   It does not have internal drive bays, the GPUs do not look well suited for gaming.

00:15:58   Or at least the drivers won't be, I suspect.

00:16:01   It's going to be stupidly expensive and not have a lot of internal storage.

00:16:04   And then, like this is the most un-Apple-like thing, and again time has tell because this

00:16:08   is going to release in the fall.

00:16:09   Are they expecting everybody to buy third-party monitors, third-party 4K monitors, which they

00:16:13   mentioned in the keynote, and third-party external Thunderbolt enclosures for drives?

00:16:18   Like Apple's not even going to sell one of those?

00:16:20   You know, if Apple made one of those and it matched the machine, people would buy it even

00:16:23   if it was crazy expensive, and now we're kind of thrown to the wolves.

00:16:26   Okay, well here's this little trash can, and you go out and figure out what you want to

00:16:29   connect to it.

00:16:30   Yeah, I thought it was really wild, and as someone who has no selfish interest in a Mac

00:16:35   Pro, it seemed to me like—and you touched on this, John—it seemed to me that they

00:16:40   were fixing the problem of what do professional video and audio kind—basically media people—

00:16:48   And 3D.

00:16:49   And 3D, exactly right.

00:16:50   You know, it's not for you guys who just want an extraordinarily beefy Mac.

00:16:54   It's not for Marco, who maybe just doesn't want to have cables all over the place.

00:16:59   It's for someone who is working at a studio, define studio however you please, and it's

00:17:04   going to solve that problem, which I think it did fairly effectively.

00:17:07   Well, like the Pixar people.

00:17:08   Didn't they announce that they were going to have, if you want to see how the Mac Pro

00:17:11   performs?

00:17:12   Yeah, in the tomorrow lunch session.

00:17:13   Yeah, come and go to go, and Pixar is going to go and show how they can real-time render

00:17:16   stuff with their, you know, because that's...

00:17:18   I mean, it's not really going to give us that much information, though, honestly.

00:17:20   No, it's not, but they're going to show off what dual professional quality GPUs can handle

00:17:26   in there.

00:17:27   not gaming GPUs, and as far as I can tell,

00:17:29   those are the only options, is those crazy,

00:17:31   like that was always an option when you bought a Mac Pro.

00:17:33   What you could pick from the video cards was like,

00:17:35   you'd pick, you know, the crappy stock video card,

00:17:39   which sometimes didn't even have active cooling,

00:17:40   it just had like a passive heat sink from those days,

00:17:42   and then you'd pick, you know, maybe one or two cards

00:17:44   that are bigger than that, and then there was always

00:17:45   the option, it was like, add $3,000,

00:17:47   and it was like Nvidia, whatever,

00:17:49   and you would never want that unless you were gonna,

00:17:51   unless you're gonna run Maya on it, right?

00:17:53   And nobody would want those, and actually,

00:17:54   their gaming performance was not that great,

00:17:56   is the drivers for those things in gaming would not be, you know, but professional 3D

00:18:01   people needed them and we would never pick that one. But now it's like you get it whether

00:18:03   you want it or not. So I don't know if I'm going to end up buying this machine because

00:18:08   I want to play games on it. I don't want to have to buy a gaming PC. And if it turns out

00:18:12   that like the top of the top of the line retina iMac or whatever has better gaming performance

00:18:18   I'm going to have to end up with an iMac instead of that thing.

00:18:21   God.

00:18:22   What will the world come to?

00:18:24   No, it's a nightmare.

00:18:25   I think, I mean, the new machine, it's really interesting.

00:18:29   You know, they did, they had this goal, I think, of making something bold and new, and

00:18:36   obviously the typical Apple modern values of making it smaller.

00:18:40   But they, you know, in order to accomplish that, what we have is a machine that has reduced

00:18:46   choice and that does not cover many of the edge cases of needs that the previous Mac

00:18:53   pros covered.

00:18:54   And I have to wonder, so they made this thing really small, but I didn't really need it

00:19:00   to be small.

00:19:02   Mac Pro customers weren't really complaining that often that things were big.

00:19:06   When you have to move them, it kind of sucked to have the handles cut into your hands because

00:19:09   they weighed like 60 pounds.

00:19:10   But for the most part, it wasn't that big of an issue.

00:19:16   And you're right, now everyone's going to get these GPUs.

00:19:20   So everyone's going to have to pay for these GPUs.

00:19:21   Now, stand-alone, workstation-class GPUs used to be about $1,000 or $1,200 each as options.

00:19:26   Now we have two of them, and that's the only option.

00:19:28   So who knows what we're going to be paying for this machine.

00:19:32   They also -- you know, there's no more internal drive bays.

00:19:34   There's internal PCI Express SSDs that looks like there's room for two modules.

00:19:38   They look like they're probably custom modules, and so we probably won't be able to easily

00:19:43   upgrade them, at least not for a while.

00:19:44   And Apple's going to charge a bazillion dollars for them.

00:19:47   Exactly.

00:19:48   Like they always do.

00:19:49   Exactly.

00:19:50   The demo unit they had with the lid off upstairs,

00:19:53   there's a spot for a second slot on the motherboard,

00:19:57   but the connector isn't even soldered on there.

00:19:59   So it's like this was an option when they screened the board,

00:20:02   but they didn't even put the connector on there

00:20:04   if it wasn't configured with that.

00:20:05   And who knows how it will ship,

00:20:06   but it's looking like it might be like you have to buy it

00:20:11   with two cards if you want that much storage.

00:20:13   And so, it's because of the kind of module they're using

00:20:17   that's going to limit the amount of storage,

00:20:19   I'm guessing the maximum might be one terabyte or 960 gigs when it ships, if it's two 480

00:20:26   modules.

00:20:27   Maybe they'll be able to crank it up and get two 768s and have it be 1.5 terabytes.

00:20:32   Either way, it's going to cost a fortune for that storage.

00:20:37   And there's no hard drive options, there's no two and a half inch bay, and there's no

00:20:41   PCI slots, which is going to anger video people because they're going to have to buy new capture

00:20:45   hardware and all the PCI hardware that people used to use.

00:20:48   The thing is they emphasize like oh, it's so quiet and we got this fan and everything

00:20:52   You have to hook up external drives to it and it Apple doesn't make a super quiet black sleek

00:20:58   Rex Thunderbolt so now I have to take this beautiful

00:21:01   Maybe let's say this thing is beautiful and quiet and sleek and I sit it on my desk now

00:21:05   I have to just you know buy some random third-party Thunderbolt drive enclosure

00:21:09   It's gonna have its own fans and its own stupid noise well so much for the quietness like it's not like you how long is

00:21:13   The maximum Thunderbolt cable it's not like I can put them in a closet

00:21:15   It's not, you know, I guess I could have like a SAN or something.

00:21:18   I think network drives are going to become more popular.

00:21:20   It's not, it doesn't provide the, even for people who want to do like video editing stuff,

00:21:24   I don't, are they going to value the quietness in size?

00:21:28   Because it's immediately compromised by the way they have to use it, unless they're all

00:21:30   using SANs for everything, I don't know.

00:21:32   Well, actually I think a big production house is what they usually do.

00:21:34   Well then why have six thunderbolt ports in the back of it?

00:21:37   Right.

00:21:38   I guess for six monitors maybe?

00:21:39   Yeah, I bet monitors are actually a big reason why.

00:21:41   But I think, and also one big problem with video is that there's no longer a dual socket

00:21:46   model.

00:21:47   This appears to be single socket only.

00:21:49   They are going to use the Xeon E5 with the Ivy Bridge EP coming out, I mean this, yeah

00:21:53   the Ivy Bridge EP coming out this fall.

00:21:57   It is going to max out at 12 cores, but that's only because Intel's making a 12 core E5 this

00:22:01   fall.

00:22:03   If they were continuing with their old way of doing things, you could have gotten 24

00:22:06   cores.

00:22:07   I mean there's like, you know, they moved to single socket which allowed them to make

00:22:10   the whole thing much smaller, much lower power needs, much lower thermal needs.

00:22:15   But video editors are going to really, I think, not react well to this machine for both the

00:22:20   lack of card slots and for the only single socket option.

00:22:24   And those are the people who are buying Mac Pros, like all the really high-profit dual

00:22:29   socket models that start at like $5,000 today.

00:22:32   They're the ones who buy all those high-profit machines, and they're the ones who, like the

00:22:36   iMac will not work for them, and it will never work for them because they actually need as

00:22:40   much CPU performance as they can get to do their jobs well and to be economical.

00:22:44   I think it's like a bet on the future of like, they assume more and more stuff is gonna be

00:22:47   moving to the GPU, and they're counting on people to rewrite their applications to use

00:22:52   more OpenCL and to farm stuff off, because it's going to have so much more performance

00:22:56   on those GPUs than it will have on that one CPU.

00:22:59   It's just a question of tapping it.

00:23:00   Because if you think about it, very little you can do with that Mac Pro is going to tap

00:23:05   those two GPUs, except for running a huge number of monitors and running like Maya or

00:23:08   or something that takes advantage of them,

00:23:10   or something that always use workstation.

00:23:12   And everything else is just those GPUs just sleeping there.

00:23:15   Right, like if I get one of these things,

00:23:16   it's going to be such a waste of those GPUs,

00:23:18   because it's going to be showing text editors most of the time

00:23:21   at Xcode.

00:23:22   Right, and the thing is, like, you know,

00:23:24   you always want-- we want everything, right?

00:23:26   So it's a desktop class machine that's not a Mac Mini,

00:23:29   so thumbs up there.

00:23:30   And it's not an iMac, it doesn't have integrated steering,

00:23:31   so thumbs up there.

00:23:33   And a lot of it we love.

00:23:34   We love the Xeons, the ECC RAM.

00:23:36   And it would make your text editing better, because you're

00:23:38   pulling stuff off of really presumably a super fast PCI

00:23:41   Express attached SSD.

00:23:42   And so things will open really fast.

00:23:44   Like, it's got all those good qualities.

00:23:46   And then two grand worth of GPU that you don't want,

00:23:48   that you can't get rid of.

00:23:49   Right.

00:23:49   And we don't know--

00:23:50   the pricing of this is going to be very interesting,

00:23:53   because we don't know how much we're going

00:23:54   to be charged for those GPUs.

00:23:55   Yeah.

00:23:56   It's not going to be the same cost as putting

00:23:58   two big NVIDIA cards in there.

00:23:59   It's not going to be four grand worth of GPUs.

00:24:01   The question is, how much can they shave off

00:24:03   by soldering these things to the boards, having only one Xeon?

00:24:06   And by having this be the only option for every Mac Pro buyer, they have to have some

00:24:10   volume advantage. Maybe they got a nice deal from AMD on the GPUs. I mean, who knows? But

00:24:16   that's a big question mark, I think, is the pricing and how much we're paying for those

00:24:19   GPUs. And it looks like they're not upgradable. They have some kind of weird custom way to

00:24:24   attach to the main, like, CPU motherboard, but it doesn't look like this is going to

00:24:29   be upgradable in any way except RAM and maybe those disk modules.

00:24:32   Everything in it is weird and custom. Even the RAM, like, seems to fold out on these

00:24:35   little gills on the side of the thing, that little plastic latch opens up and then the

00:24:39   RAM module is flat, but it's totally weird and custom.

00:24:42   It looks kind of like, I mean someone posted a picture of the 20th anniversary Mac subwoofer.

00:24:45   But the 20th anniversary Mac was also similarly custom, as are all of the Macs.

00:24:49   Like if you look at all the Airs or the MacBook Pros, nothing inside them is standard.

00:24:53   Everything is made specifically for that model to fit exactly, and that's true of the Mac

00:24:56   Mini, and the only computer left that it wasn't true of was the Mac Pro, because it's like,

00:25:00   "Oh, that video card that's in there?

00:25:01   That wasn't made custom."

00:25:03   I mean it was in terms of like manufacturing, but it's a regular standard PCI Express card, right?

00:25:08   And you could take that card out and it will physically fit inside a PC

00:25:11   It won't probably won't work because the you know the right you'd have to flash a thing

00:25:14   But like it's made to a standard that was not made by Apple

00:25:16   Nothing in this thing is a standard thing except me like maybe the CPU and the dims the dims

00:25:21   Everything else is some crazy board that you know, there's no standard SATA connector. There's no 2.5 inch bays 3.5 inch

00:25:28   There's no optical drive bays, you know, there's nothing about it

00:25:31   that's standard. And so now it fits with the rest of Apple's product lab, because this

00:25:35   is their vision of how to build computers.

00:25:37   Well, nothing on the inside is standard, but there's what, four Thunderbolt ports?

00:25:41   Six.

00:25:42   Four, six. Thunderbolt ports, there's like four, six USB ports. So I think the interesting

00:25:47   thing about it is that there's nothing that's inside that's standard, with the exception

00:25:49   of the RAM, but almost every connection to the outside world is standard.

00:25:53   Yeah, no more ADC port or any other weird exotic things. In fact, very few ports at

00:25:57   are. Like, they just have—I wonder if those audio ports are the fake little optical—because

00:26:03   the back of my Mac Pro has actual dedicated optical ports in addition to the—

00:26:06   Yeah, you have like little spid-if ports.

00:26:09   Yeah, right. And like all that stuff, like, I wonder how much they've sacrificed. And

00:26:13   I wonder how much people care. The other thing about it is the power supply. We're debating

00:26:17   whether—is the power supply internal or is there a brick?

00:26:20   It does appear to have a regular, you know, the three-pronged NEMA or NEMA, whatever it

00:26:24   is the plug, the standard plug, it does appear to have roughly the same type.

00:26:28   So it's almost certainly internal, and I was thinking of it from an audio perspective,

00:26:32   like because the PowerMic G5 had terrible, like, you'd get this electronic noise inside

00:26:36   the thing that would show up on your audio, and I still get it sometimes, like, you know,

00:26:41   because the analog audio, I was thinking, well, if I use optical audio out, maybe that

00:26:44   would be isolated, like, it was just a big box of electrical noise.

00:26:47   And this one, you would presume, would solve those problems, just because there's so much

00:26:50   left in the box.

00:26:51   a significant heat issue, if they had a brick, they would have to have a fan in it.

00:26:56   Because the highest TDP for the series of Xeons they're using for the 12 cores is like

00:27:01   130 watts for the CPU alone.

00:27:04   Yeah, I wonder about the whole thing in terms of power, because those GPUs are not cool.

00:27:07   Like each one of those would require a big active cooler on each of those cards, plus

00:27:12   gigantic fan on the CPU.

00:27:15   I guess they get away with not having hard drives in there probably saves a lot on heat.

00:27:18   The thermal design does look really nice,

00:27:20   and I do like, for noise reasons,

00:27:22   I do like how the fan appears to be the only moving part.

00:27:26   But, you know, it is, I think my two big questions on it,

00:27:31   which I guess we'll learn closer to launch,

00:27:33   my two big questions are entry price and retina displays.

00:27:38   Because all that GPU power, you know,

00:27:41   may be the reason why they beefed up the GPUs like crazy

00:27:44   for everyone who buys this thing.

00:27:46   Maybe the reason why is that they expect to actually ship a retina desktop display sometime

00:27:51   during a lifetime of when people are going to own this thing.

00:27:53   And whether it's at launch, that's pushing it, I think.

00:27:57   But maybe next year they release a retina desktop display that you can plug into this.

00:28:01   Do you think they've decided that the users they're targeting with this already have displays

00:28:06   or don't want Apple displays anyway?

00:28:08   That seems crazy to me.

00:28:09   Maybe someone in the industry knows, "Oh, we never buy the Apple displays.

00:28:11   We always have our specially calibrated whatever display."

00:28:14   But it seems like leaving money on the table.

00:28:15   Like, if you're going to sell something on this really expensive computer and they configured

00:28:18   it, at least have an option for like, oh, and pick the Apple super expensive 4K display,

00:28:21   even if it's not better than third party, like, because you're going to make money on

00:28:24   it.

00:28:25   And if you make it nice and it matches the display, people will buy it, I guess, right?

00:28:29   Maybe we'll see at the launch event.

00:28:31   Maybe they have new displays for people to buy.

00:28:33   Maybe they don't.

00:28:34   I don't know.

00:28:35   And the hard drive's annoying me because it's like, you're going to buy this Mac Pro for

00:28:37   a bazillion grand and now you do not have, you can't do a time machine backup because,

00:28:41   oh, you got to buy Thunderbolt disk for that.

00:28:43   Now you're just like an iMac user.

00:28:46   Oh, you need a stupid external--

00:28:48   - Goodness, no.

00:28:49   - Yeah, time machine is one of the reasons

00:28:51   why I so appreciate all my internal drive bays,

00:28:54   'cause I hate, as Katie said, I hate the clutter

00:28:57   of a desk covered in hard drive enclosures

00:28:59   and all those extra cables and power bricks

00:29:01   that come with them.

00:29:02   - You have to turn the hard drives on

00:29:03   'cause they're not bus powered.

00:29:04   - Right, and all that crap, I hate all that stuff.

00:29:06   And these days we are seeing a lot of moves

00:29:09   towards network storage and time capsules.

00:29:12   I'm sure they want you to buy that instead.

00:29:14   You know, there's all the, historically they have not

00:29:17   worked nearly as well as local disks for Time Machine.

00:29:19   - Even just the Firewire attached,

00:29:21   internal SATA has been the most reliable way

00:29:24   to your Time Machine or super duper anything,

00:29:26   like no problems. - And it's quieter

00:29:27   and it runs cooler.

00:29:28   - Discs spin down when they're not in use,

00:29:30   there's no extra power, it's just, you know.

00:29:32   - Yeah, so I think this will be interesting.

00:29:34   I think I'm probably going to end up buying one

00:29:37   just because I really want that CPU power

00:29:39   and that will help me a lot,

00:29:40   But it is a little disappointing that, like, what—the compromises that they made that

00:29:46   don't necessarily seem like they're achieving goals that any of us are really asking for.

00:29:50   Yeah, well, it's Apple's goal.

00:29:51   Go ahead, Casey.

00:29:52   Yeah, and so that's the thing is that it seems to me like Apple took their vision of what—excuse

00:29:58   me—what a media person would want, what a studio would want, and they said, "Oh,

00:30:04   they're going to want an enormous amount of graphic power and a pretty fast CPU,"

00:30:08   and that's all they should need.

00:30:09   And as you guys were talking about, in reality, that might not really match up with what a

00:30:14   studio would actually want to buy.

00:30:16   So it's as though Apple invented this phantom persona that they wanted to build this thing

00:30:22   for, but it's certainly not you guys who want a gazillion internal drives and the ability

00:30:27   to add and remove things easily.

00:30:29   And it may not even be for the studios, because they're going to want their own video cards,

00:30:33   they're going to want more internal storage, et cetera, et cetera.

00:30:35   I think they had to have been in touch with some of them.

00:30:38   One would think.

00:30:39   video like sometimes they have a video of like you know we the people who they

00:30:42   built this thing for like sometimes it was software or whatever like oh this

00:30:45   this new version of whatever is amazing and I love this new version of aperture

00:30:49   changes the way I and they and they show all the photographer so presumably they

00:30:52   had some kind of early feedback with like they must have had not a phantom

00:30:56   persona you know but like a real I mean maybe Pixar yeah and maybe Pixar maybe

00:31:01   that's why they're doing that lunch doesn't say Oh Pixar loves these now

00:31:04   they can run Maya really well and it doesn't take up a lot of room and they

00:31:06   just, you know, but like who—I think there is a phantom customer, but I wonder like why

00:31:11   this decided to focus on.

00:31:13   And this machine though, it seems like the philosophy that it adheres to is the one that

00:31:16   Apple has for all of its hardware.

00:31:18   Custom parts, as small and as quiet as possible, as simple as possible, no standard anything.

00:31:24   We are not a PC manufacturer.

00:31:25   We don't make a box that you can slap a bunch of stuff into.

00:31:29   Because slowly all of Apple's computers stopped being that until there was almost nothing

00:31:33   in them that was like standard or standard opening or card slots or whatever.

00:31:37   Even like the hard drives, like we can replace those with our own, not really custom, but

00:31:41   sort of custom little, you know, instead of SATA, 2.5 inch SATA drives, we can use these

00:31:46   little, what is it, the M-SATA connector?

00:31:48   Yeah, like the sticks.

00:31:49   And then, but it's not, it's like, I think Anantek had, he was analyzing, like trying

00:31:55   to figure out what it was, and he said there was like this M2, it was like MicroSATA 2.

00:31:58   I think that it didn't appear to be that, and it looks like it's just a custom connector

00:32:03   custom modules, custom everything.

00:32:04   - Yeah, so that's how they decide,

00:32:07   that's how you make computers from now on.

00:32:10   - Right.

00:32:11   - In the same way that the MacBook Air is made,

00:32:12   it was the precursor, now all their computers are like that,

00:32:14   all the way down to the Mac Pro,

00:32:16   which is just a philosophy that I don't think

00:32:17   they consulted on other people.

00:32:18   Hey you guys, do you think we should make

00:32:20   the batteries sealed in on all our laptops?

00:32:22   Do you think we should get rid of 2.5 inch SSDs

00:32:24   and replace them with these little stick things?

00:32:26   Like they just decided this is the way

00:32:28   computers should be built, this is the way

00:32:29   Apple computers are going to be built.

00:32:31   And then also, oh by the way, what would you guys like?

00:32:34   Okay, we'll build you one of those using our philosophy

00:32:36   of all custom parts and crazy stuff like that.

00:32:38   - Right, and certainly I think this is going to bring Apple

00:32:41   more profit because now we can still probably put in

00:32:46   third party RAM, but now we can't put in

00:32:49   third party drives anymore.

00:32:50   - That machine will just reject third party RAM.

00:32:51   It'll be, you'll try to put it in, but it will spit it out

00:32:53   the side and grind it up in the central fan

00:32:55   and it will come out in chunks.

00:32:57   I'm sorry, I only accept Apple approved RAM.

00:33:00   Mac Pro Shredder.

00:33:02   - Alright, let's talk about our second sponsor

00:33:04   and then we'll move on to iOS 7.

00:33:05   Good, alright.

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00:34:00   Thanks again to Windows Azure Mobile Services for sponsoring the show.

00:34:03   iOS 7 gives you many new reasons where you might want to send push notifications to your

00:34:08   application.

00:34:09   It does actually, yeah.

00:34:10   That's a perfect segue, Jon.

00:34:11   That's very true.

00:34:12   So what do we think about iOS 7?

00:34:15   I gotta tell you, I haven't...so Marco put it on his not normal phone and his old 4S.

00:34:25   And we've all played with it for, I don't know, maybe between all of us a sum total

00:34:28   of five minutes.

00:34:29   And so we haven't had a chance to really process and think about it.

00:34:34   Since I'm talking, I'll start with my own thoughts.

00:34:37   My first thought is I don't know what to think.

00:34:38   I feel like I need to chew on it a little while because it is bold.

00:34:43   It is absolutely bold.

00:34:45   And the other thing I will say is the first thought that I had and I think all of us had

00:34:50   the moment we saw the home screen is, "Holy crap, those icons have got to go.

00:34:53   They're just rough."

00:34:54   Actually, the first thought I had when I saw this, when they finally revealed what it looks

00:34:58   like, and even in that little demo video with dots that was in the beginning, is...

00:35:05   We complain about giving credit to like, "Oh, you're not the first person to make something

00:35:08   with a touch screen."

00:35:09   But we give credit to Apple because they made the first one that didn't suck or whatever.

00:35:12   Or you know, Apple kind of was making a phone that's all on screen.

00:35:16   Like, "Oh, Nokia had a phone that was all screen beforehand."

00:35:19   Those earlier ones don't count.

00:35:20   Like whoever sort of, I mean, right or wrong, whoever popularized it, whoever was famous

00:35:26   enough and did the thing, they get the credit because no one knew about it when it was just

00:35:29   on the Nokia phone, but then when Apple did it, you know, touchscreen phones are everywhere,

00:35:33   or the GUI rings other things.

00:35:34   And in this case, I really feel like this visual style, which is the first thing that

00:35:40   hits you in the face with this, seeing the home screen, seeing all the other stuff, credit

00:35:43   to this visual style planting the flag on this goes to Microsoft with Metro.

00:35:48   They were not the first person to come up with this style.

00:35:49   They were responding to the things in the air about the design community, but they put

00:35:53   that flag in the ground.

00:35:54   And I remember talking about it on Hypercritical where they were talking about after I just

00:35:58   watched that Windows Metro video for Windows 8 for like an hour and a half, and I looked

00:36:03   back at my iOS device and it looked old and creaky and clunky.

00:36:07   And so this does not look exactly like Metro.

00:36:10   It isn't a ripoff of Metro, but Microsoft is the one who planted the flag of this is

00:36:13   the new visual style.

00:36:15   And if you stare at this long enough, even if you hate it and think it's ugly, when you

00:36:18   look back at your other thing, your other thing looks crappy.

00:36:20   And I think iOS 7 is following that trend in terms of Microsoft planted the flag and

00:36:25   Apple followed, and it will probably -- ugly icons aside -- will probably have the same

00:36:30   effect where if you stare at it for a long period of time as you're developing your app,

00:36:33   when you go back to your iOS 6 and you look at it, you're going to be like, "Ugh, it's

00:36:38   going to be like pinstripes."

00:36:39   No matter how much you hate the ugliness of iOS 7, I think that effect is going to be

00:36:43   there.

00:36:44   It's startling to me, and as Gruber said in his post, this is a polarizing thing, but

00:36:48   I feel like there's going to be a ratcheting effect where we won't be able to go back.

00:36:53   - I think it's, I would even say it looks almost like it's been heavily influenced by

00:36:59   both Windows Phone and Android in a lot of its graphical treatments and styles.

00:37:04   Like I think the new toolbar icons in Safari-- - Yeah, the action button, which is like the

00:37:10   box with the arrow coming out.

00:37:11   - Almost everywhere that we've seen a toolbar icon

00:37:14   that wasn't just text, that it's actually an icon drawn,

00:37:16   they look very Androidy in their design and their style.

00:37:20   And yeah, they're all like thin abstract lines,

00:37:23   like it really does look like Android.

00:37:24   And you're right, the rest of the system

00:37:25   looks a lot like Windows.

00:37:28   And not like, you know, not the point where you confuse them

00:37:32   but you could tell, like this is obviously

00:37:33   a very heavy influence.

00:37:34   - In the same way that you can say that Android

00:37:36   does not look like iOS, but you're gonna say,

00:37:37   but face it, Android is the way it is

00:37:39   because iOS came along and made an OS

00:37:41   where you only interact with it because if you look at Android before iOS and after,

00:37:44   and no one's going to say, oh, Android rip off the look and feel of iOS.

00:37:47   Because it doesn't.

00:37:48   It looks totally different.

00:37:49   But you're going to say Android looks the way it does because iOS exists.

00:37:52   And I'm going to say both iOS 7 and Android share the influence, I think, at this point

00:37:57   of Windows 8 Metro, which may not have been a successful product, but was the first highest

00:38:03   profile boldest iteration of that design philosophy, which, again, I don't think Microsoft necessarily

00:38:07   invented, but it doesn't matter.

00:38:08   just like Apple didn't invent the GUI or the touch screen phone.

00:38:12   It is, I mean we should really, it really is remarkable to point out that Microsoft

00:38:16   has set a new design trend.

00:38:18   Yeah.

00:38:19   Or I mean, I mean, I'm hesitant to say set, but like they are the standard bearer for

00:38:23   it.

00:38:24   They were there first, they planted it, and they were the big company that put it out

00:38:28   there and it's like other people would say when they saw Windermetro, "Oh, that looks

00:38:31   exactly like what I've been doing."

00:38:32   Hundreds of little people probably all said that, but they aren't Microsoft and that's

00:38:35   just how the business works.

00:38:36   And it's startling not just that it was Microsoft, but that Apple is now reacting to it.

00:38:41   You know, with the Redman "start your photocopy."

00:38:43   Not that I'm saying they shouldn't react to it, because fashion and design trends, like,

00:38:46   that's how it works.

00:38:47   But this is one that Apple is not the standard bearer for.

00:38:50   They're just not.

00:38:51   No, and the thing that I thought was most surprising was during Tim's part of the keynote

00:38:55   early on, I think it was his beloved customer sat, which I hate that.

00:39:00   But when he was talking about customer satisfaction numbers, and the way he was talking about

00:39:05   Android, it felt like he knew that Android had a lot of users, but he just didn't believe

00:39:12   in his heart that they were an actual competitor.

00:39:15   And the way he was talking, even though it was very briefly, the way he talked about

00:39:19   Microsoft was that they were the ones that Apple should be worried about.

00:39:24   I mean, this is all based on my interpretation.

00:39:28   It's not like he came out and said it, but I got this feeling that Microsoft was the

00:39:32   actual competitor, and it was just hammered home by the way Iowa 7 looks, because it is

00:39:36   not a rip of Metro, but it's absolutely, you're right, it's very heavily influenced by Metro.

00:39:43   That's the direction everyone is going in, and Apple was not out there first, saying

00:39:47   "Come on, everybody follow me."

00:39:49   And it's weird, because usually the person who's out there first with a design direction

00:39:52   of "Hey, everybody, let's make touchscreen phones," is also the leader in the market,

00:39:56   and Microsoft is not the leader in the smartphone market, or really anything else these days.

00:40:02   But they they were definitely the leader in that vision, and it's I mean I

00:40:06   wonder

00:40:09   This is like alt history stuff say forest all is not there and doesn't force

00:40:13   There's no forest all rise to power does Johnny I've beat windows metro to the punch with with a software interface

00:40:19   It looks like this and the only reason he didn't was because the combination of forest all and jobs were so they loved so much

00:40:25   leather and 3d effects and thick things and texture and like it was a story of Steve Jobs someone

00:40:32   showed their app to Steve Jobs in the elevator at Apple.

00:40:35   Some Apple employee showed it to him, and Steve looked at it for a few seconds and said,

00:40:38   "This background needs more texture."

00:40:39   He gave it back to him.

00:40:40   You remember that story?

00:40:41   Yup.

00:40:42   Yup.

00:40:43   Like, Vegas, those guys just love texture, and maybe that was a diversion.

00:40:44   I think it was a fruitful diversion.

00:40:45   I like the look of the old OS, but I gotta say, it starts to look pinstripey.

00:40:51   Like even in the demo, when they said, "Here's how you can test your app to make sure the

00:40:53   metrics still work in iOS 6 or 7," they switched it back to 6 mode, and everyone went, "Ooh."

00:40:57   Yeah, like it looked really old.

00:40:59   And this is not an audience that's like Gaga for iOS 7.

00:41:02   Like we're not all, "Oh, iOS 7 looks gorgeous."

00:41:04   We're saying, "iOS 7 looks weird," but it's the contrast.

00:41:07   It's like being dipped into hot water and then cold water.

00:41:09   You're like, "I didn't like either one, but this feels cold now."

00:41:13   I think what's worth pointing out, though, is that while iOS 7 does appear, by looking

00:41:18   at one static screen, it does appear very metro-y in a lot of ways.

00:41:23   where they really departed from both what Android

00:41:26   and what Windows is doing, are doing,

00:41:29   is in the depth.

00:41:30   And it was very important that nobody from Apple

00:41:33   said flat at any point.

00:41:35   The word flat was never used to describe this design

00:41:38   because it is not, you know, it's not textured

00:41:43   and not using gradients very much,

00:41:45   but very much like Lauren Brater's letterpress,

00:41:49   there is a depth to the interface

00:41:52   And they use depth very clearly, and they use shadows and they use translucency, which

00:41:56   I'm a little iffy on, it looks a little bit Windows Vista-y.

00:41:59   But they make heavy use of layering and then the parallax stuff and the transitions are

00:42:05   all different.

00:42:06   It is very much like iOS before 7 had all these textures and gradients and everything,

00:42:12   but the way things would move, like the way view controllers would push onto the stack

00:42:16   –

00:42:17   It was flat planes.

00:42:18   Yeah, you were just moving around flat planes together.

00:42:20   - There wasn't a big separation.

00:42:21   If you imagine them as a bunch of cards on the desk,

00:42:23   their cards were all touching each other.

00:42:25   - Exactly.

00:42:26   - Like they would slide past each other

00:42:27   and in front of and behind,

00:42:28   but there was never like,

00:42:29   "Oh, this card is a centimeter floating above the other one."

00:42:31   - Exactly, and that's how Windows Metro feels.

00:42:34   They do a little bit with the text,

00:42:37   like the text being kind of partially off screen,

00:42:38   you scroll it in,

00:42:39   like they do a little bit with that,

00:42:40   but for the most part,

00:42:42   it still feels like you're moving around flat panes.

00:42:44   And iOS 7, I mean, we haven't had time

00:42:47   to play with it much yet,

00:42:48   but the way it looks in the videos and stuff,

00:42:51   it looks like it has this great sense of depth

00:42:54   and layers to it that you don't really see in the other OS.

00:42:57   - They're trying to sell that, but that is a,

00:43:00   I mean, this is, we're talking about iOS 7 overall,

00:43:01   that is a difficult transition to go from

00:43:04   everyone who's got their apps that look like

00:43:05   the way they do now, and Apple says,

00:43:07   here's a new direction, and when they show their own apps,

00:43:11   like sure, they can make a mail match that,

00:43:13   and they can make a Safari match that or whatever,

00:43:14   but if you look at Safari and compare it

00:43:15   to the old version of Safari, and if you were to say,

00:43:18   okay, well, that's how much Safari had to change

00:43:21   to match into the aesthetic and functional

00:43:24   and conceptual model.

00:43:25   Now take your app and how it looks,

00:43:27   you have to change as much as Safari changed,

00:43:28   and that's a lot, that's not a little,

00:43:30   it's not like, oh, just make your toolbar work,

00:43:31   because Safari is just wildly different

00:43:33   in terms of how the toolbars work and how,

00:43:36   it's practically a new app in terms of the UI,

00:43:39   like none of the UI is shared,

00:43:40   like the web rendering engine is shared and improved,

00:43:42   but that's a lot of work to be able

00:43:44   to fit into this new world.

00:43:45   So it might be kind of like Apple's apps

00:43:47   fit into this new world, and then you launch someone else's app, and it looks a little

00:43:51   different but the conceptual sort of physics model of how it works is the same.

00:43:54   You're sliding things in and out, and I guess you've got the new animations on the sheets

00:43:58   that come up and stuff like that, but you're not going to be getting any, like, I guess

00:44:02   the picker has its little, I don't know.

00:44:06   It might be weird to use this on day one and see all the built-in apps looking this way

00:44:12   and all of the third-party apps looking like iOS 6 with a fresh coat of paint.

00:44:16   Right, and the thing—there were two things that struck me about it.

00:44:19   The first was, the way I would describe iOS 6 is, how would you make something look 3D

00:44:25   when you only have two dimensions to play with?

00:44:27   And you would have—and I don't know the design-y terms to describe it, but that's

00:44:31   kind of how it felt, was, let's take something that's flat and let's pretend that it's

00:44:35   not.

00:44:36   You put shading on it.

00:44:37   Right.

00:44:38   And iOS 7 is—obviously the screen is still flat, but iOS 7 is, now we are putting some

00:44:43   actual depth into the interface and it's not a fake anymore, it's real.

00:44:48   And what are we going to do about that?

00:44:50   And so that, I think, to me was the most striking difference.

00:44:53   And then in terms of what you were saying about the apps, the funny thing about it is,

00:44:58   as time went on with iOS 6 or, you know, iOS visual interface Gen 1, everyone got more

00:45:04   and more away from standard UI kit elements.

00:45:09   And so, for example, my little app that I have in the App Store, it looks extraordinarily

00:45:14   dated now because I never really bothered with appearance proxies or anything like that.

00:45:19   I never did custom UI elements.

00:45:21   And so now, at this very moment, or at least up until today, it looked very old.

00:45:26   But I downloaded the new Xcode and ran it in the new Xcode, and it actually looked just

00:45:33   fine.

00:45:34   the advantage of staying with, you know, standard UIKit elements is I blended reasonably well

00:45:40   right off the bat.

00:45:41   And I'm not saying that that's going to be true for everyone.

00:45:43   It's just it's funny to me that all these people who went really wild with really, really

00:45:48   custom user interfaces because they kind of had to in order to stand out, now we're going

00:45:52   to kind of have to pay the price.

00:45:54   It depends, in certain cases.

00:45:55   Some developers could smell where the wind was blowing, though, like our friend underscore

00:45:59   David Smith, whose weather app, who I can't remember the name of.

00:46:02   Check the weather.

00:46:03   Like, he brought up a control and he was testing it on iOS 7 and I said, "Oh, is that the new

00:46:08   like OS player control?"

00:46:09   Actually, this wasn't the weather app, it was some other app that he makes use too many

00:46:12   of them.

00:46:13   And he said, "No, that's a..."

00:46:14   I believe it was feed wrangling.

00:46:15   Yeah.

00:46:16   And he said, "That's a UI that I drew."

00:46:17   And I'm like, "Well, that looks like iOS 7 already."

00:46:18   And Twitterific is another great example of another app that sort of, you know, and the

00:46:22   weather app itself, like, they are the Yahoo weather app for that matter.

00:46:28   They reacted to the same, I mean, Microsoft, is it because Microsoft came out with Metro?

00:46:32   Like that same—the direction the wind is blowing is that way.

00:46:35   So if you did a custom UI and you did it in this theme, your app will not necessarily

00:46:39   look out of place, at least in a static screenshot, in iOS 7.

00:46:43   And those people have got to be like, "Wow, this is great.

00:46:45   I don't have that much work to do."

00:46:47   Whereas the guys with super-duper 3D rounded custom buttons that are trying to look like

00:46:51   the OS buttons in iOS 6 but not really, they have a lot of work to do.

00:46:55   Because you cannot put one of those buttons on a screen, on an iOS 7 screen.

00:46:59   It sticks out like a sore thumb.

00:47:00   Yeah, that's why there's really gonna be I mean this I think by far is going to be the iOS release that has

00:47:06   developers needing to do the most work and

00:47:09   and and you know, you're right that you know, I

00:47:11   Think there's there's gonna be the two extremes of developers who use UI kit controls mostly unmodified

00:47:18   will be pretty much fine with almost no changes and

00:47:21   People who make their entire interface custom they're gonna be fine, too

00:47:28   - Especially if the look they chose matches iOS 7.

00:47:30   - Correct. - If they've made it

00:47:31   entirely custom and everything has grass growing on it,

00:47:33   well then they're kind of screwed.

00:47:34   - Like I worry a little bit about Tweetbot.

00:47:36   Like how, like that style, that might not fit in well

00:47:40   with the new, with iOS's new style.

00:47:42   Like the whole style of like, you know,

00:47:44   like those richly colored and gradiented apps

00:47:48   that have all the, you know, like all custom stuff.

00:47:50   - That is kind of custom too.

00:47:51   Like what if you just left it like that?

00:47:53   And then you go out of this OS

00:47:54   and then you're into Tweetbot.

00:47:55   Like doesn't your app become even more distinctive

00:47:57   - Yeah, Mike.

00:47:58   - As like a heavy, I mean, well, you know.

00:47:59   - I guess we'll have to see.

00:48:01   - The other choice is redesign your whole freaking app.

00:48:03   Every single button in control.

00:48:04   - Yeah, I think you're right.

00:48:05   Like, Twitterific is a good example of like how

00:48:06   they lucked out big time.

00:48:08   I mean, you know, they saw where the style was going also,

00:48:10   but it was very clear like Twitterific,

00:48:13   when it came out, looked totally radical

00:48:15   and now it's looking like, oh, that was,

00:48:17   that's gonna fit in very well.

00:48:19   But I think, so it's the developers who were in the middle

00:48:23   who are going to have probably the most work to do,

00:48:25   which is, and which I've always been in this camp,

00:48:27   especially with Instapaper.

00:48:28   With the magazine I did a lot of custom stuff,

00:48:30   but with Instapaper I was always in the camp of

00:48:33   use UI kit stuff and then modify it slightly,

00:48:36   or modify it to do things that it can't do.

00:48:39   So you fake this shape or you fake this pixel.

00:48:43   If that's been your approach,

00:48:46   I think there's gonna be a lot of work to do.

00:48:47   - What about the iPad version of Instapaper?

00:48:50   That looks like it had weird custom stuff on the side,

00:48:52   doesn't it?

00:48:53   - The iPad version will actually be okay

00:48:54   because the iPad version was almost entirely custom.

00:48:58   I think Instapaper for iPhone is gonna have some issues.

00:49:02   But fortunately it's not my problem anymore.

00:49:05   No, but--

00:49:06   - Tip to Guy English if you're listening.

00:49:07   - Right.

00:49:08   No, I think, and the magazine should be fine too.

00:49:11   But I think what you're really gonna have to consider

00:49:16   and what we're gonna see,

00:49:17   this is going to be an uncomfortable transition

00:49:20   this fall when this comes out for developers,

00:49:22   for users because so much is different.

00:49:25   I think apps that use mostly the old stuff,

00:49:28   even if you can get them to not look broken,

00:49:31   they will start feeling old and dated.

00:49:33   Like one of the biggest changes is the way

00:49:36   that like view controllers have this new depth

00:49:39   and they kind of push over.

00:49:40   They've almost adopted the basement interface metaphor

00:49:45   as like the way those things move

00:49:47   and are spatially arranged.

00:49:48   They've kind of adopted that for view controllers now,

00:49:51   like for the navigation pushes and stuff.

00:49:54   I think if your app uses the old style stuff

00:49:57   where you have full screen view controller

00:49:58   and then you're gonna push down to another level

00:50:00   and everything slides off screen and new things slides on,

00:50:03   if you're doing that a lot,

00:50:04   I think it's gonna start to feel old.

00:50:07   Even if it looks okay,

00:50:08   it's gonna feel like an antiquated design.

00:50:11   And there's so much new stuff with parallax, with physics,

00:50:16   and just new styles, new paradigms,

00:50:18   so much new stuff that I feel like

00:50:21   you're gonna have to significantly rethink your app

00:50:25   in a lot of cases to make it feel modern

00:50:28   and at home in iOS 7.

00:50:30   And I would really, I'd be shocked

00:50:34   if anybody could really pull it off very well

00:50:36   without dropping support for iOS 6 and before.

00:50:39   - Yeah, I think the biggest visual trend,

00:50:41   aside from all the stuff that's obvious,

00:50:43   like looking at the pictures, is this was a big trend

00:50:46   back in the earlier iOS days,

00:50:48   and developers of their own accord have been abandoning it.

00:50:50   But back in the old days, every single freaking app had a top bar and a toolbar thing on the

00:50:54   bottom.

00:50:55   I forget what the names of those are, right?

00:50:56   And now--

00:50:57   - Navigation bar on the toolbar.

00:50:58   - Right, and now they're like, people started to give them up.

00:50:59   First they gave up the bottom one and tried to do everything with the top one.

00:51:02   Then they tried to have the top one so you could hide it.

00:51:03   And Apple's apps in iOS 7, it's like everything is full screen.

00:51:07   Your controls, if they're there at all, have to be minimal and maybe make them disappear

00:51:11   when people aren't using them.

00:51:12   It's just like your app fills the entire screen from top to bottom, including even the status

00:51:16   bar, which is now translucent.

00:51:17   And your app is drawing underneath that.

00:51:19   I mean, it's not so much you can do because the status bar is gonna have stuff in it.

00:51:21   It's not like you can draw there, but that is a totally different philosophy.

00:51:25   And it's kind of weird that the screen got taller and they said, "Also ditch those stupid

00:51:29   bars on top and the bottom."

00:51:30   Like, you just get everything out of there.

00:51:34   And that's part of the thing that looks old about it is when you see, like, it's like

00:51:37   a hat and a belt.

00:51:38   It's got a utility belt on the bottom and it's got this headband or hat on the top and

00:51:42   then this little...

00:51:43   And then it makes the already small window and through those two things you can see your

00:51:46   app hiding behind it and those are like the button controls and now it's like

00:51:50   maybe some wispy words in a small font at the top and maybe maybe you know

00:51:54   nothing on the bottom and then everything disappears when you scroll

00:51:57   and if you tap that the words come back and you can tap them that is like you

00:52:02   will have to change your application and that's why like you said like you can't

00:52:05   just say okay well I'll just have I'll just do conditionals and say if you're

00:52:08   on iOS extra crazy-ass toolbars but if you're not that you're making two apps

00:52:11   at that right you can't like you can't change your entire interface or like

00:52:15   fundamental parts of its navigation for just iOS 7 and keep all of it. I mean that's

00:52:20   just ridiculous. I don't know. And I think this is obviously the beginning of a new paradigm

00:52:27   in a lot of ways and I don't think Apple got everything right. And you know like we

00:52:32   said earlier I think the icons are pretty rough. One of my friends described the icons

00:52:40   as they look like somebody's first illustrator project

00:52:44   and that I think is pretty apt.

00:52:46   I'm shocked at how bad they are honestly.

00:52:50   - The thing is that they're bold.

00:52:52   They're not, because I can imagine icon designs

00:52:55   that fit exactly with this aesthetic

00:52:57   that do not look as ugly.

00:52:58   Like, desaturate the colors.

00:53:00   Like, they could, think of the super desaturated

00:53:02   like OS X things when they took all the color

00:53:04   out of the sidebar icons or whatever.

00:53:05   You could do a super desaturated subtle version

00:53:08   where all this is just beautiful, simple, flat line art.

00:53:11   I'm saying flat to mean they have not shaded stuff

00:53:14   to make it look like it's puffy.

00:53:15   Like everything is, you know what I mean?

00:53:16   Like it's supposed to be like ink drawing printed on paper.

00:53:20   Just don't use like bright pink and bright purple

00:53:22   and like don't use such saturated colors.

00:53:25   And it would still fit with the aesthetics theme

00:53:27   because the aesthetics theme is like,

00:53:28   oh, the buttons don't have borders around them.

00:53:30   They're just words.

00:53:32   And the words have a color to let you know

00:53:34   that they're active.

00:53:36   Like that theme is not in itself ugly

00:53:38   and is nice, but the icons are just like,

00:53:40   I'm pink and purple and I got a yellow pointy thing

00:53:44   on my spinny dial and I'm safari and newsstand,

00:53:46   look at me, I got Fisher Price books on my,

00:53:48   and god, Game Center, like they got rid of this

00:53:51   stupid green felt, but now it's like,

00:53:53   just giant blobs of jello, it feels like a Barney show

00:53:56   or just like a preschool.

00:53:58   I found the felt and like the parlor game thing insulting,

00:54:01   I find this insulting too, like they just do not,

00:54:03   they still do not understand how gamers would like

00:54:06   to see themselves or how they identify

00:54:08   And maybe they don't care because they're not making something for gamers, but it's

00:54:12   not attractive.

00:54:13   - And going back a sec, just to finish that thought, I think they are starting this whole

00:54:18   new paradigm, and they didn't get everything right.

00:54:21   I think a lot of this stuff, a lot of things now are more gesture-based and therefore are

00:54:26   harder to discover.

00:54:27   A lot of things that are buttons or are things that cause things to happen don't look like

00:54:33   buttons anymore.

00:54:34   And it's like there's all these changes that,

00:54:37   some of them I think we can agree,

00:54:40   like John Gruber wrote a pretty good post last night

00:54:42   about how the training wheels are no longer necessarily,

00:54:47   people know how to work touchscreen devices now

00:54:49   and you don't need everything to look like a button

00:54:51   and things like that.

00:54:52   And I think that's true,

00:54:53   but I think Apple might have gone a little bit too far

00:54:57   in the direction, and I think time will tell

00:54:59   whether they have to course correct a little bit or not.

00:55:01   But ultimately, I think whatever Apple and developers do

00:55:05   with this this year, we're gonna have to revise

00:55:09   significantly next year.

00:55:10   But just once we see this thing in action,

00:55:11   once the whole world is using this new paradigm

00:55:15   and these new standards, then we can start making changes

00:55:18   and seeing how it works in real use.

00:55:21   But I think it's gonna be a really uncomfortable

00:55:24   transition period while we all figure this out.

00:55:26   I think it's exciting.

00:55:28   I think Apple has a lot of revision they need to do

00:55:31   with the styling of it, but I think it's exciting overall.

00:55:33   Like, I like the animations, I like,

00:55:36   basically to clarify what I like, I hate the icons,

00:55:39   and I hate some of the text and layout decisions

00:55:42   they've made, but I love the 3D stuff,

00:55:44   I love the depth, I love the animations,

00:55:46   that stuff, that all rocks for me.

00:55:49   - And the best example of the training wheels thing

00:55:51   I think is the lock screen, because everyone knows

00:55:53   how to slide down lock by now, and it still says

00:55:56   slide down lock, and it still has an animation

00:55:58   that goes from left to right, but it no longer looks like

00:56:00   little inset plastic thing that you drag along a little track cut into the top of your phone.

00:56:05   They no longer need that.

00:56:06   But I think on the other hand, one of the things that we all know, you know the little

00:56:10   -- what is it, the rectangle icon with the arrow leaping out of it to the right?

00:56:14   The share thing?

00:56:16   Or the fact that the gear menu is setting?

00:56:18   Nerds know what those things are.

00:56:19   But I've seen plenty of regular people using iOS devices, and they don't know how to share

00:56:23   a photo, despite the fact that seven apps that they've used have shown in all seven

00:56:28   that little square with the arrow leaping out of it is probably like how you share something.

00:56:32   The word "share" is more of an affordance for them than that stupid little icon.

00:56:38   And again, despite the fact that icons are used everywhere, you think you would pick

00:56:41   up the pattern, like, "Oh, when I want to share something from the app, I hit that little

00:56:43   rectangle."

00:56:44   Now that it actually says "share" and the fact that it's blue everywhere, it shows you

00:56:48   can tap it, I think that actually is a trade-off in the other direction.

00:56:52   And they made an emphasis on that, like, "We're using words instead of icons," because sometimes

00:56:55   Sometimes icons can be inscrutable, and even though nerds pick up the patterns really quickly,

00:56:59   regular people don't.

00:57:00   So it's interesting that they're not hand-holding you on it, because once you learn SwipedOpen,

00:57:05   no one forgets that.

00:57:06   It's like, that's it.

00:57:07   You know it, you do it a bazillion times, it's burned into your memory, it only happens

00:57:11   in one place, the context is clear, maybe people aren't learning gear as settings, or

00:57:15   share as that little rectangle thing, and it's better to have the words on them.

00:57:18   So I think they're trying to react to a population that is learning how to use smartphones, but

00:57:23   the same time recognizing the things that people are failing to accomplish with smartphones

00:57:27   because of these stupid inscrutable icons.

00:57:29   Exactly.

00:57:30   Yeah, and to go back to what you were saying, Marco, about the animations, the animation

00:57:34   to go between an app and the home screen, it's hard to describe, but I love it.

00:57:39   I think it's really well done.

00:57:41   I think it looks great.

00:57:43   The new multitasking setup, I feel like something's just a little off about it.

00:57:47   Perhaps the little screenshot of whatever app you're looking at needs to be a little

00:57:50   bigger or something.

00:57:51   It doesn't feel right.

00:57:52   Like, I think even Palm OS felt better, which is a very similar metaphor.

00:57:55   Yeah, and I'm not sure what specifically doesn't feel right.

00:57:58   I am totally thumbs up on the premise of it.

00:58:01   I think it's a lot better than what we've got with the little multitasking tray in iOS

00:58:05   6.

00:58:06   But it didn't feel right, but I'm totally behind the principle of it.

00:58:10   And just those little affordances, just that animation to the home screen and the multitasking

00:58:14   gesture, the multitasking view, that alone makes me clamor for putting this on my carry

00:58:21   which I'm not going to do because I did that with iOS 5 and I hated myself for it.

00:58:24   Yeah, by the way, we've seen a few of our friends have put this on their carry phones.

00:58:28   And we've seen the reboot.

00:58:29   And I would not recommend installing the iOS 7 beta on your carry phone.

00:58:33   It looks, I didn't do it, thank God, but it looks like it's pretty unstable and not ready

00:58:39   at all.

00:58:40   Put it on the night phone only.

00:58:41   I think it's interesting too that the iPad beta is not out yet and that they didn't show

00:58:47   anything on iPads yet.

00:58:49   They flashed up a static screenshot, I think.

00:58:53   - Which was probably fake.

00:58:54   - I mean, ever since the iPad has existed since 2010,

00:58:59   and since iOS 3.2, it's always had a crazy mix

00:59:04   of just blown up iPhone UI and its own custom stuff.

00:59:09   And generally, iPad apps that used stock UI kit stuff

00:59:13   looked way worse than iPhone apps

00:59:15   that used stock UI kit stuff.

00:59:17   And I wonder if they're gonna take this opportunity,

00:59:20   well, if they're either gonna take this opportunity

00:59:22   to make the iPad version more distinct

00:59:25   from the iPhone version,

00:59:26   or if they went into this design

00:59:29   trying to make just one design that looked better on both,

00:59:32   rather than have a phone design

00:59:34   that just blows up kind of to iPad.

00:59:36   - But it seems weird, like, going back to Safari,

00:59:38   do you want an iPad screen for the controls of Safari

00:59:42   just to disappear as soon as you start scrolling?

00:59:44   Because space is not as much of a premium.

00:59:46   you have that extra space.

00:59:47   So is the solution, oh, well, on an iPad,

00:59:50   the toolbar doesn't do that shrinking thing.

00:59:52   Or is that an opportunity to find out something

00:59:54   better you can do with it?

00:59:56   I don't know.

00:59:57   I think that's why the iPad always

00:59:58   feels like the redheaded stepchild is like,

01:00:01   it kind of gets a phone UI stretch or a custom thing

01:00:04   or whatever, but it's not--

01:00:05   Maybe now it doesn't.

01:00:06   Sometimes I don't feel like--

01:00:08   shouldn't they decide to do something

01:00:10   like make the standard UI on the iPad tailored to the iPad

01:00:15   and make it so you could make an app with all standard UI

01:00:19   on an iPad that both looks different from the iPhone

01:00:21   version and is better in ways to take advantage of the larger

01:00:24   screen.

01:00:26   Yeah, I guess we'll have to see what

01:00:27   happens when they show us the iPad version,

01:00:29   because we haven't seen any of it.

01:00:31   And again, we're all assuming it's like time pressure.

01:00:33   We have to have these things ready for the keynote.

01:00:36   What can we do?

01:00:37   Oh, how about we just take all resources off the iPad version

01:00:40   until after the keynote?

01:00:41   Fine.

01:00:42   That's the way there'd be the deadline.

01:00:44   And it's fine.

01:00:44   Whatever.

01:00:44   not doing until fall, but if you have an iPad app, now you're just kind of like twiddling

01:00:49   your thumbs going, "All right, well, I'm going to have to do something."

01:00:53   So there's a lot of other things iOS 7 related to talk about, but in terms of the visual

01:00:58   stuff, are we saying yes, no, or maybe?

01:01:00   I think I'm saying, to back you guys up, I like it-ish, I think it's jarring, but what

01:01:08   But John said especially earlier where you look at your current iOS 6 device and you

01:01:13   go, "Oh."

01:01:15   And so I think there's going to need to be some tweaks, but certainly it's looking a

01:01:19   lot more modern.

01:01:20   It's looking a lot more fresh.

01:01:22   And so I think I'm behind the changes, but I definitely want to put it on a device and

01:01:26   play with it for a while.

01:01:27   It was time for a change.

01:01:29   That's the bottom line.

01:01:30   Whatever it is, it was time for a change, and this is a change.

01:01:33   I mean, now people have already complained.

01:01:34   Like, oh, I think Jeff Atwood said, you know, oh, I've seen the future and it's just more

01:01:38   icons on a background.

01:01:39   Shockingly, Jeff Atwood didn't like something.

01:01:42   They didn't change that part of it, but the design language of the OS and even the fundamental

01:01:48   features like multitasking and stuff, this is a change.

01:01:51   A change was due, and I really do feel like we won't be able to look back at the old stuff.

01:01:55   Maybe we won't look at pinstripes awful, although I think that blue they used for the top bar

01:01:59   will look pinstripes awful.

01:02:00   I think it almost already does at that point.

01:02:03   And we have plenty of chances to refine this, because they've refined the current iOS look

01:02:09   that's changed drastically from 1.0, but it was clearly an evolution of a single beast.

01:02:12   And this is the first iteration of whatever this thing is.

01:02:15   So six more versions from this.

01:02:17   This thing could look very different, but still be a direct descendant of iOS 7.

01:02:22   So I'm excited to see a new stage in evolution, even if this is kind of the awkward half-form

01:02:27   embryonic version of it.

01:02:29   Yeah, I like the foundation they've laid out here.

01:02:33   And I like the direction they're heading.

01:02:35   I don't like a lot of the individual little choices they've made here, but that's going

01:02:41   to change over time.

01:02:42   That's going to be refined, and we'll see.

01:02:44   And we should also, before we run out of time, we should really talk a little bit about the

01:02:50   technical changes with -- I think the two big things going into it that were on most

01:02:57   people's wish lists were, at least most geeks wish lists,

01:03:01   were better multitasking and better inter-app

01:03:04   communication support, or at least some kind of like

01:03:07   contract or intense-like system.

01:03:09   And we got one of those, and we didn't get the other one.

01:03:11   And I think that's probably worth talking about, right?

01:03:14   I mean, so we didn't get the Android-like intense

01:03:19   or the Windows-like contract systems where an app can say,

01:03:22   I know how to share photos, who can take a photo?

01:03:26   or I want to share a URL or I can open URL

01:03:30   so whenever anyone else has a URL to share,

01:03:32   show my app as something they can send it to.

01:03:35   Things like that.

01:03:36   We didn't get anything like that as far as we know.

01:03:37   - Or changing the default apps, leveraging a system like that.

01:03:39   - Correct, right, yeah, being able to say

01:03:41   I'm gonna use Chrome as my default browser or whatever.

01:03:43   Yeah, we didn't get that either.

01:03:44   So that's a big thing, a huge feature

01:03:48   or a huge category of features

01:03:50   that we just simply did not get.

01:03:53   But we did get substantially improved multitasking.

01:03:57   That is going to be major for, not for all apps,

01:04:02   a lot of apps have worked just fine

01:04:03   in the current method of multitasking,

01:04:06   but having those periodic background wake ups

01:04:10   and being able to wake up on push notifications

01:04:11   for all apps, not just new stand ups once a day,

01:04:14   now it's for all apps and you can set the polling intervals

01:04:18   and it'll try to poll when the phone's woken up,

01:04:20   when the person checks the time or whatever,

01:04:22   That's really cool and that's gonna make things like,

01:04:25   you know, news apps and Twitter apps and you know, social.

01:04:28   - Hot test clients.

01:04:29   - Yeah, so many things it's gonna make just awesome.

01:04:33   - It will make your phone feel faster.

01:04:35   - Exactly.

01:04:36   - Because when you launch an app,

01:04:37   the stuff will already be there

01:04:39   and it won't be a launch app, watch a spinner,

01:04:41   watch a spinner, watch a spinner.

01:04:41   - Right, wait for everything to load.

01:04:42   - Wait, load the new updates,

01:04:44   like hopefully they'll be there.

01:04:45   - And presumably, I hope Apple has done that

01:04:48   also with their own apps with things like iCloud updates.

01:04:50   Like, I've always hated how, you know,

01:04:52   like you launch Calendar or whatever

01:04:54   and all your stuff pops in a few seconds later.

01:04:56   - If you're lucky.

01:04:56   - Right, yeah, because it wasn't,

01:04:59   even though you edited these things

01:05:00   three hours ago on your desktop,

01:05:01   you know, the app never checked.

01:05:03   - It never had a chance to run.

01:05:04   - Exactly, and yeah, even Apple stuff

01:05:07   was bad about that before, so maybe,

01:05:09   I hope they've taken this opportunity

01:05:11   to fix their own stuff in that way too.

01:05:13   I mean, it looks like this is a pretty solid feature update.

01:05:17   You know, they have a lot of text and font improvements too.

01:05:20   I mean, it looks like a pretty great update for APIs and for developers.

01:05:25   Yeah, and what I liked about the multitasking stuff is that, I mean, we couldn't talk about

01:05:30   the particulars even if we knew them, but we don't know them anyhow.

01:05:33   But it seemed like one of the things I was really worried about was if they took the

01:05:37   Android approach of every app can install a daemon that can live and run forever.

01:05:41   And obviously that's not Apple style, but we weren't entirely sure if they were going

01:05:46   to just be marginally less restrictive.

01:05:49   And there's an argument that that's what they did, but it's certainly less restrictive enough

01:05:52   that it should make a really notable positive difference, and yet also restrictive enough

01:05:58   that I don't think our batteries will last half as long because things start downloading

01:06:04   in the background.

01:06:05   Yeah, the key feature is apps that you don't use eventually fade away, and that is the

01:06:09   thing that kills your stupid phone if you have like, if it's a free-for-all and you

01:06:12   download some stupid app and you forget about it and then you don't understand why your

01:06:15   battery is dying and you blame it on the app you downloaded today, but really it was the

01:06:18   app you downloaded three days ago that keeps running in the background and doing something,

01:06:21   like those apps will just no longer be given a chance to run in the background by iOS,

01:06:26   because it will say, "Look, the user does not run you.

01:06:29   You never get a chance to run in the background."

01:06:30   I wonder if it will actually turn off your push notifications.

01:06:32   That would be interesting.

01:06:35   But yeah, because people could work around it.

01:06:37   I'm trying to think of, if you are malicious and you are an annoying thing and you just

01:06:41   want to load your ads or something, could you make an app that constantly receives push

01:06:44   notifications and constantly wakes up and drains your battery?

01:06:46   I guess we'll see.

01:06:47   When it gets back to the OS X Mavericks feature where you can rate applications by how much

01:06:52   energy they're using, they still have not brought that to iOS.

01:06:56   Your process viewer where you find your Android has that "here's what used your battery power"

01:07:00   but on OS X they feel okay about it.

01:07:03   Maybe they'll bring it to iOS soon, maybe it'll be in the shipping version, who knows.

01:07:08   I think overall though this is a solid update and the OS X update looks pretty good too.

01:07:14   I'm very happy with what they announced.

01:07:15   We didn't get everything we wanted, but we got a lot of it.

01:07:17   It was not boring.

01:07:18   Not boring at all.

01:07:19   Definitely not.

01:07:20   No, not boring.

01:07:21   And I mean, I really think that they came out swinging.

01:07:23   I know we've said that a few times now, but the air in the room, whether or not it came

01:07:27   across in the video, was that Apple was fired up.

01:07:31   They were—I don't know if "angry" is the right word, but they were ready to fight back.

01:07:37   They've been sitting around working on things quietly, and now they're ready to say to the

01:07:42   world, "Hey, screw you.

01:07:44   We never left."

01:07:45   back. We never even left. When we didn't even mention iRadio, which is like, and we got

01:07:48   one of those too. Right, yeah. By the way. We just bolted on a complete Pandora clone.

01:07:52   Right, for less money. Yeah, built into everything. Yeah, that looks like it's gonna be awesome.

01:07:58   Between Marco and I, we counted probably five or ten or fifteen different apps or companies

01:08:05   that had some serious thinking to do after the keynote. I mean, it was impressive. And

01:08:10   you know what's great about this? Just overall, this is gonna make everyone start talking

01:08:14   about Apple a lot more than they have been.

01:08:16   You know, Apple has lost so much of the attention

01:08:18   and the interest of the press and of reviewers and of nerds

01:08:21   'cause everyone else has been doing all these crazy things

01:08:23   and Apple's been kind of resting on its laurels

01:08:24   apparently to the public, but now they come out

01:08:27   with all this crazy new stuff and now they're back

01:08:30   in the discussion and we have a lot of work to do

01:08:34   and we have a lot to see and I'm very excited about that.

01:08:37   - It would be great if it was a one-two punch

01:08:38   and the next iPhone was the iPhone 6

01:08:40   with the new physical design.

01:08:41   I'm not predicting that, but boy that would be--

01:08:43   That would really, like, you know, they do it.

01:08:45   What if they come out with, like, a bigger screen version this fall?

01:08:47   Yeah, like, I mean, they're setting up because, you know, that's usually their big thing these

01:08:51   days is, like, oh, a new iPhone is out.

01:08:53   This was not a -- there was no new iPhone here, but they did all this stuff, and they

01:08:56   didn't even do the new iPhones.

01:08:57   Like, the new iPhone, you know, we all just assume it's going to be the form factor, but,

01:09:03   like, imagine you could -- imagine a device that matches up with iOS 7, right?

01:09:09   Yeah.

01:09:10   And that's kind of the idea they're going for.

01:09:11   I mean, they talked briefly but sternly about collaboration being a really important part

01:09:16   of iOS 7 and that, you know, the design of the device should inform the design of the

01:09:22   software.

01:09:24   And so you make a very good point that it very well could happen.

01:09:27   And I think the thing that made me laugh the most was when Schiller, it was Schiller, right,

01:09:32   that was doing the Mac Pro bit and he said, you know, what was his quote?

01:09:38   innovate anymore my ass."

01:09:40   [laughter]

01:09:41   Yeah, and then they put the camera on Steve Wozniak in the audience, and I think he might

01:09:46   have written an article once that said, or been in an interview once that said Apple's

01:09:49   innovating anymore.

01:09:50   I don't want to throw Woz under the bus.

01:09:51   I think you should have googled that beforehand, and I think that's why they put the camera

01:09:54   on him as soon as he said, "Can't innovate anymore my ass."

01:09:57   And whatever you think of that Mac Pro, and maybe people think, "Oh, it's not innovating,"

01:10:01   that is not a regular computer.

01:10:02   That is not like we made a box and put CPUs in it and RAM and stuff.

01:10:06   - Yeah, and regardless of whether we're gonna complain

01:10:11   about its lack of hard drives or slots,

01:10:12   that is innovative, that's for sure.

01:10:14   - Yeah.

01:10:15   - All right, I think we should wrap it up.

01:10:17   This is, we still have so much more to talk about

01:10:19   for these things, but we, I guess we'll have more

01:10:21   to talk about next week once we are fully,

01:10:24   once we're packed full of stuff that we can't talk about

01:10:25   from the end yet.

01:10:26   - Exactly.

01:10:27   - But this is great, I'm really looking forward

01:10:29   to all this stuff.

01:10:30   Thanks a lot to our sponsors, Backblaze,

01:10:32   go to backblaze.com/atp for awesome unlimited online backup,

01:10:36   and Windows Azure Mobile Services,

01:10:38   go to windowsazure.com/ios to learn more about that.

01:10:41   And thanks again to our podcast studio hosts,

01:10:43   Jason Snell and Macworld,

01:10:45   for letting us use this awesome studio.

01:10:48   Thanks a lot Jason and Macworld,

01:10:49   this helped us out a great deal.

01:10:51   And all you listeners should thank them too,

01:10:53   because now we can actually get the show out this week,

01:10:56   and not leave you all hanging.

01:10:58   So thanks a lot guys, and we'll talk to you next week.

01:11:01   - Sounds good.

01:11:02   (upbeat music)

01:11:05   Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin

01:11:09   'Cause it was accidental (accidental)

01:11:12   Oh, it was accidental (accidental)

01:11:15   John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him

01:11:20   'Cause it was accidental (accidental)

01:11:23   Oh, it was accidental (accidental)

01:11:26   And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm

01:11:31   And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them

01:11:35   @C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S

01:11:40   So that's Kasey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

01:11:44   N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-D

01:11:46   S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-C-U-S-A

01:11:52   It's accidental, accidental

01:11:55   They didn't mean to

01:11:57   Accidental, accidental

01:12:00   Tech.cast so long

01:12:05   I don't have a sign off.

01:12:07   Hey!

01:12:09   Hey, he's back!

01:12:11   I'm gonna open the door so you don't die any more than you've already done.

01:12:13   You wanna say hi in an After Dark something?

01:12:15   Hi everybody.

01:12:17   Alright.

01:12:18   Oh, actually that mic's off.

01:12:20   That one's off, yeah.

01:12:21   That's right.

01:12:22   You're welcome, Marco.

01:12:24   Alright.