00:00:00 ◼ ► I've got two special guests here. Welcome to the talk show. Ben Sandofsky and Sebastian DeWitt.
00:00:06 ◼ ► You two are the co-founders, co-partners, co-makers of Lux. Is that that's the company name?
00:00:18 ◼ ► Lux Optics, incorporated legally in our filed paperwork. I love it. I love it. That's a little
00:00:27 ◼ ► bit like in the paperwork. My company is the Daring Fireball company. And when I filed the paperwork,
00:00:35 ◼ ► my accountant was like, "Why not just Daring Fireball? Doesn't that make more sense?" And
00:00:39 ◼ ► I was like, "Yeah, but I kind of want like the old timey feel." I wanted to sound like it's been
00:00:44 ◼ ► around since like 1907 or something like that. Best known for Halide, the professional camera app
00:00:53 ◼ ► for the iPhone. And you guys now have a second app, Orion, which we'll talk about later. But
00:00:58 ◼ ► welcome to the show. Before we talk about your work, we've got upcoming news. Apple has surprised
00:01:04 ◼ ► us with a evening online event next Monday, as we speak with the headline Scary Fast. And a pretty
00:01:15 ◼ ► obvious strong hint with the animation that turns into the Finder logo, which I guess is also the
00:01:21 ◼ ► unofficial Mac logo that this is a Mac-oriented event. What do you guys think? There was a lot of
00:01:28 ◼ ► speculation before this event that there'd be no new Macs this year, and now something, but nobody
00:01:34 ◼ ► really knows what, which I think is super exciting. I think so far, just like the rumor conflicts in
00:01:41 ◼ ► the last part of this year have been the most amusing to me, because there was that whole
00:01:45 ◼ ► iPad thing. I'm not sure if you follow that, but there were a bunch of people who said there was
00:01:49 ◼ ► going to be new iPads, and then we just got a new pencil. And now there are people saying,
00:01:59 ◼ ► there's nothing coming anymore. And now we've got, we don't know what we're getting. I still
00:02:05 ◼ ► want to believe we're going to get something super out of left field, and it's going to be
00:02:19 ◼ ► press release that Mac OS would be delayed because they had to pull off engineers, right?
00:02:24 ◼ ► So I imagine everyone in the company working on all the frameworks and everything is super focused
00:02:29 ◼ ► on getting a vision pro out. So we're going to see some speed bumps, but we're like, this wouldn't be
00:02:35 ◼ ► the year that you'd see something revolutionary. And it occurred to me, the one thing, if I had
00:02:40 ◼ ► to guess is they're probably going to give a release date for Resident Evil 4, just because
00:02:43 ◼ ► that ties into Halloween. And they kind of didn't announce that it would be coming to the Mac.
00:02:52 ◼ ► the date in the app store is a placeholder of December 31st, because you always think of
00:03:01 ◼ ► Resident Evil the day of, and it'll, it'll, they'll, there'll probably be a narrative around
00:03:06 ◼ ► gaming on the Mac finally, because that's also what they were pushing over summer with the cross
00:03:10 ◼ ► compatibility stuff. And some people were able to hack it already using, I guess the SDKs to run PC
00:03:15 ◼ ► games on the Mac. So I'm guessing it'll be gaming focused in some, in some horror cutesy skits.
00:03:21 ◼ ► That's good. That's really good. Yeah. They're, I, I almost feel bad for them. I guess it's better
00:03:31 ◼ ► than nothing, but they they've been promoting the heck out of both of these Resident Evil titles
00:03:37 ◼ ► for, I don't know if it's even a full year, but you know, obviously a lot larger on iOS,
00:03:42 ◼ ► but you know, they, they came up at WWDC, they keep coming up, right. And it's like the,
00:03:47 ◼ ► it's fair to call it a dearth of AAA games for the Mac, right? The Mac is not in a great shape for
00:03:56 ◼ ► AAA games. And there's a whole bunch of reasons for that. We can actually delve into them, but
00:04:05 ◼ ► the Resident Evil ones, I guess, are written to metal APIs, which is why they're able to like,
00:04:13 ◼ ► what, wasn't the demo at WWDC when they talked about the built-in ray tracing support and the
00:04:19 ◼ ► GPU and the A17 Pro, I think they showed the Resident Evil was the footage taking advantage
00:04:25 ◼ ► of it. They also had a demo that Apple itself wrote. It was sort of like a pretend game,
00:04:30 ◼ ► which sort of speaks to how few games there are that they had to sort of make, like, it was like
00:04:35 ◼ ► some kind of futuristic spaceship metal hallway type thing. And they're like, here it is running
00:04:41 ◼ ► at 12 frames per second on an older chip. And here it is with ray tracing running at a full 60 frames
00:04:46 ◼ ► per second, blah, blah, blah. But the Resident Evil games are the few, the handful of major
00:04:51 ◼ ► titles that, that actually could run great on the Mac. So I def and the Halloween tie-in. Yeah.
00:04:58 ◼ ► Right. Yeah. That seems like a really good shoe in. And there's a, so there's a certain irony in
00:05:04 ◼ ► Resident Evil 4 specifically, because this is the remake and the original version that came out for
00:05:09 ◼ ► GameCube in 2002 was announced was at a time when Nintendo was in trouble. Like they didn't have any
00:05:14 ◼ ► third-party devs building for GameCube. So there was a set of games called the Capcom 5, which were
00:05:20 ◼ ► all a sensibly at the time going to be GameCube exclusives. And it kind of injected new life in
00:05:25 ◼ ► the system and Resident Evil 4 was like the tent pole of that. And it ended up being like one of
00:05:30 ◼ ► the most influential games of that whole era. So there's something funny about now Apple partnering
00:05:35 ◼ ► with Capcom, although it wasn't a launch title. iOS wasn't the launch title for Resident Evil 4
00:05:41 ◼ ► this time, but there's just something funny that they're sort of playing that game to try to prove
00:05:44 ◼ ► to people we can do AAA gaming, just like with black magic design. There's just certain partners
00:05:49 ◼ ► that Apple loves to work with and be like, look what we can do with the system. If you really
00:05:53 ◼ ► like lean into it. Yeah. Ben, are you a long time Nintendo fan? I guess, yeah, I had a Nintendo set
00:05:59 ◼ ► of a Genesis, so I guess that that shows my divide. Yeah. Yeah. I guess I stopped gaming
00:06:05 ◼ ► right when I got a job at a school and then, so I missed that whole era. And then as I've gotten
00:06:10 ◼ ► older, I've been able to rediscover the games I couldn't afford when I was growing up. So,
00:06:14 ◼ ► so you're like more of a retro gamer. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Although I can't, I can't do that on my
00:06:20 ◼ ► iPhone, but yeah. Yeah. I'm sort of the same way. I grew up. I love it. It is. I would say one of
00:06:27 ◼ ► the most, if you could talk to my teenage or even college age self, I think the most surprising thing
00:06:37 ◼ ► my younger self would learn about my now 50 year old self is that I no longer really play video
00:06:43 ◼ ► games. I mean, honestly, I think my younger self would be like, Oh my God, did I have a stroke or
00:06:48 ◼ ► something? Is it, is something wrong with me? But for me and it's been, it sounds like something
00:06:54 ◼ ► similar sort of happened. It was like, once I started working, working, it's like something
00:07:02 ◼ ► had to give time wise. And for me, it was video games. It's like, I still watch lots of movies
00:07:09 ◼ ► late at night. Like, I guess that's the time I'd spend, but I just don't play games anymore,
00:07:12 ◼ ► but I appreciate it. But I'm the same way. Like we have a switch and we have two switches cause my
00:07:18 ◼ ► son took one to college, but the one that's hooked up in our living room, the games I'm most likely
00:07:23 ◼ ► to play are like classic arcade games that I got dig dug. It's just, just like the 1987 coin op dig
00:07:32 ◼ ► dug or something like that. And I got, they re they re-released my beloved golden eye for the
00:07:40 ◼ ► Nintendo 64. Oh yeah. So I play that, but I don't, I'm not, I'm not really up on the new games. I was
00:07:48 ◼ ► thinking about getting this new Mario game that came out. I feel like one of these days I got to
00:07:52 ◼ ► get one of these new games. I know I do not want to play. What's that one that everybody spends like
00:07:58 ◼ ► 300 hours playing breath of the wild. Yeah. Zelda, the Zelda games. And I read about them. I enjoy
00:08:07 ◼ ► reading the reviews. I guess the game tracks how many hours you play. And I have friends who they're
00:08:12 ◼ ► like hundreds of hours in and I'm like, I don't know where that time would come from. Like that
00:08:17 ◼ ► game terrifies me because I'm afraid that I would like it. You know, I played an hour and a half
00:08:23 ◼ ► opening of it and it's a tutorial that shows you all the mechanics and like, it's supposed to be
00:08:29 ◼ ► a sandbox. I get it, but I'm like, I, if I can't get through the tutorial one sitting, I have a
00:08:33 ◼ ► list of games for like my retirement. Like I'm going to play through all the like a hundred hour
00:08:38 ◼ ► final fantasy games. So you know, as I'm getting ready to shuffle off my mortal coil, I can just
00:08:43 ◼ ► check off all of these experiences, but like now the Mario one what's remarkable also, and this
00:08:49 ◼ ► like speaks to Nintendo specifically is they were saying that there's like no game passes to it.
00:08:54 ◼ ► You don't have to buy the platinum to your game. It's like a $60 game. You plug it in and you just
00:08:59 ◼ ► start playing. There's no microtransactions. Doesn't even have to do like a 10 gigabyte
00:09:04 ◼ ► download when you plug it in, which is the worst experience for a kid on Christmas. They just love
00:09:09 ◼ ► a download screen and there's like no companies that make this anymore. Maybe that's why I like
00:09:13 ◼ ► the retro games is like I download I'm oh no, sorry. I buy these games. Of course. No, I download
00:09:18 ◼ ► like a one megabyte title and it's like 10 hours of entertainment without any of the BS that you
00:09:23 ◼ ► get right now. Sebastian, are you a game player, a gamer? Yeah, but I'm like generationally different.
00:09:30 ◼ ► My parents never bothered to get us a console or anything. My dad got into PCs. So I grew up with
00:09:37 ◼ ► a PC and was somewhat weary. I didn't love computers as a little kid. It's not very complicated
00:09:43 ◼ ► and confusing probably because they weren't Macs. I was later introduced to Macs. So I played PC
00:09:49 ◼ ► games. We did have like Sonic the Hedgehog, which was like at that point started coming out for the
00:09:53 ◼ ► PC. It was a brand new thing called the CD. So it was a game called Sonic CD and it came with a CD
00:10:00 ◼ ► you could put in your in your stereo to to play the soundtrack, which I was jamming on for a while.
00:10:05 ◼ ► Good stuff. So yeah, GTA one old like DOS games like Wolfenstein 3D. I have my memories of playing
00:10:11 ◼ ► that with with my buddies in elementary school on DOS. GTA one is probably the last like major
00:10:19 ◼ ► triple-a title that I played. I and I love that game. I was I'm still blown away by it. I'm it's
00:10:26 ◼ ► so good. It really was sort of the the type of game my friends and I would fantasize about like
00:10:35 ◼ ► as 12 year olds like wouldn't it be great if you like you could just have like a whole world you
00:10:39 ◼ ► could just go wherever you want and do whatever you want and just want to steal cars. You just
00:10:43 ◼ ► steal people's cars. It seems so alive to me honestly, I was actually just last week looking
00:10:48 ◼ ► into it too if you want to like quickly because I have a kid now so my only experience of video games
00:10:53 ◼ ► now is watching a speedrun which is very appropriate. It's like someone does the game in
00:10:56 ◼ ► three minutes. But it I just recall how incredibly alive it felt and like so open and free and because
00:11:03 ◼ ► of the lack of internet access I had there were just rumors of like oh there might be a tank there
00:11:08 ◼ ► or like a plane in the game or a boat you could find and there was the possibilities were endless
00:11:17 ◼ ► But I actually kind of got my my start in quote unquote software design helping people make like
00:11:22 ◼ ► mods for Quake 3 and Half-Life so I would do like textures and yeah those kind of things and that was
00:11:29 ◼ ► fun. I was in junior high that was I think Quake 1 and I remember creating a Quake 1 level that
00:11:34 ◼ ► was based on my high school which now you would get a call and I swear it was just the architecture I
00:11:41 ◼ ► knew. But no that's the sort of thing that back then you you might even get like they'll they
00:11:48 ◼ ► might even set up like a little demo in the lobby of the school like look what our talented senior
00:11:52 ◼ ► Ben made it's a live 3D rendering of our high school whereas now yes that is a red flag knock
00:12:00 ◼ ► on the door I mean it's it's funny it's funny what what becomes controversial or or a red flag over
00:12:09 ◼ ► time. Let me say that I do know this and and I know like in broad strokes and I think it's worth
00:12:15 ◼ ► talking about for this speculating about this event next week and the gaming it's almost a
00:12:21 ◼ ► mystery and I think it is within Apple too how they just the Mac just can't gain traction with games
00:12:31 ◼ ► and it's not technical right for the Intel years maybe there was something there about well not
00:12:39 ◼ ► maybe definitely there's something there with Apple's sort of the fuck you stance towards Nvidia
00:12:46 ◼ ► like CPU wise Macs across the board were literally peer-to-peer with PCs because they're just using
00:12:54 ◼ ► Intel chipsets and stuff but on the GPU side the Macs sort of you're gonna use AMD video and and
00:13:03 ◼ ► like it stance was a setback but not not so much it's not like you can't game with the video cards
00:13:10 ◼ ► that you can get for the Intel Macs the game companies just didn't write to those APIs they
00:13:17 ◼ ► wrote to the the Windows gaming APIs you know and that was it things like Steam you could get Steam
00:13:23 ◼ ► on the Mac but it's right it it's missing so many of the games that you can get on all the other
00:13:30 ◼ ► platforms that Steam runs on. But it seems almost cyclical or something like yeah remember when
00:13:35 ◼ ► Steam came to the Mac and there seems like there's these moments in time where like it's like the Mac
00:13:39 ◼ ► is back in gaming and then you know if it's Apple like not like following through with it or people
00:13:44 ◼ ► seeing that the market is just smaller than they would like it to be or but there's these little
00:13:49 ◼ ► peaks and bumps and then there's this long valley afterwards in which we kind of forget about the
00:13:53 ◼ ► Mac as a gaming platform again. Here we are again with like now this time it's for real we're gonna
00:13:58 ◼ ► get some real AAA games everyone. My son who's a sophomore in college I got a gaming PC when he was
00:14:06 ◼ ► I don't know 13, 14 that's what he really wanted and I mentioned it here on the show at least maybe
00:14:11 ◼ ► I've written about it but somehow I've mentioned this and some people I don't have any kind of
00:14:15 ◼ ► religious attachment we're not religiously Apple users it's not a religion I use Apple stuff because
00:14:20 ◼ ► I like it the best and you know there there were there wasn't even like a moment of hesitation like
00:14:26 ◼ ► oh no PC is gonna enter our household internet no it's like that's what he wanted and I you know he
00:14:32 ◼ ► really you know he knew what he was talking about he did the research and I could you know that was
00:14:36 ◼ ► the rule is you explained to me what kind of system you want and why and what components and that
00:14:41 ◼ ► means you're serious about it but a couple years ago somebody at Apple like at an engineering level
00:14:46 ◼ ► reached out to me and just said that people within Apple noticed that if my son bought a gaming PC
00:14:53 ◼ ► what's going on and and just asked me questions about which games he plays and why why he didn't
00:15:00 ◼ ► want to do it on a Mac and and basically a typical Apple person but maybe said we're doubling back on
00:15:07 ◼ ► this whole aspect and taking a look at why the Mac isn't considered a top-tier platform for games
00:15:15 ◼ ► and we're just trying to re-evaluate it from the ground up which I thought was interesting but I
00:15:21 ◼ ► to me haven't seen much come out of it other than the fact that they do seem to have gaming segments
00:15:27 ◼ ► every keynote now no matter what it is right it's a it used to be sort of come and go like if they
00:15:33 ◼ ► really had something to show off on the video for the iPhone there'd be a gaming segment but now it's
00:15:37 ◼ ► like every time yeah I mean it's my thinking is sorry I was gonna say my thinking is that they
00:15:43 ◼ ► they don't they don't actually really care about gaming on the Mac at all it's just that their
00:15:47 ◼ ► future much like how they've been talking about AR and beating the AR drum for like years before
00:15:52 ◼ ► the vision pro is announced is that they need developers to be on board making really good
00:15:58 ◼ ► games for the vision pro to be like a very compelling experience and for the iPhone and
00:16:03 ◼ ► the iPad to be great gaming platforms maybe even the Apple TV but you know I doubt you know now
00:16:08 ◼ ► that we have one architecture you're building for that it's that much easier to just deploy it on
00:16:12 ◼ ► there and monetize that game but I feel like strategy wise I don't think there's a top exec
00:16:18 ◼ ► at Apple that was like we got to do something about this Mac gaming thing I think it's more
00:16:23 ◼ ► strategic than that right so I mean as far as third-party devs it's as simple as the number of
00:16:30 ◼ ► Mac users out there is a rounding error so there's some engineers like okay it'll cost us this amount
00:16:34 ◼ ► to port it and this how much we can make but Apple's solution if you look at what Sony's done
00:16:38 ◼ ► is they have their own studios that like made horizon zero west and it's part of the Activision
00:16:44 ◼ ► like the or all the stuff that leaked they spent something like 300 million dollars on one of these
00:16:51 ◼ ► games as like their tent pole for the PlayStation 5 and so if you look at how much Apple spends on
00:16:57 ◼ ► like Apple TV productions if they put a similar budget into a Mac exclusive triple-a or Mac iPhone
00:17:04 ◼ ► iPad exclusive triple-a title then they could change the narrative but clearly that isn't at
00:17:10 ◼ ► the top of their priorities yeah I think the Apple TV example is I can't think of a better analogy
00:17:16 ◼ ► where they they didn't have their own streaming channel they decided they were going to make one
00:17:23 ◼ ► and they put a lot of money into it and yes they knew they had to kind of bootstrap it and yes when
00:17:29 ◼ ► they launched there were only a handful of shows and that's why the price was $4.99 a month because
00:17:34 ◼ ► I would say right now today Apple TV plus is a fully has a full tank of original content I would
00:17:44 ◼ ► almost say they don't need more I mean I could always fit more sports in or something like that
00:17:48 ◼ ► but you know I feel like it's plenty of original shows maybe they don't have so many original
00:17:53 ◼ ► movies but they've got Martin Scorsese's Flowers of the Killer Moon which is getting all these
00:17:59 ◼ ► accolades from arguably the best living director on the planet and inarguably one of so it's hard
00:18:05 ◼ ► to say see how they could be more serious about TV and movies right they got a Scorsese movie
00:18:10 ◼ ► nothing like that on games like Apple Arcade is a real deal and yes they when they raised the
00:18:21 ◼ ► and I know I think it's the rule actually that all the Apple Arcade games are across all of
00:18:28 ◼ ► Apple's devices there might be some exceptions where they've got some that maybe need a gaming
00:18:34 ◼ ► controller and they're only for the Apple TV or the Mac or something I don't know but for the most
00:18:40 ◼ ► part they all run Mac Apple TV iPad and iPhone like that's part of the the deal to make arcade
00:18:48 ◼ ► Apple Arcade games but they're not the PC games that gamers want to play but this is gonna say
00:18:55 ◼ ► like the first wave of the Apple Arcade titles were a bunch of original titles that I don't know
00:19:00 ◼ ► if they co-financed to make so they were they were exclusives like Sayonara Wild Hearts which was
00:19:06 ◼ ► great it was right and a permanent interactive but so there's a bunch of original titles at first but
00:19:10 ◼ ► then they gradually moved over to convincing companies to take their freeware or the freemium
00:19:15 ◼ ► games that had like gem systems and take out the gems like the Castlevania game it was so
00:19:21 ◼ ► embarrassing it was the exact same game but they just gave you unlimited gems so it's the same
00:19:25 ◼ ► grind mechanic but someone just clicked a button that said like free play basically so I it could
00:19:31 ◼ ► also be that they recognize the type of people who are into arcade are way way more casual and
00:19:36 ◼ ► aren't interested in even indie level titles I don't know right right I mean and casual gaming
00:19:42 ◼ ► is a big deal but it's not what a scary fast event is about yeah yeah yeah yeah and it is it is it is
00:19:50 ◼ ► really to the point that like Apple TV plus is sort of like HBO in its attitude where you just
00:19:55 ◼ ► super high quality stuff they really don't there's no filler like Netflix is always kind of like
00:20:01 ◼ ► people are kind of laughing about how half the shows that come out seem to be some sort of like
00:20:05 ◼ ► crazy filler thing but it arcade I don't want to say it's filler there's tons of amazing games from
00:20:10 ◼ ► developers I know and respect a ton on there but it's it's not quite the same sort of imagine if
00:20:16 ◼ ► Apple had an in-house studio it would look quite a bit different right right that's I mean that
00:20:20 ◼ ► would be my idea if I were there would be like give because these these triple-a titles they do
00:20:25 ◼ ► have budgets very similar to the budgets for major motion pictures 100 200 million dollar budgets
00:20:32 ◼ ► let's put 500 million dollars to make three games and get name brand game designers the people that
00:20:42 ◼ ► gamers love and put the money into it and making make them exclusive and make the gaming get get
00:20:50 ◼ ► piss off all of reddit that this game is only available right oh man make the gamer brain
00:20:56 ◼ ► explode right go back turn the dial all the way back to when halo was going to be a mac exclusive
00:21:04 ◼ ► wow right and do it actually do it and make a mac exclusive or whatever whichever ones of the other
00:21:13 ◼ ► platforms apple silicon exclusive game that makes the gamers go nuts that they their gaming pc can't
00:21:21 ◼ ► play it this is what valve did with their with their headset right like they they added they
00:21:30 ◼ ► people worked on they made that exclusive to their their headset their vr thing or vr platform to to
00:21:37 ◼ ► sort of push that forward and I think that would behoove apple to to have titles like that like
00:21:42 ◼ ► absolute blowout huge like triple-a game title have a have an installment on the vision and
00:21:49 ◼ ► maybe on the other platforms I mean it's basically the nintendo playbook where nintendo releases
00:21:54 ◼ ► underpowered hardware like years behind the others but it's the only place you can get mario and
00:21:59 ◼ ► zelda and animal crossing and you don't even want any of the ports of the other stuff coming out
00:22:04 ◼ ► on the other platforms because they look dog ugly like so yeah just become like a nintendo and have
00:22:09 ◼ ► your own ip and just release it only on your devices and you will be able to sell more ipads
00:22:15 ◼ ► when you're saying this scary fast in this in this event pertains to their acquisition of nintendo
00:22:20 ◼ ► and it's actually about mario kart I don't know the colors don't quite job um I I would love for
00:22:29 ◼ ► them to acquire hadeo kajima and have this most bizarre post-modern like two hours of mads mikkelson
00:22:36 ◼ ► ranting about like nanomachines like we did it we have our ip here I guess that the the just to cycle
00:22:44 ◼ ► back to exactly what we expect is the is it going to be the m3 or not right and I I'm a little
00:22:51 ◼ ► confused I'm not a silicon expert and I think I miswrote a little bit this week when I was
00:22:55 ◼ ► speculating about the event when I even speculated that whenever the m3 might come that it would be
00:23:02 ◼ ► derived from the a17 pro hardware apparently the a17 pro is sort of a dead end in that way
00:23:11 ◼ ► the more I kind of knew that before I should know more because ben thompson from my other podcast
00:23:17 ◼ ► knows more and but and I listen to ATP where John Siracusa knows it's a stuff stone cold I guess it
00:23:24 ◼ ► comes down to all right forget if it's derived from the a17 pro or not I think that the big
00:23:28 ◼ ► question is are they is the m3 set for the three nanometer process at tsmc or not no matter which
00:23:36 ◼ ► a series thing it's most derived from let's just say there's going to obviously there will be an m3
00:23:43 ◼ ► chip family either coming next week starting or starting sometime next year I I don't even think
00:23:52 ◼ ► it seemed as far as I can tell though nobody really is even certain whether it's going to
00:23:56 ◼ ► be three nanometer and if it is I guess it's going to be this slightly different process than the one
00:24:01 ◼ ► like a sort of second generation three nanometer process from the a17 pro but I guess that's the
00:24:06 ◼ ► question is is can they hold an event that's worth holding an actual event where people are supposed
00:24:11 ◼ ► to watch and media are coming to new york for for briefings and stuff like that if they're only
00:24:19 ◼ ► announcing max that are still based on the m2 family yeah I'm guessing it has to be a like I
00:24:27 ◼ ► can't see them having a spec bump because they updated the macbook pros this year right like
00:24:32 ◼ ► and then having another update this year that is what would they say like now the screen is
00:24:37 ◼ ► brighter right the battery's better or it's screwed all we're doing the touch bar again
00:24:43 ◼ ► it's back well we went for years for so many years especially I don't know maybe like those
00:24:52 ◼ ► the teen years of the the 2000s leading up to that point where they had that mac round table to say
00:24:58 ◼ ► hey we're gonna we we really do care about pros and we really we know we backed ourselves into
00:25:02 ◼ ► a thermal corner with the trash can uh mac pro we're and practically said we're going they said
00:25:11 ◼ ► we're going to have a pro imac coming out later this year and we asked that will it be called the
00:25:17 ◼ ► imac pro and they were like we're gonna have a pro imac coming out later this year like that's
00:25:23 ◼ ► always how apple people are like they've been trained like we're not going to tell you what the
00:25:26 ◼ ► name is um but I don't know I kind of feel my gut feeling and I could be wrong like that they could
00:25:35 ◼ ► come out with some max that run the m3 like here's the introduction first m3 max my gut feeling says
00:25:43 ◼ ► no though and to me the big tell was that the 15-inch macbook air with the m2 only came out at
00:25:51 ◼ ► wwdc which is just a couple months ago like that to me is a sign was a really strong sign that the m2
00:26:00 ◼ ► is here for is going to be current for a bit and the m3 is sort of a next year's sort of thing
00:26:07 ◼ ► and I could see them especially I don't know if it would just be imax I don't know what else they
00:26:13 ◼ ► could speed bump but if they just say now the imac is on the m2 and we have an imac pro that has the
00:26:20 ◼ ► m2 pro or it's just like the the same chips in the 14 and 16 inch macbook pros could they justify
00:26:28 ◼ ► calling that scary fast I kind of feel like they'd sort of be spinning it because these are chips
00:26:33 ◼ ► we've seen before but if we're going to have to wait until next year for the beginning of the m3
00:26:40 ◼ ► series and then later to get to the higher end m3 hardware it seems like this is where product
00:26:50 ◼ ► marketers earn their keep and calling saying that the m2 and the m2 pro are still scary fast
00:26:57 ◼ ► at the end of 2023 carrying into 2024 is a way to sort of fill that gap with hey don't worry
00:27:05 ◼ ► these things are and they are they are they are really this is really fast hardware yeah I mean
00:27:11 ◼ ► you call it too that the vision pro is going to be shipping with the yeah two suppose right right
00:27:17 ◼ ► and I I keep thinking it would be slightly weird for them to introduce even if they're consumer
00:27:23 ◼ ► products the 1300 MacBook airs with the m3 but this 3500 headset that's coming in like I don't
00:27:33 ◼ ► know end of January or February or something for 3500 has the m2 is what it's it's they can do it
00:27:42 ◼ ► when I reread their hype from WWDC about the vision pro and they really really really emphasize
00:27:49 ◼ ► the r1 chip in that like like they're here's the thing that only apple can do here's what sets this
00:27:58 ◼ ► thing apart silicon wise from anybody else in the headset game it's the r1 that they're talking
00:28:05 ◼ ► about it's the r1 that enables this incredibly low latency from the cameras to what you see in
00:28:11 ◼ ► the headset it's they they I don't even know if they really talked about they're like it has
00:28:16 ◼ ► the blazingly fast m2 chip in it but they didn't really talk about that at all as having any sort of
00:28:23 ◼ ► major part to play and what's what makes vision pro special different low latency super engaging
00:28:31 ◼ ► etc etc it's all about the r1 so I think they could do it but I still feel like it's it's just
00:28:38 ◼ ► like one part of the song that would be like a discordant note yeah anything else what do you
00:28:46 ◼ ► say what do we think I that's what I I'm kind of guessing if you wanted me to guess I'm gonna guess
00:28:50 ◼ ► it's all about iMacs and that nothing else is gonna get updated because I just I see yeah I
00:29:05 ◼ ► oh that was wasn't that wwc was it they did the the Mac studio yeah because they did the
00:29:10 ◼ ► Mac studio update you were right that was the studio update but yeah but that makes the Mac
00:29:17 ◼ ► Pro came after that because they were like and now we also finally are finishing the lineup
00:29:22 ◼ ► John Trenas famously got quoted over and over again that will return to the Mac Pro in a future
00:29:27 ◼ ► point in time which is the most concrete announcement on hardware plans Apple's ever made
00:29:37 ◼ ► since the introduction of the m1 basically has been untouched right yeah definitely yeah it just
00:29:43 ◼ ► came out everybody was excited about the colors everybody was sort of had strong opinions about
00:29:47 ◼ ► the chin and colors on the chin and the fact that there still is a chin and yeah and everybody loved
00:29:55 ◼ ► the colored cables and and then what nothing since not a word and then no more fun colors in ed it's
00:30:02 ◼ ► the right the last time they shipped anything with fun colors right and I was like kind of sleuthing
00:30:08 ◼ ► on this online and I posted this on on all the twitter like social network twitter adjacent
00:30:13 ◼ ► social networks now that there was this weird leak happening around iphone release time where
00:30:18 ◼ ► there were supposedly going to be these color matched cables coming with every iphone which
00:30:23 ◼ ► never materialized because they were USB-C cables people thought they would go with the
00:30:26 ◼ ► iphones and they were all in funny colors right but I bet that would be that would go with because
00:30:31 ◼ ► the accessories on the iMac famously are color matched which is really cool to the actual iMacs
00:30:36 ◼ ► and those have color matching lightning cables now that's obviously not going to be a thing anymore
00:30:41 ◼ ► but the the little finder face yeah also the old the the the iMacs have these really cool
00:30:48 ◼ ► wallpapers that take a little bite out of the hello script yeah the first Macintosh yeah and
00:30:52 ◼ ► if anything screams first Macintosh it's the finder face right so maybe that'll be like
00:30:57 ◼ ► the the thing they remixed with the iMacs this time so maybe it'll be like m2 comes to iMac
00:31:03 ◼ ► maybe there'll be a tease or an introduction of a bigger iMac which is scary fast maybe they'll
00:31:08 ◼ ► put the m3 in that for the first time and maybe they'll spec bump the MacBook pros and showcase
00:31:14 ◼ ► how they're both great for gaming and for developing your vision pro game on it because
00:31:18 ◼ ► it's even more crazy bitchin fast also I think they're overdue for an XDR display update because
00:31:24 ◼ ► it still doesn't do promotion oh man be still my beating heart yes displays that would be great
00:31:29 ◼ ► yeah that that would be super fun I have to me I own the studio display not the XDR but uh maybe
00:31:39 ◼ ► if they came out with an XDR a new XDR I might upgrade find a new home for my studio display but
00:31:45 ◼ ► it the thing that would most excite me about it is even if I don't buy it it would just tell me
00:31:50 ◼ ► that Apple is definitely committed to staying in the display game yes yes like I was so mad for
00:31:57 ◼ ► so long that they weren't making displays and seemingly that they had sort of done the displays
00:32:02 ◼ ► what they long ago did with printers like screw this we're not making them anymore and I miss
00:32:08 ◼ ► Apple printers Apple printers were great and it like back in college at the newspaper at the
00:32:14 ◼ ► student newspaper we bought HP laser jets but Apple was still making a Apple's existence in
00:32:21 ◼ ► the game made HP compete in terms of oh it's it's great you just hook it up get it on your
00:32:27 ◼ ► get it on your ethernet and it just works Apple's absence from the printer game has helped the
00:32:33 ◼ ► printer industry devolve into hell yeah I'm honestly amazed that this is not something that
00:32:39 ◼ ► like some fancy direct-to-consumer startup has solved yet or I know it has because it if you
00:32:45 ◼ ► look back we're gonna be like living in this future right with these like amazing generative
00:32:49 ◼ ► AI tools where the future is truly here you're talking to a completely virtual human with
00:32:54 ◼ ► complete autonomous general intelligence and in the meantime your printer is still going to be
00:32:58 ◼ ► this piece of shit that doesn't work and you have to turn it on and off 20 times to print a piece of
00:33:03 ◼ ► paper yeah yeah so X XDR update with promotion man that would be great because that would to me
00:33:10 ◼ ► solidify yeah we're in this we're in this for the long run we're gonna keep making displays because
00:33:15 ◼ ► we we can't trust anybody else to make good ones Ben question so what what do you what's your
00:33:21 ◼ ► hardware as a as a the developer of the duo what Mac are you using so it's funny like the first
00:33:29 ◼ ► version of halide was built on the first macbook that was with a single USB it's like 2014 the the
00:33:38 ◼ ► 13-inch one it was mostly an act of rebellion to see like if you don't really need a large mac
00:33:44 ◼ ► no it wasn't it the 12-inch there was 12-inch yeah I think yeah that's right that's right but it was
00:33:48 ◼ ► the sit it was the first single I still have the mac just as a goof but it's like yeah the single
00:33:53 ◼ ► USB port and then eventually I grew beyond that and for a while I was when it first came out the
00:34:00 ◼ ► M1 mac mini with an XDR display which I was amazed to see worked really well like you couldn't author
00:34:08 ◼ ► like 4k video and resolve on it but it was more than enough for what we needed and so now I'm on
00:34:15 ◼ ► the M1 macbook pro and then I have because of the apple design awards they give you this prize
00:34:21 ◼ ► package of like every item so I have the mac studio that they have with the ultra which I can't
00:34:27 ◼ ► use in the couch so so I end up still using the macbook pro but when it does involve something
00:34:32 ◼ ► like if you're training a machine learning model or you're having to push HDR video then yeah
00:34:37 ◼ ► I bring out the big guns yeah Sebastian what's your what's your hardware well I used to so I
00:34:44 ◼ ► do some 3d work and I used to I was lusting for this for a long time I was like an age-long mac pro
00:34:50 ◼ ► user back in the day the Xeon cheese grater and so when they came out with the 2019 mac pro I
00:34:57 ◼ ► actually used their our proceeds from the app we launched that year specter to buy one one of the
00:35:02 ◼ ► new intel ones and that thing aged like milk that was just incredible it's true I think it
00:35:09 ◼ ► outperformed like a macbook air basically by the moment apple silicon came out even for 3d stuff
00:35:14 ◼ ► it's actually kind of amazing and so nowadays my macbook pro m1 max does everything and it's it's
00:35:23 ◼ ► perfect so I have it hooked up to a pro display xer and I will say they they claimed that the
00:35:28 ◼ ► apple silicon like the mac studio would beat the mac pro in every respect but I did get the wheels
00:35:33 ◼ ► on the mac pro and on a slight incline I will tell you that the mac pro is still way faster than the
00:35:39 ◼ ► mac studio which hardly moves at all that's me I'm the I love just having one mac that I use
00:35:47 ◼ ► whether I'm on the road on the couch or at my desk that I can hook up to a display so me I've the
00:35:51 ◼ ► 14 inch m1 macbook pro max literally maxed out max chip 64 gigs of ram and my terrible horrible
00:36:03 ◼ ► hoarder browser tab habit the only thing I'm jealous about with the m2 macbook pros is that
00:36:12 ◼ ► that you can get up to 96 gigs of ram but right I even with my horrible hundreds of safari tabs
00:36:19 ◼ ► open at a time habit I still it can go weeks and still have swap at zero so it's it's the first
00:36:28 ◼ ► first mac that I've had ever that never swaps because of my browser tab habit so maybe 64 is
00:36:35 ◼ ► good for me um all right I'm gonna guess iMac but we'll see there's no more we'll find out next week
00:36:41 ◼ ► let's take a break and let me thank our good friends at trade coffee I don't have any trade
00:36:47 ◼ ► coffee in front of me right now because we're recording in the afternoon but it's it's coursing
00:36:52 ◼ ► through my veins as we speak my caffeine for the day came from trade I love trade coffee here's
00:37:00 ◼ ► the deal it is a subscription service they are not a single roaster it's not like trade is
00:37:07 ◼ ► that got like a factory where they roast beans what trade is is sort of an umbrella on top of
00:37:13 ◼ ► like I think it's over 50 different independent independent roasters around the country with over
00:37:20 ◼ ► 450 different coffees so all sorts of really small tiny independent roasters from around the
00:37:27 ◼ ► around the country trade works with them and your subscription they they keep sending you new and
00:37:33 ◼ ► original coffees from different roasters around the country I got one the last batch the batch I
00:37:39 ◼ ► drank today just had a nice little handwritten note on the bag thanks John from the name of the
00:37:45 ◼ ► roaster and it was great coffee it's really it's like really small roasters who just really sweat
00:37:51 ◼ ► the details over their beans and with trade overall when you sign up for an account you tell them as
00:37:58 ◼ ► the coffee comes hey I really like that or that one not so much and then they use that to algorithms
00:38:03 ◼ ► aren't bad all the time this is a great algorithm they use what you like what you dislike to adjust
00:38:09 ◼ ► which beans they send to you on your subscription and for me it only took a couple of rounds before
00:38:16 ◼ ► they zeroed in right on the bullseye of the type of coffees that I like to drink and make at home
00:38:23 ◼ ► it is absolutely terrific over 450 different coffees but again if you're overwhelmed by that
00:38:29 ◼ ► they've got a couple of questions up front that can help you get started it's not overwhelming to
00:38:33 ◼ ► get started even if you're not sure they will guide you through that process and the very best
00:38:38 ◼ ► thing about it in addition to the fact that these things come from small independent roasters is that
00:38:42 ◼ ► as I always say here coffee is produce it starts going bad as soon as it's roasted and you get your
00:38:50 ◼ ► trade coffee delivered to you three four five days after it was roasted it's that fresh it is as fresh
00:39:03 ◼ ► freshness alone let alone quality but the freshness angle alone you just cannot buy store-bought coffee
00:39:08 ◼ ► that competes with the stuff that you get from trade and it just makes such a huge difference
00:39:13 ◼ ► once you go to fresh coffee you just will never ever go back I am a super happy subscriber of
00:39:19 ◼ ► trade but I'm also very happy that they continue to sponsor the show what do you do to get started
00:39:24 ◼ ► it is so easy upgrade your morning routine with better coffee trade is offering talk show listeners
00:39:30 ◼ ► a free bag of coffee with any subscription go to drink trade.com slash the talk show that's drink
00:39:37 ◼ ► trade.com slash the talk show and you get a free bag of coffee with any subscription purchase
00:39:45 ◼ ► drink trade.com slash the talk show all right what do you what kind of grinder do you use
00:39:52 ◼ ► oh I have a it's like a big burr grinder encore nope oh wait yes the encore yeah that's it what's
00:40:01 ◼ ► the name of the company though baratza there we go what what is it it's baratza I think yes
00:40:07 ◼ ► baratza encore yes thank you you knew that's my grinder I've had it for years it runs like a champ
00:40:14 ◼ ► the only thing I could not stand about it all right I'm gonna have to make a note here I will
00:40:19 ◼ ► put it I will put it in the show note for this section I will make the album art a picture a
00:40:25 ◼ ► photo of my grinder I could not stand the font that the word on tour it's terrible it's like that
00:40:34 ◼ ► cino of words yes yes it is it is like like zap fino and it's right there on the front of the
00:40:41 ◼ ► grinder and I had it for years and every fucking morning because I make coffee for myself every
00:40:46 ◼ ► every morning I wake up I grind coffee and I mean it is every day I mean like unless I'm not home
00:40:52 ◼ ► or like I have like an early flight to the airport or something some kind of morning appointment I
00:40:57 ◼ ► make coffee and I had to stare at this ugly fucking logo and so I took my label maker I've got one of
00:41:02 ◼ ► those old old school ones that the the plastic you know what I mean the old school personal label
00:41:09 ◼ ► maker the ones that punch through basically right yeah that punch through to make the colored tape
00:41:13 ◼ ► turn white by the pressure of the plastic and just wrote the word encore with it and taped it over it
00:41:19 ◼ ► because I kind of like the look of that I love the industrial look of those old school labels
00:41:23 ◼ ► and every single morning I look at that little handmade label I put there and it makes me so
00:41:29 ◼ ► happy that it and it just fits perfectly over the encore look I will put it in the show notes
00:41:34 ◼ ► and I'll send you guys a picture I bought a shredder like a small shredder for my office
00:41:40 ◼ ► and it was the design itself I liked it it was kind of cute but it had a gigantic logo over the
00:41:45 ◼ ► top and I took some black gaffers tape and from a distance you can no longer see the logo
00:41:51 ◼ ► oh man I've done that too with the gaffer gaff tape is number one a merlin man taught me this
00:41:59 ◼ ► years ago that every household should have some black gaffer's tape because it's it's the greatest
00:42:03 ◼ ► tape in the world like the whole point of it is it comes from the gaffers in the movie industry
00:42:09 ◼ ► you have to tape like cables and lights and stuff like that but then they have to take the tape off
00:42:13 ◼ ► and move because they you know we need a new setup we need to move the lights so it's like sticky
00:42:17 ◼ ► enough to keep stuff in place but it's not like duct tape where like oh god as soon as you can't
00:42:23 ◼ ► peel it off and then there's residue behind it's like no residue like this perfect mid-ground of
00:42:29 ◼ ► sticky enough to stick and yet doesn't leave residue and it is perfect for covering up labels
00:42:36 ◼ ► shiny things annoying thing I I use gaff tape on one of my old kindles because I don't know at one
00:42:42 ◼ ► point amazon for reasons that I I cannot understand I mean there's a lot of things wrong with every
00:42:48 ◼ ► kindle but one of the kindles I bought had a shiny amazon logo on the front underneath the book
00:42:54 ◼ ► and I'm like it's bad enough you put it I mean this I have so many complaints about the buttons
00:42:59 ◼ ► and the lack of buttons and everything but it's like this goddamn shiny logo and then nice little
00:43:04 ◼ ► piece of gaff tape over it ah problem solved done yeah well even apple doesn't put the macbook pro
00:43:11 ◼ ► text on the front of the screen anymore so if they don't put their brand on it not as a company like
00:43:17 ◼ ► you really shouldn't be putting your logo prominently on your product like that like really
00:43:20 ◼ ► it's not necessary yeah they went back to the macbook logo at one point they it was like they
00:43:25 ◼ ► had it then they went away with it and I thought good it shouldn't be there and then it came back
00:43:30 ◼ ► I don't know if it was for the original m1 macbook air or maybe maybe when the macbook air went retina
00:43:38 ◼ ► remember there was that weird gap oh yeah where the macbook air was not retina and everything else
00:43:43 ◼ ► was and if I but maybe that was it but one of those things like let's just say it was the the
00:43:48 ◼ ► original retina macbook air they put the macbook air logo back under the screen I remember asking
00:43:52 ◼ ► I asked phil shiller I was like why did you do that and it is one of those non-answer answers
00:43:59 ◼ ► and I can tell I could just tell there there was a discussion about it yeah that's funny when you
00:44:07 ◼ ► get to kind of get that feeling well they stamp it into the bottom of the macbook pronoun yeah
00:44:11 ◼ ► it's really nice yeah which is really really nice I love it it makes me very happy every time I pick
00:44:17 ◼ ► it up from the desk and I'm reminded of it I'm like yeah that's nice stamped in there all right
00:44:23 ◼ ► let's talk halide I mean I think it's safe to say this that's the flagship app you guys make I forgot
00:44:28 ◼ ► to mention specter earlier at some basic level you're the halide company for now I mean things
00:44:34 ◼ ► can change your adapting where did the idea what you tell me tell the audience I mean I think
00:44:39 ◼ ► people have heard about it I've linked to it enough but what is halide halide is basically
00:44:45 ◼ ► a camera for your iphone that tries to find the middle ground between a full-fledged complicated
00:44:52 ◼ ► dslr and apple's camera app so it's an app that's easy enough to understand and to help you learn
00:44:58 ◼ ► photography and take better photos because you get more control over the process but not so
00:45:05 ◼ ► completely complicated that it's almost like stepping into an airplane cockpit and being
00:45:09 ◼ ► overwhelmed with all the knobs and switches ben what would your what would your one-line picture
00:45:13 ◼ ► be well it's funny because yeah it's changed over time and I mean that was the original idea is that
00:45:19 ◼ ► we wanted something that would be if we can't carry around a digital slr back when it first came out
00:45:24 ◼ ► all I wanted was manual shutter speed control iso and things like there weren't any iphone apps that
00:45:31 ◼ ► did focus peaking which is a pretty standard feature in cameras so this was before computational
00:45:38 ◼ ► photography was on everyone's lips and so after that then now what is the definition of manual has
00:45:46 ◼ ► changed so now especially we use it more because we give control over turning down some of the
00:45:53 ◼ ► processing that apple includes out of the box they give apis for it but just because they don't want
00:45:58 ◼ ► to turn the first party camera into a cockpit you have to expose on the api level and so it's also a
00:46:04 ◼ ► focus tool so again like the first party camera it would suck to work there because they have the
00:46:10 ◼ ► sisyphean task of having one app that does video and photography because you you see a camera on
00:46:16 ◼ ► you tap on it and so halide just does photography despite everyone's requests to add video and it
00:46:23 ◼ ► just does one tool really like this one specific thing that's a perfect description i agree that
00:46:31 ◼ ► i would i don't know if i would not want to work on apple's camera team because of what you just
00:46:36 ◼ ► said or if i would want to because it's such a challenge and i happen to think it's one of the
00:46:43 ◼ ► best apple ui teams that they have consistently like and it is it's a sisyphean task and and it
00:46:52 ◼ ► go back to like the original iphone camera like the early years the the skeuomorphic years that
00:46:58 ◼ ► steve jobs was still alive years and it really was just a shutter button right and and the
00:47:05 ◼ ► revolutionary breakthrough was pinch to zoom right i mean that you could pinch to zoom on
00:47:23 ◼ ► amount of software that went into it and of course i'm sure from the early years onward with the
00:47:28 ◼ ► super crappy sensors back then that the image processing to try to get a decent looking image
00:47:33 ◼ ► it was hard lots and lots of software not putting it down but ui wise man was it simple right i
00:47:39 ◼ ► mean it didn't even have video right this is the and then oh okay we'll shoot video then then they
00:47:43 ◼ ► added one little switch next to the shutter still or video that's it right yeah that was the
00:47:50 ◼ ► beginning of the end because we got the hdr toggle for a while right right and and i actually remember
00:47:55 ◼ ► them at some point at a keynote and i remember i think it was steve that introduced this maybe
00:47:58 ◼ ► was phil but he was talking about how they had patented this new thing where you tap to focus
00:48:04 ◼ ► and tap to tap to expose and tap to focus basically that this was this really revolutionary
00:48:09 ◼ ► new thing it's super universal now right it's everywhere and i'm sure it's more of a defensive
00:48:13 ◼ ► patent if they even can say exclusivity to that at all but it it belies how complicated or at least
00:48:21 ◼ ► different cameras were before then where i mean the first iphone had a fixed focus lens it didn't
00:48:26 ◼ ► even have autofocus it just everything that's in focus already wasn't and then they yeah they
00:48:36 ◼ ► things now right it's probably if either of you can think of an example that even competes with it
00:48:51 ◼ ► fiddly and i don't mean this in a disparaging way i i just mean that it really does have a lot of
00:48:57 ◼ ► stuff in it right i mean you get to pick which lens you get to drag up and pick aspect ratio
00:49:04 ◼ ► you you you could apply one of their filters in the viewfinder before you shoot if you want
00:49:12 ◼ ► what i'm looking at it right now as we speak you've got to be able to flip the camera around
00:49:17 ◼ ► turn the flash on and off turn in video you can turn action mode on and they've got to make all
00:49:23 ◼ ► these decisions like action mode isn't a separate mode that you swipe left to right on it's a toggle
00:49:31 ◼ ► on regular video you get to switch between 4k and hd you get to pick the frame rate 24 30 60
00:49:40 ◼ ► all these little that's a lot of stuff to pack on screen and yet still like you guys said
00:49:46 ◼ ► fundamentally it has to be for i would guess at least 95 of iphone owners tap the app icon frame
00:49:57 ◼ ► tap the shutter so like you were saying like picking lenses even beyond giving control it
00:50:02 ◼ ► needs to intuit what the user intended more so than what they actually get so like you can pick
00:50:09 ◼ ► a 3x or a 5x lens in the app and you think it's a lens but if the system detects that it's too low
00:50:15 ◼ ► of a light or if you're trying to focus on something closer than the minimum focus distance
00:50:18 ◼ ► it'll quietly switch over for the user so it has to deal with like these leaky abstractions when
00:50:24 ◼ ► when they had that year they had the macro mode and people were complaining about how shift snapped
00:50:28 ◼ ► from perspective well unless unless you have like a motor on the lens that's moving things around
00:50:34 ◼ ► like you just can't make it transparent so it has it's tasked with making it feel like it's this
00:50:40 ◼ ► magic box you press the zoom button you tap the button and it just works but then they have to go
00:50:45 ◼ ► against all these leaky abstractions yeah yeah i think i wrote about this in my review like briefly
00:50:52 ◼ ► but apple has always had this clear fundamental philosophy around their camera design where their
00:50:56 ◼ ► camera app is not just an app they see camera as a product that is just as big of a product as
00:51:02 ◼ ► iphone and the moment you're in that experience they might talk about different lenses and they
00:51:08 ◼ ► have different sensors and all these different specs or whatever but for you as a user it's just
00:51:12 ◼ ► one camera and it just happens to be able to zoom from 0.5x to 25x out and it just can do all these
00:51:20 ◼ ► things and they do insane stuff in the factory like matching up components to micron level stuff
00:51:25 ◼ ► right to make sure that this kind of like lens switching doesn't go all jarring like they go
00:51:30 ◼ ► through stuff like you wouldn't believe the kind of integration between hardware and software that
00:51:34 ◼ ► they do in that team to achieve what they do that's truly like some of the most amazing
00:51:38 ◼ ► engineering today that they do there yeah they spend less time on that in the keynotes anymore
00:51:44 ◼ ► and i think for good reasons they have plenty of other stuff to talk about but like i would say
00:51:50 ◼ ► like the last few years of phil shiller as head of product marketing and shiller being the like
00:51:58 ◼ ► in the spot where jaws is now talking about like focus pixels and stuff like that like they
00:52:04 ◼ ► they they were some of the most technical slides and segments of an apple keynote i think ever
00:52:13 ◼ ► uncharacteristically so yeah yeah definitely really and it really helps that shiller himself
00:52:22 ◼ ► is a pretty serious longtime prosumer photographer and knows it and therefore really wasn't like just
00:52:30 ◼ ► reading off a script like he really understands the actual and hardware engineering complexity
00:52:38 ◼ ► of of what they're doing and his and his enthusiasm for it i think helped carry through
00:52:44 ◼ ► those segments of those keynotes for the people out in the audience who really just want to point
00:52:47 ◼ ► and shoot but as like an explanation for what they're doing i and the other thing but like what
00:52:53 ◼ ► you said sebastian like that they're sort of see camera as its own product to me is also exemplified
00:53:00 ◼ ► and this is a theme i want to come back to with you guys but with the the ui theming of the camera
00:53:05 ◼ ► app right like post ios 7 apple really refocused the company on a sort of doesn't matter which app
00:53:18 ◼ ► it is we're all going to stick to this sort of ui aesthetic and do things like color hints so
00:53:27 ◼ ► okay notes gets yellow and camera get or a calendar gets red i think and so you can pick
00:53:34 ◼ ► a custom spot color but you're going to stick to this very very consistent look and and they've
00:53:41 ◼ ► it's 10 years now since iowa 7 or or uh right yeah i was 17 to iowa 7 if anything i think they've
00:53:50 ◼ ► not just stuck with it but have gotten more consistent and camera isn't foreign to that look
00:53:58 ◼ ► right it's it's like they've found a look for it that it doesn't look like it's out of place but
00:54:05 ◼ ► it's its own language right and again we'll come back to it with you guys like custom version of
00:54:10 ◼ ► uh san francisco font right like a sort of industrial cameras ask version of the font for
00:54:18 ◼ ► all the little bits of text like switching from photo to video to portrait like i'm looking at
00:54:23 ◼ ► that capital r and portrait right there and it doesn't look like they are in any other variant
00:54:29 ◼ ► of san francisco but it's perfect for this right but that's the type of details they sweat so on
00:54:40 ◼ ► the quality of it in some ways makes it harder to be a third-party camera app oh yeah yeah i think
00:54:49 ◼ ► yeah even if you look back since iowa 7 it's the one that stayed the closest to that redesign too
00:54:55 ◼ ► back then they were the only ones who weren't using alvetica even in iowa 7 it was right didn't
00:54:59 ◼ ► like type in there right but the design still looks a lot like that and if you go to all these
00:55:03 ◼ ► android phones uh it's kind of this magical thing like since the iphone came out people look at the
00:55:08 ◼ ► hardware design like oh everything looks like a blackberry and then it looks like right looks like
00:55:12 ◼ ► an iphone but every camera app this is like amusing to me it's like no no end because i
00:55:18 ◼ ► designed camera app so like i know there's a lot of ways to like you know solve this problem but
00:55:23 ◼ ► somehow they all look exactly like the iphone camera with the same swipey thing at the bottom
00:55:27 ◼ ► to change between modes and the same little lens picker and and inevitably as apple changes a little
00:55:33 ◼ ► tiny fundamental thing it just somehow trickles out totally the android phones too it just shows
00:55:38 ◼ ► that they are really like in a place where they are a market leader on this because yeah yeah
00:55:42 ◼ ► it's really hard to find it it's hard to find an android phone that doesn't use black background
00:55:48 ◼ ► with yellow as the spot color as the color scheme of their camera app right which is exactly like
00:55:54 ◼ ► apples and the defenders of that are like well what other colors are you going to use and it's
00:55:59 ◼ ► like you can use any color you want ben i think i interrupted you oh no like it's kind of no better
00:56:08 ◼ ► illustration of the google approach and the apple approach is that google for a few years there was
00:56:12 ◼ ► ahead of like they did the night mode stuff and like if you read the research papers like mark
00:56:18 ◼ ► levoit and like all that team was doing was like revolutionary and you know it didn't take that
00:56:22 ◼ ► long to find an apple and apple did its own thing but google never set the design language or the
00:56:30 ◼ ► productization of a lot of these things they never wrapped it up in a way that you'd be like oh this
00:56:35 ◼ ► makes sense even when you get to like stuff like that weird mode now where you can cut out people's
00:56:41 ◼ ► faces from different photos yeah and like it's just like no i do not want this that's the worst
00:56:46 ◼ ► demo you you convinced me never to buy this camera this is awful i watch a lot of sports especially
00:56:53 ◼ ► in the fall so the and it's so this is the time of year and it i think it's helpful it's like
00:56:58 ◼ ► i watch football i watch playoff baseball i like to watch live and so it's like the only time of
00:57:03 ◼ ► the year where i watch normal tv commercials and then i go months and months where i only watch
00:57:07 ◼ ► stuff streaming or otherwise skip the commercials and so i'm seeing the google pixelate commercials
00:57:13 ◼ ► a lot and the more i see their commercials showing that feature the the best take feature
00:57:18 ◼ ► the more it it like rankles me it's like it's not like a subtle like oh we'll go back you you
00:57:28 ◼ ► half a second because it was better than when you hit the shutter it is like no this is completely
00:57:33 ◼ ► manipulated and they show all these faces being moved around and it's like this is not a photograph
00:57:39 ◼ ► this was not a moment in time it's funny is i actually so i've been for some reason been
00:57:45 ◼ ► re-watching a lot of the old keynotes where apple is introducing camera features and i think it's
00:57:49 ◼ ► phil shiller with the iphone 7 or maybe even earlier that introduced a feature where if you
00:57:58 ◼ ► where people blinked and or and or smiled and pick the frame with the fewest closed eyes basically
00:58:05 ◼ ► right and it's like there's a lot of ways like to ben's point where you can wrap this up as
00:58:09 ◼ ► a product where the marketing slash communication around it doesn't give you that icky feeling
00:58:15 ◼ ► but google is not the best positioned or right traditionally the best company at doing that
00:58:21 ◼ ► maybe facebook is slightly worse yet but like they just they're good at getting the ick yeah it
00:58:27 ◼ ► would be like if you took a burst of a dozen photos or still is i think you take a burst of
00:58:32 ◼ ► a dozen photos and they algorithmically think these two are the good ones and they'll put like
00:58:37 ◼ ► a dot in the corner and so like you you're welcome just to go through and pixel peep all 12 of them
00:58:43 ◼ ► but you get to the one with the dot and you're like yeah that does look like a good one okay
00:58:47 ◼ ► keep that one throw the rest away well if i were to design the products let's just put it this way
00:58:51 ◼ ► you would just take the photo and it would just automatically compose one where everybody looks
00:58:55 ◼ ► their best instead of like i think there's something rather inhuman about swapping people's
00:58:59 ◼ ► heads out yes it doesn't it'll never not feel weird right so like if we're going to keep this
00:59:05 ◼ ► into the halloween theme like great for halloween a little scary otherwise i'm going to take people's
00:59:10 ◼ ► heads and change them when did you guys start halide when was the first version i want to say
00:59:15 ◼ ► we well we we met in 2016 for coffee and we shipped we we put a line in the sand we're like we got to
00:59:21 ◼ ► finish this up before dub dub we're going to be busy so like the week before dub dub 2017 okay
00:59:26 ◼ ► that's right yeah yeah ben actually slid into my twitter dms back when it was twitter he was like
00:59:32 ◼ ► hey there's these new apis for manual controls for the camera app and he read i wrote a what was it a
00:59:38 ◼ ► review of the like m that you read yeah yeah your two year long review of the m8 yeah yeah yeah and
00:59:44 ◼ ► i'm not maybe it was the m240 or something but anyway one of the cameras i used to write camera
00:59:48 ◼ ► reviews and he was like this guy seems like a fun fun dude to design a camera with we kind of knew
00:59:53 ◼ ► each other a little bit but that's when we we started in earnest and we thought it would just be
00:59:57 ◼ ► like a a scratch around each kind of situation we thought everything out there was kind of bad
01:00:02 ◼ ► or at least not to our liking and then we just decided oh why don't we take a stab at this and
01:00:07 ◼ ► make a camera that we think is nice to use and then eventually i think we were kind of on and
01:00:12 ◼ ► off it was just a side project and then yeah i think you ben maybe were like we got to ship
01:00:16 ◼ ► this thing at some point let's like put in a little sprint and and just get it out and maybe
01:00:20 ◼ ► a couple people will download it and you know we'll move on it's funny like some of the stuff
01:00:24 ◼ ► that didn't make 1.0 we didn't have the volume button capture stuff built in because it required
01:00:29 ◼ ► a really hacky way to work so like 1.0 there was no way to press the volume button to capture
01:00:34 ◼ ► because it was like so hacky we we can take it like a week later yeah can i take a volume button
01:00:41 ◼ ► aside because we're gonna write a blog post about this so apple has announced nobody nobody's aware
01:00:45 ◼ ► of this but at wwc during state of union apple announced all these really amazing features like
01:00:49 ◼ ► zero shutter lag like so our app can now take a photo before you've even pressed the shutter
01:00:53 ◼ ► button it's like crazy rolling buffer stuff like really cool we've got that the one feature they
01:00:59 ◼ ► haven't released on ios yet is an api to take photos with the volume buttons and back in 2010
01:01:07 ◼ ► there was an app called camera plus yes they figured this out but they could just look at
01:01:12 ◼ ► the volume and then if you press the volume button you would take a photo and apple unceremoniously
01:01:17 ◼ ► kick them off the app store thing there's no way in hell you can do that and right then the next
01:01:23 ◼ ► year scott forestall is on stage showing off the iphone 4 or something or the 4s and he's like and
01:01:29 ◼ ► check it out you can just take a photo with the volume button and since then there's okay so camera
01:01:35 ◼ ► plus has reinstated the same year by the way after going to the press which they were explicitly told
01:01:40 ◼ ► that wouldn't help yeah it never works it never works never works never go to the prep and but we
01:01:46 ◼ ► still don't have an api for this so sometimes someone says like hey it's weird when i open
01:01:50 ◼ ► hell i my volume changes a little bit and we're like yeah so because you can only detect if the
01:01:55 ◼ ► volume changes but if you're at zero percent and someone presses down you don't get an event for it
01:01:59 ◼ ► it's a death by a thousand cuts of like okay if you should bring up the photo reviewer and you
01:02:06 ◼ ► don't want to be able it's it's like all these little stupid things and finally our long-standing
01:02:11 ◼ ► national nightmare is over whenever they release this they're finally fixing it this year possibly
01:02:16 ◼ ► 13 years later we might get an api to do this but it's interesting too right because it makes you
01:02:20 ◼ ► think okay what if you're like suddenly something really loud plays like and then you want to change
01:02:25 ◼ ► the volume but there's an app that hijacks the volume button and you can't do that right i kind
01:02:29 ◼ ► of get that but yeah still it i just wanted to say like oh yeah i think we'll finally be able to
01:02:35 ◼ ► do this now so yeah it's funny and i remember the camera plus situation i remember it being and it
01:02:41 ◼ ► was it was a pretty big hit app i don't know if they're still doing well i mean you guys might be
01:02:45 ◼ ► more aware of i mean they're out if they are they're somewhat of a competitor but i know it
01:02:50 ◼ ► was a hit for a while and it did cool things with filters and stuff like that it had had a nice ui
01:02:55 ◼ ► i guess what i remember when that was controversial it it's like on the one hand it's a very obvious
01:03:02 ◼ ► feature right and it's like the way it's like you said like the way forestall presented it it's like
01:03:06 ◼ ► yeah isn't this obvious like all of a sudden like and it to me it goes back to the original
01:03:13 ◼ ► steve job's presentation of the original iphone where it's like why aren't we going to put buttons
01:03:18 ◼ ► because every app wants its own button so we'll just make them all in software right and it's
01:03:23 ◼ ► sort of like hey this little rectangle in your hand becomes these different things you open the
01:03:30 ◼ ► calculator app and you're just holding a calculator that's what it looks like it just looks like it's
01:03:34 ◼ ► a calculator you open the calendar app and it's like it's a it you have a pocket calendar in your
01:03:38 ◼ ► hand that's what it is it's not it you know and and that skeuomorphic look even emphasized that
01:03:46 ◼ ► more right it's like look it's a little calendar with leather at the top and stuff like that
01:03:50 ◼ ► that's what it is it's not a system running an app in the system the little device becomes this thing
01:03:58 ◼ ► and so yes when it becomes a camera it doesn't it make all the sense in the world that there's
01:04:03 ◼ ► an actual physical button to hit to take a picture it's like that's the way forestall presented it
01:04:08 ◼ ► but i i feel like conversely at that time there was sort of a philosophy at apple that the app
01:04:16 ◼ ► gets the screen right you go from corner to corner you get the whole screen but just the screen
01:04:24 ◼ ► the hardware was the systems right so like and obviously for example it it would literally be
01:04:31 ◼ ► disastrous if an app could take over the home button back then right because you needed the
01:04:36 ◼ ► home button to get out of the app right so the home button obviously had to be off limits api-wise
01:04:42 ◼ ► taps and i it's like volume though it's like oh yeah why not for a camera app let them take volume
01:04:49 ◼ ► but i feel like there is this philosophy of no no no those are actual volume buttons and the
01:04:54 ◼ ► user should be able to use them to change the volume at any at all times so you can't use them
01:04:59 ◼ ► for a camera shutter you can't use them as the buttons for a game you can't can't because i think
01:05:04 ◼ ► people tried the same thing back then with games like and obviously volume buttons aren't good for
01:05:09 ◼ ► twitchyness but you know i don't know you could do something in a game with a hardware button
01:05:19 ◼ ► so they don't want to allow developers to make the assumption you can build an experience around this
01:05:25 ◼ ► hardware component because who knows maybe apple in the future will change from clicky buttons to
01:05:30 ◼ ► like a swipey dial or something right and also just as far as like usability they don't want to
01:05:35 ◼ ► teach people to exit this canvas and start pressing buttons on the side as a core interaction right
01:05:40 ◼ ► right right and even now it's like it it i know some people get confused and it's actually kind
01:05:47 ◼ ► of clever but it's like the the they call it the side button it doesn't really have a name but the
01:05:53 ◼ ► the side button has to be off limits to apps for security reasons like that's why when you verify
01:06:01 ◼ ► that's why it's used for apple pay and it's like when you do an apple pay they're like you have to
01:06:05 ◼ ► double click this button and then they show on the screen on your phone this button right here you've
01:06:12 ◼ ► got to double click this to confirm because if it if the interaction for the payment was entirely on
01:06:18 ◼ ► screen there'd be nothing to prevent an app from putting up a fake confirmation button and all of a
01:06:24 ◼ ► sudden you're think you're paying one way and you're actually getting ripped off and paying
01:06:28 ◼ ► another but the fact that that hardware button is off limits to the software means that when you
01:06:34 ◼ ► double click it to confirm you can be the software can be assured yes the user an actual human being
01:06:41 ◼ ► actually double clicked that actual button right yeah there was a brief moment in time where the
01:06:46 ◼ ► subscription app craze started and the all the iphones had home buttons and your touch id sensor
01:06:52 ◼ ► was yeah there and these scummy apps would just throw out random pay walls and when people tried
01:06:56 ◼ ► to exit right sometimes it would just trigger them to purchase it and i was like this was something
01:07:01 ◼ ► that was this wasn't thought through very well and i wonder if like they saw a big dip in app store
01:07:06 ◼ ► revenue after that i don't know it was a real thing i know that that was a real problem and
01:07:10 ◼ ► i talked to somebody who's involved somebody who's on the team that made the original iphone 10
01:07:15 ◼ ► and they said like that was the biggest problem with the touch id sensor on the home button was
01:07:22 ◼ ► that they and and those type of things when you're an honest person like most people are and like
01:07:29 ◼ ► everybody most people at apple are it doesn't even pop into your head that you would give people a
01:07:34 ◼ ► reason to use the home button to exit and then time it so that you pop up a confirmation for
01:07:39 ◼ ► a payment at that time and then as their thumb hits the button you've just confirmed a payment
01:07:44 ◼ ► when all you wanted to do is get out of this app that has seemingly locked you in i remember
01:07:49 ◼ ► hearing a rumor that when the ipad first came out there were games you could download for your cat
01:07:54 ◼ ► and it was just like show this thing would run on screen and this so your cat would pop the screen
01:07:58 ◼ ► and you'd let the app run for 10 minutes and leave it with your cat and then 10 minutes later it
01:08:02 ◼ ► would show a pop-up buy a hundred gems for 20 dollars and the cat would be like yeah okay oh
01:08:07 ◼ ► yeah i like brilliant that's horrible but you know what right it is i always think that when
01:08:16 ◼ ► new scams come out it's like oftentimes i'm like i hate you and i don't know how you sleep at night
01:08:20 ◼ ► but i admired the cleverness of the hole you found in the system here that you're exploiting the other
01:08:27 ◼ ► part though just circling back to okay you're going to make a business out of a pro camera app
01:08:33 ◼ ► for the phone you've got apple's camera app on one side and so the built-in camera app that
01:08:38 ◼ ► everybody has and has all the first party advantages in addition to the fact that it's not just like
01:08:44 ◼ ► like all of apple's built-in apps have the first party advantage because they're built in
01:08:50 ◼ ► the camera app has the additional advantage of being marketing wise the primary thing that apple
01:08:59 ◼ ► sells phones about right like the the one thing that they've every single year for at least
01:09:16 ◼ ► just about the camera right like shot on iphone is the longest running ad campaign the company has
01:09:22 ◼ ► ever had and i don't think it's going to stop i think it has at least another 10 years ahead of it
01:09:27 ◼ ► well they'll just keep running the exact same ad shot on iphone and just show really cool photos
01:09:34 ◼ ► blown up to billboard size so you're competing against this app that has the full attention of
01:09:39 ◼ ► the company a level talent within the company and then on the other side the app store has a lot of
01:09:46 ◼ ► camera apps yeah right it's a crowded field and so i feel like a lot of people let's go back to 2017
01:09:54 ◼ ► you're like hey maybe we should make this app and scratch our own itch would be like well you hope
01:09:59 ◼ ► you guys don't have any hopes of making a business out of it because you're getting squeezed on both
01:10:02 ◼ ► sides right that's how you said my actual mom said that my mom was aware of the fact there were so
01:10:08 ◼ ► many camera apps she's like well that seems like there's an awful lot of apps already doing camera
01:10:12 ◼ ► stuff in the app store and i was like well it's not really for about making money it's more about
01:10:16 ◼ ► like doing what we like to do i like design i like iphones i like cameras why not right and we were
01:10:23 ◼ ► very surprised to see it take off so much and like kind of resonate and i think it was because it was
01:10:28 ◼ ► so opinionated and we didn't we never and to this day don't make an illusion that we're trying to
01:10:33 ◼ ► compete with apple's camera right for one the silicon advantage is crazy they can literally
01:10:38 ◼ ► do all sorts of stuff we can never do and i don't really blame them for it if they want to stay on
01:10:41 ◼ ► the cutting edge they can't build an api for every single invention they do and all that sort of
01:10:47 ◼ ► thing and we don't want to i don't want to be on the design team that has to make a camera for every
01:10:51 ◼ ► single person under the sun like literally every person on this planet needs to be able to use their
01:10:56 ◼ ► camera app we have a luxury of designing for a niche and that's that's a really nice luxury to
01:11:01 ◼ ► have but we just went really overboard with that niche we were like okay let's we i think one of
01:11:07 ◼ ► the biggest things we saw which started our collaboration was just that cameras are delightful
01:11:12 ◼ ► objects they're super tactile if you give a camera to a child they play with the knobs and the dials
01:11:17 ◼ ► and the clickiness on the aperture ring and and a phone kind of by definition will have to lose that
01:11:24 ◼ ► you're tapping this pane of glass but what could we do to make it as tactile as possible and we kind
01:11:30 ◼ ► of we went a little overboard with it as we tend to do with our apps but we put like a little little
01:11:35 ◼ ► sort of virtual paper manual that you would kind of leave through that was styled after an old
01:11:39 ◼ ► polaroid manual and we made a custom typeface that was kind of looked like the before apple had one
01:11:44 ◼ ► i will add that that kind of looked like the sort of etched lettering you would see on like a like
01:11:49 ◼ ► a rez ice lens and those kind of little things some things didn't work and we dropped them and
01:11:53 ◼ ► some things worked and it just resonated with people and back then it was all about like now
01:11:57 ◼ ► you can take raw photos on your iphone too which the first party camera couldn't do and sometimes
01:12:02 ◼ ► you could get a nicer shot of it if you put some effort into into editing that and i think that's
01:12:06 ◼ ► kind of the the note we we hit yeah i think that on the apple side of things a healthy ecosystem
01:12:15 ◼ ► a healthy reason to build an sdk to begin with is that you want other companies to fill in the stuff
01:12:21 ◼ ► that is not your primary fields and like as much as i loved aperture for mac i think it makes sense
01:12:27 ◼ ► that this is not the fields or this is not an app that apple wanted to be in they want to build
01:12:31 ◼ ► products for the broadest possible market and so i think there's a lot to be said that like yeah we
01:12:36 ◼ ► don't want to compete with the first part of camera mind you you can you can like get an extra 10 of
01:12:41 ◼ ► extra features like you can know nothing about raw or white balance or any of that and you just want
01:12:46 ◼ ► manual focus and focus peaking and these little things and we have users who use the app just like
01:12:52 ◼ ► that because they just want that little extra something and that's cool but then once you start
01:12:56 ◼ ► getting into pro raw like we would actually so like last year we were able to ship something
01:13:01 ◼ ► that allowed you to say 48 megapixel jpegs when you could only do it with pro rock which i i didn't
01:13:05 ◼ ► realize was available in the first party camera until recently like so giving people who are a
01:13:11 ◼ ► little more sophisticated that extra whatever they want i think that's a lot of the bread and butter
01:13:20 ◼ ► are there ever too many love songs no i'm i'm a jerk no i mean like there's more realistic is
01:13:29 ◼ ► like there's a market for a porsche a ferrari a mercedes right you don't need to dominate something
01:13:37 ◼ ► if we were building a social network yeah we'd be totally screwed because that's a zero-sum game but
01:13:42 ◼ ► as far as something where people want quality experience i think it's much fairer to compete
01:13:47 ◼ ► on quality and value add than worrying about one winner takes all yeah that's that's my take i mean
01:13:55 ◼ ► and i say this from the vaguely similar perspective of somebody who before halide worked on a notes app
01:14:03 ◼ ► right which had the same problem right we me and brent simmons and dave whiskas made vesper which
01:14:08 ◼ ► was sort of to notes app what halide is to camera apps apple makes a good notes app there's lots and
01:14:15 ◼ ► lots of notes apps in the app store and we didn't make it but i think i think we could have for other
01:14:20 ◼ ► reasons but i still think the our basic idea that our idea when we got started is if we're better
01:14:25 ◼ ► than everybody else we have a chance and i i think that's where halide has thrived is it's great
01:14:33 ◼ ► right it looks great it is fast it has you guys come up with cutting edge whatever is capable from
01:14:40 ◼ ► the hardware you guys can take advantage of it and do it technically impressive things in addition to
01:14:46 ◼ ► the fact that you've got the visually pleasant things like a commissioning a custom typeface
01:14:53 ◼ ► right which is i i love i love sebb calling it a little overboard i mean it's a lot overboard
01:14:59 ◼ ► but that right it is it's a lot overboard and we we talk a lot privately and we not privately but
01:15:07 ◼ ► personally on on chat and i've told you from like the beginning how much i love the shutter button
01:15:14 ◼ ► in halide it is the nicest i'm looking at it right now it is still it is like the nicest little
01:15:21 ◼ ► thing i can i press it even i'm not i there's nothing in the frame that's worth taking and i
01:15:25 ◼ ► just like pressing it it is a beautiful beautiful it is the nicest looking button on the entire
01:15:34 ◼ ► iphone in any app it is right all right i like to and we built a tiny physics engine for specter's
01:15:41 ◼ ► dial so when you flick it we didn't use any of the stuff they have just like yeah i want to this will
01:15:45 ◼ ► be fun and i think one of the difficult things especially if you're a two-person team is having
01:15:51 ◼ ► a taste of like you love apple products you love premium products but also recognizing like
01:15:56 ◼ ► the limitations and i think it's something we've worked on that we can't spend the same resources
01:16:02 ◼ ► apple does on one feature years getting something or you end up like well you end up like humane
01:16:10 ◼ ► but like right you end up never shipping anything right so like for us we end up we're getting
01:16:16 ◼ ► better now i think making fighting the right battles and knowing where most attention is
01:16:20 ◼ ► going to be going and like the analogy going back to games would be apple is a triple-a
01:16:31 ◼ ► a cozy i don't know experience even if you're a two-person team as long as you pick the right
01:16:36 ◼ ► battles is one of the i feel like now that apple has got it's always been an issue with apple
01:16:43 ◼ ► apple's always had a a unique relationship with third-party developers in a way that let's say
01:16:50 ◼ ► their biggest long-term rival microsoft has always everybody mocks balmer for the developers
01:16:58 ◼ ► developers developers developers developers developers develop because he was all sweaty but
01:17:04 ◼ ► it's a funny thing but there is a truth to it though that microsoft has relationship to
01:17:10 ◼ ► third-party developers was like maybe we won't do everything you want but you will at least listen
01:17:15 ◼ ► to you and there's open channels and we'll tell you why and we'll tell you all sorts of things
01:17:20 ◼ ► and it's just everything i know about it it's way less of a black box than the third-party
01:17:25 ◼ ► developer relationship with apple right like just reporting bugs or getting progress on bugs
01:17:32 ◼ ► you've reported when in feedback i'm never going to not call it radar but yeah it it anybody's
01:17:40 ◼ ► listened to any podcasts with developers on it is going to find at some point find a developer
01:17:45 ◼ ► really really mad about a really good bug report like totally reproducible like three lines i have
01:17:53 ◼ ► an xcode project that is three lines of source code that reproduce the bug every time and it
01:17:58 ◼ ► doesn't get fixed and they don't hear anything and then a year later it's fixed and it's like what
01:18:04 ◼ ► oh what happened or whatever or never gets fixed but uh it did and it's just an overall large just
01:18:12 ◼ ► writ large even from the power user perspective the fear that apple is so focused on the consumer
01:18:18 ◼ ► and the just to stick to the camera they just hit the shutter button level of usability across the
01:18:25 ◼ ► system that they're losing their desire to appease power users but it seems to me that with the camera
01:18:35 ◼ ► in addition to the fact that they obviously spend an inordinate amount of attention on their own
01:18:40 ◼ ► camera app that they have provided and continue to provide additional apis for apps like halide
01:18:50 ◼ ► or like on the video side filmic for pros like pro type apps that they're serious about providing
01:18:56 ◼ ► in addition to their own app camera apis so ben like how where am i right to say that that that
01:19:05 ◼ ► they are pretty they seem pretty enthusiastic about providing apis for people like you yeah i
01:19:11 ◼ ► mean they're like when they launch pro raw that's a perfect example because we had just spent like 18
01:19:16 ◼ ► months building mark 2 and like we have features in there to make raw easier and like a month or
01:19:22 ◼ ► actually right before we launch it they announced and here's pro raw like wow i could have saved
01:19:26 ◼ ► three months of my life if i'd known that was coming well that's going up there so they're not
01:19:30 ◼ ► going to like compare that to again like a partner if you're if you're working with sony on the next
01:19:33 ◼ ► playstation they seed you hardware years in advance so that you can help them on launch day
01:19:38 ◼ ► sell the new thing and i get that because on the flip side look at all that stuff that's leaked
01:19:42 ◼ ► around the switch too right right but so on the that that all said like as soon as they launched
01:19:47 ◼ ► uh pro raw they said like and we're also going to be shipping an api at this before the end of the
01:19:51 ◼ ► year and they did and they even kind of explained like where it was coming from and what what the
01:19:56 ◼ ► intent of this is so sometimes like i would say most of the time they try to get something out as
01:20:03 ◼ ► as soon as after public launch as possible but then there's stuff like night mode which is our
01:20:08 ◼ ► we're asking users what do they miss most in the app and it's night mode and they just don't expose
01:20:13 ◼ ► that as an api to third-party devs and i kind of get why because there are certain features in the
01:20:17 ◼ ► first party camera like panorama mode where it's just like so niche and it would be kind of how do
01:20:23 ◼ ► you expose that to a third-party app without then hand holding them through the usability but that
01:20:29 ◼ ► said like we'd kill for night mode like it's the number one pain point yeah yeah and stuff just
01:20:36 ◼ ► randomly breaks right like like ben said like we don't get like advanced iphone hardware and they
01:20:41 ◼ ► speaking of a black box like they're obviously not going to put anything api wise ahead of time
01:20:47 ◼ ► being to the development versions of ios so by the time the new devices hit like clockwork usually
01:20:53 ◼ ► our app is super broken depending on what's going on the final version of ios or the final new
01:20:59 ◼ ► device and that can be kind of a scramble for us a lot of our users assume that we are buddy buddy
01:21:04 ◼ ► with apple and then we just get to play with the new iphones but like we're just in line with
01:21:07 ◼ ► everybody else in the morning trying to get a device so we can start troubleshooting it
01:21:12 ◼ ► and sometimes that also means that you can you don't get an answer to your bugs so when the 10s
01:21:16 ◼ ► came out and the 10r we had a new portrait depth mode in hallad and we were like there's a weird
01:21:22 ◼ ► issue with the depth thing going on and they just wouldn't they couldn't get an answer to us because
01:21:28 ◼ ► they were too busy being secretive about it and trying presumably to ship this and then we weren't
01:21:33 ◼ ► sure if it was going to be fixed or not in the final shipping version of ios so we just ended
01:21:36 ◼ ► up building our own portrait blur for it because yeah i mean it's also like there was an issue with
01:21:43 ◼ ► saving photos the camera roll that was a bug in one of the demons i learned way too much about
01:21:48 ◼ ► internals of ios and how photos are saved to an asset demon through this but for like a year it
01:21:53 ◼ ► was the number one bug and we ended up having to build like a feature we called rescue where before
01:21:58 ◼ ► we try to write the camera roll because sometimes photos would disappear like we would save you a
01:22:02 ◼ ► local copy and it involves like to sort of show apple and i kind of wonder like how much they
01:22:08 ◼ ► have as far as telemetry when they run these bugs but we showed them statistics based on how many
01:22:13 ◼ ► people are using this and it's almost like if you're in a large company as if it's almost as if
01:22:17 ◼ ► we're the we're the satellite office of apple reporting bugs sometimes where like you have a pm
01:22:22 ◼ ► at a large company and their priority is the next big thing and if you're at a large company you
01:22:26 ◼ ► have to make a case based on reason of like this is how many people are impacted it's not just me
01:22:31 ◼ ► insisting you fix this bug here's a concrete case if i had a keynote i'd show you it like and so
01:22:37 ◼ ► we've gotten better at that too and i think that over time as we've been better at reporting the
01:22:41 ◼ ► bugs i think that they've gotten better as soon as they see one from our company i think they're
01:22:46 ◼ ► better at getting it screening like oh it's those guys we better move that one to the top of the
01:22:50 ◼ ► line they're pretty good at this so all right i brought up video what about have you guys have
01:22:57 ◼ ► you guys considered adding video or is is still photography a big enough ongoing bite and
01:23:08 ◼ ► specialization for halide halide is not going to record video i love video right but i love video
01:23:17 ◼ ► right halides never i'm so happy to announce halide is never i love ever ever going to get
01:23:26 ◼ ► video and it will not get my mojis and uh yeah yeah yeah and there are apps like i said like
01:23:34 ◼ ► there's filmic i think is it black magic who just came out with a new app it's similar because the
01:23:40 ◼ ► video capabilities of these things are better and better and people really are it's i know when
01:23:45 ◼ ► soderberg shot his first the first like real feature steven soderberg film on an iphone
01:23:51 ◼ ► it kind of had it was like part of the the the aesthetic of the movie i forget what the title
01:23:56 ◼ ► of that first one was but then he shot another one and it's like this doesn't look like it was shot on
01:24:00 ◼ ► a phone it's not supposed to and it's they're not shooting with the built-in camera app they're
01:24:06 ◼ ► using filmic or one of those things there's there's i would i would the best analogy i have when we
01:24:12 ◼ ► built halide in 20s well we talked about in 2016 and that fall they released raw for iphone and
01:24:17 ◼ ► ios 10 and that was when sebastian and i were like we gotta do this and like i would say that with
01:24:22 ◼ ► log video uh on iphone that's its raw moment of like okay now now you can really treat this more
01:24:30 ◼ ► as a filmmaking device and like i'm excited like a lifetime ago i my my first career i wanted out
01:24:37 ◼ ► of school was to work in visual effects and i loved like turns out building for websites
01:24:43 ◼ ► one fraction is difficult like you can actually have you can actually have a life outside of work
01:24:48 ◼ ► but along the short is like i love i love video and i love what they're doing with it and it'd
01:24:53 ◼ ► be my dream to play around with it but it's you also have to realize like if you start adding a
01:24:58 ◼ ► bunch of features like to halide you don't end up with a horse you end up with a camel like yeah i
01:25:02 ◼ ► could use another hump there oh it should have a lot of water so you can walk right over a few days
01:25:06 ◼ ► and before you know it you end up with this like terrible product and so half of our struggle is
01:25:12 ◼ ► just like saying no to stuff that we really want to build like with with orion like that was
01:25:17 ◼ ► originally going to be we were looking at you could hook up webcams to your ipad and like okay
01:25:21 ◼ ► well maybe that'd be cool if you could get manual control over a webcam and halide for ipad and now
01:25:26 ◼ ► it sucked so we were like yeah let's not build that that isn't good enough and so it ended up
01:25:30 ◼ ► being like okay well then orion came about it like with just this one-off thing for that purpose yeah
01:25:35 ◼ ► yeah specter is also a good example we had a lot of people ask us with the first version of hell
01:25:39 ◼ ► that like why can't i take a long exposure your limit to one third of a second and we said well
01:25:44 ◼ ► that's the actual hardware limit on the api level for the camera you can't take a longer frame than
01:25:48 ◼ ► that and they said well there's these other apps that do long exposures and i would get some
01:25:52 ◼ ► somewhat upset being like well it's not real it's they just stitched together a bunch of photos it's
01:25:57 ◼ ► not a real long exposure and then i realized like i'm being a purist for the sake of it and it
01:26:01 ◼ ► doesn't make any sense what if what if we were to make this and like what would it look like so me
01:26:05 ◼ ► and ben we sit down and we we work on this long exposure thing and it looked really cool but we
01:26:10 ◼ ► had to make all these different decisions and and options and things that didn't really feel true to
01:26:14 ◼ ► something that would fit in hell it was starting to kind of look like homer simpson's car from
01:26:18 ◼ ► the simpsons we had like three different horns for different sounds so we thought what if we
01:26:22 ◼ ► spin it into an app on its own and that actually gave us the opportunity where halide is somewhat
01:26:26 ◼ ► for intermediate users if you graduate from the camera app maybe you want to you understand what
01:26:31 ◼ ► shutter speed is etc you know what raw files are what if we make it the long exposure you don't
01:26:35 ◼ ► have to think about anything like that we don't even use a single word from the photographic
01:26:39 ◼ ► lexicon and we just make it and we make things easier too so we just like build use ai to like
01:26:45 ◼ ► we're not required a tripod anymore we don't make it technical at all you just tap the button get a
01:26:49 ◼ ► long exposure if you don't even know what that is and that was a really good decision and and i think
01:27:00 ◼ ► makes it a meaningful addition to the app rather than kind of try to shoehorn in more and more
01:27:04 ◼ ► features because we can yeah so yeah so we were talking about specter specter is an app that is
01:27:10 ◼ ► dedicated to long exposures i mean is that a simple way of putting it so like a water fountain
01:27:17 ◼ ► or a fountain or nighttime shot of cars driving fast by you or what are other examples that are
01:27:24 ◼ ► great for a long exposure my favorite example of it is was actually and this was a funny because
01:27:28 ◼ ► it was launched the year before the pandemic and then for a while our primary use case fell away
01:27:33 ◼ ► because ben was in this place in kyoto we have these beautiful orange gates and there's always
01:27:38 ◼ ► tons of tourists that are taking photos but tourists tend to take a photo and move on so
01:27:42 ◼ ► if you just set us exposure time of like five nine seconds they just disappear they just get averaged
01:27:51 ◼ ► the people disappear and normally that would take figuring out exposure logic so it doesn't end up
01:27:56 ◼ ► all blown out and the tripod and whatever now you just grab your iphone take a picture and then at
01:28:01 ◼ ► worst the people got super blurry and it kind of becomes a texture and that was a really really fun
01:28:06 ◼ ► use case for it like you said waterfall what's most fun about this and okay going back to like
01:28:12 ◼ ► emergent gameplay like the zelda games where you figure out a solution to a problem and that's half
01:28:17 ◼ ► the fun like what's amazing is building an app like specter we have users who are doing this
01:28:25 ◼ ► like these phantom so to speak images and so it's really fun to build things like that and see
01:28:31 ◼ ► people find uses for it that we couldn't have predicted yeah yeah i go back i i'm old enough
01:28:38 ◼ ► and enthusiastic enough that i my early years of photography were on film actual film and i it's
01:28:44 ◼ ► long long exposures were possible of course on especially like slr is you could set the exposure
01:28:50 ◼ ► for really long 10 seconds if you want but the need to keep the camera completely stable was so
01:28:59 ◼ ► important that you really if you really were into long exposures you'd get an external shutter
01:29:06 ◼ ► for the camera because even if the camera was on a firmly grounded tripod you're physically hitting
01:29:14 ◼ ► the shutter button on the camera would move the camera enough that like the initial opening second
01:29:20 ◼ ► or fractions of a second would screw it up and the whole for the whole photo would be a bit a bit
01:29:27 ◼ ► blurry you actually needed like a little clicker like uh they were like the clickers on jeopardy
01:29:32 ◼ ► that like a little pen that you hold in your hand and and click so that the camera wouldn't move at
01:29:38 ◼ ► all and i remember learning that even things like well if you're outside and it's windy you're kind
01:29:42 ◼ ► of screwed you're never going to get a good long exposure it's and then you'd see when you like
01:29:48 ◼ ► behind the scenes at national geographic and they show you i know which i always i'm sure you guys
01:29:52 ◼ ► do too it's like i almost love the behind the scenes stuff more than the actual footage and
01:29:57 ◼ ► you'd see that they'd build like a tent around the camera to keep the wind from moving the tripod like
01:30:02 ◼ ► not in the frame but it's like they built like a shed for the photographer to stand in to stay out
01:30:07 ◼ ► of the elements because any little fan meanwhile now you'd specter you're just holding your phone
01:30:12 ◼ ► in front of your face right yeah oh like look at night mode with your iphone where you keep in a
01:30:17 ◼ ► pitch black room and you don't even have like any limber so there's actually a little plus to make
01:30:21 ◼ ► sure you stay aligned because right and it'll just throw away the stuff we can't use it'll just sort
01:30:26 ◼ ► of auto align the images and it was kind of cool that year because i always thought it would be
01:30:30 ◼ ► kind of technical and niche but it it did really well when it launched and that year apple picked
01:30:35 ◼ ► it as the iphone app of the year as kind of a showcase thing and i always thought that was
01:30:40 ◼ ► funny because i kind of cynically assumed apple cares more about revenue with these things or
01:30:45 ◼ ► they could have nominated some easy some absolute money maker app and it just makes millions of
01:30:50 ◼ ► dollars but they just went with a pretty niche little thing and that was really cool to me
01:30:53 ◼ ► that that was like what happened all right let me take a break here and thank our second sponsor for
01:30:58 ◼ ► the show it's our good friends at squarespace oh man squarespace is the all-in-one platform
01:31:11 ◼ ► 2023 we head into the end of the year this is the year where it overall broad strokes just proves
01:31:22 ◼ ► with the decline of twitter the rise of threads all these other micro networks going on you should
01:31:30 ◼ ► have your own home on the internet your own website and that's home base and then you can
01:31:35 ◼ ► have little mini profiles and posts other places but you want your own presence on the web and the
01:31:42 ◼ ► easiest way to do it is with squarespace squarespace all in one everything from templates
01:31:48 ◼ ► to choose from their new next generation fluid engine which is what they call they've always
01:31:54 ◼ ► been drag and drop at squarespace fluid engine is their next generation website design system
01:31:59 ◼ ► and the biggest difference from the previous tools that they had is that fluid engine is designed
01:32:05 ◼ ► from the ground up to work just as well with touch that it does on a mouse-based system and so you can
01:32:11 ◼ ► design your website on your phone or your ipad or something like that but even on your phone you can
01:32:17 ◼ ► make these tweaks and drag and drop to your heart's content is just absolutely the best website
01:32:23 ◼ ► template configuration building visual tool that i have seen on any app anywhere and everybody who
01:32:30 ◼ ► signs up for squarespace just gets it other features online stores build it you could do it
01:32:35 ◼ ► right in squarespace everything from the catalog to the presentation to the actual e-commerce and
01:32:41 ◼ ► processing the payments and stuff like that when you do payments through squarespace you can accept
01:32:45 ◼ ► credit cards paypal apple pay everything you'd want you can even integrate with the new stuff
01:32:50 ◼ ► like afterpay and clear pay and stuff like that they've got integrations like that built right in
01:32:56 ◼ ► like i said flexible website templates that you can either use as is or you can tweak to your
01:33:02 ◼ ► heart's content analytics everything like that just an absolutely great analytics dashboard
01:33:09 ◼ ► that is you know speaking about airplane cockpits again nothing at all like most analytics where it
01:33:16 ◼ ► looks like i don't know like a 27 tab excel spreadsheet no squarespace analytics are just
01:33:23 ◼ ► like how much traffic you're getting where is it coming from where's it going to super simple
01:33:30 ◼ ► everything you need to know it's really just beautiful and great so where do you go go to
01:33:34 ◼ ► squarespace.com for a free trial and if you go to squarespace.com talk show they'll know you came
01:33:44 ◼ ► from this show and squarespace.com slash talk show gets you 10 off your first purchase of a website
01:33:52 ◼ ► or domain my thanks to squarespace for their continuing support of the talk show let's talk
01:33:59 ◼ ► let's go back and talk ui design trends oh boy it's funny and again i still i still have so much
01:34:09 ◼ ► affinity for vesper um but when we did vesper it was in i the ios 6 era i was five and i was i
01:34:18 ◼ ► think maybe it was i was five when we got started or i was six and you know everything had depth
01:34:23 ◼ ► and texture and stuff like that and it felt like the winds were blowing in the other direction and
01:34:31 ◼ ► our first version of vesper shipped before i forget what year but i guess it was 2013 when
01:34:37 ◼ ► i was seven came out we shipped like in may before we def like you guys we desperately wanted to ship
01:34:43 ◼ ► before wwdc and it had a look and feel surprisingly ios 7 like and i was seven dropped as a surprise
01:34:51 ◼ ► on everybody i mean that was a well-kept secret within apple it just was sort of we correctly
01:34:58 ◼ ► tell kind of felt a shift in trends flatter simpler sort of lack of depth i but i kind of
01:35:08 ◼ ► feel like with apple when they went with with where they went with iowa 7 was even further
01:35:13 ◼ ► and like the complete almost complete lack of button shapes for buttons anymore like vesper
01:35:19 ◼ ► still had buttons they just didn't have 3d depth there but they were outlined and they highlighted
01:35:23 ◼ ► when you tap them and iowa 7 introduced a sort of you know what we don't really need buttons we
01:35:28 ◼ ► for most things we could just use text and make it a certain color and you just tap the text which
01:35:34 ◼ ► to me made the whole system feel more websitey than appy which in a way that i i never really
01:35:41 ◼ ► liked and i feel like they've come back a little bit on some of those things and where they are
01:35:48 ◼ ► with the overall look i think it looks better than ever and they've gotten some more depth but
01:36:05 ◼ ► yeah i think it's really what's really interesting is i don't think i know a single designer that
01:36:12 ◼ ► didn't feel like apple over corrected a little too hard with iowa 7 right and obviously there
01:36:17 ◼ ► was a lot of changes in like leadership structure and direction at that time and i will say this as
01:36:22 ◼ ► a disclaimer that i worked at apple on some of the most egregious cited examples of the pre iowa
01:36:29 ◼ ► seven days there might have might or may not have been some stitch leather with my name on it
01:36:33 ◼ ► involved rich karenthian rich karenthian but there was someone who really liked that back then at
01:36:40 ◼ ► apple and that person is not there anymore and i think what the coolest thing has been to see the
01:36:46 ◼ ► return of it some designers in my opinion some of myopically are looking at it and seeing like all
01:36:51 ◼ ► right i can use my layer effects again let's dust off photoshop but if you look at the way this sort
01:36:56 ◼ ► of i don't like to use the word skeuomorphism because a lot of these things don't look like
01:37:00 ◼ ► right if you look at the definition of skeuomorphic it's it's an object that is looking
01:37:04 ◼ ► like the thing it's trying to depict so a calendar if it looks like a physical paper calendar and be
01:37:08 ◼ ► paper on the digital interface even though it has no reason to be the the new sort of era of
01:37:13 ◼ ► tactile interfaces is like the dynamic island for instance where the the visual flare doesn't come
01:37:20 ◼ ► from being able to add layer effects and having these juicy retina displays that can display all
01:37:24 ◼ ► these gradients and colors it's being able to do motion blur and animation and seeing like the way
01:37:30 ◼ ► that shape can expand is almost liquid right you can see it kind of like sticking together and
01:37:34 ◼ ► popping apart you see this in all of apple's like latest and greatest stuff is that the fluidity of
01:37:39 ◼ ► the gesture-based interaction the iphone 10 having these incredibly supple fluid transformations of
01:37:46 ◼ ► vector shapes progressive gradient blurs these little things that are honestly our design tools
01:37:51 ◼ ► are not at all equipped to do we've had our design tools go more and more in that direction since ios
01:37:55 ◼ ► heaven of being able to make boxes with text on them and none of them do this kind of this is like
01:38:01 ◼ ► code your own stuff game engine stuff and apple increasingly is is showing that their direction
01:38:11 ◼ ► surfaces that are glassy and blurry and fluid and and that's really cool and i think that that's
01:38:17 ◼ ► kind of like the direction that ui is going into and it's it's way more subtle and interactive and
01:38:23 ◼ ► beautiful than we can comprehend right now right like it's it doesn't fit into that old aqua
01:38:30 ◼ ► framework anymore where it's just a bitmap that looks different it's actually the way things
01:38:34 ◼ ► behave to your finger with physics and that yeah it's super super cool yeah well i'll just say
01:38:43 ◼ ► lickable was probably the wrong thing for me to say because lickable applies specifically to
01:38:47 ◼ ► aqua where it looks like candy lozenge i i i just sort of mean like apps that when you just look at
01:38:54 ◼ ► them at first first look you're like whoa what's that right that and i feel like that's been
01:39:01 ◼ ► missing for a while there there's a certain sameness to everything and and to me i also think
01:39:12 ◼ ► a sort of hey it it's like there's a lot of super talented designers like you and and peers of you
01:39:25 ◼ ► and your friends who who know my friend brad ellis who know how to make extraordinarily good little
01:39:33 ◼ ► buttons or icons or something like that and there's this sort of ah who needs them will just
01:39:37 ◼ ► make all these icons just be completely flat if if it's completely flat with no lighting or texture
01:39:44 ◼ ► we don't need them right as opposed to when it felt like everything needed some depth and lighting
01:39:51 ◼ ► and texture if you didn't have a good designer your thing stood out because it looked like shit
01:39:56 ◼ ► right and and if nobody's trying it then yours can be made by untalented designers and it doesn't
01:40:02 ◼ ► really stick out like a sore thumb well it's unfortunate is i feel like there's been this
01:40:07 ◼ ► sort of like wave of fun police coming into the f world where people are just like why is it looking
01:40:12 ◼ ► like this and oh you shouldn't be spending time on that and even with orion we had this to a big
01:40:16 ◼ ► extent where there was some guy who was uh his forces was on twitter or x you want to call it
01:40:23 ◼ ► nowadays he's like well like how does this even meaningfully impact your conversion rates or
01:40:27 ◼ ► whatever nonsense like that it's like it's like the finance boys took over like something that
01:40:32 ◼ ► really was a group of enthusiasts making things for the sake of creating the art like there's art
01:40:37 ◼ ► to making apps just like video games and for some strange reason and i think it has something with
01:40:44 ◼ ► again the design tools as well it's harder to make things that are really overtly fun and it's much
01:40:49 ◼ ► harder for an organization which app organizations are much more serious and big now to justify
01:40:56 ◼ ► or quote unquote take the risk of being visually distinct and fitting that into their quote design
01:41:02 ◼ ► system or whatever it is nowadays to justify that kind of flair and i think every user notices and
01:41:09 ◼ ► appreciates it honestly like there is no end to the people actually i don't know like it doesn't
01:41:15 ◼ ► go unappreciated is what i'm trying to say and and i think we are seeing more and more people
01:41:20 ◼ ► especially on the web interestingly before apps people more using fun effects using more depth and
01:41:26 ◼ ► making things a bit more attractive and i really think we're hopefully going to see that in in apps
01:41:31 ◼ ► as well because i mean if we're any example of it like people really appreciate we get so many
01:41:36 ◼ ► messages from people saying like we we love that there's just fun and cool cool things going on in
01:41:42 ◼ ► here and there's it's it's a huge app store it's it's never been this big i think but there really
01:41:48 ◼ ► are still not very many apps where people go that far and they really get noticed when you put that
01:41:53 ◼ ► kind of love and care into something yeah ben yeah i i think that i get why iowa 7 was a response
01:42:01 ◼ ► like post-modernism it was a response to things had gone too far in one direction and i i
01:42:08 ◼ ► personally went through a period like an interior design where i loved modernism and super clean
01:42:12 ◼ ► lines and everything but then i don't know if it's a sign of my age but in interior design it turns
01:42:18 ◼ ► out there's this really cool aesthetic where if you take uh modern and contrast it with like
01:42:23 ◼ ► pre-war and ornate or nation orientation whatever you'd say like the two styles next to each other
01:42:30 ◼ ► play off each other really really well because when you see this flare it has something to
01:42:36 ◼ ► contrast against and so hopefully now you'll see it used tastefully and will actually be a stronger
01:42:42 ◼ ► look with like a sort of a baseline tabula rasa this is what the os level is and now people are
01:42:48 ◼ ► going to feel more comfortable sort of dipping their toes like with ios as it sort of reeled
01:42:52 ◼ ► itself back but yeah i want to see a baroque app i want to see gargoyles and a ridiculous flare
01:42:59 ◼ ► where it counts well and that brings us to o'ryan o'ryan is your guy's new app sort of a mini app
01:43:07 ◼ ► you guys even said you guys sort of built it in six weeks or no that might be too short but for
01:43:18 ◼ ► i can go for this one uh so we discovered when we were looking into the external camera api with uh
01:43:27 ◼ ► ipad that it kind of sucked as a camera api but it turned out that you could plug in these capture
01:43:34 ◼ ► dongles that you buy off amazon for 15 bucks and you can plug in an hdmi source and suddenly you
01:43:39 ◼ ► can use your ipad as an external monitor and so we're like okay what if we were to kind of like
01:43:44 ◼ ► specter do like a one-off app that does one thing particularly well it wouldn't be an ongoing
01:43:51 ◼ ► business and if you were to do this one thing how would you go over the top and have fun with it and
01:43:57 ◼ ► it was kind of like it it was more for us and having fun and just yeah if it made money cool
01:44:04 ◼ ► if it was an art project that's great and so it's useful if you're if you need to play a console
01:44:12 ◼ ► game on your ipad you don't have a monitor if you have a server in a closet like a mac mini that's
01:44:16 ◼ ► not hooked up to a screen and you just need to quickly log in and fix something you could use it
01:44:21 ◼ ► i have it hooked up to a dongle that does composite input and so i have it hooked up to my super
01:44:26 ◼ ► nintendo and i was able to get some rounds of street fighter 2 off so it's like a portable
01:44:30 ◼ ► monitor and we're able to layer on like crt effects oh and in the case of like nintendo
01:44:35 ◼ ► switch which only does 1080p we were able to do some stuff like upscale to 4k using metal effects
01:44:41 ◼ ► so it's like the old it's it's it's it's an overkill monitor uh for ipad right let you use
01:44:48 ◼ ► your ipad as an ad just as a display all right what's what's the path to get a super nintendo
01:44:53 ◼ ► hooked up to it though because super nintendo doesn't do hdmi out oh no so you buy a little
01:44:58 ◼ ► dongle i forgot whoever was like star tech or one of these companies makes a an s video and analog
01:45:04 ◼ ► input to usb-c all right and then you plug that into the ipad it shows up as a webcam i guess it
01:45:10 ◼ ► was for like if you had one of those little camcorders for home movies right and there's
01:45:14 ◼ ► like all these chinese companies like oh they're all the same chipsets so you can pick any of the
01:45:20 ◼ ► dozen off amazon and they all do the same thing but they're out there you only need one adapter
01:45:24 ◼ ► though i was thinking you might need like s video to hdmi and an hdmi to usb-c yeah i'm kind of
01:45:30 ◼ ► surprised that you don't have some daisy chain of like crazy dongles like sticking out now right
01:45:36 ◼ ► now it's right there s video right to usb-c right because at one point i had to do that with my
01:45:41 ◼ ► apple extended keyboard 2 which is adb out my beloved keyboard and it went i added old i mate
01:45:51 ◼ ► usb-a adapter so it went one adapter was all i needed but then once the machine stopped having
01:46:00 ◼ ► usb-a ports then i needed a usb-a to usb-c dongle and a dongle to a dongle you're starting to stretch
01:46:06 ◼ ► things but it's getting into some yeah absurd territory right but there's a guy over in hong
01:46:11 ◼ ► kong i forget his name jianni something but he goes by the name tinker boy but he makes a he like
01:46:16 ◼ ► 3d prints a bunch of custom dongles and he's got a it's a much better adapter than the old i make
01:46:22 ◼ ► one but now it go he's got one and he sent me a prototype that goes right to usb-c and there's
01:46:28 ◼ ► just something in the back of my brain that is so much happier knowing that i've just got one
01:46:32 ◼ ► adapter than an adapter to an adapter but yeah but that's a cool the the the mac mini in a closet
01:46:40 ◼ ► type scenario i mean it's it's not just a toy right it's not just like sure playing your old
01:46:46 ◼ ► super nintendo games is all right now it's a toy it's you're playing video games but that's actually
01:46:50 ◼ ► a cool use case right because you don't want to if 99.8 percent of the time the the mac and the
01:46:57 ◼ ► little mac mini can run headless yeah why even waste money on the cheapest to cheap displays
01:47:04 ◼ ► to keep in there and if you can just walk in just walk around with the ipad you already have and
01:47:09 ◼ ► hook it up with one thing and now and all of a sudden that's super useful right it is actually
01:47:13 ◼ ► useful when i told my son about orion he was so happy he said i've been i've been wanting a wig
01:47:20 ◼ ► in his dorm room to play his switch on a bigger screen i mean is his ipad he has an ipad pro though
01:47:26 ◼ ► so 13 inch display is a lot for him in a and with the limited viewing distance you can get in a
01:47:33 ◼ ► college dorm room he was like oh my god he wants it just for that and you guys built there's so
01:47:38 ◼ ► much fun stuff in there again custom typeface right up to two custom typefaces because why not
01:47:45 ◼ ► but yeah we saw i just thought that it would be really neat to base it off of kind of the 80s
01:47:50 ◼ ► vhs crt tv vibes and they have those pixel it was the dawn of the pixel typeface the dawn of
01:47:59 ◼ ► like digital type so they had these pixel fonts and i work with my really good friend yelmar
01:48:04 ◼ ► here it's my did the type he's an amazing type designer in holland so we just had these late
01:48:08 ◼ ► night sessions with a couple bottles of bourbon and and a couple computers and we're sitting
01:48:14 ◼ ► together sketching up like making pixel fonts and doing all the styling after it so there's actually
01:48:19 ◼ ► a bit of a blue screen on this on-screen display almost vhsc screen if you don't have anything
01:48:24 ◼ ► connected and yeah all the menus we use we use we use the custom type in there we kind of just
01:48:29 ◼ ► went by granted with it we wanted to feel a little physical again so you you open the app for the
01:48:33 ◼ ► first time you get to unbox it there's a little tearaway strip and your cable sasser wrote a little
01:48:38 ◼ ► amazing tune for the retro logo made for it it's a little over the top again but we figured we
01:48:45 ◼ ► might as well it's it's a free app so you can actually check it out like we we don't charge any
01:48:48 ◼ ► money for just using using all the the the core functionality um but we want to just like make it
01:48:55 ◼ ► make it really fun without getting too much in a way of actually using it i would literally say to
01:49:00 ◼ ► the people listening i mean this sincerely that it even if you in the back your head think well
01:49:05 ◼ ► that's a neat idea for an app but i if you're thinking i literally have no place in my life
01:49:11 ◼ ► where i would like to use my ipad as an external display you should still download orion and unbox
01:49:18 ◼ ► it just to do the unboxing and see the little because it it's the sort of things that exemplify
01:49:25 ◼ ► what i'm talking about that i miss right that it really does look like a piece of cardboard strip
01:49:30 ◼ ► that you're peeling off as you open it up and it's that is it i would say that just that unboxing
01:49:39 ◼ ► animation alone exemplifies what i'm talking about it's it has no point no no no well no point other
01:49:47 ◼ ► than to bring joy right then to be fun to look cool and be fun and something that just looks
01:49:53 ◼ ► cool and is fun and is like pops into your head as i mean i guess we've spoiled it for everybody
01:49:59 ◼ ► but i'm using as a reason to get it but if you for all the people who've downloaded it or or in
01:50:03 ◼ ► the future we'll just go to the app store and stumble across it read the description and say
01:50:08 ◼ ► yes this is exactly what i've been saying i want to just plug hdmi into my ipad for for x situation
01:50:15 ◼ ► they get this all of a sudden a part of their brain will light up like what the hell is this
01:50:20 ◼ ► i have to peel off a piece of cardboard to open and it's like oh that's fun right but it's like
01:50:25 ◼ ► all of a sudden there's certain neurons in these people's brains that will get lit up with joy or
01:50:31 ◼ ► at worst i mean what's the worst that could happen is somebody who literally has the doesn't have the
01:50:37 ◼ ► gene to experience fun well then they've wasted one and a half seconds of their life peeling off
01:50:43 ◼ ► a thing they didn't need to otherwise peel off i do like the entertainment fantasy there's someone
01:50:47 ◼ ► out there that they'd actually really pissed off oh i do know they're through this you know there is
01:50:55 ◼ ► um but the other thing that you guys do and i'm guessing hearing from your use case ben and and
01:51:04 ◼ ► of course i think it's true i think you guys would both agree i mean you said it with halide
01:51:07 ◼ ► especially when you're an indie and the smaller it is it has to be true that you you're scratching
01:51:16 ◼ ► your own itch and that you love the thing you're making right like if rich siegel weren't himself
01:51:23 ◼ ► a heavy bb edit user bb edit wouldn't be going right it's the fact that rich siegel himself is
01:51:31 ◼ ► one of the biggest users of bb edit in the world and okay so it makes sense that he's been spent
01:51:38 ◼ ► 30 years working on the same app but one of the fun things in orion is that you guys have modes
01:51:45 ◼ ► to simulate crts right and that is it that's got to come from you wanting to hook up your
01:51:52 ◼ ► super nintendo to it right yeah yeah well also i just wanted to learn could you is it possible
01:51:58 ◼ ► to build something that would emulate crts at a retina level on the display how would that look
01:52:04 ◼ ► and then like once i started watching videos about how crts actually worked when i was growing up
01:52:09 ◼ ► like okay well if we're gonna build one crt there are actually three popular types of crts
01:52:14 ◼ ► the trinitron which is like the cadillac of the crts and so once you go down that path why not
01:52:20 ◼ ► choke we'll just include three ones so if anything i don't care if you use the mode i just wanted to
01:52:24 ◼ ► see if i could build it you know but like which is which tends to be a precarious path but yeah so
01:52:31 ◼ ► i've been using it for that and it's been interesting just seeing like the preservation of
01:52:36 ◼ ► old games that are even if they're re-released by the companies they aren't displayed like they were
01:52:42 ◼ ► originally like the original artists who programmed it intended because displays today are razor sharp
01:52:48 ◼ ► and they don't blur the details right and and jesus can even tie back to like photography about like
01:52:53 ◼ ► having everything super sharp and invisible kind of takes away some of the magic of imagery right
01:53:00 ◼ ► right right yeah i know there's everybody out there listening who plays retro games through
01:53:07 ◼ ► emulators knows exactly what i'm talking about but if you're not this issue of hey when we first got
01:53:15 ◼ ► to like lcd led displays that are flat and they're so pixel perfect and sharp even not counting retina
01:53:22 ◼ ► right but it's just they're just so super sharp that when you play these retro games on these
01:53:37 ◼ ► like that and so it's like you're seeing the art in a way that is the clearest as possible of what
01:53:46 ◼ ► it is pixel by pixel but the overall effect is nothing like what it looked like when you were
01:53:51 ◼ ► actually playing back in the day right like yeah like i'll just go back to pac-man pac-man looked
01:53:57 ◼ ► like a yellow circle a perfect circle it did not look like a little pixelate and as everybody has
01:54:05 ◼ ► ever tried to do pixel art knows making like a circle is hard when you've got square pixels
01:54:10 ◼ ► it pac-man just looked like a circle nobody thought that there were any kind of pixels or
01:54:14 ◼ ► jagginess involved there is sort of a it was like anti-aliasing without actually doing any
01:54:22 ◼ ► algorithmic anti-aliasing the actual nature of a crt display it has some of that blurring effect of
01:54:30 ◼ ► anti-aliasing so like if i think it was mega man 3 that did this where they deliberately drew the
01:54:37 ◼ ► graphics in such a way that the individual pixels would hit phosphors so that there's a sequence
01:54:47 ◼ ► different colors but if you show it on a monitor display it's like oh they're white but yeah they
01:54:52 ◼ ► would they would hack that there were some and we haven't built it yet but in certain games they do
01:54:57 ◼ ► transparency effects by hacking the interlacing and it was like leaning into the limitations of
01:55:02 ◼ ► the hardware to to accomplish specific visual effects right it's super clever stuff yeah that
01:55:07 ◼ ► was like a half transparent waterfall in some game where it was only that effect the effect falls
01:55:12 ◼ ► apart on a lcd because there is no interlacing whatsoever right so it's a free app people can
01:55:20 ◼ ► download it and use it but you can upgrade right there's there's a pro because i know i did it
01:55:25 ◼ ► instantly because i thought well whatever it unlocks i want it i think it's the 4k upscaling
01:55:29 ◼ ► in the crt effects and we we have a few custom icons coming that we want to bundle in one one
01:55:34 ◼ ► use case been didn't cover that i use it for is a lot of modern cameras that you can use for vlogging
01:55:39 ◼ ► or or yeah video use you can hook it up as a monitor which usually costs a couple hundred bucks
01:55:44 ◼ ► at least so you can have a sort of screen that faces you so you don't have to look at the back
01:55:49 ◼ ► of your camera to see your framing and your exposure that that works pretty nicely too and we
01:55:53 ◼ ► we're going to add a few a few we want to add a few features for that to make that work a little
01:55:57 ◼ ► bit better yeah and that's another use case too where you might not want to even buy even just a
01:56:05 ◼ ► 300 stand on a monitor for that purpose if you're not going to use it all the time and if you own
01:56:11 ◼ ► you're like well i'm not going to use it much so i'm going to go spend only a little bit of money
01:56:15 ◼ ► but then you're going to get a shitty display right whereas you've got an ipad you've got
01:56:19 ◼ ► an apple quality display and then you can just use it for that purpose when you want to use it
01:56:25 ◼ ► for that purpose and it's you know as better than any display at that size that you could get from
01:56:30 ◼ ► any company in the world and you can even screen record it right so let's say if you are like on us
01:56:34 ◼ ► location you want to just run a little sample shoot you can literally just screen record
01:56:38 ◼ ► the output and and use that you can take captures of your framing and quickly send it out it's it's
01:56:44 ◼ ► just really neat that you have this whole ipad it's almost like your camera's kind of like running ios
01:56:48 ◼ ► for the output that's funny like a dp i i shared some dms and he works on like actual real real
01:56:54 ◼ ► productions i think actually an apple tv show and he was saying like on set the most reliable
01:56:59 ◼ ► hardware are ipads like as far as like screens and so he's like yeah we're definitely going to give
01:57:04 ◼ ► this a run there's limitations because you start talking about sdi connections and everything
01:57:09 ◼ ► but an ipad as far as a device it's funny we think about it like it's for your grandparents but it's
01:57:14 ◼ ► like no it's a device that just works and if you're on a set that's gonna it's gonna cost us
01:57:18 ◼ ► a million dollars today we can't be futzing around with control alt delete to to get things running
01:57:23 ◼ ► because it's going to cost us money right or worrying that the display isn't capable of really
01:57:28 ◼ ► conveying the color and any meaningfully accurate sense or something like that yeah that's a big one
01:57:33 ◼ ► yeah right yeah right and and it and as opposed to apple who obsesses over the color accuracy of
01:57:42 ◼ ► of every display that leaves the factory well you this has been a great talk i appreciate the time
01:57:47 ◼ ► i don't think i have anything else to cover and unless you guys do all right no all right any
01:57:54 ◼ ► lost guesses for the event that's coming anything else that come to mind all right here's one
01:57:58 ◼ ► everybody wants to know uh how is it going to open i i think it's going to open with tim cook
01:58:05 ◼ ► saying good evening right right good morning good morning good morning good morning but i think he's
01:58:09 ◼ ► i think it has to open with him saying good evening i don't think there's anything magical
01:58:13 ◼ ► about him saying good morning like i've seen people on twitter saying he's still going to say
01:58:17 ◼ ► good morning and maybe because if it's filmed in the daytime or something like that it would make
01:58:23 ◼ ► sense but i'd know if they're going to air it at eight o'clock at night i think i think the whole
01:58:27 ◼ ► thing will be dark right like like the jaws sections of the iphone keynotes right the kyan
01:58:34 ◼ ► drance's sections where she does the non-pro phones are in the daytime i don't know how many
01:58:39 ◼ ► people notice this but ever since it's been kyan and jaws her sections are in the daytime for non-pro
01:58:45 ◼ ► phones and then it always shifts to nighttime for pro because i don't know in apple's mind pro is
01:58:50 ◼ ► dark i guess this whole event's going to be dark i don't know i never noticed that that's that's
01:58:54 ◼ ► a good catch if i had apple's budget i would do an hour and a half long video hosted by the crypt
01:59:01 ◼ ► keeper just like an hour and a half good evening boys and girls today we have an amazing just like
01:59:08 ◼ ► play it straight and i would yeah that's why i don't have their money no my last thought is
01:59:15 ◼ ► i was gonna my last thought is is is i'm super happy with my m1 max if the only thing that could
01:59:21 ◼ ► get me to upgrade if they suddenly came out with an m3 max macbook pro that's completely black like
01:59:28 ◼ ► actually beautiful black metal uh i would instantly want to buy that i would look at my laptop and be
01:59:37 ◼ ► like you terrible obsolete thing i would do that i would do the exact same thing because i have
01:59:44 ◼ ► more money than sense and would instantly try to trade in my perfectly good like i said i never
01:59:53 ◼ ► swap the only thing i'm really concerned about is ram it's got more ram than i need but i would
01:59:57 ◼ ► instantly upgrade just to get true black and it makes the worst thing furious the worst thing they
02:00:02 ◼ ► created was the trade-in program so now i have like oh i guess i have to upgrade now i have like
02:00:08 ◼ ► a thousand dollar credit for every i can buy so many gems in the app store now but like it's so
02:00:14 ◼ ► tempting like yeah i can just trade in my old mac and i get some credit yeah i feel like they haven't
02:00:20 ◼ ► flexed on mac hardware lust in a while right like just i don't even care what it does i just want a
02:00:30 ◼ ► box that looks like that right like the mac studio is not a sexy box right it's right it's not ugly
02:00:37 ◼ ► it is not i don't have any complaints about it but i don't look at a mac studio and think oh i need
02:00:44 ◼ ► that i need that on my desk right if they made a black laptop the way i'm in v i think you are too
02:00:51 ◼ ► i would just be like i don't even care what the specs are i just give it to me take my money
02:00:56 ◼ ► remember when they charged more remember when they charged more when to put the plastic macbooks they
02:01:00 ◼ ► weren't pro level but they had the black one was like 200 more i had it i paid it they should
02:01:07 ◼ ► do that again i would if i worked there and see that i should not work there i should i i have
02:01:13 ◼ ► the right job just telling them what to do not doing it but i would say yes let's charge more
02:01:18 ◼ ► let's charge more for the black version that has no other advantages other than being black because
02:01:36 ◼ ► and you can go from there to all of the apps we mentioned halide being the big one but specter
02:01:41 ◼ ► which i should have mentioned up front and now the new one orion you guys and again i i always link i
02:01:47 ◼ ► love love love your camera review every year camera system review which people who listen to the show
02:01:53 ◼ ► probably remember it was just a few weeks ago i linked to it and you guys are both on social media
02:01:58 ◼ ► you can people can can look for you thank you for your time i'll also thank our sponsors we had