A Fistful of Apple Watches
Casey:
So I hear you really like new Macs these days, huh?
Marco:
So we have some follow-up.
John:
Yeah, nice try, Casey.
Casey:
John, why don't you tell us about marathon running?
John:
Last show, we talked about what you might want out of the watch if you're using it to do not just fitness tracking in terms of how much am I moving kind of fitness, but more serious how far have I run, where have I run, and we mentioned a GPS being superior, like a dedicated, those dedicated big ugly GPS things being superior to just a watch because the watch doesn't have any GPS.
John:
Aaron wrote in to say that
John:
uh his experience with the apple watch as a runner are not great even when the phone is with him he says the the quality of apple watch's ability to track depends on how you hold your phone if you hold your phone in your hand or wear it on your arm it does a very good job if you wear it on your waist then under measures you run by about five percent which of course is terrible if you're a serious runner and you want to know exactly how far you ran um
John:
So he goes on to say that he and his wife, yes, that we really like the extra abilities the watch give us.
John:
We can control our songs and podcasts, receive and send child care related messages without fear of dropping our phone in the cement.
John:
And there's a grocery store on their route that takes Apple Pay so they can use their watch to pay for things there.
John:
As a result, you know, so they're annoyed by the watch's inability to accurately track their runs because they don't like to wear their phone on their arm or hold it in their hand.
John:
Uh, but they do like all his other abilities.
John:
So right now they're running with two watches, the Apple watch on one hand and the Garmin GPS thing on the other.
John:
And he says, you can't wear them on the same wrist because they literally press each other's buttons.
John:
So this is not, this would not be like featured in an ad for, I guess, for the Apple watch showing someone running with their Garmin GPS watch and the Apple watch.
John:
Uh, but apparently this is the current reality for people who are really serious about exactly tracking their runs.
John:
But it's interesting that Apple watch has tagged along for the ride for its other abilities.
John:
And for like, even like the minor ones, like, well, why don't you just bring your phone with you?
John:
Then you can text, uh, childcare related things or whatever.
John:
Uh, why do you need to bring the watch?
John:
Well, you don't want to bring the big phone.
John:
And so you bring the watch just so you can have a slightly smaller thing that you don't have to carry that you can text from.
John:
And it seems like that is enough of a use case to get that watch to come on board for the run.
Casey:
Well, the phone has to be with them in order to send and receive the messages.
Casey:
But yeah, I got to imagine that doing so from the watch for simple things is a lot easier than, you know, getting your phone out of whatever holster-like contraption.
John:
Right.
John:
Like, then you can just put it somewhere where it's like, I mean, it could be in a backpack or anything.
John:
Like, it doesn't have to be accessible in the whole idea of...
John:
worrying about dropping it while you're running you don't i mean because i don't know how good people are right could you get a phone out of your shorts pockets while you run or out of a holster thing and then i don't know worried about looking down at your thing maybe well the good thing is most shorts pockets are so ridiculously shallow especially athletic shorts that your phone will just naturally almost be falling out of it all the time anyway so it shouldn't be too hard to get it out it'll leap out of your pocket into your hand exactly hopefully oh
Casey:
Oh, my goodness.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Well, it's funny to hear this feedback.
Casey:
I am not a particularly serious runner.
Casey:
In fact, I haven't ran in a long time, and I should probably be shamed for that.
Casey:
However, it's odd because of the feedback I've seen through Twitter and various websites and whatnot –
Casey:
Everything I've seen has said that the watch was eerily accurate.
Casey:
Now, again, I can't really speak to this one way or the other, but this is the first piece of feedback that I've come across that said that the watch wasn't, if not very close, eerily close.
Marco:
So in all fairness, Apple did just release a software update that was after this email came in that allegedly improves this and also gives instructions the first time you launch the workout app that you should do like a basic 20-minute walk with your iPhone present with the watch running the workout app to kind of calibrate it.
Marco:
I think we talked about this last episode.
John:
Yeah, well, this complaint is about even when you have the phone with you, he's saying compared to his Garmin that the phone is under-measuring information
John:
If the phone is on your waist, if the phone is on your arm or in your hand, it's fine.
John:
But if the phone is on your waist, that's under measuring by 5%.
John:
Maybe the software update helps us because this feedback was from before the software update.
John:
I don't know.
John:
Yeah, it beats me.
John:
All right, what else do we have?
John:
This is from Christopher, and he gives one more reason that runners and cyclists want a cellular radio on their watch.
John:
This is assuming they don't have their phone, is in case they get injured and can't get back from wherever they are.
John:
So if you run or bike long distances and halfway through your journey, something happens that you can no longer run because you twist your ankle or something.
John:
your bike you know your brakes or you get hit by a car or something you want to be able to contact someone to come and get you or call 911 or whatever and you can't do that with your watch if you don't have your phone with you and i mean that's a really good reason but that that just sounds like if you're going to be um you know doing something like that in a remote area it just sounds like you should probably just bring your phone
John:
Well, I mean, you know, we were talking before, what would it take for you to leave your phone at home?
John:
And for people who want to leave their phone at home, I can imagine people who are doing athletic activities every little bit, you know, even if you have it strapped to your arm or your waist or whatever, it's kind of an annoyance and it adds up.
John:
So what would it take for serious runners and cyclists to leave their phone home?
John:
It sounds like...
John:
you know more accurate uh tracking of where you are so maybe gps and at the very least some ability to like a 911 call or something or like a you know a single call home or something like that uh for a cell radio so we're not there yet but i assume in several more generations this will be possible
Casey:
That's what we've been saying about Macs with cellular radios, though, and we haven't seen that quite yet.
John:
It's totally possible right now.
John:
We're there.
John:
It is possible.
John:
It hasn't happened, but it's possible.
Marco:
Yeah, I think at this point, it's pretty clear that Apple just does not think they need to put cellular radios in Macs because they could have so long ago, and there have been so many opportunities to.
Marco:
It's very clear that they just want you to use the phone tethering feature that I think Yosemite introduced, the automatic thing where it just detects it in the Bluetooth menu sometimes.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Even when it didn't auto-detect it, you could still use it for tethering.
John:
But that's their solution is tethering.
John:
We should be glad that they didn't decide that the way you connect the iPad to a cell network is you tether it to a phone.
John:
Like, why did that one happen to get the cell radio?
John:
They could have just said, you know what?
John:
All cell radio communication, if you buy Apple products, goes through your iPhone.
John:
I almost call it the Apple phone.
John:
See what you're doing, Apple?
John:
Make up your mind on the names here.
John:
But they didn't.
John:
They said the iPad can have a cell radio too, but no Macs.
John:
All right.
John:
Why don't you tell us about what's going on in India?
John:
This is from Akshay, and it is about the world's India's biggest online retailer planning to go app only.
John:
This goes back to our conversation about Facebook Instant Articles and Marco's doomsaying about the future of the web.
John:
Here is an online retailer saying that they're just not going to have a website anymore, I guess.
John:
This place is called Flipkart, and it's from this article.
John:
It says it's going to move to an app-only format within a year.
John:
One of their VPs says, a year ago, 6% of our traffic was coming from mobile, and in less than 18 months, that traffic is tenfold.
John:
So what is that, 60?
John:
I think you can do that math in my head.
John:
It seems premature.
John:
Maybe if 6% of your traffic is coming from apps,
John:
to say by the end of the year you're going to go 100% app.
John:
I don't know if they're going to tear down their website.
John:
But anyway, this is not just some random place doing this for publicity.
John:
This is a store with more than 40 million registered users and 30,000 merchants selling 20 million products.
John:
India's a big place.
John:
This is a big store.
John:
The fact that they're planning on even trying to go app only shows how much things have changed.
John:
I don't think Amazon's going app only anytime soon, but...
John:
I don't know about you guys, but when I shop, maybe I'm just an old fogey again, but when I shop online, the app is sometimes good if I know exactly what I want, but I always feel like I'm getting more of a cut-down experience, even on the big iPhone 6.
John:
Maybe on the 6 Plus it wouldn't feel as cut-down, but I want to go to the actual website.
John:
And frequently I want to have a big screen so I can have multiple tabs and multiple windows to compare this product to that product and so on and so forth.
John:
I kind of feel constrained when doing anything serious like price comparisons and shopping and looking for things from a mobile device.
John:
So I hope the web stays around a little longer because I really don't like buying things on my phone.
Casey:
Yeah, I agree.
Casey:
I don't shop from any one single retailer often enough to justify installing an app, except maybe Amazon.
Casey:
And I recently installed the Amazon app.
Casey:
And for the life of me, I can't remember why, but I believe I've deleted it from all my devices because I hate using it.
Casey:
I'd much rather go to the website, even on like an iPad, I'd much rather be on the website for the exact same reasons you said, John, that
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
I mean, you could make the same arguments for like Instagram and things like that.
Casey:
But for shopping, I'd much rather use the website.
Casey:
The only exception that I can think of is the Apple Store app, which I keep on my phone mostly for the rare occasions I'm going into the Apple Store for things like EasySteel or whatever they call it.
Casey:
And for the rare occasions that I decide to buy watches that I swore up and down I wouldn't buy.
Casey:
But I don't know.
Casey:
Marco, do you use store apps or are you a web kind of guy?
Marco:
So I'm kind of halfway between you old fogies and the rest of the world.
Marco:
Sorry.
Marco:
I'm also an old fogey.
Marco:
But in this one particular way, I'm a little bit closer to the rest of the world than you guys, it sounds like.
Marco:
Get off my lawn.
Marco:
Exactly.
Yeah.
Marco:
So I have the Amazon app and the Apple Store app.
Marco:
I don't have any others for stores, but I do buy a lot from Amazon.
Marco:
And the Apple app is great because their online store isn't really that much better than the app.
Marco:
In some ways, it's worse.
Marco:
In some ways, it's slower.
Marco:
The app is always the fastest way to pre-order hardware at 3 a.m.
Marco:
when they do the new releases and stuff.
Marco:
Touch ID is awesome, etc.
Marco:
The Amazon app is different, but the Amazon app, I didn't install it.
Marco:
I've been buying almost everything that I buy from Amazon for years.
Marco:
And I only installed the app about six months ago.
Marco:
But I've actually gotten into using it.
Marco:
I don't usually place orders from the app unless it's just like refilling something that I already know that is good, that I want.
Marco:
Like, oh, we're out of dishwasher detergent.
Marco:
Okay, you know, add that, whatever.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
So I do frequently use the app to add things to my cart without actually completing the buy process.
Marco:
So it kind of like as a reminder, as like a save for later kind of thing.
Marco:
Like if I'm out, I'm like the other day, oh, I'm outside.
Marco:
Oh, let me look up.
Marco:
I keep forgetting to buy pressure washer detergent.
Marco:
So let me look that up quickly and just add one to my cart and I'll go back later when I...
Marco:
order something off Amazon next, which is probably going to be within a couple of weeks, then I'll see it, and oh, I have to go finish this research and buy this or don't buy this.
Marco:
So it is nice for that.
Marco:
People in the chat are telling me there's all these abilities about scanning barcodes in the real world and comparing stuff, and I don't do any of that yet.
Marco:
Maybe I will in the future, but
Marco:
I do see the point of the app.
Marco:
Furthermore, I think us saying, oh, well, we don't really buy things in the apps.
Marco:
We prefer to buy things in the websites.
Marco:
That's kind of like people saying, well, I don't like to buy things on the internet.
Marco:
I like to just look things up, maybe then go to a store and buy them.
Marco:
I don't want to type my credit card in on the internet.
Marco:
Maybe it looks something up in the yellow pages.
John:
I think it's the opposite because it's the opposite.
John:
It's more like the...
John:
comparison i would draw is when the power users complain that all the power user features they want are going away but it really doesn't matter because the rest of all wants a simpler product and what i'm i'm anyway complaining about is there are features available on the website that aren't available in the app that i use and maybe most people don't use them and that's why i think it's not analogous to like you know i'm not ready for the future i want to buy things in a store instead of online because in that case the online experience gave more experience more features than the in-person one because you can comparison shop and do all sorts of stuff when you're in a physical store all you can do is look at what's there
John:
And like the example, what kind of features am I talking about?
John:
So recently I bought swim fins for my kids.
John:
I had no specific swim fin in mind that I wanted to do, so I wanted to see a lot of reviews.
John:
And you can see the reviews in the mobile app, but you can see more of them on the website.
John:
And it's easier to have a separate window with just your reviews and looking at them.
John:
and trying to find a fin that you wanted and eventually you get it and they're sized like one two three four five and i have no idea what one two three four five mean uh and so then i want to look at the little answer question and answers that amazon had a few years ago someone saying hey how do i find out what the heck size two means what size shoe does that correspond to oh there's a sizing chart on the people's website and you get to people's website you have the sizing chart and like i'm the experience of figuring out
John:
what swim fin to buy what size to buy it in like that is the experience that i need the website for because on the app i it was harder to get that information i can't compare two things at once i wouldn't know i don't know if i would even have found the sizing chart thing which was like a mouse over thing that made this little table appear on the site that i actually found it on that mouse over wouldn't even even worked on mobile
John:
All that information that I know is there.
John:
Amazon provides me a way to find the answers to these questions, which is one of the reasons I'm shopping in Amazon, all these features that they added.
John:
When I'm doing it in the app, all it says is, here's the thing, here's the price, pick a size from pop-up menu, and then read the reviews here.
John:
It's just...
John:
I'm missing features.
John:
And I feel like that makes Amazon less valuable to me if they try it because it's not cut and dried.
John:
I'm not just like ordering my next run of paper towels from Amazon to come in.
John:
It's like research for something I want to buy.
John:
And it's the type of research that's way easier to do online.
John:
I'm not going to go to 17 different sporting goods stores and have to do it at a time when I can drag my kids there so they can try on swim fins and everything.
John:
I know their shoe size.
John:
I got to find a swim fin that people say is pretty good, that it's not a piece of junk that has a reasonable price, that it will ship in a reasonable amount of time, that is sized the way I want it.
John:
And, you know, I guess what I'm saying is it's not app versus web that bothers me.
John:
It's features.
John:
If you make a web application...
John:
If you make an iOS application that, for example, runs on the iPad and gives a fancier, more feature-filled purchase experience than the phone version does, I would probably be all on board with that.
John:
I'm not tied to the web because I specifically like the web.
John:
I'm more tied to having a big screen where I can look at lots of things at the same time and having access to all the features that these e-commerce sites have added over the years that are useful for figuring out what the hell you want to buy.
Marco:
And that's exactly it.
Marco:
Obviously, in the case of us looking up stuff on Amazon, looking at reviews and specs and stuff, Amazon was built for the web first.
Marco:
And the web is probably still their biggest platform.
Marco:
But I think it's clear to see the trend lines here where more and more activity and browsing and computing and purchasing is being done on mobile.
Marco:
And so much of that is being done in apps, not on websites.
Marco:
And that number seems to be increasing.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And, you know, you look at the store Flipkart in India, their customer base is dramatically increasing it.
Marco:
And that could have to do with differences in cell phone adoption versus computer adoption in India versus here.
Marco:
But for the most part, I think we're seeing the same general trend everywhere, which is mobile is taking over big time.
Marco:
And apps on mobile are way more important than websites on mobile for the most part today.
Marco:
And that trend is only going more in that direction.
Marco:
It's not like we're waiting for the web to catch up on mobile.
Marco:
I think the web is not going to catch up on mobile.
Marco:
But there's probably going to be both website, web stores and app stores for most major retailers for a long time.
Marco:
The main problems you have, as you said, this is an implementation detail just among the Amazon app today versus the Amazon website today.
Marco:
That's going to change over time.
Marco:
They're going to make the app better.
Marco:
They're going to make more stuff possible in the app, but they're going to make stuff better in the app because that's where they should be pouring their attention as people use it more.
Marco:
And Amazon's good about that.
Marco:
They will do it.
Casey:
Yeah, I think that you're definitely in the popular crowd in thinking that the app is the way to go.
Casey:
And I think that John and I are kind of clinging to our old-timey ways.
Casey:
But I don't like to have any app on my phone that I either don't use regularly or don't absolutely need in a pinch.
Casey:
Like, for example, Uber, I don't use regularly.
Casey:
But man, when I need it, I want it to be there.
Casey:
And the Amazon app, like John has said, doesn't really help me in any way that I use anyway.
Casey:
And it hurts me in that it prevents me from doing things like having multiple tabs open and things like that.
John:
So and like I said, I don't think it's old timey versus new.
John:
I think it's features.
John:
And a good example of this is the App Store, which has a web interface, but it's terrible.
John:
No one like you can't actually do it from the web.
John:
But say you could like, you know what the web if you land on one of the web pages for the App Store.
John:
There's like nothing there.
John:
You can't do anything.
John:
It's just like the shell of a thing.
John:
That's a case where the application has more features.
John:
And even though it's a website and even though it's a big window and you can have multiple ones open at once, you would never want to do that because the features that you care about, like even just like reading more than three reviews, I think the web ones just show like an abbreviated version of a couple of reviews or whatever.
John:
The app has more features there.
John:
And so it's not so much app versus web.
John:
It's like, where are the features?
John:
And maybe it's just like, OK, Amazon was born on the web and their and their app is crappy.
John:
and newer stores that are more app native will do a better job.
John:
I could see that happening.
John:
But the second level problem is what Casey was talking about, why he doesn't want to have a million stores on his phone.
John:
Like the web, you put Safari there and you get any web store.
John:
And this actually is a reason that retailers probably love apps.
John:
The apps, you're not going to have an app for every store.
John:
You are going to necessarily be limited by the store apps that are on your device.
John:
If you're in like an app mindset, like I buy things through apps,
John:
if you don't find yourself buying through Safari, it's kind of like, well, I can go to Target, but I can't go to Kmart because there's no Kmart in my town.
John:
Like the other one is really far away.
John:
It's like, well, you know, Kmart exists and you know, you can get there, but you know, convenience sake, you're going to go to the one that's close to you.
John:
If you only have five apps on your phone, you're like, well, I could buy this thing at some other location, but I don't actually have that app on my phone.
John:
I have this app on my phone.
John:
So let me do it.
John:
I'm not going to go to the app store and download, like you can't download every retailer's app.
John:
So
John:
retailers getting their apps onto your phone because once you have like say you have uber do you also have the lyft app do you also have the whatever you know competitor to the uber is going to come out in the future you're going to have 17 different apps for getting rides or you're going to pick maybe one or two and once those one or two are on your phone it's harder for the competitor to get their app on your phone because you already feel like you have that need covered whereas if they were all just websites every time you launch safari it's up for grabs where you end up based on like a google search or you know a bookmark or whatever
Marco:
Well, but a lot of that applies to the web, too.
Marco:
I mean, having your credit card saved on a site, having a good online purchase experience or a good online store.
Marco:
I mean, there are so many things that I just buy on Amazon because I used to buy them on their vendor's site, but their vendor's site is slow and awful.
Marco:
And it's so much easier to just order it from Amazon, so I just do it there.
Marco:
There are these same kind of lock-in style effects on the web.
Marco:
That isn't really...
John:
that exclusive yeah i mean it takes a little bit of a step but but i think in a web you'll do a search though like you'll do a search for something like you don't know where you want to buy something like you won't feel yourself limited to if you're starting in a store you've already chosen practically where you're going to buy it whereas if you're starting on the web you don't know where you're going to buy it you're just trying to see what's out there what kind of options are out there you know even something like the sweet home where you're like i don't know anything about
John:
whatever it is like uh you know uh humidifiers or something like i'm gonna find out what is a good humidifier to buy if you start that by launching an app you've already practically decided where you're gonna buy and you're just gonna say what seven humidifiers does amazon have if you did a google search you might end up on like marco's humidifier thing you might end up on the sweet home or whatever and that could leave you to a store eventually but you would be learning about what to buy like
John:
I don't know.
John:
I see advantages to the app approach.
John:
If you do the app well, I see advantages for the vendors, but I see a lot of downsides for like sort of unconscious lock in sort of the old school unconscious lock in of the stores that are actually near your house influence where you buy stuff in the pre-internet days.
Marco:
Sure, but I think my Yellow Pages remark earlier applies to a large degree here, which is like, if you look at the world today, apps and web, etc., right now, do you think you could launch a new restaurant or a new shop in a town without having an entry in the Yellow Pages?
Marco:
But the Yellow Pages was just a directory.
Marco:
You weren't actually going there.
Marco:
Well, okay, but a lot of people, when they would need a certain type of business or be searching for a type of store or a type of business person, they would look in the Yellow Pages for a long time.
Marco:
Yeah, but WebSearch replaced that, though.
Marco:
Well, so what I'm saying is, this is a metaphor, John.
Marco:
This is a reference.
Marco:
So what I'm saying is that at some point, you know, today you can launch something new and you don't really have to think about placement in the yellow pages or buying an ad there because enough people find stuff on the web now that it's probably not even worth your time to make an entry in the yellow pages for your business anymore.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
it's very possible there will come a time where a major retailer or any size retailer where so few people are buying stuff on web pages versus so many buying stuff in apps that when they have to decide how to allocate their resources and whether to have only an app or only a website or both, there can come a time if this trend continues where the website is just not worth it to build and maintain for them.
Marco:
So you're saying that their website is like the Yellow Pages?
Marco:
I'm saying we're heading in a direction where websites might become as relevant as the Yellow Pages are today.
Marco:
And I don't know that we'll ever get there, but that is the direction I think that we are heading in.
John:
I don't think that answers the search question, though.
John:
Just think of what are the good restaurants in this area?
John:
right like when you when you don't already know where you're going to end up because that's the whole thing with a bunch of apps you are picking a store but what if you have no idea where you're gonna end up or you just want to know hey what's around here or what what's out there that we can try you need some way to find to find what's out there and you're not going to do it you're certainly not going to do it by searching the app store you're not going to go to the app store and type restaurant to find i mean just think of it think about if restaurants had no websites they only had apps and
John:
And even in your own area where you live, you just want to know, hey, have any new restaurants opened in this area?
John:
Are you going to go to the App Store and try to find a restaurant app for a restaurant near you?
John:
Like the App Store can't even let you find Angry Birds reliably.
Marco:
Well, no, you might search the App Store for restaurants and find something like Yelp if you didn't already know about it, which is probably unlikely.
Marco:
I you know the the app store is different the the app paradigm of using apps to interact with computing things and buy things just like when you move to the web things were different in a lot of ways when when in this move to apps things aren't all going to work the same way just certain things will take their place so in in your case you're saying how do you know you're are you going to search for restaurants in the app store.
Marco:
No, you're going to open up the Yelp app and search for restaurants there.
Marco:
There's going to be all these silos.
Marco:
If you want to buy an object that's sold in stores, usually you're going to go to Amazon or whatever.
Marco:
If you want to find restaurants, you're going to go to Yelp and something like that.
Marco:
If you want a taxi, you're going to open your taxi app, whichever one that might be that you choose in your area.
Marco:
That's the interaction paradigm on mobile.
John:
it is not you don't start at a universal search box and get shown tons of spam like most of these apps you're talking about are just web views inside a container anyway and i feel like it is making but what i'm saying is it's making it's making it worse because it's it's good for the the people who are selling these things because they're like oh people will be locked in because they'll have their app on our phone and let us use their app but it's bad for us because people are taking what used to be sort of
John:
uh on a more level playing field and confining it inside these little containers and having their own icons on our home screens and it just clutters everything up and it makes everything worse and one uh one place's app might not be as good as another place's app and so on and so forth just for the container stuff let alone what's inside the page it's just well the same applies to websites there i mean it's it is going to be different we know that it it isn't necessarily worse in every way it's better in some ways uh it's just it's different it's better for the it's better for the vendors how is it better for us
John:
things load fast i don't know no they don't it's just a web view inside an app i think it's just not better for us unless i mean unless it's artificially done like it's better for us in the app store because apple's web version of the app store is just so bad that's one way they can make it better is everyone make your websites way way worse until the app version of it wins because the websites are basically useless
John:
Oh, they're doing a great job of that already.
John:
Websites today are terrible.
John:
Well, the Amazon versus the Apple, and they're not doing it.
John:
I've never used a Flipkart thing, so I can't say it.
John:
I mean, let's think of some, what's one thing that you routinely buy through an app that you don't buy through a website?
John:
I guess Instagram, I mean, it's not buying thing, but they don't, they have a website too, but it sucks.
John:
Uber, I guess, do they even have a website?
John:
Probably not.
John:
That's app only, right?
John:
I have no idea.
John:
What else can you think of that is a better experience of buying through an app than through the equivalent website?
Casey:
The Apple Store app is pretty good.
Marco:
Yeah, I would say that I don't necessarily think it's better because you can't do everything.
Marco:
Apple's website is functional but mediocre in a lot of ways for the store part.
Marco:
It works most of the time.
Marco:
It doesn't usually show errors or anything.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
The app is good enough, and the app actually is faster because it isn't loading all the Chrome install sheets.
Marco:
It seems to access some kind of separate API that doesn't go down as much during the major product launches, and it has Touch ID Apple Pay for checking out, which is awesome.
Casey:
It has more than that, though, right?
Casey:
Because it has genius reservations, if not creation of, then check in for.
Casey:
It has easy steal or whatever it's called, where you scan the barcode and then pay through the app and walk out of the store.
Casey:
And if you're like me, you're holding your iPhone up to anyone who is looking anywhere near your direction to show that you've actually paid for this thing, that it looks like you're stealing.
Casey:
It has some functionality.
Casey:
And this comes back to what John was saying earlier.
Casey:
It has functionality that you can't get through the website.
Casey:
And that's, I think, in large part why I like the Apple Store app so much.
Marco:
Oh, you know what else also, John?
Marco:
I can buy things on the Amazon app without ever entering a password because I entered it once and said save it.
Marco:
And on the web, that doesn't quite work.
Marco:
On the web, you always have to go through the login form when you're buying something.
Marco:
And I know there's ways that they can do without that, but the fact is they don't.
Marco:
So that's another thing.
Marco:
It's faster.
Marco:
If you know what you're looking for, an app shopping experience can be a lot faster.
Marco:
If you can go iTunes, if it has decent search, and you can jump right there and hit checkout.
Marco:
And if there's any steps they can skip by the security of the phone, like Touch ID for Apple Pay or skipping passwords, it can be faster.
Marco:
In many cases, it is faster.
Marco:
What you're describing, John, about wanting to open up a bunch of tabs and do research side by side, that is worse.
Marco:
You're right.
Marco:
The web is probably always going to be the better platform for that.
John:
I just mean like structurally is it worse to have a bunch of apps, like that they're pinning you down in artificial ways.
John:
Rather than you thinking that it's a green field and you have access to all the world's vendors, you are necessarily limited to the icons that you have put on your phone.
John:
And there's some inertia to dislodging those icons or adding a new one or remembering which app or grouping them together.
John:
Like I said, how many different apps you're going to have to do the same job as Uber does.
John:
Whereas if Uber was not an app native platform, like I feel like it is constraining in a way that benefits the vendors and doesn't benefit consumers for mostly no good reason.
John:
There's a few reasons, like you said, the biometrics things or whatever, but again, Amazon has the one click stuff and really that's.
John:
not that big uh of a of a hurdle for you know like checking out at amazon i feel like is below the threshold where touch id it's cool for us to be able to do it but most people they just click click click and go through and i know a lot of people like to have i are afraid to turn on one click because it's too fast that was already too fast that's not even biometric
John:
uh and i think both you were i think were startled by how easy it was to drop however many hundred dollars on an apple watch just by going tap tap whoops done yeah you know like so good for vendors maybe not good but anyway i was thinking about the which companies do which companies do have better apps than websites uh and so it's it's companies that started you know sort of the app world like uber you know or instagram they were always at first their websites if they exist at all or afterthought so their apps are better right
John:
it's companies that have always been terrible at the web like apple i guess that's the explanation why are their apps better than their web versions because they've never really been good at web stuff and so their apps win and then the other companies that either started on the web like amazon or even things like airlines like airlines have apps but their their web experiences usually have more features or more ways to like you know research which seats you can do and get a better diagram now if you didn't see this you can enter your number there and do this thing and the app doesn't show you that path right
John:
Things that you can only do from the website that you can't do from the app.
John:
Airlines, everything sucks.
John:
Yeah, they're bad at everything.
John:
But still, their apps are more feature poor than their website.
John:
It's like, oh, when you're making your reservations, make sure you either go through the website because on the app, you don't get this option and that option.
John:
And you want to do this one because you can get more leg room for less cost or whatever.
John:
Like...
John:
it's a weird split and i don't know especially for the big ones like you know amazon ebay things that have some a critical mass it's difficult to overcome are they perpetually going to have worse apps than their websites will they figure it out and reverse it or is it only the new companies like uh you know i'm not gonna think besides uber and instagram some other like companies that came of age in the app era where they never really considered websites and their whole product was always an app
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
We should plug a new website that has come out since I believe the last time we recorded.
Casey:
This is Cosmodrome by Brianna Wu.
Casey:
John, do you want to tell us a little about this?
John:
yeah this is a a link list style site as she calls it sort of modeled on daring fireball only that it's just going to be a bunch of links not a bunch of original writing there for the most part and so what's what's the big deal about that is a million sites that have a bunch of technology links and stuff uh this one is like any site that has a single person behind it the idea is the voice of the person comes through and this is brianna's voice and she's intentionally trying to put in links that
John:
have the best content from tech and gaming because she's obviously runs a gaming company and she's also into tech.
John:
So it's not just going to be like, you know, regular tech industry stuff, but mixed in with game industry stuff.
John:
And she's trying to amplify voices of women that she respects and women in the industry.
John:
So she's got an introductory post explaining what Cosmodrome was about.
John:
You can see it in the show notes.
John:
I find myself, and this is another example of apps versus the web, I suppose.
John:
When I saw that this thing was there, I'm like, I'm never going to,
John:
see anything on that site unless it has a Twitter account, because that's how I see all of my links.
John:
I follow the Twitter accounts that belong to like Marco.org and Daring Fireball and Casey's site.
John:
Wait, you're one of those?
John:
Yes.
John:
I don't like RSS.
John:
Twitter has just eaten RSS in my life.
John:
I subscribe to the Twitter accounts of all these sites.
John:
And I mean, so this is I still have an RSS reader.
John:
I still use reader with two E's.
John:
on the ipad to read news but it's like a different set of things like i have the things i use rss feeds for and then have the things that are that get to be in my twitter feed and obviously the twitter feeds it's a few smaller number of sites just the important ones um but yeah i'm now basically in the twitter app since i subscribe how do i see that when you post you know you posted something that we're going to talk about later in the show how did i see that i see it on twitter how did i read it by following like on twitter if i didn't have time to read at that point i would have instant instant papered it from twitter
John:
And I don't think I ever go to your site to see if there's anything new on your site.
John:
And I don't think your site is in my RSS feeds anymore because it's the type of site that as soon as something is published, I want to know about it immediately.
John:
And I do because it's on Twitter and I keep up with my Twitter.
John:
So anyway, Cosmodrome blog is the Twitter handle.
John:
We will put a link to the introductory post in the show notes.
John:
Check it out.
John:
Yeah, I've been following it since you tweeted it.
John:
It's very good.
Casey:
Yeah, you know, I'm still stuck on John saying that you are one of those people that gets all your links from Twitter.
John:
Not all my links, but the ones that, like, if I want to know as soon as something is posted or, you know, or like, especially with a link list thing, you're not going to read everything.
John:
You're going to say, am I interested in following that link or not?
John:
I mean, it's not the words of somebody writing something down.
John:
And a lot of blogs are a mix.
John:
Like, Marco does some link posts and he does some posts on his own, right?
John:
So there's a handful of things that I subscribe to in that way on Twitter.
John:
And I will know as soon as someone posts something on those things,
John:
because I keep up with Twitter, right?
John:
But RSS is for let me see the last whatever umpteen news stories from Ars Technica.
John:
RSS, I don't subscribe to the giant Ars Technica Twitter.
John:
I don't even know if they have one.
John:
If there was a Twitter feed that showed everything that RSS posted, there's no way I would subscribe to that.
John:
It would fill my feed.
John:
I would never look at anything.
John:
I use my RSS reader for that, but then you can just go boop, boop, boop, and look at all of them at the same time and view them more quickly and so on and so forth.
Casey:
Yeah, the only such Twitter account that I follow, like I don't follow Marco Oreg on Twitter, it's in my RSS feeder.
Casey:
I don't follow Daring Fireball on Twitter, it's in my RSS reader.
Casey:
But I follow my own to make sure things get tweeted, and that's it.
John:
You should follow hypercritical because once a year, maybe, when something posts, you want to know about it right away.
Marco:
You know what's really great to follow a bunch of sites like that?
John:
RSS readers.
John:
Yeah, agreed.
John:
No, but you'll never notice in the RSS reader.
John:
You'll never even look at that section of the RSS reader.
Marco:
Okay, here's your problem right here.
Marco:
RSS readers, if you have so many subscriptions that you are missing items constantly because they're buried in a different section, you have too many subscriptions.
Marco:
I have a lot of subscriptions.
John:
I do.
John:
I used to actually keep up with RSS, but that was years ago.
John:
I wasn't a completionist, but I was a Marcus Red completionist in the glory days of NetNewsWire.
John:
I had tons of feeds.
John:
And at the very least, every day I would decide that I'm not going to read something like it was.
John:
I would go through everything that's there and either say I am going to read that or I'm not going to read that.
John:
And I would read the things that I'm going to read.
John:
Now, you know, most of the stuff you're not reading.
John:
Right.
John:
But that passed.
John:
I don't know why that passed.
John:
That passed just, I guess, because the volume just increased.
John:
Like I didn't even follow that many more feeds.
John:
but the volume of all the feeds increase like think of what the rs technic rss feed was when i first followed it it was like a couple of posts a day now it's like a fire hose and just multiply that for every site that i followed right so unsubscribe because you're not really reading them all well i'm i'm not a completionist anymore i don't care like i go to it when i go there and you know i just yeah i just march mark huge swaths as red because it's like all out of date info but i find a few yeah i still subscribe to
John:
a lot of things but most of the things i actually care about uh are in twitter and that's only maybe five six sites see this this is why we can't get through follow-up or topics in a reasonable amount of time because every everything that we do we discover something about each other that is worth discussing and we have to nitpick it to death pretty much follow-up already ended once we once we ended the uh the cosmodrome thing then we were just talking about other stuff
Marco:
uh this is i i love doing this show with you guys uh all right uh our first sponsor it's a new sponsor this week it is bushel b-u-s-h-e-l bushel.com slash atp so bushel this is really interesting um you know how ios devices if you have like a real job and you have a company there's all these configuration options you can do like to kind of manage a fleet of ios devices max you can use configuration profiles and everything
Marco:
Doing this, though, it is not an easy thing to set up or manage.
Marco:
Bushel is a hosted cloud service that basically does that management for you in a really, really nice interface.
Marco:
So here's what it is.
Marco:
So it is a mobile device management MDM system.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
With Bushel managing your workplace's devices, you can easily provide and manage access to company email accounts.
Marco:
This is pretty cool.
Marco:
So you can send the profile out, send the configuration out to these devices, and the employees don't need to manually configure all the stuff, all the server settings and everything to access their email, the company email, or you can make sure they have SSL enabled, all this cool stuff.
Marco:
You can also install work apps, any apps from the App Store.
Marco:
You can install them to every device all at once.
Marco:
You can also enable settings that will separate and protect your team's personal data and personal apps from their work data from your company.
Marco:
And that way, another great feature is that if a device is ever lost or stolen, you can remotely lock it or you can completely wipe all the company data portion off of it remotely.
Marco:
really cool stuff they have a device inventory section you can see capacities you can see which user is using which device which apps you've installed on devices and much more you can even configure company owned devices through bushel without having to physically touch them first that's pretty cool you can basically you know get a box give it to somebody shrink wrapped and have already configured the device so that when they take it out it's all set up really cool stuff with bushel you can do all this and much more all yourself without an IT department
Marco:
It's all integrated into one seamless, fully responsive web interface so you can manage your company's Apple devices wherever you want, wherever you are.
Marco:
Remember, this is both iOS devices and Macs.
Marco:
iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, and Mac.
Marco:
Bushel makes the complex simple so you can focus on what matters.
Marco:
Your first three devices, if you're only managing three devices or fewer, that's free forever.
Marco:
And if you want to add more than three devices, it's just $2 per month per device after that.
Marco:
So this is really affordable.
Marco:
$2 per month per device past three.
Marco:
No contracts, no commitments.
Marco:
It's very, very simple, nice, reasonable pricing.
Marco:
Learn more at bushel.com slash ATP.
Marco:
That's B-U-S-H-E-L dot com slash ATP.
Marco:
This sounds really cool.
Marco:
So thanks a lot to Bushel for sponsoring.
Marco:
You know, I even think like...
Marco:
Beyond workplace, you might even want to just do this yourself for your own devices or your family's devices.
Marco:
There's so many good uses for this.
Marco:
So thanks a lot, Bushel.
Marco:
Bushel.com slash ATP.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So in the last, what, 24 hours, we have our first Apple Watch OS update.
Casey:
So we are now on Apple Watch 1.0.1.
Marco:
I believe it's pronounced Watch Us.
Casey:
Watch Us.
Casey:
1.0.1.
Casey:
I have installed it.
Casey:
Marco, I presume you've installed it as well?
John:
I have.
John:
Nothing happened.
John:
It was glorious.
John:
I'm disappointed they didn't call it a firmware update.
John:
Remember those days?
Casey:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John:
The iPhone would get a firmware update.
John:
It was an OS update in all the same ways that an OS ever was, but they hadn't yet decided to call it an OS because, hey, it couldn't even run apps, right?
John:
It was a firmware update.
John:
It's like a watch firmware.
John:
I guess the watch can run apps, but yeah.
Casey:
Well, in any case, I just wanted to point out a couple of initial impressions I had.
Casey:
I've talked to a handful of people, and a lot of us agreed that third-party apps and glances especially just feel quicker.
Casey:
I have no concrete evidence of this.
Casey:
I have no...
Casey:
no quantitative evidence of this, but it just feels quicker to me.
Casey:
Marco, would you say that's the case?
Marco:
I think so.
Marco:
I mean, it was hard to tell initially because in the previous 1.0 version, after a clean reboot, things would be faster and more responsive for a while.
Marco:
So, you know, after you install the update, you have a clean reboot, so it would feel fast immediately.
Marco:
So far, though, in the, what, day and a half that we've had it so far, I have not had an app lock up permanently forever.
Marco:
I have not seen an infinite spinner.
Marco:
And part of that is because I'm using very few apps now.
Marco:
But it does seem like they have improved it.
Marco:
So I give this a thumbs up.
Casey:
Yeah, I agree.
Casey:
The only thing that I'm a little shady on is I went for a walk earlier tonight.
Casey:
And what I did was I went to the exercise app.
Casey:
I said, I'm going for an outdoor walk.
Casey:
And I started walking.
Casey:
And by no means am I doing, you know, a super mega power walk or anything like that.
Casey:
But we were, Aaron and Declan and I were walking reasonably briskly.
Casey:
And when I got back from this walk that was like two and a half miles or something like that and lasted roughly 15 minutes, I got back and I was credited with something like 15 minutes of walking.
Casey:
And in 1.0.0, I don't remember that having ever been the case, that if I walked for 50 minutes, I would get credit for 50 minutes of exercise.
Marco:
Well, was that credit for 15 minutes of elevated heart rate?
Casey:
Well, and that's exactly what I was going to say, is this all could be that I was cheating the system in 1.0.0, and I shouldn't have been getting credit because I wasn't getting my heart pumping quick enough to earn that credit.
Casey:
And now in 1.0.1...
Casey:
Maybe the heart rate detection is more frequent, or maybe it's just better.
Casey:
In one way or another, maybe I just don't deserve credit for more than 15 minutes out of 50.
Casey:
But it is different than 1.0.0.
Casey:
And last night, right after I had done my upgrade...
Casey:
I went for a walk, and I could swear that for a little while during that walk, my heart rate read 70, and I am out of shape enough that I can assure, and I was walking quickly enough, that I assure you my heart rate was probably not 70.
Casey:
So this is all very anecdotal, and it very well could be user ineptitude on my part, since I wasn't walking quickly enough.
Casey:
But I don't know, it just seems like that...
Casey:
that the heart rate related things got a little bit worse.
Casey:
But what I'd like to do is maybe tomorrow I'll really try to amp up the speed and see if that makes a difference.
Marco:
Yeah, give it a shot.
Marco:
Also, try giving a good wipe-off to the disc on the back of the watch.
Marco:
I had an issue today where on my morning walk this morning, the watch kept locking as if I had taken it off.
Marco:
Oh, that's interesting.
Marco:
And so I assumed, oh, the sensor must be cloudy or whatever.
Marco:
So I wiped it off, and I haven't seen the problem again.
Marco:
It did it a few times in the same walk, and the workout app kept crashing, and yeah, it was not good.
Marco:
But then I took it off later, wiped it off, and I haven't seen it since.
Marco:
So it could just be that.
Marco:
Who knows?
Marco:
Also shave your arm or hair.
Casey:
Well, I'm not a gorilla like you are, John, but I will keep that in mind.
Marco:
So, John, how are you enjoying watchOS 1.0.1?
John:
Oh, it's great.
John:
I love seeing screenshots of people updating their OS on one device by running an updater on another device and then making sure the watch is in the charger when they do it.
John:
It's very exciting.
Yeah.
John:
They were always paranoid about that.
John:
The iPad and iPhone updates used to be like, well, you have to have at least 50% battery power, and if you don't, you have to be connected to power before we run the updater and stuff.
John:
And the watch, it's like even more.
John:
It's like, no, just unconditional, it seemed like from what I read, connected to the charger, period.
Marco:
Well, I think the reason why, first of all, keep in mind, if a software update on the watch goes bad, the recovery options you have are, as far as we know, pretty limited.
Marco:
Because you can't just plug it into iTunes and hold down two buttons and have it go in DFU mode.
John:
we don't know if there's anything that a home user can do yeah there's probably got to be like a wireless like put it into recovery mode where it's just looking for a wireless signal that will signal to it okay i'm about to take you over and shove a whole new image down your throat probably
Marco:
And the other thing is, the update, for me, it took a pretty long time.
Marco:
I would say it probably took 20 minutes.
Marco:
And during that time, the screen was on the entire time showing the progress.
Marco:
So I think that is probably why they require the power.
Marco:
Because if you didn't have it powered, you would slaughter the battery life just doing the update.
John:
Yeah, not just for the screen, but because it's doing IO on its little solid-state storage for the whole time.
John:
That's all it's doing.
John:
And over the normal course of events, the watch is not constantly reading and writing from its disk.
John:
Exactly.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
We should probably plug something else that that's going on specifically during WWDC week.
Casey:
So whether or not you happen to be going to San Francisco, App Camp for Girls is doing a fundraising happy hour that is being thrown by WWDC girls.
Casey:
And that's going on the Wednesday night of WWDC week.
Casey:
Now, if you're not going to San Francisco that week, that doesn't mean you can't help out.
Casey:
And it doesn't mean you can't donate to App Camp for Girls, which is a really great organization that seeks to improve...
Casey:
The the interest of increase the interest of young girls and young women in app development and programming and things of that nature.
Casey:
And so ATP is going to be sponsoring the happy hour.
Casey:
I know I will at the very least be going there for a little while, if not the entire time.
Casey:
Marco, I think you are also going.
Casey:
Is that true?
Marco:
That's true.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So we will be there for at least a little while.
Casey:
So if you wanted an excuse to say hi to us, then I would certainly do so.
Casey:
In all likelihood, we'll probably be there the whole time.
Casey:
I'm afraid to guarantee that because WWDC week gets a little crazy.
Casey:
But anyway, but ATP is sponsoring.
Casey:
We'd love it if you could show up.
Casey:
Tickets are what, like a $20 suggested donation?
Marco:
And if you can't make it, you can donate on the same form.
Marco:
You can just say, all right, you know what, I can't make it, but here's $10 or whatever.
Marco:
Please do that if you can't make it.
Marco:
This is really a fantastic organization doing fantastic work, and we couldn't possibly recommend strongly enough that please support it.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Um, I definitely wrote in a donation that was considerably more than $20 for my ticket.
Casey:
Uh, I encourage you if you happen to be going and, and you have the means to do so, I, I encourage you to do the same thing.
Casey:
And just like Marco said, whether or not you're going to be there, uh, please feel free to donate tab camp for girls.
Casey:
It's a really, really great organization.
Casey:
And like I said, um, at the very least Marco and I will be there, uh, to say hi to everyone and, uh, shake a few hands and, uh, take selfies if that's your shtick, et cetera, et cetera.
Casey:
So, uh,
Casey:
Please check it out.
Casey:
We'll put a link in the show notes.
Casey:
That's App Camp for Girls, the Wednesday night of WDC week.
Marco:
And it's evening.
Marco:
It's like 5.30 p.m.
Marco:
So it doesn't take up your whole night.
Marco:
It's a happy hour thing.
Marco:
So nothing else is going on during happy hour.
Marco:
So if you're there, you can totally make it.
Casey:
Yep, exactly.
Marco:
Before we leave the topic of WBDC week, I also want to mention the Release Notes podcast from our friends, Charles Perry and Joe Chaplinsky, Releasonotes.tv.
Marco:
They did a great episode this week.
Marco:
It is episode 105 on WBDC tips and kind of an overview of
Marco:
What's going on that week?
Marco:
What events?
Marco:
What parties?
Marco:
What other conferences are going on?
Marco:
Our friend Jesse Char is putting on a conference called Layers, which looks fantastic.
Marco:
There's so many good big names that are going to be speaking there.
Marco:
I actually bought a ticket to that.
Marco:
I'm going to be basically balancing both, attending both WVDC and that.
Marco:
It looks amazing.
Marco:
That's bringyourlayers.com, I think.
Marco:
And yeah, the Layers conference looks great.
Marco:
There's also AltConf, which also has an amazing speaker lineup.
Marco:
Now, there is so much going on that week that I almost feel like if you don't have a ticket, you have more options.
Marco:
Yeah, it's really weird that way.
Marco:
There's so much going on.
Marco:
So definitely check out those conferences.
Marco:
Check out the Release Notes podcast.
Marco:
They did a much better job than we will of going over all the options that you have.
John:
It's bad enough that WWDC is multi-track and you can't actually be like some sessions.
John:
Now, the entirety of that week is multi-conference multi-track.
John:
You are doing it.
John:
You, Marco, have a ticket to both layers and WWDC and you can't be in both places at once.
John:
So on certain days, you'll be deciding I'm going to be layers in the morning and here in the afternoon or whatever.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And that's before even considering multiple tracks.
John:
Is layers multi-track or single?
John:
I believe it's single.
John:
All right.
John:
So that's single at least.
John:
But then WDC was multi.
John:
Anyway, too much stuff jammed into one week.
Casey:
But this is a great problem to have.
Casey:
I mean, it's much better than, you know, what would have happened if Marco and I didn't get tickets to WWDC and we wanted to go to San Francisco anyway.
Casey:
I mean, not I'm sure we would have found something useful to do during the daytime when we weren't at the conference.
Casey:
But now.
Casey:
we have all sorts of options that were hypothetically, we would have had all sorts of options of things to do.
Casey:
And that's kind of exciting because one thing I feared is that over the years, as less and less of us win the lottery and are able to go to WWDC, the conference, I would, I was wondering if, you know, would I go to San Francisco during that week in the, in future years, if I didn't have a ticket to WWDC and the,
Casey:
If things like layers and alt-conf are going on, then heck yeah, I will.
Casey:
I mean, that's awesome.
Casey:
So this is really exciting.
Casey:
And I'm really thrilled that people in the community are stepping up to make this even more inclusive for those who don't have a ticket to the big show.
Casey:
So I'm really stoked.
Marco:
Yeah, this is really great work that the other organizers are putting on.
Marco:
There's even on a release, they were talking about how they're hosting a viewing room as part of AltConf in a big theater where you can go and watch the live streams and watch session videos as they're released.
Marco:
So if you don't have a ticket but you're going to be there and you want to see the live stuff and you want to watch the sessions...
Marco:
They're actually setting up a room that everyone can watch in.
Marco:
It's amazing.
Marco:
And they aren't the only ones doing this.
Marco:
A lot of people do viewing parties, get-togethers with a projector to watch a live stream or whatever.
Marco:
So many people do this kind of stuff.
Marco:
It's really great.
Marco:
And the fact is a lot of people...
Marco:
It's hard if you don't know a lot of people out there, if you don't have friends.
Marco:
It's hard to find some of this private stuff.
Marco:
But now there's things like AltConf and Layers.
Marco:
These are public events that anybody can go to.
Marco:
AltConf is even free.
Marco:
Anybody can go to these things.
Marco:
Even if you don't have friends out there already or you don't know a lot of people out there,
Marco:
there's now still options even for that.
Marco:
And that's fantastic because it's hard to break into the social crowd of certain app developers if you don't know anybody.
Marco:
This provides ways to do that, and that's really great.
John:
All this is doing is making hotel prices even higher.
John:
Yeah, that's true.
Casey:
Yeah, they were terrible this year.
Casey:
I mean, they've been getting progressively worse, but I feel like, maybe it's all in my head, but I feel like there was a big jump this year.
John:
Yeah, maybe the hotels have finally figured out what happens this week.
Marco:
Well, what happened is the Park 55 was our cheap go-to the last few years, and it got bought by Hilton.
John:
I think the Pickwick was expensive this year, though, wasn't it?
John:
Everything was expensive.
Casey:
That's insane.
Casey:
I've stayed at the Pickwick one year, and I think it has since been refurbished, but the time I was there, let's just say you get what you pay for.
Yeah.
Marco:
No, but the problem is in San Francisco, you don't get what you pay for because you can pay like 300 bucks a night for a hotel room.
Marco:
But in San Francisco during WBC week, $300 a night is on the cheap end.
Marco:
And so you can have like a cheap crappy hotel and have paid $300 a night for it.
John:
Yeah, that's the room rates this year are like every night that you're staying in San Francisco, you could buy yourself a new Apple Watch.
Casey:
Was it you that said that to me originally?
John:
I don't remember who it was, but... Well, you know, it's when, you know, when I'm shopping for hotel prices way before the lottery, which by the way, this is another, we're not doing WWC tips this time, but this is another thing that people who go to WWC frequently do is book your hotel reservations before you even know when WWC is going to be because hotel reservations are really easy to cancel.
John:
All you need is like 24 hours notice usually, right?
John:
So book your hotel reservations.
John:
And when I was doing that,
John:
if you're not going to go pickwick like everything was 350 or more and so yeah it was just like just just consider one more day one more apple watch i'm not getting up another apple watch sport going out the window up let me chuck this apple watch sport out the window it's just every day you're there you're just burning apple watches it's the unit of currency instead of paying for rooms you'll just trade in a fistful of apple watches with their little green band sticking out
John:
well i love that image that's amazing that's like a gasoline is the currency in mad max right so well in san francisco currency is just the wads of apple watches colorful sport bands yeah yeah well it the pickwick is at least better than what is it the master who uh david sparks was saying on on the talk show yeah this one with shared bathrooms let's get progressively and that probably is still 200 a night so
Marco:
Our second sponsor this week is Harvest.
Marco:
Harvest is a beautiful business tool for tracking time spent on client projects.
Marco:
If you do client work, time tracking is such a major part of it.
Marco:
Casey, you know this, right?
Marco:
With Harvest, no matter where you find yourself working, the focus stays on the task at hand.
Marco:
So it's very simple.
Marco:
You're working on something, you start a timer for it.
Marco:
You can start these timers from anywhere.
Marco:
Your web browser, your desktop, your mobile device.
Marco:
Tracked hours appear in beautiful visual time reports.
Marco:
And then when all is said and done and all the work is done, you can create an invoice.
Marco:
Well, the work is really never done, but you know.
Marco:
When you need to get paid, you can create an invoice with billable hours right in Harvest.
Marco:
Everything's all integrated.
Marco:
Harvest gives you the tools, data, and visualizations designed to keep projects on time and within budget.
Marco:
And you can use these tools.
Marco:
You can see for yourself.
Marco:
You can see data like which clients and projects are actually making you money and which ones are really just costing you because you're putting so much time into them that you can't make that much money back.
Marco:
So, Casey, I'm curious.
Marco:
You work in the consulting business.
Marco:
How useful is a tool like Harvest to really boost your time tracking skills?
Casey:
Oh, it's hugely useful because I am an erosion on the bottom line of the company if I am not billing a client.
Casey:
And so you bet your butt that I need to make sure I'm billing every second I'm working for a client.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Something like harvest does a really good job of making sure that I do exactly that.
Casey:
And the key to this is it being extremely low friction.
Casey:
And that's exactly what this is.
Casey:
So I definitely recommend having harvest or something along those lines, preferably harvest to do this, because if you're anything like me, doing it in your head is just a recipe for disaster.
Marco:
Exactly.
Marco:
So Harvest gives you all the tools to make this painless.
Marco:
It's beautiful.
Marco:
It's accurate.
Marco:
And it gives you all the reports so you can see how things are working.
Marco:
You can make sure you're getting paid.
Marco:
You can make sure you're making money.
Marco:
It's all integrated.
Marco:
Check out Harvest.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
Thanks a lot to Harvest.
Marco:
GetHarvest.com for sponsoring our show once again.
Casey:
You know, it occurred to me just a moment ago that the new MacBook Pro is the same style as the new Mac Pro was prior to the trash can.
Casey:
You know, where they just kind of slapped a new sticker on what was already there and said, yeah, yeah, this is totally new, you guys.
Casey:
You should buy one.
John:
It's a little bit better than that.
John:
They changed the trackpad.
Yeah.
John:
Yeah, and it has a new SSD.
John:
The new Mac Pros, there was no new features.
John:
It was literally just an internal upgrade that was not a significant one.
Marco:
It was like two different processor options and a price drop on one of them.
Marco:
This is a real update.
Marco:
It's just a really small one.
Marco:
you know they they did upgrade the ssd to be the new pci uh x4 i believe and that's significant if you're doing anything that was io bound because it's not like the ssds are like 10 faster they're like 2x which is that's good yeah there was a great benchmark on barefeet that showed them all and it's it really like the ssd in in the newest um i believe it's the 13 and 15 retina mac pro and the new macbook the 12 inch macbook one
Marco:
um i believe those are all now faster than the ssds that are in the mac pro yeah because the mac project hasn't gotten this update yet that's the mac pro is comfortable in that position of being the machine that is just never updated while the lesser machines slowly pass it by
Marco:
exactly so uh yeah it's i mean it was an update the the issue as with almost everything in the last year uh is that broadwell chips have not shipped yet for the quad core so you know intel has had such major delays with broadwell it's i think it's almost a year later than it was supposed to be they just barely got the broadwell chips out for the low power model so the ones that are used in the macbook one and the ones that are used in the macbook air and i think the to the 13th get broadwell i think it did too
Marco:
But the quad core Broadwell chips are still not out.
Marco:
We're getting close to Skylake's intended release date.
Marco:
Skylake's supposed to come out this fall or next spring.
Marco:
At this point, it's pretty clear what's happening here is that Intel, all their production delays on Broadwell, they just can't get the quad cores out in time that Apple wants them.
Marco:
Apple needed to do an update.
Marco:
Oh, they also updated the GPU.
Marco:
That's a big thing.
Marco:
uh we don't i don't know anything about these gpus but the the old gpu everyone said was really getting ancient and gpus move so quickly that's plausible the new one is probably not going to satisfy people because people are never satisfied with the gpus apple picks but it will at least be newer and probably faster so that's that's important for a lot of people it doesn't matter to me but it's important for a lot of people so i get that um
Marco:
But for the most part, the problem is there's no new CPUs to use.
Marco:
So the CPU options, and I believe even the motherboard chipset, the RAM, everything is the exact same as last year in those departments.
Marco:
So it is really kind of a half update.
Marco:
No USB-C either, right?
Marco:
Correct, yeah.
Marco:
No USB-C, no external case changes.
Marco:
Because they did the Force Touch trackpad, they did add 4% more battery wattage to it.
Marco:
I'm assuming, they didn't say this, I'm assuming it's because the Force Touch trackpad is thinner, and so they gained a little bit more space under it, so they probably could fill that with battery, because the battery in this... They could have done their scalloped or terraced batteries, too.
John:
They could have just, you know, wedged more stuff in it.
Marco:
Well, I think they would have said so if they did, though.
Marco:
I'm guessing that's not here yet, because that would have probably involved a redesign of the whole top case, which is where the batteries are bonded, and they didn't do that.
Marco:
So I'm guessing it's literally just like the battery was able to get 4% bigger because of the space gain with the forced-to-extract pad, and that's it.
Casey:
So this is a relatively unimpressive upgrade, is what I'm hearing.
John:
In this case, we get frustrated.
John:
It's like, oh, this is a bad update.
John:
But it's so clear that this is not Apple dragging its feet.
John:
It's Apple going like, well, are they going to be out?
John:
Or should we wait?
John:
Or no, we can't wait.
John:
I wonder when they made the decision to say we have to go with this sort of half update.
John:
They can't ship machines with chips that aren't available to purchase from Intel.
John:
And it's a shame, but that's the position they're in.
John:
half update but it's the best they could do and like timing wise could they have done the half update earlier some people were complaining like look if you weren't going to have uh broadwell chips uh why did you why why the delay in releasing even these and we don't know like maybe it's took this long to just get this design together you know because they made this decision several months ago that they weren't you know it's it's a shame but it is what it is um and i think with these machines
John:
Most of the things I've seen from discussions from Marco and other people is like, if you have a recent Retina MacBook Pro, should you buy one of these machines?
John:
And it's like, well, you really have to look at the few things that got better in them.
John:
Are you doing stuff that's IO bound, in which case the SSD is a big deal?
John:
Yeah.
John:
Are you doing something that's GPU bound, in which case the GPU is better, but otherwise CPU is a small bump, blah, blah, blah.
John:
But ignoring that, saying you don't have, either you don't have a Mac laptop or you don't have a MacBook Pro or you don't have a Retina MacBook Pro, these are still...
John:
pretty good machines like it's not like this is a dog like you buy this oh you bought one of those crappy ones we're just we're kind of like purely judging it as how big a leap over the previous one it is is it whereas if you're using a non-retina macbook from a long time ago or you've never purchased a mac this seems like a perfectly fine machine right
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, I said in my post, so I've been using a 2012 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro, the very first Retina MacBook Pro.
Marco:
It's been great.
Marco:
I love it.
Marco:
It's been awesome.
Marco:
The only downside to it is that usually when I'm on a cross-country flight using Xcode and serious computing stuff the whole time, usually I need about an hour more battery life or maybe occasionally two hours more battery life to really be happy with it.
Marco:
That is the only time that I'm not 100% satisfied with this machine.
Marco:
It is so good.
Marco:
And since then, since 2012, they actually have gotten... I think they've gotten that extra hour or hour and a half just by improvements going from Ivy Bridge to Haswell and a couple other minor improvements.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
It turns out I don't like Force Touch.
Marco:
I like it on the watch.
Marco:
It's fine.
Marco:
I really don't care for the Force Touch track pads that are in the laptops right now.
Marco:
I tried them in the store, and then I guess we'll get to my mistake one in a minute.
Marco:
But I just don't like them.
Marco:
I don't like the way they feel.
Marco:
They do feel like you're clicking a button.
Marco:
And it is a really cool thing.
Marco:
It's a really cool technical achievement.
Marco:
It's very impressive.
Marco:
It does feel like you're clicking a physical button for the most part.
Marco:
I would say it feels like 80% right.
Marco:
But it's kind of like an Uncanny Valley situation.
Marco:
Like...
Marco:
It almost feels like you're pushing a good button, but not quite.
Marco:
And that not quite really irritates me.
Marco:
And it doesn't feel like a good button press.
Marco:
It is really impressive that it works as well as it does, considering there's no moving parts.
Marco:
But I just really don't like it.
Marco:
So I like the previous generation 15-inch so much.
Marco:
that I actually ordered yesterday's or last week's model, which is the 2014 model.
Marco:
I actually ordered one of those on clearance from Amazon for $18.50 to replace... Because I mentioned earlier, I really need to hand this computer down to a family member.
Marco:
And I kind of wanted to...
Marco:
I kind of wanted a new one just to get a new battery and to get that extra hour because even though this is great, it also has a three-year-old battery in it because it's three years old.
Marco:
So this one still works so well that I can still hand it down to a family member or I can sell it for a good price if I don't need to hand it down anymore.
Marco:
So we'll see.
Marco:
I really do think that the base model 15-inch is an incredibly good value.
Marco:
It is the most machine that most people need.
Marco:
It is not that much.
Marco:
So the base model 15-inch is usually $2,000.
Marco:
You can usually get a refurb or a clearance or just get it from a resale like Amazon for $1,600 to $1,800.
Marco:
That's a really good buy compared to getting a 13-inch and specking it up to be similar.
Marco:
That's only a few hundred dollars less, usually.
Marco:
The 15-inch is so good, so powerful, so fast.
Marco:
The screen is huge.
Marco:
You can do so much with it.
Marco:
It has all the ports that John needs.
Marco:
It's great.
Marco:
That's why I like it so much.
Marco:
I compared it... John will appreciate this.
Marco:
I compared it to the Honda Accord.
John:
I saw the comparison, and I don't think it quite made sense.
John:
What you're trying to say is that you can get a surprising amount for your money, but maybe if you confine your context to just Retina MacBooks or just Apple laptops, then it fits that.
John:
But still, at $1,600 to $2,000, this is a fairly expensive laptop in the grand scheme of things.
John:
Well, it isn't a fairly expensive Mac laptop.
John:
It's a mid-priced Mac laptop.
John:
That's what I'm saying.
John:
Once you can find it to max, I would think that the Honda Accord is probably more like the 13-inch Air because it's got the non-retina screen and it's not even an IPS screen or whatever, but...
John:
that thing does all the things a laptop is supposed to do is it easy to carry it does all the stuff it has the ports it's like it is a complete thing whereas you demand as we know from both your cars and your computers a little bit more perhaps than the honda accord and its four-cylinder engine has to offer v tech notwithstanding oh sorry um so you are you are shopping in a different class of things so i think it is more apt to call the that thing the uh the 535i
John:
like it's not the m5 right but it's still a premium product it's large it's got a big engine and the the 13 inch air is the honda accord anyway i don't i don't think it matters which car these things correspond to bottom line it's a it's a very nice machine yeah and and what i discovered uh is that it is by far the machine i'm happiest with
Marco:
if i get anything smaller than a 15 there are trips that i take that i really regret it not all trips a lot of trips i can take and just and i wish i had the smallest laptop possible um you know trips where i'm not really coding i'm not really working i just need to you know keep up on email and stuff and browse the web sometimes like that's and i don't like using ipatch that sorry everybody that's you know that's fine well so this is exactly why you felt the urge to go out and buy a brand new laptop that is not the 15 inch
Marco:
because you like new things that's well briefly yes so i i've had mixed experience with uh with new things the 5k iMac is the best computer i've ever owned it's amazing i'm so ridiculously happy with it the apple watch i've had for you know since day one so what is that about three weeks now
Marco:
Love it.
Marco:
I so love the Apple Watch.
Marco:
For a 1.0 especially, it's an amazing product.
Marco:
It is not perfect, but it is really, really good.
Marco:
And I'm enjoying it more than I expected to.
Marco:
I like it.
Marco:
I use it a lot.
Marco:
It has made me actually increase my physical activity level on a regular basis so far.
Marco:
It is so good.
Marco:
I am so happy with the Apple Watch.
Marco:
And again, so happy with the 5K iMac.
Marco:
I'm so happy with the 15-inch laptop line.
Marco:
I like a lot of things.
Marco:
I thought I would like to have the MacBook One.
Marco:
Can you explain to people what the MacBook One is?
Marco:
The new MacBook with one port.
Yes.
Marco:
because we always just talk about it as that i think who coined that term is that marco i did yeah anyway yes that's what we're talking about the really skinny macbook with one port that we talked about for like seven episodes exactly we're going to talk about a little more now but it's all right so for years i've been thinking you know what i would love to have like a bedside tiny computer that i could occasionally write blog posts on answer email like when i'm if i go up if i go up to bed early and i want to like
Casey:
Whoa, stop.
Casey:
When do you ever answer email?
John:
I don't have a computer to answer it on.
Casey:
Yeah, that's the problem.
John:
We made it in front of everyone for the day phone and night phone, but now Marco is buying laptops specifically for use within certain rooms of his house.
Marco:
Yes, my upstairs laptop and my downstairs laptop.
Marco:
No, I said...
Marco:
Oh, my God.
Marco:
So, you know, I was waffling for years over the idea.
Marco:
Maybe I go pick up a used 11-inch Air from somewhere.
Marco:
Because for my purposes of blogging and emailing and stuff, it wouldn't need to be high spec at all.
Marco:
It could be very slow.
Marco:
It doesn't need to be new.
Marco:
It could be fine.
Marco:
And I would use that.
Marco:
And then...
Marco:
occasionally when i do take these trips where i don't need to get any work done uh when i just want to like keep up on email and stuff i can bring that as the laptop instead of bringing my big 15 inch um so this was my thought and for years i've been thinking about this and not doing it and when i saw the macbook one in person in the store i i was really tempted by it from the very first time i saw and i've through various watch trips and repairs i've actually been to apple stores a number of times since it's come out
Marco:
And every time I go, I always go over to MacBook One and I look at it.
Marco:
And I type on it.
Marco:
I'm like, can I live with this?
Marco:
Can I live with this keyboard?
Marco:
I know it's a weird keyboard, but can I live with it?
Marco:
And it is just so small and so light.
Marco:
And the screen looks pretty good.
Marco:
And it isn't as good as other retinas.
Marco:
I was wrong about that.
Marco:
But it is close.
Marco:
And it is better than the 11-inch Air screen.
Marco:
That's for sure.
Marco:
The non-retina.
Marco:
So it looks great.
Marco:
This machine, you see it and you're drawn to it.
Marco:
It's like a lust.
Marco:
You see this and you're like, oh my god, this is such a nice machine.
Marco:
The business rep in my store, I mentioned at one point that I was possibly interested in one at some point.
Marco:
And they emailed me saying they had one in.
Marco:
And I thought, you know what?
Marco:
I'm about to go on a trip this weekend where it would be the perfect trip to test it out on.
Marco:
Let me try.
Marco:
Let me get it.
Marco:
I think I'm ready.
Marco:
I think this is a good idea for me.
Marco:
Let's see.
Marco:
How do I put this?
Marco:
Our third sponsor this week is Fracture.
Marco:
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Marco:
Go to FractureMe.com.
Marco:
Fracture photos are awesome.
Marco:
I have a bunch of them around my office.
Marco:
I got, let's see...
Marco:
five six now so wait no more over there i think i have eight in my office right now so many of these things they are fantastic uh they so really it is a photo printed on glass you go there you upload your photo uh and by the way it doesn't have to be a photo like so three of mine in my office are icons for the apps that i've made as kind of like these little trophies or these little like show pieces of like here's here's the row of apps i've made uh and these are these little glass prints that hang on the wall they look fantastic right
Marco:
And then I have photos, family photos, fun photos, illustrations.
Marco:
I got a couple of those up here and there.
Marco:
They are fantastic.
Marco:
It is such good quality on these fracture prints.
Marco:
I always get compliments on them.
Marco:
People always ask about them.
Marco:
They ask where they can get them.
Marco:
People who know fracture, who know of them through the podcast, if they're here, they'll be like, oh, are those the fractures?
Marco:
Like they always ask about them.
Marco:
So many compliments.
Marco:
They're so good.
Marco:
So really, it is a piece of glass.
Marco:
It's a thin piece of glass adhered to like this foam board thing so that you can put a nail in it.
Marco:
And the photo was printed on the back surface of this thin piece of glass.
Marco:
And so it shows through the front.
Marco:
And so it's protected.
Marco:
It doesn't scratch off or anything.
Marco:
It doesn't look weird.
Marco:
It also doesn't need a frame, which is really cool.
Marco:
Because then, you know, normally you get it on a photo printed, then you got to get a frame for it or get a custom frame, which is really expensive.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
uh and it doesn't kind of look right just having photos hanging on your wall by themselves with fracture it is its own complete product it looks great you don't need a frame it is fantastic it is clean it's modern it's very very well priced uh and they put everything you need to get your photo on the wall or desk right in the box so prices start at just 15 bucks for a 5x5 inch square they also have rectangles the
Marco:
5x5 is a great size for Instagram photos because it's big enough that you can see it.
Marco:
In fact, most of mine are that small size.
Marco:
But it's small enough that if you only have a low-res iPhone shot, the photo still looks great, even at that size.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
They make great gifts.
Marco:
If you want to give them as gifts for holidays or birthdays or whatever, or just send them to your friends as gags or as gifts to your friends.
Marco:
If you have a photo of you and your friend looking funny or whatever, you can send them.
Marco:
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Marco:
I can't recommend Fracture enough.
Marco:
And really, they get so many compliments in my house.
Marco:
They're just great.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
Don't use Gruber's code.
Marco:
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Marco:
No, use whoever you heard last.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
Thank you very much to Fracture.
Marco:
Photos printed directly on glass.
Marco:
It is so good.
Marco:
Highly recommended.
Casey:
So tell us about your big mistake.
Marco:
So I talked myself into the MacBook One.
Marco:
I said, you know, for this purpose that I've wanted for a while, it would be amazing.
Marco:
Because the one thing with the 11-inch Air is the non-retina screen.
Marco:
And that's a pretty big thing for me.
Marco:
I really care a lot about retina.
Marco:
And I really don't like using non-retina screens.
Marco:
And MacBook One, I thought, you know what, let me give this a try.
Marco:
I think I might love this, actually.
Marco:
And so I bought it.
Marco:
And I brought it home.
Marco:
And I used it for about 36 hours, pretty heavily.
Marco:
A lot of people were criticizing me for reviewing it after only having it for a day and a half.
Marco:
And that's somewhat fair.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
I just really hated it.
Marco:
So what did you hate?
Marco:
I knew the keyboard was going to be weird.
Marco:
That being said, so every time I was in the Apple store, I think I saw it in person maybe three times before buying it.
Marco:
So every time I saw it, I would go to it, I'd open up the Notes app, and I'd just start typing something long just to kind of see, like, can I get used to this keyboard?
Marco:
Every time I was getting better at it, and I started realizing, you know, I actually, this is fine.
Marco:
I can type on this.
Marco:
I don't like typing on it that much, but I can do it.
Marco:
So I can probably get used to it, and it's probably going to be fine.
Marco:
And I got it, and I got it home, and I started typing a lot on it as I was setting it up.
Marco:
And then I installed all my chat apps on it so I'd be typing more.
Marco:
I installed Slack, and I installed Twitter, and then I installed email, and I started responding to a bunch of my email.
Marco:
And so I did a lot of typing on it.
Marco:
And I got really fast with it.
Marco:
Speed was not an issue at all.
Marco:
And accuracy wasn't that bad either.
Marco:
My big problem with the keyboard is just that it doesn't feel good.
Marco:
And to me, it actually feels bad.
Marco:
And I guess I want to be careful here to not...
Marco:
To not say that people who think differently are just wrong and stupid.
Marco:
This is my opinion, of course.
Marco:
But I really don't like the key switch feel.
Marco:
Part of it is the short travel of the keys, which everyone's side says.
Marco:
Yes, they're very shallow.
Marco:
They don't push down very far.
Marco:
But also, for me, part of it was the way they click down.
Marco:
It is like... A key switch is kind of a soft actuation on a regular keyboard.
Marco:
These are... They're like tiny little hard dimple buttons.
Marco:
Like...
Marco:
It clicks like bubble wrap.
Marco:
It's like there's a snap when you push it in.
Marco:
And it feels like buttons.
Marco:
It doesn't feel like keys, if that makes sense.
John:
Is it also noisier?
John:
Did you say that in your review or somebody else?
Marco:
I think it is.
Marco:
It sounds different.
Marco:
I would say it's noisier.
Marco:
The trackpad is a little bit quieter.
Marco:
Keyboard is a little bit louder.
Marco:
I think it depends on what you're doing.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
It had a weird sound, and I could definitely see other people in the room being annoyed by it if I were to use it in a workplace that was not full of the same computer.
Marco:
Yeah, it is weird.
Marco:
It's clicky, but not in a good clicky keyboard way.
Marco:
It's just a very strange keyboard.
Marco:
I also did not, as I mentioned earlier, I didn't care for the trackpad, the Force Tux trackpad.
Casey:
Wait, hold on.
Casey:
Before you get to the trackpad, can you just remind everyone, what is the keyboard you're used to using, say, with your 5K iMac?
Marco:
The keyboard I use on a regular basis is the Microsoft Sculpt Ergonomic.
Marco:
So the Sculpt Ergonomic Desktop Keyboard.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
It has like four words.
Marco:
One of them is Sculpt, one of them is Ergonomic.
Casey:
But this is not a traditional clickety-clackety keyboard like a lot of popular Apple people use.
Marco:
No, I've tried those in the past.
Marco:
I have not found an ergonomic one of those that fit me very well.
Marco:
There are very few ergonomic mechanical keyboards.
Marco:
The one that was my favorite was the Matthias Ergo Pro.
Marco:
I did a review on my site a couple months ago when that came out.
Marco:
That was my favorite one of the mechanical ones.
Marco:
But the Sculpt Ergo from Microsoft just fits me a little.
Marco:
Like the curvature of it just is more comfortable for me.
Marco:
So I stick with it.
Marco:
It has scissor keys like laptop keyboards, like other laptop keyboards.
Marco:
It has, you know, like they're shallow, but not that shallow.
Marco:
Then they have like the scissor mechanism under them.
Marco:
So they kind of squish down.
Marco:
It's not a clicky keyboard, but it's fine.
Marco:
I like it a lot.
Marco:
But more importantly, you like the keyboard on your 15 inch.
Marco:
Yeah, and the keyboard that Apple's been using on laptops forever, I mean, even before this, the G4 keyboard, that's where I started my Mac life.
Marco:
And I loved that keyboard, too.
Marco:
It was fine.
Marco:
And the current keyboards that are on every Mac laptop except for the MacBook One...
Marco:
I think they're great.
Marco:
I've never had any problem with them.
Marco:
I don't type on this and say this is the best keyboard I've ever used, but I also don't think about it because it's just good.
Marco:
It is completely forgettable in all the best ways.
Marco:
They're just good keyboards.
Marco:
And until you use a bad keyboard, you don't really appreciate quite how good they are.
John:
Do you think that if you use this keyboard for a longer period of time, you just would have accepted this in the same way that you accept the inferior tier Microsoft Sculpt keyboard, but otherwise like you just get used to it?
John:
Like if all the laptop keyboards were like this and you had no choice and you used it for like a year, would you eventually settle into the same compromise where it's like, well, I prefer my desktop keyboard.
John:
Obviously, it's better, but these are fine.
John:
I'm sure I could.
Marco:
A bunch of my friends have these computers and love them.
Marco:
And I was asking some questions here and there on Twitter and privately and everything.
Marco:
And somebody said, I think it was Paul Haddad from Tweetbot, it's a perfectly fine keyboard once you get used to it, if you'd never use any other keyboards.
Marco:
because it's it is such a different feel from other keyboards that it is very strange to transition between and even though like i have no trouble transitioning between my split ergonomic curvy keyboard on my desktop and the straight keyboard on my laptop i have no trouble like i've never had an issue getting used to one or the other transitioning even though they're they're physically very differently spaced apart very different keys etc
Marco:
With the MacBook One, it is such a different feel, and you have to press down with so little depth, but still a similar amount of force.
Marco:
This is part of my problem with it.
Marco:
Ergonomic keyboards are designed... They're really good ergonomic keyboards from Kinesis.
Marco:
They're designed very carefully to modulate the amount of force that you need to push a key down so that you're not pushing too hard.
Marco:
If you have to push too hard, or if you have to push hard enough that...
Marco:
After it has actuated, you're still kind of bottoming out.
Marco:
You're still slamming the key into the floor of the keyboard further than you have to to actuate the key press.
Marco:
Those are all bad for RSI and ergonomics.
Marco:
Those all really exacerbate things like carpal tunnel syndrome and various other RSI things.
Marco:
They really are not good.
Marco:
And so these keyboards are designed very carefully such that...
Marco:
they match the level of pressure required to depress a key and how far it needs to be depressed with the way people's fingers work and the way people type and how, like, your fingers are all different strengths.
Marco:
Your outer fingers, like your pinky ring finger, those are weaker than your index finger or your thumb.
Marco:
And so, like...
Marco:
The really fancy ergonomic keyboards like the Kinesis will actually have different keypress forces on different keys depending on which of your fingers are intended to hit them.
Marco:
So the keys in the middle will be harder to press than the ones towards the edges because then your weaker fingers press the ones towards the edges.
Marco:
So all this care is put into keyboard design for very good reasons because it really does matter.
Marco:
It really does make things feel better or be more or less problematic for RSI sufferers.
Marco:
And I do have mild RSI problems, and I manage them by doing things like using a split keyboard.
Marco:
Not as bad as John, but I do need to avoid RSI problems.
Marco:
The MacBook keyboard, the MacBook One keyboard,
Marco:
It really I have concerns for ergonomics for long term use of it more so than the regular laptop keyboards.
John:
You think you're saying you think it takes more pressure more force than the other than the non MacBook one MacBook keyboards.
Marco:
I think.
Marco:
I don't have it anymore to do a side-by-side test, but I did some while I had it, and it's different because, as I mentioned, the way the keys click down is a different type of click force and a different type of response, not just being more shallow.
Marco:
It is really a very different feel to the click.
Marco:
but i had some concerns using it about rsi and and i was i was a little sore after my day and a half using it now that that's that's too early to say whether it's the keyboard's fault or whether just because it was different you know that could go either way so i'm not claiming that i had a problem from that keyboard necessarily but i do have concerns because it seems like the ergonomics of it are substantially worse in this one key way uh no pun intended
Marco:
of the pressure required to depress the keys and then trying to avoid the slamming against the bottom, the bottoming out of pushing it too far.
Marco:
The way these keys are designed, the shallow travel makes it very hard not to bottom out like that.
Marco:
But the key switch type, where you have to kind of press hard to get it to actuate, makes it even harder to avoid bottoming out like that.
Marco:
And especially on your less precise fingers.
Marco:
One of the problems I had getting accurate with it was the key I most frequently miss hit was delete.
Marco:
Because my pinky has to hit delete, one of my weakest fingers.
Marco:
And so I would frequently go to go to hit delete and not push hard enough and have to then go like redo it again.
Marco:
I would I would type of there.
Marco:
So I wasn't pushing hard enough to to actuate to actuate the the far away keys.
Marco:
And eventually, you know, I got used to it enough that I was able to do that.
Marco:
But it was it was never anywhere near as comfortable to use.
Marco:
And it was always very frustrating to use as a result of that.
Marco:
Does that make sense?
Casey:
Yeah, I think so.
Casey:
Now, you were starting to talk about the Force Touch trackpad.
Marco:
The Force Touch trackpad is not as bad as the keyboard.
Marco:
I really would prefer never to own a laptop with that keyboard.
Marco:
If I had to own a laptop with the Force Touch trackpad, I would deal with it.
Marco:
It wouldn't be a massive problem for using the laptop.
Marco:
I would deal with it.
Marco:
But I don't like it.
Marco:
And I would prefer not to have to deal with it if possible.
Marco:
The four-stock trackpad, as I mentioned earlier, it is a very good technical achievement.
Marco:
But it doesn't feel like a good button press.
Marco:
It feels like a worse trackpad in use than the old one did.
Marco:
It is a softer, quieter click, which is nice for noise reasons.
Marco:
um it is uniform across the entire surface as you mentioned because of the way it works rather than like the the older trackpad has a hinge at the top and so the bottom of it pushes down the furthest so you kind of have to click at the bottom to make to make the old style work whereas the force touch you can click anywhere on it and doesn't matter where you click and it does the same feedback regardless
Marco:
My problem is the old way of having to click on the bottom, well, that's fine.
Marco:
That's what I've always done.
Marco:
Like before that, when there was the button only at the bottom, the separate button with the old style trackpads, that's what we all got used to.
Marco:
That's why that one was designed that way was because you could basically just keep your fingers all in the same spots and do the same thing and it would still work.
Marco:
The force touch, even though it is now uniform across the whole surface, no part of that surface feels as good as the bottom half of the old trackpad.
Marco:
There's three different settings for how firm you have to press and then how much feedback you get as a result of that.
Marco:
As I was pressing on it, I didn't feel like I was pushing a button sometimes.
Marco:
I never forgot that I was kind of mushing my finger against glass.
Marco:
Again, as I said earlier, it feels like 80% like a button, but not like a button because it doesn't get all the way there.
Marco:
So maybe having that deeper forced click, like the third-level click, maybe that is going to be so compelling in time that I'll tolerate it.
Marco:
Or maybe, as I mentioned on Twitter, maybe I will just convert into a tap-to-click person, which I've never been.
Marco:
And I tried it once.
Marco:
I experimented back in college.
Marco:
No, I tried it once.
Marco:
I didn't like it.
Marco:
I switched back.
Marco:
But I just don't like it.
Marco:
Simple as that.
Marco:
So the MacBook One has...
Marco:
A keyboard I really don't like.
Marco:
A trackpad I just normally don't like.
Marco:
The problem is that all the things I would do on it would involve a lot of typing.
Marco:
So today I decided it was just not for me and I returned it.
John:
did you let tiff try it i don't think i i didn't she was making fun of me for even having gotten it i just wanted like you know i non if you gave us because i've heard so many stories of people uh regular people going into the apple store and not knowing that the button didn't move down right or not realizing that the keyboard was different in any significant way and i'm wondering how noticeable are these
John:
differences to people to people for whom buying a new computer like i feel like they they just expect it to come with a host of minor differences and inconveniences i like my old screen better i like the way the old laptop was shaped i like the old laptop's color i don't like this keyboard like if you buy a new mac every five years you are forced to deal with these things you know i liked it when the trackboard had a button right you know because if you're
John:
If you're upgrading not very frequently, every new Mac you buy, it seems like, has one of these things where you're not used to something that you touch on the thing.
John:
The keyboard is different.
John:
The trackpad is different.
John:
The screen is different.
John:
It's missing some ports.
John:
It doesn't have an optical drive, so on and so forth.
John:
And yet people still continue to buy new computers just because that's like the price of doing things.
John:
So I'm wondering...
John:
Would would normal people even notice that this keyboard is different or would they accept that it is as different as them upgrading?
John:
I mean, I guess we've had a long sort of run of trackpad and keyboard continuity, so they have to be coming from either the error with the button on the trackpad or I mean, the keyboards have been the same forever, except plus or minus some flexibility in the.
John:
the underpinnings.
John:
But yeah, that's why, you know, someone who cares less about these things and is less picky, frankly, would they care and be like, oh, yeah, whatever.
John:
It's a keyboard.
John:
You know, you can use the trackpad.
John:
Oh, I didn't even notice anything different about it.
John:
Whatever.
John:
It's fine.
Marco:
And that's very possible.
Marco:
I mean, you know, there are certainly, it is certainly valid to be skeptical or critical of my point of view here because you think that I just don't like it because it's new.
Marco:
And that's, I might.
Marco:
That's, I don't know.
Marco:
What I can say is that in the last, I don't know, three, four years,
Marco:
I have gone through periods where I have regularly used six different keyboards.
Marco:
I have used five different desktop keyboards and one keyboard on the laptop, one keyboard style on the laptops because I haven't changed this keyboard in a long time.
Marco:
Every time I've moved to a different keyboard,
Marco:
There's been a very short period of adjustment of a few hours, and then I'm fine.
Marco:
And on this keyboard, on the MacBook One keyboard, after like an hour, I was really fast and fairly accurate on it.
Marco:
And so I think I was able to adjust to it quickly.
Marco:
I just didn't like it.
Marco:
And none of the other keyboards that I've used during this time, I haven't thought that way about them.
Marco:
This was definitely the worst keyboard, in my opinion.
Marco:
It was the worst keyboard I've ever used.
Marco:
I don't say that lightly.
Marco:
I used to use a Gateway 2000 keyboard.
Marco:
And then I used a Dell keyboard at work for a long time back in my first job.
Marco:
And I really can honestly say this was the worst keyboard I've ever used.
Marco:
I wanted to like it.
Marco:
It's not that I went into this hoping to trash Apple and return the laptop.
Marco:
That is the last thing I wanted.
Marco:
I really had convinced myself that it was going to work for me.
Marco:
I really wanted to like it because physically, you look at this machine, you pick it up, you close it up, and you carry it, and you're like, oh, my God, this is great.
Marco:
This is amazing.
Marco:
I wanted this to work so badly, and it just couldn't.
John:
I couldn't do it.
John:
I really want to go into a store and try one of these things because I had a similar sort of even longer uniformity of keyboard experience.
John:
I used the Apple Extended 2 keyboard from basically 1989 to 2003.
John:
After that, I made the transition to a series of terrible Apple USB keyboards until I finally settled on the aluminum, the current aluminum one that I have now that's been around for many years.
John:
And I think maybe these key switches on the aluminum ones aren't the same as they are on laptops, but they're very, very similar if they're not identical.
John:
And so there has been a surprising amount of continuity in recent history and for most of your Mac life of, you know, keyboard feel and exact keyboard mechanism for the past several years.
John:
Right.
John:
And I'm assuming they're not going to go to this super slim keyboard everywhere because it's so obviously a compromise for thinness.
John:
why in the world would they do that and then of course i have flashbacks of why in the world but they use the uh the keyboard from the 12 inch power book on the 17 inch power book but anyway i'm assuming that they will not go to this super shallow travel keyboard and the the little bubble switch mechanism that goes with it on all the laptops four star trackpad of course we assume is going to be everywhere
John:
and they're just going to take that and you're going to deal with it um i'm i'm not worried about the trackpad because i i hate all trackpads and if i hate this one slightly more so what like it's gonna on a scale from one to 100 i like trackpads about a five and if this one is a three whatever you know it's not not a big difference but for the the keyboard i'm worried because i hate track i hate laptops
John:
period.
John:
I don't like their keyboards at all.
John:
Not, not because of the key presses, but because I'm missing the keys on them.
John:
And if they make them even worse, like maybe I'll just switch to typing on my iPad with my Apple Bluetooth keyboard or something, if I needed a, which is what I do anyway.
John:
You know, when I was taking notes at WWDC, I either have a giant battleship notebook, which I don't like, or the little iPad.
John:
I don't like typing on glass, even though I can kind of sort of do it, you know, at maybe one eighth speed.
John:
Um,
John:
But I also, you know, it's like the 11-inch Air.
John:
I would love to have a little Air.
John:
And, like, this is like, isn't this the perfect computer?
John:
Beautiful retina screen, really small.
John:
But if I can't type on it, I don't know.
John:
So I really need to try one of these out and see exactly how crazy you are.
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, please do.
Marco:
I would love to hear your take on it.
Marco:
Because, like, ever since I published this, of course, because I wrote something about Apple that was not entirely positive, it spread all over the stupid rumor sites, the sensational sites today.
Marco:
uh well i don't know why i blog anymore these honestly like when somebody takes my article and puts a sensational headline on it and rewrites it makes it sound way worse than what it actually was that's the kind of stuff that makes me not want to blog anymore well you know if you want me to doctor i can word doctor this up to make it i mean these sensational ones just took totally out of context so forget about them they're just gonna they're gonna make stuff up or whatever but for the other people getting you know like
John:
Does the wording have to do with other people getting up in arms about it, making these vulture sites realize that where there's smoke, they can make fire by setting things on fire and making things up?
John:
I don't know.
John:
What you've said here is describing why you don't like the keyboard.
John:
But then in the article, you say, until now, Apple has never shipped a keyboard that it was less than great.
John:
Everything you said is more or less subjective.
John:
You don't feel like it's flimsy.
John:
It's not falling apart.
John:
It's not missing your keystrokes, right?
John:
So...
John:
When you write about these things, transitioning from here's why I can't stand this thing to this, this marks a decline in the quality of a component in an Apple laptop that had previously been excellent throughout its history.
John:
That's what I think gets people all cranky.
John:
And then the vultures come and just, you know, have their way with the whole article.
Marco:
I think what we need to find out and what we can only find out with time is whether Apple thinks this is really the best new keyboard and whether it does go into products that don't need to be this thin or whether it is only ever really in these super thin lines of the laptops.
John:
I like the idea, the fantasy idea that everyone thought of when they showed the little video is...
John:
a key cap that goes up and down straight kind of like you know a mechanical key cap doesn't wobble when you hit it but the scissor key caps with a little you know if you look at little plastic bits under there there's just little bendy plastic bits and they do kind of like they do go off center and wobble a little bit when you hit them right uh it would feel sturdier if they just went straight up and straight down so uh take the
John:
very more more sort of like less wobbly keycaps but then give them more travel which i guess would mean you have to change the mechanism because it sounds like your biggest complaint about this is not even so much the travel but the mechanism of the lack of travel forces the key to have the little dome thing like i'm assuming that's at the root of the the unpleasurableness of this keyboard uh
John:
you know can you get the non-wobbly benefits like the fact that it feels solid that you know and the larger keys and the smaller gaps can you get that but also have good travel and a key switch i don't maybe you can't like certainly these new macbook pro 15 inches are not a measure of whether apple's going to do this because we've already just said they're they're just a stop gap solution and we have no idea what their grand plans are doesn't even have usbc ports so we may have to wait a long time until we find out
Marco:
what does apple think about this keyboard is it confined to this little skinny laptop or is something like this going to happen elsewhere at the very least it'll be interesting to see if they just make the keycaps bigger and just use the same mechanisms you know i would expect the first major redesign to be next year when skylight comes out because skylight introduces thunderbolt 3 maybe there'll be new ports maybe you know then maybe maybe they'd have usb3 ports or usbc ports then and
Marco:
So I would expect the first post-MacBook major redesign of another laptop to happen within the next, I don't know, 9 to 12 months.
Marco:
Whenever Skylake actually can ship in the 13 and 15 Retina MacBook Pro, I'm guessing that's when we see it.
Marco:
So we'll know in about a year.
Marco:
We'll know whether this keyboard moves on to other things or stays here.
Marco:
But I don't know if it's possible to use this kind of key switch design in a way that's good.
John:
in a way that in the way that you like because that's what i'm getting like i don't know you're the first person who i've i've heard to have a visceral negative reaction to this thing and i i my bet would be that most people are not in touch with these nuances of the hardware that they're using but we'll see
Marco:
Well, I mean, Jason Snell's argument, I think, was very similar to mine.
Marco:
I mean, he liked the rest of the machine a little bit better than I did.
Marco:
But I very much agree with him on the keyboard.
Marco:
He said something along the lines of, I got used to it during the review, and I could type very quickly on it, but I hated every minute of it.
Marco:
That is basically how I felt about it.
Marco:
I could type on it just fine.
Marco:
I got really fast, really quickly on it.
Marco:
It wasn't that big of a deal to adjust.
John:
But keep in mind where most people do their typing.
John:
which is with their thumbs on a phone screen which is way worse than this keyboard like that is the common experience i'm just i'm wondering like what the tolerance is for this type of thing both because people are just so used to the new computer they buy being different in all sorts of weird ways and they just get used to it and
John:
the idea that people seem generally not to be sensitive to keyboard feel at all in my experience like regular people who are not computer enthusiasts who don't read computer magazines or computer websites keep up with computing or whatever i mean like you said like the dell the gateway keyboards those keyboards that feel like you're just pushing something down into modeling clay they're just totally mushy you remember those things i mean that's that's what i think of when i think of like the gateway and dell keyboards like they just felt like mush i'd rather use that
John:
And people just clack away on them all day long in an office and don't say a word.
John:
And it's not even a thing that occurs to them.
John:
Not that I'm saying that's the bar for Apple.
John:
Like, they should find something that is good for people who enjoy those type of things.
John:
But I'm thinking, what will make Apple change?
John:
Because you know Apple's not going to say, oh, well, some people don't like the keyboard feel, so let's make the next one thicker.
John:
Right?
John:
Because they're down to the wire here.
John:
They're down to...
John:
Either we don't put battery under the keyboard, which is going to massively cut into our battery space, and it's basically untenable, or we make the thing thicker.
John:
Like, they have backed themselves into a thinness corner here, and so if they can't make this work, it's going to take some significant feedback.
John:
There's going to have to be some backlash of, like, there has to be word on the street among, like, you know, it has to be a USA Today article, like,
John:
don't buy the new MacBook because the keyboard sucks.
John:
But I don't see that article coming anytime soon so far.
John:
I feel like it would have been out there already, but we'll wait and see.
Marco:
Well, and what you're right about, like, you know, they backed into the thinnest corner here.
Marco:
What aggravates me about this is that they didn't need to
Marco:
like what what aggravates me most about this you know the 11 inch air hardware versus the macbook one hardware proves that they could have done a retina macbook one kind of computer they could have done that even at two pounds like they could have they could have fit all of this in oh but it would have to be a different shape i mean you know this is the only shape this case could possibly be sorry no room for anything else
Marco:
No, but the 11 inch air is the same shape.
John:
It's just a little bit bigger.
John:
No, not exactly the same shape.
John:
If you add one millimeter to this machine, it is no longer good.
John:
This is the product Apple envisioned.
John:
Accept their vision.
John:
Why won't you accept it?
John:
There's no room for anything else.
Marco:
This is the problem.
Marco:
They made this giant compromise on this keyboard.
Marco:
And, again, time will tell whether it's clear that Apple thinks it's a compromise or whether they actually convince themselves this is better.
Marco:
I don't know.
John:
I mean, the scissor keys that you like, the ones on your 15-inch, those were also a compromise from the old style of key, you know, because they've been gradually saying, you know, how much can we shave off our laptop?
John:
I mean, I've got a Mac portable upstairs that has keys, like, that you see on, again, on a Dell and a Gateway keyboard, like...
John:
huge vertical like old school desktop keys the life of laptop keyboards has been a gradual thinning of them how much thinner can make it how much thinner can so the one that you like is itself a thinness if you want to call it compromise or advance a thinness advance over the previous one which said advance over the previous one which advanced over the previous one um and they change mechanisms those things going from plunger things to scissor keys going from scissors keys to dome switches um
John:
uh i don't think this this advancement is that much out of step with all the previous advancements uh but if you had been around for the transition to scissor switches from plunger switches you probably would have felt the same way that like uh i can type fast on these scissors switch keyboards but i hate every minute of it but like eventually all there is is switches and everyone just gets used to it
Marco:
that's fair maybe that'll happen here i don't know but it just it kind of drives me nuts that they they took they made a massive compromise on this keyboard that doesn't honestly look necessary well you'll be you'll be begging for these dome switches when they go to a capacitive touchscreen for their keyboard yeah definitely oh god
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
Well, thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, Bushell, Harvest, and Fracture.
Marco:
And we will see you next week.
Casey:
Now the show is over.
Casey:
They didn't even mean to begin because it was accidental.
Casey:
Oh, it was accidental.
Casey:
John didn't do any research.
Marco:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him because it was accidental.
Marco:
It was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
Marco:
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
Casey:
So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-N-T, Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A, Syracuse.
Casey:
It's accidental.
Casey:
They did it.
Casey:
So did your computer finally die or what, Casey?
John:
Yeah, what happened?
John:
Yeah.
John:
Oh, God.
John:
You got to tell us what happened.
John:
We need the Death Watch website.
John:
Go check it.
Casey:
Well, when you're a man of habit, you sometimes forget to change your habits.
Casey:
Oh, no.
Casey:
And sometimes you repeat habits you don't want to repeat.
Casey:
So it just went for another swim.
John:
I tried to save you, Casey.
John:
I tried to tell you about the drink on a different level.
John:
Not just far away on the same table, but on a different...
John:
physical level so here's the thing oh my god what happened below water below a computer above because oh my god i don't have another level to put it on john unless i stack it on like you got a tray table you got upside down garbage can maybe like maybe like one of those one of those camelback things with a tube so you run i'm so angry at myself right now yeah podcasting camelbacks that
Marco:
Oh, my God.
Marco:
I feel so bad laughing right now.
Casey:
So, seriously, when did Neutral start?
Casey:
It was January of 13?
Casey:
Something like that, yeah.
Casey:
So, it's been two and a half years that every single time I record either of my two podcasts, I get my... What is this?
Casey:
It's a beer glass, basically.
Casey:
It's like a pint glass or something like that, full of water, and I stick it where my mouse goes, because I don't use a mouse with that computer, and I record my show.
Casey:
And for two and a...
Casey:
Quarter years, I never had an issue.
Casey:
Then I put a little bit of water on her computer and I told myself, this will never happen again.
Casey:
You will use a water bottle that if you spill, nothing will come out.
Marco:
Like a sippy cup?
Casey:
Well, no, like, shoot, what is the name of those things?
Casey:
I can't remember what it's called.
Casey:
I don't have it in front of me.
Casey:
Well, that's the problem is I don't have it in front of me.
Casey:
But I can't think of the name of it.
Casey:
But well, if you work, if you worked, you would know what I'm talking about.
Casey:
But because you never leave the house, because you never leave the house, you have no idea what I'm talking about.
Marco:
And so I do have a house full of sippy cups.
Casey:
well that's true so it's like an adult sippy cup let's just leave it at that it's it's not a camelback it's uh i don't know i forget what the hell it's called an algae in bottle well yeah well no but this doesn't have a lid it has a little like spout that flips up kind of like some child cups and it doesn't matter anyway it's an adult sippy cup let's move it's an adult sippy cup so so some here forgets that that's the new routine and
Casey:
And apparently my new routine is to spill water on Aaron's laptop.
Casey:
So this time it went for a good swim and I immediately flipped it upside down and everything was fine until I jostled the power cord.
Casey:
Then it turned off, and it doesn't seem to want to turn back on on its own juice.
Casey:
So I think I fried it.
John:
So this was just a plain old open.
John:
Today it was just an open cup.
John:
That's why you probably went back down.
Casey:
Yes, and I've been doing well with using the water bottle.
Casey:
But because I'm an idiot, and seriously, I am so programmed by routine that I just got my normal glass of water like I always do or did.
Casey:
Yeah.
John:
oh my god i feel so bad for you right now you didn't like i thought your move would be now that again you should have honed this move now you know flip it upside down but would you also have you also not been yanking out the power cord at the same time are you no not last time because the podcast was my priority so i left it running you gotta have a full battery while you're podcasting and flooding your computer and so the i mean like once the water spills on it like the move would be flip it over yank out the cable no no everything was left plugged in because the podcast is a priority
John:
Don't try to blame the podcast.
John:
Don't try to say this is the podcast's fault.
John:
No, it's not the... Don't drag follow-up into this, Casey.
Casey:
That's right.
Casey:
Oh, my God.
Casey:
I'm not blaming the podcast.
Casey:
I'm blaming my own dumb... Think of it this way, Casey.
John:
If it really is dead, then it has ended your suffering of wondering when some bit of corrosion on the inside is going.
John:
You know what I mean?
John:
That's the silver lining, John.
John:
Rather than a long, drawn-out period where you're nervous about, is it going to... This is just the quick...
John:
I don't know.
John:
It might come back, you know.
Casey:
Somewhere around here, I have a screwdriver that's like a double.
Casey:
Oh, there it is.
Casey:
It's a double zero screwdriver that, of course, isn't the right size for these screws because they're so god darn microscopic that I can't get it open.
Casey:
So I was trying to pull the bottom cover, but I'm afraid I'm going to strip the screws doing that.
John:
It's either happened or it hasn't.
John:
You've got to try to get the water out, dry it out.
John:
Maybe we'll start back up again.
John:
Who knows?
Casey:
The problem is I have no one to be angry at but myself.
Casey:
I wasn't trying to blame the podcast.
Casey:
I have no one to be angry at but myself.
Marco:
Don't be so hard on yourself.
Marco:
No, I mean, I know you're probably really ridiculously frustrated right now because that's like...
Marco:
I always feel the worst when I screw something up.
Marco:
And I know it's totally my fault.
Marco:
And it's just so embarrassing and frustrating that it's just me.
Marco:
I just screwed up.
Marco:
That's it.
Casey:
Yeah, that's the thing.
Casey:
Oh, God.
Casey:
It's my own fault.
John:
Just think of it this way.
John:
The thing I've noticed for people with expensive Apple hardware is a surprising number of people...
John:
Break them by dropping them onto hard surfaces, including laptops, not just phones and iPads, but laptops, too.
John:
The number of laptops I've seen with very large dents in them or shattered screens from being dropped onto hard surfaces is surprisingly high.
John:
So at least you're avoiding that one.
John:
Water spillage.
John:
You don't see those.
John:
It's not as visible.
John:
I guess it takes out the computer or it doesn't.
John:
But I see lots of people.
John:
dropping their things and you know this all just argues for the next materials revolution in Apple's laptops like so the long time they were like everything else where it's like a metal frame with plastic on the outside and then there was this weird transition with the titanium and everything and eventually they settled on glass and aluminum machined aluminum right there will be another materials revolution sometime in our lifetime that will make these things more durable to drops and hopefully more water resistant let's say
Casey:
You know what the other frustrating thing is?
Casey:
It's not like my old ThinkPad, which I could like, you know, puff air into it and kind of try to blow the thing out.
John:
But this I don't think that would help is I think you mean you don't know.
John:
Are you blowing a little water droplets towards the part that they're going to damage or away from the part that they're currently damaging?
John:
I don't I don't wouldn't suggest that move.
Casey:
There's also no lights, so I can't even tell what's happening.
Casey:
All the reasons I love my Macs, now I'm hating every one of them.
Casey:
I hate everything except you guys.
Marco:
All right, so we're going to fix this problem.
Marco:
You're going to get a new computer, and then we're going to tell you about these awesome policies a lot of homeowners insurance companies have that are accidental damage coverage for things like computers.
John:
We'll hope the insurance adjuster doesn't listen to the program when he assesses your risk.
Marco:
Yeah.
John:
Seriously.
Marco:
Seriously.
Marco:
I mean, you can look at, you know, rather than being so hard on yourself for this moment, look at it instead as you've recorded like 120 podcast or 130 podcast episodes and you've only spilled water during two of them.
John:
Also, the number of your belongings that you care about that Declan will destroy will quickly dwarf this, so don't worry about it.
Casey:
Oh, wonderful.
Casey:
Yeah, exactly.
Casey:
Yeah, plugging it back into power and trying to turn the thing on is not helping either.
Casey:
Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
Casey:
Hold on, hold on.
Casey:
I see an Apple logo.
Casey:
you may have you may not have an undead computer it may actually be a zombie computer at this point the sad thing is i was really going to tell you like beg you to cut all this out of the show but now if this actually comes back to life even momentarily uh this may be worth leaving in it's worth it oh it's back on it's back on it's back on i'm a cat
John:
But when you type, your fingers get wet.
Marco:
I mean, first of all, you should probably turn it off.
Marco:
But the problem is like the battery is always connected on me.
Marco:
It's like you have to disassemble it to disconnect the battery.
Marco:
So it's kind of always powered to some degree.
Marco:
yeah i turned it back off but that there's hope oh god now in with the last spill when we got everyone's weird recommendations the fact that you just had to say last spill is so bad like i'm not mad at you i'm just saying it's so bad that we have to now specify which friggin spill it is i know but anyway for the last spill did you learn any techniques or tricks that you can use now or that you did already use clearly not marco i just spilled a game
Casey:
I know what you're saying.
Casey:
I know what you're saying.
Casey:
No, I heard all the wives' tales and husbands' tales about how to get stuff out and so on and so forth.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
really the reality of the situation was i was just very lucky i know this probably sounds like crap because i keep trying to look at this thing and try to salvage it so i apologize not not practicing good microphone technique but anyway it's it's totally worth it though um so yeah so we gotta keep this in i i know we do and i'm because we're gonna be talking about it in the future probably so we gotta leave it in did you know you can play this like a friggin harmonica
John:
Stop blowing into your thing, Casey.
Marco:
It's a terrible song.
Marco:
I know.
Marco:
I'm not a good harmonica player.
Marco:
It's also a keyboard.
Marco:
Not a bad keyboard, but still a keyboard.
Marco:
I think I would rather use that keyboard wet than the MacBook One keyboard.
Casey:
At least, I mean, the only thing I have going, well, I have two things going for me.
Casey:
One, I'm not drinking, which is probably good because then it's just doubling down on the ineptitude.
Casey:
Wait, were you drinking last time?
Casey:
No, no, actually I wasn't.
Casey:
Maybe this is the problem.
Casey:
Yeah, that's true.
Casey:
Maybe that is the issue.
Casey:
But no, I'm not drinking, which means it's only a single level of ineptitude, however repeated.
Marco:
The funny thing is, if you were drinking like a highly distilled, very alcoholic spirit.
Marco:
Yeah, it might be less damaging.
Marco:
Yeah, it actually might be better.
Marco:
It would evaporate a lot faster, and there would be less stuff in it.
Casey:
That is a good point, actually.
Casey:
The vodka would have just evaporated instantly.
Casey:
No, that's what I was going to say.
Casey:
It wasn't like a Sprite or anything like that, so at least it won't be sticky.
Casey:
Oh, man.
Casey:
I'm such an idiot, you guys.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Either way, if this doesn't make it, then John wins.
Marco:
Then it'll at least be over.
Marco:
If it does make it, it'll be really impressive.
Marco:
Either way, the show wins.
Marco:
Unfortunately, either way, I think you lose and Aaron loses.
John:
We just got an email recommending the depot repair that Marco just did on his thing, that apparently it covers water damage as well.
John:
So if you just want to throw it to the mercies of the depot repair and pay them $300.
Casey:
Well, that's the thing, though.
Casey:
That's what we talked about a few episodes ago, is that I've heard the depot repair is free if you are nice to the genius.
Casey:
I've heard it's $300.
Casey:
I've heard it's $800.
Casey:
I've heard, I think, once or twice it was over $1,000.
Casey:
I kid you not, I have probably heard...
Marco:
10 to 20 responses as to how much a depot repair is and of those 10 to 20 responses i would say i've heard five or six different answers well but don't you find out the price before you send it though or no well yes for the deep not for all repairs for the depot repair yes because it's a flat rate repair the depot repair is literally like you give them x dollars whatever it is for that model uh and and then
Marco:
They replace anything in there that fails testing.
Marco:
So the problem you'd have, first of all, is what if they get it and they run the test and they all pass?
Casey:
Oh, God, that would be kind of funny.
Casey:
It would be terrible, but it would be kind of funny.
Marco:
From what I've heard, there is a separate type of repair for water damage where they basically replace the entire logic board and everything inside.
Marco:
That is a lot more expensive.
Marco:
That's the one that I think somebody told me was $900 for that model that you have.
Marco:
So that's the one that's really not worth doing in most cases.
Yeah.
Casey:
You know what I probably should do, if I'm really honest, is I should just spend the $1,000, $1,100, whatever it was, and get Erin her own freaking MacBook Air, and then leave this one, if it still works, as the, oh my God, when is it going to die?
Casey:
You did this to yourself, podcasting computer.
Marco:
Well, it's kind of the worst podcasting computer, if you think about it.
Marco:
The last thing you want for a podcasting computer... Is something unreliable.
Marco:
Something that is very unreliable, potentially, and also that's really easy to spill stuff into.
Casey:
Oh, God.
Casey:
I am so angry at myself right now.
Marco:
Well, hey, you know what?
Marco:
If you get the MacBook One, it wouldn't have a fan, so that would solve the problem of your other computer.
Casey:
Yeah, that's true.
Casey:
But I mean, honestly, the funny thing is, I actually am due for a new computer, both at work and at home.
Casey:
I mean, leaving aside the MacBook Air, I should take actually, well, my room is, my office is such a mess, but I was going to say I should take a picture of the puddle of water that's adjacent to where the computer sits that was other debris from this spillage, because it's a significant puddle.
Marco:
And maybe you could sign the computer and auction it off.
Marco:
Yeah, seriously.
Marco:
As fan art from the show.
Casey:
Right?
Casey:
Oh, God.
Casey:
An artifact?
Casey:
I'm such an idiot.
Casey:
I'm mad it happened, but just like you said, Marco, more than anything, I'm mad that I didn't learn from my last mistake.
Casey:
God, I'm such an idiot.
Marco:
You're fine.
Marco:
Be easy on yourself.
Marco:
Look, I mean, you're going to screw things up in life sometimes.
Marco:
That's reality.
Marco:
That's a human being.
Marco:
Yeah, but learn from it.
Marco:
You have a kid now.
Marco:
You have no idea how many screw-ups are ahead of you.
John:
Yeah, if you want to see spilled drinks at the table, you know, like just start counting them up until you just, I mean, my kids are still spilling drinks.
John:
Double digit ages on, it's not preventing.
Casey:
Well, I'm 33 and I'm spilling drinks every freaking week.
John:
Well, I'm just saying, you know, there's no use crying over spilled milk or spilled water.
John:
It happens, you know.
Marco:
Yeah, that's life.
Marco:
This stuff happens.
Marco:
Maybe it's some kind of sign from some kind of spirit that just really hates MacBook Airs.
Marco:
Maybe.
Marco:
Or just really hates that one.
Casey:
I don't know.
Marco:
You have a cursed MacBook Air.
Casey:
Now, after doing this twice, it removes all doubt that in at least this way, I am the idiot of the three of us.
Casey:
And that's also deeply frustrating.
John:
Oh, come on.
John:
No, it doesn't.
John:
Perhaps the least coordinated.
John:
I'm not going to say it has anything to do with intelligence.
John:
Maybe control of your limbs.
Yeah.
John:
But I don't think you can directly correlate that to intelligence.
John:
Otherwise, they would make the world's greatest athletes the world's smartest people.
John:
I just bought a whole computer wrong.
John:
That's the thing you do, though.
Casey:
Yeah, that is just the thing you do.