Admitted No Wrongdoing
Marco:
i do i steal all the tissues out of the hotel room and then have to make sure they refill those boxes sometimes they don't we're live we are in person in my hotel room with a whole bunch of equipment and wires everywhere recording this on a proper three-track recorder with three microphones and we're one is clipped to a table mine is clipped to a suitcase stand and john's is clipped to a pole lamp
Marco:
And we are making this work.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
So big day, huh?
Marco:
Huge week.
Casey:
It's odd looking at you guys.
Casey:
We do this every year, but it's odd looking at you guys while we're doing the show.
John:
Do you have a little note thing normally when we record, or is that just for today?
Casey:
No, so I'm holding field notes.
Casey:
The comedy behind this is I wrote some notes in my field notes, but I can't read them because my handwriting is crap in general, but my handwriting is unintelligible when I'm writing in a dark room without having a surface to write upon.
John:
You should have tapped them out on your little iOS device.
John:
I don't know why you're writing in this field notes notebook that's shaped like your butt.
Casey:
so i know i'll have to paint you a word picture so the the field notes is concave convex i always get it backwards anyway it depends on which way you hold it yeah i guess that's true so it's bent because it always resides in my back left pocket it is crinkly as all anything and so yeah so uh i didn't take copious notes i don't know how do you how do you want to how do you want to start this i mean the morning was are you actually are we are we now learning because i have notes
Marco:
Are we learning that I took the best notes of the three of us?
Marco:
You know, I wasn't taking notes.
John:
I'm on vacation.
Marco:
You're on vacation in California.
John:
Yeah, you don't say.
John:
Yeah, no, I didn't take notes.
John:
But if I just saw like the agenda, like if you just have the agenda, the keynote, we'll just go through it chronologically and assume that we will actually finish with the agenda.
John:
Marco can keep an eye on the time and how far we're through the agenda.
John:
And if we spend 45 minutes on the first item, we'll know that we have to move along.
John:
Although, are we just going through the keynote?
John:
Are we also going through the State of the Union?
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
Knowing us, we'll barely make it through half the keynote.
Casey:
And the keynote was about seven hours long.
Casey:
So there's that.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And I want to say, like, we've done these recordings before.
John:
And for people who haven't listened to them, I think the thing to remember is that we spent the day standing in lines, attending the keynote.
John:
By the way, I'm actually at WWDC, in case you were wondering.
No.
John:
attending the keynote and then the state of the union we haven't had time to look up everything on all the websites or digest it all or whatever so the main thing we're bringing to this as people who are actually here bringing to the people who aren't here is that we were in the room and we could see the reactions and we are sort of giving first impressions so inevitably we will get things wrong like just before we started recording i was asking
John:
I wish I could see a particular slide because I have some memory of something being on that slide, but I'm not entirely sure.
John:
So if we make mistakes, please forgive us, but we're trying to give you the on-the-scene sort of flavor of WWDC, not so much a comprehensive, no factual errors, complete coverage of everything that was announced today.
Casey:
Because clearly that's what we do is a podcast that has no factual errors ever.
Casey:
And so this is an exception.
John:
The weird thing is if you are here, you actually probably know less about the announcements than if you're not here because you're too busy being there for the things, you know?
John:
Right.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Like Jason Snell talked about that in Upgrade last week about how like, you know, when you are covering the event, you don't have time the way everyone else does at home to go through all the websites and the documentation right after the release and everything.
Marco:
So we actually have had.
Marco:
Yeah, you're right.
Marco:
We've had less time to go over this than a lot of people have.
Marco:
So we're making a podcast about it.
John:
But we have the things that they don't have is that we get to.
John:
And this is the thing people don't know, too.
John:
When they release the videos of this, they edit them.
John:
They cut out parts.
John:
They cut out audience noise.
John:
They cut out flubs.
John:
Sometimes they're even edited for content, like when that guy typed the wrong thing into the whatever that was.
John:
Like, what was that?
John:
I don't remember.
John:
Oh, that was Siri.
John:
Did you talk about it during the music?
John:
No, like in the old thing that he was trying to say, it's road trip.
John:
Oh, you're talking about last year.
John:
He was trying a Utah road trip or something.
Marco:
He pulled up the wrong song.
Marco:
Like that one with the Siri thing.
John:
Yeah, yeah.
John:
But anyway, being here live, that's what you get.
John:
And sometimes that's significant and sometimes it's not.
John:
But that's what we've got to offer you.
Casey:
Right.
John:
Lucky you.
Casey:
Hooray.
Casey:
Well, let's start.
Casey:
How about we do just a general overall feeling about the entire keynote?
Casey:
Let's leave aside the State of the Union for now.
Casey:
So just the keynote in general, how did everyone feel?
Casey:
I'll start off.
Casey:
The first half to two-thirds I thought was excellent.
Casey:
There was a lot of enthusiasm.
Casey:
Some of the things that I think the room found more enthusiastic, I was slightly surprised by.
Casey:
The room got really amped up about an announcement with regards to Swift, which we'll talk about later.
Casey:
But in general, I thought it was very good.
Casey:
It wasn't quite the fast-paced holy crap that was last year, in my personal opinion.
Casey:
Last year, I felt like my hair was getting blown back.
Casey:
There was so much so fast.
Casey:
This year, it wasn't that.
Casey:
The last third, however, basically once Apple Music started, things took a turn, and we'll talk about that as well.
Casey:
But I don't know.
Casey:
Marco, what did you think about the whole thing?
Marco:
I thought it was great.
Marco:
If we consider the first three quarters or whatever, the first part before Apple Music, if Tim Cook would have ended, and instead of saying one more thing, said, thanks, this will be a great week, we'll see what you guys can do with this, thanks a lot, and that was the end of it, I think it would have been a very different overall reaction.
Marco:
Until that point, really, I think the momentum was very good.
Marco:
So, you know, they ran through a lot of stuff.
Marco:
They ran through, you know, iOS 9, OS X, is it El Capitan?
Marco:
Is that how you say that?
Marco:
I believe that's right.
Casey:
We're going to have to learn that.
Casey:
I guess El Cap, is that an acceptable?
Casey:
Well, I'm sure Stephen Hackett's going to be furious about this, but I will probably call it El Cap.
Marco:
I've heard California people call it LCAP, so I think that's okay.
Marco:
But you never know with California people.
Marco:
Maybe they can say it, but we can't.
Marco:
I don't know.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
Like, isn't Cali unacceptable if you're not... And don't forget Frisco.
Casey:
Yep, we're here in Frisco.
Casey:
We're here in Frisco, Cali.
Casey:
Oh, God, so many people are so angry right now.
Marco:
Welcome to Frisco.
Marco:
Don't touch anything.
Marco:
So I think, you know, starting, if you start at the beginning, you know, going through it, first of all, I would say, I took a note of this too, like the reactions that people had to both Tim Cook and to especially Craig Federighi, these were like roaring cheers, like more than I've heard since Steve Jobs at these events.
Marco:
Like people are really pleased with these execs.
Marco:
Like it was just very, just positive, very positive overall for them.
Marco:
I think, you know, so moving into what they announced, I mean,
Marco:
So, first of all, I thought the opening film was kind of funny.
Marco:
I heard a lot of people on Twitter were like, oh, this is lame.
Marco:
I thought it was cute.
Marco:
I didn't think it was bad.
John:
I think it played well in the room.
John:
Like, of all their opening videos they do that are supposed to be funny, they're hit or miss.
John:
You know, it doesn't really matter.
John:
But I thought this one...
John:
was mostly hit and i i didn't hear a lot of groaning from the room and at that point yeah i mean the thing the worst thing you could say about the opening video is that it didn't seem particularly relevant which you can kind of imagine it has to be that way because if you're going to get a bunch of celebrities and someone to produce this video for you and everything you can't like what if they had filmed a whole bunch of stuff about the new apple tv like you know or teases about the new apple tv and then they had to can it you know so that the opening joke can't be about anything that announced but then you're like well why is it even here is it just wasting time
John:
Is it trying to entertain me?
John:
The only thing I would really ding the opening video on is making a joke about Objective-C and not mentioning Swift.
Casey:
No, I thought it was good because what was it, Bill Hader, Bill Heater?
Casey:
Yeah, Saturday Night Live guy.
Casey:
Yeah, and he's awesome.
Casey:
And so I thought as a cheesy and campy opening video, it was about as delightful a cheesy and campy opening video as one could really hope for.
Casey:
So I give that two thumbs up.
Casey:
I thought it was fine.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And, and so, you know, I, I think, you know, you can, you can look at the room and you can say, you know, you're right.
Marco:
Like, you know, the playing to that room, it, it worked.
Marco:
It was lighthearted.
Marco:
It was, you know, they know they're not going to get like, you know, comedy awards or the things they produce or anything, but it was lighthearted and it was, it was nice.
Marco:
It was pleasant.
Marco:
It was, parts of it were very funny, I thought.
Marco:
And it was fine.
Marco:
You know, it's open up and like, they usually open up with jokey videos.
Marco:
Like there, there was like that Siri video a few years ago and stuff like that's not new.
Marco:
It's like to open up with a jokey video.
Marco:
So that's fine.
John:
And this referenced third-party apps.
John:
You had the little crows from Monument Valley in there.
John:
You got Angry Birds, of course.
John:
There was a lot in there.
John:
Yeah, a lot.
John:
So if you're playing to a room full of developers, referencing a bunch of third-party apps is a good bet.
John:
Exactly.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
So let's see.
Marco:
The first thing I have here.
Marco:
Put your laptop in front of you so you can stay on mic.
Marco:
Yeah, I know, right?
Marco:
So they went over OS X first.
Marco:
And so, man, I wish we had somebody in the room who was an OS X expert.
John:
Like I tweeted, OS X still gets top billing, which isn't really true because the last spot's the good one.
John:
But anyway, as I said, just let me have this one.
John:
OS X top billing.
John:
That keynote had...
John:
It was so long.
John:
I'm not going to say it had so much stuff in it, but it was so long that now I'm thinking back, what did they announce for OS X?
John:
Well, it got its own name, and it's not Snow Yosemite or Snowsemite.
John:
You think, oh, who cares what its name?
John:
But that is a signal that Apple has used in the past to indicate an OS release that is merely the previous OS release, but kind of cleaned up a little bit.
John:
You had Snow Leopard and Mountain Lion.
John:
And those were all modifiers of Leopard and Lion.
John:
And that sends a clear signal about the intention of the OS.
John:
This one does El Capitan, which is kind of a modified version of Yosemite because it's a thing that's in Yosemite.
John:
But...
John:
It's still trying to stand on its own.
John:
The thing that struck me about it is, and I'm still looking at it from a reviewer's perspective, I'm like, man, the screenshots are going to look exactly the same this year as they did last year, because last year was the big overhaul of how everything looks.
John:
And this year...
John:
i don't was there anything to look different the font's different yeah yeah other than the font but that's kind of big i mean it's only big to people who care about fonts i can tell you that vanishing a small number of people even can even notice in like a test is this helvetica or you know charcoal or sb sands or chicago maybe they could tell chicago but uh yeah it is it is a new font but other than that
John:
I don't think there's even any new controls or effects or widgets or anything like that.
John:
So this is going to look very similar in the reviews.
John:
And everything they concentrated on were a few underpinning text and a bunch of new features for apps.
John:
It did not look like a big OS release.
John:
And the other thing that struck me, since this was their first announcement, it's like, okay, you're going to show us this new OS.
John:
It's going to have a whole bunch of stuff in it that is kind of like, well, it's like Yosemite, but a couple things are better or improved or whatever.
John:
they did not emphasize the idea that we're taking this year to sort of make things perform better and make more stable.
John:
They did not hammer that at all.
John:
They merely just didn't say anything.
John:
They just said, this is, uh, you know, OS 10, El Capitan, and here's what it has in it.
John:
Uh,
John:
And these things that it has is great.
John:
And moving on, they did not emphasize where like they did.
John:
It was snow to say like zero new features.
John:
We're really going to try to, you know, buckle down this time and concentrate on the core OS.
John:
I mean, I think they are doing that, but they didn't say that in the messaging.
John:
And that I think would be a theme throughout because a lot of the announcements in this keynote were like that.
John:
But it was unspoken.
John:
Like in the past show, I said, hey, they can get lots of applause lines by saying that they didn't go for them.
John:
They didn't go for like that type of line.
John:
They just sort of went with the positives and didn't put it in the context of we know that iOS 8 and Yosemite were big releases and there are a bunch of bugs that you wish we would fix.
Marco:
I disagree.
Marco:
I think they did.
Marco:
I mean, so the way Federighi introduced it, he said there were these handful of headlining features.
Marco:
There was spotlight enhancements, some things to the built-in apps, window management, and performance.
Marco:
And Metal was part of performance.
John:
But performance is not a big Yosemite.
John:
Here, I put it in legal terms.
John:
They admitted no wrongdoing.
Yeah.
Marco:
yeah that's you know they did a settlement and they say but of course apple admits no wrongdoing right that's fair well but you know first of all i think that's very heavily implied by like the by the clear slowdown in in like headlining marketable features of these two os's uh but also you know i i think even with snow leopard they didn't say man leopard was a piece of crap we're fixing it they said we're working on like you know making things better under the hood they said like that
John:
They said they were regrouping.
John:
They had to say, why are we making a thing with no new features?
John:
Because it's like a regrouping or rebuilding year.
John:
That is what we're doing with this endeavor.
John:
They didn't feel the need to excuse anything about El Capitan.
John:
They didn't feel the need to explain why it didn't have as many new features to demo as Yosemite or why the features were less dramatic.
John:
At no point did they put it in the context of past releases characterizing this release as small or less significant in any way.
John:
and i think that's fine it's it's a perfectly valid way to go i just thought they would have gone for it to get to get sort of the credit for what it is they're doing and it seems like it's not like a power like i did i don't think they wanted to embarrass themselves not that you're going to say your previous os was a piece of crap but but to but to put this new release in context and say this release is a smaller release than our previous one and that is a conscious choice and it's good for consumers because of x y and z they didn't say that
Casey:
Yeah, that's true.
Casey:
What do you think of the name?
Casey:
Because I don't dig it.
Casey:
I don't think I really like the California-themed names at all, because they don't mean anything to me.
Casey:
Like, I can get behind tiger and leopard and even snow leopard.
Casey:
And granted, there aren't snow leopards running around Virginia.
Casey:
But I mean, everyone can associate, can understand and appreciate animals.
Casey:
Whereas these...
Casey:
To me, kind of esoteric places in California, they just carry no weight to me.
Casey:
Like, John, I'm especially curious to hear you.
John:
I like that naming thing because I think there are so many options.
John:
And I like this name, admittedly, because it was the name of the tower case.
John:
I believe it was the name of the entire tower case design that the Power Mac G3 and G4 came in.
John:
This was the name of that thing.
John:
Yeah.
John:
But they sound cool.
John:
With the exception of Mavericks, two out of three so far have been names that people know throughout the whole country.
John:
People know what Yosemite is, and I think people know what this is, even if they didn't know about the case code names.
John:
And that's kind of what a name has to be.
John:
It's just a filler marketing name.
John:
It's better than a number.
John:
It's better than the name of a wine.
Yeah.
John:
right it's less highfalutin than uh whatever i don't even know what the wine name for this one is someone can look it up on the the rumor sites uh so so i don't mind it um and the os itself the things they changed are all like yeah that was kind of silly that that was limited that way and oh that does look like a cool feature but i don't care because i don't use that app uh
John:
So, you know, all the things they didn't talk about, like if you have Discovery D problems and this solves them, that will be worth the hassle of upgrading alone.
John:
But they didn't talk about that at all because they would have to put that in context and sort of admit wrongdoing there.
Casey:
Right, right.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
What else do they talk about for OS X?
Casey:
I...
Casey:
kind of blanked in terms of my notes on what happened.
Marco:
There was the... Well, there was the window management stuff, the new split-screen enhancements to mission control and stuff like that.
Marco:
And that's all, I think, fairly lightweight, but it's nice.
John:
The window management, I think, is interesting to me from the perspective... From my perspective, how I manage Windows...
John:
And Windows itself, Microsoft Windows, has done this thing.
John:
They'll sort of drag the window to the side and have it fill the half screen or whatever.
John:
And of course, Linux Windows Managers have been doing this for ages as well.
John:
Marco, are you okay?
John:
Are you dying over there?
John:
I'm fine.
John:
All right.
John:
Yeah, you can't just get away with it now because we're all in the same room.
John:
But the whole idea of a tiling window manager is the opposite of how I manage Windows.
John:
I manage Windows...
John:
with with overlapping windows the way that mac window management has been done since the dawn of the mac windows overlap and even when i even use the same vocabulary i'm like oh tile i tile my windows but what tile means is what they were showing where the windows don't overlap and you divide the screen into fourths or thirds or whatever vertically horizontally and the windows don't overlap and when i say tile it's probably the wrong word i mean like that they overlap
John:
uh and are you know staggered one after the other um so i think for people who want to people who are stuck in full screen mode this may help get shake them out of it and say hey you've got this big giant screen don't make your text editor window fill your entire 24 inch screen because you're not going to write lines that are 700 characters long maybe
John:
I don't know, split your screen vertically and have two things.
John:
It'll help people along who are addicted to full screen apps, even on giant monitors, and maybe on small monitors, it'll give them a chance.
John:
And there's a nice symmetry with iOS 9's features that we'll talk about later.
John:
But from my perspective, this is
John:
window management that is not even up to the complexity of third-party Mac apps that have been around for ages, like Divi and Moom.
John:
Moom, is it called?
John:
There's a bunch of other ones that are like that.
John:
I just don't have interest in these things, so these features of El Capitan don't interest me, but I think it's good that they're there to sort of
John:
be like training wheels for people who aren't very good at window management to say here are some more options and they're built into the os and you don't have to install a scary third-party app and maybe maybe they will help you feel comfortable with windows in a way that you don't currently feel comfortable yeah that's fair um was it during the os 10 portion that they announced that core animation is moving to metal instead of open gl
John:
So they announced that Metal was coming to OS X, and there's a lot of announcements this year, like, yeah, we all figured that from last year.
John:
They announced Metal, and it's iOS only, and it's like, why is it iOS only?
John:
The only reason you can think of is because they have limited resources and time, and iOS is more important, and it will come to the Mac eventually.
John:
And it did.
John:
And they put their stuff on top of it, and it's good.
John:
You know, thumbs up.
John:
And Craig Federer, you threw up the horns.
John:
Of course.
John:
Briefly, I'm pretty sure.
John:
Marco needs to see what the horns are.
John:
These are the horns, Marco.
John:
Is that a reference?
John:
Mess with the bull, you get the horns, okay?
John:
Oh, God.
John:
Wow.
John:
Neither one of you get that, do you?
Casey:
No, I know that's a reference.
Casey:
I don't know from where...
Casey:
you should chat room is silently shaming you you should see this is different now because i can see the disgusting absolute disgust on john's face typically i'm behind a monitor so and we don't do video when we record so i don't get to see how unbelievably upset and frustrated john is but this time i did i think he threw up the horns again i don't have a video to look at yeah
Casey:
I thought he had as well.
Casey:
That's all right.
Casey:
What else happened in OSD?
Casey:
You know, they didn't do, it just occurred to me, they didn't do Control Center, right?
Casey:
Or did I totally miss that?
Casey:
Control Center?
Casey:
They were talking about doing the same thing where you swipe up from the bottom on iOS while they were going to swipe from the left.
Casey:
A notification center type thing by the other side.
Casey:
Right, right.
Casey:
That was a pretty solid rumor, I thought, up until.
John:
I think Mark Gurman was wrong about that.
Casey:
Well, or maybe we just don't know it yet.
John:
It could still be there.
John:
That type of stuff.
Marco:
Or maybe it gets cut.
Marco:
I think they would have shown that off.
John:
I think so, too.
John:
Yeah.
Marco:
I'm kind of glad it's not there, honestly.
Marco:
When I heard these rumors, I was not looking forward to that, honestly.
John:
Going to save something for next year.
Marco:
Yeah, exactly.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
So before we move on to iOS, let's talk about our first sponsor.
Marco:
It is our friends at Cards Against Humanity.
Marco:
Now...
Marco:
cars against humanity rather than actually uh giving us a sponsorship to read they have asked john to review a toaster so john what is the toaster of the week so this week's toaster is the hamilton beach toast station model 22722
Marco:
That's it.
John:
Both of you pull this up because this marks a turning point, I think, in our toaster review.
John:
What is this abomination?
John:
Exactly.
Casey:
What is happening?
John:
This is an octoparrot.
John:
It's not a refrigerated toaster.
John:
It is kind of an octoparrot.
John:
What is that?
John:
Polly shouldn't be.
John:
Casey does not get that reference.
John:
Nope.
John:
Neither does Marco.
John:
This thing, I will describe it for you.
John:
It looks like a toast oven, and seeing it in person, it's like my Breville toast oven was cut in half, so it was half the depth, so it sticks out from the wall of my kitchen half as far, right?
John:
So that's the first chop.
John:
And the second chop is vertically, where...
John:
the door that opens up is half the height of the toaster and what are they doing with the rest of the vertical head of the toaster there's a slot in the top where you put pieces of bread product in and push down a knob on the side this is a slot toaster and a toaster oven in one we will put the link in the show notes so you can look at it it's kind of like one of those magician's boxes where you expect there's like mirrors in there it's like when you push down the toast where does the toast go well there are no mirrors it's not magic when you put toast in the top of this thing in a slot and push them down
John:
They sit vertically in the middle of the toaster oven.
John:
So you can't use the slot toaster portion and the regular oven portion at the same time.
John:
Well, that's not that unreasonable.
John:
All right.
John:
Well, so here's the thing.
John:
Like a refrigerator toaster, this has many, many compromised, right?
John:
Well, first, let's talk about the interface.
John:
It has an on-off switch, which is nice.
John:
So you can turn the darkness knob to whatever you want and then use the on-off switch.
John:
But it also, of course, has the toaster plunger part where you don't use the on-off switch.
John:
Then you just push down the little plunger if you're using the slot toaster thing.
John:
the supposed benefits of slot toaster is that it toasts faster and this is a little bit faster it's like three minutes for two slices which is a little bit faster than the revel but it's not that much faster because it's got it's got two sort of quartz heating elements in the bottom and then it's got a one heating element
John:
on the side of the slot and one heating element on the other side of the slot and that does speed things up a little bit um but what do you trade that for well you put things in the slot toaster on the top and they come out not very evenly browned at all which kind of makes sense because there's just one heating element on either side it's not like a real slot toaster where they have all the resistive wires going all over it gives nice even heat over the whole piece of bread
John:
these things come out super spotty like big dark spots big spots that are underdone um and the first time i tried to use it i put english muffins in the top and the slot is very wide i'm assuming to be able to support bagels but it doesn't grip things very closely so i put english muffins which are not very wide in there and pressed it down and then tried to pop them back up and one of the english muffins had to sort of like bent over because there was too much room in the slot and it curled back on itself when i popped it up it had like crunched over and didn't pop back up and i had to fish it out with a knife this is the very first time i'm using this thing
John:
So the slot toaster is crap.
John:
Like, it does not toast as well as a real slot toaster does.
John:
It's a little bit faster than a toaster oven, but what you get out of it is worthless.
John:
I would never toast anything in that.
John:
It's worse than all of my toaster ovens.
John:
It is not evenly brown.
John:
It is not very fast.
John:
And then the toaster oven portion is super small.
John:
You can only put two slices of bread in there.
John:
Your height is compromised.
John:
The little door that you open is super chintzy feeling.
John:
And when the thing is done, it makes this terrible long beeping sequence that you wish would stop.
John:
Like, it beeps two times.
John:
You pull out the toaster and it just keeps beeping and keeps beeping.
John:
This is the new champion for the worst toaster that we have ever tested.
John:
It is not a good toaster oven.
John:
It is not a good slot toaster.
John:
And people kept sending this to me when we were talking about this.
John:
Hey, you should check this out.
John:
It's a slot toaster and a toaster oven.
John:
It is bad at both of those jobs.
John:
Do not buy this product.
John:
I do not understand how it has a three and a half star rating on Amazon.
Wow.
Marco:
That's amazing.
Marco:
So what you're saying is that this is not as good as your other toaster.
John:
It's just not good.
John:
The picture they have, the second picture on Amazon, if you swipe, it shows this beautifully brown bread coming out.
John:
That does not happen.
John:
No bread that looks like it ever comes out of this toaster.
Casey:
So you're saying that slot toasters may not be sufficient for you.
John:
This is not a slot toaster.
John:
I think slot toasters are fine or would do better than this.
John:
Because again, slot toasters have lots of... You ever see them with little wires that glow orange inside them?
John:
There's a whole bunch of those wires, crisscross, and they brown it evenly.
John:
This just has two toaster oven elements sitting on either side of the slots.
John:
And it also turns on the two bottom ones.
John:
It's a mess.
John:
This was like someone thought it would be a good idea, but it is totally not.
John:
How much does this cost?
John:
I didn't even look.
Marco:
It's like $32.
John:
It is $30, so you kind of get what you pay for, but please don't buy this.
John:
Mine was red.
John:
The only thing it has to recommend is that mine came in red, which is kind of cool looking.
John:
But other than that, does it match your toaster?
Casey:
Thumbs down.
Casey:
So fun fact, Hamilton Beach's headquarters are in Richmond, Virginia.
Casey:
You can go there and throw eggs at it later.
Marco:
I think we've done another Hamilton Beach toaster, but I don't remember what the model was.
Marco:
Yeah, that's all right.
Marco:
So, thanks a lot to Cards Against Humanity for sponsoring our show once again.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
So, iOS 9.
Casey:
Well, are we done with OS X?
John:
I think we're never done with OS X. As far as any of us can remember from the keynote, probably, but as I go do sessions and learn new things, I'm sure new things will come up.
Casey:
Right, okay.
John:
But the keynote, they didn't spend much time on it, right?
Casey:
It wasn't that much, no.
Casey:
Okay, so I'm sorry, Marco.
Casey:
Carry on.
Marco:
All right, so big hitlining features of iOS 9 were a lot of the API improvements and then user-facing stuff.
Marco:
There's this new proactive assistant, and part of this is on OS X as well in the new Spotlight window.
Marco:
It seems like this is a lot of similar kinds of stuff.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
Big disappointment for me, the forced search page on Springboard is now back.
Marco:
Remember the way it used to be where Spotlight was a page on the left?
Marco:
Now, once again, it's a page on the left.
Marco:
But besides that, it looks pretty good.
Marco:
I'm curious to see.
Marco:
They seem to be integrating...
Marco:
A whole lot of web service type stuff in here, web data results.
Marco:
It really is a continuation of them kind of encroaching on Google's territory.
Marco:
And not in some ways and not quite to the degree Google does these things.
Marco:
But you could tell that that's kind of the direction they're trying to go in.
Yeah.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
I mean, to me, I have found things like the Safari autocomplete for websites that doesn't use Google at all.
Marco:
Things like the current Spotlight on iOS 8 that tries to integrate web and app store results and everything.
Marco:
It has some problems sometimes.
Marco:
But for the most part, this stuff works pretty well for me.
Marco:
So this looks like a pretty good continuation of that process.
Marco:
And I'm really excited about the app indexing kind of thing where you can...
Marco:
Like now apps, either through their websites or through the app itself on the phone, they can publish searchable data for Spotlight and for Siri.
Marco:
And that's pretty cool.
Casey:
Yeah, that's pretty fascinating.
Casey:
What was interesting to me about the whole iOS 9 section was we got to see...
Casey:
How Apple, well, maybe not the mechanisms, but the features that Apple is putting together to try to combat, what is it, Google Now?
Casey:
Since Google, in many cases, has all of your data, it knows when you're going to fly next and when you have another appointment.
Casey:
And server-side, Google can look at that and say, oh, well, Casey is supposed to go to dinner with Aaron in 20 minutes, but traffic says if he doesn't leave now, he's going to miss it.
Casey:
And it was interesting seeing how Apple's trying to create some of that Google Now functionality, but without crawling all your data server-side.
Casey:
Now, what was very hand-wavy and don't worry your pretty little faces was, well, how are they really accomplishing that on the device?
Casey:
And the implication was, and in many ways the statement was, well, it's all happening on the device, so it's fine, it's fine, it's fine.
Casey:
And they made a lot of indirect and direct comments about privacy.
Casey:
And about, oh, it's under your control.
Casey:
Everything is on, you know, the users own all this data.
Casey:
We don't want to know.
Casey:
Actually, they literally occasionally said, we don't want to know.
Casey:
Often they said, we don't know or can't know.
Casey:
And so it was very interesting to me to see Apple's reaction to that kind of omnipresent Google that people either love or hate, depending on what your particular opinion is.
John:
Yeah.
John:
I don't know if that strategy... I can't tell if that strategy is like, this is our corporate differentiator, this is what we believe as people, that we don't want that thing, or that it's like, that's what they have.
John:
They don't have the server capacity.
John:
Thinking about the on-device stuff, right?
John:
So Google checks your email, figures out that you have a flight, and can do all that stuff because it sees your email everywhere, right?
John:
Whereas Apple's like, oh, this all happens on device.
John:
And that sounds fine to you.
John:
Like, well, but what if I don't check that mail account on my iPad?
John:
Does that mean my iPad doesn't know I have a flight?
John:
And if it's all on device, the answer is, yeah.
John:
How could the iPad know that you have a flight if you're not checking that email account from your... Maybe it doesn't matter.
John:
Maybe people don't have 50 email accounts and they check all their email accounts on every device or whatever.
John:
But basically, the smarts are isolated and confined to the data that's on that device.
John:
But your life may encompass more data than it's on any single device.
John:
And so how can it get a picture of my whole life if all the stuff is necessarily local?
John:
I feel like if Apple is going to make more intelligent features, it's going to have to eventually move away from that.
John:
And I don't think that's such a big deal.
John:
They don't read our iMessages.
John:
The iMessages are all two-way encrypted.
John:
But there should be a way.
John:
You need some global awareness.
John:
That is not confined to a device to do really smart things.
John:
So this is a good start for Apple.
John:
You can do lots of smart things just on the device.
John:
But if you try to explain to a person why like, well, why doesn't it's hard to say because like the watch is not really an independent device or whatever.
John:
But like, why doesn't my iPad know that I have a flight?
John:
You know, if I use Google, everything knows.
John:
Like, if I use Google, when I'm on my computer at work, it pops up a thing in my face that says, oh, don't forget about your flight.
John:
But on my Apple stuff, only my phone knows.
John:
Why is that?
John:
Well, because you're at work and you're not checking your home email and your work thing.
John:
You're just checking your exchange.
John:
Like, trying to explain to them the technical intricacies, they won't understand.
John:
And then you try to explain, well, it's for privacy reasons.
John:
So Apple doesn't have your data.
John:
And they're like, well, I just want all my computers to tell me when my flight is.
John:
Like, this is the thing that frustrates Marco so much.
John:
The people...
John:
Don't care as much about privacy, certainly as Marco does, and perhaps not even as much as Apple does.
John:
I think their best-selling point is we won't sell your stuff for third parties.
John:
We won't give your stuff for third parties.
John:
If you decide that you trust Apple for whatever reason, you only have to trust us.
John:
You don't have to trust us and everybody we will ever do business for, which is...
John:
Technically not true because Apple could give your information to whoever the hell they wanted.
John:
But their current terms and conditions and their current strategies, they're telling you, hey, that's their value proposition.
John:
Give your data to Apple.
John:
We won't look at it.
John:
We won't give it to anybody else.
John:
That, I think, is a little bit easier to sell for people who are scared of privacy.
John:
But I think history has shown that people are like, all right, well, fine, whatever.
John:
Have all my data.
John:
I just want to know what my flight is no matter where I am.
John:
So I think Apple is going to...
John:
Not this year, but some future generation come up against this barrier and said, we've done everything we can do local.
John:
How do we get sort of information about you and your life that spans all of our devices while still keeping your data private?
John:
And I'm not entirely sure they know yet.
Marco:
I think time will tell.
Marco:
Apple is really hitting home on this, or driving this home, because I think you're right that this is some of what they believe.
Marco:
They truly believe this is very important, but also, this is obviously a competitive differentiator, and
Marco:
I don't think the market cares as much as Apple does.
Marco:
That might not be a bad thing.
Marco:
I mean, the market doesn't care about attention to detail as much as Apple does or design as much as Apple does in general either.
Marco:
That doesn't mean they shouldn't do those things, and that doesn't appeal to a lot of people anyway.
John:
I think that it influences people on sort of a subconscious level, right?
John:
Whereas these privacy things, I'm not sure they do.
John:
I'm not sure people are even aware of.
John:
We talked about this with iMessage.
John:
I talked about it when I was on Rocket.
John:
The privacy advantages of iMessage are really beyond people's knowing.
John:
All they know is like, I looked at this conversation on my Mac and then I looked at it on my phone and some stuff wasn't in both places.
John:
And they don't understand why.
John:
And if you try to explain to them, they don't care.
John:
They just want it to be everywhere.
John:
Google stuff works the way people think modern computers should work.
John:
And when anybody ever gets used to my stuff everywhere, anything that is not everywhere, they think it was a bug.
John:
Like, oh, well, my Google stuff is everywhere.
John:
I like that better.
John:
Right.
Casey:
Exactly.
Casey:
It's funny.
Casey:
A quick aside.
Casey:
I was on the plane on the way to San Francisco and I hadn't had my laptop connected to the Internet in, I don't know, a few hours or something like that.
Casey:
And on the plane where I'm on this god awful, terrible connection, which is to be expected because I'm in a tube 30,000 feet in the sky.
Casey:
I noticed or I was trying to carry on a conversation with Aaron via iMessage, but it was completely unintelligible because what ended up happening is I would type something, send it, and then messages from hours ago would come in below what I had just typed.
Casey:
And so I could not follow the conversation because I was reliving the conversation from hours before.
Casey:
And it was at the in the heat of the moment.
Casey:
It was extremely frustrating and frustrating.
Casey:
Thankfully, I understand enough about the mechanisms behind it to have realized, well, you know, I'll just have to wait this out.
Casey:
But I could see how to a regular user, that would be unbelievably infuriating.
John:
Yeah, but the local on-device, there's lots of low-hanging fruit they can do local on-device.
John:
And I think they're doing this stuff.
John:
What they're doing, all these things they're doing, despite characterizing it as like the anti-Google, they're doing Google-like things.
John:
They're doing them on your device, but it's very Google-like.
John:
Oh, yeah.
John:
And these are the best things for Google, things that people like from Google.
John:
So I think...
John:
These sort of intelligent features, if they work well, will help Apple catch up a little bit to the good impression that Google makes in people's mind when it does smart things of like presenting them with information just in time.
John:
Remind me about this later.
John:
Really easy to do, but once someone gets used to it, any device that doesn't have that very simple context awareness will seem dumber.
Casey:
Yeah, absolutely.
Casey:
The other thing that I noticed that Apple seems to be doing a lot with is natural language processing.
Casey:
And I can't think of an example right off the top of my head that was from the keynote, but something like...
Casey:
uh fantastical is famous for so you know dinner tomorrow with aaron at 5 p.m and you type all that out you type the words dinner tomorrow with aaron at 5 p.m and it will parse out the relevant pieces and file them away in a calendar appointment as expected well this wasn't specifically about calendaring in the keynote but they were doing um similar style of natural language searches in like spotlight for example um which were really impressive i think they did an example with photos if i'm not mistaken it even worked
Marco:
in Finder on the Mac.
Marco:
That engine was on the Mac, it was in Finder, it was in iOS and Spotlight and in Siri.
Marco:
That was really all over the place and it looked pretty impressive.
Marco:
The challenge I think for... There's going to be two challenges.
Marco:
Geeks like us, we won't know what we can do
John:
We just want to use the K prefix constants, K-M-D, last modified.
John:
Exactly.
John:
Like that query syntax makes sense to geeks.
John:
I remember loving AltaVista because it worked in such a sort of deterministic way.
John:
You could do plus and minus words.
John:
The pages would have those words in it.
John:
It made absolute sense.
John:
And then when Google came along, it's like, I can type words into the Google search box, but some of these words might not even appear on the page because if I type like how to cook an omelet,
John:
The page might not even have the word how on it.
John:
Like, it's a different mode.
John:
So if you're a programmer, you're like, I just want a deterministic machine.
John:
You just tell me the query language, and I will construct the query.
John:
But that is not how people query things.
John:
And so, yeah, Spotlight has had all these features for a long time.
John:
Nobody uses them except for geeks.
John:
And even geeks can't remember all the stupid K prefix contents.
John:
So this upgrade to Spotlight of having natural language querying, and the Fantastical is a great example of, like...
John:
I use Google's appointments partly because they do a little bit of that natural language stuff.
John:
Like, I do, like, you know, 1 p.m.
John:
haircut.
John:
Even something as simple as that, trying to enter a 1 p.m.
John:
haircut in Apple's things is way harder than typing 1 p.m.
John:
space haircut, and it shouldn't be harder.
John:
And so Apple is, again, playing catch-up here, but long overdue.
John:
And the thing, I think there's still a lot of room to grow, but it's when they say, like, oh...
John:
You know, dinner with Aaron at seven.
John:
What if you knew two people named Aaron?
John:
Yeah, that's where these things fall down.
John:
And like, it's like, oh, well, maybe it presents a picker and shows me the two people in Aaron.
John:
I pick the one.
John:
That's like the next level.
John:
The next level is, look, 99% of the time, I mean that Aaron.
John:
And when I say Aaron, just pick that one.
John:
put the picker up and if i don't do anything with it just default it to that like that's it's like next you know getting up the sort of human assistant level where i don't i don't need to clarify who it is or even if you could like if they were on find your friend find my friends and one of the people is not within flying distance to be there at 7 p.m you can figure out because they live in a different state i don't know this there is a long way to go to do uh you know intelligent assistant type stuff so it's good seeing apple getting a start in this area
Marco:
Well, and a lot of this stuff is hard.
Marco:
Like, if you think about an actual assistant, which I don't think any of us have ever actually had, right?
Marco:
Nope.
Marco:
Okay, but... Hops, right?
John:
No?
John:
Not a big help?
Marco:
He's of limited usefulness.
Marco:
He's mostly moral support.
Marco:
But, you know, he... So, actual assistants even have problems with these things.
Marco:
Like, human beings have problems with a lot of these things.
Marco:
Like, if you say something that is ambiguous or can be easily misunderstood to mean something else, you know, like, then...
Marco:
This is a problem that on some levels can't be solved or has a ceiling on how well it can be solved.
John:
Well, I mean, they need to clarify.
John:
A good assistant would clarify, and so will a computer.
John:
But the computer can be maddening because it clarifies every time.
John:
It's like, oh, Jesus, yes, it's still that Aaron.
John:
It's almost always going to be that unless another Aaron is in play.
John:
Like, it has an appointment with them.
John:
I've received an email from them recently.
John:
Things that a human assistant would know.
John:
The human assistant would not repeatedly clarify which Aaron you're talking about to find them.
John:
Because there's two in your address book.
John:
Just because they're in my address book, they don't have equal value.
John:
They don't have equal relevance to me.
John:
And that type of information about who is, again, this requires global awareness.
John:
Maybe that person, other Aaron, is in your address book because you sent them an email three years ago.
John:
The relevance of that person, that entry, you don't want to delete it because you might want to email them again like they're your real estate agent or something.
John:
Yeah, we've got a long way to go in this area.
John:
But yeah, it's good to see Apple getting started.
Marco:
And that's the kind of area that Google is usually much better at than Apple.
Marco:
And that's why I worry a little bit about, like, I'm curious to see how this ends up working with Apple, if they show signs of being able to do this kind of thing and improving in this area.
Marco:
Because historically, again, I think they've lagged very far behind Google historically in that kind of, like, big data problem.
Marco:
But we will see.
Casey:
Absolutely.
Casey:
Do we want to talk about the Apple Pay changes?
Casey:
And more specifically, actually, I wanted to bring up, we saw two women on stage today, which was awesome and surprising.
Casey:
And it was so surprising that I actually wanted to call out a text message I got from a coworker as I was sitting in the keynote saying,
Casey:
I believe that my coworker was referring to the second woman who came on stage.
Casey:
And I apologize because I don't remember their names.
Casey:
But I got this text message from my friend at work, Chris.
Casey:
She said, what?
Casey:
A woman presenting something at Apple?
Casey:
That was phenomenal to her.
Casey:
And this is someone who is really enthusiastic about the watch, but generally speaking doesn't pay the kind of attention that we pay.
Casey:
So this is like a quote-unquote normal, which is such a dismissive way of describing her, and I don't mean it to be dismissive, but someone who doesn't really follow this like we do...
Casey:
was stunned that there was one woman brought on stage, let alone two.
Casey:
And so I'm really pleased that Apple's finally listening and making these strides.
Casey:
And a friend of the show, Christina Warren, who was on the show, what, two weeks ago?
Casey:
She actually interviewed Tim Cook, was it Sunday night, I believe?
Casey:
Something like that.
Casey:
For Mashable, and she had pressed him on this a little bit, and he said, basically, watch The Space.
Casey:
And sure enough, we watched The Space, and there were two women presenters, and I thought they were great.
John:
Yeah, that was teased in that interview, and it's good to see, like, you can't, you know, Tim Cook was very forthcoming with the whole diversity report and everything, that they have not done well in here, and they are making changes to improve things.
John:
Was it half women?
John:
Was it majority women?
John:
No, but it was more than zero.
John:
It was two and seven.
John:
Right, and the other thing to keep in mind about WWDC is, like, well, the glory things, like the keynote and, like, the State of the Union, used to be just all men, right?
John:
And now getting women there is super important, but
John:
If you don't go to WWDC, you may not realize how many technical sessions at WWDC are presented either primarily by women, like they're the main speaker for the whole thing, or incorporate women.
John:
That was the whole thing.
John:
There are women on Apple's team.
John:
Apple's diversity is not great, but it's not terrible.
John:
It was very commonplace to see women giving presentations and any type of presentation at WWDC, right?
John:
But you never saw them in the keynotes.
John:
That's what made it all the more glaring.
John:
It's like, well, we've got a company full of all these people, but really the only people who ever get to talk is Tim Cook and a bunch of others similarly aged, similarly appearing men.
John:
And so, yeah, they're mixing.
John:
And like, that's the whole thing.
John:
We didn't know the names of these people.
John:
Steve Jobs was big and like not telling you the names of anybody who's in the company except for like the big headline executives.
John:
That's why everyone thought it would be Angela, whose last name I can't pronounce.
John:
Angela Arendt's like, oh, she'll definitely be up there because she's the woman who's on there.
John:
you know, C-level executives page.
John:
But there are tons of women at Apple, and I don't think it was particularly hard to find them.
John:
Like, you know, who's the head of Apple Pay?
John:
Apparently this woman who we never knew before, because, you know, who knows?
John:
Have her present the Apple Pay part instead of having Phil Schiller do it or something, right?
John:
It just makes perfect sense.
John:
And I think they did great.
John:
I think they both looked a little bit nervous.
John:
As we know, the men who have presented for the first time also felt a little nervous.
John:
Oh, yeah.
John:
I think that the second one up, she had a really good joke about reading ESPN for the articles, and she seemed very relaxed.
John:
the reaction to them in the room in the room was uh good they were they did much better than a lot of men first-time presenters and it's difficult for them to be in the spotlight about like oh are you just a woman presenter or are you like these are people in charge of these these parts of the product they're not just like plucked out of oh you're a woman can you talk about this product like they're in charge of this this is their job so it's uh
John:
I thought it was exactly what it should have been.
John:
The actual women behind important technologies present doing presentations on those technologies that they created, that their team created.
John:
So big thumbs up.
Casey:
Yeah, definitely.
Casey:
So I brought up Apple Pay because it was the woman who was in charge of Apple Pay that presented.
Casey:
I didn't think there was too much there to unpack.
Casey:
The couple of highlights for me were loyalty cards being integrated into Passbook, which is sort of not Passbook anymore.
Casey:
We'll get there in a second.
Casey:
That's really exciting to me because about a year ago, I tried to slim down my wallet from being as thick as John's wallet, which I'm looking at next to him, and it's like four feet thick.
John:
It's all money.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Oh, listen to this guy.
John:
Listen to this guy.
Casey:
Making it rain in here.
John:
Yeah, these singles, man.
John:
It's like 15 singles in here.
John:
We'll have to do... Oh, God.
Casey:
So we're going to have to talk in the post-show about how wrong a trifold wallet is, but we'll leave that for another time.
Casey:
But anyway, so loyalty cards are now in Passbook, which when I went through this wallet cleansing and purging event about a year ago, what I found was I had a bunch of loyalty cards that I use once a month
Casey:
But I want to have them because they save me money or earn me perks or whatever the case may be.
Casey:
And so I wanted to have them with me.
Casey:
And so what I ended up doing was putting those all in my glove box, well, in my car.
Casey:
Well, it would be awesome to have that in passbooks.
Casey:
So I don't need to worry about that anymore.
Casey:
And that's exactly what's coming with iOS 9.
Casey:
I thought that was awesome.
Casey:
Any thoughts about that before I move on, gentlemen?
John:
The favorite thing I have about loyalty cards is that
John:
once you get a loyalty card and you put it into apple pay it's a signifier that store accepts apple pay because otherwise how would they let you put your loyalty card in it so it is you know if you're going to slim down your wallet you should be pulling out like pulling out credit cards that can go into apple pay pulling out loyalty cards that go into apple pay and all that means another location where you can use apple pay and having used apple pay now for a little while i wish every place could use apple pay because it's much more convenient than digging out your big giant wallet and pulling things out of it so
John:
It's going to take a while for us to get there, but I can imagine certain people, if they pick where they shop very carefully, which is exactly what Apple wants, they're like, you should, you know, frequent Apple Pay stores as a reward for them carrying Apple Pay.
John:
I've been surprised so far at the success of Apple Pay.
John:
One of the places I tried to use Apple Pay recently that didn't take it was up on that slide, Trader Joe's.
John:
I went there and I'm like, do you take Apple Pay?
John:
They're like, oh, sorry, we don't.
John:
Well, they're going to this year.
John:
So they're knocking them down one by one, all the stores that we go to.
Casey:
That's awesome.
Casey:
The other thing I wanted to note about Apple Pay was that they are now partnering with Square.
Casey:
I'm assuming it's a partnership.
Casey:
But anyway, they're partnering with Square to make some sort of NFC-based Apple Pay reader to work with Square, which I thought was a phenomenally bright idea for both companies.
Casey:
I mean, to me, it seemed like a win-win because Square is becoming kind of omnipresent.
Casey:
And even in
Casey:
Places like Richmond, you know, it's not a San Francisco thing.
Casey:
I mean, even in Richmond, you see any sort of independent vendor is using Square now.
Casey:
And to have Apple pay support for something as ubiquitous as Square, I think is extremely bright.
Casey:
And it seems that both Square and Apple are pushing that pretty heavily, which to me is brilliant.
Casey:
So I definitely applaud that.
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, that is a genius move.
Marco:
Honestly, I'm kind of surprised it didn't happen when Apple Pay was launched last fall.
Marco:
But I'm glad it's happening now because that will make it a lot easier for a lot more places to take it.
John:
They're complementary systems.
John:
Because remember, Square has always been like, oh, there's this little reader that you put into your headphone jack on your thing.
John:
And if you have a kiosk, you can use an iPad kiosk and then hook up a card swiper thing to it.
John:
It's like the last mile problem of payment.
John:
How do you get a thing from a customer that lets you pay with?
John:
And magnetic stripes are so barbaric that there was always...
John:
the barrier.
John:
It's like, now that has been solved.
John:
Hopefully, your well-heeled customers all have iOS devices that have Apple Pay.
John:
And yeah, it works best in cities filled with people who have iOS devices and stuff.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Square is filling a need that like, you know, it's not like Walmart is going to use Square.
John:
Like the big credit card processors are geared towards the big customers.
John:
But if you're just selling a bunch of stuff out of like a kiosk or something like a craft fair, having Square is awesome because it makes you as fancy as the big vendors.
John:
But it's something you can set up yourself in a weekend and take payments from anybody with an iPhone.
Casey:
Yeah, I definitely applaud it.
Casey:
Marco, why don't you tell us about something else that's cool?
Marco:
Our second sponsor this week is Automatic.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
And what this does is this is a little dongle you plug in, and then it has a smartphone app that runs on iOS or Android.
Marco:
And then they have they have a whole suite of apps and they have an API.
Marco:
They have IFTTT integration so that you can then do things that are smart with that data.
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:
There's also a whole bunch of other stuff.
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:
So again, it can combine the intelligence from these two devices to really offer some great features.
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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Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So we should continue with iOS 9.
Casey:
And today was Federico Vatici's birthday.
Casey:
It was Christmas.
Casey:
It was New Year's.
Casey:
It was everything to Federico.
Casey:
And I actually exchanged a couple of text messages with him.
Casey:
And suffice to say, he is beside himself.
Casey:
Did that cost him like a million dollars in roaming fees?
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
Well, thank goodness it was actually iMessages.
Casey:
But yeah, anyway, there's a lot of attention paid to the iPad and a lot of features, or maybe not that many, but important features to make using the iPad as a workhorse a much easier and more productive device.
Casey:
The quick and easy ones, they seem to be doubling down on keyboard support, physical keyboard support.
Casey:
So they have an alt tab switcher or command tab.
Casey:
God, oh, man, I'm going to get an email for that.
Casey:
Oh, God.
Casey:
Now I want to crawl in a hole.
Casey:
I'm just going to crawl under Marco's bed real quick and cry.
Casey:
They have a command tab switcher.
Casey:
Yeah, that's not weird at all.
Casey:
They have a command tab switcher.
Casey:
I think they have more keyboard shortcuts.
Casey:
They kind of flashed a few things on screen, and I didn't get a chance to catch them all.
Casey:
But what was really interesting is, and I want to play with it because it did not look terribly intuitive to me, but I suspect once I use it, it won't be so bad, is the keyboard on iPad apparently is now a trackpad when you use more than one finger at a time.
Casey:
Did you guys kind of catch... I was trying to watch how that works, and it was flying by way too quick for me to really understand.
John:
This is a feature of one of my favorite iOS apps that I really hoped that Apple would bring everywhere, but I use it on my iPhone.
John:
Twitterific added a feature in a recent version where...
John:
If you swipe, not on the keyboard, but if you swipe on the text area where you're composing the tweet, it will move the insertion point.
John:
Oh, really?
John:
Yes.
John:
Oh, I didn't know that.
John:
You should try it.
John:
And once you get used to that, you hate every other text field.
John:
The thing that has always annoyed me, and it always annoys me about iOS...
John:
Overall, the entire system, I understand why they do it, but any sort of gesture that requires for you to hold down for a certain period of time is sort of just against my computer religion.
John:
All of the interface elements that I was brought up with.
John:
react as fast as the computer can react to whatever it is you're doing right so you click on a window close widget the window closes maybe there's an animation or whatever but the window closes right you double click as fast as you can double click it registers double click it happens but ios because of the limited interface had to have a bunch of things where you have to tap and hold and there's nothing you can do to make that hold faster you don't hold for the minimum amount of time you don't get tap and hold and so many things on ios require that selecting text tap hold and that hold i mean
John:
maybe it doesn't bother most people but i feel like i'm waiting for the computer is waiting for me i'm waiting for the computer we're just waiting together in a pointless way right uh moving the insertion point i find really frustrating if i want to put the insertion point at the beginning of the line i frequently tap oh i'm too close to the edge of the digitizer didn't get it tap oh it's not going tap if i want to move left one character it requires a super precise tap on my giant meaty finger to move a left one character whereas in twitterific
John:
Swipe left, the insertion point moves to left.
John:
Swipe left, left, left.
John:
Left three characters as fast as I can swipe.
John:
Right, right, right.
John:
Left, left, left.
John:
And so what they were showing was a different way to do the same thing.
John:
To say, look how fast I can move the cursor around.
John:
There's no way you could accurately move the cursor around as fast as they were demoing.
John:
And yeah, they're basically using the Surface like a trackpad, which is different than swiping, but it's like they...
John:
There's no mouse on iOS.
John:
They didn't talk about this.
John:
But this is really darn close to controlling a cursor with a trackpad on an iOS device.
John:
Like, your finger is not the pointer.
John:
Your finger is moving around on this surface.
John:
And another thing, let's call it the pointer, is moving around over there.
John:
And I love this feature.
John:
In principle, I haven't tried it yet to see if the implementation is intuitive.
John:
But I love the limited version of this in Twitterific and lots of other apps have implemented this.
John:
Yeah.
John:
I think Android has lots of versions of this with their various keyboards and interfaces.
John:
I hate tap and hold.
John:
Anything lets me move the insertion point around.
John:
I'm really glad they're doing this.
John:
I really hope they also do it on the iPhone.
John:
It wasn't clear to me which one of these features stay on iPad and which ones come to all iOS devices.
John:
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that was iPad only.
John:
Yeah, that's what I thought.
John:
For this release, maybe next year.
John:
Some things were, and some things... I think you're right about the trackpad, but I think some other aspects of the new keyboard were...
John:
either shown or mentioned to be available in both anyway we'll install the babies and we'll find out but i think there is no reason that a lot of these features should be limited to ipad because again the place where i use the little swipey feature the most is on an iphone app um with the trackpad area might be like well you need to have a big area to move around or you don't people they don't want you to put two fingers down wasn't one of the gestures like a two finger thing like how do i find a place for two fingers on my iphone thing but i'm like please apple we need if anything you need even more
John:
sort of an easy way to move the cursor around and do text selections in a tiny little iPhone screen because it's so much harder to get your fingers in there and tap things.
John:
Just get a 6 Plus.
John:
Oh, God.
Casey:
Still too small.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Mike was wrong.
Casey:
Then the other big feature that they talked about for the iPad is like real honest to goodness multitasking in the sense of multiple things on the screen at the same time.
Casey:
Don't call them Windows.
Casey:
Yeah, they're not Windows.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
But multiple apps on the screen at the same time.
Casey:
And
Casey:
So remind me the terminology, because I was paying close attention, and because I haven't played with this yet, it hasn't really sank in.
Casey:
So there's some mechanism where you can swipe in an app temporarily, but you can't interact with it.
Casey:
Is that correct?
Marco:
No.
Marco:
So there's the slide in or slide over, whatever it's called, where it's almost like notification center.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
It just kind of, like, literally, like, you can swipe from the right and you can slide in an iPhone width app over top of the running iPad app that's running full screen.
Marco:
Or you can actually, you know, actually shrink the current running app and actually have them both side by side at the same time.
Marco:
So if you only do the slide over thing, the slide over thing, first of all, that works on more iPads.
Marco:
That works on your Retina Pad Mini.
Marco:
Hi, Steven.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And that works on most iPads above the A5 CPU.
Marco:
So anything with a retina screen that isn't an iPad 3, basically.
Marco:
And then if you have the iPad Air 2, only the most recent full-sized iPad, then that one is the only one that can do actually running two apps indefinitely.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Because like the other mode where you just slide one in temporarily, then the background app becomes unavailable until you slide that app out of the way.
Marco:
Right, right.
Marco:
So I think that's mostly... I mean, it might be a power user price segmentation issue partly, but I think it's probably also just like RAM concerns of keeping two apps active.
John:
Is it RAM, though?
John:
I was going to guess that it was CPU because at first I was thinking RAM, but then I was thinking like...
John:
It can't be RAM because all those same apps are expected to run on machines with one gig of RAM.
John:
That's true.
John:
Right?
John:
But CPU, I can think of, well, because it's not limited, I don't think.
John:
Is it limited?
John:
Do you have to do special support for the splitter?
John:
Is there a limit on what kind of apps you can put in a split pane?
John:
I don't think there is.
John:
Either way, what I was thinking of was,
John:
If say you wanted to split between two games and both games use every ounce of computing and GPU power, the iPad Air 2 may be the only thing that can run two apps simultaneously with acceptable performance if one or both of those apps are very demanding.
Marco:
And this might be... If it is CPU relevant, this might be why the iPad Air 2 shipped with this third core that they really underplayed at the launch.
Marco:
They didn't even mention it, I don't think.
Marco:
And the iPad Air 2 has had ridiculous performance compared to other iOS devices.
John:
It's just so much faster.
John:
And here's the thing.
John:
You're like, well, so what?
John:
They sell Macs all the time with wimpy CPUs.
John:
And it's like, well, if it's slow, it's slow.
John:
But there's the expectation in an iOS device...
John:
that if an app works it should always work and if it works and then you bring and then you split the screen and all of a sudden get super slow and crappy you're like oh well this stinks like like there's the expectation on the mac you're used to it like the expectation on the mac is if you're doing a bunch of other crap one of your apps could get worse because you're doing a bunch of other crap but on the ios it's like well it either runs or it doesn't run it's more like a game console it either works or it doesn't work
John:
And to have an app that seems to work, but then you bring in a different application and a splitter pane and run them both at the same time, and then it doesn't work as well, like the frame rate suffers or the sound.
John:
Sound's probably not going to stutter.
John:
But whatever the working versus non-working state is, I think they're trying to keep the expectation is, look, if your app runs, it will continue to run, even if there's another one running right next to it, right?
John:
Yeah.
John:
It's like an appliance.
John:
They just don't want it to... And you're right, it could just be market segmentation and they want to sell more iPad Air 2s.
John:
I'm looking for a technical reason.
Marco:
Honestly, it's probably some of both.
Marco:
They do want to sell more iPad Air 2s.
Marco:
They do want to just sell more new iPads, period.
Marco:
One of the biggest problems they have for iPad sales is that old iPads continue to be pretty useful.
Marco:
People will be using them.
Marco:
They don't break enough.
Marco:
Right, exactly.
Marco:
A lot of people still use iPad 3s, iPad 2s, and they're fine.
Marco:
So they might get a little slower over time, but there aren't a lot of compelling reasons pushing people to upgrade their iPads.
Marco:
And this, if you've been frustrated by the limitations of trying to get, quote, work done on the iPad...
Marco:
a lot of people are going to look at this and say, oh, well, if I get the iPad Air 2 or whatever new iPads come out this fall, presumably, then I'll be able to work better.
Marco:
So that will drive sales, no question.
John:
The one thing they didn't show that I really thought they were going to show, at least maybe they did and I blacked out during this period, you guys can tell me, they had the thing side by side and they were like, look, and if you have a link in a notes app and Safari is on the left, I can tap the link and it loads right in Safari.
John:
Like, you know, you didn't have to switch apps.
John:
You have everything in context.
John:
I really wanted them to grab something and drag it from one of those panes into the other.
John:
I really wanted that to happen.
John:
They didn't do it, right?
Casey:
I thought they did.
Casey:
Weren't they in the Notes app and they took a link from Safari into Notes?
John:
Maybe they did.
John:
Or was that on the Mac?
John:
See, that's what I'm not sure.
John:
I'm not confident that it was on the iPad.
John:
You're talking about Federico Vatici, who is a big fan of using the iPad as his main computer.
John:
And I've always been talking about the iPad Pro, that the iPad is a better computing device for regular people because you can throw it in front of somebody and they can do useful work in it much easier than if you threw a Mac or a PC in front of them.
John:
So this is the future of computing.
John:
But if it's going to be the future of computing, it needs more capabilities.
John:
And one of those capabilities is like, what if I'm just assembling a bunch of stuff
John:
Like, I'm trying to make a document out of a bunch of bits and pieces.
John:
It's just a pain in the butt.
John:
If you have to switch the whole, you know, your entire content to your screen is replaced, then something else is replaced.
John:
And, like, two things they announced today.
John:
One, the iCloud Drive app.
John:
And two, side-by-side things.
John:
Starts to give you a workflow that looks a little bit more like, hey, I can pull from here, pull from there, assemble a big document made of media and a bunch of other places, open this up in an editor application, tweak it, drag the resulting version into this.
John:
Like...
John:
An iPad Pro now has an even more reason to exist because, I mean, maybe you don't get three splitter panes, but the two splitters that you get can be bigger and better, and it can have a bigger CPU to have more stuff going on.
John:
It's not like they're reinventing the Mac on the iPad.
John:
They're trying to give you...
John:
the capabilities that you have on the Mac without the complexity, without as much as the complexity.
Casey:
Well, and also, you know, with this better hardware keyboard support, you can do all these things and do it, do them more efficiently with a hardware keyboard, which is also appealing.
Casey:
It was a bummer to me, though, as a pretty big fan of the iPad Mini, it was a bummer that as it exists today, there is no iPad Mini that supports the, I think they're calling it app pinning, which is like the split screen, with split screen, two apps running simultaneously set up.
Casey:
And
Casey:
I would hope and assume that this fall, when the iPad Mini... What are we up to?
Casey:
Four?
Casey:
Something like that?
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
When the next iPad Mini comes out, that maybe it would be supported.
Casey:
But I also wonder if maybe they'll say, well, the screen is too physically small to support two windows at once.
Casey:
So no, this is only a full-size iPad thing.
Casey:
And even though I only use my iPad for goofing off 99% of the time, I still love my iPad Mini.
Casey:
And I...
Casey:
I wasn't planning, to go back earlier in the conversation, I wasn't sitting here now planning on upgrading to the next one until I found a reason to do so.
Casey:
And today I might have found the reason to do so.
Casey:
So I'm a perfect example of someone who might have just been pushed into upgrading who may not have otherwise.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And the picture in picture thing, I think, is another thing where it doesn't require because you would assume the video playback is dedicated hardware for that and everything.
John:
It could be done even by wimpy devices.
John:
Even that is like, well, what if, you know, I'm using the MLB app, but I want to also be like reading email or scrolling through Twitter.
John:
picture in picture throw the little sports window up in the corner and now you can do two things that that really changes the game for whole classes of applications where you're like people people will go away from the ipad is it they think of it as a single tasking device even multiple things are going on just the ability to have a little video thing running in the corner it was just like a youtube video or like whatever just to have that off in the corner and to be able to do other things really changes the game on the ipad now it is it's not your mac but it's it's so much it's like going from zero to one it's
Casey:
huge difference right i couldn't agree more because on the plane on the way here i was trying to watch an episode of top gear and then um i kept getting text messages from like either you guys or aaron or something like that and in that situation because i'm in a plane i can only have one device on the internet at a time because that's the way plane uh wi-fi works no it's not go ahead well that okay you gotta buy the all day pass from uh from gogo before you get on the plane then you can sign up all your devices what yeah oh
Casey:
Mind blown.
Casey:
Well, anyway, I had thought that I could only have one device online at a time.
Casey:
And so what ended up happening was because I couldn't effectively watch this video without being interrupted constantly, I said, you know what, screw it.
Casey:
I'll take the iPad with the nicer keyboard that's easier to type on.
Casey:
I'll take that off the Internet and I'll put my phone on the Internet.
Casey:
And I had them both sitting on my tray table like a lunatic because...
Casey:
That was the most efficient way for me to do everything I wanted at once, which was watch this episode of Top Gear while also talking to you guys or Aaron or whomever.
Casey:
And if I had Picture in Picture, that would have made this so much better and easier to deal with.
Casey:
Or if you had a Mac.
John:
If you had a Mac, you'd just have the movie window in the background and your message window, and you could arrange them however you wanted.
John:
Picture in Picture is a little mini version of that.
Marco:
What's interesting about this, too, is this is major features that are iPad-only, possibly big iPad-only, that the iPhones can't do and probably won't get, if I had to take a guess.
Marco:
And so that, I think, they really have to do something to try to give more people a reason to use iPads and use them more often over just, oh, I'll just get a big phone.
Marco:
From Apple's point of view.
Marco:
From our point of view, we might just say, we'll just make the phones better and we'll deal with it.
Marco:
But
Marco:
A lot of people, they're going to now be pushed into either using their existing iPads more or getting new iPads.
Marco:
And from Apple's point of view, that makes sense as a goal, as something they need to do.
Marco:
So we'll see what happens.
Marco:
I think what they're doing on the iPad is smart.
Marco:
I don't know if it will turn around the kind of plateau of usefulness the iPad seems to have hit for many people.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
But I guess time will tell.
John:
I think you really have to... I think Apple's waiting for us to... You really have to age out the old ones.
John:
They're just like, come on, guys.
John:
Get rid of... Stop using those things.
John:
They want the old devices to go away and...
John:
Like I said, there's no differentiator.
John:
They don't know what the product upgrade cycle is in the iPads because the product is too young, and now they're trying to hasten the demise of these older devices because they're holding back the progress of the platform, as Apple used to so often talk about at WWDC.
John:
And this is saying, all right,
John:
We are moving forward.
John:
You can't have these nice things.
John:
We really hope these nice things are compelling to customers because that's the only way we'll move things forward.
Marco:
Although in another very interesting major way, the new version of iOS doesn't age out any old devices.
John:
i know and they're still selling a5 devices fifth gen ipod touch is up there on the supported thing it's like are you kidding me like that's that's what i think about you know that's why i mean you mentioned like why can't they bring split screen if someone if you're making a thing and you're like i want i want this game to work on all the things i'm going to make this game work on an a5 it's probably so hard for you to get that game to work on an a5 that they said oh by the way you get half of an a5 because they get split screen you're like oh well forget it like i can't support that at all like they should just get rid of the a5 class devices but
John:
Yeah.
John:
It's better to use the – I guess they're trying to use the carrot here and say you don't get these fancy features on the iPad at the very least.
John:
On the phone stuff, they seem to have been limiting themselves to features that can live on A5 class devices, albeit in sort of abbreviated form.
John:
Yeah.
John:
I don't know.
Casey:
Well, but to go back just a quick step, they did mention in one of the two presentations we've seen today that coming soon you can target 64-bit devices only, which is well after the A5, right?
Marco:
That's A7 and up.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
Or is it A6?
Casey:
I forget.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
It's something that's not an A5.
Marco:
I think it's A7.
Casey:
But regardless, so you can choose to target an app only at 64-bit devices, which is sort of kind of a way to get around this, oh, my God, I really don't want to support the A5 problem.
Casey:
But either way, it was definitely some great advances for the iPad.
Casey:
I kind of wish we had a live camera on Federico while all this was happening.
Casey:
It was like...
Casey:
Having a live camera on you when Swift was announced last year, I think that would have been amazing.
Casey:
But no, they're both, everything sounds really good.
Casey:
I'm really looking forward to trying.
John:
Unlike Swift, though, we knew that this splitting the screen stuff existed in iOS 8, like we talked about in the last show.
John:
So Federico couldn't have been totally shocked.
John:
True, true, true.
John:
But it was nice to, you know, it wasn't just the splitting screen.
John:
There was more stuff on top of that and the keyboard changes.
John:
And, you know, so lots of iPad love this time.
Casey:
Speaking of Swift, Swift 2.0 is a thing.
Casey:
And the most fascinating and interesting thing to me about Swift 2.0 is that not only is Swift 2.0 going to be open sourced later this year...
Casey:
But A, the reaction to that from the audience was stunningly enthusiastic.
Casey:
Not that I expected people to be like, oh, woo.
Casey:
But people were like really amped up about it, like surprisingly amped up about it.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
What did you guys think?
John:
I think that makes sense because I think as developers, developers in the modern age know that if you're going to make a language...
John:
that language is always going to suck at some degree if it's proprietary, right?
John:
If it's a single company language, like everyone, developers know you need to have an ecosystem.
John:
And the best for languages especially, like for APIs, frameworks, whatever, but for languages, it's just kind of accepted that if your language is going to be worth a damn long term, it needs to not be your own little private toy.
John:
You need to open it up, and it needs to be available to everyone.
John:
It needs to not just be an Apple-specific thing.
John:
Having more people using your language benefits the language.
John:
Apple can still steer the ship and be in charge of it because they write the most code and all the other stuff.
John:
you know webkit is a great example and that's not even a language programming languages programmers feel really nervous about the idea that you know even though objective c is like well is that open kind of sort of but apple's been advancing and no one else it makes everyone feel better uh in the same way that i think the core os that having darwin be open source which people forget about now and seems not important like those are those are developer comfort factors that that
John:
The core part of the OS is open source, was a big comfort factor when OS X was new.
John:
And Swift doing open source now, I think, makes people feel a lot better about Swift.
Casey:
Yeah.
Marco:
So it is important to clarify, though, what part is open source?
Casey:
Well, and that's the other thing I was going to bring up.
Casey:
It's funny you say that, because they said they're open sourcing the language, but they also said they're open sourcing some of the frameworks.
John:
Well, they said standard library.
John:
What do you mean by standard library is the things where, like, int and array are defined?
John:
Like, that's the standard library.
John:
Yeah, like the Swift string and array classes and stuff like that.
John:
There is no Swift without the
John:
standard library so them saying we're open sourcing swift and the standard library that's just like saying swift other frameworks i mean some parts of core foundation already are open source but that's not swift you know like well what else is there to swift are there any swift only frameworks i don't know at this point i don't think so yeah i didn't think so either right so so like all there is is the language and the standard library and then you know calling into a bunch of objective c frameworks many of which are closed source and will probably remain that way
John:
Right.
John:
So, you know, I think it's the same deal with Darwin.
John:
Like the language, the compiler was already open source.
John:
The language, the standard library, having the Linux port is basically saying, you want to write an app, a program in Linux?
John:
You want to use Swift to do it?
John:
Go ahead.
John:
Oh,
John:
but wait i can't call into ns url session of course you can't like that's not that's not on linux like and if they make a bunch of frameworks only available to swift there'll be apple frameworks that are closed source just like the apple closed source frameworks but you know core foundation is the best example because most of it is closed but there is a version of this cf light or whatever that's part of darwin and the same thing the rest of os 10 a lot of os 10 and the core os and everything are open but then some parts of it are proprietary like the graphics drivers or whatever that have proprietary stuff from nvi and ati
John:
So I think this is exactly as open source as everyone was asking for Swift to be.
John:
And that's why everyone applauded.
John:
They're like, you know, because Apple has been so clearly saying we are staking the future of our platform on this language, and it just makes everyone feel so much better to have it open.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Now, do you reckon that we're soon to find Swift taking over for Node or the JavaScript framework du jour of the minute, and that suddenly everything server-side is going to be Swiftified?
John:
Well, I mean...
John:
that's a lot of things people talk about.
John:
Oh, you know, it could be Apple's Dart.
John:
Safari could run Swift native and translate it to JavaScript.
John:
Any excuse to try to get rid of JavaScript.
John:
Like, can we use Swift instead?
John:
Or can you use Swift on the client side and the server side?
John:
And the client side would be a browser or it would be a native app and you could run Swift on the server.
John:
Like,
John:
and I can have shared libraries between them.
John:
We're a long way from that.
John:
That's what open sourcing allows to happen.
John:
If it's worth a damn as a server-side language, some person on Linux will try to use it, and we'll see.
John:
Maybe they'll make libraries for it, and those libraries... That's the whole thing that opens up.
John:
If you want to make a library to make server-side web applications with Swift...
John:
You could do that now because you wouldn't be like, well, that's great.
John:
You just got to use Max as your server.
John:
It's like that's not going to happen, right?
John:
Now that it is an open language, people can try anything and everything with Swift.
John:
And the community of programmers will find out what Swift is good for and what Swift is not good for.
John:
And if a bunch of people made like a big library, like, you know, some sort of server side framework for writing web apps and it was awesome, it would live and die on its own merits.
John:
But it is no longer limited by the fact that Swift is confined to the Apple world.
Marco:
I do think, though, that web programmers who are hoping to use this as a server-side language, which I would love to look into that, honestly.
Marco:
That would give me a lot more reason to learn Swift if I could use it in both places.
Marco:
But I think people like me are going to be disappointed if we think that this is going to enable us to make web apps in Swift this fall or tomorrow or whatever.
John:
and we try it and it turns out that you know the lack of all of the frameworks uh because you would use you would use all the sort of the frameworks for dealing with urls and making web requests right and like it's like oh well that's not there well you're like well well then what do i get like what could you share if you wanted to say i want to have a bunch of code that i share between my web app and my ios app and you think well is there any part of your ios app that doesn't call any coco apis that are apple's
John:
Probably not, unless you're doing a lot of math or unless you've implemented your entire data storage layer yourself.
Marco:
And not using most of the foundation collection classes and stuff like that.
Marco:
All the stuff that either won't be open source.
John:
You can use all the arrays and dictionaries and stuff that are native to Swift and that are bridged to the other stuff.
John:
This is just step two in a long potential road to Swift being more useful than it currently is.
John:
But this is an essential first step to say...
John:
It's open.
John:
Now people can see what the hell it's good for and can submit bug fixes and can see the source to try to debug their own problems because it is a young language and there are going to be weird things.
John:
And it's great when you have the source to figure out what the hell is going on under the covers.
John:
And who knows how many submissions they'll get.
John:
Maybe Google will start using it and then make their own fork of it and give it a different name.
John:
I don't see that.
John:
happen i mean yeah if they did start using it they would definitely fork it within a year like the webkit example exactly it's open and then they kind of work together and it was like you know what we can't even work together on this so never mind no i don't see this happening because swift is clearly apple's baby but yeah this is this is more of a a feel-good moment and a opening of many doors and we don't know how many of those doors will just lead to blind alleys or bottomless pits it's true
Casey:
Now, but anything else on iOS 9 that's worth discussing at this moment?
Marco:
I don't think there is.
Marco:
Well, I think after the break we should talk about notes and news.
Marco:
Oh, you're right.
Casey:
You're right.
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
Sorry, I forgot about that.
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Casey:
Excellent.
Casey:
So now, Mark, you reminded me we should probably talk about news.
Marco:
yeah so first of all i i honestly i'm looking forward to the notes app i think it looks pretty nice that's true i i i'm not a heavy notes user um and part of it is because i've never liked any of the solutions that go that that can be synced between mac and ios and and i do so much work on the mac that um
Marco:
I would love to use Vesper by our friend John Gruber, but I've just never gotten into it because they don't have a Mac version yet.
Marco:
And what I see from the new Notes app looks pretty compelling.
Marco:
It looks really interesting because what they've done with it is they've made it this complete... It's a complete rich text editor.
Marco:
It's almost like a word processor, but modern.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Right, right.
Marco:
And not made for print.
Marco:
It has all the rich formatting styles you can apply to things.
Marco:
It supports inline images, inline media.
Marco:
They had this cool thing where you can convert a list of lines into a checklist and then check them off.
Marco:
It has this embedded checklist functionality.
Marco:
A lot of these things that we see from apps like, oh, man, what's Jesse Grossjean's app that it's like a combination of task paper and something?
Marco:
I've got nothing.
Marco:
I have to look it up.
Marco:
We'll put it in the show notes if we can find it.
Marco:
But there are so much rich functionality that's in this app that appears to be there on iOS and on Mac.
Marco:
And it all syncs.
Marco:
There were rumors that notes used to be synced via IMAP with your mail account, which was a terrible idea that never worked.
John:
That's the thing I tweeted.
John:
Is this still IMAP back then?
John:
I think it might be.
John:
I think it still is.
John:
Because...
John:
I think on my wife's computer, she doesn't use Apple's mail stuff, and I think every time I try to enable Notes, it's like, oh, you need an email address.
Casey:
Well, but that's the way it is today.
Casey:
And at one point, they flashed up a slide, it might have been this afternoon, where it was all the bits and pieces of iCloud, and Notes was there.
Casey:
And what I'm not sure is, like, if it's IMAP, does that classify as still being iCloud?
John:
Like, the thing...
John:
The fact that it's IMAP has two bad things.
John:
One, IMAP implementations are weird and flaky.
John:
And two, you have this weird dependency where you can't use notes in a synced manner unless you have an email account.
John:
It's like, how are those two things related in any way?
John:
And you'd have to know, well, it's using IMAP as a backend, which is gross and has always bothered me.
John:
But the reason I use notes is exactly what Marco said, because there's a Mac app and an iOS app and I use it in both places.
John:
And so I use notes.
John:
I just read my toaster.
John:
notes off of the notes app and i really do edit those notes in two places i i start entering them when i'm on ipod i i fix them up a little bit when i'm on my computer the thing that annoys me about notes so that they didn't i like the fact that it has all these new features but they didn't demo the one feature i really wanted and the thing that always drives me nuts when i'm trying to do any setup kind of notes in ios is i i find myself looking uh in vain for the tab key on the ios keyboard
John:
because I want an outline view.
John:
And they did show bulleted lists, and they showed Rick's text, and they showed headings.
John:
They did not show outlines.
John:
And I find a lot of the notes I make are outlining.
John:
And like in text edit, it has, I think this is held over from the next days.
John:
People don't know, and I think I've mentioned this a few times.
John:
If you are in text edit on the Mac and you hit option tab,
John:
It suddenly goes into this weird pseudo outlining indenty rich text mode thing that I use a lot.
John:
It's not great.
John:
A real outlining app like Omni Outlet or something would be way better.
John:
But I want something that's sort of available everywhere, supported by the system.
John:
So there's still stuff for notes to add in the next version, but I'm happy for a bunch of additional features.
John:
And I'll be super happy if this gets off the IMAP backend and goes on to the new CloudKit backend for real, like the native CloudKit document type stuff instead of IMAP, because that just seems silly to me.
John:
And maybe it's irrational that I don't trust it as much, but I just don't.
John:
And I've had many cases in notes where notes suddenly get duplicated, and I have to delete the duplicates and silly stuff like that.
John:
And I'm hoping it will be better with a proper backend.
Marco:
yeah and i have to imagine like i don't think they would have done this this big enhancement which you know this might have been a total rewrite using like using like a cloud kit back end i don't think they would have done that if they were still using imap and if they ever planned to move it off imap like they would have waited and done it at the same time i mean it's just a bag of bytes like you could put whatever you want on imap i get scared and thinking like when you select all this stuff and it makes it into a bullet list like they're using sort of a weird bastardized markdown language behind the scenes that it really just is a big giant text that's all rtf is anyway but it's like yeah
John:
Like there's a line between a bunch of weird things that humans were never supposed to see that make up this file format and something like Markdown where it's like we just picked it, you know, it's supposed to be readable as plain text and we just made up our own plain text thing to mean a checkmark that's checked and a checkmark that's not checked out.
John:
I don't know.
John:
I'm hoping the back end is better on this one, but nothing they showed me definitively says it must be.
John:
They could pull all this off on top of IMAP with a weird format under the covers.
John:
I just hope they're not.
Marco:
Yeah, I'm guessing it's like HTML and, you know, something like that.
Marco:
Or maybe it is RTF.
Marco:
Who knows?
Marco:
Yeah, RTF is not a great format either.
Marco:
Display PostScript.
Marco:
We'll see.
Marco:
Oh, God.
Marco:
All right, so I think we got to talk about this news app.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
Apple Instant Articles.
Marco:
Yeah, that's basically, I mean, it looks like it's a lot like, or, you know, Apple Board.
John:
Apple Instant Articles with no visible means of support.
John:
Meaning, I'm pretty sure they did not mention a single time
Marco:
ads advertisers or anything like that and also on the page it says you can use i add so i'm not entirely sure the details we haven't had time to look into the details but it looks like their solution is basically if you want to monetize this you can use our ad system the one
Casey:
The one that everyone loves is setting the world on fire.
John:
Here's the thing.
John:
We don't know what their solution is, but we do know how they presented it, and they presented it entirely as an end-user benefit.
John:
We talked about the Facebook Instant articles being presented as like, here's the end-user benefit, instant.
John:
You don't have to wait for stuff to load.
John:
But they also said, and here's the publisher benefit.
John:
We'll give you all your ad money.
John:
You'll get lots of demographics.
John:
You've got lots of reach, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
John:
Lots of social sharing.
John:
They can start here instead of, you know.
John:
They gave two halves of that.
John:
Apple only gave the consumer half.
John:
This is a cool way.
John:
these things these publications look the way you expect them to look they still have personality you can find them all in one place and i'm pretty sure from memory that all the articles they scrolled through did not have a single ad of them and it looks so alien because we're so used to scrolling through mobile web pages with a million ads and like in the middle of an article it's a gigantic square the size of your entire screen advertising something and
John:
Adblock is not as pervasive on iOS, let's say, as it is on the desktop.
John:
Maybe Chrome has some options for it.
John:
I don't think there's anything you can do in Safari except for maybe like DNS blocking at your router to kill ads and stuff.
John:
It just looks so weird to be reading all these news sites without an ad in sight.
John:
And so I'm left to wonder, you know, I like the consumer story, sort of.
John:
But what is the publisher story?
John:
Why would Wired and the New York Times and Rolling Stone or whoever else they put in there, why would they want their things to be in news if you aren't going to their websites and they can't show you any ads?
John:
And the iAd thing, like, is that the answer?
John:
Is that like...
John:
You have to use iAd?
John:
Do you get to run your own ads?
John:
I don't know.
John:
As someone snarkily tweeted, I think it was Brianna snarkily tweeted, worried about how this is going to affect the application that Apple previously had in this space, Newsstand, which is really burning up the charts.
John:
I'm not going to say Newsstand has been a failure, but it certainly has not been the success that Apple wanted it to be.
John:
And here they are taking another run at the same problem.
John:
I'm not sure if they've nailed it on the second try either.
Marco:
So I've been looking through the fact, and it's interesting, and it's kind of vague on some pretty important points.
Marco:
So first of all, this is entirely based on RSS for now.
Marco:
And then they say there's an Apple News format that's coming soon, but the details of such format are not available yet.
Marco:
And the way this works is it appears that...
Marco:
They will add RSS feeds for a lot of things by themselves, and you can opt out of that.
Marco:
But then you can also sign up with an account to have a management interface to submit your own RSS feeds for your own sites.
Marco:
So God knows how that's working out.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
And then there's a submission status.
Marco:
And then there's some things about how can I monetize?
Marco:
And the answer is you can monetize with iAd.
Marco:
And it says you can sell ads.
Marco:
I guess iAd is just then serving the inventory you've entered.
Marco:
So if you enter ads into iAd that you have sold, you keep all the revenue.
Marco:
Otherwise, if they sell the ad, if you're showing their inventory that they sold, you get 70%.
Marco:
So it's...
Marco:
It's interesting.
Marco:
And there's a section of what's required, and the requirement is basically it has to be an RSS feed.
Marco:
And then what's recommended.
Marco:
And that says no read more links, no advertising that's outside of iAds, stuff like that.
Marco:
So this will be interesting.
Marco:
I see that...
Marco:
I think the story for publishers is going to really depend on if anybody actually uses this.
Marco:
Same thing with Newsstand.
John:
Good idea, but if people just file that thing away and never look at it, not so good idea anymore.
Marco:
With Facebook, the reason why Facebook is able to do something crazy like Instant Articles is because they just have a ton of people browsing in Facebook.
Marco:
They can throw around a ridiculous amount of traffic and increasingly...
Marco:
for publications, they kind of have to be a newsstand.
Marco:
They have to be visible on Facebook somehow, whether it's through links or articles.
Marco:
They depend on Facebook's traffic to survive or to stay healthy.
Marco:
And so Apple, with a brand new app that on day one, certainly a lot of people are going to use it just because it's a new Apple app and it's built into the OS or whatever, but it's not going to be the size of Facebook traffic for browsing stuff on the web.
Marco:
I do wonder, is this going to get big enough to make it worth the publishers participating and making things really fancy besides just dumb RSS feed dumps that the publishers eventually realize, oh, crap, we forgot to monetize our feeds, and then they just stop supporting RSS.
Marco:
This could go very badly.
Marco:
It's worth considering, what is the endgame here?
Marco:
First of all, this is very much not an Apple-like thing to attempt.
Marco:
If you would have said...
Marco:
two of the big tech companies are going to do this during a three-month period.
Marco:
Which two is it going to be?
Marco:
I don't think you would have guessed Apple would be one of them.
Marco:
I think you'd probably guess Facebook and Google.
Marco:
To have this be Apple is kind of weird.
John:
I think the way they pitched it actually makes sense in terms of what the companies have, like you just said.
John:
So Facebook pitched way more towards the publishers because they already got the users, right?
John:
They don't have to...
John:
to pitch that they did do the hey it's great you don't have to wait for loading they don't have to pitch to the customers too much because other customers people are already using facebook and facebook controls what they see facebook controls the feed in a in a way that they with power that they've exerted time and again where at this point that people just accept that facebook has a tremendous amount of control of what they see in facebook that they are not entirely in control so they pitch to the publishers and
John:
apple is pitching to the users because there are far fewer publishers and if the users are there i think apple feels like they can get the publishers on board especially they could differentiate themselves from facebook or whatever in some way they need to pitch to the users because it's this all this is pointless if like you said if people don't use the news app so they're entirely going to the customers and saying you are the ones that we need that we don't have if we can get you on board it will be easy to explain to the new york times and vogue magazine or whatever why you should be in our thing
John:
Even just if you're going to say do it as a hedge against giving all your content to Facebook and letting them control your destiny.
Marco:
And what's interesting, too, like they are saying this is the way forward so much that people on Twitter were just telling me they have actually killed Newsstand.
Marco:
Newsstand and iOS 9 here will say it will not be mourned from Nate Peel, a user named emullet on Twitter.
Marco:
He says that when he installed iOS 9, Newsstand was converted into a folder.
Marco:
Honestly, that's great.
Marco:
Back when I was a newsstand publisher, I was saying they should do this.
Marco:
This is great.
Marco:
This is perfect for everybody.
Marco:
For users who hated it, who never wanted to see it and had to bury it somewhere, and for the newsstand developers.
Marco:
It was worse for the people who used it all the time because everything was always two levels down.
Marco:
Right, and it was worse for the publishers because their app couldn't be on the home screen.
Marco:
It couldn't be in the dock.
Marco:
It was also buried.
Marco:
It really just didn't work out at all for anybody, for any side.
Marco:
Even for Apple, because then nobody wanted to use it, and it was just bad all around.
Marco:
And this is also interesting that it doesn't seem like there's any kind of payment method built into this.
Marco:
It's only ad-based, which is probably... Like subscribing or anything, yeah.
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, that's probably for the best because it does seem like on the web that just works a lot better and is by far the dominant way to monetize web content.
Marco:
It is interesting that they are kind of saying, all right, well, newsstand is done.
Marco:
And if you want to keep having...
Marco:
that support payments in the app and in-app purchase subscriptions, those all still exist.
Marco:
And you can do them in an app separately from this.
Marco:
But if you want to be in this news app, in this ecosystem, it sure looks like your stuff has to be free on the web.
John:
Yeah, this is also interesting to compare to something we forgot to mention.
John:
Like, so...
John:
This is like, well, newsstand didn't work out.
John:
Let's take a second run at this problem.
John:
Whereas Passbook turning into Apple Wallet is not like, well, Passbook didn't work out.
John:
Let's take another run at it with Apple Wallet.
John:
Apple Wallet is what Passbook was always supposed to be.
John:
It's the same tech underlying with the little HTML things that make the little cards and everything.
John:
But when Passbook was launched, they didn't have a financial component to it.
John:
So it could go two ways.
John:
One is...
John:
They wanted it to be this passbook thing, and it turns out payments fit right into that, and payments are more important.
John:
The second is they always wanted it to be Apple Wallet, but you can't launch a thing called Wallet with no money inside.
John:
If it just has boarding passes, the entire passbook project, everything they did is 100% used in Apple Wallet.
John:
All the tech that they worked on for all the... How do you make a passbook?
John:
How does it get in there?
John:
What is it made out of?
John:
How does it update itself?
John:
All that stuff for all your boarding passes and event tickets and stuff,
John:
That's all used in Apple Wallet.
John:
It's just now that we have Apple Pay, now it sort of reveals its final form.
John:
It was always Apple Wallet.
John:
So Passbook has become the beautiful butterfly of Apple Wallet, and Newsstand is just getting stomped on, and there's a new thing with News in the name that is, as far as I can tell, unrelated to Newsstand in every way.
John:
And we'll see if they got it right that time.
John:
Yeah.
Casey:
What's weird to me about news is that I feel like it's solving a problem that nobody really had.
Casey:
Because, I mean, granted, maybe you couldn't have solved this problem with solely Safari and the things that are baked into iOS.
Casey:
But Flipboard is really good.
Casey:
And I don't think that the world was yearning for a Flipboard replacement.
Casey:
And yet here it is.
Marco:
They weren't yearning for a reading list either.
Casey:
Well, true.
Casey:
And so I'm surprised that this is somewhere where they seem to have put a considerable amount of effort.
Casey:
And I'll certainly try it once I move to iOS 9, which, by the way, pro tip, if you learn anything from us, do not put on beta 1.
Casey:
Just don't.
Marco:
Yeah, just skip beta 1.
Marco:
Just wait a couple weeks for beta 2 to come out.
Casey:
At the earliest.
Casey:
And if you're wise, you're going to wait until like July before you start doing anything.
Marco:
Generally, like the pro move is don't install anything before beta 3.
Marco:
Usually by then they've worked out most of the major problems that would prevent you from being able to use it like on your day-to-day phone.
Marco:
The wisest move is just never to install the beta.
Marco:
But if you insist, which most of you will, yeah, wait until beta 2 or 3.
John:
Unless you're a developer.
John:
Obviously, if you have a spare phone, put whatever you want on there.
John:
But what we're talking about is don't put it on your main phone because you won't just host your main phone.
John:
Especially while traveling at WBC.
Casey:
Yeah, because didn't you and I both put on five or whatever it was that had a notification center and both of us deeply regretted it immediately?
Casey:
Drunk Group will never let me forget that.
Casey:
I did the same thing.
Casey:
I was also an idiot and did the exact same thing.
Casey:
A terrible decision.
Casey:
Absolutely terrible decision.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Anything else on iOS or can we talk watchOS?
Marco:
I think it's time to go to the watch.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So we are getting third-party complications.
Casey:
That makes me very happy.
Casey:
That makes me super happy.
Casey:
I'm really excited about this.
Casey:
I think if developers can keep themselves in check and actually do this tastefully, I think it can be phenomenal.
Casey:
The problem is I'm not terribly convinced that we'll be able to do it tastefully.
John:
As soon as they mentioned, like they were talking about the time travel feature, like that, you know, what if you have something you don't know in an update?
John:
It's like the score in a game.
John:
It's not like the weather where you can update it every hour.
John:
or the score in the game updates.
John:
You don't know when it's going to update, but you want to know as soon as someone scores a goal.
John:
Well, you can do a push notification, a priority push notification from your server that goes through the phone.
John:
And I immediately thought video complications.
John:
Push a frame of video 24 times a second.
John:
Push, push, push, push.
John:
I got to look up a thing.
John:
There'll be a tiny little video in the corner here.
John:
Oh, God.
John:
That's the kind of abuse you're talking about, I think, is not being tasteful.
Marco:
And we've seen that Apple is seemingly either unwilling or unable or both to police push notification abuse.
Marco:
A video wouldn't work, obviously.
Marco:
It was a joke.
John:
But yeah, people can...
John:
Two things here.
John:
One, and we'll get to this with native apps in a bit.
John:
You can really hose someone's watch.
John:
Like, I didn't see a lot.
John:
Maybe we'll go to the sessions later and we'll learn what all the crazy limits are.
John:
But so what are you saying?
John:
I can send a push notification whenever I want to update a complication.
John:
You could keep that poor watch like it's trying to go to sleep.
John:
It's trying to be like, and, you know, I'm not doing anything mode and it keeps getting these notifications like it.
John:
You now have the power, I think, to basically make a badly behaved app that drains someone's watch battery way more than, you know, we're in the glory days of the watch now where everyone says it lasts all day and there's no problem.
John:
But now you just let random developers do stuff, especially if you have like apps installed by default.
John:
Is that the default on the thing?
John:
I think it is, yeah.
John:
That's probably a bad default because you'll install some cruddy game on your iOS device, play it once, not like it, forget about it.
John:
Maybe you didn't delete it and not know that it put some watch kit thing.
John:
I guess if you don't make the complication show, it's not that bad.
John:
But anyway, I'm kind of fearful of the things that native watch apps and complications can do.
John:
that people will be unaware of.
John:
Like, they'll be able to connect up.
John:
Like, I put this complication in because it's neat, but this complication is actually updating once every 30 seconds all day.
John:
Right, right.
Casey:
Yeah, that'll be no good.
Casey:
The one thing I'm curious to hear about later in the week is how does it work for the different sized complications?
Casey:
You know, the modular face, that's what I'm thinking of, right, that has no analog anything on it.
Casey:
Some of those complications are physically – they take up quite a bit of real estate, like the main one in the center of the watch face.
Casey:
And yet they also showed – so they showed some of those.
Casey:
And they also showed third-party complications like there was a Volkswagen, like how charged is your Volkswagen?
Casey:
And it was basically like a –
Casey:
A little circle, kind of like the activity rings that went around the VW logo.
Casey:
And that's one of those little teeny tiny complications.
Casey:
It's kind of square shaped.
Casey:
I'm curious to see how that works.
Casey:
You know, do you do?
Casey:
I presume size classes.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Don't forget, you also have 38 and 42 millimeter.
Casey:
Oh, that's another good point.
Casey:
I hadn't considered that.
John:
and then you have things like you're you're probably i mean we haven't looked at the api yet but you're probably given like an accent color that you have to use and stuff like that i mean this is third-party complications are technically probably one of the easiest things they can do because it is so incredibly constrained yeah the number of things you could do there i don't think you have you know like you know to have core graphics and you just draw whatever the hell you want there maybe you're going to be making up a ping and passing it over maybe you have some simple
John:
maybe it's just like a mask that you pass and it treats it like a mask yeah i don't know but but anyway it's it's it is huge bang for your buck because it is the thing that you see when you raise your wrist and lots of things you can imagine could be super useful even if just something as simple as a sports score having a sports score as a complication on your watch is something that mechanical watches could never dream of
John:
This is the real differentiator.
John:
Like, yeah, I can see what day of the week it is.
John:
I can see the face of the moon.
John:
I can see all this thing.
John:
I can see a live sports score.
John:
Now we're, you know, forget about physical watch.
John:
This is just stomping in their faces.
Casey:
Yep, yep, yep.
Casey:
And then this brings us to, what is it, time machine, time travel?
Casey:
What do they call it?
Casey:
Not time machine.
John:
Time travel.
John:
I said it was a missed opportunity.
John:
They could have called it time machine.
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
So time travel and...
Casey:
What that allows you to do is as you're looking at your watch face, you can spin the digital crown and you can move forward or back in time to see what your complications either did or would reflect at that point in time, which I think is absolutely fascinating and reminds me of the Pebble time.
Casey:
Is that correct?
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Which works in a vaguely similar way where the idea behind that is everything you look at on like the main interface is kind of like a timeline.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And this isn't exactly the same, but very similar.
Casey:
And I really dig the idea of like we were talking about weather earlier.
Casey:
John had brought up weather as a complication.
Casey:
Being able to see, well, at five o'clock, what's the weather going to be like?
Casey:
And at the very least, you can get numerals for the temperature or perhaps you can get like an icon that'll tell you whether or not it'll be overcast.
Casey:
And so, you know, you can spin the crown and kind of see how things are going.
Casey:
Or you can see, they actually used an example in the second session of, well, how did this team that I, this soccer team that I loved, how did they lose?
Casey:
Did they lose in the last second or did they lose by not scoring in the last 45 minutes?
Casey:
And you could scroll back on the digital crown and see, oh, well, they had lost in the last second, I think was the example.
Casey:
So I am absolutely fascinated by this.
Casey:
I had written a blog post a while ago and I'm not the only one.
Casey:
I think Marco had done the same.
Casey:
Um,
Casey:
A few people have been saying third-party complications would be really awesome.
Casey:
And I think if tastefully done, and that's the key, if tastefully done, I can see how this would be absolutely awesome to have.
Casey:
And just like John had said earlier, when all you're doing is flicking up your wrist to look at the face of your watch and you can instantly see...
Casey:
some piece of information, be it a sports score or the weather or what have you, that is absolutely appealing to me.
Casey:
And appealing enough that I would even consider going to the modular watch face, which I freaking hate.
Casey:
It's not that appealing.
Casey:
To get that amount of information density would be fantastic.
Casey:
And by the way, very quick aside, they're also supporting a picture as a watch face.
Casey:
Or an album.
Casey:
or now yes actually excellent point or an album which i think is awesome because not only would i love to have like a picture of aaron and declan as my watch face but we actually have a shared photo stream that that will post pictures of declan for family and friends to see and having it's having my watch face cycle through those pictures sounds awesome the only problem though uh which marco pointed out to me as we're sitting in the keynote is well we don't see any complications on that right now and there may not be any complications like there's not
John:
going to be i think the complication is where do you put the time so it's legible in the picture and if you have a bunch of complications now like do they have to you could pick a color that looks okay but in different sections of the picture of different color it's actually a pretty hard problem with arbitrary pictures if you put a bunch of complications it'll just look all splotchy i agree and they don't they don't even have complications on the ones they control that are like that which like the jellyfish and the butterflies and everything and i mean only there's only there's what six or seven watch faces only three of them support complications yeah
Marco:
and and that's so on on one hand like you know it's interesting like you know they do a new watch face but doesn't support this though okay um i think there's a lot that they could do to make the watch faces and the complications better but uh third party complications that's a major step in the right direction like that's a huge jump that i was not expecting to have yet oh i agree third party watch faces next year right
John:
maybe i don't know if they don't i don't know if they'll ever do third party watch faces like i think it's time will come to me it's like third party lock screens on the phone like i don't think that's ever gonna happen either but this like once you have complicated third party complications like well i get to put stuff in little places why can't you even if the third party watch faces only could choose complications that were of the preset sizes which would probably be the case it would still be even if you just rearrange modular to put you know stuff in different places like i not this year but
John:
Anyway, a lot of things are telegraphed.
John:
I think the time travel feature was telegraphed by the fact that on my watch face, by the way, I have an Apple Watch now, in case you're wondering.
John:
On my watch face, when I turn the digital crown, nothing happens.
John:
Right?
John:
Yeah, same here.
John:
How in the world could you have this watch?
John:
It's major UI features.
John:
Like, oh, look at this digital crown.
John:
It's great.
John:
And you just turn it and nothing happens.
John:
And what do you expect to happen?
John:
I expect, I guess, the hands on the watch to turn.
John:
Ah, but on the solar face, something does happen.
John:
What happens?
John:
Basically, time travel.
John:
right there's no complications so they didn't they could do that they're like you can move the sun on the little solar face and stuff like that so time travel was you know how could apple ship a watch returning the crown does nothing when you're on their watch face well they didn't just wasn't ready yet it's time travel it's cool it does exactly what you would expect it to do intuitively and that it already did on the solar face so uh even though they're calling this watch os2 even though there was never a watch os1 because it didn't have a name with those all lowercase watch or whatever this seems like
Marco:
watch os 1.0 and what we're all using now is like the beta yeah it seems like a 1.1 you know like i think okay we got a solid 1.0 it's fine but yeah this this feels like 1.1 you know the first update i mean ios had a 1.1 out of things like the like the gps triangulation simulation and then two to edit apps right
Marco:
Yeah, 2.0 was apps, yeah.
Marco:
So maybe that's what they were thinking, but it is kind of weird to have 2.0 so soon that it has seemingly very few user-facing enhancements besides third-party stuff, which is big, but, you know.
John:
Yeah, they were super proud of themselves that, like, this is only six weeks after the launch of One, but it's like, you know, things come out whenever they're done, so.
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
And we're getting native applications on the watch now.
Casey:
It seems like they're intending to push developers to abandon WatchKit as we know it today and move towards native.
Casey:
Was that the impression that you guys got as well?
Marco:
Well, the way they're doing it is interesting.
Marco:
So I was assuming when we heard that they were going to be doing native SDK, I was assuming all this time that the WatchKit API that we had now, which does kind of like the remote control of the interface on the Watch, I was assuming that that was just a temporary thing that was basically a dead end.
Marco:
And that as soon as we got native apps, that we would be writing directly to UIKit.
Marco:
Mm-hmm.
Marco:
And what we have instead is they're taking WatchKit, which WatchKit extensions run on the iPhone today.
Marco:
Right, right.
Marco:
They're now just letting you move them so that they run on the watch.
Marco:
But you're still writing WatchKit, and you're still writing WatchKit code.
Marco:
You're still writing WatchKit UI.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
And you still have many of the WatchKit limitations, but now they've added a bunch of new things you can now call from WatchKit.
Marco:
And because it is running on the watch instead of on the phone, it becomes more useful in a lot of ways and, of course, better in a lot of ways.
John:
But those are faceless things, right?
John:
Like you have lots of APIs.
John:
eyes that you can get at that do things but not ui not not ui kit not like oh i'm just gonna make this new layout and have this controller and push these things under no that's not there but if you want to use all sorts of you know networking stuff because now you can do wi-fi directly from the watch or like audio or video processing and stuff like that you can do that but it seems like the viewport through which you see the customer sees you and you interact is still watch kitty
Marco:
Yeah, and I haven't looked at the APIs yet to know for sure, but it sure looks like we're not using UI views and UI buttons here.
Marco:
We don't seem to have total freeform layout control.
Marco:
I think we're still using the WatchKit layout methods, which are more limited than UIKit.
Marco:
and we don't seem to have any kind of access to things like animation of the UI elements, which seems like a pretty big thing.
Casey:
Well, you get that when you write a full-on native app.
Casey:
Do you?
Casey:
Yeah, I could swear.
Casey:
Maybe.
Casey:
Now I'm losing my confidence, but I could swear they mentioned that you can do some animations on the watch in native watch apps.
Marco:
All right, so I'll have to look at it to see.
Casey:
We'll go to the sessions.
Marco:
I bet they'll tell us.
Marco:
Yeah, probably.
Marco:
Well, yeah, those of us with tickets, John, ding.
Marco:
So anyway, yeah, so I think...
Marco:
It is in some ways simpler and more logical than I was predicting because I was thinking, throw out WatchKit and start over again.
Marco:
And that's a plus and a minus.
Marco:
Because they basically just moved WatchKit onto the watch and expanded it, we can use our existing knowledge.
Marco:
We can use a lot of our existing code.
Marco:
And so it is less of a jump and we don't have to throw away everything we wrote, you know, a few months ago necessarily.
Marco:
But also it is going to be more limited.
Marco:
And like a lot of the frameworks are more limited.
Marco:
Like I already know I can't do my audio engine.
Marco:
I can't do smart speed on the watch.
Marco:
I can't do voice boost.
Marco:
Like there is audio playback, but you have to use their custom new player thing, which is very limited.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And there's going to be these limits all over the OS as you look at it.
John:
Weren't you talking about pre-rendering the smart speed, though?
Marco:
Yeah, it's something I could do.
Marco:
We'll see if that ends up being good enough to actually do.
Marco:
Another big thing that they have some sessions on, I haven't looked at the documentation yet, but there, of course, is the issue of
Marco:
of communicating between the extension, between the Watch app and the iPhone app and data sharing and what happens when the phone goes away.
Marco:
What data do you have?
Marco:
It can read from the shared container, which is nice, but then when it goes away, do all the operations just fail?
Marco:
Is there some better way to do that?
John:
And if they don't, you're a split brain then and you've got to reconcile.
John:
You're writing your own little sync engine between two things, not just your server and your client.
Marco:
So it sounds really hard.
Marco:
So I'll see what they have in store for this, but I'm still not yet convinced that I should even do a native Overcast app that can play things on its own without the phone there.
Marco:
I would not call that a guarantee that that's even worth doing.
John:
Aren't you going to at least do it just to get the better launch time and responsiveness?
Marco:
Yeah, I'm certainly going to play with that and see.
Marco:
That, for sure, I'm most likely going to do that.
Marco:
No new functionality.
John:
All the data comes from the same places, but fewer spinners.
Marco:
Hopefully, yeah.
Marco:
I'm certainly going to try it, but I don't... You're not already done?
Marco:
David Smith would have it done by now.
Marco:
Yeah, he probably is done.
Marco:
He probably did write it already.
Marco:
But overall, it's great.
Marco:
And besides Overcast, there's a lot of other apps that can benefit hugely from this.
Marco:
So I'm looking forward to this.
Marco:
Again, I've said before, I don't consider the watch a huge app platform.
Marco:
I consider it a platform that everybody uses a relatively small number of apps, but that that is incredibly useful to them.
Marco:
And I think it will stay that way.
Marco:
Just the apps that you can use will just get better now.
Marco:
And more kinds of apps will be possible now than were before.
Marco:
But I still don't really see the watch as, like, I'm going to leave my phone in my pocket while I'm sitting on the couch and just, like, be poking around on the watch for 15 minutes.
Marco:
Like, I don't think that's going to happen.
Casey:
No, I agree.
Casey:
All right, so what else with watchOS 2?
Marco:
I don't think there's anything that I'm... There were some Siri improvements, but for the most part, it's all about the apps, and I think that's enough, personally.
Casey:
Yeah.
Marco:
Then we got to the second presentation, which... So, thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, Cards Against Humanity, Automatic, and Squarespace, and we will see you next week.
Marco:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin.
Marco:
Cause it was accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
Marco:
John didn't do any research.
Marco:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
Marco:
Cause it was accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
John:
And if you're into Twitter...
Marco:
You can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
Marco:
So that's Casey Liss.
Marco:
M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-N-T.
Marco:
Marco Arment.
Marco:
S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A Syracuse.
Marco:
It's accidental.
Casey:
Accidental.
Casey:
They didn't mean it.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
So that Apple Music presentation.
John:
Well, this is the one thing developers care about.
John:
It's music.
John:
honestly i let's just pretend that didn't happen and let's just pretend that it ended right before the one more thing because it was a much better conference i don't mind so much the music things what i mind a lot is that they they uh devalued one more thing by making making the watch one more thing felt appropriate yep yep it felt totally appropriate or whatever this was not one more thing
John:
and it's and like it's fine they can they can take ownership to that phrase and make it mean something else and and sort of devalue it that's go for it whatever we'll get used to it after a few things we're just like oh remember one more thing was a big deal but now it's not anymore that's fine but well wait wasn't one more thing at one time safari for windows steve jobs could make one more thing anything you want it
John:
In the Steve Jobs era, one more thing was always like he felt like he had to have something cool and either he had to fake it and pretend he was really enthusiastic about this or he really was enthusiastic about it, but nobody else was.
John:
But either way, it was his thing.
John:
He could pull it off.
John:
Once he's gone, it becomes like, oh, that was his thing.
John:
If you do it now, you're invoking him.
John:
It's not appropriate to do.
John:
They didn't do it for a long time.
John:
They did it for The Watch, which was like the most significant announcement of Tim Cook's tenure as Apple CEO.
John:
It felt significant.
John:
It felt like the right time to do it.
John:
Now they're just going to switch it back to like every presentation we feel like we want to have this gag at the end with the one more thing.
John:
I don't know.
John:
Anyway, but yeah, then what followed was a really long kind of railing presentation that was not relevant to developers.
John:
I think even when they do hardware, that's more relevant to developers.
John:
Developers buy hardware, right?
John:
How in the world is music?
Marco:
Well, I mean, you can argue that, oh, well, developers listen to music.
Marco:
That's great.
Marco:
But to me, this – see, everything they announced with music today seemed like it's a lot more for the music publishers than it is for us.
Marco:
Like, we get, okay, a snazzy new-looking music app.
Marco:
Honestly, I didn't find the music app that compelling, but I listen to terrible music.
John:
trying to pitch is like this is a streaming service that is i think they said try to pitch it was like this is differentiated from the other streaming services that we involve humans in the process and that the same reasons you like beats in their playlists because we we have people with taste who are going to do stuff it's not just a bunch of algorithms which is funny coming from the company that made genius which is a bunch of algorithms right but like that's their whole big pitch is like this is a streaming service but with a difference and the difference
John:
In some respects, they were pitching to the publishers like, oh, one place where you can go to put all your stuff, but that's kind of BS.
John:
The publishers are going to put their music where the customers are, and they have to have their music on Spotify because it's so popular, and they have to have it on Apple's because of iTunes, and they're just going to spread it around.
John:
It's not like the labels are going to be like, oh, I got to do this thing for Connected, and you got to put pictures here, but you also have to have a YouTube channel, but you also got to have a Facebook page.
John:
This does not clarify or simplify anything from their perspective.
John:
So I think it was mostly just like...
John:
hey, me too, we have one of these, and customers, you'll like it because we hired a bunch of people who you respect who are going to use their musical taste to give you something.
John:
And they leaned on the no-ad thing.
John:
They didn't get down to the nitty-gritty details to explain, like, how do the things that play on terrestrial radio get chosen to be on terrestrial radio?
John:
And it has almost nothing to do with what some person likes.
John:
It has everything to do with what record companies want to promote and, you know, the format of the station.
John:
You have to play one of these and one of those and five of these, and we got paid to play these and, like...
John:
where they were really emphasizing on this one.
John:
This is the music that a bunch of people we hired think is good music, which is very different from terrestrial radio.
John:
And Spotify, different from Spotify, but Spotify is not really like a radio station.
John:
I don't know.
John:
They're trying to say we are better than the other ways that you listen to music and these ways that are important to us, but...
John:
I was just too busy being annoyed by the fact that this is supposed to be a developer conference.
John:
And maybe I shouldn't be.
John:
Maybe it's silly, you know, whatever, that I should care about this.
John:
Maybe it's just because it was like a flabby presentation and it was long and boring and rambling.
Casey:
See, that's what I was going to say is that I can get over the fact that they're using one of the couple of times that they're in front of the world during the year.
Casey:
to announce something that's somewhat irrelevant to developers.
Casey:
However, I just thought that entire 40 minutes or whatever it was, was just hugely boring.
Casey:
And I wasn't impressed by it at all.
Casey:
And I think part of the reason I wasn't impressed by it is,
Casey:
Everything else in the keynote and even in the regular presentations that the public doesn't get to see throughout WWDC, they're all so well rehearsed.
Casey:
They're so well orchestrated.
Casey:
They're all so solid.
Casey:
And this was just like a train wreck to me by comparison.
Casey:
And I don't know.
Casey:
I didn't care for it.
Casey:
I wasn't really sold on Apple Music.
Casey:
I remain not really sold on Apple Music.
Casey:
What is it that you guys are doing better than everyone else?
Casey:
The only thing I got was the curation.
Casey:
But I don't really...
Marco:
Well, to be fair, that is what a lot of people like about Beats.
Marco:
And this is basically Beats Music 2.0 or whatever.
Marco:
Our friends on Connected will probably talk about this better than we can because they actually use these things more than we do.
Marco:
But people do like the human curation aspect.
Marco:
I'm interested in that aspect.
Marco:
I wasn't really sure, though, from what we saw today.
Marco:
It didn't sell me on it.
Marco:
And part of it was because I was tired and zoning out after a long morning.
John:
Mixed in with all the other stuff that we're talking about.
John:
If I had to pull out the points that are important to me as someone who doesn't use these streaming services is...
John:
Music being rationalized for families and that you pay once for an entire family and they all get access to the music.
John:
Being rationalized into a single app called Music and the fact that the app is available on Android, which clearly expresses Apple's intent to compete with Spotify and stuff.
John:
Not to make this is the way the people who own Apple devices listen to music, but to try to be like iTunes was before it.
John:
This is the way people buy music.
John:
Not just Mac users buy music in the old days before iOS.
John:
Not just Mac users, not just iOS users.
John:
There's iTunes for Windows.
John:
Everybody should buy music through iTunes.
John:
Sort of the iTunes error of buying songs for 99 cents seems to be moving on, and we're in the new streaming age, and it's important for Apple to stake its claim.
John:
Notice, not by making a Windows version of Apple Music, but by making an Android version.
John:
We were in the mobile error, and so...
John:
You know, those two things.
John:
One, taking iTunes and music out of the ghetto.
John:
I don't know if it's like, is this replacing iTunes match?
John:
Does it also put your stuff in the cloud or is this entirely separate?
John:
Either way, this is priced the way we expect things to be priced and structured the way we expect them to be structured.
John:
And two, saying this is not just an Apple thing.
John:
This is a everything thing.
John:
They are trying.
John:
I don't know if it's going to work, but they are trying to relive their former glory.
John:
At one time, iTunes defined digital music.
John:
Now it no longer does.
John:
They're trying to get that back with Apple Music.
Casey:
Yeah, I pretty much think that perfectly encapsulates everything I had to say about Apple Music.
Casey:
So we got to talk about two important things during this after show.
Casey:
Number one, what watch did you get, John?
John:
I got the same one as Marco.
John:
I remember me hemming and hawing like, oh, I don't know if no one's going to use this thing.
John:
I don't like wearing watches.
John:
My main problem was I just not like how the sport one looks.
John:
And the other one was just so darn expensive.
John:
And in the end, I said, look...
John:
I like the more expensive one.
John:
I got the expensive one.
John:
I got the stainless steel one for two reasons.
John:
One, I like how it looks way better than the other one.
John:
And two, I wanted the sapphire scratch resistance because I'm not going to be doing sport things with it, so impact resistance was less important.
John:
But I've already scraped it against things and gone, ooh, yeah.
John:
And then realize, oh, it's probably okay because, you know, you look up the hardness scale of the thing I scraped it against.
John:
So no scratches so far.
John:
I got a black classic buckle band because it just looks like a regular watch band.
John:
I am not used to wearing watches.
John:
The first day I wore it, it itched me like crazy because it was wiggling my arm hairs around.
John:
This week, this is my first week with the watch.
John:
It arrived just before I came to WWDC.
John:
I'm going to wear it this whole week.
John:
I'm just going to do it.
John:
I'm going to wear it all day.
John:
I'm already getting used to it.
John:
It's a little bit heavy.
John:
Sometimes it catches on things, but it's kind of neat and it looks cool.
Casey:
Nice.
Casey:
So far, it's approved.
John:
Yeah.
John:
The big test is after WWC week, after I leave the place where thousands of other people also have Apple watches, do I keep wearing it?
John:
Do I put it on when I go to work?
John:
Am I going to get into the Marco Green Ring cycle?
John:
I don't know.
John:
You don't really have any weight to lose.
John:
it's not even that like that's very true i i think i already have a significant amount of antibodies for these gamification of fitness things that i've you know i'm pretty immune to being guilted into doing things by uh by my watch but i'm gonna i'm gonna give it a try you know casey's tapping me now i got we all got tapped to stand up during this recording this podcast none of us stood up
Casey:
Nope.
Casey:
I thought about it.
Casey:
I really thought about it.
John:
There was no stand-up gag in the keynote.
John:
Which was a little surprising, actually.
Casey:
Yeah, I thought there would be.
John:
Yeah, it was a perfect opportunity.
John:
Even if they just wanted to pretend it was an ad lib and not time the entire keynote around, they didn't do it at all.
John:
And there were two opportunities.
John:
Yeah, that's true.
John:
There were almost three.
John:
It was a two-stand keynote.
Casey:
That's the new measure.
Casey:
The other thing we need to discuss that's really, really important is how in the name of all that is holy do you have a trifold wallet?
Casey:
What is wrong with you, man?
John:
I've always had a trifold wallet.
John:
This is a George Costanza wallet.
John:
It is pretty big.
John:
Well, here's the thing about it.
John:
It's not a George Costanza wallet because I would never put this in my back pocket when it's sitting down.
John:
That's crazy.
John:
You just destroy yourself.
John:
Two, it's thick because it does have a lot of money and a lot of cards.
John:
Like, I would like to get rid of a lot of these cards.
John:
And it also has some stupid business cards floating in there.
Casey:
Can we get a side view of this thing?
John:
It's not as thick as you would think.
John:
Hold it up so I can take a picture of this.
John:
If I take all the money out of it.
John:
No, don't take the money out.
Casey:
That's cheating.
Marco:
There's too much money in it.
Marco:
How many iPhones thick is it?
Marco:
yeah seriously that's measure let's measure this is what my wallet looks like most of the time with no money in it okay your back with no money in it i would say it's roughly four iphones thick i think that's fair to say come on look three with cases yeah four with cases it's tapered too it's thinner at the end it's like it's like the air yeah in the middle the thickest part which is the widest part as well yeah uh the bulk of its the bulk of its width it is at least three if not four iphones thick
John:
I like trifolds better than bifolds, I guess you would call them.
John:
I just like the way the trifold goes together, but this is thicker than I would like it.
John:
I would like to get rid of a lot of these cards.
John:
If they accepted Apple Pay everywhere, I would get rid of more of them.
Marco:
So the problem is you're carrying around like eight layers of leather there when it's folded up.
Casey:
Yeah, I know.
Casey:
Yeah, the whole trifold thing, like it's appealing for a second because you can fold it on top of itself and it seems to take up a lot less space than a single fold or bifold, I guess, wallet.
Casey:
But it is insane.
Casey:
Every trifold wallet I've ever seen or had in my completely just barbaric days of my youth, they were all like three feet thick.
Casey:
And this one is three feet thick.
John:
This wallet may be older than you, Casey.
John:
Yeah.
John:
This is a very old wallet.
Marco:
Well, it's time for you to upgrade.
Marco:
Because you can't keep it in your pocket, so it doesn't wear at all.
Marco:
It's actually wearing a little bit, finally.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
So what kind of wallet do I have, John?
Marco:
Do you know?
Marco:
I have no idea.
Marco:
Because you've never seen it.
Marco:
Because it's in my pocket.
Marco:
Because I don't have to take it out of my pocket when I sit down.
John:
Amen, brother.
John:
The only reason I brought this with me is because my hotel key card thing is in it.
John:
That's why I have it with me at all.
John:
I bring this with me to and from work every day, but it's not in my pockets, ever.
John:
It's in my backpack.
Casey:
So you're one of those lunatics that every time you sit down, it's like strip everything out of my pocket.
John:
No, it's in my backpack.
John:
My wallet is in my backpack.
John:
I don't put it in my pocket.
John:
That's where my wallet is.
John:
That's weird.
John:
The whole time we were at WWDC, it was in my backpack.
John:
That's insane to me.
Casey:
Because if you lose your backpack, you lose your wallet.
John:
It's on my back.
John:
I was like, where's it going?
Casey:
You never know.
Casey:
You sit it down when you're in the sessions, and then you're not going to get on the darn plane to go home to your family because you lost your license.
John:
I'm not going to lose my backpack.
John:
Anyway, I have more problems finding a place to put my phone because my phone, I can't really keep it in my front pocket when I sit down because I have trouble getting it out because it's so damn big.
John:
Is it too thin?
John:
I'm afraid I'm going to bend it.
John:
Maybe it's already bent.
John:
I don't even want to look.
John:
No, I don't look.
Casey:
Oh, God.
Casey:
You're seriously turning away with revulsion at the thought of it.
John:
I don't want to know that it's bent, but now I can't look away.
John:
Is it bent?
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
Throw it to me.
Casey:
I'll set it on the table here.
Casey:
We'll see what happens.
Casey:
We're not going to know.
John:
It's like dead pixels.
Casey:
So in summary, I have actually switched from a single-fold wallet to this, what is this, a UBI, Y-U-B-I wallet?
Casey:
It was a Kickstarter, and to be honest, it's a year or two old, and I kind of need to get a new one because some of the elastic is falling down.
Marco:
but um this is thicker god marco that's ridiculously thin what do you have in there nothing three credit cards driver's license a metro card for the new york city subway which i hardly ever use and uh about six bills folded in half you have zero business cards in there though that's true how will you know the phone number of the person who cuts your hair
John:
What?
John:
I've never called the person.
John:
Are you being serious right now?
John:
I have the business card.
Casey:
You have an information phone that can store these things.
John:
I always use the business card.
John:
I got a business card for a restaurant that's no longer open.
Casey:
Give me that business card right now.
Casey:
I'm throwing it away.
Casey:
Give it to me right now.
John:
There you go.
John:
Take it out.
Marco:
This was a good place.
Casey:
John has thrown me the business card.
Casey:
I tried to.
Casey:
It didn't work.
Casey:
That's all right.
Marco:
It's on the floor.
John:
that's amazing so you that's what you're keeping in there i don't keep receipts like that's usually the problem people keep receipts now i have a bunch of business cards of things i have my hair cutting place i have my insurance agent i have a why do you have your insurance agent i have my freaking like the wallet equivalent of speed i have my barking uh parking ticket for the the airport i have the chestnut hill apple store uh thing in here let's see oh my god i have a triple a card why
John:
I got credit cards, my driver's license, my health insurance card.
John:
Oh, God, this is ridiculous.
John:
Anyway, yeah, it could be thinner.
John:
The real problem is like the amount of money that I have in here is making it thick.
John:
And so it is sensitive to small changes like that.
Casey:
That's one of the problems.
Casey:
Humble brag, by the way.
John:
They're small bills.