Dark Mode Is Your Hat
Marco:
You ever gone back recently to a trackpad that actually has a button, like a separate button area that you can't just click the whole thing?
John:
The one that we had, the non-unibody MacBook Pro, the button had been so filled with child filth that it would not click down or get stuck down.
John:
It physically would no longer... I guess that won't happen with the fourth stretch.
John:
I guess that'll just get an even crust of disgustingness.
John:
Kids are gross, man.
Casey:
So we should do a little bit of follow-up.
Casey:
And one of you wants to talk about cellular service on Macs.
John:
A couple of listeners gave us.
John:
We talked a lot about the Mac last show, the viability of the Mac, whether it's going to be replaced by the iPad, if it's a dead platform, all that stuff.
John:
And multiple people asked us about a topic that has come up on the show before but didn't come up on the last episode.
John:
It's related to the question of, and I think Casey maybe was talking about this, how
John:
uh you can go anywhere with an ipad and do anything because it's got a cellular connection and it's got wi-fi and it's kind of all in one and yeah if you have a laptop you can tether it but then you also need your phone and you're draining your phone's battery and um we didn't take the next step and talk about the topic uh the evergreen topic of why do max not have cellular connections what is it like because a lot of people think that would make
John:
the mac a stronger competitor to even the pro ipads especially now that the max is very small if you could have a macbook one second generation macbook one with better battery life a faster cpu um and a cellular connection that would surely give a uh an ipad pro a run for its money as that single lightweight machine that you can take everywhere and work from anywhere with um
John:
Why is it the Macs, after all this time, don't have cellular?
John:
And I seem to recall last time we talked about it, we didn't really, we had some vague ideas.
John:
But at this point, years later, I think, most of our vague ideas are like, well, they want to reserve that for the phone.
John:
They think you should use your phone.
John:
It's like, now what's the excuse?
Casey:
So I think the problem Apple has with putting a cellular modem in a MacBook or MacBook Pro is twofold.
Casey:
One, it's more things to take up space and actually come to think of a battery life.
Casey:
Things have to get ever thinner, or so we seem to think anyway.
Casey:
And two, why would you not have an iPhone with you?
Casey:
You have an iPhone.
Casey:
You have a way to tether it to your Mac.
Casey:
Why would you ever need an onboard connection on your Mac?
Casey:
Now, of course, this argument falls completely on its face when you point out, well, there's iPads with cellular connections.
Casey:
In fact, Casey, you have an iPad with a cellular connection, and I have an iPad with a cellular connection because I don't want to have to tether to my phone anytime I want to get online outside of the house.
Casey:
not when I'm not near Wi-Fi so I I don't know that I would buy a Mac that had a cellular connection but it certainly is appealing and it certainly would make me think twice about an iPad Pro if I was trying to like decide between an iPad Pro with cellular or say a MacBook one with cellular I don't know Marco how do you think about it
Marco:
I would love a MacBook with cellular.
Marco:
I would absolutely love it.
Marco:
But as we discussed years ago when we first covered this topic, I think nothing has really changed in the way that the software environment on the Mac is designed in most cases.
Marco:
Most of the apps are designed.
Marco:
The system services are designed to assume they are on Wi-Fi all the time and to assume they can use large amounts of bandwidth.
Marco:
The system updater, that could download an update that's hundreds of megs.
Marco:
iTunes, they can background download new episodes of TV shows that you buy and stuff like that.
Marco:
And granted, a lot of these things are things that are maybe fading out of favor, but they still happen.
Marco:
You have all sorts of software updates happening all the time in the background automatically, and not just from Apple.
Marco:
It could be Adobe's updater and everything too.
Marco:
There's so much stuff in the Mac environment that...
Marco:
It assumes that if it has a connection, it can download large chunks of data in the hundreds of megs range.
Marco:
And there was change in the APIs, I think with Mountain Lion.
Marco:
I think it was around Mountain Lion time when they moved to NSURL session.
Marco:
where they unified the API between iOS and Mac, and NSURL session has these global flags on sessions where you can say, on any connection I run in this session, allow or don't allow cellular access.
Marco:
So if the connection is cellular, you as the app maker could kind of opt out of using it or opt into using it if you wanted to.
Marco:
So you could say, if something is...
Marco:
Important, like if you open up a Twitter app and you're trying to fetch the timeline, use cellular data for that because that's probably what the user wants.
Marco:
But if you're checking a background update to see if there's any updates to your app, if you're Adobe, then maybe wait until Wi-Fi for that.
Marco:
So that system's been there for a few years, but the reality is I don't think any apps meaningfully are really using it, especially since there's no reason for them to use it because there are no cellular Macs.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
So unfortunately, I just think the software environment is so wasteful of data by default that I think it would just result in way too much data usage.
Marco:
And I think, you know, Apple probably noticed that too.
Marco:
And also, you know, on iOS, you have the App Store and AppReview to enforce that and to monitor that.
Marco:
And AppReview does monitor for excessive bandwidth usage.
Marco:
They have certain metrics like you can't use more than X megabytes and X minutes unless the user streaming media or something like that.
Marco:
You know, there's...
Marco:
There are certain limits that they at least used to monitor for.
Marco:
They probably still do.
Marco:
Anyway, all that is to say that, you know, on the Mac, you don't really have the software environment conducive to sipping data carefully when you're on cellular.
Casey:
You know, it's funny you bring that up.
Casey:
I agree with you.
Casey:
But have you used trip mode?
Casey:
Have you heard about this?
Marco:
I haven't.
Marco:
Is that some kind of little firewall thing, like a little snitch or what?
Casey:
Sort of, kind of.
Casey:
I think that it might have been Jason Snell that turned me on to this.
Casey:
I forget exactly who it was.
Casey:
But the tagline for this app is your mobile data savior.
Casey:
And it is not only for the Mac.
Casey:
It also works on Windows.
Casey:
And what it basically does is when it detects that you're tethered or on some other sort of low bandwidth connection,
Casey:
it will flip into a different mode where it will prevent every app from getting to the internet except the ones you whitelist.
Casey:
And it'll also keep track of how much data each of these apps is using.
Casey:
And so I have this installed on my laptop because on the rare occasions that I do tether, even though I have a crud load of data, way more than I would ever use in a month, I still want to be sure that I'm not doing something like, I don't know, downloading an episode of Mad Men.
Casey:
Right, Marco?
Yeah.
John:
hmm see i don't buy any of these excuses because we're so much farther down the road like in the beginning when you know cellular was just coming to ipads and apple was first making iphones sure but as marco pointed out they added this the beginnings of these apis a long time ago it's a problem for apple to solve for sure but it can be solved like it's all it takes is some new software and you know like it it
John:
The trip mode thing is a great example of like they're not even the OS maker.
John:
Apple could implement something like that or a new set of APIs or make it opt in or like this is their problem to solve.
John:
Same thing with space in the case.
John:
Same thing with battery life.
John:
Like we have the technology.
John:
We can rebuild it like this is.
John:
This is a thing that we could actually do.
John:
And you say, oh, but it's so hard.
John:
It's going to take a long time.
John:
Yeah, but it's been a long time.
John:
And so it's like, have you have you been working on this for three years?
John:
Are you just like, well, it'll always be impossible and we should never even try it.
John:
Like because it just every time it comes up.
John:
we all say you know not that they all have to have cellular right but one model pick one model to be like the bring this mac everywhere with you and you will be able to get online everywhere and we know most people aren't going to buy it because who wants to pay for just like people most people don't buy cellular ipads because who wants to pay for another cell connection or whatever added you know right but
John:
you know surely it has enough utility that if they were paying more attention to the mac line they would say we can we can sell this this is this is a value add feature people will pay more for it it will make the product more attractive um would they sell more cellular macs percentage wise than they do cellular ipads probably not it would probably be less and i bet the percentage of cellular ipads is super low anyway but they keep making them because for the people who use them
John:
They love them.
John:
Imagine if you said, you know what?
John:
iPads aren't going to have cellular anymore.
John:
Just tethered to your phone.
John:
People would be pissed because they're used to that feature.
John:
And it took a lot to get, you know, the cell phone feature on iPads and an iOS working with all these different APIs.
John:
I don't know.
John:
I feel like...
John:
After so many years, any excuse you had about how difficult it might be, it now changes into an excuse of, like, I guess you just didn't decide it was important.
John:
Because now enough time has passed that if you had decided it was important, we'd be three years into the transition period, and we'd be well on our way to it being a thing.
John:
And when they did that new API, I thought, oh, this is the beginning.
John:
Like, a few more years, and, you know, they'll have this rolled out.
John:
But I guess they just don't think there's enough of a market for it to justify...
John:
You know, the time and expense of changing the APIs and everything like that.
John:
It just seems like another missed opportunity on the Mac, where if the Mac was selling much better and making them much more money or had more growth potential or some combination of those, this would be an obvious thing.
John:
In the same way that larger iPads and a stylus were obvious than iPads, but Apple didn't...
John:
uh pulled the trigger on that for many many years um and the ipad apple certainly thinks the ipad has more growth potential than the mac it seems so anyway i'm sad there's still no cellular macs um although i don't expect any at the upcoming apple event which we'll talk about a little later yeah and a real-time follow-up from the chat room from the white box in the chat room um this person reminded me of the photos of the prototype macbook pro with an integrated 3g cellular modem this is for mac rumors in 2011 and
Casey:
And it's really kind of weird looking.
Casey:
It looks like a MacBook Pro, but it has like an extendable antenna on the side of the screen.
Casey:
We'll put a link in the show notes.
Marco:
You know, I mean, I've been using tethering on laptops while traveling for 10 years now.
Marco:
Literally.
Marco:
Like, I was going through pictures earlier.
Marco:
I'm going to Tumblr tomorrow to kind of give a quick little talk about, like, the history, and I was going through pictures.
Marco:
And literally 10 years ago, I have a picture of me using a MacBook with a cellular modem plugged into the side of it, a little USB thing.
Marco:
And before that, I was using Bluetooth tethering with my old Motorola flip phone.
Marco:
And, you know, tethering is awesome on laptops.
Marco:
Like, if you have a laptop, you probably want this if you ever use it out and about.
Marco:
If you ever use it while traveling or if you work in coffee shops or whatever.
Marco:
The dream of ubiquitous Wi-Fi never really came true.
Marco:
Everyone thought that cities would just be covered in Wi-Fi, and everywhere you went, there was Wi-Fi.
Marco:
It turns out maybe 20% of the places you go, there's Wi-Fi.
Marco:
It might suck, and it might be insecure, which is a big problem these days.
Marco:
It might be slow.
Marco:
It might be metered.
Marco:
But the dream of this free, ubiquitous...
Marco:
Everywhere coverage and no security problems and always fast Wi-Fi just never came true.
Marco:
There's so many reasons to tether and to use your own cellular connections.
Marco:
And as time goes on, those reasons just increase as we get more and more mobile.
Marco:
Laptops keep getting smaller and even more compelling to bring with you if you're going somewhere and you want to get something done on a laptop.
Marco:
especially if you look at the MacBook One or the upcoming Skylake MacBook Pros, which we'll talk about soon.
Marco:
These things keep getting smaller and better, and cellular connections keep getting faster.
Marco:
We do have data caps these days, but we also have now these pooled data plans where you can add another device for $20 a month.
Marco:
Back 10 years ago, I was paying $60 a month just for that cell modem, and now you can get them for $20 a month, just add it to your existing plan or whatever.
Marco:
So it seems like this would be the time to do that.
Marco:
If for some reason that time hasn't come yet, might as well do it now, right?
Marco:
But it just does seem like Apple doesn't care.
Marco:
And it seems like this is something they obviously did prototype it.
Marco:
They obviously decided not to do it.
Marco:
And, you know, John, I think you're right.
Marco:
If they wanted to do this on the Mac, they could.
Marco:
The fact is, you know, the software environment isn't there for it now.
Marco:
But yeah, they've had 10 years to work on it, and they pretty much haven't.
Marco:
um so that that does make me sad and i will keep tethering uh and i and that i kind of it just feels it feels like a weird hack to tether because tethering doesn't actually work that well uh in in practice like it once you plug in it's fine but like if you're if you're doing anything besides a usb connection it is always a little bit flaky plus not to mention then it drains your phone battery so there's like so many reasons not to tether uh or to tether over cable only which is clunky
Marco:
So it does make me sad that we probably won't see this from Max because I think if they can justify it for the iPad, might as well do it for Max too.
John:
Well, all those prototypes that they made, you know, the 2011 pictures or whatever, like what they learned from those first efforts is all the things we talked about.
John:
Like, oh, it uses a lot of data.
John:
Our environment is not set up for this and drains our battery more and whatever.
John:
Yeah.
John:
and all that does is let you know how much is it what is it going to take to do this and then they they do the calculation this is what it's going to take this is the potential upside and they just keep saying no and you know and again like i said if the mac sold more there was more of an upside if they felt like there was more demand like a million combinations because you could say oh if there was more demand they would do it but also if they sold 20 times as many macs because that would increase the number of sell assuming the demand is proportional right then that would you know there's just so many factors that are working against them doing it but
John:
the longer time goes on the more it kind of stands out to me as as a weirdness because eventually you would hope the the battery cost and the size cost or whatever of doing cellular would be they're decreasing as a proportion of the overall available you know i mean i guess you can't decrease transmit cost that much because you got to reach the tower and everything but
John:
all the other associated stuff how big is the chip you have to put in there how much power does that chip take uh how much room does it take uh how much does it cost like all those other factors time should be on your side and eventually it should be like maybe like when they added the fm radio or the ipod you know what what the hell throw it in there and but you know then there's a software part of it that they're obviously behind on but you know the other thing that could help there is like marco was talking about what if the the cost of cellular connections and data continues to go down and
John:
five ten years from now uh unlimited data connections are standard and you don't pay a lot for them and it costs nothing to add and it's just like it just seems like it's got to happen eventually or the mac could just go away entirely um but anyway i miss it and i would buy one i totally don't buy any argument that it's a hardware limitation or that it would be too costly in the hardware because the ipad is the biggest counter example you if you if they can offer it in the ipad
Marco:
since 2010 for $130 premium, then certainly they can offer it in the higher priced, larger and bigger batteried MacBook Pro line.
Marco:
Like there's no reason why if it's in the iPad, you can totally do it in the MacBooks.
Casey:
I mean, it stands to reason.
Casey:
I don't know enough about the hardware, but it certainly stands to reason in my head that that's the case.
Marco:
PC manufacturers also offer this.
Marco:
It's not like no one's ever done this before.
Marco:
You can buy a ThinkPad with a cell connection in it for also about 10 years, I think.
Marco:
So it can be done.
Marco:
They just have chosen not to do it.
Marco:
And that, I think, is unfortunate because I wish they offered that.
Marco:
And I think they could charge a good premium for it, maybe $200.
Marco:
I'd easily pay $200 more.
Marco:
We'll see.
Marco:
I don't have high hopes for that, honestly.
Casey:
Fair enough.
Casey:
Now, moving on.
Casey:
We got a really interesting reminder from Atan Shulman, who wrote in to remind us that in February of 2015, it was discovered that the New Photos app contains something called UXKit.
Casey:
And we'll put a couple links in the show notes, one to Jason Snell's Six Colors and one to a friend of the show, Brent Simmons' blog.
Casey:
It appears that it's basically a reimplementation of UIKit, which is what's used to build apps on the iPhone, on top of AppKit, which is what's used to write apps on the Mac.
Casey:
And it's an interesting thing to think about, well, you know, as these platforms...
Casey:
You know, kind of crawl ever closer to one another.
Casey:
Do we think maybe this will be a new thing that maybe, for example, at WWDC this year, maybe Apple released UX kit and make it easier for people like Marco, who don't really write Mac apps to write an app on the Mac by using an API that's familiar to him?
John:
I think we talked about this at the time.
John:
I think so.
John:
I think at that time, Brent's post had also come out.
John:
And it's like the consensus then I still think is the same now, which is like when we all saw photos and these other apps that look so much like their iOS counterparts, it stands to reason.
John:
It's like a lot of people would say, oh, all they did was port the iOS applications to the Mac and sort of Macify them a little bit.
John:
And so many things in them were similar.
John:
And UXKit is kind of like, well, we know they had a photos app on iOS.
John:
And we know this one visually and structurally is very similar to that.
John:
And so it stands to reason that if they wanted to make the development of the iPhoto replacement faster, they could say, is there some way that we can reuse, if not the code directly, then at the very least some of the structure of the application and some of the knowledge or whatever?
John:
Like, is there a way that we can take an iOS application and...
John:
you know even if you're just using the sort of big box diagram of how the pieces fit together and what the class names are and everything like that can we do that well you could have this ux kit thing which is kind of like a ui kit like wrapper on top of app kit so that the mac looks a little bit more like ios from the perspective of this code you're writing but you would only do it
John:
if you were coming from that direction um and Brent Simmons uh post is mostly skeptical about the idea that this would ever be a thing that they would throw out to developers and it's hard to tell because very often Apple does dog food its own APIs first in its own applications then like a year later at WWDC they're like oh here you go and they don't mention like oh and by the way we've been using this for a year or two years in our own applications to sort of work out the kinks and
John:
but they've done that with so many other technologies but then again there are other things that they use for their applications they never offer up like the pro kit framework which they use for aperture back in the day and i think final cut pro like the the weird small dark colored widgets and like those things were all there was a pro kit framework that would if you had those apps installed would occasionally get updates we are very lucky they didn't offer that for anybody else to use well i mean but i'm saying like it was the last thing the world needs is more pro kit apps
John:
They didn't just build one app on it.
John:
Like, oh, we have this weird code based on this thing.
John:
They built multiple apps on it, but it never graduated to the level, which I assume that was also, you know, either a wrapper on top of AppKit or its own weird thing.
John:
But it never came out into public.
John:
So...
John:
I still think there is room, as Marco talked about last time, for Apple to introduce something that makes it easier for people with UIKit, either code or expertise or both, to make Mac apps.
John:
But I don't know if UXKit is it.
John:
Maybe UXKit is...
John:
one attempt at what that might be like and remember the guys at icon factory did that chameleon framework which was another sort of thing where yeah it's a re-implementation of the ui kit api on top of the mac to help them because they had ui kit applications that they wanted to bring to the mac um all those things are like they're kind of technical marvels that they work at all but when you start to suggest the idea that this would be like the one recommended way to make mac apps like apple would say
John:
hey you should use this to make mac apps like i don't think apple wants to muddy the water i think they want to have a clearer answer and especially with swift in the mix now i'm not entirely sure that apple is ready to to come out with something that will help ios developers uh
John:
write mac apps better whether they think it's even again it's same thing with like investment like yeah they could do it they could do lots of different things here but is it worth the investment it would take a lot of uh developers and it would be difficult to do and what would our payoff be so um obviously for their own internal applications they decided it was worth it and um and so they got ux kit and they'll probably use it and if that's not already used in multiple places it might be used in other places going forward as a way to make it cheaper for apple and
John:
to bring quote unquote new applications to the Mac, helping them take the expertise and maybe some of the code from iOS and bring it over to Mac apps.
John:
But I'm not sure they're ready to offer that to the public.
Casey:
You know, as you were bringing up Chameleon, I was about to bring it up myself.
Casey:
And so I went and dug up the GitHub page for it.
Casey:
Last commit was May 16, 2014.
Marco:
When it comes to this kind of major platform development framework, this is long-term stuff.
Marco:
These are things that last 10, 20 years.
Marco:
Apple's a very patient company when it comes to things like this.
Marco:
With lots of things, Apple's very patient, honestly.
Marco:
But in this kind of scenario...
Marco:
The transition to Swift, I think, is very, very important here.
Marco:
And also we have to figure, like, where is Mac OS X going?
Marco:
You know, as we discussed last week, you know, if they are planning on some, like, major next generation Mac operating system that's going to be a major departure from OS X as we know it today.
Marco:
they'll just wait until they do that.
Marco:
They're not going to make a new OS X framework now.
Marco:
They'll just wait until that comes and do it on that.
Marco:
Same thing if they're going to do something major with reconsidering AppKit or UIKit with Swift and with a more Swift-y model.
Marco:
If they're going to be doing that anytime in the next 5-10 years, they'll wait for that.
Marco:
They're not going to do something in the meantime that is... I can't imagine them investing tons of time and effort into a brand new...
Marco:
objective c and swift ui framework for the mac today like that i just i don't see that at all if if they have to do something more elegant but if they want to do something more elegant but they have to wait five more years to do it they'll just wait let's talk about something that's awesome and celebrate a little bit
Marco:
Alright, speaking of the Mac, if you are a Mac developer and you want to sell outside the Mac App Store, our first sponsor today is DevMate.
Marco:
DevMate lets you sell Mac apps outside of the Mac App Store and it integrates a whole bunch of services so it kind of gives you a lot of the benefits of selling in the Mac App Store as a Mac developer, but without having to actually be in the Mac App Store.
Marco:
So, you know, and I was honestly, I was looking at maybe making a little Mac app, not Overcast, but maybe making a little Mac app, a little utility thing.
Marco:
Sorry, Casey.
Marco:
I was looking at it and I honestly, I don't want to have to deal with payment processing and I don't want to have to deal with like building in an auto updater and everything.
Marco:
Like I just don't want to deal with that stuff.
Marco:
There's a reason why the App Store is compelling when it works well, which might be never.
Marco:
But the promise of it is actually, you know, it should work.
Marco:
And in theory, it does work.
Marco:
Unfortunately, in reality, the Mac App Store doesn't work.
Marco:
And fortunately for me, I don't need to make that decision for whatever this app is I'm going to make because it can't be sandboxed.
Marco:
So I can't put it in the Mac App Store.
Marco:
So if I want to release it, I have to release it outside of the Mac App Store.
Marco:
And I'm looking at DevMate, honestly, because DevMate, so it's made by a company called MacPaw.
Marco:
They do all sorts of stuff for the Mac.
Marco:
They've made a powerful tool set that has allowed all of us Mac developers, I can say us now, to overcome app store limitations.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
They can sell your software outside of the Mac App Store.
Marco:
You can deliver updates easily to it with their platform.
Marco:
You can protect your apps with license management.
Marco:
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Marco:
You can sell bundles.
Marco:
You can even run beta tests with automatic crash reporting.
Marco:
All these luxuries that you get if you're totally in the App Store ecosystem.
Marco:
And you can get in-depth analytics and marketing metrics, which is even usually better than what you can get in the App Store.
Marco:
So DevMate has collected all the tools and services they use into one pack, and they've created this amazing platform for Mac developers.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
They offer hosting, they offer the CDN, version management, update delivery, and an e-commerce solution for in-app purchase.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
So all you have to do is worry about coding the app itself, and you leave the rest to DevMate.
Marco:
So Mac developers, check out DevMate today.
Marco:
Honestly, I am tempted by this.
Marco:
I might check it out.
Marco:
If I decide to release this app, that's going to be the first place I'd look, honestly.
Marco:
Anyway, thanks for sponsoring.
Casey:
All right.
Marco:
So you're not going to tell us what the app is?
Marco:
Well, sure.
Marco:
It doesn't really matter.
Marco:
It's really nothing.
Marco:
Do you remember a few months ago, I posted a little launch-y AppleScript thing to automatically quit Twitter every 10 minutes if it wasn't active?
Marco:
so if you make a native app you can do that a lot better you can do things like you know instead of just every 10 minutes check if it's active and if not quit it you can monitor the active window in real time and so you can quit it like 10 minutes after i last used it and you can do or you can do things like only quit if it's hidden and stuff like that you can you can do like a more advanced version of this more easily
Marco:
um so i i have a little prototype of that running and right now it's literally like this giant black square in my menu bar so that you know it's gonna if i want to actually you know make it releasable there's going to be some work involved but it does work and it's very it's really nice actually it's really nice i found that this has dramatically reduced my twitter usage um as measured by rescue time and uh so i'm actually very happy with this approach and
Marco:
It has turned Twitter into something that is always open on my Mac, like mail.
Marco:
It has turned it from something that's always open to something that is inherently incredibly unreliable.
Marco:
It seems to me like it crashes every 10 minutes, which is really nice.
John:
You've created your own chaos monkey on your Mac, basically.
Marco:
that only targets one or two apps it's great it's great because like i it it turns it into something that i have to like actively go and and activate rather than something that's always there in the corner ready for me to be distracted by it you know so it actually this approach actually does work really well for me i don't know if it'll work for anybody else i don't know if anybody else cares uh but it was worth me making the mac version just to make it better um so it's no longer these weird launch d scripts that i can't turn off easily or can't adjust easily
Marco:
So yeah, so far I'm liking it.
Marco:
So I might release it.
Marco:
I don't even know if I would charge money.
Marco:
I have no idea.
Marco:
But I figure this could be a nice way for me to learn a little more about making Mac software and the market for Mac software and just kind of dip my toe in and get a little tutorial on it.
John:
excellent would you pay five bucks for this thing i wouldn't buy it yeah i can't buy an application that quits outs from out from under you no thanks yeah i don't even like uh sudden termination or whatever the apis they added that like when you have no open documents they kills the application i don't even like that i haven't even noticed that ever hitting me honestly maybe i just don't use apps that do it if you use text edit it happens a lot you close all the windows and text edits and you switch to some other app and then you look back at the doc and you're like well put that dot go underneath text edit oh it's gone again
John:
who would uh who would you use a text editor anymore i find myself using it still occasionally it has the i use it for as my uh poor man's outliner like if you do option tab you know that whole thing don't you have like a mail like a better don't you have bb edit aren't you like a better text editor person yeah but that's not for outlining like outlining like having having indented levels and have being able to just keep typing and have it soft wrap the indented level you know like you said tab what
John:
no no no you like you write long paragraphs and they stay at the level of the like you're not hard wrapping it right you're just typing and typing and typing and it is wrapping in a paragraph but that paragraph is indented just like the bullet point you put it on use a task paper i don't even know what that is that's what i use for that it's but it's a i think it's jesse gross gene the guy who makes a folding text i think is i think that's him
John:
yeah anyway that's i've text edit is what i use for my podcast notes when i'm on podcasts other than this one like when it's just notes for me as opposed to all three of us sharing a document right um yeah and i don't know and you double click documents it owns dot txt and i haven't gone and changed the the bindings for all that stuff so it i find myself launching it um
John:
and then if i want to keep it open i got to remember just keep one document open really like the whole idea is you're not supposed to care that it's open it's excited it launches so fast i really don't care but i do notice it quitting itself preview does the same thing which annoys me more because i do use preview more to view images and stuff apparently literally task paper 3 was released today coincidentally i've been i've been testing it for a while and i really like it i just didn't realize it was released today yeah i like task paper a lot so we'll put a link in the show notes
Casey:
Fun times.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So speaking of releasing things, Overcast 2.5.
Casey:
Tell us all the things about it, Marco.
Marco:
Oh, geez.
Marco:
Do I really have to?
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
So I did a 2.5 update, the list of features of which was typed in TaskPaper the whole time, as I've been using as my to-do list for all of my apps since Instapaper 1.0, maybe, or at least early versions of Instapaper.
Marco:
Anyway, so 2.5 is basically what it sounds like.
Marco:
It's like a half major release, if that makes sense.
Marco:
It still looks about the same for the most part.
Marco:
There's not a whole lot of new headlining features, but there are a few and there's a whole bunch of big improvements everywhere, basically.
Marco:
So originally I was calling it 2.1, and I was like, eh, as I could add more stuff, I'm like, you know what, this feels like a 2.5.
Marco:
So I'll call it 2.5.
Marco:
And it's about six months from 2.0, so that kind of made sense with a roughly annual release cycle for the big stuff.
Marco:
So the big things are, if you are a patron, so if you pay me a dollar a month, basically...
Marco:
then you get a new dark theme and you get the ability to have file uploads.
Marco:
So you can upload something that's not a real podcast or not a public podcast, like an audio book, or if you're a producer of podcasts, like a draft of an episode you're working on, you can upload that into Overcast and play it in your player.
Marco:
And it doesn't become public for everybody to play.
Marco:
It just plays for you.
Marco:
um and this is actually a feature i built this in version 1.0 i had this right at the beginning and it was only enabled for my account for all this time and i would use it to play uh downloaded episodes of howard stern i mean personally recorded episodes of howard stern uh home howard stern recordings and so i use it all this time but i didn't want to launch it because these files are hosted on s3 and so i'm like i don't you know i don't really want to sign myself up for
Marco:
somebody paying me five bucks once and then me hosting like two gigs of s3 files for them for the next three years that that would be hard to sustain economically and so i i figured you know let me let me wait until i have some kind of recurring revenue in place or if it if it appears as though the app is doing so incredibly well with the in-app purchase up front that i can that i can enable for everybody then maybe i'll try it later but anyway whatever i push it off till later
Marco:
That was in mid-2014.
Marco:
Good grief.
Marco:
I kind of just forgot about it.
Marco:
I mean, people have been requesting this feature for a while, but there were always features that were requested more that I had to do, that were more important to do, things like streaming and stuff like that.
Marco:
There was always kind of stuff ahead of it in the to-do list.
Marco:
And I finally got around to doing it, which really was just like polishing up the feature I already had, like making it look a little bit nicer, styling the website slightly around the uploader instead of just being like an unformatted progress bar and everything.
Marco:
And the technical side of it is really pretty straightforward.
Marco:
I actually, if you look at this, if you view source on the uploads page...
Marco:
I actually am uploading the files directly to S3, and then the app downloads them directly from S3.
Marco:
So the files never pass through Overcast servers, which helps me save on cost, and it also helps them arrive faster.
Marco:
You don't have to wait for a double upload, like for my server rather than upload it to S3.
Marco:
You don't have to wait for that.
Marco:
So it's both a nice cost savings for me and also a speed improvement for you, and a weird, technical, cool thing that most people don't even know that you can generate a form to securely upload a file to S3, but you can.
Marco:
Then I did Dark Mode, which is also for patrons only.
Marco:
I got a little bit of pushback on this, actually.
Marco:
I'd say I probably heard from about 100 people.
Marco:
It's a little controversial.
Marco:
I'm curious what you guys think.
Marco:
It's a little controversial because... So when I had version 1, 1.x, like all the 1.x versions that ran from mid-2014 to mid-2015...
Marco:
uh version one was a free app with a five dollar in-app purchase to quote unlock everything and what i meant was unlock all the features i have right now like just unlock everything and then in 2.0 last october i switched to a a full patronage model where everything was free and you could pay if you wanted to for nothing like you just you get nothing for and i said like i might add features in the future for patrons that i can't have for everybody for cost reasons or whatever um and i was actually thinking about the upload feature when i wrote that
Marco:
So now, when I wanted to add this new file upload and dark mode pair, I decided to make... Now, file uploads are easy to make patron-only because you can say, well, that costs money for everyone who uses it.
Marco:
But there is a debate here among people who bother me on Twitter...
Marco:
People who are literally arguing with each other.
Marco:
I'm not even involved in the argument.
Marco:
People are arguing in my mentions with each other about whether this should be a problem or not.
Marco:
Whether people who bought the 1.x unlock everything thing in 2014, whether they should have the dark mode as well.
Marco:
What do you guys think about that?
Marco:
The reason why I thought it would be okay this way...
Marco:
The reason I made everything free with 2.0 and decided to just do page range for nothing for a while was I was tired of the basic version of the app having intrusive limitations that would make it suck.
Marco:
It would only show the top five entries in a playlist, and you couldn't adjust the speed, or you could only do it for a few minutes at a time and everything.
Marco:
There were these limitations in the app that were...
Marco:
actively trying to make the app worse so that you would hit them and then you'd be encouraged to pay the money to unlock everything and so i decided that it would make most sense for if i was going to do anything special for patrons and first of all i should preface this with patrons wasn't going that well honestly like it was going well enough to sustain the basic cost of the app but it wasn't doing well enough for me to really want to justify putting tons of time into it
Marco:
It was doing okay.
Marco:
But I needed to do better than how it was doing.
Marco:
Otherwise, I'm going to have to move back to some other model, like whether it's paid up front or another in-app purchase, whatever.
Marco:
So patronage as it was going was not going well enough.
Marco:
So I had to change something.
Marco:
So I decided, let me give people some motivation to pay.
Marco:
But I didn't want to make the app suck for everyone else.
Marco:
so i decided to dark mode was i decided was interesting to make patron only because it's something that doesn't really if you don't have it it doesn't affect you at all really like it doesn't the absence of this feature does not make the app worse for everyone who doesn't have it it's not like some kind of limit that you hit where it makes it worse so i figured it would be a nice perk
Marco:
to give patrons, it's something that like, it kind of feels like a perk.
Marco:
It kind of feels like a special extra, you know?
Marco:
Because it isn't really like a substantial functional feature in the app.
Marco:
It's just like a theme.
Marco:
It's how it looks.
Marco:
And so you make a cool dark mode and it looks cool and everyone likes dark modes now.
Marco:
So it looks cool and I think it looks nice and it's something new and different and kind of exclusive because it's patron only.
Marco:
So I thought that was all fine.
Marco:
But I have now heard from, yeah, probably about 100 people
Marco:
who, who think differently.
Marco:
What do you guys think?
John:
It seems like, well, so for the patron thing, if someone pays and they get the dark theme, what is, does the dark theme go away if they stop paying?
John:
Yes.
John:
So that, I think that's the, the place where it doesn't seem like it fits, uh, because it seems more like an app purchase, basically.
John:
Like if you did it as an app purchase, uh,
John:
It would be like if you don't want dark theme before 2.5 came out, you didn't have dark theme anyway.
John:
You didn't even know dark theme existed.
John:
You were fine using overcast before.
John:
Now all of a sudden 2.5 comes out and you see the shiny dark theme that you want, but you don't want to pay for it.
John:
You just want to get it for free.
John:
Well, you know, if there's a thing that you like.
John:
how about you give me some money and i'll give you the dark theme but i think that most people's minds dark theme doesn't seem like a thing that you should have to keep paying for they don't you know for for whatever reason it seems like like like buying a downloadable content in a game you know you buy to get the fancy hat for your character you get the fancy hat you don't have to keep paying every year to keep your fancy hat
John:
I think it feels more like a one-time in-app purchase.
John:
And yeah, I think it's the perfect kind of in-app purchase or the perfect kind of monetary frill because it's like, like I said, people may be upset about it, but you're using 1.0 and 2.0 and they didn't have any dark theme.
John:
right you before 2.5 that you were fine with it but then suddenly when you know there's a dark theme and now you have to pay money to get it oh i want to get it i want to get it for free uh well so if you don't think it's worth the money don't pay for it right um and if you if you suddenly don't want to use the application like well then just go back in time and pretend 2.5 was never released and then use whatever calculus you were using before to make you pay for it were you just holding on waiting for a dark theme anyway
John:
um i i'm saying is i don't think it seems like a recurring thing and trying to bundle it all under the patron thing when you've only really got two things at this point for the patrons you've got the the uploads which like you said makes total sense like you are you're costing money therefore you must give money on a regular basis because you're storing files on the internet
Marco:
right well well it doesn't make total sense to everybody who's been angry at least half of them are demanding that too but that's that's that one easy for me to say i can't do that for everybody sorry i'm not going to do that you know that makes sense right i mean it's you know like it doesn't this is a money losing proposition there it's i will pay for storage and amazon s3 for you and you will give me nothing no it doesn't you know anyway
John:
um i think that makes more sense and if you have like 17 features that patrons got and one of them happened to be the bundled dark theme i think that would make sense too because the patron is like the different the different class of people like oh i pay a little bit extra there's an app that you can get and use for free and it does everything you want to do but i pay a little bit extra for this one feature that has an ongoing recurring cost because i'm storing bits on the internet and this other feature that's just a little perk i mean in the end it doesn't really matter like all these logical arguments of what should or shouldn't be all that matters is
John:
do people find that are people willing to pay for it i mean you'll find that out with the sales number if have you made an offering that is attractive enough for people to part ways with their money on a regular basis to get them you'll find out um but if if we had to try to like break it down i think that's the difference between
John:
the two of the things that you've offered that uh that one of them just doesn't seem like a recurring uh feature for a lot of people but for other people they're going to pay for the file uploads anyway and for them dark mode is just like a perk oh and great i get dark mode too they don't feel like they're paying x amount every month or year for dark mode they feel like they're paying for file uploads and getting dark mode as a perk so i think that the sales numbers will bear it out and
John:
if people are having arguments about it it's clear there are disagreements about what is worth spending this money on or not um so i don't i think it's perfectly valid experiment and i fully expect in six months or a year from now are you to try more experiments because that's just the way it goes casey what do you think
Casey:
I think that I didn't blink an eye over Dark Mode or File Uploads being a patron-only exclusive.
Casey:
I think having heard John's thoughts on it, I tend to agree with him that Dark Mode seems like maybe it should have been in an app purchase separate from the patronage.
Casey:
But then that gets into a whole new wiggly discussion about, well, do you really want to have...
Casey:
patronage and in-app purchases concurrently?
Marco:
And the answer is no, I really don't.
Marco:
There's so many reasons why I don't want to do that.
Casey:
Then I would say either you give dark mode out of the goodness of your heart and then potentially have some financial implications thereof, which I don't think is a terribly good option, or you deal with the people being grumpy.
Casey:
I do understand what John's saying and I mostly agree with him that, you know, it feels like the sort of thing that you should just pay for once and that's that.
Casey:
But on the other side of the coin, I mean, you need to be able to eat.
Casey:
And I would say that most of the people or I would think that most of the people that download this app
Casey:
I have enough of an understanding of kind of how the app store economy works, not necessarily to the level of those who listen to the show, but just a general understanding that, hey, the people who wrote this app or person that wrote this app needs to be able to eat.
Casey:
And so I need to be able to pay that person.
Casey:
And so I don't I don't find it troubling for either to be in the patronage model at all, really.
Casey:
But it's easy for me to say, because, you know, I'm obviously going to support you regardless because you're a close friend of mine.
Casey:
I definitely don't see a problem with the file uploads being in patronage at all, at all, at all.
Casey:
Because as John has said, and as you've said, you need to be able to recoup that money somehow.
Marco:
The way I look at the patronage model, really...
Marco:
is that i have i have i'm trying to find a way to be both both the cheapest and the most expensive podcast app in the store so i'm trying to find a way where this could be free for almost everybody you know and you know free up front if anybody wants to try it they can try for free because as i said you know on numerous other occasions one of my goals with this app is to get a lot of users to kind of help me defend the openness of podcasting with diversity of clients so
Marco:
It is very important for me that the apps stay free up front.
Marco:
And so the question is, where do I get the money?
Marco:
And I can do ads somehow, but I don't really want to.
Marco:
I've thought of ways I could do it tastefully.
Marco:
I still would rather not do that if I don't have to.
Marco:
So we'll see what happens there.
Marco:
Hopefully I won't need to do that.
Marco:
But I might.
Marco:
To me, I see this really as update pricing or upgrade pricing, like kind of baked in.
Marco:
So if I didn't do this, I would have to do some kind of upgrade pricing model.
Marco:
So I would have to then hold back features for longer and make these bigger... I probably wouldn't have released 2.5 right now.
Marco:
I probably would have waited a few more months and done a big 3.0 update in the summer or something.
Marco:
And then charged a whole separate purchase.
Marco:
Like, had it be, all right, you know what, your 1.x and 2.x purchases don't count for anything now.
Marco:
Now, you know, brand new purchase for the 3.0 premium features.
Marco:
And that also sucks in a lot of different ways.
Marco:
And I think that would anger people more.
Marco:
So the question is, I want to get somehow I want to get some kind of recurring revenue.
Marco:
And I think the software industry kind of bears that out now of seeing like, you know, for an app to be sustainable, it needs something like that.
Marco:
You know, it doesn't necessarily need to be done in one particular way, but somehow you need recurring revenue to come in.
Marco:
You know, like with Instapaper, I didn't have that for a long time.
Marco:
Instapaper, it was just five bucks up front and that was it.
Marco:
And that worked for a long time.
Marco:
Because the growth was so good.
Marco:
With Overcast, the growth isn't that good.
Marco:
It grows, but it's not growing at the kind of rate that Instapaper was.
Marco:
Just because Instapaper had a really great growth curve.
Marco:
It was really early in the app store.
Marco:
It was in the right place at the right time, basically.
Marco:
And I think that was a wider audience.
Marco:
Whereas now, with Overcast, the built-in podcast app is so popular.
Marco:
And even though it's fairly mediocre, it's popular enough that it's hard for people to make a dent in that.
Marco:
So I need some way to... I can't rely on just growth for revenue purposes.
Marco:
I have to rely on some kind of recurring revenue.
Marco:
So in the App Store, my options are sell coins and BS, but some kind of consumable... They call it some kind of consumable in-app purchase.
Marco:
I don't think that necessarily fits in a podcast client.
Marco:
I don't see how that fits in a way that doesn't just piss people off.
Marco:
So that's option number one.
Marco:
Not a very good option.
Marco:
Option number two would be what I mentioned, kind of like the upgrade pricing, kind of straightforward way to do it, which is either make a whole separate app every year and have it be paid up front, maybe, or have it be free in a purchase to unlock the way I did 1.0.
Marco:
Then I have a whole new app every year.
Marco:
And that has so many problems with people getting really angry if they bought it right before you updated it.
Marco:
And again, you have to batch your major updates together and hold back features for six months waiting for the big update and everything.
Marco:
And that sucks too.
Marco:
Or you do what I'm doing now, which is some kind of subscription, some kind of recurring payment for something.
Marco:
So the way I'm doing it now is, you know, I started out, you're paying for nothing.
Marco:
Now you're paying for almost nothing.
Marco:
Except, you know, these two features you're kind of paying for.
Marco:
I think it's a pretty good happy medium where I'm basically charging you $12 a year if you want the full experience.
Marco:
But most people won't.
Marco:
And that's fine.
Marco:
So far, my subscription counts are up by some big percentage.
Marco:
I think like 30% in like two days.
Marco:
i mean it's it they they had a big jump and we'll see what happens um if they you know if they keep going up as more people get the update or try the update i'm not really promoting the update like like when you launch it after the update it doesn't pop up a box saying hey here's what's new just nothing happens like so you'd have to like go to the setting screen to even notice necessarily that it's been updated
Marco:
So this could be like a slow growth over time.
Marco:
But it does seem so far as though this one change of like giving you something that you kind of want for $12 a year, it does feel like that one change will be enough to push a lot more people into subscribing.
Marco:
And that will probably make the difference between being able to keep this model long term or not.
Marco:
Because if I didn't do this, as I said earlier, if I didn't add something compelling for patrons, and uploads aren't compelling enough because most people don't need that feature.
Marco:
Some people really like it, but most people don't need it.
Marco:
Whereas dark mode, that could appeal to any user.
Marco:
Not everybody cares that much, but it will appeal to lots of people.
Marco:
So if I didn't make a change like that, where you got something for that unlock that was really nice,
Marco:
but that didn't make the app super bad for everyone who didn't have it, then I wouldn't be able to continue this model.
Marco:
So, hey, we'll see what happens.
Marco:
John's probably right.
Marco:
I will probably change this in six months.
Marco:
But, you know, I'm hoping not to have to because if I can keep this, if this ends up working and being a great model for Overcast long-term...
Marco:
then I don't need to save up features for major releases anymore.
Marco:
I can release features whenever they're ready.
Marco:
That is so much better for me.
Marco:
It's better for users.
Marco:
It is just so much better to do things that way.
Marco:
And I don't have to deal with all this crazy, constantly changing purchase stuff to manage.
Marco:
And it's easier for the users.
Marco:
There's no issue of if you buy the day before I have a major new update, then you feel like a jerk from the day before.
Marco:
There's so many issues this avoids.
Marco:
And barring the absence of some kind of new app store monetization method where if Apple would offer some kind of easier paid upgrade system or something, then I might change my mind.
Marco:
But barring anything like that, which I don't foresee, this is probably a really great model as long as it works.
Marco:
That's a big question, but we'll see.
John:
So you're going to have to come up with new hats soon, though.
John:
Like, Dark Mode is your hat.
John:
Dark Mode is that, you know, the games learn that the thing that you can make people pay for are actually the things that are meaningless in the scope of the game, but give your character a funny hat or whatever.
John:
You know, like some cosmetic item that is desirable all out of proportion to the actual value.
John:
Because the number of people who legitimately need Dark Mode because...
John:
the white screen is too blinding and they like to use it mounted in their car or whatever like this everyone's got an excuse why they have they need a dark mode and they can't turn their screen down or whatever right but bottom line is people want dark mode because it looks nice um those are the perfect kind of usually you know in-app purchase types things i would love to know how many people signed up for patronage in 2.5
John:
because of one of the two new features which one was it like they had to weigh them like was like many people are just signing up just because they want to fund the app and have it be developed and blah blah the sort of high-minded ideal but other people like oh there's there's two new features file uploads in dark mode which one were they really wanting to get did they like them both equally or are they going mostly for dark mode and i i would think most of them were going for dark mode even though that is like the the less valuable practically speaking in terms of doesn't actually add any feature just makes the app look different um so if that ends up working
John:
next year you'll need something else of similar value for the people who paid for dark mode right to maybe they don't want to keep paying because they're bored with dark mode but what new hats do you have to give them for for your podcast application how about a uh podcast application construction kit like the calculator construction kit get to design your own application pick the font pick the color anyway um i'm sure you'll come up with something what i'm hoping is though as you go through these features you're saying like before you had
John:
these other features that were more important than file uploads but eventually you did those and so you got down to file uploads when are you gonna get how far down the list is my pet feature where whenever i add something to overcast i want it to be added to the one playlist i use all the time i hate adding it to overcast and realizing i didn't really add it overcast i added to a place where i'm never ever going to see it because i spent all my time in this one playlist and it's 7 000 taps to pull things from
John:
not in the playlist to be into the playlist when they're like individual episodes like if someone tweets oh this was a good podcast episode of a podcast that you probably don't want to subscribe to but just download this episode and before it was like oh well now i gotta subscribe and find the episode and then add it to my playlist but now with uploads i can just download the mp3 and upload it but i still have to go add it to my playlist i would love it if everything i added overcast always went into
Marco:
the playlist of my choice and i realize that's a super low priority feature but in theory eventually you'll get to it that that is exactly how overcast works for me because because my my like everything playlist is default inclusive yours is a whitelist based so right isn't that last time we talked about this but yeah
John:
yeah but that's what i want that's what i want i want it to be whitelist based because there are things there are things on the outside that are large volume things that i don't want cluttering up my it just it seems like it seems like a simple anyway eventually you'll be scraping the bottom of the barrel the features and you'll get to mine eventually
Marco:
it's just it's just one top menu when adding things overcast where should they be added by default i don't even want a million options like what priority or whatever just add to the bottom i don't care or the top whatever pick one oh boy well anyway maybe someday i'll have to go ad supported uh but if i did i would totally have mail route as a sponsor one of our sponsors this week on this show is mail route go to mail route.net slash atp
Marco:
mail route is amazing hosted spam and virus email filtering that's it they it's all they do they do email spam and virus filtering and they do an amazing job at it i've used it myself for i don't know six months a year a while now and it is shocking how little spam i get now and how few legitimate messages are caught in the spam filter
Marco:
It's really quite good.
Marco:
MailRot is great.
Marco:
Once again, mailrot.net slash ATP.
Marco:
So if you are in the corporate world, there's all these products that like filter email for you.
Marco:
And there's things like Postini, MXLogic, these things that have been discontinued.
Marco:
This whole industry in the corporate world is full of these like ghosts that have just been discontinued.
Marco:
And then you're kind of stranded.
Marco:
mail route is here they've been here for a long time they are here to stay this is all they do they do spam environment filtering there's no there's no hardware to buy this is a cloud service so what you do is you point your domain name at mail route and then you you point mail route to your server and they deliver filtered mail only filtered mail to your server
Marco:
So if you're a corporate person, this saves you tons of hassle because you don't have to deal with all those like hardware filtering gateway things.
Marco:
And also it saves tons of server load for you because you don't have your servers processing all the spam themselves.
Marco:
So big companies might be able to go from like 10 email servers down to two or something.
Marco:
It's crazy how much spam you have to process.
Marco:
And once you get rid of it, like your email servers are sitting there doing nothing.
Marco:
If you're an individual like me, then it's also really great because, you know, I don't run my own servers.
Marco:
I use Fastmail as my host.
Marco:
But this gives the world-class spam and virus filtering to any IMAP host.
Marco:
So if you have your own host like I do, your own domain name, you can, again, point the domain at mail route, point mail route to you, and then all of your spam just goes away.
Marco:
And there's lots of cool tools to help you manage this.
Marco:
They'll send you an email digest of things that were caught in the spam filter that they think might not be spam.
Marco:
They kind of need a threshold.
Marco:
And with one click, you can whitelist any of them that come through and have them be redelivered if they got anything wrong, although they usually don't, honestly.
Marco:
And it's a really great service.
Marco:
Check it out today.
Marco:
The team behind MailRite has been doing email protection since 1997.
Marco:
It's even older than I've been using cellular modems.
Marco:
It's a very, very long time.
Marco:
The interface has tons of admin tools.
Marco:
If you're a corporate person, if you need any kind of granular access tools or corporate-friendly things like that, they offer all that stuff.
Marco:
They even have price matching right now for any McAfee or MX Logic customers.
Marco:
Start today with a free 30-day trial of MailRoute.
Marco:
Go to mailroute.net slash ATP or email sales at mailroute.net.
Marco:
Listeners of this show, using our coupon code by going to mailroute.net slash ATP, will get 10% off
Marco:
for the lifetime of your account.
Marco:
So every time they bill you, you get 10% off if you sign up through our link, mailroute.net slash ATP.
Marco:
Thanks a lot to MailRoute for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
One quick question for you, Marco.
Casey:
I don't know very much at all about S3, but all of the uploaded files are in a bucket that you control slash own, right?
Casey:
Or maybe bucket isn't the right term.
Casey:
So have you looked into about how many files have been uploaded?
Casey:
Is it a gajillion?
Casey:
Is it just 10?
Casey:
Do you have any feeling for it?
Marco:
Honestly, I haven't looked since that day.
Marco:
Give me a second.
Marco:
Introduce the next topic.
Marco:
Can I do this?
Marco:
Can transmit count up for me?
Casey:
Well, while you think about that for a second, and you can interrupt with some real-time follow-up hopefully in a minute, it is probably worthwhile for us to talk about what's going on Monday.
Casey:
It is Monday, right?
Casey:
The big Apple event?
Marco:
Something like that, yeah.
Casey:
I think it's March 21st.
Casey:
So, yes, that's Monday.
Casey:
Apple is going to loop in the press on March 21st and talk about some new things.
Casey:
What do we think it's going to be?
Casey:
I presume it'll be some sort of new Macintosh hardware.
Casey:
It may be a new smaller iPhone, which I have extraordinarily conflicting thoughts about.
Casey:
John, what do you think?
John:
I haven't really been keeping up with the typical criminology of examining the invitation and seeing what it means.
John:
I mean, I did see it when it came out, and I thought briefly about the looping you in, and I saw a couple stories about, oh, it's going to be showing new colors of Milanese loops.
John:
I don't know.
John:
I mean, the titles always mean something.
John:
Sometimes it's something not exciting.
John:
But that's... It does say something about what they choose to emphasize.
John:
And it would be really weird to me, I think, to have this event where we assume there's going to be at the very least new laptops that Marco will talk about when he's done doing his research.
John:
It's just a spinner.
John:
I'm not counting it myself.
John:
But it would be really weird to me if they had this event...
John:
And introduce all the things that we think they're going to introduce, or at least some of them or whatever.
John:
But the Loop Us In thing ended up being about new Milanese loops, new colors.
John:
Like, I don't know.
John:
I just, it seems weird.
John:
So I'm hoping that's not what it is.
John:
But anyway, I've been treating this event kind of like The Force Awakens, where I'm not trying to read too many spoilers about it, because the past couple of events I haven't really been bowled over by.
John:
and uh i i want to be pleasantly surprised by something so you know it's just managing expectations like all right well if you if you feel like you're getting overhyped then just don't read as much hype and then whatever they announce you'll be more excited about can i spoil it for you uh i mean yeah so the laptops i'm probably not going to be excited about anyway well i was just going to tell you that they're probably not going to release the mac pro with the gaming video card that you want
John:
oh yeah no it's really thanks i kind of i kind of figured that one out um doesn't have to be gaming video card but they released a new mac pro period yeah i i'm assuming if that's going to come it would be wwc or later um i haven't even been keeping up to know if enough to know if this is the rumored event where they're going to do the uh the new ipad i assume that's going to be october still but like the new regular size ipad with the the stylus and everything that i might actually buy
John:
but if it did announce that because i've been out of the loop um i would be excited by it and i would probably buy one otherwise i guess i'll just look at the laptops from afar and we'll talk about whether we think they're good or bad laptops but uh marco can tell us about those now well first of all the the rumors are pretty strong that this is the event where the 9.7 inch new ipad will be released oh don't you just don't spoil it for me i could have been pleasantly surprised
Marco:
How do you not know that?
John:
I've been trying to stay away from the million sites that will tell me the list of things that are likely to appear.
Marco:
Okay, well, basically, everybody is reporting the same rumors, including ATP Tipster, reporting the same rumors that basically...
Marco:
This is that event, and we should probably expect that to happen almost certainly.
Marco:
I don't think anyone is even doubting any part of it anymore.
Marco:
But basically, that's going to happen in all likelihood.
Marco:
And it is a 9.7-inch iPad that's kind of like a mini iPad Pro.
Marco:
So it'll have a smart connector.
Marco:
It'll have those four-speaker arrangement.
Marco:
And it'll be nice and fast and use some variant of the A9X.
Marco:
Oh, and it supports the Pencil.
John:
I've been wondering how they're going to find space for the big speaker cavities.
Marco:
Do they just mean they'll have four speakers?
Marco:
The rumor is that it will have a similar four-speaker arrangement as the iPad Pro.
Marco:
I think they could plausibly do it.
Marco:
I mean, with the iPad, their main limitation is weight.
Marco:
It's not necessarily size.
Marco:
Weight is the big one.
Marco:
So, like...
John:
they they presumably like i don't think every inch of that case needs to be full of battery you know because i mean look at the ipad pro the ipad you know if you look at the ipad pro it's not but the case is so much bigger there is what i don't know they just make it thicker obviously but that's so counter to what they always do like all you got to do is make it a millimeter thicker and then suddenly you gain back all the area that you want for the or you could just make the cavity smaller anyway i'm sure they'll work it out i'm just curious about what it'll look like
Marco:
But a real-time follow-up, the total amount of data stored in Overcast upload so far is 189 gigs.
Marco:
So that's not bad for like three days after release.
Casey:
Wow, that is impressive.
Casey:
And do you have any feel for how many files that is?
Casey:
Just ballpark?
Marco:
This doesn't tell me that somehow.
Marco:
It tells me exactly how many bytes.
Marco:
Yeah, no, I'm not going to do that.
Marco:
Anyway, it doesn't matter.
Marco:
Yeah, a lot.
Marco:
188 gigs.
Marco:
I mean, I have a limit of 500 megs per file.
Marco:
Or maybe, no, I've raised it.
Marco:
It's a gig per file now.
Marco:
So, you know, it's got to be at least 188.
Probably more.
Marco:
Anyway, so I think this will be a major iPad update because, for one thing, I think bringing the pencil to the 10-inch line is a really big deal.
Marco:
And by all accounts, that's what they're going to do.
Marco:
That is going to be huge because for so many people, they really want the pencil, but the iPad Pro is just too big.
Marco:
Because the iPad Pro, you really have to be really into working on the iPad on a table or at a desk.
Marco:
You have to be really into that kind of setup, almost like a mini laptop, really.
Marco:
You have to be using it that way for that to be comfortable for a lot of people.
Marco:
the way most people use ipads kind of like in one arm like kind of sitting like on a couch something like the way most people use ipads i think uh that the ipad pro is is not great for that you can do it but it's really not great for that and in some cases maybe you can't do it uh so i think there's a lot of people who would like the features of the ipad pro but just want it to be smaller and you know just for physical dimension reasons
Marco:
uh so i think this will sell very well for an ipad i don't think it's going to revive the ipad and save it you know by itself it might be part of a combination of things that revive the ipad but i you know i don't think this alone will do it but i think it's going to be a really nice update and it's going to be a success i think um and if i use my ipad more than zero times ever i would totally get it because it looks like it's gonna be really good
Marco:
Unfortunately, maybe I might get it.
Marco:
I had an idea for an app that uses the pencil, but I'm probably not going to get to that idea anytime soon.
Marco:
I'll probably wait on that and probably not get this version.
Marco:
The only thing that would make me get this version, I think, is if I decided to move forward with that app and I would get it to test on, but it's probably not going to happen.
Casey:
I'm really hoping for, even though I am not at all in the market for a laptop, I am really hoping for the new MacBook Pros, or whatever else happens to be released, has the keyboard mechanism from the Magic Keyboard.
Casey:
If you happen to follow me on Twitter, I won't shut up about how much I love the Magic Keyboard, because guess what?
Casey:
I'm so amped for the thought of that keyboard being on a MacBook Pro, because...
Casey:
Now, typing on my basically brand new, as I sit here today, 15-inch MacBook Pro, the keys are just mushy by comparison to the Magic Keyboard.
Casey:
And I want the Magic Keyboard in a MacBook Pro, something fierce.
Marco:
Yeah, so I guess we'll talk about the MacBook Pro now.
Casey:
Was there anything else about the iPad?
Casey:
No.
Marco:
But there's also the iPhone and the watch bands.
Marco:
Anyway.
Marco:
We'll get there.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
So MacBook Pro.
Marco:
Intel released Skylake chips this past winter, like in CES or whatever timescale that was, or in that ballpark.
Marco:
Skylake is a big deal, basically.
Marco:
It's the new revision of the Intel CPUs that is dramatically less battery usage.
Marco:
um and a pretty decent performance increase as well so it ends up that if you you know by switching to sky lake if you keep the size of the thing the same you can get a nice long battery out of it if you if you just want to keep the battery life the same then you can shrink the size of the laptop you can make it thinner and lighter
Marco:
So what we've heard from ATP Tipster, quite a lot actually, but what we've heard is that this update or some update soon, like basically like these laptops exist.
Marco:
We don't know if they'll be released on Wednesday, but this update has happened internally and they're like done.
Marco:
They're ready to go.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
But with Intel, you never know whether they can get enough chips.
Marco:
Intel's a mess as a partner to depend on.
Marco:
Intel's been holding back Mac releases for years now.
Marco:
They just can't advance their own stuff.
Marco:
They can't get their process up.
Marco:
They can't get yields up, whatever else.
Marco:
But sometime very soon, and probably at this event, there's going to be a significant update to the MacBook Pro line.
Marco:
And also the MacBook One.
Marco:
So moving them all to Skylake, basically.
Marco:
And of course, what this allows them to do, as I said earlier, is you can either increase the battery life or you can make the thing thinner and lighter.
Marco:
So according to ATP Tipster, the MacBook One, the little skinny one port thing with the crappy keyboard, that is apparently getting Skylake, but with not really other meaningful changes.
Marco:
the usbc port it has will become a thunderbolt 3 usbc port i think but uh that will be a big deal because you know that enables faster things and better monitor and stuff like that but the main thing is with the macbook one it'll get a decent performance increase but again keep in mind you know if a lot of people are hoping for the macbook one to somehow reach the level of like last year's macbook pro or something it won't it can't the the thermal difference is there like
Marco:
this is a fanless computer made to dissipate like six watts of heat or whatever it's not it can't you can't put a cpu class uh that that's made for like a 25 watt enclosure it can't dissipate enough heat so the macbook one cpus are never going to be fast relative to the ones you can get by going a little bit larger with a fan like they're never going to be that fast and it's never even going to be close they just can't be by just thermals of cpu design but
Marco:
But it will be probably a good 10% to 25% faster than it is now, something like that, in that ballpark.
Marco:
And it's also going to probably have something like 10% to 30% better battery life, something like that.
Marco:
So it takes this computer that was pretty underpowered and had pretty mediocre battery life, and it makes those things better.
Marco:
Not 100% better, but decently better.
Marco:
So the MacBook 1 will get a little better.
Marco:
I would also speculate, I haven't heard anything about this yet, but I would also speculate on the invitation to the event, the invitation Apple sent out, I know we don't want to look too much into it.
Marco:
However, it is pretty obvious on the invitation that they have clearly featured the colors of the medals they've been offering on the iPhone.
Marco:
They have the space gray, the rose gold, the gold and the aluminum.
Marco:
They have all those colors like kind of forming the logo on the invitation.
Marco:
So I have to imagine this indicates that they're going to offer these colors on the new laptops.
Marco:
Notably, they don't currently offer the pink, or excuse me, rose gold.
Marco:
They don't offer rose gold MacBook 1s yet.
Marco:
And they don't offer any colors on the MacBook Pros yet.
Marco:
It would be cool if they offered all four colors on all the MacBook Pros.
Marco:
And according to ATP Tifter, that might be the case.
Marco:
So I'm looking forward if they do that.
Marco:
I would love to have those color options or more color options, but I would love to at least start with those.
Marco:
It'd be great to just have something different from the plain aluminum that we've seen for God knows how long, right?
Casey:
Oh, totally.
Casey:
I bought my first Mac when the polycarbonate MacBook was a thing.
Casey:
And I remember wanting the, what people called the black book, which is basically a black plastic MacBook.
Casey:
I wanted that thing so badly, probably because I came from ThinkPads that were all black.
Casey:
But to this day, I still think it looks really, really, really good.
Casey:
And I wanted it so bad, but it was like $150 or something like that.
Casey:
The only difference was the case.
Marco:
and they collected fingerprints like crazy like that was that i did not know neither yeah i we had a couple of them in the tumblr office a few people had them i got to see them like during that time and they never look good in person because like and neither you know the white ones would have the discoloring palm rests uh and it wasn't actually from your hands necessarily they would actually the plastic would discolor with heat
Marco:
and it would also discolor if you had your hands all over it and they were dirty but like like i got my top case replaced uh in the middle of having my white macbook with the replacement i put a little like one of those little like stick-on protectors on it like a clear stick-on protector on it so my hands never actually rested on it and it's still discolored and yeah it turns out like that you know as we learned with the white iphone being delayed for like almost a year remember that as we learned making white plastic that ages well and stands up to heat is really hard and
Marco:
And they just didn't do it right or they hadn't figured it out yet.
Marco:
So yeah, the black one had a different finish.
Marco:
The white one had like a glossy, smooth finish.
Marco:
The black one was like this weird matte, almost rubbery finish.
Marco:
And it just showed the slightest hint of finger oil just from like picking it up.
Marco:
You'd have these giant oily fingerprints visible on the case.
Marco:
It was really not good.
Marco:
It was unfortunate because like when it was perfectly immaculate, it did look really nice.
Marco:
But that lasted like a day.
Marco:
And then that was it.
John:
the aluminum ones had the same problem back in the day like i have one of the later non-unibody before any unibody uh apple portables came out aluminum and that aluminum would get these weird smudges like they didn't wipe off it would end up like discoloring the aluminum from oils on your fingers or from just kids grossness like you couldn't wash it off and it was
John:
it was not great and the new ones like on the macbook air i know because my kids grimy hands are all over these things and now the kids have graduated up to or the computers have graduated down to the kids like then now they're using old macbook air and it just even though it's the same color it's the same boring silver that it's always been it stands up better to finger grease and grime and i think the the current crop of uh like the what is it the space gray or whatever the darker color one
John:
uh that one seems like it should hold up even better i think i think they finally figured out how to make a surface aluminum surface that's durable and doesn't discolor and then different colors of it like the gold and the space gray only improve that because the hardest one to get is the one that's like the lightest or the closest to white which is the the plain old silver so even if i hadn't seen rumors about this which i had i would have fully expected just because because the macbook one is available in those colors they'll all be available in those colors because it's all just aluminum and
John:
they're making a million things anodized in different ways.
John:
And I think they've really got the, uh, the anodizing and the surface treatment of this aluminum down at this point that they totally should do that.
John:
And I don't know if they're going to charge more for them.
John:
They didn't with the Mac book, uh, one and, and, uh, unlike the black book, which was whatever, you know, like you said, $150.
John:
Um, it's just a way to make them more attractive machines.
John:
And if they have a pink one, uh,
John:
uh that will definitely help because that like that's the first sort of non-boring color there's the other ones like all right well there are shades of gray and a gold that barely looks gold like i would like a red one a blue one a yellow one you know we used to have multi-color imax and they were fun and we loved them
John:
Now, you know, we're still, we're kind of timidly dipping our toe into colors that are not just different shades of silver or brown.
Marco:
And also, you know, just like the actual design of the MacBooks has changed so little, you know, in the last 10 years.
Marco:
It really, like, going through the unibody transition and then going from unibody to retina, it still just kind of looks like the same laptop, just, you know, thinner.
Marco:
It still looks very similar, and I think they look good.
Marco:
I think the current design does look good, but it's pretty boring by now.
Marco:
It's everywhere, and as Apple has gotten more popular, this issue's even gotten worse, because I kind of feel like I want some room for individuality, and I know I'm not going to get a huge amount of that, especially if I buy a Space Gray one and show up to an Apple conference.
Marco:
I know I'm not going to get that much individuality there, but...
Marco:
uh i would like just something to push us a little in that direction you know anyway uh if atp tipster is right there's also substantial updates to the macbook pro and this to me is more interesting because the macbook one we've already seen i've already decided it's not for me a lot of people decided that or that it is for them and the update to the macbook one is probably going to be a fairly minor one whereas the update to the macbook pro is is if he's right uh rumored to be substantial um and this is going to be a you know a significant design update
Marco:
Because Skylake has enabled the laptop to become thinner and lighter because, you know, they're going to shave off the, quote, excess battery.
Marco:
I love the content of that.
Marco:
But, you know, I'm pretty sure that's how they look at it.
Marco:
And, you know, you could argue whether it is or is excess.
Marco:
I'm sure I will argue that eventually again.
Marco:
But I expect, based on the information here, I expect that the new MacBook Pro will look like the MacBook One.
Marco:
Just, you know, not that small, obviously, but it has similar styling.
Marco:
So also offered in the colored metals, a thinner design, probably not tapered, but a thinner design using Skylake chips.
Marco:
I would expect roughly the 13-inch MacBook Pro to be effectively a replacement for the 13-inch Air at this point, you know?
Marco:
When they introduced the MacBook One, fans of the Air were very disappointed because it seemed as though they were probably not going to ever touch the Air again, and that the long-wished-for Retina Air was probably not going to happen, that the MacBook One is the Retina Air.
Marco:
And that seems, you know, so far that seems to probably be correct.
Marco:
But the new MacBook Pro, the 13-inch, if you shave off, you know, 20% of the weight of a 13-inch or whatever, or, you know, if you shave off a significant chunk of that weight and make it a little bit thinner, then the 13-inch MacBook Pro is very close to the size and weight of a 13-inch Air.
Marco:
And it's Retina.
Marco:
And it's newer and more modern.
Marco:
And so, you know, supposedly, that sounds really good.
Marco:
Like, if that's all true...
Marco:
And the rumor is also that it retains the same ports.
Marco:
It's not going to lose tons of ports.
Marco:
It's going to retain the ports and just trade in the Thunderbolts for new USB-C Thunderbolt 3 ports.
Marco:
And if that's true, that's great.
Marco:
That sounds like a great laptop.
Marco:
The 15 or the 13, they're both going to be like that.
Marco:
I would love either of those, honestly.
Marco:
The 13 would be a fantastic replacement for the MacBook Air, at least the 13-inch version of the MacBook Air.
Marco:
11-inch Air fans, I'm sorry, you're screwed.
Marco:
You got to deal with the MacBook One.
Marco:
But if you're a fan of the 13-inch Air, I think the 13-inch Pro, then if this is all true, that will be awesome.
Marco:
That'll be a fantastic all-around laptop.
Marco:
It'll be thin and light and powerful, and we'll have a retina screen and tons of ports for usefulness.
Marco:
That sounds great.
Marco:
The 15 inch will also become even more compelling.
Marco:
You know, if this all works out, then the 15 inch, you know, kind of like drops itself by like half a weight class, basically.
Marco:
So it becomes even thinner and lighter.
Marco:
And, you know, and it's already, you know, the current 15 is already pretty good for a 15 inch.
Marco:
This becomes even thinner and lighter.
Marco:
I really hope this is all true.
Marco:
I would love to see this come out next week.
Marco:
If not, we'll probably have it at WVDC maybe or sometime between now and then.
Marco:
But if you look at what's in this event, you have the new iPad and then you have what we haven't talked about yet, which is the new 4-inch iPhone.
Marco:
Those are both kind of like mid-grade to low-end products.
Marco:
Oh, and also new watch bands.
Marco:
And possibly a minor update to the watch, but probably not even that.
Marco:
You kind of have all these low-end, low-profile products.
Marco:
I'm hoping the MacBooks are what makes the event kind of complete then.
Marco:
The MacBooks and the MacBook Pros would be like, it isn't just all boring low-end stuff.
Marco:
It's also, hey, here's some new stuff for the laptops that you're all using.
Marco:
Here's significant new versions of these laptops.
Marco:
I hope that's what's going on here.
Marco:
Now,
Marco:
about that 4-inch iPhone.
Marco:
What do you guys think about that?
Marco:
John, you used a 4-inch device for so long.
Marco:
Would you get a 4-inch iPhone?
John:
I can't go back now, I think.
John:
I've been thinking about it, and we have enough little iPod Touches around the house.
John:
In some ways, I miss the portability, but I'm just so used to the big screen now.
John:
I don't think I can go back.
John:
The iPhone 6 does still feel a little bit unwieldy in my pocket, but if I went to a store and my two years was up and I needed a new phone...
John:
i think i'd pick the six size so i'm i am a convert but i would assume that they are going to offer the smaller phone and that the smaller phone will be cheaper in keeping with the trend that the plus is more expensive than the six the smaller phone will be less expensive than the six size devices probably out of proportion to the cost savings that they get from using a smaller screen right because they do get some cost savings from using a smaller screen
John:
um and a smaller battery and like all that stuff does cost less um but not you know not that much less i think i think that this will be the the lowest end of the current generation of iphones which is kind of a shame for the people who are hoping for uh the best that apple could pack into a small package but i think they're going to be disappointed
Casey:
Yeah, I don't know.
Casey:
It's funny because I definitely wanted all the new insides when I got the 6 last, or I guess two years ago now.
Casey:
But I really didn't want a bigger phone.
Casey:
And to this day, the phone doesn't feel bad in my hand, but we use a 5S as like a noisemaker when Declan is sleeping.
Casey:
So I handle a 5S at least once a day.
Casey:
And, oh, man, does that feel so much better in my hand.
Casey:
It feels perfect in my hand.
Casey:
It really does.
Casey:
And I think that's 95% size and a little bit the edges, but mostly it's the size.
Casey:
The problem, though, is that I don't know if I can go back from a phone that's got this much screen real estate.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And so I think like John, I probably am a permanent convert.
Casey:
I mean, I'm not a maniac.
Casey:
I'm not going to go plus club, but I think I'm a permanent convert in the six size category.
Casey:
But gosh, I'm going to have a real crisis of decision making when they show us something that looks really pretty, but is the same size as a 5S.
Marco:
I have high hopes for this phone, even though I don't plan to get one.
Marco:
I'm glad that it's even rumored, that it looks like it's very likely to happen.
Marco:
I'm glad that they care about the 4-inch size.
Marco:
The iPhone 6 and 6 Plus sizes are good for a lot of people, but not everyone.
Marco:
And to totally abandon the 4-inch line, I think, would have been a mistake and would have really made life a little less convenient for a lot of people.
Marco:
So I'm really glad they're doing this.
Marco:
I'm very happy that we're going to have these options in the lineup again for people who do want them.
Marco:
And I'm glad that the option isn't just going to be like, oh, you can choose either a new giant phone or an old piece of crap.
Marco:
Because it seems like the gap between... If the rumored specs are correct, it's going to basically be a mini 6S with maybe a little bit lower clock speed for thermal reasons.
Marco:
But it seems like it's going to have current generation hardware for the most part.
Marco:
We'll see.
Marco:
I don't think we know really what the camera is going to be yet.
Marco:
It probably won't be as good as the 6 just for...
Marco:
size or cost reasons but it's probably going to be close you know and and so i think it's going to be a really nice product for a lot of people and i'm glad apple's going to have it in line up i i do think you know john you know you kind of you talked about this a little bit i do think um it is kind of unfortunate that apple charges by size so by pricing they are going to have to make this like the lowest spec'd phone in addition to the you know the kind of smallest one in the
Marco:
It does kind of suck that people who get the small phone are probably never going to have the best hardware, but it'll be better than using two-year-old, three-year-old hardware.
Marco:
Overall, pretty good.
Marco:
I'm looking forward to it.
Marco:
Design-wise, I'm totally with you guys.
Marco:
I really don't care for the 6 physical design at all.
Marco:
I think... And the 6S made it slightly better by making the finish on the case slightly less slippery, but not enough.
Marco:
I really do not like the little slippery bar of soap design.
Marco:
I don't like that I have to use a case now.
Marco:
I use Apple's leather case now just to give it grip.
Marco:
I don't like cases.
Marco:
I don't like having all the dust collect around the edge.
Marco:
I don't like the extra bulk that they add.
Marco:
I don't like spending another $40 every time I buy a new phone.
Marco:
It's just like...
Marco:
Cases are a really inelegant solution.
Marco:
And I know lots of people use them, and that's fine.
Marco:
But surely it's better if you design a phone that doesn't need a case for so many people.
Marco:
Some people are going to use a case regardless.
Marco:
A lot of people are going to use a case regardless.
Marco:
I didn't use a case for any of my phones before this, and it was fine.
Marco:
And the 6 and the 6S, I need a case to hold them securely.
Marco:
And that kind of sucks.
Marco:
I'm hoping with the iPhone 7 design this fall, I'm hoping...
Marco:
that it improves the real world holdability somehow.
Marco:
I'm honestly not that hopeful that it will.
Marco:
I'm not as down on the sixth shape.
John:
In fact, I kind of wish I could use it without a case because it's so nice to have the curved glass and the case messes that up for edge swipes and stuff like that.
John:
But on the other hand, I really like my leather case.
John:
I like the fact that it is protected by this thin layer of stuff that can get nicked up and that I can replace it and that it's grippy because the leather is way more grippy than anything aluminum is ever going to be.
John:
um and i like that that's why i would use silicone cases for such a long time i like the grippiness um but if a seven is like this like because i'll be getting a seven you know my six will well my two years with my six will be up um and i'll end up getting a seven and if it's more or less like the six but uh improved insides um i'm fine with it so important question to go back to the four inch phone does it or does it not have a camera bulge i'm gonna think no right it's kind of you gotta not have one
Marco:
It depends.
Marco:
The reason I bring up the 7 also now is we have this release that's literally halfway between the 6S and the 7 design releases.
Marco:
This phone, obviously, they're going to want it to be in the lineup for a while.
Marco:
They're not going to make it look outdated in six months, ideally.
Marco:
I'm guessing, you figure, will the design of the new 4-inch phone more closely resemble the 6S or the 7?
John:
and or the 5s yeah that was that was one of the early rumors i don't i don't see that well because the 5s didn't have 5s didn't have a bulge so that's what makes me think that if they're making a new four inch phone like the only reason you need the bulge is like we we need to have the best camera and the best camera is just too big to fit if it's too big to fit they just won't give you the best camera and they're gonna have a non-bulging camera on the 7 it seems like so they could even put that in there they want to have the good camera just seems like their their non-bulge options are so many and
John:
including actually making including actually making the thing a little bit thicker because hey this isn't the fanciest one it's a little bit thicker it could still be thinner than the 5s and still not have a bulge i think i feel like the bulge days for this class are probably over and the only reason the ipod touch still has it is because no one cares about the ipod touch and because the ipod touch is insanely thin
Marco:
Yeah, I hope it doesn't have a bulge.
Marco:
But yeah, so anyway, I'm really curious to see, will the design of the new 4-inch phone give us any hints towards the design of the 7, basically?
Marco:
Will it indicate where they're going?
Marco:
Or is it just going to look old?
Marco:
The 6 design, I think, is ugly, certainly.
Marco:
I think it has very little personality.
Marco:
If you look at...
Marco:
Almost every previous iPhone except maybe the 3G.
Marco:
If you look at all the other ones, I think they have a more distinct look.
Marco:
If you look at the 6, I think it looks like every Android phone.
Marco:
And part of that is because Android has been copying Apple like crazy.
Marco:
But part of that is also just like there's less about the 6s.
Marco:
that is visually distinctive.
Marco:
Whereas the 5 and the 5S, these were these beautiful, pretty unique-looking objects.
Marco:
And the 4 before that, again, this really unique, double-glass kind of thing, these were really distinctive-looking objects.
Marco:
The 6 just isn't distinctive.
Marco:
It just looks like a blob, and it feels like a blob.
Marco:
And the back, I think, is ugly.
John:
I like the 6 look better than the 5.
John:
I never liked the 5 design.
John:
It just seemed like a boring tub of aluminum, chamfered edge, which is not enough to redeem it for me, just aesthetically.
John:
And I think the 6 was not the first phone to use curved glass at the edge.
John:
Many other phones, including Android phones, did that first, so
John:
But I think Apple was wise to pick that up.
John:
The reason I think the 6 looks better is because I like that.
John:
I like both the appearance and the feel of the glass curving into the rest of the case.
John:
And the back of it doesn't look that impressive, but I don't think it has to.
John:
I think it's pleasingly smooth.
John:
I think they did an admirable job of...
John:
blending in those weird uh antenna lines like that that looks expensive and fancy to me even if it aesthetically doesn't look particularly nice if this if this case is to be believed they've changed that antenna line to look a little bit more swoopy and a little bit less utilitarian but we don't know what the front of it looks like i assume it looks the same but i think you can change the look of the front by
John:
I mean, adjusting chin sizes or, you know, you could do much more interesting things with the front of the iPhone than they're currently doing now.
John:
And the back of it, they're anodizing in various colors, all of which are very subtle.
John:
I would say the same thing.
John:
I mean, I've been saying this for years that, you know, and I like the 5C.
John:
I like the fact that they offered it in a bunch of rainbow colors.
John:
why can't you do that for the expensive phones why do you have to choose between the fastest insides or the fun colors there you know we all know one or two people who ended up getting a 5c at least partially because it's a more fun color and sometimes they would sacrifice they would say well i know it's not as fast and i would really like the faster one but i really want to have a yellow phone because it looks cool
John:
like the f5c was its own case and i thought that was interesting and fun and the the top end phones still don't do that so i think there's plenty of room to visually differentiate but if this one just ends up being a nicer six i will be fine with that and i think the market will be fine with it too
Casey:
Yeah, I feel like I'm between you guys in that I definitely think that the 5 looked great and is probably my favorite of all the iPhone designs.
Casey:
But the 6 looks really good.
Casey:
And I made the tragic mistake of taking my 6S out of my case as you guys were talking, and now I'm holding it naked in my hands.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Don't spill water on it.
Casey:
I will attempt not to.
Casey:
Um, this phone does, I mean, I like the leather case a lot.
Casey:
I've had Apple leather cases since I can remember pretty much since they were offered, but this phone without a case on it does feel really good in the hand.
Casey:
It,
Casey:
in that it's both more and less comfortable, right?
Casey:
Because it's more comfortable in that the edges are a little easier on the hand, but it's less comfortable in that it's bigger.
Casey:
In fact, it's a little too big if I'm trying to reach with my right hand from the bottom right where my thumb is all the way up to the upper left.
Casey:
And I don't even remember what it's called, the little mode where everything kind of drops down a little bit where you double... Reachability.
Casey:
Yes, that's right, that's right.
Casey:
That is just such a hack.
Casey:
But, I don't know, it's tough because I both love and wish for less in the 6, but I don't think I could go back to a smaller screen.
Casey:
I really don't.
Marco:
Yeah, I don't think I could either.
Marco:
I mean, it's like when you move up monitor sizes on your computer.
Marco:
It's really hard to ever move down.
Marco:
I think the same thing with the phone, if not even more so, because it's just how often you use a phone.
Marco:
I think once you move up to a big screen size, I think moving back down would,
Marco:
You could probably get used to it after like a week, but during that week, you'd be regretting every single minute getting that phone.
Marco:
And you might return it or, you know, yeah, I don't know.
Marco:
I think moving back would be difficult, but not impossible.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
But, yeah, I don't know.
Marco:
I mean, the fact is, like, I'm actually thinking about getting the Plus in the next generation.
Casey:
You're an animal.
Marco:
Because, as I said, Mike might have been right.
Marco:
This is how we're going to get you into an iPad.
John:
Your phone is just going to keep getting bigger and bigger until you realize you're holding a 15-inch iPad Pro and you're like...
John:
Boy, this phone seems really big.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Well, let me explain my possible plus left in a minute.
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:
You know, try to, you know, do all this stuff.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
If you want, you can do all sorts of other restore methods as well.
Marco:
You know, if you need to restore one or two files, yeah, just do web restore.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
So 7 Plus or Pro, whatever.
Marco:
The rumors keep swirling that it might be called iPhone Pro or there might be another model called iPhone Pro.
Marco:
What's pro about it, though?
Marco:
I guess the camera's better.
Marco:
But other than that... And it's big.
Marco:
I guess with the iPad, they're going to confuse what that means.
Marco:
But the reason I'm tempted to do this... And we'll see what... I mean, obviously, we don't know anything about this product yet, except that it probably will exist and that it might contain a cool dual camera system that the smaller phone won't have.
Marco:
If that's all true, and if it doesn't really suck for some other way, some other reason...
Marco:
I'm tempted to get it because, A, I don't use an iPad.
Marco:
B, I use my phone for so much.
Marco:
My phone is really my main computer for so much of the day, for so many parts of my life, while I'm traveling, while I'm just running errands around town, while I'm just in different parts of my house and not in my office.
Marco:
My phone is my computer for so much of every day.
Marco:
I do so much on my phone.
Marco:
And there are often times when I wish for a little more screen space.
Marco:
There are frequently times when I wish for more battery life.
Marco:
And there are frequently times where I wish I could type a little bit more accurately.
Marco:
And I've found in my brief times using a 6 Plus, like on a couple of trips I've taken it on, I have found that I can type more accurately because the keys are larger on that phone.
Marco:
It seems like my iPhone typing scales up in accuracy with size.
Marco:
I tried using a 5S the other day for testing for when I was doing overcast testing.
Marco:
And I was a mess on that keyboard.
Marco:
I don't know how I ever typed on those keyboards before.
Marco:
And on the 6, I'm okay.
Marco:
But on the 6 Plus, I'm way more accurate.
Marco:
So I think it just kind of fits the way I thumb type better.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
I think I could actually do a lot more while I'm away from my computer if I use the plus-size phone instead of the regular-size phone.
Marco:
Plus, when I have used it, I've been very happy with those benefits.
Marco:
My only reservations are that also when I've used it, I've been really turned off by how big it is in my pocket.
Marco:
So that's something I would have to consider.
Marco:
But I don't know.
Marco:
You guys sound like you're pretty set on not going the plus-size.
Casey:
Wait, wait, can we just back up?
Casey:
So you're saying that you really, really, really love the feel of a four-inch phone, but you're probably going to get the 17-inch phone for your next phone.
John:
It just needs to have all three, and so depending on his mood at the moment...
John:
He just needs to get those, you know, those tactical pants with the really big pockets in them so he can have all three.
John:
And depending on do I feel like typing more efficiently?
John:
Do I want to have a little worry stone that I rub in my hand?
John:
I'll pull out the four inch phone.
John:
Do I want to have the in-between size?
John:
That's the only solution for you, apparently.
Casey:
Oh, my goodness.
Casey:
I do not want to hear Mike's feedback for this episode.
Casey:
I'm already dreading it.
John:
What would you think if the 7 Plus had a smart connector on?
John:
I don't buy that for a second.
John:
I'm not saying that I think that's going to happen, but what would you think of that product?
John:
Is that product...
Marco:
more valuable to you less valuable to you or the same and you think it's just silly well look at what the smart connector does so far so the the rumor of the new ipad is that it will also you know the the new the new 10 inch ipad will allegedly have pencil support ipad pro class cpu although probably not quite as high clocked uh and smart connector for the currently the only things that can use the smart connector are smart keyboards from apple and logitech and four gigs of ram please four gigs yeah hopefully yeah
Marco:
We still don't know what the smart connector will be for on the 10-inch iPad.
Marco:
We can assume it will probably be for a smart keyboard.
Marco:
But part of the benefit of the smart keyboard, I'd say probably the biggest benefit of it, is that it functions as a regular iPad cover.
Marco:
A bigger, bulkier one, but still a regular iPad cover.
Marco:
So that it has to actually remain the same size as the iPad for it to keep that benefit.
Marco:
So I'm assuming there would also be a second version of the Apple Smart Keyboard that would be smaller and would fit that size.
Marco:
And that makes sense.
Marco:
I mean, have you guys ever used an iPad keyboard cover for the 10-inch iPad from Logitech and stuff?
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
I don't think I have, no.
Marco:
They're pretty good.
Marco:
I mean, like, you know, they're cramped, but they're usable.
John:
They're not good to type on.
John:
They're good in that when you close them, they're the same size as your iPod, but as soon as you open it up, they're a terrible keyboard.
Marco:
No, I would say they're okay.
Marco:
I mean, you know, as much as you can make a usable keyboard that's only, you know, 9 inches or whatever wide, they're not bad.
Marco:
So it's possible to make one that's usable.
Marco:
However, it's not possible, in my opinion, to make one that's usable for the iPad Mini.
Marco:
They've tried.
Marco:
Companies have tried.
Marco:
If you're an elf, you can use it.
Marco:
The ones for the Mini are really, I think, that has crossed a threshold where it's just not possible to comfortably touch type on something that size.
Marco:
I think obviously there is like a limitation here of like how small can you make a keyboard cover that is the same size as the device that it's covering and have it still be a usable physical keyboard.
John:
I don't accept that limitation, though, which is why I brought it up for the 7 Plus.
John:
Because obviously in the 7 Plus, the smart connector, the hypothetical smart connector on the side, thought exercise, wouldn't be for a keyboard that's the same size as the 7 Plus.
John:
you would have to break out of that and be more like the old palm things where you have this little tiny screen but say you're on a plane and you have stashed in your backpack a full-size keyboard with a smart connector like it unfolds yeah and then you'd be like oh i i have to do some serious emailing here i don't want to thumb type it even on my seven plus turn it sideways smart connector shove it into the little keyboard put it on your table and then the keyboard goes away like that the keyboard
John:
you don't no longer have to tie the keyboard to the size of the device then that would let you sort of you know what would be your sort of on your road thing i don't need to bring my macbook one all i got to bring is my iphone 7 plus and my folded up smart connector keyboard slash stand for the 7 plus if i need to do serious typing
Casey:
Well, you could also do that with a Bluetooth keyboard, though.
John:
Yeah, no, I know.
John:
But the smart connector is likely you don't have to have an extra battery that you have to do.
John:
And it could be thinner.
John:
It could be powered from the phone in the 7 Plus, which you're hoping has enough to power the light demands of a keyboard.
John:
And it can be magnetic.
John:
And it can fold up and be the cloth thing.
John:
And you don't have to deal with Bluetooth, because in my experience, the tenuous connection between any device and its Bluetooth accessories is not a fun thing to have to manage.
John:
i never have problems with my keyboard and mouse but i mean teach their own it's not it's not the keyboard and mouse that like you have right in front of your computer it's like my experiences are all wwc because it's the only time i ever do use any bluetooth accessories the constantly my ipad losing the bluetooth connection to the keyboard and my ipad losing the tethering connection to my phone
Marco:
The other problem with a smart keyboard also is that the smart keyboard, at least as we know it so far, the smart connected devices are powered by the host iOS device.
Marco:
In theory, this smart connector on an iPhone would have to use the iPhone's battery to power the keyboard.
Marco:
Now, keyboards, any kind of wireless or otherwise keyboard, they use very little power.
Marco:
They really don't take much.
Marco:
But do you really want something else draining power from the phone?
Marco:
Like yet another thing draining
Marco:
power from the phone i'm just assuming the keyboard is the the power demands are so incredibly light like that you wouldn't even care that it would be like it would be less power than turning bluetooth on it might be i don't know but you know that's it's yet one more thing to consider so basically you know we know apple will say no to a lot of things that they just think would be clunky or or would not have enough sat or whatever but
Marco:
I don't see them doing this.
Marco:
I just don't see them thinking that enough people want to use external keyboards on their iPhones that it would be worth making this.
John:
I mean, does anybody... Well, the phone was just a mental exercise, but the more concrete one is the 9.7-inch iPad, which we all think is going to have a smart connector.
John:
And now I'm saying...
John:
what have you had a 9.7 inch ipad do you have to have a keyboard that is the size of the 9.7 or can you actually use a larger full-size keyboard with that why would you not want to use it like do you have to does it have to be a keyboard slash also the thing that covers up my ipad why can't those p two distinct things or why can't you have one without the other because that size i think it starts to make more sense the phone is the more extreme example and because you know i'm thinking of uh
John:
these phones getting bigger and more powerful and you graduating up to them, moving your way up to the iPad.
John:
So the phone is just to sort of ring out whether this is a product that might be useful, but we, you know, not that we know, but we're pretty sure there's going to be a smart connector there.
John:
And I've used those small keyboards and I don't think they're great.
John:
And once you have the smart connector on that one,
John:
I feel like, you know, if I was, again, trying to assemble a WWDC bag and I wasn't allowed to use an Apple laptop for some reason, I would choose a smart connector keyboard and a 9.7 inch.
John:
iPad Pro over a Bluetooth keyboard and that same thing.
Marco:
Oh, I would too, certainly.
Marco:
But we'll see what options we're going to be having.
Marco:
But I suspect that if they do this, if there is new iPad and if it has a smart connector and if they release an appropriately sized version of the smart keyboard to plug into it,
Marco:
it's probably going to be decent you know it's probably not going to be like an amazing keyboard i mean the current smart keyboard isn't an amazing keyboard it's it's okay you know most people who use it say it's roughly similar if not slightly better than the macbook one keyboard and yeah if i was like the reason i have tried ipad keyboard case covers before is because that combo having an ipad on a keyboard cover is really nice on airplane tray tables it is awesome for that
Marco:
because it fits on any of them and if you don't already have a tiny laptop that can be your airplane laptop you know not not for doing tons of stuff if you don't usually if you're not usually accustomed to an ipad workflow but it can be pretty cool for for a flight you know uh so if they do this in a good way for the 10 inch ipad that's great that's they're gonna sell a good number of them probably i hope it'll be good again i probably won't have any reason to ever buy one myself but
Marco:
that's going to be really nice.
Marco:
So, you know, good on them.
Marco:
So I think if you look at this event, oh, we haven't talked about watch bands yet.
Marco:
Got to talk about watch bands.
Marco:
That's the last thing in the event, right?
Marco:
You're not even wearing your WAP watch anymore.
Marco:
What do you care, Mr. Mechanical Watch?
Marco:
It's over there on top of my thing on my desk.
Marco:
Next to Tiff's, who's also not wearing hers anymore.
Casey:
Well, not all of us are too cool for them.
Casey:
And so I'm curious to see what the bands are that they have in this particular event.
Casey:
But I don't feel like I'm in the market for one.
Casey:
I am fine with my sport band.
Casey:
I only have the one band for the Apple Watch.
Casey:
And I don't yearn for another.
Casey:
But, you know, I'm curious to see what they come up with.
Marco:
I mean, the rumors are that, you know, I mean, it's almost a given there that if they're going to make new bands at all, they're almost certainly going to have new colors of a sport band because that's easy.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
You know, that's that's not that doesn't take like a major, you know, rethinking of everything.
Marco:
And that's that's easy to change out with seasonal and annual fashion changes.
Marco:
So they're probably going to do that.
Marco:
uh but also a lot of a very strong rumor from that i've heard a number of times is that they might do a nato style strap which i think would be a smart move because those are very much in fashion right now wait what does that mean i don't know what that is no no one knows that is but you margo it's i i don't personally care for them so i'll probably explain them poorly and nato yeah yeah like like the the organization it's um north american treaty organization
John:
No, North Atlantic?
John:
What the hell is it?
John:
Oh, no.
John:
It's North Atlantic, I think.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
But they're like – usually they're like a fabric, like a woven fabric.
Marco:
I think they often have a stripe.
Marco:
It's like they're – I'm probably destroying this for people who love these things because, again, I don't really care for them, so I don't know much about them.
Marco:
But I know they're very much in fashion.
Marco:
So, yeah, if you go search for NATO strap, you'll see what I'm talking about.
Marco:
You can see if you do this image search, you see they always have this weird little kind of double loop attachment mechanism.
Marco:
They're kind of bulky, but because they're a woven nylon mesh, usually, they're usually very comfortable.
Marco:
Just a little bit large for my taste, but people like them a lot.
Marco:
They're very much in fashion.
John:
Watch fashion is like, I would like a miniature version of the Manhattan skyline on my wrist because that shows that I'm a city person and I love Manhattan.
John:
Okay.
Okay.
John:
like this nato strap like it's not it looks like utility it is meant to evoke it seems like the type of straps used to attach equipment for people in the military and those type of sort of rugged outdoor mountaineering type stuff but it isn't one it is not attaching something that needs to be like all those loops are there you know it's like it's like a tiny it's like an art installation um
John:
that is on your wrist like you know it is a it is an imitation of another thing and you're confused by the fact well it is a strap right it does actually hold it to my wrist yeah it does hold it to your wrist but all the crap on there is is from another strap that does a job not the job that this thing is doing and i just i can't imagine i can't imagine adding like adding adding additional metal things to a strap that's going to be around my wrist that are non-functional
John:
like no i don't like that's that's why the uh the what do you call it the the plasticky florelastomer uh the sport straps appeal to me because for the most part they'd say well it's just a thing that goes on your wrist let's make it as squishy and as comfortable as possible they kind of go weird with the with the classroom mechanism but anyway suffice it to say i'm obviously not in the market for a new strap although what i would buy for thirty dollars from what i would buy for thirty dollars from apple is a slightly smaller version of the little
John:
leather band that holds the you know that on the the classic buckle or whatever the leather strap is that i have that holds the little tongue you know the excess tongue that sticks out that little band that's supposed to hold it needs to be slightly smaller because the little tongue slips out too easily that happens with every leather watch band i've ever used but you just kind of make it a little bit smaller not a lot smaller just a little bit
Marco:
Or they could just put in a deployant or something, but that's too fancy.
Marco:
They probably won't do that.
Marco:
No one knows what that is but you.
Marco:
What did you just say?
John:
This is your version of Destiny.
John:
It's just a bunch of weird words that seem like they mean nothing.
Casey:
Yeah, I agree.
Casey:
Thank God that John actually understands the pain we go through when he gets riffing on Destiny stuff.
John:
Destiny is real.
John:
Watch bands are just made up stuff.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
So what did you call it?
Casey:
A deployment?
Marco:
A deployant.
Casey:
Oh, that makes even more sense.
Marco:
It's a type of clasp.
Marco:
So normally you loop the thing through the buckle and you loop it up and down so it kind of tightens that way.
Marco:
A deployant is something where you kind of attach it to one of the holes and then you can open and close it with this metal opening and closing clasp mechanism.
Marco:
So you kind of fix the size to where you want it and then it's always at that size until you readjust it.
Marco:
And it holds it flatter, and it's quicker to put on and off.
Marco:
So it's considered a slightly better enclosure.
Marco:
Usually it's higher end.
Marco:
But, you know, I mean, Apple could offer it for, like, $30 more.
Marco:
Apple could do a good job with it if they wanted to.
Marco:
Because, honestly, Apple's bands are awesome.
Marco:
Like, the quality of Apple's bands, the construction of them, the looks of them, the practicality and the comfort of Apple's bands...
Marco:
is just worlds beyond most, not all, but most of what you can find in the fancy watch world.
Marco:
Apple's bands are great, and they should really be commended on that.
Marco:
For that being their very first time they ever tried making a watch, and they make these amazing bands with this awesome quick-detach swap mechanism.
Marco:
The rest of the watch world has nothing on that.
Marco:
They're so good.
Marco:
But there are things that they could borrow from the watch world to make a few slightly nicer ones.
Marco:
And one of those would be a decent leather with a deployant.
Marco:
But I'm not holding my breath on that one.
Casey:
Man, you really went...
Marco:
i know the advantage john if you the reason i brought this up is that uh deployants usually don't have that problem with the leather bands with the ends slipping out because it's kind of the way it's held it's kind of held in a more fixed way uh it doesn't usually happen that way i don't actually own any of these but uh i doubt i doubt i would buy one at the prices though like i haven't even been able to bring myself to buy a sport one just because it feels like it's not worth 50 bucks for a piece of plastic or whatever they charge and honestly the leather strap is fine the old the one annoyance is that the thing slips out
Casey:
I just can't believe how deep into the dark side, into the deep end or whatever, you went on this watch stuff.
Marco:
Hey, you know how I do things.
Casey:
I knew it was bad, but woof.
Casey:
It's right up his alley.
Casey:
Yeah, but wow.
Casey:
I feel like we need an intervention at this point.
John:
No, he's fine.
John:
Everyone needs a hobby.
John:
This is a pretty benign hobby as far as hobbies.
John:
He's into jewelry, essentially, or jewelry, as people say.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Yeah, it's jewelry.
Marco:
I like it.
Marco:
Thanks a lot for three sponsors this week.
Marco:
Backblaze, MailRoute, and DevMate.
Marco:
And we will see you next week.
Marco:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin.
Marco:
Because it was accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
Marco:
John didn't do any research.
John:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him because it was accidental.
John:
It was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
Marco:
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
Casey:
So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-N-T, Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A, Syracuse.
Casey:
It's accidental, they didn't mean it.
Casey:
John, what the hell happened to your iPod Touch?
John:
I stole it out of my car.
John:
People have broken into our cars while they sat in our driveways many times over the years that we've lived here.
John:
apparently this is a thing that people do they just wander through the neighborhood at your house yeah they just wander through the neighborhood at night while everyone is asleep and check for open cars and when they find one they take any valuable stuff out of it why would you not lock your car i always lock my car i always i obsessively lock my car i lock my car when i go into the elementary school to pick up my daughter for the three seconds it's out there always um why was the car apparently unlocked
John:
It could be the UI on the key fob where it used to be three separate buttons, one of which was locked that was a different size than the other ones and was centrally located.
John:
And now that we talked about this when I got my new accord, it is just like sort of like a single rectangular region divided in thirds.
John:
And the bottom one is locked.
John:
It's not as bad as I thought it was when I first talked about my card key fob.
John:
I'm pretty good at finding the buttons, but it's conceivable that I could mash the wrong one absentmindedly.
John:
It's also conceivable that someone else in the house could grab some set of keys the wrong way and accidentally unlock the car because the signal can reach from inside the house.
John:
Anyway, I probably just forgot.
John:
The scary thing about it is because I am so obsessive about locking my car...
John:
it basically means that every single night someone is checking all the cars right because what are the odds that the one day i forget to lock it is the one day it gets stolen because like literally i i'm really good about like i lock the house i lock the car i lock everything um from new york it's like what i do right so
John:
it has to be like the one time i slipped up in somebody the other option is they could be breaking in and that's the past things my wife never locks her car so she's had her car broken into a million times i took all the quarters out of the the things they probably go in there all the time and be like oh still nothing good in this car um but she used to have a lot of change in there for parking meters and that all got taken out a couple years ago and then one time we came out and found like in the winter the window rolled down
John:
on my car uh or on a car that i had driven last and anyone who's ever driven we knows i do not roll down the windows like i don't i don't like when the cars i would never roll in the winter and i'm always cold forget it right so i didn't roll down the window on purpose don't think i did it accidentally maybe in the course of trying to break into the car they somehow triggered the window rolling down i have no freaking idea but anyway this is over the course of many years and this time they went in and they took my
John:
it was i think it was like second generation ipod touch it was some really old ipod touch it was useless like you couldn't even give it to a kid the whole the whole point of it is like great this is what you do with old ipod touches you fill it up with music and you stick it in your car it's your permanent you know music collection in the car and yeah i use bluetooth on my phone for the car to listen to podcasts but every once in a while i switch to the ipod source you get like the display of the the songs and everything it's just nice to have a separate bucket for music and playlists and stuff like that
John:
so they took that they took the case that it was in which was this little cute cloth case uh with a you know something from etsy i think they took the wire they did not take the garmin gps the ancient dedicated garmin gps from the pre-iphone days they just couldn't even be bothered that even they recognized this is a worthless piece of technology um yeah so that was pretty annoying so i've all i've done is pulled another yet another ipod that i did go through the the exercise of
John:
find my iphone and of course it's not online anymore and i set the thing to you know auto lock if it ever connects the internet because of course it didn't have lock on i don't think there was anything on it because i think i had erased everything off of it except for just a music collection that i this ipod touch was too old to even use icloud stuff so it was like i had synced with itunes my music onto it so i think all they've got is my collection of mostly drm free music um if they ever do connect it to the internet it will automatically lock itself and
John:
yeah it's just kind of depressing kind of sad and i'll just you know i guess i guess i have to i was thinking getting look if they're coming every night i should get one of those little cameras that i hear advertised in other podcasts and just point it at my car and just see them on their nightly visit because really it's amazing amazing to me that like if i forgot to unlock my car one night and that's the night it gets broken into because i i'm really very very sure that i lock the car all the time it is a thing i do obsessively
Marco:
I mean, for whatever it's worth, I mean, first of all, that sucks.
Marco:
Second of all, regarding having some kind of camera thing.
Marco:
So we got a couple of minor vandalism incidents at our house over the last couple of years.
Marco:
And fortunately, they weren't major, but they were vandalism.
Marco:
And it really angered me.
Marco:
And, you know, the second time it happened, or the most recent time it happened, I actually reported it to the local police.
Marco:
I'm like, this is stupid.
Marco:
They should at least know about this.
Marco:
And I didn't think they'd actually do anything.
Marco:
And they couldn't.
Marco:
But I asked the officer who came by, because, you know, it was the middle of the day.
Marco:
He had nothing to do with the suburbs.
Marco:
And I asked him, I'm like, you know, do you think there's any, is there any value in me, like, putting up cameras?
Marco:
Like, if I had the cameras and I had video of whatever, like, teenager was doing this, could you actually do anything with that?
Marco:
Or is it just a waste of time?
Marco:
And he talked to me for, you know, a good 10 minutes.
Marco:
He, you know, basically said like, yeah, there's not much they can do.
Marco:
It's like, even if you get, even if you know exactly which kid in town did it, which is, you know, not a given, but even if you knew exactly who did it, like, you know, most of the kids who do this kind of stuff are minors.
Marco:
And, you know, it's like, there's not that much they can do in that case.
Marco:
You might get your stuff back.
Marco:
Or if the kid, you know, vandalizes your house, like,
Marco:
you might be able to try to get them to pay for it to be removed or cleaned up or whatever, but it's not like, there's not much you can do.
Marco:
And I was thinking like, once you go down like the security camera route, you kind of have to become like one of those like,
John:
paranoid security people you have to you kind of have to go you get into anything i wouldn't have to like i the only reason i would do it is well first of all as for reporting it i i'm considering doing that too not because i expect anything to happen just because i want to like affect the crime statistics of my neighborhood to let people know that hey
John:
this is a thing i want to be a number on a spreadsheet somewhere at the end of the year when they tally up you know silly petty theft and in my town right um and then the camera would just be just because i'm curious like basically it's the divide is it kids or is it adults right because if it's kids these kids is the same group of kids has been doing over the course of like five years that spans the time there maybe it's even more than that like it can't be the same kids because they would have aged out of it or is it things past
John:
on from kid to kid like kids just know when you reach a certain age they learn from their older siblings that you go down the neighborhood at 3 a.m and check every single car to see if it's open because there might be valuable stuff in there um or or is it adults i don't know so anyway i would just be doing it to satisfy my curiosity and if it was kid what i would do with that information is tell their parents find them bring this if i knew like oh i know that kid he's down the block i would bring the video to the parents and said your son in the night he's stealing crap out of my car and by the way give me my ipad back or my ipod back
John:
That's worth 50 bucks.
John:
Yeah, well, it's worth less than that, but it's the principle.
John:
You know, kids, you can get in trouble with their parents and, you know, hoping that they have parents who would care about this or whatever.
John:
Gonna be ever vigilant.
John:
And honestly, like, seriously, I'm fascinated by the idea that...
Marco:
it's such an incredibly frequent interval people are just trying every single car like in the whole neighborhood they're not just trying my one house right like they're got to be going well i mean chances are i think you probably just got unlucky that they probably aren't going through that frequently uh i'm guessing this just happened to be the day that you unlock the car it's possible this could be going on every night but i think it's unlikely
John:
Well, when I talked about it on Slack, other people from, you know, I think people, someone from Seattle and some people from the West Coast were saying this is a thing that like people go through neighborhoods and check for open car doors.
John:
Like it is a common, low level, easy way to get free stuff without actually committing a real crime.
John:
You're not actually breaking anything.
John:
You're not actually, you know.
John:
uh so it seems like i think that is still theft you know what i mean but it's not like it's not like you're breaking the window with a with a rock and then stealing the radios out of the car or you know like uh some people have their their transmission gouged out of their car in an attempt to like hot wire it or whatever like
John:
uh and even my brother when he lived in uh in the more downtown areas had his car broken into a few times where they would actually break things on the car so i'm you know thankful that like this is like the most polite thieves ever oh the car's locked move on you know they're like stormtroopers in a new hope door is locked move on to the next one not really good at trying to find things because obviously you would just lock the door if you were hiding there uh anyway um much yeah i don't want them if they broke my window i would be super pissed right if they just gently opened the the
John:
the door they didn't close they left all the bins open so i could tell what they had rummaged through so they didn't even like clean up after themselves but i don't know i'm mostly just curious like morbidly curious like what who is doing this i mean it would make me feel better if it was kids but on the other hand i would be like all right kid you need to get in trouble
Marco:
Yeah, but the reality is the kind of kid who would go around doing that, chances are even if you told their parents, the chances that their parents would A, believe you, even if you show them a video, B, care, and C, not just get pissed at you, I think are pretty low.
John:
no i think they're pretty high in the neighborhood i'm in because it doesn't mean that the kids are doing this have to do it to get money or anything it's just like a prank you know just like a fun thing to do i don't i don't think these kids need and really seriously if they knew anything about it they were they should have looked at this ipod and thrown it back just like they didn't take the garment it's a piece of crap it's useless right
John:
seriously they're gonna and i think i had upgraded to like the latest supported os so it was like incredibly slow you're not gonna be happy with that thing you just stole trust me you're gonna bring i should find it back on the hood of my car eventually like sorry this is useless you can have it back keep it with your garmin
Marco:
You should have a Honeypot, maybe have it look just like an iPod Touch, but it's actually like an Android Nexus 4 or whatever, and it's loaded with all sorts of garbage.
Marco:
Oh, you know what?
Marco:
I got it.
Marco:
Make it the real iPod Touch, but have it only contain the U2 album.
Oh!
John:
yeah yeah or i could just take i put one of your kindles each day in there there you go a little baby each day and see if they i think they'll leave the kindle too is they'll be like this isn't an ipad look at the screen isn't even color i can't even touch it forget it