WWDC Is Not Santa Claus
Marco:
Egg salad is not delicious.
Marco:
Salt and mayonnaise are delicious.
Marco:
That's what you're tasting.
Marco:
Egg salad is not delicious.
Marco:
Egg salad is awesome.
Marco:
What are you talking about?
Casey:
Egg salad's good.
Marco:
Egg salad's fine, but it's not delicious.
Marco:
I wouldn't, I'm not going to rave about it.
Marco:
That's ridiculous.
Casey:
I wouldn't say it's delicious, but it's quite good.
John:
Right, exactly.
John:
Yeah, it's not delicious.
John:
See?
John:
i went through several containers of your actual chicken salad which is good it's good chicken salad um but i also had egg salad to compare it with and when it came time like it's what you can tell you know like if you feel like you don't have a preference you can go either way it depends on what i'm in the mood for when i came time to pick i was kind of leaning towards the egg salad a lot it's the yolks man that's what does it it's the yolks
Casey:
We should talk about T-shirts.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
So it was late breaking news after we had recorded that we were able to get everything squared away between ourselves with Cotton Bureau, who have been excellent so far.
Casey:
So many thanks to Jay and team at Cotton Bureau.
Casey:
We have two shirts up for sale in case you haven't heard or haven't looked.
Casey:
One of them, which we kind of call watches, is inspired by Ricardo Melo's tweet.
Casey:
And then Jay designed it as pixel art.
Casey:
As everyone expected, John has thoughts about this pixel art.
Casey:
But it's the three of us with our respective choices of wrist wear.
Casey:
And then the other one, um, is just kind of our logo shirt, which is a kind of combination of our automotive heritage and, uh, our, our current, uh, our, our automotive and current and, and Macintosh heritage for those of us who were around in the six colors days, which is basically just John.
Casey:
So, uh, they'll be up for sale until what third of June, I believe.
Casey:
So as this episode is released probably about another week, um,
Casey:
Don't delay.
Casey:
Don't forget.
Casey:
I cannot tell you how many people have said after the last round of shirts went up, oh, yeah, I just never pulled the trigger on ordering it.
Casey:
I just forgot.
Casey:
And so can you make them again?
Casey:
No, we can't.
Casey:
So pull the trigger as you're thinking of it.
Casey:
Get yourselves a shirt if you want.
Casey:
I am really happy with this year's shirts, especially since up until like a week and a half before they went up for sale, we had no freaking clue what to do for shirts.
Casey:
Uh, so I'm really happy with them and, uh, you should, you should buy one to support the show.
Casey:
So thanks everyone who has bought one and everyone who will buy one.
John:
Yep.
John:
Thank you.
John:
So far we haven't repeated any shirts.
John:
So again, the same thing, like, I don't know if we're, maybe we'll, this from this year on, we'll just repeat the same shirts over and over again, but so far we haven't repeated any.
John:
So if you like one of these shirts, don't assume I'll just buy it next year.
John:
Cause it might not be the next year or it might.
John:
Um, but anyway, same, same thing with have a critical shirts that I sold just once.
John:
And I still get people tweeting me to this day.
John:
It's like years later, like, uh,
John:
Oh, I missed out buying those shirts.
John:
And make no mistake, these are expensive T-shirts, especially if you're shipping them far away.
John:
All podcast T-shirts are expensive.
John:
I know.
John:
I have literally boxes in the attic filled with podcast and website T-shirts.
John:
but they're cool to have uh and in the grand scheme of things they're actually pretty rare because who listens to weird tech nerd podcasts and then who buys a t-shirt for a tech nerd podcast not a lot of people so uh it's kind of a shame we didn't make it for wdc but i think they're fun shirts and i have i had a question for you guys we haven't talked about this on twitter we have no one i believe has spelled out
John:
the visual metaphor of the atp logo shirt and i've been hesitant to do so because i feel like explaining it kind of makes it worse but maybe i'm wrong maybe people maybe people would be more excited about the shirt if they understood what we were going for so would you like to explain
John:
yeah it's pretty obvious connection if you're in the right mindset but if you're not thinking that way it might not occur to you and of course if you don't know anything about cars and you don't care then like explaining to someone who doesn't know anything about cars it's pointless because they don't care right yeah so i guess we're not explaining it then no feel free okay well since i am the only summarizer in chief
Casey:
Yeah, exactly.
Casey:
So since I'm the only current BMW owner, this is a play on the BMW M symbol, which we'll put a link to that in the show notes.
Casey:
Basically, BMW M is their motorsports group.
Casey:
And so Marco's M5, which we've talked about ad nauseum on the show and certainly was kind of the driving arc behind Neutral.
Casey:
The way that logo looks is it's three colors.
Casey:
And there's a story behind them.
Casey:
I think one was Bavaria.
Casey:
One was Texaco, which had a deal with BMW at the time that M was created.
Casey:
And one was just like a purple to kind of blend the two.
Casey:
So Jay at Cotton Bureau, completely on his own accord, like with zero input from us...
Casey:
thought oh well i can take the six colors from the original mac and then do a kind of stylized atp and kind of blend our automotive history coming out of neutral and get that like old school mac flair going and get kind of a mashup of the both and you keep saying mac like those like those uh pc users who say uh do you like mac computers is mac making an ipod now in all capitals into the mac store in all caps i heard mac makes phones now
Casey:
I am sorry to offend you, old man.
Casey:
What was the appropriate?
John:
It's the Apple logo.
John:
It's a rainbow striped Apple logo.
John:
It's a logo they had for like the first, you know, 15 or whatever years of the company's existence.
Casey:
Fair enough.
Casey:
I regret the error.
Casey:
Thank you.
Casey:
And God, I'm going to get so many emails.
John:
I saved you from the emails.
John:
Now they feel like it's been addressed.
Casey:
um my apologies for that but anyway the point being that it's a combination of the original apple logo and the bmw m logo or inspired it's not the original apple logo i'm saving you again oh my god the original apple the original apple logo was that was that pen and ink drawing of the guy under the tree uh some emails anyway yeah apple was selling a
John:
Apple was selling t-shirts with the original Apple logo on them, along with the rainbow stripe Apple logo and a bunch of icons and other stuff on their 40th anniversary.
John:
I tried to get some.
John:
I tried to have my minions in Cupertino buy them from the Apple store at Infinite Loop, but they were too late.
John:
They were sold out.
Marco:
Actually, if we have minions there, I need somebody to get me some pens for TIFF.
Marco:
But yeah, let me know.
Marco:
I have minions.
Marco:
Maybe you have minions.
Casey:
In any case, so please, if you have the means, buy a shirt.
Casey:
Also, John alluded or touched on this earlier, but we do understand.
Casey:
I know it doesn't sound like we do, but we do understand that shipping is extremely expensive across the pond.
Casey:
And we are genuinely very sorry for that.
Casey:
And hand on heart, we weighed that as a con when deciding how to do the T-shirts this year.
Casey:
There are other t-shirt vendors that people use and that we have used that have overseas presses or printing or whatever you call it.
Casey:
We wanted to go a different route this year and try something different.
Casey:
And I really, really, really appreciate anyone from Europe or Asia or really anywhere other than North America that has bought one of these shirts because I know shipping is just out of control and I am sorry for that.
Casey:
But...
Casey:
Look at it this way.
Casey:
These shirts, I am super proud of them.
Casey:
And if it wasn't for Jay at Cotton Bureau, they would not look anywhere near as good.
Casey:
You should see the illustration Marco sent as a... You should save that as a great example of patent hands.
Casey:
Yeah, really.
Casey:
Just as an example of what we gave Jay with regard to the three hands or three wrists.
Marco:
It's really bad.
Casey:
I mean, I would have done worse.
Casey:
I'm not trying to throw stones.
Casey:
I would have done a much worse job.
Casey:
But that illustration, with respect, Marco, was pretty freaking bad.
Casey:
And Jay made it...
John:
Because the best part about it is that he meticulously drew, I'm assuming on the iPad Pro with the pencil, he meticulously drew his watch because that's what he cares about.
John:
And then the hands are just these misshapen mutant paddles.
John:
It's like hands, hands, whatever.
John:
I can't draw.
John:
Well, you spent so long on that watch.
John:
I get to see you zooming in and carefully drawing the hands, trying to draw your beautiful little Swiss whatever the hell watch it is.
John:
And then the hands are just a mess.
Marco:
First of all, that is not an exact that is not like an exact representation of any of my watches.
Marco:
And I didn't take that long to draw.
John:
Well, you certainly took longer than you took to draw the quote unquote hands.
John:
Yeah.
Well, yeah.
Casey:
So suffice to say, look in the show notes.
Casey:
You can see Marco's original illustration to Jay.
Casey:
And we never told him pixel art or anything.
Casey:
He just took that upon himself and did a just killer job with it.
Casey:
So, again, just to bring this back around and try to redeem myself as summarizer in chief, we are very sorry about the shipping costs.
Casey:
We really, truly are.
Casey:
And we are super appreciative of anyone to buy shirts, but particularly those overseas, because I know it is a big ask.
Casey:
And we really thank you.
Casey:
And hopefully if we do shirts again next year, we'll have some different mechanism for doing this, but no guarantees.
Casey:
We'll see how it goes.
Casey:
Moving right along, we should probably do some follow-up.
Casey:
Clace Jacobson, I'm so sorry, had written in, I don't know if this was via Twitter or an email, but they said, after submitting a burst of 20 installs, submitting an iOS app, a burst of 20 installs from California occurs.
Casey:
This has happened recently, but did not happen between October and February.
Casey:
So perhaps there's some sort of automated testing going on when you submit to the app store, more than just like the checking for private APIs and things like that.
John:
More recent or more rigorous or perhaps more timely automated testing.
John:
That's another theory.
John:
It's not in the follow-up here that I heard a lot is that a lot of people under the impression, I'm not sure if it's founded or not, that the delays in review, like in the olden days, several months ago, you'd submit an application and it really
John:
take like a week or whatever to get through the review process and a lot of people think that's because apple intentionally doesn't look at your application for a long time uh as a form of training to make you think uh think twice before you submit don't waste our time submitting your application
John:
If you're not super duper sure that it's ready to go up and to teach you that lesson, no matter when you submit, we're just going to sit on it and do nothing.
John:
Even if we don't have anything else to do, even if we have the capacity, we're just going to intentionally ignore your app for a week just to teach you a lesson to say, see, it's always going to take at least a week.
John:
So don't submit in haste.
John:
Always, you know, make sure your I's are dotted and your T's are crossed.
John:
That doesn't sound like something that makes sense to me for Apple as a business to do.
John:
Again, I don't know if these reports were based on inside information or testing or theories or whatever, or it was just a feeling they get, but that doesn't strike me as something that reasonable.
John:
maybe if there was something like that it would be like we don't bother looking at your application for the first four hours to give you a chance to think better of it if you accidentally submitted but i can't imagine them sitting on it not doing anything for a week so i'm still uh thinking that the decreased uh review times have to be the result of something that apple is intentionally doing because they want the review times to be shorter not longer
Marco:
This past week on the talk show, Rene Ritchie was the guest with John Gruber.
Marco:
They were talking about this, and you could kind of tell that Rene has information about this that he has heard.
Marco:
In the best Rene way, he basically suggests what the information is generally what category it is, but doesn't actually tell you anything that would get him or anybody else in trouble.
Marco:
But it basically sounds like
Marco:
there was a significant management change in AppReview.
Marco:
And this wasn't Phil taking over the App Store.
Marco:
I mean, it might have been related to that in some way, but it wasn't that change, but it was some other change that happened further down the line in AppReview that basically got some people out of the way who would cause holdups.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And that is apparently and seeing some policies and that that is apparently what the result of this was, if you read between the very, very obvious lines that Renee drew on the talk show last week.
Marco:
So that I think is very interesting.
Marco:
Also, I agree with what you said, John.
Marco:
I don't think they were ever like artificially delaying.
Marco:
things necessarily to to a week because if they were you would have never seen a review time less than a week and that wasn't true you know if you would look at the at the history on on that shiny development site that was collecting all the all the stats from everybody that still is collecting all the stats from everybody it fluctuated and sometimes it sometimes it would go you know down to like six days five days and then go back up
Marco:
I think what instead was the case was we know that Apple is very performance metric driven these days, especially in the middle management levels.
Marco:
So I think they had just defined the performance metric to be 90% or more or 95% or whatever the percentage is.
Marco:
We want X percent of apps to be reviewed within a week.
Marco:
And we consider that success so that whenever they would start getting...
Marco:
way above that and that number would start suffering, maybe they would add more staff or maybe they would make changes to get that number back down.
Marco:
But it seemed like they considered that good enough for all this time.
Marco:
And so a combination of maybe changing that opinion, maybe changing that metric to something lower, as well as whatever this management change was that happened.
Marco:
That, I think, is very plausibly what went on here to cause app review times to drop from a week to less than a day.
John:
it doesn't have to be like a week specifically just the idea that there's there there's excess capacity that apple could review your application but instead let's either decrease staffing or send people home early or like like they're intentionally like the delay is actually part of their policy with an intent that was that's the theory that like apple apple always could do this but they were intentionally not doing it and that's slightly different than they had a metric that meant people got to go home without staying for overtime as long as they hit x percent because
John:
I can imagine Apple being what it is.
John:
They probably staff so that the people have to work really, really hard to hit whatever the numbers were.
John:
They're not like overstaffing and then giving them a low goal and letting the people go home at three every day.
John:
Like that's not the way it's working.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
Also, the idea of automated app review or adding another automated step of app review to, you know, before it gets to the humans.
Marco:
That, I think, has a lot of merit.
Marco:
It's not an easy problem to solve, but if you can have some kind of automation that basically just tries to push a bunch of buttons in an app, Apple has said on a number of occasions that the most common cause of app rejections is that the app crashes during review.
Marco:
So if they can automate a process where they just bring up an instance of the app and just push some buttons and attempt to, in an automated way, basically guess how to use the app and just navigate to different screens, if they can cause a crash to happen during that, it never even has to get to a human.
Marco:
It can be rejected right then, go right back to the developer and say, all right, this failed.
Marco:
Here, try again.
Marco:
And that could also result in a major time savings for the humans and therefore better throughput for the apps that get through that test.
Casey:
Cool.
Casey:
So Drew Henné wrote in.
Casey:
They said, among other things, it's always been pretty complicated to understand what exactly swiping an app out of recents actually does under the hood.
Casey:
Was this with regard to Android, actually?
John:
This is on Android, because we were asking last week about the Clear All button.
John:
Like, wouldn't it be fun if Clear All just got rid of the pictures on your screen but did nothing to the processes?
Marco:
We are now the premier Android podcast, by the way.
Casey:
Mm-hmm.
Casey:
Sorry, Material.
Casey:
So anyway, so they said,
Casey:
An app can have multiple tasks in recents at the same time, like having multiple Google Docs open at once.
Casey:
When you swipe away an app, it finishes the task, which tells the app that the user is done with that workflow and it doesn't need to worry about restoring that UI state.
Casey:
If the app is doing background work or has other open tasks, its process will not be killed.
Casey:
If there's no more open tasks or background jobs, swiping away an app will let the system know it has the option of killing the process, but it doesn't guarantee that it will.
Casey:
So the clear all button shouldn't have a dramatic effect on system performance on Android since it usually won't mean that all app processes are killed, but it does have the downside of losing any user state from their open tasks.
Casey:
That's very interesting to me, the way Android works, because I didn't know most of that.
Casey:
And it was also interesting to me how many people who seem to claim or seem to view themselves as, you know, nerds, nerds, tweeted about how, oh, yeah, I do that too.
Casey:
And I'm sorry, John.
Casey:
which I thought was quite funny.
Casey:
The only feedback that I saw that I thought was very interesting was people who said they wanted to clear it out, not for like battery, not for memory or anything like that, but just because they didn't want that view, that drawer, if you will, to have a bunch of things in it.
Casey:
They just wanted it to be clean so they didn't have clutter there, which still to me seems a little bit peculiar, but makes a lot more sense than thinking, oh, this is going to save my battery or prevent something weird from happening.
John:
Well, they changed the iOS policy to be more like Android.
John:
It's like an Android when you're when you're clearing these things, it's explicitly not killing your application.
John:
Like if your application is running background jobs, it lets them keep running.
John:
Right.
John:
And it just gives it the all it's basically saying is when I relaunch that, don't bring me back to exactly where I was, which is still kind of punitive because like you're punishing people for like, I don't like the visual clutter.
John:
So I want to get the rectangles away.
John:
Right.
John:
Right.
John:
And there is a punishment for that, which is next time you launch that application, it won't remember where you left off.
John:
It will just bring it back to a fresh state or whatever.
John:
It would be nice if all these operating systems, I guess, maybe either took this feature away entirely, in which case you just deal with the clutter...
John:
Or gave people a way to like like the new Android and like I don't know if it's hard coded to seven or if you can adjust it, but only show a certain number.
John:
So it never gets more cluttered than some small amount, you know, or just make it get rid of the pictures and do nothing else.
John:
Right.
John:
um and and uh as drew said there is still of course an android way to actually force quit to kill things it's it's more deeply buried but it's there and as many people pointed out to us on ios there is another way to force quit uh applications besides flicking them up you can also do the hold down the power button thing but instead of swiping to turn off the phone you hold down the home button or anyway there are lots of ways to uh to force quit things uh but the flicking up of the squares half of it is the force quitting habit and the uh the voodoo and uh
John:
superstition about that and the other half is just people like things to be neat and tidy and both of those things have i feel like detrimental effects on the experience of using the phone probably i would say more detrimental than the mental distress caused by having lots of rectangles but i guess that's up to each person to decide on their own
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
They started out a few in the office.
Marco:
Then they became a lot in the office.
Marco:
Then they spread outside the office.
Marco:
Now there's a couple in the kitchen and one in the den.
Marco:
I think there might even be some upstairs now.
Marco:
And of course, we've sent a lot of them as gifts as well.
Marco:
Fractures are great because these are photo prints.
Marco:
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Marco:
and they just look fantastic.
Marco:
You have this edge-to-edge print in vivid color of your photo, and it can be an illustration, it can be a doodle, it can be art, it can be a photo from your phone, or it can be a photo from a good camera.
Marco:
They all look good, and we have them everywhere.
Marco:
They make fantastic gifts, and they're very, very affordable.
Marco:
Prices are just $15 for the small squares, which are great for Instagram.
Marco:
They're about
Marco:
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Casey:
So there's been rumors about new MacBook Pros.
Casey:
They're coming eventually.
Marco:
First of all, if you go back to the original article, I believe it clarifies that it's Q4 of Apple's financial calendar that they are coming, which is July.
Casey:
Oh, okay.
Marco:
So the rumor is that in, quote, Q4 of this year, which everyone interprets to mean October through December, Apple will be releasing new MacBook Pros that are substantially redesigned so that they're going to be thinner, they're going to be lighter, they're going to have the new Skylake CPUs, and they're going to have a few other interesting changes that we will talk about in a second.
Marco:
So...
John:
Before you move on, how confident are you about this whole Q4 confusion?
John:
Because when I read this article, my overwhelming sense of sadness was like, Q4?
John:
Seriously?
John:
How long have we been waiting for the MacBook Pros to get updated?
John:
And now I have to wait until the end of the year, like the fall and winter time?
John:
And then you're telling me, oh, no, Q4 is not that.
John:
It's a financial Q4, which is different.
John:
It makes me feel better.
John:
But how sure are you about that?
John:
Because I have to know how to feel before you move on to what these computers are going to be like.
John:
um i'm just repeating what other people said so maybe i'm not so sure i don't know now now i'm doubting everything uh anyway all i can say is that if if you if you people can't get one of these things in their hands until the end of the year that seems like that seems bad like i mean you can blame intel for a certain amount of the delay but really like we can't get new macbook pros until the end of 2016 if i had told you in at the end of 2014 that there's not going to be new macbook pros until the end of 2016 um
John:
Yeah, I don't like it.
Marco:
Well, especially, I think it's made worse because of the fact that there was such this long delay with Intel's CPUs here that they're currently shipping basically three-year-old CPUs.
Marco:
Like the guts of the MacBook Pro that you buy today, there was like the one minor update in mid-2015, but it was a very minor update.
Marco:
It changed almost nothing about them.
Marco:
And so basically you're buying like two to three-year-old hardware today.
John:
It's the curse of the Pro label, right?
John:
As soon as you put Pro on it, the CPU ages to be three years old in the market.
John:
I think that's the new rule.
Marco:
Yeah, which is, I mean, like, cosmetics aside, I mean, you know, we can talk about cosmetics in a minute, but, like, just the fact that Apple continues to sell really pretty ancient hardware by computing standards for so long now...
Marco:
We talked about it before.
Marco:
I know why some of these things are this way.
Marco:
I know that they generally wait until there's a substantial CPU update from Intel and that those have been delayed in recent years.
Marco:
But that has to change because I know they do care.
Marco:
But when they let the hardware age for this long, still at the top of the line, it looks like they don't care anymore about it.
Marco:
And again, I know they do care, but this is how it looks to buyers.
Marco:
This is how it looks in the market.
Marco:
It looks like Apple is just ignoring the Mac and letting these things languish.
Marco:
And I don't know if that's true.
John:
It looks that way to nerds, to tech nerds.
John:
Other people don't even know what the heck is in them.
John:
But I mean, where it's a tech nerd podcast.
Marco:
No, people do.
Marco:
People do research.
Marco:
You've got to give people credit.
Marco:
They do their research.
Marco:
And when people are looking to buy an Apple computer, they go online and they look and they find things like the Met Groomers buying guide that says all this stuff is three years old.
Marco:
People do their research.
Marco:
They find stuff out.
John:
They know.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And it's not as bad as spinning disk versus SSD where you're, you know, you sort of prematurely age when you realize that everyone else has SSDs.
John:
But, you know, maybe you could upgrade yours or whatever.
John:
CPUs don't age your laptop as bad as other things, but it's all cumulative.
John:
And basically what we're what we're doing is here as as people knowledgeable about.
John:
uh you know the platform and the products is we're judging the products how good a product is this and uh you can't judge it to be a particularly stellar product if the innards are really old and out of date and as you know as time marches on and competitor products uh get better innards for usually less or the same money you have to judge apple's products more harshly and as people who other people might ask about computers who might say now is not a good time to buy a
John:
But if we've been saying that for two years at a certain point, we're like, I don't know if it's bad advice or good advice.
John:
We're trying to kind of predict the future of like, you know, should you buy this?
John:
Should you not?
John:
But once it's a three year old CPU, even if new Macro pros didn't come out for another year.
John:
you can't really in good conscience tell people uh you should buy this computer because it's a great product you could say you should buy this computer because it basically it's your only choice if you want a mac laptop like you know these are the laptops they sell and a whole bunch of them are bad and compromised in a bunch of reasons but if you need a laptop now you got to get one but i can honestly say that this is not actually a stellar product unlike say the 5k iMac which came out of the gate and i was you know good in all the the ways we expected it to be good right
Marco:
Oh, yeah.
Marco:
I mean, like the 5K iMac has been fantastic.
Marco:
And that has like that is, you know, it originally came out a year and a half ago.
Marco:
And then six months ago, they made the updated version.
Marco:
And it's it's a fantastic computer.
Marco:
It is it has new up to date components.
Marco:
It was updated one year after it came out with even newer, even more up to date components like that is a healthy release cycle.
Casey:
Yeah, you know, with regard to the date, something to consider is, and we're going to get to some interesting new hardware tidbits in a second, but what if one of those hardware tidbits requires a major release of OS X and that doesn't typically ship until the fall?
Casey:
So maybe it is the fall because they need the software.
Casey:
And I know they'll do like a point release ahead for a lot of things, but I can't remember.
John:
I don't think today's Apple is delaying hardware for software.
John:
Oh, absolutely they are.
John:
except for except for new devices like the watch i know you're gonna say the watch but for laptops i'm saying even if they have a weird screen above the keyboard that we'll get to in a minute like they they'll just work that into the old os if they needed to ship them like they've done that so many times where some boring old mac is ready to ship but the they would like ship it with the new os but it's not available with it so they'll end up shipping they do see that with os versions like they end up shipping it with uh with leopard or something when uh
John:
not leopard with uh with tiger even though lever was about to come out and then people would get it by the time they'd get it in the store it would still have the old os with it and then you'd get it and they would upgrade you for free or whatever like i don't think especially with os 10 i don't think that's why they would be holding back this hardware to wait for the software unless there's some amazing new feature
Marco:
No, but here's this scenario here.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
So the new laptop, suppose it has Touch ID, like this report says, and everyone says there's going to be Siri in new OS X. So suppose it has a Touch ID button or surface or circle or something, maybe the power button, who knows?
Marco:
Somewhere there's a Touch ID thing there, right?
Marco:
And then also somewhere on the keyboard in the FNRO, which we'll get to in a minute, in the FNRO, maybe there's a Siri button, there is no OS X version until the fall that will support those things in all likelihood.
Marco:
The OS X version that comes out in the fall...
Marco:
They can't bring those things forward or they won't bring those things forward.
Marco:
They don't feel like bringing those things forward to release earlier because the OS X version in the fall also has stuff that integrates with the iOS version that's coming in the fall.
Marco:
And the iOS version that's coming in the fall is tied to the iPhone hardware schedule.
Marco:
And the entire company is dictated by the iPhone hardware schedule.
John:
Yeah, that seems plausible.
John:
I forgot about the Touch ID thing, but the secure enclave is the other thing, like assuming there's a Touch ID thing that's probably a secure enclave thing, and that's, yeah.
John:
The screen, I'd say no, because the screen you can write a driver for in any OS, but the Touch ID and that security stuff...
John:
Yeah.
John:
All right.
John:
Well, that's crappy, but that's life.
John:
So that's it.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So we've bounced off the outer atmosphere of the changes here, but we should probably talk about it.
Marco:
So it's going to be really Q4 probably.
Marco:
It's probably going to be like September, October.
Marco:
Okay.
Casey:
Fair enough.
Casey:
So there's apparently going to be a replaced F in row where all the F1, F2, F3, et cetera keys are now little mini OLED displays.
Casey:
I'm not sure what to make of that.
Casey:
I feel like there was a keyboard that like in the pre-Kickstarter days, but it was a Kickstarter kind of project where there was a keyboard that they wanted like the entire keyboard to have little mini displays on each key.
Casey:
And the theory was, which made a lot of sense to me.
Marco:
It was the Optimus keyboard.
Marco:
Was it?
Marco:
Okay.
Marco:
By the Art Lebedev studio.
Casey:
Yes, yes, that's right.
Casey:
You're absolutely right.
Casey:
Did that ever ship?
Marco:
Yeah, it was delayed for years, I think, and it ended up being very expensive, but I think it did, in fact, ship.
Marco:
And now a bunch of keyboards now do the exact same thing since then.
Casey:
Yeah, so the idea being that all of these different displays can be reprogrammed.
Casey:
So think of sort of kind of having all the benefits of a keyboard on screen, like on a phone or tablet,
Casey:
But it's still a physical keyboard, but you can reprogram what the keys show and potentially what they do.
Casey:
And so I can see maybe you have on the current keyboards, the F8 key is play pause.
Casey:
Well, maybe it's play pause in Finder or by default, but maybe in other apps it does other things.
Casey:
And it shows you right on the key, like a little logo or whatever.
Casey:
Or maybe even a logo in the words as to what it does.
Casey:
So I can see this being neat, but I also am not sure that this is something I really need, but I'm anxious to see what they're going to do with it.
Casey:
What do you guys think?
Casey:
I mean, Marco, you have tweeted about this and don't sound too enthusiastic.
Casey:
Is that fair to say?
Marco:
well so the the initial reporting of this rumor had it as the effing key row would be would disappear like the keys would no longer be there it would just be one screen one screen not keys with screens on them right exactly yeah that's the initial rumor was that it would be one one like one long strip of of oled screen and it would be touch sensitive and so you would just like push it like it's like it's a skinny ipad screen basically and so
Marco:
If this thing is real and if that ends up being the way it's done, I don't like that very much, at least on principle.
Marco:
If they actually do something like that, we'll see how it turns out.
Marco:
I could change my mind.
Marco:
There was a good discussion about that particular rumor on Clockwise this week, today, actually.
Marco:
That, I think...
Marco:
not having physical buttons to push there on this keyboard that you're probably not looking at like yeah the the keys in the f in a row are not that frequently pushed by most people but for the people who do frequently push them and that you know the f in a row includes some pretty important keys like escape which is like that your shortcut to cancel dialog boxes which is kind of frequently hit also frequently hit if you're a vim user among other things a lot of programmers use it for code completion so like
Marco:
there there are and and as you said like the media keys the volume up and down the play pause the mute anybody who uses the uh the various like things that used to be called expose that are now lumped into all these other things uh and i always use f11 for show desktop like those things those are very frequently hit by by a good number of users i think
Marco:
And so if you remove those as keys at all, and it's just this, this touch surface that you need to pretty, you pretty much would need to look at it to see what you're hitting.
Marco:
And you wouldn't get that physical feedback of a key press to know that you did hit it correctly.
Marco:
Uh, that is, I, I really hope we never get to that point because, you know, there's a reason why in all these, all the effort that, that we've put into making things thinner and lighter and mechanically simpler and removing buttons, uh,
Marco:
There's a reason we still have keyboard buttons on computers.
Marco:
Even when you look at the MacBook One and you see we barely have keyboard buttons, but we still have keyboard buttons for a reason.
Marco:
And that is that when you are not looking, when you're typing blind, it is way easier and more accurate and faster and ergonomically better to have key switches that move up and down that you can feel when you push.
Marco:
So, the idea of replacing this strip with an OLED strip to accomplish various goals.
Marco:
The benefits here would be you could put stuff under that part because it would be thinner.
Marco:
It wouldn't need any kind of travel under it.
Marco:
And presumably, the screen component could be very thin, thinner than a keyboard row could be.
Marco:
So, you could shove more of the computer's guts or battery under that area.
Marco:
So, you save something there.
Marco:
It would...
Marco:
look cool maybe if it wouldn't look tacky so you'd say you know you gain something there you could put banner ads on it oh it's not a chromebook never mind yeah there you go yeah so like there you could see the reasons to do this and and i should point out also like and you know you can use it for like status things and pc laptops have had displays you know above the keyboard that show statuses of things for for a long time also on the covers and on the back and on the sides this place on every possible surface of pc laptops
John:
There was a Windows feature they were touting like one or two or three years ago.
John:
They were like, the new Windows feature is like secondary screens on laptops and it's OS supported and basically PC manufacturers go ahead, figure out where it's a good idea to put a screen and you just try to sell things like this and the OS will support them and it doesn't seem like it really caught on that much.
Marco:
Yeah, so anyway, Apple could do this that way with replacing the F&K row entirely with a screen.
Marco:
I hope they don't do it that way.
Marco:
Unfortunately, we've heard from a certain tipster that that's not how they're going to do it.
Marco:
The tipster suggested that what he saw around was not that version of it, but was instead you still had the physical buttons.
Marco:
And the screen augmented the buttons in some way.
Marco:
So I'm hoping that is correct.
Marco:
And that I wouldn't mind.
Marco:
If Apple does this right, I think it's going to be fine.
Marco:
I really hope they don't get rid of the entire F and key row itself.
Marco:
Because I really want those keys to be there.
Marco:
But I don't really care how they're labeled.
John:
i've got an idea you could sell an external keyboard like this and call it the apple extended keyboard and then finally apple would sell a keyboard that is not a tiny little piece of crap with no inverted t arrow keys on it oh don't even get me started don't even get me started you are wrong sir some chat room credit uh windows sideshow was what the great name that's fantastic like the the external like uh the support for weird uh secondary displays on laptops uh
John:
uh and nathan a in the chat room pointed out that uh what i was trying to think of was a os 10 lion uh came out with retina support 10.7.5 because basically the the fully retina supporting os 10 8 wasn't out yet yeah and the old the app store came to 10 6 10 10 6 8 yeah i think yeah anyway so that's that's the effing key row i think we have that well covered unless you guys have other other comments on that
John:
um i i think the the idea of having a big like you know the the that our tip says they're not doing but just having a big flat screen like there's the obvious reasons that's bad and you went over them like did you you know you feel your keys you want to feel what the edges are it's pain in the butt if it's just one big flat screen but
John:
i have to think and we've joked about this so many times and talking about the macbook keyboard and everything like well why even have keys at all if there's going to be so little travel and part of the whole big sales pitch of the original iphone presentation was like oh look at all these phones they have all these buttons on them but you kind of have to pick the buttons when you make the phone and you can't change it after the fact well what if we made the whole screen of the phone the whole surface of the phone a screen then you don't have to worry about what the buttons are because it's all software we can change them all the time and everybody said yeah all software but then how the hell can you feel the keys when you're trying to type on the thing because it's just a big flat screen uh
John:
We work that out as a society.
John:
We now know how to type on flat screen phones.
John:
It's a little bit different because the focal distance between looking at the keyboard and looking at the screen is a little bit better on a phone than it is on a laptop combination.
John:
Like you're kind of looking in the same place at the same distance as opposed to
John:
looking at the keyboard, obviously touch typists are going to say, oh, I don't like this.
John:
I'm a touch typist.
John:
I don't have to look at the keyboard.
John:
I wonder what percentage of the world population looks at the keyboard when they type, not on a phone, on a regular laptop or desktop keyboard.
John:
Maybe it's pretty high.
John:
Maybe it's not.
John:
I don't know.
John:
But you still have the same focal distance question.
John:
Anyway, the final thing that I can't remember the source of this, maybe one of you will.
John:
Was it on iMore?
John:
Somebody did a survey of...
John:
how fast can you touch type on a on an ipad keyboard like on a totally glass keyboard by age and they split it up by age and the old people of course were horrendously bad at touch typing on it and the younger you got the bigger the bars get up to the point where people were typing faster on the the uh ipad keyboard than i can touch on a real type on a real keyboard i'm a terrible typist so that's no big judge but they were into like you know over 60 words a minute this was cortex by the way
John:
oh was it cortex yep yeah anyway um it makes me wonder about the future like that for now we're all glad if they do the separate buttons with the little led things in them because it looks cool we can feel the button edges and i know i don't look at the keyboard when i hit the escape key and many other things like i'm not really a touch typist i don't type the right way but in practice i can program without looking at the keyboard even though my fingers are doing completely the incorrect thing down there um
John:
but we're going to get old and retire and die uh and eventually i don't think it's too unrealistic to imagine that it's possible not guaranteed but possible that future future future apple laptops could uh either a not exist or b uh just have an entirely you know have an entire screen for the keyboard area because it would be thinner and it would be infinitely reconfigurable and people do get used to them and people can actually get fast with them and it makes me uh wonder about the future
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, like, I think my ideal setup here, because I do recognize like the advantages of having like dynamic soft keys where, you know, maybe some of them the system defines as always having pretty much the same functions, things like, you know, volume controls.
Marco:
um and then some of them you know are application defined and applications can say all right well when you have like photoshop or logic or whatever active then you can map these buttons to these commands and actually show them on there and that that makes it easier to learn the keyboard shortcuts and more these functions become more accessible and everything so like there is also do the fuzzy targets too just like the a phone keyboard does that was another big selling point of the phone keyboard is like oh we know that most likely in the english language the next letter is has a much higher percentage chance to be you know an r than an x
John:
So even though you're a little bit off of the key that you were trying to hit, will, you know, like the sort of fuzzy matching for where your fingers tap.
John:
And you may think, oh, I don't need that when the keys are full size.
John:
But maybe you do.
John:
Maybe it would help.
John:
Like there are things you can do with a...
John:
Completely software controlled, completely flat glass keyboard that you can't do with a physical one.
Marco:
Well, right.
John:
It might be good.
Marco:
But to me, I think that the happy medium here would be that you still have the physical buttons there.
Marco:
I mean, if you're doing the entire keyboard, not just the effing row, if you're doing the entire keyboard, I think your argument makes more sense.
Marco:
Even though I think I would hate that, but it would be so much more powerful because you could do things like, well, the entire left half of this is going to be a jog wheel instead of keys.
Marco:
You could do dynamic stuff.
John:
yeah that's what i'm saying this the entire thing would be just it would just be like be you know just like typing on an ipad it's just one big flat piece of glass for the whole thing not a bunch of individual keys like because it almost feels like a weird in-between state to have like the optimist keyboard where it's like we want the keys to be infinitely reconfigurable but they all have to always be the same size and position right but i think in the context of a mac
Marco:
And, you know, especially like a Mac laptop where whatever keyboard they ship in a Mac laptop, you're stuck with.
Marco:
Like, you know, I mean, you could put other keyboards like on desks when you go park it on a desk.
Marco:
But like when you are out in the world or when you're using your laptop like on the couch or by itself with no additional hardware on a desk, like...
Marco:
whatever keyboard that that has in it you don't have a choice so i think in in the current context of like how people use macs and pcs like i think it's important to have a physical keyboard and i think you know looking at things like the macbook one where you know apple goes to incredible lengths to make a really crappy physical keyboard but it's still better than typing on glass i i think apple probably agrees i think that this design apple agrees and
Marco:
Um, that, you know, in the Mac landscape, you need physical keys.
Marco:
So if you're going to have physical keys and you want this, this key strip to be dynamic, it makes sense to also keep those as physical keys because the way people are going to be using that keyboard is still going to be based on feel for the most part.
Marco:
And you're not really going to gain much.
Marco:
You know, if, if you only have a thin strip on top of the keyboard to customize in software, um,
Marco:
You're not really going to gain much by having that be a flat tuck surface that you wouldn't also have by having them be physical keys.
Marco:
And there will be no cost to it then to the user.
Marco:
There will be no downside if there's still physical keys and you're changing the labels on them.
Marco:
Then there's no complaint.
Marco:
There's no downside except cost and complexity.
Marco:
But it seems like Apple's okay with that.
Marco:
uh i i think that sounds fine i think that that would be that would be my happy medium is sure if you're gonna do this at all make it like the optimist keyboard put screen put some kind of screens on each key or put a big screen below all the keys and make them clear or something i don't know but that's yeah it'll be a screen on each key um but like for the big flat glass thing you can also get rid of the trackpad at that point too like it's another it's a simplification that may prove irresistible eventually
John:
uh if if the customer base eventually gets to the point where they feel like we can sell this product and not too many people will complain except for the really old people yeah i just want an extended keyboard is that too much to ask is that just not a thing anymore that apple doesn't really it's like they want their keyboards to be super small because they're all used on submarines or whatever i don't know i don't know what the use case is for constantly making the keyboard not just thinner fine whatever i don't really care that much about that but narrower like am i am i using it in coach class on united i don't know what why does it have to be so i've got this big desk here like
John:
Take off the numeric keypad, fine, but give me an inverted T. I use those keys when I type and program.
Marco:
Also, a quick comment on the thinness of keyboards here, just for a second.
Marco:
Articles are saying that this new MacBook Pro has a thinner keyboard that is like the MacBook 1 keyboard.
Marco:
This would normally freak me out, except the tipster has said many times in the chat that, yes, it is that general type of keyboard.
Marco:
However, it is much closer to the new standalone Magic keyboard than the MacBook One's total crap keyboard.
Marco:
I've tried the Magic keyboard in the store.
Marco:
I know, Casey, you love yours, right?
Casey:
I cannot say enough good things about it.
Casey:
With the exception, I agree, I would prefer the inverted T, but I've learned to move on from it.
John:
Page up, page down, home and end.
John:
Don't you miss those guys and being in a normal place where you can find them really easily?
Casey:
Nope.
Casey:
Really honestly don't.
Casey:
What year is this?
Casey:
Seriously.
John:
you don't use page up and page down no i even have them on my keyboard i never use them you swipe on your silly little mice when i used windows i used home and end all the time but now i use command left command right and that's you know right no home and end doing what they're supposed to do not what they do on windows go to the beginning of the line that's not home what world is that home home is the top end is the bottom
Casey:
That's command up and command down.
Casey:
Easy peasy.
Casey:
So the point is, so yeah, I love the Magic Keyboard.
Casey:
It is my favorite keyboard that I've ever used.
Casey:
And I have tried just about any of the popular keyboards or close variants thereof.
Casey:
And I grew up on the IBM.
Casey:
What was it?
Casey:
The IBM M or something like that?
Casey:
The ridiculous buckling springs.
John:
You love them.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And so, I mean, I'm not a keyboard snob and I don't really typically care for really loud, clicky keyboards.
Casey:
However, I love the Magic Keyboard more than anything.
Casey:
And the only flaw I see in it is I do agree with you that I wish I had the inverted T. So I love this thing.
Marco:
Yeah, I'm totally with you on that.
Marco:
But overall, the Magic Keyboard, I think, is fine.
Marco:
I have no problem with that.
Marco:
So if the tipster is right that the new MacBook Pro keyboard is much closer to that than to the MacBook One keyboard, that's fine.
Marco:
However, I would just generally like to say, there were a few people on Twitter who were kind of saying worrying things to me earlier about how keyboards keep getting thinner.
Marco:
It is great to have laptops that are thin and light.
Marco:
But in general, what matters more is the light, not the thin.
Marco:
And keyboards weigh almost nothing, no matter how thick they are.
Marco:
Like the keyboard component of a laptop is mostly empty space.
Marco:
And the key travel is all empty space, of course, because the keys have to move up and down.
Marco:
All matter is mostly empty space.
John:
Thanks, Sean.
John:
Thanks.
John:
I'm so happy you added that.
John:
I was on the kick of trying to stop email from people.
John:
Thanks.
John:
The new level of, well, actually, all matters.
John:
Anyway, go on.
Marco:
Okay.
Marco:
How am I supposed to continue?
Marco:
Anyway.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
So anyway.
Marco:
So yeah, keyboards are extremely lightweight.
Marco:
If you're talking about making laptops thinner and lighter...
Marco:
Again, lighter matters more than thinner.
Marco:
And if it gets to the point where you start sacrificing the usability of the keyboard, if you have to ship a crappy keyboard in order to make the laptop appealing visually to make it thinner from the side, which is an angle which nobody ever looks at it, I think that's a bad choice.
Marco:
I think Apple went too far with that.
John:
It's also harder to pick up, by the way.
John:
as they get thinner it gets harder to eventually it's like i know they cup the edges and they make it but like at a certain point if you keep getting thinner and thinner you don't have enough edge left to even cup and if like you put it down it's like trying to pick a coin off a very smooth table it's hard to do yeah it also makes it harder to open the lid but anyway and that's weight too anyway
Marco:
So my point is, I think if you are optimizing your laptop for thinness, I think you're optimizing it for the wrong thing.
Marco:
You should let thinness follow from battery removals, which will result in more efficient CPUs, more efficient components, things like that.
Marco:
And things like getting rid of the optical drive and making other components thinner.
Marco:
But I don't think you should ever be at a point...
Marco:
where you are making the keyboard hard to use or less ergonomically friendly or otherwise horrible for the sake of shaving another millimeter off the case thickness.
Marco:
Because if the laptop is still very light and is just a millimeter thicker to accommodate better key switches...
Marco:
That's fine.
Marco:
That's an acceptable tradeoff for a laptop because you want laptops to be light, but you don't need them to be paper thin.
Marco:
We're not talking about a big difference here.
Marco:
We're not talking about going back to the old PowerBook G4 thickness to have a decent keyboard.
Marco:
You don't need that.
Marco:
Today, you can look at the MacBook Air.
Marco:
and you can look at the MacBook Pro today, and presumably what it's about to be in a few months, you can make a great laptop with a great keyboard that's very, very thin, but I think the MacBook One took it too far.
Marco:
And it sounds like with these newer MacBook Pros...
Marco:
If all the rumors are right, if Tipster's right, I think we'll be okay again.
Marco:
I think we will have reachieved a good balance here.
Marco:
So I'm looking forward to seeing how that turns out.
Marco:
I hope Apple does it right.
Marco:
And in general, I've been very critical to MacBook One.
Marco:
Even though people love it, that's fine.
Marco:
If you love it, good for you.
Marco:
I'm happy for you.
Marco:
In general, I expect the new MacBook Pro to be awesome.
Marco:
both 13 and 15, based on both what we've heard, what's been reported, and just based on, you know, Apple, the things that really matter, things like the iPhone, Apple is really, they have a fantastic track record.
Marco:
You know, Apple has never made a bad iPhone.
Marco:
And similarly, I don't think Apple has ever made a bad MacBook Pro.
Marco:
There have been a few that have been slightly imperfect, but for the most part, the MacBook Pro, they just nail it.
Marco:
It has such a good history, such a good track record.
Marco:
And it has to because the MacBook Pro is like the workhorse of the entire industry.
Marco:
Pretty much every web developer, almost every Apple developer, tons of people inside Apple, tons of journalists, tons of people, tons of students.
Marco:
The MacBook Pro is such the workhorse of so many people.
Marco:
They can't screw... Legally, they just can't screw it up.
Marco:
And they know that.
Marco:
Apple, I think, would not take lightly major changes to the MacBook Pro.
Marco:
And their track record on it is so good that I am confident that this is going to be awesome.
Marco:
Even though I'm skeptical of many of the things that Apple does these days, I definitely give them the benefit of the doubt that
Marco:
Whatever we hear about this new MacBook Pro that might sound a little bit weird, it's probably going to be awesome.
Casey:
Yeah, I agree.
Casey:
I'm really looking forward to this.
Casey:
To me, I feel like I would just be thrilled if the next MacBook Pro had a keyboard as close to the Magic Keyboard as possible.
Casey:
And also an SD card slot that didn't trip my damn SD card read switch.
John:
SD card slot.
John:
No, no, you get USB 3 ports, USB-C type C connectors, and that's all, and you'll like it, mister.
Casey:
Probably right, and I was being silly about the SD card thing.
Casey:
But anyway, I think an improved keyboard would be great, and I don't think the current keyboards are bad.
Casey:
I just freaking love the Magic keyboard.
Casey:
But I agree with you, Marco.
Casey:
I think that they have a great track record, and I can't see them releasing a dud.
Casey:
And even though some of these rumors are making me scratch my head a little bit,
John:
i'm really really amped to see these and also miserable because i'm not getting a new mac from from work for another two years i think and and i'm certainly not buying one for home so i'll be sad i'm still uh looking for a retina air i know the 13 will be so thin it'll almost be air like but now that the air has been freed up you know we have the 5k iMac uh used to have the air connected to a thunderbolt display now just the air is like rattling around the house and
John:
My daughter is smearing her yogurt-covered fingers on it, and I'm routinely cleaning it.
John:
Anyway, 13-inch Air is such a great form factor for a laptop.
John:
It's such a good machine.
John:
The screen is crap.
John:
But everything else about it, this is like a 2011 model, right?
John:
That screen is not good.
John:
But everything else about it is just so nice.
John:
And because it's a 2011 model, it's like a 5-year-old computer, it looks great.
John:
and so now hopefully maybe these 13s will get down to the point where it's getting close to that because the errors haven't been updated and you said that the pros the workhorse is the workhorse of like you know professional people or people who need some sort of computing power to do their job but uh the errors were the sort of uh
John:
computing for the the the lap the apple laptop for the rest of us where you're not going to be compiling stuff you just want to like browse the web and write papers for school or whatever it's it was such a great student computer was such a great computer for people who don't have particularly demanding needs it's a real a real high point i think when we look back
John:
The great Macs, the 13-inch Air, that design, if not the particular innards, but when they redesigned the case and everything, that was a great computer.
Casey:
Absolutely.
John:
And so the pros, the first Retina ones were pretty impressive, and now they're going to go super thin and just have the USB-C ports on the side and just shave off all those things.
John:
These have the potential to be really great, long-lasting computers to remember.
John:
The Touch ID and the weird screen keys and stuff,
John:
also has the potential to have them go wrong until they sort that out uh but like you said like they're surely they've had enough time to work out these kinks and this is the type of thing they could have been working on for a long time so uh i i have some confidence that they're going to be good as well um although i have to admit when i saw you marco tweeting about the
John:
the thin keyboard thing i thought you were talking about their external desktop keyboards that also keep getting thinner for even as i said even more mysterious reasons not just like you know i talked about the width before with the united airlines but they're also getting like thinner as in lower to the desk they're just they're just wasting away soon they're just going to give you a bunch of keycaps and you'll throw them on your desk
Marco:
No, I mean, in Apple's defense, one of the reasons I don't use their desktop keyboards is that the ergonomics are horrible on them, and I need something with better ergonomics to prevent RSI problems.
Marco:
In their defense, though, the worst thing about ergonomics of most desktop keyboards is when the back is higher than the front, the forward tilt.
Marco:
That's terrible for ergonomics.
Marco:
And by the way, anybody listening, if you have the feet flipped up on the back so that your keyboard is tilted even more, for God's sake, flip those feet down.
Marco:
Put something under the front to make it level.
Marco:
Yeah, there's a reason why if you look at natural keyboards now, like the Microsoft Sculpt and everything, there's a reason why they come with this big riser on the front that lifts the front up so it's actually tilting away from you.
Marco:
uh and everyone thinks it looks weird and it does the first time you see it but way better for ergonomics there's a reason for that uh anyway you know if apple makes their keyboards thinner it actually reduces the tilt inherently and so it it slightly improves the ergonomics
John:
They can still be totally level.
John:
I have a really old translucent plastic Apple USB keyboard I saw in the attic when I was cleaning stuff up.
John:
Those were pretty much perfectly flat as well, although they did have stupid feet in the back.
John:
But anyway, you can make a keyboard that is level.
John:
It just doesn't have to be level and also the thickness of three credit cards.
John:
Because again...
John:
I fear that they're going to get to the point where they're starting to sacrifice travel on the desktop models.
John:
It's like, what space are you saving?
John:
The airspace above my desk?
John:
You want to save two millimeters of airspace?
John:
Please, width-wise and height-wise, don't go nuts with the thing.
John:
And I understand the part sharing with the laptops.
John:
That's why I think it could literally be the same exact part.
John:
I haven't seen the Magic Keyboard.
John:
I can't tell if it's actually a laptop-worthy part.
John:
But anyway, I understand the economies of scale going on here.
John:
I just think that the desktop keyboards and also the little edges around it people like sometimes it's hard to pick up my keyboard if I want to move it because how the hell do you pick it up because the key caps go right to the edge it's a it's a little bit extreme it's a little bit we're getting into the realm of a form over function where like what do I have to do with the keyboard I want to type on it sometimes you have to move it around and
John:
I don't really care if it looks like... I mean, I do care if it looks like a beautiful piece of art, but when that look starts to compromise the basic things I do with my keyboard, including occasionally picking them up or moving them around, it's silly.
Marco:
But that is...
Marco:
Today's Apple, like the desktop keyboards, I mean, if there's ever a thing that they make that form over function wins, it's like the desktop input peripherals because the function part doesn't really matter.
Marco:
Anybody who cares about the ergonomics or the size or the layout or the key switches or the thickness of their desktop keyboard, they're just going to use a different keyboard.
Marco:
And this is like exactly the kind of area where Johnny Ives is going to come in and be like, all right, well, this needs to look even thinner and even sleeker so that it looks great in all of our press shots.
Marco:
And so the iMac looks great and they look great in the stores and the boxes can be smaller and all this stuff like...
Marco:
This is exactly the kind of area where Apple would absolutely go nuts and sacrifice functionality for form, and the cost of that isn't so big.
Marco:
It's way worse than the laptops, where, as I said, you're kind of stuck with the keyboard that's in a laptop.
Marco:
So that, I think, is the bigger area we have to watch out for.
Marco:
And I do feel like, even though I just got done praising Apple for how awesome they're probably going to be with this, I do feel like that I'm kind of always on edge trying to defend and hold on to things on Apple products that work well or are ergonomically friendly.
Marco:
Because I feel like I'm always battling Johnny Ive on like, no, please stop making things worse or harder to use or more slippery or, you know, with the Apple TV remote where you can't even tell which way is up and you're pressing things wrong.
Marco:
Like, please, like, please, Johnny, stop.
Marco:
Stay away from my things.
Marco:
You're sanding off all the things that make them usable.
Marco:
Like, and I am a little bit worried about that.
Marco:
that angle of apple kind of taking over more than it should and and that i think long term both present and into the near future i think that is a major concern that many of us should have about apple that real world usability and ergonomics seem to be a very low priority and an ever shrinking one that they're happy to borrow from to make gains in thinness and appearance
John:
or they just forgotten how to do it but like the the keyboard i have the apple extended aluminum keyboard i've bought many of these i've gone through a couple of them actually breaking the keys which maybe doesn't speak to the reliability of the keyboard considering i use the apple extended two for years and the only way i broke it is because i dropped my pocket knife off of a shelf onto it and snapped off one of the function keys but uh
John:
i like the apple extended aluminum keyboard in every aspect except for the fact that the stupid top row function keys is too close to the number keys and is not full size but every other aspect of it i like i like that it's thin and small and doesn't have any excess room it doesn't have any excess sort of trimming and stuff around it it could be a little bit flatter because it does tilt up a little bit but
John:
it is i think the a reasonable interpretation of the minimalist flat thing i like the fact that the keys have low effort because that helps my rsi um and i can't type on a keyboard so like if if you if given the choice if you can have any keyboard in the world with your new mac this is still the one that i would pick because it's still basically my favorite keyboard out of all the ones that i've tried uh you know and i can't use my apple extended to anymore um
John:
but they went a little bit farther like the next keyboard was like well the other one had a little bit of a rim around the edge so you could pick it up can we shave that off and the answer is yes we can and can we put it directly down to the ground instead of having a lip where you can get your fingers underneath it well we can do that too and can you take off all those useful keys that people use sometimes yep they can do that too and now i'm sad
John:
but you still buy this one by the way like you can still buy the extended keyboard with your new computer it's just it's like you feel like you're getting the last generation thing you can buy this shiny new keyboard that casey has and he loves so much with these cool key switches that i i like too i tried them the apple store i think they're great too um or you can get this old keyboard that silly people use with the extra keys on them
Casey:
Yeah, one of the things I love about this keyboard is that it is so darn flat.
Casey:
Now, I wouldn't say I ever was seeking out a keyboard that's flat, but now that it's in front of me, I like that it's so flat because I feel like it works better for me ergonomically.
Casey:
Now, maybe that's wrong.
Casey:
Maybe I'm crazy, but it feels good to me.
Casey:
And I like that if I decide to take my iPad on a trip, for example...
Casey:
And I don't want to take my full on 15 inch work computer.
Casey:
I can just throw this keyboard in my bag and it's like it's not even there.
Casey:
It's thin, it's light, and it's my favorite keyboard I have ever used.
Casey:
So I know I talk about it constantly, but I cannot say enough good things about this keyboard.
John:
it's a great portable keyboard but you know i'm not buying it for portable i'm buying it it's like this is the one that's going to be attached and by the way i like when they're attached with the wire because again i have a place for the wire to go and i don't need to deal with bluetooth and i don't need to deal with batteries because it's never going to go anywhere it's always going to be plugged into my computer it'll be fine um so yeah like i and the flatness again is not an innovation of this particular keyboard because like i said there's been flat keyboards from apple and others forever and ever and ever without any feet without anything that are just nice and level and
John:
it's the tucking in of the edges and the bringing of the edges straight down to the table and the trimming off of the keys and the not having a space between the numbers and the function keys because that would make the keyboard ever so slightly bigger it's like yeah all right if you're making a portable keyboard i see that trade-off you want it to fit in your backpack every every millimeter counts it's going to be on my desk every millimeter does not count in the same way and it just strikes me as a bad trade-off
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:
If people are slow to pay your invoices, they have overdue payment reminders.
Marco:
So you don't have to have that awkward conversation.
Marco:
You can have FreshBooks have it for you.
Marco:
These are all configurable, of course.
Marco:
You can configure the message.
Marco:
You can configure when it's sent, who it's sent to.
Marco:
And going beyond the invoicing that they started with, they also have expense tracking.
Marco:
So you can track receipts.
Marco:
You can have an import transaction from your bank automatically, whether it's a receipt or not.
Marco:
You can have it import all transactions.
Marco:
It can generate expense reports for you.
Marco:
You can integrate that whole thing into the invoicing system.
Marco:
It is so advanced.
Marco:
And you can use the FreshBooks app to take pictures of receipts that you get in real life on your mobile device, and you can let FreshBooks pretty much handle the rest of it.
Marco:
This is such an advanced platform.
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
Thanks a lot.
Casey:
So you had written a post, Marco, about whether or not Apple's kind of allowing themselves to get left behind on this whole intelligent assistant thing.
Marco:
Can't we just talk about the MacBook Pro some more instead?
Casey:
No, I think we've beaten that to death at this point.
Casey:
So I don't necessarily need to get into the article too much, but I thought it was reasonable.
Casey:
And then, curiously, a day or two later...
Casey:
there's an article on The Information about Apple's opening up Siri and it's developing an Echo Rival.
Casey:
Interesting.
Marco:
I mean, this could be a coincidence.
Marco:
It could be a controlled leaking response.
Marco:
I have no idea.
Marco:
It's probably a coincidence, being realistic here.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, so, I mean, I don't want to go too far into it.
Marco:
The gist of my article was, this was another one of these situations where, like, I write something critical about Apple on my blog, and it just goes everywhere.
Marco:
This time, I don't feel bad about it.
Marco:
This time, like, with the whole functional high ground thing, I mainly felt bad about it because, you know, A, I did not expect that at all.
Marco:
I had never seen that kind of response before, so it was more of a shock.
Marco:
B, the bigger reason is that I just didn't write it very well.
Marco:
I didn't do a very good job of writing it.
Marco:
And so I was kind of embarrassed that a lot of people, including people at Apple, saw this.
Marco:
And it wasn't very good work.
Marco:
So that's why I kind of had a hard time back then with the high ground thing.
Marco:
But this time, I wrote this piece knowing that there was a chance that it might spread.
Marco:
Although I didn't expect the spread of God at all.
Marco:
But knowing there was a chance it might spread.
Marco:
And I wrote it very carefully, much more carefully than the high ground thing.
Marco:
And I think what came out, I stand by it.
Marco:
The only thing that I regretted was I had originally titled it Avoiding BlackBerry's Fate.
Marco:
That kind of implied that if Apple doesn't make this big shift, they will definitely fail the way BlackBerry did exactly.
Marco:
And that was not my point that I was trying to make.
Marco:
So I retitled it about a day in to something more closer to what I actually meant.
Marco:
The rest of it, I totally stand by.
Marco:
And I don't regret it at all.
Marco:
And so I feel pretty good about it.
Marco:
And it did spread way further than I thought.
Marco:
And many of the crappy rewrites of it have been crappy.
Marco:
Business Insider did what they always do, and that's fine.
Marco:
I sent their visitors to the Fish Meat Stick video.
Marco:
And all the sensational news sites and all the crappy TV people and all the other crappy sites, they're going to do what they're going to do.
Marco:
And all I need is to be comfortable myself in standing by what I wrote
Marco:
in knowing myself that i did good work that i that i wrote it that i expressed myself properly in the way i wanted to explain myself you will not get that reference at all hi and i'm happy with what i wrote and so what i wrote basically which i realized now i forgot to say at the beginning of this giant rant sorry see i don't stand by this giant rant now but so what you know
Marco:
What I wrote was basically, I think, you know, Google and Amazon and Facebook and, as many people pointed out, which I didn't, Microsoft, they're all making these huge developments in AI-like big data services.
Marco:
So things like, you know, obviously, in the old days, things like search and maps and directory stuff.
Marco:
And then now, in recent times, these, like...
Marco:
kind of like assistant these virtual assistants chat bot things like siri and cortana and google now and stuff like that um and now the amazon echo and the google home weeble thing and whatever you know whatever amazon and apple and facebook and everybody else are going to come up with next if the industry shifts to prioritize the functionality of these virtual assistants of of this kind of big data ai problem as like the primary thing people care about or the primary functionality people want
Marco:
Apple is not in a good place for that.
Marco:
I made the BlackBerry analogy.
Marco:
When the iPhone came out, BlackBerry was on top of the world, and they were doing really well.
Marco:
The reason BlackBerry was so screwed...
Marco:
is because when Apple came out, they changed the game completely to raise everyone's expectations of what phones could and should do in areas that rim... They could not catch up at that point if they wanted to because Apple had moved the goalposts into this area where, okay, now to be competitive, you need to have...
Marco:
a desktop class operating system, this incredibly complex manufacturing pipeline to make these incredibly precise, high-quality devices, this massive store ecosystem with all these credit cards on file and all these developer tools and the ecosystem of computers surrounding them and, like, all this crazy stuff that, like...
Marco:
that the iPhone was, all the stuff that enabled the iPhone with assets that Apple had been building up for like a decade before that, no matter what BlackBerry did at that point, because they weren't building that kind of assets for a decade, they were not going to catch up.
Marco:
The writing was in the wall as soon as Steve showed the iPhone in early 07, before it even blew up with the App Store a year later.
Marco:
The writing was on the wall for BlackBerry because the gap was too wide.
Marco:
They would not be able to catch up to what the iPhone had now redefined smartphones to be.
Marco:
You look now and you see these services.
Marco:
Apple started out this whole thing with Siri.
Marco:
And yes, I know Google was doing voice stuff before that.
Marco:
Yes, thank you.
Marco:
But Apple kind of started the virtual assistant revolution with Siri in 2011.
Marco:
Yeah, 2011.
Marco:
It has progressed.
Marco:
It has gotten better.
Marco:
It has gotten more advanced.
Marco:
It has added more languages around the world, which is not an easy thing to do.
Marco:
But ultimately, Siri still feels like a first-generation version of this product, while the competitors are all moving past that in certain attributes.
Marco:
So you look at like the Amazon Echo and the Echo only supports basically U.S.
Marco:
English and only is useful to people in the U.S.
Marco:
for most of its functionality.
Marco:
But the functionality it does for those U.S.
Marco:
English speakers, it does that stuff better and more reliably and faster than Siri does most of the time.
Marco:
And you look at, you know, Google is going to be way better at international support, way better at different languages.
Marco:
And Google is also doing a lot of this stuff better, faster, more reliably now with their Google Now stuff and all the other Android things I don't understand.
Marco:
It's hard to look at this and to see, yeah, if we all start using these virtual assistants as our primary interfaces in two years or whatever, is Apple really going to catch up to what Google is doing and what they will have in two years?
Marco:
I don't think so, because Apple is not good at big data problems.
Marco:
Number one example of this is the App Store search.
Marco:
You could argue, okay, well, maybe that's one department that has these technical burdens or whatever else.
Marco:
Fine, maybe that's true.
Marco:
Okay, what about Siri, where it really matters a lot?
Marco:
Siri, again, it's kind of a Gen 1 product in a Gen 2 world now.
Marco:
And so it is possible, we've heard lots of rumblings, that Apple has made some key acquisitions and investments over the last year or two.
Marco:
And that this WBDC, they're going to come out with something major and it's going to be amazing.
Marco:
And that might be true.
Marco:
But just as I said earlier, that Apple has an amazing track record of MacBook Pro updates.
Marco:
Apple has a really terrible track record of big data AI problem updates.
Marco:
You hear, oh, we've improved Siri, we've now added these capabilities, or now it's better, or now you can do this.
Marco:
And yet, somehow it's still unreliable and inconsistent and sometimes not that smart.
Marco:
Apple has the opposite problem here of any hype that's about what Apple might do at WBDC to all of a sudden show us that they're an amazing AI and big data company...
Marco:
I don't believe that for a second.
Marco:
I would love to be proven wrong.
Marco:
I really hope I'm proven wrong because I would so much rather have Apple do well at this stuff than have to switch all my garbage to Android.
Marco:
But I don't have a lot of confidence in Apple doing this stuff because their track record just is not very strong.
Casey:
So there was an interesting article that I saw today, and I'm assuming it was posted today.
Casey:
No, it was yesterday on Pixel Envy, and it was titled Meet Vocal IQ.
Casey:
Vocal IQ is a small Cambridge-based startup launched in 2011 that specialized in natural speaker recognition and conversational interactions.
Casey:
From a Times article, this is Times UK, published in June, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Casey:
This is a quote from one of their employees.
Casey:
One of our key projects is to develop a car that can talk to you like a Knight Rider.
Casey:
Awesome.
Casey:
So these people got acquired by Apple in October.
Casey:
And so there was a quote by someone who's been following this.
Casey:
If Apple utilizes just a small subset of the technology developed by VocalIQ, we will see a far more advanced Siri.
Casey:
However, I'm quite certain that the amazing work of Tom Gruber...
Casey:
will also be utilized.
Casey:
Additionally, the amazing technology from Emollient, Perception, and a number of other unannounced and future Apple acquisitions will also become a big part of Apple's AI future.
Casey:
So Perception apparently was actually Perceptio, which was a photo classification startup, which reminds me a lot of Google Photos, which I've also been talking about constantly lately because it is amazing.
Casey:
So you put all this together, and this article, which is very short, ends with, so who's excited for WWDC?
Casey:
And I just think it's interesting.
Casey:
They've been making a lot of acquisitions that are right in this wheelhouse, and we don't know what they've been up to, but hopefully there's something there.
Marco:
I hope that's right.
Marco:
I mean, again, I really hope I'm wrong on this.
Marco:
I really hope Apple just suddenly comes out and is really good at this stuff.
Marco:
Unfortunately, I don't think it works that way.
Marco:
I don't think this is the kind of thing you can do quickly.
Marco:
One thing that's worth investigating is, yeah, they've made acquisitions like this and like the Siri people.
Marco:
Why do these people not stick around?
Marco:
Is there something about Apple's culture or their organizational structure or the departments that these people are hired to work in?
Marco:
why like why don't they stick around why why does apple need to go buying people in order to get this kind of talent in the company like is this a problem and are there other ways to fix this are there other problems need to be solved first i don't know i don't know enough about how they work internally to really uh to have good insight into this but what i can see is from the outside and again like
Marco:
I mean, every time anybody criticizes or has some kind of fear about Apple or is pessimistic about Apple in the springtime, everyone always says, oh, just wait.
Marco:
Oh, just wait.
Marco:
You're going to see.
Marco:
This is so stupid for you to be thinking about this now because just wait until WWDC.
Marco:
But you know what?
Marco:
WWDC is not like Santa Claus.
Marco:
It's not magic.
Marco:
They're not going to solve every problem that everybody wants them to solve in one keynote.
Marco:
And that's not realistic.
Marco:
And that, you know, if, you know, people say that I like, I am naive for thinking Apple's not working on this stuff.
Marco:
I think thinking Apple's going to magically solve everything in two weeks is naive.
Marco:
I think we can look at what Apple services are today and what they have been.
Marco:
Things like Siri, things like search and relevancy and predictive inputs, things like proactive on the phones and everything.
Marco:
We see what... And Apple News, Apple Music even, the recommendations.
Marco:
We see...
Marco:
Apple's current capabilities, and we know their past capabilities, in big data, AI-based web services.
Marco:
And we see that they can do it, they can manage to have a service out there, and it can work most of the time, and be up most of the time, and be fast most of the time.
Marco:
But that's what was good enough five years ago, ten years ago.
Marco:
And now, the companies who are really good at this stuff, like Google, they have moved to a different level of sophistication and performance and consistency.
Marco:
And we haven't seen Apple match that level.
Marco:
And it took them a pretty long time to get to the last level.
Marco:
So, again...
Marco:
Look at their track record.
Marco:
And I don't think it's unreasonable to be concerned about this.
Casey:
David Schaub made a good point in the chat.
Casey:
Startup people from all these acquisitions often aren't compatible with big companies or perhaps moving to the Cupertino area.
Casey:
So maybe you're happy in Boston like this vocal IQ company was.
Casey:
You get bought up by Apple.
Casey:
You're expected to move.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And sometimes people just like the chase of a startup.
Casey:
Sometimes they just don't like being always on vacation in California.
Casey:
And it could be that it has nothing to do with Apple at all.
Casey:
And it's just the kind of mindset or geographical situation from these companies that are being bought.
Casey:
Or it could be that their new corporate overlords are killing them and they just can't handle it anymore.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
What do you think, John?
John:
On an upcoming episode of another podcast on another network, I had a long discussion about Apple not talking about, you know, agents or services or things like the Google Home thing or the Amazon Echo or Siri or Cortana or any of that stuff, but about the more mundane aspects of cloud computing that it seems that Apple still has yet to master.
John:
that you have an apple id that you were signed into the apple id in various applications on your phone and that it lets you do things like see your past purchases make new purchases uh download your music for you know uh apple music or itunes match see your photos all those things and the utter mess the that
John:
The whole identity and login system is both on the web on your Mac, but especially on your phone with the series of dialogues popping up and you entering your password and having no idea why you're being prompted and why you're being prompted again.
John:
That is not just like level one or 1.0 or whatever.
John:
That's like level zero many, many years ago.
John:
that apple still hasn't gotten right so i i continue to think i've you know i've been being this drum for ages about apple and services that just sort of having something that looks on the outside just like everyone else's service like yay we've done it we have a service we're a services company
John:
You have to keep evolving the basic parts of your system, sort of in the same way that, you know, in the beginning, Google was a search box that you type terms into.
John:
Eventually, there was something to sign into.
John:
I forget what the first Google thing to sign into was.
John:
Maybe it was Gmail, maybe it was something else.
John:
Eventually, there was the concept of a Google account that was unifying all the various Google things together.
John:
And the way Google authentication works and the way it's consistent, referencing some tweets that Craig Hockenberry had been doing recently about how many different ways can you log in with your Apple ID just on websites alone and his speculation that each of those talks to a different back end and that they're all sort of diverse.
John:
And it's just such a big mess compared to how Google's authentication and login system has evolved over the years to get...
John:
Sort of more sturdy, more centralized, more comforting, more reassuring, more reliable, more predictable.
John:
Whereas Apple's has gone in the opposite direction.
John:
It started off as small and humble and has become fragmented, confusing and broken a lot of the time and inexplicable.
John:
And like, we're just talking about logging in.
John:
We're not talking about understand my natural language query that I'm speaking into my phone, which seems like it's a harder problem.
John:
But if you neglect the fundamentals, if you don't, but Margaret was talking about like the, why are these people not staying in the company?
John:
It's a topic that's come on past shows as well.
John:
Like, you know, it could be that a serial entrepreneur
John:
I want to move on to other things, but Apple as an organization has never seemed to value the type of infrastructure work that is necessary to be a world-class services organization that you, you can't have every project to do everything on its own.
John:
You have to sort of build up a common core infrastructure like it has, like, again, this is a repeat of shows from many years ago, but like.
John:
like it has on the os side they had a core os they developed it they use it as the underpinning for their new mac operating system it eventually ended up being the underpinning for their phone operating system also for their watch operating system also for their uh h.264 hdmi adapter cable for you know whatever does that one have ios in it i forget anyway like core technologies coco objective c their compiler infrastructure their their development tools like
John:
on on the client side in the non-service world they understand that it's stupid of every project to have its own little thing unify share where possible like it just makes more sense and then and on the services side they haven't quite gotten that down to the most basic thing you could possibly do with a service which is like log in and have an application that knows that you're logged in that doesn't ask you to log in repeatedly for no reason it doesn't lose your login credentials doesn't get confused that you don't have bad weather iCloud days where things just don't seem to be working like
John:
I don't know how many more people get sick of hearing it about this and me listing off all the technologies that Google has had and developed over the years that are not for a specific project that are so that anybody at Google can make a scalable, worldwide, reliable, redundant, performant network service online.
John:
On top of these things that they build and this whole section of the company, Google, all they do is make that infrastructure better and better and revise and replace this one with a better version than that.
John:
And just it's a rising tide lifts all boats and apples just like you're chucked out into sea with life preserver and sent to fend for yourself.
John:
Even the whole the Siri people touting like they're moving to the Apache.
John:
Was it Mesos or something or whatever?
John:
Like I get the impression that that team is like solving a problem for themselves.
John:
Like, why is there not an Apple wide solution to anybody who wants to write a service like this that is infrastructure for the whole company?
John:
Why is a product team doing it?
John:
I don't know.
John:
It seems to me they just don't get it.
John:
And that, to me, explains partly why people who aren't serial entrepreneurs but just merely want to work in a company that values that type of work would definitely go to work for Google or even Amazon or Facebook before they would go for Apple because those companies are so much more focused on valuing those server-side and operations and data center things.
John:
Whereas Apple's like, we kind of try to do it in-house and we kind of farm stuff out to Azure and Amazon, but...
John:
we're not really good at that stuff.
John:
We mostly make cool devices and that's, that's just not going to cut it long-term regardless of whether AI is awesome or anything.
John:
I think it's not cutting it today and it's just not going to cut it even for basic stuff like photos, which even if you set aside all the cool stuff that Casey loves about Google photos, just the basics of doing photos, right.
John:
And having them in the cloud and everything took them so long to even get like sort of a passable level of, of having things working and so many different tries.
John:
And yeah,
John:
i guess you know cloud kit is a is an attempt to do that type of infrastructure but it's like they're just taking too long and they're moving too slowly and everyone else is too far ahead of them again repeats of stuff i said uh last week but uh it's it's on my mind a lot because i use a lot of apple products and every time i think about is that i'm starting to think about are there aspects of my life that i use apple with that i would be better off using someone else with uh down to things like google photos with uh casey talking about that but you know all the way up to
John:
Should I stop trying to use Siri and should I use Google now?
John:
I'm not going to go out and get an Android phone at this point, but I already used Gmail for my mail.
John:
I would never use Apple's mail system for my mail for a variety of reasons.
John:
Apple's losing on a lot of these fronts.
Casey:
Yeah, Google Photos, and I think I may have briefly mentioned this last episode, it's really rocked my world in an uncomfortable way because it really makes me wonder, like, am I missing out on just giving Google everything about everything and having that kind of intelligent assistant thing for me?
Sure.
John:
should i be looking at android you should use the gmail web you should use the gmail web interface because it knows when your flights are coming and it puts a little thing there and you can unsubscribe to lists from like little buttons on your like it's it does smart things with your email and gives you little buttons without even having to go into them to and it can put things on your calendar based on what's in there and that may sound annoying and everything but it's it's actually really convenient
Casey:
Yeah, Google Photos has shown me, like, if you're willing to give Google, in this case, all of your pictures, it's stunning how much intelligence they can provide you based on that.
Casey:
You know, if I want to search for a picture taken on a patio...
Casey:
in 2012, I probably could search for that and it would probably find it pretty quickly.
Casey:
It's unbelievable the things that can put together just from the metadata in my pictures.
Casey:
And so it's not hard to extrapolate.
Casey:
Well, if it's able to get all this from my pictures, what could it do with my email and maybe with searches and things?
Casey:
And so on the one side, every ounce of me is like, no, that's a terrible idea.
Casey:
You don't want Google looking at all those things.
Casey:
And then the opposite side of me thinks, no,
Casey:
It is pretty damn convenient.
Casey:
Is it really that big a deal?
Casey:
I mean, they already have my email.
Casey:
Why not take the rest?
Casey:
So it's very weird what Google Photos has done because it's really made me start thinking about, is it worth trading some of that privacy and some of that data to get something that is actually useful out of it?
Marco:
We are also sponsored this week by Hover.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
Thanks a lot to Hover for sponsoring our show.
John:
I was going to say one other thing that came up last week.
John:
Again, I feel like I mentioned this to Marco and Slack.
John:
I just feel the crushing invisibility of podcasts because I feel like we had this discussion on last week's ATP and nobody knew or cared.
John:
Like it has to be written down somewhere that people can link to before anyone cares about it.
John:
But anyway, something else that was discussed last week that I also saw written down in places was I was reminiscing about the old days when Apple and Google were friends.
John:
when apple introduced the iphone it was like we made this amazing hardware and this amazing os on this device that's like nothing you've ever seen before and it's powered by these google services um and what a great partnership isn't that isn't that great we make the os and the hardware apple or google does the services and together you have the best of all possible worlds because we are the best at making hardware we are the best at making native client-side applications google is the best at maps they're the best at online services they're the best at search
John:
And we're so integrated that we have, you know, our Maps application is essentially Google's Map application.
John:
Google provides the data.
John:
We wrote the application.
John:
It's a marriage made in heaven.
John:
And they got divorced and we were all sad.
John:
And I don't know if that's what we're moving towards.
John:
If, like, if Apple can never figure this stuff out and if Google continues to not be able to make the money and inroads that it wants to from Android and instead the money from Android ends up going to other people, like,
John:
Could we end up years and years down the road where they come back to the table and say, you know what?
John:
We should have never broken up.
John:
I've learned that it's really hard to make money selling hardware, especially when you give away the OS for kind of free.
John:
And in China, they make Android phones without using any of the Google services.
John:
And we kind of let this whole thing get away from us.
John:
And Apple's like, we tried to make services, but it's really hard and we're not good at it.
John:
So why don't we just do...
John:
what we're each good at and together we can make a great phone platform where siri will be powered by google now and i message will be replaced with a decent service that doesn't send messages out of order and has actual new features in it but it'll be end-to-end encrypted and you know like i i want the point i want the best of both worlds and for a brief time it seemed like that's what we were going to get until uh both android and apple decided they were both going to do everything that the other person does only better and thus far
John:
uh their their strengths remain the same google is getting better at hardware apple's getting better at services but if you were to lay them down again you would say who's the best at making hardware and operating systems and all that stuff still apple who's the best at making services still google so i don't know what the long-term solution is but as a customer and not someone who really cares about either one of those two companies ruling the entire world it would be nice if we could turn back the clock on that relationship
Marco:
Well, the good thing is, like, I feel like, you know, if you look at the situation on the Mac, you know, ignoring iOS for a second, look at the Mac.
Marco:
And on the Mac, you have pretty much what you want.
Marco:
You have tons of people who use Macs running Mac OS X with all Apple stuff under it.
Marco:
Maybe even use iCloud for certain things, but who use Chrome as their browser, who use Gmail for their mail, maybe have Google Photos, whatever, upload or however that works installed.
Marco:
On the Mac, you have that world of choice where you can totally be bought into the Google ecosystem and still be using a Mac with macOS as your computer and have all the Google stuff running there if you want it.
Marco:
they had siri to os 10 though we're not gonna build your place with google now like that's the strategy tax type of thing where like you go well if you want a voice assistant that helps you on your mac you only get to choose the apple one the only it's almost like it's an accident of history well that's not true though because on the mac you have you have like the system ability for like there's nothing stopping google from running their own demon in the background that's listening on the microphone for its own commands like it on ios that is not possible you know in the software environment it
John:
There's going to be OS level integration, though, that Siri is going to be favored with.
John:
And I guess you could say like, yeah, on the Mac, all is fair if you get admin access and you could bypass system integrity protection and hack the finder and get your things into the dock or like whatever.
John:
Like Apple, Apple always still has an advantage, even for things like Spotlight and stuff like that.
John:
Like Google tried to Google have like a Spotlight competitor that was trying to.
Casey:
Yeah.
John:
use the public apis to do stuff like it's really hard you know and that's what i'm saying like it's almost an accident of history that the web browsers can because web browsers to plain old application and so there's no real barrier to entry there even you know especially since apple still has a way for you to pick where your default browser is on the mac unlike ios but as you get more and more integrated into sort of system components it becomes harder for any third party party no matter how good they are to compete with the built-in one not only because it's built in but also because like there are deep hooks that
John:
you can't get at or you can only get at doing nasty hacks that you have to maintain and so in practice it's really hard no matter how bad spotlight is and no matter how good google's thing could have been it's been really hard to for them to make a better spotlight and i imagine siri will be similar it will be harder for them to
Marco:
But so but I think like on the Mac, I think the the gap there between what we have possible now.
Marco:
and the world you imagine as the ideal world here, that gap is pretty small.
Marco:
I think we're almost there.
Marco:
We're pretty much there now, where if Google wants to make all their stuff for Mac OS X and integrate their own alternatives in as many ways as they possibly can...
Marco:
There are lots of ways to do that right now, and that's pretty much possible now, and in many ways, it's already done.
Marco:
Things like Chrome and Gmail and stuff like that.
Marco:
That's pretty much done.
John:
I'm worried about it actually getting worse.
John:
It's the next topic that we probably won't have time to get to in this show, but the next topic maybe we'll get to next week is about Chromebooks outselling Macs in school.
John:
The problem is that Google, because Apple and Google both want to do everything that everybody does, Google's like, we should sell laptops, and we should have... It's like, well, we don't have a desktop OS.
John:
What should we do?
John:
Well...
John:
can we make a chrome os or can we put android on chromebooks like we have an os it's not really a desktop os but maybe like that everyone wants to be in everything it's it's almost kind of like but only by the good graces of google that google is so nice to you know not that they're doing it you know out of the goodness of their heart they want our information in our eyeballs you know everything else whatever but
John:
they make their applications for ios and for the mac apple is not making facetime for android you know like it's not an open standard that ever you know it can't go back to that well but like apple keeps itself to its stuff to its own platform when it's feasible whereas google it's more important to get its thing everywhere so we are blessed with these
John:
gifts from google but like oh i can use you know there's a there's a native quote-unquote native gmail application for ios and there's google now and there's google maps for ios even though apple took the mapping thing back and did their own native thing and i worry that someday like the cold war will get even colder and google will start behaving even more like apple and will be even more siloed and then the mac will be like this even the things we enjoy now will be pulled away from me and i feel like with system integrity protection and other things
John:
It's getting farther and farther away from the world where anybody could compete with built-in Apple stuff.
John:
All you can really compete with is Apple applications.
Marco:
Yeah, but I feel like Google and Apple are both under different leadership than where they were when this feud really was at its hottest.
Marco:
And I think you can look at both companies now and see that they're very pragmatic in a lot of their decisions.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And, you know, I don't think you're ever going to see some kind of grand reunification where, you know, Tim Cook comes out and is like, oh, now we've partnered with Google to replace it.
Marco:
Like, you're never going to see that.
Marco:
But I think what you will see is Apple kind of like yielding certain ground to enable people to do that kind of thing if they want to.
Marco:
So, you know, I'm not saying they're going to suddenly have everything this fall where like, oh, you can set your default mail to be Gmail.
Marco:
You can set your default browser to be a Chromebook.
Marco:
I expect we probably will get to that type of thing slowly over time as the market kind of directs Apple to do that.
Marco:
There's enough demand now.
Marco:
Apple now offers their own versions of all these different services.
Marco:
Google is offering their versions of all these different OSs and hardware and stuff.
Marco:
So you're right.
Marco:
There's a lot of duplication here.
Marco:
And that's great because the people who really love Google can go buy a Chromebook or whatever and an Android phone and get all their Google stuff.
Marco:
The people who really love Apple can go buy Apple hardware and Apple software and all Apple services.
Marco:
Most people are somewhere in the middle.
Marco:
Most people love some stuff from multiple companies and aren't purists of either company or any company.
Marco:
So the more that both companies do to address that giant middle where most of the customers are,
Marco:
the more they both really benefit.
Marco:
And both companies' leadership are smart enough to know that.
Marco:
And they're also, I think, realizing like, you know, in the same way, like when Steve came back and gave that big speech with Bill Gates on the big screen and said like, you know, for Apple to win, Microsoft doesn't have to lose or vice versa, whatever that quote was.
Marco:
I think Tim Cook knows that even though it's pretty clear that he obviously thinks a lot of what Google does is distasteful, and he's right, and Google obviously thinks a lot of what Apple does is arrogant and technically inferior, and they're right.
Marco:
But the reality is, I think both companies... Google knows that as a services company, it has to be everywhere.
Marco:
It has to be where the people are.
Marco:
And a lot of the people are on Apple stuff.
Marco:
And Apple knows that a lot of its customers who buy its devices really want to use some of Google's stuff on them.
Marco:
So they're both going to address that.
Marco:
They're not going to let that demand go totally unanswered in the name of spite over a 10-year-old battle that...
John:
neither company's ceo was really part of well but the thing the thing is that's motivating seems to be motivating apple now to to uh bestow its gifts onto other platforms is the things that are services like apple music this is apple music for android right yeah am i not imagining that yes there is so because apple music is a service once for products that are like services you end up using the google rationale well it's a service and the most important thing is that we have a
John:
Same thing that motivated iTunes for Windows.
John:
When you're in the service mindset for your service products, the calculus is different and you end up putting it everywhere.
John:
But the other calculus, when it is like, this is the reason someone would buy a Mac, or this is the reason someone would buy a phone when you use FaceTime or whatever, when it's more linked to...
John:
software proprietary platforms where it's not a service where your main goal isn't to get everyone in the world using it you want people to buy iphones you want people to buy macs when it's like your hardware business then the opposite motivation comes in so apple is getting a little bit of the services motivation saying if we have services products we need to have them more than just on our platforms if you want a
John:
And again, Google, because they want to do everything Apple does, is starting to make hardware products.
John:
And I wonder if they say, well, normally there are our culture and our motivation to everything we do is Google is get as many users as possible because their data is the most important thing to us and we can sell based on them and blah, blah, blah.
John:
But when we do these hardware products.
John:
if we actually want to if we can overcome our own company culture and motivate these hardware products like to say you have to make a great product that people want to buy and we want to sell a lot of them you have to think in a different mindset thus far google has not been able to get into that mindset which is why most of their hardware has not sold like hotcakes right and thus far mostly apple's not been able to get into the right mindset to be really successful at services either um
John:
so as apple learns if google continues to learn too it will mean that they will start doing some of the things that i don't like about apple not sharing their stuff so i'm not sure the net sharing between them will be better i think the only thing that is going to make the net sharing between them improve is for the power balance to shift kind of the same way that the net sharing between apple and microsoft really started to move once the parents power balance shifted once once apple was almost going out of business microsoft was like oh apple i remember them
John:
All right, we'll make office for you.
John:
Here's $150 million.
John:
We'll sell our shares too early and regret it.
John:
I think someone did the math of what that would be worth if they had kept it.
John:
Anyway, if the power bounces way off, suddenly you can come to the table.
John:
But right now it's like the Cold War where, you know, everyone wants to show strength.
John:
Everyone wants to do anything.
John:
And it's not a particularly comfortable time.
John:
But, you know, you're right.
John:
In the meantime, I will continue to use Chrome and Safari and Gmail in the web interface.
John:
uh what else do i use from google google drive uh google docs we're using it right now for uh the show notes that marco's not looking at um the google search engine yeah google maps search engine obviously it's it's a mix uh but on ios definitely it's much harder to achieve that mix and i worry about the mix and i look forward what i'm saying is i look forward to the time that this balance shifts in some way and the companies can go back can get out from this sort of megalomaniacal mindset that the old microsoft mindset that
John:
Not only can we do everything because we are the mighty insert company name, we should do everything and we're going to be awesome at it.
John:
And that's a bad attitude for any company, Google, Apple or anything.
John:
And it mostly leads to bad things.
John:
But the iPhone is a rising tide that lifts a hell of a lot of boats.
John:
And so far, Apple is not feeling the sting from that.
Marco:
Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, Fracture, FreshBooks, and Hover.
Marco:
We will see you next week.
Marco:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin because it was accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
John:
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-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-E-N-T-M-A-R
Casey:
They didn't mean to.
Casey:
Accidental.
Casey:
Accidental.
Casey:
Tech podcast so long.
Marco:
Man, I feel like, Casey, I feel like I have to save you in some way from tripping and falling into Android.
Marco:
In the same way, remember about two years ago, you started talking about not wanting a BMW, but instead of wanting one of those weird, sporty new Cadillacs that's all straight lines and angles and...
Marco:
I'm like, you look at that and you're like, I was like, just no, I have to save you.
Marco:
Back away from this cliff.
Marco:
I'm like, I'm like holding the back of your shirt.
Marco:
Like, no, I'm not going to let you go over this cliff.
Marco:
Like, you are not doing... Trust me, you will thank me later.
Marco:
You're not doing this, right?
Marco:
I feel like this might be that moment for tripping and falling into the Google pit of insanity here.
Casey:
I know you're being silly, but... Only a little bit.
Casey:
And I'm not actually looking to buy an Android phone or anything, but...
Casey:
It is striking to me how me, I guess I could say forced.
Casey:
I mean, I don't have to be a Google Photos user, but Picture Life is a dumpster fire and EverPix is dead.
Casey:
And I don't particularly care for Flickr, just me.
Casey:
You may love it.
Casey:
That's fine.
Casey:
But I backed into Google Photos and then I started to just really love what it was providing.
Casey:
And it's really made me, like I said earlier, kind of question, am I holding on to Apple being the best thing ever because it's just what I'm used to?
Casey:
And I don't think so.
Casey:
And I think that if I were to go Android, it would be death by a thousand very, very deep and very wide paper cuts.
Casey:
But...
Casey:
But nevertheless, it's made me think.
Casey:
And then there was that great episode of Connected this week where Federico got himself an Android phone and had positive things to say.
Casey:
And I think his experience is probably what mine would be in that, you know, there's a lot here to like, but it's not enough to sway me.
Casey:
But man, it's stunned me how much I've just like subconsciously been thinking that
Casey:
Man, this is really convenient.
Casey:
And all I've given them is photos.
Casey:
Now, granted, it's tied to my ID that probably has everything I've ever done on the Internet ever.
Casey:
But all I've knowingly given them is my photos.
Casey:
And the stuff that they can put together is just stunning.
Marco:
I think what you're doing now, which is using Apple hardware and OSs, but using selectively the Google things that you like best on them, that is generally the best combo for most people, I think.
John:
Yeah, I agree.
John:
Well, even with photos, though, don't you feel the pain of iOS integration?
John:
Like, one of the main reasons I'm sticking with Apple Photos is, well, part of it is I'm actually hoping they're going to get on the ball and start integrating some of these features like the rumors say.
John:
But the other thing is, like, it's integrated with your phone and the native photos application has this stuff.
John:
And maybe I think there's a bigger barrier than there really is to, like...
John:
What if I just don't use the Apple Photos application?
John:
Does the photo picker always show you only Apple Photos from the thing?
Casey:
Yes.
Casey:
I think the problem is my mental model, for better or worse, is that the pictures that are on my phone in the stock Photos app...
Casey:
Those are the pictures that were generated on that phone or have been beamed to that phone via airdrop or Wi-Fi from the big camera or something like that.
John:
But it's not all your photos.
Casey:
Correct.
Casey:
And to me, something else outside of the stock photos app is all of my photos.
Casey:
And it was picture life.
John:
and now it's google photos now i'm not saying that's right i'm not saying that that's how you would treat it but that's the way i like to treat it but do you have share i guess you have with extensions don't you have a share sheet like say you say you want to tweet something and you want to tweet and it's a picture from like three years ago that's in you that's in your all my photos collection when you tap the little camera icon in your twitter application of choice does it bring up a photo picker do you have the option to picking from your google photos or do you only get to pick from the phone things
Casey:
I think only the phone things, but my workflow... Yeah, so on TweetBot, I can only choose from library.
Casey:
But my workflow would have been, if I were to do something like that... You go to the photo first.
Casey:
Yeah, find the photo on Google Photos, download it onto my phone...
Casey:
And then take it from there.
John:
Yeah, no, I mean, I want it to work both ways.
John:
Like I said, it's whether a real or perceived barrier to like the fact that Apple's photos are integrated into iOS in the most convenient possible way.
John:
And all third party things are slightly less convenient or they have to think about more or whatever.
John:
And that's another area where eventually, like Marco said, it could be that, you know, the sort of.
John:
the detente comes in and then they start uh allowing you to pick hey what do you use for your photos and it just has to be conformant to this particular you know interface or api or whatever and then when you say pick photos we won't just show you your collection of quote-unquote apple photos same thing with context same thing with everything else although context is different because apple actually gives you access to the underlying data from any application so you can use different calendars and stuff anyway
John:
what i'm saying is i'm sticking with the apple apps in a lot a lot of cases not because i think they're the best because i would i would like to try google photos but i know that i can't try google photos without having a split brain situation where now i have two collections of photos to manage i'm not going to do that so i just have the one collection um
John:
and you know and maybe i would upload them as like a redundant backup if i'm i think i'm still paying for like a terabyte of google storage for various reasons but uh but yeah i it's a barrier it's a barrier to me trying what is almost certainly a product that i would enjoy more than what i'm using and also i have to say a lack of a really cool native application like photos is a barrier the photos drives me up a wall but there's no equivalent to that for google photos as far as i'm aware um
John:
slow down well what are you looking for because there's absolutely a native app but but it may not do the sorts of things that you want it to yeah i mean like like like the photos application like with all the adjustments and all the like it's not it's not that they're fancy but it's it's a native application rather than a weird web interface and it has all sorts of uh you know and printing you know booklets and doing doing all the stuff that like iPhoto used to and that photos still sort of does
Casey:
yeah so it does a lot but not all of that so it is native and i'm sure knowing that given that it's google i'm sure there's web views that i'm just not realizing but it doesn't feel like they're web views it feels honest goodness native um you can do some modifications but here again that's not something i typically do on my phone even in the photos app so um that that's not an itch i need to scratch i'm talking about the talk about the mac app not the not the ios app
Casey:
Oh, I'm sorry.
Casey:
Yeah, on the desktop, you're absolutely right.
Casey:
It's all web.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
I thought you were talking about iOS.
Casey:
No.
John:
That's what we're doing with our photos.
John:
We're going to 5K iMac and you load photos, and that's how I through them to pick out the photos.
Casey:
I got you.
Casey:
I got you.
John:
Calendar and arranging things, and I guess also PhotoStream, and this is sort of a family inertia in that we finally got everyone set up on PhotoStream, so now when we post a picture, everyone can see it, and it's so much better than every other system we've tried previously at to get pictures of grandkids to grandparents.
John:
Yeah.
John:
this is the best system because we just do a thing and then a thing pops up and they see the thing and so much easier than sending them urls or knowing when they need to go there or whatever like and again if we just got them onto the google system they could do the same thing but it's like well everyone's already set up with their ios devices that it's like it's platform inertia and lock-in keeping me away from superior applications things are working sort of as designed for apple but i i'm a little bit bitter about it
Casey:
Yeah, I think the problem is – I shouldn't say problem, but the difference between you and I is a couple of things.
Casey:
One, I view the file system on my – actually, it's sitting on the Synology, but effectively on the iMac.
Casey:
I view the file system as the canonical representation of my photos.
Casey:
I don't use Photos app on the desktop.
Casey:
I actually really don't like it very much at all.
Casey:
And so to me, Google Photos is just a portable search tool and view into that repository.
Casey:
And that works really well for me.
Casey:
And I've always treated...
Casey:
My my one true repository as segregated, like I was saying earlier, from the from the phone.
Casey:
And that just works really well for me.
Casey:
Additionally, you do a lot more stuff with your photos than I tend to.
Casey:
I'll share them on social media.
Casey:
I have a shared album for pictures that we like of Declan that we've shared with friends and family like you guys.
Casey:
But I don't do a whole lot of heavy photo editing.
Casey:
I think it was Marco or somebody taught me how to do a white balance correction for when I take pictures at night.
Casey:
That's like a big new advancement for me.
Marco:
I didn't teach you.
Marco:
I just said you should look into this.
Marco:
It makes a big difference and it's not that hard.
Marco:
yeah well okay maybe that's because that was like when i first started taking decent photos or photos with decent cameras like in 2006 2007 like i look back at all those photos and they're all orange because i didn't know how to do white balance and i i eventually learned white balance like oh that makes a huge difference and i didn't know that for a very long time so i was basically trying to like jump you up the queue of learning how to do photo stuff just like here which i appreciate three years
Casey:
Just look at my balance.
Casey:
It absolutely did.
Casey:
But, you know, but I bring that up to say that that's about as heavy an edit as I usually get.
Casey:
We don't do the yearly calendar thing.
Casey:
We probably should.
Casey:
And I'm jealous of your yearly calendars or like the underscores were showing us.
Casey:
We were up there this past weekend.
Casey:
They do yearly like photo books and we should do that.
Casey:
But I was asking I was asking Dave and Lauren, you know, how long does that take you?
Casey:
And they said about a week, week and a half every single year.
Casey:
And
Casey:
I don't know how they find the time for it, but I wish I had it.
Casey:
So I guess they make the time for it.
Casey:
But I don't use photos heavily.
Casey:
I find that for me, photos are just I want to have them to help jog my memory.
Casey:
I want to be able to get to a relatively arbitrary photo very quickly.
Casey:
So, oh, that restaurant we went to that when we were going when we were on our trip to Paris, I'd like a picture of that.
Casey:
Well, I can just type in Paris in Google Photos.
Casey:
And maybe you can do this in regular photos, too.
Casey:
In fact, I think you can.
Casey:
But I could type in Paris in Google Photos.
John:
Only if it's geotagged and only if you actually happen to be in Paris.
John:
Like, these are all things that Apple wants to catch up.
John:
And if they're actually, you know, all these rumors are true, they should show, hey, the next version of photos knows what the hell's in your picture and can do something.
John:
And then it's just a competition of who does it better.
John:
Spoiler alert, it's going to be Google.
John:
But at least just having that feature is better than not having it at all.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
So here's a great example.
Casey:
So earlier today, I forget why, but I wanted to see if I had a picture of the Rotunda at UVA.
Casey:
So UVA is the University of Virginia.
Casey:
It's where Aaron went to school.
Casey:
It's about an hour west of where we live.
Casey:
And their most famous building is a building called the Rotunda, which is modeled after the...
Casey:
Pantheon or Parthenon.
Casey:
I always get it wrong.
Casey:
I'm so sorry.
Casey:
Please don't email me.
Casey:
The Pentagon.
Casey:
It's modeled.
Casey:
Yeah, the Pentagon.
Casey:
Totally.
Casey:
It's modeled after one of those.
Casey:
So it's like this old kind of Greek-looking structure with the columns and all that.
Casey:
Well, anyway, so I did a search for Rotunda, and I have not...
Casey:
knowingly tagged these pictures in any way it doesn't oh never mind it does say pretty rotunda on this picture just kidding but this but this is a terrible example um but so the file name in this case did tag it and my bad but i have seen other situations just let's pretend that's not the case i've seen other situations um when i haven't given google any information about the photo but it has figured out oh the
Casey:
This is the Rotunda.
Casey:
Well, as an example, so the pictures of the Pantheon Parthenon, I always get it wrong.
Casey:
We were there in Italy, I believe.
Casey:
God, Federico is going to be so mad.
Casey:
Anyway, the point is we were at the inspiration for the Rotunda.
Casey:
And I just did a search in Google Photos for Rotunda.
Casey:
And one of the things that comes up are pictures of this old, old, old ancient building.
Casey:
which looks just like the UVA rotunda.
Casey:
So Google has said, presumably, hey, what does the UVA rotunda look like?
Casey:
Oh, this looks like that.
Casey:
Let's bubble these up as well.
Casey:
And you could take this either way, right?
Casey:
You could either say, well, this is a false positive, or you could take that as, well, this is an ancillary picture that you may have wanted, so I'm going to give it to you anyway.
Casey:
And just that machine learning, which we heard a thousand times during Google I.O., it really does freaking work.
Casey:
And in the fact that I can just search the word rotunda and get not only pictures that we've taken in front of the rotunda, but pictures we've taken in front of this other building.
Casey:
I just find that to be amazing.
Casey:
And it makes it so, so convenient rather than having to think to myself.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
When were we in Paris or when were we in Rome or what have you?
Casey:
That was 2012.
Casey:
Shoot.
Casey:
What month was it?
Casey:
I think it was July.
Casey:
No, it was August.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Now I got to go through every picture in August to figure out where where was that or when it was that we went to Rome.
Casey:
And now I got to search.
Casey:
OK, which day was it in this week that we were there?
Casey:
And now, granted, another approach could be what I suspect you do, John, which is to catalog and tag and do a lot of this stuff by hand.
Casey:
But I don't have the patience for it.
Casey:
And so I love that Google Photos can just figure it out for me.
John:
Yeah, that's why I don't want to do all that work.
John:
I would like a reliable way to do it.
John:
I remember when Picasa came out with face detection.
John:
I'm like, oh, that's awesome.
John:
But, oh, they don't have it in Apple's photo, as I wish they did.
John:
And then Apple came out with the feature.
John:
I'm like, yeah, finally you've caught up.
John:
And then what face detection brought was a fan-spinning CPU-grinding feature to iPhoto that nevertheless failed to accomplish the task that I wanted it for, which is basically...
John:
find me all the pictures of a particular person because you had to train it and it would miss a bunch and bottom line is my manual tagging of who's in what picture was better and faster and did not destroy my computer during the process so it's like you brought the feature but your implementation is bad enough that manual tagging still wins whereas with the google thing
John:
there's no way I'm going to tag everything.
John:
Like, you know, I'm not going to tag all the hugs and all like the nighttime things and put geotags on my, you know, pictures that don't have tags because they're from cameras that don't have a GPS.
John:
I'm not going to do that.
John:
If Google can do it, it's not as if it's competing with a better manual tagging alternative.
John:
It's competing with, there's no way in hell you could do this manually.
John:
And so you're not comparing it to essentially, you know, 99% accuracy.
John:
You're comparing it to nothing.
John:
You got nothing.
John:
Now, when I'm looking for pictures, like,
John:
you know where is that picture of uh my television so i could see like what arrangement of av equipment i had three years ago i just have to scroll i just have to scroll with my eyeballs and like look at the date and say like this is around last year and let me just sort of scroll through the pictures and look for something that looks like a tv and sometimes you miss it if i could just type tv and you know tv 2013 google photos would do it uh photos on the mac will not
Casey:
Yeah, I just typed television 2013, and I'm looking at pictures I took of RTV, among other things.
John:
Of course you are.
John:
Anyway, like face recognition, I fully expect Apple to add this feature to photos.
John:
I just hope they do better this time than last time.
Casey:
Well, the tough thing is how does how does photos get better at figuring out what's in the photo?
Casey:
Because it does.
Casey:
It can't really aggregate what it learns over gajillions of photos.
Casey:
It can just do a best guess based on what's been programmed into the photos.
John:
There has to be a server side component.
John:
there has to be right and then at that point how are they any better than google and if you put on your tinfoil hat not better i don't i don't consider it bad or like apple's got all my photos anyway where do you think they're all stored they're on apple servers i don't i assume they're not even encrypted they're just like i'm i am signing up to say here apple take all my photos and store them on your cloud infrastructure now apple you have all my photos and i'm trusting you won't do anything nefarious with them right that's it that's the deal so i that's not a hangout for me at all they're like oh i don't want to give my photos to google no i'll gladly give them to google
John:
The reasons I don't have everything I just said, like iOS integration and sharing photos with family and all that other stuff.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
So like, here's a great example.
Casey:
So I typed in Declan Liss and I've told Google, you know, it discovered that there is someone who looks like this in a lot of pictures.
Casey:
And I told, told Google, okay, that's Declan.
Casey:
And so I typed in Declan Liss comma beach comma 2015.
Casey:
And it came up with our beach trip from last year, but it interestingly also came up with a shot of Declan sitting at a pumpkin patch where the ground was indistinguishable from sand at a glance and
Casey:
So it has looked at this picture and said, hmm, that looks to me to be a beach.
Casey:
That looks to me like that's Declan in there.
Casey:
And it is one of the results that came back.
Casey:
And here again, like I said earlier, you could treat that as a false positive.
Casey:
But I think it's great because it shows that there is some amount of like reasoning going into tagging that picture as being at the beach.
Casey:
i know it's good stuff so it makes you wonder you know hey would it be cool if it just searched my email and said hey you know you better leave now for that flight that's coming up and to be fair what is i forget what they call it but apple's doing that now as well yeah yeah so you know like when i get in the car on the way home it'll say it sees the phone will see that i've connected to a car bluetooth and it'll say well about this time he tends to be heading to my home address and
Casey:
And it'll tell me it'll be about eight minutes to get you home.
Casey:
Like, that's that's awesome.
Casey:
And that's the same sort of thing that I'm thinking about when I say, oh, extrapolating Google Photos advantages out.
Casey:
You know, what what could that get me?
Casey:
And that that sort of thing.
Casey:
Oh, I see you're in the car.
Casey:
I know what you're probably going to do.
Casey:
It'll probably take you about 10 minutes.
Casey:
That is awesome.
Casey:
And it doesn't have to be Google and it doesn't have to be server side.
Casey:
In every single case.
Casey:
But I can see how in a lot of cases like photos, there are many advantages of it being server side from a company that does this sort of machine learning all the time.
Marco:
Every time I get into my car, Proactiv tells me how long it takes to get to the chicken salad deli.
Marco:
So it actually knows me pretty well.
Casey:
Are you being serious?
Casey:
Does it really?
Casey:
Yeah.
Marco:
That's the main place you go.
Marco:
I mean, I would argue it's probably working as designed.
John:
It tells me the work one, though, I think.
John:
I feel like it tells me at times when it should know that I'm not going to work.
John:
I don't know how it should know.
John:
Like, maybe it's a national holiday.
John:
Maybe it's Christmas.
John:
Oh, you get in the car.
John:
It's, you know, X number of minutes to work.
John:
It's like, come on, it's Christmas.
John:
I'm not going to work.