Computerized Garden Gnome
John:
He's a nice guy.
John:
He has a voice.
John:
Well, that's how me and you sound to other people, Marco.
John:
This gives you a glimpse of what it must be like for the people who hate us.
Casey:
I was thinking it, but I didn't say it.
John:
For the people who hate us, this is exactly how we sound to them.
Casey:
Hold on.
Casey:
Nobody hates you, John.
John:
That is so not true.
John:
Look at my email there.
John:
Believe me.
Casey:
Well, okay, there's a difference between hates you and corrects you.
Casey:
You do realize that, right?
John:
No, well...
Casey:
Uh, so how's the review going, John?
John:
Well, with the, uh, the uncertainty about the release date and, you know, like it could be, it could be any day now or whatever.
John:
I thought it was, uh, well, I brought it up to the ARS guys and they agreed that we should just start editing and copy editing this, even though it's not done, done.
John:
Like we're still doing battery tests and getting results and, uh,
John:
Still waiting for dictation to work and, uh, stuff like, and still waiting for pricing information, but like what's there, like we better start going through it now.
John:
So it's, it's uploaded and it's in the process of being edited and copy edited what there is of it.
John:
And we're just gotta, uh,
John:
Just got to wait.
John:
I mean, you hope they're going to give you a nice long notice about when it's going to be released, but they could just say, and here it is, and it's shipping now, or God knows what they'll do.
John:
Obviously, their plans don't factor in the quality of life of people writing reviews, because that's really low on their list.
Casey:
You can't make a call to one of your birdies or something?
John:
How many birdies?
Casey:
I don't know.
John:
and besides like nobody knows this anyway like this is the type of thing that like the price and ship date are the type of things that you can change right up to the last minute like you don't need a big advance notice for any of these things they could hold it they can keep it you know what i mean it's not all those both those things are known to such a small group of people it's not like it's not like even the name of the product which has to be in marketing materials and everything like that i guess pricing is in marketing materials a little bit but there hardly are any marketing materials it's going to be on you know the app store so just waiting
Casey:
Fun.
Casey:
You don't, you sound beaten, but, or not beaten, I should say.
Casey:
You sound battered, but not beaten.
John:
Yeah, this is not a fun part.
John:
Rerunning tests, going through screenshots to make sure things haven't changed, retesting things.
John:
It's just no fun.
Casey:
You sound like a man who's on the edge of stopping, but I feel like every year you get to this point, and then it chips, and then you're fine.
John:
Well, every year I have something that's annoying about it, and this year I think the
John:
uh not knowing the ship date or the price and stuff like that um i don't i have such terrible memory things these things so i can't tell you but it seems like in every other year previously we knew the ship date or the price well in advance of it happening and who knows maybe we will this year as well but the fact that we don't by now is uh annoying me uncertainty is bad fair enough all right we have a lot to get through uh anything else on the review
Marco:
Yeah, this is going to be a tough show, I think, because next week we're doing the show right after the iPhone, or like the day after the iPhone event.
Marco:
And so I would imagine that next week we're going to have a pretty packed show full of iPhone stuff.
Marco:
Although, I don't know, does it look that interesting?
Marco:
I think based on what we've seen so far, if it's just the iPhone and not also iPad slash Apple TV slash anything else, if it's just the iPhone, which I would probably say there's a 50-50 chance of, then I actually don't know if there's going to be any surprises.
John:
We'll talk about the fingerprint scanner for half the show.
Casey:
No, let's not talk about the fingerprint scanner for half the show, only because we don't have the time for it.
Casey:
But I do think, to your point, that if there's anything interesting, I suspect that it will be something like the fingerprint scanner.
Casey:
It seems like there's a lot of smoke about the iPhone 5 color, as I'm calling it, the iPhone 5 champagne.
Casey:
And I think that those seem to be pretty much a lock.
Casey:
I had thought earlier today on Twitter whether...
Casey:
the champagne iphone would be just a china thing or an asia thing i should say or if it would go everywhere at the time i thought it would be just them now i'm thinking it would probably be everywhere but that all seems to be pretty much a lock as far as far as i'm concerned so the only big surprise in my mind would be well maybe not surprise but slightly surprising thing would be a fingerprint scanner and there's some amount of smoke there but not a lot i don't know what do you guys think
Marco:
Well, I don't know.
Marco:
I'm thinking we're probably, I mean, the fingerprint scanner, there was something in the software, I believe, that tipped that off.
Marco:
There was some kind of reference to it in the hardware stuff somewhere in iOS 7 beta something, I think.
Casey:
But we've seen that before, haven't we?
Casey:
I can't cite an example, but I could swear that we've seen stuff like that before.
Marco:
But I think it kind of makes sense as something more interesting than a passcode lock and faster.
Marco:
Whether it's more secure depends on a lot of things and is highly arguable, but it's at least more convenient.
Marco:
I don't use a passcode lock on my phone.
Casey:
I only do if I'm traveling and I feel susceptible to my iPhone being lost.
Casey:
Like at WWDC, I typically do not because I don't trust fellow conference goers, but because there's a gazillion iPhones in a square mile.
Casey:
And it wouldn't surprise me if somebody accidentally grabbed the wrong one.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
But generally speaking, I do not have a lock on mine either.
Marco:
I figure for security, though, this is always the argument with security.
Marco:
If you're just going to put your password on a Post-it note and stick it to your monitor, you're better off having lower password requirements and just being able to remember it.
Marco:
This is the kind of thing, I don't use a passcode lock because it would slow me down too much when I have to unlock the phone.
Marco:
If they do something with a fingerprint scanner where it's really fast to unlock based on the fingerprint on the home button, I might do that.
John:
Well, they could go one or two ways on the fingerprint scanner.
John:
They could do the, you guys don't remember this, but the macOS 9 had a voice password thing for its fake user accounts where you would say something and then instead of typing your password, you would say the same thing and it would let you in.
John:
And the policy of that system, which was so impressive when you first used it, you realized that it errs on the side of letting you in.
John:
So if anyone says anything remotely similar to what you said in a similar voice, they get let in.
John:
So it's very comfortable and easy for you to use, but the security is perhaps slightly better than nothing, but not much, right?
John:
And the other way to go with it is to err on the side of...
John:
Not letting people in.
John:
So the fingerprint scanner works like 50% or 40% of the time, but it never lets someone else in except for your finger.
John:
And based on the fingerprint technology thing, I don't think it can be all that reliable.
John:
So they have to make one of those choices.
John:
Like, it's not going to work, I don't think, even 90% of the time.
John:
So they have to decide...
John:
Are we just going to say, okay, well, 90% of the time this gets you without entering your passcode, but 10% of the time you've got to enter your passcode anyway?
John:
And there's a little frustration factor.
John:
They're like, why did I bother putting my finger on there?
John:
Because this time it didn't work.
John:
Let me just enter the passcode.
John:
And then maybe people – it doesn't take much for people to say, if it doesn't work almost 100% of the time, I'm just going to enter my passcode every single time and not bother with that fingerprint thing.
John:
And the other way to do it is to be for people like Marco who don't use a passcode –
John:
And just say, well, if your finger's close and it looks kind of close, it'll let you in.
John:
Maybe it will let someone else in sometimes, but, you know, it's better than nothing.
John:
So that's what I'm going to watch for if this thing has a fingerprint scanner is which one of those two policies do they come?
John:
And I guess the third possibility is that it's magic and it works 100% of the time and Apple doesn't have to make that choice or close to 100% of the time.
John:
But for some reason, I find that unlikely.
Casey:
Well, on top of that, if you think about it, I have an average-sized hand, and my thumb is considerably bigger than the home button.
Casey:
So what happens if I use the tip of my thumb in one moment to unlock the phone, but then I use kind of the heel of my thumb the next time?
Casey:
Is there some sort of scanner that I have to, like some training process I have to go through in order to scan my entire thumbprint?
Casey:
That just seems so not Apple-like at all.
John:
Here's my thought process on the fingerprint scanner.
John:
Apple has yet to produce an iOS device with a home button where the home button doesn't fail some percentage of the time that's large enough for us to all have heard of or experienced a failed home button.
John:
Wait, I don't think that's true.
John:
Have you never heard of or experienced a failed home button?
Marco:
No, I have on previous models, but I think the 4 was really bad for that.
Marco:
But I think the 4S might have improved it.
Marco:
Certainly the 5, I believe the 5 made it metal-backed.
John:
They keep making it better.
John:
They're improving it, but I have heard of people with 5s with failed home buttons.
John:
And not that I'm saying it's their fault and it's shoddy workmanship.
John:
It's just that it's a button that you press all the time.
John:
It's good.
John:
I don't know what the percentage is.
John:
Maybe 99.5% of the home buttons are fine after the first year and 0.5% fail.
John:
But that's a button that does nothing except be a button.
John:
So to expect an equal or higher percentage out of a button that is a button and, by the way, also some kind of fingerprint scanner, that's why I'm explaining why I'm ruling out the idea that it will work reliably enough that Apple won't have to make those choices of which way to go with it.
Casey:
I tend to agree.
Casey:
I mean, I think it's an interesting premise, but like you, I'm very dubious as to how they can execute well on it.
Casey:
But just like Marco was saying earlier, you know, I don't use a passcode lock on my phone.
Casey:
I find it to be annoying when I do use it at conferences or whatever the case may be.
Casey:
And the thought of a perfect...
Casey:
thumbprint scanner really does sound excellent to me.
Casey:
Um, but it also has some other weird annoyances that come with it.
Casey:
Like for example, what if, uh, Aaron's phone is in the kitchen, all the iPads and whatnot's are upstairs.
Casey:
We're sitting on the couch and she wants to look at, look up something real quick.
Casey:
If I hand her my phone and
Casey:
What does she do?
Casey:
I mean, logically, I would assume she would have to enter my passcode, which, of course, I would have already shared with her.
Casey:
But like, how does that work?
Casey:
And that gets to be a little dicey.
Casey:
And what is the fallback?
Casey:
Like you were saying earlier, if my thumb doesn't unlock it, is that the passcode?
Casey:
I know it just seems.
John:
Well, the passcode is will always work.
John:
Passcode will always I'm assuming will always be an option and will always work.
Casey:
Well, right.
Casey:
I'm saying like, would that be your fallback if you can't scan your thumb?
Casey:
And it stands to reason it would be, but I don't know.
Casey:
It just seems, like you were saying before, it just seems like it would be annoying if it doesn't work darn near all the time.
Marco:
Yeah, it wouldn't surprise me if, John, you're exactly right, that it would just be a quick shortcut to get out of the passcode entry screen.
Marco:
It's like a quick alternative to entering the passcode, but it might even still show the passcode screen.
John:
Well, it has another important effect, similar to Siri, in that
John:
uh it's a gee whiz kind of feature so even if you only even if someone bought an iphone 4s or whatever when siri came out and only use siri for like the first two or three days to show people and play with uh a lot of those people i think got their value out of siri like they got a cool new phone that you could talk to and they played with it and were entertained by it and eventually became bored of it because it doesn't work reliably enough and they don't doesn't fit into their workflow
John:
But I think a lot of them are not bitter about that.
John:
Like, they still were left with a really nice phone, and they got that extra bit of enjoyment out of it.
John:
And it was exciting and interesting and new.
John:
And the fingerprint scanner could fill that role for the iPhone 5S or whatever they end up calling it, you know?
Marco:
man siri's a mess every time seriously it's it's been out now for what two full years it's just a beta marco come on is it still i don't know i don't know i can't keep track every time i try to use siri uh which isn't that often like i used to use it a lot but it just kept failing so often back when it first came out uh that and you know not even just doing the wrong thing but like failing to be recognized and timing out and having server issues
Marco:
It was failing so often that I just slowly slowed down my use of it and then eventually stopped for a while.
Marco:
And I've been trying it over the last couple of months, like just maybe like once a week, I'll try something.
Marco:
And it fails about half the time.
Marco:
And so I'm just like, it's so discouraging.
Marco:
I can't believe after all this time, it still has this problem.
Casey:
Yeah, I mean, I use it sporadically.
Casey:
I think I would lump myself in that category of, ooh, this is shiny and fancy when I first got my 4S.
Casey:
And I used it more, but not a lot.
Casey:
Now I find myself only using Siri to set timers.
Casey:
So if we're like cooking or something like that, or if I'm trying to send a text message while driving, I'll dictate it to Siri and hope that what I send Aaron or whomever is...
Casey:
is remotely similar to the words that came out of my mouth.
Casey:
And I would agree that Siri, not only is it bad, but I would say it's gotten worse lately because I actually had pretty good luck with Siri up until the last month or two.
Casey:
And I feel like it's a total crapshoot now.
Marco:
Yeah.
Casey:
That's right.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So what else will be – so are we saying yes to champagne iPhone?
Marco:
Oh, I mean I think – and by the way, not only champagne.
Marco:
There's also that new kind of lighter gray color with the black glass.
Marco:
You see that also?
Casey:
I did not actually.
Marco:
There's four proposed colors, and somebody had a video of all four of them lined up, like all four of the shells lined up.
Marco:
So it's the dark black and the white and silver that we have now.
Marco:
And then there is the champagne one, which I'm sure everyone's probably seen on rumor sites by now.
Marco:
And then there's also like a lighter, like a light black, if that makes sense.
Marco:
And it's closer to raw aluminum color, but it still has the black accents, which could be nice.
Marco:
Because honestly, the black one, I even said this last year when the 5 was new.
Marco:
The black, I think, is too dark.
Marco:
You don't really get a lot of that nice metal quality from it, because it just looks like just one big black slab.
Marco:
The difference between the black glass and the metal backing is not a big enough color difference.
Marco:
There's no contrast there.
Marco:
So I don't actually think the black looks like it.
Marco:
It also does not age well, because especially along the chamfered edges...
Marco:
the black anodized coating flakes off on those corners, on those edges, and so you see a lot of the underlying metal.
Marco:
So I think for the next one, I was even thinking about getting white, although my wife has prohibited that in advance.
Marco:
She's right.
Marco:
Well, because she wants it, and she doesn't want us to both be the same.
Marco:
But I'm thinking about that medium gray color is looking pretty good, honestly, because I think it'll age better, and I think it'll just look cooler.
Marco:
I think the black just...
Marco:
the detail, the black, just gets lost because it's too dark.
John:
I wonder if people are going to have iPhone 5C envy, not just because of the colors, but maybe I'm the only one like this, but you've all seen my iPod Touch, and I've got that...
John:
What is it called?
John:
Kind of plastic.
John:
TPA, is it called?
John:
TPU?
John:
TPU, I think.
John:
It's a kind of plastic that's not squishy like rubber, but also not hard like regular plastic.
John:
It's a little bit grippy.
John:
And that's what I like on my cases.
John:
I want it to be curved and comfortable, but a little bit grippy.
John:
And I can't tell what the back of the 5C is made out of, like some kind of plastic.
John:
But if it's made of TPU or something similar, I mean, I'm guessing it's not, but like it looks more comfortable in my hand that I'm wondering if, okay, I got the much faster, fancier, more expensive looking 5S or whatever, but holding a 5C is...
John:
is more comfortable.
John:
It feels more secure in my hand.
John:
It doesn't have sharp edges.
John:
It's more durable and resilient to nicks and scratches and stuff like that.
John:
But of course, it's going to be slower and be not as good a phone.
John:
And I wonder about that.
John:
I wonder if anybody out there will come home with their 5S and feel a little twinge of disappointment that they didn't get to bring home the green, curved, comfortable one that they liked.
Marco:
Well, the people in the know are all pretty much saying for certain that the 5C is literally just an iPhone 5's internals, probably even the same camera, if I had to guess, because that's kind of their style when they're going to do something like this.
Marco:
So it's basically an iPhone 5, but rather than just pushing the iPhone 5 down, they're supposedly getting rid of it and replacing the, you know, the quote, old model this year with this new edition of the old internals with this new casing around it.
Marco:
And so if that's the case, it's going to be a pretty good phone.
Marco:
The iPhone 5 is still really good.
Marco:
Even with iOS 7 stuff, it's still a very, very good phone.
Marco:
And when you think about what they're actually selling, as far as I know, nobody's able to break it down.
Marco:
Maybe Horace Didu found a way to figure out with margins and stuff.
Marco:
But what the breakdown is between the different iPhone models that are sold at a time, like how many sell relative to each other,
Marco:
From just looking at the public and what people buy, just anecdotally, it's always seemed like the cheaper, like last year or two years ago models of iPhones have sold extremely well.
Marco:
So what if the iPhone 5C...
Marco:
Since the iPhone 5 is still so good by most standards of phones today, what if the 5C kind of makes it official that the lower-end model slash last year's model is like the default model?
Marco:
Similar to what the iPad Mini did to the iPad, what the iPod Mini and iPod Nano did to the iPod, you have the high-end super premium model.
Marco:
That's going to be the 5S this year.
Marco:
And then you have the one that most people buy.
Marco:
And previously, that was last year's model.
Marco:
This time, maybe that's going to be the 5C.
John:
Yeah, that would be a change in iPhone buying because up until this point, what Apple has told us is that the most popular model is always like whatever the fanciest one is.
John:
Like they won't give you breakdowns, but most of the time they will confirm that like most people are buying iPhone 5s or something to that effect.
John:
Because it's the best and they're still kind of selling a high-end thing.
John:
And I would not be surprised at all if come some earnings call when someone tries to get this information out of them, they say that most people are buying 5Cs or they sold more 5Cs than 5Ss.
John:
But I think the 5C might be a better conceived physical product.
John:
because they've gone through all these iterations of the glass back and the external antenna and the 3G with the big bubble plastic back and the original one with the plastic bottom.
John:
They've gone around and around trying to find something that's a nice balance, something that's a beautiful object.
John:
And I think the 4-4S form factor is the most attractive as a piece of sculpture.
John:
And also one that's the most...
John:
You know, utilitarian and, you know, fun and comfortable to use to recognize that most of the time you're holding this thing in your hands and chucking it into your purse or your pocket or whatever.
John:
Which one strikes the right balance?
John:
And maybe that's going to end up being the 5C.
John:
I think it depends heavily on what kind of plastic that is and stuff.
John:
But I don't think the 5 has nailed the sweet spot yet either.
John:
So...
John:
Maybe you're right.
John:
Maybe the 5 becomes the iPad 4 of the phone line and this thing becomes the mini and then it becomes the biggest.
John:
And I'm sure Apple would be perfectly happy with that because as far as they're concerned, they're selling you a cheaper version of last year's phone and selling a ton of them.
Marco:
oh yeah i mean and i agree with you by the way i i think that the best feeling iphone in my hand was the 3g slash 3gs because it had that nice curve and it was plastic so it was it felt very secure in the hand that was too big well you're an ipod touch person every iphone is too big to you i'm just saying like you know that like you're trying to look for what is the sweet spot between making something too thin and too and like the 3g you know
John:
was very large and maybe like a little bit over large.
John:
And yeah, it felt comfortable, but you didn't feel comfortable in the other aspects of use it.
John:
Like when you shove it into your pocket, now it's like, hmm, maybe thinner would be better, you know?
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
So really quickly, just to put the rumor mill to bed, if there is a 5C and let's say that it's very, very cheap on contract, John Syracuse, will you finally get an iPhone?
John:
No, because it won't be very cheap on contract.
John:
Apple is not responsible for the price of an iPhone.
John:
The carriers are.
John:
The price of the phone is so small compared to the cost of paying for a Verizon calling and data plan for two years of life.
John:
The phone price.
John:
Apple has so little control over whether I buy an iPhone.
John:
It's all up to the carriers.
Marco:
Right, because you're the only person in the world who buys a phone in a subsidized environment and actually does that computation.
John:
I think some people do it too.
John:
Maybe they just do it for their kids because their kids, you know, like some teenager wants an iPhone.
John:
They're like, do you know how much that cost?
John:
Like, go get a job delivering pizzas and then you can pay for the data plan.
John:
You can play, you know.
John:
So we'll see.
John:
We'll eventually reach that point.
John:
I'm waiting them out.
John:
They're lowering their prices.
John:
And, you know, my wife's got one.
John:
So I get like the family plan price now.
John:
So if they suddenly lower the family plan price, you know, I just re-upped my re-upped whatever marketing campaign made that term come into existence.
John:
I don't know.
John:
But apparently it has penetrated my consciousness.
John:
Anyway, I just paid again for my stupid flip phone plan.
John:
And I bought two years worth because it was $150 for two years worth of service for this phone.
John:
So think about that the next time you get your $70 Verizon bill.
Casey:
Now, what if you could find a decent prepay data plan that supports the iPhone?
Casey:
And to be honest, that may exist already, and I have no idea.
Casey:
But would you do a prepay?
Marco:
I don't think it does in the U.S.
Marco:
Although our previous sponsor, Ting, they seem to imply or maybe even state directly on their website that they expect to get the iPhone pretty soon.
John:
Well, you know, people think I'm, you know, cheapskate and don't care about nice things by not having an iPhone.
John:
But the fact is that I'm a prima donna and demand the very best things.
John:
And if I can't have them, I just forego it entirely.
John:
I don't want an iPhone unless I can get it on Verizon, partially because I live kind of in a cell phone dead area.
John:
Yeah.
John:
You know, Verizon has the best coverage around where I am, and it also has the best coverage at my house and also my work.
John:
So, like, I'm not going until I can get, you know, the Verizon network.
John:
That's the reason they get to charge so much money, because they know, look, we have cell towers all over the place and you don't.
John:
So I'm basically a slave to Verizon because of the physical realities of where the cell towers are where I live.
Casey:
Is that really still true?
Marco:
And I'm the opposite with AT&T, that AT&T covers everywhere fairly mediocre-ly, if that's a word.
Marco:
But Verizon covers everywhere okay, except my house, where there's no coverage.
Marco:
So I still can't use Verizon.
Casey:
I really haven't had bad experience with AT&T in the last year or two.
Casey:
When I got the 3GS, which I got when it was brand new, that was pretty ugly.
Casey:
As soon as you got off the beaten path, you were screwed.
Casey:
And I got that on AT&T.
Casey:
And by the time I got the 4S, things were pretty good for the most part.
Casey:
Now it's very rare that I have a situation...
Casey:
that I don't have pretty good, if not excellent coverage.
Casey:
Now, to be fair, I'm not often off what I would call the beaten path, but I mean, I've traveled quite a bit over the last couple of years and I've never been in a situation that I can recall that somebody was standing near me with a Verizon phone without an issue and I had my AT&T phone and it was a piece of crap.
John:
And Marco has the same problem that I do.
John:
You live too close to rich people.
John:
In Marco's case, very close.
John:
The problem near me is... Excuse me, I passed an M5 like a block from your house.
John:
I know, I live too near rich people.
John:
Chestnut Hill is the problem.
John:
There's an area near us called Chestnut Hill that...
John:
So local tales go has a lower density of cell towers than elsewhere because no one wants cell tower in the backyard and they're all rich people.
John:
And what it produces is like you can see when you go on the B line on the T, you go past Chestnut Hill and there is no signal like, you know, for a brief period, but zero signal.
John:
And so that's bad.
John:
And I'm assuming you have the same problem as when you get up into Batman, Bruce Wayne Manor territory.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
So it's just very, very spotty coverage up here for most radio things.
Marco:
AT&T happens to cover it well, possibly because there's antenna on the top of our town hall.
Casey:
Well, plus the... I can't think of the word I'm looking for, but the way in which GSM and CDMA signals work is a little... Isn't it a little better for landscapes on GSM, but a little...
Marco:
crummier for buildings or something like that i'm reaching back to things i've forgotten years ago i think that's now obsolete well with lte that doesn't matter as much does it because it matters mostly the frequencies i believe uh anyway we really shouldn't be talking because we don't know what we're talking about nope unless john unless you do because you actually not talk unless you knew that's why i'm not talking
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
Let's wrap up the iPhone topics because we're going to be talking about this all next week.
Casey:
Is there anything else?
Casey:
I mean, I don't have anything else.
Casey:
I just want to make sure you and John both had a chance before we talk about something awesome.
Marco:
Unless you actually think there's going to be something non-iPhone released.
Casey:
I do not.
John:
Well, here, I'll throw this out there.
John:
This is like fourth hand from some random person that has no provenance anywhere.
John:
But someone mentioned today, and I just remembered it was so out of the blue, applications for Apple TV.
Marco:
Yeah, I saw... Somebody mentioned, I don't know whether it was one of our blogger people that we're friends with or MacRumors or something.
Marco:
Somebody mentioned that the Apple TV SDK was apparently almost done for WBDC that they heard and then they just got pushed or canceled or whatever.
Marco:
I don't...
John:
Yeah.
John:
And then, like, maybe it's not too much of a stretch to say, look, instead of all these icons just appearing on your Apple TV every time you do a software update, how about we make some kind of, you know, crappy sort of Apple TV store where you can choose which icons you want, and then maybe we'll hook them up to some kind of payment subscription thing.
John:
let people subscribe to netflix through the apple tv and subscribe to hulu and you know that type of thing where it's not quite the app store we're all thinking of like oh and now there's going to be you know angry birds and stuff because what are you gonna do control it with a little five-way controller and that stupid remote uh and it's not the new amazing apple tv that we're all thinking of it's just kind of like regularizing the current ongoing system of adding icons to our home screens and making us turn them off parental controls because we can't control them any other way
Casey:
So there's a couple thoughts there.
Casey:
Firstly, earlier today, and I don't remember where I saw it, there was a report that somebody had snooped delivery information or something.
Casey:
I forget where exactly I saw this nor what specifically it said.
Casey:
But they said something along the lines of Apple's been receiving shipments that were labeled for the purposes of customs set-top boxes.
Marco:
Oh, yeah.
Casey:
I saw that too.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And so they were trying to extrapolate that, oh, maybe these were like demo units or first-run units from China where they're being built.
Casey:
The other thing I should point out is my understanding of Apple TV apps as they are today is that they're all quasi-web-based.
Casey:
So, for example, the Plex app, which masqueraded as the trailers app, it was like this weird hack where you set your computer to be a proxy, and then when you go into the trailers app on the Apple TV app,
Casey:
it would intercept that and it would show you information from Plex, which is a media manager.
Casey:
It's a fork of XBMC.
Casey:
Well, anyways, that was all like XML and HTML and CSS and so on and so forth from what I'm told.
Casey:
So I don't think that even if there is an SDK, I think it's more a la the initial iPhone, which was not native.
Casey:
It was just make a web app and be thankful we're letting you do that much.
Marco:
I don't – honestly, I don't see this happening yet.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
I mean Tim Cook hinted early this year.
Marco:
I think it was maybe at the All Things D conference or on various earnings calls or whatever else.
Marco:
Tim Cook hinted on a number of occasions, pretty strong hints, that we would see something that's basically a new category of thing from Apple this fall.
Casey:
Is that not the 5C though?
No.
Marco:
I don't think the 5C matters that much.
Marco:
I mean, in the grand scheme of things, for the iPhone, yeah, the 5C is going to be profitable for Apple.
Marco:
They're going to make a killing on it because the iPhone is their most popular product, and they're going to sell a buttload of 5Cs.
Marco:
But the implication that he gave in these statements was, oh, here, Sam the Geek in the chat room says, it was a direct quote, new product categories.
Marco:
And so that, to me, the implication there is we're talking about the kind of thing like the watch or the TV or one of these new things people are talking about.
Marco:
That was the implication.
Marco:
Now, maybe he had a loose definition of that.
Marco:
Maybe the Mac Pro that they announced in June after he said this, maybe the Mac Pro is considered a new product category because it's a new type of desktop.
Marco:
It's not.
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't consider it one, but maybe he does.
Marco:
It could have been just that, but I'm betting not.
Marco:
I'm betting there's something else.
John:
No, I think it's the watch thing.
John:
We're talking about one event on September 10th.
John:
There's still time for an October event for them to announce.
John:
How about the Mac Pro, which we know they're going to... They said they're going to announce.
John:
There's time to produce an iWatch thing.
John:
There are possibilities out there.
John:
It's just that we're questioning, okay, well, what's going to be on September 10th?
John:
And...
John:
That seems like it's just going to be a phone event.
Marco:
I like the suggestion from Njerk in the chat room that the new category is a new AA battery charger.
Marco:
I don't know what they're going to do with events this fall.
Marco:
Obviously, they're not going to cram everything into September 10th event.
Marco:
That's very likely to just be iPhones.
Marco:
It's very unlikely to contain anything else at all.
Marco:
It's going to be probably iOS 7.
Marco:
You know, the official announcement here, it's done, and it comes out in, you know, today slash a week, you know, whatever the case may be.
Marco:
And, you know, they're not going to have vents for every release.
Marco:
Like, if the new MacBook Pros come out,
Marco:
And they happen to just be a Haswell update.
Marco:
Maybe Thunderbolt 2.
Marco:
If it's just that, and it's not also like Retina display desktops with the Mac Pro all together in one big event, they wouldn't do an event for just a CPU update to a laptop.
Marco:
But they still have iPads.
Marco:
They still have the Mac Pro.
Marco:
They still have potentially a new category, whatever that means.
Marco:
So I don't know.
Marco:
I think we're in for more than we expect.
Casey:
I was just thinking that, and I was thinking a lot of the chatter before WWDC was how quiet Apple had been.
Casey:
And if you think about it, there hasn't really been much.
Casey:
Now, yes, iOS 7 was a radical visual departure from what we've seen in the past, but
Casey:
By and large, there were some very cool new APIs, but nothing earth-shattering.
Casey:
There was no, say, Siri API, for example.
Casey:
So there's still not been a lot of activity for a year.
Casey:
I mean, on the one hand, you could say there's been a lot, but to me, there's not been a lot.
Casey:
And so I wonder if they're just going to cram everything into fall, like everything is coming, maybe a watch, maybe a new Apple TV, maybe something else we're not even dreaming of.
Casey:
What if
Casey:
What if they're so smug and just sitting so quietly on their laurels waiting for the next three months or so in the beginning of 2014 to just knock all of our socks off?
Casey:
Because that strikes me as an Apple thing to do.
John:
The two things we're talking about for new categories are television thing and thing you wear.
John:
And I can't imagine both of those things being ready for the holiday season.
John:
Even one of them being ready for the holiday season is still questionable, but it seems like not an Apple thing to do to do both amazing new television product and amazing new thing that you wear probably on your wrist before the holidays.
John:
Not just because they might not both be ready, but it would distract from one of them.
John:
You'd want one of them to be the big push, and you wouldn't want to dilute the message of either one of those things, assuming they're both as impressive as we all imagine, by having them out at the same time.
Marco:
One thing that also tipped me off that the timing of this is a little weird is Chris Parker's departure from UIKit.
Marco:
I'm sure you saw that.
Marco:
Chris Parker is this really nice guy who works at Apple.
Marco:
If you've ever gone to WBDC, you've almost definitely seen him give the What's New in UIKit talk.
Marco:
He's a guy with long, straight, blonde hair, and he's very energetic and gives awesome talks.
Marco:
I follow him on Twitter.
Marco:
Nicest guy in the world.
Marco:
His dog is adorable.
Marco:
He and his dog are adorable together.
Marco:
Anyway,
Marco:
He was something important, I don't really know exactly what, on the UIKit team for the last four or five years, some very long time, pretty much since UIKit has been a public thing.
Marco:
And he announced about a month ago or a few weeks ago, he announced that he was leaving the UIKit team to go work on something else within Apple that he couldn't talk about.
Marco:
The implication was that it was new and exciting.
Marco:
So given his experience on the UIKit team, I assume that this means going to work on something else that's maybe in the same vein or the same kind of thing, like a UI-level framework slash API slash developer tool.
Marco:
And so that would correspond pretty nicely to...
Marco:
If there is a watch or a TV SDK, then that would make sense.
Marco:
However, not if they're releasing it this fall.
Marco:
That would be way too soon.
Casey:
So 2014, and I think it was Art Jonesy in the chat said earlier that Tim Cook had said there would be new stuff in the fall and in 2014.
Casey:
So everything you're saying corroborates or fits with that.
Casey:
That makes sense.
Marco:
The question is what's in the fall?
Marco:
That would be considered possibly a new category.
John:
yeah i mean you know like maybe the first generation of the quote watch um is basically an ipod nano that can show notifications from your phone on it we're losing sight of what's important here guys mavericks ship date let's concentrate who cares except you you can throw me a bone you know we have all event today is going to be all about phones and the 5s and the 5c and colors and then let the end just go on by the way mavericks is going to ship on such and such today thank you good night you're welcome john saracusa that's right
John:
they're just gonna release it one day they're not even gonna tell i know that's my fear that you're just gonna wake up one morning and it will be on the app store it'll be a friday night right and it'll be on the app store immediately available for sale for a price developers will never have received a gm you know or like even same thing developers get a gm but still no date and price and then it just you know we have the gm for three weeks and then it arrives in the store one morning with a price
John:
You know, how can I get a book into any of the e-book stores if I don't know the price until it arrives?
John:
How, Apple?
John:
I ask you.
Marco:
Well, I mean, you could argue, do you really need to know the price for the content of your review?
John:
I already wrote about it with my best guess in the price.
John:
I could delete that whole section.
Marco:
Can you put in like a variable that you can assign later?
John:
Yeah, right.
John:
I'll have it be a web service call.
John:
It'll pull different paragraphs of text.
John:
If it's free, pull this paragraph.
John:
If it costs 99 cents, pull this paragraph.
Casey:
It'll be an app purchase.
Casey:
There you go.
Casey:
Marco, it reminds me we should take a note to you and I discuss the Syracuse rescue plan if this happens and how I'm getting to you and we're getting to him in time to stop him from doing something stupid.
Marco:
Well, I can get us to him quickly at least.
Marco:
And with butt massaging.
Casey:
We should talk about something awesome.
Marco:
Speaking of which, our first sponsor this week is a repeat sponsor.
Marco:
In fact, both of our sponsors this week are repeat sponsors, but I will save the surprise until later of the second one.
Marco:
Our first one, it's going to be a huge surprise.
Marco:
Our first one is Hover.
Marco:
Hover is high-quality, no-hassle domain registration.
Marco:
And we have a promo code as usual.
Marco:
You can use promo code ATP for 10% off any registration or add-on you buy at Hover.
Marco:
It's pretty great.
Marco:
So Hover offers .net, .co, .com, TV, tons of country code TLDs, and...
Marco:
They've been adding a bunch of new TLDs recently.
Marco:
They just got .io pretty recently, and they're constantly adding more.
Marco:
You can get .com, .net, .io, just about .anything else.
Marco:
They actually said .anything else.
Marco:
That's pretty cool.
Marco:
So, Hover takes all the hassle and friction out of owning and managing domain names.
Marco:
Now, everyone here, everybody listening to this show especially, because you're all nerds like us, or geeks, whatever the term is, sorry.
Marco:
John.
Marco:
John.
Marco:
Domain registration is usually a pretty terrible experience.
Marco:
Usually the way it works with other registrars is you go through their terrible shopping cart after you search for names in their terrible search interface.
Marco:
And they try to upsell you like crazy on every stupid little service.
Marco:
And there's always confusing checkboxes like, don't not prevent the newsletter from getting to me.
Marco:
What?
Marco:
And then there's like, okay, so do you want to pay an extra $10 a month for us to not sell your information to spammers?
Marco:
Well, wait a minute.
Marco:
So there's all this crazy stuff that other registrars do that just makes it pretty unpleasant.
Marco:
Then once you finally get their name registered, their interfaces for managing them are terrible, and a lot of times you've got to pay extra for...
Marco:
very basic things like, like DNS that a lot of regular shores offer for free.
Marco:
Um, hover is just good.
Marco:
And I say this as a hover customer.
Marco:
Uh, I was a customer before they were a sponsor of the show.
Marco:
I'm happy that they are sponsoring the show because I can actually honestly tell you hover is great.
Marco:
Um,
Marco:
They don't believe in heavy-handed upselling or aggressive cross-selling.
Marco:
They don't hide functionality that really should be there.
Marco:
They have email services, and they even have Google Apps for your domain, all sorts of cool stuff.
Marco:
And one of the best things about Hover...
Marco:
My two favorite features about Hover are, one, they have this awesome valet transfer service or transfer valet.
Marco:
I forget what they call it exactly because it isn't in my script here.
Marco:
But if you want, when you're moving to Hover, you can just give them the login for your existing registrar.
Marco:
They will log in and move everything over to Hover for you.
Marco:
You don't even have to mess with it yourself.
Marco:
And, of course, if you don't want to give them the credentials, you can still do it yourself.
Marco:
It's very, very easy.
Marco:
I moved a few myself, and it was very good.
Marco:
My second favorite feature of Hover is their phone support.
Marco:
So they have a no hold, no wait, and no transfer phone policy.
Marco:
You call this number, the toll-free number that's on their site, Monday through Friday, 8 a.m.
Marco:
to 8 p.m.
Marco:
Eastern, and you will speak to a live person.
Marco:
They will pick up the phone.
Marco:
a live person will pick up the phone and say, hi, this is Hover.
Marco:
How can I help you?
Marco:
And they will actually be able to help you.
Marco:
I've used it a couple times.
Marco:
It actually does work.
Marco:
It's really great.
Marco:
So go to hover.com slash ATP and use promo code ATP for 10% off any domain you register there or anything else.
Marco:
Really great service.
Marco:
Thanks a lot to Hover for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
I didn't realize it was no transfer as well.
Casey:
That's pretty cool.
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, I've only called like twice, but both times the person who picked up the phone immediately upon ringing, they helped me through the whole thing.
Marco:
I didn't have to get bounced to different departments or anything.
Marco:
I don't think it's that big of a company.
Marco:
I think you're talking to a handful of people who all know their stuff, and they have the power to do things for you.
Marco:
They don't have to bounce you to 17 different departments.
Casey:
That is really awesome.
Casey:
And as I've said in the past, but I'll repeat because I haven't said it in a while, my father was registering a domain.
Casey:
My dad is savvy but not a geek in the traditional sense.
Casey:
And I told him just go to Hover and just figure it out.
Casey:
And sure enough, he went to Hover, he figured it out, and it worked out great.
Casey:
So truly, whether you're a geek or not, it's a great option.
Casey:
I definitely recommend them.
Casey:
Anyway, what else do we want to talk about?
Casey:
We have a laundry list of things.
Casey:
Do we want to talk about confections?
Casey:
Do we want to talk about how the app store sucks?
Casey:
Or do we want to talk about Nokia?
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
I feel like a lot of these topics are going to be pretty boring.
Marco:
I mean, the KitKat thing, like, okay, who cares?
Marco:
Like, who cares which mountain or ski lodge Intel uses for their next chip code name?
Marco:
Like, does it really matter?
Casey:
Or what portion of California Apple is using for their next not sea line?
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
Yeah, exactly.
Marco:
I mean, what other portion of California that has an awkward pluralization in the name that nobody who's not in California has ever heard of?
Casey:
That's so terrible.
Marco:
What could possibly go wrong?
Marco:
Seriously.
Marco:
Sorry, Californians.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So enough of that.
Casey:
Do you want to audible to something totally different?
Casey:
A little birdie told me we maybe should talk about synologies or synology.
Casey:
Is that how it's?
Marco:
Yeah, it's because it's pronounced like synergy, but with ology at the end.
Marco:
Synergyology.
Casey:
Yeah.
Yeah.
Casey:
You want to talk about that?
Casey:
We can if you want.
Casey:
I mean, I can totally audible away from the thing that probably things that everyone else wants to talk about and talk about.
Casey:
We want to talk about.
Marco:
Is that a football term?
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
Or an audio or an audio books related.
Casey:
It's a football term.
Casey:
I forgot my audience.
Casey:
My apologies.
Casey:
Anyway, so we should back up and explain what we're talking about.
Casey:
So a while ago, Marco, and you can feel free to interrupt me when you're ready.
Casey:
Marco had tweeted about, hey, I want to get a new network attached storage.
Casey:
What should I get?
Casey:
Should I get a Drobo?
Casey:
Should I get this?
Casey:
Should I get that?
Casey:
Blah, blah, blah.
Casey:
And I remember this was going on right around WWDC because I remember talking about it in line with you for one of the presentations in Presidio.
Casey:
So anyway, so come to find out that somebody from Synology caught wind of this and offered to send Marco a Synology network attached storage box.
Casey:
And that was extremely kind of them.
Casey:
And then decided, you know what, we don't want to just be that awesome.
Casey:
Let's be even more awesomer.
Casey:
Yes, that's a word.
Casey:
And let's send a box to John and Casey as well.
Casey:
And so all three of us have all gotten the same Synology box.
Casey:
They even doubled down on awesome and filled John's and mine with hard drives.
Casey:
I don't know if that can be said for you as well, Marco.
Casey:
So they gave us these unbelievably awesome and not cheap network-attached storage boxes, no strings attached whatsoever.
Casey:
And we're talking about them because we want to, not because they told us we have to.
Casey:
But with that said, they were comped.
Casey:
So Marco or John, what would you guys like to say about this?
Marco:
Well, you've already heard me talk a lot about mine back when I got it.
Marco:
So, John, why don't you go ahead?
John:
I'll preface it by saying that I haven't had a network-attached storage box before except for the Transporter, which the Transporter guys sent us.
John:
They have sponsored the show, and we've talked about those before.
John:
See, this is why you should start a podcast, everybody.
Marco:
If you want...
John:
If you want network-attached storage.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
We can't really get a whole lot else, but if you want network-attached storage, we have tons of that.
John:
Yeah.
John:
So the transporter is, you know, it's... You've all seen them.
John:
They're very small.
John:
They're also much cheaper than something like a Synology.
John:
But that was the first network-attached storage thing I had, and I use it like, as I described in a past transporter spot, kind of like...
John:
a little magical thing that just contains my data.
John:
And I've been using the transporter a lot.
John:
I know this is going to, I was supposed to talk about Synology, but briefly in the transporter thing, like now that I know other people also in the podcasting space who have transporters, when I want to send a large file to somebody, uh,
John:
And I know they have a transporter.
John:
It's such a relief because they don't have to do one of those like, oh, can I put it in my Dropbox and give them a public URL?
John:
Maybe, maybe not.
John:
Or one of those file send it services or it's too big to send over email or I have to host it on a web server and keep my computer running for them.
John:
It's so much easier if I can just jam into the transporter and send a little share request and then turn all, you know, put my computer to sleep and not think about it.
John:
So anyway, that was my first experience with network-attached storage, and that's already changed my life to a similar degree like Dropbox did, where now you have this new sort of third place where you can put things and stage things that's not one of your computers that doesn't require you to keep your computers on or connected or whatever.
John:
So that was kind of a relief.
John:
But what I was always looking for in my life for network-attached storage is...
John:
It's the same type of thing, like the third place, the other place that isn't on any of my one computers, but that is gigantic, like that can fit all my crap on it, plus all backups.
John:
Like, you know, it can't just be one little hard drive or two little hard drives.
John:
It has to just be massive.
John:
And I never could bring myself to buy one of those things because I had no experience in the field, and I was afraid I would get, like, the wrong thing.
John:
Or, you know, I look at all these sort of do-it-yourself projects, and, you know, I'm such a big fan of ZFS, so I could try to build one of those with Open Solaris and ZFS or this FreeBSD ZFS boxes or this build-your-own NAS things.
John:
Or maybe I should just get a little PC and stuff it full of disks and put it in the basement.
John:
I never knew what to do.
John:
So Synology solved the problem for me.
John:
By sending me this box.
John:
And my expectations were actually pretty low.
John:
Because, like, the transporter I expected to work like an appliance.
John:
Because it looks like an appliance.
John:
It looks like a little tiny... It's not even as big as a potted plant.
John:
But this cute little vertical thing looks like a little computerized garden gnome.
John:
And it's like, oh, it's adorable and it's great.
John:
But, like...
John:
Like, it's one 2.5-inch drive in there, so I'm not expecting, again, terabytes of storage.
John:
But everything else looks like some big, ugly PC thing.
John:
I remember when Marco got his, I was asking him, like, you know, fans, how loud are the fans?
John:
How can you have this thing in the same room?
John:
You put it in a closet.
John:
Isn't it overheating the closet?
John:
Like, I didn't have high expectations for this thing.
John:
I figured it would be, like, a big, ugly, noisy PC with disks in it.
John:
Uh, and I got the box and it's big and it's heavy and it feels like it costs as much money as it does.
John:
Cause it's made of metal.
John:
It's very solid.
John:
It was stuffed with hard drives.
John:
I got like the eight drive model.
John:
So it's stuffed with eight hard drives, uh, took it out of the box.
John:
And like the instructions that come with it are like,
John:
two sentences long.
John:
It's like, plug into power, plug into Ethernet, go to your computer and type find.sonology.com or whatever into your web browser.
John:
Like, it was just a host name that you typed into your web browser, and then that somehow finds your network attached storage or your network, and there it is.
John:
And I'm like, all right, well, it just mounted as, like, a single volume, a single massive volume, which is like, oh, that's great and everything, but that's not what I wanted to do.
John:
I'm like, oh, no, what am I going to do with this thing?
John:
Like, having...
John:
you know, 24 terabyte of storage just sitting there on my desktop with network attached isn't very useful to me.
John:
So I, you know, fired up the software interface of this thing, which I expected to look like, I don't know, have you ever had a non-Apple router and it's like that web page you go to and a little locally hosted web server and it looks like some disgusting thing or whatever.
John:
But I didn't care.
John:
I'm like, fine, if it looks gross like that, that's fine.
John:
I just want to be able to like...
John:
At first, I was like, oh my god, maybe I didn't understand what this thing is.
John:
Maybe it just gives you, like, you know, it puts all the disks together in some kind of RAID arrangement or something, and you can choose which RAID arrangement.
John:
Maybe it just shows up as one volume.
John:
But, like, I don't want to use it like that.
John:
I want to divvy it up into different pieces and slices.
John:
And I shouldn't have worried because the interface they have, it's a web interface, and it doesn't look like an Apple web interface.
John:
It looks kind of like a Linux on the desktop kind of interface influenced by the original Apple Aqua stuff.
John:
But it is perfectly serviceable.
John:
It works the way you expect.
John:
It's even got little windows you can drag around and stuff.
John:
And you can do anything with this thing, like just by clicking around.
John:
You can divvy this thing up into any possible arrangement of any different RAID strategy, carve up volumes into different pieces, make it appear as different volumes that mount on your computer, create user accounts, apply quotas.
John:
And maybe this is all an old hat for people who know NAS stuff.
John:
But I was impressed by the flexibility of this thing.
John:
And my main problem now is...
John:
It's too many possibilities.
John:
I don't know how I'm going to divvy this thing because it's so much space and I have so many schemes that I want to do to it.
John:
So I spent the first week just slicing these disks up into different pieces and then reformatting them all and re-slicing them and then trying this out and installing applications, doing all this stuff.
John:
And the whole time, by the way, this thing is in my basement and it has...
John:
two gigantic fans in the back of it that are amazingly quiet not quite enough that i would ever want it in the room with me but still pretty darn amazingly quiet and in fact it comes when it comes out of the box like one of the umpteen settings that's in the web interface is i thought you were going to find this quiet i found every option this thing is quiet mode and cool mode and it comes shipped in quiet mode and it's like well the whole reason i put it in my basement is so i don't have to deal with that so i switch it to cool mode and it is not that much noisier i can't even tell the difference
John:
I mean, it's about the same amount of noise either way.
John:
So I have this thing down in the basement about six feet off the ground on top of something with a cat six cable running to the back of it.
John:
And I put my transporter down there too.
John:
And I put a UPS down there also off the ground.
John:
So like basically if my basement floods, the water has to get six feet high before it takes my network attached storage offline.
John:
Right.
John:
In which case you have lots of other problems.
John:
Yeah, and we don't have flooding here anyway.
John:
So this has really changed my life.
John:
Like, that I have this unseen magical storage that's always on, that I can even make it accessible from the web I've wanted, because of course the box has that feature as well.
John:
So I'm mightily impressed with this, and I would not hesitate to suggest this product for anyone who wants network-attached storage, because...
John:
And everything that I've asked it to do, including network time machine backups from two separate Macs, that's the great thing about, I figure when they did a line or mountain line, let you add the second disk to a time machine.
John:
I just said, why the hell not?
John:
And I added it as the second time machine destination for all the computers in my house.
John:
Now they back up to their local Time Machine disk that they always had, and they also back up to the Network one.
John:
And that was my first test of it.
John:
Can you back up 4 million files off my Mac Pro to Network Time Machine?
John:
And the answer is yes.
John:
Now maybe it will flip out when it runs out of space because it does that when it's actually a regular disk, and that's not really the fault of the Synology.
John:
But it has done everything I've asked it to do, and I'm very impressed by it.
John:
I give it two big thumbs up.
Marco:
I will say also, before I had the Synology last year when I was using a laptop instead of a Mac Pro full-time, I had a Mac Mini running Lion server and using network time machine that way, like with a USB disk plugged into the Mac Mini through Apple server over the network to my laptop.
Marco:
And it was incredibly slow to back up, to look things up, to restore files.
Marco:
It was just ungodly slow.
Marco:
With the Synology, with the Mac Pro, obviously there's a lot of different factors here.
Marco:
The disks aren't external to it, although you can plug in USB drives to it.
Marco:
But in this case, I didn't.
Marco:
It's just way faster.
Marco:
I would say Time Machine, both backups and restores and browsers from my Mac Pro to this analogy are just as fast, perceptibly, to me at least, just as fast as using a local disk.
John:
But Time Machine itself is a still...
John:
Incredibly slow and terrible protocol like even just doing it to a local to disk inside my Mac Pro It's slow because it's just doing all sorts of terrible things So one of the things I did do with this is try to see what kind of speeds I was getting from it You know and I enabled jumbo frames which I hadn't done before because I had never had a reason to but now all of a sudden I have a reason to enable jumbo frames and I was happy
John:
to learn that all of my switches in between me and the NAS support jumbo frames, so I turned it all on.
John:
And I was getting over 100 megabytes a second just writing big media files, which is obviously the easiest case to this thing.
John:
So I'm completely satisfied with the speed.
John:
Of course, Time Machine is still slow as balls, but it's obviously not the fault of the hardware or anything between.
John:
It's entirely a software thing, which I'm willing to live with.
John:
But it's not so slow that...
John:
It seems like about the same speed as Time Machine to an internal disk.
John:
See, that's what I'm saying.
Marco:
It's about the same.
Marco:
For me, I haven't done a massive restore yet, but I've pulled a few files off of it here and there.
Marco:
And doing that really just feels the same as it always did using an internal three and a half inch drive in the Mac Pro.
John:
The one thing that I planned poorly about was, like, when I knew the NAS was coming, I ran another cable from my computer room through these various holes I have, you know, fishing it through with a hanger and everything in my own sort of, you know.
John:
I have several cables going through these holes, but every time I do it, I never bother to, like, put a lead in there so I can pull things back and forth.
John:
Anyway, I did a new cable and stapled it all up to the, you know, rafters and got it all the way into the other corner of the house where the NAS stuff is.
John:
And then when the NAS came, I put it down, and I realized this has four LAN ports in the back of it.
John:
I should have run three more wires.
John:
It was a big mistake.
John:
I could, in theory, run one cable to my Mac, to the Switch, to my Mac.
John:
I could also run another cable directly to the back of my television if I wanted to stream because, of course, this thing is a DLNA server and it does video streaming and everything.
John:
So it would have a gigabit to and from my Mac, but it would also have a separate gigabit interface to and from my entertainment center if I wanted to stream movies.
John:
And those movies wanted to transfer at 100 megabytes a second, which is kind of unreasonable.
John:
But anyway, that has four ports in the back.
John:
So I kind of regret not running more wire, but that's not the fault of the NAS.
Marco:
And also it supports connection bonding.
Marco:
So if your Switch supports that, you can, I believe, bond all four of the ports together.
John:
Yeah, I've got two ports in the back of my Mac Pro and the new Mac Pros do as well.
John:
So if I bonded those interfaces, can you do that in OS X?
Marco:
I'm assuming you can.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
I've never tried.
Marco:
I would hope so.
Marco:
I mean, on the Mac Pro, which is the only Mac that has multiple Ethernet ports, that would make a lot of sense.
John:
Yeah.
John:
All right.
John:
So, Casey, what did you think?
Casey:
So I too had never had network attached storage before the file transporter, which clearly serves a wildly different purpose than the Synology.
Casey:
And previous to getting the Synology, I had the most ridiculous setup of half USB external enclosures.
Casey:
Well, they were all like USB external enclosures, but one or two were connected to the
Casey:
to my airport extreme one or two were hard lined into one of my max.
Casey:
And so this way my two max could, could back themselves up via time machine.
Casey:
It was ridiculous.
Casey:
I'm actually fairly embarrassed at how ridiculous it was.
Casey:
So I get this analogy and I divvied it up.
Casey:
So it's the particular ones we got where the 1813 pluses, uh, which are kind of the big daddy models, if you will.
Casey:
Um, which again, thank you so much analogy for sending them.
Casey:
Uh, and so I took the first two physical drives.
Casey:
This was mostly Marco's recommendation.
Casey:
Took the first two drives, made them one single volume, and that would be Time Machine backups for my two Macs and Aaron's Mac.
Casey:
And then I took the other six and said, do that Synology hybrid RAID whatever magic thing to make it one gigantic volume with one redundant drive.
Marco:
And that becomes expandable.
Marco:
It's very similar to how Drobos work, where they call it the SHR for Synology Hybrid RAID.
Marco:
And it's very similar to Drobos, where you can pull one drive out and replace it with a bigger one, and then it'll rebuild the array and expand it.
Marco:
Although the reason I should point out now, if you don't mind, Casey, the reason I recommended that you split it up like that is that the hybrid RAID volumes
Marco:
are very big and very expandable, but also very slow.
Marco:
Because when you think about how it works, it's similar to how RAID 5 works, where every access, every read and write, requires all of the disks in the array to read and write before it's done.
Marco:
And so you can imagine, in reality, that's actually slower than one disk in that kind of performance, especially on writes.
Marco:
It's especially slow on writes.
Marco:
And so the SHR volume for me,
Marco:
like i was a little nervous to have eight discs all reading and writing constantly with the exact same things i was nervous for both the speed of that and also the lifetime of those discs being all read and written to like exactly the same amount and and for everything i figured that was pretty heavy use and i don't want my discs to die early because none of them are like those crazy you know nas editions or raid editions or whatever the stupid things that drive manufacturers do these days try to get more money out of us but uh
Marco:
So that's why I recommended Time Machine is a very different access pattern than everything else.
Marco:
Time Machine is very frequent.
Marco:
It should be fast.
Marco:
So I do two disks in RAID 0, which I know is crazy, but it's a backup.
Marco:
And it's not even my only backup.
Marco:
So I figure it's okay.
Marco:
Two disks in RAID 0 are Time Machine for us.
Marco:
And the reason why we have to do it that way is because...
Marco:
I don't know whether this is a limitation of just the Synology management interface or the underlying component they're using that's probably a BSD thing that emulates Time Machine, but you can only have one Time Machine share on the Synology at once.
Marco:
So if you want...
Marco:
multiple computers to back up to one... If you want multiple computers to back up to the Synology at all, you have to have them all go to the same share, and then you can manage their space with user quotas.
Marco:
But we will see how well that works in practice.
Marco:
Anyway, so I did the two RAID 0s for that, and then I have four disks in SHR for my general big file storage and media serving and stuff like that, and then I have two bays empty for future expansion.
Marco:
So yeah, Casey, sorry, proceed.
Casey:
No, no, not at all.
Casey:
So mine is fully loaded.
Casey:
So I have the two, like you had said, two in RAID 0, and then the other six is one gigantic drive.
Casey:
A few things that – and let me pick up my little clipboard.
Casey:
I've been taking notes on them.
Casey:
A few things that I wanted to point out about the Synology.
Casey:
Firstly, it has actually a suite of iOS apps you can download.
Casey:
One of them is just a general manager.
Casey:
So if you expose it to the internet, you can't, which by the way, you can get your own SSL certificate and install it and so on and so forth.
Casey:
But anyways, if you expose it via the internet, you can manage it remotely via the web.
Casey:
You can manage it remotely via this iOS app.
Casey:
Also, the Synology itself has kind of a package manager.
Casey:
And so you can actually install different packages.
Casey:
And one of the packages I installed was a download manager.
Casey:
And so that'll let me download if I wanted to download a torrent or if I have a news group account and want to download news group things, I can, or even just do like a W get for all intents and purposes.
Casey:
All of that can be done on the Synology and there's a separate iOS app for that.
Casey:
It has a Plex app on the Synology.
Casey:
So if all of your media is on the Synology, which all of mine is,
Casey:
then it can expose that via Plex.
Casey:
And I think I mentioned earlier in the show that Plex is a really neat media manager.
Casey:
Let's see what else.
Casey:
There are smaller versions of the Synology.
Casey:
So like I said, we were lucky enough to get the big daddy ones, but there are smaller ones that have fewer drives.
Casey:
And I believe all of this line of Synology is
Casey:
also support getting daughter boxes, for lack of a better word.
Marco:
Yeah, like an expansion box.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
And so you could load a bunch of drives in there in the future if you decide you need to.
Casey:
And this way you don't have to pay the price for this whole big thing up front.
Casey:
And you could get one of the smaller ones and then add on if you really find you need to.
John:
You could also hook up USB disks.
John:
They have USB ports in the back.
John:
For example, I have a bus-powered 1TB drive that if I wanted, I could just go throw that down in the basement and I've got an extra 1TB of...
John:
portable storage that just, you know, attached to the thing.
Marco:
Although you can't, as far as I can tell, when it mounts a USB drive, you don't have all the same options.
Marco:
Like, you can't make RAID volumes out of them and stuff like that.
John:
Yeah, it would just be like a portable appendage, you know.
Marco:
Right, exactly.
Marco:
But yeah, and as far as I know, so we have the DS1813+.
Marco:
All the numbers that end in threes, I think, are the most recent revisions right now.
Marco:
So the 1813.
Marco:
There's also the 1513.
Marco:
Same thing, but instead of eight bays, it has five.
Marco:
But I think otherwise, it's effectively identical, and it has all the same capabilities.
Marco:
If you don't need 8 bays, I would say the 1513 Plus is probably the one to look at.
Marco:
And there's even 2 bay models down at the low end.
Marco:
I think they have less processing power because they have to be so cheap, so I'm not sure if they would be able to do all these exact same things.
Marco:
But the 5 bay and 8 bay models are pretty great.
John:
Someone in the chat room was asking whether they thought it was worth it for the price, and obviously it's worth it for us because we got it for free, but the price is a question, and maybe that was what was keeping me away from buying one.
John:
It's that these things are expensive, and you look at them, and you're like, well, I could just buy a PC for that price.
John:
But then the reason I wasn't buying a PC for that price was, well, you buy a PC, then you have to install an OS, probably install Linux on there, and deal with volume management, and where you're going to put the drives, and are they going to be all internal, and how easy is it to get them, and maybe you should buy a shuttle PC where you can get them in and out.
John:
Eventually, you end up sort of cobbling together your own NAS, like with the do-it-yourself NAS kits, and you arrive back at the thing that Synology is providing for you already done.
John:
Software, hardware, everything included, and
John:
I should have just pulled the trigger on that before because, like, that to me is worth the price.
John:
Now, the downside for me as a Unix nerd is that don't go into this expecting that what you're going to get is a Linux PC with logical volume management and stuff like that.
John:
Like, you can get a shell, you can SSH into it, but...
John:
and you know it's like whatever it's like an atom processor or something but it is not a full-fledged linux pc that you can just expect to immediately pop right in there it's going to have all your linux user land that you expected and you're going to be able to just install your own stuff from rpms and just treat it like oh it's like i have a linux pc and also i have a nas what you have is a nas and it is totally designed from top to bottom to be network attached storage and not designed from top to bottom for you to just have an interactive user shell and use it as like your little
John:
place the ussh into instead and you can install us as a you know sh i think comes with it or maybe it's in the package manager you can install pearl from their package manager and stuff like you can do all that stuff but it doesn't come out of the box with that so if you're expecting like a linux home server that you're going to be using interactively from a shell i don't know how many people wanted that except for me maybe uh this is not that thing this is a nas and although you can make it act kind of like a linux machine it's kind of like swimming against the tide to do that so
John:
Because, like, I went in there, for example, like, oh, I'm going to set up some cron jobs to do stuff instead of going through the GUI.
John:
But I don't think cron D was on there.
John:
Or maybe it was a second.
John:
Like, it's very clear once I, like, the shell they give you isn't even, like, Bash or let alone, you know, my favorite shell, TZSH.
John:
You can install ZSH.
John:
You can install Bash.
John:
You can install all these things.
John:
But they're not there to be in with.
John:
That's a signal to you.
John:
To not set up cron jobs, but to use it like a NAS because there's a GUI interface for all this stuff.
John:
You have some repeated job you want to do, you know, go nuts with it.
John:
So that's the only caveat I would give for this thing is if you want something that's a network attached storage appliance, buy this.
John:
If you want a Linux home server, buy a Linux home server.
Marco:
Yeah, I agree with that.
Marco:
I mean, if you're going to want to really hack it and if you're going to want to do things that it can't do officially, and there's a lot that it can do officially.
Marco:
They have kind of like an App Store type interface or like a package manager interface that you can install a bunch of stuff from.
Marco:
And you can probably browse it on their site somewhere.
Marco:
But I would say...
Marco:
Yeah, you can SSH into it.
Marco:
I tried installing the CrashPlan client directly onto it so you can have it back itself up to CrashPlan.
Marco:
And because my CrashPlan server here, as we discussed previously, because my CrashPlan nearest server is terrible, I ended up abandoning that.
Marco:
But I did get it working.
Marco:
It just was too slow to upload to matter.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
If you're going into that area of installing your own package manager and then installing Java and then installing your own stuff, at that point you might want your own PC, like a regular Linux PC that happens to have a bunch of drives in it maybe.
Marco:
But if what you're looking for is the NAS, then yeah, I agree with John that this is pretty much the way to go.
Casey:
Yeah, and I had a couple other quick thoughts, and one of them actually was about CrashPlan.
Casey:
So I have two MacBook Pros, one of which is works, one of which is mine.
Casey:
And the one that's mine has CrashPlan on it.
Casey:
And I told my Mac, I told CrashPlan to look at the Synology and back it up.
Casey:
The big, you know, what is it, 15 terabyte array or whatever it is.
Casey:
And it took, I don't know, three or four days or something like that, because I don't have the problems you have with CrashPlan.
Casey:
And sure enough, all of that is now in crash plan.
Casey:
I'm not paying anything extra for it.
Casey:
It's all just up there waiting for me, which is really great.
Casey:
And the other thing I wanted to point out was, you know, just like John said, it really changed my world.
Casey:
And I mean that because, say, for example, I really like Top Gear.
Casey:
It's my favorite TV show, the British version.
Casey:
And so I have all of these episodes of Top Gear stored on literally 15 or 20 DVDs.
Casey:
And as John berated me about early on in ATP's existence, that really isn't a very good mechanism for keeping all of these files.
Casey:
Additionally, I had all of our wedding pictures on a couple of DVDs.
Casey:
And yes, I had a couple of backups of those.
Casey:
But all of these things that were just sitting on DVDs in various files,
Casey:
or whatever you call them from straight out of like 99.
Casey:
They're now all, they've all now been sucked into the Synology.
Casey:
And now in principle, I never have to worry about them again.
Casey:
And that is really awesome.
Casey:
And on top of that, if I want to watch some random episode from the fifth season or series of Top Gear,
Casey:
I can do that in no time, whereas before I would have to say, oh, God, now I've got to go up to the office, find the binder full of Top Gear DVDs, figure out which one is the one that has the Top Gear episode I want, and it would have taken forever.
Casey:
Now it's all just right there.
Casey:
So in summary, it really has been awesome.
Casey:
I've always kind of felt like I wanted a network-attached storage, but I never felt like it was something I needed, and now I've been...
Casey:
completely changed.
Casey:
Now I must have this in my life.
Casey:
So I definitely recommend it.
Casey:
Even if you don't get the model we have, find a different model that fits your needs, but I definitely recommend it.
Casey:
And I can't say thank you enough for the folks at Synology for sending all of us one.
Casey:
That was extremely kind.
John:
Yeah, really great of them to do that.
John:
And I'm compelled at this point to remind people, because no one has said it yet in this discussion, that RAID is not a backup solution.
John:
Just keep repeating that to yourself as many times as possible.
John:
When I was divvying up my Synology, and I still haven't come for the final setup that I'm going to do, but mostly I was settling on using it not as just a box of disks type of thing, but close to that, where...
John:
I'm struggling to think of any reason why I would set up any kind of raid situation because none of the stuff that I'm using, like, the reason you want raid is because you don't want downtime.
John:
But I'm not in that type of environment.
John:
I can be down for a day or two days, and it's not a big deal as long as I don't lose data, right?
John:
So I don't need it like, oh, I've got to put that in at least a RAID 1 because what if one drive fails, right?
John:
All these things are, the vast majority of it for me, are backups of things that I already have on probably two other hard drives elsewhere in the house plus in the cloud, right?
John:
And for the few things that I have on there that would only be on Synology, like all my media files that I'm going to
John:
They're all on my Mac Pro now, so they really are backups now.
John:
But when I get my new Mac Pro with its dinky internal storage, a lot of it will only be on the Synology.
John:
And when that happens, my solution is going to be to set up two volumes on the Synology, one of which has all my media, and one of which has a regularly backed up copy of all of my media.
John:
And why wouldn't I just do a RAID setup?
John:
Okay.
John:
because it will delete them across all of your disks.
John:
And when you say, hey, I want those backs, it'll say you should have had a backup.
John:
So I'm going to end up divvying this thing up into many different slices, maybe with a few RAID 0 things in there, but probably almost no redundancy or data protection.
John:
All of my data protection is probably going to be by having the Synology backup to itself and, of course, to online and all the other places that I backup.
John:
So that's actually kind of a surprise to me, too, after all the stuff of thinking about different RAID schemes and stuff.
John:
I tried many of them, and every time I looked at it, I was like...
John:
This is really what I want, and it's one of the few things that made me finally buy Carbon Copy Cloner, which I hadn't bought for years because I'd always been using SuperDuper.
John:
But SuperDuper doesn't do network disks, and Carbon Copy Cloner does.
John:
So if I want to have two volumes on the NAS, I can have a job on any of my Macs that will smart copy one of – I'm using SuperDuper terminology – intelligently copy one of those volumes onto the other to make a weekly or whatever backup of my media drive.
John:
instead of you doing a RAID 1 volume or RAID 5 volume for my media and thinking that somehow that's protecting it because it wouldn't be.
John:
And despite all the times we've talked about it, none of us have tried iSCSI yet.
John:
No, no, I'm still too afraid of it.
John:
I mean, I'm assuming it would work fine, but I'm like, this works so well, why would I?
John:
What is it that I can't do with it the way it is that I would want to install kernel extension?
John:
Back up with Backblaze.
John:
That's a big one.
John:
Well, I'm already a CrashPlan subscriber, so I'll probably just do like Casey did and suck this all into my CrashPlan thing, but may still use Backblaze for my local Mac.
John:
I don't know.
John:
I haven't decided yet.
Marco:
Or I could see if you wanted to use one of the Synology disks as a Photoshop scratch disk or something like that, like some disk roll where the network protocol overhead might be prohibitively slow for it or weird in other ways, and you don't need to share it, then that might work.
Marco:
But who knows?
John:
Yeah, there's a... The latest version of Synology software has support for SSD... It doesn't have some kind of SSD support, like an SSD cache drive or whatever.
Marco:
Yeah, I haven't listened to it yet.
Marco:
Yeah, like the read caching.
Marco:
A few other NASAs do this already also.
Marco:
It's not... They're not the first ones to do this, but...
Marco:
Yeah, it works, you know, similar to how you'd expect it basically.
Marco:
Not quite like Fusion Drive, but it basically uses an SSD of whatever size, you know, you stick it in there and it can use it as a read cache.
Marco:
But I don't know in detail how that works.
John:
And I was thinking that that would be for people who like have massive aperture libraries or something and they use it with the iSCSI interface, right?
John:
And so then they get a little bit extra performance because they're really thrashing it or whatever.
Marco:
Well, the difference, though, is that it depends on how it's being used.
Marco:
Fusion Drive is interesting because it's not just a cache.
Marco:
It's actually moving blocks around and saying, all right, this block that's being actively read and written to now lives here on the SSD.
Marco:
And so it can not only make reads faster, but it can make writes faster.
Marco:
And if it's kind of like a simple, dumb caching arrangement instead, where the data still lives on the spinning disks and the SSD is just like a read cache for it, then that's great for reads, but it doesn't do you any good for writes.
John:
Yeah, I still wish I could.
John:
I'm still trying to angle with this new, you know, trash can Mac Pro.
John:
If I could somehow get a Fusion-based boot drive out of that thing.
Marco:
Oh, yeah.
Marco:
Good luck with that.
John:
I mean, either that or I want like a 1.5 terabyte SSD, but I know that's not going to happen.
John:
So I'm thinking of something.
John:
So my NAS is not entirely solved my Mac Pro problem, but that's Apple's fault, not Synology's, because they didn't put any drives in the damn thing.
Casey:
Oh, goodness.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So really quick question, Marco, and then please tell me about something else that's awesome.
Casey:
I've been asked by some friends that actually believe in photography in a way that I don't.
Casey:
If the Synology works as an aperture or light room, I don't even know the terms, like a library or something like that.
Casey:
And I feel like I saw you answer this via Twitter.
Marco:
twitter or email or something like that but do you find for you and or tiff especially like what is your workflow can you use this as your primary working drive or how did you guys divvy that up we really don't i mean neither of us are qualified to know tiff's photo management is she uses her own file and folder structure and uses adobe bridge and photoshop bridge for browsing and light editing and raw and photoshop for more detailed editing
Marco:
So Bridge is basically a file browser.
Marco:
It doesn't keep much of its own library around.
Marco:
It doesn't manage the files for you.
Marco:
I use Lightroom, which is not actually that different from Bridge.
Marco:
Lightroom is basically a nice interface with a few additional library management features on top of Bridge.
Marco:
It has all the same editing controls, the same camera raw stuff that Adobe does.
Marco:
What I like about Lightroom, actually, a little side note, what I like about Lightroom a lot, first of all, compared to Aperture, it's way faster, way more frequently updated, and way more stable.
Marco:
And the processing stuff they have is really good.
Marco:
It's, I would say, far ahead of Aperture at this point, with no sign of Aperture catching up anytime soon.
Marco:
Aperture always has felt like there's nobody working on it, and I think it's actually been true for a lot of the time it's been around.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
But anyway, so the problem is, though, neither of us can tell you because, you know, Tiff doesn't use things where the library would be like half there and half in her computer.
Marco:
She has some like old archive client work that just the folders are on the NAS now, but she's not like actively browsing that.
Marco:
So you can't really tell.
Marco:
I actually still keep my entire photo library on my local SSD.
Marco:
So the NAS for me does not take a role in this.
Marco:
So people keep asking me this all the time and I can't, I'm sorry, I can't give you the answer.
Marco:
Aperture has this weird concept of like, you can have the masters in one place and then you can have like the working files or previews locally or something.
Marco:
And back when I used Aperture, I used it for a couple of years and,
Marco:
One of the reasons I stopped using it, besides all the other problems I just cited, was I was never quite clear on where the files were and what I'm supposed to be managing here.
Marco:
Where is this file?
Marco:
Do I actually have a copy of this file?
Marco:
Can I delete this version of this?
Marco:
Is that going to delete the original?
Marco:
And the whole concept of vaults and reference masters and all this crazy stuff Aperture has to manage files and where they're located...
Marco:
I could just never wrap my head around it.
Marco:
So I, I never really used much of it.
Marco:
And, uh, with Lightroom, you could, you have a lot more control.
Marco:
I think it's less, I think, and I don't use this stuff that heavily.
Marco:
So with a grain of salt, but, um,
Marco:
Lightroom seems to have less automatic management of those files, but it gives you more control over the file structure and where it goes.
Marco:
It doesn't try to just hide it all in a bundle like Aperture does.
Marco:
You just tell it what directory to import to, and it imports to those directories.
Marco:
I like that a lot better.
Marco:
To answer your original question, I can't actually tell you how it is using a photo library on a NAS.
Marco:
I really can't tell you.
Marco:
That's one of those examples where maybe iSCSI might be worth considering or trying.
Casey:
Fair enough.
Casey:
How about something awesome?
Marco:
That sounds fantastic.
Marco:
Our second sponsor this episode is another repeat sponsor.
Marco:
It is the repeat sponsor.
Marco:
It is, once again, Squarespace.
Marco:
Squarespace is the all-in-one platform that makes it fast and easy to create your own professional website or online portfolio.
Marco:
For a free trial and 10% off, wait a minute, September is here, and this is really cool.
Marco:
Every other month...
Marco:
that we've run Squarespace, and that I've ever heard Squarespace sponsor any other show, every other month, they have a 10% off coupon code.
Marco:
This month, it's even better.
Marco:
This month, just for September, use coupon code ATP9, because September is month number nine, right?
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Use coupon code ATP9 for 20% off.
Marco:
That's a lot.
Marco:
That's a big, big cut.
Marco:
It's 20%, actually.
Marco:
So, use coupon code ATP9 for 20% off.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
Squarespace is constantly improving their platform.
Marco:
They have new features, new designs, better support, and they have over 20 highly customizable templates for you to choose from to start.
Marco:
You can customize everything.
Marco:
You can change the markup.
Marco:
You can inject JavaScript.
Marco:
You can do all sorts of cool stuff.
Marco:
I've customized the layout for ATP site.
Marco:
I've used JavaScript hacks to insert download links for the MP3s and stuff like that.
Marco:
They give you all sorts of stuff to play with.
Marco:
Okay.
Marco:
It's incredibly easy to use.
Marco:
If you need any help, though, they have an amazing support team.
Marco:
They work 24-7.
Marco:
And Squarespace starts at just $8 a month.
Marco:
And that's before our coupon.
Marco:
It starts at just $8 a month and includes a free domain name if you sign up for a whole year at a time.
Marco:
And, you know, we all know that Squarespace is beautiful on the outside.
Marco:
But what's also amazing is all the code is beautiful, too.
Marco:
Take a look at the markup sometime.
Marco:
You'll see there's a lot you can do there.
Marco:
They take a lot of pride in their back-end code.
Marco:
So this ensures easy markup, accessibility, SEO, all sorts of great benefits.
Marco:
So they take care of the hosting so you don't have to.
Marco:
We've talked before, and I'll repeat it a little bit here, that we all know how to make websites.
Marco:
We can make our own and we can stick it on a server somewhere, but that's a pain in the butt.
Marco:
We all know it.
Marco:
We've all done it.
Marco:
And there's a lot of situations for which you do not want to be doing that or you shouldn't be doing that.
Marco:
And Squarespace is just fantastic to get something up there quickly and easily.
Marco:
That is, especially in my case, way better than anything I could make myself.
Marco:
So thanks a lot to Squarespace for hosting or for sponsoring this episode of ATP.
Marco:
And really, don't forget, use coupon code ATP9 for the month of nine for 20% off just the month of September.
Marco:
Check it out.
Marco:
Use that code.
Marco:
You'll save a bundle.
Marco:
And thanks a lot to Squarespace for sponsoring.
Casey:
Thank you guys.
Casey:
No, and they've been really good to us, Squarespace.
Casey:
So it's very much appreciated.
Casey:
So there's a couple of things I think we could talk about, but we're a little short on time.
Casey:
So do we have any thoughts on Omni Key Mapper or whatever it was called?
Casey:
Do you know what I'm talking about?
Casey:
I do.
Marco:
Go ahead, John, because I don't know much about it.
John:
I mean, I don't have any thoughts except for sadness.
John:
Like, what I can't, you know, is the continuing tension between Apple's App Store policies and what third-party Mac software developers...
John:
want or need to do to maintain their business and is a difference of opinion about how the mac software business should work and third-party developers rely on upgrade revenue and think it's a reasonable thing to do and apple doesn't and now apple's trying to stop third-party developers from allowing mac app store customers to upgrade to a non-mac app store version so
John:
The scheme that Omni had was like, hey, you bought our app on the Mac App Store.
John:
You want the next incremental update, but you don't want to pay full price.
John:
Just use this application that we have.
John:
It will figure out that you purchased our previous version of our application from the App Store, and we'll give you upgrade pricing on purchasing the next version not from the App Store.
John:
And Apple won't even allow that to happen.
John:
They said, stop doing that.
John:
Lots of people on Twitter were like, is that even legal?
John:
Can they stop you from doing that?
John:
It's like proof of purchase.
John:
Isn't there some sort of...
John:
precedent case in law that you're allowed to do proof of purchase type discounts from competitors or whatever oh this is the app store there's no law yeah but like the point is who cares unless you have the money to challenge apple in court which nobody does basically except for maybe adobe or microsoft who neither of whom are in the mac app store anyway uh it's a moot point so basically apple is you know being like they're being they're being kind of jerky about it they're saying uh you don't like our store uh
John:
fine, don't be in it.
John:
And by the way, don't try to do anything that involves our store, like giving your customers a discount.
John:
And, you know, the argument we talked about paid upgrades before, but the argument is like some people ask on Twitter, why should an upgrade be any cheaper than the original purchase?
John:
And as the Omni guys have explained on their site and in Twitter as well, it's like you get more value from the first purchase of the program.
John:
If you don't have a program and then you do, that's incredibly valuable.
John:
And then when they upgrade the program to a fancy new version,
John:
That's an incremental amount of value above the current one you have, but it's presumably not as big a value as going from not having that program to have it.
John:
So that's why upgrade prices should be cheaper than the initial purchase, because the initial purchase has more value to you, and the upgrade has some value to you, but presumably not as much as the entire application to begin with.
John:
And Apple disagrees, and so they don't have upgrade pricing in the store, and...
John:
This will continue to be an annoying battle until this gets sorted out in some way.
John:
One way it can get sorted out is all Mac developers who have any desire to have upgrade pricing leave the Mac App Store, but that's probably not going to happen.
Casey:
Well, I feel so bad for the Mac developers that I feel like they don't have a lot of leverage unless they en masse leave the App Store, like you were saying.
Casey:
So by themselves, they don't really have any leverage.
Casey:
And so they just have to deal with it.
Casey:
And that's really too bad.
Casey:
And I wish that...
Casey:
Apple, maybe they do care, but they give the outward appearance of not caring about how this works for anyone but themselves.
Casey:
And that's crummy.
Casey:
And it's one of the ways that Apple really disappoints me.
John:
Yeah, well, like we said the past time we discussed this, like, they, in theory, they could care about the customers because they think, you know, just a low price for everybody is better than upgrade pricing because of, like, lock-in and making a more competitive market and all those things we talked about in the past show.
Yeah.
John:
But the much less charitable opinion that many people expressed is, no, in reality, what they want is for software to be free because they want there to be many attractive reasons to buy their hardware.
John:
And so they want software to be entirely commoditized and almost free.
John:
and eliminate any company that can't survive by giving away almost free software.
John:
So if you need to charge $50 for the first version and $10 upgrade pricing, you will be eliminated by the company that can charge $15 for every single version year after year and somehow stay in business.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
That's sad.
Casey:
It is sad.
Casey:
Any other thoughts on that?
Casey:
And then we have one more topic I want to try to squeeze in if we can.
John:
Yeah, let's move on.
John:
Buy OmniGraffle.
John:
It's a good program.
John:
They are not a sponsor of the show.
John:
I just use it and like it.
Casey:
And they deserve a break.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So how about Nokia or Nokia or whatever it's called?
Marco:
I'm sure we're pronouncing it wrong even now.
Marco:
Surely we are.
Marco:
Maybe we'll hear about it on Strateakery.com.
Casey:
Yeah, I was really surprised to hear that was the correct pronunciation, but we're already taking a turn for the boring.
Casey:
So what do we think about this Nokia thing?
Casey:
I don't see how this is really helping anyone, and it just smells of desperation to me.
John:
Oh, it's helping somebody.
John:
I think it's helping both of them, both companies.
John:
It's helping Nokia because they get to save face, kind of, because they were going down, down, down, and now it's like, well, not our problem anymore.
John:
Microsoft bought it, and it's their fault that our phones didn't sell or whatever.
John:
And Microsoft, again, if we get back to discuss, if they want to be a...
John:
devices company according to like the balmer plan before he was booted out if that's what they want to be acquiring a hardware manufacturer is the logical next step and the obvious one they would acquire is the one they're already half in bed with with their you know microsoft guy who went to be their ceo and this very intimate deal for them to make windows phones and widely acknowledged to be making the best windows phones um
John:
So, yeah, that's the one to buy.
John:
So now Microsoft has more hardware muscle to go along with its supposed plan to become kind of like Apple and Google.
John:
Google are wrapped into one.
Marco:
Yeah, I think Ben Thompson, the author of Strategory, I think his theory is probably the correct one, which is, you know, because Microsoft already had Nokia slash Nokia, however it's actually pronounced.
Marco:
They already had them kind of around their finger for a long time, for the last few years, ever since Elop was installed as CEO.
Marco:
And, you know, they already had Nokia being their phone maker.
Marco:
They were making, was it exclusively Windows phones, smartphones at this point?
Marco:
Yeah, I think so.
Marco:
And they were making what most people considered very good hardware for Windows Phone.
Marco:
And so, you know, Microsoft was already kind of getting the milk for free there.
John:
I don't know if that's the same thing, though.
Marco:
Well, it might not be, but...
Marco:
Regardless, Ben Thompson's theory as to why this was necessary is that, you know, Nokia was, by most people who are smarter than us in this area, by most people's assessment, Nokia was in severe financial problems.
Marco:
They were possibly on their verge of going bankrupt.
Marco:
And there were also some rumors that maybe they were considering just making Android phones, you know, just starting to use Android just to get more market share and more money coming in.
Marco:
So if either of those were about to happen, if Nokia was about to either go bankrupt or start becoming an Android manufacturer, that would give Microsoft a pretty big reason to help them out and step in there and get some more influence there.
Marco:
Because...
Marco:
If Nokia stopped making Windows phones, who the heck would?
Marco:
You know, there's a handful of other manufacturers that make them, and they're all terrible.
Marco:
Like, Nokia makes the only good ones.
Marco:
And Microsoft still, you know, is fighting hard for... Well, they're fighting for Windows phone to still be a thing, and they're not just going to give in and start making Office for Android, which has a bunch of Nintendo parallels that we don't have time to get to today.
Marco:
But, you know, they're not going to do that...
Marco:
Even if they should, they're probably not going to.
Marco:
So Microsoft kind of had to do this.
Marco:
Theoretically, if this is true, they kind of had to do this.
Marco:
And it might have played a role in why Steve Ballmer has been suddenly kicked out.
Marco:
Maybe Nokia would only agree to it if ELOP became the next Microsoft CEO.
Marco:
Or maybe Ballmer opposed the idea and the board didn't.
Marco:
There's all sorts of possibilities here.
Marco:
But I think that given what we've heard about Nokia's financial situation, that sounds like a really plausible explanation for all this.
John:
And really, if they want to be a company that makes awesome hardware and software together, there is no getting around them making their own hardware.
John:
And they've got a taste for it with the Surface and even with the Zune and, of course, with the Xbox.
John:
You just can't... It's not the same when it's another company doing it.
John:
Like...
John:
Because that's the reason that Apple kept making better products than them for all those years, even though they were dominating them in the market, was that it was all in-house in Apple.
John:
And Microsoft somehow, it was like trying to control, you know, a horse by a pair of reins that were, you know, or like poking something with a stick.
John:
They could try to influence the people who made PCs.
John:
Like, please don't put crapware on or try to, like, strong arm them by requiring, you know, if you want the Windows logo for Windows XP, you must include X, Y, and Z. Or you better put a sound chip on your things because we're embarrassed by the PC speaker.
John:
And, you know, they had some influence on all the people, but it's not the same as when it's you.
John:
And so they'd see Apple like, oh, fine, sure, Apple can make awesome hardware because they can just put whatever the hell they want in there.
John:
And sure, Apple doesn't have all these crazy driver and support problems because they make seven machines and they know exactly what they need to support.
John:
Uh...
John:
I think Microsoft's sick of that.
John:
It's like fighting with one arm tied behind your back.
John:
And so they need hardware expertise.
John:
And this could have been the perfect storm, like Margaret was saying, that if they didn't save these people, all those beautiful Lumia phones would be gone.
John:
And if you're going to buy someone anyway to help you make phones, why would you not buy the company that's currently making the best Windows phones?
John:
So it makes sense from all those different perspectives.
John:
People are down on the deal just because they're like...
John:
Is this going to be enough to save you?
John:
Is this really going to make a difference or is this another one of your stupid deals that you had to make and that doesn't end up changing Microsoft in any way?
Marco:
It seems like what is – let's say in six months from now, everything is all settled and they own this massive division from Nokia that makes all their phones –
Marco:
And they can finally start releasing the next generation of Microsoft Lumia phones.
Marco:
Because they bought the rights to use the trademark Lumia, but not the trademark Nokia.
Marco:
Because they didn't actually buy all of Nokia.
Marco:
They only bought their phone hardware division.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
Suppose six months from now this is all in place and they release Windows Phone 8.5 or 9.0 or whatever it is on the new Microsoft Lumia whatever.
Marco:
What's different then compared to today?
Marco:
What does this really change?
Marco:
What does this enable besides just a continuation of the status quo which was not working well?
Marco:
What does this enable?
John:
Well, it enables them to do the things that Apple does.
John:
Like, say the next version of Windows Phone, you know, Windows Phone 8.7, or I don't know what the hell the version they're up to.
John:
They want to do something with it, and they say, okay, well, this version of Windows Phone will only run on, because Microsoft's done this like crazy, will only run on such-and-such hardware.
John:
And they could even say it will only run on this new hardware.
John:
And in fact, we're going to design this new hardware and we're going to custom pick the GPU and the system on the chip and we'll build the entire thing as a unit, kind of like we're building an Xbox with the hardware and software tied together to work in perfect synergy to give us exactly the GPU features we want, exactly the clock speed, memories, and bus sizes that we need
John:
to implement the software stack that we plan to implement in this OS to make a match set.
John:
Instead of saying, we're going to make this OS, and this is the driver interface, and we'll try to support your things, and maybe you should pick, like, they can make an integrated package that doesn't have to be like, we make this over here, you make this over there, and then we have meetings to work out our interfaces, because you never end up with an optimal situation like that.
John:
You want something as low cost as possible that performs as well as possible in the smallest amount of power, and, you know, like...
John:
They want them to be a match set exactly the same way that Apple does with all its phones like crazy and like Microsoft does with the Xbox where they control the entire stack.
John:
So that, I think, is the win that they're looking for.
John:
It doesn't mean they have the competence to pull it off.
John:
But in theory, that was not possible before.
John:
And now it definitely is possible.
John:
It's just up to them to pull it off.
Casey:
Well, sort of.
Casey:
My recollection of the original Windows Phone 7 specs were that the hardware specifications were pretty specific.
Casey:
To your point, they weren't as specific as, hey, guys next door, can you build exactly this?
Casey:
But they were pretty darn specific, and there wasn't a lot of wiggle room.
John:
But you couldn't iterate on it.
John:
They produced the spec and said, you guys should build this, and then they go off and build the thing.
John:
And they do still have leeway to pick their own camera or pick their battery sizes or pick the materials or pick the screen technology and stuff like that.
John:
When Apple designs, it's not like one team goes off and says, here's iOS 7 and here's where the specs have to be, and then hands off a piece of paper to the hardware guys and they build the phone.
John:
It's totally together.
John:
It's a process moving in lockstep, iterating over and over again, like revising, revising, instead of
John:
OS manufacturer makes a new OS, provides a spec sheet that says, do you run this OS, you need this hardware.
John:
Even if the spec sheet they give you has no variability, it's not the same as it having been designed altogether and going through iterations.
Casey:
Yeah, that's true.
Casey:
I mean, we'll see what happens.
Casey:
I mean, only time will tell.
Casey:
I thought, you know, the good pieces that I read personally were both of Ben Thompson's.
Casey:
We've already talked about one, and there's another that he himself actually has linked in the chat, which has some talk about the, what is it, value something, value...
Casey:
value value act which i guess we're we're theorizing has some play in in some things going on in the board behind the scenes also a horace's take on it which had a delightfully uh casey trolling title which i gotta find uh i think it was like who bought whom or who is buying whom um reading a quick blurb from that uh so in a way an acquisition of priorities is almost a
Casey:
The acquired is actually, quote, buying, quote, the acquirer.
Casey:
The acquired company's priorities and hence processes and resources become the guiding principles in the acquirer.
Casey:
It's what happened when Apple bought Next and may have happened when Disney bought Pixar.
Casey:
And whether or not you buy into the theory, I thought it was a really interesting point.
John:
We forgot the most important point, of course, which has been made by many other people online, is that when you are on the hardware company, you don't get a $15 license fee for your OS when they sell the phone.
John:
You can get like $300 out of the $3,000 cell phone service contract that you got.
John:
So you make a lot more profit when you sell.
John:
I mean, that's the obvious thing that is going unsaid here, but it's worth mentioning.
Marco:
Oh, yeah.
Marco:
I'm sure they wouldn't have even considered this possibility if that wasn't on the table.
John:
I mean, that doesn't make much of a difference if no one buys them, so I still think of it from the perspective of finally you have a fighting chance of doing what Apple does.
John:
Or what Samsung does, because even though it's like, well, Samsung doesn't control the OS, it's like, well, they don't control it, control it, but they kind of, kind of... I always wonder how many people Samsung has working on their Android OS, because it's open source, and they customize their OS to various degrees, so they are more masters of their fate than Nokia was, because I imagine that... Oh, I don't know what the deal is.
John:
It's pretty incestuous between Microsoft, but I don't know if Nokia previously had all the source to...
John:
Windows Phone 7 and 8, and were able to sort of customize it.
John:
I mean, I'm pretty sure they weren't allowed to customize it because they said, we want you to have the Windows Phone experience and don't change the UI to be like, you know, the Motorola Sense skin or all those things that people do with Android, you know?
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So is that it?
Marco:
I guess.
Marco:
I can't think of anything less interesting, to me at least, than trying to figure out in any more detail than what we've talked about.
Marco:
Trying to figure out what's going on with Microsoft and its board.
Marco:
The whole value act thing, that sounds really interesting when Ben Thompson writes about it.
Marco:
I would hate to be trying to do more research on it, though.
Marco:
Can you imagine having to dig through board stuff?
Marco:
Yeah.
John:
That probably is actually, I think, the board intrigue part and the politics part of it is the most interesting part of this entire deal, but has the least or perhaps the most negative bearing on the success of the future companies.
John:
Because it's interesting from like a political, personal, like you wonder what happened and kind of like Game of Thrones, right?
John:
But –
John:
And the more interesting that gets, the more it bodes ill for the future of these companies.
John:
Because if this deal is really about who's going to be CEO and backstabbing in acquisitions and whose star is rising and falling in the corporate ranks, that is totally taking your eye off the ball.
John:
And you do not want any kind of drama like that.
John:
Or at the very least, you want very intense and very brief drama, leading you to a new regime that goes along smoothly.
John:
But this just looks like a gigantic mess over there in the boardrooms.
John:
And I'm so glad that we aren't there sitting through it all.
Casey:
I do want to end with one quick thing, a tweet from Matthew Panzarino from a few days ago, which I think hits the nail on the head.
Casey:
Reality check, though.
Casey:
You and I as consumers can only win if Microsoft and Nokia succeed.
Casey:
Competition only burns the crucible hotter and purer.
Casey:
And I think that's dead on.
Casey:
I know we've all said that many times, but if this does work out, it makes Apple work that much harder and Google work that much harder and Samsung work that much harder.
Casey:
So I do hope it works out, but it's going to be interesting.
John:
If not for the Metro look, who would Apple have used for inspiration for iOS 7?
Casey:
Exactly.
Marco:
Oh, God, that's such a minefield.
Casey:
And on that note, on that bombshell.
Marco:
Let's wrap it up because we're running long here, and we've got to get our sleep before next week's iPhone episode.
Marco:
So thanks a lot to our two sponsors, Hover and Squarespace, and we'll see you next week.
Marco:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin.
Marco:
Cause it was accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
Marco:
John didn't do any research.
Marco:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
Marco:
Cause it was accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
John:
It's accidental.
Marco:
Accidental.
Marco:
They didn't mean to.
Marco:
Accidental.
Marco:
Accidental.
John:
I'm so excited to be playing with it every day.
John:
Every time I see it automatically mount on my desktop and slowly and painfully get a time machine back up and then go away.
John:
I think, ooh, that's down there.
John:
It's down there doing that stuff.
Casey:
It's down there doing that stuff.
Casey:
Are we still talking about the Synology?
John:
That whole paragraph is a title.
John:
I'm so close to getting a Mac Mini or something to be a Plex thing connected to my TV.
John:
I just need a fanless Mac Mini.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Do we want to do titles real quick?
John:
So I like computerized garden gnome.
John:
Don't you think it's like a little garden gnome?
John:
It's like a little statue.
John:
I know what you're saying.
John:
It looks like a robot.
John:
It's got a little light around it.
John:
It's cute.
John:
I'm so happy that I just think of them down there, the two of them sitting next to each other in my basement.
John:
Like all in their own little UPS.
John:
It's made just for them.
John:
Oh, my God.
Casey:
Which one's Bert and which one's Ernie?
Casey:
Oh, goodness.